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Persona 5: Daywatch

Summary:

Stumbling across the wrong enemy, Kurusu Akira is banished to Tokyo by his own father. Always on guard, taking an umbrella brings him into Ann, Shiho, and Yuuki's orbit just in time for a spectacular disaster. What begins as a near-suicidal quest for vengeance becomes a desperate attempt to turn the pieces of his life into an honest whole. Aided by clever strategists and opposed by supernatural puppeteers, one lost boy's quest for something greater becomes a set of bonds firmer than any family he ever knew. Hopefully those bonds are stronger than those that would think themselves gods over the rabble, or demons within.

Contains AU elements.

Notes:

Thanks for reading! Castle's Tall Tower was a sample preview of Daywatch. This expands considerably beyond the deviations hinted at there. I'll keep spoilers to a minimum because I plan to finish this story, but this will not be a regurgitation of the game we all know and love. If you're reading this, you've probably already played it. This will expand or twist every scene, and while some will follow the canon more closely than others there will be no regurgitation of the game script. You all deserve more than that. This Akira is mouthy and active in a way the (near) silent protagonist doesn't allow the scenes to flow, so expect the ripple effect to go from his change and another one we'll get to when he arrives. Certain aspects of the game were handled in a weak manner and I plan to challenge them for a stronger narrative. Prime among them is what I consider the poor writing for Akechi, so they will be diverging from an early childhood point.

Thank you for reading, and stopping to leave a comment. It makes a big difference to see what people think.

There will be references to a particular take of Persona 4, but Daywatch will remain firmly focused on Persona 5. Depending on interest, I may go back to write that as a prequel. Thanks for leaving your thoughts and criticisms in a comment.

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Chapter 1: April 9th, Unpleasant Arrival

Notes:

This story will largely be a Divergence, but there will be some AU elements. Enjoy, and thanks to all reviewers.

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Saturday, 9 April 2016
Afternoon
Yongen, Leblanc

In the quiet residential neighborhood of Yongen, Tokyo, a dark-haired teenager came to a stop at the door to Leblanc. The sleepy cafe lacked any lit-up advertisements, even a sticker identifying which kind of wi-fi it hosted.

Akira brushed a hand through his curly hair and straightened the thick glasses on his nose before pushing the door open. A small bell fixed to the inside of the door jingled. Worn, mostly wood interior had an old-time feel like many of the old buildings Akira lived in. It used a minimalist décor, but warmer than industrial-style buildings like the Smiling Mountain Institute. The thick scent of coffee soaked into him, reminding him of the tiramisu his mother would order. Identifying the manager by the only occupant wearing an apron, the teenager shifted the duffel bag strap on his shoulder, then straightened his gloves and strode to the register where the cafe worker lounged. “Sakura Sojiro?”

The middle-aged man looked up from The Prisoner of the Tower, a small book in his hands. What black hair hadn’t already receded was slicked back, making his goatee seem larger in comparison. “Oh, right. That was today.” He set the book down underneath the counter.

Laughter bubbled up from a group of three young adults as they rose from a booth further in, and the three men trotted to the exit, one of them pausing to raise a hand. “Thanks for the coffee, Boss.”

Sojiro gave a show smile, something wide enough for Japan’s near-obsequious service industry, but thin enough to use as little of his face as possible. “We appreciate your time.” He waved back, watched them go out, then dropped slack the instant the door swung closed. Looking to their place, three coffee cups and a plate with crumbs spilling over the table waited for him. After letting out a heavy breath, he picked back up the book and opened it up with the traveling boy in his peripheral vision. “So you’re Kurusu Akira?”

He twitched in distaste at the use of his family name. Not buying the feigned disinterest, Akira gave the expected bow for any new introduction. “Sorry for the trouble.”

Sojiro’s eyebrow rose and he looked up from the paperback, no effort to conceal either his suspicion or interest now. “I wondered what kind of unruly kid would show up.” He jammed a time-yellowed receipt as a bookmark and set the book back under the counter. “You’re more polite than I expected. You’ll be in my custody for the next…”

“Year,” Akira said, scanning the rows of coffee shelved behind the counter. “According to Officer Ichijou.”

Crossing his arms, Sojiro harrumphed. “You seem pretty calm about moving and living with a stranger.”

Still scanning the back wall, Akira responded, “Anything’s better than back there.” Finished with his visual inspection, he focused on Sojiro. “I’m just curious how you knew me. Officer Ichijou said you were a friend of the family.”

“I knew Waka…” Sojiro cleared his throat. “You know what? It doesn’t matter.” He headed for the small hallway at the back of the cafe. “Walk this way.”

Taking a loping gait after him, Akira threw back, “If I could walk that way—”

“Don’t get cheeky,” Sojiro snapped over his shoulder, then led him up the stairs. “I’ll bring up sheets for…” He turned, eyebrows rising at the youth’s pulling bags of refuse together. “What are you doing?”

“What?” Akira looked down, settled the two bags in his hands, then set his duffel bag next to the shelf crammed with coffee sacks. “Sorry, I can’t stand a mess. Anything reserved?”

“I don’t care about the books, bags, or boxes,” Sojiro said, hands going to his hips as he watched Akira’s attention leave him and return to the inanimate objects around him. “But if you throw out the ladder or any of my spare tables or chairs, I’ll boot you.”

Akira wiped a finger down the planks of the wood flooring and shuddered. “Do you have a clean broom for this room?”

Sojiro’s left eyebrow rose. “A clean broom?” He pointed in the corner, across a dilapidated mixer to a broom that looked as old as the last World War. “Just sweep up.” He drew his keys and held them up. “I’ll lock up when I leave each day. Don’t do anything stupid just because nobody’s here to keep an eye on you.”

Akira let go of the latest bag of trash and snapped straight, arm coming up at precise angles and palm out to give a picture-perfect British salute.

Sojiro’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t be cute. Officer Ichijou may have argued for you, but she said you’re here because you butted into an adult’s situation.”

Akira’s salute fell and his lip twitched. “He was assaulting a terrified woman. How was I supposed to know who the drunk was before I stopped him?”

A long-suffering sigh emanated from the middle-aged man, though the look in his eyes felt considerate instead of condemning. “Either way, that’s what happens when you stick your nose into someone else’s business. You did injure the guy,” he finished, setting hands on his hips.

Clenching his teeth, Akira growled. “And Inuri High expelled me.” He clamped his eyes shut, sucked in a deep breath, then blasted it out through his nose before going back to cleaning. “At least the court really did send me away from the old bastard.”

Sojiro’s arms crossed. “That’s no way to talk about your fath—”

The garbage bag hit the ground and Akira took one stomping step at Sojiro, finger pointed like a weapon. “That bastard is not my father.”

Sojiro’s eyes narrowed. “You should be a little more considerate of the only link between you and Wakaba.” Uncrossing his arms, he took a quarter turn to the stairs. “Just don’t cause any trouble and don’t say anything. A restaurant lives and dies on its reputation. As long as you behave yourself, you’ll only have to put up with this for a year. After that, your probation is lifted and you can file whatever motions you want with the court.”

Akira set the bag down in a neat grid with the others by the table next to the stairs, and swept the open swath of floor.

Waiting a moment for eye contact, Sojiro gave up with a quiet sigh. “Make sure you’re ready to go to Shujin Academy tomorrow morning. They never mailed your ID and said they want to be sure your paperwork is finalized.”

Akira spared him a confused glance. “I already got the uniforms. What else do they want?”

“You’re on thin ice already. I don’t think it’s unreasonable that they want a proper introduction before you start class.” Sojiro put his hands on his hips, fingers tapping for a moment. “It’ll be… First thing Sunday. Are you going to need to do anything?”

Akira paused, a garbage bag in each hand. “I would be going to Mass since it’s Easter season, but they hold it in the morning.” Setting them down against the tidy arrangement of trash bags against the stairs, Akira dusted off his gloves before reaching into his time-worn jacket and drew a fat envelope. “Father Motoori gave me this for Father Sugiyama.”

“Sugiyama?” Sojiro’s eyes widened.

Akira looked the middle-aged man in the eyes. “Why do you sound so surprised?”

“He…” Sojiro’s eyes drifted to the bottom of the stairs, “buried Wakaba.”

Akira’s shoulders slumped. “I… sorry. I didn’t—”

“Don’t get any wrong ideas,” Sojiro said, turning to the stairs. “Just be sure you’re ready to make the trip up to school tomorrow. Once you get your transit pass from them, you can handle your own travel.”

Saturday, 9 April 2016
Evening
Yongen, Leblanc Loft

Akira grunted, standing the ladder against the corner near the stairs. With several more square meters of floor open and swept, he sloshed the mop in the bucket and attacked the dusty floor.

The stairs creaked as somebody paced up, a purposeful but measured gait. Sojiro watched for a moment, his eyebrows raised. “You were serious about cleaning.” He looked to the corner. “Looks like you prefer your bed against the wall.”

Keeping his focus on the floor even as his back complained, Akira threw back, “I can’t stand a mess.” Reaching the end of one stretch, he kept his feet on the dry floor and returned to the mop bucket. “I’m assuming by the flat tires the bike is an abandoned throwaway?”

For some reason, Sojiro smiled. “It is, but for Shujin you’d be just as well walking to and from the train station.” He folded his arms over his chest, sweeping his gaze over the room and the stack of unsorted books on the table by the stairs. “Hm. This place doesn’t look so bad.”

“A professional is neat and tidy,” Akira said, attacking another lane on the floor.

“If you’re trying to make a good impression, I think you already have your start.” Sojiro watched the boy clean in determined silence for several long seconds. “Don’t forget to get some rest so we can get to your school on time tomorrow.”

Akira stopped to jab at a dark spot multiple times.

Sojiro’s brow furrowed. “Fine, if you get sick, I’m not going to look after you. You’ll be—”

“I’ve been on my own my whole life,” Akira snapped, returning to longer sweeps with the mop. “This is just a bigger flat to do it in.”

“Oh!” Sojiro snapped his fingers and trotted downstairs with a little more energy than his entry, coming back up a few moments later. He set something leather-bound on top of the nearest stack of books on the table. “Here’s a journal. You’ll make a complete record of your daily activities. You’ll turn it over to me whenever I need to make a report to social services.” He folded his arms over his chest again. “Don’t trust that your social worker will skim over, actually fill it in so I have something to report.”

Akira continued mashing the mop over the floor. “Just as long as Father Sugiyama doesn’t have to read it. I’ll already be doing Hail Marys for skipping Mass tomorrow.” He stopped and lifted the mop, making a face at the dark water dripping from it. When he noticed Sojiro still standing there at the top of the stairs, he asked, “Something else?”

The middle-aged man adjusted his glasses, then relaxed. “You may be on probation, but since you don’t have a special conviction like computer crime there’s no special limitations on anything in particular. As long as you follow the law.” With that, he turned and went downstairs.

Akira swirled the mop in the dust-muddied brackish water in an effort to rinse it off. Letting out a deep breath, he pulled his phone out to step back his alarm in the morning. A bleeding eye icon sat on his grid of apps and Akira tilted his head. “I wonder what update that came with?” Sniffing at the scent of dust and old books, he put the phone away, picked up the mop, and trotted downstairs to change the water.

Saturday, 9 April 2016
Night
Location: Unknown

Akira opened his eyes to blue crushed velvet. Confused, he reached out to brush a finger against it and check whether it felt like what he saw. Before his arm got halfway, he noticed the salvaged large shirt he wore to bed replaced by a black and white striped shirt. At least it wasn’t hot. Sitting up, he realized all his clothes were replaced by the silly striped uniform. Glancing to his side, he spotted bars. “Oh, this is just ridiculous.”

Chuckling echoed from beyond the bars and Akira turned his focus from the prison cell to its source. A bald man with wild tufts of pale grey hair sat behind a fine wood table. The stranger wore a crisp tuxedo that only served to enhance the eeriness of his wide, bloodshot eyes and the longest nose he ever saw. “Welcome to my Velvet Room. I am delighted to make your acquaintance. This place exists between dream and reality, mind and matter.” The well-dressed stranger folded his hands. “I am Igor, master of this place.”

Akira stood up, trying to ignore the chains linking his wrists or ankles. “Nobody who’s truly a master of something needs to stop and say it. Now why do you fear me so much you need me behind bars?”

A blond child in a corny blue warden’s uniform stepped out from his right and whacked her baton on the bars, sparks zipping between the contact. “Know your place, Inmate!”

Akira shot her a dirty look.

Igor’s smile thinned. “This place is a reflection of your heart. Are you a prisoner of society? Fate itself?” He took his hands apart, resting his chin on one. “You stand on the cusp, but will you have the strength to stop the impending ruin?”

Akira approached the bars, noticing a similar kid-wannabe-warden on the other side. Keeping his focus on the man behind the desk, he gripped the bars and pushed out to test their strength. “If you’re trying to make a veiled threat, you’re going about it the wrong way. The only way something in the future is assured is if you do something.”

Igor chuckled, unperturbed. “Do not be afraid. It may be possible to oppose fate, perhaps even rehabilitate your way—”

Akira snarled. “Yeah, I’ve already seen what ‘rehabilitation’ does to prisoners and psych ward patients. You might as well be honest and call it a lobotomy. ‘Mental reprogramming’ is just a set of words to make yourselves feel better about it.”

Igor chuckled, something incongruous about the well-dressed man finding something amusing about the phrase ‘mental reprogramming’. He straightened just a little from his drastic hunch. “Such spirit! Perhaps you may yet find the resolve to challenge the world’s distortion.”

Rankled, Akira tightened his grip on the iron bars. “I have the resolve to take on anything, old man.” He glanced down to one child, then the other. “So, who’s Oxymoron?”

A soft but pleased chuckle floated out of the tuxedoed man. He held a hand to the costumed kid on Akira’s right, “Caroline, and Justine,” he finished gesturing at Akira’s left. “They shall be your wardens.”

Akira pulled at the bars. “Nobody keeps me prisoner, so nobody is my warden!”

“Struggle all you like, Inmate,” the eerie girl with a blindfold over one eye said.

“If you insist,” Akira snapped. He yanked at the bars, but they held fast.

Igor’s grin only widened. “This shall be a most interesting ‘rehabilitation’. I shall look forward to seeing what power you choose to awaken. Shall you seek your own world, or will you seek other thieves to use?” The long-nosed man let out a laugh with all the depth of his voice. “In time, young one.”

Sunday, 10 April 2016
Early Morning
Yongen, Leblanc Loft

Grinding his teeth at the irritating buzzing, he fumbled for his smart phone and shut off its alarm, then put on his glasses to check and see if it decided to go off an hour early like his body claimed it did. No such luck. “Damn, didn’t I get any sleep?”

A clatter sounded downstairs and the ‘first thing in the morning’ business at Shujin leaped to his mind. Akira scrambled to get into his Shujin uniform, getting his long-sleeved shirt on and trousers up before Sojiro strode up the steps. Hopping on one foot to try to keep his balance, he hit the bookshelf crammed with thick books and binders, knocking over the broom.

The middle-aged man looked over the polished floor of cleared space. “I’m surprised you’re up…” His gaze paused at the broom. “You did sleep, didn’t you?”

Akira zipped up his school uniform and picked up the black jacket. “That’s what I’m trying to tell myself.” Heart still beating fast and hands aching to land fists on someone, he shook his head to push away the strange dream. “I thought I’d be able to get a peaceful night’s sleep now that I’m outside.”

Sojiro crossed his arms, an eyebrow rising as he looked over the transfer student. “Outside?”

Akira’s face heated up and his stomach twisted at the humiliating days past. “Never mind. If we’ve got to go, let’s go. Shujin’s in Aoyama, right? Yongen-Jaya to Shibuya, then transfer Ginza to Aoyama-Itchome?”

“Something like that, but I’m driving.” He held up a finger as if making a stern point was necessary. “Just for today. I don’t want to take the chance we have a problem with the subway.” Sojiro headed back to the stairs, muttering before descending, “Sheesh. Men usually aren’t allowed in my passenger seat.”

Akira buttoned his jacket. “Wonderful. I finally get out of the asylum and my caretaker is a nut.”

Given the standoffish, naked hostility from Sakura Sojiro, Akira turned and stared out at a city looking more like a rat maze with thick crowds of people rushing about anywhere cars didn’t choke the streets. Either he picked up on Akira’s overwhelmed state, or Sojiro didn’t feel like talking past one quip, so the trip passed in as much silence as one of the world’s busiest cities would afford.

Pausing just before the front gates of some school with “Shujin” on the sign out front, Sojiro turned on Akira and set his hands on his hips. “Do me a favor and behave yourself, all right?”

Akira played up the offended innocence. “Just because I usually don’t behave doesn’t mean I don’t know how to.” At the restaurateur’s flat stare, he straightened. “Right. No stand up in the halls. I understand.” He snapped one foot against the other, standing at attention and gave a British salute.

“Just… don’t be yourself,” Sojiro said, sounding weary. “I don’t care what happens to you, but I don’t want to have to clean up anybody else’s mess again.”

“Again?” Akira’s mocking salute fell.

Sojiro whipped around and marched Akira up to the school principal’s office.

The obese man in a Dijon-yellow suit leaped straight to the expected rhetoric. “You’ll be expelled if you cause any problems.”

Staring straight ahead, Akira drew his heels together with a click and stood at attention. “Sir!”

Kobayakawa looked down at a manila-sheathed dossier, his frown deepening the folds on his face. “I understand you have a history of fighting and infractions that never led to charges pressed in your hometown, but you will behave yourself here.”

Akira stared straight ahead, letting out nothing but a curt and clear, “Sir!”

Kobayakawa paused, his feigned officious anger losing the battle to bewilderment before he looked away from Akira. “Well…” He swiveled his seat to a woman in a yellow shirt. “This is Kawakami. She will be your homeroom teacher.”

She gave a brief incline of her head. “Kawakami Sadayo.”

Akira turned to her with a click of his heels and snapped a thirty-degree bow. “Kawakami-sensei!” He rose with the same swiftness.

She took a set of paper envelopes from the stained-wood desk and handed them out. “Here’s your student ID and your authenticated transit pass. Make sure you read the instructions, it might be different from the buses and trains where you came from.” After Akira took both, she shifted back just a little. “Violations will result in a trip to the guidance office, so read the school rules and don’t repeat your behavior from the last schools. We call this Shujin Academy for a reason. If you have any problems, I won’t be able to protect you,” she said in a manner that sounded very much like ‘I wouldn’t even bother trying.’

Akira clenched his jaw for a moment to hold up his façade-for-the-moment. In the same snappy, professional tone he stated, “You will find that a new environment has an enormous effect on performance and behavior, Kawakami-sensei.” He snapped his right hand up at a sharp angle, palm flat and out against his eyebrow, then dropped it.

“W-well,” Kawakami said before retreating a step toward the principal, then leaning closer to whisper not quite low enough, “I thought he was a regular student, not a transfer from a military school.”

“He is supposed to be a regular student,” the pudgy oaf complained. He swiveled back to Akira. “Oh, relax, Boy. You’re making me feel tired.”

Akira snapped his hands behind his back, feet spread to shoulder width and back still straight as a meterstick.

Granting Akira no shred of attention, Sojiro gave a tired, “If that’s all? I have a business to run.”

Kobayakawa cleared his throat and feigned the least believable smile the transfer student ever saw. “Thank you for keeping a close eye on him.”

Sensing the end of the demeaning meeting, Akira snapped back to attention with a click of his heels, bowed, then came back up and returned to rest.

Kawakami rubbed at one eye for a moment before saying, “Come to the faculty office tomorrow and I’ll show you your classroom.”

Sojiro led the way out of the office, but failed to conceal a sense of tension which burst at the entry hall when he towered over Akira and snapped, “What was all that in the office about?”

Akira slid a foot back and bit his tongue to try to keep a grip on his temper. “At least I held back the urge to snap up an arm and shout ‘Heil Kobayakawa’,” he said along with a click of his heels and right arm held out. The transfer student fell back into a relaxed pose. “Besides, the best thing to do when you’re in an unusual situation is to smile. It confuses people.”

Sojiro rolled his eyes. “Ugh. Let’s just get going.”

Chapter 2: April 11th, Meet Blue

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Monday, 11 April 2016
Early Morning
Yongen, Leblanc

Sojiro looked up from a cup of hot coffee as Akira trotted out in a crisp Shujin uniform. “You’re really going to school.” He scrutinized the youth.

Akira shot him a hooded gaze. “Your faith in me is touching. Surely I must be on the fast road to rehabilitation.” He held up his hands wide. “Welcome, glorious civilization, here I come!”

“Don’t get smart,” Sojiro snapped, eyes narrow as he set a plate of curried rice down on the counter. “Just sit down and eat before customers start coming in.”

Akira pulled up the bar chair, clasped his hands in prayer, then dug in. He jerked away. “Wow, this is good curry. As in really good.”

Sojiro crossed his arms and struggled to look neutral, but the corners of his lips quirked up.

Despite the amazing flavor, the limited time pushed Akira to scarf down his first breakfast in Tokyo before pushing away. He gave a swift bow. “Thanks for the meal.”

Sojiro’s left eyebrow twitched, but he retained that watchful, neutral look. “Maybe you really do have manners after all. Hurry to school. You’ll be late if you get lost.”

Akira pulled his smart phone out and read the screen. “Weather report said there was a chance of rain. Do you have a spare umbrella?”

The middle-aged man shook his head. “Sorry, you’ll have to buy one at the station.”

Akira looked into his wallet. “I have four hundred yen, plus a thousand in the account. That should be enough.”

Snorting, Sojiro shook his head. “You sure are new to Tokyo. No way are you going to find an umbrella for less than three thousand.” When Akira’s expression took a turn for the murderous, he opened up the register. “Here, two thousand, five hundred yen.” When Akira’s fingers closed on the bills despite his dubious expression, Sojiro held on. “This isn’t a gift, this money belongs to the shop. You’ll pay it back as soon as you can. You can start by flipping the sign open for me.”

Monday, 11 April 2016
Morning
Aoyama

Akira trotted out of the station, coming to a stop under the first convenient business awning to pull out his phone and read the map. “Shit. There’s no way I’m going to get there on time.”

His scanning the map for a faster alternate route halted when a shapely set of legs and a little bit of black pleated skirt poking out from a white hoodie walked into his downward-directed view. The slim girl came to a stop under the same awning and brushed water off her damp sleeves. Her shoulders shifted from a weary breath, then she reached up to pull her hood down. Smooth, ash blonde hair cascaded down and Akira’s breath hitched in his throat. Even through the warm hoodie extending past her waist, he could tell her curvaceous frame.

“Yes?” She asked, the controlled tone of somebody impatient but trying not to sound rude.

Akira opened his dry mouth, closed it, then opened it again. “I-is that a Shujin uniform?”

Her pretty, pale blue eyes flicked over him before fixing on his, the mask of indifference drawing back a little from the porcelain-skinned beauty. “Uh… yeah. Same as you.”

Kicking himself for making a bad impression with the prettiest girl he laid eyes on, Akira blurted, “Sorry, I’m Akira. I’m a new transfer.” He reached over the hand holding the umbrella. “Could you show me a fast way to Shujin Academy?”

Her blue eyes bore into his for several seconds before she reached for the umbrella, fingers not closing over it. “Takamaki. Even if we run, we’ll still be late.”

Akira adjusted the angle, inviting her to take the handle, allowing a confident smirk over his face. “Trust me, I can keep up. We used to practice parkour back home.” He waited a moment for her to take the umbrella, and followed her at a strong run all the way to Shujin. She went one way as he turned for the office.

While she wore a lighter, orange-striped yellow shirt today, Kawakami looked almost identical to yesterday. Her hair and expression both looked frazzled, and she turned a cool glare on him. “You skipped the whole opening ceremony. Fashionably late may work in the country, but we expect punctuality in the city.”

Akira fought to keep a snarl off his face. This wasn’t Inuri High anymore, the only person to embarrass was himself. And if Sojiro was any indication, he’d have nobody to turn to. “The train lines have all been fouled up with that accident yesterday. I was expecting to be half an hour early.”

She looked at his empty hands. “Didn’t you even pick up your books?”

“No, Kawakami-sensei. I came straight here to check in.” He bit his tongue to keep from throwing out ‘like you asked yesterday’. People didn’t like being reminded they asked for something unnecessary.

Her pen shot out, scratching out a signature on three separate forms in quick succession. “I don’t have time for excuses. Let’s just go.” Collecting her binder, she led him to class 2-D. When another student tried to slip in behind her, she shot him the evil eye.

Akira took his spot up at the front for the requisite introduction of the transfer student. The almost twenty students chattered amongst themselves.

That’s the guy? He looks so normal,” somebody in the middle of the room said.

Akira quirked an eyebrow, but held his tongue.

Kawakami plopped her binder down and came to a stop behind the front desk. She sounded as tired as she looked when she more pleaded than demanded, “Everyone settle down.”

The back door slid open and another girl and boy slunk in, taking seats in the corner of the class behind Ann. Kawakami gave them both a good glare before continuing, “I understand some of you may have had problems with the subway. I expect you to adjust as needed. We start regular classes tomorrow, so there’s no leeway time.” She paused for a tired breath out, lifting a lazy hand in Akira’s direction. “This is our transfer student. Introduce yourself.”

Despite the weak beginning, he took a piece of chalk and wrote his whole name. People just asked more questions when he tried to drop the family name entirely. Done, he bowed to the class. “My name is Kurusu Akira. Please call me Akira. I look forward to attending school with all of you.”

“Maybe it’s one of those ‘beware the quiet ones’ types,” one of the girls near the middle of the room said.

Ignoring the strange chatter, Kawakami waved her hand at empty seats near the middle. “Go sit down there for now. Share with somebody’s books until you pick up yours.”

Akira slipped in and sat down in front of a dark-haired male with his uniform suspenders hanging slack at his sides. It felt like everybody’s eyes were on him as Kawakami begain routine administration. “Who’s the class rep today?”

The boy behind him stood and gave a brief bow. “Mishima.” As the teacher wrote, he called out, “All rise.”

Monday, 11 April 2016
Lunchtime
Shujin, Cafeteria

Belly growling, Akira stepped into the cafeteria and took in the scent of soy and fish, splurging on the grilled fish lunch.

“Look out, I hear that guy’s with the creeps in Shibuya.”

Akira paused, glancing around for the source of the muttering, but the amount of movement made it impossible. Nobody met his eyes and most scurried away from him. Muttering under his breath, he glanced for candid cameras. This treatment would make sense if he was still at Inuri High, but he hadn’t made a terror of himself here. Finally, he spotted somebody who didn’t look away. The blond bombshell he met at the train station, sitting across from a pretty girl with a black ponytail. Akira slid over to a seat on the other side of the table and pasted on a smile. “Hi. I’m surprised to see nobody else already sitting here. Do you mind?”

“Wow, first day and he’s already hitting on Kamoshida’s bitch? He really must be looking for an early grave.”

A snarl flashed over Ann’s face.

The transfer student gave a polite nod to the dark-haired girl next to Ann. “I’m Akira.”

The dark-haired girl gave a shy smile and Akira’s stomach flipped. She looked him in the eye, gathering her courage. “Suzui Shiho. Are you… really the transfer student?”

Wondering what her tone meant, Akira decided to play it off as if people weren’t giving him weird looks. He thrust out his chest and smirked. “Yeah. I finally escaped from the boonies.”

Ann squared her shoulders. “But it’s nice out in the country, Kurusu-san.”

His hands tensed on his chopsticks. “Would it be too much to ask to call me Akira? Just Akira is fine.”

Shiho’s phone chirped and she snatched it up, reading the incoming text. Her mouth twisted in embarrassment, but also curled up at the corners. She looked up and across the room until meeting eyes with Akira’s class representative. Her stance softened and she beamed a soft smile that made the whole room seem warm and pleasant.

Swallowing at the sudden butterflies in his stomach from eavesdropping on a lovers’ silent exchange, he coughed into his hand and struggled to think of something to say before something stupid came out. “So, um… I heard this place has quite the athletics program.”

Shiho looked at him, seeming pleased with herself. “Oh, yes. The volleyball team’s been to the national championships for the past four years in a row. Last year we even won.”

Akira tapped his fingertips on the table a couple of times. His ‘sports’ back at Inuri High tended to involve running from the police. Father Motoori was clear he needed to leave those things at Inuri. “Um… good for you.”

Ann looked offended for some reason. “That’s all?” She crossed her arms, elbows on the table. “Shiho-san was even on the team then.” She flashed a smile filled with haughty pride at Shiho. “She’s even one of our starters when we go to nationals in a couple weeks.”

Shiho’s shoulders drooped and her head fell enough for the overhead lighting to look like it cast deep shadows in her eyes. “It’s not so big a deal. After all, volleyball and Yuu-chan’s all I have.”

“Oh,” Akira said, looking up from his fish. “I didn’t want to demean your role or anything. It’s just that when I looked up the school website last week, I didn’t see almost anything in the way of fine arts programs or recreational clubs.”

Shiho sat back in her plastic folding chair, eyes rolling up in thought for a moment. “Well, that would be more Kosei High. We’re an athletics and academic place.”

Akira pursed his lips. “I’m just not looking for a sports program. Father Motoori said I should use this change in venue to apply a little more of my mind and a little less of my muscle, and he’s always given me good advice in the past. I’m studying to be a chiropractor.”

“Really?” Shiho said, looking Akira over with the first undiscriminating curiosity he saw since setting foot in Tokyo.

“Yeah,” he looked down at his food, trying not to blush at the first sign of interest from a pretty girl. The fact that she had such bright, soft eyes only made it harder. “My family would never allow me to do anything outside of medicine, but I don’t want to be a researcher. I’d rather help heal people. Chiropractics is something that’s small-scale and cheap enough that I can be easily approachable, but also can offer the weary and pained some immediate relief so I get to see my patients walk away with a smile.”

Ann raised an eyebrow, scanning him as if expecting a disguise. “Are you for real?”

“Why?” Akira shot back, free hand curling into a fist and his right tensing on his chopsticks. “Is there something strange about that?”

Shiho gave him a genuine smile. The kind that nudged her shoulders up and made her eyes sparkle, besides making the whole room seem warmer. “Not at all, I think it’s a very good goal to work towards. It’s something good for society and good for you.”

Akira swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry and butterflies dancing in his stomach, knowing he lost the battle to keep the blush from his face. “Thanks, Suzui-san. Say, do one of you want this?” He held up a plastic-wrapped pink-frosting-covered dessert.

Ann opened it by the time he realized she swiped it from his fingers. At least she smiled as she said, “Donations of sweets are always appreciated. Maybe you’re a good guy after all.”

Akira swallowed a large chunk of grilled fish, deciding while good it wasn’t worth the yen. “Well, if volleyball’s really the only thing going on, should I come by and watch one of the practice games? It’s not like we have a chess or medicine club.”

Shiho tensed. “No!”

Akira blinked and glanced around, wondering what happened. “Huh?”

Ann flashed a plastic smile, her shoulders and body posture indicating general anxiety like Shiho but also hostility aimed at himself. “She means you should get settled in before you try to join a club. Keep your eyes open, you know?”

Akira shrugged and picked up another bite of sushi rice before looking back at Shiho’s slow settling down. Once she seemed back to normal, they settled into meaningless small talk and Akira felt a smile on his face.

Monday, 11 April 2016
After School
Shujin, Hall near North Stairs

Pacing out from the student guidance office with his books, Akira adjusted his school satchel and headed down the stairs for what he thought was the library. Before even getting halfway to the first floor, he saw Ann trudging out from class 2-D. She angled for the stairs when a tall, muscular man in a white shirt and dark blue track trousers walked up to her from the hallway further down. “Hey there, Takamaki.”

Ann’s leg twitched, shifting her weight to the balls of her feet and her body angling away from him.

He either ignored or took no notice of the stark change in her stance. “I saw you running to school with that transfer student.”

Ann’s shoulders pinched up, her fingers clenching over her book bag. She shifted, still refusing to look him in the eyes. “Oh, was that him?”

The muscled, towering man waved an arm, something a little too practiced about it to be genuine dismissal. “And I heard he was with you at lunch. Be careful around him. He’s got a criminal record. Assault, I hear.”

Her attention perked at that, though she cringed with it. “I see.” She shifted the strap of her book bag, and Akira noted his opaque blue umbrella still tucked into the bottom loops.

The tall man reached a supplicating hand toward her. “You look tired after a long day. Could I give you a lift home?” He reached his hand out to take her shoulder, only managing the lightest, briefest of touches.

Ann flinched, a brief tremor passing through her body. She angled her face and body even further away, not quite daring to let him out of her peripheral vision. “Sorry, I have a photoshoot today. It’s for a summer issue, I can’t afford to miss it.”

The towering man let out a sympathetic sigh even as his torso tightened with impatient annoyance, stark lines appearing at his neck. “I feel bad keeping your best friend at practice so often. That’s why I asked you out in the first place.”

Somebody stopped next to the stairs below him, and a young female voice asked, “Oh, hello.”

Akira stumbled away, trying not to look like he was eavesdropping.

A girl with curly, auburn hair stood there in a pink cardigan. She held two large books between her hands, and sent him the same wary look as most students had been all day. “Are you lost?”

Akira paced down to the first floor so he at least stood on the same level as her, and slid his hands into his pockets. “Uh… no. Just getting a feel for the school’s layout. It’s different than the last one.”

The girl scanned him, holding her books against her chest. “You’re the transfer student?”

He knew he shouldn’t be surprised that most students knew there was a transfer student, but this sounded like yet another instance of everybody hearing about him and having some strange expectation where they preferred to avoid him like a leper. He pushed on a nervous smile. “That’s right. Name’s Akira, second year.”

The girl inclined her head, standing straighter. “Haru, third year.”

Akira leaned against the wall nearby, keeping his eyes on her. He wondered why she didn’t give her full name like normal introductions, but if he was going to do his damnedest to distance himself from his name, who was he to deny her the same right? “Do you mind if I ask you a question, Haru-senpai? Since you’ve been attending here for the past two years?”

She gave a wary nod.

“Why does everyone seem so skittish here?” Akira brushed a hand backwards through his hair. “I’m not especially surprised about all the rumors – we’re all teenagers, after all – but it’s like everyone’s looking over their shoulders. And a bunch of people keep giving me this look like they’re expecting something to happen.”

Haru’s shoulders drooped and she clutched her books tight to her chest. “Oh. W-well, I don’t like to gossip,” she stuttered.

Akira bit down a ‘bullshit, you’re a teenage girl’.

“I’m sure most of it’s just the pressure,” she explained. “Shujin Academy is a somewhat prestigious academic school, and a lot of the student body are probably just concerned about keeping up and earning a letter of recommendation to their first choice college.”

Akira rotated his shoulder to work out a kink. “So there’s nobody I need to watch out for or anything?”

Her eyes fell. “O-o-oh, I don’t know.”

After scanning her nervous posture, he couldn’t decide if she was just that timid or if something else was up. He gave her a self-deprecating smile. “Just me, then. That’s okay, Senpai. Thank you.” Snapping straight, he gave her a picture-perfect British salute and marched away.

Haru watched him leave. “That wasn’t what I expected of him.”

Monday, 11 April 2016
Late Afternoon
Yongen, Leblanc

Sojiro wiped a wide circle over the counter, stopping when the bell tinged. Looking up, he saw Akira trot inside with a dark book bag. “So, you did go to school today.”

“Nope,” Akira said back with a flat tone, “I spent all the time at arcades with those fat stacks of cash I smuggled in.”

Sojiro sighed, wondering if the kid was always this mouthy. “Just… don’t get into trouble. There’s already plenty of eyes on you waiting for you to slip up.”

Akira’s shoulders fell and his gaze hardened. “Right. Because it’s so easy to be a model citizen even when people back up and give me room to fucking breathe.”

As Sojiro tried to think of a way to tell the kid to just let things pass by, his phone rang. Recognizing her number, he answered and listened for a moment. “Okay, okay. Just give me a minute to lock up.” Closing the call, he turned a hard look on Akira. “I’m heading out. Don’t go wandering around.”

Akira grumped right back. “Fine. I still haven’t finished cleaning upstairs.”

Notes:

Getting started showing more of the variations from canon thanks to giving Akira a concrete personality and backstory which the 'blank slate' couldn't do.

Chapter 3: April 12th, Words Between

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Tuesday, 12 April 2016
Early Morning
Train to Aoyama-Itchome

One hand in the overhead loops and the other holding up a set of flashcards, Akira did his best to push away the dull roar of too many people in a train car. That sense of too many people breathing too little air raised his hackles, but there was too little room to do anything.

Despite what felt like too little room to move in, when a red-head sitting next to him stood to offer her seat to an old woman, a big man in an office suit shot into the seat with the swiftness of a movie ninja. Even the red-head seemed shocked.

Nerves buzzing, Akira snapped at the guy who bumped past him to steal the seat, “What happened to respect for the elderly? She didn’t offer her seat to you!”

Suit nodded off with a speed that made Akira wonder if it was fake.

The red-head let out a short breath. “It’s all right. I can understand his position as well.” She turned to the old woman and he went back to his note cards.

Early Morning
Aoyama-Itchome

Akira paused to let some of the crowd get ahead so he could breathe easier.

By the time he felt he had his breath back and footing steady, that red-head from the train bounded up to him and gave a bow. “Thank you for earlier.”

He tilted his head just a bit. “Um… for?”

The girl in a red ribbon and Shujin uniform stood and gave a chipper smile that set her apart from the churning crowds around them. Must have had a full cup of strong coffee. “For speaking up for that old woman.”

Akira blinked. Did this girl not know, or was she fucking with him? The only person at Shujin who hadn’t metaphorically spit on him was Shiho. “You did that first. And you shouldn’t have let that suit steal your seat. You didn’t offer it to him.”

Now she tilted her head at him, more consideration passing behind her eyes than he expected from the pranksters who toyed with him for fun. “W-well, some people have a commute hours long. It wouldn’t be right to make a scene for somebody like that.” She shook her head and straightened the straps of her school satchel. “Sorry for not saying so on the train, I just wanted to say thank you. I’m just a first year.”

Akira waved her off. “I was a junior, trust me when I say there’s not so much different from first year to second.”

She started to bow, then straightened and gave an incline of her head anyway. “I didn’t want to be rude for a senpai.”

It reminded him of Job, making sin offerings on the off-chance his kids did something wrong just because that was the rule. Now feeling some annoyance creep in, he shook his head. “First thing you need to do is stop bowing and apologizing. Anybody would’ve done it.”

She bowed anyway and he downgraded her from ‘cute’ to ‘cute but annoying’. “Please excuse me,” she said before charging off into the crowd like it was nothing.

Tuesday, 12 April 2016
Morning
Aoyama Station

Akira trotted out of the station, coming to the dull cityscape of Tokyo under a mat of grey clouds. While not excited to get to Shujin Academy, he couldn’t think of any amusing diversions. Before getting far from the stairs to the train station, he spotted a distinctive pair of blond pig-tails. Speeding up, he confirmed that yes, it was the hot girl from the other day. “Morning, Takamaki.”

She turned on him with a jerking motion, her hand drifting down her bag to the matte-blue umbrella still slipped through the under-loops. “Oh, h-hi.”

He came to a stop and blinked at the tension in her shoulders and suspicion in what should be pretty blue eyes. Straightening, he tried to keep any sign of emotion out of his voice. “I hope my umbrella was useful yesterday.”

Ann looked at it as if it bore her every sin in writing, her eyes narrowing and face twisting in a disgusted embarrassment that seemed far out of proportion with forgetting to give a stranger back his umbrella. Cringing, she pulled it out and offered it. “Oh. Sorry, here.”

“Thanks.” Taking it, Akira gave a show smile she ignored. When she turned back to Shujin without a further word, he couldn’t keep all his indignance down. Frustration crept into what should’ve been concern and he sped up to keep pace with her. “What the hell is your problem?”

“Huh?” Ann’s eyes flicked to him, and her pace stepped out a little to keep ahead of him. She spared him only a glance before turning her eyes back to the sidewalk ahead.

“You’re acting different,” Akira snapped, feeling a little too much like a lawyer in a courtroom drama. He sucked in a deep breath to keep his cool, reaching back for a nice moment when Ann and that gorgeous volleyball player with the kindness of a saint shared lunchtime with him. “I thought you didn’t mind my presence when I sat down next to you and Shiho-chan at lunch. I’m still kind of new here, and when I first saw you it was raining and I was late to check into the faculty office so I didn’t stop for all the usual greeting niceties.”

“No, that’s not it,” Ann threw back, still avoiding eye contact before she stepped out her stride and maneuvered around two salarymen.

Akira sped up, bumping into one of the snaggle-toothed men in his efforts to keep up with the determined blonde. “What did I do now?”

“Nothing!” Her fingers clenched and back straightened before she took off at a solid jog.

Growling, Akira wondered what got into her. After a moment of shifting from foot to foot, he decided against chasing her and reached into his jacket for his smart phone and the map function.

Tuesday, 12 April 2016
Lunch
Shujin, Courtyard Nook

Akira sat down at the lonely table tucked away in Shujin’s inner courtyard. Setting the bento purchased from Muramasa Grocers, he set his chopsticks on top and clasped his hands in prayer. After closing his eyes, he took in a deep breath, trying to exhale all the things he heard people say about him in the hall.

“Oh,” a familiar feminine voice said, “would it be okay if I had lunch here?”

Akira looked up, the name Shiho springing from his memory as he looked up into her deep, warm, brown eyes. He felt his frame tighten as he prepared to move. “Oh, go ahead. I didn’t know this spot was taken.”

Shiho plopped down on a different bench nearby, flashing him a weary but still beatific smile. The kind that didn’t just sparkle in her eyes but made her shoulders rise and seemed to light up the shadowy corner. “It’s just a quiet, out-of-the-way spot.” She let out a whoosh of air before digging out a plastic tupperware stuffed with rice and vegetables. “And I could use one of those. Were you meditating?”

“Praying,” Akira said, unsure whether he was agreeing or correcting. He took his chopsticks and tore the plastic film off his lunch. “Father Motoori said I should do it more often. It’s supposed to be good for our hearts as well as our relationship to God to bring Him our troubles and wants.” He gave a self-derisive smirk and opened his mouth, wondering what was making him so chatty. “I guess I could use some work with that.”

Shiho’s smile waned, concern edging out some of that beautiful warmth. “Having trouble with all the rumors?”

Heat having nothing to do with the April humidity wrapped around his throat and he averted his eyes. “A-a little.”

Her tupperware popped as she pried the lid off. “Try not to worry about the things people say. Soon enough they’ll find something new to gossip about. Ann was in a similar situation and she had to persevere, too.”

Akira gazed at her, unable to find any angle in what seemed genuine unselfish kindness. His eyes traced the smooth curve of her jaw as she opened and closed it around her food, the way her black ponytail jostled when she swallowed. A faint sigh leaked out of his mouth. “Your boyfriend has no idea how lucky he is.”

Shiho shot ramrod straight, looking at him with wide eyes and a grain of rice falling from her open mouth. “W-wha?”

Akira blinked, feeling dizzy from the sudden change in mood. “Your boyfriend.” He snapped his fingers a couple times. “I can’t remember his name. My class rep, the one you gave that ‘you’re special to me’ smile yesterday.”

The color drained from her face and a piece of something fell backward in her throat. Suzui slammed her chopsticks into her lunch and gripped the edge of the table, hacking against the rice.

“Shiho, there you…” Ann said, trotting up from the Academic building before a look of concern tensed her shoulders. “Are you okay?” She jogged to the table and glared at Akira. “What did you do to her?”

He raised his hands in confusion. “Is it supposed to be a secret that Suzui-san’s got a boyfriend?”

Ann’s eyes snapped wide and she rounded on the other girl, a touch of pale creeping into her face. “You told him?”

While Shiho kept hacking, Akira’s eyebrows raised at the panic in the blonde’s tone. “I didn’t think it was that hard to figure out. Why are you both acting like this is the end of the world? I get some couples like to keep things on the dee-el. I won’t tell anyone.”

Ann planted her free hand on her hip in what would’ve been a cute pose if it wasn’t held by a snappy bitch. Just for good measure, she threw a renewed glare at him. “You better not. Kamoshida’s harsh enough when he doesn’t think we’re ‘distracted’.”

Shiho tore the cap off a small water bottle and drained it.

His left eyebrow rose. “Who’s Kamoshida?”

“Just the volleyball coach,” Shiho answered just a little too quickly.

Shoulders pinched up and arms crossed, Ann watched the black-haired girl for a moment of concern. Then stepped between her and Akira. “Just make sure not to screw things up for Shiho. She worked too hard to earn her starter position and as her best friend I don’t want anything to mess that up.”

Akira held up his hands, trying not to make a bad impression in front of Shiho no matter how much he wanted to throttle the blonde. “I’m only trying to get through the day. I’m not here to trip up anyone else.”

Pressing her hand against her sternum and unintentionally tightening her shirt over her breasts, Shiho coughed out the last rice. “It’s okay, Ann. I think he does mean well.”

Stepping aside, Ann’s stance fell into a slouch before she looked back to Akira. “You can see how fast rumors fly. We can’t afford to let anything happen.” Her eyes drifted to her volleyball friend. “You deserve everything you can get.”

Tuesday, 12 April 2016
After School
Shujin, Courtyard Nook

Stretching back against the bench, Ann froze when her phone rang. Turning a little from Shiho, she took it out just long enough to glance at the screen for caller ID. She slipped it back into her pocket without answering or cutting the call, letting it keep ringing in her pocket.

Shiho tilted her head at the blonde. “You’re not going to get that?”

Ann gave a stiff smile. “Oh, it’s just my part-time job. Nothing to worry about.” She turned away, muttering, “It has to get better.” When heavy footfalls drew close, she looked up at Mishima, her eyes widening a little at the bruises under his left eye and along the right side of his face.

Mishima stopped and drew in a breath as if the journey from the practice building took all he had, sparing only a glance at Ann. “Shi-chan. Kamoshida told me to get you. You should get going.”

Shiho’s arms closed around her school satchel. “What did he say?”

His eyes clenched, his left eye twitching. “Just please go before he finds out you were still here.”

Shiho turned to her longtime friend and swallowed hard. “Ann, I…” She looked up at Mishima, who held a serious, patient stance. “Thanks, Yuu-chan.” She gathered her bag, stood up and dashed for Shujin’s front gate.

Tuesday, 12 April 2016
After School
Shujin, Front Gates

Akira pushed open the door, trying to pick a snark to throw out at the person ahead who let it close in front of a line of people. Stepping outside, the humidity punched all the way down his windpipe and he decided it wasn’t worth yelling at someone if he couldn’t get his hands around the jerk’s throat. Then he stumbled from some unlucky fool running into him. His hand lashed out to grab her, but he froze when he saw the girl attached to it was Shiho. Surprised, his grip went slack and she bolted into the city.

“Good thing she’s fast, I heard he’s got a knife,” one of the male students said as Akira paced towards the cityscape. He wondered who tipped them off.

“Keep your distance,” a girl’s voice hissed. “If you get close to him he’ll only ruin your life.”

Akira kept walking, trying not to show how much the last one stung.

“Don’t make eye contact, he’ll drag you into a dark alley and stab you.”

He ground his teeth to keep from responding, “No, I’ll only stab you.” By the time he passed through the gates proper, his fingers pulsed from the strain of clenching his satchel.

Tuesday, 12 April 2016
Late Afternoon
Yongen, Leblanc

The little bell above the door rang and Akira ground his teeth to hold in the urge to punch the happy-sounding piece of metal.

Sojiro, reading a newspaper behind the counter, looked up. “So, you’re back.”

Stomping his way in, Akira snapped, “Sorry to disappoint.”

Sojiro set the paper to the counter, his eyes narrowing behind his glasses. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Knowing he just stepped in it, Akira stopped and clamped his fingers over the back of one of the bar chairs. The leather groaned under his grip and he leaned against the chair for support. Despite his efforts, his arms trembled. Following Father Motoori’s guidance, he drew in a long breath, then blew out a long breath, keeping his eyes focused on an indistinct point ahead of him. “It’s been a long day, Sakura-san.”

Sojiro straightened. “You haven’t been getting into trouble, have you?”

Akira whirled on Sojiro, but nothing breakable sat in easy reach. Somehow, the tiny logical part of his brain that knew he had nowhere to go if Sojiro kicked him out clawed its way to the fore and he spoke instead of reaching for a sugar shaker. “Somebody leaked that I have a record. Now there’s only one person at school who treats me like a damn human being.” Standing up from the chair, Akira let out a long breath. “I need to go running.” He jogged up to his room and changed.

He heard a musical tune play as he walked down the stairs in his exercise outfit, a black tank top and baggy black shorts tied with a drawstring.

“…told you,” Sojiro said from somewhere in the kitchen ahead. “It’s just a part-timer I hired.” He met gazes with the student as Akira paced out from the hallway, phone still by his ear. While Akira couldn’t make out the words, he could hear a female voice from the other side. Sojiro covered the microphone and looked Akira in the eyes. “How long are you going to be out?”

“Until I’m done,” Akira snapped before his brain could find the reigns for his tongue. Withering under Sojiro’s glare, Akira looked at the floor. “Three or four hours.”

A long, uncomfortable look passed as Sojiro scrutinized the boy before lifting his phone and taking his hand from the microphone. “Okay, fine. I’ll be there in just a few minutes.” Hanging up, he turned to Akira with a look of wary understanding. “Inokashira Park’s only a short ride away, though you’ll have to buy round-trip fare.” Crouching under the counter, he fiddled with a few things, then came up and set a key down on the counter and gave Akira a stern glare. “This doesn’t mean you can just go around anywhere at night. I just have better things to do than keeping watch over you. Make sure you lock up any time you’re out. And if anything’s missing—”

“I’m no thief,” Akira snapped, pride unable to take any more. When Sojiro nodded at that and walked out, Akira stood staring at the key for a minute before swiping it and heading for the door.

Tuesday, 12 April 2016
Evening
Inokashira Park

Akira huffed in and out through the mouth, breath heaving in a harsh but regular pattern as he dodged around people, then leaped over a bench. Artificial yellow drew his eyes and he spotted another runner on the path, this guy wearing a red shirt declaring Pow! to go with his bad blond dye-job.

The other runner held eye contact through the crowd for only a moment before an unspoken signal passed between them and he smirked. His eyes narrowed and he accelerated.

Dodging around another couple meandering down the path, Akira leaned to pour on the speed and catch up with Blond.

Red shirt smirked and pulled ahead.

Akira narrowed his eyes at the back of Blond’s red shirt.

A park custodian pushing a trashcan-laden cart trundled into his path. The man stared like a deer at an oncoming train.

Too much inertia to stop, Akira leaped, springing off the cart, over the man, and tucking into a roll to come back to his feet. Once he got his eyes back on the crowd, he growled when he noticed Blond still ahead and accelerated.

Blond glanced over his shoulder, then spotted Akira coming alongside. Blond nodded in acknowledgment, pumped his arms, and pulled ahead.

Akira leaped over a fallen log at the side of the path, spotting a thin space in the trees at the main path curved around. Making eye contact with Blond, both smirked at the other and focused on the race ahead.

Akira dodged between trees, surging out of the thin copse just in time to see Blond rush ahead of him, still on the main path.

Akira stumbled to a stop, bracing against his knees as he breathed. “Damn, that guy’s fast.”

AN: Yoshizawa’s appearance doesn’t have enough gravity to change the course of things going on, but it’s a good way to introduce the character to the audience. Royal’s way of introducing Yoshizawa was actually somewhat like how I brought Haru in early last chapter – and besides just introducing her early enough to care she exists, those vegetables she makes could’ve been VERY useful in early and middle palaces.

Notes:

Yoshizawa's addition at the beginning of the chapter isn't a big addition, but the game introduced and kept her relevant how Haru should have been: show early and appear intermittently, not as a background Shadow that's irrelevant until the last quarter of the game.

Chapter 4: April 13th, Part 1, Into the Tower

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Wednesday, 13 April 2016
Afternoon
Shujin, Gym

The rubber of fresh sports shoes squeaked against polished wood panel flooring. For lack of anything better to do, Akira scrolled through the mobile version of the school’s website for any sign of who leaked his record.

Somebody in a male gym uniform plopped to the floor next to him, his scratchy voice blurting, “Hey, you’re that guy sprinting at Inokashira.”

Akira looked over at the student next to him, his eyes shooting to the dyed-blonde hair. While the hair screamed ‘delinquent desperate for attention’, he remembered that undeclared race yesterday. Anybody that good at running deserved recognition if just for the running itself. He slipped his phone into a pocket to turn his full attention to the strange student choosing to sit next to the ‘dangerous criminal’. “And you were that red shirt.” He raised a few fingers in a tiny wave. “You’ve got some serious speed and endurance.”

“Ryuji,” bad dye-job said with a modest shrug that ran counter to his delinquent appearance. He leaned back against the painted brick wall. “And I’m not as good as I was before. Used to be on the track, before Master Asshole there,” he gave a nod at Kamoshida, weaving between teachers in the ongoing game, “destroyed the team.” A snarl pulled Ryuji’s lip up, exposing pointed teeth and a familiar hate. “Couldn’t take any competition with his precious volleyball.” After a moment, Ryuji tore his glare from Kamoshida and loosened up as he focused on Akira. “I guess you’re that transfer student.”

“Akira,” he said with a nod before leaning closer to stage whisper, “Just to warn you, I’m even scarier than the rumors.”

Ryuji snorted, but a smile split his face.

A larger movement than before drew Akira’s attention to the game. Kamoshida made a leap taking him almost a meter off the floor. Something passed over the coach’s face – a snarl? A feral grin? – too quickly for Akira to judge, but his eyes locked onto one of the students and he spiked the ball straight into the class representative’s face.

Akira leapt to his feet. “Mishima-san!” He dashed to the fallen student. When Kamoshida ducked under the net, Akira repositioned to put himself between the coach and his classmate.

Kamoshida looked down at the bruised student. “Is he all right?”

Mishima stirred under the would-be chiropractor. A faint groan leaked out of the class representative’s mouth. Mishima’s eyes clenched, then opened and gazed up, unfocused.

Akira let out a relieved breath. “He’s bleeding. He hit his head and was unconscious for at least a few seconds. I think he may have a concussion.”

“Take him to the nurse,” Kamoshida snapped before turning back to the court.

Akira’s fists clenched and his legs tensed to stand and unleash retribution on the callous coach when Mishima reached out, balance wobbly.

The transfer student slung Mishima’s arm around his shoulder and stood. “C’mon, Mishima, talk to me.” His eyes traced over fading yellowed splotches as well as bruising he hadn’t seen since he got into street brawls even before Inuri High. “Damn, are you sure you just got hit with one ball? You look like you went ten rounds with Big K.” He angled for the door. “Do you know where you are?”

Mishima slipped and his head lolled to one side. “Coaching?”

Akira pulled until Mishima stood on his own legs. “Hey, stay on your feet. One foot in front of the other.” Once they got moving, he smiled in relief. “There you go.” They passed through the doors and into the deserted hallways. “Do you know what day it is?”

Mishima let his head fall forward, eyes clenched shut. “No more.”

Concerned about the lack of cognitive communication, Akira couldn’t keep his volume from rising. “Talk, Mishima. Stay conscious.” He grit his teeth, before admitting under his breath, “C’mon, I don’t actually know how to treat head injuries.”

“I…” Mishima flinched, but at least maintained pace. “No. Just don’t hurt Shi-chan.”

Akira froze, the door to the nurse’s office looming mere steps away. He looked at Mishima’s injuries, the bruises on his hands and arms. “Oh my God. Has he been doing this to you because you and Suzui are a couple?”

Mishima’s eyes cracked open, unfocused, then slipped closed again and he flinched away. “Th… the special coaching…”

Flashes of bandages and haunted gazes on no few male students passed before Akira’s eyes. “What kind of…” His teeth ground. “How has he not been reported and fired yet?”

Mishima picked his head up, eyes focusing on Akira. “Transfer?” He jerked, then tried to pull away and vomited on the tile floor.

Akira scrambled to get him into the nurse’s office, a heavyset woman looking up at them from the desk inside. “Possible concussion,” the transfer student explained in a no-nonsense tone. “Volleyball hit his face and the back of his head hit the ground. He’s only starting to regain lucidity and threw up just outside the door.”

The nurse reached for a pen light in a drawer. “Was he unconscious?”

“Ten to fifteen seconds,” Akira yielded his class rep to a chair next to her desk. “And still pretty out of it the three-ish minutes it took to walk him here.”

Finished checking his pupil reaction, she pulled on gloves and shone the light into his hair. “Thank god this one was only that long.”

Akira’s breath caught in his mouth for a moment before he blurted, “Only?” His hands curled into fists. “Concussions can result in permanent behavioral and learning disabilities. He needs to be at a hospital!”

The nurse kept her eyes on Mishima and continued scanning his scalp. “Leave the medicine to us, honey.”

He stepped closer anyway, tone rising. “If he takes another head injury like that, it could do worse than kill him! Do you want a mental vegetable at this school?”

Mishima’s unswollen eye widened and his face paled.

“Don’t you worry about it,” the nurse demanded, still bent over the bruised student. “He just needs some rest.”

Akira clapped a palm to his forehead. “How many other people had to be escorted in here after special coaching?”

The nurse stood straight, eyes shooting left and right before looking away from Akira. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Akira blinked, staring down at the woman trying to shrug him off. “Then you condemn the next person to even worse!” Fists stuffed in his pockets, he stormed out and around the vomit. “I need answers, and there are only two people who’ll give them to me.”

Two students gossiping at the side of the hall stared at him but failed to wait until after he passed out of earshot to return to their conversation. “I heard he almost killed someone.”

“I heard he’s working for those thugs in Shibuya.”

Akira stalked through the halls, thrusting his hands in his pockets to resist the urge to throw a punch at the next morons who bandied rumors behind his back. With more students coming out of their games, the halls started to sound more like normal. At last, he spotted a flash of natural blond and broke into a run after Ann, bulling past a girl with a braid-style hairband.

She shot him a glare, but he ignored her in favor of catching up with Shiho and Mishima’s mutual friend. Finally reaching her just before the opening to the third floor, he snagged Ann’s wrist.

She whipped around at him, her other hand raised to swing back at him. When she realized it was him, her hand dropped and her stance relaxed but her glare held some heat. “What do you want?”

“I want some straight answers for once,” Akira snapped back. He let go of her hand and both glowered at each other like yakuza daring the other to draw the knife first. “When I took Mishima to the nurse’s, I spotted a lot more bruises than any sports practice.” His eyes narrowed. “Somebody’s using him as a punching bag.”

“He’s…” Ann’s eyes fell away and her fists tightened. “No, Shiho’d tell me if somebody was going after him.”

“Would she?” He leaned even closer, which only brought his eyes lower given the step she stood on. He tried to ignore the prominent chest right in front of his thick glasses. “Would she tell you everything about some guy she’s,” Akira clapped his hands flat together, “that tight with? Maybe even that way?”

Ann’s posture regained its confident hostility. “She… We’re best friends, have been since middle school.” Her eyes, which had been boring a hole through his, slid to the wall. “She works so hard and I can’t… I can’t mess up something she loves almost as much as, maybe even more than Yuuki.”

Alliance Force Assemble sang out of his phone and Akira whipped it out to cut the call, snarling, “Shut up!” Fumbling to put it back, something red came on the screen before he shoved it back in his pocket and looked Ann in the eye. “Who would be that against her being romantically involved?”

Ann turned a little further away and she crossed her arms. “I don’t know if it’s about her, but…” Her lip curled into a snarl and her hands fisted again. “Kamoshida.”

Akira blinked, unable to place the name. “Excuse me?”

She turned to him, eyes blazing with fury and posture all set to fight. “Kamoshida Suguru.”

A twang sounded from his phone, but he held gaze with the angry young woman in front of him. “What, does he have an iron-fisted rule here in Shujin Academy?”

Another twang played, and only seemed to make her more pissed off. Her sneer grew, and her fisted hands swung down to her sides. “You don’t know anything about that pervert. It’s not just Mishima.” She took a step down to him, almost nose-to-nose now. “Everybody here is like some… serf in his own private castle.”

Another twang played, but before either one could say anything, a computerized voice stated, “Match found. Target Asmodeus. Beginning navigation.”

Both of them queried in confusion. Red swam before Akira’s eyes and the world twisted like a collapsing acid trip. A grandiose, carpeted spiral staircase replaced the efficient, squared stairwell. Anger at her bleeding through even as he stared at the stonework, he snapped, “Wha? Where is this?”

“That’s what I want to know,” she shot back with no less anger. She crossed her arms and glared. “Did you drug me?”

Akira whirled on her fist cocked back before he caught himself. He snarled, “Oh, don’t flatter yourself, princess.” He glanced up and down. “Where’s the door to the hallway?”

Ann leaned down over the railing to peer into the dark below, then up. “I don’t see any light down that way, but I do see something up there,” she pointed.

Akira blinked and forced his fists to open. “Shouldn’t that be the roof?”

“If it was the school,” she snapped at him as she turned for the stairs up. “Does this really look like Shujin?”

Grumbling, Akira followed her up the stairs as they spiraled up much higher than Shujin before opening to an ornate hall with whitewashed walls and a polished stone tile floor covered with a thick, red, hall-length rug. Glistening sunlight streamed in through giant windows, but something about the angle set off alarm bells. “Is it really getting to twilight already?”

Ann spun on him, hands on her hips. “We’re in some weird-ass palace and you’re worried about the time?”

Akira advanced on her, doing nothing to hide the snarl pulling at his lip. “I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on by any clues I can pick up.” He pointed at the windows. “That’s not early afternoon sunlight.”

With neither having anything else to say, they advanced to a three-meter-tall polished oak door. When Ann hesitated, Akira felt his own confidence waning and burst inside just to keep her from seeing his hand shaking.

Soft reds, pinks, and browns dominated the expansive room. Scattered around with a total lack of neatness lay oversized pillows and the girl’s volleyball team in various states of undress.

Ann’s anxious meekness vanished and her trembling hands curled into fists as she stomped after him. “What the hell is this?”

Akira threw up his hands defensively. “Don’t look at me! I’m a cuddler, not a groper.”

One of the girls gave a sensual moan and batted a curled hand at him with a hooded, expectant gaze that made him glad Shujin’s gym uniform had baggy pants. He jerked away.

Ann, scanning the room, froze. Her eyes snapped wide and her face paled. “Sh-Shiho?”

“Huh?” Akira said, following her gaze to a round waterbed near the center of the opulent room.

Suzui Shiho crawled to the edge of the waterbed on all fours, wearing nothing but tight gym shorts. Locking eyes with Ann, she sat back on her heels for a moment. “It’s the princess!” The volleyball player threw herself backwards on the waterbed with a happy groan, her breasts jiggling at the impact. “He must be pleased if he’s going to take us all today.”

Ann gaped, her face stricken with horror and fear, but her posture screaming rage. “Shiho! What are you doing?”

Shiho pouted for a moment, then her eyes slid to Akira. She gave a sultry grin and reclined on her side, displaying every curve. “Did the king send you to get us ready?”

Ann shot a look to her side, spotting an Akira still frozen in fascinated horror. She snapped, “Don’t look, you pervert!”

“I’m not!” he protested, then slammed one hand over his eyes. Fighting just to control his breathing, he shouted, “Would somebody just tell me what’s going on?”

Shiho turned a hooded gaze to Ann but remained spread out across the edge of the bead. “You’re not here just to show off, are you? Just because you’re his favorite…”

Ann jerked away, one hand grabbing the two sides of her gym jacket closed even as a blush spread across her horror-stricken face. “W-w-what?”

Akira took a single stomp towards the bed, hand still clamped over his glasses. His other hand clenched in a white-knuckled fist, he roared, “What the hell is going on?”

The doors burst open, and an enormous man decked out in metal armor strode in. Gasps echoed from the girls as they scrambled to the walls to give him a wide path to Akira.

Ignoring them, the knight looked at the students in Shujin gym uniforms. “Who dares to intrude in the king’s pleasure chambers?” His gaze stopped on Ann. “Princess? What is My Lady doing outside His personal chambers?”

“Princess?” Scandalized, she turned the full force of her sexy anger on the plated man. “Personal chambers?”

The knight sheathed his sword and trotted up to Ann, reaching a hand out. “Come with me, My Lady. I shall escort you back to His Highness’ bedchambers.”

Akira hopped between them, shoving at the knight’s arm and having about the effect of a stiff breeze. “The hell are you taking her any—”

The knight backhanded him with a very solid metal gauntlet, sending Akira spinning and blood flying from his split lip. As Akira caught himself on the edge of the waterbed, the knight loomed, “Know your place, slave. If you’re not in the Training Hall of Love, you should be doing only the task His Highness ordered you.”

Shiho crawled to him and brushed his hair out of his eyes now that his glasses weren’t there to obstruct his grey gaze. She cooed, “It’s useless to resist. Aren’t we all here at the pleasure of the king?”

Face still smarting and head still pounding from the blow, he stumbled back in between the armored man and Ann. “Get away from Takamaki-san and Suzui-san.” Eyes remaining locked on the knight, Akira ground out to the girls, “Go on, get out of here.”

“Insolent knave!” The gauntlet snapped forward, grabbing Akira by the throat and lifting him off his feet. “The king deserves all things. You should be pleased to be permitted to serve him.”

Gagging against the crushing grip, the transfer student slammed his fists against the solid metal.

“Akira!” Ann cried out. After a moment to settle her stance, she shoulder-slammed the knight, bouncing off him. She rubbed her shoulder against the sensation of having rammed a wall.

The knight glared down at her. “You wait your turn, princess. It shall be your honor to service the king later.”

Spots forming in his vision, the blows of Akira’s fists weakened.

“Do you yet understand, slave?” the knight snarled. “If you cannot serve the king by pleasure, you shall serve him by pain!” It hurled the boy to the ground.

He crumpled, curling up and coughing. Flecks of blood dirtied the tile floor.

“Akira!” Her hand still holding her shoulder, Ann took a step to him, then stopped and turned back to her friend. “Shiho, come on! We can save you! Just come with us!”

The room darkened and both schoolkids cringed when harsh voices floated at them from no-where.

“If you can’t do it, you’re useless!”

“Nothing matters if it doesn’t succeed.”

Akira struggled to his knees, still bracing on his hands, and coughed. Flecks of blood flew from his split lip. He brought a hand to his head, grimacing against a pounding, burning pain.

“Hey, look,” a boy’s voice mocked. “It’s the lab freak’s son. You gonna lock us in a dark, scary place and make monsters come out of us?”

Thou art I,” a deep but calm voice said through the swirl of accusations.

“Everything you touch gets ruined!”

Akira clenched both hands over his head, his breathing ragged and feeling like millions of hot needles stabbed him all over.

“Stay away from that troublemaker,” a woman’s voice snapped. “Those types will only drag you down.”

I am thou,” the calm voice cut through the storm of accusations again.

“Useless boy, how can anybody take you seriously if you make mistakes in such petty things?”

Fingers already sliding through his hair, his hands clamped tight and he pulled, desperate to let out the searing pain and impossible pressure in his skull. Arching his back, he howled in agony to the ceiling.

“You’re a monster born from a monster!”

“There is no buddha,” a high man’s voice spat, “or god or anything out there to save you. If anything pulls us from the coming ruin, it shall be me and my research!”

Akira howled, desperate for anything to take away the pain, to make the madness stop.

Slammed with a sudden numbness, Akira’s hands slid away from his head and fell to his side. “And God went ahead of his people in a pillar of darkness during the day to shelter them and a pillar of fire during the night to guide them.”

Hot winds whipped through the ostentatious room. Deep red flames licked over his face, leaving a mask. Reaching up at the sudden sensation of weight, Akira pulled at the mask and his own skull tipped forward. Bringing up both hands, he dug his fingers in as the pounding inferno in his head returned with a vengeance. Desperate, he heaved the mask off.

Red fire roared over his body, leaving a high-necked longcoat. The swirling winds whipped into a scalding gale, sending pillows hurling through the air and the knight crashing all the way against the wall by the door.

The knight pushed itself to its feet and drew its sword. “What manner of trick is this?”

A vortex of darkness and flame churned between them, as if fire and black smoke condensed into a near-liquid density and twisted into a pillar rising all the way to the vaulted ceiling.

Akira stood, a calming numb spreading over him. “Pillar of Heaven, destroy our enemies!”

Hot winds whipped around, sending pillows tumbling again, but concentrated on the knight. Darkness gathered under the armored man and roared up in a torrent, leaving dissolving black smoke.

The pillar vanished into the ceiling and Akira collapsed to the tile.

“Akira!” Ann shouted, dashing forward to help him off the floor.

Akira blinked and turned a bleary gaze to her. “Is he gone? Are we safe?”

Confused beyond anger, she retorted, “You idiot!” She clamped a hand on his arm to hold him up. “What the hell was that? You scared me to death.”

Akira swayed, but forced himself to stand on his feet. “What exactly happened?” He looked around the cavernous room edged in gold. “What happened to the girls?”

“Shiho!” Ann spun around, her foot taking a step to the waterbed of its own accord. Scorch marks marred the floor in jagged lines spiraling out from where the pillar formed. Gaping for a long moment, when she spoke her soft voice was filled with trepidation. “She… they’re all gone.”

Akira, realizing something about himself felt different, reached to his face. Hissing in pain, he tried again, avoiding the part of his face still pulsing from the gauntleted back-hand. Fingers coming to his cheekbone, they ran up, then around his mask. His eyes snapped open and he let out a gasp. “My glasses!”

Ann glanced down, snatching them up and presenting the split frames to him. “Easy, they’re right—”

Continuing to explore the mask with his gloved fingertips, a smile split his face. “I can still see!” When she lifted the glasses up at him again, he took them anyway. Turning to the door back out, he took one step and wobbled.

Ann caught his arm to steady him again. Raising an eyebrow, she set her free hand on her hip.

Catching her silent inquiry, Akira answered, “Takamaki, I’m nearsighted like you wouldn’t believe. I’m practically blind without my glasses.” His grin grew wider, revealing the even rows of his pearly whites. “Or I should be.” Shaking his head, he wavered more and leaned against her support. After slipping his broken glasses in his pocket, he turned back to the tall oak door. “Well, there’s no other way out of this room and the girls are gone. I say we bug out before another one of those knights comes in.

“But… Shiho,” Ann started, eyes unfocused as she paced alongside him. “I put up with so much for her sake.” The corners of her eyes glistened. “How could she…?”

Taking his head in his hands, Akira let out a groan. “None of this is right.” Walking, he paused to pull the door open, then stepped out on his own. Besides the rug, nothing interrupted the hallway from the stairs to a shorter, gold-plated door further down. “So, back to the stairs and hope down goes somewhere? Or out those gold-lined doors?” He paused and looked down the hand he just pointed with, specifically the red glove. “Did you change me?”

She left a hand on her hip. “You did that.”

“I don’t remember that.” Looking down, he checked out his current garb and smiled. “Oh, man. The old bastard would flip if he knew I had a swankier longcoat than he did.”

She spared him just a quick glance. “I guess it’s not a bad style. For you.” Ann lifted a finger to her chin. “Oh, I just had an idea.” Jerking both hands up in fists, she shouted at the top of her lungs, “Let’s get out of here!”

Leading him to the stairs, they heard metal clacking up the long, winding stone. Turning around, they both bolted the other way down the hall.

Three knights came out just before they reached the red oak door again. One pointed its gauntleted hand. “Intruder!”

Another drew its sword. “He’s trying to abscond with the princess.”

Racing as fast as they could run, both students reached the gold-plated doors and hauled them open, dashed in, and slammed the doors closed. Panting, both collapsed against the doors for several seconds.

Looking around, Akira wrinkled his nose at the gaudy space. Three walls glistened with mirror from floor to ceiling, and all across the length. A giant canopy bed dominated the center, gossamer curtains flapping in the breeze from an open window.

Akira spit at the bed. “And I thought the old bastard was tacky.”

A bang sounded through the door and both students froze. Akira pressed his ear against the door.

“I’m not going in His Highness’ chambers, you go in!” one of the knights whined.

Ann trotted to the wall with windows and closed the open one, slowing as she looked at the dozens on dozens of portraits of girls on the wall. Some were edged with silver, some framed in gold. Coming to a stop, she snatched a silver one off the wall as her face contorted in anger. “What the hell? I’ve never worn a slingshot bikini!”

Covering his nose just in case, Akira approached to confirm the wall was covered with photos of the girls’ volleyball team in provocative swimsuits and lingerie. While all of them smiled, the eyes of many remained tense with fear.

Ann gasped, then ripped a gold-framed portrait off the wall. “Kiriko-senpai!”

“Who?” Akira said, coming closer.

Ann clutched the portrait against her chest and turned away from Akira. “She was one of the volleyball starters last year. Everybody loved her. She was smart, and beautiful…” She turned back to Akira, looking down at the picture. “Then overnight she became a recluse. Just stopped talking to everyone. She transferred out at the end of the semester.” Her brow furrowed. “A lot of her clubs disbanded.”

Ann hurled the pictures in her hands to the floor, earning the sound of broken glass. “Who would do something like this?”

Akira blinked, his eyes drawn to a gold-framed photo of Shiho, giving a come-hither gesture while wearing lacy lingerie that hid almost none of a bust that seemed larger than he remembered when they sat down together in the courtyard.

The golden doors banged open and Kamoshida stepped in, cloaked in a long, red velvet cape and followed by two knights, one in golden armor. The grey knight snarled, “Filthy vermin!”

It slowed a few paces into the room, visor stopping on Ann. “Princess? What are you doing in such rude attire?”

Kamoshida scoffed, the small gold crown on his head sparkling. “How could you mistake that for my Ann?”

Ann’s mouth drifted open. “Ka… Kamoshida-sensei? What have you done with the school?”

Another Ann wearing a micro-bikini came to a stop next to Kamoshida, leaning closer as if begging him to touch her. Akira swallowed, feeling like his own pants shrank.

The Kamoshida in strange garb scoffed at her. “I am king of this castle. I do what I will, and all serve my desires.” He lifted a hand to stroke the scantily-clad Ann’s cheek, revealing nothing beneath his luxuriant cape but a hot pink speedo.

Akira threw himself to his knees, hands over his face. “Oh, God, my eyes! Somebody, please cut out my eyes!”

Smile falling to a thin line, Kamoshida glanced to the grey knight. “You, execute him.” Flicking his eyes to the knight clad in gold, he threw out, “You, take her.”

Goldie sheathed its large knife and turned to Ann. Akira interposed between them, a snarl on his face. “Like hell you will.” When the grey knight kept closing with sword drawn, he paced backwards and attempted bluster. “You really think you can take me one-on-one?”

The grey knight stopped and shuddered as if caught in a seizure, joints jerking and black oozing out of the joints in its armor. Moments after the armor was covered in the flowing muck, it burst like a bloody pustule. In its place were three creatures. The first, a blindfolded woman with birdlike wings and straps covering strategic points on her body.

The second had a carved pumpkin in place of a head, a bright yellow fire burning within the head as well as the iron lantern dangling from its left hand. Dark, heavy but ragged robes flapped from the air currents of its transformation.

The third Akira would have called a snapping tortoise if it weren’t for the long, orange serpentine head extending from where the tail should be.

“Oh, darn,” Akira moaned.

All three creatures advanced on him and Akira fell back towards the wall covered in pictures. He held up a finger at the floating feminine creature. “Okay, I should inform you that if you’re trying to intimidate me, angels didn’t look like some blindfolded bondage fantasy. They’re soldiers. There’s a reason every time they showed up in the Old and New Testament they had to say ‘don’t be afraid’.”

The orange serpent-head opened its toothy maw and snapped down at him.

Throwing himself out of the way, as Akira rolled to his feet he reached inside for that sense of righteous indignation. “Pillar!”

The faux-angel stopped and waved its hands in repetitive gestures, flecks of light appearing and disappearing at its fingertips.

Darkness zipped out from the base of the swirling pillar of darkness and fire, its zig-zagging course bringing it under the false angel where it roared up and disintegrated the monster in dark flecks.

Akira smirked. “I knew it. False images.”

Genbu’s tortoise head snapped at Akira, forcing him back against the wall. The lantern-wielding monster surged sideways, hurling a fireball from its lantern into Pillar.

Still running to keep his distance from the monsters, Akira stumbled with a cry of pain and Pillar shuddered back. Akira straightened on his feet, looking past them to see the gold knight locking Ann’s hands up to a set of handcuffs above her head on the bedpost.

Ann pulled against it. “I’m not a whore!” She kicked the knight in its codpiece.

“Now, now,” King Kamoshida reprimanded, just watching as the knight locked her right leg in a low shackle even as she kicked it with her other. A leer spread over the coach’s face. “What shall I do with you?”

Eyes wide with confusion but blazing with anger, she snapped at him, “You’ve been coming on strong, but this is crazy!”

Smirk spreading into a smile, Kamoshida looked the Ann in a gym uniform up and down. He ran his tongue over his lips. “This slave’s a lively one.”

Akira dove out of the way of an icy explosion, grunting in pain. Pillar surged at the Jack, but it floated back. The Genbu’s dragon head reared up and coughed an ice bolt at Pillar, which dodged out of its path.

Ann jerked with a pained grimace against the gold knight as it locked her other leg. Anger being replaced by desperation, she yelled, “Let me go!”

Kamoshida rubbed his chin, baring his unshaven legs and speedo again. “Talking back. Now what should I do about that?” He reached his arm around the other Ann, hand sliding under her bikini and stopping at the swell of her breast.

The strange Ann clicked her tongue and gazed up at Kamoshida. “That is totally the worst.”

Akira dodged a gloved swing from Jack, which changed targets to shoot another fire bolt into Pillar. The swirling column of fire and black swerved out of a snap from Genbu’s tortoise head.

Kamoshida gave a sage nod. “I think drawing and quartering is in order.” A leering smile split his face. “Start with her clothes.”

Goldie drew its gigantic knife.

Ann pulled against her bonds jerking away from it. “Get away from me, you freaks!”

Kamoshida frowned. “Now, now. That’s not the proper attitude to show a king.”

“That’s not the proper attitude for a king to show!” Akira snarled as he dove away from the Jack. It floated away, frustrated, and lifted its lantern, blazing a seconds-long gout of flame into Pillar. Akira growled in pain and ground his teeth.

Pillar pulsed, emitting a bolt of fire against the Genbu. The tortoise-like monster flinched but held the column in its sights.

Goldie grabbed Ann’s shirt and sliced down through it.

Akira changed direction to head towards her. “Stay away from Takamaki, you son of a bitch!”

Ann jerked one way, then another against the bonds, panting with exertion but failing to budge them.

Kamoshida turned from Ann to Akira, lip curled in a sneer. “I’ve had just about enough out of you, vermin. Isn’t it about time you tire out and die?”

An icy explosion burst, catching Pillar in the detonation. Pillar shuddered, giving Jack an opening to fling an exploding fireball into it. Akira clenched his teeth, collapsing to one knee.

Jack swooped down, wrapping its huge gloved hand around his throat and picking Akira up off the floor.

“No!” The real Ann shouted, still jerking against her bonds, her slashed shirt flapping. “Kamoshida, stop it!”

Akira kicked Jack in the dark fabric covering what should be its chest. The material deformed with the blow and the fire in its carved head flickered, but it held steady. Still able to breathe, he brought his hands together and slammed the combined fist against the glove, only getting a mild twitch.

Genbu’s tortoise head snapped at Pillar, which dodged, but the dragon head sucked in air and glowed with blue. Jack shot a fire bolt into Pillar as the dragon head blasted a long ray of ice into the churning column.

Akira screamed in pain.

“Stop it!” Ann pulled at her bonds, her eyes on Akira as he kicked from half a meter up in the air in the Jack’s grip. “Kamoshida, I’ll…” She stopped, her head falling. She drew in a long breath, seeing her own chest rise, then looked up to the demented coach. “Let him go, and I’ll…” Her eyes fell away.

Kamoshida held up a hand, his smirk back in full force. Genbu retreated a step and Jack lowered its lantern. “Now that’s the sort of look you should’ve had to start with.”

Breathing ragged, Akira kept slamming down on Jack’s glove. Pillar shrank in on itself, retracting into the ceiling.

Leering, Kamoshida reached for Ann’s open shirt, fondling her breast over the dark purple bra.

“No,” Akira shouted, still pounding against Jack’s glove. “Takamaki, even if all you can do is deny the enemy victory, never give in!”

“This is Takamaki we’re talking about,” a girl’s voice floated from no-where.

Kamoshida’s voice floated out of some indeterminate direction, thick with empathy but tinged with expectation. “It must be lonely with your friend spending so much time in practice. Give me your phone number. I’m sure I can find a way to help you out.”

Ann jerked against her bonds, clenching her eyes shut. “No.”

“Sure, she’s got the body. But what’s she willing to give to be a model?”

“Is she really doing Kamoshida? She seems easy, you think I’d have a chance?”

Ann snapped straight, glaring at Kamoshida. “I’m nobody’s toy.” She flinched in a new pain as flames crept up her face, in moments ragged screaming tore from her throat. When the flames ceased, a solid red mask rested over her face.

Kamoshida jerked back and retreated another few steps for good measure. “What is this?”

“I’m not some cheap whore, scumbag!” Ann declared.

“Bitch,” Kamoshida shot back.

Ann tore her bonds from their mountings against the bedpost. Tilting to keep balance, she kicked Goldie, dropping its knife and sending the ostentatious knight tumbling over the floor. Picking up the knife, Ann plunged the gaudy blade into the false Ann, which dissolved in a puff of dark dust. That satisfied, she reached up and tore off the mask with a shriek of agony.

Akira smirked. “You’ve just been out-maneuvered. Pillar of Heaven!” He kicked Jack across the face to make it flinch, twisted, and slammed both feet against the lantern, causing the monster to drop it.

The column of fire and darkness shot out of the ceiling, blasting fire into Genbu, which slumped and dissolved into black and red goo.

“Carmen!” Ann shouted.

A torrent of blue flames exploded out from her, knocking Goldie and Kamoshida away. Breath ragged, she looked over to see Akira still gripped by the Jack diving for its lantern. Casting out a hand, she snarled.

A huge, glowing figure in a frilly dress lashed out a long, thorny whip that cut through Jack’s head, blasting it into dissolving black and red goo.

“Oh, shit!” Kamoshida said before scrambling out the door.

“That,” Goldie said, rising to its feet, “is quite enough of that.”

Shuddering like the throes of a massive seizure, black ooze leaked out and it popped into a towering woman holding Shinto dancing fans, clad in scanty white wrappings too revealing to call a proper kimono.

Akira stumbled closer, sweating and bruises developing on his face. “Pillar of Heaven!”

The column churned between he and the towering woman, shooting it with a bolt of flame.

The bolt splashed against her and vanished without hint of a singe. The woman focused on Ann. “You think you can deny Lord Kamoshida’s love?”

Ann snarled. “Don’t feed me that line when he doesn’t even know what love is. We’re not sexual outlets.”

Carmen lashed out with its whip, wrapping around the towering woman’s neck and sending a howling blizzard’s gale that froze the enemy monster. The frozen figure fell to the floor in front of the door before it suddenly picked up and hurled into the canopy bed, shattering into dissolving black and red goo.

Something between a child and a cat strode into the room, flicking an arm in dismissal. A burly, glowing figure vanished from over its head. “I guess I arrived just in time. You look like you’re on your last legs.”

Notes:

Updated 26 April to fix some formatting, weak wording, and a few small details to better foreshadow an incident which won't be clarified for a very long time. Thank you for reading and commenting.

Chapter 5: April 13th, Part 2, Escape from the Tower

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Wednesday, 13 April 2016
Afternoon
Location: Unknown

Breathing heavy, Ann slid to her knees in the gold-gilded bedchambers of the twisted king. Her eyes locked onto the short, bipedal creature approaching them from the door, she managed, “Wha… what are you?”

The half-meter black and white creature looked over Ann, its eyes widening. “What a meowvelous woman! Fierce and beautiful.”

Ann braced a hand on her knee, only then looking down and noticing her form-fitting red leather bodysuit. Wrapping her arms around herself for all the good it would do, shouted, “What the… when did this happen to my gym uniform?”

The cat-kid held a hand up at her. “That is the shape of your will of rebellion against the injustice of the world.”

Still favoring his left leg, Akira came to a stop just a pace from her. “But… red leather?” When Ann shot to her feet, shoulders back and posed to throw herself into a fight, he raised his hands in surrender. “Not that it doesn’t look good on you.”

“Everybody constructs their lives with the building blocks made available by the world around them,” the catboy said. He gestured at Akira. “Much as you.”

A clatter of plate mail from the door heralded the appearance of a group of gray knights. “There they are!”

“Quick,” catboy snapped, “Follow me!” Drawing a fist-sized canister from his belt, he threw it and smoke billowed.

The sounds of metal charging in rang, but the smoke obscured everything. A voice echoed out of a metal helm, “Where are they?”

Struggling to squint through the dense fog, Akira spotted the diminutive form of catboy and followed him out the door. Pausing, he turned to see Ann at his back. Satisfied both of them were safe enough, he followed catboy to a vent, then through that to a narrow, smudged servant passage.

Once they all stood in relative safety, Akira put his hands on his hips. “So who are you?”

Pausing to glance around warily, catboy looked up at him as if hoping not to say. “I’m Morgana.”

Akira brought his hand to his chest and inclined his head. “Akira.”

“Ann,” she introduced in likewise fashion. Staring out at the narrow corridor, she asked, “What is this castle? What happened to the school?”

Morgana’s ears fell slack against his broad skull. “The school is the castle. This is the distorted reflection of your school in the heart of the palace ruler.”

Akira straightened his longcoat. “Well, you did say Shujin was his own private castle.”

Ann’s eyes widened. “I didn’t mean it literally!”

Akira focused on Morgana. “But… What about the girls? Especially Suzui? There’s no way a nice girl like that would be caught dead with Kamoshida, much less half-naked in some… pleasure house,” he spit, “and gushing over how wonderful it would be to wait on that shit-head. I know it’s dangerous, but we’ve got to go back and bust ‘em out.”

Morgana tilted his head. “Girls?”

Akira frowned. “He must’ve had the whole female volleyball team there in that gold-caged sex dungeon.”

Ann rolled her eyes. “I think you mixed a few metaphors there.”

“Up yours!” he snarled back.

Hopping up and waving his arms to get their attention, Morgana said, “Whoa! We can’t go back up there. There’s nobody to rescue.”

“The hell there isn’t!” Akira reached for Morgana, who danced out of his grip. “I saw… it must’ve been twenty girls.” A flush of heat spread over his cheeks.

“And that…” Ann shivered. “…look alike.” Her mouth twisted into a grimace. “I’d never wear something like that for Kamoshida.”

Akira stared off. “She sure filled it out.”

Ann glared at him.

“I…” Akira stepped back. “…just noticed…” He pressed a palm against his eye, then hissed and flinched away from the darkening bruise over his face. “I must have foot-in-mouth disease.”

Morgana’s eyes snapped wide. “Oh, I think I understand what girls you’re talking about. Like that cognitive image the Palace ruler had of Lady Ann?”

Now Akira’s eyes grew wide. “Cog… are you telling me they were all cognitive constructs formed from an amalgamation of his conscious and subconscious desires?”

Morgana crossed his arms, his gaze narrowing to slits. When he spoke, his tone was nothing short of accusatory, “You catch on… very fast.”

Akira scratched his neck, eyes on his feet. “I… didn’t exactly have a lot of choice in whether to learn about psychology.”

Ann crossed her arms. “How do you know so much about this place, cat?”

Ruffled, Morgana bared his teeth. “I am not a cat! I am Morgana.” He held up his hands, ears curling down as he flexed his fingers. “The Metaverse has been distorted by something lately. That’s what changed me into… this.”

Straightening to try to inject some calm neutrality, Akira looked Morgana in the eye. “When did that happen?”

Morgana looked away, his ears pressing against his skull. “I… don’t know. Maybe it’s because I’ve been here so long, but…” He held his arms down and looked Akira in the eye. “I can’t remember anything from very far back. A matter of months, maybe a year. The distortions that turned me into this also robbed me of most of my memories.”

Akira shoved his hands into his pockets. “Man, I wish I could get that.”

Both Ann and Morgana turned scathing looks on him.

Akira shrugged. “I don’t exactly have a diary full of warm memories.”

Sighing, Morgana waved it aside. “If I could just find the Treasure, I could topple this palace and right at least a little of the distortion.”

“Huh?” Ann blinked, her crossed arms loosening.

“Palaces form when a ruler has a focus of warped desires.” Glancing up, he noticed both costumed teenagers giving him blank looks. “Think of a Treasure like an anchor. It’s a core of their desires. If it gives rise to a Palace, it could even stop them from being able to go anywhere in life, forcing everything to circle around that one primary obstacle in their mind.

Akira blinked, seeing double Morganas and Anns. “Could you four do me a favor? Stop wobbling.”

Ann raised an eyebrow. “Wobbling? We’re both standing still.”

Hot red flames washed over Akira, returning him to his gym uniform, and he fell to his knees.

Morgana maintained a calm, analytic stare. “Huh. I knew he was burning up a lot of energy, but I didn’t know his power was still so unstable.”

Kneeling next to Akira, close enough to see perspiration beading across his skin, Ann glanced back at their short benefactor. “What’s going on?”

Looking her in the eye, Morgana’s held a serious tone. “If that was your first time summoning your Persona, you won’t be far behind. We need to get both of you back to your world, quick.”

Bracing a hand against the wall to come back to his feet, Akira couldn’t find enough strength or coordination to push Ann away. “No argument there.”

Ann looked to Morgana. “Is it because he summoned his Persona three times?”

“Once you’ve awakened, it should just depend on how hard you’re pushing your Persona.” Morgana glanced between them, then his eyes snapped wide open. “Wait, are you saying he just awakened too?”

“Why?”

“That’s very dangerous. I’m surprised you can still walk so soon after calling out your Persona for the first time. If he forced his out three times today,” Morgana opened his mouth, then closed it, then waved his hands in the air. “I don’t even know what could happen. Worse, he’s vulnerable to the palace distortions now.”

Head pounding, Akira grunted. “What’s that mean?”

“That…” Morgana swirled a hand in a circular motion, “outfit you wore. Think of it like armor that protects you from the effects of the palace ruler’s distortion. It’s a reaction of your will against his.”

Akira tilted his head, hammers still pounding the inside of his skull. “So… those threads were how Kamoshida thought of me?”

Morgana shook his head. “No, your appearance is determined by your self-image, as well as your perceptions of how others view you. Now hurry, follow me before you forget you came from the outside.”

Struggling against the headache and rubbery sensation in his knees, Akira followed Morgana to the castle entrance, relying on Ann to steer him in the absence of his glasses. They came to a place much brighter than the halls of the castle, and Ann stopped, staring out. “No way, it’s Tokyo!”

Morgana came to a stop in front of them. “Now you just have to use the same artifact you used to get here and you’ll return to your world.”

Ann threw her fists down to her sides. “We don’t know how we got—”

“Wait,” Akira said, a tinge of elation joining the throbbing headache. “My phone said something before we wound up here.” Digging around, he pulled out his smart phone and stared, baffled, at the bleeding eye icon taking up the screen. “The hell?”

Morgana stood like a sentinel by the vent they used to escape the castle. “Just don’t forget that I helped you when you needed it.”

Ann gave him a serious nod. “Okay.” Refocusing on Akira, holding a hand against his head, she said, “Let’s go home.”

His thumb tapped the screen and the same mechanical voice from earlier read, “Returning to the real world. Thank you for your hard work.”

Red and darkness tore across their vision, but after a blink the bustle of Tokyo stood all around them. At least outside the narrow alley across from the gates of Shujin High. Both struggled to breathe for a moment, shocked at the journey they concluded. Caught up in the euphoria of victory and return, they embraced.

Akira glanced down to see her purple bra peeking out.

Ann glanced down to see her split shirt. Jerking apart, her hand lashed out and slapped across his face.

Akira stumbled back into the air conditioning units, hands going to the one side of his face. His split lip started bleeding again as he let out a moan of pain.

“Sorry!” Ann grabbed her gym jacket and zipped it up. “Look, about that castle fiasco… the things that cat said…”

Akira searched around through every pocket for his glasses until finding the half a frame without a cracked lens. Holding it up over his eye, he turned to Ann. “Morgana. Yeah. We need to check it out again. I know he said they weren’t real, but… if there’s even a chance Shiho’s in danger, I can’t just sit it out.”

Leaning her forearm against the brick wall for support, Ann scanned his face for a few moments, her eyes coming to rest on the purpling bruise on the left side. She took in a deep breath, but something about her pose seemed more relaxed than the transfer student had ever seen her. “You really care about her a lot, don’t you?”

The wistful hint in her voice sent a feeling of fire through his face and he coughed against a tightness in his throat, unable to meet her azure gaze. “N-no! It’s just that… Anybody who would have stuff as sick as that in his head is somebody too dangerous to leave unchecked.”

Letting out a heavy breath, Ann leaned fully against the brick wall opposite Akira. She brought a hand up to clutch her head, wincing. “I’m feeling dead on my feet.”

“I feel like I’m ready to collapse as soon as I sit down.” His head pounded like oni took turns slamming each side with warhammers. Looking back to Shujin, he said, “I’ll see what I can find tomorrow. Want me to message you if I find anything?”

Ann hesitated, then looked to the bruise darkening on his face. “If I can’t trust you after that, who can I trust?” Taking her phone out, they exchanged contact information. Glancing up at the sky, deep crimson giving way to purple, she gaped. “It’s that late? I am so dead!”

She dashed back inside the school and Akira followed at a more measured pace.

Wednesday, 13 April 2016
After School
Shujin Hallways

Shiho shifted her grip on the stack of books in her arms, tired even before having started them. A familiar stride approached and she turned in the empty hall to see Mishima, favoring his left foot just a little.

Some recent swelling kept him from fully opening his left eye, but he looked up at her with the same tender worry as he did back when he used to meet her after volleyball games. “Shi-chan… are you leaving?” He reached for her shoulder.

“Sorry, Yuu-chan,” she said, the act of having to send away the most supportive person in the school almost painful. “I’ve got too much studying to do.” She looked over his bruised face and cast her gaze away, shrugging his hand off before her mind could start whirling through that fearful cycle of wondering what happened that he wouldn’t talk about. She glanced up and down the empty hall, but couldn’t help but notice the way her heart sped up at his touch. “C’mon, we can’t be seen like this at school.”

Mishima took his hand away. “Go.”

Shiho blinked, turning to her pillar of gentle support. “What is it?”

Mishima flinched and turned further away, a tremble entering his hands. “Kamoshida’s asking for you. He’s in the PE Faculty office.”

She swallowed, trying to push away the rumors of what happened to people he called to his office after practice. After all, she was the starter. The star of the girls’ volleyball team. She didn’t make any mistakes. He had nothing but praise for her, even if he was a little harsh to the other players. “What did he say?”

His trembling hands clenching into fists. Mishima turned further away, his body tense as a violin string. He whispered, so quiet she hardly heard, “Go.”

“Yuu-chan…?” After several seconds of him looking away from her, doing nothing but tremble, she let out a breath. If anybody would tell her if something important was up, he would. Taking another moment to glance around the empty hall, she stepped closer and reached out but couldn’t actually cup his bruised cheek. He looked more worried than the night he met her mother. “What is it?”

Mishima swallowed and straightened, but just when he was about to look up at her he cringed and looked away. His limbs shook so much she was surprised she didn’t hear his knees knocking together.

When he refused to speak, she drew her hand back, her patience thin. “Yuu-chan, I don’t have time for this.” Shiho shifted her grips on her books again. “I have books I haven’t finished reading that I need to check back in to the library.” Glancing at him, he refused to turn to her and a spike of annoyance shot through her. Yuuki, the one friend she thought would always talk to her, stood there looking like a beaten dog. “Yuu-chan, he’s got to know I’m here today.”

Mishima opened his mouth, then closed it. “Kiriko…”

The long-haired senior sprang to her mind’s eye. Vice captain of the girl’s volleyball team last year, president of several clubs and a shoe-in for student council president in her senior year. Until she dropped off the face of the earth. “You heard what the student council VP said, she was over-extended and exhausted herself. Nothing happened.” She shuffled a half-step to one side to try to look him in the eye, but he turned his face further away. Shiho sighed. “I can’t just skip school every time you get nervous. If I keep vanishing every time he wants to see me, he’ll kick me off the team.”

Mishima’s fists tightened. “He just said to the come to the office.” His hands trembled and eyes clenched shut, turning his face all the way away from her. “I can’t do it again!” Glistening light appeared at the corners of his eyes before he turned and fled.

Baffled at his refusal to speak to her, she took the books to the library, finished the chapter for her upcoming history essay, and returned them. Knowing she had no other excuses to get in the way, she took the hallway to the practice building.

Echoes of the whispered rumors passed through her ears. Two students keeping their distance from the office glanced at her, to the door, then made themselves scarce as if a monster chased them.

Shiho straightened, muttering to herself. “The tournament’s going to be starting soon. I’m the starter. He wouldn’t do anything to me. Those rumors are wrong.”

It still took all her will to lift her hand and open the door. She stepped inside, and the door closed with a low click far louder to her ears than it should have been. “Kamoshida-sensei?”

Kamoshida took his time standing out of the stunted chair in front of his desk, stepped around her, and locked the door.

The towering man looked down at her, his tongue running over his lip.

Shiho backed away, her limbs feeling cold and heart racing. “P-please…”

Her sobbed scream echoed through abandoned halls.

Chapter 6: April 14th, Part 1, Event Horizon

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Wednesday, 13 April 2016
Evening
Yongen, Leblanc

“You’re late,” Sojiro snapped before he even looked up at Akira. Once he did, the middle-aged man’s face snapped taught and eyes wide. “What the hell happened to you?”

Walking through the feeling of being absolutely drained, Akira paced down the lane towards the stairs. The image of that gold knight cutting Ann’s shirt and her helpless thrashing still replayed through his mind. “I had to help someone out.”

Sojiro stood from the bar stool and into the transfer student’s path, crossing his arms, his tone rising. “What kind of lame excuse is that? You can’t be getting into fights!”

“Excuse,” Akira spat, then looked up at Sojiro, too tired to dredge up his comforting, familiar anger. At least the train trip gave him time to think up a cover story. “Right. Because if I called the police to say someone jumped me, they’d leap at the chance to help a reformed convict.”

Sojiro sighed, but his frame loosened. “Child services were here this afternoon. I tried to call you.” His gaze turned heated. “I am not going to stick my neck out for you again.” Sojiro set his hands on his hips. “Have you been hanging around any bad influences?”

Akira’s lip twisted in a snarl. “I’m surprised you’d consider someone to be a bad influence on me.” When Sojiro tensed, exhaustion swept over him and the boy let his shoulders slump. “Sorry, it’s just been a long day.” A smile curled on his lips, then he flinched in pain. “In truth… I think I made a friend.”

Sojiro scanned Akira. “It’d have to be some really weird person to want to spend time with you.”

Akira’s hands curled into fists and he bit his lip, then cringed in pain from the swelling. Heart crumpling at yet another person reminding him what bad company he was, he angled to rush around Sojiro.

The older man sighed and stepped in the way to prevent a quick retreat. “I’m just saying if you’re not careful who you let close to you, you’re going to get hurt.” He reached to set the newspaper on the bar counter. “Think of how I feel, having to stay up and worry about you. Then you walk in with a bruise the size of Hokkaido, a split lip, and a thousand-meter-stare.”

“You weren’t worried about me. You made that plenty clear.” Akira slipped around, trotted upstairs. Despite the feeling of shards where his heart should be from Sojiro’s cruel assumptions, he forced himself to his bed and got halfway through changing for bed when his phone buzzed.

Ann’s ID stared up at him, so he opened the instant messenger and read. <I just wanted to say thanks before I passed out.>

Akira’s fingers moved almost before his brain caught up. <It’s no big deal.>

<Yes, it is. I wasn't very nice to you before and you still saved me. Also, sorry about slapping you near the end.>

Akira typed in, <It was a nice view,> then considered the day as context and deleted it. Instead, he sent, <You were still freaked about everything. As long as you're okay, it's all good.>

<I don't understand you.> She sent back. A few moments passed before she added, <I mean, thanks.>

Thursday, 14 April 2016
Early Morning
Yongen, Leblanc

Akira pulled the door closed behind him and took a good look at the cafe’s washroom. Almost wide enough for him to stretch out his arms in either direction, it felt much more roomy than any other one he’d been in. The sink bolted to the wall lacked any counter, so he had to leave his bag on the ground, but at least it had a mirror big enough to view his entire face in.

The half of his face the knight’s gauntlet struck yesterday still smarted. The swelling was on its way down, but a huge bruise extending from his cheek to his temple stood out like a blighted field. Reaching down to his bag, he pulled out the makeup kit and opened the pale, skin-tone container. “Good thing I’ve had to do this before.”

Swabbing a cotton ball over the top, he touched it to the bruise and hissed in pain, jerking his hand away. Taking in a deep breath, he swept it over the bruise and painted over the injury.

Thursday, 14 April 2016
Afternoon
Shujin, Class 2-D

Ushimaru drew a stick-figure representation of a judge and turned back to the class, still droning about the separation of powers in the Japanese government. Akira ignored him, speed-reading through the book until one of the students on the right wall of the class jerked to his feet and peered out through the window. “Hey, who’s that?”

Ushimaru cleared his throat. When the class didn’t all turn their focus back to him, he gripped his chalk and snapped, “Class is still in session. Sit back down right now.”

“She’s outside the fence!” somebody from beyond the classroom shouted.

Now half a dozen students next to the window abandoned the pretense of paying attention and rushed to see what was going on through the courtyard. The first student to stand said, “We’ve got a jumper!”

Mishima shot out of his seat, knocking his chair into the aisle. “Shiho!” He bolted out of the class.

Ann turned pale as death and stood. “Shiho?” She followed the class representative out at a slower run.

With two people repeating the name of the only kind student in school, Akira felt a chill trickle down his back. “Suzui-san?” He chased Ann out to the window, just in time to see the black-haired girl tip over the edge and plummet into the courtyard.

Ann clapped her hands over her mouth, eyes wide with horror.

Akira felt the blood drain from his face, a sensation of ice pounding him. He hardly felt Ann slam through him, even though the motion knocked him spinning around. Once he finished almost falling into the window to the courtyard, his eyes picked the blonde out of the crowd building in the hall and he took off at a panicked dash, praying he didn’t see what he knew he saw.

He slammed into Ryuji, pausing only enough for eye contact before resuming the sprint outside.

A crowd gathered, numerous vultures in student guise holding up their phones to record videos as the jewel of Shujin Academy bled in front of them. One of the third-year teachers called for the students to return to class, but the buzz of horrified conversation and gossip only grew.

Snarling as he shoved aside one student recording the debacle, Akira finally came close enough to see the poor girl herself. “Suzui!” He bulled through other students until coming to Ann, kneeling on the ground and crying as medics locked a brace around the black-haired girl’s neck. Akira kneeled behind Ann. “Is she gonna be all right?”

Ann crawled closer. “Shiho, what happened?”

“Can’t…” Shiho whimpered in pain. “Sorry.”

Ann pushed closer and a paramedic shoved her aside to shift Shiho onto a stretcher.

“Ka… Kamo…” Shiho’s eyes slid closed and her body went slack on the mat.

Feeling wetness at his eyes, Akira prayed like he never had before.

The medic pushed the stretcher in and jumped in after. Another came out from the direction of the passenger door. “We need someone to go with her. Who is her teacher?”

The third-year teacher muttered some lame excuse, and Ann jumped to the fore, her makeup streaked with tears. “I’ll go!”

The medic pursed his lips, then glanced to the ambulance. “Fine. Hurry.”

Akira struggled to breathe. Air came in thin wisps, and it felt like the whole world pressed on every square inch of him in its best attempts to crush him into paste. Numb and feeling his knees giving out on him, Akira stumbled in a turn and grabbed Ryuji’s shoulder to stay on his feet before he consciously realized the runner was there.

During the turn, he spotted Mishima slipping into the Practice Building.

Akira’s wheezing vanished, his gaze hardened, and he strode through the crowd like a Terminator as Ryuji followed, trying to talk to him. Akira cornered Mishima by lockers in the practice building, crying his eyes out. Feeling detached from his voice, from the school, from his own thoughts and body, Akira asked with unnerving calm, “What happened?”

“I…” Mishima wiped at the snot dribbling down his nose, but the tears came too fast to hide. He looked away. “…don’t know.”

Surging out with strength he didn’t know he had, Akira threw Mishima against a locker. “The hell you don’t!”

“Whoa, man!” Ryuji grabbed Akira and pulled him back before looking at Mishima. “Talk to us, dude. We won’t blab, but we gotta know what’s goin’ on.”

“Shiho…” Mishima took his head in his hands and leaned against the locker, sobbing. “Kamoshida… called her out.”

Akira’s eyebrows arched. “What the hell’s that mean? I thought he only got rough with guys getting close to girls on the team.”

Ryuji snorted. “Like he’d have that much restraint.”

Mishima shook his head, hands lowering. “Not just guys. He calls out anybody on the volleyball teams. Anybody who’s done anything wrong, and…” He looked away, tears still streaming down his face. “Oh, god, Shiho…”

Akira flexed his free hand, grinding his teeth, but reached out to Mishima’s shirt, pressing the class leader against the locker. “What exactly happens?”

Mishima struggled for a few moments before his breathing evened. “He’d nominate someone when he was in a bad mood, for the smallest mistakes… and hit m-us.” He clenched his eyes and flinched. “Again. And again.” He reached up to cradle a bandage on his cheek. “But Shi-chan never made any mistakes or anything.”

“That…” Akira stopped, thinking back to how the coach looked at Ann days ago, how the king Kamoshida touched Ann in the castle of horrors. The topless Shiho in that pleasure room. Akira stepped away from Mishima, fingers curling into tight fists.

The memory of Ann’s words echoed in his mind, “Then something happened. Overnight, Kiriko-senpai became a recluse…”

Akira’s teeth ground. “So that wasn’t just his desire, he acted on it.” He turned around and stalked towards the PE faculty office. Mishima and Ryuji followed close. Akira heard them call at first, but soon everything was drowned out by the roar of blood in his ears. “Ka-” The door came in sight, “-Mo-” he reached out for the lever handle, “-Shi-” he slammed the door open, “-Da!”

Kamoshida looked over his shoulder from his desk, nonplussed.

Akira roared, “You rapist pig!” Ryuji clamped on one arm before Akira could start swinging.

Kamoshida threw his pen on the desk, turned around, and stood with a deep frown. “You’re expelled.”

Akira clenched his fists, and Mishima took his other arm.

Kamoshida stared down through narrowed eyes. “Don’t think you could throw such serious accusations without repercussions.” A bitter sneer twisted his face. “What did you even come here for? Even if I did what you claim, there’s nothing you could do.” Straightening, with a little more of his nonchalance back, he threw a meaningful glance at Mishima. “Even… certain people couldn’t do anything to stop it.”

Mishima froze.

Kamoshida straightened, looking as calm as a man in control of everything in the world. “The hospital just called. Suzui slipped into a coma.”

Mishima broke into a sob, his grip on Akira changing from one of holding the hot-head back to clamping on him for strength he couldn’t find in himself.

Kamoshida took a shallow step closer, his eyes on Mishima but his body angled at Akira. “I hear there’s no chance of recovery.”

“No,” Mishima’s voice cracked, fresh tears falling.

Akira’s arms vibrated with the urge to lash out despite the two students holding him back.

Kamoshida smirked, locking eyes with the transfer student. “Am I going to have another case of self-defense?”

Akira jerked at the coach, held back by Ryuji. “Pig!”

Ryuji pulled back harder. “Don’t let him do it to you, man! This is just what he did to me. No matter what happens here, he’ll win if you let go now!”

You?” Kamoshida chuckled and crossed his arms. “You’re stopping the criminal?” He threw back his head and let out deep, belly-full laughter. “That’s rich.” He leaned just into Akira’s reach. “What’s stopping you? Don’t hold back.”

Akira curled his fists, nails biting into his palms, but he felt Mishima clamped on his arm, crying into his sleeve and stopped straining.

Kamoshida closed his fists and stood back. “You’re all expelled.”

“What?” Mishima and Ryuji both shouted, aghast.

Kamoshida’s lip twitched, the only sign of a smothered snarl as he turned to Mishima. “Didn’t you ever wonder why I let someone as talentless as you stay on the team?” He leaned closer. “Even though you were distracting the real talent?”

A tremor passed through Mishima before he dashed out.

Akira ran after him, Ryuji hot on his heels. “Mishima!”

Ryuji grabbed Akira’s school coat and brought them to a halt. “Dude, let him have some space for a while.”

Akira pulled once against Ryuji’s grip, but the track star held on until Mishima disappeared around the corner. With both targets out of sight, Akira had nowhere to bury his fists and he ground his teeth.

Shouting muffled by the heavy doors came from the courtyard, but the transfer student gave it no mind until one burst open and a first-year teacher strode in, her drab gray suit-style vest disheveled. She took one look at the pair of second-years and shouted, “Back to your classes! The principal hasn’t released school, so get back to your rooms!” Getting nothing but a glare that could’ve set forests on fire from the transfer student, she looked to the blond-haired student. “Have any other students come this way?”

“Nah,” Ryuji said, furrowing his brow at her before he grabbed Akira’s arm. “C’mon, Kurusu-sa-”

“Don’t call me Kurusu!” Akira snapped, his vision clearing a little as he rounded on the runner.

Taking the shout in stride, Ryuji gestured his chin at the door the teacher just walked through. “The courtyard’s gonna be packed, let’s take the walkway.”

Akira growled, but let himself be led back to Class 2-D. The only thing that filled his mind was the image of his hands choking the life out of Kamoshida.

Chapter 7: April 14th, Part 2, Another's Vengeance

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Thursday, 14 April 2016
After School
Front Gates of Shujin

Akira stormed through Shujin’s front doors, every student noticing him clearing a wide path. The image of Shiho’s body, limbs twisted and glassy eyes staring up with a lingering ‘please make it end’ still in every line and wrinkle. A look that echoed from too many dark nights in his own life. A look that didn’t belong on such a beautiful face. Bumping into somebody in a Shujin uniform, he pushed him aside and stalked past the yawning gates, trying to figure out how to murder Kamoshida for laying a hand on the sweetest girl in Shujin.

A black cat hopped up onto the cleanest air conditioning unit next to him and scrutinized him with what the transfer student could swear was worry. Then it opened its mouth, but instead of a meow he heard the voice of the creature who guided them out of the Metaverse yesterday, “Something wound you up.”

Akira’s fingers twitched. “Morgana?”

The cat blinked, one ear twisting as an impressed surprise slipped over his face. “That was easier than I thought it’d be. How did you recognize me?”

“I never forget a voice.” He clenched his fists, deciding to shelve how Morgana got here or why he looked like a street cat with white paws. It wasn’t much different than his bipedal cartoony-catboy form in the castle. “You were right about that perverted bastard. He needs to go down. So how do we do this, cat?”

Morgana’s tail twitched back and forth, ears folded against the back of his head. “I’m not a cat!” He glanced to the transfer student’s fists. “And we’re not beating him up, we’re simply stealing his distorted desires.” He looked back out at the road. “Where’s Lady Ann?”

Akira ground his teeth, impatience beating on his body’s need to act. “She went to the hospital with Suzui earlier. She’ll meet us here in a few minutes where nobody will see us… go.”

Morgana’s eyebrows arched, concern clear despite the furry feline face. “I understand you want to do something, but if you’re sloppy about it, you could cause a mental shutdown.”

Akira lunged at the cat already less than a meter away. “Damn the shutdown, this man is as evil as my old bastard.” He lowered his fists to his side and forced a breath in, then out. “I waited when I had the opportunity before. I knew what was in his head.”

Shaking his head, Morgana sighed. “You were in no condition to press farther. It’s only been a day since you and Lady Ann awakened. I’m not even sure you’re fully recovered ye—”

“Look what happened to Suzui-san!” Akira shouted. One girl turning onto the road paused, giving him a funny look for yelling at a cat, but she speed-walked away when he shot her a glare. Swallowing and struggling to keep his volume to a harsh whisper, he held up his hands, trying not to see them tremble. “Her blood is on my hands. She isn’t even the first one. How many came before? You think it was just Kiriko? Who’s it gonna be next time? Takanashi? Takamaki?”

Morgana turned his head away.

“You think I can afford to wait? You think they can afford to wait?” Akira shoved his hands into his school jacket, feeling his tone rising. “This is playing Russian roulette with a fully loaded gun!”

Ann jogged in from the street, breathing hard. Her chest heaved, but something cold yet energetic like a winter blizzard swirled in her eyes. “I just… got back from… the hospital. You messaged… that you’ve got a way to deal with Kamoshida?”

Akira snarled at the mention of the name. “We crush the king.”

Standing, Morgana shot him as firm a gaze as a little cat could a teenage human. “This isn’t a decision to make lightly. If you’re going to do this, I need all of you—”

“I’m in,” Ann interrupted.

Morgana’s ears curled and he tilted his head as he looked up at her, a waver in his eyes. “I just don’t want you to do something you’ll torment yourself over afterwards.”

Akira crossed his arms. “You really going to get in the way of a girl with the fires of vengeance burning in her belly?”

Morgana fixed a clear glare at Akira. “You can’t run into this thing half-cocked.”

“Then stay out of our way,” Akira shot back.

Morgana stood up, tail twitching. “Don’t think you can do this without me. You need me as much as I need you. Are you both sure about this? Sure you can keep a grip on your emotions, too?”

Akira nodded, but when Ann gave her own assent they both looked as determined as ever.

Morgana let out a sigh, then took a deep breath. “The moment we cross over, we’ll treat each other like phantom thieves, so I hope you’re ready.”

Ann set a hand on her hip. “Excuse me? Phantom thieves?”

Puffing out his chest, Morgana sat. “Masters of the covert who sneak into the most secret of places and stylishly steal treasure.”

Akira spat at the ground. “I don’t care about treasure. I’m going in to stop Kamoshida from doing to anyone else what he did to Suzui-san.”

Ann stood straighter, squaring her own shoulders. “If you’re that certain, there’s no way I can back out either. Shiho was my best friend since middle school.” She glanced at the downcast Morgana. “Well, I think it sounds cool. So how do we get back into the castleverse?”

Akira drew his phone and turned it to her, the bleeding eyeball app in the center of the screen. “Same way as yesterday. Except this time, we mean to do it.”

“Who made that?”

Akira turned his phone back and lifted his free finger. “Some douchebag with a long nose. What’s it matter as long as it works?”

Ann shifted her hips. “You’re weird, but I guess you have a point.”

Akira tapped his smart phone and the world bled red for a moment before the castle sprang up where Shujin once stood.

“What the shit?” Ryuji shouted from just around the corner to the alley.

Morgana the catboy flopped on the air conditioner. “Aaand, there goes our stealth.”

Akira trotted out of the alley, Ann and Morgana at his heels.

Gawking up at the castle, Ryuji’s hands closed into fists and eyes widened. “What the eff happened to the school?” He whipped around, looking down both directions of the street. “Where’d everyone else go?”

Akira reached out. “Same place you’re going to.”

“Don’t you even…” Parrying, Ryuji brought up his fists. “Who the hell are…?” He leaned closer, his eyes squinting for a long beat. “Akira?”

“Guilty as charged,” he said, droll. “Now get going.”

“What happened to your clothing?” Ryuji turned to Ann, mouth drifting further open and a blush spreading over his face. “Takamaki…? Da-yum, who put you in that getup?”

Ann swiped a hand at him despite several meters between them. “It’s our residual mental image.”

Morgana trotted closer. “Right. It’s a defense against the palace’s distortion.”

Just starting to settle down, Ryuji took a step back and his eyes widened again. “Is that a… cat?”

“I am not a cat!” Morgana roared. “This is just… from the distortion of the Metaverse. I’m trying to restore my true form.”

“Which is a cat?” Ryuji blurted.

Akira stepped between them. “No, it’s human. How would a cat learn to talk? Now stop getting in our way, we’ve got a rapist to take down.”

Ryuji straightened, looking Akira in the mask. “You really goin’ up against Kamoshida?”

Ann stepped out of the alley, crossing her arms. “This doesn’t concern you, Sakamoto.”

“Suzui-san was in my class, too,” Ryuji shot back, ears and face reddening. “She may not have been my BFF, but she was the class rep for a reason. There’s not a single one of us who didn’t like her. If Kamoshida’s responsible for her tryin’ ta kill herself, I can’t just walk away. He’s stolen from both of us. Or have you forgotten the shit he put the track team through? What he put me through?”

Looking down, Ann took a half step back. “Listen, Sakamoto, it’s not that I don’t understand, but this is… way beyond—”

Akira slipped his hands into his pockets. “You willin’ to put everything on the line?”

Ryuji pumped a fist in the air. “Hell yeah!”

Akira stared into Ryuji’s eyes. “You willin’ to go up against this Kamoshida, even if it means a fight to the death, if it means keeping what happened to Suzui-san from ever happening again?”

Ryuji’s hand came down and he backed up a step, unable to meet Akira’s eyes. “I… I dunno about killin’ the guy. I mean, he’s a class A hole, but…”

“Then leave,” Akira snapped. “Either you go all the way with us, or you walk out now. I won’t blame you for choosing to duck out. It’s your life and I don’t know how far we’ll have to go. I’m the only one with nothing to lose.”

Ryuji took a step closer, narrow eyes fixed on Akira’s. “He expelled me, too.”

Ann blinked. “Expelled?” She put her hands on her hips and directed a harsh look at Akira. “Too? What happened?”

With a bitter smirk, Ryuji jerked a thumb at Akira. “Dude took a page from my book and stalked down Kamoshida in his office. Would’ve put the beat down on him if me an’ that other guy weren’t there. That asshole expelled all of us just for bein’ there.”

Ann’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t know how good you think you are, but Kamoshida would’ve destroyed you.” A sigh leaked out and her shoulders slumped. “I don’t know, if he’s already announced your expulsion, maybe he basically did.”

Akira turned to the castle. “In the end, it doesn’t matter. I’m here to see this through.” He looked down to Morgana. “I think we saw everything there was in that sex dungeon—”

“In what?” Ryuji blurted, eyes shooting wide.

“—but one of the guards mentioned the Training Hall of Love,” Akira continued without a beat of hesitation. “You see anything like that while you were scopin’ the place out? Kamoshida was a gold medal winner, if his treasure wasn’t in that slave tower it’s got to be there.”

Morgana put a hand on his chin. “Mmm, I was scouting the dungeons, but I bailed when I heard about a princess kidnapping in the tower. It might be down there.” He straightened and pointed his hand at Ryuji. “I still think he should sit this one out.”

Ryuji lifted a fist at the small catperson. “Dude you couldn’t throw me out if you wanted to.”

Morgana sent him a hooded glare. “Those two have already faced the oppression of the world bearing down on them and the dark weakness in their own hearts. They’ve already awakened their Personas. You’re just a loud, impulsive thug.”

Akira chuckled. “Damn, he’s got you pegged.”

“Fuck you, man.” Ryuji jammed his hands in his pockets. “Like I ain’t faced down plenty’a shit myself.”

“You’re right,” Akira said, looking back at him with a calm tone. “That was uncalled for.”

Ryuji let out a breath that seemed to take most of his energy with it. “What?”

“I’m being strategic and tactical in one move,” Akira explained before Ann or Morgana could pipe in. “Between the three of us we might be able to force you back into the real world, but it’d take more effort than it’s worth. If you do have a beef with Kamoshida, far be it from me to stand in the way of letting you pay him back.”

Ann held a wary stance, hip jutting out. “What is it with you and revenge?”

“It’s the only thing that keeps me warm at night.”

Ryuji swallowed. “You worry me. But thanks.”

Morgana scanned the three humans. “If we’re all ready?” When the others nodded, he shook out his tension. “Okay, I’m counting on you, Joker.”

“Joker,” Akira said, a smirk growing on his face as he tested the sound. “I’ve always wanted to wow the crowds.”

Ann crossed her arms. “You hate crowds.”

“Shut. Up.”

Ryuji rolled his eyes. “Why the stupid nickname?”

“It’s an alias,” Akira said, terse. “Like when me an’ the guys’d group up to go steal a cop’s hat. Without a code name, it doesn’t matter if you get away or not.” He removed his hands from his pockets and stretched out one shoulder. “As soon as they hear applause and ‘go Yoshida’ you’re dead as soon as you get home because they’ve called your parents. But if all they hear is ‘break left, Viper’ all they can do is chase you down to get it back.” A smirk spread over his lips. “And the only one smart enough to take us down one by one was this crazy kung-fu chick who could out-parkour everyone but me.”

Ryuji chuckled, rocking back on his heels. “Damn, man, you must have tons of crazy stories from where you grew up.”

Morgana held a hand to his forehead. “There’s no telling what kind of effect yelling our real names could have in the Palace. It may not be Kamoshida’s consciousness, but it’s still connected to it.”

Ryuji turned on their short compatriot. “So whadda we call you?”

“Something swift and deadly,” Akira said. “Bachi Hebi?”

Morgana bared his claws, the points glinting in the torchlight from the castle courtyard. “You’re going to compare a nimble animal with claws to a fat snake?”

“They can jump…” Akira said, a drop of sweat running down in front of his ear. “Just throwin’ stuff out there. Aomanjaku?”

Morgana sheathed his claws, withdrawing into his frame. “Do you really think of me as an instigator of cheap tricks?”

Ann stepped closer, holding out a hand. “Byakko?”

Eyes widening, a look of dawning awe spread over Morgana’s face. “The guardian of the west.” He nodded. “Well, I do have a little white fur. Okay, Byakko it is.”

Ryuji looked Ann over, eyes lingering for several seconds longer than necessary. “What about Takamaki?”

Inside the confines of his own mind, Akira debated potential codenames for the fellow student who stood at his side. And wore a red leather bodysuit. “Sex kitty?”

His alter ego slapped him with a paper fan.

“Hot leather?”

The paper fan lashed out again.

“Night Woman.”

His alter ego slapped him up and down with the paper fan. Coming out of his internal musing, Akira shouted, “I got nothing!”

Ann smirked, placing confident hands on her hips with no apparent idea how blistering hot the pose in that getup looked. “There’s only one name for me. Panther.”

Akira’s eyebrow rose enough for it to be visible above his eye-mask. “Seriously? What kind of—?”

Ann stomped a foot, leaning down at him in anger. “It’s Panther, all right?”

Akira looked away from her cleavage, feeling like his face burned and pants shrank. He mumbled, “Sure, okay, no problem.”

Morgana turned to Ryuji. “Well, that just leaves you.” He held a hand to his cheek, tapping a finger as he hummed. “Something descriptive, something defining. Mouth.”

“Dude,” Ryuji glared and raised a fist, “your naming privileges are gone.” He shook his arms and bounced on his feet as if waiting to take off at a run. “What about Captain?”

Akira and Ann both snickered. She recovered first and stood straight. “Brawler?”

Rolling his eyes, Ryuji sighed. “Man, I get enough crap for that shit with Kamoshida already.”

Akira slapped his palm to his face. “We don’t have all day. I took mine and went with it, couldn’t you do the same?”

Ryuji clenched his teeth, but after a beat sighed. “Fine. But if I get one of those weird costumes, I get to pick a new one.”

Akira rolled his eyes and turned to the courtyard. “Fine, whatever.”

Morgana led them up crates and scaffolding to a decorative window high on the courtyard and they slipped into the castle.

Chapter 8: April 14th, Part 3, Tempest Wakes

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Thursday, 14 April 2016
After School
Kamoshida’s Palace, Training Hall of Love

Half a dozen students in Shujin gym uniforms pumped their arms but only held in place on the massive treadmill. A pot of cool water dripping with condensation dangled in front of them and a long roller of spikes whirled behind them. Ryuji slammed the bars and roared, “Son of a bitch!”

One runner got underneath the pot and struggled to get his arms up, failing to reach. After a moment, he just stretched out his neck and opened his mouth to catch a precious few drops before he stumbled and fell.

Two runners dodged around him and one jumped over him with a panic-fueled hop. The fallen had just enough time to crawl to all fours in front of the spiked roller before crying out, then sudden silence. The tips shone with fresh red.

Akira crossed himself. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph… is this really the kind of thing he does in real life?”

“I…” Ryuji gripped the iron bars, resting his forehead against them. “He was practically doin’ this shit with the track team when he was drivin’ us into the ground. I should’a known he wouldn’t stop.”

Akira stared, transfixed at the five left running. “When I was carryin’ Mishima to the nurse to have his concussion checked out, he let slip that Kamoshida calls in guys and beats ‘em any time they made a mistake. Called it ‘special coaching’.” His fists clenched into such tight fists the leather groaned. “Poor sap looked like Kamoshida’d been puttin’ him through ten rounds of kick boxing every day.”

Ann turned away. “I should’ve known, too. I was with Shiho almost every day, I saw girls and boys on the teams with bruises and bandages. Shiho even told me about how Kiriko-senpai changed almost overnight, even if she believed the official story.” She crossed her arms. “I was just burying my head in the sand as long as nothing hurt Shiho. She and I tried to keep her boyfriend secret, but Kamoshida must’ve found out.”

Akira slammed a fist into his opposite hand. “Enough with the pity party. This just confirms what we knew. Kamoshida needs to go down.”

Clapping echoed from behind them and they heard Kamoshida quip, “Well isn’t it lovely to see all the vermin in agreement?”

All three wheeled around, fists up. Six silver knights in a neat formation two rows wide stood before them, blocking the passage. A larger gold knight stood further back and the King Kamoshida past it. Kamoshida stared down at them, his gold eyes glistening with more light than the candles should give.

“You bastard!” Ryuji took a couple steps at him, cocking back a fist, but Akira caught him.

The nearest two knights hefted their shields and lifted their swords.

Kamoshida waggled a finger at them. “Now, now, there’s no need to rush into things.” He gave an expectant smirk. “A king does so love his entertainment.” He threw his hands on his hips, elbows out, pushing open his cape.

Akira dropped to his knees, clapping his hands over his eyes as if preparing to claw them out. “My eyes! Oh, God in heaven, my eyes! I can’t un-see it!”

Ryuji’s face twisted in disgust. “I never thought a speedo could look so nasty.”

Kamoshida dropped his arms, mirth gone. “You know, perhaps I should thank you. That irritating pet of yours has been a bother for so long, it’s a joy to see it behind bars. If only I could decide how I want to execute it. There are so many ways to skin a cat.”

“Byakko!” Ann glared at Akira, next to her. “I told you we shouldn’t have sent him out scouting alone!”

Kamoshida’s eyes stopped on Ryuji and his smirk widened. “And you brought me another gift. The track traitor.”

Akira’s fists tightened and his lips peeled back to bare his teeth. “You’re raping girls and beating boys and you call someone who stood up to you a traitor? Fuck you and the horse you rode in on.”

Still smirking, Kamoshida rolled his eyes. “Hasn’t he told you? How many lives he ruined so he could have the satisfaction of that one punch? The rest of the track team was strong enough to bear up under the weight of my… tender training.”

Ryuji growled. “That wasn’t no training! You just couldn’t take another team doin’ as well as your precious volleyball team. We were all set to take our own trophies and you were scared.”

Lip twisting, Kamoshida spat at them, “The only one who needs to produce results is me. If that coach hadn’t tried to oppose me in front of the other faculty, I wouldn’t’ve had to settle things with breaking his star’s leg.”

Ann’s shoulders drooped and she looked over her shoulder at the ex-runner. “Sakamoto…”

“Now,” Kamoshida said, “go kill the vermin.” His eyes roamed over Ann’s hourglass shape and he smiled. “And do feel free to see how much you can cut from the girl. I’d love to peel the leather from her.”

The front two knights burst into a quadruplet of four-legged rams standing as tall as a warhorse. Their curved horns looked dark as obsidian, but their eyes glowed with crimson.

The two persona-users summoned their own glowing monstrosities and Carmen froze one with a single powerful burst of ice. Pillar sent a zipping shock of dark into another, the inky darkness roaring up and dissolving a second, but the remaining two Bicorns charged.

The next two knights shuddered and burst into four leathery-winged, gaunt demons with huge strap-on codpieces. The knights behind them raised their swords.

The Bicorns slammed into Carmen and Pillar, drawing a cringe and pained grunt from Akira and Ann.

Pillar of Heaven flared, cracks of darkness spreading out over the ground, then roaring up into the Bicorns, disintegrating one and knocking the other to the ground, twitching. Carmen lashed it with her thorned whip and the Shadow burst into dissolving ashen darkness.

Two of the Incubi held up their hands, claws twitching as an orb of crackling darkness formed. The other two dashed at the Personas.

The knights behind them lifted their shields and paced forward.

Both Incubi slipped close enough to slash into the Personas with claws as big as Akira’s forearm. Ann cried out. Akira’s footing faltered but he stayed up and grunted in pain, nothing but anger and resolve on his face.

“No!” Ryuji ran up until Akira snagged his sleeve.

Carmen lashed her whip into the nearest Incubus, knocking it into the bars with a clang. The two Incubi hanging back charging darkness threw their inky orbs into the Personas. Akira just grit his teeth.

Ann cried out and stumbled to her knees.

Pillar of Heaven churned, expelling a shimmering ball of yellow flames at the Incubus facing it, blasting it into fading ashes.

The waiting Incubi bared their claws and flapped ahead, still grinning. The one slammed into the bars struggled to its feet, then flapped up but wavered in the air.

Ryuji tugged at Akira, wanting to rush in to help but having no idea how to take down the monsters. “Fucking stop, Kamoshida!”

The self-styled king looked to him with a droll expression. “You wait your turn.” His lips curled up. “I’ll start with your other leg, just for poetic sake.”

Both vigorous Incubi clawed into Carmen and Ann fell back with a grunt of pain, clutching her sides. As Pillar shot fire at the faltering Incubus, Akira dashed to help her up.

Carmen slashed her whip across both attacking Shadows, winding one of the grinning demons.

Pillar hurled fire at the other, knocking it stumbling to the ground, but it leaped and slashed at Pillar in a frenzy.

Stumbling in place, Akira grit his teeth and tightened his hold on Ann.

Ryuji grit his teeth, hating the sensation of impotence. “Kamoshida, you asshole! Is destroying people the only thing you’re good at?”

Kamoshida smirked.

One gray knight burst, leaving a pair of green demons hiding in large, gold pots. The other also burst in tainted darkness, leaving a pair of armored knights riding red horses. The green demons peeked out and wiggled their fingers, a crackling and scent of ozone filling the air. The armored men on horses readied winged spears and took aim at separate Personas.

Pillar blasted the closest Incubus and Carmen lifted her arm, twirling her thorned whip above her and raising a snowy gale around her that buffeted one of the faltering demons.

Both of the timid green demons blasted Pillar with lightning.

Akira cried out, falling to one knee but clamping his grip on Ann’s arms.

“No,” Ryuji growled. “I can’t just stand here, watching my friends beaten to death in front of me.” He stepped in front of Akira and held a steady march forward.

Carmen slashed her whip, shredding an Incubus.

The remaining grinning demon cracked its knuckles and slashed into Carmen.

The mounted soldiers tapped their horses and advanced with spears raised.

A boy’s voice shouted from nowhere, “We don’t have a track team ‘cause of you!”

Ryuji clenched his fists, but took another step forward.

“No!” Akira shouted. Letting go of Ann, he took a stumbling step at Ryuji. Pillar advanced, churning with fire and darkness, but the first Berith powered a slash knocking it aside.

Akira fell against the bars, then to his knees with one hand struggling to hold himself up and the other clutching his chest.

Carmen blasted the last Incubus with ice, knocking it to the floor in dissolving goo.

The green Agathion unleashed blasts of lightning into both Personas, driving their users to all fours.

A familiar girl’s voice spat into Ryuji’s ears. “Ugh, who’d want to be with some violent thug who even hits teachers?”

Ryuji took another step forward, hands tightening and teeth clenching.

His mother’s voice wailed from nowhere, “You had a track scholarship! Why couldn’t you just be a good boy?”

The Berith advancing on Carmen paused, shifting its empty visor at the ex-track star.

His father’s voice bellowed, “That stupid bitch ain’t worth nothin’!”

Ryuji forced another step, growling in pain as one hand lifted to his dyed-blond hair.

The Agathion lanced lightning into both Personas again.

Akira and Ann collapsed to the ground with cries of pain.

Ann struggled to push herself up off the dirty floor. “I can not let it end here.” She shot a glare at Kamoshida even as her chest heaved breath in. “You have too much to pay for – not just for Shiho, but for everything!”

Akira rolled onto his side, reaching a trembling hand at the Berith staring him down. Pillar shot it with a zig-zagging blast of darkness.

The mounted soldier flinched, then kicked its horse forward and stabbed its spear into Pillar.

Akira rolled away, curling up and howling in agony.

The sound of his mother weeping behind her door rang in Ryuji’s ears.

Trembling, he forced one more step, then hunched as his stomach rebelled and his head pounded in pain.

The Berith staring at him tapped its horse and advanced, lifting its spear for a stab into his throat.

One of his fellow track brothers’ voices whispered from nowhere, “All we can do is endure.”

Ryuji straightened with a pained scream and fire licked over his face, leaving a heavy skull mask. Surprised at the sudden weight, he clawed at his face, catching the mask. He growled in pain when his first tug only sent a shock of pain into his system. Ryuji grit his teeth, refusing to give up. Digging his fingers behind his mask despite the flare of pain, he tore it off with an agonized shriek and splatter of blood.

Hot winds exploded out from him, slamming the Beriths away and both Agathion into the far wall.

Kamoshida gaped at the glowing figure taking shape above Ryuji. “What? I-impossible!”

Ryuji looked Kamoshida in the eye as a pirate cutter the size of a large truck coalesced above him, a humanoid figure a couple meters tall rising up out of it. Blood dribbling down his face, Ryuji spat at the royal-garbed coach. “Believe it or not, you piece of shit, you’re still going down.”

He swiped a hand like throwing a knife and the skeletal figure riding the cutter like a surfboard held aloft a cannon where one of its hands should be. Howling winds tore through the room and both Agathion smashed into the solid stone wall again, collapsing into goo and knocking both Beriths to their horses’ knees.

The gold knight advanced between them, something black and thick like tar oozing out of its joints and its movements twitchy. It burst into a huge, cloaked skeleton wielding a bow and riding an enormous white horse covered with eyes.

Darkness, then a bolt of ice slammed into the mounted soldiers just as they struggled up, knocking them back to their knees.

One Berith, just within reach, swung its spear into the boat-riding figure wearing a tattered cloak and hat bearing the skull-and-crossbones.

Ryuji grunted and snapped up a hand, clenching a fist as if crushing a rotten orange. “Captain Kidd!”

The boat-rider swung his oversized cutlass, driving the Berith to the ground in broken bits of dissolving goo.

An arrow the size of a long spear flitted into Kidd. Ryuji fell, but caught himself on one knee.

Pillar shot a zig-zagging blast of dark at the white rider, but the dozens of eyes on its horse blinked and it leaped out of the way.

Ann struggled to her feet. “Carmen!”

Her frilly-dressed Persona shot an ice ball at the white rider, which dodged. The ball of frost splashed against the wall.

Rider shot Carmen with another huge arrow and Ann collapsed to the ground, clutching her chest.

The remaining Berith charged at Kidd from behind, thrusting its spear.

Kidd parried, slashing its cutlass across the mounted soldier’s neck. The decapitated Shadow fell into dissolving black and red muck.

The towering rider shot Captain Kidd with an arrow.

Ryuji dropped to one knee, planted a hand on his raised knee, and stood back up.

Darkness flitted back and forth, surging up underneath the white rider.

It dodged and returned an arrow into Pillar. Fell back to his knees, clutching his chest with both hands.

Another ball of ice sailed at the skeletal archer, which dodged and snapped another arrow back at Carmen. The dancer twisted out of the way.

Ryuji clenched his fists and began to roar. Captain Kidd grasped the ship’s mast and rode it like a surfboard as wind howled through the room, whipping around the white rider.

The monstrous Shadow ducked its head, its mount’s eyes squeezing closed against the stinging gale.

Carmen flung an ice ball, which veered in the howling wind but hit the horse. Darkness zipped beneath and roared up into the eerie rider.

Ryuji’s breath ran out and he dropped to one knee, the gale relenting.

Rider shot an arrow into Kidd.

Ryuji growled in pain but struggled back up.

Carmen floated closer and lashed out with her whip. Rider dodged, but her whip wrapped around the horse’s neck. Braying, it pulled the thorned whip taught.

Rider shot her with an arrow, and Carmen shuddered but held. Ann fell to both knees, a tear of pain leaking down, but grit her teeth and held her focus.

Darkness roared up from underneath and Kidd blew past, powering a cutlass slash through the rider and its horse, sending it stumbling to the ground. Pillar of Heaven churned and blasted fire into it as ice encrusted the length down the whip and over the many-eyed horse’s neck.

Kidd swung back, slashing a deep blow across the rider’s torso and horse’s neck, casting it into dissolving red and black splatter.

Ryuji collapsed to both knees, breathing hard and covered in a sheen of sweat. “Damn, the… bastard got… away.”

Dismissing his Persona, Akira stumbled but walked closer to Ryuji and reached out to help him to his feet. As they struggled for breath, he looked over the ex-track star’s new look, dominated by heavy black cloth. “I see you’ve finally got a spine.”

Ryuji struggled to smile and frown at the same time. “Screw you, man. Better than your red-light-district magician getup.”

Turning to Ann before she closed the distance under her own power, Akira smirked. “Whatever.” He glanced around, then let out a frustrated huff. “Clearly the palace treasure isn’t here. Let’s go bust out Mo-Byakko.”

Ryuji pointed to the four prisoners on the treadmill. “What about all these guys?”

Akira slipped his hands into his pockets. “They’re figments of Kamoshida’s imagination. This,” he gestured his chin at the dungeon, “is all a product of that bastard’s mind. They’re no more real than that chesty facsimile of Ann that walked in when Ann and I were in the tower of pleasu—”

Face crimson, Ann blurted, “L-let’s just get going.”

As recovered as they were going to get, the three headed out and smashed through the two silver-armored knights guarding his cell to find Morgana tapping his foot inside.

Akira gave a cocky grin. “Good thing we were here to break you out, huh?”

Morgana hrumphed as they struggled to pick the lock open. “It’s technically your fault that I was caught in the first place. They stepped up the guard since that stunt you pulled in the tower of pleasure.”

Ryuji squeezed his eyes shut. “Please never say those words again.”

Morgana looked up, then gaped at the track star half-behind Ann. “You… even got him to awaken? You’re more impressive than I thought.”

Ryuji clenched his fists. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

The lock popped and Akira hauled the door open.

Morgana trotted out, shooting the track star a knowing smile. “It means I didn’t think you had it in you, Brawler.”

Ryuji swept out his hands. “Okay, first thing we’re doing is a new name. I ain’t goin’ around with somethin’ embarrassing like that.”

Pausing, Morgana tapped his chin. “Thug.”

Ryuji snarled. “Do you want me to drop this steel-toed boot on your ass? If I’m gonna have any name, it’s gotta be about the mask.”

Akira exclaimed, tone giddy, “Oh, like Moonbeam Man!”

Ryuji sighed. “Seriously, how old are you? Naw, I’ll be Cranium.”

Ann, Akira, and Morgana chorused, “No.”

Ann turned to Ryuji with a half-shrug at Akira. “He could’ve said Tuxedo Mask.”

Ryuji sighed, sounding tired instead of angry. “I will hurt you.”

Akira’s eyes rolled up and he ticked through silent options on his fingers before clapping. “Namahage?”

“Ugh, no,” Ryuji grumped. “Do I look like I’m wearing a costume made of straw?”

Ann crossed her arms tighter. “What about Reaper?”

Ryuji bobbed his head. “Yeah, I can dig that.” He looked back at Akira. “I’ve been meanin’ to ask. What’s up with your face?”

Akira held up a hand to his cheek, then flinched and hissed in pain.

“Ohhh,” Ann muttered. “Yeah, from that knight.”

“Huh?” Ryuji said, blinking.

Ann gestured to where the guard knights used to be. “One of those knights hit him right across the face with that metal hand.”

Morgana growled, staring down the corridor they came from. “If I hadn’t been caught, I could’ve been right there to help defeat the palace ruler.”

Akira sighed. “Consolation is there was no treasure down there.”

Morgana shook his head. “I didn’t think there was, it feels like we’ve been getting farther away from it.”

Ryuji frowned, tapping a steel-toed boot. “You knew where it was to start with?”

Eyebrows furrowing, Morgana faced Ryuji straight-on. “Not exactly.” He pointed at Akira as he looked up. “When you mentioned the Training Hall of Love, I thought you had reliable intel.” Looking back to Ryuji, he noticed how the runner braced a hand against the bars. “You two haven’t even recovered from yesterday, and Ryuji’s burning up energy fast. I know you all want to see this finished quickly, but if we rush in unprepared that does nobody any good.”

Akira growled, “But we’ve gotten nowhere.”

Ann wavered on her feet, one hand taking Ryuji’s offered hand to help stand steady. “I… I’m not feeling so good, Joker.”

Ryuji held his free hand to his forehead. “The cat’s right—”

“I am not a cat!”

Akira opened his hands, closed them into fists, then forced his fingers open again. His jaws clenched, but when he looked at Ann, his eyes fell to the floor and he let out a defeated breath. At that signal, the group started walking for the exit.

Ryuji came up next to Akira. “Hey, if we’re headin’ out anyway, I got an idea.”

Akira growled, but when he spotted Ann clutching her stomach, he let out a heavy breath. “Fine. I’m listening.”

Folding his arms against his chest, Ryuji smirked. “It looked like you guys were really dependent on your Personas.”

Ann stopped and turned on the former track star. “Did you not see the kind of monsters we’re up against? Some of them almost killed Joker twice yesterday. They almost killed us all today.”

Ryuji nodded. “That’s just my point. We need some firepower.”

Sighing, Akira pressed his hand against his side, wishing he had a hot or cold compress. “If you’re about to suggest we lift a Scottish claymore from a local museum, I don’t think I can fit that under my school jacket.”

“I mean guns, dumbass,” Ryuji snapped.

“Ryu—Reaper,” Akira started, nonplussed, “this is Japan. I may have a record, but even I don’t know how to get my hands on guns. What do you think I am, yakuza?”

Ryuji grinned underneath his heavy skull mask. “Wouldn’t have to be real guns if we’re not using them in a real castle, eh?”

Ann shot him a glare. “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Morgana stopped and turned to him, eyes widening. “No, actually, it’s brilliant.” He gave a wide grin. “I’d have never expected it from you, Reaper.”

Ryuji smiled and puffed out his chest as they all headed towards the entrance. A little while later, he stopped walking. “Hey, wait. What’s that supposed to mean?”

Chapter 9: April 14th, Part 4, Outcast Bond

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Thursday, 14 April 2016
Early Evening
Front Gate of Shujin Academy

Ann glanced out of the alley in front of Shujin Academy. Dark doors and the distant sound of traffic met her senses. Satisfied the coast was clear, she rubbed at her shoulder, then stretched it out with a wince. “I guess we’re off on our own way for now. I just wish we had a quick way to get together.”

Morgana hopped up onto one of the air-conditioning units to look them closer to eye-to-eye. “Like a secret hideout.” He purred. “We’d be like the classic thieves.”

“I am not a thief,” Akira muttered, then rubbed at a bruise he felt forming below his ribs. “Well, you guys are the ones who’ve been here the longest. Where’s a quiet spot to hide out when we don’t want to be overheard?”

Ryuji shrugged. “Nobody ever goes up on the roof.”

Ann’s eyes rolled up for a moment. “I guess not. The roof it is, then.”

Ryuji slouched against the air conditioning units, favoring his left leg. “Man, I’m gonna sleep like a baby when I get home.”

Akira smirked. “Up every thirty minutes?”

Ryuji rolled his eyes. “Speakin’ of time, I feel like we were stuck in there for days! I’ve had track meets that didn’t wipe me out that much.”

Rubbing an eye with the heel of his palm, Akira nodded. “I could use some rest, too.” He drew his phone. “Before we split, we should exchange contact info. Being physically present all the time shouldn’t be necessary if we can just call or text each other. If anything comes up, go ahead and send me a ring.”

Morgana’s ears drooped. “What about me? I can’t contact you from the Metaverse.”

Akira finished checking Ryuji’s number, then looked to their smallest member. “So stay in this world.”

Ryuji stretched out his leg. “They don’t allow pets at my place.”

Morgana turned a hopeful look to Ann, but she shook her head. “My father’s allergic to cats. If he came home and saw you, he’d blow his top, cat or no.”

Morgana’s ears drooped.

“I guess that means you’re stuck with me.” Akira smirked and collected his school bag. “Tough luck.”

Ryuji pointed a steady finger at Akira. “Don’t you dare forget to call me before you go back.”

Akira tisked. “You shouldn’t have to worry about that, you’re showing me that place we can get guns from.”

Ryuji’s stomach growled. “Man… I’ll have to do that tomorrow. I’m starvin’.”

Akira waved at him with a, “Pshaw.” Then his stomach growled.

“Even I feel like I could eat a horse,” Ann declared. Then she flinched, holding a hand to her ribs. “Okay, not a horse.”

Ryuji smirked and slipped his hands in his pockets. “Well, if we’re all rarin’ ta go, I happen to know a great place.

Akira squinted at him. “If this is a greasy back-alley gastropub…”

Waving him off, Ryuji stepped out in the road and turned for the train station. “Nah, it’s a Chinese joint, real authentic. But they got ramen bowls if you’re hankerin’ for Japanese cookin’.”

Thursday, 14 April 2016
Evening
Nerima, Chinese Restaurant Nekohanten

Traditional styling gave a warm, homey feel to the restaurant tucked between a commercial and residential neighborhood. Ryuji slurped down a long noodle, then looked up from his soup. “So, transfer—”

“The name’s Akira,” he snapped, then tore into the small mountain of sliced pork on his plate.

“Sorry,” Ryuji said, at least having the grace to look sheepish. “You really got a criminal record?”

“Sakamoto!” Ann chastised.

“No, it’s okay.” Akira swallowed a bite of pork and peppers, then poked at his meal. Bringing up his checkered past might have brought up anger before, but between the hunger and pain from the fight leading up to Ryuji’s awakening, Akira couldn’t manage anything more than a self-derisive smirk. “To be honest, I’m just pissed off that the one time I did get arrested, I didn’t even actually beat the guy. It’s not like I haven’t gotten into fights, they all just got swept under the rug.”

Ryuji stirred at his soup, looking for another piece of shrimp. “You have a lotta assholes back home?”

“I wouldn’t call it home, and no.” Akira swallowed and picked at his pork. “Sure, it would’ve been great to be one of those nice guys everybody’s friends with, but everyone knew my old bastard.” He lifted another slice, watching the pink meat dangle. “All I wanted was for people to know that I wasn’t him. The last time I made a real effort to play nice with people outside the chess club was basketball. The captain saw me and said ‘hey, it’s the creepy geek’s kid’. That was when I decided, what’s the point playing nice if people are going to treat me like I’m a monster anyway?”

Ann stared at the piece of white fish between her chopsticks. “You’re not the only one who had no friends. I was born in Finland and my parents were always busy with fashion shows. We were traveling all the time.” Her eyes took a distant look and a nostalgic smile pulled at her mouth. “That’s why I decided to go into modeling. When I’m in front of the camera, no matter how silly the dress, it’s like… I’m right there with them. When I came here, everybody saw me and said ‘hey, it’s the foreign girl’. Shiho was the first one who actually came up to me and talked with me, instead of hanging back and talking at me.”

Hunching over his bowl, Akira swallowed a large bite. “What about you, Sakamoto?”

“Dude, that’s what my teachers call me an’ they don’t even want anythin’ to do with me.” He flashed a smile. “Just Ryuji is cool, yo!” His smile faded. “My old man wasn’t exactly a model father.” He pulled a shrimp out of the soup, letting it drip a second before stuffing it in his mouth. “When he finally left, mom wanted me to make somethin’ of myself at a new school. I started runnin’. Got into Shujin and crushed the track team quals.” His eyes took a faraway look and he swallowed. “She looked so happy when I came home and said I might be gettin’ a sports scholarship.”

“Yeah,” Ann said around a mouth full of fish. “Shujin isn’t cheap.”

Ryuji’s face flinched in a bitter grimace. “Then that asshole had to go screw it all up. He called it self-defense, but he was abusin’ us, too.” His eyes squinted, a brief flicker of intense hatred. “One day… I couldn’t take it no more and let him have it. He broke my leg and the next week the track club was disbanded.”

Akira snorted and picked up a long chunk of pork. “I guess that means we’re all a bunch of misfits. No wonder you guys haven’t ditched me yet.”

Ann looked him over with tense, arched eyebrows.

“You know,” Ryuji said, “you never did say how you got a record, exactly.”

“Oh, that?” Akira swallowed the rest of the chunk of pork. “I was reading late at Inuri High one evening. On the way home, I spotted some drunk trying to force a woman into his car. Mother or the old bastard would’ve walked away. That’s all I need to know that’s the wrong thing to do. So I dove in there and pulled him off her. The dumbass was so sloshed he tripped on himself and fell on one of those concrete barriers separating the road from the sidewalk. I didn’t know he was one of my old bastard’s benefactors until the cops pulled up with their headlights on.” Akira chuckled. “He stood up and said,” his tone dropped, “I will bury you.”

Ann looked up from her fish. “Your father didn’t try to do anything to help you?”

Akira snorted with a deep frown. “They pulled out the red carpet whenever that prick came around. My old bastard was the one who suggested kicking me out. He was so proud of the idea he told me.” He popped another slice of pepper in his mouth. “Besides, the idiot was drunk. You know nobody takes what you do seriously if you’re drunk. So I’m the one with the felony.”

“Damn!” Ryuji snapped, slamming a fist against the table next to his bowl. The napkin holder and pepper shaker jumped from the impact. “What an asshole!”

“Dude,” Akira said, “Chill. It’s in the past.” He ate in silence for a moment, then shrugged and pointed his chopsticks at himself. “Only guilty man in Shawshank.” When Ann and Ryuji shot him confused looks, he sighed. “I think of it like this: I may not deserve those charges, but I’m not innocent. Besides, at least I’m away from the old bastard.”

Ann scrutinized him out of the corner of her eye. “Wow, you really know how to let life roll off your back.”

Akira rotated his shoulder, feeling an unpleasant tingle at praise.

Ryuji tilted his bowl and drank the broth, then brought it down to the table hard. “Between what you did at Kamoshida’s office and inside that castle, you’re one of the…” He shrugged. “I dunno how to say it… most real people I know. You ever need somethin’, I got your back.”

Akira swallowed a mouthful of noodles, his throat feeling tight and his eyes unable to meet the others’.

Thursday, 14 April 2016
Late Evening
Yongen, Leblanc

Akira pushed at the door, but it swung in with no resistance, the bell tinkling and a woman standing right there past it. Her black, biker’s leather jacket looked generic enough, but the green dress had a spiderweb pattern to it and her black pants had holes slashed across the front.

Morgana hopped up in his bag, bracing on Akira’s shoulder to check out the cause for the stop.

Akira stepped back to let her out. “’scuse me.”

She gave a polite nod, but paused when her eyes fell on Morgana. “Nice cat,” she said before walking on.

Morgana growled, “I am not a cat.”

Akira shook his shoulders to drive Morgana back into the bag as he walked in.

Newspaper crinkled as Sojiro looked up from the end of the counter. “You’re pretty late today.”

Akira shrugged. With his belly full, his aches returned and all he wanted to do was lie down. “Who’s the punk rocker?” he jerked a thumb at the door.

Sojiro snorted, lifting his newspaper. “She’s the doctor at the clinic down the corner.”

Akira slipped his hands in his pockets. “The one selling drugs? Who gives half-assed exams?”

Sojiro’s eyes narrowed. “Where’d you hear something like that?”

Akira shrugged. “People talk. I learned early on in life how important it can be to pick up on the little details some people whisper.”

Sojiro flicked the newspaper in his hands to try to straighten it. “She may sell weird homebrewed medicines or whatever, but as far as I know she’s a legit doctor. I haven’t been there, myself, but I bet neither have any of the people spreading those rumors. It’s not like she’s doing anything to them. I don’t know why they’d bother talking about someone they never deal with.”

Akira stared down, feeling a strange sense of empathy for the woman facing the uphill battle of a bad reputation. “We’re the easiest targets.” He paced toward the stairs.

Sojiro looked Akira up and down. “Were you limping yesterday? I hope you’re not getting into trouble.”

“You know me,” Akira threw back. “Trouble is my stage name.”

Sojiro sighed. “Well, if you’re joking it can’t be that bad. As long as it’s not trouble with the law, I don’t really care. Just remember that as long as you’re staying here, anything you do could reflect on my livelihood.”

Akira’s eyes fell to the floor with a heavy sigh. “I got it.” He slipped around Sojiro, trotted upstairs, let Morgana out, then started cleaning the table next to the couch.

Morgana sniffed at a bag of coffee beans. “Is this an abandoned warehouse?”

Akira snorted. “I wish, at least that would be cool. This is just Sakura’s attic.” He set a stack of books in a bin, then paused. “There’s a lot of books on psychology up here. I wonder if he was more involved in Isshiki’s research than he let on.” He paused in between book piles. “Recognize any of this?”

Morgana hopped down to the floor to scan the titles on the spines of the indicated stack. His ears curled down. “Uh… I don’t think so.” He looked up at Akira. “Why?”

The student stacked more books and set them down to sort into unwanted, suspicious, and a small stack for personal use. “I was wondering if you might have been involved in Isshiki’s research, too. You seemed to have a real knack for the Metaverse.”

Morgana smirked and stretching himself up a little. “Well, you did luck across the Metaverse’s greatest thief extraordinaire. That castle is just one of many Palaces that sprang up from the people of this place. While I was exploring it, I found lots of places representing Kamoshida’s suppressed self.”

“You mean he’s not just a rapist with delusions of adequacy?”

Morgana pointed a clawed paw at him. “Don’t be too eager to dismiss him. Kamoshida may be small fry in comparison to some, but you all have only begun your journey through the Metaverse. You’ve already seen some of the things he longs to sate – his lust and his longing for power. However, he’s also driven by fear and all the inertia of his past life.”

Heavy footsteps tromped up the stairs, and Sojiro’s voice projected, “Are you watching cat videos?” He reached the top of the stairs and his eyes locked onto Morgana. “A stray? This is a restaurant! I can’t afford to let pets run around.”

Akira stood up, finding his hands curling into fists on the way. “Morgana was abandoned.”

“I was what?” Morgana blinked at Akira.

“Morgana?” Sojiro scratched his head.

Akira stacked books from the shelf against the wall. “That’s his name.”

Sojiro stroked his goatee for a few moments as he stared at the cat. “I suppose if you’re already that attached, you’ll be on better behavior.” He let out a sigh with a hint of wistfulness. “But you’re taking care of it.”

Akira straightened the stack of books against the wall, then stood up and snapped a British salute. “Right-o, Boss.”

Rolling his eyes, Sojiro trotted downstairs.

Morgana hopped up on the desk in the corner. “Is that the ruler of this place?”

Scowling, Akira said, “He’s not a…” A deep breath passed before he chuckled. “You know what? I guess he kind of is.”

Morgana swept his gaze across the half-cleaned attic. “He seems pretty understanding for a guy keeping you crammed in this dump.”

Akira chuckled, going back to stacking and sorting out books and other detritus. “You must not know much about housing. This may be an attic, but it’s probably twice as big as most apartments in Tokyo.” His eyes rolled up. “Well, the ones I’d have a prayer of affording. It’s not a cell, anyway. The cell my old bastard kept me in? I could touch both walls if I stretched my hands straight out.”

One of Morgana’s ears twisted down. “Why do you keep saying that? What is an ‘old bastard’?”

Akira sighed, set down the last of his stack of books in the sort, then sat on the corner of the bed with a sigh. “Well… other people have a father. It’s not just the person who donated the half of your genes to allow you to live, he’s supposed to be a person who provides for you. He gives you shelter, a safe place to stay. When you’re lost or confused he’s supposed to teach you. He gives discipline so you grow up to be a good person, but he doesn’t beat you or shackle you as bait in terrifying experiments. He never lies to you, never makes you feel like you’re an unwanted mistake. A father is supposed to be the person who builds you up so you can go out into the world. He gives you that little push when you’re unsure.”

Morgana started sniffing the air, but kept an ear on Akira. The transfer student took off his glasses and rubbed a palm against one eye. “That’s what you have to do to be a father. If you can’t do that, you’re not a father, you’re an accidental parent.” Setting his glasses back on, Akira spotted Sojiro’s head poking up from the stairs. “You don’t have to eavesdrop from that far away.”

Striding up with a gait too stiff to be nonchalant, Sojiro avoided eye contact as he walked in with a plate of tuna. “I… uh… thought the little guy should at least have something to eat.”

Morgana’s eyes grew wide as Sojiro set the plate of tuna down on the desk. “Now that is a generous man. You didn’t bring me any meat when you went to that place with Lady Ann.”

Akira’s phone vibrated, but he held off answering when he noticed Sojiro still there looking at Morgana.

“He just kept on calling out in that cute little voice.”

Akira covered his mouth to hide his smile.

Sojiro turned on him, straight and all-business. “Make sure you wash that dish.”

Akira snapped him a British salute. “Aye-aye, Boss.”

Sojiro shook his head and left.

Smirking, Morgana looked up from the half-eaten plate of tuna. “Looks like he likes me more than you.”

“Laugh it up, fuzzball.” Akira crossed his arms. After a moment of watching Morgana eat, he straightened. “You seem to be comfortable eating straight from a plate. Were you an eating contest champion?”

Morgana licked a paw, then cleaned off his muzzle. “To be honest, I don’t remember. Listening to you all talk about your lives growing up made me realize I must’ve lost a lot to the distortions in the Metaverse, not just my form. That’s why we’ve got to go back into that castle. I’m sure we can clear up the distortions, and I can get my real body back.”

“Well,” Akira said, picking up more junk and moving it to a bin already lined with a black trash bag. “As long as you’re backing me up with this, I’ll back you up with that. It’s only fair.”

Morgana smiled. “Well, if you’re that certain, I guess I could pass along some of my knowledge. This keen mind and these dexterous paws aren’t just for show. I could show you plenty about infiltration tools.”

“You could help me make a new tension wrench? I had to leave the crew’s old tools behind when I moved.”

Straightening, Morgana scrutinized Akira. “You already know about picking locks?”

Akira dropped some broken chunks of styrofoam packing into the trash bin, then gave an uncomfortable shrug. “Me and the guys used to go all sorts of places where we weren’t invited. I wasn’t the expert, I just tended to carry the tools because I was the only one who ever got away from Kung-fu Cop. I’m more curious about that smoke canister. That could be useful if we need to do some sneaking or escaping after they already know we’re there.”

“I don’t know if all my tools will work in this world, but I’ll teach you what I can.” Morgana leaned back down to lick off the plate.

That conversation over, Akira took out his phone, hoping to see an update on Shiho from Ann. To his surprise, it was Ryuji.

[About this treasure and palace stuff you guys were talking about… how's that work?]

Akira checked with Morgana, sitting down at the stool against the bench so he could read in, then typed in the explanation to Ryuji.

It took a few moments for Ryuji to type out a reply. [Wait a minute, isn't desire a good thing? I mean… when I was in the track team, I had plenty of days I didn't wanna go to school. But training with the guys was enough to get me up and out.]

Morgana flicked an ear. “It’s true. We’re all defined by our desires. To eat, sleep, to build something, to fall in love—”

“Oh, please,” Akira barked. “Love’s just running around trying to entertain yourself while still calling yourself an adult.”

Morgana’s ears folded back and his eyebrows rose. “Where on earth would you get a strange idea like that? Love is the glue that holds families together, that forms new ones.”

Akira adjusted his seating and pushed up his glasses to rub at one eye in an effort to stave off exhaustion. “I hear about love all the damn time.” He raised his voice to mimic the airheads at Inuri, “I love chocolate!” He lowered his voice a bit, adding more of a western twang to mimic his mother, “I love sex!” Akira straightened. “'Love' is people trying to excuse not having control.”

Morgana stared at him. “We’ll have to talk about this later. About stealing a Treasure, if all of a person’s desires were taken away, he’d shut down.” Akira forwarded a quick summary.

[So Kamoshida could turn brain dead if we mess up? I may be pissed at him, but I dunno if I want to go so far as killing him.]

Akira ground his teeth. [Ryuji, I used to think there was only one person in the world so evil he deserved to die. Then Kamoshida raped Suzui.]

Morgana looked over Akira. “You feel really strong about her. How long was she your friend?”

Blushing, Akira let out a wistful sigh at the memory of her beautiful smile. “Uh… Three days.”

Morgana backed up, eyes wide. “Three days?”

Akira found himself unable to make eye contact. It felt like months to him. “It’s not just about her. I came from… a really bad place. I needed somewhere good when I left there. She was the only one at Shujin with the strength and kindness to smile. When Kamoshida hurt her, he didn’t just take that away. He took it away from me.” The instant the words were out of his mouth, Akira realized how selfish they sounded. “He took it away from Ann, her boyfriend Mishima, her class. He hurt the entire school.”

Morgana looked back down to the instant messenger. “I’m surprised you’re forwarding all of this to Ryuji. I was kind of expecting you to edit what you said to make him feel more cooperative.”

Akira shot him a nasty look. “I’m not the most honest of people, but I don’t like tricking people into things. If Ryuji’s on board, I don’t want it to be ‘cause I have him hooked on a line. That’s the kind of thing my old bastard would do.”

[I get what you're saying, but if we go so far as to kill him just because we don't like him… isn't that a little too close to what he does? Crushing everything he doesn’t like? Sure, I want him to pay for what he did. I just don't know if I want to become a murderer over him.]

[I've been over this with Ann. The volleyball team's keeping mum, the parents and teachers all turn a blind eye for the glory of Shujin. You and I are already outcasts. I know I lost it back there in his office, but you've heard the rumors after. Almost nobody believes it, and the few who do would never stand up and say it out loud. Going into that world is the only option we have. If you want to sit out, _I_ will protect Shujin from him.] Akira turned off his phone and set it on the wide sill next to the bed before changing. A long day of school came before Ryuji’s mysterious gun connection.

Thursday, 14 April 2016
Night
Velvet Room

Besides the metal slab he lay on, the first thing to intrude on Akira’s consciousness was soft, gloved clapping. Crushed blue velvet lined the padded walls. He pushed himself to his feet, though he noted the slab of a bunk didn’t feel as cold as a chunk of metal should.

“So the prisoner awakens,” the voice as deep as the Marianas Trench resonated from the center of the room. Igor folded his gloved hands together, his unnerving smile wide as ever. Akira noticed a glass cylinder on his desk, an iron spike jutting down through the middle holding up a few glass marbles, which held up another two iron spikes. “And already he has begun training other thieves.”

Akira pulled the ball weight to give himself some slack before walking to the bars and bracing his forearms against them. “I’d like a quarter-pounder with extra cheese and a side order of some God-damn clarity.”

A resonant chuckle rumbled from the center of the panopticon. “No need to understand everything all at once. You must now hone the power of your Persona.”

The wanna-be warden with a clipboard stared into him. “Personas are like an armor against the troubles of the world.”

Akira scoffed at her. “I don’t need armor. I find the problem and attack.”

Igor gave a belly-full laugh. After a few moments, he clapped his gloved hands. “So tell me what you think of the Metaverse Navigator.”

Standing up from the door of bars, Akira tilted his head. “The what?”

An electric zap sounded with the clang of Caroline’s baton crashing against the bars. “Honestly, Inmate, haven’t you been paying attention? The app you use to travel into the Palaces of the Metaverse.”

Igor lowered his hands to the desk. “This shall be the tool enabling your rehabilitation. Since you have already begun gathering allies, I shall grant it to them as well.”

Akira’s steel gaze narrowed. He spared a glance at the hot-headed wanna-be before slouching against the barred door, braced on his forearms. “What kind of rehabilitation would require training me or my friends as a thief?”

The suited man’s smile remained wide. “Involving others is the path you have chosen in your rehabilitation. Cultivate these new relationships. Go out and seek out more of those who have been robbed of their places to belong. They shall lend you their strength and help you mature.”

Akira wavered, but couldn’t tamp down his interest. “Robbed of their place to belong?”

Justine clasped her clipboard with both hands, her gaze intense despite the guarded neutrality of her posture. “Your Persona is the strength of your heart. While training it in combat against Shadows directly will make it stronger, the bonds surrounding you will do so as well.”

Akira bristled. “My persona came from my own personal rage and defiance. I refused to hand Takamaki over to those things in Kamoshida’s head. How the hell is buddying up to strangers going to help it?”

Caroline smashed her electrified baton against the bars, driving him back. “People all over the city have talents you could only dream of. Get their support and maybe we’ll be able to help turn that into something even a weakling like you could use.”

Igor reached out a gloved hand. “Even I could support your power, if you truly desire to reach your ambitions.”

A chill crept along Akira’s spine. “What do you know about my ambitions?”

He responded only with a deep chuckle before everything faded.

Chapter 10: April 15th, Big Man

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Friday, 15 April 2016
After School
Front Gates of Shujin

Akira turned around, pacing a little oval in the turf between the opening of the building proper and the front gates. Most students ignore his presence, but a red-eyed girl with a braided hairband met eye contact, her gaze narrowing for a moment as if to say, “I see you,” before the exiting throng forced her to walk on.

Akira got close to the walkway, several students recognizing him enough to veer away, but he turned back to the lawn and the flow returned to normal. The students buzz with gossip, most irrelevant drivel but one girl amid the exiting stampede asking, “Did you hear what he said to Kamoshida? There’s no way!”

At last, a dyed-blond head appeared and Akira stormed to him. “What the hell took you?”

Ryuji’s hands drifted out of his pockets and he returned the almost-glare. “Dude, it’s only been ten minutes since classes got out.”

“Look, it’s the two delinquents!”

“At least they’ll be expelled soon.”

Akira whirled to the gate. “Let’s just get going.” He paused to take a quick scan of the crowd, but saw no specific people holding attention on him. “I get the weird feeling that girl with the hairband’s got me marked.”

The two jogged to the train station and caught a ride to Shibuya, coming out to Station Square. When Ryuji trotted into the mass of people without a breath of hesitation, Akira couldn’t muster the courage to make an excuse, but the chaotic storm of people spiked his anxiety and he found himself pushing back.

Pausing near the north end of Station Square, Ryuji glanced back and spotted Akira shoving through a salaryman but breathing heavy. The urban veteran raised an eyebrow at the transfer student. “You good?”

Akira grimaced but refused to show weakness. “Let’s just get there.”

Ryuji shrugged and walked into the crowd towards Central Street.

Akira followed, attempting to keep a straight course but bumped and jostled by the throngs of humanity. When he shoved yet another person out of his way and saw fists on the hands he retracted, he realized his anger was starting to get away from him and he shoved his hands in his pockets.

Hearing a shout of dismay, Ryuji paused in front of a bookstore to turn and look back at Akira, bulling through a slow-moving clump of people. The former track star leaned against the brick at the end of the shop and waited for Akira to stop next to him.

The transfer student braced a hand against the glass storefront, shoulders rising and falling as he forced air in and out of his lungs.

“Dude,” Ryuji said, eyebrow raised at the pale face and snarl on his fellow student’s face. He almost looked ready to bolt. Ryuji stood up to be sure Akira looked at him. “You sure you’re okay?”

Akira took a short but clear lunging step at Ryuji, baring his teeth. A beat passed and he withdrew, looking no less haggard. “Is it like this all the time?”

“For real?” Ryuji chuckled, shaking out his shoulders. “This is Shibuya-ku, Tokyo. It ain’t even a busy day.” When Akira angled away from the crowd, the blond bit down a snort of amusement. “Takamaki wasn’t kidding when she said you don’t like crowds.”

Akira’s lip twitched, revealing teeth, but he pulled back. “I don’t like the crowds at the school.” His eyes scanned the bookstore beyond the window. “I thought I was ready for out and about in general, but I feel like a sardine in a can.”

Ryuji laughed. “I know, ain’t it great?”

Akira glowered.

Ryuji put up his hands, fighting to keep down a smirk. “I mean, if you’re not up to the challenge, I could always—”

Bared teeth and fire blazing in his eyes and stomach, Akira shouted at him, “I am not useless. Failure is—” He bit his tongue to regain control, wincing. “Sorry.” Looking up, he noticed a smirk growing on Ryuji’s face. “Oh, stop smiling.”

Ryuji chuckled and led him the few remaining paces left to the alley. “Well, you made it.” He jerked his shoulder at a nearby alley. “Shop’s right back here. You know anything about guns?”

Akira blinked. “Never look into the barrel, and if in doubt… it’s loaded.”

Ryuji tilted his head and looked Akira up and down. “Really? That’s it?” When Akira failed to respond, he cleared his throat. “I kinda pictured you as a closet gun nut.”

Finally separated from the apathetic mass of humanity, Akira straightened and took in a deep breath. “The closest thing I have to experience with guns is playing Resonance of Fate at Yoshida’s.”

Ryuji led him to the front door and pushed it open. “At least tell me you know the difference between an automatic and a revolver.”

Now Akira shot a baffled look at him. “Are we talking about cars now?”

A wielded, cross-linked grating stretched across the counter, realistic model guns on the far side. Scattered common goods like dust masks and cotton swabs hung from hooks on the customer side. Coats, survival and military-surplus-type goods occupied the rest of the customer space, but a surly man with a heavy coat and hat looked up from a sporting goods magazine and made eye contact with Ryuji. “So, Little Man returns. Did you decide you stick out like a sore thumb either way and you’re keepin’ the bleached hair?”

Ryuji scoffed, yet smiled. “A man who’s his own man doesn’t need to blend in.”

“Nope,” Akira said, coming to a stop next to Ryuji. “Only men who want to make it to the next paycheck.”

The shop owner snorted, the corners of his lips curling up, and maneuvered the white stick in his mouth to the other side.

Ryuji gestured to Akira. “I brought fresh meat.”

Mister Cool and Surly turned the page in his magazine. “You’re still not getting a discount.”

Ryuji slumped. “Aw.” He looked up at Akira. “So, what kind do you think you like?”

“There’s a lot here,” Akira answered. He tilted his head up at some bunch of tubes hanging from the metal girders above. “What’s the plumbing doing hanging from the ceiling?”

Ryuji puffed out his chest and gave a proud smile. “That, my friend, is an RG-6 forty millimeter semi-automatic grenade launcher designed by Izhmash.”

Cool and Surly turned another page in his magazine, eyes still down. “It was designed by the Central Design and Research Bureau of Hunting and Sporting Weapons. Izhmash was the manufacturer group—”

“Of the single-shot underbarrel version,” Ryuji said, swiping a fist with a familiar self-disappointment on his face.

Akira smiled and jabbed an elbow into Ryuji’s side. “Damn, you just geeked out on me.”

Ryuji kicked at the worn carpet floor. “Everybody’s got to have a hobby.”

Akira chuckled.

Ryuji shifted so he could point at the array of faux weapons on the other side of the grating. “So what do you think you’d like to start with? Revolvers? Pistols? SMGs?” He looked down at the lounging shop owner. “You got assault rifles too, right, Big Man?”

Cool and Surly turned another page, eyes on some article. “Not for casuals, Little Man.”

Ryuji turned back to Akira, an eager glint in his eyes. “Let’s start you off with somethin’ classic, but powerful. Somethin’ easy ta grip and aim. The MP-443 Grach.”

Cool and Surly stood. “One Rook, comin’ up.”

Akira rubbed his shoulder. “Ann’s gonna want something, too.”

Ryuji gave a leering smile. “Don’t worry, I already thought of that.” He elbowed Akira. “With that suit of hers, I can totally see her totin’ a PP-91 KEDR with a laser sight.”

“Mods are extra.”

“But she’ll like the base version,” Ryuji finished without missing a beat.

Cool and Surly plopped the magazine onto the laptop behind the grating and headed to the back.

Akira grinned. “I hope you know what all those things are, because you might as well have been speaking Greek.”

Ryuji laughed, looking more relaxed than Akira ever noted before. “I had two great loves since I started high school.” He held up an index finger. “Track,” then he extended his pinky, “and guns,” then head-banged to some tune inside his own mind. Chuckling at his own joke, he lowered his hand and looked Akira in the eye. “What about you?”

Akira shrugged, rubbing the back of his own head as he looked at the guns on display behind the heavy wire grating. “We played a whole bunch of strategy games in chess club at Inuri High. I may not have really made friends with the other guys, but I liked the games.”

“Were they really rude?”

“A few,” Akira conceded, slipping in hands in his pockets. “But most were just really quiet. It was like you weren’t allowed to talk or do anything besides think of your next move.” Akira scratched his neck. “Granted, I think a lot of that was because they were all nervous of me, but… still. I was kinda hoping to make a new start with a club like that at Shujin where nobody knew me or my family.”

Ryuji scanned the transfer student and his slouched shoulders. “I getcha. I’m sure you don’t need any further reason to go after him, but I bet it was that effin Kamoshida who leaked your record in the first place.”

The shop owner returned and set two paper boxes on his side of the counter, eyes flicking to Ryuji with a casual air. “I already know you, but,” his gaze slid to Akira and hardened. “Just to be sure, even though these are models, don’t go ‘round pointing ‘em at people.”

Akira snorted. “If anybody even thought I might have a gun, I’d have so many goddamn fuzz on my ass I’d look like a cop parade.”

A short moment of consideration passed through Cool and Surly slid the smaller box out to the square opening at the counter. “These ones are models for enthusiasts. Real guns feel… different.” His eyes flicked to Ryuji for a moment. “Maybe one day I’ll show you the good stuff, but for now you start at the bottom of the ladder.” He pointed a lazy hand at Ryuji. “Just like him and everyone else. That’ll be six thousand yen.”

Akira’s jaw dropped. “Six thousand?”

Ryuji sidled closer. “These ain’t no gundam models, this is serious quality merch. The kinda stuff you’d mount on the mantle.” His eyes flicked to the shop owner, then he turned away from Cool and Surly and leaned closer to whisper, “Just think how useful it’ll be in the castle.”

Frowning, Akira pulled out his wallet. “Yeah, fine. You’re paying for Ann’s.”

Thin-lipped, Ryuji pulled out his own duct-taped wallet. “This time.”

Friday, 15 April 2016
Evening
Shibuya, Central Street

Akira trotted down the stairs and turned around a crowd of people meandering towards the train station. With no place in particular he wanted to go, he let whimsy take him down the narrower, grimier streets of Shibuya.

Morgana popped his head out of the bag and stared up at the skyline. “The sun’s going down. How long until your curfew?”

Akira groaned. “Now I really don’t want to go back to Leblanc. It’s not like Sakura-san’s a horrible human being, but damn sometimes I can’t stand him and his lecturing. Sometimes I don’t know whether he thinks I’m a bad person or not.”

Voices down the narrowing alleys perked his ears and Akira crept closer, peering around a corner to a dirty side street. Some woman in a dark dress and leather jacket crossed her arms. She looked familiar.

A few paces in front of her stood a gangly man in a leopard-print silk shirt hanging sloppy on his frame. “…think you’re the only doc who can write prescriptions in Tokyo?”

The woman tapped a plastic case almost as big as a suitcase against her side. “I’m the only one offering the bulk you’re asking for. Amphetamines aren’t exactly easy to get. It takes a lot of effort to keep my suppliers and the government in the dark.”

The gravelly-voiced man switched a brown paper sack from one hand to the other. “The head honcho’s puttin’ the squeeze on everyone in Shibuya.”

Despite being alone with a man in a dark alley, the woman held a confident, almost bored pose. “My concern is getting the drugs you demand. I know very well you’re making a lot more than you’re paying for them. If you want me to be able to keep this up, just pay the five hundred thousand we agreed on last time.”

Leopard Print tisked. “This ain’t gonna fly every day.”

“That’s why we’re doing this at night,” she responded, holding out her free hand. “Now if we can just do this? I have real medicine to do.”

Leopard Print threw the brown paper sack at her.

Stepping back, she caught it and set her plastic medical container to the ground to open the sack and count. After a few moments, she looked up. “This is four hundred thousand.”

Leopard Print reached into his pocket and threw a handful of taped rounds of cash at her.

The woman grabbed for them, dropping the sack and knocking over the plastic container. Leopard Print chuckled, but after confirming the count the woman slid the plastic container across the pavement at him. He picked it up, smirked, and strolled away.

The woman in dark clothes stuffed the cash in the paper sack, shoved it in her purse, then walked away. Her platform shoes made the metal storm grating clack under her feet. She continued a few paces towards central street, then stopped and leaned against a cleaner segment of brick wall under a light. The pause in good lighting allowed Akira to make out her dark hair, a studded leather choker around her neck, and the rips in her jeans. She looked up at the sky. “I’m sorry, Miwa-chan. I never wanted this. If I can just make it up to you…at least I can make that right.”

Curiosity stirred, Akira slipped his hands into his pockets and stepped out from the corner behind her. “So who’s Miwa-chan?”

The woman in punk-rocker styling spun around, her hands up and her tone placating. “I’m just a small clinic doctor.” Takemi paused to look him over as Akira stepped into the cone of light with her. Morgana popped out of the bag to look over his shoulder. “That cat… you’re that boy from Leblanc.”

Akira slipped his right hand from his pocket to give a tiny, mocking wave. “Luce. Turner Luce. What the hell are you doing selling drugs in a dark alley in Shibuya, doc?”

Takemi deflated. “Dammit.” She looked him in the eye, a note of pleading in her face even if her tone sounded more like a command, “Look, when I said I’m a small clinic doctor—”

Akira waved her off. “This isn’t a shakedown.” He crossed his arms and leaned against the wall in mimicry of how she stood before he revealed his presence. “But I’m sure we can come to some… mutually equitable arrangement. First I want to know why you’re out here involved in that little… exchange.”

Her eyes narrowed and he could swear he saw the gears whirling behind her eyes for several seconds before she let out a long breath, shoulders slumping. Takemi more collapsed than leaned against the brick wall. “I had a… period of disagreement with a few suppliers. I didn’t want to shut down my clinic so soon after opening it, not with all I have to do, so… I went to the wrong people for help staying open. I just wanted to finish researching a treatment for my old patient, Miwa-chan.” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath in, then out. “Now even though I could get everything from legitimate suppliers, if I stop doing business with those thugs, I’m a dead woman.”

Akira scanned her, seeing no sign of deception. “I… might occasionally need medical care I can’t have reported to the police.”

The doctor stood up and opened her eyes, glancing from Akira to the night-darkened alley. “You in trouble with these bozos?”

Akira swallowed, but maintained his outward cool. “I’m kind of involved with another… issue right now.”

Takemi narrowed her eyes, scrutinizing him for several moments, then shrugged. “Fair enough. At least I shouldn’t have to worry about that moron for another four or five weeks.” She turned and walked out to central street at a brisk pace.

Morgana purred. “Talk about a fruitful day. New weapons and a doctor who owes you.”

Akira watched Takemi disappear into crowd. “Let’s not count our chickens before they hatch.”

Friday, 15 April 2016
Evening
Yongen, Leblanc

The bell let out a merry jingle that grated on Akira’s tired nerves as he walked into the cafe, the smell of fresh-brewed coffee stirring up his stomach. A young adult, probably a little older than himself, sat at the nearest tall chair at the bar. A tan, pressed jacket from some school or college hung on the back, its neatness contrasting with the young man’s thick mop of brown hair Akira could swear had a hint of red in it.

Looking up from his legal pad, the customer flashed a wide show smile. “Oh, don’t mind me. I’m just here to enjoy the finest coffee in Tokyo.” He glanced at Akira’s tired eyes. “Are you a regular?”

“You could say that,” Akira said as he paced down the bar.

The customer lifted his cup. “You should count yourself fortunate. I fell asleep on the train and got off at the wrong stop. Now I need to make my way back to Shibuya, but I thought why not take a moment to grab a cup and get a little work done?” He tilted the cup back, paused for a disappointed moment, then looked into it and sighed before putting it back down on the saucer. “Alas, I think I have drunk my excuse out.” Reaching into his pocket, he drew a student debit card and held it out. “Thank you very much, Master Sakura.”

Sojiro swiped the card over the chip reader and handed it back. “Any time.”

The young man packed his papers in a metal briefcase, shrugged on his uniform jacket, then departed.

Sojiro pressed his hands against his lower back and stretched backwards. “Well, it’s time I get home and start making dinner.”

“I’ll finish off the dishes,” Akira said, slipping his bag off his shoulder. The thought that he wasn’t being paid for his labor passed through his mind and he cringed, remembering how much he paid for the model gun. “And I need to get a job somewhere. I should stop by the boards down in the Shibuya underground.”

Sojiro closed out the cash register and doffed his apron. “Well, look at you, acting like a responsible member of society.” He gave an easy smirk as Akira carried the dishes to the sink, walked out and locked the door.

Akira set his bag on the nearest bar chair, then got to work on what ended up being almost thirty cups. After a minute of silence from Morgana just watching, Akira looked down at him. “Do you think I’m not responsible?”

Morgana tilted his head, ears turning askew. “Why would you think that?”

Akira sighed. “Japan may not be the Near East of the Old Testament, but one thing that’s the same in both is that you don’t tell someone to be brave or strong if they’re already brave and strong. I know I’ll always be an outcast, but… life is like a democracy.” Finishing the dishes, he rinsed and pulled a handful of paper towels to dry his hands. “If everyone in my life says I’m trouble, isn’t it insanity to try to say I’m the only right one when everyone else around me is wrong?”

Morgana stood up. “The fact that an answer is popular doesn’t mean it must be right. Isn’t everyone at Shujin turning a blind eye to Kamoshida? Aren’t you the only one leading the way into his Palace to keep him from hurting anyone else?”

Akira’s lips turned into a snarl as he snatched his bag and walked up the stairs. “I will bury him for what he did to Shiho.”

Chapter 11: April 16th, Friendly Fire Isn't

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Saturday, 16 April 2016
Lunchtime
Shujin, Class 2-D

With the space open, Akira set his cardboard-boxed lunch on her desk, turned the chair ahead of Ann around, then plopped into it. Sparing a wary moment to be sure nobody was nearby to overhear, he whispered, “Ryuji’s got your gear. You sure you’re ready?”

Nodding, Ann swallowed a soggy dumpling. “The hospital said they’re not allowing anyone but family to visit Shiho yet.”

Akira stared at his okonomiyaki, trying to keep the gloom out of his voice. “I’ll keep praying for her.” He took his chopsticks and stabbed the first piece of the sliced, pan-fried savory in his box. “In the meantime, we put that mental Kamoshida six feet under.”

Ann ate in silence for several long seconds. While she didn’t look away, she also wouldn’t meet Akira’s eyes. After swallowing and still looking conflicted, she said, “Well, thanks for praying for Shiho, anyway. We meeting at the alley again?”

Akira shook his head. “We’ll meet Ryuji up on the rooftop. We’ve already checked that one tower and the torture dungeon, so now we have to rely on Morgana and head into the rest of the castle.”

Now Ann looked him in the eye, her gaze steady as a machine. “I’m ready. Kamoshida stole everything from Shiho. Today’s his turn.”

Saturday, 16 April 2016
After School
Shujin, Rooftop

Coming to a stop near the potted plants, Akira opened his paper box and disentangled the pistol from the crinkled paper packaging.

Ryuji handed her a small cardboard box, watched her toss the flimsy paper lid to the ground and take out her submachine gun. He gave her a moment to look over the very realistic model of a Russian weapon before reaching into his own schoolbag for the front and back halves of his model shotgun. Ryuji set the barrel into the back half and twisted until it clicked. “So now what? We say his name, the school’s name, then castle?”

Akira smirked. “We don’t even have to do that much.” He drew his smart phone and brought up the app. “This thing has a bookmark function. I just tap it and away we go.” His thumb hit the screen and the world bled red, twisting around them. When the surroundings stabilized, they stood on a balcony looking high above Tokyo.

Morgana pulled a square rod from the sack slung over his back and hit a button on the device, causing it to snap open into a shiny crossbow. “Be careful, everyone. We’ve been caught in this castle twice so far. The alert level has definitely been raised, and if too many guards are deployed we won’t be able to get to the Treasure.”

Akira stuffed his pistol into one of the large pockets on his longcoat. “You think we should send a decoy mission somewhere?”

Morgana shook his head. “This is a cognitive reality, not a physical one. The more we’re spotted, the more likely the real Kamoshida will develop a general wariness and things will get harder no matter where we go. We also don’t know where the Treasure is. If he does have enough wherewithal to step up the guard anywhere specific, it would likely be right around there.”

Ryuji unfolded a plastic extension on the back of his shotgun, then twisted a wing nut and tested the feel of the folding stock against his shoulder. Without a word, he gave a ready nod at Akira and they set off down the spiral staircase. After navigating through the halls for a few minutes, the team stumbled into a gray knight patrolling a hallway lit by stained glass images of Kamoshida playing volleyball.

The knight oozed black from its joints and burst into a pumpkin-headed monster holding a flickering torch and something the size of a child, but with white skin interrupted by tiny brown roots like a daikon.

Akira dashed to the cover of the couch at his feet, shooting two wild shots with his pistol.

Ann sprayed her SMG one-handed, the shots all puncturing the painted wood paneling on the walls.

Ryuji slapped a palm to his mask. “Wow.” He pulled Ann behind a large bookshelf. When the Jack came floating around it to find them, the track runner popped out and blasted it in the face with his sleek, black shotgun. Its oversized head snapped back and it thumped to the ground, dissolving to black goo.

Ann looked at her gun with disgust. “Right. Well, this thing’s inaccurate.” She stood straight, calling out, “Carmen!”

As soon as her dancer-like Persona formed, she sent it against the woody Shadow trying to beat a hasty retreat.

Akira ran out of cover at the other side of the hall, firing three shots in rapid succession. One hit the Mandrake, one went wide, and the last hit Carmen in the back, sending Ann collapsing to the ground with a pained cry.

The Mandrake jumped, punching Carmen and forcing a hiss out of Ann’s grit teeth. She pulled herself back to the couch for cover with Akira. Carmen slashed the Shadow with her thorned whip, destroying the monster. After determining the rest of the hall was clear, Ann dismissed her Persona.

Ryuji trotted up to the two still crouched beside the overstuffed couch. “What the hell was that?”

Akira stood, rubbing the back his neck, eyes on the floor. “Yeah, that didn’t exactly go like the movies.” He looked to Ann. “Sorry, you okay?”

Ann reached to rub a spot on her back, face scrunching in pain from the motion. “I don’t think I’m bleeding, but it hurts like somebody jabbed me with one of those fireplace pokers.”

Ryuji reached out a hand at Akira, palm open and the disappointment unmistakable even through his heavy mask. Head drooping, Akira handed his pistol over. Ryuji slung his shotgun back over his shoulder on a strap tied to the weapon’s front and back. “I didn’t think I was gonna hafta go over all the basics. Ain’t ya ever played video games with guns?”

Akira pointed a finger at him, feet sliding apart to the ready-for-fighting stance. “I believe I mentioned Resonance of Fate already.”

Ryuji sighed. “Okay, well the stance for my shotgun is really only useful for longarms like rifles, but I don’t have any of those and I’m not sure it would work with…” He glanced between Ann and Akira, “… your style.” Gripping the pistol, he settled into a light posture on his feet. “Here, look at this. This is pretty much the stance you’re gonna want for either the pistol or submachine gun. You grip it in your right hand, and steady with your other hand down here. Some SMGs have a forward grip, but I’ll cross that bridge if we come to it. You hold it up, line the iron sights up with your target, and pull the trigger.” Ryuji handed the pistol to Ann and took her gun. “Got it?”

Ann lifted the weapon, looking down the top like Ryuji did. “Like this?”

Ryuji smiled. “Yeah, just hold your feet a little farther apart for stability. You ain’t walkin’ down a rope.”

Straightening, Ann shot him a glare. “For your information, it’s called runway walking and isn’t easy to do.” Her gaze fell. “I’ve had a couple agencies say if I was a serious model I would’ve learned to do it properly already.”

Akira chuffed. “I’d say screw them. You look comfortable when you walk, that should be good enough.”

Ryuji looked over Ann, a smile growing before he nodded. “Well, at least it looks like you got the basics.” He handed the submachine gun to Akira. “Here, when you were runnin’ it looked like you were tryin’ ta squeeze a burst. Some SMGs have a stock to brace against your shoulder, but in the meantime you’ll have to handle yours like a pistol.”

Akira swung up the gun in one hand. “Like this?”

Ryuji sighed, taking Akira’s arm with both hands to push him into a better stance. “Man, you weren’t kiddin’ when you said you never played gun games. You need to join me down at the arcade in Shibuya, as long as we don’t run into one of the pro-players like The King it’ll be good training. Here, move your right leg a little more back, then a couple centimeters to the side.”

Akira shuffled his feet, wobbling. “Why? That feels weird.”

“That’s ‘cause you’re keepin’ your feet pointed straight forward like a robot. Let the toes out to the sides.” Ryuji gestured for Akira to try again.

The transfer student swung up the gun, looking awkward but at least standing steady and looking down the sights built into the top.

“There ya go.” Ryuji smirked. “Maybe next time we’ll try not shootin’ any friends. ‘Cause friendly fire ain’t.”

***

Diving forward for the limited cover of a polished oak end table, Ann came to a stop and popped out of cover to shoot the drooping, petite form of a woman with dragonfly wings, splattering it into dissolving black-and-red goo.

Captain Kidd shot a powerful pulse of wind against the second green demon hiding inside a gold-encrusted vase, slamming it into the wall and dissolving goo.

Swaggering, Akira pointed his submachine gun at the winded Agathion teetering on the ground. Tone low, he said, “You will join us… or die!”

Agathion quivered, then exploded into black swirls that streaked through the air into Akira’s mask.

Akira dropped his gun and stumbled against the wall, falling to his back and grabbing for his face. After patting himself a few moments to be sure he still had a face, he rose to his knees. “Whoa.”

Morgana stopped next to the transfer student, his blue eyes wide. “What happened?”

Ryuji crouched down and picked up Akira’s gun. “You okay, dude?”

Standing, Akira blinked, shook his head, and swayed on his feet. Ann caught him, her worry clear despite the mask covering her eyebrows. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

“I just feel a little disoriented. C’mon, let’s walk it off.” Refusing to succumb to the pounding headache and vertigo, he snatched his submachine gun. “We might not have time to wait.”

Following Morgana, they slipped into a huge room with vaulted ceilings but otherwise resembling the chapel just a couple blocks from Inuri High. Coming to the aisle lined with cushioned pews, Akira scoffed. “Man, this douchebag would implode if he ever had to go to Confession.” Looking over the golden statue of Kamoshida, highlighted from behind by a rosary, Akira flinched away, putting his hand up in shielding. “Oh, God, my eyes.”

Ryuji came to a stop next to Akira, shooting him a hooded glare lacking real intensity. “For real, man? Again?”

Akira straightened with a casual air. “You think I’m overdoing it?”

“Just a little.”

Ann looked up and around. “Wait a second, isn’t this the gym?”

Ryuji’s eyes widened. “Hey, yeah.” He pointed at the gaudy statue. “That would totally explain that. He must think he’s some kinda god there.”

Something armored slammed down ahead of the polished statue, then stood with ponderous motions. Covered in chain mail, steel plates, and ivory edging, the archangel glared out from its open-faced helm. “The ape is correct. This sacred place is a holy ground for the almighty—”

Several bullets pinged off its breastplate and Akira looked up from his gun. “I’ll give you cred for at least gettin’ the look and entrance close to an angel, but you’re still a fake piece of shit.” Aiming down the submachine gun, he pulled the trigger. Bullets pinged over its torso, only drawing a flinch.

The others summoned their Personas, but after a single burst from each of their elements it still stood tall.

The over-muscled Persona Zorro reached out, its blue aura flaring. Blue glinted over the archangel for a moment, but the whispy traces vanished as soon as they appeared. Morgana readied his crossbow. “It’s too strong for mine to throw!”

Akira snarled, “Persona, destroy the imposter!”

Blue flared above him, a gold-plated vase taking shape. The green demon cowering inside waggled its hands and a bolt of lightning dropped down from the dark ceiling into the archangel.

Lightning coursed through it, making the winged Shadow double over with halting, twitchy motions.

Morgana stared. “Holy… Did you just call out the Persona that flew into your mask?”

Akira dove for the pew on the opposite side of the aisle as Ann and Ryuji advanced. “Uh… why? Can’t everyone do this?”

“No!” Morgana shouted over the thunder of Ryuji’s shotgun.

Ann shrieked, Archangel’s sword cleaving through the pew she took cover behind. “Priorities, everyone!”

“Right!” Morgana craned his neck and Zorro twirled its enormous rapier. Blue wrapped around the blade and fragments of the pew, hurling them at the false archangel.

The first slammed into the armored Shadow, but it swung its sword and shattered the second piece.

Captain Kidd shot a stream of howling wind at the archangel. It tucked in its wings, braced its stance, and thrust its sword despite the meters of space between them. A giant mote of golden light swirled into being in front of Kidd and slammed into the privateer.

Ryuji fell backwards with a groan of pain.

Carmen slipped in behind, lashing its thorny whip around the towering Shadow’s neck as it fluttered back up.

Archangel jerked in a half-turn and slashed its sword into the feminine Persona’s torso, which dispelled its whip.

Ann collapsed to the ground with a shriek, clutching her chest and curling into the fetal position.

“Agathion!” Akira shouted, shooting another aimed burst that pinged off the angel’s armored torso. The demon in a vase bobbed higher in the air, fingers wiggling and another lightning lancing down into the Shadow.

Archangel crashed to the floor but managed to stay on its feet despite its twitching. Glaring, it jumped through the air and swung its sword, knocking Agathion flying into the far wall.

Akira crumpled to the floor, clutching his chest as tears gathered at the corners of his eyes.

Zorro hurled fragments of the pews at Archangel, the first meeting its sword but the rest smashing against its plating and chain-mail.

Captain Kidd held his canon-arm aloft and the winds in the gym-chapel picked up, blowing small pew-fragments back into Archangel. Its feet slid over the carpeted floor, but nothing else happened.

An ice ball slammed into Archangel’s chest, encrusting the sword-arm against its plated chest.

Agathion hurled itself into Archangel, bouncing off.

Ice cracked and the fake angel growled.

Zorro flew in close, stabbing his ethereal rapier into the chinks of the false angel’s armor once, then twice.

Ice shattered and the towering Shadow slashed Zorro, knocking him flying into the far wall. Morgana tumbled to the ground, crying out.

Kidd flew over the ground as if surfing an invisible wave, slashing his oversized cutlass.

Archangel parried the blade, looping its sword around to slash back. Kidd’s smooth ‘surfing’ faltered, but it lashed back out and cut across the false angel’s back.

Agathion summoned another bolt of lightning into Archangel, knocking it down to the ground.

Captain Kidd powered a slash down, then up the false angel’s body. Black gushed from the deep cuts.

Carmen shot a bolt of ice into Archangel, and it held out its hand, flicking a ball of light into the Persona’s wispy legs. Ann stumbled to one of the room’s decorated support columns, tears of pain falling.

Zorro circled Archangel, psychokinetically hurling pew fragments into it.

Dashing by for another go around, Kidd parried a slash, counter-slashing across the false angel’s arm.

It turned and brought its blade down, growling, but Kidd blocked the blow. The straight sword pushed against the curved blade, edging Kidd further and further back.

Zorro stabbed Archangel in the back and it burst into fading black-and-red smoke.

Dismissing their Personas, everybody paused to catch their breath. After a few moments, Morgana stumbled to the broken pew Akira braced against. “Did… did your Persona become that Shadow?”

Akira blinked, still struggling to breathe deep. “P… Pillar of Heaven.”

Fire and darkness tore from the ceiling into a swirling column.

Morgana’s eyes widened. “You can wield multiple Personas?”

Stumbling up to go check on Ann, Akira answered through shallow breath, “Why? Izzat bad?”

“Each person only has one heart.” Morgana folded up his crossbow and stowed it in the black bag slung across his back. “That should mean everybody only has one Persona.”

“But…” Akira paused to search through his pockets for the hot compress he brought, handing it to Ann. “We each wear different masks, behave differently to different people. Even if we didn’t, it’s not like we’re the same all through life.”

Morgana blinked, still in wonder. “Even so… I didn’t think it was possible to have more than one Persona! This will give us a huge advantage.”

Akira sat against the broken remnants of a pew next to Ann. “Didn’t… seem to do much against that one.”

Shaking his head, Morgana looked over the group. “As much as I’d like to stay excited about discovering your new ability, Joker, I think we’re all spent. Let’s fall back to rest and recover.”

Akira looked up, the vague silhouettes of nude girls in the stained-glass rosette window reminding him of Shiho. He grit his teeth. “We run across one speed bump and you want to run away? We’re not even close to laying down some vengeance on Kamoshida!”

Ann held the compress against her ankle, eyes still squinted in pain. “No more today.”

Ryuji stumbled, but walked closer to Akira. “Yeah, I feel like I just got beat on by a heavyweight wrestler.”

Akira slammed his fist down on the pew, causing it to crack and dump him to the carpeted floor. His chest spasmed and for a brief instant his breath fled. Looking over at Ryuji, the track runner’s breathing already looked deep and steady. “How are you?”

Ryuji grimaced, and glanced at the hot compress Ann held to her foot. “You got a cold one?”

Akira pulled out a flexible ice-pack. “It’s for keeping food cold, but this should fight any inflammation.” He looked over at Ann, who still held her teeth grit together. “Just one more room?”

Ann shook her head. “I know how you feel, Akira, but we won’t do Shiho any good burning ourselves out.”

Akira gave a reluctant nod. “I dunno how much more I can do myself, but I do know somebody who can patch us up.”

Saturday, 16 April 2016
Evening
Takemi Medical Clinic

An automated chime played as Akira helped Ann hop through the door, keeping her weight off her right foot.

Nobody else occupied the entry lobby, but the tired doctor yawned from her desk behind the window. She droned, “Takemi Medical… Oh!” Her eyes locked onto the two teenagers, moving from Ann to Akira. “I didn’t expect to see you again so soon.”

Akira helped Ann to the nearest chair. “It wasn’t by design, I assure you.”

Takemi opened the door to the exam room, shooting a concerned glance at the entry door. “Hurry up.”

Akira slung Ann’s arm over his shoulders again, walking her to the exam bed. Winded from the exertion, he plopped down next to her, pressing a hand over his ribs. “You… okay?”

Ann grit her teeth. “My ankle feels like it’s on fire.”

Takemi trotted to a mini-fridge in the corner. “Shoe off. Anything else?”

Ann’s hand drifted to the base of her sternum, but she stopped and her eyes flicked to Akira.”

“I’ll go,” he said.

Ignoring his walk to the front lobby, Takemi kneeled to look at the girl’s bruised ankle. “What are you kids getting into?”

The door swung closed behind him and Akira collapsed into a chair with a hiss. After a few minutes to breathe and wait for his pounding headache to subside, the inner door swung open again. Takemi stuck her head out. “No broken bones or torn ligaments. Your girlfriend’s going to be okay. Now it’s your turn.”

Akira blurted, “She’s not my girlfriend,” at the same time as Ann called from inside, “He’s not my boyfriend.”

Ann lifted an ice pack from her ankle and Akira looked down, noticing something black and bulky where her tennis shoe should be. “A foot brace? How bad was it?”

Takemi scribbled onto her little clipboard. “It’s just a tension brace.” Looking Ann in the eye, she said in a tone brooking no argument, “Make sure to keep ice on it for at least thirty minutes as long as you feel that heat-pain tonight, but give it a chance to warm for at least ten minutes between. As long as you’re not running for a couple of days you should heal fully. Do you want me to call a cab for you?”

Ann cringed, fingers clutching on the ice pack. “I’d hate to think how much a cab would be. Could I just take some crutches and bring them back on Monday? I’ll be late even if I take the train, but I’d rather that than have to explain to mom and dad why I’m late and need cab fare.”

Takemi looked her over. “I’d prefer you to stay off your feet as much as possible. Especially with those…” She crossed her arms. “…stairs you fell down to get those injuries.” A beat passed before she turned to Akira, eyes alert and stance suspicious. “Your turn. Jacket off.” She grabbed a pair of crutches from the corner, handing them to Ann.

Akira watched his classmate settle onto them. “You going to be okay getting home?”

Holding her braced foot off the ground, she leaned right and left. “Yeah, as long as I don’t have to jump on it I’ll be fine.” She crutch-walked out and Takemi closed the door behind.

Akira hissed from unexpected pain as he took his school jacket off.

Takemi’s eyes swept over him for only a second before she continued with her clipped commands. “Shirt off.”

Akira fought off his white undershirt, and she scanned him for several seconds before retrieving a cotton ball and bottle of isopropanol. Tilting it to wet the cotton, she set the bottle on the end table next to the exam bed.

When she brushed the wet cotton ball against the first abrasion, he grit his teeth. She swiped at a second, then a third before sitting back. “Well, you’ve got pain tolerance. Are you sure you aren’t in trouble with the yakuza in Shibuya?” She brushed over a wide abrasion.

After a moment of teeth grinding, Akira clenched his fist. “Why, do they tend to leave people alive?”

She stood back, looking him in the eyes before going back to his injuries. “The biggest clan prefers to blackmail and undermine.” Her eyes drift away and she hesitated before getting a new cotton ball and wetting that one. “Though I wouldn’t doubt they’re responsible for at least a few of the bodies in Tokyo Harbor.”

Silence passed for the next several seconds as she wiped at abrasions over his ribs. Finished, she tossed the last cotton ball into the trash and capped the bottle. “These wounds aren’t from somebody trying to send you a message, are they?”

Akira looked at the hanging plastic sheet dangling from a track in the ceiling. “I’m afraid I can’t talk about it. Not yet.”

The doctor pursed her lips. “What about that bruise? Or the split lip?”

Akira smiled, feeling tension at his still-healing mouth. “I took a backhand for talking back. You should see the other guy, though.”

Takemi closed her eyes, taking a slow breath in and out. She sat down in the chair next to her computer, but he could make out the worry lines at the corners of her eyes when she turned back to him. “I know I said I’d treat you without reporting anything to the cops, but it’s a lot harder to treat injuries when I don’t know for sure what caused the injuries.”

Akira closed his eyes and leaned against the wall, rejecting the idea of telling her about the Metaverse. “There may have been some… disagreements of opinion.” He scanned her eyes. “With people who had blunt objects. But I don’t abandon my friends.”

“It’s just…” Takemi ripped open a plastic pouch with a medicated bandage and stood up to apply it. “…I’ve seen injuries like yours before. These look like someone trying to send a message. No vital tissue damage, just like somebody doing his best to prolong pain. It doesn’t seem like you have any broken bones, but there’s a lot of bruising.” She pressed the bandage against the side of his ribs. Despite his attempt to stay stoic, he knew she felt his flinch. “Just try not to come here too often.”

Akira forced a smile. “And deprive you of this boyish face and these rugged good looks?”

Takemi rolled her eyes, ripping off her gloves and tossing them with the packaging into a little garbage can. She sat back at her desk and scribbled on her clipboard’s top sheet for a few moments. “Well, between you and her that comes out to…”

When she handed him the clipboard, he expected some minor amount he could pay in cash. His eyes widened at the number circled at the bottom. “What? I don’t have that much!”

She took back her clipboard, the corners of her mouth quirking up. “Well, I’m sure we can come to some… mutually equitable arrangement.”

Chapter 12: April 17th, Glimpse

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Sunday, 17 April 2016
Early Morning
Yongen, Leblanc

Shrugging on his dress shirt, Akira gave a wave to his companion locked in cat form. “I’ll see you when I get back, Morgana.” Buttoning down the front, he trotted down the stairs.

Sojiro looked up from a large pot of curry on the stove, smelling like a project just beginning. “I’m surprised to see you up and about so early on your day off. What’s with the dressing up?”

Akira tugged at the shirt, well aware how obvious his nervousness was. “It’s my first time attending Mass at Kanda Catholic Church. I want to try to make a decent first impression when I first meet Father Sugiyama.” He slipped his hands in his pockets, muttering in a bitter tone, “Since I haven’t made a good first impression anywhere else.”

Kanda Catholic Church

Akira filed into the church with the rest of the mass of humanity. The press and numbers caused his heart rate to increase, but everybody kept in neat groups and headed the same direction. The sense of order and calm about each individual member helped settle Akira’s nerves, though the uniformity of everybody’s clothes reminded him a little too much of robot drones. At least the girl in the pew ahead of him had a red omamori-style knot in her hair. The one spot of color in the day.

Mass proceeded, music and liturgy of the resurrection failing to chase away his feeling of being trapped and alone in Tokyo.

When the service ended, Akira stood to introduce himself to Father Sugiyama. Going the opposite direction of the people ahead, he bumped into the girl with the red knot in her hair. “Oops.”

She backed up and stuttered, “O-oh, no. I’m sorry.”

Mentally kicking himself for already screwing things up with people he didn’t know, he stood back against the side of his pew. “No, excuse me. You’re trying to get out. Go ahead.”

She brushed a strand of dark brown hair behind her ear and gave a nervous smile. “T-thank you.” She gave a shallow bow, said, “Good day,” and left.

Akira walked up to a man wearing the white vestments of the Easter season. He bore wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and had a head of thinning dark hair losing the battle to white. “Father Sugiyama?”

The priest turned to him with a polite, wooden smile. “Good day, Son. Did you have any questions about the daily lesson?”

Akira drew an envelope from a pocket inside his dress shirt. “I’m Akira. Father Motoori said I should talk to you.”

Sugiyama took the yellow envelope. “Ah, yes, he emailed me about you. I was expecting you last week.”

Rubbing the back of his neck, Akira couldn’t maintain eye contact. “Yeah, sorry about that. There was some paperwork and my transit pass at the school.”

“Motoori told me a little about you over the phone when you had to leave.” He gestured to one of the side doors at the front of the sanctuary, then led him through it. “Terrible business. Worse, I’m sure, to have to suffer during a season of celebration.” Sugiyama opened the door and led him down staff halls. “Even with your checkered past, nobody so young deserves to have so heavy a chain cast upon him. Japan is a particularly unkind place for anybody once judged.”

Akira noted a lack of mention that the charges against him were false. He rubbed his arm, but decided worrying that Father Sugiyama might not believe him wouldn’t do any good.

The priest unlocked the door to a cramped office crammed with books. He gestured to an armless padded chair, then sat in a larger chair on the far side of the desk and opened the envelope. “So tell me, Akira-kun, how has the move been? What do you think of Tokyo?”

“I can’t believe that people choose to live here. I mean, population density is high in almost every city in Japan, but every train I get on I feel like I’m running out of air. The crowds are more like an avalanche of people, always moving and pushing and nobody going in the same fucking—”

Father Sugiyama cleared his throat.

“—direction,” Akira finished, shrinking back into the seat a little.

The priest nodded in understanding. “I may have graduated to here from Sapporo, but I was born in a humble town in Kyushu, so I understand some of the crowd shock. If it helps, perhaps you could think of it like rain. We get sprinkles throughout the year, much like the people in smaller towns moving about. And when the monsoons come we have the press so heavy you can’t even feel the individual drops anymore, like the crowds outside Shibuya Station.”

Akira leaned back in the chair. “Yeah, but I can use an umbrella against either of those rains. I can’t very well hold people away with an umbrella.”

Chuckling, Father Sugiyama opened the letter, allowing a nondescript memory stick to fall to the desk. “No, I suppose not, my son.” Setting the stick to the side, Father Sugiyama began reading the letter. “What about your new school? Motoori said your previous school was not… particularly understanding and you are attending somewhere new, now.”

Akira crossed his arms and sat back against the old, cushioned chair. “Well, I was kind of acting out, so they were probably glad to get rid of a troubled little miscreant. I was hoping Shujin would be different. A fresh start.”

Eyes still tracing down the letter, Father Sugiyama nodded. “The act of forgiveness is all about that release of a fresh start, even if the people cannot always themselves move. It allows the soul to move beyond the prison of past mistakes.”

After getting a sense of what Motoori told him, Akira explained the basic gist of his life under his biological father’s mistreatment and the events leading up to his expulsion to Tokyo, but he focused on the events surrounding Kamoshida, minus the castle in the Metaverse.

“I can scarce believe that a father would put his son through such experiments,” Father Sugiyama said, his brows drawn together. “I’m so sorry, my son. I’ll certainly pray for not only for you but Suzui’s recovery, and have the secretary put her on our prayer list. How have you been?”

Akira clenched his hands, then opened his fingers, hands still feeling tense. “I… I feel worse than invisible, Father. Back at Inuri High I just wanted to be anything but the ‘lab freak’s kid’. Now everybody treats me like I’m contagious when I haven’t even done anything yet.” He rubbed a hand over his face, wondering if he should bring up Kamoshida.

Father Sugiyama returned to reading the letter. “You’re in a hard place, but God will not abandon you.”

Muttering under his breath, Akira said, “Maybe he should. I’m about to kill one of his creations and piss on his grave.”

“Sorry?” Father Sugiyama set the letter down on his desk.

Akira shook his head. “I should go, Father Sugiyama. Shujin may be socially unfriendly, but it’s too demanding for me to take time off.” He stood up and marched out before the priest could say anything, pulling the door shut behind. Only after he stepped outside and came to the perimeter fence did Akira let his weary despair show. Heart pounding, he leaned against the stone pillar. A scattered stream of people passed him, not one looking him in the eye.

After the stupid way he stormed away from Father Sugiyama, he couldn’t blame them.

Glancing at his hands, he saw them tremble. Clenching them into fists, he stuffed them into his pockets and pushed off the wall. “I’ll avenge Shiho. Everything will work out after that.”

Sunday, 17 April 2016
Afternoon
Yongen, Leblanc

Akira strode in, bell jingling. An elderly couple nursed their coffees at a booth table halfway into the small cafe. Unsure what to do next, he glanced to Sojiro.

The middle-aged man flicked his eyes to the hallway with stairs up to his room.

Speed-walking up, Akira spotted Morgana fiddling with something at the workbench. Hearing his approach, the guide-in-cat-body sat on the corner of the desk, tail curling around his feet. “You’re back. How was Mass?”

Unbuttoning his shirt, Akira changed into street garb and hung up his dress clothes in a zip-up garment bag. The act of taking off the dress shirt sent painful twinges through his strained shoulder muscles. “Father Sugiyama had some things to go over from Father Motoori.” He froze, then cursed under his breath. “I didn’t go to Confession.”

The tip of Morgana’s tail twitched. “Are they like those fathers you talked about the other day?”

“No.” Moving to the table set up in front of the couch, he pulled a couple school books out. “Well, actually yes. It’s different, though. A Father in the Catholic Church is more like a rank, he’s someone who watches over the parish like God watches over the Church. The title is supposed to evoke those responsibilities I talked about.”

Morgana hopped up on the table, stepping on one of the books. “I think we should go out. You’ll need a job if we’re going to buy more supplies or scope out the lay of the land.”

“I’ve been picking up a thing or two about general treatment.” Akira pulled out his mechanical pencil and opened his geography textbook. “Musculoskeletal structure isn’t all I’m studying.”

Morgana shot Akira a hooded gaze. “An ice pack and hot compress isn’t a treatment for everything. You’re no doctor.”

Akira returned the glare, his own gaze narrow. “I’d prefer to keep things in-house. All the boys who got caught at Inuri mouthed off to the wrong people and either someone overheard or someone blabbed.”

Morgana trotted right on top of the map of Japan in the open book. “You can’t do everything yourself. From what you described about Ryuji’s awakening, you’d have died if you didn’t have Lady Ann and Ryuji awakening right there. And when we fought that angel in Kamoshida’s gym, you were still favoring the leg you hurt back on the day Ryuji awakened.”

Akira threw his pencil to the table. “Fine, I’ll look for work.”

Morgana hopped into the satchel and Akira took it, heading past the elderly couple nursing their cups and to the train station.

Sunday, 17 April 2016
Evening
Shibuya, Underground Walkway

Leaning against the tiled walls in Shibuya’s labyrinthine underground, Akira read through the job advertisement magazine. Little feet pressed into his shoulder as Morgana read the other side of the page. Squeaks of shoes and shouts of voices filled the space, weeping around the magazine and thrumming through Akira, but he held up the publication like a shield and forced himself to see the words instead of the untidy masses. Steadier in his focus, Morgana pointed out, “Sounds like Ore no Beko pays pretty well, but you’d have to know how to cook.”

Akira shot him a glare. “I part-timed at a yaki place back before the old bastard shipped me to Inuri.” He pulled out his phone and dialed, going silent for a while, a frown growing as he listened. “I don’t believe I can do that yet.”

He paused, listening.

“Yes, I’ll call back if my availability changes.” Akira hung up and slipped his phone back into his jacket.

Morgana tapped a paw on Akira’s shoulder. “What happened?”

Grousing, he went back to the magazine. “They only need people late in the evenings. With all the grief Sakura’s been giving me, I don’t think he’d okay a job at night, even if it is only one short train ride out.”

Morgana waved his paw at another ad. “There’s a flower shop.”

“Do I look like a florist friar? No.” He went back to reading through local listings for several pages, fingers digging into the cheap publication as the masses streamed around him. “Oh, hey, that convenience store up on street level is hiring.”

He called and Morgana listened through the droning introductions.

“I’m a high school student,” Akira said, heading into a conversation about availability. “Great, as soon as my current cram school finishes I’ll look forward to coming in.”

Morgana raised an eyebrow. “Cram school?”

Akira shrugs, then ducks his head back when the motion destabilizes Morgana. “I can’t very well tell them about Kamoshida, can I? I should have plenty of time soon as he’s taken care of. Might as well check out the place.”

Sunday, 17 April 2016
Evening
Yongen, Leblanc Loft

Akira set the finished sheet of trigonometry aside, then yawned into his fist. His phone buzzed and Morgana sat up from his curl on the corner of the bed. Reaching for it, Akira opened the chat app.

Ann wrote, [Shiho's finally stable!]

Akira’s breath caught in his throat and he stood, then paced the room, homework forgotten. [She's out of intensive care? How is she?]

[Her mother texted me and I went to see her at the hospital today. Shiho's under observation and the doctors don't know if she'll regain consciousness.]

[When. When she'll regain consciousness.] Akira paused, looking to the small picture of Mary on her knees, looking down at Jesus. [I'll make sure to pray for her.]

Several seconds passed and he wondered if he said the wrong thing before three dots appeared. [Thank you. She's… strong. She's got to get better. As long as we believe in her, she can do it.]

Akira’s stomach flipped like a gymnast on a coffee high. His throat tensed and for a moment he was glad Ann contacted him through a text messenger instead of phone call where his voice would have cracked. [Do you think I would be able to visit sometime this week? I feel like I need to apologize.]

[You? What for?]

Akira sat down on the corner of the bed and Morgana wasted no time in sitting down next to him to pry on the conversation. [I don't have the excuse of being caught up in whirlwind Kamoshida. I saw everything that was going on and didn't push because I was too concerned with my own probation.]

[Akira, there's no way you could have known what was going on. You were new. All of us were burying our heads. But no more. Kamoshida will pay for what he did.]

Feeling a kinship with her passion and anger, somehow his stomach settled down and Akira put away the phone. Then he knelt in front of the image of Mary, made the sign of the cross, and folded his hands together.

Morgana watched from the bed. “She is such a kind girl. Caring about her friends, the innocence to charge into the jaws of death to achieve her goal, and beautiful.”

Akira snorted, unable to hide the smirk on his face. “Somebody’s smitten.”

Smirking, Morgana took a few steps closer. “Women make the most amazing phantom thieves.” With a relaxed smile, he flopped to his side on the bed. “They can steal a heart like no other.”

A bitter taste rose in his throat, his jaw clenching and lips twisting down. “Yeah. Whatever.”

Morgana curled up into a seated posture. “Just you wait. One day you’ll meet a girl who only has to smile and you’ll feel like you’re basking in a warm summer day.”

Akira rolled his eyes.

Chapter 13: April 18th, Book of Memory

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Monday, 18 April 2016
Early Morning
Shujin, Hall in front of Guidance Office

Akira trailed his homeroom teacher to the guidance office, wondering if Shujin had decided to give him the boot early. He and the others hadn’t even found Kamoshida’s Treasure yet.

The door slid open and the brute himself stepped out and mirrored the snarl on the transfer student’s face. Kamoshida’s eyes met Kawakami’s, then he relaxed as a man and miss Cute But Annoying walked out behind him. He gave a smug smile angled more at the transfer student than the frazzled teacher. “Good to see you getting to the problem I mentioned, Kawakami!”

The red-head inclined her head to the transfer student. “Thanks again.”

Kamoshida stiffened and turned to the first-year, his smile vanishing. “You know this guy, Yoshizawa-chan?”

Either missing out on the hostility radiating between the two or choosing not to acknowledge it, she gave the square-jawed teacher a smile. “Mm-hm. He helped me earlier.”

Kamoshida’s eyes flicked to the suited man, then his face collected into a wooden mask of calm. “Steer clear of the likes of him. There are some students in this school you shouldn’t get involved with. This one’s at the top of the list.”

Akira’s composure cracked and he felt a snarl twist his face. He forced it into a smirk, then clasped his hands in front of his chest. “I’m number one in your book? Why, that makes me so proud.”

Kamoshida’s snarl returned. “Of troublemakers.”

Yoshizawa blinked. “Oh, the delinquent?”

Akira shoved his hands into his pockets and curled them into fists. Kamoshida wanted to poison him before he had a chance to make his own impression? See how he handles this. Akira turned to the red-head as if the coach wasn’t there and smirked. “Be careful, I’m apparently bad to the bone.”

Kawakami groaned behind him. “Just get in there.” She shifted to the coach. “Pardon the interruption, but I need to use the guidance office.”

Kamoshida forced himself to give a too-wide smile. “We should be going. Wouldn’t want to get in the way of guiding a delinquent.” He marched off and the suit followed.

Yoshizawa gave a stiff bow. “Please excuse us,” she said before trotting off, giving him a wider berth than before.

Kawakami motioned him into the guidance office and the transfer student stepped in, then sat at one of the two chairs on one side of the table. After closing the door, she took the opposite side. “Kurusu-kun, what happened between you and Kamoshida-san?”

Akira blinked. She sounded firm, but hadn’t just assumed he had to be all in the wrong yet. “He drove Suzui-san off the roof.”

Now the haggard teacher sat up. “Something so serious is not something to make light of, Kurusu.”

Akira stood up enough to push his chair back before he realized it and forced himself back down. “Who’s making light of it?” He took in a breath and added as an afterthought, “Sensei.”

Kawakami rubbed at her eyes. “You’re not even in one of his classes. You’ve had no other reports of misbehavior from any of your other teachers, you haven’t even gotten a single question wrong during lesson.” She lowered her hands but looked no less weary. “Just don’t go causing trouble.” She glanced at the door, then back at him. “Before we go. About that girl outside the office… did you make a pass at her in front of Kamoshida or something?”

Tisking, Akira crossed his arms. “She’s cute, if you’re into that ‘doormat who believes perverts who leak transfer student’s sealed records’ type.”

Kawakami rubbed at one eye. “Ugh. You’ve been getting involved with Sakamoto-kun and clearly have strong opinions about Suzui-san. Just… please get through the year and don’t cause any trouble, okay? That’s all I wanted to say. You’re free to go.”

Monday, 18 April 2016
After School
Shujin, Rooftop

Akira glanced at the flowers and tomato plants, little green bulbs just visible under some stems. With no sign of anybody else up on the roof, he returned his focus to the team. “Everybody ready?”

Morgana jumped up to one of the disused desks, giving a meaningful glance at Ann before facing Akira. “Are you sure everyone’s had enough time to recover from the battle against that angel on Saturday?”

“We don’t have time to lollygag around.” Akira fought down a snarl. “Every day we leave Kamoshida be is a day he could be putting another person into a coma.”

Ryuji wavered on his feet, unable to meet Akira’s eyes. “I get you, dude, but the Shadows are gettin’ kinda strong. What happens if we run into somethin’ else like that angel in the gym?”

Akira slipped his hands into his pockets. “Oh, don’t worry too much about that. I found a doctor in real life that can do some patching up if we get into a real scrap.”

Ann looked up from the email on her phone, her stance tense. “Any idea where the Treasure is, Morgana?”

“No, but we were getting closer last time. There’s just too much we can’t know until we go in.”

Akira stared down their companion-in-cat-form. “But once we find the treasure, the Shadow will be vulnerable and we can strike Kamoshida directly?”

Morgana squinted, as if unwilling to answer for a moment. “If we get into a direct confrontation with him, yes. But if we’re not careful, we could end up causing him to go berserk.”

Ann crossed her arms. “Don’t worry. Revenge is a dish best served cold.”

Kamoshida’s Castle

Opening the ivory-edged door with a quiet click, Akira kept low as Morgana hopped off his back. Raising his sub-machine gun, he pushed the door open, holding onto the gold-filigreed handle to keep it from banging. Ryuji ran in with his shotgun up, sweeping left as Ann strolled in sweeping the center. Akira took to the right and they spread out through the one-room but still opulent library.

Ann’s lips curled in disgust at the gold statuette of a nude girl holding up a stack of books on the shelf. “I’m surprised a pig-headed pervert like Kamoshida would have a library in his Palace.”

Ryuji leaned in at one shelf. “Running Times of the Great Kamoshida. Magnificent Hair Care.” He stepped away with a tisk.

Morgana kept his crossbow in hand, if retracted in its square-rod state. “I thought the Treasure was in this direction, but it looks like nothing’s here.”

Akira made a slow revolution, taking in huge library room for second time. Shelves lined the walls, the dark wood polished and all manner of colors and sizes of books arrayed on the walls.

Ann lowered her machine gun and read one of the book spines. “The Delicate Kiriko.” She spat. “All of these are probably his sick fantasies.” Stepping away, she stopped and noticed her staunch compatriot still scanning the large space. “What’s up, Joker?”

“Something’s wrong. Don’t you guys see it?” Akira paced a small circle around the reading table in the middle of the room, eyes out on the walls and shelves.

Ryuji took his shotgun in both hands. “A lotta creepy books?”

Akira clenched his hand over his sub-machine gun, then lowered the weapon to his side. “No, not the books, something else is… wrong here.”

Ann bared her teeth in a silent snarl. “The bookends are all naked girls.”

Akira stopped, then closed on one of the support pillars separating the bookshelves. “No, it’s this.” He reached out for the candle in a gold holder jutting out of the pillar. “It’s not straight. Honestly, am I the only one in the world who likes things straight and tidy?” He pulled it out to check the bottom when a click sounded. Wood scraped on stone as a bookshelf at the far end of the short wall spun around.

Morgana dove for cover under the table, crossbow snapping to the ready.

Ryuji gave a shallow nod. “Whoa! Good eye, Joker.” He pointed his shotgun and the group looked at a heavy wood panel where the bookshelf was.

Akira lowered the candle back. A click echoed out of the wall and the bookshelf spun again.

Ann held up her pistol. “I’m not the only one who saw something behind it, right?”

Morgana hopped up on the reading table. “I saw it too, Panther.”

Ryuji boggled. “Wha… you wanna go in there?”

Akira held his sub-machine gun up against his chest, finger out of the trigger well. “C’mon, Byakko. You can tell me if we’re any closer to the Treasure in there. Panther? Keep watch with Reaper.”

Morgana steadied his crossbow and swallowed. “Right.” He followed Akira to the spinning bookshelf.

Ryuji lifted the candle out of the holder. The bookshelf spun, taking Akira and Morgana with it.

A small, stone-walled room lacking the fine plaster, polished wood paneling, or ivory filigree greeted them. A huge, wood desk dominated the small room beyond the circular scrape marks. Sitting on it rested a huge tome, less a proper book than loose papers sewn into a heavy wood cover. Walking around desk, Akira reached for book and pulled it open.

***

Holding his hand over heart as Japan’s national anthem finished, a heavy medal weighed down on his front. Despite its significant pull, he felt a million meters tall.

***

Suguru tromped into the bustling bar and plopped onto one of the circular stools.

The bartender came to a stop in front of him with a towel slung over one shoulder. “You look like hell, Suguru-kun.”

You deserve every recognition, every reward.

“Just leave the bottle this time.”

“You’re not usually a drinking man.” The bartender set a bamboo cup and medium-size rice wine bottle on the counter in front of him. “What happened?”

Your subjects betrayed you.

Suguru threw back the whole cup, a burning heat sliding down his throat. “I won them a gold medal, and they kicked me to the curb.” He tilted the bottle to refill his cup. “Do they think I’m just some hack who got lucky? If my talent’s not carrying the day, what’s the point?”

He threw back another cup.

***

Suguru looked down at the dangerously overweight man in mustard-yellow suit across desk.

Kobayakawa closed the file.

A pinch tightened inside Suguru’s chest.

Kobayakawa looked up at him. “Kamoshida-san, I can’t believe that somebody with such a stupendous record would apply to coach at Shujin Academy.”

Suguru straightened, his breath hitching. “You… you mean…?”

It is only what you deserve. Does a king not deserve a kingdom?

Kobayakawa smiled. “Kamoshida, just the news of you joining our school would boost our ranking. If you could get a team to regionals… Well, we’ll have donors lining up for the chance to contribute to the school.”

Suguru scrambled to his feet, bumping his seat back in haste. “Kobayakawa-san, I promise you I won’t stop at regionals. I will bring us all the way to nationals and put the golden trophy in your hands.” He gave a deep bow.

Here you can reap your reward.

Phone ringing, Kobayakawa pulled it out and took a quarter turn away. “I look forward to it.” Answering the line, his pudgy face smiled even more. “Yes, Shido-san. I’ve just secured an asset that will make your contribution to this school very lucrative.”

***

Suguru slid the door open to Shujin’s PE faculty office. Trotting to his chair, a knock pounded on the door before he can even plop into his seat. Sighing, he turned around. Kamoshida’s voice came out of his mouth, “Enter.”

The door slid open and a toned girl with wavy black hair stepped in, then closed the door behind her. Her skin glistened with sweat, giving her an ethereal glow, her bust straining under the volleyball uniform as she breathed from her run to the office. Whirling around on him, she shouted, “I’m on the bench? I was the team captain of a champion team at Green Ceder!”

At last, a fitting offering for a king.

Suguru sighed. “Himiko-chan, there are a lot of very talented players this year.”

She took an aggressive step closer, chest still moving in and out. “But I am supposed to be the best!” She crossed her arms under her developing breasts. “I work twice as hard as all of them.”

“Team size is fixed, Himiko-chan.”

Himiko fell to her knees, a little theatrical but a definite fire in her eyes. “Please, Kamoshida-sensei. I have to be the starter. I’m good enough… I’ll do anything.”

See how they all want from you? It is only right to claim tribute back.

Suguru swallowed, feeling his member stir in his pants. “There’s a lot that defines a volleyball player. Her strength, her constitution, her skill…” His eyes roved over her curves. “Her… dedication.” He put a hand on her shoulders, hooking his thumb inside her shirt collar.

A momentary shudder passed through her before she breathed in, then out, and looked up at him.

Suguru smiled. “If you’re willing to give enough, you can get anything.”

She stood, and after he pulled she reached down and helped him remove her white gym top. Her lacy black bra jutted out, the skin all over glistening with sweat. Suguru pulled down her shorts even as her eyes clamped closed.

***

Akira surged back away from the tome, stumbling into the wall and slipping to the ground. He curled onto his side and dry-heaved.

Morgana rounded the desk, crossbow in hands and eyes wide in worry. “Whoa, Joker! What happened?”

Akira twisted onto all fours, focusing just on breathing for a while until the need to vomit was no longer all-consuming. His heart raced, and he felt defiled. As dirty as if his hands pulled that glistening girl’s clothes off. “He… Kamoshida really does think all girls want to be with him.”

Morgana lifted the crossbow to rest on his shoulder, the long bayonet jutting out the front and glistening in the dim candle light. “Joker, what are you talking about?”

Akira swiped for his sub-machine gun, stumbled up to his feet, and pointed a hand at the book. “That sick bastard thinks everything he wants is his for the taking.” He lifted his sub-machine gun, but between the defiled feeling and wispy air getting into his lungs couldn’t scrape together enough energy. “But… it’s like something was talking to him, pushing him to that idea.”

Morgana looked around, pulling at one of the drawers in the desk only to give up when the whole desk shuddered under his yank. “Well, I don’t know what this room is for, but I don’t see anything useful and that,” his eyes stopped on the tome, “sure isn’t his Treasure.”

Keeping a maximum distance from tome, Akira moved around room to the bookshelf. “I don’t see a switch or anything here. How do we get out?”

“I think they need to trigger it from out there.”

Akira clawed at the books, throwing them from the shelf, then banged on the backboard. “Reaper! Panther! Listen to me very carefully. Put the candle back!”

Tuesday, 19 April 2016
After School
Shujin Library

When the door slid open to dense shelves of books instead of a student worker, Akira knew he opened the wrong door. Hoping that wasn’t a bad omen, he kept his back straight and posture calm like he meant to do that and walked in. A set of round desks sat beyond the bookshelves, some students reading manga and more reading textbooks for class. Rows of small study cubicles lined the back wall.

Despite the short walk, by the time he reached the desk of the student librarian, he could already hear murmuring behind him. The many that glanced up kept an eye on him, but most remained quiet as he came to a stop in front of the brown-haired girl at the desk. She clasped her hands and looked up at him, eyes flicking over his uniform. “Oh, a second-year badge. You’re the transfer student?”

“Akira,” he said with a swift, shallow bow, sidestepping the question.

It wasn’t enough to placate the students at the reading desks, many of them breaking into hushed conversations and shooting suspicious glances at him. Was Shujin really that hard-up for gossip that he somehow became a celebrity just by transferring in?

The student librarian glanced left and right, taking in the others at work. “I don’t mean to be rude, but it might be better if you weren’t here.”

Akira’s easy pose straightened, gaze hardening. “How is that not supposed to be rude?” Despite himself, his teeth ground and his voice rose as he continued, “This is supposed to be a place of learning open to all students, and I’d like to study.”

A red-eyed girl with a braided hairband stood from one of the reading tables and walked over. She looked either annoyed or nervous, but kept a closer guard on her expression than most students. “Is everything all right?”

The librarian bowed in her seat. “Oh, pardon the disturbance, Miss President.”

Akira slapped the piece of scratch paper in his right hand to the desk, flipping it when he realized his handwriting wasn’t facing up. “I need this book, the online catalog indicated you have it.”

The student worker took it and read, “Muscles and the Skeleton, Fourth Edition.” She stood, eyes flicking to the taller brown-haired girl before she stood and beat a hasty retreat out to the shelves.

The girl in the sweater vest held a confident, even imposing stand against him. “I am the Student Council President. The library is a place of learning but it is a place of quiet learning. I don’t mind if you’re here to study, but please keep your voice down.”

Akira tightened his already curled left fist, waiting without a single word back to the student council president. Leave some hoity-toity official to get on his case when all he wanted was to study.

The librarian returned with the book, took Akira’s ID, scanned them, then handed him the book as if she feared he might tear her arm off. Akira sat down far away from everybody in one of the study cubicles and started reading. Minutes passed and the murmured conversations continued. When his phone went off, he gave up on the lumbar vertebrae and brought up the blinking chat function.

Ryuji’s ID stared up at him. [Yo! Where you at?]

Closing his book, Akira focused on chat. [Trying to study in the library. I’d think you’d be here, too.]

[Dude, my grades aren’t that bad. Besides, I realized something when we were running around the Palace. I feel like I’m way behind where I was back in track. We’re running into tougher Shadows, so we should probably train.]

Akira blinked, trying to decide if Ryuji was that far ahead of the lesson plan or that determined to catch up with him and Ann. [Weather says chance of rain tomorrow. You have something in mind today?]

[Quick warm-ups behind the gym. Be sure to change into your gym clothes first.]

Tuesday, 19 April 2016
After School
Shujin, Practice Field

Back in the same uniform he wore when first discovering the castle of horrors with Ann, Akira walked onto the general-purpose field. When he heard Ryuji’s heavy, certain footsteps he said, “You know, I’m starting to think the same construction and landscaping company does every school sport field in Japan. The one at Inuri High looked the same.”

“Yo,” Ryuji said in response. He came to a stop next to Akira, hands on his hips, eyes sweeping over the grass field with his chest puffed out. “Lotta memories here.”

Akira tried not to think about the basketball fight. “The track team have a lot of good days here?”

“Yeah.” Ryuji kicked the grass, his shoulders drooping a little. “We’d gather here before hitting a track, and just become one with the wind.” He looked up at Akira. “You seemed pretty good on stamina back there. You sure you didn’t play anything?”

Akira snorted. “As if anybody’d have me on their team.”

Ryuji shoved his hands into his pockets. “Well, anyway, that was actually what got me thinkin’. When we were fightin’ in that other world, I felt slow and clumsy.”

Akira gave an easy shrug, though a smirk slipped through. “Well, maybe you just are.”

Ryuji jerked his hand out, thwacking Akira on the arm.

“Ow.” Akira rubbed the impact.

“Anyway, I thought I needed to build back up again.” Ryuji said, stepping out into the field before looking back with a grin, “Can’t sit back with this flimsy body, right?”

Akira held his hand over the last punch site. “You’re seriously going to leave me an open door like that? You make it too easy.”

Ryuji closed in and elbowed him with a grin of his own. “Hey, maybe it’ll help you, too. I seem to remember beating you back on the walkway in Inokashira Park.”

Akira adjusted his glasses until he cast a glint on Ryuji. “Heh. You may find I’m not some sloppy amateur struggling to catch up to you.”

Ryuji shot back his own grin. “An’ I ain’t some old man past his glory. You know what knee lift sprints are?”

Akira tilted his head.

“Well, I know you know regular ones. Let’s take ten laps, an’ I’ll do the knee lifts.”

Both charge around the field, both trying to out-do the other until they both come back to the grassy field closer to the buildings. Ryuji came to a stop, gasping and bracing his hands on his knees.

Akira flopped onto his back on the grass, spreading his limbs out as he heaved in breaths. “Man, you don’t… know when to… stop. You must’ve… been a speed demon before Kamoshida.”

Ryuji stood straight, clasping his hands on top of his head to expand his chest. “We were the big thing here at Shujin before Kamoshida disbanded us. Well, besides the scholarships for good grades and letters of recommendation. He was on our case as soon as he got here. He gave crazy workouts, then just piled more on.”

Several moments passed as both did nothing but breathe. Ryuji plopped down next to Akira, crossing his legs and staring out at the setting sun. “He gunned after me. Prolly knew I’d snap sooner.” He lowered his arms to his knees. “I guess… I was always the kinda guy who didn’t really know when to hold back.”

“You’re not alone there.” Akira pushed himself to a sitting posture. “You did pretty good back when I stormed in Kamoshida’s office. I wasn’t thinkin’ at all. All I could see was Suzui’s twisted body.” He clenched his fists, remembering her perfect smile. Her graceful gait. Her luxurious, black-as-midnight hair in a practical ponytail. The rose-scented chapstick that drew his eyes to lips that smiled so easily. Her joyous laugh, the way it made her eyes sparkle. And the empty stare as she lay broken on the courtyard. “Whether I succeeded or failed, the cops’d have stuffed me in a hole so deep I’d never have seen the light of day again.”

“Yeah, that was a weird day.” Ryuji ran a hand through his hair. “You were so much like me I didn’ know what I was s’posed to do. It was like you were really gonna kill him.”

After a while of staring out at the skyline of the city, Akira looked back to Ryuji. “So what’d he end up doing? I know he screwed your team, but it sounds like you have a personal beef with him.”

Ryuji rolled a twig between his fingers. “He brought up my parents.”

Akira let out a sharp breath. “I’da slugged him too.”

Ryuji looked Akira up and down. “What’d your old man do?”

Akira clenched his hands into tight fists, focusing on drawing in breath and letting it out through his grit teeth. After feeling his heartbeat slow back down from the flash-urge to kill, he spoke. “It’d be a shorter list to say what my old bastard did right. He was always more concerned with his research than me or my mother. For a long time, he did memory training when he wasn’t with others. He’d strap me in a chair, jam electrodes in my scalp, and shock me any time I answered a question wrong.”

Ryuji stared at him for a while. Then, eyes narrowing, he crossed his arms. “Are you for real?”

Akira shot him a flat stare. “Why would I lie about the bastard?”

“Wow,” Ryuji said, scratching his head. “That’s just… messed up. I mean, my pops… well, you know.” He mimed tipping a bottle at his lips. “He’d be at work sometimes all week, and always promise to bring home somethin’ nice to say sorry, but he’d almost always get home sloshed. Sometimes he’d pass out on the recliner, but sometimes he’d get all mad at somethin’ I did, and hit me.” The runner’s hands clenched and teeth ground. “Or Ma.” Ryuji blinked, then shook his head and looked at the transfer student. “But he never electrocuted me. Kinda makes us losin’ our shot at the championship seem like small potatoes.”

“Why?” Akira held up a twig and pulled off a strip of bark. “I’m just one person, your championship was a lot of people. A lot of opportunities, you’ll never know what could’ve been.”

“Yeah,” Ryuji said, looking out at the skyline. “But lookin’ back, I don’t think he’d’a ever let us get in a win. Kamoshida. He always came at me twice as hard. Finally told the whole team about my drunk of a father.” He clasped his hands on his head again. “In front’a everyone. I lost it, kinda like you did.” Ryuji sat on his heels and ran his hand over the tended grass.

He hurled the twig into the wind. “You wish you could go back?”

Ryuji stood up. “To track? Nah. The other guys treat me like a traitor, and it’s not like they’re wrong.”

Akira scoffed, and stood up next to him. “If they were just putting up with Kamoshida’s abuse, they were the traitors.” He let a breath pass. “You were the only one with the guts to stand up to Kamoshida, just as you were. That takes balls of steel, dude.”

Ryuji smiled and nudged him an elbow. “Well, if you’re gonna steal pages from my book, I might as well do the same. Who cares what happened before? That’s the past, we got the future.” He brought up his hand to high-five Akira, who barely responded in time to avoid a slap in the face.

Notes:

I don’t dislike Yoshizawa, and I don’t think Daywatch’s Akira really dislikes her, but showing up and appearing to take sides with Kamoshida during a point like this is a great way to put a burning roadblock on their relations. I’ve always thought it odd that Kamoshida was interacting with her and wondered what it was for, as at this point in the game he’s clearly still targeting Ann as well as thinks he alone is enough for Shujin’s prestige. Just her existence at Shujin could be threatening to a fragile, ego-centric person like Kamoshida. I always thought when they brought up the school threatening her that it was a process started far earlier by Kamoshida trying to make her crack and transfer early so he remained the sole beacon of glory at Shujin.

Chapter 14: April 20th, Treasury

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Wednesday, 20 April 2016
After School
Kamoshida’s Castle

Slinking through the narrow, open space, Akira led the others down to a balcony over an audience hall. A padded throne glistened with gold at the end.

Ryuji dusted his hands. “Easy peasy.”

“Shh!” Morgana crept to the balcony, followed by the others on their bellies. Kamoshida sat on an ornate gold throne before a thick formation of gray knights.

Akira crept back a little, a snarl on his face. He whispered to the others, “Shit. We can’t take him down now. There’s too many soldiers, even for all of us together.”

Morgana looked at him through a hooded gaze. “Don’t forget that our goal is the Treasure, not his Shadow. It’s the Treasure that’s chaining his Shadow. If we don’t take care of that, we’re more likely to cause a mental shutdown.”

“That’s the brain-dead thing, right?” Ryuji looked around, then gawked at the impressions in the ceiling.

Ann’s fists curled. “Then let’s keep moving.”

Slinking low along the balcony, the thieves came to an ornate, narrow door. Ryuji came to a crouch next to it, allowing Morgana to hop on his shoulder and pick the lock as Akira watched. After slipping through, closing the door behind them, they stood up and relaxed.

Ryuji stared at the pair of heavy, cedar doors beyond, wrapped in iron banding. “Damn, these doors look like they could take a battering ram.”

Akira crossed his arms. “If I was an evil castle prick, I’d hide my treasure behind something like this.” He looked down to Morgana. “You think you can get us in?”

Morgana smirked. “Please. Watch the master at work.” Just a couple seconds of fiddling later, the lock popped. “With a little more training, maybe one day even you will be able to do that, Joker.”

“Whatever,” he said, pushing open the door to the treasury. Gold statuettes scattered over mounds of gold coins.

Ryuji’s eyes popped wide as dinner plates, a stupid grin on his face. “Holy shit! Is all this loot the treasure?” He stepped into the piles of gold, picking up a heavy candlestand in the detailed likeness of a nude girl. “Man, this freak really is a pervert.”

Akira picked up handfuls of gold oval coins, recognizing them from pictures in his history textbook on the warring states period. “For all the western styling, I’d have expected his treasures to be English pounds or something.”

Ann held up a heavy gold necklace lacking any gems to break up the yellow sheen. “For someone with such a gaudy castle, I expected him to have more… interesting jewelry at the end.”

“All of that’s just set dressing.” Morgana hopped up on a gold vase near the middle of the room, surrounded by deep piles of gold coins and trinkets. “This is the Treasure.”

Akira slipped his hands into his pockets, making no effort to hide the dubious expression on his face. “That cloudy thing? Sorry, but I’m gonna have to go with Ryuji on this.”

“Don’t get ahead of me,” Morgana scolded. “Remember, this is a cognitive world, not a physical one. Just finding the Treasure,” he gestured to the shifting cloud, “is just the first step. Everybody knows they have desires, but for most people, we understand on a deep level that they’re not physical things. In order to make the treasure manifest, we need to make the person aware their desire is in fact a Treasure just the same as any physical thing that can be stolen.”

Akira blinked. “Wait, are you telling me we have to warn them we’re gonna come in?”

“Yes.”

Akira waved his hands. “I’m gonna have to put a negatory on that plan. Telling people you’re gonna do something just guarantees you get caught.”

Morgana crossed his arms. “No it doesn’t. And there’s no other way to make the treasure manifest. We have to send the conscious person a calling card. The conscious person and their Shadow are connected. A change in one affects the other, and because the Treasure is connected to the Shadow that will make the Treasure vulnerable.”

Ryuji danced in glee, gold statuettes in both hands. “A calling card, it’s totally like one of those awesome heist stories!”

Akira’s lips pressed into a thin line.

Noticing Akira’s reluctance, Ann cleared her throat. “I say we give it a shot. If a calling card can make the Treasure vulnerable, it should do the same for their Shadow, right?”

Morgana’s ears drooped and he sent a despairing look to Akira. “Yes, but I have no idea what exactly it will do to the Shadow.”

The temporarily-sans-glasses-thief crossed his arms. “So we’ve done all we can here?”

Morgana nodded. “Until we send the calling card.”

Akira gave a curt nod. “Then we leave and do it. Kamoshida’s had enough of a reprieve for what he did to Suzui-san.”

Thursday, 21 April 2016
After School
Shujin, Rooftop

Ryuji huddled under the overhang, watching rain pour down over the school roof. “Man, it sucks tryin’ ta meet when it’s raining.”

Ignoring the complaining, Akira got straight to the topic at hand. “We’ve been maintaining pretty well as we crawled up that tower, so I think a day of rest should be plenty. I think we should take the castle tomorrow and bring Kamoshida to an end. That means we need to have the calling card ready by tomorrow.”

Ryuji backed away from a large drip splash. “Couldn’t we have sent one at the beginnin’ of all this?”

Morgana, still huddled in Akira’s bag set against the wall, shook his head. “A calling card is meant to create a sense of threat and manifestation through focus. As time passes, that mental sense of possessive fear fades and the Treasure disappears.”

Akira looked down at their metaverse expert. “How long does it last?”

“Until their cognition has time to lapse back into a sense of security, like any mental reset. Generally, that’s when they next sleep.”

Ryuji boggled, accidentally stepping back into the rain dripping down the side of the overhang. “Less than a day? That’s like no time at all!”

Akira leaned against the wall. “That’s why we all need to be ready to send it. Ann, I know you need to work, is it okay if Ryuji and I write it?”

“I’ll be here too!” Morgana chirped from the bag.

Ann shot a wary glare at Ryuji. “It better not have spelling errors in it, okay? The embarrassment would kill me.”

Akira nodded. “And we’ll have to make sure they can’t tell who wrote it. If we leave a handwritten note we might as well write ‘this is my confession’ and sign our names.”

Ryuji jumped in excitement at a sudden idea, splashing the water running along the roof. “We can just use magazine cutouts, like all those TV villains who leave anonymous letters.”

Akira snorted, but fell silent for several seconds. “That’s just archaic enough to work. You got a print center nearby?”

Ryuji tilted his head. “Why would we need that?”

“Copies,” Akira said, pulling out his phone to get started with what they would need for a good draft. “We need a lot. If the school sees just one little note, they’ll throw it out as a stupid prank. If we plaster it over the billboards, everybody will see it and they won’t be able to cover it up anymore.”

Ann gave him a predatory smile. “Smart. You’ve really thought about this.”

Morgana piped up from the bag, “We’ll only have one shot at this. If we fail now, another calling card most likely won’t have enough impact to make the Treasure manifest again.”

“Don’t worry,” Akira said, tone grim. “We’ll only need one shot to take down Kamoshida. He won’t get away with all the things he’s done. Come on, Ryuji. Let’s hit the library. I need to get some studying in, too.”

“Dude, we’re gearin’ to take down the king of assholes and you want to study?”

“They’ve got dictionaries and a couple thesauri down in the library and I want to make sure that calling card will do the job without pointing straight back at us. See you later, Ann.”

Ryuji sighed. “At least let’s go to the diner. It’ll be quieter there.”

Friday, 22 April 2016
Morning
Shujin’s Front Entrance

Akira trotted in the front doors, hearing the buzz of conversation deeper inside right away. The noise hammered him, a directionless cacophony making his stomach clench. Despite the discomfort, he proceeded inside to a mob at the front billboards plastered with calling cards. Clumps of students surrounded every billboard on the first floor, each one strewn with calling cards.

An excitable girl with wiry hair jogged up to the group from behind him, stopping next to Mishima near the back of the crowd. “What’s all this about?”

The class representative stood steady as a statue, his gaze hollow and fixed on the dozen cards pasted over the billboard. They reminded the transfer student of a shark’s, as if they peered into an unfathomable void. “Somebody left calling cards. They’ve been here since I got here for study early in the morning.”

Ann came to a stop next to Akira, and the two shared an acknowledging glance before Mishima read the card to the excitable girl.

“Sir Kamoshida Suguru, the pitiful sinner consumed by lust. You force your twisted desires on students that can’t fight back. You abuse the weak and dishonor the pure. Your punishment shall be visited upon you by your own hand. I, the Phantom Thief of Hearts, shall take your distorted desires without fail.”

Ann tilted her head closer to Akira and mumbled, “Ryuji wrote that? I can almost take it seriously.” The two walked further down the hall to Ryuji. “Sakamoto, did you really write all that?”

Ryuji smirked, though as tall as she was he couldn’t look down his nose at her. “It’s like poetry, ain’t it?”

Morgana popped out of Akira’s bag, eyes narrow. “I’m the one who came up with most of the phrasing. You wanted to say ‘we know how shitty you are’.”

Ann crossed her arms and shot a cold frown at Ryuji. “That sounds like a child failing to sound like an adult.” She glanced at Akira, still next to her. “But why Phantom Thief?”

Akira grumbled, shoving his hands in his pockets. “They insisted on thieves, even though that sounds stupid.”

Ryuji and Morgana both groaned. The runner sent him a hooded gaze. “C’mon, man. Not this again.”

Morgana snapped from the interior of the transfer student’s satchel, “Gentlemen thieves are cool and stylish, we steal from the rich and give to the poor.”

Lowering his voice to keep from being overheard by the crowd focused on the calling-card-plastered billboards, Akira said, “Thieves don’t lend courage to the innocent, and hardly fear in the guilty.”

Slumping, Ryuji rolled his eyes. “It ain’t the same thing as bandits, dude. It’s takin’ on the big dogs to keep the little guys from getting’ crushed. Like privateers.”

Morgana glared at Ryuji. “We were not going to be Sea Dogs.”

“Well,” Ann said, cutting off further argument, “what’s done is done.”

A frown still tugging at his face, Akira shrugged. “I figured there wasn’t a better candidate for somebody acting out the deadly sin of lust.”

Ann’s eyebrows rose and her head tilted to one side. “Deadly sin?”

Akira nodded. “It’s from a poem the Catholic Church used to use to teach to help people remember virtues and vices. You’ve got seven virtues and vices in contrasting pairs.” He lifted a hand to point to himself. “Mine is wrath. Its opposite is patience.”

Ryuji slipped his hands in his pockets, shoulders relaxed. “Yeah. Those two kept wantin’ to change stuff, so we browsed tons’o stuff online for reference.”

Akira gave a wide, bright smile. “And my search history is still squeaky clean.”

Ryuji’s eyes popped wide. “Oh, crap.” He pulled out his phone and opened the web navigator.

Morgana sighed. “I still wish somebody with some artistic talent could’ve done the logo.”

Akira leaned his back against the wall. “I’ll commission one of those homeless artists in Inokashira Park for something next time.” He pulled out his phone, passing it from hand to hand as he stared up and out. “Hell, there’s probably some in Shibuya.”

Ryuji kicked a sneaker against the floor, drawing a high squeak. “You know what? You want some artsy fartsy thing, go to Kosei.” He spared a glare at Akira. “At least I could make something that looked like a top hat.”

Morgana snickered from inside the bookbag.

Akira glared down at it. “Traitor.”

The excitable girl from earlier jerked back from the mob. “Does that mean those scary rumors are true?”

The majority of the student mob broke, dashing for their classrooms before Akira could see Kamoshida coming in from the front gates, looking for the source of the commotion. He seemed annoyed but collected until his eyes fell on the calling cards. The remaining students backed far away.

Akira navigated to the video app, glancing at his compatriots. “Exit stage left.” Ann and Ryuji took the courtyard doors out and Akira began the recording, setting his smartphone on the electrical box near the corner, setting his bag under it.

Kamoshida’s shoulders hunched and his hands curled into fists before he roared, “Who put these here?”

Morgana peeked out from the bag to say, “I’d say that is impact positive.”

Students scattered as Kamoshida snatched for them, then spotted Akira watching with his hands in his pockets. The towering teacher stormed closer, an anger borne from fear etched across his face. “Was this you?”

Akira pushed his glasses up with his middle finger, slipping his hand back into his pocket. “Was what me?” When Kamoshida took a step closer, Akira smirked but kept his posture neutral for the camera. “No, wait, let me guess. It doesn’t matter because I’ll be expelled soon anyway?”

Kamoshida’s face twisted, settling into rage as he grabbed Akira and lifted him in the air with one hand.

A momentary tremor prickled his skin, but Akira kept his eyes on Kamoshida’s. For an instant, he could’ve sworn they reflected gold light. Still, it wouldn’t take much to weasel out of an assault charge with just grabbing the jacket. Akira swallowed, narrowing his eyes. “Right, because it takes a big man to attack a student with his hands in his pockets.”

Kamoshida threw Akira into the wall and stormed away, frame vibrating with pent-up anger.

Akira crawled off the floor, feeling the impact still pulse along his arm and hip. Pushing aside the discomfort, he took his bag, smart phone, and stopped the recording.

Morgana popped his head out. “You’re way too reckless.”

“I prefer ‘daredevil with a plan’,” Akira said, sending the recording to Niko Video.

Chapter 15: April 22nd, Severed Whisper

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Friday, 22 April 2016
After School
Kamoshida’s Castle

Akira came to a stop in the open doors of the throne room. Girl’s bust pillars spaced around the lower level, gloomy shadows underneath enhancing the quiet. Lewd at best depictions of female anatomy decorated the hall. Rose petals scattered over the floor, but no sign of the grey or gold-clad guards interrupted the unsettling silence, even at the throne on its step-style dias near the stairs up to the treasure room. “Normally I’d be glad to see an easy entry, but where’d all the soldiers go?”

Morgana switched his grip on his crossbow. “The soldiers could’ve been assigned across the castle when the real Kamoshida saw the calling card. Either way, the Treasure is still our goal.”

Hackles still raised, he held his position outside. “I don’t trust an empty throne room. Let’s take the high route.”

Ryuji hopped up the nearby statue, then swore. “Hey, it’s barred!”

Akira checked his sub-machine gun and led the column of thieves, sneaking along the shadowed edges of the throne room. Sub-machine gun up, he raced up the stairs to the open doors and braced behind his weapon until Morgana finished unlocking both sets of doors to the treasury vault. Plans for a calm and swift exit shriveled up when he laid eyes on a giant crown resting on the gold vase.

Morgana stared, eyes dilating and limbs going still. Even his tail hung motionless in the air.

Ryuji gawked at the massive, sparkling gold crown. “How the hell are we supposed to get this huge thing out?”

Ann looked over it with clear wonder. “I wasn’t expecting something this… pretty.” She crossed her arms, lips taking a bitter curl. “Isn’t this supposed to be Kamoshida’s desires? It should be black and ugly.”

Akira shrugged, stepping over the gold-strewn floor to try to figure out a good place to lift from. “Could be his self-styled representation. I bet if I had a palace and treasure, I’d want it to look nice.”

Morgana’s hands opened and his crossbow slipped with a clink to the gold piled over the floor, its bayonet digging into a pile. His jaw drifted open and a feline moan began.

Akira rushed to the doorframe, looking through the open vault doors to the decorative ones leading to the throne room. “You idiot! Keep it down!”

Morgana hopped up onto the side of the huge crown, grabbing on and rubbing his face on it.

Sharing a glance with Akira, Ryuji scrambled up to grab him, then threw the cat-person to the floor with a clinking of gold koban coins.

“Ow!” Morgana pushed himself to his feet, eyes flashing to the three humans before falling to the floor. He kicked at a pile of kobans. “Forgive me for such an unseemly display, my lady.”

Ann just gave him a raised eyebrow. “That was… completely weird. Usually you and Joker are both so cautious.”

Morgana and Akira both snorted, then looked at the other.

Morgana fidgeted with his hands, eyes still on the floor. “It… it just came over me. I had no idea human desires would have such an affect.” He straightened, face an impassive mask. “Anyways, you guys need to carry it.”

Ryuji snapped, “What about you?”

Keeping his finger out of the trigger well, Akira waved the sub-machine gun at Morgana. “Reaper, look at him. He has a big head. And little arms. I don’t think you thought this through.”

Ryuji kicked at coins underfoot, sending a large scatter clattering around. “Still, I figured there’d be some elaborate trap and villainous gloating.”

“Jinx,” Akira said with a grin.

Ryuji’s face fell into a cold stare. “Shut up, asshole.”

Akira knelt down to pick up a koban. “That reminds me, did you guys keep the stuff you picked up the other day? I didn’t remember doing it, but when I took off my school jacket in the real world, I found a couple of these coins.”

Ryuji’s eyes popped wide open and he almost dropped his shotgun. “This stuff is real?” Slinging the firearm, he grabbed fistfuls and shoved them in his pockets, then grabbed for Akira’s pocket to continue, “Here, you help haul out stuff.”

The runner released one handful and tried for another by the time Akira dodged away. “I am not a pack mule.”

Ann snapped, “Would you two focus on the Treasure we came here for?”

Ryuji dropped the big handful. “Fine. It ain’t like this is a perfect opportunity. And ain’t we thieves, anyway?”

“I am not a thief!” Akira snarled. Stowing his sub-machine gun, he took position at the crown and counted to three before they lifted it.

“Wow, this thing’s heavy.”

“Not as much as a real gold thing this size would be,” Akira said, picking his footing over piles of gold koban coins. “Good thing I don’t have scoliosis.”

Ryuji’s eyes disappeared up behind his mask. “What?”

“Abnormal curvature of the spine,” Akira explained as they passed through the vault doors. “It results in weakness and muscle pain and tends to get worse with age. It’s one of the more common conditions chiropractors have to treat.”

Morgana opened the doors, crossbow resting over his shoulder as he followed them out into the throne room. “What a successful mission, a treasure and three Persona users to boot. I scored the jackpot with this investigation. Muahaha!”

The team just passed the raised throne when the eerie false-Ann clapped from the balcony above. “Go! Go! Go Kamoshida!”

Ann snarled. “I’m gonna kill that little bitch.”

“She’s not real,” Akira reminded, pulling the huge Treasure toward the doors out. “She’s a cognition in Kamoshida’s mind.”

“I’m gonna kill that cognitive bitch,” she amended.

Kamoshida’s Shadow leaped out, spiking a volleyball into the crown, knocking it clattering to the ground. Soaring through the air, he landed at the throne and reached one arm out. The crown shrank down to the size of an ordinary, wearable accessory and flew to his outstretched hand. The cognitive facsimile of Ann dashed down the stairs from the balcony to him, clutching his arm between her voluminous breasts and baring the hot pink speedo.

Akira fell to his knees, hands slapping over his face. “Oh God, my eyes!”

Kamoshida shot him a hooded glare and for a moment it looked like his eyes glowed from within. “You’ll die first.” He tossed up his Treasure, catching it with a vicious smirk spreading over his face. “Nobody takes what is mine.”

Akira stood, back to serious at the flick of a switch. “I have to ask… why’s your treasure a crown when you’re already wearing a crown? Why do you need two?”

Kamoshida growled, his glare intensifying.

Ryuji braced behind his shotgun. “So, you layin’ in wait?”

“Yeah,” Akira drew his sub-machine gun. “It makes me nervous when a pervert springs an ambush.”

Kamoshida spat at the floor. “Don’t flatter your own importance. I just arranged for easy disposal of garbage.”

Ann’s face twisted in anger. “You sick bastard.” She pointed her pistol at the micro-bikini-clad Ann draping herself over his arm. “Is that how you see all girls?”

Giving an exaggerated sigh, Kamoshida shook his head. “Of course you would fail to understand.” He wrapped his arm around the cognitive Ann, fondling her breast. “Some people understand that a little sacrifice on her part meant not only could she benefit, but so could that obsessive player she clung on to make her empty life feel like it meant something.”

Her leather-clad hands clenched in fists. “You sick piece of shit. Shiho was my friend. My best friend. And you knew what you were doing was wrong. You kept it a secret for years.”

Kamoshida tossed the crown up, shaking his head. “It was the people around me who kept it a secret. The students who wanted to get ahead in life. The adults who longed to bask in my accomplishments.” Catching the crown, he threw his arms wide. “There’s nothing wrong with using my gifts for my gain. I’m just letting them profit as well.”

Ryuji bared his teeth. “Bastard. You think you’re above everyone else?”

“I am above everyone else, in this world and yours. What I don’t need are imbeciles who stumble around screwing up everyone else because they can’t understand the simplest things. Like that girl who tried to kill herself.”

Akira’s grip on his gun trembled, face twisting in rage. “Suzui was not an idiot, and she wasn’t just some girl! She was the only girl at Shujin with strength and kindness!”

Ann dropped into a firing posture of her own. “And none of us need your permission to live our lives. You don’t stand above us, you slither below us.”

Eyes aglow with gold, Shadow Kamoshida snarled, “I am Kamoshida!” Darkness poured off it like black fog, swirling around him.

Akira roared in hate, spraying a burst into the transforming beast.

Kamoshida’s silhouette distended, puffing out and stretching up higher and higher. The darkness broke with unnatural suddenness, revealing a towering, leathery-skinned monstrosity with bulging eyes and a protruding belly. Four arms held out from its sides and a tongue longer than a train car hung from his mouth, holding off the ground more like a monkey’s prehensile tail than dangling piece of drooling flesh. “I do whatever the hell I want.”

Akira fought down the urge to vomit when a single eye diverted from Ann to him. “Even in the freest world, the freedom of your actions ends when it curtails others’ lives!”

Kamoshida slashed a three-meter-long gold knife down.

Akira dove for the side, shouting, “Berith!”

Blue ebbed above him, coalescing into a grey-plated horseman on a rusty-brown mare. It braced its spear and galloped at Kamoshida’s Shadow.

As soon as Captain Kidd formed, it raised its canon-bearing arm and sent howling winds at the Shadow.

Carmen stood straight, her frilly dress flapping around her, and tensed her hands as if shaping and etching clay. A glowing blue ball grew between her hands.

Kamoshida stabbed a two-pronged gold fork down at Kidd, who surfed out of the way.

Berith stabbed the Shadow’s leg, dodged the rod and fork, then wheeled around to retreat from the assault by the weapons in the four-armed monstrosity’s hands.

Zorro flew up, stabbed Kamoshida in between the protruding ribs on its misshapen body.

The Shadow slashed it with its enormous knife, knocking Zorro into the balcony’s railing and Morgana stumbling backwards.

Kamoshida snapped the rod in his lower hand to the ground. Something opened behind him, and six emaciated boys locked in full iron helms scrambled up on all fours, pulling carts of volleyballs. As soon as they took position beside the Shadow, they reached in and began hurling volleyballs.

Despite their comical look, the impacts struck Berith like sledgehammers. Akira flinched several times and stumbled under the assault until he unsummoned it. “Andras!”

Carmen hurled her huge ice ball, detonating against Kamoshida and freezing one of the chained boys in a thick crust of frost.

The remaining prisoner-boys shifted target to Captain Kidd, surfing high in the air around Kamoshida.

Ryuji grit his teeth. “Damn, man, that actually hurts.”

Morgana came alongside Ryuji and loosed a crossbow bolt at one of the cognitive boys. “Leave those to me.” His and Zorro’s eyes blazed with blue-white. Wispy tendrils of the same sprang up around many of the volleyballs, most of them arcing away from Kidd and Carmen while others turned all the way into Kamoshida.

***

Carmen’s ball of ice soared into the formation next to Kamoshida, exploding with a burst of icy fog and leaving two of the demon’s emaciated henchmen frozen. The four-armed beast snarled and swung its three-meter knife, its movements slower and less precise but still strong.

Agathion wriggled its fingers, floating safely out of the giant demon’s reach, and lightning lanced into Kamoshida.

Zorro swiped its rapier, deflecting another volleyball from the iron-helmed minions as it used its telekinesis to deflect most of the rest headed at the team’s Personas.

Morgana ran, sliding to a stop near Akira. “Joker! We don’t have the brute force to overpower him.”

Akira snarled and lifted his sub-machine gun for another quick burst. “If violence isn’t solving our problems, we’re not using enough of it.”

Morgana sighed. “The Treasure must be strengthening the Shadow, Joker. We have to get it away from him. If we can’t steal the treasure, all our efforts are useless.”

Akira reached out a hand, calling back Agathion. He spared a growl at his short compatriot. “Then you go get it. Pillar of Heaven!”

Kidd floated past the churning swirl of darkness and fire like a surfer, the swift ease of motion drawing a pang of jealousy in Akira. Refocusing on the demon, he glared at the bulging eye locked onto him like a chameleon’s twitching sensor and shot a bolt of fire into it.

Kamoshida snarled and he reared back, the putrescent purple tongue winding up. Akira turned and ran for all he was worth to keep out of its swipe, the other Personas scattering either for height or distance.

The dripping tongue slammed down. Kidd dodged above it, but Carmen and Pillar both couldn’t move out of the way in time.

Ann and Akira tumbled to the ground with the force of the blow against their Personas.

Gritting his teeth, Akira shoved himself back up and sent out another pulse of darkness. The blow sent a small twitch through Kamoshida’s arm.

Growling, the transformed Shadow glared with one eye.

Pillar sent another pulse of darkness into the malformed demon, then a second and third.

Kamoshida swiped his giant knife through Pillar and Akira fell to his knee with a grunt of pain, hand clutching his side.

Pillar shot another blast of fire into Kamoshida’s face, drawing a growl.

Kamoshida lifted his enormous burgundy glass. Wine sloshed around the terrified cognitive Ann as she struggled to cling to the glass, tipping over and pouring into the Shadow’s gaping maw.

Kidd shot another concentrated pulse of wind at it, continuing circling.

Morgana leapt out from upper balcony, knocking against the crown, but instead of flying off, slimy black tendrils underneath pulled it back onto his head. Morgana cringed back, grabbed one of the demon’s horns to steady himself.

Morgana’s eyes glowed and Zorro telekinetically pulled at the crown, exposing the tendrils reaching from the crown to bury into the Shadow’s head.

Carmen sent a bolt of ice at the tendrils.

Pillar blasted a pulse of fire into Kamoshida’s face, splitting its attention from the struggle on its head.

Morgana jumped and swung his crossbow, its long bayonet severing the tendrils and sending the crown crashing and shrinking off to the side.

Kamoshida screamed and thrashed wildly, knocking Morgana away. Darkness blasted like high-pressure steam from its mouth and every scratch.

Pillar sent another bolt of darkness at the Shadow, joined by a blast of exploding ice from Carmen, freezing the remaining minions and winding the shrinking demon Kamoshida.

Collapsing his crossbow, Morgana dashed after the man-sized crown as Zorro hurled one of the frozen slaves into the Shadow.

At last reduced to his human – if still towering – size, Kamoshida dove for the crown, kicking Morgana out of the way. A bullet pinged against the ground, centimeters from him, and the Shadow dashed for the balcony but stopped in the doorway.

Akira took aim. “What’s wrong? Can’t handle the last thing you pushed Suzui into?” He gave a feral grin. “No, that’s too good for you.” Lining up the sights, he glanced down at the action locked forward, the magazine empty. He snarled.

Breathing heavy, Kamoshida spun left, then right.

Ann advanced, pistol raised. “What’s wrong? Isn’t the great athlete going to run?”

Kamoshida took a shaky step closer to the balcony, clutching the crown like a drowning man a life-saver. “You’re just like all the others, forcing their expectations… all their needs on me. This is all for them! Why shouldn’t I be rewarded?”

Akira lowered his gun, moving Pillar closer. It pulsed with churning flames, his face grim.

Kamoshida cowered behind an upraised hand, “No, please…”

Carmen shot an ice bolt, smashing one of the double-doors and encrusting part of the balcony.

Ann’s lips bared teeth. “How many people begged you the same way? Did Kiriko-senpai scream for mercy when you did it to her? Did Shiho?”

Kamoshida trembled, glanced out at the balcony, cringed, then looked back in. His knees knocked.

Ann took another step closer, pistol steady despite the tears of anger forming at the corners of her eyes. “Shiho saw the same view. I bet she was terrified, but she didn’t have anywhere to turn.”

Pillar loomed behind Akira and he crossed his arms. Fire and darkness churned, eager to be released. “So what’s it gonna be, bastard? Jump? Or do we finish you off here and now?”

Kamoshida looked down at the crown in his hands and blubbered. “Everything’s over when you lose!” He slid to his knees, shaking hands losing their grip and letting the crown roll out over the tiled floor. After at least a minute of messy tears, he took in a shuddering breath and sat back on his heels. “Do what you want. You won that right.”

Morgana reached for the crown.

Akira’s teeth ground together. Pillar pulsed, its bottom swirling out wider, darkness reaching out.

Ann flicked out her arm, fingers spread. Those five slender, gloved digits were all it took to stop him. A vicious snarl flickered over his face, but when his eyes slid to her, all his energy fled. Shiho may have infatuated him, but she was Ann’s best friend for years.

Kamoshida’s eyes dropped and his shoulders slumped. “Just… finish me off. End it all.”

Ann’s fists curled, the leather straining, her teeth grinding. After tense seconds, she let out a primal scream. Carmen hurled an ice ball.

Akira’s heart jumped in his chest.

The ball struck the balcony and exploded. Shards of stone flew and a part-frost-encrusted Kamoshida tumbled back into the throne room.

Ann sucked in a deep breath, her teeth clenched. “A brain-dead shit-head can’t confess his crimes.”

Kamoshida gathered himself back onto his knees, looking up at her through teary eyes. “What would I do now?”

Ann lowered her pistol. “Atone for your sins. Every. Last. One.”

Kamoshida bowed until his forehead touched the floor. After a moment, Akira could’ve sworn he saw the pattern of tiles below through the bowing Shadow’s body.

Akira opened his mouth to ask Morgana if Kamoshida was supposed to turn translucent when a tremor shot through the castle.

Morgana’s eyes snapped wide. “The Palace is crumbling! Let’s get out of here!”

Friday, 22 April 2016
Shujin, Front Gates

“The destination has been deleted. Thank you for your hard work.” Akira’s phone said, the alley around them hemming in the sound and making the soft voice seem louder.

Ann sucked in a breath, pressing a hand against her side. “Holy shit. And I thought fighting that demonic Kamoshida was bad.”

Akira coughed once, then spat blood at the dirty alley pavement.

Ann’s eyes widened. “You’re bleeding.”

Jaw shifting, Akira flinched in pain. “I must’ve bit my tongue. It’s nothing.”

Ryuji pushed up from bracing against his knees, holding his weight off his left leg. “What did that nav thing mean?” He brought up his own smart phone. His eyes widened. “Dudes, the bookmark is gone!”

Ann sat against one of the air conditioning units. “The… the Palace is totally gone?”

Morgana stepped out from behind Ryuji, a smirk clear despite the gold medal held in his mouth. He hopped up next to Ann and set it down. “Heh heh.”

Ann stared down at it. “What about the crown?”

Morgana sat. “This was the root, or perhaps seed, of Kamoshida’s distorted desires. To him, the medal is worth as much as that giant crown in the Palace.”

Ryuji’s lips curled in disgust. “An Olympic medal. Figures that perv couldn’t let go of his past glory.”

Ann glanced at Akira, then to their shape-changed guide. “Does that mean his heart changed?”

Ryuji stood straight. “Wait, if we got his medal here…”

Morgana shook his head. “This is a manifestation of his cognition. Kamoshida’s real Olympic gold is still wherever he keeps it.” He prodded the medal with a paw. “I guess in a twisted way, I can understand one part of his desire. Once you’ve gotten an Olympic gold, what way is there to go but down?”

Ann let out a relieved sigh. “Thank god, at least we won’t be arrested as thieves. Does this mean his heart changed?”

Morgana’s confidence flagged. “It… should.”

Ryuji disassembled his shotgun and hid its sections in his school bag. “Should ain’t good enough when I’ve got an expulsion comin’ up in less than two weeks.”

Morgana stood, tail twitching in agitation. “I can’t give you answers when I don’t have them. It’s not like I’ve got a dozen toppled Palaces under my belt. This was my first success.” The tail lowered. “But the whole castle collapsed. That must have been a lot of suppressed weight pressing down on him.”

Ryuji glanced at Akira. “Hey, since when are you the quiet one? Don’t you wanna know too?”

Morgana sighed. “We’ll just have to be patient.” He narrowed his eyes at Akira. “Now stop looking gloomy. Kamoshida’s Shadow said he’s returning to his self in reality. Even if he was scum, maybe he regained his conscience.” He took in a steady breath. “Whatever happens to Kamoshida, we definitely saved a lot of people.”

Ann struggled to make a smile. “Yeah.” She looked over the alley at Akira. “What about you? You haven’t said a word since the throne room.”

“It’s time to go.” Akira turned and limped off at a speed as close to a power-walk as he could manage.

Morgana sighed. “I’ll go keep an eye on him. You two rest up.”

“Make sure he goes to that doctor,” Ann called after them.

Friday, 22 April 2016
Evening
Inokashira Park

Akira pumped his arms, racing over the paved path. Every limb ached and stabbing pains lanced through his torso, but not enough to drive away a dozen voices haunting his mind.

There’s no way a nice girl like that would be caught dead with Kamoshida,” he remembered saying.

You better not,” Ann snapped at him days ago. “Kamoshida’s harsh enough when he doesn’t think we’re ‘distracted’.”

Akira dodged around a clump of three strolling pedestrians, his hip protesting at the change in momentum.

Shiho’s voice sounded in his mind’s ear, “Not at all, I think it’s a very good goal to work towards. It’s something good for society and good for you.”

We’re best friends, have been since middle school. She works so hard and I can’t… I can’t mess up something she loves.”

Akira’s heart pounded, and his limbs felt like lead.

Try not to worry about the things people say,” Shiho told him.

Don’t be so nosy,” Ann snapped.

Despite his efforts, Akira’s jog slowed and the light-headed sensation failed to take away his pain.

Just make sure not to screw things up for Shiho.”

It’s okay, Ann. I think he does mean well.”

Heaving breaths and stumbling, Akira returned to Yongen. Once there, the feeling of sweat-salt crusting his exercise shirt diverted him to the baths across from Leblanc. Even as he sat back in the hot water, it felt like crushing weight pressed down.

Chapter 16: April 23rd, Price of Victory

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Saturday, 23 April 2016
Morning
Aoyama-Itchome Station

Feeling suffocated, Akira forced his way out of the train with other throngs of students. Stopping to lean against a tiled support column, he struggled to catch and slow his breath, one ear listening to announcements and the press of conversations and station noise, the other ear listening to angry industrial metal music on an earbud.

A dyed-blond head appeared out of the crowd, Ryuji coming out of the directionless mass of people. “Hey, dude.” Getting closer, he noticed the earbud and music playlist on Akira’s phone. “Man, nothin’ phases you. After all that with Kamoshida, I feel totally spent. I even missed breakfast today ‘cause of sleepin’ in.”

Voice as mechanical as his posture, Akira responded, “I was running until twenty-two-hundred last night and I’m still here. Ready and on time.”

Ryuji’s eyes widened, mouth curling in an impressed smile. “Duuude, you are a machine.” He kicked at the ground, then cringed. “Man, all this worryin’ just makes me hungrier.”

“Then buy bread at the school store.”

Ryuji practically fell to the floor, his shoulders staying slumped. “You gotta stop bein’ so hard on me.”

Saturday, 23 April 2016
Lunchtime
Shujin, Rooftop

A modest lunch in hand, Akira paced up the stairs and away from the halls filled with the usual meaningless drivel. He reached for the door, looking forward to leaving behind Mishima’s monotonous typing, Ann’s concerned looks, and the pointless rumors from the student body. At least on the roof he could rationalize his lonely sense of failure as something sensible, something just part of the isolated setting and not his family’s genetic legacy of failure.

The door swung open and Akira squinted against the momentary blindness from the noontime sun.

When his vision cleared, he spotted someone in a girl’s school uniform standing up from the planters, dusting her hands. Her curly, auburn hair tickled the back of his mind, but he felt too awkward to greet her by her given name when they didn’t know each other. Haru’s eyes stopped on the fresh tupperware in his hand. “Oh, you came up here to eat lunch? Don’t let me stop you.”

He gave a shallow nod of thanks to her for not protesting his presence. An empty roof would have been better, but this would have to do. “Thanks… Senpai.”

Saturday, 23 April 2016
Lunchtime
Halls of Shujin

Cruising from his class to the far hall where his two friends had homeroom, Ryuji spotted Ann by herself, opening a small box of pocky. “Yo.” He strode closer, hands in his pockets. “Hey, you see Akira in class today?”

Ann raised an eyebrow. “Uh, duh. He sits in front of Mishima, just a couple chairs away. At least he doesn’t spend all day checking me out.”

Ryuji flinched. “Ugh, that ain’t what I’m talkin’ about. I saw him this morning. I mean, I dunno ‘bout you, but after last night, even though I don’t know if we changed Kamoshida’s heart for sure, it’s like I got this huge weight off my shoulders.”

Ann’s gaze took on a distant quality. “I know what you mean.”

“But Akira didn’t look like that. Sure, he was leanin’ against one of those pillars at the train station listenin’ to music, but I’ve been thinkin’. He looks more like he’s got something holdin’ him down than before we went up against big and ugly.”

Ann slouched against the wall. “Maybe so. I sent him a text last night to say thanks, and he never responded. Then all through morning classes all I heard was the scratching of his pen. He’s always asked me how I’m doing.”

Ryuji grinned and wiggled his eyebrows. “You sure he wasn’t checkin’ you out back there?”

Her eyebrows furrowed. “Yes. I’m sure. Unlike you, he has some class.”

Chouno paced up the stairs, looking left and right with an aggravated air. “Damn, where is that kid? I have my own students to deal with.” Pausing when she spotted Ann, the English teacher marched closer. “Well, Takamaki, you’ll have to do. Kamoshida-san took the day off. They’re holding study hall instead of PE today. Make sure you tell Kurusu-kun. Kawakami is busy and I have my own class to take care of.”

Ryuji’s eyes widened and he jerked his hands out of his pockets. “Kamoshida ain’t here? He never missed a day in his life!”

Chouno shrugged, though her eyes fell away from the two students. She took a step closer, her eyes flicking left and right. “You didn’t hear it from me, but I heard Kamoshida put himself under suspension.”

Ann stood up from the wall. “So soon before the tournament? No way.”

The gossipy teacher in maroon leaned closer. “Principal Kobayakawa left to talk to him about it. He’s never hesitated to be heavy-handed before, so I can’t believe he’d just let the coach disappear at a time like this. But after he came back from Kamoshida’s he’s been locked up in his office.”

Ryuji looked to Ann. “You think the expulsions are why Akira’s been so moody?”

“Expulsions?” Chouno crossed her arms, zeroing in on the artificial blond. “I haven’t seen any papers about it. I know the rumors, but Kamoshida’s normally very prompt about getting work done. If he’s not there to defend it they may be thrown out. Anyway, make sure you relay that to Kurusu.” She turned and trotted away.

Ann swallowed her pocky and drew another stick. “I don’t think the expulsions were it, he never seemed phased by it before. It’s like it wasn’t even in his mind, just avenging Shiho.” She gave a self-derisive smirk. “He was just as gung-ho about it as I was, and he only knew her a couple of days.” She chowed down, then swallowed as her eyes widened. “Maybe that’s what I could do. Earlier he asked to come along and see Shiho.”

Ryuji turned to her. “She’s awake?”

Ann shook her head. “No, but he wanted to apologize. Besides Yuuki, Akira was probably hardest hit by Shiho’s…” Her eyes fell, “suicide attempt. Maybe if I invite him along today, he’ll be able to deal with what happened.”

Ryuji scratched his neck. “Why’d those two take it so hard? I thought you were her BFF?”

Ann set her pocky on the nearby locker and drew her phone, preparing a text for Shiho’s mother. “When Akira arrived, I wasn’t… too good to him. Shiho, having the heart two times too big for her, of course gave him a smile and some quiet encouragement.” Tapping the send, she drew in a breath. “Maybe… at least I can do this much.”

Saturday, 23 April 2016
After School
Shujin, Class 2-D

The bell rang and Ann tossed her things together, looking across the class to see Akira’s lethargic motions despite Yuuki’s attempts to provoke him into conversation about the upcoming midterms. Or whether they’d still be around for them. Navigating through the desks, she stopped next to his. “Hey, Akira. Come on.”

Akira looked up at her, hands still packing with no sign of hurry.

Glancing at Yuuki to note he was listening, she kept her focus on Akira. “Shiho’s mom got back to me. It’s okay for you to come visit today.”

Behind him, Yuuki flinched. Akira’s eyes snapped wide for fraction of second, but he composed himself back to the creepy robotic Akira a moment later. “You… you sure?”

She looked to Yuuki. “I’m sure you—”

Yuuki shook his head, shouldering his school satchel and turning away. “I’ve no right to see her. What could I possibly say?”

Stepping aside to let him out, Ann gestured to Akira. “Hurry up. Train ride’s forty-five minutes each way.”

Saturday, 23 April 2016
Hospital, Room 248

A woman with a thin, green head-scarf looked up as the two teenagers entered. Deep circles around her eyes gave her a gaunt appearance. “Oh, hello, Ann-chan.” She glanced over at the curly-haired boy. “And you are?”

Akira bowed, still showing no outward sign of emotion. “Kurusu Akira. Please just call me Akira.”

Miss Suzui lifted a hand to straighten her cyan sweater in the air-conditioning. “Such a polite lad.” Her stomach growled and a thin frown formed. “A little forward, though. So you’re the new friend Ann-chan told me about?”

Akira bowed again, reminding Ann more of a wooden doll than the passionate comrade she thought she knew. “I feel like that might be presuming, Suzui-san. Your…” His throat tensed. “Your daughter was the first one at Shujin to show me any kindness.” Coming up slow, his breath hitched and he didn’t quite look at the girl wrapped in casts and tubes. “She… you have an amazing daughter.”

She gave a plastic smile. “Ann-chan, if you could watch over Shiho? I haven’t eaten since yesterday.”

“Oh, of course Suzui-san.”

The weary mother stepped out. Ann took a position at the foot of the bed while Akira came to a stop near the head. A rigid plastic collar still locked Suzui’s neck, casts and pins on both legs and another cast on her left arm highlighted the severity of her injuries.

Akira lowered to both knees, touched his fingers to his forehead, stomach, then shoulders, and folded his hands on the edge of the bed. “Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum…”

Ann stepped closer, taking her left arm in her right. With no idea what to say to either one, she listened to him go in in prayer in that strange language until he stopped, then prayed in plain language for Shiho’s health. Then he began the prayer in that strange language again and she couldn’t stand the awkwardness, so she knelt next to him.

Akira froze, hands tense in their perch on the edge of the bed. “Sorry, am I bothering you?”

Ann shifted her weight from her left knee to her right. “To be honest, it felt wrong to just be standing around when you were kneeling there. Sounds like you were really… fervent.”

Akira looked over Shiho. “Nobody’s ever described me as pious before.”

Ann brushed the tip of one pigtail off her shoulder. “Well… Shiho and her mother would—do appreciate you praying for her healing.”

Akira’s gaze drifted away. “It… only seems appropriate.” He brought his hands down to his sides, rubbing his left arm where she remembered his Persona taking quite a blow days ago. “You know, God in the Catholic Church is portrayed as a lot of things. King. Father. Most especially judge. Father Motoori said the Greek Orthodox Church holds him up as a healer and I always liked that particular avatar. It’s probably why I decided to go into chiropractics. Jesus healed people everywhere he went, and sermons are always going on about how we’re supposed to try to be like him. So I decided the best way to be the opposite of my old bastard is to be a healer.” He gave a self-derisive smirk. “It would be pretty far from everything else I’ve done in my life so far.”

Ann fidgeted, then could no longer ignore the call of nature and stood. “I need to use the bathroom.”

Akira nodded, tapping his fingers against himself again before settling back into his strange prayer.

Ann trotted out to the public restroom a few minutes away. On the way back, she heard Akira talking, but on peeking into the room saw nobody else. Despite knowing it was rude to eavesdrop, she pressed herself next to the doorway and listened in.

“…Smiling Mountain Mental Institute. Until Isshiki’s death and he was assigned as head of research.” Akira gave a bitter snort. “Imagine it. A fourth grader who thought it was normal for his father to put him in experiments. That’s why they started calling me the lab freak’s kid. Or sometimes they’d call me ‘lab freak’. The first day from school I came back to the institution in tears. My old bastard lost it. He always had a temper, but he usually yelled before. That was the first time he hit me. And kept on doing it. He said ‘men don’t cry’ some time before I blacked out. That was when I started getting into fights. The teachers always said I shouldn’t fight, but… they expected it. They stopped whispering behind my back and looking down their noses at me. When I ran away from school that first day with tears and snot running down my face, the way they looked at me said more than a million words. Violence was okay. Crying was not.”

A cyan sweater against the sterile white drew Ann’s attention to the hall in the direction of the cafeteria to Suzui’s mother.

Uncertain why she felt her heart rate spike, she scrambled inside and gave a smile that wouldn’t fool an infant. “Well, I’m back.”

Akira jerked in the chair pulled up next to the bed, taking his clasped hands into his lap. She thought she noticed some faint puffiness around his eyes, but by the time she got close enough to be sure he already rubbed his face to straighten himself out.

Glancing at the two youths at her daughter’s bedside, Suzui’s mother came to the foot of the bed. “Any change?”

Ann shifted her weight to her other foot. “No, she’s still unconscious.”

Akira stood and stepped away from the chair so Shiho’s mother had a clear path. “She’ll pull through,” he said, tone dull and controlled, though she thought she heard a hint of need in it. “If ever I met a strong person, it’s Suzui.”

Shiho’s mother pulled a half-spent packet of tissues from her pocket and snatched one out for herself. “She… yes, she certainly is.”

Saturday, 23 April 2016
Evening
Yongen

Darkness fell as the sun sank low behind the mountains, natural and man-made, of Tokyo. Akira held up a hand in a lazy wave of acknowledgment at the owner of the second-hand shop and kept going. The echoes of the multitudes on the train rang in his ears, somehow only enhanced by the silence of the almost-empty road.

Akira’s phone blasted Alliance Force Assemble and he hissed in annoyance before drawing it. He groaned when he saw Ryuji’s ID on the text app, then settled his back against the dark theater building. “Can I not get five minutes to myself in this city?”

[You back from the hospital yet?]

Akira typed in, [I just got to Yongen. Don't forget how many transfers I need before I get anywhere.]

A tone played and Ann joined the chatroom. [All safe and sound, then. I didn't realize how much homework I was putting off until I got back.]

Akira rolled his eyes. [I just wish there was something I could've done. I hate feeling useless.]

[I hear ya, bro. All this waiting has me antsy. Want to go on a trip or something?]

[Sure.] Akira glanced down at his school satchel, hanging off his shoulder, with Morgana peering up at him from inside. [You and me can hit the library.]

Ryuji’s response came fast. [Um, yeah no. Do you remember all the talking the last time we made that mistake?]

Ann’s response came next. [There's plenty of diners in Shibuya.]

Akira grimaced, not liking looking like a negative person. [Me and crowds don't mix. I'm also not so sure about Shibuya, I think I ran into a meeting I wasn't supposed to see.]

[Holy shit! You run into the yakuza?]

Akira sighed, pushed his glasses up and rubbed the spot on the bridge of his nose for a few moments. [Let's not get overexcited. Just a couple thugs talking about drugs in an alley. Although if you hear anything related, shoot me a quick message.]

[That is so cool, man!]

Even Morgana sighed. “Reaper, you must have serious problems with concentrating.”

Several seconds passed of as much quiet as this neighborhood of Tokyo got until a helicopter rumbled through the air above.

Ryuji’s ID pulsed, three dots dancing for a few moments. [So back to less alley talk, how's Suzui? Everybody in class's been quiet and antsy since her incident.]

[I told her we settled things with Kamoshida. She's still in a coma, but… I had to make amends.]

Akira straightened against the dark theater door. [You didn't do anything wrong, Ann. Kamoshida's the one who did.]

Ann’s response came so fast he could almost hear the self-scathing tone. [But I was there next to her the whole time. What kind of friend could be that close and let that happen?]

Morgana’s ears drooped. “That poor, kind girl.”

“Pity helps nobody,” Akira snapped. [Don't you dare start moping about might-haves. We're here now and what happened happened. All we can do now is decide what we do from here on.]

No sound but the helicopter circling overhead interrupted the night, and Akira slid further underneath the theater’s overhang. When he looked back at the chat, Ann added, [You're right. I have to make up for what I should've done or I won't be able to move on.]

Ryuji pinged next, [When'd you get so fired up? I don't remember you being so passionate in middle school.]

Ann wrote, [I think I was just trying to get by before. But with all of you, I know there's more. To me, and to life. More that I should've been doing all along. You're right, though. We should do something when this blows over.]

Akira stared at the chat. “I dunno if that would be a good idea. The cops didn’t like me hat-snatching while I was attending Inuri.”

Morgana looked askance at him. “You do know there are things you can do for fun that aren’t illegal, right?”

Akira slipped his phone into his pocket and headed for the cafe. “Not until cannabis is legal.” He pushed open the door to Leblanc, the annoying bell jingling.

Sojiro looked up from counting through the register. “You keeping busy out there?”

Akira shrugged. “Trying to keep up with school.”

Sojiro counted out one last thing, wrote into his cell phone, then closed the register. “You have some time? We haven’t really sat down to chat since you got here. There’s a lot of things I’d like to ask.”

Akira kept walking until reaching the coffee siphons by the sink, but stopped short of the hallway to the stairs. Guessing he’d lose more credit than he’d gain by keeping to himself, he let out a breath, set his school satchel down on the booth seat behind him, and whispered to Morgana, “I’ll catch you later.”

Morgana slipped out, but only got as far as the bathroom before stopping and leaning as if readying to listen in.

Akira spun a bar stool around backwards, plopped on it, and leaned away.

Sojiro looked away, struggled to think for a moment, then looked at him with a focused gaze like plenty of the fuzz around Inuri. “How’s school? You’re not causing any trouble, are you?”

Akira crossed his arms, jaw set. “Of course I would have to be the one causing trouble.”

Sojiro sighed, then started straightening things by the coffee machines. “I’m just trying to get started, here. I have to report to your probation officer twice a month. Consider how much of a pain in the ass it is when I’ve already got everything else to deal with.”

Scoffing, Akira tightened his crossed arms. “Right. Because all those laws to keep the people in line are worth so much when the authority figures aren’t worth the respect a healthy nation needs to keep from toppling.”

Sojiro pulled away from fiddling, giving him an analytic gaze heavy with suspicion but also curious probing. “You’ve sure got an interesting perspective.” He slid a few things inwards against the kitchen side of the bar and reached for the towel to dry his already dry hands. “Does that have anything to do with that pondering you were doing the other day about fathers building someone up?

Akira straightened on the stool. “I wasn’t expecting that to come up again. I figured you’d pretend you weren’t there and hope I forgot.”

Sojiro shrugged his shoulders in the nervous manner like he had exactly that thought but didn’t want to admit it. “I went to get your cat some food, I didn’t intend to listen in. But yes, I heard a few things.” He set the towel down. “Not that I’m saying it’s a bad thing to talk things out, even to a cat. Sometimes you can help straighten out an idea that way.” The middle-aged man smirked. “But every once in a while you might want to talk things out with a person. They can talk back and maybe even help you figure something out.”

Akira drummed his fingers against the counter. “I’d have to trust that nobody’d stab me in the back to want to do that. Only problem is people tend to be humans, and that seems to be their modus opperandi.”

“People aren’t all bad,” Sojiro shot back. His phone rang and he stepped back to the shelves to answer. “What’s wrong?” A young, feminine voice floated out from his phone, not quite loud enough for distinct words to reach Akira’s ears. “Sorry, I’ll head out now.”

Akira slumped over his bar stool. “Hot date?”

Frowning, Sojiro’s brow drew together and down. “You can see I’ve got plenty on my plate, professionally and personally. What about you?”

Akira leaned away, grabbing onto the chair’s back to stay steady. “I put in an application to work up at Ore no Beko up in Shibuya. Only problem is they only need people for the evening shift.”

Sojiro’s arms crossed. “You want to go wandering off all the way to Shibuya at night? I have to justify your actions to a probation officer, you know! If it was something on the way from school I could understand, as long as you keep up on your studies, but I still have to lock up and I’ve got plenty to do myself.” He paused, his eyes falling on the coffee makers. His stance relaxed. “Though while we’re at it, you could lend a hand here.”

Akira looked around the empty diner. “Yeah, these crowds must really test the limits. I don’t know how you keep it together. All that fat loot must really weigh you down.”

Rolling his eyes, Sojiro stepped closer. “I’m not asking you to work for free. These beans aren’t just for show. If you pitch in, I’ll teach you how to brew the perfect cup.” He smirked as if he said something brilliant. “What do you think?”

Akira slipped his hands into his pockets, shoulders drooping. “I don’t really have any friends to impress with a cup of good coffee.”

Something passed through Sojiro’s face that Akira hadn’t seen since Officer Ichijou, a look he couldn’t identify. The middle-aged man gave a one-shouldered shrug. “Never hurts to learn beforehand. Preparation beats make-up.”

Akira slumped forward. “I guess I do need a part time job somewhere. Fair enough.”

Chapter 17: April 24th, With Grace

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Sunday, 24 April 2016
Morning
Kanda Catholic Church

Mass over, Akira sat back in the bench and closed his eyes to listen to the shuffle of people. Slow scraping marked people gathering to chat, the posh, posh of leather and rubber identifying people walking out with an energy of haste. No simple answers about what to do today arose. Despite sniping with Ryuji, Akira didn’t know what to do about Kamoshida. Standing, he realized he had yet to go to Confession like Father Motoori asked. Akira sighed, feeling his temples throb just at the prospect of talking about everything happening recently. He looked around the emptying sanctuary.

A pretty girl with a red, omamori-style knot in her hair zipped a leather-bound study bible closed and gathered a wood box and wood grid board. Curiosity stirred and he walked around the pews between them. “Hello. I see you’ve got a… hold on a second.” He counted. “Chess boards are eight across, that’s nine. Am I right in presuming that’s a shogi board?”

The girl smoothed out her conservative beige dress. Her stance remained guarded, but one corner of her mouth curled up. “That’s right, I’m a shogi player.” She gave a polite incline of her head. “Togo Hifumi.”

Akira adjusted his glasses, sudden panic shooting through him at the possibility of meeting somebody neutral who knew nothing of his checkered past. “Please, call me Akira. It’s been a little while since I played. I think there was only one person who really liked it in chess club at my last school, although it was a rather eclectic bunch there. More played go than chess, anyway.”

Togo turned a curious, analyzing gaze on him. A long moment passed before she held the board close and sidestepped to let another parishioner leave. “Oh? That’s interesting. Kosei High does have a small chess club, but that is the only game they play.”

Akira shrugged. “Well, their loss. I liked every strategy game I played, but in order to really train your strategic muscle you have to test it against a variety of challenges.”

Togo paused, the gears whirling behind her dark green eyes. She glanced at her board, then back up at Akira. “Well, I brought this to play a few games with Father Sugiyama. If you have some time, we could play a quick match.”

A thrill zipped up his spine. Feeling good for maintaining more than thirty seconds of conversation without shooting himself in the foot, and even more at the prospect of being able to flex his strategic muscle, Akira gave a smirk. “Quick? I’ll have you know I’ve held off my opponent in go for hours.”

A sharpness entered Togo’s eyes, and a faint smile curled her pink lips. “Shogi is a very different game. We’ll see where each other stands.” She gestured to the pew next to her. “Is this good here?”

Akira plopped down and scooted in, leaving plenty of room for her and the board. He resisted the temptation to crack his knuckles for show, but knew his smirk still lingered. “Anywhere, any time.”

She set down the board, opened the box, and both began setting up.

Kanda Catholic Church

Togo took in a long breath. “The dragon which governs the blue sky has fallen into my hands!” She moved a tile. “Check.” She scooted back just a little, her eyes on Akira instead of the board. “No matter which move you make, I will have you at checkmate in less than three turns. Please concede.”

Akira stared at the board, formulating move after move and only seeing his king’s capture each time. He growled. “I do not give up.” He reached out and moved his knight, placing the tile with a firmer snap than the last.

Togo folded her hands in her lap. “To concede is to admit you have lost, with grace.”

Akira looked across the board, trying not to notice that she could promote another two pieces he couldn’t capture next turn. He tapped the curled knuckle of his index finger against his lip. “One more game.”

Togo breathed out. “This was our third match. I acknowledge your resolve, but part of being a good shogi player is knowing when to bow to one who has proven the better. Just because somebody has bested you does not mean either must lose dignity.”

Akira clenched his teeth, but the calm and clear way she said it left little room for him to hold onto anger at anything but himself. She did beat him fair and square. Cycling breath, he sat back against the pew, closed his eyes, and took in a deep breath. “That’s a lot easier to say than to do.” He opened his jaw, feeling a pop and putting a hand against one side. “I’ve tried to grow beyond him, but my old bastard—”

Togo cleared her throat, throwing a clear glance to the crucifix and altar.

“Sorry.” Akira straightened. “Anyway, he taught me that to fail is to step closer to death. It’s an end to your ability to even try.”

“That… sounds very harsh,” she said, sitting back against the pew and looking at the crucifix. “In my own experience, I know I have learned more from the games I lost than any I won.” She gave a warm, affirming smile. “I know it can be difficult, especially with the national motto practically being ‘fly or die’, but my father taught me that defeat can be our greatest teacher. If we are able to hold onto grace in defeat as well as victory, we will grow that much more from either.”

Akira let out a long breath. “I… can’t argue with that.” He glanced at the board, then up into the deep green pools of her eyes. “S-so that last game…?”

She checked the time on her phone, then flashed him an apologetic smile and started putting pieces away. “I’m sorry, but my mother arranged an interview for me. I must be going.”

Father Sugiyama came up the aisle from the altar. “Good day, Daughter,” he paused to bow to Togo, who returned with a lower bow. “Son,” he bowed to Akira, who returned the gesture. “Please forgive my absence. When I noticed how focused you both looked, I couldn’t help but hold back.”

Her eyes widened as if she scrambled to excuse her hand from the cookie jar. “Oh, not at all, Father. I’m sorry I allowed myself to be distracted so long, especially after asking you to set aside time for a game.”

Father Sugiyama turned to Akira. “I see you have met our resident shogi expert, Togo-chan.”

Akira whipped around to the girl in the flattering, beige dress. “Shogi exp… I knew it! You were bamboozling me.”

Father Sugiyama gave the kind of smile that hinted at more to say later. “Nonsense, I dare say Togo-chan is the most honest member of this parish. And I do include myself in that count.”

Akira felt a lump in his throat and looked away, feeling his face heat up. Determined not to let things end on a sour note to the only person to give him a good run, he bowed his head at Togo. “Sorry. It’s just that I’ve never been decimated quite so thoroughly in a strategy game before.”

Hifumi closed her tile box. “Well, you’re no novice… though everybody has room to grow.”

Akira stood. “Perhaps another game later?”

She brushed her hair back over one ear, then let out a breath, tension creeping into her expression. “Perhaps. I’m afraid I have little time during the week right now between studying for entrance exams and interviews, but perhaps I will see you here next week?”

Akira gave a flourished bow at the waist. “It would be an honor.”

Togo gave a relaxed smile that sent a shot of relief through his system, held her board and box on her left side, and gave a brief bow of her own. “Then next week after Mass.”

Father Sugiyama watched her leave for a few seconds, then turned to Akira. “I’m pleased to see you’ve made a friend. I hope this week has been gentler to you than the last?”

“I…” Akira sighed, unsure whether to call it a net gain or loss. “Well, a few things drew to a close, but I feel more like life is slipping through my fingers.”

Sugiyama nodded. “We’ve all been praying. Has the Suzui girl recovered?”

Akira’s shoulders slouched. “Takamaki and I visited her, but she’s still in a coma.”

Father Sugiyama gave a strained smile Akira assumed was meant to indicate empathy. “Well, sometimes all we can do is leave our troubles at the foot of the cross. Jesus may have told his disciples, ‘pick up your cross and follow me’ but God also told us in Genesis that ‘it is not good for man to be alone’.”

A hollow tone rang inside Akira’s mind at the last quote - yet another reminder about all the other people who had a mother or father they could trust, or a plethora of friends they could talk to on any day of the week, or a brother to back him up. Fighting off a snarl, he jammed his hands into his pockets. “I also thought he said he wouldn’t give us any more than we could bear.”

Akira stormed out as Father Sugiyama watched.

Sunday, 24 April 2016
Evening
Yongen, Leblanc

Akira rinsed off the last dish and pulled the plug in the bottom of the sink, then flicked water off his hands and reached for the towel. His smart phone chirped and Akira hurried to dry before bringing up the text messaging application.

Ryuji’s ID looked back at him. [Anything change with Kamoshida?]

Akira sat down at the chair on the end of the bar as Morgana hopped up on the chair next to him. [I wouldn't know. I went up to see Suzui with Ann, remember? Something up?]

[I'm just anxious. Even after all we did, we may still get expelled.]

[We've done all we can. If you can't trust what YOU did, trust what Ann and I did.]

[Man, you're being kinda hard on me.]

Akira huffed. [I'm not being hard on you, I'm being practical.] Akira took in a long breath. Maybe he was being hard on the runner. [It applies to me, too. To be honest, I don't feel like I did enough, but what's done is done. I have to believe in what you and Ann did.]

Morgana smiled and chirped from his chair, “And me, too!”

Several seconds passed before three dots pulsed, then Ryuji’s next message came in. [Dude, you really do hold everyone to a high standard, huh?]

Akira leaned on the bar, bracing on his elbows. [The one good lesson my old bastard passed on to me. Failure is death.]

[I was going to say I feel a little better after talking about this, but… for real? Maybe we both should get out and do something.]

Hifumi’s words echoed in his mind, “Just because somebody has bested you does not mean either must lose dignity.” She seemed so serious and sage when she said it. Even though he wanted to believe it, the words went against everything he learned in life. Screw up once, and nobody will ever let you forget it.

Akira let out a short breath and typed, [I'm not really ready for celebrating right now. And I feel like I haven't left things with Ann in a good place either.]

[I guess I was worried about what's gonna happen to mom if things go south.] A short beat passed before the triple dots pulsed and he sent more. [Oh, and if there's something rough between you and Ann, please don't tell her I was doubting us, okay? She's got more than enough to handle already and I don't want her to think she's got no one to rely on.]

[Any secrets you leave with me stay with me.] Akira put his phone away and looked up to see Sojiro staring in his direction, hand pushing a polishing rag in circles on the counter. “What?”

Sojiro stretched out his shoulder, but his inscrutable look settled behind a mask with just a little suspicion. “Just tryin’ to figure a few things out. Think you’re getting used to the city?”

Akira spread his hands out on the counter. “I can navigate if that’s what you mean. Sometimes I think I’ll never get used to the crowds. At least things are easier once I get wherever I’m going.”

A beat passed as the middle-aged man stared at him before he straightened. “Well… you’ve been reliable so far. I suppose it’s safe enough if you want to go out at night.”

Akira straightened, feeling like a heavy chain slid from his shoulders. The unsavory types he both pranked and hung out with at Inuri tended to come out in droves when the sun went down, and he never had better luck than at night. This could mean opportunity to pay off the score with the doctor. “That mean it’s okay if I pick up that night job at the beef bowl in Shibuya?”

Sojiro dropped the polishing rag in a bin under the counter, looking tired. “As long as you take school seriously and don’t get in trouble, I don’t care. Just make sure the stove is off and you lock up.”

Monday, 25 April 2016
Early Morning
Aoyama-Itchome Station

The cacophony of a thousand conversations and feet in the enclosed train station assaulted Akira. He pushed and shoved through the crowd meandering up the stairs like flocking animals. At last he escaped to the street. Akira ducked to one side to get some room to breathe, one hand white-knuckled on his schoolbag and the other clenching his phone, a shogi game in progress on the screen.

Blonde pigtails appeared out of the crowd and Ann slipped out, locked onto him and trotted closer with the ease of striding from one room to another in a private house. She flashed him a smile. “Morning! How’s being packed in like sardines, city-style?”

Akira looked away, unsure if she was mocking him but unwilling to make a gaffe if she wasn’t. Ryuji’s hint that Ann had no one else to turn to echoed in his ears and he couldn’t shove her away like he had the previous days. “I thought commuter hell sounded funnier before I landed neck-deep in it.”

Ann’s plastic smile vanished and an empathetic frown crossed her face. “Sorry, I can see you don’t like it. I don’t mean to poke fun at one of your weaknesses.”

Feeling hot, Akira swallowed and looked away from the pretty girl’s concern. “Don’t worry about it.”

Ann crossed her arms and he tried not to notice the way it pushed up her breasts. “To tell the truth, I’m worried. I always get anxious when I don’t have something to do.”

Akira nodded, letting out a breath that took a little of his tension with it. He brought up his phone and slid a tile over, then submitted the move. “Me too.”

Ann took a step closer, her shoulders angling away as if she wanted to leave but her hips pointed towards him as if she wanted to turn straight to him. “Say… do you have time after school? Both of us need to switch gears.”

The narrow score he got on Chunou-sensei’s last English quiz despite being the last to turn it in weighed down on him and he mumbled, “Need to study.”

Ann forced a smile showing teeth too perfect to be real. “Then we can meet and study at the diner!” She waited several seconds as students streamed past, but when he kept his eyes fixed on his phone, she waved goodbye. “Well, see you. Thanks.”

Monday, 25 April 2016
After School
Shibuya, Diner

Ann moved her ice cream bowl to the far inner side of the table and turned the page in her history textbook. Books and papers spread out over the table in the cozy diner several floors up from Shibuya’s street level. Every table hosted eaters, and the few waiters working that afternoon scrambled to keep up. Despite the number of people surrounding them, the net effect left them near alone.

Ann looked up, trying to figure out what was eating at him. “So… Akira. About everything that happened with Kamoshida…”

His mechanical pencil’s lead broke and he tapped out another millimeter. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

She closed her mouth and watched him for a moment, but his shoulders never relaxed. “You haven’t touched your kale kobachi.”

He glanced at it, then went right back to writing. “I’m not hungry. Are you stuck on a problem?”

Ann glanced at her pages, well aware of how many blanks she had on papers due tomorrow. “Well, not homework. Akira, we’re worried about you. You haven’t joined us for lunch, you don’t talk to us anymore.” She forced a smile in the hopes he’d look up and see some positivity. “You’re probably not going to be expelled anymore.” When a couple seconds passed without response, she brushed her pigtail back. “Come on, Akira. We did everything we could with Kamoshida.”

He smacked his pencil down on his notebook, turning a burning gaze on her. “No, we didn’t do everything. Shiho’s still tied up in casts, comatose on a hospital bed and Kamoshida’s probably sipping wine in his cushy private house. He should be the one in the hospital, not Shiho.” He snatched his pencil and looked down, shoulders hunched as he resumed writing. “If the only thing I can do right at Shujin is grades, I might as well do that.”

Ann pasted a smile over her face. Of course it would come back to Shiho. Yuuki idolized her. She was so nice, everybody in Shujin seemed to like her. When Akira arrived, all she had to do was offer him a smile and friendly words of acceptance. “I know Shujin isn’t treating you right.” When he continued writing, her false smile faded into a frown. “What about the rest of Tokyo?”

At last, his pencil stilled. “I’m… not thrilled about the crowds. And the city’s so big, it takes a long time to get anywhere. Whenever I notice it, I wonder why more people don’t move out.” He started writing again.

Ann decided to take what she could get. “I know what you mean. I was just starting middle school when mom and dad brought me over. I wasn’t really ready for Tokyo either. Everybody would hang back and go ‘look at the foreign girl’. I even considered dying my hair black to blend in with everyone else.” Her smile turned shallow, but felt easier. “We were in art class one day when Shiho came up and told me ‘Takamaki, your paintings suck’.” At the memory, a laugh bubbled up.

Akira looked up at her laugh. His eyes reminded her of Yuuki’s, dark and soulful, but the hunch of his shoulders smoothed out a little. “Really? I guess she was really good at always getting to the heart of the matter.”

Ann nodded, feeling her next breath come easier at seeing him relax and open up a little. “It’s the first time I can remember someone talking to me without my looks being the center of the conversation. We talked more, and soon we were best of friends.” She scanned his face, not liking the way the muscles tensed around his eyes. It looked like pain. “What about you? Any friends you keep in contact with?”

Akira leaned back in his booth seat, eyes distant. “Not really. At Inuri we were more friends by proximity than because any of us liked each other. Father Motoori was the only one I ever went to for advice, but he was the guy who tended the chapel. When I told him I was being shipped to Tokyo, he gave me the name and address for Father Sugiyama over at the church in Kanda. Officer Ichijou said as long as I saw him every week that should count for counseling.”

Ann leaned forward, resting her elbows on the table. “Is he nice?”

Akira looked away and stretched his shoulder, guilty look unmistakable. “I… haven’t really talked to him. Kinda hard to bring up a castle where our school should be, in a magic realm that a weird phone app teleports us to.”

Ann let out a nervous sigh. “Yeah. Maaaybe we keep that Metaverse stuff to ourselves.” She paused, remembering the grateful look on his face when Shiho told him she liked his idea about becoming a doctor. “You could talk to Ryuji and… well, to me.”

He met her eyes for only a fraction of a second before looking away, red tinging his cheeks. “I… don’t know if I’m ready. I’m not all that good at talking even when I know what I’m talking about and I’m kind of… uncertain right now.”

Watching his hunched, withdrawn posture for a few moments, Ann drew in breath to growl at his refusal to share any of his burdens when she realized he just did. He wasn’t bearing his soul to her, but she reminded herself that despite the castle he only knew her for less than a month. Admitting he didn’t know what to do was one step closer.

She pursed her lips and resolved to ask Mishima.

Chapter 18: April 26th, Kamoshida's Confession

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Tuesday, 26 April 2016
Morning
Shujin Gym

Akira lined up with the rest of Shujin’s student population in the gym. The memory of the battle against the false angel in the Metaverse made his hackles rise. Unencumbered by knowledge of another world overlapping this one, the other students buzzed with gossip.

A pigtailed girl with gaudy hair ornaments beside him leaned to whisper to the boy on her left, her arms crossed in exasperation. “Seriously? An assembly in the middle of the week? Couldn’t they at least wait until Golden Week?”

A boy beside her with dark, short-trimmed hair leaned closer to her. “You think it’s about the girl who jumped?”

The pigtailed girl huffed. “It’s been almost two weeks. What are they going to do, tell us not to kill ourselves? Great timing.”

Ann, several spaces ahead of Akira, crossed her arms, shifting her weight from one foot to the other.

Muttering filled the gym like the summer humidity until Principal Kobayakawa took to the lectern. The fat man cleared his throat and gripped the edges of the stand. “Thank you all for coming, I am pleased to announce that Kamoshida-sensei has agreed to return to Shujin today. All of us have a bright future ahead, and—”

Curtains ruffled as Kamoshida trudged out from the back of the stage. He wore a grey sweatshirt and black track slacks, both rumpled. His curly hair stood flat on one side like he just sat up from the pillow. His eyes slid closed, deep circles around them giving him a skeletal appearance.

Kobayakawa turned from the lectern, a smile splitting his face at seeing his favorite teacher after weeks. “Thank the gods, Kamoshida-san…” He paused, eyes taking in the matted hair, wrinkled clothes, and defeated slouch. “Is… everything all right?”

“I cannot keep the truth inside.” Kamoshida opened his eyes, trudged to the lectern and leaned against it for support.

The students fell silent, as if waiting for a grenade pin to drop.

Kamoshida looked away from the principal, but also avoided making eye contact with the arrayed students. “I… I physically battered my teams.” His hands tensed on the wood stand and gulped down a breath. “I sexually harassed and blackmailed the female students. I even dissolved the track team because of an argument with its coach.” His arms shook and he squeezed his eyes closed.

Paling, Kobayakawa ran up to the slouching coach, but murmuring already started from the students. A girl five or six students to Akira’s right broke down sobbing, the students around her catching her to keep her from falling to her knees. After a sharp wail, she charged the stage, passing four rows of students before one snagged her arm and brought her to a spinning halt.

The two rent-a-cops at the sides of the stage stood, frozen in shock.

“Get down!” Kobayakawa reached up and tried in vain to pull the towering athlete away from the microphone as students gabbed in excited conversation, their neat rows wavering.

A crumpled paper ball hurled through the air at the stage, snapping the rent-a-cops out of their frozen state. Both fell back to the stand, but couldn’t decide if they wanted to focus on Kamoshida or the less and less organized crowd of students.

Tears glistened at the corners of Kamoshida’s eyes. “I was so arrogant, I thought of this school as a private castle. I…” He heaved in a breath. “I am shame itself.” Tears fell. “I am the one who… who… I am the cause for Suzui Shiho’s suicide attempt!”

The rising murmur of students broke into shouting, most incredulous.

Mind reeling with the event unfolding on stage, Akira gawked at the stage. Kamoshida’s heart really did change! Spotting somebody else texting reminded him of his own phone and Akira dialed the cops. “Finally, the culprit goes six feet under for what he did to Shiho.”

One of the third year teachers bellowed, “Return to your rooms!”

Trembling, Kamoshida tumbled to all fours beside the microphone stand. Akira couldn’t hear what he said, but both school cops dove for the muscled coach. Something glinted as it tumbled away from him before they wrestled him to his stomach and zip-tied his hands behind his back.

Ann shrieked, her voice somehow carrying above the frenzied crowd, “You don’t have the right to flee, bastard! Shiho’s still fighting for life! If she can keep going after everything you did to her, you better atone! For everything!”

He couldn’t tell where it started in the discord, but a chant grew through the crowd, “Jail Kamoshida! Jail Kamoshida!”

The rent-a-cops fought to get the coach back to his feet, but once they did he shook his head and returned to the microphones, leaning down to them. “You’re right, Takamaki-chan. I have not built this school, I ruined it.” Tears gathered at the corners of his eyes. “I even tried to extort Takamaki for sexual favors.”

The rest of his words were drowned out by the shouting in the crowd. Red flashed through the gym windows as the school security hauled him back behind the curtains. Noticing the flashes coming from outside, Akira set his jaw. “Here come the fuzz.”

Tuesday, 26 April 2016
Lunchtime
Shujin Gym

Nodding to Ann, the police officer scribbled something at the bottom of her notepad. “Thank you, miss. We’ll be contacting you, later.” She waved two fingers at another girl waiting in line. “Next!”

Ann meandered through the gym, coming to a stop next to Akira, waiting in another line. She crossed her arms, eyes wide as she tried to take in the mess remaining across the gym after the near-riot. “I don’t believe it. His heart did change.”

Ryuji wove through the scattered clumps of students refusing to disperse from the gym commandeered to interview students about Kamoshida’s meltdown. He came to a stop next to Ann, a wide grin on his face as he handed bread to her and the transfer student. “Dudes, I tried pinching myself, but it still doesn’t feel real. Am I dreaming?”

Playing on his phone, Akira slid a shogi tile over and confirmed end turn. As light-headed as he still felt, coasting on autopilot seemed as much as he could manage. He glanced up at the track star. “The fuzz always take forever. What’s the big deal?”

“I mean all over school, man!” Ryuji’s enthusiasm shone undimmed. “The teachers aren’t even trying to hold classes anymore, an’ I heard there’s even detectives at the office.”

Akira noticed Ann scanning the boys in line with him, no interest in her melon bread. When she looked back a second time, popping up on her toes for a moment, he knew something was wrong. “What’s up?”

“Where’s Yuuki?” She said, looking around the gym. “I thought he was right behind you. He looked awful.”

Akira turned and lifted his hand to point, “He’s just two…” When he saw no trace of the Class 2-D representative, a chill sank into his spine. When Mishima didn’t seem up to talking, Akira figured he just needed time to himself and focused on staying in line. But that empty look…

Akira pushed the contents of his hands to Ann and slunk out at as fast a walk as he could without drawing the adults’ eyes. As few cops as were there to watch over the crowd, none noticed his stealthy exit to the courtyard. The instant he was out, he broke into a sprint.

A trio of students chatting under the covered awning looked up as he passed, but made no move to stop his dash into the academic building.

Leaping up the stairs four at a time, Akira raced to the roof.

Metal fencing jangled as Mishima pulled himself up the inside of the roof fence.

Akira leaped over the small greens in planters, snagging Mishima’s feet.

The sudden force plucked Mishima from the heavy wire fence, and both boys tumbled backwards, landing against the plastic planters, spilling dirt and crushing baby tomato stalks.

Mishima’s face glistened under his eyes and nose. After a minute to catch his breath, he sobbed, “At least Kamoshida had the guts to confess.”

Akira more pulled Mishima to his feet than helped the crying boy up. “What are you talking about?”

Tears spilling from his eyes, Mishima snapped, “I was the one who killed her.”

Akira’s hands froze, holding bunches of Mishima’s uniform shirt, his mental train derailed. The transfer student’s mouth drifted open, closed, then open again before he forced his hands open. “Mishima, I was right there when the ambulance took her away. She started to say Kamoshida’s name before she—”

Already weak, Mishima fell against Akira. “He’d hit any of us.” His hoarse voice trembled as he added, “All of us. At first I thought I could withstand it so he wouldn’t hurt Shiho. I’d… I’d warn her to get out of school any time he wanted her for special coaching.” His body trembled. “But then at the nurse when you said that about concussions… I saw myself in a hospital bed, with a breathing tube in my nose and IV in my arm, with some doctor in a white coat tellin’ mom I’d never wake up again.”

Unable to decide what to do, he let Mishima cry against his uniform jacket. “And then?”

At least a minute of crying passed before Shiho’s boyfriend responded. “Ka…Kamoshida tried calling Ann-san, but she must’ve turned her phone off.” He sucked in a trembling breath. “He was livid. He turned on me and hit me harder than he ever did before. I fell and everything went black for a few seconds.” His voice cracked, tears still falling. “And all I could see was a vision of me drooling in a wheelchair for the rest of my life. So when he sent me for Shiho,” he heaved in a ragged breath, “I went.”

Akira’s fists tightened just thinking of the loveliest girl in school being in his office.

Mishima’s eyes stared into the unseen distance. “She looked so tired, but she was still so beautiful. I tried to warn her. But she wouldn’t go. Said he’d know she was still at school.” He sat back against his heels, his voice cracking as he grabbed fists of his hair. “I sent her to him! The nicest, prettiest, most amazing girl in the world and I sent her to that monster!” Letting go, he took a stumbling step back at the fence. “He didn’t push her off that roof, I did!”

Akira’s hands curled into fists and red haze choked his vision.

Then an image sprang to his mind, the cafeteria on the first day when she looked up from the text message on her phone and sent that sweet smile across the room.

A smile warmer than the sun on a winter day.

Shooting to his feet, Akira grabbed Mishima by the shoulders and spun him around, forcing him to look in his eyes. “No, Mishima. You didn’t do this. Kamoshida did. He was the one who turned his fists on the students. He was the one who savaged you and her.”

His knees quivered. “But I—”

Akira slammed Mishima against the air conditioning unit behind, anger at himself and anger at the world lending him strength. “No, look at me!” He held steady until the class representative looked at him through glistening eyes. “Say it with me. Kamoshida hit you.”

Voice cracking, Mishima said, “Kamoshida hit you.”

Akira relaxed his iron grip on the shorter boy’s shoulders, closed his eyes, then took a deep breath and opened them. “Kamoshida hit me.”

Tone confused, Mishima parroted, “Kamoshida hit me.”

“Kamoshida hit Shiho.”

Mishima blubbered, “But I—”

Akira thumped Mishima into the roof-top equipment again. “Kamoshida hit Shiho.”

Mishima’s voice cracked, “Kamoshida hit Shiho.”

“And I will not commit the sin of taking my own life.”

Mishima blinked. “But Shiho—”

Snarling, Akira pushed Mishima against the towering AC unit. “Is still fighting for her life. But even if she wasn’t, you should be for yours.”

Lip quivering, Mishima grabbed the transfer student’s coat back. “I don’t deserve—”

Akira pulled Mishima up to push him against the bulky metal unit again. “Suicide is a sin! You’re still alive, and that must mean God’s got something important for you in this life.”

Chin still trembling, tears dripped down Mishima’s face. “I don’t deserve your help. You had the strength to help everyone in Shujin even after Kamoshida leaked your record. All I did was keep my head down until it happened to Shi-chan.”

Fingers slipping from the class representative’s long-sleeved shirt, Akira stepped back.

I heard that guy works for the thugs in Shibuya.”

Who would want to hang out with a delinquent?

Akira took in a breath, but his heart rate continued to climb. His body felt like it wanted to tear itself apart, and the reminder his school would never give him a moment’s rest only added to the sense of pressure. He slammed a hand onto the AC unit next to Mishima, clenching his teeth. The pulsing pain in his knuckles shot clarity through his system. “Then you atone. Do something.” He lifted his left sleeve above the elbow to give Mishima a good look at an arm marred with thin, faded scars. “I know most of them aren’t easy to make out, but you see these?”

Mishima nodded.

Akira paused. He never showed anybody these scars before. Scars meant you screwed up, but he already crossed the point of no return. “Not all of these were inflicted by other people. This one,” he pointed to a thin, pale line going from just below his wrist to the inner elbow, “was when I only wanted to get away from my old bastard. I woke up in the hospital and met Father Motoori.”

The class representative leaned against the AC unit, his eyes falling to his shoes.

Several moments of silence passed before Akira pulled his sleeve back down. “This life we have isn’t free. Remember what I said last time?”

Mishima breathed for several long seconds, his rhythm hitching once before he closed his eyes. “Take my feelings, gather them, and use them.”

Akira clapped his hands on Mishima’s shoulders, giving a triumphant smile bearing teeth. “Yes!”

Mishima steadied under the transfer student’s hands. After several seconds, he looked up but couldn’t quite meet the other’s eyes. “I… I have to earn this.”

Akira let go. “That’s my Mishima-kun.”

Wednesday, 27 April 2016
Lunchtime
Shujin, Class 2-D

The final bell rang and the math teacher gave up trying to control the students’ conversations. Ann twirled her pen through her fingers, antsy to get Akira and Morgana alone so they could talk about what happened. With Kamoshida’s confession, there was no doubt they did something significant.

Jamming her lesson plan for the day in her binder, Usami-sensei glanced up at the board scribbled with math diagrams intended to hold the class’s attention. She let out a quick breath, then lifted her binder. “Class representative, clean this up.”

Mishima stood and gave a rote, “Yes professor.” The energy faded almost as soon as the class gabbing began, but at least he didn’t have the empty-as-shark-eyes look she saw on him yesterday before Akira went after him. Dark eyes didn’t belong hollow, they were meant to be deep as a cool well.

She considered snagging him for a pep talk – Mishima swallowed so much abuse to keep Shiho insulated – but discarded the idea once he began a rote but even pace to clean up the board. Ann muttered, “He’s not in a good place, but he’ll get by for now.” Friend of a friend out of mind, Ann felt her phone vibrate as soon as she got up to the front of the classroom.

Ryuji’s ID stared out at her on the group chat. [Dudes, this is totes unreal! We gotta talk with the cat.]

No sign of response from Akira, which tickled a warning sense in her brain. He was always prompt about responding at first. But since stealing Kamoshida’s Treasure, he disappeared every lunch and hardly spoke.

Sayuri, from Class 2-B, slipped in and intercepted Ann before she could get to Akira’s row. The rather plain girl bowed. “I’m so sorry I spread rumors about you, Takamaki-san! I had no idea what was really going on.”

Ann felt a nervous smile spread over her face and she tried to figure out how to get out of the fourth girl to apologize since yesterday. On the one hand, it was nice to feel vindicated. On the other, Akira looked almost done packing. “Oh… uh… you don’t have to bow and be like that.”

Sayuri held the pose anyway. “We were so horrible to you. I’ll make it up to you, I promise.” She rose and shuffled out of the way when the student at the front of the row stood up, giving Ann an opening to speedwalk down to Akira.

She flashed a show smile to try to lighten the mood around the morose transfer student. “Ryuji wants to have a word with Morgana. See you at the usual place?”

Akira watched Sayuri leave and finished adjusting the books in his bag but failed to quite meet her eyes. “You were right, Ann-san. I was wrong.” His eyes fell and his shoulders slumped. “I have something I need to do.” He glanced down at his desk to the cat. “Go with them, I’ll meet up back at Leblanc.” He shouldered his school satchel and slipped out with the grace of an Olympic gymnast before she could argue.

Ann looked down at the talking cat hiding in his desk. “I wonder what’s up with him?”

Morgana’s ears drooped. “I wish I knew. I live with him and I don’t know what goes through his head.”

With nothing else to do, she let the team guide into her bag and brought him up to the ceiling, pausing for another pair of apologies in the halls as she headed to the rooftop rendezvous with Ryuji. As soon as she got there, she dropped her bag to one of the spare desks. “Man, you’re heavy. I don’t know how Akira makes it look so effortless.”

Morgana’s tail drooped off the edge of the desk. “That hurts, Lady Ann!”

Ryuji, waiting ahead of her, grinned from his casual perch on another desk. “Have you been hearin’ all this? It’s like a whole different school! It’s like we changed everyone’s heart. The only ones who aren’t talkin’ about Kamoshida are talkin’ about you, Ann. Looks like those weird rumors are gonna be a thing of the past.”

She felt a smile tug at her mouth, but smothered it. “I don’t care about that. Kamoshida came clean about Shiho. That’s all I wanted.” She glanced around, as if expecting Akira to pop out from behind her. He might have been able to see through her little fib, but Ryuji just grinned. Now that she had both, being vindicated from those disgusting rumors was wonderful.

“Yeah, sounded like that’s all Akira wanted, too.” He paused to glance at the door, then Morgana. “Where is he?”

Morgana sat and curled his tail around his legs. “Akira said he had something he needed to do and ran off. He looked less down in the dumps, but something’s still definitely bothering him.”

Crossing her arms, Ann thought back. “I wonder what he meant when he said I was right before he ran off.”

Ryuji flashed a wide grin and clapped his hands together behind his head. “Well I’m callin’ this tote success! One scumbag teacher down, and we didn’t even mess up his mind!”

Their guide’s gaze held at some indistinct point on the far fencing. “It’s strange, though. That castle crumbled, but Kamoshida didn’t have a mental shutdown. I was afraid something as drastic as a complete palace collapse might have done permanent damage.”

Giving a slow blink, Ryuji threw the concern behind him. “Well, we took the Treasure and ‘shida seems fine. As much as that d-bag can be.”

Morgana’s unfocused gaze held on the fence. “We persuaded the Shadow without killing it, and it went back to its real self. Maybe that’s what we need to prevent our targets from having a mental collapse.”

Ann crossed her arms and shifted her weight to her other foot, thinking back to that last, unnerving fight. “What about that sticky tar-stuff holding the crown to his head?”

Lowering his arms, Ryuji blinked. “The what?”

The cat shivered. “It was whispering. I could hear it when I cut it off. Near the end I wasn’t sure if I was cutting the crown away from his head, or his head away from the crown.”

Ann brushed a pigtail back over her shoulder. “Was it kind of like the masks we have?”

When Morgana failed to answer, Ryuji gave a momentary shudder. “Dude. Freaky.” He looked her in the eye. “Anyway, I thought you were as gung-ho about takin’ down Kamoshida as Akira. I’m surprised you didn’t finish him off.”

Hands clenching, she felt her heart rate kick up. “Killing him wouldn’t have done anything for Shiho. He needed to suffer. Now that he knows what he’s done, he’ll beg forgiveness for the rest of his life.” She forced her hands down, a cold satisfaction pooling in her gut. “There are fates worse than death.”

Ryuji paled. “Shit, dude. Ma was right when she said hell has no fury like a woman.”

A paw padding at her jacket drew her focus down to Morgana. “I think it means you’re kind at heart, Lady Ann.”

Ryuji crossed his arms and tried to look casual. “What I wanna know is why Kamoshida’s the only one with a castle?”

Morgana turned a hooded gaze to Ryuji, some sense of ‘this again’ to it. “You mean a Palace? He’s not.”

Backing up, Ryuji’s eyes went wide. “For real?”

Morgana flicked one ear. “Anybody with distorted desires can have a Palace.”

Remembering earlier speculation, Ann took her left arm with her right. “Do… do you think Akira has one?”

“I think people who’ve awakened to their Persona can’t have a Palace,” Morgana answered, a glum quality to his voice that failed to soothe her concern. “To have a Persona, you have to come to an understanding… a connection with yourself. A Palace is a sign of disconnect.”

Ryuji scratched his head and growled. “Man, Akira’d probably know somethin’ about this. Why’d he have to up and ditch us today?”

Ann rolled her eyes at the childish theatrics. “We should probably lay low for a while anyway. Even if nobody else can find out what we did at his Palace, there’s a lot of rumors going around about you and him. A lot of people think you two threatened Kamoshida.”

Ryuji stood up on his feet. “The eff, man!”

Wednesday, 27 April 2016
Afternoon
Kanda Catholic Church

Pulling the door closed, Akira sat down on the padded stool in the Confessional booth. Although his heart had been steady when he ran from the train station, it refused to slow down now. He took a deep breath and looked at the shadows playing over the screen separating him from the priest. “Father, forgive me, for I have sinned. It has been… almost two months since my last Confession.”

Father Sugiyama’s sonorous voice floated into his half of the booth. “I am here to shepherd the flock. What troubles you, my son?”

Akira’s eyes darted and he shifted on the padded stool, trying to decide how much to say.

“I tried to kill my gym teacher.”

Once his mouth opened, words spilled from his lips and he couldn’t even try to hold them back. “The whole fucking world came down on me like a sack of bricks! Same as back with that drunk prick with the stupid glasses. I’m not going around burning buildings down or robbing companies! I just wanna do the right thing. I don’t even always know what that is. Inuri High, my old bastard, even the bitch I saved stabbed me in the heart! The judge didn’t even go past that letter of condemnation from my old bastard before pronouncing me guilty. The one person who listened to me, the one idiot who encouraged me to keep trying in Tokyo was a cop. And then Kamoshida raped the only girl in my life who was kind to me!”

“Oh my,” were the only words Father Sugiyama let slip, deep silence descending on the Confessional. Despite the concerned tone, the few words gave no clue whether the priest believed the student or not.

“I…” Akira lifted a hand, flexing his fingers and trying to reconcile the boy Officer Ichijou said could become a good man with the one who only left Kamoshida alive because his weapon ran out of ammo. “I’ve never liked who I am, but once everything with Kamoshida was done I realized I did everything wrong. Now he’s in police custody and I still can’t feel sure if that’s a good thing.”

“Well,” Father Sugiyama said after a breath, tone contemplative. “You stood beside that Takamaki girl when she was in danger. I think that means you care about the people around you.”

Akira wrapped his arms around his body. “Shiho wouldn’t have wanted me to go kill Kamoshida. I just kept on trying to push the responsibility on her so I wouldn’t have to think about it.” He grit his teeth, remembering the pain in Ann’s eyes as he tried to force them to keep going after fighting the faux angel. He felt a tear trail down his nose. “I kept pushing ahead because I wanted to hurt Kamoshida for taking her away from me.” Akira ran a hand through his hair. “She wasn’t even mine to have! You should’ve seen that smile she flashed at Mishima in the cafeteria. It was soft and affectionate and grateful.” Sighing, he let the warmth of the memory wrap around him, though it felt constricting now. “No one’s ever looked at me like that. Like they want me there.”

“I think, my son, that you judge yourself too harshly.” Father Sugiyama leaned back in the booth. “Yes, wrath is a vice you grapple with, but patience is something I think you will learn if you stick close to your friends. They may have troubles of their own, but they will help you find your way. Don’t forget that you have your own strengths. I may not have known you for long, but between what Motoori has told me and what you have, you are strong in Charity.”

Snorting, Akira crossed his arms. “Father, I can’t deny I have vices, but virtues are a lie.”

Father Sugiyama retorted, “That’s your father talking.”

“That bastard is not a father,” Akira snapped, rising off the stool. “He doesn’t deserve that title.”

“Then don’t be ruled by his misconceptions,” Father Sugiyama riposted. “You may have joined the Church to get away from him, but you’ve learned too much to remain smothered in his shadow.”

Akira settled back on the stool and huffed, but Father Sugiyama was right. Feeling cleansed and weary, the transfer student reached for the door. “Thank you, Father.”

“Ah-ah,” Father Sugiyama tisked. “I think you have a few Our Fathers first.”

Chapter 19: April 27th, Networking

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Wednesday, 27 April 2016
Early Evening
Yongen, Leblanc

Slipping his hands beneath the sink’s sudsy water, his phone buzzed and Akira scrambled to dry his hands and see what the call was about. By the time he got the smart phone out, the group chat was already open and several texts blasted back and forth.

Ann began, [I went to tell Shiho about everything we did.]

Ryuji, [Awesome! What'd she say?]

Ann responded. [She's still in a coma. Her mom thanked me for the news about Kamoshida's confession. She was on the phone as I left. I bet she's planning on suing him.]

Akira brought up the keyboard to shoot out, [Serves that bastard right. He made that mess, he should pay for it.]

[What about you?] Ann texted. [You left in a big hurry.]

Akira paused to decide how to answer. [I've been carrying around too much baggage and I needed to talk to Father Sugiyama. Went to Confession for the first time since the incident with that woman and the drunk.]

Ryuji’s ID popped up, three dancing dots indicating a message in progress for several seconds before he sent, [Hey, maybe we could change that drunk asshole's heart.]

Scoffing, Akira replied, [Why bother? He's probably some rich corporate industrialist who just can't handle his booze. I never even got his name.]

Ryuji passed that concern like a champ. [Oh, thought you might want to know. Lots of people at Shujin were talking about the calling cards, but almost everyone thinks it was just some prank from someone spying on Kamoshida.]

Akira shifted to lean his hip against the counter, remembering the easy banter between the others when they got out of the Palace. [What about that medal? Morgana said it wasn't Kamoshida's real medal, but I'd rather not leave it hanging around. I'm the 'keep memories, not mementos' kind of guy.]

Ann sent back with remarkable speed, [Let's sell it and have a celebration. Showa Day's coming up on Friday. Or we could have it at the end of Golden Week to charge us up for school!]

Akira typed out, [Or we could divide it into savings.]

Ryuji’s next text came almost immediately. [Dude, can't you see the mood's heading to party town? You especially need to live it up!]

Morgana, reading from the stool, preempted Akira’s retort. “Ryuji’s got a point. You have a tendency to bottle everything up. You need to loosen up once in a while.” The metaverse guide smiled. “And what better than to celebrate a job well done? Discussions among Phantom Thieves deserve to be held over the delicacies of luxury.”

Akira huffed, but sent out, [Fine. I can see when I'm out voted. Where would we go? Ramen?]

[No way,] Ryuji shot back. [We can do that any time! It's gotta be something special. Especially since that medal should be worth thirty thousand yen.]

Ann texted with lightning speed. [I know just the place. You can even pay me back what you owe me from middle school.]

Ryuji wasted no time to protest, [No way I owe you thirty thousand!]

[Plus compounded interest…]

Akira chuckled. “There’s a story there.” He tapped away, [Focus, peeps. I'm up for Showa Day, any of you working then?]

[I’m good,] Ryuji returned.

Ann took a few seconds. [Nothing on the calendar from my agency.]

Akira shot out, [So where would we go?]

Silence held the group chat for a while before Ann answered. [There's a place Shiho and I have been wanting to go.]

Another second passed where Akira imagined a mournful sigh before Ryuji assented. [Well, I guess I do owe you, so I'll let you pick it.]

[Send me a text with the address and prices,] Akira sent out.

[Will do,] She answered.

Morgana flicked his tail. “But will the guy at the second hand shop down the corner buy those koban? He didn’t have any jewelry or gold things hanging up.”

Akira slipped the phone back in his pocket and returned to the sink. “And I don’t want to unload much loot somewhere so close to where I live. But I bet he does know someone who’ll buy. There’s gotta be plenty of fences in Tokyo.”

Wednesday, 27 April 2016
Night
Velvet Room

Akira opened his eyes with a gasp, greeted by dark velvet and a striped white-and-black uniform over his body. He let out a long breath and slumped against the slab as his racing heart slowed, fragments of a dream with Shiho echoing in his skull. The image of Shiho in nothing but Shujin’s tight, red gym shorts, her arms bent at weird angles still had his panic response on overdrive. Akira pushed himself to his feet and looked around. After seeing Shiho splayed over the ground, the sight of a steel bunk and toilet seemed calming in comparison. Blue velvet carpeted the walls. Chains criss-crossed a door of iron bars.

“Congratulations,” a deep voice slid smooth as silk from the center of the panopticon, “thief of hearts.”

Hands still shaking from his prior dream, Akira kicked at the door. A ball weight on the chain he forgot was on his foot tripped him and he fell against the bars.

Justine snickered.

Heart still pounding from seeing Shiho broken on the ground, Akira turned his ire on her and drew his hands into fists. “I thought I told you I’m not a thief.”

Caroline slammed her baton against the door, the metal ringing. “Shut your ungrateful mouth and listen, Inmate!”

Igor looked as unperturbed as ever as he capped a fancy-looking fountain pen. A hollow glass orb on a cylinder sat on the table just next to him. Six large iron needles thrusted down through holes in the cylinder, holding up a handful of marbles inside. “You have a special power, but it must be refined if you wish to use it to prevent the coming ruin. This shall be the rehabilitation you shall strive towards.”

Akira banged a fist on the door and snarled, “I did it once, didn’t I? I’ll tear the evil out of human hearts, one bastard at a time.”

Igor chuckled.

Justine shifted her clipboard to her other hand. “Do not look with narrow vision, Inmate, or you will miss important opportunities. The strength of many can cover the limitations of the one.”

“A single man can do almost anything if he is willing to sacrifice anything, including himself,” Igor said, his deep tone sedate but with an undertone of mirth for no reason Akira could guess. He clapped. “But you have chosen to bring others into your quest. What shape shall that take, hm?”

The short wanna-be-warden with a braid continued. “Cultivate every relationship you can.”

Looking down at the diminutive twins calling themselves wardens, he couldn’t hold in a laugh. “What do I need more power for? I took out Kamoshida, didn’t I?”

Igor nodded and folded his hands together. “True, but not alone. You are already seeking out fellow thieves.”

Caroline wagged her baton at Akira. “Those will be extra sources of power, Inmate.”

Igor’s wider-than-needed grin returned. “It is through contracts you gain the power to oppose impending ruin. Certainly a triumph to celebrate.”

Akira gripped the bars and glared straight at Igor’s unnatural calm. “How can you say that with the same toneless cool as a newscaster announcing mass casualties in an Indian riot?”

Caroline clanged her baton against the door. “Be grateful when our master deigns to pass words of praise on you!”

A beat passed before Igor added, “You have taken your first step into a more magnificent world. It shall be quite interesting to see where your path leads.”

Thursday, 28 April 2016
Early Morning
Yongen, Leblanc

Sojiro paused behind the counter, looking down at Akira as he sat in a chair in the middle of the bar. “You sure look tired. Didn’t you sleep?”

“I’m fine,” Akira grumped.

Shrugging, the restaurateur set a plate of curry down in front of Akira. “They had a school on the news yesterday.” He crossed his arms as if expecting something earlier and it being denied him. “Some teacher abusing students.”

“Kamoshida,” Akira said before digging into the curry.

Sojiro sighed and uncrossed his arms. “Look, just try to keep your head down. You’ve heard the old saying, nails that stick out—”

“Get hammered. Yeah, I know.”

Thursday, 28 April 2016
After School
Yongen, Backstreets

A siren wailed in the distance, a gentle breeze blowing through the narrow streets of Yongen. The old man in his second-hand shop hummed and turned over the rounded gold coin in his fingers. “It’s certainly a koban, probably a Genbu koban judging by the size, but it’s also pretty badly damaged. I can’t even be sure if it’s a genuine article or one of the counterfeits made by smaller smithies later in the period.” He glanced up at Akira, something about his gaze seeming not quite focused. “Where’d you say you got these?”

“Internet,” Akira said. “I bought a bunch of lockboxes from online auctions. I figured these looked like real gold coins.”

Hiromasa turned the coin over again. “Well, the gold’s real enough, but I’m afraid I couldn’t sell something like this.” He lifted his arm at the hanging lamps around him. “I tend to go through instruments, small furniture or appliances. Things you can use. I may have been a coin collector by hobby, but I stay away from trading jewelry or coins at work. Too easy to get caught up in fakes.”

Letting out a heavy breath, Akira rubbed his shoulder. “I suspected something like that. Nobody else in the area is interested in coins without a certificate of authenticity. Tokyo’s too big a place for me to go hunting for a buyer for things like this or jewelry or whatever else the next lockbox might have.”

Hiromasa set the koban on a stack with the other four. “Well, I don’t know how much business he’ll be willing to do, and you may have to do a favor or two for him before he trusts you, but I happen to know a fellow in Shibuya who seems to be able to sell anything. Doesn’t ask too many questions either, which should be perfect if your boxes don’t have those certificate things.”

Akira brightened. “Really? That would be great.” He recorded the address info, but paused at the mark on his map of Shibuya. “That’s not too far off Central Street. Almost sounds familiar.”

Hiromasa shrugged at the transfer student’s muttering. “Owner’s there almost every day but Sunday, you just have to catch him without any other customers around if you want to make your sale. Tell him Hiromasa recommended you.”

Akira checked the time and slipped his phone in his pocket. “I better hurry if I’m gonna check it out today. Thanks.” He took three of the koban, then walked away.

Thursday, 28 April 2016
Early Evening
Shibuya, Untouchable

A hot, humid breeze blew through the back streets of Shibuya. Akira looked up at the clouds turning gold and purple in the sinking sunlight, and down at his phone with the directions from the second-hand shop owner. He looked up at the last stretch, a familiar alley ahead of him. He was about to ask Morgana if this was the same place Ryuji brought them when he heard two adults skulking in the shadows to one side.

“Let’s just take care of this,” said one in a crisp, light grey suit.

The other man, wearing a neat, tan suit looking out of place in a shadowed back alley, stared at his phone and whispered, “We don’t have the warrant yet. Let’s not threaten the case by jumping the gun.”

Maintaining a steady walking pace past them, Akira came to Untouchable, his navigator pointing straight at its door. “Well, son of a—”

Morgana poked his head out of the bag. “At least we’re here. Let’s get inside and finish before those weird guys notice us. The sooner we finish and get back home, the sooner you can throw away your leftovers.”

Akira swallowed the angry lump in his throat and pushed the door open.

The store owner in a long coat looked up from a sporting goods magazine. “You again? I have to admit, you didn’t strike me as a big enthusiast last time.”

Akira pointed his thumb over his shoulder at the door. “Fuzz are outside, overheard one mention waiting on a warrant.”

Grimacing, Long Coat shot to his feet. “Excuse me a second.” He took long strides to the back. Rustling, then the bang of something metallic falling to the concrete floor rang out. After about a minute, he returned, holding a brown paper bag. “You got two thousand yen?”

“Yeah?” Akira looked at him askance.

Long Coat set the paper bag in the square hole in the grating across the counter. “Here, hand it over. I can even make change, I just need the cameras to show an exchange.”

Akira eyed the shop owner for a moment, then pulled out his wallet. “I came here to sell, not buy. Hiromasa recommended you.”

A momentary flash passed through Long Coat’s eyes, but his face stayed grim. “Tell ‘ya what, you come back tonight and I’ll buy whatever it is. Just help me out now. Take it and go, just don’t open it until you come back.”

Akira pulled out two thousand-yen bills.

Still tucked in the satchel, Morgana hissed, “Akira, what are you doing?”

Akira set the bills on the counter and slid them in, then took the paper bag as the shop-owner pulled out one thousand yen in coins. “This is only—”

The door opened and the two men in suits walked in.

Akira took the bag, coins, and slipped them into his satchel, then settled it on his shoulders and waved at the shop-owner to keep up the act. “Thanks.”

Long Coat nodded back, his smile stiff. “Pleasure doing business with you again. Come back soon.”

The stern detective in a nice business suit made a beeline for the counter. “Iwai Munehisa?” He drew his badge fold from his coat. “We have a few questions we’d like to ask.”

“Exit, stage left,” Akira muttered as he headed for the door.

The detective in a grey suit stepped into Akira’s path. “Hold up, you little shit. What’s in the bag?”

Akira adjusted his glasses with his middle finger. “Schoolbooks, Prick-san.”

Stomping into Akira’s face, Grey Suit reached down for the satchel. “That’s it, you fuckin’ delinquent.”

“Hey!” Morgana popped out and swiped at the detective’s hand.

Grey Suit jerked his hand away, a vein on his forehead pulsing.

Iwai stood up. “Hey, detectives, if you’ve got a search or somethin’ to conduct, my store’s open. You can check the tapes if you want. But I’d appreciate if you wouldn’t go harassing the clientele. That kind of thing tends to get reported to Internal Affairs.”

Grey Suit snarled at Iwai. “Bastard.” When Akira tried to take a step around, he stepped back in the way. “We have a warrant, and you tryin’ ta leave with a brown sack right as we come in is plenty for probable cause.”

He reached for Akira’s shoulder, but Akira danced out of the way. “Keep your dirty paws off me.”

Morgana shuffled in the satchel. “I resent that remark!”

Akira slung his school satchel down to his elbow. “Here. Try using words like an adult next time.” He pulled out a crumpled brown sack.

Iwai clenched his fists.

Grey Suit opened the bag so fast it tore. He jerked his face away and held the bag away as if it contained a rotting head. “Ugh, natto.”

Akira smirked. “Fermented beans, a healthy part of an afternoon meal.”

Grey Suit growled but handed the bag back to Akira. “I think your natto’s past its expiration. And I wouldn’t go for that soda half-covered in it either.”

Akira snatched the torn paper bag and looked inside. “You broke my natto?”

Iwai snickered.

Grey Suit stepped away from the door, a snarl on his face. “Just get out, you little shit.”

Brown Suit rolled his eyes. “Enough with the kid. The tip said Iwai had contraband in the back.”

Iwai gave a pointed smile. “You gotta do what you gotta do, Detective-san. You got a warrant?”

Brown Suit presented his smart phone. “We’ll have a printed copy down here if you require it.”

Iwai read for a moment, then handed the phone back. “I’m good. Aren’t upstandin’ citizens supposed to cooperate with the Law?”

Grey Suit stepped up to the window and slammed a fist down on the counter. “Watch that attitude!”

Akira slipped out the front door and threw the lunch bag with natto away.

The instant the door closed, Morgana poked his head up out of the satchel, eyes narrow. “What do you think you’re doing? We came here to get money.”

“It’s called networking,” Akira said, stepping around a fallen bicycle. “Iwai owes us.”

Morgana sat down, ears flat against his head. “You’d better hope he’s really that fence we were looking for.” He ducked down into the satchel and a crinkling of paper sounded. “What’s in this bag, anyway?”

Akira shook his shoulders to jostle Morgana. “Hey, not here in the open.” He stepped out to central street proper and grimaced at the crowds heading left and right on the street. “Well, might as well hit the diner for some studying.”

Morgana grumbled. “With what? You gave most of your money to that gun store owner.”

“I can still get a cup of lame coffee for less than a thousand yen.”

Thursday, 28 April 2016
Evening
Shibuya, Untouchable

Akira pushed open the door and shuddered against the heavy air conditioning. He walked in the model gun and military surplus store, noting Iwai straighten behind the counter.

Iwai sniffed, eyes narrowing but one corner of his mouth quirking up. “Well, you’re back sooner than I thought.”

Slipping his hands into his pockets, Akira trotted to the counter window. “I don’t scare easy. Everyone I know would tell me I’ve got more guts than brains.” He unslung his school satchel and reached in for a stained hand cloth, then set it on the counter and unfolded the tied cloth package. “I understand you wanted to buy this.”

Iwai adjusted the brim of his cap, looking down at the Olympic gold medal. “You sure don’t waste any time.”

“Your time is valuable,” Akira responded, standing straight. “So is mine. And those fake silencers you handed me in the bag with the fake gun.”

Iwai chuckled. “So you looked inside.”

Akira set his satchel on the ground, letting Morgana hop out to scout the front area of the store. He brought out the paper bag Iwai gave him earlier and set it on the counter. “I’ve played the mule before, but I’m not stupid.”

Iwai picked up the medal and flipped it to look at the reverse. “I seem to remember hearin’ about some teacher who used to be an Olympic athlete gettin’ in trouble. This wouldn’t happen to be hot goods, would it?”

Eyes narrowing, Akira let his fists curl. “I am not a thief.” He crossed his arms, searching his memory for what Ryuji claimed it was worth. “So how’s thirty thousand yen?”

Iwai set the paper bag behind the counter, tossed the stained hand cloth aside and set the medal in the middle of the counter, then took out his phone and took a picture of it. He tapped away at his smart phone for a few moments, then read for about a minute. “How’s twenty…” Iwai looked up at the transfer student. “You know what? You were pretty quick on the uptake today. Clever about that switch, too. You got your thirty thousand yen.” He opened the cash register, counted out a hefty stack, then handed over the yen notes and closed the register.

Akira took them. There was networking to do. “So are we just leaving things here?”

Iwai smirked and scanned Akira’s face and stance. After a moment, the shop owner stood. “Why don’t we talk in the back?” He stepped away, then a clunk sounded and the heavy steel door in the back marked STAFF swung open. Akira followed him into what looked like a craft shop with plastic storage bins cramming two walls. Iwai dropped his show smile and stopped at the corner, then crossed his arms and looked over the transfer student again. “So what’s your angle?”

“I’m no friend of the fuzz.” Akira slipped his hands into his pockets and leaned against a steel shelf laden with plastic bins. “Think of me as a concerned enthusiast.”

Iwai chuckled. “Well, you’ve got guts and you’ve got wiles, I gotta give ya that. You lookin’ to offload more… found items or were you tryin’ for some of those customizations you heard me mention to Little Man?”

“Both,” Akira said as he glanced around for some sign of Morgana. “You heard anything about the drug trade in the area?”

Frowning, Iwai’s crossed arms tightened. “I wouldn’t touch that shit with a five meter pole.” He sat down on a stool in front of a workbench with several power tools scattered across it and let out a heavy breath. “Listen, I’m not a bad dude. Sure, I’ve been known to compromise – I mean, I gotta look out for my own. That may mean I’ll come across hot items, but there are some lines I don’t cross whether it’s China White or pills that ‘fell off the back of the truck’.”

Akira held up his hands. “I’m not sayin’ you’re involved, I just wanted to know what’s up here in Shibuya. One of my friends is caught up and I need to help find a way out.” He looked over Iwai, noting none of the tell-tale signs of lying. He seemed as trustworthy as a shady shop owner could be. “I think we can make a deal.”

Iwai chuckled, a thin smile forming. “You’re not bluffin’. Okay. I can only move so much merchandise at a time, so I can’t exactly buy anything else like that medal for a few days, but if you want to purchase some more model guns or modify the ones you got, I can help you out.” He straightened his cap. “But you gotta help me out, too. It may involve more quick hands and quick thinkin’ like today.”

Akira straightened. “Even angels have been known to use darkness.”

Iwai’s smile widened. “Heh. You get it, kid. I think this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Here, give me your number and I’ll give you a ring if another job comes up.”

Chapter 20: April 28th, Buffet Celebration

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Thursday, 28 April 2016
Late Evening
Yongen-Jaya Station

The announcer blared another update about the train schedule from the loudspeakers. Already at his last stop for the day, Akira ignored it and stepped out of the train with the rare sensation of having enough room to breathe. He paced through the faded tile to the street. The sun already fallen behind the towers and mountains, the sky above darkened to a black with the brightest stars fighting for visibility through Tokyo’s light pollution.

His phone rang before he even got out to the street proper. Grimacing, he stepped into a nook with a utility pole to get away from the flow of people. Opening the call without checking who it was, he threw out his usual gag opening. “Faye Kinnit’s taxidermy emporium, your one-stop shop for cliché villains.”

After snorting in amusement, Ann’s excited voice floated out of the speaker against his ear. “Hi, Akira-kun. Have you seen the news?”

Frown fading, he slumped against the concrete pole. “To be honest, I don’t tend to watch the TV news. They tend to be several days behind.”

Ann shot back with a snappy disapproval. “That’s no reason not to be informed. Lots of stations have been playing stories about Kamoshida. Lots of people have come out about him. It’s… a lot bigger than I thought.”

Akira’s eyes fell to the street, Mishima’s bruised face conjuring in his mind’s eye. “Yeah. I had tunnel vision.”

A beat passed before she spoke again, concern and empathy in her voice. He could imagine her reaching out for him if she was on the street next to him. “I think we helped those people speak out. It’s amazing, isn’t it?”

Wondering what Shiho would have thought, if she would have smiled or been disappointed, Akira’s shoulders fell. “Sure.”

As if she could see his melancholy, Ann’s tone picked up a chipper quality he couldn’t determine as real or faked. “I’d say we earned a celebration. You pawn off the medal?”

“I just finished. Got your text about the address and prices, too.”

When she spoke next, the pleased tone sounded genuine. “Great! See you in front of Shibuya Station at noon.”

Morgana popped out of his school satchel as Akira put the phone away. “Hey, we’re about to celebrate. No grousing.”

Showa Day. Friday, 29 April 2016
Afternoon
Wilton Hotel Buffet

Akira slipped in to the sofa near the middle of the dining area of the buffet. The pleasant, just-brighter-than-mood-lighting made it easy to take in the foods. Each of them looked well-prepared, and smelled even better. As much as he didn’t like the glitzy ambiance of the place and its staff, the taste and texture were every bit as good as Ann promised.

After cutting a piece of white fish and setting it on a coffee saucer for Morgana, Akira pulled out his phone and ate with one hand while managing his continuing shogi game with the other. “There’s tons of rumors out there about Kamoshida, but nothing about the drug trade going on here in Shibuya. I’m starting to think I’d be better off following one of those shady guys offering ‘easy’ jobs.”

Ryuji looked up from a hunk of roast beef. “Man, ya gotta leave the business at the door. This is a victory party!” He leaned in for another bite and moaned in pleasure at the meat. “Oh, it melts in my mouth.”

Morgana snapped at a piece of fish threatening to fall from the corner of his mouth. “Indeed. After all the trials we’ve been through, this little band I pulled together deserves some rest and relaxation.”

Beaming, Ann swallowed a big bite of some fancy chocolate cream pie. “Did I choose good or did I choose good?”

Akira gave a one-shouldered shrug, head still abuzz. “It’s a good place. I’m still a little worried about Kamoshida. Police started interviewing people at school. It looks more thorough than cursory questioning of the teachers. Mishima even said he got called up after school.”

“But everyone’s pumped up!” Ryuji protested, a sliver of meat stuck between his front teeth. “We got guys talkin’ about how the Phantom Thief stole his heart.” His smile widened. “It’s so awesome!” Diving in for a piece of roast beef, he took a big bite and pulled out his phone, saying something through a full mouth.

Ann recoiled. “Ugh, Ryuji! That’s disgusting.”

Ryuji hurried to chew and swallow, navigated to a site, then held out his phone. “We’ve gotta be big shots, we even got our own website!”

Alarm bells buzzing, Akira took the phone and closed his shogi game to bring it up on his own browser app. “The Phantom Aficionado Website?” Finding it, he handed back Ryuji’s phone and read the first comments up. “‘Thank you for giving us hope,’ ‘I thought I was trapped and nobody could help me. Thank you for stopping him.’” He handed his phone to Ann so she could browse. His shoulders felt even heavier. “I can’t believe I was so selfish. I thought I was different than my parents.”

“I was in the same place, Akira-kun,” Ann consoled. “I wanted to deal with my own problems so much, I didn’t even see how bad things were getting for everyone else.”

Ryuji swallowed and held a hand in the air. “Guys, this is a party! Kamoshida confessed an’ it’s like some evil presence was taken away from the school. Now I know what those soldiers felt like in all those videos in history class with people wavin’ flags all up an’ down the road. Sure, not everyone believes it, but so many of ‘em are grateful.” He let out a rumbling belch, then clutched his stomach. “Oh, gotta hit the bathroom.”

Akira slapped his palm to his face, trying not to count the fourteen people who looked in their direction. Desperate for some distraction, he looked to the part-time model. “Do you mind if I ask how Shiho was?”

Ann’s fork slowed its work carving up her pie. “She’s still in a coma, but the doctors said that she’s healing very well.” Her eyes fell to Akira’s phone and the Phansite on it, then she set it back on the table and slid it over to him. “I just have to hold on to hope that she’ll wake up.” Her eyes swung back up to him. “What about Mishima? I saw you follow him out after Kamoshida confessed.”

Akira swallowed a bite of spiced rice. “He was about to jump, too. Blamed himself for Shiho’s suicide attempt. I managed to talk him out of it. Has he been up to visit Shiho?”

Ann shook her head, then lifted a new bite of chocolate cream. “It’s strange. He was head over heels for her. When I used to stop by Shiho’s, sometimes he’d be there. They’d just sit there, arm in arm, playing with each other’s hair.” Her shoulders drew up and stress lines wrote over her face. “To be honest, I was jealous. Most boys are intimidated by me, so I’ve never had a boyfriend. I know plenty of guys ogle me, but sometimes it’s hard to imagine just sitting next to a boyfriend of my own just playing around with my hair.”

Morgana looked up from the picked-over fish bones on his plate. “Hey, hey! No heavy stuff at a victory party. This is a celebration of changing Kamoshida’s heart. We went in to the unknown, and succeeded beyond all expectations!”

Ann forced a smile. “You’re right. After all, who knows when I’ll be able to enjoy the Wilton Hotel cake buffet again?” With that, she dug in to the remainder of her chocolate-cream pie.

Akira finished his rice and added it to the stack. “Well, I’m on to the next plate.”

Ann swallowed a large helping of chocolate. “You know you can actually fill a plate, right?”

He flashed her a smile. “And let the food touch?” His smile took the sharpness of a smirk. “I would never do such a dirty thing.” He stood and proceeded to the rice and meat tables at the buffet.

While picking over the last morsel of meat to add, an overweight, greying man in a mild blue suit laughed at his assistant. “The Phantom Thief? Phaha! Just rumors made up by school kids. Still, it gets website hits and that means advertising revenue, so who cares if it’s true?”

Akira returned, set Morgana’s old saucer on a stack, then set some meat down for him on a new saucer. As the transfer student ate, he pulled out his phone to read more comments on the phantom-aficionado site.

Now I can keep going, too.’

The rumors made me scared for my girlfriend, but now she’s finally talking to me and it looks like everything will be all right.’

Akira swallowed his bite of ham. “I can’t believe so many people posted here. How long was the shadow cast by Kamoshida?”

Ann looked up from her cheesecake, the wreckage remaining of her chocolate pie on another plate pushed to the side.

Akira felt his lips quirk. “You’re not worried about calories?”

Ann’s brows furrowed but her cheeks tinged an adorable pink. “When am I ever going to have the chance to do this again?” She resumed digging into her cheesecake and the two ate in silence for a while. Finishing it, she shoved her latest plate aside and hopped up to weave her way through the crowd to the dessert buffet.

Another woman backed up from the meat table to the desserts, chatting with another woman next to her. Keeping her eyes on her friend, she laughed and turned, arm holding her plate going wide and hitting Ann. A gasp rang out, letting go of her plate on noticing Ann. The jostled plate hit the floor with a shattering of ceramic. “Stupid girl! Look what you did!”

Ann gasped, the surprise visible even from her distance. “You’re the one who walked into me.”

The short-haired woman next to her sneered at Ann. “This is why they shouldn’t allow children into classy establishments.” She and the woman responsible power-walked off.

Ann sighed and flicked flecks of food off her jacket and glanced around. Her eyes met several cold, reproving looks before she paced around the spilt food and an employee with a broom and sweep-bin closed on the mess. Returning, she plopped into her chair, her posture heavier than before.

Akira lowered the hand holding his phone. “Ignore her. That bint ran into you. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

She took a deep breath in, then out, but relaxed a little on the breath out. She cut into her carrot cake with far more force than the slice required. “But… did you see the way all of those restaurant workers looked at me?”

Akira paused with his fork halfway through a slab of ham. “Sycophants and simpering cowards. You don’t need their approval. They should be asking yours.”

Ann gave an awkward smile, but it faded in moments. She stared down at her two slices of cake. “Do you think we’re out of place?”

“Honestly?” Akira swallowed, going silent and setting his phone down on the table. “Ann-san, I feel out of place wherever I go. When I’m at church with people like Togo-san or Father Sugiyama, I feel like some Viking barbarian surrounded by enlightened monks untouched by the dirty underside of life. I felt like a clumsy nerd at basketball club in Inuri, but a stupid jock in math class. And in Ushimaru’s class I feel like a college student stuck in remedial civics.”

She chuckled and swallowed another bite of carrot cake. “I think he does that to all of us. I heard he loved repeating the point back in my first year at Shujin.”

He stabbed another bite of ham. “But we still earned our seats here. We have the same right to enjoy this buffet that they do.”

The transfer student recognized the blond head and angry stomping even before Ryuji made it back and threw himself into his overstuffed chair. “Goddamn assholes!”

“Ryuji,” Akira sighed, “calm down. What happened?”

“I was comin’ back from the bathrooms and this big-shot dickhead surrounded by suits had his puppets shove me out of the way and he waltzed into my elevator. He didn’ apologize or nothin’. Talked about me like I was some little kid in a daycare.” He took a fork and stabbed onto his plate of meat, causing a metallic squeal. “I wish that selfish shithead had a Palace.”

Morgana looked up from licking off his saucer. “He might.”

Ann’s eyes widened, then locked onto their compatriot locked in cat form. “You said something like that earlier. You’re sure Kamoshida wasn’t the only one with a castle?”

“Anyone with a strong, distorted desire could have a Palace.”

Ryuji straightened. “Wait, you think they’d have a crown and would change if we stole it?”

Morgana shot him a hooded gaze. “Ryuji, each person’s Treasure would be different.” His eyes narrowed in thought, ears twisting one way, then another. “But… if it worked with Kamoshida, it should work the same with anybody else.”

Akira took his phone back in hand. “Was it the treasure, or convincing the Shadow that made him have the change of heart?”

Ann swallowed a bite of cheesecake. “Huh, that’s true. We didn’t just steal Kamoshida’s treasure. We defeated the Shadow and convinced him to change.” She brought up the phansite on her phone, then looked up to Morgana. “All those people who had no choice but to deal with Kamoshida are thanking us.”

“Yeah, yeah!” Ryuji agreed. “So I was thinkin’.”

Akira paused, shredded beef halfway to his mouth. “Dangerous words.”

Ryuji glared. “Dude, shut up. Anyway, why stop here? If there’s this many people we helped out with Kamoshida, just think…” He looked around, his eyes roving over the room for long seconds before stopping on Akira. He spoke, voice low, “…like, how many people we’d have goin’ ‘go Phantom Thief’ if we took out this drug ring you’re lookin’ for?”

Ann looked up from her creamy cheesecake. “I get what you’re saying… but you really think we should go after a drug gang?”

Akira looked up from the page of comments on the Phansite. “Wait, after all those times we barely made it through Kamoshida’s castle, you guys want to go after the drug kingpin?” He gestured the hand with his smartphone in it at Morgana. “He and I are at it because he’s still trying to restore his human form and I need to pay him back. You guys already dealt with Kamoshida, you don’t need to jump back into danger.”

Ann gave him a narrowed glance. “Well, Kamoshida didn’t remember anything about what we did in the Palace. Wouldn’t the same thing apply to the next palace?”

Morgana smiled. “Lady Ann’s right. The Palace and a Shadow self might be connected to the person’s conscious self, but it isn’t directly the consciousness. They shouldn’t be aware of anything we do in the Palace.”

Ryuji sat back in his chair. “Sounds like no downside to me. I say we do it. Let’s take down more of these shitty adults.”

Ann swallowed another bite from her cake. “If I just sat back and did nothing but take care of myself, I’d fall back into the same me who let those bad things happen. I don’t want that to happen.”

Morgana licked his lips and smiled. “Well, you may be fledglings, but if you’re all on board I think I can lend you my brilliance. We’ll just need to collect some intelligence and practice so we’re ready for the next palace.”

Ryuji threw a fist into the air. “All right, we’ll take the world by surprise!”

Ann carved a big chunk out of her remainder of carrot cake, but paused to look at Akira. “Well, going after the drug ring was your idea. You want to be the leader?”

Ryuji slouched against his seat and jabbed for another bite of beef. “Sounds good to me. Responsibility’s not my thing.”

Akira held up a palm. “No.”

Ryuji’s eyes widened. “What? Why not?”

Every choice I made in the castle was the wrong one. I tried to charge on when we were spent. Twice.” He glanced to Morgana. “I moved on to the Training Hall of Love when we knew you should’ve checked in.” Akira sighed, his shoulders slumping, his tone and volume down. “I didn’t even go after Kamoshida to change his heart, I wanted to kill him.” He peered up at Ann. “You were right. I was wrong.”

Ann’s mood took a similar turn for the crestfallen. “I was only able to do any of that because you were already out there. You stood up against that knight before you even had a Persona. And you’re even doing stuff outside the Metaverse, like finding us that doctor. I want to help all I can, but sometimes I think I’m overwhelmed just trying to keep up at the agency and school.”

“Yeah, man,” Ryuji added, already spearing fork to meat. “I mean, who else would be our fearless leader? Morgana? He’d be out as soon as the Shadows threw catnip.”

Morgana growled. “I am not a cat!” He looked up at Akira. “But Lady Ann is right. You’re not just tenacious, you’re almost as clever as me and you not only found that doctor, you found a fence that we can do business with again.”

Akira rubbed his shoulder and picked his fork back up from his plate. “Those were just luck. I’m sure Ryuji would’ve done the same thing.”

Ryuji smirked. “Hey, I may not be stupid, but a man’s gotta know his limits. Even while you’re up front, you’re thinkin’ and watchin’. When that Shadow transformed into monster-shida, you were on it before it even finished. I’d rather have a fearless leader than fish-chaser.”

“Hey!”

Akira swirled a piece of ham around his plate. “There’s another word for a person without fear: stupid.”

Ann’s shoulders squared. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. All the rest of us look up to you, and you’re really reliable.”

Akira picked up the bite, but stared at the cut of ham. “I’m not reliable.” His eyes slid to their guide trapped in a cat’s body. “But I can think of someone who is.”

Muffled sounds and a fleck of sauce sailed at Akira from Ryuji’s open mouth. The track star’s words may have been obliterated by roast beef, but his intentions were not.

“Ryuji, finish chewing and think about this with a little perspective.” Akira set down his fork. “He is our team expert on the Metaverse.”

Swallowing, the athlete stabbed his fork into a mound of meat on his plate. “He said himself he don’t remember everything! An’ don’t forget about how he went all catnip-weird when we found the Treasure.”

Morgana and Ann both grimaced.

Akira sat further forward on the couch next to Morgana, his glasses magnifying his narrowed gaze. “He led us out of the castle safely every time. Hell, he’s the only one who can sense the Treasure. He knew what to do to get the Treasure to manifest. He helped us write a sensible calling card. In every fight we had he kept his wits and was the only one who figured out to cut the crown off Kamoshida’s head. He had the right strategy and brought us up to speed when he could’ve left us to walk into our own deaths in that castle. He went out of his way to help us.” Taking a moment to reign in his breathing, the transfer student sat back on the couch and straightened. “Shiho would be ashamed of me, and for good reason. I vote for Morgana as leader. It’s the only right vote.”

Ann looked back and forth between Ryuji and Akira before swallowing a mouthful of cake. “Hard to argue with that. Make my vote for Morgana.”

Ryuji fumed. “Man. It’s a mistake to be takin’ orders from a mascot.”

Morgana’s ears curled back, but he took a moment to collect himself. “I’m not some ignorant sports team mascot, Ryuji. Don’t forget this isn’t my real form. The same thing that’s twisting people like Kamoshida distorted my body. Investigating the Metaverse is going to cure me and fix society. As long as I can do those things, I’ll never stop fighting forward. And if you fledglings are with me, there’s nothing that can stop us.”

Ryuji grumped for a moment, then picked up his fork and jammed a heaping helping of roast beef into his mouth.

Ann looked between the others. “So what do we call ourselves?”

Eyes narrowing, Akira scooped up some of his jasmine rice. “I think Ryuji already decided that when he picked The Phantom Thief of Hearts.”

Morgana’s ears curled back against his head. “I know you have a thing against thieves, but it’s stylish. Besides, if we changed our name we’d have to start over with our reputation and everyone would wonder what happened to The Phantom Thief who stole Kamoshida’s heart.”

Akira’s mouth twisted into a frown and he swallowed. “I hate it when you have a point I can’t argue.”

“Who cares?” Ryuji said through a big smile, eyes already back on his food. “I’m sure we’ll make big headlines if we can catch the ring here in Shibuya. Even the cops haven’t been able to find the boss.”

Morgana swallowed a bite of his beef, then straightened. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Kamoshida dropped into our laps. We knew where he was, what he was doing, and his distortion was obvious as well. We need to find out all of those things as well as the name of the next target. We’d even need to decide which person in their heirarchy to take down, there might be more than one with a palace and the higher up, the greater the risk of a gross distortion. Today, we celebrate a job well done. Tomorrow we can begin our quest for the next heart to change.”

Ann sat up in her chair, turning to Akira. “If helping out Kamoshida’s victims had the impact we did on Shujin, just think how many people will find courage if we take on a kingpin.” She checked the time on her phone. “Only a few minutes left until the buffet runs out.”

Akira stood, took another selection of food, and returned.

Morgana smiled up at him as the transfer student sat. “The Phantom Thieves came to our first decision. Once we find a target, we need to agree on it unanimously.”

Akira shrugged. “Fine. The only name I wanted to go after doesn’t have a Palace.”

Ryuji glanced up from his plate, a drip of sauce running down his chin. “Whozzat?”

Akira shook his head, cutting into his beef. “Don’t worry about it.” He closed the Phansite and opened a new online shogi game.

Chapter 21: April 29th, Next Step

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Friday, 29 April 2016
Evening
Ore No Beko Beef Bowl

Akira let out a heavy breath, then hung up his hat and apron on the hook in the tiny room serving as the office and staff break room in back of the beef bowl shop. Wiping his forehead with a rough paper towel, Akira tossed it into the trash and pulled out his school satchel. “Damn, I don’t remember food service being that taxing.”

Morgana hopped up on the chair in front of the desk. “But you kept up until closing. Not bad for your first time at a new place.”

Swinging the cubby-style locker closed, Akira took off his glasses to clean a lens flecked with sauce an hour ago. “And that paycheck in my account’s gonna help a lot. I was hoping on hearing something going on in Shibuya, but no such luck.”

Morgana smiled, tail swishing like an expectant predator. “You can’t expect to strike pay dirt every time.”

Akira set the satchel down for his currently feline companion to get in. “True. I just feel like we’re on a time limit and I can’t see the counter.”

Friday, 29 April 2016
Late Evening
Yongen Bath House

Akira set his folded shirt on top of the stack in the battered, green-painted locker. The sound of running water in the other room competed with the sound of traffic leaking in through the front door, the air tinged with vinegar and cleaning chemicals. Undoing his belt, before he could slide his trousers off his phone buzzed. Growling, Akira pulled it out to see a group chat.

Ryuji already had a line submitted. [Phantom Thieves. Just the sound of it rocks!]

Ann’s icon pulsed for a moment. [You were the one who came up with the name, Ryuji. As long as we help people, it's good.]

Pursing his lips, Akira mulled over the mysterious website they all discovered days ago. [Who set up that Phantom Aficionado Website? I know how to handle my smart phone, but I'm no tech-head.]

[Ask Mishima,] Ann texted. [I remember him talking about web design to Shiho. She was just smiling and nodding, but he seemed to know what he was talking about. That or he knew someone who did.]

Ryuji’s icon blinked. [What about the poll responses? 'Do you believe in the Phantom Thieves?']

Akira sighed and sat down on a stool. [I'm not a politician. That's more… who was that guy we walked past in Station Square?]

Ann popped up next. [Either way, sixty percent seems low to me when we stole his heart.]

[Well, consider how low the site traffic is,] Akira reminded her. [Not even two thousand visitors, and I'll bet most of those are victims from Shujin and other students who heard straight from them. There's not even a link to it from the school website. I'm amazed either number is that high.]

Ryuji blinked as three dots indicated a message in composition for a moment. [Dude, when did you become an optimist?]

[I'm just trying to take an objective look at it. Maybe it's just a lot easier to do that since seeing Father Sugiyama.]

Ryuji’s icon blinked again. [But for real. Imagine how cool it would be if we got lots more people coming to us.]

Snorting, Akira sent, [Popularity is for needy, washed-up idols like Kanami. I just want to find the next person living on the suffering of everyone in Shibuya.]

Ann texted next, [I get what you're saying, but I think Ryuji's got a point too. The more people who know us, the more likely somebody will point us at one of those big fish we're looking for.]

Saturday, 30 April 2016
Lunchtime
Shujin, Kobayakawa’s Office

Makoto closed the door behind her, paced to the principal’s desk, then drew herself into a formal, attentive posture. Her mind buzzed trying to calculate the reason for this meeting. No student-council-related matters pressed for attention. Bullying incidents plummeted, though the students involved might all still be in shock over Kamoshida’s confession earlier that week. The plain-clothes detectives still interviewing staff had the gossipers buzzing, but now that the police were involved the case was in their jurisdiction. “You wished to see me, Principal Kobayakawa?”

Shifting some papers aside, the obese man in a mustard suit looked up at Makoto. “You saw the state Kamoshida-kun was in?”

Makoto only just held in a sigh. This sounded just like the rumor-mongers in the halls. “You mean in that assembly he called?”

“Exactly,” Kobayakawa said, rubbing his chin with an unfocused look in his eyes. “I’ve known that man for years, and he’s never groveled. Something shady must be going on.”

Makoto clasped her hands behind her back, fidgeting with her fingers. For a moment, she considered asking about the horrible rumors about Kamoshida. That the things he confessed about Takamaki and Suzui, the rumors about more of the same went back… maybe even before Kiriko-san transferred.

Her eyes fell to the floor for a moment.

Kiriko-san. Her grades weren’t as good as Makoto’s, but her involvement as president of the music club and chess team, as well as treasurer in the student council, made her something of a rival. But on the eve of her expected announcement to become a starter on the volleyball team, she stopped going to all her clubs and went from one of Shujin’s most popular students to a recluse, avoiding teachers and students alike. It should have been Kiriko’s unstoppable step into yet another step into another sector of Shujin, and would have guaranteed her the spot of student council president this year.

Makoto shook her head. Dwelling on the past wouldn’t help her. “I… I’m not sure I understand, sir.”

“Well, a lot of rumors have been flying all over the school.” Kobayakawa dabbed at his sweat-beaded forehead. “It’s disrupting daily operations, but some of them have me very worried. Some students may have meddled with him, but who? And how?”

Opening her mouth, Makoto caught herself before she could question why they should look into it if his confession was real. Sae may not have mentioned it in a while, but ‘fruit of the poisoned tree’ could ruin an entire case even if the true perpetrator was caught. “You think some students threatened Kamoshida-sensei? Blackmailed him?”

Kobayakawa nodded. “Students are supposed to trust their teachers, so the teachers can guide the students. If somebody’s gone so far as to attack such a respected figure as Kamoshida, any of the students or faculty could be vulnerable! And what might they be threatened into?”

Makoto nodded, unwilling to contradict the principal but unable to keep from seeing how all those hushed rumors lined up with the confession.

The principal held up his hands. “This could be very important for the safety and stability of this fine academy. I want you to look into this for me, even if it involves looking into student matters.”

Makoto tightened her hands behind her back. “Are you saying there may be some truth to those Phantom Thief rumors?”

Lips pursing, Kobayakawa took his chin in hand. “Kamoshida did change somehow, but what I don’t know is the cause. If I don’t know that, how can I handle the media or police correctly?”

“Oh.” Makoto exhaled, feeling her spirit deflate somewhat as well. She couldn’t think of an angle to criticize his practical reasoning, but it didn’t seem very responsible. Especially with the ongoing reports of students getting caught up in scams in Shibuya.

As if sensing her thoughts, Kobayakawa gave a reassuring smile. “Your grades and conduct are impeccable, and your teachers have nothing but praise for you. If you could solve this mystery, I have no doubt that we could have a glowing recommendation for any college you desire, Niijima Makoto.”

Makoto stiffened.

“Your sister holds a lofty position at the Public Prosecutors’ Office, yes?” he asked in the tone of somebody who knew the answer and wanted to take the conversation somewhere.

Makoto swallowed and nodded, unsure why the room felt hotter than before.

Still with his plastic smile, Kobayakawa finished, “If something were to happen here, we wouldn’t want it to reflect poorly on her, would we?”

Feeling a drop of sweat trickle down the back of her neck, she said, “Of course not, sir.”

Kobayakawa relaxed. “What a capable and intelligent student council president. I look forward to you uncovering the truth behind this as soon as possible.”

Makoto fidgeted with her fingers behind her back for a moment, wondering if she should press about the fraud and scam concerns in Shibuya.

A cell phone rang. He pulled open a drawer and drew a small, black flip-phone. His eyes fell on her, something tense and bleak in them. “Thank you, Niijima.” He opened the call and lifted it to his ear. “Kobayakawa.” She stepped out the door. “Yes, sir, I apologize for the trouble when you are so busy. About the matter we discussed earlier…”

She closed the door and let out a tense breath.

Saturday, 30 April 2016
After School
Shujin, Class 2-D

The bell rang and Chunou-sensei paused to glare at the speaker in the corner of the room for interrupting her. Her eyes swept over the class, slowing at a few of the students, before she let out a defeated sigh. “Fine, go on home.”

A cheer rose up and some of the students shot out of class. Akira set his books into a neat stack, then glanced to his left at a clatter. Ann bent down to pick up pencils and lipstick knocked off in her haste. Finishing packing his own, he paused to let Morgana slip into his school satchel and slipped through the desks to Ann. “You going somewhere?”

Her right eye squinted a little in the tense, apologetic way she did. “Yeah, I’ve got a shoot today. And I was going to go up to see Shiho tomorrow. Sorry.”

Akira held up a hand. “No, it’s okay. Message me if Suzui-san wakes up.”

Ann gave a firm nod, then speed-walked out.

He managed to get up the stairs and halfway to the library when his phone went off. Akira sighed and leaned against the wall to check it.

A text message from Ryuji bounced in his inbox. [Yo, buddy. You got some time?]

[I was just going to get some studying in. You could always use a boost to your academic rank.]

Ryuji’s reply came fast. [Man, I could study for days and it wouldn't help. At this point I'm happy to pass.]

Morgana sighed and slouched against Akira’s shoulder. “Why am I not surprised?”

Ryuji added, [They finally fixed Gun About down at the Gigolo arcade in Shibuya. You should come. If we ever pick up a solid lead on that drug thing you warned us about, you need to know how to shoot.]

Akira ground his teeth, thumbs slamming into his smart phone. [My marksmanship was not THAT bad.]

[Dude, your first volley hit Ann, and monster-shida was a freaking barn.]

Sighing, Akira conceded defeat. [Point taken. I'll be there in fifteen.]

Putting away his phone, Akira jogged down to the train station. The usual press of people crammed against him even after disgorging from the train at Shibuya, but he managed to get to the arcade without starting a fight. Older men filled the pachinko machines at the front, and he shook his head as he proceeded to the arcade game section in the back.

Ryuji spotted him first, and waved from a tall game platform.

Akira came to a stop, noting four controllers at two pedestals in front of a projector screen, thick cables connecting them to the game station. The pedestal to the left held cradles for two pistols, the other for two rifles.

Ryuji held one of the rifles, a broad grin on his face as his friend walked up. “Check it out. One of the most realistic shooters without needing paint balls.” He quivered in anticipation, his smile growing almost to a manic state. “It’s awesome!”

Lifting the pistol controller in the pedestal in front of him, Akira tested the weight and balance. “So how’s it any different than those home console guns?”

Ryuji presented his rifle. “See how it’s got this?” He jiggled the rifle controller to shake the cable. “That ain’t just for power. It’s also got an air hose. Depending on the kinda gun you select, it’ll run air up through here,” he pointed along the gun, “so it shakes just like real recoil. Oh, and if you run out of your clip, you don’t shoot off the screen like those sissy arcades.”

Akira snorted. “There are games where you shoot off the screen to reload? What sense does that make?”

Ryuji’s smile grew to disturbing proportions, but faded as he set into teaching the system. “For real! I’m playin’ around with an assault rifle today, but I usually play close-in maps with a shotgun setup.” He pointed to a square button at the bottom of the grip. “These rifles are like the pistols – or SMGs if you pick that – you just slap the magazine well here to reload. Shotguns have a couple different ways to go depending on which one you have, my favorite has a tube mag so I have to hit this little panel on the side.” Ryuji flipped his controller over to point at a black, rectangular panel set in the bright blue plastic. “To move, just step on those pedals,” he pointed down at bottom of terminal, “and just step off ‘em to take cover.”

Akira looked at the pistol controller. “Wow, that’s a lot of effort for a game.”

Ryuji’s grin reappeared. “Ain’t it? C’mon, the terminals take all kinds’a cards so you don’t even need to buy tokens.”

Kneeling closer to the card reader, Akira pulled out his wallet and shot a brief glare at his running compatriot. “You know I’m also paying for our medical, right?”

Ryuji tilted his head. “Didn’t you say you were checkin’ out a buyer?”

“Yeah,” he said, authorizing a few games and standing up. “But I haven’t had time to meet him yet. Sakura-san just okayed me going out at night, and I’d rather not he find out I was doing anything other than working. At least for right now.”

Ryuji nodded. “I getcha. Let’s go back and play the grassy knoll. It’s pretty easy, but Gun About doesn’t have much of a tutorial. It’s more a pick-up-and-play.”

Akira picked an SMG and read what little instructions the game gave about using the controller. He joined Ryuji in a level walking down an inner-city park like Inokashira, but without the lake. They ran through it again another time, then went through a steel mill with two robots fighting in the background.

“Okay,” Ryuji said with a comfortable grin. “You seem to be pickin’ it up. Let’s step out of skirmish and see how you do against some real players. Let’s take the factory warehouse. There’s plenty of cover there, and it’s got more ammo drops than most other maps.”

Akira followed Ryuji’s avatar through the crate-filled warehouse strewn with forklifts. Despite the quick pace, Ryuji’s snap shots landed home every time and Akira found himself focusing on stragglers until they came to a player with a slender gas-mask over his face, its faceplate reflecting red light. No matter how many times he blasted a burst from his SMG into him, the player ducking in and out of cover kept up a quick advance. “What the hell is up with this guy?” His screen turned red and ‘insert credits to continue’ rose out of the dark.

Ryuji’s teeth ground and his glare at the screen turned murderous. “You.” He pulled the rifle controller to his shoulder and unloaded burst after burst into the gasmasked goon jumping and weaving around cover. The enemy player blasted Ryuji’s with a shotgun and the screen went red.

Ryuji kicked the pedestal. “Damn! I almost had enough points to buy a ballistic vest. I hate that shit-head.”

Akira’s brow arched as he watched the screen. “Why is he crouching on top of your character, standing back up, and crouching again?”

Ryuji turned away from the screen. “It’s tea-bagging. Dude, you really don’t keep up with shooter game culture. Doin’ that’s like flippin’ someone off an’ pissin’ on his corpse.”

Scratching his chin, Akira set his controller back in its cradle on the pedestal. “How’d he even get to you? I’m not too proud to admit your aim is way better than mine ever will be. There is no way he could’ve gotten through both of us without getting hit. Especially when you gave up taking cover to unload into him.”

Ryuji leaned his hip against the pedestal and breathed in deep. “He’s got some kind of cheater armor or somethin’. I try different points every time I see him, but he kills an’ griefs anyone he runs across. Well, almost anyone. I heard The King survived once.” He turned back around and swiped his card over the reader to start playing the game again.

“You and your gun obsession need to see a therapist.”

Ryuji stood straight, giving a hooded stare. “It’s just appreciation, dude. I bet The King’s some ex-special forces hot-shot with thirty years of experience.”

Akira slipped the controller back into its cradle. “I think I’ll head back to Yongen.”

“What, you’re done after just two games?” Ryuji flashed him a mocking smirk. “My main man, you need to up your game if you wanna impress the ladies.”

Akira shot him a flat stare.

Ryuji rolled his shoulder. “Or just not embarrass yourself at the next Palace.”

Akira picked the controller back up. “Let’s do it. Show me these mad skills you think you have.”

Smirking, Ryuji shouldered his rifle controller. “Heh. Kneel and eat my lead.” His eyes popped wide open. “That sounded less dirty in my head.”

Saturday, 30 April 2016
Evening
Shibuya, Central Street

Akira marched out of 777 Convenience, the unrelenting sound of the city hammered into his ears. Cars beeped and rumbled down nearby streets and a helicopter buzzed overhead. He grit his teeth and shoved his hands in his pockets, the noise alone an assault even before the crowd that never quit.

His stomach growled, a churning demand in his torso warring with his plan to flee to the relative quiet and solitude of Yongen. Big Bang Burger glowed from across the street, beckoning him through the horde.

With a concrete destination, Akira forced his way through the crowd, ignoring noises of protest until he got inside. Catching his breath in the line, he ordered a pair of burgers, looked in at the crammed seating, then decided to take his chances finding quiet on a side-street.

The instant he stepped outside, a clump of people crashed into him like a wave against a shipwreck survivor. He could’ve sworn the streaming crowds even pulled his air away with them. Pushed this way and that, his desperate hindbrain took over and he found himself taking the lightest streams and first side streets available. Still assailed by the sound of people so strong it wrapped around his heart and pulsed like eurobeat, he followed further down the dark side streets.

At last, he came to a place with no foot-traffic to compete with him, the sound of the city distant if still surrounding him on all sides. A utility road between a commercial property and the perimeter wall of a residential area snaked down the terrain ahead of him, and he spotted a person huddled against one of the concrete poles holding up power lines. “Hey.”

The down-on-his-luck man in ratty pants and a worn, hooded parka jerked awake. He shot a momentary fearful glance up at Akira. “Huh?”

Stomach still clenching from the crowd, he looked down at his two burgers. Something prodded him from inside and snatches from Father Motoori’s sermons surfaced in his mind. Akira held one of the wrapped burgers at the ragged-dressed man huddling against the wall. “Hungry?”

The homeless man’s eyes lit up and he shuffled closer, but paused. Suspicious eyes locked onto Akira’s. “For what?”

The transfer student shrugged. “Tell me about Shibuya. How you got here.” He left the hand holding the burger steady.

A long, wary moment passed before the homeless man looked between the paper-wrapped burger and Akira before snatching and unwrapping it, lifting it to look inside as if expecting some kind of gotcha. Satisfied, he put it back together before taking a deep bite, savoring the flavor for long seconds before chewing and swallowing.

That hurdle over with, Akira opened his and bit into his burger.

The homeless man sighed and looked down at his food. “I used to be a respectable artist once.”

Akira scanned the unfortunate drifter. “Sculptor?”

The homeless man raised an offended eyebrow. “No, real art. Painting. I spent years under the mentorship of…” He turned a melancholic stare to his burger and took a modest bite.

Akira chewed, waited, swallowed, then waited some more. “Well, who?”

“Madarame.” The artist’s gaze turned wistful. “The great neo-classical Japanese Painter. There were a couple of us at his workshop.” He shuffled position to sit comfortably against the property wall, eyes in distant memory. “Oh, we’d make amazing paintings like even Heizou would’ve struggled to create.”

Swallowing a big bite, Akira looked at a limp bit of tomato hanging out of his burger. “Sounds like a real cushy spot. How’d you end up out here?”

The artist’s shoulders fell and he stared into his burger. “He… was in a bit of a slump. We’d all pitch in – after all, it was the great Madarame, and he was showing us a world of art and technique we’d never have found otherwise. But one day he had some public showing at an art collector’s place in Nichino. I’d been doing a few things and wanted to keep my name on a screen painting of mine.” He paused to bite, chew, and swallow, his expression hardening. “He said no. At first I thought it was okay. Kita-kun and the others thought it was okay, after all, and Madarame taught us so much.”

“What happened?”

The artist let out a sigh. “He sold it. I heard one of that collector’s friends talking. He sold it for five hundred thousand yen. I don’t know which I was more mad at – that he never let me put my name on it, or that he put his on and didn’t want to cut me in on the sale. Said I wasn’t ready for the commercial world. When we got back to Tokyo, I went to some reporter.”

Akira stood straighter. “Remember who?”

“Murakami something. Said she wasn’t interested because she was working on some politician.” The homeless guy bit into the remnants of his burger. “Madarame found out anyway, thought I was trying to sell him out and kicked me out. When I tried to sell another screen printing to an advertising company, I hoped I could finally get my feet underneath me. Then they suddenly came back and said they couldn’t buy.”

Akira swallowed and crumpled up the remains of his wrapper. “What the hell would advertisers care?”

“Madarame was pressuring them. Said they’d never be able to reference his works if they did business with me. Same with the next place, then the next.” He looked at the one bite left, his eyes glistening. “My whole world was painting, but if I wasn’t making things for him he wouldn’t let me make anything.” He threw the last bite in his mouth and crumpled the wrapper into a little ball.

Akira reached for his phone, then realized he shouldn’t operate the Nav in front of other people. He changed his hand from his jacket to trouser pocket. “I may not know Madarame, but I do know that people who are really scumbags at heart are always the architects of their own downfall. He’ll either get caught or…” He shrugged. “Have a change of heart.”

The homeless man gave a bitter smirk. “Yeah, as if that could ever happen. Thanks for the grub, anyway.”

Chapter 22: May 1st, Meet Green

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Sunday, 1 May 2016
Early Morning
Kanda Catholic Church

Father Sugiyama lectured on the daily message, his changing tone drawing Akira out of his melancholic musing. The middle-aged priest cleared his throat, then read, “Jesus told his disciples, ‘Because a loveless world is a sightless world. If anyone loves me, he will carefully keep my word and my Father will love him…’”

Akira crossed his arms, toe tapping on the floor for a moment. Looking left and right for anybody else uncomfortable, orderly throngs of calm Japanese followed along without any sign of demons haunting them. Despite being surrounded by people, he felt alone and far away from every one of them as Mass went on. When at last it drew to a close, he straightened to bail on the church. He glanced at the pew at the fold-up chess board he brought. He hesitated. Togo-san did promise him another game.

Letting the hasty parishioners leave first, he sought her out and hid the board behind his back. “Hi.”

The girl with the red knot in her hair startled, settling into a practiced for-the-public smile in record time. “Oh, hello, Akira-san.”

“So…” He scratched the back of his neck, keeping the board out of sight. “I was about to ask for that game we couldn’t get to last week.”

Hifumi drew a closed hand to her chest, one eye narrow in a familiar pained expression. “Oh, I-I’m sorry. I have to do a photoshoot.” Her discomfort remained steady when she looked to the exit.

Unsure if he should feel better that her discomfort didn’t seem to be due to him, Akira tilted his head, keeping his chess board hidden behind his back. “Have to? You seem in quite a hurry for something you’re almost cringing just at the thought of.”

Hifumi forced herself to stand straight, impatience creasing the lines of her face. “It’s… I’m just trying to support my family and draw attention to shogi.” She gave him a shallow, swift bow, something about her looking like she just ate something bad. “Please excuse me.” Without allowing him another word, she dashed out.

Feeling his shoulders sag, Akira watched her jog out the doors. A few moments passed before he threw the folding cardboard to the pew next to him. He ran his hands through his hair, took in a deep breath, then remembered the box of chess pieces. Feeling cheated and still itching to test his mental mettle, he ran through the list of people he knew who might be interested in a game.

Akira sighed and narrowed that list down to people who probably knew how to play as well, coming up with zero. After letting out a frustrated growl, he collected his board and box of cheap plastic pieces.

Familiar footfalls drew his attention to the priest coming down the aisle to him. Akira bowed his head. “Father.”

The middle-aged man with greying hair inclined his head. “Son. What can I do for you?”

Something about asking the priest to set aside time to play chess felt wrong to him, so he dug around for anything else to talk about. “Uh… well… One of my classmates lost his girlfriend – Suzui-san.”

Father Sugiyama bowed his head. “I remember you mentioning her. We’ve all been praying for her recovery.”

Akira set the board and box on the pew nearby, then scratched his neck. “Well, Mishima-san was torn up when the ambulance took her away. I think he’d have rather died himself than let that happen to her.”

Sugiyama pressed his eyes closed for a solemn moment. “He sounds like a caring boy in hard times. I’m glad to hear you could be there for him.”

Akira cringed, then stretched out his shoulder as his insides quailed. “That’s just the thing. I don’t feel like I am. Whenever he talks about Suzui, I feel like I’m talking to a martian telling me about an alien planet.”

Pasting a cheery but not totally real smile, Father Sugiyama’s expression turned serious as he looked over the teenage boy. “At your age, you’ve never been in love?”

Akira glowered at the pews on the other side of the aisle. “No. There’s tons of shit poetry—”

Father Sugiyama cleared his throat, casting a glance at the crucifix.

Akira gave a nervous bow at the altar, only feeling the sense of pressure inside continue to rise. “Sorry, Father. But… I’ve studied medicine, and it reminds me more of… it’s like hearing about a disease I’ve never seen but I know the symptoms of. I just… he’s all torn up and I feel like I can’t get it so I can’t do anything for him. It makes me feel extra stupid. The girl he liked doesn’t like him anymore, why can’t he just move on? What am I missing?”

Father Sugiyama chuckled. “Oh, son, love is not by any stretch a disease. But to focus on your concern for your friend… He was very close to somebody and that horrible event took her away. He was used to her being there. Now a part of his life that he cherished is gone. I felt like that when I lost my job and my girlfriend at the time broke it off to live with someone with a steadier job. Now for me, that was the period that directed me to the Church. Looking back on it, I feel like I can be calm and safe in where I am despite the fear and uncertainty back then. He’s still lost in that unknown place.”

Crossing his arms, Akira looked at the priest as if something in the lines of his face might give answers to questions he didn’t know how to ask. “So is the problem Suzui-san or himself? All I could think of was to tell him to accomplish something instead of beating himself up over what Kamoshida did to Shi—Suzui.”

Sugiyama’s next smile looked genuine. “You’re a rather perceptive lad. Right now, I suspect he needs to come to terms with himself. That idea of yours of taking action was brilliant, but I suspect he still needs support to either rediscover himself or discover who he needs to become.”

Akira kicked at the wood floor. “Why are people so complicated?”

Sunday, 1 May 2016
Early Evening
Takemi Medical Clinic

The sounds of the city screeching all around him and a trace smell of garbage on the wind, Akira strode into the clinic lobby. Relative silence took place of the noise of the city, not a sign of another living person except the doctor sitting behind her plastic-shielded desk. Her fingers clacked away at an old keyboard, one of the keys sticking.

It took a moment for her to look up at him. A wistful spark in her eyes, she said, “In spring, one ‘sleeps a sleep that knows no dawn’, huh?” Tiredness overcoming her, Takemi yawned into her fist. “God, I need a nap. Or some good old-fashioned caffeine in my system.”

Akira shoved his hands into his pockets. “I’ll bring some coffee from Leblanc next time. I came to ask about a few things, like what’s going on in Shibuya.”

While her shoulders remained relaxed, her eyes narrowed and scanned him up and down. “I agreed to treat you with as few questions asked as possible, but I don’t run a loose dispensary.”

Akira waved a hand as if casting off something dirty. “I’m not looking for drugs today, I’m here for information.”

Glancing up at the front door, a moment passed before she clacked away at the computer, then put a ‘the doctor is seeing a patient’ sign up at the desk window. “In the back.”

Nodding, Akira set the bag with Morgana underneath a chair and headed into the exam room.

Locking the door, she crossed her arms at him. “I knew you were involved in something when you brought that girl in the other day, but I changed my mind. I don’t want you getting involved in my situation.”

Akira pulled out the little stool and plopped down on it. “I might already be involved in it. You’re just doing what you are because of Miwa-chan. Well, I’ve got people to look out for too. I’ve never been able to close my eyes and ears when something’s going on all around me.” He slipped his hands into his pockets and took a deep breath before he looked up at her. “So who was that dork in the leopard-print shirt?”

A small smile made its way over her face and she clamped her lips closed to strangle a laugh. “Well, you’re a fair judge of character so far.” Her look of amusement melted away. “But you’ve got no instinct of self-preservation if you’re trying to get involved in a yakuza drug ring.”

“Who’s saying I’m trying?” He leaned back a little before the stool wobbled and he centered himself on it. Considering a few possibilities, he decided to gamble on a guess he had no way of proving. “They’ve already got people at my school. Shujin’s not exactly close, but it’s got people that are already hooked. Don’t ask me to turn away from my friends.”

Takemi sighed and turned away to her computer with an organic molecule drifting in the screensaver.

After giving her a few more moments to think, he asked again. “Who was that dweeb in the leopard-print shirt?”

She turned and her eyes narrowed on him. “Anybody ever tell you you’re a busybody?”

“I seem to remember Kung-fu Cop telling me that back at Inuri.” Akira flexed his arms, stretching up, then clasped his hands behind his head in as relaxed a pose as he could get on the tiny stool.

Takemi let out a heavy breath and look like she just lost a custody battle. “Knowing my luck, you’re already involved and you just don’t know his name. He goes by Masa.” Her eyes narrowed. “Dont underestimate him. He looks like a big-mouthed thug, but he’s more clever than he lets on. He’s either a lieutenant or he’s gunning for a lieutenant spot in one of the yakuza in Shibuya.”

“Just Masa?”

Crossing her arms, Takemi ran a finger along the edge of her clipboard. “We meet at night in an alley of Shibuya. You really think he goes by his full legal name whether or not he’s got cronies around?”

The hair on the back of his neck rose. “He has dupes with him while you’re making some of these exchanges?”

She nodded. “Once in a while.” She looked him in the eye, the corners of her lips turning up. “Don’t tell me you’re worried about me.”

“If he’s the type I’m thinking of…” He tapped his knuckle against his lip, thinking of strategies and counter-strategies. “They don’t keep their word for long.”

Takemi scoffed, but the grip she held her clipboard with betrayed the underlying tension. “He needs me more than I need him. He wouldn’t be asking for that quantity of amphetamines if he had other reliable sources. My life is only in danger if I try to cut him off.” She looked away, letting out a long breath. “I just have to keep working on real medicine and hope I can do more good than the damage I’m causing.”

Akira looked at her for a long moment before deciding she had a good grip of where she stood. He nodded in thanks. “I’ll see if I can get anything else without raising suspicions.”

She pointed her clipboard at him, all trace of humor gone from her eyes. “Don’t catch the ire of the yakuza. They don’t play around.”

Standing, Akira straightened his school jacket and smirked. “Neither do I. Don’t underestimate my connections. Or how much I can do without ever being seen.”

Sunday, 1 May 2016
Evening
Yongen, Leblanc

Akira pushed the cafe’s door open, feeling worn out but still cheated an opportunity to flex his mental muscle even after an extra session at the arcade and making a deal with Doctor Takemi.

The little bell rang and Sojiro glanced up from the register. Further in, some salaryman in casual clothes and a ratty-edged green sweater stood from a booth further in. He dropped a few yen notes on the table and walked out, but stopped next to the younger man sitting near the manga by the register. “Hey, enjoy your sit-down, Defective Detective. You belong in little cafes like this.” Laughing, he walked out and Akira stared at the man’s rude gall.

The younger customer, probably some college student judging from the papers spread out in front of him, picked up his mug. It was almost enough to hide the sharp twist of his lip and narrowing of his eyes before he took a gulp and set down his coffee, all smiles again.

There was something familiar about burying feelings under a false front for the public that called to him, so Akira sat down at the bar stool next to the brown-haired college kid. Just before Sojiro could move from glaring to snapping at him to get away from the customers, Akira settled into today’s role. “One cup of the decaf blend.” He glanced at the empty mug in the other customer’s hand. “And another of whatever he’s having.”

For an infinitesimal moment, those red eyes narrowed at him, flicking over the transfer student’s face so fast he couldn’t tell if it bore more resemblance to a rabbit scanning the treeline for a hawk or a hawk scanning a field for rabbits. Then Red Eye was all proper posture and the smile of corporate spokesmen. “Oh, you don’t have to feel sorry for me.”

Akira pulled out the yen notes to pay for his and the other kid’s drinks, tossing them on the counter close to Sojiro and enjoying the feigned moment of no connection. “Even if misery doesn’t love company, good drinks do.”

Sojiro returned, setting down cups on saucers in front of each. “Enjoy.” His mouth pursed together, but with Akira refusing to act like anything but a new customer he must not have had any excuse to complain. The older man retreated to the sink to wash dishes.

The other customer ran a hand through his brown hair. “Well,” he took the cup and lifted it in a toast. “I suppose I can’t argue with that.”

Akira returned the gesture. “Amamiya Ren.”

Red Eye nodded. “Akechi Goro.”

Akira glanced over Akechi’s paperwork. “Looks like complicated legalese.”

“Oh, it’s not so difficult as it is much more verbose than it needs to be.” Tiredness ringed his eyes, but Akechi forced his face to hold a smile. “I suppose that’s the inevitable result of hundreds of years of legal traditions. This is just a motion for discovery.”

Akira snorted in amusement. “I just had the mental image of a lawyer jamming a flag into the tile floor and declaring ‘I have discovered the east courthouse bathrooms.’ Then some clerk walking past him going,” he waved his hand under his nose, “Yeah, I discovered it too.”

Akechi laughed, though his shoulders slumped just a little and when the laugh finished the smile was thinner. “No, no, it’s a court-mandated obligation for another party to turn over documents and evidence. It’s a favor for an investigative journalist who helped me numerous times in the past two years. When used in conjunction with a lawsuit or criminal investigation, it makes disposal of evidence a serious crime and opens more avenues for investigation and arrest.”

Akira took a sip of his coffee, twitching at his first sip and reaching for some creamer. “Yeah, they seem to be better at digging up dirt than the fuzz. They only ever seem to go after the helpless.”

Setting down his cup, Akechi turned a page and signed a series of blanks. “It’s not that the police seek the helpless, they just have certain pressures to be much more cautious around connected targets. I’ve worked both with and outside the police as a private investigator. They have regulations and, being connected to the state, have both funding and politics to worry about.” He turned another page and read. “It’s been that way since the dawn of the samurai. The extolling of loyalty obligated them to prefer their sworn lord over the people of his fiefdom.”

“Ah,” Akira said, drawing himself up to the battle of wits. He held up a hand with his index finger extended. “But as Corvino said, loyalty is only a virtue when the object of loyalty is good.”

Akechi blinked, then gave a smile that touched his whole face. “You are very well-read, Amamiya-san.”

Sojiro’s cell phone rang and he headed to the kitchen to answer it.

Akira shrugged. “I’ve had to argue against blind obedience before. I find that Confucius is not the best source for such arguments.” He paused to sip his coffee, wondering why it tasted so different than it smelled and adding a little more creamer. “Investigative journalists don’t get enough credit for the amount of work they have to dig through. I wonder if Murakami worked on stuff like the ring in Shibuya.”

Akechi sat up straight, casting a wary glance at the transfer student. “How do you know that name?”

Akira raised one eyebrow. “One of those homeless artists in the backstreets of Shibuya told me about her. Something about Madarame. Why?”

Akechi picked his phone out from underneath a pile of receipts and tapped out a quick text message. “One of my contacts in the media keeps asking about a Murakami. Did this artist say when?”

Akira shook his head and sipped coffee to try to break the conversation.

Akechi bit his lip in thought for a few moments, then opened his metal briefcase, dug around in it, and handed a business card. “This is her card. She’ll want to know about this Murakami sighting.”

Akira swallowed and set his coffee down, reading the card. “Ohya Ichiko of the Maiasa Newspaper. I’ve never heard of it.”

“Really?” Akechi looked as surprised as he sounded. “It’s no small publication.”

“Okay, okay,” Sojiro said as he paced closer, his phone still at his ear. “I’ll just take care of these last two customers and come fix dinner.” Slipping the device into a pocket, he looked at both. “Sorry, boys, but I’ve got to close up now.”

Akechi took a deep draught from his cup, then packed up his paperwork. “Thanks for the shot of caffeine. Tonight’s going to be a long one.” Slipping his binder into the metal briefcase, he clicked it shut and left.

Before the bell stopped jingling behind him, Sojiro looked to Akira. “What was all that about?”

Akira took another sip from his cup. “You never seem to want me to be associated with this place, so I played the customer so I could lend an ear. It’s always interesting the things people will tell an unconnected stranger.” Turning the card over expecting a blank back, he read the katakana scratched by hand in blank ink. “Crossroads, huh?”

Sojiro’s eyes narrowed. “Well, I’d lose that card. Whatever that young man there was involved in is nothing you want to get involved in. A lot of lawyers and papers by the look of it.”

Akira pocketed the card and took the dishes to the sink. “Whatever. You go take care of your personal business.”

Monday, 2 May 2016
Morning
Shujin, Class 2-D

Akira’s pen scritch-scratched down the page as he jotted down the mass of math problems Usami-sensei listed on the back chalkboard for this week’s homework. Conversation bubbled around him, only a few of them muttering his name. The rear door threw open and all talk stopped. Tomoya, the student council disciplinary head, rushed down the rows of desks to Mishima. He bent down and exchanged rapid whispers for a few seconds, pointing up at the ceiling in the direction of administrative offices.

After Tomoya departed, Akira returned to his desk. Scooting his chair around, he asked the class representative, “What was that about?”

“Tomoya-san was just talking to the vice principal. Again.” Mishima shrugged. “I guess he’s been setting up shop in the principal’s office and people are getting worried Kobayakawa’s going to jail. A lot of teachers are getting repeat interviews. That’s got to mean prosecutors are pressing charges.”

Akira snorted. “He should be behind bars. Burying who knows how many rape cases makes him culpable in all of them. And anybody else who helped the cover-up.”

The front door slid open and Inui-sensei stormed in, his tie and the button-down under his suit jacket looking just a little rumpled. “Everybody in your seats. Time to study history, not be history.”

Monday, 2 May 2016
Lunchtime
Shujin, Class 2-D

Ryuji trotted in through the rear door, giving it a kick with his ankle to send the door sliding shut again to block some of the hubub of conversation in the halls. The few students still lounging in 2-D ignored him, either eating or continuing their own animated conversations. Ryuji plopped down at Mishima’s desk right behind Akira. “Hey. I’ve been followin’ those rumors about peeps doin’ stuff in Shibuya, an’ I think I finally got somethin’.”

Akira swallowed his bite of radish and turned in his seat. “Well?”

Ryuji opened his lunch sack, glanced up at the four continuing conversations about sports, video games, and girls, then leaned closer. “Nishiyama came in today with new shoes. Real nice ones. Good enough for this girl who told me to notice and remember. But get this – he’s been complainin’ about not havin’ any money.”

Akira slumped in his seat and popped another radish in his mouth. “Ryuji, don’t waste my time with who’s got the latest fashion.”

Ryuji pulled out rolls wrapped in plastic. “You’re pissy today. Think about it, how often do you look at someone’s shoes? If she noticed ‘em, that’s gotta mean they’re worth noticin’.” He tore the wrapping off and stuffed the first roll in his mouth.

“So what?” Akira said, feeling his blood run a little hot for reasons he couldn’t even understand and only feeling more on edge because of it. The weekend tended to make him feel cooler and more even-keeled, but this week felt like it dragged straight on from the last one without a moment’s respite. “Doctors all over say the most important thing you wear is on your feet.”

“Really?” Ryuji shook his head. “Well, apparently Nishiyama doesn’t have a job. I guess he’s always hangin’ around school.”

Akira nodded, impressed with how on-focus Ryuji was. “You know what class he’s in?”

Ryuji shrugged and swallowed his second roll. “Not in mine.”

Akira growled despite the start offered. “Great lead, Ryuji.” He shoved another radish in his mouth and took out his phone, navigating to the messenger. “But Mishima’s better with names than I am, maybe he knows.”

Chapter 23: May 2nd, Fiery Eyes

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Monday, 2 May 2016
After School
Shujin, Class 2-D

Matsuko, the student council secretary, scrambled in. Even after coming to a stop next to his desk, her not-in-regulation purple shirt shook from her nervous twitching. She glanced at the transfer student scratching away at today’s homework and leaned closer to the class representative to whisper, “Is it true?”

Yuuki blinked. “Is what true?”

“Principal Kobayakawa’s gonna be fired!” He sat up in his chair and she waved him down to try to avoid notice from the small handful of other students eating lunch in 2-D. “Think about it. The vice principal’s been in his office every day. Detectives have been interviewing teachers and asking specifically about the principal.”

Yuuki nodded. Detectives had stopped at his house to interview him specifically about Kobayakawa. “I guess Shujin made enough headlines that more faculty are facing criminal charges. Makes me wonder what might have gone different if Kamoshida confessed a day earlier, or later. If some of those calls to the police caught the wrong guy in public security.”

Monday, 2 May 2016
After School
Shujin, Stairwell near Class 2-D

Leaning against the stairwell wall, Ryuji scrolled through his phone. “The rating’s going down, but there’s more postings on the Phansite.”

Reading through one post, Akira made sure to push a heavy monotone droll into his voice, “Make my friend apologize for not returning the book I lent him.”

Ryuji’s shoulders drew up. “I didn’t say they were solid gold hits.” He backed out one step and continued scrolling. After a moment, he let out a brief sigh. “But yeah, lots of ‘em are like that.”

A pair of girls trotted out of Class 2-D and Akira watched them out of the corner of his eye. The longer-haired one took in a deep breath. “The atmosphere’s so different here. You wonder if that rumor about that Phantom Thief stealing Kamoshida’s heart is true?”

The shorter, more curly-haired girl snorted with laughter. “What a riot! That’s like sewer alligators.”

“But Kamoshida was bawling up there on that stage. Who’d have ever thought such a serious teacher would do that?”

Short and Stupid flipped out her phone and browsed. “Please. He prolly couldn’t keep hiding it after that girl jumped off the roof. You know they take it easier on people who turn themselves in.” She looked up at her classmate. “I really don’t care about those thief rumors, I just hate that now our school’s gonna have a reputation.”

Her friend nodded as if the other said something wise. “Oh, yeah. I hope it doesn’t make our college entrances harder.”

Akira’s hand clenched over his phone as he abandoned the stairwell to spit fire at the two stupid girls. His fingers trembled, begging him to lash out to avenge their disregard. “That girl was Suzui Shiho—”

Ryuji stepped up next to him, planting his hands on his hips. “Dude,” he said at the girls, “that is somethin’ messed up. She was my class rep, and she wasn’t even the first victim!”

Akira bared his teeth, focusing on Short and Stupid. “What the hell is wrong with you? An innocent person,” he whipped around and pointed at the other girl, hoping she’d get at least some of the message, “one of your schoolmates almost died,” he shouted, voice rising, “and your only concern is whether people might think of it when you apply for college more than a year from now?”

Ryuji blinked as a girl with a braided headband approached. Focusing on the transfer student, Ryuji put a hand on his shoulder to hold him back. “Dude, I get it, but miss principal’s pet is gonna get inta this.”

The red-eyed senior stepped right up to the four clashing students.

The two girls snapped to attention, Short and Stupid hiding her phone behind her back. “Madam President!”

Madam,” Akira spat with a roll of his eyes.

The student council president turned a glare to him. The two girls took the distraction to scurry away. He tensed his legs to give chase, but the red-eyed girl drew to her full height. She was still shorter, but set her jaw and held her glare. “Is there a problem?”

Ryuji waved her off with the hand not clamped on Akira’s arm. “Nah, we don’t need no teacher’s pet.”

Her ruby gaze shot to the dyed blond for a moment before drifting to the transfer student.

Akira remained tense against the track star’s grip for several long seconds further, glaring back at the red-eyed student. He recognized her from when she introduced herself as the president of the student council in the library. And talked down to him but not the other students talking in the library. Nobody got to that position without having powerful friends and kissing ass, so he grimaced and clamped down on his urge to run through her after the two sociopathic girls. “No,” he ground out before turning on his heel and jerking out of Ryuji’s grip. He paced down the stairs, but by the time he reached the ground floor his control frayed out and he punched the concrete wall.

The pain released endorphins countering his adrenaline and he pressed his forehead against the cool wall.

Keeping an eye out for other students giving them a wide berth for the moment, Ryuji came to a stop next to Akira. “I know it ain’t right, but that’s prolly how most of ‘em are gonna be for a while. Not a lotta people believe in the Phantom Thieves.” He jabbed Akira in the arm, and forced a grin and leaned in closer to whisper. “All we gotta do is take down more big shots. If we get famous, no one’s gonna talk down about stuff like this, right?”

Akira turned around, drew in a long breath, and leaned against the wall. “Think miss hoity-toity would count?”

Ryuji snorted, a hesitant grin creeping across his face. “Principal Kobayakawa sure does set out the red carpet for her, but that’s on account of her big-shot family. Prez’s just Shujin’s narc.”

Akira turned around closed his eyes and cycled through another long breath. “We can’t even find a target.”

Ryuji fidgeted. “Man, Im usually the impatient one. Don’t make me be the voice of reason.” He shifted his weight from foot to foot. “We just gotta keep our eyes up and lookin’ for a lead, right?”

Akira let out a huff, then stood up and nodded. “Nothing else to do.” He drew his phone and brought up an online game. Maybe trouncing somebody in shogi would make him feel better for a few minutes.

Ryuji brought out his phone too. “I’ll see what I can find online. You got luck like nothin’ else, so you keep an ear out when you’re on the streets, right?”

Akira grimaced, but Ryuji had a point. The former track star lacked Akira’s problem with crowds but stuck out when he wasnt trying. He was also better with search engines, or just getting lucky online, so Akira pushed off the wall and headed to Shibuya.

Monday, 2 May 2016
Evening
Yongen, Leblanc

The little bell rang as he trudged into the little coffee cafe, still beating himself up over his colossal failure to handle the student council girl. Even a few hours of wandering around didn’t loosen the bitter, twisted feeling in his stomach of a clash without resolution. No sign of Morgana at the base of the stairs probably meant he hadn’t found anything in his own wandering through Shibuya, either.

“You’re back early,” Sojiro called from behind a newspaper. “What happened?”

“Huh?” Akira said through a yawn. He shook himself and paced inside. “Slow day at the convenience store and the beef bowl already had two college kids on the roster tonight.”

Sojiro shrugged. “Well, the store’s empty tonight.” He cleared his throat. “If you’re up for it, I can teach you about how to make coffee before we have a regular in.”

After a whole day of dealing with impatient customers and wandering around a neighborhood that reminded him too much of a literal rat race, some studying to wind down and a long sleep called out to him. Still, the lack of progress in his investigation of Shibuya left tension running through him. “Clean hands, empty belly?”

Sojiro gave a superior smile. “Something like that.”

“I’ll go put things down first.” Trotting upstairs, Akira found Morgana sprawled over the bed. He sighed and dropped his school satchel to the floor with enough force to startle the cat awake. “I bought you a pillow so you’d have your own comfortable place to sit, why do you have to get hairs on my lumpy mattress?”

Morgana sat, curling his tail around his legs. He didn’t leave the bed. “You always complain about this or that not being neat. If it wasn’t for Lady Ann’s father, I’d let her take care of me.” He closed his eyes and purred at the thought.

Akira rolled his eyes. “You spent most of the day out and about in Shibuya. Find anything?”

Morgana’s ears dipped. “There’s definitely something shady going on at the day lockers at the train station and Protein Lovers Gym, but nobody’s naming names. For the most part it’s just high school students.”

Akira’s lips pressed into a thin line and he changed out of his school uniform. “I’ve got some work to do with Sakura-san.”

Morgana hopped down in front of the little poster of Mary holding the body of Jesus on the wall beside the bed. “I think I’ll know where to find you.”

Akira trotted back downstairs, behind the bar, put on an apron, then took a few minutes to scrub his hands.

Sojiro gave a polite smile. “Since you’ll be working here, we need to make sure you have the basics down.” He crossed his arms, looking Akira in the eye. “You know what I mean?”

Akira put his fist to chin in thought. “Let’s see. My first day here you said men usually weren’t allowed in your passenger seat. Then you called the public phone because you only want women’s numbers in your phone.” He snapped his fingers and pointed to Sojiro, widening his eyes to complete the effect. “Hitting on girls!”

Sojiro slapped a palm over his face. “You are way too early for those lessons.”

Akira gave a cheeky grin. “Preparation beats make-up, right?”

Sighing, Sojiro pulled down a jar of coffee beans. “I’m real particular about what we brew here.” He shot a pointed glare with no room for humor. “You serve a bad cup, and I’ll have you on the street so fast it’ll make your head spin.”

Akira snapped straight and gave him the British salute. “Understood, sir.”

Sojiro measured out some beans, shrugging off Akira’s irreverence. “I’ve been doing this so long I can measure out the beans by feel, but you’ll need to use the cup and scale. I’ll go over that next time when I explain mixes later. Coffee’s flavor is determined by three things. Grind, which I’m doing here. Then heat,” he pointed to the burners, “there, and time in the siphons.” He lifted the bowl, dumped the beans into a grinder, then set the bowl in front of the spout and flipped the switch.

Akira wrinkled his nose, his last memory of coffee being some underpaid intern burning it. “Why is that set to medium-fine? Isn’t it more flavor the finer it is?”

“There’s more surface area for the water to interact with, but different siphons work better with certain grinds. These take medium-fine.” The middle-aged man smiled. “But it’s good to see you noticed. That means you’re paying attention.”

Akira yawned. “So it’s just a set portion of beans for a set grind, then a pot of water over those burners for however long that mix takes?” When Sojiro nodded, the boy stretched out his neck. “Not exactly rocket engineering.”

The bell on the door rang, and a woman in a red business coat and a gaudy necklace walked in. “Good evening, So-chan.”

He gave her a stiff show smile. “The usual, then?”

“As if I could resist?” She sat down at a booth close to the end of the counter and flashed a flirty smile that made Akira’s skin crawl. It reminded him way too much of his mother’s shameless flirting.

While Sojiro prepared the curry, Akira worked on the coffee. After accepting the meal, she ate and flirted, making Akira’s hackles rise. He tried to pretend he wasn’t there until his phone rang, giving him excuse to flee for the register. He opened the incoming chat conversation from Mishima.

[Sorry for taking so long to get back to you. I know Nishiyama's a second year, but he's not in our class. He hangs out around Iida sometimes, but he and I don't seem to cross paths much so I can't say where he is most of the time. Golden Week's starting tomorrow, so I might not be able to find anything. I'll keep an eye on the chat rooms.]

Akira frowned, but refrained from growling with the other adults so close. [Don't worry about detecting over the holidays. I'll be up in Kanda on Thursday anyway.]

[Some special Children's Day thing going on up there?]

Akira smirked, but the Catholic calendar was new to him too. [Day of Ascension at church. It's one of the big Catholic holy days.]

[You're Catholic?]

[Yes. Maybe not a GOOD Catholic, but I'm trying. Almost ten percent of Japan is Catholic.]

Dots indicating another participant composing a message blinked for a few moments. [That's true, I just never met one before. So what's that day like?]

Akira glanced over at the flirty woman and shivered. [Not sure I could really say. I've only been Catholic for six months.]

[Is it hard being Catholic?]

[Not as hard as being a teenager. Father Motoori always listened to me, gave me advice. His little church was the first place on Earth I felt safe. Of course, he had a troubled past just like me, got in trouble with the law, and was in prison for a long time.]

Mishima’s reply came uncomfortably fast. [That doesn't sound like a safe person.]

Akira paused, looking up at his last message and wondering why he wrote so much. [Sometimes when you're dirty, what you need isn't a person who's never been dirty. It's somebody who's been dirty themselves, someone who knows how to get the dirt out.]

[Sounds like something mom would say. She likes laundry metaphors.]

Akira frowned. On the surface the remark seemed so mundane, but something about it seemed so alien to him and knowing that it shouldn’t be just spelled out how far removed from ‘normal’ people he was.

He put away his phone just as the customer in red pulled the door open, then turned around to wiggle her fingers at Sojiro. “Ta ta,” she said in a husky tone before stepping out.

Akira shivered. That kind of clear flirtation sounded like his mother, and sent his hackles up again.

Sojiro chuckled. “What’s wrong with you, girl phobia?”

Exhausted from the day, Akira closed the chat and rubbed his arm. “Let’s just say that experience taught me to be on guard when a girl gets flirty. They never do something unless they want something.”

“That much is true.” Sojiro chuckled, but before he could say anything, his phone rang. His eyebrow twitched in the manner of unrecognition at the caller ID, but he answered with the same professional tone as usual. “Hello?”

A moment passed before the middle-aged man turned away from Akira, body snapping straight. “How’d you get this number?” He listened for a couple seconds, shoulders tense. “Now? Where?” After several long second, his shoulders slouched. “Fine.” Hanging up, Sojiro jammed the phone in his pocket. “I’ll have to finish your lessons later.”

After all the stupid decisions he made that day, Akira leaped at the chance to try to curry favor. “I’ll finish the dishes. You want me to leave the stove on?”

Sojiro glanced at the time on the TV. “No, go ahead and close up.”

Constitution Day. Tuesday, 3 May 2016
Evening
Yongen, Leblanc

Akira toweled off his hands, feet throbbing in his shoes and back aching. At least the daily elderly couple were the only remaining customers, their silence a blissful reprieve from the day’s hubbub.

Sojiro took out the coffee filters. “Whew! I’ve had busy days, but we’ve never been packed for so long.” He banged the filters against a black bin with ‘compost’ painted against the side. “We could use a few more days like that, though. Helps during the rainy season.”

Akira set the towel against the bar beside the sink. “I have a couple things to do. Mind if I cut out?”

A corner of Sojiro’s mouth quirked up. “You kept up all day, I think I can close up.”

Akira rushed upstairs.

Morgana joined him at the table set up in front of the couch. “Whew. Boss worked us hard today, huh?”

Akira changed into a nondescript, long-sleeved shirt. “Worked us? All you did was poke your head out from the base of the stairs a couple of times.”

Morgana’s ears pressed back. “It’s not like I chose to be turned into something small and weak. Just think about how hard it would be for you to wake up in a body without the opposable thumbs you know you were born with.”

Akira let out a long sigh. “I know. I’m just…” He sat on the couch and lifted his glasses to clean the lenses. “We’ve got a really dangerous target somewhere in Shibuya, but the best place to get intel I can’t go to because I either freeze up or get unreasonably violent.” Setting his glasses on the table, he ran his hands through his hair. “If we could just get into this coward’s Palace I’m sure we could take him down, but trying to get information… I’m worse than useless. I’m a liability.”

Morgana took a single step closer. “Sometimes you just have to sit back and trust in the ability of others.”

Akira grumbled, but got up and opened a drawer under the workbench and withdrew a bag of koban coins and crumpled paper to keep them from clinking. Stuffing them in his satchel, he paused to let Morgana hop in before heading to Shibuya’s Central Street. While starting to get used to the terrain, the unruly mass of humanity pressed against him and it felt like the air was too thin to breathe by the time he got to the first available side alley. Akira sucked in air.

Morgana popped his head out of the bag. “Hey, Joker. You okay?”

Akira hunched, unable to drive away the sound of millions of feet and voices. “There’s…” He sucked in a breath, bracing against the brick. “…too many.”

Morgana patted the human’s shoulder with his paw. “It doesn’t sound like those scam artists are picking up kids right now. Might as well see if we can sell those coins.”

Nodding, Akira shoved his way the remaining distance to Untouchable. Shaking off his limbs to cast off residual tension, despite the air conditioner being full blast the steady, muffled sounds of machines provided him a sense of comfort.

Iwai looked up from a sporting goods magazine with some kind of foreign lettering on the front. “Well, if it isn’t the prankster. What can I do you for?”

Akira smirked, standing straight and confident as he paced to the window in the wielded grating. “A little of this, a little of that.” He knelt so Morgana could hop out of the bag and watch from out of the way, then pulled out the bag of muffled coins, removing the sheet of crumpled paper from the top and set it down. “Genbu-era koban. Probably not real, but they seem like near-period counterfeits.”

Iwai looked over them without a word, then slid all but one of them into a pile in the corner of the counter. Straighting one, he took another from the pile and flipped it heads-up next to the first, then put a ballpoint pen above both. That setup finished, he held his smartphone over them and snapped a photo. “You seem to know a lot about them.” His thumbs tapped over the virtual keyboard.

Akira shrugged. “Somebody near where I live happens to be an enthusiast. Not interested in buying, though. That reminds me,” he dug into his satchel, slipping a hand under the flap in the bottom and pulling out his sub-machine gun. “I need a…” his eyes squinted up in thought, “Ryuji called it a folding shoulder stock.”

Iwai took the sub-machine gun. “Gotcha.” He set his magazine over the kobans and headed to the back. After a few moments a heavy metal machine whirred to life, then metallic grinding rang through the building. An electric power motor buzzed a few times.

Morgana looked into the narrow hall behind the counter to the back room. “This guy sounds like quite the craftsman.”

“Nobody gets good at something without doing it a lot,” Akira said.

Iwai returned to the front with something shrouded by a threadbare brown towel. Setting on the counter, he flipped the towel off the SMG with what looked like a thick wire bent into a brace extending out of the back.

Akira picked it up and held it up like he saw other players do in Gun About with the rifle controller. The aiming sights down the top looked clear and it fit just right against the pocket of his shoulder.

Iwai smirked. “It folds just like a real one. Just press there to unlock the stock and…” A metallic click sounded and it rotated around. “Looks like you got it.”

Akira folded the stock on the sub-machine gun, leaving it no bigger than it was without. “Nice. I see why he said folding instead of just a stock.”

Iwai’s phone buzzed. Picking it up, he read, then sat back down behind the register. Counting the coins, he typed something else in, scraped them into a beat-up cardboard box-top of printer paper and slipped them underneath the counter. Those stowed, he opened the register, counted out quite a bit of cash, then set it in the window. “Always a pleasure.”

Akira slipped the model weapon back into the bottom of his bag, then picked up the money. “Damn, I could pay off our first trip to the doc with this.” Yawning into his fist, he distributed his cash into a couple pockets.

“Hey,” Iwai said, switching the lolipop stick to the other side of his mouth as he stared through the grating. “You’re not using those guns to hold up a bank or anything, are you?”

Akira snorted. “I don’t even like banks. They’re full of legalized thieves.” He lifted his other hand in leaving. “See you later.”

Iwai tipped his baseball cap and Akira stepped out.

Nature Day. Wednesday, 4 May 2016
Late Afternoon
Shibuya, Central Street

The sound of thousands of people walking and talking made for an effective blanket of white noise, but the forceful press of bodies and constant motion made Akira feel like a rat in a kicked ball. The crowd was thin at this time of day, with most people being on vacation in the more exotic locales of Japan, but the foot traffic’s lack of order grated on his nerves. Still trying to keep an eye out for a yakuza scouter picking up people for whatever operation they had running, he noticed somebody with dark hair tailing him.

He rolled his eyes and his urge for violence shifted from the crowd around him in general to the girl hiding behind a manga. The game of cat and mouse sent a thrill through him back at Inuri High, but a game of skill only counted if the opponent had some ability. This one was clumsy and wouldn’t fool a five-year-old child.

Akira wondered if this was how Togo-san felt when she steamrolled him at shogi.

Shaking his head, he made wide motions in turning onto a small side street lined with lockers. A gym and a couple hiding points lay beyond. Akira slipped into a gap between two units of lockers and waited.

The stalker paced down the alley, at least having enough sense to check an immediate horizontal sweep. Seeing nobody, she picked up her pace to a light jog and peeked over her manga to check the entrance to the gym.

In one fluid motion, Akira slipped out behind her and snatched her manga.

He came to a full stop when he realized it was the latest volume of Fairy Tail. “Wait, you read Fairy Tail? No way!”

The red-eyed girl ripped it back out of his hands, some emotion flickering through her eyes too fast for him to identify. “Why not?”

He glanced back at the student council president of Shujin, but his mouth ran ahead of his brain. “Fairy Tail’s awesome, and you’re a tool!”

She cringed, but straightened with furrowed brow. “You wouldn’t happen to be off to some clandestine meeting, would you?”

Akira bristled. “I’m guessing they don’t teach subtlety at those ritzy cram schools you go to, Madam President.” He slipped his hands into his pockets. “Though I guess you won’t need to be subtle when you’re walking over us little people’s throats when you’re councilor or whatever position you inherit.”

Miss President gaped, hurt flashing through her eyes before clenching her fists. She rocked back onto her heels for a moment.

“I’m not gonna pretend that I haven’t given people reason in the past,” Akira said, “but why are you so up in my case that you’re even following me around Shibuya on the holidays? I got business with the shit-heads makin’ trouble here, it ain’t your scene. Offense intended, shouldn’t you be browsing for designer clothes up in Takenoko?”

Her fists trembled for a moment, but contrary to his expectations, she straightened and held her narrowed gaze on him. “My name is Niijima Makoto. Consider my position as the student council president of Shujin Academy.”

Akira threw himself to one knee, arms up as if to defend himself from an enormous assailant. “Oh no, not the chief boot licker of prison school! What ever will Sukeban have someone else do to me?”

Niijima bristled, her fists clenching and a twitch at her upper lip. “Do not call me that. I have enough to do without dealing with your horseplay. I keep the peace in Shujin and I fulfill my duties to my family.”

Akira spat on the ground. “Don’t give me that horse shit. Tribe and family honor is all just a front that people hide their own vain ambitions behind.” He took a step and jabbed a finger at her. “You think you’re hot shit because you’re prince – not king – of a graveyard where dreams go to die?”

Niijima’s fists tightened and rose, one foot sliding back and to the side. “Shujin is a great, prestigious school.”

Akira hopped to his feet so he could make sure she had to stare up at him. “Great school? It hid a rapist for years. Then your oh-so-benevolent principal lays out just how eager he is to give me the left foot of fellowship.” He paused to hold up his hands in feigned defense. “Oh, then… mysteriously… on day one someone lets slip that I got a record.”

Taking a shallow step back, Niijima blinked. “I had nothing to do with the leak.”

Akira snorted. “Right. And when people all over that shitty school started talking about the ‘shifty and malevolent’ Kurusu,” he paused to spit, “I’m sure Sukeban set the record straight.” Her firm stance faltered and her eyes drifted down for a heartbeat before snapping back up to his. Her mouth drifted open, but by that point he felt on a roll and couldn’t stop the venom from his voice. “But I’m just some transfer with a record. At least you did everything you could for Suzui.”

Niijima wavered on her feet, her face twisting as if he gut-punched her. He knew it was a low blow, more than she probably deserved even if the rumors about her being a toffee-nosed snitch were true, but the words hung in the air and he couldn’t take them back.

His throat closing, and his damned pride pounded down the urge to say ‘I didn’t mean it’. Stomach twisting, he turned on his heel and marched into the narrow streets until the roar of traffic drowned out his heartbeat in his ears. Out of breath, he came to a stop next to a brick wall and slumped against it. He took off his glasses and felt the hard edges of the brick press back against his skin. “Great job, shit-head. Way to build bridges. No wonder everyone who meets you wants you dead.”

Notes:

Daywatch isn't the only story where the very public outing of Kamoshida has strong enough consequences for Kamoshida to go, but also ask "why doesn't anybody else get investigated and fired?" I always assumed that the first call to the police in Kamoshida's confession hit somebody in the Conspiracy so they would've started efforts to bury it and allow their pawn Kobayakawa to continue working without having to take public heat. However, would that same stroke of luck have happened if the confession happened just one day earlier or later? Not in Daywatch. Here, multiple people call the police and news so it can't be buried. That doesn't mean that Kobayakawa is completely out of the Conspiracy's notice or reach, however. But they won't bother to do anything to him when he's being shoved into prison as a scapegoat for all the parents of abused children at Shujin. The game implied he was targeted when he had second thoughts and threatened to turn on the Conspiracy. He lacked that time and opportunity to turn in others to save himself, but he's not safe.

Chapter 24: May 6th, First Glimpse of Mementos

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5

Friday, 6 May 2016
After School
Halls of Shujin

Akira slid the rear door of Class 2-D open, then stepped into the hall. Ann stepped out a moment later, closing the door as Akira busied himself with an online shogi match. The two students turned to the stairwell and ascended to the third floor where Student Council President Niijima almost bumped into them.

Shifting her weight to her back foot, she gave a smirk like she expected a party to leap out at any moment. “Off to some clandestine rendezvous?”

Akira looked up from his online game, the pleasure from his incipient victory clashing against the suspicion about her extremely obvious leading question. Was she that oblivious, or did she have something on him that made her that confident? Akira could only raise an eyebrow. “Um… what?”

Standing even straighter, Niijima’s smile vanished beneath a layer of composed calm. “Nothing. Carry on.” She walked off toward the library.

Akira glanced over his shoulder at Ann, standing just a step beneath him on the stairs. “How’d she get to be president?”

Ann glared after Niijima. “Probably from having top marks last year.” Pacing around him, she headed for the door up. “Let’s just go.”

Turning his attention back to his shogi game, he followed her onto the roof, hearing Ryuji come up after. Morgana hopped out of his school bag and onto a desk as the rest took a seat. Ann leaned against the perimeter fence and a cool breeze wafted over the rooftop.

With everyone settled, Akira looked down at his game and saw opponent resigned. He threw his free fist in the air. “Yes!”

The others shot to their feet and looked at him with baited breath. “We got somethin’?” Ryuji blurted.

Akira swallowed and pulled up the messenger app. “Uh, sorry. I just won. Feels like the first time in a while.” He cleared his throat. “Anyway, Mishima texted me at lunch. Said Iida is in our class, found out Nishiyama’s one of his friends. Nishi’s in Class 2-C. Apparently they meet up in Shibuya sometimes, just not where Mishima hangs out.”

Plopping into a chair, Ryuji growled. “It’s been a week and this is all we can find out?”

Akira shrugged. “I checked with that doctor, but all she knew was the guy buying drug ingredients is named Masa and she doesn’t even know for sure if that’s his real name. Either way, it’s not enough to look for a Palace.”

Grinning, Ann brushed one of her pigtails off her shoulder. “Actually, since Kamoshida’s confession a lot more of the girls in Shujin started talking to me. Akemi said her big brother’s been using. He’s a college senior, but he still works in Shibuya. Hopefully that means the friend he’s buying from is also in Shibuya.”

Ryuji settled his chair back to all four legs. “Got a name?”

“Masachi Marai. She even posted it to the Phansite.”

Bringing the bloody eyeball app, Akira considered how unlikely it was to just guess what somebody’s secret distortion was. He punched in the name just in case.

“Candidate not found,” his Metaverse Nav said.

He grimaced. “Damn. No Palace.”

Ryuji groaned. “Man, what kind of Phantom Thieves can’t come up with a good guy to heist? We’re never gonna get famous at this rate.”

Ann sent him a sharp glare. “We’re doing this to give hope to the helpless, Ryuji.”

Akira didn’t like Ryuji’s attitude, but followed the idea to browse the Phansite. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that they’re so hard to pin down, or the cops would’ve done it already. But if we can’t find anybody connected, how can we possibly hit the top of that corrupt pyramid?”

Ryuji leaned back on his chair, kicking it up on its rear legs again. “I’ve been checkin’ the Phansite. So far, just a lotta bitchin’ about parents or boyfriends. I’m thinkin’ that Nishiyama-Iida angle is more likely to go somewhere.”

Phone on the Phansite, Ann winced. “Maybe asking people to post a name and location is too much. I know the name and location submissions are blanked out to regular users, but even Id be hesitant to put someone else’s name out there.”

“Truth,” Ryuji said, flicking his thumb up along his screen. “I mean, just that people already are is kinda freakin’ me out.”

Akira opened a new thread. “Especially if they don’t believe the Phantom Thieves are real. Wanting to believe we took down Kamoshida and believing we’ll take down the next asshole is two different things.”

Ryuji growled. “Well… If nobody’s gonna tell us, we’ll find one ourselves.”

“Who?” Morgana’s ears drooped. “If they were big enough everyone knew them, the police would already be on them.”

“As much as I’d like to get on this now,” Akira said, “we do have midterms next week.” He looked up at his two school companions. “You two ready?”

Both of his fellow students found sudden fascination with the roofing beneath their feet.

Sighing, Akira moved to the next thread. “We need to set up a study group. My math and English suck.”

Morgana chuckled. “It’s not as bad as Ryuji’s Japanese.”

Ryuji slammed his chair back down on all four legs. “I don’t have to take this from a cat.”

“I’m not a cat!” Morgana stood, tail held aloft, ears folded back. “Not every challenge can be solved with brawn and overconfidence. Sooner or later we’re going to run into traps that you’ll have to think through.” He glanced up at others. “Your Personas are a reflection of yourselves, everything you do in your daily lives has an impact on them.”

Ann chuffed. “I hate studying. But I guess if it’s training to be a phantom thief, I can push through.”

Ryuji’s shoulders slumped. “Maaan… I became a phantom thief ta fight Shadows and help people, not study.”

Akira deadpanned, “That would explain your class ranking.”

Ryuji shot to his feet and snarled, “I don’t have to take this from you, too!”

“Hey!” Morgana shouted. Once everyone’s eyes were on him, he sat. “Studying is important, but just because we can’t find a Palace doesn’t mean we have to give up.”

Akira sat back against a desk. “No Palace, no Shadow.”

Smirk growing enough the transfer student could see it even on his small cat face, Morgana sat back down, tail curling around his feet. “You all did agree to help me if I helped you with Kamoshida.”

Akira looked up at him, eyebrows up. “That’s true, and you were there the whole way with Kamoshida. But what can we do?”

Morgana hopped off his desk, leaving a little rattle, then paced back to the door off the roof. “Come on. This little trek starts in Shibuya.”

The team headed out, though Morgana noticed Niijima at the end of the hall, holding up a manga as if it could shield her from their view. As they headed down the stairwell, Niijima slipped to the stairs up to the roof.

Friday, 6 May 2016
After School
Shibuya, Station Square

Dozens of people criss-crossed the paved square in business suits and bland clothing adults used to indicate their surrender to boring. Akira crossed his arms, leaning against the concrete wall in the nook of the courtyard the group stood in, watching the crowd in the Station Square.

Ann mimicked the gesture, watching his posture. “Starting to get used to the Shibuya crowds?”

Still terse, Akira answered, “It’s not the crowds I have a problem with, per se. It’s getting pushed around and people coming up behind me when I’m not ready.”

Ryuji, standing closer to the lanes of travel, looked lost and confused. “I’ve been hangin’ out here lots this week. What am I s’post’a be seein’?”

Akira glared at Morgana, sitting on a chest-high wall that put him near eye-to-eye. “I could be practicing shogi right now. What am I supposed to be doing with the Nav?”

Morgana wrapped his tail around his feet. “Remember that friend who might be selling drugs?”

Akira uncrossed his arms. “Don’t you remember back at school? I already tried Marai. We don’t have a location or distortion. The app said he didn’t even have a Palace.”

“Just listen to me.” Morgana stood, looking out at all of them. “All of you, too, this place is harder to get into than anybody’s Palace. Type Mementos into the keyword.”

Akira finished typing and hit the check address button.

The droll, automated voice floated out of his phone. “Candidate found.”

All three humans stiffened, eyes widening. Despite the multitude streaming around them, Akira would’ve sworn not a breath passed between the thieves.

Ryuji cheered. “Sweet! Does this mean we don’t need a location for everyone?”

“I said all of you,” Morgana snapped at Ryuji, while scanning the crowd as if expecting an assassin to burst out at any moment. “We’ll each have to use our abilities to get into Mementos.” Once they were all ready, he settled back. “Now as soon as we have a clear opening, hit it.”

Akira scanned the thinning crowd, then almost as one the three hit the Metaverse Navigator. The world bled red, all motion slowing down and twisting in on itself. When the distortion and sense of gut-wrenching motion ceased, an empty Station Square surrounded them.

Ryuji braced, his fists up. “Where’d everyone go?”

Akira blurted a surprised laugh. He ran into the square, arms spread straight out and ran in a wide circle, laughing and taking in the dulled scent of summer. His heart leaped in his chest. “Finally! It’s Shibuya without a gazillion people!”

Ann looked around, knees bent and stance wary. “This is Masachi’s Palace?”

Morgana, now in his boyish form, beamed a smile at her. With his stature less than a meter tall and head rounder than any human it almost made the transfer student laugh. “Yes and no, Lady Ann. It’s a sort of Palace, but not like the one Kamoshida had.” He stopped and turned to the square, fists clenched before he bellowed, “Joker!”

Realizing he looked like a child, Akira stopped and followed him down to what should be the Shibuya’s underground walkway. All the main lighting looked dead, but a dim red shone out from the emergency lighting and through the cracks of the staff doors. He inspected the vents and some of the pillars, where some crystalline substance crawled out or around the shapes like mold.

Morgana held the lead. “Be careful. Lots of Shadows lurk further down.”

“Sounds quiet to me,” Akira said. He gestured to Ann. “And I don’t see Catw—her thief uniform. Shouldn’t we have gone all fire-and-phantom-thief yet?”

Morgana shook his head. “The tunnels may be teeming with them, but they rarely come up. It’s like they’re drawn to something below.”

Ann tapped at one of the darkened vending machines. “What is this place if it isn’t Masachi’s Palace?”

“This isn’t Masachis Palace. It’s everyones,” Morgana said with a theatrical sweep of his arms.

It was plenty to tickle a cold worry in Akira’s mind. “Hold on a second. With Kamoshida, you said that crown was the core of his Palace. When we took it, that place crumbled.”

Morgana nodded. “That is correct. His Treasure and distorted desires grew until they could no longer be contained in Mementos and they formed a distinct Palace for Kamoshida himself.”

Ryuji scratched his head. “So… Kamoshida’s Palace was like a hermit crab that outgrew its shell and left to go find a bigger shell?”

Morgana looked askance at him. “The Treasure, yes. To a certain point, distorted desires and their Shadows can exist together down here. However, they begin to distort their own little space and after enough time, if that distorted desire is… fed by the person, it expands into an independent Palace like you all saw with Kamoshida. Until then, those distorted desires reside here in Mementos.”

Akira swallowed. “You’re saying it’s like a Palace for all of humanity? Like a collective… no, not consciousness, a collective unconscious?”

Morgana’s eyes narrowed. “I’m a little uncomfortable with how unsurprised you are by all this.”

Akira steamed ahead. “Everyone’s Shadow is down here?”

Morgana nodded.

“So somewhere in here I have a Shadow?”

Morgana fell down to all fours, touching his wide forehead to the floor. “I thought I told you, Persona users have to form a kind of… self-understanding that should make having a Shadow and therefore a Palace impossible.”

Ann stepped between them. “But if the Nav could still react with ones like Masachi, does that mean we can change hearts even if they don’t have their own Palace?”

Morgana flashed her a wide grin. “Precisely, Lady Ann. I’m glad to have a smart person on the team.”

Akira and Ryuji both stomped in protest. “Hey!”

Then Akira blinked. “Wait, what about a calling card?”

Morgana flinched, but held eye contact. “We shouldn’t need one for Shadows that are still in Mementos. Something about them is still… I don’t know, bound enough to the Treasure and to Mementos that we should be able to engage the Shadow directly. We should be able to change them just like we did with Kamoshida.” He hopped down some stairs, the team following as a prickling sensation of eyes on them grew. A few paces from the subway station, flames flickered over them, leaving the team in their Phantom Thief outfits. “If the public was more aware of us it would be easier, but it’s still possible.”

Though the way the emergency lights shone red made the floor look caked in blood. Where the real world’s subway smelled of perfumes, machine oil, and overworked electronic circuits, this place reeked of dust, scorched grain, and some kind of metallic tang he couldn’t identify. Akira thought he saw movement in the shadows, but every time he turned to look, he saw only dark lines of a distorted subway.

Morgana stopped on the station above the tracks. “Stay wary of Shadows.” A smirk spread over his face. “I’ve been waiting to show you guys this.” He leaped, somersaulting into a spin, then with a pop, burst into a Citroën minibus. “Everyone in.”

Ryuji gawked.

Akira knew he looked similarly shocked. “A van?”

The minibus shook on its wheels and Morgana’s voice came from it. “It’s similar to how cognition materializes those transformations for you guys.”

Akira lifted a gloved hand. “I would like to call your bullshit and raise a what the hell? We get coats and you just turned into a car.”

The minibus’ doors opened. Morgana’s voice floated out, “Get in and let’s go find Masachi.”

At hearing the name of their target, Akira blinked and glanced at the others. “He’s right.”

“Window seat!” Ryuji said before dashing for the side door.

Ann grimaced, pushing as she ran for the same door. “Ladies first, Reaper!”

The minibus trembled more than just two teens stepping in should cause. “Gentle, Panther!”

Akira settled into the front seat and closed the driver’s door. The interior looked just like an ordinary vehicle, and he ran his hands over the steering column.

The minibus, Morgana, jostled. “If you grab the steering wheel and scratch my beautiful paint, I’ll never forgive you, Joker!”

Akira took his hands back and the minibus drove at a cautious speed into the gloom lit only by the headlights and occasional emergency lighting that looked more like they dripped cones of blood than lit the tunnels. The small headlights cast overlapping white light into the deep darkness ahead.

As the dim red lighting on the train station fell behind, Ann shifted in her seat. She looked out one window, then another. “Something about this place feels like I’m being watched. Kinda like a Palace. You sure you can find him, Byakko?”

“I can sense him kind of like how I can sense the Treasure in a Palace.” Morgana turned a corner.

Something towering, but deformed and bulbous stared down at them. Akira would have called it humanoid, except it lacked a head and leered down at them with either multiple faces or masks embedded across its body. It took a step at them. He could hear the thud from inside the minibus. One ‘arm’ reached at them, and he could swear it lengthened at them.

Tires squealed as Morgana shot past it, then kept on driving into the dark. The monstrosity gave chase until it receded into a tiny figure in the back window.

Mementos, Masachi Mirai’s Distortion

Black gushed away from the monstrous ball of flesh and it fell with a wet thud to the etched obsidian. The polished surface stretched out as wide as the rooftop batting practice range, the glowing patterns making it look more like the carved bobble of a fantasy sorcerer. Lit by glowing red pipes at the back, they reminded him of veins even without the eerie floating cord now severed from Shadow Masachi. The Shadow itself, a sphere with eyes and mouths scattered across its ugly shape, thrashed and wailed.

Black muck dissolved until only Shadow Masachi remained on all fours, breathing hard. The pudgy middle-aged man looked up at the thieves, glittering eyes wide. “Please… You can’t do this to me.”

Ann braced behind her pistol, confident and ready to launch back into combat. “You think just because someone else threatened you, that gives you the right to threaten lots of other people?”

The Shadow of Masachi Marai looked up through his thick, unruly mop of black hair. His fur-lined leather coat looked more like bonds weighing the overweight man down. “But they have lots of people! With guns! If I don’t sell… or at least bring in the quota every month, they’ll kill me.” He shrunk away from Ann, cringing at Akira before prostrating in front of Ryuji. “They don’t just have dirt on me from selling in Shibuya! The one time I said I wanted to stop, she brought photos of ma and pa sleepin’ in their bedroom.”

Akira raised an eyebrow. He didn’t comment out loud that he understood the threat. If the yakuza could get a photographer into his parents’ bedrooms, they could get an assassin in there just as easily. He lowered his submachine gun. “She? Who is she?”

The Shadow backed away on his knees, holding up a hand to shield himself. “No, if I tell, she said the next time I saw ma and pa again they’d be in wooden boxes!”

Ryuji came alongside Akira, leaning close to whisper, “Tch. Ain’t that the same kinda thing you said they’re doin’ for the doc?”

Nodding, Akira took a step forward. He held his emotions in check and tried to inject some soothing into his tone, “She won’t find out that you told us.” His hand tightened on his SMG. “But if you don’t tell us, I will be very unhappy.”

Shadow Masachi cringed, both hands held up. “I don’t dare.”

Akira clicked the firing selector and squeezed off a single shot next to Masachi’s ear. The Shadow fell backwards, covering his face with his hands and wept.

Ann ran between Akira and the Shadow. “Joker!”

He hissed, “This is the only way to make our way up the ladder.” He stepped around her, his grey eyes falling back on Masachi. He flipped the firing selector to burst with a click echoing through the enclosed space lit by the eerie, vein-like pipes. “Tell me!”

“Tosa Kotomi!” Shadow Masachi wailed.

Akira lowered his gun and turned away. “All right, everyone. On to Tosa.”

Mementos, Path of Aiyatsbus

Morgana, in his catboy form, hopped up on the station platform in front of the others. The dim red lights and crystalline corruption creeping from the staff utility door gave another reminder the concrete-and-steel space around them wasn’t the real world. “Oh, good. It’s a route down.”

Ryuji slapped a palm to his forehead, the sound only louder when it struck his heavy mask instead. “You didn’t know where it was? I thought you were here before.”

Morgana turned around, looking imperious from his stance on the concrete above them. “It’s the fused cognition of every human who hasn’t either awakened into a Persona user or separated into Palace ruler. It would be useless trying to make a map.”

Ann looked around the otherworldly subway. “So it’s always changing? Why aren’t we seeing the walls move?”

“I think there’s a stabilizing influence from the presence of Personas.” Morgana’s cheeks puffed out as he considered. “That or maybe it only shifts during certain times when I never happen to be here. Either way, I know the path is different every time I come, but it never changes while I’m here.”

Rails rattled and Akira felt as much as heard a roar of air from deeper in the concrete-lined tunnels. A garbled horn reminding him as much of a distant woman’s wail as a machine warning sounded.

Akira shouted in a panic, “Off the tracks!”

The team scrambled up onto the platform with Morgana. Moments later a subway train pulled up to the opposite side of the station, dim red lights flickering inside. A scattering of indistinct silhouettes stood inside.

Breathing hard, Ann stood up. “I knew I heard trains! How are trains running in a Palace?”

“Isn’t this how the public views the subway?” Morgana tilted his head, ears rotating one way, then another. “As long as we keep our heads up we should be fine. Now come on, I need to check something down this way.” He bounded to an inactive escalator going down.

The team followed him down to another station platform below. With only emergency lights casting dim red light, this place looked even darker than above. The concrete walls cracked and Akira could’ve sworn they bowed outwards under some unknown weight.

Ryuji paced to the side, then pounded at a dark ATM, then sighed in disappointment. “Man, it’s like everything electronic ain’t workin’.”

“Except those trains,” Akira pointed out, eyes flitting this way and that as he tried to take in the whole eerie place around them. “And those bloody lights.”

Without warning, Morgana leaped with a victorious fist-pump. “Yes! Here it is!” He dashed into the gloom and the others followed him to a familiar sight. The wall looked too smooth to be concrete, its surface more like polished obsidian than anything else he could think of. Like the carved obsidian space Shadow Masachi had inhabited, wide patterns curved over it, glowing a faint red when they approached.

Ryuji shrugged his shotgun off his shoulder and clutched it in a ready stance as he came to a stop behind Morgana. “Weird wall.”

“Just watch,” Morgana said, his toothy grin glittering despite the dim lighting. “Lady Ann, everyone…” He stepped up and touched the carved stone. It rotated and slid away.

Akira’s phone chirped. “A new area has been confirmed in the depths. Updating guidance information.”

Akira stared down the new but still descending escalators. “A gate?”

Morgana danced in victory, either unhearing or ignoring Akira’s question. “Yes! I knew it!”

Akira came to a stop next to the catperson, ears straining. “Haven’t you been through here before?”

“No. The last time I came here, it wouldn’t budge.” Morgana’s ears drooped. “But somehow I knew something lay deeper beyond it.” He shook his head and straightened. “There’s no way Mementos would stop at some ordinary place like this.”

“For real?” Ryuji held his arms out to gesture at the gloom and crystalline corruption along the outer walls. “You’re callin’ this normal?”

Akira rolled his eyes, then turned to their guide and gestured down the inactive escalators. “Well, shall we go?”

Morgana’s eyes widened and he stood in place. “But… I only brought you all here to see if we could open that gate.”

Ryuji pumped a fist in the air. “Woo! Mission accomplished. Let’s go have ramen.”

He turned for the dead escalators up, but Ann crossed her arms. “Well… You did help us against Kamoshida. Carmen’s still feeling strong. Besides, helping you with this still helps us. Didn’t you say Tosa Kotomi was further down?”

Morgana’s mouth twisted and his eyes fell away, elation and concern both in his expression.

Ryuji turned back, looked over the group, then trotted closer and let out a melodramatic sigh. “Fine. I guess this is still goin’ after that scumbag mafia dude anyway.”

Akira pointed a finger-gun at the short team leader and made a clicking sound. “We’re all with you, Byakko. Besides, helping you is still helping us pull Shibuya out from under his thumb!”

Morgana looked at the three humans around him, smiled, and gave a nod. “Well, I can’t very well let down my crew of gentlemen thieves, can I?”

“I am not a thief,” Akira whined.

“Sorry,” Morgana said, turning to Ann. “Gentlemen and lady thieves.”

Mementos, Path of Aiyatsbus

Morgana leaped out of the swirling distortion, its churn already slowing. Instead of turning back into the Citroën right away to resume their trek through the dark, labyrinthine tunnels, he held a hand to his head. “Whew, I don’t know whether they’re getting a lot stronger or we’re getting that tired.”

Ryuji slouched against the concrete wall. “You’re tellin’ me.”

“Good job everyone,” Akira said, bringing up his phone to type in the next target. “Mo—Byakko, can you sense Masahiro Tokisumi?”

“Whoa there,” Morgana said, holding up a hand to the boy in the black longcoat. “We’ve been through four Shadows, besides all the things between the distortions. As leader of the Phantom Thieves, I’m calling it a day.”

Akira grit his teeth, but reigned in his temper for the first time in a long while. The light from his smart phone, the brightest in the tunnel, cast a pale pallor across his face, making it easy for others to see the his tension. “But… we don’t have any other leads.”

Ann reached up to squeeze his shoulder. “I know, but we haven’t exhausted all options and we still have more we can come back to. Let’s go home and rest.”

“The doctor will still be there tomorrow,” Morgana said with as much reassuring as he could pack into his tone.

Akira put away his phone, letting out a harsh breath in the near-pitch-black. Morgana transformed into the minibus and the team piled in. Akira rested his forehead on the top of the steering wheel for a moment, taking a deep breath even as a disapproving groan sounding like his mother floated in from somewhere down the tunnels.

“Um… Joker?” Morgana said. “I can’t steer properly if you’re holding onto the steering wheel.”

Only then realizing he clenched on the wheel, Akira jerked his hands away and muttered, “Sorry.”

Ann sat back and looked out the window as they got going.

Akira crossed his arms and watched the headlights playing over the walls so like, and somehow unlike the subways under Tokyo. “Was there anything else to do today, Byakko?”

Morgana slowed more than seemed necessary to make a turn. “There’s another gate like that one we passed through earlier, but I think that might be dangerous in our current state. We’ll come back after we’ve had time to rest.” The others agreed and Akira remained silent as they journeyed back to the real station square in Shibuya. Just as they left it, each person activated the Metaverse Navigator to return.

Hungry as well as tired, the team helped Akira navigate to the Ore no Beko beef bowl shop and they sat down in the restaurant. Ann leaned heavy on one elbow as she ate piecemeal from her bowl with the chopsticks in her other hand. “Whew. I’d have never thought a labyrinth like that hid underneath us. So what was that big stone gate thing?”

Morgana peered up from Akira’s school satchel, on the floor between their stools. “That’s probably the best thing you could call it. Something about the public’s cognition was keeping me out. I just wonder if things changed enough so the next gate will open for us right away.”

Ryuji jammed a long octopus tentacle in his mouth, the curled tip dangling out as he chewed the base. “I thought you didn’t have any memories.”

Ann pushed herself up from the counter and glared at him, too tired to show revulsion for the crass behavior. “Ryuji!”

Ryuji shrugged his shoulders defensively, but sucked in the rest of the octopus tentacle.

Morgana’s ears drooped. “My memories are foggy, but I know something is down there. If I can deal with the greatest cause of distortions, maybe I…”

Akira burped, then went back to his sliced beef. “Hey, we were looking for something too when you first helped us. Besides, helping you is still helping us with this crime investigation. We’re all in this together.”

Ann gave a relaxed smile and nodded. “Yeah.”

Akira glanced to his side and elbowed Ryuji.

The ex-track star coughed on his rice and failed to wipe away the look of indignance before he said, “Yeah, yeah. You may’ve just been pokin’ around, but if you’re helpin’ us, we can help you too.”

Ann popped a pale shrimp in her mouth and added, “We’ll help you get your human body back.”

Morgana’s ears curled and twisted in different directions as he averted his eyes. “I… I just needed minions. Don’t think too much into it!”

Ann picked up a clump of rice, her eyes unfocused. “It’s neat that we can make people have a change of heart even if they haven’t become twisted enough to have a Palace. I just hope there’s nothing too dangerous in there. It’s already got its own sort of problems different from a Palace.”

Akira nodded, swallowing a large bite of beef. “And this could be great for intel, but I thought of one problem.” He leaned to look down at Morgana. “You said those four will all have a change of heart, like Kamoshida?”

Morgana stretched up, sniffing for the shrimp. “Yes. That’s why their Shadows faded away. They were forced to a realization. Their suppressed self, as defined by their old Treasure, could no longer exist.”

Akira pursed his lips. “We might need to leave some of them in case one lead turns out to be a dead end, but being able to learn things without alerting the conscious person could be a huge advantage.”

Ryuji gnashed down on another tentacle. “Only if it helps us get the big fish.”

Akira pulled his phone out of his pocket and checked the date. “Well, you guys need to rest, and midterms are right around the corner. Let’s make sure we all pass our exams first.”

Ryuji groaned, almost planting his face in his bowl with his flop of protest. “Shit, man, I gotta study.”

Akira gave him a flat stare. “Yeah. It’s almost like I’ve been inviting you to study for the past three weeks.” When Ryuji tisked and returned to his calamari and octopus bowl, Akira picked up the last slice of beef in his bowl. “You guys have my number if you want to study or meet up.”

Notes:

Morgana claims that he needs somebody else to drive him during the introduction to Mementos, but in canon speeds away with far more force and dexterity than the Haru who wanted to stop and talk to the Phantom Thieves would have been able to push a minibus. I took that to mean he was fully capable of driving himself, and skipped the unnecessary steps in Daywatch.

Chapter 25: May 7th, By Reason of Mental Defect

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Saturday, 7 May 2016
Morning
Shujin, Class 2-D

Idle chatter reverberated through the room. The door at the head of the class rumbled open, the squeaky wheel guiding it down the track faltering as Kawakami shoved it open. More and more of the students looked up to her in silent anticipation. When she dropped her binder on the desk at the front of the room, all conversation ceased and every eye focused on her.

She scanned the room, something sharper in her gaze today. Squaring her shoulders, she set a hand on her hip. “Easy, everyone. I’m a little early and I’ve got some work to get done before we begin.” Disappointment and relief both flowed through the class before she added, “Kurusu-kun, I do need to speak to you.”

What calm had come to the class fled at his name. The students on both sides of Akira bandied ideas about what crime he was about to be expelled for.

From his comfortable hiding place inside Akira’s desk, Morgana’s ears twitched as he followed the conversations. “Just act normal. There’s no need to raise suspicion.”

Sighing, Akira shoved his seat back and stood. He slid the chair back up, leaving just enough space for Morgana to slip out before trotting to the front of the class.

Kawakami-sensei wrote something in red on one of the literature quizzes from the other day, then covered her yawn with a fist. Finishing with a little shiver, she glanced up at him with some form of concern that only increased his worry. She jerked her thumb at the door, led him out, then closed the door before turning to face him. “There’s quite an uproar with everything around Kamoshida. Detectives are interviewing faculty and the students who called to report him last Tuesday.”

Akira held his hands up, eyes widening and brows rising in feigned shock. “Somebody else reported him?” He shoved his hands in his pockets, expression becoming dour. “I didn’t think anybody else in this school had the balls.”

Kawakami crossed her arms, her narrowed eyes on his. “This is no laughing matter, Kurusu-kun. Detectives aren’t just questioning staff after-hours, they’re interviewing students. And you’re first on the list today. Student Guidance Office. You’re excused from class until they finish, but please don’t say anything unnecessary. Just give enough to answer the questions and get it over with quickly.”

Akira gave a sharp nod, then turned for the guidance office. A single seat rested against the wall a couple steps from the door, but he found his palms sweaty and couldn’t make himself sit in it.

After a few moments, the door slid open. A man in a dressy but worn brown suit poked his head out. He frowned. “Kurusu?”

The transfer student clenched his hands in his pockets. “My name is Akira.” But when the suited man stepped inside, he followed and closed the door behind him.

A stoic detective with a dark, ash-grey suit shuffled paperwork as Akira stepped into the requisitioned student guidance office. He pointed to the chair across the fold-up table. “Thank you for your time. Kurusu Akira?”

“I go by Akira.” His eyes dropped to the folder the detective skimmed through. It felt like the heat in the room turned up when the detective turned a page in the manila folder. Most of his incidents had been brushed under the rug without any formal reprimand. Those who didn’t give up on hearing the name Kurusu did after their phone call to the Institute. “What’s that?”

“Complaints and demerits,” the detective said, taking a long moment of reading before straightening and looking the delinquent in the eye. “It’s standard procedure to research a little about a person of interest before an interview. We were expecting to get to you yesterday, but as part of due diligence I always call to get a sense of an interviewee’s background.” He turned another hand-penned page. “I’ve never had an interviewee with sealed incidents in his background, but your principal confirmed that the expulsion wasn’t the first time you’d gotten into a fight.”

Akira gave a shrug, neither confirming nor denying the statement. He leaned back until it tipped, the creak of metal resonated through its frame.

The detective in brown, standing almost unnoticed in the corner, stepped up and slammed the back of the chair, knocking it back on all four legs. “You’ll show proper respect to the police.”

Akira shot up but stopped himself halfway up and tugged to straighten the chair under him.

Dark Suit cleared his throat, then flipped forward a few pages, tracing his retracted pen down the handwritten pages and reading in a moment of silence. “Witnesses report you had a dispute with Kamoshida-sensei?”

A huff escaped Akira’s throat and he scratched his temple. “When was that?”

Dark Suit’s eyes flicked to the side of the page. “Thursday. The fourteenth of April.” When he met Akira’s eyes next, they held a laser-like intensity.

Straightening in his chair, Akira folded his hands on the table and swallowed. “Oh, right. That was the day Suzui-ch—san was driven to suicide.” His hands curled tight, his heart thundering in his throat. “That bastard raped her. I knew it the instant I saw her eyes as she lay there, splayed on the packed turf.” His hands trembled. “She was scared. She was hurting, violated like I never was even by my old bastard. But she didn’t want to die.”

Dark Suit scribbled onto the notepad next to his file. “This Suzui-san and you were close?”

Blushing despite himself, Akira’s eyes fell to the ground before he shook his head. “I… wasn’t sure where I fit in here. It was still the first week of school.” Settling in his seat, he took off his glasses and wiped the lenses before settling them back on his face. He wasn’t wiping away any tears. “She deserved better than she ever got here.” Akira flexed his shoulders. “Kamoshida on the other hand… when he started bawling up there on that stage and asked for someone to call the police, it was the least I could do.”

Brown Suit took a heavy step closer, lip twitching up. “So what about your fight on the fourteenth?”

The familiarity of the hostility brought a smile to his face and Akira held up a hand with his index finger extended. “The alleged fight.”

Dark Suit sighed, flipping a few sheets back while holding his place with his finger. “According to witnesses, you said at a very loud volume, ‘you rapist pig’.” He shot a nonplussed look to Akira. “We’ve already got enough witness statements that a recording would be unnecessary. Kamoshida himself has already given a thorough statement. Could you skip the whole ‘alleged’ dance and give your side of events?”

Akira slouched in his chair, tapping his fingers against the table. He wasn’t sure if he should be disturbed or comforted that his heart rate slowed to a steady at the familiar setting of adults trying to bear down on him. “He fucked me by leaking my record, then he literally fucked her. And I’m s’posed to be quiet about it? Damn right I said it for all Shujin to hear.”

Brown Suit with his brutish lack of restraint and Dark Suit’s ‘we already know everything’ play tag-teamed Akira as he told most of the day’s events until his voyage into the Metaverse.

Brown Suit crossed his arms. “You were seen with that girl’s friend later. The cute one with pigtails.”

The image of the two girls sitting across a corner from him in the cafeteria sprang to his mind. “She’s Suzui-san’s friend. And nice in her own right.”

Brown Suit grumped and they spent the next few minutes talking him in circles about his time in Tokyo. About other students. About the teachers. He had little to say about most of them, Kawakami was the only one who knew his record for sure but climbed off his back.

After what felt like hours, Dark Suit gave a nod and closed Akira’s file. “I’m sorry for taking so much of your time.”

Akira slumped back, feeling more like he just finished a champion fist-fight against Big K than an interview.

Packing up Akira’s file, Dark Suit glanced up. “One last thing. What do you think about the rumors of the Phantom Thief?”

Akira stopped, hand on the door handle. “I don’t know if Shujin should throw a parade or if we should all come wearing black.”

Brown Suit scratched his head. “You’re not a fan, even with all the loose ends this tidies up for you?”

Akira stared at the door handle. “Pity not the land that breeds no heroes. Pity the land that needs a hero.”

Brown Suit snorted. Akira stepped outside and closed the door. Energy sapped from the interview, Akira leaned against the door. When he heard faint voices, he turned to listen in.

“Think he could be involved?” Dark Suit said, shuffling papers.

Brown Suit chuckled. “He’s all mouth and no control. No way could he have blackmailed Kamoshida.”

Akira pushed off the door and headed back for class 2-D. “Not guilty by reason of mental defect.” He let out a bitter chuckle. “This far away and the old bastard’s still got me wrapped up.” He reached into his pocket for his phone, to the screen with the Nav, then put it away. He muttered, “Why’s it so hard to live right?”

Saturday, 7 May 2016
Evening
Yongen-Jaya Station

The train trundled to a stop, and the doors slid open with jerky motion. Akira dove out and widened his pace to keep ahead of the crowd. Everybody else seemed too absorbed in their little worlds to notice the transfer student with a metaphorical storm cloud hovering over his head. How many of them jogged on to their fathers’ abuse?

Akira growled, grit his teeth, and slapped his transit pass against the reader on the turnstile. As soon as he paced through, he broke into a jog.

Before he even got to the narrow alley weaving to Leblanc’s street, a little boy dashed out of it and turned around with an irritating, happy smile on his face. “C’mon, papa!”

A man on crutches paced out after, a grin on his face. “I’m coming, kiddo. Not so fast.”

Akira hung back, watching until they disappeared into the public baths. A smiling child and his father. Why did that feel so alien?

The bell rang as he pushed open the door to Leblanc and trudged in. An overweight woman snoozed over the booth table, the only occupant left besides the proprietor working on a crossword puzzle.

Sojiro looked up at the bell, but settled into a resigned pose after he recognized the transfer student. “Oh, it’s you.”

“Sorry to disappoint,” Akira, sounding even more monotone than he intended, “but I haven’t mastered the art of spontaneously becoming Risette when entering small businesses.”

“Ugh,” Sojiro spat. “I’m not asking for a song and dance endorsement deal, just… try practicing common sense things you’d do whenever you want something from them. Give a service smile, say hello, that kind of thing.”

Morgana looked up at him from within the satchel. “Boss has a point. By getting better at getting people on your side, you wouldn’t have to work so hard at being on guard all the time.”

Akira grunted and muttered, “Not like people aren’t inclined to stab you in the back anyway.” He trotted up the stairs and changed out of his school uniform.

Morgana hopped up on the stack of ‘books to keep’ and curled his tail around his feet. “Why don’t you go downstairs and see if Boss has any other helpful advice? You’ve been moody all day, maybe it’ll be good for you.”

Akira rolled his eyes, but it was either that or get more lectures from the guide-trapped-in-a-cat-body. “Fine. Anyway, it’s not my fault we haven’t found any solid leads on that yakuza boss.” Walking downstairs, he heard the bell jingle and noticed the napping woman gone and Sojiro stirring the curry. Akira slipped his hands in his navy-blue shorts and leaned against the fridge. “So, uh… you want a hand down here?”

Sojiro gave a smirk, but beyond a short exhale he gave little further response. After the spoon finished another circuit in the delicious, aromatic curry, he lifted it out and tapped clinging drops back into the pot. “There aren’t exactly any customers in the way. How do you feel about the different bean types?”

Akira flexed his fingers, still feeling tension in his limbs from the day at school. Even after the interview, if felt like everybody was waiting for him to lose it. “Well, even though they’re more expensive it looks like you mostly have the Arabica variety.”

The corners of the owner’s lips turned up and he set down the spoon. “You’ve got a good memory. Come over here.” He waved and paced to the narrow glass containers sitting over a flame. “Fundamentally, coffee’s not extremely complicated. It’s in the details where the problems arise.”

Akira snorted. “Just like families, then.”

Sojiro’s gaze slid from the coffee grinder sitting beside the siphons. “Families are all about relationships you can’t entirely control. In that way, they’re even worse than politics.” He tapped a shallow tin measuring cup against the grinder outlet, then drew out the tray and dumped it into a small compost waste bin under the counter. “Same as poker. Even life, when you think about it. You can only play the hand you’re dealt.”

Harrumphing, Akira paced to the sink but stopped before turning the water on. “The world doesn’t give you what you want unless you grab it by the throat and take it.”

A chuff emanated from Sojiro and the transfer student turned a glare on him only to see the adult smiling. “C’mon, kid. Relax. Nobody gets respect with threats and force.” His smile vanished. “I had a… coworker who thought that way.” Sojiro shook his head and picked up a polishing rag. “That’s fear.” He picked up a siphon over an extinguished flame and wiped at it.

“Though fear goes plenty far.” Akira turned back to the sink and started on the dishes.

Sojiro pointed the siphon at him. “Fear only gets you what you want as long as you’ve got that sword of Damocles hanging over them. There’s plenty of ways of getting things. You trade shifts. You talk your way into getting that last pocky stick.”

Akira nodded. “You buy that car or that minister spot.”

“Hey!” Sojiro said, his snap lacking genuine hurt. “Government positions can’t be bought.”

The student’s flat stare could’ve crumbled granite. “Tokyo University up for any smartass off the street?”

Sojiro paused wiping the coffee siphon. “Okay, I’ve gotta give you that one.” He resumed wiping. “You’ve got a lot of unusual opinions for a high-schooler. Not what I would’ve expected for a probate waxing philosophical about fathers with a cat.”

“Hey!” Morgana said from underneath one of the bar stools.

“So, I’m a freak.” Akira shrugged and wiped at a plate with a blob of dried curry. “My mother and old bastard taught me a lot about what I dont wanna be.” Finishing with the few remaining dishes this late in the day, he rinsed his hands and shut off the water. “Isn’t that everybody?”

Sojiro shook his head. “I can’t believe that Kurusu would’ve raised a kid who talked like that.” He scrutinized the student as he put dishes away. “Isn’t there anything good you learned from your parents? My mother taught me how to cook and my father taught me how to keep the supplies up but the budget down.”

Akira paced down the bar, positioning the sugar shakers at even intervals. “The only thing my old bastard passed on was attention to detail. And if I could be as laid back as Ryuji, I’d trade for it even if it came with his lack of attention.” He turned on Sojiro, feeling heat spread over his face and chest. “I don’t get what it is with you people always thinking I should worship the ground my old bastard walked on. Fuck, knowing someone should be basic grounds for not liking them, but especially him. He never read me bedtime stories, or took me to the beach. Everybody’s always on about how nice or generous dads are s’posed to be, but his version of generous was saying ‘I’m not even charging you for the electricity.’”

The bell on the door interrupted Akira’s rant, and a middle-aged man in a cheap sweater trotted in. He bore a smile, but his pace was measured and his eyes scanned the shelves behind the counter with an appraising look Akira knew from hanging out with plenty of thieves at Inuri. The chubby man waved a hand at Sojiro. “Been a long time, Sakura-san! A pity you didn’t tell me you had a nice place like this. Great location.” His eyes paused only a moment on Akira. “And you’ve even got help this late, business must be good.”

Sojiro came to a stop halfway to the register, folding his arms and making no move to hide his glare. “What’s your order?”

Akira quirked an eyebrow at Sojiro’s lack of hospitality.

The man in the sweater crossed his arms and trotted in a few paces, pausing to take a deep sniff. “Amazing how smells bring back memories, huh? Smells like you’re still stuck on her.”

Sojiro’s hand tightened into a fist and his jaw clenched.

Sensing something strange, Akira stepped up to the register and pasted on a fake smile like Ann did. “I’m Tatsumi. Who’re you?”

The overweight man’s smile dimmed, and a piercing gaze swept over the transfer student. “Isshiki. Me and Sakura-san go way back.”

Sojiro came to a stop behind Akira, arms crossed tight. “You here to order anything?”

“Tsk, tsk,” Isshiki said. “You didn’t used to be so cold. I just thought I’d drop by.” He brought his hand to his brow for brief moment, the motion too sloppy to be a clear anything salute. “Be seeing you.” He turned and trotted out.

Akira turned around to see Sojiro fuming, something out of character for the adult who had to have a stash of cannabis hidden somewhere. “Who’s the scout?”

Sojiro jerked, as if only now noticing the student wearing the green apron. “Scout?”

“Scout,” Akira repeated, leaning against the bar counter’s inner side. “I’ve seen plenty of people scoping out a mark. You have insurance, right? Against burglary?”

One corner of Sojiro’s lip pulled up, but at least his crossed arms loosened. “Well, at least you got the right general idea of Isshiki Youji.”

“Isshiki… Like the head of research, Isshiki-sensei?”

Sojiro’s jaw clenched, and he forced his molars apart before flexing his jaw. Tension lines still stood out on his neck. “You’re too attentive to detail sometimes. Yes, he’s Wakaba’s older brother. If you see him again… don’t trust that smile.”

Notes:

Even with the research center covering up Akira’s troubles so they don’t reflect badly on his father, almost nothing is ever truly sealed in the past. Of course, some of his experiences help arm him against other troublesome characters he’ll come across.

Chapter 26: May 8th, More of a Challenge

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Sunday, 8 May 2016
Morning
Kanda Catholic Church

Akira sat back against the pew, pondering the day’s lesson. As the other parishioners left, he muttered to himself, “I wonder if Id believe seeing somebody I knew died days ago.” He crossed his arms, thinking to the troop’s misadventures in Kamoshida’s castle. Even now the events in the Metaverse seemed surreal, how could he expect somebody else to believe it when they hadn’t seen it?

“Oh,” he heard Hifumi say from beside his pew. “Examining the paintings?”

Akira gave a nervous smile, not wanting to correct her. “I’ve got a lot of things on my mind.” He scooted over to allow her plenty of room.

She sat with a prim posture that made him feel sloppy, then looked out at the paintings around the altar. “I’ve always thought of a good shogi player like an artist. Just like a master painter has a place for every stroke of the brush, a shogi player must find ideal placements for each piece to bring the strategies to life.”

“Just like a chef looks for just the right combination of spices to bring a soup to the next level,” he said.

She nodded with a subdued but genuine smile. “Care for a match?”

He scooted a little further so she could set her board down, finding a smile of his own forming. Another chance to prove his mettle. “Anywhere, any time.”

They set up the board. As they began, Hifumi’s posture and expression changed. The uncertain, demure girl was replaced by a bold, merciless queen. “Vanguard of my Togo Kingdom, trample them!”

Trying to look ahead, he winced at how many of his pieces she threatened. He moved the bishop up to back up a knight.

Her dark green eyes seemed to spark with energy deep within. “You think to protect yourself with that paltry defense?” She let out a laugh any TV villain would be proud of. “It’s useless!” She picked up a silver general of her own and captured the bishop he brought out to reinforce the knight.

Akira ground his teeth, already seeing his options collapsing before him. Throwing caution to the wind, he took his knight and captured her lancer.

She only sat straighter, a pleased smile on her face. “You have only awakened the dragon! Consume them in shadowy hellfire!” She moved up her other rook and captured his rearward knight. “Can you hear the wailing of your soldiers?”

He knew that she had him out-maneuvered, but if she thought she could psych him out, she’d discover two could play at that game. He lifted a pawn. “The steel of my robot army may break under your forbidden magic, but it knows no fear! My battle droid ambushes your bishop.” He took her piece and placed the pawn where it once stood.

Hifumi jerked straight. Her eyes flicked from him to the board once before a deep blush spread. She covered her face with her hands. “I-I did it again. I’m so sorry.”

The sudden attitude threw him for a loop. Something bitter and heavy recoiled in his stomach at the strange change. “Huh?”

She pressed her hands over her face despite the extent of her embarrassed blush. “It’s a bad habit I have.” She lowered her hands but looked away, her cheeks almost purple. “W-while teaching me shogi, my father gave me image training exercises to help me remember the rules. I would look at the board like my own kingdom, and make up stories for my…” her eyes fell on her pieces, “…subjects.”

Akira leaned back against the pew. Something about the bashful display struck a disharmonious chord in him, even though the logical part of his mind tried to say it wasn’t embarrassment of him. Fighting the tension throughout his body, he waved a dismissive hand. “So you’re like the queen of your own little kingdom. I don’t see anything wrong with it. Even Clausewitz said rules were guidelines for thinking men.” He swallowed, but his mouth opened again despite his brain trying to stop there. “If you’re never aggressive, you’re not alive.”

She turned wide eyes on him, her blush fading. “Y-you don’t think it’s weird?”

“Pfft.”

Fiddling with her fingers and looking away, the corners of her mouth still turned up. She pushed her hair back over her ear. “I know very well people make fun of me, especially on the internet.” Her smile faded. “They say I’m a nerd, or crazy. I can’t say they’re necessarily wrong.”

Akira sat up, leaning to get back into her peripheral vision. “Then I’ll say it. They’re wrong. Your self-confidence needs to start with you, the world will catch up. If they don’t get it, they don’t deserve your time.”

She gave a twisted smile that sent his stomach into flips. “W-well, your positivity is a welcome surprise.”

He shifted to the edge of his seat, seeing nowhere she couldn’t easily counter and give herself an even stronger position. Growling, he reached for his king. No matter which flank he tried to strike, she always had a counter. No matter which move he tried, she not only had a counter to it, she welcomed the attempt. Again and again. “Teach me to be like you.”

“Hm?” She tilted her head, her omamori-style knot dangling, but that didn’t take away all the sting of him losing yet again.

Akira swallowed, wishing he hadn’t blurted that out. “Listen, I hate being bested, but nobody’s put my back against the wall and given me opportunity every time like you have. Teach me to play like you.”

Hifumi straightened, contemplation behind her eyes. For a moment, he thought he just crossed the line and she was about to reject him when she covered her mouth with her hand and giggled. “You’re strange, but I feel like I’ve already learned new things from our matches. Of course I’ll continue to play.” She held up a hand, with one finger extended. “On one condition.”

Akira sat forward in his seat.

“Seeking to become a professional shogi player, I am often seeking to try out new moves. On frequent occasion, I will set up a certain circumstance and we shall play from there.” She straightened the straps of her Sunday dress.

Akira smirked. “Like I said earlier: any where, any time.”

Her eyes gleamed and her smile sharpened. “Be careful what you wish for. You may find more of a challenge than you expected.” Her phone buzzed and she took it out to check a text message. “My apologies, I will have to be going.” Hifumi met his eyes, a firmness in those deep green orbs. “Practice for next time.”

The intensity in her gaze sent a thrill up his spine and Akira brandished his best smirk. He gave a showy bow while still seated. “If I can’t match you at shogi, I’ll bring in go. If I can’t do it there, I’ll bring stratego.” His gaze sharpened. “I will bring a worthy challenge, Queen Togo.”

She cracked a grin that lit the flame of competition in his chest. “I look forward to it.”

Akira stood up, feeling more energized than the last time he chugged an espresso, but without the nausea and jittery muscle movements. The two packed up and headed out, his pace only increasing until he found himself running all the way to the train station. Next week couldn’t come soon enough.

Sunday, 8 May 2016
Daytime
Shibuya Diner

Akira set his umbrella in the holder and took the steps two at a time to get up to the second-floor diner. Open wood framing gave the restaurant a more spacious feel.

Mishima spotted him first, waving from a booth several tables down. “Hey, Akira-san!”

Papers and the world geography textbook lay open on the table in front of the class representative, but Mishima focused on his smartphone. Akira slid in and set the bag with Morgana hiding inside at the end, then waved the cat out. “Study time, furball.” As he set up, he looked at Mishima. “So what’s got you so busy? Worried about the midterms next week?”

Mishima looked up, lines underneath his eyes a sign of many nights of too little sleep. At least the eyes didn’t have that distant, dead look like their last rooftop rendezvous. “I’ve got to keep up on the Phantom Aficionado website.” He finally looked up from the phone. “You’re finding it useful, right?”

Akira glanced out at the restaurant, all the other patrons too absorbed in their meals or conversations to pay the high-schoolers any attention. Uncertain exactly what the class representative’s tone insinuated, he prodded, “Uh… what exactly do you mean?”

Smiling, Mishima leaned over the table. Were the table not separating them, they might be forehead-to-forehead. A quirk on his lips, Mishima looked Akira in the eyes. “You and the other Phantom Thieves.”

Akira sat straight, looking around for signs of observers. “Shh!”

Mishima’s smile faded. “Don’t worry, I can keep a secret.” His shoulders drooped. “I’ve got so much to make up for.”

Akira opened his world geography book. “Hey, Kamoshida’s already down.”

One side of Mishima’s lips quirked up for a moment, but then down. For a heartbeat, a dulled look of despair settled over the class representative’s face. Then he sat straight, a wooden smile and determined square to his shoulders. “Kamoshida was a special kind of evil, but there are so many more rotten people out there. That’s why I have to manage the website to collect all these problems.”

Recalling his own blinding need for vengeance, Akira nodded. Sounded like Mishima found his way of grappling with letting his girlfriend fall victim to Kamoshida. “We’ll bring justice to them, Mishima-san.” He looked down at his notes, with many penciled-in question marks. “But right now, I think we need to focus on passing midterms.”

The two settled into studying, Akira ordering barley soup when the server passed by. The transfer student smiled at the sense of academic rivalry, though Mishima’s grasp of mathematics felt only a little better than his own. After a few hours, a pair of cops sat down at the booth behind him.

A grey-speckled cop with crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes sat heavy in his padded seat. “And I thought that pervert teacher raised a ruckus.”

The young cop slid into his booth seat and tossed his hat to the end of the table. He brushed a hand over his hair to straighten it. “I wish they’d just give us the go-ahead. At least most of the foot-work there is done.”

Curious, but sensing opportunity, Akira opened a record app on his phone.

The older cop sighed and set his hat on the seat next to him. “I don’t know if they’re going to lock up half the teachers at that school or let ‘em off scot-free, but if just one more person comes out with suspicions of covering up abuse, someone’s lookin’ at jail time.”

Neat Hair huffed and reached for the hot pepper shaker. “A thousand yen that gossipy bitch loses her teaching license. No way she wasn’t in on the cover-up.”

“No bet. That’s for sure.” Old Cop lifted both hands in a “whatever” gesture, and let them fall with heavy thumps. “Either way, they’ve got me runnin’ all over the city interviewing students for those damn detectives. I wish I had your duty comin’ up. Protection detail may be boring, but at least it’s nice and quiet.”

“I wish it was still babysitting that stuck-up artist,” Neat Hair whined. “Haven’t you noticed all the suits crawling over the station since that drug dealer was found in a barrel?”

Grey leaned back against the booth seat, making it creak. “I recognized one of ‘em from the special prosecutor’s office. What’s all that about?”

“Drug ring in Shibuya,” the younger one said as if the words tasted bitter. “Some dealer named Tosa Kotomi was found in a barrel. Water in her lungs and defensive wounds on her arms and legs.”

Akira froze, his stomach turning in knots at the news of the death of one of his changes of hearts.

Neat Hair went on, unaware of his audience, “TV’s callin’ it a new wave of drug violence and the mayor’s comin’ down hard on every department to find a breakthrough.”

Grey let out a disgusted noise. “Trust me, rookie. There ain’t gonna be some easy scapegoat for this one. She sent letters of apology to her druggies with names of bunches of her druggie dealers. Dunno who blabbed to SIU, but now they think it’s some big break in a yakuza case they’ve been stalled on for years.”

Mishima opened his mouth and Akira snapped a “silence” finger to his mouth.

A waitress came to the cops’ table and set down a plate of fried pork rinds.

“Ooof.” Grey paused to focus on the server. “Grilled fish and rice. Doc said I gotta watch my cholesterol.” He turned back to the other cop. “You better get used to havin’ suits runnin’ roughshod all over the precinct. Them bastards are relentless.”

Neat Hair nodded. “I’m gonna be walkin’ around all day for a while. Get me the steak special.” Turning back to Grey, he added, “They’ve got me tapped for two arrests tomorrow, and I heard they pulled guys from that artist’s detail. That exhibition’s been pushed back a week.”

“And that’s if they don’t get any more leads.” Grey snorted. “Just as well. I only heard a hustle like this once before and it had everyone workin’ overtime for weeks. At least we’ll finally get to cleanin’ up Shibuya.”

“What’s wrong with the artist?”

“You’ve heard of somethin’ too good to be true?” Grey said. “That guy’s one. You hear how much his painting of the fields north of Sapporo went for? No way is that guy a starving artist.”

Akira closed his recording and paced to the bathroom, bile clawing in his throat.

Somebody just died.

One of his changes of hearts just died.

Monday, 9 May 2016
Lunchtime
Shujin, Kobayakawa’s Office

Makoto finished reading the text about another student facing blackmail in Shibuya, then slipped her phone back in her pocket and knocked on the door before entering the principal’s private office. Despite her tension from the number of duties waiting on her, she came to his desk and stood straight. “You asked for me, Principal Kobayakawa?”

Capping his calligraphy pen, he looked up at her with a more haggard expression than she’d ever seen on the almost always cool-and-assured principal. “Makoto-chan. How is the progress of the teacher blackmail I asked you to look into?”

That knot in her back tensed. “Well, everybody is talking about Kamoshida-sensei. Plenty are talking about the Phantom Thief, but there’s so many wild rumors…”

Kobayakawa shifted his head to change the angle he looked up at her, then to the trophy case, then back to her. His chins jiggled as he yanked his chair closer, though his girth prevented him from scooting in any further. His eyes were wide and sweat glistened on his bald head. “Nothing? You have to have something! Anything!”

Makoto flinched away from the intensity of his shout. She rubbed at her forearm, staring into the texture of the carpet. “I’ve narrowed down a lot of the impossibilities…”

Kobayakawa slammed his hands on his desk, causing pencils to jump in their mug and rattling his nameplate. “How many students could control a teacher? The police and other teachers are both up in arms. The school board is breathing down my neck, and police are hounding my teachers. They want answers now. Was Kamoshida the first? Who’s next?”

“I can’t make evidence.” Makoto clenched her eyes. Whispered accusations in the halls and detectives questioning Kiriko’s teachers made it harder not to wonder who knew what. Swallowing, she looked back at the sweating man dabbing his forehead with a cloth. “What about you?”

The principal froze, sweat rag in hand. “Hm?”

“Shiho wasn’t the only one,” Makoto said, her stomach quailing. “Was Kiriko-san a victim too? How many others?”

Setting down his sweat rag, Kobayakawa swallowed and took a deep breath. “I can see this is a difficult time for you. For the student council president to have to hold together the school after one of her fellows… one of her juniors attempted suicide.”

Makoto’s breath hitched in her throat.

Kobayakawa leaned back in his chair. “School is a place of binaries. The successful and the unsuccessful. Where all people feel ill at ease and light grows dim, or where all students can feel at ease.”

“That’s it?” She clenched her hands. “What if there isn’t a Phantom Thief and it was all just a conveniently-timed hoax? The calling cards were four days before that strange confession. One anomaly does not make for a readable pattern. What—?”

Kobayakawa sat up with sharp suddenness, slapping his hands down on his desk and looking her in the eye with an intensity that made her look away. “I’m sure your sister would have had no problems with this trouble. She would have devoted her energy to her duty and conquered it. Not gotten lost with tangents.”

The air of finality felt choking to Makoto. “I… Yes, sir.”

He smiled. “Very good. We all want to make our family proud.”

She bowed, fearing her knees would give out any moment. “Yes, sir.”

His personal cell phone rang and he waved her to the door.

Makoto left, her cell phone pleading with her for help against a growing scam ring in Shibuya warm in her pocket and the principal’s orders causing a cold lump in her stomach.

Chapter 27: May 9th, In the Grove

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Monday, 9 May 2016
Early Evening
Shujin Library

Akira jotted down the list of names of Meiji Era leaders, adding who served for who. Throbbing pressure in his nose pulsed and he ripped out his handkerchief just in time to blast a sneeze into it. Tokyo’s pollen season would not be fun. Not-hushed-enough conversations about him flitted back and forth among the reading tables. He glanced out for signs of the officious red-eyed girl who chewed him out for making noise in the library. Bitch.

He turned the page, only to catch a clear snippet of one of the conversations. “Can you believe that Kamoshida didn’t expel him when he had the chance?”

Gathering his things, Akira stormed out. With the sun sinking behind the skyscrapers, darkness crept across the streets. Most days he would cruise through the shadows enjoying the illusion of freedom, but with exams drawing near, he couldn’t catch that elusive sensation. Everything reminded him of some obligation or looming test question.

When his phone buzzed, Akira almost dropped it in his haste to grab for any distraction.

[Yo,] Ryuji texted, [You're not getting an early drop on studying for exams without me, are you?]

Akira quirked an eyebrow. Ryuji thought cramming a couple days before the midterm tests was early?

[You gotta help me!]

Despite himself, the transfer student chuckled. “I could go for a group that actually wants to study.”

Morgana chuckled from the Akira’s shoulder, reading in on the text app. “As if that dummy could help study.”

Akira shook his shoulders, forcing his guide locked in cat form to retreat back to the school satchel. “Hey, every little bit could help.” He shot out a message asking for a location to Ryuji.

As expected, it wasn’t school. [Dude, there's this super cheap yaki cart on the south side of Inokashira Park. The takoyaki is delicious!]

Akira ran his tongue over his teeth. Not having worked up the nerve to ask Sojiro for permission to use the kitchen to prepare his lunches, and unable to afford buying lunch at school every day, Akira felt like he was running on empty. Overriding his concerns about getting studying done, his stomach growled. [Want to meet at the train station?]

[Sure, dude.]

Akira put away his phone and Morgana grumped the whole train ride there. Ryuji met Akira in a ragged, sleeveless T-shirt several sizes too big, matching the maroon sweatband around his head. “Yo!”

Akira looked him up and down. “I thought this was a study session, not running session.”

Ryuji laughed and bounced on the balls of his feet. “Heh, I just went out to keep the ol’ heart pumpin’. You know how it is, sittin’ inside with video games right there…”

Akira adjusted his satchel straps. “Ryuji, midterms start on Wednesday. My student contract has me on academic probation. If I fail so much as one section, Shujin’s gonna boot me. I’ve got nowhere else to go.”

Ryuji settled down on his heels, eyes holding on Akira’s for a while. “For real? They didn’t even hit me with that when the King of Assholes broke my leg and stuck me with assault.”

Akira’s stomach grumbled again, the unpleasant bubbly sensation rising up higher in his gut, and he gestured out to the street. “So this yaki place got seating?”

Ryuji grinned. “Sure, dude. C’mon.” He led him a short jog through the park to the road along the south end. Tranquil green sprawled out on his right side while high-rise buildings lined the road to his left, except for a notch of covered seating shared between two small restaurants, with a food cart against the street. The breeze picked up and the one salaryman eating there folded up his squared styrofoam container and ran off.

“Hey, Vietnamese Pad Thai.” Akira slowed to read the closest restaurant’s advertising, allowing Morgana the opportunity to jump out and seek shelter under another table.

Ryuji brought his jog to a halt in front of the food cart, sizzling under its wood shutters. “Meh, that place is overpriced. Heres where the good stuff’s at.” When the cart owner kept snoozing despite the raised volume, Ryuji kicked the owner’s foot. “Yo. You got any takoyaki left?”

Moving with mechanical, practiced motions, he flipped open two wood panels before giving Ryuji a shake of his head.

Man,” the track team star whined. He snapped straighter, his grin back full force. “Crab croquettes?”

The cart owner covered his mouth with his long, white sleeve and yawned before looking into another covered container. He shifted back to the track star, giving two slow blinks. “How many?”

Ryuji pulled out his wallet, perfectly aligned pearly whites gleaming through his smile. “How many you want? I can getcha today.”

Akira squirmed for a few moments, fidgeting with his black leather gloves. “Eight.”

Ryuji’s eyebrows vanished into his messy blond hair and he let out a brief whistle. “Your momma don’t feed you?”

Taking in a deep breath, Akira struggled to hold a wooden expression, but his eyes still narrowed. “Easy not to when she’s not there.”

Eyes widening, Ryuji’s hands clapped to his head. “Dude, I forgot about your…” His eyes flicked to the cart owner struggling to keep his eyes open, “circumstances. I’m sorry, for real.” He drew his wallet and opened it to flick through the yen bills. “Uh, six for him and three for me.”

Taking the money, the cart owner stood off his cushioned stool and made change from a flimsy lockbox set into the top of the cart. He fashioned flattened patties and flipped them in a bread crumb mix before flicking open a metal panel covering a metal griddle. He pulled a bottle of some kind of oil out from a door beneath the griddle and dumped some on, then dropped the patties over the sizzling liquid. The scent of real crab and toasted breadcrumbs made Akira’s mouth water and stomach grumble. The cook pulled a metal spatula from its hook above and flipped them, baring succulent, golden brown. Moments later, he swiped them off the iron to paper boats and cleaned off the griddle before returning to his stool to snooze against his lockbox.

Akira joined Ryuji at one of the tables under a broad, metal umbrella, and wasted no time stuffing his face.

The runner watched Akira for a few moments before popping one of his fried patties in his mouth. Three-quarters of the way through chewing, he asked, “Your ma ever make these?”

Grimacing at the blond’s open mouth, Akira chewed his fourth crab croquette and swallowed. His eyes drifted up for a moment. “I can’t think of a time she ever cooked.”

Ryuji’s phone buzzed, and he drew it, reading from the screen before swallowing and typing and sending a response.

“Anything important?”

“Nah,” Ryuji said, slipping his phone away and planting an elbow on the table. “Ma just wanted to know when I was gonna be home for dinner.”

Akira opened his mouth around a fifth croquette, then set it down, a different sort of twist in his stomach. “I’m not so good about perspective with parents. You talk to her a lot?”

“Yeah.” He looked up at Akira with a twist in his eyebrows. “Don’t you with yours?”

Akira looked away. “My mother… taught me more what not to do than what to do. Back in middle school, when we lived in podunk nowhere… seemed like she was out at one of the parties at the Ichijou place all the time. I knew Nana Saitou better than her, and she was so old she could hardly hear.” A sour note twisted his lips and stomach as he remembered the hope when they moved. “She abandoned me to my old bastard so she could go live it up. The last time I spoke with her I was trying to get her to take me away from my old bastard.”

Ryuji scratched his head, incomprehension in his features. “And…?”

Shoulders drooping, he tossed another croquette in his mouth, chewed, and swallowed. “She said ‘Why should I give up the prime years of my life?’”

Ryuji stared at him for a while. “Day-um. I didn’t think moms could even be like that.” He took another croquette and bit into half of it, chewing for almost enough time to mulch his bite. “Mine was always there for me. Up early to make me breakfast, buggin’ me to get my homework done so I’d pass finals, takin’ me to track meets.”

Akira ate his last patty, brushed his hands, and brought out some books in silence.

Ryuji took Akira’s math notebook in hand and flipped through it, pausing at the numerous pages of handwritten notes stuffed here and there. “Duuude, you must be, like, top in your class.”

Akira snorted. “You’ve never seen me scrambling to finish a quiz. You know Usami-sensei marks us down depending on how long it takes us?”

Ryuji chuckled. “Yeah, she teaches math for 2-B, too. Ma didn’ believe me about her until she met her at the school festival last year. Now she thinks Usami’s nuts.”

“She doesn’t seem so bad to me,” Morgana said, hopping up on the rounded bench next to Akira. “Very strict, but also very informative.”

Akira snorted. “Well, your math sense must be better than mine.”

The two students sat down with Morgana watching over them as task-master and studied until the sun went down and the brightest stars struggled out.

Tuesday, 10 May 2016
After School
Shibuya, Central Street Taiheidou Bookstore

Akira counted out the last few yen coins into the tray, then slid it over to the old lady at the counter and picked up the book with Hachiko on the cover. He thanked the old shop hand before turning to the chaotic mob outside. His palm sweat against his new book and his heart thudded in his chest. He paused to blow his nose into his kerchief before turning back to the unforgiving outdoors. Checking his phone, he realized it was still early and Morgana would still be cruising Shibuya for at least an hour.

Sucking in a deep breath, he stepped out as if preparing to set foot on the moon.

The door to Scarlet flew open and a girl in blond pigtails jogged out.

Already forcing his way through people, Akira crossed the street to intercept her before she got to the subway entrance. “Hey, Ann-san.”

She stumbled and almost missed him in the sea of dark-haired, dark-garbed males. “Akira!” Straightening her school satchel over a jacket he’d have sworn she plucked fresh off a designer store, she smiled. “I didn’t expect to see you out here.”

He huffed, then shoved back at somebody who shoulder-checked him while jogging down the sidewalk.

Ann reached out to take him by the elbow and pull him out of the crowd. “Maybe you and I should go somewhere for a while.”

Akira’s face heated up, before he remembered her close friend Shiho and he turned away in shame.

Her grip faltered, but she held onto his arm. After a beat, she gave a gentle tug. “Just for a bit? I could really use a study partner. I am so not looking forward to midterms tomorrow.”

Guilt and a sense of duty to his friend, for Shiho’s sake if not all of them, stirred inside until he gave an assenting nod.

She let out an excited sound too short to call a proper giggle and pulled him into the crowd. Pedestrians on the phone and the news helicopters above pressed down on him as the mass sucked away his air. His knees felt weak and his pace stumbled once before she pulled him up a set of stairs and several floors up to a crepe bar.

Akira let out a heavy breath he didn’t remember holding in. “Isn’t there a crepe shop down on street level?”

“Uh-huh,” she said, adjusting her satchel on her shoulder. “But you looked like you were afraid of the crowds.”

Indignity flared inside and he barked, “I’m not afraid of crowds!”

The one other patron glared at him for several seconds before she went back to daintily cutting away at something thinner than a pancake and smeared with cream.

Ann stepped up to the order register, bouncing on her feet in gleeful anticipation. “Two chocolate-cream crepes, please.”

Akira switched his satchel to his other shoulder. “Oh, you don’t have to get me anything.”

A tinge of red touched her cheeks and she said in a faint whisper, “Those were for me.” She recovered her enthusiasm in the blink of an eye. “What would you like?”

Staring up at the menu hanging above them, he realized he hadn’t even looked at it and searched as fast as he could. “Uh, the strawberry whipped-cream-cheese?”

When Ann started digging around in her satchel, he pulled out his wallet and held up his other hand to stop her. “I’ll get it. You did get me out of there.”

She waved him down. “I invited you, and I know how tight things are with money right now.” Her smile turned sharp. “Besides, you need to help me study.”

He shrugged, not feeling up to the obsequious deny-three-times his mother told him was tradition. “Thanks.”

Taking their orders to a small booth in a cozy corner, both scarfed down their orders before hitting the school books for a while. “I am so glad I ran into you today. Shiho and I used to study together all the time, and she was always so good with Japanese literature.”

“I bet Kawakami was pleased.” Akira turned a page in his textbook and jotted a quick note about Numata.

“She didn’t start teaching until this year,” Ann said, running her finger down one line, then pursing her lips. She braced her elbow on the table, then set her chin on her palm and sighed. “I’m worried about her.”

“Miss I-Look-Like-I-Want-To-Sleep-In-Class?”

Ann perked up in confusion. “Huh? No, Shiho!” She fiddled with her wood pencil. “I should have believed in her from the start. Told Kamoshida off from day one and trusted that she’d hold her own because she earned it. Maybe she saw that I didn’t trust her enough to say what was happening, so she didn’t tell me about what was happening with Yuuki-kun either.”

Akira clicked out another millimeter of pencil lead. “How’s she doing?”

Ann sighed, her eyes staring down at her textbook. “I’m worried about her. I hope it’s just being cooped up with casts and pins and everything on that hospital bed, but she’s been… angry.”

The image of her splayed out on the courtyard turf sent a chill down his spine. “I can see why she’d be pissed.”

Ann looked Akira in the eyes, her forehead creased. “Akira, you don’t understand. She’s never angry.”

Akira shot her a look.

“Okay,” Ann rolled her eyes. “She’s been annoyed before, but she never stays ticked. It’s just not like her. She always had so many ways to burn off steam. Or she’d just talk to Yuuki-kun and she’d be all back to normal. I never saw her mad, she never even got that far.” She set down her pencil. “But Sunday, she wouldn’t even talk about Yuuki.” She bit her lip. “How’s he doing, anyway? You said he was about to copycat her jump, but he’s been avoiding me lately. Or he’s really short with me and more interested in whatever code, forum, or news is on his phone. It’s not like him.” She let out a melancholic sigh.

“Hey,” he snapped to interrupt her descending spiral. “Shiho’s in a rough spot, and being there for her is all any of us can do for her. Mishima’s…” Akira ran a hand through his frizzy hair. “He feels guilty as hell about what happened, keeps talking about making up for it, but I wonder if he’s really dealing with it. He knows where her hospital is, right?”

“Yeah, room number and everything,” Ann said, sitting back from her books. “I texted him the first time I visited, but Shiho’s mother said he’s never been by.” Her gaze fell. “I was kind of hoping that he’d step up and start seeing her again. Then I wouldn’t have to worry about how long it’s been since the last time I could get up there.”

Akira scanned her face, not liking the degree of guilt trying to etch lines into somebody far too young to have such worries. “What’s up? Trouble at home?”

Her phone sang and she straightened, reading whatever message came through. “Speak of the devil.”

Akira tilted his head.

She glanced at him before going back to reading. “It’s an email from my agency. They want me to do a shoot up in Ikebukuro.” Ann’s eyebrow rose. “Weird for them to ask for me to double-check time and place.”

Akira readied his mechanical pencil again. “Don’t most businesses just tell you where and when to show up and that’s it? You’re late, you’re out?”

“I’ve been doing a lot of substitutions whenever they’ve got something in Shibuya. Apparently quite a few models haven’t shown up for scheduled shoots.”

Akira winced. “Well, they can’t want to be models that much if they don’t bother to show up.”

She shot him a brief hooded gaze. “It’s not all their fault. I heard one model crying about not being there because she received a change in schedule and thought it was another day. The crew have to do a bunch of scrambling, and substitutes aren’t cheap even when they’re available. And that’s besides how much it throws off the staff for them to be all ready for one girl when a sub shows up.”

“I bet it’s no fun for the girls getting yoinked all over the city.”

Ann shrugged. “It’s not so bad. My first modeling gig was as a sub, after all.”

Akira looked at her, trying to imagine Ann as something other than a model. His mind refused to conjure her as anything other than the tall, blonde, pigtailed friend of Shiho sitting at the table across from him. “Was somebody absent like you’re getting now?”

Ann leaned forward, bracing both elbows on the table. “Not quite. We were still back in Finland at the time. Mom and dad do these super cool shows – they’re both fashion designers – but they just couldn’t get enough people to this one show and I was there, so they adjusted some of the dresses for me and out I went.”

Akira scratched his scalp, the story sounding like plenty of other people recounting warm stories of people who actually wanted to visit their parents, and having parents who liked having them around. “Must be nice to… get to do fun stuff with your folks all the time.”

Her shoulders drooped. “It is while they’re around. With the way the fashion industry is, they’re always jumping from country to country, so I only get to see mom and dad half the year.” She sat straighter, painting a smile over her face. “But that’s there.” Her eyes swept over a sheet of review. “So what was the theme of In the Grove, again?”

He looked at her askance. “Even if people can convey the truth, they dont. Each person has incentive to change the narrative to suit his own ends. Even the murdered man.”

“Wow, you didn’t even check your notes for that one.”

Akira looked away, unable to withstand her blue gaze. “It’s my favorite book. And one of Japan’s top novels.”

Ann gave a small nod and the sense of scrutiny vanished. Then she paused and looked under the table. “Hey, where’s Morgana?”

Akira flinched, then dug around in his pockets for his phone to check the time. “Crap! He’s still out scouting.”

Chapter 28: May 13th, While You Were Testing

Notes:

Chapters 3 (April 12th) and chapter 13 (April 18th) have both been updated and now include Yoshizawa.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Friday, 13 May 2016
Afternoon
Shujin, Courtyard

Ann fell behind in the trot out of the gym, as students filed out to return to their classes. A warm breeze blew, but that didn’t stop the transfer student from slipping his hands in his pockets as he strode shoulder-to-shoulder with the runner.

Ryuji stopped and leaned against the railing. “Bad enough Shujin’s interruptin’ midterms for it. You guys seriously ‘xpect this dump to give a shit about our mental health?”

Before she could say it sounded like a good idea, Akira leaned against the railing next to the runner with a dubious snort. “The higher-ups don’t give a fuck. They didn’t do shit when Shiho went over the edge, they waited until it hit headlines and cops started showing up on-campus. This is classic bureaucratic ass-covering.”

She started to reach a hand for him before deciding she didn’t like how automatic his cynicism was. Not that she could say he was wrong, but that felt as much like her own betrayal as Shujin’s. “Well, even if it’s just damage control, wouldn’t it look even worse if they did nothing at all? At least this is something.”

Akira slipped his hands out of his pockets and brought up online shogi. “As the guy who played class clown in middle school, I feel qualified to say it’s all an act and you should never trust somebody goofing it up in public. There’s always an angle.”

Ryuji tapped his heel against the concrete walkway. She expected him to say something like that, but the runner seemed taken aback by the forcefulness of the transfer student’s statement. “Ya think so?”

“Hello,” a familiar masculine voice called out from behind them. The teens turned to see the new counselor himself walking up. His eyes scanned then with that same rapid, analytical quality she saw Akira sweep over a room as he entered. He forced himself into a stiff, practiced smile like she’d expect on a new sales clerk. “Takamaki-san, Sakamoto-kun, and… you must be Kurusu-kun.”

His grip on his phone tensed, jaw clenched, and hackles rose. “I go by Akira.”

Maruki held up a hand as if ready to reach out, or ward off. “My apologies, Akira-san.”

Ryuji turned on the counselor, his hands in his pockets but his shoulders squared. “How d’ya know our names?”

The awkward counselor brought the hand up to rub the back of his head. “I was informed of a few students who had… interactions with Kamoshida.” He lowered his hand, his eyes flicking to the cell phone the transfer student kept his eyes on, despite the tense shoulders and conspicuous way he kept the counselor in his field of vision. “Things have been rough for all of you.”

Akira’s thumb tapped two spaces on his phone’s screen. A brick wall between he and the counselor might have been more subtle.

Sensing more tension and less response from him than the others, Maruki faced the transfer student straight-on. “Things must’ve been particularly difficult for you, your record being unfairly leaked and one of your school-mates attempting suicide so soon after transferring here.” He noticed the waver to Akira’s shoulders at the oblique reference to Shiho. “Did you know Suzui-san?”

Ann didn’t think it possible, but the transfer student’s frame stiffened even more. A gleam sparked in those grey eyes which reminded her of Yuuki and she lifted a hand to reach out for him, but realized he’d just throw it off with the new guy there. “She was the nicest girl in Shujin, she talked a few times.” She turned to the doctor and wondered whether he was as clueless as he looked or if there was something to Akira’s assumption that he was probing them. “Why don’t you get straight to the point?”

Maruki gave an awkward laugh and rubbed the back of his head. “Well, I already offered my services to the student body, but would you three be interested in counseling?”

“Nope,” Ryuji proffered without a beat of hesitation.

Shuffling back a shallow step, the counselor let out a distressed sound.

Akira rolled his eyes, but looked less like a vibrating violin string. “Please tell me you’re not surprised. Shujin did fuck all but bury things until peeps outside put us in headlines.”

“Th-that’s very true,” Maruki conceded, brow furrowing. “And I don’t agree with Shujin’s decision to try to make any of these sessions mandatory. I even brought that up, but both the principal and vice-principal shot down making it all voluntary no matter how much I insisted.”

“Really?” Akira drawled before he turned his back on the counselor and took one step away. “Better get started on that expulsion paperwork.”

Ann saw the same gasp from the others as she heard from herself.

Both of Maruki’s hands came up, though he couldn’t seem to decide what he wanted to do with them. “Akira-san, you – all of you – have suffered enough. I want to help you.” He realized he’d started to wave his hands like a toddler and brought them down to his sides. “I understand asking you to open up to a complete stranger is a lot. You don’t have to come today. All I ask is that you give it a chance. I’ll do everything I can to make it a worthwhile experience.” He lifted a plaintive hand at the students. “Think of it as stopping in for free snacks!” He clapped his hands, sensing he was losing his audience. “All you can eat… would be nice, but I’ll make sure you have plenty.”

Akira’s deadpan could have flash-dried a whale, “I hear unmarked vans make the same offer to ‘the evaporated’.”

Even Ryuji flinched at that. “Dude, there’s bein’ skeptical, an’ goin’ too far.”

To his credit, Maruki recovered from the metaphorical gut-punch and pasted on a practiced smile. “Oh! If you attend counseling sessions, I’ll teach you different ways to improve mental acuity.”

Akira lifted his phone and resumed his online shogi. “I’m already familiar with the family home memory technique.”

“Huh?” Ann let out.

Akira tapped his phone. “It’s a technique for memorizing large volumes of detailed information and recalling the information accurately long after. The Office of Special Services taught it to spies in the Second World War, and Public Security acquired it with espionage training during the cold war.”

Maruki gave an impressed chuckle. “That’s very impressive, Ku—Akira-kun. I didn’t even know where it came from. But there are more things I can teach, like ways to hone concentration before exams, or keep from getting nervous on dates. How’s that?”

Ryuji and Ann both shifted their weight from foot to foot. The track star looked around, unwilling to be the first to break, but after a few moments turned a less energetic gaze to the counselor. “Guess it don’t sound so bad.”

Ann nodded. “Yeah.” She looked to the transfer student with that metaphorical wall back up. “Can’t hurt, right?”

All eyes fell on Akira. Long seconds ticked by before he glanced at the runner, then blonde before his jaw tensed. “I will… consider it.”

Maruki let out a relieved whoosh of air, then even gave a shallow bow. “That’s all I ask. Thank you.”

A bell sounded and the doors to the gym burst open with the students who lingered to chat until time to return to mid-terms, now sprinting to class.

Friday, 13 May 2016
After School
Shujin, Class 2-D

Akira doodled on a sheet of scrap paper until the bell rang. He heard Ann groan, then get up to hand in her paper. Noise in the room rose as the students chattered with what energy testing hadn’t sapped from them.

“Settle down,” Kawakami spoke over then, her weary voice only just audible. “Before you’re released, I was instructed to give an addendum to the assembly. The counselor will be with us until November. For the majority of you, counseling is optional. However, the school has decided it will be mandatory for a few students. You should already have a notice in your student email.”

Akira checked his phone. Sure enough, the email he gave Shujin had a notice of required counseling.

“What do you think?” Mishima said from behind him, his eyes on his own phone.

The transfer student’s phone buzzed in his hands and he opened the waiting Phantom Thief chat. Ryuji’s ID blinked at the top. [Akira's right. Fork them forcing us to do this.]

[You said you'd do it,] Ann texted. [What about you, Yuu-kun?]

[I'll go after midterms,] the class representative replied. A beat later, he added, [What about you, Akira? You could talk about those things you talked to me about.]

He wasted no time to text, [It will be a cold day in hell before somebody forces me into another shrink's couch.]

Three dots bounced next to Ryuji’s ID for a moment. [What about shrink-wrapped couches?]

[My old bastard's a shrink, Ryuji. Neuropsychologist is just a fancier title for the same thing.]

Three dots winked in next to Ann’s ID, then disappeared. A moment later she texted, [The school's got their eyes on us.]

Mishima texted, [She's right. Cops were still interviewing students and faculty this weekend. And if you guys are going to take down either the drug or fraud rings, you can't afford to be caught nosing into them.]

[I'll go first,] Ann sent. [Might as well find out what it's about and get it over with sooner rather than later. What are you going to do?]

[I'll think about it,] Ryuji texted.

Mishima gave a quiet, pained groan behind the transfer student. [My parents have been asking about my class ranking. I think I better hit the library again today.]

Akira texted, [I want somewhere quieter. I'll be studying in the diner in Shibuya.]

Friday, 13 May 2016
After School
Shibuya Diner

Akira scribbled down the final calculation and checked the derivative against the original equation. Seventeen on one side, minus eleven on the other. He dropped his mechanical pencil on the math book and let himself fall forehead-first onto his practice for tomorrow’s math midterm exam, glasses pressing against his face. “Math was invented to make people unhappy.”

Alliance Force, Assemble! sang out of his phone, so he pulled himself up off the table covered with books and papers. Akira slipped his phone out, glancing at ‘Doc’ on the ID. “No job too small, no fee too large. Scoundrels for hire, this is Hugo First.”

“You certainly lose none of your wit over the phone,” Takemi snapped. Something thumped on corrugated cardboard. “It’s Masa. Be here, but don’t be seen.” She cut the call, and seconds later sent a text with an address and time.

“Hm. I think Doc’s calling for overwatch.” Akira paused, hand in the bag, fingertips against the cloth-covered cardboard serving as a false bottom. Brandishing a sub-machine gun should be enough to surprise any street gangers dumb enough not to question how a school-age kid would get one. Add his emergency change of clothes lacking any identifying traits and he might be able to pass himself off as a young hired gun.

Morgana’s ears curled back as he watched Akira pack up. “Joker, much as I hate to point this out, what can we do in the real world? Masa is a gangster – a real one. We’ve got the advantage in the Metaverse, but he’s got the home field advantage in the real world. You said it to Ryuji. You’re no yakuza.”

“I can’t just abandon someone when the walls are closing in on her,” he ground out. “I am not letting another Tosa Kotomi happen.” Checking his map, the commercial-district back lot didn’t seem special. While quite a few buildings rose up around the lot, none had convenient access for overwatch. A single narrow lane led to the delivery truck access on a major road where it would be simple enough to blend in with traffic. This late in the evening, the sky darkened, leaving the almost-abandoned parking lot bathed in shadows.

Glad he had the chance to change out of his Shujin uniform, Akira found few places to get a vantage point that also left him close enough to jump into a situation. He ended up climbing on top of a once-white, boxy delivery van and readied his sub-machine gun if he needed to make a threat, then his phone to get what pictures he could. After a short wait, a brown sedan pulled into the nigh-empty parking lot.

It pulled in front of a rusted door marked ‘Staff’, and a man with a leopard-print shirt and pants with loose leggings stepped out. He reached in to take a sheathed knife at least twelve centimeters long and slipped it into his pocket. With only one parking lot light working he had trouble making out the man in dark clothes, but recognized Masa’s voice as soon as he snapped into the vehicle, “Just stay with the car, man. Let me handle the business.”

After slamming the car door closed, he paced to the tall pole the sole working light jutted out from, dropped a brown paper sack at its base, then drew and lit a cigarette. He smoked through that and lit a second before a motorcycle squealed into the parking lot.

Pulling to a stop on the opposite side of the working light pole, the motorcyclist kicked down the stand, dismounted, then slipped off the sleek, black helmet. She shook her short, dark hair before setting the helmet on the seat. She knelt down next to the rigid storage unit bolted over the rear wheel and pulled out a white plastic case just like the one Takemi handed over at the last drug exchange. With her leather riding slacks and jacket, he hardly recognized the doctor.

Pacing closer, she stopped just a couple steps inside the circle of light. Takemi hesitated for a moment before calling out, “It seems a shame for partners in business to go by such distant relations.”

Masa flicked his cigarette away. “The fuck do you care? You never wanted to be in these little… transactions.”

Takemi set the plastic case of drugs onto the cracked concrete pavement at her feet. She crossed her arms over her leather jacket. “Fine. Then hand over the payment.”

Masa slipped his hand into his pocket. “An’ if I want those pills first?”

Takemi glared. “I have expenses to pay, so you know I’ll hand over my share. After trying to stiff me last month, I’m sure even you can understand why I need to count first.”

His lip curled up, but Masa bent down to take the paper bag and tossed it at her.

She opened it, counted, then used her foot to tip over the plastic case and send it skidding over the cracked concrete to Masa. He picked it up, weighed it with his hands for a thoughtful moment, then said, “The head honcho is uppin’ quotas. You better be ready to bring more product when I call in a couple weeks.”

Takemi went stiff, but anger pushed its way to the fore. “Do you have any idea how many hoops I have to jump through to get you that much amphetamine? Any more and I’ll have district investigators poking their noses around.”

“Figure it out,” Masa bit out. He held two fingers to his forehead. “You’re s’posed to be like a smart person.” He turned around and popped into the dark-colored sedan, which drove away without fanfare.

Desperate to move his limbs again, Akira slid to the edge of his abandoned delivery truck and dropped down. “On the plus side, he had a knife but didn’t try anything. Is this what he does every time?”

Takemi paced back to her motorcycle and picked up the helmet but just pressed her hands against it. “He’s always done it up in Shibuya before. Every time. Something’s got to be changing for him to make it here in Minato-ku.” Her leather gloves squeaked as they pressed down on the plastic motorbike helm. “I thought they didn’t have anywhere else to go before.” She sighed and loosened her hands. “You’re as good as your cat at sneaking around, but if Masa makes a move… what can you do?”

Morgana slunk out of the darkness under the delivery truck. “Tell her I’m not your cat.” His blue eyes scanned the doctor decked in leather from neck to toe. “Though… she’s trapped by her situation just like you were with that horrible drunk and the police.”

“Don’t underestimate me.” Akira held up his sub-machine gun so she could see it before he started unscrewing the fake silencer on the faux gun. “Just make sure he has no reason to suspect anything is different on your end.”

Takemi set her helm on the seat, saying nothing for several seconds before she leaned forward to brace against it for several long breaths. Anger and defeat resonated in her pose. “Can I make this right even if I succeed in curing Miwa-chan?”

Letting a moment pass, Akira sat down on the plastic basket bolted to the back of the motorcycle. He looked into her bright brown eyes, but she stared down onto the seat. “Tell me, Doc. Why’d you go into medicine?”

She sucked in a long breath before her eyes drifted closed. “Miwa-chan’s disease was particularly rare. There’s only a few case studies—”

“I don’t mean how’d you get from medicine to here. I mean what got you into medicine? You’re a general practitioner, right?” Akira slipped his hands into his pockets. When she only gave a nod, he sighed. “Took long?”

Takemi took a deeper breath, then began as if reciting a report to a board of sleep-proof scientists, “Three years at the College of Nursing, Akaishi-cho. Three years at Jikei. Four years residency before I was accepted into research.”

He leaned a little further into her field of vision. “Isn’t the basic med degree four years?”

Standing up from her bike, she crossed her arms. “Yes.”

Akira tapped his foot against the cracked pavement in thought, then froze and flashed her a big smile. “Well hell, that means you even started out at the head of your class. Three years to everyone else’s four.”

Takemi let out a little chuff, but her posture relaxed. “I was already studying medicine, so it’s not that impressive. Not a whole lot to do when you’re a sickly girl spending months each year at a hospital.”

Akira gave a theatrical sigh. “Give yourself some credit, Doc.” He tapped one foot on the pavement before reigning in the tic. “Does it get any easier? Medicine?”

She sat down on her motorcycle seat, looking aside at him. “It does, actually. There’s always a new study, but there’s also only so many things you’re going to see frequently.”

Looking through the photos he surreptitiously took of the exchange, Akira zoomed in on the license plate of Masa’s car. Assuming it even was his car could be a mistake, somebody else was in the driver’s seat the whole time. “Is Leopard Print a lieutenant?”

Takemi snorted, her tension cracking at last. “I would’ve said definitely when I moved into Yongen, but he reaches like a guy angling for a promotion. I saw plenty of those types while I was working on residency at Jikei University Hospital.” She leaned a little bit, spying the pixelated license plate on the transfer student’s phone. “You’re really serious about going after Masa.”

Akira scrolled up a couple images of Masa smoking and thanked Mishima for showing him how to mute phone apps. “I meant it when I said we could come to a mutually equitable arrangement. And so I put a request in to…a friend I know.” He knew they’d need to continue receiving the doctor’s help. “Discretion isn’t a problem, but information is.”

Takemi held an inscrutable look on Akira for several long seconds. “Listen, kid. It’s not that I don’t appreciate the offer, but…” Her dark eyes looked to the cracked asphalt at her feet. “You’re young. You’ve got prospects. I’m just a quack who fucked up big enough to wind up in a nowhere clinic lost in the back streets of the biggest city in the world.”

Pebbles popped as he stood up, but he reigned in his anger. “I’m not some ignorant little kid. I have a conviction for assault.” He turned off his phone and stuffed it in his pocket. “It’s not like I’m very far from these assholes.”

She gave him a side-eye. “You assaulted someone?” Takemi huffed. “I don’t see you being that half-hearted.”

He blinked, then stumbled a step back. “Half-hearted?”

Takemi picked up her bike helmet by the chin brace. “You’re not as guarded as you think you are. I could believe you yelling at some dick in front of a train station. Or killing him in a back alley. But not going half-way for something like just assault.”

Akira’s body felt lighter. Granted, he hadn’t sat down and talked about the debacle with the rich asshole who slapped him with trumped-up charges, but even they didn’t quite give him such an absolution of the night that ruined his life. Would they? Every one seemed too decent to step into the dirty path his life tread. Even Ryuji wanted to be a straightforward good guy. “Well, if you know that much, you know I don’t back out once I’ve given my word. I said I’d help you with this,” he said, waving his finger in the air. “Do they have peeps following you?”

She closed her eyes. “They don’t need to. I’ve got nowhere to go. Even with all the money I’ve got, I can’t leave until I’ve cured Miwa-chan.” She held her helmet in both hands.

He slipped his phone in his pocket. “You really helped us against…” He paused how to avoid saying Kamoshida. “Against a jackass who put somebody real important to me in the hospital. Do you know any other names?”

Takemi shook her head, then held an inscrutable look on Akira for several long seconds before putting her helmet on. When she spoke, her tone was flat as a windless sea, “Your girlfriend must’ve been real close for you and her to come to the clinic more than once.” She slapped the visor closed, started the motorcycle, and peeled out.

Akira clapped his hands around his mouth. “She wasn’t my girlfriend!”

A cricket chirped and he let out a long breath, brought out his phone, and stared at the license plate, wondering what he could do with it. “We’re running out of time.” Putting the phone away, he disassembled his sub-machine gun and slipped it into his satchel.

His phone buzzed and he brought up the group chat, where Ann texted, [I went in for counseling with Maruki.]

Ryuji’s ID winked in. [How was he?]

[He was very nice. I thought it was going to be rough, especially with Kamoshida having to be part of the conversation. But instead we mostly talked about Shiho.]

Akira texted, [Must have been hard.]

[Surprisingly, no,] She replied. [Maruki was pretty easy to talk to. He didn’t even seem to mind when I rambled, he was just happy when I felt confident enough to talk. No matter what about.]

Ryuji sent, [He didn't try and make you sign anything about that shirt bag Kamoshida, or an NDA?]

[Not at all. He just wanted me to be more comfortable, even after I left. You guys should go, too.]

Akira frowned. She was supposed to be the smartest, most level-headed of the Phantom Thieves. Instead she had to be taken in by that bumbling goof act. Nobody was that nice without expecting something in return. He slipped his phone in his trousers and walked back to the train station.

Saturday, 14 May 2016
Early Morning
Shibuya Station

Somebody stepping on his heel sent Akira stumbling, his shoe popping off. He swore and spun around to retrieve his shoe before it was forever lost to the morass of Shibuya. Some businesswoman in a striped pencil skirt kicked it and Akira shoved his way after it.

Against his expectations, a tall, dark-haired boy in the white jacket of some other school stood up, the shoe held by his thumb and index finger. “Ah, so you are the source of the unusual phenomena.” When he offered the black street shoe, Akira snatched it and put it on.

Morgana peered out of the bag. “At least say thank you.”

Akira sighed, but the team’s Metaverse expert was right. Nobody would ever do it again if he never showed gratitude. “Thanks.” Both boys moving on, the transfer student muttered, “I wish the old bastard passed on a useful lesson like that instead of a list of known neuro-transmitters.”

Coming to the station for the train to Aoyama-Itchome, Akira spotted the distinctive bad dye job and unkempt hair of his compatriot. “Hey, Ryuji.”

The track star’s jaw opened and he let out a yawn without bothering to cover his mouth. “I was up all night on account of today bein’ the end of exams.”

Morgana popped out of Akira’s bag. “Do you really expect us to believe you were up late studying?”

Ryuji turned the world’s most tired glare at the guide trapped in cat form. “What’s the point? When I realized exams were almost over, I played Star Ocean all night.”

Akira took off his glasses before pressing the heel of his palm to his face. “It’s not that I don’t understand the world bein’ up against you, but how’re you gonna show them up by giving up?”

Ryuji shrugged, but his eyes fell away. “Not like I’m gonna blow anyone outta the water with grades here. I got the upper quarter of the class all through middle school, but now? Nothin’s diff’rent if I just fail again.” Ann strode out of the crowd, covering her mouth in a yawn. Something about that perked up the track star. “’Guess someone else was gamin’ late last night.”

The transfer student gave a small wave, getting one in response before Ann brushed at her pigtails. “Just one more day of exams. We’re nearly at the finish line and I wanted to make it a good run.”

Morgana nodded, pride almost smug in his voice, “That’s the kind of discipline I’d expect from a Phantom Thief, Lady Ann. Way better than the organ grinder’s monkey,” he finished with a chin-nod at Ryuji.

The runner jammed his hands into his pockets. “Like I gotta take this kinda crap from a dinky-brained cat.”

Akira nodded, his expression all serious. “Just make sure to donate your head to science when you die, Ryuji.”

“Huh?”

The chuckling started slipping out even before Akira finished, “Scientists haven’t found the perfect vacuum yet.”

Morgana snorted with laughter, but dropped back into the bag so they could finish the trip to Shujin.

Saturday, 14 May 2016
After School
Aoyama-Itchome Station

Spotting the unkempt dyed blond hair, Akira headed for the corner of the station, glad for the consideration. Still, the noise pounded him, so he leaned back against the tiled wall and gave the group a solid, post-test greeting. “Ugh.”

Ann threw her hands up in celebration. “Hand me a mike, I need to drop it! Tests are done.”

Finally,” Akira blurted as if trying to get something tasting bad out of his mouth.

Ryuji stood a little straighter but left his hands in his pockets. “Tests kickin’ your butt too, huh?”

Akira took off his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose. “I was thinking the entrance exam was hard, but damn. Shujin pulls no punches.”

“It is a big academic school. Nobody qualifies unless they score above the national average,” Ann said, tilting one head and examining him more than he felt comfortable. “You worried?”

Akira stretched out his shoulder, but couldn’t feel any relief in his back. “I never had so much riding on getting good grades. My student contract has me on academic probation until after exams. If I don’t just pass but also excel, I am boned. Whether or not Kobayakawa’s still there next week.” He glanced over at Ryuji, browsing his phone with no sign of discomfort from the bustle or noise. “Any leads?”

“Nah,” the runner said, thumb flicking up, eyes skimming the screen for only a moment before flicking up again. “Not as many posts. I sure hope the Phantom Thieves don’t go out like this.”

Akira straightened his glasses. “Well, I’m too wiped out to go to Mementos. Tomorrow’s Pentecost so I have no idea if I’m gonna have time then, but send me a text if you guys run into anything weird happening in Shibuya.”

Pentecost. Sunday, 15 May 2016
Afternoon
Kanda Catholic Church

Akira fidgeted in his seat on the pew, waiting for the choir to finish the last song of the day. He knew the liturgy of God sending a helper to the early believers should be uplifting, but instead only felt a twisting sensation of loss in himself. Any day now, that yakuza boss could make the call that would put Takemi on a one-way trip to the bottom of Tokyo Harbor.

The choir came to a sharp halt and a solemn silence spread through the church. Father Sugiyama gave the benediction and the tension broke. The other parishioners packed up their Bibles, Mass notes, and headed back into the unforgiving city. The chaotic shuffles of feet and hushed conversations assaulted his ears, but at least the aisle channeled their movements into one ordered direction. Still feeling wiped out from a week of midterms, Akira hung back and looked for Father Sugiyama for this week’s Confession. Maybe that would help lift some of the weight off his shoulders and clear his mind for another shot at finding the yakuza boss’s name.

The red omamori-style knot tied in her hair made her stand out even before Togo slipped through the out-bound towards him and gave a brief bow. Her navy-blue, conservative dress had a looser cut than most of her others, and the green highlighting on it somehow made her eyes seem even brighter. “Akira-san, how good to see you again. What did you think of the liturgy? I always love Father Sugiyama’s lessons on the book of John.”

He bowed back, swallowing at the close proximity to a girl making his heartbeat race. “I’m not sure I agree that there’s nothing to be done with another’s sins. When God told Moses to take a headcount of the Israelites, they all had to pay an atonement tax.”

She held her Bible and shogi box behind her back, her eyes drifting up for a moment. “Exodus chapter 30, as He gave the specifications for the Tent of Meeting?”

Akira rubbed his neck, avoiding looking at those pretty green eyes. “Wow, I didn’t even feel that confident when I got to the history portion of midterms this past Friday.”

“Oof,” she said with a sympathetic wince. “We had midterms last week at my school. I was glad to share our game for a change of pace from academics.”

He glanced at the shogi box extending out from behind her back. “Maybe another match this week?”

Her stance perked, that predatory spark lighting in her green eyes. “I have been looking forward to testing out a few moves, and Mother’s allowed me some more time today since it’s Pentecost.” Her eyes flicked over the sanctuary. “Although it can be helpful to practice in different places from time to time. I haven’t even had a relaxing stroll since February.”

“Well, there’s Inokashira Park,” he said, dredging up a mental map from the last time he went running there. Plenty of tables to set up a proper game. “I think there’s a train there less than thirty minutes.”

She gave a warm smile. “Excellent.”

They walked to the train and continued debating Biblical stances on obligation and restitution until coming to Inokashira Park itself.

Hifumi sat with her same prim, proper posture on the time-worn bench and looked out at the lake. “So many things can change the experience of shogi. The scenery, the sounds, the smells.”

Akira took in the scenario she set up on the board, noticing her gold general sat in his capture stack. The faint breeze tugged at the shogi master’s puffy dress sleeves. “You use all twenty senses?”

She turned back to him, brows raised. “Twenty?”

Shrugging, he looked away from those pretty green eyes. Akira rubbed his neck, wishing he could kick his old bastard for raising him with such a screwy, specific knowledge set. “Neurologically there’s… I believe twenty-two senses. Lots of them like pressure, heat, or pain are folded together in traditional parlance.” He clapped his hands together and tried to remember which move he started with last week. “Anyway, a change in scenery does something to change your choice in moves?”

She nodded and settled before the board. “It helps change your frame on your usual sensibilities. Shed light on new moves.” She let loose a dainty giggle. “A little like you, Akira-kun. Like a board with endless potential. I wonder what kind of formation you could become.”

He swallowed, feeling the impression of heat on his face and tore his gaze off eyes deeper than any well. Looking to the board, he settled into calculating his next three moves.

Monday, 16 May 2016
Lunchtime
Shujin, Class 2-D

Fatigue from the midterms clashed with the anxious coil of energy tensing inside him from being away from the Metaverse. Giving Ann a small wave to be sure she was okay, when she gave a nod and looked back down to her phone he decided to leave her to whatever text absorbed her attention. She seemed busy but not tired, so that was one member recovered enough from midterms to join another sweep through Mementos.

Akira picked up his school satchel and held it open to allow Morgana to slip in without being seen, then walked out of the classroom packed with boisterous conversation. Mind already working on preparations for Mementos, he stood up to find a quiet place to strategize with Morgana. With the number of people in the hall he knew the courtyard would no longer be a safe place. He turned to the roof.

Blinking in the glare of sunlight, he let out a breath of relief at the peace and quiet. “So we’ve only got a matter of time, a couple weeks at the most until Leopard Print tries something stupid.”

When his vision adjusted, he realized a girl knelt down in front of the rows of planters. Her winter Shujin uniform made her look like every other girl in the school, but that curly brown hair looked familiar. “Oh, hello. I didn’t realize anybody else came up to the roof.”

In the privacy of his own mind, he cursed at the lost opportunity to strategize. Certain she heard him, Akira swallowed and back-tracked the conversation to be sure he hadn’t blurted anything incriminating. He remembered she called herself Haru, but drew a blank on her family name. Best not to look too forward, just in case she was in cahoots with that officious girl with the hairband. “Oh, uh, hi. Senpai. You come up here a lot?”

The upper-classman clasped her hands, her eyes sizing him up with a strained energy behind them. She reminded him of Toyohisa, looking for something and expecting not to find it. “When Kiriko-kun stopped coming to the Flowers and Gardening Club, all the other members lost interest. It wasn’t fair to the plants to just leave them up here to whither, so I had to take care of them.” Setting his school bag on the ground to let Morgana out, she still caught him hopping out. “Oh, you bring your pet cat with you to school, that’s adorable!”

Morgana shot a smirk at the transfer student and swished his tail with a purr.

Akira shot him a frown. “Go ahead and laugh it up, fuzzball.”

She giggled. “Did you come up here for lunch? Don’t let me stop you.”

Glancing from her to the planters, he wondered how reliable meeting on the rooftop would be. After a short prayer, he took out a container of spiced rice and chopsticks. “You up here a lot?”

Her lips pressed together and her brows drifted closer. “At least once a week. There’s really not much difference between here or somewhere else.”

Akira snapped up from his rice, eyes wide. “No difference? It’s actually quiet up here. It’s like an island of peace surrounded by the rat race.”

Haru looked down with a faint but bitter smile. “It is strange how energetic some of them can get. It’s not like the company will grind to a halt if somebody comes in an hour late or leaves off a TPS coversheet.”

He swallowed his mouthful of rice. “Yeah, but you can be guaran-fucking-teed that if you’re five minutes late that you’ll get an hour of ass-chewing.” Akira took a large bite of his rice, but when he thought he saw a hint of condescension in her smile, he swallowed and went quiet.

She brushed at her hands and gave a tenuous smile. “Well, it was nice talking to you, but I’m afraid I have to get cleaned up for class. See you later.”

Notes:

Since Maruki’s bumbling but amusing introduction to the school didn’t leave much room to vary and also didn’t really define the characters nearly as much as the courtyard scene, I left it in Daywatch’s “off camera” cutting room floor so I don’t throw game repetition at everyone. It’s a good scene, but I want to stick to the real meat of the plot and characters and the courtyard is where things happen. In the same light, Daywatch generally follows Akira fairly strictly so most of the sessions of Maruki counseling the Phantom Thieves will not be making on-camera appearances, but the group will be discussing things before and after and those conversations will still have an impact on Akira, wearing down his paranoia against Maruki.

Akira’s “the evaporated” line is one of many terms for the nearly 10,000 people who go missing in Japan every year. Many of those are elderly without any close or surviving family, or suicides, but children and kidnapping victims of all ages are included there. He is hitting hard to defend himself from a perceived threat, just as his psychologist father taught him, even if it’s not actually the best route to take. He’ll get over that, and Maruki will be one of the people who helps him do so, but right now all Akira knows for sure is that Maruki is a “shrink” and wears a white coat just like his father did. It will take time and bitter lessons before he’s ready to give up his presumptions, just as is the case for nearly all abuse victims.

Chapter 29: May 16th, Blackmail

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Monday, 16 May 2016
After School
Halls of Shujin

The student population thinned, few people noticed Akira’s departure from the library. Adjusting his school satchel’s straps, he trotted down the stairs, his eyes on his phone as he scoured the internet for news on Tosa Kotomi. Not one place mentioned her by name, and the toll was starting to wear at him. At least if people were talking about her in specific, he would have one place to worry about. Lacking that, every drug deal and back alley beating left the question of whether it was her. Could he have stopped it?

A pressed blue uniform swelled into Akira’s view behind his phone. Grabbing the rail, he halted his downward momentum just before he crashed into the blue-garbed man preceding Kawakami up the stairwell, but dropped his phone in the process.

Straightening his ironed uniform, the cop stared into Akira’s eyes. “You know where Chouno-sensei is?”

Akira dashed to retrieve his phone, then pointed down the hall. “Uh… I would guess the faculty office. Second floor.”

The police officer grumped, but turned around without another word. “Ma’am,” he nodded to Kawakami before stepping around her.

His homeroom and literature teacher narrowed her eyes. “There you are.” Her brown eyes searched his. “Are you all right?”

Akira felt his heart seize and his hands go cold. He dipped into that familiar feeling of anger. It didn’t take away the burning in his chest, but did stop the trembling in his hands. “You needed to speak with me, Kawakami-sensei?”

The teacher held the railing like she feared she’d fall without it. “Niijima said she can’t find a report of a lost item, so she needs you to fill in the paperwork so they can start the official process.”

Akira’s eyebrow rose and he closed the web browser. “Niijima-san…?”

Kawakami crossed her arms, brow furrowing. “Really? The student council president. She’ll be in her room next to—”

“The library on the third floor,” he finished, having noticed it when returning his book on musculoskeletal structure.

“Right.” She let out a heavy breath, turned, and trotted down to the second floor.

Morgana poked his head out of Akira’s satchel. “Isn’t she that girl with the braided headband? Who’s been following you around since you yelled at the librarian?”

Akira let out long sigh. “Crap. I was afraid she was getting wise.” He headed to the student council room, thankful at least only she was there rather than a panel of her cronies.

Niijima looked up from her seat in front of a laptop on a single folding table, another folded up against the wall next to the chairs. “Ah, there you are, Kurusu—”

“My name is Akira,” he snapped, fists clenching. “I do not go by Kurusu.”

Niijima blinked, a moment of confusion passing through before she composed herself and gestured to a chair on the opposite side of the table. “Well, if we could sit down for a bit?”

Akira took the indicated chair, his hackles rising, and set his school bag onto the other chair beside him. “What’s this all about? I didn’t report anything lost to the school.” He glared at the table. “Except maybe my dignity.” He straightened his glasses. “What would Miss Brown-Noser want with one of us plebians?”

Morgana glared at him from the hidden confines of the school satchel. “Joker.”

Her eyelid twitched. She folded up her computer and set it on the chair next to her so she could clasp her hands and look him in the eye. “Why don’t we get straight to the point? Kamoshida-sens—”

“Rapists have no right to be called sensei,” Akira spat.

Niijima’s hands balled, but she kept her eyes and body calm. “The charges haven’t—”

Akira rose, fists banging the table in his anger, Shiho’s broken body in his mind’s eye. “Suzui-san threw herself off the roof, and he confessed. Are you really going to sit there and defend him even after everything that came out? After all the girls he violated? After all the lives he crushed?”

Her eyes clenched and her head turned aside for a moment. Niijima drew in a breath, straightened, and looked as calm as ever before she looked Akira in the eyes. “This just highlights how strange it is for Kamoshida to have done all those terrible things, only to come to school one day, confess, and resign.” Her eyes narrowed. “It’s been the talk of Shujin Academy, but it seems like you are the only person unsurprised.”

Sitting, Akira clasped his hands on his lap and tried to project a calm front despite his pounding heart.

“Would you kindly tell me the truth behind the Phantom Thieves?”

From his concealment in the bag, Morgana quailed. “You were right, she knows!”

Akira maintained steady breath. He lied to the police before, he can lie to one little girl. “Didn’t that calling card he left say there was only one phantom thief?”

“It wasn’t clear.” Niijima let a victorious smirk play over her mouth. She pulled out her phone and navigated to a file, then tapped play.

Akira’s voice floated out. “Damn. No Palace.”

Ryuji groaned. “Man, what kind of Phantom Thieves can’t come up with a good guy to heist? We’re never gonna get famous at this rate.”

Ann’s voice came next. “We’re doing this to give hope to the helpless, Ryuji.”

Niijima stopped the recording and brushed her hair back, her smirk spreading. “Now what could such a strange conversation mean?”

Still in bag, Morgana said, “This is bad. Very bad.”

Eyes narrowing, Niijima turned a look like a cutting laser on the transfer student. “How did you do it? Blackmail? Hypnosis?”

Akira shrugged, but his hands clenched on his knees. “All I heard was a couple of phantom thief fans.”

Niijima held fast, looking far too much like a practiced interrogator. Without a word, she scrolled forward on the recording and hit play.

Ryuji’s voice floated out. “Maaan… I became a Phantom Thief ta fight Shadows and help people, not study.”

“That would explain your class ranking,” Akira’s voice mocked before Niijima stopped the playback.

She looked up at him with a soft smile like the cat who ate the canary. “You really want to claim this doesn’t prove anything? I’ve only been following you for a few days, and I believe you three are the Phantom Thieves.” She paused to sweep her eyes over him, gauging his reaction. “What would the police think if I were to send this recording to them?”

Red haze shot into his vision. Snarling, Akira bashed the table up to one side and rushed her.

Shocked, Niijima stood from her chair. His fingers just grazed her throat when she snagged his outstretched hand and yanked to her right, throwing off his footing. She kicked him in the soft spot beneath his knee cap. Akira tumbled to the floor and she braced a knee into the small of his back.

Alliance Force, Assemble! sang out of his phone.

Remembering his encounter with her in an alley in Shibuya, Akira couldn’t muster the energy to try to turn the tables. That, and she could easily break his arm. “Okay,” he said into the prickly carpet, “I realize I may have deserved that. I may be a jackass, but… Kamoshida was trying to force sex out of Ann for maybe a year. And Ryuji… he just wanted to earn a track scholarship to help ease the burden on his single mother. Those two deserve chances they’re not even being given.”

Niijima’s knee pressing into his kidney wavered a little.

Morgana stood from the bag, tail standing straight up. “Okay, everybody take things easy. We can’t afford to make any mistakes here, Joker. If the police come for you, things would get bad fast.”

After long seconds, Niijima straightened. Her knee still pressed into his back. “First, let me say one personal thing. I am not the snitch of Shujin. Or a teacher’s pet. I work hard to get as far as I can and I am sick of people stacking their expectations up against me. Chouno, Arakawa, and you.” She paused for a breath, her grip on his wrist tightening. “Can you prove to me the Phantom Thieves are about justice, not revenge?”

Morgana bared his teeth, tail twitching. “Of course we’re just. We—”

“I think that will be rather hard,” Akira said to the girl still braced on him, “with my face in the thinnest carpet ever manufactured by man.”

She didn’t make a clear sound, but he had the impression she frowned at him.

“Well,” he said, smirking. “I know some girls like being on top, but you haven’t even bought me dinner.”

Niijima sighed, shifted off him, then retrieved her fallen phone and stood.

Wincing, Akira got up and righted the table, then his chair, and turned just enough to straighten the table to a right angle with the wall. He reached for his school satchel with Morgana still standing in it, but paused. “You… heard me make that comment about ‘playing Russian roulette with a fully loaded gun’ the day Suzui-san jumped, didn’t you?”

Niijima sat down, posture composed and eyes straight on him. “I heard about you going after Kamoshida in his office, but it was you three meeting after. That and, as I said, you being the only one in Shujin who didn’t seem at all surprised at Kamoshida’s sudden change of heart. I admit, I happened to be in the right place to hear a few things. After I concluded you three were meeting on the rooftop, I hid my phone inside a desk on the roof and let it record your conversation.”

Sitting in his chair, he clasped his hands on the table, looking more at Morgana than Niijima. “Before I agree to anything, I need assurances that you won’t do anything to Ann or Ryuji. I… I never had a real chance to go legit, but they… They deserve a break.”

Niijima’s eyes bore into his. “Do this one thing and I’ll consider it.”

Morgana sighed, then said, “I don’t think you have the leverage to keep Reaper and Lady Ann in the clear. This might be our only option.”

Akira figured that would be the best he could get. “So… how?”

Niijima turned her head to face him and he found himself even less able to meet her gaze. “I want you to change someone’s heart.”

His narrowed eyes snapped to hers. “Who?”

Niijima sat back in her chair, self-satisfied. “Such certainty.” The corners of her mouth turned up, the student council president looking as smug as ever. “So it is possible.” She folded her hands on the table like him. “The mafia boss responsible for the blackmail and phishing scams in Shibuya.” Her fists clench and eyes unfocus. “They target minors like Shujin students. They force us, my fellow students into their scams, their schemes, threaten their families, and destroy lives.”

Akira took off his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose. “We can’t pick up another target.”

One of Niijima’s eyebrows rose. “Excuse me?”

Morgana’s ears twisted up and down as he thought. “We’re running into brick walls looking for that drug kingpin. I don’t see how it could hurt to add President Niijima’s blackmailer to the list.” His tail shot straight up and his eyes widened for just a moment. “He might even be the same one! It’s not like organized crime sticks to only one crime.”

Akira swallowed against the bitter taste of the leader of the Phantom Thieves agreeing with the conniving girl in front of him. “A… friend of mine is an unwilling participant in the drug trade in Shibuya. The moment she stops doing business, they’ll kill her and dump her in Tokyo Bay.” He set his glasses back on. “I guess we could be looking for the same person.” Gathering his fortitude, Akira looked her in the eye. “So what’s his name?”

“Nobody knows.”

Akira slapped his hands on the table. “Without a name, it’s not even possible.”

Morgana’s tail returned to a rhythmic side-to-side swish. “I wonder if the police have anything.”

Niijima crossed her arms. “The police know this is happening, but victims are threatened against testifying.” Her hands closed into fists. “The police can’t do anything. Somebody has to.”

Akira spread his hands open on the table. “Even if this is the same dude, trying to go after the fraud and drug rings could get a lot more dangerous.”

The movements of the tip of Morgana’s tail took on a tenser twitch. “I think all of us together can do it. Kamoshida was pretty dangerous, too.”

Akira worked a fist open and closed on the table. “We can’t do it. Not nearly enough information. With Kamoshida, we knew who he was, where he was, and what he was doing. With this mafioso, all we know is what he’s doing.”

Morgana’s ears folded back against his skull. “Then we consult the others. I think this could be a good opportunity. And if we say no, you’ve just got a pissed off girl with a recording of a Phantom Thief meeting.”

Niijima paused to send an arched brow at Morgana, then crossed her arms and thought a moment. “I’ll ask my sister.”

Akira crossed his arms, eyes narrowing and flicking between the diminutive leader and student council president. “I’ll have to bring it up at our next meeting.”

“You have two weeks,” she said, back to looking smug and in control.

He looked her in the eyes. “This sis of yours a cop?”

The student council president lowered her fin from her chin and met eyes with Akira. “She’s a prosecutor.”

Morgana’s tail settled into smoother motion. “Good enough.” He straightened, chest puffed out. “Now say something witty as a parthian shot.”

Akira smirked and spared a glance to the cat. “Something witty.”

Morgana bonked his head on the edge of the table.

Monday, 16 May 2016
After School
Shibuya Station

Disgorging from the train, Akira pushed his way out of the quagmire of people. Their hundred cacophonous conversations assaulted his ears and their unhurried, meandering pace forced him into a forest of elbows and awkward collisions. At last, he shoved out of the maze of concrete and tile. Free of the closed confines of the underground subway, the crowds of idiots streaming left and right in defiance of order continued.

Heart thudding in his chest and ears, Akira shoved his way through the plodding morons. Needing some kind of escape, he considered pulling up the Nav and waiting for the others in Mementos. Ann might remember he hated crowds, but he didn’t trust Ryuji to think to check.

He pushed through the crowds to a concrete nook with a storm drain where they came out of Mementos last time. While the location wasn’t invisible, it was easy to get to and from and out of the way enough that nobody paid any attention to it. Safe place to stand found, he looked through the crowd for any sign of blond, real or dyed. To his displeased surprise, several popped out of the crowd but all belonged to other people.

Morgana poked his head out of the bag. “You’re gritting your teeth again.”

“I am not!”

A passing woman slowed and gave him a raised-eyebrow look.

Once she left, Akira drew his phone and brought up the Nav for a Palace search. “Niijima Makoto.”

It chirped a low tone at him. “Candidate not found.”

Akira growled. “We need to get everyone together. That mysterious deadline became a hard line.” [Double check to make sure you've got your gear for the meet at the nook where we came out of Station Square last time.]

Morgana stretched up to read over the transfer student’s shoulder. “Leave off the particulars. In fact, until we know more, don’t mention your school president at all. No point in poisoning the well. Especially if Miss President is directing us at the same mafioso we’re already after. If we can make use of information she might be able to pass on to us, might as well use it for the betterment of society. Besides, didn’t you say the hearts we changed might be in danger? She could help us with that.”

Ryuji was the first to respond, [Sweet! I've been ready to go since Midterm Torture!]

[Ah!] Ann sent. [I left mine at home! I'll have to run there and back.]

Akira growled, but knew his anger wouldn’t help her along any. It was probably safer for her to leave it home than risk being caught with it when she visited Shiho at the hospital. Closing the chat, he asked, “You really think that Niijima would help us? That we should trust her when she threatened to blackmail Ryuji? Ann?”

Sighing, Morgana shook his head. “Joker, I think we could make use of her. I know she didn’t play nice, but don’t we need some kind of a breakthrough to prevent a repeat of that dealer woman you’ve been reading about the past few days?”

“Shut up!”

A pair of salarymen paused mid-step and gave him curious looks before they spied his phone and disregarded him.

Morgana settled in the satchel. “Joker, I’m just saying we can still turn this to our advantage. It doesn’t have to be yet another battle you pick up to fight alone. For now, what’s actually changed?”

Keeping his tone low, Akira said, “We’re on a two-week time limit.”

“But still going after the yakuza in Shibuya.” Morgana scratched at his ear with a paw. “And you admitted yourself it might be the same guy. We might even be able to get more names from her. We might even be able to feed names to her. Those are more hearts to change and people to save.”

The mental image of a bloodied Kotomi stuffed into a 200 liter drum flashed before his mind’s eye. Sensing he’d have no argument the team leader couldn’t easily counter, Akira pursed his lips and brought up an online shogi game to keep himself busy.

Three narrow victories later, Ryuji’s voice called out, “Yo, bro!”

Akira looked up at the dyed blond grinning far too wide for such a crowded venue. He spat, “You’re sure in a good mood.”

Ryuji’s expression cooled. “What’s with you? Most peeps get recharged over the weekend. You miss out on sleep or somethin’?”

Akira finished his move and hit end turn, not liking where the formations were going. It looked like one of his games with Hifumi. Most of the time he felt better after a game with Hifumi, but Niijima’s reminder of the yakuza and Tosa Kotomi left him feeling sick and on edge. That Niijima was sticking her nose in Phantom Thief business only made it worse, but until he could convince Morgana to drop her, it would be easier to keep Niijima to himself. “It’s nothing.”

Tilting his head for a couple long seconds, Ryuji shrugged, then leaned against the concrete wall next to the transfer student. “Well, we’re both here. Ya think we can get movin’ and have Ann meet us inside?”

Morgana’s ears flattened against his skull. “No. We still haven’t run into all the surprises Mementos has for us, and even if we fought every enemy we found, Ann could run into Shadows that crawled out of the dark after us.”

Akira growled, but remembered the look in Ann’s eyes when he tried to push them into advancing after the battle against Archangel. Glancing to his phone, he advanced another piece in his online shogi game and hit ‘end turn’. “Fine. It took a while to get all the way down and back up last time anyway.”

Morgana relaxed, his ears perking. “There might be a way to speed that up. I’ll point it out to you when I see it.”

Before the transfer student could respond, his phone buzzed with an incoming chat request. Mishima’s ID stared back at him. [Hey. Are you guys busy?]

Akira pressed his back against a thick drainpipe in the concrete alcove. [We're not exactly hitting home runs with finding the name of that mafioso. You hear anything?]

[Nothing beyond the names I texted you yesterday, sorry. Ishikawa-san asked for some help. A couple classmates in the journalism club are being blackmailed.]

Akira blinked, then glanced out at the crowd. A sea of dark hair met his gaze. [I hope you have the blackmailer's name, because we've got our hands full with one stalled investigation.]

[Hashiko Aikiko. She lives in Minato-ku and hung out with Yamada before this blackmail thing popped up.]

Glancing up at his compatriots. “You guys think we can find another name while we’re lookin’ for Masahiro Tokisumi? Probably not connected to our don, but Mishima thinks it could do some good.”

Ryuji shrugged. “If it’s on the way, I don’t care. ‘Still need Ann to get here if we wanna ask her.”

Morgana settled in perch on the transfer student’s shoulder. “No reason why we can’t search for several names in Mementos.”

[We'll see what we can do,] Akira sent back. [By the way, have you been in to see Shiho since she was hospitalized?]

[How can I go see her now?]

Akira’s smart phone clicked as he tapped out a message on its virtual keypad. [There's a train from the Aoyama-Itchome station that only takes forty-five minutes to get up to the hospital. Then you use your feet to walk for five minutes into the hospital and up to her room. Ann said Shiho's mother is there most days.]

[Was she okay?] Mishima texted. [How did she look?]

[She looked like she was worried about her daughter,] Akira sent back. He crossed his feet, brows furrowing as he tried to imagine what the class representative’s game was. [Why haven't you gone to see her yet? Ann said she texted you the hospital room and address five times by now.]

[What right do I have to dig up all that pain again? I haven't even made up for letting Shi-chan go!] Mishima left the chat, giving the transfer student no time to come up with a response.

“Over here!” Ryuji shouted.

Blonde pigtails popped out of the crowd as Ann ran from the station. Stopping and bracing her hands on her knees, she panted for breath, her breasts straining against her shirt. “Sorry!”

Akira looked away, his face burning. “Yeah, okay. Whatever.”

“Okay, everybody,” Morgana said as he hopped out of Akira’s satchel. “Before we go, Joker’s contact found a blackmailer going after the journalism club members,” the diminutive team leader finished.

“Candidate found.”

Akira straightened. “Well, that confirms what Mishima suspected. Hashiko Aikiko is in Mementos.”

“Right,” Morgana nodded before looking back to the lady of the team. “Are you up for going after another n’er-do-well even if it isn’t necessarily somebody pointing us to the yakuza leader?”

Ann nodded. “Anybody who’s shitty enough to make an enemy of Yuuki made an enemy of me. Let’s take her down.”

Morgana smiled. “That’s a unanimous. Okay everyone, into Mementos to track down Hashiko Aikiko.”

Chapter 30: May 17th, Victorian Surprise

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Tuesday, 17 May 2016
After School
Shujin, Class 2-D

As the rest of the class rushed to escape from campus, the sounds of chairs scraping and a dozen conversations crossing over each other assaulted Akira’s ears. Reaching back to the advice Father Motoori gave him before the trip to Tokyo, he took his time and deep breaths as he packed to go. When he scooted his chair back to get up, he noticed Mishima still at his desk, reading about a grisly murder reported in Minato-ku.

The transfer student spared a glance at Morgana, who shifted but wasn’t in a position to give a clear shrug of his shoulders. Or whatever the guide-trapped-in-cat-body intended to show.

Akira gestured at his school satchel, then a thumb at Mishima’s desk and gave a small shrug he hoped conveyed his intention.

Morgana rolled his eyes and pointed a paw at Ann’s seat against the left side of the class.

Watching her stride across the back of the room, Akira pointed at where she was and picked up his things so they could go their separate directions. It wouldn’t be the first time the Metaverse guide wasn’t interested in taking care of things in the real world. Huffing, Akira shouldered his school satchel and stood up with Mishima as Morgana slipped into the crowd unnoticed to go with Ann.

Mishima took the stairs down, giving no sign he noticed Akira following behind.

“There’s the dumbass who went after Kamoshida-sensei!” one boy said as Akira strode past.

By the time they got to the ground floor, Akira had enough of watching the class representative reading about yakuza victims and reached out to grab his arm and stop him. “Hey, Mishima-san.”

The tired student looked up, a despondency that looked too much like Akira’s own when his mother threw him back to his old bastard. “What is it, Kurusu?”

“Just Akira,” he said, though with more volume than he intended, drawing a few momentary looks from students on the stairs already watching him out of the corners of their eyes. He slipped his hands in his pockets. “Akira is my name. Kurusu is how people referred to my old bastard. I’m not him.”

Mishima looked back to the social media on his phone. “Sorry, I don’t have anything new for you.”

When the class representative stepped out into the ground floor, Akira kept pace beside. “Mishima, I’m glad that you’re helping us…” He paused to glance around, then gestured to the courtyard. The class representative went along, but stopped as soon as he got underneath the vending machine nook. Akira sighed. “So… where was I? You tracked down… what was it now, two drug peddlers in Shibuya?”

“Three,” Mishima said, his tone sounding as hollow as his eyes looked.

“Right. But what good is it going to be if you burn yourself out?”

Mishima shot a glare at him, the first strong emotion he’d seen from the class rep in more than a week. Then he looked back to his smart phone with that dull resignation again. “I’ve got to do this. You guys took down Kamoshida. I… I still have to make things right… for her.”

With the relative silence of the courtyard, Akira took a seat at the bench against the corner and waited until the class rep joined him. “Tell me… how’d you meet her?”

Mishima looked up, his attention gone from his phone for the first time this afternoon. He breathed in, eyes gazing unseeing into the distance, but when he breathed out his face didn’t seem quite so tense. “Somebody invited me to one of the girls’ volleyball games. Shiho was at the front, and she was amazing. So graceful and precise.” The corners of his lips twitched. “Everybody playing in the game was trying hard, but Shiho… she was giving every little motion her all. I probably would’ve just watched her for weeks if the guy who invited me didn’t drag me up so he could hit on Ann. She didn’t shut it right down, so Shiho let it go. I happened to be right there and Shiho didn’t want me to feel uncomfortable, so she struck up a conversation.”

Akira felt a pang in his heart. She showed that same genial kindness to him. “What about?”

Mishima scratched the back of his neck. “Phoenix Featherman. Then we talked at lunch a couple days later. Then I started coming to the games just to see her. When she fell and sprained her knee in practice, I was right there to help her to the nurse.” He let out a soft sigh. “She said she was glad somebody outside the volleyball team was willing to help.” The corners of his mouth pulled up. “She laughed so easily.”

“And smiled,” Akira added, a fuzzy sense sweeping over him.

Leaning back against the bench, Mishima let his head rest against the cold concrete wall. “We had to keep our relationship secret so Kamoshida wouldn’t make things hard for her, but I couldn’t see enough of her. I went to every game, every practice. Kamoshida got suspicious, so I pretended I wanted to be a member of the men’s volleyball team.”

Akira turned his eyes to Mishima, looking for tells. “That’s when he started beating you?”

Mishima looked away.

Akira reached out and took the class rep by the shoulder, squeezing until he met Akira’s burning gaze. “Take those feelings, Mishima. Take every smothered scream, every escaped tear, and gather them all deep inside. Use them as fuel to the fire in your soul.”

Mishima’s thin frown twisted, hunching. “You almost sound like Ann.”

Akira snorted. “Well, you won’t help out someone in trouble tomorrow by working yourself to death now. Hell, even Ann’s worried about you, and she’s like the poster girl for relentless optimism.”

Before the class representative could say anything, Ryuji jogged up with a ridiculous grin. The kind of somebody with a plan.

On guard, Akira stood and turned to him, the class rep doing the same. “What is it, Ryuji?”

The ex-track star’s smile remained undimmed. “Dude, it’s a perfect day for a bro-op. You gonna help me out?”

Akira looked sidelong to Mishima, still unwilling to leave things where they were. “You have any idea what that means?”

Mishima turned to the runner with fake-blond hair, his gaze hooded. “Why don’t you get to the point, Sakamoto-kun?”

Instead of being dampened by the wariness, Ryuji’s grin only widened, revealing bleached white teeth. He reached into his school satchel and whipped out a ten-by-twenty centimeter glossy flier. “It says a cute maid will do anything for you.” He leered. “Anything we want.” Ryuji hopped back and forth on the balls of his feet. “A maid!”

Akira turned to Mishima. “Am I the only one in Japan who just doesn’t get the whole maid thing?”

The Class 2-D Representative stared at the pink flier decorated with hearts and girls in short black dresses with white lacy frills. Despite himself, he stood a little straighter, then turned to the transfer student. “I-I think it’s just that. A fetish, I mean.”

Ryuji blinked, shoulders slouching as confusion writ over his face. “C’mon, you two are guys, right?” After a moment of scanning them, he slid up to Mishima, smiling wide. “You get what I’m sayin’, eh?” He gave a theatrical wink.

Mishima backed up a step and swallowed, but a rosy tint touched his cheeks. “I, ah… I couldn’t call some cleaning lady to my folks’ house!”

Ryuji wiggled his eyebrows. “No problemo, bro. Some dude on the top floor just moved out so there’s a vacant apartment in my complex.”

Shooting a hooded gaze to the horny blond, Akira slid his hands back in his pockets. “Dude, Morgana would not go for a prank like this and I don’t think I could pick one of the locks around here. Besides, wouldn’t the landlord get pissed?”

“Pfft,” Ryuji waved him off. “As long as people don’t mess up the place, he doesn’t care. And the key’s inside the unlocked mailbox, so you wouldn’t even have to bring those pokey things.”

The crack of flesh on flesh echoed in the corner of the courtyard, and Akira slid his hand from his forehead. “Those are rake picks, Ryuji.”

Ryuji rolled his eyes. “Whatever.” He refocused on the still blushing Mishima. “Whaddya say, bro?”

A faint tremor entered Mishima’s arms, and light glinted at the corners of his eyes.

Too on a roll to notice, Ryuji slipped around to drape his arms on both other boys’ shoulders and shoot them a knowing grin, “Doncha wanna know for sure what it means for a maid to do anything for ya?”

Hands curling into fists, Mishima squeezed his eyes shut and a tear leaked out of one eye. “You think I’d just… play around with anyone?”

Ryuji tightened his grip around the two classmates’ shoulders. “Hey, hey,” he soothed. “Think of it as… research. We gotta know if they look just as advertised an’ everythin’.”

Surprising both others, Mishima jerked out of Ryuji’s grip, one hand clenching on his phone and the other bunching into a white-knuckled fist. His eyes glistened. “The one I love is in the hospital, crippled by the Monster of Shujin, and you think I would ever cheat on her?”

Ryuji stared. His mouth drifted open. His head swiveled, stiff, to Akira. Then swung back to Mishima. “You… an’ Suzui-san? For real?”

Akira slapped his palm on his forehead again.

Mishima looked ready to let out a roar and start swinging, but after a beat he instead fled.

Ryuji whipped around on Akira. “Da eff…?”

Desperate to keep Ryuji from causing a scene, or start something with Mishima, Akira grabbed the runner by the shoulders. “Uh… You wanna do this maid thing or not?”

Changing mood with whiplash speed, Ryuji stood with his chest puffed out like he just won an Olympic marathon and grinned to match. “Ooh, ooh, we gotta have a codename. It’ll be like—”

“Yeah,” Akira said, distracted. “Text me.” Ripping himself away and shouldering his school satchel, Akira ran at the doors after Mishima. By the time he got to the shoe lockers at the front, there was no sign of the class representative and his street shoes were gone. “Shit.”

“Watch your language, delinquent,” a teacher snapped as he stepped out of the front desk office.

His phone vibrated. Hoping to see some positive sign from Mishima, Akira sighed at the text from Ryuji giving his address, time, and [Operation Maidwatch: starts at dark.]

Akira clapped his hand over his face. “What the fuck did I just agree to?”

“Language!”

Tuesday, 17 May 2016
Evening
Sakamoto’s Condo Building, Suite #416

Akira slid his hands into his pockets, avoiding the urge to scratch at the sweater he kept in his bag for an emergency disguise. At least the ashen-grey trousers only looked a little wrinkled from their long time folded up in the bottom of the bag, though they had no few hairs from Morgana sitting on them. He followed Ryuji into a small sitting room looking out onto a courtyard between four condo buildings. Stepping to the sliding doors to peek at the smallest balcony ever built, a small white dog yapped at him from the grass below. He closed the door and turned back to the dyed-blond. “Are we really doing this?”

“Man, if it’s sketchy we just bail. You’re almost as good at runnin’ as me.” Ryuji leered. “It’ll totally be like those spy movies.” He dropped to a low crouch, holding one hand flat above his eyes. “Operation Maidwatch is about to begin.”

Bemused, Akira pointed out, “What are you shading your eyes for at night?”

Standing, Ryuji’s smile faded. “C’mon, man. You’re ruinin’ the mood. We ain’t even called yet.”

“True.” Akira nodded.

Ryuji nodded, slipping his hands in his baggy khaki shorts.

Akira took in a deep breath, then let it out.

Ryuji did likewise.

“Well, if we’re going to do this, I guess now’s the time?” Akira said.

“Yup,” Ryuji said.

Akira looked at the runner.

Ryuji looked at the transfer student.

The small dog outside kept yapping.

“Oh, come on!” Akira groaned. “It starts at four thousand yen!”

Ryuji’s eyes narrowed. “Hey, I’m the one who found the flier. And I’m the one who set up this vacant place. It’s not like we’re messing with someone’s home.”

Sighing, Akira took off his glasses to wipe the lenses. “I grant that was pretty smart, for you.”

Ryuji beamed. “Ain’t it?” He paused, then blinked. “Whaddya mean, ‘for you’?”

The small dog outside yapped. A nasally male’s voice outside shouted, “Sir Fluffernutter, quiet!” But the little dog continued yapping.

Ryuji drew his phone, “If you’re going to puss out, I’ll pay.” He wriggled his eyebrows with a grin. “But I get first dibs on what she does.”

Akira growled and drew his phone. “Fine. I’ll make the call. At least I’ve got a scrubbed account to make the payment from.” He snatched the flier from Ryuji’s outstretched hand and dialed the number, then tossed the glossy paper back. It flipped and twirled in the air.

A gravelly man’s voice answered, “Victoria’s Housekeeping.”

Leaning uncomfortably close, Ryuji’s grin spread so far the transfer student feared it would fold into a crease and destroy space-time. The runner slapped his hands over his mouth and danced back and forth on his feet.

The gravelly voice continued, “Do you have any particular requests?”

Ryuji snapped down his hands and opened his mouth.

“Anyone is fine,” Akira said.

Ryuji glared.

“May I ask for your address?” the voice said over a woman coughing in the background. Akira relayed the address and door number. “We’ll have a maid right up in twenty to thirty minutes.”

“Right,” Akira said, hanging up. He backed up to see Ryuji bouncing back and forth from one foot to the other. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Would you just relax?”

He bit his lip, no longer looking like he was overflowing with eager anticipation. “It’s not that.” Ryuji looked left, then right. “I gotta go.”

The crack of flesh on flesh filled the sitting room, then Akira took his palm from his forehead. “Then go. I know water’s shut off in here, but your flat should still be good.”

“C’mon, dude,” he said, still hopping from foot to foot. “I don’t wanna miss a sexy maid.” His gaze narrowed. “An’ anyway, why’d ya give ‘em a ‘whatever’? What red-blooded man doesn’t want a little T-an’-A?”

Sighing, Akira removed his glasses to wipe them, then pressed the heel of his palm against one eye in a vain effort to stave off a headache. “Dude, just… go take care of vital functions. It’s not like she’s gonna be here right away.”

Ryuji looked back and forth. “You gonna hold down the fort? Just in case she—”

“Ryuji, of course I’ll be here. The last thing I trust is you alone in a room with a strange woman.”

He hopped to his opposite foot. “Huh?”

Akira considered shoving the ex-track star out when an idea came to him. He breathed in, cleared his throat, then pressed his lips together and mimicked the sound of a large drop of water.

Ryuji blinked.

Akira mimicked another drip.

Ryuji glared.

Akira sucked in a little air and made a noise of a bubble bursting with his mouth. Then he added another sound of water dripping.

Dropping the flier, Ryuji scrambled to the door but paused, hands at his groin, to glare over his shoulder. “You play dirty,” he said before rushing out.

Akira smirked and reached his hands high up to the ceiling to stretch out his back. “Yep, Akira, it’s a tough job, but somebody’s gotta troll ‘em.” The sound of the yappy dog faded and he let out a long breath. With nothing to do, he took out his phone and started an online game of shogi.

A couple minutes later, a knock tapped at the front door.

“That was quick,” Akira muttered to himself, heading up to let Ryuji back in, ready to deliver a tongue-lashing if the dumbass came back without taking care of business.

A slender woman with bushy pigtails using too much hair product stood outside. She wore a frilly maid outfit with a bust window exposing some cleavage and a skirt just as short as Ryuji’s flier indicated. She took the edges of her skirt in her fingertips and bowed a curtsey with a practiced smile that failed to conceal signs of disgust hidden in the lines of her face. “Becky for Victoria’s Housekeeping, Master. I’m going to fill your tired heart full of lovely energy.”

Akira almost dropped his phone. “Kawakami-sensei?”

The woman’s brown eyes grew wide as saucers, face turning pale as a sheet. Without warning, she shoved him inside and strode in, pulling the door closed behind her. She advanced on him with her jaw set. “Listen, buster. I just got my job at that school.” Her left eye squinted as she looked him over in the brightness of the empty sitting room, and she set her fists on her hips. “Hey, wait a second. You’re that military school kid.”

Akira burst out laughing.

Kawakami stepped back, one arm up in case he pulled a knife and went from crazy to kill-crazy.

Still chuckling, Akira wiped a tear. “I can’t believe you still believe that routine! Or remember it. I mean, seriously, how many rumors about me are flying around the school?”

She took another step back, looking at him askance and planting a fist on her hip. “Plenty. But besides that one day where the trains were running late, you’ve never been tardy or pulled any pranks in homeroom. So I didn’t give any thought to all those rumors.” She looked him up and down. “How’d you know it was me, anyway? The walkway light wasn’t even working.”

Akira held up an index finger. “I never forget a voice.”

She gave him the stink-eye for several moments before crossing her arms. “You know, you could get in pretty serious trouble for calling an adult home service when you’re underage.”

“Good to know.” Akira looked down at the shogi game still waiting on his phone. He switched to the messenger app and shot a quick text to Ryuji. [Maid service is a no! Bail!]

[Huh?]

The snarl slipping onto his face felt a little too comfortable. [Read the fucking age next time.] “I should’a figured the little troll would’ve screwed something up.” Putting his phone into sleep mode, he slipped it into his pocket to turn his full attention to his homeroom teacher in the most ridiculous getup he ever imagined.

Kawakami maintained crossed arms, doing a pretty fair job of shutting out any clear signals of what she was feeling besides a defensive wariness. “Chouno told you, didn’t she?” She gnashed her teeth. “That nosy bitch has been looking for somebody to sell out since the detectives showed up at the school.”

Feigning nonchalance, Akira leaned against the wall and crossed his arms. “She didn’t tell me.”

Some of the color faded out of her cheeks again. “W-well, you’re not going to tell her, are you?”

Akira brushed his fingertip against his nose twice. “Well, that all depends on the offer.”

Kawakami stood straight, fists going to her hips. “I’m in charge of your homeroom. If you’re going to side with a teacher, it should be me.”

Akira stood, silent.

She swallowed. “If she finds out you called an adult service, Chouno wouldn’t be the one you’d want to find out anyway. She’ll be just as much trouble for you as me.”

Akira watched, silent.

Her eyes wavered, something withering inside her before her expression twisted into a grimace. “I can’t pay you. I need this job.” She looked away, her left hand taking hold of her skirt. “If you keep this secret from Chouno, I’d do anything!”

“Anything?” he said, raising a single eyebrow. “Four thousand yen is a little bit much. If we cancel this little appointment, how soon can I get my money back?”

She cringed like he’d stabbed her. “Victoria doesn’t allow refunds. You pay by the hour, and once the first hour is purchased it’s final.”

Akira ground his teeth, then froze, an idea coming to him. “You got your phone on you?”

Confusion and a few other emotions filled her eyes, but she still only spared him a resigned glance before taking out her phone and handing it to him. He entered her contact data and texted her an address before handing it back. “Show up here. We’ll see what you can do there.”

Tuesday, 17 May 2016
Evening
Yongen, Leblanc Loft

The wood stairs creaked under rapid footsteps behind him, and Akira stepped out to let Kawakami pace up into the attic. Moonlight shone down through the open windows, casting stark rectangles on the bed and floor and throwing relief on the exposed rafters above. The pale light made the dark books sorted out on the bottom of the shelves look bleached. The tarp-covered workbench and plastic bin-crammed shelves seemed to loom even taller than normal.

She stopped, her hands going to her hips as she took in the room. “Ugh, this place is more like a warehouse than home.” She dragged the toe of one shoe across a few centimeters of floor. “Clean, though.”

He paced to the table next to the shelves packed with bags of coffee beans. “Better than the street. Now pick up that end.”

Kawakami crossed her arms. “You didn’t just lure me here to try to do the dirty in a different venue?”

Akira bristled, remembering the rain and his mother’s moans from beyond that locked front door in Inaba. “You can take all those rumors of me and shove them right up your ass. I don’t take after Mother or the old bastard. You’re in a housecleaning service, right?”

Her eyes narrowed, and she failed to move for the table.

“So let’s clean house,” Akira added.

Notes:

I do understand the rudimentary idea of the maid fetish but share Akira's confusion in why it's so popular, at least in Japan. Kawakami had an interesting plot arc in P5, though parts of it felt sterile and disconnected due to the main character being a blank slate the game never fleshed out. In Daywatch I have the opportunity to make this relationship a two-way growth of characters because he DOES have defined backstory and a specific personality. I look forward to seeing what you all think. Thanks for reading.

Chapter 31: May 18th, Hospital Confrontations

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Wednesday, 18 May 2016
After School
Shujin, Class 2-D

The last bell rang and the class scrambled to pack up. While the class broke into discordant noise of half a dozen conversations, Akira took the opportunity to turn to the class representative behind him. “We checked out those names you sent me last weekend, but two of ‘em were no good. Found anything else?”

Mishima shook his head. “Sorry. We’re getting past the people or places I know. I’ve been talking to Ishikawa and the others, but they’re still getting back on their feet after Hashiko had her change of heart today.”

“Fuck,” Akira spat under his breath. Turning back to his desk, he drew his phone and shot a message to his teammates to get ready for another trip through Mementos. He still felt a little tired from the last one despite taking the day off yesterday, but Ryuji’s misadventure with Victoria didn’t exactly help.

Akira paused.

If Kawakami was involved in an adult service, maybe she’d know somebody involved in the drugs or scams in Shibuya.

Akira bent down to look the team leader in the eye. “I may have another source. Let’s go find Kawakami.”

He found her in front of the Faculty Offices, trapped in an evasive conversation with Chouno-sensei. The English teacher held her arms crossed and eyes narrowed. “…late to almost every staff meeting. You leave work earlier than any of the other teachers. Is this the way that a new teacher serves a school as prestigious as Shujin?”

Kawakami blinked, dark rings under her eyes a testament to too little sleep. “It’s not really so complicated, Chouno-san.” She paused, taking a moment longer to recognize the transfer student’s presence than he expected. “Get home safely, Kurusu-kun.”

Akira’s jaw clenched, but he held his fists behind his back.

When the literature teacher tried to turn for the faculty office door, the English teacher snapped, “We are not finished talking yet!” Chouno said, side-stepping to block the door. “Those detectives are like sharks, and there’s already talk of criminal indictments. Kobayakawa’s already been placed on administrative leave. Police are going around on another round of interviews. They’re questioning everybody who worked with Kamoshida. Even Shima’s been brought downtown.”

Kawakami looked at the door to the Faculty Offices behind Chouno. “The history teacher for third-years?”

Chouno crossed her arms, her shoulders pinching up. “What are you running out to do every evening?”

Akira cleared his throat in the pointed ‘don’t ignore me’ way adults always did when they wanted to interrupt without feeling like they interrupted.

Kawakami looked at him, looking like she’d much rather slink into the faculty office instead. “Did you have another question, Kurusu-kun?”

“Another?” Chouno repeated, suspicious but also ponderous.

Going with the sense of frustration, he tapped that sense of frustration inside. “It’s not like I’ve got to book tutoring appointments for most teachers.”

The dark-hared teacher looked from Akira to Kawakami. “Book appointments? For tutoring?”

Akira held his arms in the air in mock surrender, voice thick with sarcasm. “Oh, right, because everyone here has a second job trying to further education in Tokyo. But hey, why let dedication to a cause get in the way? After all, housing and living expenses are so affordable here in Tokyo I’m sure that a new teacher has no issues.”

Chouno’s eyes wavered until she took in a breath. “I… see.” She turned to Kawakami. “I… suppose I hadn’t considered that. I didn’t get much better than a housing and living stipend when I started teaching here, either. And if you’re taking work on margins as thin as tutoring high school students, I can see why you would spend so much time at it.” She gave a shallow but noticeable bow at the waist. “Forgive me, it seems you are the kind of teacher Shujin needs. Especially now.”

Kawakami blinked several times before processing what she saw and gave a polite, fake smile before bowing back. “Oh, you don’t have to be like that, Chouno-san. Just trying to be the best teacher I can,” she finished with strange tension in her face.

Chouno opened the door and stepped into the faculty office.

Kawakami mouthed, “thank you,” before following her in.

Morgana peeked up at the transfer student from within the satchel. “I’m guessing we’re not going to be learning anything from Kawakami today?”

“M-hm,” Akira muttered before heading to Shibuya to join the others at Mementos. Pushing for something now could ruin things with Kawakami-sensei, but the Phantom Thieves needed a break in the investigation.

Thursday, 19 May 2016
After School
Shujin, Class 2-D

Trying to push out the cacophony of conversations from lingering students, Akira stacked his last book into his satchel. Behind him, Mishima slung his bag and stood.

“Hold up!” Ann called. She slipped between the desks, ignoring the handful of students who paused to watch. Hands wringing and shoulders hunched, she came to a stop between the two boys. “I need your help.”

Akira looked up at the tall blonde who helped him fight through Kamoshida’s castle to avenge Shiho. “Sure, what’s up?”

Ann clasped her hands and bowed her head, her teeth clenching for a moment. “I… I’ve been trying to help Shiho through her physical therapy, but she had a bad reaction to one of the pain medications…”

The transfer student’s hand clenched on the strap of his school satchel, but a wide-eyed Mishima beat him to the punch, “She’s not back in the ICU?”

Ann recoiled as if the very prospect punched her. “No, no, Yuuki. She’s okay physically.” Her eyes fell and body tensed even more. “Given the circumstances. They’ve got her on a new pain reliever, but she’s frustrated with the physical therapy. Her mom said some support might help her get through the month.”

“Yeah,” Akira’s mouth blurted before his brain could catch up with all the reminders of his heavy school load and shift at the convenience store.

Mishima partially turned away, his shoulders slouched and his eyes on the floor. “I can’t face her now. There’s no way I’ve made up for—”

Ann grabbed his hands to bring his focus back to her. “Please, Yuuki.” Her brows knitted together. “I can’t do it on my own, and you were her soul mate. You’re thoughtful and sweet. If anybody could get her through this, it’s you.”

His brown eyes flicked up to hers, to his feet, to hers, then to the transfer student before settling back to the floor. Akira sighed. “C’mon, man. Sometimes the path of redemption leads through peril.”

Mishima forced his eyes up to the transfer student’s, his face scrunched in pain before he let out a sigh and slipped his hands out from hers. “Fine.”

She let out a relieved whoosh of air, then rushed them to the train station. A handful of other students and workers separated Akira from Ann and Mishima, but he could still make out the morose responses to her attempts to strategize through the forty-five minute train ride up to the hospital. “She really doesn’t give up,” Akira muttered before the doors opened and disgorged passengers.

Like before, Ann led them to the hospital, almost at a run. After checking in, they made their way through the ordered bustle to Room 248. Ann took point into the room of sterile white.

Shiho, her right arm still in a rigid cast, fumbled for the bed remote to prop up the head. Red-faced, long strands of her unbound black hair clung to her skin. She gave a lethargic smile and squeaked, “Ann!”

The blonde bent down to give a quick hug. When Ann stood and backed away, Shiho looked up to him and fought a grimace off her reddened face as she studied his for a moment. “You’re that boy who wanted to become a doctor.” She smiled and reached her good arm out when he stepped through the door.

“I’m glad to see you’re out of a few of those braces.” He paused, looking over his shoulder to see his class representative fidgeting just outside the door. “Come on,” he said as he took a deep step to grab and yank Mishima in.

Like the flick of a light switch, the atmosphere in Room 248 changed. Shiho’s forehead creased and her legs shifted under the covers, the braces catching on the sheet. Her eyes widened and she drew a long breath in through her nose.

“Bastard!” she shrieked.

Ann and Akira both drew back in shock.

“You let that monster…” Her arms trembled and she took Ann’s hand. “You let him…!” Shiho dissolved into teary sobs, her right hand clenching Ann’s. One of the machines bolted to the wall behind her started beeping.

Mishima stumbled the few paces left to her bed, but his hands froze in the air like he couldn’t quite decide to reach out for her or up to shield himself. “No! I never wanted anything to happen to you, Shi-chan.”

“Liar!” She hurled the wired remote at him, the cord bringing it to a short, anticlimactic clatter against the floor. “You threw me out like chum in the water!” Tears spilled down her face and her veins stood out against her pale skin.

“Shiho,” Ann shouted, her own eyes welling up with tears. “Stop, this isn’t you.”

Drawing in a ragged breath, Shiho ignored her to screech at her once-boyfriend. “I hate you!”

Mishima, already wavering on his feet, turned and fled for the hall as tears fell.

Aghast, Ann stared at Shiho for just a moment before dashing after the Class 2-D representative. “Yuuki!”

So confused he felt dizzy, Akira took a step towards the Angel of Shujin. The girl once as optimistic as she was pretty shook in rage. He took one step closer, “Suzui-san, hold on a second. Mishima just—”

“Fuck you!” she snapped, her ragged hyperventilating descending into incoherent sobs.

Several footsteps raced into the room as Akira struggled to sort out the impossible juxtaposition before him. Before he could hope to say anything, a gruff woman shouted, “Out!”

Feeling the room start to spin, he stumbled out as nurses and a doctor came in, trying to placate the raging girl. The hallway stretched out with no sign of Ann or Mishima, so Akira paced the last direction he saw Ann run. The image of a red-faced Shiho, spittle flying from her teeth, messy hair splayed over veins standing out on her skin made her look more like a yama-uba.

It… wasn’t right.

Akira crossed himself and prayed that Mishima didn’t do anything he’d regret. “You see which way they went?” he asked the Phantom Thief leader hiding in his satchel.

Morgana stood up and scanned the halls. “I think they went that way,” he gestured with his chin.

The haunting tones of a string instrument playing the theme of the Goa’uld rang out of Akira’s phone and he pulled it out to see ‘Principal’s Lapdog’ on his caller ID. He grimaced, but Ann was hot on Mishima’s heels. If he could trust anybody with the class rep, it was Ann. Besides, he might as well try to see if he could at least make some progress on the yakuza investigation. “Carrie Ann Crowe’s Mystery Meats. You hit it, we grill it.”

“That’s disgusting.” A beat passed. “Is this Kurusu?”

“Don’t call me Kurusu!” Akira took in a brief breath through his mouth. “My name is Akira.”

Morgana hung his head, disappearing back into the satchel.

After a moment of distant helicopter noise from her side, Niijima came back, “I’ve been talking to my sister. It took a while to get enough into her good graces to spill details, but I managed to get a few.”

“You know who the don is?” Akira opened the first door he came across, hoping for some privacy, but an old man looked up at him from the bed. “Sorry, wrong room,” Akira said before backing out.

“Not specifically,” Niijima said, her tone cool. “The police have been tracking at least a dozen suspects, but the problem is they all have enough plausible deniability to be impossible to build a case against. However, the dominant yakuza group in Shibuya has been dynamic enough that Big Sis is positive he lives and works there.”

Akira slipped into another hospital room, only for a middle-aged lady to give him a confused look. “Sorry, wrong room.”

He dashed for the next door and opened that to see another elderly man sleeping on the hospital bed. Still, the room had its own water closet, so he closed the hall door as quiet as he could and slipped into the WC, closing that door too before he wrinkled his nose against the stink of old people farts. Privacy at last, he re-focused on the confusing teacher’s pet blackmailing him into the job already in progress. “He’s in Shibuya? That’s it? There’s gotta be a quarter million people who live there. Much less the million people around Tokyo who come in during the day.”

“Joker!” Morgana reprimanded as he stood up from the open satchel.

“I didn’t have the luxury of cross-examining her! But if Big Sis says the guy lives in Shibuya, he damn well lives in Shibuya!” She groused for a moment. “All of the most likely candidates own and personally inspect several businesses there, including… establishments of ill repute.”

“What, like a bank?” Akira snarked.

Niijima sighed. “Banks are legitimate, certified institutions, Kurusu-kun.”

“That’s what they said about medical research in Unit 731,” he snapped back.

Morgana reproached, “Joker, we need her help. We haven’t even started trading names of criminals whose hearts are about to change.”

“What’s that?” Niijima said before a frustrated growl. “Never mind. Anyway, this yakuza clan’s been harder to track down than others since the latest leader took over ten years ago. Reorganized it and threw the police off almost every murder and assault pattern they were using to close in on them. Fraud, prostitution, and racketeering seem to be their mainstays now. A lot harder to stop when the criminals are technologically savvy.”

Akira looked down to the team leader, who shook his head to indicate those details weren’t enough for a distortion. “Okay, that’s a start, but don’t you have a single name? One of his lieutenants who got off on a technicality or something?”

She let out a pleased huff, something smug and superior about it. “As a matter of fact, I did get the name of one of their recruiters.”

Akira wrinkled his nose again at the pervasive smell of elderly degassing. He’d have to change as soon as he got to the loft. After a few moments of nothing but the smell, his shoulders rising and pinching together, he held out his left hand, jostling the satchel. “And…?”

“I want to stand in the meeting, personally evaluate the justice of the Phan—”

Akira clapped his free hand on his head. “Have you never seen Key of Life? Fuck, the whole reason why you know about us is because of a fuck-up with operational security.”

“Operational security?” she shot back, incredulous. “This isn’t a government project.”

“Whatever. Let us handle the job on our end, and you get information we can use on your end,” Akira snapped, then hit end call.

Morgana sighed. “Joker, you’re going to have to stop being so short with people. I don’t actually think it’s a dangerous thing for her to see one of our meetings. She already knows Ann and Ryuji are members, and if we can convince her to want to help us we won’t have to worry about her after we change this mafia guy’s heart.” His eyes narrowed. “Remember? Networking?”

Akira spat from between clenched teeth. “She blackmailed us. Threatened the only people in my life who weren’t complete bastards.”

Morgana wrinkled his nose against the smell and sneezed. Taking a moment to recover, the team leader looked up at him with narrow eyes. “Joker, I was there. You tried to choke her. It makes sense for her to want to do some evaluation for herself. You didn’t exactly give her much to trust us with, and it’s not like I can make a case for the Phantom Thieves to her. At least leave out the blackmail part when we talk to the others.”

Fine.” Akira slipped his phone back into his jacket, straightened the satchel, and strode out into the quiet hospital halls. “Where did you say Ann and Mishima were?”

The guide-trapped-in-cat-form looked out from the satchel, scanning the four-way hall intersection for a few moments before pointing a paw. “That way. I can hear Lady Ann’s voice.”

After a few moments of walking, Akira came to a waiting area filled with bland beige furniture. Mishima cried into his hands, his shoulders shuddering. Ann sat next to him, rubbing her hand in circles against his lower back. Akira stood there for an awkward moment, wondering what to do. Things were so simple at Inuri when he didn’t need anyone and nobody needed him. What did you say to somebody you wanted to be able to see the next day?

Staring at the class representative, Morgana hopped out of the satchel, his tail standing straight up. “Hey!” Akira and Ann stared at the team leader, who shrank back as his ears curled down. “I mean… it does no good to sit and stew over a terrible situation that may have extenuating factors.”

Akira nodded. “He’s right.”

Mishima’s eyebrow quirked up.

“Flogging yourself isn’t going to change the past, Mishima-san.” Akira sat down at a nearby chair and clasped his hands. “If you didn’t sneak a duplicate pack of cards up your sleeve, you’ve got no choice but to play the cards you’re dealt.”

Ann’s hand came to a pause, still resting on the class rep’s back as she sent a narrow gaze the transfer student’s way. “Akira…”

“Hey, I’m just trying to remind that forward’s the only way to go in life,” Akira said, opening his mouth to continue when Mishima lifted his head to look in his eyes.

Voice cracking, Mishima said, “Please, just go.”

Morgana’s ears curled down against his head.

After a few moments, Akira looked Ann in the eye. “Can you make sure he gets home okay?”

She nodded and Akira turned around to return to Shibuya.

Notes:

Just the fact that Shiho didn't snap her neck or die on impact from jumping off the top of a three-story building is amazing, but that still means she's going to have extensive injuries and require months of physical therapy. P5 showed her walking around on the rooftop for her closure, but realistically it would be unlikely for her to ever walk again. I'll be trying to depict the most sensible middle point, and it will involve wheelchairs for at least much of the rest of her life because nerve damage and spinal injuries do not fully heal. Even though she lived, Kamoshida's act took away the healthy life from an innocent person and that's something many people have to come to grips with. Mishima was a direct part of the Shujin-wide system that enabled Kamoshida, and that's something that I never thought the game resolved. It's one of the dangling threads I want to deal with in Daywatch, and making Shiho his girlfriend (ex or not) is part of that by not allowing him to just wash his hands of 'a girl he never knew'. With them having a close relationship, he's thinking of her every day.

Chapter 32: May 20th, Strategy Meeting

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Friday, 20 May 2016
Morning
Shujin, Class 2-D

Akira wrote a correction to his notes in the margin, reviewing for social studies in an effort to keep his mind off the hospital debacle the other day. Even beyond the hurt obvious on Ann and Mishima, he had trouble trying to push out the new mental image of Shiho yelling herself hoarse at the boy who took beatings for her. Most of the time the between-class banter felt oppressive, like summer humidity doing its best to choke him, but something about the burbling conversation flowed at just the right pattern for him to tune it out like a steady rain. It ended up feeling too close to empty silence, leaving him nothing but his thoughts.

The rear door slid open, but instead of Chouno in a dress with padded shoulders, a pudgy man with a receding hairline and conventional business suit walked in, a set of binders in his hands. He proceeded to the desk at the front of the class at a pace somehow combining the speed of a power-walk with the awkward gait of a waddle. Based on the fellow students covering their mouths, he guessed the others noticed too.

The black-haired man dropped his binders to the front desk with a heavy thump, whipped around, then took the chalk and wrote Hashida-sensei. He spun back around and spoke with a northern-dialect twang at a volume Akira previously assumed had to come from a bullhorn, “Listen up, you undisciplined ninnies! I am Hashida. From here on out, I will be the English teacher for Shujin Academy’s second year students. The fact that I am entering mid-term does not mean I am going to take it easy on you. You will have your assignments posted on the school website on Monday. You will have your readings done before class lectures. You will have your assignments completed and handed in to your class representative at the start of every class. Understood?”

Murmurs of assent leaked out of the class.

Hashida roared with no sign the jump in volume took extra effort, “I said is that understood?”

“Yes, Hashida-sensei!” the class chorused.

He spun around, voice still thundering as he wrote on the chalkboard.

Akira took off his glasses to press against one eye. “Oh boy,” he muttered. “We lose a gossip and gain a guy who thinks he’s a drill instructor.”

Friday, 20 May 2016
After School
Shujin, Hallway outside Class 2-D

Akira straightened the satchel straps over his shoulder. Without any new breakthroughs from Mishima or yield from Niijima, the only thing in Mementos would be the unending chain of petty yakuza gangers. He clenched a hand open and closed, then stepped out towards the library.

“Hold up, Akira!” Ann called over the bustle of students heading to clubs or home. He paused so she could come up alongside. When he stepped for the library again, she took his arm and steered him toward the front gates. “You mad about Ryuji’s text?”

“Huh? No,” he said, stepping closer to the wall so other students could walk past. “He’s just gotta drop license paperwork off for his mother. That’s why I wanted to hit the books for an hour. Mishima can hold the table if I’m a few minutes late.”

Ann’s eyes widened. “Wait, Yuuki? I thought this meeting was for us.”

“It is.” He paused and glanced around. Nobody looked like they were listening in, but if Niijima could get a recording of them, they needed to be more careful. Akira relented and motioned to the front, and they proceeded until reaching the grades. “Oh, shit. I forgot those were out today.”

She stepped around the clump of students standing right next to the grades and scanned the second years. She stepped closed to him, brushing her pigtail off her shoulder. “You did pretty well.”

Akira side-stepped to get his own view, his shoulders sinking once he spotted his name. “Holy crap my grades are down.”

Ann glanced from him to the board. “Thirty-first is down for you? That’s pretty impressive given that Shujin Academy is stricter about scoring than most schools.”

“Academics have always been my thing,” Akira said, seeing no familiar names ahead of his. Not seeing her name in his glance through the top half of the junior year, he stepped back out and they went their separate ways through the foot lockers and out the front gate.

When she came back alongside, heading for the train station, Morgana popped his head out of the satchel. “Where are we going?”

She clasped her hands behind her back, eyes on the signs above. “I need some time before the meeting.” Ann straightened and looked him in the eye with her old intensity back. “And what did you mean Yuuki would save a table for our meeting?” She leaned close enough he could feel her breath on his face. “The PTs strategy meeting we all decided on yesterday?”

“Yeah,” Akira said, cool as a northern breeze. “He already knows.”

Ann’s pace froze and he had to backtrack a step.

When she gave him a stunned stare he nodded. “Me, and almost certainly you. He was too close to Shi… Suzui-san.”

Ann let out a sharp breath, her lips twisting, but one corner turned up with a hint of relief in her eyes. “He was always as smart as he was sweet.”

Akira double-taked. “I’ve never heard a dude described that way.”

Now she let a smile crack across her face. “Yuuki always did figure things out for himself. Maybe with some help from me and Shiho.”

Akira chuckled. “He did mention he’d’a never met you two if it wasn’t for a chance meeting at a volleyball game.”

“Was it?” She tilted her head a little and stepped closer to let another pedestrian past. Her smile relaxed and her eyes gazed at the distant crowds. “It’s kinda hard to imagine him not being around. Yuuki and Shiho were the only ports of calm in Storm Shujin. He was even the first boy I brought home from school. Granted, that was with Shiho, but mom wasn’t expecting him and she flipped.”

Akira found himself faking a smile and laugh along with her. Something tickled the back of his mind and he realized faking his way through the day was the old Akira, the him who got in fights all the time and focused on just surviving his way until Inuri. Ann had his back all the way through the Kamoshida fiasco and never asked him to put up a front.

Her smile faded and she looked into his tense eyes. “What’s wrong? Is it Shiho? I’m sure that was just—”

Akira shook his head. “Sorry, it’s just that… to be honest, I’ve never really understood people who have parents they’re all involved with. I didn’t want anything to do with my old bastard, and my mother never wanted anything to do with me.” He spread his hands. “So, to be honest, I’m always waiting for the other shoe to drop. To figure out what the game is.”

Ann’s eyebrows drew together as pity writ over her features, making his hackles rise. “Sometimes there’s no game, and things are what they look like. My parents are working abroad a lot, but when they say ‘I love you’ I know they mean it.”

Akira nodded, slipping his hands into his pockets. “So no chess?”

Ann rolled her eyes.

“What about stratego?”

Ann gave a brief groan. “You might have to come up with a new codename for Akira, Morgana. I think Joker is a little too on the nose.”

Morgana sighed.

Akira’s pace slowed down, the thought wheeling around in his mind. He hadn’t brought that one in to Hifumi yet. “Actually… do you know anyone who plays stratego? Or chess or go or something like that? Morgana’s game sucks.”

“Hey!” The team leader stood up in the school satchel. “It’s hard moving those game pieces with these paws.”

Chuckling, Ann’s eyes drifted back up to his. “It’s a shame you didn’t come last year. Kiriko-senpai had a chess club, but it disbanded when she stopped coming, so I have no idea who was in it.” She slowed down and looked into a storefront advertising heating and air conditioning.

He wondered what memory she relived with that unfocused look in her eyes. Or if Shiho reminisced a lot, too.

Turning to him, Ann’s intense blue eyes gazed into his. “How come you don’t mention your parents very often? Didn’t you have any good memories with your father?”

“Don’t call him that,” Akira snapped, before settling back and reminding himself she wasn’t the enemy. “Excuse me.” Face feeling hot, he turned to the advertisements to break her gaze. “He was always all about work. Kirijo, Isshiki, he didn’t care who was footing the bill as long as he got to run his experiments.” He felt his frown grow. “Cared more about those fucking numbers than any human being.”

In his peripheral vision, he saw Ann clasp her hands, probably studying him in that matronizing way. Then she straightened. “Let’s get some crepes. Chocolate always makes me feel better.”

Friday, 20 May 2016
After School
Shibuya, Karaoke Bar

Akira set his school satchel down on the cheap pleather next to his class representative. “Thanks for reserving us a table. How are you holding up?”

Mishima collected his scattering of newspapers and print-outs into a paper folder. He looked to each of the three fellow Shujin students, his poise all business. “Hey, Ann, Akira-san.” His brown eyes paused on the transfer student. “We’d better get to the mission. Drug kingpins don’t wait on us, and there’s less than a half hour left of the reservation.” He nodded to the former track star, studying his eyes for a moment. “So how’d you meet Akira?”

Since the class rep didn’t have that empty-as-shark-eyes look, Akira slid into the booth seat. “He’s my gay stalker.”

Ryuji’s eyes bugged out and he sputtered before pounding a fist on the table. “Don’t effin say shit like that, dude!”

When Ann and Morgana both sent him disapproving looks, Akira held up his hands. “Just trying to break the ice. He was with us against Kamoshida.” He looked to the track star, then jutted his chin at the class rep. “Most of us know each other, but Mishima-kun’s our tech expert. Set up the Phansite and our special accounts.”

Mishima rubbed the back of his neck and looked away. “Oh, I’m not some computer genius or anything. Just making use of what I learned in the Newspaper Club last year.”

Ryuji slumped in his seat as the worst singing ever to come from middle schoolers leaked from the insulated room next door. “Man. I thought this was gonna be a real meet. It ain’t like me or Ann’s even good at singin’.”

Ann crossed her arms. “This is a real meet. Mishima’s one of us. Possibly the most important one.”

Morgana cleared his throat. “Excuse me, Metaverse expert here.”

She giggled. “Okay, fine. Second most important.”

Mishima smiled and reached down at the guide-trapped-in-cat-form, who dodged away. “Is he like your mascot?”

Morgana swiped at the class rep’s hand. “I’m not some pretty face.” He smiled at Ann. “That distinction goes to the loveliest member of the Phantom Thieves.”

Ryuji rolled his eyes. “Ugh. If I wanted sappy lines like that, I’d’a stayed at home with Mom’s Korean soaps.”

Mishima straightened in his seat, looking more than a little confused. “What about a mascot is sappy?”

Akira took off his glasses and drew a cloth to wipe the lenses. “Morgana’s our leader. And he’s not some pet cat, he’s a person. The Metaverse twisted him into that cat form and he’s helping us out so he can return to being human, too. Apparently not everyone can understand him when he speaks.”

“It’s because they haven’t visited the Metaverse. Something about being there forces the mind to change, to open up. That’s why I’m comprehensible to you, but sound like a cat to him and Boss.”

Akira passed on the gist of it.

Mishima raised an eyebrow, his eyes sliding to Ann’s. After a shallow nod from her, he clasped his hands over his folder. “Okay.”

Ryuji balked. “For real? That’s so crazy I didn’t believe it at first and I snuck inta the Metaverse with ‘em.”

Mishima shifted in his seat. “I’ve known Ann for almost as long as Shi-chan. Ann wouldn’t have become Shi-chan’s best friend if she was a liar. Or crazy. If that’s what she says happened, that’s what happened.”

Ann shot him a grateful smile. “Thanks, Yuuki.” Her smile melted into a serious look as she scanned him. “How did the session with Maruki go?”

Akira felt his body tense. “You actually went to that goon?”

Ryuji scratched his head. “He don’t seem that bad, Akira.”

Mishima’s hands curled into fists on the table. “Shujin did say sessions for all of us were mandatory, so I wanted to get it over with.” He gnashed his teeth together. “He tried to say none of what happened was my fault.”

Ryuji crossed his arms, confused by the sudden ratcheting up of tension around the table. “Dude, it wasn’t.” He jerked a thumb at his chest. “I know better’n anyone what would’a happened if you stood up to Kamoshida. My leg’s still not back one hundred percent.”

“I sent people to his office!” Mishima shouted with more energy than the transfer student had ever seen from him.

One of Morgana’s ears twisted back. “Do you seriously think you could have stopped someone as big as Kamoshida alone? Did you not see the bruises on the rest of Shujin?”

“Yeah,” Ann said, poking the class representative. “Did you not see how bruised the rest of Shujin was?”

Light glinting at the corners of Mishima’s eyes, he snapped back, “I was the one who sent Shiho…” His speech hitched and he struggled to control his breathing.

“Hey!” Morgana shouted at surprising volume for his small cat body. “We need to get back to business. The additional names you’ve been finding for us have gotten us further in the yakuza clan, but we’ve been running into dead ends. Shadows may possess the knowledge of the conscious person, but even with less of the conscious inhibitions that doesn’t help us if they don’t know the real name of their bosses.”

Nodding, Akira clasped his hands on the table. “And based on what I overheard from Leopard Print, we only have a couple of weeks before he might be sending the doc swimming with the fishes. Besides any other deadlines. That’s not enough time to stumble our way through the whole clan.”

Flicking an ear, Morgana looked up to the transfer student. “Do you think that Niijima could—?”

“We don’t need that lapdog’s help,” Akira ground out. “We can’t trust her. We’ll just have to find some other way.”

Mishima slumped. “I’m even asking Ishikawa and the rest of the Newspaper Club for help – for a ‘personal project’ of course. But these are some dangerous adults. To be honest, unless one of us is very lucky and stumbles across something, I don’t know if we’ll be able to find the name of a mob boss even the police can’t corner.”

Ryuji sighed. “For real. What we need is a good, old-fashioned muckracker.”

Morgana’s eyes widened. “Of course!” He rounded on the transfer student. “Akira, you said some detective kid knew an investigative journalist?”

Not recalling a name, he dug around in the satchel until finding the business card. “Ohya Ichiko. Maiasa Newspaper.”

Mishima leaned closer to look at it. “Really?”

Akira handed it over. “Why?”

Mishima turned it over and read the hand-writing on the back. “Well, I have no idea what Crossroads means, but Maiasa is one of the bigger newspapers in Tokyo. Three or four of the members of the Newspaper Club who want to become investigative journalists read it religiously. They’ve got kind of a trashy tabloid section, but their investigators are supposed to be top-notch.”

Ryuji crossed his arms. “Think we can trust her?”

Akira slumped against the padded booth seat, then brought up his phone and began typing up an email. “No choice. Doc gets shit on in the neighborhood all the time, but her skills are the real deal. And that’s not even including all the thousands of people that gang has on the hook in Shibuya. Stakes are too high to walk away.”

The booth phone rang, so Ann stood up to check the phone next to the booth. After a moment of listening, she said, “Thanks.” Covering the microphone, she looked around. “Our reservation’s up. Should we extend it?”

Ryuji checked the time on his smart phone, then sighed and slumped again. “Man. Happy hour’s almost over. Let’s just go.” He looked to the transfer student. “Well, if we can’t trust a name from president hoity-toity, do you think we can trust that journalist?”

“I think you should go for it,” Mishima said, the conviction in his voice drawing stares from the others. He rubbed his neck and looked down to his folder. “I mean, even doing the best I can, I can’t find the names you guys need. And if you already know someone in danger, it would just be threatening her to ignore any new avenues forward.”

“I agree,” Morgana said.

Ann added a nod.

Akira took the business card in hand and added the data to his contact list. Just to add some bait to the offer, he mentioned Murakami’s name in the email for help and hit send. “Okay, guys. Now it’s up to her to respond.” Standing up out of the booth, Akira checked the time on his phone and gave a brief wave to the class representative. “We’ve got under four hours to take a run through Shadowland. Good luck on your end.”

“You too,” Mishima said, taking his folder crammed with news articles in hand.

Friday, 20 May 2016
After School
Mementos, Path of Aiyatsbus

The creature collapsed to the ground, its humanoid torso limp but its spider-like body twitching. Black poured off it like fog from dry ice, muck dissolving underneath it until all that remained was the huddled body of Shadow Takenaka. His gold eyes shone even as he held his legs close and wept. “P-please, just… don’t hurt me anymore. I-I didn’t even do it myself, I just passed along the orders.”

Ryuji settled back on his heels for a moment, lip curling in disgust. “Tch. You make a livin’ roughin’ up customers at shops that don’t pay you and you want us to go easy on you?”

Morgana pointed his crossbow at the now-cowering Shadow. “Your days of stealing from the poor and beating up the week are over. You’re going to pay all of it back.”

Shadow Takenaka gasped in terror, his glowing eyes widening. “Bu… He’ll kill me! He was never merciful before, but he’s been absolutely ruthless since he started paying off that minister!”

Hope clashed with six failures this day alone. Akira lined up his sub-machine gun with the shadow in a fine suit. “Who is ‘he’? Your boss?”

Shadow Takenaka gibbered at the gun for a moment before nodding.

Akira aimed just a few centimeters from the Shadow’s head and squeezed off a single shot. “What is his name?”

“Kaneshiro!” the Shadow said, bowing on his knees and clutching his head in his hands.

Heart rate jumping, Akira took a step back. At last, a break in the investigation. Just not enough. He clicked his firing selector up. “His full name!”

“I don’t know!” Shadow Takenaka wailed. “He’s only ‘Boss’ to most of his underlings. I’ve never even heard his lieutenants call him anything but Kaneshiro-sama.”

Snarling, Akira lifted his sub-machine gun.

Ann dashed forward and shoved the muzzle away from the Shadow. “Enough, Joker.”

Morgana paced to the transfer student’s side, folding up his crossbow. “He’s being honest about not knowing more. Remember that Shadows are distortions of a person’s inner self with inhibitions removed.” He looked to the cowering form with glowing eyes. “Go back and make up for all you’ve done.”

Shadow Takenaka nodded, then faded away, leaving nothing but a money clip.

Ryuji picked it up, disappointment clear in his frown. “So do we go after that other name, see if we can get more dirt on this Kaneshiro dude?”

Morgana put his folded crossbow in a pouch. “We’ve been at this for hours. There’s something I want to check down that escalator, but I think we’re too tired to hunt more Shadows today.”

Clicking the safety back on his sub-machine gun, Akira nodded before following the others out of Takenaka’s tiny corner of Mementos. The swirling distortion slowed behind them, and Akira joined the others in the cat-bus. His arm throbbed and every joint ached, but he refused to whine about strains the whole team had to deal with. Men didn’t cry.

Morgana stopped and popped out of his mini-bus form, leading them down a dark and still escalator. He fiddled with one of the pockets on his utility belt and drew a small but bright white LED lamp and clicked it on.

Akira snapped into a ready-to-fight pose when the team leader leaped half a meter in the air.

“There it is!” Morgana dashed into the gloom, his lamp spot dancing over the concrete wall.

Akira led the three human members of the Phantom Thieves onto the concrete ledge ahead. A security light cast a bloody pall over the space, leaving long shadows on a couple benches and a stand with no stop markings or schedule information. Transparent plastic walls separated the rest stop from the surrounding platform.

Ryuji chuckled. “Whoa, it’s like one of those mini-stops that they used to have!”

Akira followed their diminutive leader to a steel door set against a concrete wall along the ledge’s left side. “There is what?”

Morgana shone his light against the steel door, centered on its lock. “One of those shortcuts I told you about earlier. Looks like a simple pin-tumbler. You should be able to pick that open.” He turned to Ann. “Relax. Places like this are like safe, Shadows even avoid coming here. For some reason.”

“You’re really flaky for a leader, y’know that?” Ryuji trotted down the recess in the concrete subway tunnel, shotgun in hand. The pop of tiny stones grinding under his steel-toed boots sounded loud against the comparative silence of Mementos here. A subterranean breeze carrying the phantoms of disapproving whispers blew. The track star whipped around on the ball of his foot, shotgun up, but only darkness greeted him. He glanced to the team leader, then back to his own weapon. “I outta get a light for this. They make ‘em for real-world guns.”

“Really?” Ann said, looking at the profile of her pistol as she slouched against the wall. “Think they make lights for small ones like this?”

Letting his shotgun slip down on its strap over his shoulder, Ryuji paced next to her. “Oh, sure. Real police even use ‘em. I dunno if it’s for makin’ it easier ta see, though. Whenever I saw it on TV, they were shinin’ lights in perps’ faces.”

“Huh,” she responded.

Akira slipped the rake pick to the next pin, pressing with the tension wrench until he felt the cylinder give. His arm screamed in pain from the feedback as they fought Shadows earlier, but Akira refused to give in and ask for help. He tapped the pick on the next pin.

Ryuji took his shotgun in both hands and trotted down the recessed space. A minute later, he turned around and paced back. Then turned again.

Akira grit his teeth. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Would you relax?” Sweat from the pain beaded his face.

Ryuji spun around on the ball of his steel-toed boot. “Well if you wouldn’t take forever…”

“Reaper!” Ann chastised, “You’re not helping.”

Morgana left the model’s side to close on the door. “What’s the problem with the lock?”

“One of the earlier pins slipped once I started on number five, and that one slipped when I went back.” Akira twisted the torsion wrench in his fingertips, feeling no give. His arm protested every little motion. Refusing to give up, he wiggled the rake pick until the cylinder rotated a fraction of a degree.

Morgana stared up at the steel door. “Make sure you keep constant pressure with the tension wrench.”

Akira snapped, “I got it.” Holding the twist, he moved on to the sixth pin and nudged it with the rake pick until he felt it slide up and the cylinder rotated open with a click of the bolt disengaging. “Man. Takanobu made it look easy.” He pulled the door open and slipped the picks out, handing them back to Morgana.

Ryuji wasted no time hopping through the door and clambering up the ladder, keeping his weight off his left leg.

Morgana sighed and hung his head. “I was going to say ladies first, Panther.”

Ann flashed him a toothy smile. “You’re such a gentleman, Byakko.” She stepped into the utility space and climbed up next. Morgana followed, and Akira took a few deep breaths to wrestle down his pain before clambering up after them. His arm throbbed and sweat beaded over his face.

When he came to another concrete landing only a couple seconds later, Morgana hopped up and had the next steel door open in seconds. He stowed the picks and tugged the heavy door open with a smug chuckle.

Ryuji gawked. “For real? There’s no way the ladder was that long. We were four levels down!”

Akira stepped across to look through the doorway, the blood-red lighting of the lobby greeting him. “Huh.”

Ann gave him a sidelong glance clear enough for him to make out despite her mask. “You’re sure unflappable. We just found a one-story ladder climb that took us up four levels of subway.”

He shrugged the shoulder that hurt less and stepped out into the lobby. “I’m beat. And it’s not like it changes all those Shadows who didn’t know shit. ‘Kaneshiro’ isn’t even enough to punch into the Nav.”

Morgana followed the others out of the staff door and pushed it shut. “Mishima did give us three. That still leaves us two names to follow up on next time. After ten people’s Shadows, and a possible partial for our target, I’d say that’s not bad.”

Ryuji sat down against the lobby floor and began disassembling his shotgun. “That don’t help us get into that mafia shithead’s castle.”

Ann sighed. “Doesn’t, Reaper. And even if we didn’t find the boss’s leader this time, that’s ten people who are going to have a change of heart.” She pursed her lips. “I wonder if they’re going to be okay. Yakuza are supposed to be real tight-knit.”

Morgana hopped closer to her, eyes wide. “That’s brilliant, Panther.” He turned to the transfer student in a long, dark coat. “They’re going to have a change of heart anyway, why don’t we send their names to the cops? That girl’s sister might even be able to find out somebody else higher up in the clan, and we could trade!”

“Only if we let her in on the meetings.” Akira growled. “Like we need that lapdog’s help.”

Ann rounded on him. “Wait, we have somebody else with more names? Somebody in the police, even?”

Akira winced. “Niijima said her sister was a prosecutor, technically not a cop.”

Ryuji slid the stock off his shotgun and gathered up the three pieces. “Who cares? We need all the help we can get.”

Morgana looked about the group. “We’re not going to figure this out while we’re all exhausted from fighting Shadows. Let’s talk about it tomorrow. We can figure it out after we’ve all had some rest. As the leader of the Phantom Thieves, I’m calling today finished.” He turned to Akira. “You especially, you need to have the doctor check your arm.”

Ryuji stood and trotted off.

Ann pressed fists against her hips, eyes staring into the distance. “Niijima-senpai…” After a few moments, she shifted her weight to her other leg, then focused on the transfer student. “Can we trust her?”

“No,” Akira bit out against the diminutive team leader’s protest. “Back at Inuri, we used to pull all kinds of pranks against the fuzz. Quick wits and quick reflexes were the only things that saved us, and sometimes even that wasn’t enough. But every guy who got suspended without getting directly snatched by Kung-Fu Cop? Blabbed to somebody. Every person who learns we’re the Phantom Thieves is another mouth we need to hope stays shut.” He looked her up and down, this time for unspoken clues instead of the ridiculously hot costume. “Why, did she know something about Kamoshida?”

Ann twisted her fists against her hips, eyes narrowing and drifting away again. “I don’t know. But it’s hard to imagine that somebody as high up as the student council president wouldn’t.” She turned and strode up the stairs to station square.

Akira sighed. “Back to the rat race.” He drew his phone as the team leader fell alongside. “I should probably also pass that name to the reporter in case she can find out anything else for us. If she can help us learn what his distortion keyword is, we’re golden.”

Chapter 33: May 22nd, Go Match

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Sunday, 22 May 2016
Morning
Kanda Catholic Church

Akira tugged a handkerchief out of a pocket and sneezed into it.

“God bless you, my son,” Father Sugiyama said from the other side of the confessional booth, holding in the chuckle for a beat. “Have you considered seeking consultation by a professional?

Akira sat back until his head thumped against the back of the booth. “Geez, not you too, Father. He’s just a new school shrink.”

Father Sugiyama straightened on his seat. “I was referring to allergies. Have you not availed yourself of your school’s counselor? I am here to offer guidance however I can, but I can only be certain to be available on Sundays. I would hope a school counselor would be available many days of the week. You carry a heavy burden, I think it would do nothing but help you to seek the words of a counselor elsewhere. It can only ease your soul.”

“All due respect, Father, but I think I know better than to trust a shrink.”

Father Sugiyama let out a breath as if he wanted to say otherwise, but had to accede for the moment. He gave a final prayer, couple of Bible verses to read, and sent the transfer student on his way.

Stepping out of the confessional, Akira let out a long breath. A few scattered elderly snoozed, but the pews looked almost empty. Except one girl in a sleeveless blue dress and red omamori knot in her hair, waiting two pews back. After thanking Father Sugiyama, Akira paced down the aisle to her. He gave a shallow bow at the waist. “Ready for another match, Queen Togo?”

She giggled and scooted back. “The rangers of Lothlorien are ready to strike at any time.” She reached back for her box of shogi tiles.

Akira sat down and set his Go box between them. “Actually, I thought we might try something different today.” He scratched behind his ear. “I kind of need a change of pace.”

Hifumi set her box back behind her, then studied his face for a moment. “I know what you mean. I could probably handle cram school fine if it wasn’t for the relentless schedule I have to keep.”

He set a small plastic tray with stones next to the board. “It’s a little easier when you at least know the deadlines. You can always make a workback schedule and keep up. But sometimes you just know there’s something… out there and you’ve got no idea what to do or how long you’ve got to do it.” He slid back against the pew. “And sometimes that feels like my whole life.”

“I… think I understand,” she said, before gesturing him to the tray of stones. “I won the last game, so you can take the first move here.”

Taking a small black piece, Akira paused to look at the grid of small indentations on his board. The choice of where to go and how was up to him. By game terminology, any liberty he desired was his. Almost the exact opposite of his life. He set his black stone near the corner. “Do you ever feel like your hands are full trying to take care of responsibilities from people outside your family?”

A quick breath passed through her nose and her mouth quirked, but Hifumi settled into a laser-focused expression and they settled into a quick pace of laying down stones. “I don’t think I’ve ever had a particularly eventful social circle.”

Something about the melancholy in her tone made Akira’s insides squirm and his mind spin. How could somebody smarter, nicer, better looking, from a better town and family not have it all better? Father Sugiyama praised her integrity above his own! How could people who actually deserved to have a better life still be imprisoned by theirs?

Hifumi paused and looked up at him, hand halfway to set down another stone. Something about her gaze felt penetrating, like his irreverent, jocular front was stripped away. “Do you feel like your friends are stopping you from living your life?”

Letting out a rush of air, Akira sat back and straightened his glasses. He thought back to his short-lived attempt to join the basketball club at Inuri. Then his idiotic attempt to charge down Kamoshida on the day Shiho jumped. Ryuji and Yuuki were opposite ends of the emotion spectrum, but neither lost their heads like him. “The opposite, really. It’s more like no matter where I go or what I do, somebody there is better than me. Like I’m the one who’s holding back everyone else.”

Hifumi set down a white stone, then looked him in the eye, her lips pressed into a thin line. “Is that why you insisted on Go today?”

“What?” he squawked, bumping against the pew back. Akira rubbed his neck. “No. I mean, sure, you’ve won every shogi game so far, but at least you’re honest about playing at full strength. It’s not like the patronizing bull…crap I put up with from Sakura-san or Kawakami-sensei.” He set down a black stone. “Ryuji’s faster than I am, Ann’s more savvy than I am. Hell, I don’t even know if I have better grades then them.”

“I think from our games, that stems from a problem with outlook,” she said, setting another stone down. “Remember that first session, when I talked about what conceding meant?”

He stared down at the board. “You think I should back out of those problems?”

Hifumi set down another stone. “I don’t know enough about you or those problems to say. I mean more about the nature of defeat. When teaching me shogi, my father was careful to teach me not only how to play the game, but how to analyze the game so you could improve from one to the next. And how not to resent a temporary outcome. In a game lost you can still learn a great deal about your own strategy. Perhaps these people are not obstacles stopping you from finding your own greatness, but opportunities to look at yourself and what you can improve.” Soft piano music floated out and she drew her phone, then gave a frustrated sigh and stood. “My apologies, Akira-san. Duty calls.”

Smiling, Akira stood with and gave her a nod. “Let it get the answering machine once in a while.”

Her lips curled up, but a tension remained around her eyes. Hifumi collected her shogi board, but paused, then looked him in the eye. “I quite enjoy our matches together, and it was lovely to have a change in routine like this.” She held the board close. “I’m afraid that mother keeps my schedule rather full throughout the week, but if you’re interested in a practice match during the week—”

“Absolutely,” he blurted, bringing up his phone to exchange text messenger.

Sunday, 22 May 2016
Early Afternoon
Shibuya, Underground Mall

Finishing the online shogi game he began on the train, Akira raised his attention to the mall between station square and his next train connection. It took him a little further out of the way than staying in the underground walkway, but more of the pedestrians walked with a sense of purpose and stuck to one side of the hall than the chaotic maelstrom churning every which way in the walkway.

A familiar head passed by in the browsing people meandering through the albums on display, his eyes scanning a printed page warning customers that Risette’s album Sapphire was out of stock.

Somebody slipped past, hand sliding into the brown-haired kid’s pocket and bumping into Akira in his twisting to get back out with a wallet without alerting the mark.

Akira caught the eye contact of a compatriot and shot in-between, intercepting the pass-off. With his lengthened step and already brusque stride, the pair of pick-pockets chose to fade into the crowd rather than cause a scene. Akira continued on to tap the victim on the shoulder with his bulging wallet. “Hey, Kaoru-kun.”

The son of the surplus shop’s owner froze and turned with a startle. “Huh?”

Akira held out the wallet. “You might want to be a little more careful if you’re going to be browsing in a busy place like this. Where are you heading?”

Shame tinged his cheeks red and he checked his pockets before snatching his wallet. “Dad always told me to be careful when I was out. I just wanted to look at some music.” He tugged at his white shirt. Paired with the black slacks he looked like most people in their Sunday casual. He glanced up and down at Akira, as if seeking a diversion from his glum state. “You work at some kind of high-end office?”

Akira glanced down at his Sunday dress. It was his best formal clothing. “Nah, just coming back from Mass. Change into street clothes, do my grocery shopping and cook lunch for the week.” He spread his hands. “It’s a pattern that works. You know any good grocers’ in the area?”

Kaoru shot him a raised-eyebrow look that if it had been on a blond-haired friend would have been accompanied by a dubious ‘For real?’ He slipped his wallet in his pocket, hand still holding on to it. “Well, I usually shop at the Y’s Mart in Akihabara, but that’s because it’s close to where the guys hang out after school.” He pulled out his phone. “Right! This place is closer…”

Sunday, 22 May 2016
Afternoon
Minato-ku, OK Mart

Akira sat down in the diminutive eating area of the food mart. He set the other Garden Sushi box down in front of the surplus store owner’s kid, his cotton tote bag against the wrought-iron chair, then straightened his summer street jacket and bowed his head for a brief before-meal prayer.

Kaoru popped open his box. “You didn’t have to get me anything, Kurusu-san.”

“Akira,” he said, keeping most of the terseness out of his tone. He feigned a casual expression. “You can relax around me, Kaoru-kun. You did wait for me to get changed back at Yongen. There’s enough people serious and formal all the time.” He paused to gauge the reaction. “Too soon?”

He swallowed and broke apart the cheapo chopsticks. “It’s okay, A-Akira-senpai.” He took one bite, but stopped and looked up at the cooking video on Akira’s phone. “I’m kind of surprised to see another guy who does most of his own cooking.” He tapped at a stack of carrot slices. “A couple of the guys at primary school used to make fun of me for shopping and cooking.” He let out a breath and relaxed back against the wrought iron chair back. “It’s just one of the few things I can do to help Dad out.” He poked at the vegetables for a moment before taking a slice and eating it. “Mom died in a car accident, so it’s been just me an’ Dad since.”

Akira popped open his store-box lunch. “My parents are separated, so I know what it’s like not to have both of ‘em around to rely on.”

Kaoru nodded. “Oda-kun was like that. He was a junior at my primary school. We used to mostly talk about video games before I graduated to middle school.”

Something about the similar family tribulations broke the tension holding around the middle schooler, and they chatted about middle school before finishing the boxed lunches and going their own ways home.

Sunday, 22 May 2016
Early Evening
Yongen, Leblanc Loft

Crimson light seeped through the paper-covered window slides. Grunting, Akira pulled himself up to the rafter, then brought himself down.

Breathe in, pull up. Breathe out, extend down.

The energetic violins and bass of Stargate’s theme sang out of his phone and Akira dropped to the floor, stumbled, then pushed a report on The Sea of Withered Trees out of the way to retrieve his phone.

Morgana leaped up to the windowsill. “Who is it?”

“That journalist Akechi mentioned,” Akira opened the email reply and read. “She wants to meet at the Crossroads Bar in Shinjuku as soon as she gets back in Tokyo on Monday. Nineteen-hundred. Looked like it’s in the Red-Light District.”

Morgana gave a nod. “So a journey through the night life neighborhood filled with temptations.” He sat, tail curling around his feet, and looked the transfer student in the eye. “It’s also bound to have lots of people. You already have trouble with Shibuya.”

Akira gave a cheeky grin. “Why, will you be my escort?”

Ears drooping, Morgana sighed. “Where do you learn these things? I’d expect that kind of talk from Reaper.”

Akira pointed a finger at the guide and picked up his phone. “Speaking of, I might want one of the others there. I’m getting used to the train system, but Tokyo’s still kind of screwy.” Eyes down to the phone, he shot off an invite to the Phantom Thief chat room explaining the situation.

Less than five minutes later, Ryuji responded. [A trip into the Red-Light District? Sweet night!]

Akira sighed and leaned down to brace his chin in his left hand. [This isn't a prank trip, Ryuji. It's to get information from that reporter because we can't find the full name for the don in Shibuya.]

Ann logged in and three dots danced at the bottom of the chat window for a few moments. [Are you going to be okay going up there? The night life is pretty happening.]

Nodding, Akira sent back, [You guys mind coming too?]

Mishima sent, [Sorry guys. I'm filling in for Ishikawa at Setagaya on Monday.]

[I am so there!] Ryuji responded.

Akira pursed his lips, considering how much Ryuji stood out around Shujin. [If we get into a crowd either of us have problems with, I won't be able to help you out of trouble. You up for going out Monday, Ann?]

[You and me can do it alone,] Ryuji shot back. [I've been to Shinjuku so I know the trains we'll need, and I haven't seen the red lights yet!]

A moment passed before Ann sent, [I'd be up for it. Where should we meet?]

Akira glanced at Morgana. “You coming to keep eyes on the situation?”

“Of course.”

“I should get a satchel for casual travel so I’m not always hauling the school bag around,” Akira said. He refocused on the group chat. [Make sure to dress so we can get around Shinjuku without being recognized. Looks like we have to go through the JL anyway, but could we find somewhere with a little less crowd problem than Station Square itself?]

Ryuji’s ID blinked, and three dots pulsed for several seconds. [There's a walkway from the Teikyu Building. Lot of people, but nobody who wants to see anyone else. Kind of the same thing as being invisible.]

Morgana looked up from the screen with a smirk. “On the bright side, if Reaper comes along, nobody will notice you two don’t belong right in those dangerous alleys.”

Snorting a laugh, Akira relayed the Metaverse guide’s message.

[Shut up, man!] Ryuji shot back. [You don't have to repeat every stupid thing he says!]

[See you then,] Ann sent.

The others left the group chat, and Akira closed the chat room, but lingered for a few moments. Since he already had his phone out, he sent a text to Hifumi. [This is Akira. Just wanted to make sure I've got your right info and wish you a good week.] He was halfway through changing when his phone buzzed.

[Thanks, and you too,] she replied.

Monday, 23 May 2016
Lunchtime
Shujin, Rooftop

Akira pulled another shrimp from the cold, red soup left over from the previous day. He jostled the chopsticks to knock the small drop forming back into the bowl, then stuffed it in his mouth. Before he could scrounge another, Alliance Force Assemble sang out of his pocket. Knowing Ryuji and Ann could both join him on the roof, and none of his once friends from Inuri stayed in contact, he drew it and opened the blinking text chat.

Hifumi’s ID appeared, three dots blinking for only a moment. [Good news, Akira-kun! Cram school is only going to 17:00 today. Would you like to meet for a game?]

His acceptance finished and thumb hovered over the send button when Akira remembered the reporter’s text last evening. Cringing, he instead sent, [I am so sorry. I already have an appointment I can't afford to miss this evening.]

Long seconds passed before Hifumi sent, [I understand. I apologize for the interruption.]

[There's nothing to be sorry for. Any other day I would be there, but I'm trying to help a friend. I already said I'd be there.]

A few more seconds passed before she replied, [I think I will have time on Thursday.]

[I'll look forward to it. Prepare for the unstoppable advance of my robot army.]

Hifumi sent a smiley face sticking out its tongue. [Steel cannot conquer will!]

Before she had the chance to go, Akira added, [Hey, thanks for calling. Texting. Whatever. Thanks for remembering me.] The instant after he hit send, he realized how pathetic that looked.

[How could I forget you? Your confidence and passion are infectious.] A beat passed before she added, [See you later.] Hifumi left the chat moments later and Akira let out a heavy sigh at the opportunity he had to deny, but it wouldn’t be right to foist this all on the other Phantom Thieves. He made his promise and had to carry his own weight.

Notes:

Akira’s conflict in Daywatch is the same as a lot of my writing, built on the idiom “The more you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, the more it will think itself foolish.” Society does a lot to hamper itself by pigeon-holing people without ever giving people a chance to even test their own potential. Adding a small connection between Kaoru and Shinya is also an opportunity to explore more of both characters even if there’s no canonical link.

Chapter 34: May 23rd, Cold Reading

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Monday, 23 May 2016
Early Evening
Shibuya, Teikyuu Building Walkway

Akira leaned back against the rail at the observation windows, waiting for his online opponent to make another move in his doomed shogi game. With the conductive pads on his gloves, he didn’t even have to take off the black material to keep playing. They complimented his dark trousers against his white long-sleeved shirt, even if the ensemble made him resemble every other boring Joe on the street. Before he could advance his lancer into the promotion zone, the track star jogged up to the transfer student.

“Yo, bro.” Ryuji glanced at the frizzy-haired student’s hands. “What’s up with the gloves?”

Standing up from the rail, Akira sent back a hooded stare. “Ryuji, I usually wear gloves. I’m just not allowed to at Shujin because the uniform specifically forbids it.” Looking back to his phone, he slid his lance up and hit ‘end turn’ with the conductive pad of his grey gloves.

Morgana poked up out of the school satchel. “Oh geez, Reaper. Didn’t you change after Shujin?”

Ann’s voice floated out from behind the transfer student, “Did you forget we’re going to Shinjuku?”

Ryuji stood up and raised an eyebrow for a moment. Then he jerked straight and his eyes widened. “Da-yum. Not like I’m complainin’, but whadda you in a dress for?”

Akira turned around to look at Ann in a maroon, high-necked dress that draped over her bust and cascaded down her body. Feeling heat spread on his cheeks, he managed to drag his eyes from her chest to her head and the straight black hair spilling off it. “Y…you dyed your hair?”

“It’s a wig so I can go out without getting stared at the whole time. Bought it after you-know-who touched my hair the first time.” Ann glared at Ryuji, noticing him eyeing her. “I didn’t want to look like a student when we got to Shinjuku.”

Ryuji took one stomping step at her. “Get off my case, okay? Today’s runnin’ day, I had to rush just to get here after I got outta the showers. Like anyone’s even going to notice.”

Sighing, Akira moved up his rook and hit end turn. “Ryuji, you’ll be a liability. Go home.”

“What?” he snapped. “I rode the train for—”

“Reaper,” Morgana said, settling his front paws on Akira’s shoulder. “People are talking about Kamoshida and Shujin all over. If you go, the cops are going to catch you.”

“C’mon, man,” Ryuji whined at the bespectacled teen. “You an’ me, we can make it a bro night! I’ll even be your wingman.”

Ann’s eyes narrowed and she leaned in to hiss, “It’s not the safest place in Tokyo, Ryuji. Hell, that mafioso’s territory might even extend all the way up there. At least with Akira, I think we’ll be able to sneak wherever we need to go. You’ll get spotted five minutes in, and then we lose that journalist who might have the rest of that name we need.”

Akira slid his bishop onto the enemy’s gold general and hit ‘end turn’. “Don’t try to make it a big thing, Ryuji. Ann and I have been teaming together longer.”

He glared. “For what, like a day?” Ryuji kicked at the floor. “Fine, even I can see when I’m not wanted. But you better get that effin’ name.” He stormed away.

Turning to him, Ann rubbed her fingers against her temples. “Sorry about that. I’m sure he’s real about wanting to help out, he’s just too good at sticking out even when he doesn’t want to.”

“Yeah, kinda like the flamboyant cuttlefish,” Akira said, holding the shogi game between them as if it could keep him from looking at her shapely figure. He posed and said at a low register, “Fuck blending in with the world, why doesn’t the world try to blend in with me?” Straightening, he chuckled and added, “I get him, but I’ve gotta keep the mission first. And I’m sure that you’ll watch my back.” He pointed at her black hair. “You even thought to disguise your hair, I should probably do somethin’ to mine too.”

Ann’s cheeks took on a faint rosy tint that went with the dark red dress she wore. “Th-thanks.”

Monday, 23 May 2016
Late Evening
Shinjuku, Red-Light District

Akira pushed past a clump of salarymen, stumbling onto the street in Shinjuku. Garish signs shone bright lights down every lane he could see, shades of red dominated many displays. The light shone off his wet, finger-combed hair. When Ann came up right behind him he said, “I can see why this place is called the Red-Light District.”

Morgana peeked out from the transfer student’s leather bag. “Stop gawking. You already look like a tourist.”

Akira frowned. “Give me a little bit of a break. I grew up in small neighborhoods for most of my life, this is the complete opposite of a podunk mountain village.” He brought out his phone and leaned against a theater building with Ann to let a pack of young office workers cruise for the next bar. The pounding music from a rocker bar down the street made it hard to think. “Address says it’s just up ahead on the right.”

A pair of tall, foreign men stumbled through the quintet of office workers, one tripping against Akira as he put away his phone. The transfer student bared his teeth and cocked his fist back.

Ann reached out to grab him before he could loose a swing, taking his arm in hers and guiding him across the street. She didn’t seem to notice most of the motion pressed his arm against her breast.

Akira spent the time trying to breathe while being closer to a prettier girl than he’d ever been before. Her steady poise reminded him of Shiho. With the wig, he could almost imagine it was the sweet girl from Shujin walking him through the over-crowded city district. Once they reached the opposite sidewalk, he was glad for the signage glare to conceal the blush blazing across his face. Unfortunately, her grip also put him at an angle to see a crisp, blue uniform resolve out of the crowd, and the transfer student noticed the cop look straight at him and Ann.

Akira tensed his arm around hers and steered the pair down the road forking to the right, hoping the cop would pass on by. “Fuzz, eight o’clock.”

A quick glance back showed the blue-garbed man navigating the crowd toward them.

Speeding up his pace, Akira advanced until a small, fold-out table blocked his path. Sensing the cop still on their tail, he slipped his arm out from hers and gave a subtle gesture to the padded stool.

The young lady sitting behind the covered table looked at the two disguised high schoolers with wide, dark eyes. “Ah, so you’ve come to hear your fortune?”

Akira jammed his gloved hand in his pocket for his wallet. “Yeah!” he said with fake enthusiasm, grumbling on the inside about the short time since paying off the doctor.

Ann sat down just as the cop stepped out of the disorganized crowd. “Hi, Miss Fortune Teller.”

The woman gave a closed-lip smile and brief chuckle. “Please, honored customer. I am just Chihaya. Would you and your boyfriend like an affinity reading?”

He felt his blush blaze anew, as Ann stammered with a similar darkening of her cheeks. “O-oh, no. He’s not—”

Akira set his hand on her shoulder and squeezed, giving a smile showing clenched teeth. “We’re not worried about that. Just whatever fortune you think best.”

Chihaya looked at Ann, her eyes narrowing in scrutiny. “Oh, my. You poor thing. I can sense that you’ve been beset by tragedy lately.” She laid down a set of ornate cards.

Akira bit his tongue to keep from complaining about cold reading techniques while the cop stood there, watching them. It wouldn’t take much to guess from the stress signals in Ann’s pose that she suffered something lately. He could feel some of his hairs stand on end at the very premise of using theatrics to play on others’ emotions. Whether for entertainment like his mother, or to lord power over others like his father.

Ann seemed not to notice, taking in a breath at Chihaya’s vague statement which could apply to almost every human being on the planet. “You’re right! My best friend jumped off the roof last month, and she’s still in the hospital.”

Chihaya flipped a card, then let out a relieved breath. “The good news is that your friend can recover. Fortune says that as you grow stronger, so shall she.”

Ann took hand still resting on her shoulder, clenching it with far more strength than Akira thought she had. Just when he was about to let out a pained groan, he noticed a tear slip out from one of her eyes. Letting out a sound between a laugh and a gurgle, she squeezed even harder on his fingers. “Hear that? She’ll get better.”

Grunting, he took her hand and pulled his out, his glove slipping off from the strength of her grip. She relinquished it to him and he tugged it back on. “She was always going to get better. Suzui-san’s too tough to get brought down by that bastard.”

Another tear slipped down her face, but Ann gave him a thin smile and grasped his hand again – still looking a little like a drowning sailor grasping at flotsam, but without the crushing grip this time.

Chihaya brushed at some of her long, brown hair and looked down at the cards. She cringed, then hovered her hand back and forth over the remaining cards. Her fingers grabbed a card and flipped it over with the suddenness of a snapping turtle. The sham woman’s cringe grew and she glanced to Akira. “Are you sure you want me to read this?”

“Pfft.”

“Akira,” Ann chastised, letting go of his hand to wipe at her face. “Would you just answer the question?”

He worked his jaw open, then closed before he felt himself centered enough to answer the con-woman. She may be a fraud, but she also gave Ann enough sense of hope to draw tears and if he started a diatribe here and now, he knew it would escalate and the cop would just cuff him and add another tally to his weekly quota. “Don’t let me stop you. You got somethin’ to say? Say it.”

Chihaya took in a deep breath, her eyes locking back on the card she flipped for a long moment before looking Ann in the eyes. “You shall not find love on the road you now walk. You shall find it only if you look into the unknown, from a place you would never have thought even a short time ago. Even so, it shall not be far.” She settled back on her own padded stool and gave a sympathetic smile. “Five thousand yen.”

Ann’s eyes snapped wide. “Five thousand?” She dug into her dainty purse of the same deep red as her dress, then looked up at Akira and cringed. “Uh… I only have three thousand. Could you spot me?”

Akira rolled his eyes. He drew his wallet and slapped down two thousand-yen notes, but couldn’t keep his mouth shut and jabbed a finger at the fraudster. “You’re still an emotionally manipulative con.”

The cop stepped forward, hand reaching down to the pouches at his waist. Chihaya lifted up a hand to stop him. “It’s all right, Officer Toriyama. Anybody would be shaken by the news fate delivered through me. I think it will be all right if he just has some time to think.”

The man in blue let his hand fall to his side and gave the fortune fraudster a nod, then turned and strode back into the chaotic crowd.

“Thank you,” Ann said with a small bow in her seat.

“Don’t thank a charlatan.” Before the model even got back to her feet, Akira turned to the larger thoroughfare, bulling through the crowd and letting his compatriot chase after.

Slowing down at an unmarked door across the street from a sex toy shop, a buck-toothed man in a heavy brown business suit rubbed his hands. “Hey, man. Lookin’ for a place to blow off steam? Or get the… eh, heart pumpin’?”

Akira raised one eyebrow.

The huckster clasped his hands together. “Touch all you want, no added fees. Whatever you’re lookin’ for, we’ve got.” He pointed a finger-gun at the transfer student. “Cutest girls in town. Guaranteed.”

“Akira!” Ann shouted, before maneuvering through the crowd behind him.

The huckster’s lip curled up at her, but in a blink he was all smiles again. “Hey, if you’ve already got your own, we got rooms for a quickie.”

Memories of thumping and moaning from beyond the locked front door sounded in his mind’s ears, red crept in on the edges of his vision, Akira shot him a snarl. “Fucking gigolo!” He advanced as the pimp fell back. “You’re no better than the whores you hide behind closed doors.” He spat on the sidewalk in front of the huckster.

Ann grabbed his arm and pulled him further down the road. “Whoa, c’mon, Akira.” When the transfer student finally turned back to the sidewalk ahead, she patted him on the back. “You weren’t even that mad at the fortune teller.” She tugged him against a building, her blue eyes gazing into his plaintively. “You want to talk about it?”

Akira clenched his jaw for a moment and slipped his gloved hands into his pockets. Going off about his mother here wouldn’t help. “It’s nothing.” He pulled out his phone and brought up the map to find their destination. “Crossroads Bar. Should be right around here.”

A woman in a black pencil skirt, her dark hair in the remnants of what might have been a tight hair bun that morning stumbled out of a nearby club entrance, vomiting on the sidewalk.

Akira backed up into Ann in revulsion, and Morgana poked his head up out of the satchel slung over his shoulder and read the lit sign above. “Beer, whiskey, and wine. Looks like some office workers really throw themselves into the bar setting.”

Akira turned away from the clear fluid. “If anybody needs a reason to become a tea-totaler, they just need to look at a drinker.”

Ann settled next to him, her eyes coming down from the sign. “Maybe, but that’s Crossroads. That reporter should be somewhere in there.” She walked around the vomit with him and they stepped into a modest club.

An extensive wet bar stretched out along the wall to his right, the back wall covered with pictures of famous patrons. A tiled space lit by a dancing, colored light-show took up the center of the main floor, open to the balconies on the second floor. Drunk office workers scattered across the booths lining the walls and four-seat tables in the middle.

Ann made a quick scan of the occupants. “I expected a hole in the wall, not an ex-nightclub. Not as busy as I thought.”

Akira nodded. “Yeah, if there’s anyone who can give Russians a run for an alcoholism trophy, it’s office grunts.”

She shot him a cool, disapproving look. “So how’d we know which one’s the reporter? She got a profile online?”

Akira shook his head. “I thought of that on the way to Shibuya, but Maiasa Newspaper only had a super-short blurb about her being an investigative journalist. Didn’t even have a profile photo.” Glancing around, he stepped up to the bar and sat down in one of the leather-covered seats, Ann taking the open one next to him.

An overweight woman in a bright blue kimono and makeup so heavy it looked theatrical came up to the pair. She wore a microphone and speaker earpiece clipped to her left ear. When she spoke, she sounded like she’d been smoking since childhood. “Oh, aren’t you a delectable set of morsels?” She leaned down at him, hand on her back. “Are you sure you’re old enough to be cruising bars?”

Akira reached into his pocket and handed her the Maiasa Newspaper business card with the reporter’s handwriting on the back. “I have it on good authority that Ohya-san is here. I need to speak with her. About private business.”

The woman took the business card and flipped it around, scrutinizing the hand-penned writing on the back. Her eyes flicked up, then around before she handed the card back. “Spends more time around here than she does at home, I suspect.” The heavyset woman looked at the two for several long moments. “You look like fine people, but I’m afraid I can only bring one up to see her. She’s been getting skittish since the Hashiba Clan got pushed out of the neighborhood. Not as safe as it used to be.”

Ann looked at the transfer student and sighed. “You should do it. You’re better at reading people than I am, and I figure you’ll know something she might want. To be honest, I’m not sure I could figure out how to get a professional journalist to talk to me.”

Akira nodded, then spared a glance at his school companion before turning to the bartender. “She going to be safe down here alone?”

The woman behind the bar waved a hand at him. “Oh, honey, there’s cameras all over the lower level here. I’ll have one of the girls keep an eye on her, just in case, mkay?” She ducked into the swinging door behind the bar.

A few moments she later with a twenty-something girl with dark hair and old-style kimono, one of the layers glowing under one of the black-lights on the bar. She gave an unconvincing smile. “Hi, I’m Kaho.”

Akira nodded. “Yoshida, and this is Akemi.”

“And I’m Lala,” the heavyset woman said, gesturing the glass bottles in both hands at herself. She guided him through a swinging door and up a set of stairs to a small booth overlooking the tables.

Akira turned on a recorder, then slipped his phone into his pocket before following the bartender in.

A black-haired woman in a rumpled T-shirt and jeans sat curled up on an overstuffed chair, a laptop open on the stubby table next to her. She turned her head and glared at the overweight woman in the blue kimono. “I asked for a Tokyo Sidecar, Lala-chan.”

Unperturbed, Lala set the two condensation-beaded beers down on the table next to the laptop. “You’ve been drinking since you came in, Ichiko-chan. No more hard liquor for you tonight, even in mixed drinks.” She gestured to Akira. “The kid had one of your signed cards.” She wiggled her eyebrows enough for it to show despite the makeup. “You picked up a real young-un this time. Just don’t give him anything to drink, okay? He’s got a nice young lady to escort home.”

Akira wrinkled his nose at the stink of booze on the black-haired woman.

Ohya scrutinized him with greater intensity than seemed fitting for somebody about to be cut off at a bar. After a moment, she waved the bartender off. “Yeah, yeah, Lala-chan.” The bartender slipped away, and Ohya sat up. Her dark eyes looked clearer than moments ago, though it wasn’t very easy to tell as low as the mood-lighting was.

Akira sat down in one of the other overstuffed seats and set his bag next to the table. He gestured his chin at her computer, cyan light emanating from its screen. “You know, it’s bad for your eyes to stare at a back-lit screen in the dark.” He tapped the frames on his lenses. “That’s why I’ve got such dorky glasses.”

Ohya gave a sultry smile and leaned back. Did she know that was the same way Shiho showed herself off in Kamoshida’s palace, or did all women just know that was an unfairly sexy pose? “I’ve had doctors before, but you’re a bit young.”

Akira sat back in his chair, his face burning in embarrassment. Seeing women flirt was nothing new, but at him was.

The reporter laughed. “Take it easy, kid. You’re too high-strung. So where’d you hear about Murakami?”

“Homeless artist in Shibuya,” Akira replied, trying to puzzle out how inebriated she really was. “Said he talked with her about his no-good mentor.”

Ohya grunted. “Damn, I was hoping we were done with Madarame.” She sat up and set her beer down on the table, opening something on her computer and typing with practiced speed for several seconds. Then she took a carabiner out of her right pocket, keys jangling against waterproof memory sticks dangling from the oval. She tossed it up just enough to grab a metal loop, then use it to pry the cap off one of the beers. She took a deep drink before righting the bottle and holding it up for examination. “Benjamin Franklin was right.”

Akira tilted his head and raised an eyebrow. “The guy who invented bifocals?”

Still gazing at the bottle held aloft, Ohya explained, “Beer is proof that god loves us and wants us to be happy.” She then brought it back and took another deep drink. After a sharp exhale, she looked more morose than when she started. “And a woman needs some reinforcement when she’s dumped into entertainment from politics. Where investigations uncovered real dirt.” Her frown sharpened. “Not the latest Phantom Thief fad my boss thinks is coming.” She took another deep swig, then stared at the bottle. “I don’t even have any connections. Bastard.”

Morgana sat up from the satchel, his eyes glistening in the dim light reflecting in the shadows. “Oh! Mishima knows all about Kamoshida. And he’d go pretty far out of his way to help us out.”

Nodding, Akira tapped his fingers on the padded arm of his chair. “I could help with that,” he told her. “In exchange for help with that name I emailed you.”

Ohya sat up, her eyes clearer and more focused than expected for somebody having been drinking for an hour. When the corners of her lips tugged up, he suspected she was testing him all along. “You know somebody at Shujin?” Her brow furrowed. “It would have to be good.”

Glancing at the team leader, Akira frowned. When the guide nodded, he looked up to the reporter. “I’ll set something up.” He straightened in his armchair. “So about the rest of that name?”

Her eyes slid over to him, that sharp look returned. “You’re looking for a swimming trip with concrete shoes if you’re thinking of tangling with the mafia.”

Akira leaned forward in his armchair. “Who said I was thinking of it? My friends’ lives are at stake,” he shot back. He paused for a long breath to try to find that calm he knew hunters needed. “One’s a doctor. They’re extorting her, and they’ll kill her soon if I can’t find a third option. And don’t dare tell me to leave it to the cops, if I could do that I wouldn’t be here.”

Ohya pushed herself up from her slouch. “You’re for real, aren’t you?”

He opened his hands. “You get your source on Kamoshida, the public gets their salacious stories, and I pass along the names of the mafia’s leaders to a guy who knows the Phantom Thief.” He leaned forward, elbows bracing on his knees. “So… do we have a deal?”

She looked back at him for a long moment. Seconds ticked by before she took a quick swig of her second beer. “Well, you got guts. That’s for sure.” She paused for another swig. “But guts alone just make for bad mornings after.”

He grit his teeth. “If the Phantom Thief can swoop in on a rapist whose school was protecting with a veil of secrecy for years, don’t you think they can get a Mafioso?”

Ohya stared at him for a long few seconds before she burst out laughing. It went on for a while before she took another swig from the beer bottle. “You really believe that a Phantom Thief was even responsible for that pervert coach’s confession?”

Akira planted his hands on the armrests of his chair, fingers digging in. “Test it. If I’m wrong, then what’s happening now keeps happening. If I’m right and the Phantom Thief is real, this don turns around and potentially his whole mafia branch collapses. Can you let an opportunity like this pass by?”

The reporter stared him in the eye. At last, she sat up in her stuffed chair. “You’re a true believer.” She took a sip of beer, then swirled it around in the bottle, staring at it for a moment. “I don’t know how you stumbled across his name, but your tip was right. His full name is Kaneshiro Junya. For such a rich guy, he has almost no web presence. I mean suspiciously little, like you’ll only get if you’ve got professional scrubbers. He buys servers just to keep his name from blogs and web news.”

Morgana looked at the transfer student. “No wonder Reaper and the Phansite maker couldn’t find him.”

Akira edged forward in his seat. “But where is he?”

Ohya took another sip of beer, her eyes never leaving the transfer student. “That one was a lot harder. It looks like he doesn’t have any preferred hangouts. Best I could find is a hostess club named Spiral that he personally inspects several times a week.”

Morgana settled his feet closer in, the tip of his tail twitching back and forth. “That’s not enough, especially if it’s not a precious location to him. Kamoshida thought of the school as his personal domain, a place where his power could have no limits or question.”

Akira gave the team leader a shallow nod before looking back to the reporter. “No home?”

She sat back and took a deep swig of beer. “Two, one in Sumida-ku and another in Hana, Hawaii. Based on me being able to find them, I’m pretty sure they’re business show-houses and not hearth and home.”

Akira pulled out his phone, a few ideas buzzing in his head but nothing concrete enough to make a search. Mishima was so much better at this kind of thing.

Morgana paced higher up the transfer student’s padded chair arms. “See if she’s been able to find out what his distortion is.”

Swallowing, Akira brought up the chat and sent a ping out to Mishima. “So what’s this Kaneshiro’s obsession? Snorting china white? Whacking everybody who challenges him?”

Ohya paused, her beer halfway to her ruby-sheathed lips, one eyebrow quirked. “What difference would it make?”

Akira shrugged, feeling tension seep throughout his frame. His question gave something away, he could see it in the gears whirling behind her eyes. “Anything I can pass along could help the Phantom Thief.” His phone rumbled in his pocket and he looked down, glad for the distraction.

[What's up, Akira-san?] Mishima wrote.

[Would you be willing to give an interview or two about the Kamoshida thing to a reporter? We might be able to get some positive publicity out of this.]

Seconds passed and the transfer student imagined Mishima pacing in a small bedroom like Yoshida’s before responding. [I'll do anything I can to help the Phantom Thieves. My life is lighter than a feather.]

“And duty is heavier than a mountain,” Akira muttered, finishing the old adage. Thanking Mishima, he closed the chat. Looking up, the reporter held her stance, so he took the sheet. “His name is Mishima. Shujin. You want me to email you his number?”

She took a deep drink, finishing the last of her beer, then nodded. “If you want a journalist’s intuition, Kaneshiro runs on money. Just…” her brows knitted together, “don’t get caught, kid.”

Akira nodded, stood, and collected his satchel to go.

Before he reached the door, Ohya smiled. She held her hand to her eye, finger and thumb curled into a circle. “Be seeing you.”

He trotted down the narrow hall but paused at the top of the stairs and brought up the Navigator. “Kaneshiro Junya.”

“Candidate found.”

“Yes!” Akira pumped a fist and jostled the team leader hiding in his satchel.

“That was step one,” Morgana cautioned him. “We still need a location and distortion. For now, let’s meet up with the others.”

Akira entered Spiral Hostess Club into the location.

The Nav’s synthesized voice blurted, “Condition has not been met.”

“Fuck,” he spat before he trotted down the stairs and back to Ann. He strode out to the bar where Ann slapped a hand on the bar and snorted with laughter, the bartender in blue giggling along with.

Lala looked up at him and gave a wave. “You came just a minute late, Sugar. I was just telling your darling friend here about my first month running Crossroads.”

Ann turned around on the stool and braced at his frown. “You didn’t get it?”

Morgana poked his head out of the bag. “His name, yes. His location and distortion, no.”

Akira faltered. “Well, we don’t know the whole bit for sure, but we have leads.”

Lala chuckled. “You sound so much like Ichiko-chan used to.” She glanced at a quartet of small monitors hanging down just behind the bar, then clapped her hands to her cheeks. “Oh, my. It’s getting late! You kids are delectable, but it’s almost curfew.”

Ann grabbed the half-full glass and took a deep drink of the orange liquid filtering between half-melted ice cubes, then set it down. “Thanks for the fruit juice, Lala-san!” She took him by the arm and they hustled outside, where far fewer people prowled the streets. Once nobody lingered close enough to overhear, she leaned in closer to him. “So what happened?”

Morgana popped up out of Akira’s satchel, resting his paws on his shoulder. “The mafia leader’s name is a start, Lady Ann! All we need to do is piece together his distortion and location.”

A strange man’s voice, spoken just a little higher than his natural register, said, “Ooh, look at the potential in this one!”

Turning to the speaker, the transfer student saw two men in bright, flamboyant garb approaching. “And the one he has on his arm… well, the hair’s so bland, but that dress is simply superb!”

Ann raised an eyebrow, unsure whether she was being praised or insulted. She ended up settling on a smile. “Um, thanks.”

The flamboyant man with a white scarf tied around his neck reached for Akira’s wet, finger-combed-back hair. “Oh, no, no, no! He’s not taking proper care of that mane of his.”

While that one reached out at him, the other closed on Ann.

Akira brought up his left leg, but instead of kicking, his hand slipped into the boot and came out with a flick knife that sprang open with a click. Stepping between Ann and the weirdos, Akira held it up to the reaching man’s face. “Back off!”

Ann’s eyes snapped wide. “Akira, are you crazy? Put that away!”

Both flamboyant men cried out and fled down another street, but the commotion drew another cop on foot patrol. Swearing, Akira dropped the knife and ran with Ann all the way to the train station.

Pausing for breath, the two looked at each other and laughed. Ann gave him a soft look and said, “You shouldn’t have brought something like that, but thanks for being willing to step in. I know you meant well.”

Akira rubbed his gloved fingertips through his hair to get it back to normal. “Yeah, I’m better at being prepared than keeping it cool. See you at school tomorrow. Let’s get started on that bastard’s Palace, pronto.”

Notes:

There are two major reasons for the change to who accompanies Akira to Ohya. Taking Ryuji while he was still in his school uniform bothered me, not only did Morgana notice but he even pointed out it was a liability that could easily have landed Akira in jail for violating curfew while on probation. Second is the closer relationship he and Ann have, in the canon game Ryuji was the bro who survived the first trip to what Joseph Campbell would call the strange world. In Daywatch, it was Ann and she was nearly brutalized by her worst nightmare in front of him. Her even considering offering herself to keep Akira from being slowly killed was not lost on him.

With Ryuji out, there left much less room for the shoddy “laugh at gays or crossdressers” joke from the original game, and even though Royal’s English translators changed the script due to foreign fan backlash, it felt wrong for there not even to be an option for Akira to be a damn human and say “look folks, you’ve got it wrong. Ryuji’s my friend and he’s not into whatever you’re trying to push him.” Instead their presence became an opportunity to tease at the lingering demons inside that Akira has yet to defeat.

Mifune Chihaya was a very useful character for gameplay mechanics, but her plot always felt very forced to me. For one, it goes even wilder into “because magic” left field even for a setting where you have mind monsters. While there are a lot of people suckered by mysticism in Japan, there is a strong and growing current of rationalists who want nothing more than to leave those archaisms in the past. She isn’t forgotten, though. The fact that Akira can’t see a reason to exploit a relationship there doesn’t mean that another trickster couldn’t have noticed her.

Chapter 35: May 24th, Dark Shibuya

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Tuesday, 24 May 2016
After School
Shujin, Hallways

Ryuji twirled his pen between his fingers while waiting for the last bell to ring. Since Akira’s text that they got the scumbag mafioso’s name, he felt like he’d been riding a five-cup-of-Arginade high. The history teacher finally stopped rambling about the 80s slump, and the new class representative read off the end-of-day announcements and due dates. Even after a month, it still felt weird for some boring dude to end the day instead of Suzui-san, but her seat one ahead and two right of his remained empty.

The reminder dulled his enthusiasm when the bell rang and the other students sprang from their seats. Most days he would be with them, but somehow the reminder of the absence of the girl who had been his class rep since his start at Shujin sapped his energy. Even the junk in the trunk shaking each skirt getting up failed to perk him up.

Ryuji plugged his earbuds into his phone and put on some music to chill. The thudding beats helped get him to his feet and out of class, past some chick reading Fairy Tail.

Leaving his music going, he trotted out the front gates and paused to savor the sweet air of Free Tokyo. Leaving the trains at Shibuya station, his feet took him towards his line home before he remembered the mission and turned to ground level Station Square, passing a chick reading Fairy Tail.

Taking the stairs, Ryuji headed for the walkway in the Teikyuu building. Akira and Ann leaned against the rail, taking turns tossing words at his phone just for it to repeat: “Condition has not been met.”

Yo, dudes,” Ryuji greeted.

Pausing to shoot him a long-suffering glance, Akira tossed out without looking up, “Location and keyword’s all we need. Money bath?”

Condition has not been met.”

Ann crossed her arms. “Safe house?”

Condition has not been met.”

Ryuji tilted his head and looked at the two. “Uh, what exactly is this?”

A familiar, boyish voice let out a disgusted sigh before Morgana licked his paw and rubbed at his ear, “We only have his name , Reaper. The only location we know for sure that Kaneshiro has been to is the Spiral Hostess Club, but that didn’t result in a hit. So we’re still trying to figure out Kaneshiro’s distortion.”

Ryuji slipped his hands in his pockets. “Like a buried stash?”

Condition has not been met.”

Currency exchange,” Morgana tried.

Condition has not been met.”

Akira looked to Ann, at his right. “I’m starting to think we’ve gone through every possible synonym for money laundering. Wait, laundromat?”

Condition has not been met.”

Ya don’ think it’s about the drugs?” Ryuji leaned closer. “Maybe a warehouse?”

Condition has not been met.”

It’s not drugs, Ryuji,” Akira snapped. “And without a trail of bodies, I don’t think he’s the power-murder fantasy type. This dude’s richer than a king and he’s still ripping off high school students. Besides, Ann and I already went through all the names we can think of for distro facilities before you got here. It’s got to be the money.”

What about insurance?” a familiar female voice said from behind him.

Condition has not been met.”

Akira snapped straight, looking behind the track star to the student council president walking out from behind him. “What the hell are you thinking, bringing her here?”

Ryuji sidestepped, just as surprised as the others to see upperclassman Niijima standing next to him looking like she belonged there. “Where da eff you come from?”

Akira slapped his palm against his forehead.

Niijima clenched her jaw for just a moment. “The wave of scams targeting Shujin students is part of my duty as student council president,” she said in the same patronizing tone as teachers explaining a concept they thought everybody should know already.

Ann looked at her with narrow eyes, her arms crossed. “The acting principal tell you to find us?”

Akira looked back to his phone. “Can’t imagine why you’d want to hang out with criminals.” He looked down his nose and mocked, “I thought Shujin couldn’t handle such associations.”

Ann’s arms crossed tighter. “Only suicide and sexual harassment.”

When the student council president cringed, balling both hands into fists, Ryuji cleared his throat. “Dudes, I ain’t got much to stick up for, but I don’t think this is helpin’.” He looked to her, remembering the cold shoulder the teachers and disciplinary committee gave him. “You prolly don’t even know they’re just usin’ you, like Kamoshida used me to shut down the track team. Hell, I even feel sorry for ya. I got nothin’ to gain hatin’ on a pawn lettin’ shitty adults push her around.”

Niijima looked away and pulled in a deep breath. “I just want to help.”

Akira bared his teeth. “We don’t need your ‘help’, Madam President.”

She straightened and her eyes narrowed on him. “Even though I have the name of one of the clan’s ranking recruiters?”

Bloody eyeball app forgotten for a moment, Akira stomped one step closer, radiating indignance. “We already have the mafioso’s name. Thanks for nothing.”

Yeah,” Ryuji said, guessing Akira was just frustrated with their guessing game. “He’s Kaneshiro Junya.”

Akira’s palm slapped against his forehead again. “Don’t tell her, Ryuji.” He refocused on the upper-classman. “You’re not one of us. The ball’s in our court now.” His two fellow Shujin juniors cringed. “Okay, that was a bad choice of words. But like always you’re a day late and a yen short. Leave this to the real problem solvers.”

Joker,” Morgana reproached. “She already knows about us. It can’t hurt to have another mind to put towards figuring out his distortion. As long as we don’t bring her inside, she shouldn’t have to worry about the danger.”

Makes sense to me,” Ryuji said, shrugging his shoulders. “So we figure out where he hides out. Everybody has a home base.”

No we don’t,” Akira said.

Ryuji crossed his arms. “C’mon, man.”

Akira spread his hands out. “What? If home is where the heart rests easy, I don’t have one. There’s a reason I learned to sleep with my back to the wall.”

What about Yoshida?” Ann straightened her school satchel straps on her shoulder, her eyes scrutinizing the transfer in that weird way that made him unsure what she thought or how he should take it.

Girls were weird.

Akira rolled his eyes to the overcast sky out the windows. “Come on . We played video games a couple times because he lost at Go . He woulda never stuck his neck out for me even if we did both go out hat-snatching. And he never faked like he would, just like he knew I would’ve never stuck my neck out for him.” He shrugged. “But… I mean, that just made it easier for me to go other places.” Akira looked at him and Ann, his gaze softening for a moment. Then they unfocused and the hardness returned to his face. “Then there’s some folks who are like… anywhere they go, it’s theirs . Like that douchebag chairman the old bastard would always roll out the red carpet for. It was like he owned anywhere he went and fuck on anyone who didn’t bow fast enough.”

Ryuji felt a tad dizzy trying to keep up. “Well… how’re we s’posed to find some guy who’s been stealin’ from all of Shibuya?”

Candidate found.”

All four of the others – including the cat – gasped. Morgana looked from the active phone to him, “I don’t believe it, Reaper. You’re amazing!”

Ann nodded, her eyes still wide. “I’ve got to hand it to you, Ryuji. That was a stroke of luck like we’ve been waiting for.”

This freak’s distortion is all of Shibuya?” Akira looked back to his phone, the creepy bleeding eyeball app filling the screen. “Geez. Now all we need is what he thinks of his distortion. A loan shark’s stash?”

Condition has not been met.”

Morgana shifted, wrapping his tail around his feet. “Maybe it has something to do with shell companies? He owns plenty of places to hide his money.”

Real estate office?” Ryuji proposed.

Condition has not been met.”

Akira crossed his feet. “Money markets?”

Condition has not been met.”

Niijima held her right arm in her left. “It’s possible that you all are on the wrong track trying to think of illegitimate places that organized crime ends up laundering their money. One of the things that most criminals, almost all regular people want, is to feel normal. What about something simple, where people withdraw money?”

Ryuji looked at the transfer student’s phone. “An ATM?”

Condition has not been met.”

Ann stared at the student council president for a moment, then tried, “A bank?”

Match found. Beginning Navigation. Target: Bael.”

Akira tapped his phone and the home screen shone up at him before he slipped his phone in his pocket.

Dude,” Ryuji blurted, hands jerking from his pockets, “What the eff? We just found the king d-bag and you wanna back out?”

No. But this is for the fixers, not the bean counters sitting back to wait for their orders from on high.” Akira’s narrow gaze fell on the student council president. “It’s our turn now.” He picked up his school satchel and walked away, leaving the upper-classman staring after them with her hand clenched on the railing.

Ryuji shrugged and followed the rest of the Phantom Thieves. Once they found a quiet nook to duck into, the transfer student slid his phone back out and hit the app.

His stomach twisted and the world bled as everything warped together into a freakish mish-mash collapsing in on itself. Then lines straightened, though the sky was overcast and dark as twilight. Wind blew bits of paper through the streets, no bright advertisements or street lights to brighten the gloom. Looking down at himself, Ryuji was disappointed to see his Shujin uniform. “Aw, man. I was hopin’ for that sweet jacket and steel-toed boots.”

Akira scratched his head and looked down at the catboy. “Weren’t we always in those thief outfits everywhere in Kamoshida’s castle?”

Morgana drew a squared metal rod. “That was while we were inside his treasured domain, a place his subconscious innately tried to push out everything he couldn’t control. It’s possible this isn’t the ‘inner sanctum’ of Kaneshiro’s Palace. Until we’ve crossed some sort of boundary or threatened his psyche in some way, there won’t be any of that friction which causes your transformation.”

Akira snapped his fingers. “So like an immune response, until his subconsciousness perceives us as a threat, we’re just unimportant static?”

Morgana squinted, teeth clenched in discomfort. “Basically. Some personalities have an extremely narrow field of importance, and others are hostile to even the faintest traces of something happening outside their direction.” Morgana pressed a button on his metal rod and it popped open into his crossbow. “In any case, we’ve gotten into the mafioso’s Palace. Our mission is the same as before: secure a route to the Treasure, send the calling card, and change his heart.”

Ryuji clicked his RMB-93 shotgun together and slipped his school bag back behind his arms. “Awright! It’s time to do this!”

Akira unfolded his KEDR’s wire stock and nodded to Ann, then followed Morgana out into the windy street. For such weird proportions, the catboy moved like an anime ninja, zipping from cover to cover.

Akira, the second one out, was the first to freeze on the cracked and dirty street. When Ryuji got out of the little alley, he realized why. Despite the dim twilight, small groups of honest-to-god ATMs on stubby legs stood along the sidewalks up and down Shibuya’s central street.

One of the bits of blowing paper slapped against Ryuji’s shotgun and he reached out to take it, noting the rectangular thing was more colorful than it appeared from a distance. When he picked it up, he saw the two-thousand-yen bill’s portrait of Naha’s famed gate. “This is the best Palace ever!”

Focus, Reaper.” Morgana peeked out from behind a delivery truck sitting on cinderblocks, its wheels gone.

Giving catboy a dirty look, Ryuji walked up to one of the ATMs, noting its screen had a partial display for a withdrawal. “What the eff is this?”

The machine gave what Ryuji would’ve sworn was a resigned sigh, and then a couple yen notes spat out of its cash slot. Confused, but not enough to look a gift horse in the mouth, Ryuji bent down and picked them up, then smiled. “Hey, sweet. Easiest ten thousand I ever made.”

Ryuji!” Ann jogged closer, wary like she expected the machine to explode or something. “You can’t just take money from a strange… ATM… person… thing.”

Why not?” Ryuji blinked at her.

She took a step closer, her pretty blue eyes blazing. “Because—” She stepped in front of the ATM and it gave another dejected sound before spitting out another note. Ryuji reached around her for it and she snatched it from under his hand. “It’s weird!”

Hey,” Ryuji leaned back against her, almost pressing forehead to forehead with the dumb blonde. “These guns that I got for you ain’t free. That flashlight attachment you bought and folding wire stock Akira got cost dough, so why not? It’s just financin’ Phantom Thief stuff.”

Akira kept his KEDR up like he expected an ambush at every moment. The dude really needed to smoke a blunt and chill. “Okay, so there’s creepy ATMs with feet everywhere, but shouldn’t there be a bank somewhere?”

Morgana looked up at him. “Well, Reaper, this Palace appears to mirror Shibuya so far. However, I think we can safely assume Kaneshiro’s Palace isn’t a bank. At least not at a real one. It wouldn’t be a distortion that way. The heart of his Palace must be something else.”

Ryuji growled at the talking cat-boy the others elected leader. “Do you know how many buildings there are in Shibuya?”

Ann rolled her eyes clear enough for him to see through her mask. “There’s a big one six blocks this way.”

Morgana transformed into the bus and Ryuji groaned about the lost opportunity to grab for blowing yen notes along the way until they reached an insurance building his mom frequented, though the lights in its sign and lobby were out. The doors lay on the floor as if both rusted out of their hinges years ago, more of the ATMs resembling hunched people scattered inside.

Akira jumped a line to an ATM where a front desk clerk should be. It made the same resigned sigh and offering of bills, but the transfer student waved his KEDR in the air. “Okay, where is Kaneshiro Junya?”

A synthesized sigh passed out of the ATM. “Please, just take your money and go. That’s all we’re good for.”

Ann looked around the room. Her hand clenched on the Grach held against her side, but at least she kept her finger out of the trigger well. “I can’t believe this is what he sees people like.”

Morgana came to her side, definitely checking out her ass. Not that it wasn’t fine. “Well, his distortion was a bank, and of all Shibuya. In its own perverse way, it makes sense for him to view everyone in it as his patron.”

Ryuji scoffed. “Then where’s the chicks, cool cars, and other stuff rich dudes buy tons of? What’s the point of money except to do stuff with it?”

Akira took the bills and examined them like he expected test answers. “Well, despite their financial options, the wealthy spend far less of their income on food, housing, even cars and boats. They tend to dump it into sheltered financial markets that keep it away from the poor.” He pocketed the cash from what should be a receptionist. “And to some degree, I get it. That sanitized account I made was supposed to be savings for an emergency, but I keep having to drain it for the doctor’s visits.”

Ryuji walked up to another ATM-person just standing in the middle of the lobby and it shuddered before extending more yen notes. “Huh. Three thousand.” He waved his hand in front of its bill slot and another bill spat out. “One thousand.”

Reaper!” Ann stomped closer.

What?” he snapped back. “I’m just seein’ what’s here.”

Morgana trotted closer and waved, using his crossbow to extend his reach. The ATM spat out another thousand-yen note. “Does this mean he thinks people always have more money?”

Ryuji shrugged and took the note. “Makes sense for a rich dude. Seems like they always think everyone always has more money.” He ground his teeth, fist clenching over the bills in his hand. “Like the bank that kept houndin’ ma after she left pops.”

Akira punched the ATM and roared, “Where is Kaneshiro?”

Kaneshiro is a higher person. He leaves no tracks,” its melancholic, synthesized voice said.

Ann sighed in that girly way like she was watching a limping puppy.

Akira kicked one of the unused chairs, sending it toppling. “Why is everything in my life one step forward and one jump back?”

Ryuji began to reconsider his praise back when he told the transfer student he was awesome for letting everything roll off his back.

Morgana switched his grip on his crossbow. “Let’s not lose sight of our objective. However repulsive – or just weird – Kaneshiro’s distortion is, it doesn’t change the plan. Secure a route to his Treasure and change his heart.”

Akira’s lips twisted for a moment before he turned for the street, then scrambled back to right the chair, and head back for the street. “Let’s scope out this twisted Shibuya. Reaper, where’s the next sky…”

After waiting several seconds for Akira to finish his sentence or do anything, Ryuji walked out after him. “Dude, you miss out on sleep or… whoa.”

Easy as a balloon, high above Shibuya floated an enormous disk. A series of concentric rings covered its bottom, the weak wind swirling through Shibuya converging up into its center like a vacuum, sucking up all the money in the borough.

Akira stared up, mouth hanging just a little open. “Byakko, you don’t happen to be able to cognition yourself into a helicopter to get us up there, do you?”

Catboy looked up at the transfer student with a glare. “It’s not like I gain new powers for each Palace I infiltrate. There wasn’t exactly room for the minibus in Kamoshida’s Castle.”

Akira’s lips pressed into thin lines. “That thing might as well be in Ha’tak up in orbit.”

Ann came out behind them, staring up at the floating disk. “Well, how the hell are we supposed to get up there?”

Ryuji looked down to Morgana’s crossbow. “Hey, don’t ninja in anime have grappling hooks ‘n stuff?”

Morgana glared at him. “Ninjas in anime can also duplicate and fly . Any crossbow capable of launching something as heavy as a grapnel wouldn’t be able to get it as far as that flying palace.” He stared up at the flying disk for a long moment before letting out a sigh. “We’ve reached a cognitive block, everyone. Let’s reconvene in the real world and hope we can figure out another way in.”

Notes:

Royal added a "grappling hook" which, much like the very convenient device in Ratchet & Clank, but that idea works best with a singular hero. It's not so easy to integrate such an idea into a more realistic narrative where your temmates can't teleport after the hero.

A big thanks to all those who comment.

Chapter 36: May 24th, Lead Me Not

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Tuesday, 24 May 2016
Early Evening
Shibuya, Teikyu Building

Akira paced next to the others, looking through the list of now-defunct bookmarks in the Metaverse Navigator. Ann grumped next to him, and Morgana sat in much the same state from inside the school satchel.

Only Ryuji seemed to share his burning need to inflict violence on something in an effort to make something right, or just to do something. He held his rage in check until coming across a discarded plastic bottle in the road as they trudged back towards Shibuya station. “I can’t believe we got nothin’ after all that work!”

Akira shoved through a herd of businessman trudging out.

Ann grabbed the transfer student’s arm and pulled him to the corner. “Akira!”

Morgana’s ears remained curled as he groused in Akira’s school satchel. “It looks like our luck has run out. After all the Palaces I’ve visited, I never imagined one would have its sanctum in the sky. How could I possibly counter that?”

Ryuji walked around a gaggle of college students heading home, his frown deep but his hands in his pockets. “What’re we gonna do, ask the real Kaneshiro?”

Niijima slipped out of the crowd behind them. “Having some difficulties?”

Ann turned a hooded gaze on the student council girl, too tired to be a real glare. “Did someone tell you to eavesdrop? Or sit on your high horse and look down on us? At least we’re trying.”

Ryuji cleared his throat. “Dudes, she ain’t the enemy.”

Her words in the student council room echoed in his mind, “What would the police think if I were to send this recording to them?”

Akira adjusted the satchel strap on his shoulder. “Don’t be so sure of that.”

Joker,” Morgana poked his head out of the satchel. “We could have a mutually beneficial agreement.”

Niijima tucked her manga in her school bag. “Perhaps—”

Akira whirled on her, ignoring the crowd. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Would you just go away? This isn’t a situation calling for middle management to helicopter around until a trouble-shooter solves the problem for you. You’re worse than useless!”

Niijima cringed like he gut-punched her. He’d have sworn he saw light glinting at the corners of her eyes before she blinked, anger and something else flashing through her eyes before she straightened with an unnerving calm. “So, you want to talk to Kaneshiro Junya?”

Akira pondered whether to try throwing her off with a joke or if a satisfying verbal barb would do the trick.

“Then you get Kaneshiro.” She dashed between them and out the door.

Akira paled, his eyes widening. He didn’t need to see how Masa treated Takemi to know that the best she could look forward to would be floating face-down out of Tokyo Bay. He was pissed she threatened his friends, but didn’t want her brutalized and murdered. He took off after her, but stumbled to a stop when a grey-haired man in a shabby office suit strode in through the door. The transfer student looked to Ryuji, who began running alongside. “Stop her!”

Ryuji nodded and launched off through the crowd, ducking and weaving through the crowd with a dexterity of years of practice. Easy back-and-forth like the strokes of a swimmer, picking one way and then the next to race through the crowd. It was so graceful in its own way the transfer student gawked.

Shibuya, Central Street

Ryuji leaped over an unauthorized street-side jewelry dealer, cutting through the crowd like a race to the school gate. If it wasn’t for the student council president’s braid, he’d have lost her among the sea of other dark-haired girls in the evening Shibuya crowds. Slipping around some old granny with a walker, Ryuji closed enough to see her flag down a cab.

“Spiral Hostess Club,” she said.

“Shit, she was listenin’ in on us,” Ryuji spat. Skidding past a trio of children, he caught the door before she could close it. “Are you totes crazy?”

She commanded, “Drive.”

When the taxi began to move, he leaped inside, hopping to the opposite seat.

The taxi stopped and the driver looked into the back seat. “I’m not getting involved in any fight between you an’ yer boyfriend.”

Ryuji choked on air.

“Just drive.” Niijima closed the door, her voice just as authoritative as last time. Without making eye contact, she pulled on her seat-belt.

Knowing trying to physically force her out would just end up with the cops carting him off, Ryuji followed suit. Taking that as good enough, the driver turned around and put his foot on the gas.

Ryuji looked over at the stoic girl hitching a ride to some place filled with gangsters. Now that he was faced with the prospect of talking a girl down, he wished Akira didn’t have that damn fear of crowds so he could’ve done it. Not that she wasn’t easy on the eyes. He leaned closer to hiss under his breath so the driver might not hear, “Prez, these ain’t the kinda folks to screw around with.”

“Neither am I,” she snapped back without any attempt to keep her volume down, her crimson eyes still on the road up front.

He ran his fingers through his hair, trying to think of a way to convince her not to throw both their lives away. Keeping his voice down, he tried reasoning with her, “Prez, these ain’t the kinda guys that’re gonna be impressed with winnin’ a student council election. They got people that handle things in alleys at night.”

She rounded on him, her eyes blazing, pricks of light glinting at their corners. “The kind of thugs that my fellow students begged me for help with.” Her breath hitched. “How long am I supposed to do nothing, Sakamoto-kun? How long should I wait for somebody else to take care of the problem for me? Isn’t that exactly what you all were just condemning me for? For doing nothing for Suzui-kun? For doing nothing for Kiriko-san?”

Ryuji recognized the name of the shoe-in for StuCo president before she transferred out without a word to anyone. He opened his mouth, closed it, and opened it again. This girl held onto things even longer than Akira.

The cab driver pulled to a narrow access road with openings to a small parking garage. “Spiral club is just past this parkin’ buildin’ here.”

Niijima pulled out her wallet and paid at the machine bolted into the back of the driver’s seat, ignoring Ryuji’s protestations.

Scrambling to keep up, he slapped the seat-belt away and stumbled out after her. Out of the taxi, he abandoned any pretense of staying low-key and reached for her. “Prez! For real, you don’ wanna do this!”

Niijima shrugged off his hand and marched on through the concrete parking structure. It reminded him way too much of Akira’s march on Kamoshida. Before coming to the pedestrian exit, she drew her phone and dialed.

Akira’s voice came from its speaker. “Niijima, are you fucking insane? Get back here before you cross a line they will not let you come back from. Blackmail like they’ve got on Iida are kiddie games to them. These are the kind of bastards that run sex slavery.”

“Stay on the line and listen,” she snapped, her face focused and open hand curling into a fist. “You might want to record, too.” She opened her phone’s settings and tapped. Akira’s protestations went silent.

“Prez!” Ryuji had just enough time to say before she strode out of the parking garage to a tall building with signs for half a dozen businesses inside. One emblazoned with ‘Spiral’. “He’s serious! We all are. This is the yakuza!”

Niijima yanked her arm out of his hand and power-walked in, then up the stairs to Spiral. She burst in without the niceties he thought were programmed in her. “Where is Kaneshiro Junya?” she demanded of the front hostess.

The girl behind the front desk gave a clenched smile. “This is just a hostess club, miss.”

Ryuji couldn’t imagine that physically hauling her out now could be any worse than the steaming pile of dangerous shit she was trying to step into, so he grabbed Niijima by the elbow and tried to pull her away, only for the student council president to go all Bruce Lee on his ass, spinning him around and pinning him to the front hostess’ desk.

Niijima stared into the hostess’ wide eyes. “I know Kaneshiro is here.” She straightened and looked out at the pairs of businessmen and girls in costumes showing off their curves. “Kaneshiro is peddling drugs throughout Shibuya and blackmailing high school students!”

The quieted conversations burst into a murmur and two of the men stood up and slipped out.

Refocusing on the hostess, Niijima added with a still raised voice, “I want to talk to him now. Or I bring the police in on it.”

Another handful of businessmen decided to make a hasty exit. One of the suited men lounging around a door in the back stood, straightened his jacket, and walked up to the front desk.

Beads of sweat broke out across the hostess’ face. “Please don’t cause a commotion, miss. Nobody wants any trouble.”

The man with small piercings in his ears and nose glared down at Niijima. “Whatta you makin’ up shit against a respectable businessman like Kaneshiro for? Beat it.”

“Yeah,” Ryuji said, still pinned to the front desk. “We’ll just be going now. C’mon, prez.” She pressed with way more muscle than he thought a girl could have and he couldn’t budge.

Seeing that raising her voice got at least some reaction, Niijima shouted, “Kaneshiro is running the Shibuya mafia and anybody spending money at his business is supporting the mob!” As another handful of businessmen made their exit, she glared right back at Pierced Muscle-head glaring down at her. “If he’s not here, you’d better take me to Kaneshiro right now!”

“Please,” the hostess begged as another man in a generic suit walked from his station at a door to the back. She gestured both hands down as if that would make any impact on the student council president. “Nobody wants any trouble.”

Pierced Muscle-head reached for her and Niijima let go of Ryuji so she could snag his wrist and hold him off. Pierced Muscle-head’s lip quirked. “This boy’s smarter’n you are. Might want to do what he says and make yourself scarce before someone makes you.”

Niijima snapped, “I’ll only make more of a scene until I talk directly to Kaneshiro Junya.”

The other thug in a nice suit reached into his jacket. When Ryuji caught sight of a holstered gun, he felt himself break out in a cold sweat, but instead the thug drew a flip-phone and dialed a number. “Boss? We got a problem child up at the front. Permission to… take care of things?”

The upper-classman shouted at his phone. “My name is Niijima Makoto and I’m not going anywhere until I talk to Kaneshiro Junya!”

Ryuji caught a burst of some dude’s raised voice for a moment from the flip-phone before Suited Thug frowned. “You either got real good luck or real bad, girlie. Boss will see you now.”

Pierced Muscle-head jerked his hand out of her grip and led the two high-schoolers to the door in the back. He knocked three times with a brief pause after the second knock. A bar latch on the inside scraped before the door swung open, another meathead inside. Pierced Muscle-head plopped down into a chair next to a small table with cards. Meathead Two and Suited Thug escorted them to a private room several doors down the brick-faced hallway.

Inside a room lit by soft blue and purple lights rested plush couches. A laptop rested on a glass-topped, circular table strewn with fancy booze bottles. An overweight man with thick, brown hair looked up at the high-schoolers with a sneer. He kicked up his feet on the table and put his arm around a hot woman wearing a skimpy black dress. “Word to the foolish: time is money and right now you’re wasting both of mine.”

Niijima glared at the obese man in a silk suit.

Musclehead Two punched her across the side of the head, sending her stumbling into Ryuji.

Kaneshiro sat up, his feet thumping on the ground and rage twisting over his face. “Fucking idiot! Do you have any idea who she is?” He scooted forward on his padded couch, giving the lackey no time to answer. “That’s our leverage against the fearsome and until now untouchable prosecutor Niijima Sae.”

His upperclassman gasped with wide eyes and Ryuji helped her stand.

Kaneshiro waved a lazy hand at Ryuji. “He, on the other hand, is a nobody.”

Suited Thug snapped a sudden punch into Ryuji’s gut, sending the track star crumpling, breathless, to the ground.

“Sakamoto!” Niijima scrambled to get between him and Suited Thug. “Keep your hands off him!”

Kaneshiro laughed. “Are you really that clueless about where you are, little girl? If it wasn’t for your sister, you’d be nothing but an hors d’oeuvre for my loyal employees before you went away, never to be seen again.” He sneered. “Him, on the other hand? I’ve seen a million trash like him on the streets. Without him, there’d still be a million trash out there. Brainless shitstains like him wouldn’t even know what to do with a thousand yen. When I was in high school I was turning one thousand yen into ten, getting ahead of the internet revolution. Now no shitstains like you or Medjed could stop me.”

Meathead Two kicked Ryuji in the chest as he tried to stand, sending him crumpling again with a moan.

Suited Thug reached to shove Niijima out of the way, only for her to snag his wrist and spin on the balls of her feet, hurling him over her shoulder into the wall.

Another thug in a generic suit, standing across the room, snatched a GSh-18 pistol from inside his coat, lining it up with Ryuji’s heart.

Niijima froze, breathing heavy but crouched low and waiting for the next person to move.

Kaneshiro bared his teeth. “Understand? I eat shits like you for breakfast.” He leaned back and smirked, then eyed Suited Thug, held up two fingers and twitched them forward.

Just as the track star began to rise, both hands up as he stared into the GSh-18, Suited Thug kicked him in the ribs, knocking him coughing to the ground. The impacts before hurt, but now each breath caused a dull burning sensation.

“Stop it!” Niijima took a quick step at him, only for Meathead Two to wrap both hands around her torso and pull her back. When she stopped, he reached up to cop a feel with one hand. When Niijima pushed at the limb, the suited man with a GSh-18 lined up with Ryuji’s head. She trembled when Meathead Two squeezed at her.

Kaneshiro sat back, taking on a stony expression. “This is the power that unlimited money provides. Power like nothing else in this world can give. And here is the first new rule from the one who has to my new little patrons: run your mouth and I break both of you. Rule two: when I find it convenient, I call you and you get your hotshot sister to back off whatever case I say.” His posture relaxed. “There’s also the matter of lost revenue because of that shit you pulled up front, but I think a million yen by the first of June should cover it.” He swished his hand at the door, all back to relaxed smiles. “Now go.”

Suited Thug swung a left haymaker into Ryuji’s head, sending the track star stumbling into the door. Stars exploded in his eyes.

Meathead Two released his grasp from Niijima’s chest and she dashed away from him, taking the stumbling Ryuji and helping him out the door. “Sakamoto, I am so sorry.” Her eyes glistened and she sniffled as she led him back to the door, Meathead Two trailing them. “I never meant for you to get involved. I never meant for any of this to happen.”

Remembering the staunch quiet he had to dredge up when his father stumbled home in one of his alcohol-fueled rages, Ryuji just said, “Out.”

Meathead Two locked the door behind them as Niijima guided Ryuji back to the front of the hostess club.

Her breathing began to get faster as she led him out down the stairs. “This wasn’t supposed to happen, Sakamoto-kun.”

Holding a hand over his burning ribs, he turned his eyes to hers. “We all said this would happen.” His phone rang, but his ribs hurt too much to fish it out of his pocket, so he just strode out the business tower’s front entrance.

Shibuya, Parking Garage near Spiral

Sure they should see them by now, Akira ended the recording and closed the call so he could focus on looking for the blonde and brunette. The air felt thin and his heart hammered in his chest. Stepping out of the shadows of the concrete parking garage, he looked across the narrow road to a business tower with ‘Spiral’ marked for the second floor.

Ann shifted her weight from foot to foot and cut the call. “Ryuji’s not answering.”

The door opened and Ryuji limped out, Makoto following right after, her eyes glistening. She had one arm wrapped around her middle and her lips trembled.

Ann raced off from his side and gave a relieved “Ryuji, you made it out!” as she threw her arms around him.

He let out an agonized gasp.

Akira grabbed Niijima by the shoulders. “You idiot, you could’ve been killed!”

Tears streamed down Niijima’s face and she surged within his outstretched arms to clamp hers around him and bury her face in his neck. “I’m sorry.” Her arms trembled. “I’m so sorry.” Her whole body shook. “I didn’t mean for this to happen.”

Akira went stiff, wanting nothing more than to push the shaking student council president away. Yet, her tears and the tremors were different than when his mother cried to make a man compliant. Fearing that she’d either break into fragments or pull a hidden knife and fly into a rage, he just stood there, waiting for her to stop and do something comprehensible.

Ann slipped Ryuji’s arm around her shoulders to help him walk before looking to the transfer student. “We’d better get out of here. I know Kaneshiro let ‘em out alive, but…”

“Right,” Akira responded, calm now that he had an objective not involving a girl shaking like a motor about to spin itself out. Returning to the access road, he pinged a taxi to take them to Takemi’s clinic. Once it arrived, he slipped a hand around her middle to help guide her into the vehicle.

The whole trip, Niijima repeated, “I’m sorry.” By the time they arrived in Yongen, she went quiet but refused to unlatch from Akira.

Inside, they all sat down at the far end of the waiting room while Takemi finished with a patient already in back. Akira sat down at separate chairs, hoping it would force Niijima to let go of him, but no such luck.

The upper-classman’s phone played a jazzy tune, and at last she unlatched. ‘Blocked’ stared up at her from the address of the strange email. When she opened it, an attachment showed a picture from a security camera in the corner of the private room in Spiral. Ryuji lay curled on the floor, one of the suited goons holding his arms over her torso, one hand squeezing her budding breast.

Ann flinched at the clear blackmail. “You going to be okay, Senpai?”

After a moment, she took in a deep breath. She brushed at her shirt with one hand. “I didn’t mean to drag you in like this, Sakamoto-kun.”

Akira shifted the arm she cried on, feeling the wetness getting into his undershirt. “It was the yakuza, I don’t know what else you were expecting.”

Morgana sat down before the group, his tail swishing behind him. “No beating up a lady, verbally or physically.”

Akira rolled his eyes, but with his arm now freed he reached into the left pocket of his Shujin uniform for a mini-packet of tissues.

“You’re right,” Niijima said, accepting the offered tissues. “I was stupid. I got so caught up in trying to do something for once in my life, I didn’t just walk myself into danger, I made enemies for Sakamoto.”

“It ain’t that bad.” Ryuji shifted in his seat and hissed, clutching his chest.

Akira glanced at the picture filling her smart phone screen. “What on Earth made you go and do something so reckless?”

Niijima chuffed, not quite a laugh but not a sob. “I just… The best I’ve ever been is a burden. After dad died in the line of duty, Big Sis did her best to keep everything going. She was always so… focused, so driven. She homed in on one thing like a laser-guided missile and nothing ever got in her way.” She bit her lip and wiped at her face. “I always… wanted to be like her. Unstoppable. She always knew what to do.” She cringed and wiped her hand down her shirt. “And now Kaneshiro’s going to expect me to make things even harder for her.”

Morgana’s ear flicked. “Is that the prosecutor she mentioned in the student council room?”

Ann arched an eyebrow. “Your sis is a prosecutor?”

Nodding, Niijima turned her phone off and put it away. “She’s one of the head prosecutors in the Special Investigative Division.” She jerked, then let out a cough and her bloodshot eyes started glistening again. “She’s going to lose her job because of me.”

Morgana puffed out his chest. “Nonsense, we’ll find a way to fix this before anything happens to her.”

Niijima looked up at Ann. “I… I should also apologize to you, too. The whole school covered up Kamoshida’s crimes for… I don’t even know how long. I couldn’t do anything about it.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “No, I didn’t do anything about it. If I really cared, I’d have done something. Instead I just did what everybody else said. I could have stopped him before he ruined your life at that school. Maybe even Kiriko-san’s.” She looked down, her shoulders hunched. “I really am the worst human being ever.”

Akira swatted her across the top of the head, knocking her hairband off-center. “Real douche-bags never know they’re douche-bags.”

Morgana’s eyes narrowed. “Akira…”

Ann looked to the small team leader and sighed. “I’m not so different. Me and Yuuki were the closest people to Shiho, but we didn’t do anything. I don’t think I’ll ever stop wondering what might have happened if you at least tried to help Shiho, but…” She straightened, turning a cold glare at no point in particular across the room. “Kamoshida’s the one who actually did it.”

Morgana’s ears curled down as he looked up at the student council president. “I guess you’re just like the rest of us. None of us had anywhere to belong either.”

Ryuji let out a sigh, then winced. “If we could just get to that damn flyin’ palace, we could take care of all this, no prob’.”

Ann smoothed out one of her pigtails. “So what do we do from here?”

Morgana’s tail swished as he pondered for a moment. “Whether in the real world or in the Metaverse, we’re all Kaneshiro’s targets now.” He looked Akira in the eye. “Think we should bring her in, see if she can divine a solution we missed?”

Akira took off his glasses and pulled out a microfiber cloth to clean them. “I don’t see how it could make anything worse.”

Straightening her hair band, Niijima looked around at them, then wiped at her shirt with her hand. “I’m afraid I don’t follow.”

The door to the interior of the clinic opened and Doctor Takemi strode out, her stethoscope bouncing and a no-nonsense expression on her face. “So what do we have?”

An elderly woman trudged out from the back, her rubber-soled cane making a quiet pok, pok sound as she crossed the lobby.

Takemi walked up to the group huddled at the far end of the small lobby. She bent down to examine Niijima’s face, taking her chin in hand and rotating her head left, then right to examine the developing bruise. Her eyes flicked to Akira. “I thought you said there was nothing to worry about, and the yakuza weren’t going to be a problem?”

“It’s not…” After a sigh, Akira put his glasses back on so he could see the far side of the room. “Okay, this time it was the yakuza. But we have everything under control.”

Niijima pointed at the dyed-blond trying to look stoic. “And he’s the one who’s actually injured. This is nothing.”

Akira sighed and looked to the slender woman in a white coat. “Just…put him on my tab. I’ll come by and pay his bill tomorrow.”

Ryuji followed the doctor into the back, not doing a good enough job of subtlety as he checked out her legs while limping into the back.

Morgana’s tail twitched and he turned on Niijima. “Before we break, we may have the perfect opportunity to have somebody look in on all those names we’ve been changing at Mementos.”

Akira’s brows furrowed. “You really think we can push that on her now?”

Niijima looked from the transfer student to the guide-trapped-in-cat-form and back. “Are you all okay?”

Morgana stood, his tail held aloft like a tiger about to pounce. After a beat, it returned to a slow swish and he looked to the transfer student. “You already know the idea, would you just tell her?”

When Akira hesitated, Ann jumped in. “Could your big sister take names of people who are about to have a change of heart? We went through a lot of people in Mementos while looking for Kaneshiro’s name.”

Akira nodded. “A lotta prosecutors are always looking to add another feather to their cap. Could she trade names of compliant perps for favors from cops or other prosecutors?”

Makoto brushed her hair back, eyes zoning out for a moment. Her eyes fell to the floor and her hand curled, fingernails biting into her palm. “I don’t know. I tried to talk to her about the Phantom Thief on Monday…” He thought he saw her shoulders shudder before she bit her lip. “I’m not sure she’d trust changes of hearts. She even mentioned bringing in a consultant, though last I knew the Shirogane Detective Agency hasn’t responded to her requests.” She tapped her fingertips on her chin as if doing so would drive her neurons.

Akira pulled out his phone to look at the bookmarks they pursued in Mementos. “I’d rather they rot in prison than float out to sea.” He put his phone in sleep mode. “I mean, I’d rather they could just live better. Prison’s supposed to be for people who won’t change.”

Ann sent him a soft look. “Because their situation is a lot like yours? All you want is a chance to live a good life.”

He looked away, wondering if Hifumi or Father Sugiyama would have such a generous interpretation of his future if they knew how many fights he threw himself into in the past. If they knew how many injuries he’d caused.

Niijima searched his face as if expecting some kind of clue there. “You’re really that concerned about the fates of scam artists and drug dealers?”

Akira straightened his glasses. “We wouldn’t have changed their hearts if we didn’t give a damn. But any day now there’s gonna be a bunch of drug pushers and con artists waking up to what they’ve been doing to Shibuya. While surrounded by other drug dealers. If we’re not willing to let people have a change of heart, what’s the difference between us and the Republic of Greater East Asia?”

Ann scoffed. “Hey, I had to read Battle Royale for language arts class, too. We’re not that bad!”

“Right,” Niijima agreed, her stance relaxing just a little. “Those dystopias kill people. It’s not at all the same thing.”

He rounded on the upperclassman, looking her straight in the eye. “Isn’t it? Both say you’re only worth the wrongs you can be punished for. Never forgiven. Or maybe the favors you can be used for. The victims who gave up those names deserved freedom from the prison of their situation, but if at all possible those changed hearts deserve a chance to live too.”

Niijima studied his face for a few moments longer. “You really do care what happens to them.” She wiped at her white button-down shirt. “Things can be pretty dangerous for people trying to leave yakuza clans. I’ll find a way to make it work.” She held her left arm in her right. “The only problem is how to get them to her.”

Akira craned his neck to stretch out a muscle. “Should we do the same magazine clipping thing as the calling card?”

Niijima shook her head, as serious as ever, but looking settled now. “I think that kind of thing would come across as a taunt to her. We’d need to make this look as plain as possible. Like the…” She broke for a yawn. “…memos that go back and forth between the prosecutors’ offices.”

Morgana nodded. “I think we’re at the end of the road today. Everybody rest up and we’ll rendezvous for another attempt tomorrow.”

Ann nodded and stood, but then stopped. She turned, arms crossed, to look at Niijima for several long seconds before her aquamarine eyes flicked to Morgana. Then she trotted out.

Akira looked to the packet of tissues and decided it would be better to let her have the rest even if it was new. “You going to be okay? We could only hear what happened in there.”

Niijima clenched her hand on the tissues, her eyes down for a moment before she looked back up at him. “You were just as vitriolic as Ann just half an hour ago. Why are you concerned now?”

Akira squirmed in his seat. “I thought you were a hypocrite before. One of those people willing to sacrifice others to get what you want but never get your hands dirty yourself.” He swallowed and studied her face to be sure she was as unscathed as she claimed. She only had that one bruise, at least where he could see, but her posture wasn’t as hunched as before. “My parents are both hypocrites, used people to get ahead.” He glared out across the narrow lobby. “I hate that more than anything else.” Akira straightened and looked her in the crimson eyes. “I still think what you did was stupid, but… you proved me wrong.” He glanced to the team leader. “So what next?”

Morgana hopped up on the vacated chair next to the transfer student. “We take her into Kaneshiro’s Palace. Between her knowledge of Tokyo and her outside perspective, she might come up with a solution we missed.”

Akira took his satchel and let Morgana in, then looked to the class president. “Meet us tomorrow, at the Teikyuu overpass after school.”

Notes:

Fan fiction is an opportunity to apply little twists or fixes to many different aspects. I always thought the game was hamfisted about making Kaneshiro a mustache-twirling joke, so one of the priorities was making him a believable, dangerous villain. Leave your thoughts in a comment if you thought this take was done well or badly.

Chapter 37: May 25th, Waking Fire

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Wednesday, 25 May 2016
After School
Shibuya, Teikyu Building

Akira craned his neck left and right to stretch out a kink. He took in a deep breath, then stepped from the concrete wall into the mass of morons, each going his own way. A hundred conversations over phones assaulted him as he made his way across the square, but at last he reached the stairs and the foot traffic thinned out. Coming up to the walkway, he noticed the class president already there, waiting. She wore an adhesive bandage over the cheek the yakuza muscle struck the other day. He nodded at her. “You okay, Niijima-senpai?”

She twisted away from him for a moment, her exposed cheek turning pink for just a moment. “It’s just a little bruise. I’ve had way worse in aikido practice, Kurus—”

He cleared his throat. “Could you not call me that? I introduce myself as Akira for a reason.” He took off his glasses to rub his eyes. “Kurusu’s my old bastard.” He thrust his chest out, wide eyes gazing out at the blurry people as he said in a nasally voice, “That’s Doctor Kurusu.” He put his glasses back on and spat over his shoulder. “I don’t want anything to do with him, name included.”

Ann slipped out of the crowd and leaned against the rail on Akira’s other side.

Setting the satchel with the team leader in it against the rails, Akira leaned back so he could look out at the people walking by. “I meant more how did it go? You live with someone, and I know when I got back from school with bruises I had to answer tons of dumb questions. That’s why I learned how to use makeup to hide them.”

“Ah, I—” Niijima froze, then looked him in the eyes, her own widening in confusion. “You learned how to use makeup?”

He shrugged. “Yeah. When I didn’t want the sweater-vests to see me with a fresh bruise.”

Ann sighed.

Morgana shot a hooded gaze at him. “Smooth, Joker. Way to break in the new help.”

Fiddling with her fingers, Niijima looked down. “Well, Big Sis has been staying over at work since Monday, so she doesn’t know what happened.”

Blond showed up like a lit neon sign in the crowd of dark hair, and a moment later Ryuji strode out of the crowd. “Sweet, everyone’s here. Let’s go turn Kaneshiro’s palace upside down.”

Niijima glanced at the assembled Phantom Thieves. “Palace?”

Akira waved her on. “There’s no good way to explain it. Just follow along and you’ll see.” He retrieved his satchel and followed Ann to the secluded nook behind some browning landscaping they used to slip into Kaneshiro’s palace the first time. He pulled out his phone, opened the bloody eye icon, then looked up at Niijima. “Brace yourself. It’s about to get weird.”

He tapped the screen and every color around them drained, except the reds which bled into everything else. Every line and shape twisted like the world wanted to turn inside out. Then, a blink later, everything straightened and a dirty Shibuya, locked in the pall of dusk, lay before them. Scraps of paper blew in the wind.

Niijima gasped. “Where did all the people go?”

Ann twirled her finger through the end of one of her pigtails. “They’re safe in the real world. This is… a different one.”

Akira nodded. “It’s a cognitive construct based on Kaneshiro’s warped desires.”

Ryuji looked at his Shujin uniform with disappointment, then sighed and slipped his hands into his pockets, wincing at the motion. “Yeah. The mafia jerk thinks money’s all other people are good for. An’ apparently don’t think anyone can run out.”

Niijima arched an eyebrow. “Why would he think something so nonsensical?”

Akira pulled his sub-machine gun out of his satchel as the others readied their weapons. “He’s a rich dumbass. Everybody who hides in an ivory tower loses touch with reality.”

The student council president stared as they drew their guns from their satchels and assembled them, her eyes widening and skin paling. “What are you all doing with firearms? If the police caught you—”

“They’re actually models,” Ryuji said, digging into his school satchel. “Though they work just like real ones in this funky place. They’re for Shadows.” Ryuji clicked the front and back ends of a rifle together, then clicked a wood stock into the back of that. “You’ll know ‘em when you see ‘em, but hang back when they come out, mkay?”

Akira checked the new laser dot projector on his sub-machine gun, then looked over the polished wood of the weapon in the track star’s hands. “When did you get a rifle?”

Ryuji smirked. “It’s an SKS battle rifle, still used as a ceremonial weapon today. They filled in between bolt-action rifles and full-auto firearms, but this one’s got sighting for use as a marksman rifle. ‘Figured since we have long streets and that flyin’ palace thing, I might want some range.” He shouldered his school satchel, then hissed in pain. “I’m good. Anyway, I got it from Big Man.”

Niijima blinked. “I’m impressed, Sakamoto-kun. If you showed such attention to detail in your studies—”

Ryuji clicked his tongue. “Eh, whatever. Anyway, first thing we gotta get to is codenames. We all got ‘em when we’re in here. I’m Reaper.” He let go of the rifle to point his left hand at Akira. “He’s Joker. Ann’s Panther. Catboy there is Byakko.”

Morgana held out his squared steel rod at the track star, for all the indimidation a folded crossbow could do. “I am not a cat! I’m an honest human, it’s the Metaverse that twisted me into this form.”

Niijima hopped a step back, her eyes wide again. “A monster cat?”

Morgana fell to the ground, pounding a fist on the packed dirt. “I just said I am not!”

Ann clicked a button on the side of her pistol light and it cast a bright cone of white light. “All ready. Let’s get up there.”

Niijima glanced up at the giant floating disk sucking up all the money in Shibuya. “What is that?”

Morgana lead the team out from behind the tended foliage and into the street. “The heart of Kaneshiro’s palace. Technically this whole place is his palace, since he considers all of Shibuya his, but his Treasure is up there. And that’s our target. If we can get to it and steal it, he’ll have a change of heart just like Kamoshida.”

She slowed and stared at the ATM-people. “What are these?” The cognition she approached gave a pathetic groan and extended a handful of yen notes. Baffled, she took it and examined them as if expecting some hidden exam question. “Five thousand yen notes?”

Akira nodded, then flinched when a blowing note hit him in the face. He reached up and pulled it off, pocketing it. “Yeah. Those are what he views people as. Hardly any different than my old bastard. Just stepping stones to his glory.”

Niijima swept her gaze up and down the street. “A reality showing his heart. So stealing his ‘treasure’ somehow forces something like an overwriting of his cognition?”

Akira pulled his sub-machine gun stock against his shoulder. “Close enough.”

“Wait,” Niijima said, keeping in step as the group entered Center Street. “If this is how he views Shibuya, does that mean there’s an ATM version of me somewhere?”

Ryuji swept the barrel of his rifle over the rooftops. “Wow, she got that an’ she didn’t even see that cognitive version of Ann.” He grinned down at Morgana. “Makes you look lame, actin’ like it was somethin’ complicated when she an’ Akira got it right away.”

Akira swallowed, his pants straining against him at the reminder of the cognitive Ann in a micro-bikini. As much to get them talking about something other than Ann in a scorching-hot bikini as to distract himself, he joked, “It’s not like you got it.”

“Shut up, dude!”

Niijima looked up at the flying disk. “So we just need to get up there, right?” She straightened and took in a deep breath. “Kaneshiro Junya, I’m Niijima Makoto and I’ve come here to bargain!”

Ryuji scoffed. “Like shoutin’ at it’s gonna work.”

The disk descended.

The boys gaped. Morgana leaped almost a meter up, pumping a fist into the air. “Yes! I hoped her deal with Kaneshiro would’ve changed his cognition in a manner we could exploit.”

Ann stared at it in wonder. “But… how?”

Niijima came up alongside the blonde. “Maybe it’s like using your card to get into banks after hours?”

Akira blinked. “You can do that?”

Ryuji lowered his rifle and looked at the transfer student. “Uh… yeah. You didn’t know that?”

Akira ground his teeth. “All the places I lived in up to Inuri were dinky little towns. After the sun goes down, good luck getting any services.”

The disk came to a landing at the large intersection near Station Square, and a ramp extended from the top. Now that it had descended, he could see a building on it with marble facing and gold decorations.

Morgana led the wary march up, but the instant they set foot on the paving stones on the giant disk itself, a flicker of flames washed over Akira, Ann, and Ryuji, leaving them in their Phantom Thief forms.

Niijima jerked back, her stance widening and arms rising. “What happened to you?”

Ryuji smirked under his skull-like mask. “Sweet, ain’t it?”

“Isn’t,” she corrected. “You’re certainly still Saka—”

“Reaper!” Morgana blurted. “Remember, this is a place within Kaneshiro’s heart and mind. Codenames protect us, just like the outfits you see them in now are like an armor against the palace ruler. Now let’s do this fast before one of the palace effects start to contaminate you.”

Akira and Ryuji braced their weapons, then headed up to the entrance of the most ostentatious bank the transfer student ever saw, glittering with gold and marble facing.

“Eff, man,” Ryuji said, his eyes wide under his heavy skull mask as he stared around the enormous dais the bank rose out of. “Dude’s got literal money trees. He really is in la-la land.”

Ann looked over her tight red leather suit. “You know, us in a bank… with costumes like this…”

Ryuji snorted in amusement. “I know. We’re totally robbers.”

Morgana hit a button on the side of his rod and it sprang open into a crossbow. “Eyes up, everybody. I’m sensing a lot of Shadows inside.” He tilted his head. “They feel… different. Like they’re waiting for something.”

Niijima stepped up to the polished oak doors. “Maybe a customer of importance.” She reached out and hauled at the pull ring, the door opening with a groan.

Ryuji lifted his rifle, then grimaced.

Morgana hopped in front of him. “Hold up. Miss President, for your protection you should hold at the back. Shadows can be very dangerous when they turn hostile. You too, Reaper. It’s pretty obvious that you’re still recovering from the beating the yakuza gave you yesterday.”

Niijima held up her fists. “I can take care of myself. I’ve trained in aikido since I was twelve.”

Akira lowered his sub-machine gun. “How much force can a fist deliver versus a bullet?”

She sighed and took position behind the others. Once she moved, Ryuji joined her and the group paced into an enormous bank lobby.

Despite the gold and marble facing on the outside, much more practical wallpaper decor met them inside, with tones of beige and a leafy green. Rows of benches stretched out like pews in a church sanctuary.

A two-meter tall figure in white trousers and a sky-blue vest met them, but when it bowed they all got a good look at a head black as midnight and lacking any facial features but two glowing yellow eyes. “Master Kaneshiro has been awaiting you, Niijima-chan.”

Akira pointed his sub-machine gun. “That’s ‘san’ to you.”

Morgana hopped closer. “Hold your fire, Joker. There’s Shadows all over the place.” He gestured to the teller kiosks, each one manned by an identical Shadow, then to halls to the right and left of the lobby where pairs of Shadows wearing ballistic vests and wielding batons stood. “Take us to Kaneshiro.”

When Akira lowered his sub-machine gun, the Shadow led them through a gap in the tellers, past counting tables where the same smart-dressed Shadows sorted yen notes, and into a broad hall to a spacious room. “This is the reception office,” it said.

Stuffed black leather chairs surrounded a heavy conference table of some dark wood. A stacked pyramid of cash took up the bulk of the table’s space. Even through her mask, Akira could see Ann’s eyes widen at the stacks.

“Dayum,” Ryuji said as he walked up to the table. “This would be like… a hundred lifetimes of beef bowls.”

Akira smirked. “Or just ten of Aiya’s Gyudon.” When the track star snagged one of the taped bundles of notes, Akira sighed. “Reaper.”

“What?” Ryuji whined. “It ain’t stealin’ if it’s from a thief.”

Akira shrugged and picked up a taped bundle to examine it.

Seeing no obvious traps, Makoto stepped up and sat in one of the plush chairs by the screen. Once the rest sat down, a three-meter-wide screen on the wall blinked. A comically tall chair on it rotated, and a Kaneshiro with smoldering gold eyes and a sharp white suit glared out at them. Looking down his nose, he began, “Unauthorized entry. Defamation of character. Lost wages and revenue.” He clucked his tongue. “For such a pretty girl, you certainly didn’t exercise sense. The settlement shall be one million yen.”

Akira spat. “Fuck that, you bloated rich bastard. Paying a blackmailer only encourages more blackmail attempts.”

Shadow Kaneshiro shook his head. “Defiance of authority. Refusal to settle a lawful account charges. Additional administrative fees. That’s another two-hundred fifty-thousand yen.”

Ryuji boggled. “One an’ a quarter mil? For real?”

Shadow Kaneshiro folded his hands together. “I can understand gathering so much money could be difficult for children.”

Ann brightened. “You’re going to call it off?”

Ryuji reached forward and slipped another bundle of yen notes into his pocket.

Shadow Kaneshiro huffed. “A loan. Ten percent interest per day.” His eyes shifted to Ryuji. “Fifty percent for him.”

Akira ticked his finger along the stacks of cash, trying to keep his decimal places. “That’s… uh…”

Niijima gave him a hooded gaze. “One hundred twenty-five thousand yen a day. Six hundred twenty-five thousand yen a day for R…Reaper-kun.”

Akira almost dropped his sub-machine gun. “Thousand… per day?”

The corners of Shadow Kaneshiro’s lips turned up. “There are… more manageable options for ones such as you.”

Niijima glared into the screen. “So now we get to what you really wanted from the start.”

Shadow Kaneshiro clapped. “The riff raff can learn after all.” He gave a grin, exposing teeth capped in gold and silver. “Yes, indeed. Even though certain services are inconsequential to your kind, they are of significant monetary value to me.”

Ann’s lip curled, baring teeth. “Our kind?”

Rolling his eyes, Shadow Kaneshiro sat back in his high-backed chair. “Perhaps not learn so much after all. The younger Niijima-chan is but a slip of a girl. She shall service my clients in the private rooms of Spiral.” He grinned. “But the older…” He chuckled. “Special Prosecutor Niijima Sae could save me so much money on bribes and payments to that irritating minister and those puppet police.”

Niijima’s hands clenched. “So that’s how he’s managed to evade justice this long. He’s bought out somebody higher up. With that kind of forewarning, he could pack up and move operations each time a warrant is filed.”

Ann stood up out of her chair and snarled at the Shadow. “You’re delusional.”

Shadow Kaneshiro tisked. “Young women. So foolish, so physically frail. The best thing about them, really.” He waved a dismissive hand at them. “It’s been the nature of things since the dawn of time for the weak to be devoured by the wealthy. The young are stupid. I’m really doing them a service by taking that money from them and putting it to good use.”

Leaping from his chair, Akira roared and fired full auto across the width of the screen hanging from the wall. An alarm pulsed from speakers hidden in the ceiling.

Ryuji snatched handfuls of bundled yen notes.

Pounding footsteps preceded the appearance of two armor-vested guards wielding long batons.

Ryuji lined up and pulled the trigger, blowing the head of the left guard into dissipating smoke, the rest of its body following suit. He gasped in pain at the recoil from his weapon and collapsed back into his chair.

Ann braced behind her pistol, her form exactly like Ryuji explained to her back in the castle, letting off shot after shot into the other guard’s chest.

Smoke leaked from the impacts. The guard shuddered and burst into black muck and a red-skinned oni stood up out of it, shouldering a wolf’s-toothed club.

Morgana closed his eyes and a brawny form took shape above him, Zorro’s eyes glowing as blue light crept over the oni’s weapon, yanking at it. The Shadow pulled back and swung down, its club shattering the heavy table and sending taped bundles of yen notes flying.

Akira lined up on the guard, but called, “Pillar of Heaven!”

A column of fire and darkness dropped from the hallway behind, then blasted the oni with darkness.

Already in firing stance, Ann took two shots into the oni’s face. It fell back and dissolved into vanishing black goo.

Another pair of guards with batons raced around the corner.

Morgana shot a crossbow bolt into the first one’s throat, sending it stumbling to its knees and clutching the bolt, gushing smoke before dissipating into nothing. Akira blasted the other with darkness from Pillar before following Ann out into the hall.

Another three oni now with breastplates and clubs met them at the exit to the counting area.

Pillar shot a fireball into the center one as Akira and Ann shot the oni on the right, a crossbow flitting into its right eye before it tumbled to the ground and dissolved in smoke.

Ryuji shot the oni on the left with his rifle, the blow sending it stumbling a step back but knocking him off his feet. He hit the ground with a pained cry, his weapon clattering to the floor next to him.

Niijima reached for his rifle, her feet sliding into a braced stance, but Morgana shouted, “Forget fighting back, help him out first!”

Taking it in hand anyway, she slipped his arm over her shoulders and helped him limp faster into the counting area. Akira and Ann blasted covering fire over the desks, sending yen fluttering and Shadows diving for cover under the furniture.

Two guards with batons stood just outside the gap to the lobby, already shuddering and swelling up like dark puffer fish before bursting into more oni.

Ann lined up and pulled the trigger, but her pistol clicked empty. “Shit. Carmen!”

Blue motes of light pulsed between the oni, growing into the shape of a dancing woman in a frilly dress. It lashed its thorned whip around one, throwing it into the other oni and giving the Phantom Thieves enough room to run into the lobby.

More baton guards poured out from the hallways to the right and left, with the siren continuing to pulse from all around them.

Morgana lined up his crossbow with the closest on the right. “There must be dozens.”

Niijima walked out with Ryuji. “Why are the guards turning into monsters?”

Akira blasted another guard coming from the left before his sub-machine gun clicked. “Not the time. Berith!”

A pulse of pale blue motes of light burst in front of him, leaving a grey-armored knight on a red horse. It charged the guards coming from the left as Carmen advanced on the ones to the right with bolts of ice. Morgana summoned Zorro and sent it to back up Carmen, then shot a guard on the left in the throat.

Ryuji stood up on his own feet, gritting his teeth. “The eff am I gonna let my friends get hurt without helpin’ ‘em out. Captain Kidd!”

A swirl of blue motes burst, leaving a towering skeletal captain perched on a boat. It held up its cannon-hand and shot a blast tossing a handful of Shadow guards like leaves.

Emerging from the wave of guards bursting into oblong black masses, one oni leaped, powering a blow down on Kidd in the skeletal torso.

Ryuji stumbled back until Niijima caught him, his Persona dissipating in a puff of blue.

The alarm ceased and a click sounded from the ceiling. Shadow Kaneshiro’s voice came next, “Customers are only worth keeping when they pay. Tragic suicides from two shots to the back of the head should be enough to… encourage the remaining customers.”

Tears shining at the corners of her eyes, Niijima shouted back, “Please, just let them go! It’s me that you have a problem with.”

Akira snarled, but stumbled against one of the padded benches when an oni struck his galloping knight with a studded club. He reached out at his Persona as if trying to pull it, and the Persona vanished into sputtering blue motes. “Nobody who’s got a beef with Kaneshiro is alone. Andras!”

A new burst revealed a towering, winged man with blue feathers and the face of an owl. It spread its wings and cawed, waving its arms and sending shards of ice flying into half a dozen oni.

Ignoring the fight still closing in on the Phantom Thieves, Shadow Kaneshiro said over the speakers, “Oh, you have no need to worry, little Niijima. You’ve caused some unsightly delays, but I’m sure you will find some way of paying them off. I have backroom clients who pay handsomely for someone of your physique.”

The student council president clenched her eyes shut and let out a choked sound.

“Prosecutor Niijima, slave of the Kaneshiro yakuza,” the Shadow gloated over the speakers as oni pounded Carmen with long war clubs.

Another club landed on Andras, the feathered man crumbling to the floor and dissipating in a burst of azure motes. Akira stumbled against another bench with a pained cry.

Niijima struggled to keep control of her breathing. “Please, stop! My sister has nothing to do with this, and neither do they! I’m the one who made the mistake, not them!”

“Debts are meant to be paid,” Kaneshiro called back, calm as the oni closed in a ring around them.

Carmen collapsed under the blows of half a dozen oni, Ann tumbling to the ground with a whimper.

Kaneshiro’s voice floated out of the speakers, “You’ll pay what you owe. Just endure it and do as instructed.”

Dodging between more oni and Niijima, Akira snarled at a purple-skinned oni sauntering at them from the desk tellers. “She doesn’t owe shits like you anything. You’re the petty thief here, not her. Agathion!”

A giant gold vase hiding a green imp formed out of blue motes, and it blasted a bolt of lightning into the purple oni, knocking it, twitching, to the ground. A pair of other oni, one red and the other gold, paced closer from its flanks and simultaneously leaped, chopping their weapons into the vase. It shattered into motes and Akira collapsed to the floor, curling in on himself with a pained gasp.

“You are becoming rather expensive annoyances,” Shadow Kaneshiro said, his tone bored. “Your only meaning in life now is to pay.”

Niijima gulped in air.

Akira fought to his hands and knees. “Shut up, you two-bit mafia shitstain. Decent people shouldn’t even have to share society with scum like you. People like Ann and even Niijima deserve better than you.”

“Kill him,” Shadow Kaneshiro said over the intercom. “And dump what remains of his body in front of the nearest publisher’s house. The people need an example so they remember to pay.”

Niijima snarled. “Shut your damn mouth, you money-crazed tyrant!”

The lights in the lobby flickered and whispers floated out of the air around them.

You can’t let the Snitch of Shujin find out! She’ll just feed you to the sharks.”

The young woman’s voice came again, “You’re in high school, and it’s high time you grew up. All you do is eat away at my life.”

Niijima slid to her knees, clutching her head.

Niijima couldn’t wipe her own ass without orders.”

The young woman’s voice accused again, “You’re given food, clothing, and shelter. Do you think I can waste time with such garbage?

Niijima whimpered, fingers digging into her hair and knocking her braided headband out.

Akira’s voice floated out, dripping with venom, “At least you did everything you could for Suzui.”

Words are all you have?” a boy’s voice said, “So you’re just a faux-good-girl pushover.”

A young woman’s voice snapped, “The very fact that you’re still engaging in such infantile fantasies just shows how little you’ve grown up.

“I’m not your puppet,” Niijima whispered. Her stance tensed. “This is for me!”

Flames licked over Niijima’s face, leaving a heavy metal plate with slits over the eyes. She pulled herself to her feet, then reached up and yanked at the plate over her face. Stumbling to one knee, she grit her teeth and pulled again, screaming as blood dripped, but kept pulling.

Morgana looked up at her from his hunch on the ground, panting but smiling.

Several oni hefted their clubs and raced through the benches at the Phantom Thieves, only for a massive explosion of blue and red flames to burst out from Niijima and knock them flying back. “Johanna!”

When the fire cleared, Niijima wore a black leather riding suit and sat low astride an enormous motorcycle covered with heavy steel plates and red tracery, yellow flames swirling where its front and rear wheels should be. A thick canopy of glass jutted up from the front to shield Niijima.

Ryuji’s mouth drifted open.

Kaneshiro’s voice snapped from the speakers, “Fools! Kill them or you’re not worth your money or your life!”

The oni surrounding them readied their weapons and Niijima snarled at them. “No more Miss Nice Girl!”

One hand twisted at one of the hand-grips and yellow flames sputtered from vents projecting from the front and back of the bike. Niijima pressed low and slammed her foot on the pedal, wheels of fire blazing before it squealed over the polished tile floor, leaving a scorched trail.

Throwing her weight to one side, she swept the rear end of the bike around, smashing three oni into dissipating smoke before twisting at a handgrip and billowing flames from the front vents into two purple-skinned oni rushing at her.

Another oni with skin as pale as snow came up at her from the flank, lifting a double-sided glaive, only for Ryuji to roar and call out his boat-riding skeleton pirate again, sending its giant cutlass through the white oni’s thin torso. The remaining guards surged at the group and Makoto powered through the padded benches like fallen twigs in the road. Her armored bike Persona blasted flames over the oni in front of her, gushing fire each time she pulled into a tight drift to smash through more.

Morgana pointed his crossbow to the front door. “There’s our opening. Let’s go!” He hopped up and transformed into the minibus with an anti-climactic pop.

Makoto aimed for the front and gunned the engine, flame wheels scorching the tile beneath, running over two Shadows before she shattered through the polished oak doors.

Akira took Ryuji’s arm and helped him into the catmobile, Ann following as fast as she could limp.

Morgana raced through the wrecked front doors, knocking what remained of the shattered door off its hinges. The two vehicles kept going down the ramp and into the streets of the darkened Shibuya inhabited by ATMs.

Once Makoto came to a stop, the bike vanished in a swirl of flames and she collapsed to the ground.

Chapter 38: May 25th, Flame's Resolve

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Wednesday, 25 May 2016
After School
Kaneshiro’s Palace

An overcast sky roiled over the dark, dingy depiction of Shibuya. The ever-present wind blew money and shreds of paper outside. Akira craned his neck to see the biker as she came to a stop, then her Persona burst with a flutter of blue flame and she fell to the ground.

Morgana transformed out of his minibus form and the Phantom Thieves gathered around the student council president back to her Shujin uniform.

Ryuji placed his studded gloves on his hips with an appreciative smile. “That was effin’ awesome, Miss Biker Babe!”

Groaning, Makoto rolled onto her side, then accepted Ann’s hand to help stand before she looked up to the blond. “Do you want me to smack you?”

Ryuji cringed back. “Please, no. I’m still tender from yesterday.”

Ann took her distance too. “Welp, I sure don’t need a reminder not to cross Miss President. She’d rip my arm off and beat me to death with it.”

Makoto cringed. “Please don’t say things like that.” She lifted her arms, looking at where the spiked pauldrons, then knuckle dusters used to be. “So what was that flame and costume thing about?”

Folding up his sub-machine gun, Akira looked over the street for signs of pursuit. “Don’t worry about it. Awakening to your Persona takes a lot out of you and your power might not be stable right away. Same thing happened to me. You should have a steady Phantom Thief… uh, form next time you visit the Metaverse.”

Ryuji nodded. “Don’t forget you’ll have the best sleep a’yer life, an’ you’ll wake up feelin’ like a billion yen.”

Akira gave the track star a momentary arched eyebrow. His experience was nightmares of Kamoshida killing him and brutalizing Ann in her sexy costume, then waking up sore. The transfer student focused back on the group. “Too bad about the problems this is gonna create with your sister. I hear most people are pretty close to their siblings.”

Makoto shook her head, the left corner of her mouth quirking up for a beat. “This was going to happen one way or another. My sister and I never quite… synced. Don’t get me wrong, she works so hard and I’m grateful for so much, but… I’m sorry for her, too.”

Morgana folded his crossbow and gave the dark-haired girl a nod. “You’ve certainly shown the strength of your heart. Welcome to the Phantom Thieves.”

She gave a faltering smile. “I… do feel better than I have in years.” Makoto’s lips turned down. “But I’ve also never felt this tired.”

Even Akira felt the corners of his lips quirk up. “Well, you’re certainly not a slave to society anymore.”

Ryuji gave a beaming smile filled with white teeth. “Awright! The Phantom Thieves have a new hot chick!”

Blushing, Makoto blinked. “Wha?”

Akira patted her on the back. “Ignore him.”

Morgana looked over the awakened humans. “I’m sure you have plenty of questions, but I think we’re all spent for the day. Get home safe and get some well-deserved rest, everyone. We’ll reconvene and explain things tomorrow.”

Thursday, 26 May 2016
After School
Shujin Rooftop

Shielding his eyes, Akira strode out, squinting until he could make out his smart phone screen again. Moving up his lance to capture an opponent’s pawn, he hit ‘end turn’ and looked up, surprised to see Makoto already there, sitting at a chair and reading something on her phone. “Oh, I, uh… didn’t expect to see you up here so promptly, Senpai.”

Makoto closed her browser and set her phone down, then straightened her skirt. “Well, as the newest member of the Phantom Thieves, I’m sure I have a lot to catch up on before I’m ready to join operations.”

Morgana hopped out of the transfer student’s satchel to the desk in front of Makoto. “Well, we might as well begin with the basics the others already know. Kaneshiro’s Palace represents his heart. Somewhere inside it is his Treasure, an object symbolizing the core of his corrupt desires, the thing that his entire life has come to revolve around. As Phantom Thieves, our objective is to find and steal his treasure. Without that, his cognition will have a collapse and reorganization.”

She nodded. “So that’s how you made Kamoshida confess his crimes.”

Akira found it impossible to meet her gaze, and pulled up another chair to brush off and plop down in. Talk of Kamoshida just brought up why he went in, and while comeuppance was a part of everyone’s motives, in retrospect his beef with the coach seemed weakest and he was the only one who wanted to kill. Akira tipped his chair back and looked to his shogi game. “Well, we’re no SG-1, but there’s a time for blasting and a time for sneaking.”

Makoto’s brow furrowed, eyes focusing intently on a point on the fence as she pondered. “What about those strange guards turning into monsters?”

Morgana scratched at an ear with his hind leg. “Shadows. Whenever somebody’s desires become warped enough to break off into their own Palace, it draws in fragments from the collective subconscious around them.” Morgana said. “They’re encapsulated in a shell dictated by the warped thoughts of the palace ruler. That transformation you mention is them breaking into their unrestrained forms.”

The door swung open and Ryuji walked out, his pace much shorter and more controlled than usual. “Yo.” He lowered himself into another chair, began to tip it back like the transfer student was doing. His eyelid twitched, then he set it back on all four legs. “Where’s Ann?”

Akira slid a pawn up to capture his opponent’s knight. “She wanted to talk to Mishima. They both have pretty good cred in my book, so I figure it’s worth her being a little late to an introduction session.”

Ryuji shrugged, the motion looking smaller and stiffer than his usual brazen self. “As long as we can get back to kickin’ some tail in that jerk’s palace.” He gave a wide grin, showing off rows of even pearly whites. “Prez’s got a sweet Phantom Thief getup and her Persona’s a motorcycle. What could be cooler than that?”

Akira shrugged. “I have a feeling Big K would just say something about leathered-up pansies. But what are you so jealous for? Your Persona is a skeleton pirate riding a ship like a surfboard!”

Ryuji let himself flop back, then grunted and sat back up. “For real? Motorcycles rock so much more than a dumb boat.”

Akira decided to change course before Ryuji could take the conversation into any stranger territory. He looked over the assembled group. “So does your Persona impart some knowledge or skill about how to do things like ride a motorcycle?”

Morgana’s ear twitched and he reached up a paw to scratch it. “No more than your Phantom Thief forms give you special knowledge about lock picking or other thieving.” His tail swished and brows drew together.

Makoto brushed at her uniform. “I do have a license.” A momentary smile slipped over her face before embarrassment smothered it. “There was just something easier about pushing the edge over there.”

Ryuji laughed. “Yeah, you rode like a champ back there.” He cast a narrow gaze and smirked at the team leader. “An’ bikes are way cooler than some dumb van, too.”

Morgana stood, his tail held up and almost vibrating. “They also can’t carry large numbers of people.” He stopped, his tail going still in a heartbeat and his eyes widening. “Carry…” His tail drooped. “Something just crossed my mind.” His ears curled down and he let out a frustrated growl.

Makoto looked between them. “Is everything all right?”

Akira moved his silver general and tapped ‘end turn’. “Morgana was a human, but something in the Metaverse twisted him into that cat form. And took away most of his memories.”

The door burst open and Ann walked out, her aquamarine eyes distant and a tinge of rose on her cheeks. A beat passed as those gathered looked up at her before she gave a tense smile. “Hey, guys.”

Ryuji drawled, “I see your acting is as good as ever.”

Ann’s faux friendliness evaporated in an instant and her cheeks turned redder. “Shut up, Ryuji.”

“Don’t start something pointless, Ryuji,” Akira shot out.

Tip of his tail twitching, Morgana cleared his throat. “Anyway, now that we’re all together we can discuss our line-up and plan for Kaneshiro’s bank. Given the security we saw, I suspect that Kaneshiro’s going to reinforce the front door, maybe even try to seal it. We’ll have to look for another way in.”

Akira sent in his next move and looked up. “Well, if a thief is like a good spy, you never want to go out the same way you came in, right?”

Ryuji crossed his arms, glaring at the transfer student and cat-leader. “We’d better get a move on if we’re gonna get there in time. Prez doesn’t even have a gun yet, and she’s gonna need one or she’s gonna knock herself out, relyin’ on her Persona.”

“Me?” she said, holding a hand to her chest as she looked to their school satchels. “I can’t carry a gun.”

Akira smirked. “Sure you can. Real ones aren’t even half a kilo.”

Ryuji groaned, his eyes rolling back. “Ugh. We don’ even know what kind of gun she’d use.” He slipped his phone out of his pocket. “You got any favs when you play shooters?”

Brushing her hair over her ear, Makoto’s eyes fell to the rooftop. “I don’t really know. There’s just not enough time between all of my other responsibilities.”

Looking up from the gun search on his phone browser, Ryuji focused on the transfer student. “You two sure are peas in a boring pod.”

Akira adjusted his glasses with his middle finger.

Morgana’s ear twitched. “Focus, everyone. True, she’ll need some kind of weapon to back up her Persona in the Metaverse, but once we get in there it won’t matter as much what her choice is as much as how well she can handle it. Same as her Persona.” He hopped up on a desk and looked over Ryuji, the bruise on the track star’s cheek still purple. “On the other hand, your Persona was dissipated in one blow from Kaneshiro’s Shadows when it’s normally our toughest. And you were wheezing when we split up.”

Ryuji’s brow wrinkled. “Was not!”

“Were too,” Akira tossed back, eyes on his shogi game.

Makoto pressed her palm against the side of her head. “Are these really the Phantom Thieves that took down Kamoshida?”

“The point is,” Morgana shouted over the spiraling conversation, “that you aren’t back up to top shape, Skull. As our first foray into Kaneshiro’s palace should have made clear, things can get really hairy really fast.”

Akira nodded, his face the picture of solemnity. “Indeed. Just look at our leader.”

Ryuji and Makoto both groaned, but Ann just rolled her eyes.

Morgana gave a narrow stare at the transfer student for several seconds before flicking an ear and looking back at the track star. “I want you to sit this one out.”

Ryuji shot to his feet. “Da eff? We just got into this prick’s palace an’ you want me ta go home?”

Akira tapped ‘end turn’ and looked up from his phone. “It’s a smart call, Ryuji.”

Curling one hand into a fist, Ryuji took a step at Akira. “Eff that.”

The transfer student stood, closed the two paces between them, then poked Ryuji in the chest. The track star stumbled back, wheezing. Akira looked down to his game, seeing opponent resigned, and closed it. “We’re not going to give courage to the downtrodden by getting killed in his palace, Ryuji. That’ll just bring a premature end to the Phantom Thieves.”

Ann nodded. “Right.”

Makoto took her chin in her fingers. “For the downtrodden. You sound like my father.”

Ann crossed her arms, a wariness in her eyes as she looked at the upperclassman. “You say that like it’s a past-tense thing.”

The upper-classman closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. “He… Dad was a cop.”

Akira pursed his lips. Best to leave that aside unless she brought it up again. Akira glanced from Ryuji to Morgana. “So do we try another break-in today? Makoto could use Ryuji’s gun.”

Ryuji bent forward like he wanted to charge. “I ain’t sittin’ back. Ya don’t need to baby me.”

Morgana shook his head. “Fine. We’ll take today to ready our supplies. As long as nothing in the conscious world affects his cognition, the reprieve might even allow Kaneshiro to relax a bit, lowering his guard.”

Akira glanced at his email app, something about conscious world affecting cognition stirring in the back of his mind. “So how do we figure out what weapon Senpai uses?”

Ryuji settled into a relaxed slouch, a smirk on his face. “Heh heh. You should know just what would make the best simulation. We’ve been practicin’ on it every week.”

The upperclassman’s eyebrow twitched up, but Akira slapped himself in the forehead. “Of course! Gun About has pneumatic feedback so you get a feel for recoil, and several controllers for different grips.”

Morgana’s tail swished. “That’s… a very good idea, Reaper. My paws in this world can’t handle them, but now that we have four Phantom Thieves with human hands we could all take a day of training.”

Ryuji pumped a fist in the air, then flinched. “Gun About, here we come!”

Akira had no idea what they were about to unleash as they led Makoto down to the arcade in Shibuya.

Thursday, 26 May 2016
Early Evening
Shujin, Library

Ai stood up, brushing her pageboy-cut hair over her ear before waiving goodbye to her cluster of friends around the round table next to Makoto’s. With her departure from the library, the rumor-mongering at last quieted. Scratching of pens made for a peaceful relative silence for Akira to finish his homework. Clicking his pen closed, he set it down on his literature notes. Akira reached up, interlaced his fingers, and stretched his hands high. His back cracked several times and he made sure to let his arms down slow.

Alliance Force, Assemble! sang out of his phone and Akira pulled it out, wondering who would call him at this time of night.

When he saw Queen Togo on the caller ID, he rushed to the hall for some privacy from prying ears. “Mike Easter. Rubber chickens half off with the purchase of a T-shirt gun.”

“O-oh, sorry,” Hifumi stuttered. “I must have gotten a wrong number.”

“No, wait!” he shouted, standing up from his lean so fast he almost tripped himself. “Sorry,” Akira resumed at a more normal indoors volume. “I’m Akira. Th-that was a joke.” He felt a droplet of sweat roll down the back of his neck. “I do stuff like that a lot. It’s just supposed to break up the monotony of the social script. Open up conversation.”

“Oh,” Hifumi said, sounding unsure if she believed him. “Well, I finally finished everything for cram school today. Would it be acceptable to sit down together for a game or two? I have a few scenarios I want to try.”

“Yeah,” he blurted before even checking his calendar. Well, the beef bowl place already fired him, and he hadn’t found a new night job yet. “I’m just five minutes away from Aoyama-Itchome station. Where’d you like to meet?”

A huff came from Hifumi’s side. “Hm. I was hoping to visit the Metropolitan Art Museum in Ueno, but Madarame’s art is still packed until his special show is done.” Then a sharp intake of breath. “Oh, I know. Have you been to Nijubashi Square?”

“Not yet,” he answered.

Marunouchi, Nijubashi Square

Dodging his way through the people of Nijubashi Square like the crowds in Shujin’s halls, Akira even managed to avoid pushing most of them. High-rise business towers rose up on three sides of the square, restaurants on the ground floor wafting the smells of grilled fish, tempura, and more exotic aromas. Store fronts blazed with advertisements, but must of the night time square remained dark in a cozy sense. Metal tables and chairs gave plenty of seating in the middle of the square, too many for him to pick out his shogi nemesis.

Akira pulled out his cell phone and sent a text. [I'm here at the northwest corner, but I don't see you.]

[East side, right next to Fried Delights.]

Turning around, it took him until just a few paces to the source of the tempura smell to spot her. Her straight brown hair looked gold in the blazing yellow from the shop’s sign. Unlike her conservative Sunday dress, now she wore a dark blazer jacket with an even darker skirt showing off legs for days.

Akira shook his head and approached. “H-hi.”

Hifumi gave him an expectant smile and they settled into a couple games of shogi, starting from weird formation arrangements. Even with most of them putting her at a significant disadvantage of power pieces, she still won every time. “That’s check again. Third time. You really should protect your king better.”

Akira took off his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose. “I’m trying a wounded gazelle gambit. It usually works against players online, as soon as they see an opening to the king they’ll throw their most powerful piece and I turn the whole game around.” He set his glasses on the board and rubbed his eyes. “I don’t know, maybe I’m just stupid.”

She brought up her hand with unexpected speed to flick him on the nose. “I’ve been enjoying our games shared together. Would you have managed that if you were stupid?” Once he donned his glasses again, Hifumi’s now-clarified stern expression drew a nervous gulp out of him, and she held the stare until he mumbled a negative. Her posture relaxed, but her brows drew together and her beautiful, dark eyes gazed into his. “You’ve always taken the games to be a challenge. What’s this really about?”

Growling, Akira sat back against his thin metal chair. “I’m just worried about school right now. I passed the midterms, but only ranked thirty first.” He took his glasses back off and brought out a cloth to clean the lenses, leaving the world outside arm’s reach blurry. “I have never been worse than nineteenth. It’s… it’s embarrassing.” He took in and let out a deep breath, but could still hear the echoes of his old bastard’s ranting. “The only good thing I could do was grades. It was the only thing my old bastard approved of.”

A few seconds passed before Hifumi reached for the pieces on her fold-up board. He couldn’t make out her expression, but her tone sounded calm when she said, “What’s your most problematic area?”

Akira set his glasses back on his face. “Math. I swear, it was invented to make schoolkids suffer.”

Hifumi raised a fist to attempt to cover up her smile, but couldn’t keep a quiet chuckle from slipping out. “Well, you may be in luck. I’ve always scored near the head of the class in math. I could tutor you, if you would like.”

He felt his mouth start to drift open. An excuse to spend more time with the smartest girl he’d ever met? “Sign me up!”

Chapter 39: May 27th, Rider's Handle

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Friday, 27 May 2016
After School
Shujin Halls

Akira turned to the stairwell to the roof, Ann right behind him. He heard a not-hushed-enough whisper behind him, but grit his teeth and kept walking. Today should be the day they stormed Kaneshiro’s bank, student rumors didn’t concern him. Trotting up the stairs, he spotted Makoto already at the top landing, one hand in her pocket and the other pushing open the door.

Wondering why she was acting so wary, he stepped out the door, shielding his eyes.

Still in her track uniform, the upper-classman with curly brown hair knelt down before the planters, a basket of weeds beside her. She turned at the waist and gave the expected polite smile. “Oh, hello.” Her eyes drifted to Makoto when she followed him through the door. “Miss President.”

Makoto bowed her head. “Excuse us, we didn’t mean to intrude.”

About to jump out of the transfer student’s satchel, Morgana hunkered down, only his ears poking out of the opening. “We can’t have a Phantom Thieves meeting here while somebody else is around. Where else could we go?”

Ann twisted her finger through the end of a pigtail. “Well, we have to go to Shibuya anyway, right? Might as well meet there.”

His phone buzzed as he jogged to the train station and Akira brought it out, expecting to see Ryuji clamoring for the location of their next meet. Instead, a text from Mishima stared back at him. “I’ll be right down,” he said before opening the messenger.

[Do you have some time? I need to talk,] the 2-D class representative sent just a few minutes ago.

Akira sent back. [Is this about the Shibuya problem?]

A minute passed before Mishima returned, [Oh, no. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt business. If you're already busy.]

[No problem,] Akira texted. [See you in class tomorrow.] With no sign of Ryuji, Akira sent a text informing their non-present member of the new rally location, specifying the Teikyuu walkway before the group filtered up the stairs and to the bridge. When the track star finally joined them, Akira picked his school satchel back up and they walked to a dead-end hallway to make the transition.

Friday, 27 May 2016
Early Evening
Kaneshiro’s Shibuya

The instant the dirty, dark Shibuya of Kaneshiro’s heart, a sensation of cold flickered over them, leaving them in their Phantom Thief attire. Makoto held up her hands, examining the knuckle dusters built into her suit’s gloves. Her black leather bodysuit clung to her form, though not quite to the degree of the second-skin over Ann’s generous curves bodysuit. Short spikes jutted from something like armor on her shoulders. “Wait, didn’t that only happen when we entered the bank last time?”

Morgana drew a square rod. “We’ve all infringed on a part of Kaneshiro’s heart that he guards jealously. We’ll be treated as enemies from now on, no matter where in the Palace we are. Fortunately, this influence on his cognition is also what allows us to steal his distorted heart.”

The rest of the Phantom Thieves assembled their weapons. Ryuji clicked his pump-action shotgun together, then handed it to the upper-classman. “And this is yours, Post-Apocalyptic Girl.”

She took the weapon, but her face twisted like she bit a lemon at his proposed name. “You are not calling me that.”

“You do need a code name.” Morgana snapped open his crossbow, checked the bayonet, then locked it back.

Ryuji eyed Makoto, not quite hiding his eyes lingering on her chest and hips. “Uh… Shoulder Pads?”

Akira rolled his eyes. “That is not what you were looking at.”

Ryuji clicked his rifle together. “No, but she’d’a smacked me if I said that.”

Shaking his head, Akira turned back to the upperclassman. “Sukeban?”

Makoto’s eyes narrowed. “I am not some gang mastermind!”

Ann braced a hand on one hip and leaned her weight on her opposite foot, with no sign she realized how hot the pose looked when she was in red leather. “Spike?”

Makoto glanced at her shoulders, one eye squinting for a moment before she focused back on the team. “I don’t feel like that fits either.”

Crossing his arms, Akira thought back to the sight of Makoto braced on her motorcycle-persona, flames pouring from the wheels and vents on the front and back. “Witch? Your persona looked tough as hell and you sure blew the fuck up out of those Shadows.”

“Ugh,” she said, shaking her hand as if trying to brush off the suggestion. “I’d rather something a little more… refined.”

Morgana pursed his lips. “I should warn you that your Persona will seem a lot more powerful the first time you call it out than subsequent summons because you have no sense of finesse with it yet. It’s like you lack the ability to hold back the first time. Even so, your persona was extremely strong.” He tapped the crossbow’s limb against his head as he thought. “Joker, what’s the strongest piece in chess?”

Makoto smiled. “Queen. That has a nice—”

Bursting out laughing, Akira clutched his stomach. Especially in her Phantom Thief outfit, she lacked any shade of Hifumi’s natural grace and dignity. After regaining control of his breathing, he stood up and wiped a metaphorical tear from his eye. “There’s nothing queenly about you, Prez. ‘Badass ranger’ is the kinda vibe you got.” He thought back through movies for an example. “Maybe something sounding outta Mad Max? Damn near everyone in that movie was badass. Nightrider?”

Makoto stood in silence for a few moments, her lips pressed into a thin line before she straightened. “That’s true.”

Ryuji slung his rifle, moving slow as he slipped the loop over his shoulders. “All our code names are super short, though. I mean, when we’re in the middle of a firefight the last thing you want is some long name.”

“True,” Ann said, crossing her arms and tapping her chin with her finger. “Just Rider?”

“I think I would prefer Nightrider, but very well.” Makoto took her pump-action shotgun in both hands. “So what’s the strategy for the mission?”

Ryuji blinked. “Uh, strategy?”

The crack of Akira’s gloved palm striking his face echoed in the sheltered hall.

Makoto’s eyes widened as she looked across the junior students. “Have the Phantom Thieves been acting without any plans?”

Ryuji tweaked something on top of his rifle. “We run inta Shadows, we beat the shit outta them.”

Akira sighed. “That’s not a strategy, Reaper, that’s what we do along the way. We recon the palace to figure out where the treasure is and what crap is in the way, disabling traps as necessary. Once we locate the Treasure, we send calling cards in the real world to make it manifest here so we can steal it and cause the change of heart.”

Morgana nodded with a smile. “That’s right! Our first step today will be to find a new ingress.” He turned to Ryuji. “Right after Reaper returns home.”

“Eff that,” Ryuji snapped, squaring his shoulders. “I backed you all up every dive in Mementos while we were tryin’ ta find that yakuza shithead’s name. Why shouldn’t I get to see this throu—?”

Akira poked him in the ribs and the track star stumbled backwards with a wheeze. “What exactly happened in there anyway? All we got was the audio.”

Makoto cringed. “He took a few solid kicks to the ribs.”

“I’m okay now—” he protested.

Morgana rubbed his head with his hands now equipped with opposable thumbs. “Reaper, you’re still hurt. That means a vulnerability Shadows will exploit as soon as they figure out it’s there. You all voted me to be the leader because you expected me to keep a level head. The objective choice is for you to hold back when you’re injured, not charge forward.”

When the track star clenched his rifle, Ann stepped forward, just a little sashay to her walk. “Reaper, we need to be at the top of our game to beat the Shadows and steal his heart. If you die here, what do we tell your mother?”

His jaw flapped twice before he clenched his fists, then slumped. “Fine.”

He started to turn back for the Teikyuu building when Makoto dashed into his way. “Wait!” She swallowed, looking at everything but him for a long second before stopping on her new shotgun. “How do I take this apart to make it smaller?”

Akira came up next to her. “Yeah. There’s no way she’d be able to hide that thing in her skirt.”

She eeped, but Ryuji laughed. With the tension broken, he showed her how to disassemble it, then put it back together. He broke down his rifle, slipping the pieces back into the pockets inside his plated black jacket before drawing his phone and walking away.

That done, the remaining Phantom Thieves walked the short distance back to the bank. The front doors – or the shattered remnants of them – lay on the steps, a steel roller gate now blocking the front entrance.

Seeing their entry cut off, Makoto sighed “Sorry, everyone. I overdid it the other day.”

Akira rolled his eyes. “You know… if you said that around my old bastard, he’d smack you with his bulletproof clipboard.”

Makoto snorted a laugh. “Bulletproof clipboard.” She paused to glance at Ann, noticing the other girl’s unamused look. Makoto followed back to him, her eyes scanning his face, the trace amusement draining from hers. She clapped her hands over her mouth. “Oh my god!”

“Shh!” Morgana hissed. “Keep quiet. Our first tool of defeating Shadows is not getting caught.” He scanned the huge, ostentatious building. “It feels like his wariness has reduced. Our first entry must have coincided with something happening to him in real life. We’ll still need to be wary, though.”

Slipping around the perimeter, at one point at the back he stopped and cackled, rubbing his hands together. “Perfect. Somebody always leaves a window open.” He climbed up the ivy and leaped into the window, opened it all the way, then disappeared inside for a few minutes before returning with a coil of thin rope in his hands. “Here you go.”

Akira climbed up into the open floor-plan office. Rows of desks filled the center of the room, with wide file cabinets lining the walls. Curious, he checked for his name but found nothing where Kurusu should have fallen. Sakamoto was next, and his heart sank on not just finding a folder Ryuji with a -1 million yen balance on Ryuji, but more papers for his immediate family. The next page listed summary financial information for Sakamoto Youko at a dental clinic in Mitaka, and another with far smaller numbers for Sakamoto Hiroshi.

Seeing Ann come through the window next, he checked for Takamaki and found a folder labeled ‘Takamäki’. On it were a series of transactions several hundred thousand yen each. “Panther, come look at this. I think he’s got a file on your family, but it’s misspelled.”

She rushed closer, took it and read for only a moment before letting out a relieved breath. “That’s mom and dad’s clothing line. They changed their name to Takamaki when they moved to Tokyo. Exotic works better for products than people in Japan.” Ann pressed her lips into a thin line. “It’s still kind of disturbing to see that he’s investing in us.”

Akira blinked, then stepped back to let her put the folder back. “That’s right, you mentioned growing up in Finland that time we all got out of Kamoshida’s castle.”

While Makoto climbed, the team leader stepped out to scout. Akira kept browsing until he froze at a familiar name. Togo. Pulling the folder out, he found a stack of sheets over a centimeter thick. The name at the top read Togo Mitsuyo, with amounts above a hundred thousand yen each time going into his businesses, noting transfers elsewhere, and amounts about eighty percent going back to a debit account in Togo’s name. “He’s got a lot of money laundering going on.”

“None of that’s his treasure,” Morgana snapped in a hushed tone. He looked to their newest member coming in the window. “Let’s go. Quietly.”

He stood by the door, tail swishing back and forth before turning the knob and pulling it open. The rest of the Phantom Thieves followed him into a hallway with an arched ceiling and the same kind of beige wallpaper as the lobby. The hunched form of one of the shadowy guards paced away from them. Even from behind, he could see this one had a heavier guard uniform including a padded vest and white helmet.

Akira pressed his sub-machine gun wire stock against his shoulder and advanced only a step before Morgana snapped out a fist for ‘halt’.

The leader lifted his crossbow and shot a bolt into a camera in the corner.

Akira grimaced. He hadn’t even noticed the camera was there.

Morgana paced behind the guard until passing a conference room door, which opened. Another Shadow guard stood there, looking down at the team leader. It wore a padded vest like armored car guards, and a white helm with a full faceplate complete with glowing cyan eyes. The towering entity raised its meter-long Tonfa.

Akira leaped, catching its faceplate with one hand. Expecting the entire helm to come off like it did with the knights in Kamoshida’s castle, he yanked up. The faceplate snapped off, smoke billowing from where its face should have been.

With a moan like wind passing, it fell to its knees, its shape shrinking as smoke poured out, clinging to the guard and wrapping around it.

Akira braced his sub-machine gun against his shoulder, laser dot drawing a line through the smoke.

In a blink, the murky dark faded and a muscular woman in a black catsuit stood up, a long tail held erect behind her and enormous hand claws extending from her gloves. An iron mouthguard covered her lower face, making it hard to tell whether she was smiling or snarling.

Akira shot her with his sub-machine gun, sending her stumbling against the opposite wall, and an instant later a crossbow bolt flitted into her stomach, bringing her to her knees. Makoto came up alongside him, shotgun held out and ready.

“Hold on,” Ann said with an expectant grin. “This is gonna be great.”

The team leader lined up his crossbow with the transformed Shadow’s face. “Where is the control center for all those cameras?”

The catsuited Shadow looked at the guns pointed at her, then whimpered. “Security control is in B-1, and Surveillance is on the second floor. But both are locked by keycards. It would even be impossible for someone with my fabulous skills.”

Morgana lowered his crossbow, stroking his chin with his other hand. “There’s always a way.”

Akira shrugged, scanning the Shadow’s posture for signs of how to talk it into cooperating. “Breaking into two security centers. Think you’d be up for a heist of the century?”

A feminine purr emanated from the felinoid woman. “You’ve got strength and guile. Count me in.”

Makoto opened her mouth to ask what was going on when the Shadow on her knees burst into black streaks that zipped into Akira’s mask, sending him reeling two steps back. Ann caught him before he could get far, and he shook himself of the passing sharp tingling sensation. He straightened his mask and looked down to the team leader. “Ready to go.”

Makoto’s jaw flapped open and closed twice. “What was that?”

Morgana gave a haughty chuckle. “Joker is capable of absorbing and using Shadows as his own Persona.” He scratched his ear. “Or something to that effect.”

Ann chuckled. “Yeah. He’s like a Swiss army knife, a Persona for every occasion.”

Akira took his sub-machine gun in both hands and aimed back down the hall they were headed. “Let’s not put me up on some pedestal, I’ve got a couple and none of ‘em are fast like Ryuji’s Persona. Or as good at nuking enemies as yours. Even Morgana’s can smooth over some of the damage our Personas take.”

Morgana took point and started a quick pace down the hall, pausing at the corner before dashing to a wide alcove that ended up being an opening to a drab stairwell. It led down, but the team leader dashed down and came up only seconds later. “No access to the basement, and there’s a grating locking the first floor.”

Akira turned his sub-machine gun’s red dot projector on and glanced up at the ceiling corners. “That works for me. The surveillance place should be here.”

Makoto fidgeted with her grip on the shotgun Ryuji loaned her. “Why do I get the feeling that this isn’t the first barrier we’re going to have to overcome?”

Morgana held up a fist for ‘shut up and pay attention’, then led the team out behind a Shadow guard pacing past the stairs. He stepped to the left with Ann beside him, pistol raised.

Akira drifted to the right side of the hallway, waiting until Ann nodded behind her raised weapon before leaping up, planting a boot on the Shadow guard’s back as he snagged its faceplate and pulled up, only to snap off like it did on the other guard. Letting momentum carry him, he hit the wall and spun around, raising his weapon as a thick smoke gushed from the manifesting Shadow.

A familiar brawny humanoid body greeted them as the red-skinned oni stood up, club across its shoulder with the same casual ease as Ryuji with a baseball bat.

Akira and Ann hopped back, both summoning their Personnas. The shape coalescing in front of Akira towered over the teens but not quite as tall as the smirking oni, a head like an owl and a shawl of large, dark blue feathers over his shoulders. Andras swept out a clawed hand, sending a trio of ice shards at the same time as Carmen sent a ball of ice exploding into the oni.

Morgana shouted, “Get back, Nightri—!”

Shaking the frost off its head, the oni made a downward swing at Makoto.

She fell backwards in her effort to evade, crawling backwards as she aimed her shotgun with one hand. The weapon thundered, but only caused the oni to pause its advance. It raised its club in one hand.

A thorned whip wrapped around its throat as Ann shouted from further down the hall, “No you don’t!”

Akira recalled Andras, thinking through how well the other Personas and attacks seems to do to the physically sturdy oni. “Agathion!”

The blue-green creature hiding in a golden vase coalesced, then waggled its fingers and shot a lightning bolt into the oni, sending it stumbling and cross-eyed.

A whispy, pink-and-blue foxfire danced over the oni and Morgana growled with effort before the oni’s stance faltered. Then the whole monstrous Shadow jumped like a spooked cat, its limbs flopping with a crunch. The oni crumpled to the ground and dissolved into smoke.

Dismissing his Persona, Akira looked down at the team leader. “Zorro can do that?”

Morgana panted for a few moments. “Not… usually. It’s more of a support Persona, its most powerful abilities can only be deployed when the Shadows are stunned or compromised somehow.” He looked to the newest Phantom Thief. “You froze.”

Makoto looked away, red-faced under her iron plate of a mask. “Sorry. I saw what you were all doing and wanted to jump in doing the same, but… when it transformed and looked right at me, I forgot what I should do.”

“Take some distance to give yourself some options.” Akira reached out a hand to help her up.

Morgana cleared his throat. “There’s going to be some adjustment period as you define your own fighting style. We had to stop Ryuji from charging in—”

“Like yesterday,” Akira interrupted.

Ann chuckled. “True enough, but it’s not like you don’t have a lot of the same problem. Either way, he settled in beside us.” She looked to the girl in black leather. “You just have to be careful to act with us.”

The upperclassman nodded, but Morgana gave them no extra time to chat. He cocked his crossbow and slid along a wall to a steel, divided door with top and bottom halves locked shut. A magnetic card reader sat against the door frame.

Akira tapped his sub-machine gun against his frizzy-haired dome. “I think that’s a bit beyond my ability to pick.”

Morgana looked up the tall wall of the hallway, following the lines with a squint. Then his eyes dropped back to the doors and he trotted past two bland office doors before coming to a heavier steel door. He hopped up to grab the handle, the rattle of a locked door greeting their ears. Putting away his crossbow, he switched for his lock picks.

Akira and Ann fanned out around him to cover his flanks, with Makoto joining them after a brief moment of trying to decide which direction to worry about. After a few moments of scratching, the knob clicked and Morgana pushed the door open. A small utility room with huge air ducts lay beyond.

The others followed inside, but Makoto fidgeted. “What can we do here?”

Akira pulled her in. “I nominated Morgana the leader because he’s got good ideas. He wouldn’t have asked us to come in here without a reason.” He looked up at the piping, and across at a water heater. “You… do have a reason?”

Morgana fiddled at the bolts of a panel by one of the large, squared air ducts snaking up to the ceiling before disappearing to all three walls shared with other rooms. “Did you forget the passages we snuck through in Kamoshida’s castle? Everybody’s mind has seams connecting one part to another, it’s just how they’re conceptualized in his Palace.” With a tinking of bolts falling to the floor, he pulled the panel away and jumped inside, disappearing upwards.

Akira followed, hearing the leather of Ann’s boot soles and a moment later a heavier thump of something covered in rubber. He crawled after the team leader through the cramped air duct for what felt like ten meters before Morgana stopped at a vent and chuckled. Not at the right angle to look through the slits, all Akira could tell was white light came from the other side. “What?”

Morgana pulled out another tool and slipped it through one of the slits, a quiet ratcheting    before he slipped it to a slit at another corner. “This is that surveillance office. Get ready to rush out and hit hard, we’re only going to have the element of surprise for a moment and only one can fit through this vent at a time.”

Akira glanced back, and spotted the glint of light from Ann’s and Makoto’s eyes as they nodded. When he turned back to Morgana, he gave the same acknowledgment and tightened his grip on his sub-machine gun.

The team leader slipped his tool into a slit and unscrewed the last corner.

The team burst out of the vent, Morgana taking a wild shot with his crossbow as the others came to their feet.

While only one Shadow guarded this room, it had the same heavy helmet and faceplate as the others. It wore a thick, yellow padded vest over its considerable girth, no sign it noticed the bolt sticking out. Its body bulged and seized, black oozing out to cover it like an obsidian cocoon. Akira blasted bullets into it, but too late.

The pulsing black exploded, revealing the unraveling coils of a fat, leathery-skinned serpent. Its grey hide undulated over muscle. Milky eyelids blinked over gold eyes with slit pupils and it reared up at the arrayed Phantom Thieves. “Who daress tresspass on the domain of Lotan? Your penalty shall be grave, and penaltiess are meant to be paid!”

Makoto sidled closer to the transfer student to whisper, “He was about to grab a keycard from a reader behind him before we dropped in.”

Akira nodded, then refocused on the rounded face of the bulging leviathan. “I guess you’ve got a lot of back-pay for all Kaneshiro’s extortion, then. Nekomata!”

Motes of light gathered with a pop as the small Persona appeared behind Lotan’s sinuous form, allowing her to strike with her oversized hand claws while Ann and Morgana summoned their own Personas. Carmen’s ball of ice shattered against its hide and it ignored whatever wispy wave Zorro threw at it.

Lotan roared, rearing its head back as cutting winds whipped around it, slicing at the Personas attempting to tangle with the leviathan directly. Akira squinted against the wind, his long coat shielding him from the worst of it at his distance, but cringing against the feeling of slashing wind blades on Nekomata.

Akira looked over Lotan as it twisted, evading a thrust from Zorro, then shrugging off Carmen’s spiked whip. Nekomata was agile enough to dodge the Shadow beast as long as it didn’t cast large spells like that, but they needed something else to really hurt it. “Agathion!”

His Persona dissipated, motes of silvery light coalescing before bursting into the green-skinned imp hiding in its golden vase. It waggled its fingers at the leviathan, looking silly but sending a respectable lightning bolt into the Shadow.

Lotan whipped around and let out a bellow, pounding winds smashing the floating Persona against the beige wallpaper, leaving an imprint where “days since last workplace accident” used to be.

Akira fell to one knee.

Makoto’s shotgun barked twice before she lowered the weapon. “Johanna!”

Blue swirled underneath her, the same steel-armored bike as before assembling itself and lifting her up, one panel sliding open and a black clamp taking her shotgun.

Akira couldn’t hide his jealousy. “It even has a gun rack. All it needs are cup-holders.”

Flaming wheels blazed over the floor, leaving a scorched trail as Makoto let out a long roar, popping her motorcycle Persona’s front wheel up at the last moment to catch and tear a blaze down the leviathan’s side, gushing flames as it went.

Unsure whether the flames or brute physical power had more of an effect, Akira called in another Persona. “Pillar of Heaven!”

Distracted with trying to swat Zorro or crush Makoto, Lotan didn’t even notice the column of churning fire and darkness extend from the tall ceiling. The leviathan bellowed    at Morgana’s persona, sending it flying into the wall and the leader sprawling to the ground.

As if gaining a second wind from the success, Lotan twisted its bulky, muscled body, slamming back against Johanna, sending it skidding across the ground.

Carmen threw a blue orb that detonated in a cloud of ice shards, but the leviathan didn’t even flinch as it drew up and unleashed another slicing wind storm on the dancing Persona. Ann cried out as she collapsed to the floor.

Hand clenching on his sub-machine gun in rage, he rushed to her as he directed his Persona. A ball of flame the size of his body flung out of the churning column, smashing into the leviathan’s head and knocking it into the bank of screens lining the wall behind it.

Straightening, Lotan looked down over Akira and Ann, drawing in breath for a heavy attack.

Flames blasted at its hindquarters and Makoto drove right up onto the leviathan, fire billowing down at it from every vent on her bike-Persona. “Just go down already!”

Lotan rolled, tossing her off. Makoto’s Persona dissipated and she tumbled over the floor.

Zorro plunged down from above, burying its sword to halfway down the blade in the muscled behemoth.

Lotan snarled and its milky eyelids slid closed, centering another storm of slicing winds on itself. Carmen backed off, but the storm battered Zorro and flung it into the ceiling.

Helping his blonde classmate stay steady on her feet, Akira asked, “I think it’s immune to Carmen’s ice. Can you damage it with physical blows?”

Breathing hard, Ann looked from it to him. “That’s not what Carmen’s good at, but I’ll do my best.”

Zorro zipped in and out as Morgana ran up to the longcoated Phantom Thief. “This could go on for hours. You and Rider both have Personas with the power of fire. I think you can combine your efforts for a stronger blow that might finish it off.”

Akira glanced at his sub-machine gun, then up at the huge leviathan. “How?”

“Instead of trying to blow something up, send your flames to her,” Morgana shouted over the howl of winds and kawoosh of fire. “Her Persona should know what to do to convert that into an even more powerful blast. The only problem is your conscious relationship and whether you trust each other.”

He looked over at the girl in a black leather riding suit. She blackmailed the only friends he had, but they had a common enemy now. That should be enough. He nodded to the team leader.

“Rider!” Morgana cupped one hand around the side of his mouth. “Let your Persona feed on his flames!”

She swung around to avoid another slam from the beast. Incredulous, she shouted, “What?”

“Pillar!” Akira called, and the column undulated for a moment before sending an oblong burst of fire at her.

She hunkered down on Johana, its red tracery glowing brighter. The instant before it collided, the red dimmed. Yellow flames exploded over her, splashing against the leviathan. Its roar almost drowned out her cry of pain.

Zorro and Carmen settled into a pattern of taking turns to flit in, stab or slash, and flit out. Makoto returned to shooting small bolts of fire into it at a distance, and her gutsy runs where she drove Johanna right up onto it to gush flames over its body. Akira gave up on trying to hurt it with darkness and pounded the beast with fire for minutes as the group wore it down, until at last a blow penetrated its hide and smoke gushed out from the stab, then its mouth, then smaller cuts from earlier in the fight. Lotan withered and at last dissipated into fading smoke.

Feeling like he ran two marathons back to back, Akira accepted Ann’s help to steady him. Where the last ooze dissipated lay a metal rod as long as his hand, with a diamond cross-section and random squared nubs jutting out. He picked it up before joining the others at the card reader. “You… okay? You don’t look burned.” He handed her the nobby metal rod.

Taking the dropped rod, Makoto pursed her lips and examined it. She passed it to Ann. “Think this is a key?” When the model shrugged, she turned to the transfer student. “What exactly was that fire thing?”

Akira clenched his free hand. “Hey, it’s not like I wanted to burn you. I was trying to help…” he glanced to the team leader, “what exactly was it? Strengthen her Persona?”

Morgana sighed. “I’m sorry, I should have realized this would be likely to happen. Your Personas can enhance each other, at least for brief periods, but to do so successfully requires a bond of trust that goes beyond conscious necessity.” He glanced between Akira and Ann. “That’s why I didn’t bring up the possibility in Kamoshida’s castle even after you acquired Andras, even though it could use ice just like Carmen. Your interests were aligned, but you didn’t truly… have that bond until after defeating Kamoshida’s Shadow.”

“But we both wanted to pound Kamoshida,” Akira snapped back.

“Joker.” Ann sighed and pressed her hand against her back, one eye squinting. “Ease up.”

Makoto turned back to the bank of monitors… at least the quarter of them that hadn’t been smashed in the fight. “Well, we’ve incidentally hampered the surveillance capabilities in Kaneshiro’s bank.” She scanned the control station in the middle, the whole thing bent from a collision from Johanna’s steel plating, but still functional. “It looks like there are two separate camera circuits.”

Ann looked from the damaged monitors to the blinking lights on the control panel. “Think you can turn them off?”

Makoto rubbed her chin, then reached out, flipped a couple of switches, turned a dial counter-clockwise, then tapped a button. Her finger glanced off and she shook her hand. “Looks like that one’s stuck.” She looked for another few moments, then repeated much the same sequence on a different set of switches, dials, and tapped another wide, green button. This one depressed and three of the monitors went black, white text stating, “No feed.”

Akira smiled. “So how far do you think we can get, fearless leader?”

Morgana looked askance at him. “You’re wavering on your feet and trying to press on? Panther might still have some stamina left since Carmen couldn’t use ice magic, but this was Rider’s first major fight. We don’t have a lot of stamina left to go, so I’d rather not risk running into any other surprises.” He collapsed his crossbow and pointed to the wall. “We know there’s a control center in basement one, and there’s a vault two levels below that. If that keycard doesn’t get us into that control center, it’ll let us do something else once we can get in.”

Grimacing but conceding the point, Akira twisted a dial-style switch against the wall to unlock the surveillance office door and the Phantom Thieves made their way back to the dark streets.

Ann yawned into her hand, then shook her head. “Sorry. I feel like I need a long, hot bath after all that.”

Makoto stretched one arm up, wincing. “You’re telling me.”

Morgana looked over the Phantom Thieves. “I know you all want to get this done as soon as possible.” His gaze fell on Akira. “Some more than others. But I think we did pretty well today. We didn’t find a safe zone, but did disable half of the cameras and any traps linked to them. And we have two different kinds of keys for some future area. Just like with Kamoshida, making sure progress will be more important than trying to rush. Does anybody have anything the doctor might need to look at?”

Ann shook her head, her blonde pigtails tousling. After a moment, Makoto gave the same. While sore from repeated blows and a couple of his Personas being pounded by the leviathan’s cutting winds, Akira knew he wouldn’t have any bruises that would show beyond the school uniform tomorrow.

“Good,” Morgana said, his little white hands on the pouch-lined belt on his hips. “Then let’s break and get some good rest for the night. I have something I need to look into, but I’ll meet you at Leblanc this evening.”

Chapter 40: May 27th, Philistine

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Friday, 27 May 2016
Evening
Yongen, Back Streets

No sooner did Akira pass a father and his grade-school son than the eerie string music of the Goa’uld sang from his pocket. The boy pulled away from his father and gave Akira a funny look. “What kind of weird song is that?”

The man took his son’s hand and pulled him to the side. “It’s not polite to insult other people’s taste in music.”

Akira slowed. His father never would have never defended someone else. The transfer student shook his head and kept walking. He pulled out his phone, Principals Lapdog on the caller ID. Still tired from the fight against Leviathan, he remembered Morgana’s combined-fire-attack didn’t work out so well so he swallowed his irritation. “Budd Tugly’s cosmetic and make-up services.”

Niijima sighed from the other end of the line. “Really?”

The team leader stood up from the satchel, front paws on his shoulder. “Be nice, Joker.”

He leaned against a concrete wall just a few paces from the narrow road in front of Leblanc. “What’s up?”

“I forgot to mention earlier,” she said. The sound of a heavy door swinging closed banged through the speakers. “I passed some of those names you gave me to Sae.”

The tips of Morgana’s claws sank through Akira’s school jacket. “Why doesn’t that sound like good news?”

A metallic clinking like keys jangling came from her side. “And I have good news and bad news. The good news is she read the list and I’m pretty sure she sent them to some investigators she trusts to check them out.” Tense silence stretched on before she let out a heavy breath. “The bad news is she’s investigating the Phantom Thieves.”

“What?” Morgana blurted, hopping up to perch all fours on the transfer student’s shoulder, as if that could give him a better vantage point to shout at the student’s phone. “How could she find out about us? Did—?”

“Whoa,” Akira said, standing up, the motion jarring the guide-trapped-in-cat-form into a jump to the road. “Calm down there for a second, O fearless leader.” He looked to his phone. “Any risk of us being found out?”

Silence loomed for a moment. “I don’t see how she could discover that world, but I overheard her talking to some investigator who sounded like an expert on Apathy Syndrome and mental shutdowns.”

Morgana’s ears pressed against his skull. “This could be bad.”

“This could be nothing,” Akira riposted. He raised his voice to talk back to the upperclassman. “It can’t change our fundamental mission. The Phantom Thieves aren’t about going for the safest option, it’s about trying to make things safer for others. Just stay calm and don’t blab and we should be fine. Just keep an ear out.”

Niijima hemmed and hawed for a moment. “Okay.” Silence stretched on for a few long seconds before she asked, “Do you think we could meet to talk in person tomorrow?”

“I’m upgrading gear at Untouchable, I don’t think I’ll be able to get to you ‘til Sunday,” Akira said. The conversation over, he went back into his contacts and looked at his nickname for Makoto for a few moments. Principals lapdog wasn’t appropriate when she fought alongside them, or helped smuggle names from changes in Mementos to the police. He deleted that and replaced it with President Niijima.

Saturday, 28 May 2016
Early Morning
Shibuya Underground

Akira trotted through the concourse linking together half a dozen train stations in the Shibuya underground. The mass of noise pressed down on him, the way every single person walked his own way making him feel just a little dizzy. Angling for some slightly more open space, someone still ran into him as he skirted around a temporary stand selling umbrellas.

Before he could get his fist up, a low, young man’s voice said, “I’m sorry.”

With the two being almost the only two still people in the underground, it was easy to take a moment to look over the tall boy. He wore a long-sleeved white shirt with some funny symbol in dark blue at both sides of his split collar. His dark gray eyes bored into Akira, and he held black bag big enough to hide a storefront-display flatscreen TV slung over his shoulder. Curious, Akira asked, “What’s that?”

The dark-haired boy glanced down to it, then back up with a sense of smothering ennui. “Oh, just my paintings. I’d been caught up helping Master with a slump he’s having. He’s not been well since the police moved back his Shibuya exhibition. Alas, all I could manage for school was a trite landscape to demonstrate technique.” His shoulders slumped even more, as if he’d just confessed to embezzling a whole bank’s finances. “There is no beauty in it.”

The boy seemed a near age, but without recognizing the school uniform he couldn’t be sure if he was a senior or college student. Shrugging, Akira gave a wave goodbye. “Well, Shibuya’s going to be stirred up for a while. When it rains, it pours, you know?”

The boy in white nodded, “Every monsoon.” He shifted his painting-bag strap and shuffled into the crowd.

Akira stared for a moment, wondering how he could miss such a common idiom, then shrugged and decided to get to Shujin.

Saturday, 28 May 2016
Afternoon
Shujin, Class 2-D

Akira tapped his pen against his notebook, making little effort to listen to Inui-sensei over the hushed conversations. Inui’s jaws clenched whenever he stopped talking, and he spoke faster than before. His tie knot skewed to the left, making his whole body look off-center.

The tip of Morgana’s tail twitched. “This teacher’s been acting funny for weeks. What’s up?”

Akira clicked his pen closed and answered in a low tone. “They couldn’t hush up Kobayakawa facing ten years. They’ve only fired Chouno so far, but I bet he’s in the line for the chopping block.”

“Well,” Morgana muttered from the desk, “he’s not doing himself any favors by losing his grip on teaching.”

Inui babbled through the remainder of his lecture, sounding plaintive when he tried to start a question and answer session with the last five minutes of class. He called the class representative to clean the chalk boards.

Mishima tapped out something on his phone, then called, “Yamamoto.”

The girl in the back corner of the class let out an indignant huff, but got up and started erasing.

Morgana’s tail stilled. “That’s the first time your class rep has delegated a job to someone else.”

“Perk of the job,” Akira said, packing up his things. He paused and thought back. The class rep sounded terse, but focused on his own work. It wasn’t the despondent droning he’d sounded like for weeks. The last bell of the day rang and the hushed conversations exploded into an assault on his ears. Using their lack of attention as cover, Akira asked, “You think we can get to that other control room?”

Morgana’s eyes narrowed. “Not today. I’d have to see her to evaluate for sure, but I bet Nightrider is still tired and recovering. Reaper is still healing, and if a bunch of those oni-type Shadows show up then just you, me, and Lady Ann are not going to be enough. The Phantom Thieves are resting today, and that’s an order.”

Striding across the front of the class, Ann paused, her eyes meeting Mishima’s for a long moment before her face flushed and she speed-walked out.

Akira slipped his last book in his satchel and watched her exit. “I wonder what’s up with her and Mishima.”

Morgana forgot his need to hide on campus and popped up to try to spy the blonde. “Why? What’d he do to Lady Ann?”

Akira pushed him into the satchel and hissed, “Keep it down. A few people have spotted you and don’t care, but no pets on campus is still an official rule.”

Taking to the halls, before he could head for the stairs up, a blond popped out of the crowd. Ryuji flashed a wide grin. “Yo, dude. How’s progress goin’ against that mafia asshole?”

Akira pulled the track star to the wall so others could go around and ignore them. “Quiet!” He glanced about, seeing only disinterested faces rushing their own way or already absorbed in their own conversations. “Makoto caught us because we were sloppy. No talking about business in public.”

With a leering grin, Ryuji slipped his hands in his pockets and wiggled his eyebrows. “Already just Makoto?”

Groaning, Akira rolled his eyes. “C’mon, I like bein’ polite if it’s returned, but I isn’t like I was all ‘Sakamoto-san’ after you started helping us.”

Ryuji’s smirk held steady. “Hey, ain’t ya protestin’ a bit much?” He flexed his shoulders. “Ya got some time? If Morgana’s still makin’ ya take a day off, we could do some trainin’.”

His ears pressed against his black head. “I am, and you should be taking it easy today, too. Bruised ribs take a while to heal.”

Akira straightened his glasses. “We could take a day to hit the books. Most of the midterms were easy, but I’m still worried about my score on math.”

Ryuji turned to face him straight on for the first time in the conversation, brow furrowed and eyes narrowed. “Did you just say the midterms were easy? You traitor.”

Morgana rolled his eyes. “I’m not saying you should obsess over it like Joker does, but you wouldn’t have to worry about it if you studied regularly.”

Ryuji sneered at the team leader. “Like a cat would know.”

Taking off his glasses, Akira pressed his palm over one eye. “Why don’t you go sneak around and see if you can pick up a Mementos target or any useful rumors?”

Morgana thrust out his chest. “Fine. Lady Ann would know how to appreciate a gentlemans presence. And somebody needs to make sure your class representative isn’t taking advantage of her.” He hopped out and slipped unnoticed through the crowd of people all distracted with their own problems.

“Whatever. I’ll see him at Leblanc.” With him out of the picture, Akira returned his glasses to their place and looked the track star in his brown eyes. “I heard the track team was getting back together, at least unofficially. You in on that?”

Ryuji gestured his head at the stairs and Akira followed him out to the courtyard. Instead of stopping at the nook with vending machines, Ryuji led him past the practice building to the athletics field.

Akira slipped his hands in his pockets and looked out at a pair of students in PE uniforms running a circuit around the field perimeter. “What was it like?”

Ryuji came to a stop next to the transfer student, shadowing his posture. “Whaddya mean?”

Eyes following the pair of runners, Akira shifted on his feet. “Being in a team. A place where people’d still be there with you even after the class bell rang.”

Ryuji watched the runners for a moment. “Track wasn’t exactly a team sport. Not like volleyball or baseball. When you’re runnin’, it’s kinda like it’s just you, the track, an’ the wind. When it fin’ly comes up for your hundred meter, it’s all up to you to crush that distance as fast as ya can.”

Akira took in a long, deep breath, then let it out. Despite his own desire, the list of names they took down while closing on Kaneshiro scrolled before his mind’s eye. All of them with dozens of victims, people who waited for the Phantom Thieves because they had no-one to turn to, nowhere to go. “Kinda like life? When it comes down to it, nobody ever sticks next to you.”

Ryuji elbowed the transfer student. “C’mon, dude. The competition’s where the crowd’s’re at, but that’s just one part of the sport.” He scratched his bleached scalp. “I never met a dude who wasn’t in some kinda sport club. You seriously never have a team?”

Akira pursed his lips. “I tried for basketball a couple of times, it was big in Inaba but Tanizaki’s team prioritized senior players, so I never got onto the court.”

“That sucks,” Ryuji commiserated. He pondered for a moment. “You remember when we ran at Inokashira?”

Akira raised an eyebrow. “Yeah?”

“You sure picked up the pace after you saw me pass you.”

Akira motioned to give a friendly jab, then thought the better of it. “Heh. You were slacking, you needed a push.”

Ryuji gave a wide, toothy grin and jabbed back with both of his hands. “Yeah, exactly. That’s what was so great about practice. There’d be thirty of us on the boy’s track team, runnin’ the streets here. Sometimes you start feelin’ tired an’ if there’s no one there to measure up to, you let yourself fall back. But when there’s another guy right at your elbows, somethin’ about it lights a fire inside ya and ya run faster an’ longer than ya thought.”

The two runners, closing their circuit of the practice field, slowed as they came up to the pair of juniors still in academic uniforms. The one with a dark sweatband over his dark hair put his hands on his head and paced away from them, but the brown-haired one glared. “I thought you were a runner all the way to your bones, Sakamoto. Can’t even get changed anymore?”

Ryuji’s fists clenched and he took a step at him, but flinched and held one hand to his ribs. “Even I gotta take a day off once in a while. Or you still not doin’ nothin’ outside school?”

The runner with the sweatband bubbled out with laughter. “You give up the team, you give up our trainin’ spot, and now you’re even giving up running?”

Ryuji growled. “It ain’t like that at all, Takeishi!”

The brown-haired one growled. “We don’t even have a locker room, thanks to you!”

Akira found himself between Ryuji and the other student, feet apart and fists low but still ready. “You idiots think Kamoshida would’ve let you keep your precious team as long as you had a shot at outdoing his volleyball teams?”

Brown Hair looked over the transfer student, though his confident stance flagged. “What’s your problem?”

Takeishi came stepped closer. “He’s that transfer student.” He glanced between the two still in academic uniforms.

“Tch,” Brown Hair sneered.

Ryuji tugged at the transfer student’s jacket sleeve to keep him back. “Don’t mind Nakaoka.”

After a brief breath to calm himself, Nakaoka took a deep step back. “What are you doing, hanging around this loser? You got all of Tokyo and you hang out with this club-destroying delinquent?”

Akira surged out of Ryuji’s fingertip-grip, coming nose-to-nose with the brown-haired goon. “What’d you do to help your team? Stand back and say nothing as he abused you? Look away like a coward when he broke your best runner’s leg?”

Nakaoka shuffled back a little further, his eyes dropping. “You don’t know nothing, Transfer. But if you’re really any better, you’d better find other people to hang out with. He may fake it, but he’ll hit you the minute you piss him off. Just how it is. Bad father, bad son.”

The track star growled, but Akira’s vision hazed red and Nakaoka was on his back before anyone realized what happened.

Ryuji grabbed and held Akira back.

Takeishi helped his fellow runner up and they both took some distance. “Looks like they’re two of a kind after all. Makes sense thugs would hang out with thugs.”

Standing straight, Nakaoka seemed emboldened by his fellow runner, jerking his arm out of the other’s hand when Takeshi tried to pull him back. “No, I’m gonna make him understand.” He turned his burning gaze on Akira. “You think any of that was easy? Nobody stood up for us. All the rest of us took it for the sake of the team.” He turned to Ryuji. “You were the one who fucked that up!” That out, the runner deflated and took a step away. “I was stupid for ever thinking you’d have my back through it all.”

They took off, back along the perimeter, and Ryuji came up to Akira. “Sorry, man. I was right there to try an’ help you keep your cool, but when he said that ‘bout my dad the only thing that stopped me from sockin’ him was you throwin’ him down first.” He let out a beleaguered breath. “I thought I was gettin’ better after all these months, but it looks like I’m still on square one.”

Akira shrugged to settle his school jacket on his shoulders. “Hey, fuck him and fuck that. I may not have met your old bastard, but you actually give a shit about other people. Whatever your old bastard was, youre a good person.” He looked down and kicked at the dirt. “You just have as much problem as me holdin’ back when someone’s being a dumbass.”

Ryuji let a wan smile slip across his face. “You’re right, dude. We’re who we are here an’ now. C’mon, let’s blow off some steam at Gun About.”

Saturday, 28 May 2016
Evening
Shibuya, Scarlet Media Rental

The transfer student trotted up to the clerk’s counter and set down a couple CDs. The bubbly girl behind the counter gave a smile. He tried not to notice how her bot haircut made her head look like a sphere. “Thank you, valued customer. Did you notice we have a new foreign series in?” She pointed to a stand with MacGuyver.

Akira squinted. “Hey, I know that guy.” He picked up the DVD case and read the back, then set it on the stand again. “Nah. There’s no way Anderson could be anything but a colonel.” After paying for the documentaries on the history he’d need to write a report on, Alliance Force Assemble sang out of his phone.

Stepping outside and then to the side so people could ignore him and pass, he saw Big Man on the ID. “Neil Efare’s funhouse. Come for the mirrors, stay because you can’t find the way out.”

A snort of amusement confirmed Iwai’s identity before the surplus store owner spoke. “I got a job. You got some time to run an errand in Shibuya?”

Akira looked around at the churning mass of people and the air coming into his lungs felt thinner. He didn’t want to say no to somebody helping him with modifications to a replica so realistic it was nigh illegal, but also didn’t fancy sticking around. “W-where?”

“I’ve got a meet with a guy at a diner. I need someone ‘round. As a security measure,” he added, nonchalant as pointing out a shaped cloud in the sky. “All you gotta do is keep an ear out and call my phone when I cough.”

Indoors was good. “I’ll be waiting. You already got a table reserved?”

Iwai grunted. “That diner doesn’t reserve tables. It’s just public enough that most people won’t pay attention to you, and private enough to have a convo on the down-low. There’s usually a small table open by the corner next to the server entrance to the kitchens.”

“I’ll be nearby,” Akira said. “But I don’t exactly have the stuff to bug the table.”

Iwai snorted. “Youre my bug, kid. Just listen and call my cell when I give the signal.”

Akira dashed to the other side of the street, straining to hear the airsoft store owner over the crowd as he went. “You want me to record, in case he’s the type who’s not so good at remembering what he promised?”

“No!” Iwai snapped. “I mean… he and I share some unsavory connections. I’m tryin’ to get out of the spider’s web, not deeper in.”

“Got it,” Akira said, ending the call and charting a course to the diner through the unruly mass of humanity rushing this way and that. He looked down to the satchel hanging from his shoulder and the team leader hiding within. “You wanna come along?”

One of Morgana’s ears folded back and his blue eyes narrowed for a moment. “I’d rather focus on trying to tie up the Shibuya yakuza. I know we’ve got the Palace for its leader, but if we can add any important members of its leadership to the targets we take care of in Mementos, we can ensure they don’t just reorganize.”

Akira shrugged. “Good luck. Meet you at Leblanc at eight?”

Morgana stood, nodded, and hopped out into the crowd.

Akira pushed his way through the crowd and up to the diner. He spotted the table for two in question at the far side of the dining area, just past the soda fountain. The closest seat nearby was a booth, so he sat down and spread out some books to look like he had business being there. After a few minutes, a cute waitress with her ponytail in a red bow came to take his order.

A few minutes later, Iwai slipped through the crowd, his pace steady but his eyes sweeping over everything with a subtlety the transfer student forgot adults were capable of. Without even making eye contact, the surplus store owner sat down at the far chair.

A lanky man with slicked-back hair and a leopard-print shirt sat down in the seat next to him, his back facing the transfer student. Akira felt his hair stand up when Masa spoke. “I wouldn’a thought a tough guy like you would go for a dumpy joint full of kids and old farts. Long way from Mune the Stomper.” Masa shook his head.

Iwai let out a chuff, pulling the brim of his cap lower and glancing at the servers ducking into the nearby kitchen entrance. “Hey, sometimes reputations get a little longer in the retelling. I just wanted ta check on some of the old boys. How’s Tsuda-san?”

Masa leaned back in his chair. “Same old.” He tilted his head and from the shift in Iwai’s posture, must’ve given a hell of a scrutinizing look. “You ain’t been around for years, an’ you know they never really left a spot for me. ‘Thought you left the family. Why the sudden interest?”

Iwai tapped the brim of his cap, slouching back in his chair to try to hide the stiffness in his shoulders. Akira could still see the tension in his neck. “Just saw him around the other day. Made me think about old times.” The shop owner straightened. “And I figured it was past time to bury the hatchet. But I haven’t been in the family in years, I can’t just walk up to him.”

Masa snorted, then broke out into a nasally laugh. “You still on about the ol’ code? I guess some things don’t change.”

“So you an’ he still in the same circles or not?”

A plate broke in the kitchen and the two adults froze before the hubbub returned.

“I’d hafta do some reconnectin’. New boss, and all.” Masa twirled a toothpick between his fingertips. “Want me to set up a meet?”

Iwai sat up straight in his seat. “No, idiot. I just need to talk. We only need to end up in the same place at the same time. This has gotta go down like a coincidence.”

Masa nodded. “Shibaura’s gettin’ a lot of attention lately.”

Iwai quirked an eyebrow. “That run-down dumping ground?”

“First rule of real estate is everything is for sale at the right price,” Masa said, slouching against the wall. The transfer student could just catch a smirk. “Talk is there’s gonna be redevelopment. Tsuda’s been down there on the regular.”

Iwai hacked into his fist. He strained, like listening for something in the crowd, but instead of reaching for his glass he coughed again.

Akira slid his recording app out of the way and brought up the surplus store owner’s number.

Masa scooted back a little and took his coffee from the table. “You sick or somethin’?”

“Just a cold.” Iwai snatched his ringing phone from his coat pocket. “What? Polystyrene instead of canvas?”

Akira quirked an eyebrow.

Iwai feigned listening. “No, no, sir. I’ll have it fixed right away.” He covered the microphone and looked at the gangster in a leopard-print shirt. “Work. Later.”

Masa gave a lazy wave. “Seeya.” He lifted his mug and sipped his hot coffee.

Iwai dropped a yen note on the table and dashed, but from the sound stopped at the stairs. “Stay on the line. If I know Masa, he’s an opportunist. I need to know what he says when he calls out.”

Akira filled in Hashiba Hideyoshi on his history homework and gave an “Mm-hm.”

Sure enough, just seconds later, Masa lost patience and pulled out his smart phone. “Tsuda-san. It’s Masa.”

A moment passed, but Akira couldn’t hear the other side over the clinking and work in the kitchen.

Masa set his coffee on the table. “Iwai was just askin’ ‘bout you. I gave him the runaround like you said.” He paused and Akira wished he could hear over the sizzle and clatter of cooking staff. “My guess is he heard about your big score and wants a cut.”

Iwai’s voice faded in over the sound of background noise on Akira’s phone. “Big score? I wonder what’s up.”

Masa nodded. “Yeah, don’t worry.” He hung up, took another sip of coffee, then brought up his phone’s contacts. “I don’t got time to screw around with those pissants. I got real prospects.” He tapped on one of his contacts. “Hey, Senda. You ready to put a little fear of god in the doc?”

Akira clicked his pen closed, hoping he wasn’t hearing a reference to what he thought. It was too early. He slipped his homework into his school satchel.

Masa nodded. “Right. Same place as usual.” He took another sip of his coffee, head tilted against his phone. “Don’t worry about that, I’ll get you a piece. A guy I know just made a sale and still has a whole case of spare guns.” He ended the call, gulped the rest of his coffee, then stood up and headed for the entrance.

Iwai asked, “What’s he talkin’ about?”

Shoving the rest of his school materials into his school bag, Akira cut the call, hopped to his feet, dropped a yen note to pay for his kale kobachi, and dashed for the front before Masa could disappear. Concerned Iwai would try to call back, Akira put his phone on In Meeting mode, then stopped the recorder. He got to the stairs just in time to see Masa close some app and slip his phone into his pocket.

Before they got down to the street, Akira’s phone buzzed. Takemi’s ID blinked up at him, call waiting to connect. He canceled the call, then brought her up on his chat app.

She wasted no time to send, [He's called early. I don't have nearly enough to placate him!]

A notification about an incoming call from Iwai appeared, and he swiped it out of the way, then sent to Takemi, [I'm on him, just stay calm and do what you can for now.]

[I've barely got enough to rattle in a case!]

Akira clenched his teeth. [Then bring that, just get moving!]

Looking up, he dashed through the crowd to keep track of Masa until he turned to the less used side streets. The roads seemed longer than when he wandered through them to stumble across Takemi’s drug drop point the first time. At least the majority of the lights were burned out, leaving him plenty of darkness to creep through. It reminded him of following Morgana across storage shelves in the castle’s larder to evade the knights.

Masa took position in the dark just outside a cone of light at the back entrance of an appliance repair store. He lit a cigarette and smoked halfway down before another young man in a dirty yellow shirt with torn sleeves approached. Masa nodded to him and continued smoking, finishing the first and starting on a second cigarette before a clinking of small, hard objects shifting in a plastic container echoed in the alley.

Masa flicked the cigarette away and pulled a pistol tucked against his waistband, then handed it to the flunky.

The new guy turned it over in his hands for a second. “Is this fake, or empty?”

“Shh!” Masa gestured both hands down and leaned closer. “It’ll look and sound just like the real thing.”

“You said you’d get me a piece for this! Or ain’t that Tsuda as hot as you say?”

Masa growled. “Listen, shit-stain. He keeps real tight grip of his product. This is the best I could get without forking over a fuckload of cash the boss is constantly swipin’ from my pockets.” He jerked his head at a shadowed loading dock. The other thug clambered up and took position in the darkest corner on the concrete platform. Akira took to a dark doorway a few meters down.

Doctor Takemi paced into the alley. The dark green of her dress and black on her leather jacket and ragged leggings made her look like she belonged in here more than the dork in the leopard print shirt. She kept her back straight, but her fist held her plastic medicine case with white knuckles.

Masa ground his cigarette beneath his shoe before looking her in the eyes. A smirk slipped over his face and she retreated a shallow step. “I give you a chance for a sale, and that’s all you bring?”

Takemi swallowed, her brows furrowing. “You called early. I’m not a miracle worker, a lot of the medication you… want only comes at the beginning of the month.”

Masa’s smirk widened. “Wrong answer, doc.”

The ganger’s flunky jumped down from the darkness of the loading dock, landing less than a pace from the doctor.

Dropping the case, she scrambled back.

Masa approached, his smirk expanding into a shit-eating grin before his flunky spotted the red dot come to a stop on Masa’s chest. “Shit!” The new guy fell to his ass in his haste to scramble away, his gun replica falling to the ground. “She hired a merc!” He scrambled on all fours before sprinting away.

Masa snarled at him, but looked across the dark alley until his eyes zeroed in on Akira, little but the fake silencer protruding out of deep shadows. The gangster froze, his eyes going wide and his breath halting when he locked onto the red dot projector.

Takemi straightened and took a beat to steady her breathing. “Now unless you want my guy to pay you a midnight visit, here’s how it’s going to go from now on. If I want to hear you again, Ill call you.” She jerked her chin away.

Face contorting in rage, Masa clenched both fists but trembled where he stood. “Don’t think the boss is gonna let this go for long.” He turned and fled the same direction his lackey did.

It seemed a full minute passed in as close to silence as a back alley of Shibuya could get before Takemi collapsed to her knees, hands catching the broken asphalt. She sucked in ragged breaths and tears drew trails down her face.

Akira turned off his laser dot projector and folded his sub-machine gun, retrieving his satchel so he could stow his weapon. His phone vibrated, but when he saw Big Man on the ID he denied the call and slipped it back in his pocket. After slipping his gloves on, Akira snagged the very real-looking pistol, tossed it in his schoolbag, and retrieved her medicine case. That out of the way, he knelt down next to the doctor. “Hey, it’s over. They’re gone.”

“It’s not over!” she snapped at him over the traffic helicopter passing overhead.

Ignoring her shout, he reached out a hand to help her to her feet. “Let’s get back to Yongen-Jaya for now. We’ll worry about the rest later.”

She glared at him, so he straightened his satchel, grabbed her arm, and walked her to the main streets. She pulled a tissue to wipe at her face, but stayed just a pace behind as they proceeded to the train station and to the back streets of Yongen. When she kept going straight at the road heading down to her clinic, he cleared his throat. Takemi’s glare fell on him again, but by this point she looked confused and tired instead of angry.

He waved her closer. “You need a break. I’ll make you a cup.” Despite the sign still saying Open, the lights were off and the door locked. Akira pulled out his keys and unlocked it, turned the sign, then flipped the lights and started heating up some water.

Takemi slid onto a seat next to the books near the yellow phone, slumping to the polished wood countertop. “We may have made it out of that one this time, but he’s going to try again.”

Akira finished her mug and set it on the counter in front of her. “Maybe, but he’ll need his boss’s backing and he won’t have that for long.”

Takemi stared into him, and for a moment he feared she was going to snap before her head dipped. She caught herself and reached for the mug, but grimaced after only a quick sip. “You made me decaf? Philistine.” She took another sip anyway.

Notes:

A big thanks to all the comments, they help a lot whether it's helping gauge interest or providing constructive criticism. This is a big project and all of you who've stopped to provide your opinions give a lot back.

Chapter 41: May 28th, Mistaken Impression

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Saturday, 28 May 2016
Late Night
Yongen, Leblanc Loft

Akira hit the floor. A jolt of panic seized through him at the darkness and feeling of every limb being restrained, memories of buckles and straps and the sharp pinpricks across his scalp of the EEG reader. He pulled in a deep breath. This was just a sheet. He extricated himself, noting a strange absence once there was nothing wrapped around him.

Morgana shook his head, but stayed on the circular cushion on the lower book shelf. “More nightmares about Kamoshida? You were calling for Shiho.”

Heat blazed on Akira’s face. Part from the dream Shiho playing hide-and-seek with him across Tokyo, and part in shame that he was still thinking about another man’s girlfriend. Shiho made her decision before she ever met him. All that besides a whole Biblical commandment about not coveting his neighbor’s wife.

Morgana sat up, the white tip of his tail flicking in and out of his blurred visibility in the dark. “We changed his heart. Don’t worry, Kaneshiro’s will change too.”

Akira sat on the bed. One spring popped underneath him. He stretched his arms just to give his body something to do. “Sure sounds an awful lot like hoping. Which is what people do when they can’t do.”

Morgana hopped up on the bed next to him, making it harder to avoid seeing the narrow searching quality of his eyes. “Don’t say things like that. Didn’t Lady Ann say Kamoshida stopped coming to school? We haven’t even finished Kaneshiro, but as long as we follow the same procedure I’m sure we’ll succeed and he’ll change just like Kamoshida. We just won’t be as close to this target to get those smaller signals before the big change.”

Akira rubbed his face. Despite the racing of his heart from his dream, he felt chilled. “A few days break hardly made up for extorting her for sex.” He rubbed his arms. “Do you think that’s any different than tricking someone into it?”

The image of another night’s dream Ann in lingerie flashed in his mind before the memory of the real one locked to Kamoshida’s bed post. He shivered. A little voice in his mind questioned how different he could be from that monster if he desired the same things.

Akira shook his head to drive out the image. The familiarity of Kaneshiro’s laser-focused practicality just took its place. “I just need to apply myself to something else.” He got out of bed and unrolled the exercise mat for push-ups. When he got tired enough, sleep would come for him.

Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ Sunday, 29 May 2016
Afternoon
Kanda Catholic Church

Hifumi slid her knight onto his gold general’s space, switching the tiles with swift precision. “My Lothlorien rangers ambush your battle droids.”

Not to be outdone, Akira picked up his lancer. “Well my army deploys its landspeeder, chasing down your ranger.”

Hifumi giggled. “You have left your commander open!” Her tile made a snap as she set it down where his rook was. “Check.”

The approach of something large and black from his side kicked up the transfer student’s fight response before Father Sugiyama spoke, leaning in. “Nothing warms my heart more than the youth in the flame of life, but we do have a few other parishioners in prayer for the members of our community this day of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ.”

Hifumi covered her mouth, her entire face turning red. She spoke more in a squeak than a whisper, “I am so sorry!”

Father Sugiyama gave a thin smile. “Nobody’s been harmed, Daughter… Son,” he nodded to both, then strode back to the confessional booth for the white-haired woman trudging up to it.

Scrutinizing the board, Akira let out a sigh. “I’ve got five different routes I could go, but you’d have me back in check in three turns at most. Do you have the time to go somewhere else?”

Hifumi checked her phone, then her shoulders sank. She tapped away, then waited. Piano notes emanated from her phone and a frown marred her visage. She looked up, but didn’t quite meet his eyes. “I’m sorry, but mother’s insisting I meet her. She’s scheduled an interview, and I need to be in time for the wardrobe and photographers.”

At the cringe in her eyes, Akira opened his mouth to tell her to blow it off like he would, but damn near everybody he’d met treated that like an insult.

The shogi master looked down at her phone. “I… have to go now.” She paused to smooth out her dress. “But if I have an opening some evening during the week…?”

Akira flashed her a confident smile. “Like I said the first time. Anywhere, any time.”

They exchanged contact information and she departed with a less hunched posture, the past minute sinking in. He stared at his phone for long seconds. He had Hifumi’s number. Hifumi gave him her number.

Before Akira could decide what to do, his phone sang with the string instruments of the Goa’uld theme.

He bowed to the parishioner giving him the stink eye in the pew behind. “Excuse me.” Once outside, he opened the call bearing the ID President Niijima. “Russian delivery service, Pikup Andropov here.”

Niijima made a grunt of consternation, but shoved that aside. “I’ve been thinking a lot since our first break into Kaneshiro’s Palace.” She paused, and while he couldn’t see her or articulate what he was hearing, he sensed nervous fidgeting. “A lot of the things that happened wouldn’t have happened if I was better at understanding the student body. I… I need help prognosticating. You said you were busy attending to equipment upgrades on Saturday and you’d have time Sunday?”

A joke danced on the tip of Akira’s tongue, but his old bastard rarely hesitated to make him feel like a fool when he didn’t know something. If his games with Hifumi confirmed anything, it was that learning something new should be a good experience, not a chance to humiliate. He leaned against the side of the old Catholic church. “I’m still in Chiyoda right now. Did you need to meet somewhere?”

“I’m at Shujin right now, but I can meet you at Shibuya Station in ten minutes.”

“It will take at least twenty minutes to get to Shibuya,” Akira said. “I’ll text you.”

Autopilot almost took him back to Leblanc, but he ended up in front of the blended drink kiosk Vegetarian, still in his Sunday finest.

Never having seen her out of the Shujin uniform, he wasn’t sure what he expected from Makoto. The loose and practical white poet blouse and simple black leggings wasn’t it. It was… so casual. When she locked eyes with him, she came to a standstill. Her eyes swept up and down and a hint of pink bloomed on her cheeks. “You clea—I mean… you dress sharp.”

Akira tugged his dress jacket straight. “That’s kind of the point of having a Sunday best to wear to Mass.”

“Mass?”

“It’s what they call the organized gatherings for Catholics.” Akira slipped his hands in his pockets. “I converted last December, so most of it is still new to me.”

Nodding, Makoto coughed into her fist, then straightened. “I feel like I’ve been coasting through all the expectations others had of me for my entire life. When Kiriko-san left, there was nobody to even challenge me for president of the student council.”

Akira squinted at a rise in volume from a clump of boisterous kids coming up from the subways. He gestured to the stairs up and she kept pace beside. “You ever play the tuba? You’re pretty good at blowing your own horn.”

She glared and took another gulp from her red, pulpy drink, then pitched the plastic cup and straw into a trash can. “I’m not trying to boast, just frame how I always thought of things.” Her pace slowed and her crimson eyes fell to the floor. “I did nothing for Kiriko, for Suzui, or Kamoshida. I was so concerned with following the rules, I wasn’t there for people suffering the rule breakers.” She shielded her eyes from the sun as they stepped into Shibuya’s central street. “Sometimes it feels like there’s a gulf wider than the Akaishi Mountains between myself and my peers.”

Shrugging, Akira kept a steady pace out of the crammed market lane towards Station Square. “I don’t think you’re that bad, Senpai. Though you can’t gain street smarts if you’re never in the streets.”

Makoto nodded, the muscles at the corners of her eyes tense. “I realized that as I was trying to list the things I knew about the student body. I don’t even know where most people go for fun.”

Akira paused to look at her. The upper-classman seemed weary, like someone with far too many years pressing down on her shoulders. It reminded him of the cringe Hifumi had when she tried to excuse her duty to her family. “Maybe you’re overthinking it. What do you do for fun?”

Makoto blinked with surprise, but the hunch of her shoulders remained. “I spend most of my time studying to stay at the top of the grade.” Her eyes gazed into the empty distance for a moment. “But Papa and I used to watch crime dramas.”

Grinning, he poked her in the arm. “See, there’s something. I used to sneak into theaters when I was in middle school, too. Sci-fi, comedy, it hardly mattered what the movie was. Getting in was the main challenge.”

She squeezed her eyes shut. “Not sneaking in. Papa would buy tickets and the movie would be the main event. He didn’t even get popcorn so we could focus on the screen. When Kiriko-san was still talking, she mentioned a whole variety of snacks she’d buy when she’d watch movies with her friends.” She hugged her arms around herself. “Thinking about it just makes me realize how much better a student council president she would have been. The student council is responsible for understanding the student body they serve, right?”

Akira snorted as they entered Station Square. “Or grifting as far as their limited power allows them. Secretary at Inuri bought herself a gaming laptop.”

A man in a grey suit and white gloves gave the kind of laughs adults made before chiding a child. “Now, now. While there are those who abuse power, the ideal of what politicians are for must remain foremost or not only will we fail to live up to those ideals when it’s our turn, but we’ll fail to hold accountable those who skirt their duties.”

Smiling at the reinforcement, Makoto bowed to the man. “Thank you, Toranosuke-san.” She led him to a bench next to the statue of Hachikou. “So what else?”

Akira took off his glasses to clean the lenses. “Well, we had movies. There’s themed cafes I hear groups go to. Karaoke if you’re trying to show off.” He re-settled his glasses and looked her in the eye. “There’s athletics or sports.” He grinned. “Or if you’re really gutsy, hat-snatching. Me and the guys at Inuri used to do that all the time before Officer Ichijou arrived.”

Makoto gave a long-suffering sigh. “I’m trying to reach out to those below my station, Akira. Not throw it out altogether. I know well enough I can’t just read my way into understanding people.” She took a deep breath. “To tell the truth, I don’t understand where to start. You managed to find Kaneshiro, even though you didn’t grow up here. How did you manage that?”

Akira scratched the back of his neck. “Well, I stumbled across a deal with one of Kaneshiro’s flunkies and the doc we brought Ryuji to. She’s one of those people we’re trying to help, and she stands to lose a lot more than just reputation if we can’t change Kaneshiro’s heart in time.” He crossed his arms. “Though the last break was a journalist at a bar in Shinjuku’s red-light district.”

Makoto’s eyes grew wide as dinner plates. “Y… you met someone in a bar in the red-light district?”

“Uh, yeah? It’s not like I drank.” He held up a hand as if to hold off an invisible offer. “I already tried that disgusting stuff once. No thank you.”

Makoto’s eyes went wide as saucers. “You’ve drank alcohol? That’s not legal until you’re twenty!”

Akira gave her a swift elbow and looked up. The few pedestrians who gave him disdainful looks kept walking. “It’s not technically legal to smoke some green, either. But as much as I’d like another joint, I think you need one more.”

A blaze in her eyes, Makoto shot to her feet. She opened her mouth, closed it, opened it, then closed it a final time before she stormed into the crowd.

Even though Morgana wasn’t there with him, Akira could imagine the small team leader reproaching him. “Well if she didn’t want to know, she shouldn’t ask,” he snapped. Sometimes talking to her was like arguing with himself. He stood, straightened his dress shirt, then headed for the trains back to Yongen.

Sunday, 29 May 2016
Evening
Shibuya, Underground Mall

The tides of humanity swirled around him like the push and pull of ocean currents in the midst of a typhoon. Dozens of conversations battered his ears, the smells of perfumes and body odor his nose. Hopping up on his tip-toes, he looked out over the flashing displays and tides of dark-haired people until he spotted a pair of blonde pigtails. He waved even before he was sure who it was, his desperation to meet up and get out growing. “Hey, Ann!”

She stepped out from the crowd, a relieved grin spreading over her face. She typed something into her phone with the rapid speed of practice, then slipped it into her jacket pocket and stepped closer to let the crowds flow around them. “You seem to be handling the crowds better.”

Akira leaned back against the tiled wall between Trillion and 37C. With his back no longer exposed, he felt like his lungs could take in a full breath at last. Being in his street casual clothes helped a little. “It’s gotten easier to get around since Ryuji introduced me to crowd running. Now that I can think of it like parkour, just with people as moving obstacles, it’s way easier to get around.” He picked off a fleck of lint from his school jacket. “So why’d you want to meet without Morgana?”

She fidgeted, reaching her hand into the pocket with her phone without pulling it out. Her eyes dropped, rose to the ceiling, then looked away again. “I… I wanted to talk about a few things. Mom and dad’s going to be back home for a while in a couple weeks, and I feel kind of overwhelmed trying to figure out how to catch them up on everything that’s happened.” She brushed one of her pigtails back off her shoulder.

He nodded. “About Shujin after numbnuts? Or Shiho?”

“All of it,” she said. She made a quarter turn away, but didn’t step off. Her eyes scanned the shoe-worn tile and her left hand reached up to twirl the tip of her pigtail. “Well, I guess life at Shujin’s more like how I’ve been saying it was all along, but I was lying before.”

Akira shrugged, standing up from the wall a bit when he felt a brick scrape his shoulder. “Were you wanting to talk to them about how Shujin was before?”

Her finger pulled on more hair. “No. Well, maybe. I mean, I’d kind of prefer to act like it never happened, but… I spent months fighting him off. Coming up with excuses for either myself, Shiho, or Yuuki. Some days I spent more time trying to think up ways to talk that bastard out of something than I did studying. I guess I kind of want to know that I didn’t waste all that time hiding from Kamoshida and not talking to anyone.”

He gave another shrug. “Eh, people are overrated. I bribed and connived to get mother to take me away for years before she put me up at her rental place for a series of galas at the Ichijou’s. Couldn’t even leave me there after the year ended. When the parties moved, she left too and Murakami High wouldn’t let me apply without a guardian there.” He held out his hands. “Didn’t matter that I’d been taking care of myself for years.” He shrugged and relaxed against the wall again. “On the other hand, the only thing to that school’s name was one of its students went crazy and killed a teacher at the other high school, so it might not have been any better than Inuri. How’s Shiho doing, anyway?”

Crossing her arms, Ann squinted and looked away. “She’s struggling through physical therapy. She’s kind of scared me a few times because of how…angry she’s been. At the same time, I don’t want to shut that down because sometimes that’s the only thing that gets her through.”

Akira scratched his chin, the image of spittle flying from her lips leaping to mind. “What about Mishima?”

“I didn’t mean to!” Ann bellowed, bringing a handful of other pedestrians to a standstill. Her cheeks burned with pink. She crossed her arms and shifted her weight from foot to foot, glancing at the people streaming by beside her.

When several seconds passed with only the unceasing sounds of the crowds bearing down on them, he reached out to tap her forearm so she’d look at him again. “Okay, I know something is going on, but this clearly isn’t the place to talk about it. You want more people so no one stops to listen in, or nobody around to listen in?”

She shifted her weight back and forth for a few moments, the faint tinge to her face growing into a more pronounced blush before she said, “Sorry. I thought I could get it over with if I asked you here, but… I want this to be between you and me.”

He nodded. “I know a place.”

Shibuya, Alley in front of Untouchable

Stepping around an unfamiliar bike, both tires flat and a u-lock trapping its rear wheel, nothing stood out in the relative tranquility. While the unceasing city noise pressed in, this tiny pocket held as little hustle as the teens would ever find. Akira took off his glasses to wipe the lenses, then set them back and looked her in the eye. “So where were we? Mishima?”

The red on her face deepened and she looked away. After a deep breath, Ann leaned back against the wall, though her shoulders hunched in like she wanted to vanish. “I didn’t mean to kiss him.”

His body nodded, but his mind’s train of thought derailed, skipped off the bridge, and tumbled down the mountainside before exploding in a brilliant fireball at the bottom of the metaphorical valley below. “What?”

Ann jerked up from her slouch, her eyes glistening. “The day after we got into Kaneshiro’s Palace… we were just talking. Yuuki seemed so sad. He’s always been so sweet and supportive, and when I saw how hard he’s been working for us, for everything…”

She clutched her hands into fists. “We were already sitting right next to each other.” Her hands drifted like she hoped to snag an invisible answer out of the air. “It was always okay being around him before. He was one of the few good guys at Shujin, with that outward calm and inner strength that even won Shiho. I just leaned closer to try… I think just say he should stop blaming himself, but he did the same thing and when his lips touched mine…” She twirled a finger through the tip of one of her pigtails hard enough he feared she’d pull it out. “I didn’t even realize what happened until we broke apart for air.” A tear slipped out one eye and she looked like she wanted to race out into the street.

Adjusting his glasses, Akira tried to think but found his train of thought still burning in the valley floor. “Uh… you like him and Mishima likes you. I don’t see the problem.” Shiho dumped him at the hospital, didn’t she?

Ann’s eyes blazed with energy as intense as a blizzard trying to batter through the window. The tears brimming only made her look more dangerous. “You don’t understand. He’s Shiho’s soul mate! They’re like…the only perfect couple in existence!” She clamped her hands on his sleeves. “How could I do that to her?” Tears slipped out both sides of both eyes. “She’s my best friend. She’s laid up in the hospital and I made out with her boyfriend!”

Akira pulled his hands back, feeling heat on his face as he looked down the alley. “To tell the truth, I haven’t been able to get Shiho out of my mind since that first day.” Ann sniffed, but waited for him to continue. “When she looked up from that text and smiled… I’d never seen anyone look like that before. Never knew that I wanted it so badly.” He couldn’t figure out how to say he couldn’t see Shiho like that anymore.

“But you didn’t trick her into cheating on Yuuki!” Ann paced down the alley for just four steps before reversing and pacing back to him. Her hands curled into fists so tight her knuckles paled. “Do you know what the first thing Shiho said to me at the hospital when she woke up? ‘I’m sorry.’ She was sorry for not telling me about Kamoshida, about all the things he was doing to the team.” She paused to sniff, which didn’t do much to help her catch her breath. “I’m worse than Kamoshi—”

Akira grabbed her by both sides of the head and forced her to look him straight in the eye. “Don’t you dare say that. Kamoshida did what he did. Blaming yourself for everything isn’t going to fix shit. You can’t undo what was done by treating yourself like you’re responsible for it. Even if you made one mistake, it’s nowhere near the level of him.” He lowered his hands as she brushed at her pigtails. “As for Yuuki… Sounded to me like Shiho brushed him off. And you talk about him almost every time we meet. You like him. I don’t see how that’s some bad thing. As far as I can figure, what you and Yuuki are is what you and he decide to be.” He raised his hands. “I don’t think anyone else can decide that for you.”

Crossing her arms, Ann stared at the ground, but she didn’t look like she wanted to run into traffic anymore. “I don’t know how you can look at everything like it was so simple.” Her mouth twisted into a partial forced smile. “But thanks. After we finish Kaneshiro, I think I’ll talk to him.”

Akira came to a stop next to her and leaned to shoulder-bump her. “I know I’m not the best person to say this, but Big K told me once…don’t wait too long. You’ll never know when you might lose an opportunity. I never knew how true that was until that drunk asshole.”

Monday, 30 May 2016
Early Morning
Shibuya, Station Square

Yoshizawa Kasumi side-stepped to try to get around the unsavory man in a dark shirt, but that just cemented his attention. “Excuse me, sir.”

He looked her over, his dark eyes pausing on her skirt. “Say, you go to Shujin? I heard about a teacher going crazy there. Wanna go… talk about it?”

She suppressed a shiver. One of those people. Why was it so hard to just blow them off and go her way with grace? “Thank you for the concern, but I’m in quite a hurry.” She bowed as she’d been taught from childhood – always be polite – but that gave him the opening to get closer and grab her wrist. She gasped, but a cold feeling washed over her and her strength failed her.

The middle-aged man pulled at her, a hint of slurring to his syllables. “No need to play shy. I’ll put my number in your phone and we can make it a date later.”

She tugged back and tried to speak, but her voice came out as a squeak, “S-stop it.” She noticed a couple onlookers stare her way, but also a few that paced by as if nothing unusual were happening. Why wouldn’t anyone do—?

A hand clamped down on the middle-aged man’s wrist and brought all motion to a stop. Grey eyes glared through black frames under a mess of short, unkempt black hair. A voice spoke, low and promising consequence, “You’re hurting her.”

The middle aged man pulled at the familiar boy in a gym uniform, managing just a tremble for his efforts. “H-hey, leggo. I’m just bein’ friendly.”

His tone just above a growl, the grey-eyed transfer student stared unflinching into the middle aged man. “Then try actual friendly. Or I might get unfriendly.”

The middle-aged man opened his hand and the transfer student let go a heartbeat later. Kasumi hesitated for a beat at the intensity exuded by the transfer student, the almost hopeful note in his voice as he delivered his threat, before dodging behind him. Her heart hammered in her chest and her breath still came too fast to form words.

The man grimaced at her, but slunk back from the transfer student and pushed into the crowd. The bystanders decided the incident was over and the crowd returned to its bustling normal.

Still short of breath, Kasumi scuttled back from the transfer student who maintained an imposing countenance despite the bright gym suit, then bowed to him. “Th-th-thank you! S-sorry for the trouble!”

The transfer student pushed his glasses back up. “What are you apologizing for?” He looked out at the people churning around him, fists clenched and hackles raised as if expecting that slimy man to return. “Fucking cowards.”

She flinched. As much to try to move herself on as to reassure the transfer student, Kasumi waved her hands. “I-I’m all right.”

His eyes flicked to the benches to one side and she followed him there, where they both took a moment to catch their breath. He looked more tense than while facing down that scary man. Then he took in a sharp breath and reached out a hand, palm-up. “How’s your wrist?”

His clipped, professional tone reminded her of Coach Hiraguchi and something about that settled her nerves despite the clear tension remaining in his frame. She held out her right hand and the transfer student took it with a far lighter touch than she expected, pushing her sleeve up a bit to examine before letting go. “Doesn’t look like he had any rings to leave abrasions. Do you tend to bruise easily?”

She shook her head. Now he sounded like a meet doctor. “No, me and my—” A sudden pain shot through her skull and she clapped her hand over her head, but the spike passed as quickly as it came and she shook it off. “I’m tougher than I look.” She gathered her courage and looked the transfer student in those stormy grey eyes. “Can I ask… why did you help me?”

He opened his mouth, then closed it and straightened the sleeves of his gym uniform. “I just can’t close my eyes.”

A dubious, “That’s it?” slipped out of her mouth before she could stop it. This guy must have nerves of steel if he could walk up on a spiraling fiasco in public without flinching. Kasumi cleared her throat, hoping she could smooth that gaffe over. She bowed. “Sorry for…” She wasn’t sure why, but her eyes traced up and down the bright red of his gym uniform. “Um… why are you in your gym clothes?”

He gave her arched eyebrows. “Uh… that was the uniform for cleanup day according to the email from Makoto.”

Kasumi’s eyes snapped wide. “Was it? I assumed it was the regular uniform!” She pulled out her phone and almost groaned at the time. Alas, the transfer student was correct. “Oh no, I need to get my gym clothes from school.” She bowed to him. “See you at the cleanup! Pardon me!”

Morning
Inokashira Park

Akira craned his neck left, then right. With the sun out, today would have been an excellent day to go running rather than slave labor for a school just trying to show off how rehabilitated they were to investors. The thought still nudged him to seek out the track star, and he spotted the bottle blond in a gym uniform under a large tree, chatting with the natural blonde in the regular school uniform. “Yo.”

The runner flashed him a too-perfect grin, but Ann gave him a bemused look. “You came here in the gym suit?”

Akira scratched his head, wondering what was so odd about it. “Those were the instructions Makoto sent out. I’m trying to do things right now.”

Ann rolled her eyes. “That’s not what I meant.” Their phones buzzed, and the phantom thieves drew them to see a text from Makoto reminding them to stay hydrated so they could make progress in the bank after cleanup.

“Geez, she nags just like Ma.” Ryuji put his phone away with a shrug, then looked to Ann. “You doin’ cleanup in that?”

Akira took a pose and threw out his hand. “I know, red is so not your color.”

The glare she sent him could have frozen the Pacific Ocean. “Never do that again.”

Falling back, Akira clapped his hands together and gave a shallow bow. “I beg forgiveness.”

Ann straightened her satchel on her shoulder. “I was gonna change in the bathroom, but there’s a giant line.”

Ryuji shrugged. “Sucks ta be a girl.”

Ann shielded her eyes, then spotted an opening and dashed for the park bathrooms.

Mishima trotted up, hands in his pockets and eyes avoiding the direction Ann went running. “Hey, guys.” He looked at the runner, taking pains to keep his posture straight despite the tree he leaned against. “How’s the ribs?”

Ryuji let out a sigh. “Like a goon tried to cave in my chest last week.” He turned a harder gaze to the model, then transfer student. “You guys are goin’ back in today, right? We better not let that fuckwad Kaneshiro get away. Ma thought she saw someone tailin’ her at the grocer’s.”

Crossing his arms, Akira cleared his throat. “We’ll get him, Ryuji. We just need to get through this park cleanup bullshit and we’ll be on to the next step.”

Ryuji scratched his scalp, then let out a sigh. “I ain’t tryin’ ta pressure you guys. If it was just me I’d be like… I can take it. But Ma’s all I got.”

Akira wished he knew what it was like to be that close to someone, but all he could say is, “We’re doing this for her. And everyone else under Kaneshiro’s shadow.”

Afternoon
Inokashira Park

Akira stepped out of the park bathroom, shaking off his hands. Despite Makoto’s explicit instructions for team leaders to get food for their groups, he was unsurprised to see less than half of the students left. And no sign of his cleanup team. Dicks.

“Oh!” chirped the voice of Cute But Annoying. He looked aside to see the red-head herself walking out of the women’s bathrooms. “I was hoping to run into you.”

“Good to see you made it safely,” he said, heading to the nearest park bench to sit down so he could find out when Makoto would be available to head back to Kaneshiro’s bank.

Without invitation, she followed. “I wanted to thank you properly for this morning. I was in such a panic at showing up in the wrong uniform, I didn’t take the chance to say it like I should. Especially when you went out of your way to help me.” She glanced around. “Where’d the rest of your group go?”

He waved his arm off towards the park.

“Ah,” she said, at last going with a simple and non-obsequious response. “Mine too.” She forced a smile. “Why don’t we eat together?”

Makoto’s answer buzzed in at the top of the Phantom Thief chat. [I have to observe take-down of the staging area. I'll be an hour after the rest are released.]

Akira closed the chat. It seemed he had time, so the only reason not to humor the underclassman was if she wasn’t being genuine. “Careful, I’m the fearsome rumored delinquent. You might risk your reputation taking a hit.”

A gloomy expression passed over the girl’s usual chipper face. “I don’t even like gossip myself, so I should have been clear-sighted enough not to pay attention to the rumors about you. I’m sorry about the other day.”

Akira wondered what she meant, but all the apologizing was starting to rub him the wrong way. “You seem to have a fixation on apologizing for problems you aren’t at the root of.”

She blinked at him, her feet steady but the mind behind those innocent eyes whirling. Then she settled back on her feet. “I… may have paid too much attention to what I overheard from my classmates, too.”

“For real?” Akira said.

Inogami Train

Ryuji sneezed.

Inokashira Park

Akira stood and slipped his phone into his pocket. “You can tell me all about it over soup.”

Cute But Annoying blinked at him, posture straightening a little even as she stared. Then she caught herself and said, “O-okay, Senpai.”

He led the march up to the staging area where Maruki and the girls not fawning over the big dweeb were serving pork and onion miso soup. He spotted Makoto there, but she was busy taking reports and lost items from the last team leaders. Wanting to preserve his mental energy for the bank, he chose a bench rather far from the staging area to sit down.

The red-head settled onto the other side of the bench. “Thanks for the food!” Instead of digging in, she looked up at him. “I want to thank you again for this morning.”

Akira settled the bowl on his knees. “You already did. There must’ve been fifty people there, and every damn one of them should have stepped up.” He clasped his hands for a brief prayer of the other Phantom Thieves’ safety when they broke into Kaneshiro’s bank this afternoon. Then he picked up the paper bowl and spoon.

He caught Cute But Annoying staring at him with that ‘what do I make of this?’ he saw a lot of at Tanizaki Middle School. She gave a sudden blink, realizing she’d been caught, then said with a faint, embarrassed flush, “Well, still… I’ve never had to deal with a stalker or grabber before, so I blanked on what to do.”

“Kick ‘em in the knee,” Akira said with ease before taking his first spoonful of soup. He spared a moment to wonder what Hifumi did. She mentioned interviews and photographers, so that meant a wide circle of awareness. Inevitably that meant attracting the attention of some creeps. He glanced aside and noticed her looking at him. “I can tell you’ve got something else to say. My answer is: I’m sorry, but I charge for autographs.”

She let out the squeak of a laugh of somebody amused but thought she wasn’t allowed. “You’re certainly nothing like the person rumors make you out to be. It would be one thing if the rumors were true…”

Akira swallowed a chunk of pork. “I’d have to be in more places than Moby Dick. What kind of crimes have I done?”

Some tension crept into her face and she looked down to her bowl. “Burglary, murder, and…” she tapped her chin with her spoon, “…elephant tusk trafficking?”

Akira lowered his spoon. “Ivory smuggling? The other stuff is old rehash, but that one is creative!”

She blinked. “You’re not mad?”

“I drive without a license, too.”

This time she let out a giggle that sounded natural. “It’s hard to believe the number of people who shake in their boots when they hear your name.”

He slurped his next few spoonfuls with a little more force. Being feared was easy. Being dismissed out-of-hand hurt. “Gives a measure of power, if you think about it.”

She gave a sound of affirmation as she set aside her empty bowl. When had she had time to drink all of it? She had a full-body shiver. “Oh my, I haven’t introduced myself!”

Akira swallowed his spoonful of miso soup. “Kurusu Akira. Feel free to call me Akira, when I hear Kurusu I still expect people to be calling for my old bastard.”

She flinched at that, a faint wrinkle of distaste passing over her face before a child trotting down the path in front of them tripped, losing her grip on a red balloon. The red-head launched up, soared over the fallen girl, snatched the balloon, and tumbled to a neat finish on her feet on the other side of the path.

Morgana stood up out of the transfer student’s school satchel. “She’s even more dexterous than you are in the Metaverse!”

Akira stood, collecting the smart phone and fallen school pocketbook on the way. “You can keep that from happening easier if you tie the end in a loop. That way you can hold onto it in a few ways and it’s less likely to get lost.” He handed the fallen items to the red-head and took the balloon, tied the end so it had plenty of room for the girl’s hand, then held it out. The girl took it with a shy nod of her head, then scurried off.

“You can tie knots, too? You’re a man of many talents, Akira-senpai,” she said, accepting her things. “I’m Yoshizawa Kasumi.”

Akira pointed back at the girl with her balloon. “You grabbed that balloon out of the air and you think tying a basic locking knot is impressive? I think you have things backwards. You even had a really tight tuck-and-roll landing.”

She preened. “Oh, you’re familiar with gymnastics, Senpai?”

“Parkour. We played it sometimes back at Inuri,” he said. When he noticed that look of incomprehension, he explained, “Ah. I guess a lot of people don’t know the name. In Japan, we invented karate, the art of fighting with improvised or no weapons. In England, they invented pugilism, the art of fighting without weapons. In France, they invented le parkour, the art of running away.”

She snorted with laughter.

Akira crossed his arms, feeling lighter than he had in a while. “Say… at the risk of being too forward, would you mind teaching me a few techniques? Clearly you’re an experienced gymnast.”

Yoshizawa clapped a hand over her mouth and stars shone in her eyes. Gymnastics must have held a special spot in her life. “You’re really interested?”

He nodded. “There might even be a few shared techniques, at least in landings and balance control. Then I could teach my friends a few pointers.”

She recovered her wits. “I’d be honored!” She slipped her phone and pocketbook away, then looked him in the eye, a determined light in her eyes. “In exchange, would you be willing to help me out from time to time?” Her gaze fell. “I practice competitively, but my recent results have… not met expectations.” She held up her hands. “I-I’m not asking for technical coaching, just someone to help me work through if I’m overthinking things.”

Training he might be able to pass on to the rest of the Phantom Thieves in exchange for just being a sounding board? Akira didn’t need to consult Morgana for this contract. He gave a polite incline of his head. “Deal.”

Notes:

Thank you for comments and constructive criticism.

Chapter 42: May 30th, Sub-Level

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Monday, 30 May 2016
After School
Kaneshiro’s Bank

The steady, carpet-softened footfalls of the Shadow guard faded around the corner. Akira let out a breath and followed Morgana’s dash to the hallway intersection. Muted tones of beige and pale green stretched all three directions. The team leader leaned around the corner, peered for a moment, then dashed across the intersection and nodded.

Akira burst into a sprint at the Shadow, by now almost five meters into the hall bisecting the bank’s basement floor. The distance closed, but two meters away it stood straight, its head turning.

Akira leaped, left hand reaching for its faceplate—

The guard smacked Akira with its baton, knocking him breathless to the wall where he collapsed like a sack of potatoes.

“Joker!” Makoto cried before her face twisted in rage and she leaned forward, her motorbike of fire forming from underneath her. Too late to stop the Shadow from distending, its surface turning black, then bursting like a bloody pustule.

Where it stood floated a half-meter-tall humanoid wearing a glistening breastplate, translucent wings jutting from its back. Two red-furred creatures flanked it, their heads and legs like those of a horse.

Makoto revved the engine and surged forward, flames gushed from vents on the front as she crashed into the whinnying horse demon on the right.

The other Orobas charged Akira, still struggling to his feet with the help of the wall. Its hooved feet stamped, lips peeled back to bare crooked, yellowed teeth. It raised a fist, but a spiked whip lashed around the limb, a rime of frost spreading from the contact.

Ann snarled, “Get away from my friend.”

Carmen flicked her whip, a snow-flurry rushing from her hand down its length into the demon.

Zorro’s eyes blazed as it psychokinetically picked up the ice-encrusted Orobas before a pulse of concussive wind slammed into the group, throwing the burly Persona into the wall. Morgana tumbled to the floor.

High Pixie swung an arm like a dismissive wave. Cutting winds swirled around Makoto, scattering flames and drawing a cry of pain before her Persona vanished in a puff of fire.

“Andras!” Akira shouted. The muscled form of a man with an owl for his head appeared in a blip of light, swinging both wings and releasing bolts of ice from each. The magic struck Makoto’s equine enemy, knocking it stumbling.

With Carmen already evading the other Orobas, Zorro flitted through the hall, impaling the horse demon down to the hilt until the Shadow collapsed into dissolving black goo.

The remaining Orobas leaped, slamming a fist into Andras and driving the owl-headed figure back. A burst of slicing winds followed up the slam, and Akira fell back against the wall, coughing.

Zorro swung its rapier at High Pixie, but the armored fairy fluttered up, raised a single hand, and snapped its fingers at the black-clad Persona. Zorro and Morgana both came to a stop, eyes closed. The Persona’s head nodded down and catboy snored.

A thorned whip lashed through the hall at High Pixie, but it dodged to one side, then another before it swatted a hand at Carmen despite the meters between them. A wind burst slammed Carmen into the wall.

Blood still dribbling down his face, Akira whipped up his sub-machine gun and fired a burst at the remaining Orobas. “Byakko, wake up!” He fired again as the horse demon left a crumpled Makoto to stamp the dancer Persona.

Morgana snoozed, steadier on his feet than right for a sleeping person.

Makoto gunned down the wide hall, flames sputtering from her Persona as she fled the center of the continuing storm of cutting winds. No wonder that skeleton riding that freakish horse slowed down so much when Ryuji awakened in Kamoshida’s castle.

Orobas danced out of the way, delivering a vicious back kick as she passed by, sending Makoto tumbling, her Persona vanishing in a puff of flames.

Akira growled and tried to line up a shot at the armored fairy, but the still-expanding wind stung his eyes.

High Pixie swatted its other hand at Ann, a hurricane gale smashing Carmen into the wall and knocking the girl herself off her feet.

“Panther!” Akira shouted.

Makoto leaped, her Persona forming underneath her moments before crashing against the nimble horse demon and plowing straight over it with Johanna’s flame wheels. She locked eyes with High Pixie and gunned the engine.

The fairy snapped its fingers.

Johana went silent, its flames fading and Makoto slumping on her Persona.

Orobas leaped at Carmen, kicking her into the wall and drawing a pained shriek from Ann.

Eyes full of tears and still stinging from the tearing winds, Akira roared and reached down inside for something – anything – to protect them. Anything stronger than himself. Hifumi’s cackling bubbled up in his mind, the unashamed joy of clashing against all competition.

“Ananta Shesha! Mafrei!” tore from his throat.

Andras vanished into a cloud of silvery motes of light which re-gathered into an enormous serpent longer than a car. Akira could swear its scales showed a brilliant celestial-scape like the Eagle Nebula. It wore a shiny gold collar, with five hooded cobra heads branching out above the collar. All of which flared, though a sound like distant song emanated from its mouths.

A burst exploded from the starscape-skinned Persona, striking Orobas and High Pixie. The stinging wind storm vanished as the armored fairy collapsed and Orobas swayed on its hooved feet.

Makoto snatched up her shotgun and blasted it square in the chest, dissolving it.

Morgana shook his head, his Persona absent but his crossbow in hand as he shared a glance with Akira. The boy in the longcoat dismissed his Persona and advanced on the armored fairy.

High Pixie took in gulps of air, its legs splayed behind it and one arm holding it off the floor. It looked up at the pair of Phantom Thieves, its chin still held high. “This sucks,” it groused.

“Be glad,” Akira said, a smirk on his face. “If the world didn’t suck, we’d all fly off.”

High Pixie and Makoto both choked back laughter. The Shadow’s shoulders slouched. “You’re not just strong, you’re pretty clever. We’d make a great team.” Akira nodded and lowered his sub-machine gun. The armored fairy fluttered back up off the ground, closed its eyes, then burst into black streaks flinging into his mask. Ann caught him as he swayed, but Akira righted himself after a moment.

Morgana folded his crossbow. “That was pretty impressive, Joker. Why didn’t you tell us about that celestial serpent Persona?”

Akira shook his head to try to cast off a sense of cobwebs. “I don’t think I had it until just now.”

Stowing his crossbow in the pouch slung on his back, Morgana gave a smirk so wide, Ryuji would’ve been proud. “So you’ve already started fusing Personas. She must be workin’ pretty quick. I really know how to pick ‘em.”

Makoto came to a stop next to Ann. “She?”

Morgana blinked, his ears perking straight up and eyes widening. “I remembered something!” The other Phantom Thieves waited with bated breath for several seconds before he let out a puff of air. “No, sorry. It slipped away.”

With Morgana feeling refreshed from the fight and everybody else grumbling but ready to go, the diminutive guide led them through the halls and air vents until they came to a plexiglass door in sub-level one.

Kaneshiro’s Bank, Basement Security Control Room

Akira dove into a roll underneath a wake of wind solid enough to smash a monitor on the wall next to him. At least the security control room was big enough for all of them to maneuver in, despite half a dozen Shadows waiting to counter the Phantom Thieves’ ambush with one of their own. “Agathion!”

His cavalry Persona disappeared in a burst of silvery motes of light drawing in as if sucked by a powerful gravity affecting nothing else. A green imp in a gold vase took its place. Mezuki leaped, coming down in front of the new arrival, the horse-faced demon powering its forward-curving sword through the space Agathion was in an instant earlier.

With Kin-Ki distracted trying to chop up Carmen with its double-sided sword, Akira took a risk. Instead of countering Mezuki, the captain of the group and easily the buffest monster that came out of the black mass, he directed his persona to shoot a lightning bolt into the gold-clad oni. The blast sent it into dissolving goop just before it slammed its sword into Carmen’s neck.

“Thanks!” Ann shouted, popping shots from her pistol into the remaining Sui-Ki nearby.

The purple oni threw a ball of ice at Makoto, zipping through the control room wider than Leblanc’s whole building. Thanks to Ann’s pistol fire, its aim went wide. Makoto swung her motorbike-Persona’s armored rear end around, crashing into and crumpling the Fuu-Ki before she pointed at Mezuki and lobbed a ball of fire at the horse demon wearing a green gi.

The ball struck and exploded, flames washing over it and sending it tumbling to the ground with a whinny of pain and frustration. Akira shot a burst into it with his sub-machine gun before she swing close, blasting it with her shotgun and trying to swipe it with her armored Persona.

The horse-headed monster hopped out of the way, his sword glancing across the back of Johana’s armored end.

“Orthrus!” Akira shouted, his imp-in-a-vase dissipating into motes which re-gathered into a canine the size of a warhorse. Its twin heads growled at the captain of the Shadow defenders before the muscle-bound canine leaped for the throat.

Like before, Mezuki danced out of the way. Orthrus’ left head yawned open, a bolt of fire blasting from its toothy maw.

Mezuki stumbled, backpedaling to catch its footing.

A ball of ice slammed into the horse demon wearing green, leaving it crusted in ice. Cracks started to form around its mouth and nostrils, but an instant later, Johanna smashed through it, scattering dissolving chunks of black goo to the floor.

Breathing hard, Makoto dismissed her Persona, caught her footing, and paced back to Akira. “You okay? It looks like you’re bleeding again.”

“I’m fine,” he said. He checked three pockets for his now-bloodied handkerchief. Glancing at it after dabbing below his nose, he decided it wasn’t worth stopping for. He’d had worse nose bleeds from summer allergies. “Everyone okay?”

Morgana folded up his crossbow, then pressed a hand against his back. “I think I prefer one big Shadow to a whole bunch of them.”

“The smaller ones are a lot more satisfying to run over,” Makoto said with a gleam in her eyes. She knelt down where the largest chunk of Mezuki dissolved. “Looks like you were right, Byakko. They were guarding more keys.” She passed it to him and he turned the odd key with a square cross-section over in his hands.

Hopping onto the wide control bank, Morgana inserted the keycard they stole from the surveillance office. Green and yellow lights all across the board blinked, then blazed yellow or red. Morgana scanned the board, then screens. He hopped about a foot over, scanned the board, then pressed a few buttons which turned red, and looked up to the screens. “Eeexcelent. The laser trip-sensors have been disabled.”

Akira paced to the control bank. “About damn time. Now we don’t have to dance over every God-damn corner, intersection, and door.” He took his sub-machine gun in his off hand to shake out his right. “I really hope the next asshole’s Palace we infiltrate isn’t as security-obsessed as this paranoid psychopath’s.”

Morgana stowed his collapsed crossbow, then held a fist to his chin. “Well, the vault door is still closed. But between the key you picked up and the one Rider still has, I suspect that’s all that we need to get inside that vault there.” He pointed to a screen showing a large, circular bank vault door. He glanced up at Akira and the kerchief held to his nose. “Should we fall back and take care of the Treasure later?”

“No!” Akira folded the kerchief and jammed it back in a pocket. “We should press on.”

Morgana glanced to Ann, then back at Akira. “You’re unusually insistent. Why?”

“I was shadowing Masa…” The others gave him blank looks. “One of Kaneshiro’s henchmen. He picked up a flunkie and tried to brain Doctor Takemi. If I hadn’t scared him off with this and its dot projector, he might’ve killed her. If I needed to shoot, we’d have been fucked.” He paused when Makoto twitched at his cursing, and took a deep breath. “That’s for one of their suppliers. I don’t even want to imagine what people who owe them money may have to look forward to.”

Makoto rubbed her arm and looked away. “I can’t hold back this time, either. Twelve students have come to the student council for help.” Her arm fell to her side. “I can’t let them go the way of Kiriko-san.”

Ann tottered between Morgana and the two Phantom Thieves garbed in black. She let out a brief breath. “I… guess I can make it for a little longer.”

Morgana’s brows cinched in worry. “Okay, but don’t strain yourself, Panther.”

Akira rolled his eyes at the leader’s hopeless, gushy infatuation. The oni and nekomata they ran into along the way made for little more than a speed bump, but at last they came to what looked like a large assembly room. Dominating one wall was a vault door even bigger in person than on the monitors.

Ann gazed up at it. “This thing is gigantic. How are we gonna get it open?”

Akira scratched his face next to his mask. “Well, some semtex along the edge should do it.”

The leader shot him a hooded gaze. Ann blinked and tilted her head. “What’s that?”

Makoto rolled her eyes, but stood back with a hand on her hip, scanning the vault wall. “Based on the security before, we probably have to use both keys at the exact same time.”

Ann flipped one key around her fingers. “Ready.”

Akira looked her up and down, trying not to let his eyes linger on her suit’s cleavage window. “Where were you keeping that?”

Ann stuck her tongue out at him.

Drawing out their new diamond-cross-section key, he headed for the lock on the left and she to the one on the right. Makoto counted down, and on one they both rotated the keys counter-clockwise.

His refused to budge. Black blobs extended from the ceiling like some viscous liquid soaking through a paper.

Makoto readied her shotgun. “Oh, come on! What happened?”

“Mine turned!” Ann protested.

Akira braced his sub-machine gun’s wire stock against his shoulder as black blobs fell from the ceiling and swelled. He opened fire, the suppressed weapon thudding. “Mine didn’t! What’s wrong with this bank? Righty tighty, lefty—”

The first blob fell over and dissipated. Ann took aim at the one closest to her and blasted it, knocking it into a dissolving mass as well, but causing rotating red lights in the ceiling to blaze and a warbling sound filled the air. The first wave of them burst into an array of red, white, purple, and gold oni. The model in red leather swore.

“Orthrus!” Akira called, silvery motes of light gathering into the twin-headed canine. It lunged at the nearest Fuu-Ki. Flames blasted around Makoto as she raced around the assembly room on Johanna.

His Fuu-Ki retreated, leaving an opening to bellow fire at it. Carmen and Zorro tag-teamed an oni while he and Makoto distracted the majority of the oni busy. Once their immediate threat went down, Carmen started slinging ice bolts at the rest. Remembering the maneuver Morgana tried to get him to do with Makoto, he called to Ann, “Take this and hit ‘em all! Andras!”

His twin-headed Persona collapsed in on itself, motes of light scattering for only a moment before they collected back into an owl-headed sorcerer. His Persona brought both hands together and hurled a glistening ball of ice at Carmen. The dancer caught it and the ball burst, but instead of a fast-vanishing explosion, icy chunks swirled around her, growing larger and faster until she flicked her hand, blasting ice in a wide arc.

Four red-skinned oni collapsed in dissolving goo, a Kin-Ki falling with. The remaining Kin-Ki and Fuu-Ki fell under the combined power of Morgana and Makoto’s Personas. They followed the leader’s stealthy way back to the security control room, shut off the alarm, and reset the door.

Akira wiped his forehead with the back of his gloved hand. “Whew. The vault should be a piece of cake compared to the basement here.”

Morgana shot a narrow glare at the transfer student currently in a three-piece suit. “Joker, we just fought two big ambushes. Nightrider’s been adapting to her Persona very well, but Panther is spent and even you can’t hide your exhaustion. Your pace has been getting irregular since that last oni ambush.” He folded up his crossbow and stowed it in the small black bag slung over his shoulder. “Any injuries that need doctor attention?”

Ann and Makoto both look at him. Akira backs up with his hands raised. “Hey, I’m fine.”

Makoto shot him a disapproving, arched eyebrow. “At least wash up before you go anywhere.” She gestured below her nose.

Letting out long breath, Morgana adjusted the tight black hood he wore over his cartoonishly big head. “Time to go home.” He led them to a safe space across the hall, a ventilation and maintenance room with a shaft to the top level, and then back to Shibuya. “Stay safe, everyone.”

Monday, 30 May 2016
Evening
Yongen-Jaya Station

Purple skies darkened above them as the Phantom Thieves dispersed across the real Tokyo. Hoping not to have to deal with a lecture from Sojiro, a yawn forced its way out of his mouth as he stepped out of the surprisingly vacant train car. One passenger glanced at Akira, his eyes drifting down a bit before making a disgusted sound and scurrying off. Akira raised his hands to his lips and felt wetness. Red dirtied his fingertips when he pulled his hand away. Checking his coat revealed blood splattered across his lapels. “Shit.”

Hurrying to Leblanc, Akira counted himself fortunate the store was already closed and locked, though the sign still said Open. He unlocked it, fixed the sign with his clean hand, washed, gathered his laundry, and went to the coin-op laundromat next to the public bath.

A hand-written note warned the tap-pay machine was out of order, and sure enough it refused to acknowledge his smart phone or start a load. The rest of them looked almost as old as the Second World War, and when he turned on his smart phone’s flashlight what labels remained were faded beyond the point of legibility.

Morgana hopped up and squinted. “Sorry, I can’t make it out either.”

Akira turned the flashlight off. “Fuck my life. I thought my luck was changing when my face stayed clean long enough to find a homeless artist in Shibuya to do a better version of the Phantom Thief logo.”

Morgana sat, ears turning back against his skull. “Too bad you can’t call someone else to do your laundry for you.” When the transfer student tensed, the team leader flicked an ear. “What?”

Scrolling through his call history, Akira found the number for Victoria. A small voice in the back of his mind pointed out how sad it was how few people he’d called since. “I can.” When the guide made a questioning sound, he explained, “Ryuji found a maid service that day you went off with Ann. We can trust this one to stay quiet because if anybody found out about her other job, she’d lose both.”

A nasally female voice answered with a grating level of cheer, “Victoria’s Housekeeping. Do you have any particular requests?” The false enthusiasm made him imagine a guard holding the operator at gunpoint.

“Becky,” Akira answered.

“Specific request fee brings that to five thousand yen.”

“Fine,” he said, finishing the payment from the same sanitized account as before.

He nodded off and Morgana scratched him to wake him when Kawakami arrived at the door to Leblanc. Akira stepped out of the alley onto Leblanc’s small side road. “Hey,” he said, waving her to the laundromat.

When she stepped inside the narrow room, Morgana stood up and sniffed. “There’s something familiar about the girl in a French maid outfit.”

Kawakami placed a hand on her hip. “That meow sounds familiar.”

Akira yawned into his fist, then picked up his school jacket. “You know how to get blood out of clothes?”

His homeroom teacher straightened. “Why?”

He glared. “It’s mine, not that it makes any difference to you or anyone else.”

She took the jacket and examined it. “This has been drying for a while. I don’t think these clunky machines have enough power to get blood out. Do you have a first aid kit with hydrogen peroxide?”

He nodded, went to the kit under the sink in Leblanc’s bathroom, and returned with the bottle, a bowl, and box of plastic gloves.

“You think ahead. Thanks.” Kawakami donned a pair of gloves, stretched the dirty portion of the jacket over the wide bowl, and poured hydrogen peroxide on it. The liquid bubbled and she rubbed with her gloved thumbs, poured, and repeated until it looked wet but not bloody.

Akira sat on the uneven stool against the laundromat’s wall. “These are too old to read the instructions, and the only other pay-machines I used at the Inaba Cleanliness Center were new so I just had to tap my phone to pay.”

She looked askance at him. “You wash your own laundry? I thought everyone’s mother did that.”

Akira snorted, then clapped his hand over his nose. “Ow. Anyway, it’s not like mother ever had time for me even that one year she took me from my old bastard. I’ve had to take care of myself my whole life.”

Kawakami nodded. “Well, if your room was any indication, you take extreme care of your environment. I’ve seen dedicated cleaning services that wouldn’t get a house that good.” She focused on the laundry machine and scrutinized it for a few moments before slipping a few yen coins into it, turning two of the unlabeled knobs, then pushing the middle one in. It rumbled to life and she looked back to her student. “Thanks for vouching for me when the police interviewed you. I was really worried when Chouno was fired, but it looks like they’re wrapping up the staff purges.”

He shrugged and glanced to the team leader trapped in cat form. “Sometimes justice actually does prevail.” He leaned back against the wall.

Tuesday, 31 May 2016
Early Morning
Yongen, Leblanc Loft

Akira smacked his lips. Not just dry, his mouth felt like an army marched barefoot across it. He levered himself up on one elbow, and sat up, pulling his sheet off. Akira stood and checked the time.

A flutter of ears preceded Morgana stretching on his pillow on the bottom of the book shelf next to the bed. “So, you’re awake.”

Akira reached for the water bottle he kept on the windowsill. A quarter bottle was better than nothing, so he drained it and stretched his stiff, achy joints. “Here in body if not in spirit.” He paused. “Am I sick? I don’t remember going to bed.”

Morgana stepped off the circular pillow, stretching out his hind legs. “Technically, you fell asleep in the laundromat, Joker.” He looked to the basket with Akira’s dark clothing stacked in sloppy folds, the school uniform on top. “Your homeroom teacher carried you up, but you never quite woke up. You should’ve said the bank tired you out.”

Akira pulled on his uniform, made the bed, and re-folded his clothes. He pulled his wallet off the windowsill and checked it, but found all sixteen hundred and eighty yen he had yesterday. Then he slid the small boxes out from underneath the work bench to check the gold nameplates they found in the bank earlier.

Morgana jumped up to the corner of the work bench, his tail wrapping around his feet. “Do you really expect everybody to be after you?”

“I was falsely convicted of assault and my old bastard exiled me to the city.” Akira straightened his uniform jacket, then strode downstairs to make himself an omelet for breakfast.

Just as he flipped it into the half-circle shape he liked, the bell rang and Sojiro trotted in. His eyebrows shot up when he spotted the transfer student. “I didn’t think teenagers got up this early.”

Akira tapped a foot, waiting for the omelet to finish cooking. “We kind of have to get up for school and it’s not like this is unusual for me. I don’t know anyone who wakes up later anyway. Day waits for no man.”

“Whoo, boy.” Sojiro scratched his scalp and leaned against the counter. “I didn’t expect a teenager to care about wasting daylight. I thought they stayed up all night, perched on a chair in front of the computer, munching on junk food no matter what’s offered on the table.”

Eyebrow arching, Akira turned to the middle-aged restaurateur. “That was suspiciously specific. Got a problem child in mind? I figured you for the type to never settle or get chained down to kids.”

Sojiro groaned as if mortally wounded. “Jeez. Everybody gets old.”

Akira looked the restaurateur over for tells, but only got strong defensive signals now. “You sure you aren’t thinking of one in particular?”

Sojiro gestured to the range. “Don’t forget to eat your breakfast.”

Akira let out a long breath at the most obvious redirect in conversation history. He forced a shrug, figuring Sojiro must’ve been stuck on some neighbor’s kid while partying through his young adult years. He slid the omelet onto a plate and sat down at the bar, folding his hands for a brief prayer before eating.

Tuesday, 31 May by Daywatch
Lunchtime
Shujin, Student Council Office

A knocking at the door broke Makoto’s concentration. The class president set her pencil down on the calligraphy club requisition forms and raised her voice to be heard through the door. “Yes?”

The voluminous blonde pigtails surprised her. Ann slipped inside and closed the door behind herself. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

“Oh, it’s okay.” Makoto straightened the middle stack. “I’ve already delegated some of the responsibilities I’d been handling to other members of the student council. And once we change Kaneshiro’s heart, that will ease the burden on everyone.”

After taking a few steps further into the room, Ann grasped the fingers of her left hand with her right. “I, uh… I wanted to apologize, Senpai. To be honest, I’ve been wanting to for a while, but realized after we split last night that I hadn’t done it and didn’t want another day to go by. So…” She bowed at the waist. “I’m really sorry. Even more for not doing this earlier.”

Makoto drew back in her seat. “What are you apologizing for, Takamaki-san?”

Ann stood, but her eyes drifted away and her right hand slipped up to twirl at the end of a pigtail. “About blaming you for Kamoshida’s sexual harassment. Even lashing out about you not doing anything about Shiho.” The model bit her lip. “Truth is… she was calling out for me and I wasn’t there for her. I lashed out at you because I didn’t want to admit I was just as guilty.” Her lips twisted, but the smile didn’t look real.

Makoto gestured to the seat on the other side of the small table. “Why don’t you take a seat? Please don’t feel you need to be tense on my account. The way I see it after this past week, I think we’re pretty similar, Takamaki-san.” The president rubbed at a burr on the corner of one of her fingernails as the model sat. “Pushing blame on you was just my own way of avoiding admission of my own worthlessness. I think that was why I treated you all as badly as I did. I tried to tell myself that Suzui-san was a surprise I couldn’t do anything about because I was just following orders, but there were other warning flags. Kiriko-san, for example. To try to displace my own fears, I treated you all badly.” She bowed what little she could in her seat. “So I’m sorry, too, Takamaki-san.”

Ann waved her down. “S-stop that, Senpai! Call it even. I’m pretty sure even Akira was the same way with how you two butted heads. You got us into the bank, after all. And you don’t have to call me san when we’ve been risking our necks together to take Kaneshiro down.”

Makoto’s throat tightened a little. She even used ‘san’ with Sae. Now that the class junior brought it up, everyone since papa had been filed into a senior to obey for hope of a favor or a junior to placate so she could refocus on seniors. Sae did it so naturally… Makoto tried to think about when she adopted that transactional behavior. She shook her head. “Are you sure that’s okay, Takamaki-s… Takamaki?”

Ann beamed a smile that warmed the room, yet somehow took nothing away from her sense of presence. “Just Ann. We’re comrades in arms, right Makoto?”

The class president swallowed against a sudden lump in her throat. “You really are the heart of the Phantom Thieves. T… Ann.” She fidgeted. “Sorry. I guess I’m not always the quickest on the uptake.”

Ann gave a little giggle and clapped her hands together. “Oh, I know what we should do! Since Morgana’s making us all take the day off to rest and relax, let’s you and I go somewhere after school. There’s a place we can get crepes at Central Street that totally stuffs theirs with deliciousness!”

Makoto felt a smile spread over her own face at the junior’s enthusiasm. “S-sure. Maybe it will even help me think of how to approach Big Sis about the next names.”

Tuesday, 31 May 2016
Early Evening
Shujin, Library

Akira’s pencil scratched across the blanks on his history homework. Despite his knack at remembering the stories, the topic was one of his least favorite. His fellow students either hated history and wanted nothing to do with it, or knew far more than him and disdained him for not being on the same level. He’d already sent Hifumi a text, she was very constructive with math and would probably find a way to help him here, but the message sat unread in his outbox. He sighed and tried to block out the irrelevant chatter.

His phone buzzed and the transfer student scrambled for it. Alas, instead of his beautiful rival, Ryuji’s ID sat at the top of a new text to the group chat. [You, dudes.] A beat passed. [I mean hi. You guys got time? We need to change gears so we can hit the bank fresh tomorrow. Especially Senpai and Akira. You two are intense.]

Morgana peered at the screen, then whispered, “Find out what he wants.”

[If it's anything to do with food, count me out,] Makoto sent.

Ryuji replied, [I won free tickets to a darts lounge. They'll expire next week if I don't use them, so why not come?]

He started typing in an excuse when Makoto sent, [Something focused and physical sounds like a good diversion. This might even hone our technique for the Metaverse. Excellent work, Sakamoto.]

Hoping for backup, the transfer student turned the phone so Morgana could read from within the shelter of his school satchel. Morgana nodded. “She’s right. Let’s go.”

Sighing, Akira texted for directions and packed up to catch the Inogami Line.

Tuesday, 31 May 2016
Early Evening
Kichijoji Station

Makoto adjusted the strap on her purse, then turned around to walk back along the subway. The sun sinking below Suginami-ku cast long, deep shadows even if it wasn’t true twilight yet for over an hour. When Sae texted that she’d be staying at work tonight, the upperclassman wondered if she’d be able to keep her nerves under control until they struck Kaneshiro’s bank tomorrow. It wasn’t like she new many diversions, herself. Were it not for that million yen hanging over them, she might have asked her new compatriots what other people did, but Sakamoto gave her an opportunity to find out at least a bit without having to embarrass herself.

Of course, that was if one of them would show up. Just when she was about to start calling, she spotted the transfer student come up the steps, his phone in hand and a deep frown on his face.

She waved to get his attention. “Kur—Akira?”

“Senpai,” he said with a shallow nod. “Ryuji message you that he arrived yet?”

She shook her head. “Kept on texting about the places around here. Ann’s last was that she expected to be five or six minutes.”

Morgana peered out from the transfer student’s school satchel. “The atmosphere is different here. We’ll want to be careful.”

Akira shot an irritating smirk at her. “I was just thinking, if circumstances were just a bit different, I could imagine you stalking me all the way here.”

She jabbed him with an elbow and got a satisfying Oof. “I thought we agreed never to bring that up. I was only doing that because Principal Kobayakawa was threatening me. And I’m not even working for him anymore!”

Somebody coming out of the subway station bumped him and Akira bumped back. He glared at the crowd around them, then adjusted his eyes up at the lit business signs. “Wait for them in one of the shops?”

Guessing he was still nervous about the bank, she nodded and walked with him down to a high-end stationary store. “Well, besides the bars, it doesn’t look so different from Shibuya.” Few of the bars were open yet, but plenty of the evening businesses were rolling up the shutters and getting ready.

He looked over the fountain pens on display by the counter. He muttered, “I wonder if she’d like anything.”

Makoto adjusted her braid headband. “Hm?”

Akira crossed his arms and swallowed, a twinge to his eyes that she couldn’t explain. “I was just thinking about consumerism. The traditional gifts are chocolates or cookies or boxed crap like that, always sold well above their value at stores. But what kinds of things are actually good gifts?” He pointed a hand at the display of cheap pens beside the cash register. “Functional gifts anyone could get anywhere, use, but cheap enough that the receiver wouldn’t worry about losing something small?”

Morgana hopped up onto the transfer student’s shoulder. “I can tell you that a lot of the things in this fine establishment suit the refined taste of yours truly.”

Their phones buzzed and the upperclassman checked to see Ann’s note of arrival at the station. Makoto sent her the name of the stationary shop they browsed in. Still no word from Ryuji.

The model’s cheery, “Hiii!” sprang from behind them. “So, browsing the promenade while waiting for that slowpoke to get here?”

Makoto turned and bit her tongue at the twinge of jealousy. Not a hair of ashen blonde hair stood out of place and even the standard Shujin blouse looked flattering on her in a way it never felt on Makoto. Instead, the upperclassman gave a nod.

Ann let loose a bright smile. “Well, let’s check out the other places!”

Akira only managed, “Wait, I came for darts!” before the girls dragged him from imported grocer’s to outdoor and sporting goods.

While the model pressed a waterproof jacket over herself to check for size, Makoto crossed her arms. “I knew there were a lot of businesses catered to sports, but never heard of one catering to ladies preferring the outdoors.”

Akira rubbed his arm. “That isn’t common?” He rubbed the back of his head in a cute way she was disappointed only lasted a second. “I thought that was kinda default.”

Makoto stifled a laugh. “Right, because you came from a smaller town. You’d have to go for a ways to get to a serious camping spot in Tokyo. Clearly Ann likes it, but most girls aren’t so inclined.”

Akira shrugged and drew his phone. “Well, we’ve been at this for twenty minutes, I’m going to text him.” He tapped away and sent a message into the group chat.

A moment later, Ryuji replied, [I've been waiting for you guys!]

Akira shot back, [Where? You never sent the directions to that dart place. We don't even know the name.]

A beat passed. [Oh. I'll come out and get you,] the track star replied. After getting the name of their current shop – Echo and Wave – a minute later the dyed blond waved from just outside. He gave them a sheepish smile as they closed on him. “Sorry ‘bout that. I just got all excited ta do somethin’ together.”

Makoto held her hand to her forehead. “In the future, Sakamoto, you might want to give us the specifics of when and where.”

Ryuji pointed them to a set of set of stairs just a few meters away. “There it is. Penguin Sniper. Funny name, eh? I mean, why’d you give on’a those doofy birds a gun?”

Akira pushed up his glasses. “It’s easier than throwing them and trying to avoid the explosion?”

“Now you’re making Disgaea references?” Ann made a face before she rallied the troops. “Let’s go before he starts trying to add ‘dude’ to the end of every sentence.”

The Phantom Thieves entered, but it turned out Ryuji also failed to tell them he only one two tickets. With neither of the boys having a stable source of disposable income – only Akira had a good reason for not having a job yet – Ann and Makoto paid for their own fare.

Akira hung back as the others followed the directions to the dart lanes, his steel grey gaze locking on the billiard tables. “What’s that?”

“I’m afraid that’s a separate event, sir,” the man at the register said. “Billiards. Very popular game that tests the mind and body of its players.”

He allowed the runner to pull him along to the dart lanes, as Ryuji’s bruised ribs hadn’t finished healing yet, but the transfer student’s gaze lingered on the green tables until they started a game. Akira allowed the runner to explain the rules, and even motioned for the runner and upperclassman to go first. Then Akira tossed the darts from hand to hand a few times, lifted one in his left and let it fly with what looked like a casual flick to Makoto.

It landed on the triple twenty.

The model gave a cheer almost as enthusiastic as Ryuji’s.

Akira bounced the darts in each hand a few times, before he lifted one in his right hand and let it sail with the same deliberate ease. It flitted into the twenty less than a centimeter above the triple ring. He tossed his third dart and sent it into the twenty just millimeters from the triple ring and snapped his fingers. “Sorry, guys. I’d like to say it’s the lighter darts, but I can never seem to get all three into the triple.”

Makoto straightened. “You’ve played?”

He rubbed the back of his neck. “When I couldn’t steal Mother’s credit card, darts was how I got most of my money in middle school.”

Ryuji’s perfect grin could have blinded. “Dude, why didncha say you played?”

Despite his impressive showing, Akira’s gaze fell to the floor. “I don’t like it. I used it ‘cause it paid for food, but… Darts just ended up another thing people hated me for. Some of the old-timers at Luckless had been practicing for longer than I’ve been alive. Then I waltz in and zero the first game money’s on the table for.” He shrugged, but his gaze didn’t quite rise to theirs. “It wasn’t even fun, it was easy. There’s no strategy in it, just reflexes. Unlike go or shogi, where you only do well if you’re skilled.”

Morgana’s tail flicked back and forth from the satchel resting on the drink table near the end of the dart lane. “There’s natural talent to mental games, as well. Just because those old farts were all poor sports doesn’t mean you can’t be both gifted and well-practiced.”

Ryuji gave a vigorous nod. “Eff yeah! Gettin’ you here an’ findin’ out you’re like, some kinda pro. It’s like a strike of good luck! We outta do this again some time.”

Ann slapped her hand to her forehead. “Oh my God, Ryuji. It’s stroke of good luck. And I haven’t even gone yet!” She stood, lined up, and tossed, but her third dart threw a bust. She held a cringe as she turned back to the others. “Sorry, everyone.”

Morgana almost jumped in the satchel on the narrow table. “Don’t be hard on yourself, Lady Ann. This is a game of precision and coordination where syncing with your teammates is just as important as how well you can score, yourself.” He gave a smile. “You know what? This might not reflect as directly as Gun About, but I bet this could help improve the Phantom Thieves’ performance in the Metaverse as well.”

Makoto nodded. “Agreed. We should do this again.”

Ryuji perked up. “Another round? Lesse if Akira can hit the triple twenty all three—”

“It’s late,” the upperclassman said with practiced firmness. To her relief, Ryuji reacted just like her fellow students did to her firm tone of authority. “We need to be well-rested for our next foray into the bank. And aren’t you second years coming up on the social studies trip? If any of you have demerits or poor grades, you’ll be dropped from the trip for remedial lessons. And I know not one of you would let that happen.”

Ryuji shot straight. “Y-yes, ma’am!”

Notes:

Akira’s sudden formation of a new Persona draws from P4 The Animation, where most of Yu’s new Personas are either fused off-screen or pop out at a moment his friends are in danger. Many of the investigators’ awakenings in The Animation are also delayed until their battle with Ame-no-Sagiri when it’s them pulling out all the stops to save him. It’s also reflected in Persona 3 when Junpei has THE most badass persona evolution in the series and kicks Streiga’s ass when they dare tell him Chidori’s death was meaningless.

Makoto’s a difficult character to write, she’s extremely popular but also has a strong hatedom because she starts off looking like a prissy nose-in-the-air jerk who just wants personal benefit. The game does a bit of disservice because the pressure she’s facing from all sides is shown to the audience rather than to any of the characters, which denies a lot of character bonding and growth from overcoming those bad impressions. That is one of the many things I hope to fix in Daywatch, where her fear of becoming a hollow, transactional person and harsh treatment of the Phantom Thieves has to be dealt with. It always sat wrong to me that Makoto threatens the same fate of a criminal record already forced on Akira, but to the only people in his life that have been good to him. The game completely blows that off, but Daywatch will not.

Chapter 43: June 1st, Vault

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Wednesday, 1 June 2016
After School
Kaneshiro’s Bank

Akira slid his studded key into the diamond-shaped hole in the steel panel, glancing over at Ann to be sure she was ready. She lifted her pistol and its matte-black new silencer, glanced around, then gave a nod. Morgana cocked his crossbow just in case another trap triggered, then counted down. On one, Akira and Ann turned their keys towards the enormous, circular vault door.

Green indicator lights above the locks blazed, with a series of deep clunks he could feel in his feet as much as hear in his ears. Metallic whirling and groaning emanated from the door before it rotated open. Even before he got to her, Ann’s shoulders slumped at the space beyond. “This guy’s vault is huge. How’re we going to find his Treasure in this?”

Reaching the inner side of the door, Akira’s eyes widened at a corridor wide enough to drive a semi through, with a slow curve to the left. Safe deposit boxes the size of Shujin’s gym lockers lined both walls from floor to ceiling.

Makoto paused at the threshold, her jaw clenched. “Then we do it the old-fashioned way.” Before he could say anything, she reached out for the closest deposit box, tapped the unlock button, and yanked on its handle.

The box budged open only a centimeter, and the class president froze.

Morgana folded his crossbow and approached. “Nightrider?” He came to a stop right next to her and poked her knee. “She looks just like y—”

Makoto jerked back, teeth bared and shoulders trembling before she punched the box, knocking it ajar. “Bastard!”

Akira came next to her. A wild energy blazed in her eyes. “Calm down, Rider. You’re in the Metaverse with us.”

He reached out, but at the touch of his fingertips, Makoto spun on him, her hand clamping on his wrist. Her eyes wavered for a moment before focusing on his. She let go and took several seconds to regain control of her breathing. “Sorry.”

Ann paced in and put a steadying hand on Makoto’s trembling shoulders, avoiding the spikes. “Are you okay, Rider? What happened?”

Makoto fidgeted, her eyes sweeping over the lock boxes anywhere but near the other Phantom Thieves. “I felt like… for a moment, I was Kaneshiro. I saw him… I lived him planning the murder of an NHK boardmember because one subordinate journalist was closing in on Kaneshiro’s man inside the government.”

Akira frowned and slipped his free hand in his coat pocket. “I figured he would. There’s no way an operation gets as wealthy as his without running across the authorities.”

Sensing a pall forming over the group, Morgana hopped and waved to get their attention. “This just confirms what we already knew when we targeted him. Kaneshiro has to have a change of heart. Otherwise he’s going to keep on corrupting officials and ruining people’s lives. Let’s keep moving, the Treasure is close.” He led the group along the curving hall until slowing down and backing up. Catboy lifted a white hand and pointed at a column of lock boxes. “I’m sensing the Treasure this way.”

“Disguised door?” Akira wondered, reaching out at one of the lock boxes, tapping the unlock button, and pulling.

***

Two boys cheating on the pinball machine looked up, then scrambled to leave. The four Hashiba men closed on the teenage Kaneshiro. Junya backed away from the bar, his hands up in supplication. “G-gentlemen, there’s no need to do anything rash.”

Kaito held up the handful of yen notes Junya had given him. His dark green gaze felt as cold as a shark’s. “You’re short by a lot, Junjun.”

Junya’s butt hit the billiards table. He could feel sweat rolling down him. “We wouldn’t want to do anything to sour things between the Hashiba and Kaneshiro clans.”

With the slowest pace of the bunch, Shichiro sauntered to the cue sticks, grabbed one, then walked up to the table arresting Junya’s escape. Unlike his lazy walk, the powerful jab of the cue stick was so fast it drove the breath from the middle schooler before he saw the move. “Name droppin’ doesn’t work on businessmen.”

Wealth knows no boundaries, remembers no loyalty.

Coughing, Junya clutched the forming bruise. “P-please, I don’t have that much right now.”

Shichiro nudged Kaito out of the way, then slammed the cue stick against Junya’s sides.

The teen could’ve sworn he felt his whole insides move. His buy wouldn’t mature for a year, and the House heads’ stinginess even when they had money was what forced him to the Hashibas in the first place. “I… I could get you VIP rooms at—”

Shichiro slammed the butt of the cue stick into the teenager’s belly again.

See how poverty invites misfortune.

Junya coughed, clutching the new bruise. “I don’t have any more. My investments will take time to mature.” When Shichiro drew back the cue stick, Junya threw out his arms. “But they will, I swear.”

“Debts are meant to be paid, in cash or in real estate,” the stubble-chinned adult growled. He swung the heavy end of the cue stick across the side of Junya’s head, sending the teenager sprawling over the end of the billiards table. “You better find a way to pay by the fourteenth.” He dropped the stick clattering to the floor and the adults strode out.

***

Akira jerked his hand back, shaking it as if he could get the filth of Kaneshiro’s memories away by such action. “His life kinda reminds me of mine. Never getting any slack, even for being young.” In one motion, he leaped to the top of the deposit box. The top of the stack still a ways away, he reached for another box to make stairs.

***

Junya slouched back against an overstuffed chair, almost purring. He looked across the insurance company’s conference room, a dark-stained wood table clashing with the sterile plastic wall panels. His oldest bodyguard stood at his side, his sharp, dark suit making him look like a perfect symbol of corporate success. Exactly the look Junya wanted for the Kaneshiro Group.

At the other end of the round table sat the head of the Kaneshiro Group. The old man had almost as little hair as a grip on reality. He looked more like a museum mannequin than leader of the most powerful yakuza in Tokyo in his purple kimono. Two of the family bodyguards stood flanking him, their faces blank but the sharp lines on their necks betraying their tension. Old man Kaneshiro ranted, that vein on the side of his head looking more prominent than ever. “Fucking moron, Junjun! You think you can trust cops you buy? How long are they going to stay their hand when they learn they’re being paid with drug money?”

See how wealth begets power.

Junya slammed his hands on the table at that demeaning childhood nickname. He reached out a hand and his bodyguard set a cigarette in it. “Don’t blame me for your lack of preparation, Uncle.”

The head of the House slammed his fists into the table. “We have rules for a reason, Junjun. Hands off the drugs, kids, and state attorneys. And never trust a sellsword! Breaking those won’t just bring the cops down on the clan, the other Houses will come at us for free!”

There are only those who claim money, and those who make it for you.

Uncle jabbed a wrinkled finger at him. “It’s only a matter of time until that Chink double-crosses you. He only came here because he was betraying the Ikeda Group. Well I won’t give him the chance. I’m shutting it down and disposing of him. This House lives on our people.”

Junya laughed, his slight belly shaking. “You ancient idiot.” He slapped his hands on the table as he sat up, his presence dominating the room. “Dead men don’t pay bills. If you’d bothered to learn from the Russians like I did, you’d know how much better kompromat is than dead debtors. And it doesn’t matter how powerful our enemies are if they’re at each others’ throats instead of after ours.”

Uncle motioned his hands from his bodyguards to Junya. “You’ll have plenty of time to think about it from my hostess club for the rest of your life, never managing so much as a whore’s schedule.” It took the old man a few seconds to realize his bodyguards hadn’t moved.

Smirking, Junya leaned back in his padded chair. “You always took loyalty for granted. I promised them a raise and free lifetime access to my hostess club.” He chuckled. “Your men have been my men for years.” He lit his cigarette, took a drag, then leaned forward. “Give him a long fishing tour.”

The two men lifted Uncle out of the chair. His face turned red. “Only power is respected!”

Money is power.

Junya tapped ashes into a waiting tray. “Have you not noticed how few cops have gone after my boys? You relic of the last age. It’s time the Kaneshiro Group gets with the modern day. International drugs. The internet. Overseas money laundering. You may have been fine with always being one bust away from bankruptcy as long as you told yourself you had purity and feigned loyalty.” Junya took a deep drag from his cigarette. “But I will never be poor again.”

***

Another ring of the vault opened before them, and Akira stepped up to open more memory lock-boxes. Sparing a glance at Akira, Morgana looked up to the top of the next wall of lock boxes. His eyes narrowed for a moment before he looked at the boy with red gloves. “Do you think you could open one more, Joker? The Treasure is so close!”

Akira drew in a deep breath. A dozen showers wouldn’t wash off the all-too-long moments lived through Kaneshiro’s memories.

To his surprise, Makoto came to his rescue. “Byakko, he’s been through eight of Kaneshiro’s memories. I could barely handle one. Surely that’s enough to ask of anybody.” After the long-coated teen jumped down, she came to a stop next to him, their eyes meeting for a moment. “I’ll do the next one.”

Makoto leaped up, ignoring their protestations. Her hand clamped on the handle, thumb flicking the lit switch, and pulling out the tall safety deposit box. After a few moments, she twitched and shook out her hand, then hopped up to the top of the next ring.

Morgana bounded to the top of the stack, tied off a cord, then lowered it so they’d have a quick descent once time came to steal the treasure. “This should be it, the treasure is very close.”

Akira grabbed the nylon cord thinner than his pinkie and pulled himself to the top, popping up as soon as he could get a grip. A concrete pillar lay before them, reaching from floor to ceiling and big enough to fit all of Leblanc in the center. A steel door big enough to drive a car through gaped open and a Shadow guard stood in the gap. Another similarly heavy steel security gate filled a gap in the deposit boxes to the left.

Behind him, Makoto grunted as she pulled herself up.

Morgana waited until Ann reached the top. “Okay, everyone. Just one Shadow left guarding the location of Kaneshiro’s Treasure. Get ready to hit quick, because I can’t guarantee Joker or I are fast enough to ambush it at this distance.” His eyes turned to Akira. “I’ll try to get this one’s mask, but have your fastest Persona ready just in case.”

Akira nodded, readying his sub-machine gun and searching though himself for some connection that felt like he’d be able to hit hard and fast, and found his mind’s eye coming to the cat in his physical gaze.

“Hey, intruder!” The Shadow lifted its tonfa, missing a swipe at the cat, though its body seized and bloated, consumed by black as Morgana leaped at its face.

The Shadow burst into a trio of tall, powerfully-built females. The one on the left bared light purple skin and no clothing to speak of. She gripped a thin, wicked-looking sword in each hand. The other two were covered head-to-toe in red cloth reminding Akira of cartoon ninjas but for the white nou mask. Their claws were smaller than Nekomata’s, but still glistened in the light.

As he hit the ground, a ball of fire struck the purple one and a larger icy one exploded against the demon in the middle. He shot a burst into the demon on the right, one of his bullets hitting true and knocking it down. “Nekomata!”

His own nimble Persona leaped from the burst of silvery motes, her claws ringing off the purple ogre-woman’s swords.

Zorro rushed at the demons in red, landing a lucky stab and letting the one in the middle slump to the ground. Ann continued lobbing ice at the demons as Makoto slid down the cord.

The demon his shot knocked down shuddered, then kipped up to its feet and clawed at Zorro in an angry frenzy. The burly Persona fell to the ground, dissolving into motes as Morgana fell with a cry.

Carmen arrived just in time to whip at the demons in red, buying Makoto time to get there on Johanna while Nekomata continued trading swipes and parries with the purple Shadow. The dancer swung its whip, but instead of striking the retreating demons, she unleashed a freezing gale filled with shards of ice.

One withstood the magic, but the other became encrusted in frost, just for Johanna to smash it to pieces with its armored bulk. He pulled the trigger and held it until the gun stopped firing at the red demon. Bolts of fire and ice finished it off.

Not letting up for a moment, the purple swordmaster struck a heavy blow into Nekomata, knocking it to the floor and Akira to one knee with a pained growl. Tired and sore, when the blade-woman scored a deep slice against Carmen, he reached inside for any kind of power to set it off-balance. Hifumi’s relentless surprise moves came to mind, and his mouth opened. “Shesha!”

The five-headed, celestial-scaled serpent coalesced into existence. All five heads opened their mouths and roared a bluish beam into the Shadow, knocking it down.

The Phantom Thieves fanned around it, weapons up even though he knew his sub-machine gun was empty.

The purple-skinned ogre-woman heaved in breaths, her long black hair disheveled and not quite covering enough of her chest. She looked up at Akira as his serpentine Persona came to a stop next to him. “Few are foolhardy enough to deny Kaneshiro. Fewer still powerful enough to stand up to him. How do you come here?”

Akira held his firing position, though his Persona would have to take care of things if she pulled out a surprise. “We’re here to change the world. One selfish prick at a time.”

She took a steadying breath and her grip tightened on her twin swords. “You think this world is yours for the shaping, but not Kaneshiro’s? Your arrogance is astounding.”

Ann came alongside Akira, the powerful beam of light below her pistol’s barrel throwing an oval on the Shadow and the darkened vault behind. “It’s not arrogance at all! It’s resolve. If that goes for Kaneshiro, why not for us?”

The purple Shadow glared. “The many do not want change.”

This time Morgana hopped to the fore, crossbow still aimed at the Shadow. “Most people just want to get along. If they can do that with the same, they’ll support that. If they can do that with change, they’ll support that too.”

Akira nodded, his stance straightening as he got into the argument. “It only takes engagement from three percent of the population to effect systemic change.”

Ann’s eyebrows rose enough to be clear despite her mask. “Really?”

“Yeah,” Akira said, his Persona’s tail shifting behind them. “Less than five percent of England’s population rose up against the entitled nobles in the Dispenser War, but the tax collectors were required to collect from the titled as well as the workers after. Here in Japan only about three percent wanted to keep trading with the West and the Dutch were invited to our ports during the height of our isolation period.”

Makoto’s eyes flicked back and forth as she scanned her memory for a moment. “How do you know that?”

He shrugged. “Resistance, and rebellion against unjust authority was kind of a recurring theme in arguments against my old bastard.”

The purple-skinned Shadow slumped, one of her swords falling to the floor with a clatter. “Your point is well made, bandit. But have you considered the cost of crushing the Kaneshiros? Tearing all like them from society?”

“We’re no bandits,” Akira snapped. He lowered his sub-machine gun. “We’re here to reform society, not destroy it.”

The ogre looked up at him, her messy black hair reminding him of a child caught in the rain. “Lofty goals, intruders. You really think you stand a chance?”

Akira nodded. “I know we can. Any enemy can be defeated piecemeal.”

The ogre picked up her sword. Ann and Makoto tensed, but Akira noticed Morgana watching with a relaxed sway to his tail. “Then join my power to your confidence and let evil hearts be changed, one by one.” Closing her eyes against the Phantom Thieves, the Shadow stood and burst into black streaks flinging into his mask.

He stumbled once before catching his footing.

Makoto shook her head and lowered her shotgun. “Even seeing it four times, I still can’t believe it.”

Morgana smirked as if he achieved the victory himself. “Neither can I, to be honest, and I’ve been watching him do it since we stumbled across it in Kamoshida’s castle. Good job purifying another Shadow.”

Akira tilted his head. “You guys stepped in and talked with it too.”

Morgana gave a thoughtful smile. “True, but that doesn’t diminish you reaching out. You really are something, Joker.”

Makoto stepped past them into the dark vault. “So Kaneshiro’s Treasure is in here?”

Ann took the lead, sweeping her pistol-flashlight over a vault strewn with yen notes and gold bars. She took her time moving the illumination to make a more methodical search, and stopped at a shimmering cloud. “There it is.”

Makoto scratched her head. “What are you talking about? Are you saying all this,” she paused to pick up a sloppy wad of yen notes carpeting the floor in mounds, “isn’t his Treasure?”

Morgana cackled and folded up his crossbow. “Those are just accents. This is his Treasure,” he pointed his folded up rod at the cloud. “All we have to do now is send a calling card.”

“He needs to be put in mind that his distorted desire is a thing that can be stolen,” Akira said.

Makoto’s eyes widened for a moment. “I see. By drawing his attention with the calling card, you force it to physically manifest. Is that what you did to Kamoshida?”

“Yep. You’re pretty quick on the uptake,” Morgana said, grinning ear to ear. “Now that we’ve secured a route to the Treasure, it’ll be no problem to speed through here next time. All we need to do is send the calling card.”

“Let’s do it now,” she said, planting her free fist on her hip.

“Whoa,” Morgana held his hand up to stop her. “Fighting a palace ruler is a very dangerous thing. We need to make sure we’re as prepared as possible. And we’d need to write that calling card tonight, and distribute them in the morning without getting caught.”

“I’m with her,” Akira said.

“Of course you would be,” Ann muttered.

“I just want to keep people like Doctor Takemi from getting killed,” Akira shot back. “It’s not like we have a convenient timer telling us ‘ten days until Masa gets Kaneshiro’s permission to shoot her in the back of the head’. And then there’s all the other students who are so desperate they went to the student council for help. Besides, Ryuji might still be too injured to fight, but he can help us distribute cards.”

Morgana’s mouth twisted for a few moments. “We’re not especially depleted right now. I suppose we can get enough rest even after preparing a calling card to be ready tomorrow.”

Once they strode down the ramp back into the darkened, dirty facsimile of Shibuya, the conversation turned back to the plan. Ann began unscrewing her silencer. “So how are we going to get the calling card to Kaneshiro? I have a feeling he wouldn’t be as generous as he was when he let you and Reaper get out of Spiral alive.”

Akira folded his sub-machine gun’s wire stock. “Shit, I didn’t think of that. It would be suicide to try to just storm into Spiral again. And that’s assuming he’s there instead of one of his other dozens of businesses.”

Makoto grimaced. “Sorry about that. It’s my fault Reaper’s mother is being shadowed now.”

Morgana put away the squared rod of his folded crossbow. “There’s no way we could have done it without your help, Nightrider. Thanks to what you did, we could get inside his bank and find his Treasure.”

Makoto tapped her gloved fingers against her lips. “A similar method would ensure he gets it.” Her head straightened. “Byakko, could I borrow Reaper? I’ll need your help, too.”

Morgana tilted his head at her, eyes squinted in confusion. “Um… I suppose, but I will not okay you marching straight back into that club. Joker’s right, he might not even be there and even if he is, he might not let you live a second time.”

Through the wide slits in her heavy iron mask, the transfer student could see the gears behind her eyes whirling. It reminded him of Hifumi deciding which counter-strategy she wanted to crush him with. Makoto’s lips pressed into a thin smile. “Oh, don’t worry. He won’t see it coming.” Her crimson gaze locked onto his. “How soon can you have eighty copies of the calling card printed?”

Akira’s eyes stretched wide. “Eighty? I’d have to call Reaper, he was the one who lived next to a print shop. Once we actually got to it, he had a dozen pasted all over Shujin by the next morning. I mean, I commissioned an improved logo from one of the homeless artists drifting in Inokashira Park, but getting it to Kaneshiro would be the hard part. Not the making it. What are you planning?”

Makoto disassembled her shotgun, her smile even more pointed. “You guys write it. Let me handle getting it to him. Come on, Byakko.”

Morgana nodded, but looked to the others. “Make sure you get plenty of rest.”

Thursday, 2 June 2016
Morning
Aoyama, Road to Shujin

The air seemed hotter than normal, thick as if the humidity competed with the anticipation of the day’s upcoming battle to change Kaneshiro’s heart. Even the traffic, as ever-present as it was, seemed more subdued and distant. The carefree chatter of the students walking to the gate ahead of Akira made things feel even more jarring.

He stumbled when a dyed blonde shoved into his personal space and elbowed him with a face-splitting grin. “It’s finally the day to steal his Treasure, eh?”

Akira’s hand lashed out, swatting the track star across his bad dye job. He hissed, “Shut the fuck up in public, dumbass.”

Ryuji’s grin recovered after only a beat and he bumped the transfer student again. At least his volume lowered to a whisper, “I am so psyched to finally do this.” He leaned into Akira’s personal space again as they passed the gates. “That fuzzbucket can’t keep me outta this fight.”

Akira fought to keep from rolling his eyes. “He’s still out spreading cards, remember? He’ll be back at lunch, and he’ll decide if you’re healthy enough to come then.” He paused to push open the door. “And if he says no, I happen to agree. I got cracked ribs when I was fourteen. That hurt for a month.”

One of the students behind whispered, “Sakamoto’s got broken ribs?”

The one next to him shrugged. “Whaddya expect from a delinquent? I wonder if the transfer did it.”

Akira clenched his teeth, but the runner just rolled his eyes and strode through the open door.

Thursday, 2 June 2016
Lunch Time
Shujin Rooftop

Ryuji kicked at the roof, sending a small pebble skipping out through the bars and into the courtyard. He turned his rage-twisted face back on the team leader perched on a desk. “You guys better steal his heart.”

Morgana looked over the assembled Phantom Thieves, his tail twitching behind him at the argument over keeping a wounded member out of a battle against a Palace ruler. “Don’t worry, Reaper. We’ve got a good rhythm. Nightrider’s meshing pretty well with the Phantom Thieves.

Akira slipped his hands in his pockets, resolved to stay out of this particular spat between the track star and the team’s Metaverse guide. “It’s no big deal, Ryuji.”

He growled and stopped, his hand on the door handle. “’Course you say that. You get to go ‘round with two hot chicks.”

Makoto looked like she couldn’t decide between choking in embarrassment and preening in pride.

Akira covered his red face with his hand as Ann scoffed.

The door opened into Ryuji’s shoulder. “Ow.”

He knew it was Haru even before he saw the curly brown hair from the surprised squeak. “Oh, I’m sorry.”

Ryuji froze, staring for long seconds before Ann swallowed her last bite of onigiri and coughed into her fist. The sound broke the spell on Ryuji and he pulled the door open the rest of the way. “Uh… no biggie. We were just finishin’.” He glanced at the others. “I’m still gonna see you there.” He held the door open as she stepped onto the roof, trowel and hand rake in her left. Ann and Makoto followed the track star down.

Having paused eating to watch the argument and shoot down Ryuji’s reasons for going along, he picked up his tray and ate another sushi.

Haru paused, the tools still in her hand but her eyes on the Phantom Thieves’ leader. A moment passed before she let out a quick but mournful breath. “I always wished I could’ve had a pet ever since I saw Kirijo with her shiba.” She lifted her right hand. “M-may I?”

Akira shrugged. “Go ahead.”

Morgana’s ears flattened even before her hand touched and he snapped, “Don’t make decisions for—”

Her fingers stroked down the black fur between his ears, and when she scratched at the base of one ear, Morgana stretched his head up into the manicured digits. It only took a moment before a deep thrum rumbled from his throat. A faint smile spread over Haru’s lips. “It’s interesting how small the conditions can be that cause a change in behavior in animals.”

Akira swallowed another small sliced roll of sushi. “I guess habit is always in the wings. I remember Haruko’s dog went after me when Yoshida and I were running one day.”

Her fingers went still. Morgana glared at the hand. “I didn’t say stop.”

Akira snorted in amusement. “What’s wrong, didn’t you not want her to pet you?”

Morgana puffed out his chest. “I… I’m just being gentlemanly.” He leaned closer to her again.

Haru resumed scratching the back of the guide-trapped-in-cat-form’s head. “It must be so simple being an animal. No facades on cause and effect. Humans are ruled by the same nature, we just add pointless steps and call it decorum.”

Akira paused, sushi in his chopsticks halfway to his mouth. “There are tons of differences between humans and animals. We make tools.”

“Humans are animals,” Haru replied, though her tone sounded more like a classroom recitation than casual conversation. “And animals use tools. Capuchin Monkeys use rocks to break nuts, and they chip and break them to make better hammers.”

Akira opened his mouth to retort, his long-running conditioning to be right compelling him to defend his argument. But his curiosity got the best of him. “Really? Monkeys actually make tools?”

Haru gave a faint smile, though the gesture looked genuine this time. “Not just monkeys, apes and beavers too. Sometimes to make shelter, sometimes to get to food. It’s all to satisfy the drives of instinct. That’s what rules all animals. And since humans are animals, us too. Chemical reactions. The chain of cause and effect.”

Morgana’s ear twitched, and he give Haru’s lowered hand a distracted glare. “A chain…”

Heart rate jumping, Akira set his tray down and chopsticks on it. Talk of people being animals went against everything that felt right, but reducing them to chemical reactions… “That’s like Tesla calling people meat machines.”

“Well, we are,” she said with a shrug.

“People aren’t machines!” Akira felt his fists closing. “Without the capacity for free will and thought, we wouldn’t even be able to ask if we are. People wouldn’t be able to make smart decisions or dumb ones. We’ve known humans are capable of choice and independent thought. Rene Descartes. ‘I think, therefore I am’.”

She gave him a soft smile, though it reminded him of his mother before she called him a child and said something demeaning his intelligence. “Oh, Akira-kun. Things like independent thought are just misconstrued interpretations of how we reflect the processes around us. The present state of the universe is the effect of its past and cause of its future. Pierre-Simon Laplace.”

The bell to start fourth period rang and Akira cursed. He grabbed his lunch box, stuffed a couple of the sushi rolls still left in his mouth, and chewed as he ran for the door. Haru followed, her pace heavy and eyes on the stairs.

Chapter 44: June 2nd, Breaking the Vault

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Thursday, 2 June 2016
Lunchtime
Shibuya, Spiral Hostess Club

Rapid footfalls scrambled down the back hallway, pausing just outside his door. Kaneshiro reached around his laptop for a champagne flute. He took a deep drink. This week wasn’t looking good. The police snooping around didn’t bother him, but moving labs cost money. What grated his nerves, however, was his network going silent. A few street-level drug pushers could be easily replaced, but the people disappearing went all the way up to Hirotoshi. And so did rumors of henchmen turning themselves over to the authorities.

The door flew open and his bodyguard popped to his feet, pistol up before the messenger in a crisp business suit surged in, breathing heavily. “S-sir!” He paused to gulp a deeper breath and held out a small, red piece of paper. “These things just showed up all over Central Street.”

At a small wave of Kaneshiro’s hand, the gunman slipped his pistol back in its quickdraw holster and sat back down. The clan boss took a deep drink of champagne. His uncle would’ve beaten a messenger for interrupting lunch, but business opportunities could come at any time. “What is it, Masui?”

The courier took a shallow step closer, still looking out of breath. “A… calling card, sir.”

Kaneshiro set down his champagne and took a bite of chicken piccata. “Well, read it.”

Masui gulped, fidgeting for a long few seconds. “But sir…”

Kaneshiro glanced at his stock market trading program. Ikeda was trading higher today. He sighed, then thought back to the gaps in his clan. Replacing personnel meant private investigators and other trouble-shooters. He glared up at the courier. “I said read it. I’m a busy man.”

Masui swallowed, fidgeting for a moment longer before staring down to the strange red card. “Sir Kaneshiro Junya, the pitiful sinner consumed by gluttony. You indulge in cowardly scams on children, blackmail, and drug trafficking in your desperate want for money. Your punishment shall be visited upon you by your own hand. I, the Phantom Thief of Hearts, shall steal your distorted desires without fail.”

Swallowing champagne, Kaneshiro glared over the top of the flute glass. “You wasted my time with some stupid prank?”

Masui took a stumbling step closer. “Sir, we’ve been finding these things scattered all over Central Street.” He pulled out his phone and checked his messenger. “I’ve even gotten texts about them being found farther out over Shibuya. People are talking about it online. Clan heads are going to find out…”

Kaneshiro set down his champagne hard enough to splash a droplet out. “Don’t waste my time with stupid shit.” He sneered. “Phantom Thief? Ha!”

His arm candy, the buxom girl cutting his next bite of chicken, paused to look up at him with a tremor in her eyes. “But if we can’t get that protection money—”

Kaneshiro slapped her hard enough to send the knife tumbling to the table. “Don’t you ever presume to tell me my business. This city and all the money in it is mine. All the other clans are afraid because mine is the one raking in the money.” He glared up at Masui. “Some so-called thief says he’ll steal from me? He’ll soon learn his mistake.” Having to replace clan businessmen wasn’t bad to start with, but some threats needed a full salvo. Computer crackers, stake-outs, burglary experts. “Spread the word.” He paused to eat another bite of chicken and capers. “This month’s quota just went up.”

Thursday, 2 June 2016
After School
Shibuya, Station Walkway

Leaning against the concrete wall next to the track star, Akira opened the link in Mishima’s text to a browser page. “And there’s another forum talking about a new sighting of the calling card.” He closed his browser and looked up at the stuffy class president. “I have to admit, I was worried about your plan. It’s gutsy, but looks like it’s paying off.”

Makoto gave a humble shrug of her shoulders. “Since the rest of you couldn’t find out where Kaneshiro was, and it would be too dangerous to try going directly to him, message en masse seemed the only way. I’m sure his lackeys have brought at least one to him by now.”

Morgana straightened on the transfer student’s shoulder, giving a smile. “For our newest member, you sure have a good grasp of the theatrics of a phantom thief. The true brains of this operation.”

Standing up from the wall, Akira retorted, “Hey, I’m here too!”

Ryuji pulled his hands out of his pockets. “And I’m the one who went postin’ it all over the place.” He shot a narrow gaze at Makoto. “You even made me dress all up like six times.”

Akira rolled his eyes. “It’s called a disguise, Ryuji. Even not being a thief, I’m familiar with the idea. We’d do it all the time at Inuri when we were going to prank the cops.”

Ann crossed her arms tighter. “I’m just anxious to go after him. First Kamoshida, now a real live criminal overlord.” She made a tight smile. “I could get used to this kind of phantom thieving.”

Nodding, Makoto’s tense stance hinted much more tension. “We steal the Treasure and the ruler’s heart changes, right?”

Morgana gave a nod and smile. “Exactly.” He glanced to the track star. “A certain someone still struggles to comprehend it.”

Teeth bared, Ryuji snapped, “Get off my back, cat! This is only our second Palace, and this whole thing is weird.”

Akira shot him a smirk. “Technically, he’s on my back.”

Ryuji rolled his eyes. “C’mon, not you too.”

Makoto clasped her hands, eyes to the pavement. “Kaneshiro’s been making thousands of people’s lives a living hell, and I am no better for failing to do anything before. I should’ve done something with Kamoshida, but I can do something about this now.”

Akira held out a fist to her, but when she looked at it with a quirked eyebrow he lowered his hand.

Standing up, the leader took a glance at the assembled Phantom Thieves. “Everyone ready?” When they nodded, Morgana smiled. “Then let’s do this.”

Thursday, 2 June 2016
After School
Kaneshiro’s Bank Vaults

Morgana called up from the walkway of the inner ring, “Looks clear.”

Akira glanced back at the circular walls they bypassed, then took the nylon cord in hand and rappelled down. He brought his sub-machine gun up as soon as his feet hit the floor. “I don’t like this. Patrols are up in the whole bank but the vaults? I smell a trap.”

Ann groaned as she descended after him. “Don’t say that, we could use a lucky break.”

Makoto sighed from the top of the stack of lockboxes and slung her shotgun on her shoulder by its strap. “He’s probably right. There’s no better time to set a trap than the eve of an enemy’s action.”

Akira paused at the gaping vault door, looking over Makoto as she slid down to the inner ring concourse. Despite her settling into a wary stance, a calculating gleam shone in her eye that set his heart pumping. “You and I will have to play a game of shogi after this is all over.”

Her boots hit the floor with a thump and she looked him in the eye. The bright lights over the concourse cast her in stark greys and blacks of sharp shadows. Her mask made it hard to tell, but he thought Makoto’s eyebrows rose. “You play shogi?”

Tossing his sub-machine gun from hand to hand, Akira smirked. “Shogi, go, labyrinth. You name it, I’m game.”

Morgana unfolded his crossbow. “Let’s steal the Palace ruler’s Treasure first.” He paced into the core vault, dark as a spider’s burrow. Like last time, gold bars and yen notes carpeted the floor in loose piles. Ann’s gun-light swept across the dark vault, slowing when it illuminated a wall a few meters from the back that wasn’t there last time. The spotlight froze when it reached a large, circular opening. Beyond the opening lay something like a table crammed with gears, levers, and other mechanics.

“What… is it?” Akira leaned one way, then another to try to figure out what the Treasure was.

Makoto squinted. “I think it’s some kind of printing press. The old-fashioned kind with movable type or woodcut images. I’d say it was some kind of money printer.”

Akira shrugged. “Well, that was easy.” He trotted forward, but the instant he was about to reach the threshold, a circular door slid into the space, then whirled into a clockwise spin. Kaneshiro cackled, and white lights lit up the enormous vault chamber. The yakuza boss smirked at them from a metal grating catwalk over the new sub-vault door. Akira groaned. “Look, we fought our way here twice. Can’t you just make this easy and get out of our way?”

Shadow Kaneshiro’s lips pulled into a deeper sneer. “Tch. You only got here because of luck, but your luck is about to run out.”

Ann pointed her suppressed pistol at him with one hand. “You can’t just walk over all the people of Shibuya!”

Shadow Kaneshiro smirked. “It is the way of the world for the mighty to take from the weak. And what is might but wealth? People will do anything for money.”

“Bullshit,” Akira shouted, hating how much like his father the yakuza boss sounded. “There are honest people who can’t be bought. And some of us just happen to be standing in front of you today.”

Shadow Kaneshiro’s smirk held fast. “Those people just need a certain… leverage to convince them to play along.” Hand going to his chin, he scrutinized Akira. “Now what would yours be? Drugs to make it feel like the shitty world around you is a little farther away? A few photos of your family where they think they’re safe to remind you how vulnerable your kin are? The… touch of a woman—”

“What is it with all you assholes,” Akira snapped, “and saying I need some woman to complete my life? I’m here now.” He braced behind his sub-machine gun, aiming at the Shadow’s pudgy if immaculately-dressed belly. “And I’m going to take you down.” He glanced at Makoto. “Though I just so happen to have two girls tougher than nails who have the same plan.”

Makoto raised her shotgun. “Right.”

Morgana aimed his crossbow. “The police may not have gotten you yet, but you’ll go crawling to them by the time we’re done with you! And everyone out there will know that the Phantom Thieves can clean up anyone!”

Shadow Kaneshiro’s hands slammed on the metal railing as rage twisted his face. “There’s no such thing as a clean person. Just what each person’s dirt is.”

He jerked, clenching the rail to hold him up as his body stretched upwards. His eyes widened and glazed over, but continued to expand, pushing out and up his face, darkening like red gemstones until they looked like compound eyes. His already pale skin whitened until it reminded Akira of a bloated corpse floating on the sea, hardening and segmenting. His stylish silk coat merged into his chitinous surface, and broad, translucent wings like a fly unfurled behind him. Shadow Kaneshiro’s monstrous form stood twice as tall. Gold glinted at one of his left wrists.

Before he could line up his gun, Shadow Kaneshiro flapped his wings and flexed his arms, emitting a solid wake of pressure that hit Akira like a train and knocked Makoto to all fours. “It has always been the weak that consume the strong.”

“Then how did you last so long, Junjun?” Akira shouted, going for a detail from Kaneshiro’s memories in the hopes it would make him leave an opening.

He whirled on him and jumped down from the catwalk. “I’m no poor weakling!”

A ball of ice slammed into the monstrous Shadow, exploding in a huge burst of frost.

He shook his arms and flapped his wings, ice cracking and falling off. “God damn punks. You’re gonna cry at me for flexing my power over others, but then do the same thing against me?” He snapped his fingers.

Six man-sized pustules of black muck appeared across the vault, quivering for just a heartbeat before bursting into various oni.

Akira gave a groan. “Aw, c’mon. We already fought through these bozos to get to you.”

A snow-white oni whirled a double-bladed staff sword and drew up in a pose Akira recognized as charging its magic, left hand held flat before the hole through its head where a face should be.

Having defeated one in the halls above, Akira didn’t even have to concentrate to change Personas. “Agathion!”

Motes of pale light coalesced into the green imp hiding in a gold vase, which thrust its fingers at the oni, the lightning bolt knocking it to the ground.

Makoto ran over it, blasting it and the Sui-Ki behind it into dissolving smoke.

Seeing a red-skinned oni heft its greatclub and chase after her, Akira brought out Pillar of Heaven and pelted the oni with darkness until it collapsed, then turned to Shadow Kaneshiro and continued. Fire bolts joined while Carmen and Zorro tag-teamed the last oni.

When all four of their Personas concentrated back on him, Shadow Kaneshiro raged as he fled their attacks. “You thieving hypocrites! The one in the black mask doesn’t hold anything back to get what he wants. Why should I be any different?”

Akira aimed down the sights in the top of his sub-machine gun. “Don’t try to hide your cruelty behind some other person’s heavy-handedness. You’re the one responsible for your actions. And when it comes time to be judged, you’re the only one who will have to excuse yourself.”

Wings buzzing, Shadow Kaneshiro hopped away from a fireball lobbed by Johanna, then growled at a stab from Zorro before bashing away the burly Persona with a flick of his segmented arm that sent Morgana’s Persona flying. The monstrous Shadow raged, “You may be stronger than you look, but you’re still nothing but low-down punks! I have the resources to show you your place.”

A snap of his fingers, and another eight oni sprouted from the ground, piled yen notes and gold bars tumbling from their footsteps.

Carmen and Zorro tag-teamed a Kin-Ki on the far side of the vault while he sicced Agathion on both of the Fuu-Ki.

Shadow Kaneshiro hopped up to evade Makoto, his wings buzzing. He flitted back and forth to avoid Makoto’s firebolts, then Akira’s when he summoned Pillar of Heaven. “You little shits! I crawled from the mud to where I am.”

Akira shot a burst from his sub-machine gun. “That’s no excuse for you to push others into the mud. How many people have you beaten with pool cues because they couldn’t pay?”

Shadow Kaneshiro came to a hover in midair, giving Johanna and Carmen a perfect stationary target for exploding balls of elemental power.

Still staring down three purple oni, the transfer student zapped each of them with howling dark energy from Pillar, but they kept closing on Zorro. Eyes growing wide as he backpedaled, Morgana shot one in the throat, bringing it to its knees, but the others sped up their charge. “A little help here!”

“Shesha!” Akira howled, digging inside for that focused passion Hifumi brought out so easily in her shogi matches. The starscape-skinned serpent coalesced as the purple oni slashed into Zorro, the serpents’ heads opening singing mouths and unleashing rays of cyan energy into all three Sui-Ki. The one on its knees collapsed into fading smoke, the other two falling to the floor, wide open for Zorro to stab them through the head and finish them off.

The rabble finished, Akira turned to Shadow Kaneshiro. Shesha blazed beams of cyan light from all five singing mouths into the monstrous, bug-faced form.

Shadow Kaneshiro fell to the ground, knocking gold bars tumbling and yen notes fluttering. The Phantom Thieves formed a ring around him, guns up, with their Personas close by. Kaneshiro glared up at them, the anger somehow clear despite the red bug eyes. “You… you bastards. You condemn me when you’re no different than Black Mask. Goin’ around, takin’ whatever you want from other people’s hearts.”

Ann pointed her gun at his face, “Don’t impose your selfish motivations on us. We’re here to steal distorted desires, not your money or secrets.”

Akira stood straighter. “Right! We fight to set people free, not to trap them in a cage of debt or despair.”

Makoto glared down the top of her shotgun, looking unnervingly like a professional soldier. “Your fate was sealed long ago. We’re just the heralds, Kaneshiro. You murdered my father because he was inconvenient, but we’ll see you in prison.” Her shotgun thundered, and when the monstrous Shadow stood, the other Phantom Thieves added their gunfire.

Shadow Kaneshiro slammed his fists into the ground, sending out a shockwave knocking all four Phantom Thieves flying over the messy vault floor. Yen notes fluttered all around them, but not enough to hide Kaneshiro lifting a deformed hand with thumb and finger poised together. “You think I don’t have the resources to destroy you? Ha! Even the government can’t help but bow down to the power of my money. Even the commissioner will turn a blind eye for the right price.”

His fingers snapped.

The lights went off, leaving the vault in pitch black outside the cone of Ann’s gun-light. The sound of Shadow nodules bursting raised the hair on the back of Akira’s neck. The dim glow of Carmen and Shesa only gave enough light to see the Personas themselves.

Something scampered through the settling yen notes, making his sub-machine gun’s laser dot flicker from the wall to some point just a few meters away.

Morgana shouted from somewhere in the dark, “Panther, stay where you are! Rider, can you pick up Joker?”

“Where are you?” She shouted from his right.

Yen notes scattered behind him and Akira whipped around, letting out a short burst concealed by his sub-machine gun’s suppressor. Whatever was there dashed away, knocking two gold bars together. The distraction was still enough to cause Shesa to dissipate, leaving Akira feeling naked and vulnerable to at least two new Shadow minions. “Right here.” Taking his finger out of the trigger well, he waved his sub-machine gun in her direction, hoping she’d either spot his laser or the dot it projected. “I’m holding position right here.” He summoned High Pixie and the Persona as small as a regular person floated above him, though something seemed to sap at the light that used to glint from its translucent wings.

Red flames flickered underneath Makoto as Johanna formed underneath her, the red tracery and steel plating even more intimidating in the darkness. The transparent canopy finishing just in time to cast aside a flying sickle on a chain. Her wheels blazed as she raced at Akira, and the transfer student backed up a step when she came to a stop just a few centimeters away. She dismissed her Persona, then spun around when something dashed through the notes piled over the floor, her shotgun braced against her shoulder just like Ryuji taught her.

She startled when Akira backed up against her, sweeping his sub-machine gun left and right to try to get that dot jump indicating something closer than the wall.

The cone from Ann’s gun-light spilled over a black silhouette, humanoid as the other oni but wearing black, shrouding clothing just a little loose at the arms and legs. A close-fitting hood concealed the head. She pulled the trigger and followed it, three shots piercing its torso before it escaped her light. A fourth shot rang out, passing just above Akira’s head.

He dropped to the ground. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! I’m right here!”

“Sorry!” Ann called, going back to her jerky back-and-forth search.

“Okay,” Morgana shouted from the spot where Ann’s gun-light cast its cone. “I’m going to transform and pick you guys up.”

His red dot flickered and Akira squeezed off a burst.

Something scuttled away from the dot-jump point, and five or so meters to his left. “But we can’t fight from inside you.”

“It’s not ideal,” Morgana called back. “But once we’re together we can focus on fighting the Shadows and less on avoiding shooting each other.” A pop echoed in the darkness and two cones of light shone out across the space, one headlamp revealing Kaneshiro rubbing his hands against each other and the other a crouching oni wrapped in black clothing.

Makoto and Akira both opened fire on the oni holding a sickle on a chain in one hand, and the weighted end of the chain in the other, one of the shots striking it in the head and sending it sprawling to the ground, leaking smoke. Makoto shot it another two times before it dissipated.

Heavy footsteps over loose notes drew Akira’s attention to his right. They scuttled away before he could figure out quite where they were, but before he had the chance to complain, Morgana pulled up in his bus form and the side door slid open. Ann hopped out, her gun-light waving back and forth. The three students came back to back and Morgana hopped onto Akira’s shoulder, crossbow at the ready.

Ann jerked, tensing against him before she called, “Carmen!”

Morgana summoned Zorro an instant later, but by then the sneaky oni was lost to the darkness.

Shadow Kaneshiro laughed from somewhere in the dark.

Heart hammering in his chest, Akira scrambled for something to give them the upper hand. “What’s wrong, Junjun? Doesn’t this remind you of sneaking into your uncle’s office to steal the deed to blue street in Shibaura?”

Kaneshiro roared. “I had no choice! I had to pay those Hashiba bastards with something. My uncle wouldn’t have lifted a finger to help me.”

Akira’s lips pressed into a thin line and he muttered, “Sounds familiar.”

His laser dot jumped, and he pulled the trigger.

His companions spun around, Ann’s gun-light casting white over the black-clad oni holding another kusari-gama. While they blasted it with gunfire, he summoned Pillar.

Darkness didn’t even make it flinch, and the Shadow leaped through the gloom at Pillar, slashing through the churning swirl of dark and fire. Akira collapsed to the floor, clutching his chest.

When he fell, Makoto growled and leaped forward, Johanna forming underneath her before rocketing over the floor at the Ongyo-Ki.

It shot into the darkness, its sickle smashing into the back end of Johanna followed by a chained iron weight the size of Akira’s head.

Her Persona dissipated into flames and she tumbled, skidding through yen notes carpeting the ground in uneven piles. The sound of her bones colliding with gold bars rang twice.

Despite the flames of Pillar of Heaven, Akira couldn’t see more than a few meters past it, so the group lowered their guns and rushed over to Makoto.

His dot jumped, and Akira pulled the trigger. Something dashed over mounds of yen notes, but he heard Shadow Kaneshiro grunt in pain.

Makoto summoned Johanna and lobbed a ball of fire towards the same general area he blasted his gun at, the ball itself only striking the yen on the ground but the explosion catching Shadow Kaneshiro, who leaped away with a buzz.

That sound was all Akira needed to lob fire from Pillar of Heaven. Carmen joined in with ice, but it wasn’t until Morgana cried out that Akira realized he’d forgotten about the team’s leader.

“Help him!” Makoto snapped, keeping her eyes on Kaneshiro, Johanna pulsing bolt after bolt of fire at him as he buzzed back and forth in the darkness.

Akira picked up their panting leader, who gave a thankful nod. Morgana looked out into the darkness, where Shadow Kaneshiro faded, then to Akira. “I’ve got a plan, but you need to hold back until they take the bait. You’re our wild card, the only one Kaneshiro and his minions can’t prepare for.”

Akira nodded.

Morgana loaded bolts into his crossbow’s magazine. “This new minion doesn’t seem to have a weakness to any of our elements, so you need to hit it with your strongest fighter. Leave Kaneshiro to us until that damn ninja Shadow is dead.” Akira gave a grim nod, then Morgana leaped to his own two feet with a roar, summoning Zorro and using his psychokinesis to pick up and fling gold bars after the flying monstrosity. “Everyone else, throw everything you two have at the Palace Ruler! Focus on him!”

Akira settled back, straining to hear above the sound of gold bars clinking against the vault walls and either ice or fire exploding.

He spotted the Shadow oni with a kusari-gama charge into Makoto and Johanna a fraction of a second too late to stop it from powering a blow into the mask on the armored front of the tank-like motorcycle. Johanna disintegrated into red flames.

Makoto screamed as she tumbled through the air, skidded over piles of yen, then into Ann, knocking her over.

The oni shrouded in black turned on Zorro, but Akira was already calling on his newest Persona and channeling all of his fury into it. All of the impulsive power of Caroline and merciless precision of Justine. “Yaksha! Tempest Slash!”

His own purple-skinned oni formed behind the larger black-shrouded one, a barbed, forward-curving sword held each hand. Her long black hair shifted as she lifted her swords and powered a chop down into the Ongyo-Ki’s back, reverse-slashed upwards, left, right, then down through its back again. The ninja dissipated into smoke.

Ann’s gun-light fell over Shadow Kaneshiro again, the Shadow on all six limbs. When something on his chitinous wrist glinted, Makoto pointed, “There, that bracelet! The real one never wore anything on his hands.”

“Just like Kamoshida’s crown,” Morgana said with a smirk, before launching at the gold loop clinging to the monstrous limb. Locking his crossbow’s bayonet out, he thrust it between the gold bracelet and corpse-white exoskeleton, and twisted with all his might.

The bracelet cracked, black tendrils reaching out to continue grasping for Kaneshiro’s arm. Hissing whispers slithered through the air before a ball of ice hit him in the limb and exploded, flinging shards of ice.

The bracelet snapped off.

Shadow Kaneshiro wailed as the lights flipped back on. The monstrous boss slid back down to his knees as smoke gushed from every cut and blow through the fight. His height dwindled, his face shrank back down to the rounded human one, and at last a Kaneshiro in tattered pants and the ragged remains of a silk tuxedo jacket looked up at them. The spinning sub-vault door came to a stop and drifted open.

Kaneshiro ran to it, throwing his arms wide. “No, you can’t! Black Mask already takes anything he wants from other people’s hearts. This is my money!”

Akira snarled. “Stolen from the people of Shibuya!”

Makoto stepped closer, wincing but keeping her shotgun trained on him. “Innocent people.”

Tears streamed down Kaneshiro’s face. “B…but without it, I’m just another one of those ugly, weak fools. Weak people can’t have happiness.” The yakuza boss’s lips trembled. “We can’t even feel safe.”

Akira glanced at his sub-machine gun, noting the bolt locked forward again. Well, maybe the Shadow wouldn’t notice it. He pointed his gun. “You think you can play the victim when you’ve been making thousands of people suffer? You’re even worse than the people who made you afraid when you were a teenager trying to show his uncle how smart he was.”

Ann held her gun out at him, trembling despite both hands on her pistol. “You surrounded yourself with people who only cared about money, and now you have the gall to act afraid that the people around you will treat you badly because you don’t have enough money?”

Kaneshiro looked up at the standing Phantom Thieves forming a semicircle around him. “Where else did I belong?”

Makoto lowered her shotgun. “Where you make for yourself. The only right thing is to spend the rest of your life paying atonement in money and other ways. Even if you have to beg for forgiveness.”

Kaneshiro looked over the four. “With all your power, with all the Palaces you could loot, or even better extort… how could you give up the chance to make bank? How much is justice worth if nobody can afford the bill?”

Akira lowered his sub-machine gun. “Only if the single way you measure the world is money. Some people live to safeguard their family, to give their children a quiet place to lie down and sleep without nightmares. That can’t happen when everybody is running around sucking money without care for what it does to others’ hearts or lives.”

“Yeah!” Morgana said. “Now go back to your real self and set your debtors free. Stop covering for those other yakuza thugs. Make up for what you’ve done. If you can do that, you’ll have a place even if you don’t have money.”

Kaneshiro stared at the messy piles of yen and gold carpeting the floor for a long moment before he nodded. His shoulders slumped as he faded away.

“Come on,” Akira shouted as he threw open the sub-vault door.

Morgana leaped past him and for a moment the transfer student thought he was going to help before the catboy clamped onto a wheel controlling the money press and rubbed his face on it. “Treasure,” he purred.

Ann rushed in, yanked Morgana off, and threw him to the ground still strewn with piles of yen notes, gold bars, and the occasional glint of some gemstone. “Come on, let’s load it and get out before the Palace collapses!”

Bracing against the side of the subvault door, Makoto’s eyes widened under her mask. “Collapses?”

A bolt pinged out of the iron girders above and the bank groaned around them.

Ann’s face flushed underneath her mask and she let out a nervous laugh. “Oh, uh. Did we forget to mention that?”

Akira and Ann surged for the Treasure and Morgana popped back into the catbus for a mad dash out of the bank.

Chapter 45: June 2nd, Family Doc

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Thursday, 2 June 2016
Evening
Shibuya, Station Square

The Phantom Thieves stumbled into the writhing mass of humanity streaming to and from Shibuya Station. Next to him, Makoto tripped, her foot twisting and her hands thrown wide in a vain attempt to catch herself. When Akira grabbed her arm to help her, she yelped and pulled away.

Ann came to a stop next to them, dragging a gold briefcase. “You okay?”

Glancing out at the others, Makoto accepted Akira’s help to her feet, though still let slip a pained grimace. “I don’t think anything’s broken.”

A yowl shot through the crowd, then Morgana dashed through the swift movement of the crowd’s legs. His eyes came to a stop on the gold briefcase, though his tail remained high and twitching. “Oh, good, you guys have the Treasure.” He paused to look up and around. “Too many eyes. We should find a private place to open it up and find out exactly what his Treasure is.”

Akira glanced at the student council president leaning on him, her eyes squinted in pain. “First thing we should do is get you to the doctor.”

Morgana’s ears twisted this way and that before he sat, looking up at Ann. “Can you keep the Treasure safe for a while?”

Ann nodded. “It’s heavy as hell, but it’s also got rollers so I can drag it home.”

Akira knelt to let Morgana in his school satchel, then offered Makoto an arm and aimed for the train station. The smell of burnt meat wafted through his nostrils and he flinched in disgust. The red sky faded into purple, though with all the lights of the city the throngs walking through the streets seemed more like Shadow silhouettes to him.

Makoto let out a pained wimper, and when he loosened his grip she led the pair to the closest bench she could find. A pair of tourists came up to the statue of Hachiko, snapping photos and chatting as they walked without hesitation into the seething mass of humanity.

Akira pulled his hands away from the upperclassman. “I’m just making things worse, aren’t I?”

She grimaced, holding a hand to her chest. “It’s okay. Despite my own attempts to keep up, I just don’t seem to have it in me to walk the walk.”

He raised an eyebrow, looked through the crowd, then spied the shiba statue and looked back to her. While they sat, he poked into his satchel for the hot compress and gave it to her. “You’re talking about back then, aren’t you?”

Morgana poked his head out of the bag. “Back then?”

“A brief run-in Akira-kun and I had last Sunday.” Pressing the compress against her chest, Makoto nodded. “I’m sorry I was so short with you that day. I made you take valuable time out of your busy schedule to try to find out more about the rest of the student body. I was insulted that you invited me to share your walk and rejected it out of hand because it was… well, almost all your suggestions were illegal. Even if you might not be the representative of the average person yourself, you were still trying. And the next time we needed to fight through Kaneshiro’s bank, you set all of what I said aside like it never happened.”

He shook his head. “I shouldn’t have said most of the things I did. You’re being genuine about wanting to understand people better, and ‘it’s what I know’ is not a good excuse when that’s not the kind of Akira I want to be.” His phone buzzed and he pulled it out to check the text. Hifumi sent him a message nearly two hours ago saying she was ready to tutor him. He let out a morose breath and sent back, [Sorry, Togo-san. Had an emergency that couldn't wait.]

Makoto looked away, pink touching her cheeks. “I wasn’t even big enough to give you the benefit of the doubt you automatically gave me. I should’ve known back then you weren’t being totally serious.” She reached her right hand across to offer a handshake, but winced and clutched her torso with her other hand, dropping the hot compress.

He snatched it and pressed it against her back until she could maneuver her arm to hold it. “My old bastard made everyone else walk on eggshells around him, I shouldn’t be repeating his mistakes. I should be helping you. I mean I will.” He paused to scrutinize her hunched posture. “You got battered pretty hard by those oni. I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve got pulled muscles besides the bruising we all probably took.” He shifted to face her straight-on. “Takemi might have some muscle relaxants and anti-inflammatories.”

A thud drew their attention and Ann picked the gold briefcase back up, at least as much as she could without the strength to get it off its roller-wheels. She looked between the transfer student and president. “You two move fast.”

Eeping, Makoto shot back to a straight sit on the bench. Her angry blush didn’t help her protestation. The hot pack flopped to the bench. “N-no! Nothing of the sort, Takamaki-kun!”

Akira shot his oldest fellow Phantom Thief a flat glare. “I’m trying to make use of my medical knowledge, Ann-san. Looks like we’ll have to stop by the doctor’s.”

“Right, right,” she said with a grin, though her entire posture looked weird due to the golden briefcase not letting her stand straight. “Well, don’t let me interrupt you two.” She paced into the crowd and disappeared through a turnstyle.

“Actually,” Makoto said, coming to her feet with her face twisted with pain. “I think I’ll take you up on that offer to stop by the doctor. I didn’t want to say anything earlier and risk letting Kaneshiro get away, but I may not have been completely over the strains from yesterday.”

“It’s no good burning yourself out,” Akira reproached, helping the president down the stairs and into the train, but when she didn’t retort he let silence hang between them until they passed Leblanc. “Hold up. I need a minute at my place. I promised I would bring the doc some caffeine last time I brought Ann up.” He pushed open the door, but paused when he saw Sojiro look up from polishing mugs. Akira gave a nervous wave. “Uh… Hi. I kind of owe Doctor Takemi a pot of coffee. I accidentally gave her a decaf last time.”

Sojiro set the mug and polishing rag down with a humph. “You’d better not make a mistake like that again. Coffee is our primary item. Oh, and your mistake… your money.”

Akira grimaced, but flinched when he bit his tongue to try to hold down his anger. That was going to bleed for a while longer. He pulled out his wallet, then a few yen notes. “Fine. Can I get the ice pack for Senpai?” He gestured to Makoto, who followed him inside.

The proprietor yanked open the freezer and pulled out a rubber ice pack. “I wondered who put that thing in there.” He tossed it across the counter, quirking an impressed eyebrow when Akira caught it with one hand. Pulling out a battered thermos, he looked at the pair of Shujin students. “I hope you kids aren’t getting involved in anything. Anyway, it’s getting rather late. I’ll be open for a little while, but don’t you have families and dinner to be getting to?”

Makoto’s eyes fell to the table, her fingers tracing minute circles on its surface as her shoulders sank.

Akira leaned against the booth seat opposite the class president. “You worried about getting in trouble for staying out? Real helicopter mom and pop?”

She let out a sigh. “The opposite, really. I don’t even know if Sae would notice me being late. She’s been keeping so busy with work, we hardly talk even when she’s home.”

Sojiro paced down the lane. “I’m sorry to hear that, kiddo. It’s no fun going through life with family too busy to, well, be a family.”

Akira gave him a look askance. “What do you mean, ‘be a family’? Family’s just people related by genes. Everyone’s busy taking care of themselves.”

Sojiro thumped the transfer student in the arm with the filled thermos. “Family’s the core and foundation of every society on earth, kiddo. Now c’mon, if you’re gonna bring a nice girl into a cafe, you commiserate. Say how sorry you are to hear her mom’s busy.”

Snatching the battered thermos with both hands, Akira shot a dirty look at Sojiro. “Why? I’m not the one keepin’ her at the lab.”

Makoto shook her head. “It’s okay. She’s my big sister, though she does have to put up with quite a bit of a burden between her job and taking care of me. I try to do things around the home like cooking, but sometimes I wonder if it’s really enough to make up for it all.”

Sojiro gave the transfer student a light elbowing. “See? Taking on life and rising above the problems with good life skills like mom’s home cooking. Even you did that, I’ve seen you preparing your lunches.”

Akira rolled his eyes. “Nobody was there to teach me, I taught myself how to cook. If I didn’t do it myself, it didn’t get done.”

Morgana sighed from the bag. “Joker…”

Makoto reached out a hand to her fellow Shujin student for help to her feet, but she kept her eyes on his. “Come on, they may not all be good, but everyone’s mom does at least some cooking.”

Akira gave her a flat look. “No, not everyone’s mom cooks. I don’t think mine so much as set foot in a kitchen. The best thing she ever did for me was locking me out that August night when I met Big K.” He tugged his school jacket straight, a small wince escaping his control. “Come on, let’s get you to the doc.”

His phone buzzed, but when she drew hers as well, he guessed that it was the group chat. He pointed to the door. “I’ll join you guys in chat later. Doctor first.”

Leaving the lukewarm compress, she leaned on his support out of Leblanc, but slowed down before reaching the main lane. The searching look she gave him raised his hackles, but she continued heedless. “You really…don’t have any moments with your mother that you cherish? No favorite books or dishes she introduced you to?”

Akira picked up the pace. “Why is it that everyone thinks a mother is some fantasy wish-giving thing? Moms are people just like all the other self-interested people out there. Hell, mine wasn’t even into family holidays. The only time I remember her and the old bastard under the same roof was for some gala with rich bigwigs they wanted to show off to.”

“Oh.” Makoto looked down, shamefaced for some reason as her pace slowed. “Your parents are separated. I’m sorry.”

He gave her an arched eyebrow. “Why? You didn’t do it. And them livin’ separate places was the only thing that gave me hope I’d get away from the old bastard.”

Makoto looked to his face, but her gaze fell the instant their eyes met. “My mom was kind of busy – she kept up her job at the county clerk’s office, but she did things with us every day. Taught Sae and I to cook and how to keep food warm for those nights dad was late. She was even going to teach me how to sew, but I always ended up too busy with studying to take her up on it before she died.”

He let out a long breath, but took the moment to think. “I guess I remember Big K sayin’ his ma did the same thing for him.” He paused to open the door to the Takemi Medical Clinic. “The most I can do is replace buttons and patches for holes in a pocket.” He set the battered thermos on the window, declaring from deep in his belly, “I come bearing coffee.”

Takemi looked at Makoto, still leaning on his right arm. “And more bruises, I’m sure.” She reached for the thermos. “You kids need to find a safer hobby.”

Akira feigned horror. “And give up parkour? Where will we get our running exercise?”

The doctor gave him a bored stare for several seconds before she unscrewed the cap and poured a cup of coffee. “So which one first?”

“You—” Makoto began.

“No, you’re actually hurt. I just got bumped a bit.” Gesturing Makoto to the exam room, Akira sat down in the lobby and checked the group chat to find out what the buzzing earlier was about. Ann and Ryuji had been discussing the battle against Kaneshiro, then speculating what was inside the gold briefcase.

Morgana popped up to read along. “Tell them not to break anything. You have a light touch, and it took you weeks to master the tension wrench.”

Akira smirked, taking it for as much praise as he could expect. “You have high standards.” Settling back into the chair, he added his own prediction, [500 yen it's only got IOUs.]

Ryuji shot back. [Dude, you're totally spoiling the mood. Did you even snatch any cash while I wasn't in there?]

[Kinda had other priorities, Ryuji,] the transfer student sent.

Ann texted, [Yes, we all took cognitive money out. I'm kind of scared to try spending it, even though it looks the same as regular money.] After a moment, she added, [Makoto mentioned stopping at Leblanc on the way to Doctor Takemi. Is everything okay, Akira?]

[She's in with the doc at the moment. And it's probably smart not to go throwing his money around, it might share numbers with notes already in circulation.]

Ryuji sent, [Prez will be fine. Her Persona's like a motorcycle tank.]

Akira straightened in his seat when he heard the exam doorknob rotate. [Catch you all at school tomorrow.]

Friday, 3 June 2016
After School
Shujin, Class 2-D

Finishing the essay for literature class, Akira capped his pen and looked up. Only two other students remained, also getting a head-start on homework. Having no idea if they were paying attention, he whispered, “Where’d Ann go?”

Morgana cracked open an eye, tip of his tail twitching. “She went with your class representative.” He blinked, his eyes narrowing. “Somebody needs to keep an eye on them.”

Akira set the last book into his satchel. “Please tell me you’re not going to sabotage our best infobroker,” he whispered. “He’s her friend.” That being said, Ann still seemed off since last week. With no clue whether she straightened things out with Mishima, after letting the team leader slip into his school bag, Akira stood up and headed for the Phantom Thieves’ meeting location.

Wrist brace still restricting his motion, he opened the door to the roof with his left hand. Ann’s voice and pacing came to a swift halt and she looked up from her rain-stained seat. An awkward energy crackled in the air. Mishima leaned back against the fence, slipping his hands in his pockets, eyes falling from Ann to the planters with tomato stalks.

After letting out a frustrated breath, Ann took a deep breath to steady her breathing. “Sorry about taking so long, Akira. I was just trying to figure out something about guys with Yuuki.”

Well, Akira never claimed to be a good source for anything. “Sorry I’m not much help. I wasn’t even the one who found Kaneshiro’s name.”

Ann rolled her eyes and flicked one pigtail off her shoulder. “Men. You’re all goddamn impossible.” She threw her hand out. “Why are you guys always trying to pick up the whole Earth like nobody else is there to carry it too?”

Morgana popped up out of the satchel. “It’s a complicated world out there, Lady Ann. I was thinking of gathering the Phantom Thieves to go after more Shibuya thugs in Mementos, but I’d be happy to teach you how real gentlemen think.”

Akira set his satchel on the nearby desk. “Might as well give it a try. Even if he’s weird himself, he’s spent a long time in the Metaverse. That should mean insights to how people’s subconscious works.”

Her eyes flicked to the class representative, narrowing for a long moment before twitching back to Akira’s. Ann let out a sigh. “Fine. I need some chocolate anyway.”

Morgana’s tail swished and he smirked up at the transfer student. “I’ll see you back at Leblanc.” Tail held high, he hopped into Ann’s offered bag and they departed.

Akira shrugged, but Mishima’s eyes followed Ann until the door closed. When it thumped the door frame, he dragged his eyes to the baby plants and wiped at the shamed blush on his cheeks. “C…could we talk?”

Akira brushed off and set up another chair at the corner of the desk closest to Mishima. Akira plopped into the other seat. “Step into my office.”

When Mishima only sat down with a quirk at the corner of his mouth, the transfer student knew things were serious. People loved to groan. After fiddling with his hands for a moment, he still couldn’t look any closer to Akira than the desk. “You said before that you’re Catholic, right? What’s the Church say about loyalty?”

Akira fumbled in his pocket for a microfiber cloth. “Loyalty is all all over the Bible. The First Commandment is to be loyal to God first, that everything comes after Him.” He took off his glasses to wipe the lenses. “To be honest, it’s damn hard. Humans are hardwired to think of ourselves first. Perceptually, each individual is the center of his universe. Your self is where all your information comes from.”

Mishima’s fidgeting with his hands was large enough for the transfer student to see despite not having his glasses on. “What about if you made a promise? Like, to always be there for someone.” Glasses back on, Akira could see Mishima’s fingers grip the sides of his chair hard enough to make the knuckles turn white. “I promised Shiho I’d do anything for her. That I’d always be there for her, for the rest of my life.” He gulped down a breath. “And since Shiho was such good friends with Ann… I never thought that would complicate anything.”

Akira put away his cleaning cloth. “You and Ann get into a fight?”

Mishima let go of the chair and wrapped his arms around himself. “Worse than that. I…” He drew in a shuddering breath. “I took advantage of her. She was so disgusted with me she ran. We couldn’t even talk about it today. If you could call it talking at all.”

Akira scratched his scalp. His story sounded rather different from Ann’s. “Walk me through it. Where’d this start?”

Staring away, his finger traced nervous circles in the desk top. “Class just ended, and Ann wanted to talk. She was telling me about how you guys just got into that yakuza boss’s mind palace. I’ve always been such a boat anchor on everyone else, I just wanted you guys to have one less thing you have to worry about.” He drew in a shuddering breath. “But I couldn’t even do that. She started saying something angry…”

His breath rattled, his eyes glistening. “I smelled that peach-scented shampoo like Shiho always used to use and leaned in, and felt her hand on my knee.” Mishima jerked in his seat, his bloodshot eyes locked on Akira’s. “For a second I didn’t even remember it wasn’t Shi-chan I was kissing …” A tear slipped out.

Akira scratched his scalp. “Mishima-san, I’ve never had a girlfriend. And my family gave me little but bad examples. I feel like this whole issue is something I’m uniquely unqualified to help with. If I tell you that you screwed up, I feel like I’m sounding like my dick-head old bastard who loved putting people down when they were doing their best. If I say you’re just two peeps looking for warmth in each other, that sounds like my mother making excuses.” He spread his hands. “None of it sounds right, but I don’t even know what it’s like to have one person to go to. Much less two.”

Mishima stood up, knocking his chair to the ground. “Would you cheat on someone you promised to be with forever?”

A cold settled over his body and Akira folded his hands in his lap. Was it even right for someone like him to want someone like that? With all his problems? Akira pushed his glasses up to rub the bridge of his nose. Mishima needed help now. “No, but… I think Ann trusts you even more than me. I seriously doubt she’s angry at you so much as worried for you.” He straightened his glasses.

The class representative stared, though something changed in his visage. Whatever it was, Mishima wiped at his face and stood with a stony expression. “You’re right.”

Akira extended a hand to help his class representative to his feet. “Come on, let’s get a couple cans of TaP and tea.”

Friday, 3 June 2016
Evening
Shibuya, Ore no Beko Beef Bowl

Akira clasped his hands behind his back and nodded at the manager still prattling on about timeliness. He bit his tongue to keep from snapping back about how meaningless ten minutes was. That the manager saw him coming from the arcade only made him angrier. No point arguing that he ducked into the arcade to escape from the crowds, not play games.

“We need people who put the business first. If you can’t take your duty to Ore no Beko properly,” the balding man shouted, “then you can take your lackadaisical attitude and find somebody else. This is your last paycheck.”

The door from the kitchen swung open and one of the college-aged workers rushed to desk for the box of paper towels underneath. “Another party of four ordering Huo Guo Rou bowls, boss.”

Baldie growled, but yanked on an apron and stormed through the door.

College Kid looked at the transfer student with a half-suppressed wince. “Don’t take what he says personally, he’s one of them managers stuck on how things used to be in nineteen-eighty.” He tossed the roll of paper towel from hand to hand. He gave a show smile, though it strained a little wider than his genuine emotion. “You could always put his name on the Phansite. Have the Phantom Thief take away his bad management style.”

Akira adjusted his glasses. “You’re a believer in the Phantom Thief?”

College Kid’s smile relaxed. “Dude, I know he exists.” The smile dimmed a little. “Can you keep a secret?”

Akira picked up his school satchel, noting the team leader snoozing in it. “Yep.”

College Kid’s smile brightened again. “I’ve been clean since May thanks to the Phantom Thief. I thought I was on my way out of everythin’ in life until Marai – my dealer – had a change of heart.”

Akira’s hands tightened on the satchel straps.

College Kid held up his hands. “No, really. Like that coach change of heart. Went ‘round apologizin’ to all of us he was cuttin’ his stuff for, then turned himself in the next day.” College Kid threw his hands wide. “It’s like everything in my life is better. I could show up to work every day and Old Fogie,” he gestured at the kitchen, “stopped hasslin’ me. I’m studyin’ every mornin’ and I think I’m even gonna pass my last finals.” He threw a friendly jab at the transfer student’s shoulder, only for Akira to dance a step back out of reach.

“Well… good for you, but now I gotta figure out a new way to take care of myself,” he said, returning to the streets crammed with assholes. He hung back at the train station, sending a text to Hifumi just in case she had time.

[Sorry, busy on an errand today.]

Hope dashed, Akira took to the trains packed like sardines, until getting to the blissfully quiet back streets of Yongen. Despite the relative silence – as much as Tokyo ever seemed to get – his mind still buzzed. Why couldn’t he even come up with a straight, simple answer for Mishima?

Knowing he wouldn’t be getting to sleep any time soon, Akira browsed the back roads for a bit, stopping at Hiromasa’s second-hand shop. He eyed the electric guitar for a little while, but despite juvenile fantasies he knew he couldn’t play and it would just collect dust in the loft. With Shujin remaining a hostile environment and no good bookstores yet to lounge in, he had to have local options. “How big is that CRT?”

Hiromasa leaned on his cane and followed the transfer student’s gaze to the larger old-style television sitting on an antique table in the back of the shop. “Oh, that’s a 32-type. Bought that from the Suzukis when they moved out of the flats more’n a year ago.” He pointed to the small apartment building between the supermarket and walled houses where he first tried looking for Sojiro. “Nice couple. Moved out when his girlfriend got pregnant and they had to get married. It works fine, but I’m sure a youngun like you wouldn’t be interested in such a clunker.”

Akira fumbled to pull his wallet out with his one good hand. “I would if it came with a digital converter. I’ve got the budget of a student with a part-time job, not a parent making five hundred thousand yen a year.”

The old man rubbed his chin. “Tell you what. If you really want to buy the TV, I’ll order a new digital converter and have it delivered to you.” His eyes fell to the velcroed tension brace on the transfer student’s wrist. “I’ll even have someone deliver the TV.”

“Sounds like a deal,” Akira said, pulling out the yen and taking a signed receipt from the old man.

Business done, Akira headed into Leblanc. The high-pitched jingling from the bell hit his ears like a spike. He sat down at the bar and picked lint out of the velcro on the wrist brace Takemi gave him yesterday.

Rhythmic chopping at a wood cutting board greeted him, Sojiro keeping his eyes on a half-cut apple. “You’re back early. Aren’t you working at that beef bowl place now?”

Setting his school bag against a stool, Akira drew the journal and sat, then started summarizing the portions he didn’t mind social services finding out about. “They fired me. Said I had too little availability. I was a few minutes late.” He fidgeted with his hands. “I ducked into the arcade to get a breath away from the crowd, and the boss thought I was messing around in there.” He spat at the ground.

Sojiro’s knife stilled and he looked the transfer student over, eyes coming to rest on the hand still wrapped up in a black wrist brace. “I’m sorry to hear that. Some managers can lose touch with the life their workers are living.” Instead of going back to cutting, he held the boy’s gaze for an uncomfortable second. “Do you feel like you’re starting to get used to the Tokyo crowds?”

Akira shook out his right hand, then flinched when the rapid motion caused a spike of pain through his forearm. “Not really.” He looked down at his journal, seeing the half-written sentence about playing Gun About with Makoto. With him and Ryuji, it was all training, a race to the elusive goal of perfection. Makoto, the girl he thought was born with a stick up her ass, threw herself into the activity and laughed. He’d forgotten it was a game. “You ever have someone that you’re completely certain about, you put her in some box, and then the situation changes or maybe just a new day starts and you realize you were way off base?”

He expected Sojiro to snark back at him or throw some back-in-my-day platitude, but instead the middle-aged businessman set his knife on the cutting board and braced his hands on the counter beside it. “I do wonder some times. Then dupes like Isshiki’s brother just restore my faith in first impressions. That ever happen when you met an aunt or—no, right, Doctor Kurusu didn’t have any siblings.” He picked up the knife and slid the cubed apple into a metal bowl. “Do you?”

“No.”

Sojiro straightened. “Cousins? Anything?”

Clenching his teeth, Akira lifted his fountain pen from the journal. “If I had any family to go to, don’t you think I’d have gone their way years ago?” Thinking back to his first day in Tokyo, he remembered Sojiro insinuating he only took him in as a favor to Isshiki. “Was that a big thing for Isshiki? I didn’t see her all that often. The old bastard really didn’t like her.”

Sojiro chuffed in a manner that left it unclear if he was amused or just contemplating a distant memory. “Hm. She never talked much about him.”

Akira chuckled.

“What?” Sojiro paused, arm raised to a shelf of spices.

Akira lifted his fountain pen away from the journal. “There’s something satisfying about the idea that the old bastard wasted hours of his life hating a person who barely knew he existed.” He drummed his fingers on the counter. “Why did you choose to take me in? I know you were never that close to my old bastard, even if his money’s good enough.”

Sojiro set down a pair of cylindrical metal containers with their contents labeled on tape. “Well, Isshiki mentioned you. Saw you at the institute a couple times and said she was worried about you, so I guess there’s a bit of last wishes there. That and Officer Ichijou asked me to give you a safe roof to live under. Kid came here a lot while she was attending police academy, and she knew I wasn’t using the loft. No idea how she got Doctor Kurusu to go along with it, though.” He pulled out a thin rubber sheet to help grip the metal cylinder’s lid. “It’s a pity you never had much of a family life growing up. It changes your outlook. Helps you define yourself.”

Akira scratched down the rest of his daily entry. “Yeah. Constantly bumming off your hard work. Blaming you for tracking mud in the house when your jerkass little sister was the one who did it. Going into debt and putting you on the hook for it. Doing something stupid that gets you fired.” He capped his pen. “I heard all about what family’s like from other people. No thanks.”

Frowning, Sojiro pulled a set of long metal measuring spoons from a drawer under the counter. “There’s plenty of things that families do besides that. Teaching you to shop so you’re not taken in by disingenuous advertisements, or budget so you’re not dependent on others to do your accounting for you. Helping cover for you when you’re sick. Taking trips to the beach.”

Akira snorted and glanced up at the pale restaurateur. “When’s the last time you’ve gone to the beach with a girl?”

Sojiro jerked, spilling some yellow powder from a mounded measuring spoon all over the counter. “Dammit! Look what you made me do!”

Blinking, Akira wondered why that of all things made the middle-aged playboy angry.

Something patting at his leg drew his gaze to the floor where Morgana sat. “It sounds like this conversation’s going nowhere. We’ll have an opportunity to go into Mementos tomorrow to clean up more of Kaneshiro’s mafia. You should get some rest.”

Akira flipped the journal closed and headed up to his room. When his mind refused to slow down, he sat at the desk, trying to stay ahead of studying.

Chapter 46: June 4th, Increasing Tally

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Saturday, 4 June 2016
After School
Shujin, Front Gate

Akira waved good-bye to Ann as she jogged through the crowd to the station. He felt a pang of disappointment at not being able to spend more time with the second person to really believe in him since arriving in Tokyo, but she had a job and it would have been selfish to jeopardize that. He adjusted the school satchel hiding Morgana and kept a steady march next to Mishima until Alliance Force Assemble sang out of his phone.

Pausing to give the class representative a wave goodbye, Akira peeled off to the inner edge of the sidewalk to answer. “Appointments and scheduling, Stu Early.”

The blissful sound of Hifumi chuckling floated out of his phone. “I’ll take that as the right number this time. You’re certainly the joker.”

From his satchel, Morgana grumped, “It’s getting hard to tell if that means you’ve broken cover like Reaper’s always doing or not.”

Akira scratched the nape of his neck, his face heating in embarrassment and his eyes averting despite not having anyone to look at. “Sorry. Old habits.”

An undercurrent of suppressed laughter wove through her tone. “Despite your jocular nature, you never demeaned me and my embarrassing habit during games. To be honest, after the initial shock wore off, I liked how you picked it up and used that same passion yourself.” She cleared her throat. “But to the point, cram school today’s been canceled due to teacher illness. I promised to help you with math, but mother’s been keeping me so busy I couldn’t spare an hour earlier in the week. Would you like to study together?”

“Y-yeah,” he said, his heartbeat speeding up. He mentally kicked himself for throwing out such a lame, casual answer. Ryuji may have been laid-back enough to accept that, but Hifumi was too smart and proper. “I mean yes. Definitely.”

“There’s a table in Ueno Park. Papa would stop there and we would practice before he had a match.”

Akira slid the call to one side to bring up the map function. “Ueno Park… so… the place next to the flea market?” He didn’t want to come out and say he didn’t want to meet in public places, that might make him sound like a creep. But between the press of crowds and the noise, he didn’t look forward to meeting someone unless it could be a more sedate, secluded place. “There a good, quiet place around?”

She hummed, and though the traffic helicopter circling above his head made it hard to hear he thought he heard her humming play through musical notes. “It might be harder to find such a place that also has table space for books. I-is that all right?”

Akira worked his jaw, feeling his mouth go dry at being put on the spot. “You’re the one taking time to tutor me. I’ll make time.”

She let out a short giggle. “You’re certainly easier to work with than the photographers and wardrobe mother schedules me with.” She fed him some directions and he took the train.

Ueno Park

With the sun still up, it took much less time to push his way through flea market to a series of court of eateries and food carts. It took only a minute to find the girl with prim posture and the red knot in her hair. Her blazer shone blue in the daylight, the bright colors a stark difference from the masses of people throughout Tokyo all dressing like they didn’t want to be noticed. Just before he could greet her, his phone buzzed. He left it to focus on the girl he came to see. Akira bowed, “Queen Togo?”

She jerked in her seat, looking up at him with wide eyes, shoulders shooting up and a touch of pale on her cheeks before the deep green of her eyes locked onto his. Her pink lips twisted into a smile and she closed the news article on her phone. “Akira-kun. You took a little while.”

Setting down his satchel, Akira took the seat across the corner of the steel grate table next to her. “Thanks for waiting.” He tapped Morgana. “I need my math book, your highness.”

Morgana stretched before he hopped out. “It’s not my fault the train rides are long.”

Hifumi stood and leaned to look around the corner of the table, then clapped her hands together with a bright smile. “Your school lets you bring your pet? That’s so cute!” A distant quality entered her gaze. “I pictured you as a dog person, though.”

Morgana’s tail stood straight up, the tip twitching. “I am not some pet. Tell her, Joker!”

His phone buzzed. Akira gave the team leader an arched eyebrow before pulling out his notes and homework with one hand. He spared a moment to look at his phone to see Ann, Ryuji, and Makoto speculating on what was in the gold briefcase Ann still had stashed under her bed. He spared a moment to text them that he was busy with a tutor today and slipped his phone back in his jacket.

Hifumi tore out a sheet of paper and clicked her pen open. “Let’s start by finding out exactly where you stand.”

Early Evening
Ueno Park

Dotting the last sentence, Akira flipped through his new pages of math. “Yeesh. These are more notes than I’ve taken over days of class.”

Hifumi brushed eraser dust from the papers in front of her, her posture as prim as ever. “Examples to put the theory to practice are necessary for retention.” She dropped her pencil in a pencil case and tilted her head at him. “Doesn’t your math teacher go over examples like this?”

Akira flopped back in his chair with a disgusted sound. “Usami-sensei wanted to be a software engineer. She is constantly using weird computer examples that make no goddamn sense to me.”

Hifumi said nothing, but something about the cant of her shoulders and attentive but neutral look in her face made him wonder if she didn’t believe him. “Well, you are sounding a little spent, so let’s take a break. Hone your mind on something else.”

Akira felt his heart rate rise and a grin split his face. “Anywhere, any time.”

She shared a smile leaving a hint of teeth, reached into her school bag, then drew and set up a shogi board. The firm but sedate girl transformed into the impassioned queen. Like all the rest of their games, her magical kingdom chased his robot army around the board and smashed them. “Checkmate.”

A small yawn floated out of his schoolbag, followed by the sound of tiny jaws clicking together.

Akira smiled. “Your highness has deigned fit to join the land of the living.”

Morgana held out a paw. “Guess how many claws I have, just for you.”

Hifumi leaned to get a better view of him and giggled. “I guess it must be interesting owning a cat.” Piano notes emanated from her phone and she pulled it out.

Morgana’s tail stuck straight up. “Nobody owns me, and this isn’t my natural form.”

Akira looked his rival and tutor in her deep green eyes, the spark of a queen still burning within them. “One more match?”

She tilted her head, lips pressing together in an attempt to show haughty impatience, but the corners of her lips turned up. She checked her phone and her shoulders fell. “I would love to, Akira-kun, but mother already booked a venue.”

He pulled out his wallet. Her eyes squinted and the muscles in her neck tensed, but he couldn’t think of a way to press her about her running to something she hated. “Fair enough. How much do I owe you for the…” Akira glanced at his phone, “two hours?”

Finishing packing up her game, her eyes had the wideness of surprise when she looked back at him. “Oh, you don’t have to pay.”

His features hardened and an unpleasant tension seeped into every muscle in his body. “Yes, I do. You’re taking time to share your expertise with me. A man shouldn’t take what he does not contribute to.” He drew a five thousand yen note, then another. “Five thousand an hour?”

Hifumi’s pretty lips thinned. Her deep green eyes hardened. She held up a hand to ward off the money, but gears whirled behind her eyes for long seconds, her eyes twitching back and forth in the subtle movements he knew of a person arguing with herself. “I…” Her jaws clenched together. At last, she snatched the notes. “I suppose this is a better way of contributing to household financing than those interviews.”

He was about to ask what that meant when she hefted her school bag and walked into the crowd coming and going from the flea market with the same bold confidence as Ann or Ryuji. It took several minutes longer for Akira to brave the same action.

Saturday, 4 June 2016
Evening
Yongen, Leblanc

The bell rang out from the corner of the door as Akira strode into the small cafe. The transfer student paused just past the door when he spotted Sojiro wiping crumbs from one of the booth tables.

Sojiro glanced up, crumbs in his cupped hand. “Oh, it’s you. Good, my back’s killing me. I’m calling it a night early. I need to sit back if I’m going to be in condition to make dinner.”

Akira pointed at the limited kitchen. “You don’t just sit back and grab a plate of curry?”

The restaurateur came to a stop at the compost bin and brushed his hands clean. “Curry’s… not always an option. Oh!” He jerked a thumb beneath the counter. “Mail delivered a package with your name on it. You can open it as soon as you finish the dishes.”

“Thanks.” After doing the dishes, Akira retrieved the paper-wrapped box and sat down at the counter. It weighed very little, so it couldn’t be his rolling closet kit. He tore off the wrapping to find a box for the board game Carcassonne.

With Sojiro gone, Morgana hopped up onto a stool next to Akira and looked over the delivery. “What is it?”

A wide grin spread over Akira’s face, chuckles bubbling out before morphing into laughter. He held up the box as if displaying a trophy. “Soon, victory shall be mine!”

Morgana let out a sigh. “It’s for your math tutor isn’t it? You’re still stuck on her beating you at shogi.”

Akira let out a breath but held the pose. “Really? Not a peep? Not even a chuckle?”

Morgana shook his head, ears flapping. “You really are a joker in every sense. Code names are meant to be a disguise. If I knew yours would be so close on so many levels, I would have picked something more circuitous.”

Akira flashed a wide grin. “You could’ve named me for my Russian tactics, Pikup Andropov.”

Morgana bonked his head on the counter.

Akira took the box in both hands. “You know you love it.”

The guide trapped in cat form rolled his eyes, but the corners of his lips curled up. “As much as life is a fight for you, you always get back up.”

Akira swallowed, feeling a tightness in his throat. He turned for the stairs and started up. “I… It’s nothing.”

Reaching the top of the stairs, Morgana hopped to the table and sat. “That much humility, you must have stolen it from me.” When the transfer student just rubbed the back of his neck, the leader stood. “You really don’t know what to do with a compliment, do you?”

Akira set the box on the workbench. “I’d like to just accept one, but my parents taught me there’s always a string attached. The only time my old bastard would say good job was to see how I would react… and only when I had an EEG strapped to my head.” He sat down on the stool and ran a hand through his hair. “That’s why I let it grow out in middle school.”

Morgana hopped down, then onto the workbench. “Just to make sure, you know your old man was exceptional? And not in a good way?”

Akira opened the box and dug around for the instructions. “A beaten dog knows to avoid the stick, but that doesn’t mean he knows where the dog run is.”

Ear flicking, Morgana gave him a raised eyebrow. “You have something special. Why does it seem that you never want to accept a compliment?” His eyes fell on the tabletop game boxed up in the transfer student’s hands. “Does that have to do with why you hate losing even if it’s a game?”

Akira slumped and folded the instructions back into the box. “I thought you were asleep that whole time.” He closed the box. “I just… everywhere I go, someone’s always better than me. Just once in life, I’d like to have parity. To be equal rather than constantly playing the game of one-upsmanship.”

Morgana stood and shook out a kink in his back, tail flicking. “Think about all we’ve done. You and Nightrider were at each others’ throats, and now you’re both Phantom Thieves. Fighting side by side.” His tail settled into a slow swish. “She even has a motorcycle-shaped Persona. I guess I feel a sense of kinship because I can turn into a car.”

Akira stood there, box in his hands. It had been a while since Morgana talked about who he was or wondered where he came from. “Maybe you’re a Persona?”

Morgana’s tail stood up. “A person.” His eyes fell to the side and the tip of his tail switched. “Take… since Nightrider awakened, it’s like there’s been something on the tip of my mind, but I can’t gather enough of it to say it. Something important that I’m supposed to do.” He shook his head, then looked up at Akira. “Something special, like you.”

Akira looked away, feeling heat in his face and a tightness in his throat. He set the box aside and walked to the table set up in front of the couch to collect his homework. “Don’t praise me for being lucky. Luck can run out.”

Morgana hopped up on the couch as the transfer student slid the box under the workbench. “With all the talent we’re collecting, just you wait. And it’s only a matter of time until Kaneshiro’s heart changes.”

Finishing changing, Akira sat down on the bed. “I hope so. There’s a lot of people who will die soon if it doesn’t work.”

Morgana hopped down and paced to the circular cushion Akira set on the bottom of the bookshelf for him. “Hey, Joker?”

Akira slipped under the sheet. “What’s up?”

“Kaneshiro hurt hundreds of people. He had a whole network of people making others suffer.”

Despite the leader’s statements, it sounded like he had a question. “Yeah, those have always been the worst people in history. Not the ones who kill or poison directly, but the ones that set up a network of fear to force others to do the same thing, and typically go on until rot within allows something to crumble them from the outside. The KGB. The Kenpeitai.”

Morgana sat down, eyes distant with thought. “But with so many people to see the terrible things, why doesn’t anyone stop it?”

Akira leaned back, clasping his hands behind his head. “Oof, that’s a complicated one. My old bastard said humans are naturally assholes. Both my parents are case examples, really. Hell, look at us. We went after Kaneshiro in the Metaverse where we have Personas to fight him, but we did everything we could to avoid him in the real world.” He set the Casserone box on the shelf and started changing. “But… I don’t know. That doesn’t feel right. I think that’s part of why I felt so strongly about what Father Motoori said in the intensive care unit of that hospital. He spoke to me about a whole side of humans I never really heard about. I just wish I could be sure that isn’t just another human weakness.”

“Humans are… weak?” Morgana’s ears twitched. “No, that just doesn’t feel right. There’s too much potential. If humans were bad at heart, society would be all horrible all the time. Even if most people just want to get by, that’s still a way better place than everyone wanting bad things.”

“You sound like Father Motoori,” Akira said, pulling the sheet up. “Go to sleep.”

Sunday, 05 June 2016
Morning
Kanda Catholic Church

The final benediction came to a close and the parishioners shuffled out. Waiting for the crowd to clear out, Akira read on from the last day’s reading of Jesus interrupting a funeral procession in Nain. After the majority were out of the sanctuary, he stood up.

Hifumi stood there at the second pew, a glint of expectation in her eyes. “Good morning, Akira-kun. Ready for another match between the Legion of Steel and Togo Kingdom?”

His heart shot into the same fast, steady rhythm as when the class lined up at Shujin’s field for sprints. He closed his Bible and set it aside, a wide grin forming as he bowed in his seat. “For Queen Togo? Anywhere, any time.”

A skip to her step, Hifumi sat down and set up a standard game.

Akira straightened his glasses. “No special set-up today?”

Hifumi twitched, her hand dropping the last tile out of place. She snatched it and put the silver general down. “O-oh, I don’t want to make you feel like I’m only exploiting you for my own scenarios. It’s important to give back to something you take from. My father always phrased it, ‘what’s good for the whole is good for the one.’ I thought we’d start with a standard game. U-unless you wanted—”

“No. It’s okay, Togo-san,” Akira said, reaching a hand towards hers but drawing back before getting halfway across the board. He settled back into his regular posture, then glanced at her prim pose and straightened. “You won the last game, so I’ll start with the usual battle droid.” He moved up a pawn.

She set one of her own pawns forward. “Lothlorien’s rangers are at home in the forest.”

A rapid back-and-forth settled, with him capturing almost as many pieces as her until she called check for the second time. He ran a hand through his frizzy hair, trying not to grind his molars. “Well that went as bad as last time.”

Her head tipped forward and lips pressed together just a bit, with an adorable pink pout that refused to let him look away. “Nonsense. You’re more of a challenge every time. It’s clear you’re practicing between our sessions.” She tucked her long, dark hair over her ear, but missed a couple of strands.

The confessional opened and Father Sugiyama stepped out, helping the old man down the stairs to the congregation pews.

Akira couldn’t stop from staring at those two strands of hair. Couldn’t stop thinking how badly he wanted to reach his hand out and brush back those strands. Just imagining touching her made him wonder how soft her skin was.

Heat blossomed over Akira’s face and he jumped to his feet. “S-sorry, Father Sugiyama’s expecting me. Seeyoulater.” He snatched his study Bible and raced to meet the Father lifting the stole off his shoulders.

“Son,” the middle-aged man said with an acknowledging incline of his head. “I hope you weren’t distressed by having to wait.”

“What? N-no, everything’s fine,” Akira blabbed, his heart refusing to slow down and the sensation of heat lingering on his face at the mental picture of brushing his finger across Hifumi’s cheek. Or wondering how it would feel to cup her face with his hands…

He rubbed his head, forcing himself to think back to the problem with Mishima, Ann, and Shiho. “Okay, everything is not fine. But it’s not her fault,” he said, twitching his head back at her without having the guts to look back Hifumi’s way.

Father Sugiyama gave a polite nod and led the transfer student to the side door leading to parish offices. After settling down in front of his desk, Akira clasped his hands and fiddled with his thumbs. “I tried reading about what the Bible said about loyalty, but there was so much.” His eyes fell to the floor. “I… what if I met a girl and things got serious? If I promised to always be with her and help her? Then asked her to meet me and stood her up, and she got hurt because she was where I told her to be?”

After leading them into his office, Sugiyama drew a pair of thin-framed spectacles from a case inside his desk and settled them on his nose. “I think, son, that the past is a thing which informs our present, but should never be allowed to hold tyranny over our present or future.”

Akira closed the door and scratched behind his ear. “Even if she blames me? How would I make it right?”

Father Sugiyama stood and paced to the bookshelf to his left. “Well, there’s no one easy answer. How did you meet the lucky lady?”

Akira swallowed. Mishima deserved some good answers. “Volleyball practice.”

The priest’s eyes widened for a moment and he pulled a book off the shelf and returned to his office chair. “Is Shiho still hurt?”

Akira squirmed, the padded chair much less comfortable for some reason. “She’s… still in the hospital. Hasn’t finished physical therapy.” He sat back against the chair. “How’d you know?”

Father Sugiyama smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling. “‘My friend has this problem’ is very close to ‘I have this problem’. And I suspect you’d be at the thanksgiving offertory right now if you found a serious girlfriend.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose for a moment before returning his spectacles to his nose. “What did she say in the last visit?”

The transfer student tugged at his dress shirt lapels, unable to meet Father Sugiyama’s bespectacled gaze. It took Akira several days to ask Ann about Shiho again after the shock of her explosive rage. Ann had to beg the class rep to come the first time, and Mishima got jittery and self-effacing every time he or Ann poked him to visit Shiho again. “He hasn’t gone back. And somehow what he’s saying makes sense, but I don’t understand it.” Might as well see what response, if not answers, the Father had to Mishima’s excuse. “Says she was hurt because of him. That going back would just dredge up all her pain again. No matter what Ann or I say, he said he doesn’t have that right.” His mouth tasted bitter. It didn’t make sense that Mishima wasn’t battering down every door between himself and the girl he wept over.

Father Sugiyama’s head tilted just a little, focus leaking out of what little slipped beyond his composed mask. “Our lives are defined by what we sacrifice for. If he wants to rebuild the relationship, he needs to go to her. And in my experience of couples’ therapy in the parish, the sooner you reconnect the better. Even if you have to include intermediaries. No relationship becomes serious without a multitude of factors bringing two people together. What drew them together?”

Akira took off his glasses to wipe a faint smudge on the lens, certain the temperature in the room went up when the thought about pre-incident Shiho. “She was kind, beautiful, insightful. She possessed a calm, but somehow drew the eyes of everyone around her without ever needing to raise her voice or be extravagant. She had the patience to look at me. To decide to look past the rumors and give me a chance to be an Akira who wasn’t a criminal, who wasn’t a broken twig away from whipping my knife out, who wasn’t an asshole. For Mishima, she was all that and affectionate.” Putting away his microfiber cloth, he set his glasses back on his nose, eyes down as jealousy roared within that she couldn’t have been his. “And that smile…”

Sugiyama’s composed mask slipped just a bit, the corners of his lips turning up and a glint in his eyes before he opened the book and traced down the table of contents, then flicked through the pages. “It’s clear this girl is dear to you, as well. Sadly, without speaking to the boy I can’t be sure what factors are central to his relationship. But I can give general relationship advice. Go with him if he needs a steady shoulder, he needs to repeat those things he loves of her and seek the things she loved of him.”

Akira straightened and took in a deep, centering breath. “Well, the situation got… complicated. Her best friend – who is amazing, supportive and beautiful to the point of being distracting. Like… she catches girls’ eyes.” The image of Ann in her hug-every-curve Panther suit sprang to the fore. He cringed, and in the privacy of his own mind kicked himself for thinking of his friend like that. Mother would think of people like that. He shook his head. “A-anyway, she was talking to Mishima and… whether it started as an accident or not, they kissed.”

Sugiyama spread his hands over the pages to flatten the book, but his eyes remained on the transfer student. “Well, a little incidental contact by teenagers in school isn’t breaking marriage vows.”

Akira worked his jaw, sympathy for and anger at Mishima both for being so close to two beautiful women. “It wasn’t a short kiss. Breath ran out. I feel dirty just looking at Ann out of the corner of my eye while thinking of Shiho, I can’t imagine how painful it is for Mishima who was going steady with her.”

The priest folded his hands together on his book. “Well, anxiety can whittle down our patience as well as dampen our wisdom. If Mishima is concerned about loyalty, we can help understand what we value by what we set time aside for.”

The transfer student rubbed the back of his neck. “To be honest, Mishima’s been avoiding both of them. I understand shock – Shiho floored me with how angry she got at Mishima. But he’s been overworking himself trying to ‘make up for it’ and hasn’t ever gone in to see her since Ann and I dragged him that one time. At first I thought that was a good thing, because he tried to kill himself the day Kamoshida confessed. At least by working he’s got something to live for.” He blinked, then took off his glasses to wipe a fallen eyelash from his face. “But since he told me about the thing with Ann, he’s been avoiding her too.”

“Hm.” Father Sugiyama ran his finger down the page in a familiar speed-reading technique, turned the page, and kept going for a little ways. “People tend to avoid problems, hoping to avoid the discomfort of confrontation, but that rarely makes things better. It’s one of the reasons why the Catholic Church is so firm on its stance of forgiveness. It doesn’t just help those sinned against by restitution, it helps the sinner by opening our lives back up.”

Akira felt himself leaning just a bit forward in lieu of being able to step into the verbal confrontation. “Doesn’t it make just as much sense to try to balance the scales so you can go back into the world?”

“When there is an objective weight to measure against,” Sugiyama said, pushing back and reaching to a statuette of an archangel holding a set of scales. He set the statuette down on the desk, facing the transfer student. “If my driver backs up into your mailbox, causing five thousand yen of damage, it is a simple enough matter for me to pay five thousand for restitution. But what about if I accidentally lose the last photograph you have of a dear departed grandfather? Six hundred yen may be the cost to buy a set of photos at a mall photo booth, but what could compensate for the treasured memories you and your grandfather shared? What if I lost my own photograph of my dear departed grandfather? Would I not increase the tally of the sin every time I thought of it, even though I had but the one sin?”

Akira looked at his hands in his lap.

“You said this young Mishima blames himself for what happened to Suzui-chan,” the Father said, leaning back in his chair. “Do you believe he would ever decide he has done enough for either hurting or allowing hurt to the person most precious to him?”

Akira took off his glasses to clean the lenses. He hated being stumped. “I didn’t really think about that.”

He folded his hands together again and looked the transfer student in his bespectacled eyes. “It is rather common for the virtuous to think more highly of others than we think of ourselves. The first thing you can do is be a reliable friend so he feels grounded enough to go forth.”

That made sense. Akira picked up his study Bible and bowed. “Thank you, Father. I should go get started.”

Chapter 47: June 6th, Lull Before

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Sunday, 6 June 2016
Early Afternoon
Shibuya Station

The sound of fifty or sixty conversations spilled over each other and echoed off the tiled walls. Walking with the churning mass of humanity disgorging from Yongen’s line, the jostling of elbows and knees wore away at his mood from a good night’s sleep and invigorating match against Hifumi. Once he made it to the Underground, he diverted to an open space by a tile-covered pillar to catch a breath.

The roiling tides of humanity seethed around him until a tall, dark-haired boy slipped out and leaned against the pillar next to him. Slashes of gray and black across the bottom of his jacket added an asymmetrical sense of fashion to the stranger’s otherwise unexceptional ensemble.

Akira gave an acknowledging nod, though the lanky boy took several long moments to recognize the transfer student and give a half-hearted nod. He looked out into the crowd, though the way his dark grey eyes didn’t linger on any one else’s gave the impression of a man looking for something and expecting not to find it. After a few beats, the dark-haired boy settled back against the wall a meter away and pulled out his phone to focus on it.

Akira wondered what Father Sugiyama would have said. The thought brought to mind his recent entreaty to be a support for his friends so they could step out into their lives. He fished his phone out of his pants pocket and dialed Mishima.

It rang twice before the class representative picked it up. “Oh. Good day, Akira-san. I’m sorry, but I haven’t found you any new names. There’s a stalker in Shibuya who’s stepping up into assault. Three elderly people have been hospitalized, all of them with the same story, but none of them have a name.”

Akira pursed his lips and pondered. Mishima had been shouldering the burden of investigation for the Phantom Thieves. If Akira could find this bastard, it might lighten the load for him and make him feel ready to patch things up with Shiho.

Mishima was the one who was with her for a year. Mishima was the one who sacrificed for her day after day. It’s not like Shiho was his.

Why didn’t that make it easier to think of the sweetest girl in Shujin being with someone else? He wouldn’t have been a good match for a good girl anyway.

Akira cleared his throat. “Well, don’t wear yourself out trying to do everything yourself. I’ll be starting a job at the convenience store next to the arcade, so I can keep an ear out. Just send me a text with what you’ve got.” He glanced at the young man in a tricolor jacket dominated by purple, but decided not to interrupt the stranger’s texting.

Shibuya, 777 Convenience

With little else to do in the street-level shop, Akira kept a close eye on the two college-age-ish young men in the magazine aisle. Like most stores in Japan it was policy to let people browse to get out of the weather in the hopes of making a good impression and sales, and Akira retreated indoors on frequent occasion to escape the chaotic crowds so he didn’t want to confront them. However, something about them reminded him of thieves scoping out a mark after classes at Inuri.

Bowl Cut snickered at one of the lifestyle of the rich magazines. “My luck may finally be turning. The ADP finally sent me an invitation to a Gold Members Seminar. That’s the quick path to their VIP crowd.” When his friend stood silent for a second, Bowl Cut added, “Those guys are all rolling in dough.”

Akira straightened the coin change tray and muttered, “Surely the greatest reason to join a group. Other people being rich.”

Bowl Cut’s curly-haired friend looked up from his porn mag. “You really think people like us can ever hit it big? Fortune doesn’t change for peeps like us. I couldn’t even afford to sue when Aizawa stole my motorized skateboard design. Same logo an’ everythin’.” He put that magazine back and thumbed through others before stopping on a trashy tabloid with something about Venus in the corner of the cover.

Bowl Cut grabbed a pair of paper-wrapped onigiri and headed to the front. With his fellow cashier buried in receipts, Akira waved to the pair of idiots dreaming of get rich quick schemes. “Interested in any mint gum or hot pastries?”

Curly Hair waved him away. “Nah.”

Bowl Cut shrugged and set down a crisp ten-thousand yen note, though the design was years old. It looked like one of Kaneshiro’s counterfeits. Akira decided to shrug and let the store handle it. Short of explaining walking through Kaneshiro’s memories, he had no way to explain a high school student knowing about the fat mafia bastard’s counterfeiting operation.

As Akira handed back change, he looked at the sweet flavors of the onigiri and mused, “You know, I’ve never made those before. I wonder how the others would like them.”

Ignoring the transfer student, Bowl Cut unwrapped the first and took a big bite before he even got outside. The fan blew a tepid zephyr behind the counter.

Akira took a rag from the sanitizing solution bucket and wiped the counter down for the fifth time this shift.

His co-worker paced closer and opened her mouth, though her jaws widened into a yawn and she covered her mouth until finished. “Looks like it’s going to be a dead day, kid. You might as well go home and hit those school books.”

Sunday, 5 June 2016
Early Evening
Central Street

Stepping out of the book store, street lamps flooded the lanes with light even before the sun disappeared behind the mountains. Akira adjusted his glasses and drew in a deep breath. Despite the good day so far, the chaotic crowds churned back and forth, making him feel dizzy. Dozens of conversations, with fellow pedestrians and over cell phones blanketed the street, leaving Akira feel choked of oxygen.

He pulled in another breath, the air coming in thin wisps, and stepped through the crowd. The morning seemed so easy, but the evening crowd pushed back from all angles. Elbows, knees, and shoulders slammed into him. Akira tried to follow Ryuji’s crowd-running example, but a knee hit his leg and sent him stumbling.

Acting on instinct, he spun around, shoving at the jerk who tripped him.

His hand connected with the twenty-something guy, his bright baseball cap and thin goatee clashing with a crisp button-down business shirt. The guy stumbled into a couple other people, the disturbance drawing a wider circle of attention. A handful of those who stopped to stare pulled out their phones to record the incipient fight. The guy lowered into a crouch, fists balled.

Akira’s heart rate jumped and his lips curled up. He raised his own guard, keeping his hands loose.

“Enough!” a scratchy man’s voice bellowed over the rumble of the crowd. The pudgy, balding politician broke through the circle, his green sash catching the evening wind. He turned his dark eyes on the first one to meet his, Goatee. “Gentlemen, we’re all adults here. Hundreds of people have to get where they are going tonight. Let’s be mature and share this crowded thoroughfare.”

The bend to Goatee’s legs straightened and his fists lowered a little, but he remained ready to throw a punch.

Seeing the other man’s readiness left Akira’s own muscles taught.

The politician spun on him. Stern-faced and standing at his full height, something about him sent a flicker of fear through the transfer student at his resemblance to his domineering father. “It doesn’t take courage to draw a sword. It takes courage to sheathe it. No bullets or arrows are flying, so do you have the strength to stop here?”

Akira shifted his weight from his left to his right and back again.

“What’s your name, Son?”

Akira’s eyes flicked to the crowd around him. “Yamada.”

The pudgy man gave a nod and the intimidating sternness faded. He pointed a hand at himself. “Toranosuke.” He took a step back to allow the two younger men to look at each other directly, his own gaze falling on Goatee.

The young man stood up and opened his fists, the muscles tensed for a fight relaxing. “Iori. Sorry about bumpin’ into you. I kinda got jostled by the crowd, but I should’a been more careful.”

Akira could feel the energy in the crowd change before Iori even finished, all the pressure turning to him. He slipped his hands into his pockets and wished they’d all just go away and do something else. Why were their stares always so damn heavy? “I should’ve stayed cool. No harm, no foul.” He stuck out a hand, more to get the crowd to look away from him than because he was naive enough to think the goateed guy would—

Iori took it and gave one firm shake.

At this point, Akira couldn’t ignore the rising muttering from the crowd. “Did you see that? Old man Tora just talked two guys from brawl to friends in less than sixty seconds.”

Iori took the handle of a small, wheeled travel case. “’scuse me, I gotta catch my train.” When he passed the circle of people, the crowd largely returned to its chaotic shuffle, though they left room for Akira and the pudgy politician.

Morgana poked his head out of the satchel. “That conviction and command of the public space reminded me of yours truly. You could learn a thing or two from him, Joker.”

His face burned when he wondered what the other parish members would’ve said if they saw him. Would Father Sugiyama scold him for tarnishing the Day of the Lord with a street brawl? Would Hifumi shun him for being so obstinate somebody else needed to step in and stop his fight? Akira let out a long breath. “You know what? You’re right.” But with cameras and gawkers still about, he couldn’t just walk up and admit he did something wrong. People put him away for not having done anything wrong before, how much more would they screw him for fessing up for a mistake?

Akira turned for the trains to Yongen, but made a mental note to stop and talk to the old politician the next time he had an opportunity.

Monday, 6 June 2016
Early Morning
Shibuya Station

Something about the cadence of conversation in the subway brought to mind the piano music in Hifumi’s ringtone yesterday. Humming the tune to himself, Akira strode through the Shibuya underground to the line to Aoyama. Fewer people crowded the station platform than he was used to, allowing him a sensation of plenty of air.

Blonde pigtails resolved out of the crowd and came to a stop next to him. Ann crossed her arms and looked ready to rip someone’s limbs off. “What an unbearable weekend. My shoot on Saturday went horribly. The photographer kept saying my smile was as fake as the snow, so I spent hours in heavy winter coats under the hottest studio lights in Japan.”

Akira gave a sympathetic nod. “Sounds rough, but at least it’s over and you’re here now.” He found himself drifting back into humming.

Morgana popped out of the school satchel. “Are you okay, Lady Ann? You didn’t get sick over the weekend, did you?”

She shook her head, sending her voluminous pigtails spilling off her shoulders. Too tired to yell, she bit out, “No.” She straightened her skirt. “Sorry. I’m just nervous about Kaneshiro’s heart. Ryuji’s a good guy, even came over on Sunday to help carry that gold briefcase to a guy he knows to sell it. And I just got to know Makoto. I don’t want anything to happen to them.”

The team leader stretched a paw at her, then steadied himself on Akira’s shoulder, a sparkle in his eyes. “You’re so kind, Lady Ann.”

Akira leaned to nudge her. “Have faith, Ann-san. We stole the Treasure and convinced the Shadow. He’ll change, just like Coach Asshole.” He glanced to the team leader perched on his shoulder. “Just needs time to recover from the palace collapse, right?”

At the leader’s nod, Ann’s crossed arms loosened. “I guess you’re right.” She scanned him. “You’re in an awfully good mood today. Are you that certain? I just don’t remember you looking this cheerful when we beat him.”

Akira shrugged, jostling the leader. “Maybe it just took this long to sink in? Maybe it was a really good weekend.”

Monday, 6 June 2016
Lunchtime
Shujin, Student Store

Akira shuffled up to the student store window. “Cheese bread.” He set down yen coins in payment. A buzz emanated from his phone, then buzzed again. A moment later it buzzed again. He took it out to see what the conversation was about.

Makoto sent, [It worked!]

Ryuji followed up with, [Woot!]

[What worked?] Ann sent.

Three dots danced next to Makoto’s ID. [The change of heart.]

Akira tapped open the virtual keyboard. [Awesome! You sure?]

Makoto’s reply came fast. [Definitely. He sent me a text this morning informing me the debt was canceled and all footage had been deleted. I was suspicious, but Big Sis just called me. Said they were having a strategy meeting. That's when she hands off cases, but she said she wouldn't be home today. That can only mean a sudden increase in case load. It's as close as she's allowed to say Kaneshiro turned himself in.]

The student worker handed over a paper-wrapped bun and Akira paced to the corner of the disused vending machine nook in the courtyard. Reading over Akira’s shoulder, Morgana purred. “That is good news.”

Mishima’s ID pulsed, and three dots danced for a few seconds. [I haven't seen anything about it in the news. Between me and the other Newspaper Club members, we're watching about 30 news outlets.]

The transfer student tapped reply, but Makoto’s ID blinked before he could think of what to say. [Regular procedure in a case like this would be for the Special Investigative Unit to put a gag order on the press until he's been processed into protective custody. I'd expect the story to start breaking late this evening, tomorrow morning at the latest. Especially if we can hit more of his lieutenants in Mementos today.]

Ryuji shot out, [She's as crazy as you, bro.]

Typing fast, Akira sent, [Motivated. We are MOTIVATED. And that's because we're awesome and can't be stopped!]

Ryuji replied to him with a quick, [You're peppy today.]

Akira paused to tear his scant bread’s packaging open with his teeth, then added, [Anyway, if we're going to be hitting Mementos, do you have any new names for us, Mishima?]

Several seconds passed without sign of response. After downing a mouthful of cheese bread, the transfer student saw dots pulse next to Mishima’s ID. [Strangely, no. There's been a lot of petty complaints against strict parents or annoying boyfriends, but the Phansite isn't Revenge Quest. All I've been hearing about in the Newspaper Club is about betting rings, but as long as nobody's fixing games I don't think that's enough to be worth digging into.] A couple seconds passed before he added, [Although I did see an anonymous request to change a stalker's heart at Shujin, so I'll investigate that one myself.]

Makoto’s ID blinked. [Thank you for all your hard work, Mishima-kun.]

Morgana’s ear flicked as he read the conversation. “That class representative sure is working hard. The Phantom Thieves could certainly use the help, but now that Kaneshiro’s behind bars, shouldn’t we all be relaxing?”

A buzz alerted him to a private text message. He shuffled out of the Phantom Thief chat to see a message from Ann. [Papa's going to be in Tokyo today, but I'm worried about Yuuki. I don't want him to burn out. He never really knew when to stop, but Shiho was always the smart one among us who knew when to go out on a de-stress date. Could you talk to him?]

[Will do.] Akira closed that thread and opened a private text line to Makoto. [Could we put off Mementos until tomorrow?]

[Very well. I have student council work to keep up on, anyway.]

Working until problems went away sounded like a good plan to Akira, but it was easier to see burnout in others than yourself. “I’ll have a talk with him.” He typed in a casual invitation, then paused. If he understood the class representative’s mentality, he’d have to tell him to show up rather than ask. [We need to talk, Mishima. Meet me at Ore no Beko after school. Send me a text as soon as you can get there.]

Monday, 6 June 2016
After School
Shibuya, Ore no Beko

Akira lifted the sheet of homework up and scanned his geography book for a mention for when China changed its capital from Nanjing to Beijing. “Why can’t China just make up its goddamn mind? I thought it was supposed to be a three thousand-year kingdom.”

Staring up from the satchel against the transfer student’s stool, Morgana called through the racoucious din, “Incoming.”

Mishima approached, then took the just vacated seat next to him. The presence of a dust mask stood out, compounding with the class representative’s already tired appearance. He more dropped himself onto the stool than sat down. “Hey, Akira-kun.”

Akira set down his mechanical pencil. “Holy crap, Mishima. When’s the last time you got some sleep?”

“I said Hou Guo Rou!” one of the patrons shouted at the hapless college student scrambling on the other side of the counter.

Mishima coughed, holding the counter to steady himself until his coughing fit passed. “I…haven’t even come close to making things right. There’s so much sickness in the world.”

Akira looked at the class representative’s hunch, his pale skin, the dark circles around his eyes. “Yeah. Maybe some closer to home than others.”

Mishima’s gaze drifted away to the counter. “I sacrificed Shiho to protect myself out of a moment of weakness. I have to make that right, and at least with the Phansite…” he gestured to Akira, “with all this, I’m starting to. But there’s always an obstacle. Like when you guys were trying to learn the yakuza boss’s name. I just don’t know how to fix it all.”

The server, a college boy who looked like he’d sampled one too many bowls, slid to a stop in front of them. Akira held up his hand to give a visual cue since that helped him while he was working here. “Two medium beef bowls.”

The server scrambled off.

Morgana’s ears curled back against his head. “It might be unrealistic to try to fix the world. Even one heart is a challenge.”

Akira nodded. “You can’t heap all the blame on yourself, Mishima. If you hadn’t gone, Kamoshida would’ve beaten you into a coma and had somebody else do it.” Akira shrugged, looking down to the team leader. “And you may have a point, but this is good work and there’s got to be some way to keep doing it, just better.”

Morgana licked his paw and brushed at his ear. “Even you used help. Didn’t that reporter get you Kaneshiro’s full name?”

Akira leaned back with a smile. “Hey, that’s right.” He looked the class representative in the eye. “Maybe you just need a mentor, somebody who’s already learned the ropes of investigating people. We got the rest of that boss’s name from a reporter.”

Morgana smiled and puffed out his chest like it had all been his set-up. “All we have to do is bring him to Shinjuku to meet her.”

A droplet of sweat drops down Akira’s neck. “Uh…maybe she could meet us somewhere else?”

Morgana’s ears fell slack. “Just set up a meet and let them handle it.”

Monday, 6 June 2016
Evening
Yongen, Leblanc

Head pulsing with numbers and figures from a long study session at the diner, Akira shoved open the door. The bell gave a merry jingle, the simple clarity of the sound a contrast to the bustling jumble in Shibuya. The TV showed a sequence of shots of police officers and patrol cars, a scrolling headline mentioning a large operation sweeping Shibuya. The restaurateur himself brushed rice from the table onto a battered dust pan. Splotches of curry dotted by rice blotted both sides of a set of booth seats, as well as the tables on each side. Akira paused stepped inside. “What happened here?”

Sojiro jerked, rising only a centimeter before his torso spasmed. His face contorted and he dropped the metal dust pan, catching the table. His eyes squeezed shut and he let out a groan, reaching his other hand to press his fingers against his side.

Akira set his school satchel on the counter and ran to help the old man up. “You okay?”

Scowling, Sojiro dug his fingers against his back. “Leave old backs to old men and go take care of yourself.”

Akira stepped back. A part of him wanted to kick the old man for giving him a metaphorical slap at the offer of help, but he found himself at the end of his breath and took a deep lungful in. The time let him think back to his conversation with Father Sugiyama and the old man’s reminder that Akira needed to work on his own problems before he had the footing to take issue with others. Hifumi’s words echoed in his mind, It’s important to give back to something you take from. What’s good for the whole is good for the one.

The transfer student retrieved the cold compress from the fridge, then returned to his school satchel for the medical supplies hidden in it for Mementos visits. “I need the brown bandages, your highness.” When Morgana hopped out and slunk away without a word, Akira decided to leave his focus on the shop owner. “Here. Cold helps muscle tension and stiffness.”

Sojiro’s mouth quirked, but turned to help the transfer student wrap the compress in place. “So what about heat?”

“That’s used for muscle soreness,” Akira said, winding the brown strap around the middle-aged man’s torso.

The restaurateur couldn’t hide a satisfied smile. “I remember you heading over to the doc’s with that nice girl. That visit make a big impression?”

Akira chuffed and pressed the last of the length down to help the bandage cling. “I was always going into medicine. You can’t escape the family trade when you’re the son of a neuropsychologist who’s the son of a pharmacist.” He stood up and looked the man over, noting less pinching of the shoulders. “I’m kind of surprised you didn’t assume she was my girlfriend. It seems like I can’t spend time around a chick without everyone assuming I’m trying to get into her pants. Even people who never knew Mother.”

Sojiro rocked from the balls of his feet to his heels and back again, his eyes distant. “Just imagine having a sister to tease you about it.”

Akira plopped back on a seat by the bar, just out of the mess of spilled rice. “I have to assume that would just make things easier.” When the adult arched an eyebrow, Akira straightened. “Well, all the top scorers at Inuri had siblings, and there’s a concrete social stabilization factor with more in-generational cohorts.”

Sojiro stared at the student for long seconds before a brief laugh bubbled out. “I don’t think I’ve heard such a cold, clinical summary of family benefits. And that’s saying something from a guy who retired from a career in the Ministry of Finance.”

Akira picked a piece of fuzz off his sleeve. “My only observations are from the outside.” He stood and straightened his shirt. “It’s not like getting a little brother or sister was ever my decision.”

“That’s more neutral than I expected of you,” Sojiro said, hand drifting to the bandage. “Just out of curiosity, would you say you’d dread having a sibling to look out for, or missed not having one to play with?”

Taking out a microfiber cloth, Akira cleaned his glasses. “If it wasn’t for the parents, I think I’d have liked a little brother.” He picked up the brush the restaurateur dropped earlier. “Why don’t you settle back and I’ll get this?”

“Won’t argue with that,” Sojiro said, striding behind the counter to the register. “What about a little sister?”

Akira paused at the edge of the spilled rice all over the floor, broom in hand. “Just as good. Family’s family.”

The register clacked open. “That’s surprising. I took you for an ‘I don’t rely on anyone’ sort.” He leaned to write something into his smart phone. “And you looked like your skin was crawling when Emi was last in. I’d have bet money you’re one of those ‘keep girls away’ guys.”

“I tend not to want to rely on others. You knew my old bastard, you should know why.” He paused to adjust his grip on the broom. “But I still want people to know they can rely on me.” Akira swept loose, dried rice on the floor into the dust pan, then knelt to get the broom underneath the booth seats. “You knew anyone besides Isshiki at the institute?”

“Not well.”

Satisfied the floor was clean, Akira set the broom against another booth table and swept a napkin over one of the tables. “Mother acted like men were just for entertainment. It sounds a lot like how people keep expecting me… or most guys to treat girls. About the only examples my parents gave me was what not to do.” He folded his napkin over and brushed the other half of loose crud from the table. “Men aren’t playthings, and neither are women. You keep at arm’s reach and everything goes okay.” He brushed his hands clean, then took a wet rag to scrub the tables.

Sojiro stood up from the cash register. “Whoo, boy. You’re right about not being playthings, kid, but I think you’re carrying some wrong assumptions. There’s nothing wrong with having a little fun with the fairer sex. It’s when you disrespect ‘em that problems crop up.” He looked back down to the yen notes in his hand and finished counting, typed something into his phone, then stuffed most into a small, lined envelope. “And it’s not like you treat ‘em all the same. You’ve gotta handle a grown lady like a dance, with a lot of give and take. They like spontaneity. Young girls, on the other hand, aren’t as big on changes.”

“Where’d you hear something like that?” Akira sopped up some more water and started on the next table. “The only thing I hear girls talk about at school is how bored they are.” He finished the second table and headed to the sink to rinse the rag.

The restaurateur wrote something into his smart phone, then closed the register. “Well, much as I’d like to keep chatting about family mores, now my feet are killing me. It’s just time to go home and put these old bones up.” He took a step past the counter, then paused. “Oh, and leave your journal here underneath the register. Social services said they needed an evaluation when they come interview me about your behavior, so I’ll take care of it after the morning rush.”

Akira nodded, glad he sanitized the daily events he wrote down there. The journal seemed to help, but no way would he let Sojiro know about the one he wrote his dreams and Metaverse exploits in.

Chapter 48: June 6th, Sacrificing Power

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Monday, 6 June 2016
Night
Velvet Room

The clang of a baton on bars pierced his ears before he opened his eyes to a room covered in crushed velvet. The sedate blue contrasted with Caroline’s shout, “On your feet, Inmate! Our master has deigned to speak with you.”

A chuckle floated from the desk in the middle of the panopticon. The balding man with long grey hair and an unnaturally long nose grinned over folded hands. “Excellent work, Phantom Thief. Your work of rehabilitating society is rehabilitating your self as well. A gluttonous monster deposed, and what of you?” That glass ball on a cylinder with iron pins rested on the desk next to him, though it looked to have about a dozen pins and twice that many marbles of various colors inside.

Akira stood up, taking slow steps to drag the ball on a chain so he didn’t trip on the bar door this time. Wild speculation on his own tenuous psyche could wait. “He said something about an enemy in a black mask, someone exploiting others’ hearts for profit.”

The unnerving grin widened. Just a little, but it didn’t have much face left to spread on. “Interesting.”

Akira grasped the bars on his door. “Who is he? What’s that black mask guy doing in people’s heads?”

A scoff floated from the stunted girl in a warden costume to his left. “Why do you waste our master’s precious time with questions you already know the answer to, Inmate?”

He glared at her. “Would I ask if I knew?”

“Think carefully,” Igor said, smile stretched as ever, “about what you know.”

Akira grit his teeth. “Kaneshiro said there was some black mask…and that he was exploiting others’ hearts for profit.”

Justine let out a scoff. “And how many is ‘he’?”

Akira let go with one of his hands. “One.”

Igor nodded, holding out a thin hand. “And if he wears a mask?”

Akira brought his free hand up to his own face. While he lacked his Phantom Thief costume at the moment, the memory of his mask over his face pressed down. “He’s gotta be just like me. He’s some douche-bag with a Persona, going around screwing with people.” He reached back for the door. “How do I find him? Can I?”

A low, rumbling chuckle floated out from the center of the panopticon. “One of many interesting possibilities, is it not?”

Akira narrowed his eyes, scanning the easy posture of the tuxedoed man. “I thought you were supposed to aid me. How can I knock down ever bigger Shadows if I can’t outgun them?”

Igor chuckled. “Perhaps it is time to bequeath you with another boon. Consider it a reward for this most fascinating turn of the times.” Igor clapped his hands, eyes flicking to the girls cosplaying as wardens. “Set up the chair.”

Caroline and Justine shared a glance, then nodded to each other.

Snatching his hands back, Akira stepped back from the door. “The chair? Is this a Monty Python joke?”

“A tool of execution.” Justine tapped her clipboard against her side as if nothing were out of the ordinary. “By sacrificing your Personas, with our help you can convert them into shards of power that can help you by other means.”

“Yeah!” the eye-patched girl with the hair bun shouted at him. “Next time you come back, we’ll have an execution chamber ready to change your Personas into what you need to over-power your puny enemies.”

Akira crossed his arms. “And if the idea of executing pieces of my mind isn’t exactly something I’m up to?”

Justine held a blank stare on him, though something about her facial features fell. “You must be willing to give up parts of yourself to become different.” She held up one hand. “Now the night draws to a close. Until next time…”

Tuesday, 7 June 2016
After School
Mementos, Path of Aiyatsbus

Striding out of Shadow Morihiko’s personal distorted space of Mementos, Akira looked both ways. The emergency lighting in this sector shone with magenta, bright enough to get a scope of the nearby environment at a glance but not enough to chase away the deep darkness of this twisting mockery of Tokyo’s subways. Akira tried to tell himself it was that stark contrasts that made him think he kept seeing movement stalking them within the shadows.

Morgana popped into his bus form and Ryuji waved the transfer student over. “Hey, dude! You fallin’ asleep on your feet?” He raised turned to the other Phantom Thieves in the Morgana-bus only six feet away, his voice undimmed, “Told you all that six in one day was too many for ‘im.”

Akira shook his head and folded his sub-machine gun’s wire stock before following Ryuji into the middle bench.

Makoto turned around in the driver’s seat. “Think we can get Madam Ikenouchi?”

Akira adjusted the fit of his gloves. “Let’s do it.”

Ann grunted and flopped back against her seat in the front passenger. “Ugh. I’ve still got to read Ki no Tsurayugi.”

Ryuji peered out his window, then leaned across Akira to look out the side door’s window. At least he kept the assault rifle in his lap pointed away. “Let’s put the hurt on those mafia assholes!”

Akira smiled. “You’re awfully enthusiastic.”

Ryuji gave him a toothy grin. “Eff yeah, dude! I had to sit out, like, the whole palace. Now’s my chance to show those mafia dipshits ain’t nobody can run from the Phantom Thieves.”

Ann crossed her arms and shot a narrow gaze at him. “You mean to free the oppressed from injustice?”

Ryuji waved a hand down at her. “Ya know what I mean. Anyway, I think we all got a lot stronger in Mementos. If it wasn’t for Kaneshiro’s thugs in real life, I bet I’d’a been up for the whole Palace. These Shadows feel like a warm up. Ya get me?”

Akira held up a hand. “Hell yeah, man.”

The runner clapped his upraised hand, then looked to the student council president scanning a list of names in the pocket notebook in her hand. “Takin’ down more names for your sis?”

Makoto nodded, but kept her torso mostly pointed forward despite Morgana being the one driving. “Most of today’s are sex traffickers, but even if they’re not as dangerous as the drug pushers, that’s going to be a lot of girls who don’t have to be afraid anymore.” She clicked her pen closed and pushed it through the spiral of wire at the top. “You know, I was worried about Big Sis when we first started slipping her names. This is going to make more work for her and the other prosecutors. And when she called yesterday, she sounded furious when that story broke about the Phantom Thieves getting Kaneshiro. SIU had been on him for years.” She rubbed her arm underneath the spiked pauldron. “She’s always been driven, but…” Makoto shook her head. “I don’t know.”

Ann leaned back in her front passenger seat. “I hope that means she’s not going after us. Those names were a lot of hard work and she’s definitely getting credit for snapping those ones up.”

Morgana pulled up to another station with descending escalators and popped back into his catboy form. He led the team halfway down the escalators before the sound of rattling chains echoed from a distant tunnel, and his tail shot straight out. “Okay, enough exploring.”

Makoto held a hand over her mouth, but that failed to entirely conceal her yawn. Or the pained twitch in her left side. “No, it’s okay. I’m good for one more heart.”

Morgana roared, “We are leaving now!”

When he took off running up the escalator, the others followed at a jog. Ann twirled a finger through the tip of a pigtail. “What’s up, Byakko?”

Morgana dove off the station platform and popped back into the Morgana-bus. “Get in,” he commanded. Sensing the gravity of his words if not understanding the situation, the team piled in. He shot down the tunnels, slowing at each corner before rocketing on. “Those chains mean something is on the prowl that we do not want to run into.” The team ascended two floors before returning to a sub-station with the steel door to a shortcut ladder.

With the team leader out of breath, Akira said what was on everyone’s minds. “What the hell was—?”

Morgana brought a finger to his mouth, his eyes wide. The blue orbs searched left and right before he motioned the thieves closer. “Remember what I said when I first introduced you to Mementos?”

Akira thought back. “Shadows rarely come up. So there are some weird ones that do?”

Morgana’s arms fell and shoulders slouched. “No. It’s Shadows coming down.” He took a deep breath, eyes flicking over the assembled Phantom Thieves. “Remember how I didn’t let you guys linger up on the surface? Even though it seems empty… there are Shadows there. Sometimes big ones.”

Ryuji slung his rifle by its strap, letting it dangle from his shoulder. “Bigger than Kamoshida?”

The short team leader nodded. “Way stronger. All of us together wouldn’t be a match for one of them.”

Makoto paced to one of the benches and sat, taking her time stretching her left arm out, though she couldn’t conceal a cringe of pain in her face.

Lips pressing together, Akira sat down next to her. “Busted arm, or shoulder?”

“Back, actually,” she said, eyes away but shoulders tense. She fidgeted with her hands in her lap, but made obvious effort to feign that nonchalant pose with her back too straight.

“Here,” Akira said, shifting on his seat to face her directly. “Face the stairs up, I’ll see if I can’t isolate the problem.”

“You have a Persona that can heal our bodily damage?”

“More mundane than that. I’m studying medicine.” She swallowed, then nodded. Akira pressed his fingertips against the back of her leather biker getup. She jerked, tense, but stayed sitting. Pressing in, he pressed his fingertips across her trapezius muscle. Searching for a problem to diagnose helped him focus away from the fact that he was touching a girl as athletic as him.

He found a clench as tight as a rock under the leather and Makoto jerked away.

Ryuji flashed them a leering grin. “Whoa. You cheatin’ on Ann?”

Pink spread over the model’s cheeks. “Ryuji! We’re not going out!”

“Yeah,” Morgana blurted. “He’s clearly going for somebody who can nerd out.”

Snapping to her feet and away from the transfer student, Makoto’s blush darkened even more than the model’s. “We are not a couple!”

Akira rose to his feet, glaring at Ryuji. “You were there when I told Shiho I was going to become a chiropractor. Diagnosis is a fundamental part of physical therapy.”

The utility door popped open and Morgana dropped back to the floor. “Enough jaw-flapping, everyone. Time for the Phantom Thieves to disperse and rest. We’ve done a lot of good today, let’s make sure we take care of ourselves so we can do so again.”

Ryuji, tapping his foot in impatience, raced in.

They climbed up the shorter-than-it-should-be ladder to the lobby, but Akira snagged Makoto’s wrist before they could head out. “Hey, Rider. Doctor Takemi’s not quite a physical therapist, but you really need to see someone about those muscle knots you’ve got. If left untreated it could eventually cause muscle tearing.”

She rubbed her fingers against the base of her neck, eyes squinting. Makoto took in a deep breath and for a moment he expected her to walk off, but instead she turned to him. “You’re saying I’m not taking care of myself.” Sighing, she lifted her eyes to his. “Big Sis and I are a lot alike. She’s very driven and comfortable battering down rote problems. Am I going about this all too mechanically?”

Akira clasped his hands together, the very picture of serious contemplation. “Beep boop. Unit zero two confirms.”

Makoto scowled. She stormed a few steps away, but stopped short of the stairs to the surface. After a brief breath, she rubbed her left arm. “I thought I changed when I awakened to my Persona and fought alongside the rest of you, but apparently it wasn’t as much change as I thought.”

The slump of her posture reminded him of himself, and making fun of somebody in an existential problem felt like what his father would do. Akira stepped closer and patted her arm just under the pauldron. “Hey, I know we don’t always see eye-to-eye on everything, but I’m trying to get better too. If you need my help… Maybe next time we can start on the right foot.”

Her face twisted, but after a moment she straightened. A twinge of pain flitted over her face. “Thanks, Joker.”

She turned and walked out, past a translucent, blue barred door just a meter from the stairs. The wanna-be warden twins stood next to it, both of them holding a finger to their lips when he opened his mouth.

Akira looked back up the stairs after his upperclassman. “What’s wrong with her?”

Contrary to his expectations, the cosplaying child with a hairbun and baton stepped back further behind the corner. The sound of Makoto’s bootsteps faded.

Justine held her unsettling, dispassionate gaze on the transfer student. “We are here for you, Inmate. Remember that we are your conspirators as long as you are on the path to rehabilitation. You have been forming bonds with those – like you – denied a place to belong.”

“Okay, first I don’t think rehabilitate means what you think it means.” Akira ran a hand back through his hair. The wanna-be warden with a clipboard betrayed no emotions or intentions and that set his teeth on edge. “I don’t understand how befriending people down on their luck is supposed to make me more powerful.”

Caroline brandished her baton at him. “You’ve already used it, Inmate!”

Akira stopped at just flinching back from her baton. His eyebrows arched and he slipped his gloved hands in his dark longcoat’s pockets. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Justine held out her clipboard-holding hand at the door. “Come, let us explain and put to action. Our master has deigned to grant you a boon.” The glowing blue door of bars swung open, a dull blue like a still curtain inside. She strode in, vanishing into the plane of whatever it was. He looked behind the door, no sign of shadow or movement in the corner beyond.

A shoe in his lower back knocked him stumbling into the doorway. The first thing he noticed as he caught his footing was the clean stone floor and sedate, neutral lighting. Bars stretched across the cell wall opening to the center of the unsettling panopticon, a soft blue covering almost everything but the grey stone. Igor’s desk piled with papers in the center of the rug with a V on it. Like before, that strange marble-filled tube sat in the middle. A high-backed, bland wood chair sat off to the side, like a forgotten decoration. Akira swallowed when he looked closer and saw iron manacles, and a spiraling wire jutting from the top of the back, arcing up and forward to terminate in an iron cap.

The twins wearing hats collectively spelling Oxymoron stepped into view from beside the cell bars. Justine held her clipboard close, looking at it instead of him. “We intended to introduce you to fusing Personas later, but you have exceeded our expectations by beginning this process yourself in the lair of the gluttonous.”

Caroline jabbed her baton at him, sparks flying when it tapped the bars. “You mean stumbling blindly around, entirely out of order. Our master offered you the chair first for a reason, Inmate!”

Akira scratched his hair, noticing that his gloves and swanky, high-necked coat and the rest of his Phantom Thief attire had been replaced by the rough white-and-black striped uniform. “Lair of the gluttonous… Kaneshiro’s bank? What ‘fusion’ happened there? The time I accidentally fireballed Makoto because Morgana thought we could pool our Personas’ magic power?”

Justine let the paper fall flat against the clipboard and turned a piercing gaze on him with that unnatural gold eye reminding him of a Goa’uld System Lord. “Think, Inmate. The one whose power, integrity, and resolve you sought when you saw your own was not enough to save your friends.”

Akira thought through the very short list of people he thought had integrity. But adding power… “Father Sugiyama?”

Justine gave a slow shake of her head. “You do not trust him. You could only have fused a Persona if you both trust and receive trust from.”

Akira took the bars in both hands. “Wait… that star-scaled serpent.”

Without even having to speak its name, motes of silvery light gathered in the open chamber, coalescing into the serpent the size of a small van. Ananta Shesha’s hooded cobra-heads spread as it stretched as if to say it was ready and waiting.

Justine gave a shallow nod, but if the light wasn’t playing tricks on him he thought he saw a shallow smile tug at her lips.

A clang rang and electricity zapped through the bars. The transfer student jerked away to glare at the aggressive warden-wanna-be. Caroline glared right back, her expression undimmed from the restriction of only having one eye. “That’s just one quality from one bond, Inmate! If you want any hope of true power, you’ll need to reach out to many who have talents a weakling like you doesn’t. Using those bonds as a basis, we’ll help you forge that into power.”

Justine gave a shallow nod. “Prove yourself and we will even help you strengthen your Personas. For now, we will show you the boon our master bestowed upon you.”

When she gestured to the electric chair, Akira backed up a step. “Listen. I may have wanted to escape suffering before, but since meeting Father Motoori I have a different perspective on the value of life.”

Caroline’s baton clashed against the bars again, sparks zipping between the contact points. “Coward! It’s not even for you, it’s for your Personas. By sacrificing fragments of the power you’re taking from others, you can concentrate it into something even a clumsy thug like you can make use of. Perhaps the other thieves you’ve made contracts with.”

The prospect of being able to offer something useful to the others gave Akira pause. “How exactly does this work?”

Justine took her clipboard in both hands. “Think of the Persona you wish us to take to the chair.”

He stepped back up to the bars. “Power from others…” He thought back to the bank, when the others introduced Makoto to his ability to talk Shadows into joining them. But what would help the whole team? He had a couple Personas with the power of ice, but Ann surpassed his strength without even trying. He acquired Orthrus in the halls of the bank, but Makoto seemed at least as strong in literal fire power. More to the point, what was the biggest gap the Phantom Thieves faced? Captain Kidd had plenty of speed and strength, though it only seemed to be able to use its wind either offensively or to increase its mobility.

“That’s it,” he breathed. The gap in the team’s strength. Within the center of the panopticon, flutters of flame sparked and motes of light gathered into the distorted figure of a muscled humanoid, its bony joints standing out against its brawny arms and legs, a hole through the white oni’s face.

The twins led Fuu-Ki to the chair, threw a tarp over him, and shoved what he would have sworn was a smaller figure wrapped in a tarp into the chair. The iron restraints pinched over wrists and ankles. Justine paused next to the bound Persona to look up at Akira.

He took a deep breath. “Father Sugiyama always did say I needed to learn to let go.”

Caroline flicked a switch on the far side and a quick jolt blazed. Instead of a long spasm and agonized shrieks like he expected from horror movies, the entire Persona burst into    a swirl held back by the strange tarp, raging for just a moment before the tarp settled down, to all appearances empty.

Justine cast the tarp to the hot-headed twin and picked up a green crystal shorter than a finger, crossing the panopticon to set it on the shelf jutting through a slot beside his barred door. Her one eye bored into him. “You may use this to imbue your weapons with the power sacrificed. You have already begun the next task on your road to rehabilitation by joining the strengths of your Personas with the strength of an ally’s Persona. By learning how to join power there, you will be ready to merge power here. Do so once again and we will discuss fusing Personas the next time you come here.”

Chapter 49: June 8th, Curb Your Enthusiasm

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Wednesday, 8 June 2016
Morning
Shibuya Station

Akira shifted from one foot to the other. Despite getting his back comfortably against a wall, the shuffle of the crowd of students waiting to transfer across Shibuya still reminded him of a roiling boil. The noise made his skin crawl, but with his earbuds forgotten at the loft he had no choice but to sit back and wait for the train.

Bright, uncombed blond hair slipped out of the crowd. Ryuji thrust out his chest covered with his favorite red ZOMG shirt on underneath his black winter jacket. The runner gave a smarmy grin. “Mornin’. You been listenin’ to folks talkin’ on the street? I thought Kamoshida was big, but peeps’re talkin’ about Kaneshiro all over the place. An’ almost everyone knows about the callin’ card.” He crossed his arms and glanced left, then right, taking in the crowd. “Girls’ve been checkin’ me out all mornin’. Maybe they can sense the sheer awesome of a phantom thief.”

Akira slapped a palm onto his forehead.

Morgana popped his head out of the satchel. “Geez, Reaper. How unobservant are you?”

Ryuji scoffed at the small team leader, but looked over the transfer student. His eyebrows rose and he stood straighter. “Hey, why’re you wearin’ long sleeves? We’re—” The track star boggled. “Shit!”

“What?” Akira asked, his tone droll.

Ryuji’s feet slid apart, balance dropping in the subtle shift of an experienced runner about to set off. “We’re s’posed to switch to summer uniforms.” The track star looked the transfer student over again. “So why’s yours a long-sleeve?”

“I asked for it.” Akira said, looking back down to the shogi game on his phone. “I wear long sleeves, so when I got their uniform in the mail I asked for permission to wear long sleeves for medical reasons.” He crossed his arms, slid his lance up on his online shogi, and hit end turn. “You want me to tell your teacher you’re gonna be late?”

Ryuji spun around, but threw over his shoulder, “Not if I can get back soon enough!”

Wednesday, 8 June 2016
Morning
Shujin, Class 2-D

Usami-sensei attacked the chalkboard with a gusto the polar opposite of the topic of math she wrote on it. A few white chalk smudges marred her dark brown business-style suit, bending as she side-stepped to finish an array of numbers. Akira’s phone vibrated in his desk and he snatched for it before anybody else could notice.

Ryuji was the first to send a message to the group chat. [They don't know it's us, but doesn't it rock to hear people talk about how great the Phantom Thieves are?]

Akira let out a soft sigh as the other students scribbled. [Phantom Thief. And we're in class. Focus on class.]

[But we're on a roll!] Ryuji sent back with surprising speed. [All we need to do is decide who we're going to go after next.]

Ann’s ID blinked for a moment, three dots pulsing before she added, [You have someone already?]

[Well, no. But I'm psyched for the next one.]

Akira set down his pencil to rub his forehead for a moment, feeling a pulsing discomfort grow. [Curb your enthusiasm. We have class now. Next will be sweeping for another target.]

[Hell yeah!] Ryuji sent out.

Morgana looked up at Akira, one ear bent towards the teacher. “Do you think he gets it and just refuses to acknowledge a proper time and place?”

Akira muttered, “Maybe he just has too much caffeine.”

The guide-trapped-in-cat-form smirked. “Better not serve him any of Leblanc’s finest.”

Makoto joined the chat. [Akira's already pointed out this is class time, Sakamoto. At least I'm on the way back from the bathroom.]

A beat passed before Ann sent, [We learned plenty while we were in Mementos working our way up Kaneshiro's mafia. Maybe another request there could point us to somebody big?]

Ryuji was ready with the speed of an Olympian. [Good thinking, Ann!]

[I wouldn't mind,] Akira sent, bringing down his other hand to type faster. [People needing help might or might not lead to a Palace, but it's still someone in trouble.]

Usami-sensei snapped, “Kurusu-kun! If you’re too bored with matrices to keep your eyes up front, you must have already solved this one. Enlighten the class.”

Wednesday, 8 June 2016
Lunchtime
Shujin, Class 2-D

Akira pressed a few clumps of sticky rice together with his chopsticks so he had just one chunk to manage. The instant he closed his mouth around it, his phone buzzed, and he heard the same from the class representative sitting behind him with his own home-made lunch.

At the top of a new thread in the Phantom Thief group chat winked Makoto’s ID. [Good day, everyone. Have you have gone to see the school counselor yet?]

[Nope,] Ryuji sent back. Akira sent the same.

Ann texted, [I went after finishing midterms for the day. It sounded like Shujin was forcing us to, so I thought I would go see what it was like. If it was bad, I'd get it out of the way. But he wasn't.]

Three dots bounced as Mishima tapped away behind him. [He tried to tell me that what happened wasn't my fault. Even though it was.]

Ann texted, [I think it was very cleansing. Go and you'll see.]

Akira sent, [He's either somebody's stooge or a goon on his own.]

Makoto replied, [You haven't even gone, Akira. That kind of blind cynicism isn't constructive.] A beat later, she sent, [I got one of those mandatory session emails from Shujin. I might as well go see what it's like for myself.]

Wednesday, 8 June 2016
After School
Shibuya, Untouchable

Cold air blasted Akira, a welcome change from air hotter and more humid than any mountain village he grew up in. Even having changed out of his school uniform didn’t provide much relief. The dark walls and dark camouflage pants near the front added an extra sense of relief from the bright bustle outside. Having to brave it twice to get to Leblanc for the junk from the bank only wore that much more at his stamina. Akira gave himself a moment to savor the sound of nothing but the fan in the ventilation.

“So he is alive after all,” Iwai said from his seat behind the grating. He plopped his sport shooting magazine on the counter and sat up on his stool. “I thought you’d decided to ghost me after you got the dumb idea to follow Masa.”

Akira rubbed the back of his neck. “Sorry I didn’t respond to your text, I was still trying to help… another friend.” He shook his head and set down his bag, laden down with Morgana and over a quarter kilogram of gold nameplates. The leader hopped out and sat down against the counter where the shop owner wouldn’t see him, letting Akira pull a paper-wrapped parcel of the gold plates. They hit the counter with a thud, one corner tearing through the brown paper.

Iwai pulled the wrapped stack closer and untied the twine binding it all together. He picked up one plate and held it up to the light. A golden glint reflected back on the realistic model guns covering the wall behind him. “You got any idea if they’re gold-plated or solid?”

“Scratching didn’t make a difference,” Akira said, clasping his gloved hands together. “I don’t have a saw to cut and check the cross section.”

“Some genuine gold could really help get me into the black,” Iwai said, still turning the plate around. He took his magazine and plopped it on top of the untethered bundle of gold name plates, then stood and strode into the back. Plastic and metal shuffled for a minute, then the stubble-chinned man trotted back out to the front. “Seems real according to my scale. It’ll take me a few days to line up buyers for all of it. Don’t wanna dump all in one basket. How’s four hundred thousand?”

“You’re lowballing me,” Akira said, slipping his hands into his pockets and letting himself slouch. “And what do you mean get into the black?”

Iwai’s phone buzzed and he scanned the screen, then typed a reply. He adjusted the brim of his cap and looked back up to the transfer student. “Shibuya mafia charged insurance. Some months it would be more than my income. The military surplus and most’a that crap out there,” he pointed at the racks, “has almost no margin. Collectors an’… buyers were where most of my money came from. And most of the former ain’t comin’ around since that asshole online claimed my stuff’s cheap knockoffs.” He took the magazine and dropped the plate onto the stack. “Prolly Tsuda.”

Akira scratched his neck. “I had no idea you were under Kaneshiro’s boot, too.”

Iwai stiffened, then switched his lollipop to the other side of his teeth and relaxed back on his stool. “That was pretty weird news. Asshole had an empire here for years an’ then one day just turns ‘imself in? Must’a been runnin’ from something.” He straightened his cap. “The local collector just got nabbed yesterday. Cops just came ‘round to get a statement. Would be nice if that would bring my customers back.”

Akira scanned the shop owner. His long, baggy coat didn’t hide the slump of his shoulders. Or the weak goatee on his chin the tightness of the muscles in his neck. “You’ve got to deal with an unfair rep too, huh?”

“Too?” Iwai swung his lollipop to the other side, but whatever he was about to say fled when his phone buzzed again. He read for a couple seconds, then typed in another response and looked up. “Don’t tell me, I don’ wanna know. Four hundred thousand for the bundle.”

Akira let his weight roll to his heels and crossed his arms. “The price of gold goes for over three and a half thousand yen a gram. This is a quarter kilo.”

He let out a breath. “I’m not exactly an authorized commodity dealer. Two thousand a gram. That would come to five hundred thousand yen.”

“Seven hundred and fifty thousand.”

Morgana swayed on his feet as if preparing to pounce. “You get ‘em, Joker.”

Iwai straightened from his faux-relaxed slouch, a curl to the corner of his lip but a hard glint to his eyes. “You wouldn’t be bringin’ this stuff to a dude like me if you thought you could get market price anywhere. I’m not just offerin’ five hundred thousand, I’m not askin’ where you got it.”

Akira pursed his lips. “Six hundred thousand. And you tell me all about Tsuda.”

Despite the transfer student’s expectations, Iwai leaned forward, elbow braced on the counter and steely gaze hard as the real metal. “You seem so… ordinary at first glance. Hard to imagin’ a kid like you pullin’ a switcheroo on the cops. Or tailin’ Masa. You got balls, kid.”

Akira took off his glasses to wipe a lens. “Or I could just be stupid.”

Iwai burst out laughing. “Well, at least I know bein’ full’a yourself ain’t one of your vices.” He pulled his stool a little closer and opened the register, setting down five- and thousand yen notes. “Me an’ Tsuda go way back. Longer’n I’ve been fencing. Back when we were sworn brothers in the Hashiba clan.”

The name leaped from his memory. Well, from the memories of Kaneshiro he had to see so he could open up a set of impromptu stairs for the other Phantom Thieves down in the vaults of Kaneshiro’s bank. “One of the yakuza clans? I heard they scared the piss out of the Kaneshiros. Back in the day, anyway.” Akira leaned against the wielded grating separating the customers from the realistic gun models on the other side of the counter, folding his forearms together as he smirked. “I always knew you were a muscle head.”

Iwai chuckled. “The nerve of kids these days.” He re-settled his cap on his head. “Well, he’s still in, but I—”

The door swung open and a middle school student in a bland, navy-blue uniform walked in. “Hello,” he said, his voice cracking.

Iwai’s casual demeanor vanished. His back hunched and his fingers tapped on the counter as he shot a cool stare at the boy. “What the hell you doin’ all the way down here? This ain’t a study hall.”

Akira blinked. “Didn’t you just say customers were scarce?”

Iwai stood, leveling his index finger at the transfer student. “Shut your trap.” The finger pointed to the squeaky-voiced boy. “You should be studying for your entrance exams.”

Akira centered his glasses. “In June? Studying’s important, but not at the cost of the entire year. Pick up a new sport, learn a hobby, build connections so you have an outlet besides high school.”

The earnest kid’s shoulders squared and he looked to the shop owner with renewed enthusiasm. “Exactly. I just wondered if you could use some hel—”

“Go home and study,” Iwai barked, his expression stony.

A look of disappointment spread over Kaoru’s face, every line slack. Avoiding eye contact, he tugged his left coat sleeve straight and trudged out the door.

Akira glanced from the door to the shop owner, swiped the yen note, and reached for his leather travel satchel. The diminutive team leader leaped inside just in time to make the opening before the Akira shouldered the bag. The shop owner shouted after him, but Akira ignored it and jogged out. “Hey, kid!”

The boy stopped just a little too close to the streaming crowd of central street for comfort, but turned and looked back into the dank alley. He tilted his head a little, suspicion in the narrowness of his eyes but curiosity perking his ears. “Oh, you’re that guy who gave me back my wallet. How’d you hear my name?”

“I heard someone else say it. Probably one of your classmates, you two were talking as you got off the train,” Akira answered. The humid air pressed down, but the real feeling of pressure intensified as he neared the crowds streaming by on central street’s main thoroughfare. He wanted to approach and talk like a normal person, but the relentless cacophony of the crowd battered him and his heart thundered before he even got halfway.

Morgana popped out of the bag, paws wide on his shoulder. “What are you doing, Joker?”

Ignoring the team leader, Akira pointed a thumb over his shoulder at the door to Untouchable. “That your uncle?”

The boy tugged his navy blue school jacket straight, took one step closer, and squared his shoulders, looking the transfer student straight in the eye. “He’s my father,” the boy proclaimed.

Akira blinked. He’d seen kids puff up at family reputation or the things parents gave them, but few occasions of such simple, earnest association. The transfer student shifted his weight to his left foot. “Listen, uh… I may have sounded a little weird back then just deciding to talk to you same as your classmates. How would you prefer I call you?”

“Normally it would be Iwai, but you gave me back my wallet after somebody picked my pocket,” the kid said, thought shining behind his dark eyes. “I mean, you even bought me lunch just for pointing out that grocer’s. That’s more than most of my classmates have ever done, so Kaoru seems fine.”

Akira held his right hand below his belly and held out his satchel with his left to keep from throwing the small team leader around as he gave a bow. “Well you may call me Levy Tate, furniture mover.”

Kaoru spat, devolving into full-body-shaking laughter in record time. “That is so dumb!”

Morgana looked up at him from the dangling satchel. “He’s right about that.”

Akira stood up, the corners of his own mouth quirking up. “And yet you’re standing a little easier now, aren’tcha? You looked a little bummed back there.” He gave a mild shrug and slipped his satchel back over his left shoulder. “In my experience, nobody turns down a groaner.”

Kaoru straightened, chuckles subsiding. “I think you’re right. But what’s your name, really?” He scratched the back of his neck. “I don’t… really remember from last time.”

The transfer student fidgeted, knowing some people made things awkward when he introduced himself without his family name. Then again, that curly-haired upperclassman at Shujin took it, so why not try again? If the kid was Iwai’s son, it would be easy enough for him to ask later and giving a stage name after already being dumb and giving his real name before would just make things awkward later. “Akira. You might as well go on and study, but don’t knock yourself out.”

Adjusting his bland, navy blue jacket, the middle schooler’s smile dimmed a little. “I kinda wish there were more jokers like you around. Social types. It seems like all the kids in my class are all withdrawn. There’s this one really lonely kid in my school who spends all his time playing video games.” He tugged his left sleeve. “He just seems… kinda quiet and sad, but never talks to anyone.”

Akira shrugged. He avoided video games because hours could fly by when he sat down for them. “Everyone’s got their way of getting through the day. Maybe for him he can figure out video games but not people.” He straightened the satchel strap over his shoulder. “Any likeness to your father?”

Kaoru straightened again as if challenged. “My dad is a great guy. He… may not be the most social, but he’s always there when you need him.” His phone buzzed and he pulled it out to check a text app. “Sorry, I got a group project. See you, Akira-san.”

Akira’s phone buzzed in his pocket, so he checked the incoming message as the middle schooler melded into the churning crowd.

Makoto opened a new thread in the Phantom Thief group chat. [I just finished a session with Doctor Maruki. It was much more calming than I expected.]

Ann popped up next. [I know, right? With everything going on, and Shujin making it mandatory, I thought it was going to be like a police interrogation. But he was really laid-back and good at listening.]

Akira texted, [That wasn't what Mishima said.]

[That might have just been nerd expectations,] Ryuji sent. [I know you're not buddy with counselors, and hearing about how hot he is from girls is SO annoying, but he sounds like a chill guy.]

Makoto replied, [Have you been, yet?]

Three dots bounced next to Ryuji’s ID for several seconds. [No.]

[You should go,] Makoto sent. [You don't even have to talk about Kamoshida. I spent most of my time talking about how much you all have helped me.] A beat passed before she added, [He said I have a very robust support system.]

[I don’t get it,] Ryuji texted.

Ann sent, [She means that we talk to each other and that's good.]

[That doesn't sound so bad. The last thing I want to do is rehash that piece of shirt Kamoshida,] Ryuji replied.

Akira’s lips pressed into a thin line. At least Mishima understood that talking through problems didn’t mend burnt bridges. [Be careful who you trust.]

Ann’s ID popped up, three dots dancing next to her ID for a few moments before sending, [You should consider going, Akira. It would be good for you. Talking to a counselor doesn't make all the rocky parts go away, but it makes your next steps easier.]

Wednesday, 8 June 2016
Early Evening
Shibuya, Gigolo Arcade

Akira walked a burst of shots up from the chest to the face of another player in a face-covering mask. He ran out of bullets on the next player, making a sloppier dash at cover closer to the burned-out car his character crouched behind. He slapped the magazine well and stood, pulling the trigger before his character even rose. It didn’t do any good as the obnoxious cheater, 0wner, dodged half the bullets and somehow ignored the rest long enough to blast Akira’s character with a shotgun. When Game Over floated out of the darkening screen, he debated whether he wanted to keep practicing. Games were expensive.

Alliance Force Assembled sang out of his phone and he slipped his phone out of his pocket, Queen Togo on the caller ID. He swiped the call open and headed for the front where it was quieter. “Ian Fleecem of the Dewie, Screwum, and Howe law firm.”

Silence stretched on, though after a couple seconds he could just hear her breathing as she ticked through something on her side. The sound effects of video games sounded all around him and he opened his mouth to explain when Hifumi jumped in first, “Oh! I get it!” He worried he annoyed her before a quiet chuckle just made it through the boisterous arcade around him. “You’re as creative as ever, Akira-kun.”

Without being able to see her, he couldn’t tell if she was just being polite or genuine. Still, no reason to argue the point over the phone. Once he reached the at-the-moment quiet pachinko machines at the front, he replied, “What can I do for you?”

“I finished an… errand for my mother. There’s a cozy second-hand bookstore in Jinbocho with a surprising variety of fiction, philosophy, and strategy books,” she said, sounding humdrum about whatever she was about to propose. “Even if they don’t have a good book on math for your studies, I’m sure the one across the street will.”

Leaning against a machine, despite the fact that she couldn’t see him he gave a smile. “For Queen Togo? Anywhere, any time.”

She shared a chuckle and gave him the directions to Nagiuri.

He had to push and crowd-run his way to the train station in Shibuya, but the crowds thinned on the train up to the used bookstore in question. Akira expected the obvious professors and bespectacled nerds, but the number of women and children browsing the neighborhood suffused with bookstores surprised him.

A pair of girls in the dark, unfamiliar uniform of some other school walked past, their eyes glued to their phones. The one with long, curly hair shot a skeptical glance at her friend. “…but the head of a yakuza?”

The girl next to her pushed whatever article was on her screen at the other. “Not just the head. It’s like the whole clan disintegrated. Peeps selling drugs for years had a change of heart and turned themselves in. The Phantom Thief is real!”

His footsteps came lighter and he proceeded to the used shop Nagiuri. Hifumi leaned against the register counter, browsing a heavy, leather-bound tome with age-yellowed pages. She still wore what he assumed was her school uniform, a short-sleeved blue shirt with a laurel wreath-wrapped star on the left breast, a loose black-and-white victorian-style bow tie, and a pleated black skirt that drew his eye to her shapely legs despite today’s black leggings.

As soon as his eyes made a twice-over, he lingered back. Sure, his black long sleeves and khaki slacks helped him blend in elsewhere, but next to her perfect everything he felt slovenly.

The team leader betrayed his position by popping out, paws on his shoulder as he scoped out the front of the used book store. “What’s the hold up, Akira? That looks like your math tutor right there.”

Hifumi’s deep green eyes snapped up and swiveled for only a moment before locking onto the guide-trapped-in-cat-guise. “Oh, you brought your cat.” Her lips turned up and she closed the tome, setting it aside with one hand while her other reached out for the team leader’s chin. “May I?”

Morgana let out a frustrated huff, but lingered long enough for her fingers to scratch his chin. When she retracted her hand, he glanced at Akira and explained, “I’m just going along with it to help you, Joker.”

“He’s very vocal.” A hesitant chuckle slipped out of her. “You know, for some reason I pictured you as a dog person when we first met.”

Akira shrugged, with the added benefit of getting the small team leader to return to the satchel. He took a moment to tear his eyes away from her and take in the humble bookstore. Bare bulbs hung down from wires dangling from the ceiling, and the stained tile floor had seen better days. Floor-to-ceiling shelves lined the walls. A dark wood table in the middle, books cramming the top and the boxes beneath. Pens and a display of common stationary sat next to the register at the front, but the entire rest of the humble space was crammed with books, in many cases stacks from the floor rising almost as high as his chest. Nicked paperbacks and worn hardbacks, leather-bound and a scattered range of fabric bindings. Not a single one following alphabetical order, year of publication, or any other order he could discern.

“Are you okay?” She leaned closer, then looked around. “Do you not like the smell?”

He blinked, tearing his eyes away from the disorganized mess, his hands twitching. “No, I love the smell of paper books. There’s something safe and yet inviting about it.” He reached out his hands as if ready to pick up a pair of tomes to get started. “But I am having a really hard time keeping from trying to organize everything.”

Hifumi twitched and a laugh spilled out of her. “It’s not that kind of book store, Akira-kun.”

At the ease of her casual joy, he couldn’t help a smile from working its way across his own face. He glanced down to the book she set on a stack rising all the way from the floor to the level of the register counter. “Was that what you came here to find?”

“Oh, no. I was just passing the time until you arrived.” She flashed a toothy smile. “I had to wait for my porter to carry my books for me.”

He chuckled along with her, telling his heart to stop racing. This wasn’t a date, not that a nice girl like her would be interested in a guy like him. He shook his head and they paced inside the tiny store to browse.

He made it almost ten minutes before the master of shogi came around the table and put her hands on her hips. She cleared her throat, but something about her posture looked too theatrical for real annoyance. “Couldn’t wait to sort the place?”

Akira set down The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. His face burned. “Force of habit. I made it until seeing two books of a series by Sergei Lukyanenko in different places.” He stood and looked around. “I see a bunch of history, poetry, and something on planetary physics but no shogi strategy or math books.”

Hifumi flashed him a pleased smile that had his face heating up before his embarrassed blush even had a chance to fade. She handed him a pair of leather-bound books. “I didn’t see any math books either, but these are both on strategy so it’s not a total loss. Shall we try the next establishment?”

The next hour passed as they trawled through used book stores for hidden treasures. Much to Morgana’s amusement, Hifumi found Akira sorting books at three more of them, and listening in over more gossip about the Phantom Thief and Shibuya yakuza. Crossing the street to the next stretch of stores, the shogi queen came to a sudden stop when a sharp-eyed woman in a tan jacket stopped in front of her. She spoke with a frosty tone, “Hifumi.”

The girl drew her arm back as if ready to shield herself, but caught it and stood straight. “Oh, hello. Taking some time to walk after your match?”

The woman stepped even closer, her dark eyes narrowing more. “There aren’t any matches this week.” Her eyes flicked up to Akira when he came to a stop beside her, giving him a glare before reforming a frosty gaze at Kanda’s shogi queen. “I see you’ve got a new toy for the day. I suppose you’ve got your pick of them.”

Hifumi blinked, her mouth drifting open just a little as she struggled to put her composure back together. “M-my apologies. I forgot the others don’t have as complicated a schedule.”

The woman tugged her jacket closer and power-walked off.

His fingers tightened over the short stack of books in his hand, but before he could say anything, Hifumi reached up to straighten the victorian bow tie at her collar. She turned part-way to him, but her eyes avoided his. “I-I’m sorry about that. She’s my senior in the Shogi Federation. I-I defeated her in a title match two weeks ago.”

Taking in a deep breath, Akira just held in a snap back at the bitch fading into the crowd. “You have nothing to apologize for, Togo-san. Human beings judge as part of our fundamental nature. It’s a necessary thing for us to do things like use the right politeness to someone our senior. It only becomes a wrong thing when people like that get stuck on past events and dismiss others based on a problem with a different person.” He let his glare after the woman.

Hifumi shook her head, her long, dark hair catching the red evening light. Her once sparkling green eyes remained dimmed as they fastened on the sidewalk. “But s-she’s very friendly to everyone else. She was only unkind to you because you were with me.” Her shoulders hunched, she turned and grabbed the books with sudden motion. “I-I’m sorry for today. I should be going to check on father.”

She dashed into the crowd in the opposite direction from the rude woman. The transfer student took chase, his bag swinging on his shoulder.

Morgana popped his head out of the satchel and cried, “Stop rocking me like a pendulum, I’m gonna hurl!”

Akira slid to a stop and barked at him, “No throwing up in my bag!” By the time he looked up, Hifumi was gone. With the light fading and crowd heavy, he couldn’t spot any sign of the swift girl. All at once, his crowd jitters came back. The shortness of breath. The dizziness from so many people moving so many ways. His hands tightened on his travel satchel and he turned for the trains to try to make what little day he had left for studying.

Chapter 50: June 9th, Studio Day 1

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Thursday, 9 June 2016
Early Morning
Aoyama-Itchome Station

Akira trotted up the stairs toward street level, salarymen and Shujin students choking the passage. The sound of hundreds of feet and dozens of hushed conversations echoed off the tiled walls.

A familiar stride fell into the mass of dark-haired Shujin students beside him. “Hey, Akira,” Mishima said with an automatic nod before a yawn crawled out of his mouth. “You’re a little early today.” He paused to look down at the book in the transfer student’s hand. “New novel?”

“Cook book, actually,” Akira side-stepped and slipped the book into the side of his school satchel next to Morgana. “Everybody else already has family members to get them started on the tradition of cooking, so I’ve got to play catch up.”

Mishima rubbed his neck. “That’s dedicated. All I do is eggs or miso every morning.” The crowd broke as they reached the street-level exit. “Speaking of dedicated, there have been a lot of thank-yous posted on the Phansite. A lot of people had the chance to repent thanks to what you all did.”

Akira let a hesitant smile spread over his face. “I see you’ve been reading about Catholicism. I better step up or you’ll leave me in the dust.”

The wind howled as the latest train pulled up, so the two lined up to wait for an opening.

Thursday, 9 June 2016
Afternoon
Television Station, Studio Two

Holding the looped heavy cable in one hand, Akira paced from the technician at the industrial outlet and around the back of the flimsy audience seating to an enormous camera, letting out length as he walked. Another station crew leaned against the camera so bulky he wouldn’t have been surprised to see it fitted between anti-air batteries on a battleship. He handed the end of the loop to the crew hand.

The transfer student heard Hashida-sensei before he saw the teacher step out of the halls. The teacher continued chatting with the station manager with a volume Akira associated with trying to talk over heavy traffic. Akira wondered if that was his equivalent of whispering. The teacher clapped his meaty hands together in a thunderous sound that hit the painted wood paneling intended to prevent echoes. Akira rolled his eyes but joined the students filling out a rectangular formation in front of the audience seating. Hashida looked over the assembled students with an inscrutable gaze for a moment before speaking in his usual bellowing tone, “The station manager tells me he is eager to see Shujin again for filming tomorrow. Excellent work, students. Acting Principal Takahashi has granted you leave without having to check back in at Shujin. Don’t cause trouble.” He swept his gaze over the assembly, everybody tense with eagerness to get going. “Dismissed!”

“Yes, Hashida-sensei!” the students shouted in concert before breaking up.

Akira couldn’t see any grime on his hands, but felt it anyway and headed to the nearest bathroom to wash.

He spotted Ryuji heading to the sinks from the inside as the transfer student came from the outside. The track star whined, “Effin’ slave labor is what this is.” He fastened his pants and waved his hands under the faucet to get water running. “Yo, Akira.”

Akira nodded to the track star and, seeing the side-to-side motions weren’t triggering the faucets, tried up-and-down. Water flowed and he began scrubbing. “Truth. Serfdom never left Japan. The big-shots just wear suits and sit on corporate boards now.” As they stepped out, the transfer student jerked a thumb back at the bathroom. “You at least feel better?”

Ryuji kicked at the linoleum floor. “Nah.”

Ann rounded a corner, the pace of her rapid walk slowing. “Good, there you guys are.” She came to a stop less than an arm’s length away. “At least when I’m with a couple classmates the managers stop trying to ambush me for ‘photo specials’. Like I don’t know what that means.”

Morgana popped out of the transfer student’s satchel, paws gripping the shoulder. “Those fiends tried to take advantage of the maiden of the Phantom Thieves?”

Ryuji shot a smirk at the team leader. “Oof. Way to throw Makoto-senpai under the bus.”

Morgana’s blue eyes widened. “T-that’s not what I meant!”

As if just to tease him, Ann flipped a voluminous pigtail off her shoulder. “At least tomorrow’s just sitting in on a studio audience.”

Akira straightened his long sleeves. “Since we don’t have to check back in to Shujin, is there anything in the area to do? I’m starting to get a feel for Tokyo, but I’ve never been up here before.”

Tail swishing as if he scored some victory, Morgana smirked. “You were gawking at that pancake place.”

“I was not,” Akira whined, about to launch into a counter before somebody wearing a beige peacoat dashed behind him and into the bathroom. The transfer student glanced back, then shook his head. “I guess some people don’t get warning signals from their bladders. Anyway, how about that park in business town?”

Ann held a finger to her chin, those frosty blue eyes swiveling up for a moment. “Business… Oh! You’re probably talking about the amusement park around Dome Town.”

Ryuji brightened, straightening out of his usual slouch. “Oh, yeah! Ma took me to one of the baseball games in the stadium – the round part in the middle – the day we finished the move. Said she wanted to have good memories of our own in Tokyo.”

Akira forced a mild smile over his face at the casual ease. How could Ryuji be so chill about a forced move? Even if it was his mother’s decision, he knew he’d have very short and loud words to say about his father if he let the family situation get to that point. “I’ve never been to an amusement park before.”

Ryuji’s brown eyes widened and he slipped his hands out of his pockets. “Never? Dude, we gotta get you caught up on all the adrenaline-junkie bait in Dome Town.” His eyes slid down to the team leader’s and he let loose a smirk. “Tough luck, catboy.” He held his hand flat about midway up his chest. “I don’t think you make the height requirement.”

Morgana’s tail stood up, the end twitching, and his claws sank through the fabric. “I’ll show you! Your heroic leader will conquer every one of those scary rides!”

Ryuji burst out laughing. “You don’t go on rides to show how macho you are, you do ‘em for the thrill of feelin’ your body goin’ fast as a train. The wind whippin’ through your hair an’ the harness tuggin’ you left an’ right like a baby in the hands of a British nanny.”

Akira waved a hand in warding, his grey eyes flicking to the diminutive team leader’s form on his shoulder. “Well skip that part. You almost threw up in my bag yesterday.”

The men’s room door swung open and the young man in the peacoat strode out. Now that he moved slower than a sprint, Akira had the chance to examine him. His fashionably shaggy brown hair lit a pang of jealousy and despite his run and just coming out of the bathroom, his crisp uniform was as immaculate down to the ironed creases in his dark trousers. He tugged dark brown gloves back over his hands, and his red eyes fell on the transfer student. “Ah, Amamiya-san. What a surprise to see you here.” His gaze jumped to his teammates, flicking down to Ryuji’s pants and Ann’s skirt before coming back up to their eyes. “You three are Shujin students?”

Ryuji chuffed. “What’s it to the Defective Detective?”

Ann pressed her palm against her face. “Ryuji.”

Too late, Akechi drew himself to his full height. Not much taller than Ryuji, but his countenance flipped from a smile as wide and unwavering as any fake idol to a hot glower and tense shoulders. He took a sudden step forward, driving the track star back to the wall. “Then why don’t you tell me how many court appearances you’ve made? How many hours you’ve spent filing legal motions? How many doors you’ve knocked on or social media feeds you’ve trawled for plutocrats no attorney would prosecute?”

Akira glanced between them, then took Ryuji’s side, but left his focus on the track star. “Where do you know Akechi-san from?”

The dyed blond swallowed under the sudden ire of the red-eyed sentinel. “The chicks at ma’s clinic always had the lobby tuned in whenever he’s on TV.”

Leaning against the wall, Akira slipped his hands in his pockets and looked to the red-eyed student detective. He pasted a goofy smile on and loosened his stance. “You never told me you were some kind of celebrity.”

Akechi stepped back, rubbing the back of his head with a gloved hand, back to the faux-bashful smiles. “Oh, nothing grand. I’ve only appeared on television a couple times. It’s necessary to put pressure on specific communities in the scientific, business, or judicial sectors.”

Ann held a fist on her hip. “Well, whatever.” She gestured her thumb towards the door. “C’mon country boy, you’ve got a whole new part of Tokyo to make memories in!”

Akechi’s smile strained and he looked on. “You’re very fortunate, you know. I had to skip lunch and breakfast, so a few pancakes would really hit the spot right now.”

Eyebrows rising almost to his dyed, unkempt hair, Ryuji scratched his scalp. “Huh?”

A gurgle floated out from Akechi and the unofficial detective covered his stomach with a gloved hand. His wooden smile wavered, but held. “Well… I have briefings to attend and papers to file.” He stepped between the others and disappeared down the hall to the studio offices.

Ann waited until he was gone before she turned an arched eyebrow to the transfer student. “Amamiya?”

Akira shrugged and flashed her a toothy grin. “You thought the only names I had were Kenny Dewit?”

Thursday, 9 June 2016
Late Afternoon
Dome Town

Akira and Ryuji left the roller coaster at a slow trot, the former helping the latter walk. Both glared at Ann when she came skipping out from behind them. Pop music pumped through the speakers with enough volume to drown out most of the conversations in the crowds, though the cohesive beat and melody felt like less an assault on Akira’s ears than the cacophany in Shibuya Station.

Ann paused, and for a brief moment Akira noticed her hair didn’t stand out against the bright colors of the amusement park structures. She flashed them an eager smile. “C’mon, guys. That was only the third ride. We’ve got more roller coasters to conquer!” She finished with a fist pump.

Ryuji took a seat on the bench next to Akira’s bag, taking the look of commiseration from the team leader sitting inside it. “For real, my stomach’s tryin’ to send lunch back up.”

Akira set himself down on the other side of the satchel. “Shouldn’t have had three hot dogs as soon as you came.”

Morgana shot a quick glare at the transfer student. “Don’t provoke him when he’s that green and looking right at me, Joker.” He swung a worried look back on the dyed-blond.

Ann crossed her arms, thrusting her hip out to the side. The raise to her eyebrows drew a little away from the tension in her posture. “I just want to have a proper celebration for Kaneshiro’s change of heart.”

Morgana’s ear twitched. “We should probably have Nightrider with us for that, Lady Ann.”

She cringed, but the reminder gave Akira the thought to call her about it. A spasm shot through his neck as he pulled his phone out and he paused to rub the stricken spot. “When you said these rides were gonna be like getting shaken by a British nanny, I didn’t think you meant straight up.”

Ryuji pressed a hand over his stomach. “They ain’t that bad. I just should’na ate right before.”

When the team leader shot him a glare, Akira shrugged, then rubbed a muscle twinge. “Well, if we’re going to celebrate, might as well have everyone here. Makoto-senpai earned it too.” He tapped and listened to the phone ring.

And ring.

And ring. Akira shrugged and closed the call. “Busy.”

Ann shrugged. “Think it’s student council work?”

The eerie strings and wind instruments of David Arnold’s theme for the Goa’uld resonated from his phone. Akira swiped to answer. “Wayne Deer, where can we deliver your sleigh?”

“Oh, come on. You just called!” Makoto said, her breath just a little quick even if she kept her volume hushed. “Is everything okay?”

Akira rubbed his neck, still feeling stabbing tension. “Social studies trip is finished. We’re at Dome Town, and Ann brought up that we never did celebrate Kaneshiro’s changed heart.”

He could just hear Makoto’s footsteps through the halls of Shujin. “Well, isn’t Ann still holding onto the briefcase his treasure turned into?”

Akira looked up. “You sold that briefcase, right?”

Ryuji grinned, a lot of the green fading from his visage. “Oh, we hit jackpot with that thing. I talked my man into a hundred fidy.”

Morgana shook his head, ears flapping against his skull for a moment. “So what was in it?”

Ann’s face twisted into a frown. “Monopoly money with Kaneshiro’s face on every note.” One corner of her lips curled up as her azure eyes slid to Ryuji. “You should’ve seen the look on his face when the guy popped open the case and he thought it was full of legit cash.”

Ryuji slumped, his color clearer but regret etched into every line. “Would’ve been enough for ten lifetimes of beef bowls.”

Akira set his phone to speaker so he wouldn’t have to relay conversation.

The sound of the door to the roof swinging closed clanged from the phone line. “After Kamoshida, it seemed like all of Shujin came alive like it was hiding in the dark before. The effects are even wider in Shibuya, partly because of all the other hearts we changed along the way.”

Finger twirling through the tip of a pigtail, Ann gave a shallow smile. “That’s true. If saving Shibuya was such a big deal, we’d better have a party to match.”

Akira frowned, rubbing his teeth on his lower lip. “I’m not against celebrations, but I don’t like big, extravagant productions. Maybe something none of us have done in a while? I keep hearing about good ramen places in Ogikubo.”

Ryuji leaned against the concrete walls of the planter behind them. “Maaan, ramen’s good but that’s a once-a-month thing. We gotta make this somethin’ special!”

“There’s…what about a nice sushi place?” Makoto said, a strange guarded quality to her tone.

Morgana stood up, starts in his eyes. “What a spectacular suggestion from our newest member!” He closed his eyes, his tail still swishing back and forth. “Roe, tuna…”

Ryuji clutched his stomach. “Ugh. Please don’ talk ‘bout the food right now.”

Makoto let out a small cough. “Oh, would sushi be a problem? I didn’t know anybody had an allergy to fish or—”

“It’s fine,” Akira said, waving to dismiss the concern despite her not being able to see. “Ryuji just ate a bunch of food cart grub right before we went on a couple roller coasters. So when do we do this? We get off early tomorrow, too.”

“Maybe you do,” she said, the grump slipping out of her aloof tone. “Seniors are still in exams all day tomorrow, and there are more exams on Saturday so I’d rather make sure I have time set aside to study.”

Ann let her hand down, her shoulders slumping. “I’m on a shoot Sunday afternoon.”

Akira glanced from the model to runner. “Well, we do still have the rest of the day after classes on Saturday.”

Ryuji shrugged.

Makoto’s tone brightened. “I wouldn’t mind a bit of break after school. I’ll try not to wear out too much on exams, but I should be able to make it on Saturday.”

Morgana purred. “Then it’s decided. The Phantom Thieves will savor succulent sushi on Saturday.”

Akira straightened his glasses. “I guess it’s mostly decided. Keep an eye on the chat room tomorrow and we’ll nail down the place.”

“Right,” Makoto said, sounding more chipper than before. “I’m going to be studying late tonight, so have a good evening.” The line closed with a click.

Akira put his phone away and looked to the runner still looking just a little pale in the face. “You have nobody to blame but yourself for eating before getting on.”

“More harping isn’t going to take away his upset stomach,” Morgana reproached. When Ann’s eyes widened at the rebuke, he puffed out his chest. “Well, it’s the responsibility of a leader to maintain the integrity of the team. Joking is okay, but we can’t let things get too serious.” He looked up at the runner. “But this isn’t the first time you’ve done something physically… okay, maybe today wasn’t dangerous, but risky when you didn’t need to, Reaper. Joker has been reckless as long as I’ve known him, but I know why he does it. What are you trying to prove?”

Ryuji scratched his head. “Damn, dude. You just brought things straight from party town to downertown.”

The small team leader glanced at Akira, his small blue eyes locked onto the transfer student’s steel grey behind glasses. After a beat, Morgana glanced back to Ryuji. “Joker’s gotten better after he started going to his church. I guess religion really helps some people. I just want to make sure you’ve got something like that too, Reaper. We’ve all seen embarrassing weaknesses of each other. The Phantom Thieves should be the one group of people you don’t need to pose in front of. Our enemy has to be Shadows, not other humans.”

Akira stood so he could speak with Ann in hushed tones without interrupting the others. “Hey, I almost forgot about Mishima. He helped us out a ton, you think you could bring him to the party?”

Ann jerked back, pink dusting her cheeks. “W-what?” She swallowed and straightened. “Oh, right. Uh…” She looked down. “I don’t think so. He’s still been avoiding me.”

“Still?” Akira pushed up his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose. “Damn, I was going to talk to him but forgot between all the upset with Kaneshiro and the social studies trip. Sorry.”

She shook her head, her shoulders still drooping and eyebrows drawn taught. “No, he’s my friend. And he only sits, like, three seats away. I’ve had tons of chances to talk to him if I hadn’t been too embarrassed.”

Akira rubbed the back of his neck.

Before he could say anything, Ryuji cleared his throat. “So, uh, I’m gonna go ‘round talkin’ with Monamona.” He gave a smile too wide, something too expectant in his eyes for comfort. “Peace out.”

Morgana sat down in the runner’s school satchel, held at his side. “I’ll meet you at Leblanc. Don’t you do anything to besmirch Lady Ann’s honor.”

“Morgana!” they both shouted, faces tinged with red.

Ryuji gave the transfer student a wink, then disappeared into the crowd.

Akira straightened his glasses. They had the wrong idea, but no reason not to put time to good use. “So… Everything going okay with you two? Or at least with you? I’m sorry I haven’t really been there to help with things lately.”

“No, everything’s okay,” she blurted. She clasped her hands behind her back. “Even besides your family hangups, I know you’ve got tons of stuff going on. I don’t want to make any more trouble for you.”

Most days and with most people he would have taken the out to leave on neutral terms. But Ann was with him almost since day one, and had a strong enough soul to leave Kamoshida alive to repent. “Ann… I’ll drop it if you want, but… neither of us have a lot of people to go to. You backed me up with Kamoshida and Kaneshiro. I want you to know I’ll back you up too.”

Her face twisting as a smile fought with embarrassment, she finally let out a breath and unclasped her hands to let them swing at her sides. “Let’s get something to eat.”

“My treat,” he said, and followed her to one of the food courts.

Once there, Ann sat with a large cup of green ice chilling some fancy berry flavor of soda. “So, uh…” Her eyes cast down to the miniscule round table between them. “I hate how you never really understand how much you treasure something until it’s gone.” She held up her free hand. “Not that Shiho’s gone! But… things have only been getting more tense. I used to be able to talk to her about anything, but never imagined that I’d want to talk to her about falling for her boyfriend.” She traced her finger over a napkin on the plastic table top. “Sometimes I wonder if I’m just making the same mistake again. I took so long to apologize for not being there for her with Kamoshida.” She glanced up to him, but could only hold eye contact a fleeting moment. “You remember how Kamoshida threatened to take Shiho off the team if I didn’t…?”

Akira nodded, glad she didn’t finish that sentence. He saw that in too many nightmares already. “I hope you know by now that Kamoshida betrayed you both with your own kindness. She cared too much about you to just walk away from it all, and you cared too much about Suzui-san’s dreams to walk away from her.”

She gave a twisted, hesitant smile, twirling a finger through her pigtail. “That’s true. Now that I’m out of it, I’m sure he never would’ve risked that damn trophy by benching her.” She gave a tight smile, a spark in her eyes like a blizzard’s swirl. “I should’ve dared him to do it.” The spark extinguished. “But now I’m scared about how Shiho’s going to get through this.” Her lips turned down. “Shiho was always the strong one.”

“Hey,” Akira said, his legs tensing. “Don’t discount yourself. Even with Morgana and Ryuji, we’d never have made it to Kamoshida if it wasn’t for you. Knowing when to hold back is a quality, too. You didn’t go berserk during that fight and kill him.”

Ann barked out a laugh, but her eyes looked like she wanted to cry. “Come on, Akira. Remember when it all started? The day of the volleyball rally, you didn’t even know who Kamoshida was but you still had the strength to chase me down when Yuuki got hurt. You were willing to start all that just for him.” She looked down, her finger tracing paths on the napkin again. “I was so weak I didn’t even believe Shiho’s ability outweighed Kamoshida’s authority. I felt like I was alone, like even Yuuki was too far to truly trust.”

Akira scratched his scalp. “Well, I never did know when to put something down or quit.” He steepled his fingers. “So you need me to club Mishima over the head and drag him over so you two can sort things out?”

Ann chuckled. “That’s so you, Akira. I can’t even take names like ‘prissy bitch’ or ‘Kamoshida’s girl’ without feeling my heart tremble.” She paused to drink through the neon-pink straw. “It took you, Morgana, and Ryuji to help me take Kamoshida down. I could never have done that on my own.” Her hand clenched the napkin. “I want to change that. If Personas are the power of the heart, I wanna have the strongest one, the dancer who is strong enough to save anyone. But I don’t even really understand what ‘strong’ is.”

Akira stood and reached a hand at her. She looked from his hand to his face several times. He cleared his throat and held his arm straighter. “Then let’s figure it out together.”

Smiling, Ann left her cup on the table and stood, clamping a firm hand on his own for a shake. When they separated she picked up her large cup of berry soda. “I’ll start by… not getting refills. That’ll mean I’m strong enough to resist, right?”

Akira felt a drop of sweat trickle down his neck. “Uh…”

Chapter 51: June 10th, Television Condemnation

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Friday, 10 June 2016
Afternoon
Television Studio

The crew rushed about as everybody brought things to their proper place for the recorded show. Lights blazed down on the glittering set, leaving the audience in comparative darkness. One of the men with a clipboard checked his watch, then made a swinging motion at the cameramen with his free arm and counted down from seven seconds.

A busty woman with a matching navy blue skirt and coat smiled into the camera when the countdown ended. “After two calling card incidents and a huge police sweep through Shibuya, we’re proud to bring you Senior Political Analyst Hashimoto-sensei, who taught Psychology at Hitotsubashi University for eleven years and consulted on more than thirty criminal profiling cases.”

A wrinkled man with snow-white hair and a wiry moustache gave a brief bow in his seat. “Please, I’m not a teacher anymore. It’s my honor to provide my psychology expertise to police investigations.”

The cute announcer smiled. “And our returning young guest is Akechi-kun, a high school senior and consultant for the police. He’s famous – or maybe infamous – for disputing the cause of quite a few mental breakdowns, and claiming links between mental disturbance cases and Apathy Syndrome.” She paused to look straight into the main camera with a smirk. “Let me tell you, girls, the junior detective’s even easier on the eyes in person than in photos. It’s not just his work with investigations all over Honshu that’s made him stunningly popular.”

Akechi Goro brushed his hair away from his brow, catching the light just enough to leave a glint. “Oh, how embarrassing. I’d much rather be remembered for my investigation linking the train conductor breakdown in April and an almost identical mental shutdown in Chief Financial Officer Nakamura of Duckburger. And I would like to point out that Apathy Syndrome, despite its regression ten years ago, has been documented prior to the more infamous outbreak in 2001.”

“Talk of the Phantom Thief”,” the announcer interrupted, “has taken the internet by storm. The yakuza boss Kaneshiro turned himself in shortly after calling cards were left by the Phantom Thief.”

Akechi nodded, his posture relaxing but something about his gaze into the camera sharpening. “Indeed, a very theatrical move indicative of a need for public attention. I have to wonder why they would resort to such grandstanding if they really are capable of stealing ‘distorted desires’ as the calling cards claimed.”

The professor crossed his arms, his dark, striped business suit creasing. “When a yakuza boss is dethroned, he is most often pushed past the point of no return by a rival yakuza clan. It isn’t even unexpected for neighboring yakuza to keep quiet about their involvement in it as they move in to seize territory for themselves.”

The announcer straightened her coat. “So you’re saying that Kaneshiro turning himself in was motivated by encroaching rivals instead of the mysterious Phantom Thief?”

Hashimoto scoffed. “Ma’am, I am a rationalist. The notion of being able to steal a heart is simply absurd.”

Akechi let a faint frown slip through his cheery façade for just a moment. “It is unusual, but is it not the same claim made in the calling cards targeting Kamoshida Suguru in April?”

Hashimoto kept his eyes on the center camera instead of turning his head to Akechi. “Perhaps, but if some locals spied Kamoshida and learned of his recurring abuse and sexual misconduct, they could have simply been lucky about posting those cards before he broke down.”

Akechi pursed his lips, gears whirling behind his eyes. “I cannot falsify such a hypothesis with the limited evidence we have, but neither should we dismiss the possibility out of hand. It is a mistake to theorize before you have data. That fosters the temptation to twist facts to fit theories instead of theories to facts.”

The announcer beamed a bright, fake smile into the cameras. “There’s been a lot of debate online about whether the Phantom Thief is real. And who he is.” She shot a sly look at the center camera. “Or if it’s a mysterious she.”

Several males in the audience hooted.

Ann leaned back in her chair, a smile on her face as she clasped her hands over her knee.

The announcer turned back to the show guests. “The Phantom Thief caught quite the imagination of the internet even if the mainstream populace has yet to come to any conclusions.”

Akechi’s eyes narrowed and he looked into the camera. “Many of his supporters claim he is a hero of justice. I would like to believe that, but the Phantom Thief is engaging in vigilantism where he acts as judge and jury without oversight. The fact that he has not overtly killed anybody yet is possibly the only reason the police have not mobilized a manhunt.”

Hashimoto gave one sharp nod. “Quite. We have a criminal justice system for a reason. It is not just to punish offenders, but also to have people accountable. Even the police and judges are subject to review. But a criminal skulking about in the dark?”

The announcer settled on the professor. “Some people, especially the victims of Kamoshida, claim the Phantom Thief helps the confessors abandon their evil ways.”

Hashimoto’s dark eyes narrowed. “The human mind is not a switch to be toggled, it is like a city. Complex and ever changing, but built on a firm foundation. The only means of changing a person’s behavior over such a short period of time is some very brutal form of coercion.”

Ryuji, sitting next to Akira, let a low growl rumble out of his throat. “Those shit-heads don’t know nothin’.”

Akira snapped a Shh! at him.

The announcer gave a fake smile. “So tell me, if you met the Phantom Thief, what would you do?”

Hashimoto sniffed. “You can’t meet something that doesn’t exist. You might as well ask what I would do if I met Santa Claus.”

Akechi steepled his fingers together on his lap. “Based on the similarity of the calling cards and the change of hearts of the two known cases, it does seem more likely to me that there is a Phantom Thief. However, especially with my current contract with the police, I would have to arrest him for trial in a court of law. He would face far less consequence than Kaneshiro, but justice is over everyone or it is over no one.”

The crowd stirred, but before the murmurs could grow to shouting a ‘quiet’ sign beside the camera lit up.

The professor gave a brief, subtle nod. “Quite, quite. If somebody is coercing those people. It’s retribution, not justice.”

“Still a smaller measure than any one of the hundreds of crimes Kaneshiro has committed.” Akechi’s eyes narrowed, his face animating for the first time as he said, “However, both the freedom to choose their own actions as well as the responsibility to own up to the consequences rest on every member of a healthy nation. Programming makes robots, not people.”

The announcer clapped her hands over her crossed knees. “What a charismatic philosopher. Kaneshiro was suspected of participation in many crimes in Shibuya. Even the earlier detractors of the Phantom Thief seems to think he is a hero of sorts, if a dark one.”

Hashimoto waggled a finger as if he brandished a dangerous weapon with the gesture. “But we can not let whimsy dictate our actions. In the unlikely event a Phantom Thief exists, he is certainly a criminal just the same as the victims so far.”

Murmuring spread through the audience, one voice standing out from the others, “He’s got a point. Who’s got more to gain by goin’ after a criminal than another criminal?”

Ryuji clenched his fists.

Akira slapped a hand over Ryuji’s, his fingers clamping down even as a faint growl leaked out of his own throat.

The announcer brandished another expected smile at the camera. “I could listen to you for days, but now it’s getting to the time for our audience participation. Everyone, please press your button if you think the Phantom Thief is just!” Clicking proceeded for several seconds, before an on-stage LED screen lit up. “Twenty-five percent. Your thoughts, Hashimoto-san?”

“I think all this Phantom Thief mania is only distracting the already burdened police department with the search for the culprit who is actually behind these suspicious ‘changes of heart’.”

Looking down from the on-stage screen, Akechi focused on the announcer. “I’m surprised the response is that high, given the number of adults who share Hashimoto-san’s hesitation to even believe he exists.”

The announcer picked up a microphone and walked into the aisle through the audience, stopping at the second row. “What do you think of the Phantom Thief?”

The snaggle-toothed man looked surprised for a moment. “Well, it makes sense that he’s a criminal just like those two men. I mean, criminals wouldn’t hesitate to bribe or blackmail, right?”

The announcer gave an obligatory nod and paced near Akira before stopping and holding the microphone out to him. “What about you? What do you think of the Phantom Thief?”

Remembering Makoto’s words in the bank, Akira straightened. “They bring justice where even the law can’t reach.” He glared at Hashimoto in particular. “Or fails to.”

Akechi clasped his gloved hands, a lightening of his posture. “What surprising conviction.”

The announcer turned back to the stage and spoke into her microphone. “Quite a turn away from your opinion that the Thief should be charged and tried.”

Hashimoto pointed a finger at Akira’s general area. “And if that friend next to you had a sudden change of heart, would the Thief still be a hidden hero?”

Akira’s fists clenched and he fought to keep a snarl off his face since the two wing cameras held on him. “The Phantom Thief targets criminals, not casual citizens.”

Akechi smiled, and Akira could’ve sworn he saw sorting and filing happening behind those bright brown eyes. “No hesitation.”

Hashimoto sneered. “The innocence of youth.” He looked to the junior investigator. “Before we discuss whether the Phantom Thief is just or not, may I bring up another point I believe has received too little attention?”

Akechi nodded as the announcer returned to her seat on the stage.

How does he change hearts?” Hashimoto paused to straighten his dark sleeves. “If a hardened yakuza boss can overnight decide he has wronged the city, what happens when the Phantom Thief decides that the president of the local bank is being too selective when choosing who to approve loans for?”

Ryuji’s lips bared his teeth and he snapped not quite deep enough under his breath, “Who the shit cares how we’re doing it? Ain’t makin’ two bad guys confess proof enough the Phantom Thieves are just?”

Akira took off his glasses to rub at the bridge of his nose and sighed.

Akechi straightened his gloves. “As I have already brought up, the Phantom Thief only appeared to target well-known criminals. How can we be sure the Phantom Thief is just when he only targets publicly convenient criminals and makes grandiose public claims like a needy actor? If his aim is truly justice, why hasn’t he targeted somebody behind a ring of fraud or some such hidden activity that strikes hundreds of vulnerable people every day? All we have seen so far is public grandstanding.”

Hashimoto gave a sharp nod. “Even Kamoshida appears to have been an open secret maintained through fear. The only question is how much the faculty cooperated to hush things. Their principal received ten years for a mountain of conspiracy and obstruction charges. And the claims that Kaneshiro had a change of heart instead of fleeing from rival yakuza. Ha!”

The audience burst into muttered speculation. Ryuji curled his fists and started to stand before Akira clamped a hand on the runner’s nearest wrist. That ‘Quiet’ sign lit again.

Akechi said, “Extracting a confession was used by people who thought they were doing good things – going back to the magistrates under Toyotomi who tortured Christians into confessions of sedition because they were afraid of losing the Japanese way of life. They showed the world how weak and fearful that Japan was. We cannot let ourselves go back to that. Forcing a confession is not justice.”

Akira settled his glasses, his mind lost in thought to the end of the filming. It wasn’t until Ryuji stood that the transfer student realized the audience was dispersing.

Ryuji led the transfer student and Ann to the side. “Hey, buddy, I’m sorry about that back there. I know I’m s’posed to keep a low profile. I just couldn’t stand how those two jerks made us sound like baddies.”

Ann crossed her arms and shifted her weight to the foot closer to the transfer student. “Hashimoto-sensei might be like most adults out there, but Akechi hit kinda close to home.”

“Yeah,” Akira said. “I haven’t even been in the Catholic Church for long, but one of the most sacred things that exists is free will. God doesn’t manipulate human free will, even when we do wrong things. We act and have to pay for sins.”

Ryuji crossed one foot over the other. “C’mon. If we hadn’t gone after Kamoshida, he’d still be abusin’ kids at Shujin and playin’ creepo at Ann. Nobody stood up for you, and if it wasn’t for us nobody’d have stood up for Suzui-san.” He elbowed the transfer student. “And you’d have been kicked out just ‘cause he didn’t wanna give you a chance. Now it’s like Shujin’s alive.”

Morgana looked out from the satchel hanging on Akira’s shoulder. “Right, Reaper. He can say all he wants about justice from the outside, but he wasn’t there to see how bad Kamoshida was, or how things improved after his change of heart.” When a beat of silence passed without response from the transfer student, he batted at Akira’s ear to make him twitch. “It’s not like we killed anyone. Even Kaneshiro chose to turn himself in.”

Ryuji crossed his feet over left over right. “Yeah, man.” He crossed his feet right over left.

Akira looked at Ryuji’s footing and sighed. “Dude, just go.”

The track star scrambled for the bathroom.

Ann shifted her weight away, a frown on her face. “I can’t say Ryuji’s wrong, but I notice you’ve been quiet too. What’s on your mind?”

Akira uncrossed his arms and straightened his school jacket sleeves. “I was just thinking about what Akechi-san said about extracting confessions. I remember Father Motoori mentioning that in Europe, they had inquisitions that were about as bad as the forced confessions Akechi mentioned. Free will is a sacred thing in the Church, and with Kamoshida and Kaneshiro… how different is what we’re doing?” He glanced to the team leader poking his head out of the satchel. “We may be fighting in a battle in the center of the mind, but isn’t it still fighting them until they say what we want?”

Morgana’s ears curled around like he wanted to hiss. “I don’t think so. When we were down in the vaults in Kaneshiro’s bank, didn’t you say that you saw a bunch of his memories?”

“Mm-hm.” Akira nodded.

“Didn’t you say there was something weird in there with him?”

Akira held his chin, thinking for a moment. “A voice talking to Kaneshiro. Can’t figure out who it was, though, because most of the memories had all different people.”

Ann checked the time on her phone, then slipped it back into her purse. “Well, it’s getting about time to get on the bus.” She trotted away through the fast deserted studio room.

Akechi, still in his formal button-down dress, stepped down from the stage and slipped around the camera to close on the transfer student.

Akira smirked. “Well look at the little ambusher, springing to the attack at last.”

Akechi gave a show smile. “Same as during the show. You certainly didn’t hold back.”

“To hell with walking on eggshells to play politically correct.” Akira crossed his arms, scanning the junior investigator for signs of his real motives. “If I see it, I call it. Good or bad.”

Akechi’s smile faded, though his stance loosened. “You’re rather blunt, but nobody could accuse you of not being genuine. I’m glad I was able to catch you today. I wanted to thank you face-to-face for the debate you gave.” His smile vanished and he let out a brief breath. “I was expecting a little more actual debate and less steered conversation. Advancement cannot occur without both thesis and antithesis.”

Akira’s face twisted in thought. “Richard Fenyman?”

Akechi chuckled, hints of a real smile about his eyes. “You are well read. I was thinking of Hegel, myself, but I suppose Fenyman said essentially the same thing even if his focus was on physics.” He let out a heavier breath, his shoulders falling. “So few people are willing to consider the possibilities and grapple with a problem.”

Akira shrugged. “Managers are used to being listened to, and workers are used to being told what to do. For all the praise of duty to society, when that gets out of hand we have a society of living dead.”

Akechi let out a mirthful chuckle, but there was a piercing quality to his gaze. “That’s certainly one way of putting it. I realize we may sometimes be on opposite sides of an issue, but would you mind if I stopped by a little more often for some coffee and conversation?”

Adjusting the satchel straps, Akira stretched out his shoulder. “I would say yes, but I’m trying to get out more and find a better-paying job. A few of my friends have been asking for help, and I try to be there to help them out of trouble spots when I can.”

Akechi held an analytic gaze for a moment. “A noble sentiment.” He reached into his pocket and handed over a business card. “If you have a moment, feel free to give me a call. Or maybe I’ll see you over a cup of that fine coffee.”

Flipping the card over, Akira turned it back and pocketed the card. “Hm. You did point me to a good investigative journalist. I suppose I can lend an ear a few times.”

Akechi beamed a convincing but still show smile. “Glad to hear it.” He turned and paced through a door against the back-stage area.

Morgana stuck his head out of the bag, watching Akechi’s retreating figure. “I still don’t think we can trust him.”

Akira headed to the door out. “Who ever said anything about trusting him? There’s a difference between leaving the door open and leaving the porch light on.”

Morgana blinked, raising an eyebrow. “What?”

“It’s called networking. You need to lay the groundwork for people to want to do favors for you in the future.” Akira pushed open the door and joined the formation for last head-count.

Friday, 10 June 2016
Late Afternoon
Train bound for Shibuya

The regular procession of lights and sway of the train over the tracks lent a sense of rhythm in the world around him. Pressing back into the not-padded-enough seat, Akira slid a rook over and hit ‘End Turn’. Moments later, a pop-up window informed him the opponent surrendered and it dropped him to the lobby. While Ryuji was in the same train car, the TV station trip still lingering in his mind and Akira wanted to get the whole group on the problem. [Have you guys thought about what Akechi-san said?]

It took a few moments before the class president and Ryuji joined the chat room. The latter let out loud growl sounding over the muted conversations in the train car. [The f, man. I just made myself forget about him and now I'm pissed off again.]

A ding played as Ann joined the room, and after a few moments dancing triple dots indicated typing. [I was more worried about Hashimoto. It's almost worse than being discredited.]

Makoto sent next, [What is worse than being discredited?]

Akira sent a quick explanation. [We went to the TV station for the social studies trip. They filmed a debate about the Phantom Thieves.] He sent her the network and initial broadcast time, which looked to be several hours from now.

Makoto’s icon appeared at the bottom, dancing dots there for several seconds until Akira imagined her awkwardly trying out response after response and deleting it. [Well, there's probably no good to come from complaining about it. Plenty of students thanked me for getting Kaneshiro off their backs and there's going to be a lot of people who won't die of drug overdoses now. Those are real lives that we changed in a real way.]

[Thanks, Prez!] Ryuji sent.

Ann sent, [The police are going to be busy for a long time with all those gangers and drug dealers, huh, Makoto-san?]

Trying to keep his topic in the conversation, Akira sent, [I just can't get it out of my mind. Even if Akechi wasn't totally right, he had a lot of tough points. Justice and Free Will aren't things to take lightly.]

Makoto’s icon blinked at the bottom of the chat. [I think it's a good thing that you don't take them lightly.]

[Man,] Ryuji texted, [I thought it was going to be awesome getting another chick in the Phantom Thieves, but you two are just party poppers.]

A beat passed before he sent again, [Poppers.]

Then another loud growl from across the train car before he sent, [Dam you, autocorrect!]

Ann’s icon blinked at the bottom of the chat. [They've got a point, Ryuji. Kaneshiro forced other people to do what he wanted. Just because they're criminals, does that mean we can do the same thing?]

Ryuji wasted no time arguing. [It isn't the same thing at all, Ann! Kaneshiro had cops in his pocket. Who'd have knocked him down a peg if it wasn't us?]

[Kamoshida, too.] Makoto texted. [I was right here for all those years and buried my head because I was so concerned with living up to everyone's expectations that I couldn't even conceive of disrupting things until you all changed his heart. It happened right under my nose, and I did nothing even after Kiriko-san became a husk overnight. Losing the student council president election to her would have been well worth having spoken up.]

Akira pursed his lips. Lacking anything encouraging to say, he tried to skip around the point. [Time goes forward, not backward, Niijima-san.]

Ryuji popped up next. [F yeah! I think.]

Morgana’s claws dug into Akira’s shoulder when the train jostled. “Remember what you yourself said at the TV station, Joker. Sometimes, the Law itself isn’t enough to reach wrongdoers. We’re all doing what we are because of justice that goes beyond law.”

Akira mumbled, “We can also act through channels no one else can see, just like Kaneshiro.”

The guide trapped in a cat’s body huffed. “But we vote. As long as all of us have to agree on a course of action, we won’t fall into the same trap as the despicable people we change.” He smirked. “Besides, you have my brilliance leading you.”

Akira rolled his eyes.

Ryuji sent one last message before leaving group chat. [Don't worry, Ann, everyone. It doesn't matter if it's Akechi or that stuck-up professor. We'll show them all who's right.]

Chapter 52: June 10th, Bank Party

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Friday, 10 June 2016
Evening
Shibuya, Underground

Stepping off the train, Akira pushed out of the stop and up to the walkway where more people churned back and forth but at least had dead zones to stop for a breath. With Makoto still dealing with testing, Ryuji and Ann both still seething from the battering Hashimoto and Akechi gave the Phantom Thieves, and Mishima collating information from the Phansite, he had little to do but study. Maybe somebody disconnected could help clear his head. He slipped his phone out and called Hifumi.

Long rings plagued his ear before she at last picked up, speaking in a low hush, “Akira, I—”

“Pay attention, girl!” a woman’s voice snapped from somewhere in the background on her side. “That bottle would smudge your lipstick. You can have some water after this next set.” Sharp clapping echoed in an enclosed space. “Makeup, are we trying to make her look like a skeleton or the face of shogi?”

“I…” Hifumi cracked, a tremor of too many things piled on top of her in it. “I’m sorry.” The line went dead.

A frown twisted his face and Akira slipped his phone into his pocket. “Whoever’s jerking her around needs a good slap across the face.” His conscious mind knew it was illogical to act like he had any right to Hifumi’s time. She wasn’t his family or his classmate no matter how pleasant her company was. She wasn’t actually his shogi partner no matter how thrilling their games were. And she wasn’t his teacher no matter how brilliant she was.

Akira let out a harsh breath.

Morgana poked his head out of the satchel. “What’s up, Joker?”

Akira scowled. “No tutor today. So much for catching up on math.” He turned for the door and pushed into foot traffic to get out of the Teikyuu Building. Halfway across station square, two men shouted at each other like animals baying for blood.

“Selfish bastard!” a nasal voice yelled.

Turning to spot the disturbance, he noticed a man in a three piece suit grabbing another in a grey sweater-vest with both fists, getting the same treatment in kind. His gravely voice snapped over the quieting crowd, “Selfish monkey, you just want to drag everyone back so they’re all as bad as you!”

That politician making speeches came around the old-style train car mockup and thundered, “That’s enough!” Not stopping at words, he shoulder-checked both, driving them apart. Once they both had their feet steady under them, he snapped at the suited man still clenching his teeth. “The solution to society’s apathy isn’t to replace it with rage. That kind of wild energy can only harm Japan.”

Three Piece Suit pointed at Sweater Vest. “It’s communists like him harming Japan.”

He gestured his hands out at the station square, one of them pointing almost straight at the statue of Hachiko. “Just look at you two. While you were so focused on hurting each other, you took this square intended for all Japanese away from everyone. And what benefit did you achieve from it?”

Both aggressors glared at each other, but either the politicians’ words were sinking in or the number of cell phones up taking video were reminding them of shame.

The politician carried on, his voice carrying over the whole crowd but without the ear-piercing volume Hashida-sensei used. “All you have done is inflict scuffs and bruises on yourselves. Whatever party you espouse, neither one of you have honored them by your actions here. Even when not your party, the people of Japan are not your enemy.”

Sweater Vest took a few steps closer to gather a few fallen yellow fliers with red ink, but gave Suit a wide margin as he rushed into the crowd in the direction of central street. Three Piece Suit himself glared, but never quite met anybody’s eyes as he descended into the subways.

Morgana gawked from the transfer student’s shoulder. “He’s impressive.”

From the sounds, the crowd had the same sentiment, but once the possibility of fists flying in public was gone the circle disintegrated and the video-takers moved on.

Waiting just long enough for the team leader to retreat to the satchel, Akira ran through the crowd to catch up with the politician before he got back up on his little wood box. “Say, uh… that was really good. You weren’t afraid to get involved bodily, but sent two dudes in a fist fight walking without having to put one in the hospital. Name’s Akira.”

“Toranosuke,” he said with a smile. Against the transfer student’s expectations, it even added a glint to his eye. “It’s a delight to have made a positive impression on someone so young.” He stopped, eyes making a quick scan over the student. “I recognize you…” He snapped his fingers. “The beef bowl shop a couple weeks ago. You were running ragged in there. I’m sorry to have been a contribution to that.”

“Oh, no, you were the most patient person there,” Akira said. “It’s just a really demanding job.”

Peering out from the satchel, Morgana let out a breath of awe. “Ten seconds and he’s even got you trying to say nice things about him. This guy’s good.”

“Shh!” Akira hissed at the diminutive team leader. He re-focused on the politician. “You, uh, really have a talent with words.”

Toranosuke let out a self-deprecating chuckle. “Oh, I’m afraid I’m not nearly so talented. Any ability I do have comes from many years of hard practice. But what can one do when you fall but to pick yourself up?” When the student stood silent, Toranosuke asked, “Is politics a field you have any interest in?”

Akira’s mouth opened to give an automatic no, but Hifumi and Morgana both emphasized his need to move beyond his old boundaries. He scratched behind an ear. “I would have said no earlier… I hate crowds and I don’t like speaking to people. But I can’t avoid it, and trying just makes me a liability to my friends.” He gave a nod towards where Sweater Vest walked off. “But you have it figured out. I want in on that.”

Toranosuke gave a small, thin-lipped smile and brushed his white-gloved hands together. “Well, legally I can’t employ a student. But I certainly wouldn’t want to stop a young man wanting to better himself. Especially if he’s willing to assist a few of my speeches.”

Akira squared his shoulders. “I’ll do my best. What do you need, perimeter security? I can get a bat in ten minutes.”

Morgana poked up out of Akira’s school satchel. “He’s even getting you to volunteer to help him? I should start taking notes.”

“He’s why we came this way,” Akira growled under his breath at the team leader.

Toranosuke’s eyes widened and those white gloved hands came up. “Good heavens, no, boy. There’s too much of that outside United Future Party rallies. Just hold up my sign and this old man won’t have to worry about it falling over. Would you mind telling me your name and contact information? I’ll send you the release forms.” He drew his smart phone.

Akira took out his phone. “Kurusu Akira. But I would prefer to go by Akira.” Their phones synced, and a moment later the politician sent a consent form.

As the transfer student filled it out, the politician introduced himself. “Well, nice to meet you. I am Toranosuke Yoshida.”

Akira paused. “No kidding? I knew a Yoshida at my last school. Did a ton of stuff together.”

Nodding, the politician gave the kind of nod indicating he understood but wanted to be the one talking. “I used to be a member of the diet, but that was a long time ago. I haven’t won an election back in for almost twenty years.” He rubbed the thin hair remaining on the back of his head. “Look at me now, I’m indulging in negativity before I’ve even begun. No solution comes of pessimism.” His phone dinged when the student sent back the consent form and he gave a polite smile. “Well, on to business, Akira-kun.”

Stepping up to the box, a handful of people stopped to lean against the planters as he began. Few others stopped, leaving the chaotic stream of people and noise assaulting his ears. But when Toranosuke stood up on that box ahead of him, they seemed a little smaller and further away. His speech went on for two hours, but his resolve held fast despite repeated hecklers.

Akira’s arms grew tired and he couldn’t even hold the sign up over his face by the time the politician stepped down.

Toranosuke dabbed at his forehead with a sweat rag and leaned against the car mockup. “So, Akira-kun. What did you think of tonight?”

Akira bit his tongue when the first thought to spring to mind is that he would have preferred shogi. “Well, you handled the hecklers without having to tackle anyone. Even to that dumbass who said nothing mattered until you were elected.” He leaned the sign against the mockup. “Seriously, who’s going to get elected without a party?”

Toranosuke uncapped a water bottle and sipped. Despite the slump to his shoulders, the upturn at the corners of his mouth seemed genuine. “Well, election season proper is still several months away, but this is a make or break for me. More people are noticing me, but some are starting to view me as a fixture of Station Square like Hachiko there,” he gestured his water bottle at the statue. “If I can get some serious notice, I might finally get elected where I can do some good. If not, I fear I may become a part of the terrain.” He looked to the student. “You think my speech today did a good job on that?”

Akira straightened his glasses and let his arm flop back to his side. “Well… there’s really nothing controversial about ‘the best interests of all’. Nothing specific to it either. Doesn’t sound like a promise to do anything.”

Toranosuke let out a breath, but despite his eyes staring out they looked sharp as ever. “There are many things this nation needs if it wants to do more than survive the near future. Infrastructure, education opportunities…”

“Judicial reform for a system better than the Gestapo at putting people behind bars, as long as they’re not rich,” Akira said, his lips tensing. At the politician’s arched eyebrow, he cleared his throat and looked out at Hachiko. “My old bastard was an authoritarian. I spent a lot of my childhood finding arguments against the kind of society he wanted to make.”

“You are a man of many surprises.” Toranosuke took another sip, then capped his bottle. “I hope to see you again next month.”

Akira shouldered his school satchel and headed to the subway lines to Yongen. “You’ve been quiet for a while, Morgana. What’d you think?”

Those blue eyes stared up at him from within the bag. “I think you ran into a man who has a real way with words. This’ll be good for you.”

Saturday, 11 June 2016
After School
Ginza Sushi Bar

The dark wood paneling gave a soft, intimate feel despite the open layout. The last time the Phantom Thieves celebrated, everybody Akira saw was either in a fancy suit or dress. Here a wider variety of suits and dresses represented the middle class splurging on a rare treat. It made him feel less like an ill-fitting transplant, though all of them still being in their Shujin uniforms helped. Having the group gathered around a table in a booth reminded him of the homey feel of Leblanc, adding to the relaxed feel of the place.

Ryuji swallowed, letting out a pleased hum. “I never thought flounder could taste so good. Man, I can see why sushi chefs gotta be in trainin’ for years. This texture’s amazeballs.”

Akira closed his eyes and took in a deep breath. “Please don’t say that word again, Ryuji.”

“Yes, thank you,” Makoto said from her seat next to Ryuji. She looked across the table to the class representative picking at his food with little energy. “Everything okay, Mishima-kun?”

He pulled his head up, but his back remained hunched. “I was just thinking… not that Kaneshiro’s confession isn’t a definite victory… it’s just that I can’t get over the bitter taste in my mouth from that KFTV segment with Hashimoto-sensei calling the Phantom Thieves just another criminal. Is that really how the rest of the world views us?”

Morgana stared at the saucer on the seat in front of him. “Well, we’ve changed dozens of hearts, but the wider world only knows about the two we left calling cards for. As long as we keep on changing the hearts of the corrupt, the world will come to understand. You’ll see!”

Makoto’s back straightened. “You’re right. We can’t let ourselves get disheartened by the limits of others’ vision. Before I met you guys, I was doubting that there even was true justice out there. Now I know for sure I’m part of it.”

“Speaking of patience,” Morgana said, sniffing at the air, “where’s my fatty tuna?”

Ann swallowed her last bite of her crab sushi, then flashed a grateful smile at the waiter stopping at their table to deposit another rectangular tray of elegant sushi rolls. “Right here.” She plucked one for herself, then took another and set it on the team leader’s plate.

Morgana gave her a smile. “Not just getting delicious fish, but being graced with it by Lady Ann’s hand. This day couldn’t get any better.”

Makoto sat back just a little in her booth seat, her face twitching like she wanted just a little more distance from Morgana. When the class representative shot her a questioning look, she tried to wave it off. “Anyway, do we have any idea what we’re going to do next?”

“Video games!” Ryuji said, pumping his hand in the air. “We used to play Mario Kart after track meets. We tote gotta have a tournament, just us!” He looked around and lowered his hand. “Oh, but there ain’t nearly enough room for all’a us at my place.”

Akira swallowed his bite of fatty tuna sushi. A dark part of his mind whispered that these good times couldn’t last, that Hashimoto and Akechi’s condemnation should’ve been reminder enough, that he’d mess something up if it didn’t come from the outside. But he didn’t want this day to end. Making it through a school day without anybody yelling at him, only a handful of people whispering about him as if he were a leper, sharing delicious food with the best people he ever met… the only thing missing would’ve been a couple of the nice people from the parish. Maybe Big K, just to see what the tailor thought of him now. “There’s plenty of room at my pad.”

Setting down his glass of water, Mishima looked at him. “Your pad?”

Akira rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, it’s basically a crash pad for as long as I’m on probation, but you guys are welcome any time you want.”

Mishima gave a hesitant smile. “That’s very generous. I just hope you guys get the recognition you deserve some day.”

Ryuji finished a drink and brought his glass to the table hard enough to splash water back up at him. “One day the whole world will know how awesome the Phantom Thieves are!”

A woman walking by tucked her brown dress closer. “Ugh. I’m hearing about hoodlums everywhere.”

Ann gave the fakest laugh Akira ever heard. “Yeah, that’s all we are. Huge fans of the Phantom Thief.”

The woman rolled her eyes and sped up her pace into another section of the restaurant.

Makoto elbowed Ryuji and all the others joined in her glare. “Idiot!” she hissed. “Have some awareness of where you are, Sakamoto.”

The track star deflated. “Sorry dudes. I di’n’ mean nothin’.”

Morgana cleared his throat. “People are starting to look at us. Let’s make this next roll our last one and go for that change in venue.”

Saturday, 11 June 2016
Evening
Yongen, Leblanc Loft

A blue shell slammed into Luigi’s cart, allowing Yoshi to zoom ahead. Ryuji cursed, boosting back into the track but not in time to keep from falling back three places.

When Yoshi crossed the finish line, Ann threw her fists in the air. “Woo! Still the undefeated champion.” She threw herself into a victory dance, skirt shaking and breasts jiggling.

Akira and Mishima both blushed and looked away.

Makoto, having lost to Ryuji the last round, continued browsing the books on the transfer student’s bookshelf. “You’ve got a lot of books on psychology. Is it a family heritage?”

Glad to have an excuse to divert his attention from his sexy, dancing teammate, Akira stood to join her by the bookshelf moved to jut out into the room. “Not really. Well, I guess kind of. My old bastard’s a neuropsychologist, so it’s not like I had a choice but to pick up on things. Most of these books were already up here, collecting dust. For all I know, they’re remnants from whoever owned this place before Sakura-san moved in.”

Makoto took off her braided hairband to brush at her hair. “I know what you mean about wanting to break from the family line but feeling like you can’t. Big Sis went into law, but I always looked to my father no matter how much mom took care of us.” Her eyelid twitched and she took out her phone to check the time, then glanced at the purple light coming in through the windows. “It’s been fun, everyone, but I better get home. I didn’t tell Sae that I’d be out anywhere, so I don’t want to be late.”

Standing up from the chess board he was sharing with the transfer student, Mishima nodded and checked his phone. “Me too. I sent dad a text that I’d be eating with friends after school, but he hasn’t wanted me out late since Kamoshida’s confession hit the TV news.”

Ann pouted, swinging the wii-mote on its strap around her wrist. “C’mon, just one more.”

Ryuji sat down in a chair next to the couch and wiped sweat from his forehead. “At least you had a rest. I’m as sweaty as the end of a run.”

Akira gestured his chin at the windows. “There’s showers and everything at the public baths right across the street.”

Ann pouted, but took the wii-mote controller off her wrist. “I’ll take a rain check. I only use public baths if I can change into clean clothes afterwards.”

Ryuji shrugged and stepped aside to let her grab her bag and leave. He turned a sweaty grin to the transfer student. “I’m the same way, but I hit the gym so often I always got a change in my bag. Let’s go.”

Akira grabbed a change of clothes for himself, then a pair of towels for the two of them. He waved to the team leader. “Catch you later.”

Saturday, 11 June 2016
Late Evening
Yongen, Bath House

Ryuji stretched out his hands to revel in the sheer amount of space. The bamboo siding gave a natural feel contrasting the stainless steel in the scrub area. The runner took in a deep breath. “Man, you are sooo lucky to live like, five seconds away from a bath house. Huge bathtubs are great.”

Akira let himself sway back and forth in the hot water, enjoying the relative silence with the runner the only other one in the men’s side. “Except when it’s crowded. I’m kind of shocked every day at all the luxuries in Tokyo.”

Ryuji tilted his head. “Whaddya mean?”

Akira stopped, letting the faint current run over him and took in a deep breath of the warm, moist air. With his glasses sitting on his folded-up clothes, the imprints in his nose felt hot. “Back when I was stuck with my old bastard, we only had those group-style showers. I always waited until real late to take mine because I didn’t want anybody else’s water on me.”

Chuckling, Ryuji looked Akira over. “Heh. Glad you’re over that.” Pausing to glance left, then right, he swam a little closer. “Hey, you an’ the girls’ve been spendin’ a lotta time together, right? Which one’s more your type…Ann or Makoto?”

Akira swallowed, glad the already hot water gave him cover for being red-faced. “Well, Ann’s a very reliable teammate. Even when she doesn’t know what her goal is, she never loses sight of her morals.” Pausing, his throat felt tight and the runner held an askance look. “Also very good with English.”

Ryuji slapped a wet palm over his face. “C’mon, can’t you act like a guy our age? This is the prime time of our lives to check out babes. Even if you’re on a diet, there ain’t nothin’ wrong with checkin’ the menu.”

Crossing his arms, Akira felt shaken by how much his friend sounded like his mother. But he would never admit how much sense it made. “I’m not like that!”

To his credit, Ryuji didn’t even flinch. “Dude, I see you blushin’ around Ann. It makes tote sense. Even if she’s kinda domineerin’, the hair an’ body make up for it. There ain’t nothin’ wrong with thinkin’ a girl is hot.”

Akira turned away, but couldn’t put together an argument as the cognitive Ann in Kamoshida’s castle sprang to mind. He’d be repeating Hail Marys for Father Sugiyama for sure.

Ryuji reached up and scratched at his scalp for a moment, his eyes narrowing in thought. “Uh, well. My old man wasn’t the best pa, but he at least gave me the same talk as ma. Bein’ attracted ta girls is how all guys are.” His eyes rolled up for a fraction of a second. “C’mon, seriously. Somebody had to talk ‘bout this.”

Father Motoori’s reading of Genesis sprang to his mind. “Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh. She shall be called Woman, for she was made from Man. That is why a man leaves his father and mother…” The blush returned as he recited the rest of the verse in his mind.

Ryuji blinked. “Uh, yeah. Like that, I guess.” He slipped through the water to sit next to Akira, his trademark grin returning. “So whaddya think of Ann? As a girl? Like, the first time you laid eyes on her.” His boldness and focus made the transfer student’s protestations seem petty. The energy in his friend drew out a need to share something normal for once, and the runner seemed so certain what that was.

Averting his gaze, Akira moved his hands so the runner couldn’t see him getting stiff. “My heart skipped a beat when I first saw her standing under the awning that rainy morning. She was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen.” When Ryuji gave a triumphant laugh, he glared. “And she isn’t domineering, she’s confident. She’s honest. She wears her heart on her sleeve, knows it, and goes with it. She and Shiho are quite the duo of friends.”

Ryuji let out a proud laugh and gave a playful punch as his grin grew. “I gotcha.” He slipped closer and elbowed Akira underwater again. “Whaddabout Makoto? She’s tough as nails if that whole motorbike of awesome was anythin’ to go by. You should’a seen her throw this ganger right in front of Kaneshiro. Smart too. An’ you can’t say she ain’t a looker.”

A lower portion of Akira’s brain understood what the runner was getting at, but as easy as it was to imagine Ann as sexy and exotic, he couldn’t imagine Makoto in the same sense. It wasn’t her threatening the only friends in his life, her selflessness in the bank balanced that out. But something about her felt too much like him. “I can’t really think of Makoto as being… available.”

“For real?” Ryuji leaned closer, scrutinizing the transfer student like a doctor struggling to discern symptoms of an exotic disease. “I’d’a thought one’a them would be your type. From the way Ann an’ Morgana went on, you an’ Makoto were on the same wavelength all through the bank.” His brows knit together. “An’ it ain’t like she’s goin’ steady with anyone.”

“We’re not together, Ryuji,” Akira said, his gaze hooded but body relaxing in the hot water. Even as he said it, he couldn’t explain why.

The track star clapped his hands together underwater, causing a shimmer in the water surface above. “Aha! You got a girl from your old town!”

Akira sat back against the side of the tub. “I was never close enough for anyone to leave me.” He wrapped his arms around his knees. “Probably better that way. Nobody to answer to, but nobody to get caught up in my morass of problems.”

Ryuji punched the transfer student in the arm. “C’mon. Every dude’s got a type. Like, for me, she’s gotta be nice. There’s no bonerkill faster than a mean girl.” He elbowed the transfer student. “So what’s your type?”

Sitting up, Akira looked over the runner. His breath caught in his throat, then he breathed in and the tickle grew into a laugh. “You’re trying to play the personality guy? The only thing you ever talked about was girls’ body parts.”

“Tch.” Ryuji waved off the statement. “That’s just how you tell the good ones apart. Ain’t like it’s worth datin’ a girl who’s gonna bite your head off.”

Akira leaned against the side of the tub and tried to let the hot water relax him. The runner’s questions brought up a lot of sleepless nights. “What if there’s no girl out there for me?” He rubbed the sides of his head. “No, more like what if it’s better if there isn’t?”

“Dude,” Ryuji began, eyes wide. “Every guy wants a girl. An’ as many problems as we got, even dudes like us deserve a shot at the right girl for us.” The runner held a pearly-white grin and the squared shoulders of a man who said exactly what he meant.

The transfer student stood, but halted short of getting out of the tub. “Hey, Ryuji?”

“Yeah?” came the confused reply.

“Even when we don’t see eye to eye, you always know what you’re going for.” Akira took in a deep breath. “Thanks for not letting me get away with being totally stupid.”

Ryuji chuckled. “Course, dude. That’s what bros are for.” A hand splashed out of the water. “And to be your wingman!”

Notes:

Thanks to Despol12 for editing the end of the Kaneshiro and Madarame arc. And thank all of you who read and leave a comment, it means a lot.

Chapter 53: June 12th, Good Players

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Sunday, 12 June 2016
Evening
Kanda Catholic Church

Akira set his bishop down, threatening her silver general and king. “My cyberdisk lines up on your governor. Check!”

For the first game in a very long time, Hifumi paused, her green eyes darting from this square to that. “Dark inferno rock!” Her hand snatched her knight, taking his bishop and setting her knight down where it once rested.

Akira sat on the edge of his seat. So close. “Battle droid strike!” He took her knight.

Her pink lips spread in a smile. “Your machines will learn fear!” She moved a rook all the way onto his pawn. “Gurthang Attack!”

Father Sugiyama came to a stop beside the pew, his hands folded behind him and gave a brief incline of his head. “Son, Daughter. I could hear you from the confessional booth.”

Blushing, Hifumi covered her face with her hands. “I’m so sorry, Father.”

The priest allowed a hint of an amused smile to slip out of his ever patient expression. “I understand the spark of enthusiasm is a trait of the young, and encourage you two to continue your rivalry… but somewhere besides the sanctuary? I’m afraid I have other parishioners to tend to.”

Hifumi stood to give a deep bow. “Please forgive our disruption, Father.” Coming back up, she tucked some errant hair behind her ear. “Would you like another game elsewhere?”

With the pair no longer locked in an enthralling escalation, Akira couldn’t help but follow the slender digits, or keep from noticing the strands of long, dark hair she missed. His hands twitched and he shoved them in his pockets. She’d call the cops on him for sure if he did something as weird as running his fingers through her luxurious hair. Mouth dry, he swallowed and tried to come up with an excuse to depart.

Her brows rose and pinched together as those gorgeous deep-forest-green eyes widened just a little.

“O-okay,” his mouth blurted. In the privacy of his own mind, his alter ego bashed his head against the sanctuary wall for sounding like a bludgeoned toddler.

She straightened her mauve dress with a smile and they departed for a noodle hut.

Akira thought he saw someone following them, but when they sat down unbothered he shrugged off the paranoia. He needed to find a way to deal with his crowd anxiety. As they set up for another game, he asked, “How long have you been playing?”

Setting her elbow on the table, she rested her chin in her hand, eyes gazing into the distance. This close to her, he couldn’t help but look into the faint amber ring around her pupils like an island in a sea of soft green. Hifumi pursed her pink lips. “Hm. It’s hard to think of a time I wasnt playing. Papa taught me before I started primary school, and I played at school clubs now and then. I think it was the tournament in fourth grade when I started having trouble balancing school work, trying to make friends, and shogi.” Her smile twisted and she looked to the board. “But the things I worried about juggling was homework and friends.”

Akira thought back to the number of kids who made fun of him when he read books without pictures all the time at each of his primary schools. Even though they were the only things he could read his old bastard wouldn’t hit him for. “Shogi wasn’t even a question for you.”

“Yes, exactly.” The twisting of Hifumi’s lips blossomed into a wide smile and his face burned. “What about you, Akira-kun? You’ve only mentioned playing it at your last school’s chess club.”

His stomach did backflips that she remembered such a small detail from weeks ago. He took a sip of the tea he ordered when they came in, glad that they hadn’t gotten the food yet. As much as his insides were bouncing around right now, he feared he’d have tossed everything over the board. Akira straightened his glasses and tried to will his heart to slow down. “I think the first time I played was Tanizaki Middle School, or at least I had to ask for the rules again there. After that, I always wanted another shot at it because it’s always a challenge.”

Hifumi’s smile sharpened and a gleam sparkled in her eye. “Well you know I’m always up for a game.” With that, since she won the toss, she moved a pawn forward. “And so the soldiers of Lothlorien march forward.”

Monday, 13 June 2016
Morning
Shibuya Station

Tides of humanity ebbed and flowed in the underground station around Akira. Despite the clean walls and lighting, the chaos of dozens of conversations raised his hackles and he pushed his way through the foot traffic until he spotted someone wave at him from one of the tile-covered support pillars. Eager to get a moment away from being shoved every which direction, he headed for the dark head next to the bad blond dye-job. “Hi Yuuki, Ryuji.”

Grumping, Ryuji kicked at the tile.

“Didn’t sleep?” Akira slipped his hands in his pockets and looked over the runner, then around. Mishima shrugged.

Ryuji’s lips pressed into a thin line. “I’m still ticked about that damn Akechi. Makin’ us out ta be the same goddamn thugs as Kaneshiro’s drug pushers.”

Akira shrugged and took place in between his classmates as they headed for street level. They still pressed against him in the jostle of the crowd, but having a steady eye on them helped soothe over the prickle of something unknown coming at him. “Nothing to do but prove him wrong through action. Us mulling over it’s not going to change his mind. So you ready to, uh, go… spelunking today?”

Ryuji’s eyebrows shot up. “What?”

Akira groaned, his eyes flitting around. “I’m trying not to be completely obvious in public, Ryuji.” He leaned closer and whispered, “I mean check Mementos for new names.”

The runner maintained the are-you-crazy look. “Uh, how the hell’s anyone s’posed to get Mementos from spunk?”

Akira bristled, trying not to note Mishima looking distinctly away. “Hey, it’s underground.”

Morgana popped his head out of Akira’s bag. “I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but I’ve gotta side with Ryuji on this. You’ve got to use clever code words and convene with the other Phantom Thieves first so we know what you’re talking about. You can’t just spring strange words on us out of no-where.”

When his class representative bumped into him, Akira looked over to see Ann slip out of the crowd to join them, taking place next to him as the class representative sped up. “What strange words?”

“Antidisestablishmentarian,” Akira rattled off without missing a beat.

Ryuji and Morgana groaned, but Ann’s head whipped around, one of her voluminous pigtails slapping him in the face. She brushed down her pigtail. “Sorry. I just… think someone’s following me. I haven’t had the hair on the back of my neck stand up like this since I was avoiding Kamoshida.”

All three boys in the group stiffened. Ryuji shielded his eyes despite the group still being underground. “I bet there’s tons o’ perverts that’d creep on you, Ann. You’re an actual model.”

She shivered. “That feels like a backhanded compliment.”

Seeing nothing distinctive but the tides of dark-haired people, and a small scattering of different school uniforms, Akira grumbled. “What’s your stalker look like?”

Ann glanced over her shoulder again and bit her lip, her expression reminding him of his own trepidation in crowds. “Dark blue hair and even taller than you. I think he’s wearing white, but I’m not sure.”

Slipping off his school satchel, Akira handed it to Ryuji and drew his phone. “I’ll keep the chat up, tell me if I pass him.”

Morgana popped his head out. “Don’t do anything rash, Joker.”

Ryuji yawned. “Whyzzit gotta be some big deal so early?”

Ann shot him a glare. “Thanks for caring so much.”

“I’ll take care of this,” Akira said before pushing into the crowd. When someone pushed back before he could even spot Ann’s stalker, he started having second thoughts. An elbow jammed him in the ribs. Akira backed up and readied a fist when his phone buzzed in his other hand.

[That's him!] Ann sent.

[The bowl cut?]

[No, the guy you backed into.]

Akira spun around and spied a tall, blue-haired boy with a white jacket get on the escalator fifteen people behind Ann. Akira shoved through the tide of humanity. Whoever it was must be hyper-focused on Ann, because even after pushing to within three people and getting called out twice for pushing, Blue Hair never looked back.

The tide of people broke onto Central Street. Ann stopped just past a street light, Ryuji and Mishima forming a wall between her and Blue Hair.

Akira decided not to wait until Blue Hair pushed through. Two paces away, he grabbed Blue Hair’s wrist and thrust it into the small of his back, directing him to the concrete wall. “Okay, first, you’re going to leave the nice lady alone. Second, you’re going to explain why you’re perving on Ann.”

Blue Hair fumed. “How dare you sully my artistic aspirations with such base accusations! And unhand me!”

Unwilling to make a scene, Akira released.

Ryuji approached and the rest followed. “Whaddya want? You get your jollies stalkin’ our classmate?”

Blue Hair drew himself up to his full height and sniffed with disdain. “I’ve done no such thing.”

Ann jabbed a finger, pushing between the two boys. “You’ve been following me since I got off the train!”

Blue Hair took her pointing hand with both of his. “This world is filled with greys, but I sense passion in you that shines brighter than the sun! Even flustered, your beauty puts the magnificent Camille Doncieux to shame. You’re the woman I’ve been searching for my whole life!”

Ann’s cheeks blushed and she gaped.

Akira made a mental note to steal that line, and put away his phone.

Blue Hair tightened his hands over hers. “You must let me paint you!”

The image of Blue Hair stroking a paintbrush over Ann’s naked body sprang to mind. Akira cringed and mentally kicked himself for thinking of his friend like that. He swallowed, his mouth feeling parched and pants tight.

Mishima put himself between Blue Hair and Ann, shoving Blue Hair’s hands away. “Who do you think you are?”

Blue Hair brushed back at the bangs hanging over his eyebrows. “You’re right. In my artistic zeal, I’ve forgotten my manners.” He stepped around Mishima to face Ann directly, and gave a flourished bow at the waist. “Kitagawa Yusuke, second year at Kosei High. I am a pupil of Madarame-sensei.”

Mishima took a step back. “The Madarame? The painter of a thousand styles?”

Ann’s eyes widened. “Oh, I know that guy! He was on Good Morning Japan on KFTV.”

Morgana looked at the group from Akira’s satchel. “Didn’t we hear that name from Mementos?”

“Akira, Shujin. Second year.” Akira glanced at the track star, taking a small bit of comfort at the subtle shrug hinting that the runner didn’t know who the artist was either. Akira knew the name, but not from anywhere good. Assuming it was the same guy. “For those of us who grew up in the mountains, who’s that guy?”

A honk from the street drew their attention and the rear window on a shiny black car opened. “Yusuke-kun!”

Kitagawa grimaced, but drew back from Ann. “Sorry, Sensei! I’ll be there in but a moment.” He dug into the pockets in his uniform jacket for a moment before producing a handful of tickets on glossy paper and thrust them at Ann. “Things have been very busy, having to reschedule Madarame-sensei’s exhibition, but I will be there for the opening this weekend. I beg you to come. Please tell me if you will be my model.” He cast a narrower gaze at Ryuji and Akira. “I’ve my doubts about your interest in fine arts, but to show my honest, artistic intentions I even extended tickets to you.”

He dashed for the car and Akira spied a cushy, dark leather interior.

Morgana growled from his satchel. “That shady character dared go after Lady Ann? I’ll remember him!”

Ann tucked the tickets into her school bag. “Well, now that I actually talked with him, the guy only seems a little eccentric. Not like creepos who typically proposition me on the way to school. And an art show sounds fun. A better scene than hospitals or dark subways.”

Akira blinked. “Typically propositions you?”

Morgana gawked up at her from the satchel. “Don’t tell me that suspicious character’s theatrics have snared your heart.”

“What?” Ann jerked. “No.” Her blue eyes met Akira’s. “What is it?”

He shrugged. “Probably nothing. Let’s get to school.”

Monday, 13 June 2016
After School
Shujin, Class 2-D

Akira flipped back through his history book to fill out his handwritten notes stuffed on notebook sheets between the pages.

Before he could finish the first chart, the sound of Mishima standing up interrupted the usual noise of winding down conversations and hurried students packing to go. “Kurusu, clean up duty.”

Akira bit down a curse. Everybody got end-of-day cleaning duty eventually, but getting called out for it by his family name when the representative knew he didn’t like it just felt rude. Finishing the timeline plot for history class, the transfer student packed up and turned to the representative, who lingered with his jaws clenched together.

The other students, glad to weasel out of being volunteered for the job, packed up and scattered for home or other study locations. Mishima himself stayed standing next to his desk, looking down at his phone. The keys of his virtual keyboard clacked, paused, then clacked as he read and shot out text messages. After a few moments, he slipped his phone in his pocket and looked up. “I was just getting in touch with Ryuji. We need to check out that shady artist who made moves on Ann this morning.”

Morgana poked his head out from the desk. “That’s right! As gentlemen, we have to protect Lady Ann’s honor.”

Akira pointed to the desk at the left side of the room where she sat. “If you wanted to talk with her, she was right there a few minutes ago.”

Mishima’s hands slid further in his pockets and he looked away with a blush on his cheeks. “I… I didn’t want to worry her. Or bother her, in case that Kitagawa guy really is just some eccentric artist.” He pulled out the ticket. “I know it happens sometimes, Ann mentioned guys coming up to her with bad pickup lines once a week. And usually outside school. But if he’s willing to stalk her before you made him just talk in the open, that could be a red flag.”

Akira tilted his head. “I thought dudes being too chicken to come right out to girls they liked was the Japanese standard? I didn’t start reading manga until recently, but I didn’t exactly see any different even in fiction.”

Mishima took his right hand out to rub his arm, though his dark eyes remained fixed on the floor and the blush all over his face. “Well, people do dumb things in fiction to draw out the story. That was ninety percent of manga like Ranma one-half. But this is reality. What if today was just the first day we spotted him?”

Morgana peeked out. “That’s right. What if he’s been stalking her for days? What if he still does it tomorrow? We need to defend a lady’s virtue.”

Akira took his glasses off to rub the bridge of his nose. “I think she’s plenty capable of defending her own virtue.”

Mishima shifted his weight from foot to foot. “Isn’t that all the more reason we should check on him, make sure Ann doesn’t have anything to worry about? He might even been an unwitting stooge for Madarame.”

Straightening his glasses, Akira shrugged. He and the class representative cleaned the chalkboards, erasers, and got halfway through wiping the desks before Ryuji slid the classroom’s back door open. “Yo, Speedy.”

Ryuji grinned and gave a nod. “So we’re gonna be checkin’ on Ann’s creeper?” When the other two boys affirmed, he closed the door and helped them finish classroom cleanup.

After setting the brooms in the cabinet, Mishima turned to the others with a square to his shoulders the transfer student hadn’t seen since the first week of school. “Okay, guys. If we’re going to look up Madarame and his apprentice, the best place to get started is the internet. Journalists and social media influencers both love talking about big name artists, and Madarame’s one of the biggest. The Newspaper Club has a computer bank, so we can get started in there.”

Akira wiped his glasses clean and put them back on. “It wouldn’t be weird to bring outside people to use club equipment?”

The representative shook his head. “Most articles are chosen by personal interest, so it’s pretty frequent to bring friends in to help research.” At the track star’s shrug, he led them to the Newspaper Club in the practice building. A little smaller than the academic classrooms, a bank of computers took up the wall to the left. To the right sat tables with power and plugs for internet cables, a bulky printer machine in the far right corner. A set of shelves overflowing with books, magazines, and newspapers separated the computer third of the room from the tables.

A girl with black, shoulder-length hair looked up at them from the computer closest to the door. Akira gave a lazy wave. “Hi, Ishikawa-san.” When she gave a shallow nod and turned back to her web search, he shrugged.

Ryuji leaned close and whispered, “She’s cute. Classmate?”

“She’s in class 2-C,” Mishima said, drawing his hands from his pockets.

Ryuji sidled closer to the class representative, his eyes flicking from the girl to Mishima. “She a fan?”

Mishima grabbed the track star and pulled him further away down the hall and hissed, “You can’t tell someone you’re the Phantom Thief just to get a date! The Phantom Thief needs to be better than that. It’s about ringing the truth out of the darkness and justice for the downtrodden and—”

Ryuji rolled his eyes and pushed the representative back. “Yeah, yeah. I gotcha, fanboi.” The three all took a deep breath to try to work through the frustration and entered, passing Ishikawa to the computers on the far end of the room. “So whadda we gotta do?”

Mishima brought up a web browser. “Not sure yet, I’ve never looked for apprentices before. Maybe angry art collectors? As long as we keep an eye out for anything, we’ll stumble across something important.”

Scrolling down through ads and a trash magazine article about the Wonders of the Artist of a Thousand Styles, he found a small online news article mentioning Kitagawa in last year’s Kosei High cultural fair. The next ten minutes proceeded with little better luck until Ryuji cringed and blurted, “Eff, man. Died before first responders arrived on scene. That means it wasn’t instant.”

Mishima and the transfer student both looked up from their computers to read the article on the runner’s screen. “What a way to go.” Mishima pulled up his phone and typed into it. “Sawamura Hitoshi.” Setting his phone back on the table next to his mouse pad, the class representative slumped. “It’s like everyone likes this Madarame guy, and almost nobody even notices Kitagawa.”

Akira straightened his glasses. “That’s suspicious. Nobody gets famous without making at least a few enemies. And what up-and-coming art students wouldn’t want to promote themselves through their big-shot master’s name?”

Mishima scratched his scalp. “Well, it’s not like many articles spend time on the students. Until they break away and start doing their own works, the master is really the only one producing things to write about.”

Ryuji pushed back from the computer bank. “This would be so much easier if we had a list of his goons.”

Akira closed his browser and rubbed his eyes under his glasses. “They’re apprentice painters, Ryuji.”

The track star shrugged. “Whatevs. Listen, rep,” he paused to look down to the team leader hiding in the transfer student’s bag, “leader. It looks like there ain’t nothin’ here. If we’re gonna spend all day trackin’ down somethin’, it should be that dude who survived Owner.”

Mishima blinked. “Survived owning what?”

Akira felt all his muscles tense at the jerk who shrugged off every simulated shot and cost him a ridiculous amount of money resetting. “Cheater in Gun About. He’ll run and dodge so it’s not so easy to see, but he’ll take a full magazine of bullets and never lose any health. Worse of all, he uses a goddamn number as part of his name. In place of a letter.” He gestured a hand at Ryuji. “He introduced us to Gun About to practice, but this douche bag’s been ruining peeps’ time for months.” He glanced to see Ishikawa still there, minding her own business. Just to be sure, Akira spoke in a hushed tone, “Ryuji texted us about it one night and we thought the player would make a good change of heart. We just can’t figure out who he is or how to beat him. Only one player’s ever beaten him, so that guy – The King – is our only clue.”

Corners of his mouth curling up, Mishima held up a fist. “How can I help?”

Ryuji shrugged. “Well, most peeps I talk to are pretty sure he ain’t playin’ at home. Home cheaters are too easy to kick, and Gun About’s done it before. But arcade player IDs are procedurally generated, so the same ID code might not be the same person. Or you just have to hit a different arcade an’ you’re griefin’ peeps from a new ID. So console bans can only be temporary.”

Mishima rubbed his chin. “That also might mean our man could be at any number of arcades. That might make it harder to find him, but could also make it easier to find witnesses who’ve seen the real player.”

“Right,” Ryuji said with a grin. “You ain’t the only one who’s good at investigatin’. Now I confirmed he’s never been to the Gigolo in Shibuya, and the dudes there I talked to are pretty sure nobody’s seen him further west.” He brought up his phone and brought up a map with Gun About locations speckling Tokyo. “So he’s gotta be at one of these places east of here. It’s only thirty places—”

“Thirty?” Akira shouted.

Ishikawa shushed him.

Ryuji cleared his throat. “But between the three of us, we can definitely hit thirty places in a day. Since Makoto’s busy with StuCo an’ Ann’s visitin’ the hospital, I fig’ we might as well. Not like we’re goin’ to Mementos today.”

Akira had no argument to that and didn’t feel like braving the loudest school library ever, so he followed the others to Shibuya, where they broke up to investigate ten each of the arcades with a Gun About station.

Monday, 13 June 2016
Early Evening
Akihabara, Electric Town

Akira dashed through the crowd, holding his school satchel close so it didn’t swing when he made sudden changes of direction. People packed sidewalks as well as the road closed for a car show. He had no idea what the appeal was to painting gaudy representations of anime characters on an expensive car, but it made for a crowd almost as thick as Shibuya. He almost made it to the Gigolo Arcade when the diminutive team leader cried out from his bag. Akira slipped into a computer hardware and tool store across the street.

Morgana flopped part-way out of his school satchel and heaved breaths in and out. “You… really need to… learn to slow down.”

“Sorry, but I don’t know any other way to crowd-run,” Akira said, knowing how awkward he sounded. To give both of them some time to catch their breath, he browsed and bought a set of small tongs for Morgana’s lock pick crafting.

Before he got back on the road, he got a text from Mishima. [Finished. Two of my arcades were closed. Family emergency and installing new machines. Any luck at your end?]

Ryuji texted back, [I'm on my last one. Crossing my fingers he's here.]

[I'm on arcade number seven. I REALLY hope that jerk is here.] Akira glanced at the guide trapped in cat form hanging his head out of the satchel. [I think Morgana would have preferred to switch places. Since Ryuji introduced me to crowd running, he's been less interested in following along. Maybe it would have been better to send him with Ryuji.]

Morgana harrumphed. “Yeah, but then nobody’d be there to help you out of a scuffle on the street. You still have crowd phobia problems.”

Akira rubbed the back of his neck, pausing inside the door to let a clump of middle schoolers gawking at a show car move on.

[Got it,] Mishima texted back. [I lost one of my metric screwdrivers, so I'm going to stop by Takanashi's place in Electric Town to get one. Maybe get some more laptop RAM.]

When the representative strode through the front, Akira chuckled and texted, [Heads up!]

Mishima made an inquisitive noise, then stopped a moment before walking into the transfer student. “Oh! I didn’t think you had an arcade this close.”

Akira closed the text app and brought up the map. “I thought I was going to trip over it by now, but I’ve never been to Akihabara before.”

Slipping his phone in his pocket, Mishima rubbed his neck. “That’s right, sometimes it’s easy to forget how it’s like to navigate these boroughs for the first time. I used to come here all the time when I was in middle school.”

Morgana popped his head out of the satchel. “You weren’t going to that maid café that smells like syrup, were you?”

Mishima’s face did a remarkable impression of a tomato. “What? No! Just the computer shops!” He mumbled something about being too young. “Anyway, there’s a Gigolo arcade just down this way.” He paused to buy that replacement screwdriver and led the transfer student down the street to the arcade across the glitzy cars.

Three old men sat there scanning the pachinko machines at the front as if they could divine some great secret from the pattern of pegs. That or the anime girl in skimpy clothing painted on the backboard.

The inside was quieter than Shibuya’s Gigolo arcade. The ambient music was the same, but fewer clusters of people milled around. Each group held their own conversations. Most of the half-dozen people in this smaller arcade focused on their own games.

Except a middle schooler in a blue varsity jacket and bright red hat stepping to keep a smaller middle schooler trapped against a crane game filled with snowmen almost as misshapen as the Junes bear mascot. “Pay up. It was fifty yen per one-headshot kill.”

The smaller boy with a disheveled blue shirt sniffed. “B-but I only have three hundred yen left. What about the subway ticket home?” He tried to dodge left.

Blue Jacket intercepted the escape maneuver. He didn’t raise a hand, but did bodily push the smaller boy back into the crane game. “You’ve got a transit pass, you don’t need to buy a ticket.” After the middle schooler handed over the coins, Blue Jacket stepped back and the small boy fled.

The transfer student stepped aside and watched the little shakedown artist count his coins, then pause when he realized someone watched him. Blue Jacket glared up at the transfer student, bringing the Get Smoked embroidered across the top into good enough light to read. “What?”

“What a little turd,” Akira muttered.

Morgana popped onto his shoulder and shot him a hooded stare. “He reminds me of you.”

“Hey!” Akira paused, realizing talking to the team leader in front of a civilian might not be a good idea. He cleared his throat and tried to look neutral, but interested. “Who’re you?”

“Just another gamer.” Blue Jacket’s eyes flicked to Mishima for just a moment, then he stepped away from the crane game. “You can have your money eater.” He trotted off to Gun About, dropped coins in the feeder slot, then did so at the next station. He picked up both pistol controllers and started playing.

Despite being a kid – or using two pistols at once – his game reflexes were preternatural.

“Even dual-wielding is too easy?” Mishima’s eyes widened.

A college-aged kid kid came to a stop against the crane game next to Mishima. “So The King is back. Man, I wish I had time to stay, it’s always a trip to watch him.”

Akira texted Ryuji, [Found The King at the Gigolo in Electric Town.]

The King?” Mishima curled one hand closed and glared at Blue Jacket’s back. “The King is supposed to be the strongest player, someone to look up to. But when strength doesn’t go with control, it’s just another form of tyranny. Along with all forms of power come responsibility. Even participation in games comes with acceptance of an implied code of conduct for the better experience of the whole.”

One of Blue Jacket’s player screens turned red and a giant bullet-hole with spiderwebbed broken glass faded in across the screen. He glared at the class representative for a moment before his expression returned to bored disregard. “You’re not just boring, you’re a loser.” He turned back to the game and tossed a grenade around a stack of timbers in the outdoor lumber yard of the game map.

Mishima’s jaw flapped open twice before he hunched and slunk away.

The phone buzzed in the transfer student’s hands and he looked down to see a text from Ryuji. [Just got on the train. I'll be there in five or six minutes.]

More people trickled around in the minutes that followed. Despite the transfer student’s discomfort at the press of bodies from the ring forming around the young middle schooler, it wasn’t enough to miss the spiky blond hair when Ryuji joined the crowd to gawk. When the game round ended, he elbowed the transfer student. “That’s tote him! Let’s play a game.”

Blue Jacket turned, flashing that Get Smoked hat for only a moment as he stared at them with bored eyes. “Do what you want.” He turned back to his game and tapped a card so he could continue playing with two controllers at once.

Deciding to back the runner up, Akira stepped up to the far controller. Still not knowing much about guns, all he could be sure of was it sat larger in his hands than the rifle controller the runner wielded. He picked the closest thing to a sub-machine gun the game list presented, but Blue Jacket curb stomped them for five minutes.

“You’re totally The King!” Ryuji hopped back and forth on the balls of his feet. “I can’t believe it. You gotta take out Owner with us.”

Blue Jacket stared for a cold moment before turning back to the game. “I can still beat him, so I don’t care.”

Ryuji boggled. “But if you help us out, we could knock ‘im down a peg.”

Blue Jacket tisked. “So that’s what you wanted. You’re not just an arrogant loser, you just wanted to live through someone else’s victory.”

Akira set down his controller and stepped up to the runner’s side. “He’s invincible. Cheating to ruin everyone else’s time.” He slipped his hands in his pockets.

Blue Jacket tilted his head up just enough to make the arch of one eyebrow. “What do you care? Just don’t play.”

“Eff this. I’ll find him somewhere else.” Ryuji stormed out.

Akira pursed his lips. “Good guys don’t let bad guys win.”

Blue Jacket smiled. “You’re dangerous. Like the quiet ones.” The kid dove both his characters into cover, then turned away from his game to scrutinize the transfer student. “You sound like the Phantom Thief who took down that nasty coach, and all those gangers on the street.” A beat passed. “You a fan too?”

Akira spread his hands and widened his stance to give Blue Jacket a good view of his Shujin uniform. “Changed more than just the coach. Six people including the principal who were covering things up went to jail. Just goes to show change never stops with just one heart.”

Blue Jacket’s eyes wavered and the transfer student knew he won. “Even so, teaching you to beat that cheating loser won’t be easy. What would I get out if it?”

Akira pointed at Gun About. “The more people like that cheater that are there, the more cheaters and toxic people that will be here. And the fewer people that are fun to play against that will stay. If you can’t teach us how to beat him and kick him out of Gun About, tell us the name of his player.” Akira brought out his phone and brought up the Phansite on the browser, then showed it to the kid. “The Phantom Thief will change his heart.”

Blue Jacket chuffed, but a corner of his mouth quirked up. “I don’t know if I can help you. Yeah, he played here a couple times, but I don’t remember the cheater’s name.” He tapped a foot. “Tell you what. I play here a lot, but sometimes it would be nice to have a good player. Or at least somebody else willing to learn. How about I teach you, and once I find out who it is, we beat him together in the game and you take his name to the Phantom Thief so he doesn’t make all the fun people leave?” He gestured for the transfer student’s phone.

Akira handed it over.

The kid entered his contact information, then bumped the phone while turning it around to hand it back. “Who’s Queen Togo?”

Akira snatched his phone.

Chapter 54: June 13th, The Good Doctor

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Monday, 13 June 2016
Evening
Yongen, Leblanc

The jingle of the bell interrupted Akira’s heavy footfalls. The restaurateur splashed sudsy water in the sink, the sound of the television was just loud enough to be audible above the sound of work. With the dimness of the light outside, the cozy ambiance of Leblanc’s interior seemed bright.

Unlike evening of most days, a customer sat at the coffee bar. His familiar brown peacoat hung on the back of the chair, his steel briefcase ajar and a ream of paperwork spread out before him. Akechi turned a page in a printed packet thicker than his thumb, eyes still reading as he picked up his coffee mug for a deep sip.

Akira sat down at the closest seat available, the paper spread keeping him a chair away. “Evening.”

Akechi’s eyes flicked up from his papers for only a moment. “Amamiya-san. It’s been a while.”

Akira couldn’t decide if that smile was genuine or the false sort on a person who didn’t want to say go away out loud. “Working overtime again?”

Chuffing, Akechi paused for another sip of dark coffee. “You wouldn’t believe the deluge of nonsense that a company’s legal department can inundate you with.” His lower eyelid twitched, then he took a breath out and in, back to all smiles.

Sojiro trotted closer, drying his hands with a threadbare brown towel. “What can I get for you?”

Akira dug into his pockets. “One cup of the decaf blend.”

The restaurateur tossed the towel over his shoulder. “Sorry, kiddo. We’re out of decaf today. Too close to closing to brew another siphon. A cup of regular?”

The transfer student couldn’t feign displeasure at the news. Coffee smelled great, but tasted more bitter than medicine. And it was too late in the day to down caffeine. He couldn’t understand why it was so popular. “Just a can of tea, then.”

Sojiro looked like he’d been gut-punched for a moment. “Your choice.” He retrieved a can from the fridge the transfer student helped stock that morning and handed it over, then gave a nod at the kid working on legalese. “Have a good day.”

“Oh, it’s not my day to be worried about,” Akechi said with a just-a-little-too-wide smile. “But as Reverend Martin Luther King Junior said, we are tied together in a single garment of destiny. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

“Maybe,” Akira said. “But even if there are natural laws as Locke suggests, they have to be discerned by humans and that makes one man’s justice another man’s injustice. The consequences society chooses to apply provide the force behind its morality. When man’s only feedback to determine right action is the result, how can it be determined if there even is a true and objective right?”

Flexing a gloved hand, Akechi scrutinized the transfer students with red eyes just a shade dimmer than Makoto’s. “Hume said that our very nature and interdependedness reveal the moral requirements of human life. Being the species of invention humans are, we construct some of what is right while some are results of what natural laws require humans to be.”

Akira swallowed a sip of canned tea and decided an infuser might be a good investment in the future. “Didn’t Kant write that what is just is defined by external actions?”

“He also wrote that lying corrupted human moral capacity and was wrong under all circumstances,” Akechi said, capping his pen. “If something is always wrong, that has to indicate a deeper structure of right and wrong than just what the observable outcome is.”

His phone buzzed and he slipped it out to read the incoming text. Akechi began packing his papers. “As interesting as our discussion on the knowability of justice is, I’m afraid that I have pressing paperwork downtown.” He picked up his coffee cup and downed the rest of it before locking and hefting his steel briefcase.

When Akira noticed Sojiro standing back by the coffee bean jars, drying already dry hands, the transfer student tilted his head. “What?”

Sojiro set the towel down. “Oh, just a little surprised to see two young men going back and forth about moral philosophy. I don’t think I heard that much enthusiasm when I took ethics back in university.” He made change for the can of tea, and closed up the register. “Getting time for me to be heading out. Don’t stay up too late.”

Tuesday, 14 June 2016
After School
Shujin, Front Entrance

The haunting string instruments of the Goa’uld theme sang out of Akira’s phone. With Makoto the only one he gave that ringtone, he opened the call as soon as he got his shoes straightened around his ankles. “Tokyo complaint department, if you have an issue I can get you to Keith Maipathi Waitbut.” He followed the stream pushing him to the front gates.

The student president growled. “I’ve heard of people who prank call, but never people who prank answer.” Papers shuffled on her side. Something heavy and plastic thudded against a wooden surface. “Um… you said before that you’d be willing to help me learn more about the student body. Since Yuuki-kun hasn’t sent any new Mementos targets, would you mind? Based on our interactions thus far, we both have some learning to do about the main portion of society.”

Akira pressed his lips together and stepped to the side to lean against the wall, out of the way of the stream of foot traffic. Now he felt bad for opening with a joke. Why couldn’t she have a sense of humor? She had the same go-get’em attitude as he did in the Metaverse. “What were you thinking? Checking out a different arcade?”

She let out a short breath. “I think I had my fill of video games in that celebration tournament on Saturday.”

“Still mad Ryuji called you too nerdy for video games?”

Flustered noises emanated from the phone for a few moments. “No. I enjoyed it, I just don’t feel like more video games right now. I was thinking of another entertainment topic. Have you left for home yet?”

Akira looked out at the slowing stream of students fleeing Shujin for home or jobs. “I’m right at the gates. Should I meet you at the Aoyama-Itchome station?”

“That’s fine.” Makoto rushed out a door and into a wider space with more background chatter. “I’ll meet you there.”

Akira put away his phone and headed to the station entrance. A few minutes later, Makoto stepped out of the trickle of students still departing Shujin. She glanced right, then left to the transfer student leaning against the tiled wall a couple steps from the escalator. She brushed her dark brown bangs out of her eyes and stopped to recover her breath. “A-Akira-kun.”

When the first thought that came to mind was what her hair might feel like, Akira grit his teeth and gave himself a mental kick. “H-hi.” He put his phone away and slipped his hands in his pockets. “So did you have a destination in mind?”

She straightened her pleated skirt, her red eyes flicking back to his. “My first thought was the Toyo Cinema, but they only have a few recent movies. There’s certainly excitement for those, but the favorites people talk about tend to be older ones that made a big impression.”

Akira nodded. “Scarlet’s on the way of my train transfer in Shibuya, not far from station square.” He thought back about movies. “Should we get Ryuji in on this? Last time we ran together, he went on and on about movies.”

Makoto’s shoulders slumped. “I actually already texted him about it. He wasn’t interested. Said he was busy practicing in Shibuya. Yuuki-kun’s indisposed with an investigation of his own.”

Akira rolled his eyes. “Practicing he says.”

Those crimson irises burned into him, though from the small muscles in her face and neck he couldn’t be sure if Makoto was angry or just annoyed. “He is by far the best marksman in the group. You can’t say it doesn’t work.”

He shrugged. “Fair enough. What about Ann?”

Makoto’s shoulders pinched up and her gaze fell to the tiled floor. “She looked stressed, and I haven’t really thought of a way to apologize to her.” She looked up at him, her eyes as intense as before but the brows drawn up together. “I never did take action before Shiho. Or even with Kiriko-san.” She rubbed her arm. “I never even tried to talk to Ann, I just assumed those terrible rumors must have some seed of truth and left her on her own.”

Akira pushed up his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose. “I’m starting to think Ann has a magical power to make people not talk to her. She’s not the type to hold a grudge or she’d definitely have taken something out on me.” He shifted his lean against the wall. “And probably turned Kamoshida into frozen little chunks.” His eyes drifted up. “No, actually, she knew he’d suffer by letting him live.” He shook his head and straightened his glasses. “Well, might as well get going.”

The two hopped on the train to Shibuya, then navigated to the Scarlet music and movie rental company on central street. Makoto beelined to the dramas, then browsed down the other aisles. “There are a lot of romantic comedies here.”

Akira scratched his neck, following a few steps behind and glancing over the gaudy covers of women in bright clothing none were brave enough to wear in real life. “Yeah, they’re kind of like the Goa’uld.” At her head-tilt, he explained, “Evil race of aliens trying to take over everything around them in SG-1.”

Makoto picked up one movie to browse the back. “It sounds like you’re not a fan.”

“I get the point of comedies, but they’ve never been my cup of tea.” He paused, scanning the titles for Key of Life, but the titles jumped where it might have been. “One of the chief problems of rom-coms is that they perpetuate some rather unsettling stereotypes when those behaviors are put into real life. Women who are vapid doormats and wait for somebody else to solve everything for them but still expect everything to be happy, for example. Or men who stalk girls and keep trying to sneak into their safe spaces like the onsen. And then typically following up with violent beatings that would put a real person in intensive care, if not leave crippling brain injuries.”

Makoto’s head tilted to one side, her crimson gaze searching his for long moments before their phones buzzed. They both drew them to check the group chat.

Mishima’s ID sat at the top of the chat. [Sorry about being so late to get this to you all. I found the name of that one stalker girl at school. The one posting murder fantasies on her blog. They got SERIOUSLY disturbing, and I say this having spent the last month reading about Kaneshiro. Her name is Yumeko Mogami.]

Morgana hopped up to read over Akira’s shoulder. “People may say things they don’t mean, but if this was bad enough even your class representative felt sick then we probably better change her heart before talk online becomes action offline.”

“Agreed,” Akira said before adding the tallies to the chat.

Makoto nodded at him, but texted the group anyway, [I'm for it.]

Ryuji and Ann joined the chat, only a few seconds passed before they added their assent.

Mishima posted next, [Also got a couple requests on the Phansite for a Hayashi Matsuko. She's a college student who's been seducing male students and breaking their hearts. I got the feeling something more is going on, because one of the posters said she killed him. No way to follow up, though. Maybe it's just a guy with a glass heart.]

Three dots danced next to Ryuji’s ID. [What a total bench.]

A moment of silence descended on the rental shop. Makoto even bit her lip to keep from laughing.

[Bench,] Ryuji sent.

A moment later Ryuji texted, [You know what? F my phone and its autocorrect.]

Akira glanced at the team leader, got a nod in response, then typed in, [Make that a yes from me and Fearless Leader.]

Ann’s ID blinked, three dots dancing next to it for a couple seconds. [So can we do these names today, or would we have to wait until later?]

Ryuji sent back, [Wait, aren't you working today?]

[Uh, no. I'm still at Shujin studying with Akemi. I need to get caught up after all the time I spend on shoots or at Shiho's physical therapy.]

The team leader didn’t give a committal gesture, but when he looked at Makoto, the upperclassman straightened. “I’m ready.” She focused on her phone. [We can meet you at station square in five minutes if you want.]

Ryuji texted, [Sounds like we're all ready and willing. Ping us when you're here, Ann.]

Fifteen minutes later, they gathered in the dim lobby of Mementos. Ann leaned her head left and right to stretch out a muscle. Pistol in hand, she walked past the phantasmal blue door of bars with no sign she noticed it. “Ready to go change some hearts?”

Makoto gave a sharp nod.

Rifle in his right, Ryuji lifted his left fist into the air. “Eff yeah! We still got, like, two gangers left over from last time.”

Mementos, Hayashi’s Distortion

“Die, thieves!” Hayashi’s Shadow floated above them. The enveloping ashen robes it wore made it look human. All four of its hands clasped at its front, fingers dancing through small, precise gestures. The six, mirrored spheres floating around it reflected the unnerving red glow of the shadow-pockets here in Mementos, their orbit speeding up and expanding. “Die, like the bastard who put poison in me! It’s my right to infect them right back!”

Morgana backed up. “Everybody brace, it’s going physical again!”

Akira grit his teeth and dismissed Pillar of Heaven, the floor-to-ceiling column of darkness and flame retracting into the carved obsidian. In its place formed Orthrus.

Ryuji smirked and Kidd just sped up. When the six orbs lashed out at them like enraged comets, the ship-surfing Persona juked left around one and flew up above another.

His smirk disappeared when a violet beam shot out from under Shadow Hayashi’s hood and hit Captain Kidd square in the skeletal face. Ryuji’s jaw dropped slack and his eyes glazed over.

Morgana bared his teeth, face twisted in anger and concentration. Zorro shimmered with wispy blue, the light blazing in its eyes as it focused all its psychokinetic energy into the single orb bearing down on him. It held out its sword and the empty hand, wispy blue energy roaring out of it against the mirrored orb.

It raced closer and closer, sending Zorro scraping backwards, the little feet leaving gouges in the carved obsidian. Unstoppable force came to a standstill against immovable object, and Morgana roared. Zorro’s arms moved in time with his as they smashed inwards, shattering the mirrored orb into dissolving dust.

Akira fired burst after burst from his gun for all the little good it was doing. He wracked his brain for what would help when it resisted curse energy, fire and Shesha’s radiation, much less shrugging off lightning. “Ryuji, snap out of it!”

Carmen danced out of the way of another hurtling orb, and flung an icy bolt at the floating Shadow in return. Ann stumbled, sweat dripping down her face.

Flames sputtered over the obsidian floor as Makoto rode her fiery bike-Persona over the pocket of Mementos. Fire spilled from its blazing wheels, but it couldn’t drift out of the way of a mirrored orb in time. The meter-and-a-half sphere smashed into the Persona. Red flames gushed and thick metal panels buckled.

Johanna vanished in a flutter of blue flames, spilling her rider on the floor. Makoto leaped to her feet just in time for her vision to fill with another mirrored orb.

Akira threw himself against her, knocking her out of the way. “Sui-Ki!” The motes of light coalesced into the shape of an ogre and it spun its double-sword to parry when the mirrored orb smashed through it and kept going.

The direct impact sent Akira tumbling like a rag doll.

“Guys?” Ann called as Captain Kidd returned to the floor, leveling its hand canon at Carmen. “Things just got worse!”

While the others fought, Makoto dashed over the glowing runes. “Joker!”

His whole body burned and it felt like somebody lodged knives in every joint of his left arm. Knowing he couldn’t control his sub-machine gun with one hand, he dug into his coat. “Rider.” He hissed, but kept searching until his hands closed on the shard that guillotine turned Fuu-Ki into days ago. He pulled out the cylindrical shape glowing with green from within. “Here. Wind at least hurt it. If you can take that Shadow down, Ryuji should go back to normal.”

“Wait,” she searched her pocket. “Let’s get you patched up fi—”

He grabbed her hand and shoved the glowing cylinder onto her palm. “Load that into your shotgun. Finish. The. Shadow.”

She pursed her lips, then nodded. She pressed the green-glowing cylinder into her shotgun, then turned on Shadow Hayashi.

While Carmen danced out of Kidd’s razor winds, Zorro split its attention between trying to distract Kidd without hurting Ryuji while hampering Shadow Hayashi.

Dashing to get close enough, Makoto leveled her shotgun at the floating monster bent on destroying everyone around it. “Enough killing and hurting for one day.” She pulled the trigger.

A gale of whipping razor winds howled out of her weapon, sliding around the mirrored spheres and lashing into the towering Shadow.

The beam it held trained on Captain Kidd ceased as it stumbled back.

Makoto gawked at her shotgun until the mirrored orbs began swirling faster around Shadow Hayashi again. The biker-suit-clad girl pulled the trigger again and again, lashing gales roaring from her weapon until smoke gushed from the cuts and impacts on the Shadow from throughout the fight. Darkness bled away from it until only the shape of a college girl remained, coming to rest on the obsidian floor.

Shadow Hayashi looked up at the five Phantom Thieves surrounding her, tears leaking from her glowing yellow eyes. “It’s not fair.”

Morgana kept his crossbow trained on her. “It was bad enough when we thought you were just breaking hearts. What do you think gives you the right to go around infecting other people?”

“There’s no cure.” Propping herself up with one hand, Shadow Hayashi sniffed. “I’ll never be healthy again.”

Akira held his banged-up left arm. “Even if that were true, being hurt yourself is no excuse to spend your life going around hurting others.” He knelt to look her eye-to-eye. “If there is sickness, let it stop with us.”

Makoto lowered her shotgun. “Go to the police. If you cooperate, they’ll be able to find the one who first infected you. That could help save a lot of other people.”

Shadow Hayashi’s head dipped and she sniffed again. “You… you’re right. It’s better to stop sickness than spread it. I… I’m sorry.” Her form faded away, leaving a glint on the floor.

Ann paced closer and knelt to pick it up. “A charm bracelet. Looks like the kind that’s supposed to have three… no, four little gemstones in it.”

Ryuji let out a long breath. “Whoa. That was one twisted chick.” He turned to Makoto. “Since we got a couple minutes before this place collapses,” he turned on her with a calm air before dropping it with a sudden yell, “When the eff did you learn to make my gun shoot magic?”

Morgana rounded on her, folding up his crossbow. “Yeah!”

She turned the shotgun on its side and struggled for a moment to extract the green-glowing cylinder. “Akira gave this to me.”

Ryuji whipped around on the thief in a longcoat. “Effin’ sweet! How many more you got? Any that make stuff shoot lightnin’?”

Akira held up a hand when she tried to return it. “I’ll let you hold onto that.” He tapped his head. “I’m the one with a crowd upstairs.” He gave them a moment to chuckle, but only Ann did. “And that’s the only shard I’ve got. But if it can help out like that one did, I’ll look into getting more.”

Morgana collapsed his crossbow and stowed the squared rod. He looked between Makoto and Akira, his bright blue eyes holding fast on the boy. “Take that medicine. It’ll help, though not as much as if you’d taken it when Rider tried to give it to you. The longer your mind processes the idea you’ve been hurt, the harder it will create pains that take time to recover from. The sooner you take that medicine, the sooner you can take advantage. Remember, everything follows cognition in the Metaverse.” He let out a long breath. “And you two need to stop by the doctor once we’re out.”

Tuesday, 14 June 2016
Late Evening
Yongen Station

The train slid to a stop, the old car rattling around them. Akira couldn’t help but notice Makoto clench her jaw and hold her stomach. When the doors trundled open, she stepped out and took a breath of the station air with the same heavy footfalls and rush of air as he associated with himself.

Still holding his arm to keep jostling of his shoulder from making that sensation of hot needles, Akira came to a stop behind her. “Doc’s just a couple minutes away. How bad is it?”

She straightened, but a twitch in the muscle below her eyelid betrayed her struggle to keep everything inside. “It’s not so bad. You’re the one who jumped in front of a giant bludgeon.”

“To help you,” he said, a corner of his mouth quirking up. “Besides, Sui-Ki took most of the impact.”

“So did Johanna,” Makoto said, following him to the Takemi Medical Clinic.

This late in the evening, they found Takemi snoozing at her desk. After a sharp knock at her window, she took Makoto back and gave a prescription for painkillers, anti-inflammatories, and no heavy exercise.

Akira sat back in a chair and texted Hifumi, taking the few minutes to reminisce as she did homework and he waited for Makoto’s examination to finish.

The door to the exam room swung open. Takemi followed the student president out. “Okay, boyo. Your turn.”

[Talk to you later,] he promised. Akira followed the doctor into the back and submitted to the usual examination. The exam was quick and almost wordless, but the situation went from unusual to red flag when she got up and locked the exam room door.

Takemi tapped her clipboard against her nose, masking her lower face and highlighting the narrow glare of her brown eyes. “When we made our agreement, I thought I’d be patching you up from one fight. Now you’re carting in more battered friends, all of them bearing the bruises from leather-wrapped batons—”

“We’re not dealing with the yakuza any more.” Akira straightened his glasses to try to give the impression of calm so she’d go about her business and let him leave.

Her fingers only clenched tighter on her clipboard. “Then what?” She stormed closer, towering over the student seated on her exam bed. “What are you stupid, crazy kids getting into that’s bringing you into my clinic day after day with bruises, exhaustion, and in your case in specific an unmistakable look of guilt?”

Scratching started at the door, and the transfer student thought he heard Morgana’s voice.

Takemi ignored the scratching. “I’ve seen injuries like this before when the yakuza would offload people they didn’t want to have records of treatment. Torturing mothers and middle-aged men who owed ten thousand yen. Beaten without breaking the skin and shedding a drop of blood so there’s less clean-up.” She crossed her arms, her shoulders pinched up. “It always escalates.” Her gaze fell away. “And I’m already cleaning up one child. I can’t handle this sudden deluge.” She sat in her chair as if she couldn’t hold her body up for a minute longer.

Pushing his own pain aside, Akira focused on the doctor. Where she had been vibrating with tension before, now enervation sagged every muscle on her frame. “Is Masa still bothering you?”

“No,” Takemi groused. She crossed her arm. “It’s… strange. He had somebody shadowing me most days since I got here last year. They disappeared last Sunday.”

Akira straightened his glasses. “So that midnight visit line worked?” He mimed holding his sub-machine gun.

Her head dropped back as she let out a long breath. “That would only have been a temporary measure. Masa’s too ambitious not to push if he thinks he can get away with it. He’s got gang muscle and knows it.” She pulled herself upright and tapped a key to bring the computer out of sleep mode. “That must have changed when Kaneshiro turned himself in. I’d like to think he got nabbed by the police sweep of Shibuya, but that feels too much like naive optimism.” Takemi stood to retrieve a threadbare sling from a box in the corner, then settled herself back in her chair. “But even if he’s really gone, that only solves one problem. A doctor can’t treat her patients if there’s no trust. Without knowing what’s injuring you kids, there’s very little I can do to treat you.”

Biting his lip, Akira fidgeted with the uniform jacket in his hands. The doctor may be intelligent, but she was too rational and grounded in the regular world to believe he was taking a bruising from monsters in a supernatural mind world. He looked down to break eye contact. “I… I’ve never been good at just walking away from things. I have to believe that’s a good thing. Before I got shipped up here to Tokyo, I stopped a drunk from abducting a woman off the street.” He took a breath as he thought of Ryuji pulling him back in Kamoshida’s office. “I know I’m not perfect and sometimes I need to tone it down, but I can’t walk away from people everyone else has already abandoned to a slow, painful death.” He reached his good hand out for the cloth sling.

Takemi tossed the sling at him. “You need to give your body a chance to heal. I’m certain there are microtears in your tendons, if you don’t take your wounds seriously, you’ll wind up with permanent damage.” She picked up a pen, clicked it open, then scratched out a bill for today’s treatments. “If you’re not going to tell me how you and your friends are getting beaten up, we have nothing more to say here.” Her hand wavered just a bit. “Getting the chance to save Miwa doesn’t mean anything if I have to sacrifice four other children to do so.”

She thrust the clipboard at him and Akira fumbled out his wallet to pay for this session.

Notes:

I can’t claim to have the brilliance to come up with a fake name like Keith Maipathi Waitbut, that one was stolen from Collin Mochrie on Who’s Line Is It Anyway.

Chapter 55: June 15th, Venus

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Wednesday, 15 June 2016
After School
Shujin, Class 2-D

Akira flipped back through his history book to fill out his handwritten notes stuffed on notebook sheets between the pages. With the other students still shuffling out of class, he couldn’t dredge up the energy to fight through them to get to the library just to fight through more students in an attempt to study. When his phone buzzed, he left his book open and pulled up the incoming chat.

Ryuji’s ID blinked up at him. [Hi, dude. I was just thinking that it's been a while since we did some working out. Can't be too prepared for Mementos, eh?]

Glancing down at the team leader, Akira noted the sway of the team leader’s tail. “Not interested?”

Morgana’s ears flicked, but with his head pointed down the transfer student couldn’t be sure if it was annoyance or something else. “Go ahead and practice your running. I’ll check with Nightrider about our name exchange.” He hopped down and slunk out the door. Akira shot a text back to the runner, then to the president to warn her to keep an eye out for their leader. Communications done, Akira changed into his gym uniform, and met the track star behind the gym.

Ryuji bared a toothy grin. “Yo. How you feelin’ about fightin’ the flab?”

Akira poked the runner in the ribs. “I ain’t the old man struggling to reach his old glory.”

Smirking, Ryuji shoulder-bumped the transfer student. “Heh. Watch me wreck your expectations.” His eyes bulged. “I mean, like, in a not bad way.”

An unfamiliar boy snapped, “The hell you doin’ in our spot?”

Akira turned, shoulder-to-shoulder with the runner. “I don’t see your name on it.”

A dark-haired boy with a dark sweatband glared at the transfer student. He shifted his heated gaze to the runner and slipped his hands in his track suit. “What’re you doin’ here? Think you can just start runnin’ with the team again after what you did?”

Akira stepped closer. “What did you do, Takeishi? ‘Cause for all the talk of team spirit, all I see is shit-talking from a coward who did nothing as Kamoshida beat every team but his own into dust. At least Ryuji stood up to him.”

“He couldn’t even punch out Kamoshida,” Takeishi spat. “Yeah, he singled you out, but when it came down to it, all he had to do was push and you went down.”

“At least he pushed,” Akira said, gesturing his head at Ryuji.

The brown-haired guy stepped back with a weak shrug.

Takeishi saw it and whirled on his fellow runner. “The hell you agreein’ with them for? The transfer doesn’t have any business talkin’ shit at all, and Ryuji ruined all of us just for one ineffective swing.”

Ryuji took in a deep breath before howling over them, “Dudes!” He made sure to lower his clenched hands. “Kamoshida’s gone now. We don’t gotta stay stuck on him. Eff, we could bring the track team back if havin’ a team is really what it’s all about. Back for real, not this runnin’ around the back lot.”

Nakaoka’s face reddened with a sudden rage and his hands balled into fists. “And who’d cosign for reinstating the track team, Ryuji? Not one of the faculty would have anything to do with us. You were the only one who broke records, but thanks to that swing you took at Kamoshida all we’ll ever be here is the team that attacked the coach.” He took off at a steady sprint down the outer-grounds path.

Takeishi ground his teeth for another second longer before taking off as well, sending almost as heated a glare at his fellow runner as the ex-track star.

Ryuji let out a long breath and as much collapsed as leaned against the gym wall. “Man, it’s lookin’ like Nakaoka’s gettin’ along even worse than usual.”

Akira quirked an eyebrow. “He just unloaded on you and you’re worried about him?”

Ryuji wiped his nose with the back of his hand and stood up. “Well, yeah. We were friends, before Kamoshida. All of us were. An’ even though we ain’t buddy-buddy now, he ain’t wrong.” He threw a hand out at them as the pair hit the corner and continued running along Shujin’s property wall. “They don’t even got a club room no more. We used to be able to go a buncha places for track or cross-country practice, an’ now the few that still got the heart to run gotta just run laps in this shitty place. A proper team sport ain’t the place for outcasts.”

Akira walked over and gave a playful punch in the runner’s shoulder. “Hey, I saw you running in Inokashira. You love running so much, you adapted. Outcast or no. So could they.”

Ryuji forced a grin that wouldn’t have fooled a five-year-old child, but punched back and stood up. “Well, it’s easier for me ‘cuz I live like right across the street from Inokashira. But thanks, dude. With all the shit goin’ round you, I bet you got it even worse than us.” He looked out at the corner the other runners disappeared around. “Even if I can’t be part of whatever’s up next, it’s not like I want ‘em endin’ up like me. Y’know?”

Akira clapped his hand on Ryuji’s shoulder. “You may dye your hair to look like a dork, but you’re a stand-up guy.”

Ryuji pulled away and ran a hand through his hair. “Hey, this is the sign of a rebel.”

Wednesday, 15 June 2016
Early Evening
Aoyama, Road to Train Station

Akira’s feet thumped down the road, occasional trucks the only traffic intruding on his thoughts. While the city noise sounded oppressive on most days, like the pressure on his eardrums when diving just a little too deep, it was a welcome relief after Shujin’s library. The noise level alone would have been a minor distraction if his name didn’t keep on popping up. With the distractions he felt like he spent two hours for half an hour of study.

He slowed once the stairs down to the subway came into view. It had been a while since he saw Hifumi last. It would be nice to see her again, for tutoring if not just that sonorous voice and those deep green eyes.

Akira came to a stop next to the wall so the foot traffic would avoid him. His contacts already open to Queen Togo, doubts creeping in. “Well, nothing ventured, nothing gained.” Leaning against the wall next to a storefront of baby toys, he called.

She picked up just after the third ring. “Good day, Akira-kun.”

Akira felt a smile tug at his lips. “Good evening, Queen Togo. Sorry about all those texts late last night.”

A dainty chuckle floated out from the phone. “That was hardly late, Akira-kun. There’s a lot of things to stress about, I don’t want to be one of those things for you.”

That smile widened over his face. That consideration reminded him of Shiho. “So, uh… I know you’ve been kind of busy.” He bit his lip, feeling a knot forming in his gut. “I thought maybe we could play a game or two in the fresh air. Would you like to visit somewhere outside?”

Her voice dropped to a hush, “God, yes. The chairs in the calligraphy club feel like rocks and if I have to stare at the inside another studio set, I’m going to start tearing my hair out.”

That knot in his stomach loosened a little. He opened his mouth, but before he could even speak, his mind started telling him why every single place he could think of was a bad choice. Too boring, too dirty, too bad for respectable company, too expensive. “Anywhere you’d like to go?”

A few beats passed where he strained to hear Hifumi’s soft breathing as she ticked through options in her mind. “Rekisen Park is quiet, offers some nice privacy, and has tables we could set up on.”

“Mm-hm.”

“I’ll send you a text for the exact meeting spot as soon as I get there.” She cut the call.

Akira glanced down to the team leader, head jutting out of his satchel but laying on the open zipper. “You coming?”

He rolled his blue eyes. “I don’t know what you see in that game, and if I wanted to see two teenagers getting boisterous about weird stuff I’d stick around more often when you watched Fairy Tail.”

“It’s a great show!”

Morgana shook his head, the shake passing all the way down his spine to his tail. “Just let me off at Shibuya. If I don’t run into Nightrider or Lady Ann, I’ll see you at Leblanc at night.”

They parted ways at the Shibuya Underground and Akira took the train up to Chiyoda. The park outside Tokyo Dome would have been closer, but he figured Rekisen had some other quality she wanted, so he took a bus, texted to let her know he arrived, and followed her directions through the central promenade to a secluded, concrete table nestled in the trees. Despite being off the main walk way and food vendors, Akira spotted a young man in an egg-blue button-down shirt standing over Hifumi in her school uniform. Blue Shirt stared at his hand with a look of awe. He spoke with a breathlessness as if he just ran a marathon, “T-thank you!” He held it up, marveling at the ordinary limb. “I will never wash it again.”

Akira grimaced in disgust as he approached. “Don’t be unhygenic.”

The man in blue jumped in surprise, whipping a glare onto him for a beat before looking back to Hifumi. “Is it true that you pray to God for victory?”

Her eyes widened and head drew back, a pucker to her lips as if she bit a lemon. “Why would I do that?”

The young man jammed his hands in his pockets and drew his phone. “Oh, just lemme get a selfie with you.”

“No unapproved photographs,” Hifumi said, melancholy slipping into her calm, controlled tone. For a moment, she looked as exhausted as the transfer student remembered Ann looking when he first arrived at Shujin. “My mother has me on a strict contract.”

He held up his phone anyway and Akira snatched it. “She said no. People like you who act like they don’t understand what consent is make all men look bad. Now respect her wishes and leave.”

The obsessive man took back his phone, but thrust a hand at the shogi master. “Do you have any idea who that is? Togi Hifumi, future professional shogi player and most beautiful soon-to-be champion of the third-dan league.”

Akira felt his face warm. She was certainly beautiful, but saying so with a jerk like this still eyeing her like a piece of meat made him feel dirty. “W-well… you’re interrupting a match between shogi rivals.”

Blue Shirt looked between Hifumi’s cool I’m-not-glowering and Akira. “You’ve gotta be kidding me. You really gonna bullshit me that you ain’t here for the Venus of Shogi?”

Trying to surreptitiously clean her hand with a wipe, Hifumi stopped. She blushed and clapped her hand over her face.

Akira felt his own face heat up more at the title, as well as the reminder of the artwork the name came from. And the mental image substituting the shogi master for the nude lady. He took off his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose, hoping that hid some of his blush. “Look, just because you’ve got nothing but what’s downstairs doesn’t mean she doesn’t have plenty upstairs,” he finished tapping the side of his head.

Blue shirt flashed a lascivious grin at her. “Yeah, I’d say she has lots upstairs.”

She and Akira sighed in time, her face reddening in shy embarrassment and his in shame. He set his glasses back and shot Blue Shirt a glare. “Can we get on with our game?”

Blue Shirt tilted his head and stepped back, then seemed to come to a decision. “You may be for real. Smart of you to challenge her in private because you know how amazing her skill is in public.” He bowed to her twice. “T-thank you so much, Hifumi-chan.”

He scurried off and Akira raised a fist as if considering following after to beat a sense of respect into the weirdo. “Creep. What people think and believe are so much closer to the core of our being than any appearance.” The transfer student sat down across the table.

Flashing him one of those subdued smiles of gratitude, Hifumi checked her phone and began setting up another one of her odd scenarios. “Thank you. I hate being the center of a fuss.” Her face darkened. “Being good-looking isn’t even special. An hour with a makeup and wardrobe team can make anybody look amazing.” She stuffed her hand-wipe into a small plastic bag in her schoolbag. “Men like him proposition me all the time. To be honest, I thought you were one of them at first.” Her visage settled into a warm smile. “But when you knew the difference between a chess and shogi board, I figured you earned a chance.”

Feeling buoyed, he bowed in his seat. “Think nothing of it, Queen Togo.”

She covered her mouth and giggled, the hunch to her shoulders vanishing. “I thought I had found a once-in-a-lifetime shogi friend in Father Sugiyama. He is incredibly generous, allowing me to practice in the church.” Her face reddened. “And he never laughed at my embarrassing habit.” She gave him a relaxed smile. “I count myself blessed to have found another such friend.”

Akira’s mouth drifted open, but for long seconds he forgot how to speak. His lungs froze and his heart played bumper cars in his rib cage. Hifumi, the brilliant and beautiful girl with a real family, who had to have real prospects, put him on the same level as Sugiyama? Part of him felt like floating off the seat, and part wondered what was wrong with the shogi master. He was no better than the pervert openly ogling her.

Akira rubbed the back of his neck, the park feeling hot despite the breeze. “So, uh…” His eyes spotted a book with a colorful cover in her schoolbag. “W-what are you reading?”

She glanced at her bag and reached in to draw out the book and hand The Lord of the Rings to him. “I’ve finished it before, but this is the kind of story with layers of meaning that makes it an interesting read again and again.” She slapped her hand to her cheek, red tinging her face again. “Oh!”

He glanced at the hedges behind him. “What?”

“The last time we went book shopping,” she said. She sat straight and drew in a deep, calming breath. “I found a good translation of The Screwtape Letters. Some of the things you said about responsibility and virtue reminded me of it and I thought you’d like to read it. A lot of stories depict demons as purveyors of vice, but he postulated that their prime goals were to minimize Christian virtues and by this keep souls from heaven. Lewis was a very insightful man, I thought you would find it interesting. I’ll make sure to have it for you next time.”

Akira scratched his neck. Plenty of people noted his ability to memorize things, but few ever praised his thoughtfulness. Maybe she just didn’t understand him. For now, he would give her that game.

Thursday, 16 June 2016
Early Morning
Shibuya Station

Leaning against the tiled pillar, Akira let the symphonic melody of David Arnold flow through the wired bud in one ear. A handful of students and salarymen scattered across the station platform on the line to Aoyama-Itchome, all either in that standing-half-asleep or absorbed in something on their phones. He turned a page in Brave New World.

Makoto hopped off the stairs, at as much a jog as Shibuya’s underground allowed. The powerful jog and dexterous jump in direction set his heart beating in anticipation of a good race. The thudding in his chest didn’t help him ignore the way the white shirt of her summer uniform wrapped around her chest with just enough suggestive power to draw his eyes to it. The even breathing just emphasized the ease of her run, adding to his jealousy of the athletic girl.

Stop it, he chided himself.

She came to a stop next to him and gave a shallow nod in greeting. “Akira-kun.” She glanced at the book in his hand. “I see you are also a fan of literature. Anyway, it seems Kaneshiro turning himself in is on everyone’s mind.” She crossed her arms and shifted her weight to her far foot. “Most of the police are just happy to have him off the streets.”

“Most?” He paused his music and closed his book on his finger.

Her crossed arms loosened just a bit. “Big Sis is already on another project, but quite a few prosecutors built their whole careers around taking him down. While his confession helps, the calling card means they don’t get any credit.”

Stuffing a bookmark in Brave New World, Akira clapped it shut to turn his full attention to her. He tried to keep bitterness out of his tone, “Build your life around knockin’ others down and your existence becomes all about pain.”

Makoto rubbed her arm, eyes drifting down as she let out a long breath. “They just want to get rid of the toxic people in society.”

“So did the judge who pronounced me guilty without even giving my rep the chance to call someone in my defense.” Akira held a hand out to her, palm-up in an effort to show it wasn’t intended to be aggressive. “Well, so was I when you first started stalking me.” She blushed, but he continued, “I didn’t go after Kamoshida because I wanted him to become a nice guy. I didn’t even believe the change of heart would happen until his confession.”

She snapped straight, her brows knitting together and crimson gaze boring into his. “You knew he would change.”

He sighed and leaned his head back until it thumped against the tile. “I knew something would happen, but I’d have been okay if he had a mental shutdown.” Just to break her gaze, he looked over at one of the electronic posters advertising some movie with Risette, rotating into some old guy in a weird paint style. The pillar prevented him from turning away from her without making it obvious. “That stalwart champion of justice you looked for when you baited me to the student council room? That was Ann. When the chips were down and Kamoshida’s Shadow was vulnerable, she was the one who let him live.”

Makoto shifted, one hip jutting to the left as her eyes scanned his face. “But you changed. You even asked me for help delivering names of hearts soon-to-change in the Shibuya–” her eyes darted around them, “–clan.”

He tucked his book under his arm. “Somehow I got a second chance. I never knew what it was like not to have everyone treating me like I failed before I even started. For the first time, I could be someone not like my old bastard.” He shrugged and slipped his book back out, but returned his focus on her. “Everyone deserves a chance to make a turn to the better. Otherwise, everyone gets pushed to the worst they can be. If there’s no forgiveness, everyone is condemned eventually.”

Makoto fidgeted with her pleated skirt. “For someone who says he wasn’t a good person, you sound like a genuine reformer.”

Akira rubbed his neck, feeling some heat on his face. “Well, if we don’t try to fix the small things, what hope do we have for the big ones?”

Makoto nodded, her hands releasing the pleats of her skirt. “Speaking of big ones, do we have any big names to change? I knew Kaneshiro would be big, but had no idea just how much an impact across the city he would have. It’s nice to clean up more of his…” her eyes flashed left and right, “…underlings, but I feel antsy to get out there against another real target.” She even bounced from foot to foot.

Akira felt a smile split his face.

Morgana poked his head out of the transfer student’s satchel. “Not even a week after the last and already looking for the next heart to change. I’ve pulled together a great team, huh?”

Akira rolled his eyes, but let the corners of his mouth turn up. “Don’t let that head get too big, fearless leader.” Wind rushed through the tunnel and the waiting students stood for the line to Aoyama-Itchome.

Chapter 56: June 16th, Out of His League

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Thursday, 16 June 2016
After School
Shujin, Front Entrance

Fumbling a little with his left arm still in a sling, Akira leaned against the shoe lockers to straighten his heel with his one good hand. Before he could get his other shoe off, his phone buzzed. A text from Makoto to the group chat apologizing for being held up with student council business. He shrugged and fought his other shoe on, tucking in the laces, then followed Mishima out the front gates. A flash of blond pigtails brought them to a stop. “Hey, Ann. What’s up?”

Even Mishima paused the incessant tapping on his phone and glanced up. Ann clasped her hands behind her back, making her breasts push against her shirt. The class rep blushed, and both boys averted their eyes, but Ann continued without any sign she noticed their discomfort, “Since we’re not going anywhere,” her blue eyes glanced to his sling, up, then to Mishima, “did you guys want to check out Madarame’s exhibit?”

Morgana popped his head out of Akira’s satchel, devastation in his voice, “No… he couldn’t. Don’t tell me that shady Yusuke guy’s stolen your heart, Lady Ann.”

“What?” She drew back, disappointment as well as anger in her tone. “No! I was just noticing with your sling, there’s nothing more we can do… there. So we should do something in the real world.” She handed them two tickets. “Madarame had pretty nice artwork in that TV special. I mean, Kitagawa already gave the tickets.”

Akira shrugged. “I still think we’ll find more targets in Mementos, but there was this homeless artist I ran across who said Madarame drove him out of the art world. Maybe there are more clues in the real world.” Between Takemi’s and Morgana’s orders, he was out of combat until the sling was gone. At least last evening with Hifumi gave him something to challenge himself on.

Mishima stepped closer to give departing students more room, and tapped a knuckle against his lip in thought. “Might also give a lead that you guys can’t get in Mementos. Most of the articles I find on the internet only go on about what a nice or eccentric guy Madarame is, or how amazing his scope of style is. Even the article on one of his students committing suicide by train last May was filled with commiseration. And the only thing I could find about the apprentice guy was an article from Kosei High’s Gazette about their art scholarship recipients this year. Super aloof, but also no sign of foul play.”

Morgana popped out of Akira’s bag, paws on the transfer student’s shoulders. “I believe Joker. If he says there’s something fishy about Madarame, then the old man’s just hiding his crimes behind closed doors.”

Akira pulled the chat up on his phone. “Makoto might want to go. That seems more her scene.” He tapped a quick invite, adding the location and time.

Ann smirked. “Thinking of taking her out for a night on the town?”

The transfer student blinked, unsure how to place her tone. “Makoto’s just a very reliable teammate. I’ve only been to history or science museums through school, so she might actually know what’s up.”

Ryuji trotted out of the front gate, making a beeline for Ann. He gave a brief wave to the others. “Somethin’s up?”

Akira switched his phone to his sling-hand and held up the ticket Ann gave him. “Art exhibit, Ryuji. Remember? The one Kitagawa gave tickets for on Monday?”

Morgana brushed at one ear with his paw. “Appreciating fine art builds character, Reaper. This could be an excellent team-building event. What kind of lame phantom thief couldn’t tell an original from a replica?”

The transfer student’s phone buzzed and he ignored the bickering to read Makoto’s reply. [I'd love to see an art exhibit. I haven't been to one since dad died. How many of his apprentices will be there?]

“Makoto’s in,” Akira blurted into the argument. When Ann cringed, he gave her a raised eyebrow. “Something wrong?”

“He only gave me four tickets,” Ann said. “I didn’t even think about Senpai.”

Morgana stretched out on Akira’s shoulder. “Well, I think Reaper should definitely come. He is in desperate need of culture.”

“I bet he has plenty between his toes,” Akira said with aplomb.

Ryuji bared his teeth to reinforce his glare. “Aw c’mon. I wash my feet after runnin’. At least the cat don’t know better.”

Morgana’s tail stood straight out. “I am not a cat!”

Mishima raised one eyebrow.

“It’s affectionate bickering,” Akira said, “I assure you.”

“Based on the gaps in your conversation,” the class representative said, his eyebrow arch receding, “I’m sure he’s got to be saying something. But I’m not sure if it’s any better to argue like bitter siblings in a Korean soap opera or get into a shouting match with a cat who can’t talk back.”

“Ah, whaddeva!” Ryuji spat. “Stupid you and your cat.”

“Claws!” Akira snapped at the hint of sharp points in his shoulder. Once the team leader settled back down, Akira checked her question and texted the student council president back, [I think just Kitagawa, the guy who gave us the tickets.] He added a note that the team was antsy to get going. That done, he slipped his phone back in his pocket. “So Makoto’s going. I’m not texting her back to cancel. She can have my ticket if you all want in, it’s not like I need to see an art gallery. Ann’s got to go, she’s the reason he gave us the tickets.” He paused and looked her in the eye. “Unless you want us to tell him to buzz off on your behalf?”

“No! I want to go.” She twirled her finger through the tip of a pigtail. “Just the idea sounds mature,” she finished with a smile.

Ryuji scratched his head. “What’s the big deal about a buncha pictures stuck on a wall? That sounds like starin’ at ma’s screen saver all day.”

Groaning, Akira brushed his free hand through his hair. “Then go investigate Shibuya or look for The King on Gun About or something. We’ll investigate the art exhibit. Four tickets, four people, problem solved.” His phone buzzed. “Makoto says she’ll be done in fifteen. This is good, you guys can take a dive even if I have to sit today out.”

Ann’s eyes widened. “We can’t go without you!”

“You can and should,” Akira said, walking them to the vending machine nook outside the front gates. “We need a big win to prove to the world the Phantom Thieves are just crusaders, not criminals pushing out criminals.” He lifted his arm in a sling and frowned at the feeling of stiffness resisting motion. “I may be out of commission today, but with Makoto you still have four. That should be enough for a good dive through Mementos.”

Morgana gave him an inscrutable look. “I don’t like the idea of leaving you out, Joker.”

“You’re the only vital one in Mementos,” he shot back. “You’re the one who can safely get them in and out, as well as sense our targets. Between you four, you should be able to handle anything you come across. But the Phantom Thieves still need to make progress.”

Mishima, his eyes on the road, stepped out and waved back towards the school.

A moment later, Makoto jogged in, breathing from running all the way out of school. She gave a nod to the 2-D class representative, then looked over the others. “Okay, everyone. I’m ready to fight those Shadows.”

After quite a few exchanged glances, Ann grunted and held out her school satchel for Morgana. “Fine. Don’t aggravate that sprain, okay, Akira?”

He nodded.

Following the transfer student down a longer route to the train station, Mishima waited until after they were out of eyesight and earshot before leaning closer. “You texted Prez that they already decided to go into Mementos, didn’t you?”

Akira shrugged. “Ryuji had to wait out almost all of Kaneshiro’s palace, even after helping us get there. He was pissed, but he grit his teeth and got through it. If he can do it, so can I. Trying to hold everyone else to a different standard is what my old bastard would do.” He turned to his class representative. “So no promising leads at all?”

Mishima rubbed the back of his neck. “Nothing but those bullies I already texted you guys about. There’s more requests every day, but most of them are the petty kind Ryuji mentioned were…pointless.” He adjusted the straps of the school satchel hanging on his left shoulder. “It might take a serious journalist to get the real dirt. I’ve been pretty lucky, but I’m still just a high schooler.”

Akira elbowed the class representative. “Hey, you’ve been doing really good for us. If you’d just go talk to Shiho, she’d be proud.”

Mishima stepped into a small delivery side-street to get them away from the already sparse foot traffic. He faced the transfer student straight on for the first time today, jaw set, but stopped short of raising his fists. “I haven’t done nearly enough to make up for what happened to her.”

Rubbing his temple with the fingers of one hand, Akira let out a sigh. “Kamoshida’s the one who r—hurt her.”

“It never would have happened if it wasn’t for me!” Mishima bellowed, his eyes shining with unshed tears. “I’m the one who deserves to be stuck in a hospital.” His arms shook. “She was everything to me. She was the only gentle thing in Shujin. She was sweet and patient and her heart was so big she was still automatically kind to everyone, even at that rotten school.” He sniffed, and snot glistened beneath his nose. “She was strong when she hugged me, warm when she smiled, and a sight to behold when she threw herself into volleyball.” He wiped at his eyes, but tears traced down anyway. “Now all that’s gone.”

“Hey,” Akira snapped to get the class representative’s attention. “We’ll take down that scammed mistress or tax fraud ring or whatever skeleton Madarame’s got hiding in his closet. It’ll be the perfect moral victory after Hashimoto’s condemnation of us on TV.” He stepped closer to pat Mishima on the arm. “Then you can go make up with Suzui-san. Ann says she’s walking two meters without assistance now. It would mean a lot to her.”

Mishima wiped at his face. “To Shiho, or Ann?” He slumped against the wall next to the transfer student.

“Both.”

Mishima gave a derisive snort, but he stood a little straighter. “I don’t feel like I’ve any right to try to get my girlfriend back when I’ve been such a terrible boyfriend.”

Akira let out a long breath. This would be so much easier if the class representative would figure out which girl he wanted to be with and just go, but he couldn’t just dismiss the point. “I guess that brings the question to what is a good boyfriend? Or girlfriend for that matter.”

“Well…” Mishima rubbed his arm. “Shiho was beautiful, certainly, but that wasn’t what got me hooked.”

Akira raised an eyebrow. “I think Ryuji would have something different to say.”

Mishima let out a frustrated huff, then wiped at his face, looking a little more collected. “I think Ryuji-kun is stuck on the superficial aspects that draw attention because he’s never experienced the things that people decide to make it a relationship for. Patience, that ability to listen for just a few minutes and make you feel like your existence means something.”

Akira slipped his hands in his pockets, his thoughts circulating back to the girl who gave him an affirming smile in the cafeteria when he said he wanted to be a doctor. “Warmth.”

Mishima stood straighter, a light sparking behind his eyes. “Right! Passion, that makes you feel warm and comfortable.”

His face blazing, Akira coughed into the back of his hand.

Mishima blushed too. “Not that! I meant like a companionable warmth. A way that, just by being around her, even in the dead of winter, you feel cozy.”

“Right!” Akira said just a little too quick. The exuberance Hifumi overflowed with when she had the chance to clash the Togo Kingdom against his Legion of Steel came to mind. As well as the mental image of her standing on a giant scallop shell, sans clothing. He shook his head against the sudden heat on his face.

Mishima stood up from the concrete wall. “Thinking of Ann?”

Despite himself, he thought back to a dream with Ann in lingerie wrestling him to the ground. Akira couldn’t deny she was hot by any measure, but… cuddling? Sitting together on the bed and just chatting about anything under the sun? Lacing her fingers in his and keeping him steady as they walked through a crowd? Tolerating his stupid outbursts and guiding him back to sanity? Challenging him, intellectually as well as physically? “It’s not that she isn’t nice, but… no.” He turned his steel grey gaze on the class representative. “Why her?”

Mishima went red as a tomato and fled to the street.

Akira blinked after. “Hoo, boy.”

Thursday, 16 June 2016
Evening
Yongen, Leblanc

The high-pitched chime as the register popped open brought Akira’s attention out of his homework. The lights dimmed outside, but no scratching at the door hinted at the team leader’s presence. Were they just taking their time today? Did they run into a trap? Akira took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose with his one good hand, trying to ignore the jittery feeling from the one hanging in the sling.

The bell rang and the last couple of legitimate customers stepped out. “Have a good night.” Sojiro wrote the day’s totals into his phone, then glanced over at the table half occupied by history and math. “Being studious is one thing, but anything can be taken too far.” He paused to look over the transfer student. “Have you been getting enough food and sleep? You’ve been looking a little worse for wear the past week.”

Akira huffed, but his hands felt tense without anything to do. Even his math homework lay completed before him. “Just trying to stay productive.” He brought up his phone and shot Hifumi a quick text message asking if she had time today. It took quite a bit longer with only one hand.

Tossing a brown hand towel next to the register, Sojiro proceeded to the door. “Make sure the stove is out. And get some sleep, kid.” The bell jingled as he pulled the door shut and locked it. His footsteps faded fast, but not too long later, he heard pawing at the door.

Akira jumped out of the booth seat, unlocked and opened the door. “Morgana! Is everything all right?”

The diminutive leader strolled in. “Of course. We changed four people’s hearts in Mementos.” He sat down, tail held aloft. “Nightrider is a lot less reckless when you’re not there to egg each other on. She still voted to continue on to the fifth one, but the gate at the lowest level we can reach still won’t open.” Morgana hopped up on a stool and took in the clean little cafe. “I see you’ve been keeping yourself busy. Don’t you ever stop and rest?”

“The dead have time to rest.” Akira packed his school satchel and followed the team leader upstairs.

Akira froze at the top, his eyelid twitching when he saw faint, dusty pawprints forming a trail on the hand-polished wood paneling. “Stop!”

Morgana went tense, his tail twitching high but at least his feet halting. “What, a trap?”

Akira grabbed for the broom and wipes. The sudden motion went further than his tense arm could control and he dropped the canister. “Dammit!” He bent down to get the wipes. “You must’ve stepped in something.” He held out a hand, then realized he didn’t have full use of both hands and leaned the broom against the table. He pulled out a sanitizing wipe.

Morgana rolled his eyes, but trotted closer and let the transfer student wipe off whatever oil he stepped in on the way from the train station. “The operation was pretty touch and go at first. One of those amalgamation Shadows ambushed us in the upper levels. Without you there to swiss-army-knife them, it took a hard beating to break out.”

Akira swallowed and focused on the cat paws to have an excuse not to look at the leader’s blue eyes. “How bad were the injuries?”

Morgana did a remarkable job of waving off the question without having human wrists. He smirked enough to be clear despite the fur. “Funny you should mention that. Even if it wasn’t for the medicine, Zorro isn’t the only Persona in our little band that can heal anymore.”

Akira paused from wiping at the floor and looked the leader in the face. “Between Captain Kidd’s speedy strength and Johanna’s blunt tankiness, I can’t see any… wait, did Carmen gain healing?” He could see somebody as nurturing – even if sometimes matronizing – as Ann learning to heal.

Morgana sat down, smirk still on full. “Nope. Makoto. She said she had a revelation after that first battle and restored the damage to Zorro.”

Akira blinked, but couldn’t imagine Johanna doing anything except busting out fiery missiles. He went back to scouring the floor and hit the broom, which slipped and clattered down the stairs. “Dammit!”

Morgana sighed, but seemed too tired to launch into a lecture. “Akira, you need some help. If you really need to do any cleaning up here like you’re always doing other nights, at least call someone to help.” He yawned. “But I’m beat.” He hopped onto the cushion on the bottom of the bookshelf and curled up.

Akira trotted down to the bottom floor. He slipped his arm out of the sling and reached, taking it slow, but it felt like a car’s suspension spring rested in his arm, resisting all motion. He slipped the canister of wipes into the sling and leaned the broom up against the wall before checking his phone. No response from Hifumi. Not that he’d want to call her over just to make her clean with him.

He pursed his lips, but his mind kept going back to the dust bunnies he was sure he saw under the couch. He brought up his phone and scrolled through his contacts to the one labeled ‘Becky’. He opened the call, and as soon as the Victoria receptionist answered he said, “Is Becky available?”

Yongen, Leblanc Loft

Kawakami-sensei followed him up the creaky old stairs, stopping at the top as she looked over the paneled floor as polished as hand work could get the old wood. “Wow, you keep your place almost as clean as the Ikedas.”

He gave her an askance look. “Are you talking about the dysfunctional family on that ‘lifestyles of the rich’ type show?”

She took her skirt in one hand and held her other over her mouth. “Master shouldn’t be so hard on Becky.” Looking around, she lowered her hand. “So where next? This place already looks spick and span. As surprising as that was for this attic’s start.”

Akira gripped the couch with his one good arm, leaving his other in the sling Takemi gave him. “I can get under the table, bookshelf, and work bench. But I can’t get the broom and mop under this thing.”

Kawakami’s arms dropped and her stance slumped. “Ugh. Just my luck a customer calls who just wants a cleaning service.”

Eyebrow arched, Akira gave her a stare and crossed his arms. “Why, should I be angling for sex like most of the perverts who probably use Victoria?”

Her fists settled on her hips. She didn’t meet his eyes so he knew she realized his point, but refused to concede. “Hey, buster. You were the one who requested me.” She crossed her arms just like him. “How’d you find out about Victoria, anyway?”

“Classmate,” Akira said. No way would he mention Ryuji by name, especially not after the loudmouth finally forgot the whole escapade. “He chickened out at the last minute.”

Kawakami nodded, her stance relaxing a little. “I can see Mishima-kun doing that.” She caught him tensing and let a little smirk on one side of her mouth. “You don’t hang out with many of your classmates. There’s only a few it could be. Are you… keeping in touch with your old friends?”

What old friends? The few dudes I used to hang out with ghosted me when I was arrested.” He reached his good arm out for the couch. “One meter out should be enough to clean entirely underneath.”

“Ugh. Slow down, kid,” Kawakami said, but lifted her end and helped him carry it out the requested meter. When he picked up the broom, she paced around to snatch it. “You’re still hurt. Geez, kid, don’t you know how to take it easy?”

“Idle hands make the devil’s playthings.”

She stared at him for several seconds before turning around and sweeping. “You’re not at all like your record made you out to be, you know that? I’ve been teaching for three years so I’ve seen a lotta kids. All of them have their tells, but you’re probably one of the hardest to read. You have a conviction for assault, but you chat with the class president. You stormed Kamoshida’s office the day of that girl’s jump, but you’re never late to class. Your edges are so rough they’re serrated, and yet you defended Suzui-kun when she wasn’t there to defend herself. And from your last essay, justice is very important to you.”

Akira crossed his arms tighter. “Where no one else will uphold justice, that should just be a call for all present to stand up that much faster. The kenpeitai terrorized Japan until enough Japanese refused to live under their thumb of the world’s most brutal tyranny.” His eyes swung up for a moment of thought. “Well, and the allies carpet-bombing the military until there wasn’t enough of a kenpeitai left to keep up the iron fist.”

She chuffed, but Kawakami’s mouth smothered a smile instead of a frown. “You must read a lot. I didn’t know about the kenpeitai until I took history in college.” She knelt to sweep the dust into a dust pan, then dumped it into the garbage pail.

Akira dipped a mop in a small plastic bucket. “Oppression and standing up to it was a recurring conversation topic in my family.”

She forced a giggle, but at least it sounded better than one of Ann’s fake laughs. “You and your mother never talked about housecleaning techniques? Most parents are eager to offload the housework onto the kids.”

Mouth pressing into a thin line, Akira tried to decide what would be the quickest way to get her to lose interest without having to elaborate on much. “You said you read the file sent to Shujin. Did you not notice mother and the old bastard had different addresses?”

Kawakami set down the dust pan and took the mop. With her shoulders squared and eyes still searching his, even that laughable maid uniform couldn’t take away the resemblance to Officer Ichijou. The way both of them stared, filed and sorted and compared him to some mental model built from someone else. “I just… can’t understand how someone so young could be so cynical, not just about adults in general but both of his own parents. Parents teach everyone something. If you didn’t get any valuable life lessons from your father, at least your mother—”

“Never thought past who she was going to bang next,” he bit out. He could almost feel the rain soaking his Tanizaki Middle School jacket. The humiliation so long ago still clenched his hands into trembling fists despite the tension in the hand in a sling. He stalked to the corner where he kept the cleaning supplies and threw the broom against the wall, where it bounced to the ground with a clatter. “Never even considered giving up her old ‘profession’,” he snapped with a sneer. “Not for the old bastard, and not for me.” He knelt to snatch up the broom. “I am nothing like her.”

Kawakami set down the dust pan. “She…” Her eyes grew wide. “While you…!” A shiver passed through her before she crossed her arms and took a step back. “I… I didn’t mean to pry.”

Akira set the broom against the wall. “I’m not like her,” he said, face burning as fragments of his steamy dreams with Ann percolated up in his mind. Then the ones he was starting to have with Hifumi. “I’m not.”

Kawakami took the mop. She wouldn’t quite meet his eyes. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have pressed. It’s just… as earnest and important as justice is to you, you called a maid service.”

His arm in a sling felt tenser than before and he twisted it to try to work out the muscles. “You’re here to do the cleaning I can’t. It’s not like you’re not being paid.”

Her strained smile could’ve cut steel. “Becky… does need the money.”

His phone buzzed and he pulled it out to see a text from Queen Togo. Akira took some distance to make sure he read in privacy, only to see, [Sorry, busy with errand for mother. Not available tonight. Also sorry for being so late to reply.]

He sighed, his shoulders and eyelids feeling heavy all of the sudden.

[It's okay. You've got to take care of your own.] He stared at his sent message for long moments before deciding it wouldn’t switch to read while he stared at it.

“Everything okay there, Kurusu-kun?” Kawakami called from the mop bucket. She gave a teasing smile. “Lover’s tiff?”

He couldn’t hold in all of the snarl that snapped onto his face, but he composed himself as fast as he could. No sense denying the facts. “Don’t make fun of me, Sensei. I’m not boyfriend material.”

Her smile evaporated, her spine straightening as she stood up to look him over. A guardedness replaced her easygoing energy. Kawakami’s dark brown eyes met his with a searching intensity he’d never seen from her before. For a beat he wondered if the square to her shoulders was for her or him. “Nonsense. There’s all sorts of guys, and all sorts of girls that go for those guys.”

With the other Phantom Thieves recovering from a run in the Metaverse and his only other outlet for intellectual stimulation busy, Akira turned his phone to sleep and plugged it into the charger. “Bad guys like me don’t end up with good girls like…” He shook his head. Hifumi, Ann, Makoto… Every girl he could think of was out of his league. They had better prospects than him.

“Like who?” Kawakami prodded.

“Anyone,” he said as the atmosphere pressed down on him. Akira sat back on his bed and took off his glasses to massage back the sense of growing headache and fatigue. A yawn worked its way out of his mouth.

Friday, 17 June 2016
Early Morning
Yongen, Leblanc Loft

Akira’s hand fumbled for his phone as Battle at the Pyramid blasted out of it. As much as he wanted to enjoy the score to Stargate, the tangle of his sheet felt even tighter than most mornings. Never being one to lounge in bed, he extricated himself and stumbled to the work bench to turn off the musical morning alarm. Retrieving his glasses, he looked around to note the room looked different than before. “Morgana? Does anything seem different to you?”

Morgana hopped onto the arm of the couch. He sniffed twice in the air. “That cleaning lady you hired really does take pride in her job, huh?”

He checked the faux recycle box for palace trinkets covered with discarded newspapers. With no sign of disturbance, he looked across the rest of the room. “Yeah, I guess she gets the job done.”

Morgana hopped to the table at the corner by the stairs. “She even cleaned over here, and the stairs. Getting it this good would’ve taken more than an hour to finish.”

Akira had to admit the not-cat was right. He pulled on his Shujin uniform. “No time for dallying in the morning. Come on.”

Chapter 57: June 17th, Second Step

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Friday, 17 June 2016
After School
Shujin, Class 2-D

When Mishima joined the first wave of escapees at the sound of the bell, Akira shrugged and took his time packing up. The class rep was still the Phantom Thieves’ best investigator, so maybe he had a good reason.

A scant minute later, a shadow fell over his desk and he looked up to see Ann there with her school satchel over one shoulder. She glowered for a moment at the now empty seat the class rep sat in before. “Dammit, he’s always gone when I want to talk to him.”

Akira turned in his seat. “Everything okay?”

Thumb fidgeting with her strap, Ann’s eyes darted around for a moment before she let out a breath. “Shiho’s got another physical therapy session today. I was hoping on… straightening a few things out with Yuu-kun on the way.”

Morgana’s tail twitched from his hiding space in the transfer student’s desk. “What a terrible class rep to leave Lady Ann in the lurch.”

Akira opened his lips to offer to go, and in an instant his lungs felt small and mouth parched as the Ghobi Desert. He smacked his lips once, cleared his tense throat, and said through a cracking voice, “Want me to come?” He coughed into his fist once, feeling less under the influence of a terrible curse once he got some words out. “I mean, she’s not my best friend and I don’t know if there’s anything I can do but moral support—”

“Yes,” Ann said, weariness and gratitude both etched in the lines of her face. “I think you’d have been fast friends, too, if… the hospitalization didn’t happen.”

Akira lowered his voice at the team leader, “You coming too?”

The tip of Morgana’s tail twitched. “W-would it be okay, Lady Ann?”

Her already thin smile strained, but Ann nodded. The group packed up and pushed their way through the chaotic mess to the train. No open seats awaited them, but Ann and Akira found side-by-side hanging straps to hold onto.

She hadn’t said anything, but Akira noticed the lines in her neck. He knew the signals of chronic stress, his old bastard was an expert at inflicting it. Trying to take a page out of Hifumi’s book, he planned ahead and tried out some lines in his head, but nothing ever felt real. At last he spit out, “Everything okay? You’re looking like you’re carrying a safe.”

“Huh?” Ann’s frosty blue eyes met his for only a moment before she looked away, her shoulders slumping more. “It’s nothing.” She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, breathed in, then opened her eyes. “I feel like I’m juggling knives. Study, homework, modeling, and then trying to get up to Shiho three times a week. I feel like whoever I am is getting lost in there, but if I give up any of those things, I still lose.”

From within the transfer student’s satchel, Morgana let out a melancholic sigh. “Plagued by your own kindness and concern. You’re such an amazing person, Lady Ann. You shouldn’t neglect yourself.”

Akira was tempted to point out how strange it was for a guy who looked like a cat to hit on Ann, but discretion won out this time. He tightened his hold on the strap above. “He’s got a point. Even if you’ve got a posse to back you up, you still need to take care of number one.”

Ann’s face twisted like she bit a lemon. “I hate when people say that. ‘Take care of number one’. It sounds so… I only hear it when people are trying to excuse being a jerk.”

The train slid to a stop and a new batch of passengers boarded, making further conversation impossible until they got off at the stop for Shiho’s physical therapy clinic. Once they got out of the crowded station, the street wasn’t much better but allowed Morgana to poke his head out. “Lady Ann, you said modeling was like juggling knives. Is there somebody causing problems there? Like a heart we might need to change?”

“What?” Ann said, her pale blue eyes widening. “No!” The little shadows of small muscle tension returned to her neck. “I mean, there’s a lot of personalities, but it’s mostly the complications of subbing. They’re all set up and usually only have the makeup and wardrobe for the intended models, so there’s a lot of running around.” She fidgeted with one of the straps of her school satchel. “It might be easier if I got scheduled more, but I’m still not sure how big I want modeling to be. It’s nice while papa and mama are away because I feel a little less distant from them.”

Akira strode around an old guy quizzing a beat cop on directions. Without a problem child to go after, he had no idea what advice to offer the model. “What about with Shiho?” he managed as they came to the physical therapy clinic.

Pausing at the door, Ann’s eyes stared into the frosted pane of glass. “We… There are things we have to not talk about now. And as much as I’d like to…” She fidgeted. “I have to help her first.” She pulled the door and stepped in before the pair accompanying her had a chance to speak.

The smell of rubber gloves and analgesic creams hit and he wondered if his place would smell like this if he ever got to open a practice of his own. Eggshell blue paint and posters of the back, elbows, and knees covered the walls. A reception desk window and row of seats along one wall reminded him of the lobby in Takemi’s clinic. A family with a curly-haired eleven-year-old sat at the end. Ann checked in with the receptionist, then led them to a narrow hall stretching quite a bit further back than the exam room in Takemi’s clinic.

Ann knocked at the next room.

A moment later a man in a green striped button-down shirt opened the door. He smiled. “Takamaki-chan, good to see you.” His eyes drifted over to the transfer student standing behind her.

“They’re friends too,” she explained, pasting a smile too wooden to look real. The clench of her hand on her school satchel’s strap only made her seem more awkward.

“Hurry up!” a familiar woman’s voice snapped from further inside. “Just three more and you can go back walking today.”

Green Shirt abandoned the door to slip inside, though he left the door open. The students took that as an invitation and stepped in as he beseeched the mother, “Restoration of previous strength and range of motion is bound to take time, ma’am. It’s important to pay attention to feedback from the body.”

Following Ann inside, Akira looked around the same eggshell-blue walls. A big inflated ball sat in the corner, with four plastic chairs on the opposite corner where Suzui’s mother sat. Parallel bars jutted out of the short wall, bisecting most of the eggshell-blue room. One poster of the skeleton and several of tendons in the major joints drew his eye.

Shiho sat back in a wheelchair next to a row of plastic chairs. She held a triangular, padded grip, something like a bungee cord stretching down to the other end held down by the foot of a man in a sweater vest. Beads of sweat rolled down her face and veins stood out at her temples, but the light in her eyes shone dim as a smoldering ember.

Green Shirt looked down at the straining, stretchy cord. “Just a few more seconds, Suzui-chan.” When her grip on the padded handle failed, he smiled a little wider than his tense stance indicated as he picked it up. “Good, that’s still progress.” He nodded to the bottle next to her. “Take a few sips and rest for a bit before we do our final exercise of the day.”

Ann sat down in the plastic chair next to the mother. “Hey, Shiho.”

Akira left them to catch up and approached Green Shirt. He held his hand up to his jacket. “Akira. I’m studying to go into physical therapy myself. What… exactly is this clinic’s specialty?”

“Sawano,” Green Shirt responded with a nod and gesture at himself. “We deal with upper and lower-torso injuries here. Most of our patients came from long hospital stays and just need to recover muscle mass.” Sawano’s dark eyes swept over the transfer student for a moment, narrower than he might have been intending to betray. “Are you a friend of the family?”

“Just a…” Akira’s mouth drifted open, but he couldn’t make himself say he was Shiho’s friend. He was there to soak in her praise and kind words, but wasn’t in time to stop the filthy bastard who drove her off the roof. He closed his mouth, swallowed, then tried again. “A classmate.” His eyes flicked to the three girls chattering away. “Physical recovery often has a different length of convalescence than psychological trauma. Is she…?”

Sawano straightened his sleeve. “Even if that was something we dealt with at this clinic, I wouldn’t be permitted to discuss that with anybody outside her family.”

“Of course,” Akira said with a shallow bow.

Sawano approached the girls and clasped his hands. “How are your joints feeling today, Suzui-chan?”

She shot him a hooded glare. “They feel like they’re holding up sacks of ball bearings.” She flashed him a grin so sharp it could cut. “Which means they’re far better than my legs.”

Ann and Shiho’s mother flinched.

Sawano set the stretch tool in a cubby-hole built under the table next to her. “Suzui-chan. People have died from falls of only two meters. Your fall was considerably higher than that. Lumbar surgery can only do so much to replace cartilage, scaffold bones, or stitch tendons back together. In the end, it always comes down to you and your body’s ability to heal. So let’s give it the best chance possible.”

Akira slipped his hands in his pockets, memorizing the way Sawano sidestepped her frustrations and redirected her. He wondered if he’d ever be that dexterous in conversation. He also noticed Ann and her mother nod before Shiho did.

Sawano stepped over to the parallel bars and her mother pushed the wheelchair to the end. Ann helped her stand up to the bars, but the physical therapist motioned her back after Shiho came to her feet. He wrapped a padded-belt harness around her hips and just under her arms, but left slack in the plastic strap connecting to the back.

The pretty, black-haired girl wavered on her feet a moment, steadying herself with a firm grip on both bars. Shiho took a deep breath, then moved her left foot forward.

Her knee wavered as she took her first step forward, but her fingers clenched white on the steel bars. A sheen of sweat made her skin glisten.

Shiho took another step down the bars, every muscle in her arms clenching taught.

Arms straining, she took another step, shorter than the last one.

Ann stepped closer only to be blocked by the physical therapist. “Come on, Shiho! You can make this.”

Shiho’s hands clenched white on the bars, but she took a longer step and sucked in a long breath. Droplets of sweat fell down her face and neck. Another step, then another passed as she clamped her hands down on the bars to keep herself from wavering to one side.

Akira clenched his teeth when her arms started to tremble.

Shiho took another shallow step, her jaws set but her arms trembling as she tried to move forward.

“Go on,” her mother demanded. “You need to get stronger to get back to school.”

Sawano cleared his throat to get the girl’s attention. “You’ve been making very good progress, Shiho-chan. You’re already stronger than last week.”

Straining to keep up with both feet on the ground and hands on the rails, she snapped, “No I’m not! I can’t do all of this.”

“Yes you can,” Akira blurted with sudden strength. He ignored the stares of the others and held all of his focus on her. On the one girl at Shujin with the strength to show kindness despite Kamoshida. On the one person to make him feel like this new try in Tokyo might be something he could survive. On the first girl to smile at him in years. She shouldn’t be the enraged, drugged-up girl howling at her boyfriend. “You’ve always been the strongest of us. Now come on, if not to show yourself then to show up that smug bastard who thought you wouldn’t be able to get back up.”

Shiho looked at him, tears building in her eyes from the strain. Her teeth ground.

She took one more step.

Her shaking hands slipped and she stumbled, Sawano catching her with the strap just before she hit the bar. The physical therapist looked to Ann. “Get her wheelchair.” She nodded and jogged to fetch it as Sawano helped Shiho back to the start of the parallel bars and into the wheelchair.

While they disengaged her from the harness and settled her in the wheelchair, Shiho’s mother straightened her cardigan and leveled a glare as intense as a laser on the transfer student. “I didn’t mind Shiho having friends for moral support, but if you paid attention you’d see how badly you almost hurt my girl. You’re as bad as that mousey little boy she insisted on playing around with. Never should have let that little cretin in my home.”

Ann shot upright. “Don’t you talk that way about Yuuki!”

“Get out!” Her mother’s hands clenched on her leather purse, lip twitching and fingers worrying the velvet lining the top.

The transfer student came up alongside Ann to back her up, but Sawano shook his head. “Kids, this isn’t a family counseling center. Technically we only allow friends as a nicety. Whatever issues are going on, you can solve them out there.”

Ann shifted her weight to one foot, then the other before she turned around and stormed out.

Akira dashed to get her school satchel, forgotten in the corner, and followed her outside. As soon as he could get her attention, he handed her bag to her.

Morgana beat him to the condolences. “Are you all right, Lady Ann?”

She took her bag and whirled on the diminutive team leader, tears leaking out of the corners of her eyes. “Would you put a sock in that lady shit!”

Morgana retreated into the satchel, his ears and tail both low.

Ann bit her lip.

Akira lifted an arm around her shoulder and directed her through the sparse crowd in the opposite direction. With nobody paying then attention to start with, he decided they had as much privacy as they were likely to get without a hide-away. “I get that emotions are running high and rough edges are out everywhere, so I don’t hold any of what happened in there against you. Shiho and her mother are both scared they’ll never be able to live like they were before, but I think they’ll both settle down.”

Ann choked out a sound somewhere between a sob and a laugh. She dug in her satchel for a moment before tearing a tissue out of a battered packet and dabbing at her face. “I… I hoped that all this would be settled by Kamoshida’s confession. I mean… we got more than we ever expected from that. But Shiho…”

Akira tightened his grip on her shoulders. “Hey, just because you’re no longer racing into the woods doesn’t mean you’re out of them yet. The body and mind have their own healing times. Sometimes the mind comes to clarity while the body is still broken, and sometimes the mind holds onto an emotional crutch when the muscles have knitted back together.” He gave her a moment to process and respond, but after blowing her nose she looked back at him like she expected more. “For a three-story fall, Shiho is doing really well. Hell, I’m surprised that she’ll ever walk again. She could be dead.”

Morgana thrust his head back out of the satchel. “Hey, stop scaring her! That’s not how you make a lady feel better.”

Slowing her pace, Ann dabbed at her nose and put the tissue into a small bag of trash in her satchel. “It’s okay, Morgana.” Her frosty blue eyes came up to him, still shining with more tears, sending his stomach into knots. “I think I understand what you’re getting at. It’s just… well, even in there you knew Shiho was always the strongest of us. The one Yuuki or I could always go to when Shujin was getting to be too much.” She drew another tissue and blew her nose into that.

Akira maintained his grip around her shoulders. The brushing of her long, pale blonde hair tickled, her makeup smearing from the emotional tumult at the clinic. “It seems to me that you’re doing better, too. I know all this hit you pretty hard.”

She blushed and an embarrassed smile crept across her lips. She peered down at the satchel hanging on his shoulder. “You accidentally jump into the wrong satchel, Morgana? I think we picked up an Akira from an alternate dimension.”

“Hey!” Akira withdrew his arm. He knew she was joking, which should mean she was doing better, but he couldn’t let that barb go uncontested. “I’m supposed to be a chiropractor. That kind of physical therapy is exactly what I’m going to be doing one day. And it’s not like knowledge of psychological therapy can hurt.”

Morgana sat up, head poking out of the satchel with a wry smirk. “You can’t be picking up this kindness from school, that’s for sure. Someone is sure making a good impression on you. Did you meet a therapist out there?”

Akira clutched a metaphorical dagger at his heart. “E tu, Brute?”

The team leader and model laughed, the oppressive gloom hanging over them breaking up. After a few moments, Ann looked down at the team leader. “Could… you give us a few minutes, Morgana?”

He tilted his head at her a moment, but puffed out his chest. “For my lady? Anything.” He hopped out and trotted back towards the clinic.

Ann wiped at her nose and put away the dirty tissue. She crossed her arms and, after glancing to be sure none of the swift-walking crowd paid them any mind, turned to look straight at the transfer student. “I know you noticed my outburst back there. About Yuuki. Shiho was still angry, but I…” She swallowed. “I think about him all the time. Is… isn’t it wrong?”

Akira opened his mouth to tell her that he had dreams about her too, but suspected telling her she chased him in a dream inn wearing nothing but an obi would just result in a slap. “You all were pretty close friends. Did he and Shiho date and do that romantic stuff together?”

No,” she said, a small amount of surprise in her voice as she tightened her crossed arms. Her eyes searched the pavement for a few moments. “Not dates exactly, they were always so careful not to be seen by someone from school.” She uncrossed her arms, then put them right back. “But… one movie night at my place, they were sitting against each other on the couch watching Masquerade. Hand in hand. It made me feel a little sick inside.” She blushed and her gaze drifted to the ground as a bitter chuckle came out. “Some friend I am.” She shifted her weight to her other foot. “When I’d walk in on them while they were together, playing with each other’s hair…” Her blush deepened. “Don’t you think that’s romantic?”

The first image to jump to mind were two women fighting on TV, both pulling each other’s hair. A moment of a laugh leaked out before Akira could get control of himself. “No,” he said, regaining his serious composure. His mind could conjure images of hair pulling, but not whatever this romantic hair thing that people kept alluding to.

Ann took a shallow step away. “At first I thought I just wanted to do those things with a boyfriend of my own.” She shifted to her other foot. “But…what if I wanted to do those things… with him?”

Steamy thoughts about Ann leaped into his mind and Akira felt his own face heat up. He coughed into his fist. He took a step further away, though the crib store behind left little room to retreat. “Well… I don’t think those sound like bad things. You like him and he likes you and there’s clearly some bloody spikes between he and Shiho right now.” He lifted a hand, but after a couple seconds without anything wise coming to mind let it fall. “I’ll see if I can track him down, maybe get an answer out of him.”

Morgana’s voice reached up from behind him, “Shiho and her mother left. Can I help with your dilemma, Lady Ann?”

She let out a long breath with a bit of the tremble of a growl to it. “I’m actually feeling kind of tired right now. I think I’m gonna head home from here.”

Friday, 17 June 2016
Evening
Akihabara, Electric Town

With the afternoon fast fading into the evening, more people crammed the roads of Electric Town and the more Akira wanted to be anywhere else. His promise to Ann to track down Mishima and get an answer out of him warred with his desire to just breathe. The growing bustle on the sidewalks pushed at him, a forest of elbows jabbing him.

Akira ducked into a tiny concrete nook sharing space with a steel utility pole. He hadn’t seen Hifumi in a while, it would be nice to hear that sonorous voice. Maybe invite her to an online game of Kriegspiel if she had time but not travel options. He brought up Queen Togo, but his thumb hesitated over the open call button. If she was at all busy, it would go straight to voice mail and hers always seemed to be full. He backed out and sent her a text instead. [Have any time today?]

He tapped his foot a few times, but the outgoing message remained dark. He tisked. With Morgana ‘out scouting’ when he realized Akira would be crowd running, he didn’t have the diminutive team leader’s eyes to help him scope out the crowd. Of course, he could also crowd-run to his heart’s content.

A flash of familiar, messy dark hair stood out of the mass of drab combed hair that might as well have come out of a factory. This had to be divine intervention.

It’s not like his luck was ever that good.

Akira tossed the rubber phone casing to the counter and dashed outside, weaving through crowds with a left-right-left reminding him of swimming. “I gotta thank Ryuji for introducing me to this.”

He clapped a hand on Mishima’s shoulder the instant they both got to the far side of the street, in front of an art and detailing shop. The class representative turned with a widening of the eyes and pale face, his gasp audible despite the low roar of the crowd. He slumped when he spotted the transfer student. “Geez, Akira-kun. Don’t do that. What are you doing here anyway? I thought I said I was…” he glanced around, “…investigating.”

Akira kept a firm grip on the class representative’s shirt and part pushed, part pulled him to the building edge of the sidewalk. He slipped closer so he could read lips without worrying about an idiot getting between them. “Ann said you were avoiding her. Mishima, I thought you were going to deal with… problems after the whole bank thing. That was over a week ago.”

The shorter teen shifted his weight from foot to foot, his gaze low. “I, uh… Well, I have to help you guys with this slimy new art apprentice guy—”

Akira pushed up his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose. “Mishima-san, I get the temptation to put things off. Ann can be scary when she wants to be. But she’s our friend. You probably more than me.” When the representative looked away, Akira stepped closer. “Putting off treating a wound doesn’t stop the bleeding. You need to put on the bandage for that. Hell, we’re not even going after a palace right now. Ann’s worried about you all the time. Shiho’s going stir crazy in—”

Mishima shot back a step, his eyes drifting to the concrete. “You saw what happened the last time I did something to her. I have to make up for—”

“How many times?” Akira shouted. A handful of nearby pedestrians slowed and stared at him. His phone buzzed and Akira pulled it, but caught the class rep try to slink off into the crowd. The transfer student moved after as he checked the text from Hifumi.

[Sorry. Busy with errand for Mother.]

Akira growled but forced himself to send a thanks for the acknowledgment before slipping his phone away and catching up with the class rep, grabbing him by the elbow to dissuade his attempt to lose him in the crowd. “Mishima, I don’t understand why you’re working so hard on tracking down all these people but not talking to ones in your own class.”

Mishima’s phone buzzed and he pulled it out to scroll through an email app. “Listen, Akira-kun. I’m really not in the mood to get yelled at right now. I was meeting with some contacts before about a theft ring, and now I need to go meet that reporter so I can help you guys. It’s the only way I’ll ever make up for what happened.” He opened a map app and turned away. “I just need to find this Crossroads place she wants to meet at.”

Akira fell in step next to the class rep. “It’s a bar and night club in Shinjuku. If you promise to talk to Ann, I could show you exactly where it is.” He glanced down at the other boy, noting he wore a nondescript white shirt and had changed into dark brown trousers since the end of school.

Mishima gave him a squinty-eye. “No more lecturing?”

Akira let out a dramatic sigh. “I’ll give you a reprieve today. But seriously, dude. I spent an hour with Ann and Shiho fighting through physical therapy and they’re both hurting. Just promise me that you’ll deal with this. I’ll even do whatever I can to help out, but don’t leave them out in the cold.”

Mishima broke eye contact. “Fine. But later. First, Ohya-san’s meeting.”

The two walked to the train station where Akira changed out of his Shujin uniform for nondescript dark grays that made him look as boring as all the other adults trudging around Tokyo. The trip to Shinjuku took less time than he expected the journey from Akihabara, but once there the crowds streamed like tempest-tossed waters through the streets.

Mishima stood next to him. “You all right?”

“I’m fine!” Akira snapped. He stepped against the wall to get a moment’s reprieve from the number of drunkards stumbling around, and rubbed his fingers against the sides of his head. “I hate crowds. They’re just a symbol of everything in excess. Too thick, too undirected, too noisy, too stupid.”

“Well, look at how the individuals in it are managing,” Mishima said. He pointed at a young girl with her dark hair in a sloppy bun, wearing a skirt-and-suspenders uniform in an eye-searing bright pink. “See? Like her. She’s treating the crowd as just more environment to navigate.” His eyes lingered on her neon pink skirt.

A beat passed before Mishima shrank in on his stance. “Look at me. I can’t even go an hour without looking at girls besides Shiho. Now that’s even more I have to make up for.”

Akira grabbed the class representative’s elbow. On the one hand, she was cute. On the other, he could also understand a good guy staying loyal to his girl. That wasn’t just some admirable quirk, it was the only right way to live. “Let’s just… get through this. Bar’s that way.” He led them through the churning crowd choked with shouting, laughing, and lewd calls. At last, he slipped them into the Crossroads bar and night club. Despite the thudding music here on the first floor, the relative humdrum level of conversation felt peaceful against his ears.

Mishima stared at the wet bar to their right. “Looks like a night club. With alcohol!”

Akira smirked, feeling more like Joker and less like a hamster kicked in a ball now that he wasn’t fighting a directionless crowd. “With a full selection of mixed drinks for your perusal.”

An overweight woman in a blue kimono patterned with various fish chuckled. “But not for young lads like you.” She looked over him, then the boy whose arm he still clenched. “I didn’t think you swung both ways. You’re a fearless hunk, aren’t you?”

The two boys shot apart and the bartender laughed like only a lifelong smoker could. Mishima turned all the way from the transfer student and scanned the crowd before he stepped around an empty stool to the bar. “I’m supposed to meet a reporter here. Ohya-san.”

Lala waved a hand at him and laughed. “I should’ve guessed, coming in here with that naughty boy over there. She’s upstairs.” Movement beside drew her attention to the one other person rushing around behind the bar, a snifter glass in each hand. One filled with something red, the other a bright yellow. “Kaho-chan, is that Ichiko-chan’s?”

The waitress lifted the red glass and nodded. “This one, Lala-san.”

Lala pointed to the class rep. “Customer there’s expected. Go show him up.” After the frazzled waitress and rep departed for the stairs at the back, the man at the stool next to him slumped over and started falling.

Akira caught him before he could slide off his stool, hauled him up to center him on his seat, and held him steady.

Lala gave him a nod and pulled back his quarter-full beer glass. “I’ll call you a cab, Torahito-kun.”

Her voice somehow cut through the alcohol-induced stupor and shot to his feet, stumbled, and jerked his arm out of Akira’s grip. “Ya don’ need ta drive me home. I’m jus’ a lil’ tipsy.”

Akira stepped closer, but decided not to touch the glaring man. “It’s just to help you out, Torahito-san. You don’t want to bump your head and have a bruise for the guys at the office to make fun of, do you?”

Torahito twisted back and forth with exaggerated motions before he stumbled back to the bar, grabbing it for support. “Well, I s’pose I wouldn’ wanna hear about it at work.” He slumped back on the bar and let Lala call him a cab, then paid his day’s tab with a five thousand yen bill. A moment later, she returned with a hand on her earpiece and nodded. “Right, I’ll send him right out.”

“Where’s my Ricky, Lala?” a woman in a wrinkled dress shouted from further down the bar.

Akira stood. “I’ll get him to the front.” He took the middle-aged office goon with as gentle a grip as he could and guided him to his feet. “Upsy-daisy, Torahito-san. You hear that?”

The drunk looked right and left with confusion. “No.”

“It’s the cab, for you.” Akira guided him to the front, and into a waiting white cab.

Torahito stumbled into the cab, only keeping up by virtue of Akira’s strong grip. After the help sitting down, he slurred, “Yer…not so bad, lil’ guy.” He reached into his pocket and fished for a moment, then slapped some coins into the student’s palm.

Akira considered shouting at the office nobody for being cheap as well as a drunk, but the still churning night crowd drove him back inside. When he glanced at the coins, he noticed three five hundred yen coins among others. Not so bad. He pocketed them and returned to the bar.

Lala-san gave him a weary, grateful smile. “Thanks, kiddo.”

Before Akira could respond, a man trudged around him from the front door. He wore a sharp suit with the jacket unbuttoned and his red tie loose around his neck like he couldn’t decide if he wanted to wear it or take it off. He slid onto a bar stool as if his body was too heavy to hold up a moment longer and held his head in his hands. “Whiskey tonight, Lala-chan.”

The bartender only had a moment to smile and nod before her eyes unfocused. She pressed a hand to her clip-on earbud, then pulled out an oval tray, glasses, and small array of booze bottles. She poured the first glass, added ice, and set it before the suited man whose tie hung like a severed noose.

As the bartender busied herself with the large order on the tray, the suited man slumped back against the bar and sipped. His dark eyes met the transfer student. “You seem a bit young for bars or clubs. You trying to get away from your neighborhood too?”

Akira shrugged, his eyes flitting to the narrow stairs leading up to the semi-private rooms on the second floor.

Not to be dissuaded, Suit held up his hand holding the whiskey at the student. “The diet just voted on another bond infusion to cover the national debt.” He gave a huff of a laugh and lifted the glass at the student again before bringing it to his own lips for a sip. “Can you believe that? We’re already in debt and they’re trying to solve it by borrowing more money.”

Akira thanked his social study teacher from Inuri for forcing the class to go in detail on the economy. “I think Japan is doing a decent job diversifying, but not enough to draw in young workers or ease the process of transition from unskilled to skilled labor. The demographics are really more of a threat than the economic prospects. We’re expected to drop from one hundred twenty million to eighty million before 2050.”

Suit finished a sip and scrutinized the transfer student. “Hey, that’s actually a nuanced answer. You’re smarter than you look, kid. They say it’s an emergency measure to restore the economy, but the emergency was debt to start with. You think burdening the citizens is a good strategy for economic revitalization?”

Akira shrugged. “How much of our debt do we owe to overseas entities?”

Suit’s eyes rolled up and he took a drink. “About half a percent.”

Slipping his hands in his pockets, Akira gave up on waiting for Mishima to get back quick and gave the older man his focus. “I heard Greece is still considering defaulting on their debt to the EU.”

Suit took a sip. “They’d go right back into recession from the hit their credit rating would take. No way. Besides, they may be part of the EU, but they owe money to different member nations. It’s a completely different debt situation.”

Akira’s phone buzzed and he jerked it out. Instead of the update from Hifumi he hoped to see, a text from Iwai asked him to stop by for work tonight. He sent a reply about being busy across town and promised to stop in tomorrow. That done, he returned his focus to the financial guy drinking next to him. “I think I read that our debt just exceeded the gross national product. Doesn’t that mean we both owe a lot?”

After a deeper gulp, Suit slumped forward against the bar. “No, kid! Ninety-nine point nine percent of our debt is to Japanese, in yen. If inflation goes up or our credit goes down, it’s all still for us and to us.” He chuckled and brought his glass up to his lips for another sip. “I guess that means we ain’t so bad. We don’t owe debt to other people in a currency we can’t control.” He tipped his glass back and drained half of the remaining glass, going back and forth on economic policy and debt hawk talking points as Lala left to deliver drinks upstairs, then returned to serve more bar patrons.

Words slurring, Suit paid for his drink and departed.

Lala popped a paper mini-umbrella in a bright yellow drink and handed it to another customer, then scrutinized the transfer student. She waved to the stairs and the class representative approached. “You’re a surprising lad, you know that? Nagai-san is a pretty high-level banker. Confuses most of my staff, but it looks like you were able to keep up the whole time.”

Akira shrugged. “Topic conversations are easy. When you don’t know the topic, most subject matter experts love educating you on it even before the whiskey.” He looked at his haggard fellow student descending the stairs. “You look spent. Ready to go back?”

Mishima nodded.

Lala waved the hand holding a polishing rag before the transfer student could turn away. “A big part of bar life is listening, and it looks like you can hold your own. If you’re looking for a place, I could always use a steady barhand.” Her dark gaze narrowed just a bit. “As long as you can keep your hands off alcohol. I take my license seriously.”

Akira lifted his hands. “All I needed to learn not to drink was to see people who do.”

Notes:

I understand why the developers put Shiho on a bus, the game did feel a little long by the end. However, that really denied a lot of closure and I felt left her personal thread frayed and open. We know she didn't leave with bitter feelings to Ann or Akira in canon, but don't have a good idea that she's really recovered herself. By adding that cord between Shiho and Mishima, that not only drew him and Ann closer but provided me the opportunity to get into more of Shiho's conflict and the true resolution of it. Leave your questions and thoughts in a comment, and thanks for reading.

Chapter 58: June 18th, Gallery of Lies

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Saturday, 18 June 2016
After School
Madarame Art Exhibit

Ann stepped through the doorway as the transfer student held the heavy glass door open. Makoto and Yuuki followed close behind before Akira followed them all in. Air conditioning roared over them, tugging at their street clothes and casting away the lingering feeling of the muggy air outside, replaced with a faint tinny scent. A rentacop checked their tickets, then stepped back to the front desk and let them inside. Throngs of people packed the exhibit, everybody chatting in hushed but animated tones as they marveled paintings hung on the building wall or stand-up movable walls.

She noticed the transfer student’s shoulders pinch up and eyes narrow at the guard, but he didn’t relax as they entered the main foyer. Morgana poked his head out of the transfer student’s leather street satchel and hopped up, paws on Akira’s shoulder to scan the room. “Ugh. It’s so crowded.”

Makoto rubbed her arms and stepped closer to Akira. “You think you’re going to be okay, Akira-kun?”

Akira’s lip tugged in a frown. “Don’t matronize me. This is as limited a crowd as I’ll probably ever see in this city.” He rubbed one arm and looked over the dark-haired people. “I’d guess there are staff-only sections of the exhibit. Do you think Kitagawa-san is there?”

Ann popped onto her tip-toes for a moment to scan the crowd and spotted a familiar dark blue head meandering on a circuit through the P-shaped exhibit hall. Being the tallest girl in her year had its perks. “Right there, guys.” She led them through the maze of people and freestanding walls bearing impressionistic and abstract paintings.

Kitagawa-san stepped out of a gap in the crowd, his eyes snapping onto her hair and doing a more obvious look-over of her than most boys dared. At least his dark gaze came to rest at her eyes after drinking in her entire height. His lips curled up and his entire expression brightened. “You came!”

Akira and Makoto stepped up to her left side, Yuuki to her right. The artist’s gaze narrowed on them, slowing over Akira and Makoto before glancing across them again. His face slid into a stony mask. “I see the blond ruffian found other places to be.”

Morgana popped his head out of the satchel and growled. “Better to be rough around the edges but noble at heart than a scheming serpent!”

Ann nodded at the small team leader. “Right. My friend having better things to do doesn’t make him any less a good person.”

Akira gave an affirming nod, coming shoulder-to-shoulder with her. “Exactly. But why would you be surprised that we came when you gave us those tickets? Isn’t this exactly what you were hoping for?”

Pausing a moment, Kitagawa gave a shallow bow of his head. “True.” He turned to the transfer student standing next to Ann. “Well, if you three don’t interrupt the other patrons you are free to browse.” He reached a slender hand to the model. “May we? I’d like to show you around while we discuss the painting I mentioned earlier.”

Akira crossed his arms and clenched his jaw, but stopped when Ann shot him a brief ‘I’ll be fine’ look. She paused to glance at Yuuki, seeing worry knit the brows on his face, but he didn’t settle back when she tried to reassure him non-verbally. The concern from the sweetest boy in Shujin touched her, but she couldn’t stop for him now. It’s not like things could be any more awkward with Kitagawa-kun than that accidental kiss with Yuuki that intruded on her mind every day since. “It’ll be fine, guys. It’s basically a public event.” She slipped out to the artist’s side and they left the four other Phantom Thieves to browse.

Kitagawa walked beside her, but passed a painting of a young woman.

Ann stopped. The woman in the painting faced the background, the top of her kimono down and tied at her waist, everything above bare. The short brown ponytail couldn’t conceal the hunch of her shoulders making Ann think the woman didn’t want to be there. Hazy buildings she could swear belonged in Tokyo’s skyline studded the background, an impressionistic distortion to them. She read the plaque, “Beyond the Rice Field. Huh. The buildings in the background are kind of weird, but really make the woman stand out. She seems sad, though.”

Kitagawa came to a stop next to her, his eyes tracing the woman’s ears and tied hair. He let out a quiet breath. “Madarame-sensei painted that a year ago. It was an experiment in a traditional subject with modern paints.” He paused, a tension passing into his deep, grey eyes before a mask of calm settled back over him. “Saki-senpai was still in the atelier then.” He stepped out and Ann followed to a gloomy painting dominated by a forest of blues, greens, and browns, most almost black. The sharpness of it seemed almost photo-realistic in certain spots. Kitagawa glanced over it, his brows furrowed. “Ah, yes. ‘Wood of Sleep’. That’s been an audience favorite since it was painted four years ago.” His hooded gaze held on it for a moment, and she thought he muttered something about cutters.

Kitagawa’s impassive expression strained for a moment before he held out a hand to direct her away. “Come, these are more like the style that informs my own.” He led her quite a ways down the exhibition hall to an abstract piece with bold, bright colors dominated by gold. Its tag read ‘Star Surface’.

Ann clasped her hands behind her back and leaned one way, then another to change her perspective. Some strokes were fine and others glops of paint large enough to cast shadows, all weaving together into something like an explosion. Each of the paintings looked like a totally different artist made them. “I had no idea there were so many kinds of Japanese paintings, much less that one man could make them all.”

Kitagawa’s eyes slid away from hers, his chin pressing up just a little. “Most artists do concentrate on a single style. However, my sensei is unique.”

A scratchy, nasal man’s voice came from behind them. “What do you think, young lady?”

Ann jumped, then pressed a hand against her heart when she spun around to see the old guy from the car Kitagawa retreated into that Monday. He wore a traditional-style kimono, the green outermost layer looking a little threadbare at the cuffs and neck. The kind smile he gave made her blush at being so surprised by an old man. She turned part-way back to the bright burst painting. “It’s all amazing. Somehow, even though I can’t really find a single shape in it, I feel a smile from this painting.”

Madarame’s face wrinkled with his own wide grin. The way the corners of his eyes crinkled, with just a little spark in those irises, sent a wave of nostalgia through her. “Being able to stir emotions from our pieces is as high as any artist can hope for.” He bowed. “If you’ll excuse me, Yusuke-kun, I think it’s about time for the press conference.” He barked a laugh and slipped into the crowd.

Ann blinked, leaning against the apprentice for a heartbeat before she remembered where she was. Not up in the snowy streets of Rauma. No father in a thousand kilometers to burst through the door, to sweep her up in thin but strong arms with a bark of a laugh.

She rubbed her arms and looked elsewhere. “I figured that big-time artists would be distant and so esoteric it’s hard to understand them, but he reminded me so much of papa. Oh!” Orange against blue caught her eye and she wove through the crowd to another painting. “I wanted to see this one in person.” Less abstract than some, dark trees almost faded into the background. Dominated by reds and oranges, a single autumn tree in the foreground popped out.

For some reason, Kitagawa hesitated to follow her to this painting. His eyes stayed down like this one was painful to look at, his right arm holding his left. “What about this one?”

From up close, Ann could see hard strokes filled the painting even in the dark background. It reminded her of Akira. “This painting makes me feel… a lot of anger, with no where to go.” She crossed her arms. “It’s strange to think such a cheerful old man could paint something like this.” Several seconds passed with no sound but the murmuring in the crowd out there. The apprentice just stood there, holding his arm and looking away. “Everything okay?”

Kitagawa shook his head, straightening behind a mask of calm that failed to hide a seeping melancholy. Something about it reminded her of Akira when he thought nobody was looking, forlorn but too stubborn to bend his spine. “There are many better pieces.”

Department store: Madarame Art Exhibit

Akira straightened his glasses on his nose. The bustle and sound of excited chatter jumped in the corner of the room. Suits and women in fancy dresses rushed for the bend in the hall. Camera flashes blazed. The transfer student looked at the others and shrugged before the trio slipped through the scattered people to the source of the excitement. The transfer student hopped up to get a glimpse over the crowd, spotting a white-haired man in faded green traditional-style clothes. “I think that’s our mark himself.”

Mishima and the student council president exchanged a glance, then both turned and pushed with as much gentleness as they could. At least a dozen people ringed the old artist, smart phones held up to record the interview led by a proper journalist with cameraman in the center. “Art amateurs and critics both praise the way you keep a fresh, ever-changing style. What advice do you have to inspire such creativity?”

Madarame adjusted the clasp of his hands several times, something just a tad too wide about his smile. It reminded the transfer student of Akechi. “Well, creation is something innate… it flows up from within my soul like bubbles in a spring. The most important thing is to be attentive to yourself and let what is beautiful come out.”

Akira crossed his arms, his eyes narrowing through the shuffling gap of people recording the old man. “What a bunch of double-talk. Nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent.”

Makoto nudged him with her elbow. “Shh. He might give us a clue about his keyword.”

One of the other well-dressed people recording the interview with a smart phone asked, “How do you balance the pursuit of art with money?”

Madarame clasped his hands tight, his head tilting back and nose crinkling as if he smelled a bad odor but did not wish to say it. After a brief breath in, his face settled back into the calm old man facade. “True art can not afford to be distracted by such fleeting, fickle things as material success or fame.”

The interviewer with a microphone smiled as if such a platitude graced them with an answer to a mystery of the universe. “You’ve been living at the same address since moving to Shibuya thirty years ago. Have you ever considered moving to accommodations more befitting an artist of your contributions to the art world?”

A wide, close-lipped smile creased the old man’s face, though with his eyes closed Akira couldn’t be sure if it was genuine. “Oh, where one is makes less difference than what you make there. Any environment can be fertile ground for an artist who is open. The trick is to be unattached so you are not constrained by the everyday things around you. The atelier may be a modest shack, but provides me enough to pursue true beauty.”

Mishima scratched his hair. “Shack? That seems a strange way to talk about the home where he produces the vast majority of his masterpieces.”

“I see,” the interviewer said. “How enlightened to find inner beauty by emptying one’s self of ego.”

Makoto took Akira’s arm and tugged him away from the thickening crowd. “Here, let’s go check out the rest of the exhibit. Your eyelid’s starting to twitch. If you’re not okay with the crowd, we don’t have to push into it.”

He quashed his reflexive instinct to protest. He did want to go, and she just offered an out. If he was going to change, he had to accept more opportunities handed to him. They departed, browsing the various paintings and arguing about their intended meaning or whether the painter was right or left-handed with Morgana. Five or ten minutes passed before Mishima rejoined them, then another few before Ann and Kitagawa crossed their paths.

Ann grabbed the class representative’s arm. “Oh, Yuu-kun, there’s one you’ve gotta see! It’s got this ethereal crowd inside a big foreign building I know I’ve seen before but can’t remember the name of. Maybe you’d know, prez.”

Makoto gave a soft smile. “I don’t know how much I’d know about foreign-inspired art, but let’s see.”

Akira stepped away from the class president and closer to the apprentice. “Hey, I wanted to ask you about Madarame. Is he a rightie or leftie?”

The apprentice’s eyebrow arched. “Sensei is right-handed, as are all of his apprentices. He finds it easier to teach them when he can critique the technique without having to mirror before evaluating them.”

Akira crossed his arms, squaring his body posture back. “That’s convenient.”

Kitagawa straightened, his arms crossing and his calm mask inscrutable. “What exactly are you looking for?”

Morgana’s ear twitched from his perch poking out of Akira’s satchel. “It’s strange how much variance there is in the products of one guy.”

“I don’t buy the man of a thousand styles story,” Akira said, slipping his hands in his pockets to try to reduce the tension he felt building in his frame. “Signature forgers wouldn’t have their work cut out for them if it was that easy.”

Nonplussed, Kitagawa stood tall, but his crossed arms betrayed defensiveness. “How is it that you believe your expertise in a few minutes of examining paintings allows you to say that Sensei has not created all of his paintings?”

Akira settled back. “I don’t have to be a master of art to know people. People pick and stick with familiar things because that’s how our neurons fire. Neural patterns that aren’t used are pruned and lost.” He pointed at a gaggle of reporters hounding the elderly artist. “Like them. Even people without thirty years to practice living in a rut.”

Kitagawa’s gaze flicked to his, down, back up, then slid over the transfer student’s shoulder. “You are close to Takamaki-san?”

Akira turned to follow his gaze to see Ann chuckle, shoulder-bump Mishima, then turn away to say something to Makoto. “Close enough to say she’s definitely a mold-breaker. A terror to behold when she gets going, too.”

Kitagawa’s muscles tensed, lines at his neck tensing despite the aloof mask over his visage. “Are you courting Takamaki-san?”

Morgana stood up out of the satchel, head rising up in front of Akira’s shoulder and tail twitching out behind it. “That is none of your business, you serpent!”

Akira shook his shoulders to drive the team leader back into the satchel. “Hey, settle down.” He looked the artist in the eye, his crossed arms tightening. “No, why?”

Kitagawa glanced down at Akira, his composure cracking as his confusion blurted, “Why on Earth not? She is bright, beautiful, and has a bold passion rarely seen in this dreary city. How could every man not want her?”

Morgana growled.

Akira thumped him on the head before refocusing on the artist. “She’s nice enough, sure, but part of what makes a person exceptional is being able to challenge your friends to go farther. The… I guess ability to hold things steady even when you don’t know how, like a boat’s keel. Ann-san’s nice, and she’s not a doormat, but…” He rubbed his neck. “I can’t think of her and not also think of Shiho.”

“Shiho?”

Scratching the back of his head, Akira broke eye contact as the ponytailed girl’s warm smile on one of the lowest days of his life jostled in his mind with the angry, wounded girl on the hospital bed. “Ann’s best friend. Now she was one in a million.”

Kitagawa held his knuckle to his lips in thought for a few moments. “I see. So there are seven thousand like her out there.”

Saturday, 18 June 2016
Early Evening
Shibuya, Teikyuu Building Walkway

Akira slipped his phone out and plugged in the wired earbuds. The other Phantom Thieves arranged themselves on either side as they waited for Ryuji to return from Gold Gym. The light outside drooped through the shades of gold to amber as the minutes passed, streams of commuters going by without so much as a single glance of acknowledgment. After a few tracks from David Bergeaud, the dyed blond jogged through the crowd. Akira took out one earbud and stopped the music.

He wore a black, threadbare, sleeveless t-shirt and a sparkling grin. “Yo, dudes. So what’s the big decision? We got a target?”

“Yes,” Akira and Makoto said at the same time Ann and Mishima said, “No.”

Morgana gave a, “Maybe.” All five of them sighed at the lack of cohesion. Morgana straightened in the transfer student’s travel satchel. “It’s not a clear-cut case. Madarame might be running an extremely convincing front.”

“He’s ripping off his students,” Akira said, slipping his phone in his black jacket pocket. “I can’t explain exactly how an art master’s doing it, but one man can’t have so many developed styles. Neural pruning simply wouldn’t allow him to get so good at so many different ways.”

Mishima clasped his hands. “We appreciate the possibility, but none of us are expert artists. We can’t make a call on such a narrow issue. Remember the browsing we did after Kitagawa approached Ann-san on Monday? The only articles speaking ill of Madarame were trash-talking in bad tabloids. That convinces me more that they’re not true than that they could be.”

“It just doesn’t make sense for him to have a Palace,” Ann said. “He looks like any kindly old man.”

Akira pulled his phone out and opened the Metaverse Navigator. “He’s got a Palace. It’s not like this is something we have yet to determine.”

Ryuji pursed his lips in thought for a moment. “That ‘nuff to show up Hashimoto an’ Akechi?”

Mishima tugged at his untucked shirt. “That’s just the thing, we’re not sure. The past two palace people were undoubtedly evil, but according to Morgana, it only takes strong, distorted desire to have a Palace. In order to prove that the Phantom Thieves are truly just, we need to find a hidden evil. Someone hurting a lot of people.”

Ryuji blinked, then looked at the others. “Wait, he can understand Mona now?”

“It’s Morgana,” Ann said, pressing a hand to her face. She brushed a few strands out of her eyes. “And no, we talked about it on the way here.”

Akira stopped chewing his lip. “And even if this wasn’t some big-time dude, wouldn’t it still be the right thing to change his heart?”

“Let’s not jump to conclusions,” Morgana said. “We were in the right place at the right time to know about Kamoshida before we even got into his Palace. But Kaneshiro took a lot of research before we found him, his location, or his distortion. Right now, this is the only target in our reach, but we need to investigate to be sure changing his heart is the right thing to do. Stealing Treasure is a difficult, dangerous thing and shouldn’t be made lightly.”

Ryuji nodded. “Fair ‘nuff. So we just gotta look him up.”

Mishima pulled his phone out and began rapid typing. “I’ll ask a couple others at the Newspaper Club if they’ve heard of anything shady related to Madarame. I’ve got a collection of requests for you guys anyway, so even if I can’t get you proof of plagiarism, at the very least I can get you a few more small-time hearts to change in Mementos.”

Saturday, 18 June 2016
Evening
Shibuya, Untouchable

A grizzled man in a scuffed leather jacket took long some long object shrouded in brown paper wrapping from the window at the counter. Akira stepped aside to let him out. The door swung closed with a whoosh of air conditioning. Taking a glance at the jackets, surgical masks, and other common items out at the front, Akira came to a stop at the counter fenced off from the customer area with welded wire grating. With nobody else around, he figured he might as well get right to business. Akira knelt down to let Morgana out and pull out a box filled with money clips, shiny pens, and other junk from the bank. “These are new, and a couple interesting styles.”

Iwai let out a “Tch,” but looked through the box of miscellaneous things they either found or gained from Shadows desperate to placate them in the halls of the bank. His fingers stopped on a fountain pen with a polished wood exterior. His eyes only opened a fraction more, but his back straightened and he scooted up the padded stool he sat on. Iwai pulled it out and pushed the box aside. He uncapped the pen and shook it. “Empty, but should be easy enough to fill.” He sent out a quick email, set the pen in the box with the rest, and without even waiting for a response looked the transfer student in the eye. “Nine thousand.”

Morgana’s eyes widened from his spot below the customer side of the counter. “That’s a lot for some pen.”

Smirking, Akira leaned against the wielded wire grating. “I was born at night, not last night. I know a collectible when you see one. Masa may be a moron, but I’m not.”

Iwai chuckled. “When you see one.” He shook his head, then straightened the ball cap, his expression going serious. “Don’t mistake being stupid in one area with being stupid in all’a them. You seen Masa lately?”

Akira shook his head. “I assume he got picked up in the police sweep of Kaneshiro’s clan.”

The shop owner’s lips pressed into a thin line, his eyes unfocusing for a moment. “Don’t count him out. Bastard’s like a roach.” His eyes focused on the transfer student, one pair of steely grey eyes boring into another. “You know he didn’t used to be one’a Kaneshiro’s flunkies?” Iwai’s fingers drummed against the countertop. “He used to be a wide-eyed kid under Tsuda. Back when Tsuda an’ me were sworn brothers.”

Akira shifted his weight to his other foot, feeling that prickly sensation in his gut. Sworn brothers. Even when hat snatching at Inuri, he never had anyone like that. “Back when you two were in the Hashiba clan?”

Iwai peered at him for a few moments. “Most people act like they’re at least creeped out by the yakuza. You got your own history, but one thing I’m sure of is you’re no Yakuza brat. You got some kinda fixation?”

Shrugging, Akira stood up from the grate. “I’m not invested in the status quo. I’m also not invested in the yakuza.” His eyes flicked up in remembrance. “Well, provided it’s not the Kirijo Group. Those bastards can go fuck themselves. I don’t care what they say about their new head.” He shrugged. “I guess that gives me space to deal with either without getting tangled up.”

Iwai gave a dark chuckle, a crinkling around his eyes betraying a smile he wouldn’t allow his mouth. “Bein’ unattached has definite advantages.” He pat his chest with one hand. “When people know you, you gotta rely on the bridges others leave for ya. Tsuda an’ I, we were sworn brothers, so everyone who knew us has their own take. Anything I do has to take into account whatever ideas they got. If you stick around, you could get involved in some real… gray zones. Movin’ product, sussin’ out old info, destroyin’ evidence. You sure you wanna get in with that?”

Akira leaned against the grating and gave an easy cross to his arms. “We have a deal, don’t we? I thought you figured out by now I don’t scare easy.”

Iwai let out a chuckle. “I’ve heard it ain’t smart to go chasin’ shadows, but sometimes you gotta be willin’ to go there if you lost something in the dark.” The corners of his lips pulled up. “And you sure as hell don’t shrink from the dark. Even a churlish old-timer like me’s gotta give that respect.” His smile dimmed as his eyes unfocused, seeing far back into his past. “Pity some folks lose their way in the dark.” He straightened on his stool, his gaze falling from the transfer student. “That’s kinda what happened with me an’ Tsuda. We got into…legally questionable things, but somethin’ happened and I realized I’d be livin’ one way if I stayed with ‘im.” He spread his hands. “So I left.”

Akira uncrossed his arms to shrug the shoulder not pressed against the welded grate. “So you pick the way you wanna live and go. What’s that to Tsuda?”

Iwai chuckled, but all trace of humor left his eyes. He switched the popsicle stick to the other side of his mouth. “You really are a kid. Peeps like knowin’ where you’re gonna be, that you’re gonna have your back. When anythin’ changes, that makes ‘em question how safe their back is.” He straightened and rolled his shoulder. “Tsuda stayed in the clan and kept risin’ through the ranks. I came out here, problem is there’s threads left danglin’.”

Akira stood up. “Well, Big K always told me it takes a man with hands as steady as his heart to sew on a patch.” He pointed at the box. “By the way. Twenty-five thousand.”

His phone buzzed and Iwai read in contemplative silence for a moment before he typed out a text. He glanced down at the box of pens and a silver stylus. “Twelve thousand.”

Akira leaned an arm up against the wielded grating. He weighed getting a little more money he didn’t have pressing, immediate need for against whether the business owner would believe him helping out. “Done.”

Sunday, 19 June 2016
Morning
Kanda Catholic Church

Sunlight streamed through the stained glass windows in the falling morning. Father Sugiyama made the sign of the cross to finish the Mass’ benediction. “Go in faith and share the love of Jesus.”

Noticing Hifumi get up to leave with the first wave of parishioners, Akira hopped to his feet. He caught up to her just before the doors to the narthex. “No shogi today?”

Hifumi bit her lip and fidgeted with her loose-sleeved black dress. Her pretty green eyes fixed on the tiled floor. “Sorry, Akira-kun. Mother has me scheduled for a photoshoot and I need to be there before twelve.”

Akira glanced over the hunch to her shoulders, the squint of her eyes, and the taught muscles in her neck. “You’d rather not.”

She deflated, her eyes drifting even further away. “I don’t know how people can do it voluntarily. All that fuss turning you from a person to a thing that can be sold. So much effort into finding an image that’s already culturally manufactured.”

Akira’s mouth ran ahead of his mind, “They wouldn’t need to change anything to make you beautiful.” All they’d need for her to nail the classical Japanese beauty would be the garb. Just the thought of her in a kimono made his face warm. The intruding thought that traditionally, women wore nothing underneath didn’t help the feeling of heat.

Hifumi’s face reddened and she stepped out. “Please don’t tease me.”

“S-so why do it?” Rushing to keep at her side, Akira swallowed against the sensation of tightness in his throat.

She steadied her pace to let him keep up. “Anything I can do to bring wider attention to shogi should help the sport.” Her footsteps slowed and her eyes tensed, falling to the sidewalk. “At least, that’s how I try to justify it to myself. It’s… Mother’s been so happy since I won the female shogi league, I don’t want to disappoint her. Things have been so hard since father became bedridden, I have to ease her burdens. It’s more attention than I’d like, but when mother is celebrating my wins as if they were her victories I just can’t say no.”

They came to a stop at a crosswalk. The slump of her shoulders and furrowing of her brow spoke of a different story than celebrating victories with her mother. “Listen, Hifumi-san. I don’t know much about families that are happy all the time. But I know that people don’t have an unlimited number of relationships to rely on. I know your mother is important to you.” He paused for a breath. “You should know you can go to your mother about things that are important to you.”

The street light changed and Hifumi glanced at him with a smile that only made her eyes look more sad. “Isn’t it also natural to want to live up to your parents’ expectations?” She stepped out.

Akira hurried to keep up with her on this last stretch to the subway station. “I just don’t want someone like you to have the same problems I have. You deserve to have people who will help you everywhere.”

Hifumi’s trot slowed when she reached the bottom of the stairs. Her deep green orbs searched his for a long moment before she let out a short breath. Her smile waned a bit, but so did the tension around her eyes. “Mother wasn’t always as overzealous. The beginning of the year can be really stressful for some people.”

Akira paced with her. “I tried calling at least three times during the week and you were too busy because of photoshoots each time. Isn’t she acting a bit like an idol manager?”

Hifumi’s pace slowed, her shoulders drawing in and red tinging her face. “I appreciate you listening, but I don’t want to burden you.” She changed her grip on her purse and drew a transit ticket, but paused before the turnstyle. “Do you read weekly magazines?”

Akira straightened his button-down dress coat. It was warm but not hot enough to explain why his underarms felt so sweaty. After a moment he gathered the courage to return her eye contact. “Uh… not usually. I tend to read stuff I can really sink my teeth into, so to speak.”

She swallowed and her gaze flitted away as an adorable dusting of pink grew on her cheeks. She let out a heavy breath. “I feel like I know the meaning of ‘dug my own grave’ now.” She shook her head. “Well, it’s not like you aren’t aware of what most of my errands are. I just… I wanted to warn you about the article in CM Now.” Her eyes shot wide. “Oh!” She dug into her purse and pulled out The Screwtape Letters. “I intended to give this to you at the end of our little excursion in Jinbocho. Sorry about the delay.”

Taking the book, he stared at it for a few moments before he took it and gave a brief bow of thanks. Unsure quite which way he should be supportive, once he came back up he said, “Hey… If you’re ever having a hard time…” He brought the book to his brow in a facetious salute. “Anywhere, any time.”

She let out a breath, but the tension lines in her neck and the small muscles in her face faded. She forced a smile, but the corners of her eyes remained tense. “Thank you, Akira-kun.”

He bowed, but before he could say anything she joined the stream of people rushing into the station.

Notes:

One of the interesting parts of the Madarame arc were the hints that not all Palace rulers were evil, which I hope was setup for Futaba. Sadly that's the only one we get for non-evil Palace rulers, which is one of the reasons I found the Persona 4 palaces more compelling. All of them held some deeply disturbing issues, but none sprang from what you could call "evil" people. Then again, as the saying goes, "which wolf rules within you? The one you feed." Different philosophers hold different stances on how human nature starts, but few would argue that people can cultivate evil inside themselves.

Thanks for reading and commenting!

Chapter 59: June 19th, Art Block

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Sunday, 19 June 2016
Afternoon
Yongen, Leblanc Loft

Akira’s mechanical pencil scratched away at next week’s homework. With everything out of the way for civics and history, he was running out of excuses to read the rest of the awful poetry Kawakami assigned or the even worse math Usami inflicted on him. His phone buzzed from the charger on the workbench.

Morgana set down the half-finished rake pick and brushed his paw against the phone screen to bring it out of sleep mode. “It’s that class representative and Reaper.” A hollow click played. “And now Nightrider.”

Akira clicked his pen and pushed the graphite back in the narrow metal tip. He was caught up enough on homework to get the blood pumping with some group sprinting. Ryuji’d be up for it, and Makoto could keep up if her performance at the bank was any indication. Akira stood up and trotted to the workbench to unlock his phone.

Mishima sent a couple names for Phansite requests, with the others already having consensus on all but the last name, Nakanohara Natsuhiko.

Ryuji texted, [Stalking is always the first step for creepers. How's he even finding the girlfriend if she moved three times?]

Mishima replied, [She doesn't know, he just always starts showing up a few days after the move. She even quit and got a new job and he's still harassing her.]

Makoto sent, [UNFORGIVABLE. AND THE POLICE WON'T DO ANYTHING UNLESS SHE PROVES SHE'S IN DANGER?]

[Check your settings, Senpai.] Ann texted, [And I hear about that all the time. If you're not a famous girl, police are super slow investigating stalking or harassment cases that don't have hospital reports. One of the models I subbed for hurt herself so the hospital would have something to document because one of her stalkers followed her to her apartment.]

[You want to change her stalker's heart?] Ryuji sent.

[Police already acted with that one. But if I get the name of the flower stalker, I'll definitely submit that one.]

Akira tapped away. [Flower stalker?]

Three dots danced next to Ryuji’s name for a moment. [Wow, Akira's up on Sunday. I thought you slept in.]

[I attend Mass, Ryuji. I'm always up in the morning.] Akira thought back to the nervous energy speeding up Hifumi’s pace and his teeth clenched together.

Ann responded, [The flower stalker is this guy who's been stalking a couple models from my agency. He never approached, or talked to them, but he found out exactly where they lived and delivered live flowers to their doors.]

Akira raised an eyebrow. [Giving a girl flowers isn't romantic?]

[Giving flowers isn't the problem. They never told him where they lived.]

Morgana leaned to peer in on the screen. “That makes sense. Want to go?”

“Mm-hm.” Akira typed, [Two ready here.]

[Big Sis already left for work,] Makoto texted. [So I'm ready, too.]

[Count me in,] Ann sent.

Ryuji replied with remarkable speed, [No leaving me out of this.]

Mementos, Nakanohara’s Distortion

Black gushed like compressed smoke out of a balloon, the Shadow shrinking until the only thing left was Nakanohara in a bland business suit and glowing yellow eyes. He coughed and held himself up on all fours before looking back up at the Phantom Thieves. “It’s not fair. First my art, then my girlfriend. They’re all taking everything from me. Why can’t the world leave me anything?”

Ryuji held his rifle steady on the Shadow and scoffed. “You’re whinin’ about someone takin’ stuff away, so you go all creepo on your girlfriend? Workin’ at her credit card company is no excuse for stealin’ her address ‘n stuff.”

Akira lowered his sub-machine gun. “Hang on a second, guys. This sounds familiar.” He stepped closer and lowered to one knee to look the Shadow eye-to-eye. “You said they took your art. You were blacklisted?”

Nakanohara nodded.

“Do you know who blocked you?”

The Shadow let out a breath and the transfer student would’ve sworn he shrank even more. “Madarame.”

Morgana flipped the bayonet attachment of his crossbow back. “I don’t understand.”

Nakanohara turned its dimmer glowing eyes to the floor and sighed. “Madarame Ichiryusai. He took me in when I was still in middle school, fed us nothing but glorious art. Then took it all away.”

Makoto let go of her shotgun with one hand to shake the arm out. “I don’t understand how one man could possibly close off an entire sector of industry. Arts and entertainment are probably the biggest industry in Japan.”

Akira lowered his sub-machine gun and stepped closer. “After all the effort you spent with your ex, I’m sure you tracked down the guy who blacklisted you. It’d have to be somebody with considerable pull in art and advertising.”

Nakanohara’s eyes narrowed and his fingernails scratched along the obsidian. “Kuraya Eisuke. Sensei never let us put our name on our paintings, so I didn’t have any pull to fight against the deputy curator of the Tokyo National Museum of Modern Art.”

Makoto nodded and slung her shotgun. “That certainly sounds like a big target.”

Ann switched her pistol to her other hand, its gun-light casting white on the floor. “You can’t get anywhere in life thinking only of yourself. That’s how you end up alone.”

Nakanohara slumped. In his position on all fours, he looked like a beaten dog. “You’re right. I need to think of the other people in my life or they’ll all leave me like she did.” He faded away, leaving a tiny, dark lump of rock.

Morgana picked it up and sighed. “Another one of those stupid black rocks. Come on, everyone. Let’s go see if Kuraya Eisuke’s here or has his own palace.” He handed the lump to Akira like all the others they found before.

They departed the small pocket of Mementos for the twisting tunnels, but following Morgana down towards Kuraya came to a stop at one of those stone gates that refused to yield. The team leader turned to the thieves. “Sorry, everyone. It looks like we’d have to do something to change the public consciousness in order to get further down.”

Ryuji threw a fist in the air. “Eff, man. Didn’ you say the only things that could make that happen was all that reportin’ when we changed a palace?”

Morgana nodded. “I’m positive all that fuss after changing Kamoshida’s heart is what opened that first one when I introduced you to Mementos. And that next one didn’t open until after we changed Kaneshiro’s heart.”

Makoto tugged at the strap over her shoulder holding on to her shotgun. “Nothing else to do, then. We’ll keep looking in the real world. Maybe Yuuki-kun will be able to connect Kuraya with someone else.”

Monday, 20 June 2016
After School
Shujin, Newspaper Club

Akira tapped away at his computer, trying another modifier to reduce the tens of thousands of results in a search of Yusuke and Madarame. So far, not a single article focused on the apprentice Mishima was so concerned about last week. From the tight looks on their faces, Makoto and Ryuji weren’t having any better luck despite the list of almost a dozen apprentices Mishima found over the weekend. Akira watched Ryuji scroll down through the interview they witnessed at last weekend’s opening of his art exhibition.

Ryuji cleared his throat and tapped the class representative with his elbow. “Ueda Hiroshi. OD’d on sleepin’ pills.”

“Not even an article for Utada Yano.” Makoto brushed back the bangs from her eyes. “Just an obituary that says he was an impressionist painter ‘taken too soon’.”

They fell back into the relative silence of clicks and key presses. A couple minutes later, Ryuji let out a chuff. “’Nother dude hanged himself in his bedspace apartment.” His eyes squinted. “Man, if I was crammed into a dump like that for years, I think I’d seriously consider offin’ myself too.”

Makoto elbowed him. “Ryuji-kun, that’s horrible!”

Akira swallowed at his article. “I found Tokunaga Rin. She was a senior at Kosei when a classmate found her in the bathroom with her wrists slit by a razor.” He looked to his side to see his class representative gritting his teeth. He tapped the boy’s shoulder. “Hey, I thought I had a trademark on tooth grinding. What is it?”

Mishima let out a frustrated huff. “Takashita Jinpachi. No obituary, no public death report, no employment record. It’s like he just dropped off the face of the Earth shortly after 2010. Even with all the techniques Ohya-san taught me last week, I’m still running into dead ends.”

Ryuji made a disgusted face. “I think I’d rather have one’a those than more’a these cutters.”

Mishima leaned to read the runner’s screen. “Which one?”

“Oh.” Ryuji scrolled back up on the article, complete with pictures. “Misora Kotani. Wrists in the bath.”

Akira waited for the representative to write a cause of death down next to that name before he pointed out his own latest discovery. “At least there’s no picture for Kondo Akari. Though I guess they wouldn’t for a smear across the pavement.”

Makoto dropped her head into her hands. “Akira-kun, don’t say things like that. You’re too far away for me to smack.”

Mishima cleared his throat. “What was her cause of death?”

“Suicide by truck. Witnesses say she ran out into traffic, the truck driver even hit another car but couldn’t avoid her.” Akira closed that tab, then lowered his voice. “I know we started this investigation into Kitagawa, but there’s too many bodies in Madarame’s wake.”

“For real,” Ryuji whispered.

Mishima nodded, his face grim. “And yet every article not in a trash tabloid is praise. It’s too good to be true.” The others nodded.

Makoto cleared her throat. “Even so, there have to be signs in the real world if we just know what to look for. Or maybe who to look for. We at least know this apprentice is still alive and nearby, even if Kosei is a little ways away.”

Morgana poked his head up out of Akira’s school satchel, his blue eyes on the class representative sitting next to him. “Was there anything about a shack and mistreatment on the Phansite?”

“Good point. Check the Phansite for something about Madarame mistreating his students. Not sure what a shack has to do with that. Hm. Kosei…” Akira tapped his fingers on the tabletop. “Kosei…” He searched until bringing back up Tokunaga’s article, and the stock yearbook photo of her. The same blue over-shirt with a star in a laurel wreath. “I know that uniform. And someone who goes there.” He pulled out his phone and navigated to his texting app to get a hold of Hifumi. [Do you have a moment? We need help with any rumors about Madarame at Kosei.]

To his surprise, Ryuji found the post before his class representative. “Yeah, somebody posted just today. ‘Madarame keeps his students in a run-down shack, without enough food to be healthy. It is unbearably hot in the summer and freezing in the winter. He treats them like dogs, and makes them paint pieces he takes as his own.”

His phone buzzed and he looked down at Hifumi’s response. [I'm stuck in wardrobe and makeup for the next hour. As long as mother isn't in I don't think anyone will mind my texting. Why the sudden interest?]

Akira scratched his neck. “Crap, I didn’t have a reason on standby. I don’t think she’d buy the plagiarism accusations. What do I say we’re trying to ask about?”

Mishima and Makoto whispered to each other, keeping an eye on Ishikawa, before he leaned back to the transfer student. “Well, technically you did just learn about a lot of Madarame’s ex-students. We’re concerned for his health?”

Akira tapped away. [I just heard about Tokunaga. I'm concerned if Kitagawa is okay. Anything you know about Madarame? I know he's had students there, people must talk.]

[Oh, definitely. Kosei was always proud of its fine arts program, but Madarame sending pupils here has been a big point of prestige.]

[What do the people say about Madarame? Besides being a good painter.]

Three dots danced next to her ID for a moment. [Most of it is just that. And that he is a demanding task master. I suppose you don't get that good without an eye for detail. Maybe that goes with being a perfectionist like Jackie Chan.]

Noticing Mishima giving him the side-eye, he explained, “Well, word in Kosei is Madarame’s demanding.” He looked back to his phone. [So anything else? Is anybody nominating him for favorite boss of the year?]

[Definitely not after Tokunaga. She died the year before I started Kosei.]

[Was there anything special about her?]

[Not as far as I know,] she replied. [When Kitagawa and Sawamura were both here last year, they always seemed to be off on their own. The rumor mongers made it sound like they thought they were better than everyone else, but they just seemed aloof to me. Maybe that's just what artists are like when art is the axis mundi of your world. It's not so different with me.]

Akira looked up and scratched his head. “Uh, what’s an axis mundi?”

Mishima shrugged, but Makoto’s eyes screwed up and her face tensed in thought. “A religious or mythological core, or something like that. My art teacher last year called the Ganges River an axis mundi for Hindus.”

Ryuji scrolled up and down the post. “You think Ann’s stalker wrote this?” His eyes shot wide. “Oh, or maybe it was Nakanohara!”

Ishikawa held her finger up to her lips. “Shh!”

“Sorry!” Ryuji replied at a volume still better suited to the outside.

Makoto leaned closer to whisper across Mishima, “You think we might learn something from the apprentice’s Shadow?”

Mishima scratched his scalp. “Or maybe we just talk to him.”

“Not without Ann,” Ryuji said. “Dunno if he’d go for Makoto, but he def’ didn’t have time for none of us guys.”

Akira rolled his eyes and returned focus to his phone. [Any unpleasant rumors about Kitagawa?]

[I'm not in his class, but I don't think so. He spends long hours at the art studio and doesn't seem to have friends. Not that I'm one to talk.]

[He's not hostile or on edge?]

[Not from what I've noticed. He misses classes occasionally, but I believe that is helping Madarame.]

[Nice guy?]

[Well, nothing about him seems mean. He doesn't glare over his sketch pad at people, but he also doesn't talk often. Some days he will sit on a stump in the corner of the courtyard and just sketch all lunch long.]

Akira straightened his glasses and glanced at the others. “She isn’t in his class, but it seems like he’s just a loner.” [Would you mind keeping an eye out? I just feel nervous after finding out his last two compatriots died recently.]

[You're a considerate soul, Akira-kun. Of course I'll help.]

The chat closed and he swallowed. “I feel like I need a shower. I just lied to a fellow parishioner to get her to spy on one of our target candidates.”

Ryuji leaned over to get a better view of Akira from the far side of Makoto. “Her?” His grin stretched wide. “She cute?”

Makoto swatted him across the back of the head.

Monday, 20 June 2016
Evening
Shibuya, Cafe

A cup of cold coffee sat at the edge of the table, most of the rest of it covered with Akira’s history and language arts studies. The retreat from Shujin’s hostile halls used to mean some peace and studious quiet, but texting Hifumi today reminded him about the photo spread she mentioned in CM Now. Akira’s mind kept circling back to it, wondering what kept her busy for so much of the week.

He wondered if it was her idea, her mother’s, or some corporate producer’s idea to put her in a backless dress the color of red wine. The material spilled down from the clasp at her neck, showing off her smooth skin and sensuous curves. Her poise retained that defiant grace she held in every moment, but a faux-contemplative look in her face couldn’t hide the antipathy in her eyes, a soul-crushing darkness in deep green orbs meant to hold the bright spark when they played shogi together.

Akira jumped in his seat when his phone rumbled in his hand.

He brought up the text app to see a message from Mishima. [Could I ask for your help?]

Morgana stretched from his position on the booth’s other tiny bench seat. “What’s up?”

Still a little hot under the collar from the photos, and concerned for Hifumi at the same time, Akira sent out a snarky text. [I believe you just did.]

A beat passed before the class rep responded. [Ohya-san asked for a meet today. I've been giving her info so she can get more positive articles out there about the 'Phantom Thief'. But that investigation we started on those suicided pupils has me worried. I got an interview with a new guy, but can't make it if I see Ohya-san. Could you gave her the scoop?]

Akira checked his other texts, but the one he sent Hifumi asking for tutoring sat there, unread. He let out a long sigh and swiped back to the chat app. [Fine. Where do I need to meet her?]

[Crossroads.]

Akira sent a quick confirmation to the class rep, then slipped his phone into his pocket. “Mishima needs us to meet that journalist while he’s checking out a lead elsewhere.” He finished a fill-in-the-blank worksheet so he wouldn’t be stuck waiting in foot traffic in Shinjuku, then packed up and headed to the bar.

Having been there several times before, Akira pushed his way through the crowds and reached the bar. Once inside and he didn’t have to worry about the constant presence of multiple people behind him, he let out a relieved breath. He muttered to himself, “I wonder if it’s pathetic to be proud of just getting down the street.”

Morgana popped his head out of the transfer student’s satchel. “Even the small successes are successes, Joker. So where’s the drunkard?”

Akira shot him a sour look. “Good thing nobody else can understand you.” Seeing a familiar bartender in a blue kimono with a koi fish pattern today, he waited until after she served a trio of businessmen beer before approaching the bar packed with patrons. “Is Ohya-san already here?”

Lala squinted at him for a moment before the flash of recognition. “Oh, you’re that brooding boy.” She waggled her finger at him. “No friend with you tonight?”

Smirking, Akira used a hand to pull open his satchel so she could see the team leader. “He’s my friend.”

Lala let out a raspy laugh, then pointed to the stairs at the back. “Go on up, kid. She’s at her usual box.”

Akira slipped up to the private booths looking down on what might have been a dance floor before the place turned into a salary man's watering hole. Ohya stretched out on a chaise lounge sofa, three empty beer bottles on the tiny nearby table. He gave her a nod and stepped in.

Quirking an eyebrow, the reporter sat up on the short sofa. “Where’s Junior?”

Akira slid the booth door closed behind him. “Junior?”

Ohya reached for a half-empty beer. “That kid from your school who looks like he’s stuck in a cringe. He’ll make a half-decent investigative journalist if he’d decide to come out of his shell.” She stretched out across the lounge sofa, her dark shirt lifting enough to expose some of her smooth midriff. Then she shot him a knowing smirk.

Swallowing, Akira set down his satchel and sat down in one of the stuffed chairs to lessen the tension in his pants. She looked way too much like Shiho on that circular bed.

“Geez, kid. Loosen up,” she said, sitting up and pausing for a sip of beer. “Ya don’ hafta look sick at a lil’ flirting. A girl needs ta let loose a bit when big…boss man sticks her on tha goddamn ennertainment column.” She took a deeper swig. “I’m a real germ…journalist, ya know. I di’n’ ask to get shafted with some dumb schoolkid fantasy.”

As she paused to take another swig, Akira reveled in the indignant anger at this washed-up loser calling him, calling all the Phantom Thieves a fantasy. Heroes only appeared when the world was screwed up, but at least they did something. “The Phantom Thief took down a rapist and yakuza boss, and you think it’s still just some rumor?”

Ohya slammed the bottle down on the table, a drop splashing up out the narrow neck. “I read ‘bout cards showin’ up in Shibuya, but Ha…” She hiccuped. “Hashimoto knows his stuff. I’ve seen all sorts’a shitbags go after criminals ‘cause yer average Joe’s gonna look the other way. I betcha one heard ‘bout that coach who beat up his kids an’ pulled a copycat act.”

Akira slammed his fists onto the padded arms of his chair. “So what about all the drug dealers and pimps who turned themselves in? The Kaneshiro Yakuza disintegrated. Must’ve been dozens of thugs who had a change of heart after all those requests on the Phansite.”

Her drunken smile widened, but a sharpness entered her eyes at odds with her slurred speech. “Phansite, huh?” Ohya set down her beer. “So what’s your connection with the Phantom Thief? Why come all the way out here to talk to me?”

Akira sat back. “Who says Mishima’s not the Phantom Thief, and I’m his biggest fan?”

Ohya burst out laughing. Her breath stank of beer.

The two discussed the Phantom Thieves’ work on the Kaneshiro yakuza for a while longer before the reporter opined, “Sounds like the Phantom Thief can get anyone.”

Akira’s mood dampened as he thought of Shiho. Then Tosa Kotomi. “Even the Phantom Thief can’t save everyone.”

His phone buzzed. Queen Togo’s ID blazed up at him in the text app. [Sorry about being away from my phone for a while. Mother had me scheduled. It's too late to go out tonight, but maybe Wednesday?]

Akira typed in, [Consider it a date,] then realized that might be misconstrued. Instead, he sent, [I'll be there.] That finished, he realized he’d need to get to the train soon. He stood and looked down at the reporter finishing off her fifth beer. “Write something good, okay?”

She shot him a dirty glare. “Who’d’you think yer talkin’ to?”

He tucked his phone in his pocket. “I need to get going before curfew officers come out of the woodwork.”

Ohya curled her thumb and index finger into a circle and held it up to her eye. “Be seeing you.”

Chapter 60: June 21st, Ground Down

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Tuesday, 21 June 2016
Early Morning
Shibuya Station

The train slid to a noisy stop, the faint smell of metal and oil in the air. Akira tapped his foot as the doors trundled open, waiting for the workers heading into Shibuya to disembark. Before the last passenger got off, a few of the other waiting Shujin students pushed their way in, so Akira did likewise. To his surprise, few people occupied the train.

Akira rushed for one of the available seats and even resisted the urge to smirk at the next Shujin student.

More people piled in and the team leader popped his head out of the bag. “Nice, you got a window seat.”

“They’re all against the window,” Akira said between chuckles. He tapped the diminutive team leader. “Hey, since I don’t have to hold you, this is a great opportunity to get some reading in.”

Stumbling when the train accelerated, Morgana squeezed to one side to let Akira draw a small book. “The Screwtape Letters? I don’t remember seeing you buy that one.”

“H—Togo-san gave it to me,” Akira said. He pulled the small book out and opened to the first page.

Tuesday, 21 June 2016
After School
Shujin, Class 2-D

Relaxing as much as he could in the classroom, Akira busied himself with homework. Except for a pair of girls talking favorites about famous boys, the other handful of students still around lounged at their desks working on their own homework. The front chalkboard sat clean, but on the back rested a crude likeness of Madarame, drawn by some fan after his gallery opened up just a few days ago.

Akira looked down at his math homework with the lethargy of a convict at a ditch yet to be dug. It didn’t seem as skull-battering hard as before, but still made his veins pulse in frustration. He pulled his phone out, but hesitated at Queen Togo. Would she be bothered by him taking more of her time after fishing information out of her about a possible heart to change? He already used her for spying on a possible target. Or would she be more creeped out by his cyber-stalking when he spent an hour yesterday looking for those luscious photo shoots she cringed about?

He didn’t deserve someone like her.

He lowered the phone, then held it up. Despite all those photos yesterday, it wasn’t enough. He didn’t just want to see her curves, but hear her sonorous voice and see that living spark in her eyes when they sat down to a match.

“What’s up?” Morgana whispered from inside the desk.

Akira adjusted his phone so the team leader couldn’t see it, and texted her a study request. His phone buzzed in his hands and the transfer student’s throat went dry. A response, already?

Opening the chat, he felt a cold disappointment at the Phantom Thief chat. Mishima’s ID stood at the top. [Hey, everyone. Sorry for the delay. Just got out of StuCo meeting. I ID'd a couple people for requests on the Phansite. There's an insurance fraudster back in Shibuya. He swoops in, cheats a couple insurance agencies out of hundreds of thousands, then disappears. He has to have a stash of alternate identities all lined up, but the MO looks the same, so I figured his original name should do for you guys. Akitsu Fumio.]

Makoto’s ID blinked, [I have to get back to student council work, but shouldn't the police handle that? Insurance companies and the prefectural police both have departments dedicated to handling fraud.]

[For real,] Ryuji texted.

A beat passed before Ann popped into the chat, [Shiho's parents both work in the financial sector. That money doesn't come from corporate-only money trees. That kind of fraud is just theft from a whole ton of people with a middleman doing the collecting. Then they raise the rates on all their customers. If we can help, I say we do it.]

Akira sent, [I never thought about it like that before. Count me in.]

Ryuji replied, [Makes sense to me.]

Ann texted, [I thought you were going to be running today.]

[I had homework.]

Akira’s eyebrow quirked. [Ryuji? Doing homework before the night of?]

He texted an angry face emoji. [Dude, President already gave me crap today.]

[There's another one I think you guys might want to make a priority,] Mishima sent. [Remember that stalker I mentioned a week ago? One of the helpers on the Phansite linked to her blog. She started dreaming up violent fantasies at the start of the semester, and only got more deranged as time went on.]

Akira opened the following link. His browser opened a very plain blog using a black high-heeled shoe as her profile image. The last post started with ‘I’ll kill him. Nobody will take him away from me’ and got graphic enough no image was necessary. He scrolled back a few posts and read, then back a few more.

Back on the chat, Ryuji added, [I don't know what the big deal is. Isn't it hot that a girl's thinking of you?]

Akira closed the browser. [You didn't read it, did you? I don't like drawing on my experience in the Institute, but there's some clear escalation. Most days, I'd say a teenage girl's diary isn't a very reliable source, but she knows a lot more about veins in the neck than a high schooler should. I think we should change her heart before she makes the transition from fantasy to reality.]

Makoto texted, [An emergency we need to take care of today? Can't read blogs until the meeting's over.]

[Yeesh,] Ann sent. [That girl's got issues.]

Morgana’s ears twisted in the shelter of his desk. “You read too fast for me to finish those blog posts. What do you think?”

Akira’s lips pressed into thin lines as he thought. [I'd say we have a couple weeks at the most, but a few days shouldn’t hurt. Why?]

[I can't get away from Student Council today,] she texted. [It would look suspicious to leave this much work unfinished.]

Ann’s ID blinked. [Oh! In that case, can I have the day off? My agency sent me a sub request and I could use the extra cash. My parents have also been wanting to take me out for a family dinner.]

Morgana let out a soft sigh. “Of course Lady Ann can go.”

Akira typed, [Morgana says, 'Work, slave!']

The team leader lashed out, scratching Akira’s finger. “Ow!” Akira pulled back, his chair bumping into Mishima’s desk behind.

[I'm going to take that as a yes. You're the best, Leader!] Ann sent.

Akira texted, [Who's our stalker?]

Three dots danced next to Mishima’s ID for a moment. [Mogami Yumeko. Remember the girl huddling by that bend in the hallway before the cross-over between the academic and practice building?]

Ryuji replied with remarkable speed, [I totally knew that creepy girl had to be some kind of stalker! She's always there staring at those ex-basketball club guys by the second-floor billboards.]

Morgana’s ears twisted with a distinct impression of disappointment. “So much for it being ‘hot’ for a girl to be thinking of you.”

[No objections here,] Akira texted. [Any luck with those Madarame pupils?]

Mishima’s ID blinked. [None I can find any traces of. Which in itself is suspicious when I've confirmed he had fifteen students. I'll text you guys an update if I find anything else.] He signed out, followed in short order by Ann and Makoto.

[Weird that he'd have fifteen dudes and NONE of them would make it big.] Ryuji’s ID lingered. [Hey, you still up in the library?]

[2-D. I got cleaning duty, so I figured I'd just stay and do homework here.]

[Want to run?]

The tip of Morgana’s tail twitched. “You two might as well. I don’t want to take the Phantom Thieves into Mementos when we’re down two members. Just let me out the front and I’ll see you at Leblanc.”

[Give me a minute to change and I'll meet you at the courtyard,] Akira sent before closing the chat.

After slipping Morgana out the front gate, the transfer student found Ryuji bracing against the back practice building wall and stretching. “Yo.”

“Hey, Ryuji.” Akira joined him in stretching. “So Shujin used to have a basketball club?”

“Yeah,” the track star said, raising his arm to stretch out his side. “Shujin used to be like a lotta’ other schools. Had kendo, basketball, volleyball, even a swim team before I got here. Dunno where they practiced.” He switched his raised arms and leaned to his left. “Basketball lost their budget and just kinda petered out my first year here. Wouldn’t be surprised if Kamoshida was behind it. Only club he didn’t fuck with was kendo, but that’s ‘cause they never won a meet.” He straightened up, his eyes taking a faraway look. “Now track was Shujin’s big deal. We were gonna beat the regionals again… and maybe even place in the nationals.”

Akira scratched his scalp. “I know he broke your leg, but how come the track coach didn’t stop it?”

Ryuji snorted and straightened, just to lower into a pose stretching out his left calf. “Yamauchi – first-year language arts teacher – brought up accusations of ‘mishandling club money’. Tch. Effin’ lapdog just wanted to suck off Kamoshida. Kicked Wada-san out. Kamoshida took over as sub.” He stood up straight, hands clenching in tight fists. “Shithead made us do shuffle sprints right after a long run. We’d go ‘round the whole block, but he’d never let us drink.”

The cognitive runner tripping and falling back the treadmill into the spiked roller flashed in Akira’s mind. “He was doing the same kinda thing to you he did to those dupes in his nightmare castle.” He shook his head. “Why didn’t any of the other guys on the track team go after him?”

Ryuji folded his arms, the rolled-up arms of his white shirt reminding Akira of shimenawa wrapped around temple trees. Those brown eyes scanned the broken clouds in the sky. “He treated all us like shit. Went after me ‘specially.” Ryuji’s eyes fell to the transfer student. “Knew I’d fight back.” He nudged the transfer student with his elbow. “A bit like you, eh?”

Akira elbowed him back, then tugged the sleeves of his PE jacket straight. “You got a mouth on you, but you take as good as you dish out. How’d Captain Ass-Hat get you?” He blinked. “I mean, if it’s not too—”

“Naw,” Ryuji waved him off. His posture tightened a little, but the creases in his forehead smoothed out. “You prolly already guessed it. Told everyone Ma was a drunk’s sleaze.” His teeth clenched together, though with the corners of his lips turned up. “I knocked him on his fat ass. Everyone went quiet.” He jammed his fists in his exercise slacks. “Then he had ta get back up. Shoved me down an’ broke my leg.” His lips drooped into a frown and he peered out over the courtyard. “Used that ta shut down the track team.”

A brief wind blew.

Akira came alongside the track star and stared out at the packed turf. “They should’ve stood up for you.” He shifted his weight from one foot to another. “Thinking about what might’ve happened if things had gone different?”

“Nah.” Ryuji said, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. “Well, maybe a bit. But I ain’t so good at keepin’ my head down. Don’t want ‘em goin’ the way I went.”

Akira moved a few steps on and leaned against a support strut for the covered walkways. “Doesn’t seem like you went so bad. You’re still running, and damn good at it too. You still had enough heart to hold up against Kamoshida, even when they should’ve had your back. Still took care of your mom… and even stood up for me.” He shook his head. “They don’t know what they lost.”

Ryuji drew in a deep breath, a surprising level of contemplation deep in his eyes. “That’s all in the past. I mean, Shujin could make a new track team, but it would hafta be a different one.” He slipped his hands back in his pockets. “Old one has too many scars. Even if I didn’t eff it up for all’a them, it’d never work if I tried to go back. Small time meets and prob’s like that? If you’re gonna do somethin’, go big or go home.” He paced closer and elbowed Akira, knocking him out of his casual lean. “I gotta place here. You know, with you guys. No need to look back.” He gazed out at the sun dipping behind the skyline. “But if those guys could make a new track team, I bet it would be good for everyone.” He clapped his hands. “Enough with mopin’ – let’s get to runnin’.”

Wednesday, 22 June 2016
Early Evening
Shujin Library

With Ryuji and Makoto both gone, conversation bubbled around the library. When Akira’s phone buzzed, he dove for the excuse to get out and do something besides homework in Tokyo’s noisiest library.

The ID Queen Togo stared up at him, and he felt his face heat up. [Good evening, Akira-kun. Cram school is over, but I still feel like math today. Still interested in tutoring?]

He blinked. He muttered, “Feel like math? What on Earth is wrong with you, girl?”

Morgana yawned, blinking bleary eyes from his hiding spot in the transfer student’s satchel. “Who is it?”

Akira weighed bringing the leader along. On the plus side, he was pretty astute about almost any subject and lacked the transfer student’s aversion to math or poetry. That could help during study later. On the minus side, he couldn’t talk freely if a personal topic came up, and with Hifumi, he wanted to be able to talk about anything. “Shogi rival.”

“Ugh.” Morgana groused, but at least kept it quiet enough the student in the next cubicle couldn’t hear.

[For Queen Togo? Anywhere, any time.]

Three dots danced next to her ID for a moment, then disappeared. A second later, she sent, [The tutoring is for YOU, silly. Have you been around the Waseda Language School?]

Akira began packing up. [I have not.]

[There is a lovely stir-fry restaurant in the northwest corner. Kanaoka's.] She linked a review of the place giving its exact address.

[I'll text you when I get there.] Akira slipped his last book under Morgana and headed out, letting the team leader off at Shibuya.

Kanaoka’s Stir-Fry

Akira stepped into the long, narrow eatery dominated by bamboo paneling, but saw no sign of the shogi master with a cute omamori-style knot in her hair. He sent her a text telling her he’d arrived, but when it sat unread, he plopped down at the worn wood bench by the front. He pulled up an online shogi match and waited.

Fingers tapping him on his shoulder jolted him out of another win. Akira looked up to see the poised brunette leaning over him, looking prim but expectant. He held a hand over his heart to try to quell the thundering beats. “Geez, Togo-san. You didn’t tell me you were part ninja.”

She giggled and led him to the front host’s desk, where he led the pair of students to a booth table in the back. As she strode down the restaurant aisle, he couldn’t help but look at her back and think of the wine red, backless dress she wore in the CM Now photo spread. And the way it cascaded down her shoulders and drew attention to curves even her school uniform couldn’t dim.

Akira swallowed against the sharp feeling of dryness in his mouth and throat. After ordering some appetizers, they settled into tutoring. Akira fixed his eyes on his papers and went through more math than he remembered absorbing from class in a week.

He just finished a derivative drill when a handful of whispering boys in the periphery stood up from their table and scurried through the neo-modern furnishings. The first squeaked, “It is!”

The second, a boy with a bowl cut, let out a sound Akira would’ve sworn was a squee. “The Venus of Shogi!”

Taking in a slow breath, Hifumi covered her face with one hand.

The third boy in the rumpled uniform of one of the local colleges held up his phone. The click of a shutter emanated from it.

Akira shot from his seat and interposed himself. “Dude, show some respect!”

Squeaker tried to step around the transfer student, his eyes never leaving the shogi master. “Can I have your autograph?”

Hifumi slapped her hand to the table. “No autographs, selfies, or social media.”

Squeaker pushed against the transfer student, just to get push back. “Aw, c’mon. You can’t shut down your adoring fans. We love you!”

Another shutter click came from the snaggle-toothed moron ignoring her explicit request.

Akira’s blood thundered in his ears. “Did you not hear her? Back off!” He snatched for Snaggle Tooth’s phone and a tug-of-war ensued.

Fists clenching, Hifumi’s face reddened. “Stop it!”

Akira’s stomach twisted and he let go, bitterness coating his throat. Her anger may have swept over the intruding men, but her piercing gaze stopped on him.

Footsteps pounded from the front, but it wasn’t sycophant cops coming to throw him against the wall. No rich bastard with orange-tinted glasses mocking him with liquor-suffused breath. Just the host who led them to their table, and a beefy guy with thin remnants of black hair. Both wore the same black shirt and dress slacks of the restaurant’s uniform. The beefy man snapped, “We do not allow disruptions in this establishment.”

Snaggle Tooth aimed his phone’s camera at Hifumi, who clenched her jaw.

The manager grabbed Snaggle Tooth by the shoulder and hauled him around to stare into the pipsqueak’s eyes. “Settle your check and leave. We only provide for customers who respect this place and other customers.” His glare swept over the other standing men.

Bowl Cut flapped his jaw a couple times. “But—”

“Out!” The manager turned to the host. “Settle their checks and see to it they leave immediately.” The three college morons filed out behind the host. Instead of looking pleased, the manager turned to the transfer student. “Out.”

Hifumi massaged her temples with her fingertips. “It’s okay, he’s with me.”

Akira scratched his neck, eyes unable to meet the other two. “I didn’t help de-escalate.”

Her head tilted just a little forward, exasperation writ over her features. “You were trying to do what you thought was right. And help me.”

The manager’s stern posture relaxed.

Akira took off his glasses to wipe the lenses with a microfiber cloth, unable to bear their scrutiny. “I should have tried calling the manager—”

“You’re damn right,” the thinning-haired man snapped.

Hifumi sat straight against the back of her bench, her green eyes fixing on him. Her voice jumped a couple decibels, “Sit down!”

Akira sat, sliding his glasses back on his face. The manager walked away and the transfer student fixed his glasses. “Sorry about that.”

She tapped her pen against her notes in a rapid patter for a second. Her lips pursed before she forced herself to set the pen down. When she spoke, her melodious voice was quiet but filled with stern disappointment. “Akira, you’re the only one still holding onto it.” She tapped his knuckles with her pen. “I have to deal with fans occasionally. What you need to do is let things go. Getting angry about it never helps.”

Akira let out a whoosh of air. “Anger can come in handy sometimes.”

She rolled her eyes, but the tension in her posture held fast. “Maybe. But remember the Beatitudes. ‘I tell you anyone who is angry with his brother or sister will be subject to judgment’.”

Akira scratched his scalp. He was tempted to look it up on his phone, but she’d see it for sure. “Uh… where’s that?”

Her easy, assured gaze sharpened. For a moment he felt like her gaze peeled away not just his readied excuses, but his skin and bones and stared straight into his soul. “You’re Catholic and don’t know where the Beatitudes are?”

Unable to withstand her deep green gaze, he looked at the floor as his face flared with heat. “I just converted end of last year, okay?” He considered telling her the guards took away his Bible during his stay in jail until the judge pronounced him guilty. “I haven’t even finished reading the Old Testament yet.”

Her intense gaze held for a moment longer, then softened as she sat back against her booth seat. “Matthew, Chapter 5. But if you’re not very familiar with the Old Testament, I’d suggest reading Luke first. He interviewed the surviving disciples like Matthew the tax collector, but was himself a Gentile, not a Jew, and also wrote for a non-Jewish audience. Matthew and Mark both presuppose quite a bit of Jewish tradition, so you can lose some nuance by reading them without the background of the Septuagint.”

Akira held his chin in his hand and looked over her. A smile crawled over his face. “You are amazing, Togo-san. Every time we meet, I learn something new. Sorry about those three jerks who don’t think of you besides the red dresses and costumes.”

Hifumi’s smile, which had been creeping its way across her face, went flat in the blink of an eye. She tapped her pen for a moment. “I figured you’d look them up.” She set her pen down on her notes with a thump. “Sorry, that sounded more aggressive than I intended. I did even tell you about it.” She looked up at him, the meekness of her posture clashing with that sexy lip bite. “What did you think?”

Akira swallowed. His mouth went dry and heat scorched his face. “I… uh…” She continued staring, and he realized he would have to answer if he didn’t want to pull a Mishima and run away from the problem.

His mind reminded him Akira never ran, and he’d need to give a careful answer. His mouth went ahead without the rest of him. “I’m surprised a devout Catholic would model for such flamboyant photos.”

She let out a ‘tsk’, though he could tell Hifumi’s consternation was directed at herself. “You mean gaudy and scandalous.” The faint dusting of pink on her cheeks darkened.

Akira scrambled to try to recover. “Uh… there’s nothing wrong with being a model. Ann-san does that sometimes.”

A hunch still in Hifumi’s shoulders, her eyes snapped to his. Given the tension in the small muscles in her neck, he couldn’t be sure if she was angry or embarrassed. “Excuse me?”

“She’s a classmate,” he explained, tugging at his collar to get some air. “She works as a model for her part-time job. Sometimes she talks about the scramble which happens when she has to sub for somebody else.”

“Oh,” Hifumi said, before taking her water glass. Her deep green eyes stared into the half-filled container.

Akira examined her posture, trying to figure out what was whirling through the gears behind her eyes. “You want me to put you two in touch? She might have some advice.”

Hifumi took a deep drink, then set her glass down and picked up her pen. “Oh, I don’t want to be a bother.” She swallowed as if trying to work down tension. “I hardly have any time anyway, as full as Mother keeps my schedule. If it wasn’t for bringing in money from our tutoring, Mother wouldn’t even allow me to do this.” Hifumi gave a bitter smile. “She definitely wouldn’t if she knew it was with a boy. It’s about cultivating the image of a shogi personage, you understand.” Those green orbs flicked up to him and the tension returned to her posture. “She’s as strict about what I can’t do as what I must. I haven’t even been on a date since middle school.”

Akira opened his mouth to say something, anything. His heart shot into his throat, telling him he had a chance at the same time his mind told him he had no chance with a brilliant beauty like her.

She turned a page in her math book. “I’m sorry for bothering you with all that. Let’s get back to derivatives.”

She kept them on-task for the remainder of their short time together in the restaurant with nothing but a handful of appetizers. Akira tried to keep his mind on the math, but by the time they departed, he couldn’t help but think about whether his tutor’s mother could do with a change of heart.

Notes:

The collision course between Akira and Hifumi picks up, and Akira learns his friends are more like him in his troubles than he thought. The game didn't take much advantage of either Haru or Hifumi's characters despite both of them being relatively prominent figures, but I don't have the game's constraints. I hope you all like how I work them in. Leave a comment with your thoughts, questions, and where you think things are going!

Chapter 61: June 23rd, Modeling Gone Wrong

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Thursday, 23 June 2016
After School
Shibuya, Madarame’s Atelier

Akira led the walk across the street to the run-down hut covered in tin plating. He could even see rust stains running across the sidewalk from the joints in the plates. Overgrown bushes choked the limited space between the building’s walls and street and sun-faded drapes closed off the windows. “Uh, Ann? You wanna double-check the address?”

Makoto slipped ahead to peer at the door plate. “The plate says ‘Madarame’.” She looked at the intercom, the brittle plastic faded from decades in the sun. “I’m almost afraid if I touch it, the whole thing will fall over.”

Morgana scanned the roof line. “Nobody sneeze.”

Ann shifted her weight from her right to her left foot, finger twirling through the tip of a pigtail. “I am a little nervous about modeling for a painter. Do I need to do anything?”

Akira crossed his arms, holding his chin in his fingers for the classic pose. He snapped his fingers. “Cover yourself in paint.”

Makoto rolled her eyes. “I’m sure he’d have given instructions if he needed anything from you, Ann-kun.”

Ann let out a breath and shared a small smile. “True, Senpai. After all the terrible fates which happened to other apprentices, I’m more worried about something happening to Kitagawa than what’s coming from him.”

“Well, since Ryuji’s not here to goad into it…” Akira stepped up to the door and tapped the intercom button. The plastic ring around the button fell into the shrub beside the door and Akira danced back like he expected the rest of the building to follow.

Kitagawa’s voice emanated from the scratchy speaker, “I’m sorry, Sensei is—”

“It’s me,” Ann pressed the speaker button, twirling a finger on her other hand through a pigtail. “Takamaki.”

“Stay right there!” He said in one breath, then the speaker went silent.

Makoto craned her neck to look up at the old building. “It’s just so hard to think of a great artist living in a dump like this.”

Akira stepped back and folded his arms. “I know. Who would use plaid for curtains?”

Ann eyed him with an arched eyebrow. “That’s what you focus on, with all the things falling apart?” She swung her arms back and forth. “Is this building even habitable?”

The door burst open and the apprentice artist stood inside, wearing a paint-stained brown apron over a white shirt. The instant his dark grey eyes fell on Ann, a faint smile slipped over his face and he let out a relieved breath. Then he spotted the transfer student and student council president, and his posture shot from relieved to guarded. “I do not recall inviting you or your significant other.”

“She’s not my girlfriend.” Akira crossed his arms and mirrored the apprentice’s suspicious stance. “We’re here to make sure nothing happens to Ann-san.”

Makoto nodded. “It is unusual to hire a model without going through her agency. Freelance models are frequently taken advantage of.”

Morgana popped his head out of the transfer student’s bag and bared his teeth. “That’s right. I’ve got my eyes on you, you duplicitous silver tongue.”

Kitagawa turned his nose up at the class president. “Perish the thought. I seek only to convey true beauty to the masses. To one day grace mankind with another Sayuri.” His dark eyes centered on Ann. “And in you, I am sure I can do so.”

Swallowing, Ann glanced at the others, then inside. “So… do you have a courtyard or something where we do this?”

“Ah,” he said, stepping back. “Please, come to my studio.” He turned and led the Phantom Thieves inside, down a turn, then through a sliding wooden door on shiny new rollers, while the rest of the worn wood looked as old as the Second World War.

While the artist busied himself setting aside a painting of three-ringed orbs, Makoto perched on an overturned bottle crate for lack of any proper seating besides the stool. “We were curious about your teacher. How long have you known Madarame?”

The apprentice spared a glance before battering a brush in a paint can filled with water. “All my life.” He dragged a plastic bucket from the wall and sat a brown towel on it. He gestured Ann at it.

Ann brushed at the paint-flecked towel, then sat down and crossed her legs. She tugged at the sheer black vest over her cream-colored blouse. “Is this okay?”

Kitagawa gave a sedate smile. “I could not have chosen better.”

Akira checked the notes on his phone. “So how many apprentices has Madarame had?”

“Something like twenty,” the artist said, before retrieving a blank canvass from the corner of the room.

Makoto picked at her straight skirt. “Keep in touch with any of them?”

Kitagawa unfolded another easel and put the blank canvas on it. “Not anymore.”

Akira finished typing. “Not even Nakanohara? I’d think the oldest apprentice would leave some kind of impression on the others.”

Holding his arms out at full length, Kitagawa looked at Ann through a rectangular frame made by his thumbs and index fingers. “He was a fellow student, but did not invest himself in art as a true artist must. He was often busy with a part-time job or gallivanting with friends.”

Akira scanned the windows. “Feels kinda warm in here. Hasn’t Madarame had the windows re-sealed?”

Kitagawa took a short side-step, his fingers still making a tilted frame. “If you are bothered by the temperature, the only window AC unit is in the upstairs workshop.”

Makoto cleared her throat, fingers gripping her skirt. “How many of his ex-students left of their own volition?”

Kitagawa paused to look at her with a guarded expression for a moment, before his eyes re-focused on Ann. “All of them. They would still be here otherwise.”

Straightening his glasses, Akira arched an eyebrow. “Not a single one of the twenty got kicked out?”

The apprentice kept his eyes on Ann. “Art looks easy from the outside, but it is a harsh world.”

Akira nodded. “Harsh enough for Sawamura to commit suicide by train?” When the artist just shifted another side-step around Ann, the transfer student continued. “For Tokunaga Rin, Misora Kotani, and Ueda Hiroshi to slit their wrists?”

Kitagawa paused. “As I said, the art world is harsh and some people—”

“For more than twelve people?” Akira retorted. “There’s only one thing in common between all of those bodies.”

Lowering the finger-frame, Kitagawa shot a glare at the transfer student. “Are you trying to insinuate Madarame is secretly some sort of serial killer?” He waved a hand as if to ward away a bad smell. “Utter nonsense. Art is a cruel field, he does his best to protect us from it.”

Makoto looked left and right. “Us? How many other pupils does Madarame have?”

The intensity of Kitagawa’s dark grey eyes faltered. His balance rolled back to his heels, but after a blink, he stood firm, chest puffed out.

Akira knew that look from so many glimpses in the mirror. Pride masking fear. He knew he looked like that the night Director Isshiki asked if Houzan laid a hand on him. He should have said ‘yes’. “He ever get hands on?” Akira mimed a backhand.

Kitagawa barked a laugh. “Now you try to malign Sensei’s care?” He sniffed, looking down his nose at the sitting transfer student. “My mother died of a seizure. If Sensei hated children, he would have shipped me to the first available orphanage. Instead, he adopted me into his own abode, even taught me the ways of the greats.” He snatched a pencil from a chipped mug. “Most of Sensei’s apprentices have been children like myself.”

Makoto held up a hand to placate the apprentice towering over them. “We were just concerned, Kitagawa-kun.”

Akira sat down and glanced to Makoto, then the artist.

Clenching her jaw, she stared at him and flicked her eyes up to the artist.

Akira tipped his head to the boy sitting down in front of the blank canvas.

Makoto pursed her lips and took in a long breath. “Has he ever presented one of his student’s work as his own?”

Standing, Kitagawa’s dark eyes narrowed and slid to her with a heat threatening to combust the student council president. “How dare you.”

Akira stood up to interpose between her and the artist. “And surely, you wouldn’t cover for him…? No matter how many of his ex-pupils leave and somehow never work in the art world again?”

Kitagawa’s soft pencil dropped to the easel. He stood, his gaze as fiery as before as he whipped around at the transfer student. “You would come into my home… into the abode of Sensei, and hurl such slanders?”

Akira opened Firefox on his smartphone. “Even with statements online—?”

“Slander from jealous fools!” Stepping closer, he bumped the easel, knocking the pencil clattering to the floor. “You will rue the day you mocked—”

The front door banged open and heavy footsteps rushed down the hall. Madarame called out from the doorway, “Yusuke? What’s wrong?”

Beads of sweat glistened on Ann’s brow and she gave a terrible fake laugh. “O-Oh, nothing!”

Fists still curled, Kitagawa ground his teeth. “These cads slandered your good name!”

Madarame gripped the sliding door to steady himself and let out a long breath, the shadows making the wrinkles and lines in his face seem longer. “Well, a cranky old coot is bound to make an enemy or two. I’m sure they didn’t mean it, m’boy. Some people will say anything to be part of another’s popularity.” He let out a breath, his shoulders slumping even more. “I hope you don’t hold it against him, children.”

Ann hopped up from the towel-covered bucket. “Oh, not at all, Madarame, sir.”

The old man held a hand against his back. “I’m very sorry to bother you, but the police moving back my exhibition has led to a lot of scramble. I’m afraid I’m not as young as I once was, so I need to take a lie-down.”

Kitagawa bowed. “Of course, Sensei.”

Madarame slid the door closed and shuffled to the stairs. An awkward silence descended over the four teenagers.

Makoto fidgeted with her hands before looking in the apprentice’s general direction. “I’m afraid that still leaves us with unanswered questions. Madarame can’t have done all those paintings. Some of those styles use mutually exclusive techniques.”

After several suffocating seconds, Ann sat back down on the towel-covered bucket. “That painting I pointed out to you at the exhibit.”

Kitagawa picked up his pencil and sat back at the stool, his eyes on the canvas and not Ann. He gave a momentary gesture at Akira. “The one you said reminded you of him?”

“Mm-hm.” Ann fidgeted with the brown towel. “It’s yours, isn’t it?”

Reaching his pencil up to the canvas, Kitagawa went still.

Akira stood up. “C’mon, why are you still defending him? I know his type. People who use up others like tools and discard them. Tell us what’s really up, and we can take ‘im down.”

The artist’s hand clenched around the pencil. “Not even a minute after Sensei argued for patience on your behest, and already you rail against him. You nurse a grudge against the great Madarame, but unable to prove anything yourselves, you come to draw me into your web of selfish deceit?”

More certain with the apprentice’s every protestation, Akira ground his teeth together. “How long’s it got to go on until somebody has the guts to stand up and speak the truth? How many people does Madarame get to chew up and spit out?”

Kitagawa’s teeth clacked together. “Be gone from this place! I invited her here to model, I never asked for you or your significant other.”

Makoto grabbed Akira’s arm before he could raise his fists. “Morgana, say something.” Her eyes widened a little and searched down around the corners of the room. “Morgana?”

Ann held up her hands to placate the artist. “Wait, we just want to help.”

Kitagawa thrust a finger at the two Shujin students sitting back against the door. “You will leave this house, or I will call the police to have them drag you out!”

Makoto clenched her jaw. “Isn’t that escalating too quickly?”

The artist let a snarl slip through his mask of calm control. “You are the one who started the character assassination!” He dug through his pockets for his phone.

Ann stood up. “Hold on—”

Kitagawa’s thumb hovered over a saved number. “You will leave this atelier and never come near it again, or I will have lawyers destroy you!”

Makoto’s hands closed into fists. “You can’t just try to ban us from the whole neighborhood!” She lowered her voice to hiss, “Think of all the students who died.”

“Leave this place,” the apprentice ground out, his shoulders hunching, “and never return to bother myself… or Sensei again.”

Ann slumped, but reached for the door and slid it open. She almost jumped when Morgana peered up at them from the other side. “Where have you been?”

“You have to change his mind!” Morgana pleaded, hopping up and batting a paw at her. “This place is his Palace, and I don’t think it’s extensive enough for us to get in anywhere but right here.”

Kitagawa shot a narrow gaze over them all, pausing with a brief arched eyebrow at the cat. “I made my invitation to Takamaki to be my model, but all three of you have besmirched the man who raised me. If I see any of you again, I will sue for harassment and causing a disturbance.”

The upper-classman’s crimson gaze shot between the two boys, but it was Ann who jammed her fists on her hips and protested, “Wait a second! What about giving humanity another beauty like the Sayuri?”

Kitagawa’s posture faltered, but his thumb shifted position to hold his smartphone. He turned part-way from them and closed his eyes. “I will not report you all… only on one condition.”

Ann brightened, the tension in her shoulders relaxing. “What?”

Kitagawa stood, his chest thrust out but his eyes still closed to them. “You shall help me create the greatest nude painting ever!”

Ann shot three steps back, forcing Morgana to leap out of her way. Her hands clenched together and her face paled, her breathing turning shallow. Her hoarse voice spoke just above a whisper, “Nude?”

Kitagawa held out a slender-fingered hand. “If you come here and bare everything to me, I can put my heart and soul into the creation the best nude painting ever, and I will forgive all of you your slander today.” He turned until only his narrow profile faced them, though his eyes were distant and shoulders hunched. “If I don’t submit another painting to Sensei, there shall be…”

Makoto took a step between them and the artist, her hands balling into fists. “What you’re asking is totally unreasonable!”

With the model’s breathing continuing to speed up, Akira reached out a hand to touch her arm. “You okay?”

The instant his fingers brushed her sheer over-shirt, Ann bolted for the front door.

Fists curling, Akira rounded on the artist with his teeth clenching together. “You bastard…

Makoto took a short step at the door, but stopped. She grabbed Akira’s arm. “No, Akira. Don’t do anything.” She looked up at the artist. “We’ll leave.”

“No,” Akira hissed through gnashed teeth. “We’re not.” When her hand tightened, he jerked away and pulled out his phone. “Go help her,” he shot at the upper-classman, “I don’t think she wants to see another guy for a while.” His steely gaze slid over to the artist as he typed for the Maiasa newspaper. “But you…”

Makoto held her grip, but her eyes flicked to the team leader, then hall. “Akira, things are already tenuous with you. Don’t make anything worse.”

He yanked his hand from her grip. “I swear by God I won’t touch him. Now go make sure Ann’s okay.”

“I’ll watch him,” Morgana said, hopping up on the overturned bottle crate.

Makoto gave him a tense glance, but jogged for the front door, her footsteps fading fast.

Kitagawa’s eyes narrowed and he lifted his phone. “I told all of you to disperse.”

Akira looked down at the online Maiasa website, and searched for Ohya’s article on Kamoshida. Finding it, he opened the article and held it out. “Read this, you sick bastard. Maybe next time think before you try to blackmail an innocent girl into sexual favors.”

Kitagawa hit the Open Call button on his phone. “I—”

“Read it!” Akira snapped.

Eyebrow raised, Kitagawa took the phone and his eyes scanned the headline. Then the next line. Then the next.

“Touji, Takeda, and Seta Law Firm,” a nasally voice came from the artist’s phone.

Eyes still on the article, Kitagawa said, “I’ll call back.” He hung up and slipped his phone into a trouser pocket, then took the transfer student’s phone and scrolled down. His dark grey eyes widened as he read.

When the artist reached the end, Akira snatched his phone back. “By trying to force your desires on a girl extorted by Kamoshida, you put yourself on the same level as him.” He slipped his phone into his uniform jacket and stormed out.

Thursday, 23 June 2016
After School
Shibuya, Subway Station

Before he even reached the base of the escalators heading down to the various subway line branches, Akira spotted Makoto browsing the job advertisements. Spotting him out of the corner of her eye, she replaced the pamphlet on flower shops and joined him in the flow of people descending to the transitways beneath Tokyo. “Akira-kun. What did you do in there?”

“You’d be proud, Rider,” Morgana said from the transfer student’s satchel. “He reminded that snake of Kamoshida. I’m positive he’ll back off that terrible request against Lady Ann.”

Makoto crossed her arms, stepped two paces away, then two paces back. “I talked to Ann before she went home. She needs some time, but I think she’ll be okay.” Her crimson eyes flicked down. “The thing is… not that I support what Kitagawa-san did, but I can see why he did it. He doesn’t know us, and we come in, gunning for the man who raised him.” Her arm-crossing tightened. “And what about him?”

Akira slipped his hands into his pockets. “The dude with twelve dead apprentices? You were with us when we were reading up on them on Monday.”

“We looked him up on the Metaverse Navigator,” Morgana reminded her. “He’s got a Palace, and it’s there.”

She turned an exasperated look on both of them. “But does having a Palace necessarily mean evil?”

Morgana looked away. “Strictly speaking, no. All we can know for sure about the Palace from the outside is the person has strong, distorted desires.”

Akira jerked his hands out of his pockets to throw them in the air. “Would you two look at the evidence? He’s got more bodies in his wake than some of the world’s serial killers. He’s using his apprentices, and even if he’s not slitting their throats with his own hand, he’s blacklisting them from the only passion in their lives. After raising them in it.” He lowered his hands. “Hardly matters if it’s done with a sword or pen. When a man dies, he still dies. Hell, he might even make like Kaneshiro and put extra pressure on them to make sure it happens. It’s what my old bastard would do. As far as I’m concerned, he’s no different than Toyotomi, killing people to make himself look good.”

Makoto her hand against her face. “Have you ever considered the possibility you’re working with a biased sample? Clearly, you hate your father, but not everybody had such bad figures in their formative years. Ann and I both had fathers who loved us. They protected us and taught us. How do we know Kitagawa didn’t have the same?” She shook her head. “As for Madarame… I just can’t see him as a Palace holder at all. Kaneshiro was nasty in both worlds, and even Kamoshida was arrogant and power-tripping now that I’ve opened my eyes.” She brushed back a lock of hair. “But Madarame? He talked Kitagawa-kun down and asked him to forgive us. He was so kind.”

Akira pulled out his phone and brought up Madarame’s incomplete bookmark on the Nav, shoving it at her face. “Hello…?”

“She’s got a point,” Morgana chastised from the satchel. “The reason most of us are doing this is to prove those guys from the TV show wrong. To find and expose a hidden evil in society. Palaces are dangerous, so we can’t choose our targets lightly. Just imagine losing a Phantom Thief in a Palace for…” One ear folded back. “…I don’t know, a guy afraid of getting old.”

Makoto crossed her arms. “I agree, and I know Ryuji holds exactly the same position. Kaneshiro almost killed us. Our objective is to prove our justice to society. This is a simple matter of risk versus return. We can’t afford to expend that much energy on a change which would only impact one heart.”

“What if he needs that change?” Akira bellowed.

A couple of the passers-by stopped to stare at the arguing teens. Makoto tilted her head in at one of the lines and once the pair of students got started, the crowd went back to its churning, discordant normalcy. They proceeded to her line home, but hung at the back of the station platform to finish the discussion. She glanced around to be sure nobody listened in, then resumed. “I’m just saying, we need to be selective. It’s the only logical choice.”

Akira crossed his arms and grumped. “I’d have helped you if it was changing just one person’s heart.”

Makoto’s face turned red, but before he could question why, air roared through the platform as a new train pulled up. She shouted, “See you later!” before racing onto the train.

Thursday, 23 June 2016
Evening
Yongen, Leblanc Loft

The bell rang and Sojiro looked up from the cash register. He set down the newspaper crossword puzzle. “About time you got back. Here, the mail delivered a parcel for you.” He ducked behind the counter, then came back up with a brown-paper-wrapped box. “Getting more comfortable with Tokyo?”

“It’s an unforgiving city,” Akira said, Makoto’s voice still nagging in the back of his mind. He took the parcel and set it aside to help Sojiro close up. Once the bell rang for the restaurateur heading out, the transfer student took the parcel upstairs and unwrapped the box for Labyrinth the Board Game.

Disposing of the packaging, he set the board game with others on the bottom of the bookshelf, then sat down to get some homework done.

Friday, 24 June 2016
Early Morning
Aoyama-Itchome Station

The train trundled away from the station, but with the cacophony of the many students and workers heading into Aoyama, there wasn’t enough peace for Akira to hear his own thoughts. A forest of elbows and knees churned around him, half the people too absorbed in what was on their phones to pay attention to whose toes they trod over. Air came in thin wisps.

Akira pulled off to the side as soon as he got to the streetside where he had enough room to do so. His heart hammered his chest like the end of a long run, but without the satisfying feel of effort in his tense muscles. When Alliance Force, Assemble! sang out of his phone, he reached for it but missed his pocket the first try from his shaking hands. He took another long breath in and out before taking out his phone and swiping to open the call. “Izzy Bakyet’s courier service.”

“Akira,” Ann snapped. “What did you do to Kitagawa?”

Morgana’s ears perked and he popped up onto the transfer student’s shoulder. “Is Lady Ann okay?”

Sharing the team leader’s concern, Akira tensed against the concrete wall. “You all right?”

I’m fine,” she answered, her tone still terse but her breathing even. “But what did you do to Kitagawa? He just called, and he sounded on the verge of a total breakdown.”

Morgana’s ears drifted down in shock. “Lady Ann is worried about that perverted artist?”

“He just looked shocked when I left him,” Akira explained. Mishima tried to jump off the roof, but he looked like he had nothing to live for. The apprentice artist never had such a look of resignation. “Why?”

“Are you forgetting the whole context that drove us to go there in person?” Ann snapped, her breathing quickening. A pack of young, male chatter faded into and out of her side of the phone, her voice silent as the boys passed. “Those victims we already discovered with Yuu-kun in the Newspaper club? Akira, think. We show up on his doorstep, uninvited, and then barge in harping on the person taking care of him for as long as he can remember. And Madarame was as kind as Papa. How could we not look like the bad guys?”

Morgana’s ears pressed back against his head. “T-That’s ridiculous. We only tried to get at the truth! We’re there to change that master artist’s heart of whatever his distortion is.”

Akira nodded. “We’re trying to fix Madarame’s distortion.”

“At what cost?” She snapped back, a tremor in her voice. She paused to pull in a breath loud enough for him to hear through the phone, but spoke in a whisper harder to make out from the sounds of chatting students jogging down the road on her side. “Akira, listen to me. We can’t fix one heart by breaking another. That’s not what the Phantom Thieves are about.”

Akira’s breath fled his body.

Morgana puffed out his chest. “He held himself back more than that unscrupulous apprentice deserved, Lady Ann. Joker showed that no-good artist the Maiasa article on Kamoshida.”

Akira shook to get the team leader down. “I didn’t lay a hand on him. All I did was drop the truth on him with that Maiasa article. Why?”

Long moments of the chatter of students running by came from her side of the phone before Ann spoke again. “He called to apologize, Akira. I didn’t need to see it – I could hear him choking back tears. He said he was so torn he hadn’t eaten or slept, and canceled that threat he’d call the cops if he saw us up there again. He was freaked out but couldn’t tell me what about. Something’s going on there, and I’m afraid something you – or we – did pushed him over the edge. And he doesn’t have anywhere to go.”

Morgana poked his head out the front of the satchel, ears pressed against the back of his skull. “You only showed the truth about a lady haunted by a pervert. If that artist didn’t want to feel bad, he shouldn’t have tried to blackmail Lady Ann – even if he wasn’t planning on going through with it. Him being in a bad situation isn’t an excuse to do whatever he wants.”

Akira pushed up his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose. “What do you want us to do, Ann?”

“Let’s go back and make sure he won’t hurt himself,” Ann said. “I said I’d do this because I want to help people. I…” Her voice cracked. “I couldn’t bear the thought of me being the reason someone…”

Akira’s hand tightened on his phone. “What about him trying to blackmail you? Are you really going to say that didn’t bring back flashbacks to Kamoshida?”

She took a shaky breath. “I’m not going to say this isn’t an emotional roller coaster. Yes, he reminded me of Kamoshida pressuring me for my phone number, but now I’m scared for Kitagawa. At least twelve of his fellow apprentices died. We have to go there and make sure he won’t hurt himself.”

Morgana let out a frustrated sigh, but gave a nod to the transfer student.

Akira straightened his glasses and plotted out a route into the churning mass of humanity heading towards Shujin. Would any of them have done like his father by throwing the first convenient stranger under the bus for a shot at personal benefit? “Okay, Ann. I’ll text the others and we’ll head up there again today.”

Notes:

It always pissed me off how the game, less than a month after changing Kamoshida's heart and freeing Ann from a predatory adult trying to blackmail her into sex, turned around with whiplash speed to turn blackmailing her into sexual favors as a joke. If I had been there instead of Akira? I'd have decked Kitagawa as soon as he said it. I STILL want to slap the game's writers for such a crude, hamfisted joke when a real person would still be recovering from that trauma.

If you didn't like Ann, just supporting your friend should have been enough to do just like he did for that woman against Shido to stand up and stop it. And if you were going the romance angle for Ann? "Get away from my girl" should've been just another opportunity to put that shit to a stop right then and there. Tell me what you think of my handling of it.

Chapter 62: June 24th, Museum Crashers

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Friday, 24 June 2016
After School
Shibuya, Madarame’s Atelier

Akira straightened the long sleeves of his summer uniform as the Phantom Thieves gathered in front of the rusting, tin-plated hut Madarame lived in. Or, at least, stuffed his students in. The transfer student took a deep breath and pressed the intercom button, a brief buzz sounding through the speaker. Instead of a click and a voice, long seconds of silence passed in the neighborhood with fresh buildings rebuilt after the last earthquake scattered among the survivors of many before.

Ann’s shoulders slumped and she turned to the transfer student falling back to her side. “Are we too late?”

Akira clapped a hand on her shoulder. “He did respond when you texted him at lunch, didn’t—”

After a long minute, the front door swung open with a ponderous air. Kitagawa stood on the other side, his clothes rumpled and hair disheveled. A touch of redness crept in from the corners of his eyes, bags under them reminding the transfer student of night after night trying to keep up with the grind for perfection at Inuri. After a beat for the artist’s eyes to lock onto Ann, his gaze fell to the floor at her feet. “No words can express my horror at the depths I have sunk to. In ignorance, I spoke out of a desire to defend Sensei. I committed a crime against art itself, putting a frown on a face God made to smile. I am the very lowest of abject horrors.”

Morgana’s tail twitched left and right, his teeth bared. “How dare that silver-tongued serpent make moves on Lady Ann!”

Kitagawa’s stomach growled and he covered it with a hand, averting his eyes.

Ryuji chuffed. “Dude, you look like shit.”

A blush spread over her cheeks, but Ann swallowed and reached a hand at him. “S-Stop that. Can we focus on what’s important here?” Her blue eyes looked away. “At least tell us you’re not even considering killing yourself.”

His shoulders drooped. “I… have thought of it. But if I followed through, how would I do justice to the Sayuri? How could I carry on its legacy if I cast myself from this cruel mortal coil?” He looked up at them in a jerking motion. “It calls to me, it haunts me.”

Ryuji glanced at the other Phantom Thieves. “One o’ you dudes know what he’s talkin’ ‘bout?”

Kitagawa stood and drew his phone from his trouser pockets, then opened a saved image and handed it to Ann. The other Phantom Thieves gathered around, with even the leader hopping up to look over Akira’s shoulder.

Makoto held her hand over her chest. “That’s… amazing. And mysterious.”

Akira gave a stoic nod, having no idea what words to use to describe the gentleness of the woman’s gaze. The soft smile no woman had ever turned on him.

“It’s beautiful,” Ann said, handing the phone to the student council president.

Morgana coughed from the transfer student’s shoulders. “It… is very well done.”

Ryuji took it next. “Dudes, I don’t know much about art, but even I can tell whoever made this was hella talented.”

The transfer student handed it back to Kitagawa, who paused to stare into it with a mournful longing. “Sensei had been painting for years beforehand, but the Sayuri is considered his breakout piece. The start to his meteoric rise. It captured the minds and hearts of Japan, and inspired me to pursue art like him.”

Akira found his feet rising to his toes for a moment to keep a view of the mysterious, evocative image. “What’s she looking at?”

“That’s a mystery left to the mind of the viewer.” Kitagawa gave a brief incline of his head to Ann. “I felt the same stirring of emotion when I gazed into the Sayuri as when I first looked at you. Passion and gentleness somehow both sharing the same beauteous frame.”

Ann crossed her arms and looked away, but a faint blush showed under her light makeup. “M-Me?”

Makoto coughed against her fist. “Amazing though it may be, that doesn’t answer the question raised by all those plagiarism accusations out there. Or that autumn tree—”

“Enough!” Kitagawa snapped, but when he breathed out, it seemed to take his energy with it. His shoulders slumped and back hunched. “We’re all… Sensei’s pieces.” He turned his phone off and slipped it into his pocket. “But I offered my work of my own will. So it can’t be plagiarism. He says no matter how much the outside world enjoys seeing tears or contrition, nobody accepts an artist who cannot produce. Sensei is simply suffering from an extended bout of artist’s block with Sawamura-san’s suicide.”

Silence pressed down on the Phantom Thieves, each one trying to think of how to pierce this latest revelation… or even decide if it was true. After long seconds, Akira asked, “And the other pupils?”

Kitagawa stood, his eyes locked onto the transfer student, looking more bloodshot than before. “Why do you push your self-centered judgmentalism onto me?”

Makoto took a shallow step closer and held out a hand, just a little too timid to take his arm. “We know how much it can hurt to have an adult, especially one you should be able to trust, betray you. Please let us help. Weren’t you the one who said you were afraid of problems if you couldn’t come up with something to offer him soon?”

Ann clasped her hands together, her azure eyes boring into the artist’s for long moments before he breathed out. She swallowed, then held a hand up at the hut before them. “Just help us figure out what he thinks of this place as, okay? Please?”

Ryuji nodded. “Yeah, just help us out with this dude’s distortion.”

Akira elbowed the runner. “Everybody has this… treasured place in life, even to the point of distorting from where we actually are. We just need to know what Madarame thinks of his as.”

Kitagawa’s dark gaze swept over the Phantom Thieves, but flitted away from Ann before his face angled back at the ground. He drew in a deep breath, only exaggerating the hunch of his back, then nodded. “I am unsure what you mean by ‘distortion’, but… Whatever you are seeking would have to be a place of art. Art is everything to Sensei.”

“I think that’s the most we can expect from him, guys.” Akira gave him a shallow bow. “Thanks.”

Makoto gave a lower bow, as if that could show the thieves’ earnest want to do something. “If we need more help, we’ll try to come back in less… tense circumstances.”

Ann followed suit, but Akira and Ryuji just trotted the others to an empty stretch of cracked sidewalk beneath one of the windows. Kitagawa shuffled back inside. After finding a quiet spot on another side road, they drew their phones.

Makoto shot him a tired glare. “Why’d you cut things off there, Akira?”

“He wasn’t going to help us.” Akira reached up and straightened his glasses to give his tense muscles something to do. “Take it from an abuse victim, I know he’s getting abused. But he doesn’t believe in us. Jesus said faith can move mountains. No faith, no action. And the longer we pushed him, the more likely he was to freak out and call the cops on us.” He brought up the Metaverse Navigator. “What is this shack to him? A prison?”

“Condition has not been met.”

Makoto glanced at the others. “Is it okay if we do this right here?” Her eyes flicked from the team leader to the rusting shack.

Morgana brushed his ear with a paw. “As long as we don’t activate it too close to a person, we shouldn’t have to worry about accidentally bringing in anyone like what happened with Reaper. Joker was up late trying to guess through the dictionary, so I can’t imagine educated guesses could be any worse. After all, changing Madarame’s heart would help that apprentice, as well.”

Makoto glanced between the other Phantom Thieves. “Is he one of the guys who says a man’s house is his castle?”

“Condition has not been met.”

Ryuji scratched his scalp. “Warehouse?”

“Condition has not been met.”

Makoto tapped a finger to her chin. “A guidance counselor’s office?”

“Condition has not been met.”

Ryuji scowled at her. “A dude blacklistin’ his apprentices ain’t gonna think of his place as a guidance office.”

“Condition has not been met.”

She crossed her arms at him. “I was thinking more of him receiving guidance from them. Don’t the best teachers say they learn from their students?”

Akira snorted. “Not in Japan. Our model is still the expert regurgitating information on students and expecting them to soak it up like a sponge, despite research in the sixties showing that wasn’t the best way to imprint information for retention.” He re-settled his glasses. “An art supply store?”

“Condition has not been met.”

Ryuji tilted his head left, then right, in thought. “A farm?”

“Condition has not been met.”

Ann crossed her arms, one finger tapping her elbow. “A factory?”

“Condition has not been met.”

Makoto’s lips twisted right, then left. “An art school?”

“Condition has not been met.”

“An archive?” Akira guessed.

“Condition has not been met.”

Akira looked to Ann, her azure eyes staring, unfocused, at the artist’s shack. “Anything?”

While the track star flopped back against the next home’s brick wall, Makoto side-stepped to get out of the way of his spread arms and glared into the Nav on her phone. “A distortion from an artist…” She tapped a finger to her chin and blinked, then looked at him. “A museum?”

“Match found. Beginning Navigation. Target Azazel.”

A momentary sensation of the world moving around them, every straight line curling as if attempting to turn into a circle. Then, after a blink of the eye, the dilapidated Shibuya neighborhood mixed with fresh houses stretched before them, each building stretching a little higher than it should, and all of them looming over the gathered teens. Makoto jogged towards the intersection to look down the road they took from the train station. “Where did everyone else go?” Then her eyes drifted up. “Wait, it’s not nearly windy enough for those kinds of rippling thunderstorm clouds.”

Ann patted a hand on the upperclassman’s shoulder. “Relax, Rider. The distortions of the Metaverse are always a little weird. See how it looks like all the buildings even look like they’re all leaning over us?”

Akira slipped his phone in his jacket pocket. “Looks like regular Tokyo to me.”

Ryuji held up a hand at the class president. “Hard part’s up, we’re in!”

She blinked… until Ann hopped in to give a high-five, then reciprocated with the still-outstretched hand.

The class president scrutinized the architecture curving out at them. “Weird, but a completely different kind of strange to the grubby Shibuya in Kaneshiro’s Palace.”

Morgana nodded, his child-like Metaverse form’s large head bobbing. “Precisely. The distortion of each Palace is unique to its Ruler. Ones like Kaneshiro had gross misinterpretations of the entire world around him. For others, the cognition can be extremely subtle. You may notice the rest of you also haven’t transformed into your Phantom Thief selves. That means the Palace Ruler doesn’t yet consider us a threat. Best to stick to code names, however.” He rubbed his hands. “Now, let’s go see what the Ruler’s Palace sanctum looks like. It better not be flying.”

They rounded the corner, and where a rusting shack sat nestled between humble homes before, an enormous, blocky building with a polished gold exterior dominated the block. Trucks painted with advertisements reading Come and see the magnificent Madarame!’ shared curb space with limousines and luxury cars, and where a narrow sidewalk lay in front of the real house, an expansive concrete lane packed with people lined up to the gate opening to the building, shining like polished ingots.

Ryuji jammed his hands in his pockets. “Maaan! Look’t that line. It’d take hours to get inside.”

Akira took off his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose. “Ryuji, you bonehead. We’re Phantom Thieves. We’ll find a skylight or back entrance.”

Ann jerked her thumb at the entrance, and the tall perimeter wall wrapped around the glistening museum and loomed over the street so much he could swear it leaned out over the sidewalk. “With that wall? I don’t see any way but the front.”

Akira growled. “Then we walk around ‘til we find some back entrance. You know, at the back.”

Makoto’s hand on his shoulder brought the transfer student to a pause. “Or we make our own.” She pointed at a large delivery van. The group followed her to it and she hauled the door open. Plush leather seats and fine carpeting lined the inside. “Well, this is evidence Madarame has distorted expectations, but it’s not proof of plagiarism. How long did it take for you to find deciding evidence with Kamoshida? It wasn’t until the vaults when we saw Kaneshiro’s memories.”

Akira shared a glance with Ann, then they both averted their eyes. “We… kind of got dumped right into pervert central in Kamoshida’s castle. Though I think Kaneshiro’s ATM cognitions always having more money was telling in its own way.”

Ryuji chuckled. “Yeah, that was awesome.”

When she climbed in, Akira looked up at her. “You know how to hotwire a car?”

“No need,” she said, turning the key already in the ignition. The engine thrummed to life and the rest of the Phantom Thieves backed well away. Makoto closed the door, clicked the seat belt, then put the van into reverse. The van shook when one wheel, then the next passed the curb. Then it hit the wall with a thud.

Ryuji clapped. “She’s there.”

Makoto rolled her eyes and extricated herself from the vehicle. “Well, at least we can get to the top of the wall from the van’s roof.”

Akira hopped onto the hood, then cab, then strolled up the top of the cargo compartment. “Well, time to find out why some dude who’s already got crap in museums all over the world would dream of museums.”

Ryuji joined him. “For real. What’s a museum gotta do with plagiarism?”

“No point standing there scratching our heads.” Morgana hopped straight up to the top of the cab, then to the wall. “Come on, Phantom Thieves.”

The instant they reached the top of the perimeter wall, the thieves fell silent. Burly men in blue uniforms patrolled the stone paths on the ground. Stone fixtures rose up from the meditative garden, giving them a path to hop over the well-patrolled grounds to a balcony with a skylight to a dim room. Morgana flipped open a bar to brace outside the skylight panel and tied a rope to it. They all froze when a cone of light meandered over the floor. A bulky figure in a generic pale blue rent-a-cop uniform trotted through the aisle.

Makoto backed up a bit and clapped a hand over her mouth. She hissed, “That Shadow’s got more brawn than Jean-Claude van Damme. How strong are the Shadows here?”

Ann peered at it from her perch on one knee. She whispered, “I still can’t believe this gold-plated place is Madarame’s Palace. He looks like such a kind old man.”

The roving Shadow guard disappeared through the other door. Ryuji clicked his rifle together and slung it on his shoulder. “I know you said we could do cool movie ninja stuff in the Metaverse, but for real, dudes. That’s a long drop.”

Morgana unspooled a heavy climber’s cord from one of his belt pouches. “You may be a man of many weapons and Joker of many Personas, but your leader is a master of many tools.”

Ryuji rolled his eyes and mouthed with exaggerated twisting to his face, “Master of many tools.”

Makoto finished tightening the folding shoulder brace on her pump-action shotgun, now sporting an underbarrel flashlight. She jabbed the track star with her elbow. “Just make sure you’re prepared, Reaper. Everyone ready?”

Ann pulled her pistol from her bag and tested the under-barrel light against the gaudy, polished-gold roof. When the beam reflected glistening golden light, she turned it back off and screwed on a suppressor.

Morgana tied off the end of the cord to a locked latch on the multi-segment skylight. “Okay, you guys first. I’ll make sure it holds up, and go last.”

Akira nodded, pushed his school satchel tight against his shoulder, and left his sub-machine gun folded up as he took the cord and slid down. The instant his foot hit the ground, flaming motes of light washed over him, leaving him in the slick, high-necked longcoat he loved about the Metaverse. He moved over to the velvet ropes dividing the aisle from enormous paintings hanging on the wall. Spaced out like an exhibit in a real museum, a brass stand held up a placard for each painting.

Makoto came next to him, squinting in the dark. She reached and turned her gun-light on with a faint click, centering it on the impressionist portrait hanging next to a short hallway. “Is that painting… moving?”

Ryuji came to a stop next to her, the two of them in their Phantom Thief garb reminding the transfer student of TV villains. They stared at the shimmer, as if looking through an image under a few inches of river water. “That ain’t the weirdest thing we’ve seen in a Palace.”

Morgana picked up the loose end of cord and tossed it so a high loop caught on the corner of a portrait at the side of the broad hall with a red rug running down the center. With the evidence of their entry concealed, he joined the others.

Ann came to the transfer student’s other side and clicked her gun-light at the placard. “Minami Saki.”

Makoto looked down the short hall of paintings behind the standing placard. “Looks like nothing past here.” She lowered her shotgun barrel to the ground. “Thanks for the idea of the gun light, Ann—Panther. I wish I’d thought to add it to my shotgun before that battle in the vault.”

Ryuji snorted. “Ya mean my RMB-93.”

Ann rolled her eyes. “You were the one who gave it to her, Reaper.”

He bristled, the plates in his jacket jutting out. “’Cause she was only good with the shotgun in Gun About an’ I wan’ed to get back to blastin’ Shadows.”

Morgana hopped up on one of the poles holding up the velvet ropes separating the broad hallway from the strange portraits. “What does this one say, Panther?”

She moved and shone her gun-light at the placard. “Tokunaga Rin.” She sucked in a sharp gasp.

The others all jerked, weapons up. “What is it?”

“That’s one of Madarame’s pupils who committed suicide!” She waggled her gun-light at the date just below the name. “Tokunaga Rin. 2008.”

Akira stepped inside, eyes tracing over the paintings hung in the dim side-hall. One in particular resembled those creepy trees with faces in them Ann pointed out at the art exhibit in the real world. Curiosity aroused, he reached out to grasp the frame of the painting.

Shibuya, Madarame’s Atelier

Madarame slid the apprentice workshop door open and strode in. Yusuke looked up with those eager, dark eyes and hopped up from his creaky stool. “Sensei!”

The old artist waved him down. “Easy there, Yusuke-kun. Is Nakanohara back yet?”

The twelve-year-old’s enthusiasm dissipated. “He hasn’t returned”

The girl painting at the other easel snapped, “He’s probably necking with his girlfriend, Sensei.”

The young Yusuke tilted his head. “Necking?”

Madarame slipped his hands in his threadbare sleeves and paced to his other apprentice. “I’ll have a word with him when he returns. How are the Woods of Suicide going, Rin-chan?”

She added a dark dash to finish the line on a mouth crying out in the bark. “Almost finished, Sensei.”

He nodded and stood behind the chubby girl. The anguish hidden in the leaf-less woods sent a chill down his spine. He knew she mentioned The Divine Comedy reading from Kosei, but how did the freshman come up with such subtle, detailed imagery from a long-dead poet time after time? The casual ease of her latest composition in the series based on that religious poem sent a jealous gurgle through his stomach. He’d have to think of a gentler name when he presented it as his own later.

Madarame’s Museum

A cone of light swept into the broad hall and Morgana shot into the narrow hall dedicated to the artist, hissing, “Hide!”

The girls shut off their gun lights and the thieves dashed into the relative darkness of the night-time museum. Another burly guard strode down the red carpet of the main hall, flashlight drifting right and left. Its pace remained at a tense march as the cognitively-wrapped Shadow came to a pair of posts at the door to another stretch of broad hall. It took something white and rectangular from its blue breast pocket and waved it at the post.

A brief beep sounded and a parallel series of red lasers flashed bright for just a moment before they vanished. The Shadow guard passed through and the lasers flashed bright for a moment, faint lines remaining now he knew where to look.

“Dammit,” Akira breathed, taking his hand from his laser dot emitter. “This freak’s as paranoid as Kaneshiro.”

Ryuji lowered his rifle and glanced down at the team leader. “Think one’a your smoke bombs could help us get through those lasers?”

Makoto let out a disappointed huff. “If this place was realistic, any smoke dense enough to block the beams would set them off same as our bodies would. Of course, if those security lasers were realistic they wouldn’t become solid beams of visible light before turning on or off, they’d just be invisible.”

Morgana hopped up to the velvet rope post, the squared rod of his packed crossbow in hand. “Best to stay clear of lasers like that for now. Okay everyone, spread out and let’s see what we can learn from this place.”

With the darkness as it was, that led to Ryuji and Morgana following close behind Makoto while Akira shadowed Ann as they checked more portraits and placards. Ueda Hiroshi, 2014.

Ann turned off her gun-light when it began trembling. “These are all his ex-students. What the hell is wrong with him?”

He nodded. “They’re all just… things to him. Things to use and profit from.”

Another cone of light bobbed into the main hall and the Phantom Thieves shot into the side-halls to hide. Like the last guard, this one kept a lazy sweep with its flashlight. Its pace held a steady march until it paused at the laser checkpoint, then moved on.

Ann leaned close to the longcoated student. “I thought Madarame was supposed to have a whole bunch of styles. But all those portraits look the same. It’s not at all like the exhibition.”

Akira clenched his jaw. “I think the majority of those were stolen from his pupils. That creepy Woods of Sleep was originally the Woods of Suicide.”

The other three thieves closed from the other end of the hall. Ryuji gave a shallow nod. “More’a them lasers that way. What’s with all these names? Ain’t paintings s’posed to have a title and artist?”

Makoto cringed. “I think the names are the titles, in Madarame’s mind. And I think the dates on the ones which have them are the dates his students suicided.”

Ryuji nodded. “Dude’s for real messed up. All the names are peeps we found… you know, earlier.” He fidgeted with his rifle’s strap for a moment. “What I wanna know is why that Yusuke guy’s keepin’ mum about it. No way he don’t know about it. Ya don’t live with a guy an’ pick up nothin’.”

Makoto shot him a strained look the transfer student couldn’t see clearly through the eye holes and darkness. “He did tell us he feels a life debt to Madarame for taking him in.”

Morgana waved the squared rod at them. “Keep focused, everyone. So far, all of the apprentices have been… ex-pupils.” He pointed to the top of the laser-posts at either side of the arch in the hallway, separating it from another straight space. “I’m sure things will be clearer if we press on.” He leaped with an ease of thousands of times of practice, clearing the two meter high invisible barrier without a sign of strain.

Akira took in a deep breath, then leaped, kicked off the wall next to the lasers, and cleared the faint barrier by a hair’s breadth. The others followed suit to the next hallway, extending at a ninety degree bend from their hall of entry. He followed Makoto this time as they checked the portraits and side-halls. Hirahara Ryuuta, 2012. Utada Yano, 2011.

After the next guard passed, Ann hissed to get their attention and brought the thieves to another portrait. “Takeshita Jinpachi, 2009.”

Makoto came alongside Ann to read the placard next to the impressionist portrait, then look at the young man. “What are these?”

Akira held his sub-machine gun close and scrutinized the portrait. “Well painted?”

Ryuji fiddled with the strap slinging his gun over his shoulder. “I guess ya got a point, but I don’t think that’s what she meant.” He looked at the adjoining side-hall next to the portrait. “Dude, he must’a stolen a lotta paintings.”

Ann came to the next faint laser-barrier. “Looks like a different kind of room past here. Almost looks like a lobby, but there’s no people.” She turned back to the team leader. “What about that huge line outside?”

Morgana inspected the twin posts flanking the archway. “I think it indicates his desperation to feel wanted – even worshipped – by the many, but an unwillingness to let anything in.”

Akira’s gloved hands tensed, but before he had a chance to say anything, a faint electrical hum buzzed from behind them and a cone of wandering yellow light played over the floor. The Phantom Thieves fled for the side-halls and waited for the guard to pass.

Most guards maintained a brisk, no-nonsense march and the closest they came to a full sweep was casting their light on one of the portraits before moving on. This guard came to a slow walk, his cone of light shining down Misora Kotani’s side-hall, then moving up to Jinpachi’s. Any moment now, he’d spot Ann and Ryuji huddling in the back corner.

Akira bolted out of the hall across the way and leaped for the burly Shadow van Damme’s head. His thumb brushed against something feeling like dark cloth where its head would be, and a thick mask where its face should be. “No cognitive armor for you!”

He ripped the ceramic mask off and it dissolved in his hand the same as the guards at the last two Palaces. This guard fell to its stocky knees, smoke gushing from its face and its body distending. Ann and Ryuji raised their weapons as Morgana and Makoto came to flank the shrinking monster as it took shape.

The arms diminished and the Shadow’s impressive girth narrowed until it resembled a child. Ragged butterfly-like wings unfurled from its back, and after a single thrashing motion the transformation was complete. The pretty, feminine form had skin almost as dark as Panther’s costume, but wore a white cheongsam which hardly reached low enough to conceal her hips.

Ann shot it in the chest with a single thwip from her suppressed pistol.

The red-skinned Shadow collapsed to the ground, its face jerking back and forth at the Phantom Thieves surrounding it, jostling the golden hair extensions giving it a twin-tailed look. “Like days of life, rain falls on the wicked as well as the weary.”

Ryuji came out, rifle aimed at the red Shadow’s head. “Where’s the Treasure?”

It looked up at him. “Everything the great Madarame touches becomes a treasure.”

Makoto growled, keeping her shotgun trained at the Shadow as well. “A special treasure. Like a locked vault?”

The Shadow in the shape of a girl sighed. “What need has the great Madarame for vaults when his greatness is for the whole world?”

When the butterfly-winged Shadow blinked up at her, Morgana sighed. “I think this Shadow is too limited to have any knowledge of the inner structure of Madarame’s heart.” His bright blue eyes flicked to the longcoated student. “You want this one?”

Akira looked over it, something about its resigned words reminded him of Iwai, especially in those moments after Kaoru stepped out the front door. “You want to surpass him?”

“Can what is excellent be surpassed?” the Shadow retorted, its legs curled under it and hands pressed on the floor to keep it up. “Can what is dead be brought back?”

“With the calling of a name,” Akira riposted, lowering his weapon. “Let the town bury its dead, but let the living follow the living.” He held out a hand. “What is your name?”

With a flutter of its wings, it rose to its feet. “I am Hua Po.” It burst into black streaks which swirled into Joker’s mask, knocking him a step back.

Ryuji grinned and came closer to rest his elbow on the longcoated teen’s shoulder. “Nice. Thirty minutes in and we’re already pickin’ up new shit. An’ no jump in security from gunfire ‘cause of effin’ cameras with mics.”

Akira shrugged his friend’s arm off. “We got lucky that one was vulnerable to guns.” He looked to the team leader. “Any sense of the Treasure’s location?”

Morgana closed his eyes and sniffed at the air. His ears twisted this way and that, like independent radar dishes. “Up and…” He turned to point his crossbow at an angle through the wall. “That way.”

The Phantom Thieves followed his direction down the hall. They vaulted over another laser fence with only a small gap between the top and the cap of the curved arch to what looked like a dark lobby. Rich, navy blue carpeting stretched from wall to wall. The near and far corners held luxurious couches in red, yellow, and blue. A curving, polished gold reception desk stretched across the broad space, with a maze of velvet ropes marking out the space for a long line between the locked glass front doors and the gleaming desk.

Makoto scanned the two doorways behind the reception desk. “Damn, more of that laser fencing, but no arch to slip over top of.”

A cone of light bounced around from the west wing and the thieves dove for what cover they could get from the reception desk. The burly Shadow van Damme flashed its plastic ID card at the laser grid, which flashed to inactive, it stepped through, and the grid flashed active again.

Its light wandered over the velvet-rope maze, up to the steel roller-doors, the gateway they came through, then back down and over velvet ropes to the glimmering reception desk.

Ann drew her booted foot back, trying to keep in the shadow of the less-than-meter deep desk, but four humans and a crouching catboy made for too much for the teenagers to hide.

“Intruders in the lobby!” The Shadow guard’s body jerked and swelled.

All the lasers blazed a bright, steady red and an alarm blared over speakers concealed in the ceiling. The Shadow guard grew into a large, black pustule, bursting into three Shadows in record time. The flanking Shadows glistened as if wet, the curvaceous women almost as well-built as Ann, wearing clingy pale silks. Between them stood what was either a child mummy with its arms and legs chopped off, or a doll almost the size of Ann. Its face turned to the long-coated boy, no iris or schlera interrupted the inky blackness staring into Akira’s soul.

The Phantom Thieves scrambled, though as close as they were which caused Makoto and Ryuji to trip over each other while trying to jump to battle. Them toppling to the ground knocked Morgana, sending his crossbow bolt sailing past one of the watery women.

Akira ran out in front with Ann as the others untangled, the model summoning Carmen as he called out Agathion and sent it at the wrapped Shadow. His lightning bolt struck true, but the Shadow stood there for an unblinking second before it turned on him.

The water sprites swung their arms, unleashing bolts of ice.

Carmen advanced to block the blows. Ann grit her teeth, but thrust out a hand. Carmen swung her whip as Kidd and Makoto on Johanna entered the fray. At least Makoto’s firebolt drew the eerie black-eyed Shadow to a temporary halt.

Carmen’s thorned whip lashed over the lead water sprite, but in an effort to avoid Kidd, struck Agathion.

“Joker!” Morgana shouted, hanging back with Zorro. “I think I recognize those sprites from Mementos. Hit them with lightning!”

Akira side-stepped as much as he could until the velvet rope maze, directing his Persona to float over it before zapping the leading water sprite and knocking it to the ground.

The laser barrier from the hall they came from blinked off, and another Shadow van Damme ran in.

Morgana turned to the new foe. “Dammit. Rider, Shadows coming from behind! Joker, you and the others keep on the first group!”

Lacking Morgana’s backup felt unsettling, but with fewer of his friends’ Personas to bump into and one weakness already identified, Akira turned his focus on the water sprites. Agathion’s lightning turned the injured one into dissolving ash.

The wrapped-child-like Shadow advanced at the three Personas. Those pure black eyes fixed on Akira, and for a moment it seemed like the entire world but those eyes blinked.

The concrete walls of the Smiling Mountain Mental Institute surrounded Akira. His heart rate sped up as he looked up and down the hallway, its grey paint peeling in places. The moonlight streamed in as much as it could through the windows made of fogged, structural glass. Steel doors with remote-controlled maglocks studded one wall, the other an unbroken stretch of concrete as unyielding as his father.

“Akira!” his father’s gravely voice shouted from just past the hallway corner. He stormed around the corner, a pair of burly orderlies flanking him. Their yellow gazes locked on him and they matched his quick pace. The light glinted off his father’s glasses, drawing up the resemblance to a Goa’uld System Lord in the boy’s mind. His long legs thundered down the hallway, mouth in a tight grimace.

Akira looked down, seeing himself still in his high-necked longcoat instead of the over-sized yellow shirt he favored while he lived at the Institute. His right hand clutched the handle of the sub-machine gun, its silencer making it look long as a sword and its dot laser wavering on the wall as his hands trembled. He braced as much as his strengthening trembling allowed and aimed the weapon at his father. Was this a dream come true?

His father’s face contorted with rage, his eyes still hidden behind the reflected glare in his glasses, but his pace halted even if the orderlies didn’t. “You put that toy down you imbecilic waste of carbon. You’ve been enough of an embarrassment to the Kurusu name.”

Akira’s mouth drifted open, indignant rage battering tertiary thoughts like when this was or where… someone was. Someone else? The storming feet made it hard to think, his pounding heart almost as loud in his ears He adjusted his aim to the pair of orderlies still stalking down the hall, but even bracing the sub-machine gun with his left hand, the weapon shook. The air felt too thin in his lungs. He looked left and right, then at the short stretch of hallway behind him.

Why was he looking for someone else?

The orderlies stomped closer and his red laser dot wavered over the one on the left before Akira looked back and took off running.

A shot rang out and the wrapped Shadow reared back with a roar.

Akira came to a sudden stop when he tripped in a tangle of heavy velvet ropes, dropping his gun. The room around Akira swam. Footsteps rushed around him before a final blast of concussive air went off, and when he looked up he saw Ryuji and Makoto both staring at him, Ann and Morgana checking the far gallery’s barrier. “What happened?”

Makoto let her shotgun dangle on its black strap over her shoulder. “That weird handless Shadow hit you with something. Your Persona vanished and you started pointing your gun at everyone. You look like you saw a ghost.”

Morgana hopped up on the reception desk, folded crossbow in hand. “Good thing you held your fire. You’d have shot Reaper if you went with your first instinct.”

Akira stood from the rope maze and picked up his sub-machine gun. His heart still raced, but they didn’t need to know that. “Well, I’m good to go now.” It was a good thing his Metaverse costume included gloves so they couldn’t see the white-knuckled grip he held his weapon with.

Morgana’s mouth pursed and he looked to the others. “Everyone else still want to press on?”

Ann nodded. “Enemies hurt a lot more in the bank. I’m fine.”

The leader narrowed his eyes at her. “Panther, the only hits striking your Persona were Carmen’s own element. That’s always going to have little impact. Just don’t be reckless with the next ones. They might not be Koropokkuru.”

Akira glanced around, noting the lack of pulsing alarm or blazing lasers in every doorway. “What happened to the alarm? Did it go off at the end of the fight?”

Ryuji chuffed. “As if we could get that lucky.” He pointed to an open panel on the back of the lobby desk. “Byakko hotwired that to short the alarm. ‘Doubt it’s gonna work again, though, so let’s get a move on.”

The thieves followed Morgana to the west wing art gallery and followed Morgana over the faint laser barrier. More names and dates waited for them as he followed Ann and her gun-light in the dark museum. “Kondo Akari, 2010.” Then to the next one. “Hata Keiichi. Huh, no date next to this one.”

The pair of thieves moved on to the next placard, but Ann’s gun-light froze on the portrait and she sucked in a breath. “Guys! It’s that stalker guy we fought in Mementos.”

Morgana read the plaque. “Natsuhiko Nakanohara. You were right, Joker. Looks like he was connected to more than Deputy Curator Kuraya Eisuke.”

Makoto’s gun-light wavered in her tense hands as she came closer to examine the portrait, then placard. Her jaw clenched. “I’d say this settles it. These have to be the students he’s been stealing from.”

Ryuji came up behind them, one hand resting on his slung rifle. “For real, we gotta change this dude’s heart. He’s tote messed up.” The others muttered assent, and continued past another bend in the gallery hall until they came to the room with the open skylight and rope tucked behind a large portrait frame. “Aw man, we just went ‘round inna big circle.”

Makoto held her chin in her hand. “We did pass those doors at the lobby, but those had lasers guarding them.” She looked to the team leader. “Any sense of the Treasure’s location, Byakko?”

Morgana closed his eyes to breathe deep for a moment. “The Treasure is upwards from here, but it’s inwards. I think these art galleries we’ve been through form an outer loop representing the thefts of lesser value to Madarame’s mind.”

Makoto growled. “I knew it. The only way in through those laser-sealed doors behind the reception desk.”

Ryuji looked at the ajar panel Morgana already broke into earlier. “But Byakko already wired the security up here. If those’re still on, how do we get past ‘em?” He looked at the team leader. “Could smoke bombs hide us?”

Makoto shook her head. “Security lasers operate on a continuous circuit, breaking the beam would trip the alarm. We found that out by accident back there,” she paused to point at the far end of the outer gallery loop. “Madarame may not be up on modern security technology, but he does understand the basic principles of physical security.” She tapped a finger to her lips. “However, we may be able to refract the lasers with mirrors. I think they did it in Rififi.”

Morgana peered through the laser barrier blocking the two doorways behind the reception desk, but only saw a curved hallway beyond. “Very well, Phantom Thieves. We’ll call it quits today and take tomorrow to prepare.”

Notes:

Memory being an imperfect thing, Makoto is incorrect about the title of the movie with the mirror refracting a laser detection system. Rififi is a fine movie, and fits with the crime and heist movies she mentions liking, but came before lasers were commonly known technology. It was used in Mission Impossible "The Traitor" (the TV show) and more than one movie after. In real life laser sensors are too sensitive not to be set off by the shaking of pushing a set of reflectors in the path of the beam, but cognitive reality is defined by the mind of the beholder.

The reactions of Yusuke here is more an attempt to bring him from the Yusuke in canon who threatens Ann to the one who is a cohesive member of the team for the rest of the game, because the game just dropped that whole threat. Behavior has a sort of inertia and consequences that will still need to be resolved in Daywatch. Tell me what you think.

Chapter 63: June 24th, Street Meet

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Friday, 24 June 2016
Early Evening
Yongen, Takemi Medical Clinic

Akira stumbled into the clinic, caught his footing with a firm hand on the doorknob to hold himself up, then yawned into his fist. The clinic sat empty, but instead of a doctor at the desk, a small sign reading ‘The Doctor is with a Patient’ sat on the desk window. Not trusting himself to stay awake if he sat down, Akira brought up his cell phone and shot a message to Hifumi, [Good evening.]

Silence permeated the waiting lobby for seconds stretching into minutes before his phone buzzed. [Sorry, scheduled. No time to talk.]

He didn’t even have time to put it away before his phone buzzed again. Makoto texted to the Phantom Thief chat, [I don't understand how he can be part of the crime, giving up his own work, and still defend Madarame.]

Akira typed as Ryuji and Ann’s IDs popped in at the top. [I think it's learned helplessness. After long enough of nobody helping you, social conditioning teaches humans to expect no help from the outside, even if it's available and that's where you need to go to escape conditions of pain.]

Ryuji texted next, [It's unforgivable! He's teaching them art like it's the best thing in the world, but never letting them put their own stuff out there.]

Three dots danced next to Ann’s name for several seconds. [Even if you owed your life to them? How far would that go before you hit your limit?]

Morgana frowned from Akira’s shoulder. “You think he’s afraid, like all those victims under Kaneshiro?”

[He's stealing from all of them,] Makoto sent back.

Three dots danced beside Ann’s name and Akira waited until she sent, [But Kitagawa-kun himself said we should leave Madarame alone. Why protect Madarame if everything is horrible?]

Ryuji texted, [You think there's more going on?]

To his surprise, Makoto replied next, [Even if we haven't met any of the people crushed under Madarame's heel… Even if the tools Madarame are using aren't as cruel as Kaneshiro, he is still ruining the livelihood of all those pupils. He HAD to know he was driving his pupils to suicide, not just once, but a dozen times.]

The door to the examination room swung open and an old man trudged out, clutching a brown paper sack and prescription note. Takemi reached for the ‘BUSY’ sign, her eyes narrowing on the transfer student. “You’re back?”

“Just for some meds,” he said, looking back down to the Phantom Thief chat.

He followed her into the exam room, where Takemi handed him a list of medication and sat down to focus on paperwork.

[But is it right for us to force it when Kitagawa-kun won't do anything?] Ann texted. [After ten people, I know Madarame is bad, but how can Kitagawa forgive and defend his teacher after all the other students left or died?]

[You heard Akira,] Ryuji sent. [People go all turtle and then forget how to come out. It pisses me off so much! And good people are just supposed to let those shitty adults do anything they want because if they rock the boat, THEY'RE not good people anymore!]

Makoto texted, [I can't back down in the face of such certainty. I don't know what Kitagawa-kun is deluding himself into thinking, but MADARAME is the evil one. After a dozen suicides, and all those futures stolen, there can't be any room for uncertainty. I wasn't there for Shiho, but I'd never be able to face Dad if I dropped things here.]

Three dots danced next to Ann’s name for a moment. [I know about the bad things which happened to all the others, but it seems like Kitagawa-kun still thinks he needs Madarame. We're not just becoming bullies ourselves by going ahead with this on our own, are we?]

Morgana’s feet padded back and forth on the transfer student’s shoulder. “Then let’s call for another vote and make sure it’s official. I still vote we change Madarame’s heart.”

[Morgana says it's time for a vote since it sounds like sentiment changed. Your Shoulder Is My Throne says he votes to change Madarame's heart.]

Ryuji wasted no time to send, [Me too. I vote we change this shirt bag's heart.]

A beat passed.

[Shirt bag.]

[We get it, Ryuji,] Ann texted. [Make my vote to change his heart.]

[You're sure?] Makoto texted. [We don't want to pressure you into this.]

[I've got my reservations,] Ann texted. [Especially with Kitagawa-kun still choosing to stay at the atelier and defend Madarame. But that old man is stealing futures, and almost always from young and vulnerable people.]

Makoto texted, [I vote to change his heart. I will not be the student council girl who let other people hurt just so I wouldn't risk getting demerited ever again.]

[Me too,] Akira texted. [That makes it unanimous.]

Morgana slipped down into the transfer student’s satchel. “Now tell them to get some sleep, and let’s get the medicine for the Metaverse.” He yawned, his little jaws snapping shut with a clack.

Saturday, 25 June 2016
Late Afternoon
Ueno Park

Akira braced his hands on his knees, drawing in deep lung-fulls of air. He’d been out-done in contests of stamina at Inuri High, but not often. Even without the old bastard’s cajoling, losing left a bitter taste in his mouth even when it didn’t bring bruises. But with Makoto still working on building the deflectors to get therough Madarame’s security lasers, he needed some kind of distraction and Cute But Annoying’s invitation to train was too good to pass up.

Yoshizawa stood there beside him, glistening with sweat and breathing heavy but looking like she could have continued for another ten minutes. The fact irked him even knowing she was an honors gymnast. “Very impressive, Kur—Senpai! We’ll want to work on some of those counter-productive habits, but you’re way ahead of most people!”

Despite not quite having his breath back, Akira straightened his back. “Fine, then let’s do it. Amateurs practice until they can get it right, professionals practice until they can’t get it wrong.”

Yoshizawa held up a hand, index finger extended. “Coach would like your gumption, but you’re still not that good at accurately gauging your own reserves. If we kept going, you’d be hurting by the time you got home. Most people don’t work their internal or external obliques so hard, and I could see your movements starting to get a little erratic. If you’re going to be teaching others, it’s especially important to know where to stop things.”

Grumping, he had to admit she had a point. He fought with Morgana in the past, but the team leader tended to be the one to make the call to fall back or rest. They stretched, and by the time they finished he couldn’t deny the burning in his muscles. Maybe he’d better bring Ann or Ryuji to a gym where somebody else could keep an eye out so he didn’t push them too far.

You’ve certainly got drive,” Yoshizawa said as they wound down. Despite having regained her breath a while ago and her sweat already drying, she let out a whoosh of air. “To be honest, I don’t think I could have made much more. I’m… not feeling at the top of my game.”

The lack of sweat clashed with her claim of empty reserves, but she did look weary. Akira rubbed the back of his neck. “I’ve been pushing things too far, haven’t I?” He gestured his hand at a nearby bench. “You sick?”

She took to it with the enthusiasm of someone desperate to get off her feet. “ Physically I’m fine. But it’s like… there’s this weight that won’t let me go. No matter how much I practice, I feel like I just get clumsier.”

Akira opened his mouth to tell her that her judgment had to be compromised if she thought her practiced grace and stamina were anything but far above average. “Problems with your compatriots?”

Shaking her head, Yoshizawa seemed even more lethargic. “Coach said I need to take a break and think about who I am.”

Memories of his attempt to join Inuri’s basketball club surfaced in Akira’s mind. “Life sucks when the team and coach both don’t believe in you.”

Yoshizawa straightened, a miffed energy widening her red eyes. “Oh, not at all. Coach is always praising me. She always said ‘Kasumi’s greatest weapon in her boldness’. And it used to be that I could always practice through the problem.” The corners of her lips quirked up even as her eyes remained tense. “Gymnastics was always thrilling. But since I started high school, I got taller and… other things happened. It’s like I’m piloting someone else’s body.”

Nodding, Akira sat back against his side of the bench. He didn’t know a lot about medicine outside basic physical therapy, but he remembered suffering his own growing pains at Inuri High. And girls hit their spurts before boys. “When either the world or your body changes around you, the only choice is to keep practicing until either you change or you learn to walk in the new crowd.” He gestured a hand at a clump of middle schoolers heading out from the path to the train station. “I used to hate Tokyo’s crowds, but since Ryuji introduced me to crowd running, I’ve been getting through it by treating crowds as an obstacle I just have to race through.”

If Morgana had come along, Akira’s sure the team leader would’ve complained about the bouncing and running.

Yoshizawa gave a sound more like a huff than chuckle, but some of that darkness in her expression cleared. “I can see why you take so well to the routines, you’re athletic at heart as well as body. I’ll bet you even spend your spare weekends running.”

Akira sat up. “Not really. I use exercise to fill in time in the week, but when I have a block of free time I actually like sitting down to a good book.” He pulled up his phone and swiped out of the apps-cluttered front page so the gymnast could see Hifumi’s Ultimate Excalibur formation. “Or strategy. I love strategy games. It’s the purest test of the mind that exists.” There was something he couldn’t explain about them, maybe everything the quest for intellectual sophistication carried with it. The accompanying rules of etiquette helped him reel himself back in as much as it helped tone down his opponents. Even people who didn’t like him would at least let a fair game come to completion.

She gazed at his phone with a look of incomprehension. “With as fearless as you were at Station Square, I never would have pegged you as a book-type.”

Books are patient and unchanging,” he grumped. Turning the screen back to himself, Akira checked his email, then messenger.

Assignment coming due?” the red-head beside him queried.

He shook his head and pocketed his phone. “What makes you say it like that?”

She swallowed, but a faint impish smile slipped out anyway as she pointed out, “Your brows furrow when you’re worried about something. Your hair’s not long enough to hide it.”

Akira let out a whoosh of air, then scratched at his scalp. “One of my fellow parishioners said she’d message me. Contact has been spotty and I’m concerned whether everything’s okay at home.” He slipped his phone away, reached out both hands, interlocked his fingers, and stretched his arms and back. “Then there’s everything with him .” He glanced aside at the red-head. “Say… you know anything about Madarame?”

Yoshizawa blinked. “The painter? I know Father’s had him on Good Morning, Japan a few times but that’s about it.” Her phone chimed. She checked it, then stood. “Pardon me, Senpai.” She straightened out her gym uniform, then bowed. “I need to get going, but I hope you can teach me how to be confident like you are.”

Saturday, 25 June 2016
Evening
Akihabara, Den Pho Vietnamese Restaurant

Akira squinted at his homework in the dim yellow light of his corner of the restaurant tucked into the western fringe of Akihabara. Like the rest of Tokyo, he could see the mass of humanity churning outside, but at least in this tiny space he had respite both from the intensity of Oda Shinya’s instruction as well as the cold, uncaring masses. He turned the page and started on the next sixty problems due before Tuesday.

He stopped when Alliance Force, Assemble! sang out of his phone. He picked it up and smiled when he noticed Queen Togo on the caller ID. “Homan Provement’s remodeling and décor.”

A dainty giggle floated out from the phone. “You are endlessly creative, Akira-kun. So… I just wanted to say I’ve landed a spot in the upcoming tournament schedule!”

“Yes!” He stood up for a fist pump. When the other customers gave him quizzical looks, he pulled his chair back in and sat down. He straightened the papers knocked loose by his sudden movement. “Uh, so… where and when is it? Can I bring flags and air horns?”

“No!” She said through a giggle. A beat passed. “You wouldn’t, would you?”

“No,” he said, though his chuckles were forced.

Hifumi let out a relieved breath. “Well, I have a qualifying round in two weeks. I thought now was the best time to get a strategy book and brush up on some historical tactics.”

Akira thought back. The last time he saw any books about either shogi or strategy was his last trip to book town. “Another trip up to Jinbocho?”

He could almost see her bright grin in the tone, “That’s exactly what I was thinking, Akira-kun. I just finished cram school, so I thought we could pop in and between the two of us find some hidden gem.”

He could always do homework after helping his shogi rival. “I’m actually pretty close right now. Just text me where you want to meet.”

Jinbocho, Old Pen Used Book Store

Akira reached for a book and tugged, his finger slipping off the dusty tome. He jerked his hand back and wiped. “Ick. The dangers of book hunting.”

Hifumi flashed him a grin which warmed the one-room used book shop. “Every hobby has its perils. Did you have time to read The Screwtape Letters yet?”

Akira set Neutron Star back up on the shelf and reached for Because I Have a Name, then decided to leave it. He felt a sense of chill from the reminder of all the things he read about in the book she gave him. “That wasn’t a joke you had a friend print out just to give me, was it?”

Hifumi clasped both hands on her school bag, her deep green eyes boring into his. The offended look passed after just a moment, but her polite mask couldn’t hide the scrutiny she settled on him. “Why would you think that?”

Akira swallowed and scratched his head. “I thought those demons were talking about me. I mean, if they hadn’t specified a war in Europe, I’d have thought it was all about me.” Heat rose through his face at the reminder about the ‘patient’ in the book meeting a Christian girl, and the one just two steps away from him right now. He shook his head. He’d be more likely to get blown up by a vengeful criminal’s bomb than ever get in with a nice girl like her.

Hifumi smiled and a quick breath left her lips, before she smothered her chuckle. “It’s one of those books deep in philosophy which speaks to everyone, Akira-kun.” The curve up of her pink lips twitched. “I recognized a lot of myself in the patient as well.” Her eyes darted to the shelf next to him. “Oh! Just what I was looking for!” She hopped forward and plucked a book with bland, tan rebinding.

“Here, I’ll get that,” Akira offered as they closed on the register mounted on the desk by the front.

She clutched the book closer to her bright blue uniform shirt. “Don’t be silly. I called you here to help me find a book for myself. It wouldn’t be right to make you pay for it.”

The shopkeeper struggling to keep her eyes open snarked, “Could you two get a room after one of you pays for my book?”

Both teens blushed and Akira couldn’t manage to get his mouth to work, so Hifumi stepped up to the register and paid for her book with a shiny, steel-grey card. She let him carry it out and the two turned to Jinbocho with golden evening light saturating the narrow streets. The way the dimming light made her Kosei uniform look black in the shadows reminded him of the first time he saw her in her uniform, that late Thursday evening when she offered to tutor him. “W-Well,” she said, still not holding eye contact with him for long, “Shall we see what else we can find?”

“Sure,” he said, his heart fluttering in his chest before they turned to investigate another three used book stores.

“Oh,” he heard as they slipped out of shop number four. A familiar braided headband slipped out of the thickening evening crowd jostling his nerves, and Makoto came to a stop before the pair. “Good evening, Akira-kun.” Her red gaze shifted to the long-haired girl next to him.

“Yo, Makoto.” Akira gave a tip of his head in acknowledgment. “Finished with the mirror whatsit?”

“Of course,” she said, drawing up to her full height. “That’s what I spent most of the day outside class working on.” Her red gaze flicked to the transfer student. “Is she a friend of yours?”

The full and considerable etiquette for Japanese introductions hit a nervous switch in his stomach, but then evaporated from his mind as soon as he tried to decide which one to introduce first. Akira coughed into his fist. “This is my classmate, Niijima.” He lifted his hand to the beauty letting him carry her books. “This is Togo, my math tutor and—” his hand clenched as he struck as dramatic a pose as he could with two books in hand, “—my shogi nemesis extraordinaire. Undefeated, but I shall earn my victory sooner or later!”

A couple passers-by gave him an arched eyebrow. His rival rolled her eyes and Makoto rubbed her brow with a sharp breath out. “Always dramatic, huh, Akira?”

Hifumi shook her head, but the corners of her mouth quirked up. She gave a polite bow at the waist. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Niijima-san.” She glanced between them, her smile fading and a small slump entering her shoulders. “Well, I don’t want to get in the way if you two have a school project to finish.”

Makoto blinked, shooting him a quick questioning look to the transfer student. When he shook his head, she piped up. “Oh, you don’t have to be so circumspect.” Before she could say anything else, a growl rumbled from her belly. She covered herself with her arms as if that could conceal the offending noise.

Hifumi gave a sympathetic smile. “If you’d like, I haven’t had anything to eat either. Do you like curry? There’s a little place not even a block this way.”

Makoto held a hand over her stomach, but wavered on her feet for a moment before she turned to them and gave a deep bow of thanks. “Thank you.” She fell in step beside the shogi master. “Mother and I would play on occasion. That was kind of a rainy day thing.” Her pace slowed for a moment, her eyes going distant before she snapped back into focus. She glanced to the book the transfer student browsed as they walked before her crimson eyes shifted to the shogi master. “If it’s not too forward of me, would you mind teaching me some strategy? The knowledge might benefit u—me in the future.”

Hifumi’s forest-green gaze bounced between the two of them for a heartbeat as the transfer student held the curry corner’s door open. “Very well.” After the three made their orders and separate payments, they sat down at heavy wood tables worn smooth by decades of use. “Different games place different constraints on the procedures. With the number of counters existing in shogi, the approach must be creative. Like Akira-kun, you must be willing to sacrifice pieces without remorse.” Her cool gaze fell on him for just a moment. “But you must be sure to have pieces positioned to take advantage of multiple outcomes. A strategy is no good if it depends on your opponent moving his bishop and he instead captures your gold general with a knight.”

Akira groaned. “Of course you’d have to bring that one up. Whenever you’re planning multiple moves in advance, it’s inevitable you miss a few possibilities down the line.” He straightened on his stool. “You can’t let risk dissuade you, though, or you’ll just be crushed by a luckier or better-prepared player. I use bait to draw the opponent into specific areas and win against people one or two thousand above my ranking online.”

At the cook’s call, Makoto picked up their curry bowls from the kitchen window and sat back down. “So you use sacrificial pieces to open avenues by counterattack? An aggressive application of a decoy.”

Hifumi nodded, a glimmer in her eye and up-turn at the corners of her mouth. “Precisely.”

Akira swallowed his spoonful of green curry. “And I’d like to point out that bait is less effective in turn-based games like shogi because you can only move one piece at a time. In more realistic simulations, it’s even better because you can position multiple of your pieces to wait until not just one enemy, but sometimes a specific target takes the bait.” He took another spoonful. “Hasn’t the Special Investigative Unit done exactly that with some bank fraud case last year?”

“Oh, yes,” Makoto said, her back straightening as she launched into the broadening discussion on strategy.

The three chattered until the sun went down and piano music floated up out of Hifumi’s phone. Her enthusiasm dissipated in a heartbeat and she answered with a faraway look in her eyes. “Yes?” Her shoulders drooped. “I’m just in Jinbocho getting a few books on shogi.” Hifumi’s lips curled into a frown. “Yes, Mother.” She gathered her school satchel and reached a hand to the transfer student. “Please forgive me, I must be going.”

Akira handed over her books with a great sense of reluctance. With his own curry polished off, he stood to follow her out.

She let him open the door, but her deep green eyes wouldn’t meet his. “You should go ahead and enjoy the rest of your time with your classmate,” she said, fingers tightening over her new books. “I have to head straight home.” She took a quick breath in and out. “Damn, the first witty conversation I’ve had in a week, and I didn’t get to play a single game with her.”

Akira gave her a smile, however much he’d have rather spent the rest of the evening with the shogi master. “I’ll set something up.”

A smile bloomed over Hifumi’s face. “I’d like that, Aki-kun.”

He bowed at the waist, a smirk on his lips. “For Queen Togo? Anywhere, any time.”

Sunday, 26 June 2016
Morning
Kanda Catholic Church

Following the benediction, Father Sugiyama gave a shallow bow to the parish, which returned with deeper bows from their seats. The usual hubbub began as the people got up to leave, but this time Akira noticed a strange woman with chestnut brown hair and a flattering blue dress standing up next to Hifumi.

It took until they were at the aisle and turning for the door before Akira noticed the woman’s hand around Hifumi’s wrist.

Akira came to a sudden stop before them, feeling himself start to sweat from the intensity of the woman. “Excuse me.” His eyes flicked from the woman just two centimeters shorter than Hifumi, but with brown eyes as intense as a bonfire. “Um… Togo-san?”

The woman stepped between he and the shogi master, her brown gaze boring into him. “Are you some fan?” She turned up her nose. “She only signs autographs at special events. The times and locations are on her social media.”

When she tightened her grip on the shogi master’s wrist, Akira side-stepped to keep in front of her. “Pardon me—”

She glared, and he somehow felt a meter shorter than the woman in the pristine dress. “Are you some pervert stalker?”

Hifumi yanked her hand out of the woman’s grip. “Mother!” Her deep green eyes fell to the empty pew beside her and she fidgeted with her flattering, maroon dress. “He’s my shogi friend.” She paused to swallow, but couldn’t pull her eyes up to the intense woman’s face. “I told you about him, remember?”

Her mother stared into the young girl for a long moment. Then the moment passed and she spun on the transfer student in his Sunday suit. Her dark brown eyes flitted over him too fast for him to guess at what she was looking for, but she settled that laser-intense gaze on his after just a moment. “You’d better not be harboring any deviant thoughts about my daughter.”

Akira’s mouth drifted open, but the burning gaze making him feel ten centimeters tall stole the breath he was about to use to snark that anybody would have thoughts about a girl as beautiful as Hifumi. After a moment he closed his mouth and swallowed. “Slow down just a minute, she’s not a dog to drag along to a show.”

Hifumi swallowed, her focus turning to the woman. “I-It’s nothing to be concerned about, Mother.”

The woman in the blue dress turned to the shogi master, who shrank back the little she could against the pew. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten that nasty little incident at Ogawa. You are not permitted to date.” She snagged Hifumi’s wrist and took long strides to the door, bulling straight past Akira. “Your photo spreads are only beginning to attract male fans.”

Akira stumbled at the reminder of Hifumi in that showy, wine-red dress making it clear she wasn’t even wearing a bra underneath. He dashed after them. “Hey!”

The woman’s hand tightened on Hifumi’s wrist. “Come along, we can’t be late to this interview. When you’re famous, you can have fifty like whoever that boy is.”

Hifumi blushed and clapped her free hand over her face.

When he tried to intercept, her mother bowled him aside, her powerful stride unbroken. When the shogi master tugged against her grip, her mother pulled and kept walking. “Good girls do what they’re told.”

Akira sprinted, weaving through the crowd with all the dexterity he’d gained since Ryuji introduced him to crowd running. His teeth clenched together and his fists ached to act against the woman hurting the kindest girl he ever knew.

Hifumi held up a hand to ward his approach. “I-It’s okay. She’s just having a bad day today. I-It’s my fault.”

His heart thudded in his chest and red crept into the corners of his vision. He heard plenty of ‘just having a bad day, it’s my fault’ from abuse victims at the Smiling Mountain Mental Institute. His teeth ground and his hands trembled.

Hifumi jerked out of her mother’s grip and used both hands to bring the transfer student in formal dress to a halt. Her voice hushed, “Akira-kun, please, don’t make a scene.” Her eyes flicked out at the street around them, pausing at the clumps of parishioners. When her mother turned on them, her brown eyes blazed with even more anger than Akira’s, though her face did a better job of masking it. Hifumi shrank back. “Please don’t worry, Mother. It’s nothing. I’m going.”

The older, stacked woman grabbed her hand and paused to throw one last glare. “My daughter’s already dealt with stalkers. If I see you around again… the police can haul you away quite easily.” She pulled the girl and stepped out.

Akira took a step after them, but felt the impressions of her hands on his chest. The pleading in her eyes. And the pain of longing and hope when before her mother hauled her away.

Sunday, 26 June 2016
Afternoon
Madarame’s Museum, East Gallery Hall

Akira caught and held the stunted doorway-shaped plastic pipes glued together to frame the mirrors studded around its sides. He looked up into the skylight. “Got it.”

“Shh!” Morgana hissed from up top.

The rest of the Phantom Thieves slid down the rope as Akira carried the refractor to the laser barrier. They could just jump over this one, but what better place to test it than right next to their escape point in case something went wrong? Makoto helped him line it up straight and they shared a worried glance before pushing the plastic-framed refracting doorway into the laser barrier. The faint red lines bounced on the mirrors lining the sides, up to the clusters at the top corners, then back down to the other side.

Both froze, waiting for another alarm to sound, but when nothing happened for several tense seconds, both let out a breath of relief. Akira held it steady while Makoto ducked down through it, held the other side, and the rest of the Phantom Thieves dashed through.

Ryuji laughed. “Effin’ sweet, that’s even easier than jumpin’ over those damn things.”

Ann gave her own relieved chuckle. “The less time we have to stare at all those stolen memory… paintings, the better.”

The only thing which would come to his mind’s eye was Hifumi’s mother dragging her out of church. His blood boiled at the reminder and he flexed his hands out of fists. “What’d you see?”

“Madarame watching all three apprentices at the time make better stuff than him, then hiring thugs from Shibuya to stalk them until they moved away.”

The Phantom Thieves made their way to the doorways behind the reception desk and slipped through the refraction doorway. They were all set to continue on when Ryuji looked at it and scratched his head. “Uh… do we just bring this with us? There may be fewer guards today, but if we leave it here, the next guard is gonna sound the alarm. And prolly break it.”

Akira pulled it a few inches in, then leaned it against the wall of the inward-curving hallway so it couldn’t be seen from outside. When Ann gave him a quirked eyebrow, he shrugged, “We’ll come back if we need it.”

Morgana nodded. “Good enough. Now, let’s see what gaudy thing Madarame has next.”

The inward-curving hallway rose to an enormous, circular room dominated by a giant, gleaming gold statue. At first, he thought it was just a rising spiral, but on stepping closer he realized each strand was made of people lifting up their arms, propping up the next one. Banners proclaiming the greatness of Madarame spaced around the walls, which wavered with the ink-paintings of a traditional-style leafless tree.

Makoto clicked her gun-light on and read the plaque. “The Infinite Spring. The amassed work of art created thanks to Madarame’s own generous funds. Those who are gifted with his genius teachings must reciprocate with their creations… for…”

“The rest of their lives,” Ryuji finished. He gritted his teeth. “Effin’ shithead. He ain’t just a phony takin’ his peeps’ shit as his own – he’s offin’ the ones who try an’ go on their own so nobody knows he’s plagiarizin’!” He kicked at one of the posts holding up the velvet ropes keeping a barrier around the spiraling statue.

Makoto grabbed the pole and steadied it, letting her shotgun dangle from its strap. When no alarm sounded, she stood back, her glare falling on the statue. “It’s just a thinly-veiled form of slavery. Stealing their ideas and promising them greatness, while destroying their futures.”

Morgana tapped the squared rod of his collapsed crossbow in hand. “If this is true, I’d say he doesn’t even count as an artist. Even a thief will let a farmer grow more crops, or potter to sell his wares.”

They proceeded up the ramp spiraling around the outside of the room to an exit on a higher level, leading to another gallery hall with six enormous portraits in gold frames. Other than that, they seemed to be the same mix of names and dates for those who suicided or gaps for those who disappeared, never to be seen in the art world again. Makoto, at the front, came to a stop when her gun-light illuminated a familiar figure in a large, gold-framed portrait.

Ann gasped. “It’s Kitagawa!” Just to make sure, she followed the light to the placard next to the wavering portrait. Sure enough, it bore the name ‘Kitagawa Yusuke’. A long hallway of the young apprentice’s paintings snaked deep out of view.

Ryuji peered into the side hall studded with paintings. “It’s even got that angry tree Ann was talkin’ ‘bout.”

Already feeling pissed off to the point of jittery hands, Akira decided not to follow the others in their brief foray down the side-hall showing off stolen artwork.

As they came out, Ann glanced over her shoulder at the others. “Think we should tell him?”

“What?” Akira snapped. “That there’s a likeness of him as a tool in Madarame’s subconscious? He’d cancel his call to the cops and make one to the loony bin. It doesn’t matter if we’re trying to help him. He doesn’t believe in us, same as those volleyball players.”

Morgana paced closer, looking over the longcoated thief. “Is everything okay? You seem more terse than usual.”

Akira flexed his left hand open and closed. “To be honest, I probably would’ve been just as evasive and unhelpful if you guys came to me back when Director Isshiki was still my old bastard’s boss. People swept what he did under the rug so long, I stopped believing anyone on the outside would do anything.” He took a breath in, then out. “If we want him to believe in us, we’re going to have to show him proof. Proof like a changed heart.”

Ryuji nodded and stood guard at the hall with the longcoated transfer student. “Pissed off about how messed up this dude is?”

“Huh?” Akira straightened and checked the door they came from. “Just real life being a bitch. Fuck, I wish Byakko would just let us get a good fight in. All this sneaking around is getting on my nerves.”

Makoto paced out with a thousand-meter stare. She fidgeted with her shotgun. “Remember when I said I had reservations about changing Madarame’s heart without knowing if it would be okay with Kitagawa? I retract my reservations.”

Ryuji looked her up and down, for once his eyes not stopping on her chest. He let go of his rifle with one hand to mime a back-handed slap. “The old man got drunk and hurt someone?”

She shook her head, squeezing her red eyes shut for a moment. “Kitagawa and Hideki just wanted lunch money, and he made them feel like criminals. Just for asking to eat at school.”

Morgana clenched his crossbow. “I think we’ve all been in agreement for a while. This artist is in serious need of a change of heart. Now come on, and keep quiet. The Treasure is this direction.”

They passed into a display room, paintings along the perimeter and folding stands in the middle. Each one bore praise from critics, or mentioned a loan to a famous foreign museum. The Phantom Thieves followed Morgana around the square displays in the middle until he jerked back behind a corner.

The leader waved back an instant before a cone of light shone at them, a Shadow van Damme coming around the corner. “Intruder in the south gallery!”

Akira, standing near the middle of the walk way, gave a feral grin. “Oh, yes.”

Ann hissed from behind another angled pillar of paintings, “Shit!”

The guard’s body twitched and distended with slower speed than the ones the other day when the museum was on higher alert, but still burst into a pair of those dwarfish little Shadows with dark old-timey clothes and holding a giant leaf each.

Akira left his sub-machine gun low, using it wouldn’t be satisfying enough. “Pillar, Agi!” Darkness and fire churned from the ceiling, emitting a bolt of fire before even touching down.

Johanna came to a stop next to him and blasted a fire bolt at the next Shadow, knocking it down.

Morgana aimed his crossbow and moved to flank. “Good, we’ve got them both down—”

“Agi!” Akira barked, striking the second Shadow, throwing off dancing cinders and knocking it into dissolving ash. Those brown eyes condemning Hifumi still blazed hotter in his mind than his own Persona’s flames. Akira turned back to the first Shadow. “Agi!”

Pillar emitted another bolt of fire, knocking the dwarfish leaf-holder toppling backwards. It found its feet and began a run to the double doors.

“Agi!”

The disintegrating Shadow collapsed against the steel.

Akira dismissed his Persona with a harrumph.

Morgana lowered his crossbow. “Fall back to the rear, Akira.”

The longcoated teen blinked. “What did you just say?”

The leader pointed his folded crossbow at him. “I said fall back. I half-expected you’ve been slapped by a Kumbhanda. It’s already hard to fight with so many of us. If I can’t trust you to keep a clear head, then you need to hang back.” He took a step closer. “Joker, the Shadows were both down. Procedure since we started fighting at the castle was either to negotiate with them or finish the battle quickly with an all-out strike. You could’ve gotten a new Persona, or we could’ve gotten a new trinket to sell for medicine money. What would’ve happened if Rider was charging in to run them down?”

He opened his mouth, teeth bared, but held himself back. He took in a deep breath and let it out. Pointing out his fire would’ve had little-to-no effect on Johanna wouldn’t help.

Ann came to a stop next to him. “I’ll take rear guard with Joker. You guys go on ahead.”

Makoto and Ryuji nodded and paced to the door, but Morgana held a scrutinizing gaze on the two. After a moment thick with choking silence, he gave a nod. “This place might be big enough for another Shadow to spawn even while you both are here. Don’t dally.” He slipped through the doors, which closed with a soft clunk.

Ann reached for him, but the transfer student jerked his arm away. “Joker, what’s going on? You’re reminding me of our last climb up Kamoshida’s castle. Remember the tower leading to the throne room?”

He switched his sub-machine gun from his right to his left hand. “Not very well. It was a lot of climbing inside and outside.”

She tapped her suppressed pistol against her leg, those blue eyes staring into his. “Joker, you did the same thing to one of those owl-men.” Ann’s gaze shifted to one of the portraits and she rubbed her arm. “Morgana was injured so he might not have noticed at the time, but… your eyes… you were somewhere else, Joker.” She pointed her pistol at the spot he stood at before. “And right there? You were somewhere else.” Ann shifted from her left leg to her right. “You seriously scared us. I know I can’t just ask you to trust me enough to just talk about it, but at some point, you’re going to have to talk to someone.”

She turned and took a step for the door before he caught her arm. Akira swallowed, but kept his eyes on hers. “You think I don’t trust you?”

Her blue eyes did not quite meet his. “I think there’s a lot you’re struggling with. And some of it you don’t think you can come to us about. And that’s okay, there are things I talk about with Shiho I don’t with Yuu-kun. But if you bottle everything up, you’re going to explode like my MacBook’s battery.”

Akira took down a quick breath of air before a laugh squeaked out of his mouth. She chuckled along with him, and both spilled into laughter without quite understanding why. After catching their breath, both stepped through the double doors. Beyond stretched a green, sun-lit yard of tended grasses and bamboo. An umbrella shaded a small portion of a seating area next to a small locked cafe. Past that, the stone-tiled path turned to a courtyard crackling with a veritable forest of blazing laser fencing.

Ryuji gawked. “The shit?”

Makoto scanned the bristling courtyard. “These look way more dangerous than the alarm lasers across all those doors.”

Ann scrutinized the stone-tile path through the courtyard, then looked at the dark museum building beyond. “With all this security, you think the Treasure is just past that?”

Morgana folded his crossbow. “There’s never that much security unless there’s something worth protecting.”

Makoto nodded. “Indeed. Unless it’s a decoy like the bamboo bombers we used to fool Allied airstrikes in the Second World War.”

Akira crossed his arms, keeping a light grip on his sub-machine gun. “If I was an evil overlord, I would not have my command center clearly marked. If I must have publicly available maps of my complex, the display will have a room clearly marked as the main control room. That room will be the execution chamber. The actual main control room will be marked as sewage overflow containment.”

Makoto gave him the side-eye. “That was rather developed for a quick punchline joke.”

Akira let out a breath. “You’re right, I should trim that one down some.”

Ryuji spluttered. “You sayin’ all this might be for nothin’?”

Morgana shook his head. “The Treasure is definitely further up from here. And that’s the only entrance.” He squinted, then hopped up onto Akira’s shoulder, then head.

“Hey!”

“Hold still,” the team leader snapped. He scanned the far side of the bristling courtyard. “I’ve seen that door before. Inside Madarame’s shack. I’m sure of it.”

Akira held a hand out at the criss-cross of lasers. “Well, how the hell do we get past that? That little security card they have disappears when they transform into their true Shadow selves.”

Morgana hopped down and paced back to the double-doors where they just came from. “There’s another way to open it. We just need to force a change in cognition.” He led them back out of the museum and through another two guards who stumbled across them despite their attempts at stealth, but refused to say anything further until they escaped to the real world and streets beyond. The team leader turned to Ann. “Lucky for all of you, I went scouting while you were playing around with that artist.”

Makoto shot a glare at him, the red of her eyes enhancing the effect. “You got bored and wandered off.”

Morgana held his paw against his chest.

Ann rolled her eyes. “So where is it?”

Akira tilted his head at the team leader, now in the perfect resemblance of a small tuxedo cat. “Some real-world analog?”

Morgana beamed. “Exactly! There wasn’t much on the second floor – just a bathroom, Madarame’s suite… but also a painted blue door with a hefty lock just like the one across that lasered-off courtyard.”

Ryuji finished disassembling his rifle and slipped its pieces into his school satchel. “But we wanna get through a door in the Palace.”

Morgana sighed and shook his head. “Reaper, the likeness means there’s a cognitive link. If we can get that door open in the real world in front of the real Madarame, it will leave it open and vulnerable in the Palace!”

Akira nodded. “Makes sense. In the real world, they have control centers deep behind layers of locked doors and closed-circuit TV cameras in jails, so there’s likely the same kind of setup in Madarame’s Palace. It’s literally impossible to get in without somebody on the inside buzzing you on.”

Ryuji turned a gloomy glance at the transfer student. “Right, they prolly had you locked up after that effin’ bastard sicced those crummy lawyers on you.”

Makoto tilted her head.

Akira waved her off. “It’s the past. Let’s focus on changing Madarame’s heart.” He looked to the team leader. “Only problem is, that means we have to get a lock open in real life. I think I could do it, but Madarame’d go after me for breaking and entering for sure.”

Ann unscrewed the fake silencer on her model gun and slipped it in her bag, glancing at the others who already stowed their weapons. “I bet I could get Kitagawa-kun to let me inside. You think I could learn how to do it in time?”

Morgana’s ears twisted. “Picking a serious lock is a very difficult thing. As hefty as it looked when I was scouting, I have a feeling it would be hard for me. No offense, guys, but I think Madarame would go after all of you same as he would after Joker. It just wouldn’t land you all straight in prison like it would him.” He shook his head. “No. It has to be me. I can’t put any of you in that kind of danger. As long as we get the door open, his cognition will change.”

Ryuji clenched a fist, the muscles in his face tight. “I ain’t gonna just sit back. If this place in the Palace is all secure n’ shit, I bet we’re gonna hafta get inside quick before one o’ those command centers just locks everythin’ up again.”

Morgana nodded. “Your Persona is the fastest and strongest we have. Joker? With the number of Personas you have, you should be able to get through whatever surprises they have in wait. Ann? I’ll protect you from that silver-tongued so-called artist, and I’ll get that door open.” He turned to the last member. “I guess the last is you, Nightrider. Want to stand guard in the real world, or back up the ambush team in the Palace?”

Makoto rubbed her chin, eyes narrowing in thought. “Hm. I’m afraid of something unexpected happening in either place, but I can only be in one at once.” Her eyes fell on the transfer student, then runner, then the blonde model. “Are you going to be okay with just B—Morgana?”

Akira stretched his neck. “You should go with Ann.”

Ann shook her head at him. “If it gets bad, Morgana’s small enough to hide plenty of places, and I can just run. An entourage might just tip them off early. I’m confident we don’t have anything to worry about from Kitagawa-kun.”

The class president stood straight and turned to the team leader in the transfer student’s satchel. “Very well. We’ve been in some close scrapes in the bank, so best not underestimate this museum. I’ll reinforce the ambush team.”

Ryuji crossed his arms, looking serious for all of a second before a smirk spread. “I guess all that’s left is for you to go nude.”

The crack of flesh on flesh echoed across the street in front of Madarame’s shack. Ann glared and withdrew her trembling hand from his face – the paleness in her own didn’t escape their attention. “He canceled that threat, remember?” She crossed her arms, then pulled the blue jacket wrapped around her skirt and slipped it on, tugging it tight and holding with clenched fists.

Ryuji held his cheek. “I forgot, okay? It ain’t like I was there to see whatever went down in the first place. You went all meltdown on chat, so of course that was what I remembered!”

Akira rubbed the side of his head. “Not even a month after taking down Kamoshida for sexual abuse and you’re already making jokes about it? That’s stupid, Ryuji, even for you.”

“Dude, it’s been two months.” Ryuji glanced at the two girls. Seeing their glares, he stepped back. “I mean, I didn’t think ‘bout that.” He scratched the back of his head. “Sorry, dudes. I really didn’t.”

Morgana came to a stop in front of the model. “If that no-good artist lays so much as one finger on your beautiful head, I’ll scratch him until my paws bleed!”

Her hands remained tight on her jacket. “H-He’s not going to do anything.” She turned for the road to the train station. “Let’s just get going. The sooner we can get this over with, the better.” She stepped out at a strong walk.

“Rest tomorrow!” Morgana shouted after her, before returning to the transfer student’s satchel.

Notes:

The Phantom Thieves each have their own lives, but the closer they get the less likely a big part of one's life will remain unnoticed by the others. Hifumi makes her first impression on one member of the Phantom Thieves here, but where the game forgot the two very interested characters met, this will pick up as soon as they have some breathing room. You know, right before life hits the fan.

It will be a while before Makoto and Hifumi have another direct run-in, and there are a lot of other complications yet to work out as Ryuji just showed by playing the horny boy and forgetting Ann was being blackmailed a short while ago.

Chapter 64: June 27th, Door Number Three

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Monday, 27 June 2016
After School
Shujin Roof

The heavy door swung shut behind Akira, and he blinked against the glare of the sun filtering through the intermittent clouds. Rain-stained roofing stretched out under his feet. stacks of chairs and desks off to his right sat next to the air conditioning units. Akira stepped out from the narrow shaded space over the door and let Morgana down. At first, he reached for his satchel for The Grand Inquisitor, but paused when he noticed the other student.

That girl with the curly hair knelt down in front of the planters, her back to him. In her PE uniform, she looked almost as nondescript as any other girl at Shujin. She knelt there, tending to something with bright green leaves after school on Shujin’s roof, instead of out enjoying the sights and thrills of Tokyo like most the other girls. Haru dusted off her gloved hands and stood, pulling off the heavy white fabric. “Oh, good afternoon.”

Akira glanced down at the planters, noting taller stalks with darker green leaves on the ones to the sides, and new shoots where he and Mishima messed up earlier. “Hi, Senpai.” He pointed to the variety of plants. “Thinking of starting a farm?”

Haru giggled, the light sound reminding him of Hifumi. “Nothing so grand.” Her eyes rolled up and she clasped her hands behind her back. “Although I likely have enough space in the plot on Father’s grounds.”

Akira coughed and wondered if she realized how much space that meant – even if it was a vacation house in the Ryukyu Islands. “I remember you said you got into this with Kiriko. Something about a club?”

Haru’s eyes sparkled, and a smile lifting her whole posture formed. She stood straighter and clasped her gloves tight in both hands. “The Flowers and Gardening Club. Kiriko-kun started it. Something about connecting with her grandfather’s heritage.” She turned around, the focus in her eyes fading out as she saw something a long time ago. “We would grow daisies and snapdragons and lavender. Before the end, we even got a sunflower to bloom…” She pointed to the concrete wall. “…right over there. And it’s true, they really do point at the sun all day long.”

Akira let a smile spread over his face. It wasn’t often people got excited about things they were talking about to him. However, the mention of the former favorite for the student council president just piqued his curiosity. “I’ve heard her name a couple times from the upperclassmen. What happened?”

The light shining in Haru’s eyes dropped from a blazing fire to a pinprick smolder. “She was expecting a promotion in the Shujin Girls’ Volleyball Team. Had a meeting with Kamoshida after school one day.” Her brown eyes flitted from his to the ground and her toe twisted into the rough roofing. “I always assumed he told her she wasn’t eligible for that starter spot she wanted.” She shrugged. “Well, that’s all speculation. The day after that, she stood up the Student Council Secretary. Stopped coming to all her clubs, didn’t talk to her friends…” She looked down to the fine, rugged but soil-stained gloves in her hands and stepped closer, as if trying to get nearer to his eyes without daring to look into them. “This is hard work, to be sure, which is why all the other members dropped out.” The upperclassman let out a long, heavy breath. “But these plants… they bloom so beautifully with just a little care. They’re some of the few things I can nurture and grow.”

The glow she said it with reminded him of their earlier argument about determinism, but he couldn’t think of how to bring it up without sounding like a gotcha. “Well, uh… what flowers are those going to be?”

Haru’s shoulders squared a little. “Oh, those aren’t flowers. Those ones are scallions.” She pointed to lower plants spreading over the bounds of their sides. “Those are thyme. The ancient Egyptians used them for antiseptics and relaxing muscle spasms. When it blooms, the pink flowers are beautiful.”

Akira gave an acknowledging nod. “Maybe so, but the ancient Egyptians also worshiped the sun as a god riding a chariot high above the Earth, pursued by the serpent Apophis.”

She tilted her head at him just a little. “Oh? You’re an Egyptologist?” She pursed his lips. “Which one is associated with thyme?”

“I have no idea – just that the thyme leaf is associated with courage.” Akira chuckled and rubbed the back of his head, trying to decide how to explain SG-1 to somebody who had never seen it. “Egyptian mythology played a pretty central role in Stargate. It’s a science fiction show that replaces the magic with technology and gods with aliens.” He looked over the variety of other plants, noting some with small, bright leaves and others with broad, dark green. “Do you want a hand?”

For some reason, pink dusted Haru’s cheeks and she held her free hand to her mouth. “Oh, I don’t want to make you feel like you have to work away just to be up here.”

Morgana peered at him from the satchel hanging on his shoulder. “Trying to avoid studying in that noisy library?”

Akira shot a grimace at the team leader and said under his breath, “For your information, yes. At least this can be productive.” He shrugged off his satchel and set it down against the wall. “I’m not going to roll up my sleeves, but a little hard work never killed anyone.”

Haru gave a smile, a hesitant quality to it before she nodded. “Well, I shouldn’t turn down gallantry.”

He felt a little flutter inside at being called gallant, but pressed on. Some time with little but small instructions passed, before Akira finished watering a baby tomato stalk. “You mentioned this all started with flowers, but it looks like almost all of these are some sort of herb or vegetable. Why the change?”

Haru looked up from pruning one of the taller, leafing plants. Her lips drew together into a cute almost-pout as her eyes zoned out. “Well, the club advisor Gotou-sensei recommended we do something fruitful as well. When the first tomatoes came off the plant there,” she pointed at a potted bush strapped to a bamboo pole, “I realized how… practical gardening could be.” Her gaze fell. “This is the only place I can have a positive impact.”

Akira hummed, and they fell into a pattern of work, chatting about the minutiae of plants and gardening. Then his phone buzzed. The transfer student brushed off his hands and leaned against the door to shield the screen as he checked the Phantom Thief group chat.

Ryuji’s ID stood at the top of a new conversation. [Just finished a session with the school counselor. It wasn't bad, I feel ready for a good run.]

[Good for you,] Makoto replied.

Ann’s ID winked in. [Told you it would get a load off your shoulders.]

Akira’s thumbs stabbed over the virtual keyboard. [If the fangirling is done, did everyone forget what Mishima said?]

Ann texted, [He still thinks he needs to be hurting for what happened. I would take his disapproval with a grain of salt.]

[For real,] Ryuji sent. [He's already got another dude today, but you should give him a shot, Akira. It doesn't even have to be about Kamoshida. We spent most of the time talking about track and running. Sure, it was awkward at first, but isn't talking to any adult weird when they don't know you? He was real cool. I might even go back if we get another one of those mind blocks in a palace and feel all pissed.]

[Dear God, Ryuji, please don't out us to the public AGAIN,] Akira texted.

Three dots bounced next to Makoto’s ID for a few moments. [A session could really help, Akira. Ryuji has an excellent idea about using it to help clarify another stumbling block in life if we have a Metaverse complication. Don't forget that Shujin made this mandatory for you, going would at the very least give Shujin's administrators less reason to bother you. You should give it a shot. Just one session.]

He stared into the screen for a moment. Three people he thought smart going to a shrink and saying it would do some good. Maybe not smart in the academic sense in Ryuji’s case, but he was supposed to be a good judge of people. So why did so many of his friends think it was a good idea to see a shrink? Either Maruki was an active part of the system just waiting to grind them down or he was a stupid goon who couldn’t help anyone. Jaw-jabbing didn’t solve problems. It never had before.

Akira returned to the big tomato planters with Haru-senpai and resumed yanking weeds.

Monday, 27 June 2016
Evening
Shibuya, Untouchable

The front door squeaked as Akira pulled it open. He paused for the student president to step inside first, before following her in. Some college-aged guy stood at the counter window, setting down a couple yen bills for a set of dust masks, so Akira cleared his throat and angled his head into the other end of the store. The class president took his direction and they took the long way around racks of fatigues, green mechanic’s jumpsuits, and black jackets. Along the way, he looked over the survival supplies like flashlights with red filter caps and combination compass-rulers. After a minute, the other customer took his change and departed.

Makoto beelined past folded tarps to the counter and set her disassembled shotgun wrapped in a clean white cloth. “Could I see the…?” She glanced back at the transfer student.

“Menu for her model shotgun.” Akira set his satchel down on the ground at his feet. The team leader poked his head out, but stayed where he was. With nothing to deal with there, he turned his focus to the upperclassman. “Any ideas on what you wanted to do with it?”

Makoto took the stiff printed sheet from the shop owner and scanned it, pursing her lips. “If I already knew, I wouldn’t have asked you to come along.” She let out a disappointed huff. “The light seemed like a no-brainer, but it wasn’t so clear until after that debacle with the lights out. Problem is, there are so many options it’s too hard to make a choice.”

Iwai chuckled and slid his lollipop to the other side of his mouth. “Be glad you don’t have to pick for a rifle. People have been slappin’ customizations on those since the days of muskets.”

After a quick discussion on the ‘hypothetical’ uses of the different modifications, the two decided on a mounted holographic sight for quicker precision… and laughed at a few of the crazier modifications like polished faux-gold plating. Makoto took out her disassembled shotgun, wrapped in a white cloth, and set it down on the counter.

Iwai chuckled at the students and took the wrapped, disassembled weapon to the back. After some banging and the grinding whirl of drilling into metal for several seconds, silence returned and he returned, setting the re-wrapped package in the window. “You have strange taste in girls.”

Makoto went stiff.

Akira couldn’t let a prompt like that go. He whirled around and dropped to one knee, taking the upperclassman’s hand as she stared at him in confusion. He completed the flourished gag with, “Only if you’ll have me.”

Makoto blushed and stammered. It took several moments before she jerked her hand from his.

Iwai lasted until a smirk played over the transfer student’s face before he couldn’t hold in the gruff countenance anymore and spat with laughter.

Morgana hung his head with a sigh. “Is it really so hard for you to take things seriously for an hour, Joker?”

Slipping his hands in his pocket, Akira stood, swallowing his mirth. Receiving a glare from Morgana and Makoto, even the shop owner held a scrutinizing gaze on him. For some reason, the last one sent tension down his spine. “Aw, c’mon, guys! What am I supposed to do when you all just assume that any girl I spend five minutes with has to be my girlfriend?”

Iwai swished his lollipop to the other side of his mouth. “I never said girlfriend. That one’s on you.”

Akira clasped his hands over his chest to mime catching a dagger and pulling it out. When the class president didn’t so much as chuckle at his misfortune or theatrics, he huffed and turned back to the shop owner. “Fine. You got me.”

Makoto set the cardboard-backed menu on the counter. “I think that will be all for today.” She transferred the wrapped, disassembled gun model to her school satchel and shifted some books over it before paying. She shot Akira a momentary glare, her face still red before she strode out.

With his weapon already as customized as he could think to make it, Akira thought over the people he’d run into in Shibuya lately. “Seen Masa lately?”

That stick swung to the other side of the gruff business owner’s mouth. A chuckle slipped out. “You just jump right to the point.” He reached up a hand to adjust the brim of his gray baseball cap. “Haven’t seen ‘im since that police crackdown.” He picked up one of those stress dolls and squeezed until its eyes and ears popped out. “Masa’s a parasite, ‘e’s only dangerous as what he can attach ‘imself to. Tsuda’s always been the dangerous one.”

Tuesday, 28 June 2016
Late Afternoon
Shibuya, Madarame Atelier

The front door of the aged shack creaked as it swung open. Ann gave a hesitant wave.

Yusuke squinted and lifted the hand holding a white jacket to shield his eyes from the intensity of the outdoors. The black polo shirt and blue jeans lent a casual air to the student whose stiff stance gave every indication but. Despite the text she sent him yesterday, his eyes still widened in surprise. “T-Takamaki-san! You really came.” His dark gaze fell to the hot sidewalk. “I did not expect to actually see you again. Especially after I called to cancel that callous threat. I heard about some school’s teacher resigning, but never imagined you were one of his victims.” His shoulders slumped further. “You shine most brightly when you smile, but a true smile is a welling from deep within the soul. A forced act can never be beautiful.” He looked up at her, timid expectation in his gaze and his right hand clenching a white jacket. “Unless you wanted…?”

She jerked back. “What? No!”

Morgana popped his head out of the model’s satchel and bared his teeth. “A snake like you doesn’t even deserve to imagine Lady Ann naked.”

Ann clapped her hand to her face, feeling a blaze in her cheeks. “Morgana.” She straightened and looked the artist in his dark grey eyes. “Your text said Madarame wouldn’t be staying late at the exhibit today. When will he be arriving home?”

Yusuke slipped his phone out of his paint-stained jeans and adjusted it until he could read the screen. “Another thirty or forty minutes.” He looked to her, his eyebrows arched. “Why exactly was it vital that he be here?”

“We need him to see a door open,” Ann said, before striding past the artist. She paused to slip her shoes off in the genkan before stepping up into the house.

Yusuke’s confusion grew and it took a moment for him to remember to close the front door. “See a door open?” He rubbed his left arm just below the short, black sleeve of his plain T-shirt. “I don’t understand. I fail to see how I can help…”

She glanced down at the team leader weighing down her school satchel. “We—I mean, someone I know can make Madarame change his mind, but to do so he has to see this one door open.”

Yusuke looked at the front door. “This door? He opens it every day.” He crossed his arms, his eyes unfocused for a moment. “Well, except when he is on a spiritual retreat.”

Morgana scoffed. “Spiritual retreat, he says. He just hides out in resorts.”

Ann shook her head. “Not just any door. It’s got a lock on it.”

Morgana hopped out. “It’s over here. Just follow me.” He bounded down the hall to the stairs.

Yusuke followed her until reaching the narrow ascent. “Ah… Takamaki-san. There isn’t anything up there but Sensei’s room.”

She climbed up the creaky stairs after the team leader, most of them groaning under her weight. She grimaced at them and muttered, “I don’t eat that much cake, do I?” A heavier wooden groan sounded from behind, and she turned with far too much relief to see the artist there at the second step.

His dark eyes widened. “T-Takamaki-san, I assure you there is nothing of interest on the second floor.”

“We’ll see.” Ann turned back to pace up the ancient stairs as fast as she felt the old wood could take. Broken easels, stacked cans of dried paint, and other junk lined one wall, with a stack of blank canvases leaned next to a washroom door at the end of the hallway. One worn wooden door sat halfway down the hall on the right. On the left was a heavy door with a blue wing painted over the rectangular barrier. “It is just like the one in the Palace.”

“Takamaki-san,” Yusuke said as he came up to the top of the stairs, his eyes wide and footsteps hesitant. “We can’t intrude up here.”

She crossed her arms and tried to pick apart why the artist reminded her of Mishima. “Why not?”

“That’s Sensei’s room!”

She held her flat stare. “Yes, I believe that’s been established.”

Morgana pointed a paw at the plain wood door on the other side of the hall. “Actually, that is Madarame’s room. Based on the exterior, this one is something else about the same size.”

Ann followed the team leader’s attention to the painted door, one of the few things in the house which looked like it had been replaced since the Second World War. A beautiful blue and gold wing painted across it, something unearthly about it as it neither quite fit feathers or the angled mosaic like butterflies Shiho liked so much. Even the lock above the brass doorknob stood out. Unlike the stacked metal plates she was used to seeing, this one had a smooth surface as if fashioned out of a single piece of metal by an artisan, and polished to a high shine. Being almost as big as both her fists, it had plenty of shiny surface to reflect. “I don’t suppose you can get in?”

Yusuke flinched back as if struck. Even his pupils shrank like Mishima when he was summoned to the coaches’ office. He hissed as if fearing being overheard, both hands twisting at the white jacket, “T-Takamaki-san, we can’t intrude in Sensei’s room. I d-don’t even have a key!”

Morgana scanned the junk in the hallway. “Those cans won’t be stable enough if they’re empty. Here, move those canvases, I can stand on those.”

“Here, help me,” she called the artist, who stood in place with wide eyes as she hauled a stack of six cloth canvases next to the painted door. Ann managed despite his lack of help, though she shot him a momentary glare as the adorable team leader and certainly-not-mascot hopped up. “Think you can get it in… twenty minutes?”

“Hah!” Morgana preened. “Watch the master at work. Just hand me those picks.”

Yusuke arched an eyebrow when she unfurled the cloth pocket in front of the team leader. “Did you bring your cat to play?”

“Just go with it. He’ll take care of things.” As the leader got started, Ann turned back to the apprentice, then stepped in the way so he wouldn’t freak out seeing a cat pick a lock. He hadn’t retreated yet, but the way he held his right arm with his left looked just like Shiho before practice. Akira’s words before echoed in her mind, “Take it from an abuse victim, I know hes getting abused.” Well, confronting Yusuke to help him was just as good as just to keep him from interrupting Morgana.

Ann reached for the artist’s hands clenching his jacket. He jerked away, but she clamped down on his cold fingers and refused to let him retreat to the stairs. “Kitagawa-kun, what’s going on?”

“Nothing,” he said, his eyes on the wall away from her.

Ann’s grip tensed enough to make his teeth clench. “Don’t bullshit me. I walked away from Shiho and…” Her breath halted. “And I will never forgive myself for that. I let Yuu-kun and Shiho get hurt for months, and never said anything because I didn’t want to make anything worse. And you know what happened? Things got worse.” She jerked at his arm to pull him and try to make him look at her. He didn’t. “I am not going to do that again. I will never be that Ann again. So you tell me what you’re so afraid of!”

“Everything!” Yusuke said, a momentary tremble in his arms before his dark grey eyes at last locked onto hers. “A world which spits upon artists who can’t make art, and then excoriate artists who do make art for not being bright enough, or dark enough, or traditional enough, or modern enough. For Sensei, who made us drink and breathe art, but always found a way to be somewhere else when our empty bellies groaned. For art itself, taunting us with the terrifying depth of the human heart, and yet beauty like yours which refuses to let us look anywhere else. For my own trembling hand when I know what I must do, and for the canvas sitting there, blank!”

The sound of a car door thumping closed penetrated the thin walls of the shack.

Ann checked her phone. “Wait, we’re supposed to have fifteen minutes left!”

Yusuke did his best to shrink in on himself. “Sensei’s early!”

“Mayhe it honeone elhe,” Morgana said through the lockpick in his mouth.

The front door rattled and swung open. Madarame’s voice groaned out, “I’m home.”

Ann’s grip slipped open and Yusuke raced downstairs as if the whips of hell itself lashed at his heels. She looked over at the team leader and felt a droplet of sweat slide down the back of her neck. “What’s taking so long?”

Morgana adjusted his twisted head until finding a point he could press his paws against the two picks jammed in the lock. “This is a strange lock, and I don’t exactly have opposable thumbs in this body!” He bit one of the things and continued twisting his head and pushing the thing in his teeth ever so slightly. “Hall hin!”

Ann paced down the steep, creaky stairs as fast as she dared, then broke into a run the instant she hit the stable planks of the ground floor. As much to halt her momentum as to block the old man from proceeding through the hall, she grabbed the apprentice’s arm. She tried to make a laugh, but the sound grated on her ears as much as it seemed to grate on theirs. “M-Madarame-san! How nice to see you!”

She didn’t think it was possible, but Yusuke tensed even more under her arm.

Madarame’s eyes narrowed and he lowered his hand from fixing on his indoor slipper. “What’s going on here? Who are you?” His glower shifted to the apprentice. “What is the meaning of all this running and ruckus?”

“Sen… Uh… You see… Sen…”

Time to turn on the charm. Too bad Shiho wasn’t around to see how much Ann’s acting had improved. Disengaging from the panic-stricken apprentice, Ann spread her arms and twirled to put herself on display. She put on a dazzling smile to complete the effect. “In his amazing vision, Kitagawa-kun picked me out of the crowd and begged me to be his model.”

Madarame’s dark eyes bored into the apprentice. Then his gaze flitted to her. For a long second, she felt not just stripped but dissected from her fluffy pigtails to her ankles. Then those brown eyes shot back to the apprentice. “I believe I made myself clear about bringing groupies to the atelier. You can never trust when one is really a no-good journalist snooping around.”

Ann felt her hands ball into fists.

Despite his long-halted breath, Yusuke beat her to the indignant denial. “Sensei… I assure you I have absolutely no interest in her as someone of the opposite sex.”

Now Ann felt her mouth drift open. She could’ve sworn she felt Carmen roiling inside her, begging to release the blizzard. “Excuse me?” She turned to the apprentice and even Madarame retreated a step. “Have absolutely no interest?” She batted a pigtail off her shoulder. “Oh no, you don’t get to say things like that when you inspect me out of the corner of your eye like Taro or Akira!”

Yusuke opened his mouth, but she knew by the way he held his body what he was going to say.

She jabbed her finger at his chest. “And don’t you say you never eyed me. A girl knows when she’s being looked at. It’s one thing if it’s someone who likes you.” She waved her finger in a circle in front of his face. “Like… all of you. It’s something else if you’re just trying to grade a girl like a slab of meat you need to price up for the market.”

Her breath ended, but her whirling mind couldn’t stop. She saw dozens of boys looking at her and Shiho, especially once she started in Shujin. Every single one of them inspected the girls like something to carve up and sell, their eyes stopping on her breasts or ass or some other part like the rest of her didn’t matter. The worst ones even talked about them like she or the other girls were just dolls to pop parts off and attach to another girl’s parts.

Only Yuu-kun didn’t act like that. He didn’t just look, but marveled like every square centimeter of Shiho was amazing. Or the way his eyes would close and he would just listen, as if the sound of her breathing alone was as spectacular as those bright, sparkling eyes, treasuring the way she moved and the words Shiho said.

A tone played from one of Madarame’s pockets.

Metal thumped against wood upstairs.

Yusuke’s whole body remained in that confused pose as if his brain hadn’t finished processing the things she said.

Madarame’s eyes snapped wide and a gasp drew in the old man’s mouth. “No!” He shoved past, knocking Ann to the wall as he raced to the stairs.

Having taken harder blows dozens of times in the Metaverse, Ann sprang back and sprinted after him. As narrow as the stairs were, she had no chance to get ahead of him without throwing the old man down. “Incoming, Morgana!”

If anything, his climbing pace increased before he got to the stop. Slow steps brought him out to the hall and the teens followed him up. “A… cat?”

Morgana’s ears pressed back against his skull. “Oh no, it’s not working. The lock isn’t enough!”

The tone played from Madarame’s pocket again.

Ann clenched her jaw and took a deep breath. Akira wouldn’t even hesitate. The others were depending on her. Letting out a battle cry to psych herself up, she dashed past the wheezing, kindly old man and threw open the door. When she turned, that kindly had evaporated from the old artist and her feet shuffled her backwards away from him.

Madarame’s face twisted in surprise and anger. “Get out of there, thief!”

Yusuke rushed to the doorway as she stumbled and fell over a hard wood corner and onto other things just as unyielding. “Sensei, calm down and catch your breath. Takamaki is no thief.”

That tone played from Madarame’s pocket again.

Yusuke stepped inside and flipped the light switch before Madarame could stop him.

Ann rubbed at her hip as she stood. School uniforms were absolutely no defense against hard edges. It wasn’t until she noticed Yusuke staring – and not at her – that she followed his gaze to the stack of paintings she propped herself up with. Her hand already on the stack of more than a dozen leaned up against the wall, she pulled to look and see the same painting all the way down. To her left stretched another stack of even more Sayuris. “Wha-?”

Yusuke took a step in, his eyes wide. She could almost see his brain throwing sparks. “How are there so many?” He turned from the model to his teacher. “Sensei, these are… you said Sayuri was stolen when Kamiya-san left years ago.”

Ann turned to hold the stack and turn the next frame, then the next like pages in a book… except every one of them was Sayuri.

Madarame stomped a foot, the effect somewhat lessened by the old man’s lack of strength and soft indoor slipper. “Stop that!”

Yusuke swallowed, took in a breath, then stepped in between her and the old man. “There has to be some kind of logical explanation for all of this. Sensei, please…”

Madarame wavered on his feet in the hallway for a moment, before he took the step to bring him to the doorway. He reached out and leaned, his other hand clutching his chest, still regaining his breathing from his run up. He stroked his thin beard. “I…” He let out a breath, his face tilting down and eyes closing for a moment. “You’ve already seen, I suppose there’s no more I can do to protect you from the shame.” He sucked in a breath. “I never wanted to tell you this, but… I’m deeply in debt. I’ve been selling these copies through a connection to scrape together enough money to further your talents.”

Yusuke’s eyes repeated a pattern of scanning up one stack of Sayuris, then down the other, and touching on the cubbies of other paintings and supplies along the right side of the room, before starting the whole process over again as if he still couldn’t believe his eyes. The hand holding his jacket clutched tight.

With him in greater shock than the middle of her diatribe downstairs, Ann prodded the first thing which didn’t sit right with the story. “Wait, the real Sayuri was stolen.”

Madarame let go of his chest. “That’s right. Kamiya always blamed my strictness. I always wanted nothing but the utmost for my pupils, and not everyone can measure up to such high standards.” His face pinched in pain. “It’s all my fault. Fame has a terrible cost, and as much as I wanted to protect my students from it…”

“No,” Ann shook her head. The words all sounded fine, but rubbed her brain the wrong way. Like discovering a puzzle piece which fit, but had a different color than the surrounding pieces. “I read about Kamiya Hideki. He committed suicide in jail the night before he was gonna go to prison. Said he was innocent right up until his final day.”

Madarame’s eyes flicked to the stacks of Sayuris. “A curator approached me, offering to buy several, knowing full well they weren’t the original. I attempted to recreate the Sayuri, but only managed these… replicas,” he spat.

Yusuke reached a hand out at his teacher, pain and empathy etched in his face. “Sensei…”

That sense of a puzzle piece in the wrong place grew, like a thorn in Ann’s mind. She reached up and twirled a finger through the tip of a pigtail. “How could you make copies of a painting that was stolen? The police never recovered the Sayuri.”

Madarame’s mouth flapped open twice before he managed, “I… used a detailed photograph from an art book.”

Ann shook her head. “My parents may work in fashion instead of painting, but connoisseurs have a mega eye for detail. They could pick out the difference between seams sewn by Papa and Mama. There’s no way the kind of people who buy paintings would be fooled by something made from a copy of a photo.”

Yusuke wavered on his feet.

Madarame stamped his, the hand clenching the doorway squeezing tight. “What would a little tramp like you know? I’ve been fighting through the cut-throat world of art longer than you’ve been alive!”

Yusuke spun on the old man, his eyes narrow as he stepped between him and Ann. “Don’t speak such thoughtless things about Takamaki-san. Her virtue is as beyond reproach as her fortitude.”

Morgana leaped up at a painting on a sturdy easel off to one side, covered by a cloth. His claws caught and dragged the thin covering off.

Tuesday, 28 June 2016
Late Afternoon
Madarame s Museum

Akira swept his sub-machine gun around as he moved into the small control center crammed with computers and administrative desks. The others filed in behind him and they spread out to look for the security terminal so they could turn off the sector’s security. After a minute of checking, he came to a stop at the computers along the back. “Here it is.” A password input screen replaced the screen saver.

The others came up behind him, and Ryuji groaned at the computer screen. “Aw, man! How the eff we gonna get in now? We’re already in ‘rame’s head.”

Akira tapped a gloved knuckle against his lip as he wracked his brain. “He doesn’t seem to have a favorite squeeze. And he’s been careful with preventive measures, so it’s not like he’s got any kids to start with, much less favorite kids to name things after.”

Makoto set her shotgun down on the desk next to the keyboard. “If I may? One of the most common security problems I’ve had to speak to since joining Student Council has been easily broken passwords.” At the transfer student’s step out of the way, she sat down and typed Password 1.

The controls for the local area’s security replaced the login screen.

Akira scrunched his eyes shut and rubbed his forehead with his free hand. “I know he’s not Mishima, but holy shit that’s stupid.”

Tuesday, 28 June 2016
Late Afternoon
Shibuya, Madarame Atelier

As the old man gasped, his pupils shrinking to pinpricks, Yusuke turned to see what the noise was about. Then, he gasped as well and took a step closer. “This…” He whirled around on his teacher. “You said the real Sayuri was stolen!”

“It was!” Madarame gabbed. He shook his head, and when that tone sounded from his pocket started patting at his clothes for his phone. “That’s a replica!”

Yusuke swept his left hand at the standing piece, but his posture stood even straighter as he shouted back, “Rubbish! This is the painting which has inspired me, haunted me! This is the Sayuri!”

Madarame stomped a foot. “It’s a counterfeit! I… I bought it!”

Ann scrunched her nose. What had been a mysterious thorn in her mind now seemed more like a stink in the room. “You’re seriously trying to sell this as a counterfeit? We had tons of knockoffs in fashion, the ones that aren’t handed to the police for evidence are destroyed. What’s an artist who’s made it to the big-time doing buying counterfeits?”

Madarame straightened, all trace of the weak old man gone. He turned his most venomous glare on her. “I could understand this kind of stupidity from some slip of a girl.” The glare slid to the apprentice. “But I raised you better than this. After all I’ve done, after all I’ve given you, would you really turn against the man who taught you in the greatest pursuit of mankind?”

Yusuke took in a calm breath and stepped between Ann and his teacher. “A dispassionate eye shall discern the truth.” He pointed a hand to the standing painting. “And that is the painting which has driven my career since I thought to hold a brush.”

“Don’t you try and twist my words back on me,” the old man raged. He took in a quick breath and straightened, his flip phone in his hand, far more collected than she’d ever seen him. He hit a button and the tone ended. “I see that bimbo gaijin has already gotten her claws in you. No matter. The police can take their time with both of you.”

Ann’s breath caught in her throat.

From the pale, wide-eyed look on Yusuke, he seemed just as shocked, but found his control much faster. His hands curled closed and he fixed a steady gaze on his teacher. “Sensei, be reasonable. Takamaki-san has done nothing wrong. Neither of us have. There is no cause to speak ill of—”

Madarame’s glower remained unphased. “You can explain it to the police. They’ll be here in another minute.”

Morgana shouted, “Don’t just stand there! Retreat!” He led the charge out.

When Ann grabbed Yusuke’s hand to haul him out, Madarame stood out of her path but shouted, “There’s nowhere to run!”

She ignored him and ran down the groaning steps, but by the time they got to the ground floor, the front door flew open and two men in black private security uniforms stood beyond.

A sensation of ice water ran through Ann’s veins as she imagined those rent-a-cops arresting her, throwing her in a sham trial, and kicking her out of her home just like Akira faced. Worse than having to wait a few days to see Shiho… never seeing her best friend again. Her parents going broke and selling the apartment. The courts sending her to some strange, far-away city. Would she have rage boiling underneath like Akira if she didn’t have Shiho? Or would she even make it that far?

Her phone thumped against her thigh and Ann clenched her jaw. She wasn’t out of options yet. She reversed her run back up the stairs, but crashed into the apprentice in the narrow staircase. She snatched her smart phone out of her skirt pocket and hit the Metaverse Navigator.

Notes:

Haru, being on the outside, had a different perspective on Kiriko. The game shoehorned Haru in too long after the audience made emotional connections, if she was ever going to be relevant she needed to appear and act regularly. It felt odd for the developers to drop the ball like that when they did it right with Mitsuru in P3 and Rise in P4.

Iwai was a great character who I always thought would be right there to throw snark right back if game Akira wasn’t so passive.

Sometimes I think two different writers did Yusuke: the one who blackmailed Ann, then the one who joined the PTs and helped them the rest of the game but acted like a whole different person. In Daywatch I wanted there to be a clear sense of that being the same person on a path of growth.

Chapter 65: June 28th, Goemon

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Tuesday, 28 June 2016
After School
Madarame’s Museum

A panicked scream tore out of Ann’s throat as she plummeted who-knew-how-far through empty air before landing in Yusuke’s outstretched arms. The impact sent the pair toppling to a tangle of limbs sprawled on the ground. The impact dazed both teens and she blinked, trying to figure out where they were. Looking up, Ann saw polished gold and frowned. She was about to mutter how that didn’t help her, until she followed the gold up along a spiral of students, each lifting up the next one. “The Infinite Spring…”

Yusuke’s hand flopped onto a boob and squeezed.

Ann squeaked and her body lashed out, knocking the sitting apprentice sprawling back with a pained groan. As soon as she got onto her feet, embarrassment flooded her face with heat. “Sorry! Are you okay?”

Yusuke pushed himself up to all fours, his eyes wide and breathing still rapid. “Where am I?” His wide eyes, jerking about their surroundings, locked onto hers, then gave her a once over. Then another. A blush touched his cheeks. “W-Who are you? Where is this?”

She held out her hands, feeling what comfort she could from the familiarity of seeing the leather of her Phantom Thief costume on her outstretched arms. “Calm down, Kitagawa-kun.” When his brows still arched in confusion and breathing refused to slow down, she twirled in the same pose she gave for Madarame when she tried to pretend to be his model. “Remember?”

Yusuke looked her up and down, a little more analytic than last time, though his blush still deepened. “T… Takamaki-san? I did ask you to model, but did not expect something so… bold.”

She covered her chest with her hand, her self-consciousness smothering her. “It… it’s not safe. We’d better get out of Madarame’s Palace.”

Standing, Yusuke looked her in the eye. “Palace? Takamaki-san, are you sure you’re quite all right? Where are we?” He turned to take in the large, circular room with leafless trees painted against the sides, until he spotted a banner proclaiming the greatness of Madarame. That brought his gaze up to the spiral. Yusuke backed up, his jacket falling forgotten from his hand. His lip curled in disgust as he took in the giant gold statue. “What is that gaudy monstrosity?”

Listening for Shadows, Ann drew her pistol and turned on her gun-light. “It’s called the Infinite Spring.” She paced forward and held the light on the placard for him to read.

After a moment of trepidation at the weapon, he shuffled forward and read. By the time he straightened, his eyes narrowed and his hands curled into fists. “For the rest of their lives? I do not pretend Sensei is perfect, Takamaki, but this prank of yours has gone on for quite long enough. I ask you return me to the atelier at once.”

Ann’s hands jerked down to her sides. She took in a quick breath and swallowed. The apprentice couldn’t be in the best frame of mind right now. “Look, I know this may all seem hard to believe, but this place… is Madarame’s heart. This is how he views the real world. Every thing and person in it are all tools to be exploited, like paintings to be rented out.”

Yusuke stomped to retrieve what appeared to be his uniform jacket and folded it over his left arm. “Sensei took me in when my mother died. Raised me for ten years in the greatest pursuit of mankind.”

That anger in his eyes reminded Ann of Yuuki when she asked if anything happened in volleyball: a hatred of one’s own impotence. Just the thought opened a cold pit in her stomach. Yuu-kun lied to her, knowing she knew it was a lie, but she would not let the same thing happen again. Ann’s gloved fist clenched. “Fine, you want to see the truth? Come see what Madarame thinks of you.” She turned off the gun-light and stormed up the ramps rising up the sides of the room to the second level. The door banged as she barged through it, the confused apprentice hot on her heels.

Storming into the inner gallery, the six portraits stretched out before them. She came to a stop next to the placard for Yusuke’s portrait and turned her gun-light back on, then shined it up at the stylized painting.

Yusuke opened his mouth, then closed it. His stony lack of expression ticked her off, but she couldn’t decide if that was just his mannerism, or if thwarting her was his reason for doing so. After a long moment, he confessed, “This… is Sensei’s style.”

Somehow, the hesitant admission only made Ann even more pissed off. She stomped to his side-hall where that painting with the tree of flaming colors, anger in every brush stroke. She pointed her pistol to make sure it was illuminated.

To his credit, Yusuke held his stoic composure, though only just. She caught the momentary widening of his eyes and flaring of his nostrils. “This… I only finished this three weeks ago. It has never been on display before. How did you get a replica of it here—?”

“It’s not a knockoff,” she snapped, lowering her pistol. She reached a hand out to try to encourage him. “Here, just… touch it. You’ll see how two-faced Madarame is.”

As one, they placed their fingertips on the frame.

Madarame’s Atelier, Master Workshop

Madarame paused in the atelier’s upper workshop for one last look at Yusuke’s latest. His production had been slowing of late, as if his speaking alone had not been sparse enough since Hitoshi-kun’s selfish act of defiance. With his own paintings coming only once a month and receiving lukewarm reviews from critics, something would have to be done. Yusuke claimed nothing was wrong, but the powerful brush strokes reminded the aged painter of sword slashes. The impotent rage cried out no matter how much he counseled the boy to detached stoicism.

He sighed and set it on the brown packaging paper, folded, and tied it. Kuraya’s men would be in any minute to collect the latest addition to Madarame’s burgeoning collection of masterpieces. His feelers hadn’t reported any offerings for One Forest Flame yet, but the collector in London offering fifty million yen for a Sayuri would be more than enough to cover a relaxing spa trip in Sapporo with this month’s mistress.

Madarame’s Museum

Ann stepped back, a shiver of disgust passing through her entire body. The apprentice’s heavy step back thumped despite the deep carpet. As close as she stood, she could see a trembling in his arms. His breathing came in labored gasps. She grabbed his arm to keep him from stumbling into any other memory-paintings. “Kitagawa-kun!”

He ripped his arm out of her grip and ran back to the gallery hall bearing six apprentices all in those enormous, timid portraits. He tripped and fell to all fours, his breathing labored.

“Intruder!” A Shadow van Damme bellowed from the door to the Infinite Spring, before its body collapsed into a puddle of inky black, out of which rose a trio of those watery tarts Ryuji kept ogling last time.

“Keep back, Kitagawa.” Ann turned her pistol on one of the watery tarts and summoned her inner self. “Carmen!”

The sensual dancer’s thorned whip lashed out, wrapping around one of the blue-skinned women and using her as a projectile to slam into the other one. Her pistol barked out against the third until it collapsed in dissolving ash. The wet woman struck by her thorn-wrapped companion shot a bolt of ice at Carmen, the bolt shattering against the dancer’s lacy dress.

Ann grimaced, but she’d been punched harder by jealous girls in middle school. Carmen lifted the still-wrapped one to bludgeon the free one and slammed that same ensnared Shadow into the floor where it dissolved. The winded Shadow left danced forward to attempt a backhanded slap against Carmen, this one leaving a sharp sting on Ann. Carmen’s last lash sent it stumbling back into dissolving ash. Dismissing her Persona, Ann turned back to the artist.

Yusuke had fallen and backpedaled into the wall.

His eyes only spared her pistol a moment before flitting to the spots on the floor where the Shadows dissolved, then back at her. “W-What…? What were those things? What was that?” he finished, waving a hand at where Carmen was.

“It’s okay, Kitagawa-kun,” she said, reaching out both hands. When he flinched back from the pistol, she lowered that hand but left the other reaching out. “That was Carmen. My inner self. And those things were Shadows. I don’t really know how to explain them, Byakko would be the one to ask about that. They congregate in Palaces like this.”

Yusuke turned his still wide eyes left, then right. “Takamaki-san, this is a museum.”

Ann scowled. “I’m doing the best I can, okay? I’m not the Metaverse expert. This is the truth hidden inside Madarame’s heart.”

His dark eyes stared at the museum around them as if expecting Shadows to pop out of every, well, shadow. His hands curled. “If this is a place showing the world as he sees it, where is the Sayuri?”

Ann shifted her weight to her other foot. “I… don’t know. We haven’t seen it yet.”

Manic laughter bubbled out of the apprentice and he held his head in one hand. He shoved himself to his feet, his very ordinary-looking black polo shirt and blue jeans clashing with his intimidating aura. “You tell me this place is Madarame’s heart, and then claim there is no sign of the Sayuri in it? I did not believe a maiden like you to be possessed of madness, Takamaki-san.”

Ann started to point at him before remembering that was her gun hand. She pointed with her left. “All right, first of all, call me ‘Panther’ here. Code names help protect us.” Her raised hand wavered. “I… have no idea what to call you. I mean, you shouldn’t even be here, I should be getting you out so you don’t get hurt.”

He crossed his arms, something vulnerable as well as adorable about his intense contemplation. “This past hour has soured me to the great masters of impressionism. If I must take on the name of another, it must be… ‘Da Vinci’.”

Ann held her head in her hand. “Fine. Now come on, let’s get you out.”

They proceeded through the gallery to the Infinite Spring, but froze before stepping out. At the lower level stood two Shadow van Dammes being berated by an even taller Shadow wearing what she’d swear some kind of old-style Japanese court robe woven out of glimmering gold. “Then call out the reserves and double the guard, you worthless buffoons! Heretics have threatened the Sayuris! Nobody must be allowed to get in!”

“Sir!” The Shadow van Dammes said along with a modern salute. One disappeared out the door to the lobby, the other began a long circuit of the enormous circular room bearing the polished gold statue. The Shadow wearing red and gold took position next to the placard, then turned to face out and just stood there.

“Shit,” Ann hissed. She’d been really syncing well with Carmen lately, but taking on two Shadow van Dammes at once felt like too big a gamble. The tall, thin one dressed in something as gaudy as the museum’s exterior looked sent a shiver up her spine. She glanced at the artist with his white uniform jacket clenched in one hand. “The rest of the team was supposed to be opening up the way in. If we’re lucky, we can meet up with them. Say close to me and do not be seen.”

She slipped through the doors back to the inner gallery. The doors to the gallery opened and a Shadow van Damme strode in with a noticeable nervousness to its steps. She yanked Yusuke into the first side hall as the Shadow guard’s blood-red flashlight jerked left and right. That cone of disconcerting red shone into their side-hall—

Ann pulled the trigger twice, her first shot grazing the guard but the second shot shattering the flashlight. “Fuck yeah! Take that, you head-shotting ninety-percent accuracy bastard!”

The van Damme collapsed into a puddle of black goo in less than a second. Out of it rose one of those red-skinned fairy girls Ryuji kept ogling, something that looked like a two-meter long wolf ran over by a semi-truck, and one of those annoying onion-headed burnt chicken monsters which didn’t even notice the curse energy from Akira’s Persona.

“Dance, Carmen!”

Her Persona sprung out, a lash of her thorned whip loosing a bolt of ice at the leggy fairy and knocking it tumbling to the ground. A follow-up lash at the burnt chicken monster knocked it stumbling back.

The flattened wolf opened its jaws, but instead of a simple howl, it blasted a ray of sickly white energy at Carmen.

The burnt chicken monster lunged at Carmen, leaving it too close to make effective use of its thorned whip. Ann backed up her Persona and aimed her own pistol at the beast, riddling it with bullets until it fell over backwards and dissolved.

Carmen slung another bolt of ice into the standing red fairy, disintegrating it.

The reprieve was enough for the flattened canine to howl another ray of energy at Carmen, the blow hitting Ann like a spiked volleyball. The girl snarled at the Shadow and cast out a hand.

Carmen struck with a flurry of lashes from her thorned whip, leaving Ann winded, but succeeded in cutting down the remaining monster.

After several moments of hard breathing, she felt a hand take her arm and help pull her up to stand. She looked up to see Yusuke there, his eyebrows pinched together. “You… You were in pain. When those monsters hit that specter.”

She forced a smile and stood away from his supportive grip. “It… It’s my inner self. Don’t worry about me, let’s just focus on catching up to the others.”

Her stride faltered, but he kept very close behind her until they came to the courtyard lit by so many lights it resembled day. With the lasers all gone, she breathed a sigh of relief. “At least that’s one thing that went right today.” With her breath returned and little cover, she ran across the broad courtyard for the gaping double-doors opening into a new stretch of the museum.

She almost made it to the door when a Shadow van Damme stepped out from behind the doorframe. “Thief!” Another Shadow van Damme stepped out from behind the other side of the doorway. The sound of rubber soles on the paving stones alerted Ann to the approach of yet another Shadow van Damme walking alongside one of those tall Shadows wearing the gaudy, woven-from-gold old-style Japanese clothing. More footsteps drew her attention back to the courtyard exit past the now-open wing-painted doors, where another two Shadow van Dammes flanked an approaching man in the same gold kimono as the towering Shadows, but where they all wore ceramic face masks, this man seemed human but for the gold glow of his irises. His hair was done up in what might have been intended to look like some old-style Japanese top knot, but made her think more of a swaying palm tree. White makeup caked his face, a dark red square of lipstick breaking up the white monotony.

“Ugh,” Ann said. “Mom and dad would never let one of their models down the runway like that.”

Beside her, Yusuke went ramrod straight, almost every muscle tensing. “S-Sensei?”

Ann looked from the apprentice to the gaudy man in gold glittering in the courtyard’s bright lights. It wasn’t until he called the name that she put the topography of the face here together with the humble man losing the battle to rage in that store room. “Madarame?”

The extravagant man lifted his hands. “What do you think of the magnificent Madarame’s museum? As spectacular a work as the works it holds, is it not?”

Yusuke trembled beside her. “It… It can’t be. Selling false Sayuris to that deputy curator…” He held his head in his hand. “Sensei was so humble. Disdained the distractions of materialism. The atelier…”

Shadow Madarame let out a belly-shaking laugh. “You’ve seen enough plays to know an act, Yusuke. That rusting shack? Set dressing. The public adores nothing more than an artist on the brink of death. And poverty is death. An artist of my worth has four mansions.” His lips turned up in a disturbing smile. “Each one with a subservient mistress.”

“But, all that about marriage being a form of death…” Yusuke said, gasping in air. “You told Nakanohara-senpai even taking a girlfriend was sacrificing a vital portion of the artist’s pure soul.”

Ann felt a snarl crawl across her face. “You bastard. No wonder so many of your apprentices suicided, you wouldn’t even let them make friends outside your cleverly disguised sweatshop!”

Yusuke’s eyes trembled, the hints of unshed tears building. “The Sayuri in that storage room. You said the real one was stolen… and why would you make copies of such a sacred treasure?”

Shadow Madarame rolled his golden eyes. “Does Kosei give you such little education in theater? There was no theft. That play was my genius, and it made the value of each Sayuri skyrocket.”

Yusuke’s jacket trembled in his hand. “H… How?”

Turning to the Shadow van Damme on his left, Shadow Madarame crouched and spoke in a stage whisper, “I found the real painting, but it can’t go public. For a special price, it can join your private collection.” He turned back to the two teenagers, the smile just a little too wide to fit a natural human face, guffawing all the while. “Everybody likes thinking they’re getting preferential treatment. Art snobs couldn’t throw their cash at me fast enough!”

Ann spat at him. “I knew you were drowning in vainglory before, but that’s a new level of low. You cheapen art by throwing it around like some common commodity.”

Shadow Madarame tisked, slipping his hands in his voluminous sleeves. “Art’s value has always been subjective. You have no grounds to look down on a legitimate business transaction. Brats like you never could’ve come up with such a brilliant scheme!” He cackled. “Such a pity I lost such a skilled money launderer to the Phantom Thief. A good thing I never put all my eggs in his basket.”

Ann’s grimace twisted at her face. “Is all you think about money? And what about the hundreds of paintings you plagiarized from your students? They’re the ones who should be getting the recognition for the art they toiled over.”

Madarame waved her away as if her accusation were an annoying fly. “Art is nothing more than a tool for fame and wealth. Those milksops wouldn’t know the first thing about negotiating the sale of art. If those paintings were left to them, they’d have been undersold at criminal rates.”

Ann pointed her pistol at him. “What happened to inspiring art around the world? The Madarame Foundation? Making the next century’s greatest painting?”

Shadow Madarame groaned, his eyes swiveling ceilingward again. “Success isn’t about making things, you naive fool. Value doesn’t exist until the sale is made!” His golden gaze fell on the apprentice. “And if you ever hope to have value, you’ll continue contributing to the magnificent Madarame.”

Yusuke shook his head, holding his jacket close. “How could such a man take me in?”

Laughter pealed out from Madarame and he clutched his belly. “How could I not? Children are desperate to be wanted, their empty minds hungry to be filled. All I needed was to train them like a carnival man would a monkey.”

Ann’s gun-hand trembled. “I thought Kamoshida was disgusting, but he was just an opportunist. You went out of your way to create suffering just so you could profit on it.”

Shadow Madarame shook his head in disappointment. “Livestock are reared and slaughtered for their hides and meat. Why should it be any different for human calves?”

Ann’s lips peeled back to bare her teeth. “I’ve heard more than enough. Carmen!”

The dancer in a dark, lacy dress coalesced, her spiked heels slamming into the pavement stones hard enough to cause cracks. Not to be outdone, the Shadow van Dammes making a square around Shadow Madarame collapsed into puddles of inky black. Out of them rose a dozen quivering, gelatinous masses.

Yusuke turned to check their retreat. A pair of human-sized paper cutouts replaced the Shadow van Damme there, flanking the Goldie standing in the middle of the doorway with its arms crossed. Yusuke bared a snarl at them. “Make way!”

“The only way to take is what the magnificent Madarame creates,” its deep voice rumbled. “The only reality is the one his genius creates.”

Ann’s teeth ground. “Why are all you monsters so god-damn arrogant?”

Carmen twirled her thorned whip around itself, a frosty gale growing until unleashing a bolt of ice at each one of the slimes. Two froze, but the rest shook off the impact and threw themselves at her inner self.

Her Persona dodged with twirling grace, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to keep this up. “Get back, Yusuke!” Ann lined up her pistol on Madarame’s Shadow and pulled the trigger.

One of the slimy mounds reared up, throwing itself into the path of the bullet and disintegrating.

A wave of force threw Ann off her feet. Yusuke struck the stone edge of a planter with the crack of bone. Where Goldie had been stood a bird almost four meters tall. White plumage covered the Phoenix’s body, gold feathers shining in its wings and brilliant red in its long tail-feathers. A golden twirl rose up from just behind its glaring gold eyes.

“The price of insolence is death,” Madarame spat, his voice fading behind them.

Goldie growled, stretched its wings wide, then snapped a sudden flap which blasted a wave of heat over them. This time both teens braced, even as cinders danced in the scorching air.

Yusuke slipped to his knees clamping his hands over his head as he whimpered in pain.

The sight only stoked the cold fury in Ann’s heart. “Show them why the blizzard is feared, Carmen!”

Her Persona danced, twirling that barbed whip above her as a swirl of frigid winds whipped around them all. The Phoenix squinted against the frosty gale and the slimes all struggled to brace against it until she let that power go in a sudden burst. Two of the slimes dissolved and another three froze in icy rime, but the rest slid back.

Carmen leaped at the enormous avian enemy, her whip slashing against its chest.

Phoenix spread its wings and opened its beak, roaring a torrent of flames at her Persona.

Ann screamed at the agony of every cell in her body lighting on fire. She crumpled and her Persona tumbled, until the stream of fire pushed it to the concrete wall.

“No!” Yusuke bellowed. “Stop this!”

The Phoenix settled back to the middle of the expansive courtyard. “There is a price for failing to bow to the world offered you by the magnificent Madarame. To reject what is given you by the very highest—”

Yusuke lifted the pistol he scooped up from the ground next to Ann’s fallen body. “No man is above the truth!” Mimicking her stance, he aimed and pulled the trigger. Despite his poor posture, against a bird the size of a house, his shot struck the Phoenix in the chest.

Phoenix spread its wings wide. “You, who steal from the generosity of the magnificent Madarame, think your weak ignorance stands a chance against him?” It spat a ball of fire straight at the apprentice.

Yusuke braced behind both arms. The fire exploded with a ka-woosh, skin cracking and flesh charring. He his grip on the pistol failed as he grunted against pain threatening to overwhelm him. “So many children adored you as father…”

Condemning whispers grew in the air around them. A tremor passed through the courtyard. A booming voice declared despite the apprentice’s clenched mouth, “Eyes can only look upon a deplorable imitation for so long.”

Yusuke’s teeth clenched and his fingers dug into his dark hair.

The lights flickered and that voice like Yusuke’s but too deep rumbled again, “Have you had your fill of averting your eyes from the truth?

The slimes bounded forward. Despite her own pain, Ann sent Carmen at them, her thorned whip lashing back and forth at the sheer mass of them. Every blow from them felt like a spiked volleyball, but if Yuuki could take it, so could she.

A crackle filled the air, a faint metallic tang growing. “This world is filled with both beauty and vice. Let us forge a contract and show them which is which!

As her hair stood up, she watched Yusuke’s pained struggles grow still. “Even though flowers of evil bloom, abominations are fated to parish.”

Crackles of energy flowed between his fingers and with puff of blue flames, a white mask appeared over his face. Yusuke clutched at it and tugged, his entire face jerking. He reached higher, dug in and tore, howling as skin ripped and blood flowed.

Phoenix sucked in breath, the furnace within flickering brighter.

Blinding lightning exploded all around them. When the blinding glare cleared, scorches marred the paving stone underneath him but Yusuke stood tall. Once garbed in paint-stained T-shirt and jeans, he now wore a black jumpsuit. Something looking like a striped fox tail wrapped around his waist and dangled down behind him. A collar even higher than Akira’s coat jutted up, and all sign of broken arm or charred flesh was gone. In lieu of Madarame, Yusuke howled at the Phoenix. “How many dreams did you sell for riches?”

“Perish, thief,” Phoenix said before giving a single mighty beat of its wings. Its beak yawned open and flames roared out in a wide fan, gushing over the courtyard.

Yusuke dove in front of Ann and rose an arm in warding. “Goemon!”

Lightning lanced down, but the figure of the Persona was obscured by the veritable storm of flames washing over the courtyard. Yusuke ground his teeth against the pain of the flames.

The flames weren’t quite loud enough to overpower the sound of a heavy motorcycle coming in from the hall behind them, charging through the flames as if they were an insignificant breeze, until Johanna stood like a wall between the Phoenix, Ann and Yusuke, the flames parting around it. The instant Phoenix’s flames died down, flames sputtered over that magnificent tank of a motorcycle.

Warm motes washed over Ann, the feeling of being burned all the way to the bone vanishing.

Makoto locked eyes with the model, grim resolve in her face. “The others are on the way. Who’s mister lightning?”

Ann flexed her limbs to work out the phantom sensation of charred flesh inside her body. “Yusuke. He finally gave up defending Madarame.”

Phoenix beat its wings, sending another pulse of scalding wind battering the teens. “Bow down, thieves!”

Flaming wheels swirled and Johanna shot over the courtyard, swiping around to bash Phoenix’s feet, but the bird spread its wings and hopped up in the air over her. Makoto whipped out her shotgun and blasted it with a pulse of shredding winds just before she wheeled past.

“Goemon!” Yusuke cried, the commands coming from instinct, just like Ann remembered when she first called out Carmen.

A Persona shaped like a man, clad in resplendent robes edged in bold blue, with bright red gathered pants stood on the tallest wood sandals she’d ever seen. Ropes binding its waist and tying down its oversized purple outer-layer looped larger than she’d ever seen on the showiest kabuki. It lifted the largest smoking pipe ever to its lips and blew, a veritable cloud pouring out of it and just hovering above everything in the courtyard for a beat.

Then lightning rained down on the Phoenix, driving it to the ground in a growl.

A wing beat drove Makoto on Johanna away and forced Ann and Yusuke to brace behind one of the stone planters. The instant the force passed, Ann popped back up. Carmen coalesced in a wink of motes of light, lashing her thorned whip at the giant monster.

Goemon slashed its pipe and the axe blade in the end of it at Phoenix’s other wing.

Ryuji yelling, “Gimme a boost!” was her only warning to take cover before Captain Kidd shot out of the ostentatious hall as if from a cannon, his cutlass burying up to the hilt in Phoenix’s chest.

Phoenix beat its wings, battering Kidd away in the scorching gale.

Morgana and Akira dashed out of the gold-wallpaper hallway, the team leader looking behind to the dyed blond hot on their heels. “Smash the small fry with me, Reaper. Joker, hold off that big bird until we secure the flanks.”

“All who turn against the magnificent Madarame are fated to perish!” Phoenix bellowed, a red glow growing deep from inside its mouth. “Bow down!”

“Yeah, no.” Akira shot a burst from his silenced sub-machine gun, then summoned what appeared to be a dog monster so long it made Ann think of an eel. After a brief glance over her, he shifted his focus to Yusuke. After a moment of intense scrutiny, Akira braced behind his gun. “Show us what you’re made of.”

Yusuke gave a thankful nod and turned to the enormous Phoenix playing keep-away with Johanna. “I learned much from you, Madarame. That a dispassionate eye is required to discern authenticity. That diligence is required to overcome sloppiness.” No longer holding a weapon, he pointed his empty hand at the giant monster. “I will no longer be held back by your lies! Goemon!”

With a hand to his face, the theatrical Persona coalesced, and blew another cloud which lanced a heavy blast of lightning into Phoenix. The towering beast tripped and slid to the paving stones.

Morgana slotted another bolt in his crossbow. “Give it all you’ve got, everyone!”

As one, the Phantom Thieves descended on the Shadow, and it dissolved in a puff of smoke.

Ann turned to offer a high-five to Yusuke when he collapsed to his knees, blue flames washing over him and returning him to his humble shirt and jeans. “Kitagawa-kun!”

Akira and the track star lifted up the fading artist between them. “Well, that answers one question.” His eyes stopped on Ann. “You good?”

She searched the scorched grass for her pistol. The upper cowling jutted back, leaving an empty chamber exposed. “One of you should take the front. I’m running on empty, in both senses.”

Morgana nodded and led the party through the museum, avoiding what fights they could, to the skylight where Ryuji carried the artist up and out.

The Phantom Thieves collapsed against the shiny roof, just breathing for what felt like a full minute. Morgana spent the last of his energy patching up the injuries with Zorro, then let himself fall with them. After they recovered enough breath to sit up, the leader turned his cute catboy eyes on the artist, narrowed in anger. “What are you doing here? The plan—”

“Didn’t survive contact with Madarame,” Ann explained. “Security’s up in the whole Palace, and they had some guards who gave me a really bad vibe just past that Infinite Spring thing.”

Akira started breaking down his gun and stuffed the pieces in a pocket inside his longcoat. “You okay?” His grey eyes flicked to the apprentice. “What happened?”

With her joints no longer screaming, Ann brushed a pigtail off her shoulder to give herself a moment to think. “I’m fine. Turns out Madarame had some kind of contingency to call the police if anyone got inside that one room.” She held up her hands, unsure quite what to do with them as the excitement of retelling the story flooded her veins. “You should’ve seen it. It might not have been quite as big as that loft place you stay it, but it was stacked with copies of the Sayuri.”

Yusuke grunted, leaning on his left arm to lever himself off his folded white jacket. “Taka—I mean Panther-san. Who are they?”

Makoto and Ryuji, slumped next to each other against a rising side of the gold-plated building, shared a glance before they then looked to the team leader. Smirk held high, Morgana answered, sweeping his short arm through the air with all the theatricality of a Phantom Thief, “Stylish gentleman – and ladies – who seek out the most rotten of hearts and change them.”

Akira peeked out over the edge of the building, then turned back to the others, one knee down and the other raised as if preparing to spring back in the skylight. Steel-grey eyes swung to hers. “How’d he get in after you?”

Ann shifted her weight to her far foot. “Had to use the Nav to escape the police.”

A beat passed before his head nodded. “Okay.” Grunting as he rose to his feet, Akira held out a hand. “You all right?”

Yusuke groused. “I have seen Madarame sell his most precious… no, copies of his most precious work. I have seen the hanging portraits of what he thinks of all his students. I have seen him offer away my work just hours after lecturing me on how dangerous, how impure letting my thoughts dwell on money or fame is.” His dark eyes flitted to Ann, then down as shame reddened and tugged his face down. “So no, I am not all right.”

Makoto slipped her shotgun off her shoulder and began disassembly. “That was why you became so angry when we brought up the plagiarism, isn’t it?”

Yusuke shrugged, his gaze falling even further away. “Strange people have been coming by for years, and the plagiarism was an everyday affair. Even so… Madarame raised me since mother died when I was four, vouched for me when I needed a recommendation for a scholarship at Kosei.”

Makoto knelt next to them, her red eyes peering into his. “I know all of this must hurt, but… surely leaving—”

“To where?” Yusuke looked up at her, vestigial defiance in his face even though exhaustion had claimed the rest of his body and he struggled to keep his eyes open. “And how? To leave that place would mean slandering… no, but telling the whole world that my master was an awful man.” He rubbed his eyes, then looked over at the track star disassembling his rifle. “I must commend your courage in bringing real firearms to engage those monsters.”

Makoto shook her head. “Oh, we couldn’t afford real firearms. These are just models.”

Yusuke stared at the rifle, then swung his dark gaze back at the open skylight. “But…”

Ann half-lifted a lazy hand at the track star. “If it looks real, the Metaverse treats it like it is.”

Akira extended his hand further. “Listen, this has been a really trying day for all of us, but you especially need to get somewhere safe for some rest.”

Ann shot to her feet. “Oh, shit!”

The others all stood, Ryuji snapping the upper and lower receiver of his rifle back together. “What?”

Ann scratched her scalp. “Madarame saw us both break into that room with all the duplicates of the Sayuri. Said he’d throw the police at both of us.”

Morgana let out a breath as he looked over the team. “I’d say we’ve done all we can here. We managed to shut off the laser grid and open the roller doors on the outer perimeter, but without having an exact map of his Palace, we can’t know exactly what’s in store for us. At a minimum, we know there’s an inner perimeter defending his Treasure. We’ll rest and come back for it later.”

Yusuke accepted Akira’s hand up, folded his white jacket again, and followed the rest of the Phantom Thieves over the outer gardens to the street. After hopping off the truck, he looked down at his legs, then arms and the rest of him. “Wait a moment. Did my clothes change?”

Ryuji boggled. “They did, but they changed back, like, ‘soon as that monster bird kicked the bucket. Yer just noticin’ now?”

Morgana rolled his eyes. “Come on, everyone. To the real world.”

“Real?” Yusuke murmured, then wavered on his feet. Ann tried to catch him, but almost fell, herself. After the longcoated teen steadied them, she followed him to a small nook between two more modern residential buildings on the same street as the ostentatious museum.

Tuesday, 28 June 2016
Early Evening
Shibuya, outside Madarame Atelier

Akira felt himself fall a couple centimeters to the ground, his feet impacting concrete sidewalk cracked but not yet broken from past earthquakes. No matter how many transitions they made between the Metaverse and real world, it always seemed to change things up on them just a little. At least the tiny nook sharing space with a concrete utility pole was a few houses away from Madarame’s shack and provided them cover. The team leaned against the wood property wall, everyone’s eyelids heavy… except Kitagawa, who stood street-side and looked ready to topple from his feet. Akira clapped a hand on the artist’s shoulder. “You okay?”

Hollowed, dark grey eyes stared down at him. “I… feel like a gourd someone scooped out the insides from. How do all of you manage it?”

Makoto gave a small smile, betraying no trace of exhaustion despite zipping around the front all day on Johanna. “Waking up to your Persona takes a lot out of you, though something about the Metaverse is always a little tiring.”

Ryuji rearranged his disassembled gun in the bottom of his school satchel to make sure it was hidden. “You gonna be good goin’ back to the shack?”

“I…” A whole new form of weariness wrote over Kitagawa’s face and he drew his phone, enhanced by the deep red sunlight making the slow transition to purple as evening fell. “No new messages.”

Adjusting her school satchel on her shoulder, Ann scanned the apprentice. “I don’t like this. He was mad, and looked straight at you when he said he’d throw the cops at us.”

Ryuji stroked his chin as he scrutinized the artist. “Oh! If he’s got a Persona, what’a we call him when we go in next?”

Yusuke straightened. “Da Vinci.”

Akira shrugged. “Doesn’t matter to me.”

Ryuji’s posture slumped and an eyebrow arched. “Zabinshi?”

Sighing, Morgana paced in a circle. “It’s going to have to be something Reaper can say.”

Akira fought to keep a smirk off his lips. “That cuts down a lot of possibilities.”

“Eff you, dude,” Ryuji tossed back with a roll of his eyes.

Yusuke pointed at the pacing cat. “Pardon the interruption, but are hallucinations a common side-effect of gaining a Persona? I thought your cat just talked.” He looked around. “And where is that masked boy who was leading you?”

Morgana reared up with a growl. “It’s me! I’m not a cat, this form is what distortion in the Metaverse did to me!”

Akira took off his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose. “He only looks like a cat in this world. He isn’t actually one.”

Ryuji chuckled and flashed a smirk bearing too-perfect teeth. “Tough to tell, sometimes.” He re-focused on the artist and tapped a fist against his chin in thought. “Well, you got that funky mask, and that tail. Whaddabout abura-age?”

Morgana and Makoto both snorted back laughter.

Yusuke shook out his white jacket and folded it over his left arm. “If we must.”

Morgana’s eyes widened, aghast. “He went for something like that?”

Ann shot a frosty glare at the track star. “Not. Happening.” She looked over at the transfer student and saw him fighting off a smirk. “You got any bright ideas?”

Pressing a fist against his mouth to smother chuckles, Akira tried to think of an alternative. But with those weird mannerisms? That jumping from flighty to intense? The white mask and silly pin-on tail? “Clown.”

Makoto pressed the heel of her palm against her temple. “I think one Joker is more than enough. How about something simple like Fox?”

Ryuji tapped his right foot against the pavement for a moment. “Literal’s as simple as ya can get. Not bad, Rider. Nice to get a good one from the brains of the outfit.”

When the artist nodded, Morgana preened as if it was him who accomplished something. “Excellent. Your code name shall be ‘Fox’ from now on.”

Ryuji stepped out to the street and stretched his arms up. “I’ll go spot the shack.”

Akira gave him a single, solemn nod.

Kitagawa brought up his phone’s contact list and opened a line to Madarame. The other Phantom Thieves leaned close to listen in. “Sensei?”

“Yusuke?” The old man’s weak voice slid out of the smart phone. “Where are you?”

Kitagawa held his phone away to stare at it a moment as if attempting to decipher an alien language. After a moment he swallowed, straightened, and said, “I believe I am still in Shibuya, Sensei.”

“Yes, yes,” the master artist’s impatient voice clucked. “Where?”

The transfer student’s phone rumbled and he brought up the chat. Ryuji sent a message, [There's fuzz inside listening on one of those fancy headsets. One of them saw me, I have to take another route.]

Akira brought up the virtual keyboard. [Smart. We'll text you if anything happens. See you at school tomorrow.] He held up the screen to make sure the other thieves saw the report.

Madarame spoke again, his tone firmer than last time. “Tell me where you are, Yusuke-kun. I’ll send the driver to get you.” A note of sweetness and maybe just a touch of pleading slipped into the undercurrents. “Is that gaijin with you?”

Yusuke’s eyebrow arched. “It is almost night-time. Your driver has off at seventeen-hundred.”

“It will be no trouble, I’ll send someone to get you,” Madarame said, his tone just a little too saccharine. “Just tell me where you are, and I can have someone pick you and that gaijin up.”

Akira motioned his hand in a slashing movement across his throat.

Yusuke tilted his head. “Don’t be ridiculous, nobody is dead.”

Ann and Makoto both brought palm to face.

“Dead?” Madarame spluttered, nervous laughter following. “No, m’boy. Nobody’s dead as long as you and that gaijin come right. Back. Home.”

Yusuke swallowed.

Madarame’s voice sputtered over the phone, distant and fragmented as if holding his end far away from his mouth. “Can’t you imbeciles find one confounded phone? What’s the point of hiding GPS locators in these contraptions if you can’t use them?”

The sound of speech too low and distorted to make the transmission warbled.

“Idiots! Do you have any idea what it would look like to the Madarame Foundation for the police to arrest my only pupil in public?”

Akira surged forward to grab the phone out of the artist’s stunned hands, cut the call and power it down.

Ann lay her hand on the artist’s shoulder. “Kitagawa-kun, I’m… I’m sorry.”

“No.” The artist shook his head. “Deep down… I knew who he was. What he was. That was why I treated you all with such venom. You refused to accept my willful blindness.” He stretched his back, took in a breath, then stepped back and sank to one knee, his back hunching until it touched his raised knee. “Forgive me—”

Akira stepped forward to take him by the arms and pull him up. “Kitagawa-san, if there’s one thing life and history has taught me, it’s that man should kneel to God alone. Never to his fellow man.” He looked aside and caught his upperclassman staring at him. “What?”

“That was…” She uncrossed her arms and huffed to get out tension. “…surprisingly deep.” She turned to Kitagawa and shifted her weight to her other foot. “What are we going to do, though? He needs to stay somewhere.”

Morgana coughed to get their attention from his short stature. “Well, would you be able to board him with you, Nightrider?”

Pink tinged her cheeks. “There’s enough room on the couch, but Big Sis would never allow a boy in the flat. Not without far more scrutiny than we can afford.”

Akira handed Yusuke his phone back, then drew his own again and brought up the chat with the track star. [You got a spot for a night?]

Kitagawa bowed at the waist at the upperclassman. “Thank you for the thought, but I shall stay with Takamaki-san.”

She jerked back. “No, you are not. Mama and Papa are still in Tokyo, so there’s not even a spare bed.”

Akira blushed when the first thought to pass through his head was Ryuji’s likely joke of the artist not needing a separate bed to stay with Ann.

His phone buzzed and the transfer student looked down to the response from Ryuji. [Dude, I wasn't kidding when I said we don't even have room for a cat. Even if I wanted to, Mom would kill me.]

Stooping to let the team leader in his satchel, Akira sighed and stood up. “Come on. I’ve got a couch in the loft you can use.”

Morgana poked his head out of the satchel. “Are you sure Boss would approve?”

“He’ll have to,” Akira said, his steel-grey eyes falling. “We all had a part to play in souring things between you and Madarame. There were a million times I wish people had given me a safe place away from the Old Bastard to go. It wouldn’t be right for me to ask if I wasn’t willing to give the same to people when they need it from me.” He looked down at Yusuke’s paint-stained shirt and jeans, and the white jacket in his hands. “I can pay for your tickets and loan you some spare clothes until you get things straightened out. Do you need any help with school?”

Kitagawa chuckled, something too dark to be mirth in it. “Actually, I left my school bag in the art studio. I frequently stay at Kosei to keep up on academic work.”

Morgana let out a relieved breath. “And since we got out without any serious injuries, we have a reprieve from that doctor.”

Both girls looked up at him. A droplet of sweat rolled down the back of Akira’s neck and he grabbed Kitagawa’s jacket to get him to run before the girls could stammer out a question. “Gotta go, bye!”

Tuesday, 28 June 2016
Evening
Shibuya, Subway to Central Station

The quiet, efficient clack of the train rumbled around them as Shibuya station fell behind. Despite the lateness of the hour, a scattering of Tokyo-ites filled most of the other seats. No conversation filled the train car, and even the artist slumped against his shoulder, snoozing. Akira’s phone buzzed in his jacket and he decided there was no more use in putting it off.

The Phantom Thief chat sat waiting for him, about twenty messages from the others wondering what he had done to piss off the doctor… and if they needed to, or even could, change her heart. Akira sighed and angled his phone so the leader in his satchel could see, too. [Do you guys seriously think she's trying to extort me into testing weird concoctions like some bad movie?]

[You're right,] Ryuji sent back. [Akira's definitely the one doing the extorting.]

[I know where you sleep,] Akira riposted.

Makoto’s ID blinked. [You're kind of making his point, Akira.]

Morgana shook his head. “Would you just tell them what’s up? She doesn’t want to see good kids hurt.”

He started typing out a quick, lame excuse, but the tension around her eyes the last time he saw her stilled his fingers. Her words echoed in his mind, “Getting the chance to save Miwa doesn’t mean anything if I have to sacrifice four other children to do so.”

Akira sat back against the side of the train. She looked at him like Big K and Officer Ichijou did. There were traces of fear in the expression, but it made no sense for them to be scared of him. She couldn’t really…

Morgana twisted in the satchel sitting in the transfer student’s lap and looked him in the eye. “Tell. Them.”

[Doc insists we tell her exactly how we're getting injured or she… it's unclear, but she might go to the police. Said something about not sacrificing four kids to save one.]

Three dots danced next to Ryuji’s ID. [No way would she believe we go to a secret world where we have super-powers and save people's souls.]

[Pretty sure not,] Akira replied. [She mentioned Hashimoto-sensei.]

To his surprise, Makoto was the first one to respond to that. [That man is so frustrating! How do we counter an argument of rationalism when the truth is a supernatural world of cognitive distortions?]

Akira pursed his lips. [If you and Morgana can just mend whatever damage we get in the Metaverse, why would we have to go back?]

Morgana slumped in the satchel. “Geez, Joker. I thought you were smarter than that. Did you not notice how many times in Kamoshida’s castle or Kaneshiro’s museum you still had to seek outside help? Did you think I was intentionally sending you guys home bruised? Even Zorro’s amazing healing can’t patch up everything. At our best, luck is still a factor.”

Akira huffed, but Hifumi told him much the same during their games in Nijubashi Square. If luck was a factor with someone of her skill, it was always going to be a concern. Looking back to the chat, Makoto had the same point as the team leader. He straightened and texted, [Short of telling her we're the Phantom Thieves, I don't see what options we have. We know she was part of Kaneshiro's drug trade, so it's not like she can afford to turn us down.]

Ann sent, [Doc doesn't seem like the kind who'd let people leave untreated. And she's still doing business, so she can clearly keep quiet a long time.]

The train trundled to a stop and Akira helped the tired artist to the JL line to Yongen. Yusuke nodded off again, and the group argued over chat about what to do with the doctor.

Notes:

Akira's talented at starting trouble, but part of his character is not passively letting others suffer. The game left some weak implication that Yusuke could be directly targeted, so I thought about why a paranoid and entitled Madarame would just let Yusuke off and couldn't justify it. So Akira puts his money where his mouth is to give his compatriots the shelter nobody gave him, and the ripples spread a little further. Tell me what you think.

Chapter 66: June 28th, All for One

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Tuesday, 28 June 2016
Evening
Yongen, Leblanc

Akira opened the door, his lips curling up at the familiar jingle of the bell on the door. Every joint ached at the motion and he just wanted to plop into bed, but he clenched his jaw and stood fast. The artist trudged in. His compatriot didn’t seem to bear any injuries, but the whirl of an overburdened mind dulled the artist’s dark gray eyes.

Sojiro looked up from an empty cafe and set down the cup in one hand. He tossed the drying rag from left to right. “You two look like you just finished a marathon. Bringing a classmate in for a quick cup of joe?”

Akira directed the artist to an empty seat at the bar and slid himself into the next one. “Not quite, but before that, I need to tell you a story.” He tented his hands on the counter before him, trying to decide which one the restaurateur would believe, and then incite the most sympathy to exploit. “My old bastard’s always been obsessed with showing results. He was still sore about losing most of the hundred-some subjects he’d been working with pharmacology at Port Island. And then that explosion which took out whatever big thing he’d been working on.” Akira rolled his grey eyes. “He acted like it was worse than losing the Second World War. Smug bastard acted like his research was gonna totally upend reality itself.”

Sojiro nodded. “That’s certainly him. He was as driven about the Blue Cove research project as Wakaba. I remember Kurusu-sensei promising to change the world more than the discovery of electricity.” He gave a wry chuckle. “It’s a good thing Wakaba didn’t have his sense of entitlement.”

Akira interlaced his fingers. “He didn’t change when he moved from the Institute to Blue Cove. Did he tell you how he calibrated the EEGs one October when the Institute got a bunch of second-hand sensors due to a budget crunch?” At the shake of the proprietor’s head, Akira settled on his bar stool. “He locked me in a chair with leather straps. He had two staffers jam electrodes into my scalp and lock white-noise headphones on my ears.” He brushed his hand through his unruly hair. “That’s why I let it grow out since then. Since it became too hard to apply an EEG, it’s been too much trouble bother me.”

Sojiro’s hand continued wiping with rote motions at a dry coffee mug. “Jesus, kid.” He set down the mug and picked the same one up again. “I wish I could say otherwise, but I can see Kurusu-sensei doing that. Nothing was sacred to him.”

Separating his hands, Akira jerked a thumb at the artist sitting one stool over and staring. “Kitagawa here is trying to get out of an abusive situation too, but needs a safe place to lie low until the judge can make a decision.”

Kitagawa sat straighter on his bar stool, his eyebrows rising. “What ju—?”

“Shut up, idiot,” Morgana yowled at him from his feet. “Joker’s trying to help you. Don’t ruin it!”

Sojiro looked down and realized the mug he polished had been clean five minutes ago. He set it upside-down on a dry tray with others upturned. He took in a deep breath, then let it out. “You got assault charges and booted to another city the last time you couldn’t leave well enough alone.”

Akira pressed his hands flat against the counter. “I’ve never been the kind of person who could walk away. Too many people walked away from me. I can’t hurt other people like that.” He straightened and looked straight at the restaurateur even if the old man wasn’t looking back. “Not when that woman in the torn blouse begged me to help that drunk off her. And not with him.”

The proprietor opened his mouth to draw in air for a diatribe, but the moment his eyes locked onto the transfer student’s grey ones, he let all that breath out in a tired groan. A long moment passed as Sojiro scanned the two boys. His hand clenched the drying rag in his hand for a long moment before he threw it at the counter. “As long as the customers don’t say anything and you keep your nose clean, you can stay.” He took off his glasses to rub at the sides of his head. “You have a week. But if the police get involved, I’m not sticking my neck out.”

Akira rose to his feet, scooting the stool back. “Just a week? It took longer than that for them to shove me through a kangaroo court—”

Morgana pawed at the transfer student. “Joker, you’ve got your safe place for Fox. We’ll ask for an extension later if we need it.”

Kitagawa lay his hands flat on the counter and bowed until his forehead almost touched it. “You have my eternal gratitude, sir.”

Sojiro planted a hand on his hip and laid down the ‘ground rules’, which dragged on for longer than the Japanese Constitution. Once satisfied the artist wouldn’t be a problem – beyond his unique outlook – the restaurateur drafted Akira to help close up and locked the door behind him.

With that done, Akira led the artist through the empty coffee shop and to the loft. The artist’s eyes widened as he took in the space. Given how exhausted they were, he almost looked alert. Akira scratched the back of his neck. “Yeah, sorry about the dump.”

“Perish the thought,” Kitagawa said as he took slow steps to the center of the space. “I have never seen a home so clean.” He spread his arms wide. “And you have so much space.”

The corner of Akira’s mouth twitched, but when he opened his mouth to deliver a cold dose of reality, he could swear he felt Hifumi standing nearby, clearing her throat in that wordless warning of hers. Well, he could let the artist have one night of optimism. He knew the train routes, and there would be plenty of time later to debrief about how exactly he got into the museum with Ann. Right now, it was a struggle keeping his eyes open, so Akira pointed out the laundry basket serving as a laundry hamper next to the work desk, unzipped the standing ‘closet’ he organized his clothes into and handed Yusuke a shirt and pants for tomorrow. They were short, but his jacket would hide enough to get by. “We’ll talk later.”

Yusuke pulled out a couple pencils and pens from one pocket in his shirt, then a modest sketchbook from a large pocket on the inside.

As the artist settled down, Akira knelt down in front of the tiny poster of the virgin Mary. The likeness of the suffering as she held Jesus’ body never felt more real as he prayed he didn’t just make a mistake which would screw up another life as bad as his own.

Wednesday, 29 June 2016
Early Morning
Yongen, Leblanc Loft

Akira shook the artist awake. “Hey. Time to rise and shine. You remember how to get to Kosei?”

Yusuke unfolded himself from the couch, then pulled the paint-stained shirt off and tossed it in the laundry basket. “As soon as I get to Shibuya, yes. I’ve lived in the borough for all my life.”

While the artist changed, Akira retrieved his phone and picked the team leader up in his school satchel.

Downstairs, Sojiro slid sloppy scrambled eggs on top of a plate of rice and set it down on the counter before the transfer student. His eyes fell on the artist in a white jacket. “What can I get for you?”

Yusuke shook his head. “I am not hungry this morning. In fact, I should get going right away.”

Finishing his quick morning prayer, Akira dug out his wallet. Besides a scattering of coins which wouldn’t be enough for a full day ticket, all he had was a five thousand yen note. He held it out. “This should be enough for a couple daily transit passes and lunch. The train station is down the road to the left.”

Yusuke took it with a brief widening of his eyes. “What time are we returning to the museum today?”

Morgana poked out his head out of the satchel. “We’re not—”

The door swung open with a jingling of that little bell. Sojiro leaned closer and hissed, “Get that cat out of here.” He snapped into the service industry’s smile-for-the-public, “What can I get you gentlemen?”

The team leader retreated and Yusuke’s jaw clenched, but after a moment he straightened up, a stony expression over his face as he strode out past the three local early birds.

With other customers shambling in like last decade’s zombie extras and demanding coffee, Akira rushed through his rice and eggs. By the time he got out and in sight of the train station, Yusuke stepped in. The train hissed and slid out for Shibuya.

Wednesday, 29 June 2016
Morning
Shujin, Class 2-D

With Ushimaru-sensei distracted readying the day’s lesson, Akira slipped his phone out. The first night and morning with Yusuke passed without serious incident. It seemed strange not enduring last-minute questions before they left Leblanc to go to their separate schools, but the artist must have wanted to be sure not to be late for school. He pulled up his contact list, then groaned when he realized he hadn’t added Yusuke yet. After turning off the artist’s phone to stop Madarame from tracking him, he hadn’t thought of calling the guy. He brought up Ann. [Hey. I forgot to get Starving Artist's number. Has he said anything? He bounced fast this morning and I just realized he hasn't been briefed on… most things.]

The leader in question growled from within the desk, but slid back further in the desk when a nearby student perked up and asked who had the cat sound effect.

Ann covered her mouth for a long yawn, then checked her phone. [You two were exhausted by the time we got out of there. I'm pretty sure he's smart enough to take the day easy before we go back in tomorrow.]

Inspiration struck and he switched to Queen Togo to check on their fellow teen exploited by selfish adults. They both went to Kosei. [Sorry to bother you, Togo-san. Have you seen Kitagawa recently?]

A few moments passed before her ID blinked at the top of the new chat. [Not today. Isn't he busy helping Madarame with the exhibition?]

Akira sat straighter in his chair. [It looked to me like he was going to school.]

[I didn't think you knew him,] she sent back.

[We met recently. Shared a lot of childhood struggles. He ended up staying over. Are you sure he isn't there, just late or something?]

Three dots danced next to Hifumi’s ID. [My seat has a good view of the south entrance. He's in the art studio every morning until right before class, like clockwork.] A beat passed before she added, [Any time he's at school, anyway. Are you sure he's not helping Madarame?]

Morgana craned his neck to peek at the chat. He whispered, “This doesn’t feel right.”

[I'm sure,] Akira replied. Biting his lip, he switched to the Phantom Thief group chat. [Guys, we may have a problem.]

Makoto texted, [If Kitagawa-kun is too tired to go in today, that's fine. We always take a rest day to keep up with life after Metaverse days.]

Mishima’s ID popped up next. [What kind of a problem?]

Akira tapped a foot, feeling a coiling sensation tighten inside him. [According to my contact at Kosei, Kitagawa isn't there.]

“What?” Ann blurted from her seat at the left side of the room.

Ryuji sent, [You sure, dude?]

He slid the chat over and returned to the private line with Hifumi. She’d sent, [Akira-kun, after the things I heard about the other two Madarame students, I'm concerned.]

[I hate to be a bother, but could you check at the office to be sure he's not just late or something?]

About two minutes later, Hifumi responded. [Kitagawa-kun is not on campus. The office secretary tried calling his phone and got an out-of-area message. Akira-kun, what's going on?]

That coiling sensation morphed into a cold rock settling low in his gut. [Stay safe. I'll take care of it.] He swapped back to the Phantom Thief group chat. [Guys, he's not at Kosei, and when they tried calling his phone they got a 'number not in service area'.]

[Same when I just tried,] Ann texted.

Three dots danced next to Makoto’s ID for just a moment. [He's not finding a bridge to jump off, is he?]

Akira thought back to the early morning. Kitagawa seemed quiet and just a little distracted, but was that his usual mannerism? He didn’t seem to have any obvious tics when donning that white jacket. Then again, he declined Sojiro’s offer of breakfast. At the time, it seemed like the kind of stress-induced lack of appetite making no few hungry mornings for Akira at Tanizaki Middle School.

[No way,] Ryuji replied. [He was as pissed as I've ever seen at Mister Gaudy for stealing all his pupils' work AND kicking them out of art.]

“Oh no,” Morgana breathed. “He’s pulling an Akira.”

Akira frowned and muttered back, “I’m right here, y’know.” Even so, he had to admit the leader had a point. It seemed they both thought the same thing. [Leader and I both think he's gone to do something stupid.]

Ryuji shot out, [He's got a Persona and probably has the Nav. If he wanted to go in himself, we couldn't stop him. I say we bail school and save his stupid ash!]

[Then go help him!] Mishima texted. [I'll come up with something to cover you guys at Shujin.]

Ann hopped out of her seat, school satchel in hand as she rushed out the classroom’s back door.

Akira let the team leader slip into his satchel and tried to be a little more subtle about taking it with him as he rushed out.

Ushimaru reached for a stick of chalk. “Hey, class is starting!”

Mishima stood up. “Sensei, Takamaki and Kurusu-san asked to be excused due to illness…”

The voices faded behind Akira as he dashed down the stairs and out the front gate.

The class president raced out after them, Ryuji following her. His eyes popped wide when he spotted her. “Whoa, Prez, whaddya doin’ out here—?”

“Some things are more important than attendance,” Makoto snapped.

Wednesday, 29 June 2016
Late Morning
Madarame’s Museum

Akira’s sub-machine gun burst drilled into the mummified figure the size of a child, blasting it into dissolving ash. The other Phantom Thieves scanned the gallery halls. Akira wiped at his forehead. “Whew. Security level’s sure up.”

Ann came to a stop next to the laser projectors once blocking the way from the lobby to the Infinite Spring room. Occasional sparks still sputtered from a long rend down a corner, tearing both sides open and rendering the security mechanism useless. “No wonder. Yusuke-kun must be pretty strong to rip into these, but it’s pretty hard to miss.”

Makoto looked at the ruined laser gate. “I wonder what effect that has on the real Madarame’s cognition.”

“I can see it making him just a bit more erratic or forgetful, though only in the short term. Real change can’t happen as long as a Palace has its Treasure. Everything will just return to the source of distortion,” Morgana said, jogging into the enormous circular room with the towering gold statue. “Let’s just get to him before he gets himself killed.”

The others rushed after the team leader to the ramps climbing the sides of the room, but Akira noticed dark spots on the floor in front of the dedication placard. “Hey, Byakko. Do Shadows leave splatters behind when you kill them?”

“No,” the catboy said, hopping over the railing to check the spot of ground the longcoated teen knelt at. “Most Shadows we’ll run into are fragments of the collective subconsciousness, and return as soon as they’re defeated.”

Akira followed the trail of blood drops up the ramp and through the inner gallery, where a few more droplets of blood scattered over the space before Kitagawa’s portrait.

The trail passed through the courtyard, adding a bloody handprint along the left-hand wall. From the enormous room surrounded by massive landscapes and once filled with a maze of laser fencing, they heard the artist’s voice bellow, his rage hot but a tremble in his words, “Goemon, crush them!”

The Phantom Thieves raced into the deactivated laser maze room. Two masked humanoids with ragged feathery wings held the left flank of a hodge-podge monster with the body of a lion, head of a monkey, and tail of a snake complete with yet another fanged head.

Yusuke faced them down with a katana held in his left hand, his right dangling from his shoulder. Blood splattered the floor around him and flowed from gashes studding all four limbs, running down a wound in his chest, and coating his face beneath his left eyebrow. His theatrical samurai Persona finished a series of slashes against the chimeric beast, in time with the apprentice artist stumbling back and coughing flecks of blood.

Morgana shot a bolt at the hybrid beast and came to a stop just beside the artist. “Panther, take out the tengu! Rider, watch our flank. Reaper, keep its attention off Fox!” He finished with a glance to Akira and a thin smile.

Akira broke out in a grin. He knew what a ‘let loose’ looked like. “Yaksini!”

The purple-skinned Persona wielding two forward-curving swords slashed both blades across the chimeric monster’s face, then danced to one side in a twirl and brought both blades down its flank.

The beast the size of an elephant twisted around with speed no creature of that size should possess, clamping its toothy maw over the swordswoman. When Captain Kidd attempted to swing by for a slash, that serpent tail smashed against the surfing Persona. Both sets of the monster’s eyes turned pitch black and a growl thrummed out from its throat.

“Guard!” Morgana snapped.

The Phantom Thieves dropped back from attack the instant before the ground cracked and groaned. Darkness roared up from fissures which yawned just long enough to assault the entire team with streams of burning black, but left an aftertouch of cold. Akira looked to the team leader. “I hope you’ve defeated one of these in Mementos before.”

“Never seen one,” Morgana said before he brought up his crossbow. The catboy let a bolt fly right into the monkey head’s left eye, sending it stumbling back with a roar piercing everyone’s ears.

Bolts of flame blasted from Johanna, leaving faint singeing on the chimeric beast’s yellow fur.

Zorro pointed its rapier, a violet aura spilling over the blade and around its eyes, but fizzled against the monster.

The Nue laughed at him, then reared up and slammed its front paws into the ground. A shockwave raced out, slamming into Zorro and Yaksini.

Spitting blood, Yusuke struggled to his feet and reached for his fox mask. “Goemon!”

As the theatrical samurai-Persona slammed what was either an axe or oversized smoking pipe against the monster, Captain Kidd crashed against its opposite side, cutlass slicing.

When the chimeric monster stumbled, an idea came to Akira’s mind. “It can only resist so much damage. Reaper, take this wind and hit it with everything you’ve got. We’ll hit it from the opposite side!”

Morgana nodded. “Reserve some stamina, Rider. Everyone else, with me!”

Ryuji gave a thin grin and turned back to the battle as Captain Kidd swung around to get some distance for a better angle.

“High Pixie,” Akira called. The armored fairy flicked a hand and sent a long burst of crushing winds at Captain Kidd, who accelerated as if shot from a cannon.

Carmen lashed her thorned whip to catch the serpent tail, pulling it back where it couldn’t guard the body.

Zorro and Goemon dashed at the chimeric monster’s left flank as Captain Kidd smashed into the right, cutlass-first.

The monster faded into dissolving ash, which made the sound of Yusuke’s battered body hitting the floor all the louder.

“Fox!” Ann raced to the fallen artist. She looked up at Makoto with tears in her eyes.

The girl in black leather nodded and closed her eyes in concentration. Flames fluttered from every line of tracery and orange motes of light washed over the fallen artist’s body. The break in his arm straightened and the gashes closed.

Akira’s mouth dropped.

Ann reached out a hand to help the artist stand, and hold him steady when he seemed just as surprised as the transfer student he could stand at all. “Does it feel like anything’s broken?”

“No,” Yusuke began, a touch of awe to his voice. “I feel as fit—”

Ann’s hand slapped across his face, knocking his mask askew. “Then what the fucking hell were you thinking, charging in here alone?”

Yusuke straightened his fox mask, though still retreated one step. “P-Panther-san—”

She advanced after him. “Were all of us so unreliable you couldn’t even call one of us?”

Yusuke’s hands both came up in warding. “I… This was something I had to do. Sen… Madarame was my sensei. I enabled him. And Sayuri—

“What about your life, Fox?” Ann snapped, her lips twisting and teeth bared. “When did life become so worthless?”

He retreated another step.

Ann’s fists trembled down at her side. Concerned, the transfer student stepped forward to see her better as her body trembled. Tears streamed from underneath her mask. “I already lost Shiho to one cruel teacher. I ca…” Her voice cracked and she stopped to gasp in a breath. “I can’t lose another friend. I’m not strong enough.”

Akira feared his own chest would crumple in on itself.

Yusuke took a step closer and reached his now-bloodless hand out to wipe away the trail of tears down one of her cheeks. “Truly I must be an abominable person, for I have twice put tears on a soul God made to smile.”

The memory of Hifumi looked up at Akira, a tremble in her eyes despite the steadfast regal pose she held. He stepped up to the pair, clamped an arm around each one’s shoulder, and drew them close. The artist flinched, though Akira wasn’t sure if it was the firmness of grip or frosty gaze. “Promise me two things, Fox. First, that you fight. Don’t you dare throw your life away. Because none of us know what tomorrow will bring. And second, let’s do this right. We’ll change Madarame’s heart, but we’ll do this together.”

“Yeah!” Morgana shouted as he took a bounding hop at them.

Makoto came to a stop standing close by the artist’s other side. “Exactly. Remember the credo: two in harmony surpass one in perfection.”

Ryuji clapped a hand down on Ann’s shoulder along with the transfer student’s. “Eff yeah! It don’t matter how much shit you been walkin’ through, or got ahead. We’re all in this together.”

Yusuke’s mouth drifted open, closed, then wavered open again. “I don’t deserve friends such as this.”

Makoto’s eyebrows pinched up. “How good friends could we be if you had to buy us first?”

Akira gave an extra squeeze to make sure the point was clear, but the artist gave a pained grunt. He released his two comrades and backed a step away. “Sorry.”

Zorro coalesced above the team leader and stretched out his open hand. Warm motes of light washed over the artist for a moment, and he stood straighter.

Akira let go and back up. “Wait, you can mend structural physical damage…” He remembered the mass of wounds which disappeared when Makoto did her thing. “…and you? Why didn’t you guys tell me you could do so much?” He turned a glare on the catboy. “I thought you could only mend a limited degree of damage to our Personas.”

Makoto sighed. “It’s still a limited tool, Joker. And it takes a lot out of us.”

His glare at catboy intensified. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because of you!” The grumpy team leader shouted. Morgana folded his crossbow and took a few moments longer to meet the transfer student’s grey gaze. “Joker, this stunt Fox pulled is what I expected of you. I can’t trust you to hold back. That’s why I never brought up melee weapons to you guys even though my crossbow has a bayonet. This is why I swore the others to secrecy.” His ears pressed flat against his skull. “Be honest, if you thought I could just magic away all your injuries, what would have stopped you from putting your whole life out there? I don’t want you to die!”

Akira opened his mouth to snap at them, but with every one of the Phantom Thieves including Yusuke staring at him he couldn’t deny it. “What about Reaper? Healing his broken ribs would’ve been such a help in the bank.”

Morgana sighed. “The mending capabilities of Zorro and Johanna are cognitive powers. They only work on injuries sustained here because the Metaverse is a cognitive reality.” He turned for the door down. “Now come on, guys. We’ve accomplished our objective.”

The other Phantom Thieves nodded and they moved as one, but only got as far as the hallway before a Shadow van Damme on patrol crossed them. “Intruders!”

A collective groan passed, but Makoto and Ann fell back for the others to focus on the pair of post-roadkill weasels flanking a dancing snowman.

“Knock ‘em down, Joker,” Morgana said as he readied his crossbow.

Akira nodded. “Agathion!” His demon in a gold vase coalesced and shot a bolt of lightning at one of the weasel Shadows, only for it to dance out of the way.

The flattened weasel Shadows howled at Carmen and Zorro, rays of nuclear power blasting into the Personas. Makoto shot a bolt of fire at the snowman, knocking it tumbling to the floor.

Yusuke raised his katana and took a deep breath. “Allow me. Goemon!”

The gaudily-dressed samurai Persona coalesced, then blew a long breath into his axe-pipe, which emitted a cloud above one of the flattened weasels. A bolt of lightning lanced out of it into the pale grey beast, smashing it into the ground.

The other fell under the physical assault of Zorro and Captain Kidd, Johanna’s fireball disintegrating the snowman.

The Phantom Thieves gathered around the remaining Shadow, sword out and guns drawn. Akira took the lead, “I think you know where this is going. You can either hunt with the winning team, or feed us.”

The flattened weasel chuckled, pushed itself off the floor, and gave a long “Awooo!” before breaking into streaks flying into his mask.

Ann joined Morgana at the lead. Despite the addition of Yusuke, with his stamina nearly depleted and the grind wearing everyone down, the journey out of the museum turned into a slog through dozens of fresh guards. Hours passed before they got back to the outer wall.

Yusuke tipped, dropping his sword and would have fallen off were it not for Ryuji’s quick reflexes. Once they all returned to the ground, the artist retrieved the katana.

“So, Fox,” Ryuji said, slipping his mask up to wipe at the sweat pouring down his face, “where’dja get that from?”

Yusuke looked at the single-edged sword in his hand. “I used the Nav to break into Sen… Madarame’s atelier to retrieve my supplies. He doesn’t like letting the police inside, so even if they are watching the outside, I wasn’t seen. Even after everything I learned about him… painting is in my blood, my very bones.” He gestured to a bundle wrapped in canvas cloth across the street from the gaudy Palace. “It took me more than one trip to get everything I would need, but as I came back in, I realized I could turn his own tools against him. Sens… Madarame has a collection of props we used for our paintings.” He proceeded to the bundle and sheathed the sword in a brown, leather scabbard decorated with iron highlights.

Morgana clipped his folded crossbow to his belt. “That turned into a surprisingly hard journey, but everybody’s safe.” He turned a hard glare at Yusuke. “Now, actually rest tomorrow so we can all come back at full strength.” At the artist’s nod, he turned back to the others. “Good job, Thieves. Even rotating the front line twice on the way out, it looks like everybody’s figured out a good rhythm with the others on the forward team. We’ve all gotten a little stronger and, more importantly, come together as a team.”

The thieves explained the process of securing a route to the Treasure, sending a calling card, and changing the Palace Ruler’s heart, with Makoto making a special point to warn him about the need to escape the Palace collapse.

Yusuke gave a wry chuckle. “I feel extremely foolish for taking your treatment this morning as sign you were backing away from Madarame. I just… He hurt so many people. And I defended him, even to other apprentices who would have gone on to live healthy lives of their own were it not for me. I could not think clearly.” He switched the sheathed katana to his left hand and bowed. “Please forgive me. I am still tortured by the mystery of the Sayuri, but I swear to you. Next time, I shall journey at your side.”

Morgana gave a nod and satisfied smile at all of them. “Stay safe, go home, and relax.”

Taking a sheltered nook to avoid notice, the Thieves activated the Nav to return to the real world. Ryuji stared, glum, at his phone. “Damn, we were in there a long-ass time. School’s been out for an hour.” He then gave a wordless, surprised shout. “Wait, we gotta make sure to trade numbers.”

“Ah,” was all Yusuke stated, before setting down the canvas sack with the legs of more than one wood easel sticking out. He drew his phone and the thieves gathered one more time before dispersing with as much speed as their weary bodies could manage.

Notes:

It never made sense to me that Madarame was SO paranoid that he'd go after all the Phantom Thieves but NOT Yusuke. This Akira isn't a passive doormat like in the game, so even when the people are the same the sequence of events can't play out the same if it's allowed to evolve organically. Morgana, having been saddled with the official leadership position like he basically took in the game so the writers didn't have to let the player actually choose anything, has also gone a slightly different direction, particularly with Akira.

Yusuke and Hifumi are both sent on a different course, I hope you find it interesting. Tell me what you think, and what you're predicting next!

Chapter 67: June 29th, Interview

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Wednesday, 29 June 2016
Early Evening
Yongen, Leblanc Loft

Akira helped the artist set his canvas-wrapped bundle down on the table next to the top of the stairs, the lumpy mass hitting with a heavy sound like a cloth-wrapped turbine. He set his satchel down so the team leader could hop out.

Morgana stretched low, tail swishing in the air before reversing, head held high as his rear legs almost lay flat against the ground. A head-shake traveling through his entire body and tail completed the gesture. “I know better than to waste my breath trying to make you go to bed, but you two really should get some sleep.” He trotted to his cushion on the bottom shelf. “I’m going to get a head start.”

Yusuke set the two wooden A-frames against the table. “I feel I should apologize again—”

Akira took out a handkerchief and wiped the feeling of cloying grit the dirty canvas inflicted. “Dude, I am the last person you need to say sorry to about wanting to kill someone who took something precious from you.” He flicked his hand as if trying to fling off something sticky, but the coiled sense of tension only spread through his body. He looked at the artist organizing glass jars of paint. “To be honest, you remind me of myself enough that it’s a little unsettling. You like coffee?”

Shuffling through glass jars, Yusuke stacked them on the floor under the table. “I remember Nakanohara making coffee from powder.”

“So never had the good stuff.” Akira slipped his hands in his trouser pockets. “I’m too antsy to even try getting to sleep. If you’d like to try some, I’ll buy you a cup.”

A rumbling growl emanated from the artist’s stomach. He looked away. “I’m already indebted—”

“No,” Akira said. “Big K said even the best people need a generous hand once in a while if they want to walk the straight and narrow. When I said tough people help themselves, he showed me a speech by Arnold Swartzenaeger that there’s no such thing as a self-made man.”

Yusuke let out a soft huff of air, the small up-turn at the corners of his mouth reminding the transfer student of Hifumi’s regal air. “I shall pay you back, I promi—”

“I’m all for remembering people who do favors for you, but not juggling a ledger for who owes what how much,” Akira said. He took a measured pace down the old stairs, the eleventh and sixth steps creaking as the students took to the cafe proper. The proprietor turned a suspicious glare at the transfer student, but his gaze wavered when it locked onto the artist following him to a seat at the bar next to the coffee siphons. As a pair of salarymen on the older side of middle age walked in, Akira said, “Two cups of the house blend, and plates of your curry and rice.”

Sojiro glanced at the new customers, his lips pressing thin for a moment before he straightened and said in his for-customers tone, “Coming right up.”

The salaryman with a buzz-cut style hair sat down at the nearest booth to the front window. “That sounds excellent. We’ll have the same.”

Sojiro nodded and the salarymen busied themselves with several daily newspapers.

Yusuke set his sketchbook on the counter and folded his arms as if he wanted to clutch his stomach but not be seen doing so. “Who is this Big K?”

Akira reached one hand up high. “A real mountain of a man. Tall enough to look down on the Germans who came to stay at the Amagi Inn, and I thought they were the tallest people in the world. Ripped, too, though the kinda-uniform Amagi Inn employees wore didn’t exactly show it off.”

Yusuke tapped the fingers of one hand over his sketchbook, his eyes unfocusing as he tried to picture it. “He sounds intimidating.”

Chuckles slipped out of the transfer student. “Contrary to popular mythology, real-life giants tend to be super chill.” He flashed a smirk. “Must come with being able to reach items on the top shelf.”

Even Sojiro chuckled at that as he set plates and cups in front of the students.

Akira bowed his head and clasped his hands and prayed he’d become anyone but someone like his old bastard before straightening and taking a sip. The house blend coffee was dark, bitter, and carried earthy tones but wasn’t overwhelmed by that like the coffee the interns made at the Institute. Setting that on the saucer, he glanced at his side to see Yusuke digging in. He considered going back to his story before the door bell jingled and another three salarymen trudged in.

The pair of students ate as a more random assortment of rush-hour people looking for a break from home filtered in, most just grabbing a cup of coffee but some ordering the curry as well. Yusuke’s spoon scraped over the plate as he went for every last scrap. “That was the most satisfying curry I have ever had the pleasure of consuming. I wonder how Boss managed to take the edge off the spice.”

“Apples,” Akira said, pointing at a cutting board on the other side of a counter. “Something about them helps mellow out the tumeric and cumin. The kitchen at Amagi Inn did the same thing.”

Yusuke sat straighter after a full meal. “You sound like you are quite familiar with the place. Did your family stay there often?” He paused, then straightened with a look of epiphany. “Ah, I think I understand. It was a refuge from the crowds.”

Akira rubbed the back of his head. “Not… exactly. First of all, while I’m not a fan of crowds, I never had a real problem with them until coming to Tokyo.” He let out a long breath and lowered his voice. “I broke in to Amagi Inn late one night to get something to eat when mother locked me out.” He looked down to his near-empty plate. “I… may have also started a fire because I didn’t know how to use their kitchen equipment.”

Sojiro, filling a new set of cups at the siphons, muttered, “You’re not exactly convincing me to let you in my kitchen again.”

“I was a dumb middle schooler!” Akira scraped up the last of the rice and curry and swallowed, then pushed the plate back. “They had ovens and deep friers, stuff I’d never seen at the Institute.” He checked the time on his phone, but felt even more like going out on a run than before sitting down to eat. “Anyway, this old broad puts out the fire and the inn heiress herself shows up to see things at the worst possible moment. She calls the fuzz, but Big K showed up first and said it would be better to put me to work to pay off the damage.”

Sojiro carried emptied cups from the first group to bail and set them in the sink. “Sounds like a harrowing experience.”

Akira waved down. “Nah. I got caught trespassing places all around the Institute and the cops always let me go as soon as they called in.” He crossed his arms. “Made me overconfident. But Big K wanted to do it a different way, heard my stomach growling from not eating for three days and gave me the food I wanted in the first place. I figured even if he just wanted me on the hook for something, better to take his way than the angry lady’s. I’d have dared them to call the cops if it was my old bastard, but I was with mother at the time.” A smile broke out over his face. “That was technically my first job. I never collected an actual paycheck, but… I got to cook. And not just for myself. I never really thought about being able to do constructive things before.” He tapped his fingertips against the counter, a bitter smile slipping over his face. “You know what? I think Big K was the first guy who convinced me he wasn’t out for whatever he could get out of me. Dude knew all about being labeled and scared of society and just wanted people to have an honest shot to be who they could be.” A chuckle slipped out. “Even showed me a picture of him and his crew back when he was in high school. He had the whole dyed-blond ‘I’m a rebel’ thing like Ryuji.”

A long beat with nothing but the clink of spoons and coffee cups filled the café.

“Yusuke?” Akira turned.

The artist sat there, his attention consumed with his sketch pad, a fat pencil scribbling away just quiet enough it didn’t sound over the ambient noise. His dark grey eyes flicked up and his face contorted as if he saw something terrible. “Please, just hold that pose for a moment longer.”

Akira arched an eyebrow, but figured he’d humor the artist this once. Hunching forward, he put his hand back, though he turned his head to watch the skinny teen. From this angle, he could just make out a piece of one of his earlier drawings. “Hey, wait a second. You’ve been drawing me?”

Yusuke’s pencil scratched and scribbled back and forth.

“Yusuke?”

The pencil scratched along the paper.

“Earth to Yusuke.”

The pencil finished a stroke and the artist looked up. “Is there something wrong?”

Akira pointed to the sketch pad and used a finger to lift up a page to get a clear view of the previous sketch. Himself, bowed in his nightly prayers. His black, loose-fitting shirt reminded him of a hunched monster, his messy hair resembling a wild child, his clenched hands making him think of dying patients on TV medical dramas. “Do I really look like that?”

Yusuke looked the transfer student in the eye. “Ever since I first saw the Sayuri, I have been captivated by portrayals of human emotion. Instants of the truth of our hearts, bared to the world. Sensei said that was why we should never be ashamed of the human body.” He flipped more pages back, Ann filling them. “I saw Takamaki-san at the train station in Shibuya, her passion irrepressible. Her youthful sensuality something she claimed with every confident step and bat of her eyes. Her cheer blazed amid a sea of children being taught to fear showing any emotion.” He threw his pencil-hand wide, almost hitting a salaryman getting out of the booth. “But your invitation to share your domicile has been more than a safe place of refuge to lay my head for the night. It has shown me another person burning with rage at injustice, agony at the cold world’s cruelty, and a fear of failure in a soul refusing to retreat.” He clapped the sketchbook closed. “You must let me paint you!”

A yawn forced its way out of Akira’s mouth, the day’s crawl through the museum weighing down on him. “Maybe… after a good night’s sleep.”

Afternoon?
Rekisen Park?

A gentle wind blew, taking the edge off the heat. A hedge of tended trees surrounded all three sides of the cozy nook of the park around them, the sky above them a dull blue uninterrupted by clouds. His Go board sat on the stone table in front of him, but all his attention fell on the girl standing beside it.

Batting those gorgeous green eyes at him, Hifumi clasped her hands behind her back. “It’s good to see you.” The dark purple dress she wore ruffled in the breeze and made her shining eyes seem all the brighter. The soft smile and glint in her eyes at meeting his made his heart swell.

Akira jogged around the bench, his Shujin uniform feeling less constricting than usual. She raised her arms with the dignified certainty of a true royal and he threw his arms around her. The warmth and strength of someone’s arms around him sent a jolt like electricity through him.

With a serenity which could only come from her, Hifumi tilted her face up and puckered her lips, patiently waiting as he closed the distance—

Thursday, 30 June 2016
Early Morning
Yongen, Leblanc Loft

Beep! Beep! screeched a strange phone’s alarm.

Akira’s eyes opened to his pillow and rumpled sheets, his arms around empty air. No kind, green eyes. The sense of absence swept over him like a rogue wave, and an emptiness in his chest and arms slammed down like a continental plate. He threw off the sheet and pushed himself to sitting, sucking in air which wouldn’t fill his imploding chest as one hand slapped for his phone to shut it up. His eyes welled up and he didn’t even bother reaching for his glasses. He wouldn’t be able to see anyway. His heart had burned before, but anger was easy to deal with. It fueled him like no oil could a machine. This feeling just took and took.

Wasn’t it enough to see other people from a distance in the real world? Did his dreams have to taunt him with things he could never have, just for the world to snatch them away and laugh?

The blurry sheet over Yusuke flew back and the artist stumbled to his feet. “Akira, what happened? Are you sick?” He took a few morning-unsteady steps closer and reached out.

Slapping the artist’s hand away even as he wheezed for air, Akira snatched for the kerchief to press it over his face and wipe with trembling hands.

He made the mistake of letting people see him cry before.

Never.

Again.

Faint pattering hit the floor in the direction of the bookshelf. Morgana’s voice came, full of command, “Whoa, Fox! He needs his room to breathe.”

Just to add insult to injury, Battle for the Pyramid sang from his phone and he stormed over to turn off his morning alarm, then chucked the damnable device to his bed. The daylight streaming in through his windows wobbled and Akira realized he was trembling, his limbs feeling leaden and his head light. He could almost feel Hifumi’s arms around him for a breath and somehow that just made him feel more like crumpling into a heap. But he couldn’t with that damn artist rooming with him.

“This cannot be normal,” Yusuke said as casual footsteps paced closer. “Do you need to see Doctor T—”

Snarling, Akira slapped away the slender hand reaching for him. He gnashed his teeth together and spun on the ball of his foot, then stormed downstairs. The harsh pounding of his feet down the steps gave him some reassurance that something in this world was still real and reacted in unflinching, non-intruding fashion. He slammed the washroom’s door closed, then had to shove it back a second time when it bounced from the force of his first motion.

With nobody else to witness him, he fell against the tiled wall and slid down, his whole body shaking and hot tears streaming down his face. Darkness crept in at the corners of his vision and he forced a deep gasp in, then deep gasp out with the rhythm they taught him for marathon running in grade school. After what he hoped was minutes but felt like an eternity, the shaking and darkness receded. Despite the creaky pains in his body, Akira flipped on the cold water tap and splashed his face, then straightened his sleep clothes and headed back upstairs to change for the day.

Before reaching the top, Yusuke’s voice floated down from the loft, “…seems so strange to think of nightly terrors in one who awakened to his Persona so long ago.”

Morgana gave a feline, “Nyahum.” A beat later, he said, “Joker’s always been pretty high-strung. Maybe that’s part of why he nominated me to be the leader when Lady Ann tried to nominate him. His jokes are as much a mask for him in the real world as that avian domino mask is in the Metaverse. He should talk to somebody, but if he is it’s never around me. He just got angry with me when I tried to ask him to talk about what his nightmares are, so all we can do is wait until he’s ready. He’s been a reliable Phantom Thief so far, so I have no reason to force him to divulge his personal demons. After all, don’t we all have ghosts in our past? Personal stakes in being Phantom Thieves?”

The artist gave a hum of assent.

Akira clomped up the stairs. Yusuke’s eyes scanned the transfer student, but after a beat he trotted to the rolling garment rack, unzipped it, and drew a pair of black pants. The transfer student came to a stop next to him and the two students changed in silence. After making the bed, Akira checked his homework, packed it, then collected Morgana and followed the artist down.

Every time he closed his eyes he saw Hifumi, lips puckered. And each time, he wished he could cut out his own heart to stop it from feeling like it was imploding in his chest.

Thursday, 30 June 2016
After School
Shujin, Practice Building

Akira rubbed his hands on his trousers to get off the feeling of sweat. While his breathing normalized hours ago, he couldn’t get that phantom sensation of Hifumi’s touch out of his mind. He needed something – anything – to get this out so he could focus. He swallowed and tried to tell himself there was no reason to be nervous. According to Makoto, that counselor had all the proper certifications and expressed no desire but to help the students. As much as it vexed his paranoia, all his friends besides Mishima had glowing reviews of the shrink.

Cute But Annoying stood in the doorway to the nurse’s office, chatting with someone inside, but she stopped when she noticed the transfer student’s approach. She gave a sunny smile. “Akira-senpai, good afternoon. I was just finishing a session. Did you decide to try it out?”

Akira wrapped his arms around his torso.

Yoshizawa’s head tilted a bit. “You okay, Senpai?”

Akira straightened and cleared his throat as if that could make everything seem normal. “You getting some too?”

She gave a small smile and nod. “Yup! Doctor Maruki is a wonderful counselor. I was seeing him before he came to Shujin.”

The counselor himself stopped at the doorway and rubbed the back of his neck. “Don’t oversell me too much, Yoshizawa-san. I’m not special.”

Yoshizawa covered her mouth with her hand to hide her smile. “We’ll have to disagree on that one, Doctor. Please excuse me.” Lowering her hand, she gave a formal bow and trotted off.

Maruki gave a show smile that only seemed to add to the tension in the air. He reached out a hand for a handshake, then drew it back halfway and started to bow, then tried to go back to the handshake at the same time as the transfer student returned a bow. Maruki let out a nervous laugh. “I’m glad that you’ve decided to give it a chance. I’ll do my best to make sure it’s worth your time. I’m sure you’re very busy, Kur—no, you didn’t like going by your family name. Do you mind if I call you Akira-kun?”

The transfer student shrugged and stuffed his hands in his pockets. His bag felt too light without Morgana, but as reliable as the team leader had been he couldn’t make himself talk about Hifumi around the not-cat. He’d be fine with Makoto today.

Maruki led the way inside, letting the transfer student close the door after. Going on about confidentiality, the counselor took off his long white coat and set it on a hangar in the corner, then sat down in the far stuffed chair and pointed at the other one. Without the lab coat, the short, shaggy brown hair and short-sleeved blue button-down shirt made him look much more like an ordinary office worker. “Please, don’t be so tense. We’re just going to chat about anything you want.”

Akira slipped his hands in his pockets and tried not to glare. Just because he reminded him of a couple shrinks at the Smiling Mountain Mental Institute didn’t mean he was the same as those power-tripping bastards. Or wasn’t. “I’m sure you know all about me thanks to the spy network at Shujin. I know nothing about you.”

It wasn’t true, but Akira didn’t need to say he’d been vetting the guy for months. Information asymmetry was the root of all power imbalance.

Maruki set a notepad on his lap. “Fair enough. I’m Maruki Takuto, I was studying psychology before coming to Tokyo to try to scrounge up funding for research, but my patrons… got cold feet. The Madarame Foundation was my latest shot to get my research re-started, but I’m starting to think they’ve backed out too, so I guess I should count myself lucky Shujin was hiring or I might not have a roof over my head.” He gave a nod to redirect the conversation. “And you? I hope you’re being treated well at your guardian’s home.”

His body feeling too stiff for a believable shrug, Akira lifted a hand for a moment. “Boss is a bit of a hardass, but I can’t complain.” This wasn’t working, he didn’t give a shit about jobs or the doctor’s pet projects. All he wanted was to be free of that crushing absence where Hifumi’s arms weren’t.

His cheeks flushed.

His eyes burned.

That void where his lips should have met hers in the dream taunted him. How pathetic was it that even in a dream he couldn’t imagine what her lips would feel like against his?

Akira sat down in the chair opposite the bespectacled man. “You’re… not allowed to tell anyone else what’s said in a counseling session, are you?” Growing up in the Smiling Mountain Mental Institution taught him a lot about psychology, but not how therapists who healed broken minds did their thing.

Maruki set his papers aside, drawing straight at the change in atmosphere. “Absolutely not. Doctor-patient confidentiality is held in strictest confidence. I think priestly confession is the only other one as protected by law.” He got up and hastened to a binder-bag next to a laptop on the nurse’s desk, unzipped it, and pulled out a set of stapled papers. Returning to the chairs around the coffee table, he took a cheap candy bar from the basket and set it on them and set it all in front of the transfer student. “Here, these are standard counseling boilerplate but apply to what I do here same as when I tried to get a private practice up and running. And… you look like you could use a snack.”

Akira took off his glasses and hooked them on his collar before drawing his red handkerchief to rub at his eyes. The pressure helped fight the burning sensation. “How… how do you get over a girl?”

“Oof,” Maruki said, clasping his hands over his notepad. “Straight to the hardest questions. You have to leave a sweetheart behind when you moved to Tokyo?”

Picking up his glasses, the nervous roiling in his gut grew, so instead of putting his glasses back on, he folded and turned them over in his hands. At this distance the counselor was clear either way, but the transfer student still couldn’t meet his eyes. “No, she’s here, but… some people aren’t good for other people.”

The counselor nodded. “She put you down around her friends? Or is the relationship just getting close enough for toxic personality traits to come out?”

Akira almost stood from his chair. “No, Hifumi would never do anything like that!” For a heartbeat he thought he saw a widening of the counselor’s eyes, but once his mouth started working he couldn’t stop it, “She’s kind almost to a fault, hard-working, not just smart but brilliant, doesn’t even let my stupid shit slide, graceful, principled but inviting, composed in public but passionate about her commitments, positive without being one of those ignorant pushovers…” When he ran out of breath, he slapped a hand over his face. So much for making a case he was better off without.

Maruki gave a small grin. “She sounds really special. Pretty, too?”

Beautiful!” Akira slapped his other hand over his face. Stupid mouth. “She’s got real family. Real friends. Real prospects.” He set his glasses on the table to rub the sides of his head with his fingers. Akira told the counselor about his banishment to Tokyo, the destruction of his social life at Shujin before it could begin thanks to Kamoshida, and the safe harbor he found at Kanda Catholic Church. “It’s not that I don’t like her. But I have to be rational. My life is filled with problems. And the common factor is me.”

The counselor studied him from across the table. “Have you had a bad relationship in the past?”

That imploding feeling grew in his chest. “No chance to.” Akira huffed. “Not with girls, anyway.”

Nodding, Maruki scribbled at his notepad. “It sounds like things are different now.”

Akira’s hands banged onto the table. “But I’m the one with problems everywhere in my life. I’m the one with a court conviction. Do you know how eager people are to blacklist or malign someone for having a record? Do you think it would ever stop at just me?” He put his glasses back on, his heart in his throat for long moments. “I can’t do that to her.”

The corner of the counselor’s lip curled up before he straightened and coughed into his fist. “You know, I have counseled people with arrest records before. Some of them even had wives or husbands. They’re still people, too. The most fundamental principle guiding all human behavior is seeking happiness. Epicurious.”

Straightening his glasses, Akira closed his mouth. He wanted to say Epicurious held a childish, over-simplified view of human psychology. “Shouldn’t that just be more reason not to want to bring her all my baggage?”

A few beats of contemplation passed before Maruki allowed a faint smile. “You know, most people would consider wanting their loved ones to have a better life to be a virtue. What’s she said about all this?”

Akira found it impossible to meet the counselor’s eyes. “I never told her about my record. I think she might be the one person in Tokyo who doesn’t already know.” He clasped his hands and fidgeted. “It’d only be a matter of time before I screw it up. That’s the one constant in my life.” The aching emptiness he felt since that morning tore at him. The memory of the soft, expectant smile Hifumi gave him when they were about to sit down to a match. Then the whispers in the halls of Shujin, or the locker room talk when they didn’t know he was there. Or how much he wanted to do the lewder things to her. “I can’t even keep my thoughts about her… pure.”

“So you’re sexually attracted to her,” the counselor said, his expression nonplussed. The bland, indifferent tone and stance threw the transfer student off. “Akira-kun, it would be strange if you never had any of those thoughts about anyone. Teenage years are the stage of life where men realize women exist.” He glanced down at his notes. “And it doesn’t sound like you’re stuck on one physical aspect of her. You talked about her family, you know about her history, you respect her intellectually. What about what she thinks? Is she always on edge when you’re together?”

Her perky attentiveness of their last meeting popped into mind. “No. But she also doesn’t know…” Akira thought back. They exchanged a few details, but he let her do more of the talking. He never divulged why he was in Tokyo. “She doesn’t know about my assault conviction.”

Maruki scribbled for a few seconds before looking back up. “Well, you don’t deserve those charges to start with. If there was anything I could do about them…” His eyes took an unfocused quality for a beat and something inside the transfer student coiled. Maruki shook his head. “Short of never seeing her again, the odds of her finding out from a source other than yourself increase over time. Given the cringe you just gave, wouldn’t it make the most sense to tell her and let Hifumi decide for herself what your record means?”

The familiar clenching sensation returned to Akira’s gut, but the counselor was right. Learning about her was easy enough—despite her own wishes, her mother was set on turning her into someone famous. She already bumped into Makoto in Jinbocho once. No matter how much he liked the refuge she gave from his record, how long until they met someone who wouldn’t think twice about letting his past slip? As soon as the idea came from someone else’s mouth, it seemed so much more straightforward than his own night-time ruminations. “Do you think I really have to…?”

A sad sigh slipped out of Maruki’s mouth. “Akira-kun, even if I could make you forget your record, there are a few too many other people who would have to forget, too. It might be another thing to forget about Hifumi to protect her from unintended consequences…”

“Never!” Akira shook his head. Just the idea of not seeing her again made that imploding sensation inside come back with a vengeance. “The trajectory of my life changed the day I met her, learned that pure virtue really existed.” She was a living, breathing example of every good thing a human could be. He tried to tell himself it was just wanting to help her, but he had to fight in a sigh just at the prospect of looking into those deep, green eyes.

His phone buzzed in his pocket.

The rest of the Phantom Thieves were explaining the nature of Palaces and Treasures to Yusuke in the group chat. “I didn’t realize it had gotten that late. I should get going.”

Maruki gave one of those show-smiles. “Well, don’t feel compelled to stay on my account. I’m here for you. If you ever want another session, you know where to find me.”

Akira nodded and stood, a text to Queen Togo already composed before he was even out of the nurse’s office, [Do you have any free time today?] He slid the door closed and aimed for the library to switch out books.

Inside the nurse’s office, Maruki stared at the closed door after the transfer student and scratched down notes on the session. The girl could have been anyone to a love-struck boy, but something about the particulars reminded him of the Togos. “Hifumi… No. There’s no way the world is that small.”

Thursday, 30 June 2016
After School
Shujin, Practice Building

Akira stepped out of the nurse’s office and kept walking despite the buzzing in his pocket until he got to the door to the courtyard. He leaned against the concrete wall and closed his eyes. The mental image of Hifumi, arms around him still sprang to mind, lips puckered and those deep green eyes closed in expectation, but this time his stomach didn’t twist so hard it threatened to return lunch.

Akira-kun, it would be strange if you never had any of those thoughts about anyone. Teenage years are the stage of life where men realize women exist, echoed in his mind. It doesn’t sound like you’re stuck on one physical aspect of her. You talked about her family, you know about her history, you respect her intellectually.

So having the same thoughts his mother acted on when she abandoned him most days in the week in Inaba didn’t make him the same obsessed creature. For the first time, he dared to wonder if Hifumi had any thoughts like his. She seemed too pure to have sexual desire.

The buzzing in his pocket continued, so Akira took a deep breath and drew his phone. The Phantom Thieves were discussing the Metaverse, but with Morgana out of the loop, the conversation meandered and repeated old points. A separate text from Makoto asked him to come pick up Morgana so the team could have a proper briefing. He headed to the library to take the team leader up to the roof.

The scent of budding flowers and thyme tickled Akira’s nose as he stepped out onto the unoccupied rooftop where Morgana could talk. Darkness spread over him and Akira glanced up to see clouds passing in front of the sun. After settling in under the overhang shielding the door, Akira checked the Phantom Thief chat. Ann and Ryuji were still explaining their escapades in Kamoshida’s castle, so Morgana directed the rest of the conversation.

Three dots danced next to Yusuke’s ID. [I had no idea of that PE teacher’s depravity. I am thankful the Phantom Thief changed his heart.] A beat passed before he added, [I should say Phantom Thieves.]

Ryuji’s ID popped up. [Damn, you're sure taking the Phantom Thieves and Metaverse pretty well.]

[What would I gain by doubting my own eyes?] Yusuke texted. [I have seen the manifestation of my master's dark heart twice. To doubt your words would be to doubt my own senses. Hitoshi-san was very open he doubted not only in the world, but his very mind and body. I cannot follow the way he walked.]

Perched on the transfer student’s shoulders, Morgana’s ears twisted against his skull at the reminder of the artist’s compatriot who threw himself in front of a train. “No surprise that scars from losing his compatriot are still around a year later.”

Akira nodded. Even though the artist never said anything against him, the simple, even casual air made him think of the scars down his own wrists. Yusuke’s response to betrayal by the only human constant in his life was to stand tall and ask about the Sayuri. Akira lifted his free hand to look at the sleeve, imagining the long white lines dragging down his wrists. No, this wasn’t the time to indulge in self-pity. His world then was nothing but torment. The Phantom Thieves relied on him now. [All we have to do is steal Madarame's Treasure and his heart will change just like Kaneshiro and Kamoshida.]

Makoto popped up next. [It will be difficult. A Palace is the heart of his distortion, and we had to fight through waves of assassins before we could convince Kaneshiro to give up. But if the Phantom Thieves could do it once even before me, the chances are even better with you joining us.]

[Fork yeah!] Ryuji sent.

Three dots danced next to Yusuke’s ID for a moment and disappeared, then reappeared before he texted, [If I had faced reality sooner, so much suffering might have been avoided. Nakanohara-san asked us to leave with him. Sensei made it out to be posturing in front of his girlfriend, but if I had acted then, Hitoshi-san, Mari-san and Rin-san might be alive today.]

Ann sent, [You can't blame yourself for not knowing then what you know now.]

Three dots danced next to Makoto’s ID. [Madarame robbed the future from a lot of artists. He set up the Madarame Foundation to find vulnerable young adults he could exploit. We can at least stop him from doing it again.]

Yusuke sent, [I must join you. He won't change his mind of his own. He still wants to know where I and Takamaki-san are. For the sake of all the futures he robbed… I must put an end to Madarame's machinations. It would be the most civil thing I can do for him.] A beat passed before he added, [For the man who was the only father I ever knew.]

Ann texted, [You're so considerate. I was concerned you'd be stuck on a rampage of revenge, but it's nice to have a calm personality on the team. Makoto and Akira can both be scary when the fighting starts.]

A moment passed before Yusuke sent, [As ironic as this may seem, I have Madarame to thank for that. He always taught me it is a dispassionate eye which shall see the truth. His connections spread far in the art world, and beyond. Someone like me would be snuffed out if I attempted to stand up to him alone. The Metaverse may be our only option.]

Three dots danced next to Ann’s ID, but then disappeared.

After a few moments, Makoto sent, [I hope we all get along, Kitagawa-kun. It's a relief to see you don't hold the bad impression we made to start with against us. Any guess about when his lawyers would take legal action?]

[He wasn't willing to have the police arrest me at Kosei, so he needs to keep this all out of the public eye. Bad media attention would ruin the exhibit, but he will have the time on his hands to come up with something else after it ends. That means we have no more than two weeks.]

Akira straightened. [Leader said we were closing in before, so it shouldn’t be long now. Today is a rest day, so take the opportunity to find something in the real world to attend to. Maybe visit a park or cook lunch for the week. We'll get to the Museum tomorrow.]

Ryuji popped up next. [Oh! We should take him to Gigolo!]

Three dots danced next to Yusuke’s ID for only a moment. [There are limits even to MY openness to new experiences.]

Makoto’s spluttered laugh rose up from the library’s open window.

Ryuji wasted no time to go on the counter-offensive. [Dude, it's an arcade! They all have Gun About, it's the greatest shooter simulation out there.]

One of Morgana’s ears twisted. “Why does Reaper’s enthusiasm fill me with a sense of dread?”

“Eh,” Akira tossed back in lieu of a casual shrug. “It’s a good idea. That katana wasn’t a bad start, but guns are the bread and butter of armies across the world for a reason. Every little bit could help us against Madarame’s Shadow.” [Could you take him today, Ryuji?]

[Totally!] Ryuji followed up with a link to the Shibuya arcade so the artist would have an address.

[I am afraid I would be unable to pay for a day of gaming.]

Ryuji was not to be deterred. [Don't worry about that, I got a bunch of money when we snuck into Kaneshiro's bank.]

That sorted out, Akira swept the chat aside to check his messenger. Hifumi sent him a response that her mother was pressuring her about grades, but she would like to talk to him after cram school. He paused to give a brief prayer her family situation would ease up on her.

Thursday, 30 June 2016
Evening
Marunouchi, Nijubashi Square

The smells of shrimp and ground pork drifted through the mood-lit square, the paper boats from their snacks long since thrown away and school papers taking their place on the little table. After almost two hours of math, Akira’s tutor and crush suggested a break. His record dangled over his head like the sword of Damocles. He swallowed, unable to look her in those green eyes he could drown in. The lull in their activity left the perfect time to tell her about his conviction. He rubbed the back of his neck and ran through a few scenarios in the privacy of his mind.

Hey, Hifumi. The school counselor said I should tell you about my arrest record after I told him I’ve been dreaming of kissing you .

Yeah, that would lead to a swift slap. And now he couldn’t stop looking at her glossy pink lips.

Togo-san, what would you say if somebody got into fights on the regular, except for one time I didn’t beat up a drunk corporate chairman type? That one time I didn’t fight I got arrested and convicted of assault.

He could just imagine her putting those slender fingers to her chin in thought for a moment. Such a reprehensible person shouldn’t make excuses about how the victim justifies the crime, even through insinuation .

She was even classy and astute when telling him off in a hypothetical. Akira flinched and cleared his throat in a vain effort to clear the bitter taste on his tongue.

Hifumi paused, almost straightened after lifting her school bag with one hand and her folded travel shogi board in the other. Those sharp eyes flicked over him and she settled the folded board back in her bag. “You’re right, we play shogi all the time and we need a change of pace. Did you bring your Go board?”

Akira found a way to scramble in his seat, but managed to get it out and set up without making a complete fool of himself. Some parts were missing.

As they began, the sound of distant cars and air traffic competing with the closer people in humdrum conversation for a backdrop which all blended together until it left Akira and the shogi maestra in a curious sense of quiet seclusion. “You know, when I first got to Tokyo, I thought I was going to go crazy. The sound washes over you like the tides, overwhelming and endless.” He set his black stone down. “But I think I understand what people mean by ‘white noise’ now. Surrounded by sound, but somehow it’s like the silence of a winter night up in the mountains.”

Hifumi gave a smile which teased just a hint of teeth, sending butterflies through the transfer student’s stomach. “I never really thought about that. Tokyo has its hot spots for noise, but I’ve never really considered it as anything but just… Tokyo.” She picked up a white stone, and despite the relative darkness he could see the gears whirling behind her dark eyes.

A faint sigh leaked out of Akira’s mouth. If there was ever an instant in time worthy of being immortalized in a frame, that was it. A humble school uniform over sensuous curves… though that intensity in her pretty green eyes seemed dimmer today even as she strategized and counter-strategized.

She cleared her throat. “Um, Akira-kun? Your turn.”

His face felt like it burned. Now it seemed like an even worse time to bring up his record. He coughed into his sleeve, then picked up a black stone and set it on the board. “R-read anything interesting lately?”

Hifumi straightened in her seat, the disappointed impatience smothered beneath a snow-melting smile. It was such a small quirk of her lips, but a brightness which sparked her eyes and even lifted her shoulders. “Oh, yes. Finals are coming up so I’ve been hitting the books a lot this week, but Ooe-sensei – my language arts teacher – assigned Flowers for Algernon. It was as fascinating as unsettling. Just imagining having mental gifts exceeding almost anything seen in mankind and watching them slip through your hands day by day sends chills down my spine.” Her eyes flitted to his school satchel. “I noticed you have a different book in your bag. Have you finished The Screwtape Letters?”

Akira opened his mouth to say he has it resting on his top shelf next to In the Grove, but realized that might not mean anything to her. “I read it cover to cover twice.” He set down another stone.

She reached for a white stone, but paused to scan the board for a second before setting it down. “Anything stand out to you?”

Akira set down another stone, but left his hand on the corner of the board. “The demons’ interpretation of time.”

She clasped her hands in her lap, her shoulders relaxed but a focus in her gaze turning on him. “Oh?”

“The way Screwtape referred to time more like a point or… maybe the inside of a sphere so it was all just… there instead of being a linear thing with the past and the present being distant things like how we experience time.” He shook his head and took his hand off the board. “It was such a trippy concept.”

That soft smile which could melt snow and made his knees feel weak came out again. “I must have read it ten times and I never really noticed that, but you’re right. It makes the whole concept of choices and consequences take on a whole different angle when the effect and cause are all wrapped up together.” She set down another stone, but then her visage grew somber and her lips pressed thin. “Probably a good thing past and future aren’t one close thing for us humans, though.” She shook her head and set down a white stone. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be boring you—”

“Nonsense,” Akira said, just catching himself from standing out of his flimsy metal chair. “Togo-san, you are a lot of things. But you have never been boring. If there’s anything I can do, even just listening, I’ll do it.” He glanced at the scrap papers under the board. Trying to push his record on her just felt selfish now. “Is it stress over school?”

“No.” A shy smile pushed its way across Hifumi’s face, sending butterflies through his stomach again. “Well, not Kosei per se. I do have to keep above eighty-five percent to maintain my scholarship, but I’ve never been worried about that. To be honest, it’s probably trying to mollify Mother. She’ll throw parties when I get excellent marks on my tests, but dances around disappointment when ‘all I get is good’.”

Akira set down a black stone. “Sounds like Madarame.”

Hifumi stared down at the board with a scowl, her eyes stopping on one of the papers underneath. “Mother tries her best. I know she cares. It’s the thoughtlessness of strangers that bothers me more.” She laid down a white stone with a clack rumbling the whole board.

Akira scanned the board, realizing she was pushing his pieces around already. He set a black stone down. His face warmed at the memory of the jerk in a blue button-down shirt who taught him the name Venus of Shogi. The mental picture of a nude Hifumi standing on a scallop shell popped into his mind. How could he have thought it was a good idea to tell her he had an assault conviction? Akira shook his head. “S-so, some rando accosted you on the street?”

She let out a ragged sigh and covered her eyes for a moment as if she couldn’t bear to see the night square at all. “It’s even worse than that.” Hifumi rubbed her temples. “One of the students from class 3-1 asked about Mother running a hostess club right in front of everyone!” She glanced down at the board and slammed a white stone down. “That’s how I found out Tokyo Today ran an exposé on me.” She drew in a shaky breath. “I did an interview with them a couple weeks ago, and know they interviewed Mother a bit later, but… they went so much further. They just… threw out everything about my family no matter how little it had to do with shogi. Papa being bedridden… Mother being the only income earner left… that burglar who hurt Rumi, auntie Kiyoko and uncle Michio…” She sighed and sat back, her shoulders slumping.

Akira set a black stone down. “It can be infuriating how the papers can just throw out any garbage they want.”

Hifumi braced both elbows on the table. “It’s not that it’s untrue, but… capitalizing on my family’s pain just seems…”

“Cruel,” Akira said, his voice low. “And worse, cruelty for profit.” He stretched out his hand to take hers, but the instant his fingertip brushed her fist her eyes jerked up and he shot back as if burned.

Hifumi wrapped her arms around herself. Though her eyes turned, steady to the board, her shoulders pinched together and he could see deep shadows from the taught muscles in her neck. “To be honest, I’ve been avoiding going back home because I have to tell Mother about it. But…”

Akira reached a hand out but stopped himself short of touching her crossed arms and lowered his. “You’re not looking forward to the inevitable screaming match when Miss Overbearing finds out.”

She straightened in her seat and her arms crossed tighter, but her lips pressed in a pout and the aura of fear and uncertainty lifted from her. “Akira!” Hifumi huffed, and for a fraction of a second he thought he saw the corners of her lips turn up. “You’re extremely blunt…” Her shoulders slouched. “But also correct.” She let out a chuff, but the dimness in her eyes left no mistake about the self-deprecating smile she gave. She set down a white stone. “Have you read it?”

His eyes fell away from hers and he forced them onto the board. He picked up a black stone and mulled where his best possibilities were. “I… have seen some of your interviews and photos in other magazines. But if I wanted to know something about you, I think I’d rather learn it from you than take it from a magazine. Even if it was true, it would feel like stealing to me.” He set his stone down.

She took another stone between her index and middle fingers, but her eyes came to rest on him. Those sharp lines in her face and neck settled and she let out a long breath. “How ironic I feel better about you knowing because you said you don’t need to know, at least from someone else.” She set down her stone. “Now if only it could be that easy to break the news to Mother.”

“Want me to tell her?” Akira prodded, a bit of a playful smirk slipping out.

Hifumi slapped her hand over her face. “God, no! Mother would have a conniption if she saw me with a boy.” A beat passed before she slid her hand down and turned up her nose. “A gentleman should know better than to taunt a lady.” She maintained the regal disdain for another beat before her breath burst out and laughter overtook her, and he lasted even less time before he joined. “Thank you, Akira. I feel like our little talk has given me the bravery I need to face my mother.”

He bowed in his seat. “For Queen Togo? Anywhere, any time.”

Their game finished, and the city noise pressed in on them. He swallowed, this relative silence would be the best time to confess, but when she gave him one of those delighted smiles his breath fled. He walked her to the train station, tongue-tied and shy until the subway doors snapped closed. As the wind from the departing train swirled through the station, he could almost see his metaverse alter-ego spreading his arms and pronouncing to the crowd around him, “Ladies and gentleman, the brave Kurusu Akira!”

Notes:

Two chapters as a holiday present. Happy Christmas, everyone! Now this and the FFnet posting should be synchronized and the next content will be fully new.

The order of a few things is going to be shuffled a bit by the necessity of a world that's already had two stones thrown in the pond. Akira is one of those, and the other will be making more prominent appearances soon.

The Power of Friendship has been a frequent part of stories I've read lately, but Romance is a new genre for me to poke into. While Daywatch isn't exactly a romance, it's supposed to have some and will pick up more as different relationships become established. What do you think?

Chapter 68: July 1st, Birth of Sayuri

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Friday, 1 July 2016
After School
Madarame’s Museum

Akira kept his weapon low as he followed the two shotgun-users, Makoto and Ryuji, into the new section of the museum. Minimalist padded couches furnished the large, open room. Unlike the bland walls of the outer exhibit halls to help the artwork stand out, the walls here looked like golden screen paintings, with dark leafless trees and hazy mountains.

And in the middle of everything stood one of those tall, gold-robed Shadows.

Ryuji snapped to the corner with his gun in both hands and signaled to the others something lay ahead. Makoto leaned out a little to get a better view of the tall Shadow.

The transfer student glanced at Morgana for a silent query over which one would start this one. Somehow, Yusuke picked up on the exchange and knelt close to the team leader to whisper, “May I unmask this one?”

Morgana looked up to Akira with a shrug, and received one in return. The team leader waited until Goldie looked the other way before leading the Thieves into the room, taking what limited cover the minimalist furniture provided. He gave one last gesture to get behind Goldie.

Yusuke nodded, then dashed out behind Goldie and leaped, his empty left hand reaching for the thick mask. “Let your true self be known!”

The Shadow spasmed and swelled, consumed by black before it burst into a towering humanoid figure made of white paper folded in sharp lines. It glared down at them with a rumbling growl paper shouldn’t be able to make.

Ryuji was the first to take a shot at it with his shotgun, then another blast with the semi-automatic weapon.

Akira gave it a burst from his sub-machine gun, but he couldn’t even see bullet holes from the impact. “Well, this reminds me just a little too much of Owner.”

Morgana cried out, “Zorro!” and his Persona coalesced above him, blazing like foxfire lighting its eyes before the same wispy aura flickered over the towering Shadow, throwing it into the wall.

Makoto followed up with a fire bolt.

The Shadow righted itself and looked straight at Makoto before it roared.

Everybody cringed back at the noise, but Johanna dissipated and Makoto stumbled back with her hands clapped over her ears, her shotgun falling and only the lanyard keeping it hanging on her shoulders. She gave an angry bellow with a wild look in her eyes before she charged forward, her plated gloves crashing against the giant paper golem with the soft sound of paper rustling and no sign of damage.

Morgana tsked. “Looks like it’s effectively immune to physical damage, and Zorro didn’t do much to it. Blast it with your magic, Thieves!”

Ann gave a wicked smile underneath her feline mask. “Time for me to shine. Dance, Carmen!” The dancer flicked an open hand, tossing an exploding ball of ice at the towering paper monstrosity, knocking it growling back.

The paper humanoid flicked its hands up as if to bare its hollow arms at the Thieves. Akira and Ryuji dove out of the way an instant before a howl of what sounded like rapid gun-fire roared at them, shredding a stuffed ottoman.

Akira considered Orthrus, but with Makoto still punching the enemy in a blind rage, he knew they wouldn’t be able to reinforce each other. “Reaper, let’s give it an extra serving of beatdown.”

The wild grin under his skull mask made Ryuji look like a manic monster. “Hell yeah! Go, Captain!”

“High Pixie,” Akira shouted, bringing forth the armored fey.

“Zio!” The artist cried out, his Persona blowing that cloud-smoke out of its pipe just as the paper monster zeroed in on Akira. The lightning bolt striking out drove it stumbling back one step.

High Pixie flew up and around to get a clear line to Captain Kidd, then lifted a hand. A torrent of shredding winds spiraled out of the outstretched hand, catching the skeletal captain on a ruined boat, its tattered sails filling as the winds swirled around it. Ryuji’s Persona lifted his cannon hand and blasted out a shock of concussive force. The shredding winds spiraled after it. The first pulse knocked the giant paper monster out of its guard, the second pulled it off the ground and tore it apart, scattering half a dozen parts fading into dissolving smoke.

Still swinging, Makoto tripped when her target fell apart.

Morgana held up a hand at the others. “I’ll take care of this.” Zorro formed above him, its eyes blazing with that ethereal fire as the same aura rippled over the girl in black leather. She seized once and collapsed to the ground, then the aura and Zorro dissipated.

Akira and the other Thieves gathered around her, everybody tense in case her craze lasted. When she gave a pained groan and came to all fours, he let out a relieved breath and reached out a hand. “You going to be okay?”

Makoto accepted his hand up, then blinked and shook her head. “I hope there aren’t many Shadows who can do that. Would’ve been nice to have some warning.”

Morgana shrugged, though there was a grimace to it which belied his attempt to make them feel better. “Sorry. It’s not like I have a magical scanning power. I only know what Shadows can do if I’ve seen them, and even then there are a few who have deleterious effects which make it hard to prepare against.”

Ryuji scoffed. “Big deal. All’a us can see Shadows try to blow us up, too.”

Yusuke stepped between them, one hand on the katana at his waist. “Perhaps it would be more constructive to carry on with the heist. We may not know how to pluck Palaces out of the general populace, but we have this one yet to complete. Let us away.”

Only four paintings interrupted the gaudy walls, one on each. Akira wondered if Hifumi liked this sort of art or if she preferred more modern styles.

Yusuke’s pace froze and his dark grey gaze came to rest on one painting. He stepped closer and the other Phantom Thieves likewise gathered around the Sayuri, or at least something like it. The background was pink as a storm of cherry blossoms, the kimono was blue and the fog was white, but besides the color differences, it was definitely the painting Yusuke showed them way back when they came to the atelier to investigate Madarame. Ann shared a quick glance at them, something weighty about the empty silence, before they all reached out at the painting on the wall.

Madarame’s Atelier, Student Studio

“Come in,” a woman’s voice called through the door.

Madarame pushed open the flimsy wooden door to the downstairs painting studio. His last pupil sat on a rickety stool in front of her latest canvas. A mirror sat on the nearby counter, propped up by a can of paint. She dabbed the brush at her palette, then brushed at something near the bottom of the canvas. “You always make such spectacular work, Terumi-chan. Is this that self-portrait you were talking about?”

The frail woman flashed him a weak smile, setting down her paint brush so she could tug at her blue blouse in the sweltering summer heat. “I feel like it’s time to do something for Yusuke.”

Madarame stepped around a stack of empty paint cans. “The Nishiwakis called. They’ve been expecting an RSVP from you for their kid’s seventh.”

Terumi’s smile strained and her eyelid twitched. “Oh, I’m sorry for the bother. I’ve been forgetting things.” She turned back to her painting and picked up her brush.

Madarame came around to see. The portrait which met his eyes stole his breath. Elegant in its simplicity, the red Terumi’s alter-self wore made it pop with surprising power.

Tears gathered in his eyes when Madarame realized he could paint for ten lifetimes and never create something so magnificent. The way it seized the eye and refused to let go, the way it shone with affection…

Terumi’s brush jerked a line down through the swaddled baby in her portrait’s arms, the brush tumbling to the floor. She started to reach for it, but the hand holding her palette began to shake. A garbled moan rumbled from her throat, and she slipped to the floor, spasming.

“Terumi-chan!” Madarame looked around. A glass of water sat at the work bench, with her bottle of pills next to it. He raced around her for it, but the first steps back brought his eyes on that magnificent painting.

A painting so beautiful it made him ache.

Has the master not created as much magnificence as the student who took from him?

His feet stilled.

The stool squeaked as her convulsing form fought to drag herself up. She raised a twitching arm at him, her fingers clutching his threadbare shirt. The other reached for the bottle in his right hand. The jerking movements were so strong, she only succeeded in knocking the bottle loose and spilling a few pills.

Madarame raised the bottle and her weakened hand pawed down his shirt, unable to manage enough control to grip it.

Terumi more threw herself than shuffled forward on her knees, the spasms wracking her whole body growing stronger. The stool tipped over to its side with a clatter. She spat out a gagged breath and her head threw back, but her hands came up like claws for that pill bottle.

Madarame stepped back and the young woman fell to the ground, her spasms growing stronger and more irregular.

She stared up at him from her back, her choked breathing grew more ragged, a wet sound in it. After another minute, her lips started turning blue.

After another minute, her spasms slowed.

Then stopped.

The glass of water and pill bottle tumbled from his nerveless hands. A hand clapped over his mouth, and he couldn’t even force a word out through the smothering horror. Numbness overtook his limbs and he ran, stumbling once, around her body to the phone in the central hall to dial 1-1-9.

Madarame’s Atelier, Student Studio

The pair of medics pulled the zipper up to close the body bag, and only once the last trace of Terumi’s visage disappeared could Madarame tear his eyes away from her.

One of the medics, a scrawny, middle-aged man with a burn scar across his forehead, reached out to clap his hand on the artist’s wrist. “Madarame-san?”

Madarame jerked and looked the burned man in the eyes. “Y-Yes?”

The medic squeezed the artist’s wrist, then let go. “You can’t blame yourself, sir. It’s obvious what happened. I’ve seen it before.” He gestured at the pills scattered over the floor. “A patient with a history of seizures forgets to take her medication, an attack starts, then she spills everything ‘cause of all the fumbling. It’s not pretty, but there are worse ways to go than asphyxiation.”

Madarame clutched his hands. “As… As—what?”

“Asphyxiation,” the medic said, kneeling to pack the diagnostic tools. “Her windpipe was blocked. Not unheard of for seizure victims to vomit. God only knows what might have happened if you’d found her before she threw up, but there’s nothing to gain by beating yourself up over walking in after it’s all over.”

Madarame’s mouth opened, then closed.

The medic zipped up his bag and stood, then paused at the portrait. “Say, I’m no art critic, but that thing’s pretty amazing. What is it?”

Is a master not owed what is made thanks to his magnificence?

Madarame’s mouth opened and closed once more before he found his tongue. “It… It’s mine.”

Madarame’s Museum

Silence pressed down on the Phantom Thieves as they drew back from the discolored Sayuri. Akira’s stomach churned. Beside him, he saw Ann release a sharp breath through her nose, and it came out as cold fog.

Yusuke whispered, “Thank you, Sensei. Now I am free.”

Ryuji set the tip of his bat on the ground. “Whazzat?”

The artist straightened, his shoulders squaring. “I have no further reason to forgive that despicable man.”

Makoto’s hands clenched on her plated gauntlets. Her teeth ground and it felt like the temperature rose several degrees. “Byakko? Are you sure we have to leave Madarame alive?”

Instead of answering, the team leader looked up to Akira. The longcoated teen wondered if he was thinking of Kamoshida. He remembered the feel of the sub-machine gun clenched in his hand, the Shadow of the perverted coach who wanted to rape Ann and did rape Shiho standing in front of him. The anger when he pulled the trigger and there were no bullets left to kill him with. Or that it took him days to come to grips with the fact Kamoshida took far more from all those other students than himself. Akira took in a long breath and turned to Yusuke. “I don’t think it’s their call. Or mine. I think you’re the only one with the right to decide if he lives or dies.”

Yusuke took a step back. “How does one kill through the Metaverse?”

Morgana folded his crossbow and looked down at the ground. One ear folded back against his skull. “A Palace Ruler is the suppressed inner self. If we kill his Shadow, all his inner thoughts and feelings and everything connected to it are destroyed. He’ll enter a mental shutdown, becoming dead mentally – if not outright.”

Yusuke nodded, his eyes unfocused and swiveling up in recollection. “But to change his heart, we must take his Treasure and defeat his Shadow while leaving him alive. To that end, we must secure a safe route and be ready to send the calling card, which will cause the object representing his distorted desires to manifest into an item we may steal?”

Letting out a relieved breath, Morgana nodded with a pleased grin. “That’s right, greenie! I’m glad to see you’ve taken to the lessons Panther and Nightrider explained to you.”

Ryuji put his left hand on his hip. “Hey, I did plenty o’ ‘splainin’.”

Morgana waved him off and readied his crossbow again. “Whatever. We should get going. The Treasure is this way.”

The Phantom Thieves followed him to another hallway intersection barred by a roller gate straight ahead, with the hall branching to the left and right.

Makoto lifted her shotgun and squinted to peer through the holographic sight. “There’s the Treasure, all right.”

“Where?” Yusuke squinted, then stepped closer to the roller gate. The track star caught him and pulled him back before one of the Goldies patrolling the pedestal in the room beyond saw him.

Morgana waved them away from the roller gate. “That’s it, everyone. One of those two halls should lead to it.” He pointed at the break in the hall heading left and right.

Ann fidgeted her pistol, the length of the bulky silencer making the motion seem exaggerated. “Daggerfall left?”

Morgana gave a nod – of course – and led the team down an elbow-curve to the heavy fogged glass of a security door. A large, square planter broke up the monotony of the gold wallpaper. The Thieves braced behind it and against the wall in case a Shadow lay beyond it. The team leader hit the button next to the door.

A moment later, a gravelly voice snapped, “What is it?”

The Phantom Thieves waited. A moment later, a click sounded and the door swung open, a Shadow van Damme behind it.

Yusuke pulled the trigger, the marksman rifle sending a bullet straight between the masked eyes of the Shadow.

It swelled into a black pustule, then burst into a pair of white paper disks floating vertically in the air.

Ann’s mouth quirked and she looked to Akira. “Are these yours or mine?”

Ryuji brandished the frosty-white crystal the longcoated teen gave them at the start of this Palace dive. “Dudes, we got more options now.” He popped out the magazine and pressed the big crystal into the top, where it shrank and slimmed to fit on top. He slapped the magazine back in his shotgun and took a shot at the closest Sudama, knocking it to the ground, covered in icy rime.

Makoto stared in marvel. “I want a gun which can do that so easy.”

The other paper spirit of the mountains emitted a shockwave of sharp winds, driving the Thieves not braced behind the planters to the ground like leaves.

Akira kipped up. “Jack Frost!” The mischievous spirit of ice coalesced in a swirl of motes of light and continued dancing. It flung a bolt of ice into the standing Sudama, knocking the last one to the ground. He pulled a large survival knife out of a pocket in his longcoat and led the team’s charge at the vulnerable Shadows, leaving nothing but dissolving smoke.

Yusuke sheathed his katana. “I must say, that is exhilarating.”

Makoto jogged into the office just in case the door might close and lock on them, then held the door open.

Another door sat on the opposite wall, but didn’t budge when Akira pulled at the lever. It had a panel with a speaker and several unlabeled buttons next to it, but he didn’t want to guess at random when one of them might trigger an alert in Palace security. He turned back to the computer looking out over the core of the Palace.

Six prongs rose out of a raised pedestal, steady red lasers burning between them. Two Goldies patrolled around it, and two gateways large enough to drive a flatbed truck through opened to the right – where they were – and to the left. Even Madarame’s gaudy Shadow skulked about, though without any apparent pattern to his nervous, shuffling walk. “Seems like pretty heavy security.”

Makoto sat down and typed Password 1 into the computer overlooking the core. A list of options appeared. “So, what first?”

Morgana hopped onto the desk next to her and the others gathered around. He squinted at the room above. “There’s some catwalks up there. We should keep those in mind come time to steal the Treasure. Snatching it and running would be a lot faster than smashing our way in.”

Ann pointed her silenced pistol at the gate controls. “Might as well see if we can open up the inner perimeter.”

Ryuji shook his head and took her hand with gentle but firm grip to point the silencer away from the screen. “Dude, how many times do I gotta say trigger discipline? If ya ain’t shootin’ nobody, take your finger outta the trigger well.”

She blushed and lowered her pistol, but did so.

“It’s all right.” Makoto focused back on the computer and hit ‘retract’ on the gates. Both of the roller gates slid up and out of the way. “Well, that gets us closer to the Treasure. Looks like there are lights, lasers, and power left.”

Morgana folded up his crossbow, then rubbed his chin with his free hand. “Hm… If we can turn off the lights, that could allow us to sneak in without being seen.” When she moved the cursor to it, he waved his open hand at the next option. “What about the laser grid?”

Yusuke slipped the rifle belonging to the track star until yesterday to his shoulder, then held out his fingers to make an angled frame. “It isn’t a grid, though. Those are clearly just parallel lines.”

Makoto sighed. “It’s a term for a system of protections, Fox.”

Akira tapped a foot. “Well, let’s disable them. Getting to the Treasure is no good if we can’t actually reach it.”

She nodded and hit the toggle, but a new window appeared stating ‘awaiting authorization’ on the screen and a small panel flipped open next to the keyboard to reveal a plate with a crude hand silhouette on it. Makoto cringed for a moment, then backed to the security menu. “I’m guessing that means only Madarame can disable the lasers.”

“For real?” Ryuji’s posture tensed, one hand gripping the grip end of his aluminum baseball bat and the other dangling off the thick end, but his mouth twisted in a grimace. “How the eff are we gonna get it, then?”

Akira looked up, then down. “Try hitting the power. That should knock out everything hooked into the power grid. Which is pretty much everything as long as his cognition has realistic assumptions about security.”

Makoto nodded and hit the toggle on the power.

The lights both inside the security office and in the huge core chamber flicked off, and the lasers winked out as well. The eyes on all the Shadows glowed in the dim, and the hazy obloid form of the Treasure sat there, obscured only by the one prong jutting up from the edge of the hexagonal dais.

Shadow Madarame bellowed, “You fools! Protect my Treasure!”

A dozen pairs of eyes ran into the room and joined the encirclement of the raised dais. Just a couple seconds later, one of the Shadows shouted, “Your most brilliant and beneficent Madarame, re-activating the power now!”

The lights winked back on and the lasers returned to their steady, red hum.

Ryuji gawked. “Fuck. That wasn’t even thirty seconds.”

Morgana’s frown grew. “And the Palace’s security level just jumped. That won’t mean much once we’re coming to steal it, but we haven’t even found a way to directly reach the Treasure.”

Makoto looked at the computer, then up at the Palace core. “We’ll probably have to get here to do this when we return to steal the Treasure.”

Akira shrugged. “So we split into two teams. We’ve got enough people.”

Makoto nodded. “With Johanna, I believe I have the greatest ability to rapidly traverse the Palace. I should be here.”

Nodding, Morgana switched his crossbow from hand to hand. “You’ll need strong backup just in case, but you carried Joker back in Kaneshiro’s vault so the same thing should work again. Reaper, your Persona is almost as resilient as hers, and when it uses wind it’s still our fastest. You’re with Nightrider.” He hopped down. “Come on, let’s check that other hall and see if we can get to those catwalks.”

By the time they reached the intersection again, a Shadow van Damme patrolled the length of the carpeted area stretching from the core of the Palace to the rest and viewing area they just came from. The Thieves held back until it turned around, then headed out down the hall to the room with the mis-colored Sayuri.

The Thieves followed the hall curving and rising beyond. Plain, beige walls stretched on both sides, with corkboards crammed with advertisements for the Magnificent Madarame, sales in the millions of yen, and wanted posters for ‘fugitives’.

Yusuke and Ann’s faces were among them.

Akira stepped forward to rip off the ones on the nearest corkboard.

Morgana sighed. “That’s not going to be enough to make him forget, Joker.” He led them up the floor ramping up at a steep angle and wrapping a widening spiral around the core until coming to a landing with a side-hall branching to an observation balcony occupied by two Shadow van Dammes.

Morgana scanned the distance, then ducked back and pulled out a crossbow bolt with a long bulge just under the angled bolt head. He adjusted a dial at the bottom of it, then looked at the others and whispered, “Taking those ones out will be pointless, they’ll respawn by the time we get back here to steal the Treasure. As soon as the whistler goes off, you all follow me.”

He took a deep breath, raised his crossbow, then side-stepped out and let loose a bolt. Just after it passed the observation balcony’s rail, the bulge split open, something snapping out and knocking the bolt into a spin. What sounded just like somebody whistling for attention came from it.

Both Shadow van Dammes jerked around, looking in the core room after the bolt. “What was that?”

The Thieves dashed across the hall and continued up. Only one Shadow van Damme stood at the next landing, allowing the Thieves to sneak past as soon as it turned its back on the wrap-around hall. They continued up to another landing with two utility doors.

The team leader got to work on one as Akira worked on the door straight-ahead, opening it to a confusing storage room with two futons on one side. Just like the other safe rooms the team had come across. “Looks like we’ve got a space for a breather, guys.”

Morgana’s hushed but triumphant, “A-hah!” alerted them to a bigger discovery. Beyond lay a rectangular room as wide as the workshop in the real atelier, but with a ceiling so low Ann and all the boys had to duck to get inside. Standing racks held coiled loops of rope and extension cords to the left, spare bulbs and a theater light in the center, with brooms and cleaning supplies to the right.

Another half-sized door lay just beyond the row of light bulb boxes. Morgana picked the lock on that, then opened the door and cackled. “I knew it! The catwalks above the Treasure.” He took tentative steps at first, but when the wooden beams made no noise, he bound down them. Struggling with the stoop the room forced him to, the artist followed after. They paused at an intersection in the catwalks, beside which hung a hook on cables.

Akira slipped out to join them, keeping his voice at a whisper in case the Shadows below might hear, “What’s up?”

Morgana turned to him, his pointed grin reminding the longcoated teen of Calvin. “Go inside and find the controls for this crane. We might be able to bypass those lasers after all.”

Akira nodded and turned back, relaying the orders to the Thieves.

Makoto, just a half-centimeter shorter than the ceiling, gave an easy nod. “Oh, I know exactly what he means.” She led him to a circuit breaker box, next to which sat a big lever suitable for a theater production.

Ryuji joined them, his back hunched and head canted to one side to accommodate the low ceiling. “This it?” As soon as the longcoated teen nodded, he reached out and pulled the lever down. The whirring of an electric motor outside the small door sounded.

Akira pushed him aside, but with the ungainly position they all found themselves in to start with, he tumbled to his ass. Akira grabbed the lever and returned it to the level position.

Morgana shot back into the utility room at a sprint and gave a glare at the longcoated teen. “You idiot! We don’t want to tip off the Shadows to our only means of reaching the Treasure!”

Ryuji picked himself up, returning to the hunched posture with his head tilted to one side. “Hey, it was my idea!”

Morgana gave a bow to the transfer student. “My apologies.” He turned to Ryuji. “You idiot! We don’t want to—”

“Awright! You don’t gotta bite my head off.” Ryuji crossed his arms, his body started to tilt, and he uncrossed them.

Ann pulled her pigtail free from a splinter catching it in a ceiling rafter. “It sounds like this is doable now, right? Can we go so I stop getting splinters in my hair?”

Morgana nodded and led the team to the street-side entrance of the Palace. “Great work, Phantom Thieves. We’ve established our route to the Treasure. We’ll rest tomorrow and make the calling card. Can everybody make Sunday?”

Ann, Makoto, and Yusuke nodded.

Ryuji shrugged. “I would’a been at the arcade most o’ the day, ‘cept dinner an’ plum pie with Ma. ‘Long as we’re done by then, she won’t even know we were doin’ nothin’.”

Anything,” Akira corrected. With his knife stowed, he used his free hand to rub the side of his head. He’d have to cancel shogi with his pretty rival, but Madarame still had Ann and Yusuke in his sights. He couldn’t let his friends walk around with targets on their backs. “I can be back from Mass by noon, and up here by twelve-forty. I’ll just have to call and swap shifts with somebody working Saturday.”

“You’re working?” Makoto began disassembling her shotgun. “We can do this later.”

“The sooner we change his heart, the better.” Akira shrugged. “To be honest, work is more looking for intel. Mishima said there’s suspicious activity in Shibuya several times, and I figure having an ear to the ground would give an opportunity to pick up names.”

Ann nodded, then ran a gloved hand through her hair to check for splinters. “I like sleeping in on Sundays, anyway.” She turned a squinty-eyed look at Ryuji. “Hey, wait… plums… you only do that on your birthday!”

Ryuji gave a small grin and waved her down. “Aw, don’t worry ‘bout that. No way I’d be able to party while ‘rame’s out for your head.” Having already disassembled and stowed his shotgun, he tapped his baseball bat against his shoulder. “I know it was a real break when I knew Ma was gonna be safe. Let’s get this done. Then I can breathe easy.” He pulled out his phone, hit the Nav, and disappeared.

The rest of the Phantom Thieves did likewise, but with Akira heading to the same place as Yusuke, he ran into the artist at the side of the road next to a concrete utility pole. “Hey.”

Yusuke’s posture went from slouched to straight, his face switching to an impassive mask in an instant. “Have you ever learned something of your father which forced you to view him in a different light?”

Akira straightened the strap of the satchel sitting too light on his shoulder without the not-cat’s familiar weight. He glanced back and saw the team leader sitting a few meters back, peering at them from the concrete-block wall. Akira let out a breath and looked back to the artist. “Honestly? No. Morgana or one of the others from Shujin could explain, but my old bastard betrayed his duty as a father a long time ago.”

Yusuke crossed his arms and shifted his weight to his far leg. “I… would prefer some time alone to think.”

Morgana hopped from the block wall to the transfer student’s shoulder. “Okay, but make sure you text Joker when you’re on the way back.”

Several silent seconds passed by before Yusuke said, “You need not worry. I will join you all on Sunday.”

He stepped out, so Akira let the team leader in his satchel and took the straight route to Yongen.

Friday, 1 July 2016
Early Evening
Yongen, Leblanc

Akira trotted into the coffee shop as the crimson light of evening painted the quiet town outside. Within, the sedate wood and leather décor created a calm tone as if fighting the passage of time outside. Two elderly women in bland, pale yellow dresses nursed coffee in the middle booth, one looking up at the sound of the bell before returning to what remained of her cup.

Sojiro looked up from his book, his eyes flicking to the old women before stopping on the transfer student.

Taking the hinted meaning, Akira plopped into one of the high chairs by the stack of books and manga. As small as the core of Madarame’s Palace was, they spent little time fighting through it, but it still left some tiredness he wanted to take the edge off. Akira covered his mouth as a yawn crawled out until it passed and left with a full-body shiver. “Got any of the Kona blend?”

Sojiro came to a stop next to the register. “Not Kona today, but I can get you something close.” His eyes dropped down to the transfer student’s tapping fingers. “You’re in a good mood today.”

A scratchy tune came from one of the old women. She answered her phone and shuffled out of the booth seat to head for the door.

Glancing at his fingers, Akira stopped to press his hands flat on the counter. As soon as someone else pointed out his eager anticipation to get the Palace over with, he realized how selfish that must look. Yusuke just had a bridge dropped on him, and here Akira sat, looking forward to beating up – or even killing – the Shadow of a person who hadn’t done anything to him.

The first old woman left and the other paid and got up to go before Sojiro returned with his coffee. “You’re back earlier than usual. Everything going okay with work? And that weird artist?”

Akira shrugged, waiting for the second old woman to depart before answering. “This week’s… had a lot of revelations. To be honest, I have to credit him for holding up better than I would. I’d’ve stabbed my old bastard in the aortic artery.”

“Family court is never fun.” Sojiro started counting out cash in the register to close out the day. “Speaking of, I had a meeting with your social worker today. It sounds like you’re keeping up your grades and Shujin hasn’t had any complaints about your behavior. That’s pretty good, all things considered. I know things have been pretty hard over there with your record getting leaked, so I can see why you’re making friends at other schools.”

Akira took the tiny creamer pitcher and poured a bit into his coffee, then stirred until the white descended into the dark. He hadn’t thought about hiding his record from Hifumi and Yusuke. It just… happened. Did that make him dishonest? He blew across his coffee and took a sip. The dark, rich liquid tempered by a shot of cream chased away a little of the settling exhaustion from fighting through a Palace. He set it back down on the saucer. “It’s… actually not as hard as I thought it would be. The academics, anyway. There’s still some students who keep trying to bait me after class.”

Sojiro wrote the totals down in his phone, then packed away most of the cash in an envelope and threw it in a safe under the counter. “Sorry to say, but there’s always going to be people playing games. Fewer and fewer people as you go along, but I still had to deal with those types before retiring from the Ministry of Finance.”

Akira took a deeper drink. “You mentioned that before. Is that how you met Director Isshiki?”

Sojiro’s gaze stared up and into the distance, the corners of his lips curling as he wiped down an empty coffee siphon. “In a sense.” He chuckled, something dark and deprecating about it. “My job had been balancing the books for a while, I just had to approve budgets after inspections of Blue Cove.” He chuckled. “I’m glad the other guys had a big interest in that project. I enjoyed talking with Wakaba, but never completely understood what they were doing there.” He slipped his phone out of his pocket to check the time, then trotted over to the sink filled with dishes and set his phone on the inner counter, then turned on the water. “Say, if you’ve got enough time to yak, why don’t you help out a little?”

Akira took another gulp and stood. “That it for the day?”

“Friday’s always a slow day in Yongen,” Sojiro said. “The young kids are out in more exciting parts of the city, and the older folks just want to crash after a long week.” He watched the transfer student flip the sign closed, then turned to start cleaning in the kitchen. “Think you’re up for another lesson on coffee making?”

Akira pulled out his phone. No messages for anybody waiting for him. Hifumi already explained Friday was her longest day, thanks mostly to school, so he sent, [Winding the day down over here. Have a good night, Queen Togo.]

Just before he slipped it in his pocket, a new text came from Yusuke. [I think I am in a proper state of mind to return. My city map says I am thirty minutes away.]

[I'll be here to let you in.] Akira let out a long breath before setting his phone on the counter next to Sojiro’s. “Well, Yusuke’s a good forty minutes away. We making curry today?”

Sojiro smiled, maybe even a real smile the way the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes creased. “You’re a decent cook, but you’re a ways from harmonizing dishes like the house curry. Wash those dishes and I’ll get the kitchen straightened up. Then it’s quiz time for bean types and what to do with them.”

Akira turned and they got to work, scrubbing and trading trivia on coffee beans and the particulars of their preparation. If he hadn’t had his eyes on the dishes, Akira might have noticed an application open on Sojiro’s phone stating, ‘Cloning…’, with the same progress bar on his own phone.

Friday, 1 July 2016
Night
Yongen, Leblanc

Akira trotted up the creaky stairs to the loft. He pulled the dirty clothes from the day bundled up over his shoulder into the hamper, thankful the bath house had their own towels so he didn’t have to worry about that piling up the laundry. Crickets chirped, louder than he ever remembered them in the mountains. The bath wasn’t long enough to be relaxing by any stretch of the imagination, but did everything in the city have to be turned up to the eleventh notch?

Yusuke sat on the couch, the threadbare spare sheet thrown over the back and the winter blanket rolled up against the arm to serve as a pillow.

Perched atop the blanket-pillow stood Morgana, looking as serious as his tone. “…shutdown, like Joker said. The only other alternative is to steal his Treasure, which will cause Madarame’s heart to change. Those are the only two options to save Lady Ann and you from his pets in the courts. And we’re closing in, so we need to know what your decision is soon.”

The artist tightened the arms wrapped around themselves, elbows on his knees as if he could not bear to hold himself up. “I have been thinking about possibilities like this for years. Even before Hitoshi jumped in front of the train, I knew things could not go on with Madarame, I was just too much a coward to act on my own. I thought him like a god with the whole of the art world under his thumb, and I but an ant. He has preyed upon too many to escape paying his dues.”

Morgana’s head bobbed in understanding. “Don’t get too worked up over this, Madarame forced your hand as well. At least this way, you get to challenge Madarame on equal terms. We just need to know if you’re going to take down his Shadow, or steal his Treasure.”

“Hey,” Akira said, his voice low as he paced to the hamper to throw the day’s old clothes in.

Yusuke unfolded his arms, though they remained in a loose wrap around his torso. His bleary gaze stared up at the transfer student. “The Phantom Thieves changed Kaneshiro’s heart. How did you decide upon that?”

Akira rubbed his arm under the baggy black sleeve. “To be honest, I think Makoto just went with the procedure we developed for Kamoshida.”

Yusuke straightened a little, the hunch remaining in his shoulders. “Ah. Your first change of heart, with that despicable coach who preyed upon the kindness of the fair maiden Ann.”

Akira’s pale grey gaze looked away from the artist’s dark one. “Not me. I didn’t even have a concept of saving him. I wanted him dead.” He came to a stop in front of the tiny poster of the Virgin Mary holding the body of Jesus. “It was Ann who had the strength to change him, to let him live.”

Yusuke clasped his hands. “What made you decide to pursue Kamoshida to start with? Was it his beatings of the volleyball club? You seem the sort who delivers righteous vengeance on behalf of others.”

Akira sat down on the corner of his bed. “It was Shiho. He took her away.” He chuffed, bitterness choking his self-deprecating laugh. “She was the first girl in my life to hear out my dreams, see me in suffering, and give me an encouraging smile.” There had been several at Tanizaki Middle School who pitied him, but Shiho was so much better than that. She believed in him. Even now, the shock of that being torn away brought a burning heat to his eyes. Akira took in a deep breath, then forced it out through his lips and tried to look nonchalant and not like he wanted to cry over a girl who could never have been his. He took off his glasses to rub his eyes. “When we’d battered Kamoshida’s Shadow and taken his Treasure, she was the one who demanded he atone.” Akira re-settled his glasses. “I started the search for Kaneshiro not long after, but she was the one who began the Phantom Thieves. Without a heart like hers, we’d have killed Kamoshida and washed our hands of it.”

Yusuke breathed in silence for long moments. “It seems you’ve come to accept life with Kamoshida changed. Do you think you could have lived with yourself if you’d killed him?”

Akira turned from the artist, but that just brought the tiny poster of the Virgin Mary into view. For a beat, the look on Mary’s face seemed accusing instead of mournful. He looked away. It’s better that Shiho had Mishima to go back to, because in his heart… “Yes.” He straightened his sleep clothes. “Which is why I’m glad it didn’t end up coming down to me. A better person made the choice.”

The artist allowed a respectful pause. “She is as superb in spirit as she is in physical beauty, is she not?”

Morgana hopped up to all four legs, his tail aloft and twitching. “H-Hey…!” When the others looked at him, he swallowed. “Uh, that’s true. I mean we should stay on topic.”

Yusuke bowed his head, every muscle and line on his face somber. “I apologize for the complication I have afflicted you all with. Either way, Sen… Madarame shall pay the piper. If he dies, his fate shall be swift and certain, but if as suave as a calling card may be, I cannot help but fear a change of heart will merely see him swept under the rug.”

Morgana sat, his tail going slack. “Kamoshida went from being a predator who even bullied other teachers into helping conceal his secret into publicly confessing. If there remains even a shred of love for the art he taught you, I’m sure Madarame’s change in cognition will make a similar need to confess.”

Yusuke pursed his lips, then set his rolled jacket on the arm of the couch and patted it for what fluff that could do. He grasped the threadbare sheet, then stared at the frayed edges, his focus a thousand meters away.

Akira shuffled over to lay down in his bed, bringing up the text messenger on his phone. “I’m kind of short on money right now, but I bet I can get a new pillow for you from Ann. And I know Makoto has some linen – she mentioned doing laundry at her flat.”

The artist nodded and lay down, stretching his legs over the arm of the far side of the couch. “I am sure that will help my rest. If only such a simple solution could bring black and white to the choice with Madarame.”

Saturday, 2 July 2016
Lunchtime
Shujin, Rooftop

Akira popped the lid off his mixed rice and vegetables, then pulled a little plastic baggie with clean chopsticks. Before he could dig in, Alliance Force, Assemble! sang out of his phone. When he spied Queen Togo on the caller ID, he felt a smile split his face. “Joke translation service, this is Nadia Geddit.”

Her sonorous laugh spilled out of the phone and he savored the sound. After a few moments of the lovely tones, Hifumi apologized to some people on her side of the phone and spoke in a hushed tone, “Your creativity is a welcome break from the week, Akira-kun.”

He set his chopsticks down and rubbed the back of his neck. “For Queen Togo? Anywhere, any time.”

Hifumi’s chuckles sounded as music to his ears as her open laughter. However, an air of austere focus fell as they ended. “I wanted to ask about Kitagawa-san.”

Akira swallowed and reached down to the team leader snoozing in his satchel to tap him on the head and rouse him from his nap. “What did you want to know about Yusuke?”

“Just Yusuke?” Her tone left a sly smile clear in his mind’s eye. “You must have made quite the impression on each other.” A beat of silence passed, her voice serious when she spoke again. “However, one of the behavioral red flags are sudden personality changes.”

Morgana hopped up to the desk Akira was eating at to listen in.

Hifumi continued, “Kitagawa has been stoic and reserved for as long as I have known him. Sitting in the corner of the north courtyard and sketching all lunch long would not be unusual. Wandering through the halls, humming marching tunes is quite unusual. As is buying pickled turnips from the school store, now that I think about it. He hasn’t… asked you for any unusual favors or offered you any special tokens like a favorite brush or childhood lucky charm?”

“Ah,” he said, her insinuations lining up with some of the readiness training he remembered overhearing at the Smiling Mountain Mental Institution. “I don’t think he’s having a manic episode. And I can say with confidence he’s not at risk of an impending suicide attempt.” When she let out a hum, Akira covered the microphone and whispered at the team leader, “I don’t think she’s buying it. What do I tell her about Yusuke?”

Put on the spot, Morgana’s eyes widened. “Uh… tell her that… he’s painting you! He’s obsessed with models.”

“That’s right,” Akira realized, lowering his hand from his phone. He cleared his throat and pressed the phone close again. “He’s probably happy about finding models since Ann and I agreed to let him paint us. He talks plenty about the things he wants to do, so he’s too invested in having a future to off himself.”

Terseness seeped through Hifumi’s voice as she repeated, “Ann and you?”

“Yeah,” Akira said, a little bewildered at the steel in her voice. “He met Ann in Shibuya. She’s in my class, remember? That’s how we met. I can guess why he’d paint her, she already models part-time. I have no idea what he’d want to paint my ugly mug for.”

Sounds of disapproval floated from her. “Akira-kun, I do not let people speak ill of my friends. Even if it’s my friends. You are most certainly not ugly.”

He picked up his chopsticks and looked down at his lunch. “Say, as long as the concern with Yusuke is resolved, are you doing anything today?”

Her slight hiss told him all he needed. “I’m sorry, Akira-kun. Mother has me booked today. And tomorrow morning. Perhaps 2:30? I should be done with the interview and homework for differential equations by then.”

Morgana’s tail rose in that concerned question mark shape. “We’re changing Madarame’s heart tomorrow.”

Akira opened his mouth, then closed it. As much as he’d love a few hours with her, the Thieves had found the Treasure chamber. And with Madarame’s exhibit ending next week, there were increasing chances he’d find time to arrange for their arrest. Akira couldn’t put Ann and Yusuke in danger by putting this off. “Sorry, I’m busy tomorrow. Can’t reschedule.”

“Well,” she said, a faint tremor in her voice, but from what, he couldn’t guess. “I suppose I’ll see you after finals, then.”

Between the glumness in her voice and the disappointment in his own heart, Akira gave a weak thanks and ended the call, then finished lunch. The bell rang and he let Morgana back in his satchel. Instead of heading straight back to class, he stopped in the bathroom to wash his hands and give himself a once-over in the polished steel plate serving as a mirror.

Her words, “You are most certainly not ugly,” echoed in his head, but besides the glasses he had to maintain, everything else about his appearance shouted, ‘I don’t give a damn. She must have been joking.

Back in class, Mishima gave him a strange look even after sitting down. After a moment, the class representative leaned forward to whisper, “Don’t worry, I’m sure everything will go fine tomorrow.”

Notes:

Happy new year, everybody! Thanks for reading and commenting!

Chapter 69: July 2nd, Unto the Painting

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Saturday, 2 July 2016
Late Afternoon
Shibuya, Central Street

Akira straightened his Shujin jacket. Garish as it might have been, he appreciated the 777 convenience store’s uniform. As uncomfortable as most students made his stay at Shujin, that just made everything related to it much less comfortable by extension. With Hifumi busy, and Makoto collaborating with Morgana and Yusuke to get the calling card done, he had no prospects for an intellectually stimulating board game. He followed the churning crowd towards the train station, gritting his teeth at the inconsistent stride and direction of the crowd, almost half of whom stared down at their cell phones as they went about somewhere between a tired trudge and respectable Walk with Purpose.

His phone buzzed in his pocket and he slipped into the corner book store for a moment of peace.

Makoto’s ID sat at the top. [We've completed the calling cards. With the description of the infiltration of Madarame's stash of Sayuris, I feel confident this will trigger a manifestation of his Treasure.]

Ryuji sent, [Sure this is the way you want to do it, Yusuke? I mean, what he did to your mom…]

A few moments passed before the artist texted, [While I was still a hapless student, I thought long about what I would do if I had the opportunity to… cause Madarame to come down with misfortune. But ending his life would not bring back my mother's.] A beat later, he added, [Besides, if he dies, he will never be able to restore the stolen art to the pupils who made them. Sensei sold out art for money. Perhaps by following along the way you all have changed the hearts of those others, I can mend some of what he did.]

Three dots winked next to Ryuji’s ID. [Cool. Now all we have to do is get in and crack some skulls.]

Yusuke followed, [I hope so. Madarame relies on the popularity of his exhibits to bolster his next meetings with strangers I assume are buyers, but the exhibit will be ending on Friday. He will surely be meeting with his lawyers on that day. I fear he may still be intent on bringing charges to Takamaki-san.]

Three dots danced next to Makoto’s ID. [What about you?]

[I will endure. I have no other choice, Madarame has legal authority over me.]

Makoto replied, [That's not very comforting, either. He may not have contracted hit-men to kill you and hide the bodies like Kaneshiro, but he ruined students until more than half took their own lives.]

Akira sent, [Sounds like the kind of d-bag we set out to change.]

A beat later, Makoto added, [Leader says I need to remind you this is our third heart change. But with all due respect, each one had its own challenges.]

Ann joined the chat room. [Is everything okay?]

Makoto sent, [Nothing wrong in specific, but we don't have much time left.]

Ann texted, [Well, I'm glad you chose to CHANGE his heart, instead of snuff it out. I never realized how much good would come of changing Kamoshida's heart. At the time, I wanted him to suffer. But because of that, a lot of other people got closure.]

Akira added, [Did you guys check out minor emancipation? I put the link in the group chat on Thursday. My case only needs documentation of abuse, but there might be options for you, Yusuke.]

Yusuke sent, [Mishima and Makoto-san have looked into the possibility, but being adopted would be easier. If we succeed at plucking the darkness from his heart, I may not need to worry about it.] A moment later, he added, [But thank you for the offer. For now, let us focus on changing his heart, or all other efforts will be fruitless.]

[Any luck?] Akira sent.

Mishima replied, [From legal precedent, even abuse has to be pretty bad before the Japanese government will take a child away from his family. I think there's too much cultural weight on keeping the family together.]

Three dots winked next to Makoto’s ID. [Morgana wanted to know if you talked to the journalist who wrote the article on Kamoshida. Another piece like that could do a lot to improve the standing of the Phantom Thieves in the eyes of the general public. Apparently, the more people talk about us as Champions of Justice, the more likely future targets will relax their guard.]

[No. How long do you guys think it's going to take? I was going to see her on Wednesday.]

[Leader says it depends on how deeply entrenched those distortions are in a person's heart. We won't have much idea how long recovery will take until we encounter the Palace Ruler's Shadow.] A beat passed before Makoto added, [We both think she should have something ready before then. Why?]

[Writing isn't an instant thing, and there's an approval process at publications as big as Maiasa.] Three dots popped up next to Mishima’s ID, then disappeared. [I just sent her a document of all the names and dates I found so far, but she'll want more info. Did you guys learn much while you were in there?]

Ryuji sent, [Dude, is she still in the Red Light District? I am totally up to hit the town!]

Ann sent, [Could you do it, Akira? Papa's taking us out for dinner and they'll be leaving on a ten o'clock flight tomorrow. I feel bad for getting home so tired I can't spend the night with them on our days in the Palace.]

Yusuke texted, [Ah, so that is why you were unavailable to join us in the Metaverse until noon. I am afraid I did not seek many of Sensei's memories after the first one Takamaki-san showed me.]

Makoto sent, [Where exactly is this reporter? Morgana talks about it like it's at some place that's dangerous for boys to go.]

[Shinjuku. Kabukichou, to be specific.] Akira took in a deep breath. The crowd outside churned, reminding Akira of the foamy surf in a storm. Then he remembered the thousand-meter stare Yusuke had yesterday. He wondered if he looked like that the day his mother told him she didn’t want him back. The day he tried to check out permanently. [I'll do it.]

Saturday, 2 July 2016
Late Afternoon
Velvet Room

Akira pushed himself off the steel slab serving as a bunk and paced to the bars. The chains between his cuffs clinked, though the ball chained to his ankle was absent this time. In the middle of the panopticon sat that empty desk with the strange glass cylinder speared through by one large iron spike at the bottom, another dozen or so smaller spikes jammed in at other angles above it, all holding up a jumbled mess of marbles. Sitting off to one side, distant but ominous, loomed the twin guillotine.

No impish man with a grin too wide for his face occupied the desk, but by the time he got to the bars the transfer student noticed both of the wanna-be wardens at their positions beside his cell. Caroline tapped her extended baton against her shoulder. “Back to progress on your penal labor?”

Her words rankled him, but were obvious enough he didn’t want to give her the satisfaction. Instead, Akira brandished a smirk. “Wasn’t it supposed to be rehabilitation?”

Justine stood up from her attentive but patient lean against the wall against the edge of his cell. She turned a page on a clipboard even bulkier than the bulletproof type his old bastard used. “We have been expecting you for some time. You awakened to the power of the wild card quite a while ago, but remained unready to temper it.”

Quirking an eyebrow, Akira looked at the twin with her platinum-blonde hair in a braid but couldn’t get a good read on her. “What are you talking about? I’ve been picking up new Personas like a sponge since the castle.”

Caroline slammed her baton across the lower bars, sending a jolt through them. “You’ve been stumbling into others’ power, Inmate! Your rehabilitation depends on refining that power.” She humphed. “Besides, your Personas are all super weak.”

Justine gave a sedate nod which just seemed all the more stark for its contrast with her twin. “Just as iron must pass through the flames of a forge to become steel, you must reach out of your raw state and incidental relationships.”

Akira shook out his hands despite having yanked them away when the hot-tempered twin struck. “Yeah, His Nose-ness said something about it. I still don’t really understand what the whole drawing power from relationships is supposed to work. Doesn’t the furtherance of personal benefit kind of invalidate friendship to start with?”

Caroline ran a hand down her face. “Ugh, Inmate. You just don’t get it.”

The faintest of shadows hinted a change on the lower half of Justine’s face, and it sent shivers down the transfer student’s spine. She scanned the top sheet on her clipboard, flipped, read, then flipped another page. “Perhaps you are not so far gone. The understanding that bonds with others are valuable in themselves is a sign you are capable of viewing the world through more than a transactional lens.” She paused to read, then flipped another page. “And you have already completed several of these tasks towards your rehabilitation. Feeding your power into another to enhance their strengths not once but twice by now.”

Caroline’s baton lowered. “You’re even smiling, Justine.”

The stoic twin turned to the other, her braid dangling behind with twice as much energy as her stony demeanor. “It is you who is smiling.”

Chuckling for a few moments, Akira couldn’t help himself from laughing outright. “Did you two flip a coin before starting this job? I know you have a red oni, blue oni thing going on, but it’s not like one of you giggling stops the other one from being able to do it.”

Caroline smacked her baton against the bars. “Stop laughing, Inmate! You should know your place!”

Akira shrugged. “’ey, if you’re on top, everything’s amusing. That’s how you seize power. Find something about the situation to laugh at.”

Justine did her best to look down her nose at him despite being less than shoulder height. “That is hardly rational, Inmate. We are just satisfied as wardens to see your rehabilitation progress. Your ability to send your power out indicates a minimum degree of trust, as well as empathy and foresight. However, that is only half of the process. You must also draw strength from them.”

A smirk played across Akira’s face. “Is this where the contract signed in blood is?” He clapped. “Ooh, do I get one of those pens which draw blood and write at the same time? That would save so much mess.”

Even Caroline gave him a flat stare.

Justine looked back at her clipboard and turned to a previous page. “You have already fused a Persona in the lair of the gluttonous.”

Caroline waggled her extended baton at him. “Yeah, by bumbling accident.”

“Bite me!” he snapped.

Justine turned a page as if the other two weren’t shouting. “Blindly reaching into the universe leaves you at the mercy of random chance. As part of your rehabilitation, we will provide you with the mechanisms to exercise control over the process. This will allow you to gain the strength to avoid ruin.” She took a step to one side, bringing her to the edge of view from his cell and also bringing enormous twin guillotines into the center of his vision.

Grasping the bars, Akira took a deep breath in and out as his stance widened. This was for the Phantom Thieves. Even if the last time he went to the twins for help they put a fragment of his psyche in an electric chair and fried it like Eduard Delacroix. “Let’s do it. What’s the first goal on the list?”

Caroline tapped her baton against her shoulder. “You’ve got guts after all, Inmate! Even if they’re the guts of a mouse.”

Akira lifted his middle finger to his face, only remembering he didn’t have his glasses to camouflage the gesture after he touched his nose. “Everyone at Inuri said I have more guts than brains. Gotta use what I’ve got.” He looked to the unnerving twin.

Justine read, then turned back a page and read again, advanced a few pages, then read again. “You skipped a few steps by fusing Ananta Shesha, but I think we can start with creating a Raja Naga with Rakukaja.”

Early Evening
Velvet Room

Akira heaved once more, then wiped his chin with a kerchief before getting up from the steel toilet in the back of the cell. Whether or not the fragments executed to fuse together what he needed were pieces of himself or stolen pieces of the collective unconsciousness, he felt as wrong as when he opened the tome of memories in Kamoshida’s castle. Still, as he pushed himself to his feet, bracing a hand against one velvet-covered wall, the armored half-man half-serpent beast sat there in the middle of the panopticon.

Justine pressed the pages flat against her clipboard and gave a small nod. “Impressive, Inmate. We did not expect you to have a sufficient bond with a holder of Temperance to control a Raja Naga.”

Caroline humphed, but left her extended baton resting on her shoulder. “It’s still super weak, Inmate. But…” She fought to keep a smile from her face. “I suppose we can call it good enough for now.”

Justine held her clipboard against her side. “As promised, we will permit you to leave one of your Personas in The Pit. We will test and strengthen your Persona. At the moment we shall do so however we see fit, but after you have proven yourself with another few tasks you will have proven enough vision to request an aspect to focus on.”

Caroline waggled her baton at him. “Not like that’ll come any time soon, inmate. Your Personas aren’t just super weak, you still aren’t even close to proving yourself capable of that much foresight for us to trust you to know what’s best.”

“Yeah, whatever,” he murmured. Akira dismissed the Persona, then swiped the ‘shards of power’ Justine set on the food slot shelf. He thought back to his weakest Persona. All of them had problems with one angle of attack or another, but Agathion seemed particularly flimsy no matter what attack came at it. After a moment, the green imp in a vase coalesced in the center of the panopticon. “This one.”

Justine gave a satisfied nod. “Very well, Inmate.”

Saturday, 2 July 2016
Evening
Shinjuku, Crossroads Bar

Akira opened the door to the booth for the bartender in a blue kimono with waves and ships exchanging arrows. They stepped into the booth overlooking what might have been a dance floor, in the days when the space used to be a night club. As usual, the booth lights were turned almost all the way down.

Ohya tapped away at a laptop on the circular table in the middle of the tiny booth, her posture hunched. She glanced up at the pair, then made a quick keystroke and sat up. She gave a theatrical clap of thanks. “Lala-chan, you brought me alcohol and an informant!”

Lala set a tall, cylindrical glass of some yellow liquid on the table. “He brought himself, honey.” She planted her hands on her hips. “I know you’ve always been willing to go wherever the story led, but are you really using children for information, now?”

“I thought places serving alcohol weren’t allowed to be run by killjoys. Kids know plenty that grumpy old men don’t.” Ohya reached for the tall glass, only for the plump woman to reach out and pull it just out of reach. “C’mon, Lala-chan. I need a reliable source for the dumb articles chief dumped on me.” She reached again and the bartender handed over the glass. She paused before taking a sip, her eyes narrowing on the transfer student. “The fishy one here is you. Why come all the way to Shinjuku?”

Akira wished Morgana was here before lifting his hands. “Sometimes things are as simple as ‘bad guys are bad’.”

She took a drink, her narrowed eyes never leaving his. The residue on her lip took a little away from Ohya’s otherwise imposing scrutiny. “As if. There’s no such thing as a golden goose. I know what Junior wants, but what’s your price?”

Akira leaned against the wall next to the door. “I’ll let you know later. What’s the cynicism for? This saves you from having to run all around the city.”

Ohya’s shoulders slumped and a distant quality entered her dark eyes. “I’m doing that anyway.”

Lala crossed her arms. “Don’t tell me you’re still investigating Murakami. You were just complaining about the chief’s ultimatum—”

“I know, I know!” The reporter scowled, then took a deep drink.

Akira shrugged, straightened his black street jacket, then sat down across the table from the journalist. He tried to convey a sense of casual ease. “I’m just here to pass along information so you can generate positive PR for the Phantom Thief.”

Setting her drink down on the table, Ohya lowered the lid of her laptop to keep scanning him. “I’m sure you understand only a bad journalist doesn’t check up on her leads.” She took her drink in hand, though the other waved in the air as if the incredulous look on her face wasn’t enough. “I mean, come on. ‘Phantom Thief of Hearts’ sounds high and mighty to start with.”

Akira shrugged, but inside, he ground his teeth and longed to grab her computer and smack her across the face with it. Why did it seem like every time he tried to help someone, it burned him? The bitch who threw him under the bus with that drunk chief guy, and now Ohya didn’t want to believe what all of Tokyo had seen. “You can’t say he didn’t change Kamoshida’s heart. And after I posted Kaneshiro’s name, he took that fat bastard down. How can you argue against that justice?”

Ohya gagged, swallowed her sip, then laughed. “You haven’t really fallen for that virtuous shtick, have you?”

Lala crossed her arms, a disappointed frown on her heavy makeup. “He’s a kid, Ichiko-chan. You don’t need to pound your values into him.”

Maybe it was the alcohol, or maybe the reporter really hid that much passion inside, but she jerked her free hand at the transfer student and barked, “In my line of work, the louder someone says it’s charity, the surer they’ got somethin’ shady behind the curtain.”

Lala’s crossed arms slumped. “You used to be so positive, Ichiko-chan.”

“And look where that got me!” She took a deep gulp from her yellow drink. “I can’t even write politics anymore! Chief Fuckwad perm’ently reassigned me to culture an’ en’ertainment.”

Lala straightened, everything in her stance indicating she was winding up for something. Then she froze and held her hand to her earpiece. A beat passed. “I’ll be right down.” Her eyes focused on the reporter. “You play nice with the kid. There’s too few nice boys left in the world.” She departed the booth and tugged the door closed behind her.

Akira lifted a casual hand, feeling a little vindicated from the bar owner siding with him. “How about this. A bunch of the names on the Phansite have been Madarame’s pupils. I think they’re going after him. You ask me whatever you need to know to write something good, and you’ll have something ready to throw in your boss’s face the day his heart changes.”

She set her yellow drink down on the table hard enough to splash a drop up, which plunged back in the large, cylindrical glass. She flopped back on her chaise chair. “But I gotta write somethin’ now.”

Akira shrugged. “Then ask… and get ready for two articles.”

Ohya grumped, but pushed her laptop back open. They spent the next hour talking about calling cards, minions, and the Phantom Thief.

Saturday, 2 July 2016
Night
Yongen, Leblanc Loft

Yusuke woke to as deep darkness as the loft ever got, with distant city lights streaming in straight through the sliding window shutters. The rumble of the train pulling away crept inside. His bladder trembled and the artist threw the heat-wicking sheet off. Straining to remain silent, he rushed to the restaurant bathroom downstairs.

He might not have missed Sensei’s passive-aggressiveness, but he did miss the toilet straight across the hall from the student quarters.

That finished, he washed and trudged back upstairs, avoiding the two noisiest steps. Before he could return to the couch with its cool sheet and pillow fluffier than he ever had at Madarame’s house, he noticed the team leader who insisted he was not the tuxedo cat he appeared to be, leaning out from his cushion. A pained mumble came from the bed.

Akira turned with more of a thrash than calm twist on the mattress. His forehead creased and his hands clenched his sheet, sweat making his skin glisten. Despite the odd lighting, the clench of his jaw stood out.

Yusuke stepped closer. “Ak—”

“Shh!” Morgana spat as he hopped out of the cushion to the floor.

Yusuke whispered, “But—”

“Not here,” Morgana breathed just loud enough to hear, then trotted across the floor and down the stairs.

Yusuke looked up at the transfer student clenching his sheets as if a drowning sailor holding flotsam. Having grown up under Madarame’s roof, Yusuke shared a room with many people. Almost all of them could have been mistaken for the dead during the night. Curious what the team leader might have to say, he slipped downstairs to the closest booth, where the I-am-not-a-cat sat on the table. Keeping his tone low, Yusuke said, “I suppose it makes sense for worry to trouble his dreams. Tomorrow, we face Madarame’s Shadow.”

Morgana shook his head. “Joker is a lot of things, but typical is not one of them. Not in any sense.” He looked up at the narrow gap for the staircase. “I’m a rather light sleeper. If I wasn’t born that way, I must have had to learn it fast when I wound up in the Metaverse. When a threat could be just around the broom closet door, you have to be. It becomes a balancing act between being wary enough to remain aware of your surroundings and being comfortable enough to rest.”

“I have noticed he seems to be the last among us to slip to sleep.” Yusuke glanced at the coffee siphons, then pushed away his pang for the delicious dark drink. “I have seen my fellow students have nightmares, but that is a rare event. Or at least, I believed such disturbed sleep is rare.”

Morgana’s ears twisted back. “I’ve seen him still, but not often. He tosses and turns a lot. He almost never talks in his sleep, but pained grunts and whispers like that,” he said, gesturing with his head at the ceiling, “happen almost every night. Sometimes wakes up, if it’s a bad enough fit.”

Yusuke scanned the team leader for a moment, the anxious press of his ears against his skull and swishing of his tail. The heavy atmosphere pressed down on the artist. “I suppose that does seem odd. I am sure my sleep has been troubled in the past, but since you all helped me awaken to my inner self, I feel like I have been able to reach a tranquility I never thought night could bring.”

Morgana’s tail swished faster. “Coming to peace with yourself is supposed to do that.” One ear twisted out to the side. “Still, I suppose even coming to grips with yourself means there could still be things left to haunt you.”

Yusuke nodded, the obstacle which felt more like a mountain of his inability to paint the truth within the human heart coming to mind. “Has he ever regaled you with his past? I understand you have been his companion since before you changed the heart of that demented coach.”

The swishing of Morgana’s tail slowed a little, brushing against the table on occasion. “Joker’s revealed more by what he hasn’t mentioned than what he has. Lady Ann and Reaper talked about birthday parties on the way up to your… Madarame’s shack, and Joker didn’t say a thing. There were even a few points where he seemed even more lost than during his math teacher’s lectures. He’s never mentioned going anywhere or doing anything with his parents. No sharing a breakfast together, no stargazing like Reaper and his mother would do before he got into sports…” The twist of those ears changed, but they remained flat against his skull. “I wonder sometimes how Akira’s hurt him.”

The story of being used to test EEG sensors came to Yusuke’s mind and he shivered. “His father must have been a despicable man.” He brightened. “Maybe, after this business with Sen—Madarame is over, you could change his heart.”

Morgana shook his head. “Even Joker had that thought. The night after Kamoshida confessed, I caught him punch in ‘Kurusu Houzan’ into the Nav. No hit.”

Pursing his lips, Yusuke tapped his fingers on the table, then stopped and pulled his hands to his lap. “I don’t suppose he could have been in that ‘Mementos’ place.”

Morgana let out a sigh and paced in a tight circle, then sat back down. “I suspect the truth is worse. People have a Shadow because there is something inside themselves they want, but deny. People like you and Lady Ann are confronted with the weakness inside and find a way to accept and overcome it, transforming that suppressed inner self into your strength: your Persona.” His tail wavered as it twitched back and forth. “But there’s another possibility. Somebody can be confronted with the evil inside… and embrace it.”

Yusuke rubbed the pad of his thumb along a fingernail. “But what of Akira? I can’t accept he could be someone like that. He didn’t even hesitate to offer me the shelter of his own abode, even knowing he would have to convince his guardian. He has provided me the money for train tickets, even offered me his own made-from-scratch meals. And I see the way Ann and Ryuji stand beside him when we fight in the Metaverse. That sort of trust could not be engendered by one of black heart.”

Morgana shook his head and stood on all fours, then shook again, the motion going all the way down his tail. “I’m not saying that’s what happened to Joker, just that’s what might have happened to his father. And if it happened a long time ago, I can see why Joker seems so… disconnected from other people.”

Yusuke nodded, feeling a little more settled Akira wouldn’t be in such a terrible situation. “However many his troubles are, which of you does he go to?”

Morgana’s ears fell flat against his skull again. “Honestly… I think he thinks he’s helping us by not bringing us his problems.” His eyes rolled up in thought and the sway of his tail slowed. “Maybe he talks to that priest at the church. He’s always been in a much better mood when he comes back from Mass.” His eyes stared out, unfocused. “He’s also seemed better after playing with his math tutor. Maybe Joker’s the kind of person who just needs to have that kind of mental flexing or something.”

Yusuke nodded and stood. The Phantom Thief leader bounded up the steps first, but paused before his cushion. Akira still lay under his sheet, part of it twisted around one leg, but his hands clenched the sheet. The artist stood there for several moments longer before he decided the transfer student needed rest now more than intrusion.

Notes:

There’s something that happens when a person wants to be a good, helpful person and society around him spits on him. In many senses that applies to each of the Phantom Thieves, but even moreso to any interpretation of Kurusu Akira. Sadly, Japan is more the nation of “fly or die” than one learning from, “If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid,” from Amos Dolbear of Tufts, in addition to losing out on all that energy and expertise that could have come from letting the fish prove itself by its ability to swim.

Ironically, I think Persona 4 captured this idea even better than Persona 5, which largely eschewed any of the very gripping conflict of having to overcome oneself.

Chapter 70: July 3rd, Vainglory's Last Stand

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Sunday, 3 July 2016
Morning
Department Store, Madarame Art Exhibit

Lights flare as the gaggle of reporters snap pictures of Madarame, the old man giving a humble wave and self-deprecating laugh. The shuffling pattern in the foot traffic shifted, and one of those young gofers in business casual slipped up to one of the cameramen getting the latest for a magazine article.

When the cameraman lowered his camera and leaned to listen, Madarame felt his hands curl. He slipped them in his sleeves, but couldn’t stop the tightening of his fists when the vultures masquerading as journalists listened into whatever petty gossip the gofer mentioned, and all rushed for the front of the exhibit. He felt a sense of satisfaction when his own personal security shooed them away. When the day commandant approached him with a red-and-black card in hand, Madarame felt his sense of lofty superiority dim. “Yes, Kajioka?”

The stoic man held the card between his arm and side in such a way as to hide what was on it. “We need a moment in private, sir.” They hastened to a meager employee conference room set aside for the art exhibit. Only after they were alone did he hand over the red-and-black card to the artist. “The good news is only about a dozen were found outside the museum just a few minutes ago. The bad news is we have no idea who placed them there. I already reviewed camera footage with the department store security manager, and the clearest image looks like a cat playing with this one at the entrance.”

Madarame took the card, but when a brief hesitation to let it go stilled his chief of security, the artist looked his man right in his brown eyes. “What else?”

Kajioka swallowed, but to his credit held his ground. “The PR team informed me these have been found elsewhere in Shibuya, the earliest sighting this morning. Images are already circulating on the internet. We’re trying to get ahead of the message with some bots in the more extreme conspiracy forums, but we can’t bury this one. We lost too many personnel in the Shibuya purge.”

With his old source for muscle and internet scrubbing gone, that meant this would get messy. Madarame looked to the card in his hands. Threats and blackmail came up occasionally, but every one asked for money first. A top-hat with a domino-style mask jutted below, stylized flames around one eye. The old man turned it over to read the cutout characters on the back in silence.

Sir Ichiryusai Madarame, the pitiful sinner consumed by vanity. Your talent has long ago withered. You use your authority to steal from the toil of your pupils, then crush the dreams you cultivated in them. Your punishment shall be visited upon you by your own hand. I, the Phantom Thief of Hearts, shall steal your distorted desires without fail.

Madarame tore the card in two, then crumpled the pieces in his fists as he whirled on his day commander. “Find them and destroy them! Every single one!” He threw the pieces at Kajioka and drew his flip phone, his hands shaking in rage as he hit one of the speed dials for the Madarame Foundation. “I want this extorting perpetrator destroyed utterly!”

Sunday, 3 July 2016
Afternoon
Madarame’s Museum, Control Room

Ryuji craned his neck to stare up into the rafters where he knew the others should be. A glint winked in and out of existence. He pulled back and readied his shotgun, then looked to the upperclassman at the computer. “That’s the signal, hit it!”

Makoto tapped into the keyboard. A rumble passed through the building as the lights flicked off.

The lights flipped back on less than thirty seconds later, giving the pair of Thieves a good view of five Shadow van Dammes rising up out of the ground outside. At least none of the guards in the core room itself noticed the catboy rising out of view on a winched hook, a wrapped, rectangular package in his hands.

When the track star swore, Makoto grabbed her shotgun, but brought it to her side and reached for her mask. “C’mon, hurry and grab on.”

Ryuji blushed, but sidled right behind the student president and wrapped an arm around her waist.

Makoto hit the door switch with her shotgun, then yanked her mask. Fire exploded from underneath her, the sliding plates of Johanna rising up from beneath her as the armored motorcycle Persona formed. Flame flickered and armored glass enclosed them like a cockpit.

The Shadow Guards raised their batons and ran at them.

Ryuji swallowed, the thrill from having an arm around a hot girl evaporated at the growing army rushing to kill them. “Uh, Rider…”

Makoto hit the gas. Wheels made of flame roared and Johanna surged forward. Instead of trying to dodge the first Shadow van Damme, she slammed right into it, knocking the guard to one side like a bowling pin. Johanna blazed past the next one, turning to drift through the corner.

Johanna caught a Shadow who tried to stop them and dragged it beneath the flaming rear wheel, spitting out dissolving smoke.

An army of guards ran out from the stairwell, batons raised. Makoto smiled and let out a roar as she charged through.

Madarame’s Museum, Treasure Room Catwalks

Akira followed the team leader to the end of the catwalks. Ann climbed up the rope and out of the high, thin window at the top of the room’s perimeter. Akira shot another burst from his sub-machine gun into the Shadow guards past the bend in the catwalks, but couldn’t get a good angle to shoot the one closing on Makoto. “Coming up!” He grabbed the rope and shot up, then through the narrow window.

Yusuke, laying down to one side, pulled the trigger of his compact assault rifle, blasting one of the pursuing Shadows into dissolving smoke. He kept up the cover fire until Makoto pulled herself up to the window, when the two boys reached out to take her hands and pull her through.

Akira dropped back down to cut the rope so the Shadows couldn’t follow them as easily. “That’s not going to hold them for long.”

Ryuji leaned over the edge, looking down the plummeting distance to the ground. “Ain’t no way I’m takin’ a jump!”

A masked Shadow face peeked up at the window and Makoto gave it one blast with her shotgun. “We need to escape somewhere!”

Morgana finished picking open a narrow utility door, the open shaft of a tiny elevator beyond. “This is the only other way, but I have no idea where this goe—”

Ann leaped in and grabbed the cables in the middle.

Akira followed her down to the roof of the elevator. Lacking any way to punch through its ceiling, he used his knife to pry the grate off an air vent. He slipped in as the others descended the cables. After several twists and angled elevation changes, he came to another grate. Like everywhere else in the Palace, red lights pulsed as if by the Palace Ruler’s own heartbeat beyond.

He bashed the vent off and recognized the enormous room which once held a laser maze the first time they crossed the courtyard. “Watch the drop, there’s only a narrow ledge before a long fall.”

He squirmed out and almost missed, but caught the lip of the high ledge around the cavernous room. The scattering of paintings, all at odd angles, rankled his sense of neatness. Ann, Morgana, Ryuji, and Yusuke followed after, each dropping to the ledge before lowering to the main floor.

Makoto, struggling to get through the vent, shoved to get out and went too far. Her fingertips slipped on the ledge.

Akira dropped his gun to reach out. He caught her, but the impact sent both of them tumbling.

Makoto groaned as she got back up and retrieved her shotgun. “Thanks. At least Morgana’s not acting like he’s holding catnip like the last Treasure.”

The team leader’s eyes snapped wide as dinner plates. His jaw went slack and he gasped before throwing the tarp-covered Treasure to the ground. “Oh no!”

“What?” Ann raised her silenced pistol and looked around.

Morgana unfastened the straps wrapping the Treasure, then yanked off the tarp.

A crappy painting with swirly eyes blew a raspberry at them.

The pulsing red lights came to a sudden end. Madarame’s Shadow stepped out of one of the paintings. Dozens of Shadow van Dammes stepped out of every single doorway around the huge room. Shadow Madarame clutched his belly from long moments of cackling. “I have incredible foresight, do I not?” He unhooked a strap and pulled a large, fold-over bag from his back. “Not even the Black Mask could have taken my greatest jewel and deepest shame.”

He slipped the bag to his side, opened the flap, then pulled out the painting inside to reveal the Sayuri, framed in polished gold. The true one, with the mother gazing on her baby instead of a mysterious fog. A streak of pink paint dropped from the baby’s clothing, through the woman’s hand, to the bottom of the image.

Ryuji clapped his hands. “I effin’ knew it!” He pointed to Akira. “You owe me five hundred yen!”

Yusuke slipped his rifle to his back by its strap, and drew the katana strapped to his hip. “How filled with avarice could your life be that killing my mother is but one in a long list of crimes, Sensei?” He spat. “Your charade will end today!”

Ann’s breath came out in cold fog. “You stole… no, desecrated something so personal?” The leather of her gloves groaned as she tightened her fists. “I will never forgive you.”

Ryuji kicked the fake painting at the Palace Ruler. “This shit’s as fake as you, asshole.”

Shadow Madarame glared at them, dropping the true Sayuri into its fold-over bag and returning it to his back. “Meddlesome vermin. Counterfeits are a natural part of the art world. I am the magnificent Madarame, who sells out at every venue. I hold all the power!”

He snapped his fingers and every single Shadow van Damme burst into a black puddle, then rose back up as an assortment of every smaller Shadow they had seen in the Museum.

Morgana shot a Koropokkuru in the eye with his crossbow. “Phantoms, hold the flanks!”

Akira shot a burst at the first available Shadow, though with the crowd arrayed around them he could have fired wildly and hit something. “Jack Frost!”

Gunfire roared and Captain Kidd blasted shredding winds over a wide arc of the encroaching horde, though the move had Ryuji panting.

“Panther,” Akira shouted, firing into the crowd, “Take a power up and freeze ‘em!”

She nodded and brought Carmen back from exchanging wide swings with her thorned whip.

Akira’s dancing snowman slapped his hands to his curve-bent legs and threw a ball of ice at Carmen, who twirled her spiked whip around her. The ball struck the spiraling whip and burst, the swirl growing larger and larger, the chunks of ice growing into their own spiked balls. Carmen lashed out, the icy gale roaring over the mass of Shadows. The half a dozen spiked balls struck clumps of the monsters and exploded, leaving whole groups frozen solid.

The bursts of Yusuke’s assault rifle came to a sudden end with his cry of surprise.

Zorro, already out, spun around. His eyes blazed and the same blue aura spread over Yusuke and the Shadow of Madarame attempting to drag him into one of the enormous paintings. They struggled for a moment before Zorro yanked them both out.

Morgana leapt forward, slashing with his bayonet as the apprentice regained his footing.

Shadow Madarame vomited a stream of pungent ink at the team leader, driving him back with a disgusted shout.

Yusuke dropped his assault rifle and ripped out his katana, slashing the Palace Ruler from shoulder to hip. “Is there anything genuine about you, Madarame? Why did you even take Mother under your tutelage?”

Shadow Madarame flicked a paint brush the size of the apprentice’s sword from his gaudy gold sleeves and parried the next slash. “Are you truly so ignorant, Yusuke? Her talent and passion didn’t falter even when her husband died. She learned from me, so everything she made was mine. Fate itself had spurned me for decades, but on that afternoon, it gifted me what I deserved all along. You would have done the very same if destiny dropped such an opportunity in your lap.”

Yusuke roared and powered a downward blow which shoved through the makeup-caked Shadow and bit centimeters down through the shoulder. “How could you have defaced her last piece?”

Shadow Madarame fell back under the young artist’s assault. “Don’t feign ignorance, boy. It needed to be fixed anyway when her seizure started. All those parasitic critics said the same thing. With the babe erased, the reason for her expression became a mystery which drew them like moths to a flame!”

A bullet flitted into his chest, leaving a hole leaking black smoke.

Ann aimed for a second shot. She pulled the trigger, but Madarame leapt with shocking speed backwards into another painting. His image dashed into the background, but the same mirage touched every giant painting in the room.

With the Palace Ruler removed, the Phantom Thieves turned their focus on the mob of Shadow monsters.

Makoto blasted a pair of the weasel-dogs. “Where is he?”

Morgana wiped the ink from his face, bloodshot eyes blinking. “I… I don’t know. For all I can tell, he’s in all the paintings.”

Ryuji bashed another one of the mummy-monsters with his bat. “That don’t fuckin’ help! Can’t you scan for the real one?” He stopped to level his shotgun at one of the red fairies and shot it, then the water spirit behind it.

“It’s not like I can turn into a radar!” Morgana shot a Koppa Tengu in the chest, then yanked a lever in the bottom of his crossbow to cock it again and slapped another bolt in.

Just when it looked like the tide was breaking, Shadow Madarame leaped out of a giant painting on the side of the room and vomited a projectile stream of noxious ink on Carmen.

Ann’s next pistol shot missed and she stumbled and fell backwards, then threw up as her Persona dissipated.

Before she could give voice to her disgust, Shadow Madarame dashed at her with his giant paintbrush as if it were a rapier.

Captain Kidd slammed to the ground and scraped, leaving a long smear of ink as it rammed Shadow Madarame all the way to the wall, splattering ink across the painting he came from.

Madarame reached a hand for the painting to escape, but rebounded as if his ink splatter formed a solid wall.

Letting their Personas and the others handle the perimeter, Akira and Ryuji advanced on Madarame as Captain Kidd tore through the army of smaller Shadows. Ink splattered from the impacts of their bullet barrage.

Shadow Madarame roared in rage and dropped into an enormous puddle of flowing ink.

Akira tried to back away, but too late—the puddle grabbed him by the feet and raced to a clean painting as it re-formed into the gaudy Palace Ruler. His empty sub-machine gun fell to the ground. Madarame leaped into the painting with him.

Just like when they navigated the maze of paintings before, it felt like his entire world became an impressionist dream where depth was a suggestion and color blinded him even when he squeezed his eyes shut. Browns and blues and the queasy sense of motion like paint running, but in every direction.

Hot breath tickled against his ear as Madarame whispered, “Aid me, and you can have more money than you ever dreamed of.”

Akira forced his eyes open. The gaudy form of Madarame’s Shadow hunched over him, leering with expectation in his eyes.

Akira snatched the survival knife from his coat and plunged it into Madarame’s makeup-caked forehead.

He laughed, that stupid top-knot swaying. “I am a god of the art world. Those with the connections make the rules, and here, I am a supreme being.” Eyes burning with gold bored into the longcoated boy’s. “Those good-for-nothings think they can barge into my museum and do whatever the hell they want. They all pivot around you, rely on you. You could send them away.” He smiled, despite the knife still buried to half its length in his forehead. “You try to hide it, but you are like the iceberg, hiding a mountain of darkness under an innocuous mask.”

Akira snarled. “You murdered Yusuke’s mother just so you could steal her paintings. All you care about is yourself.” He snatched for the knife and yanked it back out, not a sign of wound remaining on the Palace Ruler. “Why the hell would you have kept him around in the first place?”

Madarame’s smile peeled wider across his face than any human should be capable of. “Yusuke might be able to feign ignorance, but you’re not as good an actor as you think you are. You know exactly why I kept a four-year-old around. Nobody at that age has talent in art.” He leaned closer, that hot breath reeking of turpentine. “You keep your friends close, and your enemies even closer. He couldn’t be allowed to be on his own where he might realize the truth.” He pulled back a bit in this strange space where distance seemed less real, and looked towards a vague impression of darkness where the battle went on. “Those insolent vermin need a whipping to make them understand.”

Akira bared his teeth. “What makes you think I’d ever help you?”

Shadow Madarame turned that wider-than-human smile on him again. “I know your eyes. They are as lonely as mine used to be. No one would heed you. No one would help you. Everyone exploited you because you didn’t have the connections to fight back.”

Akira opened his mouth, then closed it. The echoes of the Institute rang in his head, and echoes of his sobs in the dark.

Shadow Madarame leaned even closer, that hot and vile breath tickling his ear again. “People sit up and take notice of those with wealth. People venerate you for the things you do if you have money. You could have wine, ecstasy, and women in abundance!”

Akira took the aged artist by the shoulder. “The only women worth it are the ones who can’t be bought with money.” He snatched for the painting bag over Madarame’s shoulder and sliced his knife across the strap—

Crush all those who deny your greatness!

The knife finished severing the last vein-red cords binding the strap together. He threw the flap open and ripped out the gold-framed painting. Gripping the true Sayuri, Akira threw himself out of the painting. All at once, the confusing impressionism gave way to reality – as much as a Palace could. He stumbled out and hit the floor face-first.

Ann and Ryuji grabbed the painting, as well as him by the arms and hauled him up, then away from the giant painting.

Shadow Madarame leaped out after him, hands just missing the longcoated boy.

Morgana leaped, the Palace Ruler’s brush in hand as he drew a sloppy line across the painting. Glancing around, Akira saw the same on the others in the room.

Twin balls of fire and ice slammed into the Palace Ruler in resplendent gold clothing, the explosion sending him flying back into the inked-over painting before dropping back to the ground.

Morgana threw the giant paintbrush away, then unfolded his crossbow and flipped out its bayonet. “Phantom Thieves, all together!”

As one, their Personas descended on the Shadow of Madarame until he heaved and no ink came out. Madarame slipped to all fours and reached a trembling arm at the Sayuri in Ann’s hand, desperation in Madarame’s golden eyes for the first time.

The Thieves spread in a circle around him, their Personas hovering over them.

Madarame shrank back. “You can’t blame me for this. No one cares for true art. All people want are recognizable brands!”

Ryuji held his bat back for a swing, and the artist beside him with his katana held high.

Madarame held his hands out at Yusuke. “I slaved for years, and they turned up their noses on my work. Spat upon it! Until those parasitic critics published that piece on the Sayuri—only then, they wanted more. The world doesn’t value talent, only replication. I’m just as much a victim as you!”

Johanna, the only Persona not hovering over her host, blazed with red light. Makoto growled. “After everything you’ve done, now you’re trying to say your greed is others’ fault?”

Yusuke held up his katana, just waiting for an excuse to slice. “These past days, all you have spoken of is money. Art means nothing to you.”

Madarame’s Shadow trembled and he looked near to crying. “The entire world revolves around money, art is no different.” He crawled another step closer to the apprentice in a fox mask. “Surely you understand. Being poor is just one step away from being dead. They’ll only help the famous because they think they can get money from us, not because of any inherent value in anything we make.”

Ryuji wound back his bat and the artist cowered. “A shithead like you who sold out art an’ ruined his own peeps ain’t got no room to talk ‘bout bein’ ‘fraid of bein’ poor. Lotsa people died ‘cause of you!”

Morgana brandished his bayoneted crossbow. “Go back to yourself in reality and confess your crimes.”

Yusuke took a shallow step closer, his katana still held up and ready. “Give back the art you stole, and let your students go back to art – every single one of them.”

“All right!” Madarame peeked out from behind his gold sleeves. “You’re… not going to kill me? The black mask would have.”

Yusuke bared his teeth. “Even now, you still hide behind excuses?”

Madarame sat back on his heels, his form losing just a little bit of opacity.

Makoto lowered her shotgun and stepped closer. “Wait, the black mask again? Who is he?”

Madarame sat down, his body hunched in defeat. “A terrifying criminal who uses this world to accomplish anything he pleases. If he says you pay someone, you pay! It’s madness to deny him. He can do so much worse than death.”

Morgana’s tail swished behind him. “Who is he?” He flipped the bayonet back out. “Tell us!”

“You ignorant idealists think you can hold a candle to the black mask? Even murderers fear him. He would make you beg for death!” Madarame’s Shadow clutched himself as he faded away.

Makoto ran forward and reached to grab Madarame by the neck, but the last of him faded away. She growled.

Yusuke sheathed his katana and straightened the compact assault rifle hanging from his shoulder by a strap. “Is this the part where the Palace collapses?”

Morgana held the gold-framed Sayuri and rubbed his face on it with a thrumming purr. “Being human’s awesome!”

A pebble-sized chunk of concrete fell from the ceiling, hitting him on the head.

More began raining down.

Ann grabbed the painting and led the panicked sprint out of the Palace.

Sunday, 3 July 2016
Early Evening
Shibuya, Madarame’s Atelier

“The destination has been deleted,” the synthesized voice of the Metaverse Navigator said.

The setting sun shone down on the street in front of the rusting shack as they scrambled to disassemble their model guns before someone spotted them. Akira looked over the assembled group. Everybody looked exhausted, all but Ryuji still trying to catch their breath after that mad dash out of the Palace. Still, except for Makoto who was holding her nose, they all seemed to have a weight off their shoulders. Akira tilted his head at the upperclassman with her hand clamped over her nose. “You okay, Senpai?”

“Joha’a took a beating,” Makoto said, still hunched forward. A red droplet leaked out from between her fingers and began tracing down the bottom of her hand.

Akira checked his satchel, but they ran through what medical supplies he had before even reaching Madarame. Only wrappers and scrap paper from homework remained. “You’re bleeding. Anybody have any gauze or paper towels?”

Ryuji checked his school satchel, but gave a shake of his head. At least he took her shotgun and disassembled it with a speed borne of knowledge and practice.

Makoto rolled her eyes and shrugged her purse off, then offered it to Ann. “’ould you ‘et mine out?”

Ann handed Akira some rolled-up thing too stiff to be regular cloth and took the student president’s purse, then dug around. She pulled out an empty packet, then offered the purse to Ryuji for him to jam the pieces of the disassembled shotgun in. She rolled her eyes at his lack of finesse, but set the student president’s purse on the ground at her feet, then dug around in her own purse. “I should still have some left.”

While she searched, Akira examined the rolled-up thing. It was white, made of familiar crisscrossing, heavy white fibers. He unfurled it and his eyes popped wide. “Hey, it’s the Sayuri.”

While Ann handed tissues over to the student president, Yusuke took position next to the transfer student to look at it. He sucked in a breath. “This is the true Sayuri!”

Ryuji took the other side, glancing from the unrolled painting to the artist. “You ain’t gonna be all—” he feigned a melodramatic weepy face, “—Mom!”

Makoto barked, “’ow some tact!”

Akira nodded. “Seriously, Ryuji. Being vulgar’s not a competition.”

The track star crossed his arms. “Ya don’t gotta bite my head off.”

Akira handed the Sayuri over to the artist. “I think you have a better claim to this than anybody else does.”

Ann handed the remainder of her tissues to the class president, then helped her shoulder her purse again. “Are you okay, Yusuke? I’m sorry your mother couldn’t be here to see you receive it. I got the sense she was making it for you.”

Yusuke let out a heavy breath and seemed more disappointed than anything. “I will survive.” He huffed, though his lips turned down. “I think it is better Mother isn’t here to have seen what happened with Sensei and the Sayuri. She never would have wanted things to go so far.”

Makoto, still holding bloodied tissues to her nose, came to Yusuke’s other side. “It’s still a beautiful painting. At least it could return to you, even if it had to take such a route.”

Ann came around behind and peered over Akira’s shoulder. “In a sense, this is her true self-portrait.”

Yusuke gave a nod and gazed at the image, his eye drifting down to the pink streak jutting from the baby’s wrappings, across her hand and cuff, and off the bottom of the painting “The world will never know.”

Akira shrugged. “That’s not necessarily a bad thing. We may only have known your mother from those couple minutes in Madarame’s memories, but she didn’t seem like the kind of person to crave fame.”

Ryuji crowded in to get a better look at it. “Hey, I’ve been wondrin’. If your Ma’s name was Terumi, why’d he name this Sayuri? That one o’ his squeezes?”

Yusuke gave a brief sigh and took great care to wrap the painting back up. “I doubt it’s any particular woman’s name. Most likely just part of his staging.”

Morgana said, “Wouldn’t the plagiarism have been obvious if he used her real name?”

Makoto let out a heavy breath through her mouth. “’ot necessarily. He could have claimed it was in tribute.” She stepped back and looked the artist in his dark grey eyes. “’at you going to do now?”

Yusuke held the painting in both hands. “Return to Leblanc and study. Semester finals start tomorrow at Kosei.”

Ryuji flinched. “Du-u-ude. You had finals and you still came out here to whack ‘rame?” He threw a shaky thumbs up. “Good luck.”

Morgana stopped in front of the artist, his tail flicking back and forth. “We shouldn’t stick around so close to the scene of the crime, especially with an obvious injury. I think there’s plenty more to talk about, but with one wounded and the other behind on his studies, I think we can follow up on this later.”

Sunday, 3 July 2016
Evening
Yongen, Leblanc

The bell jingled above them as Akira pushed open the door and held it for the artist. While the Kosei student might have tried to conceal his pained wincing, he clutched his stomach as he got off the train, and by the time he slipped inside, his pace became a trudge favoring his right side.

Unfortunately, the business was not empty. An old man in a tweed suit sat in the middle booth with none other than Akechi Goro, their conversation halted by the sound of the bell. Already facing the door, Akechi looked up at the pair. “Oh my.” He set his pen on the legal pad and got up. “Do you need a hand, Amamiya-san?”

The artist arched an eyebrow, but Akira interrupted the question with, “Just need to get him some rest.”

When Yusuke stumbled, a pained grunt leaking out when his right foot hit the ground attempting to hold up his weight.

Akechi rushed to take the artist by his other arm, pausing to let him hand the rolled-up painting to the transfer student. Between he and the transfer student, they managed to help the artist up the stairs. Akechi slowed after stepping off the last step, his bright brown eyes sweeping over the space and stopping on the easel with the beginnings of a painting of Ann. He chuffed. “Interesting. I didn’t expect to see an art studio above a coffee house.” He led the artist over to the bed.

Akira weighed the likely consequences of telling the strange boy with a steel briefcase downstairs the bed was his. But with the state Yusuke was in? He’d look like a selfish ass. There were too many Kurusus like that already. Coming to Tokyo was supposed to be an opportunity for him to be a different person.

Yusuke looked at the bed through heavy, lidded eyes and collapsed on it without even shedding his shoes.

Akira set Yusuke’s school satchel down next to the bookshelf, but straightened the bag on his own shoulder.

Akechi straightened, no smile on his face at having accomplished some good deed as the transfer student would have expected from helping a limping kid to bed. He turned for the stairs, but slow enough to take another scan of the room. His bright brown gaze came to rest on the shogi board set up on the table in front of the couch, a ruffled sheet and pillow on one end. “Painting and strategy. Not a set of hobbies one would normally put together.”

Akira shrugged, well aware of the leader peering out from within his bag. “Everybody needs a safe house, however temporary.”

Akechi gave a smile, something which might have looked perfect to cameras, but seemed stiff and practiced. “You know, most people would call that home and assume it was permanent.”

Pebbles popped as a car drove past outside. Akira wondered if the fashionable shaggy-haired boy knew about the transfer student’s situation and was prodding him. Akira gave his own larger-than-real smile and struck a pose, miming putting on one of those straw hats, “Don’t they say home is where you hang your hat?”

Akechi gave a polite laugh.

Somehow, Akira felt like he’d just moved a shogi piece forward and his opponent moved up a counter. “Anyway, thanks for the help.” He set the rolled-up Sayuri on the table next to the shogi board. “Everything should work out after a cup of coffee.” He extended a hand to the stairs.

Akechi nodded, his smile unwavering as he turned and trotted down the creaking stairs. He slipped back into his booth seat. “Excuse me… So, how many days would it take for you to get your hands on a copy of a quarterly expense report?”

Akira sat down at a bar chair near the coffee siphons so he could keep the pair of customers in the corner of his eye. The house blend in the middle siphon was empty, so he asked, “One cup of your darkest, please.”

Sojiro busied himself with that, then settled down at the register with a book. The other customers talked about financial paper trails for a little while before Sojiro set the book down and checked the time on his phone. He slipped it back in his pocket, then held his hands against his back with a groan. “Not to rush, but it’s closing time, folks.”

Akechi dotted his last sentence, then capped his pen. “We’ll be getting out of your hair, sir.”

Akira looked at the last sip of coffee lightened by a shot of cream. For all the supposed rejuvenative powers of coffee, he still felt just as tired and achy as when he came in. He downed the rest and got up as the pair of legitimate customers left. “You need help closing up?”

Sojiro opened up the register. “No offense, kid, but you look even more tired than I feel. And there’s something else weird in your eyes. Something happen today?”

Shadow Madarame’s whispers echoed in his mind, “I know your eyes. They are as lonely as mine used to be.”

Sighing, Akira picked up his cup and took it to the sink to wash it out. “Just another day, same as all the others.” He pulled out his phone, but his thumb wavered when he brought up Queen Togo. He switched to the text messenger and sent, [Good luck on your finals.]

Sojiro shrugged and wrote the totals down in his phone. “Fine, it’s really none of my business as long as you’re not getting in trouble. Just put a lid on the pot and push it in the bottom of the fridge, okay? My back’s not up to hauling that thing around tonight.”

Akira trudged to it. Once the restaurateur left, Akira turned off the stove. The pilot light cast a dim blue around the tiny kitchenette. He stared into the steady light.

You can have wine, ecstasy, and women in abundance.”

Shaking his head, Akira headed to the bathroom to wash himself. When the water got to the coolest tepid it was going to, he splashed himself in the face, then turned it off and went upstairs to change to drop himself onto the couch.

Notes:

Madarame was by far my favourite villain in Persona 5. He’s logical (if to his distorted desires), driven, capable, but also has some really unsettling points. Think about it: if he didn’t have a point about people wanting recognizable brands, would fanfiction exist?

Chapter 71: July 3rd, From Fighting to Finals

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Sunday, 3 July 2016
Night
Yongen, Leblanc Loft

Akira pressed a hand against his back as he paced up the stairs. Yusuke snoozed on the couch, his head sunk in the pillow brought by Makoto.

The team leader poked his head out from his cushion on the bottom of the shelves. “First a long study session, then a long cleaning session downstairs. You’re certainly industrious.” His tail swished behind him. “Could we talk?”

Akira yanked his shirt off and tossed it to the laundry hamper, then unzipped his rolling closet and changed. “About the Phantom Thieves?”

Morgana paced out so they could look straight at each other, though when he sat he seemed to thrust his chest out a bit more than normal. “We have gained yet another member. First Nightrider, then Fox. We have enough to keep a well-rested reserve.”

Akira tugged at his oversized sleeping shirt. “Six Persona users will do that, I guess. At least you had the idea to designate a rear-guard-slash-reserve. We were starting to step on each other’s toes.”

Morgana smirked. “Between my wit and Nightrider’s, we shouldn’t have issues like that again.” He looked at the sleeping artist. “I’m still suspicious of Fox’s designs on Lady Ann, but having an artist’s eye should be quite a boon. He does have uncommon talent.”

Akira sat down on the bed. “I’m not so sure. Nothing is more common than squandered talent. Discipline, on the other hand, makes ‘talent’ of a blank slate.” He threw back the sheet, but hesitated. “Fits in with us malcontents, though.”

“We wouldn’t have fallen in together if we were bad guys,” Morgana riposted. His posture slouched. “A picture stolen from a pupil… I’ve seen the embodiment of human desires many times, but I still don’t remember who I was.”

The twist of the team leader’s ears started to look distressed, so Akira coughed to catch his attention. “Maybe you were too much for the Metaverse to handle, so it had to wrap you up in a cat body.”

Morgana rolled his eyes, but his little body loosened. “I still need to get my human body back, or I may lose her.”

Akira’s prankster inside called to make a wisecrack, but the long day weighed down his eyelids.

Monday, 4 July 2016
After School
Yongen, Leblanc

The bell jingled as Akira opened the door. An elderly couple and three businessmen who beat rush hour looked up at Akira. The transfer student spotted the tall artist at the closest booth to the window. He walked up to the boy with a pair of books open on the booth table in front of him. “What exactly was the emergency?”

Yusuke looked up at him with a slight quirk of one eyebrow, but it was fast replaced but a small but relieved smile. “Good, you’re here.”

Morgana popped his head out of the transfer student’s satchel and hissed, “We rushed all the way from Shujin, and you’re just relaxing?”

Yusuke drew straight, his forehead creasing and eyes narrowing. “I’m studying. Which was what I messaged you about.”

Akira sat down at the opposite side of the booth, setting his satchel further down on the bench seat. He sighed. “When you said you needed help, I thought it was something immediate.”

Nodding, Yusuke gestured the hand holding his pencil at the books and papers between them. “Finals are upon us.” He scrutinized the transfer student’s gaze, then set his pencil down on his papers, wrapping his arms around himself and his dark grey gaze falling to his lap. “If I have conveyed a mistaken impression, I apologize. I feel… even less prepared for tests now than I have in the past. Madarame seemed too important to delay, and…”

Akira set his glasses on the table and rubbed his eyes as he let out a long breath. He wanted to be more annoyed, but despite his intentions he hadn’t taken any of the team on a study date in the past few weeks. Despite the artist’s threat against Ann, he came clean and helped them fight when dragged into the Metaverse. Ann forgave him. Was it wrong to deny him reprieve? Akira got second chances after Kamoshida even though he didn’t deserve it. Even Ann and the others gave him second and third chances he never earned. Akira put his glasses back on. “I’ll need my books, fearless leader.” He looked up at the artist. “So, what’s coming up tomorrow?”

Evening
Yongen, Leblanc

Akira fanned himself with a sheet of scribbled-over scrap paper. Books and papers scattered all over the table between he and the artist, though despite the droop to his eyelids, at least the latter looked more confident than before. “When you study, you’re serious. Ann and Ryuji both gave up after two subjects.”

One corner of Yusuke’s mouth quirked up. “Discipline was not optional under Sensei.”

Akira paused, then started straightening up his things to pack. “My old bastard was the same way. He hated being out-done, but it’s not like he slacked off himself.”

Yusuke’s stomach growled.

Akira stacked his books on the false bottom hiding his gun in his school satchel. “Did you not eat today?”

Morgana, sitting against the far wall and largely hidden by the upright Shujin satchel, rolled his eyes. “You know, you can use the money Joker distributes from selling Metaverse trinkets.”

Akira flipped a folder of notes closed. “I still think that’s a bad idea. Spending money without having a clean line to explain it to authorities is how Imi got caught selling bootlegged games at Inuri.” He wiped his forehead, then grabbed the loose stack of scribbled-over scratch paper to fan himself again, maneuvering his phone out and checking his bank balance with his other hand. “Speaking of which, I’m getting kind of low on clean funds. I don’t suppose you know any places hiring which aren’t fussy about having a record? I’ve probably been turned down two hundred times.”

Yusuke shook his head. “I am afraid I am in much the same boat as yourself. Sensei… Madarame was disdainful of materialism and finances. He did not officially ban getting a part-time job, but taught us we should focus at all times possible on the greatest pursuit. He also stopped taking Saki-san to galleries or excursions outside the atelier when she got a job at a handbag store.”

Tail swishing, Morgana shook his head in disappointment. “You shouldn’t have nearly as much problem finding work.” His blue eyes widened. “Oh!” He turned to the transfer student. “That bar where you met the reporter. The lady said she’d hire you.”

Akira chuffed, still disillusioned by the number of places who turned him down the instant they found out he had a record. Places which didn’t even perform a background check still gave him the boot as soon as they got a whiff of his record. Still, what’s the worst that could happen? Rejection number two hundred plus one? He pulled up the bar’s website, a spartan affair with a special events page a year out of date and little working but booth reservations. “Looks like Crossroads doesn’t have online employment.” He pulled up the one phone number on the site and called. The phone went straight to a machine which only gave options for booth and whole bar reservations.

When the transfer student hung up with a growl, Yusuke drew his sketchpad and flipped to a fresh page. “No good?”

Akira took off his glasses to wipe the sweat from his brow. “Phone’s just set up to take reservations. They might not be set up for remote employment application.” He set his glasses back on. “Hell with it. I’ll go there and find out in person. At the very least they have air conditioning.”

“AC’s not on,” Sojiro said from the register. “Repairman’s got a backlog until next Wednesday.”

Akira let the team leader in, then shouldered his satchel. He gave one last nod at the artist. “See you.”

Monday, 4 July 2016
Evening
Shinjuku, Crossroads

The trains were crammed more than he ever thought possible, but the streets seemed lighter than his last trip up here with Mishima. Still, Akira took in a deep breath of relief once he got inside the bar. Just a dozen people scattered around the tables on what might have been a dance floor when the place was a night club. The mood lighting made the lethargic customers seem even deader.

The bartender turned her heavy-set gaze on the incoming transfer student. “You again?” She gave a thin smirk. “Keep coming to a place like this, and you might not turn out to be a good adult.”

“I’m apparently a no-good juvenile.” Akira gave her a thumb’s up. “See? I’m already practicing.”

Lala chortled. “Oh, you.” Her smile faded. “I’m afraid Ohya isn’t here today.”

He straightened his dark street jacket, wishing he had some lighter clothing for the summer. At least it was cool inside, if not as much as he expected. “Oh, I’m not here for that.” He swallowed, even though the bartender had never given him much reason to be concerned before. “You remember when you said you could use a bar hand? Is that offer still on the table?” He gestured his chin out at the assortment of suited salarymen, women in a variety of business dress, and others in less formal garb. “Looks like all sorts come through here. I can’t think of a better way to broaden my perspective and meet new people.”

Setting a hand on her hip, Lala scrutinized him with an intensity he didn’t expect from the jocular woman. Her smile and stance loosened up at the same moment. “You’ve got potential, young man. Don’t worry, I’ve had minors work here part-time before. You won’t do anything illegal.”

Akira feigned a pout. “You’re bringin’ me down, Smalls.”

She reached out a finger as if to bop him on the nose if the bar wasn’t between them. “The line is ‘killin’ me’. I like my baseball movies. Have you worked with food and drink before?”

The background check. Well, there went this job.

Morgana poked his head out of the satchel. “Ore no Beko wasn’t your first restaurant.”

Akira straightened. He came all this way. In for a penny, in for a pound. “I worked at an inn with in-house dining before. Washing dishes, carting around dinner trays, cutting tomato and pepper swans.”

She crossed his arms and appraised him once more. “Tomato swans?” Her grin widened, tobacco-stained teeth peeking out. “That’s a little higher-end than what we do here, darling. But if you can make it in a place like that, the work here should be easy. Why settle for a place like this?”

Akira lowered his hands. “Not everybody gets an allowance from on high.”

She shrugged. “Kaho’s in tonight, but a big office party’s still coming in. Come on and I’ll show you the kitchen and office.” She led him through a tour of two rooms which put together could have fit in Leblanc’s loft with space to spare. They went over schedule availability and she reiterated warnings against joining the customers in drinking. Once they returned to the front, he returned to the customer side of the bar and waited for her to take care of a new customer. After setting his beer down, Lala looked back to the transfer student in street clothes. “Explanation finito. Any questions?”

Akira looked at her, then thought back to the small handful of other bar attendants he’d seen before. “Do I need to cross-dress?”

Lala perked. “I could be your producer.” A beat passed before she burst out laughing, the sound low and gravelly. “I wouldn’t want to break adult entertainment laws. What you’re wearing now is fine, Kaho and a few other full-time girls already had kimonos.”

Morgana burst out laughing from the satchel. “I’d have paid money to see you dolled up.”

Akira dusted off his hands at the team leader sitting in his satchel, despite the gray gloves he wore. “Hey, it takes a confident man to be able to dress up. The drag pageant was one of the biggest parts of Yasogami’s culture festival. Has been since they had Risette.”

One of the two salarymen nursing beers at the bar pointed his beer at the transfer student. “No guesses why that might be.”

Akira raised his hands. “No, the drag pageant. People still had photos of a big one years back. Some student worker from Junes signed himself up and did the most unsettlingly pretty Alice in Wonderland I have ever seen.” He chuckled. “Just made the other three losers that much more hilarious.”

Lala chuckled, then took an empty glass from the salaryman nursing his beer at the far end of the bar. “So what do you think, kid?”

Akira blinked, then straightened his glasses. “Wait, you actually want me?”

Lala nodded.

“Now?”

Lala set the glass next to a tiny sink behind the bar. “Idemitsu’s going to be here any minute. Once the big parties arrive, I rarely have time to entertain the customers at the bar. That’ll be part of your responsibilities.”

Akira snapped straight and brought his right hand to his brow, palm facing out, at precise angles.

The night proceeded with less fanfare or bustle than he expected. The business party started arriving a few minutes early and Lala rushed to keep up until the girl Kaho arrived a few minutes late, complicated further by more patrons coming and going. While they focused on keeping the twenty-one adults trying to drown their sorrows well-supplied, Akira tried to keep up.

Despite the alcohol, he noticed a bored listlessness from a man with burn marks across almost a full half of his face. Once brown eyes met his grey ones, he grunted. “Whaddya lookin’ at?”

Morgana quailed in the satchel behind the bar. “Abort, Joker!”

Akira felt his body moving on its own, stepping straight in front of the glaring man nursing a tall beer. “Yo.”

The salaryman sitting one seat to Burn Scar’s right swallowed, then took his own beer and scurried for a table. Burn Scar himself held a hot glare on the transfer student for long seconds, then humphed. “Go ahead, ask me how I got it.”

Akira shrugged. “It’s a burn scar, they look pretty much the same as friction burns.” He waggled his left arm. “I’ve got one myself. Jackass threw a stick in my front bike wheel. Flipped me over and the bike scraped me down a meter and a half of asphalt.”

The glare vanished as Burn Scar straightened. “No kiddin’?”

Burn Scar sipped his beer and he recounted his job as an ambulance medic until his beer ran out a good half hour later. He paid his tab and left.

Lala closed the payment app and stuck her payment tablet in a small pocket hidden inside her obi. “I saw you speaking to Yasutora-chan today. I’m surprised. He’s a scary-looking man most people avoid.”

Akira shrugged. “I never turned when we played chicken on bikes. Yasutora-san didn’t seem so scary to me. Just a guy who’s seen some shit and wants a drink to take the edge off the day.”

Lala chuckled. “Well, I was impressed by your boldness. Just remember, there’s a lot of folks who come in here, and each one has a different way you need to handle ‘em.” When Akira just nodded, she waved him over to the register. “You’re still underage, so you should be going. I’ll just pay you from the till tonight—as soon as your papers are done, you can get direct deposit like everyone else. Keep up the good work, and be careful. Things have settled down a lot with the police crackdown on the Kaneshiro yakuza, but Shinjuku is still dangerous at night.”

Akira nodded and took his pay, his eyes widening at more than double what the convenience store paid. “Thanks, Lala-san. I’ll be waiting for the next time you need more hands on deck.”

He took his satchel, and the team leader popped out of it as they stepped out. “Not bad, Joker. You didn’t succumb even to that super-intense guy.”

Akira shook off what might have been a curfew officer before he got to the train station. With the train still a few minutes out, he pulled out his phone. He pulled up Queen Togo. [Good evening. I hope your finals are going okay.]

The train pulled up by the time his phone buzzed with a response. [I know they're necessary, but I hate finals. They're harder than hurdle marathons.]

[Good luck. Though I am sure you won't need luck.]

[Thank you, Akira-kun. Good night.]

Akira slipped into the train just before the doors closed and relished the competing sensations of blowing cool from the AC and a stirring warmth.

Tuesday, 5 July 2016
After School
Shibuya, Diner

Akira slid into the booth and set his satchel down so the team leader could pop out and glare at the artist sitting across the table from him. Ryuji slid in after the transfer student. The clatter of spoons, chopsticks, and at least a dozen conversations created a din pressing down on him, though it felt less oppressive than before. He hoped this meant he was getting used to Tokyo, rather than today being easy on its own. Akira gave a nod to Ann and the artist. “How are the finals going?”

Yusuke gave a contrite nod, his lips flat but something about his face too relaxed for melancholy. “Very well, actually. Despite the circumstances, I believe my earlier studies have left me… at the very least prepared enough for passing grades.” The corners of his lips curled up. “Actually, I did find a little time yesterday.” He pulled out his phone, opened the camera history, then presented it to them.

Akira took the phone with care, angling it for the team leader who just looked away with a pout, then the track star. Akira scanned the image, before realizing it wasn’t quite a border. “Ah, you framed Sayuri. Have you thought about what you’re going to do with it?”

Yusuke stared at the image, marred by that one stroke of paint falling to the bottom of the image. “How strange that in my teacher’s twisted heart, I not only found the last wish of my mother, but her face which had passed out of living memory.” He took back his phone, put it to sleep, then set it to the side. “I contacted counseling at Kosei for options, since I am not actually familiar with the details of my scholarship—just that it is supposed to be rather extensive. They have dorms just off campus, but only students without nearby residence may occupy them. Madarame would have to confess in writing that I have been barred from the atelier.”

Setting her civics book on the table, Ann glowered at a spot on the table. “How about it being an unlivable shack one wind storm away from falling down?”

Morgana’s tail started twitching.

Akira shrugged. “Well, Sojiro said it’s fine for you to stay ‘til finals are over. As long as we’re quiet, I don’t think he really cares who crashes there.” He looked out at them. “It’s just a crash-pad, to be honest. Any o’ you who want to stop by can. It’s not a bad little space.”

Ryuji shrugged and waved down one of the waiters and they ordered cold snacks. Once she left and no sign remained of prying eyes, he turned back to the group. “Okay, Prez wan’ed to know. Now that we took down ‘rame, whaddya gonna do?”

Akira took off his glasses to clean one lens. “Isn’t it a bit premature to be thinking of that? Madarame hasn’t even confessed yet. More mundanely, Kosei’s finals aren’t finished until Thursday, then next week it’s our turn.”

Yusuke dug into his school bag to draw a few textbooks. Instead of opening them, he looked at the runner slouched against his seat. “Madarame is the third Palace you have sought to topple. I understand why you brought low Kamoshida, but… why do you continue to strike out when there is such grave danger?”

Akira set his settled his glasses back on his face. “Somebody’s got to take down scumbags.”

Ryuji sat up, an energized spark entering his eyes. “Not just that, dude. We wanna give courage to all’a them peeps gettin’ squished by selfish adults.”

Morgana puffed out his chest from his narrow space between Akira and the wall. “That’s right!”

Gears whirled behind the artist’s dark grey eyes. “What good is courage? Does that make them happy?”

Akira coaxed the team leader onto the table, then drew a couple books. “Take this from the son of a shrink. No one thing can make you happy.”

Ann kicked his leg under the table, then turned her blue gaze to the artist. “You never know how until you try. Some people might take the opportunity to just get out of a bad situation, but some people might just need a chance to step up.”

Yusuke poked at his textbook, then looked over at her. “A little like yourself, hm? You could have stopped after that despicable coach turned himself over to the police. Instead, you continue to stand for your justice, even now.” He gave a small, hesitant smile. “How could I do any less?” He looked out at the boys across the table, as well as the team leader perched on it. “Would you have one such as I with you on your next battle to reform a small piece of humanity? My muse has been fed surfeit just from the twisted images in Madarame’s Palace. I can only imagine how much more of the Metaverse would expand my artistic repertoire.”

Ryuji gave a wide grin showing off too-perfect teeth. “Man, you really are obsessed.”

Yusuke held up a hand, index finger extended. “As long as our plans are elegant.”

Morgana shook his head, the metal on his collar jangling. “With Nightrider on the team, I don’t think you have to worry about that. And the team decides on targets by unanimous vote, so despite the incredible power of the Metaverse, we won’t abuse it like that Black Mask fellow.”

Ryuji nodded, his grin undiminished. “Niiice. When Makoto joined up, I thought it was awesome ‘cause we had more chicks, but she turned out to be even more intense than mister gotta-go-get’em here,” he said, jerking his thumb at the transfer student. “But even with all the shit you saw, you stay cool.”

Akira gave a sage nod. “If you think there’s not enough femininity, we could all wear drag.”

Morgana hung his head. “Joker.”

Only the upturn of one corner of his mouth betrayed his humor. “We could pull it off.”

Yusuke’s eyes narrowed in thought. “Several prospective students did tell me at the last Kosei culture festival that all I would have to do to look like a woman is to add makeup and change the styling of my hair.”

Ann massaged her temples. “Please don’t.” She slapped her hand against her book. “Anyway, this was officially supposed to be a study session anyway, right?”

Akira nodded despite the runner’s groan, and the next two hours flew by as they all dug into academics.

The track star got a call from his mother and excused himself. After another ten minutes, Ann gave it up and packed.

Yusuke scratched out the last of his notes on the poetry likely to be on the Japanese language portion of tomorrow’s finals. “I suspect I have reached my limit as well.” He set down his pencil and rubbed his neck. “I just need to read In the Grove before tomorrow so I can say which narrator was telling the truth.”

Akira perked up at the mention of his previous favorite book. “None of them.”

Yusuke shot him a gaze narrowed by tiredness. “Somebody has to be telling the truth.”

Akira set aside his civics book. “That’s the whole point of the story. Even if humans are capable of knowing the truth, they’re not capable of telling it because they’re all motivated by self-interest. Each of the four recountings disproves something from the others.”

Throwing his hands up, Yusuke rolled his eyes. “Then what is the point of trying? If there is no such thing as true beauty, why have artists toiled for millennia?”

Akira finished stacking his papers. “Well, which is beautiful, the people of a mandala or trees of a shigajiku?”

Yusuke sat back in his seat. “That’s… neither. Those are two entirely different genres of paintings, neither of which could exist without those elements. It’s not as if the hanging scroll depends on the geometric arrangement of people in a different painting.”

Akira pointed a finger in triumph. “Exactly. I mean, who knows if there’s some secret truth hidden out there if we are the ones who make it? We build our own cities.”

Yusuke began packing with slow motions, his eyes kilometers away. “No. There has to be truth out there. Just as there is true beauty.” The transfer student opened his mouth, but the artist interrupted, “I know it exists, for I see it in Takamaki-san!”

Now Morgana stood, tail twitching. “I will never allow a villain like you to make moves on such a beauty!”

Pushing his glasses up, Akira rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Shouldn’t she be the one who decides who she does what with? She’s mature enough to decide for herself.”

Morgana’s jaw flapped open, then clicked close.

Yusuke finished packing. “Perhaps we should leave further philosophy for later. Thank you for the study session.” He departed, and after a few minutes Akira took the team leader, paid, and left.

Tuesday, 5 July 2016
Late Evening
Yongen, Leblanc

Akira shuffled through the door, his fingers aching from the grocery bags. His stiff shoulders popped, still sore from at least ten minutes of trying to protect Morgana and his bag from the crush of rush hour in the train. The restaurant’s door opened with a faint squeak and the jingling of that annoying bell.

The only person within looked up to greet him, Sojiro’s hands on a broom as he swept rice from under one of the booth tables.

Seeing no reason to buck tradition, Akira came to a stop at the close end of the counter and set the paper bag on it so he could bring up his right hand to his brow, palm out. “Reporting in.”

Sojiro rolled his eyes. “Well, now that you’re here, you can finish the sweeping. Just the job for a young back.” He held out the broom. When the transfer student took it, he headed for the kitchen to check the curry in the pot. “What do you think of Tokyo?”

Kneeling to get under the far end of the table, Akira swept out dried rice from under the table. “There’s so many people everywhere I go. I don’t know how everyone else just brushes it off.” He swept the last particles on the ground into the little tray, then dumped them into the trash. “I assume Yusuke already came in?”

The restaurateur nodded. “Came in looking as tired as you usually do. Went straight up.”

Akira retrieved his groceries, washed the last remaining cups in the sink, then pulled out a colander to wash the vegetables in. “Lot of cups today, not so many plates or bowls. Does that mean today was a slow or fast day?”

Sojiro, stirring at the pot, gave a harrumph, though the wrinkles in his forehead seemed lighter than before. “Beginning of the week tends to be busier than the weekend here, though it can go either way.” He tapped the ladle and turned the stove off. “You and your friends find a gym or something? Seems you’re always coming in tired.”

Akira shook out the carrots and tomatoes. “As long as we’re not doing it after curfew, the cops can’t do anything about us running in Inokashira or one of the other parks.” He set the colander on the counter and pulled open a drawer for the peeler to clean the carrots. “And it’s not like we’re always out doing something.”

“Fair enough.” Sojiro tapped curry off the ladle and carried it to the sink. “So, is today cooking day?”

Akira shook out the peeler and paced to the knife drawer. A snark about having cooked for himself since childhood danced on his tongue, but the abrasive middle-aged man didn’t seem like the sort to strike up small talk. Curious what he was really after, Akira answered, “Better to concentrate preparations on a couple days and make a whole bunch, especially if you’re not good at cooking. Saves money, too. When neither of your parents give a damn about parenting, that means you’ve got to take care of yourself.”

Lips pressing thin, Sojiro finished washing and rinsed off the ladle, then hung it on a hook on the wall above the mop bucket. “Sounds like you had all-too-little childhood.”

Akira began rapid, regular strokes to cut the carrot into even slices, the motions practiced from months in the kitchens of Amagi Inn. “There’s nothing magical about childhood. We’re thinking people who remember what the adults around us do from a very young age, what most people have nostalgia for is the lack of responsibility. Pity they don’t remember how little power they had either.”

Despite the normal devil-may-care attitude the once-playboy showed before, Sojiro sighed at that. He looked older and wearier than the transfer student had ever seen before. “I can’t agree with that. Childhood is a time when you’re still figuring out who you are. Children shouldn’t be forced to toil for room and board when they don’t even know who they are or what they want to be.” He gazed into wood boards of the kitchen wall for long seconds, but something remained focused in his gaze which made the transfer student wonder what he’d seen. Sojiro shook his head and gave that practiced-for-the-customer smile. “Tell you what. Since you’ve already got plenty on your plate, why don’t I show you a thing or two about cooking? No need to rely on cold vegetables and rice every day.”

Akira nodded as they chatted about cooking styles and stir fry until well after the creak of the stairs indicated Morgana pattered upstairs.

Notes:

A lot of possible topics to touch on thanks to the wide array of broken homes, but one that I never really saw brought up is having to take care of oneself. Leaning to do your own laundry or cook for oneself isn't complicated each by itself, but when you're forced to do all of it while still struggling to keep up with school and build your future identity? It's no wonder things can seem so bleak to those who don't have the advantage of a family supporting them.

Chapter 72: July 6th, Half Moon

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Wednesday, 6 July 2016
After School
Shujin, Gym

Rain pounded on the windows as the first and most determined wave of escapees fled the classrooms. Most students took their time, fishing around in their school satchels for collapsible umbrellas. Akira looked over to Ann and spotted her glance at the only seat behind him. A beat occurred just long enough for her eyes to meet the class representative’s before she looked away at the same time as he did, Mishima’s chair scraping on the wood flooring.

Mishima turned over an assignment sheet and pulled out a notebook.

Ann slipped a folded umbrella out of her desk and shouldered her satchel, though she snuck a peek at the class rep.

Akira wasn’t sure who they were tied up by more—Shiho or each other—but this problem just kept eating away at both. It was time for drastic action. He cleared his throat and waved her down. With her attention, Akira gave a rough pat to the representative’s shoulder. “Hey, there’s an emergency I need you on.”

Mishima looked at the transfer student as much as he could to avoid the model coming to a stop next to him. “What’s up?”

Gesturing to the model and representative, Akira took a step for the door. “C’mon, hurry.” If his old bastard taught him anything, it was that the first rule of command was confidence. If you don’t give people room to argue or question you, most will obey without a peep. Worry showed on Ann’s face and a distracted annoyance on Mishima’s, but at his insistence they followed him down to the sheltered nook.

With the rain pounding down, any students out of their classrooms would be rushing for home or work. Just a handful of students raced down the covered walkway, the rain coming down at an angle left most of the walkway wet. Since the angle of the rain drenched the walkway to the vending machine nook, Akira had to pop open his blue umbrella. Being the ‘two person’ variety, it was plenty for him to escort the pair the short distance needed, and also gave him the pretext to take Ann’s umbrella as they dashed into the corner of the courtyard.

Ann’s eyes scanned him as he shook out his umbrella. “So what’s the big emergency?”

Turning to the three of them, Akira set the satchel with the team leader on the table. “This is an intervention. It’s not right to just let my friends go around with a big problem.”

Mishima’s gaze started to look shifty before he ventured to speak. “I don’t understand.”

Akira pointed a hand at the bench against the dry wall of the nook. “It’s you two.” Both of his fellow 2-D students stiffened, but as soon as they glanced at each other, they both looked like it was only the pouring rain which kept them from running for the hills. “C’mon, guys. You both trusted me enough to come to me with what happened to you the day I first went to Nijubashi Square.”

They both gave him flat, uncomprehending stares. Mishima’s left eyebrow disappeared under his dark bangs.

Akira slapped his free hand against his forehead. “Right. That was later. Makoto just joined… we all went down to Gun About. Probably the first time we all trained there together.” He glanced at the class rep. “I mean… all of us… you know.”

With remarkable synchronicity, Ann and Mishima both glanced at each other, blushed, then jerked their gaze back to the transfer student and went, “Oh!” Now they both looked as if weighing the option of bolting into the rain.

Akira pointed them both at the dry bench. “C’mon, guys. It’s been over a month, and you both look like you swallowed knives each time you look at each other. You’re my friends. Probably the first people I really, really don’t want to see hurting. Nobody’s gone out of their way for me like you guys have. I’m still pretty new at this whole being a good friend, and I was hoping you two would figure it out. But that hasn’t happened. So I’m making sure that happens today.” He glanced at the class rep. “Sounds from your stories like you had a breakdown and kissed her.”

Their blushes doubled in size and intensity. Ann recovered from the stammering just enough to blurt, “No, it was me! It’s my fault!”

Akira rubbed his forehead. “Ayayaie.” He stepped forward, grabbing them both by the arms to push them past the table and at the bench. They both yielded ground, but neither sat. “Guys, was it an accident or not?”

Ann stared out at the rain, but her blush grew.

After a moment, Mishima found enough breath to stammer, “Yes!” His body tensed. “No!” His hands closed into fists and his eyes shone in the glittering lights. “I don’t know.”

Akira set his umbrella tip-down against the dry concrete, Ann’s collapsible umbrella in the same hand still dripping. “I think I understand why family court judges drink.” He shook his head and looked at the model. “Look, you’re a lot of things, but an ambush predator is not one of them. I may not have been there to see the whole thing go down, but I’m pretty sure you didn’t lure him in to steal him from his girlfriend. You both care too much about Shiho to do that.”

Two tears slipped out of the corners of Mishima’s eyes and he sat down in the general direction of the dry bench. Being a pace away, he hit the ground hard and fell against the soda machine.

Ann dove at him to help him back up. “Yuuki!”

Sniffing, the first tears slid down from his eyes. “How can you still try to be my friend after everything I’ve done? I don’t deserve it.”

Hifumi’s quoted words spilled from Akira’s lips as soon as the connection snapped in his brain. “Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Do not be so quick to mete out judgment.” When his friends both looked at him, he shrugged. “One of the parishioners is as big a bookworm as me, just better read.” He took them both by the arms again and led them closer to the bench. Neither sat. “Anyway, the point is we all get things we don’t deserve. Shit we never should’ve had to step in. Gifts we never earned. We still have them.” He waved the hand holding the umbrellas, a couple drops splattering the vending machine. “I mean, you didn’t feed other girls to Kamoshida, did you?”

Mishima looked like he wanted to crumple, but the model refused to let him fall. “N-no. B-but that hardly makes—”

“Stop it, Yuuki!” Ann straightened, though from the tremble in her arms she couldn’t have been far from breaking down herself. “You weren’t there when Kamoshida called Kiriko-senpai to his office.”

He stood straighter, bitterness thick in his gaze. “But I was for all those guys I called in. Even if all he ever did was beat people up like he did me, they didn’t deserve that.”

Ann’s hands clenched on his. “Neither did you!”

Lips pressing thin, Akira couldn’t decide whether or not he agreed.

“I still shouldn’t have done it!” Mishima’s eyes glistened. “I thought it would never stop and… some days I had so little left… when he didn’t want to hit me, I called in some other guy for him.” He clenched his dark eyes closed and heaved in a breath. “The only one I’d go into that office for was Shiho.”

Ann’s hands loosened so she could slide her grip up to his arms, her own watery gaze searching the representative’s. “She wasn’t the first one I saw leave campus when you went to her after coming out of Kamoshida’s office.”

Mishima turned his gaze away, but with her grip on his arms he still couldn’t pull away. “You think I have the right to go back to her? After all the things I’ve done…” He glanced at her, but even before meeting her cerulean gaze his brown orbs turned down. “I haven’t even made up for what I did to you.”

Akira pressed his hand against the side of his head but kept his mouth clamped closed. The first thought to pass through his head sounded too much like Ryuji—plenty of guys in Shujin would kill for a kiss with Ann. She didn’t mean it. And the more Akira watched, the less he thought the representative did, either. “No offense guys, but you’re not master manipulators that could trick the other into… favors.” He clasped the umbrellas behind his back and stepped closer. “Kamoshida hurt both of you, and the last thing either of you want to do is to spread the hurt around.” His grey gaze bored into the representative still making the weakest pull away from Ann he’d ever seen. “You keep trying to talk about making up or paying back, holding that up as a shield to keep you from having to do what you did every day while Kamoshida was still here, threatening all of you. Going to Shiho and being her friend. Isn’t that your duty? Shouldn’t that be what moves you?” He took another step closer and pulled out his folded handkerchief, the deep red fabric a few shades darker than the gloves he bore in the Metaverse, handing it out to the class representative only just staying on his feet. “You used to treasure Shiho. Has that changed?”

“No!” both shouted. Ann blushed and let go to step back.

Mishima braced one arm against the vending machine. “I sent her to Kamoshida—”

“Because I told you the next time Kamoshida beat you, the damage would be permanent,” Akira barked. He straightened his glasses. “My vision might not be that great, but I’ve got great ears. And a memory which won’t let go. If you’re at fault for what happened to Shiho when it wasn’t your fists, where’s my part of the blame?”

Ann sighed, looking ten years older in the dark under a sheltered nook battered by the rain. “You came in at the tail end of everything, Akira. She was my best friend since middle school. I should have known.” She clasped her hands behind her back, her eyes on the rain splattering the concrete at the edge of the nook. “When you know a person that long, you pick up on things she’s not saying. Hell, I knew something was going on with Mishima, and Kamoshida and I only knew him since he started coming to Shiho’s games. I should’ve known that bastard was prepared to do something to her to get to me.” Cringing, she turned towards the class rep. “I was why he hurt her, not you.”

Akira massaged his temples. “Ann, weren’t we in his mind at the time? There literally wasn’t anything you could have done.” He threw his hands in the air, making sure to keep a grip on the umbrellas. “Hell, I was directly responsible for you being in the Metaverse instead of there for him to make whatever nasty calls he’d been bombarding you with.”

Ann shivered, her hands fidgeting behind her back. “You didn’t even know what the Nav was at the time, Akira. You didn’t exactly hide your surprise.”

“Then why’s the same reason that makes it not my fault, your fault?”

Now Ann’s hands came to her side, bunched in tight fists. “Because she was my friend. I cared about her more than anything!”

“So did I!” Akira shouted.

All three blinked in the relative silence beneath the pounding rain. The wind gusted, bringing splattering rain closer and chill wind blowing through the trio.

Akira took off his glasses and leaned against the vending machine. “She was the first girl in my life to give me a smile, remember? Listened to my dream.” He wiped the lenses on his jacket, then settled his glasses back on. “That’s who she was.” He set the umbrellas on the table and stepped closet to grab Mishima’s arm. “That’s why you can’t stop thinking about her.” Then Ann’s. “Or you. I think you weren’t ready for her not to be right here, so you were looking for Shiho in him. And her.”

For the first time in a long while, both met his grey eyes.

Akira held up his hands. “I know your type, Mishima. You think things’ve gotta be balanced before you can move out.” He lowered his hands. “News flash: it’s never balanced. Being raised by doctors, I can even give you a specific example. Your legs aren’t even the exact same height. Average people might have one a couple millimeters longer, and that’s just from being born. Life just throws more things on both sides of any equation you try to make. Yeah, things are never going to be the same with Shiho, but no shit. Next year’s not going to be the same as last year. You take it a day at a time, not theoretical years future and assumed years past.” He paused for a breath. “Weren’t you there for Shiho when Shujin was too much for her?”

Mishima’s breath came faster. “S-she was the one who was there for me.” The tears ran in rivulets. He sat, almost missing the bench again before Ann caught him and directed him back. Ugly sobs wracked him for long minutes before he lost the strength for them. “She was the one who made my life worth living.” He wiped at the tears, but more kept coming. “You don’t understand, my life was worth less than nothing before I met her. I was just that dumb nerd in the corner people would make fun of because I was too scared to speak up.” A sob cracked his voice and it took him several moments to get his breathing under control. “She was so m-much larger than life, she even filled mine.”

Akira sat down on the armrest of the bench and plopped his hand down on the class rep’s shoulder. “What if she relied on you, same as you drew courage from her?”

“Yeah,” Ann added, squeezing the boy’s other shoulder. “Even Shiho’s mother had a harder time without you there to help balance it out. Things were always tense there before you came along.”

Mishima’s face flushed and he gave a self-deprecating smile. “Y… You really think so?”

Akira nodded. “Father Sugiyama told me the most virtuous people are the ones most aware of their own vices.”

Ann clasped her hands in her lap. “But that doesn’t mean we don’t rely on you, Yuu-kun. It’s not like any of the other Phantom Thieves are any good with computers,” she said with a forced chuckle.

Haggard, the class representative looked between the two of them. “I’m really sorry, guys.”

Akira swatted the back of the rep’s head. “Stop sayin’ that. Go out and do.”

Mishima stood. Despite the shaking of his hands, he drew in a breath. “You’re right.” He turned and faced Ann straight on. “I can’t let another day go by, or I’ll be the same Yuuki who let that happen. No, worse—I’ll backslide and become that stupid, powerless loser who only met Shiho by accident.” He gave a deep bow. “Thanks.”

As the class representative scrambled off, Morgana popped his head out of the satchel. “Haha! The Phantom Thieves are so amazing, we don’t even need the Metaverse to steal distortion.”

Ann jumped, then placed her hand over her heart. “I forgot you were there, Morgana.”

Akira sat down on the bench proper. “Who’s to say they won’t find darkness there again? Yuuki-san himself said his problem before Shiho was thinking his life had no value in itself.”

Morgana crossed one paw over the other and looked up at them. “The way I see it, all we can do is take away one distortion. After that, what people become is for them to decide. If they get distorted again and start hurting other people, then we’ll go again. That’s why Akechi was wrong about us. We’re not like tyrants who want to control everything about how people live.”

She gave a nod to the transfer student. “Thanks for today, though. I tried to talk to Yuu-kun a few times, but always half-assed it. Every time he found an excuse to focus on something else, I took the out too.” She leaned back on the bench. “I never really thought about looking for Shiho in him. He’s right, though. Shiho’s heart was so big, she could make yours feel bigger just by being around. I want to be like that, too.” She stood up to grab her umbrella, but paused there. “I just wish I knew quite how she did it.” She shook her head and stepped out, popping open the umbrella.

Wednesday, 6 July 2016
Early Evening
Yongen, Leblanc

Akira picked up his cup of coffee, the brown liquid inside long since gone cold in his studies with the artist. Still, its bitterness brought a feeling of sharpness back to his awareness. He drained the last gulp. Books and papers spread across the booth table in the semi-orderly studies. Academics used to be a refuge in which nobody bothered ‘the lab freak’, so figuring out how to engage in group study was hard on its own. Math being the main topic today left him that much more burnt out at having to rely on Hifumi’s notes. After a deep breath in and out, Akira began packing. “I’m calling it quits today, Yusuke.”

Yusuke nodded. “Thank you for your insights.” He scribbled something down, then moved to another page. “For someone who claims to dislike mathematics, you seemed as apt as any of my fellow students.”

Akira slipped his satchel on his shoulder, needing far less muscle than usual with the team leader staying behind. “I’m gonna go on a walk.”

He retrieved his umbrella from the peg against the wall sheltering what little genkan the business had, opened it, then stepped out into the faltering rain. With the weather, there wasn’t any point taking the train to Inokashira or one of the other parks. “Maybe some preparation for our next dive in Mementos.”

Velvet Room

Akira leaned both forearms against the barred door between he and the inner room of the panopticon where the twins stood. With Igor absent, the space seemed calmer. Getting Agathion back also filled in a strange sense of a small void inside him he hadn’t quite understood was there until the Persona’s return.

Justine gave a faint nod and turned a page on her busy clipboard. “Your diligence is commendable, Inmate. You just may reach rehabilitation after all.”

Akira straightened enough to mime a backhand with his left, adding a smack sound effect with his mouth. “Thanks. You always know how to build a guy up.”

Caroline waggled her baton at him. “Having the will to work is a minimum, Inmate.”

He shot her a smirk, and was rewarded with her hand clenching tight on her baton.

Justine glanced up. “This is for your benefit, Inmate. Still, you have progressed since our last meeting. Sharing your power with another person is an indication of the bonds of faith you are developing. I would warn you these tasks only increase in difficulty, but that wouldn’t dissuade you, would it?”

Akira let his smirk grow.

Her face betrayed nothing but cold attentiveness. “Your attitude leaves vast room for improvement, but your will to carry on is admirable enough.”

Akira lifted up on his toes to try to get a vantage point on the clipboard. “What’s on that list, anyway?”

Caroline slammed her electrified baton on the bars, sending sparks zipping. “You’re not here for questions, you’re here for penal labor. Your responses should be ‘Yes, Ma’am’ and ‘No, Ma’am’.”

He flipped her off.

Justine cleared her throat. “We are acting beyond the minimum requirements of our duty as wardens to assist you, Inmate.”

Akira and the wannabe-warden with hair buns straightened. He crossed his arms. “Given you’re supposed to be ‘rehabilitating’ me, it seems to me like this is all obligated.”

Caroline raised her baton, but refrained from striking the bars. “It’s your rehabilitation, so you’re the one with the burden of action.”

Justine turned another page on her clipboard. “We ask you harbor a Kin-Ki with Sukukaja before we grant you your next boon.”

Caroline waggled that damn baton of hers. “It’s not like life’s just gonna hand you success.”

I will bury you,” echoed within his skull.

Akira gripped the bars, and let out a breath, the effort of standing up too much for just a moment. “I know that better than either of you may know.”

The stunted girl in a silly costume looked up from her clipboard, and for a moment he swore he saw a wobble in her golden gaze. Then it was gone, and she kept reading from the hand-penned paper.

Late Evening
Velvet Room

Akira wiped his chin and stood up from the steel toilet. His legs shook under him, but he refused to relax with those two weirdos right there, watching. Despite gaining the Apsaras he’d already seen in the museum, and a twin-swordswoman reminding him of a couple enemies in the bank, he didn’t have either the energy or stomach contents to keep going. He paced to the bars and took a firm grip on them to help stay steady. “S-so, anything I should look out for down on that list?”

Justine turned the page. “Your bond with the holder of the Magician is too weak to complete the next stage of our requests.” A narrowness entered her one eye and she turned one page, then to the next and read for a moment before flipping everything back straight. “And you are in danger of reversing the holder of Death. Be earnest and show integrity, or you risk undoing the progress you have made.”

Caroline tapped her baton against her shoulder. “Any weakling Personas you want to leave in The Pit so we can beat some semblance of strength into them?”

Akira closed his eyes and focused. Nekomata was agile enough to get into position, but never seemed to hit hard enough to help Makoto or Ryuji. And when that electrified pressure plate tripped, it felt like every organ in his body fried. Opening his eyes, he saw the ninja-esque female with an iron mouthguard crouched out there between the twins. Taking one last, long breath, he stood and brought his hand to his brow, palm out in a snarky salute.

Thursday, 7 July 2016
After School
Shujin, Class 2-D

Finished packing, Akira set his satchel on the seat to give the team leader the opportunity to slink out of the desk. His phone vibrated and he heard a buzzing from Mishima as well. Ann should still be heading to her job, so he set the satchel down and sat to check the chat.

Yusuke’s ID sat at the top of the Phantom Thief chat. [Kosei's finals are over at last. Would any care to partake in an excursion to the Ueno Modern Art Museum to unwind?]

Ryuji followed up. [Hard pass.]

If the artist had free time, that might mean another Kosei student would be available. Akira shifted over to a private chat with Hifumi. [Good afternoon. I heard Kosei's finals are over. Would you like to do anything?]

It took a while before her ID lit up and she responded, [I'm really tired. I was going to sit down to a book and go to bed early today.]

Akira let out a breath which seemed to take half his life with it. [Okay. Have a good day, then.]

[Maybe a rain check? Sorry.]

His shoulders hunched. [Don't be, Togo-san. It's not your fault tests are tiring.] So much for seeing her and getting his record out into the open. Akira closed that text line and returned to the Phantom Thief chat, his enthusiasm drained. [Sorry, Yusuke. I think I'm just going to study at Shujin.]

Makoto sent, [Good for you, Yusuke-kun. Tests are a major milestone at Shujin.]

Ryuji popped up again. [So what's Kosei like? It have a bunch of weird guys like you?]

[Ryuji!] Makoto shot back.

From the desk behind him, Yuuki finished packing his books. A moment later, he texted, [We did read quite a bit about it while investigating Madarame. I understand it has an extensive fine arts program?]

[Indeed,] Yusuke replied. It took several more seconds before he seemed to realize the others were waiting for elaboration. [It has music and ceramics as well, though painting is what drew Madarame's attention.]

Three dots winked next to Yuuki’s ID. [Any other interesting students?]

Yusuke replied, [I would have said they are all interesting, though I have noticed one in particular over the past two weeks. Togo Hifumi. She is known for participation in the professional shogi circuit. I have heard some claim she is trying to become an idol, but that does not make sense for someone who keeps to herself.]

Three dots appeared next to Ryuji’s name, but Yuuki beat him to the reply. [I didn't know she went to Kosei. I heard about a Togo model in the newspaper club. She's been dubbed the Venus of Shogi by magazines and television all over the city.]

Makoto sent, [Shogi? Like that strategist you were with at Jinbocho a couple weeks ago, Akira?]

Akira typed, [That's her, but she doesn't like being called Venus. She'd prefer to be known for her skill in shogi, which is legit. She said she'd like to play a game, if you're interested.]

[Maybe after finals. Big Sis has been getting suspicious and I want to have good grades to show her.]

Ryuji sprang in with, [You know a model? Dude, why didn't you tell us! Is she hot like Ann?]

Akira’s face burned. She was, but the runner sounded a little too much like those stalkers with no sense of boundaries or respect.

Yusuke replied, [She does not tend to mix in with the general student population. To be honest, I only noticed her because she started spending lunch in the courtyard instead of on the roof, where I heard she usually ate and practiced shogi alone.]

Yuuki sent, [Sounds kind of sad, the way you put it. Being solitary like that all high school long.]

Akira sent, [I asked her to keep an eye on you. At first it was because we were zeroing in on Madarame and you were our only good lead. After we learned what happened to so many of Madarame's pupils, it was concern.]

[That is very kind of you,] Yusuke sent.

Ryuji jumped in again. [Dudes, you're missing the point. She's a model, right? How hot is she?]

Yuuki texted, [How did you meet her, to ask her to look out for Kitagawa-san?]

[We both go to Kanda Catholic Church.]

Ryuji replied with blazing speed, [We have to go check her out!]

Akira’s jaw clenched. [Ryuji, if you bother us in Mass so you can hit on her, I won't wait for God to strike you down with a lightning bolt. I'll do it myself.]

[It's for the Phantom Thieves,] the track star shot out. [Shogi's a kind of battle, right? She's got to know all kinds of cool strategies.]

[That she does,] Akira confessed. [Remember that pincer attack we pulled off against the Nue in the Museum? I thought of that from one of our games where she struck on both sides. I still had pieces left, but it was over before turn twenty. Once I lost the flanks, she had control of almost the whole board. Same as that big fight against all those horse demon things in Kaneshiro's bank. I knew we had to take out the jumpers first because she's always sneaking her knights behind my defensive positions.]

Ryuji sent, [Then we'll all go check her out. Her strategies, I mean. But meeting the Venus of Shogi would be cool! No harm if we get to see first-hand how cute she is.]

Morgana gave the transfer student a knowing smirk. “Well, Ryuji does have a bit of a point. She is pretty cute.”

Akira coughed.

Makoto sent, [You're not fooling anyone, Ryuji.]

Yuuki backed her up, [Churches are supposed to be holy places.]

Ryuji shot back, [Shouldn't you be defending Ann? Save some of the hot girls for me.]

Akira rolled his eyes. [On to a different subject. How's that reporter treating you?]

Three dots danced next to Yusuke’s ID. [Reporter?]

Yuuki texted, [She still teases me all the time, but she's really got the whole investigative journalism thing down. She has… her own tools, but she's been teaching me to make better use of looking obsequious to navigate bureaucracy. Says I've got a knack.]

Deciding the team had nothing critical to discuss, Akira decided to sit down with some homework. [I'll be studying at the library. Send me a call if something important comes up.] He closed the chat and headed out. The fastest escapees already fled school grounds, most of the remaining students chatted in the halls or sauntered about. Once Akira reached the third floor, he spotted Makoto coming from the bathrooms.

She gave a nod and they met at the corner next to the broadcast room, slipping her phone into her skirt pocket. “Good afternoon. At least somebody isn’t obsessed with appearances.”

Akira shrugged. “I don’t think Ryuji’s as bad as he pretends sometimes. Besides, some people do take particular pleasure in going out and flaunting provocative dress for attention.” His eyes locked on the a third year, leaning against the lockers, texting. He turned to look at her straight on. She seemed familiar, from back when he was in Shinjuku with Yuuki, but the girl wore short, eye-hurting pink skirt and suspenders then. He pointed, “Like her in Shinjuku’s Kabukichou.”

Makoto’s eyes narrowed in that quick, ‘I am filing this for later’ look before stepping out to the library.

Akira followed, sorting in his mind through homework left to finish. The hubbub sprang up as soon as he slipped into the library after her, dashing his concentration. He stalked to one of the study cubbies in the back where it was a little quieter and set his school satchel down.

“What does the criminal think he’s doing here?”

“I know, the library is supposed to be for legitimate students.”

“I can’t believe he didn’t get expelled.”

“Don’t look at him, he’s got a knife!”

Makoto slammed her history book closed, the thunderous sound passing through the library and drawing a hush through the small space. She stood up and turned on the dozen-plus-some students and planted her hands on her hips. “I have just about had enough of treating the library like the halls. This is supposed to be a place of quiet study. If I continue to hear loud, irrelevant banter again, I will be making reports directly to your homeroom teachers, where written demerits will follow.” Her crimson eyes stopped on a girl with a pageboy haircut. “Do I make myself clear?”

A beat passed before the third-year girl lowered her eyes and shrank in on herself. With the chief rumor-monger cowed, all the rest of the students likewise stayed silent and tried to pretend to have their noses buried in books.

Akira shot Makoto a thankful nod and smile, and she responded with a smaller one of her own before she sat back down and opened her history.

Thursday, 7 July 2016
Evening
Shibuya, Untouchable

“Pleasure doin’ business with ya,” the shop owner said, leaning the gold picture frame and this week’s trinkets out of view behind the counter.

Akira gave a quick count of the yen notes, then folded them over and stuffed them in his wallet and slipped it in his pocket. “Got any other work tonight?”

Iwai chuffed. “I’ve been sending out feelers, but nobody’s taken the bait. I can’t afford to jump in this without havin’ an escape plan.” He picked up his sporting goods magazine. “I’ll send you a text when it’s time.”

Nodding, Akira shouldered the satchel with the team leader and meandered over to lean against the vending machine. He slipped his phone out, his hand navigating to Queen Togo by muscle memory, but he paused. She did say she would be too busy to go out, but would a call be too much of an imposition? [Good evening. I hope things have been going well for you today.]

Long seconds ticked by before Hifumi’s ID lit up. [Good evening. Mother is at work already, but Papa is better than he has been in weeks. He even was up to sharing a game with me. It's the best day I've had in weeks.]

He felt a smile slip across his face. [How many turns did he last?]

Three dots pulsed next to her ID for a moment, then disappeared. A moment later, they pulsed again. [He was a professional years before I was born. He's the one who taught me how to play, Akira-kun. It might be years before I ever beat him at his own game.]

He hummed, wondering if she was chuckling on her side or annoyed with him. He looked back over her last sentence. ‘Might be years’… and yet she still played without a moment’s hesitation. Not many people lived with that kind of devotion, or determination. It was hard to imagine somebody so good at shogi that even Hifumi, who trounced him at every attempt, thought it would be years before she could beat him. [That sounds terrifying and exciting.]

[He was the one who taught me those conceptual visualizations. He makes EVERY game fun.]

Akira stepped around a rack of camouflage splotch clothing. [I should thank him then. Although I suspect your enthusiasm as a queen is your nature, just waiting for a chance to come out.] His thumbs tensed, but he couldn’t make himself send a text about his record. Something that serious should be face-to-face.

Three dots winked next to Hifumi’s ID for long moments. [Flatterer.] Butterflies fluttered in his stomach, but she sent, [Tomorrow's going to be a long day and I'm still feeling worn out from finals. Talk to you on the weekend.] Her ID dimmed as she logged off.

“Hey,” Iwai piped up, peering over his magazine. “Don’t just stand there staring off into space. You’re creepin’ me out.”

Akira slipped his phone into his pocket. “Later.”

Notes:

Hifumi’s finally been outed to the Phantom Thieves at large. It is hard to take the story through original scenes that all feel both true to the original but also grow organically out of small variations, but that’s why we all read fanfiction, right? It also gives me a new appreciation for writers that can take an AU and do a good job with it. Borrowing names are one thing, but being able to take all those recognizable tropes through a whole different blend? Shout-out to DaBossMan's exceptional work doing just that with Shuffled Deck.

Chapter 73: July 6th, Madarame's Turn

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Wednesday, 6 July 2016
After School
Kosei High, North Courtyard

Stepping out of the west Academic Building, Hifumi angled for the disused gazebo past a water feature which dried up years ago. Too small for a group to take shelter under and too exposed to the courtyard to be used by more intimate couples, it was far enough to provide her slight respite from the either jealous or lustful gazes of the Kosei students—a situation which became more common every week.

Before Hifumi could finish her third step, she realized the clump of third years who always meandered to the ceramics building instead stood in a stationary clump on the turf. They gathered around one student, streaming a video on his phone. Hifumi slipped closer to listen in.

One of the seniors blurted, “He is crying.”

On the stream, she recognized the old man with tears streaming down his face. Kitagawa’s master, Madarame-san. “…plagiarized the toil of my own students. I… I had them blacklisted when I c-couldn’t use them anymore.” Madarame’s sobs made his next sentence incoherent. The flashes from the press conference reporters made his shaking look like seizures. “I-I… I committed crimes against art itself. I… I even stole Sayuri!”

The seniors burst into shocked chatter.

Hifumi stepped back and slipped off to the gazebo. While the other students yammered about Madarame’s drastic change of heart, her mind drifted back to Akira. “What do the people say about Madarame?” He asked when they were texting about three weeks back. “Any unpleasant rumors about Kitagawa?

A month ago, Kitagawa would scratch away at his sketch pad, rarely speaking to other students except to ask them to hold a pose, and never eating during lunch. What embers burning within his eyes smoldered. Now she saw him eating rice and sprouts every lunch, and hum marching tunes in the halls. Sometimes grim ones, but still humming, his eyes sparking with energy.

A week ago, Madarame was praising paintings as his own and giving daily interviews at his art exhibit. Now, a newscaster droned about him turning himself over to a police psychological screening.

Wednesday, 6 July 2016
After School
Shibuya, Teikyuu Overpass

Salarymen and students in twos and threes passed by on the bridge over the street, nobody giving the gathered Shujin students a second glance. Akira shifted his lean against the railing, the other Phantom Thieves gathered around as they all watched the news stream on Yuuki’s phone.

“Previous pupil Nakanohara has come forward,” the newscaster said, “alleging abuse on top of the aforementioned charges. Fraud allegations have potential repercussions across the world. The National Tax Agency has announced an investigation…”

One of the Shujin students passing by exclaimed to the girl at her side, “I told you his heart would change! The Phantom Thief always changes bad guys’ hearts, and he left calling cards in Shibuya.” She pulled out her phone. “Look!”

Ryuji flashed a wide, toothy grin. “Score!” He took a step after the pair of girls.

Makoto pulled him back into the huddle, then shifted her focus to Yuuki. “This channel’s not likely to say anything which isn’t an official statement from law enforcement. Anyone talking about the Phantom Thief?”

Yuuki nodded. “I’m sure they are.” He paused the streaming video and brought up a web search on Madarame and the calling cards. The result counter ran into the hundreds, and the three results showing declared the Phantom Thief responsible for Madarame’s sudden change of heart.

Ryuji’s grin widened again. “Double score! We’re famous!”

Ann gave him a light kick in the shin. “Keep it down, dumbass.”

Yuuki gave a hesitant grin. “But he’s right. You guys are finally getting the recognition you all deserve.”

Makoto patted a hand on the class representative’s shoulder. “We are getting the recognition. Or at least the idea of the Phantom Thief.”

Ryuji threw a fist into the air. “Eff yeah! Suck it, Akechi!”

Kasumigaseki, Police Headquarters

Sneezing, Akechi took the lollipop out of his mouth. “Excuse me?” He shifted the bulging folders held under his other arm.

The uniformed officer smirked and held up his smart phone, bearing a tabloid article on the Phantom Thief changing Madarame’s heart. “That’s right, Defective Detective. Looks like you called it wrong on KFTV.”

Shibuya, Teikyuu Overpass

Akira even felt a smile tug at his own lips. They’d risked everything, but Ann and Yusuke were in the clear now. That felt like even more of a weight off his shoulders than ending the threat of expulsion. “Nice job, everyone. One down, many more to go.” He met the sapphire gaze of his classmate. “How’s Yusuke?”

Eyebrows furrowing, Ann tapped away at her phone’s virtual keyboard. “I don’t know, he’s not responding to texts.” She looked up at him. “What about your contact?”

Akira brought up Queen Togo and sent a chat request. [Hey, there's a lot of talk over here about Madarame's change of heart. How's Yusuke-san?]

Before a response came back, Ryuji bobbed his head. “This is so awesome. I mean, it was kinda touch-an’-go with the others, but we’re on a roll here. I hope we keep on gettin’ even more famous!”

Akira shot him a hooded gaze. “To what end?”

Morgana popped his head out of the bag. “Once and they could pass us off as coincidence, twice and they had to make excuses. But with three big changes of heart out there, they have to acknowledge the Phantom Thieves.”

Makoto gave a small nod. “It’s so soon after, it’s hard to say how far-reaching the effects will be.” The corners of her lips turned up. “But as big a splash as Kaneshiro was, I’m sure Madarame’s change will give heart to people, too. We don’t even know for sure how many of his students are still alive, but I’m sure the ones left will be glad to finally come out of the long shadow he cast. It will just take time.”

The transfer student’s phone buzzed and he looked down to see Queen Togo’s ID. [Sorry for the delay. People in and out of Kosei have been buzzing about Madarame.]

[Everything okay?]

[I have been almost completely ignored all day. It's been a relaxing change of pace. I imagine things are harder on Kitagawa-san. He was being mobbed by curious freshmen until he fled campus. I suspect he was heading for somewhere quiet.]

[That might be for the best. Stay safe, Queen Togo.] He typed, [Could we meet? I want to talk about my record.] He read over it and frowned, then deleted it instead of sending.

A beat passed before she replied, [Of course. The Legion of Steel hasn't seen the last of the Togo Kingdom.]

“Sounds like Yusuke’s fine—just laying low while people are going nuts over Madarame’s confession.” Akira shifted his weight away from the railing he leaned against and brushed at his long sleeve. His eyes met the class president’s. “You think your sister might get involved in Madarame?”

She shifted her weight, silent for long seconds, but behind her red eyes whirled the gears of her mind. The intensity of it reminded him just a bit of Hifumi. Then she shook her head. “Big Sis has prosecuted financial crimes before, but most of her cases revolve around the corruption of public officials. Awarding business contracts without the required competition phase, things like that.” She uncrossed her arms to reach a hand up and tuck a lock of hair behind her ear. “I think she knows there’s more to it than the Phantom Thief ‘passing names along through me’, but she made a few enemies, too. I think it’s best to leave other teams to Madarame. We wouldn’t want to point any of the SIU at Yusuke or they’ll get around back to us.”

Morgana nodded from the transfer student’s shoulder. “Good point, Nightrider.” He glanced to Akira. “I’m glad we have somebody strategically-minded.”

Akira straightened and shot the team leader as much a glare as he could from the perch. “Oh, you did not…

“Shh!” Ryuji snapped, turning to face a pair of officious-looking men. One wore a traditional officer’s uniform and sunglasses, but the other bore a bland, dark suit. The track star hissed, “Attendance officers.” The other Phantom Thieves turned on the pair of adults advancing on them from the bridge.

“Good evening,” the officer with his eyes hidden by mirrored sunglasses said. “May I speak with you a moment?”

Akira felt his body tense and knew he wasn’t succeeding at masking his hostility to the two sorts of the people who took away his future forever. “You’re a little early, fuzz. It’s still afternoon.”

Ann jabbed him with her elbow. “Don’t provoke them.” She flashed the adults the fakest smile she’d given yet. “H-how can we help you, sirs?”

Morgana shivered enough for Akira to feel through the long-sleeved white shirt, then retreated to the satchel.

Suit’s narrow gaze passed over all of them, coming to rest on the student council president. “What are you all doing here?”

Akira rolled his eyes. He puffed out his chest. “Clearly they are my pawns in my diabolical scheme to take over the world. And you, too, can join for just twelve easy payments of 499.”

Ann jabbed him in the side, sparing him a momentary glare before turning on an even more plastic smile than before. “T-that was a joke!”

Makoto gave a shallow bow. “Please forgive his… unique sense of humor.”

Yuuki arched an eyebrow. “I didn’t think it was that bad a joke.”

Suit rolled his eyes. “They sound harmless. You kids just be careful, okay? The Shibuya cleanup operation may be winding down, but you should still be careful about where you spend your time.” He sighed and rubbed the side of his head. “Just when I thought things were gonna quiet down, that artist had to up and make a ruckus.”

Yuuki gave a quick bow. “Of course, officer. We’ll make sure to keep an eye out.”

The two adults walked off, though the cop kept his gaze on them for a while.

The thieves let out a relieved breath.

Ann jabbed Akira in the ribs. “Don’t go putting me on the spot, okay? I already get enough grief from Shiho about my acting.” She pulled out her phone.

Makoto crossed her arms and gave him a scathing glare. “Especially when we need to avoid drawing attention.”

Yuuki nodded. “Ann’s got enough to worry about.”

“Ugh,” Ryuji rolled his eyes. “Would you two just make out and get it over with?”

Both blushed and stammered incoherent, babbling denials.

“Reaper!” Morgana hopped out to his perch. “A Phantom Thief is a gentleman to a lady.” He huffed. “Still, Nightrider caught on to us because we spent so much time meeting up. Adding to that a major victim from yet another change of heart, from another school no less, might draw undue attention.”

Ryuji let out a puff of air and crossed his arms. “Eh, nobody’s noticin’ a buncha’ Shujin peeps hangin’ out. Peeps from diff’rent schools hang out all the time. Don’t get all bent outta shape.” He scratched his scalp. “Shame we couldn’t get nothin’ else outta ‘Rame. If he really does go to prison, we might not ever be able to find out if he knew anything about Black Mask.”

Akira crossed his arms, one finger tapping his elbow. “I suspect it would be too much to expect the conscious mind to draw details that may never have left his subconscious.” He tightened his arms. “Hm. With Madarame gone, that means the courts are going to have to appoint a legal guardian for Yusuke.”

Ryuji slumped. “Ugh. That could make meetin’ up tough.” He straightened – at least, as much as his perpetual casual attitude would allow. “Eff, man. How’re we gonna top ‘Rame?”

Makoto held a hand to her head. “The stir from Madarame’s confession hasn’t even settled. I recommend we all keep our heads down. Finals are coming up next week, anyway.” She shot the track star a narrow gaze. “And I know no Phantom Thief would fail the most important evaluation of the semester.”

Ryuji straightened and stepped away, pedestrian traffic bumping into him from behind and driving him back towards the president. He almost dropped his phone he was browsing pictures of girls on. “Y-yes ma’am!”

Morgana slipped down into the satchel as another clump of Shujin students passed into the station proper, then popped his head back out. “I’ll think about Mementos later, but for now, Nightrider is right. It wouldn’t do for the Phantom Thieves to be laid low by something as mundane as tests. Go out and be ready, everyone. We’ll have plenty of time to look for our next target. Keep your eyes and ears out for opportunity, but your mission is to act like normal students until we get a good lead.”

The thieves started to break up, but Makoto followed the transfer student. “Akira, could I ask for your assistance today?”

He paused, his satchel feeling heavier than some days. “Help me review for the finals and it’s a deal.”

Friday, 8 July 2016
Evening
Shibuya, Bikkuri Boi Diner

Akira yawned into his fist. The chatter of the diner around ebbed and flowed like currents of water in a bay, pressing in but at least never zipping into his ears the way it did at Shujin when he kept hearing his name at the library. The only name he picked out of the distant talk was Madarame’s.

Makoto picked up her phone to check the time. “We have been going for a few hours. Now would be a good time to take a break.” The corners of her lips turned up. “Or bring things to a close for this session. You have a remarkable academic stamina.” When she started packing, he followed suit.

Akira stacked some papers. “Getting good grades is the best thing I can really do to give Shujin the middle finger. Everyone wrote me off before things even begin. If I fail, I’m just the record who was never going to amount to anything.” He straightened the papers in his math book. Makoto had nothing to say Hifumi hadn’t already gone over. “Between Kamoshida and Kaneshiro, I was only half there for mid-terms.”

Makoto nodded. “So on to the other purpose of my approaching you. I asked around about that girl you saw in Shinjuku. Most students wouldn’t respond to my questioning, but Tomoya-san had unconfirmed reports of a senior matching her description at a club in Kabukichou, despite the Shujin charter against involvement in clubs serving alcohol. The old me might have left it at that, but I feel like this is an opportunity to expand my boundaries and maybe do some good for another student.”

“I probably shouldn’t show you the notes I made in the student handbook Shujin sent me,” Akira said, struggling to keep his smirk down. When he let his emotions play too obvious, it slipped into his tone and gave away his jokes. “Are you worried she has a sugar daddy?”

Makoto dropped her history textbook, a blush lighting her face and choked sound coming from her throat. After several moments of stuffing books in her school satchel with a distinct lack of eye contact, she regained control. “It is the responsibility of the Student Council to look out for the good of Shujin students. Predatory hustlers are not uncommon there. I want to make sure she isn’t at risk.”

Back straightening, the transfer student took in a long breath to launch off on how her entire start was just to look out for the school’s reputation, but Morgana cleared his throat. “Joker, pre-Persona Nightrider might have made mistakes, but she changed. She had every opportunity to leave the Phantom Thieves after Kaneshiro’s confession, but she investigated and fought alongside us to bring down Madarame.”

Akira pursed his lips. “Fair.” He cycled through a cleansing breath. “The student body has noticed you carry yourself differently, but not a lot of them trust you yet. And since clubbing is against the Shujin charter, she’d probably deny it if you confronted her about it at Shujin.”

“I’m worried she has an older, experienced man manipulating her, Akira.” She paused to sigh. “You’re right, I don’t think Shujin is the place. I don’t even know for sure if she’s really the one who was out there.” She settled her school satchel on her shoulder. “I want to go see for myself. You saw her up there, right? I’d like you to take me so I can judge for myself.”

Morgana peered up at him. “I think it would be good. She’d get the relief of knowing for sure, and either have the knowledge to help or to dispel those rumors, and you’d get a little more experience handling crowds.”

Akira had to admit the not-cat had a point. “You coming along?”

Morgana hummed for a while. “Nah. Nightrider should be enough to handle you.”

“Hey!” Akira exaggerated his pout. “I was thinking of enough to watch her.”

Morgana smirked, his tail swishing behind him. “I’ll bet you alone will be enough to do that, too.”

Akira pulled out the spare street clothes he kept in the bottom of the satchel before letting the team leader in. “Just let me change at the train station and I’ll be ready…”

“Excellent,” she stated, sounding a bit smug as she tilted her bag to reveal rolled-up clothes in her own bag. “No reason to be seen in our Shujin uniforms when we’re investigating people clubbing against school rules.”

Akira nodded and they headed out, where he let Morgana out at Shibuya Station, then changed and met the class president at the line to Shinjuku. He tugged at his black jacket. It added another layer when it was already hot out, but he didn’t like leaving his scars exposed. She wore the same tasteful, casual garb he saw her in that one Sunday.

She gave a nod. “Ready to visit the red-light district?”

Akira clasped both hands over his heart. “Why, Niijima-san… I had no idea you felt that way about me. I just don’t think I’m ready.”

A touch of pink bloomed on her cheeks. “W… No! This is for Takao-kun.” When he smirked, her hands curled and she growled. “D-don’t tease me!”

Chuckling, Akira boarded the train with her and they shot off to the red-light district. Despite the relative sparsity of passengers on the train, the district itself bustled. Rock music poured out of various bars and clubs, the crowds on the sidewalks so dense the criers didn’t even stand out. He found himself stepping closer to the class president.

When his shoulder bumped hers, Makoto took that as a cue to start talking, though her back was even straighter than his and her eyes wide. “So this is the biggest red-light district in Asia. It actually looks much cleaner than I expected. You hear so much about it being a hotbed for illegal immigrants and brothels.”

Akira shrugged, more to try to convince himself he wasn’t tense about the churning tides of humanity going back and forth. “I’m sure the cameras Big Brother installed everywhere make the streets safer, but without the cooperation of all these people, that’s just going to drive the crime underground where it’s more dangerous and harder to track.”

Makoto hummed. “I suppose that’s true. Kaneshiro operated across Shibuya, and may even have had operations as far as here.” She hopped up on her tip-toes for a beat, more animated here than he ever saw her at Shujin. “Dad talked about places like this. He worked in the division against organized crime, before dying in an unexplained crash. Thanks in part to all the surveillance, the police have been able to make it much safer than it was before.” She swiveled her head to take in the garish signs. “Well, let’s get a move on.”

They swept the streets to find either that Takao girl or the club he and Mishima spotted her at earlier.

One of the adult business criers spotted them first. The man in an ironed but ill-fitting suit stepped all the way into the transfer student’s path to stop them, but his eyes focused on the president. “Hey, hot stuff. You lookin’ for a good time or some spendin’ money? We got both.”

Tilting her head, she gave him a quick once-over, though her stance widened. “Do high school students frequent your establishment?”

Akira caught his footing when a drunk stumbled into him from behind, but when the guy shambled on, Akira just straightened his glasses. “I don’t think this is the pla—”

“Buzz off, four-eyes. She can think for herself,” the crier snapped at him before turning back to the upperclassman with a practiced smile. “Come on in, it’s all good, clean fun! We don’t discriminate against any ages here. Everyone’s welcome!”

Makoto’s crimson eyes searched his. “So you do have high schoolers at your…?”

“Private club,” he said, chest puffed out. “But that’s just so we can have a smoking section. City laws, understand. It’s a clean, classy joint. A beautiful dame like yourself would love it.”

She brushed her hair back over her ear, her stance narrowing and her eye contact faltering. “O-oh, I think you might misunderstand…”

He reached a hand towards her, clasping her wrist. “Naw, it’s the perfect place for a nice girl lookin’ for new experiences. The other clients and staff would love to have you. And ‘cause the clients like the place so much, I can pay my girls loads to get to work in the cutest dresses you’ve ever seen.”

Makoto’s left hand toyed with her skirt. “Are there any here from Shujin Academy?”

Akira tried to step back to Makoto’s side, but the crier bumped him away to force her attention.

“There’s girls from loads’a big-shot high schools here,” the crier said. “And we get guys from all over.” He took her hand in both of his and looked straight into her eyes. “Just think of the people you could meet.”

Her features hardened and her stance widened. “So nobody from Shujin works at ‘your’ place.”

The crier’s friendly mask faltered, but held. “Give it a chance. Just imagine gettin’ paid to wear a dress as cute as you—”

Akira slipped behind the crier and pulled a pen out to press against the crier’s back. “Her hand or your liver.”

The crier’s hand opened and he lifted both. “Whoa, there’s no need for bloodshed.” He turned enough to take in both Shujin students in street clothes, one hand slipping into a coat pocket.

Akira clicked the button on the back of the pen twice. “Can’t call the cops on a kid with a pen.”

The crier fumed, but after a moment spotted someone else out of the corner of his eye and walked away, all sweet words and smooth motions.

The transfer student and Makoto rejoined, pressing to the brick-faced building to catch their breaths and scope out the crowd churning by. She wiped her hand on her white blouse. “Ugh. He must have been one of those hostess club scouts. If you hadn’t been there…” Her lip twitched and her hand clenched on his.

Akira pocketed his pen. “It would’ve been dangerous for him. I saw what you were angling to do. I figured I’d step in before you threw him.” He slipped his hand out of his pocket to straighten his glasses. “People in his line of work have to get good at reading people fast, and you were pretty obvious about being here for the first time. He made a couple assumptions and gauged your reactions to try to flatter you inside.” He shoulder-bumped her. “Not like you’re the sort to just let people push you around anymore, eh?”

It was hard to tell with all the garish street signs, many of them already being red, but he thought Makoto’s face flushed. “W-well, him being suspicious just made him seem like the kind of person to ask.” She brushed some hair back behind her ear. “It was a little hard to follow what he was saying.”

Akira gave her a flat stare.

She brushed her hair back again. “W-well, I suppose that’s one new thing today. But still not the place we were looking for.” She looked up and around again at the glowing signs. “Do you remember where exactly it was you saw Takao-kun?”

Akira shook his head. “I have a better memory for voices than landmarks. I know Yuuki pointed her out somewhere on the way to Crossroads, but we were avoiding some of the cops patrolling the thoroughfare from the train station.”

She sighed. “Well, nothing to it but to pound the pavement, then.” She stepped into the crowd and he followed her, searching for what felt like hours in the congested streets of Shinjuku. As it turned out, the girl they were looking for ran into him.

She bounced off, and the first thing she did after catching her footing was looking up at him to meet his annoyed grey gaze. Her face paled as her eyes flicked over him, trailing down his arm, then up to the upperclassman. “Prez?” The girl’s brown eyes flicked down to their clasped hands, then back up, then to him before stopping on the class president, mischief warring with fear in her eyes. “I didn’t think Miss Perfect Marks went for bad boys.”

Makoto glanced down, then jerked her hand out of his.

When did that happen?

Makoto drew herself up to her full height, though given the high heels on the girl wearing an eye-searing pink mini-skirt-and-suspenders it still wasn’t quite enough to look down on her in a literal way. “What are you doing here, Takao-kun?”

Akira looked up and spotted that sign for the place he saw her entering when he was up here last with Yuuki. “Oh, the After School Salon.” Akira looked the girl in the eye, though part to avoid looking at that eye-hurting pink she wore. “You work here, don’t you?”

Now Takao’s face went pale enough to be clear despite the garish signs. Her breath halted as she glanced at Akira, then to Makoto, then stiffened even more and looked back to the transfer student before clasping her hands before him. “Please, Transfer, you’ve gotta understand. If the school knew… My parents would find out. They would ruin my life.”

Makoto gaped like a fish.

“Whoa, calm down,” Akira said, tapping the side-ponytailed girl on the forehead with one firm finger. “We’re not the Spanish Inquisition. She came because she heard unsavory rumors of something going on around here and wanted to make sure you weren’t caught up in anything bad. I mean, think about it. Shujin itself can go to hell, but the students in it already had to suffer through Kamoshida and Kaneshiro.”

Takao rubbed the back of her neck, her posture tense and her eyes refusing to meet his. After a moment her breathing slowed. “T-thanks. But I need to get home fast.”

She didn’t have enough time to turn for the train station before Makoto snatched for her wrist. “Hold on, I’ve got questions.”

Takao danced away into the crowd. She waved a hand high over the crowd. “I can’t now, maybe later.”

Makoto fumed next to the transfer student, her mood so obvious even most of the drunks gave them what little wide berth the busy street allowed. “That was fruitless.”

Akira pulled up a review on the After School Salon on a social media site he’d never heard of – though that didn’t mean much, as new to socialization as he was. “Sorry about the hand thing. I still have problems with Tokyo crowds.”

She cleared her throat and looked at him, but avoided straight eye contact. “O-oh, well… no harm done.” She crossed her arms and muttered, “Why’d she ask you for help and not me?”

He nodded. “We accomplished plenty, Senpai. We confirmed she comes here and either attends or works at the After School Salon. I was kind of joking when I mentioned finding a sugar daddy, but apparently this is a good place to springboard into that kind of thing nearby.” He sidestepped to a building wall and held his phone out to her after she joined him away from the street.

Makoto read the reviews on the After School Salon, then handed back his phone. “This has suspicious all over it. I don’t have much time before finals, but I want to question her further.”

Akira put his phone away. “Up to you, Senpai. At least you’ve got evidence to weigh. Just don’t make your judgment based on what it looks like up front.”

She took a slow breath in, then out. “Right. Well, it is getting close to curfew. I’m not too far away from home, but Leblanc is a ways from here.” At his nod, she led the way at a purposeful walk to the train station, where she headed for a line to Chiyoda and he back to Shibuya.

Friday, 8 July 2016
Late Evening
Yongen, Backstreets

Akira noticed the sign still read Open despite the lights off inside. He flipped it and unlocked the door. His phone sang with eerie string instrumentation, so he pulled it out as he strode inside. “Tokyo University Ornithology Department, Luke A. Boyd.”

Makoto groaned from her side of the phone. “Anyway, Big Sis got home and I had a chance to talk with her about my suspicions. She told me never to go there again, but after some of the risks she reiterated, I wanted to thank you for coming with me. That barker could’ve ended up a much bigger scene if you hadn’t stepped in when you did.”

Smirking, Akira leaned against the divider separating the door from the restaurant. “Maybe we try going in next time?”

The scoff was all she gave in dismissal. “It’s just… Dad tried to teach me about how to remain aware when going to a new place in the city, and I’ve practiced aikido since as far back as I can remember, but today reminded me that planning ahead doesn’t always mean being ready to act when the moment comes. I started to brace to throw him, but then I thought of what happened to you and froze up. So… thank you.”

Akira looked at his phone. She sounded like it caused her literal pain to say those last two words. “Uh… no problem, Senpai. ‘Night.” He looked into his phone, wondering what the weird feeling that conversation gave him. She was avoiding something, but besides annoyance with him he couldn’t guess what it was.

Notes:

Makoto’s arc seemed to focus more on another person’s problems than her own character growth. However, it’s still an interesting plot thread and one that Akira’s going to do his best to tie up. I am trying to integrate everybody’s personal plot arcs into the overall story, involving more people and showcasing a little more personal development for all of his friends.

Tell me what you think. Thanks for reading and leaving your thoughts!

Chapter 74: July 9th, Sunset

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Saturday, 9 July 2016
After School
Aoyama-Itchome Station

Alliance Force, Assemble! sang out of Akira’s phone. It took him a beat to recognize the nickname, The King, on the caller ID. He swiped to open the call. “Beverage catering service, Sheri Cola.”

“Oh,” the young voice of Oda Shinya came back with bashful annoyance. A moment passed in the shuffling crowd as a handful of eager people leaned out to peer down the subway tunnel, most hanging back to stare at their phones. A sudden intake of breath preceded, “I’ll take two larges.”

Akira felt a smile bloom across his face. “Hah! You are only the third person in my life to riposte my joke greetings. So, what’s the occasion?”

Shinya spoke with cool nonchalance. “Oh, I spotted that guy you and bleach-head wanted to know about.”

It took Akira a moment to remember who the kid was referring to. The past week had been busy, with Kosei’s finals finishing and Shujin’s coming up soon, so he hadn’t taken time to practice at the arcade. And never having heard that jerk player, he had no voice to put to the griefer. “You got his name?”

Shinya hummed in the manner of deep contemplation. “I may have, but I need to know if you’re ready to take him on. If he curb-stomps you like the other pathetic noobs, that would just embarrass me. Show me what you’ve learned since last time.”

“I’ll be there,” Akira answered. The line closed and he opened the Phantom Thief chat to say, [Got invited to a session at Gun About with The King. Will update later if it might be useful for the rest of us.]

After School
Akihabara, Electric Town

Akira slipped his hands in his pockets and trotted along. An ocean breeze brought the temperature today down a little, even if it felt as humid as Inaba. While the sea of dark heads looked much like any other place in Tokyo, something familiar incited him to slow down at the mass of gachapon machines by the corner. He double-checked the crowd before spotting a familiar navy-blue middle school uniform with a messy, parted-down-the-middle hair style. “Kaoru-kun.”

The middle schooler stood up with his capsule and blinked twice. “Oh, Akira-san! I didn’t know you liked gacha games.”

Akira leaned against a machine, though it was to get away from the turbulent flow of people cramming the street. “Eh, just taking a breather. If no one else in Tokyo’s gonna stop and smell the flowers, I might as well.”

Kaoru gave a smile. “The only flowers growing on the streets are thistles.” He straightened, his smile taking on a proud tinge. “I heard the Phantom Thief changed Madarame’s heart yesterday. Why do you think they waited so long when they left all those calling cards in Shibuya on Sunday?”

Akira glanced down at the team leader hiding in the satchel. “Maybe they did and Madarame’s just a slow old man.” He mimed holding an invisible cane and walking with a stooped shuffle.

Kaoru laughed and waved. “Well, I better go study. Tests are coming up and Dad insists I have good enough grades to get into one of my top three high schools.” His shoulders drooped a little. “I just wish I could think of where to go. There are so many, both public and private.”

Akira shrugged. “I’ve been to two. In my opinion, they’re more alike than they are different. As long as you don’t go to one of the reform schools for abandoned children, you’re probably fine whether you go right into a trade or on to college. Just don’t let your old man stress you into an ulcer like mine did.”

Kaoru laughed as if he just told a funny joke. “No way! Dad’s totally supportive.” He waved. “See you!”

Akira waved back and crowd-ran his way to the Gigolo. Striding inside, he breathed easier now that he didn’t have a forest of elbows all around him.

Morgana thrust his head out the front of the satchel and heaved shaky breaths in and out. “Geez, Joker! Can’t you just match stride and walk through a crowd like everyone else?”

Akira side-stepped around a clump of middle-school girls on their way out, then hissed back, “When it’s crowded, I move with a purpose.” He moved into the smaller arcade to the Gun About machines. Like the one at Shibuya, it was a mirrored setup with a huge screen split between two consoles, each bearing bright blue plastic controllers. The one on the left held the pistol/sub-machine gun controllers, the one on the right a shotgun/rifle and something even larger, with a heavy drum or canister of some kind on the bottom.

Shinya stood at the left, dual-wielding the pistol controllers with a bored expression on his face. When the transfer student came to a stop between the controller stations, the arcade master flicked his eyes up for only a heartbeat, then back to the screen. “You only use pistol-type weapons, don’t you?”

“Yep,” Akira said, watching as the kid demolished six players across the two accounts he played at the same time. “Everything else is too big and unwieldy.” He looked over at the large controller on the right. “What even is that thing?”

Shinya shot one crazed NPC in an orange prison jumpsuit between the eyes with the left controller, then the right. “It’s for the heavy weapons. Just a light machine gun to start with, but you can upgrade it into a flamethrower, grenade launcher, or minigun.”

Akira scratched his scalp. “Isn’t a pistol a little gun?”

Shinya let out a disappointed breath and shook his head, his concentration breaking enough for players to lob a grenade at the account tied to the right controller. A count-down to respawn timer ticked on the right side of his screen. Straightening, his eyes went right back to the game and he tossed the controller at the transfer student. “No, a minigun. Like that big revolving gun the super beefy guy had at the beginning of Predator.”

Akira swiped his credit card across the reader and started a new game. He had no idea what the kid was talking about, but figured it wouldn’t be helpful to question further. Akira set his satchel down on the floor next to the controller cradle.

Once the transfer student settled in, Shinya started a warehouse interior map and flicked the difficulty to something called Hell Mode, “Get started on your regular progression. Show me what you’ve got!”

What Akira expected to be a jocular run through the game, like when he played with Ann or Makoto, ended up being an even more intense race than the most competitive contests between he and the gun nut Ryuji.

“Aim, stupid!” Shinya barked, his controller drifting to shoot some of the giant wasps overwhelming the transfer student’s side.

They played on, but progression was hard with how often his avatar got killed. Thanks almost exclusively to Shinya, they made it through the open storage to the offices.

“No, idiot!” Shinya barked. “That just stops them from moving closer! Herding the monsters doesn’t cause damage, you gotta shoot their weak points!”

“Oh, like this is so easy,” Akira shot back. “It’s not like the weak points are glowing or anything so I can tell it apart from any other part of beetle-man!”

Shinya groaned, though his eyes never left that intense fix on his part of the screen. “Pay a-fucking-tention! Everything broadcasts its weakness, just fucking look!”

The respawn timer started counting down again and Akira lay his controller on top of the cradle. The only thing which stopped him from throwing a punch at the little bastard, was he cussed so much more than the track star it was impossible not to notice. “You’re being even more impossible than Ryuji.” He jerked a hand at the screen as the count-down reached single digits. “Even its eyes were invulnerable.”

“You gotta focus on your second shot!” He blasted down a beetle-man who jumped out of a portal less than a second after it teleported in. “Some weaknesses are intrinsic, most you gotta activate. It’s your fucking follow-up that causes the damage!”

Akira paid and settled back into the fight, but with respawn setting him back to square one, he ground his teeth and depleted his first pistol’s magazine against a beetle-man bursting through the wall where ‘days since last workplace accident’ hung. With it still moving it felt impossible even to hit such a small target as the beady little eyes, but the last bullet hit with a green splatter.

A pair of college men came to a stop against the crane game as they watched the slaughter unfold. “King could make a sailor blush.”

The college kid with a solid black tie raised his voice over the surrounding arcade machines. “Always happens when he has to let another player join up. That’s why us smart folks watch from a distance.”

The game continued for over an hour and five thousand yen of restarts, but Akira started to see what the arcade master was talking about. The hell wasps still confounded him, but the beetle men turned with ponderous motions and their ankles were fleshy. The three times he survived long enough to buy armor-piercing rounds, he took them down by shooting through office furniture.

The crowd of observing fans shuffled out through two complete replacements before Shinya at last took pity and put his controller in the cradle, letting his character get hit. “Time for a drink break.”

The residual crowd groaned now that the spectacle of either exploding giblets on the screen or swearing master of shooters was over, but they all left.

Sitting down at a bench near the refreshment kiosk, Shinya popped the lid of the fizzy berry drink the transfer student bought him. “You’re slow on the uptake, but at least you never gave up. Even started spotting their weak points. Almost all the other losers call it sour grapes and run with their tail between their legs because the weak points don’t have big glowing signs saying ‘shoot here’ like games for amateurs.”

Morgana hopped up on the bench next to the transfer student. “Everybody could improve with enough time, I’m still shocked how much that little kid swore!”

Akira shrugged and tipped his canned jasmine tea. “Yeah.” His eyes shifted to the kid. “You could’ve sent sailors running back for their ships.”

Shinya stuffed one hand in his jacket pocket and looked away. “I have a bad habit of swearing when I get all worked up.”

Laying one hand on his heart, Akira straightened. “No fucking way.”

Morgana batted a paw against him. “Set a good example, Joker!”

Akira fixed his glasses. “Sorry. I guess that’s something both of us should be working on, huh?”

Shinya swallowed another gulp. “You may never reach my level, but you still have potential. Keep it up and you may even be able to beat that cheater.”

One of the arcade’s maintenance workers paced past them to the refreshment kiosk, pausing to pull out his phone for the worker. “Hey, you hear about the Phantom Thief?”

The pimply girl in the kiosk clapped her hands. “Totally! My BFF said they promised to change his heart last week.” She pouted. “I guess that means I owe her a candy bar.”

The technician nodded. “I hope they change my boss’s heart. He’s such a jerk just ‘cause I’m late a couple minutes.”

Akira let out a breath. “Everyone wants to be part of something when it looks like it’s on the rise.”

Shinya sipped, then puffed out his chest. “I was a fan before they were popular.” He opened his mouth, then closed it and drew back into his own frame just a little.

Akira tilted his head. “You were just about to say something. What is it?”

“N-nothing.” He took a gulp of fizzy berry soda, then stood up and trotted off at an obvious ‘I want to escape from the conversation’ pace, but popped his head back around the corner. “Practice for next time!” Then he disappeared.

Morgana stood and shook. “That little kid sure is a tyrant. I didn’t think anybody could be even more foul-mouthed than Reaper.” He sat and looked up at the transfer student. “I’m surprised you never started a fight.”

Akira shrugged and sipped his tea. “He sure pissed me off a bunch of times, but he would show what he was asking me to do. His world is a very precise, detail-oriented one, but it’s hard to hate someone who’s walking through it right next to you.”

Saturday, 9 July 2016
Evening
Shibuya, Station Square

Gusting winds swirled dry leaves and small debris through the square seething with humanity. Despite Akira’s hopes to share a relaxing game with Hifumi, her mother had them attending some big fancy dinner in northern Tokyo. With that pipsqueak arcade freak still leaving him feeling raw from hours of ‘instruction’, Akira needed to do something physical. Since Yusuke was still busy meeting a lawyer from the Madarame Foundation, Akira tried to think of who else would be up for a change of pace.

He hadn’t gone with Shujin’s track star in a while.

[Hey, Ryuji. You up for running today?]

Moments later he replied, [I'm actually running right now, if you want to join me at Atago-cho. The team used to train there before meets. Maybe you'll even be able to keep up today! You can't stop the step master.]

A beat passed.

[That sounded cooler in my head. Don't send that to anyone else.]

[Sure. I'll be taking the train,] Akira sent.

Morgana rolled his eyes. “You muscle heads enjoy your muscling. I’ll investigate things in Shibuya, just let me off at the train platform.”

Akira got off the train to let the team leader off, then back on to finish the trip to Atago-cho in Minato-ku passed without incident. Just when Akira was concerned he wouldn’t be able to find the track star in a park as big as Atago-cho, he heard his familiar voice shout in an argument.

Coming closer, an unfamiliar, scratchy voice exploded, “…want us all to suffer like you are. You fucked it up for all’a us!”

Ryuji retorted, anger trembling in his voice, “That ain’t it at all! Yamauchi don’t care about track!”

The transfer student leaped over the hedge separating one grassy, rolling hill from another where the Ryuji hollered at Takeishi and a greasy black-haired student lacking a headband. The latter shouted with the same scratchy voice of someone who hadn’t grown into his adult voice yet, “We can’t even apply to competitions without a sponsoring teacher, much less get a room to store our shit ‘stead’a hidin’ it under a tarp behind the gym. All we’d need is one guy, anyone.”

Akira stepped next to the track star and faced the runners in track suits head-on. “Is he any good a coach?”

Takeishi shot a heated glare at the transfer student. “This isn’t your business, Transfer! Not like it would matter either way, Yamauchi would be at least something. Once we can get a few wins, Shujin’ll take us more seriously than the losers in the kendo club.”

Ryuji jabbed a hand out like he couldn’t figure if he wanted to swing a punch or reach out a hand in offering. “How’s that gonna happen with that good-for-nothin’ two-face? He don’t even know the stretchin’ routines. At least Wada-san—”

Takeishi stormed closer, stopping less than an arm’s length from the track star. “He ain’t comin’ back. After all the trouble Shujin’s in with Kamoshida, you really think they’d bring back a guy who stole club money?”

Ryuji took one stomping step closer, his hands curling into fists. “That’s bull, an’ you know it! Wada cared ‘bout us, he never would’a risked his job over eight thousand yen! Yeah, if we could get a fair shot we could go far, but we need a guy who knows his stuff to get us there. If we hold out, Shujin’ll ask Wada-san—”

Takeishi stepped closer, his own fists raising and lips curling in a snarl. “He isn’t comin’ back! Shujin kicked him out and he left with his tail between his legs…”

The track star stomped forward and Akira shot in between them. “Whoa, guys.”

Greasy Hair stepped closer, raising his fists. “You wanna start somethin’?”

Akira shot him a frosty glare. “No, but if one of you do… I will finish it.” Greasy Hair raised his fist a little, and the transfer student stepped closer. “There are twenty-seven bones in the human hand. How many do you want to walk away with?”

Greasy Hair swallowed and backed off.

With his backup flagging, Takeishi grimaced and turned to jog away.

Akira let out a breath, then turned to the track star. “So… this Wada-san guy. He any good?”

Ryuji grinned. “Totally! He may not have been a gold medal-winner, but he was real good at sizin’ peeps up. At first I was kinda pissed about him puttin’ me in the back’a practice runs, but I’d always end up at front. I think he wan’ed me to push the other dudes.” He kicked at the tended turf. “Effin’ Yamauchi didn’t know the first thing ‘bout coachin’. He just wan’ed to leech off Kamoshida’s rep. No way’s he changed since then. If he’s offerin’ to sponsor a new track team, he’s gonna be the one to benefit.” He tapped Akira in the chest. “But that’s all bad news. Let’s see how your endurance is, slowpoke.”

Sunday, 10 July 2016
Morning
Kanda Catholic Church

Service concluded, the other parishioners filed out of the church, none looking weighed down by the day’s message centering on the parable of the good Samaritan. Akira lingered, thinking back through the week. Chatting with Ryuji, or helping Yusuke prepare for tests seemed like meeting a bare minimum. A minimum everyone else navigated as easy as breathing.

A finger thumping his shoulder sent him jumping. He spun around with his hands up, heart hammering before he spotted that red omamori-style knot, all the brighter in contrast to today’s black dress, and the prettiest green eyes on Earth.

Akira held a hand to his chest. “Geez, Hifumi-san. I thought the Lothlorien Rangers were supposed to be the ones silent as the trees.”

She giggled, those cute lips curling and making his heart flutter. “Is the general of the Steel Legion ready for another battle?”

Despite the gloss on her lips reminding him of long dreams and the ache of waking up with empty arms, her sprightly side-to-side sway banished the feeling of aching emptiness. Akira bared his most confident smirk. “For Queen Togo? Anywhere, any time.”

She clapped her hands together, her smile widening until it showed just a hint of teeth. “It has been far too long since we’ve been able to do something.” She dashed down the pews to the one with her purse and drew her travel shogi board.

He followed and helped set up, but her sheer level of energy left him feeling like a spun top. “Somebody clearly has recovered from exam fatigue.”

Hifumi gave a dainty giggle any queen would be proud of. “Mother and Father have always done their best to leave things as quiet and open as possible on exam week. They took their toll, to be sure, but my schedule was open enough to allow me quiet personal time for the first time in a long while.”

Akira looked over her in his peripheral vision while keeping his eyes on the board. She didn’t seem to be lying, but she did seem stressed in weeks past. “Are you sure she isn’t being a little hard on you?”

Hifumi handed him a pawn to make the toss to see who went first. “Mother is strict, all parents who want strong, hard-working children have to be. She loves me and takes care of me.” She pointed to his hand holding a pawn, then clapped with an anticipatory smile. “Now, come on, let’s get started.”

They dove into the games, her cheerful enthusiasm pouring doubt over whether her mother really needed a change of heart.

Late in their third game, Hifumi promoted a lance, putting his king in check again. As usual, despite her earlier passion, she settled into a rote, professional tone to inform him, “Check.”

Akira scoured the board for escapes, but she had contingencies for all three possibilities. Maybe it was practice losing, maybe it was the merciless cleverness she deployed each and every time, but instead of frowning at his latest loss, he found the corners of his lips turning up. She gave him a good run and beat him fair and square. He just couldn’t find any place to be angry in it, and even annoyance felt like a reach. He let out a quiet sigh. “I must be a glutton for punishment.”

She let out a pleased chuckle, a regal smile on her face. “Well, shogi is all well and good, but it’s been a while since I’ve read a new book. Would you like to go book hunting—?”

His phone rumbled. This seemed a little early for the Phantom Thieves to be up and abuzz, at least for a Sunday. “Excuse me a moment.”

Conversation on the Phantom Thief chat bounced around about celebrating Madarame’s change of heart, with Makoto and Yuuki taking turns shooting down the expensive suggestions.

Ryuji was the first to notice the addition of the transfer student. [Akira, where do you think we should go? Madarame's making national headlines. We better have a party to suit! You ready?]

For some reason, the time stamp on his text stood out to him.

Then Akira shot to his feet. “Oh, shit!”

Hifumi cleared her throat and directed her eyes at the altar.

Akira almost dropped his phone, caught it, then rubbed the back of his neck. “S-sorry, Hifumi-san. I’ve got a shift at 777.”

Her beatific smile evaporated. “Oh.” She took out her own phone to check the time. “I suppose we have been playing for a while.”

He bowed low. “Sorry. It’s just that I can’t reschedule, with Shujin’s finals next week.”

She breathed out, much of her energy leaving with her before she feigned a smile lacking the sparkle of her eyes before. “Oh, well… don’t neglect your responsibilities, Akira-san.” Her lips pressed together and she began packing her shogi set.

His rival might be masking her feelings, but he knew a miffed woman when he saw one. With her already refusing to meet his eye contact, Akira scratched the back of his head. “Maybe Tuesday?”

Her movements became even more mechanical and she refused to meet his gaze. “Mother has me booked until nine at night.”

Akira straightened his glasses. “Oh. Well… finals start on Wednesday, so…” He searched through his phone’s contacts, struggling for the courage to take her aside and talk about his record. “I can cancel. I think they’ll understand…”

“No,” she said, her voice firm. When she looked up, those gorgeous green orbs held a hardness to rival steel. “I can’t even get a job for myself, I don’t want you to lose yours on my account.”

He opened his mouth, but under the regal firmness in her poise, he couldn’t muster up an argument. “Well… later,” he said, his voice struggling to carry across the pew. At her shallow nod of acknowledgment, he to rushed to the train to Shibuya.

Sunday, 10 July 2016
Late Afternoon
Shibuya, Central Street, 777 Convenience

Akira swiped the set of tiger-striped pajama pants, handed it back to the customer and decided not to recommend getting one size larger. The overweight man took his credit card, pajamas and three sweet bean buns, one stuffed in his mouth, and walked out.

The door slid back open instead of finishing its slide closed, and a girl strode in, her red hair done up in a simple ponytail with a checkered black-and-blue ribbon. Yoshizawa’s bright red eyes snapped to him and her surprised expression brightened. “Senpai! I didn’t know you worked here.” She strode up to the counter with a skip to her step. “I love the pink uniform. It looks super cute on you.” A faint touch of pink dusted her cheeks and she looked to the other employee. “I mean, both of you!”

Nanami, his senior co-worker, shot him a sly smile and wink. “That’s probably the last wave of the day, it’ll be dead until nightfall. Why don’t you go take your break?”

Akira didn’t miss the way Cute But Annoying perked up, like he was some accessory to be passed off. And he’d never been given a break before, not for the four-hour shift. “Oh, I wouldn’t want to mess up your time with an unauthorized break.”

Nanami’s smile grew and she waved to shoo him off. “Nonsense. Think of it as going to help a customer.”

Yoshizawa clapped her hands together, bouncing to the balls of her feet for a moment. “We can pick out bentos together like gym buddies!”

Outnumbered, Akira decided to give in to the inexorable and hope it went by fast. “All right.” Planting one hand on the counter to pivot, he leaped straight over the counter and landed on his feet in front of the red-haired girl. Nanami gaped with a scandalized expression.

Yoshizawa clapped with a delighted giggle. “Ooh, you’d make a good gymnast, Senpai!” She turned to the refrigerated foods section. “Now, to the bentos!” They proceeded to the plastic-sealed store bentos, where she scooped up half a dozen, handing him half to carry up to the front. She took a route along the front of the store where newspapers, magazines, and manga were. She paused once or twice to scan the food and cooking magazines, browsing Cooking for Mere Mortals for a couple minutes, but moved on.

Akira noticed a familiar red omamori-style knot poking up from behind an out-of-place magazine. He put the pop-music magazine on its correct place. Smack dab in the center of the next cover sat Hifumi, wearing a dark amber cocktail dress that set his heart racing. A shogi board cut off by the left edge of the cover seemed an almost forgotten afterthought. Below the magazine’s name and almost as large declared ‘Venus of Shogi Exclusive’, followed by a smaller but still bold ‘hair care’. He scoffed.

Yoshizawa turned and followed the gaze of his eyes before he straightened. “Not a fan of Togo-san?”

Clearing his throat, Akira straightened. “You know Hifumi?”

Closing on the counter, Yoshizawa’s eyes narrowed and she leaned in with a thin grin and sly expression that had the ends of the transfer student’s hair standing on end. “Oh, Hifumi , huh?”

The memory of their games just today flitted through his mind, the thrill and the challenge setting his heart racing. “I… It’s just that she doesn’t like being called the Venus of Shogi.”

Nanami, at the register behind the counter, clapped her hands together. “Oh, you know the Venus of Shogi? Me and my niece are such big fans. Shogi’s been a man’s world for decades, but if she wins this next tournament she might be the first woman to break into third- dan !” She pulled the first stack of bentos closer. “Getting some vittles for the whole week?”

Yoshizawa shook her head, that ribbon-bound ponytail bouncing. “Oh no, this is just ‘til Wednesday. I know people say convenience store food isn’t so good, but between these bentos and jelly drinks they’re such a life-saver!”

Sunday, 10 July 2016
Evening
Shibuya, Station Square

Akira stood in front of the train car mockup in Station Square, his feet planted shoulder-width apart and back straight, with several centimeters between him and the mockup. It felt too casual to lean against it while holding the politician’s sign, but with the crowd around him he couldn’t relax from his rigid posture. Only about a dozen of the people stopped to listen to the pudgy politician’s speech, the remaining too many streaming back and forth.

Toranosuke carried on, standing on his literal soap box jutting out into the crowd. “…make decisions based on our selfish wants and desires. This only exacerbates the self-centeredness within everyone in society, reducing our own humanity by delighting in taking advantage of the weak. Yes, we live in a modern day and age where not only invention, but international trade allows us unprecedented productivity, but by exploiting instead of acting in the interests of our fellow man, we do not only take away from him… from the young struggling to enter the marketplace, supporting an average of three elderly family members. It sickens society itself and takes away from our own futures!”

One of the elderly women pacing through the speech area came to a stop and shot the politician a dirty look. “Easy for a fat man with two children waiting for him at home. Some of us don’t have anyone left, and it’s hard enough just taking care of ourselves. The young are young, they should be working hard for our sakes!”

Toranosuke took in a steady breath, betraying no sign of anger or agitation besides a twitch in his neck. “Yes, as the body grows older and frailer it is hard. But life has taught us, chiseled at us like the carpenter shaping us into just the beam to fit among everyone else. The entire burden of our lives should not fall on the young. A world where the young exist only to be exploited will be a world where our young are driven sick, driven poor, or worst of all, driven away. We must change such a world or it will change itself and leave us behind!”

One of the men to the side crossed his arms, crinkling the dark business suit he wore. “Ugh. Night after night you prattle on with your sanctimonious bullshit! Who are you to tell us to give up anything for others, No-Good Tora? You just wanna get your hands on our money again!”

For the first time the transfer student had seen, Yoshida flinched back as if punched. His jaw clenched and a bead of sweat trickled down his neck. His feet shifted, the heel of his right slipping off the box. His voice weak, he bumbled, “T-that was… a Toranosuke I left behind.”

“Look at him,” the man in a flashy suit barked. “Once a no-good, always a no-good!” He power-walked off, almost half of the lingering dozen breaking up as well.

Akira’s hands clenched on the sign and his teeth ground.

“Easy,” Morgana warned from the satchel at his feet. “Even if that guy’s wrong, public is not the place to start a fight. Especially if you wanna help that politician guy.”

Toranosuke mumbled, but with his volume as distant as his flagging energy, he gave it up after just a minute of fruitless if plaintive entreaties.

Akira remembered campaign barkers planting themselves on the road medians just a short way outside Inuri. Despite student petitions and even complaints of sexual assault from the girls who didn’t like getting leered at or followed as they crossed the road on the way home, nobody dared chase them off. “I know you try to handle hecklers with a light touch, but wasn’t that guy committing campaign obstruction?”

Toranosuke, shoulders still slumped, let out a breath and unscrewed a fresh water bottle until its seal cracked and top popped off. “Technically yes, but pursuing the common citizenry for not being cooperative to me in a campaign year would be counter-productive at best.” He took a deep breath in and out, those shoulders reminding him of the old Ryuji. Like a beaten dog just wanting to avoid notice and exist through the day.

Setting the sign against the narrow side of the mockup next to their things, Akira planted his hands on his hips. “C’mon, show ‘em who’s boss. Get angry!”

Morgana sighed and shook his head. “Just showing off isn’t the right way to go about things, Joker.”

Toranosuke finished swallowing water and capped his bottle. “I need to win their favor, young one, not drive them with fear.” He looked over the transfer student. “I note you haven’t said anything about the accusation of embezzling money.”

Akira pondered which answer he wanted to give. Part wanted to brush it off, since he couldn’t think of a politician who didn’t embezzle funds. However, Toranosuke-san backed up Makoto while they were on that topic weeks ago, said they should care how powerful people use their power. Akira’s old bastard never did that, disengaged people were non-threatening people. “That was the last time you were in the national assembly, and if you hadn’t won for six elections, that’s a minimum of eighteen years.” He raised his hands in bafflement. “That’s longer than I’ve been alive. If a man can’t change in nearly twenty years, we might as well give up on the whole human race.”

He struggled for a few moments before a smile spread over the politician’s face. “That’s very mature of you. Still, I feel like I owe you an explanation. I was one of the ‘Kuramoto Children’. We were terribly wet-behind-the-ears, as representatives and human beings. We got in over our heads and blundered into a series of political scandals.” He gestured his water bottle out at the passing crowds rushing this way and that. “Are you sure you want to stick around? Political scandals are messier than domestic ones. I wouldn’t blame a young man full of life like you from going on.”

Akira straightened, one foot sliding back to brace his posture as his hands rose. Realizing his fighting posture, he settled himself. “I don’t scare easy.”

Toranosuke gave a wry grin, uncapped his water bottle, then took another gulp. “Well, if you’ll be staying, you’ll hear more. People call them ‘No-Good Tora’s Three Strikes’.” He took another sip. “The first was the result of being young and conceited. I missed a legislative meeting due to a personal vacation.” He left a pause, but when the transfer student neglected to fill it, he took in a breath. “Then, I was accused of embezzling a large sum of money from the party. Finally, I called a voter an idiot in open forum.” He rubbed the back of his balding head. “Three strikes, and I was branded of one of the youngest politicians to flush his life down the tubes.” He took another sip, then capped his water. “Are you still certain you want to learn from someone like me?”

Facing the politician straight on, Akira scanned the pudgy man. He tightened his crossed arms. “Before I converted to Catholicism, I thought there was no such thing as goodness and mercy in the real world. That was never part of my family. The priest who baptized me was called to faith in prison and became a model citizen. He still visits children in hospitals.” No need to go into those hospital visits being how he met Father Motoori. Akira shrugged and forced his arms to loosen. “The point is, you can come from a really low valley and still climb to the top of the hill. The only difference is the view on the way there. I can’t say I don’t care about your past—I care about everyone’s. But if you’re not the same Tora as the one who stole that money or did those other things, you’re not No-Good Tora anymore. That one died. A different one is here now.”

A gentle smile spread over the middle-aged man’s face. “You are a full of surprises. If the country has more young people like you, maybe I don’t have that much to worry about the future.” He pushed up at his sleeves as if to get them above his elbows without rolling them up at all. “I hear the hecklers doubt my odds of election, and there are plenty of silver-tongued gentlemen you could learn from. Are you sure you want to risk time with a washed-out has-been?”

Akira poked him in the belly. “You’ve got good technique and a fearlessness of the crowd. If there’s anything I’m sure of, it’s that no matter how long I’m around, I won’t hear you call a voter an idiot.”

Toranosuke gave a nod, his smile warm and wise. “Well, you may have some crowd anxiety, but your ability to come this far is a testament to your will as well, Kurusu-kun. If you’re really set on learning from an over-the-hill man like me, I’ll be glad to continue teaching you how to hold your ground. Why, should you find your footing, I’m sure you could even become a good public speaker yourself some day.” He checked his watch. “Oh, it’s gotten that late? I don’t want to make you late or over-tired for school in the morning. You’d better get on home.”

Sunday, 10 July 2016
Late Evening
Yongen, Leblanc

Akira stepped into Leblanc and locked the door behind him. At least it blocked much of the noise out. Making it through a night with Yoshida without getting in a fight left him a tiny sense of accomplishment, but feeling more drained than marathon sprints in PE. Even a quick bath didn’t wash the tension away.

He ran his hand through his damp hair. Despite just getting out of the bath, the city’s heat and humidity joined in the relentless noise and even getting inside didn’t lift the choking thickness of the atmosphere. He trotted upstairs, where Yusuke stood in front of an easel, filling in a painting of Ann in a mid-leap like they’d do in the Metaverse, but dressed in summer street clothes and holding a cell phone instead of her pistol. “Ah, Akira-san. This has been a most fascinating day. I had an interview with my court-appointed guardian. It went on for quite some time, but he said he was happy to act as a sounding board. You should meet him. He has this patient way of bringing out such insightful realizations.”

Akira changed into his sleep clothes. “Meh. I bet he’s busy with his job. He wouldn’t be interested in me.” He knelt down in front of the picture of the Virgin Mary for his nightly prayers.

Sunday, 10 July 2016
Night
Velvet Room

Even before Akira opened his eyes to blue, the feel of a flat steel slab underneath him told him he wasn’t in the loft anymore. The shackles bit around his wrists, heavy chains connecting them. In some ways, he preferred the straightforward bindings to the lies in society that his parole was only one year and that he could still go out and live a full life. In Japan, once a criminal, always a criminal. Once the son of a lab freak, always a freak.

A baton struck the bars of his cell and sparks zipped at the contact. “On your feet, Inmate! Our master has deigned to speak with you.”

“There it is,” Akira said with false cheer as he pushed himself up. “The voice of the justice system. Just obey and one day we’ll stop hurting you. Who cares about right living? Just don’t get caught.” He trudged to the bars and gripped them. “So, what’s little old me done to be worth such an audience?”

Deep laughter rumbled out of Igor’s gut. “False or not, humility can open many doors, young one.” He paused, his bloodshot eyes falling to that glass cylinder contraption topped by an orb. Just under two dozen thin iron spikes stabbed through the cylinder portion, holding up mounds of marbles within. “You have expanded your circle of thieves, and expelled a sinner of great vanity.” A chuckle rumbled out. “A delightful journey of rehabilitation.”

Akira leaned a little more on the bars he gripped. “Is this supposed to be my rehabilitation? Because I don’t see how beating up scumbags is doing me any good.”

Justine held her clipboard in both hands, her voice adding an eerie calm which wove with the gentle blue of the environs. “You should be honored by our master’s words, Inmate. Have you forgotten his warning about the coming ruin?”

“Yeah,” Akira snarked, his hands tightening on the iron bars. “People’ve been saying the end is nigh since the beginning of time. What I could use is something concrete, something actionable. Like a name or address for mister Black Mask.”

For the first time the transfer student had seen him, the wide grin on Igor faded. “I am afraid there are some things beyond even my knowledge.”

Letting out a long breath, then breathing back in, Akira stood straighter. “Then how does he get into the Metaverse?”

That unsettling smile returned, though not as wide as before. “Who knows?”

“C’mon!” Akira banged his fist on the bars, only to regret it the instant his limb bounced off, pulsing with pain. “Do we have the same powers? Is he the one responsible for mental shutdowns?”

Caroline slammed her baton against the bars, sparks flying from the impact. “Heed our master’s words, Inmate!”

Igor’s smile stretched wide again. “You are not the only intruder in the realm of the heart. It is a place fraught with unspeakable peril, and not only due to the frenzied fragments of men’s hearts. If you and the Black Mask have the same powers, devotion to your rehabilitation may see your paths cross.” A deep chuckle rumbled out. “And these bonds of those unfairly labeled by society grow, as your heart inspires theirs. How intriguing, this picaresque tale of yours. Train them in the ways of the thief as I guide you.”

Caroline took her clipboard in both hands. “It is time for you to return to your rest for the real world.”

Notes:

The game doesn’t actually give much profanity in Shinya’s dialog, but it describes him swearing up a storm. As part of the purpose of Daywatch is to expand out and make some more sense of the things hinted at in Persona 5, I brought that out in one of Shinya’s training sessions. When I first started playing Persona 5, I was sure that Gun About was going to be a team-building thing like they ended up doing with darts in Royal. A pity, but they hinted at the opportunity so I'm taking advantage of it.

Chapter 75: July 11th, Art Party

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Monday, 11 July 2016
Early Afternoon
Shujin, Class 2-D

Hashida marched up the left-most aisle between desks, his hands folded behind his back. As his feet pounded over the floor, he recited, “I thought of thinking of thanking you!” The students sat, riveted with fear. He reached the front of the room and spun around with a precision the transfer student didn’t think overweight people had. His dark eyes swept over the room before stopping on the sole natural blonde in school. “Takamaki, repeat!”

Responding with the rote procedure Hashida drilled into the class in the weeks since his arrival, Ann stepped out of her seat, back straight and hands at her sides. “I thought of thinking of thanking you!”

He stared into her, tense seconds stretching by as his gaze bored into hers. “Correct!”

Ann let out a relieved breath and slumped back into her seat.

Hashida held his precise poise, eyes sweeping over the class. “The fricative is one of the most common sounds Japanese are made fun of overseas for getting wrong!” He drew in a breath, his glare daring anyone in the class to so much as make a breath out of line. “Not one of you will be allowed out of my class with such a shame! You are students of Shujin! You are students of Hashida! We shall triumph!”

Akira’s phone buzzed in his jacket. Reflex brought his hand up and eyes down to check it. Despite halting the action a fraction of a second in, that was still enough to draw the English teacher’s attention.

“Kurusu!” He stormed to the head of the transfer student’s column of desks. “She sells sea shells by the sea shore!”

Akira swallowed. He should have this. He studied with Ann. Akira stood. “She sells sea shells by the sea shole!”

“Wrong!” Hashida howled. The transfer student would’ve sworn that one word was just a decibel short of knocking him over. His piercing gaze snapped to the right side of the room. “Kanze! If you think this is so easy, tell the class what he did wrong!”

The boy quivered in his seat. “H-he, uh…”

“Answer properly!” Hashida bellowed.

Kanze jumped from his seat, banging his desk and knocking the pencil from it. “H-he used the wrong consonant!”

Hashida let a beat pass before he nodded. “Correct! Though the exercise was to test alveolar and post-alveolar sounds, Kurusu’s last recitation used the wrong glide. Broadcast Japanese uses a range of what linguists call a liquid consonant. English separates them in two…”

He snatched the chalk and went on for several minutes until the class bell rang.

Morgana peered at the transfer student from the shelter of the desk. “Who was that message from?”

Akira pulled out his smart phone, the buzz from before Hashida-sensei’s tongue-lashing forgotten until the leader’s reminder. A new text message waited for him, but four boxes filled with paired numbers sat where the sender ID should have been.

[I am Alibaba. I have a question for the Phantom Thief.]

His breath caught in his throat. Akira hit respond and sent, [Who is this?]

Three dots pulsed in front of four blocks of paired numbers. [Is it true you can steal hearts?]

[Is this a joke, O Master of Boring Class Administration?]

Morgana craned his neck to peer out and he whispered over the between-class conversation, “I don’t think that’s from your class rep.”

Three dots winked beside the boxed-in numbers. [I already told you, I am Alibaba. Rumor has it the Phantom Thief can change the heart of anyone. Kaneshiro. Madarame. I have a heart for you to change. I can provide you with any form of recompense you desire.]

Akira turned in his seat to the class representative. “Okay, Mishima. Ha ha,” he said, droll. “You can do funny things with computers.”

Mishima looked up, his chemistry work book open and pencil scratching as he raced to finish today’s homework. “Huh?”

A strange feeling tickled the back of Akira’s head as he glanced at the strange text conversation on his phone. “You’re really trying to say you’re not joking?” The phone buzzed in his hand. He glanced at the representative’s hands, filled with a pencil and block eraser. That tickle down the back of his neck intensified and he turned in his seat to read the new message.

[I can't stress the critical importance of this heart change. Can you do it?]

Akira glanced down to the team leader.

Morgana gave what shrug he could from within the desk and whispered, “Play it off? This has to be a prank.”

With a clear plan ahead, Akira typed, [I don't know what you're talking about. I'm a student.] After a minute of no response, he sent, [Who are you?]

Or tried to. When he tapped the send button, a message window informed him ‘message undeliverable’ and dropped the focus at an empty send address. Before he could ponder what happened, the class door slid open and Hiruta-sensei strode in.

Monday, 11 July 2016
After School
Shujin, Class 2-D

As the last of the first wave of escapees fled the classroom, Akira turned around. “Hey, Mishima. Can smart phones be hacked?”

The class representative sat up in his seat, a simple boxed lunch of vinegared rice with sliced vegetables and hot dogs sat on his desk. While he still had bags under his eyes, the question drew a sharpness out of them. “Anything a hacker wants to get into can be hacked. Technically, even a computer not on a network can still be hacked if you can get physical access to it. That’s the basis of like half the missions in Shadowrun. Why?”

Frowning, Akira reached for his phone, but paused with his hand in his pocket. The team leader seemed confident it was just a minor prank, and the team only had a small window to celebrate Madarame’s change in heart before Shujin’s own exams started on Wednesday. Alibaba knowing Akira was a Phantom Thief might have been disconcerting if he didn’t refer to it as a singular like they’d been messaging to the public. And even though the hacker asked for a heart change, he never gave a target or set any stakes for good or ill. Akira shook his head. It wouldn’t be right to ruin everyone’s time just for a strange prank. “Just curious.”

Monday, 11 July 2016
After School
Yongen, Leblanc

The bell above the door jingled and Ann paused so the transfer student could hold the door for the rest of the Phantom Thieves to file in. The scent of egg mingled with the usual aroma of coffee and that unique curry only Leblanc served.

Sojiro folded his newspaper. “Good day, kids, what can I…?” He paused when his eyes fell on the student council president, then flitted to the transfer student coming in behind. “So, you two are back.”

Ryuji looked around. “Huh?”

Makoto bowed. “We didn’t properly introduce last time, Master Proprietor-san. I’m Niijima.”

Sojiro gave an incline of his head as a smirk tugged at his lips. He stroked his fingers through that neat, chinstrap beard. “No need to be so formal, Niijima-chan. This is a coffee house. The whole point is to relax. Most customers just call me Boss, and that’s more than enough.”

Mishima elbowed the track star and gave a shallow bow. “I’m Mishima.”

Ryuji gave a casual wave. “Yo. Sakamoto, here.”

Yusuke gave a bow of his head, but having been introduced back in June, he left it at that.

Ann, the last member of the Phantom Thieves to step in before Akira, flashed a picture-perfect grin. “Takamaki. Prez’s gotta make dinner for fam, so we were hoping on celebrating making it to summer with a hot pot instead of eating out and coming back for a video game marathon.” She closed her eyes and sucked in a deep breath through her nose, savoring the rich aroma. “Mmm! There’s nothing like a good cup of coffee. Or tiramisu.” Her mouth watered.

“That sounds fine.” Setting his newspaper on the counter, Sojiro gave a practiced-for-business smile. “Sorry to have missed you kids last time.” He scanned the group, his eyes flitting from Makoto to Akira, then to Ann. “So, I’m assuming student council president and…?” He shook his head and shot what might have been intended to be a sly look and smirk at the transfer student. “I hope he’s not causing you too much trouble.”

Ann’s eyes widened, but she wasn’t sure if she got the insinuation right so she didn’t want to say anything. “Oh, not at all, sir. He’s helped us out a bunch.”

“I bet you’re the ones helping him.” Sojiro reached for a book on his side of the counter and opened it up. “Well, you know how to make the coffee and serve the curry, kid.”

Akira rolled his eyes. He headed for the sink and grabbed one of the spare aprons. “Do you have a ceramic dish for the hotpot?”

Sojiro pointed low at the kitchen. “If I’ve got one, it’ll be down there for sure. Just be sure to wash it, I haven’t used it in years.”

Akira nodded, but his eyes fell on the coffee siphons first. “Want some coffee before I get into that?”

Ann threw her hands up in the air. “Totally!” She slid into the middle booth, Makoto in after her. Ryuji and Mishima slipped into the seat opposite, while Yusuke turned around one of the bar seats and plopped down in it.

Makoto scanned the chalk blackboard menu written out years ago. “What exactly is arabica?”

Akira filled a cup with the house blend. “It’s the first type of beans used on coffee, as opposed to the robusta variety lots of places cultivate for its greater pest resistance. I don’t think the claims about it having a very different flavor hold that much water, though.”

“The street’s still an option,” Sojiro said, his tone so flat the model couldn’t be certain whether he was being serious or sarcastic.

Akira paused next to the siphons. “Want some?”

Yusuke lay his arms across his knees. “I wouldn’t mind partaking in some of today’s house blend. It smells lovely.”

Makoto tapped a finger to her chin. “Coffee was always kind of a Mom and Dad thing. I know Big Sis started sneaking some in the morning after she started law school, but I never had any.” She wrinkled her nose. “It kind of smells bitter.”

Akira filled a cup for Yusuke, then another for Ann. “Most people temper it with cream or sugar.”

Makoto lowered her hands to the table, one finger still tapping. “Maybe I’ll try some.”

Ryuji stretched his arms and slouched in his seat. “This place looks so dif’rent with the lights on. Everythin’s old.”

Mishima elbowed him. “Ryuji!”

The track star pushed himself up. “I don’ mean like I hate it or nothin’.”

The class representative brushed hair back from his eyes. “I like it. So many of the places out there in Tokyo have this industrial glass-and-chrome look like all of Mother’s kitchen appliances. The wood and warm tones make it feel kind of cozy.” He turned in the bench seat to look at the transfer student washing out dishes in the sink so there was room for the pot. “Do you have iced coffee today?”

Akira nodded and ducked into the fridge to shake out a measure of ice, then carried the coffees to their table and handed them out. “Lots of people get that. I call it, ‘Do you want some coffee with your cream?’”

Yusuke blew, then took a small sip. “You really should try some darker, though. It has such a depth to its acidity which cream can easily overwhelm.”

Makoto took the cup, but stared into it, one finger tapping on the side. “Leblanc… Leblanc… I know I’ve heard of it somewhere. Was it in a magazine or on TV?”

Sojiro turned a page. “That it was, but that was a long time ago.”

“For real?” Ryuji looked around, but with the class representative drinking from his cup, he reached across the table to snag Makoto’s and took a drink straight from her cup. His face scrunched up and he turned away from the others. “Blech!”

Makoto snatched her cup back. “Ryuji!” She looked down at the spot where he sipped, an inscrutable expression on her face and the faintest pink on her cheeks.

Sojiro chuckled. “I didn’t drink coffee when I was a kid, either.”

Ryuji stuck his tongue out, his face still twisted. “It’s so effin’ bitter!” He turned a glare on the artist. “That’s cruel an’ unusual punishment, dude! Not cool!”

“There’s a portable stove we can plug in upstairs.” Akira crouched behind the counter, the sound of metal banging for several moments. “So what are we making the hot pot with?”

“Ginko nuts,” Yusuke said, before he took another sip of his black coffee.

Mishima pulled up a cooking site on his phone. “We should probably get the ingredients while Akira’s looking for the pot.”

Akira gave a victorious shout, then stood up with a big ceramic pot. “Oh! I need to wrestle that stove out and make sure it works!” He set the pot on the inner counter and jogged up the creaking stairs.

Makoto stood, abandoning her coffee. “Right.” She looked to Yusuke. “Could you come with us and help carry things?”

His soft gaze lingered on Ann for a moment before he swallowed his mouthful of coffee, stood, and bowed. “How can one do any less than one’s utmost for the very pinnacle of mankind?”

When they headed for the door, Ryuji popped up too. “Oh, I’m comin’! We gotta get pork rinds and—” The closing door cut him off.

Ann fished around in her purse for a coin bag, then stepped up to the register. “I’ll get the coffee.”

Sojiro slipped a bookmark in place and closed his book. “This round’s on the house.” He set his book down next to the register to give her his full attention. “So… Takamaki-chan. You and Kurusu close?”

She took a step back. “Me and him?” Weeks ago, that might have brought a flush to her face. Now it brought her to a seat at the counter. “It’s not that I haven’t thought about it, but…” She couldn’t think of a way to talk about Kamoshida without also bringing up the Metaverse. She knew Akira snuck the occasional glance out of the corner of his eye, but when he looked straight at her he didn’t appraise her like a piece of meat. It was flattering, really. As worried as she was for him after they fought Kamoshida’s Shadow, she wondered if there wasn’t something there, at least on her side. But the way he’d perk up, or strain just at the hint of a name… it was for Shiho, not her. And he knew it. Was that why he never made a move? “I don’t think we’d be too good together.”

The coffee shop owner’s eyebrow quirked behind his thin glasses for a moment. “Really? He doesn’t have a girl.” He looked over her in the way adults did when they were trying to pick up on clues without being obvious. “Ah, you and that artist boy…”

She scratched the back of her head. “Yusuke? He’s just… really living by his own idiom. He looks at everything like some magical art muse thing.”

Sojiro scrutinized her face for a moment before reaching for his book. “I suppose you might be right, there.” His fingers lifted the book, then set it back down. “Are you implying a pretty girl like you doesn’t have anybody?”

She shook her head. “Nope. Never have.” Now that the words were out of her mouth, it just stirred up an unpleasant sense of butterflies in her stomach. She remembered Papa teasing her over the phone back in middle school, “If one has no sweetheart until Pentecost, she will not have it during the whole summer.”

A thud echoed from the floor above, and Akira gave an annoyed shout of pain.

Sojiro picked up his book. “School life must sure be different. Back in my day, boys would be coming out of the woodwork to ask a nice girl like you out.”

His eyes rested on her pigtails, but it felt nice for someone to mention something other than her looks. “A lot of boys wanted to date me. Not a lot of boys wanted to be my friend.” She looked over to the hall past the little kitchen.

Sojiro opened his book. “Well, their loss. You’re a nice kid.” He gestured his book at the hallway. “Might as well make sure that particular lunk hasn’t damaged the stove.”

Monday, 11 July 2016
Early Evening
Yongen, Leblanc Loft

Ryuji leaned back in his chair and a little to the side, trying to catch breeze from the oscillating fan in the corner. The savory scents of sauteed enoki and crimini mushrooms weaved with garlic and soy. He patted his belly. “That was amazing, dudes.”

Morgana looked across the table to the team’s natural blonde, stars almost visible in his eyes. “A delight for the palette and warming in the belly, Lady Ann. You’ll make a wonderful bride—”

“Oh, it wasn’t all…” Ann managed before her yawn took over. A shiver passed down her before she croaked, “Makoto and Akira helped, too.”

“Even so,” Mishima said, casting an embarrassed smile at her, his face red, “This is well beyond anything I could do.”

Makoto smiled and stood up from her spot next to the model. “You can take the couch for a rest, Ann.”

Ann sent a bleary look up at the class president. “Oh, you don’t have to—”

Makoto waved her down. “Nonsense, there’s plenty of seats.”

Akira pointed a gloved hand past the dark-haired artist to the stack next to the railing overlooking the stairs. “You want to grab another chair, Yusuke?”

“No,” he answered, tone bland.

Akira snorted with laughter and slapped his knee. “I was starting to think you didn’t have a sense of humor, Yusuke-kun.”

He blinked. “I wasn’t.”

Makoto rolled her eyes and strode past him. “Never mind, I’ll get one myself.”

Mishima stood up. “Don’t trouble yourself, Senpai. Take mine, I’ll get another.”

The issue out of his mind, Yusuke turned back to the transfer student. “We haven’t even gotten to the porridge.”

Akira held a hand over his belly. “Oof. Know when to fold, Yusuke. I think we’ve all had as much as we can handle, and there’s still leftovers.”

Ann placed her folded hoodie on the arm, lay down, and slipped into quiet, rhythmic breathing in moments.

“Yeah, dude,” Ryuji said, his tone hushed as he watched Ann. “No surprise she’s tired with doing all she can to keep up with us as a Phantom Thief, workin’, studyin’, an’ visitin’ Shiho at the hospital all the time. I guess that’s whatcha do for middle school besties.”

Yusuke crossed his right leg over his knee and brushed at the trouser leg. “You knew her in middle school?”

Morgana sat on the corner of the table, his tail curling around his feet. “What was Lady Ann like?”

Ryuji shrugged, but his tone remained below his usual boisterous conversational level. “Pretty much like now, I guess. We went into different classes once we started goin’ to Shujin, so it’s not like we’ve been keepin’ tabs.” He scratched the back of his head. “Maybe I shoulda. Even in middle school, she had like no friends. I guess that just came with movin’ in from outta country. The popular kids always whipped out the passive-aggressive claws whenever she was around. She was hot even then, but the only dudes I ‘member tryin’ to talk to her were pervs who thought they could get straight in her pants.”

Yusuke sat back in his chair as if the sentiment emanated a bad odor. “How repugnant. A flower is meant to be marveled and cherished, not trampled.” He let out a long breath through his nose, then focused his dark grey eyes fell on the student council president. “What of the mademoiselle?”

Makoto fidgeted under the artist’s piercing gaze. “My father died a year ago, during an investigation, and Mom a while before that. Big Sis had to shoulder the burden of taking care of me. I thought the best way to help her was to work hard, get my commendations, go to a good college… basically fulfill everyone’s expectations of me.” She rubbed her bicep and looked down. “I felt like I was drowning, and ended up closing my eyes to the world.” Her jaw set. “Until the Phantom Thieves stole Kamoshida’s heart. If they could change the heart of a teacher who betrayed his students, I resolved to make them change the heart of those behind the scams and drug dealing I couldn’t… didn’t do anything to change myself.”

Ryuji grinned. “Not like anyone woulda listened to ya even after Shiho. An’ you sure came through with Kaneshiro. Plus, that tank bike you got is awesome.”

“Hmph,” Morgana added.

Yusuke nodded. “Quite a step forward from expecting others to fulfill everything in life to doing it for oneself.”

Morgana stood. “If you think about it, everybody here found a place here because they were rejected out there in the world.” He glanced up at Mishima, sitting down in another chair. “Even him.”

The class representative blinked and ran a hand through his dark hair. “Does that mean it’s my turn?”

Akira shrugged. “I guess it’s time for us all to put it out there. He’s probably right—we’re all here because we don’t really have a home out there.”

Mishima scratched his neck, looking away from the others. “I spent most of my life just trying to keep up. Mom and Dad are both kind of workaholics, but they had really high expectations. Some days I felt so afraid of what they’d think I didn’t want to come home. When I made the cut into Shujin, I thought they’d finally loosen up. Then my first exam scores came out.”

Ryuji snorted, though a melancholic sympathy strained at his face. “For real.”

Mishima rubbed his hands and fidgeted for a few seconds before taking a deep breath. “I met Shiho at the first volleyball game after midterms.” His eyes went unfocused and he let out a soft breath. “She was the first one to accept me just for trying to be a decent person. I didn’t have to be head of the class or basketball captain. And I did everything I could to be there for her too, even if it was too dangerous to do it at school.” Red spread over his cheeks. “She was so… sweet and open.” His eyes flicked to the snoozing Ann curled up on the couch. “Just like Ann. I felt like Kamoshida ripped my heart out of my chest and stomped on it when I heard about the jump.” Hands clenching, his fists trembled. “I didn’t even get there in time to see it.” A cough worked out of his throat before he forced himself to look right at the artist. “That’s why I’ve got to help the Phantom Thieves take down all the adults like Kamoshida, or even the ones who enabled them. That’s the only way I’ll ever make up for letting her down.” His gaze fell on Ann and he swallowed.

“To have experienced the love of a maiden is the longing of every man.” Yusuke folded his hands on his knee and looked to Ryuji. “What of yourself? What drove you to the Phantom Thieves?”

Ryuji leaned back, tipping his chair on its back legs. “Eh, nothin’ special here.” The corners of his lips turned down. “No-good dad left when I was little, an’ left Ma jumpin’ through hoops the rest of her life tryin’ to give me a good life.” His frown twisted into a pained grimace showing a glimpse of his perfect teeth. “Kamoshida used me to destroy the track team, broke my leg an’ pinned the blame on me so everyone thinks I’m some delinquent now.” He leaned back on the chair and balanced on the rear legs, but even though his face relaxed, Akira could still see his brows pressing together. “That shitty coach told everyone how my old man drank. I never thought it could be so hard to hold somethin’ in.” He leaned back further, his chair wobbling before he slammed back down. “Then he called Ma a slut an’ I slugged him. School called Ma from work and those effin’ teachers raked her over the coals about what a no-good thug I was.”

The transfer student watched Ryuji’s eyes glisten. “She was quiet… like scary quiet ‘til we got off the train for home. Didn’t even get all the way outta the platform before she broke down sobbin’, sayin’ she was sorry. Sorry for bein’ a single mom. Sorry for everythin’.”

Akira felt a heat behind his own eyes. “No, Ryuji. You were a great son to your mother, trying to keep your grades up at Shujin even after that rapist broke your leg. And even going for that track scholarship to help her out of those payments. You had a good mother to be a son to—she stuck with you and made dinner for you every night, right?”

Makoto brushed tears from her eyes. “I… I had no idea, Saka—Ryuji-kun. I’m so sorry I was one of those no-good students who just believed those terrible things they said about you.”

Yusuke sniffed, his expression solemn and posture guarded. “What a cruel lie it is when they say everyone is equal at school. We may have had different underlying reasons, but I understand how you feel in being rejected by the student body.”

Mishima coughed into his fist. “Well, I doubt anybody’s got it worse than Akira-kun here with labels and rejection.”

Makoto nodded. “About his false conviction?” She turned to him, her body’s posture casual in a measured sense, but her feet planted on the floor.

Ann, having sat up some time the transfer student wasn’t paying attention, pulled the elastic band from her left pigtail and brushed it out. “Come to think of it, I don’t think we ever got the deets.”

Akira glanced around, feeling his heart beat a little faster as all their eyes fell on him. Still, the others all had the courage to lay out their lives. Maybe this could be like practice for when he told Hifumi. “Mine is a little long, you guys sure you want it?”

Makoto glanced at the others, then to him. “Well, you’ve never really held back about not having a good relationship with your father. Wasn’t your mother a figure you could turn to?”

Crossing his arms, Akira shifted in his chair. It was embarrassing enough letting that slip to Kawakami, he didn’t want to burden them with the terrible person his mother was. “Mother was more of a non-presence than anything. Only times she took me in, she wanted more money from the old bastard.”

Makoto tilted her head just a little, one eyebrow arched. “That doesn’t sound so bad.”

“She would text ‘Take a bus’, and lock me out.” Akira shrugged. “I’da never met the Amagis otherwise, though.”

Mishima stared, his brown eyes blinking once. “Your mother locked you out? For what?”

Ann re-tied her hair and straightened her shirt. “Knowing some of the models I’ve subbed with, I can believe that. Some people are so self-absorbed, sometimes they can’t even remember their own family exists.” She clapped her hands together. “But what about that false conviction? How exactly did that happen? You said it was the one time you didn’t get into a fight.”

Akira leaned back in his chair, but when the back dug into his spine he stood. He took in a deep breath. “Okay, I’ll re-enact it, but you all have to join in at the Tollywood dance scene.”

Morgana rolled his eyes. “Eugh. Would you just tell the story, Joker?”

“Fine, fine.” Akira slipped his hands into his pockets. “I was reading at Inuri, ‘cause the old bastard wouldn’t pay for cram school. Up until Shujin, I’d study and read at school until closing pretty often as my way of avoiding my old bastard. Road construction blocked off the usual bike path, so I took another road. Halfway home, I heard a drunk ass-hat trying to force a woman into his car…”

Monday, 18 January 2016
Late Evening
Shinjou City, Back Street

Letting the bike fall to the ground mottled with snow, Akira hopped into a run at the sound of a struggle. Despite the dark of the night, Akira could see the woman’s black bra peeking out from the fancy, button-down blouse ripped half-way open. She pushed back against the larger man, but couldn’t get his filthy hands off her. Her dark eyes spotted him jogging up the road. “Please, help!”

The drunk in a suit turned, stumbling two steps from the motion, and shot a glare through tinted, frameless glasses. “This ain’t a peep show, boy. Get lost!” Something about the strong timber of that voice felt familiar, but he was so sloshed it sounded like everyone at Blue Cove. The stink of alcohol was repulsive and he’d have sworn the alcohol on it made his breath fog longer in the air.

Akira set his book bag down next to a bush under what he guessed was a home window. Turning around was exactly what his mother or old bastard would do. He didn’t need to have just converted to Catholicism to know he’d be guilty of what happened if he walked away. Standing up in the face of giants was just like the kind of story Father Motoori would read from the pulpit. “No. Now, let her go.”

He bellowed hard enough Akira picked up the sharp whiff of whatever nasty spirit he drank, “You piss-ants just need to follow where I steer this country!” He turned back to the woman struggling to get her wrist out of his hold. He grabbed her already torn blouse with his other hand. “Get in the car!”

Akira jumped forward, grabbing him by the fancy suit. He intended a brief twist so the drunk pervert would have to divide his attention and set the woman free.

Suit stumbled, almost kicking Akira as he flailed in wide motions and fell against the concrete barrier separating the narrow walkway from a car pulled across the right side of the road with both doors hanging open. Suit grunted, clambering up and turning to bare his scuffed chrome dome on the freshman student. A trickle of blood flowed from a tiny cut. “Damn brat. I will bury you!”

The woman’s eyes went wide. “I-if you keep this up, I’ll report the money!”

Akira stepped back and tugged his gloves on tighter. Another car approached from the road behind him.

The laughter which wracked Suit was not his first expectation. “The police are my bitches. All I have to do is tell them you did it on your own and they take you down for me.”

The woman clutched her ripped blouse and thin winter jacket closed, her frame trembling enough to see despite the night. “I… I only followed instructions.”

Suit lashed out, one hand grabbing her by the shoulder of her jacket. “Then you’ll follow more instructions.” White cones of light spilled over them, and the intermittent flash of red joined. “Here’s what you tell the cops. Dumb punk over here threw me down.”

“Sir?” The first cop out of the patrol car shouted. “And lady, please step apart and against the wall.”

Suit snarled and hissed in what Akira assumed was intended to be a whisper, “You know what’ll happen if you try anything.”

Akira felt like laughing now that he thought he recognized the voice. This was even the chief who sent Blue Cove into a frenzy every time he swung around for inspections? Turning in his old bastard’s boss would be icing on the good deed cake. “You’re drunk off your ass, old man.”

Suit jabbed a finger at Akira, eventually getting it at the target. “Nobody crosses me.”

The second cop paced out of the car, straightening his jacket against the chill air. “Sir! Hands where I can…” He took in a quick breath and straightened when Suit turned to him. “S-sir! Is everything all right?”

Suit tugged the jacket hanging on his frame and exuding the sharp, spicy scent of some hard spirits. If he felt the cold at all, he didn’t show it. “This alley brat attacked me. I’m pressing charges.”

The woman twitched. When Cop Two looked at her, she turned away. “He… th-that young man just came up and shoved him to the ground.”

Akira boggled. He just saved her sorry ass. Did she think this was a joke?

Suit cleared his throat and turned his focus to the closer cop. “And keep my name out of this mess. I don’t have time for little shits like that. Understood?”

“Sir!” Cop Two drew cuffs and advanced.

Akira backed up, then yanked his bike off the ground. If the cops wanted him, they’d have a chase on their—

Cop One knocked him off the bike and into the wall before he could get his feet on the pedals.

Cop Two slapped the cuffs on Akira’s wrists.

Monday, 11 July 2016
Evening
Yongen, Leblanc Loft

Akira lowered his hands and sat down in the chair. The foam in the cushion still felt worn thin, but from the stares he assumed sitting down to let them process was the right thing to do. “The next two months were a whirl of jail, like a million interviews where they tried to double-talk me into confessing, and then a kangaroo court. I never saw any of them again. The prosecutor brought out signed statements. He even read the letter of condemnation my old bastard sent.”

Ryuji’s fists crashed against the table, sending ripples through the remaining hot pot and making all the bowls, spoons, and chopsticks clatter. “Fuck that shit!”

Mishima’s eyes looked like they were stuck wide. “The woman who witnessed everything didn’t even come to testify? Or the drunk? The accused are legally guaranteed the right to face his accuser.”

Akira shrugged. “I never saw her before, so I’d guess she didn’t live in the area. And I never saw justice before, so I wasn’t surprised not to see master ass-hat absent.”

Yusuke crossed his arms and sniffed. “And that horrid woman threw you to the dogs when you came to her defense.”

Morgana’s wide blue eyes stared into him. “I… I didn’t even know it was that bad. That arrogant lecher is precisely the sort of heart the Phantom Thieves need to change. Who is he?”

Akira shrugged again. “Dunno his name. I know my old bastard worked for him, but the researchers at the institute just called him Sir or Chairman. I was always shuffled to a satellite location the two times a year he came around, so it’s not like I had many opportunities to hear it.”

Makoto crossed her arms as if cold. “Then it may not be possible to find out. Victims’ personal information is secret to prevent reprisals. And the rate of overturned convictions is less than one in a million.”

Yusuke turned a scrutinizing gaze on the transfer student. “Then there is no way to expunge the black mark on his record, no matter that he is innocent?”

Akira lifted his hands with a casual air. “Just the way the world works. Time goes forward, not backward. It’s not like I’m a nice person.”

Mishima stood up, his forehead creased. “That’s no reason to lock someone up and throw away the key on trumped up charges! If prison was for everyone guilty of any word or deed, we’d all be prisoners.”

Ryuji came to his feet too, passion burning in his eyes. “Fuck yeah! This ain’t s’posed to be no crapsack world where rotten adults get away with anything they want.”

“Not like rotten kids are any better.” Akira sat, looking back to the shogi game on his phone.

Seeing the two standing, Yusuke straightened in his seat. “Then we must be as Camilla Hällgren and Banksy to the world, shouting out injustices which must not be accepted and showing what true justice looks like. Just as Da Vinci changed portraiture with the Mona Lisa, we can make the world awaken to the truth.”

Ryuji threw a fist in the air. “Eff yeah! I mean, what’a we got powers for if it ain’t to use ‘em?”

Ann giggled from her seat on the couch. “An artist steeped in Japanese history, a student council president lost in the race to keep up with the Joneses, a falsely convicted would-be doctor. It’s hard to imagine all those kinds of people even crossing paths, but here we all are.”

Mishima sat down, then nodded. “You’re right. All different sectors of society, but all chained by parents or adults betraying us for their own benefit.”

Morgana hung his head. “Everyone but me.” The other Phantom Thieves turned to look at their morose leader perched on the table next to the hot pot. “I don’t have any past to look back on. Even after three Palaces, I recognize the Metaverse and Shadows, but don’t remember anything outside.”

Folding his hands in his lap, Akira watched the slow swish of the team leader’s tail. “Well, we’ve discovered plenty of weird things in Mementos. Maybe the answer is locked up somewhere in there. Let’s be honest, hardly any humans know what they’re doing, so it’s not like you’re out alone in trying to figure out who you are.” He grabbed his insulated water bottle, ice clinking within it, and held it up. “We’ll figure it out together.”

Makoto held up her can of grape soda. “Hear, hear.”

Yusuke held up his iced coffee. “Given the tragedies we have persevered through, I am sure your past will be as fraught with peril as the rest of us.”

“For real.”

Ann held up her own cup of coffee. “Don’t worry, Morgana. We’ll stick with you.”

Morgana’s tail stood up. “H-hey, no need to get sappy. I’m just doing this for myself.”

The track star burst out laughing and after a few moments, Akira felt it draw chuckles out of himself.

Mishima looked at him for a few moments, then back to the team leader. “I wish I could understand him. I can’t tell if he just said something really profound or a joke.”

The corners of Makoto’s lips pulled up. “It can’t be both?” She cleared her throat. “But to be serious, I feel like we’ve only begun. There are so many corrupt hearts out there, and each one we change means a difference in dozens, maybe hundreds of people’s lives.”

Making a fist, Ryuji threw his free hand in the air. “Eff yeah! You can say that again. Phantom Thieves are gonna change the world!”

“That again,” Akira said with a smirk.

Makoto stood and spun around to glance down the stairs before hissing at the track star, “Would you watch what you’re saying! Customers downstairs could get suspicious!” She pulled out her phone. “Although it is getting late. I should be getting home so I have dinner ready in time for Sis. She promised to be home on time today.”

Morgana wove through the bowls and condiments to the end of the table closest to the artist. His eyes lingered for a meaningful moment on the easel and paints wrapped in a cloth bundle. “Have you decided what you’re going to do now that Madarame’s confessed to having stolen all those paintings?”

His face already composed by default, Yusuke’s smile thinned and eyes stared out, guarded. “Actually, I have.” He stood and bowed, a solemn air pressed down over the group. “You have done more for me than I ever believed anybody would do for another. I grew up for years under the tutelage of an artist who was as much a master of avarice as of the brush, but you all taught me what true kindness feels like.” He paused to let their gazes flit about for a moment. “With all of the interactions I will be having with the police over the coming month, I believe it would bring undue risk to Akira-kun’s livelihood to remain. As such, I will be moving in with Takamaki-san.”

Ryuji shot the artist a leering glance and wiggled his eyebrows at Ann. “Hell yeah. Great opportunity to do that paintin’.”

She shot a heated glare at the track star. “Hell no.”

Yusuke gave a nod as if he’d just been denied a trivial token. “It was worth a try.” When Akira, Makoto and Mishima joined frosty gazes at Yusuke, the artist swallowed and raised his hands. “Be calm, I have a backup plan. I hadn’t needed it while living with Sen—Madarame, but with the police having closed off the atelier, I may use my scholarship for use of the dorms. The Madarame Foundation is paying for legal representation, and already petitioned the court to appoint a guardian until I graduate. I’ve already spoken with him on the phone, and he’ll meet me at the dorms to finalize paperwork.”

Despite the earlier mood, Ann shifted back and forth on her seat. “Are you sure you’re going to be okay, Yusuke? Japan doesn’t exactly have the best foster care system in the world.”

He nodded and sat. “There is little choice short of adoption into another family. Given the media storm going on right now,” he paused to give a nod to Mishima, “what members of the Madarame Foundation who haven’t withdrawn or been indicted are desperate for positive publicity, so I believe I can trust them.”

Akira tugged at his gloves. “Until they rebrand. Any word back from Kosei about how long until they’ll have a dorm room for you?”

“Tomorrow, actually. That is why I have my painting kit packed. I believe they are attempting to curry favor with the general public with a swift, altruistic display. I have been discussing the matter with them over the weekend, and my guardian convinced them a move as soon as possible would be as good for the school’s image as it would be for my mental health.”

Mishima hummed, though his brows were furrowed and hands clenched together on the table. “We might all need that ourselves. As many lawsuits as Shujin’s being hit with, it might not be open next year.”

Makoto’s fist hit the table hard enough to jostle the chopsticks. “You were supposed to keep that under wraps. It’s not certain whether or not that many sponsors will withdraw pledged funds.”

Ryuji stared at the class president. “Wait, there’s actually somethin’ to those rumors that Shujin’s bankrupt?”

Makoto glared at him, somehow conveying the aura of somebody twice as tall. “Shujin is not insolvent. And you are not to say one word about the pending lawsuits or Shujin’s financial future. The addition of Counselor Maruki’s convinced a lot of parents Shujin turned a new leaf.” She took her bag and stood. “Anyway, as I said, I do have to be getting home. Try to keep out of trouble.” She strode down the stairs.

Ryuji watched her go, eyes locked on her hindquarters until she disappeared downstairs.

Akira threw one of the coasters and hit the track star in the back, then cleared his throat and looked at the assembled. “It probably is too late to hold a video game marathon like last time, but my crash pad is your crash pad. Anybody want to use the bathhouse across the street?”

Ryuji threw an arm in the air. “Aw, yeah! That place’s gotta huge bath.”

Chapter 76: July 12th, Starlight

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Inaba, Amagi Inn?

Akira pushed open the sliding door with the toes of his inn-slippers. The usual traditional-style room stretched out before him, futons arranged along the left and a tokonoma on the right. While most homes fit a flat-screen TV in the common room’s alcove, this one followed the sedate respite from the modern day aesthetic with a vase of silk flowers and hanging scroll bearing the word ‘Satisfaction’.

He was about to set down the breakfast tray when he spotted the room’s occupant. Ann, wearing nothing but a yellow obi and sultry smile. She stepped over the futon to knock the breakfast tray aside and pull him in by the formal summer yukata Amagi Inn made all its employees wear.

Just when he started to lean in to the sensual woman, the soft patter of slipper-shoes in the hallway drew his attention over his shoulder to Hifumi in that beautiful forest-patterned kimono, coming to a stop with her hands gripping the sliding door. “Akira, how could you?”

He threw his hands up.

Velvet Room

Caroline arched an eyebrow at the boy in prisoner stripes with his hands up. “I haven’t even said anything yet, Inmate.”

Disoriented, Akira lowered his hands and tried to swallow his nervousness as he looked around the blue panopticon. “Huh?”

“Welcome back, Prisoner of Fate,” Igor said in that voice so deep it almost rumbled through the panopticon. “Your rehabilitation progresses apace. From a lair of vanity to one who would think himself a king of your age.” His eyes fall to the transparent cylinder on his desk, filled with glass marbles and crisscrossed with iron spikes the size of chopsticks. “You have far to go before you will have the power to thwart ruin.”

Tugging the ball and chain, Akira came to a stop next to his chain-crossed barred door. “Could I get a name and address instead of prophecies so vague it makes horoscopes look reliable? What even is ‘ruin’?”

“The end of man’s indolence,” Igor said as if that explained everything. He held up a hand with one white-gloved finger extended. “But be wary whom you trust. Do not forget there is a powerful enemy you are destined to encounter if you continue on your path of strife.” He clapped his hands together and both girls in warden costume snapped to him. “Explain to the prisoner the power of the shards of power he has collected in the Metaverse.”

The costumed girls spun back around with mechanical precision. Caroline waggled her baton at him. “All right, Inmate! You’ve already learned how to play with your toy guns. Those fragments of power that you acquire by executing your Personas can be used to do more than play around with your flimsy attacks. You can also use them to harden yourselves and your Personas to like energies.” She tapped her baton against the bars in the direction of the plate tray beside the door. “Put that bracelet you found in Mementos here. Then we’ll show you how to affix a shard…”

Tuesday, 12 July 2016
Early Morning
Yongen, Leblanc Loft

Battle of the Pyramid sang out from his phone’s recharging station, so Akira levered himself up. The addition of new ways to use the Velvet Room would help bolster the Phantom Thieves a lot, but he couldn’t help but remember the tears shining in Hifumi’s face as an almost-naked Ann clutched him. It didn’t take any guess work why he’d dream about a girl almost built of sheer sex appeal, but the betrayed look made him wonder what Hifumi would think if she knew about Shiho. If she knew how much he longed for the girl who threw herself off the roof, or how ready he was to kill for her.

No, he knew what she would do. Should do.

The blurry motion of Yusuke getting up and folding his sheet drew the transfer student’s notice, but somehow the artist was already looking his way. “Is anything the matter, Akira-san?”

Just betraying your oath of loyalty for any pretty face, his voice snapped at him inside, resonating so strong it drew a tremble out of his fingers and made him feel like throwing up. And it was right, how could he dare to ask Hifumi to befriend him when he couldn’t even stop himself from lusting after any girl who gave him the time of day?

“Just a dream.” Akira still paused to kneel before the picture of the Virgin Mary to pray for forgiveness and purity before heading to the rolling garment rack. Yusuke paced closer to dress as well, though he kept Akira closer in his peripheral vision than usual. Since he was already paying attention, the transfer student asked, “You ever get asked out?”

Yusuke pulled shirt down over his head. “My first year at Kosei, I had to dispose of love letters from my shoe locker every week. By this point, only the juniors who do not know me bother to continue their attempts.”

Akira tugged a long-sleeved shirt on and pulled to make sure it covered the scars on his wrists. “That many?” He supposed that made sense, he had a lot of the lithe and handsome qualities while also having hints of effeminate traits that drew attention from girls and some boys. He understood the stereotype but didn’t really get the investment to the bishounen type. “You ever think of hooking up?”

Yusuke cinched his belt. “I did not. Sensei was very consistent that it was important not to allow oneself to be polluted with the world’s temptations or we could risk losing our inspiration in art.”

Morgana hopped up onto the table by the stairs. “That con was just trying to keep you isolated so you couldn’t even realize how controlling he was.”

Yusuke nodded and began checking his thin school book-bag. “I have come to realize that by leaving me ill-equipped to navigate the tumultuous waters of society, that strengthened his iron grip on his pupils.” He lifted his bag. “It has also left me uncertain what order to do things in. Does a kiss follow the first dinner together, or need I invite Ann to several first?”

As the transfer student choked on air, the not-a-cat team leader’s tail rose and his ears folded back. “And just like that, I’m back to hating you.”

Akira shook his head and finished gathering things for school. “I don’t really have any answers for you. I never had a girlfriend, and none of the guys I hung out with did, so I don’t even know what ‘romantic’ really is.” He gave the team leader a moment to hop in the Shujin satchel, then headed downstairs for breakfast.

Tuesday, 12 July 2016
After School
Kosei Dorms

Akira shifted his grip on the box of clothes, linens, and a surprising weight of books to set the folding easel held in a few fingers down next to the door. He followed the artist and Kosei senior in charge of the floor inside the single-room living space even smaller than the loft over Leblanc. Dark wood dominated the floor and walls, though a single east-facing window let in the daylight.

The floor manager pointed at a closet. “Futon’s in the closet, but it looks like your friend’s already got your pillow and linen.”

“And all his books,” Akira grumped as he shifted the box again to take the folding wood easel with the two fingers to spare.

The floor manager tilted his head. “Say, you lived in Madarame’s atelier, din’cha? How come you didn’t just move back in? The Madarame Foundation still owns it.”

Yusuke scanned the walls, partitioning out where he could hang things. “That charnel house of stolen ideas and crushed dreams? I would not condemn my worst enemy to that drafty shack.”

Akira chuckled. He had much the same conversation with the artist on Saturday.

The bored high school senior straightened his white summer uniform shirt. “Food is not provided, you’re required to date your food or the weekly maintenance inspection can throw it all out. You can put your name on stuff too, but it won’t matter. Some jackass keeps stealing everyone’s noodles. Lights out time is eight, but as long as you’re not hosting a rager, I don’t care. There’s a speaker in the hallway that buzzes in the morning fifteen before and time to get to school. Officially truancy officers come by when class starts, but I’ve never seen one. AC is centralized and I don’t have the key to change the temperature, so use a wet towel if you get hot. Any questions?” When the artist shook his head, the senior handed the key over and stepped out, pausing at the door to say, “Your guardian’s waiting at the kitchen with your papers.”

The two Phantom Thieves set down the boxes and put things away in the generous closet before heading down to the first floor. While old, the dining and kitchen space looked clean and well-cared for. To Akira’s surprise, he saw the shaggy-brown-haired counselor from Shujin sitting at a table in the corner. He lacked the white coat and wore a different shade of blue button-down shirt, but Maruki scribbled away at the bottom of legalese. Pounding a dot, he capped his pen and looked up. “Excellent timing, Kitagawa-kun.” His brown eyes shifted to the transfer student in street clothes and he gave a smile the transfer student couldn’t tell was real or feigned. “Akira-san, thank you so much for all the support you’ve provided for Kitagawa-kun.”

Yusuke looked between the two. “You know my guardian?”

Akira slipped his gloved hands in his trouser pockets. “Maruki-san’s the counselor at Shujin.” He looked to the early-middle-aged man. “How’d you end up being Yusuke’s court-appointed legal guardian?”

Maruki straightened his glasses and his smile spread. “The Madarame Foundation asked for me to do them a favor and they’d consider funding my research. I’ve always wanted to help people and Yusuke seems a remarkably hard-working, level-headed young man.” His gaze adjusted to the lingering artist. “Is there anything else I can do for you? Is the dorm all right?”

Yusuke blinked. “I have only moved in today. The facilities seem spartan, but clean, Doctor. Did we really need anything after the interview yesterday?”

Maruki let out another awkward laugh. “Good, good. I hope everything works out for you. Well, if you have all the paints and pillows and everything that you need, I suppose I’ll let you get to organizing or hitting the town. No reason to have you sitting around waiting on an old researcher.” He punctuated that with another awkward laugh. With the weak air conditioning and humid air, it made the room seem stifling. After a beat, Maruki held out a manila folder of legal papers. “I’ll drop off Kosei’s copies on the way to the courthouse.” Maruki shifted to the transfer student. “Thank you so much for providing a safe space for Kitagawa-kun. I understand you go to different cities – schools! How did you two run into each other?”

“We have a mutual acquaintance,” Yusuke offered. He turned to the transfer student. “You two should chat. It is surprisingly therapeutic. But if you would excuse me, I have a painting I must get back to.” He gave a shallow bow and rushed back out the door to the stairs.

Maruki took off his glasses to clean the lenses on his shirt. “I have the afternoon free, if you’d like to talk. The courthouse doesn’t close until eighteen hundred.” His eyes widened behind his glasses. “O-only if you want to. This isn’t Shujin so I understand if you have other things to occupy your time outside of school.”

Akira pulled out a chair, sat down, and set the bag with Morgana in it on his lap. He leaned in to whisper, “Could you give me half an hour?” At the leader’s nod, he set his bag on the floor and Morgana hopped out and away. That done, Akira straightened in his seat. “I feel like we never finished a proper session on what the whole Shujin-mandated counseling thing was supposed to be about.”

Maruki gave a nervous laugh. “Counseling is supposed to be about helping fix people’s problems, so I try to be open to anything.” He tore out a sheet of paper from the zippered binder he stuffed Yusuke’s papers into, then drew a pen. “How have you been doing? Being in love is hard enough without the… circumstances of your coming to Tokyo.”

A pang struck his heart, but Akira pushed it aside. Dealing with Hifumi was his responsibility, and only he could clear the air with her. Shujin remained a bit of an open question. But what would she say? “What’s done is done.”

Maruki gave a diagonal dip of his head, as if he couldn’t decide whether to nod or shake and caught himself halfway through doing both. “You shouldn’t have to force yourself.” He forced a grin that was so wooden he might as well as have been wearing a physical mask. “But it doesn’t look like you’re letting life dealing you a bad hand get you down. That kind of resolution isn’t something to minimize. The conflict between what we want and what we have can be too great a chasm for some people to handle. The expectations of reaching great academic heights against not everybody being able to ace every exam. Or the strength to stand up to life’s bullies. Those things can turn what should be a bright life into a very dark place through no failing of your own.”

I know, Akira almost said. But these scars on his wrists were his, and showing Mishima already surpassed his quota of stupid vulnerabilities he never should have let someone else know about. “What if I like the dark? Makes it easy to nap.”

Maruki chuffed, but the up-turn of the corners of his lips seemed shallow. “I’m glad you have a sense of humor about it, but…” His feigned smile disappeared and his gaze peered into the transfer student. “I just want you to know… Not a lot of people could have weathered all that. I know your life wasn’t easy before, moving between your mother and father several times, then moving from a scenic mountain town to one of the biggest cities on Earth?” He forced a big smile, but it felt too practiced. “It’s clearly done your attendance and grades some good…”

Akira leaned back in the plastic chair Kosei’s dorm had for their dining hall. “Back then, there was nothing at stake but embarrassing the old bastard. I’ve got nobody to fall back on here.” He paused. “No, that’s not really true. I… I have actual friends now. Not just Hifumi, but Ann and Yusuke.”

The smile returned to Maruki’s face. “That’s excellent news. A peer support group is one of the strongest emotional support mechanisms a person can have. They can be as good for the heart as for the brain.”

Akira chuffed in amusement. “You sound like Director Isshiki. ‘In cognitive psience, as the heart goes, so goes the mind’.”

Wide-eyed, Maruki shot to his feet so fast his chair tumbled backwards. “You know about cognitive psience?”

Akira’s hands clenched into fists at the conversation turning to his old bastard. An eyebrow rose at the strange reaction from the counselor. “Bits and pieces. The old bastard studied it. Why?”

I study cognitive psience,” he said, gesturing his hands at himself as if it was necessary. He looked like he was about to click his heals and go rocketing off through the roof and into the sky. “I was researching new methods of psychological treatment. By being able to quickly and accurately diagnose how people think, really feel, we could help them.”

“We?” Akira crossed his arms.

“Oh.” Shamefaced, Maruki righted his chair and sat back down, but that brightness in his eyes remained and he still had that one-too-many-coffees energy. “It’s just been a while since I’ve met anyone open to the idea, much less had any familiarity with cognitive psience. I’ve been fighting for the idea for years. It could make the criminal justice system a thing of the past, and do away with the plight of people running through anti-depressant after anti-depressant in the hopes of stumbling across something that matches the patient’s unique metabolism.”

Akira settled back in his chair. The doctor really seemed to mean it. It didn’t seem wise to get roped in without some more information on the commitment, though. “And…?”

“Oh!” Maruki sat, shifting his legs under the table and banging it, knocking his pen rolling off. He bent down for it, then knocked his head on the table on the way back up. “Sorry. If you could help me with my research… just listen to what I’m working on and tell me if it seems off-base or workable, or if you’ve heard that approach was already disproven!” The counselor looked like little more than a starving puppy begging for one scrap of food in that moment.

Even crossing his arms and averting his eyes couldn’t stop it. Akira sighed. “All right. But in exchange, I’ll need more sessions of my own. You teach me those test tricks or ways to keep from getting nervous on da—”

“Yes!” Maruki shouted, jumping to his feet and throwing a fist in the air. His eyes bulged when he heard his plastic chair clatter to the floor behind him and he scrambled to right it, then spun back around to the transfer student. “Thank you, thank you!” He pulled his phone out. “I’ll go back through my old notes and contact you as soon as I’ve got something ready. If you give me your contact information, I can send you a note whenever I have some things to go over. Or any time you need a session!”

Akira swapped contact information and smiled at the impression of an over-energetic dog. “Chill out, Doc. You take care of Yusuke and I’ll take care of you.” His phone vibrated almost immediately and for a beat he thought the over-enthusiastic doctor was double-checking his phone number before he saw Ryuji’s name on the caller ID. “Short term employment, this is Moe Delawn.”

“Dude,” Ryuji shouted. “You ain’t been gettin’ a head start on studyin’ without me, have ya?”

Akira would have stared if the track star was physically present. He thought studying the night before exams was getting ahead of studying?

A beat too short to respond passed before Ryuji blurted, “You gotta help me, dude! I’m desperate!”

Sighing, Akira covered his phone and flashed what he hoped was a better-faked smile at the counselor. “Duty calls.”

Wednesday, 13 July 2016
Evening
Yongen, Leblanc

The bell tinkled with a far more cheerful chime than Akira remembered. Despite the beginning of finals at Shujin, it felt more like a warm-up before running laps. Maybe it was the weight off his shoulders thanks to his realization with Maruki, but the thought he could be a good fit for someone, even if Hifumi was out of his league, took a load off his shoulders. He felt more… ready to see what tomorrow brought than since his mother took him to Inaba.

“Hey, kid,” Sojiro said from behind his book, near the register. “You look like you’ve got something on your mind.”

Akira squared his shoulders and tried to force the same smile onto his face he felt as he stepped in the door. “Just life. Some good, some bad.”

Sojiro slapped a bookmark in his paperback. “Well, this is probably one of those. Package came for you in the mail.” He crouched down, then pulled up a box from underneath the counter and handed it over.

The brown-paper-wrapped package felt light, but its weight felt concentrated just off-center. He’d ordered some special pliers and tools for people with physical disabilities so Morgana could work on making thieves’ tools when Akira needed to do something else, but this felt too light for that. It wasn’t a set of paints Yusuke ordered and had shipped to his name and address, was it? “Thanks,” he said before he headed upstairs with the box.

Once in the loft, Akira set the satchel with the team leader down on the table in front of the couch. As the not-cat hopped out and stretched, the transfer student cut off the brown paper to reveal the bright colors of the Napoleonic warfare tabletop board game which had been his favorite since he found one dumped at a neighborhood garbage point outside the Smiling Mountain Mental Institution. The test of memory, cunning, misdirection, and strategy… Stratego.

Cackling bubbled out of him and he held it aloft like a trophy. “Soon, victory shall be mine!”

Morgana gave him a flat stare, but if the light wasn’t playing tricks, the corners of his lips quirked up.

Akira hastened to the bookshelf to rearrange things. There was enough room to stuff it in sideways like the books or other small boxes there, but his favorite game deserved a place of prominence. He moved a few books down, shuffling over the whole next shelf to keep things in alphabetical order, then set Stratego down facing out. He’d played through every single staffer and no few of the patients at Smiling Mountain. One by one, they stopped playing with him, but with the theatrics he’d been fostering as a Phantom Thief and Hifumi’s rival, he was sure he could keep—

Hifumi! She’d be perfect! It would also provide the chance to clear the air between them.

Akira retrieved the jacket draped over the plastic-sheathed rolling garment stand serving in lieu of a closet. He brought up Queen Togo on his phone, almost bouncing from anticipatory giddiness.

She picked up after just two rings, but a dainty yawn broke though before she spoke, her tone chipper. “Akira-kun, it feels like it’s been ages. Have your finals started yet?”

Oh. That would put a damper on things. “Yes, but they’ll be done Saturday.” He looked across at the strategy game now occupying the place of honor on the bookshelf. “I got a new strategy game. Want to play a few rounds?”

An amused chuckle slipped from her end, making him feel light. “I would love a break then, Aki.”

Then an older woman’s voice shouted from the background, “…think you’re doing, young lady?”

“Mother—!” Hifumi’s voice said, fear thickening the indignance before the line went dead.

He popped open the text messenger. [Is everything okay over there?]

The message sat dark.

Akira started pacing in the loft as he punched in her number, but before he hit the final digit, a voice from within reprimanded him, What right does a criminal have to steal from a queen? To presume he is entitled to access to her and her own family should not? Lust and lies would pollute her.

Shame brought a hot blush to his face. What was he thinking, assuming he had any right to her busy life? She told him weeks ago her mother kept her busy, and her father’s health needed extra care.

The message sat dark. He tapped in, [I understand if you're busy. Should I call on Saturday?]

That message sat dark.

Akira pushed up his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose, but that couldn’t stop the throbbing headache compounding the tiring throbbing in his heart.

A paw thwacking his shin drew his attention down to Morgana. “There’s not enough time to get distracted, Akira. You’ve still got finals tomorrow. Get some sleep for once.” He hopped onto the cat cushion on the bottom of the bookshelf and curled up.

Akira sent another text, but both stayed dark. He brought up her phone number, but paused. Finals were coming up for Shujin, and Hifumi had mentioned being busy trying to help with household finances. Pressing now would just make things worse between her and her mother. The team leader had a point and his headache was only getting worse, so Akira began stretching and ran through his end-of-day exercises. Getting closer to Hifumi wasn’t worth ruining her relationship with her family.

Thursday, 14 July 2016
Early Afternoon
Shujin, Class 2-D

Akira’s phone buzzed in his pocket as he raced down the civics portion of Shujin’s semester finals.

Ushimaru’s head jerked up from his grading, his red pen still.

The transfer student felt perspiration beading along his forehead.

His phone buzzed in his pocket again.

Ushimaru-sensei’s eyes narrowed and locked onto the transfer student in particular.

Akira swallowed and forced his focus to the test.

After School
Shujin, Class 2-D

Tapping his pen to try to let out his nervous energy, Akira almost jumped out of his seat when the bell rang at last. The last holdout with the test begged for one more minute, only for the teacher to deny and demand the test.

With everyone else scrambling to get out with as much gusto as test-depleted students can, Yuuki leaned forward. “Who was messaging you earlier? That source from Kosei have anything new?”

Having forgotten about the buzzing, the transfer student fumbled to snatch his phone out, hoping for news from Hifumi. Anything to explain what happened yesterday. His fear that something happened to Hifumi was replaced by a different fear when he saw Alibaba again. [My patience is not unlimited.] The next message a minute later read, [What have you decided about my offer?]

Akira grit his teeth, but moved his phone down so the team leader could see it in case he had something to add. [Who is this?]

Long seconds passed before three dots appeared beside the four numeral-boxes. [I am Alibaba. And you are the leader of the Phantom Thieves.]

Morgana’s eyes snapped wide and he scuttled back in the desk. “Oh crap, he knows!”

Ushimaru looked up from his papers. “Did I just hear a cat?” His dark, bespectacled gaze zeroed in on the transfer student.

Mishima stood up. “Sorry, Sensei. That’s the sound effect for one of my phone widgets.”

Packed long before the final bell, Akira stood and slid his satchel into his seat so the team leader could slip in just as his phone buzzed again. He zipped up and shared a thankful nod with Mishima, who was packing, before rushing to the stairs. The academic building’s roof sat unoccupied by anything other than the plants Haru grew there. When the door opened again, he spun around with his fists up.

Ann jogged out, coming up short when she saw him crouched for a fight. She raised her hands just in case. “Everything okay?”

The transfer student sighed, but before he could say anything, the door opened again and Mishima slipped out. He froze when he saw Ann, but let the door close behind him and rubbed his right arm. “So what exactly is going on?”

Akira unzipped his satchel to let the team leader free to pop his head out and claim his shoulder. “Somebody knows too much.” He brought out his phone and returned to the text app.

[I need you to change a heart.]

Ann stepped to come alongside him, leaning just a little but stopping just short of peeking on his screen.

He waved her and Mishima forward. After they reviewed the texts so far, the both looked to him with perplexed anxiety. Mishima shrugged. “So he wants you to change a heart. Who is it?”

Akira straightened his glasses. “How do we know whether we should? We don’t know anything about Alibaba.”

Morgana shifted his weight on the feet on Akira’s shoulder. “We also don’t know who the target is. We can’t decide or even get started on it if we don’t know that much.”

Akira grumbled, but complied. [What makes you think I can pull off such a magic trick?]

[You changed Kamoshida, Kaneshiro and Madarame's hearts. As well as dozens of others along the way. Now I require you to change one additional heart.]

Ann shifted her weight to one foot, throwing her hip out the other way as she scratched her head. “Well, that means he knows about the Mementos targets as well.”

Mishima nodded. “Well, you guys have changed forty-eight people through there, right? Eventually, those are going to get noticed by the wider world.”

Morgana hemmed and hawed for a moment. “Largely thanks to Joker’s idea of using one to get the name of another.”

While Ann translated, Akira typed, [So who's this criminal you want us to change?]

[Your heart thievery is impossible without a name?]

[Everything starts with a name.]

Three dots blinked next to the four boxes where Alibaba’s name should be. Long moments passed. [I suppose the calling cards found by the public did all have names. I presume the others you managed to deliver without public notice.] A long beat passed before Alibaba sent, [Sakura Futaba.]

Akira looked up at the others. “That name doesn’t ring any bells for me.”

Ann twirled the tip of a pigtail in her finger. “There’s a Sakura in Class 2-B, but he’s definitely not a Futaba.” She pulled out her phone. “Might even be one of those hidden criminals like Kaneshiro. Nobody knew his name until we made his calling card. Maybe Ryuji’s heard of her.”

Mishima nodded. “Sakura’s not an uncommon name.”

Akira focused back on his phone. [What did she do?]

[You have your target. How long will it take for you to steal her heart?]

[I can't steal just any random person's heart.]

[Then gather your fellow Phantom Thieves and FIND a way.]

Akira’s teeth ground. Between tests and everything else, he did not have the energy to deal with this bullshit. [Why the hell should I bother?]

He hit the send just as Ann yelped and tried to grab his phone. “Akira! Don’t provoke some weirdo who’s already been able to get into your phone.”

[You have your target. Sakura Futaba. If you fail to change her heart, I will expose your identity to the police.]

“Bastard,” Akira snarled.

[We shall speak again after you succeed.]

Mishima stared, wide-eyed. “Holy crap. Finals aren’t even over, and now this?”

[Who is Sakura Futaba?] When Akira hit the send button, an undeliverable message error popped up. “God damn it.” He clenched his phone in his hand, just to notice it buzz in his grip.

Ann had brought up the Phantom Thief chat and struggled to explain the situation to Ryuji. Makoto seemed to get the gist of it, at least from the risk to Akira’s probation.

Ryuji’s ID popped up. [But how would this ash hole know?]

Yusuke sent, [I am not sure it matters at this point. Should we not do our utmost to prevent Joker from being thrown in jail?]

Jaw clenching, Akira sent, [The Phantom Thieves can't allow our actions to be dictated by some computer creep. Besides, I'm the only one in the crosshairs, at least you guys are safe.]

[For now,] Makoto sent. [If he got into our chat logs, he knows about all of us.]

Ryuji sent, [Well, I don't have the brain power to figure this out when we still have finals. I still have to do shopping for Mom.]

Yuuki said as he typed out to the group, “If there is a bright side to this, he didn’t give us a deadline. We can think about what to do after finals. Makoto-senpai’s got a good point, though. I recommend migrating all… uh… group chat to something like LINE.”

[What's so special about that?] Makoto sent.

Yuuki’s fingers tip-tapped over his virtual keyboard. [End-to-end encryption. It needs some setting up because it's not default for all users yet, but the option is there. It should remove the vulnerability of our communications being exposed from the outside.]

Ann held her head in her hand. “Ugh. My brain checked out like an hour ago. You guys mind if I go home and sleep on all this?”

Nodding, Akira said, “You go take care of yourself, first.”

Mishima wiped his hand down his face. “I feel like I’m kinda burned out, too. Hopefully he’ll understand we can’t get started on anything until finals are over. I’ll check it out as soon as I can, though.” He turned and followed Ann in the door.

Akira followed them down and returned to Leblanc to study, but felt like everything he read got lost in the fog of uncertainty. Bad enough to be a liability to his friends in the real world where he could at least do something, but this helplessness was even worse.

Friday, 15 July 2016
Evening
Chiyoda, Togo Household

Hifumi slammed her hands on her hips and sucked in air to try to regain control of her breath. Her cheeks blazed and her heart raced like the end of track practice at Kosei. Despite that, she refused to back down this time. Maybe it was the last conversation with Akira which straightened her spine, but her mother was going too far. She faced down the imposing figure of her mother, refusing to give a centimeter over the new proposed shoot schedule. “The kimonos were fine, but even the dresses were getting scandalous enough. Have you heard what they’re saying about me in the Shogi Pro Players’ Association? They don’t even refer to me as a fellow player, they think all I care about is becoming the next idol.”

The woman in a close-fitting blue dress stood her ground, her posture as rigid as ever. “You can’t get caught up in the opinions of little people you’re never going back to.”

Hifumi huffed. “Mother! These are my fellow shogi players, of course I’m going to be seeing them again.”

Mitsuyo scoffed. “Child, you’re getting caught up in petty minutiae again. You’ve only just passed fifty thousand followers on your SpaceBook page.”

Hifumi’s fingers tensed, gathering the fading scraps of her will to keep up the pretense of resolve. “You mean your page. You created it, you put the photos on it. I never wanted to be famous on social media.” Some shame reinforced the angry blush she wore. “Have you seen some of the things people are saying about me on that page?”

Her mother smiled. “I know, it’s so easy to bait people with just a few images.”

“But it’s not about shogi anymore!” Hifumi’s hands curled into fists. “All they talk about is my body!”

Mitsuyo waved her hand as if to shoo away a fly. “Some sacrifices must be made on the path to progress. Do you think I had the chance to wield the clout of fifty thousand followers when I was your age? I have been slaving away at building this opportunity between two jobs to pay for you and all the care your father needs.”

As every time before, the mention of her father crumbled Hifumi’s confidence. Her squared shoulders sagged and her gaze fell. “I… I know.” She breathed in. Akira held the utmost in confidence in her, she couldn’t let him or her other fellow players down. “But I can’t do this at the cost of casting away the most important thing to me. The Professional Shogi Players’—”

Her mother scowled. “Hifumi, stop worrying about the small fries. The opinions of those who already know their place are beneath you. I’ve had to sacrifice for years to reach this point—you can do these petty things.”

She didn’t have to point to the folder of public relations agencies, interviews, and worse: the swimsuit schedule in the folder which kicked off today’s fight. Hifumi’s anger injected a little strength back into the shogi player. “The dresses were getting bad enough. I can’t model bikinis!”

Mitsuyo rolled her eyes. “Don’t throw a tantrum over these sedate little things. Your bikini shoots aren’t until later.”

Hifumi’s breath fled her at that admission. She shouted, “Is there no cliff you won’t push me off?”

The hand came so fast, Hifumi saw the change in the room’s angle before she felt the sting in her cheek.

The echo of the slap rang in her ears as her mother drew her hand back. Mitsuyo’s voice spoke, low and dangerous when she at last opened her mouth. “I have to get to work, because I care about my duty to this household. I expect you to be ready to apologize when I get back. Make sure your homework is done. No daughter of mine will be one of those bimbo idols with bad grades.”

She power-walked off while Hifumi stared off into the china cabinet, her cheek smarting. As much as she wanted to be angry about the first time her mother raised her hand against her, that sensation was swallowed up by the looming horror at what her mother said minutes before.

Don’t throw a tantrum over these sedate little things. Your bikini shoots aren’t until later.”

She reached out her free hand to slide along the den wall to the hallway.

Your bikini shoots aren’t until later.”

Hifumi stumbled down the hall to the back door to let Antalas in, the husky licking her hand on the way in. At least his barking didn’t add to the latest fight with Mother. Telling herself her mother loved her and wanted what was best rang so hollow. All those thoughtless things people posted to one of the many social media her mother set up pelted her mind.

Who cares about all that shogi crap? We wanna see dat ass!

She got a chest or not under those stuffy old costumes?

It outta be a crime to hide legs like that. The cops should do somethin’ useful like arresting her and givin’ us a good show!

The first tear welled over and rolled down her cheek. Those were the people mother thought she was supposed to appeal to?

She needed someone, anyone, to give her an escape, to remind her about what mattered. To at least give her a false hope she mattered, instead of being a market commodity to be sold off piece by piece until she had nothing left of herself for herself. Hifumi made her way into the master bedroom. Where a king-size bed complete with a fancy woodwork frame once dominated the room, now a hospital bed stood, the impressions in the carpet mocking what had once been a fixture of the family’s late evening life where they’d all gather around and play shogi, cards, or pile on together and watch TV. The chaise lounge sofa where mother slept seemed so small against the wall.

The rhythmic beep of his heart monitor gave her something to synchronize to. The nutritional IV drip continued, soundless under the other noises of machinery. Oxygen lines snaked from heavy tanks against the wall to the mask over his face, fogging and clearing in a steady beat which assured her at least her father was still alive. Even if he would never carry her on another piggyback ride like he’d give her as she imagined herself a maiden adventurer soaring off on her own dragon.

She let out a breath. No. She couldn’t interrupt his precious sleep just for yet another disagreement with mother. He needed his strength.

Still, the hollow feeling left her feeling too burdened to just walk out. She slipped around to her mother’s vanity desk. Lights studded the perimeter of the three-mirror set where she spent at least forty minutes every day before going up to work at the TV station. The second drawer on the right was locked, as expected, but couldn’t withstand her nimble fingers, a small standard screwdriver from the computer repair kit, and bent coat-hangar hidden behind the vanity. Inside lay her phone, seized Wednesday when mother overheard her talking to Akira.

Akira.

The mysterious man with no family name who upended her doldrum retreat at church. Her heart fluttered at the reminder of the gambler who returned her passion with passion, undeterred by her unbroken win streak. The man whose endless jokes could pierce her thickest walls of decorum and make her feel like breaching the surface after a deep dive, his humor sparing not even himself. The bonfire blazed in steel-grey eyes which darted about the board as eagerly as they drank her in.

Her thumb hit ‘connect call’ before she even thought about what she was doing. As adorable as it would be to see his cheeks redden by insinuating herself in a swimsuit, he’d also looked sick when she signaled interest before. How could she bring up ‘My mother wants to force me to model swimsuits’?

Hifumi closed the call and headed to her room. Maybe calculus would keep her busy.

The notes of Tchaikovsky spilled out of her phone and she looked down to see her practice partner and friend calling her back. The trepidation she felt in her parents’ bedroom multiplied, adding shame she’d thought to throw her family’s dirty laundry at a man who didn’t even know how to handle his own family.

“Togo-san? Is—” Akira’s yawn croaked out, “…is everything okay?”

Right, just because she rose and retired early to keep up with Kosei and cram school didn’t mean other people wouldn’t go to bed early for early-morning jobs or school activities. Her face burned and she closed her door. “Oh, excuse me, Akira-kun. I didn’t mean to interrupt your sleep.”

A meow which sounded even more mocking than most cats rose in the background. Must be that vocal black cat he brought along to a couple tutoring sessions.

“No, I’m fine,” Akira protested. She could almost hear him sit up with one of those cute, lopsided grins of his. “For Queen Togo? Anywhere, any time.”

Hifumi’s mouth twisted, her muscles tensing like her body wanted to hop for joy despite herself. How did he do that so easily? Was that just part of his relentless jocular personality, or was it just for her? Her heart hammering and her face warm, her mind still spun about what to say about her mother’s plans for her. All the years mother held her and guided her warred with this past year, where every day without him felt like a descending spiral.

“Actually, I need to…” he started, rare trepidation in his voice. A faint tremble of hope and fear she’d never heard from him before. “I need to tell you… No, I’m sorry. It’s not right to say some things over the phone.”

“Help,” her mouth whispered before she could regain control. Her face blazed with heat and she cut the call. How could she ask for somebody else to fix her problems, her family, when she hadn’t even done anything? What kind of hapless fool did that? Somebody as strong, as independent as Akira would be disgusted with her.

Tchaikovsky floated out of her phone.

Choked with shame, she turned it off and slid to the ground, letting her phone drop from her hands to the carpeted floor. This was her family. And in the dimness of the room lit only by Chiyoda’s distant lights leaking in through the shuttered windows, a thousand fears and failures closed in around her.

Chapter 77: July 16th, Eclipse

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Saturday, 16 July 2016
After School
Shibuya, Teikyuu Overpass

Trudging behind the part-time model, Akira came to a stop at the walkway looking out onto Shibuya traffic. Bitter envy coiled in him at the mass of people churning by with no sign of lethargy. Dark suits and a variety of different school uniforms passed, reminding him of the foam in the waves lapping in and out of a beach. He wondered if he would ever live to see a real beach and feel real sand in his fingers.

Ann dropped her school satchel against the inner walkway wall and flopped against the rail. “Exams are such a drag. Why do they have to be more tiring than the banks in the Metaverse?”

Ryuji slumped next to her. “For real.”

Makoto came up behind them, looking none the worse for the wear, and paced to the track star’s other side. “Could you all perhaps keep talk of castles and banks for other environs?” She checked her phone, then leaned back against the railing.

Akira set the satchel with the team leader down. “What am I supposed to do, pop off for a quick nap when there’s some weird hacker threatening to leak our activity to the fuzz? You guys might be safe, I don’t snitch, but all I need is a credible accusation and they’ll revoke my probation and throw me in juvie.” He brought up an online game of shogi to distract himself.

A terse silence settled over the group. After a few moments, Morgana popped out of the bag to pat a paw against the transfer student. “I know you’re not the type to relax easily, but even you need to put things down and sleep when it’s time to sleep. Can you at least promise me you’ll try tonight?”

Ryuji flopped despite already being slouched. “Ugh, I totally know. It’s so damn hard to hit the sack when you’ve got tests comin’ up.”

Makoto quirked an eyebrow. “I am… surprised at you, Sakamoto-kun. You must have been studying particularly hard to keep you up at night.”

Akira managed to submit his turn before he beat the model to bubbling over with chuckles. “Like you were studying.”

Ryuji jammed his hands in his pockets. “You just haven’t tried Star Ocean. Slackin’ off’s way more fun.”

Ann nodded, her bushy pigtails jostling. “Abso-lutely. I was cleaning until the bar down the street let out.” She scrunched her face in thought. “I’m almost afraid my room’s too clean. Papa and mama even noticed.”

Akira moved up a knight. “Escapism has no better examples.”

Ann stuck her tongue out at him.

He returned the gesture.

Makoto growled, turning on them with the crossed arms and spread footing. “You three are all childish. Have you even thought about where it’s going to lead you?”

“Yeah!” Morgana piped from his satchel between the two Class D students.

Makoto glared at the transfer student. “Any further word from that phone hacker?”

Akira shook his head.

“Sweet, sounds like we got off scott-free.” Ryuji tapped the heel of his shoe against the inner railing. “Hey, we outta call Yusuke. See if he’s up to partyin’ on Marine Day.” He pulled out his cell phone and called up the artist. “Yo, Yusuke. You good for speaker?”

“I shall endeavor not to embarrass the team by proxy,” Yusuke said over the runner’s phone speakers.

Ann twirled at a pigtail. “But we already had our celebration for Madarame.”

Ryuji flashed a grin so perfect it was annoying. “Yeah, but now we can celebrate finals bein’ over. They’ll be doin’ fireworks an’ everythin’. You’re in, ain’cha, Yusuke?”

Akira submitted his next move, then spread his arms at the rest of the group. “They say the best way to be true to yourself is to be young at heart. That’s why those waiting for time to heal all wounds are all sixteen.”

Ann gave him a quirked eyebrow. Makoto slouched to the side against the railing with a sound of disgust.

“Ah,” Yusuke’s voice floated out of the track star’s phone speakers. “Like the old phrase, ‘If time heals all wounds, I have not aged a day in years’.”

Morgana groaned. “Poets are all too depressed. Maybe we should celebrate just to remind you two that making it through tests is a milestone as much as changing Madarame’s heart.”

Ryuji boggled, complete with jaw drop. “Did our lustrous leader just say we all outta have fun?”

“I believe that should be illustrious,” Yusuke said through the phone. His tone perked up just a shade. “However, the fireworks at Marine Day might be the perfect opportunity to gather together in all our regalia. The crowds and skies could both prove to stoke the inspiration of our inner muse.”

Ryuji squinted as if it hurt to process the words.

Ann straightened from her sloppy flop against the railing. “You know what? It would be. I was just up at a fancy place for dinner with papa and mama, so I’ve even got a yukata out and ready.”

Makoto let a cute little smile slip across her face. She fiddled with her fingernails. “It… has been a long time since I’ve had the chance to dress up. Dad would always take us with him to the police ball on the Emperor’s Birthday, but Big Sis has always been too busy.”

Yusuke let out a breath either of affirmation or struggling with something on his side of the phone. “I would have to retrieve mine from the atelier, but I do not suspect the police would have confiscated the students’ old clothing.”

Ryuji tilted his head. “Wait, you’ve got one?”

“Of course,” Yusuke explained. “Sensei taught us that formality is part of the respect we must show the world before we may find respect for ourselves. Appearance was the first step of that.” He let out a hum. “Looking back with the clarity I now have, I should have realized he valued the ability to put on airs more than the freeing fluidity of art itself.”

Akira hit ‘end turn’ and returned his focus to the team. “I dunno, there’s a grain of truth to that. I seem to recall Teal’c saying that those who did not look like servants of the gods were sent to the front lines.”

Makoto clasped her hands before her, not quite looking him in his grey eyes. “W-well, do you have one to wear?”

He looked back down to his game. The opponent just captured his bishop with a knight. So much for the left flank. He set up his counter and hit ‘end turn’. “Nah. Mother had a shit-ton of all sorts of styles of kimono, but she never wanted to be seen with me so it’s not like I’ve ever had an event to wear one to.”

Ann gasped and reached out to grab his sleeve. “We are so getting you one to wear to the fireworks.” She glanced down at her grip and let go. “I mean, you can clearly handle long sleeves.”

Eyebrow arching, Ryuji glanced about the group. “What’s so special about those stuffy old clothes?”

Hifumi in a decadent kimono patterned in forest themes sprang to mind. Akira felt his face warm. He wondered what she would say if she saw him in the somewhat archaic garb.

Brushing back a lock of dark hair, Makoto let out an amused chuff. “It’s about the opportunity of presenting oneself in a new light, Ryuji. And sometimes to a new crowd.” She looked up to the transfer student. “There’s nothing to be embarrassed about it. Yusuke’s proof that dressing up isn’t just for ladies.”

Grinning, Ann clapped. “You’ll have to come along, Senpai. I’m sure they’ll have something good at Takenoko Street. It’ll be an outing!”

Ryuji looked between the girls, then turned a glare on the transfer student. “Dude, how do you get all the chicks without even doin’ nothin’? Back me up, Yusuke, we were s’posed to talk ‘bout what the Phanto—”

Makoto elbowed him.

“Er…” Ryuji retreated from the glaring student president, but bumped into the blonde. “What we’re gonna do next? We’re fin’ly gettin’ big, we gotta capitalize on it.”

Yusuke said, “Marine Day is in two days, and the fireworks are just after sundown. We will have to make it soon.”

Thoughts of joining Hifumi at a date in one of those fancy sit-down tea houses swirled through Akira’s head. Would she like a light kimono like the bright ones she tended to wear in those photo shoots? Or would she prefer him in something dark to contrast her own style? His throat felt parched as he croaked, “W-well, I’ve got work at the convenience store tomorrow.”

“Guys,” Ryuji whined.

“Then we shall have to do it the day of,” Yusuke said.

Ann hopped on her feet, her academic-induced fatigue gone. “It’s a date!”

Saturday, 16 July 2016
Late Evening
Minato-ku

The homeless man tapped at the shipping container behind him as he took in the transfer student. The old man wore no shirt in the oppressive July heat, making the scars of at least one knife fight clear against his leathery skin. Despite the lack of accommodations, his wiry white hair looked well-trimmed, making it easy to see the similarities to the almost fifteen-year-old photo Iwai showed from days in the Hashiba clan. “Young’uns like you got plenty ‘a better things to be gettin’ into. Can’t’cha find anything ya need on the internet?”

Akira crossed his arms, the moist air blowing up from the harbor making the parking lot scattered with shipping containers feel that much less bearable. “No. I’m not here looking for something on the internet. I’m here for… knowledge that can only be found on the streets. Knowledge about business with Tsuda and the Hong Kong mafia.”

The name drop sent a flash through the homeless man reminding the transfer student of Kurosawa’s film ‘Red Beard’, despite a lack of color in his stubble. “Who sent you?”

Akira hesitated. Dropping Iwai’s name might get the story he was looking for, but if the most recent photo he had was more than ten years old, that meant he wasn’t in. And as much as he tried to hide it with that gruff front, he cared about that idealistic son of his. Family were the first link of vulnerability in a family man, and if this Hashiba business went anywhere hot that could mean dead sons. “I’m just a drifter. You and me might belong here, but people with that innocent spark in their eyes… they don’t deserve to get dragged in with us. All I’m looking for is a way out. For them.”

Red Beard squinted, but his dark eyes lingered on the transfer student’s even as his shoulders hunched forward. “Brother?”

The guarded searching quality in the old man’s eyes set off warning bells in Akira’s mind. Still, the old man’s stance indicated interest. It reminded him of that Amagi woman’s warring of suspicion and pity when Akira spilled his story to Big K. And this wouldn’t be a total lie, Kaoru was as good a kid as Makoto. Could go far if he had the breathing room to set up a life outside the yakuza’s shadow. “Nephew. If I can just buy his way out, nothing else matters. But the only way I can do that is through the Hong Kong deal two years ago.”

“Would you look at that? A kid who follows the code.” Processing and recognition flashed through Red Beard’s dark eyes. “Two years ago? Hsun-chi Woo was here back then, but Tsuda dropped the shipping container off at Shibaura. Left with their… I think it came to the equivalent of a hundred million yen.” His hand rubbed his chin. “I suppose it was a little strange they didn’t have a drinking party to celebrate. Was supposed to be a turning point against the Kaneshiros, but their old boss disappeared and the new one didn’t play by the rules. Ended up bein’ a long slog.” He shrugged. “I guessed at the time they just spent that extra dough leasin’ a higher-end club to keep it private.”

Akira blinked. Despite having been in Kaneshiro Junya’s heart and seen thousands of yen fluttering down all over the place, amounts like a hundred million yen went past his ability to even imagine. Maybe Hifumi would have some idea, though she hadn’t responded to his texts since that strange call yesterday. What exactly did she mean by ‘help’? Help who?

Akira shook his head. He couldn’t let himself get distracted by that. Studying with Makoto helped, but she had family to attend to. This investigation was supposed to keep himself from worrying about another brilliant girl too good for this world. She was fine, he had to believe that. Iwai needed his help now. “A hundred million? How’d a deal like that go under the rug? If Tsuda got his hands on a hundred million worth of somethin’, he should’ve been able to corner the market on… tons of stuff.”

Red Beard shrugged. “Buncha us Hashiba foot soldiers were hopin’ it was gonna be enough firepower to push the Kaneshiros out. Their old boss had just disappeared and the new one didn’t play by the rules, but he always seemed to know when and where we were gonna hit. Always had just enough guns to cut down the clan muscle, and never spent his own clan’s blood doin’ it.”

That would fit the man for whom money was both the end and the means, and no target was too sacred. “So he must’ve had an informant of his own.”

Red Beard nodded, but let the silence stretch on until the transfer student offered another strawberry fruit bar with a five thousand yen note wrapped around it. He stuffed it into the folded jacket he sat on. “Impossible to say who it was, though. Could’a been one’a the guys we thought got cut down in an elevator knife attack or alley gun fight. Bun’cha guys threw in the towel, too. Or had kids poisoned all’a the sudden. Hard to blame ‘em after Noriyuki’s baby died of arsenic in the formula.”

Swallowing, Akira wiped his forehead. How close did the Phantom Thieves come to that?

They went back and forth a little more, Akira having to yield another ten thousand yen when his tongue proved not quite silver enough, but Red Beard had nothing else related to the Hong Kong deal. After splitting, he tried putting Hsun-chi Woo into the Nav, but the guy had a palace and without a location or clue they wouldn’t have any chance to break in. Maybe Makoto could learn more from her sister. He shot a message out to the class president before getting on the train. He needed his sleep if he was going to match Hifumi wit for wit tomorrow.

Sunday, 17 July 2016
Morning
Kanda Catholic Church

The service and holy communion passed, leaving the lingering worry that somebody would see through his paper-thin disguise. Being that boy from another city, coming to Mass without a family already left some distance between him and the other parishioners, but these were actually devout and pure. Would they talk about him like Shujin did?

Father Sugiyama read a passage of Luke where Jesus rebuked Martha for focusing on the cooking when her sister Mary ditched the kitchen to listen to Jesus’ lesson. So soon after finals, the transfer student wondered if God was up there having a chuckle at him. As soon as the priest finished the benediction, his phone started buzzing in his jacket.

Perplexed, Akira drew it. “The hell? I turn this off for church.” A message waited for him in the text messenger.

Alibaba’s ID stared up at him. [Why do you delay? I gave you your target. Her heart is not changed. Have you forgotten the stakes?]

“Excuse me,” the woman to his side said.

“Oh, sorry,” Akira said, standing up and taking to the aisle, pressing his phone against his chest to keep anyone else from seeing. He sidled to one side to press against the side of a pew as other parishioners left. As soon as he had an opening, he texted, [We haven't had a chance during finals.]

[Academic diligence is admirable, but this mission is not a triviality to be brushed off.]

A firm finger tapped him on the shoulder.

He jumped and spun about to a giggling Hifumi. She stood there in a soft purple dress with translucent green sleeves. “Good morning, Akira-kun.”

Akira slapped the phone against his chest to hide its screen. “Hifumi-san!” He felt sweat break out across his skin.

As if God decided things weren’t complicated enough, Father Sugiyama came up from the altar, folding his stole in his hands. “Kurusu-kun, Togo-chan. Good morning. Has the week after finals left you feeling better?”

Hifumi gave a small smile, though there was something stiff, practiced to it. “I feel fine, Father.”

His phone buzzed in his hand. Akira swallowed. “Oh, uh… mine just finished. I would love to stay and chat, but I uh… need to clear this up. Real fast. Is there a private place on the grounds I could have for a few minutes, Father?” His hand squeezed on his phone as if it was that hacker’s neck. He had just worked himself up to telling Hifumi and this would just add fuel to the fire.

Father Sugiyama’s pale brown eyes swiveled up for a moment, then back down. “The Meditation Garden is small but should do. Take the right door just before my office.”

Akira gave a swift bow to the priest, then the girl with eyes greener than any forest, then shot off. Before the fogged glass door swung shut, he bared a snarl down at his phone. “Bastard.”

Alibaba had sent, [Ah, Togo. Match fixing and betting fraud. You are investigating the clients of money launderer Nakao Hiromi after you changed her heart. So you found Kaneshiro by following the money and are still cleaning up.] Another just seconds ago added, [I looked into Kaneshiros stooges while investigating you, but those shall have to wait.]

“The fuck do I care about your hit job?” Akira growled. [The vote has not yet been made to change Sakura Futaba's heart. We just started investigating her.]

[I gave you the target on Monday. Have you done NOTHING?]

“Entitled prick,” Akira muttered. [Investigations don't conclude overnight. We don't have a location or distortion to narrow down targets.]

[Distortion? What are you talking about?]

Akira rolled his eyes. “Like you’d understand even if I explained, dipshit. We’re not going to change your rival’s heart, or some cashier who shorted you five yen at the grocers’ or whatever.” [Changing hearts takes time.]

[Do you think this is some kind of game for you to brush off? Apparently I need to show you how seriously you need to take this.]

Then nothing. Akira scratched the side of his head, then straightened his glasses. When almost a minute passed he sent, [So… what?]

Another minute passed before he growled and stuffed his phone into his jacket, then marched back into the halls of the neighborhood Catholic church. Hifumi waited for him at the hallway intersection, their gazes met, but she swallowed as if nervous. “I-I’ve been looking forward to sharing a good game for days. I had a practice match on Wednesday, but one quick game hardly counts as good exercise for the week.”

His phone buzzed. “Aw, c’mon.” He brought up his phone, but this time it was an email from the bank warning him he would face a fine for having an account balance of zero yen.

The bank he kept his laundered money at.

The one with sixty-eight thousand yen before he added the last deposit from sales to Iwai, then distributed them to the other Phantom Thieves’ dark money accounts.

Akira clapped his phone against his chest and he looked back up at his beautiful rival, sweat bringing a chill to his skin. He bared a smile at her and hoped it didn’t make him look like an angry gorilla. The twitch under her eye did not reassure him. He forced a laugh and cringed at how close to Ann’s acting it sounded like. “J-just… one minute.”

He raced back into the tiny meditation space just as the shishi-odoshi bonked against the stone in the corner. The running water did nothing to help the sense of coiling tension.

“Akira-kun?” her muffled voice reached through the fogged-glass door, though she did not open it to step through.

His phone buzzed and a new message awaited him from Alibaba. [Have you constructed the calling card? You have your target's name. If you do not change the target's heart, I will expose your identity to the world and police. We will speak again after you change the target's heart.]

He tried to send back, [We aren't puppets to sic on your enemies,] but when he hit the send button an undeliverable message error popped up.

A soft knocking on the glass made him jump and spin around, heart hammering in his chest.

“What?” he snapped, hauling open the door.

When he didn’t step in, Hifumi stepped out and let the door close behind her. Her gaze never left his, a tension in her jaw. Her hands clenched over her travel shogi board. “Is everything okay?”

Heart still thudding in his chest, cortisol muddled his mind and he snapped with the same anger he still felt at the hacker, “It’s nothing!” His stomach clenched, Hifumi didn’t deserve his anger.

She flinched, but held her ground. A momentary tremble passed through her hands before she reached to set the travel shogi board and box on the small stone bench. Hifumi blinked, but as fast as her regal posture recovered he still saw the way her eyes welled up. She swallowed once before her lip trembled and the whole act collapsed. She surged at him, wrapping her arms around his torso like it was the only thing keeping her from falling off the face of the earth, and tears spilled down her face.

The scent of patchouli shampoo suffused his nostrils, intoxicating, as a thrill zipped up his spine. He wished anything else could have brought them close enough to indulge in it. Akira felt sparks gushing in his head, but his arms closed around her, one hand rubbing in circles at the small of her back.

After what felt like hours but must have just been minutes, Hifumi’s tears slowed and sobs stopped. Her voice still cracked when she said, “M-mother and I f-fought.” Her breath caught for a moment. “She l-loves me. We… we’ve never fought.” Her arms tightened around him and her face pressed against his shoulder. “When papa collapsed, I was just entering middle school. I th-thought the world was going to end, at that hospital. I couldn’t imagine life without papa. So for hours, while her husband was undergoing treatment inside that horrible place, she held me and did my hair, undid it, then did it again, quizzing me on math to keep me from thinking about how close he might have been to dying. When they had to hold him to be sure the blood clot treatment didn’t have complications, she took off work to make me Delhi Tofu.”

Long moments passed as she just breathed. After he decided she had her breathing back, Akira decided to ask what she was leaving off. “What changed?”

Hifumi’s arms tightened around him. She sniffled once before answering, “Fame.” She took in a long breath before loosening her grip, though still held onto him. “She’d been proud since I won a competition in primary school. The principal called me a prodigy after I beat not only all the other students, but also the faculty in a primary school shogi tournament. But she’s changed these past few years. Kosei’s student newspaper put me on the cover for winning a full math scholarship and finishing qualifications to join the Shogi Players’ Association. My class representative had a copy of the school newspaper and got everyone in class to sign it in exchange for an autograph.” She sighed and her arms lowered to clasp her own wrists, keeping him held close. “Mother saw how many classmates signed the Kosei Gazette for just giving one autograph, so she said I could do more like that to help pay for Papa’s treatments after the complications started. She kept the gazette – said something about all those phone numbers the boys left.”

Akira stopped the hand on her back. “That’s when the interviews started?”

Her voice regained its steady quality when she spoke. “The photos, first. She said people don’t truly believe in something unless they can see it, but I think she knew the effect of a photogenic young woman. I wanted to help Papa any way I could, so I said yes right away.” She leaned against him as if the effort of standing on her own became too much, her soft curves pressing against him. “I had no idea things would snowball so much in a year and a half. Photos in quaint, traditional garb is one thing, but then came the dresses and this week she started scheduling me for swimsuit shoots. I ca… I can’t…” Leaving her hands clasped behind him, she leaned back to look him in the eye.

Even with tear streaks smudging what little makeup she had on, or the red eyes, Hifumi’s beauty would have taken his breath away on its own. Then she said, “Let’s change her heart.”

Akira’s mouth drifted open and a hot July breeze wafted through.

Hifumi unwrapped her arms, grasping his hands as she stepped back. “You changed Kitagawa-kun’s heart. He went from trudging around campus to humming marching tunes. You changed Madarame’s heart.” She looked him in the eye, back straight and eyes shining with hope. “I know we can do it!”

His heart hammered in his throat. “H… Togo-san…” Akira squeezed his hands, if he were standing on his own he would have been clenching his fists. When she squeezed back instead of letting go, his resistance crumbled. “I don’t even know your mother’s na—”

“Mitsuyo,” she said, her regal posture back and her features determined. “Her full name is Togo Mitsuyo.” Her hands squeezed tighter on his. “It won’t… it doesn’t hurt, does it? Kitagawa-kun seemed fine. I’ll do anything to help—”

“No!” Akira paused to breathe in. After the spike of fear at the possibility of seeing her in the Metaverse passed, he felt the corners of his mouth quirk up. When was the last time someone believed in him? She never even saw the Metaverse, and she didn’t show a shred of doubt that he could help. “I’ll have to bring it to the others to vote on. Changing hearts isn’t a one-man job. But I’ll do everything in my power to save your mother.”

Hifumi yanked him closer, wrapping her arms around him as light glinted in the corners of her reddened eyes. “Thank you, Akira!” She jerked back to look into his eyes, standing taller than he’d ever seen her. “Can I help? Mother’s done so much for me, for the family… it’s like she’s gotten sick. I just don’t know how to cure her. How do you do it?”

Akira pulled his gloved hands from hers. “We steal an anchor of her twisted desires from her mind. Even that much sounds crazy, I know, and I’ve done it, but…”

She took his hands again, her grip clenching over his digits. “But it will bring Mother back? The way she used to be?”

Letting out a long breath, his gaze dropped from hers. “I don’t know. Up until Madarame I thought it was only a process that worked on really sick, evil people. But Madarame’s stumbling block was his fear of being left behind by art and the world. All of his crimes followed from that.” He pushed her hands back at her. “Leave this to us. It’s dangerous. But we’ll find the Treasure corrupting her heart.”

Hifumi nodded and wiped at her face with a pocket tissue. They walked out of the church and crossed the street in a warm, companionable silence before Hifumi realized she left her travel shogi board in the Meditation Garden. She sent him on and dashed back to get it, leaving Akira alone at the steps down to the subway.

He pulled out his phone and brought up the Metaverse Navigator. Sure enough, Togo Mitsuyo gave a hit, and chimed once he typed Mementos into the keyword. He brought up the new group chat and typed out, [I'll be back with Morgana in half an hour. When's the soonest we can get together for a new strategy meeting?]

A minute passed before Makoto’s ID joined the chat. [I've been falling behind. Between homework and paperwork for student council, I don't know if I'll even be able to join you all for kimono shopping tomorrow. Big Sis has been noticing, I don't want to give her cause to investigate.]

Yusuke joined a moment later. [Text us if you can make it. You have an intensity that makes you a powerful ally to behold, but much like the fire your Persona wields, it can burn if held too close. Make sure you have time to enjoy yourself.]

Yuuki’s ID lit up next. [No luck on basic internet searches for the target, I'm going to have to head up to the court house for public records.]

Ann followed next. [Does that mean you can't join us for Marine Day? You need a day off almost as much as Akira. Neither of you two seem to understand the meaning of rest and relaxation.]

Ryuji joined the chat. [Dudes, what are you all blowing up my phone for this early in the morning?] A few seconds passed before he texted, [Let me guess, Akira. You went off doing something dangerous and found a new heart we have to take care of in Memento?]

[Actually, yes.]

[Memento,] Ryuji sent. [Dam, I hate my phone's autocorrect.]

Yusuke texted, [Is there someone in immediate danger?]

Akira pursed his lips. [Technically no, but the sooner the better. Could we do this now?]

Ann texted, [I'm working today.]

Yusuke sent, [I am likewise indisposed. Perhaps Ryuji is correct. Akira and Makoto, you both have a tendency to overwork yourselves. I saw Madarame wear out many fellow students permanently, you two should not follow them. My work load can be shuffled, however. I am available any day this coming week. Oh, Akira, have you decided between kinagashi or the more formal haorihakama style?]

Ryuji sent, [I'm up for Tuesday. But I vote a hard no to anything until after we party. Marine day's reserved for blowing off steam.]

Yusuke followed up with, [And there's a lot of blowing to be done.]

Makoto shot back, [Not you too, Yusuke!]

[What did I say?] the artist texted.

Ann’s ID lit up. [I'm already on the way to a shoot for my agency. If there's an emergency we could drop the shopping trip tomorrow, but I was REALLY looking forward to it.]

[Tuesday, then?] Makoto sent.

[Fine,] Akira texted. [Fireworks Monday, Mementos Tuesday?]

The others added eager assent. He leaned against the tiled storefront wall and forced a breath in and out. He wanted to argue, but pissing off Makoto and Ann might hurt their willingness to help. “Tuesday,” he said to assure himself, “We’ll save her on Tuesday.” That was enough to settle his nerves so he could head to work early.

Sunday, 17 July 2016
Evening
Shibuya, Central Street

Akira stepped out of the convenience store, the churning mass of people feeling even more choking than usual. He took the first alley he came to in order to lean back against the brick wall and catch his breath. His hands shook in his pockets, but strange movement drew his eyes down. A calico cat hopped with a lurching motion, holding a hind leg off the ground as it scuttled away from the transfer student and behind some trash bins.

Akira took in a deep breath, then pushed his way through the seething crowds to Station Square. It wasn’t until he got onto the train to Yongen before he felt like he could breathe again. With seats available, he took one. The hope in Hifumi’s gaze came back every time he closed his eyes to blink his whole shift in the convenience store, but the team was behind Ryuji.

The train trip to Yongen felt slow, but he arrived with plenty of time to get some work done.

Once he reached the top of the stairs, Morgana looked up from amid a scattering of metal scraps on the crafting workbench. “There you are. I missed you between your return from church and heading out to work. Is everything okay?”

Akira slipped his long-sleeved shirt off and tossed it in the laundry basket. “I found a new name for us to change in Mementos.” He swallowed against a lump in his throat. “You in?” When the team leader gave a simple nod, Akira sighed and the weight of a continent lifted from his shoulders.

Morgana nodded. “Pull up the Phantom Thief chat and you can bring up the nomination in my stead.”

Akira hesitated. “I… kind of already made the nomination.” He pulled out his phone to let the team leader review the chat logs. “I did say you still needed to put in your word, but I wanted to get the ball rolling.”

Morgana swiped at the smart phone. “When were you planning on telling me about this? Alibaba threatened you!”

Akira started setting up the shogi board on the table in front of the couch. “Kind of a small deal next to changing Togo’s heart.”

“There was a hundred fifty thousand yet in that account before you distributed to the rest of the team!” Morgana’s tail twitched. “Joker, this is serious!”

“This is normal.”

“This is clear escalation!” Morgana pounced across the room and onto the shogi board, scattering a couple tiles. “Joker, how can you play off a big threat like this?”

Akira grit his teeth for a beat, but sitting in front of a shogi board helped remind him to take in a breath and keep his head or he’d lose the match before it started. “Nothing that wasn’t already the case yesterday. Fuck, this is usual. I had more to worry about at Blue Cove or Smiling Mountain. I’m not happy about the cash, but we can’t do anything about it until we can meet as Phantom Thieves and go into the Metaverse. As long as we can change her heart, things will work out.”

Sighing, Morgana hung his head. After a beat he returned to the chat. “Any breakthroughs by Nishima?”

“Mishima,” Akira corrected. “Mishima Yuuki. And no luck yet, he said he’d be spending tomorrow heading to the courthouse to access name registries. I already asked the others when the soonest we could convene for a strategy meeting and they said Tuesday. Sounds like Ann and Yusuke are as eager as Ryuji to celebrate on Marine Day. If just in completely different ways.”

Morgana nodded, his black ears flicking. “Good. In the meantime, the leader of the Phantom Thieves orders you to get the bathhouse! They’ve got an herb infusion that’s supposed to help reduce stress and make you more charismatic. If there’s anything I need, it’s a porter who isn’t on edge all the time.”

Akira nodded. “Yeah… Hey, wait a sec. Porter?”

Notes:

Akira’s line “I seem to recall Teal’c saying that those who did not look like servants of the gods were sent to the front lines.” is technically incorrect, SG-1 implied but never talked about Teal’c’s makeup. Though the fanfic Morning Rituals by Nixa Jane does go straight into the idea in both hilarious and straight canonical manner.

Chapter 78: July 18th, In Case of Medjed

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Monday, 18 July 2016
Late Afternoon
Harajuku, Takenoko Street

Akira adjusted the three men’s summer yukata’s folded over his right arm, then stumbled back when a woman holding a purse big enough to hide Ann in stormed in front of him, then off to a side aisle. The first couple he snarled or snapped at, but with shopping having been going on for hours he lost track of the number of people who either bumped into him or crossed his path without acknowledging his existence. Akira backed up against a standing rack of western-style jackets. “I thought it was bad out on the street. How do people survive in these places?”

Ann held the sleeve of a flowery, in-house style women’s kimono dominated by bright pinks and yellows. “It’s the rush, Akira! The thrill of finding something cute on sale!”

He shot her a hooded gaze. “Like that special with the same regular price as the week’s special on the printed-out tag that fell out?”

She shot him a faux-grimace, but before she had a chance to throw a riposte, the artist dashed out from behind a rack of hats and hair pins. “I have found it, Grand Fashionista!”

Ann giggled and took the navy-blue men’s yukata. With Makoto too busy to join them, she fed a few recommendations from her limited experience with fashion and summer celebrations she thought might work with Akira. A checkerboard-pattern of alternating dark and light horses dominated the torso and upper sleeves. She draped it over Akira. “Not a bad look. I wonder how Prez thought of it.”

Akira straightened it as much as he could while holding onto the three Ann and Yusuke already picked out for him, as well as a paper shopping bag laden down with the day’s previous acquisitions. “Must have been the last time I talked to her about shogi. You guys do remember that hacker stole everything in my dar—er, that one account? I can’t afford to buy one yukata.”

She waved him off. “I can pick this up. Totally worth it for a team shop-out.” She shifted to the artist standing back to look at the transfer student through the frame of his fingers. “What do you think?”

Another middle-aged woman barged through an aisle between the Phantom Thieves.

Yusuke lowered his extended hands. “I can see the appeal. The cavalry motif and use of negative space on the back do seem to apply to Akira. There is a sense of one always on the move.” He looked at the transfer student, down, then back up to the pale grey eyes. “You do not approve?”

Akira sighed. “I just… don’t know. You guys said something would click, but the only sense I’m getting is fabric coming out of someone else’s factory.”

Morgana poked his head out from beneath the dark yukata draped over the transfer student’s torso. “You’re getting lost in the physicality of the supply chain. The colors and the patterns are supposed to evoke something in you.”

“It all sounds like double-talk,” Akira grumbled. He held up the yukata Yusuke brought. There was nothing wrong with it per se, but it would serve for an example. “The clown pants must be wide, but close. They must be loud, but soft.”

Ann snatched it out of his hands, then held them up to the artist’s shoulders. “Well, what do you think?”

He held up the dark fabric. “The colors are not far from mine. Mine is muave, with a sky blue criss-cross pattern. There is something… endless about it.”

Ann set a fist against her hip while she looked down to one of the three still folded over the transfer student’s arm. “I still think the red one goes well with you. The fire in the sky thing kind of doesn’t make sense, but you don’t wear hats or scarves or accessories you’d have to match, so I think the fire fits the intensity in your eyes.”

Akira held his free hand to his chin in as close to an idol pose as he could while holding a bulky bag and several folded sets of clothing on one arm. “Oh, but I’d have to get a whole new line of lipstick and eye shadow.”

Ann threw the horse-checkered yukata at him. “You’re not allowed to talk about eye shadow when you don’t wear it.”

“Perhaps he is still undecided what he is trying to match to,” Yusuke provided. “The dark frames of your glasses allow you to contrast the brightness of warm colors, or to complement the cooler ones. Perhaps think of it as a complement to the palette of we festival-goers. Do you have anyone you might wish to stand beside?”

Hifumi sprang to mind and Akira’s cheeks warmed.

The phones of all three Phantom Thieves buzzed. Makoto’s ID sat at the top of the Phantom Thief chat. [Medjed just called out the Phantom Thief.] She followed up with a link to a live news stream on KFTV.

Ann’s phone brought up the video first, so the others congregated close as a middle-aged reporter in a suit droned on, “…Phantom Thief, do not speak of your false justice. A pretend hero is not what the world needs. We are the true executors of justice.”

Yusuke squinted to read the scrolling text at the bottom. “Who is Medjed and why would they call us out?”

The reporter kept reading his teleprompter, “As a show of magnanimity, Medjed asked the Phantom Thief to repent, threatening retaliation if no action is taken.”

Ann shrugged what little she could while trying to hold her phone steady. “I’ve never heard of them before.”

The artist pulled his phone back out and opened the browser.

The news stream switched to a police press room where camera flashes cast vague impressions of a seizure in the small, regular motions of the police spokesman in dress regalia. After a few minutes of him yammering at reporters who more argued with him and each other than engaged in meaningful back-and-forth, she closed the video.

Morgana stood, pushing against the layers of fabric spilling over the satchel hanging on Akira’s shoulder. “I can’t believe them! They sounded more like sports commentators. Like they were more interested in salacious details than the good that we’ve done for society.”

Yusuke’s gaze took a distant quality and he muttered, “Medjed,” as he scrolled through a search on his phone.

Ann brought the group chat back up. She glanced over at the artist, who scrolled down, his eyes intent on his phone. “Well, Yusuke’s in art-land.” She glanced up at Akira, a mischievous twinkle in her eye that set the transfer student’s hair on end. She led him a few steps away so they could speak in hushed tones. “Don’t think I forgot what we were talking about before. You still need to pick a yukata or two. So who would you wanna match up with?”

Hifumi snapped into his mind’s eye again, her hands still clasped behind him in that moment in the Meditation Garden. Even that little physical contact made him feel more whole than he could remember in his entire life.

Ann poked him in the cheek with a giggle. “Oh, you’ve got someone in mind for sure. Is it Makoto?”

Morgana cackled. “Oh, make it Togo-san!”

Ann straightened, her muscles tensing around her blue eyes. “Togo? That sounds familiar.” She pulled up a browser on her phone and searched. “Oh, the Venus of Shogi! I heard about her on yesterday’s shoot.” Her blue eyes met his grey ones for a long moment. “You and shogi. Why does that make so much sense?” She scrolled for a bit, then shot him a sly smile. “I can see why you’d be thinking of her.”

Akira tried to protest, but only a strangled sound made it out of his throat.

She looked back down at her phone and scrolled for a few moments. “Okay. I think I have a sense of the aesthetics.” She took the horse-checkered yukata and set it aside, then the red one decorated with a flame motif and set that aside too. She lifted up the blue one decorated with grass tufts and creeping vines hinting at distant cliffs. “Is it serious?”

He held the cloth against him, wondering what he’d look like in it with Hifumi’s arm around his while she wore that forest-pattern kimono. “M-my guess is that Medjed’s sense of rivalry got pricked, but I don’t know if it’s just a nuisance thing or if there’s more to it.”

Ann thwacked his arm. “I mean Togo!”

Akira swallowed. “She was the one who told me about her mother.” His grey eyes flicked to the blonde’s. “Yesterday when I messaged you all about that change of heart.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I haven’t even told her about my record.”

Ann’s head tilted, one pigtail dangling. “Why would you? That prick unjustly forced it on you ‘cause you stopped him from forcing himself on that woman.”

Their phones buzzed. Ryuji was the first up, [We have to worry about this medical thing?] A moment later he followed up, [Median.]

[Medjed,] Yuuki texted. [They're a handful of wanna-be Anonymous.]

Yusuke sent, [An obscure god from the Egyptian Book of the Dead.]

Akira texted, [I'm pretty sure he's not a major part of the pantheon or they'd have used him in Stargate SG-1.]

Ryuji’s ID lit next. [Let's go after him as our next target.]

Morgana shook his head. “The Metaverse Navigator only locks on to the real names of specific individuals. Whether Medjed is a group or one person’s alias, it won’t work.”

Before he could try it himself, Makoto texted, [No good. It isn't coming up as a hit in the Nav.]

Akira forwarded the team leader’s explanation.

Ryuji texted, [Dam. Wouldn't bad hackers be just the kind of targets to take down?]

[Crackers,] Akira corrected. [Computer wizards who illegally access data.]

Makoto sent, [I think they have to alter data as well to be considered crackers, otherwise it's just a minor crime of computer access. I thought you said you weren't a tech person, Akira.]

[A cracker broke into Blue Cove's computers almost on a monthly basis. The times he got into my old bastard's systems he'd be up in arms in Isshiki's office. For some reason, he had the idea that she knew who it was.]

Yuuki texted, [Medjed isn't as big as Anonymous used to be, but they're recognized internationally. We can't take these guys lightly.]

Makoto’s ID lit up next. [You sound like you know a lot.]

Ann grinned next to him as she typed. [Yuuki idolizes Anonymous. Has since that Egypt thing. They're what got him interested in computers. He'd always play a decker when Shiho was GMing Shadowrun.]

[Anonymous hacked some significant figure in Egypt?] Yusuke texted.

Three dots danced next to Yuuki’s ID. [During the Arab Spring in 2012, Egypt tried to shut down their internet to stop pro-democracy protesters. Anonymous hacked, like, every fax machine in the country to send the instructions for how to re-connect.]

Ryuji followed with, [Dude, that DOES sound bass.]

Ann snorted with laughter.

[Bass,] Ryuji tried again.

Akira rolled his eyes. [We get the picture.]

Ann let out an ‘ooo’ beside him. [That could be even bigger than Kaneshiro.]

Yuuki texted, [But one of the main things people fear about hackers is their anonymity. Operating behind a pseudonym and only ever appearing online, we'd be unlikely to ever learn their location. Nobody even knows how many people are in Medjed.]

[Fork,] Ryuji texted.

Yusuke sent, [You didn't consider any of that when you proposed them, did you, Ryuji?]

Ann fluffed at one of her pigtails. “It’s not like they actually gave a timeline or stakes. This might just be grandstanding.”

Akira nodded, then sent, [Any insights, Makoto?]

[Big Sis specializes in financial crimes and corruption, not computer crimes. If Mishima-kun doesn't know, I definitely wouldn't.]

Ann slid the group chat aside to read something on her browser. “According to Medjed’s ultimatum, they want us to submit to their instructions and they’ll accept us as one of them. Otherwise hammer of justice and all that blah.” She paused, eyes darting down the page. “People of Japan, cease worship of the Phantom Thief. We shall punish failure by confiscation of possessions.”

Akira tossed the blue yukata over his shoulder and took the others in his right. “Well, Yuuki’s not a hacker, but this is more his territory. The rest of us will just have to keep an eye out.” He looked over at the artist still squinting at his phone. “You know, we can deal with Medjed later, right? Let’s finish this for now.”

Monday, 18 June 2016
Early Evening
Shibuya, Teikyuu Building

Ryuji held a hand to his brow to shield his eyes as he scanned the crowd. Despite being indoors, the air still felt muggy and oppressive. The 2-D class representative next to him waved a flimsy pocket notebook to try to cool himself off. Ryuji wished he had something to do the same with, but despite having capacity in his khaki shorts, the track habit of traveling as unencumbered as possible left him with nothing but his wallet to try to fan himself. The track star grunted. “It’s way too effin’ hot to be huntin’ peeps down. When’s their ETA?”

Mishima pulled out his phone and brought up the text messenger. “Last he sent, Akira’s on his way here, should just be a couple minutes. Same with Kitagawa-san. No word from Ann or Niijima-senpai.”

Ryuji slumped. “Wish I knew what the eff was takin’ ‘em so long. Least with Akira it’s the first time he’s worn one. Ann’s got a couple, she had a different one every time school had its culture festival.” He squinted out at the crowd, some chatting and some moving with little sense of urgency. “Suzui-san gonna be here?”

Mishima’s shoulders drooped. “She still can’t walk long enough for long public events like the fireworks festival.” He bit his lip a moment. “That or she’s still mad at me. Not like she doesn’t deserve to be.”

Ryuji held his hand over his eyes. It didn’t shield his eyes like it would outdoors, but he was so used to it from track days it helped him scan the crowd even if it was just what the transfer student called psycho-somatic. “Man, if all’a you almost-married types are teachin’ me anythin’, it’s that girls suck. Is it really worth every problem bein’ all your fault even when it ain’t, just for a hot piece ‘a ass?”

A hand swatted the back of the track star’s head and Akira walked out from behind. “When other people are that important to you, you start realizing that you’re responsible for at least some of anything enough to start a fight. Even us teenage guys don’t have dirty thoughts all the time.”

“Just every sex seconds.” Ryuji gave a playful counterpunch to the transfer student, but his aim went wide when his eyes went up above the minimalist, frameless glasses to the combed hair parted down the middle with the precision of a professional’s hands. His eyes dropped to the unfamiliar blue yukata decorated with grasses and vines, then back up to the kid who was the right height, hair and eye color but wrong everything else to be… “Akira?”

The boy reached a hand to his hair, but stopped short of running his fingers through the side and lowered the limb. Pink dusted his cheeks. Akira’s voice came out of his mouth, “I can’t look like a slob all the time.” His eyes darted out. “Ann or Makoto arrive?”

The three Shujin boys spotted the blue hair moving towards them before Yusuke slipped out of the crowds, wearing a kinda-purple yukata with a tilted blue grid on it. He gave a smile. “At last, we begin to rally. Is Takamaki-san with you?”

Stuffing his hands in his pockets, Ryuji rolled his eyes. They could deny it all they wanted, he knew why they wanted to know where a ten was. “The girls’re late, as usual. Wish I knew what the eff was takin’ ‘em so long.” He looked over the artist. “Still, Yusuke, I can tell why ‘rame taught you peeps how to wear ‘em. You look like you belong in one.”

“You are not the first to tell me so,” Yusuke said.

Before he could go on, a pair of young women broke from the turbulent stream from the trains to close on the boys wearing traditional festival garb. The girls had their own versions, one pink and one black, both decorated with different flower motifs. Pink Yukata glanced up and down both dressed-up boys before giving a second look to the artist. “You boys heading to the fireworks?”

Ryuji felt his mouth drift open a little, his heart beating faster part in jealousy and part in two hot chicks in fancy clothes that made him wonder what they were wearing underneath. How did the two most clueless dudes pick up all the chicks?

Akira nodded. “We are.”

Black Yukata gave the boys another once-over, the corners of her mouth curling up in approval. Her dark eyes zeroed on the transfer student. “So are we. Want to keep us company?”

Ryuji couldn’t believe his luck. “Hells yeah!”

Pink Yukata took in the artist with slow appreciation. “Are you a model? You look phenomenal in that.”

Black Yukata stepped closer to the transfer student, who straightened as if standing off against a senior at Shujin. She flashed him a smile that made the blood thunder in the runner’s veins. “You’re pretty good-looking, too.” Her eyes traced over his hair. “The hair makes you look a bit dorky. A side-part would amp up the sexy.”

Ryuji’s jaw drifted open more. That lucky bast—

Akira retreated a step when she reached up for his hair, his hands coming up as fists for a moment before he caught himself. An exchange of glances with the class rep next to him, then Akira straightened again and stopped himself from reaching for his hair. “I-I’m taken.”

Black Yukata pouted, but kept fem-ogling him.

Ryuji did his best to straighten and puff out his chest. He elbowed the transfer student. “Don’t pay no ‘tention to him, he’s just shy. We got all night if ya want.” When the transfer student gave him a weary glare, Ryuji elbowed him again. “C’mon, we ain’t got all evenin’ to think ‘bout this. Live a little.” He felt the blood rushing through him as he flashed his best smile to the girl in the black yukata, wondering if she was in college or just past.

Pink Yukata gave a suggestive wiggle of her eyebrows at the artist. “Well, I’m not.”

Yusuke drew one arm up as if to ward off the hot chicks. “You’re disgracing your own femininity.”

Even Mishima gawked, his pupils dilated. So the heart of a red-blooded man beat in Akira’s class rep after all.

Ryuji grabbed fists of his pockets to keep himself from slapping his forehead. What dumbass would push away girls throwing themselves at him? The girls scuttled off and the track star turned what energy he had to glaring daggers at the artist. “Dude! You just cock-blocked not only yourself, but dudes who’re ready for the next step in manhood!”

Yusuke turned up his nose. “It is unseemly to—”

Ryuji shook his head. “For real, you gotta get your head outta the ninth century. Sure, those quiet girls can be tote hot, but a girl who knows what she wants?” He gave a wide smile and made a click sound with his mouth as he wiggled his eyebrows.

“Then why don’t you go after them?” Ann snapped from behind.

Ryuji turned to see Ann and Makoto, both of them stole the boys’ breath. The blonde’s usual pigtails were traded out for a high ponytail tonight. Ann wore a light-blue yukata she filled out even more than the pink one she wore to Shujin’s culture fair last year. A pity about that bitchy look.

Makoto sighed in disappointment, though she kept her shoulders square. The posture made it easier to take in those feminine curves the boring Shujin uniforms camouflaged with sameness. Her white, floral-patterned yukata looked even more formal than Ann’s, and she traded the braid in her hair for a red headband keeping her dark hair back, the way her front bangs hung over the red headband amping up the cute. The only thing that stole her sexy in that traditional way was standing right next to Ann. Ryuji didn’t miss the way Makoto’s eyes swept down and up the transfer student’s full height twice, or the rosy tint her cheeks took.

Mishima stepped out, “We weren’t going to do any such thing.” He glanced over at the transfer student. “And what’s this about being taken?”

Ryuji considered whether Akira was doing Ann for only a moment. They were definitely into each other, but they’d both be way calmer if that was going on. Ryuji rolled his eyes. “He was just sayin’ that, dude. There ain’t a guy alive who don’t have his girl on his phone’s background. You seen his? He’s got a shogi board setup.”

Akira crossed his arms, jostling the satchel on his shoulder. “It’s called the Ultimate Excalibur Attack, Ryuji. It’s a super hard formation I haven’t figured out how to break yet.”

Makoto’s eyes went wide as dinner plates and she gawked him up and down in the open this time. “Akira?” Her blush grew darker.

Ann just flashed a smarmy grin. “I know, right? He cleans up nice.” She gave him a thumb’s up. “Told you a salon would be worth it.” She turned to Yusuke. “And poor Yusuke. He probably doesn’t even know what he’s missing out on for talking down to an interested girl like that.”

Makoto slipped her hands in the opposite sleeves. “I think it’s admirable that he stays true to his ideals.” Her gaze grew hot as it flicked to the track star. “Unlike someone I know.”

Mishima nodded. “You’ve got to give him credit for being consistent.” His dark eyes widened a little. “Oh, speaking of credit, how’d you guys think you did on the finals?”

Ryuji slumped in place, then pulled one hand out to point at the transfer student. “You two double-teamed me for hours with the hardest shit ever an’ it was still a pain in the ass.”

Makoto nodded. “Akira-kun did seem to have a pretty solid grasp on everything when we were reviewing.”

Ann tugged at Yusuke’s sleeve. “Well, don’t just stand there. Crowds are gonna take all the best spots if we don’t get going!”

Mishima rushed to keep up with the middle. “Hey, while we’re all together, we should make sure everyone’s migrated to LINE so we have secure communications.”

Ryuji followed along, appreciating the view from behind.

Monday, 18 July 2016
Evening
Odaiba, Fireworks Festival

The model ended up being right, but a downpour started less than halfway through the fireworks. Makoto was a little surprised when the transfer student whipped up a blue umbrella, but the heavy rain drove her along with all the others under it. She couldn’t identify the faint scent of soap on him over the lingering notes of coffee, but it made her blush that she was close enough to smell it. Or maybe it was the way he just fit that grassy-decorated yukata and finally did his hair, framing that boyish face.

Akira struggled to pull in a breath. “It’s a two person umbrella, not a ten man tent!”

A flood warning sounded over the external speakers. Ann, getting little cover from the transfer student’s umbrella, led the group’s retreat into a convenience store. Makoto busied herself with trying to squeeze out the soaked half of her yukata, then straighten it.

Akira put his back against the shelves and brought up online shogi.

Ann groused, “My feet hurt. I’m soaked.” She twisted at her once-floofy ponytail, wringing water out of it. “This sucks.”

When the game came up on his screen, Akira grumped. “Goddammit, I hate this asshole.”

Ryuji strained to listen to the chatter in the background. “Duuude. All the commotion we made with ‘rame and this is all we get?”

Mishima quirked an eyebrow. “Your guys’ work is covert by nature. Spies and janitors both have jobs that are very rarely thanked in public. Risette wouldn’t be the big deal she is if her entire crew and production staff was always jockying for position in front of the camera.”

The track star’s face twisted. “But I wanna change the world with a boom, like one’a them fireworks. Not sweep floors all my life.”

Akira’s phone buzzed and he read for a moment, swiped and tapped his screen, then swiped back. “Shit.”

Makoto leaned back as the other Phantom Thieves crowded around. Alibaba was back, texting, [Medjed is not to be discounted. In exchange for changing your target's heart, I can take care of them for you.]

Mishima leaned to try to make out the screen. “I may like Anonymous, but the things they do are on a level way above anything I can manage on computers. If he can get into your phone, maybe he can help you against Medjed, too.”

Ryuji shrugged. “Makes sense to me.”

Akira’s lip curled. “We are not mercenaries to be sicced at whoever the latest big bad asshole wants taken out.”

Yusuke nodded. “Agreed. I only recently came out from under the shadow of a criminal. I shall not serve a criminal mastermind again.” He glanced over at the half-soaked class representative. “Did you discover anything about our target?”

Mishima nodded. “I’ve still got some print-outs to check out at home, but there are three Sakura Futabas. One lives in Nerima, but doesn’t have a job or anything exceptional after her marriage certificate nine years ago. That was the one I spent the most time chasing down yesterday, so I can’t confirm anything about the other two.”

The transfer student’s phone buzzed, and Alibaba texted, [Do not underestimate my powers as well. My skillset is uniquely qualified to counter them. If you change the target's heart, that will show me the Phantom Thief's quality and I will stop Medjed to show Japan yours.]

Makoto slipped her hands inside her sleeves. “That would be rather helpful, especially as none of us have the tools or skill set to handle a hacker. If Alibaba wanted to report us, he would have already. I think we need to put serious consideration to his offer.”

Akira typed out, [We'll hold a vote tomorrow.]

Morgana shook his head to fling away a couple droplets that splattered him during the rush into the convenience store. “No sense arguing about it. Let’s let our information officers do their thing and we’ll get ready for a dive into Mementos. We’ve got several targets waiting for us anyway.”

Tuesday, 19 June 2016
Lunch
Shujin, Class 2-D

About half the class lounged at their desks, most working on homework or munching on boxed lunch. Akira sent a well-wishing text to Hifumi, then set his phone down, packed up his empty box lunch, and got back to the week’s homework.

The classroom’s rear door slammed open, Mishima and Ryuji standing in the opening. The latter shouted, “Dude! You traitor!”

Akira blinked, as confused as the rest of the students who gave them all furtive glances.

Mishima stepped past the runner, his eyes still wide with surprise. “Grades have been posted. You ranked ninth, Akira-san!” The dozen-odd students still in the room broke into chatter. When the transfer student stared in disbelief, Mishima dashed in to grab his arm, pull him out of the chair, then lead him to the grades posted on the second floor.

Akira had always gotten better than average grades, but breaking top ten in a large, academic prep school like Shujin? Sure enough, the top ten were posted to the right of the general list, names large and their precise scores broken down by category below the bold names. Others already crowded across the hall, either in clumps of established cliques or juniors gawking at the top scorers. He heard no few wondering how he cheated, but for the first time he could remember he heard his name coming in whispers wondering how good he was.

One of the girls from his class stepped out of the broken crowds scattering through the lunch-time hallway. “Wow, I didn’t know I’d have a top scorer in my very own class, Kurusu-kun.” Short and Stupid clasped her hands behind her back and tilted her head down, the only two demure signals on the girl he remembered talking trash about Suzui weeks ago. “Say, could I get a copy of your notes…?”

Akira’s jaw clenched tight. He was all set to lambast her when Ishikawa from class 2-C stepped forward. “I’ll pay!”

“Wait, is that real? Didn’t he cheat?”

“Who cares? He got the grade and Shujin put it up on the wall!”

Akira backpedaled as the crowd encroached.

Chapter 79: July 19th, Torii

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Tuesday, 19 July 2016
After School
Shibuya, Taro’s Patisserie

The smell of reheated pastries and cooking grease suffused the air of the low-end sit-down cafe, the bustle of dozens of people thrummed against Akira. He looked around for the group until he spotted Yuuki waving. Akira slipped through the crowd to the corner booth. Far exceeding his usual exam scores left him feeling dizzy, and the churning Tokyo crowds ground down at him. While navigating around the too-small square tables, he spotted a couple in Kosei uniforms, the curly-haired girl’s arm pulling her boyfriend close with one arm wrapped around the boy’s waist. It reminded him of his tumultuous encounter with Hifumi on Sunday, where her arms wrapped around him and for the first time in years, he felt like somebody else in the world wanted him to exist. Akira adjusted his gloves to try and settle his nerves, then paused at the booth to let the team leader hop out onto the table.

Makoto tapped her fingertips on the table as she stared into Yuuki’s eyes. “That’s an unsettling possibility. If true, there could be several Palaces for each school in Tokyo. And hundreds scattered through the businesses.”

Morgana looked around at the assembled Phantom Thieves, Yusuke with a history book open before him and the rest looking up from their phones. “Now that we’re all here, let’s start with the situation. Medjed hasn’t acted since their threat against the economy, but that’s no reason to be complacent.”

Makoto brushed at her hair before re-settling her braided hairband. “I wouldn’t say there’s been any complacency here about Medjed’s lack of action.”

Yuuki nodded to her. “It might even be cause to worry. I wouldn’t call myself a hacker, but I know it takes time to do anything with computer code. They could be hard at work now, and we’d never know it until the virus hits.”

Akira tapped on the table. “I’ll deal with it. What’s our strategy for Medjed?”

Yusuke closed his textbook. “What can we do? None of us have the acumen to face a hacker on his own ground.”

Ryuji groaned, slamming his soda down on the table. “So all we got to rely on is that Baba dude who hacked Akira’s phone? This tote sucks and blows.”

“It’s Alibaba,” Akira corrected. “I’d rather go after Alibaba just for fucking with my bank account, but it looks like we don’t have any choice.” He looked over Yuuki. “You said you had a breakthrough with this Sakura he’s got us targeting?”

Yuuki let out a long breath. “I had to go down to the courthouse in Chiyoda-ku to look up family registries. Sakura is the eighth most common name in Tokyo, but there are only three Sakura Futabas. One is a housewife who lives in the northern outskirts of Nerima. One is a financial account assistant manager for Sotan Construction, and the other is a minor who lives in Yongen-Jaya.”

Akira perked, a lifetime of disappointments tempering the flicker of hope in his chest. “Really? What’s the address? I could go down there and collect info myself.”

Yuuki read off Boss’s address.

Makoto saw the transfer student’s stare. “What is it, Akira-kun?”

“That’s Boss,” Akira said. “He never mentioned having a daughter. And he doesn’t seem the sort to adopt.”

“She could also be a cousin or something.” Ann brushed a pigtail off her shoulder and glanced from Yuuki to Akira. “Think you could learn anything from him?”

Akira sat back in his booth seat. “I would’ve said yes if it was a stranger, but Boss hasn’t said a thing about her. If he keeps his cards that close to his chest, I’m not sure I’ll be able to pry anything out of him. Hopefully it’s the one keeping company books.” There was that weird thing about fathers, but… he didn’t seem the fatherly type.

Ryuji sucked at his straw, the bubbling of liquid burbling at the bottom of his cup. “Dude, all this investigatin’ is boring as eff. Why can’t we just have a good baddie to whack?”

Yuuki straightened. “On that note, I do have some new requests you guys might be able to take care of in Mementos. Yamada Hiro has picked up some of the vacuum left in Shibuya with a scam operation targeting guest workers.”

Morgana’s eyes narrowed. “Sounds like a heart in need of changing. All in favor?”

A variety of “Aye!” lifted up from most, except Yusuke giving a “Hear, hear.”

Morgana sat, his tail curling around his feet. “All opposed?”

Nothing but the surrounding cacophony intruded.

Yuuki scrolled down on his phone. “Another is a Shujin senior blackmailing some of Kaneshiro’s victims in Shujin and a couple other schools. Ouwada Jin. No idea how he found out about them, but now they’re on the hook to pay hush money again.”

Morgana growled, his pointed teeth bared, though the sound was drowned out by the crowds around them. “We worked too hard to free Shibuya from Kaneshiro’s clutches to let somebody else move in. Any objections?”

Nothing but determined focus came from the rest of the Phantom Thieves. Ryuji gave a particularly nasty snarl. “Count me in this douche.”

Makoto covered her face with her hands. “Please pay attention to what you say, Ryuji-kun.”

Morgana nodded. “Very well, then. That leaves us with three targets waiting for us in Mementos—”

“We’re not done,” Akira snapped.

The others stared in surprise at the force of his declaration.

Breathing in deep, Akira held up a steady hand to show he had control. “I have one. Togo Mitsuyo. She’s a chief of program scheduling for KFTV. Lost her shot behind the camera and is trying to live vicariously through m—her daughter, and it’s destroying her.” He paused, noting sympathetic looks from Yuuki and Ann but just calculation from Makoto. “She’s also running fraud and betting rings. I remember seeing her laundering money through Kaneshiro when we still had access to his Palace.”

Ann curled a fist. “I know what it’s like to have shitty adults put you in a box and take away all your options. At least my parents were gone during the shit with Kamoshida. I can’t imagine how horrible it would be for one of my parents to be the one shutting me down and trying to wrap me up.”

Yusuke gave her a soft smile. “You have a truly noble soul. As warm as the morning sun, but as gentle as an autumn breeze.”

Ann blushed deeply.

Ryuji groaned. “Get a room. Can we get going, already? I wanna beat Shadow face.”

Back on his feet and tail swishing in agitation, Morgana snapped, “Right! Any objections for changing Togo Mitsuyo?” Only the ebbing roar of the surrounding conversations intruded on the corner booth, so the guide-trapped-in-cat-form stood. “Then that’s settled. Let’s go change some hearts.”

Mementos, Togo’s Distortion

All the pocket domains of Shadows had that unnervingly-perfect polished obsidian with glowing red patterns, but this one yawned open like a stadium and stretched so deep he could hardly make out the vein-like pipes on the far side. A shapely woman stood in the center of the cavernous space, a black fog swirling around her. The cord floating out from the pipes almost vanished as it snaked its way through the air to the top of Shadow Togo’s head.

Ryuji squinted, scanning her silhouette through the swirling black fog. “That’s Togo?” He gave a wolf whistle.

Morgana clapped a hand on his face. “Reaper.” He flipped out the bayonet on his crossbow.

“Togo Mitsuyo,” Akira said, hand clenching his sub-machine gun’s handle and heart beat rising at the woman torturing the most virtuous soul he knew. “Your days abusing Hifumi are over.”

Ann came to a stop at the front, between Morgana and Akira. “Yeah. What the hell is wrong with you? A mother is supposed to protect and nurture her children!”

The woman surrounded by thickening black fog scoffed at them. “I only do what’s natural.”

Akira’s jaw clenched. “The bribes and extortion surrounding Hifumi’s matches?”

Shadow Togo scoffed, holding a hand out as if she couldn’t bear to look on them. “The world only rewards the victors. Fixing matches is necessary.”

Makoto came to Akira’s right. “Perverting justice and spitting on sportsmanship itself by fixing matches is hardly necessary or natural.”

Shadow Togo laughed, a grating and nasal sound. The glowing patterns in the floor underneath them shuddered as if her spite was too much. “What kind of troublesome parents would let unruly children like you out?”

Ryuji brought up the team’s left flank, a snarl peeking out from underneath his heavy skull mask. “You sound like some old hag. ‘Unruly children’…”

The sweeping red patterns on the floor blazed so bright it hurt. Shadow Togo snarled, “Trash like you don’t even deserve to be beneath my feet. The few greats society produces deserve to walk with clean soles. Ugly rabble want the spotlight without having anything worthy of it. They don’t even deserve fifteen minutes.”

Yusuke’s hands tensed on his rifle. “How distasteful to show such callous disregard.”

“And what about Hifumi?” Akira bellowed, fist clenching around the handle of his sub-machine gun. “She’s your daughter, and you treat her worse than a dog!”

A six-sided pillar below Shadow Togo began a slow rise. Her ruby lips twisted and golden eyes blazed at him, making an unsettling resemblance to a Goa’uld host. “You dare speak of my Hifumi? I birthed her. I raised her!” The pillar stopped and she raised both hands high. “Children should be devoted to their parents. My happiness is her duty! That is what she exists for!”

Makoto stepped forward, her heavy iron mask concealing part of her grimace. “Children are not pawns for you to use and discard!”

“You think that insolent slut would be where she is without me?” Shadow Togo bellowed, darkness swirling thicker and thicker around her until only the glow of her eyes remained distinct. “I am the one who hired those tattooed freaks to break Sasaki’s legs so his son would withdraw, giving her the shot the Association never would have allowed a woman!” She floated up into the air, almost a meter above the already elevated pillar below her. Long walls of obsidian extended down from across the ceiling to box them in, their pace slow but the rumble still shaking the floor beneath the Thieves’ feet. “I am the one who sicced private investigators on her enemies, who bribed and blackmailed and extorted those who stood in my way.” She hunched, curling in on herself. “I am the one who sold those trashy tabloids which brought everyone’s eyes to the beauty she inherited from me.”

Akira gaped. “You sold those humiliating stories?”

The descending obsidian walls collided with the floor with a clunk. Long, dark limbs unfolded out of Shadow Togo’s back, solid as her arms but thin and many-jointed. “There can be no heroine without sacrifice, without tragedy!” The wings flapped high and she unfurled, opaque material snapping out to fill them in and blowing away the fog. She spread her limbs wide, every one ending in sharp claws. Akira fought to keep from gawking at the shiny, skin-tight material bearing her porcelain skin from collarbones to waist. Her long, flowing brown hair rippled as if unbound from gravity. “Now it’s my time for victory, and no thieves will take it from me!”

The quaking beneath their feet intensified. Yusuke backed closer to the short team leader, rifle up as glowing red cracks spread across the walls. “What is happening?”

Morgana jerked his crossbow left and right. “I don’t know, I’ve never seen Mementos change before!”

The walls flexed like the inside of an inhaling lung. The obsidian surface cracked, then shattered. Red shrouding curtains took their place. Sickly yellow light leaked from stage lights hanging from the ceiling. What had been a thin pillar widened into a raised stage platform. More hexagonal columns shot up around them, reaching a couple meters in height before popping, leaving enormous gongs.

Ann stumbled into Akira. “What the hell is going on?”

Long, low tables and squared red cushions rose up from the floor like plant shoots in a sped-up documentary as the space took on a look vaguely like the Shinto temples, but the addition of very familiar black pustules brought the tension to a new high. The closest popped, leaving an obese, towering humanoid in old-timey white clothes and a white, ceramic mask.

Morgana’s pupils shrank to pinpoints. “It’s becoming a Palace!”

“Agathion!” Akira shouted, meeting the dark abyss where the Tenhou Gensui’s eyes should be. His persona lanced a bolt of lightning into the Shadow’s face mask, driving it stumbling back.

Another pustule burst just a few meters to one side, driving Makoto and Yusuke back. A voluptuous woman stood out of it, more naked than wearing Chinese-style court dress, two fox tails shaking behind her.

Ryuji shot the kitsune Shadow in the head, causing it to stumble back. She righted and shot an angry glare at him as sparks danced between her fingers.

A clack echoed through the forming temple dominated by red fabrics and dark-stained wood, and the sliding doors at the back threw open. Like a time-lapse of weeds, an audience rose up out of the ground, applauding as Shadow Togo bowed and posed at the stage in the center of the hodge-podge between a Shinto temple and old-style castle. They threw oval-shaped coins and offered golden statuettes. From the heavy swinging wood doors, Morgana shouted, “Come on, guys! Our escape’s open!”

Makoto paused to blast another shot at the kitsune, knocking her stumbling.

Still backing up, Akira shot a quick bolt into the Shadow from Agathion, thinking through his Persona repertoire for one to counter her. “What about Togo’s Shadow?”

“That’s no good without her Treasure!” Morgana shouted, shooting one of the fat, white-masked figures in the throat.

The twin-tailed kitsune lashed a hand out, casting a lightning bolt at Agathion. His Persona withstood the attack, but the pain still caused him to trip. Falling backwards, he hit one of the dull-eyed audience members. The instant the woman in a formal gown jostled, her eyes locked onto his and glowed with gold. She jerked as her body distended, transforming into a black pustule.

Yusuke’s strong hand caught him, hauling the transfer student to his feet. Gunfire howled as the Phantom Thieves tried to hold off the now dozen Shadows running after them. As the last one in the line, as soon as Akira crossed the threshold of the double sliding doors at the back of the huge temple-theater space, the other Phantom Thieves slammed the doors shut.

A towering figure wearing an old-style white top and red, gathered pants approached from the hall to Akira’s right. It held a long cane in its hands. A noh-style mask covered most of its face, the yellow glow of its eyes shining through pinprick slits. “Hey,” its gravelly voice spat. “What are thieves doing in Togo the Great’s Temple?”

Ryuji stepped forward, but without having caught his breath, his shot passed right next to its mask.

The figure clasped low on its cane with one hand, ripping the top out with the other and slashing at Ryuji with the concealed sword.

Yusuke aimed down his rifle, blasting it in the chest.

The figure collapsed to the floor and dissipated like smoke on the wind.

The Phantom Thieves gasped for breath for long moments until Makoto gasped at Ryuji. “Reaper, you’re bleeding!”

“Huh?” He looked down at his arms, spotting a drip of red collecting at his fingers He lifted his arm to follow the red trail from around the base of his carpi ulnaris. “It’s okay, he just nicked me.”

“That’s not some paper cut, Ryuji,” she snapped, slinging her shotgun. She grabbed his arm and twisted to get a better look at it, drawing a gasp from the runner. “That’s going to need stitches if we don’t get it right away.” She looked to the team leader, but when he shook his head, she dropped in that summon-formation of Johanna and clenched her teeth to strain through the fatigue.

Warm motes washed over Ryuji and the wound closed up.

Morgana, who had been standing in the middle of the hallway with an unfocused look on his face, coughed to get their attention. His eyes remained closed, but his nose and ears were both perked up. His crossbow pointed at a set of doors embossed with a snarling dog at the end of the hall. “There it is. Togo’s Treasure was where that Shadow just came from.”

Ann looked over her pistol. The flashlight remained off, but the metal cowl over the top jutted off the back, the barrel sticking forward and the chamber gaping. “I’m out. Sorry, guys.”

Yusuke shook his head and aimed down the other hallway, gold-trimmed beige wallpaper lining the walls. “You have nothing to be sorry for, Panther. You gave your all to help us escape an ambush that would certainly have killed every one of us.”

Morgana pulled a lever to cock his crossbow, his jaws clenching. “Zorro got hit pretty bad in there. I don’t think I’ll be able to summon my Persona for a while.”

Yusuke gave a shallow nod. “I as well.”

Ann looked from her gun to the artist, then the small stature of the team leader. “Then we gotta get out of here.”

Akira stepped closer, his hand clenching around his sub-machine gun. “But the Treasure is just a little ways away. C’mon, guys, we’re not gonna have an opportunity like this again. We zero in on the Treasure’s location, then find a way out and bam! We have our infiltration route and can send a calling card tomorrow.”

Yusuke turned to the transfer student in a long coat. “Assuming we can guess the location and distortion. We are no longer in Mementos.”

Morgana took a long breath. “We’re two Personas down, and Ann’s gun is already empty. You and Makoto aren’t far behind, especially since you both used them fighting Shadows on the way down Mementos. Our priority is to get out alive.”

Akira’s heart thundered in his ears. “We are not abandoning—!”

Morgana bellowed, “We’re falling back, and that’s an order!”

Togo’s Temple, Front Bailey

Clambering down the steel drain pipe snaking down the massive corner post, Akira hopped back from the temple big enough to swallow Ueno Stadium. Half a dozen spotlights shone up onto the thick clouds. Nervous and needing to do something with his hands, he reached into his longcoat and drew his machete. Ann followed next, her boots hitting the raked gravel of the rock garden with a crunch before she stumbled away.

The others descended, Morgana bringing up the rear. His breath still came in rapid pants. “I… don’t think we… should trust the roof will… be unlocked next time.”

Makoto swept her shotgun at the grounds around them. Her weapon was spent during the escape, but her gun-light still illuminated the night-time temple grounds. The cone of light swept over pale gravel, squared bamboo plots, and snaking waterways. After a few seconds, she looked down at the team leader. “At least we’ve got an escape. That’s Tokyo outside the gate.”

Akira followed the direction of her light to a wide spot of white light at a road gate with the forest of buildings which looked like everywhere in Tokyo to him. “Anyone know where this place is?”

Ryuji and Makoto both shook their heads.

Akira glanced to Ann, but she just gave her own shake. He ground his teeth, but knew he shouldn’t have expected the only person living in Tokyo almost as little as him to have memorized such a sprawling city. “Fox, as soon as we get out, sketch that skyline. It might be our only clue about the location of Togo’s Palace.”

Ryuji boggled. “We almost get killed, an’ you wanna run back in here?”

Akira clenched his fists and turned the runner. “Are you saying the Phantom Thieves should give up?”

“For a Shadow bein’ mean to one chick?” Ryuji blurted. He slapped his mask up, making even more clear his raised eyebrows and pale face. “Eff yeah! There’s strong Shadows everywhere, an’ if it wasn’t for Byakko’s weird doll thing—”

“Homonculus,” Morgana corrected.

“Rider’d be dead,” the sprinter finished. “An’ it’s not like we got a magic spell to un-deadify someone if we go down. If this was the Palace for Medjed, then yeah—that dude’s threatenin’ to ruin all Japan! But we gotta be smart ‘bout this.” He jerked his good hand up, pointing at the drain pipe they all just shimmied down. “This went from some Shadow in Mementos to her own effin’ Palace. I want the Phantom Thieves to get famous too, but this is way too much risk for just one bad family.”

Akira flexed his fingers, unable to believe his ears. “People are finally starting to believe in us!” Red crept in at the corners of his vision. “We’re just starting to make some progress on changing real hearts, and you want to run away?”

Yusuke stepped between them, putting a hand on Akira’s chest to keep him from advancing on the runner. “Be calm, Joker. This Palace may be beyond our capabilities today, but with the experience we gain countering Medjed – somehow – and a few more targets in Mementos, we may find ourselves strong enough to come back.”

Makoto nodded. “In either case, becoming a Palace has changed the situation and deserves another vote. The risk just rose a lot and the reward is no higher. Japan is bigger than one person. Medjed or that Sakura Futaba have to be our priorities.”

“One person?” Akira turned on her, pushing the artist’s hand away. He pointed the machete in his hand at her. “Kamoshida was one person.”

“Settle down,” Morgana shouted. When all eyes were on him, he coughed into a hand. “We’re spent. Most of us couldn’t summon our Personas again if our lives depended on it, we tried. As the leader of the Phantom Thieves, I’m calling the day done. Go home and rest, or see the doctor if you think you need it. Medjed is threatening to ruin all of Japan, so that has to be our priority. The rest will have to be dealt with in a later meeting when we’re not all running on fumes.”

The others broke up, but before the artist could cross the threshold, Akira grabbed his elbow. He knew what the team leader said made sense, but he couldn’t just let this go. Not for the one person in his life who deserved a chance she wasn’t being given. “Fox. Could you at least sketch that out there, so we have something to go on when we need to get this Palace’s location?”

Yusuke took a steady breath and raised his mask to wipe sweat from his face, something about his aplomb at the same time comforting and infuriating. His face seemed as impassive as his mask, but after a moment he nodded. “Certainly. That we have something else which must be done today does not mean we can’t turn our attention back tomorrow.”

Akira let out a long breath, the weight of a continent lifted from his shoulders. “Thanks.”

Wednesday, 20 June 2016
After School
Shujin, Class 2-D

Even before the first wave of escapees got out, Akira’s phone vibrated, as did the class representative’s.

In the new Phantom Thief group chat winked Ryuji’s ID. [Now that Mom's finally off my back about grades, and today's a rest day, we should all do something. We haven't gone out training as a Phantom Thief group since before Madarame.]

Akira rolled his eyes. [That's because schedules started getting in the way. Kosei is basically one week ahead of Shujin. And we were lucky Makoto has been able to drop as much time as she has on Heart Changing.]

Her ID winked next. [Speaking of, I'm afraid I will be unavailable. Student Council and cram school.]

Ann stood at the window side of the room, straightening her school satchel over her shoulder. [I was feeling good about my pistol with that holographic sight, but the only effective shot in Togo's Palace was when I nailed a Shadow in the eye.]

Ryuji popped up. [You think you need some quick accuracy aid like Akira's laser dot?]

[No, I think I need to step up my firepower. But new guns at Untouchable are EXPENSIVE. I either need more bookings at my agency, or we need another windfall from Palace trinkets.]

Yusuke texted, [We have found trinkets in Mementos as well.]

Akira’s gaze flicked to the team leader tucked in his desk, then relayed, [I Creep From Your Desk says today's a rest day. No Metaverse. I was thinking of seeing Shinya today—he said he's there.]

Ryuji texted, [Well, you up to Gun About training?]

Yusuke sent, [With no club involvement, I have no pressing fixed schedule in most afternoons.]

Ann gave a small wave as she strode out.

Akihabara, Gigolo Arcade

Akira led the way into the small arcade, around the crane games to the boy styled The King by arcade regulars. Only a couple milled around to watch him play as he dual-pistoled his way through a demon-infested hospital.

Yusuke stared at the heavy weapon controller on the far right. “Odd, I do not recall this at the Shibuya arcade.”

Ryuji took the artist by the shoulders and slid him to the side to stand in front of the rifle controller. “Oh, no. That one is mine today. I just survived a temple of doom filled with sexy minxes who wanted to eat my face.”

Akira reached around the artist to flick the track star in the ear.

“Ow!”

Akira set the satchel with Morgana on the ground next to the controller cradle dock, then turned to the middle-schooler and swallowed. “Uh… he was talking about… his new video game.”

Shinya blasted two horned demons with claws so long they would have made everyday tasks impossible. “I didn’t ask.” After several minutes, a combined ambush from a player with grenades and another with a sniper rifle brought one of Shinya’s characters down. He blasted the grenadier, then turned to the others, stepping on the pedal to send his other character into cover. “So, you brought the loudmouth again.”

Ryuji raised a fist to his chin and flicked his hand out. The boy returned the gesture.

Yusuke glanced between them, then to Akira. “Is that a salute of some kind?”

“No!” Akira said.

Shinya turned back to the game. “I only said I’d teach you.”

Sighing, Akira ran a hand through his hair. “Listen, the original offer was always for you to help us out. You’re a good shooter teacher, but I’ve got enough confidence in my ego to know I’m not going to defeat Owner on my own any time soon. Ryuji’s a good guy, and so’s Yusuke.” He took the pistol controller for player two.

Shinya glanced up at the artist framing a portion of the game screen with his fingers. “He stops doing that, and I’ll consider it.”

Wednesday, 20 June 2016
Evening
Kanda Catholic Church

Akira paced to the pew where Hifumi sat, his travel go board held in his hand. Most days, he would feel a sense of giddiness at being able to share time and an invigorating match or few with his gorgeous rival. This time, the memory of her asking him to change her mother’s heart played in his mind. His palms and underarms felt slick and his stomach clenched. The signs of nervous weariness on her only enhanced his concern, the slight slouch to her shoulders, the off-center cant of her Kosei uniform.

He came to a stop next to her pew and put on his best Joker grin. “What’s a place like you doing in a girl like this?”

His palm smacking his forehead echoed in the modest church.

Hifumi looked up at him from her odd formation arrangement. A corner of her lip turned up, but only for a few seconds. She didn’t wear much makeup most days, but today it seemed just a tad heavier, especially around her eyes, where he knew shadows grew around his eyes on nights when the Institute patients screamed. There was hesitation in her movements, which seemed unlike her. “Good evening, Akira-kun.”

He sat down on the other side of the shogi board. “How are you doing?”

A moment passed as she tugged at her blue Kosei vest to straighten it. A beat later, she let out a breath and leaned against the pew back. “I had a match yesterday after cram school. I had been looking forward to it.” She set the lance down, the muscles around her eyes tightening. “I thought it would finally be a chance to show the Association that I belonged, that I deserved to match wits with them.”

Akira looked over her. He ached to reach a hand up and brush those loose strands back behind her ear, then run his fingers through her luxurious hair. He swallowed. “Won by concession but lost by points?”

“Worse than that.” She moved a knight up and captured his bishop. The snap of the wood pieces sounded deafening in the absence of her usual passionate role play. She took a long breath in and out. “I was never well-liked by my seniors. And the more attention I get, especially in those shoots mother has me do, the more I hear them whisper about how I don’t belong. Or how I’m apparently a vain prima donna.” Her breath caught in her throat. “Each one is more barbed than the last. I’m no longer a fellow player to them—they all think I’m just an idol passing by. Some of them can’t wait to be rid of me.”

The echoes of the Shujin library flitted in and out of his mind, his heart clenching. “Well, their loss for being unable to appreciate good company. Are you at least able to enjoy your games with your father?”

Hifumi let out a breath, but her hunch lessened just a little and the corners of her mouth turned up. “His health has been getting better these past few days, but I’m a little frightened of another episode. It seems like each good spell precedes a sudden worsening of his condition.” That forest-green gaze stared into the distance, a sad smile tugging at her lips. “He never would call out his attacks like I still sometimes do, but you could feel his spirit even in recordings of his matches. His eyes would shine and every movement was confident as a king’s.” Her hand came up to the omamori-style knot tied in her hair for a brief moment. “I was closer to Mother when I was a little girl, but there was something about shogi which lit a fire within me.” Her shoulders drooped again. “When he collapsed after that one shogi tournament, the way Mother looked at shogi changed. And yet she still does all she can to give me the opportunity to follow in Papa’s footsteps.” That light in her eyes dimmed, but a strange energy lingered in it which he couldn’t identify. “I have to keep going, even if I don’t like those interviews and photoshoots. It’s the only way I can contribute to the household and ease my parents’ burden.”

He slid up a silver general, capturing her rook. The air felt thick in his throat. “Hifumi… you shouldn’t have to feel like you’re obligated to suffer to—”

She looked at him, pinpricks of light glinting at the corners of her eyes. “I do, Akira. Mother works two jobs to keep the household afloat. Papa hasn’t even left the house since his last episode four months ago, when medics raced him to the hospital.” She moved one of her two remaining pawns, still there since he sat down to the scenario. “And even though it’s more work for Mother, she enjoys juggling the media. If I just selfishly stopped, it would hurt both of them. If Mother was the type to change her mind, there might be another avenue somewhere, but she’s not.”

He looked down at the board, but saw no moves which wouldn’t allow her to place him in check. He slid over his king piece. “I concede. Did you want to try something else, or go for another?”

Hifumi glanced up at him, holding eye contact for a fraction of a second. “I-if you don’t mind.” He dumped the bag of pieces on the board and they both started setting up the starting formation. He reached for a knight tile in the middle, but so did she, her fingers closing on his.

Akira’s face burned and after his brain started working again, he glanced up. So did she. Her fingers lingered on his, the apparent heat in the room rising ten degrees. He swallowed against the feeling of nervousness closing up his throat. “I… I can’t, Togo-san. I like you.” He reached his other hand over and took her hand from his to set it aside. “More than is appropriate.”

She lay her hand back on his. “What if I didn’t mind?”

He withdrew his shaking hands and set down the knight. “You don’t really know me, Togo-san.”

“I know you’re clever. Every game it’s harder to best you,” she started, her voice picking up, “You’re a fast reader—but you don’t just skim through pages, you soak them in. You treasure wisdom and treat a philosophical discussion like a marathon to leap into. You honed your mind on shogi, chess, go, and other strategy games I’ve never even heard of. You’re funny—”

His eyes fell. “I’m not.”

“—and considerate. When others are injured, you feel pain—”

“Now you’re making—”

“—but you still stand tall. You’re gentle—”

Akira shot to his feet, unable to bear that gaze greener than any forest. “I’m a convict!”

At last, her hand jerked back to hold against her torso as she gazed up at him.

At last, maybe she understood how unstable, how unsafe he was. Just to make sure, he forced himself to explain. “I was arrested. Convicted of assault.”

After a beat, Hifumi stood, smoothing out her skirt on the way up. “I know you get angry. I know people have hurt you. But I don’t believe you would hurt someone unprovoked.” When he barked a bitter laugh, she drew up to her full height. Despite lacking a physical height advantage, her regal countenance made up for the small difference. “I’ve seen how you walk into the confessional. A man who isn’t focusing on becoming better wouldn’t have the insight to recognize his own failures. You just need to stop acting like you’ve failed before you’ve tried. The General of the Steel Legion wouldn’t give up, no matter what magic was arrayed against him.”

His gaze fell. “Real life isn’t shogi.”

She took his chin with her index and middle fingers, lifting his face back to hers. “You don’t even give up in our matches. You’ve a gambler’s spirit, surrender isn’t in you. What’s really wrong?”

Unable to withstand the electrifying feeling of her touch, Akira reached up to take away her hand. He got as far as wrapping his fingers around hers before a quirk of her eyebrows brought him to a standstill. Those green orbs refused to let him go. “People like me don’t get good things in life, Togo-san. We don’t keep them.” When that look of concern on her face didn’t budge, he added, “I’m not kidding. I’ve been in so many fist-fights in primary school I couldn’t even count them. All people have to do is use the wrong words and I lose it. Like father, like son. Lab freak. Was only a matter of time until I ran across the wrong person, and I did. Doesn’t matter what was right or wrong then, life had to catch up to me some time. So now I have a record that’s going to be with me the rest of my life. If you got involved in any way… it would follow you, too.”

A beat of silence passed in the old church. Hifumi’s fingers squeezed his. “Juvenile convictions are sealed after graduating high school. If the Phantom Thief can change Kaneshiro’s heart, you can make it.” When he opened his mouth to object, she interrupted, “If people can see you changing before them and still treat you like you don’t deserve a better life, they’re the ones who don’t deserve you.”

Seconds passed as he fought to draw in a breath, his whole body numb but for the fingers wrapped around her warm digits. “H… how do you know? The prosecutor told me convictions were perma—”

“Yuna-kun was being forced to act as a mule by Kaneshiro’s men. She was caught in the Shibuya Sweep.” Her fingers squeezed his. “She said thanks to the Phantom Thief for saving her grandparents.”

His blood roared in his veins. She flinched when he tugged his hand away. “S-sorry.”

She shook her head, a practiced sense of calm in her. “I’m sure things are stressful for you, what with Medjed on top of everything else.” She reached her raised hand to touch his arm. “Don’t give up. You did it before, you can do it again.”

Notes:

Persona 3 had Tartarus, but starting with Persona 4, we never had the opportunities to see the formation of a Palace. Persona 5 implies new Palaces form all the time, so Togo was the perfect opportunity to bring that into focus and highlight how dangerous the sudden shift from pocket domains in Mementos to full Palaces. Making Togo’s Palace come up at the same time as another major threat to the Phantom Thieves also gave the opportunity to force questions canon never did by only dealing with one threat at a time.

Chapter 80: June 20th, Walk in the Dark

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Wednesday, 20 June 2016
Night
Velvet Room

Akira woke to the blessed chill of a room not connected to summer Tokyo by drafty windows. The steel slab against his back clued him into his new location even before his eyes opened to blue velvet. He paused to take in a breath of cool air, savoring it before he pushed off the bunk.

Caroline stood at her usual spot, but with a casual air in contrast to the near-rage she used to show off every time things started off. “Talk about stepping deep in it, Inmate.”

Justine turned on him from the left, disappointment clear despite the overt wooden qualities of her expression and eyepatch over one eye. “You’re quite foolish to let down your guard this much.”

Akira leaned against the door bars. “You pack of idiots want to try something specific, maybe one grounded in reality next time? I’ve heard just about enough platitudes out of you.”

Despite their annoyance, Igor at his desk chuffed with amusement. “You have been targeted by an unseen foe. How shall you overcome this challenge?”

Narrowing his pale gaze at the tuxedoed man, Akira stood straight. “Are you talking about Medjed, or the asshole who drained the gear fund?” When he got only a chuckle in response, he gripped the unyielding bars. “You got any actual advice, or is this just another taunt session?”

If Igor was annoyed, he let no sign of it slip through his too-wide grin. “This fresh dispute over that ancient argument of justice. Will you make it a swift and decisive end, or drawn out and murky exchange?”

Akira’s hands tensed on the bars. “What about Togo? What do we need to change her heart?”

Igor gave nothing but a mild chuckle. “Formidable enemies are part of the rehabilitation before you. I ask only you overcome them however you see fit. Hone your powers, or you shall never become the magnificent thief required to overcome ruin.”

The student in a striped prisoner outfit opened his hands to shout, but an electrified baton crashing into the bars interrupted him. Caroline shouted, “Hop to it, Inmate! Now get back to the real world and get to work!”

Thursday, 21 June 2016
After School
Shujin, Rooftop

Ann slouched against a desk, her elbow braced on it, hand holding up her phone as Yusuke rambled over it about the unique symbology of the mythological figure of Medjed. Ryuji tipped back in his chair. Makoto stood next to him, tapping her foot, her crossed arms in this sweltering heat plenty of evidence she wasn’t enjoying the over-the-phone briefing. Yuu-kun slouched against the wall next to the door, working away on the Phansite. A hot breeze wafted over the concrete-faced building, providing little relief. Akira looked the worst among them, sweat beading across his face and soaking the underarms of his shirt. He held a vending machine soda against his neck, his eyes distant. A pity he let his hair go after that night at the Odaiba fireworks festival.

Ryuji blurted, “Okay, dude! So he’s a flyin’ god of smiting an’ evil dead.”

“That would be Apophis,” Akira corrected, his eyes still looking a little glazed. “Sometimes pronounced Apep, always depicted with snakes.”

Ann rolled her eyes. “Whatever. What’s that help us do? Even Yuu-kun never heard of them before, and everything he found online were rumors. Corporate terrorism an’ all that, but never an arrest.”

Makoto uncrossed her arms. “If the PSIA and FBI can’t find them, I’m afraid we don’t stand much chance. Mafia who have real people on the streets to see and overhear is one thing—cyber-criminals are a completely different sphere of influence.”

Ryuji pushed his leg against the desk, tilting his chair back and forth. “I thought the bigger the better, but this feels like more’n we can chew. I mean, they said they’d crash the Nikkei 225.”

Akira shifted his soda can to his other hand and pressed it to the other side of his neck. “First of all, they bit us. And we’re all just trying to do the right thing. Defend the weak, lay low the corrupt. I’m not sorry I went after that drunk guy trying to man-handle his secretary on the street, and I’m not sorry we took down Madarame.”

“Hear, hear!” Yusuke proclaimed through the phone.

Perched in the shadow of the desk they congregated around, Morgana’s tail twitched just above the sweltering roof. “But if we can’t see them, we’re helpless against them. We changed hearts to help people, but we can’t just abandon our fans now.” He turned to the transfer student. “I know you don’t like the idea, but I don’t see any choice but hoping this Alibaba person can act on our behalf if we change Sakura Futaba.”

Keeping his soda pressed against his neck with one hand, Akira pulled out his phone. “We can’t trust Alibaba, guys. Did you forget he drained my…” His eyes twitched and scanned his screen.

Makoto paced to him. “What?”

“My bank account. It’s back,” Akira said, scrolling down.

Yuuki looked up from his phone. “I’m afraid we don’t have much on our end. Kitagawa-san and I already tried the Nav for this Sakura in northern Tokyo. We tried for more than an hour with every location in Nerima we could imagine, and it never gave anything but ‘candidate not found’. Best I can figure, she’s just a housewife, so if it’s really her we’re stumped.”

Ryuji pulled out his phone and brought up the Nav. “The Sakura Futaba who works at Sotan Construction?”

A synthesized voice chimed, “Candidate not found.”

Makoto fanned herself with her phone. “Process of elimination would point to the Sakura Futaba who lives in Yongen.”

Ryuji waited for the Nav to respond, but after several seconds of silence, he sighed and closed the weird app.

Morgana shook out his head and turned back to the transfer student with a faint glazed look to his eyes. “Did you have a chance to interrogate Boss yesterday? They do share a last name.”

Akira switched his soda to the other side of his neck. “Not yet. I went to talk to Togo-san.” At their momentary questioning looks, he explained, “Not the target, I don’t know where she works. I had to clear some things up. Boss was gone by the time I got back to Leblanc. About Boss… I’ve been living under his roof… well, under his business’ roof since April, and he hasn’t mentioned having a daughter.”

Straightening in his seat, Ryuji wiped at his forehead. “Think he’s tryin’ to keep it all hush-hush ‘cause he’s abusin’ her? I may not like the option, but… my old man wasn’t the only one out there doin’ it.”

Akira shook his head and sat up, the most movement she’d seen from him since they started their meeting on the roof. “There’s no way. If he was going to be abusive to anyone, it would’ve been me. He’s been a cantankerous old man, but he’s never lifted a hand or even called me stupid. He’s the sort who wants to be left alone.” His eyes flicked to Ann’s phone. “Hell, he even gave you a place to hide out for two weeks.”

“True,” Yusuke spoke through Ann’s phone on speaker. “However, I can not feel comfortable with this arrangement with Alibaba. We don’t know if he might be a splinter from Medjed, trying to take care of a rival. Can we even be sure he won’t turn us in even if we do conduct this heart change?”

Makoto’s phone chirped. She read a text message, then sighed and slipped it away. “Sorry, everyone. I need to intercede in a student club disagreement.”

Morgana nodded. “Well, we’re getting nowhere sitting up here talking in circles. It looks to me like this exchange with Alibaba is our only option. Joker will question Boss, and we’ll need a couple others to investigate Yongen in the meantime.”

Akira switched his soda to the other side of his neck. “Hold on a second. What about changing Togo’s heart?”

Ryuji wiped sweat from his brow and threw an incredulous look. “Dude, we got Medjed threatenin’ to take down the whole Japanese economy, an’ you wanna take a break for a chick bein’ mean to one girl?”

Akira plonked his soda down on the table to sit straight in his chair, his posture vibrating challenge. “What taking a break? We already voted on this.”

Ryuji plopped the chair back to all four legs and scooted to the edge to glare back. “That was before she turned into an effin’ Palace!”

Makoto stopped at the door and turned back to the group. “That is a good point.”

Akira stood, his chair skittering back. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize the Phantom Thieves only did work if it was easy. I thought we changed hearts to free the oppressed from suffering.”

Ryuji stood, his hands curling.

Ann stood in his way. “Whoa, guys. The situation did change. Yusuke, did you even finish that sketch of the city Akira asked you about?”

“I am still in progress.”

Ann brushed a pigtail off her shoulder. “So we’re lacking the information we need to finish either target.”

Morgana hopped up on the desk. “Good point, Lady Ann. We’ll split up. Fox, you keep up that sketch. It might be our only clue about the location of Togo Mitsuyo’s Palace. Nightrider, you take care of things at Shujin. The rest of the Phantom Thieves will focus on our priority target and investigate the Sakura Futaba in Yongen. Contact the group by text if anything comes up.”

Makoto nodded, then left. Yusuke hung up. Yuuki looked up when the door closed with a whoosh of escaping air-conditioning. “Is that it for today?”

Ryuji and Akira looked at each other. Ann knew the runner was the sort to push back, but she couldn’t figure out what Akira was so pissed about. So he liked the shogi model girl, could he not wait until Japan was safe? After a few breaths, the team leader cleared his throat and the boys broke eye contact.

Ann let out a relieved breath. “Yeah.”

After the transfer student collected Morgana, the team leader poked his head out of the school bag. “Come on, Reaper. The faster we can get this done, the better.”

Shibuya, Underground Walkway

Since the group separated at the Aoyama station, Ryuji kept an eye out for the rest of the Phantom Thieves as he strode through the Underground Walkway to the line to Akira’s place. The runner sped up, slipping through the crowd to catch up.

That asshole shaggy-haired prettyboy who called them all criminals intercepted them in the middle of the underground walkway. His white, short-sleeved dress shirt bore no trace of perspiration. Even that vertical-stripe black and white tie was clipped perfectly—something about that just pissed the track star off. Akechi gave one of those smiles which could’ve only come from Ma’s clinic. “Ah, Amamiya-kun. Have you heard Medjed’s declaration of war against the Phantom Thief?”

Akira wiped at the sweat still making a sheen over his forehead. “Let people talk. They’ll make what they will of it anyway.”

Akechi’s smile faded, though something about it felt on the smarmy side of neutral. “This whole debacle has become quite a nuisance. I was supposed to be on contract with the police to solve the mental shutdowns—not playing waterboy to the police while they try to take down two egotistic, self-appointed ‘champions of justice’.”

Ryuji couldn’t help but let out a bit of a sadistic grin that the shit-eating bastard was uncomfortable. “Whassup? Mister Media Darling don’t like someone else gettin’ the attention?”

Akechi gave a derisive chuckle which sounded pitying. “The media is even more fickle than the mythological Fortunes.” He turned to the transfer student, a sharpness entering his gaze. Something piercing and unnerving, as those bright brown eyes stared into Akira’s steel grey. “If you were the Phantom Thief, what would you do?”

Akira gave a stiff shrug, but looked straight back into the media starlet’s eyes as if daring him to do something. “The Phantom Thief do his stuff online?”

Akechi’s show smile dimmed. “There’s no evidence so.”

Akira raised his hands. “Then what would I care? Not my circus, not my monkeys.”

To the track star’s surprise, Akechi laughed out loud. The boisterous sound was enough to draw a couple heads in the busy thoroughfare. After a few seconds to regain his breath, Akechi looked the transfer student in the eye. “You let the mask slip at the TV station when you were angry about police inaction, Amamiya-kun. Aloof isn’t even in your wheelhouse. That passion could make for a potential fit for the Phantom Thief, perhaps.”

Akira shrugged, though there was something unnerving about the stiffness of his smile. He jerked his thumb at the runner. “Nah. Ryuji’s the Phantom Thief.”

Ryuji’s breath fled at the casual betrayal. “Dude!”

Akechi let out a chuckle. “I must remember never to back you into a corner. You have quite the knack for thwarting expectations.” He shifted his grip on his scratched steel briefcase. “I do so enjoy our conversations, but I am afraid I have been called in.”

Akira snapped to a picture-perfect straight military-style pose, slapping his right hand against his eyebrow, palm out.

Akechi quirked an eyebrow, his body straight but confusion in his eyes, and his lips twisted like he couldn’t decide if he wanted to grimace or force that plastic made-for-TV-camera smile. After a moment, he brought his arm up in stiff, jerky motions to return in a Japanese-style salute, lowered it, then left.

Ryuji chuckled. “Okay, I gotta admit I panicked when you poin’ed at me, but seein’ him go all discombobulated at the end was cool as eff. ‘least there’s no way he could ever find out ‘bout us.”

Yongen, Leblanc

Akira strode into the cafe suffused with the scent of dozens of varieties of coffee. When he first came, the smells all blended together in one overwhelming olfactory hit, but now he could pick out the difference between the arabica the restaurateur used for most blends and the robusta for most of the decaf blends.

A woman in a stark business pantsuit, her long hair flowing down in a combed style with just enough of some kind of smelly product to make it look manufactured instead of pretty to Akira’s eyes. She turned the kind of smile predators circling wounded prey might bear when it wasn’t quite time for fangs. “All I have to do is make one phone call. I’ve been making a great number of connections in the Shibuya Sweep. Adding new suspicions of abuse to your case, and you’d stand no chance of avoiding revocation of custody. Unless you tell me everything I want to know about Wakaba’s research.”

Grinding his teeth, Sojiro’s tense posture almost visibly vibrated. “You’d go that far? I told your lackeys over the phone I don’t know a damn thing about her research! Don’t you people have any respect for the dead?”

Her lips curled in a sneer. “You’re really okay with suspension of your parental authority? The last time social services checked on your daughter was after police had to be called to forcibly extricate her from the car from family court.”

Sojiro’s right hand clenched a mug, his left the threadbare drying rag. “You have no right!”

The red-eyed woman crossed her arms, the aggression of her posture warring with her attempted signals of casual disregard. “Then I’ll call social services to come by for another inspection. I’m sure she hasn’t degraded since her last evaluation.” When Sojiro’s posture wavered, the corners of her lips turned up. “Shall I send this to my colleagues in domestic court? My chances of victory are over ninety-nine percent.”

Akira clapped his gloved hands as he stared at the fiery woman. “Impressive. Imperial Japan didn’t even have that high a rate in occupied Korea or China. And you just shot suspected dissidents in the street without a trial there.”

The pale-haired woman whipped around at him, her glare holding all the intensity of an industrial laser beam. “Excuse me?”

Akira slipped his phone out of his pocket, flipping to the video recorder and setting it against the stack of manga as he advanced with as much a casual air as he could muster, keeping his eyes on the long-haired woman. Screw what Akechi said—if he could rebuff that bastard to Ryuji’s satisfaction, he could turn away this woman who had to be threatening the Sakura Futaba he came to ask about. If she was here to threaten him for something, she’d have attacked his own record instead of his aloof caretaker. “Fascist is as fascist does.”

Her lips twitched, bearing her teeth. To his surprise, she advanced straight on him, grabbing him by the white, long-sleeved Shujin shirt in powerful fists. “You will not speak to an officer of the court in such a manner.”

“See this?” Akira pointed at her tight-fisted grip. “This is called assault and battery. If you want to go to court, you’re already recused because you’ll be tied up defending assaulting a minor.”

She jerked Akira closer, her snarl bearing teeth now. “Between the word of a respected prosecutor and mouthy child?”

Akira spread his hand at his smart phone as if a carnival announcer to the main event. “Funny how having video evidence makes hearsay unnecessary. And that really hurts, I think you’re drawing blood. I’m sure that’ll get extra views on the livestream. How do careers do after well-published attacks on children? Last dude in the papers went to prison.”

She lifted and he started to lose his footing against arms more like steel girders. “You think you’ve got parents big enough to protect you?” Her crimson eyes narrowed, reminding him far too much of Makoto’s angriest gaze. “I can start right now with obstruction of justice, but I think we’ll add conspiracy to manipulate evidence—”

“Stop!” Sojiro dropped the cup and drying rag. With the counter in between he couldn’t have reached them, but the step and hand out was enough for the gesture to be clear. “I… I yield. Just… leave this place in peace.”

The red-eyed woman gave a vicious smirk for such a small gesture, but shoved Akira, letting go. “My office will contact you.”

He made a show of stumbling back, pained, but with Sojiro’s concession, the video hardly seemed to matter. She held a gaze on him which might have caused lesser men to burst into flames, then power-walked out.

After the door swung shut, Akira stumbled to his phone with a wheeze and stopped the recording, then pulled out a chair next to the stack of manga. “How come you didn’t tell me about Futaba? I must’ve scared her half to death when I arrived in April. I was banging on the door until the mailman came and mentioned you were at work.”

Sojiro set the cup and rag on the inner counter, then braced his hands against it. He let out a breath, his back hunching and shoulders slumping. The restaurateur looked ten years older in that moment. “You were listening in, weren’t you?” His chin and mouth tensed before he took another deep breath, then moved over to the coffee siphons and started making himself a cup. “I shouldn’t be surprised you’re sticking your nose in this. That drunk and the woman, the artist. You really don’t know when to quit, do you?”

The woman’s panicked face flashed in his mind. “Please, help!

He closed the shogi lobby. “I don’t always know what the right thing is, but there are times in your life when you see something and know it’s the wrong thing. Sometimes another human being’s life is at stake.” He set his phone on the counter. “And sometimes it’s his soul.”

Sojiro finished his cup and blew across the top. “I’ll tell you the same thing I started telling her. Some things are best left buried in the past.”

Akira’s phone buzzed, so he picked it back up to see Ryuji on the Phantom Thief chat. [According to the grocer's, Boss is buying enough for three. Especially chicken-flavored ramen. You got a hollow leg, Akira?]

Ann joined in before he could finish typing a response, [Some of the neighbors see lights on or off at weird times, but they've never seen him with anyone. They're all still sure he's single, and NOBODY thinks he has any kids.]

Akira started typing in, [Hey, I'm a growing boy,] but he didn't eat that much—he took care of his own lunches, and half the time got his own dinners out in Tokyo. Unless Sojiro gorged himself each night, he didn’t eat much either. He deleted that message and sent, [I get my own food almost half the time, and Sojiro never seems to eat breakfast or dinner here. And I have never once seen him eat instant ramen.]

Ann texted, [So that's one strike against, one strike for him having a kid.]

Ryuji popped up next. [Oh! I just thought of something! What if he cheated on his wife and his ex is the hacker who wants us to go after Sakura Futaba?]

Yongen, Sakura House, Futaba’s Room

Futaba stared at Ryuji’s text on Akira’s phone bug, then banged her head on her keyboard.

Yongen, Leblanc

Akira rolled his eyes, but there was no need to assume when the man himself was right there. “You ever been married?”

Sojiro finished a sip of coffee, then lowered it. “No. Now leave this whole Futaba thing alone.”

Akira plopped his phone face-down on the counter. “What if she needs help? Doesn’t she deserve that?”

Sojiro’s neck tensed and his teeth gnashed together, he brought his mug down hard enough to splatter coffee out of it. “She deserves to be left alone! With your old man, you of all people should be able to respect that! Now drop it or it’ll be your ass on the street!” He grabbed a stained rag, then started wiping up the coffee with far more force than necessary.

“But—” Akira started to stand.

“Joker!” Morgana hissed before he poked his head out of the transfer student’s school satchel. “You can’t afford to get on Boss’s bad side. He already confirmed there is a Sakura Futaba at his place. We just don’t know why she’s been targeted, or what her distortion might be. But finding that out isn’t worth you being on the street. Let’s go and give him time to cool down.”

Akira stood up and paced outside, then looked back to the Phantom Thief chat where the runner and model bickered about whether there was a real Futaba since the Nav wasn’t locking on. Akira texted, [Did you try the location as Sakura Sojiro's house?]

[Oh, duh.] A few beats passed before Ryuji followed up, [I knew it! That's candidate AND location!]

Ann responded, [But Yuu-kun said she was 15. It doesn't make any sense for someone that young to be a hardened criminal.]

Akira replied, [Trust me, Ann. People can be SERIOUSLY twisted at a young age. Ever heard of the Ikedas?]

[They're owners of the fourth largest shipping company in Japan. Of course I have. Papa and Mama did some custom orders for them.]

[Ikeda Haruna was kicked off her high school archery team because she was using neighborhood dogs as target practice.]

Morgana shivered from the transfer student’s shoulder. “That’s sick. After we finish this Medjed business, maybe we should change her heart.”

“Togo first,” Akira said with as much firmness as he could control. “We already know her distortion, we’re just waiting on Yusuke’s sketch to figure out where the location is.”

Morgana hummed before dropping back in the satchel to escape the summer sun. “We’re still missing information, but we learned a lot. It’s time to reconvene and get everybody on the same page.”

Thursday, 21 July 2016
Early Evening
Shibuya, Yongen-Jaya Line

The rumble and sway of the train around him added a comforting sense of regularity which clashed with the boisterous chatter of people leaving work and late clubs at schools. Despite rush hour being over, the crowds still wore away at Akira, their cacophonous conversations sipping away his air.

Unsure when Hifumi got back home after whatever her mother scheduled her following cram school, Akira pulled out his phone to send her a text. [Evening, Togo-san. I hope you're doing okay today. We're working, but there are obstacles we have to clear first.]

Her ID lit up and she replied, [But you can save her heart?]

Of course she would view it as a rescue instead of an attack mission. [We'll do or die.]

A beat passed before she sent, [Make it through. All of you. Shogi has do-overs, real life does not. I want my mother back, but I would feel horrible if one of the Phantom Thieves was hurt changing Mother's heart.]

Akira felt a stupid smile force its way across his face. For all her regal mercilessness while playing a queen, the real girl was made of kindness. [Duly noted. Just hold on.]

[I'm not afraid. My General of the Steel Legion would never give up. That's what makes him invincible.] Her ID darkened and Akira stared at the short message chain for long moments. He wanted to accept the vote of confidence, but he’d never succeeded as General of the Steel Legion.

His phone buzzed. Those numbered boxes indicating Alibaba stared up at him. [You have your name. You have your mission. You even have your stakes. Why have you not changed Sakura Futaba's heart?]

Akira sat up, in his seat, the satchels on his left and right weighing him down less than the implied threat. [Who is Sakura Futaba?]

[The heart you must change.]

Akira smacked his forehead onto his phone. “God damn it, is this guy an idiot or just that obtuse?”

Morgana peered up at him from the school satchel, a smirk visible despite the feline head. “Can’t handle the competition?”

[You have done this at least fifty times. One more should be simple.]

Akira had to go back and fix his spelling three times with how firmly his thumbs pounded the virtual keyboard. Alibaba might already know some of this, but any edge he could gain would help the Thieves. [You don't understand how the process works. Do you understand how large Tokyo is? There are three Sakura Futabas.]

A beat passed. [There are?]

[Sakura and Futaba are both common names. What are the target's keywords?]

A longer beat stretched on as the crowds churned around him. [Are you attempting to confuse me out of our deal? I gave you the name of your target two weeks ago. What is the hold up?]

[We need more information. This texting tag is not working. Let's just meet and hash things out all at once.]

Several seconds passed before Alibaba replied, [That is impossible. There are reasons why I am contacting you like this.]

Akira leaned as the train passed through a curve in the tracks. [You're disabled? That's okay, I'll come to you.]

[Meeting should be unnecessary. You have your target's name, that should be enough to make a calling card.]

Akira gripped a standing bar as the train entered a straight portion of track and decelerated. [And I already said that's not enough. Do you think we beamed into Kamoshida's Palace from the moon?]

[Are you saying you steal your target's heart directly?]

[I'm not saying anything like that.]

Akira started to type more, but Alibaba interrupted. [Did you forget when I zeroed your bank account? Or do you not believe I will feed your identities to the police if you fail?]

As the train slid to a stop, he mashed in, [We haven't failed yet.]

[It will be a failure if you wait for much longer.]

Gritting his teeth, Akira had to focus on getting off the train, but by the time he got to the platform, he lost the emotional impetus to throw out a petty but satisfying riposte. [Then let's both engage in a good-faith gesture to the other. I put your heart change at the top of our agenda, and you start hacking Medjed back so they can't crash all Japan's economy.] He let a breath out through his nose and rushed to the meeting site.

Thursday, 21 July 2016
Early Evening
Shibuya, Karaoke Club Private Room

Akira traded off with the model and runner to fill in the day’s events in Yongen, as well as the text threat on the train. Makoto nodded, her expression grave. Her eyes narrowed at the conflict with the lawyer in Leblanc. To save time, he just told her the summary for the cafe conflict. “That’s horrible. I hope you and Boss are okay. Where did you get the idea to record it?”

Akira quirked an eyebrow. “The other guys in jail. Cops rely on crushing you with the weight of evidence even if that’s just paid employee testimony and circumstantial speculation. They’re not used to people who have their own documentation, recordings, or experts to speak on their behalf. Frame things right, and you can even make them look like the assaulters. I did the same thing with Kamoshida before we changed his heart, just in case he went after any of you.”

Yuuki nodded. “Good thinking. Shame it didn’t do any good with Sakura-san.”

Ann shook her head. “This just makes me think even less that Boss-san could be an abuser.” She wrapped her arms around herself, even her voluminous pigtails seeming to droop. “I just keep trying to make sense of somebody our age with a Palace. What could she have done? If it’s not being evil like all the others, what’s the distortion?”

Yuuki finished typing something on his laptop, then looked up from the Phansite. “How would Alibaba know if you guys even did it?”

Makoto tapped her knuckles on the low table dominating the center of the private karaoke room. “In heist movies, they always have an inside man. However, from everything Akira’s said about Sakura-san, he doesn’t seem the type to talk to outsiders. Unless Alibaba is Futaba, I can’t fathom how he would know.”

Ryuji gawked. “For real? You’re sayin’ Alibaba wants us to change his own heart?”

Akira’s gaze dropped to the table and he fiddled with his phone. He recalled Father Motoori’s words from the pulpit, “Walk while you have the light, before darkness overtakes you. Whoever walks in the dark does not know where they are going.” When the others went quiet and turned their eyes to him, he shook his head and sat back. “Something in the Bible. Father Motoori read it at Mass. The signs all line up. He even refuses to meet.”

Yusuke’s eyes had a focused but distant quality, as if watching something assemble through the walls. “But what kind of a mind could want us to change them?”

Yuuki finished typing and rubbed his arm. “Somebody who doesn’t believe he can change himself. I feel like I was the same way when I heard about Shiho. Hell, even when I saw Kamoshida’s confession, I just felt more helpless because somebody that monstrous made such a change to take responsibility.” He looked up at the transfer student. “Was Togo like that?”

A darkness entered his face, tension worming its way through Akira’s frame. “No. We found her in Mementos with the other targets, but her little sub-realm turned into a Palace while we were still in it. We’ll change Sakura first so Japan is safe.” He swallowed, then forced himself to sit straight. “But everything pushing us to go after Togo in the first place are still in play. We have to go back.”

“Dude,” Ryuji said, slouching back against his seat on the couch opposite the transfer student. “She turned into an effin’ Palace. Of course things changed. We ain’t gonna get famous killin’ ourselves changin’ someone who’s an asshole to one person!

Akira tensed as if to stand, but caught himself. “We made a promise. Hell, the whole reason the Phantom Thieves formed was you guys deciding it wasn’t enough to wrap up loose ends which were affecting you personally. We decided if Kamoshida wasn’t too big for us, neither was the drug and scam trade sucking in Shujin students. Bam, down goes Kaneshiro.”

Ann clasped her hands in her lap. “Ryuji has a point. Remember what Morgana said before we began Madarame’s dungeon? There’s only six of us, and Palaces are dangerous.”

Ryuji gave a vigorous nod. “Fuckin’ right. We can’t make risks like that over one person. It ain’t like I wanna leave peeps in the lurch, but how many Palaces are out there? Hell, Shujin’s even got a few. Kamoshida’s is gone, but the principal has one. Ex principal. Eff, even Seiji has one and he’s just another dude in my class. Just ‘cause he’s got a Palace don’t mean we should put our lives at risk tryin’ to make ‘im change.”

Akira whipped around to Ann. “You are one person.” Then Ryuji. “And you are one person. I’d’ve gone after Kamoshida if it was just you.” Both of them averted their eyes. “But it wasn’t. He was hurting a lot of people.” He focused on the track star. “You even said it. When his heart changed, the whole school changed. You got a second chance. I got a second chance.”

Makoto stood and cleared her throat. Her back held straight and her shoulders square, her tone officious. From her seat in the lone stuffed chair next to the door, it made her look like a king on his throne. “Kamoshida was threatening to expel you, Ryuji, and Mishima. He had a clear and unmistakable pattern of predation. Nobody was going to go on to a successful life—”

“Success?” Akira balked. “Success? Okay, let’s talk about success. What the fuck is supposed to make success? Is it smarts? Hifumi gets better grades than I ever have. Is it connections? She’s nice to everyone and has family all over the place.” He clenched his fists. “They’re all using her. Is it hard work? She busts her ass from sun-up to past sun-down, studies material for next year, even sells copies of her notes to help her family make ends meet.”

Yuuki rubbed his chin. “That’s actually pretty clever.” He swallowed, withdrawing into his frame before he ventured, “But her doing well – or not – doesn’t mean you’ll be able to. Shujin’s volleyball teams did very well in every single match and that didn’t spare them from Kamoshida’s wrath.

Makoto held her ground against the transfer student’s glare. “I appreciate that you find her worthy of respect, but your stance on Togo is based on a personal appeal to pathos. We’re talking about a palace ruler. Changing a palace is as difficult as it is dangerous. We need to make our decisions without letting ourselves be swayed by personal impulse. It would be irresponsible for us not to put Japan first.”

“I’m not sayin’ we ignore Japan!” Akira sucked in a breath to try to calm himself down. This was more important than any other heart change, but losing his head would hurt her more than him. “I got a second shot I didn’t deserve, and because of that, I have to fight to give other people a chance.”

Morgana nodded and sat on the glass table in the small, private room. “That gives you a lot of personal drive, Joker. But that doesn’t refute Ryuji’s point about the danger of Palaces. If we’re going to get to the truth of Mementos, we need to change hearts that send aftershocks through society. We’re not a substitute for justice, just a kind that doesn’t have the constraints of courts that leave scum like Kamoshida untouched. Our most effective targets are the big ones that society can’t touch by traditional means, and getting those also helps serve as a warning to the smaller ones.”

Makoto nodded. “The objective cost-benefit analysis points to her no longer being worth changing.”

Objectivity is good,” Yusuke piped up from his seat next to the transfer student. “But we can’t let a quest for objectivity make us inhuman. None of us would be here were it not the very personal reasons which allowed – nay, forced us to awaken to our inner selves. We still strive for objective good despite still having those personal drives.”

Akira let out a breath and gave a thankful nod to the artist.

Morgana sat down, his tail flicking the microphone rolling across the table strewn with books and snacks. “That’s a fair point point, and everybody’s opinion needs to be taken into account.” He stood and walked in a tight circle on the table, just to sit down again, facing the transfer student. “Is there something about changing Togo Mitsuyo’s heart that you think could help the Phantom Thieves?”

The Smiling Mountain Mental Institute taught him to make opportunity any time he got an open-ended question, so he scrambled back through his memory. But all he could think about was the warmth of Hifumi’s expectant smile as she waited for him to move his first piece, the tears streaming down her face as she told him about her first fight with her mother, the feel of her svelte body against his. His face burned as he clenched his fists in his lap. “I… don’t know. Right now.” He swallowed. “It’s not just about her mother, it’s about her daughter, Hifumi. She’s doing everything right and isn’t being given a first chance. If someone like her can’t make it, what fucking chance does someone like me have?”

Ann rubbed her arm with her free hand, her eyes on the ground between her feet. “You know what? He’s got a point. Make my vote to change Togo’s heart.”

Yusuke gave a nod. “To bring salvation to the masses is the quintessential story of the hero. Even when I treated all of you terribly, you fought to save me from Madarame. The aftershocks extended far beyond Madarame and myself. I vote to change this depraved heart. The existence of a Palace only changes how we must go about this, not whether it is still a good deed.”

Ryuji looked Akira in the eye. “I vote no.”

“Why the fuck not?” Akira shouted, jumping to his feet, Yusuke and Makoto at his sides rising to grab his arms.

“Hold on,” Morgana stood, his tail flicking back and forth. “We vote for a reason, and I’m sure he has his reasons. Just like you do.”

“Damn straight,” Ryuji said, crossing his arms. “It’d be effin’ stupid to get ourselves killed tryin’ ta change one lady who’s bein’ mean to one chick.”

Makoto held her grip on the standing boy, her eyes never meeting the transfer student’s. “I don’t want to leave people suffering. I’m not saying I don’t understand your reasons, but they’re all personal. Medjed’s threat is national. We have limited time and resources, and very real risks to face. Togo is too big a risk to face when that will only change things for one person. We have to focus our efforts on areas of maximum effect.”

“I’m not asking to give up on Medjed.” Akira pointed a quivering finger. “Even if this was just about Hifumi, she deserves better than to be ground into dust. I’m not legit, but she is. She’s smart enough to go anywhere, works fucking hard. Her parents are decent people who built their own reputation…” He wavered.

“Joker…”

“Well, before her mother went off the deep end.” He lowered his hand, though both arms kept trembling. “My mother’s a bitch, and the old bastard sniveled under Isshiki’s shadow until she wasn’t there to compete with him anymore. I got a second shot I didn’t deserve, and because of that, I have to fight to give other people a chance.” His eyes dropped and his tone fell. “If I don’t, I’ll become something very bad again.” He shook his head and forced himself to stand straight. “She’s doing everything right and isn’t being given a first chance.”

Ann nodded, jostling her pigtails. “There’s nothing wrong with fighting for our own reasons. Nobody on the outside came to help me from Kamoshida, either. And what about all the low-key connections we won’t know about until after we change Togo’s heart? We had no clue how much impact changing Kamoshida’s heart was going to have.

“I appreciate that, but it’s speculation.” Makoto raised her free hand as if that could disarm her words when she looked back at him. “Your points just emphasize an appeal to pathos, a lack of objectivity. Ryuji is right. We have no choice but to economize. I vote no to Togo’s Palace as long as Medjed is still a threat to Japan. This deal to change Sakura Futaba’s heart is our only means of countering them.” The transfer student made for the door, but she tightened her grip on his arm. “Akira, what are you doing?”

“I’m leaving,” he snapped. “I came to Tokyo because didn’t want to be someone else’s attack dog, where the best I could do was yap at the end of a leash.” He looked her in the eyes. “You know, for a while I was deluded enough to think Officer Ichijou was right. That this could be a chance to become someone new. That some day, I could make a difference to the people I care about.” He frowned, his gaze falling on the track star. “But this… We’re not becoming heroes…” He turned back to the door.

Ann sprang up from her seat against Ryuji. “You can’t abandon the Phantom Thieves just because one vote didn’t go your way! That’s just as wrong as going after a target without coming to the rest of us to vote on it. Heart changes are all our business.”

Akira clenched his hands. Were it anybody else, especially the bottle blond, he would’ve struck back. But Ann had been with him longer than anyone else. She had his back more times than he could count, even voting with him to change Togo Mitsuyo’s heart. “This isn’t about Togo. Not just about her. You guys are becoming what I was turning into when I was lost and alone. Feral attack dogs.” He reached for the door.

Ann stepped closer. “Akira, we haven’t even—”

Vote how you guys want. I abstain,” Akira spat, a thick feeling choking his throat. “I need to get some air.” He hauled the door open and turned away from the elevators to the disused stairs.

Yongen, Sakura Residence, Futaba’s Room

The blackout curtains intensified the gloom of her room, lit only by the glare of her computer screens showing the display for the bug on Akira’s phone. Futaba strained to listen for any clue to give her hope as a heavy steel door swung open in the audio feed. His breathing and heavy footfalls echoed through an enclosed, concrete space. He plopped down on a hard surface, his breathing growing more ragged, catching once. Then threw his springy-sounding glasses to the concrete floor.

She recognized the sound of trying to wipe away tears from a hundred times of trying to hold back her own despair doing the very same thing, as if wiping away the tears faster than they spilled down would make them stop coming.

Futaba felt the specter of her mother hanging in the darkness behind her, a disdainful sneer on her face. “Look, you little monster. Isn’t it bad enough you are so cursed you can’t have happiness? You’re even destroying the happiness of real heroes. People who changed the hearts of actual beasts!”

Futaba choked, tears of her own welling up and blurring the computer screens. “I just… I don’t wanna live like this.”

“Then die!” Wakaba spat at her. “You don’t deserve to live. You bring suffering everywhere you go.”

For a while, Futaba couldn’t tell which were the sounds of her own pathetic crying, and which were the muffled noises of the tortured transfer student she harassed with her own selfishness.

Then a click over the bug and the steel stairwell door barged open, and rapid shuffling as Akira tried to sort himself out. That artist’s smooth tones spoke, “Akira-san. The others voted to change Sakura Futaba’s heart before moving on to any other requests.” A beat passed before a hand clapped over the shoulder above the pocketed phone and the artist sat down next to the transfer student. “We can still change Togo Mitsuyo’s heart. I had planned to save this until after you voted with us about Sakura due to the threat to the Japanese economy, but I now regret not having sent you the image when I finished this morning.”

Glasses slid back into place. Akira rustled, cleared his throat, then asked with a forced neutrality, “What?”

Yusuke’s voice remained calm. “I finished my drawing of the view of Tokyo we saw as we made our escape from Togo’s Palace. I do not know the location, but Mishima believes a reverse image search might be able to identify it if enough people online have photographed the spot. Here.”

Clothing rustled and something in a hard plastic case changed hands. After a moment, Akira said, “Sorry, I don’t know it,” then passed it back.

“I shall send it to you anyway. Perhaps someone else knows where in Tokyo it is.” Her bug informed her of an incoming image file, a charcoal drawing of a city-scape she didn’t recognize. Then the cloth shuffle of somebody dropping a phone into a pocket.

Her bug winked to indicate, Ready to clone. Futaba swallowed and opened the feed from Akira’s phone cameras, only getting dark cloth.

Her craving to know, to escape, moved her fingers before she could even contemplate if there might be something wrong with bugging the friends of the Phantom Thief she was trying to convince to change her heart. The short-ranged wireless handshake to avoid telecom network security meant the phones had to be just centimeters from each other.

As she gnashed her teeth, waiting on that, the artist spoke. “I understand your vexation in regards to Togo-san. Your mention of legitimacy recalled my pondering about the issue since Madarame confessed. He built a career on the theft of what belonged to others. I learned from him, and have often wondered if there can ever be any legitimacy to my own art.”

“Of course there is,” Akira retorted, getting some of his usual confidence back. “You toil day in and day out over everything. Tone, shading, composition, anatomy. Those are all just words to me, but they encompass huge and weighty things to you. The truth matters to you, Yusuke. That alone tells me you’re not going to vomit some crap just because some jerk waves a couple yen in commission at you.”

“Feces evacuate from—”

“Don’t get lost in the street terminology,” Akira interrupted, his voice tired. It didn’t carry a note of amusement, but also lacked the undercurrent of despair when the conversation started. “I know you came from an artist who claimed others’ works as his own, but you have your own very real grasp of aesthetics. Madarame may have failed to teach you what was right and wrong, but he taught you how to move a pencil or paint brush to make something.” The sound of heavy fabric shuffled. “My old bastard only taught me how to spot a lie. How to knock others down.”

Clothing shuffled again. Futaba drew her knees up and wrapped her arms around her legs, wondering if Akira sat in the same pose.

“Even so,” the artist said before the shuffle of somebody changing position on the concrete steps, “You still fight like a man possessed to free others. We shall change this Sakura Futaba’s heart. Alibaba will stop Medjed, saving the people of Japan. And then we may change Togo Mitsuyo’s heart. I may not know Togo Hifumi myself, but if her virtue is so great as to have earned your respect, then it surely must be worth fighting for.”

While the bug cloned the artist’s phone, Futaba pulled back up the text messenger history from Akira’s phone. [Make it through. All of you. Shogi has do-overs, real life does not. I want my mother back, but I would feel horrible if one of the Phantom Thieves was hurt changing Mother's heart.]

Futaba perched on her chair. “No wonder he wants to save her.”

She would never kill her mother,” Wakaba’s voice sniped at her. “If you were dead, maybe they could try to save her.”

A scratchy man’s voice hurled from the depths of her memory, “She killed herself because of you!”

“Murderer!”

Futaba clutched her head and whimpered as a pounding pain grew inside.

The artist’s voice floated out in stereo from the bug on Akira’s phone and the new intercept on his own, “Will you be able to sell more of those Metaverse trinkets? Morgana-san says we need more medicines and need to stand ready to change equipment should Sakura Futaba’s Palace have unusual hazards. Ryuji, Ann, and Makoto-san are still taking guesses at her distortion.”

Akira cleared his throat. “Would take a hell of a lucky guess. I’ve just been running through the dictionary.”

“Do you remember where you stopped at?” Yusuke said.

Akira sighed, the sound so dim it only picked up on his phone. “No, but Morgana should remember.”

Notes:

The emotional toll of people invested in changing hearts when objective priorities change can be very severe. Both Akira and Futaba are in terrible places, and Hifumi obviously isn't putting her own pain on display for his sake.

Chapter 81: July 22nd, Breaking and Rescuing

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Friday, 22 July 2016
After School
Shujin, Front Gates

Akira slipped out the door, holding it open for the class president following behind. The disjointed babble grated on his nerves, already frayed from trying to out-think a team who still refused to back him up on changing Togo Mitsuyo’s heart. If they would just get to it, the job might have been done by now. For now, he had to make a trinket sale so the team was ready to restock and gear up for Medjed’s hit job.

Pressing to get out, somebody stepped on a girl’s heel behind him, sending her tripping down the steps. She let out a panicked gasp, and her arms went wide.

With peripheral senses sharpened from sneaking through Palaces, Akira whipped around, stepping into her fall and bracing his feet to absorb her momentum. The black-haired girl’s arm knocked him in the face, sending his glasses tumbling to the street below.

One of the freshmen stared in awe. “Whoa! He caught her like it was nothin’!”

One of the girls in his class next to him rolled her eyes. “He’s not all that. Ushimaru-sensei still nails him right in the face with chalk.”

Akira recognized the girl as one of Makoto’s classmates, her black single side-ponytailed hair held by a white cartoon bear clip distinct even without the eye-searing pink skirt and suspenders he first saw her in. Takao, if Makoto’s snooping was right—which it usually was. “You okay? Twist your ankle or something?”

She looked into his eyes, the panic from falling down stairs melting into surprised relief.

He didn’t remember his glasses until he heard the snap below.

Takao looked down at him from her step-higher vantage point for another moment before she cringed at where the culprit fled the scene of the glasses-breaking. “Sorry. I mean, I’m okay. Sorry about your glasses.” She reached back up for her shoe and, using the transfer student to steady herself, replaced it. She looked down past his shoulder for a beat before standing up on her own. “Hi, Prez.”

Makoto stood on the street below, waiting for him with his snapped-in-two glasses. “Sorry, I missed the person who broke them. Do you need help getting home?”

Takao made a stifled noise, but clammed up as soon as the two other students looked at her. “I, uh, should be going. Don’t want to interrupt anything.” She took a last glance at the transfer student before merging with the departing crowd.

Akira grabbed for his glasses and held them close to evaluate the damage. One of the lenses was scratched and the other popped out, but the break on the frame seemed clean, so it should only take some superglue. He looked up at the class president. “I have one set of spares, but they’re at the loft.” She nodded, and he followed her close to the train station.

As they waited for the train, Makoto leaned close. “You want a hand the rest of the way?”

Morgana poked his head out of the transfer student’s satchel. “You could help Joker carry trinkets. We’re selling junk from the Metaverse to fund preparations for our future excursion.”

When she nodded, he couldn’t think of a sensible reason to tell her to go do something on her own. ‘You voted with Ryuji against changing Togo’s heart’ would just lose credit he needed to turn her around. Hifumi still depended on him, so he tolerated her presence as they got on the Yongen-Jaya line. Her eyes were distant with thought for a moment, before she rejoined him in the sleepy neighborhood, keeping her voice down so the scattering of pedestrians couldn’t listen in. “Had any luck with the last keyword?”

Akira scowled. Getting to sleep was never easy for him, but getting a head start on summer vacation’s homework and struggling through the dictionary to brute-force his way into Alibaba’s target ate hours. Trying to keep Hifumi’s spirits buoyed without having anything positive to report just added to his worries. Akira started to say, “No,” when a yawn crawled out of his mouth.

Morgana glared up at the transfer student. “This is why I keep telling you to go to bed.”

Akira flipped off his satchel and offered no further conversation as they headed to Leblanc, where Makoto sat down for a cup and he went upstairs to change and switch out his school satchel for the loaded leather one. He pulled the minimalist-frame glasses from the canister-style case on the workbench, then rejoined her. Makoto looked like she wanted to say something, but he wasn’t feeling charitable today. Akira maintained a swift pace to the train, where the crowd kept the Thieves from talking, and resumed his swift pace and barging through the crowd to Untouchable.

Makoto jumped in front of him to block the way into the door. Despite the intensity in her glare, she kept her voice down, “Akira. Look, you’ve been short with us since the vote.”

“And you’re surprised?” He snapped back, his volume a little higher. “I left Shinjou to walk away from a life revolving around hurting people at others’ behest. We still know almost nothing about Sakura Futaba, and when I tried to question Boss about it, he wanted her left alone.”

Makoto held up a hand, the wideness of her stance ready for a fight but her outward-facing palm a call to end it before one broke out. “I still think Alibaba is Sakura Futaba, but regardless, the group made its decision. By helping Japan, we give ourselves breathing room to engage other targets who aren’t a threat to the entire economy. We may come across important information.”

“Like what?” Akira snapped. He fished his phone out of his pocket, opening the image of Yusuke’s charcoal drawing of the cityscape outside Togo’s Palace. “Like this location?”

“What location?” a boy’s voice broke through the chatter and bustle of Central Street. The two Shujin students spun around to see Kaoru, his thin book bag in one hand, a styrofoam take-out container in the other. He chuckled at their surprise and lifted his book bag hand in lieu of a wave. “Hi, Akira-san.”

Makoto pushed the door open and stepped inside. The middle schooler followed, but turned almost as soon as he got inside to look at the transfer student.

Akira held out his phone, the picture of Yusuke’s city-line sketch on it. “We’re trying to figure out where this is.”

Kaoru set the take-out container on the counter window, then turned back to the transfer student’s phone and took it in hand. His gaze twitched a couple times as he scanned the image, then brightened. “Oh, this is the south parking lot for KFTV Studios. We were just there for a school field trip.” He pointed at one of the high-rise buildings on the right. “This place has chocolate-chip waffles. Me and the guys got some before we went back home.”

Judgement taking a back seat to the promise of resolution, Akira snapped up the Metaverse Navigator. The incomplete entry for Togo Mitsuyo waited in his search history. In the distortion rested ‘Temple’. He selected the location field and typed ‘KFTV Studios’.

“Target found.”

He had just enough presence of mind to stop the Navigator before it could take him anywhere. His heart thudded in his chest, he felt weightless and dizzy at the same time. He slapped the phone against his chest as if to reassure himself it was real, tense laughter bubbling up out of him.

Kaoru arched an eyebrow. He glanced between the transfer student and student president. “Uh… is he okay?”

Akira sucked in a quick breath. Hold it together, Akira. You can save her. He sank down to one knee in front of the middle-schooler. “Kaoru-kun. If some day in the future you ever need a favor, anywhere or any time, you call me.”

Makoto cleared her throat, her glare hooded and her crimson gaze on his leather travel satchel.

Iwai popped open his stir-fry takeout behind the welded grating. “Thanks for the grub, kiddo. See you at home.” His plastic popsicle stick swung to the other side of his mouth, a faint upturn to one corner of his mouth. “You kids and your cell phone games.”

Friday, 22 July 2016
Evening
Yongen, Leblanc Loft

“Clearing,” Akira tried in the dim of the loft.

The synthesized voice replied, the same as the last few hundred tries, “Condition has not been met.”

“Cleaver,” he said.

“Condition has not been met.”

“Cleft,” Morgana said from his spot next to the open dictionary.

“Condition has not been met.”

“Clergy.”

“Condition has not been met,” the Nav replied with that infernal, steady sound. He’d have sworn it added more cheer each time just to mock him.

Akira tossed his phone to the table, where its rubberized case bounced it over the opposite side, falling at an odd angle to send it tumbling under the bed.

Morgana picked up the bookmark with his mouth and set it in the dictionary below clergy. “Joker? I appreciate the hard work you’re putting into trying to get us into this Palace despite wanting to do another one, but you can’t overwork yourself or you’ll hurt the party’s readiness by the time we make it.”

“We’re wasting our time! We already have a Palace we can get into!

Morgana closed the dictionary and nudged it off the shogi board set up on the table in front of the couch. “You need a break. Why don’t you set up a game? Practice for the next game you play with your tutor.”

Akira took in a deep breath, then let it out. The team leader couldn’t be this stupid. “Are you mocking me?”

Morgana held steady. “Joker, your tenacity can be a virtue sometimes, but if you get tunnel-vision, it becomes a problem just as much as Ryuji’s fixation on glory. Take the night off and do something which has nothing to do with Medjed.” His eyes gazed out at the bookshelf. “Teach someone else—that way, you’ll have a better chance at teaching and playing against Togo.”

Following the not-cat’s gaze to Stratego, he went through the short list of people who’d come. Ryuji might have in the past, but if he saw the runner’s face now, he’d be more likely to deck the girl-crazy boy. Makoto never took long to pick up on things, but he didn’t even know if she could play chess and she felt like the mercenary-robot core of everything wrong with what the Phantom Thieves were becoming. At least Ryuji was obvious he didn’t like the prospect of being led around by the nose. Akira couldn’t quell the wonder if Makoto seemed okay with it because she used the very same tactics against them not two months ago.

Akira looked out across the room, the bookshelf tidy and the floor as clean as he could get it without involving waxing. He didn’t need a maid, but Kawakami was more likely to be able to follow along than anyone else he could think of.

The call to Victoria went quick, but his listlessness grew as the thirty minutes waiting for her dragged on. He ran out of homework ten minutes in, then materials to make lock picks after another five. Prince Caspian mocked him with the moral simplicity of the main character and casual ease with which he stumbled over well-meaning allies. Being a recommendation from Hifumi just made him think of her.

The unlocked door to Leblanc swung open, and his teacher’s voice drawled as she ascended the stairs, “Hiii, this is Becky!”

“You know,” Akira said, setting the lockpicks in a small plastic box and covering it, “You don’t have to fake the whole faux-chipper maid thing.”

Kawakami slumped on her feet. “Ugh, thank god. Shujin doesn’t pay overtime on weekdays for probationary teachers.” She plopped onto the couch. “So I have to run to this stupid job after class. I had to clean bathtubs and walk six dogs at once before coming here. And on my off days, it’s an endless stack of preparing quizzes and grading homework assignments.”

The team leader hopped up on the work bench and pushed off the books positioned against the left side.

The worst possible thing happened: she caught one. The most incriminating one. Kawakami paused to read the spine of the new paperback. “You and Me: A Guide to Dating.”

Morgana chuckled from the sheltered corner of the workbench and hopped down, slipping into the shadows.

Akira’s growl rumbled at the team leader’s maneuver. “You little piece of—!”

Smiling through her own tiredness, Kawakami offered his book back to him. “Congratulations, Kurusu-kun! I told you there was someone out there for you. How many times have you gone out?”

With the team leader hiding, Akira glanced up at his teacher in a ridiculous work costume. He wanted to tell her to butt out, but he paid five thousand to get her here, and yelling at the team leader would only make him seem crazy. He blew out a long breath and took the book. It felt heavier than yesterday. “We haven’t. Her mother’s…” He tried to decide how to either allude to or avoid discussing the fact his team wouldn’t help him change the heart of the mother to the most important person on Earth.

“Doesn’t approve of the relationship, huh?” Kawakami sat on the couch. “My mother was like that to the first boy I went out with in high school. She was pretty over-protective.” She looked over him, her lips pursing at something. “What’s wrong? Did you try to ask her out and things didn’t work?”

“This was supposed to be about Stratego,” he grumped, sitting down on the chair. He took the Stratego box he set on the shogi board. “Things aren’t… very good for her right now. You know my record, some of the problems I’ve got. I don’t even know if I should start. She’s on a level way above anything I’ll ever reach. I don’t see how it could ever work long-term.” He pulled the box closer, but couldn’t stop his mouth, “But… I’ve never wanted anything so much.”

A beat passed and he knew he shouldn’t have said it. Akira’s jaw clenched and he pulled up on the outer Stratego box to open it. The inner box squeaked, suction holding it in.

Kawakami’s gaze bored into him for a moment.

Akira lifted and shook the outer box.

“Kurusu-kun,” she said, her brows pinching.

Akira shook the Stratego box again. It squeaked, and the inner box dropped just a centimeter.

She pasted a smile, but her stance betrayed tension. “It can be good to have someone to impress, that can be a great drive. But you shouldn’t worry yourself sick over—”

“How can’t I?” He spat, dropping the box. A squeak of air emanated as the top dropped lower. “I have a criminal record. Shujin took me as a pity project to make themselves look better when Inuri expelled me. Hifumi earned a full math scholarship at Kosei and she comes from a good family. When I finally worked up the courage to tell her about my record, she didn’t get it. She should have high-tailed it away. I don’t understand what’s wrong with her.”

Kawakami tapped her fingertips on the shogi board always unfolded over the table before the couch. “Maybe she does understand. Maybe she’s special because she can see beyond first impressions.” She looked over him in the dim light of the loft. Her dark eyes probed his, though without a predatory sharpness. “Isn’t this the reason you requested me? I’m in no position to say no to the money, but students shouldn’t be spending money on something as questionable as a maid service.” Now her gaze took a sharper edge. “Where do you even get the money? And are they hiring?”

Akira shot her a suspicious glance before giving a droll answer, “I sneak into a magical world and steal odds and ends, which I then sell on the black market in the real world.”

“Joker!” Morgana’s voice came from under the storage shelves past the stairs.

“Fine, don’t tell me.” Kawakami sighed. “You might be the only boy in Tokyo who is averse to maid outfits, and you’re obviously sweet on this Hifumi girl. Why did you request me?” She crossed her arms. “Really.”

“Maybe I wanted to slack off in class,” he delivered with an insincere smirk.

Kawakami sat back in the couch. “You don’t know how to slack off, Kurusu-kun. Your brain would explode if you tried.”

Akira grumped. “Fine. I… wanted to find someone to play Stratego with. I wanted to be sure I knew how to teach someone else how to play, so when I show Hifumi I can bring my A game.”

His homeroom teacher in the silliest costume gave a twisted smile. “I hope this Hifumi girl realizes how lucky she is. Make sure you actually tell her, okay?” She gave him a few moments to sputter before she reached out to grip the lower box shell. “Here, you pull up on the top. Let’s do this!”

Saturday, 23 July 2016
Early Evening
Yongen-Jaya

Ann stepped off the train and reconsidered the weak air conditioning behind her. A pall of hot, humid air pressed down on her. She texted an arrival note to Akira, then fanned herself with her phone. “Ugh, this is my least favorite time of year.”

“Hey,” a sleazy man’s voice came from further down the station. “If the heat’s gettin’ to a pretty thing like you, I got cold drinks an’ a balcony pool.”

She turned to the salaryman with his necktie dangling down both sides of his neck. Same old problem as usual. Ann rolled her eyes. “No thanks, I’m too old for kiddie pools.”

He jogged a step closer and grabbed for her wrist, but she backpedaled away. “You ungrateful bitch!”

Jogging at the station from the neighborhood alley, Akira yanked the middle-aged guy away. “Beat it!”

The old guy glared at the transfer student as he came side-by-side with her, before scoffing and turning away.

Morgana popped his head out of the transfer student’s leather satchel. “Yeah, you better walk away!”

Ann shook her head with a sad smile. “I can definitely see the guy who pulled a drunk off an innocent woman. How’s the guessing going with Makoto?”

Akira couldn’t have been out in the sun long, but his shirt was soaked below the arms and sweat beaded all over his face. “We’re both going through the dictionary, but no luck so far.”

Crossing her arms, Ann nodded. “That sounds like you two. Tenacious.” She started fanning herself with her phone again. “Hey, Leblanc still open for iced coffees?”

He shook his head. “I can get you something, but we ran out of ice and milk. Boss closed up early to go out and pick up more stock.” He pushed open the door to Leblanc, the sign reading Closed. “Want something?”

“Cold cherry soda?” Ann leaned against the bar. “So, no hits at all? Yusuke mentioned in the chat he and Morgana were joining you guys going through the dictionary, even if he’s working on it from the dorms.”

Akira shoved things back in place in the fridge, closed it, then stood and handed her the can. “And Ryuji said reading the dictionary sounded like a fate worse than death.”

Ann smiled. “Yeah. That’s why his mom locked his phone’s spell checker on.” She laughed, then popped the can open. She took just a sip and followed him up, where Makoto sat on the couch in front of a table with a shogi board, several books, and an open dictionary.

“Condition has not been met.”

Frowning, Makoto looked up with weariness like she’d just run a marathon. “Oh, hi.”

Ann forced a cheerful smile and pulled a box wrapped in shiny, faux-gold foil from her purse. “I thought you guys might need some pick-me-up, so I brought some chocolates. It’s an assortment with berries and nuts and everything!”

Morgana hopped out of the transfer student’s street satchel, onto the table. “You are such a considerate beauty, Lady Ann.”

Makoto sat back with a sigh, her eyes coming to rest on the transfer student fanning himself with The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. “Ryuji and Mishima are right. We need just the smallest clue, either from Alibaba or Sakura Futaba – assuming they aren’t the same person. We’re at a standstill.”

Akira’s jaw tensed. “We have a Palace we know the name, location, and distortion for.”

Makoto’s palm slammed down on the table next to the dictionary. “We all voted! We’ve been at this for hours for a reason!”

The team leader’s tail stood up, but his ears curled down as if this was an annoyance rather than new threat. “Stop fighting, guys!”

Akira’s hands curled into fists. “I am the first one on the chopping block if we don’t placate Alibaba, but we have jack shit to go on! When we have a Palace we can get into right now! We can save—”

Ann jumped in front of the transfer student glaring over the table. “Whoa, whoa, guys! Tempers are running hot…” She swallowed and took another sip to try to counter the humid attic air. “Hell, it’s just plain hot. If we can’t get help from Alibaba, why don’t we try asking the target?”

Makoto, drinking water, almost spat a mouthful over the dictionary. After a minute of coughing, she managed, “What?”

Ann shrugged. “Kamoshida was a pervert with the whole school behind him… I mean, a lot of it,” she amended when she saw the president’s aggravated expression. “And Kaneshiro was a yakuza boss, but Sakura Futaba is just a girl. She might even need our help, if she’s an abuse victim or something…”

Makoto gulped another mouthful of water to replace what she coughed earlier. “The target would have to be consciously aware of the distortion. And willing to help us.”

Ann looked down to the box of fancy assorted chocolates in her hand. “We… could say we wanted to offer a gift. For taking you in and everything.”

Makoto set her glass down. “But this is Boss’s house.”

Akira crossed his arms, his gaze boring holes in the wall. “Let’s do it. The sooner we get this started, the sooner we change Sakura’s heart and can get on to the next one.”

Morgana looked at the assembled Shujin students. “Well, so long as there’s no nay from Joker, I think we should try it. I’m worried what Alibaba meant by our mission failing if we waited any longer.”

Yongen, Sakura House

Akira poked the buzzer again as Ann called up at the window, neither action getting a response. He frowned. “Maybe there isn’t a Sakura living here. If we get any louder, we’re liable to raise the dead.”

Makoto squinted. “There are lights on.” She pressed against the gate… and it swung open with a faint creak. She glanced at the others, then squinted into the dark of the thickening clouds in the fading evening. “The front door’s open, too. Akira, does Sakura-san have any health problems?”

“Other than being old?” Akira reached down to his boot and slipped out a knife.

Ann slapped him in the arm and hissed, “Akira!”

He locked the blade open. “A burglar killed Hifumi’s aunt and uncle. I’m not going in unprepared.” A clap of thunder rolled over the sleepy Tokyo neighborhood. The class president jumped against his shoulder, any disapproval disappeared from her face, so Akira led the way in. When no sign of life greeted them, he called out, “Boss? Everything okay?”

Morgana hopped up on a set of shallow cabinets just past the entry and squinted into the gloom.

Soft light flickered from the open door at the end of the hall. Visions of bodies and blood sprang into his mind. “Oh, shit,” Akira muttered. “Boss!” He raced down the hall. A small but cozy den lay beyond, a CRT television playing a commercial in the corner. A single recliner positioned in front of the TV, and a couch against the side wall, piled with boxes of computer components. While untidy enough to make his hands twitch, it didn’t look like anybody had broken in or searched the place.

Makoto came to a stop behind him. “What is it?”

Akira let a long breath out and closed his knife. “Looks like a false alarm.” Another peal of thunder rolled through the house, and the class president jumped again. “Sakura-san! It’s me, Akira. If you’re okay, just give a shout out.” Just to make sure, he glanced in what might have been a guest room turned into storage for sacks of coffee beans and defunct restaurant equipment while the team leader dashed into the kitchen to check the rest of the ground floor.

Lightning flashed in the windows, and the power went out. The television went dark and silent behind them, but a feminine cry of distress sounded from the entryway.

Akira jogged out of a sitting room, double-took and pointed in the direction of the yelp when the blonde followed behind him. “Ann! You weren’t just over there?”

Makoto’s eyes were wide and her movements twitchy as she joined the others in the hall. “What’s wrong, Ann?”

Ann growled. “Nothing’s…” She froze. Her eyes widened in the dark. “T-there’s someone there…”

Makoto turned in stiff, jerky motions to follow the model’s wide-eyed gaze past her shoulder.

Lightning flashed, the light reflecting off the glasses of the short, straight-haired figure standing just behind the class president. The thunder almost covered up two shrieks. Makoto dove at the nearest person and clamped her arms around Akira. Her breathing sped up and she started chanting, “Savemesis!”

Ann turned the light on her phone on, shedding just enough ambient white to also light her smirk. “You two move fast.”

“Savemesavemesaveme,” Makoto mumbled faster and faster, her grip starting to hurt.

Akira shoved back to try to protect his ribs. “She’s hyperventilating.” He grabbed her shoulder with his one free arm but couldn’t push her off. “Makoto, breathe deep!”

The gate banged open, then Sojiro hauled the front door open at the same time as the model dodged into the sitting room. “Futaba! You…” The restaurateur fumbled through a drawer near the front for a heavy flashlight. “Who the hell are you?” The light shone on the transfer student and trembling class president clinging to him. Sojiro swept the cone of light up, then down, and stared for long seconds. Then his stiff posture went slack. “I encouraged you to make friends, not to take friends to make out in my house.”

The two students squawked, the embarrassment enough to make Makoto release the transfer student. “W-we’re n-not… W-we didn’t intend to intrude… S-sorry…”

Akira took in a deep breath to make sure his ribs weren’t injured. “We were coming to say thanks for… everything.” He pointed at the box of chocolates.

Sojiro glanced at the box, then back at the two students, dubious. “So how long’ve you two been dating?”

Akira side-stepped away. “What? We’re not!”

She looked disappointed for a moment, but that might have been after-effects of her episode. “W-we’re just friends!”

Sojiro brandished a Yeah, sure smirk.

Akira sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Ann, back me up here. We just came to give the box to say thanks for giving me a place to go.”

The model trudged out of the reading room and nodded with the box of fancy chocolates held up.

Sojiro’s flashlight jerked from the class president to model, then back again. “You… and the Takamaki girl? And here I was worried you were totally helpless, kiddo.”

Ann blushed, and she raised a hand as if to ward off the accusation. “What! That’s not at all… Nobody answered the bell, the gate was unlatched, and the door was open. We were afraid you had a stroke or something.”

Sojiro clicked the flashlight off, then flipped the light switch. The lights stayed dark. “The gate and front door?” When the model nodded, he sighed and set the flashlight on the hallway cabinet. “I guess I have been getting a little more forgetful lately.” The lights flickered back on. He crossed his arms and shot a searching gaze at the transfer student. “You kids didn’t try to go upstairs, did you?”

“No, sir,” Ann shook her head.

Makoto held her hand against her chest and took in a deep breath. “Someone else lives up there, doesn’t she?”

Sojiro took off his glasses to wipe them on his shirt. He took a simple breath, but in that moment, under the hall light, he looked older than the transfer student had seen. “Futaba. She’s my daughter.”

Makoto took a step forward, took the box of chocolates, then held them out and bowed. “We’re very sorry, Sakura-san. Could we meet with Futaba-san? I want to apologize for frightening her earlier. We were just concerned.”

Instead of answering, the middle-aged man settled his glasses on and leaned against the wall.

Ann glanced at the others. “Is she sick?”

When the restaurateur kept looking down, Akira looked over the drooped shoulders and wrinkled forehead. “That’s a ‘yes’ according to the ISM, isn’t it?”

Sojiro patted his pocket for his keys. “Let’s not have this conversation here in the genkan. This is the kind of talk where people need to sit. I don’t much want her to overhear it, either,” he finished with a glance up at the ceiling.

Yongen, Leblanc

Sojiro opened the door and trudged to his position behind the cash register out of rote habit. His glasses were clean, but for some reason, it felt harder to look out than before.

He forgot where that little brat was until he heard the transfer student ask from the sink, “You want me to make coffee for everyone? I’m getting ‘this is serious’ vibes. I’ll pay.”

Sojiro let a heavy breath out. “Stop trying to be a hero, kid. Siddown.” He waited until the boy set the apron back up on the hook before the restaurateur braced both hands against the inner counter. “Hoo, boy. Where do I even start?”

Akira sat down next to the blonde, and tugged at the back of a glove in uncharacteristic silence. “With Futaba’s mother?”

Sojiro took off his glasses and pressed the pad of his fingers against one eye. His headache still thudded, but felt more tolerable. “I knew Isshiki a while before I met Futaba. Wakaba was always a woman of her own sort. A razor-sharp mind, stern and a little flighty in a socially-awkward way.” He wiped his glasses with a polishing rag and set them back on. “But she had this… sense of herself. She always knew she wanted to make an impact, but wasn’t desperate for random people’s approval.” The image of her looking over a cup of coffee at him with a teasing smirk surfaced in his mind, and he let out a wistful breath. “She was an incredible woman. When she fixated on something, nothing could get in the way of her figuring it out.”

The Niijima girl clasped her hands on the counter. “Big Sis has to work and take care of me, and I was already fourteen when Father died. It must have been so hard for her.”

The boy went quiet, his eyes deep in thought. He hadn’t made a pun, not even a wisecrack about only trusting oneself. This was serious. Sojiro cleared his throat. “Some people change when they hit certain life stages. Getting married, having the first kid. Not Wakaba.”

Akira tugged at a glove. “The fact that lawyer could threaten to revoke your parental authority tells me you’re not Futaba’s biological father. Who was? Is he why Futaba’s hiding out now?”

Sojiro shrugged, frowning when the question brought to mind his own attempts to get an answer out of Wakaba. The way she withdrew, her shoulders hunched and chin wrinkled up. He never really had the heart to press for why she seemed as disgusted with Futaba’s father as Shido. “There was no father. I did ask, but she pushed the conversation on to another topic with an insistence which told me it would be better for our relationship to leave it in the past.” He paced over to the mugs to grab one and start polishing it, just to give himself something to do with his hands. “Didn’t make her any less a mother. She loved that spunky, awkward kid.”

Akira tugged at his other glove. “Up until the day she jumped into traffic.”

The two girls both squawked. “You knew her mother?”

The boy held up his hands. “I knew Director Isshiki had a kid, I didn’t know she was Futaba!”

Sojiro felt his hands clench the mug. He tried not to glare at the boy – it shouldn’t be a surprise he’d only hear the suspicious version from his no-good father. “First, let me set the record straight. I don’t care what the sycophants said. Wakaba loved her daughter. They didn’t need a dad to be a family who loved each other. No way would she ever commit suicide, especially not like they said. I saw the security camera footage myself. Wakaba was walking her out to Duck Burger. She looked… funny. Like she was drunk, but she always slept in the day after drinking instead of going out. And she didn’t run out into traffic, she… I’d swear she died on her feet and her husk shambled in front of that Sonoda truck.”

Akira’s eyes grew wide behind his glasses. “Wait… Futaba was there when Director Isshiki died?”

The blonde covered her mouth with her hands, her face pale.

Sojiro frowned. This happened too long in the past for these kids to be getting sick over it. It wasn’t even their problem. “Futaba’s extended family kept booting her from one house to the next. Nobody wanted to take responsibility for her, so I took custody. At first, she wouldn’t talk louder than a mumble. It took a while just for her to converse normally over the phone. I just wish that meant things were getting better, but I’ll still hear her in her room, crying and saying, ‘I’m sorry, Mom…’. At first, I tried to help her talk through it, but she’ll go to pieces when something reminds her of Wakaba. So now, I just let her spend all day on the computer, or watching that show.”

Makoto cleared her throat and tried to center her pose. “I assume you’ve already taken her to doctors? What did they say?”

Sojiro turned the mug over in his hands. “She won’t set foot outside the house. I even tried bringing doctors to her, and she shut herself up in her room. Wouldn’t talk to me for a week and didn’t eat for days. Scared me so bad I just stopped trying to force the issue.”

“Oof,” the blonde said, with all the appropriate gravity of the conversation.

Sojiro set the mug down. “I hope you can understand now why I’m rooming you in the loft instead of my house.”

Akira gave a cool shake of his head. “Are you kidding? I wouldn’t have let me in.”

The boy may be dumb as a post about other things, but he’s honest. “She had to go through too much with her mother and family before. All I want is to give her a safe place.”

The Niijima girl brushed a hand through her hair. “I think that comes from the best place of your heart it could. But it is concerning she’s been retreating rather than venturing out of her comfort zone.”

Before the proprietor could say anything to the little whelp, Akira clasped his hands and braced his elbows on the counter. “You’ve talked about family before. What do you want?”

Sojiro let the breath flow in and out of his nose. Between the restaurant and trying to shelter Futaba, it was a struggle to piece together the words. “Not to sound like a Ghibli ripoff, but… I want Futaba to be happy. I want her to laugh and do normal people things.” He picked up the polished mug. “But I don’t see how she can have any of that if she isn’t safe.”

Niijima stood from her seat on the bar stool, then bowed deep. “We’re really sorry for prying into your personal affairs.” She looked to her left at Akira and Ann. “It’s clear by now Boss didn’t have a heart attack, and his home is the safest place Futaba can be. Come on, Akira. You can walk us to the station.”

Yongen, Back Streets

Makoto strode out of the coffee shop, the restaurateur turning one way as the students turned toward the train station. That the web involved Akira, as well as the impossibly tragic story of Sakura Futaba, wrapped around her even more than the summer’s evening heat. Was it all true? Did Akira know about it?

Cyclic plastic clicking sounded behind her, and Akira grabbed her shoulder to pull her to one side. An older woman on a bike with playing cards in the spokes raced past them.

Makoto shook her head. Akira might have been many things, but a deliberate part of a conspiracy? Even with his temper, his greatest problem was impulsive, not calculated evil. Instead of resuming the walk to the train, she looked over the transfer student who helped pull her out of her self-pitying helplessness. He looked just as shocked as the model at the day’s revelations. “Is Boss leaving anything out?”

Akira glanced up at her, then crossed his arms and leaned back against the concrete wall. “He’s probably not remembering everything, but best as I can tell, he’s been honest about everything.”

Ann stepped into view from behind. “I’m sure of one thing. He treasures Futaba. No way is he abusing her. Her mother’s death has to be the root of her Palace, there’s no way it’s Boss.”

Akira pulled out his phone, but stopped short of bringing up the app. “Even if we could figure out her distortion… I question whether changing her heart would fix the problem. Hell, look at me. If you guys could magic into my brain and zap my memory of my old bastard, I’d still have my criminal record, truancy record, and all the reflexes built up from growing up underneath the old bastard’s boot.”

Makoto let out a heavy breath. As despondent as it was, he had a point. “Even so, I can’t imagine the trauma Futaba must have gone through, seeing her own mother die.”

Akira’s voice was low, a dangerous thrum to it as he said, “Not just die. Didn’t any of you read Akechi’s reports on suspicious deaths, like the CFO of Duck Burger? Hear what Boss-san just said? Director Isshiki didn’t just die. It sounded like a mental shutdown.” He clenched his gloved hands. “You guys available tomorrow?”

Ann brushed a voluminous pigtail off her shoulder. “I’m on a shoot.”

Akira gave a clipped, dismissive nod. “Fine.” He spun on the class president. “Makoto, be here as soon as you can tomorrow. We’re going to crack that distortion and save Futaba.”

Notes:

While I tend to keep Daywatch strictly to Akira’s perspective, there are some advantages from being able to probe the uninhibited perspective of others sometimes. That made Sojiro and Makoto even better narrators for a few scenes in this chapter. What did you think?

Chapter 82: July 24th, Into the Pyramid

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Sunday, 24 July 2016
Morning
Kanda Catholic Church

As the people shuffled out, Akira searched the departing crowd for the tiny splash of bright color in the hair of the most graceful girl he ever met. He scanned through the thinning congregation for the red omamori-style knot since she wasn’t in her usual spot in the second or third row.

It was only a passing glance at the entrance which caught her trudging out before she disappeared into the dissipating crowd.

“Togo-san!” Akira crowd-ran with as much dexterity as he could muster to cut between the throng of people between them.

She stiffened at the threshold, surprise and a number of other expressions flashing over her face as she spun around, before withdrawing behind a tired but cool expression. “Akira-kun. I’m sorry I haven’t responded this week. Mother took my phone.” Her deep emerald gaze fell and she let out a huff. “I had an interview. It was as bad as that exposé I already told you about earlier. They never even asked about shogi. They asked how long I spent on makeup and what brands I used. They asked about Papa, but only how sick he was. They asked about Mother, but only how long she spent working two jobs to keep the home afloat. They asked about cousin Rumi, but only about the burglary.” A tremor passed through her gaze, but she refused to give up that defiant, regal posture.

Akira reached out a hand, brushing it along her arm.

She closed her eyes and let out a slow breath, some of the stress lines fading from her face and neck. “I… snapped at him.” She leaned against his touch and his heart jackhammered. “I know. Mother’s taught me for years the worst thing you can do in front of others is lose control. But…” She crossed her arms. “Mother stepped in, but it wasn’t to defend me. She just brought up more of the things my family’s had to suffer. As soon as we got to the privacy of my room backstage, she flew into a rage. When I tried to say the interviews were becoming inappropriate, she yelled. At me. Yelled that we’d never have the power to quash those rumors without more… force of audience behind us.” She rubbed her arms under the opaque sleeves of her checkered dress.

“Excuse me,” an old woman said from behind them.

The two high schoolers descended the steps and took to the side. Akira stepped closer, misjudging the distance and bumping into her.

Hifumi’s arms slipped around and she pressed against him. “I just want them to be happy. It’s the first time Mother’s been happy since Papa was first hospitalized.”

Akira’s arms wrapped around her even before his mind could finish telling him he was too close. “You should be happy, Hifumi.”

Her voice was so low, even though she spoke against his shoulder, he had to strain to hear, “How can I be happy when everyone around me is miserable?”

Akira tightened his arms against her, though in the summer heat it already felt uncomfortable. “You’re too honest and not selfish enough.”

“I’m so tired of people saying I’m an airheaded idol. Or some conniving vamp.” She sighed against him. “And online… it’s disgusting. But I can’t just cloister myself off. This is my world, and I still want to live in it, not locked away from it like Papa.” Her arms tightened around him. Were it not for the heat of her body adding to the already suffocating summer, he would have savored the sensation of her curves pressing against him. “Do you know why I practice at church?”

Akira loosened his arms – part to give himself some relief from the heat, and part so he could look her in those gorgeous green eyes he could drown in.

“Nobody else will play.” The muscles around her eyes tensed, an agony she couldn’t hide behind her natural regal countenance. “Papa isn’t well enough to play most days anymore, and my shogi associates don’t even want to be in the same room with me.” Her gaze dropped. “Maybe I should give up this childish dream and get a real job. If I don’t have to play the idol, journalists can’t hurt—”

He tightened his arms around her. He wanted to tell her he’d be there, but the whole world was chewing her up and spitting her out. What could one person do against the whole world? “You should do what you love. What you’re good at. You pour your sweat and tears into shogi.”

A nervous laugh crawled out of Hifumi’s throat, the kind which reminded him of Milgram’s Experiment. “I guess that’s true, but in this weather, I work up a sweat just breathing. Ick.” She pushed him away, then tugged out at her dress, where some of the creases from them pressing together were sticking.

His heart fluttered at the loss of her firmness against him, but everything else was glad to subtract that body-heat compounding the already stifling humidity. “Let’s go somewhere.”

She withdrew her arms and gave a gentle smile which made his knees feel weak.

Noon
Van Quy Soup House

Behind a nook concealing the restaurant’s water heater, Akira slurped down chilled udon-style noodles.

Sitting across the two-person table from him, Hifumi swallowed a tidy bite of thin-sliced grilled pork spotted with fish sauce, before resuming her recount of the week. “I’ve even been practicing online for the exhibition match. Mother’s been reminding me every day I’ll be the first woman to reach the pro ranking league. My record may not have any losses yet, but he has so many hundred more matches I can’t help it.” She poked at her rice. “It’s been keeping me up every night this week.”

Akira scanned her, not just for her flawless skin and graceful curves, but to try to divine why she was so nervous about a match in what had to be the specialty of the smartest person he ever met. She relished the challenge, it was one of the things which lit a fire in him. Nobody else was excited by the hope of a close match like him before. He jabbed his chopsticks in his cold soup. “In a contest between two people of equal skill, it can come down to luck.”

She gave him a nervous smile, though the muscles around her eyes remained tense. “You’ve become very wise since we first met. Were you keeping that under wraps?”

His hand reached for his chopsticks, but instead of closing his fingers on them, he kept his focus on her. “You’re avoiding something you actually want to talk about.” A few possibilities came to mind, but as much as he disliked the tricks he learned from his old bastard, silence was more effective than torture at getting people to volunteer the truth.

She gave a shy smile and seemed to steady at his silent stoicism. “You know me so well, Akira-kun.” She picked up a glob of sticky white rice, but stared at it instead of raising it to her mouth. “Things have been getting more tenuous with Papa’s health. And Mother shocked me even more than when she yelled at me for the first time last week.” She lowered the rice. “She told me to lose.”

Akira’s fingers clenched on his chopsticks. “If anybody can make this game, Hifumi-san, you can.”

She gave him a pitying smile, the lines in her neck growing taut. “Your support is gratifying, but she didn’t say I might lose. She told me to lose.”

He’d thrown games of shogi against his mother while he was trying to convince her to take him away from his father, but the idea of the smartest, most honest person on Earth doing so made his gut clench. Even so, a pack of idiots couldn’t have raised the brilliant girl sitting across the small table from him. “Why?”

Hifumi took up another bite of rice, her jaw clamping down on it with more force than steamed rice deserved. She swallowed, then spat, “Fame.”

Akira picked up his chopsticks and ate a slice of carrot. “If Ip Man and Kagawa Teruyuki taught me anything, it’s that audiences sit on the edges of their seats to see how the underdog climbs back up from defeat.”

Hifumi nodded, her lips thin and the lines in her neck sharp. “By rebounding from a public failure, I can become a symbol for strong women refusing to be held down by men. And with my photos already attracting legions of men…”

“Your popularity will skyrocket. Magazines and websites which don’t even care about shogi will clamor for you.” His chopsticks creaked in his hand. “I should’ve expected something that cunning from someone who raised such a smart queen.”

She jammed her chopsticks into the Com Tam still on her plate. “She even thinks I can win and wants me not to! It’s so infuriating! And even worse, it would probably work. She has such a knack for mass media.”

Akira loosened his grip on his chopsticks, but resisted the urge to reach across the table and take her hand. He fished out another slice of carrot and ate it, but his heartbeat still pounded in sympathetic anger. “There’s a lot of things you might be willing to adapt to, but you’ve got too much integrity to throw a match.”

Hifumi breathed out, her shoulders slumping just a little. “I’ve disagreed with her in the past, but… our fight this time was… vigorous.” She bit her lip, shrinking in on herself just a little. “She couldn’t even understand. She told me I was wasting time with shogi when I could make all the money I’d ever need from my looks.” She let her chopsticks fall and clasped her hands on her lap. “Sometimes I wonder if I was deluding myself from the start about her support. If the only thing she cared about was money and ratings…” She sucked in a breath, looking so defeated. “I love shogi as much as my parents. I can’t abandon either of them!”

His hand took leave of his brain and reached out to take hers. “Hold on, Hifumi-san. We’re… we’re working on saving another heart right now, but we will save your mother’s.” And yours, he couldn’t make himself say.

She squeezed back, and any hope he had of speaking was dashed.

Sunday, 24 July 2016
Afternoon
Yongen, Back Streets

Akira slipped through the streets, the noise of traffic less oppressive than the first time he set foot in the sleepy residential community. Few pedestrians disturbed the concrete walkways at this time in the late afternoon, so it only took him a moment to find Makoto and the runner under the covered entry space of the defunct local theater. “Hey,” he called to announce his presence. “Any luck on that last keyword?”

She shook her head. “Ryuji and Ann still think they can guess it, but I’m so stumped I’ve given up on anything but your dictionary method. Leash.”

“Condition has not been met.”

The runner shifted his lean against the defunct theater. “So whaddya here so early for? I thought you worked on Sundays.”

Akira handed over water bottles fogged with condensation. “Some dude robbed the store with a baseball bat. Between the cops and cleanup, they’re closed until the evening shift.”

Ryuji stretched out from the other side of the door the class president slouched against. “Man, how hard could it be to figure out what a shut-in thinks her house is? A prison?”

“Condition has not been met.”

“Leather,” Makoto said.

“Condition has not been met.”

Ryuji whined, “Why can’t Ann or Yusuke be here to help us out?”

“No need for everyone to be together until we can get inside,” Akira said. He opened his own insulated steel thermos, filled with ice water and took a gulp. “Mishima’s not here, either.”

Ryuji grunted. “Uh, he doesn’t even have a Persona, dude.” He looked down at his phone, the Metaverse Navigator staring up at him. “What’s the name of that maze thing with the weird monster in it?”

Morgana blinked, his ears angling askew. “What?”

Akira took off his glasses to wipe the lenses clear. “Like a labyrinth?”

“Condition has not been met.”

She shot him a hooded glance. “I tried that one five minutes ago, Ryuji. Leave.”

“Condition has not been met.”

Akira pulled out his own phone to check his dictionary app, then joined the others in the shade for the scant good it would do. “You sure we can’t just give Mishima the app and let him do this brute-force word search?”

“Leaves,” Makoto said.

“Condition has not been met.”

Morgana growled, the low sound thrumming from the team leader. “I don’t like it either, but each time the Nav is used around other people, that’s another person carrying the keys to a dangerous world.” He stepped closer inside the shade and gave a vigorous shake to try to cool off. “Though I’ve started to wonder if we’re on the wrong track with thinking of involuntary shut-in. Some people hide away because they feel the outside world is dangerous. Maybe she thinks of her room as an oasis?”

“Condition has not been met.”

“Jail?” Ryuji asked, only to get the same negative. He cringed. “Right, we already tried that one.” He looked at the four assembled Phantom Thieves, his eyes stopping on the transfer student. “Ain’t there some special bad place in Catholic church?”

“We already tried hell,” Akira said, unsure where the dyed-blond was going.

“Condition has not been met.”

Akira rubbed his chin, eyes narrowed in thought. “Purgatory.”

“Condition has not been met.”

“Sanctuary?” Morgana tried.

“Condition has not been met.”

The transfer student leaned against the wall next to Makoto to check her progress on the word list. “Legislator.”

“Condition has not been met.”

“Leisure,” Makoto tried.

“Condition has not been met.”

Ryuji growled. “Man, we ain’t got nearly enough clues to figure this out.”

Ear twitching, Morgana groused. “If only she could tell us directly.”

Ryuji closed the Nav and put his phone away, a grimace on his sweaty face. “Well why the hell ain’t we askin’ her, ‘steada playin’ twenty questions out here where it’s hot as eff?”

Makoto rounded on the track star, her hair plastered to her sweaty skin. “And how do we get in, Sakamoto? You think the door’s going to be unlocked every time we want to go somewhere?”

Morgana shook as if he could cast the heat out of his fur. “Don’t forget how dexterous my paws can be, even in this world. If I can open that padlock to Madarame’s stash, I can open an old house’s front door.”

Makoto fidgeted. “What about Boss? I don’t want to sour things between him and Akira-kun.”

Akira slipped his phone into his pocket. “I’ll figure it out, just like I always have. I managed life before him. If necessary, I’ll manage life after. Futaba may be trapped in her trauma, and Medjed’s too important to get caught up on little things along the way.”

Ryuji nodded, puffing up his chest a little. “Effin’ right!”

The class president held a cringe. “You getting kicked out of Leblanc would not be a little thing. Not for you, and not for us.”

He could almost hear Hifumi tutting at him. Akira adjusted the satchel on his shoulder, its straps not feeling right with Morgana’s weight absent. “I shouldn’t have started fatalistic like that. Boss is a workaholic, he’ll be at Leblanc until evening. We shouldn’t need to worry about him.”

Ryuji smirked. “Listen to your boy, Makoto. We’ll get this, we just gotta go after it.”

Morgana sighed. “Can we just get to it before I turn into fried cat? Judging from the agreement to back-hack Medjed while we change the target’s heart, Joker’s already got some rapport, so we won’t be starting from square one.”

With no argument from the assembled group, they proceeded to the Sakura house and, after a short lock-picking session, inside and to the upper floor. Caution tape on one door framed a poster with a star field, a translucent A with a circle above it in the center. “Hey, it’s Earth’s point of origin.”

“Whazzat?” Ryuji leaned in, clapping a heavy hand on Akira’s shoulder before he gave up. The runner looked down at the team leader. “You sure this is the right place?”

Yes,” Morgana snapped.

Makoto cleared her throat. “Futaba-chan? I’m sorry I startled you the other day. I wasn’t prepared when the lights went out.”

Ryuji growled and wiped his forehead. “Man. Gettin’ into Palaces sucks.”

Makoto whacked him in the arm. “Sakamoto!” She brought up her phone’s contact book.

Akira felt his phone buzz in his pocket the instant before the wind and string instruments of the theme song for the Goa’uld floated out. Makoto’s ID spread over the incoming call window.

Makoto huffed. “Sorry, I meant to call Ann.”

An instant later, Akira’s chat app buzzed with the mysterious Alibaba. He reversed course immediately. “Futaba?”

The hacker’s text read, [Why are you here?]

Morgana hopped up onto the transfer student’s shoulder to spy on his text app. “Why’d she only react now?”

Closing the president’s call, Akira pursed his lips, trying to get his mind into what a girl would be thinking. He wasn’t having much success. “Hearts are hard to get into. We need to know more if we are going to have any chance of success.”

Makoto stepped closer to read his screen in the dark, narrow hallway, her breasts pressing against his arm. When Akira jerked aside, she realized and stepped back to the door. “I know you may be more comfortable with Alibaba, but Sakura Futaba is the only one who can answer the questions we need.”

[What do you need?]

Akira let out a short breath of air that the hacker was keeping the line of communication open this time. “Living in this house has a special meaning for you. What is it?”

[Pain.]

Scratching his scalp, he angled his screen so the class president could see. When the upperclassman shrugged and sent a strained look at him, Akira looked up at the door. “Is that Buddha? Life is suffering?”

Silence suffused the hallway for long seconds. Ryuji turned on the transfer student. “Dude! We’re tryin’ to get what her keyword is, an’ you’re quotin’ religion?”

“I’m trying, okay?” Akira looked back to his chat app. “Faith is important to some of us.” He bit his tongue, trying to think. [If this place is painful, why don't you leave?]

A beat passed before the Sakura girl responded, [This is where I die.]

That comment made his heartbeat clench in his chest. His teeth ground and his hands trembled.

Makoto sucked in a breath, her hands covering her mouth as she stared at his phone screen with wide eyes. She whispered, “I thought you already tried grave.”

Morgana scratched at his collar as he peered down from the transfer student’s shoulder. “Isn’t that where people are buried long after they’re dead? This looks like a place where people are laid to rest. Maybe a tomb?”

“Input accepted. Searching for route to destination.”

Akira backed his phone to the main screen and looked up to the others, his gaze steely. “Call the others. It’s showtime!” He turned to the door and raised his voice to be heard through it. “We’ve got it, Alibaba… I mean, Sakura. You take down Medjed, and we change your heart.”

[I remember our deal. Just work quickly.]

Makoto put her phone away. “Ann and Yusuke are on their way. Ann’s already at the train station.”

Akira just gave a nod.

The team soon rallied at what served as the front court of the Sakura house. The upperclassman said, “Everybody ready to go in? This will be the first Palace since Madarame, and if I’ve learned anything from them since Kaneshiro, it’s that each one is different.”

Yusuke nodded. “Very practical caution.”

“Aaand… off to crazyland.” Ryuji, leaning next to the door, activated the Nav, and the world bled red.

Monday, 25 July 2016
Early Afternoon
Yongen, Sakura House, Futaba’s Room

Futaba tensed, hunched on her computer chair as the Phantom Thieves argued outside her door. Her heart jackhammered in her chest at the prospect of strangers being so close.

The beautiful, haunting notes of the Goa’uld theme flowed both through the door and the bug on Kurusu Akira’s phone. One of the girls said something, but that music cut through Futaba’s panic and triggered that sense of need. A question which had to be quenched. She yanked herself around and her fingers trembled as she scrabbled for her phone. She could have initialized a virtual terminal on one of her computers, but her phone already had a virtual node which would erase itself from the telecom network after she closed it. Her fingers trembled as she typed a text into the text messenger. [Why are you here?]

A cat meowed on the other side of the door.

She watched the bug displaying everything on his phone screen as he closed the call from the girl. He raised his voice to be heard through the door. “Hearts are hard to get into. We need to know more if we are going to have any chance of success.”

The girl who was alternately sniping or swooning at Akira called at that same raised-to-talk-through-the-door volume, “I know you may be more comfortable with Alibaba, but Sakura Futaba is the only one who can answer the questions we need.”

Futaba’s heart jackhammered in her chest and it felt like her throat closed up. Was she asking the impossible of them? Maybe her heart was too twisted to be saved after all. She swallowed and typed, her hands starting to shake again by the time she sent, [What do you need?]

She brought open Akira’s camera and saw him chew on his lip a moment, before he said, “Living in this house has a special meaning for you. What is it?”

What was her life? That was the easiest question in the world to answer. [Pain.]

The bugged phone shook as Akira angled it towards the girl standing against him. Strange… they were so close, but she didn’t sound like the one who cried with him a week ago, so close Futaba bugged her phone too. The short-haired girl gave a baffled shrug and looked back at Akira, then he shrugged and looked up at the door. “Is that Buddha? Life is suffering?”

The idiot snapped, “Dude! We’re tryin’ to get what her keyword is, an’ you’re quotin’ religion?”

“I’m trying, okay? Faith is important to some of us.” Akira scrunched his face for a moment before typing, [If this place is painful, why don't you leave?]

Futaba felt the calm of certainty wash over her as she sent, [This is where I die.]

Akira’s phone shook.

Makoto covered her mouth, her eyes wide in the dark hall. “I thought you already tried ‘grave’.”

The cat meowed.

“Input accepted. Searching for route to destination.”

Akira canceled the Metaverse Navigator app and returned to his phone’s home screen. All trace of hesitation left as he commanded, “Call the others. It’s showtime!” He called through the door. “We’ve got it, Alibaba… I mean, Sakura. You take down Medjed, and we change your heart.”

A tear dripped down one cheek at the promise of release. [I remember our deal. Just work quickly.]

As they walked back outside, Makoto said, “Ann and Yusuke are on their way. Ann’s already at the train station.”

Cloth shuffled, though what motion the transfer student made, Futaba couldn’t guess. Despite her promise, she felt glued to her screen as she strained to hear anything else from the bug. Minutes later, the other girl and the weirdo who had to be from another dimension joined them in the miniscule space serving as the front court outside, just underneath her room.

The upperclassman said, “Everybody ready to go in? This will be the first Palace since Madarame, and if I’ve learned anything from them since Kaneshiro, it’s that each one is different.”

Yusuke nodded. “Very practical caution.”

Ryuji drawled out, “Aaand… off to crazyland.”

The world around Futaba bled red, every line twisting in on itself. Her eyes blinked, and opened not to stained carpet, but polished marble. She looked to her left and right and saw the polished stone steps descend to a huge room she’d recognize anywhere. The palatial command center of a Goa’uld Ha’tak. Maroon tapestries hung around the perimeter of the room, edged in wing stylings and bearing the symbol of the ankh. A pair of masked Jaffa in avian-styled trooper plating looked up to her, then bowed to their knees. “My Lord!” Then they looked up past her, and repeated it in confusion.

Behind Futaba, on the ostentatious gold throne of the Pel’tak, sat a beautiful woman with all the intimidating countenance of her mother. The eyes were yellow instead of hazel, and the hair was the brilliant red of copper she wanted back when she let Kana dye her hair. It wasn’t until she took in the regal white linen and matte bronze scales that she realized it looked more like an adult version of herself.

The eyes flashed with gold light, and her adult doppelganger waved a lazy hand at the weird masked Jaffa. Her voice reverberated, “Leave us. Gather everyone in parade formation before the landing temple.”

Futaba squawked in terror, her smart phone tumbling from her fingertips before she fell from her crouch, backwards down the short stairs to the polished marble floor.

Her double stood and took a step to scoop up the fallen phone, before kneeling down next to the fallen and hyperventilating younger self. The eye-glow receded, but the irises retained the unnatural hue. Her eyebrows pressed together and sadness twisted her face as she held out the phone with one word, as hushed and ordinary as any whisper, “Live.”

Breath caught in her throat, Futaba reached a trembling hand to take her phone. On it sat a terrifying app, a bleeding eyeball staring straight at her, though she saw Exit on it and mashed it with her thumb.

Afternoon
Futaba’s Palace, Dunes

The Sakura house vanished in the blink of Akira’s eye, the chaotic concrete jungle replaced with endless sand dunes. Somehow even the yellow sun felt menacing. Akira shielded his eyes against the glare and waited until his eyes adjusted.

Yusuke held his hand to his brow to shield his eyes and stared out. “It is a desert.”

Makoto wiped at her forehead and glanced at the others, then down at herself. “Shouldn’t we have done that… ‘Poof, Phantom Thief!’ thing as soon as we got in here?”

Morgana shook his head. “Alibaba… I mean, Futaba wants us to steal her heart. The Palace Ruler has to perceive you as a threat.”

Ann gazed around the sandy expanse, then paced up to look over the dune for a moment before returning to the group. “This place feels so… bleak. It’s so weird after as populated as Kaneshiro’s bank was. Or tidy as Madarame’s museum was.” She gazed out at the sandy expanse. “Maybe Futaba-chan thinks the world is a desolate place she has to defend herself from?”

Akira looked down and couldn’t decide if he was glad he was still in his civilian attire or not. Shielding his eyes, he looked across the horizon for signs of civilization. “Hey, Morgana, shouldn’t we be seeing Tokyo?”

The catboy side-stepped into Ann’s shadow. “The Metaverse is a cognitive reality, remember? If the Ruler doesn’t know or care about Tokyo, it wouldn’t exist in her mind. This desolate place could be what she thinks of the wider world as.”

Something tickled at his ear–a familiar sound which picked up in volume until it resembled the rumbling scream of a machine. Akira’s eyes bugged out and he dove. “Everyone, down!” All but Makoto hit the hot sand. He reached up to snag her wrist and pulled, but his angle ended up tripping her and they fell in one tangle of limbs.

Before he could act embarrassed about a girl falling on top of him, two crescent-shaped craft with plasma cannons slung under their tips roared overhead. They came down to an altitude of about thirty meters, one falling into position behind the other as they zoomed low across the sky.

Ryuji rose to his knees and spotted the upperclassman on top of Akira. “Heh. Not like I don’t get it, but there’s gotta be better places to get it on than a Palace.”

She shot to her feet with an ‘Eep!’, and for a moment, Akira felt a pang of loss at the absence of softness against him. He stood, shielding his eyes, and took the lead. “This way, guys. The Death Gliders looked like they were lining up for landing at a hanger, which means we’ve got to be close.”

Brushing sand from his sleeves, Yusuke said, “Those did not appear to be gliders to me. They definitely seemed like heavier-than-air—”

“It’s just a name,” Akira said. The others fell in behind his run, and after only a few minutes, they came to the crest of a large dune. Three men and one blonde woman in green fatigues hustled down the trough between dunes, all members of both groups coming to a halt as weapons came up. Akira’s breath caught in his throat for a moment when he recognized them even without having to see their shoulder patches. “Colonel O’Neil!” He fought the urge to dance at coming face-to-face with the heroes of his favorite TV show. “Major Carter, Teal’c, and Doctor Daniel Jackson. We’re here to help. We’re on a mission to steal an artifact from the System Lord.”

Ryuji stared at the transfer student. “Are you fangirling?”

Akira held out his free hand at the cognitions. “They’re SG-1! I watched the show for years!”

Teal’c held as steady as his imposing figure always did on the show. The big, brawny, dark-skinned man with the golden crest of Apophis on his forehead glanced to the gray-haired man in fatigues beside him. “They do appear to be dressed in the garb of the Tau’ri, O’Neil.”

The grizzled, white-haired man looked up from behind his black firearm, something heavier than any rifle the track star had carried. “You with the NID?”

Morgana kept his crossbow trained on the burly man holding a staff trained on them. “Who’s that?”

Akira searched his memory. “Uh… covert operations group on Earth. Stole any tech they could get their grubby little hands on and nearly broke the alliance with the Asgard.” He lowered his sub-machine gun and looked at the white-haired man still braced behind his weapon. “We’re here to help.”

The short-haired blonde woman in fatigues lowered her weapon and glanced to her side. “I’m pretty sure no NID would broadcast that little screw-up, General.”

Morgana looked up to the transfer student still in street clothes. “They’re not Shadows, but cognitions aren’t necessarily safe either. Are you sure about them, Joker?”

Akira let his weapon drift down to his side. “If there’s one thing I know for sure, it’s that SG-1 are the good guys.” He looked back to the four adults in green fatigues. “I’m not sure what your mission is, but whatever it is, I’m sure we can help each other.”

O’Neil grit his jaw and looked at the weapons in the thieves’ hands. “Kids shouldn’t be playing with guns.”

A spark went off in his mind as he remembered Hifumi bringing his own pieces against him in their games. Mercenaries followed different rules than the sworn-to-death landed samurai. He could exploit the same excuse here. “We’re not Tau’ri. We’re mercenaries contracted by… the Lucian Alliance to steal a critical component which will destroy the System Lord’s Ha’tak.”

The other three in military fatigues looked to O’Neil before he sighed. “Ah, for cryin’ out loud! Always gotta be a snag. Brass is gonna need to hear this.” When he lowered his weapon, Teal’c snapped his staff weapon shut, and the Phantom Thieves lowered their weapons with relieved breaths. “Sam, Daniel, take point. We’re checking back in to base camp.” He slung his weapon and looked into the transfer student’s grey eyes. “Since your intel’s obviously outdated, I’m a Brigadier General now, and Sam was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel more’n a year ago.”

The two groups hiked for what felt like an hour before reaching a small cluster of beige camouflage tents. About a dozen assorted men in close-cropped hair and the same green air force fatigues as SG-1 guarded the camp. The four members of SG-1 slipped into the largest tent, a rectangular arrangement with two central tent peaks.

After a few minutes, their archaeologist and language expert ducked back out. “General Isshiki’s agreed to see you, but don’t get your hopes up about joining the search and destroy mission.”

Inside, a long folding conference table held an array of closed binders full of papers at one end, and computers at the other. Blinky light units whirred beside the latter. A woman wearing the blues of an air force officer’s dress uniform stood up and brushed her straight, black hair away from her glasses. She glanced at O’Neil. “Thank you, General, that will be all.”

“Understood, General Isshiki.” He flashed a quick salute and left, Sam and Teal’c following after.

Akira almost dropped his weapon at the sight. Despite a uniform fitting the American Air Force, he’d know that face anywhere. Isshiki Wakaba, Director of Blue Cove. “Director Isshiki really was Futaba’s mother?”

The black-haired woman’s eyes snapped to him and she gestured to the three stars at her collar. “That’s General Isshiki.” Her eyes flitted over the Phantom Thieves. “So you claim you’re here to destroy the System Lord’s Ha’tak?”

Makoto edged closer to the transfer student and leaned to whisper, “What exactly is that?”

Akira whispered back, but maintained no illusion she couldn’t either read his lips or hear anyway. “A mothership. The seat of a System Lord’s power. The throne ferrying them across the stars and deploying their armies.”

Director – no, the cognition of General Isshiki clasped her hands behind her back. “So you know what a Ha’tak is, but where are your naquada charges? You don’t have a battleship, and those weapons wouldn’t even be a serious threat to the contingent of Jaffa guarding the Ha’tak.”

Makoto blinked. “What do cakes have to do with guards?”

Akira squared his shoulders. “Every vessel carries its vulnerabilities. The reactor and computer cores can both be sabotaged to turn it into a useless hunk of metal.”

Isshiki spat a laugh at them. “You must have grown up under the gods. You are expecting a miracle.” She waved them out and raised her voice. “We don’t need your help to destroy the System Lord for her crimes against nature and humanity. Stay out of my teams’ way, and I don’t care what mercenaries do with their time. The System Lord will be destroyed.”

Akira’s fists clenched, his black gloves straining. “But—”

Morgana hopped onto the transfer student’s shoulder. “She’s made her decision, Joker. As long as we don’t have to worry about these cognitions interrupting our mission to steal the Palace Ruler’s Treasure, it shouldn’t matter.” He looked out at the others. “Come on, everyone.”

As soon as they were out of sight of the Stargate force’s camp, Morgana turned on the transfer student. “Okay, I didn’t want to say anything in front of them because you did talk us through one layer of Palace defenses, but how did you know all of those things? Did you sneak in before?”

Akira shook his head, then wiped at his forehead with the back of his gloved hand. “Stargate SG-1 is a TV show. Somebody left the box set for the fourth season in Blue Cove’s administration staff break room years ago, and I’ve been hooked since.” He shielded his eyes with his hand and scanned the horizon. “Futaba’d have to be obsessed with it for the show to be the theme and foundation of her Palace. Anybody remember which way those Death Gliders were heading when they lined up?”

Makoto glanced around, then down, changed the angle of her feet a bit, then scanned the horizon dominated by undulating dunes and long stretches of cracked dry wash. She gave one short nod, ending in a droplet of sweat falling from her chin. “That way.”

Morgana transformed into the minibus, and they raced over the cracked ground. Stale, hot air leaked from the vents, but none of the windows would lower, so the team had no choice but to sit in the catbus and sweat. Minutes passed, the water ran out, and the desert stretched on.

Ann tugged at her sweat-soaked shirt to try to let some cooler air at her skin. Even her lacy purple bra was soaked with sweat.

Ryuji leaned forward. Yusuke followed suit.

The gleaming point of the landed pyramid ship rose up above the undulating dunes sprawling around it like protective berms. His excitement ran ahead and Akira stood up as much as he could in the minibus, bracing one hand on the back of the model’s chair as he pointed with his other finger at the gold superstructure rising up out into view as they drew closer. “Look, it’s the same upgraded design Apophis was constructing before SG-1 blew it up.”

Instead of looking forward, Ann looked up at him… then glanced down at the sweat-soaked white shirt she was still tugging away from her chest in an attempt to cool off. “Perverts!” She swung a quick punch into Akira’s cheek, knocking his skull into the still gawking Ryuji, who knocked into the artist also leaning forward. All three smacked into the side of the catbus.

Morgana swerved left. Sand slid out from under the tires as the dune they were driving along started to collapse, tipping the catbus. Their Metaverse guide and transportation popped back into his catboy form, and the deluge of sand crashed over all of them.

Ryuji, wearing shorts and ankle-high-socks, was the first to burst out of the sand-a-lanche with a cry of pain. “Fuck, that’s hot!”

While Ryuji helped extricate the artist, Akira and Ann helped Makoto dig herself out from the sand burying her up to her neck. She stumbled to her feet, minus one shoe, but by the way she brushed herself off didn’t seem injured.

With the artist out and brushing away his sand, Ryuji spun on the team leader. “Is everythin’ you do half-assed? I thought you said you had AC.”

The half-pint catboy hopped in rage. “I was doing the best I could! This Palace isn’t exactly optimal for any of my abilities! It’s almost unpopulated, hot, and big.”

Ann stepped in, her voice just a little too heated to bring things down.

Makoto noticed the transfer student creeping up the sand dune and followed him up to the crest. Whatever complaint she had for him died on her tongue when she got high enough to see more than the circular gold superstructure extending out of the enormous pyramid center of the Ha’tak.

The high dunes receded into packed earth around the base of the pyramid ship’s landing site. A limestone temple poked up from in front of it. At least a hundred men in breastplates and holding long staffs gathered in a perfect parade formation in front of the temple. From behind, Akira couldn’t tell much about the cognitive Jaffa gathered, so he looked up to the one standing on the steps of the stone temple. His armor looked more extensive, with plate pauldrons and bracers instead of the leather and mail on the arrayed masses.

Akira backed down from the crest of the dune. “Makoto, you bring any binoculars?”

“Of course, this is our first visit to a strange Palace.” She pulled open her purse, then grimaced. “Geez, there’s sand everywhere.” She pawed through it for a few seconds, a quarter of it filled with grit, then pulled out a tiny set of plastic binoculars, shook at it to knock some off, then handed it to the transfer student. “What are you looking for?”

Akira blew on the lenses, then crept back up to the top of the dune. “There’s probably a ring room through a passage in that temple, but we’d have to get through that army. We’ll save that in case the Ha’tak takes off.”

“Takes off!” Morgana’s voice hissed as he bounded up the dune to peer out between them. “What’s that mean?”

Akira pointed at the gold ring structure extending out of the pyramid. “I already explained it back at the Stargate camp. That pyramid is a landed space ship.” He peered through the binoculars and continued to explain, keeping his voice low, “The good news is there’s more than one entrance. There’s no sign of a water source here.” He scanned the Jaffa on the temple steps, bellowing at the guards below. With the magnification, he could make out avian styling of the cognition’s armor. That made him think of Horus, but the black symbol stamped on his forehead didn’t look like any he’d seen on the show. A cross with a loop on top… an ankh, was it? “I’ve never seen that on the show, so I have no idea what tactics they’ll use. And that guy’s just a black stamp instead of gold, so he’s not the First Prime. That means there’s still a really strong commander somewhere in there.”

On the far side of the pyramid, a shadow from the flapping of a sand-brown tent betrayed a watch post near a break in the far sand dunes.

“Fuck,” Ryuji’s declared as he joined the others, spying out the camp at the front of the enormous pyramid ship. “I’m gonna need a bigger gun. Maybe I should’a got that SG-43.”

Akira backed down from the crest of the dune. “There’s a tent, maybe a supply camp, on the opposite side of the pyramid. It’s our best bet for a stealthy entrance.”

Morgana looked over the Phantom Thieves standing there in sandy civilian clothes. “Well, you heard the man. No fighting this time. At least it’s less than ten kilometers.”

Futaba’s Ha’tak, Supply Camp

Akira peeked around the corner of Egyptian-styled crates and boxes under a sand-colored tent. No Jaffa or apparent Shadows guarded the area and it felt like a trap. Though back entrances had been left un-guarded on the show before. A short stretch of wind-blown sand separated the supply tent from a ramp extending up into a small door in the underside of the landed pyramid ship.

Ryuji strode up behind the transfer student with his aluminum bat over one shoulder. “This place is hot as eff.” His eyes followed the ramp up. “So whaddya think’s in there?”

Sheathed katana in hand, Yusuke came to a crouch next to the transfer student. “A pyramid is the tomb of a pharaoh, correct? The physical housing from which he would rise to a physical afterlife.”

Makoto crouched to one knee, keeping her shotgun in hand. “It makes me wonder exactly what her distortion meant. During my first year at Shujin, a guest speaker mentioned the theory the pyramid is a device to revive the dead.”

Akira finished screwing his silencer onto his sub-machine gun and joined the others looking at a small ramp leading up into a door in the bottom of the huge pyramid-ship. “That would be the sarcophagus. It was capable of mending wounds and returning the dead to life. Ra brought back Daniel Jackson before torturing him for information about Earth.”

Morgana tilted his head. “Ra?”

“God of the sun,” Yusuke said, glancing left and right for any sign of cognitive Jaffa. “He was the head of the Egyptian pantheon.” He held out his arms, making a frame with his fingers. “At first, I thought the gold ring disrupted the perfect golden ratio of the pyramid, but from this side I can see a symmetry to its construction. It must look marvelous from above.”

Ann wiped at her forehead. “Well, let’s get in there and find out whether Futaba’s Shadow is all about the death or revival part.”

Morgana nodded and turned to the transfer student. “You seem familiar with the setting, and all I can sense is the Treasure lay somewhere up inside that pyramid.”

“Sure, Goa’uld architecture isn’t very complicated. If the Treasure’s high in the Ha’tak, that strikes the engine room and possibly the computer core. It could be up in the Pel’tak, guarded by the First Prime. Keep your weapons ready, we can’t assume these Jaffa will all be as incompetent as Apophis’ serpent guards.”

Yusuke swallowed, perspiration beading his skin but showing no other outward sign of discomfort. “Fascinating to hear so many words strung together in a way that makes no sense, Joker. Your powers of comedy are significant.”

Akira rolled his eyes, and led the team’s rush across the open road to the ramp into the bottom of the huge pyramid ship.

Beside him, Ann slowed to a plodding walk just short of the entrance where cold air blew down. “Thank god, AC!”

Makoto clenched her shotgun, but even she angled her face into the chill currents. “Was it really that unbearable outside?”

“The only major weather in Finland was winter.” Ann paced inside the cargo storage room, the flicker of flame passing over her and leaving the model in her sexy leather Phantom Thief state. The others all changed as well as soon as they crossed the threshold. Long boxes and crates in pseudo-Egyptian styling crammed the room about twice as big as a metal shipping container. She glanced at the team leader taking to the top of a stack. “Any sign of the Treasure?”

Morgana’s crossbow dipped a little as he closed his eyes and breathed deep. Then he hopped down. “It’s quite a ways up. Joker?”

Akira nodded and led the team inwards, zipping from support pillar to support pillar. Almost a minute in, the rhythmic stomping of metal-plated boots marched over the stone floor. The Phantom Thieves jammed themselves into the nooks behind the angled structural supports jutting out at regular intervals in the halls.

Two rows of five burly men each, all in that light breastplate with avian styling, marched past, each bearing a face-plate mask decorated as a bird. Trailing the formation tromped a man standing a full head taller than the other Jaffa. His polished golden armor glinted in the hallway mood lighting, colorful bird motifs covering the plates on his pudgy chest, upper arms, and legs. Instead of the almost flimsy mask worn by the others, a full hawk-like helm peered out, the citrine-orange gems where the helm’s decorative eyes perched glistened with their own light.

The marching echoed in their ears for long moments after the group passed the Phantom Thieves.

Ryuji, who’d been pressing against the longcoated teen to keep hidden in the shadows, let out a heavy breath as he stepped away. He whirled around on the transfer student. “Whadda those masks mean?”

Morgana bounded from the back of the group. “They’re Shadows. Remember that all Shadows drawn into a Palace-Ruler’s domain are encapsulated by the shell dictated by the Ruler’s cognition.”

His heart still hammering in his chest, Akira called to the others in a hushed tone, “Come on, ring room’s this way.” They rushed after him and the longcoated Thief keyed in the open sequence into the control panel next to the door. The thin stone door slid up and he ducked inside, where nothing but a ring in the floor broke the bland, octagonal room. He pointed at the two-meter-wide ring in the floor. “Okay, everyone inside.”

The thieves complied, though Yusuke held his rifle close. “Is this some manner of elevator?”

A grin split Akira’s face. “Yeah. Some manner.” He keyed in the sequence to take them to the top level in the control panel on the side of the room, then rushed into the ring with the others.

A mechanical hum thrummed through the room before the circle in the floor snapped away, and a set of rings rose up from the floor until only slits of the room around them were visible. A low, warbling whine shot through his ears, and white light blazed. When it faded, the rings zipped down into the floor and the circle in the floor snapped closed.

Ann pointed her gun up, taking timid steps out of the circle. “Wasn’t that supposed to take us to a new floor?”

Akira grinned, his heart racing from the nostalgia and excitement of walking around in the manifestation of his favorite show. “It did.” He advanced to the door. “Everyone ready?”

Morgana looked distracted, like he was trying to listen to something far away, but Ryuji kicked him to get the catboy moving.

Akira tapped the door unlock, and a narrower hallway accented by hanging maroon drapes lay before them. The transfer student led them around two corners to a narrow door in the same stone style as the all others on the pyramid ship, bearing the same ankh symbol as the Jaffa had on their foreheads – or masks, in the Shadows’ case. Akira tapped the open sequence and the door slid to the side. The opulent command room sprawled before them. Polished marble stretched across the floor, with gold accents everywhere. Green and maroon fabrics hung from the walls, several of them bearing the ankh. Stone and dark fabric jutted out from the back of the command room, and he wondered what equipment lay within. “I wonder if that’s a secondary computer core.”

Morgana stepped out of the corner, his readied crossbow in both hands. “The Treasure should be here, guys.”

Lips pressing together, Akira wondered where else something of critical importance could be hidden on a Ha’tak. The ship was huge, and searching it room-by-room would be impossible if it was heavily guarded. “It’s too dangerous to just go wandering around. Maybe the computers can give us an idea.”

Morgana nodded and paced to the team’s right to guard the other entrance at the back of the command room.

Akira paced to a pair of golden pillars rising from the middle of the floor. A gold bridge connected them, with a white, crystalline pyramid perched on the center. He reached out a hand and the crystal lit a bright white. The main viewscreen occupying the entire forward wall blinked, then displayed black with lines on lines of green code text. Dramatic bass music from the show poured out of the ceiling. “Oh, now you’re just taunting us, Futaba.”

At the same time as the music began, both doors at the back of the command room opened, the thudding of dozens of metallic boots rushing in. The zap of their stun weapons crackled through the air, downing Morgana and Makoto. Jaffa in heavy breastplates styled with bird wings aimed their staff weapons at the thieves. The dark curtains in the back rose, the stone projecting a U-shape into the square room folding back into the wall to reveal a gold throne. On it sat a young woman in polished gold and showy white linen. Long, copper-red hair spilled over her shoulders.

Akira snapped up his sub-machine gun and let loose a quick burst.

The bullets hit a translucent, cylindrical shield around the throne. The attractive, thirty-something woman in Egyptian regal dress laughed, the sound deep and echoing. She held a casual hand at them and her eyes flickered with a golden glow, before she spoke with a deep, reverberating voice, “Cast down those toys and bow before your god, Isis.”

Notes:

This is one of those chapters where a lot is happening and it’s difficult to find a great dividing line between rapidly-changing scenes. I hope you all enjoyed it, and thanks for leaving your thoughts.

Chapter 83: July 24th, Sarcophagus

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Sunday, 24 July 2016
Afternoon
Futaba’s Ha’tak, Command Room

Fine white linens covered her shoulders and wrapped around the woman’s hips, the skirt ending just above the knee. Matte gold scales covered her chest but bared her midriff. The molten-copper- haired woman’s yellow eyes flickered, and a smirk twisted her lips as she stared down Akira. Her reverberating voice shook in their ears, “Bow before your god, Isis.”

Ryuji gawked and he lifted his hand away from the shotgun hanging from a strap. “That’s Futaba’s Shadow? I thought the Palace Ruler was s’posed to look like some girl. That’s a total babe!”

Ann slapped a gloved hand to her face. “Reaper!” When the lines of Shadow Jaffa lined up their staff weapons on her, she set her pistol on the floor. She came back up with her hands raised, but looked angrier at the runner than Shadow Jaffa.

Still under the effects of the Zat gun, Morgana groaned, the spark of consciousness missing when his eyelids fluttered.

Despite the others sinking to their knees, Akira stayed on his feet. He sidled a step between them and the Jaffa with an officer in gold armor on the left, eyes locked with the grown woman of Shadow Futaba.

The thin Jaffa in extensive, gold plate and wearing a bird-head-helm brandished the discharge pod of his staff weapon at the longcoated Thief. A gravely but muffled voice shouted, “Bow before your god!”

Keeping his hands up, Akira glared at the towering Jaffa in gold armor. “I bow to my God. Not to false gods.”

The bird helm’s orange eyes glistened, then the helm split and folded in on itself, the entire thing retracting into the collar. The Thieves gawked as they stared up at the face of Sojiro, bearing a gold stamp of the ankh of Isis on his forehead.

He squeezed the trigger in his staff weapon and a bright bolt of yellow plasma lanced into the transfer student’s chest, leaving a smoking impact before he thumped to the floor.

Ryuji’s eyes snapped wide under his skull mask. “J-Joker…!”

A Shadow Jaffa holding a gray, serpentine shape of the Zat gun in his hand shot the model with the crackle-snap of the stun weapon, then zapped the track star diving for his gun.

Futaba’s Ha’tak, Holding Cells

Water in his nose and mouth forced Ryuji to thrash and swim, re-orienting himself until his feet hit stone and he got his head above water. A distant part of his awareness noticed he still wore the plated jacket of his kickass Phantom Thief getup. He slapped up his skull mask up to wipe water from his face as he coughed. A dim darkness surrounded him in the tall space, lit only by indirect amber light from a narrow opening above.

Another body plunged through the opening, forcing Ryuji to jump to the side. Yusuke’s body splashed into the cistern, and the runner sloshed after him to pull him up. To his relief, the weirdo spluttered, but regained enough presence to stand up.

Something interrupted the light and Ryuji had just enough time to look up before another body crashed into him, driving the pair down into the water.

The runner stood and spat out water, lifting up the coughing, leather-clad form. When the model pushed away from him, he felt relief she didn’t deck him and annoyance he didn’t get to cop a feel. Damn, does Ann fill out that cat-girl suit!

Before either of them had a chance to say anything, something interrupted the light again.

Ryuji yanked himself and Ann out of the way before the familiar spike-shouldered body of Makoto splashed into the middle of the cistern. He had just enough time to pull her coughing body up before whoever was up above tossed down Morgana.

The artist helped the team leader out of the water coming almost to the tall boy’s shoulders. Despite the annoying cat’s whining to the contrary, as soon as he got onto the artist’s shoulder, he shook himself off just like the cat he kept denying he was.

The scrape of iron on stone sounded above, and the guards above dropped a heavy metal grate over the sole opening to their wet prison cell.

Makoto looked across the other Phantom Thieves, then did a second head-count. “Wait a moment, where’s Joker?”

Ann, looking like a drowned rat with her pigtails soaked, burst into tears. She reached out and the artist stretched his arms to draw her in.

Ryuji blinked. She cheatin’ on Akira with the weirdo? The runner scratched his scalp, trying to think. He’d been focused on trying to pull Makoto’s limp form away from the Shadows when Akira said he’d never bow to false gods…

Yusuke held Ann up while she sobbed, and glanced between the runner and girl in riding leathers. “The cognition of Boss shot him.”

Morgana leaned against the artist’s head, keeping on the shoulders standing up above the water. Despite just taking a full plunge, he looked damp instead of waterlogged. “I… I should have stopped us and concentrated like I always did to just find the Treasure the old-fashioned way. When Joker talked us through that camp, I got pulled along into the hope we could make this a dash-and-grab.” His tail drooped. “Even somebody who wants her heart changed would instinctively react to protect her heart. Humans are innately possessive. I should have recognized a trap—”

“Stop,” Makoto said, tilting her head up to keep above the water coming to her chin. “We even knew something might have happened there. Both of us tried to stand guard. The Palace Ruler got the drop on us.”

Ryuji wiped water from his eyes. “Why’d Futaba’s Shadow look like a total babe? Wasn’t she some kid?”

Morgana shook his head in the distinct manner of a cat again, then tugged at the utility belt the Shadow guards were too stupid to take away from him. “A person’s Shadow is always influenced by her desire. Didn’t you notice Kamoshida was taller, or Kaneshiro thinner and with better hair?”

Yusuke released the blonde, then squeezed at his waterlogged coat sleeves, though with the water coming up above his elbows they just soaked again as soon as he let his arms down. “It would be logical to conclude the appearance of the Ruler’s Shadow coincides with some deeply held idealization which the Palace also reflects. It would be interesting to determine if Sakura Futaba desires to escape the powerlessness of childhood, or if there is some aesthetic of adulthood she yearns for.”

Jaffa, kree!” one of the guards shouted from above.

A short burst of automatic rifle fire roared, answered by several of those snappy pulses from the staff weapons the Jaffa used to kill Akira.

More NATO high-velocity rounds traded fire with the zipping sound of the alien staff weapons, before the heavy thud of the last guard hit the floor.

Morgana hopped onto the artist’s head and squinted up. “Hurry up and lift me to that grate!”

Ryuji interlaced his fingers, palms up, above the water so the artist could see it, then lowered them to his chest.

Yusuke nodded and hopped up, planting something which felt softer than track shoe soles in the runner’s hands. They wobbled a bit before both guys steadied.

Booted feet strode into what must have been a large room above them, a hushed but familiar dude’s voice saying, “…message from the Tokra just said prisoners.”

Morgana stuck his stubby arm out of the grate and waved. “Right here! We’re the prisoners.”

Makoto raised her fists out of the water. “Can we trust them?”

Before anyone else could answer, the burly figure of a dark-skinned man looked down into the grate, then crouched and hauled the heavy grate out of the way. His eyes narrowed at the team leader for only a moment before reaching in and pulling the damp cat out.

Yusuke looked down from his perch on Ryuji’s shoulders. “Ta—Panther-san, climb up next.”

Ryuji clasped his hands to help Ann up, then Makoto. Yusuke took the burly man’s deep reach and scrambled out. For a heartbeat, the runner feared they’d take off, but a moment later, a thin cord descended. Ryuji wrapped a hand around the end before he called, “Comin’ up!”

The burly dude disappeared back from the narrow cistern-prison opening pulling the cord up even faster than he could climb. A moment later, the runner clambered out of the opening, greeted by the beefy, dark-skinned dude.

It wasn’t until they stood there, less than a meter apart, that Ryuji spotted a gold symbol stamped on the burly dude’s forehead. He jumped back and raised his fists. “Shit, another one o’ them fuckers who killed Akira!”

He drew short when he spotted the sandy-blonde-haired woman and gray-haired man both point FN P90s at him.

The dark-skinned dude held a cool glare, steady as stone, at the runner. “I was once First Prime of Apophis. I seek to overthrow the Goa’uld and free my people.”

The short-haired blonde woman held steady aim right on his chest. “We came here to rescue some prisoners at the behest of a Tok’ra agent.”

Ryuji glanced around at the others, but none of the other Thieves seemed to have any idea what that meant. He lowered his fists. “We dunno what any o’ that shit means! We just came to take down the Palace Ruler.”

Makoto stepped closer, her hands up. “It appears we all have the same goal. If we help each other, it would be easier on both of us. Do you have any idea where our weapons are?”

The two people pointing P90s at them lowered their weapons. The gray-haired man glanced at a skinny American-nerd type with glasses. “Daniel?”

“Jack,” he replied, as if that was a whole conversation. The mind-people in American Air Force fatigues dispersed, the two with P90s and the dark-skinned guy returned to a heavy door that looked the same stone as the rest of this strange pyramid. The guy with the glasses gestured at what looked like a treasure chest against the side of the prison room complete with manacles on chains against the wall.

The nerd tapped gems around the top of the chest for a few moments. It hissed with an ominous rush of air and the top split open. He reached in and handed Makoto Akira’s PP-91 KEDR. Her breath caught, but she took it and reached out her other hand. Then the dork reached in and handed her the RMB-93 shotgun.

When she took it and lowered the weapon, a tension bled out of the room. Morgana reclaimed his folded crossbow and the other Phantom Thieves their weapons.

Ryuji pulled the bolt back on his SKS battle rifle to make sure the fire crystal-bullet Akira gave him was still there to turn it into the equivalent of a clip of incendiary rounds. The red glow gave him enough reassurance to set the bolt back, ready to fire, and he fell in next to the class president in a leather riding suit which was still too sexy to be fair. Especially with a fine booty like—

“Reaper!” Morgana snapped. Having the Thieves’ attention, he said, “Unless they moved the Treasure, the Shadows brought us to somewhere low in the pyramid. We’re tired, battered, and in no condition to rescue Joker at the moment.”

Ryuji rounded on the catboy. “Is your brain still sparkin’ from when those Shadows shot you with that stun gun thingy? Boss shot him in the chest! Joker’s dead!”

He’s not dead!” The team leader shouted back at almost a yowl. His chin trembled for a moment before he thrust out his tiny chest. “I’ve been there with him since his first day in the Metaverse, there’s no way a single blow could take out someone so stubborn!”

I saw it!” the runner snapped back.

He can’t be gone!” Morgana shouted back, a tremble in his voice.

Um, excuse me,” the nerdy cognition of an adult in glasses and air force fatigues cut in. “We don’t have the firepower to shoot our way all over the Ha’tak. Could you all finish this conversation when we’re not surrounded by Jaffa waiting to shoot us all in the chest? Or worse?”

Makoto bowed. “You’re right. We’re sorry.” She looked across the others and took a deep breath. “The Shadows have this round, but we gained a lot of valuable intelligence. And it’s not like Medjed’s threat has gone away. We still have to change Sakura’s heart, but we’ll never do it now . We need to exfiltrate and upgrade our gear to be better prepared for our next foray.”

Ryuji grit his teeth, but the goddamn upperclassman was right. Akira or no Akira, Medjed was still threatening to crash the Nikkei 225 his mother’s retirement was invested in, and bring down everything else. “I was hopin’ we’d’a got a Palace with no effin’ Shadows for once, but I guess that’s stupid to hope for.”

Futaba’s Ha’tak, Medical Holding

Blinding white light faded from Akira’s vision and for a terrifying moment, he thought he was in a stone coffin. He felt for the charred mess the plasma bolt turned his heart and chest into. It took a moment before his arm reacted, and even then it felt leaden. His red-gloved hand brushed over his stylish vest to the hole in his Phantom Thief clothing, but smooth skin met his leather-clad fingers.

A hum reverberated around him and the lid of the sarcophagus above him split, the upper two pieces swinging to the sides like bird wings and the lower two-thirds of the lid splitting lengthwise and sliding open. Meters above him sat what seemed to be a skylight in a high ceiling, showing a night sky. The artificial lighting he expected of a Ha’tak, a faint shade yellow, lit the rest of the palatial space.

Two Shadow Jaffa marched up and reached in, grabbed his arms, and yanked him out as if tugging out a kitten. The masked Shadows hauled him to a padded table where a pudgy Jaffa in extensive, gold plate armor stood. The hawk head glared down at him for a long moment before the shoulders gave a rolling shrug. The beak split and the whole golden helm folded in on itself to reveal the face of that one burglar guy scoping out Leblanc weeks ago.

Isshiki?” Akira was so surprised to see the man Sojiro identified as Wakaba’s older brother Youji, his weak fighting stilled for a moment. He looked to the gold ankh stamped on the cognition’s forehead. “What the hell? Sojiro was the Palace Ruler’s First Prime.”

The pudgy man with a sharp gleam to his brown eyes smirked, as he and the other Shadows tightened straps over the longcoated boy. “First Prime thinks he can protect our god, Isis, from a desolate world too wild to deserve her. The fool! All he needs to make is one slip-up, and I will show just how dangerous this world is. Just as I do every day I execute a Jaffa fool enough to believe he can ever be free.”

Akira struggled, but it took all his strength just to lift his head to look straight at the overweight man whose girth wouldn’t even let the gold plates close against each other. He stared at that golden ankh on the fat man’s forehead. “But that doesn’t make any sense. The show only had one First Prime—that’s it. The right hand of false gods…”

Finished with the last strap, the cognition Akira could only call ‘Second Prime Youji’ returned to the longcoated boy’s field of view. “Your misconceptions do not concern me, only what I desire to learn.” He gave a thin grin fitting a television villain. “I can make a god quake in terror.” The smile showed teeth. “I shall relish… learning everything about you.”

Akira spat at the cognitive man’s face. He couldn’t quite reach his own mask, but he concentrated on Pillar of Heaven, hoping sheer will would conjure his Persona.

His mask vanished in a puff of flame.

A growing darkness twisted into existence in the ceiling.

Second Prime Youji whipped his right hand down to his waist and unhooked what appeared to be a dull bronze rod with jagged thorns jutting from one end. He jabbed it into the longcoated boy’s side.

Searing pain exploded through his body. Whatever electrical crackle it made was overwhelmed by Akira’s howl of agony. It almost felt like his insides were trying to incinerate and race out his eyes and mouth. Then the rod withdrew and the boy fell slack in the restraints.

Second Prime Youji waited until the boy almost regained his breath before snapping, “Who gave you the codes to get inside or take the rings to the Pel’tak?”

Eyebrow arching, Akira looked at the man who in the real world looked like nothing more than an opportunistic burglar who couldn’t even watch what he ate. “Codes?” His eyes flicked to the pain rod for a heartbeat. If a Persona could just get one good hit in…

The pain rod only touched him for a moment, but plenty long enough to prevent Makami from coalescing.

“I am a servant of the gods—your petty tricks are nothing before Isis’ magic.” Youji smirked and lowered the pain rod. “Brute pain could do, but the goddess of magic has… more creative means of extracting what she desires.” He reached for a small box on a polished stone table just a meter from the padded one he was restrained on, and returned with two golden disks the size of a five-hundred yen coin. The first he pressed to his temple, a brief snap sounding and his wide jaw tensing before he straightened and looked down to the longcoated boy. “So, we’ll start with the most painful thing which can exist. Your mother.” He grabbed Akira’s chin to stop him from thrashing, then pressed the other golden disk flat against the boy’s temple.

Sharpness pricked his head—

Sunday, 24 July 2016
Early Evening
Yongen, Back Streets

Ann struggled to move one foot in front of the other. Golden light poured down from a clear sky. From the sound of it, the other Phantom Thieves shambled in much the same shock as her. At least while sneaking through the pyramid, those military cognitions acted like Shadows bursting into their true forms were ordinary. Dizziness nudged at her balance, but she relied on the adrenaline rush to push through.

But now, every time she closed her eyes, she saw that yellow bolt of churning nuclear energy zipping into the first boy she’d gotten close to since Yuuki. The one who didn’t hesitate an instant to step in front of mysterious armored knights with swords. The one who bellowed at her when Kamoshida’s Shadow was going to rape her, telling her to save herself even though she was going to give herself up to try to save him. The one who reminded her to keep her chin up because Shiho was still alive. The one who helped untangle things from Yuuki and saved her two closest friendships. The one who was as clueless about close family as Makoto seemed about common fun.

Her vision blurred, and she reached for the nearest Thief to steady herself as another sob shook her.

Yusuke held her with a patient strength until she was up to stand on her own maybe a minute later.

At that point, Ryuji lost his temper and punched a property wall. “Dammit!” He punched the wall again. “Fucking dammit!”

He reached back again, but Makoto grabbed his hand before he could bruise it any more. “Stop it!”

“Fuck all this!” Ryuji bellowed, his own eyes red. “He was such a pain in the ass! Why couldn’t he just fuckin’ shut up?”

“Reaper!” Morgana jumped out from the rear, standing before the members of the Phantom Thieves with un-distorted human bodies. “I—if he wasn’t the type to rebel against tyranny… he never would have wound up in Tokyo, and none of us would be here.”

Yusuke nodded. “He was true to what he believed was right. When I was uncertain about whether Madarame’s heart would change, or whether we had done what was just, he reminded me, ‘Better to die on one’s feet than live on one’s knees’.”

“Shut up!” Ryuji jabbed a finger at the artist’s face. “It was bad ‘nuff with that fuckin’ Teal guy actin’ like it was some good thing. ‘He died free’ my ass! He died!

Makoto motioned her hands down. “Ryuji, not so loud!”

“Joker is not dead!” Morgana’s ears fell flat against his skull, a tremble in his tail. “He is too strong to be killed by one shot, even from a powerful palace cognition! No way could that happen!”

Ryuji took a lunging step at the team leader. “Whadda you know? You were out cold when it happened!”

Morgana straightened, though with his tiny frame in the real world it was hard to tell what he was trying to project. “We can’t give up on Joker!”

Ryuji snarled, his fists clenched. “Ain’t no givin’ up, just what happened!”

Enough!” Makoto shouted, sharp and clear in the stifling summer heat. Giving the others a beat to collect themselves and look at her, she added, “Bickering is pointless. It doesn’t change what happened, or what we have yet to do.”

Nightrider is correct,” Morgana said, his ears rising from combat position. “Things are running too hot now. I recommend everyone go home and get some rest. Cool down. We’ll convene at Leblanc tomorrow at seven-thirty.”

Makoto nodded and wiped her face, her eyes bloodshot despite never shedding a tear the whole trip out. She and Ryuji turned for the train station and walked off.

When Ann started walking, the artist fell in step behind her and she drew some comfort from the presence of her stoic compatriot. While he was the most recent one to join the team, he seemed so calm and collected, if too innocent for the world—a complete opposite to Akira. And right now, she didn’t want to be alone.

The door to Leblanc loomed after she turned the corner, but once reaching it, her feet refused to go any further. She glanced up at the old lettering on the door’s frosted glass panel, paint flaking in a couple spots. “S-shouldn’t someone tell him? It wasn’t the real Boss who did it.”

Morgana darted between her legs to block the way. “Whoa. It’s dangerous to involve other people in the Metaverse. The physical manifestations of a cognitive reality are so beyond the average person’s life, he may call doctors on you.”

A hand came to rest on her shoulder, and Ann looked over to the artist. His serene patience somehow smoothed over the trembling of her heart. She gave him a thankful nod and stepped inside.

Her breath caught in her throat when that familiar bell rang above her. She swallowed despite the sensation of a rock in her throat. With an old couple sitting at the far booth, she stepped in and sat down at the bar.

“Be with you in a minute,” Boss called from the sink, sudsy dishes clattering.

The ever-industrious artist drew his sketch pad and flipped its pages.

Ann reached out to stop him. “Wait, what was that?”

He turned back a page and presented to her a high-detail sketch of Akira, sitting on the chair by the work bench. Biting his lip, he held his phone in both hands in his lap, his eyebrows drawn up and shoulders hunched. Yusuke took the pad back in his grip. “I call it ‘Love is Fear’. He was waiting for a text back from Togo-san at the time.”

It took a moment for her addled brain to pick that name out of memory. “Oh, the shogi girl he was blushing about when we were shopping for yukatas?” Ann pressed her fingertips against the countertop. “I couldn’t quite tell if it was infatuation because she’s pretty, or if they had a thing.” She looked the artist in the eye. “You have her number to ask if they were…?”

Yusuke straightened and turned to a sketch of her. “The Venus of Shogi? That is possibly the most sought-after commodity in Kosei. She is not in my class, so I have never had the opportunity to ask even were I inclined.”

Sojiro shook his hands over the sink before taking a towel and striding closer. “Hey, there.” He rubbed at his knuckles and gave them both a close look. “I don’t see the kid with you. You have a fight?”

“Y-yeah,” she said through a nervous laugh before she could stop herself. She braced her elbows on the counter and covered her face. As if Shiho hadn’t already said her acting was terrible before.

“Hey,” Boss said, his tone sympathetic. “The kid’s got a temper, to be sure, but he doesn’t hold onto mistakes you don’t keep making. Life’s been rough with him, but he’s more the ‘once bitten, twice shy’ type. If you’re trying, he’ll meet you halfway.” He swung the towel over his shoulder. “He’s even been pretty helpful to me, and I was tougher on him than he deserved his first week here. A nice girl like you? No chance would he hold it against you.”

Ann felt herself choke up.

She feared she’d lose herself in another ugly sobbing fit before she felt warm tension against her finger. Ann glanced up to see Yusuke there, his hand against hers, pinky wrapped around hers. A small tremor passed through her and she turned her hand to clench his. Akira hadn’t been around as long as Shiho, but he’d always been there no matter how annoying or personal her problems.

“Two small bowls of curry,” Yusuke said, straightening his back.

Boss gave a nod and smile. “Good idea. You’ll need to keep your strength up when he gets in.”

Yusuke’s eyebrow twitched and his shoulders slumped just a little. “I do not anticipate that for… some time.”

From their feet, Morgana chirped, “Well, you guys might have given up, but I am going to go hold the fort in case Joker busts out on his own and comes back. That’s just the kind of thing that stubborn jerk might do.” He padded off for the stairs.

The restaurateur wandered into the kitchen, leaving a silence she could only tolerate due to the cool presence of Yusuke beside her. He took his hand from hers and drew a pencil from his pocket, then turned pages again. He paused at the rough sketch of a girl with long, straight hair. Her legs were tucked under her, a tree trunk rose behind her.

Ann braced against one elbow on the counter. “That’s Togo-san, isn’t it?” She’d looked up a couple public releases of the girl’s photo spreads while helping Akira shop for a yukata, but pre- and post-production could do a lot to change a person’s look. This simple sketch in a Kosei girl’s uniform still made her out to be striking. “She is pretty.”

“She does match many of the hallmarks of Japanese beauty,” Yusuke acknowledged. “Though she pales in comparison to you.”

Ann’s face heated up. “S-so was this at school? That looks like a Kosei uniform.”

He nodded. “This was the second time I had noticed her. She used to avoid the usual lunch crowds, but she started eating in the courtyard where I would spend lunch break.” He huffed, one corner of his lip turning up for a moment. “I remember Akira mentioned he asked her to look out for me while you were investigating Madarame. For all his temperamental faults, I don’t think he realized how thoughtful he could be.” He straightened, his face going taught for a moment. “I have been untruthful.”

“Huh?”

Yusuke avoided meeting her eyes. “I told you I had not the opportunity to ask her for her number. That is not true. She was always the one to initiate dialog with me, usually to query about my health or whether I felt safe, but I could have asked her then.”

Sojiro set down modest-sized bowls of steaming curry before them, the small spoons clinking when they hit the counter. “Eat up. But don’t forget the time. I don’t know where you have to get home to, but the trains have a different schedule on Sundays.”

“Hiroo isn’t that far,” Ann protested before he returned to the kitchen. She picked up the spoon, intending to straighten it so she could push it aside, but now that the savory aroma sat under her nostrils, her stomach clenched and demanded some. “I never even invited him. Any of you, actually. Akira thought nothing of letting all of us into his home.”

Yusuke scratched down another couple lines on the bento in Togo’s hands. “I am not so certain he thought of it as his home. It is not traditional to have nightly nightmares in one’s home, is it?”

Ann swallowed a heaping spoon of curry, the flavor much deeper and spice milder than she expected from its fragrance. “He had nightmares that often?” She poked at the curry. “I thought most of that went away after waking to your Persona.” She left the spoon in the curry-rice bowl and wrapped her arms around herself. “I was starting to have them a lot about Kamoshida, especially after he started changing his route to Shujin to find me and ‘offer a ride to school’. But after Carmen, it was like… those worries didn’t all go away, but the question couldn’t keep me up, or give me night terrors any more. I had an answer.”

The artist swallowed, then hummed in thought. “Interesting. I had thought I was the only one to be blessed with such a peace from gaining my Persona. I wonder if we are unique, or if Akira was the exception to the rule.”

Was.

Ann’s spoon fell to the bowl. She felt like crying again, but the shuffling of the old lady going out past her caused her to tense up instead.

Yusuke reached an arm around to wrap around her shoulders. “We cannot let today dishearten us. Akira saw worthiness in this quest, and would undoubtedly want us to complete what we began.” He took up his spoon again. “And no sense letting good food go to waste. It has committed no sin.”

That pragmatism reminded her of Akira again, if with fewer rough edges. Her stomach certainly agreed with him, so she polished off the modest bowl of curry-rice and paid. The artist didn’t object, but given the number of stupid wrong examples Madarame taught his pupils, she supposed he had learned to take every opportunity for nutrition with neither question nor objection. Since their routes wouldn’t diverge until Shibuya, they took the train there in a companionable silence which kept the cloud of melancholy pushed aside until it came time to find their separate lines.

When Ann closed her eyes and still saw that yellow bolt of nuclear flame slam into Akira’s chest, her hand reached out to snag the artist’s sleeve.

Yusuke came to a stop and looked down at her grip, perplexed, then back at her.

She stepped closer, not trusting herself to have enough control to speak above a subway whisper. “Could… you walk me home?”

He took her hand from his sleeve, but held it tight instead of pushing it away like Akira had when they last talked about Shiho. After a beat, he said, “I am not worth the worry I have caused. But… if you wish… I shall walk with you anywhere.”

Monday, 25 July 2016
Morning
Yongen, Back Streets

Makoto stepped off the train, holding her bulging school bag in both hands. The thin straps dug into her fingers, and she decided Akira had the right idea in getting a bigger, more comfortable satchel for use outside school. A breeze blew down the alley as she hustled to Leblanc, her phone buzzing in her shirt pocket. She ignored it, having already exchanged at least eighty text messages from Ryuji after making the mistake of agreeing to ‘do him a favor’ on the way to Leblanc this morning.

She strode past Leblanc to the closed theater. While the overhang’s shade did little to provide cool respite from the Tokyo summer, the team couldn’t come to a consensus on what to tell Boss. At least the summer heat also cleared the streets so they didn’t have to worry about being overseen.

Yusuke, leaning against one of the locked doors and scratching away at his sketchpad, seemed to be the only one relaxed. Ann leaned next to him, her arms crossed and jaw tense. Morgana paced.

Ryuji leaned against the inside of the corner pillar, a black canvas duffel bag slung over one shoulder, something heavy weighing down one end, his foot tapping. As soon as he noticed her approach, he stood up. “You—?”

Yes, I have your box.” She joined them in what little relief the shade could provide, opened her stuffed school satchel, handed the track star his ammo box from Untouchable, and distributed medical supplies. That was the rest of their stock. If anything happened, they’d need to go back to Doctor Takemi… and who knows what loose ends Akira left to be cleaned up.

Ann checked the streets to be sure nobody was looking, then hit the Nav.

The Phantom Thieves paused to assemble their weapons, the track star taking longer to put her new shotgun together and then work on his own gun, what seemed like a bigger rifle to Makoto. “What is that, anyway?”

Ryuji clicked the box magazine into the bottom, then stood with an unsettling grin beneath his skull mask. “The RPK-74. ‘Been the crown jewel of my collection since I got it to commemorate makin’ it into the track team. This baby’s a Cold War gas-fed—”

“We have a mission,” Morgana interrupted, checking his crossbow before folding it back up. “You can wax poetic about guns later.” He looked over at the class president. “You ready to go, Rider?”

She slipped the Saiga shotgun’s strap over her shoulder and nodded. The hardness in her gaze reflected in the others. From their current point in the dunes, the catbus stood too much risk of getting trapped in the sand, so they walked towards the gleaming point of the pyramid.

With the temple still patrolled by dozens of cognitive guards, the Thieves slipped through the supply entrance at the back. Dashing from one minuscule hiding spot to another the way Akira showed them yesterday, they followed Morgana inwards and upwards towards the Treasure. Several levels up, they halted at the sound of a single set of thudding, heavy booted footsteps stomping through the halls and into a side room.

Makoto, with Morgana perched on her shoulder, leaned to listen in.

A nasal man’s voice shouted, his voice distorted but volume amplified, “Round up another two squads! The prisoner says there are thousands of soldiers out there to assassinate our goddess!”

The plaintive voice of a Shadow Jaffa already inside the room whined, “But that’s impossible! The Stargate hasn’t even been used in weeks. The prisoner must be lying!”

“I know that!” the nasal voice bellowed. “Clearly, the Second Prime has failed to break him, but nobody can resist a god’s magic for long. Until he yields, we must scour the desert for the escaped prisoners.”

Makoto’s breath caught in her throat. They were the only prisoners who lived yesterday, but even the Shadows knew the Thieves escaped. Is there another cognition? Or could it possibly be Akira? But how?

Morgana lay a hand on Makoto’s head, a silent gesture to hold still until whatever his next signal was.

Heavy boots stomped, and a stocky man in a gray, avian-style breastplate stormed out. He marched deeper into the pyramid.

Morgana waited until the stomping faded before he took away his hand from her hair, then leaped down and dashed into the small side room.

Racks and racks of long, gold staff weapons or those hand-held grey ones coiled like a rearing cobra filled the room not taken up by a table scattered with gold tools and other less identifiable odds-and-ends. The Shadow guard hopped from the meager stool he sat on, but Morgana shot forward to tear off his facemask.

The Shadow Jaffa shape bulged and distorted into a black pustle, then burst into one of those feathered blue lion-monsters. The Thieves surrounded the Shadow, and it shivered. “W-wait, don’t kill me!”

Makoto’s finger trembled in the trigger well, but she maintained the presence of mind to begin the interrogation despite Akira not being here to swiss-army-knife them if things went sideways. “Where is the prisoner?”

“M-medical holding, twelfth level.” The feathered Shadow bowed its feathered lion head to the ground. “That’s all I know!”

Morgana lowered his crossbow. “Very well. Return to the sea of souls.”

The trembling Shadow bowed, then dissolved just like the ones they held up for trinkets in the past.

Ann paced up to one of the racks with the gray, serpentine shape of the stun guns. “I wonder how effective these would be against Shadows.” She slipped one out of what reminded her of her iPhone charging cradle. It snapped open when she squeezed it, then gave a test fire at some of the other weapons. It discharged the same tiny lightning bolt the Shadows shot at them in the command center above.

Morgana folded up his crossbow and took another little stun gun from the bottom of the rack. “Well, we’re in the same Palace as the Ruler whose cognition created them, so they should be effective here. The only question is whether they’ll be as effective in Mementos, or another Palace where the Ruler had never seen the show. Even then, the force of your certainty should have some influence.”

The Phantom Thieves made their way out, then up through the pyramidal ship. While Akira was their most eager mask-snatcher, Makoto found herself just as able as Yusuke and Morgana at it, so long as they got the drop on the Shadows tromping around the halls.

Makoto keyed in the same sequence of button presses Akira used into the crystalline control panel next to the doors. Six rooms and two more Shadow ambushes later, they came to a luxurious space with polished stone floors and delicate maroon curtains. A restraining table sat in the center of the space, one Shadow guard standing over the longcoated boy strapped to it as a projection of a Japanese middle school lit up the wall.

The Shadow jerked and swelled into a black pustule, before bursting into three. The lead Shadow looked like a thin woman in fancy white linens and a gold headdress, flanked by a pair of the ice-casting owl men like Makoto’d seen Akira summon a few times.

The owl-headed sorcerers sprang first, hurling bolts of ice at the Thieves.

“Carmen!” Ann called, bracing behind her stolen stun-weapon in a pistolier’s stance as her Persona braced behind its thorned whip, stretched between both of its spectral hands. It shrugged off the ice headed at it.

Ryuji took one ice bolt to the chest and returned with a growl. “Captain Kidd!”

His skeletal captain riding a floating shipwreck coalesced, then blasted wind at all three Shadows.

The owl-men sorcerers crossed their arms and slid back, but the pounding winds which struck the gold-adorned woman reflected back straight at the Persona.

Makoto growled and summoned Johanna. If Kidd’s magic didn’t do anything, maybe a satisfying ram would.

The woman in ceremonial whites leaped, a faint rush of air as she evaded Johanna.

Growling, Makoto swung the back end around, the flaming rear wheel scorching a long line in the floor as it drifted into one of the flanking owl-men, knocking it to the ground.

By the time she returned to the team’s line, the other owl-man was already down, and Ryuji unleashed a long burst of gunfire into the female Shadow.

Morgana locked out his bayonet. “All together!”

The Thieves rushed the downed Shadows, disintegrating all three.

Dismissing their Personas, the Thieves converged on the restraint table with Akira. While he still bore the longcoat with a hole in the chest, he looked uninjured. And yet his eyes were clamped closed and his body twitched.

Ann looked up at the wall projection. “What exactly is that?”

The view – as if a first-person camera – lowered from the bike racks to a beat-up smart phone with a crack in the screen, a text message with the caller ID labeling it as from Fumiko. [Take a bus,] was all it said.

One of Akira’s deep sighs sounded. “So much for dinner or breakfast,” his voice emanated from the wall.

Makoto squinted for a moment. Fumiko was his mother’s name, according to Shujin’s paperwork on him. “What would she be sending him a text to take a bus for if he had a bike? And why would that have anything to do with food?”

The other Thieves shrugged. Morgana leaped up, locked out his bayonet, and cut the straps to free him. Still no response apart from the occasional twitch from Akira. “Joker!” He poked the longcoated boy in the arm with a finger.

Ryuji snapped his fingers over the longcoated boy’s face. “Dude! Get the eff up, it’s time to go!”

Akira’s finger twitched. Couldn’t have been conscious, though. It wasn’t the middle finger.

The view on the projection wall came to a stop in the rocks near a traditional-style resort tucked into the foot of the mountains. After locking the bike’s wheels, the first-person camera climbed rocks and slunk into the resort inn as night fell. The last of the guest room lights went off, then the view of the screen crept over a rustic wood veranda and to the main building.

Makoto slung her shotgun over her shoulder and clapped her hands in front of Akira’s face.

Morgana folded up his crossbow. “He’s caught by something in the Palace Ruler’s cognition. Fox, carry him out. Reaper, up front. Make sure nothing interrupts us. Rider, grab whatever’s on that table next to him in case it’s related. Let’s go find those cognitions who helped break us out. If they’re the helpful good guys Joker was talking about when we met them yesterday, they may be able to tell us how to get him out of this dream trap.”

Nodding, she swiped the jeweled box and a rod tipped in metal claws.

A few Shadows interrupted them on their way to the desert, and another patrol of Shadow Jaffa once at the dunes, but after what felt like tense hours, they came to the desert-camouflaged Air Force tents.

Given the number of guns and suspicious glares the Phantom Thieves got, she was glad the burly, dark-skinned man was the one who spotted them at the edge of the camp. “General O’Neil,” he called into the camp, then advanced with his staff weapon held upright, but tight in hand. He waited until his grizzled, white-haired compatriot arrived before continuing. “It appears the mercenaries have encountered difficulties.”

O’Neil’s grip on his large sub-machine gun clenched. “This is why only monsters send children to do a man’s work.”

Ryuji switched his light machine gun to his off hand to point at the grizzled general. “We ain’t got no adults to rely on or none o’ us would be here. Joker didn’t even hesitate to throw himself in fron’na Kamoshida’s troops to save my ass, just like he jumped in fron’na the bastard to stop him from raping her,” he jerked a thumb at Ann, “when he didn’ even know her. Joker’s own parents kicked his ass to the city when he got strung up on fake charges ‘cause he don’t back down when shit’s hittin’ the fan. So don’t tell us to sit back an’ wait for some crummy adult to fix things for us! However fucked up Joker is, at least does his damnedest to make shit less effed up than when he came ‘round. So if you ain’t gonna help us save our friend, get out ‘the way!”

Morgana hopped to the fore before either could escalate. “We rescued him from deep in the pyramid, but he won’t wake up.”

Teal’c turned the longcoated boy’s head, his eyes widening a fraction of a centimeter at the gold disk on his temple. “A memory recall device.”

The grizzled man parted Akira’s frizzy hair with a thumb to get a better view of it. “You idiots didn’t disable it before taking him out?”

Ann’s voice cracked when she shouted back, “We don’t know how!”

Yusuke stepped between them, his gaze steel for a moment. “Joker is our technology expert.”

O’Neil clicked his tongue, but looked around. “Water tent.”

The dark-skinned monolith of a man nodded, then looked over the teens. “This way.” He led them to a tent near the western edge of the camp and held the heavy brown canvas flap for them. Inside sat boxy liquid containers in metal frames. Teal’c lifted one of the heavy, cubic containers and set it aside the one it was stacked on to form an improvised table.

Ryuji helped the other boy lay down the longcoated teen on the water containers, but when the burly man set down another box, the runner asked, “Whaddya doin’?”

“If you did not deactivate the memory recall device before removing him from the medical holding facility…” Teal’c said with firm but even tone, “…the only way to bring him out of the forced recall is to use the master device to enter, then convince the locus of his consciousness he is in a memory he must escape from. Any door or full gate should serve as an exit point, but if you do not escape before the next memory begins, you run the serious risk of neural damage. But if you attempt to force him out instead of escaping with you, there will usually not be enough left of his mind to try a second time.”

Yusuke stepped forward. “I shall go.”

Ann yanked him back. “You can’t take that risk, Yu—Fox. I’ll do it! I’ve been his friend the longest.”

Teal’c looked at them, an analytic spark in his eyes. “Being his friend will not reduce the risk to either yourself or to him.”

“He doesn’t exactly have much attachment to the past,” Makoto said, remembering the darkness which clouded his expression as he told the Thieves about his life before coming to Tokyo. “There’s too much suffering in it. That’s why it should be me. More than anyone else here, I’m responsible for adding to his. If anybody’s going to run the risk of brain damage to save his, make it me. I have too much to apologize for to let him die here.”

Teal’c nodded, then gestured to the other water-crates set out as an impromptu table. She took a deep breath and pushed her mask up so the man built as a brick house could access the side of her head. There was just enough time to hear circuitry crackle to life, before pain spiked through her skull.

Notes:

I’ve gone back and forth on whether I like or dislike Ryuji as I played Persona 5. He’s swift to jump to wrong conclusions, but as confused as he often is, very little actually brings him to a standstill. His talent for jumping to a conclusion is part of what makes him so ready to always get going and go all-out. Makoto, at least prior to her awakening, suffered decision paralysis daily because she was so aware of the multitude of options around her and her desire to think through the consequences. He annoyed me by still acting girl-crazy even by the end of the game, but he is a 16 or 17-year-old and not everyone’s going to have Makoto’s iron self-control. In the end I think he's a good guy, but with understandable flaws just like P4's Yosuke or P3's Junpei. I was thinking (or hoping) until the shit P5 pulled after Sae’s Palace that Ryuji was going to be the traitor, beguiled by a seductress from the Conspiracy. I didn’t dislike him then, but it would’ve been a vulnerability that made sense. It would have been an actual betrayal instead of a setup that felt like "because the plot demands" instead of "because each character is doing his best to pursue his wants".

There’s an element of the show SG-1 where the Goa’uld show little creative spark, though that’s worked on as the show goes on and explains they’re so used to having the advantage that they don’t need to be clever most of the time. Human minds have their own limits: the Palace is wholly Futaba’s subconscious construct and the most painful part of her life is her mother, so the pieces of her Palace would assume the same must be true of anyone else.

Chapter 84: July 25th, Forced Memories

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Tuesday, 11 June 2013
Evening
Inaba, South Quarter

When the skies began to rumble, Akira hunched and picked up his pedaling. Most times or places he wouldn’t care about a drizzle, but Inaba never seemed to have light rain – it was either heavy or nothing. No wonder it got so foggy so often. At least it brought slight relief from the heat, though the valley wind helped.

His Tanizaki Middle School satchel thumped in the basket over the rear bike wheel as he swung in a quick turn onto his street. A few plastic sunflower-spinners and other accessories added spots of color to the cookie-cutter community, but with most of the houses here being semi-yearly rentals, most bore no decorations. However, the lights in the ground and upper floors were distinct enough to catch his eye. “Odd… Mother always turns off the lights when she leaves a room.”

Or left the lights off entirely when she was hungover, which was several times a week.

He shrugged off the suspicion. He pushed open the wrought-iron gate and walked his bike inside, leaving it leaning against the outer wall before he rushed to the scant cover in front of the door.

As often as she partied it up elsewhere, it felt like anybody besides himself inhabiting the house felt unusual. He paused when he heard laughter inside, one of the voices belonging to his mother. The sound seemed incompatible with a home invasion, but circumstances still felt strange, so he knocked instead of letting himself in.

A male voice asked something too muffled by the front door to hear.

A few moments later, stumbling steps approached the front door. One lock slid open, then the next popped open, the doorknob turned, and the door swung inwards until the chain lock brought it to a halt. Inside stood his mother, her long, chestnut-brown hair done up in a fancy bun starting to slip apart. Her lipstick looked smudged and her ostentatious kimono was uneven. She held a champagne flute in one hand. “This is a bad time.”

“What is it, Fumi-chan?” an unfamiliar male voice called, just before a short man stepped into view from the den. He could have fit in the model lineup of a daytime soap opera. He wore a tuxedo sans the jacket, though the shirt was untucked.

Her grey eyes snapped wide and she shifted to block any view of the outside. She fixed her kimono, then called over her shoulder, “Just a schedule mistake from the help.”

Akira blinked. “You’re partying here? The lease said no alcohol, pets, or noise disturbances.”

She stuck her face in the door gap and hissed, “I have been trying to get in with the Shinpei’s for weeks. Go stay with one of your classmates.”

Strong arms wrapped around his mother’s waist from behind and tugged her just enough away from the door for the guy to peek through the door. His gaze lingered on the transfer student’s Tanizaki Middle School jacket. “He’s the help?”

Fumiko waved the middle-school student off. “Good help is hard to find in the country, Shin-chan.” She turned her head over her shoulder and gave a look which conveyed, Fuck this up and you’re the one who’s fucked. She turned back to the man, switching her champagne to her other hand, the now-free one swinging the door closed.

A feminine squeak made it through the door. A moment later, one of the slide locks clacked closed before uneven footsteps trotted away.

Akira’s stomach growled. Between Mother forgetting to give him money to stock the fridge on Monday and Nozomi having stolen his sandwich today, he felt a little dizzy. Still, the one time he expressed disapproval for her drinking, she threatened to cart him off to his old bastard’s.

The wind picked up, carrying dry leaves and dust.

Akira reopened the gate and got back on his bike. Better give his mother this night than have to go back to his old bastard for the rest of his life.

Friday, 19 July 2013
Late Evening
Inaba, Tanizaki Middle School

Akira trotted into the school’s bike racks, the shoddy wood fencing making him think of abandoned countryside towns. He didn’t intend to hide at school like at Shinjou when the only person waiting for him was his old bastard, but old habits died hard. Now, he needed to get to the house to finish research for Wednesday’s history paper.

Something soft bumped into him and he turned to see one of the girls in his year backpedal and wipe at her skirt. “Eew, it’s that dweeb.”

“Come on,” the girl next to her said. “He’s in my class. Loser thought he could be best friends with everyone on his first day. Even said skip right to calling him Akira, like he’s from here and one of us.”

The rest of the lingering library and late-finishing club students trotted from the little school’s front entrance, so he unlocked his bike and walked it out to the street. He glanced up at the dark, cloud-choked skies and slipped his red umbrella out of the basket to pop it open.

Akira, wake up, a familiar female voice called, though for some reason he knew that voice couldn’t – shouldn’t – be here. He wouldn’t meet the owner for years.

His stomach growled. The school store ran out before he got to the counter. Even if he could steal a couple thousand yen from his mother again, the fridge was empty so he’d have to go shopping anyway.

A hush fell over the town before the rain began.

Letting the umbrella hang straight on his head, he hopped onto the pedals to pedal harder, shooting off to the South Quarter where his mother’s short-term lease house was.

The iron gate squeaked and he stashed the bike against the wall inside the gate where it wasn’t visible from passers-by. He slipped out the keys and unlocked the front door. The inside of the rental house was darker than the falling evening outside. No sign of life greeted him, and those dressy red stilletos were missing from the shoe cubby. “Still getting lucky at Yoshihisa’s tonight?”

Nobody would be here to answer him, so he straightened the front, doffed his own shoes, and stepped in. Some wine, spirits, and a bottle of wasabi were all that occupied the inside of the fridge. Three bottles of champagne sat on the kitchen counter, none of them upright, so he added those to a recycle bin half-full with bottles, plastic and paper food packaging. He pulled out the kitchen trash bin to sort them properly. A cake box proclaiming ‘happy birthday’ stared up at him from the trash bin and his empty stomach growled.

It wasn’t his mother’s birthday. And hadn’t been.

He still pulled the box out of the trash just in case there were some crumbs in it. Not even enough icing to coat two knuckles.

The glass recycle clattered with clinking bottles as he finished tossing the champagne in, and he paused to wipe down the counters before hauling the bin outside. His stomach growled as he turned to the neighborhood drop-off point and the bin slipped out of his hands as he tripped on a brick, the two times he managed to buy bread from Tanizaki insufficient to cover one meal for five days.

The wrought-iron gate swung shut behind him, then the mysterious no-where girl’s voice from earlier spoke, “I can’t believe it. Your mother just…abandoned you to party?”

Akira whirled towards the girl in an iron mask and biking leather, “What’s it to you? She’s my mother. What am I supposed to do, go back to the old bastard because he’s got a respectable job?” He spat on the asphalt. “Better a party animal than torturing people for government grants!”

Her eyes widened behind the large slits in her mask. “You prefer…” she glanced over at the dark house, “…that?” The girl in black riding leathers held her hand to her face plate. “And texting you to take a bus when you already have a bike… that was just to keep you away so she could bring strangers home, wasn’t it?”

His hands curled into fists. “She leaves me be. Better than the alternative.”

She gawked at him for several moments, the rain passing straight through her like she wasn’t there. “What kind of…?” Then she shook her head. “No, focus. This is not real.”

Akira closed his umbrella to shuffle back under the overhang. “What, because it sucks? That’s called life. That’s why you always gotta look out for number one. If you don’t, the world bends you over and leaves you raw.” His stomach groaned and he covered the offending organ with a hand. “Now go away. I’m not gonna eat if I don’t lift something from somewhere, Makoto.”

She pointed at him. “See? You do realize it. This is a memory, a recall forced by a Palace cognition. It’s not real.”

He stepped back out, snapping the umbrella open as he snarled at her. “Stop saying that!”

She grabbed his wrist as he tried to pick up the fallen plastic bin. “Akira, think about it. You’re a high schooler attending Shujin in Tokyo. You wouldn’t know me if you were still in this little town. None of this is rea—”

He pulled away from her, but her grip held. “My suffering is real!”

A long beat passed as she considered her words. “Yes,” she said, her tone terse but still controlled enough to keep quiet. “But this memory isn’t the real you. This is the past. We couldn’t leave you to the Palace Ruler. But you have to come with us or you’ll get stuck in a loop of tortured memories. And every time you loop into another one of these memories, it hurts you. Beyond having to relive it.”

The middle schooler in a wet jacket glared up at her, but a light left his gaze and a tremble passed through his face and arms. His eyes shone, though with the rain pounding down it was hard to tell if anything else happened. “I’m just a middle schooler everyone hates.”

She held firm on his wrist. “No, you’re not. Remember who you are, who we are. We’re Phantom Thieves. A group you started because you refused to just walk away when other people were suffering in silence. You already changed one heart before you showed me I didn’t have to let myself get pushed around my whole life, breaking myself trying to please others.”

He pulled away from her, but with less strength than before.

“Akira,” she said, a tremble in her voice as she looked down at the pathetic image of the wet boy who didn’t even have a good home to go to. “This might be your past, but it’s not all of your past. I… I hurt you because I was too weak to stand up for myself. I threatened you to make you solve my problems for me because I couldn’t see how to help myself. You stood up and refused to let me be that weak, helpless girl. You didn’t even ask me to be strong, you didn’t give me a choice. Whether you knew Johanna was in me waiting to wake up or were the kind to jump into the deep end, you didn’t hesitate and didn’t try to force me to hide from the truth. So I stood up on my own for the first time I can remember. That was because I saw an Akira who never gave up, no matter how insurmountable the odds. Even if it meant almost certain failure. That’s the Akira who led us into a pyramid space ship to save the heart of a girl who saw her mother die. That’s the Akira who’s going to get us through.”

The emptiness too vacant to even call despair faded from his eyes. Breathing in, Akira pulled his hands away from the recycle bin and straightened, then looked Makoto in her eyes. Flames licked over his wrist, then raced over his body. Instead of the bland, ill-fitting Tanizaki Middle School uniform jacket, the boy bore a slick black longcoat and avian-styled domino mask. He gave her one nod. “Let’s go save her.”

She let out a soft, relieved breath. “You sure you’re okay?”

His arms fell to his side, his lips pressed thin. “Just because I didn’t have a mother who loved me doesn’t mean that should be taken from anyone else.”

Monday, 25 July 2016
Morning
Futaba’s Palace, Stargate Camp

Circuitry cycling down resonated in her ear before Makoto opened her eyes to the inside of a sandy-brown canvas tent. Once she felt a lack of adhesion to her head, she reached up and pulled off the memory recall device from sweat-slicked skin. When she sat up, an arm was already there to take her hand and help her up.

“Awright, Miss Badass!” Ryuji said, the others crowding around a woozy Akira. “You good?”

She swung her legs down to the ground. “I’m not the one who spent a night being tortured by a Palace Ruler.” She still accepted the runner’s hand up.

Akira tried to shove himself to standing and stumbled to one knee. After that, he accepted the artist’s hand up. After a beat to catch his breath, he pushed through the model and artist to hold his hand out. “My gun?”

Makoto looked him over, but besides the five-centimeter-wide hole in his vest, he seemed none the worse for wear. “Ak—Joker, are you sure? You spent all night being forced through memories of your mother—”

“Like most Goa’uld,” Akira said, his voice raised a bit more than necessary, “Isis and her slaves lack imagination.” His eyes flicked to the artist for a moment. “I’m not saying I’m invincible. But if someone wanted to torture me, memories of my mother are not the weapons to do it with.” He held out his hand. “My gun. Futaba’s still waiting on us, and she doesn’t have long left.”

Ann blinked under her feline mask. “Wait, you want to keep going? We should get out so you—”

“I promised I’d save Futaba. So we’re going to save Futaba.” The grit in his eyes and face was unmistakable. After letting a beat pass, he turned and gave a salute to the grizzled old man still watching. “Thank you, Colonel. General.”

He gave a rather Akira-like smirk back and returned with a lazy salute. “I know I can’t give you orders. But… Whoever you kids are working for… don’t kill yourselves. Daedalus will be here soon, and then it’ll all be over.” They all exited the water tent, O’Neil marching off to the command tent with Teal’c.

As the Phantom Thieves trotted out of the camp, Morgana glanced over his shoulder at the pair of adult Stargate team members, then up to Akira. “What’d he mean about Daedalus?”

Akira scratched his scalp. “Never heard of it.”

Makoto tapped a gloved finger to her lips. “Everything here has an old Egyptian styling, except for those Americans, but Daedalus sounds like Greek.”

“Aha!” Yusuke stood taller. “I remember now. A folkloric resident of Crete, Daedalus was credited with creating the labyrinth containing the minotaur. Yano-san wanted to name one of his paintings Daedalus’ Labyrinth.” He hummed. “I think I now understand why the center bore a resemblance to Sensei’s atelier.”

Akira scratched his chin. “Hm… I know Teal’c’s father served Cronus before being executed for failing to win an impossible battle, but that’s the only Greek god I can think of on the show. And SG-1 took his Ha’tak after killing him.”

Makoto shifted her weight to her other foot. “Weren’t the Greek gods rather capacious and cruel? If one of their figures is coming, I don’t get the sense that means anything good.”

Akira nodded. “I don’t think they’re calling in a rival system lord, but I think you’re right to be wary. Especially with that ‘it’ll all be over’ comment. I think we need to hurry and change Futaba’s heart.” He looked to the cat-boy. “So where to first, Byakko?”

Makoto gawked even as they continued to pace out of the Stargate camp. “You can’t seriously be considering driving on!”

Yusuke pat his hand against her shoulder, at least below her spiked pauldrons. “We are as prepared as we might be, and he will experience no peace leaving things unfinished.”

Ryuji held his machine gun up in the air. “Fuck yeah!” When the others stared at him, he settled back into a normal stance. “I mean, ain’t ‘e right? If we gotta go early ‘cause he runs outta juice, we gotta go. ‘til then, let’s kick ass an’ change hearts!”

Morgana gave a reluctant nod. “Very well. Until we learn more about the Palace, Joker is still our best bet for finding a shortcut or safer route to the Treasure. But I want you on rear guard for the first fight. Rider? With him. Panther, Fox, and Reaper? Up front with me.”

Monday, 25 July 2016
Afternoon
Futaba’s Ha’tak

Akira dashed to the other side of the hall, keeping to the protruding angled support pillars jutting out of the wall. He gave a nod to the model, and she zapped one of the Jaffa with her serpentine alien stun-gun.

The Shadow swelled.

Morgana leaped in a blur and snatched the mask from the Jaffa on the other side of the door. It swelled in a black pustule. Both transformed into a monster with the lower body of a giant snake with the upper body of a man gripping a spear and circular shield.

Akira smirked. “Raja Naga!”

An even larger snake-man wearing gold gauntlets and bearing a flaring, gold helm coalesced.

Already charging magic, the naga on the left pointed his spear and unleashed a lightning bolt into his Persona. The tendrils of energy fizzled with the smallest tickle against his body.

Yusuke called out, “Goemon!” and sent his Persona to smash its enormous, bladed smoking pipe against the Shadow on the right.

Ann shot the Shadow on the left with her grey stun-weapon, but the naga gritted its teeth and stayed upright.

Akira sent his larger Persona against the same naga, leaving the others to destroy the second naga as his tore into the one on the left with clawed, golden gauntlets.

Once both dissolved like smoke on the wind, Ryuji came from the rear guard with a smile which fit his skull mask too well. “Nice, dude. ‘Looked like that did even less than when those bozos try an’ zap Fox’s Persona. ‘Wish I had it that easy. But when’d’ja get it?”

“Same place as Ananta Shesha. Well, maybe a little more…temperate.” Akira dismissed his Persona and keyed in the open sequence to the panel next to the door.

A Shadow guard sat at what appeared to be the alien equivalent of a computer work desk, though with a holographic screen showing Egyptian symbols. When it heard them and began to turn, Ann shot it.

The shadow swelled and burst into one of those blue-feathered, lion-headed monsters.

Ann shot it again and it fell to the floor, dissolving.

Morgana hopped up onto what appeared to be a big, limestone desk and turned to the door. “Rider, Reaper, cover the door. Joker, what is this?”

Makoto tapped a button to close the door after them, but kept her shotgun ready.

Setting his gun on the desk, Akira rubbed his hands together and sat on the tiny, wood stool with a cackle. He looked over the Japanese keyboard where a larger, alien input array should exist. “This is an information repository. The ones in the show had hieroglyphic symbols.” He straightened on the tiny stool. “Why hello there, gift horse. What nice teeth you have.” He typed for just a moment until the recommended query turned up a disconcerting result. He selected it, and the holographic screen turned opaque. Green text spelled out Matricide, with options below reading Play and Back. He glanced up at the team leader, who responded with a shrug, then settled the cursor next to Play and tapped the enter key.

Thursday, 21 August 2014
Afternoon
Shinjou, Hotel District

Traffic cruised along an unfamiliar street corner in Shinjou, the sky dotted with clouds letting in plenty of sun on the mountain city’s broad sidewalks. Only a handful of other people shuffled along at a purposeful walk, except for the girl in a bright green tank top. Futaba’s straight orange hair, once black just like her mother, flowed after her as she ran circles over the pavement around her mother, arms thrown out to sides. “Goin’ to Duck Burger! Goin’ to Duck Burger!”

Isshiki Wakaba missed a step, but instead of the sudden burst of alertness which tended to accompany such a shuffle, she settled into a lurching shamble. Her blank eyes stared across the street. Drool gathered at the corner of her mouth.

When Futaba came back around to resume her circling, she noticed the change in behavior. “Mom?”

Wakaba shambled another step at the winding street, the cross-light more than twenty meters away.

“Mom, wake up!” Futaba grabbed at the woman’s sleeve, only for her to put unexpected strength into her next step. The unexpected pull took her from the girl’s grip.

Wakaba took a long, stumbling step off the curb as if tumbling over a cliff.

Futaba’s face turned white as a sheet and she reached out. “No! Mama!” Her hands clamped on a trouser leg at the same time as the delivery truck’s horn blasted, but the screeching of its brakes came far too late.

The bumper knocked Wakaba underneath and bones snapped as her body tumbled under the wheels.

The image outside Wakaba’s legs grew fuzzy as Futaba’s eyes welled over. Her chin trembled. It took a long moment as her breathing got faster and shallower before the tears spilled. She screamed at the mangled limbs sticking out as the truck driver popped open his door, already calling an ambulance on his cell phone.

Somebody from behind grabbed her arm to pull her away.

Futaba reacted with animal ferocity, her nails drawing blood from the salaryman’s hand before she rushed back at the bloodied body.

The driver joined, trying to divide his attention between the emergency operator and talking down the frantic girl, though Futaba couldn’t make out anything over the blood rushing in her ears and screaming resonating through her bones.

Monday, 25 July 2016
Afternoon
Futaba’s Ha’tak

The holographic screen cut to black for a moment before jumping to another computer center. Second Prime Youji sat there, his body so pudgy the gold armor plates could not quite enclose him. The pair of Shadow Jaffa standing beside him did a lot to make up the image of a military commander.

Ryuji’s eyes were wide under his skull mask. “Fuuuck…”

The gold-clad commander smirked. “So now you know, Isis has committed crimes against nature. She is even more twisted than the cruel, uncaring world.”

Akira crossed himself. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Does the concept of de-escalation not exist for you?”

“Blood calls for blood,” Youji taunted. “The very universe is out for the destruction of my god. Is it any surprise I must deploy the violence I do as I daily execute the fools who think Jaffa can ever be free?”

Yusuke’s voice was so quiet, the longcoated boy almost missed, “No wonder her heart is twisted. Her own mind desires destruction.”

Makoto held her hand to her mouth, moments away from losing her breakfast.

Akira jumped up, kicking the little stool tumbling. “A Prime is supposed to serve his lord!”

The pudgy man in gold laughed. “You think I should be loyal? To a god who would kill her own mother? It is the ultimate crime! All I care about is I have the excuse to destroy all I can claim to be her enemy. And if – no, when I find the filthy Tok’ra feeding our secrets to our enemies, I shall burn it slowly.”

Ann shook, her hands clenching on her Zat gun. “But Futaba didn’t do anything! We all saw it, her mother walked—fell into the road!”

Yusuke nodded, her enthusiasm shaking away the darkness building in his countenance. “Indeed! And what was that shambling before? Are you enough of a fool to tell me she was not dead on her feet before the truck ran over her?”

Makoto stood straighter and turned to take in the artist in her peripheral vision. “You’re right! All those strange behaviors were just like the reports of mental shutdown victims.”

Second Prime Youji laughed, his belly jiggling under his gold armor plates. “Idiots! You sound like the Tok’ra who thinks death can be avoided and is still deluded enough to think heroes save. It is only a matter of time. Either the Tau’ri will come with a battleship and obliterate the mother-slayer from orbit, or I shall find and hang the Tok’ra!”

Yusuke shook his head. “This echoes disturbingly close to the inside of my head before you saved me from Madarame.”

Second Prime Youji laughed again. “It matters not. You will all die first.”

The doors snapped open and four Shadow Jaffa surged in. The Phantom Thieves whirled about, but too late to stop the Shadows from collapsing into what seemed puddles of tar. Instead of new monsters hopping out like normal, the black puddles merged into each other, shuddering with a resonating hum like a heartbeat before bursting with enough force to knock the Thieves into the walls.

In the middle stood a black-furred dog-faced humanoid in regal Egyptian armor. Flanking it floated two stone obelisks marked with a dancing woman. The three-meter-tall Shadow glared down at the Thieves, his eyes falling on the longcoated boy. He lifted a set of balance scales. “I judge your soul…” A feather appeared on one side, and the other end of the scale dropped.

A black magic circle inscribed itself underneath Akira, and he dove out of it an instant before darkness flashed up.

Ryuji and Yusuke unleashed their guns on the Shadow, but the floating stone obelisks interposed. Bullets ricocheted and the Thieves lowered their guns before they could take any more than glancing blows.

As if that wasn’t enough, both obelisks glowed with white light in the carved images of the dancing woman frozen on each face. Then frigid winds howled at the whole team, palm-sized ice shards flitting through the air and shattering against the stone walls. Makoto shrieked in pain before Ann conjured Carmen to brace through the assault. Even then, the model flinched under the impact of each shard.

Akira summoned Raja Naga again and sent a lightning bolt into one of the floating obelisks shielding Anubis. Its hover wobbled, but it stayed in the air.

Yusuke surged forward, slashing his katana at the carved obelisks. His sword deflected off and flung back at him before he could regain his grip on the blade, slicing his upper arm.

Flames flickered as Johanna formed around the upperclassman, then motes glowed and the wound on the artist’s arm sealed.

“Fuck.” Ryuji popped his gun’s generous ammo box off and pushed in the red crystal. “It can reflect bullets and swords?” He slammed the box back into his gun. “Let’s hope pyrotechnics work better!” He pulled the trigger and swept the barrel over the Shadows. To their surprise, the flaming bursts scratched at the stone obelisks carved with dancing women and both collapsed to the ground.

“The weight of your deeds!” Anubis said, holding his scale high.

A shudder passed through Phantom Thieves, their bodies becoming less responsive, as if the gravity pulling at them quadrupled.

Morgana leaped out and slashed at the Shadow, only for it to whip out a bronze kopis out of nowhere and parry the bayonet. “Joker! You come up with a Persona with bless magic when we weren’t looking?”

He blinked. “That’s a thing?”

Ann reached for her suit’s cleavage window. “Bless magatama out!” She hurled a bead no bigger than her thumb, but it burst with bright white light.

The fallen obelisks shuddered on the ground, but Anubis didn’t even blink.

Akira braced behind his weapon and squeezed the trigger, sending a fusillade of bullets at the brawny, dog-faced Shadow. It stumbled back under the long burst until his weapon clicked empty. “Shit.”

Anubis brandished its bronze kopis, the forward-curving sword glistening before it unleashed bolts of pure white light at every member of the Phantom Thieves.

Ryuji and Morgana shuddered under the bless bolts, but the impact sent Akira and Ann sprawling backwards.

Anubis held up his scale, a churning orb of darkness on one side and light on the other. The two carved stone obelisks rose up from the floor and blocked the humanoid Shadow.

Morgana lowered his crossbow. “Zorro!” His Persona coalesced, a bluish fire blazing at their eyes as the same aura licked over one of the obelisks. The team leader sighed. “Of course that wouldn’t work.”

Ryuji brandished his light machine gun. “Time to rip it up!” He pulled the trigger and angled the gun to use its own muzzle jump to sweep across the Shadows, the flaming rounds knocking both obelisks to the ground again, one almost crushing Anubis and forcing it to abandon whatever magic it had been charging.

“They’re waning!” Morgana called. “Hit ‘em with fire again!”

“Hua Po!” Akira called, the red-skinned fairy coalescing and then lifting a hand to her lips as if to blow a kiss. Instead, it blew a pulse of flame at the fallen obelisk on the right. He turned to the one on the left, but his Persona vanished in a puff of flames as sweat poured down his face.

Makoto surged forward, knocking him out of the way as she leaped into position, Johanna solidifying around her before it blasted a bolt of flame at the other obelisk. The carved Shadow disintegrated.

Yusuke called out, “Goemon!” His Persona leaped, slamming its axe-pipe weapon down against the dog-faced Shadow, which crashed to the stone floor.

With both remaining Shadows down, the Phantom Thieves surged at them, pounding them into oblivion.

Morgana panted, and folded his crossbow. “J-Joker… you’re spent. Don’t even bother arguing. Fall back to rear guard. Fox, Rider, up front. Let’s get out of here before reinforcements arrive.”

Notes:

“Wish I had it that easy,” Ryuji says about having resistance to lightning. Am I leaning on having changed the character elements? Oh yes I am, and will do so again!

Shut-ins have a much higher suicide rate than the general population, and one of the things that happens to them is a resentment of the healthier, outgoing family and ex-friends they used to have that can cause them to push away the support network they desperately need to escape. Futaba had trauma by the world outside, but at least a small part of her distortion is going to include hating Sojiro for his part in locking her away from the world even if both know he’s not trying to do so and he wants the decision to go out to be hers. In the original Japanese, the language is clear that in the “fail to save Futaba” ending that she commits suicide and her suicide note points the cops at Akira. The English localization for some reason deleted that part, but it makes too much sense to leave out.

Chapter 85: July 25th, Symptoms of Heroism

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Monday, 25 July 2016
Early Evening
Yongen, Back Streets

Yusuke stumbled into the streets radiating with heat. Were it not for the blonde’s support, however faltering her footsteps might have been, he would have fallen to the merciless pavement. From the groans and hisses around him, the rest of the Phantom Thieves were in no better condition. Worse, if the unusual shuffling steps from Akira were any indication. At least the heat was starting to drop as the clouds in the sky turned golden. “Even were we not low on medicines, now seems to be the time to seek out the doctor.”

“Uh-huh,” Ryuji blurted. He walked with a stiffer posture than usual, his pace favoring his left leg.

Lacking the capability to support any of them, the team leader trapped in the body of a tuxedo cat paced ahead of them to the Takemi Medical Clinic.

The sleepy doctor looked up at them from her work at a computer behind the window. Before she even took in the whole group, her eyes grew wide, her brows high, and she stood with her hands on her hips. “All of you?”

Akira tripped over his own feet and collapsed to the floor.

Ann mumbled under her breath, “That’s gonna make things better.”

Takemi swept an analytic gaze over the team. “Anybody have bleeding or broken bones?”

Ann shook her head. “No, Doctor.”

The doctor set a With a Patient sign on the window sill, then disappeared. A moment later, the inner lobby door unlocked and swung open. She looked straight at the class president. “Are you well enough to help drag this bonehead back?”

Makoto nodded and aided the doctor in picking up and carrying Akira to the exam room. Morgana slipped in with them.

The other Phantom Thieves plopped into the stiff foam-padded chairs to wait.

Ryuji was the first to grow too bored for the silence. “Geez, whaddya think Akira did to cheese off the doc?”

Think for once in your life, Ryuji,” Ann snapped from Yusuke’s other side. “She was getting suspicious before, and that was when only two of us at a time had to come. Now that it’s the whole team? It’s not like she’s a back-street cyberdoc who owes the Street Sam a life debt.”

“Bwuh?”

Yusuke left his query at an arched eyebrow.

Ann groaned and pressed her face in her hands. “Ugh. One of Shiho and Yuuki’s games. We’d play over Skype every Sunday.”

A click sounded from the exam room door.

Ann wrapped her arms around her torso. “Well that wasn’t ominous.”

Ryuji stared at the inner door for a few moments, then looked back at the other Phantom Thieves. “Well, at least it’s the class prez in there. If it was you, doc would’a had things figured out just off’a your actin’.”

She jammed her arms tighter and turned away, but the motions all at once drew a flinch out of her.

“Takamaki-san, are you all right?”

She squinted and rubbed at the side of her ribs. “It didn’t seem so bad, but that Garuda must’ve hit Carmen harder than I’d realized. With all the excitement of getting Akira back, I didn’t even realize it until just now.”

Ryuji’s foot tapped with impatience. “Whaddya think they’re talkin’ ‘bout in there?”

“Gee,” she shot back from Yusuke’s opposite side. “I dunno. Why don’t I send Carmen in there to spy on something happening in another room in the real world?”

“I’m just sayin’!”

Yusuke raised his hands. “Given the stakes of our current circumstances, could you two please settle down and remember the challenge before us is not each other, it is a doctor who has been suspicious of Akira-san for weeks?”

Silence stretched on for long moments, muffled speaking tones from the women in the exam room. The artist couldn’t decide if he would have preferred raised voices to listen in, or a silence hinting at no problem to have to explain later. His Kosei classmates expected fights to be loud, but he learned from Madarame hushed conversations could be more concerning. Then a plaintive yowl came from the team leader.

Ryuji cringed. “Maaan, whadda we even say?”

Yusuke’s gaze lowered to the floor on the far side of the room. “Sensei used to say it was best to speak the truth, for there is no despoiler of those with integrity – but he also stopped giving Saki-san lessons when she admitted she was considering leaving the atelier.”

The three descended into arguing without even being able to decide on how evasive to be until a clunk echoed from the inner door before it swung open.

Morgana bounded out of the exam room. He rounded on the track star. “Don’t say anything about the Metaverse!” He began pacing in a tight circle.

Makoto came out with a wrist brace on her left hand, but despite the brown paper bag sticking up out of her purse, she looked like a beaten dog. She shuffled to the others and whispered, “I never said it, but I think she knows.”

Thank you, Niijima-san. Get home and rest.” Doctor Takemi stopped in the doorway and glared at the pacing team leader. “I don’t care what you kids say, I’m not a veterinarian and I’m not prescribing sedatives for your neurotic cat.”

The vehement protests and corrections from all the other Phantom Thieves, especially the team leader himself, drove Yusuke to stand. “Oh, he isn’t a cat. His form was distorted—”

Ann hopped up, grabbing his battered arm by mistake. Despite his flinch, her fingers clamped down hard enough to hurt. “He means to say he’s like a member of the family, not just some pet!”

The neighborhood clinic doctor looked at the artist with the same intensity as Madarame used to turn on Nakanohara after learning of the elder pupil’s job at a local branch bank. Her eyes flicked to the blonde holding him. Then she stepped back and aside. “In.”

Makoto trudged to the front door, avoiding the others’ eyes the whole way.

Ann swallowed, then gave a stiff smile which only highlighted the coiling tension throughout her body. “It’ll be fine, guys!”

Yusuke shivered as she stepped into the exam room. At least he would never be unsure if she was lying to him.

After the lock clicked, Ryuji rounded on the remaining thieves. “So whadda we do? Seriously, that doc has gotta have magic powers or somethin’. She gets ten answers from every question she asks! An’ worse, she’s one o’ those chicks who got legs an’ knows it!”

Morgana let out a sigh loud enough for both boys to know he wanted their attention. “Focus, Reaper. I don’t know what she may have ascertained in most of our past treatments. Joker said she thought it was yakuza, and I don’t think he’d lie without cause. She is clearly intelligent and has been cataloging our injuries, at least mentally, so we can’t count on trying to fib something she’s already seen evidence to the contrary.”

Ryuji threw his hands in the air. “Then how the eff we gonna get outta this one? I don’ even remember all the ways I got hurt by Shadows.”

Yusuke pursed his lips. “This is starting to sound very much like our last argument. If this doctor thinks we are beset by yakuza enforcers, would it not be best to allow her to think that?”

Morgana’s tail twitch-flicked behind him. “If that still worked, yes. But when I snuck in there with Nightrider, she started questioning why there were so many bruises in soft tissue without either clear sign of defensive bruising or abrasions from restraint. Or when we got those bruises, because apparently some look older than others even if we all got them today.”

Ryuji scratched his head, then winced. “Howzat work?”

“Apparently bruising is when blood gets under the skin, and the hemoglobin metabolizes.” The diminutive leader got up and started pacing in a circle again. “Joker kinda came out of it and was explaining it, but I had to bite him to shut him up when he started also explaining the injuries all came from the same fight.” Morgana stopped and sat with a sigh. “I can’t think of how to better describe our injuries for her treatment without revealing the Metaverse.”

A click echoed and the exam room door opened. Ann strode out, holding a brown paper bag with her teeth as she re-tied one of her voluminous pigtails with her hands. That done, she took the bag in her hands. When the artist sent her a look of inquiry, she shrugged her shoulders. “Good luck.”

Doctor Takemi’s eyes fell on the artist’s. “In.”

Yusuke decided a doctor who could cow such solid members of the team was not one to provoke, so he took the doctor’s orders and stepped inside. A modest examination room with a single bed lay before him, green plastic sheeting separating the exam room from what appeared to be storage by the impressions of boxes stacked on the far side. That the doctor closed and locked the door on the team leader did not pass unnoticed. “Where is Akira-kun?”

“Resting in another room,” she said, terse. The hand holding a small clipboard jerked out at the exam room’s bed. “I sincerely hope that little twerp’s not representative of your generation.” The next ten minutes contained a terse, rapid-fire medical history questioning more allergies than he knew existed.

“So,” she said, looking him straight in the eye with a steadiness which reminded him of owls watching mice. “Kitagawa-kun, who surely isn’t involved with illicit extra-curricular activity… Care to tell me how you injured your arm?”

“It was… my own carelessness.” At her direction, he slipped the shirt off so she could examine the bruise directly. Despite Makoto’s healing, a mottled purple-yellow marred the skin. That would take a few days to disappear, so Makoto and the team leader came up with a cover story on the way. “I thought I would engage in heroics to impress Takamaki-san.” He hummed. Describing how the Metaverse turned a model sword into a sharp reality would make him seem mad. Best not even mention the model sword at all. “I swung… a branch, but slipped. Between my fall and the rebound, it struck me instead of the cads who threatened Takamaki-san.”

Doctor Takemi poked at it, her eyes more on his than the wound when her finger dug in. She sat back down. “Should’ve put ice on it. An ice pack when you get back home will help the bruising and swelling go down faster, but it’s still going to smart for a day.” She scribbled on her pad, then twirled the pen in her fingers. “When did this happen?”

“This morning.”

She scribbled for a bit, disdain slipping into her face. “How many…cads were on her?” She said with a brief poke over her shoulder at the hall deeper in the small clinic.

“Three,” Yusuke said, deciding to keep things simple. The obelisk Shadows seemed to annoy Akira more, but Anubis still battled them all.

She finished writing, then underlined. “That’s interesting. Takamaki said it was yesterday. Niijima said two, today, and somehow showed signs of minor frostbite. Kurusu said four.” She stretched out, her pen scribbling over her clipboard. “I’m surprised the little idiot could count, he’s got fewer brain cells than room temperature.”

“There were four before they merged!”

She smiled and clicked to retract her pen.

Yusuke swallowed. This doctor was cleverer than expected… and more interested – the only doctors Madarame brought him to wanted to treat no further than the illness brought before them. “I… I meant before one fled.”

“Oh,” she said, still looking like the cat that ate the canary. “I’m sure. After all, it’s so easy to get minor electrical burns, frostbite in the summer, and deep bruising in the shape of rubber bullet impacts when no police in the Tokyo departments were issued with riot gear in the days before.” She crossed her long legs towards him. “And all, coincidentally, shortly before a public change of heart.”

Yusuke’s jaw worked open, then closed. He let a breath out, then in. “We can’t stop. Souls are at stake.”

Her posture straightened in the chair. “Please tell me you kids aren’t doing something as insane as trying to conduct your own exorcisms.”

Yusuke brought his hand to his chin. “Akira may be a member of the Catholic Church, but the rest of us are not.” He tapped his fingers. “Maybe that shogi maestra he is fond of, but she isn’t involved.”

To his surprise, the doctor’s straight posture relaxed at that, though he wasn’t sure how to interpret the faint smirk. “A girl? I was starting to think that uptight little boy was too shy to have an outlet.”

The urge to defend the transfer student drove Yusuke to stand. “Akira-san is quite possibly the most earnest, self-sacrificing soul I know after Takamaki-san. He carries more burdens than any man I have known.” He cleared his throat and sat when he realized she wasn’t sending out any further threatening flags. “His rest has always been more plagued than mine. Slower to drift off, fitful with nightmares. Though I am sure the heat is making it even harder for a boy who has only had a couple months to acclimatize to Tokyo.”

He could almost see the filing and sorting going on behind her eyes. “Is he one of those idiots turning the AC off half the week to save electricity when it’s a heat warning?”

“Nonsense.” Yusuke gave a chuckle. “He does not have air conditioning at all.”

Doctor Takemi set her pen and clipboard on the desk with conscious precision, then ran her hands into her short hair as if she couldn’t decide quite where to start ripping it out. “You’re telling me his parents sent a boy born and raised in the mountains to a home in Tokyo which doesn’t even have cooling?”

Yusuke thought of the times he stared up at the underside of the roof as they waited for sleep to claim them. “I would assume the rafters let out some of the heat out from his living space.” He described the rustic charm of the loft, his words spilling out a little faster as the doctor’s gaze grew more and more intense.

“Are you telling me he is living in an uninsulated space directly exposed to the sun all day long?”

He swallowed.

“Get dressed.” She scrabbled through some papers on her desk and scratched out a prescription. “Ice at least ten minutes on that bruise, then ten minutes off, if you experience discomfort in your arm.” She shot up and filled a small box with anti-inflammatories with rote precision, rage leaking out of her stiff visage like flames under a door gap.

Takemi unlocked the door and escorted him back to the lobby, where the other three Thieves dropped into a sudden hush from their conspiratorial huddle. The door slammed behind him, and a moment later she paced to the window, wireless phone in hand. Her voice was soft as the cooing of a dove as she inquired, “Sakura Sojiro? I have you down as the guardian of Kurusu Akira.” She took down the busy sign and slid the window closed before continuing.

The artist sat down next to Ann, glad the runner left the spot open.

Ryuji didn’t even wait for him to sit all the way down before blurting, “Dude! What the eff happened?”

Yusuke folded the prescription and slipped it into his pocket. “She is aware Akira has been lying to her about how we have been receiving injuries, and knows not all of them can have come from some mundane source. However, I believe she has been overtaken by another priority at the moment.”

Ann tilted her head. “What?”

Despite the muffling of the closed window at the doctor’s desk, all the Thieves heard Takemi bellow, “Do you know what heat stroke does to developing brain tissue?”

“Perhaps Makoto was correct, and discretion is the better part of valor.” Yusuke started to rise.

Ryuji’s powerful grip brought him back down. “Dude, the eff happened in there?”

“I just described the rustic conditions of the loft in which Akira lives,” Yusuke said, noticing the suspicious squint from the team leader who insisted he was not a cat. “That he does not have a window air conditioning unit, and there is a quaint view of the roof and rafters. I don’t see what the fuss is about. Madarame’s atelier is much the same.”

Morgana blinked. “That doesn’t sound extreme.” He looked over to the natural blonde whose eyes widened. “What?”

Ann held her hand to her head. “Wait, that was the building roof?”

Ryuji’s eyebrows arched. “So what?”

Ann plopped a hand on her face. “Ryuji, you don’t get it ‘cause you grew up here. It’s just another summer to you, like all the others. Akira’s from up in the mountains where it’s, like, ten degrees cooler. I was the same my first year here, when I started middle school. It was so much hotter than Rauma I didn’t even wanna go outside, and I had AC everywhere.” She cringed. “Oh, geez. If social services ever came and saw he was in an uninsulated loft with no AC, they might call it unlivable conditions and put Akira in a group home… or worse, a legal guardian who’d treat him like garbage and watch him like a hawk so he never has time to go thieving with us.”

Yusuke straightened. “Then I offer my Phantom Thief funds to pay for a window unit. I have only spent some of it on bean sprouts and art supplies.”

Morgana paced in a little circle. “I doubt you could pay for it yourself, but you shouldn’t. I’ll put my funds in as well.”

“Me too,” Ann said.

Morgana sat down before the others, looking stern. “Lady Ann? Call Nightrider. We have a Phantom Thief proposal for the group to vote on. Joker’s only got one place to legally call home as long as he’s in Tokyo. Boss may be a demanding guy, but he’s been understanding and given Joker a lot of freedom, even done stuff like taught him how to make coffee and some of his cooking.”

She opened a line, despite the confusion in her sapphire eyes. “Hey, Makoto? Morgana’s got a vote to help Akira stay with Boss.” She listened for a moment. “No, it’s about the heat. None of us realized it until he passed out and the doctor said something about a risk of heat stroke. So we’re all going to chip in to buy him a window AC unit.”

Morgana’s tail twitched.

Ann gave one of her beatific smiles. “Awesome, Prez!” She looked out at the others. “She said she’s in. She’s already shopping online and said she’ll post the options to the group chat.”

Yusuke whipped out his sketchpad. That smile had to be captured!

Tuesday, 26 July 2014
Early Morning
Yongen, Takemi Medical Clinic

Akira opened his sleep-encrusted eyes. His back popped as he stretched his limbs and threw off the stiff, hypo-allergenic sheet. His mouth felt raw, but he hadn’t brushed since going into Futaba’s palace on Sunday. He disentangled his legs from the sheet and sat up from a raised foam-plastic mattress. He remembered coming to the clinic, then struggling back into consciousness to help Makoto last night before passing out again. Based on the white plastic siding on the walls and smell of chemicals he knew he was still in the clinic.

A door slamming closed snapped his senses on high alert. He looked around for weapons, then his shoes – not just for the knife hidden in it. The oxygen canister, even if not full, would be too heavy for him to pick up without help. Footsteps neared and he reached for a metal chair in a corner, but stopped when he recognized the plonk of platform shoes.

The door swung open and Doctor Takemi strode in, sans her usual white coat. She wore the same dark, spiderweb-patterned dress he first saw her in, but bore an irritated glare he’d never seen from her before. “So, how did my little Phantom Thief sleep?”

Akira choked on air. He turned and coughed for a few seconds until he regained control of his breathing, then tugged at his rumpled shirt to get a sense of control. “I don’t… don’t know what you mean.”

Steady as the tides, Takemi took a deep step closer. Clipboard in one hand, she snagged his wrist with strong fingers, the pads of two fingers tensing. Rudimentary knowledge of pressure points flashed through his mind before he realized her eyes had un-focused. Then she released his hand, took her pen in her right with a click to extend the point, and scribbled. “I’m a doctor. People lie, and treating them properly often relies on seeing when they’re saying something other than the truth and judging what that really is. Your friends had some… interesting things to say yesterday.”

Akira shot straight. They couldn’t have been stupid enough to spill any concrete particulars. He hadn’t been awake for most of Makoto’s interrogation, but she looked awkward at the best of times and the team leader kept trying to coach her so she couldn’t have just spilled everything. “Well… you already know about the yakuza.”

Her brown eyes narrowed. “When a bunch of troublemakers walk into a mafia kitchen, they’re all thrown into the freezer. Yet somehow only one of your friends showed signs of serious frostbite. And minor burns on that bottle blond.” Her eyes narrowed into angry slits. “And you brought in yet another battered boy. Isn’t it bad enough to get yourself beaten up on whatever crusade you’ve gotten yourself into? Why can’t you kids just leave the world to pick itself up?”

Akira faced off against her. “Because nobody would come for me!”

The air conditioning thrummed in the ceiling.

Takemi’s eyes flicked over him, but kept coming back to a stop on his as if they could divine something he hadn’t said. She sighed and moved a box of graduated cylinders from the chair in one corner and set it on a taller stack of boxes. She slouched into the seat, chin in hand as she looked at him. “You remember asking me how I got into medicine?”

His mind turned over. She tended to avoid talking about her past, except when he grilled her about it to buoy her spirits when Masa’s spectre still loomed over her. “Spending months in a hospital when you were a girl.”

She waggled her clipboard at him. “Months every year,” Takemi corrected. “I had a glandular condition which resulted in a compromised immune system. It wasn’t contagious, but that never stopped anyone from treating me like I was. It started with wanting to understand what was wrong with me, and kept going because at least books and medical journals wouldn’t call me ghost girl and leave me all alone in the school yard.”

Grey eyes fell to the scuffed wood floor. Feeling the need to sit down like the doctor, Akira hopped back onto the raised, foam-plastic mat and clasped his hands in his lap.

Takemi sighed, but at least when she looked up at him it wasn’t with that condescending anger he expected. “Medicine saved me, and I wanted to save others like it did me.”

Akira couldn’t quite make himself meet the doctor’s eyes. At least she followed through. His dream of going into medicine meant squat when the results of his life were sprains, black eyes, and tears. “That why you’re working so hard trying to finish that formula and suspension for Miwa-chan?”

“Not just her,” Takemi retorted, sounding more disappointed. “I don’t like all the bustle and randomness of being a neighborhood clinic doctor, but with the yakuza gone it’s my only legitimate source of income.” She pursed her lips, her brown eyes boring straight into him. “I don’t like seeing people hurt. Especially repeatedly.”

Akira forced himself to straighten, even though that put his eye level quite a bit above hers. “And I can’t turn a blind eye to people who are suffering, abandoned by the world. That’s the kind of cowardice my parents would do.”

Her searching gaze probed his for long moments before she sighed. “I can guess how that shy girl with the headband might have come under a predator’s sights, but you didn’t stop there. Coming in with that pretty blonde thing with the strained ankle? Bruising on that try-hard who thinks shirts make him a delinquent?” She let the clipboard fall to her lap. “And then the boy from la-la land? Are you seeking out children with even less common sense than you?”

Akira’s posture tensed. “None of us can just sit back and do nothing when the people around us are hurting. We’re fighting back the only way we know how.”

She responded in kind, “I’ve already seen the scars on your wrists. I could just tie you up and drug you to keep you out of trouble.”

His heart rate rose, but this was the kind of conflict he’d been fighting his whole life. He brandished his best smirk and held a hand against his chest. “Why, Doctor, I didn’t even think we were far enough for dinner.”

She lashed out, smacking his knees with her clipboard. Despite that, her frown seemed shallower. “You and your friends are getting increasingly odd injuries.” She paused for a steadying breath. “Don’t make me the doctor who has to certify a children’s suicide pact.”

The desperation and accusing look on Morgana’s face when he castigated Akira earlier came to mind. “I can’t tell you we’ll never be in danger in the future. But I can tell you none of us want to die.”

She didn’t stop him from walking out after that.

Notes:

It seems like most of the confidants figure out Akira’s a Phantom Thief by the end of the arc, in some cases it makes sense. Kawakami and Hifumi both explicitly mention the timing and lack of anybody else in the know. For Takemi it wouldn’t take much for her to piece things together even if she’s not being given a more realistic treatment like I’m doing for Daywatch. She was a doctor who cared in the game, even if medical research does NOT work that way. Don’t worry, she’ll still get help with Miwa and Oyamada. You don’t experiment on a treatment for one person by giving it to a person without that disease and hoping Joe Normal doesn’t die, that wouldn’t even give you useful data. For Yoshida I always thought it felt weird for him to say it outright to start with, much less figure it out when you did nothing directly for him, and there’s little indication the Phantom Thieves were ever mentioned in his presence. He chose to bring it up himself without a sign it was a part of the public discourse he could expand his platform by bringing up. That is part of what will be handled differently in Daywatch. That and it seemed remiss not to use a responsible adult and politician as a foil to Shido.

Chapter 86: July 26th, Unfair Warning

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Tuesday, 26 July 2016
Afternoon
Shibuya, Untouchable

Ryuji babbled with excitement, the rare opportunity to be in the zone taking over common sense. He went on about sighting and recoil compensation for automatic weapons, since he and the transfer student would be using the same general category for the rest of the Palace.

Akira nodded and tapped something into his phone. “I dunno what all the fuss is about a window unit, if the place isn’t insulated, it’s not going to do much good.”

From within the transfer student’s satchel, the team leader reproached, “Take what you can get, Joker. I had no idea heat could be responsible for your bad sleep. This could be a big help for your health in and out of the Metaverse.”

Ryuji scrolled up on his phone, then spotted what he was looking for and opened the first image with the correct name. “Oh! Oh! Here it is, I just couldn’t remember what the Brits called it! A SUSAT’s what’cha want. Or maybe ACOG if you wanna American-style, but that might be more range than ya need.”

Big Man strode from the back with a white paper box in his hands with the transfer student’s order. The gruff dude made out of awesome sat down on that squeaky little stool. “Kids seem way more into their hobbies these days. Didn’t I just see you at the arcade playin’ Gun About?”

Ryuji kept browsing gun modifications. “‘Cause it’s effin’ awesome!” His eyes popped wide for a moment. “So if we’re all gearin’ up, I still gotta pick the next upgrade for my RPK-74.”

Big Man chuckled. “Leave it to you to go for the paratrooper style. You know what direction you want to take it?”

Ryuji gave a wide grin as his heart thrummed at his life’s gun passion. “Oh, yeah. Eventually I wanna make it a night assault variant like Sergeant Lukasenko’s.” He flexed his left hand, remembering how hard it was to control it yesterday, especially when he needed to sweep across a group of closely-packed Shadows. “But for right now, I think it needs a hip brace an’ dot projector.” He glanced at the transfer student, remembering how he stiffened any time he spotted the cops. “Oh! An’ I’m gonna need it to be disassemble-able …so I can bring it ‘round to fan clubs an’ competitions.”

Big Man chuffed. “Right. Clubs.” He set the black gym bag behind the counter. “It’s a lot easier just to bolt the damn thing on, Little Man. You sure you wanna be able to break it down? That’s gonna take all day to finish.”

Ryuji waved at him. “All good, Big Man. Ain’t gonna need it ‘til tomorrow.”

Iwai nodded and took the up-front portion of the payment. That done, he slid the white paper box up to the window and looked Akira in the eye. “Like I said, this is the only FN P90 I got an’ only ‘cause of an order cancellation. This baby ain’t exactly top with collectors ‘cause it’s a pretty common modern gun, still in production, and it’s got no big marks in history like his World War Two or Cold War models.”

Akira gave a nod and pulled out his wallet. “I understand, Iwai-san. This is exactly the gun I’m looking for.” He set down a bunch of cash, making Ryuji wonder if he really needed help buying an AC unit, then took the box containing his new gun.

“Pleasure doin’ business,” Iwai said before picking up Ryuji’s gym bag hiding his disassembled RPK, and heading to the back with it.

They stepped outside, but before the transfer student in long-sleeved summer wear could depart, Ryuji turned his best grin on him. “So, dude. ‘Koto said you were hittin’ lightweight in there. I know there was all that exhaustion shit blowin’ up my phone last night.”

“And this morning,” Akira said, remembering the messages picking up after he left the clinic.

Morgana popped out of the transfer student’s travel satchel. “And don’t let Nightrider catch you calling her ‘Koto’, she’ll probably throw you.”

The runner waved off the concern. “You know what I mean.” He patted the hip pouch he had clipped on. “I got myself a change, an’ Protein Lovers’ is right ‘cross the way. Wanna work that flab? Can’t hurt to getcher’self ready for the Palace.”

Akira turned his phone over in his left hand, his steel-grey eyes making those small twitching movements like he remembered Captain Ikeda doing when planning out some future practice out from under the jealous eyes of Kamoshida. He shook his head. “I didn’t bring any spare boxer-briefs.” He glanced down at the team leader. “Why don’t you go with him? Maybe you can spot ‘im.”

Ryuji knew the sound of ‘I got something else to do’, so he didn’t push it. “I gotcha, dude.”

To his surprise, Morgana hopped out and sat down next to the runner. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

Akira held up his hand, touching his thumb to each finger. “Oh no, look, I’m doing something you wouldn’t do.”

Morgana’s ears pressed flat against the back of his head and his tail started to twitch.

The transfer student turned for the train station and headed off.

Ryuji shrugged down at the team leader, smothering a chuckle. Sure, it was funny, but it wasn’t the team leader’s fault he didn’t have opposable thumbs in the real world. “Hey, ‘e’s just messin’ with ya.”

Morgana’s eyes narrowed through the crowd. “No, Ryuji. He’s making excuses and trying to push us away. He’s planning something – I knew it since he came back to the loft to grab a change for the bath house.” He looked up. “How’s your stealth?”

Ryuji blinked, clueless as to what the damn cat was insinuating.

Morgana sighed. “I mean let’s follow him to see what he’s up to.”

Epiphany dawned over Ryuji’s face. “Oooh! You’re ‘fraid he’s doin’ the hanky-panky with Ann on the D-L.” They definitely had sparks and sidelong glances, but lately he’d started to wonder. He’d spotted Ann looking sidelong at Mishima, before. Did Akira finally make a move? If they’d just rent a room at a love motel and get to it, they’d save everyone a ton of time and deal with all that stress they were wrapping themselves up in.

Morgana stood, his tail vibrating with tension. “No way! Now get your mind out of the gutter and help tail him. No getting spotted!”

Before the runner could argue, he dashed into the crowd after Akira. Despite the half-minute lead, it wasn’t hard to follow the amateur crowd-runner. Instead of heading to the Yongan-Jaya line, Ryuji spotted their quarry taking a line to the east. With no bag to hide Morgana in, he hoped nobody would raise a fuss and sprinted into the next train car after the transfer student.

He almost missed Akira getting off and had to hold the doors open for the little mongrel to get off with him, but the next station was empty enough to spot the transfer student taking the stairs up.

Faint resemblance tickled the back of Ryuji’s mind as he trailed the focused transfer student to a secluded alley. When the runner turned the corner, there was no sign of the transfer student. Which should have been impossible, he heard those footsteps stop. He paced into the dingy alley, baffled. “The eff he go?”

Morgana shook his head, horror in his voice. “No, he wouldn’t be trying to go for it alone.”

“Go for what alone? I thought we were only on Sakura’s dungeon, an’ this ain’t the place to get to Mementos.”

Morgana shot him a narrow look of disappointment. “Mementos is the collective’s Palace, you can reach it from almost everywhere. But didn’t you recognize the buildings at all?” When the runner didn’t respond, the team leader shouted, “It’s the KFTV complex! Togo’s Palace!” Morgana hopped off, and dashed towards the spot where Akira probably vanished from. “Come on!”

Ryuji pulled up the Nav. He didn’t remember the target’s name, but to his relief the Nav history still had Togo Mitsuyo. “Uh… location. The, uh… KFTV place?”

“Condition has not been met.”

Morgana’s tail was twitching, but he came to a stop next to the runner. “Use your head! KFTV Studio! And temple!”

“Beginning navigation.”

The street lurched underneath him and the buildings twisted as if writhing in agony. Churning maroon clouds blotted out the sky and the surroundings snapped back, though they seemed smaller and… wilted, somehow. Both halves of an empty white paper box lay discarded on the street nearby.

A thump sounded, followed by Akira shouting, “This is bullshit! You weren’t here before!”

Morgana drew his folded-rod crossbow and looked up at the plate-jacketed Thief. “Well, this was easy.” He dashed out and the runner followed to an enormous, pearlescent gate with a strange hybrid of a Japanese castle, a Shinto temple, and a couple of those stacked Chinese temple-tower things for added confusion. Behind the gate’s wide bars rolled thick fog. Lightning flicked between the churning maroon clouds above, though no thunder sounded.

“Yo, Joker!” Ryuji shouted as he strode up the street from the alley. “The eff you doin’ here? I thought we were gonna take down Sakura’s dungeon.”

“It’s a Palace,” Akira snapped, crouching down to squint at something etched into what he thought was a name-plate on the gate. “And I promised to start changing Futaba’s Palace with you guys. We started. I also promised Hifumi I’d change Togo’s Palace.”

Morgana patted his packed crossbow in his free hand. “Why would you try something insane like trying to steal her mother’s heart alone?”

Ryuji slapped his forehead – or would have if his glove didn’t plunk against his heavy skull mask. “Togo Hifumi? Dude, I totally get it! She makes a fucking hot shrine maiden.” When Akira glared and Morgana stared, he explained, “What? You think I can’t google some chick’s name when you an’ Fox went on an’ on ‘bout her in chat?”

“No,” Morgana snapped. “We are not getting side-tracked. Akira, you’ve made impulsive decisions before, but you tried to ditch me. You were planning on coming here. Did you learn nothing from anything I’ve taught you all?”

Akira turned, his P90 in his right, and slipped that over-sized ‘survival knife’ from a coat pocket. “I learned to come prepared.” The corner of his lip twitched, but he must have picked up on the mood because his smirk flattened. “Do you guys believe in God? Or fate?”

Ryuji snorted. “No.”

Morgana’s tail drifted in a slow swish back and forth behind him.

Akira put away the blade. “My old bastard taught me how to hurt back, and Mother taught me how to fend for myself. But I didn’t know who I was or what I could be… until I came here to Tokyo.”

“You wanted to be a doctor,” Morgana proffered.

Everyone wants to be a doctor.” Akira sighed. He leaned against the gate. “I wanted to be someone. But it’s not like I had a lot of examples. Mother partied all the time. The old bastard hurt people for a living. If he wanted to do it, my best guess is to be the opposite.” He switched his P90 to his other hand. “Thing is, people ask questions. Assign essays, and make me do it again when I clown it up. Especially on career day. Nobody’d believe the son of a doctor who’s the son of a doctor not going into medicine. Father Motoori was the first person in my life who didn’t give a song and dance about what career I wanted, he demanded that I be someone… Didn’t let me give some canned answer about what my future was gonna be ‘cause…” His eyes flicked to his gloves for some reason. “Well, the point is he wouldn’t let me go without knowing I had a real thing to go for.” He rubbed his arm. “Shiho was the first girl I told who acted like it wasn’t some stupid dream.” He blushed under his mask. “And Hifumi… I haven’t even told her, but she thinks I can be someone legit. I want to be who she thinks I am. If a good person like her can’t do it, there’s no hope for me. Maybe not for any of us. I have to do this for both of us. So, please… don’t tell me to just walk away.”

Ryuji had no idea what to say to all that, so he looked to the team leader.

Morgana tapped his crossbow against his hand a couple times as he sized up the boy in a red-light-district magician getup. “That’s the first time I’ve heard you say ‘please’.” Long, silent moments ticked as he scanned the longcoated boy almost vibrating with tension. The leader deployed his crossbow. “Today’s supposed to be a rest day so we can hit Sakura’s Palace full strength. This will be a brief scouting venture only.”

Akira fist-pumped. “Yes! I will never ask you for anything again!”

Ryuji doubted that, but mister red-light-magician looked like he was vibrating with excitement for pulling a fast one on the team leader. The runner grinned. “So, what’s the hold up?”

Akira stood back from what at first appeared to be a name plate fixed into the gate, and read the text on it. “She is born with me, and I can make the strongest man fall. Though she may not see me, I am treasured by all.”

Morgana said, “Beauty.”

The instant he said the word, metal clinked and the gate sank flush into the ground.

Ryuji clapped. “Nice, Leader. But… uh… I can kick some serious ass with Captain Kidd, but relyin’ on him is gonna wear me out. You guys got your weapons. I was expectin’ to hit the gym.”

Akira started searching through his longcoat pockets. “Oh, right. I’m so used to carrying that other gun around, I’ve still got it.” He handed the FN-P90 to the runner and pulled the parts out, then assembled his PP-91 KEDR.

Feeling like a proper soldier with a gun in his hands, Ryuji followed the catboy team leader into the misty temple-castle grounds. He’d have sworn eyes peered at them from deeper inside the complex, but they vanished whenever he looked straight at them. The thieves advanced to the covered porch.

Morgana pressed against the wall for a moment, his face scrunched up before he let out a sneeze. “I don’t like Palaces with fog. Their layout isn’t as stable as other Palaces. I can’t smell a thing, and it’s almost impossible to be sure where the true location of the Treasure is.”

Akira’s KEDR laser dot projector cut a menacing red beam through the fog. “You said it was pretty close to that veneration… room we ended up in. If Togo’s got any vanity at all, she’ll want to connect it so almost anywhere leads back there.”

Ryuji nodded. “An’ if the fog can roll in, there’s gotta be some way to make it roll out.”

Morgana puffed out his chest. “Sounds like you two have been taking my lessons to heart.” He came to a stop next to a sliding wood door. Another carved wood placard like on the front gate was set in the center of the door. “I am light as a feather, but no man can hold me.”

Ryuji grinned at the opportunity to look smart. “Any runner knows that. Breath.”

The wood door slid away with a sound of finality.

Akira shot him a smirk. “That was gonna be my second guess.”

Instead of fog, an audience hall with the same layout as a big-wig corporate lobby stretched out before them, but with old, stained-wood furniture. A huge standing screen divided the middle of the room, like he’d expect from an ancient castle, but on it was a photo-realistic depiction of that angry woman in Mementos who turned into a sexy demon. He spotted a merchandise cart with shirts and coats to one side, all bearing the same pretty woman’s smiling face. Sitting behind the receptionist’s desk was something in the shape of a woman with huge tits, and a red business dress to show them off. Her skin was black as the night sky. Instead of a face, she bore a Noh-style mask with a thin, flat mouth and deep circles etched under her eyes. Other Shadows of either similar creepy girls or emaciated guys, all wearing masks with tears under the eyes, bustled about the rest of the area in the same way he would expect from a modern TV studio.

Akira, having jumped to the side for cover, whispered across the doorway, “Army of Shadows, or are those cognitions?”

“They appear to fit into the general thematic setting of the Palace,” Morgana said before walking in, keeping his crossbow at the ready, followed by the other two.

The runner would’ve sworn the receptionist’s mask winked, now showing them a wide smile, though with a tear painted under one eye. She said, “Welcome to Togo the Great’s Temple. How can I help you?”

Akira shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “We’re here to get to the… um… what do you call that place where Togo-san was on a stage, surrounded by people worshiping her?”

“The Hall of Adoration,” the receptionist said. “Her broadcasts used to go all over the world until her career at NHK was cut short. Now only the vetted may have the privilege of personally basking in the beatific glory of Togo Mitsuyo.”

“I’m almost afraid to know what she thinks of Hifumi,” Akira grumbled.

The receptionist tapped away at her computer. “The Idol Who Brings Glory is currently undergoing training to bring her around to right thinking until she concedes the bikini modeling. She will be in the Hall of Correction when not out on tours to bring glory to Togo the Great.”

Ryuji smiled. “Hot girl in swimsuits? How can that go wrong?”

Akira’s gloves groaned and his face twisted in anger. “Training to right thinking?”

“Correct,” the receptionist said, her hands tapping away at the clunker keyboard for a moment. “She has been isolated from subversive influences and punished for attempts at socialization with inferiors. Any contamination of her could reflect badly on Togo the Great.”

Ryuji caught the longcoated boy’s wrist before he could raise his KEDR at the receptionist. “Keep it cool, dude. Every Palace is gonna be twisted. Like those sexy chick statue things at Kamoshida’s castle.”

Morgana coughed to get the wannabe-red-light-magician’s attention. “Reaper is right. Keep your eyes on the Palace Ruler and don’t get distracted by every distortion along the way.” He glanced left and right. “Stay here, I’m going to scope out the exits.”

Akira’s jaw clenched for a long moment before he forced out a breath and made himself nod. Standing steadier, he asked the receptionist, “So how do we get to Togo?”

The receptionist pointed at a door on the right. “The Hall of Offering is the first step. Anyone may worship Togo the Great, but only those who are properly vetted have permission to ever come close to her again.”

Akira’s head tilted. “Again?”

Morgana zipped back to cover in front of the receptionist’s antique desk. “Other door says ‘Hall of Interns’. And there’s another riddle on it.”

Ryuji gave a nod of thanks to the maybe-Shadow-maybe-mind-person. They headed to the door on the right, labeled ‘Hall of Offering’ at the top, and slid it open. A covered walkway stretched on to a new building, fog rolling to both sides but only thin wisps intruding on the raised path itself.

They got a couple paces before the laser projected by Akira’s KEDR shot to the left into the fog and he dropped into a firing stance, his breath dropping into a clipped but steady rhythm. The runner would’ve thought nothing of it, but the team leader also has his crossbow pointed into the murk.

Ryuji glanced into the mist swirling into more of the temple-castle complex. “What?”

“Did you not see those eyes?” Morgana snapped. “That guard dog must’ve been the size of a barn!”

The runner frowned at them. “Shouldn’t we ‘a seen somethin’ that big our first time in?”

“We were on the roof more than half the time!” The leader snapped back.

Akira kept his KEDR up and pointed into the fog but paced down the walkway to the next door, where a large slotted box jutted out of the wall. The sign above the door said ‘Hall of Offering’, but the box said – “One million yen?” Akira kicked the collection box.

Two Shadows of the same white-and-red garb and Noh masks burst into being next to the door, then swelled and burst into a pair of stacked women in almost-shrugged-off court robes, twin fox tails jutting out from behind them.

Ryuji shot a quick burst into one, the NATO rifle rounds of his borrowed P90 driving the sexy Shadow woman back just one step.

“Zorro!” The team leader followed up without hesitation, his brawny Persona zipping in to stab his rapier into the Shadow foxy-woman he just shot. “No lightning!”

Akira frowned. “I remember. Raksha!”

One of those red-clad figures he recognized from the bank coalesced and slashed both her long, forward-curving swords into the same foxy-woman they already struck, driving her to her knees.

The other foxy-woman danced, making a twirl and step forward, shooting a lightning bolt at Akira’s swordswoman Persona. He growled, stumbling a pace back.

Zorro’s eyes glowed with foxfire, the same aura flickering over the fox-women before smashing them both into the wall.

The battered one dissipated, but the remaining one snarled and leaped at Akira’s Persona, claws extending out of her fingernails as the Shadow swiped at the swordswoman.

Akira stumbled, but his Persona kept her feet and slashed back.

With their guns little use against these Shadows, Ryuji called, “Let ‘em have it, Captain!”

Kidd coalesced and pointed his arm-cannon, shooting a concussive pulse of solid wind at the Shadow, knocking the almost-naked woman into the wall again. She dissolved before hitting the floor.

The Shadows down, the Thieves dismissed their Personas and Morgana examined the door, then building in detail. “That could all have been avoided.” He led the Thieves to one of the outer pillars supporting the roof and climbed up, following the rafter to a vent. “Good thing most people only know about standard screws.”

He fiddled with the panel and a few moments later, four screws tumbled to the ground, then followed by a painted screen which looked very close to the same as the top of the wall it was set in. The other Thieves followed him in, and they came to a vent looking down into what could have passed as a museum hall with old wood flooring and furniture, except for tall flat-screens next to glassed-in displays. Morgana passed the vent and Akira smashed through it, letting them all drop down.

As the Thieves stepped in to examine the room, audio played from the screens to detail the woman’s stellar rise through NHK, making repeated reference to her beauty, on-screen charm, and fame she was owed.

Noticing a momentary flicker, Akira came to a stop in front of one large-screen display next to a mannequin of Togo Mitsuyo in a pencil skirt and high heels.

Ryuji paid more attention to the mannequin than the screen playing praise next to it. The first button came lower than most business suits, more bringing the eye to the ample bust than hiding it. “Hey, ain’t this a lot like that Shadow receptionist? ‘cept a little more like what a real chick would wear?”

Akira crossed his arms and tapped a knuckle against his lips. “Byakko, you getting a sense like the memory we saw from Futaba? Like there’s something… cut off about this?”

The team leader stopped next to the longcoated boy and watched. It wasn’t until the video looped he realized something was off. “Hey, you’re right! There’s somebody in a white suit, but it cuts back to the start before his face comes into the frame.” He tapped his folded crossbow in hand. “The only question is, does this represent a repressed memory, or a piece of an unrealized idea?”

Akira glanced at Ryuji, then elbowed him. “Could you control your gaze for just a few seconds?”

“Just ‘preciatin’.”

Akira rolled his eyes and proceeded to the next door deeper into the temple-castle complex. The door slid open without resistance, though fog rolled over the covered walkway to the next area.

All three Thieves tensed when they spotted movement. A tall girl with long, straight hair and royal kimono paced along the walkway wrapping around the next building, straight into the churning mist.

The red line cast by the KEDR’s dot projector wobbled through the fog as Akira dashed after her and out onto an uncovered walkway branching off to the left. “Hifumi!”

Morgana took in a sharp breath and burst into a run after. “Careful, Joker! It’s a cognition, heading to a different section of the temple!”

Akira slowed at the warning, but kept going. “Hifumi! Is this the way to Mitsuyo’s Treasure?”

The girl shrouded by the swirling mist stopped and turned back to them. Ryuji’s hair stood on end, though he couldn’t see a reason why. Dull, dark eyes looked back up at them, the dark pattern of waves on her kimono making the red knot in her hair seem even brighter. She opened her mouth and a melodious voice floated out, “What drives man to seek blessing within his house, while danger drives him without?”

The runner was so baffled he couldn’t even put together a proper word. Something about the twisting fog made Ryuji’s hair stand on end.

Akira only looked at the mind-girl. “Obligation.”

The pretty mind-girl gave a cliché shy smile and hid her lower face behind a sleeve decorated with crashing waves. She turned around and seemed to glide down the wooden walkway into the fog, taking a turn to another building which seemed more a fortification than temple. Stone walls rose up, slits dotting the sides with Nobunaga-style arquebus barrels poking out. Mind-Hifumi walked through a square opening low in the wall to what appeared to be another museum-hall place with glass cases and big flat-screens.

“Hifumi, we need to get to the palace Treasure.” Akira reached out to try to grab her. The instant his hand closed on her shoulder, the fog churned. A deep huff passed and the fog almost three meters up swirled. Then a pair of golden eyes glowed and Ryuji understood why his hair was standing on end.

A dog the size of a barn stepped forward, fog clinging to its grey-and-white fur.

Morgana chose that moment to panic and more blurred than sprinted for the open doorway the mind-girl stepped through.

Heavy wood doors banded with black metal slammed shut in the panicked team leader’s face.

Ryuji lifted the P90 and took aim at the enormous beast’s eyes, then pulled the trigger. A satisfying but manageable kick pushed back against his shoulder as NATO rifle rounds roared out of the personal defense weapon.

The giant dog-wolf-monster squinted and flinched back, but at the end of the burst showed no sign of injury.

Akira glanced from the panicking catboy to the giant wolf. “Byakko! It’s got to have a lock or riddle or something! Pull yourself together!” He ripped his mask off and that dancing snowman popped out between he and the giant wolf. It hurled two sword-sized icicles at the dog, leaving frost smudging the points of impact.

The wolf braced, its muzzle wrinkled and gleaming teeth bared, then it roared with such force it knocked both boys back.

With the pint-sized leader still clawing at the door in a wild panic, Ryuji called up his own assault. “Captain Kidd!” The skeletal pirate on a swift but tattered boat coalesced as it rocketed at the giant wolf. The cutlass swung up, knocking the toothy maw aside, then back down and knocked the monster stumbling back.

“Byakko!” Akira abandoned the fight to go smack the team leader out of his panic, then sent Jack Frost at the giant wolf.

Morgana shook his head, but the presence of mister red-light-district-magician settled him enough to look up at the door. “I am the answer of every question. When you think you've got it, you have it not.”

“Knowledge!” Akira shouted as his Persona pummeled the beast. The doors rotated open.

The building-sized wolf snapped its huge maw on Jack Frost, then shook back and forth with such ferocity the monster’s whole body trembled. Plumes of snow crumbled off from each thrash as the fangs sank all the way through the icy Persona.

Akira growled in pain and tumbled to his knees.

Dismissing his Persona, Ryuji grabbed the wannabe-magician’s coat and hauled with all his might to get them inside. Blood dripped from underneath Akira’s sleeve and glove.

The giant wolf snapped and jammed its snout after them, but to Ryuji’s relief, it couldn’t force its muzzle past the threshold. The snout retreated and for a moment, the runner thought it left.

Then the barking resumed and a paw tipped in vicious claws reached in, scratching about with blind abandon.

Ryuji grabbed the longcoated boy and hauled him off to one side as fast as he could while the clawed dog paw bigger than either boy tapped and scratched.

Far enough in to be safe, Morgana summoned Zorro and motes of silvery light danced over the longcoated boy.

Akira gasped, but after a moment flexed his arm. “Ow. Forget Jack Frost, I think the next Persona I summon is gonna be feeling that bite. I think I know who to leave with the twins next time I visit.” He accepted the runner’s hand to help him to his feet.

As the paw scratched blindly around the door, the thieves looked around. Much the same neat organization of glass-encased awards, girl-mannequins in cute dresses, and tall screens occupied this museum-like hall. But where the exhibits in the last hall talked over each other to try to push Mitsuyo’s beauty and hard work, these sat silent.

Ryuji stepped in front of a glass-encased wall poster declaring first prize for a calligraphy competition in fifth grade. A grade-school award ceremony played on the screen. Somehow, the runner could feel the brimming pride of Mitsuyo as they called out “Togo” even before she started clapping.

The center of the museum-hall was dominated by a raised floor. While he didn’t know much about shogi, he recognized the giant pieces encased in glass on it, interspersed with mannequins of some middle-aged guy in a sweater-vest. Akira stepped past them to a girl mannequin in a gold-trimmed white sailor-style uniform, one arm wrapped around its torso and face cast down and away in shame.

The screen lit up once the longcoated boy got close enough, playing a drive through the streets of Tokyo. A handful of students in that same school’s style walked down the sidewalk in the late afternoon, though two in particular ducked into the little cover a concrete utility pole could provide from the street. The pair didn’t seem to notice the quiet car pulling closer and coming to a stop, though after it passed the pole, the runner realized why.

Hifumi leaned in, her lips locked with some boy in the male version of the same school’s uniform.

The car’s horn blared and both students leaped into the air. Mitsuyo screeched from the driver’s seat, “Is this what you’ve been doing all those nights you’re late coming home from Ogawa?”

The boy took off at a speed which would have qualified him for the track team at Shujin.

A red-faced, young Hifumi clutched a leather book bag close. “Mother! What are you even doing here so early for? I thought you were still at KFTV!”

“Get in,” Mitsuyo snapped. Before the girl even finished buckling in, she accelerated back into traffic. “Do you think I have been working myself to the bone so you can go throwing yourself at every despicable man who comes by?”

Hifumi blushed deeper and held her school book case against her chest, as if that would allow her to hide behind it. “Kazuma-san isn’t some bad person – he asked me to be his girlfriend!”

Mitsuyo ground her teeth and flipped the turn signal to take the road into Chiyoda-ku. “Did you not feel him fondling you over your skirt? Or were you too distracted playing tonsil-hockey?”

Covering her face, the blush spread. “We weren’t— He likes me!”

Mitsuyo kept her eyes on the road through sheer force of will. “That’s what all men say when they want in your panties. I’ll bet he promised to take you places and get you flowers and jewelry for doing the tango with him.”

Hifumi spluttered.

Mitsuyo’s teeth ground and she turned into the parking garage. “That is it, young lady! I am calling his mother, and I am calling the school, and you are forbidden from dating until you graduate high school! Your father hasn’t been in condition to enforce discipline lately, but I did not raise some floozy!”

Tears spilled down young Hifumi’s face before the screen went dark. Ryuji gawked. “Dude, I heard about mama bears, but that was a maulin’!”

Akira’s jaw hung open.

Morgana cleared his throat. “It doesn’t feel like there’s a safe room in this part of the Palace. The Ruler must feel she has complete control over this area.” When Akira didn’t respond, he tugged at a coattail. “Come on, Joker. Let’s get out of here.”

Tuesday, 26 July 2016
Evening
Kanda Catholic Church

Akira paused at the front doors and swallowed. He wasn’t sure if the sense of imbalance was due to the lack of Morgana after he told the well-meaning team leader he needed time alone, or if it was still from seeing the girl of a lifetime making out with someone else. He should have known – he even suspected she already had a boyfriend when first meeting her. Who wouldn’t want somebody gentle, smart, and a knockout like her?

It didn’t confirm she was too good for someone like him.

Akira hauled open the door before his nerves could do any more damage. He navigated to the staff offices and stopped to take in a few deep breaths before knocking on Father Sugiyama’s office.

“I’m expecting an appointment from a parishioner, Kanno-san,” the priest called.

Akira swallowed, then opened the door. “F-Father?”

“Oh,” the priest smiled from a desk cluttered with calendars, bibles, and a notepad cluttered with illegible scratchings. “The man of the hour. Come in. Please excuse the mess, Ouzawa-san is out sick so I’ve been falling a little behind in community outreach and the sermon for this Sunday.”

It felt like his brain spun in his skull. He set down in a chair to counter the dizziness. He couldn’t deny a little envy at the middle schooler making out with one of the prettiest girls in Tokyo, but the pit in his stomach came from the voice which said that was right and his affections were not.

“I hope the summer isn’t making you ill, my son. Togo-chan said she was praying for you when we shared a practice game on Monday.”

His steel gaze snapped up to the priest. “She… she did?”

Father Sugiyama took down his bifocals. “That poor girl’s family has been through so much these past few years. Her father’s ailing health, mother working herself to exhaustion every day, losing her aunt and uncle, and the horrendous fight which happened instead of the marriage everyone was expecting. And yet her worries are always for other people. When two nights passed without word from you, she was concerned you’d succumbed to the heat wave.” His eyes drifted to the transfer student’s wrists. “I hope it is the heat and not…”

“No!” Akira wiped his slick hands on his pants, just the reference to his scars spiking his nervousness. “No. Father Motoori explained what suicide meant, and the gifts it was throwing away. I just…” He clasped his hands to resist the urge to fidget, but the words spilled out, “Hifumi’s worried about me? She doesn’t have anybody else?”

Father Sugiyama sighed. “I’m sure her mother means well, but she’s been growing stricter as time goes on. And her best friend Yuna being picked up by the police during the Shibuya Sweep hasn’t helped.” He forced a smile. “Your presence has been support she’s sorely lacking.”

Akira sat back against the stuffed chair. “She deserves better than me.”

“Never underestimate the transformative power of the Spirit to make us what we need to be when God calls us,” Father Sugiyama said. “The human heart may be a fragile thing, but if God can make the entire universe, He can pick up the pieces of our hearts even we can’t see. And He can bring the most unexpected of people together for good.” He straightened a tome on his desk. “You look like you have something still troubling you, my son. Motoori told me about your past. Unlike your Earthly father, I follow the calling of the Father above. No matter what it is, I am here to help you.”

Akira wiped his palms on his trousers. “I found out from her mother that Hifumi kissed… was in a relationship with another guy in middle school. Maybe… an intimate one.”

Sugiyama’s practiced smile turned into a frown. “That’s dirty, even by her standards.” He coughed into the back of his hand, then steadied. “I know Togo-san can be intimidating, and seem authoritative, but I would take what she tells you with… a grain of salt.”

“I wish it was that simple.” Taking a steadying breath, Akira looked the priest in the eye. “Morgana thought it was that somebody else had her first kiss, but… seeing her… I mean hearing about her being happy with someone else…” He swallowed. “I want her to be happy. And safe. And I don’t know if I can give her either of those.”

Father Sugiyama let out a breath and clasped his hands on one of the books open on the desk. “I think Togo-chan has an excellent sense of judgment. If she is going to you with her troubles, that alone should speak volumes about who she trusts.”

Akira’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He shifted in his seat. “I don’t want to argue with you, Father, but I’m not sure if people should trust me with their troubles. I don’t even have a handle on my own.”

The smile Sugiyama gave felt a bit pitying, but he straightened. “The most virtuous souls are those most aware of the vices they must grapple with. Remember when Elijah beseeched God? He was not in the gale or earthquake or fire, but He came in a whisper. Listen to what your heart tells you, and if you feel your burdens are too heavy, bring them to the foot of the cross in prayer.”

A bleep-bleep-bloop phone tone rang from underneath the scattered papers. Akira stood and reached into his pocket for his own phone. “Thank you, Father. Maybe you should get that.” He bowed and departed, pausing at the entrance to lean against the side and find out who messaged him.

Queen Togo sat at the top of his texting app. [Good evening, Akira-kun! Is everything okay?]

His heart jumped in his throat. He tried to think of as little of a lie as he could stomach sending to the most honest person he’d ever met. [Had some phone trouble for the past couple days.] The Metaverse Navigator did indirectly dump him in a torture chamber, after all – that was close. He added, [Tomorrow's going to be busy, too.]

A long beat passed before she sent, [Oh. I suppose it's too late to do something tonight?] She sent a frowning face. He started to type an apology, but before he could finish, she sent, [What about that shogi friend of yours?]

It took Akira a few moments to remember their run-in with Makoto in Jinbocho. [Oh, that's right. I promised to introduce you two.] He sent the upper-classman’s phone number. [We're using LINE, but I'll tell her to expect a call or text.]

[You make Saint Barnabas proud, Akira-kun. Stay safe, all of you. And I hope you save the heart you're all working on.]

Akira’s mouth and stomach both twisted over the sweet girl’s concern. When the twisting sensation didn’t immediately go away, he realized he needed to burn off tension. He shot out a text to the track star, [Hey, Ryuji. I need to run. There any good bath houses near Inokashira?]

[Dude, I'm on the way now. Come on by and I'll show you where I go before I head home!]

Akira rushed to Leblanc to change into exercise clothes, where Morgana responded to the exercise plans with his intention to lodge with Makoto that night. With a spare set of generic street clothes already hiding his disassembled guns in his travel satchel, he hopped on the train to Inokashira and came out of the station to find Ryuji imaginary sword-fighting with a takoyaki skewer right outside. They exchanged the usual bros’ pleasantries before pounding pavement.

Ryuji’s strength and stamina as a runner were less affected by Kamoshida’s injury than the blow to his morale from losing his team, and he had a hell of a competitive streak. Akira took full advantage of that to push his body to its limits, until the hot wind on his face and breath heaving in his lungs left no room in his head for the image of Hifumi locking lips with someone else.

The track star led them to a spartan bath house with hot showers instead of a tub like the one in Yongen, but it was enough to clean up in. After scrubbing, applying fresh deodorant and changing, Akira paused just past the entrance. Weather report said the heat wave would continue for weeks, so he opened the group chat to ask about the heat when the track star strode out from behind. “Hey, Ryuji. Mind if I crash at your place tonight?”

The runner stopped, then pulled out his phone and tapped out a message. “It’s gonna be dinky an’ messy. I’d’a given a shout-out for Yusuke back then, but movin’ shit just for a spot on the floor for weeks ain’t ‘xactly my idea o’ charity.” His phone buzzed. “Ma says she’ll throw some more ‘yaki in the pot.”

Tuesday, 26 July 2016
Late Evening
Setagaya-ku , Sakamoto’s Home

While Akira was used to the cultural idea of humility in describing one’s home, the track star wasn’t kidding when he described his place as small and messy. The whole floor plan wasn’t much bigger than Leblanc’s loft, and most of that was a den converted into a kitchen. “Nice place. Thank you, Sakamoto-san.”

The plump woman keeping her short hair in a ponytail gave a small smile as she set the rice-maker box serving as a table. “It’s been too long since my boy’s been with good peers.”

Akira chuckled. “In that case, you might have to keep waiting. No good in this kid.”

Ryuji hooted, “Let’s eat!” Then dug in pork-and-mushroom sukiyaki with gusto.

Akira paused to pray for Hifumi’s peace of mind before he picked up the mis-matched chopsticks and ate with far more measured pace.

Sakamoto herself watched the difference between the two of them for just a moment before she whacked her son with her chopsticks. “Manners in front of an effin’ guest!” She bared teeth in a stiff smile at the transfer student. “My apologies.”

Akira swallowed a large, chewed-down shiitake mushroom. “It’s good! I can see why he’s digging in.”

Sakamoto swallowed a bite of the fine noodles soaked in a mushroomy pork broth. “Are you the runner who’s gotten my boy excited about going out again?”

Ryuji coughed through a bite of noodles and enoki mushrooms. “Ma!”

She whacked him with her chopsticks again. “Chew, then speak.”

Akira chuckled and swallowed a bite of his own noodles. “These are really umami. How’d you get that flavor in them?”

Sakamoto’s cheeks took a faint flush. “Oh, nothing special. Just rehydrated the mushrooms in the same water as the noodles.”

“Oh!” He swirled another lump of noodles and the stringy mushrooms. “A poor man’s marinade. I do the same thing with tofu.”

Sakamoto straightened on her cushion. “Oh, you cook? I didn’t think was popular anymore.”

Akira snorted. “I’d’a starved years ago if I didn’t cook for myself. I only had to move to Tokyo to find good coffee and curry.”

Sakamoto’s eyebrows rose. “Coffee and curry? What an… odd combination.”

“Blech,” Ryuji spat. “Stuff is so gross.”

Rolling his eyes, Akira ignored the track star’s disgust. “It might be anywhere else, but Leblanc’s got a fine-tuned harmony.” The conversation wove between cooking, athletics, and Ryuji’s social life until the sun went down and it was time to hit the futon.

Tuesday, 26 July 2016
Late Evening
Setagaya-ku, Sakamoto Home, Bathroom

Akira rinsed his hands and splashed a little cold water on his neck. The run with Ryuji helped push out the choking, pounding feeling inside, but he couldn’t stop thinking about that memory they oversaw in Togo’s palace. The breeze from the tiny bathroom window cracked open set the hairs on the back of his damp hand on end and it reminded him of the night he confessed his record to Hifumi. He could almost feel her hand on his. Could almost see those gorgeous green eyes staring into him in the mirror.

I like you,” he’d told her. “More than is appropriate.”

What if I didn’t mind?”

Maruki seemed so certain, so blasé when he said as if reporting the weather, “So you’re sexually attracted to her. Akira-kun, it would be strange if you never had any of those thoughts about anyone.”

Akira stared into the mirror, set up and away against the wall much like the vertical monitor in the weird museum-fort where he spied Hifumi making out with a normal boy. He couldn’t stop himself from wondering what her lips would feel like.

You really gonna bullshit me that you ain’t here for the Venus of Shogi?” that stalker said, weeks ago in Rekisen Park. No sooner had the syllables been spoken than his dirty mind stripped the elegant girl and pasted her nude form on that scallop shell.

Shaking his head, Akira splashed himself with some more cold water and dried his hands.

It would be a sin to taint perfection.

Which one’s more your type… Ann or Makoto?” Ryuji asked him at the bath house on the night of their celebration of Kaneshiro’s change of heart.

Akira never had the courage to tell the runner that the first thing to pop into mind was the cognitive Ann in a micro-bikini. The flawless skin, voluminous pigtails, and perky breasts shot straight through his self-control and punched his hormonal brain right where he had no defense.

A flicker of the miserable staff trudging through the Smiling Mountain Mental Institution passed through his mind, followed by a night of fighting in the alley behind Inuri High. His knuckles bloodied, the battered and bruised form of Takeshita looked up at him from the pavement with his one good eye. “Kurusu’s true nature comes out. Shocker, he’s a Kurusu after all.”

What if I didn’t mind?

Akira wavered on his feet for a moment, then turned on the faucet and splashed his face with cold water a few more times before drying his hands and opening the washroom door. He cleared brochures on teeth health off the cushion in front of the TV and sat down to check his email and text. Even knowing she would be better off without him, he couldn’t just cut things off without a goodbye. [Checking in, Queen Togo. Everything okay tonight?]

The message sat, dark and unread, and a gloom pressed down on him as if he’d thrown on a weighted jacket. Even his heartbeat felt sharper, painful.

“Now what’s a young’n like you got to be so down about?” a familiar woman’s voice said from the bedroom halls. Ryuji’s mother. He jerked and the plump woman smiled before she walked over to the washroom and pulled open a drawer to ruffle through medicine bottles. “Well? This li’l place is too small for moping. What’s on your mind?”

“I, uh…” Akira drew his crossed legs tighter underneath himself. “I usually end my day with some prayers. I’m just… trying to decide what I should pray over.” And how to stop thinking of a girl who was not only too good for him, but could be happy without him. Glancing into his reflection in the small, flat-screen TV, he muttered to himself, “Why couldn’t she have said no? I’d have known what to do.”

“What’s that?”

For a beat, he wondered if it would be worth asking about Ryuji’s father. “I don’t know how I can come from…” Akira’s old man left a trail of broken people and shattered dreams everywhere he went. Even Mother never seems to have loved him. Then he shook his head. It wasn’t somebody else’s mother’s responsibility to tell him how to make someone else happy. “Excuse me, Sakamoto-san. I’ll get myself to bed.”

He paced into the tiny bedroom, struggled to clear enough room with Ryuji near his unfurled Futon for the transfer student to lay down, then lay back.

What if I didn’t mind?

Lacking a phone charger, Akira set his phone on the tiny flat-screen in the corner next to Ryuji’s and lay down, then turned over and breathed out to prepare for a long night.

If he’d stayed facing the phones, he’d have seen a progress bar on both.

Notes:

There’s a lot to be said for communication, or for learning the truth, but sometimes learning fragments of the truth with the context chopped off can lead to mistaken impressions. For the trivia-inclined out there, the word for being conveying a false impression of something without using outright lies – usually fragments of the truth – is paltering.

Thanks for everyone's patience, I didn't have the opportunity to upload the chapter last week due to the convergence of bad health and schedule struggles with job interviews on different sides of town. It would've been better if at least one of them went somewhere, but neither company had the decency to even give me a phone call saying they made a decision on someone else. At least all of you can enjoy this chapter, and regular updates should resume from here on out.

Chapter 87: July 26th, Day at the Dojo

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Tuesday, 26 July 2016
Evening
Shibuya, Underground Walkway

Ann took another bite out of her ice cream stick. The best thing about summer in Tokyo was how well-stocked all the vending machines were. The sweet frozen goods reminded her of autumn cart vendors in Rauma. Her new school friend, Akemi, kept pace next to her, gushing about the special relief only ice cream provides. One of the people in the crowd focusing on her cell phone bumped into her and Ann backed up.

Makoto’s red eyes looked back at her. “Sorry, Ann. I was just texting Akira.”

“No problem, Makoto,” the blonde said with a reassuring smile.

Akemi sidled closer to the upperclassman. “Akira, huh? Planning a special date with a special boy?”

A muscle under her eye twitched and red spread over the president’s cheeks, the solid white poet blouse enhancing the color. “He’s not my boyfriend!” She finished sending the text message, then hurriedly slipped her phone in her purse.

Akemi pouted, one hand on her hip. “Not there yet? Well, if you can’t find The One, you can always find one to keep you warm!”

Ann jabbed her elbow into the smirking girl. “Easy there, tiger. Not everybody has your luck.”

Biting down on the stub remaining of her ice cream bar, Akemi dug through her purse for her phone. She brandished her phone, then took the remainder of her ice cream bar in hand. On her phone smiled a young man sitting at a table with a tall glass of beer before him, with the self-styled Detective Prince next to him at a small night club. “It ain’t just luck, ladies. You have to seize opportunity when you come across it!”

Makoto glowered at the phone, remembering the TV interview where Akechi skewered the Phantom Thief as a criminal the same as the criminals the team took down. “Are you saying your boyfriend is the Defective Detective?”

Akemi pouted. “That’s the Detective Prince. And no. Though he is a hunk. It’s Kouhachiro, the tall glass of college mmm.” She pointed to the smiling boy with a beer. She turned a squinty-eyed gaze at Makoto. “How does Miss Top Marks, upperclassman, and student president not have a boyfriend? That’s like… a dozen points for girlfriend material. At least tell me about the adorkable love letters people sneak into your shoe cubby.”

“I’m… too busy trying to stay on top of everything. Top marks require a lot of studying.” She took a quick breath and straightened. “Besides, Big Sis said not to trust boys who can’t make a public confession. Shoe locker letters are prime prank or kidnapping opportunities.”

Akemi planted a hand on her hip. “It’s totally romantic! That’s basically how I met Kouhachiro. He always came to the jazz club where I work, but one day, he left a love letter beneath the payment tray.”

Makoto drew herself up to her full height. “And you just… called a stranger who left his phone number under the receipt?”

Akemi scoffed. “No. He came a bunch of times before with all different sorts of people. Guys who are nice to their servers are a big green flag.”

Ann nudged her friend again. “Maybe a little biased when they’re interested in the server.”

Akemi elbowed her right back. “This from the most knock-down gorgeous girl in Shujin. And super nice – I have no idea how that took so long to make it into the grapevine. Guys should be falling over themselves to throw their coats down in front of you.”

Wrinkling her nose, Ann crossed her arms. “I’d rather guys didn’t go that overboard. The ones who jump out of nowhere to do things like that all think I’m an easy time.”

Makoto looked between them, her smile twisting with a flicker of envy before returning to her calm, collected appearance. “It… is hard to imagine you as not having a boyfriend. There’s plenty who are interested.”

Ann rubbed her nose to cover what might have been a grimace slipping through her cheerful facade. “It’s not that I never had guy friends. But it takes a while to build up a real network of people you trust. I had to start again when Papa and Mama moved to New York.” She felt a muscle in her back twitch. “But school there was a lot like Rauma. Coming to Tokyo felt like a complete reset on my social life. Old friends across the world start getting late, forget to respond on SMS… especially when you’re twelve hours ahead.” She took another bite out of her ice cream bar. “And going from speaking Japanese occasionally at home to everywhere was exhausting.”

The upperclassman’s face tensed, but Akemi stared at the ground, shamefaced. “And I contributed to people not treating you like you deserved. Sorry, Ann-san.”

Ann shoved at her classmate. “Don’t be like that. I didn’t drop into high school – it was second year in middle school – so most people already had a year to get into their friend groups.” She felt her smile dim as she remembered that time, when she knew enough Japanese to understand every word spoken around her but still felt nervous enough her mind would go blank when teachers called on her in class. She forced a smile to keep from dragging down the mood. “Shiho turned that around, though.”

Of course, as soon as the words were out, her best friend and her currently-ex-boyfriend surfaced in her mind. Ann took a big bite out of her ice cream bar. “I’m going to need more sugar.”

Whether seeing the need to change topic or just being in a teasing mood, Akemi bumped against the blonde. “No fair, Ann! You can eat as much as you want and it all goes straight to the curves boys like!”

Wednesday, 27 July 2016
Afternoon
Futaba’s Ha’tak

With bellies full of coffee, curry, or both, the Phantom Thieves slipped deeper into the pyramid-ship. Morgana flitted past a hall intersection and checked across, listening to the fading stomping of metallic boots, then signaled to his fellow Thieves. They flitted after him, Reaper and Joker lagging a bit behind. He had to admit his senses didn’t feel quite as sharp, and Zorro hit just a little lighter, but Lady Ann hadn’t picked up on it.

Joker seemed focused and determined, following orders and pouncing on Shadow vulnerabilities with ruthless efficiency. He’d been inconsistent before, so at least their little jaunt into another Palace wasn’t a complete waste. The degree of ferocity his Personas were displaying was a little unnerving, but he couldn’t be sure if it was just him overcompensating for being in that other Palace, or if something there still bothered him like a splinter in the mind. It made it almost impossible for the team leader to estimate Joker’s state of mental endurance.

Morgana dashed on, then skidded to a sudden halt. A heavy stone gate – almost a solid wall, were it not for a lack of decorations – sealed off the hall. “This is bad. First the ring room, now the ramps? The Palace Ruler is shutting us out.”

“All the better to herd the garbage into fire for disposal!” a Shadow Jaffa shouted, before letting loose a discharge from his staff weapon. The other Phantom Thieves gasped, all but one stunned at the sudden appearance of eight Shadow Jaffa at a four-way intersection behind them.

“Ananta Shesha!” Joker bellowed, the giant celestial-skinned serpent coalescing between them and the main ambush group.

The pulse of nuclear flame splashed against the serpent. Joker flinched and swallowed, as if that was all it took to overcome both the pain and injury.

“All fire!” The silver plate-armored Shadow Jaffa snapped. Almost as one, all eight Shadow Jaffa shot the serpent with their plasma weapons.

Joker’s foot slammed down against the pale-yellow stone of this level’s floor, but he kept his footing. “My turn.” He blasted a short burst into one Shadow Jaffa with his P90, then the one next to it, both dissolving like smoke on the wind. The giant serpent body-slammed a pair of Shadow Jaffa taking cover in a hallway on the right.

Rider didn’t need to be told to jump into the lull Joker bought them, summoning Johanna and blasting fire at one of the four Shadow Jaffa before taking off with a whoosh of swirling fire wheels.

The ever-graceful and passionate Lady Ann leaped up next, with that no-good artist next to her, both summoning their Personas. By that point, the four Shadows had transformed into a pair of Lamias, some white-furred baboon with a book, and what appeared to be a male human wrapped tight in fine white linen but wearing an enormous, ornamental Egyptian headdress with a jade-capped beard projecting from the chin.

Well, at least he’d seen the snake-women in Mementos before. “Panther, hit the Lamias. The other two are new, stay on your guard and use probing attacks.”

Johanna shot a pulse of fire into the bearded guy and left a small singe. While Joker fought the pair of Shadows just past the hallway to the right, Lady Ann’s graceful, sensual dancer Persona swung her thorned whip, letting loose dagger-sized ice shards at all four Shadows. The Lamia went down as planned.

The hopping primate held open its book, pages flapped, and a very unpleasant charge filled the air for too brief a moment for the Phantom Thief leader to warn them. A single dot sparked in the air in the middle of the group, then flared into an explosion expanding in a translucent white sphere filling the hallways. Magic used to be nothing major, but this spell slammed into Zorro and sent him crashing into the wall.

From the way Rider picked herself up, it must have hurt Johanna the same.

Before they could rally, the man in royal linen garb and heavy blued-copper headdress held out a hooked rod. Darkness zipped out from its shadow at Goemon, where the curse magic howled up.

Morgana loaded his crossbow and aimed Zorro at the Shadow who just unleashed almighty magic on the Thieves. To his delight, the shimmering psychokinetic aura enveloped the dancing baboon. Zorro slammed it into the ceiling, then back into the floor, where it lay crumpled with the fallen Lamias.

Joker shot the man in the headdress with a long burst and it went down in dissolving smoke, allowing the Thieves to move up and surround the downed Shadows.

The baboon swayed, its heavy book dropped to the floor. “All is lost. Whether from the gods or men, destruction is the only end. Even the wisest men’s books cannot divine a way out!”

Morgana glanced up at the agile, longcoated boy. “Wanna go for information or vendor trash?”

Joker held his firearm on the slumped baboon. “I’d actually like to try and recruit that one. That magic explosion hurt like a bitch, and I’d like to know what weaknesses it may have if we run into another one.”

Morgana flipped his bayonet out. They’d failed to recruit every single time they’d tried to hold up more than one Shadow before, but that strategic thinking is just what he hadn’t seen from the boy in days. Maybe letting him glimpse that other Palace was a good idea. “Okay, but brace for trouble, Thieves.”

Joker stepped closer and brought his weapon down from firing stance. “You said wise men’s books, so you value knowledge and intuition. Join me, and my grades can be unstoppable!”

The baboon reached for its book. “What way but destruction can there be, when Jaffa think of their freedom instead of their god, or when Tok’ra lurk in the shadows no matter how many sweeps Prime Youji has made? A divided house will fall!” It leaped up, tome in both hands as the pages flipped in a gale touching only them.

A beam lanced out at Joker, slamming him into the wall.

The Lamias popped up, one belching a foul breath over the whole hall.

Fox shot it and the snake-woman dissolved. The other launched itself forward with the speed of an ambush predator, raking its claws across the artist.

Lady Ann summoned her Persona and sent another bolt of ice into the Shadow, dissolving it.

Morgana summoned Zorro behind him. A good psychokinetic slam worked last time, so he did the same thing. This time the book bounced away and the white-furred baboon fell to the floor face-first.

Joker held his gun at the ready, but glanced to the team leader. “One more shot?”

Morgana shrugged. “A little more serious and less clown, this time.”

The baboon bowed prostrate before the team leader training a crossbow on him. “Please, just make the end swift!”

Fox tensed behind his rifle. “Does even a perfect maze not have an exit? Astronomers may know how the heavens go, but not how to go to heaven. Those answers lie with other wise ones.”

Joker held out one gloved hand. “Even toddlers can balance a see-saw by sitting on different ends. How much more can men raised in different courts do when a rival’s mind is there to sharpen yours?”

The baboon nodded. “True, not all answers are written in one book. I shall unleash the power hidden within.” It burst into black ribbons which streaked into Joker’s mask.

Rider caught him before he could fall. “Any hints about where to go next? We’re running out of ways to advance.”

Joker blinked under his mask. “Nothing from Thoth, but I just had a thought… This is a space ship – all the systems, from the pressure doors sealing our way up to the ring room, are controlled by computers. I’m pretty sure we’re higher than the computer core. If we can get in there, we should be able to disable the security lockdown.”

Reaper shrugged. “Makes sense. This Sakura girl’s s’posed to be a hacker, right?” The others nodded, and the plate-jacketed Thief fell in step next to Joker. “I’m just mad ‘bout my gun. I’m luggin’ an RPK-74 paratrooper LMG, but your puny PDW is way OP, takin’ down Shadow Jaffa like they’re nothin’.”

He just smirked back. “Hey, it worked in the show. Why do you think I asked for one?”

While the two boys were supposed to be the strongest runners, it took the group no effort to keep up as they descended to the computer core. They ran across another two Shadow Jaffa patrols, neither of which provided the challenge of eight at once.

Even so, Rider fell in step with the team leader. After pausing for a patrol to pass, she said, “Don’t think I haven’t noticed. You’re acting more tired than normal, and Reaper and Joker have both been hitting way lighter than usual. Something happen yesterday?”

“Nothing important!” Joker picked up the pace, though his footfalls sounded heavier than before.

They ran into another Jaffa patrol and extorted a scuffed silver necklace. When Rider tried to question him, Joker pushed them on. At last, they arrived at a heavy door. “This should be it, guys. I think this is where they went to extract Thor’s consciousness after Anubis downloaded his brain.”

Ann rolled her eyes. “That sounds more like Ghost in the Shell than this space-fantasy thing.”

Morgana flipped out the bayonet and checked to make sure he still had crossbow bolts. Today had been more draining than most, only another six left. “Breaching places, everyone.”

The Thieves arrayed at the sides, then Rider tapped in the open sequence. The stone doors slid sideways into the wall.

Instead of columns of the promised control crystal units, a tidy grid of stone beds stretched on and at least thirty Shadow Jaffa looked up at them. A sign of computer circuitry sat above the door on the opposite side of the barracks.

A beat passed before the Shadows all scrambled for their staff weapons.

Reaper pulled the trigger, spraying wild gunfire into the barracks. Rider pounded the keys to close the doors, but a golden bolt of plasma lanced into Reaper’s left arm before the doors slid closed. He shrieked and dropped his machine gun to its lanyard to clap a hand over the charred flesh below his shoulder.

“Run!” Morgana shouted.

Rider grabbed the machine gun and switched its strap to her shoulder, even if it was the wrong way for use, while Fox grabbed Reaper’s good shoulder and helped them run through the halls.

Stone slinked open and the first Shadow Jaffa came out after them, staff weapon already leveled to fire.

Joker shot it in the breastplate and it dissolved in fading smoke.

The Thieves ran on until a yellow bolt zipped through the hall, just missing Ann, before it slammed into the wall and left a dark scorch against the stone.

Joker turned and aimed to down the next Shadow. He fired again, but instead of the satisfying sound of a dissipating Shadow, the leader heard the sound of one swelling and breaking free of its cognitive binding. “Shit. Run faster, guys! More on the way!”

The Anubis who popped out of the latest one brandished his forward-curving bronze sword with a roar, and a dozen bolts of light lanced at them.

Knowing most of Joker’s Personnas were weak to bless magic, Morgana summoned Zorro to take the blows. The hits pounded into him, and despite his pride in his magical prowess, they proved too much and dissipated his inner self. Morgana slipped and tumbled, but Joker grabbed him by the head shroud to pull him back up so they could keep up the frenetic sprint.

Wednesday, 27 July 2016
Early Evening
Futaba’s Palace, Desert

Ann pushed up her mask to wipe at the sweat dripping down her face, her gun up and ready for another wave of Shadows to surge down that supply ramp.

Beside her, Makoto clenched her teeth and strained to summon Johanna. They were all worn out from the fighting retreat, especially Akira and Ryuji for some reason. Motes of warm, orange light swam over Ryuji’s charred arm and mottled red skin replaced the terrible wound. While the artist tore open and applied one of the medicated bandages they purchased from the doctor, Makoto dismissed her Persona and struggled to regain her breath. Sweat dripped down the upperclassman’s chin. “Okay, now let’s get out before any more Shadows come out of the woodwork.”

The Phantom Thieves faded into the alley path in front of the Sakura house.

The torrential downpour soaked them the next second.

Somebody bumped into her from behind and Ann jumped away with an “Eep!” Her foot slipped, but Yusuke caught her.

An old man with a cane and hooded raincoat glared at her. “Watch where yer goin’, young’un! It’s too wet to be out playing!”

They stepped aside and the old man trudged on. Akira tugged at his umbrella out in the loops of his leather travel satchel, then decided not to bother. The Thieves dashed to the shelter of the inactive theater.

Ann squeezed water out from her pigtails and looked at the track star. Wearing a tank top with a shooting star on the front, it gave plenty view of the tied-on bandage. His skin outside seemed intact. “How’s it feel?”

Ryuji’s jaw tensed, but he lifted his arm and moved it in a slow, wide circle. “Hurts like Kamoshida gave it his best punch.” He slipped two fingers in and tugged the medicated bandage away. “Looks like jus’ a big ol’ bruise. Thanks, Prez.”

Makoto let out a relieved breath. She pulled at the soaked poet blouse clinging to her. After a few moments failing to find a comfortable adjustment, she asked, “How is it one shot was enough to kill you, while it only hurt Ryuji?”

Morgana cleared his throat to get their attention. “I think I can answer that. First, cognitive Sojiro shot him in the heart. Second, the Metaverse is a cognitive reality. Akira is deep into the show on which the Ruler built her Palace. I’ll bet Joker’s seen them be dangerous through the whole TV series. None of you have. The same belief which makes your guns work made their weapons dangerous to him.”

Yusuke wiped his wet hair from his face. “Are you saying they would be less injurious to us?”

Morgana’s tail sank and he shook to try to throw off water again. “They would have been. There are some fundamental understandings of weapons which would mean you’d still be hurt, but seeing Akira shot created a knowledge in your own cognitions. So let’s try not to get hit.” He turned to the transfer student. “It’s going to be a few days longer until your AC unit gets here, so you’re going to have to stay with someone.”

Akira glanced at the track star. “Nope. No offense.”

“Whatev’.”

All at once, Ann remembered the heart-to-heart she had with Yusuke about owing him and never having even tried to pay him back even after all his hospitality. She straightened. “I’ll do it.”

Ryuji held up a hand for the transfer student. “Hell yeah, bro!”

Makoto’s jaw dropped and her cheeks turned red.

Ann punched him in the stomach. “Get your head out of the gutter, Ryuji. He just needs a safe place to sleep.”

Morgana paced in a circle, his tail held straight up. “I’ll have to come along to protect Lady Ann’s honor!”

Yusuke took in a sharp breath. “You do not. Ann-san may be as beautiful as a desert flower, but she is as rugged as one as well. She had the strength to fend off the unscrupulous advances of the monstrous Kamoshida, who had naught but carnal designs for her. Akira is honorable and upright. Even if he had affections for her, it would take but one word from her to bring him to a halt. And she is strong enough to do more than that.”

Ann held a hand to her chest as if that could slow the fluttering of her heart. Nobody had ever both shown so much faith in her and defended her like that.

A small, satisfied smile on his face, Yusuke turned to the transfer student. “Besides, you yielded your abode to me for weeks. If anybody owes him a place to lay his head, it should be me.”

Makoto managed to take in a breath. “Are you allowed to have friends over at the dorms?”

Yusuke pursed his lips. “The official rules are no overnight guests. However, as long as the floor manager is not inconvenienced, I doubt there will be a problem.” He bowed in apology. “I am afraid I do not have any spare bedding, but you are welcome to stay with me.”

Morgana’s tail settled down. “Very well. Fox, you are ordered to make sure he gets some sleep. The rest of you, think about your preferences. I know funds are low after ordering Joker’s AC unit, but consult with Reaper about gun upgrades. We’ll sell knick-knacks and see what we can do.”

Ann pulled out her phone. “Oh, I’ve got a shoot tomorrow.” She looked up. “I knew we’d have a money shortage with the AC thing, so I asked my agency if I could get some more work. They gave me hours tomorrow and Sunday.”

Morgana nodded. “Of course, Lady Ann. Anything else?”

Akira raised his umbrella and looked to Ann. “I’ve got a spare umbrella in the loft and some spare clothes if you guys need. The bath house is right across the way.”

Thursday, 28 July 2016
Morning
Chiyoda-ku, Naruke Dojo

Makoto jogged around the corner, getting in a little cardio since the dojo would be air-conditioned. Most of the time the front was clear, but today a tall girl with long, dark hair and a soft purple dress stood near the front door, absorbed in her phone. It had been intimidating enough that one day she stumbled across Hifumi in the bustling streets of Jinbocho, one among a million on the sidewalk, but standing alone in the early morning light, it was impossible not to take in the whole girl. The last traces of gold morning light had yet to fade, giving an otherworldly glow and made that long, perfect hair look dark as onyx. Combined with a dress as fashionable as anything Ann wore, Makoto swallowed against a surge of body anxiety.

Hifumi tapped her phone and sighed, then glanced up. Her eyes widened and the corners of her mouth turned up. “Niijima-san.” She gave a graceful, formal bow. “Excuse me for being so early. I overestimated how long it would take to walk here.”

It took more than one try for Makoto to get her mouth working again. Against the other girl’s flattering purple dress, her sky-blue blouse and black slacks felt casual to a crude degree. “O-oh, no. I was just finishing a light morning jog. It’s so hot out I almost can’t exercise outdoors during daylight.”

Hifumi gave a considerate bow. “That’s very diligent of you, Niijima-san. Mother has me work with a personal trainer three times a week, but it’s always inside and feels suffocating.” Her smile tugged down, but she shook her head, making the red thread dangling from an omamori-style hair knot jiggle. “S-so where shall we be going?”

Makoto paced to the front door. “Right here. The tables and chairs at the front are for friends and family of members. Big Sis has done case work on them while waiting for me to finish practice. The members won’t mind.”

Hifumi’s glimmering green eyes widened. “You practice here?” Her eyes darted over the posters and advertisements. “That’s very impressive, Niijima-san.” She rubbed one hand along her opposite sleeve. “I’ve never known anyone who actually practiced martial arts.”

Makoto swallowed against a thick feeling in her throat. “Oh, it’s not nearly so impressive as your accomplishments in shogi, Togo-san.” She held the door open for the other girl, and they sat down on the wood chairs arranged around magazine-covered little tables in the front. “Akira even sent me a couple websites to review shogi rules and strategy for today.”

Faint pink bloomed in Hifumi’s cheeks and a soft smile grew. “He is such a thoughtful young man, isn’t he?”

At least a dozen instances of Akira recklessly jumping into things leaped to mind. Makoto swallowed those and instead stuttered, “S-sure!”

Hifumi sat down and glanced at the dozens of magazines covering the whole table between them. Her hand paused at a sports and hobby magazine with herself in a formal kimono on the cover, then pulled a golfing issue over it and arranged the others to flatten the surface for her travel shogi board. “How long have you been practicing?”

Makoto brushed her hair back over her ear, wishing she’d worn her braided hairband instead of the black sweatband today. “Oh, at least five years. Dad met Mom at a dojo like this shortly after he joined the force and he wanted all of us to have the same discipline and sense of self as he felt it helped instill in him.”

Hifumi held a hand over her mouth too late to hide a cute smile. “That sounds so romantic. Two lovers meeting over the wind-swept field of battle like the king and queen of rival castles.” She finished setting down the pieces. “Do you and your sister practice together often?”

Makoto deflated a little. “Oh… Big Sis pretty much stopped when she entered law school. Dad and I practiced plenty… before.” When she breathed out, the reminder of that long night waiting for news from Dad felt like a weight pressed over her shoulders. “So, who goes first? Wasn’t there something about throwing pawns?”

Hifumi tugged her chair a bit closer and straightened. “There are enough rules for tournaments, the only ones I insist on is that once you touch a piece you move it, and that you limit your moves to under twenty seconds. As the challenger, you may take the first move.”

Makoto looked down and slid the pawn in the center forward.

Hifumi’s slender digits took a pawn from the side and placed it with an intimidating snap. Her already prim posture squared. The class president could swear she saw gears whirling behind those green eyes.

Makoto reached for her first pawn, then remembered it was usually best to have pieces cover each other so she had an option of reprisal if her piece was captured. She slid up a different one.

Eyes fixed on the board as if she could set it alight from force of will alone, Hifumi’s hand snatched out and she moved her pawn forward with another resonating snap.

They exchanged a few more moves, Makoto losing several pawns to Hifumi’s well-positioned offense. She moved a lance forward to try to cover her crumbling front.

Hifumi picked up her bishop, in one fluid motion taking the lance and snapping down her tile. As if beginning a momentous speech in a sentai film, she called out, “Dark Inferno Rock!”

A few of the nearby students who’d been trickling in since the game started paused to look over.

“It’s okay,” Makoto assured them. She pulled back and looked at the board, then to the long-haired girl. “Um… What was that?”

Hifumi sucked in a quick breath. Pink spread over her cheeks. She clasped her hands together in her lap, her shoulders hunching. Her voice came out as a hoarse whisper, “I’m so s-sorry.”

Makoto almost stood up, the change in energy too much. “Oh, no. I must have done something wrong. I’m sorry, it’s been a few years since I last played.”

Hifumi clasped a hand against her chest. When her voice came out, the timid tone struggled to cross the space between them. “N-no, the fault is mine.” The cute pink on her cheeks deepened. “Father taught me how to play by using narratives to help remember the rules. I would imagine myself as a queen looking over her kingdom. During a match I tend to… fall into the role.”

“Oh,” Makoto said. It made sense, it just seemed such a change it still had her feeling off-balance. “Well, no harm.” She looked down and frowned, annoyed with herself for not leaving an opportunity to take the bishop.

They settled into a calmer back-and-forth, though Hifumi’s back and shoulders straightened again as they got into the rhythm. A new clump of practitioners entered from the changing rooms, and one motioned a few fellows over as they came to the table. “Niijima-chan.”

“Oh, good morning, Idaware-san,” Makoto nodded in respect. She was second dan when he started, but he was still older.

Idaware plopped his hands on his hips, his eyes casting up and down the shogi master. “Hold on a second.” He looked her over again. “Are you the Venus of Shogi?”

Hifumi raised a hand in a subtle gesture to rub her forehead while also shielding most of her face.

Two more practitioners in workout gis approached. “Wow, you’re right! She’s just as beautiful in person as she is in those spreads.”

All of the men crowded a little closer. Idaware brandished a wide smile. “Well there, little lady. You interested in checking out some masters of martial arts?”

Another handful of the men practicing nearby started exaggerating their moves. The shogi master might not have even noticed, but their sloppiness irked Makoto.

Hifumi continued rubbing at her forehead. “Thank you, but I’m just here to share a game with my friend.”

Idaware gave a bow which felt more patronizing than respectful. “We’d be happy to give you some personal instruction. Martial arts is a wonderful opportunity for strength and flexibility training.”

“No, thank you,” she said, her tone cool as a winter breeze.

Idaware edged just a little closer. “No charge, it would be our treat.”

Makoto rose to her feet, her heavy steps thumping over the thin-carpeted floor at the window-side front of the dojo. “She said no, Idaware. Don’t disrespect the dojo.”

His smile vanished into a thin line and he puffed out his chest a bit. “No need to be rude, Niijima-chan.”

Two voices cried out within her. Sae telling her to fulfill her expectations, the other Johanna, saying there could never be justice which required her to disgrace herself.

Makoto grabbed Idaware’s gi and yanked to put him at a safer angle, planted her foot, then launched into him shoulder-first. The blow sent him stumbling back until he hit the mat and fell backwards.

The morning instructor called a halt to his handful of morning students and strode from the mirrored side of the dojo. “What’s going on here?”

Makoto bowed. “Apologies, Eguchi-sensei.”

Hifumi stood and bowed. “No, it’s my fault.”

Idaware stood, his teeth gritted. “That is it. You want a duel? You’ve got it!”

All practice in the dojo came to a standstill. The instructor held out a hand to warn Idaware to keep his distance. “What happened?”

Makoto swallowed and took a small, steadying breath. “I was just playing a game of shogi to start the day with Togo-san. Idaware recognized her, tried to hit on her, and didn’t take the first two ‘no’s. When he moved to get closer, while still disrespecting me, I added some space.”

Eguchi’s narrow eyes swung to the mid-thirties student.

A vein stood out on Idaware’s head. “Th-that… I was just trying to be friendly to a potential new student! Niijima-chan was totally out of line, bum-rushing me.” He turned a glare on the class president.

Hifumi picked up and opened her purse. “None of this is necessary. I’ll just go.”

Makoto’s hands clenched. “No, Togo-san. You were my guest here and you did nothing wrong. You shouldn’t have to retreat due to the incivility of others.”

“Incivility?” Idaware huffed. “Let’s see you say that out here on the mat!”

Eguchi raised his eyebrows. “You want to challenge a third dan student?”

Idaware held his scathing glare on the class president. “You haven’t even finished high school. The only reason the owner gave you third dan is because he was in the police with your father.”

Makoto bared her teeth. “I accept.”

“No,” Eguchi said, turning to the thirty-something student. “In the past five minutes, you have disregarded the well-being of a guest and disrespected not only your fellow student, but also the man who founded this dojo with me. Aikido is about discipline, respect, and harmony. I understand everybody has a bad day. If you apologize, this may end at a temporary suspension. If you do not, then you will change back into your street clothes and leave before I have to file a disturbance of the peace report with the police.”

Idaware glowered, his jaw clenching for long seconds before he stormed across the mat for the showers and changing rooms.

Turning to the two girls, Eguchi bowed at the waist. “Niijima-kun, Togo-kun, I apologize for the unpleasant experience this morning. The dojo is about rising above the corrosive influences of the ego.”

Hifumi set her purse down against the table and gave a bow of her own. “I should have been quieter and more mindful of my own behavior.”

Eguchi shook his head. “We have children and toddlers waiting up front here for their fathers or brothers all the time. Even if there is a lack of discipline by somebody off the mats, that is no excuse for a lapse on the part of a student.”

The curly-haired student who had been in the group crowding around Togo scratched his scalp. “On behalf of all of us, Togo-chan, we’re sorry for getting caught up. It’s not every day a beautiful celebrity comes by.” He gave a nod to the student president. “I seriously thought you were gonna lay him out on the floor for a minute. Naruke-sensei doesn’t certify people who don’t prove themselves.”

Eguchi cleared his throat. “I read manga when I was a kid too. I’m well aware I just ruined the dramatic finish. But the burden of discipline starts with the instructor.” He crossed his arms and regarded the student president with a more relaxed air. “I’m a bit surprised, Niijima-kun. You used to be a much quieter student. Idaware-san has never respected your seniority in the art.”

Makoto felt Johanna thrum within her and allowed herself a small smile. “I came to an understanding a short while ago, thanks to a friend who wouldn’t quit.”

Hifumi gave an unexpected smile at that. “Sounds very much like a special friend of mine.”

Eguchi glanced to the other students, and they all returned to the mats.

Hifumi sat down at the shogi board with the student president. “That may have started off badly, but I must admit, aikido looks much more interesting now than I thought before.”

Makoto slid up another pawn. “Before?”

Hifumi kept it cupped in her hand to keep it hidden, but slipped out a small can of pepper spray. “I’d never seriously considered learning martial arts before. Capsaicin makes a baby of a hundred-thirty-kilogram man.” She slipped it back in her purse, then moved up a knight with a snap.

Makoto scanned the board. Her opponent had opened up holes across both flanks and had most of her center guarded. She moved up her own knight. “One-hundred-thirty is rather specific. Make sure nobody else sees it, technically any offensive item like that could violate Article 1-2 of the Minor Offense Act.”

Hifumi nodded. “I’m aware. Being a young woman with six different reports of stalking to the police grants me justification.” She slipped it back in her purse with a heavy breath. “I thought Mother was paranoid about it before, but it seems she was more prepared to handle both the mainstream and extremes when my acclaim grew. She had me keep one of those at all times since I started at Kosei.” She squinted, her eyes drifting aside for a moment before she moved up a pawn. “Please don’t tell Akira. He seems burdened enough as it is, and I haven’t had a fan try to grab me for several weeks.”

Makoto blinked. “I could… show you a few things, if you would like. Dad never wanted me to get into a fight, but even outside that, aikido helps refine reflexes, balance and situational awareness.” She slid up a silver general, just to indicate she wasn’t trying to push the other girl.

The shogi maestra advanced a pawn, a faint upturn to the corners of her lips. “I’m sure even Mother wouldn’t have a problem with that.”

Notes:

I know the expected manga outcome would be Makoto throwing an older man practicing less than half the time she has. However, real companies have insurance to keep down and occasionally adult leaders actually do their job. Makoto and Hifumi shared only one scene in the game, but they share a lot of traits and it would be a pity NOT to develop that. Hifumi could have been another avenue to develop Makoto’s character and look into the world outside herself.

Chapter 88: July 28th, Pyramid of Lies

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Thursday, 28 July 201 6
Early Evening
Shibuya, Central Street, Gigolo Arcade

Akira adjusted his grip on the pistol controller and gunned down another human player character wearing a fedora. A grenade warning bounced into his section of the screen from the left and he stomped on the pedal in an effort to dive for safer cover before it could go off. As if predicting his movement, pistol rounds chopped through his hit points and his portion of the screen dimmed.

Ryuji almost giggled with delight. “Oooh, man! It’s The King! I ‘been wantin’ to go up ‘gainst him for weeks!”

The runner stomped on the pedals to move, then lined up his long-arm controller. An impact played and his screen spiderwebbed with the bullet in the glass effect.

Ryuji clicked his tongue, but had a smile on his face. “’Least he gets ya honest and don’t do that tea-baggin’ shit.” He lowered the controller, his grin undiminished. “You were doin’ pretty effin’ good there once you bought that dot sight. Ain’t I right ‘bout how easy that makes close range?”

Akira set his controller into the stand. “Real test is tomorrow.” His phone buzzed in his pocket and he heard the same from the runner’s. Guessing it was the Phantom Thief chat, he opened the messenger.

Ann’s ID winked at the top. [Sorry, the shoot went long. Lighting and makeup couldn't make up their minds what to do about my hair. Is it too late to join you guys in Shibuya?]

[Yusuke and Makoto already called it quits and left,] Akira sent. [Have you thought about whether you want to upgrade anything weapon-wise?]

[That zapper is pretty unstoppable. I actually want to stick with it after we finish stealing Sakura's distortion.]

Akira shrugged. [It worked for Major Carter whenever she wasn't using the P90. I don't see why not.]

Ryuji leaned over. “Pft. I still think she’d look better with a good SMG.”

“We can’t afford another P90, Ryuji.” Akira shot out a well-wishing to Hifumi, then slipped his phone in his pocket. “I’m calling it quits, tonight. Pretty low funds in both accounts.”

Ryuji waved at him, then slid his credit card through the reader to get back into the game.

Thursday, 28 July 201 6
Evening
Shibuya, Underground Walkway

Akechi Goro glanced up at the signs, then down at his phone for the map and directions to his next contact. At this point in the day, reasonable people should be off work and trying to settle down. Not calling his burner phone when he was still drowning with work for the Shibuya Cleanup… which the damned Phantom Thief was receiving credit for due to that obnoxious calling card.

As much as he wanted to solve another contact’s problem, rent was due on the first of the month and he didn’t have enough to cover his bolt hole as it was. The police were paying for each member of Kaneshiro’s flunkies he could put behind bars. Until he could find somebody higher in the conspiracy, currying favor with the police was the best he could do.

“Oof!” Somebody snapped behind him as an amateur crowd-runner bulled through a gap just a little too narrow for him. With bodies shoulder-to-shoulder in front of Goro, the black-haired teen came to a sudden drop in speed.

The detective recognized that frizzy hair – the style of somebody too lazy to use a proper comb after drying. Amamiya, from the sedate cafe, adjusted the black-framed glasses on his face.

“Oh, my god! Is that the Detective Prince?” a girl shouted from somewhere behind.

Sometimes Goro hated having vapid followers.

Amamiya must have seen the brief, ‘please not now’ expression on his face, because he leaned closer to whisper, “Don’t thank me, you’ll pay me later.” A beat later, he spun around, moments later exclaiming, “There you are!”

“Who are you?”

“Hold on a second! Don’t you remember me from grammar school?”

A feminine growl of frustration rumbled through the crowd. “Idiot! Now I lost him!”

Goro smiled and made his way to the Yongen-Jaya line, then to his destination in the back streets. The interview with the old couple who lived there could provide photos of the strong-arm threatening their customers until they closed down, as well as the developer connected to the Conspiracy pressuring them to sell, but not prove a connection between them. After the short interview, he had to admit, “I’ll look into it, but I’m afraid this isn’t enough to bring to a judge.”

The elderly couple gripped each other’s hands and nodded, struggling to maintain a stiff upper lip.

Goro slipped out of the staff entrance. That coffee shop nearby should be a good place to go through the paper trail of the Kaneshiro clan’s flunkies. After the jingle of the bell, the clink of dishes in the sink met his ears.

The proprietor stood and gave a tired for-customer-service smile. “What can I get for you?”

After a long week of fruitless searching for Palace owners to either turn over to the police or shut down, a post-middle-aged man who didn’t care enough to fawn over the Detective Prince or mock the Defective Detective was refreshing. “This is the kind of evening driving men to respite. Could I get a cup of your dark blend, extra sugar?” He set his armored briefcase on the counter.

“Comin’ right up, kid,” Boss said.

Pulling his eyes from the restaurateur, Goro’s eyes fell on a piece of paper under an empty coffee cup a couple of seats away. He leaned to look over it, recognizing a 314 Declaration of Neglect, part of the paperwork for minor emancipation. He glanced down at the summary field, where sloppy handwriting detailed two instances of the father breaking the child’s nose with a clipboard made of ballistic-resistant plastic.

Goro reached to slide the cup and saucer off the name on the top. Kurusu Akira.

Water splashed from the washroom deeper in.

Goro returned to his briefcase and got started on that paperwork for Nakao Hiromi. She’d already confessed, but her cooperation opened up access to financial records the police normally didn’t have thanks to privacy right laws. Already, the name Togo had come up several—

The washroom door swung open and the frizzy-haired teen from earlier stepped out.

Goro gave his for-show smile. “Ah, Amamiya-san.”

Amamiya sat down with just a brief nod to the detective, then pulled out his wallet. “I think that’s more than enough caffeine to get to the dorms.”

Goro nodded at the paper. “Helping a friend?”

Amamiya’s tensed all over for a heartbeat, then slouched into a too-relaxed slump. “I might say getting rid of a problem.”

Boss set a cup down in front of the detective and retreated with the mastery of a restaurateur who didn’t want to get involved.

Goro dug into his briefcase. “You’ll want to use the correct forms if you want to get anywhere with a judge in family court. There are thousands of cases per year in Tokyo. Documentation of abuse goes on a three-eighteen. Ah!” Finding the three pages he sought, he tugged out the blank forms and handed them over. “The three-fourteen applies to non-present parents, like a father who stays at work for over twenty days a month. For abuse, witness statements do help, but for a realistic chance, you’ll need medical records to back it up. Doctor’s notes, X-rays of broken bones, reports of injuries from school officials.”

Amamiya looked at the offered pages, but didn’t reach out to take them.

“Think of it as paying back. For helping me shake that tail this evening,” Goro said, only maintaining his for-the-cameras smile through sheer practice. “So who’s going to be taking in your Kurusu friend? Japan is a bad place for people without parents.”

A shadow seemed to pass over Amamiya’s eyes as he took the new forms. “Sometimes no parents at all are better than bad ones.”

A startled breath of a laugh shot out of Goro before he could control himself. Could Amamiya be so stupid? Or had Kurusu been feeding the sucker a line of bullshit? “Japan is a nation built on the Koseki system, a man without a family is no better than dust on the feet of the establishment. He’ll be denied jobs, housing, loans, licensing. Even criminals are better off. If you want to help that Kurusu out, make sure he has a family who will write him in or he might as well leave the country.”

A waver passed through those stormy grey eyes before Amamiya grabbed the forms, shoved them all together with the mis-used 314 into his leather satchel, and strode out with a clipped, “Thanks.”

Feeling a bond beyond reciprocity, Goro watched the door swing closed, then reached for his coffee.

Friday, 29 July 201 6
Afternoon
Futaba’s Ha’tak, Barracks

Akira dove into the barracks, bolts from the stun weapons wielded by Ann and Morgana flying over his head. Unlike last time, they kept up the pressure, zapping another two as they dove into the room. He popped up and shot two Shadow Jaffa trying to line up on his friends, blasting both cognitive-wrapped foes into dissolving smoke. When the runner let out a war cry, he dove back for cover.

Bullets sprayed across the barracks, slamming into at least half a dozen Shadow Jaffa as Ryuji charged in with his machine gun blazing.

One Shadow Jaffa who slipped through the concentrated fire snapped open his staff weapon to blast the plate-jacketed runner in the side. Makoto smacked the staff’s discharge pod down into the stone floor, then pummeled the Shadow Jaffa with her studded gauntlets, a last kick sending him flying into another Jaffa.

Bolts from the zat guns continued flying with their crackle-zap as their final member charged in. “Goemon!”

Akira sprayed fire across another two Jaffa. “Agathion!”

The imp in a gold vase shot a brilliant, undulating lightning bolt into Yusuke’s Persona, the lightning soaking into and wrapping around the kabuki-level flamboyant fighter. He blew into his oversized pipe, bolts already crackling through it even before the cloud spread at the ceiling. Then lightning raked down across the remaining Shadow Jaffa.

The remaining Shadows merged into five pustules, bursting into a floating, upright gold coffin and four humanoids. One resolved into a woman in royal white linens, holding an ankh in her right. Another burst into a woman towering at least three meters tall, wearing dark leather armor, twisted goat horns jutting from her head and iron kopis held in each hand. Next to her stood a man shrouded in black robes but for his head, skin pale as a corpse. At the far end towered an owl-man, dark blue feathers draping over his shoulders like a shawl as his beak screeched.

“At least I know how to take out the last one.” Akira swung up his P90 until the new laser dot projector cast red on the sorcerer’s chest. “Bye, Andras.” One short burst sent it tumbling back into dissolving smoke.

Makoto summoned Johanna and sent a bolt of flame into the pale man. It fizzled out on impact.

“Captain Kidd!” Ryuji conjured his Persona, which brandished his arm-cannon and let loose a powerful pulse of concussive wind. The wind struck and reflected straight back into Kidd, making Ryuji stumble. “Ow, shit!”

The Shadow gave a thin grin to Makoto. “Allow Set, the God of Desert Storms, to show you true hellfire.” He waved one dismissive hand.

A red bubble formed over Makoto and Johanna just long enough for it to shatter. “What the hell was that?”

Before the others had a chance to do anything, Set leaped up. What had been a normal-sized man in flowing, black robes stretched and transformed into a towering grey dragon. It opened its maw and roared out fire over the entire room.

Makoto zipped in between it and Ann to block the flames, but to everyone’s surprise, once the roaring inferno struck the leather-clad rider, she screamed and lost concentration. Johanna vanished in a swirl of fire.

The gold coffin slid open just enough for a scaly, clawed humanoid arm to slip out. A nasal voice hissed, “Scurry away, little rats.” The hand flexed at them and darkness zipped out from its shadow, flitting over the floor until roaring up under each of the Thieves.

Ryuji and Captain Kidd’s roars synchronized, and the Persona unleashed a gale of shredding winds which slammed through the narrow opening, drawing a howl of pain and knocking it into the back wall.

Goemon leaped to power a slash down through the goat-horned Shadow woman in tight leather armor. It parried his giant axe-pipe aside and used its other kopis to chop up into the Persona’s chest before kicking him back.

Akira sent a short burst at the dragon, which only grimaced at the attack. Baffled at how to tackle Set when everything they hit it with seemed to either do nothing or reflect back on them, Akira dove for what little cover the next raised stone bed could provide to get closer to Ryuji. “Any ideas? That dragon’s tough as stone, and I’m sure that bitch sorceress reflected magic last time she popped up!”

“It’s not innate!” Morgana shouted from his own cover, before shooting a crossbow into the goat-horned woman. “And don’t pull out one of your Personas weak to bless magic until she’s down!”

Ann popped up to shoot at the dragon. “Then I might be able to break it. Carmen!”

The buxom, graceful dancer in a frilly dress coalesced. She hopped over a bolt of fire from Set, then snapped her whip out at the feminine form holding an ankh. The end of the thorned whip struck an invisible wall just inches from the royal-white-clad Shadow and bunched up on it for just an instant.

Then, something shattered and the thorned whip finished striking out, cutting a black line across the Shadow’s face. She held up her ankh and soft motes of light floated down over all four remaining Shadows.

The golden coffin floated back up, the lid cracking open again for the arm to lash out. Its fingers snapped and an explosion of white and purple crashed over the Thieves.

Wind seemed to hurt it, so Akira summoned High Pixie. “Knock ‘em dead, Reaper!”

Ryuji grinned. “Eff yeah! Stay down, coffin dude!” The wind channeled from the armored fey filled Kidd’s sails for a moment before it pointed its arm-canon and unleashed a torrent of thunderous, swirling wind.

The arm slunk back inside and closed the lid, allowing the shredding winds to batter the golden coffin, throwing it against the stone wall but not downing the Shadow.

Miss Goat-Horn slapped her iron kopis together and if it wasn’t a trick of the light, her muscles rippled and expanded.

Zorro’s eyes glowed and the bluish aura washed over the sorceress holding an ankh, then smashed her into the stone ceiling. She dropped to the ground in a tangle of nerveless limbs.

Akira popped up to shoot a burst into the dragon.

Set’s dragon lips peeled back to bare teeth. “Your weapons are weak. This is the bite of the desert wind.”

The Thieves dove for cover an instant before a cutting whistle roared out at them. Pictures and the wooden head-rests serving in place of pillows shattered.

The female with the ankh struggled up, holding the symbol of Isis aloft as motes of soft white light washed over the Shadows. They all stood straighter… or floated steadier, for the decorated coffin thing.

Ryuji growled. “If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s bosses who effin’ heal themselves! Drop dead!” He brought his gun to bear and pulled the trigger, letting a stream of lead at the Shadow in royal white linen. Zorro’s aura glowed, grabbing the Shadow and smashing it into one wall, then the ceiling, then letting it drop and to the ground and dissolve.

Goat-Horn growled and leaped forward, lashing first one iron kopis, then another down into the brawny Persona in black. Morgana cried out as his Persona crashed to the ground, shattering a stone bed before it dissipated in motes of light.

That member down, Goat-Horn turned its feral grin to Carmen and raised its kopis.

“No!” Yusuke shouted. Goemon charged it from one side as the artist himself charged her from the other side even though he only came up to her waist.

The goat-horned Shadow wearing tight leather armor threw its strength into parrying the Persona, using its right hand to bring Yusuke’s two-handed slash to a dead stop.

“Y—Fox!” Ann shouted, halting her run to the team leader.

“Take down the others!”

Akira and Makoto slid to a stop behind the stone bed the team leader took cover behind. Morgana coughed blood over the floor. “T-they’re too strong.”

Akira’s eyes narrowed and he thought back to his games with Hifumi. “When the flanks fall, the center falls.” He glanced at Makoto and she gave a nod, pulling out some of Takemi’s medicine.

With the leader in good hands, Akira dove to another stone bed for cover and shot the floating coffin Shadow. The bullets pinged off, but he summoned High Pixie again, on the off-chance Set was vulnerable to sleep. High Pixie blew dust into the grey dragon’s face.

Set sneezed, then swept its head to bash the flying fey.

Carmen lashed out with her thorned whip, wrapping around the black leather-clad Shadow’s left arm. Goat-Horn kicked Goemon away to give herself enough space to wrap her hand around the thorned whip and yanked Carmen closer, smashing her forehead against Carmen.

Ann tripped and her Zat gun blast went wide.

Gold Coffin slid open, flicking a bolt of darkness into the faltering High Pixie.

Ryuji roared and Captain Kidd coalesced, blasting a howl of shredding winds into the cracked-open lid. The Shadow gave an inhuman screech of pain more like the rending of metal.

The pause was enough for Akira to direct another shredding gale from High Pixie into the widened crack. Gold Coffin collapsed to the ground and dissolved.

“Hellfire!” Set bellowed. Heat washed out and it felt like the very air turned into an inferno. Even from behind cover, Ann shrieked in pain.

The longcoated boy dove over cover to Ann, shooting wildly just to try to keep the Shadows from concentrating on anything heavier. By the time he got there, she’d already righted herself behind cover. “Akira, I think I felt something when Carmen was in contact with miss leather and iron. But I need more ice to punch through.”

“Jack Frost!”

“Carmen!” She called, her Persona taking the twin sword-sized icicles, breaking them with her whip as she spun it above herself. The swirl grew, ice shards lengthening and hardening, before the dancer lashed out. Goemon took a powerful chop to grab Goat-Horn’s arm, allowing Carmen’s whip an unguarded angle. Her thorned whip lashed around Goat-Horn’s neck, then all the ice and snow swirling around the dancer howled down the whip.

Ice encrusted the leather-clad Shadow and it fell, still grappling with Goemon, to the floor.

“Berith!” His armored knight charged against the enormous frozen Shadow and it shattered into dissolving chunks.

Set snapped down and clamped his jaws over the armored knight, roaring an inferno of flames onto the Persona. His Persona incinerated, Akira fell to the ground, so overwhelmed he couldn’t even cry out in pain.

Captain Kidd crashed against Set, cutlass biting deep into its neck as the whole bulk of the ghost ship slammed the grey dragon into the stone wall. Ann and Morgana peppered it with bolts from their Zat guns, though it growled it shrugged off the stunning effects the weapons had on man-sized targets. Ice, wind, and lightning rang out, before Akira’s vision came back almost a minute later to see the mighty Shadow fall to the ground, then dissolve.

Morgana came to a stop next to Akira, one of Takemi’s tablets in his hand. “Nice job, Joker.”

Akira swallowed the tablet. After a few breaths, the feeling of having been battered by sledgehammers and cooked by blowtorches faded.

“It’s not opening!” Makoto called from the door with the circuit sign next to it.

Ryuji pointed at another stone door set into the side wall. “Maybe that’s another way in?”

Akira paced to it and punched in the open sequence. Another computer archive terminal sat there, like a side office. “I’ll see if I can open it from here.” He sat down on the chair and the other Thieves filed in. After several minutes, he could only confirm the words. “Security lockdown. The only way to override is with a master control crystal or something called ‘root admin’.” He scratched his head. “What the hell do plants have to do with communications?”

Morgana hopped up on the big stone desk. “Isn’t there anything useful you can find?”

“Just more archives connected to Director Isshiki Wakaba.”

Makoto pressed an ice pack against her wrist. “Maybe there’s something useful in there.”

Akira brought up Final Letter Reading and began the playback.

Saturday, 6 September 2014
Evening
Shinjou, Isshiki House

A small apartment’s sitting room faded in. Bookshelves crammed with thick tomes lined the walls, the two stuffed chairs native to the room shoved against one shelved wall. Futaba sat in one, Wakaba’s cousin Hiroto sitting next to her, and a lawyer from the Blue Cove research center sitting on a folding chair next to them. Three men in suits stood before them, the one in the center reading from a letter ostensibly found in Wakaba’s desk. “I should never have had Futaba. She wasted hundreds of hours away from my research.”

Hiroto leaned to the lawyer to whisper, “Is this really necessary?”

“Most of the materials in Doctor Isshiki’s office are classified,” the lawyer replied at a normal speaking tone. “But as her listed kin and the subject of familial notes, Isshiki Futaba is legally entitled to possession of personal communiques.”

The suited man took in a breath and continued, “My projects could have changed the future of humanity, were it not for the petty trouble she caused me. She ruined my career and ruined my life.”

Tears long since run dry, Futaba hiccuped and sobbed. Her legs drawn up, she tightened her arms around them as if doing so could make her vanish into nothing. Hiroto reached over, but as soon as his hand brushed against her shoulder, Futaba shrank away as much as she could on the small, stuffed chair.

The suited man on the right pushed his glasses back up on his nose. “Based on my summary analysis of the unclassified logs and material kept, it is my professional opinion Doctor Isshiki suffered maternity neurosis.”

The suited man on the left pointed a finger at the shaking girl. “You were always causing trouble for Doctor Isshiki! She could have made the biggest contribution to science since Einstein, if it wasn’t for you! You killed her!”

Hiroto fidgeted with his hands, glancing between the suited men from the research center and the lawyer.

Friday, 29 July 2016
Late Afternoon
Futaba’s Ha’tak

The holographic projection flickered out, more voices babbling over each other, “Murderer!” and “You killed her!”

The holographic screen flickered back on to show another Egyptian-styled computer data center. Two masked Shadow guards holding staff weapons flanked a tall, thin man in the golden armor of a top-ranking Jaffa. At this point, Akira didn’t find it surprising to see the face of Sojiro, bearing the golden stamp of Isis on his forehead. His expression twisted with an anger which fit the lines of his face, but not the world-weary yet low-key kindly man he’d come to know. “Thieves,” he spat. “I will not permit any threat to come to my god. The Tau’ri, the other System Lords… all of them would destroy her, if given the chance.”

Ryuji took one stomping step at the screen. “That was fuckin’ sick even if that’s how it went down. I ‘member my old man blamin’ me an’ ma for ruinin’ his life too, but he was the sack o’ shit who never made nothin’ of himself.”

Makoto sounded like she wanted to throw up, “W-what kind of suicide note was that?”

Akira’s teeth ground. “Maternity neurosis my ass. Director Isshiki was proud of her kid, no way would some condition have just skipped ten to fifteen years.”

First Prime Sojiro sniffed, disdain writ across his posture and features. “Delude yourselves if you want. Death is the way of the world. That is why I can never permit anything to get inside. Isis must be forever cut off.”

Akira stood from the tiny stool. “Air can be dangerous, but that doesn’t mean you should choke your children to death! The more you cut her off, the worse things become!”

“You think I should expose her to all those who would see her die?” First Prime Sojiro slammed his gold-armored fist on his desk. “Next you’re going to tell me I should put her out of her misery, that just ending it would be the kind thing to do! I am not Second Prime – I shall not endanger my god!”

Yusuke shook his head. “No wonder she has a Palace. The desire to shut the world away, the desire to break free, the desire to die to balance the scales, the desire to live. Truly twisted by injustice inflicted on her. Tortured and betrayed by those who should have given her a home to grow up in!”

Seeing the tremble in the artist, Ann stepped closer and took the artist’s arm.

Makoto cleared her throat. “I’d like to punch whoever orchestrated that into red paste, but this isn’t helping us. If we’re constantly running into obstacles because she thinks she can never get out and nothing can ever get in, we may need a change in cognition like with Madarame’s door.” She tapped her gloved fingers against her chin. “If only it was as simple as having a key for a lock.”

Grabbing his P90, Akira paused. “A key that works on everything… the Tok’ra had spies who could get anywhere. Even the Dial Home Devices have master control crystals. We’ll have to make her aware of it so it changes her cognition, but we just may be able to make a master control crystal that can override the computers here!”

Friday, 29 July 201 6
Early Evening
Yongen, Theater

Akira took in a deep breath of the hot, humid air of Tokyo in July. Despite the torrential downpour, it still felt hot and thick under the theater overhang. At least that tight band-around-the-head headache which started to form the longer they were in the Metaverse was gone. He closed the Nav and searched on the browser. “Here it is, guys.” He turned the phone to show a picture of the prop used on the show as a master control crystal.

Yusuke squinted at it, humming for a long while. “I see. It resembles the fingers of the Lady of Victory that Hirama-san constructed for the last culture fair.”

“Wait,” Ann blurted. “You’re saying people at Kosei can make stuff like this?”

“Kosei is a fine arts academy,” Yusuke replied with aplomb. “Painting was only its most famous due to Madarame’s interaction with the school. We also have sculpting and music. The former, in particular, was Hirama-san’s area of focus. Metal and recycled plastic.”

“Excellent,” Morgana crooned from down on the pavement. “Call up a priority order. Let’s get this done tomorrow.”

Yusuke flinched back a step. “T-that would be impossible! I’m in the painting program, he is in the sculpting program. I don’t even have his number.” He looked to the blonde. “Yours was actually the first number I ever received from a person of my age.”

Ann blushed. “M-me?” She straightened. “Wait, you don’t have any contact info for your classmates?”

“No,” he said, as if pointing out last week’s weather. “When group projects came around, the other students would tell me I was too ‘weird’ or ‘crazy’ to cooperate with. I had to do all of the work myself or risk a failing grade.”

Ann’s teeth ground. “Those… Arg!”

Makoto cleared her throat and unfurled her collapsible umbrella, having learned her lesson the last time the Phantom Thieves didn’t check the weather before going in. “Well, Yusuke-kun, could you get in contact with somebody from the sculpting program as soon as possible, and get them to make a mock-up of one of those master control crystals?”

The artist nodded. “It is no guarantee, but I would be more surprised if there were no sculptors in the dorms.”

Akira sent an attachment of that image, then a couple more for size comparison to the group chat. “Okay, guys. We’re low on smoke bombs and some other stuff, so I’m going to go shop around for parts.”

Makoto, the only other one with a two-person umbrella, nodded. “I’ll make sure he gets to the dorms without getting soaked like last time.”

Morgana tilted his head. “We’re not low on smoke bombs. I’ve got six.”

“Well, the other stuff,” Akira shot back.

Morgana sat. “Do not go sneaking into anybody else’s Palace again.”

Makoto, about to step out, turned back. “Again?” Her gaze bored into the transfer student.

Akira sighed. “All right, fine. I don’t care about the materials – we can pick up junk tomorrow. But fabricating that letter and the whole ‘blaming Futaba for something she couldn’t possibly have had control over’ sounds exactly the kind of thing my old bastard would do. He told me my mother was killed in a hit-and-run just to test an EEG. I just… I want to go apologize. Tell her we’re close and still working on it. Tell her not to give up.”

Makoto let out a breath. “We’re already—”

Ann broke in. “Want me to keep tabs on Boss?”

Yusuke’s expression mellowed. “I second the motion.”

“Why would you…?” Ryuji started, then glanced at Ann. Up and down her curvaceous height. “Oh. No wonder.”

Ann punched him in the back, then stepped back with a satisfied calm.

Makoto stared into the transfer student’s grey eyes for long seconds before she gave a nod. “See you later.” She held up her umbrella and paced out into the rain, then had to step back to remind Yusuke to come with her. Ryuji and Ann walked off as well.

With them off into the downpour, Akira let the team leader in his travel satchel and turned for the Sakura home.

The gate unlatched with a squeak so loud he could hear it over the pounding rain, and the old lock on the front door provided him little challenge after all the practice he’d gotten in the Metaverse. He shook off the umbrella under the overhang, then slipped off his wet shoes. “Sakura?” He listened for a bit, with nothing but the sound of the rain outside, then realized that wasn’t specific in this house. “Uh, I mean Futaba?”

Still no sound met him but the downpour outside. Morgana paced into the hall, paused to shake off a hind leg, then canted his head to listen upward. “I think she’s here, just not responding.”

The two advanced upstairs to the door with a poster bearing a star field and Earth’s point of origin. “Futaba-san?” Akira ventured, coming to a stop two steps from the door.

Something thumped against thin plastic and cardboard inside. After a moment of muffled shuffling by the door, his phone vibrated and the hacker’s ID appeared. [It's impossible, isn't it?]

Akira leaned against her door frame, a little unsettled by the lack of proper writing compared to her earlier texts, when she at least pretended to be normal. “We just came across a little slow-down.”

[You don't have to lie to me. My heart is too distorted to be changed. You should go change that girl's mother. She doesn't deserve to cry herself to sleep every night]

His heart seized in his chest and ice surged through his veins.

Morgana leaped up to the transfer student’s shoulder to read in. “That poor girl. This might be related to the changing cognition. She’s thinking everything is closed off. We can’t let her think we’ve abandoned this.”

Akira nodded. He would have to take care of Hifumi later. The self-loathing and deflection reminded him of himself the week his mother told him she never wanted him. He crouched down next to the door and spoke through it, “It’s not over, Futaba. You’re too strong to let this one day bring you down. You took the worst the world could throw at you for a year, and you’re still here. Fighters don’t give up.”

[I'm not a fighter. I'm not strong enough to live with my own heart. That's the weakest.]

“No, it’s not, Futaba!” Akira took in a breath. Besides the neighbors, coming off too strong could end up having the wrong effect on her. “Your own family wasn’t there for you when they should have been. Social services, family court, the Blue Cove research group. They failed you. My…” Akira let out a long breath, willing the trembling in his hands to stop. “My old bastard is a world-class master at inflicting pain, at hurting people and making them think there’s no way out and it’s their fault. I’ll bet he was the one who forged that letter they read to you not a week after your mother died.”

[You don't need to lie.]

Akira lifted a hand and started to clench a fist, then lowered it and forced a breath out. “We found a memory center, Futaba. We saw what happened when Director Isshiki – I mean, your mother – died. You didn’t do it.”

[She would never have been there if it wasn't for me.]

Sliding down the door frame, Akira tried to think how to talk some sense into her. “You had nothing to do with Director Isshiki’s death. Something else did that.”

[She was suffering before that. Because of me.]

“No, she wasn’t,” Akira barked through the door. “Director Isshiki talked about you to the other staff who had family. She never regretted having you. She was proud of you!”

[She called me a mistake. I ruined her research, the most important thing in her life.]

“That was a fake letter, Futaba. Think.” Akira inhaled, then exhaled. Having only lived at the Blue Cove research center for a few years, he didn’t have that much material to go on. “What kind of a neurological condition is just going to wait for ten to fifteen years before suddenly driving her suicidal?”

[Maternity neurosis can jump months. Mom was strong, but she couldn't hide the signs all year. she'd get twitchy and paranoid and disgusted a couple times a year. Her true face came out.]

“Director Isshiki was proud of you, Futaba.” He swallowed against a thick feeling in his throat, hundreds of memories of his mother having been forced to the surface earlier. “A mother who hates you isn’t going to defend you or praise you when you’re not there. Director Isshiki would put the verbal beat down on anyone who ever talked crap about you. She had to be a tough broad to lock horns with my old bastard and come out on top every time. And you’re just the same.”

[You're not making sense.]

“Careful, Joker,” Morgana murmured from his perch.

“The world told you that you didn’t matter after Dir—your mother died. But you persevered despite them,” he said, his voice maybe a bit louder than necessary to reach through the door. “You didn’t give up when your cousin didn’t do his job of taking care of you. You took care of yourself when your uncle didn’t. You heard about the Phantom Thief and tracked us down. When your whole world became stifling darkness, you threw a rope into the dark.” Akira shifted to press a hand against the door. “We caught it, Futaba. If you don’t know how to get out of the dark, we’ll pull until you see a way.”

Moments of silence passed. Morgana wavered on the transfer student’s shoulder. “You might have gone too far.”

A tense second passed. Then his phone buzzed again. [How can you say that like you know?]

Akira leaned his head forward until his forehead pressed against the poster on the door, keep out tape wrapping over it. “My mother told me she never wanted me. Sent me back to my old bastard. I thought there was nothing to live for, so…” His eyes drifted to the sleeves over his scars. “I did it. Down the road, not across the street.”

Morgana fell off. “You what?”

[Why are you still here?]

Akira’s lip quirked. This past week proved how wrong he was, thinking Isshiki’s kid was on easy street with how often the director spoke in glowing terms of her daughter. “At first, I wanted to try again when I first woke up. But the Shinjou South Mountain Hospital called Father Motoori. He told me about a kind of story I’d never known before. The redemption of sins, the defeat of death. A God who didn’t just make children and abandon them, but loved and dwelt with them, and sent prophets to warn them when they tried to turn away. Father Motoori didn’t take my canned answers to make him go away. He stayed there with me for hours until he knew I knew there was something worth living for. Until I knew there was an Akira worth becoming.” He took in a long breath. “And if someone can find an Akira worth saving, there’s sure as hell a Futaba worth saving.”

His phone buzzed, but this time it was Ann. [Boss just kicked us out. He'll be on his way any minute. If you're still in his house, get out!]

“Just… Hold on, Futaba.” Akira shifted to get his feet under him instead of sprawling across the hallway, but held his satchel open. “Time’s up, fur ball.”

Morgana paced through a tight circle. “You… tried to kill yourself?”

Akira shook the satchel. “No time. We need to get out before I get sent away for breaking and entering.”

Morgana glared, hissing, “We are not finished here.” He hopped in.

Akira rose and dashed down, jamming his feet into his street shoes. He popped the still-damp umbrella open. He had just enough presence of mind to close the front door behind him, but as he stepped out to the street, a familiar white umbrella he remembered seeing in Leblanc’s umbrella can came around a corner.

Akira opened his stride until he got to the last turn to Leblanc. Sure enough, Sojiro had closed and locked up. Still, he only kept one change of clothes when he stopped at Yusuke’s dorm last time, so Akira let himself in, let the team leader out, then headed for the bathroom to brush his teeth with the new brush Ryuji’s mother gave him.

Morgana sprang the ambush as soon as the transfer student stepped back out. “Were you planning on telling the rest of us you survived a suicide attempt?”

“Nope.” Akira trotted upstairs to exchange the laundry. Group chat said his window AC unit should be arriving on Saturday, so he only needed one day of spare clothing.

Morgana leaped on top of the workbench. “How could you keep something like that hidden from us?”

Akira unzipped his rolling closet and pulled out the first available shirt to hide the broken-down P90 in the bottom of his day satchel. “I believe that falls under the business clause. Specifically, Nunya Beeswax.”

Tail swishing behind him, Morgana grumbled. “Come on, Joker. This is important!”

“You’re right,” Akira said, folding a set of pants before adding them to his bag. Tone flat as a windless sea, he continued, “My privacy is important.”

“This would be important even if you didn’t nominate me to be the leader of the Phantom Thieves!” The diminutive leader retorted. “You’re our friend.”

Akira whirled around. “Did it ever occur to you that I don’t want this to be something everyone thinks about when I come up? I already don’t like being the weapon you all rely on because I can fucking consume and spit out weakened Shadows in the Metaverse like Kirby. But apparently hurting people is a Kurusu legacy I can’t get away from. At least, this way, I can lessen the overall suffering of humanity by fighting alongside you guys.” He tugged off his current shirt and tossed it into the laundry basket.

Morgana watched as the transfer student changed, his eyes unfocused and darting around. “That was why you tried to kill Kamoshida…”

Akira paused, then buttoned his pants. Even though he knew he didn’t feel for Shiho how he used to, it made his insides clench. “Nobody else should have to walk through the dark valley I did.” He sat down on the bed to yank on a fresh pair of socks. “Doesn’t matter. I’m here now.”

Morgana sighed. “Being alone is what was driving Sakura Futaba to think death was her only release. Being alone was what made you try.”

Akira struggled with his other sock. “I believe I told you to drop it.”

Morgana stood. “Joker, I don’t want you to make yourself alone. Because despite your words to the contrary, you’re still trying to make yourself alone. Yes, we do rely on your combat prowess, but your knowledge and perceptiveness are just as valuable. And even outside, Lady Ann, Fox, and the others rely on you. We all want you in our lives. You’re. Our. Friend. We’d still be there even if it turned out you had a wart.” If the light wasn’t playing tricks, it seemed like a smirk crept across his cheeks. “And maybe that pretty shogi player.”

Socks on, Akira jumped to his feet. “Don’t you dare tell her!”

The rain droned outside.

“If you’re honest about caring for her,” Morgana said, “you’re going to have to tell her about yourself.”

Akira shouldered his leather bag. “The fuck do I want to tell her my fucked-up problems for?” Turning back around to align the rolling closet with the wall, his eyes fell on the small poster of the Virgin Mary. He crossed himself.

“Because that way, she’ll know you’re serious.”

Akira pulled out his phone. “She gets shit from too many people already. She shouldn’t have to deal with my shit too.” It was late, but not too late to send her a short text. [Good night. I hope you are okay.]

Her ID lit up right away and three dots danced, disappeared, then danced for quite a few seconds. [Can I see you tomorrow?]

[For Queen Togo? Anywhere, any time.]

[I'll text you as soon as I can get away from Mother. Probably not until after 11:00. Meet at church?]

That sounded like a rally point before heading elsewhere. [I'll be there. Tell me if you need anything.]

[Just you.]

Notes:

Being able to muck with cognition represents a lot of potential in intelligence gathering as well as interfering with their regular personality. It works both ways, as they explain in the game even if there’s almost no showing of the crossover.

The Koseki system refers to Japan’s family registration, which each household maintains. People with strong families to sue the courts or employers can have solid backing, but those without are easily left to fall through the cracks. Goro would have intimate personal knowledge of the failings of such a system, having been bounced through Japan’s foster system.

Chapter 89: July 30th, Star's Tearing Veil

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Saturday, 30 July 2016
Afternoon
Kanda Catholic Church

Hifumi’s phone rang with Liszt as she ascended the steps to her church—her refuge from the cold cruelty of the materialistic, superficial world outside. Yet even here, her mother reached out for her, she knew it even before she checked the caller ID. It might have been a meaningless gesture, but she felt a faint smirk of satisfaction as she hit Deny Call. With Akira’s confirmation of arrival in her text history, she turned her phone off and slipped it into her purse.

Between the post-rain humidity and the expected heat of the season, she felt light-headed, so she detoured to the water fountain and bathrooms. Some cool, refreshing water soothed her parched throat, but she didn’t want to insult Akira’s generous patience, so she patted a little water on her neck for the heat and headed inside the sanctuary.

She almost giggled when she saw him sitting there at her usual pew when she stewed over formations she couldn’t test against other human beings. While he might not have been a professional-level shogi player, he was sharp enough to challenge her and always had something witty to throw her out of a day or week’s rut.

Deciding to take a page out of his book, she came up behind him and leaned down to whisper in his ear, “Hey.”

Akira shot up in surprise, his skull thudding against hers and his sudden twisting jump knocking his travel Go board, sending black and white stones clattering across the pew and floor.

The instant his eyes fell on hers, his defensive and confused look morphed into horrified contrition. His steel-grey eyes continued to scan her face, his eyes and pupils widening. When his lips drifted open, no sound came out. He closed and opened his mouth another time before managing, “Hi…”

A pebble skittered from her foot, and she looked down to see a fallen Go stone. “Sorry, Aki.”

“Huh?” He murmured, a long second passing before he followed her gaze down. “Oh, no, I’m sorry, T-Togo-san.”

Togo-san. She pouted a bit at that. Still, there was a mess she’d caused. “Here, let me help you.” She knelt down and grabbed the three stones which scattered her way under the pew seat.

“No, it’s my fault,” he said, kneeling to get the fallen stones closer to him.

She ignored him, dropped her three stones on the Go board, then paced around to help him get the remaining ones on the floor and pew. Alas, he was too efficient and they never brushed hands while picking up. Denied the chance to feel his calloused fingers with her own, her eyes came to that fluffy head of dark hair. Dare she reach out and run her hand through those casual locks?

Her hand twitched, but remained at her side. Damn.

Putting the last stone into a tray built into the bottom of the travel go board, Akira clicked it shut and turned to face her. The instant his steel eyes fell on her, a slight hunch entered his back and he started fidgeting with his hands.

Hifumi reached out and lay her hand on his arm, letting her thumb trail just a bit up and down over the well-worn, sky blue fabric. “I was going to say let’s go relax at a park, but maybe we should get you somewhere cooler.” She let her eyes drift to his long sleeves. Even if they were cotton… “Aren’t you hot in all that?”

His eyes drifted away from hers, shame in the hunch of his shoulders drawing more curiosity from her than the bashful blush and visual aversion. “W-well… I, uh… don’t want to burn.”

She knew ‘I don’t want to talk about it’ when she saw it, so she pushed through her disappointment. So much for being able to feel those biceps herself any time soon. She brushed her hair back, jostling the red thread dangling from the knot in her hair. “W-well, would you like to take a walk?”

An adorable touch of pink grew on Akira’s cheeks in a manner which enticed her to cup his face in her hands, but that would have broken her queenly bearing. He gave a flourished bow. “For Queen Togo? Anywhere, any time.”

Her heart sped up, and it took all her control not to break into a silly little dance at that. After her father, Akira had been the only one who pointed out her embarrassing habit, but returned it with light-hearted affection. If only she could be a little surer whether that was something special for her, or if he was such a joker with everyone.

Their hands brushed as they paced down the aisle to the narthex, the touch feeling like an electrical jolt. Both teens took a sudden step apart, and he rubbed the back of his neck to avoid meeting her eyes for a moment. Then he turned to her, his eyes and pupils both still just a little wide. “U-uh… Not that you don’t look amazing, but do you usually wear it that heavy?”

Hifumi came to a sudden stop and reached one hand up, a feeling of fire on her face. “Oh! I-I was in such a rush to get ahead of the project manager post-shoot, I forgot.” She dashed for the ladies’ bathroom to wash off the makeup for heavy camera and lighting. Feeling refreshed and much less like someone else’s marionette, she rejoined the dark-haired boy who gave her an emotional escape from Mother’s song and dance.

He gave a bashful smile as she came out, with more of that cute blush. “I-I was just thinking about when we first met. You were playing against yourself. I’ve been playing strategy games against people since I was in grammar school, but it was always against adults. Having to play both sides just seems like an order of magnitude more complicated.”

She smiled at the awe in his voice, then gave a thankful nod of her head when he held the front door open for her. “A good strategy player has to be aware of not only her own moves, but also her opponent’s. In a way, you are already playing against yourself when you try to preempt your opponent’s strategy. The only hard part is decoupling the fact that you are Player One and Player Two.”

He shook his head, that cute blush still lingering. “You’ve got a clearer mind than I. Strategy games have always been the battlefield on which two minds clash to me. The sword between two swordmasters. Always has been since my very first game of Go against Hirota at the Institute.”

“Institute?”

His stark grey eyes looked down. “Where my old bastard wor—”

She cleared her throat. When he looked back to her, his eyebrows arched, she held her ground. “You may not have gotten along with your father, Akira-kun, but that’s just reason to rise above him. I know you can.” Hifumi reached out and took his hand with hers, her fingers grazing over his rough knuckles. His body tensed, but she refused to let go. It had been too long since she’d felt another’s hands in hers, the physical reminder of another human’s warmth.

It took several seconds before he remembered to breathe. His intense eyes, lingering on hers since she took his hand, blinked, and he rubbed the back of his neck. “I guess I still have a few bad habits to shake off from my old…my…” His gaze turned and he pulled his hand from hers. “I can’t call him ‘father’, Hifumi-san. He hasn’t earned that title. ‘Father’ is supposed to mean something—a person who fosters industry, teaches wisdom, and guards a safe roost from which to take off.”

She swallowed down the urge to frown. It wasn’t using an ordinary word, but he had reasons for it. And it was gratifying to hear him using her own name instead of ‘Togo-san’. The shogi maestra gave a serious nod. “I understand. It’s not the same, but Papa and Mother were both performers—of a sort—but I’ve never liked the limelight.”

He drifted a little closer, the corner of his mouth turning up. “I understand.” He shrugged. “I’ve never minded. At least while people are looking your way, you have control. You can make ‘em laugh, make ‘em mad, or get ‘em to toss you bread money.”

She chuckled and stepped closer as they descended the stairs to the subway. The air conditioning felt weak, but better than up in the sun. A roar of wind preceded the train, and the pair got on.

They struggled to find a handhold as the train accelerated again. Then a hand crept across her butt and Hifumi leaped from it with an indignant squeak. With Akira in front of her, she knew that couldn’t have come from him.

Where used to be behind her stood a thirty-something man, one hand on the overhead strap. He wore a Dragon Ball shirt, but otherwise bore no identifying features. However, once her gaze met his, the man’s lips pulled into a leering smile and his eyes roved over her. “Hey, little lady.”

She side-stepped closer to Akira, hoping the oaf would take the hint.

Instead, he let go of the overhead strap and advanced, ‘accidentally’ bumping into her. “I’ve got the day off, pretty thing. Why don’t you ditch the kid? I’ll show you a good time all day long.”

Hifumi wrinkled her nose and backed into Akira, no more room left to retreat. She squared her shoulders. “Desist immediately or I will report you to the station authorities.” She glanced around, but all the other passengers seemed determined in their focus elsewhere.

Cowards.

“Take the grip,” Akira whispered to her, before pulling her back and interposing himself. A fire burned in those grey eyes as he bit out, “Back. Off.”

“Shibuya Station,” the intercom called. “Exit left.”

The oaf stepped a bit away from Akira, but held up a glare. “Tch. Asshole.”

The train trundled to a stop and the doors slid open.

When Akira kept trying to glare a hole into the oaf’s face, Hifumi tugged at his hand. “Come on.” They took to the platform, but he kept glaring after the train. She used one finger of her free hand to turn his chin back to her, keeping hold of his hand with her other, though the opportunity to feel his touch felt ruined by his anger and inattention. “Akira,” she snapped. “Leave that oaf on the train. I’m here with you, now. Things like that just happen. All I can do is walk away from it.”

“You shouldn’t have to!” he snapped, drawing sporadic glances from around the station platform.

Hifumi squeezed his hand. “Maybe not. But I’d rather share some time with you than watch you mentally follow that pervert on the train all day.”

He gritted his teeth for a moment, but sucked in a breath and blew it out through his nose. He did so again before he looked her in the eye, that fire in his a contrite smolder. “You’re right. And I’m sorry. He bothered you, I should be the one consoling you after that shit.”

Hifumi decided to let that language go. Baby steps. She squeezed against his hand. “We should probably go somewhere else. Mother knows too many people here, and I’d rather have a little longer before I have to report back to face the music.”

Her heart fluttered when Akira squeezed back. His eyes unfocused for just a moment before they came to rest on her again. “I think I know just the place.”

Saturday, 30 July 2016
Late Afternoon
Yongen, Leblanc

He held open the door for her, so Hifumi stepped into the quaint, retro-styled cafe smelling of coffee. The warm wood and mood lighting created a sedate sense too often absent from Tokyo, suffused with the mingling scents of a dozen kinds of coffee. Another more familiar scent wove through the undercurrents and set her mouth watering, but… curry? In a coffee shop? It made no sense.

The proprietor sat on a tall stool inside the counter, a book in hand until he heard the bell jingle. His eyes fell on the transfer student coming in, then her. A mischievous smirk spread over the middle-aged man’s face before he set in a bookmark. “Well, now. Who’s the lucky lady this week? Last was a blonde, now another brunette. All you need’s a redhead.”

Akira slapped a palm against his face. “Don’t say things like that, Boss! It’s not like I’ve got a train that I parade in here.” Face going red, he looked to her. “H-he’s just joking around! I brought a couple classmates in here before.” He swallowed. “W-want anything?”

Despite wanting to believe her friend, the proprietor’s words stirred twisting jealousy inside, and Hifumi looked for the most expensive thing on the menu. “A Dark Colombian and tiramisu.”

“Coming up. Sit anywhere you like.” Chuckling, the restaurateur put his book down and headed to the kitchen.

Hifumi slid into the first booth and opened her purse for her travel shogi board. Akira slid into the opposite side, looking out the not-quite-transparent window, and watched as she pulled out her phone to set up a special formation.

After several turns, the proprietor came to their table with a tall, steaming mug of coffee and a plate with a rough-cut, four-layer tiramisu. Not quite up to the standards at the Wilton, but worth a try at a hole-in-the-wall place. She took the dessert fork and cut a small bite. The cookie layer felt soggy, but still held some structure. Maybe bought elsewhere. A beat later, the owner returned with cream and sugar, before looking over the table. “Anything for you, kiddo?”

His eyes darted about the board. “Maybe an iced house blend, one cream.”

Hifumi stirred, tested, then added some more cream and sugar. “This is excellent, Master Proprietor.”

“Just ‘Boss’ is fine. This is supposed to be a place anyone can come to relax,” he said with a satisfied smile. “A quiet refuge from the hustle and bustle out there.” He gave a bow of his head, then returned to the kitchen.

Her eyes back on the board, she slipped back into the game in a heartbeat. “Dark Inferno Rock!” Her knight took his with a snap of the tile. “Check.” Her rival scanned the board. She rested her chin in her hands and watched him, satisfaction swelling in her chest. The sharp, rapid movements of that steel gaze sent a thrill through her.

Akira slid his lance up to capture her knight. How like her General of the Steel Legion to keep trying even when all avenues closed around him.

She let out a satisfied breath and they settled into a few more rounds before she had him in checkmate, then another two games. After putting him in check for the second time, a thumping sound knocked low against the front door. Then once again.

The restaurateur’s brows rose and he slipped out from behind the counter. “Can I help you?”

A chipper, boyish voice sang out with a cheer that couldn’t be real, “Every day’s your day with Junes! I have a delivery here for Kurusu.”

Boss stepped out to hold the door.

A teenager somewhere around her age, but with shining blue eyes set in a very pretty face, walked in. He wore the expected dark red Junes uniform, pale blond hair peeking out from under the baseball-style cap. His hands clasped a very large cardboard box bearing the markings of a window AC unit. Despite struggling with the box, he came to a stop in front of their booth table. He flashed her a brilliant smile which brought heat to her face and a flutter to her heart. “Why, this must be the beauteous customer. O fair Kurusu, I am here for your every desire.”

Hifumi struggled to remember how to breathe under the twin assault of the charismatic onslaught, and the thought of progressing to the point of sharing a home and name with her companion.

Akira gave a growl of warning. “I’m Kurusu. But you will refer to me as Akira.”

The poor delivery kid quailed and stepped back. “How beary scary!”

Akira stepped out of the booth. “Upstairs,” he commanded.

Hifumi watched her companion lead the way to stairs tucked in the back. While her heart settled down, she enjoyed watching the cute tush walk up.

And the delivery boy’s.

Saturday, 30 July 2016
Early Evening
Yongen, Sakura Residence, Futaba’s Room

The urban sounds of the Yongen-Jaya station bubbled through the bug on Hifumi’s phone. Cloth rustled, and GPS put the phones on the same position. With her feet already pulled up, Futaba wrapped one arm around her legs and listened in on the tender moment between a Phantom Thief and his significant other. Talking with Akira yesterday left her in a state of puzzled disorientation where what was true or not all seemed up in the air, but her mother’s whispers started intruding already.

Hifumi let out a long, contented sigh. “Thank you for being with me today.”

They might not have noticed, but Futaba spotted the tremor in his voice when he replied with false bravado, “For Queen Togo? Anywhere, any time.”

The train arrived and Hifumi stepped on, humming a tune, occasionally letting out a “ba da da” of rising or falling notes.

Futaba gave a small smirk. “Girl, you’ve got it bad.”

Just to have sounds of the outside to focus on, she left the bug on in the background as she worked on back-hacking the members of Medjed. At its largest, the group included over twenty members, but membership dwindled since. She’d traced back six members so far, all of them in America, but none of those knew Japanese so they couldn’t be responsible for the Medjed threat against the Phantom Thief. Too little chance they’d have read news in a language they didn’t know. It was time to look closer to home.

A beep sounded, then a heavy door swung open. “M-Mother!” Hifumi gasped. “You were supposed to be managing the hostess club!”

A more nasal woman’s voice snapped, full of anger and disdain, “Do you think there wouldn’t be repercussions for trying to sneak away like a thief in the night?”

Futaba’s fingers trembled at the voice that reminded her so much of her condemning mother.

Footsteps thudded as one yanked the other, Hifumi letting out a pained whimper. “Mother, you’re hurting me!”

Futaba’s breath hitched.

A heavy door slammed closed, then nasal breathing grunted. The girl’s footsteps stumbled, then collided hard and fell over something upholstered, drawing another pained gasp. Mitsuyo snarled, “You ungrateful tramp! Have you never thought of the risks you’re putting your father in? I have spent over a year cultivating your position!”

Futaba pushed against her chair as if she could sink into it and escape the growing phantasm of her mother.

Speaking at a mumble the bug had trouble picking up, Hifumi said, “… Papa … want me … such questionable—”

Flesh on flesh cracked through the quiet bug, and the girl let out a shocked whimper.

Futaba’s Palace, Stargate Camp

General Isshiki bared a toothy, lopsided grin. “Activate SG-8, and deploy missiles to all teams. I want Isis helpless when the Daedalus arrives to bomb her from orbit.”

Yongen, Sakura Residence, Futaba’s Room

Futaba jumped in her seat and had to grab for her chair to steady herself.

“Now give me your phone!” Mitsuyo demanded in a tone which made the hacker think of bared teeth. It sent a shiver down her spine.

Futaba could hear the shaking in Hifumi’s hands as she opened her purse. Despite similar shaking in the hacker’s hands, her curiosity drove her to check the camera feed, and she caught a brief moment of tears running down the shogi idol’s face.

Mitsuyo snatched the phone and stormed into the master bedroom.

Hifumi’s father spoke in a wheezy voice, “L-Love?”

Mitsuyo’s feet slowed to a stop. Futaba wasn’t sure if she was glad or not the girl’s phone was turned so the same camera gave a glimpse, if at a poor angle, of the woman taking the middle-aged man’s hand, the veins standing out like dark lines on pale skin. Her thumb caressed the back of the man’s hand with the first tenderness the hacker had seen from the mother. “Don’t you worry, Darling. Just taking care of a little childish tantrum. Hifumi’s a good girl, she’ll do what needs to be done.”

“She’s still in high school,” her father said. “Maybe asking her to take on so much of the household’s financial burden…”

Mitsuyo gave a gentle squeeze of her husband’s hand. “She’s a Togo, she’s made of strong stuff. You just rest and get better. She would be so disappointed if you couldn’t come to the graduation next year.” She let go and pulled out a key ring, unlocked a drawer low in a vanity of some kind, then dropped Hifumi’s phone in it, closed the drawer, and locked it again.

Futaba heaved in a breath and pressed a hand against her chest as if that could slow her hammering heart.

There wouldn’t be much more she could learn from that bug, so Futaba switched to Akira’s.

Different urban sounds played over the speakers. On the phone’s screen, he slid the home screen to the second page of apps and selected a creepy bleeding-eyeball icon. The Metaverse Navigator. It expanded, a history in the black-and-bright-red showing Sakura Futaba at the top, and Togo Mitsuyo right beneath. He hit that and a synthesized voice announced, “Beginning navigation.” Then a strange whoosh of air played, as if a gust blew straight into the microphone.

No Signal replaced the bug’s feed.

Futaba jerked, sitting straight to nudge her chair closer to the desk. “The hell?”

Saturday, 30 July 2016
Early Evening
Chiyoda-ku, Niijima Home

Makoto scratched her scalp with the back of her mechanical pencil and glanced from the college entrance exam Sae bought from a student enrolled last year, then looked to hers. She pondered the best wording to use until she heard the muffled sound of scratching at the window to the fourth-floor walkway.

The team leader had stayed with her a couple times before, but always traveled with her. She checked her phone as she headed to the front door, but the only activity today was Ryuji trying to convince somebody on the Phantom Thief chat to invite him over to watch anime and doing a poor job of hiding that it was likely hentai. Ann stopped responding after hand emojis which might have indicated a desire to slap Ryuji, Yusuke didn’t understand the insinuations and Mishima was busy with the reporter. No word from Akira.

As soon as she opened the door, a breathless tuxedo cat—who insisted he wasn’t a cat—wheezed, “Rider… get your… kit. Joker… off to… Togo’s Palace.”

She didn’t understand what Togo’s Palace meant, but she understood what he meant by ‘kit’. She sprinted inside, grabbing her school satchel with her disassembled shotgun wrapped in a black hoodie in the bottom, then her keys and wallet. She slammed the front door closed and clicked Lock on the key fob, then let the team leader into her bag and dashed for the elevator.

Morgana explained as much as he could without having quite gotten his breath back. “I followed Joker… after his date with the… shogi girl.” He braced as the class president slid to a stop in front of the elevator. “He grabbed his Thief bag… took the train to Shibuya… and headed east. Only thing… on that line is KFTV.”

Impatient, Makoto tapped the Down button. “TV… The place you guys went for your social studies trip?” She remembered him mentioning a ‘Togo Mitsuyo’ when they last went after a series of targets in Mementos, but when it turned into a Palace around them, they canceled that one. “Why would he be there?”

“Because he won’t give it up!”

The elevator opened with a ding and Makoto dashed off.

From within her bag, Morgana continued, “I knew he felt strongly about it to start with, but the way he talked about it last… it was like if he couldn’t change this heart, he’d lose his own.”

As Makoto ran out the front of her apartment complex, she remembered the fire in his breath when he argued they should go back and finish Togo’s Palace. “I’d’ve gone after Kamoshida if it was just you,” he’d said. “If someone like her can’t make it, what fucking chance does someone like me have?”

She could understand why Akira still felt agitated. A fellow parishioner was suffering. Hifumi was smart, and kind on a level she had forgotten real people could be. Makoto wanted to say she’d have proposed changing the heart of a fellow student if she stood in his position, but so many of the barbs he threw out in that fight hooked into her.

We’re not becoming heroes.”

He didn’t know about Sae, didn’t know how many years she’d pressed Makoto to succeed even if that meant crushing all before her.

Makoto descended the stairs to the subway three at a time, but luck must have been with her because a train pulled in the instant after she bought a ticket. The number of people on the train prevented her from conversing with the team leader hiding in her school satchel, but he gave her the destination station. Once she got off the exit, she took off at a sprint.

Saturday, 30 July 2016
Evening
Togo’s Temple, Audience Hall

Makoto slid open the door with a darkened riddle etched in a panel. The space within resembled the police bullpen she sometimes went through to bring her father or Sae a wrapped meal or change of clothes, though filled with old wood furnishings instead of the station’s metallic post-modern aesthetic. A buxom Shadow like the vested receptionists at the front of Kaneshiro’s bank sat behind an imposing, dark-stained wood desk with a clunker computer on top.

Akira’s stylish, longcoated form at a sliding screen door to the left was hard to miss.

Morgana called out, “Joker!”

“A mask?” Akira said to a door. “A contract?” Hearing the student president’s booted feet, he turned and began to smile. “Good, reinforce—”

Morgana shot him with a Zat gun.

Makoto gaped. “Mo—Byakko! I thought we were going to talk to Joker.”

Morgana flicked the serpentine Zat gun, setting it to its compact folded state and slipped it into a pocket on his bandolier. “Palace security level is higher than Joker’s last visit. We can talk about it after we’re in safer environs.” He slid the front door back open and led them to the front as she carried Akira over her shoulder. Once at the entrance, he turned to her. “Take him to Mementos. I’ll explain things there.” He then side-stepped into thin air.

Makoto stared for a few moments longer. The team leader said he had his own way of getting into and out of the Metaverse, but she had never seen it before. Then a pained groan came from the unconscious boy in a stylish longcoat. She shifted Akira on her shoulder, paced to the entrance of the Palace, and used the Nav as soon as she got to a secluded alley. There, she pondered how to get him to the entrance of Mementos to work things out with Morgana. Carrying an unconscious boy would be noticed eventually, and that would lead to questions. If only she could just jump into Mementos from here…

Actually, why couldn’t that work? Morgana said Mementos was everybody’s Palace. That should mean it extended out this far.

Makoto hit the Nav and the world twisted around her. Tree leaves vanished, the moon swelled and turned a sickly hue, and the sounds of people were replaced with an ominous near-silence which made her feel like she was being watched. It wasn’t just the sudden absence of traffic—there was a significant lack of those ever-present signs of human civilization in the summer: the thrumming of ventilation fans and air conditioning in the city all around her.

Morgana stood there on the road, arms crossed. His big, blue eyes stared out, filled with worry.

Makoto knelt to lay the unconscious longcoated boy down. Despite the literal weight off her shoulders, the absence of that human contact in this otherwordly place made her skin crawl. “So what’s this all about?”

Morgana paced a bit, then hopped out to the street. “Something’s here. I’d rather discuss it with him awake, but if you need to know right now, can we at least talk on the way?”

She nodded, and he transformed with a pop into what Ryuji called the ‘Monamobile’, a mini-bus of a foreign make. He slid open the side door for her, and she laid Akira down on the floor between the first bench and front seats, then slid that closed and took the driver’s seat for herself to make sure she had a good view of where they were going. Morgana accelerated.

The silence grated on Makoto after just a few minutes. “You knew the keywords, so you had to have been there before with him.”

A sigh passed through the minibus vents. “I was with him when that kid gave Joker the location of Togo’s Palace, and we were already there to see what her distortion was. I was with Reaper at the time Joker tried to ditch us and go in alone.”

Makoto clenched her fists. “And you didn’t stop him outright? I thought you were supposed to be the leader of the Phantom Thieves!”

“I’m doing the best I can to save people, and keep the team from breaking apart,” Morgana retorted as he slowed for a left turn. “You must have noticed Joker’s grappling with several… problems.”

No sound interrupted the thrum of a not-quite-right engine as the minibus accelerated down a straight road. She’d noticed a lot of red flags—from his lack of any mention of warm memories with his family to the constant readiness for confrontation. She could understand some of it, after he explained how he got from Shinjou to Tokyo and got stuck with criminal charges for his efforts, but there was something more personal she couldn’t put her finger on. “I get the sense you’re referring to something in specific before I joined the Phantom Thieves.”

Morgana passed a creeping crystalline growth spreading from a window midway up a high-rise. “Joker’d been kicked out of home and looking for somewhere to belong. Shiho was the first person he started connecting with… maybe one of the first people he felt safe enough to be vulnerable to.”

A pit formed in her stomach. Within days of the new semester starting, Suzui jumped off the roof. Makoto opened her mouth to point out that, at least according to group chat, Suzui and Mishima were a secret couple. But then she remembered his snap at the Thieves while they were trying to find a way into Kaneshiro’s heart. “He said, ‘If home is where the heart rests easy, I don’t have one.’” That pit in her stomach grew. “There’s no way they had enough time to form an intimate bond, but… he has a hyper-attachment disorder, doesn’t he? That’s why he went after Kamoshida.” She chewed her lip. “That’s why he was so insistent we keep going after Togo.”

His voice, dripping with sarcasm, echoed in her skull, “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize the Phantom Thieves only did work if it was easy. I thought we changed hearts to free the oppressed from suffering.”

She’s doing everything right and isn’t being given a first chance. If someone like her can’t make it, what fucking chance does someone like me have?”

The worst was the look he gave her, blazing with anger but with an undertone of pain. “For a while, I was deluded enough to think Officer Ichijou was right. That some day, I could make a difference to the people I care about.”

Makoto sighed. “How can he think somebody’s life is worth more than his?”

“Because it is,” Akira said from the space in the back. He rose, holding his head, and sat on the bench-style seat. “Oh, man. Now I know how SG-1 felt when the Jaffa took them prisoner.” When she turned in the seat, he refused to quite meet her eyes. A heaviness she rarely saw about him pressed down on his shoulders. “Look, Mako—Rider. I know what my own life is. My parents and I hate each other. The chances I’ll ever get to make anything of my life are slim. People like you have a family backing ‘em up.”

Makoto’s teeth pressed down on her lip.

Not having looked up to see, he continued, “When you score well, you get commendations out the ass. When I scored well, Shujin called me in to the acting principal’s office and accused me of cheating. Hifumi’s not like me, she’s from a good place. The only thing wrong with her is she thinks I can be like her.” He tensed as the minibus rounded a turn, looking smaller than she’d ever seen him.

She scanned him, thinking back to everything her parents and psychology textbooks taught her. “Is that why this is so important to you? She’s separated from the thieving and questionable things we’re doing?”

Akira tensed, then forced his hands from his knees. “No.” Maybe despite himself, his eyes darted to one side, thought spinning within the grey orbs. “Well, I may have been looking for some of that when things started, but…”

From all around them came Morgana’s voice, “You’re stuck on her.”

He rubbed at his temples. “How can I be happy when she’s unhappy?”

Makoto blinked at how alien that sounded. Then again at the realization she almost said something so Sae-like: so compartmentalized and transactional. It still made sense, so she said, “You have to make your own life.”

“I tried,” he snapped, his steely gaze fixing on hers for the first time in the ride through the unsettling not-Tokyo. His chin and lips tensed, but he swallowed down whatever he might have been about to say. His eyes darted about in thought, then looked down as he clasped his hands in his lap. “Rider, everywhere I’m trying to go, she’s there. I didn’t even know the redemption of sins could be a thing until less than a year ago. She’s been a bona fide Catholic for her entire life. I never had exceptional grades until coming here, and she’s been near the top of her class since kindergarten. But more than that… she doesn’t seem lost in the world, or confused about what right and wrong are. She had no reason to be kind to me—some rando dimwit who interrupted her game with Father Sugiyama. But she isn’t just kind to me, she treats me like there’s some better person I can be and… then waits. Like that’s who I should’ve been all along, and she thinks I can fill that person’s shoes.”

“She’s like who you want to be,” Makoto said as the minibus slowed down. “Just like Dad was to me. Justice was just a word to other people, but with him, I knew it was a real thing. He went out there every day to fight corruption.”

Akira huffed. “A little more corruption out there than one man can take down.”

Her hand clenched on the back of the chair and she forced herself to breathe. “I think he knew that. That’s why he was tireless in rooting out what he could. Because it would never get better if he didn’t start as one man against whatever was out there.” She felt a warmth from the memory of the three of them—Dad and Sae around the antique oak table with her—as he regaled them about a bust of a company exploiting illegal migrant workers. “He knew how to play the gruff cop when it was time for that, but he was always the warm center of the family.” She felt her cheeks tense from her wide smile. “I remember the day I told Dad I wanted to be a police officer like him.”

Akira looked at her, his hunch lessening as he turned his analytic gaze to her. “He gave some big to-do about what a privilege it was to serve?”

Makoto noticed the undertone of challenge there, but at least he left an allowance for there to be something better. That was something. “He actually said he hoped I’d find a safer career path to follow. But he put his arm around me and said he’d be there for graduating, whatever I chose.” Then her smile fell. He couldn’t keep that promise.

The minibus came to a stop in Shibuya’s Station Square, the crimson light of the Metaverse pouring in through the windows. Morgana said, “You risked your life to help free your fellow students from Kaneshiro’s clutches. I bet your father would be proud you’ve found a self you can be proud of.” He popped into his catboy form, that wide head and those big eyes fixed on her.

Then Akira had to ruin the serious moment. “I like me a woman in uniform.”

Makoto would have chuckled if she wasn’t sure he was thinking of someone else. She swallowed down the taste of envy, but when she looked to him, she still saw that well of pain in those deep grey eyes behind his avian mask. He probably meant it to be flattering, or maybe distract her from the oppressive atmosphere. She forced a smile. “I have to admit, I used to put Dad’s hat on and imagine myself wearing one of those sharp uniforms when I was a little girl.”

Against her expectations, his eyes flicked up and down. With Ryuji she would have expected something sexual to pop out, but contemplation whirred behind Akira’s eyes. “Officer Ichijou pulled it off. I don’t see why you couldn’t, too.”

Makoto blinked, her breath catching in her throat. As ready as he was to talk down about the state, affirmation wasn’t what she expected. “Who’s that?”

Akira rubbed the back of his neck. “She was a cop up in Shinjou. Some of the old-timers called her Rookie, and the gang called her Kung-Fu Cop ‘cause she could run and go hand-to-hand like Jet Li.” He crossed his arms, reminisce in his gaze. “She showed both of us. Took down truant kids and burglars with equal ease, filed everything where it needed to go, but never broke a bone even though we were prolly little shits who deserved it.” He rubbed one arm, and she wondered if the cops who arrested him were rough with him. “‘Bet it helped that her husband was a chill guy.”

This time Morgana tilted his head. “How did you know her husband? He police, too?”

“No, actually,” Akira said, relaxing as he settled into story mode. “He was a basketball coach. Not at Inuri, or things might not’ve been so bad when I tried for the basketball club. Tried for the big leagues, but when he had his first big injury, they had a talk and decided at least one of them should be in a safe job if anything happened to the other one.”

Morgana’s bright blue eyes widened. “He gave up a sports dream for his wife? Now that’s true love.”

Akira shrugged. “Maybe he was just smart about it. Average age of ‘retirement’ for sports pros is in the early twenties because life-altering injuries are so common. And he’s still playing, so it’s not like he gave up the game.”

Getting the sense the conversation had spun into left field at his direction, Makoto gave a dainty cough. “All of that’s very nice to know, but we’re all still in the Metaverse for a reason.”

Morgana crossed his little arms. “That’s right! We had to come to pull your dumb head out of a Palace full of Shadows.”

Huffing, Akira slumped.

Makoto let out a breath. After the stories they’d just shared, it didn’t feel right not to explain. “Joker, I’m… not against changing Togo’s heart, per se. I just don’t want it to be a distraction from changing Sakura Futaba’s heart. Medjed threatened all Japan, and none of us are up to par. If Alibaba – I mean Futaba – suffers a cognitive failure, a lot more lives will be lost.”

His slump vanished, though there was a squint of disbelief marring the hope in his eyes. “Really? You mean you’d be good to change Togo’s heart after we finish Futaba’s?”

Morgana pointed a white finger at the longcoated boy. “No more sneaking in. The Phantom Thieves do it together, or not at all.”

His shoulders slouched, but he gave a nod. “I won’t infiltrate Togo’s temple until after we save Futaba.”

Makoto crossed her arms. “Swear it.”

Now Akira straightened, his shoulders squaring and feet angling like somebody expecting to change direction at a moment’s notice. “I never said I wouldn’t try to save Hifumi before, but now you’re asking straight-up, I said I’d stop. The Old Testament is filled with old men promising God eternal action for a quick boost, and then reneging after a few years after they got their blessing. Jesus told his followers to let your yes be yes and your no be no. Matthew 5:37. I’ll joke whenever I can ‘cause that’s good for the mood, but if either of you paid attention, you’d know I don’t often promise something. I don’t want to be the Akira who’d say whatever to get what he wanted, then not follow through.”

Makoto rubbed her arm, face warm at the riposte. Was it good enough? He seemed like he wanted to change. She looked to the team leader with a subtle shrug.

“Fine. Now, actually rest, so we can fight the Shadows in Futaba’s Palace at full strength.”

Notes:

When researching this chapter, I originally thought that professional athletes made it to the thirties before a medical issue forces retirement. Turns out, very few last longer than 5 years and most start before 20, so those who make it to 25 are unusual. To get further is even less likely. Professional sports all across the world are HIGHLY exploitative.

Chapter 90: July 31st, Pyramid Guard

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Sunday, 31 July 2016
Afternoon
Shibuya, Central Street, 777 Convenience

Akira tugged on the gaudy pink over-shirt part of the convenience store’s uniform, then slipped out of the staff room. With Hifumi a no-show at Mass, he couldn’t stop the pit in his gut. He’d just have to hope work was busy enough.

Disposing of old paperwork and expired goods took only half an hour. A mother with a rowdy pair of kids browsed the refrigerated goods section, the children hopping up and down about some soda with Risette’s figure printed on it.

A young man in a summer business suit strode in with his phone pressed against his face. “I don’t know, let me check with the closest business.” He advanced straight to the register. “Excuse me, what is the address of this establishment?” Akira fed the convenience store’s address and the business man repeated it to his phone. A low tone chattered back at him and the businessman nodded. “That’s right, a striped red-and-brown tabby cat bleeding from at least two puncture wounds.”

Nanami, the junior day manager and his senior at the convenience store, held a hand over her mouth. “Oh, no. Not another one.”

Akira looked between them. “Another?”

The salaryman’s lip curled and he shouted at his phone, “No, I didn’t see him do it, but it couldn’t have been anyone else! He was smiling! …Hello?” A beat passed and he hung up, then tucked it into a pocket in his suit jacket, then gave a brief bow. “Excuse me.”

Nanami looked glad to have an opening to placate him. “Oh, it’s fine, Takada-san. How is university going?”

The young salaryman took in a deep breath, then let it out. “Not bad for junior year. It’s good to have some time from academics to catch up. I just wish I didn’t keep running into signs of one of my juniors.”

Akira stopped wiping the counter. “I’ve been hearing about injured cats being spotted in the area.”

The salaryman gave a grave nod of his head. “Not just injured…” His fists clenched.

Nanami held a hand over her mouth.

Akira stopped himself from saying it was no surprise the police wouldn’t do anything. Officer Ichijou was proof that statement wasn’t absolute, and Makoto wanted to join them. If he wanted to help her become a cop who wasn’t a bastard, not assuming every action was a self-serving lie would be a start. Or at least Hifumi would say something like that.

Ah, there was that pit in his stomach again.

The salaryman let out a harsh breath. “As you heard, without having seen Tsuboi do it first-hand, I can’t make the cops do anything.”

Still looking a bit pale, Nanami said in a hush, “But why would someone hurt those poor animals?”

“Stress relief,” the salaryman said with a grimace. “First year in college, but he says his grandparents are putting even more pressure on him than high school. He got cited for getting into a fight with Ikeda-san – the track team captain – on campus, so now he broods and avoids people there. ‘Been making this creepy smile at every cat he sees.”

Akira went for his phone. “Well, if the police can’t do anything, what about the Phantom Thief?”

The young salaryman shook his head. “A night sentinel taking down someone small-time like a cat abuser? I’m sure that’s beneath his notice, especially with Medjed out to destroy Japan and everybody who used to support the Phantom Thief.”

Nanami lowered her hands. “Maybe not. The senior night manager used to have to pay protection money to Kaneshiro’s men, but the Phantom Thief changed the collector’s heart even before the big boss himself.”

“That so?”

Akira brought up the site. “Anybody can put in a request for help at the Phansite.”

Nanami leaned in to look at his screen, then the transfer student showed the phone to the salaryman. “You think the Phantom Thief would really act on submissions to a fan site?”

Akira feigned a shrug. “Rumor has it that’s how things started on the Kaneshiro clan.” That wasn’t technically a lie, it just wasn’t quite true. “Can’t succeed if you don’t try.” He brought his phone back and opened up a post. “What’s this abuser’s name?”

“Kazuo Tsuboi,” the salaryman said, still looking dubious.

Akira punched in the name. “Well, there it is. Now it’s up to God and the Phantom Thief. Unless he gets caught by the cops beforehand.”

To his surprise, Nanami gave a firm nod. “I hope the Phantom Thief stops him soon.”

Late Afternoon

Akira stacked sets of wrapped lunch sandwiches into the open refrigeration section. When his manager called, “Time!” from across the store, he finished stocking the shelf and returned to the register to get his hours printed out. Iwai and Sojiro didn’t care if he stayed late helping out, but they weren’t strict shift-block people and most businesses would only pay for a certain amount of time.

Once there, she handed him the printed time stub. “Are you okay? I hope that business with the cat abuser didn’t put you out of sorts, Kurusu-kun.”

Shaking his head, Akira swallowed down his annoyance at being addressed by his family name. “It’s nothing to do with that, Nanami-san. I just missed a parishioner at Mass and I’m concerned whether she’s all right.”

Nanami gave a shallow smile that felt just a bit too practiced. “I hope your girlfriend is okay. There’s already been so much unsettling news with the cats.”

Akira’s haste to deny them being anything other than fellow parishioners ended up making the denial incoherent.

From outside the window to the alley, Morgana piped up, “Well, you succeeded at identifying another Phantom Thief target, Joker! Good work.”

Nanami turned and spotted the team leader. “Oh, it’s a cute new alley cat! Hello, little girl.”

Morgana sputtered. “I-I’m a guy! Joker, tell her!”

“He’s mine,” Akira said. “Must’ve tracked me down, I don’t bring him to Mass.”

She gave a polite show smile. “Oh, that’s why you always show up for work so well-dressed.” Her head tilted a bit. “I’ve never hired a Catholic to work on Sunday. Isn’t there something reserved about that?”

Akira forced a small, polite smile of his own. “Jesus asked the Pharisees, ‘Is Man made for the Sabbath, or the Sabbath for Man?’ I figure as long as I’m mindful and use my time wisely, He won’t mind putting food on the table.” He bowed to excuse himself, changed back into his Sunday suit, then stepped out to pick up Morgana.

Sunday, 31 July 2016
Early Evening
Yongen, Leblanc

Akira shook out his next shirt, then slipped it onto a hangar and set it in his rolling closet. With the addition of the air conditioner from Junes, the room felt comfortable – almost cool – when he stood right in front of the unit. He headed back to the basket of clean laundry remaining when Alliance Force, Assemble! sang out of his phone. To his disappointment, it was Ryuji instead of Hifumi. “Cal Seeium’s health and wellness clinic.”

“Careful, dude,” Ryuji tossed back. “That doc chick might get mad you’re steppin’ in on her turf.”

Akira let out a disappointed breath. Almost nobody ever had a clever riposte to his joke greetings. “What’s up, Speedy?”

The track star let out a mirthful chuckle. “Well, we’re goin’ back into the pyramid tomorrow. I bet you ‘been readin’ books an’ borin’ shit all the time. We gotta hit the gym. I mean, Mona’s all on about how workin’ in real life’s good for our Personas an’ shit.”

Akira set speakerphone on, put his phone down on the bed, picked up another shirt and snapped it in the air to straighten it before sliding it on a hangar. “Morgana was probably talking more about flexing the mind. It’s not like I’m avoiding mental workouts.” That glum feeling of debilitating gravity pulled down at him as he wondered what Hifumi was doing. “And have you seen how many hoops some gyms have for getting out of their sky-high monthly fees?”

“So we don’t go to one o’ them money suckers,” Ryuji riposted. “There’s a no-nonsense place down in Shibuya. It’s a bit of a trip for me on break, but it’s right in your neck o’ the woods.”

Morgana stood and began stretching. “Might be good for you. I’ll keep an eye on things here.”

Akira considered. It would be nice to have some proper resistance exercise. “I’ve got five minutes longer of laundry and a ten minute train ride, assuming the subways aren’t as busy as during school.”

Sunday, 31 July 2016
Early Evening
Shibuya, Central Street

The roar of the city coiled around Akira as sure as a constrictor snake about a capybara. He rubbed his opposite arm as they paced past the street-side coin lockers in this alley branching off the market road. Some guy in grungy garb hawked jewelry from a folding case just in from the market lane.

Ryuji kept going to the multi-business entrance on the left. “Here it is.”

“Protein Lovers,” Akira read the sign. Beside the business name, a cartoony masculine figure thrust his chest out. “You sure about this place?”

Ryuji waved off his concern as they ascended the stairs. “Don’ worry ‘bout it. Sure, it’s smaller but it’s got a ton of dif’rent machines. An’ no bullshit contracts, you jus’ pay whenever you come in.” It looked large and extensive for a gym which wasn’t built to be a multipurpose meeting place. “Ain’t got a pool or hot tub, but they got showers right next to the bathrooms,” the runner pointed past the lobby desk.

“Pretty cheap for a pay-as-you-go gym,” Akira said, pulling out his wallet. When the clerk’s eyes remained glued to a years-old portable TV playing news about Medjed, the transfer student cleared his throat. “Just two hours, today. It’s a bit late for the all-day.”

“Of course, sir,” the attendant said, taking the two boys’ payment before returning her focus to the day’s dire prognosis about the stock market.

They headed into the gym, but the transfer student’ hadn’t even picked out which machine to start on before a college-aged guy in an orange shirt heading out strolled up to the track star. “Sakamoto?”

“Gevnin’, Ikeda-senpai!” Ryuji threw back with a grin.

The apparent Ikeda laughed. “Geez, Sakamoto, has your vocabulary gotten even worse?” He gave the track star a playful punch.

Ryuji returned it. “I know plenty o’ words.”

Akira decided he’d step into this conversation instead of wander off on his own. Without having ever had somebody – either mentor or patient – to practice physical therapy on, he realized he couldn’t decide where to start his own routine. “I’m Akira. Current classmate.” He gave the momentary point of his chin at the track star. “I assume you were an old classmate?”

Ikeda gave a smaller smile to the track star. “Not just classmate. We were both in track.”

Akira felt himself full-body flinch. Just the allusion to Kamoshida brought out memories of the pervert’s castle, as well as the image of Shiho plunging to the courtyard.

Ikeda’s smile disappeared. “You know him too?” He shook his head. “Sorry, I did hear a little about the confession. If you go there, chances are you’d run across Kamoshida.”

“Tch.” Ryuji growled, kicking the slip-on shoe at the painted gym floor. “More’n just a run-in. That bastard gunned for him like he gunned for me.” He pulled his hands out of his pockets, forcing himself to stand straighter and give an insincere grin. “But we’re here now, an’ that effin’ loser’s in prison where he belongs.”

Akira felt a haunting sensation stiffen his face, but shoved back at the memories of Kamoshida and dreams of a screaming Shiho with all his cognitive might. He forced himself to shrug and brandished a hollow smirk. “The past’s past. Water under the bridge. He doesn’t deserve to live rent-free in my head.”

If only that was the truth.

Ikeda gave a firm, proud nod. “Clearly you two have come out better people after him.” A glassy quality touched his eyes. “I wish I could say that for everyone.” His brown gaze dropped and he turned to the track star, but stopped just short of his face. “Hell, we should’ve all piled on when he broke your leg. We’re… no, I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you like you deserved.”

Ryuji shook his head and waved his arms with the fervent energy only he could provide. “Dude, quit it! I’m still up, an’ I’m even gettin’ back inta runnin’.” He puffed out his chest, a few signs of false bravado leaking out to the transfer student. “‘sides, you had two younger siblings to think about. You needed that letter of recommendation.”

A tense silence passed.

Ryuji stood straight, his eyes on his senior. “How’d they get you to clam up, Senpai? I thought your dad was in the stock market an’ stuff.”

Ikeda shifted his weight to his other foot. “Shujin took mom and dad to court. Threatened to expel me and sue for defamation if I so much as made a post on social media.”

Akira gave a firm nod. “If Ryuji doesn’t hold what happened against you, then you couldn’t have been responsible. Kamoshida screwed you both.”

Ikeda’s eyes dropped for a moment, but he huffed and looked up with a shallow grin. “You’re a good guy, Akira-san.” He began to throw a playful punch at the track star’s arm, but spotted the bruise remaining from the staff-weapon shot days ago. He let his arm fall. “I thought business management would be the safest degree I could get after Shujin, but with all the talk about Medjed, I’m kinda worried if we’ll even have a stock market to trade over by the time I graduate. Dad had over a million yen invested in the Nikkei 225 and he couldn’t even get coffee money from his stocks right now.”

Ryuji gave a sympathetic nod. “Sucks, man. But nothin’ ever stopped the Phantom Thief before. Just you wait, we—he’s jus’ waitin’ to make an even bigger splash with a come-from-behind victory over those shitty wannabes who think they can hold all of Japan hostage.” He wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “So whaddya doin’ now, Cap’n?”

A beat passed before Ikeda gave a sad smile, then shook his head. That smile still didn’t touch the once-Shujin runner’s eyes, but he seemed less tense than before. “Well, besides the business degree… You’d think all that nonsense would’ve sworn me off running, but…” He allowed himself a shy smile. “I’m back, on the uni’s track team.”

Ryuji’s grin let a glimpse of perfect teeth. “For real? Awesome, dude!” He threw a quick punch he might have intended to be playful, but still drove the wind from the college guy’s lungs.

The levity to the track star’s response perked up Ikeda. “Well, what about you? How’s the leg, Sakamoto?”

Despite himself, Ryuji’s grin faded and he had to push it back out. “I ain’t quite where I was, but ain’t nothin’ gonna stop this runner.”

Ikeda gave a full smile this time. “I’m glad. Some of us just wanted letters or extracurricular credit, but running’s in your blood, Sakamoto.”

As Akira looked in on the two, an idea began germinating in his brain. Ryuji did love running, and it seemed good for this Ikeda guy. Maybe, once the semester started again, there was something he could do.

“Well,” Ikeda said, his smile fading a bit, “I’d love to stay and chat, but I have a paper that isn’t going to write itself. See you guys.”

As the college kid departed, Akira elbowed the track star. “So, Speedy. Which machine should we start on?”

Monday, 1 August 2016
Late Afternoon
Futaba’s Ha’tak, Death Glider Hangar

Catwalks stretched across the cavernous hangar plunging deep into the middle of the enormous mothership. Multiple rows of Death Gliders locked into docking cradles set against the walkways, jutting up enough to crouch behind. Zorro’s psychokinetic toss threw one of the Shadow Jaffa off the walkway and plunging down into the darkness of repeating rows of death gliders beneath them. A golden bolt of plasma blazed between the down-folded wings of the crescent-shaped fighters in the rows above them, striking his Orthrus on the catwalk ahead.

Both heads of the warhorse-sized dog roared with Akira in pain, then turned and spat bolts of fire at the cognition of First Prime Sojiro on a different catwalk quite a run away.

Despite the best efforts of the rest of the Thieves fighting the other Shadows, the gold-armored Sojiro took the brunt of the fire bolts and held his footing. He closed up his staff weapon and pounded the butt end into the ground. An echo like wood resonated on the metal catwalks and the cognition bellowed, “Company, advance!”

“Fucking damn it!” Ryuji shouted from the left side of the catwalks where he and Makoto were trying to advance on the Shadow Jaffa’s flanks up one of the narrow connecting walkways. A slew of fresh Shadow Jaffa burst into being on the catwalks close to the cognition, leveled their staff weapons, then let loose a volley of plasma fire against the main group of Thieves trying to advance through the last of the previous wave’s unshackled Shadows.

Akira almost knocked heads with Ann as he dove for the cover behind one of the docked Death Gliders.

A single shot cracked through the air and a Shadow Jaffa’s avian-masked head snapped back before it dissolved like smoke on the wind.

Ann glanced over her shoulder at the artist braced on top of one of the docked Death Gliders behind them. “Thanks, Fox!”

With just enough space between the volleys of the full Shadow Jaffa squad to breathe, Akira dismissed Orthrus and summoned the most resistant Persona he had against the incoming nuclear energy. “Ananta Shesha!”

The next volley started and he grit his teeth against the pain, as the dozen cognitive-wrapped Shadows reminded him ‘resistant’ did not mean ‘immune’.

Carmen slashed her thorned whip through a naga, destroying it, then spun around to unleash a quick, icy burst against the remainder of the previous wave of Shadows and destroy them as well.

The next volley began peppering his celestial serpent Persona with plasma bolts when a long burst of automatic fire tore into them from the side. Spared the light machine gun’s rounds, one Shadow Jaffa turned to shoot the track star.

Makoto shot it in the chest with her shotgun, blasting it into fading smoke, then let her wide-choke shotgun pelt the first four available Shadow Jaffa. All four dropped their staff weapons – which disintegrated – and swelled into black pustules. While it didn’t resemble the Anubis from the last season he saw of Stargate SG-1, Akira was almost relieved to see just one of the Egyptian gods of judgment pop out.

A crossbow bolt sailed into the eye of one of the owl-sorcerers, disintegrating that one and giving Akira enough time to roar. In time with his cry, Ananta Shesha howled a sound like distant song, and rays of nuclear fire raked over the Shadow Jaffa.

Three swelled into black pustules, but the beam which drew over cognitive Sojiro only made him flinch. Another wave of ice shards slammed over the gathered Shadow Jaffa surrounding the gold-armored Sojiro. He grunted in pain, but snapped up his staff weapon and shot at Carmen.

Akira threw Ananta Shesha in the way and the Thieves threw themselves against the freshest wave of unchained Shadows.

Ryuji let up his automatic weapon fire to send a shredding gale over the Shadows. He shouted over the space now between him and the longcoated boy, “How do we take down a guy who resists every fuckin’ thing we throw at him?”

A flaming pink aura spread over one of the incarnations of Thoth, throwing the learned baboon into the gold-armored First Prime. Morgana shouted from the cradles of Death Gliders above, “This cognition is special, he’s tied into the Palace itself! Futaba must believe nothing physical can hurt him! But she believes in their weapons. Rider, see if you can get close enough to disarm him and use his own staff against him!”

The Thieves whittled down the half-dozen remaining Shadows, only for First Prime Sojiro to conjure a seventh wave. Or was it eighth?

Akira shook his head and shot down an enormous, jeweled bird using wind magic against the Thieves. Headache starting to pound inside his skull, he started using his P90 more despite being on his last magazine.

After what felt like an hour of slogging through more Shadows, First Prime Sojiro closed his Staff weapon and whipped it around to bring it crashing against the broad catwalks.

Makoto, edging closer the whole fight, slid in. She let out a brief cry of pain when the staff weapon thudded against her boot, but no resonance rang out and no new Shadow Jaffa appeared.

“Everyone!” Morgana shouted, “Support Rider!”

Akira stood, a second wind now that the end was in sight. He dismissed Inugami to bring out some of the Shadows’ own medicine against them. “Osiris!” The murdered god of the Nile coalesced and held his shepherd’s crook aloft. A flame-like aura formed around Makoto, hardened, turning opaque for a brief moment before it wrapped tight around her and faded from view. Goemon blew a fog over her and her speed doubled, going from an even match against the powerhouse of First Prime Sojiro to whirling around him, slipping into gaps in his guard despite his two-meter staff weapon.

“I can’t hit hard enough to get through his armor!” she shouted, keeping up her gauntleted assault anyway.

Akira cupped one hand around his mouth. “Aim for the chain-mail gaps between plates!”

Ryuji, dripping with sweat, gripped the thin railing to pull himself up. “Le’see if this works. Captain Kidd!”

The skeletal pirate pointed his arm-cannon right at Makoto and let loose a pulse of hurricane-force winds. They raced at her, wrapping around to double her movements with clumsy but effective pulses. At last, her blows drove gasps of pain from First Prime Sojiro… until his weapon, whipping around him with the skill and speed of a bo staff, cracked against her shin and drove her feet out from under her.

Sojiro snapped open the discharge pod and brought it around to shoot her in the heart.

Akira flipped his firing selector to full auto and pulled the trigger.

Sojiro flicked his head and the golden hawk helm re-formed. The P90’s roaring assault sparked against the gold armored helm.

It was just enough for Makoto to grasp the staff-weapon below the discharge pod. She lashed out a kick into the gap beside the First Prime’s codpiece.

A groan pitched higher than Akira had ever heard from the real man drifted from the armored form.

Scooting herself back as much as one leg kick could, Makoto flipped the staff weapon around and shot the cognition in the gold-plated chest.

A blackened hole formed, and Sojiro stumbled back.

Ryuji huffed through his heavy breathing, “He still ain’t down?”

Makoto squeezed the staff weapon’s trigger again, blasting another bolt in the First Prime’s upper chest. Then another in his plated arm, plated stomach, and a third shot into the upper chestplate. Each time, he stumbled back but remained on his feet.

She twirled up to her knees and aimed at his head, unleashing a bolt of plasma into the hawk helm.

The helmet blasted into heat-sheared chunks, exposing the old cognition’s real head as he fell against the guard rail behind him. He slumped to the catwalk with a metallic clank. First Prime Sojiro coughed, one arm clutching his chest. “You… fools. I only want to protect my god.”

Akira advanced, gun up for what little good the handful of remaining bullets might do. “Futaba isn’t a god. She’s a girl. And she’s suffocating, alone. She needs to be able to go into the world or she’ll die like a plant starved of sunlight.”

“They’ll…” Coughs tore through his protest. “They’ll kill her. Everyone out there will hurt her. The world is a terrifying, dangerous place. She’ll never survive if she’s exposed.”

Morgana hopped out, his crossbow empty but the bayonet fixed out. “That’s not true! The whole world isn’t dangerous. She knew she could reach out to the Phantom Thieves and we’d save her. You can’t protect her from everything forever, but we can help. And when she’s strong enough, she’ll be able to protect herself.”

Sojiro hacked and coughed. “Nobody else can do it. Haven’t you seen her own mother? Like the gods, Futaba and Wakaba betrayed each other.”

Yusuke advanced, rifle aimed at the cognition’s head. “Madarame attempted to cultivate dependency in his students, but even his instruction still nurtured art. The world may be much the same in its rain, but even in it are nutrients the forest needs to grow. Futaba will weather the storm and bloom all the stronger, just as the rest of us have.”

“Effin’ right!” Ryuji added.

First Prime Sojiro coughed. “Maybe…” He coughed once more, then dropped slack and burst into black ribbons, avoiding the Thieves but streaming out in all other directions and soaking into the walls.

Morgana stared, his eyes as big as the others’. “That was new.”

Makoto tossed the staff weapon off the edge of the catwalk. “I suppose we should get to that computer memory center.” The other thieves murmured wordless agreement and they filed out.

Wednesday, 6 August 2014
Afternoon
Shinjou, Isshiki Household

A small but clean apartment resolved, dark wood floors and white painted walls. Black-and-white pictures of Carl Jung and Beatrice Whiting hung on one wall, the other opening to a modest dining room. A little girl’s voice called out with a loud sing-song as she stepped through the doorway, “Mo-o-om! Let’s go out to eat.”

Director Isshiki glanced up from binders of paper, a fountain pen on one hand. Her straight, black hair jostled and her sleek black shirt seemed to swallow the light coming in from the window looking out over a brick factory. “I’m behind schedule, Futaba. Houzan didn’t submit his data correctly.” She turned a page. “And I think he’s using his son for brain-imaging again.” She scoffed and turned another page. “It’s like he doesn’t understand the necessity of a representative control group. I don’t care where he worked at, he’s not working for the Kirijos anymore.”

A little Futaba paced closer, reaching for Isshiki Wakaba’s long, black sleeve. “Mom…”

Wakaba tugged her arm out of the girl’s weak grip, made a couple marks, then turned another page. “Not now, Futaba. I need to have this corrected before next week’s imaging or he’ll waste another three hundred thousand yen on imaging that I won’t even be able to use.” She gestured her hand at another doorway. “Go get a bento from the fridge if you’re hungry.”

The girl threw her hands down at her sides. “I’ve been eating convenience store bentos all month, Mom!” She stomped a foot, brushed her long, black hair out of her eyes, then reached out to snag Wakaba’s sleeve again. “I wanna go on a trip!”

The pen dragged over one of the cross-sectional brain activity scans. “Dammit, girl! Look what you’ve done! I slave over this damn data to put food on the table and keep that unethical hack back. You’re only thinking of yourself!”

Futaba shrank back, her eyes welling up.

Monday, 1 August 2016
Late Afternoon
Futaba’s Ha’tak

The holographic screen cut to black for a moment. Akira gnashed his teeth. “No. That wasn’t it. I know there was more!” He tapped away at the keyboard to bring up the memory and all associated fragments. Millions of results of ‘fear’, ‘doubt’, and ‘self-loathing’ appeared, but none of them were the continuation.

Makoto adjusted her tense grip on her shotgun. “She seemed pretty angry for her daughter just wanting to eat or go out.”

Ann rubbed her arm. “But it all looked so normal and everyday. It even looked like she was madder at that co-worker.”

“Still blows for Futaba,” Ryuji said, his hands clutching his machine gun. “Ma had to get a new job after leavin’ the old man, but she still came home every night an’ was there.”

The holographic screen cut from his search to another computer center. Second Prime Youji sat there, flanked by the usual plate-armored Jaffa in silver bird-helms. His disappointed disdain gave stark contrast to the feigned cheer of the real one. “Thieves and criminals. Have you not meddled enough with forces beyond your comprehension?”

Akira swatted with a hand. To his surprise, the screen shrank Youji to the upper-right quarter of the screen, returning the rest of the display to his earlier search for the rest of the memory. “All evil needs to thrive is for good men to do nothing.”

Youji slammed a fist against his stone desk. “You believe you are fit to judge what you deny to the gods?”

“Silence in the face of a lie is complicity in its spread.” Akira tapped away. “I think I’ve got something, guys. Hold off the Shadows.”

Ann blinked under her feline mask. “Why?”

Prime Youji snarled. “Because my troops are coming to kill you!”

Ryuji turned on the door just in time to catch a pair of Shadow Jaffa. His bullets chopped one down, but the other Thieves had to summon their Personas to finish off the Sandman who popped out of the other.

Morgana hopped to the stone desk. “Joker, what’s so important about that memory?

Akira scrutinized the web of a memory search system. Why did everything have to have so many tags? “It’s proof she knows the setup was a sham! If we can convince her she was fooled and her mother loved her, we might not even need to steal her Treasure.”

“With that master control crystal,” Yusuke said, “the doors have not been able to stop us. Avoiding a grand battle with Sakura’s Shadow sounds good. But would it hold?”

The doors snapped open and another two Shadow Jaffa barged in. The other Thieves struck first.

“Why the hell can’t any of this be in alphabetical order?” Akira snapped at the computer.

The lower-right corner started displaying memories as Akira flipped through them. Being yelled at in gym for not wanting to run with the others. A brown-haired girl sitting next to her for a companionable silence at lunch. Clutching a stuffed Junes bear as thunder pealed outside. Director Isshiki reaching out to pat her head. Her classmates laughing at her.

Wait.

The computer center doors snapped open, and the Thieves attacked the next pair of Shadows.

Akira hit the memory.

The whole holographic screen blinked black. Then the dining room faded in again. Wakaba snapped, “You’re only thinking of yourself!”

Futaba shrank back, her eyes welling up.

A tense second passed before Wakaba reached down and pressed her hand on Futaba’s head and ruffling the little girl’s black hair. “I’m sorry, Futaba. Get yourself some celery, and I’ll call out for Chinese.”

The screen faded to black, and even Prime Youji winked out. A beat passed, then a view of the pyramid ship’s command center appeared, vacant any Jaffa. Shadow Futaba sat on her golden throne, golden eyes blazing like the best Goa’uld villains. She spoke with the expected System Lord echo-y voice, “You are quite the persistent thieves.”

Morgana hopped up on the stone desk. “And we’ll steal your Treasure.”

The gold glisten of Shadow Futaba’s eyes faded, and she spoke in a normal girl’s voice, “Do you believe you truly can save what has been marked for death?”

Ann turned to the screen. “We’re not giving up until we’ve saved Futaba-chan’s heart!”

Shadow Futaba gave a smile, something hesitant and tense about it. Again, she spoke in a normal girl’s voice, “You do not come to plunder a System Lord’s riches?”

Akira stared at the scene, trying to figure out what the game was. Goa’uld were genetically evil, and System Lords were ambitious and powerful. Even though this was technically Futaba’s Shadow, it all looked based straight on the show. Why the humility? Dropping the intimidating echo-y voice?

Ryuji glanced over his shoulder, keeping his gun trained on the door. “Whaddya all hesitatin’ for? We’re here to steal her Treasure.” He turned a bit more to look at Futaba’s Shadow on the shallow holographic projection. “You wanna help? Where is it?”

Shadow Futaba stretched out her arms. “Look upon my domain. Free Jaffa conspire within my ranks. The Tau’ri call their battleships. Prime Isshiki would turn his staff weapon upon me himself if he knew.” Her breath caught in her throat.

A blip of a picture-in-picture opened, and a man in a suit jabbed at the camera. “It’s your fault she’s dead!”

A new image of a pack of middle-school girls in the class hall crowded around, chanting, “Creepy Computer Girl! Creepy Computer Girl!”

“Murderer!”

“You killed her!”

Akira pulled the search back up, found the moment he knew was there, and hit play.

The in-picture snapped to a filthy room strewn with trash, dirty clothes, and books. His voice called through the door, thicker with emotion than he remembered, “At first, I wanted to try again when I first woke up—” He fast-forwarded over his confession. “And if someone can find an Akira worth saving, there’s sure as hell a Futaba worth saving.”

Shadow Futaba’s voice cracked, “I-I don’t wanna die!”

“Oh, my God. The suppressed self!” Tears glinting at the corners of her eyes, Ann’s Zat gun fell from her fingers. “That means the real Futaba wants to die!” She whirled on the team leader, fists clenched and a tremble in her arms. “We have to keep going! We’ve gotta save Shiho!”

The artist’s hand gripped her shoulder, and held when she spun on him. “Panther, we’re fighting to save Sakura Futaba.”

Ann blinked, her breathing still a bit fast when she answered, “Th-that’s what I meant!”

Yusuke’s hand gripped her leather-clad form tight. “We have made it through several barriers and a major guardian, but we are spent. We must trust in Sakura-san’s strength for at least another day, or one of us will die. Her heart will remain unchanged no matter what we do today, but charging ahead will likely lead to our being overwhelmed. I do not want you to have to live with that.” He slipped his rifle to his shoulder on its strap and took her other shoulder with his freed hand.

Morgana folded his crossbow. “Fox is right. We’ve made significant progress. Let’s get out and rest so we can make it meaningful, maybe even secure the infiltration route next time.”

Monday, 1 August 2016
Evening
Yongen, Leblanc Loft

Akira slid up his lancer. Despite the wearying effects of fighting in the Metaverse and scrubbing in the bath house, he felt his mind spin in his head like a hamster’s wheel and couldn’t sit still to enjoy the bath. A fresh change of clothes helped the inexplicable prickly sensation, but when Hifumi didn’t respond to text messages, the team leader agreed to give a game of shogi. Akira picked up his phone to check the messenger.

No new updates from Hifumi.

Does the sinner deserve to taint the pure?

Knot in his gut twisting, and Akira bit his lip and put his phone down. She was too good for him. At least the air conditioner helped him bring his mind back to the game and push his frustration back down. The spinning sensation in his brain loosened his tongue. “Being able to steal Personas from the sea of souls ebbing into the palaces feels weird. Do you remember waking to your Persona?”

Morgana’s ears curled back and the tip of his tail twitched. “I… I don’t remember not having a Persona. The Metaverse twisting me into this cat body must have been what forced me to awaken.” He moved up a pawn, then backed up and sat down. “Still just as suave a gentleman as your incredible leader was when I was a human, I’m sure. It just comes naturally.” His ears twisted against his head. “We’ve been very fortunate so far, distortion in the heart to some degree is extremely common. The distortion of a Palace can pressure the fractures in our own psyche, and with so many loose fragments of human emotion right there, that could lead to the sudden unleashing of a very powerful Shadow which would try to kill the conscious half. Lady Ann told us Fox’s torture was the pursuit of truth and beauty. Nightrider, trying to live up to dozens of stereotypes and never living for herself. We should be glad she came to grips with herself or she would have continued to feed the Shadows around us.”

Akira halted, midway through moving up a pawn. “Wait, are you saying she made the Shadows around us stronger?”

Morgana blinked. “I explained this. Your Phantom Thief forms are cognitive armors which insulate you from the wild wills in the Metaverse. Any emotional resonance within us – from fear to love – would resonate with the fragments outside of us as well. It’s one reason why the Shadows found you guys when you brought Reaper into Kamoshida’s dungeons.” One ear twisted sideways as he scrutinized the transfer student. “There’s something really special about you. You can draw in and use purified fragments of the collective subconscious.”

Akira slid up a knight. That clenching inside didn’t feel like ‘special’. The world kicked him while he was down for his entire life and he never heard any voice inside. Even now he struggled to keep the worry over Futaba or Hifumi at bay. “I’m just lucky.”

Morgana moved up a pawn to capture one of his opponent’s. “How did Lady Ann awaken? That happened before I found you.”

A glower crawled over Akira’s face. “Kamoshida cuffed her to that bed and started cutting her clothes off.” If he had his weapons back then, he’d have killed the bastard for sure. Akira closed his eyes and forced himself to take a breath in and out. “She’s confident and beautiful, but wanted to be on her own terms instead of being reduced to somebody else’s sex object.” He slid up a knight, a subtle tremble from one of the worst days in his life. He’d never told Ann, but that was the most scared he’d ever been for another person. “If she hadn’t bust a Persona out right then… I don’t know what would’ve been worse. Dying knowing she was about to be defiled, or seeing it happen before they got me.”

Morgana captured his lancer, and the transfer student picked up his piece and set it on the team leader’s side to help. “How did you wake to your Persona? Or did you collect it like the others?”

Akira slid his lance up to capture a pawn. That gave him an excuse to break eye contact with the team leader, even if he could close his eyes and see the whole board in his mind. “I wanted to avenge Shiho. To hurt Kamoshida.”

Morgana found a way to make his dubious gaze obvious despite the feline face. “Don’t try to make it like something so simple or selfish. Whatever you felt for Shiho, you stayed well away instead of stealing her from our infobroker. Even before we celebrated Kamoshida’s change of heart, you were on the road to changing Kaneshiro’s heart.”

How shamed would your queen feel to know she is the rebound of a cast-off?

Gut twisting so tight he feared he’d throw up, Akira reached for his phone to send an apology. Then cowardice put it down and he stared down at the board, even though he knew he had five or six routes to victory.

Joker,” Morgana snapped in that command tone of voice. “You’re not a bad person. Just look at how hard you work to get along with Nightrider. You two were practically throwing knives at each other. Now you’re exchanging personal family stories.”

The memory of coming home to hear his mother fucking some dude from a party snapped to mind right before the image of a naked Hifumi standing on a scallop shell. Akira took off his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose. “I didn’t exactly want her to see what kind of person my mother was.” He added at a low whisper, “Or figure out what kind of person I am.”

Morgana sighed. “This isn’t helping you wind down like I thought. Get your exercise or whatever in and get to bed. There’s something I want to check at the Palace tomorrow.”

Glad to have something else to put his mind to, Akira settled his glasses back on his face. “Which Palace?”

“Sakura’s.” Morgana hopped down and paced to the bookshelf where the pillow serving as his cat bed lay. “We need to talk to the cognitive Wakaba and find out what she represents for Futaba. We changed the balance in her psyche by taking down her cognition of Boss. If I’m right, we might not have time to wait for her alert level to drop tomorrow.”

Akira gave an assenting, “Hm…” and bowed before the image of the Virgin Mary for his last prayers of the night.

Notes:

Wanting to live is a pretty fundamental human drive, but in conditions of suffering, death can start looking like a good escape. Hence why all these years later, Persona 3 still has the draw as humanity struggles with nihilism.

Chapter 91: August 2nd, Down But Not Out

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Tuesday, 2 August 2016
Early Morning
Yongen, Leblanc

Spoons and cups clinked down below. Akira stretched, noting the strange angle of the light in the window. He left his alarm off just for today to try to get a full night’s sleep, due to Morgana’s plans to bring the Phantom Thieves right back into Futaba’s Palace. From the eyedrop-resistant dry crust on his eyes and creaky sensation in his joints, it didn’t work.

Down in the cafe proper, a handful of locals and salarymen, about to head to their summer jobs, drank their morning coffee. In the middle booth sat a familiar dyed-blond head in a familiar red shirt, sitting across from a familiar plump woman already in her clinic outfit. He gave her a nod. “Sakamoto-san.” He gave a neutral look at the track star and pulled out his phone. “Yo.” [What the hell are you thinking, bringing your mother to an operation area?]

Ryuji gave a casual grin, then checked LINE and looked up at the transfer student in street clothes. “Well, it ain’t like I was gonna bring her in—”

Akira plopped down on the bench, close enough to Ryuji the elbow jabbed in his side wouldn’t be obvious to the woman across from them.

Ryuji’s mother noticed the conspiratorial closeness of the two boys. “Oh, you’re here early, Kurusu-kun. Though considering how good the coffee is, I can understand.” She reached for her cup and took a sip, then went back to her curry and rice plate.

Ryuji’s reply text came in. [She asked where we were hanging out. I didn't expect her to come with, today!]

Cup still in hand, Sakamoto-san’s eyes flicked over the two teens. “You boys aren’t having a disagreement, are you? You’re too young and it’s too hot.”

Akira gave a cheeky grin. “Don’t you worry about us runners, Sakamoto-san.” [The entire point of having a hideout is to meet and do business WITHOUT being observed.]

Ryuji shot him a narrow gaze. “C’mon, it ain’t like I’m—” He coughed when the transfer student elbowed him. At last, he took to his phone to send a silent answer. [What are you acting like I'm handing out free membership cards for? You just let in Yusuke and Makoto, and they basically walked in on us!]

Akira’s smile turned a little wooden. [The Metaverse is dangerous, and the police would manufacture evidence to put you guys away for years. I don't want you guys to get caught.]

A chiming came from Sakamoto-san’s phone and she slammed back the remainder of her coffee, then took her purse and stood. “Time to wash up and go, but you boys really should spend more time talking to the people sitting right next to you and less on social media.” She stood and rushed to the washroom.

Only then did the group chat buzz, Ann at the top to report arriving at the Yongen-Jaya station. Yusuke and Makoto followed once they boarded their trains to Shibuya, but waiting for them still left a while.

Ryuji swallowed a final bite of curry. “This is good shit. How come you never bring some into the Metav—oof!”

Akira retracted his elbow. “I… never really thought about bringing food in. That TAP soda was just something I had in my school jacket at the time.”

The front door bell jingled as Ann trotted inside. The open-shoulder blouse she wore showed off her slim figure, the royal blue color complementing her softer blue eyes. And it was hard not to notice how she filled it out. She gave a confident smile. “Hey, guys. Am I too early?”

Akira found himself tongue-tied.

Ryuji gave her a nod, though his eyes also stopped on her chest. “Yo, Ann. Everyone else is still on the way. You good to go?”

She sat down across the table from them at the same moment as Sakamoto-san came out of the washroom. The middle-aged woman gave them a smile and nod, paid at the register, then hurried out.

Ann shot a hooded gaze at the track star.

Ryuji threw his hands in the air. “I didn’t invite her, ‘xactly. She wan’ed to find out where I was goin’ an’ already knew ‘bout Akira ‘cause he stayed over.”

“Uh-huh,” Akira threw out, dubious.

Ann just shrugged and waved to the proprietor. “Could I get a house blend?”

Ryuji brought up a phone game and lounged back in his spot. “I already bought us a thermos.”

She slid into the booth. “I’d still like some.” She smirked at his disgusted grimace and the group settled into idle banter until the last members showed.

Tuesday, 2 August 2016
Morning
Futaba’s Palace, Stargate Camp

The sun beat down on them, and despite being a desert the air felt heavy with moisture. Not for the first time, Akira wiped at his forehead as the cognition of O’Neil led them to the command tent. They paused at the south entrance until the tall, dark form of Teal’c stepped out, staff weapon in hand, and gave them a nod. Inside, Daniel and Carter stood behind and flanking General Isshiki, their tan field uniforms contrasting her dark blue dress uniform.

It unnerved him a little how the formation was identical to First Prime Sojiro and his Shadow Jaffa. The woman he remembered as director of the Blue Cove research center looked at them. The real one always had a sorting and filing behind her eyes, as if she juggled something out of anybody else’s view, but this one’s eyes glared at him with a heat he’d never seen her turn on any human being in the real world. “I have important business for Stargate Command. I told you to stay out of my teams’ way.”

Ryuji’s grip on his shotgun tensed. “We have, bitc—”

“Reaper!” Morgana cut in. He hopped up on the conference table to look at the others eye-to-eye. “We have not even seen any of your teams in or around Futaba’s pyramid.” He crossed his arms. “We’ve infiltrated all the way to the hangars. How exactly were you planning on fighting without moving anybody in?”

General Isshiki sneered at them, a harshness which would have fit his father, but not the practical real-world woman. “Children. You don’t destroy a mothership with sidearms. The Daedalus will be here in days to obliterate that abomination. Her crimes go against nature itself.”

Akira pressed the heel of his palm against his forehead. “Fu—Isis isn’t an evil System Lord, she’s a Tok’ra trapped by fanatic Jaffa!”

“You gullible fool.” General Isshiki’s teeth bared. “She killed her mother!”

The computers spaced around her side of the tent whirred, and dozens of voices streamed out of them: “She’s dead because of you!” “You killed her! Your own mother!” “It’s your fault!”

Plasma zipped outside, and both SG-1 cognitions flanking Isshiki held a hand to their earpieces. Carter looked to the general, “Prime Youji’s attacking early, General.”

Another zip, this time punctuated by a burst of a water tank in another tent. Gunfire roared back from several angles along the perimeter of the camp.

Akira lifted his P90 and glanced to the leader, who drew his folded crossbow. “Come on, guys!” They dashed outside and raced to the camp perimeter. A legion of Shadow Jaffa encircled the camp, dozens rushing down as a handful provided cover-fire with their staff weapons. The zipping plasma came faster as more settled into positions.

Then enormous plasma blasts lanced down in wild, paired bursts into the mess tent, and a Death Glider screeched over the camp.

General O’Neil, tube launcher already in hand, lined up and fired. The missile lanced out and curved up into the space fighter, detonating it in a brilliant fireball before the wreckage sailed out of view over the dunes.

A yellow bolt of plasma flitted just past his head, and he dropped to the ground.

Akira looked out, trying to remember what Hifumi taught him about trajectory to trace the shot back to a Jaffa with the full silver hawk helm. He lifted his P90 and squeezed a quick burst into its chestplate.

Morgana put together the situation at the same time and shouted to the Phantom Thieves, “Protect the rocketeers! We’ll use their cognitions to help turn the fight around!” He unfolded his crossbow, then summoned Zorro as he set to loading it. The over-muscled Persona psychokinetically picked up a Shadow Jaffa and slammed it into another Horus Guard.

Ryuji grinned beneath his skull mask. “This is even better than Gun About! Captain Kidd!”

Another roar preceded a Death Glider lining up on the Phantom Thieves, but the skeletal privateer rocketed at it, wind billowing his tattered sails before he swung his oversized cutlass through the crescent-shaped fighter. Fire blossomed out, and the bisected fighter plunged into the camouflaged camp’s perimeter, throwing up clouds of sand.

Bolts of flame and ice joined the outgoing fire. Instead of wondering why none of the Stargate cognitions were panicking at the Personas, Morgana dove into cover of a tent behind the longcoated boy. “Joker! This is your scene – what should we focus on?”

Akira blasted another Shadow Jaffa with a short burst, then paused to examine the battlefield. “The regular masked goons seem like conscripts – stupid, with terrible accuracy.” He spotted his quarry and peered down the prongs on the top of his gun at another hawk-helmed Jaffa, a quick burst knocking it into dissolving smoke. “Those Horus Guard – the bird-head guys – are the only ones stopping and aiming for the rocketeers.”

As soon as he pointed it out, more screaming crescent-fighters descended on them from the sky, and a rocket lanced into one. Goemon, floating just over the tents, blew into his oversized pipe, and a bolt of lightning blazed into another Death Glider.

Morgana nodded and zipped back to talk to the others as the Thieves’ gunfire blended into the cognitive defenders. Shadow Jaffas collapsed into dissolving smoke, but a few swelled and transformed into Shadows from the pyramid.

Afternoon
Futaba’s Palace, Stargate Camp

Akira ducked a Shadow Jaffa’s swinging staff weapon, springing forward to plunge his oversized survival knife into the chainmailed belly where the symbiote pouch would be. Another Shadow collapsed into smoke, and he sent his Anubis against another clump of Shadows charging around the burning remains of the mess tent. As if to complicate things, the wind picked up again, pelting everyone with sand.

Another snake-woman surged, clawed hands swiping at him before a baseball bat smacked into her face and dissipated the transformed Shadow. Spent machine gun hanging from his shoulders, Ryuji bashed another annoying Shadow thief with a bag of sleep powder, then lifted a P90 he stole from an injured Stargate cognition and shot down another Shadow Jaffa. “Fox’s got the last of our coffee. Dude’s gonna hafta piss like a racehorse if we get outta this.”

Another three Shadow Jaffa charged through the smoke of the burning mess tent, but this time a pudgy Jaffa in gold followed them, red light glistening from the hawk helm’s ruby eyepieces.

Akira turned his P90 on it, shooting through one Shadow to get a long burst into Second Prime Youji.

The cognitive reflection of Isshiki’s cruel brother flinched, but straightened when the gun clicked empty. “Pathetic vermin.” He stopped less than a pace from the longcoated boy. “I’ll enjoy pulling you out of the sarcophagus and torturing you after I kill you today.”

Akira blinked some sweat out of his eye and tossed his P90 to the side, then surged at the fat man in gold armor. He might have been faster before, but after hours of fighting legions of Jaffa and Death Gliders, his limbs felt leaden.

Prime Youji slapped his knife-hand away and followed up with a palm strike right into Akira’s face. A few feet away, his Anubis dissolved into motes of light. The cognition flicked his fingers wide and claws extended from his slender metal-plated gloves, then swiped as the mask re-formed over the longcoated boy’s face.

Akira dodged back, his movements still sluggish. One of those claws scraped over the mask instead of through his eye. The rest tore gashes in his cheek, and his momentum took him to the ground.

Youji tensed to tear into the downed Thief, before a baseball bat plinked against his armored hawk-headed helm. The helm’s beak head perched high above his real skull snapped towards Ryuji, eyes glowing red.

Ryuji swung another blow, putting all his body into it, but the Second Prime parried it with his plated arm, then swung back with a ‘thump’, sending the Thief tumbling and blood splattering.

Youji flicked open the claws on his other hand and stomped on Akira’s leg to keep him from dragging himself back to his fallen knife. The longcoated boy let out a cry of pain.

A spark flew as a bullet struck his ornate chest plate, and Youji looked up through the blowing sand to see the cognition of Daniel Jackson step out of the blowing sand, with both hands bracing his pistol. He fired again and again, each bullet drawing a grunt of pain.

Then the pistol clicked empty.

Youji flicked his head and shoulders, his golden helm splitting and folding back, retracting into the ornate collar. Teeth bared in a snarl as he spat, “That. Hurt. Now, die.”

He only made it one step before Daniel backpedaled. “Carter!”

The short-haired blonde stepped out of the swirling storm, her eyes squinting against the pelting sand and her P90 steady. She fired long burst after long burst into him, clustered holes opening up in his golden armor.

He snapped his staff weapon at her, the discharge pod opening with an ominous crackle.

Akira leaped in, stabbing his oversized survival knife up into the Second Prime’s armpit and drawing a cry of pain. He yanked his knife out and threw himself back.

Zorro dove down from the blowing sandstorm, his rapier skewering the armored cognition with the sound of tearing metal.

“Raksha!” Akira called out, struggling through his pounding headache to push a Persona back out. The red-clad fighter coalesced, standing just as tall as the cognition, before lifting its curved, twin swords.

Youji twirled his long staff weapon like a bo, shuddering under the Persona but blocking or parrying every slash.

His focus left him unprepared for Ryuji’s two-handed power swing, the aluminum baseball bat cracking across the golden chain-mail coif. The blow sent the cognition stumbling, and both of Raksha’s swords bit deep into his arm and side.

Carter’s P90 roared, the long burst walking up his chest plate until a few rounds slammed into the Second Prime’s face.

Youji stumbled back, hand clapping over the wounds leaking smoke and falling to his knees. “You… fools. I am… the strength of Isis. I only return hate… to the world that hates.”

“No,” Morgana spat back, pacing out of the smoke billowing at a steep angle from the mess tent. “You’re just unrestrained hate who doesn’t even know if it should be directed at Futaba herself or the world hurting her. She needs to breathe easy, not to be choked to death by you!” He held out his crossbow, bayonet gleaming in the fire, “Phantom Thieves, all together!”

Despite their exhaustion, Ryuji, Akira, and Morgana threw everything they had left at the cognition, and at last it collapsed into dissolving smoke.

The Thieves fell to their knees, but the sounds of plasma and gun fire both came to a halt. After catching their breaths, they reconvened at the south entrance to the collapsed command tent.

General O’Neil handed the longcoated boy his P90 back. “This is a trusty weapon. Don’t forget it next time.” He looked to the short team leader. “SG Six, Seven and Eight are pursuing the Jaffa, but they’ve scattered to the desert. I think your plan’s crazy, but if you wanted to sabotage the System Lord’s Ha’tak, now’s your best chance.”

Makoto nodded, sweat dripping down her face. “I think we should take it. We had to have gotten almost to the bridge last time, this might be enough to secure our infiltration route.”

Ryuji chuffed, though kept his focus on applying a bandage to the bleeding gashes left from Prime Youji’s clawed gauntlet.

Ann pushed up her mask to wipe underneath. “I second the motion.”

Morgana looked around, beaming with pride. “You guys have come so far so fast. All right, let’s do it!”

Afternoon
Futaba’s Ha’tak, Top Level

The Phantom Thieves trotted down the empty hallway to the command center. After the ambush their first time, everybody kept tense hands on their weapons despite the total absence of Jaffa within the pyramid ship. Akira led them through the familiar corridors to the Pel’tak, but this time Do Not Enter tape barred them in the same slipshod manner as her door in the real world. He tapped the open sequence, but instead of a soft electronic click to confirm the sequence as the stone door slid open, the buttons went dark.

He tried again. No response. Akira stepped back. “Rider, could you try it? I don’t want to take the chance that I’m entering the open sequence incorrectly.”

Makoto grunted in affirmation and they switched. Her finger tapped hard against the buttons, and nothing happened. She grunted, then looked down. “Where’s the crystal circuitry access panel?”

Akira swallowed and looked all over the wall. “I don’t think there is one.” He drew his oversized combat survival knife, then jabbed and scraped at the wall beneath the buttons, but just left a thin scratch.

A shimmer in the air preceded Shadow Futaba decloaking, her royal Egyptian armor glinting from the wall sconces. She held her arm against a golden bracer, her eyes glowing gold and voice reverberating as she stared down at them with tired disappointment, “So now thieves come to plunder a System Lord’s tomb.”

Akira just stopped himself from pulling the trigger. Apophis had one of those cylindrical personal shields, and he was certain she would have the same thing. Bullet ricochet would just lead to one of the team getting hurt. “So, what’s left? We beat up your two lieutenants. If you want us to save Futaba, show us the Treasure so we can steal it and be done with this!”

Shadow Futaba brushed back her long, copper-red hair. With a disappointed roll of her eyes, she spread her arm out to the Pel’tak door. “This is my Treasure.”

Ryuji’s eyes widened under his unsettling mask and he looked around. “How the fuck ‘we gonna steal a whole room?”

Yusuke, seeing the longcoated boy’s stance, lowered his own rifle and came to a stop next to him. “It is the existence of a Treasure which locks her life around a particular distortion. Could we buy some mock explosives from Untouchable and destroy this place?”

Morgana folded up his crossbow. “As long as we make sure not to kill her Shadow in the process, that could work. A pyramid lost in the desert could also represent part of the state of her cognition, but this is technically a space ship. If we could fly it away from this desert, that might also do. I guess a big command center like that could represent the will to fight, flee, or stand as the Palace Ruler wanted.”

Shadow Futaba gave an abashed hum. “I cannot give to you what you seek.”

Ann let go of a green-and-maroon wall curtain she was peering behind. “Why can’t you just let us in? You are Futaba, don’t you want her to change? To live?”

Morgana shook his head. “She’s a part of Sakura Futaba. People are of divided mind all the time – that’s why cognitive dissonance exists. Even the way that angry cognitive Prime disappeared just like a Shadow means he can come back.”

Shadow Futaba nodded. “You have damaged him and all he represents, but the way shall be open to you only for a few days.” She waved a hand and a holographic projection sprang into existence between them, showing a star-field with a tiny brown marble in the center. A red arrow ticked a centimeter closer from the edge towards the tiny orb in the center. “The threat is not yet quelled. Giving Futaba a purpose has allowed her to distract herself, but her wish to die has only been staved off. If Nyx will not come for her, she will… make for her own departure.” She waved her hand and the holograph disappeared. Those gold eyes settled on Akira. “Futaba is the one who keeps everyone out. Only she can let you in.”

Morgana nodded. “Then we’ll need to change Futaba’s cognition in the real world. We need to rest and restock, but we’ll be back. We’ll change Futaba’s heart.” He looked up at the other Thieves. “We have our infiltration route. Let’s head out.”

Tuesday, 2 August 2016
Evening
Yongen, Leblanc Loft

Alliance Force, Assemble! interrupted the oppressive heat, fought by the cold currents from his AC unit and brought Akira out of his nap. He felt like his lips were glued together for a moment before he pulled them apart with a ripping feel, then yawned. He reached up for his phone, wondering why it said ‘Crossroads Bar’ for a moment before he remembered having applied there, then being too busy to show up for weeks.

Sudden panic shot through him and he jerked upright and answered, praying inside he hadn’t just pissed her off and lost a job. “Accounting Department, Ed Amame.”

A snort, then a voice which reminded him of tumbling gravel came through the phone as Lala said, “Is Kurusu there?”

He kicked himself mentally for not reigning himself in. “Yes, speaking.”

“Kaho-chan called in sick and I’ve got stock coming in today,” she said, sounding just a bit out of breath. “I know I said come by when you’ve got time, but I need hands on deck.”

Akira cleared his throat to try to keep from sounding like he’d just gone to sleep. “On the way.”

“Great, kid,” she said, before holding her phone away and calling to somebody on her side, then hanging up.

Morgana shook his head as he peered up from his cushion on the bottom of the bookshelf, while the transfer student ripped off his wrinkled shirt and yanked another from the rolling closet. “What’s up, Joker?”

“I have a job,” he said almost without breath, cinching a belt. “But not if I can’t get up to Crossroads yesterday.”

The team leader stepped out and hopped up to his day satchel on the table next to the stairs. Akira decided not to argue and scooped him up in the bag as he dashed downstairs, exclaimed to Sojiro, “Gottagotowork!” and caught the train.

Tuesday, 2 August 2016
Evening
Shinjuku, Crossroads Bar

To Akira’s relief, the crowd at the bar seemed smaller than the last time he visited. A handful of people soaked themselves in booze, with about a dozen people scattered around the ground floor nursing drinks. The dim lights and sedate internet radio music did give a calm quality absent from the rat race outside, and all of the patrons seemed beaten down by a callous world outside.

The kitchen door swung open and Lala shuffled out and pulled Akira close to whisper in his ear, “Left store room, left stack. It’s got the clipboard on it.” She stepped away and smiled out at the miserable salarymen and women here to drown their sorrows. “So sorry to make you wait. Truck broke down yesterday, so I’m back and forth.”

Akira slipped out the back and moved a stack of boxed-up liquor from the loading docks to a refrigerated storage room just past the kitchen. A man in a reflective vest hauled another set of boxed wine to the right of the door, but from the gaps in the checks on the inventory receiving sheet, he assumed Lala would check those later. After a few minutes of carrying and sorting boxes into the flimsy shelves, Lala trotted into the back and picked up the clipboard.

Akira finished the first stack and headed back to the bar to make sure somebody had an eye on the customers.

It looked almost the same as when he ducked back to move inventory, but a woman in a pink evening dress slouched on one of the bar stools, one elbow braced on the counter as if sitting up on her own was too much effort, the other tracing the rim of her tall drink glass. Once her dark eyes met his grey ones, she gave a coy smile and leaned onto her hand. “I’m impressed Mama Lala hired such a cutie.”

Akira’s face warmed, but he felt his body tense. Alcohol loosened tongues, but nobody gave a complement expecting to get nothing in return. He pasted on a smile he didn’t feel and got started washing glasses. “You’re not so bad yourself.”

Her coy smile widened, something about her stance and visage lightening. “Well, now. This one has potential.”

Akira set the glass upside-down on a plastic tray next to the rinse sink. “You sound like you’ve made comparisons before. Meet a lot of people at work?”

“Almost everybody in and out of KFTV goes through Information and Scheduling.” She looked surprised for a moment, glanced at her white wine, then shot him a sly look. “You’re not bad, Cutie. Even if I’ve got a handicap.”

He gave a small shrug, flicked another rinsed glass, then took a threadbare towel from a nook under the counter and started wiping off the spots of water.

The woman brushed back a lock of hair slipping out of her high hair bun. “You like listening. That’s already an improvement on most men.” She ran one finger around the rim of her glass. “Some people love talking, but so few are really good at listening.”

There was something searching in her gaze which made it hard to hold eye contact, so he set down the dry glass and started washing a goblet.

She took another deep sip from her wine glass, then gave a show frown. “Now that’s no good. Women like confidence in a man.”

Akira flicked water into the rinse sink and started drying the goblet. He couldn’t help but think of all three Palace Rulers they’d trounced so far, and how every single one was an egotistical jackass. It reminded him too much of his father whenever he wasn’t butting heads with Isshiki or simpering for that chairman who inspected Blue Cove twice a year. “I’ve seen a lot of guys who walk over everybody around them. Kinda hard to respect that.”

The woman gave a sad smile and took another gulp of wine. “I think you just explained the limit. A good man has respect. When he gives that up, he’s no longer a good man.”

The transfer student nodded and cleaned another two goblets before Lala approached and handed him a tomato. “Party of six reserved a booth. You still make tomato swans?”

Akira examined the curled-fist-look of beefsteak tomato. “Yes, but those work with elliptical-shaped tomatoes. This one’s too irregular and spherical. I’ll have to do something geometric.”

“Lala!” one of the customers called from a table on what was the dance floor in Crossroad’s past life. He held an empty beer glass up in the air. “We miss you so much our glasses are as empty as our hearts!”

She somehow managed to wave with a wide smile and still give an annoyed huff. “No rest for the weary.” She scrambled off.

The woman in the evening dress looked to the lumpy tomato in his hand with wide eyes and a smile. “You can make tomato swans? You’re a man of many talents. Can I see?”

He nodded and retrieved a cutting board from the kitchen, then set it down, sharpened a knife, and examined his task. Amagi Inn was somewhat selective in the produce they took, but it seemed standards in the city were always lower. This bulgy tomato wasn’t even on any side. Deciding on a pattern, he slid the fruit knife straight in and spent the next few minutes twisting and cutting the tomato.

“‘ey,” a man three beers in said after staring for a while. “That ain’t no pumpkin. Don’ ya know how to cut a damn veg’able?”

Akira kept going, then lifted the central portion to make the last few cuts and flipped the pieces over to make the inter-weaving diamond design obvious.

The woman clapped her hands. “Oh, that took a while, but it’s marvelous! Where did you learn that?”

Rubbing his neck, Akira stared down at his handiwork. “Head chef at Amagi Inn.” He shrugged. “Not a whole ton to do in Inaba.”

She waggled her finger at him. “You’re only allowed to be humble about things you haven’t proven to a girl. Remember, us girls like confidence.”

Lala saved him from having to speak through the tight feeling in his throat and internal backpedaling by returning from the tables. “Maria-chan, you’re looking chipper tonight!”

The woman in the pink dress took a sip and held her glass up at the transfer student. “How can I not enjoy such a pretty boy?” She turned a sly look to the bartender handing a tray of spent drinks across the counter. “Where’d you dredge Tall, Brooding, and Dexterous from?”

Cheeks warm, Akira set the dirty glasses into the rinse sink. “I’m just average. I only look tall because you’re sitting.”

Lala snorted and took the carved tomato, pausing to give it a closer look. “This is pretty good. Did I poach a gourmet cook?”

Akira rubbed the back of his neck. “Amagi-san called my cooking incompetent. She’s infamous – or was, anyway – for being a bad chef. And I mean poisoned-a-school-camp-out bad. No way was I going to let somebody with that kind of reputation talk down to me. And I showed her!”

Maria giggled. “A man’s heart beats in there after all!”

Lala motioned Akira to a plate, then set the carved tomato on it. “You keep Maria-chan company, Akira-chan. I’ll be up and down.”

Notes:

While Akira’s lack of support means he had to have cooked for himself before, I find the idea of him going French Chef “Oh, those potato slices are too thick? I’ll show you” to Yukiko was too funny not to exploit. Although that incident likely would have happened during Golden Week when she’d be home from university to help out the Inn. Thanks to everybody for the comments.

Chapter 92: August 3rd, Before the Sandstorm

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Wednesday, 3 August 2016
Noon
Shibuya, Underground Walkway

Ann set the watch down and backed up. Despite the intention of getting Shiho a gift to try to commemorate her latest physical therapy milestone, the lingering question of what would happen to her and Yuu-kun blotted out what should have been a happy time. Well, as happy as recovering from throwing herself off a roof could be. She didn’t have that dead look in her eyes, but the frustration, the anger…

Shiho had always been blunt, but the frigid glare and throwing Ann out of the clinic wasn’t her sweet, honest friend. Were things that bad between her and Yuu-kun? How long did it take for that dense boy to get back in and help Shiho climb out of that pit?

“Ah, Takamaki-san,” a boy’s familiar voice called. As deep as her pondering was, it took her a moment to place it as Yusuke’s. He stood there in the walkway winding through the underground shops. He stepped closer to get out of the stream of pedestrians, though his gaze only lowered further from her. His words clashed with his reluctant posture, “I was hoping to find you today.”

Eager to engage with something not depressing, Ann clasped her hands behind her back. “Well, you found me! What’s up?”

Yusuke bowed low. “I wanted to ask your forgiveness. I have not treated you—”

A pedestrian broke from the stream, came to a stop at the artist, then planted her hands on her hips. “Could you not block the store?”

The artist stepped aside, his face red and one hand rubbing his other arm, his shoulders even more slumped.

Seeing such an earnest person trod underfoot made that cold indignance swell within Ann. “Come on, you can tell me over crepes.”

He followed close after her to the street-side vendor and despite his single weak attempt to assure her he didn’t need anything, she bought him a banana-cream crepe along with her strawberry-chocolate.

Yusuke accepted the rolled treat, but without his usual enthusiasm for food. “I… know you refused to be dissuaded, but I feel as if I have taken even more from you.” His dark grey eyes cast to the street. “Even now, you are on the lookout for ways to aid your fellow man. I could not even overcome the temptation of this street-side delicacy. I treated you ill when you came to help me against Madarame, and I can not even think of a way to repay Akira for the weeks he offered his humble abode to me.”

The gloomy self-deprecation stood in contrast with the dismissive ease with which Yusuke just accepted the crowd around them. She wondered what Akira might have said, but that just seemed to highlight the contrast against Akira’s tense, perpetual readiness for fight-or-flight. The thought even made her lower her chocolate-cream-filled crepe. “Well, it’s not like you can punish a crepe. Chocolate never did anyone wrong.” The corner of her lip twitched when he accepted her line and chowed down. “Akira asked me how I could take the Tokyo crowds so easily, and I could never give him an answer. How do you do it? Ryuji might be oblivious, but you’re always paying attention.”

Yusuke swallowed a deep bite. “I am looking for opportunities,” he said as if describing last week’s weather. “Sensei taught us art can inspire at any moment.” Those dark grey eyes then turned to her. “But they all seem so dull and mundane when you are there. I know there is the human spirit somewhere within them. But like the distant galaxies, they fade into the black of the night sky beside you.”

Heat having nothing to do with the scorching summer blazed over her face. “There’s plenty pretty faces out there.”

He stepped closer, the banana-creme crepe in his hand falling to his side, its cream leaking out. “No. You are not just stunningly beautiful at the superficial level. Eyes as crystal clear as the sky and a face which would have driven Susano-o across Japan. But these crowds are filled with people who have killed themselves so they may fit into the tiny cogs society crushes them into.” A wan smile slipped over his face. “With you… there is a cheer deep within your soul that you bear like a banner. A bold sensuality you refuse to betray just because society senselessly says a woman who knows and loves her own body must be a lesser human. That was what drove me from the car with Madarame. Somebody alive, so alive she reminded me I, too, could live as well.” He reached out a hand to take the tip of a pigtail, but then let go and brushed it off her shoulder. “And as I have been gifted beyond anything I deserve to come to know you, I see your beauty extends so much further. Your kindness and generosity flies in defiance of the cruelty inflicted upon you.”

Ann reached out a hand, brushing bangs from his eyes. His words stole her breath while filling her like a balloon, and it took everything she had to look into those intense grey eyes.

Then a pedestrian’s shoulder collided with her, knocking her stumbling forward, and the spell was broken. Yusuke caught her with his free hand. His eyes went to her feet and he sounded almost mournful when he said, “You dropped your crepe.”

She considered buying another, but she already ate two-thirds and another might spoil her dinner. Nana Nagato was going to be over tonight and would report Ann not eating to her parents. And she did want to keep in shape for her next photoshoot. Ann cleaned up the mess, tossed it in the vendor’s trash can, then grabbed napkins to clean off her hands. “I kind of want to get out of here, now.”

Yusuke finished his crepe. “Delicious. I can see why you fancy them, Takamaki-san.”

She giggled. Akira was the only boy she’d shared crepes with, but he gave off vibes of following along an expected script rather than genuinely liking them. All the other boys called them too ‘girly’ to partake in. After having given the artist a new experience, she wondered where his experiences had taken him.

Yusuke spoke first, giving more of a bow of his head than at the waist due to the crowds on the sidewalk around them. “I have not sufficiently apologized for how I treated you so soon after you fought you way out from Kamoshida’s thumb.”

Ann let out a breath. Maybe Yusuke and Akira weren’t that dissimilar after all. Both seemed to be terrible at letting go. “Akira and Morgana helped me out of that.” She crossed her arms. “Even gave me their full support when Kamoshida was at our mercy. I hadn’t even decided if I wanted him to live at that point.” She shook her head. “But it wouldn’t have been right to take the easy route. I’d only have been satisfied for a minute, and Shiho never would’ve had her vindication.” She brushed back a pigtail and planted a hand on her hip. “Why’d you ask for me to model… you know? I’d have understood one of those boys like Ryuji or the creeps who propose to me on the way to school, but…” She paused to try to think of what she actually wanted to say. Did it seem too weird if she still wasn’t sure whether he actually thought of her as a woman? Sex and all? The question was there or she wouldn’t have gotten mad at him in front of Madarame, but she wasn’t sure.

Yusuke swallowed, his throat remaining tense for several moments longer. He didn’t quite meet her gaze when he answered, “I wanted you to leave Sensei alone. You all had no idea how close you were to the things I had turned a blind eye to for years. Things I knew , and knew would tear down the flimsy veil that let me tell myself things were normal and therefore tolerable even though they were neither.” He breathed out, but unlike Akira seemed to relax from it. “I had no idea how hard it was to breathe there, so to speak, until I was at Akira’s.”

But… nude?” Ann tilted her head the other way. Maybe she’d spent too much time around Ryuji, but any guy she’d been around who talked about naked girls never wanted to stop at the naked part.

The artist nodded. “Sensei painted all of his female apprentices nude. He taught us that the human body is as natural is the stream or the flower.” He crossed his arms, tapping a finger against one lip. “After having spoken to Sakamoto-san and Akira-san, I think he realized there is a marketability to the female form. He never pressed the boys to be painted nude.” He blinked and eyes focused on her, then he bowed. “Saying I know better now does not seem to compensate.”

Hey, hey,” she waved at him. “You didn’t know. After all, would you really ask me again?”

His visage brightened. “You mean you would?”

Her flat stare could have frozen Central Street.

His visage paled and he seemed to realize he’d crossed a line, but the searching quality of his gaze hinted that he didn’t understand which one. “I have transgressed again.” He pressed his fingers against his brow. “I don’t understand how Akira or Mishima-san find relationships to be so straightforward. How they can pick out one of many things they love of a person, who is so much more complex than any flower or visage?”

And just like that, Ann’s anger fizzled.

Yusuke took a deep breath and looked her straight in the eye. “Would you permit me to take you somewhere?”

Wary from being asked to love motels and strange places by boys in the past, Ann tilted her head.

The artist straightened as if he needed to sort his stance as well as thoughts. “Have you ever been to the planetarium in Ikebukuro?”

Ann clapped her hands, a thrill of anticipation shooting through her. “Never! Does Kosei do trips there?”

He gave a self-conscious smile. “Middle school. Sensei was on a ‘spiritual retreat’ at the time, so Saki-san forged his signature.”

Ikebukuro, Planetarium

Ann plopped down in the cushy, padded seats reclined further back than she expected. A pre-show star projection crept across the ceiling. After the artist sat down next to her, she leaned closer. “This place is amazing. I wish Papa and Mama could’ve brought me to stuff like this. The fashion circuit keeps them so busy we don’t have that much time together.” She looked at him and couldn’t help but think of a time her old friend duo slipped into a theater in Nerima, the way Shiho and Yuuki would lean until their shoulders and heads touched, holding hands on a single armrest.

She slipped out her hand, but as soon as he felt her arm, his retreated. “My apologies.” He sat up to yield the whole armrest to her.

Ann shrugged and took it. He was being thoughtful. “It’s pretty dark. That ever make you think of random stuff?” She clapped her hands together in a glee borne of anticipation of the coming show. “Like the show begins, and our chairs shoot us into space like rockets!”

A huff of a laugh passed out of Yusuke’s lips and for a moment she was afraid he thought her stupid. Granted, it was a childish thought. Instead, his dark eyes fixed on hers, a real smile shining in them. “You are a genuine person to your core, Takamaki-san.”

From anybody else that might have been mockery, but the… she wasn’t sure what the right word was. Wonder? It shone in his gaze, and brought new heat to her face.

That deep gray stared into her and he nudged the elbow she had draped over the armrest. “And then? Where do our rockets take us?”

Her blush redoubled and Ann gave thanks for the deepening dark of the room. “They blast us into the sky! And we land on the moon!” Somebody behind shushed her, but she couldn’t stop her giggle.

The lights fell more and the show spun up, swirling them through the solar system and beyond. Ann leaned to whisper to the artist, “You ever see a sky like that?”

“Sensei took us out of the heart of Tokyo a few times for star-gazing, but I have lived under Tokyo’s skies for so long, everything else seems alien,” Yusuke said, too even for her to be sure whether he was quashing melancholy or just reporting a fact.

He didn’t shift away from her, so she continued, “I’ve always lived in cities, but winter in Rauma was cold and crisp and even if there was light pollution, I used to look up into the sky and wonder how many billions of kilometers I was staring into.” A shooting star sailed past and she clasped her hands. She wouldn’t have described herself as a religious person, not like Akira who went to church every week. Still, something about this magic called to her to pray the Phantom Thieves all got to experience more nice moments like this, that they’d save Futaba and more and be the heroes people all over Tokyo needed.

Despite the depth of his voice, Yusuke’s carried a childlike wonder as he stared up. “Is that what the Perseids meteor shower is supposed to look like?” More streaks sailed out across the dome. Mesmerized by the sight, she gave a throaty sound of inquiry. The artist raised his whisper to answer, “Sensei used to make us watch a couple of the annual meteor showers. We were always cold and hungry, but there was such a majesty to them. It always spurred the muse in us.” Yusuke’s eyes fell from the projection dancing across the ceiling. “Sensei always said my inability to create ex nihilo was one of my greatest failings as an artist. That inspiration could come from anywhere, but a true creator could selectively take from the inspiration he had seen in his past and create something new anywhere.”

Ann nudged him with her elbow. “Well, maybe we can try looking for shooting stars from my balcony some time. I haven’t done it since I was a little girl, but I’m sure it’s better with hot cocoa waiting.”

Wednesday, 3 August 2016
Evening
Shibuya, Bikkuri Boi Diner

Makoto paced up the steps to a busy diner filled with a pleasant bustle of chatter. Today may have been a break from the heat wave, but plenty of people were taking to the indoors to avoid the summer heat anyway. Assuring the woman at the front her party was already there, she looked for the pair of Shujin students who texted her about writing the calling card for Sakura Futaba. After a moment, she spotted a familiar fluffy head of black hair at a booth with his class representative and the insisted-he-wasn’t-a-cat team leader. “Good evening.”

Mishima moved his bag and scooted in to give her room. “Oh, good evening, Senpai.”

Makoto sat down, her gaze falling on the team leader sitting just inside past the transfer student. She noticed the books, half-eaten snack bowls, and crumpled papers on the table. “You two been here long?”

“I was at the gym not even a block down the way,” Akira said. “Ryuji and I were practicing on Gun About after we sold off junk.”

She nodded, then reached into her purse and slapped down her first draft of the calling card to Sakura Futaba. “What do you think?”

Akira set down a legal pad with quite a bit of scribbling and cross-outs. The intensity in his steel gaze as they darted across her paper made her tense. She helped write the last two, but over the group chat. She did her best to will down the coiling in her gut. After a minute, those eyes flicked up to her. “You think she’s a better candidate for Sloth?”

Makoto nodded. “We used the Psychomachia since you wrote the first one, and lack of spiritual development seemed apt.”

Akira handed the draft over to the class representative. “Her Palace was chock full of armies. Stargate, the Jaffa… hell, even the Tok’ra.”

She straightened in her seat, her preparation giving her a little comfort like it did at student council. “All at a standstill. She grew up with her mother and, even if it was during an emotionally vulnerable time, it only took one fabricated suicide note to make her doubt her entire life. Based on the memories we saw, her biggest challenges going forward will likely be not backsliding into self-isolation. That seemed to fit sloth more than the other vices.”

Mishima set her draft down. “She’s got good points.” His dark eyes fell on hers. “Akira talked about how she was so smart she got made fun of by her classmates, but I don’t feel like that’s the kind of thing to lift her out of either Wrath or Sloth. What about her mom?”

“Right!” Akira snatched the paper and scribbled. “Thanks for skipping lines.” He handed the addition back to them.

Makoto took the sheet. Despite the transfer student’s sloppy appearance, his neat handwriting stood out. “…a blind eye to fifteen years of a mother’s cherished love?”

Akira squirmed. “Okay, I’m cheating here a little. I knew Director Isshiki, the real woman. She was proud of her kid. Always talked about how smart or clever she was. I never saw Futaba up at the Blue Cove research facility, but even those memories point to a warm relationship.” He swallowed, his voice sounding a bit steadier than before. “She loved her mother. And her mother loved her. Doesn’t everybody deserve that?”

Makoto felt a tremor inside from that. He could say that without ever knowing what that exchange was like from his own mother. She found herself forgetting her mother and it had only been six years. Was something so foundational so easy to forget? “Y-yeah.” She reached for a bean chip and munched.

Her face twisted.

“I know, right? Way too much paprika,” Akira said. He pushed a bowl of something red, wet, and lumpy at her. “And this was supposed to be a chili paste, but doesn’t taste like much of anything. They didn’t try toasting the pepper in the pan or anything, and that even works on expired pepper.”

Mishima tapped his pencil against a sheet with more crossed out than finished kanji. “Only if it’s recent. They might not be storing their spices in airtight containers. Contact with oxygen makes them lose their flavor faster.”

Makoto sat up and found herself drawn into a conversation more about cooking than hearts, and the evening wore on.

Chapter 93: August 4th, Pyramid's End

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Thursday, 4 August 2016
Early Morning
Yongen, Leblanc

The door swung open and Ryuji looked up from his plate of fluffy rice and curry. Just because the coffee shop’s main attraction was nasty didn’t mean he couldn’t take advantage of a good meal that always left him up for the Metaverse.

Doctor Takemi stood at the door, glancing over the handful of people stopping in for breakfast in the small cafe. Her eyes came to a stop on his table, then on the transfer student and finally at the back of the artist’s head. After a beat, she paced up to the bar and ordered a coffee and rice omelet.

The bell on the door jangled when a new person pushed it back open, and the track star grinned at the hot blonde wearing what all men waited for summer for: thin, tight-fitting clothing. In this case, a yellow shirt and tight jean shorts. Ann flashed them a terse grin, her whole body just a little too wooden. “Hey, guys. Yuuki-kun stop by yet?”

Ryuji left his spoon on the plate and stretched his arms high to work out lingering sleep-fatigue in his back. “Nope. Told all you I shoulda just done this one, too.”

Yusuke swallowed a spoonful of the last flecks of rice on his plate. “Did he not assist you with the one you created for Sensei? As long as it meets our aesthetic standards, I am sure it will work.”

The Phantom Thieves ate and waited for the remaining members to arrive, with the breakfast rush departing before Mishima arrived. The class rep slipped an innocuous envelope to the weirdo artist, who gave a pleased nod before handing it over to the transfer student. When he just gave a “Hm,” Ryuji snatched the envelope to check the calling card inside. The class rep nailed the look. The team waved goodbye to Mishima and headed for Futaba’s home.

Morgana poked out of the transfer student’s leather satchel. “This isn’t a criminal we need to keep safe distance from, so we’ll deliver this to Futaba directly.”

Akira nodded, his jaw tense and a clench to his gloved fists. “We’ve done all the preparation we can. It’s show time.”

Once a pair of small children playing tag raced past, Ann sped up to close the distance with the others. “She wouldn’t even let us into the bridge. How can we even make sure the real one reads it?”

Akira slipped the plain-looking envelope out of his leather satchel. “Same solution to both of those, that’s why Fearless Leader said we deliver directly. This is the event horizon we both have to cross or we all fail.”

Yusuke slowed down to come alongside the transfer student. “How do we convince her to open up her sanctum when she does not even allow Boss-san in?”

Morgana poked his head out of the satchel. “She knows we’re Phantom Thieves, right? She doesn’t need to know the particulars of stealing Treasure. We just tell her we need her to let us into her room or her heart can’t be changed. She wants us to succeed. If she had the courage to come after us after hearing about Madarame, she’ll have the courage to open the door and let us in. Then we give her the calling card and away to the Palace.”

“Eff yeah!” Ryuji threw his fist in the air as they rounded the road to the Sakura House.

Thursday, 4 August 2016
Morning
Yongen, Sakura House, In front of Futaba’s Room

The Phantom Thieves ascended the stairs and filed in front of the door with a star-field poster. Do Not Enter tape stretched across it, just as it had on the door of the command center. Ann glanced between the transfer student and runner. “Futaba-chan?”

Rustling rolled as a bundle of something fell inside her room.

Akira swallowed and stepped closer to the door. “I know you’re still scared. But we need you to open the door and let us in or we can’t change your heart.”

His phone buzzed. The Thieves crowded around to read the text from Alibaba. [Not here! What about that master control crystal?]

The others turned to the transfer student, and he paused for thought before typing back, [There needs to be a crystal control access. Your Palace doesn't have any at your Treasure. Just open the door here and the one in your Palace will open as well.]

Long seconds of tense silence passed. A sound much like a girl’s knees hitting the ground thumped.

Akira took in a long breath and lowered his phone. “Please, Futaba. If you have ever been brave, now is the time.”

Silence ticked by.

Akira stepped closer to the door and placed a hand on it. “Don’t give yourself time to withdraw, Futaba. Trust me. You know what you need to do. Act, before your old fears can sabotage your one chance for success. This only works if you are the one to do it. You came this far – it’s just one more step.”

The faint rustle of the air conditioning whirred.

Makoto glared at the transfer student. “I told you this was too much to force onto her, especially after what happened to the cognition of—”

The doorknob wobbled, clicked, then turned. The door drifted open and footsteps scrambled away.

The Phantom Thieves strode in, their eyes widening at the modest room, a bookshelf spilled over with books and bags of garbage piled all over the corners. Akira started picking up and aligning the books so the all spines faced out.

Makoto stopped next to him. “Biology, neuroscience, algorithm software. These are very advanced books.”

Akira wiped dust off a worn book and pulled out a book on the shelf to start sorting.

Yusuke leaned to look at the portion of a bed not covered by trash bags. “Where is Futaba?”

Morgana hopped out of the transfer student’s satchel, then up onto a trash bag next to the closet. “This isn’t going to work, she’s still throwing up a barrier.”

A timorous voice came from the closet, “W-what barrier?”

Ryuji whipped around from a stacked set of trays of Featherman and Stargate SG-1 figurines. “She can talk!”

Makoto yanked the transfer student away from the bookshelf. “Stop cleaning and help with Futaba-chan!”

Akira set the book down and forced his gaze to the closet and not to the cluttered room. “As long as you keep something between you and the people outside yourself, you’ll have an absolute barrier in your cognition.”

The girl’s trembling sounded in her voice, “E-even this closet is maintaining an insurmountable obstacle in the core of my cognitive world?”

Yusuke lowered the hands forming a frame at her computer desk. “She understands such peculiarities?”

Ann came to a stop next to the transfer student. “Futaba…? I have a question. If you just wanted our help to change your heart, why the cloak-and-dagger with all the Alibaba stuff?”

“Yeah,” Ryuji said. “We’re the good guys, we’d’a helped.”

She mumbled, “…‘barassed.”

Akira slid his hands into his pockets. “It wasn’t until Sojiro came for you that Social Services did anything to get you out, huh?”

“Y-yeah…”

Akira let out a rush of breath, then held out a hand at the closet. “Same reason why I never told Director Isshiki about my old… man. She was researching human cognition and I just assumed she was like everyone else in my life – too busy to help me.” He straightened the satchel hanging on his shoulder. “I should have trusted her. She’d have done something.”

“That’s right!” Ann said, crossed arms clenched. “The mother Boss-san told us about is completely different than the one you worry about.”

A sniffle came from the closet. “Even if… I killed—”

“No, Futaba!” Akira barked. When Ann shot him a warning look, he took a breath to steady himself. “You shouldn’t blame yourself for what you didn’t do. You didn’t push her into the street. Somebody else shut down her mind.”

Futaba’s voice cracked, “I k-know what I did!”

Makoto nodded. “Between Akira’s knowledge and my own research since starting your Palace, I’ve come to understand memory is not a perfect thing. It can be tampered with, by ourselves and by outsiders. We can know what we feel, but memory and imagination are inextricably linked.”

Ryuji cleared his throat. “Uh, shouldn’t we get to what we came here for? We gotta change her heart some time.”

Akira forced himself to unclench his jaw. “Come on, Futaba. You’re a fighter. I’ve been inside your heart – I know it.”

Yusuke nodded, his voice as serene as his gaze was serious, “Don’t think first – do.”

A beat of silence passed. Then two.

Just when the transfer student in long sleeves thought she’d chickened out, the closet door threw open and Futaba burst out, her arms wide and eyes clenched shut. The striped sleeves of her casual black shirt reminded him of the prison garb he wore in the Velvet Room, but unlike the brilliant copper red of her Shadow, the real girl bore orange hair that could only have come from dye. “T-there… now steal it!”

Akira smiled and knelt to be sure her eyes were scrunched closed, not just fixed to the floor. He slipped out the envelope with the calling card and held it out to her. “See? There’s the fighter who broke open the first and last doors to free her own heart.”

When she stood there, tense arms trembling, Makoto gave a sigh mixing frustration and amusement. “We… don’t exactly do it directly, Futaba-chan.”

Her eyes snapped open. Seeing the envelope, she snatched it, backed into the closet, and slid the door closed.

Ann reached for the door. “Wait a sec!”

“It’s all right,” Morgana said, poking his head out of the satchel. “Her cognition’s changed. Now she just needs to read the calling card, and we need to get back in the Palace before that cognitive Prime re-appears.”

“D-do I need to come with you to change my heart?”

Akira gave a shrug. “It is her heart.”

“With all the Shadows we gotta dodge?” Ryuji riposted. “No way! It’d be totally too dangerous for a dude to go in his own heart.”

“Okay, Phantom Thieves,” Morgana declared in his most authoritative tone. “It’s time to finish this.”

The others filed out, but Akira paused at the door to shout, “Read that card or none of the rest works!”

Thursday, 4 August 2016
Morning
Yongen, Sakura Home, Futaba’s Room

Futaba clenched the envelope in her hands as the Phantom Thieves closed the door to her room. Her hands trembled as their footsteps faded down the stairs, but it took long, agonizing minutes before she could breathe without fearing each would be her last. She strained to listen for any sound, nothing but the air conditioner waiting for her. After long minutes more to gather her courage, she slipped the closet door open. Nobody remained behind to mock her, though the thought brought her to her computer to bring up the bug on Akira’s phone. Instead of turning it on, she looked to the envelope he handed her as if presenting a diploma. It felt heavy in her hand.

She slipped the flap open and read the clipped-out characters glued to a black and red card. “Madam Sakura Futaba, the sinner who drowns herself in sloth. You have turned a blind eye to fifteen years of a mother’s cherished love and spurned the gift of life, despite your blessings of intelligence and education. You shall climb out of the depths you have cast yourself into by your own hand. We, the Phantom Thieves of Hearts, shall steal your distorted desires without fail.”

The ominous presence of her mother loomed behind her. “Worthless, selfish girl! How dare you ignore the mother you murdered to play hero against script kiddies!”

Futaba dragged in a shuddering breath, tears blurring her vision.

Her mother loomed taller than ever. “You must die. Just avert your eyes like you’ve always done, and I will kill them in your world.” Then the presence faded, and for the first time her room felt more terrifying without the specter.

Futaba sniffled. “N-no.” She wiped her eyes and looked up at the bug on Akira’s phone, her computer displaying No Signal. She pulled in a ragged breath. Her head swam when she tried to understand whether she deserved to live or die, but the Phantom Thieves… they were heroes. They saved people, even evil ones. She couldn’t let them die. She slid away a razor blade and reached for her phone. There, on the second page of apps, was the creepy bleeding eyeball app she saw days ago before hallucinating a visit to a real Goa’uld mothership.

Well, what choice did she have?

Thursday, 4 August 2016
Morning
Futaba’s Ha’tak

Futaba opened her eyes to the palatial setting of a mothership’s Pel’tak. The polished, dark stone floors were unmistakable, though the walls were decorated with the green and maroon of Isis, complete with the ankh of the Egyptian goddess of magic.

A bolt of bright yellow plasma zipped through the air above her head and struck a floating, super-muscled masculine figure with tiny legs, wrapped in all black, and the big entity collapsed into dissipating motes of light. A boyish figure wearing a cat costume cried out at the same time and tumbled to the floor.

“Fuck you!” a familiar brash voice shouted. The hacker looked over to a running thug in a plated leather jacket and bearing a skull mask. He wound up with an aluminum baseball bat and swung at a man too fat to be a proper First Prime, his belly pushing out at the golden plates of his armor.

Futaba’s blood ran cold when she saw Uncle Youji’s face, and a sinking feeling pulled her to the floor when the gold-armored man twirled a staff weapon, cracking it across the plate-jacketed boy’s head and knocking him flying. He then snapped a leg up with greater dexterity than any man of that girth should have, kicking a girl in black riding leathers and spiked pauldrons tumbling. Youji lined up his staff on what Futaba imagined she might look like in twenty years.

The Futaba woman-lookalike, on her back, pushed herself up enough to scuttle backwards. The panic in her glowing gold eyes contrasted against the royal Egyptian garb and proper red hair Kana promised Futaba when she dyed it back in middle school. She blustered with an echo-y voice sounding much like Futaba’s, “I-I am a goddess! Strong! It is mine to decide if others live or die!”

That gold-armored likeness of Youji fired a pulse of plasma straight into the fallen goddess’ stomach. Futaba dropped, breathless, from the sensation of a mule kick straight to her belly. The powered-up incarnation of her uncle tossed his weapon to the side and advanced to pick up Goddess Futaba by the throat with both hands. “Traitorous Tok’ra bitch. At least I get to make you suffer like you deserve.”

A boy with frizzy, black hair and a long coat sprawled, unmoving next to an equally unconscious girl in a sexy red leather bodysuit. Both bore charred holes from plasma bolts. The dyed-blond in a plated black jacket struggled to lever himself off the floor as blood poured down his face and from his ear.

A thunderous sound roared from a shotgun picked up by a boy in a loose black jumpsuit, sweat pouring down from behind a fox mask. He pulled the trigger a second time, getting only a click.

Gold-clad Youji reached to a holster on his forearm and drew a Zat’nikatel, the stun weapon springing up like a rearing cobra before it discharged a bolt into the blue-haired boy, then the stumbling girl in black scrabbling for a pistol on the ground. “You wait your turn.” He put his weapon away and lifted his freed hand back to the self-declared goddess Futaba’s neck.

Feeling her own breath becoming shorter and shorter for some reason, Futaba crawled to the fallen staff weapon and picked it up. Air wouldn’t push past her throat and her vision started to blur. The discharge pod snapped open with a crackle as she squeezed the trigger. A bolt of plasma lanced into the gold-clad monster’s back.

Prime Youji dropped Goddess Futaba with a groan of pain and turned. Her vision sharpened just in time to see the rage twisting his face.

Terror turned Futaba’s blood to ice, but a memory whispered in her mind’s ear, “Fighters don’t give up!

Panic more than courage squeezed the trigger in her hand and shot plasma into the gold-armored mockery of a First Prime’s belly. That drove him a step back and lit a dim but warm fire of hope and resolution within Futaba’s chest. She shot him in the chestplate as fast as she could pull the trigger, again and again, until he stumbled back and fell to the floor, disintegrating like smoke on the wind.

Goddess Futaba picked herself up to her knees, slipped a Healing Device onto her palm, and knelt next to the little boy wearing a cat costume. A warbling sound resonated as light shone out and she swept it up and down his body. After he shook out the pain and grogginess, she moved on to the girl with the iron plate on her face.

Catboy retrieved, then folded a crossbow into a compact, squared rod before he handed a paper packet of powder to the thug with a skull mask. As the dyed-blonde shook the medicine powder straight into his mouth, Catboy paced to her with a weary smile. “Joker was right about you.”

Futaba gawked. She knew that voice – she heard it occasionally around Akira after she had that… maybe-not-a-hallucination about visiting this Pel’tak. “You… You’re the leader of the Phantom Thieves.” She looked the short, round-headed figure up and down. He didn’t look Egyptian, but she never thought she’d see her greedy uncle in a Prime’s gold armor either. “Are you Bastet? Where’s your sistrum?”

His ears curled down. “Wha? No! I’m… Well, my code name is Byakko.” He looked around, eyes stopping on that frizzy black-haired boy clutching his head, while Goddess Futaba went to work on the blonde in red next to him. “Great, you’re up, Joker! Get to navigation and let’s steal this space ship!” That order given, he turned to the other side of the room. Despite the meters between him and the dyed blond, he thrust out his hand and called out, “Zorro!”

That larger-than-life figure dressed in black, muscled far beyond any body-builder but for his tiny legs, coalesced above Byakko. The floating entity held out a rapier more like a dagger relative to the bulk of his arms.

Silver motes of light swept over the bleeding blond in a skull mask, who then pushed himself up, gloves prodding his head at wounds now closed. “Thanks, Byakko.”

Futaba’s jaw drifted open as the boy shoved himself to his feet and stumbled to the navigation pedestal. “You guys steal space ships to change hearts? Being a Phantom Thief must be awesome!”

Goddess Futaba paused, knelt over the unconscious form of the boy with a fox mask.

“Foolish girl,” snapped from over the speakers before a projection rippled into being over the far wall. Futaba’s mother, in the dress blues of an American Air Force general, glared at her, and a flicker of sickly gold shone in her eyes. Her lip curled enough to bare teeth. “Blinding herself and then expecting everyone else to be the ones stumbling. You can’t even face your murder.”

Futaba drew back and sniffed.

The young woman in a sexy leather bodysuit came to her side, a Zat’nikatel gripped in one hand. She stood defiant at the holographic visage of her angry mother on the wall. “Hey! Futaba-chan’s been struggling through a lot of pain.”

General Isshiki Wakaba spat, her tone drenched in sarcasm, “Yes, what suffering.”

The self-declared goddess rose from the unconscious body of the boy in a fox mask and looked the smaller Futaba in the eye. “Remember.” She waved her free hand as if swatting a fly, and a shallow holographic projection sprang into being in front of Futaba’s eyes. On it was her mother in the dining room, a binder of brain scans on the table. The woman reached down and patted her head.

Then another flick of the goddess’ hand, and the sitting room replaced the dinky dining room. The door swung open, and the shuffle of fabric grocery bags setting down on the coat box heralded her mother’s entry. Futaba set her laptop on the end table and raced to the entry hall to throw her arms around her mother. To her surprise, Wakaba wrapped her arms around the girl and drew her tight. After a tender beat, she took the girl by the shoulders and held her back to look her in the eyes. “I know I’m demanding on you sometimes, but you know it’s because I want what’s best for you?”

The Futaba in the holograph nodded. “Somebody at work being a jerk again?”

Goddess Futaba’s hand lowered and the projection dimmed. “Was a single dubious note all it took to make you forget?”

Another hand-flick, and the projection sprang to life again with the sitting room, three suited men standing before her reading her mother’s last letter. Her tears. Their anger, burning her fragile heart not a week after her mother jumped in front of that car. Fell in front of that car?

Eyes welling up, the real Futaba blinked. “B-but… I…”

A sudden quake passed through the Pel’tak and Akira clutched the navigation console. The projection at the front of the room flickered to the mothership’s exterior cameras, showing clouds racing down.

A beat later it rippled back to the command center of a Daedalus-class battlecarrier. The industrial greys of the American space ship featuring late in the series projected an aura of inevitability around the sneering likeness of her mother. Lighting flared to throw General Isshiki almost into a silhouette. The woman in dress blues sat in the command chair in the middle, and her eyes flickered with gold. “That’s right. You killed me. Now your atonement is at hand!”

The palatial command center around them shuddered and the lighting flickered. The rough boy with dyed blond hair snapped, “I thought you said you could fly this thing?”

Akira shouted back, “We’re still not out of the atmosphere, shields and maneuvering are both limited!” The floor bucked underneath them and the longcoated boy grabbed his gold pedestal to stay upright while everyone else tumbled to the ground. He recovered and slammed his hands on the diamond-like control surface to get back to evasive maneuvering. “I’m already struggling to get this bucket of gravel through the air – I can’t handle shields and weapons on top of it!”

Goddess Futaba growled but drew back her hand with the Healing Device strapped to her palm from the boy with the fox mask, rushed to the throne with stumbling steps and a hand over the plasma wound, then pushed a couple camouflaged buttons before returning to the boy. Two gold pedestals topped by flattened blue domes rose up from the polished stone floor.

Byakko struck a confident pose for such a short person. “Panther, Reaper, can you figure out the controls?”

Helping pull the tall boy with blue hair to his feet, the blonde girl nodded and rushed to the open pedestal. She placed her gloved hands on the blue crystalline controls. A blinding flash filled her vision. She jerked back. “Whoa, that was like trying to see every color at once!”

The tall boy paced closer as another impact made the Ha’tak tremble. “Perhaps I will be able to make sense of it.” When she stepped away, he took her place and gripped the flattened blue domes with his spread hands. “Fascinating. Just with touch, I can as much feel as see the status of the entire vessel. I shall endeavor to keep our defenses from collapsing.”

The dyed-blond just let out a cackle and gripped the blue domes at his terminal. “This is even better than the arcades! Twenty-one gun salute, bitch!”

The command center trembled behind her mother’s likeness. A pulse of gold glowed from General Isshiki’s eyes. “I hate you!”

A mighty blow struck the pyramid ship ascending through the skies and the floor jumped underneath them.

Akira struggled to keep his feet and hold his hands on the controls to keep dodging blue beams from the ship higher in orbit. “Bullshit! Director Isshiki loved her daughter!”

The girl with twin pigtails and red leather paced closer and put a hand on Futaba’s shoulder. “We’ve seen glimpses of your memories, and Joker’s told us about how much your mother loved you. What made you think she could ever hate you?”

Futaba’s eyes couldn’t meet those stark blue ones. “When a person acts like you’re lower than trash, they don’t need to say it. She might have tried to act nice, but I saw. The mask slipped every February and October.”

Akira tensed. “Wait a second… that’s when the chairman came around for project approval.”

The small hologram in the middle of the room sprang to life again, showing Isshiki Wakaba power-walk through the flat’s front door, tossing her keys and stepping out of her shoes as if she couldn’t bear even to break stride. The small projection Futaba stepped up to the door to the dining room to greet her mother, but projection Isshiki flashed a snarl before she stormed with a stiff pace to the bathroom.

The mothership shuddered from another direct blow. “Die!”

Goddess Futaba stood, a hand out to help the girl in black leather to her feet, then paced to the real Futaba. “Remember, without averting your eyes this time.” She swept a hand and the holographic screen in front of Futaba changed.

Papers covered the modest dining room table. The young Futaba in the projection poked her head out from the hallway. “Mo-o-om! You’re always working and I’m always stuck at home.”

Wakaba scratched a signature in one of the papers, set it on another stack, then pulled a stack of pale orange sheets and started reading through them. “I’m too busy right now. I’m close, so close. If I can just finish this project, I won’t have to let him touch…”

The real Futaba sniffed and shuffled in embarrassment. “I just…”

Projection Futaba threw disposable plastic cups and shrieked, “You never do anything else! That research is more important than I am!” She grabbed the whole bag of cups and hurled it.

“See?” the real Futaba mumbled, a tear tracing a new track down her cheek. “I’m a horrible daughter.”

Another blow like the fist of an angry god struck the Ha’tak, with a distant, metallic groan. The boy in the fox mask called out, “The shields have collapsed!”

General Isshiki snarled, “I could have made the scientific breakthrough of the century! You took my life from me!”

“Don’t listen to her, Futaba!” Akira shouted from the navigation station. “That’s an amalgamation of your fears and second-guessing. It’s not your true mother!”

Despite one hand pressed over her charred wound, Goddess Futaba reached through the projection to grab the real one’s face, forcing her eyes back up. “I said without averting your eyes. Remember everything.” She waved two fingers in the air and the recording backed up.

Projection Wakaba batted aside the bag of plastic cups, set down her pencil, and grabbed projection Futaba’s hand. Instead of a yell or smack, she pulled the girl in and wrapped her arms around her. “I’m sorry I haven’t been here for you, Futaba. You’ve been so much better behaved than the vice director’s kid, I’ve been taking that good Isshiki behavior for granted.” She patted the girl’s head. “But it’s almost over. Once this is finished, we can go anywhere you want.” She brushed a tender hand down projection Futaba’s cheek. “But this research could have era-changing consequences. I can’t hand it over to Kurusu – I have to be the one to finish it, even if it costs me my life.” She drew projection Futaba back in.

Another blow pounded the mothership, throwing everyone stumbling. General Isshiki howled, “Your pathetic life is meaningless!”

Ann knelt down next to the real Futaba, her eyes flicking to the holo-screen at the end of the room. “There’s no way that mean piece of shit is your mother. She treasured you.”

Goddess Futaba’s golden eye glow dimmed. “I wish Mom was alive again.”

The real Futaba surged through the projection, dissipating it, and hurled her arms around her facsimile like she’d longed to do with her mother for almost two agonizing years. “I do, too!” She sobbed. “But M-Mom’s gone! I can’t un-hear the a-angry words she said to me those nights she came home… her eyes bloodshot before she scrubbed herself raw in the shower.” Futaba hiccuped as tears streamed down her face. “I also can’t forget the time power went out and we roasted marshmallows over a gas stove on the balcony as snow fell. I don’t know what’s real!”

“My death was your fault!” General Isshiki roared.

The Ha’tak quaked around them. Yusuke called out, “The ring is losing structural integrity. We will start losing pieces of the ship soon!”

The girl with the iron plate over her face stumbled closer as the Ha’tak shook. “Did she ever abuse you? Ever raise up her hand against you?”

“N-no.”

Plate-mask Girl pointed at the screen with her screeching mother. “That’s a figment of your imagination, conjured up by fears, isn’t it?”

Goddess Futaba looked down at the real thing. “Would a mother who held you with such tenderness have written such a letter?”

“Look back,” The blonde girl entreated. “At every birthday and exam score day. Did your mom ever say such horrible things?”

Tears streaming down her face, the real Futaba tightened her arms. “No. Even when I threw a tantrum, she waited for me to calm down.” She sniffled and looked up at the beautiful, powerful woman with copper-red hair. “You’re the real me, aren’t you? The one who remembered all those tired smiles and refused to let me die no matter how hopeless things looked?”

Sparks gushed from behind General Isshiki, and Reaper shouted, “Fuck yeah!”

The pyramid shuddered around them, but the boy in a black jumpsuit and fox mask needed just one hand to steady himself. “Shields are back up!”

The real Futaba’s grip fell slack when her bigger facsimile began floating up. “Accept not the curse put upon you by those of black hearts.”

Isshiki howled with rage, “It was your fault!”

Even as more voices, both accusing and soft, emanated from around her, the unsettling likeness of herself spoke, her echo-y facsimile’s voice cutting through the whispers, “You knew from the beginning and let fear crush you. Will you die as the heartless ask of you?”

The fire within Futaba’s chest blazed. “Never! I’m going to trust my own heart and never back down again!”

“I am thou, and thou art I.” The copper-haired Futaba smiled and burst into blue motes of light, soaking into the real Futaba.

Blue flames blazed over the hacker, but instead of consuming her in merciless heat, her sloppy clothes were replaced with a skin-tight black bodysuit glistening with circuitry all across it. A heavy metal band formed around her head, unfurling into a set of heavy red goggles locking over her face.

General Isshiki slammed her hands onto the arms of her command chair. “I wish I had never birthed you!”

Futaba caught her feet as the Ha’tak rocked underneath her, then she pointed a finger at the main holo-screen. “Keep your forked tongue behind your teeth. No matter what you say, I’m gonna live! My life is mine!” She strode up the steps and hopped into the throne sized for a body a few times her own, its arms feeling warm to the touch. “Divert power to weapons! All cannons, fire!”

The Ha’tak quaked from another blow, but from her direction and Reaper’s aggression, a rain of plasma lanced into the Daedalus battlecarrier trying to blast her mothership out of orbit. Sparks gushed from an exploding station behind General Isshiki before the transmission cut.

The mothership rocked around them, the sound of shearing metal piercing their ears.

Byakko’s huge blue eyes widened. “The Palace is collapsing! But we’re in space, how do we escape?”

Feeling more alive than she could remember despite the cracks creeping through the stone walls of the Pel’tak, Futaba adjusted the front holo-screen to show the altitude. A pyramid inched up above the blue line between atmosphere and the black of space. She switched it back to exterior cameras. Plasma fire lanced into the grey Earth ship as it broke apart, but a chunk of golden ring floating through the view showed her Ha’tak wasn’t far behind. “The hangar! Pair up and escape on the Death Gliders!”

A stone facade on the ceiling cracked and a metal girder plunged through. It would have crushed the tall, blue-haired boy if he didn’t dive out of the way. Fire sputtered through the opening and more cracks spread.

Futaba waved a hand over the right arm of the throne, bringing a grid of holographic keys into existence, then she punched in an escape sequence. “Pile in, everyone! I’ll ring us straight to the hangar!”

The Thieves threw themselves to the throne and a set of rings snapped up around the gold seat as the Pel’tak collapsed, stone falling and fire rising until the transport rings flared.

In the cavernous hangar, things weren’t much better. A rack of twenty docked Death Gliders sheared loose and crashed down behind them, crumpling the rack beneath and knocking those down into the next row below.

Akira leaped up onto the nose of one of the alien two-seat fighters with the grace of an acrobat, his tailed coat flapping behind him. “Anybody else who’s played a flight simulator, jump in the pilot seat.” He held out a hand. “Who’s never done it?”

A fuel tank exploded far down at the base of the hangar, playing yellow light over his fearless face.

The girl with the iron face-plate leaped up and grabbed Akira’s hand for dear life.

Futaba jumped up and scrambled onto another fighter.

Panther grabbed the blue-haired boy and they hopped into the next Death Glider. When the blond in a leather jacket saw everybody else already strapping in, he threw himself into another fighter as Akira’s detached and aimed for the black expanse of space.

Futaba waved her hand over the controls to bring them to life and begin the launch procedure. Autopilot projected a safe course through the collapsing hangar onto the cockpit canopy and her Death Glider detached from its docking cradle. Another explosion filled the world around her with fire.

Thursday, 4 August 2016
Late Afternoon
Yongen, Back Streets

The exploding mothership blinded Akira’s eyes for a moment. After a moment of unnerving silence and the strange sensation of being motionless and yet twisting in every direction, the sounds of Tokyo intruded on his ears. Blinking in the sunlight of a hot day, the narrow streets of Yongen clarified around him as if he just stepped out of a dark room. Yusuke and Ann helped each other to kneeling, Makoto fumbled for a wall, and Ryuji squinted as if he had the same trouble seeing as everyone else even if he already stood on his feet.

Akira’s eyes fell on Futaba, but the orange-haired girl no longer wore the weird circuitry-suit. Her body splayed over the ground, limbs in no particular direction, wearing the same over-sized black shirt and striped, thigh-high socks as she had back in her room at the start of the day. “Futaba!”

He rushed to the hacker, his throat too tight to breathe and eyes too hot to stop tears from welling up. He scooped up the slight girl, her frame feeling too light in his arms for a human being. “No. Not another Tosa.” He shook her as much as he dared – which wasn’t much – to try to get some sign of life from her. “Please, Futaba-kun, wake up.”

Makoto and the others gathered around. “Did this happen because of that spectacular Palace collapse? Was it destroying the cognition of her mother?”

Morgana’s ears twisted back and forth as he strained to find an answer. “Cognitive constructs come and go, sometimes so fast they don’t register to the conscious mind. It shouldn’t have harmed her, but everything about her Palace and Awakening was unusual.”

Yusuke shielded his eyes. “Could it have been enough to put a physical burden on her? It does not appear that it would take much.”

“Yusuke!” Ann hissed.

“Akira?” Makoto shifted her focus to the trembling transfer student. She reached for Futaba.

Ignoring the wetness on his face, Akira tensed his arms around the hacker. “Wake up, Futaba.”

Ann held to shade her eyes from the sun. “What’s wrong?”

The surrounding conversation and ambient city noise faded as he hyperfocused on the hacker failing to respond to his jostling. “Please, Futaba. Don’t die on me.” Her head lolled to one side like a puppet with its strings cut and he adjusted his hold to support her.

Ryuji sank down to one knee, scrutinizing the transfer student. “She’s breathin’, dunno why she ain’t up an’ yellin’ at us.” He pointed at the transfer student. “I think he’s havin’ a panic attack. I ‘seen it in dudes before a big meet. When tests an’ run time an’ stuff all piles up.”

“What’s going on down there?” The Phantom Thieves looked down the alley at a trio of old men shuffling down one of the pedestrian streets.

Morgana growled for a beat before he looked at the gate to the Sakura house. “Reaper, Fox. Get them inside. Panther, go scope out Leblanc. Text us if Boss leaves or anything unusual happens. Nightrider, go get the doctor.”

Makoto nodded. “I’m not sure if she does house calls, but I’ll do my best.” She took off at a strong jog.

“Please, Futaba,” Akira said, his vision blurring with tears. “Please wake up.” When strong arms grasped his, he felt more like he floated with them than walked under his own power through the gate and up to the hacker’s room.

Akira set Futaba down on her futon with as great care as he could manage, Yusuke helping lay her down. At that point, Makoto returned with Doctor Takemi and the team leader sent the team brawn to back up Ann.

Akira let out a relieved breath when the medical expert stepped in. He shifted to stand up, but something pulled at his shirt. He looked down to see Futaba held an iron grip on a fistful of his black undershirt. He let out a breath and sat down, turning his attention to Takemi. “We can’t figure out what’s wrong with her, doc.”

Makoto gave a vigorous nod. “That’s right. She just plowed into him and collapsed.”

Takemi knelt down at the head of the bed and set her black medical bag down next to her. “Did she hit her head?”

Akira shot a glance at Makoto, who gave a subtle shake of her head. “No. I wasn’t expecting it so she kind of knocked me off-balance and landed on me.”

“Well, you relax. I don’t need you developing an episode while I’m trying to examine her,” Takemi said, kneeling down at the futon. She spotted the fist anchoring the transfer student in place, then sighed. “All right, sit down there and I’ll examine the girl. How exactly did you come across her in the street?”

“Uh…” Makoto looked like a deer in the headlights. Then, fast as a snap, she straightened, her expression becoming a mask of composed calm. “She just… ran out of the house. Ran into Akira and knocked him over. We’ve been worried sick about her.”

Takemi lifted the hacker’s arm to feel the pulse at the wrist. She stared at her watch for long seconds, before setting the limb down and pulling out a pen light from the large front pocket on her white coat. She pulled Futaba’s eyelid open, shined it in, then let the eye snap shut and repeated on the other. After putting the pen light away, she took a stethoscope from her black bag and held it over the left side of the girl’s chest. She listened for a few moments, then moved to another spot on her chest. After another few moments, she looked Akira in the eye. “Can you help me roll her on her side?”

Every muscle in his fingers and legs burned in pain, but Akira helped the doctor so she could slip the stethoscope onto a point somewhere at the upper back, beneath the shirt. He lowered the girl back to the bed when the doctor stood up.

Takemi took the stethoscope from her ears and let it dangle at her neck. She reached for the small, black bag she set against the corner of the bed, stuffing the scope in and pulling out a pressure cuff. She slid it onto Futaba’s arm, paused to feel for a pulse again, then puffed it up and read the gauge while feeling for a pulse.

Once the doctor slid the cuff off, Akira managed, “S-she okay?”

“No ocular or respiratory abnormalities,” Takemi said as she wrapped up and packed the cuff, then drew something in a hand grip with a ball on the end. She brushed hair away and rolled the ball across the hacker’s forehead. “Her pulse and blood pressure are both high, but her temperature is well within normal range for a young teenage girl. It looks like she’s underweight, lacks muscle tone, and shows minor signs of chronic malnutrition, but nothing severe.” She looked at the transfer student. “Did she say anything?”

Makoto spared a glance to the transfer student, who returned a lost expression. She coughed into her fist to try to ready herself. “I’m afraid not.”

Frowning, Takemi took a sanitizing wipe from a pack in her coat pocket to wipe at the hand-held roller thermometer. “I’d have to see her medical history to draw any firm conclusions, but respiration is normal. It doesn’t seem like she’s in any physical danger. It looks like she depleted her reserves.”

Morgana hopped up on the hacker’s computer desk, pushing aside a mouse and waking up the two main screens. The team leader ignored the scrolling text behind him. “Most of this might be the after-effects of her Awakening. There were just so many unusual factors, it’s hard to guess which one might be primarily responsible. I mean, who ever heard of somebody entering her own Palace?”

Inaba, Amagi Inn

Yukiko let out a sudden sneeze, then reached for a box of tissues under the check-in desk.

Yongen, Leblanc

Akira lifted his shoulders, a lancing pain cutting off the attempted shrug.

Takemi’s brown eyes shifted to the transfer student. “How often have you had panic attacks?”

Akira snapped, “Never,” at the same time as Makoto answered, “They’ve never been this severe before.”

The doctor reached for his wrist, but Akira jerked his arm away. “I’m fine, the patient was Futaba. Is Futaba.”

Brown eyes bored into his for long, tense moments. “Anxiety can build over time if it’s not handled in a healthy manner. There are some prescriptions I could write after I review a couple things at the clinic.”

Akira shoved his hands in his trouser pockets. “I don’t need lobotomy pills.”

Makoto sighed and stood from the desk chair. “Our priority should be Futaba-chan. Is she going to be okay?”

I’ll decide who’s the priority here.” Takemi gave the teenagers a steely look. “It looks like she’s just got exhaustion. How soon can you get her mother or father here to give a summary on her medical background? This might just be fatigue or it might be more serious.”

All three of the Phantom Thieves cringed. Makoto looked the transfer student in the eye. “We will have to talk to him about this, sooner or later.”

Morgana tensed on the hacker’s desk. “Even if that might risk him figuring out our identities?”

Akira worked open his jaw, a pop sounding. He rubbed the tense muscles. “You’re probably right, Makoto-senpai.” He looked down to the hand holding him with an inhuman strength. “You go get him. I’m kind of locked down.”

She nodded and rushed out.

As the minutes ticked by, Akira couldn’t stop his mind from conjuring visions of a sobbing, tear-struck Hifumi in a quaint, traditional home, hunched over the body of her mother. He could almost imagine her pained wail, “It wasn’t enough to kill Futaba? You killed my mother!

Makoto returned with Boss a few minutes later. “It’s all right, I explained the situation to him and he locked the restaurant.”

Sojiro looked at the doctor, then to the girl lying limp but for her hand clamped on the transfer student’s shirt. The restaurateur let out a breath and clapped his hand over his aproned chest. “Oh, is this it?” Hand on his hip, he fixed a gaze at the transfer student. “What was she doing outside?”

“Is this—?” Akira jerked to his feet, the girl’s hand at last releasing its grip. “She’s collapsed and unresponsive!”

Sojiro shrugged. “It’s like she runs on batteries. This happens every now and then. I guess it’s the lack of exercise.”

Lips pressing into a thin line, Takemi stood. “Fatigue would explain most of her physical symptoms, but she shows signs of malnutrition. Your daughter’s clearly not been taking care of herself. How old is she? Thirteen?”

The restaurateur rubbed the back of his neck. “Fifteen.”

Fifteen?” Takemi stood with an arched brow, and stepped into a lecture about the underdeveloped musculature, premature aging, and other dangers of not taking care of children. Her questions about Futaba’s medical background came rapid-fire and the three Phantom Thieves shrank back. After what felt like fifteen minutes and an ultimatum to bring her for a full, proper check-up the instant she woke up, Takemi stormed out.

Morgana stared after the doctor. “Yeesh. Women can be scary.”

Makoto, having crossed her arms back before the rant started, uncrossed them to shake out her arms. “How long is she typically out for?”

Sojiro knelt down to brush his hand over the top of her head. “Sometimes hours, sometimes days. Futaba’s a lot like her mother. She does everything on her own terms.” He took off his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose. “I’m going to go close up the store properly. Don’t you kids worry, I’ll make sure she has plenty of rest.”

Makoto nodded. “Of course, sir.” She stepped out, but drew her phone and opened the Phantom Thief chat.

Now that he knew Futaba’s life wasn’t in danger, Akira found his horrified gaze drifting around the disorganized dump which was her room. He started reaching for one of the lumpy bags before Makoto snagged his arm and pulled him along.

Notes:

The conflict with a person’s Shadow always implied a level of divided mind, especially if you’ve read Jung. I preferred the way that Persona 4 handled it, but there’s a significant difference in the focus of Man Versus Himself in that game and Man Versus Man in Persona 5. I did my best to find a good middle point that I’d always hoped Persona 5 would have taken. Using the framing of Stargate SG-1 and the hidden parasites allowing traitors to hide anywhere just added tools to that end. Amusingly, the issues I had with the end of Futaba’s Palace were largely dealt with in the changes they made in Royal, but by the time I got my hands on that this arc was already written. And if any Phantom Thief deserves a cool space ship, it’s Futaba. Tell me what you think.

There are also a few common points some may notice between the third-hand observations from Futaba and what Akira observed with Shido. Some people will use any tool for power, and from everything in the game I’m positive he used abuse to condition the people around him.

Chapter 94: August 4th, Fear of Failure

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Thursday, 4 August 2016
Evening
Chiyoda, Rekisen Park

Hifumi jogged through the trimmed topiaries of the quaint, out-of-the-way park between church and home. These moments away from Mother’s iron fist were too precious to waste talking away fans who drooled over her. Her large sunglasses felt like they just made her more conspicuous to people at a distance, but it was the best she had on-hand to hide her green eyes from the fifty percent of boys and every single amateur journalist in Tokyo who would recognize her. Her old, cream-colored dress may have been conservative enough to keep from standing out, but nondescript wasn’t quite a disguise. She reached up and tucked the loose strand of her red hair knot back into the headscarf that made it feel even hotter, but also made her less recognizable.

It had been more than a month since she visited, but there was something quiet about this park. It wasn’t just the limited foot-traffic, or the fact that Papa brought her here to practice before his matches. There was something cool and sheltered about it that no other place in Tokyo afforded her. Turning another corner of hedges that could use some more trimming, the shogi maestra came to a sudden stop at the most welcome surprise in weeks. “Akira-kun!”

The thoughtful boy jolted in his seat and dropped the Bible in his hands to the stone table. Even his tuxedo cat perched at the center of the table seemed surprised. Akira’s steely gaze shot wide and his mouth drifted open for a moment before he caught himself. “Togo-san!”

She would have pouted at the use of her family name, but for the way the corners of his mouth turned up. It made her want to reach out and pinch those cheeks. She sat down across from him instead. “What are you doing all the way out here? I thought you lived down by Minato-ku.”

His smile twisted into a frown and that gaze like a lightning storm dropped. His hands closed into tight fists and his shoulders hunched.

The way he talked about his father left little question he didn’t come from good places, but the amount of pain she saw him in stirred her to get up and sit down on the bench next to him. “Akira,” she started with quite a bit more force than she intended. He stopped turning away from her, but still looked like he was considering throwing up over the corner of the table. She reached a hand, then couldn’t decide what might be too far. Would it be too intimate to wrap around his waist and lean in? To take his hand and feel those calloused digits in her own? She settled for pressing her hand against his back and rubbing it in circles. “Talk to me.”

Akira opened his mouth, then closed it. He breathed through his nose a few times, leaning against her hand, though she couldn’t tell if it was conscious or not. “You ever feel like everything you do just makes things worse?”

Her hand paused, then Hifumi took a breath and kept going. He held her while she went to pieces before. Offering the same support back was the least she could do. “Sometimes it feels like anything I do with Mother is exactly that.”

That seemed to be the wrong thing to say. He tensed against her, but Akira’s glare turned on his cat. “Maybe it would be better to find another way of changing her mind. Three out of four is hardly an acceptable success rate.”

The cat stood on all fours, tail standing up with an agitated waver. He meowed back.

The transfer student gave a bitter snort. Hifumi lifted a hand to take his, then decided that might be too far. “Stressed over Medjed’s threats against the economy? I know it’s all some people are talking about, but there’s nothing you or I can do so there’s nothing to gain by dwelling on it.”

His shoulders fell even more and that gaze like a churning storm fell to his Bible. He fiddled with the bent corner of a page. “Yeah. Nothing you or I can do.” His shoulder blades pinched together and his back felt like a rock against her hand. “I guess it’s nobody, now.”

Akira’s cat stepped onto the Bible to look up into the transfer student’s eyes, and he gave a clipped meow.

With as much gentleness as possible, Hifumi reached her free hand to take the cat’s feet and move them off the Bible. She remembered him mentioning another victim he was trying to help. She wanted to be reassuring, but her own stresses piling up ran ahead of her brain’s filter. “Have you saved the girl you were going to help before Mother?”

Somehow, Akira withered even more.

His tuxedo cat gave him a plaintive meow.

“Yeah,” Akira snapped, straightening with an anger that burned through his exhaustion but seemed to take more of him with it. “What a flaming success. If today’s an example of what we can do, maybe it’s better we didn’t all charge into her mother’s heart.”

Morgana thumped a paw onto the Bible to step into view with a hiss.

Akira glared back, though with just a modicum of energy. Those eyes looked so hollow as he said, “She already knows. She’s smarter than me, remember?”

Heart fluttering in her chest, she fought to keep a smile from blooming across her face. He looked in too much pain to let him mistake thinking she was making light of him or his problem. Hifumi’s fingers lifted the cat’s paw back off the Bible. Then she took Akira’s chin – just with one finger, not with enough strength to give the impression she was forcing him to look at her. “Akira-kun. If you’re angry with something you think went wrong, don’t punish yourself through an animal or inanimate object.” She straightened as much as she could without making a point of it. “I’m here. Talk to me.”

Those stormy grey eyes at long last locked onto hers, and she felt her own heart clench in her chest at the agony she saw there. Akira’s lips trembled for a moment before he spluttered, “I think I killed her.”

Morgana yowled.

Hifumi saw a shine come to his eyes, and felt him tense against her. Well, if he thought she was going to just let him go, he didn’t know her yet. As close as he seemed to storming away looking like he’d swallowed a knife, she couldn’t be cautious. She put her arm around him with a firm grip to keep him pressed against her, even if all it conveyed was that she was going to be there for him whether he wanted it or not.

A sound passed through his throat and the glisten of reflected city light in his exhausted eyes grew brighter. He swallowed and tensed, but couldn’t seem to gather the strength to pull away from her. “You shouldn’t be here, Togo-san. I haven’t even done anything for you. I couldn’t even—”

His voice cracked and she lay her left hand against his arm, pressing just a bit to be sure he felt it under his sleeve. She took in a breath so she sounded steady. He needed someone to be steady right now. “I’m here and you’re here right now. Sometimes that’s all we can do. No boat can rush the tide.”

Yongen, Sakura House

Akira stumbled up the stairs, his breaths coming in short gasps. He reached the door with a star field and Earth’s point of origin symbol, criss-crossed with Do Not Enter tape, and hurled it open. The frail body of Sakura Futaba swung on a noose hanging from exposed rafters, her head cocked to one side and long empty eyes staring out. He wanted to scream, to shout for her to get down, to say anything, but no breath would pass in or out of his lips.

He took one step in, pushing away the mountains of trash bags piling up around every wall, but more just fell in his way.

Red lights strobed around the blackout curtains, accompanied by the pulsed wail of a siren. Half a dozen cops charged through the door after him.

Akira pushed another step in, reaching for Futaba as if he could undo the horrific act before his eyes. A folded card on her desk, the only neat item in the room overflowing with garbage, proclaimed, ‘It’s all your fault.’

The trash parted for the cops and they pounded him into the wooden floor with batons, cuffing him without the mercy to pull his eyes away from the hanging body. One of them shouted, “We got the murdering bastard! Now let’s put away the rest of the Phantom Thieves!”

Friday, 5 August 2016
Early Morning
Yongen, Leblanc Loft

Battle at the Pyramid sang out of his phone and Akira jerked. He looked around the spacious loft, the window air conditioner whirring away, and wiped at the tears threatening to spill down his face. He threw off the sheet and stood, stumbling through his achy muscles to his phone on the workstation and cut the morning alarm. He pulled up the news.

“…Commissioner General Matsumoto reiterates that Wednesday’s data leaks were a small-time attack by opportunistic hackers and that there has been no evidence of Medjed’s promised attack against the Japanese economy. Despite those reassurances, the Nikkei 225 opened down two points today, with the only clear winners being water filter makers…”

Akira stopped the video and scrolled through several news feeds, but no reports of Innocent Child Found Dead interrupted the headlines choked with people panicking over Medjed and the stock market.

Once his shaking stopped and he could breathe again, Akira changed out of his sleep clothes, donned his glasses, and put together an average day kit in his leather satchel.

By that point, the team leader who was not a cat yawned, ending with a click of feline jaws, and stretched with the languid ease to make a real cat jealous. “Today’s a rest day, Joker. We changed Sakura Futaba’s heart. You could sleep in.”

“No,” he said, tone flat. He unplugged his phone and checked the time. “Sojiro should’ve been here by now.” He shot his temporary guardian a text asking him if everything was okay, and asking about Futaba.

Pacing filled the moments until his phone buzzed with Sojiro’s response. [Hold your horses, kid. Everything's normal, just like any other day.]

Akira looked at the time. The restaurateur was a creature of habit, and he would usually be inside stretching and setting up by now even if it was half an hour before opening. [What about Futaba? Is she okay? Has she woken up?]

No response came and Akira tried to sit down to study, but he couldn’t quite get the rafters out of his field of vision and he couldn’t stop seeing that frail body dangling from a noose. He threw his pen and trotted downstairs to make himself an omelet. He wasn’t hungry, but the effort would take up some of his attention. Minutes slipped by as he diced a tomato and pepper, stirred them in rice, then switched to a pan for the whipped eggs. More to see if he could figure out how the chefs at Amagi Inn did it, he tried to use a couple chopsticks to pull the eggs into a tornado shape, but ended up cutting it into uneven chunks.

He sat down with his breakfast and sent a text describing the strange morning to the group chat.

Makoto’s ID winked in. [Are you sure that's so unusual? If everything worked, Futaba-chan shouldn't be in any risk. It might all look the same as any other day to Boss-san.]

Akira cut away the first bite from the omelet, lacking the twist of a proper cyclone omelet or the loose, easy-to-eat bits of scrambled eggs. He wondered what the Amagi Inn kitchen staff would have to say about it. Most of his attempts to led to them pushing him at vegetables so he couldn’t cause harm to the immaculate dishes they crafted for VIPs. He typed, [And if it didn't work, it could be days before we all realize how fucked we are.] He could just imagine Hifumi giving him a disappointed sniff. He paused, realizing how pointless that much negativity was, deleted the text, and pocketed his phone. With a grump, he turned to his breakfast.

The instant he cut into the eggs and rice, the bell jingled and the restaurateur strode in. He looked haggard, ground down by the world. Akira shot up from the bar seat. “Is Futaba okay?”

Sojiro gave a weary glare. The sun had yet to rise up above the Tokyo skyline, but there the restaurateur stood without clear sign of lost sleep. “I told you once. Runs out of energy like a battery. Leave her alone and she’ll be fine.” He turned the television on, then rolled his eyes when the newscaster started droning on about cybersecurity and the falling stock market.

“Maybe the problem was her being left alone,” Akira muttered under his breath, but sat down to his omelet.

If Sojiro heard, he gave no sign. He looked down at the dish, then leaned a bit to get a better look into the omelet. “Trying out fancy omrice?”

He pulled another chunk away on his chopsticks. “They used to do tornado omelets Amagi Inn. The tourists seemed to love finding chunks of cheese or veggies in the rice, so it became the thing to do. I’ve never been able to get the tornado look right, though I haven’t tried all that often.” Most of his cooking before had been the bare necessary to keep going. Back when he lived under his old bastard, what did he have to look forward to?

The transfer student checked the group chat. Mishima had joined to report this weekend’s summer plans. Makoto’s last text noted, [Big Sis would kill me if she knew I had been putting off all of summer’s school work until now.]

Akira ate a bite of the omelet and sent, [Study group? All of us could probably use the academic help.]

Ann texted back, [Are you trying to show off, Mister Ninth in his Year?]

Pushing back annoyance, he replied, [Still room for improvement.]

Mishima texted, [You know, most people would be ecstatic to have broken into the top ten at all.]

Makoto sent, [How did you do it? Your records just had you above average before Shujin.]

Akira started typing an angry reply. His grades were never high enough for the old man, no matter how many tests he aced. Shujin treated him the same, calling him in to the principal’s office to accuse him of cheating. Even his fellow students wouldn’t cut him any slack, two thirds believed the cheating rumors and the others wanted him to give them his notes.

“Eat up. Go out and enjoy the summer,” Sojiro said, heading to the front to flip the sign and open for the elderly pair waiting outside.

[Inuri failed all the tests I was absent for,] Akira at last sent. If he was honest, his attendance was just one of many reasons his old high school was probably eager to give him the boot. He’d been more focused on pissing off the old man than showing them up. Though Hifumi’s tutoring sessions helped. [Hey, maybe we could get together and steamroll through the summer school work.]

[I suppose it couldn't hurt,] Makoto texted.

Ann and Yuuki both threw in their affirmation, so Akira dug into his breakfast as more customers trickled in.

Friday, 5 August 2016
Afternoon
Shibuya, Bikkuri Boi Diner

Morgana shook out his head to work a kink out of his neck. Not that he was trying to act like a cat, it was just his distorted body acting against him! The murmur of scattered conversations gave a pleasant lull to the cozy space. Lingering smells from the Nostalgic Steak ordered as lunch still tickled his nose. As usual, Joker and Nightrider powered through lesson after lesson like machines. The way they egged each other on, ever locked in competition, helped push the group, but it dredged up concern about how they’d act the next time they ventured into the Metaverse.

Joker tapped the lovely Lady Ann. “‘Scuse me.”

The ever graceful, beautiful young woman stepped out, then plopped back down when the transfer student headed to the bathrooms.

Waiting for the bespectacled boy to get out of ear-shot, Morgana popped up, paws on the table to give himself a little more stature. That class representative was near, sitting to his left while the upperclassman scribbled away at his right, but if he picked up on the conversation he might be able to reveal something the others had missed. “Hey, have you been paying much attention to Joker? He was finally starting to loosen up and settle into his role as a normal student in the real world, and our jack-of-all-trades in the Metaverse… but has he seemed…” He struggled to find the best words. “Like he regressed? At some point since we started Futaba’s Palace?”

Nightrider tapped her pen against the table. “After he stitched that first memory back together?”

Lady Ann scratched her head. “You think he’s jealous of Futaba’s mom?”

“Envious,” Nightrider corrected, her crimson gaze staring out, unfocused. “And no. I don’t think he even ‘gets it’ enough to be envious. His mom wasn’t a monster like his father, but she was still pretty horrible to him.”

Mishima’s deep, brown eyes widened at her. “You got him to tell you about his family? I figured he’d start the zombie apocalypse because he’d come back just to keep from opening up to the coroner.”

Lady Ann spluttered a laugh, nervousness laced in what should have been the lovely woman’s light energy.

Nightrider’s analytic gaze swept over the table peppered with papers. “He seems like he’s always fairly wound up. But while we’re in a Palace he seems like there’s no problem. It’s the exact opposite of what I’d expect from… anyone. Almost like he’s more comfortable in combat than walking down the street.”

Mishima set his phone down, which had to be a first the team leader had seen. “He seemed steady as a rock when he came up to the roof to talk to me on the day of Kamoshida’s confession. Granted, I wasn’t in the best state to observe then.”

Lady Ann’s slender digits slid across the table towards him as if considering taking a hand just a little too far away, then she pulled back. “He… seems worst between defeating a person’s Shadow and when the change of heart goes public. He’s always reassuring when I run into him on the subway, but I wonder how much he believes it.”

The upperclassman’s crimson gaze fell to the team leader next to her. “How’s his sleep been?”

Morgana’s ears twisted back. “Well… he’s been better with the AC unit, but it’s been pretty inconsistent. I must have missed him texting her, but he met that shogi idol last night when he went out to read in a park. That seemed to calm him down some.”

Nightrider gave a nostalgic smile. “Togo-san is quite the kind soul. I’m sure her expertise in shogi appeals to something in him, too.”

Mishima’s eyes widened at her. “Shogi… Togo… Wait, you know the Venus of Shogi?”

Nightrider crossed her arms. “The media dubbed her that after a photo shoot she didn’t even want to do. After having seen the way some men treat her, I understand why she doesn’t like it.”

Morgana licked a paw and brushed at his ear, then realized what the action looked like and straightened with his chest thrust out. “You seem to know an awful lot about her.”

The upperclassman forced a shrug. “Akira introduced us and she came by the dojo last week. She just doesn’t seem to have the… spirit for martial arts, even if she was polite enough to ask. Even after I showed her the form, she couldn’t commit to a throw.”

Lady Ann’s head tilted, those fluffy pigtails swaying in a mesmerizing way. “Really? I never pictured him going for those silent, demure types.”

Nightrider’s eyes widened, taken aback. “Oh, if you’d ever played shogi with her you’d know she is not the meek type.”

The two just seemed weird to Morgana. “Regardless of that, what do we do about Joker?”

A ponderous silence fell across them until the upperclassman tensed and called out Akira’s name more as a warning to the group than greeting, and he seemed to pick up on it.

More rattled by the sudden tension than the others, Lady Ann popped up from her seat and gave a fake smile that wouldn’t have fooled a toddler. “W-we’re done with homework, so let’s go for a walk!”

Friday, 5 August 2016
Late Afternoon
Shibuya, Central Street

With the previous customer stepping away from the register, Ann hop-skipped the rest of the way. “Double chocolate cream for me.”

Akira paced behind her. Just like every time they’d defeated a Shadow, she could feel the tension roiling off him. Why he was more skittish after defeating someone’s Shadow than before she would never understand. Not that this was the best place to ask. After a beat of scanning that damn shogi app, he dragged, then tapped on the screen and looked up. “I’m not hungry.”

Ann’s jaw tensed, but she decided not to insist when the line behind them grew.

Shibuya, Clothing Boutique Bronxx

Ann stepped out of the changing room, her yellow polo changed for a shoulderless white shirt for the moment. It was way more showy than she would have worn before, but now that the pervert blackmailing her for sexual favors was behind bars she felt like trying out something new, something her. She struck a pose as if the transfer student was one of her agency’s photographers. “What do you think?”

Akira’s eyes flicked from her hair to face to chest before he looked away with a blush. He coughed into his sleeve.

If only he wasn’t already smitten with a church girl, he would be so fun to tease. Would it be worth teasing him anyway? Decisions, decisions…

Akira lifted the sleeve of a dress with an angled stripe pattern. “Who would wear something like this?”

Ann’s minor disappointment was washed away by a tingling of nostalgia. The cut reminded her of something. She checked the sign, and sure enough… “Ah. It’ s a Hiiragi. This brings me back. Did I ever tell you she was what got me back into modeling?”

He let go of the sleeve, then tugged at his own as if afraid to let his arms see the sun. “I thought you modeled to feel closer to your parents?”

Ann nodded, then brushed a pigtail out of the way. “Well, that’s true too. But I meant back into modeling. I pretty much stopped when we moved to New York because there was so much competition there, it got so cut-throat it wasn’t something I could enjoy. But when I read that Hiiragi said she wanted people to be a light to people, I realized I wanted to do the same thing.” She smiled at the warm feeling of clapping under spotlights, before that led to drawing that perverted coach’s attention. Ugh. How did that bastard still make her feel like she wanted to shower and burn her clothes? “Come on.”

Harajuku, Takenoko Street

Ann pranced through the usual crowd streaming through the streets, her earlier stress forgotten and a feeling of control thrumming through her veins.

Behind her, paper shopping bags in both hands, Akira stumbled through the crowd with the grace of a newborn gazelle. How somebody could be so fluid in the Metaverse but so turned around in a simple crowd escaped her. While running, he seemed to have little problem.

A thirty-something man wearing a bright red shirt stepped out of a jewelry store, shouldering into her companion. “Hey! Watch where you’re goin’, cretin!”

Shopping bag still in hand, Akira raised a fist in reflex.

Ann hopped around the jerk to catch her friend’s hand before he could do anything. “Easy there, Akira.” She let out a sigh and they leaned against the jewelry shop storefront, with her joining a moment later. “I used to come here at couple times a week to people-watch with Shiho. Well, when she was available. The crowds can be a bit much when it’s a really heavy day, so I understand why you might have problems. Like, what gives all these people the right to be here?”

Akira tapped the paper shopping bags against each other. “I’m pretty sure breathing and being a carbon-based lifeform are enough.”

She chuffed, but she knew the sound of somebody delivering a line he thought was expected. “I thought you hated crowds?” She looked out, a sea of dark-haired heads bobbing by as women and young men rushed to and fro. The occasional wig or strange dye job popped out, but with enough frequency it reminded her of the winking lights on the edge of street ads. It was so weird that he wasn’t big on crowd watching, he was always on the lookout. “I tried coming out here once after Shiho… well… but it felt wrong without her. Like I was the weird one.”

He nodded, his expression just a little too serious. “Much better to bring friends so we can all stare at them. Nothing creepy about formation staring.”

She gave him a playful punch, but didn’t bother to hide the smirk on her own face. Ann was pretty sure some of his groaners were more for his sake than theirs.

He looked a bit less tense as he leaned back against the brick work next to her. “One thing’s for sure, you hardly stand out here. Even if they’re wigs, I’m seeing blonde, fluorescent pink, even blue.”

A passerby woman with a blue pageboy cut brushed back some bangs with the hand not holding a laptop bag. “This… is my natural hair color.” An awkward moment ensued before she trotted into the glove shop next door.

Akira glanced at her, looking like he wasn’t sure where to look or how to hold his body again. “You try coming on your own? I mean, it sucks that Shiho can’t come out with you like the old normal, but it seems like a good place. I mean, people may have stared because of your hair at Shujin, but I bet we could walk around in duplicates of our…gear and people wouldn’t even give us a second glance.”

Ann gave a smile at the awkward boy. He was trying. “True. The wild hair or clothes are half the fun.” She crossed her arms. “I came around to places like this because I thought if there were tons of people, I wouldn’t feel lonely. But the bigger the crowd…”

“The more alone you feel,” he said, voice thick.

Ann turned to the transfer student. While she very much preferred Yusuke’s even-keeled calm, even he had his spastic moments. And the more time she spent around Akira, the more she understood the floundering boy just trying to make his way through life without a roadmap. She took in a breath, but held in her comment. No point wondering might-have-beens, he only had eyes for Shiho then. And even if it wasn’t for the Nadeshiko beauty he’d fallen for, Ann and Akira bounced off each other like a stone over a pond. At least Yusuke was always willing to set down both what he was doing and thinking to listen to her. After a beat, she leaned closer, her shoulder brushing up against Akira’s, and they looked out at the crowd. “There’s a lot to like about this place, but I think part of the magic is that there’s so much weird on display that we don’t stand out here. I’m just glad I get to experience it with someone else.”

Several seconds passed as Akira stared out, and the muscles in his arm never relaxed. “Big K would say the best things in life are shared. Doesn’t feel like it when the only things I ever got were hand-me-downs nobody else wanted.”

His little speech about not fitting in at the Wilton buffet echoed in Ann’s mind and she snatched for the first thing to say to try to change tracks. “I wonder what these people are thinking right now.”

Akira clasped both his hands at his front, a hint of a smirk’s shadow on his lips. “Shit, did I leave the stove on?”

She stood straighter and bumped him with her elbow. “You can play the odd man out if you want, but even you wanna be part of the party.” She focused back on the crowd, following a girl with medium-length hair done up in long spikes, shouting at a boy who hunched so much he started to disappear into the crowd. “Check out the row there! His girlfriend’s totally going for a knockout!”

Akira shielded his eyes and searched. “She’s insisting he pay for it?”

Ann thwapped him. The fight in the crowd broke up and streams of happy shoppers passed by. “I’m glad we started what we did. All those people are just trying to make it through the day, looking for a smile when they can’t fake it. I hope we can give one to each one.”

A clump passed and he pressed back between two decorative pillars, then reached to his day satchel for a paperback book with a battered cover.

She reached over to push it back into his satchel. “Just enjoy the neighborhood.”

He gave her the stink eye but let it drop back in. “It’s just until some more of the tides of humanity move on. You just don’t appreciate a good book. They help calm me down and give me something to think about.”

She rolled her eyes so hard her pigtails jostled. “Ugh. At least pick something that isn’t boring if we gotta wait.”

Boring?” Akira bristled and presented the cover. “Hong Gildong is the seminal Korean folk hero story! He’s almost as cool as Arsène. Both steal from corrupt aristocrats.”

Ann thrust her arms out at the bustling shopping district. “We’ve got the great outdoors all around us and you spend all your time in fake places? You need to appreciate the chance to get out. Stop listening to all that depressing news about the stock market, that’s not the real economy anyway. I’d have thought a mountain boy like you would love the prospect of a hike or camp… as much as is possible in the city, anyway.”

Akira let out a puff of air. “I did that plenty, the times I ran away. You do that shit because you have to, not because you want to. If the great outdoors were so great, why would humanity spend so much effort building the great indoors?”

She thought for a beat. Ann made it another beat before she burst out laughing. “The great indoors, ha ha ha!”

He crossed his arms and pouted. “I was actually being serious that time.” He pulled out his book, but she was too busy laughing at ‘great indoors’ to get annoyed at him this time.

Friday, 5 August 2016
Evening
Yongen, Bathhouse

Akira rubbed at his head with a towel, then tilted his head and poked the corner of the towel at his ears to get out that waterlogged feel. He stepped into the changing room and tossed his towels into the woven bamboo baskets along the inner wall, but before he could even get his boxer briefs on he heard Alliance Force, Assemble! sing out from his phone. “Stubborn asshole association, this is Jerry Atrics.”

Makoto released a frustrated growl. “Honestly, Akira?” A beat passed with packed train noises in the background. “Has Futaba-chan woken up yet?”

“Not as far as I know,” he said, stepping into his pants. “Sojiro gave the usual ‘leave her alone’ thing this morning, and I’ve been out most of the day.”

Makoto spoke at a raised volume to keep above the train on her side, “I’ve been concerned since we left her on her bed. I know what Boss-san said, but we just collapsed her Palace and I need to know we didn’t cause a mental shut-down.”

Akira reached for his long-sleeved shirt. “I asked him this morning and he told me to mind my own business.”

“I thought we might be able to get something from Boss if we tried together.” There was a tension he couldn’t explain in her voice.

“If you could give me a few minutes, I just got out of the bath. I’ll finish changing and meet you at Sakura’s house.” He waited just long enough for a tone of acknowledgment before hanging up and getting dressed. He took a minute longer than normal to make sure his clothes were straight and tidy. It didn’t have anything to do with his upperclassman, or potentially being seen by Futaba.

On most days, the coffee shop would still be open. Why Boss kept it open to such ridiculous hours, Akira couldn’t fathom, but the lights were off and the door locked today. Akira slipped in with his key and put his dirty set of clothes into the hamper upstairs before heading back out, flipping the sign so it said Closed, then heading up to the Sakura house. Morgana trailed behind. The upperclassman must have already been on the way because she stood against the gate, hunched as she scrutinized something on her phone. “Hey.”

Makoto gave a nod. “Akira-kun.”

He returned the greeting and opened the gate, striding through with her at his left. His knocks at the door sounded lighter than the last time the Thieves came to check on the Sakuras. With any luck, they’d have good news.

After a few moments, the clack of unlatching locks came from inside and the door swung open. A commercial for virus protection played on the television inside. Sojiro stood in the entryway, wearing white sweat pants and a beige T-shirt, both more casual than Akira had ever seen the man. “What are you kids doing here?”

Makoto took a step forward and bowed to forty-five degrees. “Please excuse the intrusion, Boss-san. But we’ve been concerned about Futaba-san. I never apologized properly for scaring her that night we barged in, thinking you’d had a heart attack.”

Sojiro’s lips pressed together, a tightness over his face like he wanted to tell her off and get her head out of the doorway, but he rubbed the back of his neck and let out a long breath. “Listen, kid. I believe that you didn’t mean anything, but Futaba’s my kid to take care of. She’s still asleep. It’s a little longer than usual, but not outside the norm.”

Akira noted a twinge below the restaurateur’s eye as he said that. His gut twisted as he remembered holding the frail girl. “She hasn’t woken up since…?”

Sojiro sighed and let his hands fall. “You need to go take care of yourself, even more than most people. Don’t worry yourself over somebody else’s problems.”

“I just want her to be okay,” Akira said.

Sojiro backed into the hall. “Me too, kid.” He hesitated for a beat, then said, “Go home.” The restaurateur closed the door and feet padded away.

Makoto shuffled on her feet for a few seconds.

Akira paced to the gate. “That was fucking useless.”

She let out a breath and took the one step to come alongside him in what little ‘entry courtyard’ the humble city home had. She toyed with her fingers. “Well, at least we know she hasn’t had a mental shutdown.”

Yet,” Akira snapped. He breathed in and flexed his gloved hands, but when he started again his voice rose in speed and volume, “Maybe you were right and we just got lucky the other times. How do we know that we wouldn’t just kill Togo’s mother?”

“Joker!” Morgana shouted from his perch on the wall. “Don’t be so fatalistic. We did everything like with Kamoshida. Calling card sent, her Shadow rejoined her real self…”

“Her Treasure, which was her self – her Palace – blew up!” Akira hissed.

She looked to the team leader for backup, only for Morgana’s jaw to drift open, then closed. He shrugged. “We did everything the same as the other changes of hearts. She should wake up with her distorted desires gone, just like the others.”

“Right,” Makoto said, trying to tug Akira aside by the elbow and gesturing for quiet. “We pulled this off, just like the last ones.”

Akira’s shoved the class president into the modest home’s property wall. “Loss of consciousness, complete lack of responsiveness… Open your fucking eyes! We inflicted a mental shutdown. We killed her! And we’d kill Hifumi’s mother just like we killed Tosa Kotomi!”

One trembling hand grabbed for her, but Makoto’s practiced reflexes snagged his wrist and reversed the surge, slamming him against the Sakura home. Before taking time to get full control back of her hiked breathing, she snapped back, “You think you’re the only one who’s scared about what we might do? You think you’re the only one who has a heart you want to change more than anything?” She let go and he turned just in time for her to shove her phone in his face.

He was about to shout back at her when he read the Metaverse Nav open on her screen. In its search history sat Niijima Sae, Mementos.

She gave him a few seconds after she seemed certain he’d read it before drawing back her phone and closing the app. “We had an argument about whether the Phantom Thieves are just a while ago. She’d always been sensitive about Dad since he died in a suspicious car crash a year and a half ago, but…” For the first time he’d ever seen her, Makoto trembled and looked like a regular, frightened girl.

From his perch on the slim property wall, Morgana stood. “Why didn’t you tell us? The Phantom Thieves help each other!”

She cast her fists down at her side, a glint in her eyes. “Because I didn’t want to abuse my position as a Phantom Thief! This is personal!”

It had been so long since he had seen someone scared for another human being, Akira wasn’t sure what to say. He crossed his arms. “I understand, I think. If you want to change your sister, I’ll help.”

Makoto’s crimson eyes snapped wide. “Huh? After everything…”

Raising his hands, Akira shrugged. “I can’t think of a funny way to say this, so I’m going to be straight up. Compared to me, you guys have your lives sorted out. For all of the Kant, Kierkegaard, or Rousseau that I read, I don’t feel like their vision of ‘right’ is something that can line up with the world I see around me. I rely on people like Hifumi and you to clarify that stuff, so helping you guys out shows me a lot more about where I should be.”

Makoto blinked, silence permeating the courtyard growing dark as the sun sank behind the skyline of Tokyo. After what felt like minutes, she cleared her throat and forced herself to meet his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

Akira back-stepped. “Why?”

Despite already having apologized, she gave a momentary bow. “I know we had poor first impressions, but I let myself believe that you let your anger at your past direct everything you do. You put a lot more thought into your life than that. I haven’t even read any of those, even if I had to memorize their names for exams.”

Akira tugged at his shirt to try to stop the feeling of it sticking to his sweaty skin in the summer heat. “Well, don’t praise me too much. I haven’t even been Catholic a year and only started reading Kierkegaard in juvie. Bibles were forbidden, but the library had a copy of On the Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates.” He lifted a hand, then wavered for a few moments before lowering the limb. “Have you been holding back nominating your big sister because of all the confusion with Futaba-kun?”

Makoto crossed her arms and backed up to the property wall. “No, I was trying to hold off until we had a lack of targets because I didn’t want the appearance of personal benefit. Big Sis has always been driven, but seemed like she was easing up after Masachi Marai confessed and the other names we passed along started falling in. Then we got busy with Futaba and the list of names ran out and she’s been… pushy.” She took in a deep breath and looked to the transfer student. Whatever she was searching for in his gaze, she seemed to find it since she straightened and turned to the team leader. “How long does it take for a person with a Shadow to… make a palace?”

Morgana sat on the end of the wall next to the gate. “That all depends on how quickly they feed their repressed desires. The only problem is whether we can get to her Shadow, but we’d have to check Mementos for that. And I’d rather wait until Futaba regains consciousness first.”

Makoto uncrossed her arms and nodded. “Understood, Morgana.” She glanced to the transfer student. “I should go. Message us when she wakes up.” She trotted through the open gate and jogged for the train station.

The team leader stood. “And you… have faith in Futaba. And in us. As much as possible, we followed the same procedure and it worked. We confronted her heart’s distortion and changed her heart. Awakening a Persona is proof of a changed heart.”

Akira turned around to look up at the small residence’s overhang, guessing where Futaba’s room was. Then he crossed himself and whispered, “Please wake up, Futaba-kun.”

Notes:

If this story was set just one year later I’d have fudged the news to take advantage of the 2018 admission of Japan’s cybersecurity minister admitting he’d never used a computer. The tendency not to let men (or women) into leadership there until they’ve started to ossify is a real problem and one of the flaws that Shido exploits in the game. It’s a bit more clear in the Japanese, but he does make general calls to give the boot to the old men in the establishment in the English as well.

Chapter 95: August 6th, End of Medjed

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Saturday, 6 August 2016
Morning
Yongen, Leblanc Loft

Alliance Force, Assemble! sang out of his phone and Akira reached over his copied math notes. “Furniture testing, you’ve reached Fits Matush.”

A long pause stretched on until Yusuke said, “Fits… Ah. Like chairs.”

A voice howled somewhere in the distance from his side, so off-key the transfer student couldn’t even call it singing.

Yusuke continued as if no strange noise just happened. “Do you remember the difficulties I had in plumbing the depths of the heart to portray pure beauty?”

“Uh-huh,” Akira said. The whole idea of pure beauty was one of their conversation topics that tended to leave them at an impasse. Besides Hifumi, nothing in the world seemed pure, so the dream the artist chased seemed impossible. “Still trying to figure out the human heart?”

“Precisely. If I can’t understand it, how will I ever be able to paint it?”

Chuffing, Akira switched his phone to his other ear. “Yusuke, philosophers and psychologists have been trying to understand the human heart for millennia. If it was that simple, I think Saint Thomas Aquinas would have done it.”

“Saint Aquinas left behind a foundation of collective society, but Jung wrote that the commonality of heroic archetypes is evidence of connection across human existence. After facing two corrupted hearts with you, I hoped I would come across a universal human truth. Yet I find myself at an impasse, as if adrift in the sea with no land in sight. My time under Madarame has given me a wealth of tools, but without him I find only that sea.”

“Well,” Akira said, thinking back through the things he’d seen with the artist. “If you’re feeling like you’re lost, step out of the rut your wheels run in and do something unknown. If you’re lost trying to depict beauty, maybe you need to try to portray something else, something alien.”

Morgana sat up from his work on the rake pick. “Oh, we should take him to Mementos!”

Yusuke gave a gasp. “The abyss of unconsciousness where we saw Togo’s distortion grow into a full-fledged palace! That’s brilliant! Let us make haste!”

Mementos

Morgana switched his folded crossbow to his other hand. He always felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up in Mementos, but he couldn’t shake off the feeling of being stalked today. The artist scratched away at his sketch pad, but another sound intruded on the team leader’s ears.

Joker paced, his P90 clenched in both hands. His longcoat swished with its usual grace, but that just seemed to highlight the tension of its wearer to the team leader. His red gloves clenched, but his hyper-vigilance was betrayed by the many false moans and flutters in the darkness in his peripheral vision.

Morgana spotted the sludge-like puddle forming in the dark just before three dark shapes leaped out of it. He scrabbled for his crossbow. “Shadows, this way!”

Joker spun, already summoning one of his fighter Personas as he charged with his oversized ‘survival’ knife held high. “Osiris!”

His first slice batted away the nearest Shadow and Joker grinned.

That boy was way too ready for combat.

While human in shape, the three emaciated Shadows clad in tattered shorts scuttled over the floor like spiders at the longcoated boy. The lead two leaped, slashing long clawed fingers at the manifestation of the Egyptian river god wearing a golden funerary mask with copper facing making it look green-skinned.

From Joker’s flinch, Morgana could tell that hurt, but his knife sliced through the closest Shadow so it couldn’t have hurt that much. The Shadows’ claws failed to find purchase and they tumbled back to the ground with the scuttling of a nervous spider. Osiris held up his hooked rod. Darkness roared from underneath all three Shadows.

One seemed winded, but the one that hung back waved his hands around a crackling ball of energy, finishing a chant that unleashed a lightning bolt into Osiris, knocking him and Joker down.

Joker may have been looking for a fight to burn off steam, but his fall was Morgana’s cue to save the day like a true gentleman thief. “Zorro!”

The burly Spanish vigilante manifested in a swirl of motes, his eyes blazing with an aura like foxfire. One of the Shadows shimmered in the psychokinetic grip, then slammed into the one that cast a spell.

A follow-up blast of lightning struck the winded Shadow and it dissipated. From several meters away, Fox gave a nod as if to apologize for not bringing his rifle.

Joker kipped up to his feet, dismissing Osiris to send out the next. “Raksha!” The red, twin-bladed swordswoman charged at a Shadow in a flurry of curved sword slashes until it dissipated like smoke.

The humanoid Shadow crawling on all four limbs made a leaping slash at Raksha, only for the swordswoman to dance out of the way.

Instead of finishing things quick with his Persona, Joker dismissed her and charged in to hack his giant knife with blow after powerful blow until the Shadow until it dissipated.

Morgana folded his crossbow, watching for signs of residual bloodlust, but Joker put away his knife. “You feel better?”

Still breathing heavy, Akira riposted with a bit of a snap, “Yeah, I do.”

The longcoated boy wasn’t far enough along that Zorro could do anything to help, so Morgana dismissed his Persona and paced to the artist. “Think you’ve found something that will help you capture pure beauty?”

Fox clenched his pencil in his fist. “Truly, this abominable place is a fitting manifestation of ugliness, but how can I depict beauty in a world of depraved ugliness?” Fox threw his pencil and sketchpad to the ground to hold his hands like claws. “How can these hands taught by Madarame create delicacy and purity when he did nothing but destroy those very things?”

Morgana put away his folded crossbow. “Artist’s block can be a terrible thing.”

Fox snatched back up his things. “It is the worst sort – my paintbrush will not still, but every time I pause to look at the whole painting, I am filled with revulsion at the latest monstrosity I have created. No painting has ever come close to showing the kindness of Ann-san, or the buzz of Tokyo like the breath of a stirring giant. They are all inelegant!”

To the Phantom Thief leader’s surprise, Joker came alongside and clapped a hand on the artist’s shoulder. “What if… they’re supposed to be? Or at least one is? Didn’t you say your Persona declared the world had beauty and vice? How can you depict beauty if you have no idea how to show ugliness?”

Fox let out a long breath. “You’re correct, my philosophical friend. I’ve let my passion and narrow-mindedness blind me to this ugly yet magnificent world. You are truly my Theo.”

Morgana tilted his head to one side. “Theo?”

Van Gogh’s brother.” He took his things in one hand and lifted his now-freed right to clap his hand on Joker’s, still on his shoulder. “Van Gogh died in ignominy and only achieved acclaim after, but his brother was friend and patron as well.” He allowed a small smile. “Not many have the fortitude to tolerate my… eccentricities.”

Joker slid his hand away. “We’d be hypocrites not to. For all I know, you’ve got it right and the whole rest of the world are the ones who are wrong. The best we can do is march forward to the truth as best as we know it. You’ve helped me out a lot already. It may have seemed like a nostalgic story, but once it was over I was glad I told you about Big K. I hadn’t thought about Amagi-san since I left Inaba.”

Right,” Morgana said, hopping up on the longcoated boy’s shoulder. “Life is confusing enough that nobody can make it through without any help. That’s why we help each other when a fellow stumbles. You keep us from losing focus on what’s important, and we’ll help you with the same.”

Fox looked back and forth between them for a moment before closing his eyes and cycling a deep breath. “I could never have deserved friends such as these.” He took in a sharp breath. “But this day I re-affirm, I shall return to you all the aid you have bestowed upon me.”

Joker poked the artist in the chest. “Careful, I might ask for a lot.”

Your fearlessness is like a beacon in the night,” Fox said with a shallow bow. “I promise you, I shall rise to the occasion.” He spun around to the tracks from which they came. “Now quickly, to the real world! My brush shall dance today!”

Saturday, 6 August 2016
Evening
Jinbocho

Akira leafed through a battered, hard-cover book. The water-damage seemed to be restricted to the one corner, but all the words in the outer lower corner were smudged. He checked the spine for the writer, Mulk Raj Anand, then set it back on the shelf to continue perusing. Hifumi hadn’t even read his texts for the past couple nights, and it was getting hard not to go stir-crazy worrying about the shogi maestra. Coming here to one of her favorite haunts wasn’t working out either.

His phone buzzed from what was probably more Phantom Thief chat, but he didn’t trust himself not to text something he would regret. With Futaba possibly down for good and Hifumi who knows what, he found himself on edge every minute. But when Alliance Force, Assemble sang out of his phone, he answered. “Director of Strategic planning, this is Kent C Detrees.”

Uh,” Yuuki drawled for a bit before clearing his throat. “I’m on the way to Kichijoji to follow up a lead that Ohya-san can’t pursue herself because her boss is watching her. It sounds like there’s some stuff going on in the group chat, but would you mind going to talk to her while I’m out? She kind of trusts you.”

He glanced at Morgana, who shrugged from his perch in on the transfer student’s shoulder. “As long as you’re not going to bite anyone’s head off, I don’t see why not. You weren’t that tired by that little walkabout in Mementos with Fox.”

Maybe that was the problem. But butchering Shadows wasn’t the kind of habit he wanted to build up. “You know what? Yeah. She at Crossroads?”

She contacted me by text,” Yuuki replied. “But that’s a pretty safe bet. When she can’t go investigating on her own, she tends to go there to drink her troubles away.”

A beat passed where Akira wondered what an independent woman would have to drink about, but there were plenty of oppressive things about Japan to drive people to alcohol. In the end, it didn’t matter. Her articles helped the Phantom Thieves. “Sure. I’ll bring Fearless Leader.”

They closed up the call and Akira headed to the train station. On the way, he opened the group chat to see if there was something he might need to update the reporter about.

His skimming ground to a halt when he saw Makoto mention meeting Hifumi at her dojo. Her mother had taken her phone away and she mentioned sadistic abuse by another Kosei student. [You saw Hifumi? How is she?]

[I mentioned that hours ago,] Makoto replied. [She showed up when I went to attend practice after school. She had an argument with her mother a couple days ago and her mother took her phone. She's physically okay.]

That would explain why she hadn’t responded to any of his texts. [That makes me think something is wrong spiritually.]

A beat passed and three dots danced next to Makoto’s ID. [Right, I forget you're Catholic sometimes. Does she always get… energetic while playing shogi with you? Or maybe it was agitated, people don't always show their true feelings.]

[Energetic. Only when she's enjoying it.] He smiled at the memory of their last game together. Jerks online could call it boisterous or unladylike all they wanted, it was engaging and fun. Akira trotted down the stairs and leaned against the tile wall as he waited for the subway. [She didn't have bruises on her wrists or say anything about home?]

Three dots winked in and out next to Makoto’s ID for several seconds. [What are you saying?]

The image of Futaba’s body, limp in his arms, flashed in mind mind. He couldn’t quite imagine Hifumi flying into an appropriate rage at him for killing her mother, but just the prospect of her turning up her nose at him and abandoning him filled him with a dread that made him cold in a way that didn’t counter the summer heat. There was no point in trying to press the Togo issue with the team if it wasn’t safe to try. [Nothing. Just worrying. I'll be at Crossroads to babysit that reporter for Yuuki.]

Ann’s ID blinked. [Thanks for taking one for the team. I'm wiped out from work. I thought it was going to be comfortable since it was indoors, but the studio had awful AC and those hot lights.]

Evening
Shinjuku, Crossroads

Akira turned to look out of the private ‘box’ to what might have been a dance floor before Lala turned the place into a simpler bar. It gave enough view to be forewarned of something happening downstairs without sacrificing privacy. The music pumping through the speakers felt quieter here, like a distant river, giving a sense of comfortable isolation. “So Shujin had two problems with the first calling cards. The first was that there were something like eighty of them, but the second was some of them being attached to the school bulletin boards with transparent packing tape.”

Morgana chuckled. “Reaper might not always think things through, but sometimes he comes up with good ones.”

Ohya tapped away at her laptop. “…to the bulletin board with packing tape?” She laughed. “Now why didn’t Junior bring that up? That’s the kind of thing that shows a journalist’s gone all the way to the primary source.” She finished typing, her gaze askance. “You got a photo?”

Akira took a sip of his canned tea to give himself a moment to think. At the time he assumed Kamoshida would be a one-off. He didn’t even believe Morgana about the change of heart, though given Futaba’s collapse he couldn’t say he had much more faith now. Pushing himself to speak, he mumbled, “No. But Mishima might.”

“That little guttersnipe,” the reporter said with a smile, sitting just a little straighter. “He’s been holding out on me.”

Akira arched an eyebrow at her pose. “You’re proud of that?”

The door opened and Lala entered with a tray of bottles, some clattering with a hollow clink.

She laughed, and he didn’t like how mocking it was. “Kid, a good journalist never tips her full hand.” She tapped away at her keyboard for a moment, then picked up a beer and took a gulp. “I mean, what’s all the Phantom Thief hoopla about, anyway? Junior may be a wide-eyed idealist, but you’re too smart to be suckered by their high and mighty shtick. That’s the one thing those Medjed assholes got right. Nobody does something if there’s nothing in it for them.”

The team leader scuttled behind the transfer student’s chair when Lala trotted over. The bartender set down two capped bottles, then set the tray down and started transferring empty bottles to her tray. “You mean jaded and cynical, like you. What happened, Ichiko-chan?”

Ohya took a deep swig from her most recent beer bottle, somehow managing to make a clear bitter frown through the process. “Company thought the incident weren’t ‘nough an’ stuck me on Phantom Thief duty. Won’ even let me go ‘round on my own time!”

“Still?” Lala said, putting the last empty bottle on her tray. “It’s been more than a year since Kayo-chan disappeared and that minister—”

With a suddenness that couldn’t have just been brought on by alcohol, Ohya’s drunken reveling evaporated into a scathing glare. “That doesn’t involve my informant.” She tipped her beer bottle back and drained it with several glugs.

The bar owner looked more disappointed than contrite. “Sorry, Ichiko-chan.”

The reporter slammed her beer down on the private booth’s tiny table bolted to the floor. A foamy droplet splattered up and hit the ceiling. “Dammit! All this shit’s soberin’ me up. I need s’more booze!”

The student and bartender looked to the two bottles she already set on the table. Lala rolled her eyes. “Don’t mind her, she gets childish without alcohol.”

Ohya pulled down at one eyelid and said, “Blah!” When the bar owner didn’t respond, she turned to the student. “Whaddya here for, anyway? Ain’t like you’re old ‘nough to drink. Ya expectin’ cash from the has-been reporter?”

Tired from fretting over Hifumi and Futaba, Akira leaned against the booth wall. “Just trying to help.”

The reporter popped the top off another bottle and slumped in her seat. “Geez, kid. You don’t gotta look like I ran over yer mother. You look worse than when when you came ‘round askin’ ‘bout Kaneshiro.” She held out the bottle. “’ere, you look like you could use a stiff one.”

Lala gave a meaningful clearing of her throat.

Ohya held her hands up – even the one clasping her beer. “I’m not actually gonna make the li’l twerp drink, Lala-chan!” A belch wrestled out, then her eyes widened and she plunked her beer down on the table. “Gotta go hit the porcelain palace.”

Akira’s palm smacked against his forehead as the reporter slapped her laptop closed and dashed off for the bathrooms. “That was ten minutes when I was hoping for an hour,” he said at the open booth door.

Lala picked up the tray clinking with empty bottles, a couple full ones presumably for the next private booth. “You should count your blessings, kid. If you stayed ‘til Ichiko-chan was finished, you’d be here ‘til sun-up. Why don’t you take the opportunity and go home before it gets too late? This part of Shinjuku gets a lot of shady types coming out late at night.”

Akira barked a bitter laugh. “Lala-san, I am one of those unsavory people skulking in the night.” He looked down and realized he was fidgeting with his grey gloves. He reached for his can of tea and tilted it for a sip, but the can was empty.

Her eyes traced over him for an uncomfortable. “We don’t have enough business to need your help tonight, but you’re welcome to come here on other nights if you need work. The paying kind or the keep-your-hands-busy kind.” She gave a sad smile. “You remind me too much of Kayo-chan. But it’s not my place to tell that story.”

A beat passed with the muted beats of the music downstairs filtering up. Akira stood to set his empty can on her tray but couldn’t muster any enthusiasm when he said, “Thanks.”

She gave a smile with too much pity to be warm. “Poor kid. You’d be a real heartbreaker if you weren’t so hard on yourself.”

Sunday, 7 August 2016
Evening
Shibuya, 777 Convenience

Settling the last packaged bento into the refrigerated display, Akira flipped out his knife and sliced the cardboard box they were shipped in to let him fold it flat. He collected the packaging and headed to the front to see how Nanami-san and the artist were doing with the newest stream of customers.

Yusuke held himself with an aloof bearing, as if by doing so he could draw attention away from the fact that the pink and green uniform shirt wasn’t long enough for his tall frame. He flipped over a package of dried, pressed seaweed to scan the bar code, then slid it into the customer’s wicker basket with the rest. “Two thousand thirty two yen, Ma’am.” As the frazzled middle-aged woman counted out yen notes, the artist met the transfer student’s eyes. “Akira-san.”

The door slid open and another two people came in.

Nanami looked up at the newest entrants and gave a relieved chuff. “Hirahara-san, thank god! It’s been packed all day!” She looked at the boys. “You two go in the back and get changed, this is the evening shift.” She gave a nod to the artist. “You held up remarkably well for your first day. Days ending in 7 are double points, so we always have heavier traffic. If you want to keep working here, we’d be glad to have your assistance!” And a weary but thankful smile to the transfer student. “Thanks for bringing in extra help.”

Akira gave a shallow bow. No need to tell her Hifumi hadn’t shown up to Mass and Yusuke calling to ask about work was the first lifeline to keep himself from going stir-crazy worrying about the shogi maestra. The unknowns between Hifumi who wouldn’t respond to his calls and Futaba whom he couldn’t call were getting to be too much for his heart. He didn’t even remember the convenience store had a special running today.

Yusuke fell in step beside on the way into the Shibuya underground. “In the past, my fellow students complained about heavy work loads when they got jobs outside the atelier. Despite your aversion to crowds, you seemed more calm in the store than before.”

“I had something to focus on,” Akira said, seeing nothing special in it.

Yusuke hummed in thought as they navigated down the stairs to the tiled underground. “Hiroshi-san said that people needed rest and relaxation when tired.”

Akira side-stepped around pedestrians coming up from the trains. “At the Institute, they used to say ‘If you can not give a man hope, give him something to do’.”

The artist slowed to a stop next to the employment brochures. “I believe the idiom goes ‘if you can not give a man love, give him hope’.”

That moment in the church when Hifumi put her hand on his sprang to mind and Akira’s cheeks blazed. He wiped his hand on his dress shirt. All the evidence pointed to shutting down Futaba’s mind. If he couldn’t even save Hifumi from her mother, what right did he have to her affection?

None .

Pausing for a breath, Akira took off his glasses to wipe down his face from sweat still beading from their brief walk in Tokyo’s summer outdoors. “No point in quibbling over poetry. Time for both of us to be getting back before curfew officers start coming out of the woodwork.”

Yusuke’s gaze remained rooted on the transfer student for a long moment as if he wanted to say something, but instead he shook his head with a guarded expression and checked the Phantom Thief group chat. “Rest well. It looks like Mishima-san has found another name for us to check and the others are considering acting tomorrow.”

Sunday, 7 August 2016
Evening
Yongen, Leblanc

Akira retrieved his book and descended back into the quiet space of the coffee cafe. A brief check of his phone showed still no response from his texts to Hifumi. Too tired to focus enough to study, but not tired enough to nap, he took a spot next to the stacked manga at the bar, ordered a coffee, and started reading. When the proprietor handed him his cup, he lifted the ceramic, saw the steam wafting off, and set it back down to cool. He pushed it aside so he could get into The Count of Monte Cristo. “How’s Futaba?”

“Sleeping, same as yesterday,” he said. “Her favorite green water bottle was in the hall, so I know she’s at least seeing to vital functions when I’m not there.” He gave a tired sigh. “That girl is so much like her mother.” He drew a cigarette, lit it, then took a brief drag. “It’s been one year, six months. I wish I could find out why she died so suddenly. Her work and daughter were so fulfilling.”

Akira looked up from his book. “The death that was ruled a suicide but definitely wasn’t?”

The proprietor took another puff from his cigarette, though the corners of his lips turned up. “You sound different than when you first heard about it.”

Nodding, the transfer student looked down to his book, then flipped it closed on his finger and looked the restaurateur in the eye. “I came to an understanding about a few things. One being that the source of that suicide story was my old ba—man. There’s little more I can do to make that right than set the record straight.”

“Make right…” Sojiro took another drag from his cigarette. “Wakaba-san told me something would happen to her before it happened.” He tapped ashes into a tray.

Akira remembered the restaurateur letting slip he took the student in as a result of Director Isshiki’s concerns, even if her death was near two years ago. “That why you took Futaba-kun in?”

A wry smile formed on Sojiro’s lips, but that tired yet bitter spark remained in his eyes. “’kun’ he says. Heh. Well, if none of this had happened, she’d be just one year behind you.” The corners of his lips turned down. “Maybe even in your year. Girl’s sharp as a tack.” He took another drag. “Say, kid, how do you heal emotional scars?”

Akira turned the page. His usual answer was anger, but his time with Ann and Ryuji showed him that didn’t work so well. Even when it worked, it burnt. Until Inuri, he never cared who he burnt. Since meeting Shiho and Hifumi, he realized there were people who never deserved that. “I keep myself busy so I don’t have the time to dwell.”

From his hiding spot under the next chair over, Morgana muttered, “See how well that’s doing you.”

“Shut up,” Akira spat back at the team leader. He glanced at the restaurateur giving in an arched eyebrow and straightened. “I hear time heals all wounds, but in my experience some wounds need sutures.”

Sojiro blew out a mouthful of smoke. “I figured. But it’s hard seeing her hurting and not being able to—” The front door’s bell jingled and he turned with a rote, “Welcome to—Futaba!”

Akira jerked in his seat and his jaw drifted open as the girl in a faded green trench coat slipped into the bar seat just past him as if they were all old regulars. She spied the coffee he set aside and said, “Oh, good. I needed one.” She picked it up in both hands and drained a third of the cup before setting it back down. A beat passed after her swallow before she looked up at the restaurateur. “Please tell me you’re not selling tepid coffee.”

The cigarette slipped out of Sojiro’s nerveless fingers. “How did you get here?”

Akira glanced at the girl they fought for weeks to free from her self-hatred. Conscious mind still chugging to catch up, his sarcasm took the reigns. “Looks like the pedestrian mode of conveyance.”

Sojiro and Morgana both snapped at him, “Not now!”

Futaba cackled. Then she glanced from the restaurateur to transfer student, then to the coffee. “Oh. That wasn’t for me.”

Sojiro blinked, his eyes going back to just as wide as before. “No! I mean actually no, but… you’re out of the house!”

Futaba set the cup back on the saucer and pushed it back at the transfer student. She shifted but didn’t quite meet the restaurateur’s eyes. “Sorry ‘bout that.”

Morgana hopped up onto the booth seating behind them all, chittering at the transfer student. “See? She can do things like say sorry.”

“Shut it, furball.”

When he failed to touch it, Futaba reached for the coffee and glugged the whole rest of the cup, then set it back on the saucer. “So hard to think. I feel like I’m forgetting something.”

Akira reached a hand out, feeling like his own brain was throwing off sparks. “Uh, Medjed?”

She sucked in a sharp intake of breath. “That’s it!” She shoved out from the chair and scrambled off.

Morgana leaped at the closing door. “After her, Joker! We gotta make sure she’s really okay!”

Joker jumped up to race after them, shouting over his shoulder at the shocked restaurateur, “I’ll walk her home!”

Yongen, Back Streets

Despite the head start she had on him, Akira was the second strongest runner in the Phantom Thieves. He caught up to the wheezing girl before she even stumbled past the grocery store. He helped her back up to her home as the frenzied burst of activity hit her.

After a few long minutes to catch her breath, and his insistence to sip some water, she led the way up to her room and took perch on the chair before her computer. “There’s a dozen members of Medjed at the moment, but the only one actually posting the threats to us is a script kiddie in Kamojima. He wasn’t even using a VPN.” She tugged the chair closer and sat up, letting her legs dangle off. “So how we wanna do this?”

The transfer student looked to the team leader. Morgana hopped up onto the bed and stared over the screens, but after a moment gave a shrug. “Computers are your area of expertise. The Phantom Thieves just want to protect Japan.”

Futaba, already keeping the transfer student in her field of vision, swiveled to look at him. “Wow, you must have a lot of levels in ventriloquism. You even sounded just like Bastet from my Palace.”

Morgana let out a frustrated grunt. “I’m not Bastet, I’m Morgana!”

The hacker’s eyes went wide and swiveled to the team leader. “Talking kitties? I must need more sleep.” She behind her back for a cushion.

Akira snatched it from her. “We’ll explain later, but you’re awake as I am. Crush that computer cracker.”

“R-right,” she said, then turned to her computer and tapped away.

A minute passed.

After another minute, Morgana flexed his neck. “She’s just tapping. Is anything happening?”

Unable to decipher the lines of what seemed gibberish text, Akira shrugged. “Hey, let the master do her work.”

A minute passed. She cackled, but continued typing and gave no other sign of acknowledgment.

“How much longer?” the team leader prodded.

Keys clacked.

Getting restless, Akira looked around the room. Books and papers were strewn across the floor, either dropped or thrown. Bags of trash scattered across the corners as if she couldn’t be bothered to so much as take her trash out of the room. He stood, adjusted his grey gloves, and picked up the first bag.

Yongen, Sakura House

Sakura Sojiro closed the door. After closing Leblanc in a scramble, his old bones were protesting and he still felt out of breath from jogging the short distance from the back-alley refuge. Wakaba’s little girl, out of the house at last? Even if there’d been any customers, like he’d have had the time of day for them. Night. Whatever. He plonked his keys in a ceramic gecko-shaped dish by the front.

Heavier footsteps than Futaba’s paced down the stairs.

Sojiro reached into the hallway cabinet and drew the heavy torch, then crept to the stairs and waited until the burglar reached the base of the stairs before turning it on… “Kid?” The transfer student lowered the bag of trash in his hands. “What are you doing?”

Akira looked down to the bag of trash in his hands. “Cleaning up? She invited me in.”

“Invited…?” Sojiro balked. He wanted to get angry, to take that club of a torch and beat the convicted assaulter with a self-confessed history of fighting away from Wakaba’s little girl. But his back hurt from scrambling to close up Leblanc and Futaba did sit next to the boy at the bar with a comfortable ease as if they were old friends just hanging out. She never even let him in.

You okay?” the boy queried with a glance up and down the restaurateur. “You’re wavering on your feet.”

Of all the times for that boy to play the concerned card, and for all his sarcasm he couldn’t even sound patronizing so Sojiro could feel justified in kicking him out. He waggled the torch at the kitchen. “Dumpster’s out the kitchen back door. Then sit your ass down on the couch. We’re having a talk.”

Akira nodded and trotted off with a sense of purpose.

Sojiro took to the kitchen and pulled a bottle of aged whiskey from the cupboard and poured himself a shot. He didn’t like to indulge, but this day was too hard on his old bones. First Wakaba’s girl walking herself out of the house, then finding out she’s invited a boy into her room. He supposed it could be worse, the boy had issues like nobody’d believe, but he was upstanding in a way he didn’t think possible to come out of the Kurusu family. Just to be sure, Sojiro snuck upstairs and slipped Futaba’s door open. It wasn’t locked, so he was able to peer in on the girl tapping away at the keys as that cute little tuxedo cat sat on her bed. She looked like she was on a mission and nothing else seemed out of place, though in a room that messy it would be hard to tell if there was a fight.

Sojiro looked back at his empty shot glass and headed downstairs, intending on another dose of liquid calm, but he ran into the transfer student heading to the couch in the den. He had his phone out and thumbed away at one of those chat rooms kids were big into. The restaurateur cleared his throat and the two sat down. Might as well start with the priorities. “How is she?”

Akira shrugged. “On the computer.”

The restaurateur let out a breath. “If she’s not watching Stargate, that’s what she’s always doing.” He swatted at the air as if that could do away with the boy’s excuses. “Why’d she let you in? How’d you even meet? Wakaba said you never crossed paths.”

Those stormy grey eyes magnified just a bit by his glasses drifted down. They stopped on his phone and he turned it to sleep mode. “We met online.”

Sojiro set his glass down on a combined table-magazine rack beside the recliner. The boy was more mature than most adults he’d come across, so the restaurateur decided to go straight to his biggest worry. “You’re not trying to sneak into Futaba’s bed, are you?”

Akira jumped to his feet, a snarl flashing over his face. “No! What is it with you people acting like I can’t have female friends without trying to fuck them?”

The restaurateur studied the boy, but the tells were all wrong for a kid his age lying to sate his libido. A bit red-faced, but understandable given what he’d just been accused of. Sojiro straightened on his recliner. “Futaba’s been through enough. I put you up in the cafe loft because I wanted her to have a safe place to stay. I don’t want to cast aspersions on you, but I don’t want anything to happen to Wakaba’s little girl. She’s fragile—”

She was hurting,” the boy muttered, his tone thick with grief. “Futaba’s been too betrayed and abandoned by the world as it is. I just… don’t want her to suffer what I have.”

Sojiro felt his mouth drifting open and closed it. He’d expected at least a bit of shame – Sojiro remembered feeling that way, dating several girls in high school. But that look of hurt… How could anybody raised by the elder Kurusu still come out sensitive? Sojiro knew ever since meeting the man at a Kirijo gala in Port Island that the senior Kurusu would do anything to get ahead. Even his marriage and fatherhood were calculated gambits to get promoted, back when Kirijo Takeharu still ran the Group. Something about only trusting fathers in upper management.

The restaurateur opened his eyes when a hand tapped him on the shoulder, and he looked up to Akira standing over him. “Hey, old man. You okay?”

Sojiro’s gaze flicked to his shot glass for a beat. “I’m not a night owl like you kids.” The boy opened his mouth and the restaurateur cut him off. “I adopted Futaba. I’ll deal with her. You go get yourself to bed so I can do the same.” He wanted to trust the kid wouldn’t try anything with Futaba, but he was as red-blooded as any other man. He’d seen the boy’s eyes take in that pretty blonde, or that elegant girl he played shogi with.

Yongen, Back Streets

Akira paced to Leblanc, the sounds of the city winding down as much as Tokyo ever was going to. Phone in hand, he scanned over the Phantom Thief group chat.

Ann’s last addition since interruption by Sojiro was, [So Futaba's awake?]

[She was last I saw,] Akira replied.

Ryuji’s ID lit up next. [What's that supposed to mean?]

[She was hard at work at that keyboard when Boss got home.]

Mishima winked in next. [Does that mean Medjed has been defeated?]

Ryuji sent, [Yeah, they done?] A heartbeat later, he followed with, [I mean, how's Futaba?]

[Nice save,] Yusuke sent.

Makoto’s ID popped up next. [I'm not sure if that's genuine or sarcastic.]

Akira texted, [There's nothing any of the rest of us can do. She's awake, so no mental shutdown like I was afraid of. I don't think she'll let up until she's finished Medjed off, so I think we're safe on that front, too. Morgana stayed with her, so if Makoto can't confirm things with her sister he should instruct her to contact us again.]

The upperclassman in question replied, [I wouldn't know either until it hits headlines. Big Sis isn't in a cybercrime unit so I can't ask her without raising suspicion.]

[Looks like we have no choice but to wait again,] Ann sent.

Mishima’s ID winked. [So I guess everyone's on news duty until confirmation hits the airwaves?]

[Sounds logical to me,] Makoto texted.

Three dots bounced next to Yusuke’s ID for a moment. [If that is the case, shall I join you at Leblanc? I can bring one of my art books. It should be far more hospitable than the dorms.]

Akira looked up from the chat long enough to unlock Leblanc and let himself in. [You guys bought me AC, as far as I'm concerned you have as much right to use it as I do.]

Monday, 8 August 2016
Noon
Yongen, Leblanc

Sun streamed in through the just-cleaned, smoky window at the front of Leblanc. A newscaster on TV droned on about another corporate information leak blamed on Medjed, and a falling stock market. Akira rinsed off a plate and handed it to the restaurateur, who wiped it dry with a brown towel and set it on the counter by the coffee siphons. “I bet the stock market wouldn’t be fluctuating so much if they’d just shut up and wait for things to happen instead of speculating.”

The rote pattern repeated until the front door bell rang and Doctor Takemi strode in. “Morning, Boss. House blend and a bowl of reimen?”

“Coming right up,” the restaurateur said as he wiped dry his last plate. He moved over to the fridge and pulled out the packaged soba to get started.

While rinsing the last mug, Alliance Force, Assemble! sang out from his phone. Akira rushed to wipe and dry his hands enough to fish his phone out of his pocket. An unfamiliar number stared up at him. “Life insurance, Ray N. Carnation.”

“H-huh?” Futaba’s voice stuttered.

Morgana chirped in the background.

“Well then he should just say so!” she shouted on her side. She cleared her throat and spoke into the microphone, “So, uh, I just wanted to say I’m done! Your hacker extraordinaire has saved Japan. You may prostrate yourselves before me.”

Droll, Akira riposted, “Yes, Lady Isis.”

A beat passed. “Okay, now things have gotten weird.” Morgana snarked something from the background and Futaba snapped, “Bad kitty!”

Morgana hissed.

“A-ki-ra! Make Bastet stop being mean to me.”

Morgana protested again.

Akira pushed up his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose. “If you two can avoid killing each other for five minutes, I’ll be there to pick up Morgana.” He hung up and returned to the kitchen from the back hall. “Futaba’s asking me to pick up Morgana. Are you going to be okay for the rest of the lunch rush?”

Sojiro sprinkled some pre-cut onions on top of the bowl of chilled soba noodles for the doctor. “Lunch rush is over, kid. Go ahead and cut out, just don’t misbehave.”

Yongen, Sakura House, Futaba’s Room

Having already explained most of Futaba’s questions about the Metaverse when she woke up late in the morning following her hack session, then endured her wordy recounting hunting down Medjed just to find a single ‘script kiddie’ responsible threatening the Phantom Thieves, Morgana wanted to scratch Joker for asking about it again. He glanced at the window at the torrential rain pounding the window. Trapped in here until the transfer student deigned to take him safe and dry back to the loft.

The jerk even told Futaba the vicious lie that the brave and wily team leader only found the special door in Madarame’s Palace because he got bored and wandered off! Talk about projection!

So now Morgana had to languish through the long story filled with weird technobabble while Joker—

“How long has it been since you’ve cleaned up in here?” Akira asked, his wide eyes on bulging garbage bags.

She waved him off and turned back to her computer. “Oh, uh… I don’t think it’s been a year? Anyway, then I broke into the archives of the University of Tokyo—”

Akira stood and tugged his gloves in a very Joker-like manner. “Then we’d better get started.”

Afternoon
Yongen, Sakura House, Futaba’s Room

Akira spritzed glass-cleaner on the window and wiped in circular motions until the pattern of rainfall against the glass looked regular. The sound of rain added to the now-clean room to bless him with a sedate sense of accomplishment. He straightened the opened blackout curtains and took in a breath. “And done.”

Futaba flopped onto her bed in melodramatic fashion. “You are a demon! Why couldn’t you have just done it all if it’s so important to you?”

Morgana hopped up onto the storage shelves beside it. “But it feels good, doesn’t it? To look around a clean room and know it’s yours.” His tail swished. “I guess I can understand why Joker spends so much time trying to make his room pristine.”

She let out a long breath and levered herself up from the mattress. “Yeah, it does feel better. That and back-hacking Medjed made me feel like I can really do stuff!” She put her hand on her chest. “It feels like my heart – my Persona’s been telling me all along since before I accepted it. It’s so much more than just I am, but it’s so hard to put it in more words.” Futaba sat up. “I can definitely understand why you guys kept going as Phantom Thieves. Going from helpless kids at the mercy of worthless adults to taking down yakuza and international cartels!”

Akira gave a calm nod. “Don’t get too excited too fast. I’m glad you’re feeling better, but you just had a change of heart. Cleaning your room is one thing – I helped with that. But are you sure you want to get involved in Phantom Thieving?”

The hours of work showed in the weariness of her frame, but she still pushed herself up. “Yup. I think I already knew before I saw the inside of my own heart, but things can’t go on like they used to. I can’t.” She reached out for that bronze-like staff and held it up as if searching for its balance point. “When I shot Youji in the Pel’tak, I think I kinda understood what my Shadow was going on about with being a goddess. Power and all that.” She lowered the staff weapon and looked him in the eye. “Not that it wasn’t a high note, but I don’t want to just leave things there.”

Even Morgana smiled, his tail swishing as if caught up in the girl’s enthusiasm. “You thinking of helping the Phantom Thieves on a more permanent basis?”

She drew herself into a springy hunch on her the balls of her feet, her arms wrapped around her legs. “Mm-hm. Now that I’m out and clear-headed, I recognize the Metaverse as what Mom was researching. I wanna learn more. Find out what they did to Mom’s research, everything. I can’t just drop out now that I’ve got my feet under me.”

Akira felt his hands start to shake. “You’d help us change Togo’s heart?”

Futaba’s eyes narrowed and a thin grin sending his hair on end spread over her face. She waggled a single finger at him. “On one condition.”

“Done!” He didn’t trust himself to say any more, as fast as his heart was hammering in his chest.

More to the team leader than other boy in the room, she stage whispered, “My luck stat’s gotta be through the roof.” Cackling, Futaba’s already unsettling grin grew even wider as she focused on the transfer student. “I want three nieces and three nephews.”

The process necessary to bring that about sprang to Akira’s mind’s eye, Hifumi naked on a futon underneath him. His hands dropped the spray-bottle and cleaning rag. His face blazed and it took him a few seconds to remember how to breathe around the sudden choking feeling in his throat. “F-Futaba!”

Notes:

Lala’s another one of those rare adults in the game disconnected enough that we don’t see any of her problems, but that allows her to be one of the more positive and reliable examples of responsible adults who offers almost unconditional support.

In the game, Sojiro sees his adopted daughter walk outside for the first time in at least a year and does absolutely nothing even as Akira, a convicted felon, trots off after her. I know that’s to give resolution to Futaba after the conclusion of her Palace, but he doesn’t. And from the rest of the game he wants to be a good father, so there is no way I could justify him NOT rushing out to check on his girl.

Chapter 96: August 8th, Trials of Teamwork

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Monday, 8 August 2016
Late Afternoon
Yongen, Leblanc Loft

Ann lounged back against the couch. The class president added more than enough stiff posture, but that paled in comparison to the awkward, jerky motions from the orange-haired girl crouching on the transfer student’s bed since they exchanged contact information. Akira occupied the chair between her and the table, but that didn’t seem to settle the younger girl to a noticeable degree. The air felt thick, and not just due to the humidity from the downpour. “So about General Isshiki… was she a Shadow? I thought those were the only things that would try to kill us in a Palace.”

Morgana, standing on the middle of the table, shook his head. “That was a cognition.”

Ryuji chewed on a chocolate wafer. “Like those ATM-people we got buttloads of money from in Kaneshiro’s Palace? Ain’t those guys always chumps?”

Akira rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Did you guys already forget about the volleyball players, and all the bruises they gave us when we fought Kamoshida?”

Makoto held her chin in thought. “It does appear that their hostility as well as how alive they appear to be is dictated by the Palace ruler. I would normally treat them like the scenery, but when Akira fell against that audience-member in Togo’s Palace, it burst into a Shadow.”

Morgana nodded. “That’s pretty close, but a palace in formation is a dynamic thing that draws in Shadows from the collective unconscious. Remember that Palace rulers also wrap Shadows into shells as dictated by their internal wants and perceptions.”

Makoto brushed back a lock of hair. “A pity we can’t revisit Palaces. We never got the chance to ask General – I mean Director Isshiki how far her research went.”

“You’d only get as much an answer as Futaba thought her mother would say,” Akira pointed out. “That was a cognition, not a tunnel into the land of the dead.”

Futaba might have given a faint nod.

Yusuke’s darker grey eyes fell on the transfer student’s. “Could she have been killed in order to stop her research into human cognition?”

Makoto pursed her lips. “I’ve been looking into cognitive psience, the psychotic breakdowns, and mental shutdowns. The only thing that makes sense is for a connection to the Metaverse, but who would be in a position to use that research? We can only safely navigate the Metaverse due to our Personas.”

The others may not have noticed, but Ann noticed the poor dyed-orange-haired girl’s posture tensing and tightening like a perched gargoyle and it didn’t look like she had any answers. “Maybe we don’t have any answers for the Metaverse, but what about Medjed? Didn’t you say they were an international group, Futaba-chan? How are you so sure you got them all?”

That did the trick. Futaba’s arms unwrapped from around her legs and she sat down, letting one leg dangle off the bed. She still seemed nervous, but now pride slipped into her pose. “I should know. I founded them.”

Everybody but Akira looked shocked, reactions ranging from Ryuji’s gaping to Makoto’s gasp.

Morgana stood up and shook, the first of the Thieves to recover. “So what do you plan to do now?”

Futaba curled her legs back under her, keeping the Phantom Thieves in her vision while not meeting anyone’s eyes. “Two things. First, I wanna find out what really happened with Mom. Second, I want to change hearts.”

Ryuji, still not quite recovered from the news that the shut-in founded Medjed, stared as if the orange-haired girl grew a second head. “For real? What ‘bout Medjed? How the eff all that even start?”

Futaba wrapped her arms around her legs. “A bunch of trolls were infesting Anonymous and they weren’t champions of privacy or freedom anymore, so I went to start over.” Her shoulders slumped and her arms tightened around her legs. “I wasn’t prepared for the same thing to happen. A bunch of people joined, but some just wanted to make money or screw with big companies. I was too low-leveled to stop all of them.”

Akira uncrossed his arms and took out his phone to look something up. “Too strong personalities?”

Futaba nodded without eye contact.

Ann crossed her arms. It sounded like even in the computer world, there were assholes who abused their power to bully those weaker than themselves, even if they didn’t really get anything out of it. “So those were the guys committing cybercrimes.”

Morgana sat, his chest puffed out just a bit. “Well, justice and helping the weak is what the Phantom Thieves are all about. We haven’t had a chance to see what your Persona can do yet, but I think you’d make a great addition to the Phantom Thieves. Any objections?”

Nays chorused around the table. A wan smile slipped onto the timid girl’s face, but she still couldn’t make eye contact with anyone but Akira.

Yusuke gave a sedate nod. “So what shall be our first order of business?”

Futaba let go with one arm to hold up a hand, index finger aloft. “Change Togo Mitsuyo’s heart. You all changed my heart, saved me, even when I was using duress to force you to. If there’s justice in the Phantom Thieves, you’ll help change Togo’s heart, too.”

Ann felt that pit of worry grow in her stomach and even the thrumming of rain couldn’t calm it. She didn’t have to look at Akira to know that name had to have come from him. “Are you sure, Futaba-chan? Not that we wouldn’t all be grateful for your help, but… taking on a Palace is a big deal and it looks like you’re still nervous just around us.”

The dyed-orange girl bit her lip and her eyes drifted to the transfer student before she straightened… at least, as much as she could without rising out of her gargoyle pose. “It’ll be just like Dragon Quest. Whether it’s saving the kingdom or princess, as long as the hero has a quest, I can do it!”

To the model’s relief, Makoto stood, asserting all the calm authority of the student council president. “Futaba-chan. Leaping right into a Palace might be too much, especially one so complicated and filled with strong Shadows.”

The young girl perched on the bed tightened her posture as if she wanted to shrink in on herself. She turned to the windows – further from the others, Ann noticed – but after a moment took in a breath. “I thought I had the greatest mom in the world. It took less than a week for people to not only take her from me, take that from me, but basically take my life from me, too. Akira had a horrible mom that—” His phone dropped from his fingers and hit the floor, and he gave an intentional throat-clearing sound. Futaba flinched. “Anyway, Togo’s hurting people. And what if she’s hurting like I was? What kind of champion of justice could know about those people and not do anything?”

Makoto sat back down, her shoulders slumped and a deep, unsettled look in her eyes.

Yusuke stood. “I second the motion. Some palace rulers, like Sen—Madarame may have been evil and inflicted cruelty on others. However, others like Futaba, were lost in pain of their own. Let us make the induction of our newest member by the freeing of another heart from its distortion.”

If Ann wasn’t mistaken, she thought she saw light glinting from the corners of the transfer student’s eyes. Apparently the weeks that passed hadn’t dulled whatever hurting that woman caused. She straightened her cotton shirt. “He’s right. My parents were the only things that kept me going when I first moved to Japan. We might not be able to stop all bad parents, but we can do something about this one.”

Makoto looked to the transfer student, an unspoken conversation passing between them before she nodded. “It was dangerous the first time we were there, but we’ve all grown stronger and better coordinated. We have a better idea what we’re getting into this time. Kamoshida’s aftershocks shook Shujin, and Kaneshiro’s shook Shibuya. Let’s see how far positive influence of changing Togo’s heart will be.”

Futaba sat up, letting her feet settle off the edge of the bed. “That’s a majority!”

Morgana cleared his throat. “That’s not how we do things in the Phantom Thieves, Futaba. In order to ensure our power is never abused, all decisions of changing a heart must be unanimous.” He looked to the transfer student.

Akira swallowed and set his phone on the table. “De Oppreso Libre. Freedom from oppression.”

All eyes fell on the runner. Ryuji scratched his scalp and grumped. “Fine, I can see when I’m out-voted.”

“No, Reaper,” the team leader said over the sound of pounding rain. “The entire point of a unanimous vote isn’t expedience, it’s ethics. If we’re going to do this, we do it because it’s right. Because we can help people by changing her heart. Not because we want to get something personally out of it.”

Still slouching, Ryuji threw his hands down. “I didn’ even have no sky pie idea for takin’ down Kamoshida. I wan’ed ta get back at ‘im for trashin’ the track team.” He sat up on his chair. “I wanna help peeps. But we almost died in there.” He slumped in his chair. “An’ I don’ wanna be workin’ all summer break. Whadda we do if some huge baddie pops up after school starts, an’ we’re all burnt out?”

Ann tapped her painted fingernails on the table. “We’ll throw a party to recharge.” She leaned back and smiled at the prospect. “We have to hit the beach.”

Ryuji threw a fist in the air, grinning like an idiot but with a gleam in his eye that unsettled the model. “Surrounded by hot babes in bikinis? Fu—” His gaze jerked aside to the hacker. “Eff yeah!”

Makoto crossed her arms. “Futaba-chan’s having trouble with us and you think we should hit the beach?”

The model withered. Between the humidity now and the prospect of no summer beach, she felt herself flagging.

Futaba glanced over the assembled Thieves and tightened her gargoyle pose. “Hrg. If I… If I can make it to the beach with you guys, would you help us change Togo’s heart?”

Huh?” Ryuji leaned back on the crate serving as a seat next to the artist. “I mean, if we can do both then I guess we prolly could recharge.” He grinned, that gleam in his eye again as he let out a sound somewhere between a giggle and laugh. “Oh, yeah, the beach would totally be worth it.”

Makoto’s crossed arms tightened, those crimson eyes zipping back and forth in complex thought. “We’d need to adapt her to our group, acclimate her to the outside and new environs in general for either Togo’s palace or a beach trip. She’d need to be at least somewhat accustomed to interaction with strangers…”

The cute team leader insisting he wasn’t a cat cleared his throat. “Okay, that’s consensus for changing Togo’s heart, and a beach party to celebrate. That might also be a good time to announce our defeat of Medjed to the world. The Phantom Thieves have been working hard, so I think we’ll have earned some time to cut loose.”

Ryuji threw his fist back in the air. “I’m callin’ that party green-lit!”

Yusuke tapped a finger to his chin. “But I do not have the paints for a beach scene…”

Ann left the others to argue about the socialization plans to see why the transfer student was so quiet. He stepped out of the conversation to look at the rain pouring outside his open windows, took off his glasses, and wiped at his eyes.

Makoto uncrossed her arms, drawing the model’s attention, and focused at the small hacker perched on the bed. “How did you find out about us?”

The orange-haired girl’s posture withdrew.

Morgana sat on the table, his tail curling around his feet in a manner very much like a real cat. “She heard about Kaneshiro on internet radio news. Then Madarame’s confession was all over. She didn’t hear about Kamoshida, but after the second big change of heart, she knew we were real.”

Ann leaned back against the couch with a proud smirk on her face. For all of Akira’s resistance to public attention, she and Ryuji were right. Just letting people know gave them hope.

Makoto nodded. “Where did you learn hacking?”

Futaba shifted her hunch and tip-tapped away at her phone.

A beat later, Makoto’s phone buzzed. The class president gave an askance, look, then drew it and checked. “Niko Niko Video?” She tapped the link.

A few moments later, a deep voice played, “This video is classified. If you’re watching this, you’re fired.”

Now the upperclassman glared at the hacker.

Akira cleared his throat and turned. His eyes still looked just a bit red, but he stood straight and his breathing was even. “She was hacking at Blue Cove even before my old… man took over.”

Ann blinked. The transfer student had never passed up a chance to slam his father in the past.

Futaba let out a quiet, warbling growl.

Makoto hesitated. “How did you get the Nav?”

The slight girl tightened her arms around her legs and looked out the windows.

Ann let out a breath through her nose. Makoto may have had good intentions, but she was making this sound like an interrogation and the little girl looked ready to bolt. “Futaba-chan’s definitely unique, but if we’re going to work together, I think our first priority is to get her used to everyone.”

Akira fixed his glasses on his face. “She’s got a point, Futaba-kun. If you can’t open up to us when the stakes are low like this, you’re not going to be ready to keep pace with us when the stakes are high and there’s just us and Shadows. If you want to do the palace first and summer sessions later, just say the word.”

She grumbled and clasped her arms around her legs. “It’s just hard to take all at once ‘cause you all have flanking bonuses!”

Makoto straightened her skirt. “If the problem is trying to get to know too many of us at once here, we could try staggered schedules through the week.”

Morgana’s tail swished in a more relaxed fashion. “Excellent planning, Nightrider. That’s the brains of the outfit.”

The slight girl looked ready to protest, but Makoto charged on. “Then we begin tomorrow.”

Futaba rocked on the balls of her feet for a moment. “Hrg. You sure we can’t just go to Togo’s palace?”

Ann tilted her head to try to appear less threatening and flashed one of those smiles she used to use to reassure Shiho and Yuu-kun it was all going to be okay. “Don’t sweat it, Futaba-chan! We’ll take good care of you! Then we can go change hearts in the Metaverse.”

Monday, 8 August 2016
Early Evening
Yongen, Back Streets, Hiromasa’s Secondhand Shop

Akira skimmed the assortment of used appliances, paintings that had seen better days, and a ukulele hanging from a hook on the wall. He thought a day with so many things happening in it would exhaust him, but Futaba waking up and turning around the vote to go after Togo’s distorted heart left him feeling like he could breathe for the first time in weeks. Behind him, the torrential downpour gave the impression that the rest of Tokyo had been washed away, so Akira savored the sensation of some peace and quiet from the noise of civilization. Another woman shared the narrow space with him, though she looked over her shoulder at the downpour for the second time in a minute. She seemed old, deep crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes, but her hair hadn’t greyed yet.

Having already used his two-person umbrella to escort Futaba back home, he lifted it up to rest against his shoulder in what he hoped was a clear invitation. “You need some cover to get to the trains?”

She wavered, shifting her weight from foot to foot. “Oh, I wouldn’t want to… you wouldn’t mind?”

Akira gave a nod to old man Hiromasa, then stepped out and popped open his umbrella. The rain came down at an angle and water rushed down the narrow, angled street, so their feet got wet, but their trip to the station completed without any slips.

His phone buzzed as they waited for the train. Slipping it out, he saw an incoming text from Yoshizawa. [I hope it's not too late to ask a favor today?]

[As long as it's not training in Inokashira.] Nothing happened for long seconds. [You there?]

A minute passed, then another before the train’s headlights came around. Akira stuck around until it slid to a stop and the old woman got on board with a ‘thank you’.

He let himself preen for a moment at that. Rain in the towns he lived at previously had been a thing that caused everybody to huddle apart, maybe in pairs but always under umbrellas away from him, so he’d never had the opportunity to escort people to the bus or train. Of course, he only had one-person umbrellas before.

His phone buzzed. [Sorry, Senpai! My phone seems to be acting up today.] The same text came in a couple seconds later. [Sorry. Would you mind helping me out on a shopping trip? You wore a couple frames to Shujin, so I hope you know a bit about glasses and fashion?]

He started to type in a warning that he’d never had the money to get anything but store-front frames. The ones he bought with Mother’s credit card in Inaba didn’t last through a year at Inuri, after which he went through shoddy drugstore frames until Officer Ichijo pressured his old man to pay for some proper glasses for his stay in Tokyo. That felt like it didn’t jive with the day’s positive turn of events, so he deleted that and sent, [I can't promise a makeover, but I'll do my best.]

The rain poured down. Long seconds later, Yoshizawa sent, [Thank you!] twice. Then sent two links to a store in Kichijoji called Two Windows.

He sent, [I'll see you there, but maybe we should get a replacement for your phone.]

Evening
Kichijoji, Two Windows

Akira paced through the chic storefront, his socks still feeling wet in his shoes. It was the one thing he didn’t like about the rain. At least the rain smelled as nice in Tokyo as it did anywhere else. “So you getting something for a friend? I’ve never seen you with the hallmarks of us four-eyes.” He adjusted his glued-together glasses.

Yoshizawa pulled her crimson gaze from a row of horn-rimmed glasses. “You’re sharp, Senpai! Dad’s birthday is coming up and I wanted to get him a present he could use .”

Nodding, he glanced over the glasses she’d been perusing. “He kind of old-fashioned? Have any favorite styles?”

She set down a red, half-frame set. “Not that I can think of. He’s got a couple sets for work, but doesn’t seem to have a favorite.”

Akira nodded and took his chin in hand to exaggerate the expression of deep concentration. “If you’d told me exactly what this trip was for, I could’ve come prepared. With my sweater vest.”

She slapped his shoulder with a good-natured laugh. “Well, just for that, you’re modeling a couple pairs for me so I can get some visual reference.”

He gave a surprised nod and felt a hint of a flush despite the coolness forced by the thrum of rain just outside. The cute red-head seemed so obsequious, he thought that exchange would go on for another minute. When she handed him a pair, he tucked his glasses on his collar and put the others on. Being the wrong prescription, he couldn’t make out the posters on the opposite side of the store, but he still noticed her eyes lingering on him for longer than he felt comfortable. He checked one of the nearby mirrors. “They give this aloof sense.” He deepened his voice to say, “Papers, please.”

She accepted the glasses back. “That might be your aura, Senpai. Glasses really seem to temper your look. It’s not all the time, but your eyes can look really intense.”

Officer Ichijo said much the same thing when she first caught him for trespassing. It was nicer than his fellow students, who tended to say things like ‘you’ve got the eyes of an animal’. When his phone buzzed, he took the opportunity to check the group chat.

Ann sat up top. [I'm doing a shoot tomorrow, can I do the Futaba thing Wednesday?]

[Sure,] Makoto sent. [I'll make sure there's some feminine sensibility there tomorrow.]

When Futaba gave a standard complaint, Akira rolled his eyes, sent, [You'll manage,] then tucked away his phone. “So what’s next?”

Yoshizawa gave a breath of a laugh. “ Someone’s enthusiastic!”

She spent the next ten minutes or so trying on frames and cracking jokes until the store attendant, with nobody else to badger for sales, came close. “Good evening, Honored Customer. Have you made a decision yet?”

Yoshizawa’s cheer faded, and while she held her posture it looked like a light went out in her eyes. “They’re all very good, but nothing’s… clicked yet.” She picked up one of the frames from five minutes ago. “What about—?”

Akira took her wrist with a gentle grip and pushed the glasses back to the table. She’d gone along with all of his jokes but one thing she’d never done was make a call on her own. “Nobody has a better sense of your father than you do, Yoshizawa-san. Trust yourself.”

She straightened, and while her smile seemed a bit practiced her eyes didn’t have that subtle tension like a minute ago. She set the green frames down and reached for a red set. “This may be going by gut, but it just seems to fit my dad.”

Perfect,” he said.

Yoshizawa beamed.

The attendant bowed. “I’m sure he’ll love it.” They rang it up and headed to the front where the rain had reduced to coming down in sheets.

Akira put up his umbrella and Yoshizawa slipped underneath until she pressed against him. Had it been Hifumi he might have rationalized it and savored the human contact, but since it wasn’t he stepped a bit away. Her gaze drifted down and shoulders drooped, so he feigned a smile and said, “Tell me how much he likes it.”

She breathed out and flashed a smile. “Absolutely, Senpai! I’m sorry that the weather isn’t quite right for doing some more training. I was hoping for stopping by Inokashira Park, but I guess I’ll just have to see if Coach Hiraguchi is at the gym.” Her pasted-on smile faded away as if washed off by the rain and she stepped closer again. “I… This may sound stupid, but I was starting to feel really out of my element trying to pick glasses. I kept on thinking, ‘what happens if I choose wrong? If I ruin things again?’ I’m sure the clerk didn’t mean it, but… when she came up and asked what I wanted I realized how big a blank I’d been drawing. Like… how can I decide for someone else?”

This sounded a lot more involved than just getting a set of glasses for a family member’s birthday. “Everyone gets like that now and again.”

She looked up at him, the rain ensconcing them in their own little world away from the enormous mess of Tokyo. “Even you , Senpai?”

He nodded. “You know how many games I’ve played with Hifumi?” He waited for a brief head-shake. “More than a hundred by now. I haven’t won yet . If it was just the winning, I’d have thrown in the towel. But it’s not. She’s always teaching me how to get better, in or out of the game, even though that means she might lose to me some day. Because she wants to get better, too. So even though it may seem counter-intuitive to help someone else get better, helping me play better helps her play better. No matter how many times she’s won, she’s still always ready for another go, always got another tip when we’re breaking down the game afterwards. Because of that, it’s less like I’m playing from loss to loss and more like… getting better, step by step. I may not ever reach her level, but it’s like a race where we both make each other run faster.”

Yoshizawa’s eyes widened. “I get it! Just like Coach was telling me, it’s easy to write yourself off in a slump.” She gave a small, cute smile. “Thanks, Senpai. I feel down sometimes, but with your support I’m starting to get my confidence back.”

He gave a smile back. “It’s never a bad thing to get support from other people. Just like us. I help you and you help me.”

Late Evening
Yongen, Leblanc Loft

Alliance Force, Assemble! sang out of his phone and Akira got up from his shogi board, the Ultimate Excalibur Formation arrayed across it. “Assertiveness Training Coach, Lois Steem.”

A girl’s voice scratched out of the speakers, “Is Kurusu Akira there?”

It took him a moment to place Yoshizawa’s voice, between the distortion and rain past the open windows. “It’s… did you really not get it? It’s me, I thought that would be funny after our conversation at the glasses shop.”

Her distorted voice scratched out over the speaker, “Coach Steem?”

Akira’s hand slapped onto his forehead. “ Assertiveness coach, Lois Steem ?” At least Hifumi had fun with it when he made a joke, even when she made him explain it. Being able to go back over the original joke and enjoy it for the spirit it was meant made her that much more delightful.

A distinct beat passed before Yoshizawa responded, “Oh! Low Esteem.” She made a sound that made him imagine a girl like Futaba sticking out her tongue. “You should be nicer to me, Senpai,” she said with dramatic scolding he hoped meant she got it. “I gave Dad the glasses and he loved them!”

See?” Akira riposted. “You can trust yourself.”

You’re right, Senpai. I wish I could be as confident as you are, but just being around you makes it seem kind of contagious. Like nobody’s too scary to make you back down and you just want a chance to show the world.”

Akira pursed his lips. He had the reflexes to look for a fight, sure, but that put him in more fights than he needed. He thought of how Hifumi might try to reframe giving the world the middle finger. “You can’t show up the ones who are putting you down if you don’t try.”

Yoshizawa gave a jovial laugh that sounded unsettling with the addition of the scratchy distortion. “You’re right, Senpai! I’ll show Coach my best, tomorrow.”

Tuesday, 9 August 2016
Morning
Yongen, Sakura House

Makoto paced up the stairs, the transfer student leading and the Kosei artist bringing up the rear as they headed to their newest member’s room. She turned off the streaming news on her phone and slid it into her pants pocket. Without a major splash to inform them otherwise, the public still expected a looming catastrophe. Futaba may have been confident the only problematic Medjed hacker was disabled, but the Thieves couldn’t decide what to do beyond that and tabled the motion. Akira was against big, public displays in general for the fear of being caught and Ryuji’s ideas were just reckless on the other end of the spectrum. Building a rapport with Futaba would be a good break from that argument.

Akira gave two sharp knocks on Futaba’s door. A long moment passed before the doorknob clicked and the slight girl opened the door, an oversized parade mask over her head.

Makoto stared. If she couldn’t even face her soon-to-be teammates, that did not bode well for ending her status as a shut-in. “I don’t think that mask will be helpful, Futaba-chan.”

Futaba took a step backwards into a room far less cluttered than when they brought her in following her post-Awakening collapse in the street. “I… I need my gear bonuses!”

Yusuke held out his hands, framing the girl falling back from the door. “How avant garde!”

Akira spat, “Take that off. You look like a Satesh Guard.”

Futaba threw her fists down by her side. “My nose is not dripping!”

Baffled by what must have been an inside joke, Makoto rested a hand on his shoulder to keep from advancing on his aggression. How the slight hacker bonded with him and not somebody more empathetic like Ann was beyond the president. “Let’s get settled in, first. Whatever quirks we have to work on, our first objective is to engage in normal conversation.”

The hacker nodded and led them inside her room. The transfer student stopped on her bed, but Yusuke continued further in to examine a set of open metal shelves beside a window overlooking the narrow road outside. He lifted a familiar long construct of what appeared to be bronze. “You brought a staff weapon from that world.”

Futaba plopped onto her computer’s chair, but pulled her mask off. Bright, wide eyes shone up at the artist and her toes tapped against the floor. “Heck yeah! I defeated a boss with that.” She beamed. “Weird thing is, I feel like I leveled up before beating him.”

Akira gave a smile. Not his usual smirk, or the wide smile before he went for a second bite of curry, but something small and soft. “Because you decided to stand up and live your own life instead of being pushed around by bastards.” He leaned back, bracing his hands on the futon behind him. “So who was he?”

The girl shrunk back on her office chair and clutched her mask tight.

At first, Makoto hoped the conversation on the end of her Palace might energize her, but that posture showed retreat. Thinking fast, the class president cleared her throat. “Maybe we should talk about more ordinary topics. What do you like to eat, Futaba?”

“Organic,” she said, the statement too short to be sure if it was nervous or mocking.

Akira sat up. “I prefer inorganic. Unit zero two can process them efficiently.”

Makoto slapped his arm. “I though I told you to drop that!”

Futaba snorted in amusement, and while she still clutched her doffed mask she didn’t hold it like a life preserver anymore.

As satisfying as it was, slapping Akira wasn’t worth just getting a momentary laugh out of Futaba. Makoto straightened. “Let’s try a different topic. How are you handling the weather? This heat wave is going to be around for a while.”

“AC.”

Akira pushed up his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose. “You’ll have to go outside, Futaba-kun.”

“Baby steps, Joker,” the team leader said as he hopped up onto the bed for the first time in the conversation. He shook his head to work out a kink in his neck – not because he was a cat, which he wasn’t – and looked to the small girl. “Have you thought about where outside you’d want to go?”

Futaba’s eyes rolled up in consideration. She held up a hand, one finger extended. “Abydos.”

A meaty smack echoed as Akira’s palm collided with his forehead.

Futaba smirked. “Hey Sokka, why’s your forehead all red?”

Makoto sighed. Every step forward seemed to precede a jump backwards. “Yusuke, at least contribute.”

“I was focusing,” he said, then stepped back from the shelf unit of models. Figurines from some super sentai series – they all looked the same to Makoto – stood in various action poses. Yusuke explained as if clarifying the date on an old painting, “The limbs kept coming off as I was moving them, but I believe I have set them in a pleasing arrangement.”

Mask tumbling forgotten to the ground, Futaba leaped to her feet, her arms trembling with rage. “My vintage Phoenix Rangers Neo Featherman set! They were already in the season one opening!”

Turning up his nose, Yusuke straightened. “The figures were of quite shoddy construction, and their arrangement almost totally concealed the green one. No balance at all.”

“That’s because Green betrayed the group in the finale!” She stepped even closer to him, fists trembling at her sides. “You wouldn’t know aesthetics if it slapped you in the face, Inari!”

The transfer student jumped up to grab her wrist before she could suit word to action. Yusuke, if he was aware of the threat to his visage, just glared back with bared teeth. “How dare you say that to me!”

Akira pulled the girl back from the artist. “Your brains get scrambled in a flash of anger? His name’s Yusuke.”

Futaba ripped her arm out of his grip. “His mask was a fox, foxes in folklore like inarizushi, therefore he is Inari now.”

Akira rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I don’t get why you’re getting so bent out of shape from Yusuke fiddling with your dolls.”

To Makoto’s shock, the artist and hacker both shouted, “They’re not dolls!” They both shared a surprised look, then turned away from each other.

Futaba jabbed a finger at the transfer student. “A doll is some shitty cloth or plastic merch, these are action figures. They hold poses so you can recreate any dramatic or action-packed scene you want.”

Yusuke nodded. “Provided the figures have the range or interlocking strength. But that starts to get into different design across different series. Certain seasons don’t have the action poses to mimic.”

Futaba turned on the artist, looking excited this time instead of angry. “Totally! Victory may have the best action, but Neo’s got the best transforming suit.”

Makoto just hung back, feeling like they were using Japanese words yet talking in a foreign language. As annoyed as she was with the artist earlier, he was the only one who found a way to engage the hacker. It just brought up all the whispers in Shujin’s halls about the robot student council president.

Morgana hopped onto her lap. “It’s unconventional, Nightrider, but they are having a regular conversation. That’s the first step to breaking out of her shell.”

Keeping her voice low so as to not disrupt the other three, Makoto replied, “I get that, but… I’m Shujin’s student council president. I thought I got there because I was the best possible option, the most qualified to handle all of its challenges. Like communicating.”

Morgana’s tail curled around his feet. “Until there’s shared experiences, we have to rely on shared subject interests. You took very safe, general topics that didn’t work with Futaba because she’s very… unique.”

Tuesday, 9 August 2016
Afternoon
Yongen, Sakura House, Futaba’s Room

Futaba felt a hesitant smile break out over her face. “This is all I gotta do? I was worried about going out for nothing!”

Yusuke tapped a finger to his lips. “Does this mean we should advance to the next stage?”

Grinning, Akira pulled out his phone and tapped away. A moment later, tango music floated out of his phone and he held a hand out to the girl with the braid.

Makoto growled through bared teeth, “Be serious for once!”

Futaba and the artist cackled. Well, she did. He just gave a weak chuckle. She’d have to teach him later. Akira might be better, she could sense the troubled nerd within. She’d have him in Sith robes before the year’s end or her name wasn’t Sakura Futaba. “What next stage?”

The girl with the braid nodded. “Being able to interact with the other members of the Phantom Thieves is an excellent step, but as part of investigations if not infiltration of other Palaces, you’ll need to be able to navigate new places.”

Futaba felt a tremble in her knees.

Akira stood and planted a firm hand on her shoulder, his stormy eyes straight on hers. “It’s just one more step on the journey, Futaba-kun. You already did it once to reach out to us.”

Critical hit to her excuses! Futaba straightened her glasses, though broke eye contact. She growled and picked up her mask. “Can I wear my cash items for equipment bonus?”

Makoto waggled a finger. “You know it will be better if you get used to not wearing such things in public. Besides, Ann and Ryuji are up next. Ryuji can be a little… off, but they’re the most understanding and accepting of us. If Ann wasn’t at work today, she would’ve been here.” She looked over at the boy already with his phone out. “Any other news from Ryuji?”

Akira navigated to the Phantom Thief group chat. “Just getting over-excited about how famous the Phantom Thieves are going to be once the defeat of both Medjed and Togo’s mother hits the press.” His brows and forehead tensed.

Morgana preened. “Today was an excellent start. A codename can wait until we get back into the Metaverse, but I think it’s worth another day of exposure training to get Futaba used to the rest of the Phantom Thieves.”

Makoto pulled out her phone to put an abbreviated report into the Phantom Thief group chat. After a little side-barring, Ann texted back. The upperclassman read for the members present, “Ann says, ‘If she still needs to get used to the rest of us and see new places, we can do both of those at my place.’ I have a college practice exam I promised Big Sis I’d take tomorrow, but Ryuji says he’s up for it.”

Futaba swallowed, but she couldn’t let high-level enemies hold her back. If tomorrow was hard mode, it was time to get good!

Notes:

The video Futaba sends Makoto is real, it’s the start to one of the cinematics in Ratchet and Clank: Going Commando.

SG-1 only shows a few variants of Jaffa. The Satesh guard is only mentioned in one episode when Teal’c is asked to tell a Jaffa Joke. “A Serpent Guard, a Horus Guard and a Setesh Guard meet on a neutral planet. It is a tense moment. The Serpent Guard's eyes glow, the Horus Guard's beak glistens, the Setesh Guard's… nose drips.”

Chapter 97: August 9th, Thick as Thieves

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Tuesday, 9 August 2016
Evening
Minato-ku, OK Mart

The bustle of people streaming through the value mart filled the grocer’s with a busy kind of white noise that reminded Akira of the Junes in Inaba. He looked down at his phone for the shopping list for this week’s aemono and scratched at his scalp. “I wish I’d asked a little more about why the chef did stuff at Amagi Inn.” He scanned the open displays for okra.

Alliance Force, Assemble! sang out of his phone and he checked the caller ID. Iwai Kaoru. “Transportation coordination, this is Orson Buggy.”

A beat passed. “Wasn’t it Levy Tate, last time?”

Akira found the okra and filled a small bag. “You’ve gotta keep it fresh, like a good salad.”

The hubub of a major city street spilled over from Kaoru’s side for a few seconds. “Uh, okay. Whatever. Anyway, are you near Shibuya?”

Just finishing up shopping in Minato-ku. I can be there in ten minutes, what’s up?”

More street noise poured through the phone for a moment. “It’s summer break, so I’m kind of running out of things to do. And that leaves a lot of time for thinking, but not all thoughts work out. You know what I mean?”

Only every time he thought of growing old with Hifumi. “Yeah. I think I do.” He folded the bag of okra over and stuck it in his cloth shopping bag. “If you wanted to talk right now, I’m heading up to Yongen-Jaya to drop off groceries. Or if you know somewhere close to the OK Mart in Minato-ku, I’m here right now.”

Oh,” Kaoru said with a breathy exhale. “If you’re already grocery shopping I don’t want to stop you. In this weather, the greens would wilt.”

So would I,” Akira joked. “If you’re wanting something filling but not heavy for dinner, there’s a place with mild curry you might like. It’s pretty close if you want to sit down and talk.”

Evening
Yongen, Leblanc

Not another soul disturbed the tranquility of the retro-themed cafe. Despite the establishment’s air conditioning, the humid heat wave infiltrated even this refuge . The scent of coffee, which always made him think of heat even when not standing next to the siphons, just added to the sensation. Akira fanned himself with a blank essay sheet as he listened to the middle-schooler go on.

He never invited me to work,” Kaoru went on. “But he only got aggressive about sending me out in April. I figured he was getting worried about the Kaneshiro Group, since they were shaking Dad down for cash.”

Akira nodded. “I get why he wouldn’t want you hanging around work if there’s peeps like that around.”

Kaoru paused to take a sip of his iced coffee, but looked no more refreshed. “I thought he’d loosen up after Kaneshiro turned himself in. Instead he’s been getting even more testy. He won’t talk about work, but he interrogates me about grades or what happened in basketball club… it’s like nothing I’m doing is right anymore.”

The sheet started to crinkle in his hand and Akira set it on the table. The boy reminded Akira of himself, his first year in school. Before he really understood what kind of a monster his old man was. “You don’t spend all day in arcades and you can cook for yourself, that puts you way ahead of most people my age.”

I don’t wanna be ahead of people your age,” Kaoru reproached. “I mean, I’m good with the guys and gals at school, it’s not a lot but it’s enough. But with Dad… it’s like everything’s going wrong. I just want things to be okay between us. I don’t want to worry at night about strange things like the delinquent who’s been hanging around the store lately. So soon after the Shibuya Sweep, I’m afraid something like that’s gonna start up again.”

Delinquent?” Akira straightened his satchel next to him.

Guy who looks like he’s scoping out the place. I even saw him arguing with Dad once.” Kaoru shifted his beige shirt as if it chafed. “But… Dad kicked me out so I don’t know what the fight was about.”

Akira drew his phone. “I’ll check in with the guys in case somebody’s seen something, but we ought to stop in. Your old man should be there to teach you and listen to you all the time, not badger you or belittle you like mine did.”

His phone buzzed and the IDs from the rest of the Phantom Thieves winked in as the group chat woke up. Ryuji was the first to text, [I'm at Untouchable now. He needs help moving shirt in the back once in a while. It's not paying, but I get discounts on mods.]

Ryuji’s holding the fort. Let’s go meet up.”

Evening
Shibuya

Akira took in a deep breath as they stepped into the alley in front of the model and surplus store. Summer had always been his least favorite season, but the combination of heat, humidity, and packed Tokyo streets grated his nerves. He flexed his gloved hands open and closed, but pushed on. The best way to escape both crowds and the heat was to get where you were going.

Kaoru shuffled back right before they got to the door. “It’s him!”

Akira peeked through the advertisement posters and standing racks of camouflage rain-jackets inside. The shop-owner was pretty clever about arranging things so it was pretty difficult to see anything inside. There was somebody inside, maybe wearing a pale hat, gesticulating in some kind of high-energy conversation. Well, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

“…what I’m sayin’!” Ryuji’s always louder-than-necessary voice shot out. “Interference with the natural frequency of the barrel is gonna be puny compared to the way more likely thermal distortion jus’ from day to day.” He glanced aside and slouched against the welded grating. “Yo, Akira.”

Kaoru, following behind, side-stepped behind the transfer student.

Ryuji noticed the move and his eyes narrowed on Akira. “Dude, first Futaba an’ now this kid? You some kinda… kid whisperer?”

Akira stage-whispered, “Should we tell Ryuji it’s just us peeps?”

Iwai straightened on his padded stool behind the counter. “What’re you doin’ here instead of studying? You finish that summer project for civics yet?”

When Akira’s feet slid into combat position, Morgana poked his head out of the transfer student’s satchel. “Easy, Joker.”

Kaoru’s shoulders hunched. “No, Dad.”

Ryuji’s eyes bulged. “You’re his son?” He cracked a toothy grin and gave a double thumbs-up. “You got an effin’ cool dad!”

The exclamation disarmed the tension in the room and the two Iwais stared around like actors who had forgotten their lines.

After a few seconds, Akira took a step towards the vending machine to give him a better view of both boys without having to look over a shoulder. “I’m guessing you two have never been introduced.” He jerked a thumb at the track star. “Ryuji’s a gun nut, but he’s secretly a nice guy when he’s not slacking off.”

The runner gave him a flat stare. “Thanks for the backhanded compliment.” He gave more a chin-wag than nod at the middle-schooler. “Yo.”

Akira pointed a hand to the middle-schooler. “And this is Iwai Kaoru. Pretty level-headed for a Tokyoite.”

Hey!” both the older and younger Iwai protested.

Ryuji grinned at the middle-schooler. “Say, whaddya think of Gun About?”

Kaoru shrugged. “I’m more of a Final Fantasy or Star Ocean guy.”

The track star threw his fist in the air. “Eff yeah! ‘Til the End of Time never got the cred it deserved!”

The middle schooler launched into animated game discussion. Akira just gave a smirk and a shrug to the store owner as the pair trotted outside, yammering on.

A silence descended on the store under the heavy air conditioning for several seconds. “You just staked your reputation on vouching for his. I hope you’re ready to pay that price.”

Akira slid his hands in his pockets. “Ryuji’s impulsive and doesn’t study enough, but his heart’s always in the right place. You can trust him further than me.” He blinked and the memory of Ryuji voting no on Togo’s palace flashed through his mind. “For almost anything.” He straightened and said, “So how do you have Ryuji working for you if you can’t afford an employee?”

It ain’t his ethics, it’s his realism that’s the problem. Little Man still thinks things work out.” Iwai sighed and spat his lollipop stick into a trash bin on his side of the counter before reaching down and unwrapping a fresh one. “I give Little Man discounts on modifications. The models were supposed to be the mainstay of this ‘honorable business’ I tried to set up here, but that gets a little difficult when the honorable business dries up.”

Akira stepped closer to the counter window of the welded grating to lean against it. “What exactly did Tsuda do to drive customers away?”

Iwai shifted his lollipop to the other side of his mouth. “Can’t prove it, but there’s this one guy online sayin’ my stuff’s knockoffs. A couple’a those mouth-breathing social media types bit an’ now it’s all over. Tsuda was a lotta things even before he became a lieutenant, I got no doubts he’s got the smarts to dangle the right line in front’a the right person. Kept that piece of shit Masa on the hook for years until he skipped for the Kaneshiro clan.”

Filing that fact away, Akira brandished a taunting smirk. “And here I was thinking you were the yakuza thug.”

Iwai grinned around his lollipop. “You li’l shit.” A darkness passed over his face. “But breathe one hint of any o’ this to Kaoru an’ I’ll gut you like a fish.” When the transfer student refused to budge, Iwai sat back and glanced over the student. “Guess that went without sayin’. Unlike Little Man you don’t run your mouth.”

How exactly did Masa jump from the Hashiba clan to the Kaneshiro clan?”

Iwai leaned back and clapped a hand on his knee. “The higher up you are, the harder it is to move. Thing is, the meat on the street? Not even grunts, these are the bodies you don’t even fork over money so they have a place to stay, they’re the friends of friends you call up when you need to show up with nine when the other guy has eight. Those guys are one yen a piece, an’ even less loyal. Nobody lets ‘em know what ops are up ‘less it’s to tell ‘em where they need to be an’ when ‘cause that’s all that type needs to know. Then some of the Hashiba officers’ kids started gettin’ poisoned an’ Masa skipped out. He must ’a found some kinda offerin’ for them to take ‘em in, I just got no clue what.”

Drugs,” Akira said, adjusting his grey gloves.

The proprietor’s grey eyes bored into the student’s for a moment before he blinked. “Nah, don’t matter. He’s not my problem. He was Tsuda’s back in the Hashiba clan, and he’s somebody else’s problem now.” Iwai stood. “C’mon back. If you’re gonna drive off the help, you’re gonna pick up where he left off. Perform well and I might consider expanding your special menu. That info you brought about the Hong Kong mafia opened up a few doors, I just gotta venture forward carefully. I’m a known quantity in a lotta those circles, but I don’t have a clan’s backing anymore.”

Wednesday, 10 August 2016
Early Morning
Yongen, Sakura House

Knocking on the front door, Akira took in another breath of hot, humid air made only a little more bearable by the downpour making rivers of the streets. The hacker still wasn’t responding, even to calls or texts. Rush hour would still be going on. “Futaba-kun!”

Morgana poked his head out of the satchel and shook his head when a droplet of water dripped on his ear. “You don’t think she backed out, did she? Futaba was doing so well in her first two ventures out. She looked like she wasn’t even bothered by going out when she came to Leblanc.”

You don’t think she had a collapse, do you?” Akira pounded on the door. “Futaba-kun!”

Shh!” the team leader snapped, then turned around in the leather satchel to peer out the back. Long seconds passed before a dark shape under a dark umbrella passed by. “Okay, she’s gone.” He turned back around. “Here. I’ll just unlock it. She should be okay, but it’s not like the doctor gave a clean bill of health.”

Akira’s gloved palm slapped over his forehead. “Shit, I forgot about that. She asked us to bring Futaba there first thing. I know she still needs to adjust to the rest of the team, but if Doctor Takemi finds out we’ve been sneaking Futaba out she’s going to be pissed .” He brought out his phone to inform the Phantom Thieves that he hadn’t gotten a hold of the hacker yet, but they would need to bring her for the promised check-up. “I wasn’t planning on trying to force Futaba to brave rush hour, so this shouldn’t delay our plans.”

The lock popped and Morgana retreated back into the satchel. “Okay. It’s not like this is the first time you’ve committed breaking and entering.”

The transfer student frowned. “It’s not like I’m breaking anything.” He pushed the door open, stepped inside, then closed it and doffed his shoes. “Futaba-kun! Is everything okay?”

Something thumped against the floor above. Several seconds later, his phone buzzed. [What are you doing here so early?]

[Futaba, today is another day of socializing with the team. We talked about this yesterday.]

[But… so early? Someone will pay for this.]

[I'll take my payment in ice cream bars.]

[I mean YOU pay ME!]

Morgana groused from the transfer student’s shoulder. “Are you trying to annoy her?”

Akira thrust out his chest, though with the team leader perched the gesture wouldn’t have its full impact. “She’s awake.” He paced to the stairs and cupped his hands around his mouth. “How much longer do you need to get ready?”

[Five more minutes.]

Morgana tilted his head, ears angling this way and that. “She just got back in bed.”

Akira let out a groan and put his phone away. “I wonder if this is what people with siblings have to put up with.” He marched up the stairs, clapping his hands as he began to sing, “Wake up, it’s late! It’s twenty minutes after eight! Come on, shake a leg, have some juice and scrambled—”

Futaba’s door opened and she hurled a larger-than-fist-sized magic 8 ball. She still wore the same rumpled clothes from yesterday and the orange hair stuck flat against her head.

Akira caught the ball. She had fair strength for somebody who was out of shape.

Her dark brown eyes glared at him as if that alone could cause him to burst into flames. He stepped closer but decided not to hand back the heavy ball. “You’ve got a ways to go to master your mother’s glare. Makoto could probably give you pointers.”

You’re worse than a devil,” she muttered. “You’re a morning person.” A beat passed. “Also, it’s not 8:20. It’s nine something.”

Yeah, I know. Only thing that rhymed,” he said, pulling out his phone to message the group. [Futaba's okay, she's just slow going in the morning.] He looked up at the girl stumbling over to her desk. “If you’ll get dressed and ready to head out to Doctor Takemi’s and Ann’s—”

Whoa!” Her dark eyes shot wide, though without her glasses the hallway light made her face look strange. “You want me to go to some strange doctor?”

Akira crossed his arms. “She’s not strange, she’s the neighborhood doc. Checked you over when you collapsed after your palace blew up.”

Morgana hopped up to the transfer student’s shoulder. “And she knows her stuff. She even offered Joker some anti-anxiety prescriptions.” A short beat passed as his blue eyes passed over the ruffled girl. “You should’ve seen how worried he was about you. We promised to take you for a check-up to keep the doctor or him,” he gestured his fuzzy chin at the transfer student, “from getting worse.”

She scratched her head, but most of her un-brushed hair still stuck out at odd angles. “I guess I was out for a couple days. I just run outta juice.”

Akira lifted his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose. “That’s hardly usual , Futaba. You didn’t zonk out for days at a time in Shinjou, did you?”

She braced a hand on the wall just inside her door. “ No .” She shifted her weight from foot to foot as her gaze fell to the floor. “Is it really that bad?”

Akira straightened his glasses. “Futaba, it’s well past time that I’ve ever been up to get ready for school. You haven’t been eating right or exercising for quite a while, and those are going to have definite impacts on top of all the stress you’ve been dealing with. There are as many neurons in the gastro-intestinal tract by weight as in your brain, of course that’s going to have a negative impact on your mind. Doc’s just around the corner so it’s hardly even going out. We’ll make sure you don’t have any lingering health complications that your old ba—family caused. Or never took care of. Then we’ll take the train up to Ann’s.”

Her teeth grit. “You sure we can’t just do one?”

He ruffled her hair. “I wouldn’t ask you to do something I didn’t think you could do. And I’ll be with you the whole way.”

She dodged back from his hand, a blush on her cheeks. It took several long seconds before she regained her breath. “O-o-okay.” She straightened in the manner of someone trying to show off to herself, and raised both clenched fists up. “I… I still don’t know if my level’s high enough, but with a good party bonus, I’ll do my best.” She allowed him enough time for a satisfied smile before she shoved at him. “Now get outta my room and let a girl change!”

Yongen, Takemi Medical Clinic

Futaba kept a hand clenched on the transfer student’s. She’d been poked, prodded, weighed, and questioned for half an hour in what was definitely not the not-a-big-deal checkup she was promised. There would be vengeance later, but by the time she was in it, a woman with every gram of Mom’s officious assurance – and dark hair in a slightly less tidy style very close to Mom’s – already had her hooked into it. If only she’d been wearing a smart pantsuit like Mom instead of that dark blue dress under her white coat.

Doctor Takemi clacked away at a keyboard that had to be more than ten years old and scrolled down her notes field in the examination documentation. She tabbed to a new window and read some dense medical entry for a few moments before turning around. “Heart rate and blood pressure are both above normal, but with a little more attentiveness to her diet and some exercise and she should fall back into the healthy range for her age.” She turned in her swivel chair and scribbled a final line on her paper, then handed it to the hacker. “Work on that inconsistent sleep schedule and your stress-retention habits. Those are both negatively impacting your health.”

Futaba shot straight. “Y-yes, Ma’am!”

Takemi waved at her with her clipboard. “Ease up, kiddo. I can only take so many high-strung kids.” Her smirk at the transfer student spoke volumes.

Akira nodded from his seat on the examination bed next to her. “I’ll ask Yoshizawa-san about lower-impact exercises and warm-ups.” He tapped his free hand against his chin. “And either she or Makoto should have a good idea about nutrition, I’ve seen both reading recipes.”

The doctor gave a shallow smirk. “At least one of you is keeping up on fundamental self-maintenance.” Her smirk grew a bit as she looked down at the hacker. “Make sure he keeps up on it, okay? He’s not so good at self-care, so having his girlfriend watch him might help.”

Oh, I’m just family. His girlfriend’s pretty hot, though.” Futaba chuckled at the boy’s blushed protestations.

Takemi’s smirk expanded into an even smile and she took another sheet and scribbled down on it, then handed it to the transfer student. “The usual. Less processed food, more regular sleep, exercise to counterbalance stress. But if today’s any indication, she’ll turn out okay.”

This doctor lady wasn’t nearly as scary as the people from social services. And double-teaming against Akira was so fun! Still, with as clean a bill of health as a shut in – former shut in – could have, she hopped up and slipped her furred green summer jacket back on. To be honest, she feared worse after the number of days she spent at Youji’s without any food at all.

Akira noticed her slowed pace in the lobby and gestured her to the far end of the empty lobby. “Hey, you okay? Anything else you needed to ask Doc about? I can wait out here—”

She shook her head. “Just thinking how different things seem. I noticed that Takemi-sensei’s hair reminded me of Mom and… it didn’t hurt inside.” She fiddled with her fingers. “I couldn’t even hear Mom’s name without crying for so long. And after that letter, everyone started to seem as scary and angry as those men from Blue Cove.”

He rubbed the back of his neck, that stormy grey gaze falling to the floor. “Yeah. Negative cognitive association is exactly the kind of shit my old… man would do.” He tapped a foot a couple times. “Think you’d be good to see Doctor Takemi again? She patches us up when the Metaverse hits us a little harder than we’re quite prepared for.”

Futaba clasped her hands behind her back and tapped a boot toe against the floor. “She know about the Phantom Thieves?”

Morgana popped his head out of the leather satchel. “Yes, thanks to him .”

Akira clapped a palm over his face. “Oh you can’t put it all on me. When we started it was just bruises and sprains, things I could explain away by letting her think the yakuza did it. But when we started coming in with frostbite and electrical burns? On some but not all of us? In the same day?” He took off his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose. “She doesn’t know much , but she was smart enough to piece together that we’re getting into something… out of normal . We haven’t decided yet how much to tell her about the Metaverse. But she knows who we are. By gist, anyway.” He set his glasses back on and reached out a hand. “For now, let’s get to Ann’s.”

Wednesday, 10 August 2016
Morning
Hiroo, Ann’s Home

Akira tapped his shoes against the corrugated iron grating in front of the tall condominium building. The outside had the same faux-stone facing as almost all the other buildings in the well-to-do neighborhood, broken by tall windows. It didn’t look like any of them opened, which meant the place must have robust air conditioning. As much sweat as dripped down his neck, he could really use some cool relief.

Futaba clutched his sleeve, standing closer to him than he felt comfortable. At least she made it through a morning check-up with Doctor Takemi. He couldn’t blame the hacker for feeling hemmed in by the churning mass of humanity. He never felt oppressed by crowds in the smaller towns and cities he grew up in, but nowhere held a candle to the human tides of Tokyo. Behind, he heard the springy footsteps of Ryuji closing from behind, the plastic shopping bags in both hands crinkling. His approach just caused Futaba to step closer, pressing against his side.

“It’s just Ryuji,” Akira assured her before retrieving his phone. The runner didn’t have a hand free to text Ann. Seeing no need to create a new thread, he opened up the pages-long chat started when they hit the grocer’s for today’s food and snacks. [We're here. Could you buzz us in?]

An intercom and column of unlabeled buttons occupied the wall to the right of the entry door, though the camera aperture looked smudged.

A beat later, the front door clicked. Akira yanked it open before it could time out. He led the trudge up eight flights of a tiny, square stairwell to Ann’s floor.

Futaba ducked in with more energy than was fair for the oppressive heat, even throwing out a, “Hurry up, slowpoke!” at the runner.

“Hey, you guys wan’ed all the bulky shit,” Ryuji threw back. “I said we should just get some pocky an’ crisps.”

“You’ve gotta have fiber an’ other stuff with your sugar and salt,” Akira riposted as they made the turn to the third floor.

Futaba paused to adjust her grip on her grocery bag, then sped up to return to the transfer student’s side. “Instant ramen is a must. So easy.”

Akira felt his mouth twist. “No satisfaction from it. Might as well just buy food paste.”

Ryuji hopped up the last step to the fourth floor. “It ain’t a pasta bar like Coach Wada-san used ta bring us to before a meet, but noodles jus’ satisfy.”

“Yeah!” Futaba said, her pace lightening. “Not like peanut butter and celery. Who heard of something weird like that?”

“Yoshizawa,” Akira said, jaw still tense from having to navigate crowds in the heat. “You heard what Doctor Takemi said, you need to start exercising and eating right. At least I suggested good food that’s going to energize.” He threw over his shoulder, “You took forever grabbing gummies and shit from the grocer’s mart.”

Ryuji let out a groan. Futaba exhibited signs of a panic attack when they tried to go into a grocer’s which was much busier than the transfer student expected, so the runner had to go in and grab everyone’s grub. “I’d’a been done half an hour ago if you an’ Ann hadn’t been changin’ your minds every three minutes!”

“We’re going to be here for lunch,” Akira riposted. “Why not get something good?”

“Cause we’re jus’ hangin’ out!” Ryuji threw back. “Instant ramen an’ pocky ain’t complicated.”

Akira came to Ann’s floor and knocked.

The thick door swung open and Ann stood there, her usual voluminous pigtails cascading onto a bold black halter top that showed off a smooth belly. Cut-off denim shorts bared plenty of leg and set his heart speeding even before she gave one of her typical sunny smiles. “Hey!”

“Hi,” Akira managed, flinching at how dumb he sounded. She trotted inside and Akira paused to slip out of his shoes, then grab Futaba before she could tromp inside with hers still on. “Hey, shoes.”

She gave an embarrassed flush and scurried back to the welcome mat. “S-sorry. Forgot I was wearing them.” She hung up her green jacket, then followed Akira in as the runner set down his bags and closed the door behind him so he could get his shoes off.

A short hallway opened to a den almost big enough to fit the whole loft above Leblanc in it. The yellow walls gave a brightness enhanced by the tall windows, with landscape photographs hanging between. A single, humble door sat against the wall beside a large, flat-screen TV to his left. To his right, the den opened up to a dining room with a sturdy wood table. Beyond that, an open counter gave glimpse to that industrial-type of post-modern kitchen beyond, where Ann trotted back in with sodas in both hands. “It’s still hot out there. I figured you guys could use some.”

“Thank you,” Futaba said, only hesitating a moment before taking it.

Ryuji took his, popped it open, and started guzzling as if two girls weren’t staring straight at him. The display made Akira’s stomach squirm.

Before the transfer student could complain, Morgana popped his head out of the leather satchel and hopped out. “Wow. So this is the abode of the lovely Lady Ann. Tasteful artwork and furniture.”

Akira straightened his glasses on his face. “Weren’t your parents in fashion?”

She gave the team leader a show smile, but her focus stayed on the hacker. “Mama picked out the photos. They’ve done alterations at home a few times before, but she wanted home to be more of a respite from the fashion industry.” A tension entered her eyes as she looked around. “You know, I think you guys are the only ones I’ve ever brought in, besides Shiho and Yuuki.”

Akira shrugged to try to counter whatever was pressing down on her thoughts. “Well, getting to show off your home is kind of a big deal, right? Not something for distant acquaintances.”

Futaba trotted over to the Wii underneath the TV and scrutinized the stack of games next to it. “What is You Don’t Know Jack?”

Ann paced closer. “Uh… that game tests friendships. Maaaybe we start with another game first.”

Morgana hopped up on a chair against the dining table. “I didn’t realize we had so many snacks until they’re all together.” He called out to the runner. “What exactly were you planning on doing?”

“Pigging out?” Akira ventured with a smirk.

Ann threw a couch pillow at him. “Eating snacks is the best part of lounging at home.”

Tossing back the pillow, Akira opened his mouth to retort that getting stuck at home sucked. For most of his life, that was the Smiling Mountain Mental Institution because his old bastard didn’t want to live away from work.

His delay gave Ryuji the opportunity to tease, “You’re gonna get fat, y’know.”

Another couch pillow hurled at him, smacking the runner right in the face.

Ryuji let it bounce to the ground, then spotted the Wii. “Oh! Mario Kart rematch!” He hopped over the back of the couch and plopped down. “I bet Miss Computer is effin’ awesome at it!”

Futaba sank down onto the far end of the couch. “I used to play racing games with Kana, but… after… Once I was with Sojiro, the only thing left in my life was finding out what happened to Mom’s research. They may have been able to fool me about what happened to her, but she never would have burned her research.”

Ann came to a stop next to the hacker. “Hey. If you don’t wanna talk about what happened then, that’s okay. You went through some horrible times after losing your mom, but you’re never going back there. And you’ve got us, now, too.”

Futaba gave a grateful smile, then fist-pumped with both hands. “Thanks. But for right now, it’s time for me to kick your butts in Mario Kart!”

Late Afternoon
Hiroo, Ann’s Home

Ann trotted out of the kitchen and set a tall glass of green tea in front of the transfer student, then sat down next to Futaba with her own. The hacker sat at the dining table, her own soda forgotten in one hand and a bowl of salted-lemon crisps in the other.

Ryuji sat across the dinner table from them, his chest puffed out with pride and eyes sparkling with energy as he regaled them with tales of his time as the track star of Shujin. “It must’a been ten paces after I bust through the tape before I realized I won. I mean, there were nine schools at that meet. Everyone was screamin’ an’ cheerin’ an’ there were girls all over me!”

“Did they trip?” Akira said, his lips quirked up.

Ryuji growled.

Futaba nodded. “As a member of the opposite sex, I detect no charm from you.” She turned up her nose and turned to the model. “Right, Ann-san?”

She avoided meeting either the runner or hacker’s gaze. “I only went to the volleyball games to see Shiho.” She coughed and straightened her back. “If you’re gonna tell tales, you gotta make them believable. There’s no way you were ever a chick magnet.”

Ryuji wheezed, his visage struck with betrayal.

Morgana chuckled. “You’ve got to admit, gentlemen don’t go around bragging about how popular they are.” He sat down, his own chest thrust out and gave a side-eye to Ann. “A gentleman offers a helping hand to any lady in need, but always has his sword and his handkerchief ready for his soul mate.”

Ryuji rolled his eyes. “That’s a buncha…” His eyes flicked to the hacker. “…hooey. All guys are lookin’ for is a little action.”

Akira shot the runner a burning glare and his lip twitched, baring his teeth. “No, all guys are not just looking ‘for a little action’.” He crossed one arm across his chest and took a deep gulp of his tea. “Some of us want dignity and companionship.”

“Awww,” Futaba drawled. She tossed another crisp in her mouth, munched, then swallowed and added, “How cute. A unicorn! A guy who just wants to be friends.”

Ann noticed the way the transfer student sat back in his chair, angled away from them, but especially the tightness around his eyes. The model waved down at the hacker. “Hey, hey. Ease up on the guy. Friendships are how romances start, after all.”

“Pfeh,” Ryuji let out, spitting flecks of chewed potato crisps on her table. “Like any o’ us got real prospects.”

“Says you.” Ann turned her nose up at him. “Yusuke asked me out to dinner tonight.”

Futaba gave a congratulatory clap, the team leader let out a melodramatic gasp, and Akira gave a, “For real?”

Ryuji shot the transfer student a momentary glare. “No stealin’ my lines, bro.” Then he swallowed his chewed crisps and whipped around to her. “You serious? Weren’t you an’ Akira…”

She was sure that couldn’t be the case, but glanced at him anyway. He seemed just as shocked, though it was hard to interpret the blush on his face. “No!” Not that she’d have rejected an overture from the transfer student, but he’d been more interested in Shiho. Recent weeks pointed elsewhere, his blushing over the Venus of Shogi back during yukata shopping was adorable.

Futaba gave a theatrical roll of her eyes. “What’s the point of even getting into that? It’s not like people get married until after high school.”

Ann shot a knowing smirk at the transfer student. “No harm in planning ahead, right, Akira ?”

He somehow almost dropped the cup he was holding with both hands.

The track star snorted with laughter. “I dunno why Prez thought this was gonna be some big deal last night. ‘Taba’s tote cool. Says what she thinks like it’s nothin’.”

The hacker’s face flushed and a small smile wormed its way across.

Akira snatched a chip from the hacker’s bowl. “This is Japan. Are you sure ‘speaking one’s mind’ is really normal?”

Hush,” the team leader riposted.

The snark still seemed to cow the hacker just a bit. “I’m not ‘xactly an expert in what normal is.”

Akira straightened. “It’s what everybody else is not.”

All the others rolled their eyes and groaned. Morgana scanned the group with pride in his pose. “I’m calling today another good day. The doctor is placated and our newest member has proven adept at interacting with the team. All we need to do is set the agenda for tomorrow.”

To the model’s surprise, Futaba set her drink on the table and stood. “What about Togo’s pyramid?”

Most palaces aren’t pyramids,” Akira corrected.

Whatever,” the hacker tossed back without missing a beat. “She’s been waiting since before you guys started mine.”

Akira gave a nod, his features sliding into a muted thankfulness. His hand patted her shoulder.

Missing the small exchange, Ryuji popped upright in his chair. “You dudes sure that’s a good idea? She’s been doin’ cool for normal stuff, but… the Metaverse has Shadows who wanna eat us an’ shit.”

“Ryuji!” Ann barked.

Morgana stood. “Actually, he has some valid concerns. The Metaverse isn’t a place to go to avoid discomfort from the real world.”

Futaba’s arms tightened on the back of her chair. “Hrg. It’s not that.” She glanced at the others and withered under their scrutiny. “Not just that. I just awakened to my Persona, and I need to learn how to use it if I’m going to save people. Like you guys saved me. Not every game has a tutorial level for new party members, so…” Futaba stood back and bowed. “So even if you guys have to carry me, I promise I’ll fight hard and get stronger. Give me a chance to show you – and myself – what I can do!”

A long, tense beat passed before she heard the team leader give an amused huff. “She’s right. She needs to learn how strong she is, and the Metaverse is the one place that leaves no room for ambiguity.” Morgana’s tail swished back and forth. “But you have to follow our example and my orders. No charging ahead, especially before you get a feel for your Persona.”

Futaba straightened, her fingers still clenching the back of that dining room chair, but a brightness to her eyes. She raised both hands in clenched fists. “I’m not the weak girl who thought death was the only escape anymore!” She flashed them a grin. “You’ll all see Futaba, extraordinaire! I-We’re gonna save hearts just like you did for me!”

Wednesd ay, 10 August 2016
Early Evening
Hiroo, Subway Station

Ryuji came to a casual stop at a subway station just like any other in Tokyo. Beside him, the transfer student shuffled around, trying to find a spot closer to an AC outflow vent while Futaba clenched his sleeve. Somebody ought to record them, they were so awkward they could make money at one of those pity cringe channels. The runner pulled out his phone to check his feeds.

Up at the top, a blog shot back against Phantom Thief nay-sayers.

The runner didn’t preen. Much.

More footsteps joined them, a couple of cuties listening to some streamer on one of their phones talking about Medjed. The one with the page-boy hair cut said to her friend, “Just wait. The Phantom Thief’s gonna take Medjed down for sure. They got every heart they send a calling card to. Takin’ down scumbags left and right. No way are they gonna let someone barge in on Japan.” She gave a girly squeal. “I wish I could run into him. I’d totally date the hero of Japan.”

They continued down the station to the spot where the second train car would stop, and Ryuji watched as that ass so worth tapping walked. For a beat he considered elbowing Akira and talking about the luck of the Phantom Thief, but despite the good day with Futaba-chan he still seemed like he was in stick-up-his-ass mode. Instead, he brought up the Phantom Thief group chat. [Our popularity is growing and people don't even know we defeated Medjed yet! And get this: a super cute chick said she wants to go out with the Phantom Thief!]

Ann’s ID winked in. [But not YOU, huh?]

Futaba texted next, [No surprise. As a member of the opposite sex, I sense no charm from you, Ryuji.]

Damn, that chick was cute as hell but she out-bitched Ann. [You have to say it over text, too?]

Makoto’s ID winked in. [Too? What's been going on over there? Akira, Ann, I specifically asked you two to keep an eye on Futaba-chan.]

[No worries,] Ann sent. [We just chatted over snacks and Mario Kart. If you play with Futaba, do NOT underestimate her with a small driver in the kart. She never makes the same mistake twice.]

Psht,” Ryuji blew out. Today was a work out. [It was only easy for YOU because you all ragged on me all day. And Futaba totally goes for cheap shots with that forking blue shell. I feel like we still need to cut loose. It could even be more 'visit new places' for her.] He sent that and thought. He could almost feel the lightbulb wink on above his head. [Let's go play some more darts! Anybody up for Penguin Sniper?]

Futaba texted, [Why would you give a Prinny a gun? You throw those suckers and BOOM!]

Ryuji sighed. These guys needed to get out. Since she was just a meter away, he said, “It’s a game hall.”

Akira glanced between the hacker holding onto his sleeve with both hands and runner. “I think I’d better drop her off so she can get some rest.”

Ryuji scuffed the floor with his sneakers. “Yeah, you’re prolly right, but you should come after that. You ‘specially need to cut loose.” He looked down at his buzzing phone to see the artist and Ann both mention they had prior engagements. Huh. Maybe she was telling the truth. [What about the rest of you? Team building and fun can go together! My treat.]

That’s so you, Reaper,” Morgana said from the transfer student’s shoulder.

[I'm finished with dinner,] Makoto sent. [I had to deliver Big Sis's to the courthouse because she's too busy to come home tonight, but I'm already on my way back.]

Ann texted, [Well, since you're paying, maybe I could bring Yusuke and Yuuki along.]

[I'm game.] Mishima texted, [Where exactly is this penguin place?]

Ann linked a map highlighting Penguin Sniper.

[Wait a second, I was thinking paying for three,] he protested.

Morgana gave a devilish smirk that only a friggin’ cat could pull off, then said, “Think you’re ready for the public, Futaba?”

Oh, that asshole .

The small girl shifted her weight from foot to foot, her hands never leaving their grip on Akira’s sleeves. She looked up at him and he let out a breath. “You’ve gotten a lot better since yesterday, but you don’t have to if you don’t want to. I think it would be neat, but there’s a lot of people there and it’s quite a train ride from Yongen-Jaya relative to Hiroo.”

She shook her head and pulled at his arm like an impatient toddler. Of course Akira didn’t complain about the cutie pressing against him.

Akira texted, [I'll drop off Futaba first. See you at the billiard tables?]

[They have billiards? It's been ages since I've played,] Mishima replied.

Yusuke texted, [If Takamaki-san is fine with it, I accept your invitation, Sakamoto-san.]

Ryuji arched an eyebrow, but the train was pulling in so his, “For real,” was lost to the rushing wind.

Wednesd ay, 10 August 2016
Evening
Kichijoji, Penguin Sniper

Akira strode up the steps and into air-conditioned bliss. Conversation swirled around and ice clinked in glasses, the sound broken by the occasional crack of what sounded like heavy ceramic. Definitely too many people for Futaba, but most people milled around in one small area so it didn’t rub him wrong like street-side crowds. It didn’t take long to identify the table where it looked like Makoto was showing Ann how to use a stick.

True to his word, the runner paid for their tickets, so Akira walked up behind Ryuji, who stood behind the girls, dumb grin on his face, his eyes locked on the class president’s skirted profile as she bent over the table. Akira flicked the track star’s ear.

Ow!” Ryuji hopped away and spun with his fists coming up before he identified the transfer student. He shot a tired glare and rubbed the ear. “Jerk. ‘Bout time you got here.” He waved across the table at Yuuki and Yusuke. “Okay, dudes! Now that we got an even number, what we gonna play?”

Yusuke brushed back a lock of hair and scanned the table. “That is a good question. Akira-san, have you ever played?”

The transfer student shook his head. “Never was at a place big enough for one.”

With the artist holding the other cue, Yuuki slipped his hands in his pockets. “Well, with the variety of different skill levels, a straight team match might not be a good idea. I don’t know if there’s a proper name for this, but have any of you heard of table score team games?” When they shook their heads, he cleared his throat. “Each team is trying to reach a goal limit, which allows a handicap for players of different skill levels to all challenge themselves without being overwhelmed by the most skilled player. Some actions, like when you knock the cue ball into the pocket,” he pointed at a white ball, “increase the score of the table. So it can be competitive or cooperative.”

A sagacious plan, Mishima-san,” the artist said. “Shall we break into teams, with the newest and oldest players to help us reach our stride?”

Akira smiled. It was a little bit fake, but everybody else was having a good time and until Togo’s palace came up he did want to try. What was it that Father Motoori said? Fake it ‘til you make it? With these people, he started to think he might be able to.

Notes:

The song Akira sings is from Animaniacs. Not because he’d likely know it, but because “I’m Mad” is funny.

Chapter 98: August 11th, Futaba and the Temple

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Thursday, 11 August 2016
Morning
Togo’s Temple, Front Bailey

Akira paced through the fog rolling out of the fortress yet temple of Togo Mitsuyo’s palace. The Phantom Thieves came here at Futaba’s insistence, and he wasn’t about to question whether it was to avoid the scheduled work and city exposure training or just divine providence. His palms felt slick under his gloves. This wasn’t a selfish run, it was the Phantom Thieves first real charge to help the most important girl in his life. His heart hammered in his chest. The towers and tiered castle walls inside loomed tall, but were they arranged that way before? He lifted his hands to tug at his gloves in old nervous habit.

Ann stopped behind him. “Before we get started, we should get the code names out of the way. I’m Panther, our leader there is Byakko, that’s Rider, Fox, Reaper – I gave him that sweet nickname – and the last one up there with more Personas than you can shake a stick at is Joker.”

Following behind them, Futaba crossed the threshold of the first gate and into the front bailey proper. Blue flames flickered over her, leaving the slight hacker in her dark, glistening-circuitry tights. The girl jumped. “Whoa! Cool, it’s even more sleek than Tron!” She admired herself for a moment before returning her focus to the pigtailed model in a scorching hot red leather getup. The hacker’s goggles tipped up and down at the model in red leather. “Wow. And I thought my getup was skin-tight.”

Pink dusted Ann’s cheeks and she angled away from the hacker. “I-it’s just my expression of rebellion. Kamoshida thought he could reduce me until I wasn’t even my own woman. Fuck that.”

Morgana paced closer, a squared rod in one hand. “Think of it like cognitive armor, our rejection of the Palace Ruler. The rest of us already threatened the Palace Ruler, so we took on our Phantom Thief forms as soon as we returned to the Palace.”

Futaba raised the hand not holding onto her staff weapon. “Uh… so does that mean if we level up, we can change into other stuff in the real world? Like how you turn from Bastet here to a cat in the real world?”

Morgana fell to the ground, forehead bonking on the raked gravel path. “ I’m not Bastet, I’m a human! The whole cat thing is distortion from the Metaverse. I’m as human as you, but I must have been caught by the distortion of a Palace ruler. That’s why I’m stuck with this form.”

Ryuji, already snickering, let out, “He tote goes for fish an’ licks himself when he thinks nobody’s lookin’. Mona’s definitely a cat.”

The team leader’s tail jerked back and forth as he leapt to his feet. “I am not a cat.” He tapped that squared rod in his hands, and more shouted than resumed speaking, “I’m trying to get my human body back. That’s why I was investigating Palaces and rescued them.” He shook his head. “Anyway, the point is, that form is like your Persona. It protects you from the will of the Palace Ruler. Note you remained in your cognitive self-image until you crossed the perimeter. Once your will clashed with the Palace Ruler, you took on your image of a rebel because the conscious and subconscious minds—”

“Are linked in a single if disjointed whole,” Futaba exclaimed, her hands clenching her staff weapon. “So you guys use code-names to help control the cognition of the head honcho! Just like how us hackers use pseudonyms so if the PSIA gets their grubby mitts on our code, it doesn’t tip them off to our real name or location!” A beat passed, then she lowered her hands. “But, uh… why not just use your names?”

Ann flashed a wide smile. “That wouldn’t be cool!”

Makoto tapped a finger against the side of her jaw. “So what shall we call you? I was about to say Hacker, but that might be a little too on the nose.”

Ann scratched at the base of a pigtail. “Mech?”

Morgana tapped his folded crossbow against his crossed arms. “Maybe go simple with your headgear? Goggles?”

“Yeah,” Futaba drawled, “I’m gonna give a pass on all those.”

Akira crossed his arms, knuckle tapping against his chin in thought. “Selket? Goddess of magic and medicine, and founder of the Ashrak assassins.”

“Se-ru-ket-to,” Ryuji sounded out, looking like he was about to fall over as his tongue tripped over itself.

Akira sighed. “Right, it has to be something everybody can say. That cuts down a lot of possibilities.”

“Fu—” Ryuji’s eyes flicked to the hacker. “Eff you.”

Futaba shook her head. “After having seen what my palace was, I need to step away from my obsession with Stargate SG-1.” She poked at the goggles on her face. “These are pretty sweet, though. Something about vision would definitely be cool.”

“Farsight?” Ryuji said.

Futaba shook her head. “I’m already farsighted in real life. No way am I gonna take that moniker in a cool world where I kick magical ass.”

Makoto uncrossed her arms. “Maybe Diviner?”

Futaba crossed her arms, tapping the butt of her staff weapon against the ground. “Getting closer. Oh! That chick in The Matrix people went to when they knew what they needed to do and but couldn’t justify it yet. Oracle!”

Ryuji nodded. “Better than Navi.”

Futaba chuckled. “Hey, listen!”

Ann let out a sound of disgust. “Ugh, please no. I skipped Majora’s Mask because they pissed me off so much with that twerp of a fairy.”

Futaba held up a hand, index finger extended. “At least you played Twilight Princess.”

Ann lost her cool thief composure. “Best game in the series! Only thing I was mad about was no boss fight against Evil Midna. They dropped so many hints in the first two thirds of the game.”

Right?”

Makoto gave a cough designed to draw attention. “We can save the video game talk for our next day of socialization training.” She paused, but decided it wouldn’t matter how much of her insisting on coming to train her Persona was just avoiding that very public activity. “Fu…Oracle, how comfortable are you summoning your Persona?”

“Marcus Drusus!” She slapped a button on her wrist. A familiar warbling hum rose and a set of transporter rings descended, flared with light, then rose up into the glider of a towering man in a silver breastplate, adorned with a red sash. In one hand he held a rectangular scroll case with a short length of parchment dangling out. He stood on a platform that resembled less a chariot than a blocky slab of metal. Prongs jutted out of the front of the slab glider.

A moment later, transport rings descended from the slab-glider-riding man, which dissipated, and the rings deposited Futaba, then dissipated as they rose back up. “I’d’a given you guys a demonstration of the cannons, but I figure with the whole thief motif you guys have going on that we better stick to stealth until it’s time to blast the baddies. But as soon as it’s time to make bad guys go bye-bye, you better give me a clear shot. This Futaba is no longer a helpless little girl.” She posed with her staff weapon.

Morgana puffed out his chest in pride. “It’s great to have a smart addition to the team. That’s exactly right, like the most stylish of thieves, we stick to the shadows and avoid fighting whenever possible. That allows us to direct our energies to fights that most need it, as well as avoid damaging the mind of the person whose heart we’re trying to change. Fox, Joker, Rider, you’re with me on the vanguard. Panther, Reaper, you’re on flank guard with Oracle.” He held up a hand when she thumped her staff weapon on the ground to object. “When too many of us try to fight at once it creates the risk of somebody getting in somebody else’s way. I want you to watch us to get a feel for our fighting style and rhythm. Then you can come up and join the vanguard so you can test your Persona.”

“Eyes up, everyone,” Morgana said at just a little louder than necessary to be heard. “They almost got us the first time we were in here, but they caught us by surprise. We’re scouting for safe rooms, ways to disable alarms, and safe routes to the Treasure. If we see that cognitive guard dog, we run.”

Makoto blinked. “Cognitive what? You mean like the Orthrus Joker recruited?”

Ryuji snorted. “That pipsqueak was tiny compared to Big and Foggy.”

Makoto crossed her arms and turned on the longcoated boy. “How many times did you sneak in without the rest of the thieves?”

Futaba glanced around, her bold posture shrinking at the rising tension in the air. “Sneak in?”

Akira cowed a step back. “T-technically others came in with both times.”

Morgana looked over his shoulder at the hacker. “Remember our rule that any decision has to have a unanimous vote?” He turned a glare on Akira. “We were here the first time because Togo Mitsuyo’s Shadow inhabited Mementos at the time.” At her confused look, he interrupted, “Don’t worry about it right now, we’ll bring you there after we change Togo’s heart. Anyway, it turned from a bud in Mementos to…” He spread his arms, “this.”

Akira swallowed, but added, “And then I came back in because I couldn’t let Hifumi suffer alone.” He held up a hand at the upperclassman in riding leathers. “I know it wasn’t playing by the spirit of the rules, I couldn’t think straight.”

Futaba changed her grip on her staff weapon. “You’re preachin’ to the choir, Joker. But we’re doin’ this right , now. All together. Anything we oughta know?”

“Watch out for Shadows, there are puzzles all over the place, walking into the fog is probably bad, and there’s a big cognitive guardian that Ryuji and I could barely hold off.” Akira flicked on his laser dot projector, its beam joining the narrow cone of light from Makoto’s shotgun. They advanced to the lobby building, but this time headed for the door to the Hall of Interns. Like before, a plate bore a puzzle in poem form. “I cover what’s real and hide what’s true, but sometimes bring out the courage in you.” He scratched his head. “The hell’s that supposed to mean?”

Ann pressed her free hand to her masked face. “Honestly, Joker. You’ve even used it. It’s makeup.”

Hollow wooden clunks resounded below their feet, then the door slid aside. Another covered walkway stretched out before them, the flat plane broken by stairs as it ascended the hillside. Deep fog rolled to either side, but only faint wisps slipped across the path. Fortified walls and distant towers rose up in the distance like the hints of a dream. The thieves proceeded at a wary jog.

Two humanoid shapes resolved out of the billowing fog to their right. A pair of the Shadow guards in formal shrine keeper garb stood there, ceramic noh masks where their faces should be. With no appreciable cover to speak of, the Shadows shouted, “Intruders!” and collapsed into viscous pools of darkness.

Four curvaceous women wearing fancy court robes – if ‘almost shrugged off’ counted as wearing – formed out of the muck. Their fluffy twin foxtails twitched behind them and pointed claws extended from their fingers.

Flanking the vixens stood a pair of what appeared to be man-sized, red-furred wolves with spiked iron collars. But on closer inspection, the beasts had segmented plates like a snake running down their bellies and up the base of their tails. Long chains dangled from their collars and the fog danced around them.

“Zorro!” the fastest of the Phantom Thieves called out. The burly Persona’s eyes blazed with shimmering purple. The same aura swept over one of the indecent vixens, tossed it up into the air, then slammed it back into the ground where it crumpled in a heap. “Fox, no lightning against those women!”

Akira reached back for his first Persona and a churning column of fire and darkness touched down. Black lightning flicked over Pillar of Heaven before darkness zipped out across the ground in its zig-zag pattern to the wolf-monster on the right, then roared up.

The red-furred beast didn’t even twitch. Then both opened their fanged maws and let loose a mighty roar that washed over the thieves.

Yusuke and Makoto kept their feet, but between the intimidating bellow and concussive wave, Akira and Morgana fell to the ground. The artist snapped to, drawing his katana to defend his fallen teammates while Goemon threw a bolt of lightning into the wolf on the right.

Makoto summoned Johanna but braced within her Persona. The three standing vixens, already crackling with energy, loosed lightning bolts. Goemon dodged with deftness belied by his size and Makoto gritted her teeth but bore the strike.

Morgana was not so fortunate as a bolt struck him, knocking his already prone form over in a seizing flop with a cry of pain.

Makoto shot a bolt of fire at the indecent vixen struggling to its feet, blasting it into fading smoke.

Akira sucked in a quick breath, then kip-upped. His attention clear again, he directed Pillar to blast the right-most beast with a pulse of fire. The blow struck and the Shadow clenched its eyes shut, but returned a growl as soon as the flame passed.

Of course it would resist fire as well.

One of the indecent vixens on the right batted her eyes at him, seizing his gaze. He blinked, and a red omamori-style knot he didn’t see before dangled from the curvaceous woman’s hair as Hifumi slid off her pink kimono to bear everything. A part of his mind questioned, but between the tightness in his pants and dryness in his mouth he couldn’t form a coherent thought. His gun clattered to the wood walkway beside him. Hifumi lifted a hand, inviting him closer with a curling finger.

Then a psychedelic burst of light flashed and a jolt of agonizing pain shot through him as if his a jagged sword cleaved down through his body.

Akira hit the covered walkway, blood dripping from his nostrils. He coughed blood and heard the whoosh of flames and crackle of lightning, then a shout from Morgana. Warm motes swept over the longcoated boy’s body. Tendons and muscle knit back together. Akira scooped up his gun and stood, woozy for a moment.

No Hifumi met his gaze and his heart twinged, but two indecent vixens were gone and Makoto hit the last remaining giant monster-wolf with a drive-by shotgunning. The thieves encircled the last vixen, singed and collapsed against the fog-shrouded ground.

It clutched its pink hanfu close and bared teeth with long canines at them. “You brutes. Coming in here and ganging up on dainty li’l me.”

Remembering the vixens seemed less phased by gunfire, Akira lowered his gun and brandished his over-sized survival knife. “We’ll apologize when we find a lady.”

Her lips curled to bare even more of her fangs.

Yusuke flicked his katana out, light from distant torches glinting over the blade. “Do not forget your situation.”

The fox-woman’s tails puffed wider and she shrank back. “O-of course! How could I show my sincerity?”

Morgana’s blue gaze flicked from the Shadow to longcoated boy. “You’ve gotten insights into the Palace before when you’ve purified Shadows before, try it here.”

Akira took in a deep breath. “Give us your cunning.”

The vixen leaned to one side, one hand braced on the ground as she feigned relaxation. “I couldn’t serve a boorish man of no intellect. Riddle me this: What is a thing that is precious as gold, yet may never be sold? A thing which can be kept but not used, a weakness that can not be removed?”

Ryuji, from back with Futaba, grumped, “What is it with this Palace an’ effin’ riddles?”

Akira wracked his brain. This sounded familiar. Something literal could not be precious yet also impossible to exchange. He glanced to Makoto, but she looked as consternated as him. What would he have and never want to let someone else have? Reputation?

Then the answer struck him. “A secret.”

The vixen shot upright, the ashen cinders floating around her falling away. “I laid low the Yi Dynasty, yet exploited only vices already there. Only the pure of heart are beyond my lure.” She burst into black which streaked into Akira’s mask.

He took a pouch of Takemi’s medicine from the team leader, downed it with a chase of coffee from the thermos, then touched a finger to his mask, a tingle passing through him. “Daji isn’t the only Shadow here that can brainwash.”

Makoto pursed her lips. “That could be problematic if there are a lot more that can use psychic powers like Zorro.”

Futaba’s head tilted. “Zorro? Psychic powers?”

Yusuke riposted with aplomb, “Your Persona is a Roman reformer riding a mechanical glider with cannons.”

“Fair.”

The Phantom Thieves advanced down the covered walkway to a grand building with tall, plastered walls. A thin walkway wrapped around the building’s perimeter, but they focused on the door with lettering over it proclaiming this the Hall of Interns. Akira read the placard on the door. “I can be held or touched, but not seen. I can be given without being lost, but only won with great cost.” He put away his knife, then scratched his head. “What can be given without being lost?”

Yusuke gave an amused chuff. “There is only one thing unseen, yet can be touched by art or held by hope. A heart.” Heavy wood clunking reverberated and allowed the artist to slide the door open.

The rest of the Phantom Thieves filed in, though Futaba paused at the threshold. “Not bad, Inari.”

“Stay close,” Morgana hissed. The tall forms of more Shadow guards patrolled the long hall, heavy pipes in the ceiling giving the space a feel more like a factory. Light filtered in through the screened vents high in the walls, but a deep gloom otherwise suffused the cavernous space.

Makoto swept her gun-light across the room, revealing numerous murals on the walls of faceless men groping a young Mitsuyo in a crying noh mask. More cognitions bearing crying noh masks toiled at desks and work benches, some with mannequins of larger-than-life old men rearing back as if to beat them with rolled up scrolls. Near the middle of the hall longer than Shibuya’s Central Street stood a bus stop where three male mannequins wearing grinning noh masks crowded around a busty female mannequin, her shoulders slumped and the crying noh mask turned to the plastic walls to try to edge out the leering trio.

Ann’s hand clenched around her Zat gun. “Yeah, I totally get that. Saw it in New York and Rauma, too. People talk about how great it would be to be beautiful, but then when somebody shows up who fits the criteria, it seems like there’s either resentment or some entitled prick who wants that for himself.”

They moved on, fighting past another Shadow patrol to another mannequin display of crying-noh-mask Mitsuyo reaching for a ten thousand yen note on a fishing line, behind held just out of reach by a male mannequin holding the fishing rod.

Futaba shook her head. “I wonder if Mom had to deal with that kind of crap.”

Ryuji growled. “Ain’t even gotta be pretty. A buncha them old boss assholes had it rough an’ just keep the shit rollin’ downhill ‘cause they got shit when they were there. An’ peeps call me dumb.”

Makoto let out a distressed breath. “Clearly she was abused. Why wouldn’t she report any of this to the police? Bosses being a jerk might not be against the law, but sexual assault most certainly is.”

Akira shook his head at her naivete. “Police are part of the entrenched system. I bet they ‘dissuaded’ her from reporting her abuse.”

Her gun-light’s cone fell. “How could you say that?”

He squinted into the dark. “That’s what they did to me. The first school day I came to school with a broken nose from the old man, my first-grade teacher said he was going to report it to social services. He was gone the next day, and the school hired a replacement three days later who refused to ask about my ‘home’ life. Same thing with the drunk. If you’re part of the old boy’s club, the system protects you despite your crimes. If you’re not, the system will grind you up and spit you out.”

Drunk?” Futaba chirped.

We can talk about it once we hit a safe room,” Morgana interjected. He led them around the space reminding Akira of a defunct museum.

Futaba slipped up to the leader. “Hey, can I come up?”

Morgana rubbed his chin. “This darkness is not an ideal condition, but you do need to practice. Rider, take to the rear.”

As the iron-face-plated girl slipped back, Futaba hefted her staff weapon. “They won’t see me comin’!”

A Shadow guard stepped around a raised, enormous stone fire pit. “I heard something.”

Morgana leaped, his claws scratching at the mask for purchase until he ripped it off. The Shadow convulsed and swelled, bursting into the powerful form of a lion with a human face and wearing a plated steel hood.

With the Shadow disoriented for a moment, Yusuke reached for his mask. “Goemon!” The bigger-than-life Persona blew a puff into his pipe, launching a lightning bolt into the beast, only for the lightning bolt to spring back into Goemon. Yusuke growled. “This place vexes me!”

Futaba lined up and the discharge pod of her staff weapon crackled before she shot a bolt of flame into the beast’s flank. A pained roar rose up.

Makoto reached forward, metal plates sliding and clicking as Johanna formed underneath her and she took the artist’s place. She sent a bolt of flame into the burly beast.

It roared, but just for a moment. It snapped its jaws with a sound like a hiss, and needles shot through the air at Futaba. One thunked into the wood floor just short of her and dissipated, another sailing over her, but the third pierced her belly and dissipated before she realized she’d been hit. The slight hacker tumbled backwards, staff weapon falling to one side as she clutched her bleeding wound.

Morgana caught her and looked up through a narrow gaze. “I’ll heal her. Joker, try curse magic! Fox, left flank! Reaper, up!”

Pillar of Heaven crashed down and pulsed a dark, moaning blast into the muscled beast.

No longer addled, the lion-bodied Shadow spun around, its tail glinting in the faint light leaking through the high windows. A jagged sensation tore over Zorro and the other four of the forward thieves, knocking Johanna over.

Ryuji grit his teeth but held his ground. “My turn! Blast ‘em, Captain!” The skeletal pirate riding a ship held out its arm-cannon and unleashed a swirling cone of slicing winds, blasting the Shadow into dissolving smoke.

Akira tore open a packet of some of Takemi’s medicine and poured it straight into his mouth, then drew a small water bottle to wash it down. He handed a medicated bandage to Futaba. “You going to be okay?”

She swallowed, but accepted the team leader’s hand to stand. This time she whispered, “Sorry.” She accepted her staff weapon, but still held a hand over the medicated bandage over where a needle as long as her forearm had pierced her belly.

As long as you’re okay,” Morgana said with relief. “This much darkness is going to be harder to fight in, maybe you should hang back until we’re outside. Rider and I can heal wounds to a degree, but nobody can bring you back from the dead.” When she gave a nod, the catboy led the thieves through the dark to a locked ladder built against the wall, unlocked it, then up it to a walkway bathed in a glow as if a full moon hung right outside. A door with a gold nameplate declaring Section Chief stood against the outer wall. “Come on in, everyone. The ruler’s cognition is weak here.”

An executive’s corner office lay beyond the door. An indoor fern to the left added some green. A bookshelf of war history covered the whole right wall, an oak desk angled in the other corner, with one of those clacking metal orb desk decorations. Despite the fact that the only windows visible from the outside all seemed to be those arrow-slit or screen-covered type, floor-to-ceiling windows behind the desk looked out to a misty, night-time forest without a hint of clouds in the sky. The thieves paused to check weapons and make sure Futaba had nothing but skin abrasion remaining.

Futaba trudged up to the runner. “I’m sorry I threw everything off, guys.”

Makoto slapped her magazine back into her shotgun. “We were all new once, just be careful to pay attention and work with us.”

Yeah,” Ann said, a pointed gaze at the longcoated boy.

With the team ready, Morgana led the thieves back out and through the maze of degrading mannequin exhibits or cognitions working themselves to tears. It took a while to move while avoiding Shadow guards, but at last they came to the end.

Makoto’s gun-light illuminated another wood placard on the door. “At night I come without being called, at day I am lost without being stolen.”

Akira tapped his foot against the ground as he thought. “The moon?”

The upperclassman in riding leathers shook her head. “The moon appears in the sky during the day, especially as it approaches the new moon phase.”

Ryuji took in a sharp breath. “I got it! Bats!”

Yusuke tapped his fingers along the handle of his sheathed katana. “Comets and meteors are most visible at night, but likewise can appear during the day if the conditions are right.”

Adjusting his grip on his sub-machine gun, Akira wished he could just let his dangle on a strap like Ryuji’s or Yusuke’s. “Energy?”

No, the coming and stolen parts make me think it’s something more concrete,” Makoto said. She pursed her lips. “Stars!” A clunk reverberated, and she pushed the door open without problem.

The Phantom Thieves advanced over another covered walkway that meandered over a foggy swamp, crossing over uncovered paneled wood paths shrouded by mist. A castle-like building with walls of enormous stones loomed before them. Good-luck talismans and spears dotted the wall in no particular pattern.

Morgana came to a stop in front of the next door. The lettering painted above proclaimed Hall of NHK . “I am without value if bought, yet often traded. I can be given by a pauper as easily as a king, but if I am broken, pain is assured.”

Ryuji scratched at his scalp. “Rgh. What is it with this dumb Palace? That ain’t even good meter.”

Ann rolled her eyes. “Like you’re a poet critic, Reaper.”

Honor?” ventured Yusuke.

Makoto shook her head. “I don’t think honor can be traded. And I doubt that a king would give honor easily.”

If I am broken, pain is assured.” Futaba’s lips pressed together for a beat. “Promise.” A wood clunk reverberated under the walkway before the door slid away, and the thieves passed inside. A covered court big enough to hold all of Shujin stretched out before them, but at least lights blazed from the ceiling. Like the Hall of Offering, exhibits dotted the court like a formal museum. Most were made of mannequins, with a tall flatscreen proclaiming Togo Mitsuyo’s beauty or greatness, though some were acted out with cognitions. The vast majority seemed ordinary days, but one stood on an elevated platform of polished wood planks. A glass-enclosed Mitsuyo mannequin clenched the front of her skirt with both hands as if trying to force it lower. As soon as Akira stepped close, the flatscreen next to it flared to life.

Shibuya, NHK Broadcasting Center
Saturday, 20 March 1999

Togo Mitsuyo swallowed and smoothed out her silk blouse. While she’d passed the probationary period of her employment with NHK, she had yet to make a name for herself with anyone significant. Her assignment to entertainment landed her a rich man with Togo Shinpei, but his little comfort couldn’t quench her need to make something of herself. Catching men’s eyes was easy, but someone as high up as Sugimura Morihiko, one of nine directors of the executive board, could catapult her to an anchor spot on NHK World, maybe even NHK General. Mitsuyo took in a deep breath and opened the door before her nerves could make her late.

The man’s once brown hair had almost lost the battle to grey, and he wore a black silk suit with a violet pocket cloth. He looked up and smiled, wrinkles crinkling at the corners of his eyes. “Mitsuyo! My chief of human resources said he’d found a woman the cameras loved, but I had no idea she would be so beautiful.” He stood and stepped around his desk.

Mitsuho stood before the desk and flashed a practiced smile. “I came to join the company family to become the face of NHK.”

And you’ve got the first qualification,” Sugimura Morihiko said, laying a hand on her shoulder as he started a slow pace around her, his eyes tracing her chest and hips. It wasn’t until that hand drifted down her back that she shot straight. “But there are so many… qualified ladies trying to become the face of NHK. I need to be sure you are… more qualified.” His hand traced down her hip and cupped her butt.

She let out a gasp of surprise and tried to step away, but the chairs hemmed her in and his hand followed, even started to hike up her short pencil skirt. “D-director Sugimura-san! Thi-this is most irregu—”

Irregular?” He roared, one hand grabbing her breast over her dress suit and shoving her against the bookshelf. His voice resumed, low and dangerous, “You’ve been at NHK for six months. And you think you deserve to jump the line all the way to daytime anchor?” His other hand pressed against her hip and posterior, more to keep her trapped against the shelves than to fondle her this time.

Mitsuyo struggled to push his clenching grab from her chest. “Su—Director! Please!”

His hand pinched so tight she thought she couldn’t breathe for a moment. “Don’t be stupid. Pleasing your betters is part of the job. You can either have a chance at life behind the camera at a real network, or you can never work in broadcast again.”

Thursday, 11 August 2016
Afternoon
Togo’s Temple, Hall of Interns

The thieves took a stumbling step back from the screen. Ann appeared to be still for a moment before Akira realized she was vibrating with rage, and Futaba clenched his longcoat. Makoto let her weapon drop to its strap and looked ready to vomit.

Even Ryuji brushed at his jacket as if to get off the dirty feel of the director’s clenching hand. “Fuck! That sick pervert!”

A sonorous woman’s voice came from behind them. “Have you thieves had your fill of traipsing through the price I had to pay to get ahead?” They spun about, where Shadow Togo stood, her leathery wings unfurled and eyes blazing gold. Six Shadows in Noh masks painted with tears and snarls ringed her. “Do you understand now what was stolen from me when shogi took my husband? When I had to leave that den of vipers to take a lesser woman’s management job?”

Despite being grappled by a trembling hacker, Akira snarled, “You suffered that, and you’re still pushing Hifumi through abuse and objectification?”

Abuse?” she screeched at him, the other glass cases in the huge, covered court trembling. “All workers must pay to make their way, that is how the world is!”

A yellow bolt of plasma zipped into the sensuous demon-Shadow. Futaba straightened and adjusted her staff weapon. “That might be the way the world was . But it’s everyone’s responsibility to make society better than when they came into it. My mom was a scientist in a world where women were expected to get coffee and stay at home, but she knew she could expand mankind’s understanding and she did it and let the men handle the coffee.”

Shadow Togo’s perfect teeth bared for a rumbling growl. “Liar. You insolent miscreants are wild monsters who need to be tamed. The great control, and the weak submit.” She held out a hand and floated backwards, dissipating into dark fog.

The six Shadows surrounding her moved forward, spread into a broad line, and dropped into puddles of darkness.

Notes:

Futaba kept her code name, but there are numerous reasons why I changed her Persona. First is that her canon start Persona was the Necronomicon, which is a reference to Lovecraft’s Call of Cthulu. Beyond Lovecraft being extremely racist, his story perpetuated not only racial disdain but a bitter misanthropy against all humans. Trauma in his childhood does not give him a free pass for that. The underlying theme that humans were too stupid, weak, and pathetic to be able to move beyond their worst goes against the entire theme of the Persona series that mankind can come together, rise above our petty nature, and surpass our fears and failures. That and the imagery of Futaba’s summoning her Persona was tentacles abducting her, alluding to tentacle porn, which I will never hesitate to write out.

Almost all the other main characters’ Personas (less Milady de Winter) referenced either historical or folkloric figures who fought against corruption, even to death. Marcus Drusus was one of Rome’s great reformers, attempting to bring together the peoples as well as classes of the Italian peninsula before he was assassinated by wealthy competitors who didn’t like his popularity and feared the loss of power his reforms would entail.

The scene with Mitsuyo and the elder Sugimura was based on The Lives of Others or Das Leben der Anderen, which is based on the frequent and abusive quid-pro-quo in the entertainment and communications industry. While enforcement has been improving, such sexual quid-pro-quo remains a part of the entertainment industry all over the world.

Chapter 99: August 11th, Wakaba's Curry

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Thursday, 11 August 2016
Afternoon
Togo’s Temple, Court of NHK

Six Shadows lined up in the covered courtyard big enough to encompass Shujin. Enormous stage lights blazed down from above, which just seemed to highlight the black pools the Shadows collapsed into. Out of the center rose a green, muscled humanoid with gold eyes blazing. As it rose, the thieves saw a churning yellow orb in the gap where its belly should have been. Below, ragged brown leathers concealed what seemed to be legs just as powerful as the bulging biceps.

A figure in late-feudal shogun’s armor, bearing a feline mask and red flag with a paw affixed to the back of its armor, formed behind the giant.

The other four rose as humanoid soldiers without heads. They wore faded tabards, and all wielded whips that looked more like spinal columns. As one they raised their spine-whips.

A Neko Shogun!” Morgana unfolded his crossbow and crossbow and charged in one fluid motion.

Makoto summoned Johanna and charged into the furthest-right headless soldier, flames bellowing.

With the team leader tied up clashing bayonet to tantou with the Neko Shogun, Futaba and Ryuji looked at Akira. “Okay, let’s make sure they have a line to fall back to. Oracle, can you hit more than one at once?”

She tapped that sleek bracelet built into the right hand of her suit and she disappeared up into transport rings as Marcus coalesced above. He held his scroll box aloft and the two canons shot long, cyan beams that raked over a headless soldier, the gigantic green bruiser, and Neko Shogun. The blow made the headless soldier shudder and fall back a step, but the shogun only flinched and the bruiser didn’t even seem to notice.

Pillar of Heaven!” His Persona twisted into being like an angry cyclone touching down from the ceiling, ripping out and tossing one of the ceiling stage lights, then zipped darkness into the beefy humanoid with a churning orb belly, and the two headless soldiers in front of it.

Undeterred, the headless soldiers swung their spine-whips. Yusuke parried the unnerving weapon, but Ryuji and Akira found themselves entangled when they tried to block with studded club and P90 respectively. The headless soldiers yanked, sinking sharp bone into the boys’ arms and sending them stumbling forward.

One of the headless soldiers loomed over the fallen Akira and raised its spine-whip.

A thorned whip wrapped around the soldier, tangling its limbs and weapon against itself before lifting it up to slam the Shadow against another. “No you don’t!” Ann snapped.

Akira rolled backwards, still bleeding from one arm as he snatched for his P90. “Thanks, Panther.”

Gotta hold that line, right?”

Akira nodded, his bloody fingers not quite responding. Personas it was, then. “Take this and hit ‘em all!” He dismissed Pillar and summoned the strengthened Jack Frost, which hurled three javelin-sized ice shards at his teammate’s sensual dancer Persona.

Starting with a growl, Big Green lifted its meaty forearms to shield itself and the orb swirled.

Carmen twirled her now unencumbered whip around herself, shattering the javelins of ice and growing a blizzard swirl around herself before lashing out. Frigid winds howled and thousands of small ice shards like a rain of arrows fell upon the whole Shadow party. Morgana leaped for what cover the towering green humanoid could provide and Neko Shogun found itself sheathed in a shell of blue ice.

Gunfire barked as Makoto zipped down the line, spraying haphazard shotgun blasts into the headless soldier Shadows. After the damage from the ice storm, the two shots she landed blasted the Shadows into dissolving smoke. Just to make sure, she swung Johanna around, drifting over another headless Shadow as her Persona gushed flames.

The enormous Shadow let out a bellow and snapped its arms wide. The orb which had been churning snapped into a tight swirl and opened like an eye, emitting a wide, blazing white beam. Akira and Ryuji dove away, but on impact with the floor it unleashed a thunderous explosion that still tossed the Phantom Thieves like leaves and expanded to engulf Marcus. Makoto was the only one quick enough to dismiss her Persona and drop into a braced crouch.

The hacker’s Persona shattered into motes as she let out a cry of pain and fell.

Still trying to get his feet under him, Akira felt his heart drop until he saw Futaba fall into the waiting arms of Yusuke.

Before either could think to say something, Morgana’s clarion call cut through the dull post-explosion ringing, “Rider, finish off the Neko Shogun before it has a chance to strengthen the rest!” She gave a nod and he leaped up to clap palms.

Makoto dropped down and that tank of a bike Johanna formed underneath her.

A headless Shadow stepped in her path, lashing its spine-whip across Johanna’s armor plates and yanking to jerk the armored bike from its course.

The ice encrusting Neko Shogun cracked.

A bolt of plasma zipped into the headless Shadow, knocking it stumbling back. Makoto took the opportunity to race past the Shadow at her target as the cracks spread across its icy prison.

Big Green slammed a meaty fist down on Johanna’s armor plate looking like a face, knocking the Persona off the ground in a spin.

The plates slid together and disappeared as Makoto dismissed her Persona, transforming her forced flip into a controlled dive at the encrusted shogun.

Ice shattered off its surface and its tantou blocked the martial artist’s studded gauntlet. It held up the signal fan in its other hand and a shimmer passed over Big Green, which stood up with less of a sense of lumbering to its motion.

Crap,” Morgana said from beside the longcoated teen. “Spread out, everyone! Joker, Oracle, with Rider on the Neko Shogun. Everyone else, surround the big greenie and—”

Without the long preamble from last time, it spread its arms and the churning orb in place of its belly dilated, emitting a howling white beam. Unlike the last one, this narrower beam swept across the grounded thieves.

Ryuji and Yusuke braced behind their melee weapons, but Futaba fled into her Persona and up at the courtyard’s ceiling. Lacking such ability, Akira and Ann dove for what cover an enormous, fallen flat-screen could provide. The beam swept over the screen, disintegrating it and smashing into the prone pair of thieves.

Akira felt himself tumble over polished floor paneling until crashing into the remains of what might have been a glass-encased mannequin. His back throbbed and he struggled to his feet as Yusuke and Ryuji flanked the headless Shadow.

Zorro!” cried out from the cover of another smashed glass-encased mannequin. Cool motes washed over the boy, the bleeding wounds in his arm closed and spasm in his back ebbed.

Thanks!” Akira shouted back as he hopped up. Pillar’s curse energy did nothing. Futaba’s cannons looked like the same energy as Ananta Shesha and that only seemed to make it stronger. Up ahead, Yusuke backed away from attempting to melee the humanoid monster to send lightning from Goemon. The blow struck, but the Shadow held its footing.

Makoto drove at the Neko Shogun behind Big Green, flames bellowing from Johanna, but the nimble general leaped over the flames and swung at the back of the armored bike.

Marcus swooped in, cannons discharging twin beams that raked over Neko Shogun.

Ann’s boosted ice had frozen it, but they needed something that could really hurt the Shadow. Well, nothing to it but to go through the list. Leaving the others to tangle with Big Green, Akira summoned Raja Naga to help Makoto.

Neko Shogun leaped over Makoto’s gauntleted punch, but spotted Raja Naga in time to divert his tantou from a stab into her back to parry the snakeman’s first punch, then rebounded on the off-hand jab and back-flipped to evade a pair of radiation beams from Futaba’s fly-by.

Great. This thing was as ninja as Morgana.

Makoto threw another couple punches, Neko Shogun dodging or parrying each one. Then she lashed out with her foot. The blow didn’t connect, but her boot slid along the ground at it as she let out a battle cry and red flames spurted out.

Neko Shogun leaped back, swatting at its decorative skirt with its signal fan.

Zionga!” Akira shouted. Raja Naga brought its hands together by its side, cradling a ball of lightning before unleashing it in a quick burst.

Neko Shogun stumbled back a step but was ready an instant later to parry Makoto’s studded gauntlets. “No good!” she shouted. “Try something else!”

While she kept up the pressure, he dismissed his at the moment most powerful Persona. Futaba’s volley hurt it but not much, and he’d seen Makoto drive past with Johanna gushing flames. He wanted to ask her how she conjured her Persona’s flames without summoning the whole Persona, but that would have to wait. He reached inside himself for an older Persona. “High Pixie!”

The armored fey coalesced above the upperclassman and held out both hands. As if spilling from her palms, shredding winds roared down at the armored Shadow, knocking it to the ground with a growl of pain.

Akira and Makoto shared a look before the former shouted, “With us, Oracle!”

As the other Phantom Thieves played cat-and-mouse with Big Green with its guard up, the three took advantage of the distance their own battle had taken to deliver an all-out beat-down. Futaba swooped in, ringing out of Marcus in midair to slam the purple, viper-head-decorated end of her staff weapon on the support Shadow.

Then Big Green lowered its guard and that shuddering white beam roared out. It missed Ann, but the point of impact exploded, crashing over everybody. Makoto tried to brace in front of Futaba, but the blast still sent all of them flying back.

Instead of holding back like the last times it blasted them with the exploding laser of doom, Big Green leaped into the air. Ann saw and braced under her whip for all of a second before a sprinting Ryuji bodily slammed her out of the way.

Even from his distance, Akira could hear the snap of bones as the track star’s right arm and ribs shattered.

Ann lay there, staring through her mask for a moment before she loosed a scream of rage and sudden gale of snowy wind lifted her from the ground. Carmen coalesced above her and snapped out her whip as ice and blizzard snow roared at the towering humanoid Shadow. The temperature in the whole courtyard plummeted and for a moment Akira feared the whole place would be blanketed in ice.

Instead, the blizzard gale receded as fast as it came, though frost marred most of Big Green’s front now and it moved with ponderous speed.

Akira spared a glance at Futaba, taking her staff weapon in hand and rising to her feet. With their newest member okay, he brought up his P90 and fired long bursts into Big Green as he raced closer.

Twin cyan beams shot from Marcus, but when they struck its chest, frost was gone and its scuffed flesh looked bright and fresh again.

Stop hitting it with nuclear energy!” Morgana shouted as he leaped closer, shooting crossbow bolts as he closed on the downed runner. “Zorro!”

The burly Spanish thief Persona cut the symbol of a Z in the air. Warm motes settled down over all of the Thieves, sealing some of their minor wounds. Ryuji’s less shattered rib cage jostled and he let out a cry of pain. Zorro then flitted in to stab Big Green all the way to the hilt.

The Shadow punched upwards with both fists, sending Zorro flying and Morgana tumbling.

Yusuke dashed at the backs of Big Green’s leather-shrouded knees and powered a slice with his katana.

Big Green snapped out a side-kick to knock him to the ground, then raised a fist in preparation to pulverize the swordsman.

Rakshasa!” Akira shouted, still drilling long bursts into the powerful Shadow. The red-clad swordswoman standing a little taller than Yusuke coalesced next to him and swung both her swords, slashing Big Green’s elbow and passing through that churning yellow orb where its belly should have been.

The monstrous Shadow flinched and adjusted stance to power its fist down. Yusuke and Raksha both leaped backwards, and the fist shattered the wood flooring. “It seems resistant to our physical prowess, but lightning wounds it. Can you enhance me?”

Enhance?” Futaba said as she came up alongside the longcoated boy.

Akira just nodded and switched Rakshasa for Raja Naga as the artist backed up and summoned Goemon. Akira’s head pounded and his breathing went wheezy, but he pushed through the exhaustion. “Big thunder incoming, Raja Naga doesn’t have small spells!”

Yusuke nodded and took a deep breath. When Raja Naga sent a churning lightning bolt with a white core at the kabuki-level flamboyant manifestation of the ancient thief, the large bolt forked and coruscated through the Persona. Yusuke fell to one knee, but stopped and shot a glare at Big Green. “Goemon!”

His Persona blew into its pipe and fog rushed out of it like steam from a tea kettle, sparking with energy even before discharging a gargantuan bolt wider than Yusuke into the towering Shadow.

At last, it wavered on its trunk-like legs. Morgana hopped with a fist in the air. “That’s it! Joker, boost Rider next!” He folded his crossbow and sprinted after the fallen runner.

Shaky on her feet, Makoto still gave a nod that felt more like It’s do or die than her being quite ready.

Still, Big Green was already turning back to Ryuji and Ann.

Orthrus!” His vision doubled and his knees felt like jelly, but he struggled to stay upright. The others seemed more in tune with their one Persona, but switching around took a little out of him. His twin-headed demon dog spat a bolt of fire at Johanna, and the armored Persona flared with red flames from every line of tracery.

With a howl of her own, she blasted a good-sized fire ball at the towering Shadow. It took a stumbling step back, grunting with effort.

Swallowing her last gulp, Ann dropped the thermos and stood. “Carmen, Bufula!”

A pillar of ice shot up from the ground and slammed into the Shadow’s chin like a fist, knocking it off its feet and into dissipating smoke.

The Thieves gathered around the fallen runner who’s pained gasps sounded like last breaths. His hands and feet twitched, but glassy eyes under his skull mask stared up at the ceiling.

Morgana sucked in a breath, then blew it out his mouth. “This may be the last I’ve got, but—”

Wait!” Futaba ran up, her staff weapon in hand. “I’ve still got some stamina left. You guys are the power players, you need to have enough left for the trip out.” She turned her wrist and slapped that button on a bracelet, ringing her up into her Persona on a powered glider. Marcus took the scroll in a box and pulled out a length of it, which then trembled in a wind that touched nothing else.

Silvery motes showered down over Ryuji. His ribs knitted back together and his chest returned to a proper, round whole. He curled up on his side and gasped for several moments. After long seconds, he pushed himself up to sitting. After another beat, he flexed his limbs. “Damn, girl. You’re a life-saver.”

Slapping up her mask to wipe away tears, Ann let out a choked sob. She lunged and everyone tensed for an instant before she grabbed him by the red ascot around his neck and started shaking him. “You idiot! You could’ve died !”

He shoved her back. “Well you sure as hell would’ve! I’m the fastest and toughest mother fucker in the Phantom Thieves. I had the best chance.” He lifted his arm and rotated it through a wide circle at the shoulder. “Hey, I think I feel as good as when we came in.” He flipped Futaba a thumb’s up. “Your healin’s gotta be at least as powerful as Rider’s.”

Futaba blushed, her posture wavering. Then she looked around. “So… where’s the quick-travel point back to the entrance of the dungeon? I mean, we just beat a boss !”

That’s… not how Palaces work. Without some kind of cognitively-appropriate system like mine carts in one palace, there’s no shortcut to the entrance.” Morgana picked up and capped what was left of the leaking coffee thermos. “We’re low on coffee and pick-me-ups, but it’s a long and dangerous journey either forward or back. The layout of the Palace is different, but I still think there’s a building with a rain-pipe we can climb to the roof ahead.”

The others nodded and fell in to the door on the opposite side of the battered courtyard. Ann read the placard, “Tool of thief, toy of queen. Always used to be unseen. Sign of joy, sign of sorrow. Giving all likeness borrowed.” She stepped back and held her chin in her hand. “I can only think of one thing to call a ‘toy of a queen’ and I don’t think Mitsuyo’s naughty enough to know what those are.”

Eh?” Ryuji scratched his head.

Futaba let out a disappointed sigh. “She means a dildo , you ignorant ape.”

Blushing deep, Akira, Makoto, and Ryuji choked on air.

When the boys continued to look like they were trying to asphyxiate themselves, Futaba slapped a hand against her forehead, glove clacking against her goggles, then pointed to herself. “Hel lo . Grew up on the internet.” She looked up at the artist. “Even miss class president is pretending to be embarrassed. Why are you the only one fine with it?”

Art requires a mind open to new experiences,” Yusuke replied, sedate. “Sensei even encouraged us to experiment with mind-expanding substances to broaden our repertoire.”

Makoto’s jaw dropped. “Are you saying Madarame gave you drugs ?”

Um, guys.” Morgana waved his little arms. “The palace door?”

Oracle re-focused. “Right.” She scratched her head. “I kinda doubt she’s thinking of laptops, even if that’s what I’d say fit thieves’ tools and queens’ toys.”

Akira glanced at his side to see the blonde crossing her arms, hips cocked to one side. He wondered if she realized how hot she looked doing that. “Uh… Used to be unseen makes me think of the One Ring, but that isn’t an always thing.”

Makoto pushed up her mask to rub her nose, but froze. Then ran the leather fingertips of her studded gauntlets along the hard edges of her iron plate. “Sign of joy, sign of sorrow.” Her eyes widened. “Tears… Like the masks the Shadows in this Palace wear!”

The gate dropped into the floor with a wooden clunk.

Outside, a covered porch wrapped around their palatial building. A covered walkway meandered out and off to the left towards a gazebo with flowered planters spaced around its perimeter. A building melding the steel and sharp lines of modern architecture with the stone and curving gables of Muromachi-era shogun castles. A dark stone base peeked out of the fog, black pine trees dotting the murky space around.

Morgana leaped into the air. “Yes! There it is!”

Futaba peered into the gloom. “There what is?”

Morgana hopped up on the hacker’s shoulder to point past the gazebo to the corner of the castle, where a covered walkway extended from an upper level and off into the gloom in the distance. “That roof connects to an inner perimeter which then gave me enough height to connect a zip-line to the lobby building. That was how we first escaped.” He tapped a foot. “It was a lot closer our first trip in.”

The point is,” Makoto explained, “we’re close to a safe exfiltration point.” She hefted her shotgun and jogged out, her gun-light casting a cone into the thick murk just past the covered walkway. The rest of the Thieves followed close behind.

Since the gazebo didn’t seem to connect to anything and stood off to the side, Morgana called in a hushed tone, “Okay, only way in is through the fog. We’ll have to scale one of the trees, but as Phantom Thieves that should prove the easy part. I’ll connect a line to the castle with my crossbow, tie it off, and then we’ll just have to navigate around to get to our exit. Stay close, I don’t want anybody getting separated in this fog.”

For real,” Ryuji said, light machine gun tense in hand.

As one, they stepped off the walkway, plunging a deceptive number of centimeters down to what splashed like wet marshland. The thieves paced slow, but their footsteps still squished and splashed. They got as far as the woods stretching beyond the base of the palatial castle before a deep growl rumbled from all around them.

A breeze swept through the wooded area just a little too sparse to call a forest, revealing a wolf standing well over four meters tall. Fangs as long as Akira’s forearm bared as its muzzle wrinkled. A stark blue eye on the right and amber eye on the left stared into the longcoated boy. It took one indomitable step at him.

A yellow bolt shrieked from Futaba’s staff weapon into the enormous beast, drawing a flinch from its face. Then the beast let out a “Wu-wu-waooo!” and Shadows burst out of the ground as if from rain, and rushed at them.

Futaba ringed into Marcus, her flying Persona raking its twin beams over the monstrosity before swinging around to lead the retreat.

Makoto held rear guard to give it one shotgun blast, then one at the encroaching horde, before she dove onto Johanna, kicking up flames as she raced back for the safety of the Hall of Interns.

Futaba ringed out of her flying Persona right at the gate and sprinted in as best an out-of-shape hacker could, but while the beast’s size prevented its yawning jaws from catching them, the horde it summoned jammed through the gate. Looking behind, Futaba tripped on a shattered floorboard.

Yusuke let his rifle fall to its lanyard and, without breaking stride, lowered down to one knee to grab the hacker’s arm and yank her up, hauling her up to her feet. Gunfire and wind roared as Makoto and Ryuji paused deeper in the covered courtyard to try to hold off the indecent vixens, straw-covered imps, and other Shadows pouring through the bottleneck of the gate. The Thieves paused as staggered pairs to throw delaying attacks into the horde, switching the hacker from Yusuke to Makoto, and kept the retreat until the ladder to the second level of the Hall of Interns.

Once back in the Section Chief’s office, the Phantom Thieves slumped against any available furniture.

After a few minutes to catch his breath, Morgana called out, “Everyone okay?” The rest of the Phantom Thieves sounded off, and the group let out a collective sigh of relief. A few more seconds passed before the diminutive leader said, “Oracle? That was the big wolf monster Reaper was talking about earlier. Did you get the sense your Persona’s energy damaged it?”

Futaba coughed against a bottle of water and, still out of breath, shook her head.

Ryuji trotted up with a smile, his eyes on the longcoated boy. “Better’n last time, eh? Damn monster wolf broke his arm jus’ by bitin’ his Persona.”

Futaba spoke, a faint tremor in her voice. “Hol’ up, broke his arm by biting his Persona ?”

A Persona is your inner self, the same as the palace ruler’s Shadow is,” Morgana explained. “It’s a lot safer fighting with your Persona than personally, but there’s still a measure of bleed-over. It is you.”

Those crimson eyes narrowed on him and she hissed, “When did this happen?”

Akira looked over the history tomes of ancient warfare on the bookshelf for the excuse to avoid eye contact. “Earlier? It was before you and Byakko came and shot me.”

Shot you?” Futaba exclaimed, clutching her staff weapon.

Morgana paused a moment longer to listen through the door, then stood back. “The swarm is gone.” With the longcoated boy drinking another cup from their thermos of Leblanc’s house blend coffee, he looked over the group. “Okay, we have a couple alternatives. One is to advance and look for an alternate route through the fog. Another is to try that path through the Hall of Offering, the cognitive beast might not be there this time. Or we leave and try to effect a change in cognition, either to deal with the fog or that monster.”

Akira swallowed the last gulp of coffee and screwed the cap back on the thermos. “I’m good to start an alternate path search.”

Ryuji crossed his arms. “Bull. Shit . You were sweatin’ back with that big green muscle dude with the laser orb stomach. An’ wolfie busted you up jus’ by bitin’ your Persona last time. I get you wanna change this broad’s heart, but you ain’t savin’ anyone by dyin’.”

Yusuke took the coffee thermos. “He has a point, Joker. We don’t even know if the rules of the palace could allow the guardian beast to be defeated. Even if we combine all our strength and manage to defeat it, it might come back after a single day of rest like the cognition with the gold stamp on his forehead in Futaba’s palace. We might be better served by falling back and changing Togo’s cognition, just as we did when we opened the door to Sensei’s forgery workshop.”

At the hacker’s confused head-tilt, Ann and Makoto gave the abbreviated version of unlocking the door in Madarame’s palace.

Makoto tapped a gloved finger against her chin. “The problem is, we don’t know what real-world counterparts the fog or that super-wolf have.”

Akira nodded. “Hifumi mentioned cram school on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, but I don’t know what kind of schedule she might have over the summer. I’ll call and see what she knows about her mother’s workplace.”

Ryuji switched his grip on the light machine gun hanging from his shoulder by a strap. “We prolly outta change up our weapons, too.” His eyes fell on the serpentine Zat gun in Ann’s hand. “Havin’ a lightning pistol may be cool an’ all, but ask Fox ‘bout how cool it is to have lightnin’ reflect back atcha. We ain’t hittin’ hard enough, an’ if the rest of the palace is like these big-ass halls, we need some range.”

Yusuke looked at the carbine in his hands. “This seems suitable, though it would be useful to have something to dampen the blows that we take when combat is upon us.”

Akira thought back to the Velvet Room twins telling him about the ability to transform shards of power into protective charms. “I may have an angle on that, too.”

Morgana nodded and paced along the length of the section chief’s desk. “I don’t want to risk too much on a foray here when we have no idea how far it is to the Hall of Adoration. Let’s leave the palace for now. We have a few points of investigation to pursue, and it might be worth visiting Gun About to practice and decide what upgrades might be most relevant for our next push into the temple.”

Thursday, 11 August 2016
Evening
Yongen, Leblanc

Sojiro looked up as the bell rang, letting out a breath when he saw that troublesome but well-meaning transfer student come through. Then he drew in a breath when Wakaba’s little girl came behind him, huddling close under his two-man umbrella. She stamped her feet against the mat at the front to knock off water from the rain still pouring outside. “Futaba! You’re outside again!”

She stomped again before stepping in, dropping onto a bar seat, and slumping on the counter. “I hunger! Curry me!”

Heartache shot through him at how much that awkward, spunky kid reminded him of Wakaba.

Akira folded his umbrella and closed the door before setting his umbrella in the can. “Actually, we didn’t eat all day.” He stepped out to walk down the customer lane. “But I need to use the bathroom.”

Toldja you didn’t need all the rest of that coffee,” Futaba called out after him as if they’d been teasing classmates for years. As if to punctuate the statement, she set the thermos those kids bought this morning on the counter. It took several seconds for her gaze to swivel around to the proprietor, refusing to pick her head up from the counter. “We’re not out of curry, are we?”

N-no,” he babbled. The middle-aged man adjusted his apron to try to give himself some reassurance that the physical world he knew still existed and this wasn’t some kind of dream. “I’m just… so happy to see you out. I’m still just trying to wrap my brain around… how?”

Futaba came up out of her slump, still resting both elbows on the counter. Her gaze flicked to the bathroom where the sound of water ran. Then those dark eyes came to rest on him. “It was… just time?”

Oh no. Please don’t let his little girl’s coming out into the world at last have to be tied to that troublesome boy. Sojiro stepped closer, as if a change in angle could help him divine what could have happened to bring her out of that shell she was falling into. “You and he aren’t…?”

She kicked her feet against the base board of the bar counter. “He’s already head over heels for another girl.” Before the proprietor could express the amount of concern that stirred in him, especially as it wasn’t a ‘no’, Futaba unleashed a toothy grin. “If I play my cards right, I’ll have nephews before I’m out of college.” Then she let out a very Wakaba-like cackle.

Sojiro didn’t know whether he should be afraid to see Wakaba’s same teasing mannerism in such a small package, or glad it wasn’t directed at him.

The washroom door swung open and Akira trotted out, gloves in his pocket as he shook out his hands. “Your roll towel machine’s jammed.”

Futaba thudded her fists against the counter. “Curry time! Curry time!”

Sojiro couldn’t help but let out a chuckle. “All right, you kids. Siddown and I’ll serve up the last plates of the day.” He retreated to the kitchen, head still buzzing as he scraped out the last rice from the cooker and then ladled on some curry.

The boy didn’t complain about his smaller-than-normal serving of rice, but ate with an eagerness that reminded the proprietor of many a hungry teenage days. He still maintained a dignified pace and savored the curry going down.

Futaba, on the other hand, dug into the meal like a starving soldier. No shame or reservation held her back. If Wakaba had been here, she’d have slapped the girl’s wrists with a wooden spoon. Sojiro was still too shocked by her being out of her room to try to enforce decorum.

While the kids ate, Sojiro crossed his arms and thought about the one thing his mind could latch onto that didn’t make him feel like having a heart attack. So Akira was in love with another girl, huh? The proprietor thought through the young ladies he’d seen with the boy. That smart girl with the braided hairband? There was plenty of tension between the two, but none of those longing, sidelong glances. The shapely blonde? Definite interest going both ways, but they both kept each other at arm’s length. It was possible they kept anything intimate out of sight, but it still felt like something was missing.

Futaba’s spoon hit the plate with a clatter. “Mm! I’m gonna be dreaming of curry tonight.” She reached up to rub at her eye under her glasses. “But it’s time to hit the hay.”

A meow uttered from under one of the chairs at the bar.

Futaba’s shoulders hunched up a bit and her hands closed into loose fists. “T-tomorrow? What about that whole rest day thing?”

Akira swallowed his last bite of curry. “Tomorrow is a rest day. But a fighter can still train on a non-match day. C’mon, helping out around the store will give you a counter between you and any weirdos but still give you valuable experience in front of strangers.”

She jabbed her fists down. “B-but working the lunch rush would be like… super hard mode!”

Akira rolled his eyes. “ Please . Tell me when you’re ready for Son of Sparda difficulty.”

The cat gave a meow that sounded like distinct reproach.

Akira stood up reach for her plate, then grabbed his on the way to the sink. “I’m sure Ryuji’s rootin’ for you. Only way through it is to do it.” He pulled out his phone and scrolled up and down.

She grumped for a few moments before spitting at him as much as the tired girl could, “You’re still a demon.” A yawn crawled out of her mouth. “What’s wrong?”

She’s not responding,” Akira mumbled back. “Hasn’t even read my texts.”

That was enough for the proprietor. Sojiro pointed her to the closest booth to the door. “Sit down for a couple minutes and I’ll take you home.” He looked over to the transfer student taking dishes to the sink. “So about the lunch rush… You sure you’re ready to be out and about so soon, Futaba?”

Akira set the plates in the sink. “She needs to get out a little more, experience the world. So she wanted to work here to meet strangers in a controlled environment.”

Futaba stamped a foot in tantrum. “Liar. Demon prince!”

That’s General of the Steel Legion, to you,” he tossed back over his shoulder before turning on the faucet.

Crossing his arms, Sojiro rounded on the transfer student. He sorted through how to kick the bastard into the rain. “You asked me about bringing her to work in here. You didn’t say you were forcing her into it. If you think you can push Futaba-chan around, you can take a long, wet walk and not come—”

W-wait!” Futaba dashed around the counter and grabbed the proprietor’s elbow. “I… I do wanna do it. I…” Her chocolate eyes fell. “I’ve just been hiding away so long, I’m still nervous.”

Sojiro cycled through a deep breath and lay a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t you worry. You don’t have to—”

I do!” she said, her eyes looking even wider under her glasses, the lenses also magnifying the tension in all those small muscles around her eyes. “I’m never gonna get enough XP to fight bosses if I never take on tougher mobs.”

The faucet turned off and the transfer student’s steps came to a stop next to the proprietor. “It’s always harder before you start, Futaba-kun. I’m not going to say it’ll be easy, but you’ll be surprised how much simpler it is when you’re doing it.” He held out his left fist.

Futaba stared at it for an unblinking couple of seconds before she lifted up her hand to tap a fist against his. Then her jaws dropped wide and a huge yawn moaned out.

Sojiro wanted to keep telling off the boy, but he’d have to be blind not to realize how attached the girl had gotten. Instead, Sojiro patted her shoulder. “If you’re really okay with it, then I’ll do everything I can for you here. But it’s no good for kids to be out late.” He pointed to the closest booth to the exit again. “If you can wait a couple minutes, I’ll close out the register and take you home.” He turned on the transfer student. “I’m sure you’ll have no problem closing up tonight, right?”

If the transfer student felt any threat from the tone in the proprietor’s voice, he showed no sign of it. He gave a simple nod before turning back to the sink.

Sojiro counted the money in the register and did the few things he didn’t yet trust the transfer student to do yet, then retrieved his white umbrella from the can and took Futaba home.

Thursday, 11 August 2016
Late Evening
Yongen, Leblanc

Akira scrubbed in regular up-and-down motions with the mop, reaching the corner at last. He stood back in the kitchen and took in a breath as he admired his handiwork. The caffeine high was coming down, and the cleaning helped work out some of the lingering tension from Togo’s temple.

Not bad,” Morgana said from his perch on a chair at the bar. The floor and counter sparkled. “I’m sure Boss will appreciate the extended effort.”

Alliance Force, Assemble! sang from his pocket, so Akira drew his phone to see who would call this late at night. The other Phantom Thieves seemed too tired after a palace run, and Futaba seemed like she was minutes away from collapsing when Sojiro guided her home. Caller ID said Sakura, so he connected. “Self defense training, can I connect you to Claude N. Skretchem?”

Sojiro grumped. “Do you do that to everybody who calls you?”

Akira stood straight even if the adult couldn’t see. “An experience tailored to each customer.”

The restaurateur let out a huff that couldn’t quite hide his amusement. “You cheeky devil. Boy am I glad you and Wakaba never teamed up, you’d have been a duo of terror. That or you’d have been at each other’s throats every waking moment.” A long breath passed. “Futaba’s asleep. Didn’t even make it to bed. First time I set foot in her room in six months.” Another beat passed before he added, his voice thick with nostalgia, “She liked the curry.”

Akira leaned his hip against the counter. “Proves Futaba had good taste.”

This time Sojiro let out a short laugh. “She would’ve appreciated that.”

Akira blinked. “Would have…? You just said Futaba-kun’s asleep.”

I mean Wakaba.” A groan and shuffle of upholstery came through the speaker. “I did tell you the curry was formulated by a scientific genius.”

Akira shifted his weight to his other foot. “Yeah, I just figured that was marketing.”

The restaurateur scoffed. “Well, it all started one innocuous day up at the executive break room at Blue Cove. I always enjoyed impressing the ladies, so I brought in my curry. That was the first time I remember surprising her – really surprising her. It was after a long day for her, so she asked for a cup of my coffee on a lark. Wakaba took a bite, then a sip, then grilled me for the ingredients and cooking method. I don’t think I even gave her the full recipe. She went home and didn’t come back for days. When she returned, she’d reworked the recipe to synergize with my coffee like I’d never imagined. I never put them together before.”

Akira took off his glasses to wipe a fleck of soap from the lens. “She whimsical that way?”

Oh, she was trouble, you can be sure of that,” Sojiro said. “Wouldn’t call it whimsical. She was very logical, and she’d let you know it if you asked her to walk you through it. She just had her own thought process. The human mind was an enigma to me, but it was a Rubik’s cube to her, something to pick up and puzzle over but something she knew she could solve. She was quite a woman. I had pick up lines that could get women all around town, but she didn’t fold to a single one.”

Yeah,” Akira said, “I can imagine her passing by when you used the ‘low in Vitamin U’ on her.”

Jesus, kid. I don’t even have one that bad in my playbook. Promise me you’ll never use that on a woman you aren’t expecting to slap you.”

The transfer student slunk onto a bar stool. “I don’t think I’m really a pick-up line guy. I just have groaners to break the ice.”

To his surprise, Sojiro chuckled. “I guess all men are fools. We chase after what we can’t have. Wakaba rejected me over and over, and my greatest victory over her was the day I accidentally introduced her to coffee and curry together.” He chuffed. “She still won that one. By miles . Kept making it at home, up until… you know.”

When the restaurateur’s voice choked, up, Akira decided not to let the silence drag on. “That’s why you got all misty-eyed when Futaba dug into the curry?”

Sojiro cleared his throat. “See? Even you can be smart once in a while.”

Morgana laughed from the next bar seat over.

Akira responded with sign language – only one finger needed – then headed up the stairs. “So… despite what happened to her mother, she got to wake up to some of what she’d been missing out on. I’d say that’s a small victory.”

The restaurateur huffed. “ Optimism ? From you ? Maybe there is something to all that Phantom Thief heart change mumbo-jumbo.”

This time Akira gave a huff. He came to a stop at the table in front of the couch, shogi board set up laying flat across it. He could almost see Hifumi sitting across from him, that excitable smile that made her already gorgeous eyes light up. “Sojiro? W-what would you do if you met a woman who was totally out of your league?”

Now he let out a belly-full laugh. “That was Wakaba if anybody was. She already had Futaba by the time I met her, after all, but a man has to go for what makes him happy. You never know how long you’ll have it.”

Or how long you can fool such a pure vessel of wisdom .

His stomach twisted and he had to clench the table and strain to breathe without throwing up for several seconds.

Kid?” Sojiro said, followed by the sounds of hands changing grip too close to the microphone.

Morgana hopped up on the table. “What’s wrong, Joker?”

Just a little sick,” his mouth said before he could reign himself back in.

You don’t think it’s the curry?”

He struggled another breath in, then out before he could throw out as if intending his slip, “Yeah. Once I found out love is the secret ingredient, I think that would make anyone sick.”

Sojiro harrumphed. “See if I feed you any more, then. Looked like Futaba’s willing to have your share.”

The evaluation in the check-up the other day came to mind. “She needs a balanced diet. Doctor Takemi said she’d been getting too much salt and starch-carbs. I don’t know how to correct that, most of my studies have been physical therapy. I’ll have to check with a few people.”

Sojiro’s smirk made it through his tone alone. “Look at you, being all responsible. Don’t forget that cooking can be a labor of love. Something you do because you enjoy the process as much as the result. Or maybe the one you’re feeding.”

The mental image of him handing a boxed lunch to Hifumi and seeing her beaming face sprang to the fore. Akira’s face felt like it burned. “Y-yeah.”

Well,” Sojiro said before the team leader with a scheming face could do anything, “it’s getting entirely too sappy in here. Time for this old man to hit the sack. Make sure you get plenty of sleep, too. You and Futaba were out in the rain and the flu can still hit you even in an off-season.”

Notes:

P5 doesn’t let you conduct an all-out attack unless all the Shadows are down, but Strikers does and it can make a huge difference without making fights easy because you’re often fighting five to fifteen Shadows at a time so they spread out. I thought it made sense and will incorporate it when the Thieves can separate and knock down a lone Shadow. The concept of flank and rear guard as well as real-time simultaneous action is already a thing, just like Strikers. I love turn-based tactical and strategy games, but in the end it’s a gameplay organization and not way the real Metaverse works based on every cinematic shown from P3 on.

Chapter 100: August 12th, Star at Work

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Friday, 12 August 2016
Early Morning
Yongen, Leblanc

Futaba shook her hands, then accepted a dry towel from the transfer student who didn’t know how to dress for summer weather. Seriously, was he cracked ? Everybody knows you wear short sleeves in the summer!

The last customer of the breakfast rush stood from the middle booth, bumping the table.

Futaba shot closer to her key item and clutched his shirt.

Sojiro paced close and those big, dark eyes blinked under his spectacles. “You sure you want to do this?”

Her hands clenched tight fists of the transfer student’s shirt.

When his arm lifted she flinched, but after a beat she felt his arm around her shoulder. “Hey, just breathe and take one thing at a time. Just like your last summer job.”

Sojiro’s voice whispered, but with enough rumble to carry a threat, “She only graduated middle school last year.”

Akira gave a squeeze and removed his arm. “Uh, well… think of it as your first summer job of high school. I had plenty even before Shujin, you can take this. C’mon, give us a power pose.”

She wanted to say the whole idea of posture changing attitude still sounded stupid, but Sojiro did look like he was calculating ways he could throw the transfer student out. As much as she wanted to avoid it, she’d never survive bosses if she couldn’t handle scrubs. She let go of his shirt to make the stupid pose and raised both hands in fists. And dammit, it worked. “R-right. My first summer job of high school. Watch me do this.”

Morning
Yongen, Leblanc

Futaba rinsed another plate, flicked the water off, and wiggled the plate to get some more droplets off before handing it to Akira. He took the ceramic and wiped away the remaining water with circular motions. As a local elderly rose from her table and shuffled to the register to pay, the hacker extraordinaire paced around the transfer student to a basket of dried silverware. She remembered Sojiro complaining about them being as battered as a World War Two destroyer, but Akira must have taken tools to them because they looked straight and polished. She hefted the basket and paced to the drawers close to the register.

Seriously, today was supposed to be a social training day. Why did it feel more physically demanding than fighting in Togo’s temple?

The door’s bell jingled as the old woman shuffled out. While her focus was on lining up spoons held in neat stacks by pegs, a surprise attack hit her delicate, unprepared mind.

The bell jingled again. A familiar girl’s voice called out, “Aki!”

Eep!” Futaba abandoned the silverware to dash behind Akira, incidentally putting her at the perfect vantage point to see the boy look up with a blush and almost drop the bowl he was drying.

Futaba peered out from behind her key item at her… key item’s key item? This was the first time she saw Togo Hifumi first-hand. Woof. No wonder Akira begged the other Phantom Thieves to help her. That long, dark hair and fair skin nailed classical beauty. The beige dress seemed a bit drab, but didn’t detract much from the girl wearing it. She made a mental note to step up teasing him about having a hot girlfriend. It would be easy mode.

Akira dropped his dish, and caught the bowl on the first bounce by sheer Phantom Thief reflexes. His eyes widened and pupils dilated, locked on the long-haired girl striding in. His lips parted just a little and the hacker heard a whispered sigh leak out.

Futaba made a revision. Teasing him over his girlfriend wasn’t even going to be easy mode, it would be auto-win. She’d almost feel bad.

Then Hifumi turned those big, green doe eyes at him with all the same softness.

Futaba opened her mouth to offer Akira as an appetizer. Unbidden, she remembered yesterday’s fight in Togo’s temple and the abuse her mother was lining up for her. At least in Shinjou, Wakaba was always there for Futaba. This girl’s own mother was wrapping her up for the same abuse she had to suffer.

Hifumi stopped by the register and leaned to get a bit better view around the transfer student. “Oh, sorry. Is everything all right? Did I come during a reservation for a special event?”

Not at all,” Sojiro said, stepping forward with an easy almost-swagger. “What can I get for you, Miss?”

Hifumi’s eyes scanned over the old chalk menus, parts of which had faded. “Could I try a cup of today’s dark blend?” Gloom seeped into her visage. “I’m not permitted to eat, given Mother’s schedule today. I’m going to be scolded for not showing up early, but there’s a lot to get done before Tanabata.”

Futaba jabbed a finger at the transfer student. “Maybe someone can give you some satisfaction.”

Despite his claims of purity, Akira’s face flushed and he stammered at her.

Sojiro rolled his eyes and paced back to the coffee siphons. “Dark blend, coming up. Sure I can’t get you anything to eat?”

Her hand moved to her stomach and her eyes flitted to the kitchen, but Hifumi slipped onto a bar seat. The controlled smoothness of her motions never ceased despite a weariness in those green eyes, as if a tiredness of life. Hifumi looked up at Akira with a tremble in her gaze, but after a blink her eyes flitted to the hacker and proprietor for a heartbeat before falling back on the boy. “Are you… close?”

Akira turned on his heel and marched around the counter, hanging up his apron on the way. He took a deep breath and sat down next to her, his hand drifting closer to the one she left on the counter for a beat. “Not yet. I’m sorry.”

Sojiro tapped the hacker on the arm and held out a cup of coffee on a saucer. “You ready to bring things out to the customer?”

S-sure!” Futaba said, cursing her stammer. If she could shoot her uncle empowered by her warped heart, she could bring out a cup of coffee in a controlled environment like this! She took the saucer and marched one foot in front of the other to the girl she’d been spying on since she cloned a bug from Akira’s phone. While the girl was crying. What could be intimidating about this?

Yo,” Futaba managed, blurting out what had to be the dumbest opener in existence. Seriously! She was supposed to be smarter than Ryuji! She didn’t realize her hand started trembling until Hifumi reached out to take the saucer and it quieted. Despite her higher brain telling her there wasn’t a threat, her hindbrain screamed, Different Thing! and she shot behind Akira.

Hifumi set the coffee on the counter, reaching her free hand after the hacker. “Oh, I’m sorry. Are you all right?” She looked up at the others. “I apologize, I haven’t violated coffee shop etiquette, have I, Master Proprietor?”

No. And just Boss is fine,” he said, though the hand towel he dried his dry hands with stretched in his grip. His dark, bespectacled gaze moved to Futaba. “You okay?”

Akira rested his hand against the hacker’s upper arm for a moment, the grey faux-leather of his glove tickling against the bare skin beside her black tank-top. He whispered, tone at such a hush she almost missed, “Just one more step.”

The reminder of his cajoling before they changed her heart helped kick her back into gear. If she could track down the Phantom Thieves while still under the malign influence of her twisted heart, she could manage this while she was a Phantom Thief! Futaba straightened her pose and nodded, as much at Hifumi as to reassure Sojiro. “I-I’m all right. I’m just trying to get used to being outside again.”

Hifumi shifted on her chair to face the hacker straight-on. “Oh? Well, good for you for not letting the hectic city keep you down.”

Futaba blinked. Anybody else would have made some dismissive snort, but the older girl in front of her somehow meant that praise, seemed as pleased as if she’d accomplished something. Why?

Hifumi’s smile faded away and her gaze turned to the transfer student, but a tension surrounded those green eyes. “How are you holding up? I hope no more arguing with cats.”

The blush that had been fading on Akira’s face returned. His gaze dropped from hers and he scratched his cheek. “No, no. I… actually have a few apologies to make about then. I got impatient and stressed without cause and I took it out the people around me.”

Hifumi took his arm in hand, a wooden quality to her small, determined smile that made the hacker question it. “See? Just like in shogi. You come back from one defeat, stronger for the next game.”

Futaba drew back a step. She didn’t like the energy in the air, the sad undertone to the shogi idol’s words.

Akira and Hifumi weren’t making out or having deep heart-to-hearts or even holding hands, they were just sitting next to each other, being gloomy together. He wouldn’t even reach out to put an arm around her even though she was leaning towards him.

Did every manga online lie to her?

Hifumi sipped her coffee, then reached for the creamer. Akira did, too, and their fingers brushed. A blush colored both their cheeks.

Futaba found herself tensing in anticipation, raising both fists almost to her chin.

Akira’s hand retracted and he leaned one elbow on the counter, the retreat so unlike the boy who broke into her house just to give her a pep talk.

Hifumi took the creamer and poured in a small measure into her coffee. Despite the tiredness in her eyes, she still maintained a resolute grace. She stirred, then sipped her coffee again. “This is so much better than the coffee they offer at my interviews. Do you do catering, Boss-san?”

Nah,” Sojiro said, all cool and above it. “This little refuge from the hustle and bustle is all I want or need. You’re welcome to take some home or to the office, with you. I’ve had customers cart a liter away in a thermos.”

The corners of Hifumi’s lips pulled further down. “A pity.” She took another sip. A beat of melancholy breathing passed around the cafe before the long-haired girl glanced aside and noticed the hacker still there, staring at her from the other side of Akira. “Oh, did you need something?”

Despite Futaba’s promise to herself to stand strong, the attention caused her to shrink behind Akira.

Don’t mind her,” Akira explained. “She’s a little nervous around strangers.”

Before the hacker could make plans for how to punish him for throwing her under the bus, Hifumi straightened. “Oh. Well, I’m Togo Hifumi,” she said with a polite little bow on her seat.

Futaba wished she could decide which was more awkward, tip-toeing around knowing exactly who the other girl was or forcing a year’s worth of shut-in habits behind her. Her mouth felt dry as she blurted, “F-Futaba.” She cringed. If Makoto and Akira both agreed she shouldn’t hide behind her mask, she should get used to not hiding behind Akira. That thought set off a whole new wave of anxiety down her spine. “I-I’m Sakura F-Futaba.”

Hifumi gave an incline of her head and faint smile. “See? Now we’re not such strangers.” She held a hand up to stage whisper, “I was nervous about meeting strangers when I was younger, too. It gets easier with practice.”

Futaba would have let out her nervous laugh if she wasn’t so sure she’d sound like one of the subjects of the Milgram Experiment. “R-right.” The hacker could see why Akira preferred the older girl.

That smile on Hifumi’s face took on a stiffer quality and her gaze shifted to take in both the hacker and boy sitting beside her. “So, how did you two meet?”

Oh, I bugged Akira’s phone and overheard him talking about Phantom Thief stuff. Then I bugged your phone and listened to your mom treat you like evil men tricked me into thinking my mom thought of me,” seemed like way too radical honesty, but where did she start?

Perhaps unable to tolerate the tense silence, Akira lifted a hand and pointed at Sojiro. “Meet Sakura Sojiro.”

Oh. That makes sense,” Hifumi said. She raised her cup at the hacker. “You’re very fortunate to be able to enjoy coffee like this every day.”

Futaba held up a hand, pointer finger extended. “It’s so good with mom’s curry.”

Akira nodded. “I’d have never thought it before, but it’s an amazing combo.”

Hifumi swallowed her sip and lowered her cup. “I love curry, but they’re weighing me before the shoot so I can’t eat until dinner.”

Now Futaba knew what her computer felt like when she told it to use a device before installing the driver. She strained to recombine what the Kosei girl said into something that made sense. “You can’t eat… because…?”

Hifumi’s shoulders stiffened and her fingers tightened on her cup. “They weigh us before the wardrobe and makeup teams are brought in.”

But…” Futaba shifted to her right foot. “They not only force you to wear dumb costumes, they also starve you?”

Yup!” Hifumi chirped, a smile so sweet it somehow highlighted the bitterness she didn’t actually let out in her tone.

Futaba was already mentally charting what network security these companies probably had. Oh, some producing executive was cruising for a cybernetic bruising. “Don’t you… faint?”

Hifumi let out a short breath. “Sometimes. Usually in long shoots when I couldn’t get breakfast or dinner.”

Akira started to overcome the fuses shorted out in his brain and he turned to the Kosei girl, one hand reaching out to grasp hers. The hacker noted the shogi girl spun her hand around to clutch his hand in hers. “They with-hold food from you… for what ?”

Her fingers squeezed his. “Girls are supposed to be light and compliant. And apparently powered by batteries and not calories, but if the shoot manager doesn’t forward a positive report to Mother, I’m not allowed out on my own to see you.”

Futaba wasn’t even in such an insane situation and she was tempted to rip her hair out by its black roots. “How do they get you to agree to something like that? That’s gotta be… child abuse!”

Hifumi shrugged. “They let me have my own TV. Lets me get caught up on Endeavour or Planet Earth.” The corner of her lip twitched and an unfocused quality entered her eyes. “We used to all pile on the bed together at home and watch, but not since Father’s collapse.” She took another sip of her coffee. “What kind of fun things do you do with your father?”

Futaba’s gaze fell to the floor and she fiddled with her fingers.

Sojiro paced out of the kitchen. “No interrogating the help.”

It’s… it’s okay,” Futaba tried to reassure Sojiro. Her family situation may be complicated, but it wasn’t for most people. Back when she was still in middle school with Kana, lots of people chatted about what each other’s family members were doing, so of course hers came up, too. Even Kana talked about her parents, even if it was almost always money problems. Just because her situation was father-less didn’t mean others would know that. She jerked her hands down and steeled herself. “Mom never talked about my biological dad. I don’t think he treated her right.”

Hifumi raised her cup as if for a toast. “Well fie on him. Clearly your mother did an excellent job with just you and her.” She brought her cup to her lips for a deeper drink. Then she pulled out her phone to check the time and sighed. “I’m afraid I have to be going.”

Akira stood and let go of her hand to dig out his wallet. “I’ll get your drink.”

She flipped her phone over to pull a steel grey card from a holder on the back. “Nonsense. You mentioned how difficult your employment situation is, I can’t make you pay for even more things if you’re already struggling.”

But I—”

She gave him an exasperated smile. “Let me handle it, Akira-kun. Most of the money for these shoots goes to Father’s care, but Mother does let me spend some of it. When I have the opportunity.” She handed the card over to Sojiro and he pulled out a pad with attached reader to tap. “Thank you for the moment of respite.” Hifumi graced the room with a small smile and strode out.

Futaba took the clueless boy’s sleeve just to have something to swing around. A beat passed before he yanked his arm from her grip. Then another before she asked in a hushed tone, “Weren’t you going to ask her about how we might change her mother’s cognition?”

Shit!” Akira blurted before dashing out the door.

Sojiro just shook his head with a faint smile before his eyes came to rest on the hacker. “To think Wakaba’s little girl is going to work and talking to customers. She’d be proud of you, Futaba.”

Late Morning
Yongen, Back Streets

Akira sprinted through the narrow streets to catch up with the elegant girl too resolved to let her pace become a trudge. He couldn’t help but worry that the frown on her face reflected the darkness in her eyes. “Sorry, I didn’t want to get into a discussion on…” He glanced around. “…Phantom Thieving in front of Boss. But we ran into a problem in your mother’s palace.”

She clasped her hands behind her back. “Palace?”

Her, uh… The manifested reality formed by her distorted heart.” Akira scratched the back of his head. Morgana stayed back with Futaba, but having him around might have been useful. Either to explain details or to put a limit on how much he was supposed to explain. Still, he trusted her more than anybody else, including the Phantom Thieves. “There’s a bunch of routes to the seed of her distorted desire, but the problem is there’s either fog or this cognitive monster wolf that’s blocking us. That’s what all the texts yesterday were about. Can you think of any link to the real world to change or overcome those blocks?”

Hifumi unclasped her hands, those lovely green eyes darting up. “Fog tends to represent a lack of knowledge, or clarity. Fog of war, for example, is the set of unknowns of either one’s own forces or one’s enemies.” She wiped at the sweat on her brow. “Given the current weather, I doubt it’s anything literal.”

And we don’t have much of a time period to contrast it. She didn’t even have a Palace until a few weeks ago.” Akira crossed his arms. “I can say it’s been getting worse. Each time I’ve gone in, there’s been more and thicker fog on the grounds.”

Hifumi adjusted her dress’ loose sleeves. “It’s hard to imagine Mother as being anything other than sure of herself. It could be related to Papa’s prognosis, or maybe she’s even not sure what to do with me , but I’d rather not give her any clarity about how to hem me in any further.”

An awkward silence descended on them as both pondered.

Describe this wolf.”

Akira leaned against the concrete wall. “That beast is fucking hu—”

Hifumi cleared her throat.

Sorry.” Akira straightened. “Anyway, it’s massive. Appears like a ghost from out of the fog, then the fog falls away and there’s a growling, fanged beast that chases us until we can get through a door it’s too small to follow us through.”

Hifumi pursed her lips. “You say ghost, but if its size limits where it can follow you then it does have concrete physical limitations.”

Akira nodded. “If it isn’t flesh-and-blood, it looks like it. Not like a gashadokuro . It doesn’t seem much phased by any kind of energy our Personas throw at it. Its white-and-grey pelt blended into the fog, so it’s like it only shows when it wants to. And those eyes… staring into me like it wanted me to know it was the last thing I saw before it tore everything apart.”

Hifumi’s eyes held the same distant quality that Kawakami-sensei held when filing and sorting something new. “No patterns, saddles, uniforms, or strapped-on weapons?”

Akira couldn’t see what she was getting at. “No. Just… a big, furry, mean wolf.”

The lines deepened on her face into a clear frown. “If it had some kind of emblem, that might have given us a symbol shortcut. Dogs are cultural symbols for defenders, for loyalty… sometimes to the point of stupidity.” A smile crawled across her face and a giggle slipped out. “Real ones are often big goofs who just want to play, like Antalas.” She wiped the smile from her face. “But wolves are pack predators.”

Antalas?”

Hifumi clasped her hands behind her back. “Oh, the husky Rumi gave me.” Her eyes drifted to him, taking in the confusion in his visage. “He’s the family dog. Well, mine. I’m the one who trained and takes care of him.”

Akira took off his glasses to press both palms against his eyes. “Ugh. Why did I not just ask if you had a dog?” He settled his glasses back on. “That might be the ticket. We need your mother to see us all with Antalas.”

Hifumi cringed. “That may be a little difficult. Antalas is the sweetest thing… to me. Because I interact with him all the time. He’s a bit territorial.”

Crossing his arms for a beat in thought, it took a moment before Akira looked back up at the shogi maestra. “Is there any way…?”

Her eyes darted back and forth, then back to his. “I think we can jump-start the process. I had to do it with Yuna-kun when I wanted to invite her home. But it involved keeping a shirt underneath his food bowl and at the foot of the bed where he sleeps.” A touch of pink dusted her cheeks. “A… used shirt. Scent acclimation. The scent builds a familiarity and association with good places for him.”

Akira stamped down the urge to reach out and rub those cheeks with his thumb. He reached into his pocket to pull out his phone to message the group. “So you just need used shirts?”

Friday, 12 August 2016
Late Evening
Shibuya, Untouchable

Akira tapped the yen notes to straighten them, then gave a nod to the hobby and surplus shop owner. “Pleasure doing business with you.”

Iwai gave a nod and touched two fingers to the brim of his cap.

Before Akira even got to the door, his phone buzzed. Drawing it, he saw the Phantom Thief chat active. “ Somebody’s impatient. I haven’t even gotten to the deposit yet.”

His hands clenched when he read to Yusuke’s text. [Did somebody disclose our identities to the public?]

Ann replied, [Ryuji, who did you blurt it to THIS time?]

[Why the fork are you blaming ME?]

Makoto’s ID winked in, and she sent, [Let's back up. Did something happen, Yusuke?]

[I was out buying paints and drawing charcoal when I overheard a fellow art student say he's an acquaintance of the Phantom Thief.]

Futaba popped up with, [C'mon. That's obviously a loser trying to glom onto our rep.]

Ryuji texted, [Still, isn't it sweet we have a reputation people want to be a part of? When we announce Medjed's defeat, I bet we'll make TV.]

Mishima replied, [In a sense, you guys already were on TV back in June when Hashimoto-sensei and Akechi tried to say you didn't exist.]

Ryuji shot back, [See, Akira? This is why I said we should tell the world we put down Medjed right away. Show those no-good ash holes the Phantom Thieves are the real deal!]

[Oh, we'll make prime time. If we get caught.]

Three dots danced next to Ryuji’s ID.

[I would have to take a couple days hacking Medjed's main page,] Futaba sent. [The poser threatening us was a script kiddie, but most of the others are the real deal. A lot of them have even been hacking longer than me. We won't have time until Togo's palace is done.]

At last, Ryuji sent, [You can be a real jerky, you know that, Akira?]

Three dots danced next to Makoto’s ID for a beat. [By the way, Akira. When is the time frame for the shirts Hifumi needs?]

Mishima replied, [Yeah, I was kind of confused by your text, too. I thought used clothes were a fetish vending machine thing.]

[As soon as possible, she said Antalas is pretty territorial.] Akira had to admit he didn’t really understand Hifumi’s request the other day either. [Hifumi said it was necessary so Antalas would let us inside. Something about scent acclimation. I assume it makes sense to pet owners. You should be okay, Mishima, only the ones going into the palace NEED to do this. The ones Futaba and I gave her should do for a start, but the rest of you need to join in, too.]

Mishima texted, [Well, you're the one with a cat.]

Morgana growled from his shoulder. “I am not a cat! Tell them!”

[Obligatory: Your Shoulder Is My Throne says 'I am not a cat'.]

Before the team leader could protest, Ann texted, [Today was your first day at work, right, Futaba-chan? How was it?]

[Well, Hifumi showed up. I'm in the process of hacking her mother's computer now. She's actually got a really robust firewall and VPN system.]

Makoto texted, [Could you possibly NOT engage in cybercrimes while working with the Phantom Thieves?]

Akira sent, [She served coffee and we talked a bit about family. It was nice until she told us that her photo shoots starve her.]

[Oh, yeah.] Ann sent. [A lot of agencies do that garbage. That's why I went with one that doesn't do weighing.] A beat later, she added, [But good for you getting out there, Futaba-chan!]

[Totally,] Ryuji sent. [A phantom thief can't save people's hearts if you're scared of people.]

Ann texted, [What about Akira?]

Akira growled as he shot back, [Shut. Up.]

[This I gotta hear!] Futaba replied.

Morgana dropped down back into the day satchel. “You have to admit, Joker, you’ve got crowd anxiety. Maybe helping Oracle can help you figure out a way to handle it yourself. For now, put the chat down and let’s go deposit the cash. The sooner the rest of the Thieves get trinket money, the sooner we can make the upgrades necessary to progress in the Palace.”

Akira checked his phone, but despite Hifumi’s promise to text him when they finished the photoshoot today, still nothing. He tried to remind himself that he didn’t have a right to her, no matter what his heart said. She was more reliable than him, she’d call or text when she had something to say.

Akira stopped by the bank to deposit the cash, then had the money wired out to the rest of the Phantom Thieves by the time he walked out of the lobby. On the way across Station Square, a woman thudded into him. The same thing happened what felt like once a second when he was outdoors in Tokyo.

Her hand came out of her purse from whatever she had been worrying, flinging small bits of something chunky and granular on him. “Oh!” Her eyes widened and her hand scrabbled through her purse. She shrieked, “No!”

Before the transfer student could back away, some salaryman shouted, “I think he just picked her purse!”

Like a pack of wolves pouncing on a wounded gazelle, the crowd rounded on him. Already on edge from lack of word from Hifumi, Akira returned their hostility with a snarl of his own. “Oh, fuck off! She ran into me !” He started brushing at the white, chunky crap she got on him. Rubbing it between his gloved fingers, the crystalline substance broke apart.

The thirty-something woman ignored all the rest of them and dug into her purse, her hand coming up with larger chunks of the same white crystal. She sobbed. “My holy stone!”

The politician called out, “Let’s remain calm, everyone. Back up and give them some breath.” Toranosuke Yoshida stepped through the less-than-cooperative crowd ringing the transfer student and woman sliding to her knees, ignoring the handful of people recording video instead of doing a damn thing to help. “Ma’am, are you injured in any way?”

Sobbing, she slid to her knees and dug more of what looked like a rectangular, white crystal that had broken apart.

Yoshida lowered to one knee to try to get more in her field of view, but hesitated to touch her. “Are you all right, ma’am? Do you need me to call someone for you?”

Tears trailed down the woman’s face and the transfer student noticed the yellow of a fading bruise under her left eye. “The holy stone was supposed to protect my happiness, my Yuya.”

Akira crushed and spread some of the shards of white the woman got on him between his fingers. He knew it from somewhere . He licked at a glovetip. “Wait a second, this is just rock salt. Miss, there’s nothing to worry about, you can buy salt at any corner grocer’s.”

Instead of taking calm from his words, the bruised woman wailed, “I have to buy another holy stone from the Maiden of Relief! It’s the only way to keep my Yuya!” She clutched her purse closed and scrambled off her feet towards the JR line.

Concerned that the woman seemed in the middle of a psychotic breakdown, Akira stepped out to catch her before she could hurt herself or someone else during her manic burst.

Yoshida stepped into his way. “Whoa, young man.”

Akira heard somebody in the crowd mutter something about purses. He forced his focus to stay on the politician in white gloves. “She’s got to be off her meds or something. She was crying about ‘holy stones’ and holding a broken chunk of rock salt .”

Do you think she was having one of those mental shutdowns?”

Those are fake. She’s probably just stressed ‘cause of Medjed threatening to destroy the economy at the end of the month.”

Yoshida stepped away from the transfer student and held up his hands to draw attention to himself. “Ladies and gentleman, we gain nothing by speculating after the fact on the mental state of a third party. She had whatever troubles she had, but neither she nor the boy were harmed and she is now on her way. Let us reserve our time and energy for those we are with now. That is how we help ourselves and our nation forward.”

Kinda preachy,” somebody behind the front said.

One of the people capturing video on his phone said, “Yeah, but how often’s a politician get off a soap box to help one’a us?”

A barbed joke hovered on the tip of Akira’s tongue, but this politician had thwarted all his expectations of political behavior. He listened, invested his personal time, and didn’t seem full of himself. He advocated responsibility and solidarity across generations instead of the obedience Akira’s old man supported. Instead, Akira straightened and said, “If he’s doing this much out of office, imagine what he’d do if he was elected.”

He expected the crowd to do like him and snark back with ‘yeah, right’s, but to his surprise he heard more hums of agreement. Granted, some laughs which could have been congenial disbelief floated out of the crowd. Even so, the amount of movement behind him set off his anxiety.

Whether Yoshida needed the help or saw the hairs on the back of the student’s neck stand up, he offered his sign, then stood up on his soap box and launched into a speech about coming together to mend society’s ills. When the cameras all left and the thinning crowd no longer took notice of him, the politician wrapped up his speech and took a drink of water from his tepid bottle.

Morgana popped his head out of the satchel. “I hope you’ve been taking notes, Joker. He’s using a lot of good technique you can use to convince Shadows to join us, or give us useful items.”

Yeah, yeah,” the student said as he re-shouldered the satchel set down at the beginning of the speech. He turned to the politician to thank him, but the nagging question about what that bruised woman meant with holy stones and Maiden of Relief left him juggling multiple thoughts. Something about it felt more specific than the generic mysticism many Japanese still clung to.

Yoshida gave a small, practiced smile. “Thank you, lad. You didn’t even know that woman earlier and you were still trying to help. Engagement and charity are strong virtues in you.”

Akira scratched the back of his head. “The world isn’t always selective before dropping a problem on your doorstep, but what’s the alternative? If nobody helps anybody else, it takes very small externalities to pick us off one by one.”

The politician gave a small chuckle. “You’re wise beyond your years, Kurusu-kun. I will be taking this Sunday off to take my wife to Tanabata, but I’ll be speaking again next Sunday. If you’re interested.”

Having no idea if they’d be finished with Togo’s palace, Akira gave a practiced smile he hoped didn’t look too fake. “I hope I have the opportunity, Toranosuke-san.” As he paced down the stairs to his train, he popped open the Phantom Thief chat to put out a warning in case somebody else had heard of a pyramid scheme involving holy stones.

Notes:

Hifumi’s description of the arbitrary and inhuman conditions subjected to idols is based on a documentary on Korean pop idols, but the same things happen in Japan.

To my surprise, the murder mystery Endeavour by ITV Studios has a strong following in Japan.

Chapter 101: August 13th, Into the Fog

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Saturday, 13 August 2016
Late Morning
Shibuya, Central Street

Hifumi tugged her headscarf further forward to hide her hair ornament. The hustle and bustle helped her blend into the many, but with the morning rush hour ended, the crowds were thinning. That meant she had to be even more vigilant as to who noticed her. Still, that vigilance allowed her to spot a familiar head of rugged, uncombed dark hair. Peering through the crowd, the shogi player’s breath caught in her throat when she saw that dyed-orange-haired girl clutching Akira’s hand as they slipped out of an alley.

The shogi player tried to swallow down a thick feeling in her throat. Akira always held a spark in his eye when he looked at her, but he avoided saying what that girl from the cafe was to him and he didn’t hesitate to take that girl’s hand, to whisper soft, supportive words to her . Already the shogi player’s nights were tormented by a dark voice inside that asked her whether she meant anything, or if she was just a passing fancy to a boy with a broken bird fetish. Just another doll to be toyed with before discard.

Hifumi shook her head. It wasn’t fair to him to assume. But would it be fair to ask him face-to-face, putting him on the spot in front of everybody on the street? She followed the pair to a Gigolo Arcade, where they rendezvoused with Kitagawa-san at the entrance. They chatted, postures conveying some kind of focused, serious talk for a minute before they strode further up the street to a stairwell to the subways.

The cute girl with dyed hair clutched close to Akira as they navigated their way to a line to the east. Kitagawa-san, as he often did at school, spent much of the trip finger-framing things and missing the number of people turning arched eyebrows at him in response. They boarded the line to KFTV studios and Hifumi scrambled through the other set of doors on the train car to be sure to spy when they got off. To her surprise, they did get off at the station near mother’s daytime work place. Hifumi made sure to keep a few people between them, matching the general flow of pedestrian traffic to avoid notice.

The trio navigated their way back to street level and the short walk to the staff entrance of the television studio, where they convened with a loud-mouthed boy with dyed blond hair and Makoto-san. Akira’s tuxedo cat popped out of his leather travel satchel to the student’s shoulder and meowed at them.

Hifumi took advantage of the cat’s appearance as a distraction to slip up to a concrete pillar supporting the wall around the staff parking lot so she could listen in.

Exasperated, Makoto-san brushed her bangs back. “Ann’s inside waiting for us. She thought you and Akira’d already gone in.”

Akira retorted, “You guys don’t think I’m that impulsive, do you? Ryuji’s the one constantly going ‘we’re Phantom Thieves’ in public!”

Eff you, man.” The bottle blond shot a hot glare at the frizzy-haired boy.

The cat leaped off Akira’s shoulder and between them, then meowed reproachfully at both.

An awkward silence descended over the assembled teens standing by the staff-only vehicle gate. After a long beat, the cat meowed and paced to the gate.

Akira scowled at him and drew his phone, thumbing up an app, then activated it.

Something tickled at the back of her mind, an absence of something in the surroundings, but Hifumi couldn’t be sure what. She peered back around the pillar, and gasped. Where there had been five teenagers around her age and a tuxedo cat, now six costumed boys and girls knelt and drew segments of firearms. A crossbow in the case of the shorter person in a catboy costume. Were these the Phantom Thieves Akira alluded to when he said changing hearts wasn’t a one-man job?

A girl in black motorcycle leathers with spiked shoulder things and an iron plate over her face held her gloved hands up to her mouth and shouted, “They’re here, Panther. Come get your gun!”

While the rest assembled a variety of firearms, a young woman in red jogged in from what should have been the staff parking lot but instead resembled a tended rock garden.

Hifumi’s breath caught in her throat at the sight. Her mother wasn’t the only one who complimented the shogi player as being far prettier than average, blessed with stature, fair complexion, and ‘hair as long as the fabled Princess Kaguya’. All her years of quiet confidence imploded into choking doubt as the incarnation of feminine beauty strode out, clad in a leather bodysuit that made it impossible not to see mature curves from head to foot.

No wonder Akira never made a move, he already had someone.

The loud blond boy clicked the last pieces of a rifle together and looked down the protruding iron prods along the top. “ Man , sucks that we still gotta worry ‘bout that fog and monster wolf.”

Jostling the stylish longcoat he now wore, Akira tugged at a strap on a gun too short to be a rifle, but much too big to be a pistol. “Hifumi hasn’t called. It’s not like we’ll always have an in like that, if we hit a corrupt corporate board member or something there’s near zero chance we’ll have somebody on his inner staff to get us in to change his specific cognition. Might as well think of this as training for the future hearts we’ll have to change.”

An in . For a brief moment, that dark voice inside asked if the only reason he sought her out in the first place was to get at her mother. A commodity to be sold in pieces for something else.

The girl in the black riding leathers spoke, and by now the shogi girl recognized the voice as Makoto-san’s, “You’re both right. We won’t always have such a resource, but as long as Togo-san isn’t able to change her mother’s cognition, this palace will be far more dangerous.” She flicked on an under-barrel light on her gun. It cast a cone of white through the mist encroaching through the front bailey where the staff parking lot should be.

The girl in blonde twintails and bold red leather stood very close alongside the blond boy in a plated black jacket and braced into a firing position like an action heroine. “Okay, Reaper. So what do I need to know about the new one?”

The boy dubbed Reaper stood straighter, the plated spine along the back of his jacket flexing along with his excited motion. “Oh, this baby’s gonna be sweet . She’s a Smith and Wesson Model 629, designed for competition shooting.” He pointed at something Hifumi couldn’t see with his body in the way of the gun. “It’s got a counterweight under the barrel here that triggers on each shot, so it’s got like no recoil. I bet if they had this piece in Gun About, you’d’a scored even higher than Joker when we were practicin’ this mornin’.”

Her nod seemed to be a signal for Catboy to advance to the gravel road inside. “Okay, everyone. We should have a healthy stock of restoratives and weapon upgrades for the challenges of this Palace. The route beyond the Hall of Interns had too much open space where the monster has the advantage. So today we’ll try to scout a safe route past the Hall of Offering.”

The girl with a long, bronze staff in hand raised a hand. “Why does that sound more ominous than the hall where we had to see Mitsuyo get fondled by her boss?”

Hifumi covered her mouth with her hand.

Catboy shook his head, making the shogi player reconsider whether it was a mascot costume. “Based on the limited scouting we did with Joker, there don’t seem to be any wide-open areas that way. Even if the buildings rearrange, hopefully they’ll still be close together.” He glared up at the longcoated boy. “As long as someone doesn’t go running off after cognitions. If you see Hifumi, do not go chasing her into the fog this time. It’s even more agitated than last time.”

Hifumi blinked. She didn’t remember ever being in a strange hybrid of Shinto temple and Toyotomi-era castle. The more she saw, the less sense it made. Maybe it would be better to just step up and be out with the questions—

The Phantom Thieves began a light jog to a building with wisps of fog trickling over the tiled roof, as if it were a damn holding back a tide of fog eager to swallow up the world. Hifumi followed as close as she could while keeping behind stone lanterns or a copse of bamboo. The fine gravel shifted under her feet, but the fog seemed to swallow up its sounds as much as it dampened the conversation of the curious group passing under a torii gate, then into the first castle building. Not for the first time, she felt glad she wore gym-style shoes instead of heels or any of the other dressier things mother kept trying to push on her.

They veered to the left, pausing to read an etching above an open doorway. Catboy piped up, “Yup, Hall of Offering this way. Hopefully the Hall of Adoration isn’t too far.”

Akira grumbled, “With our luck, we’ll stumble across the Hall of Correction first.”

Curiosity piqued, Hifumi slipped after them, through a covered walkway that, at least intermittently, seemed to push back at the thick fog rolling through the grounds of the mysterious castle. They maintained moderate jog to another castle building, where they leaped up a support column and across the truss supporting the roof to a vent on the wall with the ease of anime ninja.

Refusing to give up, she returned to a door with a slotted deposit box jutting out of the wall next to it. It bore a sign asking for one million yen, but the door next to it slid open without resistance. Inside resembled a museum hall, crammed with exhibits of Mother, talking over each other about Mother’s cleverness or beauty.

She knew Mother could be a bit… vain sometimes, but it never seemed this bad. Is this what Akira meant by a manifested cognition? Where were her awards for excellence at work, her degree in finances, or the whirlwind romance with Father? All those late-night tutoring sessions with Hifumi?

As much to stifle that gloomy voice inside asking about how far the apple fell from the tree as to keep up with movement she hoped was Akira, Hifumi rushed in.

The movement wasn’t Akira.

A man in a white yukata with red, gathered pants stalked between the exhibits extolling mother’s physical attributes. His cane would have lent him a sense of human weight, but his skin was black as the night sky between the stars. Even after she scrambled into what shelter existed between two glass-encased mannequins wearing dresses, he skulked about with that cane in both hands and a grimacing frown etched into his noh mask. “There’s an intruder about,” its gravely voice said.

Give up your fake shit!” the brash boy from earlier shouted in the distance. A moment later, the fwoosh of fire sounded.

The noh-mask… spirit – it seemed wrong to call it a shrine keeper – went dashing off after the sound of battle. A moment later, the tinkling of shattering crystal sounded, then an out-of-place shriek of what Hifumi would have sworn sounded like a sci-fi energy gun. She heard Kitagawa-san’s voice deliver a warning shout and the sounds of battle raged for long seconds.

When the fighting faded, Hifumi crept out and, keeping low, made her way to the familiar voices. She planned on calling out to them for help in this strange place, until she saw Akira and the others ringing a fox-tailed woman, their guns on her as the indecent vixen clutched her court robes closed. Akira reached to his face and motes of grey light burst into being above him, then gathered into another fox-tailed woman less wearing court robes than shrugging them off. The one at their feet bowed prostrate, said something the shogi player couldn’t catch, and… faded away.

Long before the shogi player could collect her wits, Catboy picked up something from the ground where the fox-woman disappeared. “Good job, team. That ambush in the second half just proves the Palace is on high alert. We’ll have to keep on our toes.”

The Thieves nodded and moved on to an open door at the far end of the Hall of Offering. Now that she had a moment to breathe and look over them, she wondered how they got changed so quickly. She hadn’t lost sight of them for more than a moment at the entrance , had she?

A white cone projected into the left by Makoto-san’s gun-light, a red line to the right from Akira’s gun as the Thieves crossed a short, un covered path to another castle building with stone-and-plaster walls.

Another one of those black-skinned, noh-masked mockeries of shrine keepers paced along the covered walkway wrapping around the next building. Hifumi ducked behind a support column for what little good that would do as Kitagawa-san leaped, grasping the noh mask and ripping it off with the cry of, “Reveal your true self!”

The not-shrine-keeper collapsed into a tar puddle, then sprang up into three monsters: in back a red-furred, man-sized canine with a spiked collar and serpentine plates running down its neck and belly. In front, stood two headless soldiers in generic European-style tabards, holding whips that bore an unsettling resemblance to a human spine in their hands.

Guessing things were about to get dangerous, Hifumi ducked back behind the doorway. Despite the unreal scene unfolding outside, she found herself cheering the Phantom Thieves. After long seconds, the flame and lightning ended and the thieves gathered around the toppled, red-furred canine.

She could almost hear the smirk in Akira’s voice as he said, “To the victors go the spoils.”

The beast growled , “The snake’s bite can still fell a samurai.”

Sakura-chan barked, “ We are the undefeated Phantom Thieves. Sixty hearts and counting!”

If you contribute to the Thieves, you can return to the sea of souls,” Akira said with a menace he never even projected as General of the Steel Legion.

You let me go?” the furred yet scale-plated monster blurted. “Th-then take this.”

It tossed something at Akira, who caught it, glanced to Catboy, then shrugged and slipped the thing in a pocket and lowered his weapon. The other Phantom Thieves followed suit and the furred monster let out a relieved breath… then faded away before her eyes. “Another black stone. I’ll see what I can turn it into next time I visit the twins.”

The gravely voice of another not-shrine-keeper shouted from the aisle behind her, “Intruder!”

Yelping in alarm, Hifumi dashed out from her cover behind the doorway and ran out onto the walkway. The not-shrine-keeper followed in hot pursuit, took his cane in both hands and yanked at the handle to draw a long, concealed sword. Hifumi could see the reflection of the terror in her eyes as it swung that sword down at her.

Gunfire and a voice roared in time with sprinting footsteps. Then something blunt hit her hard from one side.

She saw a flapping longcoat and splattering blood before she hit the covered walkway wrapping around the Hall of Offering.

Akira’s gun tumbled to the deck and he parried one slice, but not a rapid reverse-slash flaying open his other arm and knocking an over-sized survival knife tumbling to the deck.

Hifumi’s breath froze in her throat as she watched the not-shrine-keeper reposition his blade to impale her longcoated friend.

She almost missed the sound of flames and a motor until Akira hopped aside and Makoto-san on an armored bicycle flickering with flame ran down the not-shrine-keeper, leaving a scorch mark all the way to the exhibit inside she crashed into. Silvery motes of light washed over the longcoated boy, then rings descended and with a flare of light, the Roman riding a space ship disappeared and deposited Sakura-chan. “Ha! I knew there was a reason there were so many guards when we were all making our stealth rolls!”

Pale-faced and with a trembling in his eyes that she’d never imagined in the self-possessed boy, Akira stuttered, “Hi-Hifumi?

The other Phantom Thieves gathered around, Reaper retrieving the fallen gun and knife and handing them back to the longcoated boy, whose wounds had somehow closed. “You sure that’s Hifumi? Her tits don’t look as big as online.”

Every single other Phantom Thief looked ready to verbally flay the plate-jacketed one, but before they had the chance, the blast of a shotgun rang out.

Makoto-san backed out of the Hall of Offering, her gun barking once more. “Ambush!”

Hifumi and the thieves looked after her to see four – no, five – of the not-shrine-keepers in grimacing noh-masks. She joined the thieves in fleeing across the winding walkway through the fog to the next castle building. Every step felt like the mist clung to her, pulled at her as if hoping to trip her so the pursuing things in noh masks could seize her.

They kept their lead until reaching the small door set low in the stonework. The first two not-shrine-keepers burst into inky black puddles, which then gave rise to a handful of headless soldiers, a towering two-and-a-half meter tall man wrapped in white vestments from head to toe and orbited by six spheres, and at least a dozen imps in straw.

Rider, Oracle, the door!” Catboy shouted, leaping with Kitagawa-san and the others to tackle the growing crowd of folkloric monsters.

Makoto-san fell in next to the shogi player and read the placard on the door where tidy kanji etched out, “ I can’t be bought, but may be stolen at a glance. I am worthless to one, but priceless to two.”

Akira paused between bursts with his gun to shout over his shoulder, “A tandem bicycle?”

Focus!” Catboy said, manifesting a floating black-garbed muscle-man above him and sending the spectral swordsman at a headless soldier.

Were it not for the battle creeping up on her heels, Hifumi would have danced in glee. While she was a voracious reader, her mother’s tradition when she was a little girl was to exchange riddles. Learning not to blurt out the answer had been a hard lesson in school and even then she remained the student who threw her hand in the air the instant she had the answer. Many students acted resentful and some teachers annoyed, but she basked in their acknowledgment until middle school when she discovered how much more… interesting boys were.

Sakura-chan bounced on her feet. “Oh, I know! MOBAs! Those totally suck when you’re the only one trying to carry a team, but rock when you got good squaddies!”

Makoto-san crossed her arms, tapping a finger against the shotgun dangling from her shoulder by a strap. “Clearly not. Maybe an encryption? Cypher? Code?” Silence stretched and a few others looked at her. She stepped back with her hands up. “What? I can’t be the only one who exchanged coded messages with other students in primary school.”

Reaper rolled his eyes. “That is such a nerd thing, Rider!”

The lapse in his attention was enough for a lion with the face of a human to flick its tail and hurl several impaling spikes into the plate-jacketed boy.

Instead of telling the dyed-blond off for putting down a tradition she shared, if to get away with things under the noses of school prefects, she picked up his fallen rifle and peered down the sights on top until the giant, white-shrouded man’s face – well, veil – loomed between the V-shape at the end. A crack sounded when she pulled the trigger and the man’s head snapped back, then the whole thing dissolved into smoke.

Despite the still-approaching mob, her hands started to shake.

Sakura-chan looked torn between helping solve the door’s riddle and abandoning it to help the fight. “Maybe something more metaphysical. Prestige?”

Stomach churning, Hifumi backed from the closing melee. “Worthless to one but priceless to two. It’s love!”

The door slid aside and the thieves piled in. Hifumi had to strain against the fog that tugged at her limbs, the distant whispers that Mother wouldn’t be happy. The snapping back of the white-shrouded man’s head played in her mind and bile rose in her throat.

Sakura-chan aimed her staff out the door, what appeared to be a bronze staff unleashing a fiery bolt and shwa as the pulse lanced into a straw-covered imp, which dissipated into fading smoke. An impression of circuitry glistened over her suit as she tripped while turning to follow the others.

Kitagawa-san caught her and pulled her back to her feet, sheathing the katana too long to use in the narrow corridor.

When the corridor opened up to a broad display hall, Makoto-san paused at the corner to shoot a few gun-blasts into the monsters following. The Phantom Thieves barreled through what looked like the austere halls of the Shogi Federation’s tournament building, though with straw imps and the occasional headless soldier still pouring through the door after them, they didn’t have the chance to examine any of the displays of her father in his younger days. Sakura-chan was gasping for breath by the time Catboy shouted, “Here! A weakness in the cognition!”

Reaper threw himself at what seemed to be the front doors to Kanda Catholic Church, but the door-lever refused to turn. “Fuck!”

Makoto-san’s gun barked as the variety of Shadows flooding in after them grew. Another spikey-tailed lion-lizard approached and Akira threw himself at it with a roar, his oversized knife glistening as he clashed blade-to-claw.

Heart thudding at his insane risk, Hifumi read the placard. “I may be given but never bought. I am desire of sinner, but the saint not.” She took a breath. “Oh, dear Mother. Even saints seek forgiveness.”

The door lever turned in her hand and the Thieves rushed in after her. Sakura-chan flopped against one of the church pews of the sanctuary, shoving up her goggles to wipe at the sweat pouring down her face. Makoto-san and the blonde in red strode further in to rest against other pews, but at least Kitagawa-san paused to bow his head at the crucifix at the end of the shrunken sanctuary.

Uh…” Reaper drawled, reaching out to take back the rifle clutched tight in her trembling hand.

Hifumi yielded the rifle to him, keeping her hand away from the trigger. Despite not having had breakfast, she still struggled to keep down bile for a few moments. “M-my apologies, Reaper-san.” She clenched her hands to try to ward away shaking, and her voice fell to a whisper as her stomach churned. “I’ve never killed anyone before.”

Ain’t no people out there. Those are all Shadows,” he said, his breathing still a little heavy.

Just calm down and breathe,” Makoto-san said, her aplomb assuring the shogi player a little. “Shadows are emotions, fragments of the collective subconscious.”

A hand on her arm brought her attention up to Akira. “H… Hifumi? What are… How are you here?”

Sakura-chan levered herself up from her pew. “She prolly followed Reaper. He’s clueless.”

Dudes!”

As her higher and lower-order brain argued over whether or not she must have killed that man in white, Hifumi turned all her focus to the boy who fast became a fixture in her life. Something she could comprehend. She drew herself up to her full height. “What about that out there? Why were you so reckless?”

Despite his mask, she still saw his eyes tense underneath. “I couldn’t let them touch you.”

She reached out to take his free hand, turning it over to examine the slashes that remained in his sleeves even if his skin seemed whole now. “And so you thought you’d just throw yourself in the way of a sword? The things with whips? Those beasts with claws? Is your life worth so little?”

She felt it first in the hand both of hers held, then the trembling in the hand on her arm. “I-if anything h-happened to you…” Then the shine in his eyes welled over and tears streamed underneath his mask as he lost his composure.

Her heart breaking at the sight, Hifumi wrapped her arms around him and drew him close as sobs wracked the boy. She ran a hand through his hair… until it got caught on a snag. She extricated her fingers and continued brushing her hand over his hair, cooing until his panicked sobs faded and his breathing steadied against hers. It didn’t matter how many minutes it took, she took solace in his human warmth. Even if it felt a bit selfish, she indulged in the soft touch of another human she hadn’t felt in weeks.

Sakura-chan blurted, “Wow, is Control Emotion one of your Persona spells?”

Hifumi almost forgot the others were there, she was so focused on the sound of his breath and steadying beat of his heart. She felt a sense of disappointment when his eyes snapped wide and he jerked two steps away with an even deeper blush on his face than she had on hers. With Akira at her side, she finally had the chance to take a good look at the Phantom Thieves. Kitagawa-san seemed almost casual in his black jumpsuit with fox mask. Sakura-chan’s black unitard glistened with impressions of circuitry and heavy goggles now resting on her head reminded the shogi player of the glasses she wore back at Leblanc.

Akira, always worth a second look, fit a slim, black longcoat and grey waistcoat that brought out his stormy grey eyes despite the avian-themed domino mask over his face. His red gloves were so bright in contrast they almost seemed to glow. She couldn’t have chosen better for a dashing gentleman ensemble.

The rifle leaned against the back of a pew next to the loud, dyed-blond the others called Reaper. The metal plate fashioned in the likeness of a skull over his face couldn’t hide the lascivious look in those dark eyes as he undressed her in his mind like all the dull boys at Kosei.

At least Makoto-san seemed to be trying to glare him into better behavior. She knew the Shujin senior was fit and graceful in a terrifying way when she chose to move, but she played the part of such demure, quiet confidence in the world outside. The tight-fitting black leathers and studded gauntlets felt like such an inversion, and yet also fit the athletic girl to a T. A new wave of envy and self-doubt crept through Hifumi and she deliberately skipped over the lounging girl in red leather who made her feel dull and inadequate in every physical sense.

In an effort to keep her sense of calm, she straightened and tried to effect the same composed cool she showed during her interviews. “So… you all are the Phantom Thieves?” She gave a small bow. “Togo Hifumi.”

Reaper pounded a fist against the back of a pew. “You effin’ told her? And you give me shit!”

Hifumi held up her hands. “Please, be calm. It wasn’t that hard to piece together. You call me about Kitagawa-san, and days later his heart changes.”

What?” The artist in question lowered his finger-framing.

These people were all over the place, Hifumi wasn’t sure if that made them easier or harder to deal with than her usual interviews. She lowered her hands to try to project an aura of calm authority. “Then you call me about Madarame-san. Days later, even Kitagawa-san starts asking me about his mentor. A week, maybe two later and Madarame-san’s heart changes. Then when Mother…” She paused for a steadying breath. “When Mother became too much for me to bear, you came again to save me. And now you’re trying to save her, too, right?”

Makoto-san cleared her throat. “I think you might be mistaken about a couple things. First, we didn’t change Fox’s heart.”

Before she could continue, Kitagawa-san stepped into the conversation with a smile visible beneath his kitsune mask. “Did you all not, in a sense? I would not have awakened to my inner self without your efforts.” He laid a hand on the girl in red leather. “Especially you, who most directly saved my life and gave me no choice but to look upon the truth. I would never have lived to draw out my Persona were it not for your courage.”

Akira-kun looked down to Catboy. “She’s… This one’s not a cognition, right?”

The girl in red leather tilted her head. “This one?”

Catboy hopped onto the back of a pew and waved off her question. “We saw a cognitive Hifumi the first time I followed Joker into Togo’s Palace. Anyway, this isn’t a cognition. She’s the real Togo Hifumi.”

Despite just having his arms around her moments ago, Akira shouted, “We have to get her out of here!”

No shit, Sherlock,” Reaper spat.

Reaper!” Makoto-san’s voice thundered in the scaled-down sanctuary. She shook out one hand as if to cast off irrelevant thoughts, then looked through the slits in her metal face-plate. “Well, the Palace is on high alert, but we’re all here, so may as well. We all go by code-names here to help prevent the subconscious of the target from mapping aggression onto our real-world selves. I go by Rider. This is Oracle, Fox, Reaper, Joker, Panther, and our leader Byakko.”

The short one perched on the back of a pew like the feat of balance was nothing gave a small wave. His eyes narrowed on her for a moment and he sniffed. “I don’t think that your presence alone could cause a Palace to go on high alert, it didn’t do so when Panther or Reaper were caught in Kamoshida’s castle.” He rubbed his chin with his free hand. “Something has to be riling up Togo Mitsuyo in the real world. Can you think of anything that would trigger an anxiety episode this early in the afternoon?”

Hifumi clapped her hands over her mouth. “Afternoon? Oh, no. Mother is going to be furious with me. I was supposed to be up at the Many Landscapes Studio for a costume shoot! But when I saw Akira-kun sneaking around with Sakura-chan…”

Reaper perked up. “What sorta costumes?”

Down, boy,” Panther threw back. “Sorry about him.”

Hifumi swallowed, self-consciousness making her throat feel tight just being around the better-looking girl. “So… what do we do now?”

We’ve got to get her out!” Akira shouted, his gun clenched in both hands.

Byakko waved him down with his free hand. “We find a new route out of the palace. From the stir that happened earlier, they’ll definitely have stepped up the guard around the Hall of Offering. The beast might even be there. We’ll have to find a new route to the entrance.” Byakko hopped off the pew and paced to the door to press his ear against it. After a beat, he opened the door and poked his head out, then ducked back in. “One Shadow. Joker, Reaper, and Panther? With me.”

The Thieves all nodded, Oracle finishing off a bottled water before she got up. They readied their weapons and all headed to the door. Akira had a pained look on his face that his mask couldn’t quite conceal before he settled behind his gun like the cover of an action book and trotted out. The nimble leader flitted forward, quick as a wind, and yanked the noh mask off the not-shrine-keeper. Was that what he meant by a Shadow?

Makoto-san fell in step next to Hifumi, her crimson eyes flicking about as the other thieves arranged themselves across the faux-marbled promenade. “Try not to worry too much, Togo-san. We’ll do our best to get you out safe.”

I have faith in you.” Hifumi bit her lip a moment. “To be honest, I’m less worried for myself than Mother. She used to be such a smart, supportive woman. It wasn’t until Father’s collapse…”

The battle ahead concluded and they all resumed walking.

Joker told us,” Makoto-san said with a soft smile that reminded her of their cordial discussions over a shogi board. She paused for an explosion of ice ahead. “He’s been beside himself, trying to get us to this change of heart.” That crimson gaze swept out. “The problem is that we don’t know how to get back to the Hall of Adoration. Or past this cognitive beast that keeps blocking our progress.”

A Shadow rounded the corner and what had been a quieting conversation ahead snapped back into a flurry of activity. Akira reached for his mask and summoned one of those indecent vixens from earlier, and the floating woman danced as if unaware her archaic Chinese-style court robes were falling off. An aura of foxfire spread over the red-furred monster the size of a man and it seized as if every limb was jerked in an incompatible direction, then fell down and dissipated like smoke on the wind.

Hifumi blinked. She looked back to the girl in black leather. “Um… excuse me if I am misunderstanding something, but when Fox-san mentioned inner self, he spoke as if that was a singular thing. How did Ak—Joker just… call out one of the folkloric entities that have beset you within this place?”

Oh.” A smile spread over the martial artist’s face. “Joker is kind of a rule-breaker. He can negotiate with Shadows to get them to give us supplies, or join him as a Persona. Even Byakko isn’t sure why, and he’s our Metaverse expert.”

Hifumi gave a nod before looking around the hall around them as they resumed walking over the faux-marble flooring of what resembled the Shogi Federation’s tournament headquarters. Busts depicted Father in various expressions from intense concentration to laughter, and paintings scattered over the walls showed austere men, many with subtle sneers and leering gazes. It reminded her of the last time she played a qualifying round, and the whispers in the halls how her body was the only reason she was there.

Sakura-chan pointed her staff-weapon at one of the windows, beyond which rolled fog. “Hey, Byakko? If the palace is at such high alert, how come there’s almost no Shadows here? There aren’t any spawning all over like when the beast raised the alarm.”

Cognition,” Byakko replied, keeping his crossbow ready. “Remember that safe rooms are spaces that palace rulers believe to a subconscious level they have no power over. Togo Mitsuyo must believe a place like this is important, but she doesn’t control it. That’s why all the Shadows have come from outside.”

It does resemble the Shogi Federation’s tournament hall,” Hifumi said. “She met Father in a place like this while she was working for NHK’s culture and entertainment section.”

Kitagawa-san stepped into the conversation for the first time since the scaled-down sanctuary. “I do not imagine that the tournament hall has a Catholic church nestled within it.”

I’m pretty sure it was the catholic church I attend at Kanda. It was where Father grew up and where Mother was baptized after she agreed to marry him.”

Show yourself!” Panther shouted from ahead as she pounced on a not-shrine-keeper rounding the next corner, tearing its noh mask from its face and hopping back off as it plunged into an inky puddle.

Hifumi bit her lip in worry as the four at the front spread across the hall and battled the shogun sporting a cat-print flag attached to his back, and three headless soldiers with spine-whips.

Captain Kidd!” Reaper shouted as if born to do battle. A skeletal pirate riding a boat coalesced above him and fired a swirl of tearing winds at one of the headless soldiers, knocking it down and then taking the momentary initiative to charge, smashing into another headless soldier and dragging it until smashing into the next headless soldier, driving them both into dissipating smoke against the wall.

All in, Zorro!” Byakko shouted as the armored shogun raised his signal fan, catching him unguarded and slicing through his legs. The thieves circled as it tumbled to the polished faux-marble floor.

The shogun with a cat pawprint on the banner on its back stabbed its tanto in the ground to steady itself. “You fools think you can stand against Togo the Great?”

Panther cut an imposing look, her pistol lined up on the shogun’s face. “Only the over-confident think they are invincible. We have taken down kings in castles and yakuza because we stood together and never gave up.”

The armored shogun settled on one knee. “It is not the strongest but the patient hunter who takes the prey.”

Akira brandished his oversized survival knife. “The Phantom Thieves stalk in dark and shadow. The question is whether you want to be part of the hunters, or the hunted. Join me.”

Straightening out of its winded, slouched posture, the shogun said, “I can not join a brute. Riddle me this—”

Goddamn it,” Reaper grumped.

“—If my price is shown on a chess board, one grain of rice on one square for my first day, two grains on the second square for my second, and so on, what king could afford me?”

Akira scratched the back of his head, consternation clear on his face.

This time Hifumi didn’t hold back. She leaped to his side.

He interposed as if fearing the Shadow would surge at them any moment. “Stay back, Hifumi!”

She rested a comforting hand on his shoulder. “I’ll stay behind you, but I’m already in this with you all. Let me help.” She shifted her focus to the flagging Shadow. “There are sixty-four squares on a standard chess board. If you start at a single grain, two to the power of zero, the last square would have two to the power of sixty three. There aren’t that many particles in the whole solar system.”

Akira took a beat to breathe in, then nodded with a grateful smile and slid further between her and the shogun. “No king has the wealth to pay such a price.” Akira brandished a confident, playful smirk. “Besides, nobody’d be able to stack that many grains on a chess board.”

Reaper clapped one hand to his skull plate mask, then resumed a combat-ready posture.

The short shogun with a pawprint emblem on his banner barked out a laugh and stood, ripping his tanto out of the floor. “Wisdom and the resolution to cheer. As long as the stars can shine in your eyes, let neither mercenary or retainer falter at your side. I shall be your mask of conquest!”

Then it exploded into black ribbons that soared and snaked through the air to Akira’s domino mask. He stumbled back as if punched and Hifumi grabbed his arm to hold him steady. He patted her hand to let her know he was steady again and she hesitated a beat before withdrawing, missing that brief contact. Her shock must have shown on her face, because he gave a soft smile. “I’m fine, Hifumi. It’s one of my Personas now.”

No time to waste,” Byakko said in as much command as that child-like voice could muster. He broke into a dash that the rest needed to jog to keep up with. A traditional-style sliding door sat in the wall ahead, so they came to a stop and read the placard. “I never was, am always to be. No one ever saw me, nor ever will see. I am the confidence of all, who live and breathe on this terrestrial ball.”

Reaper tipped his head back and let out a grunt. “Why’s this dumb place gotta have all these effin’ puzzles?”

Hifumi raised a hand to her headscarf, feeling the hair knot her mother first tied in her hair as they riposted riddles at each other. “It’s a way of bringing people together. It’s like exercise, for the brain.”

Akira’s smirk directed at the loud blond, a bit more pointed than last time. “No wonder why it looks like you pulled a muscle every time.”

Reaper’s lips pulled back and he bit out, “Eff. You.”

Hifumi poked the longcoated boy in the side and gave what she hoped was a look of mild reproach.

Panther crossed her arms, her hip thrust to one side. “The future?”

Sakura-chan scratched her head. “But don’t we see the future?”

Makoto-san perked, that light of recognition in her eyes. “Oh, confidence of all! When people unite behind a policy like Toranosuke-san is always making speeches over. The future is too vague, the answer’s tomorrow!”

Wood and gears clunked under their feet and the door slid aside. Hifumi beamed a proud smile at her compatriot from another school. “I knew you all could do it.”

Trees dotted what looked like the largest castle courtyard she’d ever seen, the twisted shapes of Japanese maples reaching for the inky night sky of this fantasy realm. While no wind blew at the foliage, fog with an ethereal glow churned through the space. It stood out from the dark stone foundations of the massive castle wrapping around them, throwing sharper contrast on the bone-white plastered walls soaring even higher.

Reaper gawked at the hostile zone ahead. “Shit, man. This even head out or in?”

Byakko’s ears folded against his skull in what might have been embarrassment. “I think… both? There’s more than one gate out there.”

You think?” Akira’s panic wormed into his tone, “We’re trying to get Hifumi out of here before one of those contaminating palace effects you’re always on about gets her! I don’t want her turning into a cat!”

Byakko almost pointed his crossbow at the longcoated boy. “I’m doing the best I can, here! Navigating through fog is dangerous even in the real world! It can carry all kinds of hazards in the Metaverse!”

Reaper’s glove groaned on his metal-capped club. “Maybe if you could do somethin’ effin’ useful like turn into a map or radar or somethin’, we wouldn’t be effin stuck here with a useless cat leader !”

Makoto-san stepped between them. “Gentlemen! I understand the anxiety of the situation, but you all need to set an example for Togo-san. She’s already lost in her mother’s distorted heart.”

Despite her intention of reassurance, the reminder of her mother sent a cold chill down Hifumi’s spine. Mother was always the manager of the household, the disciplinarian, and she worked herself to exhaustion juggling not only her two jobs but managing Hifumi’s shoots and interviews. Intended or not, she’d take Hifumi’s deviation from schedule personally.

Sakura-chan waved them off. “While you all are getting your knickers untwisted, I’ll take Marcus scouting.” She jogged out onto the short landing and tapped that button on her bracelet, a stack of rings transposing her into a Roman riding an angular spaceship. It soared up and out, but the glowing fog clung to her Persona like a sticky gelatin. Instead of flying free above its level, the fog churned at her like an angry fire. A hum resonated out from the Persona as it struggled, lost altitude, then dipped beneath.

Sakura-chan!” Hifumi shouted, too shocked by what happened in an already fantastic world straining her brain to the breaking point to remember her code name. She broke into a run after the fallen Thief. Hifumi may have been envious of all the attention and contact she got from Akira, but that didn’t mean she could just let the poor girl be killed by a palace even if it was her mother’s!

Notes:

re: “is Control Emotion one of your Persona spells?” Futaba is kind of a nerd-of-all-kinds cliché, and was somewhat designed to be so to the point of being named after 2chan, but it seemed too good an opportunity to pass up another reference to Shadowrun. We’ll all pretend they’re playing 4th edition instead of the mess they turned 5th ed into.

Chapter 102: August 13th, Opened Eyes

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Saturday, 13 August 2016
Afternoon
Togo’s Temple

The Roman riding a flattened space ship slid into the fog as if whatever propelled it lost all upward momentum. “Sakura-chan!” Hifumi shouted, her scattered brain only able to retrieve her real name before she bolted into the fog in the direction of a small, wet splash.

Hifumi!” Akira shouted, panic cracking his voice as he sprinted after her.

She reached the edge of the raised walkway and hopped off. What she expected to be a five centimeter drop ended up more than a meter and her shoes splashed into a shallow puddle as the Phantom Thieves ran after her. She heard another splash nearby, but the mist might as well have been concrete for as far as Hifumi could see. Glancing down, she couldn’t even tell where her feet were. She shouted up at the others, “Stay out, visibility is zero!”

Panther-san called out from above, her voice sounding too distant and muffled to understand.

A worrying beat passed without hearing from Akira, then the fog currents shifted and she heard footsteps splash further into the marshy courtyard. Hifumi reached her hand out and this time could see past her fingertips.

Her relief ended at seeing herself in a kimono patterned with crashing waves like mother made her wear during family reunions. Her doppel held a sleeve-sheathed hand before her mouth in the cutsey shy gesture she hadn’t done since she was a child. “Oh, how shameful. Cavorting with boys and getting mud on your feet.”

Hifumi worked her mouth open, but found herself unable to speak. She closed her mouth and breathed in, the foggy air more crawling than flowing into her lungs. She coughed and slapped her chest, then stepped closer. “Wh-what is this? Where is Oracle-chan?”

Her doppel paced in a circle around her, disdain etched into her face. “Mother would be rightly shamed. She bleeds herself dry trying to support me and Father.”

Hifumi’s breath caught in her throat, not just because of the fog she would have sworn was trying to asphyxiate her. She thought of the weakened man in a hospital bed in the master bedroom, lifting a trembling arm at her, and her insides churned.

Does your family matter so little?” Her doppel said, still circling. “How hypocritical,” the look-alike spat. “You steal the hard work of Mother’s mathematics studies and thanked no one when Kosei gave you a full scholarship.”

Hifumi struggled to breathe in. “I… I wanted to help ease the burden on Mother and Father.”

A burden wholly created by you,” her doppel snapped. “You steal the years of struggle and refinement of Father’s shogi career and what have you paid back?”

Hifumi’s teeth clenched. “I’m trying …”

Her doppel’s eyes tensed despite tears leaking from the real one. “You think you’re entitled to play games that hardly pay in either publicity or funds when Father is slowly dying and all Mother asks you is to help keep F ather with us?”

Hifumi wrapped her arms around herself, as if that could shield herself from either the fog or the doppel’s cutting words. She struggled through shaky breaths to squeak out, “I… I just want…” She couldn’t think of anything more sensible than to mean something .

To what?” Mother’s voice cut through the fog, a faint reverberation to it. Then dark leathery wings more than two meters wide each flapped and a wide swath of the fog shrank back. Her mother floated above the marshy ground as if gravity was an indignity beneath her. Her long hair cascaded down, unbound like her NHK days. Shiny tights clung to her like a second skin even tighter than Panther’s, neckline plunging all the way down to her waist. Her lips curled in a sneer. “Your entire life has centered on taking from others, on pleasing yourself, no matter how indecent. Leeching from everyone else’s talents. You think you can stand on a mountain of others’ sacrifices and call your hands clean as long as you squeeze your eyes shut.”

Tears sparkled at the corners of her eyes at viciousness exceeding anything Mother had ever hurled at her before. “I… I’ve done the best I can—”

To what?” Mother snapped, those gold eyes boring into her. “To bat your eyes at every boy you thought might jump into your panties? Your dalliances with your father’s profession were even weaker than your attempts to give yourself away. You think your tournament wins are so glorious? I bought them.”

Hifumi’s mouth drifted open.

Her mother in a shiny, skin-hugging garb and leathery wings let out a disappointed huff. “ Honestly , Hifumi. Are you totally blind to anything that isn’t the next boy-toy you want to jump on? The Shogi Federation is a man’s world and they wouldn’t even consider you. You think it was coincidence that Sasaki withdrew, giving a pretty little thing like you her first ranked game? I had to have his son’s legs broken.” She floated closer and took Hifumi’s chin in hand to force her green eyes on those gold ones. “You didn’t have the wherewithal to leverage that lovely body you’re so eager to give away, to get the money or fame that could help my household. You couldn’t even earn a front position in Belshazzar’s Feast.”

The first tear slipped down Hifumi’s face. Her chin trembling, Hifumi stammered, “I… I’m not just a body—”

The gold-eyed Mitsuyo spat a laugh. “You think anything but the beauty you inherited from me means anything ? Take that shogi friend you think cares so for your mind.” She yanked the shogi player to one side.

The glowing fog rolled back and she saw Akira stumbling around the mossy marsh. His dark grey slacks and formal black Sunday jacket made him stand out even more than among the blasé casual of everyday people.

A tickle in the back of her mind told her something was wrong, but her head pounded in pain. T hen that damn doppel in the wave-patterned kimono stepped out of the fog in front of him. She ran forward and stumbled on her geta-style sandals, slipping out of one of them.

Akira leaped forward to catch the doppel.

That’s not—!” Hifumi tried to shout, but Mitsuyo clamped a hand over her mouth.

Are you all right?” Akira said, helping her doppel stand. He almost melted against the doppel when she wrapped one arm around his back, and her body against his front.

Her doppel reached up and traced the fingertips of one hand along his cheek, then cupped his face in hand like she’d longed to do for weeks. The sparks of jealousy she felt when she saw Sakura-chan and him holding hands blazed into a bonfire inside as their hungry eyes stared into each other.

Her doppel reached up to push her royal kimono off one shoulder, leaning back just enough to let her kimono slide down her arms. The well-dressed boy pushed her kimono off the other shoulder before claiming the doppel’s mouth with his own, a grey-gloved hand sliding up the fake’s body to cup her breast.

Stop it!” the real Hifumi tried to yell under her mother’s muffling hand, jealousy and fear for him both stoking the fire within. She remembered all too well the trembling in his eyes when she clutched him in the meditation garden of Kanda Catholic Church. He was too fragile to throw into something like this. He’d never dared to put it in words, but he’d let her hold the shards of his heart for brief moments. “You’ll only hurt him!”

Your body is the only thing men want,” the gold-eyed Mitsuyo said. “Tch. Hurt him? Punishment should hurt. Or else unruly children won’t remember.”

Those enormous wings flexed and the glowing fog rolled back. T he rest of the scattered Phantom Thieves faced a legion of Shadows in the marshy courtyard. Kitagawa-san lifted his katana far too late to stop a spiny-tailed swipe from one of those human-faced lions. Sakura-chan, shooting a snake-man as she backed up. She tripped and another snake-man slithered up from her left, both snake-headed ‘hands’ biting deep. Reaper, ducking under the swipe of a spine-whip to land a power swing against a headless soldier, only for the red-furred canine next to it to leap for his throat, knocking him over. Panther-san, sweat pouring down her face, dove out of the path of a bolt of lightning from one of the indecent vixens. Byakko, dodging dozens of those small, straw-covered imps.

The Phantom Thieves were being hunted down piecemeal by superior forces and numbers like a red fox before a horde of English hounds and horses.

All because they were foolish enough to gamble their lives to help her.

Her heart pounded in her chest.

You see how worthless life is,” Mitsuyo hissed, forcing Hifumi to stare at Akira and her doppel making out, “when you lack the fortitude or wherewithal to leverage the parts of you that are worth something to the world? Give up your delusions about boys, they only want to fuck you. In every sense. At least my way, we decide how much your body sells for. That’s the only way anybody can pay their way ahead in life.”

No!” Hifumi’s hands reached for the one hand Mother used to hold her captive. “Not him, not me, not for anyone!”

A clear mezzo-soprano voice called out to her, “So shall you sell yourself to butchers who see only commodities to exploit?”

Her heart thudded within and Hifumi writhed in agony at the pressure building inside, pain splitting her head, a strange sensation of weight growing around her eyes.

Mitsuyo snapped, “Stop your indecent games and just do as you’re told like a good girl. That pretty face sells for plenty to pay bribes and your father’s medical bills. I can’t have a rising star Togo fall.”

Her heart pounded. That foreign yet somehow familiar woman’s voice whispered to her again, “Will you submit body, heart, and kingdom to be carved up before foreign invaders?”

Mitsuyo’s arm tightened over the shogi player. “Good girls don’t act out or speak out of turn.”

Heart thudding and skull burning , Hifumi bit down on her mother’s hand. Her mother snatched her hand away and dropped the shogi player to the puddle below. Those wings flapped and the glowing fog raced back in as if making a last-ditch effort to suffocate the shogi player on her knees.

The mezzo-soprano voice called out again, “The retreat has been quite long enough. The line must be drawn! A queen is not queen without her kingdom, her subjects. But surrender is not the strategy to save a kingdom from pillagers.”

Her monstrous mother’s enormous, leathery wings stretched out. “Selfish girl, I’m not even asking for all of you. Only a few bits now and then, when you should be wholly devoted to your family. Leave these trash and obey your mother. I already offer you everything yen can buy.”

Her heart thudded inside again, and Hifumi reached up a hand to the sudden sensation of weight on her upper face. “I will not close my eyes. I will not cut myself off from the people I treasure any more than I would cut off my own hand. And I… am not … for sale!” Hifumi yanked at the hard shell over her upper face. Blood flowed and her skin gave way, but this mask would not hold her back any more. “Lend me your vision, Dihya!”

At last the mask came free. Blood splattered and blue flames exploded out, blasting across the courtyard, driving Shadow Mitsuyo into the sky, disintegrating the false Akira and Hifumi, the straw-covered imps and knocking the other Shadows down.

Black boots hugged her legs to her knees, rearing horses etched into the greave plates. Where her sky-blue dress had been, instead a double-breasted navy-blue coat edged in red hugged her chest, secured by thick belts, matched by jodhpur breeches. A heavy blue cloak sat on her shoulders, fastened by a thin chain. Its voluminous hood shrouded her head, leaving the red optics of her visor glowing like malevolent eyes.

Instead of dissipating, the blue flames above her coalesced into a towering two-meter woman in a red tunic. She wore silver bracers and held a tower shield in each hand, the design of an open eye spread across them. Her inky-black hair fell down below her waist, gathered in three bunches by silver clasps. Instead of a face, pure white light glowed behind a floating ceramic mask painted in serene meditation.

Hifumi closed her eyes, and looked out through her Persona. Several dozen likenesses of the Phantom Thieves fought and bled across the marshy courtyard, often against a doppel of herself.

Only six of the Thieves splashed as they fought.

She scanned over them as fast as she could to evaluate their injuries and opposition to zero in on Sakura-chan as the most vulnerable. Dismissing Dihya, Hifumi sprinted across the wet, mossy ground, hurling out her heavy cloak. Whether exceeding the chain catch or responding to her will, it snapped apart, allowing her to swing the heavy cloak out to tangle and drag down the headless soldier’s spine-whip.

Sakura-chan whipped around, staff weapon up, heaving in breath.

Another writhing snake-man came at the young girl’s flank. Despite the benefit of keeping distance, Hifumi knew her staff unleashed fire energy and these serpent-men gritted through the blasts. “Hold your fire, bash them with your staff!” She took a handful of her cloak, feeling scales sewn within it as she raised her cloaked arm to block another spine-whip.

Nice threads!” Sakura-chan took her staff in both hands and swung, pounding the end with a viper clutching a sphere over a serpent-man’s human head. The Shadow’s skull snapped to one side and it dissolved as dissipating smoke. They repeated the process of Hifumi blocking with her heavy cloak and Sakura-chan bashing the other serpent-man into dissolving smoke, but when they rounded on the headless soldier, it reached out with a hand wrapped in darkness and drew ribbons of light out of Sakura-chan. The slight girl heaved in breath. “I hate energy drain!”

As the older girl cast away the soldier’s whip, Sakura-chan lined up her staff weapon and shot the headless soldier twice, dissipating the Shadow.

Hifumi looked over the courtyard. With Sakura-chan in tow, she gained some options but lost others. As much as she wanted to get back to Akira, the Hifumi-doppel facing Panther had recovered and the headless soldiers had hit Byakko with a fear effect. “This way!”

Hifumi ran as fast as she could without losing the hacker, keeping a grip on her armored cloak so she would be ready to defend herself at a moment’s notice.

The doppel wielding a spear held out a hand, pinky and ring fingers folded down. A fire bolt formed and flung into Panther-san, the Thief in red leather stumbled to the marsh with a pained cry.

Hifumi broke into a sprint and threw herself over the veteran Thief, clenching her cloak to lessen the impact of the follow-up spear thrust. After a moment of surprise, the pair fought off the handful of Shadows besetting the vivacious blonde before Sakura-chan caught up to help them down a cognition of Hifumi in a hydrangea-patterned kimono. They surged at it with all their might, and Panther finished it off with a heeled stomp onto its skull, dissipating it into wisps of smoke.

Hifumi made a mental note never to make Panther-san angry.

The striking blonde held up the slight girl as she wheezed. “Either of you know what happened to Byakko? One of those headless bastards got him with something and he ran off in a panic.”

Hifumi glanced around the crystal clear courtyard, but her search for the team leader stopped when her gaze fell on a silver orb slamming into Akira, his longcoated form cutting a furrow through bright green moss. “Ak—Joker!” She took off at a run.

With the addition of Hifumi’s armored cloak and the Phantom Thieves settling back into fighting harmony, the Shadows and a doppel of Hifumi in a slinky red cocktail dress was defeated. The elation that the small victory fell when Hifumi detected a Shadow great dragon bearing down on Makoto-san.

Its gaping jaws glowed with a growing white light and locked onto the smart girl who invited her to the dojo. “Rider-san!”

Dihya winked out, transposing with Makoto on her armored bike of a Persona, then slammed her two tower shields together. They locked flush and the roaring beam of ice crashed against them, shuddering but holding against the monstrous Shadow’s onslaught. After long seconds of its stream of ice, the dragon closed its jaws and swished after the artist firing a carbine at it.

Standing next to Dihya, where the Shujin president was, Ryuji’s wide brown eyes stared and he said, “Fuckin’—”

Then Dihya was in front of Hifumi again, dissipating a moment later. The shogi player herself fell, Akira catching her as she gulped in deep breaths. “Hifumi, what the hell happened?”

It took Hifumi a few moments more to catch her breath. “I couldn’t… let anything happen to her.”

Panther-san helped the shogi player stand, her eyes still wide with surprise. “Where are they?”

With a little reluctance, Hifumi pushed up from Akira’s arms. “This way. Rider-san’s trying to use the courtyard wall to limit the dragon’s movements.”

Hifumi and the Phantom Thieves ran until they almost stumbled into the long, blue eastern dragon. Tufts of green sprouted from its ankles and along its back, and long, white horns sprouted from the green mane on its head. Red plated scales ran down its belly, and while its arms seemed short compared to the length of its body they were plenty long enough to clash with the artist parrying its large claws with his sword. Its blue-scaled hide bore numerous scratch marks from Captain Kidd’s shredding winds, but she couldn’t tell what the damage added up to. Either way, the girl and two boys bore far more signs of a beating than it did.

Makoto saw them and breathed only a short sigh of relief before lowering her gun. “We’re chipping away with everything we’ve tried, but nothing seems to hurt it badly.”

Sakura-chan tossed her sidearm at the blonde. “If yours is out, try this.” She leveled her staff weapon at the dragon rising up and away from them and fired a blast. Panther followed up with what seemed a pinprick from the small lightning-discharging weapon.

The dragon swirled up, then dove down and slammed its front legs into the ground. The ground trembled and plumes of water shot up.

Spread out and dodge!” Makoto-san shouted, racing away from the rising water as they reached their apex, then froze into sharp crystals and rained down.

Ryuji tripped, clutching his leg as he splashed down and then curled to take the ice as best he could. Too far from him to do any good, Hifumi yanked Akira close and braced under her heavy cloak. The pounding ice shards hurt, but let up after a brief fall.

After a momentary exchange of glances with Makoto-san, Kitagawa roared and swung at the dragon’s face, keeping up a fighting retreat that brought its attention away from the fallen runner.

Makoto rushed over to Ryuji to apply a medicated bandage to the wound bleeding the most, but from the resigned look they shared, they had little left.

Akira stepped out from the shelter of her cloak with a thankful nod, pointing his gun at the dragon for a test burst. He frowned at his lack of effect, then reached for his mask. “Daji!” The buxom woman with Chinese court robes almost shrugged off coalesced, then waved a hand and unleashed swirls of pure force at the dragon. “Yeah, Byakko would hate this thing. Anything else it can shrug off?”

Given its magic,” Kitagawa-san said as he hacked and parried at the dragon’s front, “I would presume ice.”

Carmen hurled a javelin of ice that splattered without mark against its hide. Panther cursed, but without any other options, she shot little bolts into the dragon with Sakura-chan’s small, alien sidearm and sent her Persona whipping at the flying beast.

Sakura-chan paused her volley to glance at the shogi player. “I don’t suppose your Persona has some kind of scanning ability that could tell us a vulnerability we haven’t hit yet?”

Dihya!” Hifumi called out, then closed her eyes to look through her inner self’s. All of them were strange, but with the number of Thieves together now, she was getting a feel for the… what was the word… tones of their energy? Looking for a matching power like the lightning coursing through Goemon was easy, but trying to feel an absence left her unable to determine which melodic tone to follow in the complicated Shadow. Wait, maybe an inverse tone.

Once her objective was clear in her mind, the tone felt as obvious as missing violins in an orchestra. A hole in the sounds that should be there just to indicate normal.

Hifumi hoped she had the right sense of it. “Like your celestial serpent, Joker!”

Sakura-chan swore. “Of course it would be mine when I don’t have the energy to use it!”

Hifumi opened her eyes in time to see a thankful smile on his face that made her heart flutter. He called out the five-headed serpent, and when its rays raked over the dragon, it roared in agony and lashed out. Kitagawa fell, bleeding from grievous gashes, but the Phantom Thieves rallied at the knowledge that the powerful beast could be hurt and threw everything they had at it.

She hadn’t realized how much effort running, blocking, and using her inner self was until the battle came to silence and she had an opportunity to breathe as if at the end of Kosei’s hurdle racing. A sensation of blue flames washed over her and the comfortable belted coat and boots were replaced by her wet, moss-stained dress. Just as suddenly, the fog that made it hard to see more than a meter out was back. The strength in her legs gave out and the air felt like it didn’t have enough oxygen.

Akira sprinted, slipping once over loose moss, to catch her. “Hifumi, are you all right?”

She sucked in air and held onto him with leaden arms. “Just… really tired.” Despite the exhaustion weighing at her eyelids, she gave a proud smile to the others. “You all must have incredible strength to be able to keep it up for hours.” Her eyes fell on the small girl still standing steady on her two feet, that black jumpsuit glistening with circuitry. “Especially you, Oracle-chan. Don’t you ever let other people tell you that you don’t have strength to move a mountain.”

Sakura-chan smiled and scratched at her head with the closed discharge pod of her staff weapon. “Thanks. But would you mind not calling me ‘chan’? I have been doing this for longer than you.”

Applying the last of the team’s medicated bandages to the artist, Panther-san stood. “This is your second day, Oracle.”

The orange-haired girl brandished a defiant smile. “Still enough for seniority.”

Maybe it was the tiredness, but the statement made sense to Hifumi. Every cohesive group had to have some kind of organization to operate in a synchronized manner even when they weren’t all together. “Understandable, Oracle-senpai.”

Sakura-chan grimaced as if she bit a lemon. “Super weird for somebody who just saved my life to call me senpai. Can we nix that?”

Hifumi nodded into Akira’s collarbone and mumbled something affirmative.

Makoto-san coughed into a fist. “Where is Byakko?”

Ryuji clapped his free hand on his dyed-blond head. “Oh, shit! The cat got himself nabbed?”

Akira riposted, “Bastet isn’t a cat.” When Sakura-chan started cackling, he slapped his gloved palm against his forehead and groaned. “Byakko. Byakko isn’t a cat.”

Ann set a gentle hand on the shogi player’s shoulder. “Whatever you did to find us, and find Rider… could you do that again?”

Hifumi stood and swallowed. Despite being back in her day dress, she could feel her Persona inside, that resolute refusal to close her eyes and be sold off like a commodity. “Dihya, please.”

Flames washed over her and even though she feared her head would split open, she summoned her Persona to scan the once-again clear courtyard. The catboy ran from a mob of Shadows led by another doppelganger. “There. He’s being pursued by Shadows.” While she wasn’t strong enough to hold a lead ahead of them this time, she led them through the marshy courtyard to the diminutive figure fleeing a mob of headless soldiers and human-faced lion.

Before the Thieves came close enough to see, her winged mother landed in front of Byakko. Skidding to a stop, Byakko summoned Zorro to send a wave of psychokinetic force at the yellow-eyed woman.

The shimmer of pure force reflected straight off Mother and knocked Byakko tumbling back, thermos splashing into a puddle.

Within the mob, a sad doppel in a risque tea gown nocked an arrow in her bow. The melancholic expression never budged as she drew back, “I’m sorry you made me do this.”

Her lungs burned and hands trembled, but Hifumi kept up the sprint. “Panther, the mob. Oracle, my mother!”

Makoto joined the group angling for the mob. “Fox, with them. Joker, guard Hifumi and support when you have an opening. Reaper, with me.”

Oracle paused to take the coffee thermos and help the small team leader down a dose of powdered medicine. “Hang on, Bastet.”

It’s Byakko,” he replied.

Mitsuyo’s enormous leather wings stretched wide. “So the trash still haven’t been taken care of?” She scoffed. “ Do be out of my way quickly, I have to stop by the house to discipline my daughter.”

Hifumi held her hand to her mask and closed her eyes to see through her Persona. Mother might be dangerous, but those numbers might allow the Shadows to flank the Thieves if they weren’t careful. They’d have to be dealt with first. “Scanning. Avoid curse energy on the Dullahan, and the Typhon appears immune to both bless and curses.”

Sighting across the top, Reaper swept his rifle across the dozen Shadows, coming to a stop on the doppel in a tea gown and fancy hair bun. “Oh, fuck. It’s the crazy bitch who stabbed me.”

Why,” Makoto snarked, “were you planning on grabbing her ass again?” Her gun barked into the mob, hitting two Dullahan and knocking one of the headless soldiers to its knees.

Reaper ducked under one spine-whip and swung wild at the next Dullahan. “Hey, she came onto me like some damsel in distress.”

Next to him, Panther tangled an incoming whip with her own and sent frost spreading down its weapon, slowing to a creep but still growing across its hand.

A new tone resonated from the Shadows and Hifumi dismissed Dihya. “Reaper, I think they’re all missing the same tune as Captain Kidd resonates with.”

Eff yeah! Joker, gimme a boost and let’s take ‘em all down at once!”

Joker fired a gun burst into her mother, leaving a trail of scratches. “I didn’t bring High Pixie today.”

Ryuji bashed aside another Dullahan. “The eff? It’s one of your Personas, how do you not ‘bring’ it?”

I can only control so many at once!” Akira snapped back.

Just go!” Makoto barked at the loud blond.

He grit his teeth and looked over the dozen-plus Shadows marching closer. “ Fine . I’ll go all in, but if you all ain’t in after me, I’mma comin’ back to haunt you.” He stepped back, eyelids drifting closed as he opened his mouth and took a very deep breath.

An arrow loosed at the team leader, and the doppel in a risque evening gown said, “Shall I sing you a dirge, for your last day?”

Braced behind her armored cloak, Hifumi shouted, “The only dirge shall be for Mother’s inflated ego! We will steal her distorted desires and restore her to the heart of the Togo home where she belongs!”

Gown Doppel loosed an arrow, then nocked another. “Your resistance only leads to despair. Like the Buddha, only surrender can lead to freedom.”

Her cape knocked aside the large arrow. “Nonsense!” Hifumi shot back. “Surrender to those who only take leads to servitude, not freedom!” She knelt to take up the staff weapon Sakura-chan had set down so she could drink from the coffee thermos.

Mother knows—”

The staff weapon discharged a bolt of plasma into Gown Doppel with a satisfying shwa .

Badass!” Futaba chirped, a wide smile under her goggles as she reached for her staff weapon. “No wonder Joker likes you.”

Heat blazed across Hifumi’s cheeks and she turned over the staff. “My apologies for taking this without asking, Oracle-chan.” She released the staff and took the thermos in exchange.

A skeletal pirate riding a floating boat formed in front of Reaper, then plunged into the mob of Shadows. Reaper unleashed a long roar and a growing swirl of shredding winds circulated around the boat, picking up Dullahan and ripping them into dissipating smoke. Gown Doppel loosed an arrow, and Hifumi ripped her cloak from her shoulders to cast in the way as the rest of the thieves fended off the stragglers. When Kidd crashed into the man-faced lion, the beast tumbled to the ground. The Persona dissipated and Reaper collapsed to the one knee, gasping .

Makoto led the charge with , “ Fist of justice !” and Byakko joined them in eliminating the once threatening mob.

That done, Hifumi turned to an unsettling quiet around her monstrous mother. Mitsuyo’s great leather wings unfurled from their impromptu cocoon.

The Roman riding a shrunken space ship fired cyan beams into the hovering, wing-wrapped figure, the beams reflecting off at odd angles. Then he switched back to Sakura-chan, who called over her shoulder, “I think she healed a little, and Marcus’ beams are reflecting now.” She fumed. “Multi-phase bosses suck!”

The winged Mitsuyo began forming crackling balls of lightning in her hands.

Byakko shouted at the shogi player, “We’re too spent to fight the Palace Ruler so soon. Smoke out!”

Saturday, 13 August 2016
Late Afternoon
Togo Temple, Front Bailey

Futaba gasped for air at the end of their long run. The two fights they had with Shadows on the way out were almost breathers. Either her heart was going to explode, or she’d have the best cardio of the year if she kept her promise to Mom to graduate high school. Hifumi having almost as much sweat on her face made the hacker feel a bit better.

Even Inari was clutching his side and breathing hard.

Akira paced closer to tap a fist against the artist’s arm. “Where’s it hurt?”

“My back,” Inari said through grit teeth. “I find it difficult even to move my arms.”

Akira set his P90 on the ground, then held out a hand. “Your gun.” When the confused artist handed it over, the transfer student passed it on to Ann, then slipped behind the artist. “Cross your arms in front of your chest.”

“Did you gain a Persona that—?” The longcoated boy wrapped his arms around Yusuke’s, tightened, and lifted, arching his back, sending out a series of cracks as the artist’s words transformed into a pained cry. Then he set the artist down and Yusuke whipped around, his arms rising in defense before his eyes widened in realization. He flexed his arms, then rotated one through a wide circle. “That was… amazing! I feel better than after a night’s sleep in the atelier!”

“Me next!” Ann shouted with a smile on her face.

Akira blushed and his gaze shot straight to her boobs. Not that Futaba could blame him.

She handed the artist’s carbine back, and returned the Zat’nikatel to the hacker before she turned away from the longcoated boy and crossed her arms, hands at her shoulders just like the artist did.

Akira swallowed, his blush deepening. After another beat he realized everybody was waiting on them and Ann wasn’t changing her mind, so he wrapped his arms around hers and lifted, cracking her back and drawing a yelp from the model, then set her back down.

Ann flexed her arms a few times. “Oh, wow, he’s right!” She turned back on the longcoated boy. “Where’d you learn that?”

His blush deepened and he avoided the others’ gazes. “I did say I was studying to be a chiropractor, remember? After I told Father Motoori, he called up a physical therapist he knew through Officer Ichijou and I helped out a couple sessions as an understudy.”

That’s very impressive,” Hifumi said, giving a small smile either from shyness or tiredness.

Yusuke gave a sedate nod. “You all should try it, as well.”

Ryuji waved his gloved hand and took a step away. “Yeah, right. I ain’t goin’ for none of those ‘spinal adjustments fixing personality’ quack stuff. It’s been a long day an’ I’m jus’ gonna catch some z’s. I’ll bet we’ll all be good t’morrow mornin’.”

Akira’s red gloves curled into fists. “Not all chiropractors are quacks who pretend that it can do things like changing behavioral characteristics. It’s a legitimate, scientifically studied subdivision of physical therapy.”

Makoto uncrossed her arms. “We have been in Togo’s palace for hours. It’s time for us to return to the real world and head back home. Big Sis said she’s going to be home tonight, so I need to have dinner prepared.” She lifted a hand to the shogi maestra back in her moss-stained dress. “I’m sure it’s been a long day for Togo-san.” Her lips twisted. “Would it be acceptable to call you Hifumi-san? I wouldn’t want to cause confusion about which Togo we’re talking about.”

Hifumi clasped her hands. “Oh, not at all, Rider-san.”

Morgana hopped up onto Ryuji’s shoulder to look around the group at closer to eye level. “You and your Persona demonstrated a number of unusual powers that could be of great use to us. Would you be able to come with us again to help change your mother’s heart?” His head tilted to one side and his eyes narrowed for a beat of thought. “Actually, would you be allowed to? I haven’t been along with Joker for all of your meetings, but it seems like your mother keeps you really busy.”

A gloom pressed down on the group. After a beat, Hifumi straightened. “One of the greatest hallmarks of heroes in literature and oral tradition is saving people, even when they don’t understand the threat they’re under. If there’s anything I can do to help you all, please allow me. I’m just sorry that I’ve been so selfish as to cajole you all into saving Mother.”

Futaba waved down as if that could keep the shogi maestra from bringing the conversation into left field. “Trust me, Toots, you’re not forcing us. Joker made the case and we all voted on it. I mean, your mother’s connected to Kaneshiro’s money laundering, so it’s not like this is totally out of field for us.”

Hifumi’s lips pressed into a thin line and the muscles around her eyes tensed. “I never imagined that Mother could be involved in so many hurtful things.” She shook her head. “No, I shouldn’t say that. She’s my mother, and even as she pushed me into more and more distasteful things, I just buried my head in the sand and told myself I shouldn’t raise a fuss because it wasn’t ‘so bad’. I went along with everything, trying to justify it to myself by saying that each time it was only a small thing. If I’d spoken up years ago, maybe I could have saved Mother from getting to this point.” She bowed at the waist. “So thank you for all you’ve done, and I hope we can get along.”

Makoto chuckled. “There’s need to be so circumspect. You saved Oracle, Ann, probably all our lives today.”

Ann let out a laugh. “Yeah! Fighting Shadows and saving hearts is dangerous, so we’ve all saved each other’s lives a bunch of times by now. Just don’t be reckless and it’ll all be good.” She shot a pointed look at Akira.

Morgana gave a pleased nod. “Well, I’m not sure how much progress we made in the Palace, but we’ve awakened yet another Persona user and we all made it out alive. That means a lot. But I think we’re done here for the day.”

Saturday, 13 August 2016
Early Evening
Akasaka Mitsuke, KFTV Studio

The Phantom Thieves slumped against the studio’s concrete perimeter wall. The events of the day weighed down on all of them, and Akira felt torn between pride at seeing Hifumi awaken to a Persona and terror that now she wanted to risk her life to come in with them. His vigilance was the only thing that caught her wavering on her feet before she started to tip.

The transfer student caught her, and Hifumi gave a bleary blink. “Oh, I’m sorry. I knew I was a little worn from that temple, but I didn’t realize how tired it all made me.”

Ann patted the shogi maestra’s shoulder. “Don’t worry about it. Awakening to your Persona always takes a lot out of you the first time.”

Quite,” Makoto said with an understanding nod. “We should exchange contact information and return home to rest.”

I have hers, I’ll forward it to the group chat,” Akira said, tightening his arms around her when it looked like she wasn’t steady enough to stand on her own.

Go ahead and take her home,” Morgana said from the sidewalk at their feet. He turned to the hacker. “Would I be enough to get you back to Yongen, or do you need somebody else’s help?”

Carry me home, Inari!” She declared, before hopping at him and curling her legs up. When he left his arms down at his sides, she hit the concrete butt-first. She jabbed a finger at him. “Hey! You were supposed to catch me like a gentleman!”

Makoto rolled her eyes. “If we can all contact each other, I think that’s it for today.”

Ryuji gave a single lazy wave and trotted off for the train station, followed a moment later by Ann.

Morgana nodded. “Drink water, stretch, and get to sleep early, everyone.” He turned to Yusuke. “It can be hard to tell when she’s joking, but could you take Oracle home?”

Yusuke straightened. “I only brought enough money for the two one-way tickets necessary for my lines home.” He slipped a hand in his pocket, then brought out a pittance of coins. “Oh. I am a hundred and fifty yen short.”

Did you not just buy a day pass?” When he blinked at her, Futaba slapped her hand over her forehead. “You’re making me look like Sokka. Fine, take me home and I’ll buy you your ticket.”

That concern solved, Makoto joined the walk to the train station with the artist and hacker.

Akira rubbed his hand along Hifumi’s arm to make sure she was awake and uninjured. “You going to be okay?”

She blinked and looked up at him, those green eyes as deep as ever. “Oh, thank you. I live in a neighborhood in Chiyoda. It isn’t hard to get to.” She held a hand in front of her mouth as a yawn crawled out.

Morgana joined the pair, then took to Akira’s satchel once they reached the trains. With rush hour still ongoing, they didn’t stand a hope of seats, so when she snaked an arm around his shoulder to steady herself against the boy holding an overhead strap, he reached an arm around her waist and held her close. Just to make sure she stayed steady.

When the train pulled in at Shibuya, necessity of movement among a choking crowd of assholes who put their knees and elbows everywhere separated them. They reconvened at the back of the platform and she navigated him to the line north into Chiyoda, where they lucked into a pair of seats. When she left her arm around his shoulders, he found it hard to take his arm from her waist. She fell asleep against him on the train ride into Chiyoda, the uproar of dozens of conversations fading into a meaningless white noise as he breathed in the scent of patchouli from her hair.

Her stop came up, and despite his reluctance he shook her awake and helped her disembark. As they made their way up the stairs and back to street level, he was surprised to see a familiar white poet blouse and black slacks. “Hey, Makoto-san!”

The upperclassman turned, her eyes widening in momentary surprise. “Oh, Akira. Was there a problem?”

Nah,” he said. “Her place is just up this way.”

She blinked, that momentary sharpness in her eyes as she processed and filed. “Oh, what a coincidence. My flat is right up ahead on the left.” She pointed to a gated high-rise with bright green trees behind an intimidating concrete wall.

Hifumi tipped and the transfer student thanked his Phantom Thief-refined reflexes as he caught her. “Oh, sorry. Maybe I shouldn’t have let myself nod off on the train, I can’t keep my eyes open.”

Morgana poked his head out of the satchel. “You need to crash at Rider’s place? She’s got a nice couch that would be plenty for a human, even a tall one like you.”

Hifumi covered her mouth through a yawn, then struggled out, “Oh, I wouldn’t want to burden you when home is less than seven minutes away.” She straightened for a bow. “Thank you, though.”

Makoto smiled, but her eyes flicked up when the nearby traffic light changed. “Well, if you’re sure. Big Sis and I live right over there.”

Hifumi smiled and leaned against Akira, so the upperclassman jogged across the intersection. The shogi maestra’s weight started to press as if she couldn’t stand on her own as the crossing walk signal blinked.

He squeezed the hand around her waist. “You want me to carry you?”

She blinked, a spark of energy struggling into her eyes and pink dusting her cheeks. Despite that, her arm tightened around his shoulder. “Oh, I couldn’t ask you to carry me for ten minutes.”

It’s no trouble. I think my back can take it,” he said, stepping away and turning to crouch to one knee.

She held a hand over her mouth, a dainty laugh floating out. “Oh, I haven’t done piggyback rides since I was a little girl with Papa.”

I’ll keep a steady pace so you can get a few more minutes of shut-eye,” he said over his shoulder.

Morgana turned inside the leather satchel and poked his head out the back side. “You know how stubborn he is. I guarantee it’ll be faster to just take him up on it than try to talk him out of it.”

She thought it over, either her exhaustion or the team leader’s argument winning out in the end because she draped her arms against him.

Akira stiffened. He’d heard and read plenty about girls and half expected her to be as light as a cloud and twice as hard to grasp, but the shogi maestra who settled onto his back was solid. A weight of real skin, flesh, and bone. And breasts pressing straight against him, making his pants feel a size too small. He was glad he was facing away from her for the sense of fire on his face as he stood, holding her toned legs as he stepped out into a steady walk. He followed the directions she gave him at the train station to a gated road entrance to a neighborhood with sculpted yards and hybrid-style houses. He jostled her awake when he noticed a guard at what looked like a reinforced guard booth between the gated lanes in and out of the neighborhood.

Hifumi blushed as she stood on her own, waved to the guard, then walked with him the rest of the way to a two-story house with a plum tree dominating what he could see of the front yard through tended hedges. “Thank you for walking me home, Akira-kun. Would you like some tea or water? It is very hot out.”

He held up a hand, his blush spreading across his face. “Oh, I wouldn’t—”

Yes, please,” Morgana said, poking his head out of the satchel. “He’s got a water bottle in here, but I can’t get the stupid thing open with my paws in this world.”

She gave a soft smile and led them through a walkway of flagstones to a broad porch with a set of hanging seating looking out over the green yard. The team leader hopped out and the three paced to the porch.

Morgana put one foot on the first step when the curtain jostled aside and a white-and-ashen-furred dog with a blue and pale brown eye jumped against the pane with a muffled thump. “Wu-wu-waooo!”

Morgana cried out in terror and jumped into Akira’s arms.

Akira shouted in surprise and jumped into Hifumi’s.

Hifumi said, “Wha—?” and tumbled to the ground.

Morgana righted himself, but his wide eyes didn’t indicate clear mind as he yowled, “Escape!” then bolted for the road, his tail at least doubled in size.

When the transfer student couldn’t decide what to do after helping her back to her feet, she lay a tender hand on his arm. “Go on and make sure Byakko is safe. I’ll attend to Antalas.”

Notes:

Sir William Walton’s “Belshazzar’s Feast” is a choral piece that is essentially an interweaving of two chorus groups singing one piece.

Hifumi’s Phantom Thief design is loosely based on Emilia Plater, a Polish-Lithuanian cavalier who personally raised and led forces in the defense against the Russian Empire. While the historical woman herself was not been confirmed to have taken part in any critical engagements, dying of illness after being wounded in battle, she inspired her nation and remains known as the “Lithuanian Joan of Arc”.

Hifumi’s Persona, Dihya, is a Berber queen who led the defense against the Muslim Maghreb conquest. With far smaller numbers, she harassed and held off larger armies and was named “Seer” or “Priestess Soothsayer” in Arabic. Her dog, Antalas, is named after a Berber general who led his tribe against the Byzantine Empire.

Thanks for reading and commenting, everyone! Have a happy new year!

Chapter 103: August 13th, Tanabata

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Saturday, 13 August 2016
Evening
Yongen, Leblanc Loft

Morgana jumped out of the transfer student’s satchel and stretched. All that running in the palace, then from that dog left him feeling tense. And there would have to be revenge on Joker’s laughing. It wasn’t a gentleman’s fault that he was sensible and wary of enormous predatory threats, especially after fighting giant manifestations of them in Palaces. Then he’d have to take one of the Thieves out shopping for supplies, getting split up for at least an hour hit them particularly hard.

Joker slipped out of his day’s shirt and dumped it into the basket serving as a laundry hamper. The city lights streaming in through the open windows cast strange lighting tones over the scars going from wrist almost to elbow, as well as a handful of other thinner knife scars on his chest. A rote quality to the transfer student’s motions emphasized his drained state even before the team leader spotted circles forming under his eyes.

Morgana hopped up on the workbench to get a better angle to evaluate the teen battered by life. “Fifth Palace, and yet another addition to the Phantom Thieves. A champion strategist, it should be interesting to see what she and Nightrider come up with.”

There went another full-body tense over Joker.

Morgana sat to conceal any of his own signs of anxiety. “Are you having second thoughts about changing Togo Mitsuyo’s heart?”

Joker slipped on a fresh set of boxers before he sat down on the bed. “Not changing her heart. There’s just a lot of new threats there, and now Hifumi’s involved. How do we keep her safe?”

Morgana knew this might happen. He didn’t suspect the ‘she made her choice, you need to respect it’ angle would be the right point to start on. “The same way you keep Lady Ann or Oracle safe. We fight together, keep a clear head, and change hearts. We’re all doing this to make a kinder, more just society. So as gentlemen thieves we steal distortions from people that society treats as untouchable. For Kaneshiro it was because he was an evil money-grubber with connections to high and low places. For Oracle, it was because nobody else in society could see her hurting. The Phantom Thieves will never cure all of society’s ills, but that’s not the point. We’re here to galvanize society by fixing the worst who are untouchable by traditional means. Let society handle the rest.”

Joker picked up his phone and navigated to the text Hifumi sent him while he was still on the train back from her house. [Due to my absence Saturday, Mother is certainly going to have me working all day Sunday. Monday is supposed to be Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, but Mother may not allow me to join you at Mass. I will do my best to keep a low profile so I can return with you all as soon as possible.]

Morgana hopped to the sill, around the transfer student’s folded glasses, then bed. “Have you added Hifumi yet?”

Shoulders hunching, Joker’s hands tightened on the phone. “What if something happens?”

Morgana stepped closer. “Can I confess something?” The boy straightened, his grey eyes shining without his glasses to obstruct the light from the outside. Morgana cleared his throat. “Every time Ann goes into battle, I’m scared she’ll get hurt. But she’s powerful, in heart and Persona. It would insult her to try to keep her out of battle when she has friends she wants to fight beside, to protect. Like you and Rider and everyone else. She had personal reasons to go after Kamoshida, and she proved herself there. So as much as I love her, as much as I want to protect her, it wouldn’t be right to put her on the rear guard all the time. And it would be even less right to try to keep her out of the Metaverse altogether.” He sat, tail curling around his legs. “Can you just imagine what would happen if we tried to force Lady Ann out? She’d take the Metaverse Nav and come right back in, by herself.”

Akira drew one leg up and wrapped his arms around his raised knee, looking cold and small despite the summer heat pressing in from the windows. “That’s right, Hifumi has the Nav, too.” He ran a hand up his face and brushed hair away from his brows. “I just… don’t want anything to happen to her.”

Morgana smirked, remembering their first conversation in the loft about women being the best thieves for their talent in stealing hearts. Joker’d made a lot of ground since those bitter days. “Joker, it’s easy enough to push away the things you don’t care about. But what you truly treasure? That’s what you keep the closest.”

The boy sat up and let his legs over the edge of the bed, but retained his hunch. “That won’t stop anything from happening to her.”

Morgana slinked onto the knee not occupied by a hand and phone. “No. But nothing can stop anything from happening. That would be suffocating – remember Oracle. That’s why you hold what you treasure close. That way, if something happens, you’ll be close enough to protect her. Put her into the group. It’s late, so she’s probably asleep, like most of the others are. And like you should be. We’ll deal with the rest tomorrow when there’s been enough rest to think with a clear head.”

Akira nodded, sent her contact to the group, then texted her an invite to the group chat. Once that was done, a small amount of the slouch left his shoulders. He plugged in his phone and knelt before the image of Mary holding the body of Jesus.

Sunday, 14 August 2016
Noon
Kanda Catholic Church

At the close of the benediction, Akira motions the sign of the cross over himself, then folds his hands in a moment of prayer for the shogi maestra not in attendance. After taking a few minutes at the confessional with Father Sugiyama to unburden himself of a few real world issues, Akira stopped in the narthex to check for messages. The Phantom Thieves were all over Tokyo today. Nothing from Hifumi since her message last night. He opened the Phantom Thief chat, but despite inviting Hifumi, she hadn’t posted anything. Akira texted, [Just checking in. Didn't see you at Mass. I hope you're doing okay. Message us if you get an opportunity.]

The read indicator sat dark. He tapped his fingers along one side, then two IDs winked in. Futaba texted back the fastest, [Hifumi's a smart cookie. She knew what would happen as a result of yesterday and tried to prepare us for it as best as possible.] A beat later, she added, [I mean, if you want me to hack her phone or her mom's computer…]

Makoto, the other participant, sent, [Futaba-chan, did I not make myself clear about committing cybercrimes?] A beat passed before she added, [Akira, I understand your trepidation. If I may make a recommendation?]

He had a crass, [Yo,] typed before he realized that Hifumi would be reading this some day soon. No need to make himself look like Ryuji. Instead he sent, [What have you got?]

[If you could help me with a few student council things at Shujin, that might free up enough time for me to attend the Tanabata festivities in Suginami-ku.]

His lips pressed into a thin line. The only one he wanted to attend any holiday with was Hifumi, and she’d likely be grounded until her mother’s change of heart. [I don't have any plans.]

Three dots danced for a moment, disappeared, then reappeared before Makoto attached a text file. [Thank you, Akira. I'll need this printed and filed in each student councilman's box in the student council room. And you'll need to deliver any mail left for me to my house. The Flowers and Gardening students requested permission to access the roof to care for the plants up there, so if you could let the rep up at 15:00?]

And in one moment, a single favor became a handful. No wonder she was the student council president, she was a master of offloading. Akira sighed. “You can’t go back on your word.” [I'll be there.]

[Thank you, Akira. The front desk security guard at my building should be familiar with holding deliveries and mail for me.]

When Ryuji joined the chat and instead of reading asked, [Why are you people blowing up my phone so early on a weekend?] the transfer student logged off and put the phone in his pocket. Might as well see if the twins had finished with his Personas in lockdown.

Pausing in the Shibuya underground for one of the smoothie stand’s weekly specials, Akira stopped at the convenience store for a fish tin for Morgana.

Ah, welcome back to triple-seven,” Yusuke greeted from behind the counter.

Akira gave a small wave to the artist and his former co-worker. “How’s the day going?”

Far more sedate than last week,” Yusuke replied. “I look forward to bringing a sketchpad to the celebrations in Asagaya.”

Nanami-san gave a smile. “Customers come and go in waves. Thank you again for recommending a fellow student.”

The door open jingle played and Yusuke called out the company greeting to the customers walking in behind, so Akira grabbed the fish tin and moved on.

Sunday, 14 August 2016
Afternoon
Velvet Room

The sight of chains crossing a set of old-style prison bars contrasted the sedate blue velvet of the otherwordly space. Akira paced to the bars and braced himself. Neko Shogun spun around to salute the Phantom Thief in striped prison garb, “No matter how dire, a leader does not show fear so his soldiers can know bravery. Nothing is more certain than the ultimate reconquest and liberation from tyrants. I shall return!”

The little bastard reminded him so much of Hifumi, even the swirls he burst into when the guillotines’ blades came down seemed bright. The lights merged and coalesced into a gold-skinned oni he recognized from Kaneshiro’s bank. “I grant you the power of an unyielding heart.”

A Kin-ki with Sukukaja.” Caroline turned to him, resting her extended baton on her shoulder. Her smile looked less like a smirk than usual. “You’re starting to make some progress through the list, Inmate. And here I was thinking you’d give up straight away.”

His hands tightened on the bars. “The fuck’s that supposed to mean?”

Justine turned that ever-sedate gold eye to him. “Like that, Inmate. You fear failure, and so set up the conditions for failure before you even begin. That is how you prevent yourself from forming bonds.”

Caroline tapped her baton in her free hand. “As expected of our master to see the hidden potential in this scrawny human.”

Akira spat at the floor. “I thought I showed it the first time. I don’t give up.”

Caroline waggled her baton at him. “All the guts in the world don’t mean a thing without the strength to back it up, and the wisdom to use that power judiciously.”

Feh,” Akira riposted. “Never thought you of all people would advocate restraint.”

Holding her clipboard against her stomach, the twin with a braid turned to him with just a little bit of disappointment leaking out of her cold visage. “My sister is well aware of the purpose of power, and respects the effort necessary to hold and wield it. As long as you continue to prove yourself, you shall grow in our esteem.”

Feeling steadier than during the executions necessary to fuse and shift the power of his Personas, Akira let go of the bars and sat down in the lotus position to try to help himself stay calm. “The national motto is ‘fly or die’. My old bastard never really gave me encouragement, but the only way to thwart most people’s low expectations is to exceed them. Nothing’s more satisfying than seeing people who expected me to fail see I scored better than them.”

Caroline turned to her twin with the eye-patch on the opposite side. “I gotta say, the list you wrote is working wonders at helping him get better.”

Justine looked up from her clipboard, a heartbeat of surprise leaking out. “You didn’t write it?”

Akira puffed out his chest. “Clearly it was me.”

Stay out of this,” both twins snapped at him.

Justine lifted the clipboard and began leafing through pages. “On consideration, I shouldn’t have predicted you to be its author. It is far too precise.”

Caroline’s eyes flicked to the smirking boy in stripes, then cracked her baton across the bars with sparks of electricity. “Silence!” Her eye fell on her twin. “But Master thought you wrote it. It can’t have been him, he was surprised when the inmate acquired a new Persona. All the items on this list are only possible with additional Personas. Even melding his magic into his companions’ would require new Personas.”

Justine continued to skim through her pages until reaching the end of the clipboard, then settled everything back as it was. She scratched the base of her braid. “Should we ask Master?”

That smile as Akira cracked a joke about mass casualties in earthquakes flashed in his mind, and his hair on his spine stood up. “You sure you want to do that?”

Caroline’s baton crashed against the bars, electricity zapping. “Nobody asked you , Inmate!”

Think about how busy he is,” Akira pressed. He gestured a hand at the empty desk where Mister Nose would be if he deigned to show up. “I’m not even important for him to be here half the time. And what if this list isn’t really a test of me, but a test of you?”

Miss red oni lifted her baton, but Justine cleared her throat. “The point is made. Our master told us to oversee the prisoner’s rehabilitation, not to justify a philosophical treatise on how he went about it.”

Caroline rested her baton in her opposite hand. “I suppose that’s true. This is too petty a question to waste his time with. Our duty is to follow orders. If we obey, eventually we’ll understand why.”

I remember hearing that about the Imijin War and Nuremburg,” Akira couldn’t stop himself from saying.

Shut up,” both twins snapped.

Justine faced him, clipboard at her side. “You have succeeded at your latest task. As promised, you may leave yet another Persona in Lockdown. If you succeed in merging your Persona’s magic with one more of your companions’, we will even teach your Personas new techniques.”

Caroline cocked her hip to one side and smirked. “Beating some strength into your Personas is a hell of a boon, Inmate . You better be thankful for our collaboration.”

Akira’s gaze rolled up as he thought. He’d boosted Kidd’s wind, Carmen’s ice, Johanna’s fire, and Goemon’s lightning. He didn’t even know if Dihya had any magic, and while Marcus Drusus could shoot rays, he suspected Futaba’s bond with him wasn’t strong enough to be able to absorb his Persona’s magic.

Caroline tapped her baton against the bars. “So, are we going to get started on fusing for your next task?”

Akira stood. “No, I think I need to get more work done on the outside.”

Sunday, 14 August 2016
Late Aftern oon
Shujin, Front Gates

The oppressive Tokyo summer beat down on him as the sun sank behind the skyscrapers. The shade provided little relief in the humidity. White clouds dotted the sky, promising neither rain nor protection from the sun. Almost no foot traffic interrupted the relative tranquility of the road in front of school. Akira spotted a familiar head of fluffy, light brown hair poking up from the front doors.

Fanning herself with a fashionable brown hat, his gardening upperclassman sat on one of the flower planters at the front doors. She tensed when he approached.

He flashed her the kind of smile that said ‘I know you know’. “Sorry I’m a little late. I had to change out of my Sunday suit.” He pointed to the door. “Did I keep you waiting long?”

She stood, her eyes widening. “Oh, you’re the Student Councilman here to help me on the roof?”

Morgana poked his head out of the leather day satchel. “Rider’s quite the leader to have talked you into doing errands for her at Shujin on your day off. But better to be keeping yourself busy than fretting about Hifumi, huh?”

And just like that, his hopes of keeping himself too occupied to think about Hifumi were dashed.

The floofy-haired upperclassman frowned and clutched her hands close to her chest. “Oh, I’m sorry. It’s Tanabata today. I’m sure you have plenty of things you’d rather be doing than helping—”

Nah,” he said, waving off what sounded like the start of another self-deprecating diatribe intended to either push him away or elicit pity. He hoped he never sounded like that. “I dunno if Tanabata is supposed to be a big date holiday, but it’s not like I’ve got anyone.” He swallowed down the bitter taste on his tongue. “Might as well help out you, right?”

Haru gave an unexpected smile and relaxed for reasons he couldn’t guess. Maybe she was just glad to have an extra set of hands to speed up the gardening. “You’re quite the gentleman.”

Akira gave her an obligated nod, then stepped up and used the spare key Makoto left with him in case she ever lost hers. Made things easier than picking the lock to leave calling cards for Kamoshida. With the lights off and not another soul to be found, Shujin exuded an unwelcoming aura full of hard lines and sharp shadows. “I wonder if they design schools to look like prisons.”

Hm?” Haru chirped as she followed along behind him, a polka-dotted handbag clutched in her left. “Oh, because Shujin is a homophone for prisoner?” Instead of a chuckle, her stance tensed and her gaze fell to the floor. “I’m sure that many students feel that way.”

The way her tone said ‘this is my life’ instead of ‘that was your joke’ sent an unpleasant tingle down his spine. Akira started up the stairwell and said over his shoulder, “You too, huh?”

Too?”

Akira shrugged to try to get rid of the constricting aura pressing over him. “I can’t be the only one dealing with reputation and expectation. What with all that elephant tusk smuggling.”

A beat passed as she stopped on the landing between the second and third floor, ramrod straight and eyes wide, before she realized he made a joke. The first splutter out of her lips sounded more like a strangled gasp, but after that she gave up on decorum and let out a sound that transformed from stiff to relieved. After she regained her breath, she said, “In case it matters, I haven’t repeated any of those rumors. Clearly there’s no basis to them.”

Akira paused at the top of the stairs. She admitted she heard them, but still gave him an opportunity to show who he could be. Then accepted what she saw. “I wish there were more people like you.”

Haru blushed and sucked in a breath, but the transfer student had to turn to unlock the door to the academic building’s roof. Once their eyes had adjusted, she stepped out with heavy footfalls. “They’ll make it, but once a week just isn’t enough to properly care for these poor things.”

Akira nodded. “I’ll be back up to help finish things in a few minutes, but I have some paperwork to distribute for Niijima-senpai.” When she just gave a nod and knelt down next to a green stalk with drooping leaves, he stepped back inside to take care of Makoto’s student council paperwork. Contrary to his expectations, her tiny cubby in the student council room was crammed with schedule proposals, budget requests, and even less interesting paperwork. “No wonder she wanted somebody else to do this shit.”

Even without Hifumi being there, he imagined her tisking at his language.

Just goes to show how much Rider has to deal with, not just as vice-leader of the Phantom Thieves.” Morgana scratched at an ear as he sat on the table, waiting for the transfer student to tap papers straight and lay them in his satchel. “I’ve never really talked about this with you, but you’re not mad I chose Makoto to be the vice leader?”

Akira lay the last papers inside his leather satchel. “Makoto can heal our injuries, I still can’t get one of my Personas to do that. And I did sneak into Togo’s Palace without telling anyone.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I should apologize for that, too, when we’re all together again.”

Morgana gave a proud smile and hopped back in the satchel.

Up on the roof, Haru tilted a watering can over a long box of soil and small sprouts. “Hi, Senpai. So what’s left?”

She maintained a steady sweep over the box of potting soil. “Well, there’s only one watering can, but there are some weeds to pull and we do have a hose over there.”

They set to work with a productive quiet for a few minutes before Haru finished watering her sprouts. “Have you ever thought about how quickly life can sweep you away?”

Snorting, Akira continued yanking out jagged-leafed weeds. “Yeah. I learned that lesson a long time ago.”

Oh!” The water in her can splashed with the suddenness of her stop. “I didn’t mean to disparage you with your record, I just meant—”

That’s not what I’m talking about, Haru-senpai.” He crouch-stepped to his left to resume weeding. “My old man was not the kind to let people hold onto illusions. They may tell everyone in kindergarten and storybooks you can grow up to be anything, but the truth is that we need a lot of building blocks given to us to build anything that stands. Whether you interpret that as bestowal by God or safety nets by society, you can’t make a house without bricks.”

Haru thought about it for a moment, then resumed her trot to the spigot to refill her watering can. “That’s true.” She crouched and held the can under the sputtering spout, then resumed speaking after turning the water off, “The components of the past do build the present we live in.”

They’re also what we build the future with,” Akira said, side-stepping to the last segment of the planter box. “That’s how civilization changes. Hell, we were still basically a feudal country until our new constitution in 1947.”

We’ve had a parliament since the 1880s,” Haru pointed out. “And even before a prime minister, the Chancellor of the Realm since 752.”

A rubber stamp for the aristocracy,” Akira riposted, before realizing he was starting to push his cynicism for the justice system into the rest of the country. “Well, in my opinion anyway.”

Her lips pursed in thought. “Maybe.” She shook her head. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to sound like I’m trying to disagree, the topic just became very impersonal. I shouldn’t make a fuss when you’re taking so much time to help me.” Haru returned to her last point of watering. “And you’re very good. I imagine these leaves wouldn’t be quite so droopy if we could care for them more than once a week.” She let out a long breath. “I wish I could make something, but even these herbs and veggies are little more than ornamental flowers.”

Morgana hopped out of the leather satchel and pounced closer. “Oh, Joker! You already do some cooking, if we were to make some into snacks, they could help shore up our supplies for the Metaverse. I don’t know if the cognition existed before healing foods in video games, but they could supplement our restoratives.”

Something about how Haru’s face fell as she spoke about ornamental flowers made him think she was talking more about herself than the plants. That worry about being useless resonated with him. “Well, what’s close to ready? I cook for myself, and I wouldn’t mind some more greens. A couple friends might be the same.”

Really?” she said, her face brightening and tone rising as she stood from her watering. “Oh, growing things that can actually be eaten by other people is so exciting! I’ve been spending a lot of time with spinach at home, but that won’t be ready until October. The kale are already as big as the baby kale they sell at the grocers’.” Her eyes narrowed and swept across the rooftop garden. “These tomatoes here will be ready by next week.” She pointed at the planter box he just finished weeding. “And those heirloom carrots there are also ready any time.” Then a muscle under her eye twitched. “I’m just… not sure how they’ll look.”

Akira stood, brushing the dirt off his gloves. “Heirloom carrots? I’m only familiar with the orange and white ones in the food marts, but Boss-san has been cooking for decades so he should be able to tell a good from a bad one.”

She clapped her hands together, water sloshing out of the watering can but that smile redoubling. “Really? Oh, I would love to have an experienced opinion. Kiriko-kun always said she loved the sweet peppers I grew last year, but with the gardening club disbanding I haven’t had any opinions I trust to be honest.”

Something about that felt odd to Akira, but he couldn’t decide what, so he filed it away and helped her harvest a sample short, lumpy carrots closer to yellow than the orange he expected.

Sunday, 14 August 2016
Evening
Yongen, Leblanc

The bell jangled as Akira shoved it open, the Tokyo heat and humidity pressing against his temper. The lack of customers somehow added a melancholic note to the quiet cafe. While time did not seem to touch this place, it couldn’t stop him from checking his phone to see Hifumi still hadn’t logged into the group chat, or read any of his texts. So far all of the activity had been Yusuke and Ann making plans after meeting at Minami-Asagaya.

Boss set down the glass coffee siphon he was wiping. “Plans for Tanabata? When I was your age, hoo boy. I had to juggle three lovely ladies around.”

Akira took off his glasses to wipe sweat from his eyes, then set them back on and slumped at a bar stool. “So you had girls who wanted you.” He took a breath. Snapping at his guardian wouldn’t do any long-term good, sweltering summer or not. “Excuse me.” He held out the plastic bag of vegetables Haru sent him home with. “Classmate’s into gardening, but she’s not sure about some of the varieties she’s growing. Wanted a professional cook’s opinion.”

Sojiro took the bag and peered in. “First impression is that the appearance is not… market-grade.” He set the siphon down on its holder and washed the carrots in the sink. “Huh. Been a while since I’ve seen nantes carrots.” After a bit of splashing and hand-scrubbing, he brought them to a counter and chopped the top off one. He bit down and chewed. “A little sweet, a little bitter. You said this came from a classmate’s personal garden?”

Akira tipped some ice into what remained in his water bottle, then took a gulp and screwed the cap on. “The garden on top of Shujin, yeah.”

The middle-aged man’s forehead wrinkled as his eyebrows rose. “You mean these things came from rooftop planters?”

Akira scrubbed an alcohol wipe over his gloves as he replied, “Yeah. Why?”

Growing something in a backyard garden is one thing,” Sojiro said, scrutinizing the stubby, lumpy carrot in his hands. He bit off another chunk with a snap, gaze growing distant as he chewed. “But getting something to fruit on a rooftop is nigh impossible. There’s much less control of temperature, sunlight, and water. You hear about Ashtray Tree at Blue Cove?”

Akira blinked and sorted through his memories. His old man went to some lengths to keep him away from the central office building of the facility. “The smoking area of the administration building, on the rooftop?”

The corners of Sojiro’s lips turned up. “That’s the one. The tree in a big concrete pot was always full of cigarette butts.” He gave a chuckle. “Wakaba always wanted to get rid of the damn thing, but it’s damn hard to keep something growing on a rooftop. That’s my point.” He lifted the lumpy carrot in his hand. “I may have tasted better, but there’s something refreshing about carrots. With a little extra from something hand-grown. Your classmate did pretty well.” He bit off another chunk with a crisp snap.

Akira reached out for another washed carrot and bit off a chunk. “Huh. It is sweeter than the orange ones they sell down in OK Mart. I’ll have to pass along the good evaluation.”

Sojiro swallowed his latest bite and waggled the carrot at the transfer student. “So which lucky lady are you taking out today?” At the transfer student’s curious hum, the restaurateur rolled his eyes. “C’mon, kid. It’s Tanabata, the meeting of star-crossed lovers. We don’t have many romantic holidays in Japan, you’ve gotta take advantage of what we’ve got.”

Akira swallowed his carrot bite. “Tanabata’s the same as all the other holidays. Just another push for commercialization. Just look at the decorations. Tube streamers for weaving. Paper purses for good business. Paper nets for fishing.” He waved the carrot in hand. “It’s all just more worship of the almighty yen.”

Geez, kid. You sound like Houzan. He didn’t believe in holidays, either.”

Silence descended over the cafe. With slow, deliberate motions, Akira set the remainder of his carrot down and pushed himself out of the bar seat. His hands came to fists at his side. “I know you didn’t just say I’m like my old bastard.”

As if not noticing the low, threatening tone of the boy’s words, Sojiro bit off another chunk of his carrot. “The most valuable thing a friend can do is hold up a mirror to you, when you’re doing something right or when you’re doing something wrong. Holidays are about a lot more than one thing. You’re damn right businesses love the bump, but they only get that because people are saving up and waiting for a time to cut loose. To live for something more than work. To take in the art,” he gestured at Sayuri hanging by the entrance, “or food they only allow themselves once every couple of months, or getting into hijinks with their buds.”

Morgana hopped up to the chair next to Akira. “It’s the same as stretching before and after a workout. Sure, pull-ups work your biceps, but if all you do is that you’ll tear them. Cognitive activity may not wear at muscle fibers, but it does at the mind. That’s why I mandate a day of rest between Palace expeditions.”

Akira sat back down, the low light coming in from the fogged window playing over the circles under his eyes. “They’d be happier without me. It’s not like she can go, anyway.” He checked his phone, and sure enough saw no sign of activity from Hifumi.

Sojiro smiled, a twinkle sparkling in his eye. “She, huh? Listen kid, I’m happy you’ve got someone you care that much about.” A beat passed. “It’s not Futaba, is it?”

No.”

Sojiro pressed a hand against his aproned chest. “Thank god. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy she’s not a shut-in anymore, but I don’t think this old man’s heart could take her getting together with someone so soon.”

Morgana laughed. “No worries about that, eh, Joker?”

His phone buzzed.

Sojiro set down his carrot and leaned in, bracing a hand on the inner counter. “Kid, you know the story behind Tanabata?”

Akira set his buzzing phone down, the team must have been busy. “Some god weaver and cow-herder hook up?” He fiddled with his phone, unwilling to actually read the texts flying back and forth on the Phantom Thief group chat. “I was raised by doctors, not librarians.”

Huffing, the restaurateur let his head hang for a long beat. “It helps to have romantic stories in your back pocket if you want to set the mood for a girl. Orihime wove the most magnificent robes in the celestial realm, but she despaired that she’d never meet anyone to marry. Tentei set her up with Kengyuu and they fell madly in love. After marrying, she stopped weaving Tentei’s magnificent robes and he let the cows wander all over the celestial realm. Tentei punished them by putting them on opposite sides of the Milky Way.”

Thus proving that gods are assholes.”

Sojiro took the threadbare towel hanging from his shoulder and swatted the transfer student in the face. “You’re Catholic .”

Akira straightened his glasses. “I didn’t say mine was an exception. I asked to be baptized because at least my God sent His son to atone for the sins of all mankind.”

Hm,” Sojiro said, swinging the towel back to his shoulder. “You’re a surprising one, at the very least. Anyway, Orihime cried and Tentei granted her one night a year to be with her lover if she worked hard.” When the transfer student opened his mouth to snark, the restaurateur snapped his towel back out. “The first time they tried to meet, there was no bridge, so Orihime wept. A flock of magpies made a bridge of their wings, allowing her to cross to her lover.” He gestured his chin at the phone the boy spun on the counter-top. “So about this girl you mentioned?”

A weight pressed down on his shoulders and he set down his phone and ran his hands through his hair. His face burned. His heart thudded at the thought of being with Hifumi, walking the streets in traditional yukatas that highlighted her natural beauty, and a cold, curling sensation twisted inside at the fact that nobody heard from her yet. “Her mother’s working her insensate on photo shoots that starve her.”

Sojiro nodded, muttering, “I’m sorry to hear that. But there’ll be another day.” He lowered the towel and gave a show smile. “Your friends are nice kids, why don’t you go with them? Take pictures, do things you can tell your special girl about later. Chicks dig a guy who can make them feel like you’re ready to make them a part of your life even when they weren’t there.”

Akira scrolled through the group chat. After the notice from Yusuke that he was on his way from the Kosei dorms, Makoto sent an apology that she had too much work between her studies and preparations for Obon tomorrow. As if his judgment wasn’t questionable enough, Ryuji sent a message to everyone inviting them to come join him on a quest to eat through every food stall at Asagaya. Akira’s stomach growled, his only sustenance since heading to Mass being the carrot, but as worried as he was about Hifumi, he feared he’d just throw up like he tended to during exams.

His phone buzzed again and Futaba sent to group chat, [Based on news photos from last year, I don't think I'm ready for that many people, but could you take a bunch of photos and stuff?]

[You want us to bring you something from the food stalls?] Ann replied.

The hacker texted, [Would they survive the trip with Inari?]

A paw against his leg drew the transfer student to the team leader now on the bar seat next to him. “Let’s go, Joker. Get out there and remember what the Phantom Thieves fight for.”

The team leader had a point. [Tell you what,] Akira sent. [I'll go and add photos. But you'll owe me.]

[All right! Another brother to beat meat with!]

Futaba texted, [Ryuji, do you NEVER think before you hit send?]

Sunday, 14 August 2016
Evening
Suginami-ku, Asagaya

Akira had never been to a Tanabata festival before. The crowds seemed even more packed than usual for Tokyo, but a large number of them wore comfortable summer yukatas to deal with the heat. Akira didn’t notice his making much difference, but everybody else just sweat and bore it so he took a sip of ice-water from his insulated water bottle and pressed on through the crowd. Star and weaving-themed decorations plastered the buildings and temporary stalls. Tube streamers dangled from every street light and over cords stretched across the road. Were it not for his objective to find Ann and Yusuke, the elbows and uproar of the crowd would be too much.

Then, like a beacon in the night, he spotted that blonde hair poking up above the crowd of people at the dart games. Ann left her traditional pigtails behind, today wearing braids starting at the crown of her head, wove down the back-sides, then looped back up to a pinned arrangement. While she had a light blue yukata at Marine Day, today she wore a bright red one with dark purple edging. She took a bite of a shaved-ice cone darkened with some black flavoring. “Oh, Akira! Nice of you to join us.”

She tugged the artist away from a stall of blown-glass bobbles, and only after he turned to face them did the transfer student recognize Yusuke. “Akira-san, wonderful! Parties truly are merrier the more there are.”

Try saying that when Ann runs your kart off the track for the third time,” he said as he put the stall at his back.

Ann stuck her tongue out for a beat, the flavored ice staining it dark. “Don’t be mad I’m still the queen of Mario Kart, get good!” She poked Yusuke in the chest. “Oh, we ought to do a tournament again, you weren’t with us after the sushi party.”

Yusuke looped an arm around her waist and pulled her close. The casual closeness between them even as she munched away at her shaved ice drew a blush out of the transfer student. Would he ever know what it was like to hold Hifumi against him at a merry festival? Should he?

Be of good cheer,” Yusuke exclaimed at a shout, though the transfer student couldn’t tell if it was to pierce the melancholy or speak over the crowd. “This happy occasion is for everyone! Look upon the marvelous trove of inspiration, waiting to stimulate our creativity!” he swept his free hand out at the streaming crowd. “Ann-san, my sketchbook!”

She poked him on the nose. “Nuh-uh. I took that thing away from you ‘cause you were spending more time sketching them than paying attention to me . If we’re on a date, I better be your focus.”

The artist turned to face her straight on and rested his other hand on her hip. “How could there be any doubt that your beauty shines brighter than the sun? Every day I am with you I see more that I could paint you for years and never show a fraction of your radiance.”

Morgana thrust his head out of the transfer student’s leather satchel. “You’re laying it on thick, you silver-tongued charlatan. Unhand the fairest lady of the Phantom Thieves!”

Ann rolled her eyes and rubbed the top of the not-a-tuxedo-cat’s head. “His artistic muse is on high gear. Don’t worry.” She straightened and looked the transfer student in the eye. “So how are you doing? Anything you wanted to visit?”

Akira rolled one shoulder, but didn’t want to admit he wanted to just go back home. There were too many people going too many different directions, but the food did smell good. “I, uh… To be honest, I haven’t been to many festivals outside of school. Mother preferred house parties and the old man would only celebrate funding extensions.” Then his stomach growled. Damn, he shouldn’t have had that carrot.

Ann let out a deep, resonating laugh. The transfer student felt his face heating up, but the artist’s only reaction was to allow a soft smile. The model herself gave him a poke. “We can tow you along until we run into Ryuji. I’m sure he’s somewhere nearby.”

Yusuke scanned to his right. “Have you signed a wish yet? One should not miss the chance to attend a festival and pass one’s desires on high.”

Akira gave a small grin. “You guys are too good.” He clapped his gloved hands together. “Well, I don’t want to be a third wheel for long. Where do we start?”

I recommend making the tanzaku, the intersection is a veritable font of artistic inspiration,” Yusuke said, pointing away from the throwing games. “Even Madarame’s non-spiritual pupils looked forward to the social engagement of waxing poetic on their wishes for health, success and freedom. I, myself, wished to understand love so that I may paint it for the world, just as my mother painted Sayuri for me. Nay, for everyone.”

Morgana hopped onto the transfer student’s shoulder, “You go on, Joker. I’ll stay to keep an eye on the duplicitous Fox.”

Ann bopped the leader-in-cat-shape’s nose with a finger. “He asked me out. Now be a gentleman and let me enjoy the company I choose.” Morgana took several tries before he succeeded in closing his mouth, then retreated into the leather satchel. That done, she looked up at the transfer student and ran her fingertips through a few of his unruly bangs. “The yukata’s not bad, but I still liked the hairdo you did last time.”

Whether realizing that the transfer student was frozen in place and unable to stand the heat having nothing to do with the sweltering summer, or just impatient, Yusuke stepped closer and cleared his throat to get their attention. “Ryuji had a hashi maki last I saw him, so he can’t be far from the vendors with griddles.”

Ann withdrew her hand and it took a moment longer for him to remember how to breathe after having a girl’s fingers in his hair. She seemed not to notice his deep blush as they walked through the crowd to the poetic streamers mostly filled with ‘health’ and ‘happiness’. “So how are you doing? Really.”

Akira took off his glasses to wipe sweat from his face before he took a paper from the artist. If it was anybody else he’d give some reassuring platitude, but Ann had been with him since the beginning. She fought beside him through Madarame’s palace despite losing it more than once, helped him pick out a yukata to go with Hifumi, and backed him both times he brought Togo’s palace for a vote. If anybody deserved the truth straight-out, it was her. His pen hovered over the paper. “It’s hard to keep from pacing and I can’t stop thinking about Hifumi. Is she okay? Did we set off her mother in the Palace and is she abusing her? We’ve done four palaces by now, I’m sure that it’ll work as long as we stick to the procedure. But what kind of spill-over from subconscious to conscious is happening?”

Despite his earlier jealousy at the artist, Morgana poked his head back out of the satchel. “Wow, Lady Ann. You must have Persona powers out of the Metaverse to get him this chatty.”

His phone buzzed and he checked the group chat to see Futaba. [I was promised pictures. Show me this outside I'm supposed to be working up to!]

Akira dipped the pen down, but paused. He wanted Hifumi to be free, but they were working on that themselves and making a wish about it felt like it would have insulted the Phantom Thieves’ competence. Instead, he wrote, “Let all people be free to decide for themselves without coercion,” as the other Phantom Thieves in yukata chuckled at group chat. Akira finished tying up his paper, then looked up at the artist, being the Thieves’ expert on aesthetics. “Can’t forget about Futaba. What do you think she’d want to see?”

His expression serious, Yusuke’s close-held finger-framed gaze swept across the street narrowed by vendors and packed with crowds. “This way!” He led them a few paces up the street and then turned, holding out his hands in a finger-frame. “This should be an excellent place to show the flowing crowds and streamers for Orihime.”

Akira switched places with him and held up his phone, then snapped a picture and put it on the group chat.

[Yipe! And that's the kind of mob you guys want me out in the middle of?]

Another buzz, but this time Ryuji. [It's so great going through a festival crowd! The sights, the smells, and you can hear all sorts of cool things.] A beat later, he added, [Nice, getting down to the party, Akira! I knew even a mountain boy couldn't resist the allure of Tokyo's fried goodness! Come try the nikumaki onigiri!]

The three wandered through the crowded festival, pausing once for Akira to buy some fried okra the artist had no hesitation in sharing. It was hard to hear them over the uproar of the crowd, but the three meandered without a particular destination or conversation topic. Until Yusuke bumped into a dyed-blond boy in a black tank top with Zow! on the front.

Ryuji turned around, ‘tornado potato’ on a skewer in one hand, then flashed them a huge grin as if unaware of the not-quite-swallowed fried potato in his mouth, or segment hanging out like an escaping octopus. “Yo, dudes!”

A flash preceded a click from Yusuke’s phone camera, and he added the photo to the group chat.

Futaba texted, [At least swallow before you open your mouth, Ryuji!]

Be gentle with him. We’re going to go try some throwing games!” Ann called out before walking away with Yusuke, her arm looped around his.

With the pair gone, the crowd pressed a little closer and the noise sounded a little louder.

Ryuji threw and arm around the transfer student’s shoulder as if the crowd didn’t exist. “Hey hey hey!” He leaned in close and chewed the last of the curling potato segment in his mouth, then swallowed. “So you got to take Hifumi home . How was she?”

Exhausted,” Akira replied, pushing back at a crowd-goer who fumbled into him. “She fell asleep a couple times on the way, and her dog is definitely what that cognitive beast is based on.”

Ryuji’s arm tightened and he faux-slumped in place. “Dude, come on . Chick was totally into you .” The runner’s dark eyes studied the transfer student, the glint in them almost as bright as his grin. “Was she your first time?”

Now Akira started to pick up on the subtext, and his face blazed with heat over the already sweltering summer. “Wh-what?”

Ryuji withdrew his arm and shifted to look the transfer student up and down. “Dude, I gotta say it straight out? Her ass is almost as amazin’ as her legs, I don’t blame you for crushin’ on ‘er. ”

Akira’s hand had a fist of the runner’s shirt, and yanked him closer, before he regained control of himself. “Stop talking about her like she’s a piece of meat to sample a la carte! Hifumi’s a smart, elegant woman .”

Contrary to the transfer student’s expectations, Ryuji swallowed his bite of tornado potato, brushed off the fist gripping his shirt, and stepped closer to slip an arm around the student in long yukata sleeves. “She’s a woman. And you’re a man .” He tightened the grip of his arm around Akira. “ Everyone knows what it means when a girl brings a guy home. She was totally flirting and you were so into every bat of her eyes.”

Akira could feel his face blaze with heat on top of the summer night. Despite himself, his mind conjured Hifumi stretched out on his bed, baring every beautiful centimeter.

Ryuji’s grip on his shoulder tensed. “She was all pressin’ against you after you caught her. No way would two peeps be eyein’ each other like you two, an’ not go all the way at her place.”

Morgana shoved his head out of the leather satchel on the transfer student’s other side. “Reaper, is your mind stuck in the gutter? Joker walked her safely to her front door and then left. Like a perfect gentleman. That’s it.”

Ryuji shrugged off the transfer student’s glare and slapped a hand against his back with a casual, “Better luck next time, eh?”

Akira caught himself from stumbling at the slap and focused on his footing, then breathing so his heart rate would return from the patter while imagining Hifumi naked.

Ryuji patted the hand on his shoulder and asked in a more private conversation level, “You remember what I said at the bathhouse after the party for the bank?” When the transfer student hesitated for a heartbeat too long, the runner closed in and threw the arm holding the skewered spiral potato around his shoulder. “Dude, this is jus’ how nature works. I dunno if you goin’ all prude ‘bout it is some Catholic thing, but you wouldn’t exist if dudes and chicks didn’t get horny. I wouldn’t. Ain’t a bad thing when a dude sees a hot girl and…” He held the skewered potato up at a slight angle.

Grease splashed and a fire flared up from one of the food stalls. Dozens of pedestrians crowded around to watch the fire catch the flimsy cloth roof of the stall as one of the workers struggled to get a fire extinguisher started.

More to occupy his mind with anything other than Hifumi naked, Akira shrugged out from the runner’s arm, drew his phone and snapped a picture of the stall as the worker blasted the grease fire with foam. It would make for an interesting memory on the group chat.

Ryuji bit off a little more of the spiral-cut fried potato than fit in his mouth. “Keepin’ the others updated, huh?” He smiled out of curled potato hanging out both sides of his mouth. “That’s cool. But don’t forget to enjoy the festival yourself. I mean, you came here after all.”

A few beats passed as Akira stared. Then shook his head and smiled. “How can life be so simple for you?”

Ryuji bit off a new segment of fried, spiral-cut potato. “’Cause it ain’t gotta be more complicated. When it’s time to party, party!” He chewed and swallowed, then bit off the whole remaining spiral of fried potato, then held up his skewer like a scepter. Around his almost-full mouth, he called over the crowd, “An’ here i’s ‘ime ‘o ea’!”

Morgana shook his head from the leather satchel. “Come on , Reaper!”

Before Akira could open his mouth to condemn the runner talking with his mouth full, his stomach growled. The track star grinned and pulled the transfer student through stalls selling battered, fried things. The dark-haired boy stopped as they passed a push-cart with corn sizzling on the grill. Despite the heat of the summer, the smell made Akira’s mouth water.

When the transfer student pulled out his wallet, Ryuji shoved ahead with a roll of yen notes in one hand, the other holding up two fingers. Chatting about food, they sampled konnyaku dumplings in sweet and salty sauce, then classic roasted rice-flour dumplings, and placated Morgana with salted fish grilled over coals. While taking a beat with a couple fried curry breads, Ryuji sat down at the folding plastic table next to the transfer student and nudged him. “Didn’ I tell ya? These festivals are awesome! Even if you got tests comin’ up, an’ you messed up a practice run before, at the very least you can set down today with a belly full’a goodness.”

Akira sent a photo of the fried curry bread to the group chat, and ignored Futaba’s comment about blocked arteries. “Where’d you get all that money, anyway? Iwai doesn’t have the money to spare for proper employees.”

Ryuji bit into his bun and tore a chunk away. Around his mouthful, he replied, “Bit o’ part-timin’ at a gym, bit o’ money from Kaneshiro’s place.”

Morgana’s ears drooped. “I hope you’re not relying on that cognitive cash, Reaper. It’s not real , so even if it looks identical to the real thing it may have duplicate serial numbers or something.”

Ryuji scoffed – or tried to, with a mouth still stuffed with curry, bits flew out. He chewed with haste, swallowed, then retorted, “Dude, I ain’t completely stupid! I’m bein’ smart ‘bout it. Not spendin’ or depositin’ it all at the same time or place, keepin’ it tucked away ‘til I need it. I ain’t even told Ma ‘bout it.”

The transfer student doubted that the runner was being that smart about it, but Morgana pre-empted anything with, “Very good, Reaper. As long as you don’t lose your cool, the Phantom Thieves can continue to fight injustice. I just don’t want fame or riches to get in the way of saving people.”

Ryuji swallowed a bite of curry. “’at’s always what I’ been ‘bout. No one stuck up for me or Ann, so I don’t want no -one to hafta go through what we did. A real hero don’t back down to no one.” Then he tore a casual chunk out of his fried bread as if he hadn’t just said something with such gravity.

Morgana looked up from the leather satchel on the bench next to Akira. “You okay, Joker? You’re sweating an awful lot.”

Akira popped open his steel insulated water bottle and drained the last of the water. It worked as well as Mishima promised it would, but he couldn’t drink ice that hadn’t melted. “There a place to refill this and cool off?”

Ryuji swallowed another bite and bumped the transfer student. “’Course there is. There’s even cold cucumbers over there. Ann was chowin’ down on choco bananas next to ‘em, last I saw, but then you gotta try the deep fried chicken!”

Notes:

I thought little could be more ironic than Neko Shogun paraphrasing MacArthur’s “I shall return” speech.

A lot of people dislike Ryuji for his blunt, simplistic views and behavior, but keeping things simple is also part of his character’s greatest strength. Makoto let herself be paralyzed by duty and then the wide array of choices. Ryuji was always up for a good time, and did a lot to try to make for good times with others instead of just for himself.

Chapter 104: August 15th, Executive Assistance

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Monday, 15 August 2016. Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Early Morning
Yongen, Leblanc Loft

As he buttoned up his Sunday dress coat, already not looking forward to going into the heat in such formal clothes, Akira heard his phone buzz on the shogi board on the table set up in front of the couch. He finished buttoning and answered, “British Doorman, Isaiah Olchap.”

Makoto gave a frustrated groan. “Do you answer like that every time?”

Akira straightened a sleeve, holding his phone between his shoulder and ear. “Nope. I was thinking of trying for Unlikely Travel Agency coordinator Ann Tartica next.”

It’s Antarc—you know what? I’m not going on this tangent.” She huffed. “Can we talk seriously? And is Morgana with you?”

Akira waved to the team leader setting up materials for making lock picks. “Question from Makoto.” He paced closer and put the phone on speaker. “We’re both here, what’s up?”

I’m sorry I forgot to say anything yesterday, I was trying to get ahead on my responsibilities,” Makoto said. He could hear the cringe through her tone. “But since Hifumi-san hasn’t logged into Group Chat, could I ask for the day off? Today is Obon.”

Morgana gave a nod. “We can always wait until tomorrow to return to Togo’s Palace.”

Akira knew he’d heard the word before, but couldn’t dredge up the meaning. “What is Obon?”

Makoto launched straight into Reciting Student Council President, “A holiday celebrated primarily by Buddhists that involves reflections on the walks of life and prayers to one’s ancestors. Traditionally it includes revisiting ancestral graves, but Dad’s family was from Kyoto and I know it’s too far to go for a single observance. The day also involves a summer dance and making offerings at household altars, which I was planning on doing for Dad and Mom…”

When she trailed off, Akira mentioned, “Sounds like Kyuu Bon up in Shinjou. Would you just be able to dust off the family shrine and set it up in the den or something?”

I couldn’t find it. Sae said there was no need to keep sentimental talismans, so I’m afraid she left it behind in the move, but it isn’t right to just forget them. Mom taught us to keep up the household, and Dad raised us to believe in justice that could overcome the weakness in society. After Mom died, he used to bring Sae and I along to some Joudo-shuu celebrations with others in the police force. He provided for us, taught us to tell the truth and guard our honor…” Her voice trembled as she trailed off.

Morgana peered up at the transfer student. “There’s got to be something we can do.”

Akira nodded. “Listen, Makoto-san. Today’s the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary so I’ve got to get up to Mass. I’m hoping Hifumi will be there, but even if not I think the liturgy is only an hour. Do you want me to call you as soon as it’s done? I did promise to help you figure things out when you asked about the student body.”

She coughed once and still sounded a little shaky when she replied, “Thank you, Akira.”

Monday, 15 August 2016
Noon
Kanda Catholic Church

As soon as the Father gave the benediction, Akira took to his feet. Despite his hopes, another sweep of the sanctuary only confirmed a lack of the red omamori-style hair knot or those beautiful green eyes. After waiting for a parishioner asking for prayers of protection from Medjed, Akira asked the priest, “Father? Have you seen or heard from Hifumi-san?”

Father Sugiyama gave the kind of strained smile of somebody trying to think of a way to deliver bad news. “I apologize, Son. She’s normally such a diligent parishioner, and she so enjoys the chance to test her skill over a game, but I haven’t heard from her since last weekend.”

His stomach squirmed and Akira wished he could blame it on the overabundance of food Ryuji forced on him yesterday. He bowed, “Thank you, Father.” He paused in the narthex to check his texts. His private texts all sat unread and she hadn’t posted anything to the group chat. He crossed himself and prayed for her safety, but this wasn’t unexpected. Her mother had taken her phone for days on end before.

He took a deep breath in, then long breath out and called Makoto back. “Mass just finished. Are you all right?”

A beat passed before she said, in her controlled President of the Student Council voice, “All right. Hm. I never realized how complicated a question that could be to answer before. Physically I’m fine, but mentally… This day has brought on a lot of things I haven’t thought in years. I could use someone to talk things over with.”

I’m just a few minutes from Suidobashi Station. Where do you want to meet?”

I was going to pray at Zoujou Temple in Shiba,” Makoto said. “It’s in Minato-ku, not far from Shujin.”

He hesitated to reach out for the door and the sweltering heat. “I’m familiar with it. Isn’t it basically the HQ for Pure Land Buddhism in Kanto?”

Right,” she said, some hesitance creeping back into her voice. “It’s also the location of the Taitoku-in Mausoleum. Dad and Mom weren’t particularly strict practitioners, but we visited there a few times before Mom died. Dad asked them to officiate Mom’s funeral.”

He glanced at his black, formal clothes. “I’m probably as appropriately dressed as I can be.”

Monday, 15 August 2016
Early Afternoon
Minato-ku, Shiba Park

Akira wiped sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. Today was such a strong heat wave the local weather app included a warning for the elderly to seek shelter or stay indoors, but going back to Yongen might not have helped much. He’d have been able to pick up Morgana and change out of black, but the green of Shiba Park helped cool the urban heat sink. The pictures of Zoujou Temple gave a poor sense of the scale or austerity of the large complex. A twenty-one meter main gate towered over the surrounding park, and monks maintained a small water station for the many older visitors coming to the temple for part of Obon. While he could hear music from more lively festivities elsewhere in the park, the people here maintained a peaceful quiet.

Akira-san!” Makoto called out from behind. She jogged over the concrete park path, her sneakers the only concession he could see to modern convenience. She wore her white, floral-patterned yukata from Marine Day. She again eschewed the braided headband, this time for a white elastic band that wrapped around her head like a crown and held her bangs up and away from her face. The yellow obi with a white tie added a splash of color that brought new heat to the transfer student’s cheeks.

Oh, hey, Makoto-senpai,” he stumbled over his words. “Sorry, is this a traditional gown only event?”

Oh, no. I’m sure that’s fine. Thank you for coming.” Makoto came to a stop next to him and looked up at the big, red-painted gate. “It’s been years. Father’s funeral was held at the police station. So many people came, it felt like a big, overwhelming affair.”

Akira switched the empty water bottle from a station concession stand to his other hand. “I’ve never actually been to a funeral before. One of the my classmates at Inuri committed suicide, but the school never told us how or why.”

She nodded. “I remember the guidelines for student council at my middle school were to avoid the topic so as to not encourage it.” She fanned herself with her hand, then gestured off the path to the shade of a tree where fewer of the trickle of pedestrians would pay attention to them. “Not talking about it doesn’t make it any easier to process, though. Sae was never that close to Mom, so after her funeral, she just… studied and went into law. It never felt like it was a thing to talk about, to her or to Dad.”

Akira flexed a shoulder, unsure what he should say. “Did you guys give up a lot when your mother died?”

It feels strange to say, but not really. Mom worked hard and taught us so much, but…” The corners of her lips turned up. “Dad was always the fixture of the family.” A frown crept across her face and she hesitated before her gaze slid to his. “I saw… a lot of your mother in Futaba’s palace. It’s hard to fathom such polar opposites between my mother and yours. Neither really sought the spotlight, but… Before Big Sis moved us into the new place, every time I turned a corner at home I kept expecting to see Mom there. Folding laundry or scrubbing a pan or something like that. She was always there. I could always talk to her.”

Sounds like somebody comfortable with home life,” Akira said. “Were the troubles you were mentioned earlier, perhaps, thoughts that you took her for granted until she was gone?”

No!” Makoto slipped her hands in her sleeves. “Well, now that you bring it up, I don’t think I appreciated her as much as she deserved. But she never seemed unhappy. Not with us.” A beat passed and when their eyes met, she explained, “There was tension with Dad in the final years. I think she didn’t like how much time he spent on the job. He’d take her out to nice dinners more and more often, but as time went on, instead of cheering her up they just made her worse.”

Akira scratched his head. “Really? That sounds awesome. Getting to go out, visit new places, eat new things.”

Big Sis called it bribery, but she was entering her stubborn, independent streak at the time.” She gave a small smile. “I agree with you, though. At least ever since awakening to Johanna, getting out and experiencing new things sounds so much more enthralling than sitting in and studying next month’s lesson.”

Akira fought to keep a smirk from his face. “ More enthralling?”

What?” She squawked. “Learning new things is fun, too!” Her cheeks took on a shade darker of pink and she looked away. “Before, it felt like everything was a grey. Food, music, night, day. It all blended together and the closest thing to satisfaction was finishing the checklist so I could go to sleep.”

Akira felt a curling sensation in his gut. That was how he felt for months on end with his mother. He didn’t understand it until Father Motoori called it the false feeling of nothing to live for. After enough days without… “There is no sun. There was no sun.”

Makoto straightened, her gaze flicking to the shadows playing over the tended park ground. “Summer says there’s definitely sun.”

Straightening his glasses, Akira took a breath. “Sorry, it’s a partial quote from The Silver Chair . Some kids get lost underground for so long, a witch tries to convince them there never was a sun to try to make them fall to despair. That’s probably what you felt like when everybody around you kept piling up burdens they expected you to live up to, and never treated you like a person who was carrying too many things.”

That pink returned to her cheeks. “Thank you, Akira. But you were there to help me out.”

He broke eye contact. “I was also there to pile them on. I should have been the first person to know the rumor mill was full of shit and given you the chance to show on your own who you were.” He took off his glasses to wipe sweat away from an eye. “I should have known better. I should have been better. I told Father Motoori I would be when he asked if I was ready for baptism.”

Her smile didn’t go away, but frustration leaked into her visage. “You’re certainly not either of your parents. You care about not only what you do, but the consequences of your actions.” Makoto took a breath and the corners of her lips turned up. “It reminds me just a bit of Dad. Dad was the center of the family. I don’t remember a specific incident as much as the hundreds of nights where he’d be the one to initiate every exchange of stories around the dinner table. Everybody would make one thing to bring to the table.” She gave a chuckle. “Though Dad’s was always the rice.” Makoto looked up at him. “What about your father?”

Akira tensed, but forced himself to breathe and unclench his hands. “I will never call that man father. A father teaches and empowers, like Father Motoori or Sugiyama.” He straightened his glasses and looked her in the eye. He clapped his hands together, crinkling his empty water bottle. “My old man never once ate with me. His version of helping me study was locking me in an empty patient’s room with my books so I would study instead of running away.” He huffed. “He’d usually send staff members to look in on me, but they’d leave me alone when I was reading. They never checked to see what I was reading as long as it wasn’t manga.”

That’s why you’re a reader?” she squawked. When a handful of children with a woman walking past stopped, Makoto brushed her bangs back and pointed to the temple gate. “I apologize for tying things up out here in the heat. And bringing up negative memories. My mom taught me how to cook, the closest yours came was telling you to make brown rice with hot sauce.”

Akira wiped a droplet of water from his brow. “You can say it, Makoto. Mother drank. The rice was supposed to be a hangover cure.” He turned to the looming gate. “You can’t play a hand you’re not dealt.” He led the trot to the inside of the Buddhist temple complex. A mix of solemn pedestrians and skipping celebrants milled around the stage in the center of the courtyard for the night’s dance. Lantern-studded lines stretched from the square pillar on the center of the stage to the rooftops of the surrounding buildings.

Makoto let out a hum before she hastened back alongside. “No chance to play an ace up your sleeve when you’re not at the table, hm?”

The transfer student tripped on an uneven stone in the tile-paved road lined by trees and turf. He caught his footing, but felt like his brain took a moment longer to catch up. “You’re the last person I’d expect to be familiar with gambling metaphors.”

She tilted her head. “Why? Dad always played poker at the police ball. It’s not illegal, there’s a lottery stand right at Station Square.”

Akira blinked. “Gambling’s against the law. I remember Officer Ichijou getting pissed ‘cause she had to stop lecturing me to help book an illegal chinchirorin ring.”

Makoto rolled her eyes. “Well, men can get rowdy over dice. It’s different when it’s basically family around the table, with gyoza and tonics at each one’s elbow.”

A man in the yellow and orange of a Buddhist monk approached from one of the side paths, nodding at the two Shujin students. “Good day, young ones. Is there anything I can help you with?”

Makoto pressed her hands flat together in front of her face, and bowed. “Good day, Master. I came to pray and offer some incense to my parents, but can’t afford the time to travel to the ancestral graves.”

The monk – or priest, Akira wasn’t familiar enough with Buddhist trappings to know if they had different uniforms – bowed his head back to her, then gestured to a roof peeking up over trees to the right. “The cemetery is behind the main hall. If you don’t have your own incense, there should be a stall right before the entrance until the night dance.”

When he turned to greet another family coming to celebrate Obon, the two Shujin students made their way through the crowd to the main hall looming over the courtyard, he taking a beat to buy a fresh water bottle. The crowd forced them to separate until outside again, where he found the upperclassman in a lane of the graveyard lined with short, stone statues. Makoto fiddled with a stick of incense, her eyes on the decorations. Knit caps and scarves created a sense of lively color that clashed with the dark stone and gloomy atmosphere. A small handful of people lingered here, one a middle-aged woman kneeling and crying before another statue.

Akira took off his glasses to wipe sweat away from his eyes, then settled them back on. “Have any family that died in childbirth?”

No, I was just thinking about children,” Makoto said, clasping her hands in thought. “Dad and Mom never really talked about it much. I guess having us was the family obligation and after that, neither really tried again. Their work and the existing family kept everyone really busy. Is child-raising viewed much differently in Catholicism?”

A flicker of Hifumi and him trying passed through his mind, but Akira shoved the dirty thought away. “God commanded us in Genesis to ‘be fruitful and multiply’, but that’s about as specific as it got. I wasn’t a member of the parish under Father Motoori for long enough to get a really good sense of the culture there.” He slipped his hands in his pockets. “What about you?”

She shook her head. “To be honest, I still feel like I have trouble keeping my head above water just with school and…” Her eyes darted about. “…us. I can’t imagine I’d be a good mother.”

Akira reached out to straighten a blue yarn cap on the child-statue in front of him. “This is the first time you’ve asked for a break from… work . You’re an innately organized person, I doubt you’d have trouble adapting to raising your own family if you set out to do so.”

She switched her incense to her left hand. “Thank you.” A warm summer breeze flowed through the cemetary. “What about you. Do you think kids are in your future?”

The cold that shot up his spine was so strong it brought on a full-body shiver. “I’d never want to be a father. Did you not take in anything about mine ?”

Her crimson gaze rose to him. “Really? You’re supportive, structured, knowledgeable about theory and practical life, even seem to enjoy improvising. I thought that would have been a life goal for you. Every man I’ve heard talk about it said how proud their kids made them.” The corners of her lips turned up. “Even Dad did that at the police balls. Sure, it was a career thing too and he spent plenty of time chatting it up with various section heads, but he told most of them about Sae and I. It was like our high grades were his accomplishment with as much as he’d preen.”

Akira slipped his hand back in his pocket. He’d never once heard his old man praise his grades. Granted, he had plenty of demerits from skipping school. “No matter how high I scored on my tests, my old man would just say that’s what he expected. ‘Superior genes should produce superior specimens’.”

Her face twisted as if she bit a lemon. “Even my dad, as busy as he was at the precinct or out on the streets, took Mom out and made her candle-lit dinners.” She giggled. “Though she was the cook, so it tended to be candle-lit convenience store bentos.”

Another gaggle of mothers turned the corner from the temple’s central building, so Makoto and the transfer student moved on to the dense, standing headstone section of the graveyards. She came to a stop at a nook with a few standing picture frames of men in police uniforms. She set the stick in a stone bowl with ashes from numerous prior incense, lit it against an already smoldering stick, then clapped her hands together and bowed in silence for long moments. After she came up she stepped back, hands clasped in front of her obi. “Sorry for making you take so much of your time.”

It’s fine,” Akira said, wiping sweat from his brow. “But when they celebrated Kyuu Bon up in Shinjou, most people would head to the family home and pray at the family shrine there. How come you decided to come here?”

She let out a long breath, her eyes drifting back to the frames, then the trees well behind. “I think I was trying to reconnect with them .” Her gaze fell to the graveyard’s paving stones. “Until today, I hadn’t realized how angry Big Sis still was at him for dying. Or how much I wanted to talk to him. To remind myself of Dad and Mom.” She fidgeted with her fingers. “Before I called you, I was trying to remember some of the bed-time stories Mom would read us, and… I drew a blank. I could recall which stories she’d read, but not how she read them. What she sounded like. I was still in grammar school when she died of an aneurysm, but…” She pulled in a halting breath. “Sometimes I’m afraid I’ll forget Dad, too.”

Akira stepped closer and nudged her with an elbow. “Hey. Your father is part of the reason you became who you are today. You can’t lose that. You’ve got pretty fair judgment now and excellent planning skills. He passed those lessons on to you and I’m damn sure they’ll always be with you. And you still cook, right? That’s more of your mother that you’re not letting go of.”

She smiled, then stepped out of his arm to fan herself. “Thank you, Akira. You’re a lot more considerate than you first appear.”

He thumped her arm. “Don’t kid yourself, I’m just as much of a jerk as I first appear.”

Monday, 15 August 2016
Early Evening
Shibuya, Protein Lovers’ Gym

Weights behind the resistance machine clacked in the steady rhythm as Akira counted his repetitions. More clicking, straining, and groans both of composite plastics and people sounded around the small gym. Sweat gathered into beads on his skin, but unlike outside the cool and steady blowing of air conditioning provided much-needed relief as he began the long process of working himself to exhaustion. His talk with Makoto seemed to help her out, but just left him feeling even more out of his element than before. It was hard enough trying to push away his lewd thoughts of Hifumi, but thinking of himself as a father just triggered fear at every intellectual level. His father betrayed him on a fundamental level, how could Akira be a good father when he only understood a bad one?

Alliance Force, Assemble! sang out of his phone and the weights slapped together as he ended the movement. He wiped his hands on his threadbare black shirt and pulled his phone out, surprised to see Yuuki on the caller ID. Had he found a new emergency request? “Practical Joke Specialist, Dietrich Iznotulaff.”

Kurusu?” His class representative said, sounding a bit out of breath. “I-I mean, Akira-san?”

Akira paused to make sure his own breathing was under control. “Here. What’s up, Yuuki?”

We hafta’ talk! The Phansite’s going crazy,” he exclaimed. “There’s flamers and panic everywhere. I even had to drop researching requests for you guys to try to keep the dumpster fire under control and I…” His voice cracked.

Akira sat up. “Hey, slow down and take a breath. We’ll meet and strategize. Where’s good for you?”

Uh,” the class representative said, sounding pained. “Home, but I don’t think I’m up for leaving Minato-ku.”

Akira looked around. He pre-paid for an evening of intense exercise, but it had been quite a while since he heard from Yuuki and it sounded like the guy was on the edge of an episode. Like hell would he walk away from someone in that situation. “Then I’ll meet you. Either send me your address or somewhere close by you feel comfortable meeting at, I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

A few seconds of mumbled stammerings that didn’t collect into a clear word passed before Yuuki hung up. For a beat, the transfer student was afraid he just pushed over yet another invisible boundary before the class rep posted a link to a seafood cafe on the group chat.

Just to make sure he knew, Akira texted, [I'm on the way.]

Monday, 15 August 2016
Evening
Minato-ku, Maguro Fish Market

Akira slid onto a chair with a new cushion glued to what could have passed as structural lumber reclaimed from a flood. He shifted left and right, but when he didn’t feel the chair give he decided the battered wood look of the place was an aesthetic choice.

Across from him sat the class representative. Dark circles stretched under his eyes and he looked like he’d lost at least two kilograms since their last meeting. His thumbs tapped away at his phone, no sign he ever had food despite holding the table for ten minutes. His dark eyes remained transfixed on his phone. When the transfer student snapped his fingers, the Phansite creator jumped in his seat. “Right! Sorry, I got busy moderating. There are a lot of flamers saying the Phantom Thief can’t or won’t stop Medjed. And the deadline is coming up pretty soon.”

Akira rubbed his temple. “Yeah, I know. Medjed’s been taken care of, but we’re busy with another Palace so we haven’t had time to let Futaba take the couple of days off it would take to hack Medjed’s site. Maybe I should’ve predicted something would happen and had her start yesterday.”

A squeaky-voiced college kid who looked like he’d had one too many donuts stepped up with a pad of paper in hand. “Good evening, honored customers. What can Maguro’s Fish Market get for you?”

Yuuki spared the waiter just a moment. “Not hungry.” He went back to typing.

Two simmered rockfish,” Akira said. One of Japan’s classic whitefish should get the class representative eating. When the waiter bowed and departed, Akira pulled out his phone, but kept his focus on his quarry. Since finishing Futaba’s palace, Akira ignored the media’s fear-mongering about Medjed since Futaba corrupted the offending hacker’s computer. It looked like the only thing happening was pundits and people safe in their jobs whining. Looking at the class rep, that might have been a mistake. “So walk me through it. How did things get to… this?” he said, spreading a hand out at the overworked site manager.

Yuuki finished typing something, but at least glanced up at the transfer student for a moment. Then back to the Phansite. “I think Kaneshiro primed it. When Maiasa printed that exposé about Madarame, with pictures of the calling card, traffic to the Phansite increased exponentially. What used to be a couple of trolls I could nip in the bud by banning them a couple times a day turned into thousands of new posts per day. Some are afraid and want to vent, but some are coming just to stir up trouble.”

That level of spam makes people abandon email addresses. I remember my old man having to create new business emails every couple of months because somebody kept signing him up for junk.” Akira paused, his eyes rolling up. “Now that I think about it, I wonder if Futaba was involved.” He pulled up the group chat. [Hey, mistress of computers.]

Her always-on ID winked underneath his text with three dots. [That's Computer Queen, tyvm.]

[There's only one person I'll call queen,] he typed before he realized this was on group chat and Makoto would be able to see it. Queen never seemed to fit her anyway, that would just represent an inversion of the domination power dynamic she was a part of earlier. A continuation of the cage she was in before, just with a different coat of paint. She was a brawler, a fighter learning to hold nothing back, but stood beside the rest of them. He instead sent, [Yuuki's got spam problems with the Phansite. How do you deal with it?]

The server returned with two plates of fresh, pan-simmered white fish. Akira thanked him and dug in. The group chat buzzed with Futaba and he read over what ended up being an essay that flew over his head. “Hey, Yuuki. What’s an ‘IP ban’?”

Internet protocol,” he said, finishing some typing before glancing up. His hair hung lower, and was it just the lighting in this restaurant or did it look greasy? Those brown eyes flitted as if in time with the small thoughts inside. “It’s possible a lot of the flamers are the same people just re-registering or rotating internet connection.” He swiped the Phansite aside and brought up the group chat. “Natural language moderation bots? I don’t know how to program something like that!” He typed in something to that effect to the group chat.

Futaba replied in a second, [They're easy! I used them when I had zombie farms hack universities for traces of Mom's research.]

Akira arched an eyebrow. “Zombie… farms?” He lowered his fork. “Is that an internet joke?”

Yuuki shook his head. “Zombie means a different thing in computers than pop culture. Both basically hijack the hardware of something else to serve a different purpose, but a zombie farm is a method of hacking that uses other people’s computers to run certain automated tasks, sometimes without even knowing their computers are being partially appropriated. Anonymous used them in the switch from Low to High Orbit Ion Cannons after the FBI arrested a couple of their members.”

Akira blinked. “You just went from talking about computers to orbital weaponry. I didn’t think those were real.”

Yuuki pinched the bridge of his nose. “No, not… literal orbital ion cannons. The name comes from Command and Conquer. It’s just software for information requests to overload a website.” He looked back down at his phone. “I doubt the Phansite is high-profile enough to be worth that much effort, but now that she brought it up, I guess it wouldn’t take much. I’m fine with web coding, but the most I could do with bots is writing auto-moderators to take down posts with key phrases associated with flamers.”

Akira texted, [Would you be willing to help write a few bots to stop flamers on the Phantom Thief fan site?]

[EZ peasy. Which one?]

Akira blinked. [What do you mean which one?]

She texted back, [Akira, there's a couple dozen Phantom Thief fan pages. There's this new one in Kyoto that even does a podcast.]

[He means mine,] Yuuki texted, followed by a link to the Phansite.

[Leave it to the master! I'll have those trolls crying by morning.]

Makoto’s ID winked in. [Futaba, try not to work through the night, it's bad for your health even if we aren't going into a Palace tomorrow. And NO MELTING ANYBODY'S COMPUTER.]

[Spoilsport.] A beat later Futaba added, [ Where's the fun in toasting hard drives and leaving perfectly good power supplies and CPUs? ]

Satisfied, Akira set his phone down. “There you go, Futaba will be assisting. Now eat.”

Chapter 105: August 16th, Guard Dog

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Tuesday, 16 August 2016
Noon
Shibuya, Protein Lovers’ Gym

Weights clacked and men grunted around Akira. The sound of rhythmic focus helped him focus on his own breathing as he hauled a weighted bench press, inhaling on the down stroke and exhaling on pushing away. Down. Up. Inhale. Exhale. He would have started at the cable machine to work on the muscles used in knife swipes and thrusts, especially after upgrading to a faux-black steel machete at Untouchable, but it was occupied by the time he got through the downpour. The day’s plan was to study in Yongen, but Morgana pointed out he was pacing and ordered him to go do something to occupy himself. Study just led to pacing, so exercise it was. Yoshizawa was already at a scheduled training day with her coach, and Ryuji was selling his portion of the Shadow trinkets.

Alliance Force, Assemble! sang out of his phone and Akira pushed up the Olympic-regulation barbel to set it on the bench’s catch. He sat up and allowed a couple moments to breathe before answering, “Speech trainer, Elle O’Quent.”

Okay, Elle,” Shinya drawled. “Let’s have an exchange. And since a responsible teacher feeds his students, I’ll even pay back by teaching you how to shoot like you mean it.”

On the one hand, the kid was responding to his joke opening. On the other, he was being pushy in a weird way. Most people Akira knew would just ask to hang out over lunch. If he asked for a greasy back-alley vendor, it would be back to exercising. “Where were you thinking?”

There’s a diner in Akihabara that serves the only crispy waffles in Tokyo. You can get ‘em topped with anything.” A hungry stomach growl sounded loud enough to carry over the line, and the transfer student thought he heard a hint of a pained whimper. “You’re paying, of course.”

Akira would have made a joke about having good taste because of the waffles, but that pained noise reminded him of Inaba. “I’m in. Send me the address and I’ll meet you there.

Tuesday, 16 August 2016
Noon
Chiyoda-ku, Fontyn’s Diner

The scent of butter and seared batter suffused the air of the faux-European eatery. Black leather seats around gold tables with stark red walls gave a hint of some nation’s colors, but besides a lot of names in katakana on the menu the rest of the restaurant catered to the Tokyo crowd. Hot waffle irons in the back churned out circular waffles that held up to the kid’s promise of the crispiest waffles he’d ever had, with options ranging from traditional fruits and nuts on Akira’s to cheese and shaved squid on Shinya’s.

Akira cut into his with the same care and curiosity as any relatively new food, a meager topping of syrup compensated a little by too much butter. Still, the chunks of peach and walnuts gave the dish a pleasant fruity component to go with the crisp waffle. “So what’s going on?”

Shinya looked up, already polishing off his first plate before the transfer student had gotten through a quarter of his. He hesitated a moment, a guilty expression directing at his plate before he let out a breath. His shoulders sagged. “There just… wasn’t anything in the fridge today.”

Akira swallowed a bite of waffle, then speared another peach wedge. “Every convenience store seems to have onigiri, omelette of some variety, and ramen. Triple-seven even has porrige.”

Shinya picked at a few shreds of squid. “School’s not in session and lots left for vacation. Money’s been tight without people to squeeze.”

Laughter from Shadow Kaneshiro shot through his mid-brain at the reminder of ‘squeezing’ people for money. Akira’s fingers tightened on his fork. “You don’t have enough from your mom?”

The kid swallowed another few shreds of squid. “Mom’s been… busy. When she has to stay late at work, she forgets.”

Akira swallowed a well-chewed bite of waffle. “Even to feed you?” He tisked. “Sounds like when I lived with my mother.”

Shinya straightened. “Your parents are separated? What kinda food did you eat with her?”

A bitter smile wormed its way across Akira’s face and he failed to keep in an amused huff. Still, it was embarrassing enough that Makoto knew about his mother to a detailed level. He still wasn’t sure if she knew about the day Mother told him, “ I never wanted you ,” but no need to bring that up to yet another person. Especially if the kid needed some stability. Akira bit down on the peach on his fork and swallowed before giving a half-truth in the things he ate in Inaba. “The eggplant dumplings always stood out. Depending on the season, sometimes they’d be filled with radish, nozawana pickles, or mashed pumpkin. Then there’s steamed hostas, though you had to make sure to keep it away from cats and dogs.”

The gamer made a face. “Steamed vegetables sound boring ! Even if they’re in a dumpling.”

Akira scratched his head. “Well, there was so much miso everything , even if you loved it you’d get sick of it after a while. And if you think veggies are yucky you probably wouldn’t be impressed by blanched kogomi . Which is a pity, the stuff’s good if it’s in season.” He looked up at the ceiling of water-stained tiles. “Maybe horse sashimi?”

Shinya sat up. “I had horse once. It tasted funny.”

No, those are clowns.”

Shinya slapped his free hand over his face. “Just finish so I can get to whipping you into shape.”

Tuesday, 16 August 2016
Afternoon
Akihabara, Gigolo Arcade

A crowd of eight or nine people around them buzzed, but Akira found himself so busy trying to keep up with the little combat monster that the flashes and background music of crane games just added a grating sense to his desperate struggle to keep up at what turned out to be a difficulty above Hell Mode. He stomped on a pedal to dive into cover before reloading his revolver – his choice of a sub-machine gun being out due to dying and having to re-start weapon upgrades again . Despite being in a well-air-conditioned space, sweat rolled down his face as he hopped back to try to shoot down flying demons in the construction yard.

Shinya didn’t even have a sheen of sweat as he downed three in quick succession as he barked, “Fuckin’ follow through ! You gotta shoot their weak point as soon as you interrupt their movement!”

Ryuji, taking a breather, leaned to another watcher and said, “The King’s pretty awesome, but you gotta feel sorry for anyone tryin’ to keep up. I know he ain’t bad when he’s playin’ with me, but next to The King he’s all over the place.”

The woman next to him said back, her voice raised to cut through the ambient arcade noise, “The high schooler, or The King? That grade schooler’s gotta be bipolar.”

That just seemed to make the tyke even angrier.

Late Afternoon
Akihabara, Gigolo Arcade

After knocking down another swooping demon and shooting it into dust, Akira stomped on a pedal to dive his avatar into cover and slapped the bottom magazine of his machine pistol. It made him miss his P90, but it took him a while to get a scope and laser dot projector on it. Gun About’s faster pace and more disposable handling of lives and equipment meant he had to invest more in magazines and exotic ammunitions to keep up with the younger boy.

Standing next to him, Makoto put her longarm-controller through a bit of a twirl to pump the lever-action even faster and downed another demon hopping up from a portal in the floor.

Ryuji downed two flying in from the gap where a ceiling in a completed building would be. His heavy machine gun controller swung back and forth, his grenade launcher in the game burping explosives.

Before any of the Phantom Thieves could pat themselves on the back, Shinya tossed a grenade and finished off the two demons injured by it, then let out a rapid set of pops with his upgraded starter pistol and disintegrated another two demons ambushing them out of windows on the left and middle of the screen.

For the first time in almost an hour, no enemies assailed them, allowing the four a moment to breathe. Ryuji stepped back to throw a fist in the air at Yusuke, who’d rejoined the crowd when Makoto arrived for gun training. “Fuck yeah!”

Makoto jabbed him in the side. “Children!” She took another quick breath, lowering the controller in hand just like she would her shotgun in the Metaverse. “I feel like that was a very productive session, Oda-san. All of us were able to take down those ghost and armored enemies as well. Do you think we’re ready to take down that cheater yet?”

Shinya scrutinized them like the sensei of a martial arts flick. He pointed at Akira, “He’s ready.”

Ryuji gawked. “He keeps on dyin’!”

You’re prolly the worst. You may have better accuracy than all the others, but you still play like you’re on normal mode. Headshots look fancy, but damage multipliers don’t make for status effects or special chains. You won’t adapt.” Shinya bulled on. “The rest of you are still too dependent on your equipment. Upgrades help, especially against general enemies, but the exploit Owner is using ignores equipment bonuses because it interferes with hit box detection. You need to have a seamless prediction of your enemy’s movement patterns. Success is as much about psyching out your enemy so you can control where you want him to be as dealing damage to the eyes or other vulnerable spots. Notice I used the starter pistol the whole time.”

Oh!” Akira exclaimed, feeling excitement for the first time in a while. “Like how you dissuade attacks in shogi by lining up multiple pieces to counter each vulnerable advance.”

Shinya rolled his eyes. “Ugh, no wonder it’s taking you so long to get any good. Your hobbies are boring .”

Makoto bristled. “There’s nothing wrong with intellectual pursuits!”

They played for another few minutes, but Shinya let his avatar get killed. As the glass-spiderwebbed effect spread over the screen, he set his pistol controller back on the cradle. “I’m done. It’s exhausting carrying you noobs.”

Hey!” Ryuji snapped, “We’re plenty good!”

Shinya glared back, “God, you’re a simpleton.”

Having heard the kid’s verbal abuse for the past couple hours, Akira settled his controller down as well. “You know, it’s almost as poor form to judge us by your bar as it would be for us to judge you for not being us.” He pointed at the screen as it cycled back to previews. “You put in the work for weeks and became the master of this game. The work we put in so far in our lives has been mastering other things. We’re still new at this.”

Shinya gave a partial eye roll, but tugged at the hem of his jeans and avoided eye contact. “Guess you’ve got a point there.”

The artist gave an acknowledging nod to the transfer student, then had to step out of the way when an arcade employee stepped in. “Hey, kid. Hours for elementary school students are over.” He gave a patronizing smile. “Time to go home. Understand, little boy?”

As the kid bristled, Akira turned on the twenty-something employee. “He has a case of the grade school, not severe down syndrome. Try using full sentences like an adult and not a demeaning tone like a prick.”

Akira!” Makoto barked.

Yusuke stepped into the conversation, his calm as unflappable as ever. “There is no need to either escalate or demean. I believe that things have drawn to a close for all of us. Gentlemen,” he turned to Makoto, “And lady, let us away!”

Shinya gave a frustrated grunt, but followed them outside. While dark clouds still choked the skies and water rushed through the gutters, the torrent abated for the moment. Ryuji pulled Yusuke off to a nearby cafe and Makoto followed to help keep them from causing a scene. The kid noticed Akira linger and pulled his cap brim down before muttering, “So, uh… thanks. Even when it’s hard with other people, I just… wanted to keep playing. Keep getting stronger.”

Akira paused, the brick wall still too wet to lean against . “Practice makes habit, not necessarily stronger. Besides, won’t your mom be getting home soon?”

Shinya studied a rivulet on the wet sidewalk.

A few pieces were lining up in a way that did not sit right to the transfer student. “Your mom doesn’t treat you well?”

I don’t wanna go.” Shinya blew out a puff of air. “There’s nothin’ to do there. Ma’s always at work, so there’s never anyone there.” He looked up at the transfer student. “You may be a high-schooler, but you’re basically an adult. You’re lucky. You can stay out almost as long as you want, work anywhere, and any time you get hungry you can buy anything.” He huffed. “I wish I could just play all day instead of having to back to school soon. I’d practice and practice and never lose.”

Akira poked the brim of the get smoked cap. “Just the game of academics and life politics.”

A trio of girls stepped out of the tool store across the street, the lead one so loud her voice carried crystal clear, “…hasn’t done anything for weeks . Medjed’s definitely crushed the Phantom Thief. You remember what Akechi-san said? The thief is just an attention-whore child, if the Phantom Thief won, he’d have made a huge to-do about it and shoved it in all our faces.”

Shinya kicked water in her general direction . “She just doesn’t understand. No way could the Phantom Thief lose. He’s too strong. And some day I’m gonna be as strong as him, and nobody’s gonna be able to bring me down.”

Akira weighed his options and kept his expression neutral. “You think the Phantom Thief is really hot stuff?”

Fuck yeah!” His eyes flicked down the road after Ryuji. “I mean, definitely! He took down that nasty teacher, a yakuza boss, then Madarame even when everyone thought that no-talent artist was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Everyone’s on about Medjed ‘cause those hackers are faceless people on the other side of a computer, but that’s no different than the losers on Gun About. Just people who go down because they’re arrogant.” He looked up at the transfer student. “You’re a fan, aren’t you? Don’t you believe they can take down Medjed?”

Akira opened his mouth, then closed it. After a beat, he answered, “Yeah. I pray for th—her, but I know the Phantom Thief can come out on top.”

Shinya let out a scoff. “ Her ? The Phantom Thief is definitely a guy.” He stood up and straightened his cap. “Well, I guess I hafta go, but you practice for next time, okay? If you play the cheater and don’t win, you’ll embarrass your teacher.”

Akira switched his umbrella to his left and snapped to attention and gave a picture-perfect British salute.

Tuesday, 16 August 2016
Early Evening
Shibuya, Taiheidou Books

Thunder rumbled outside and the scent of rain drifted in. Still anxious, Akira browsed Central Street’s bookstore to find something to occupy his time. Shelves full of insipid romances and sci-fi manga with inconsistent physics just made him groan. Maybe he should have ignored the weather’s eighty-seven percent chance of rain and gone to Jinbocho. That’s where Hifumi said she found most of her thought-provoking treasures.

His phone buzzed and he drew it to see Hifumi on the Phantom Thief group chat. His heart leaped in his throat as he read, [It's time, everyone. I just fed Antalas and he was comfortable with each one of your scents. Mother should be back before too late today.] She added her address and directions from Shibuya Station, just in case.

Makoto texted, [Morgana is still with Futaba-chan. Will that be enough to get you over to Hifumi's home? We may want to have everybody there to ensure the cognition can't attack anybody left behind.]

Akira crossed himself and gave a prayer of thanks that they were at last able to take a step closer to changing Hifumi’s mother’s heart. His breath came short but he felt light despite the downpour outside.

Three dots danced next to Futaba’s ID for almost a minute.

Ryuji sent, [The shoe store I'm at is only a little away from Leblanc. You good if I get you?]

Almost a minute passed before Futaba texted, [Morgana: Joker, meet us at Shibuya Station.]

Tuesday, 16 August 2016
Early Evening
Chiyoda , Togo Home

The white-and-ashen husky shook out his dampened fur as Hifumi and the Phantom Thieves doffed their shoes and hung their wet umbrellas in the two-story house’s entry hall. “Antalas!” Hifumi shouted in dismay. She gestured to the cabinet the dazzling blonde beauty sat on. “Could you hand me a towel from in there?” She took the bright yellow towel and knelt to give the dog a thorough drying before it could get another droplet in its ear and decide to throw more fur or moisture around. Despite her concerns, and the rain picking up outside, milk bones served as a perfect bribe to help him accept the strange people smelling like shirts he had been eating and sleeping over for days. After making one aggressive lunge at Morgana, the team leader who insisted he was a human swiped at the dog’s sensitive nose with his claws and Antalas respected her tugs on his leash. “I’m so sorry, Ann-san. Do you want me to get you a change? I can put your clothes in the dryer.” She called into the house, “Rei-san!”

At least the Phantom Thieves came prepared with umbrellas, so besides herself and Ann, nobody else wound up damp enough to need a towel or change. The model rubbed another towel over herself, her umbrella knocked away when Antalas tried to surge through her to get at Morgana. “It’s not your fault.”

As the Thieves stepped out of the entry hall, a small woman in her late forties rounded the corner from the kitchen. Despite her traditional black clothes, she wore a bright blue headscarf. “Togo-san, are these the guests you were going through all that trouble with Antalas about?”

Hifumi nodded and wiped her hands on clean corners of Antalas’ towel. “Everyone? This is our gardener and housekeeper, Ueda Rei. This is Makoto, Futaba-chan, my shogi friend Akira, and…” Her hand drifted from the hacker to the brash blond when she realized she never learned all of their real names. It would lead to more questions when Rei-san reported to Mother if she called him Reaper.

The runner waved and flashed a smile too perfect and white to be real. “Yo. Sakamoto.”

The middle-aged woman nodded, then turned to the tall, blue-haired boy. “Kitagawa, from your school’s painting program. I read about your master’s confession. Terrible blow.”

Yusuke bowed. “That is correct, Ueda-san.”

Hifumi smiled, reaching down to pat the Phantom Thief leader who looked so much like an adorable tuxedo cat. “This handsome gentleman is Morgana.” She withdrew her hand. “And this is Ann. Would you mind getting her a change of clothes and putting hers through the drier?”

Rei nodded to her, then to the damp blonde. “The downstairs bath is this way, miss.”

Downstairs?” The runner blurted. “This place’s got more’n one?”

Makoto elbowed him and the model followed after the housekeeper.

Hifumi drew another towel from the cabinet in the entryway and pressed against her soaked blouse. “The den is on the right, you can’t miss it. I was planning on getting you all situated before bringing out snacks or drinks, but if you’ll excuse me…” She squeezed her towel at her dripping skirt a few times to keep from tracking water through the house.

Makoto smiled, “It’s fine. I’ll watch them until you’re ready.”

Hifumi gave the mature girl a thankful smile, then an apologetic bow to the others before heading to the main bath. The sound of air blowing reached her ears at the same instant that she slid the pocket door aside. Stepping into the washroom, s he almost walked into her housekeeper taking a brush and blow-drier to Ann-san’s hair. The model wore one of her dressier shirts, a tight-fitting black under-layer straining against the blonde’s bust, draped over by a sheer red layer that gave an ethereal look. One of Hifumi’s shorter black skirts adorned the model’s toned legs.

Before she could push those envious thoughts aside, Rei-san stood back. “You’re dripping! Dear thing, get in the bathroom and I’ll get you some dry clothes.” She reached out a hand to check the shogi player’s hair. “At least that’s dry. Now go on before you catch something.”

When the blonde also stood and pressed against the counter to give a clear path to the bathroom, Hifumi decided to be gracious about it and gave a nod of thanks, then stepped in. Her socks squished, so she sat on the edge of the tub and peeled them off, tossing them at a convenient corner before unfastening the catch on the side of her skirt and pulling it off. The bottom of her blouse was wet, so she tugged that off by the time Rei-san returned with a loose-sleeved white blouse and beige slacks, plus a set of plain white undergarments. “Thank you, Rei-san. You’re a saint.”

The middle-aged woman smiled. “You’re too kind, Dear.” She set the clothes against one corner of the raised perimeter of the tub, then clicked her tongue and collected the wet articles as the shogi player dried, returning to the washroom and Ann.

Once done changing, Hifumi stepped into the washroom where Rei-san stroked a brush through the other girl’s mid-back-length, luxuriant golden hair. “Is everything all right, Ann-san?”

The girl flashed an embarrassed smile. “Oh, it’s fine, Hifumi-san. No harm done, and it’s not like your dog meant any trouble.”

The runner’s voice reached from around all the corners to the den, “‘Cause who has surround-sound speakers that big?”

Ann pressed a palm over her face. “Geez, Ryuji.”

Rei-san finished a brush-stroke. “There we go, young lady. Nice and dry. Did you want a hand fixing it up into those lovely pigtails you had them in before?”

Ann gave a shy smile. “This is fine. I do all my own styling unless the agency wants something specific before a shoot.”

Oh, you’re a model?” Rei cast a patient smile the shogi player’s way. “Hifumi-chan knows a thing or two about that.” She picked up the wicker basket with wet clothes. “Do you mind if I get right to these?”

Hifumi gave a bow of the head. “Of course, you’ve done more than enough today. I’m sure I can pull them out of the dry cycle if you want to go home.” The housekeeper opened the washroom’s side door to the laundry and slid the door shut behind her. Her absence left an awkward pall over the two high-schoolers. “So… you do your own hair?”

Ann flashed a chipper smile. “Yup! I used to love experimenting, ever since I was a little girl. It’s a lot easier styling others’ hair, but Shiho’s the only one who let me get hers since Mom and Dad moved to Tokyo.”

Hifumi brushed some hair behind her ear and led Ann back towards the den. “That sounds quite individually empowering. Mother’s decided what styling my hair and clothing had to be since middle school. I was always a bit envious of the other girls who got to play with buns or pigtails or butterfly clips. She’s been especially strict since I started at Kosei. Said it was especially important to maintain a consistent persona or the tabloids would pounce.”

Ann stood up. “That’s why you’ve gotta have fun , girl! The more rules they want to place on you in front of the camera, the more leeway they better give you off set!” She pumped a fist. “Of course, if you have a commanding presence, you can set rules on and off the set. It all starts with showing that camera who’s boss!”

Hifumi swallowed and looked at the tile floor, the blonde’s force of energy like a tidal wave. “Oh, I… I don’t know about that. It always seemed an exhausting tribulation to me. The best I can manage is trying to sneak studying into the hours they spend on makeup and wardrobe. Mom and Papa are very insistent that I maintain my grades for our futures. Some days I wish I could just leave it all behind, but where would that leave my family?”

Ann nodded. “But you’re so good at it. I looked up some of your work while we were yukata shopping with Akira. You look amazing in the traditional kimono shoots, but getting to do Sally Po must have been so fun.”

The blonde’s enthusiasm bolstered Hifumi’s resolve. She stopped and snagged the dazzling model’s wrist. “Ann-san, I need to ask… were you and Akira-kun ever…?”

An awkward laugh crawled out of Ann’s throat before she looked into the shogi player’s desperate eyes. Her cheer dimmed for a beat. “No. Akira and I were never an item.”

Hifumi pressed a hand against her chest, at last feeling her heart slow down. “Thank God.”

Ann let out a giggle that left the shogi player uncertain if it was the amused or nervous variety. “I suspect he only had eyes for…” She shook her head. “You should ask him.” She shifted her weight to her far leg. “Why?”

Hifumi scrabbled for that sense of energy she drew from the model earlier. “ Why ? You’re kind and beautiful and strong. You’re more of everything than me.”

Ann let out a spluttered laugh. “You’re not giving yourself any credit, Hifumi-san. Even before you first came in with us, I could tell he was drawing strength from you. He loves those brainy contests that you’re so into but just don’t do anything for me. He’s strong, but frightening sometimes. You never even flinched in there. You can’t call down winter’s fury like Carmen, but there’s so much more you can do that I can’t.”

Hifumi let out a breath that took a great deal of her anxiety with it. “Thank you, Ann-san. You really are the heart of the Phantom Thieves.”

Any time.” Smiling, Ann clapped her hands. “In exchange, could I braid your hair? You have such long, pretty hair, I would love to do something with it.”

Hifumi blushed, and felt her mouth turn into a smile. “Certainly.”

The two finished the walk to the den, where Akira and Ryuji argued over the original facing of a glass globe award. Ann groaned. “Ryuji! What did you break now?”

A vein pulsed on his forehead. “I ain’t broke nothin’! I just… kinda knocked it over while I was lookin’ at the huge speakers this place’s got. Watchin’ movies here must be effin’ awesome !”

Hifumi strode forward, trying to look more authoritative than resigned at childish antics. She reached out and took the award. “It was Papa’s token for raising a hundred million yen for international food independence. Mother had it facing south-east to catch the morning sun.”

Makoto bowed. “Sorry for not keeping them under control.”

Hands on her hips, Ann muttered, “Would’ve been a miracle if you could.”

Looking around, Hifumi noticed the orange-haired girl perched on a reading chair in the corner, a laptop nestled between her knees. The shogi player stepped closer, but left a few paces to help assure the young girl of her boundaries. “Oh, I’m sorry if we haven’t been accommodating, Futaba-chan. Is there anything we can get for you?”

Futaba tilted her head to one side until pops sounded. “What’s your wifi? I’m not getting any good signals anywhere in the room. And Makoto gave the Niijima glare when I tried to sneak off to scout for better reception.”

Oh.” Hifumi clasped her hands. “We don’t have wi-fi. Mother says it’s bad for security and internet speeds, but if you brought cables there’s ethernet ports above the power outlets over there,” she said, pointing to the couch her cousins sat at last time the Togos gathered in Tokyo.

Su-weet!” Futaba snatched up a bag nestled beside the reading chair and relocated.

Hifumi checked the time on her phone. “Mother won’t be home for at least an hour. Is anyone a fan of murder mysteries?”

Futaba gave no response. Akira, Ann and Makoto gave a shrug. Ryuji made a face like he’d taken a bite of expired nattou.

No Endeavour, then.” Hifumi headed for the drawer of remotes under the glass-topped coffee table. “Maybe something simple and universal. Has anybody seen Blue Planet?”

Tuesday, 16 August 2016
Evening
Chiyoda, Togo Home

Togo Mitsuyo pulled into the driveway, the streaming of droplets on her windshield left wet trails, indicating the torrential downpour ended. Two differences from normal stood out to the woman. First was darkness in the bay window to Hifumi’s room where she should be studying. The second was blue light interrupting the steady white light in the den, which should be dark. She stopped the car low in the driveway instead of pulling all the way to the garage in the back.

Mitsuyo’s heels clicked on the wet paving stone path to the front porch, but as she passed the den window, she heard an unfamiliar, loud boy’s voice shout, “Whoa!”

The click of her heels sped as she ascended to the porch, then stabbed her keys into the lock.

The same unfamiliar boy’s voice shouted, “Fish are insane !” as the door swung open.

Normal procedure was to call for Ueda to receive a report on the goings-on of the house and neighborhood, as well as estimate of Hifumi’s studying. But the middle-aged woman stormed in to catch the problem personally. If somebody brought a house party, there would be hell to—

Mitsuyo came to a sudden stop at the two-meter-wide doorway opening into the den. A whole gaggle of children gathered at the couches around the coffee table as Blue Planet played on the projector. Bowls with traces of celery and carrot sticks scattered across the table. No alarm, no call from the police or Ueda. Even the invidious mutt Hifumi doted on sat between the knees of the frizzy-haired delinquent and girl with a braided headband. Besides the frizzy-haired stalker who dared talk back to her at church, the only other one she recognized was the air-headed artist from Kosei.

The lanky boy in a fashionably asymmetric shirt stared up at her from the north couch. That head-in-the-clouds artist lifted a hand, “Greetings, Togo-san.”

Mitsuyo bellowed, “What is the meaning of this?”

That irritating mutt Rumi gave Hifumi darted out from between the knees of two children with a celerity the runt saved for getting into trouble. “Wu! Wu!”

Contrary to the mother’s expectations, Hifumi remained seated at an armless stuffed chair, the blond girl braiding her hair frozen and staring like a deer into headlights. The tramp responded with calm, “Mother, welcome home. These are my friends. It’s summer break, so I invited them to watch some Blue Planet.”

The grating boy with dyed blond hair blurted, “Yeah! Who’d’a known fish were so cool?”

The girl with a braided hairband pressed a hand against her forehead.

Mitsuyo’s eyes swept over the offensive group of children, calculating how to divide and deal with them. Her eyes stopped on the green gaze of her daughter, so like her father. This whole mess had to be her fault. “You just thought you’d bring strangers ? Into my home? I was perfectly clear about the rules when you started at Kosei. You have an image to maintain, and are not to cavort about!” She thrust a finger at the frizzy-haired boy parishioners identified as Kurusu Akira. “ Shogi friend ,” she spat as she recalled what her private investigators dug up on him. “Do you even know them? I should call the police immediately and have them haul the thug away. That boy has an assault conviction.”

Hifumi’s gaze hardened. “I know, Mother. He told me.”

The short-haired girl with a braided hairband stood, making it easier to recognize her. “Togo-san, his conviction on false testimony—”

Mitsuyo snapped her fingers. “Don’t think I didn’t have private investigators look you up as well when my daughter told me about her newest ‘shogi friend’, Niijima Makoto. Playing the snow-white dame while your family sits on a mountain of laundered money squirreled away thanks to police connections. And a sister with no experience, but a perfect conviction record? I’m sure she ‘found’ convenient evidence and well-timed confessions just like your old man.”

The gape from being so blindsided was as sweet as fine wine. That ought to teach the little fish not to hop out of their little pond.

Mitsuyo rounded on the obnoxious loudmouth next. That awful dye job and unnaturally perfect teeth told her all she needed. “I don’t even need to know anything about a dandy playing delinquent. Get out .” Continuing the sweep across the room, her gaze fell on her daughter and the girl with her dark hair still in hands. The blonde was familiar, but from where? Probably some foreigner here to wet her feet in a distant land before scurrying back home where she belonged. She locked her glare on her daughter, an unsettling defiance in her eyes and her back still straight. “After all the days and nights I have slaved for you, for you to sneak out behind my back to dally with would-be boyfriends!”

Pink bloomed on her daughter’s cheeks, but the orange-haired little gremlin sitting off to the side cackled. “So her girlfriend, wearing her clothes and braiding her hair, is okay?”

The blonde’s bright blue eyes snapped wide and a blush colored her cheeks. “Futaba-chan!”

The now-identified Futaba opened her mouth.

Mitsuyo snapped her fingers and cut her off with a glare. She learned long ago at NHK one had to maintain strict control or it could all be ripped away in an instant. “You will speak when spoken to.”

Mitsuyo strode forward, circling the blonde. If she dyed, she did her eyebrows as well. That meant either diligent attention to detail or a natural, exotic hair color. And while the blue would stand out of a crowd, those eyes were Japanese. The girl with the bad dye-job covering up proper black hair was right, the sheer red over black was one of Hifumi’s less popular weekend shirts. It strained over the buxom girl’s trim figure. And her daughter had never let another girl handle her hair before, outside of the juvenile fawning over her progeny’s superior locks. This one was halfway through an intricate crown-braid. And she might even stand a few centimeters taller than her above-average daughter. Yes, this could work. “Very well. Let it not be said that I am not a progressive mother. You others are trespassing, my lawyers will see to it you are punished in court.” She drew her phone. That frizzy-haired one had the gall to step closer. “ You on the other hand came close to my daughter when I warned you once. It should be simple to have you thrown away on stalking charges.”

Hifumi rose to her feet. “Mother! These are my friends, not trespassers.”

This is not your house,” she riposted, feeling an unpleasant tingle along her spine. Her daughter had never held fast this long before. Time to bring out the big guns. “Think of your father’s health if he were to hear of this. It’s already a strain enough on the household budget to keep up with his treatments.”

Kurusu took a step closer, his glasses failing to hide the fire in his grey eyes. “How dare you use her father’s incurable illness like a stick to beat your daughter into submission. She’s a person , not a trick ani—”

She hit the dial. “Back up, you thug . I’ll not have you lay a hand on my daughter like you did on that man in Shinjou.”

The blonde stood, hands on her hips. “Akira would never !”

Mitsuyo held her ground even as her mind reeled. Then the administrator picked up and the mother straightened. Never give a centimeter, the precedent would cascade into the future. “Send a car. I have trespassers. One’s a convict with a violent record.”

Mother!” Hifumi exclaimed, horror in her eyes but her back still straight. “They’re not trespassers, they’re my friends!”

Two officers are on the way, but if this is contested, Judge Shirou won’t be back in Tokyo until the twenty-second,” the man’s voice at the other end of the line said. “I’m afraid with the backlog created by the Shibuya Sweep that none of our other judges will have cases open for non-violent offenses.”

A tuxedo cat jumped from a leather satchel to the back of a couch and meowed at the group.

The Niijima girl sighed. “Right.” She reached a hand for the frizzy-haired boy wearing long sleeves as if unaware of the current hot season. “Come on, Akira. Everyone. We’ve spent some quality time with Antalas. There’s nothing else for us to do here.”

The teens filed out, the blonde sparing a pitying look to her daughter and most of the others looking like beaten dogs. The frizzy-haired boy held a lost-puppy look at her daughter for long enough to raise warning flags in the mother’s mind, and she stepped between them.

Before the children had even all gotten their shoes on, Hifumi came up behind. “Mother, please don’t be unreasonable.”

The door opened and the roar of a torrential downpour drowned out their muttering. That rain was a bad sign, it would reduce visibility and give them opportunities to evade the police. Mitsuyo rounded on her daughter as the children’s umbrellas went up, and didn’t care if they heard her as they fled into the rain.

Tuesday, 16 August 2016
Late Evening
Yongen, Back Streets

Akira managed to hold it together long enough to deliver Futaba home before his battling anxiety and rage made the shaking too strong to hide. He fumbled the gate once and slammed it open, though the wrought-iron was too light to give a satisfying sound against the perimeter wall, much less hear over the downpour. He let out a frustrated roar and punched the brick wall, cracking the concrete facade and splitting the skin on one knuckle. “Fuck!”

Of course his handkerchief would be on the same side as the bleeding hand. He fumbled it out and pressed it down to stop the bleeding.

Futaba texted the group chat, [What happened, Akira? You okay?]

Ryuji sent, [Something happen?]

[Akira used Primal Roar. It caused Confusion.]

Ann texted, [Sorry guys, my brain is starting to mis-fire. Yusuke stayed with Akira for a couple weeks. He might know something to help.]

[He's painting,] Futaba texted.

[How do you know that?] Ryuji sent.

Futaba logged out of chat.

Ann texted, [Listen, Akira. Today wasn't great, but it wasn't a failure. Morgana said it himself, we definitely changed her mother's cognition. Take care of yourself or we won't be able to do anything tomorrow. We're gonna have to make progress if we're going to change her heart before she takes you to court.]

She’s right, you know,” Morgana said as he slipped out to Akira’s shoulder. “Hifumi isn’t in ideal circumstances, but she’s safe for the moment and we’ve opened up a few paths in her mother’s palace.” His gaze fell to the handkerchief, the blood patch getting wetter. “My paws aren’t suitable for the detail work you need. Better have someone look at that right away, Joker.”

He already knew that, but wasn’t in the mood to argue with mister know-it-all. However, the lights were off and Takemi’s clinic was closed. After hours. Last time he busted his knuckles from being stupid and not pulling his punch, the bleeding had stopped by now. He focused on that wound to try to edge out the sound of Hifumi’s mother lambasting the kindest girl he ever knew.

After getting into Leblanc, he proceeded to the bathroom to wash his bruised knuckles, which refreshed the bleeding and added burning to the sharp, stinging sensation. Calling one of the other Phantom Thieves was out of the question – they deserved to get what rest they could. Akira navigated to his contacts for Victoria.

Late Evening
Yongen, Leblanc Loft

Kawakami taped the last corner of the bandage down over his middle knuckle. For most people just super-gluing his skin back together would be enough, but this kid didn’t know when to quit so she added a layer of petroleum jelly to keep him from pulling the injury apart. For a beat he sat back, his eyes closed behind those magnifying lenses, and she wondered if he was thinking or just taking in the white noise of the downpour outside. “There you go. It’ll take a week to heal, but you’ll be able to use it tomorrow.”

You’re pretty street-smart, Sensei,” he said as he examined his hand.

A girl has to learn a thing or two about cleaning up after roughhousing when she’s got two brothers. Thankfully, my mother kept me from getting involved in most of their shenanigans. Had to protect the femininity of the girl of the house.” She slipped glue and bandages back in the tin serving as a first aid container and rested it on the shogi board. That sparked her curiosity. And the perfect holiday just passed. “So, you have a good time with your sweetheart on Tanabata?”

His posture curled in on himself and he made a quarter turn away from her, his closed eyes squeezing. He drew in a deep breath, then let it out through his nose, but the pain in his posture didn’t leave. At last those grey eyes opened, but he looked out at the rain. “We didn’t get to do anything. Her mother was over-working her.” His spine straightened a little, that fire in his grey eyes burning. “You hear about idol agencies that starve their models?”

She nodded. A model? He must have landed himself a stunner. “I remember hearing Risette talk about that. Some companies are so busy chasing after ‘perfect’ numbers they forget their idols are human beings.” She flashed a sly smile. “But that’s just another opportunity for you to slip her a cute homemade bento.”

He looked at her through the corner of his eye.

I’ve seen you bring in stuff in generic tupperware. It’s a great opportunity. Selling homemade lunches was how I made some spending money in high school.” She gave a sly smile. “And if it’s for a special someone, maybe get a little kiss in gratitude.”

He buried his face in his hands. “Sensei!” The poor kid overworked himself to project a prickly aura, but after seeing him a few times at the end of a long day, she decided it was more like a deer tensing to run away from the sound of a breaking branch. “We haven’t even had a real hug. Just that one time when she almost fell asleep on her feet and I caught her.” His face reddened as those hands came down. “I’d never really touched a girl before, and all I could think about as she stood back up was how much I wanted to feel more.” His blush deepened and those hands came back up. “What’s wrong with me?”

Kawakami glanced over the bookshelf and spotted a Bible, with a picture of Mary on the wall next to the bed. That explained a little of why he seemed so sexually repressed. “It’s a thing boyfriends and girlfriends do, Kurusu-kun. It’s like practice for being husband and wife.”

He choked on air.

She grinned. “C’mon, Kurusu-kun. What’d she make you feel like? Warm? Light, like you could float away?”

He stared up into that Stratego box on his bookshelf. “Like I could drown in those green eyes.”

Kawakami felt a thrill pass through her. Youth, so naive yet so full of exuberance.

Then he stood up and swatted the first-aid tin tumbling from the shogi board with a clatter loud enough to ring above the downpour outside. He slammed a fist against the table. “It was bearable when being alone was all I knew! Why did anyone have to change it?”

She lifted a hand, but hesitated to touch the kid. “Because people shouldn’t have to be alone.”

He got up to retrieve the first aid kit. “Life was fine before people threw it in my face. I never knew I wanted to grow old with someone until…”

Kawakami stood. This wasn’t the first time she’d seen one of her kids meltdown over the explosion of possibilities in life. “Growing pains aren’t permanent, Kurusu-kun. Think of the growth spurt you boys are only now finishing. Change can be good.”

Good?” He stormed closer, a shakiness in his steps. “I feel like my muscles have been replaced by springs that are too tight. I’m always hungry, but my stomach is churning and I’m afraid anything I eat will come straight back up.” He came to a stop and a weariness pulled down at his frame. “I’m so tired, but the hamster upstairs just downed a shot of espresso and won’t get off overdrive. My joints hurt and some days I can’t make my hands stop shaking and I don’t know why.” Akira tossed his glasses to the table, then dug his fingers into his unkempt hair. “If it’s this bad now, I don’t want to know how much worse it can get.”

It can also get a lot better, Kurusu-kun.” She lifted a hand, then thought the better of patting her skittish student. “That heavy feeling of emptiness sucks, but there’s an alternative. That feeling of warmth and wholeness. It’s what a lot of people live for.”

Yusuke,” mumbled out of his mouth before he shook his head. “He’s an acknowledged victim. Society will let him live his life. My record was leaked before I even started at Shujin. Anybody that I get close to will suffer because of other people. It doesn’t matter how much I want…” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “No, it’s because I care about her I can’t dump that kind of fate on her.”

Kawakami pursed her lips. When she was first saddled with the transfer student with a record, she never suspected how empathetic he’d be. These kinds of kids were always hurt the most by the callous world, and they weren’t always wrong. “You remember what you said to me last time?”

He looked up at her, hesitation wavering in his grey eyes.

“‘I never wanted anything so much’,” she recited, her brown eyes holding his as if by that alone she could keep him from retreating. “I think it was the bravest thing you ever said. You want to help her, and you want her to help you. That doesn’t mean you’re selfish, it means you’re smart and already understand you don’t have to go through life doing it all alone. Don’t underestimate how much you can do for her. Or how much she might be able to do for you.”

Kurusu plopped onto the stool. His eyes fell to the floor, but the hunch in his shoulders lessened.

Kawakami did a victorious fist-pump in the privacy of her own mind. Sorting these kids out was a feeling like nothing else. “Good news! Your current condition is called puppy love. My consultation fee is a hundred thousand yen.”

Instead of arguing or making a wisecrack, the exhausted boy retrieved a box of paper trash out from underneath the work bench. He searched through it for a while, then pulled out a beat-up paper envelope, extracting a stack of yen notes from it as he stood.

Kawakami’s eyes went wide has he paced at her, counting out thirty thousand, forty thousand. She stood, holding up both of her hands. “O-oh, I couldn’t actually…” Fifty thousand. That kind of money could pull her out of the hole for weeks, maybe months. “R-really. Owing one of my students…” Sixty thousand. Despite her words, her hands betrayed her and reached for that ticket out of the scramble to placate the Takases. What would it be like to just breathe again? Even a few days of getting her head above water would be—

Wait,” he said, that wary tone re-entering his voice as his conscious mind re-engaged. “What do you actually need a hundred thousand for?”

Her train of thought derailed with the screams of a thousand moments of just wanting out . Despite herself, her fingers closed on those yen notes and her mouth ran ahead of her brain. “Oh, i-it’s for my little sister. Sh-she’s sick, so I need to pay for lots of medical bills.”

Kurusu ripped the notes away, sending them fluttering through the room with trembling hands. With terrifying speed, tears welled up and flowed over. “You’d lie to me?” He drew in breath. “I told you about my old bastard, about my mother… I told you about Hifumi ! How I can’t help her, be with her!” An ugly urp crawled out of his throat.

Uh-oh. She knew that sound from over-invested athletes. Kawakami scrambled for the lined trash bin next to his bed. He half missed, but by then his hands were on his knees and he couldn’t stop heaving. It felt like minutes passed as he sank to one knee and vomited rice, carrots, and celery over and over.

Apparently she learned nothing from the Takases, because despite driving him to puking, instead of leaving, her hand pressed circles on his back as he returned half-digested food. “I’m sorry, Kurusu-kun. But promise me you won’t hold things here. You’re killing yourself.”

Notes:

The judge mentioned is a reference to Shirou Masamune, pen name of Outa Masanori, writer behind Appleseed and Ghost in the Shell.

Chapter 106: August 17th, Bird's Eye View

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Wednesday, 17 August 2016
Noon
Akasaka Mitsuke, KFTV Studio

The director of Good Morning Japan held a thumb up. “Okay, everybody. Excellent work, we’re ahead of schedule. Go grab something to eat.” He nodded to the girl on the interview couch. “Thank you for your patience, Togo- ch an.” His phone rang and he let out a sigh before adjusting his new, red-framed glasses, then stepping aside to answer.

Hifumi stood and straightened her formal, maroon dress. It was showier than she preferred, the lacy arms and neckline felt gaudy. But Mother was being even more iron-fisted than usual after walking in on the Phantom Thieves.

A familiar red-head walked in from the staff hall, holding several plastic-wrapped onigiri from the cart vendor who stopped outside some days. She waved an over-sized rice triangle in the air. “Got ‘em, Dad!”

The director waved her over. “Perfect timing, we’re off for lunch. Will that be all? Good.” He folded his phone, then took the stuffed rice treat and tore the plastic off.

There was normally a barrier between director, cast and guests, but Hifumi felt like she was walking on pins and needles since her mother threatened the most supportive boy she’d ever met. Her being here to record Friday’s Good Morning Japan brought her to Mother’s palace doorstep. She bowed to the director’s daughter, hoping the girl closer to her age would be more amenable. “Good day, Yoshizawa-san. Please forgive the intrusion, but Mother keeps my phone when I’m expected to be on-camera. Could I make a two minute call to confirm an appointment after our shoot here?”

The red-head’s eye twitched. “Oh, I understand. I’m afraid my phone is old and not-so-reliable, but if you can get it to work you’re welcome.”

Hifumi took the proffered smart phone with several cracks in its screen. It looked like it had been driven over. She tapped in Akira’s digits, and noticed the phone’s contact book fill in his name even before the call connected. That spark of possessive jealousy flared inside and she wondered how he could possibly know the director’s daughter.

Fact Checker, Ella Fynoe,” Akira’s voice scratched over speakers that sounded like they’d been hit with a hammer several times.

Damn it, why did his off-beat humor have to make it so hard to stay mad at him? Hifumi swallowed her laugh and got straight to the point. “It’s Hifumi. Mother has my phone, but we’re at the KFTV studios today. I’ll be done in an hour, perhaps hour and a half,” she glanced up, “correct, Director?”

He sped up his chewing, then swallowed a bite of edamame onigiri. “Another fifteen minutes lunch, one hour tops for the rest of shooting. You’re quite the trooper, Togo-chan.”

Right,” she said, raising her voice a bit for the fears the phone’s microphone might not pick up everything. “Under an hour and a half. The rest can come in piecemeal, but somebody with the Nav is going to have to bring me.”

The speakers crackled, eating some of Akira’s words. “…getting equipment with … in Kichijoji. Ryuji will… your model on the inside. I’m not… Futaba’s joke, but Ann… get you.”

Her nervousness pushed Hifumi to raise her voice even more, “Okay, I’ll be waiting in the south wing. The desk clerk will be expecting her.” She wanted to get some more specific clarification, not even being certain if Ryuji, Futaba, or Ann was going to be the one to meet her at the studio’s south wing, but the call quality was so bad she didn’t trust the ability to clarify without the director or his daughter hearing everything. She cut the call and a low battery warning winked in the corner.

Hifumi handed the phone back to the red-head. “Please forgive my intrusion, it looks like your phone battery is almost out.”

The younger girl in a yellow dress gave a casual nod, her over-sized onigiri polished off despite the mere minute spent on the phone. “It just seems to do that, Ven—I mean, Togo-san.” She glanced down at the large onigiri still held in her left. “Oh, don’t you have anything for lunch? Here, you have to give the body proper fuel or it won’t be able to perform when you need it.”

The reasoning was sound, especially with her future excursion into Mother’s palace, so Hifumi took the shrink-wrapped onigiri and bowed in thanks.

Wednesday, 17 August 2016
Afternoon
Togo’s Temple, Front Bailey

Coming all the way from Kichijoji meant Akira wound up the last Phantom Thief to rendezvous. Makoto and Futaba kept a wary eye on the Palace, where there was less a low layer of fog and more a ground-level cloud stretching up meters above all but the tallest towers of the Palace. Despite the lack of wind, it rolled as if it had a will of its own. Ann gave a new retractable whip made of sword blade segments a few experimental swings well away from the others. Ryuji knelt down, finishing assembly of his wood-stock rifle, then stood up and handed it to the shogi maestra. Hifumi drew back from her summer homework chat with Yusuke and took the weapon as if afraid it would go off on its own. She stood in her bright red and dark blue rebel form shrouded by her voluminous hooded cloak. He tried not to stare at the way her knee-high boots fitted snug against her toned calves.

Morgana bounded into the middle of the Thieves and waited for Ann to step closer, her whip retracted to a sword form. “Welcome back, Phantom Thieves. We’ve got a few things to do before we get started.”

Akira stepped forward and raised a hand. “May I start? I’ve been meaning to say this for a while.” When the others all turned curious gazes at him, he decided to just go for broke and bowed at the waist. “I’m… I’m sorry about being such a pain in the ass.”

Futaba squawked, “What? No way!” at the same instant as Ryuji blurted, “Effin’ finally!”

Makoto tapped him with her elbow.

Yusuke tilted his head a bit. “I am afraid I do not follow.”

Akira tugged at the still unfamiliar, new strap keeping his P90 hanging on his shoulder, and stared at the gravel at his feet. “It happened every time. When we had an enemy , somebody’s Shadow to fight, at least I had a goal to look at. But after we won every battle to change someone’s heart, I lost sight of that. I spent so much of my life getting ready to fight I’m still not much good when there isn’t a fight in front of me. I paced. I snapped. I sulked and did all the stupid shit that I should’ve known better ‘cause that shi—”

Hifumi cleared her throat.

“—stuff pissed me off when other people did it.” He forced himself to stand straight. “We won. No, you guys won, and dragged me along with you because I couldn’t cut it on my own.”

Ann took a step closer. “We didn’t carry you, we did it together . All of us.”

Akira’s gaze fell back to the gravel. “When Futaba’s heart changed, we followed the same procedure that succeeded three times before. If I really trusted you, if I really believed in you, I wouldn’t have gone to shi…wouldn’t have panicked.” He drew in a breath and tried to will his heart rate to slow down as he thought about the girl’s limp body in his arms. “But when I saw Futaba-kun there, all I could think was I broke my promise to God and Father Motoori to never kill, never even try to kill anybody ever again. When Morgana was telling me and Ann about becoming gentleman thieves, I thought I’d be just like Arsène Lupin and play monster to real monsters without becoming a killer myself. But when Futaba was there and wouldn’t wake up no matter how much I shook her, I thought I’d killed her. Somebody who was just like me, just wanted to live.”

Futaba sniffled and Hifumi put an arm around the shorter girl’s shoulder to draw her close.

Morgana allowed a beat to pass before he stepped back towards the longcoated boy. “Joker? I won’t say that there haven’t been some days that we didn’t have to tolerate you. But you’ve come from a very rough road and done your human best to be there for every one of us. Even when you didn’t think you’d get anything for it.”

Ryuji glanced from Akira to Ann and muttered, “Oh, he thought he’d get somethin’ for it.”

Makoto jabbed him with an elbow.

Morgana ignored them. “I promised to lead you at first because I just wanted something from you, help changing a palace so I could cause aftershocks in the Metaverse and get my human body back. But I saw something special in you way back then. That was why I nominated you to be the leader of the Phantom Thieves when we were celebrating Kamoshida’s change of heart. You see your inability to do everything yourself as a weakness, but what you don’t see is how much you reach out to others to bridge those gaps. How there’s just something about you that calls to other people, even if it’s not the same thing to each person. You’re not the only one worried about who you could be or what you might become. I’ve had this distorted body for so long, I can’t even remember what my human face looked like.” He smirked and thrust out his little chest. “I’m sure I had a sturdy body and did a good deed a day, rain or shine. That I was the kind of gentleman who chastised people who smoked inside, and saved bullied cats.”

Ryuji let out a loud, amused snort. The president elbowed him. He elbowed her back. “Fine! I’ll clam up.”

Anyway,” the team leader continued, “I swore I’d save those in trouble, and I’m going to be here to save you until you realize you’re safe. All of us will, and I know you’d do the same for us. Because we’re Phantom Thieves, and it’s all for one and one for all!”

Futaba threw her fist in the air, a hiccup interrupting her, “Y-yeah!”

I think those are the musketeers,” Hifumi muttered.

Futaba cackled.

Yusuke gripped his rifle strap. “What is so amusing?”

Futaba clutched her staff weapon to help her stand, but waving couldn’t brush off the question. After a beat, the hacker explained, “If this was a sentai series, this would be the point where there’s the sound of shattering glass and the narrator tells the audience that through our love and friendship we’ve gained a new power.”

Makoto chuckled. “Like when Natsu spends half a volume getting beat up by the villain of the week, then jumps to his feet and goes ‘I can’t let down my friends!’ and turns the whole fight around?”

Yeah!” Futaba stepped out from Hifumi’s arm. “Like gaining lightning immunity. That would be so cool. Seeing one of those Hifumi cognitions coming out,” she started awkward steps, then thrust out her hand with two fingers extended, “and shooting us with lightning like Azula and just blowing it off would be peak bad-ass.”

Hifumi stood straighter and placed a hand on her chest to emphasize the displeasure her mask only allowed to show on the lower half of her face. “A member of the Togo kingdom would not fall to the ravages of madness!” She lowered her hand and spoke in a more normal tone. “Also, I’d rather not use the comparison of a mother who was supportive until her mysterious disappearance. We haven’t yet saved mine.” She crossed her arms, tapping a slender, white-gloved finger against her chin. “That reminds me, you all used pseudonyms the other day as an additional protective measure against the Palace ruler. What should mine be?”

Yusuke’s eyes traced over her, stopping on her etched greaves. “Cavalier?”

Hifumi shifted her weight from foot to foot, still looking a little awkward with the rifle Ryuji gave her earlier. “I’m not sure how apt that is when I have no horse or other means of enhanced conveyance.”

Your Persona teleported me in that foggy courtyard. I’d likely have been killed by that guardian dragon if you hadn’t,” Makoto pointed out.

Hifumi raised a fist. “I shall always be prepared to defend gentleman thieves!” One of the red lights under her voluminous cloak dimmed and the transfer student had the distinct impression she was squinting in thought. She shook her head. “Though that felt more like castling in chess. Even more of a brief interpose, really. And it might be wise not to try to test that, I feel like that was the absolute maximum of what Dihya could do.”

Ryuji scratched his scalp with his metal-capped club. “Cape?”

Futaba bound back for the taller girl and yanked, forcing a nasal voice as she called, “No capes!” When the clasp snapped open, she stared at the heavy cloak in her hands. “Whoa. Edna Mode was wrong!” She handed the cloak back to Hifumi. “Uh, maybe Rebel?”

Hifumi settled her cloak back on her shoulders and the clasp snapped back. “Rebel has a bad sound across Japanese history.”

Futaba scratched her head. “I was trying to think of superheroes that use shields, but ‘Captain Japan’ kinda sounds too long anyway.”

Ann shifted her weight to her far foot. “You knew where everyone was, but Oracle kind of already has the seithr kind of name. Oh! Before we got back to Rider, you were so ready to give orders and it saved our butts! Maybe something like Queen?”

Akira smiled, especially since he didn’t have to give the suggestion. Now the title that he saved for the woman most appropriate for it could take her rightful—

Hifumi gave a brief, apologetic bow. “Thank you, but as much as I may like to play Queen of the Togo Kingdom in shogi, I feel that would be presumptuous for the newest member joining a team of veterans with a very qualified vice leader.” That slender gloved digit tapped on her chin again. “Though your mention reminds me there are forms of vision besides pagan rituals, like a bird’s eye view.” She snapped her fingers despite her gloves. “You’re all so much stronger than me, but when looking through Dihya I can look down upon the Palace and try to find the safest paths or most optimal weak points to attack. May I be Hawk?”

Bwuh?” Akira intelligently blurted.

Hifumi fiddled with her cloak with both hands. “Oh, is that no good either?”

No, it’s fine,” he said, squelching his own disappointment. “I just thought Queen sounded perfect for you.”

She bowed again, shallower this time. “I’m flattered, truly. But the queen is a piece in chess that has unparalleled power, even beyond any of the pieces in shogi. I can help you all do what you do a little better, but it feels… conceited to name myself something like that when it’s all of you doing so much.” She reached to her face under her voluminous hood. Akira couldn’t tell if the hard shell over her upper face disappeared or the optics just turned off, but the red form of her Persona coalesced above her for a moment. “And it feels like Dihya takes much less effort to call out. Though I don’t feel like she has offensive magic like I’ve seen from you,” she finished with a nod to Ann and Makoto.

Morgana grinned. “No objections here. And your power has clearly stabilized since the day you awakened to your Persona, just like happened with all of us.” He turned back to the lobby building and flicked his crossbow to the ready. “Okay, Hawk? Take to the flank guard. Rider, Fox? Up front with me.” He looked up at the longcoated boy. “You think you’re up to the front?”

Akira smirked and drew a black steel machete even bigger than his previous over-sized survival knife. “When am I not?”

Afternoon
Togo’s Temple, Hall of Interns

No sign of the damage caused by their first fight against Big Green lingered, but the Phantom Thieves defeated the patrolling Shadow and made their way to the far door. Unlike the open field last time, a short, covered walkway extended the short distance to a new palatial castle building. Etched above the door read ‘Hall of Decay’. Akira stepped forward to read the placard, “I have no voice and yet I tell of all things. I have leaves but am no tree, pages but am no royal. I have a spine but no heart, no arms to toil.”

Ryuji scratched his head with his square-studded club. “The eff is with this damn place an’ all these nonsense poems? No animal’s got a spine an’ not a heart!”

Makoto rolled her eyes wide enough to be visible under her mask. “It’s the classic hiding of clues within misdirection of any brain teaser, Reaper.” She scratched her own head. “Though I confess I’m rather stumped by what kind of entity would have servants without being royalty.”

Futaba stepped closer to read, her goggles making her attention look intense even if her posture was relaxed. “Page is in katakana, though. Maybe it’s talking about a different kind than boys running messages for bigwigs?”

Akira shot straight. “Books!” Wood gears clacked behind the gate and it rumbled sideways into the wall.

Hifumi wrapped her arm snug around his and gave a broad grin. “I knew you’d get it.”

Akira choked at the feel of her svelte body against his arm, and took a few moments to regain cognizance after she let go.

The Hall of Interns was filled with imagery of rods and people scrambling after yen notes, with plenty of bright colors even if just to highlight within the gloom. An active, but petty kind of cruelty. Light fixtures styled like drooping willow branches lit the Hall of Decay, though all in a dim grey that seemed to leech the color out of everything. The screen paintings in this hall showed flies, choking clouds, and emaciated bodies with weak arms reaching out from piles on carts. Exhibits of masked men and women with bowed backs and drooping shoulders stared at clocks and calendars.

Makoto lowered her shotgun, the gun-light unnecessary. “This resembles what a lot of people describe as their careers. I hope Big Sis doesn’t feel like this about hers.”

Hifumi took a hesitant step inside with them. “Mother… I’m partly responsible for this.”

Ann shook her head. “You’re not the one who made your mother become what she is.”

Not entirely, no,” Hifumi replied. “But we were so close when I was a little girl. She taught me how to read and we’d spend long nights brushing each other’s hair as the other one read. She taught me how to study, mnemonics for remembering numbers and math equations, how to balance the household budget and invest. We’d go shopping together for the parish’s food and clothing drives.” Her cloaked shoulders drooped. “I ended up spending more time with Papa because he was fun, he taught me how to play shogi and took me out sight-seeing between his tournament games or fundraisers.”

Makoto stepped closer. “People need a little discipline and a little fun in their lives.”

Movement rounded a corner and one of the patrolling Shadows spotted them before the Thieves could take to cover. “Intruders!” Its body shuddered and swelled into a black pustule, then burst into a towering, brawny green-skinned man with long dreadlocks and a pulsing orb where its stomach should be. Flanking it formed a pair of men with snake arms and serpent coils where the legs should be.

Dihya coalesced above Hifumi and the girl called, “I remember those smaller ones are resistant but not immune to fire as well as firearms.”

Morgana shot one in the chest, and it hissed back. “Those scrubs are three yen a pair. Find a weakness on that big one before he starts exploding the whole hall around us.”

Futaba shot it with her staff weapon. “Yeah! It’s like Sparky Sparky Boom Man, with extra boom!”

The two serpent-men lunged forward, only to halt their advance when Ann swung her sword, extending it into a bladed whip slashing through the air.

Their advance still left them outside immediate support by the physical powerhouse, so Makoto surged forward to apply her studded gauntlets. A series of blows pounded into a serpent-man, but it survived her assault and lashed at her with both snake-arms. She parried one, but the other sank its fangs into her.

Akira ripped off his mask, “Get off! Nike!”

The woman in white, with winged sandals and bladed hoops coalesced, diving forward with a gymnast’s grace and coming up with a twirl between both serpent-men and slashing at them. Both dissolved.

Big Green lunged forward, slamming a punch straight into Nike’s face, sending it snapping back and toppling both the Persona and Akira.

Fox, your Persona would be better than Oracle,” Hifumi said as she held a hand to her face under her hood.

Futaba backed up. Yusuke squeezed off a gun burst as he advanced, then reached for his mask. “Goemon!” The kabuki-esque thief blew into what Akira still couldn’t decide was either an axe or giant pipe, discharging a bolt of lightning into the burly enemy.

Big Green shuddered, but held its focus on Nike as it tromped forward with one leathery fist held high.

Ann snarled, “I don’t think so! Freeze!” Carmen manifested beside the towering enemy with a pulsing energy orb in place of a belly, then snapped her thorned whip around its neck. Frost began to spread across its skin from the whip.

Big Green backhanded Carmen, knocking the Persona floating back and her whip slipping loose.

Any help?” Yusuke surged closer, sliding out his katana and slashing with one smooth motion.

I’m trying, it has a lot of strengths!” Hifumi shouted, Dihya above her with both its eye-decorated tower shields angled on the behemoth. “It’s like trying to pick out the instruments missing from an orchestra when most of the others are playing louder than normal!”

Makoto rode Johanna past Big Green’s legs, billowing fire, then swept Johanna around to try to catch and trip the muscled behemoth.

It stumbled just one step, then kicked the cycle-Persona and rider tumbling, then reached the still stunned Nike.

Wind!” Hifumi cried out. “It’s weak to wind!”

Take my place!” Makoto shouted as she drove back on a fiery motorbike leaving a scorched trail.

Ryuji nodded. “Got it! Captain Kidd,” he bellowed as he dashed up to the front. His skeletal pirate riding a tattered ship coalesced, leveled his arm cannon, and unleashed a howl of shredding winds.

Big Green took a step back with a snarl of pain.

Ryuji bared his teeth. “I thought you said he was s’posed to be weak to wind!”

That is weak to wind,” Hifumi retorted. “Look at how little it reacted to fire or blades.”

Big Green brought up both its forearms into a wary guard and its belly-orb churned.

Futaba quavered. “I remember this part. This isn’t good!”

At last, Akira’s head stopped spinning and he pushed himself up, then dismissed the Greek goddess of victory. “This is the best boost I’ve got. Nekomata!” His fresh out of lockdown fighter growled behind her mask, the forearm blades extending past her hands glistening in the color-sapping light. She twirled through a short little dance before funneling a pulse of howling winds at Captain Kidd.

Ryuji jerked on his feet and inhaled like a runner on his second wind. “Awright! Let’s do or die, Captain!” The skeletal pirate leveled his arm-cannon at the green monstrosity again, unleashing a sharp, concussive pulse of wind. Following behind that roared a torrent of leaves and tiny debris caught in a storm of shredding wind.

The combined winds slammed into Big Green and it stumbled back with a pained growl, the growing churn of its belly orb settling.

Ryuji gawked. “Holy shit, we did it!”

It still stands!” Yusuke reminded them, using Goemon to send a bolt into the humanoid monster for good measure. Carmen likewise shot a bolt of ice into it, but held back in case somebody else had a better idea.

Akira clenched his gloved fists, his heart thrumming. “Round two!” Nekomata danced and twirled a funnel of tearing winds into Captain Kidd, his sails billowing before Ryuji aimed a finger-gun and his Persona unleashed another focused storm.

This time the scuffs and scratches across its skin and tattered leathers on its legs were more obvious. It tried to brace to charge another beam of doom, only for the Phantom Thieves to repeat the same successful formula.

So Big Green threw itself into a snap-punch into Goemon, knocking him flying and Yusuke tumbling to the ground with blood flying from his mouth.

Ann roared in anger, swinging her whip-sword in time with her Persona, cutting gashes across its face.

Big Green reared back a haymaker to pulverize the sensual dancer Persona.

Its fist met Dihya’s tower shield, and the eyeblink after it retracted its hand, Carmen was in front of it again.

Akira and Ryuji stepped into that time to slam it with another enhanced windstorm. Carmen shot another ice bolt into the monstrosity as Ann knelt next to Yusuke, so Makoto rode back in on Johanna to help maintain an offensive rhythm until the boys could unleash yet another windstorm, dissipating the powerful Shadow.

As soon as he was down, Morgana approached the blonde and artist. “You two okay?”

Yusuke worked his jaw open and closed, then stood. “I believe Doctor Takemi’s medicines will be sufficient this time.” He bowed his head at Hifumi. “Thank you for discovering its magic vulnerability. The last time we battled such a foe it inflicted far worse injuries.”

Ann nodded. “And it’s not like Reaper would’ve hit it with wind otherwise.”

Ryuji slammed the business end of his club on the ground. “Okay, first of all, I always hurt ‘em more when I’m usin’ Kidd’s wind to go faster an’ hit ‘em harder. Swords were built for a reason. An’ second, me an’ my Persona are front-line ass-kickers. You let your Persona do all the work most of the time, an’ you totally miss out on the satisfyin’ crunch when you bash a baddie ‘cross the face.”

Except this time,” Morgana pointed out.

Thieves can’t afford to argue in the midst of a heist!” Hifumi stepped between them, her hands on her hips and her heavy cloak billowing. She rounded on the track star. “Besides, I was the one who took so long to detect its vulnerability.”

Akira shook his head. “It’s your first day—”

She held up a hand with one finger aloft. “A moment?” The smoldering red lights under her hood stopped on the class president. “Rider-san? You’re looking a little green around the gills.”

Makoto held her right arm with her left, though the longcoated boy noticed she avoided the bandage. “It’s just a scratch, I don’t want to hold everyone up because I’m not at one hundred percent. We don’t want to waste energy.”

Now that Hifumi pointed it out, Akira noticed her stance wavered. With anybody else he would blame it on poor rest or diet, but Makoto was fastidious and had a whole pre-bedtime ritual to ensure she got good sleep no matter her day. She’d tried to cajole the others into adopting it via chat several times. He let his P90 fall to its strap and approached. “That’s one of Takemi’s medicated bandages, you should be healed by now.” She let him take her arm and peel off a corner. Swollen, black veins spread from a pair of glistening puncture wounds. The inside of the bandage was wet with blood. “Why didn’t you say it was this bad?”

Makoto yanked the bandage the rest of the way off and angled her arm to try to get a better view. “It wasn’t that bad or I wouldn’t have settled with patching it up myself!”

Light twinkled as Hifumi dismissed her scanning Persona. “She’s poisoned and it’s dampening any attempt to heal her . Who ha s antidotes?”

Morgana’s ears curled back against his head. “I’ve only been poisoned once, and it was by a Shadow deep in Mementos the first time I can remember escaping from it. It burned itself out before I got to the surface. It’s been so long that I forgot to look for a countermeasure.” His mouth trembled. “Guys, I’m… sorry.”

Makoto shook her head. “If it’s been since before Kamoshida, I can understand how it might be forgotten. Just hand me a fresh set of gauze to help control the bleeding. Hawk, find us a Safe Room. We can take stock there. T his poison is cognitive so it’s unlikely to cause lasting damage. Everyone else?” She raised a gauntleted fist. “We k eep fighting. V ary your tactics in case something strikes up another realization in Oracle or Hawk.” She returned to the front, hand on her hip as if daring somebody to disagree.

Morgana swallowed, then straightened. “That’s my second-in-command. You heard her, everyone. Panther? You’ve enthralled and put Shadows to sleep before, take the front line with Rider . Joker? Keep your eyes peeled for opportunities. Oracle, hang back and help keep an eye out for Rider.”

Futaba swallowed, but made a fist with her free hand. “I… I wanna fight with Joker. I know I may not be as high-leveled as you guys, but I’m a quick learner. Yeah, my muscles might not be as bulgy as Reaper’s, but this is a place of the mind and I have brains!”

Dude!”

Akira held his arms straight forward and took a shambling step. “Braaains!”

H olding still so Hifumi could finish tying a fresh square of gauze over her wound, Makoto laughed. “Okay, okay. Let’s just get moving.” She gave a nod to the shogi maestra and once the hooded girl pointed, they all started walking.

The Thieves wound their way through what had all the polished, flat planes of wood and subdued paintings of an art hall, but the winding topography of a swamp. They closed on a plastered wall to their right when Hifumi spotted another shrine-keeper Shadow on patrol.

Akira put a little extra oomph into his leap – had to make it look good for Hifumi when he cleared the Shadow’s shoulder and ripped off its mask on the way. It swelled and burst into a bird with a three-meter wingspan and plumage the colors of the rainbow. Below it growled a red-furred dog the size of a man. The giant’s squared cap angled at him and the orbiting spheres sped up.

Nice job putting yourself on the wrong side!” Ryuji snapped.

Shut up!” Makoto spun her fiery bike on its front flame-wheel to bash back at the big red dog with a scaled underbelly when it lunged at her.

The red-wrapped figure hovered over Hifumi. “Be cautious, that Kinich bears the power of radiation. If it stays out of reach, show it our force of modern arms!” Her hands pressed together as if in prayer and the glow behind Dihya’s floating face mask intensified.

Akira reached for his mask as he called out, “Nekomata!” She wasn’t as strong as Nike, but when Hifumi hadn’t found a weakness to exploit one was as good as another. Her bracer-mounted claws sank into the dog-monster with great resistance.

Johanna spat a bolt of fire at the flier, which flapped to dodge.

The enormous bird opened its mouth and unleashed an off-white ray onto Johanna. She dissipated in a swirl of fiery motes and clattering metal panels, leaving Makoto throwing up on all fours.

The red dog leapt at her, forearm claws glinting.

Kin-ki!” he called out, remembering the promise the twins made. It should be able to add a temporary shell of protection over one of his friends.

His golden oni coalesced and held one hand out in a pose like a Buddhist in prayer.

The monster dog reached its target, and after a flicker its claws scraped over one of Dihya’s tower shields. Kin-ki’s protective aura solidified around her like the unfolding armor of a Goa’uld. The next instant, Makoto was back before the dog, still on her knees.

Hifumi’s glowing optics brightened and she shouted, “I have you now, servants of chaos!” Dihya lifted a tower shield and the light behind her floating face-mask shimmered. An aura like the armor appeared over both Shadows, but retracting until it folded itself away.

Futaba’s staff weapon blast missed, but Ann’s pistol shot bored straight into the roof of the bird Shadow’s mouth and it collapsed to the ground.

Oracle,” Hifumi called out, “The Garm is vulnerable to Marcus’ beams!”

Futaba cackled as she tapped her bracelet and transposed into her Persona. The twin prongs on the heavy glider seared into the red dog and it collapsed with a whimper.

The thieves fell upon the downed Shadows without mercy, and once those dissipated took to the door into another cognitive gap in the temple. Once safe inside, Makoto ate one of Haru’s carrots and sat in what appeared to be an executive’s lobby chair.

Morgana hopped onto the polished, dark wood table in the middle. “How are you feeling, Rider?”

Much better,” she said, sitting straight. She scratched at the back of her head. “I should apologize. I tried to tough it out on the front because I didn’t want to scare Hawk away from helping us in the Metaverse. I know you have better reason to change your mother’s heart than me, but after what she said about Dad and Big Sis…” Her fists clenched and she growled.

Hifumi wagged a finger. “A shogun and his retainers must know their limits or any battle is in peril.”

Yusuke set his rifle on the table so he could sit back in the padded chair. “That was an unnecessary risk. Joker has been clear that Hawk’s resolve was beyond reproach even before her Awakening.” He pushed his mask up and those dark eyes fell on Hifumi. “What you did with your Persona… what exactly is it? Castling?”

Makoto looked over the shogi maestra. “She called it an interpose in the front Bailey. I know your Persona has shields, but doesn’t it hurt you when you take a blow meant for one of us?”

Hifumi slipped her gloved hands under her heavy cloak. “It’s all right, I don’t bruise easily.”

Akira stiffened. “Hif—Hawk, you can’t just pretend everything’s fine when you’re hurt. It could add up and leave you open in the future.”

Yusuke’s toneless, “Are you really telling others to be forthright about vulnerability?” left the longcoated boy unsure if he was deliberately prodding or not.

Ryuji stretched out his shoulder. “Too bad Hawk can’t, like, ‘super-strength on everyone’. Like that time we all turned Rider into superwoman and she kicked mind-Sojiro’s ass.”

Futaba rounded on him. “You guys beat up Sojiro in the Metaverse?”

Yusuke folded his gloved hands together. “We defeated a cognitive likeness of Boss-san in your Palace. He was one of the powerful guardians trying to keep everyone from getting to your Treasure.” His eyes came to rest on the longcoated boy. “As diverse as our Personas may be, you seem to pull a new trick out of your sleeve every time you pause for thought in the Metaverse. I don’t suppose you’ve come up with a Persona with restorative power?”

Ann, Ryuji, and Morgana all leaped to their feet with a, “No!”

Hifumi looked over the Thieves. “What am I missing?”

Makoto sighed. “Some of the Shadows Joker turned into Personas should have restorative power, but Apsaras went berserk when he tried once in Mementos. Healed all the Shadows and weakened all of us, and he couldn’t un-summon it until we defeated the Shadows. There’s got to be some kind of block there.”

Futaba scooted closer in on her padded chair. “On the plus side, Joker throwing some kinda buff taught Dihya a new move!” She clapped her hands together. “You oughta hit me with that an’ see if I can learn new skill, too!” She dance-wiggled in her seat. “I never thought about bein’ a blue mage before.”

Akira slumped in his chair. “I don’t think that’s how it works. All of the people I’ve infused with power have a pretty strong rapport.” His gaze flicked to Makoto. “Remember that time we tried to merge fire in the bank?”

Ryuji laughed. “Yeah. You set her on fire an’ the boss whipped us for a round.”

Hifumi straightened in her chair. “Actually, it felt more like what Oracle described as her realization that her Persona had a similar power to one used in front of her. There’s so much new depth to having and using a Persona that I feel like I’ve barely begun to scratch the surface of what it means. Scanning Shadows just seems like the most important part of that, if like trying to pick out-of-tune instruments from a full, active orchestra. Identifying music is much easier when you have a single note or instrument played in isolation in front of you.”

The artist nodded. After a last check-up, the Thieves readied to charge back into the temple.

Notes:

“For three yen” is a Japanese idiom implying incredibly cheap, often in reference to a miserly character.

Chapter 107: August 17th, Pained Heart

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Wednesday, 17 August 2016
Late Afternoon
Togo’s Temple, Central Shrine

When the Thieves gathered around a tall, wooden gate, Hifumi stepped up to read the placard alongside them. “I can fill a room or just one heart. Others can have me, but I can not be shared.” She clasped her gloved hands to her chest and whispered, “Mother, why didn’t you tell me?”

Reaper – or rather, Ryuji – hung his head. “Dude, I am so ready to be done with this place.” When Futaba jabbed him in the side, he exclaimed, “Peeps outta just be straight-up with each other!”

Makoto scratched her head. “I don’t understand how others can have a thing that can’t be shared. It’s self-contradictory.”

No,” Ann said, her voice low. “Not if it’s a condition they each have. It’s loneliness.”

As distant gears clacked and the gate slid into the wall, Yusuke took her hand and squeezed. Despite the gloves of her thief costume, Hifumi’s hands felt cold all of the sudden and she looked aside at Akira. His eyes were on her hand, but when their gazes met, he blushed and looked away.

She was glad when the team leader strode into the foyer and she followed despite her own sense of cold. Like Yasaka Shrine in her last class trip of Ogawa, a trough of water with old-style ladles arranged along it stretched through the center of the foyer. Figuring it would be impolite to ignore, Hifumi picked up a ladle, then searched her glove for the termination point between it and the sleeve.

Futaba trotted past. “Don’t bother, it’s prolly a trap.” The Thieves all gathered just inside the foyer.

Ryuji swatted his hand at the air. “Damn, and I thought the fog was thick outside .”

Hifumi looked across the enormous courtyard, walls stretching tens of meters to the right and left and a hill rising in front of them with a path of paving stones winding up the rise. Dark stone torches rose up in pairs along the path, and willow trees like weeping widows sprouted from the rising earth. “What fog?”

Futaba pointed her staff-weapon up the hill at the offering hall to the right. “The fog pouring from behind that hill. That building’s the center of the shrine, right?”

Hifumi held her hand over her brow, out of habit. “That’s not even all the way up the hill. Though I have difficulty believing there’s a snow-covered mountain right behind it.”

Then that ‘snow-covered mountain’ got up and loped up the far side of the slope at them.

Close ranks!” Hifumi shouted. “But hold your fire, you don’t want Antalas to think you’re inviting him to play.”

Antalas?” Makoto said, before the cognitive likeness of her dog – if such could apply to a beast standing over four meters tall at the shoulder – closed. Futaba was the first, but the others snapped up their weapons before remembering the shogi player’s warning to hold fire. The blade-like claws on his forepaws cut gouges in a paving stone and his muzzle peeled back to bear rows of sharp fangs as he growled.

Hifumi took to the front line, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Yusuke and Ryuji. “Sit, Antalas!”

The deep and threatening growl came to a sharp termination, and the enormous canine’s rear end came to rest on the turf.

The other Phantom Thieves stared, but after a few moments realized they had to move. Makoto stepped up, keeping her eyes up and her weapon trained on Antalas’ general vicinity even after getting far enough she definitely couldn’t see the cognition.

Stay,” Hifumi commanded as she backed up to follow the others. The real Antalas would have stood and whined, hating being further than a few meters from her, but Mother appeared to think absolute obedience just appeared rather than being an exchange of mutual time and respect. The cognition’s tail thumped against the wall, but he stayed put as Hifumi joined the end of the train of Thieves ascending the stone path.

She heard Futaba reading the placard at the next door.

I haunt you at day and stalk you at night.
Watchmen call me bright,
yet I can take the sun’s light.
Home of gods, warren of fools, beware when I’m not in sight.”

Yusuke tapped a knuckle against his lip. “I can think of many matches to individual pieces. Mountaintops are often home to gods and a place of watching in mythology.”

Akira scratched his head. “But ‘warren of fools’?”

Makoto tapped her fingers on the barrel of her shotgun, keeping it ready in case cognitive Antalas stalked closer. “Hawk-san, what kind of people did your mother consider ‘fools’?”

The shogi player felt weight press down on her shoulders. “People who don’t come out ahead in business. Especially people who don’t demand payment up-front. She’s even more knowledgeable about psychology than finances, and leverages that without mercy. Despite Catholicism being closer to Judaism in treating charity as a necessary duty than magnanimous act. She still fought Papa when it came to tithe.”

Morgana tapped his folded crossbow against his crossed arm. “So she’d consider people who work hard without getting paid first to be suckers.”

Ryuji almost dropped his club in the haste to straighten. “Oh! Like the rabbit makin’ mochi on the moon!”

The door slid aside and Ann’s stare shone clear despite her feline mask. “Wow. Reaper figured out a puzzle!”

He rolled his eyes. “Eff you.”

Makoto cleared her throat. “Inside. Before that giant dog comes out of the fog again.”

More glassed-in displays of moments in Mother’s life scattered across the long walls. Papa presenting a ring to her in an upscale restaurant. One of NHK’s night-time anchorman’s desks. The dean presenting Mother’s degree in finances. A man in a fine silk suit handing Mother a business card. A boy handing a white snowbell flower to a girl with Mother’s brown hair. Hifumi felt like pouting extra hard at that last one, with Mother having chased off all her boyfriends. The Thieves proceeded into the safe room nestled in the far side and treated the shrinking poison damage on Makoto’s arm, but with nowhere else to go they returned to the courtyard.

They paced down the stone path until Futaba slowed to a stop, staring up in curiosity . Thunder rumbled and she pointed her staff weapon at the sky. “Hey, guys. I can see the antennas on the top of the tower. Damn, this thing must be a TV studio with all that hardware.”

Anybody else think the fog’s thinner?” Ryuji blurted, a smile on his face under his skull mask.

Futaba’s frown remained as she stared at the pagoda towering above them. “Why does that not make me feel good?”

Morgana paced to the enormous double-doors leading into the pagoda’s ground floor. Iron banding criss-crossed the doors, and he pressed a hand against them. Then rapped his collapsed crossbow against it, getting a faint but solid tapping. “All men seek me, but gods and kings may never know me.”

Ann scratched her head. “Everyone I can think of that people seek, gods and kings already have. Health, power, wealth .”

Hifumi glanced at Yusuke. She’d seen his high marks in history, but his eyes darted back and forth in the matter of a man sorting through a huge volume of possibility. Her gaze moved to Akira’s stormy grey eyes. If anybody understood, he must . “Think you have it?”

It’s not safety. Baldur and Cronus were both gods, and both killed.” He uncrossed his arms, a look of resolution on the face not concealed by that avian domino mask. “I fundamentally disagree with your mother’s idea that everyone seeks it, but ‘never know’ reminds me of Exodus 20:3. I think it’s equality.”

Hifumi smiled. “Close. It’s an equal .”

Gears clacked low underneath them and the door slid aside. The pagoda speared up at the churning clouds above, but despite the modest architecture she read about in the real world, the door and the corridor were large enough to drive a tractor-trailer through at full speed. Hanging torches bathed the space in generous, golden light. The silk screen paintings bearing her mother’s glamorous images wouldn’t have even hampered a motorcycle.

Morgana readied his crossbow and locked the bayonet out. “Ground floor of the Hall of Adoration. Keep your eyes peeled, everyone.” The rest of the Phantom Thieves tensed and Hifumi wondered what they had seen here. Despite being the interior of a pagoda, the gold gilding and polished darkwood could have fit the private palaces of emperors. The Phantom Thieves battled another cluster of Shadows and wound their way past a rope line tied to a fortress wall outside.

On the seventh floor, they came to a huge wood door lined with warding charms. They dimmed and tore when Hifumi ripped them apart to unseal the door and reveal what she hoped to be the last placard in Mother’s palace.

Often held but never touched,
always wet but never rusts,
often bites but seldom bit,
to use me well you must have wit.”

Akira smirked and poked the dyed-blond track star. “Well, so much for you,” he said, getting a chuckle out of Ann.

Ryuji jabbed back hard with his elbow.

Makoto held a hand to her lips, eyes distant with thought for a beat. “The tongue.”

Clacking reverberated through the walls, iron and wood locking sections of the door pulled away, but unlike last time the door did not slide all the way out of their path and the Thieves had to grunt and push to slide open a door embossed with a gold, snarling dog’s face. Beyond lay a treasure vault filled with jeweled ceramic statuettes resembling Mother or depicting the kanji for victory, wealth, fame, and safety. The room might have resembled a treasure vault were it not for the grand view of a balcony on the outer wall. A pearlescent, yet amorphous blob shimmered above a gold pedestal.

Morgana stopped next to it and turned to the Thieves. “Since we have two new members, I think some explanations are in order. This here is the Treasure.”

Futaba held up the hand not holding her staff weapon. “Um? My Treasure was my whole Palace.”

The pyramid-ship, or the command center in the middle of it, to be specific,” Morgana said. “This is the more usual form representing the seed from which the palace ruler’s distorted desire sprang.” His blue gaze rose to the shogi player. “I can tell from the way you’re looking at it that you can sense something about it.”

Hifumi clutched a hand against her chest. “There’s a ringing from it, like a song in minor key. Now that I’m here looking at it, I realize I’ve been hearing it since I first awakened to Dihya. Like a capstone in an arch, everything in Mother’s Palace points to it.”

Morgana gave the girl in circuitry-tights a beat to nod before saying, “Yup! All we need to do is send the Palace Ruler a calling card in the real world to make it manifest here in a physical form we can steal, and then that distortion will be removed from the ruler’s psyche. It may take some time for the ruler’s cognition to finish re-organizing, but just like Kamoshida, your mother will look at the crimes she’s committed with gaze unfettered by her distortion.”

Akira reached out and rested a hand on her shoulder over her cloak. “She’ll stop abusing you, and stop threatening other people.”

Makoto nodded and slung her shotgun. “We’ll have to make sure to have everything prepared. From the briefing Byakko gave me, the Treasure will only remain manifest for up to a day. And it’s unlikely a second calling card will work, the cognition can’t be changed back.”

Yusuke took his hand away from its resting spot on his katana. “Do you think she could have anything to do with the condition of her husband? I tried investigating online, but nothing has specified what exactly he is suffering from.”

Unable to bear the stifling sense of cold pressing down on her, Hifumi took hold of the hand Akira rested on her shoulder and squeezed to remind herself there was still human warmth in the world. “Guillain-Barré Syndrome, but we don’t know what caused it. And even with the things we’ve seen in Mother’s palace, I can’t imagine that she’d have caused Papa’s horrible sickness. I won’t . She can’t , it hurt her too much.”

Ann took a closer step. “Hawk…”

Akira’s other hand covered hers and she drew in a shaky breath. “Now that we have a route to the Treasure, we need to start on the calling card. Can you help us write it on group chat? Reaper and I can do the work of cutting out the physical copy.”

Today would have been a tutor and coach after the interview for Good Morning Japan, but I canceled those through the desk secretary. Mother will still be angry, so I will most likely be out of contact tomorrow.” Hifumi squeezed back, swallowing against the lump in her throat, but she couldn’t quite meet his eyes. “How soon can we… have everything ready to change Mother’s heart?”

Morgana folded back the bayonet on his crossbow. “I always insist on a day of rest to prepare for the battle against the Palace Ruler’s Shadow. They’re always the strongest thing in the Palace.” His gaze drifted to Futaba. “Generally. We want to be as rested and prepared as possible, especially since we only have one shot. That means Friday would be the earliest we could be ready to cha n ge the Palace Ruler.”

Hifumi let go of his hand and stepped back from the group. “Then no matter what I have to do, I’ll be here to help save Mother.” Her voice cracked and she bowed, as much in thanks to the Phantom Thieves as to excuse not meeting their eyes. “It’s like Mom’s been sick so long, and being so close to her being well and having a family again… Thank you,” she finished, bowing lower.

Yo, yo,” Ryuji piped in. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, but we ain’t done yet. Thank us when it’s done.”

Ann stepped into her field of view. “Your mother took away your phone, right? Are you going to be able to get it back to help write the calling card draft over Phantom Thief chat?”

Hifumi stood, but avoided meeting eyes with the sexy model in red. “Mother usually locks my phone in a drawer under her makeup in the master bedroom, but I’m careful to put it back before she notices I’ve taken it so I don’t think she realizes I can pick the lock yet. I’ll text the group as soon as I get home. I’ll just have to slip it back before she gets home, but the hostess club never lets her home until after eleven o’clock.”

Yusuke nodded, though there was a pensiveness to him she didn’t expect from the collected artist. “So late…”

Morgana nodded. “Very well. The fog has thinned considerably since yesterday, but we’ll still need you to navigate us a way out of here.”

Hifumi nodded. “Absolutely. And if everybody’s ready on Friday, I’ll be here to navigate us in. I’ll sneak out of home if I have to.” She glanced to the blonde who encouraged her to take her life back, in front of and behind the cameras. She straightened like Queen Togo would, and clenched a fist. It felt so much easier with Dihya thrumming within her. “Forces of chaos shall not prevail! These thieves shall steal the darkness itself and usher in a new age of light!”

Wednesday, 17 August 2016
Early Evening
Shibuya, 777 Convenience

Ann stepped inside and shook off her umbrella, her calculations to the nearest box of milk chocolate being thwarted by the uproar inside. There always tended to be a couple people in a convenience store on a busy street like this, especially during heat waves or rain, but more than a dozen people shuffled through the aisles and half again lined up in front of the register.

A woman with short brown hair locked gaze with her artist companion and cried out, “Thank God, I’ve been trying to call you and Kurusu-kun for two hours. Get changed in the back, I’ll hold the register.”

Ann blinked, her plans for a relaxing stroll under assault. Despite the hours in Togo’s Palace, Akira’s growing physical therapy tricks helped batter away some of the normal fatigue and soreness Ann thought was an inevitable part of the Metaverse. Just when Yusuke was starting to figure out how to be sweet and romantic. Then her phone rang, her agency on the ID. “Fine, you might as well go be mister hero. I’ll take this.”

Yusuke bowed and headed for the back door marked ‘Staff’ as Ann headed for a front corner where the outside downpour added a level of white noise that would give the crowded conditions as much privacy as she could expect. “Yes, Hayashi-san?”

Takamaki-chan, you are not an easy lady to get a hold of,” he said in a way that implied stern finger-wagging. “I just spent several hours today with a manager who would not take no for an answer. Your Edogawa shoot’s been on the calendar too long to move, but would you be able to pick up a shoot with a model outside the agency on Tuesday?”

Ann didn’t have to have Morgana there to know they might not have changed Togo’s heart by then. “Tuesday? So soon?” She glanced out the window at the torrential rain. “Wait, you said model outside the agency. I thought we didn’t do that.”

Togo wouldn’t take no for an answer,” Hayashi said, plaintive. “But this could be big, even for the agency. Huge for you. I tried to play it that your schedule’s booked solid, but she wants you to do a costume shoot with the Venus of Shogi on Tuesday. Court ladies type thing. She’s got it all planned out.”

Ann already had the Phantom Thief group chat up and shot out a text, [Hifumi, are you back home yet?]

Makoto’s ID lit up. [What's up?]

[Her mother found my agency.]

Futaba popped in. [Oh snap! You're not in trouble, are you? I haven't hacked into her private computer yet. Or yours.]

Three dots winked next to Makoto’s ID. [Futaba, what did I say about computer crimes?]

It’s just that Tuesday is so soon and I’ve got a lot going on,” Ann said so her manager wouldn’t think she dropped the call, leaning against shelves of magazines. [Not in trouble per se, I'm just a little worried about how fast she found out who I was and everything. My manager in the agency is on the line and he says she's already trying to book me for a shoot with Hifumi.]

[Congratulations!] Ryuji sent. Ann wondered how many letters he would have gotten right if his mother hadn’t locked the spell-checker on.

Akira sent, [She probably got your name from the housekeeper, and there can't be many blonde models in Tokyo. If she could find Makoto's sister is a prosecutor just from the couple of times Makoto and Hifumi played, and maybe hearing about it ONCE from Hifumi, her information network must be pretty extensive.]

I understand,” her agency manager said, not quite keeping the whine out of his voice. “But I’m serious when I say she wouldn’t take no for an answer. Please say you can make a Tuesday shoot. It’s a bit of a day starting at noon, but she’s offering one-third pay up-front, the rest after successful completion.”

Ann bumped her hip against the magazine shelves. “What’s ‘bit of a day’?”

She heard the creak of Hayashi’s office chair. “Proposed schedule says six in the evening.”

Six hours?” she blurted. “That’s longer than any of the shoots I’ve done!” It was more of a credit to the organization and preparedness of her agency so far, but most shoots tended to take half an hour with makeup and wardrobe, then just a couple hours posing for photographers after.

[This is sus,] Futaba texted.

Makoto replied, [I am inclined to agree. After the things she said about Dad, I wouldn't trust any plans she makes.]

Yuuki sent, [I think I'm missing some context. All this talk is about the mother of the Venus of Shogi? And you're trying to change her heart? Wouldn't this be an opportunity to get closer?]

I emailed you the details, Takamaki-chan,” Hayashi pleaded. “I know it’s a long shoot, but it includes setup and clean-up. I had to haggle with her a bit, but Togo-san’s willing to part with a pretty penny to get you on board.”

[We're already almost at the end,] Akira sent the Phantom Thief chat. [All we need to do is challenge her Shadow, steal her Treasure, and she'll be free of whatever distortion turned her into a greedy, tyrannical bitch.]

Futaba’s sent, [Now what would Hifumi think of such language?]

[Probably that it's unnecessary even if it's true,] Makoto texted.

Three dots winked next to Akira’s ID, then disappeared. Ann wondered if Morgana was laughing at them. After a beat, he sent, [I don't think it's a bad idea.]

[wdym?] Futaba sent.

Akira texted, [We don't know for sure if we'll be able to change her heart by Sunday. I can't be there for her, but I don't want to leave her alone. At least if you go, you two will be able to keep an eye out for each other and back each other up if anything happens.]

[Like you asked her to do for me before you changed Madarame-san's heart,] Yusuke sent, before the staff door opened and he trotted behind the counter with that bright green-and-pink uniform shirt.

Ann felt a flutter in her heart at that. Akira asked Hifumi to look out for Yusuke when the artist was still in danger? And was still trying to send backup when he was the one in the hot seat if they couldn’t change Mitsuyo’s heart? She hoped Hifumi could get him to realize the quality in his own heart. “Sorry for the delay, Hayashi-san. I’ll do it. Give me the evening to read the details in your email to be sure.” She texted notice on the group chat.

[Thank you, Ann,] Akira texted.

Wednesday, 17 August 2016
Evening
Chiyoda, Togo Home

Hifumi donned the house slippers, then slipped into the house. She heard Mother’s voice inside and made her way to the dining room, where her mother sat in front of a spread of fabric samples, phone in hand.

Whatever she had been saying, the conversation ended by the time the shogi player got to the long dining room with dark wood furnishings. Mother hit the close call button, then sat back with a satisfied smile on her face. “And the thug will be gone next week.”

Her heart rate jumped despite being tired from Mother’s Palace, and Hifumi stumbled out of cover and into the doorway. “M-Mother? Is something new happening?”

Mother’s smile widened and she stood, then walked to the liquor cabinet. She sat down with a goblet and dark rum. “Never you worry, Dear. I’ve just worked out a big opportunity. I could only rearrange things so much, but you’ll be on a shoot with your girlfriend on Tuesday.” She uncapped the glass bottle and poured herself a modest serving. “You look spent. Don’t exhaust yourself on long walks with that mutt, especially in this weather. Get up to your room and study. You need to be well-rested for your appointment with the personal trainer tomorrow. I expect exceptional results.”

Thursday, 18 August 2016
Late Morning
Yongen, Leblanc

Setting the last of his groceries into what little space he could cram into Leblanc’s fridge, Akira stood. He hit the tap and washed his hands, listening to the sound of rain droning over the roof. While it didn’t wash away all the summer heat, three days in a row was enough to bring the temperature down to a tolerable level. With the last morning customer long since having departed for the daily grind, Akira’s eyes fell on the yellow pay phone and he thought of the last evening with Kawakami. He’d never dared make true long-term plans until Father Motoori because he thought he’d never have a life of his own to live.

Maybe that was why he thought a knife would solve all his problems. Yet now that he had friends to buoy him up and a woman he wanted to spend his life with, he had a conviction which would hound him and everyone connected to him.

Don’t stand around scowling like that,” Sojiro snapped from behind the gas stove. “You’ll drive away the customers.”

Akira glanced around at the empty restaurant. “ Fine . I wouldn’t want to drive away these crowds and their piles of loot,” he snapped back, storming to the entrance. He realized he looked childish and the restaurateur probably didn’t mean to drive him away, but by then pride and momentum drove him so he yanked out his umbrella from the can at the front and stepped into the deluge. The rain battered his blue, two-man umbrella for long moments before he let out a long breath. “Nice job, dumbass. So much for being able to ask the man providing you shelter for help.”

With his impulsiveness having cut off one option for the day, he wracked his brain for another option. Takemi was close, but besides occasional teasing to distract him she never spoke a word about relationships. She wouldn’t want to get involved in his quagmire. Hiromasa was too distant an acquaintance to seek for help. Futaba was inexperienced and had an under-developed sense of boundaries so laying one of his most fragile fears in her hand would most likely lead to inappropriate jokes and broken hearts. Ryuji might be more wordly, but also thought more with his libido than his brain. Maybe Ann and Yusuke? He shot out a text, but got no response from the artist and an automated ‘busy at work’ from Ann. Same with Yuuki. Makoto was well-read and almost as thoughtful as Hifumi, but had some odd ideas and hadn’t been out of her ivory tower for long. He wasn’t even certain she liked boys – or girls, for that matter. Who did that leave to counsel…?

Oh. He should have thought of the goof weeks ago. The transfer student headed for the train station and searched through his contacts for Maruki. The phone rang, and rang, then rang some more. Then connected to the sound of heavy breathing and more rain pounding against a glass door. “Ku-Kuru… wait, you preferred Akira-kun.” Maruki paused to gulp in another breath. “S-sorry for the delay. You caught me at the library. Is everything all right?”

Akira opened his mouth to spit out the scripted ‘fine’ when his brain regained the reigns to his tongue. This entire call was because everything was not fine. “I need to talk.”

Oh, yes!” Maruki paced a few steps in what sounded like an entry room. “I’m so sorry if I seem to have been out of contact. I sent you a text on the twenty-fifth, but I guess you were busy. I didn’t want to call back too soon and seem pushy, especially when you kids are enjoying your summer break, but I guess I let too much time pass. I’ve been getting more patients who are scared of the stock market crash Medjed is threatening, and all the information leaks making headlines.”

Futaba just starting hacking Medjed’s website, but she said she was certain the ‘script kiddie’ was the only one and he’d be in police custody as soon as she leaked his personal information. “Just people panicking over everyday mistakes. They’ll announce their capitulation to the Phantom Thief any day now.”

Maruki hummed. “I wish it was that easy to believe, or convince my adult patients. Life has plenty of ups and downs, and sometimes what we think are mountains end up molehills. What is it you wanted to talk about? Er… or should I say where? I’m pretty sure you don’t want a counseling session on the phone while I’m standing in the entry hall of a university library.”

He was right, and the rain meant they had to find somewhere closed and indoors for both shelter and privacy. “They have private group study rooms?”

Thursday, 18 August 2016
Noon
Chiyoda-ku, Hitotsubashi University

Akira paced to the far corner of the small study room with a white plastic table and walls of pressed bamboo fibers. He took the cushioned folding chair in the far corner and sat as the counselor closed the door and sat down across the table, setting down a binder, notebooks, and a stack of books half his chest high. When it started to tip, the transfer student sighed and stood to catch it.

Maruki fumbled to catch his stack of books and papers, knocking the top book off and sending a dozen handwritten pages scattering. He gathered his notes and sat. “Sorry about that.” He straightened his stack so it looked less like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. “I do my best to listen, get a sense of every student and patient’s emotional state. But being good at listening has its limits. It’s much harder to diagnose and treat pain in… if I may be poetic for a moment… the heart.” His gaze drifted around the scattered pages. “Those wounds can be much more complex than physical injuries.”

Akira settled in his chair. Talking about someone else’s problems was so much easier than his own. “I think that all goes to how much harder it is to diagnose. Pretty hard for a man to say his arm’s not broken when it’s bent the wrong way.”

Maruki nodded with a toothless smile. “Exactly! That’s why I’m working so hard at my research. Not being as visible does nothing to diminish hurtful things said to you, or being separated from those you love.”

Akira’s heart clenched in his chest and he drew back in his seat. “Those things exist in everyone. It’s called imperfect life.”

The counselor nodded, but the corners of his lips turned down. “I know physical pain is a necessary response to the physical world in which we live. Fever as a response to being out too long in the snow. Swelling in response to falling on your wrist. Life would be better if we didn’t have to deal with any of those things.”

Akira straightened his glasses. “That can come with its own problems. Congenital analgesia can lead to injury pile-up and early death from failing to catch a developing problem that a fully-functioning nervous system could catch.”

But what about unnecessary pain, like in the heart?”

Akira crossed his arms. “I don’t see why those would be any different. Couples who fight but still communicate have more robust relationships than those who disengage.”

But it isn’t born from any tangible problem in our bodies,” Maruki countered. “So what does a strange and impractical pain in the mind benefit?”

Akira uncrossed his arms, just to fold his hands on the table. “Mind and body are linked.”

Maruki’s lips turned down. “To a degree, yes. Just like a physician seeks to alleviate physical injury, my research seeks to remove the psychological kind. What makes you feel pain in your heart, Akira-kun?”

The transfer student nodded, his expression solemn. “When Stargate SG-1 is delayed and I have to wait until next week for the show .”

Air blew out of Maruki’s nose and he gave an unconvincing smile. “Always ready with a joke. But there’s very real pain in things like… say, a broken heart.” He settled back. “The kind of pain that can only form because we fall in love, right?”

Akira tapped his folded hands against the table once and despite himself he thought of Shiho. “It can also come from seeing others have what you’ll never have.”

Maruki nodded. “True, even something like the empathy we need to connect with others can result in discomfort.”

Akira remembered some of the people on heavy medication regimens at the Smiling Mountain Mental Institute. “We can’t cut that out or we cut away what makes us human,” Akira said, remembering Father Motoori’s sermons. “Father Sugiyama leans a little away from the ‘interfering omnipotence’ idea some people have of God, but his sermons have included how shared experiences, even ones briefly painful, help people of disparate backgrounds to come together and become a tight-knit community which can then survive hard winters and economic downturns.”

Maruki nodded. “That’s a very positive way of looking at it. It’s a fair assessment, though I still think a life without pain would be better.” His gaze turned to his books and notes. “That’s what this research is all about, after all.” He scratched the back of his neck. “And why I asked you for help.”

Akira puffed out his chest to exaggerate recalcitrance. “I am not approving an interest-free loan.”

Maruki’s eyes widened. “What? That’s not—”

That was a joke,” Akira said, slouching.

The counselor gave an awkward laugh. “O-oh. Good one, Akira-kun. Well, you don’t have to worry about anything difficult or intrusive in helping out my research.”

Akira felt a warning flag pop up in his mind from his time at Smiling Mountain. “You don’t know much about medical research in this country, do you?”

I prefer not to repeat the mistakes of my forebears.” Maruki searched through his papers, then stacked a few in order. They questioned and conversed back and forth, most of it sounding like the later years at Smiling Mountain, but some of it sounded a little like project titles he heard under Director Isshiki at Blue Cove.

Thursday, 18 August 2016
Late Afternoon
Chiyoda-ku, Hitotsubashi University

Akira waited for the counselor to finish scribbling as the university’s study room blew AC straight on him. The cool reminded him of autumn in Shinjou.

Maruki closed a period at the bottom of the page. “Thank you so much, Akira-kun. You’ve clearly learned a great deal from all your time around neuro-psychologists.” Sharp pen strokes tapped, then he reached for his phone to check a document photo. The counselor’s shoulders tensed. “Oh, no! I’m so sorry, Akira-kun. I just used up hours of your time when I came here to help you !”

It’s all right,” he tried to wave off. “I, uh… do you remember when you promised to teach me techniques to stay focused in tests, or keep from getting nervous on dates?” His stomach wrenched into a knot.

Maruki gave a smile that lit up too much of his face to be pure placation. “Yes, I did! Have you already advanced that far with your special girl? That’s wonderful!”

Akira settled himself in his chair to give himself a beat to collect himself. “Maruki-san, did Shujin not give you a thorough rundown of my long list of ‘delinquency’?”

Principal Kobayakawa gave me the story about your conviction in juvenile court for assault. And reported a verbal altercation between yourself and Coach Kamoshida. The vice principal had some other notes, like a long list of truancy reported by Inuri High School, but your grades didn’t seem bad. When I asked for a full history, Kobayakawa told me that was all I needed to know.” The counselor rubbed the back of his head. “When I called Inuri, the instant I mentioned your name they said the next conversation we had would be with their lawyers.”

Akira grimaced. “I assume you asked by ‘Kurusu’ and not my name?” He waited for the expected nod. “Yeah, that sounds like what happened to anybody who tried digging into my old… man’s past. When you’ve got friends in the government, nobody wants to touch you.” He clenched his hands in his lap, but forced a casual smile. “Red tape is a common allergy.”

Maruki responded with a wooden smile. “I’m glad you keep up a sense of humor to it, but… adults should be helping you, even if you’ve got a turbulent past. You shouldn’t just have to accept people trying to pass off problems. That doesn’t solve them. There are enough problems with the incongruities between expectations of internal and external reality.”

Akira swallowed, feeling hairs standing up. This sounded too much like research at the Institute. “How so?”

Maruki tapped his fingers on the table for a moment, then straightened the book stack a little more. “Everyone has an internal reality. A self they want to be. For most people your age it’s wanting to be a model student, or perhaps being loved and relied on.”

Akira’s teeth pressed together as Hifumi smiled in his mind’s eye. His arms tingled just at the memory of being around her, and his heart clenched.

Already on a roll, the counselor continued as if he didn’t notice. “The idealized self and the one in the real world are often far apart. That disparity causes a lot of people enormous pain, no matter how much they try. Not everyone can ace every exam. Not everyone is fast or strong enough to be a hero, and even fewer willing to pull a Midoriya and risk hurting themselves on off-chances.”

Akira shrugged. “You can either roll over and hope you survive the trampling, or grab life by the horns.”

The counselor’s smile took a sad tinge. “That kind of a choice shouldn’t be necessary. A slight slip-up can put people into dark places.”

Akira shrugged. “What if I like the dark? Makes it easy to nap.”

Maruki chuffed, but his smile relaxed a bit. “In the interest of full disclosure, I spent some time of my own after Kobayakawa was arrested to look over your information. Get a more complete picture. I contacted your history teacher at Inuri and she said you aced every exam you were present for. And your list of residence addresses spoke a lot more than I think Shujin realized… bouncing between parents who don’t live together… I’ve counseled a child whose parents fought over custody. It’s hard on kids tugged back and forth.”

Akira took one of the loose pages of handwritten notes and started folding it. “Mine didn’t fight over who got to have me.” He closed his mouth. Futaba got an explanation, but she needed to know someone had been in that dark place where she was. That day wasn’t what he wanted to talk about, anyway. Father Motoori made sure he’d never go back again. “I know this may be hard to believe, but I don’t regret leaving them or coming to Tokyo. I’d’a never met Hifumi otherwise.” The dark pall left the room and a grin tugged at his mouth.

A beat ticked by as Maruki looked over the transfer student, then adjusted his glasses. “To be able to come out of what happened with that drunk and Kamoshida… That’s nothing short of amazing, Akira-kun. You must be made of tougher stuff than iron.”

Akira rubbed the back of his neck. The counselor meant it. “Hey, I ain’t a roll. Don’t butter me up.” He scratched. “I’m just a boy.”

She’s a woman. And you’re a man,” Ryuji told him at Tanabata. The thought conjured up Hifumi standing naked on a scallop shell, and he felt his member stiffen.

Akira coughed into his fist, then went back to folding an origami frog. “And… that’s part of why I’m here. I talked to Hifumi about my record. We’re not going out, but… I can’t stop thinking about her. And sometimes not appropriately.” He took off his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose. “I blame the jerk who introduced me to her nickname of the Venus of Shogi. She’s smart and warm as the dawn and deserves better than to be treated like a sex idol.”

One corner of Maruki’s lips quirked higher. “I’m sure. But remember what I said the first time? You’re a teenager. It’s the time of your life when hormones kick in. It could be a bad thing if that was the only way you thought of her. But it’s different when it’s an inclusive and . It means you’re thinking of her whole person. She’s a teenager too, what if she thinks the same way?”

Face blazing, Akira slammed his empty right hand on the table, crushing the origami frog. “She’s not that kind of girl!”

Would that in any way reduce her if she was?”

Akira’s mouth drifted open, and a tingle crawled up his spine. Mitsuyo’s memory of Hifumi locking lips with Kazuma shot through his mind. His heart ached when his mind tried to substitute him in the boy’s place, but he couldn’t even imagine what it was like to feel a girl’s lips on his. “ She deserves to be happy. But she can find that with someone else.” He settled his glasses back on his face. “It doesn’t matter if I want to grow old with her.”

Maruki straightened on his seat. “Akira-kun, you’re not an exception.”

Akira sat against his seat back, thrown for a loop.

Before the boy had a chance to recover his wits, Maruki continued, “ Every human being deserves the chance to be loved. And it’s natural to be attracted to the person you love.” He held out a hand. “I’ve been hearing a lot about what you want. Which is good, we need to understand ourselves. But our world is a bit wider than the self. What does she want?”

Disappointment shone in her eyes when Akira set Hifumi back on her feet and let go, her first day in the Metaverse. And was there more than frustration at her house after Antalas’ barking drove Morgana running in a panic? Or that day in the meditation courtyard at Kanda Catholic Church, did he imagine something more in her eyes before despair overwhelmed her?

No, he had to be projecting. She was beautiful. He was just some guy.

Akira shook his head. “She just wants her mother to be cleared up. Like things used to be.”

Maruki nodded, but his eyes lingered on the transfer student, searching. “It’s fine to want the good things from our past. But don’t push her away because you’re scared of a future together.”

Akira clenched his hands in his hair. “But thinking of her as… She deserves someone who doesn’t fantasize about tearing her clothes off. Mother treated people like playthings, I refuse to be like her.”

You’ve never done anything she’s protested, have you?”

Akira shot straight, but the lewd thoughts he had still brought a guilty blush to his face. “Never!”

Then don’t forget to acknowledge your own honorable conduct.” Maruki scribbled something onto a new set of notes. “And wanting to be better than one’s parents is a great stance, even if you had good ones. However, it’s possible to make a mistake of a different sort by veering too far to the opposite side of a road. Love is a thing that includes things that we would’ve called ‘sharing cooties’ when I was in primary school. Just in a proper time and place. I’ve had other patients who felt guilty about doing something they felt good, but don’t forget that if this is such a close relationship, you might make her feel good. Isn’t that something to treasure?” His eyes scanned the transfer student as he pondered for a moment in silence. “Have you ever seen ‘Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons’?”

Akira began folding another page of notes to give his hands something to do. “I’ve read Journey to the West. I liked Wukong, but thought every arc was kind of predictable when it always came down to Wukong beating up the demons who captured Sanzang.” He turned the in-progress crane to begin folding its wings. “What’s this got to do with not wanting to sully Hifumi?”

You might like this one better,” Maruki said as he scribbled a note, then looked up at the boy. “A few of my old friends took me to see it in theaters a couple years ago when I really needed it. It’s kind of a comedy which might not be your cup of tea, but Sanzang’s enlightenment at the end always stuck with me, when after rejecting Duan time and again as he pursued nirvana, he realized ‘There is no greater love, or lesser love. There is just love’.”

Akira let his hands keep folding the paper crane, its shape skewed from the notebook paper’s rectangular starting shape, but the counselor’s words resonated through a hole inside his heart. He crossed his arms. “That’s easier to say for people who don’t have a trail of blood and tears. I’m already failing to control myself in my own thoughts, what if I do something in real life? I’d… she’d…”

Your hormones are only part of you, Akira-kun. I think it’s abundantly clear you want her to be happy more than anything.” Maruki gave a rather practiced smile, something searching in his eyes as he said, “You’ve got some really smart friends, Akira-kun. And you’re pretty sharp, yourself. You’re forward-thinking enough to avoid putting yourself in a position where you might do something you might regret. If you can’t think though a problem, try it with them. Especially Hifumi, talk to her, and give her a chance to understand what she wants from you, too. You really like helping people. You give generously, especially of your time. You listen, and really think. There’s people all over the world looking for someone like you. So the next time you see her, talk to her. Give yourself a chance, and give her one, too.” He closed another period. “I’ll walk you through some basics before the Dive Response. Sit back, close your eyes, and breathe deep…”

Notes:

My Hero Academy’s been a favorite of mine for a while, but it only started airing in Japan in April so I didn’t want to make references to it and accidentally refer to something that hadn’t happened as of the time of Daywatch.

I’ve liked many derivative takes on Journey to the West but Conquering the Demons is probably one of my favorite because it sets the stage for an enlightened Sanzang despite being made in (and probably for) very conservative cultures where sex is unfairly labeled as a dirty thing.

The Dive Response makes use of tricking the body’s peripheral nervous system to force reduced respiration and heart rate and induce calm. It involves putting cool water against the eyes and face to trigger an automatic ‘slowdown’ as if the body was under water and needed to conserve oxygen. Even splashing the face with cool water can help even breathing and slow a racing heart. I learned this trick in a clinic specializing in anxiety and it’s something most people can do anywhere, we taught many patients the Dive Response as part of readying for things like job interviews.

Chapter 108: August 18th, Bar None

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Thurs day, 18 August 2016
Evening
Kichijoji, Stoneon

Akira took the receipt and beige cloth bag of ten jewels, crystals, and assorted artisan talismans the team leader assured him would have useful power in the Metaverse. It sounded as ridiculous as the idea of healing crystals, but if he wanted to keep Hifumi away from the line of fire that meant finding a new edge. When the sales clerk gushed in thanks, the transfer student slipped the cloth bag into his satchel and waited for the leader to hop inside.

A cleansing downpour gushed outside and Akira paused at the door to savor it for a few moments. The way the rain poured down reminded him of Inaba – they weren’t carefree days, but between his mother’s disregard and the first adults in his life who treated him like somebody capable of more, they were some of his best. The rain on its own always felt like a cleansing thing bigger than any human thing, cities or egos.

Morgana popped up onto the student’s shoulder. “I’m confident that more than half of these charms will be able to fill in those bracelets and pendants. I can’t wait to see which ones manifest as protective powers. One might even have a new ability that could change the whole balance of unit strategy, like those elemental shards you keep coming up with! I ought to get Rider and Hawk in on this.”

Hifumi hadn’t contacted them beyond thanking Ann for agreeing to some photo shoot her mother threw together, and that was late last night. Still, the team leader had a good idea. Akira pulled out his phone and brought up the group chat. “Any ideas to kick things off?”

Morgana hummed. “No point in giving a list of the charms before we get into the Metaverse to check things out for certain. Just report the gear shopping’s done and see if anybody has any ideas before we go anywhere. The less time I have to spend in the rain, the better.”

Akira chuckled. “Sissy.” On the Phantom Thief group chat, he sent, [Done shopping for gear enhancements up in Kichijoji. No luck on finding those holographic sights, Ryuji.]

To his surprise, Yusuke was the first of the Phantom Thieves to respond. [Did you manage to find any cyan paints?]

Futaba texted, [What is it with you and paints? Kichijoji's supposed to have awesome stuffed meat buns!]

[I am intrigued. Tell me more about these meat buns,] Yusuke sent.

Ann’s ID winked in. [How's hacking the Medjed website going?]

Three dots winked in and out next to Futaba’s ID for several seconds. [PlagUe DEFINITELY set up the current version. The thing the public can access is just a temporary image sent by a proxy so the PSIA can't just trace the host platform's MAC address. I'm trying to track them down, but the image is refreshed from a regular rotation. Probably all on zombie networks that are getting their feed from a remote terminal. If I'm going to apply anything that will stick long enough for the slug-heads in the media to see it, I'm going to have to find that remote terminal so a periodic refresh won't wipe all my hard work hacking away.]

Akira texted, [Weren't you still setting up moderation bots for the Phansite?]

Yuuki replied, [We talked for a while. After I explained the biggest problems were people stirring up the same old flame-bait fights, she realized we didn't need natural language processing. The vast majority of the problems were using a set of the same phrases, so she wrote a set of keyword hunters that muted posts and checked IP addresses against banned accounts.]

[That still sounds involved,] Makoto sent.

[Nah. EZ peazy,] Futaba texted. [I wanna update them if there really are bots starting flame wars on our Phansite, but I had the simple stuff like that done in a couple hours.]

[Well, I'm glad to have your expertise on our side,] Makoto replied.

[For real,] Ryuji sent. [Zombies and shirt are no joke.]

Yongen, Sakura House, Futaba’s Room

Futaba smacked her head against her keyboard.

Kichijoji, Stoneon

Akira scratched his head. Yuuki explained the idea of hidden computer programs camouflaged within legitimate networks but he still felt like the concept eluded him. [Train ride's almost 40 minutes. Anything else I can look into while I'm in the neighborhood?]

Ryuji sent, [Stop by Untouchable and get that holographic sight?]

Three dots winked in next to Yuuki’s ID. [Actually, a request has come up on the Phansite. It just doesn't have enough information to act on. Apparently there's an old man causing a ruckus in the back alley bars up there. Yelling, trying to steal patron payments, that kind of thing.]

[Sounds pretty tame so far,] Ryuji sent. [Why don't the cops handle that?]

[That depends on if anything is being left out,] Makoto texted. [Does there appear to be anything distinct left out, or a pattern of escalation?]

[The bartender who posted the request said he called the cops, but they won't do anything because it's an old man and nobody's been hurt yet,] Yuuki explained. [I don't want to let this go too far and have an old man struggling with senility get hurt. My grandfather has Alzheimer's and we had to put him in a special facility because he'd forget where he was. Who I was. Came at me with a lamp a couple times because he thought I was a burglar.]

[Easy enough to check in the Nav. What's his name?] Ryuji sent.

A few seconds passed before Yuuki replied, [Don't know, it's not posted.]

[I'll ask around,] Akira sent before putting up his umbrella. As often as his mother drank, he was surprised at how few people were hanging out at the street-level bars, but the rain kept plenty of people at home and after twenty minutes he texted the group with an update about the lack of progress.

[I'll ask around next time I'm in the area,] Ryuji sent. [But it's not really my neighborhood.]

[Me either,] Akira replied. [Anything else before I head to Leblanc?]

Three dots danced next to Ann’s ID for a few seconds. [Actually, Akemi works there. She mentioned a stranger groping her there. Those kinds of perverts tend not to be too discriminating. Could you check out if it's a serial assaulter?]

He asked for the address and she sent him a review for Jazz Jin, some kind of music bar. It felt too early to return to Leblanc and crash, so despite the team leader’s desire to get out of the rain, he sought out the brick-faced building with narrow stairs leading down.

Evening
Kichijoji, Jazz Jinn

The cover charge at the front desk was more than Luckless, but everything in Tokyo was and the music bar was quite a bit larger. A grand piano and microphone stand for a live singer, or perhaps small band, occupied a spot just off-center of the seating. The guy at the front directed him to a table near the piano for Akemi and the transfer student in long sleeves took a seat that exposed his back as little as possible. He didn’t hold the illusion that random strangers might physically attack him, but being able to focus on any conversation nearby left less room for people to insult him behind his back. There was something more manageable about it being done-and-done in front of him than the slow poison of rumors circulating where he could only hear fragments of hurtful things.

A familiar girl with shoulder-length brown hair and a short black skirt trotted to his two-person table. Akemi, one of Shujin’s second-years. “Welcome to Jazz Jin!” she regurgitated a practiced line, but once her eyes locked onto him they widened and made two sweeps. “You’re him !”

As much to mock her as to cover up the twinge in his heart, Akira gave a flourished bow. “It is an honor to be a man who needs no introductions, Akemi-san.” He thought, but realized he never heard Ann mention the waitress’ full name. “You don’t mind ‘Akemi’? Ann never told me your family name.”

Oh,” the brunette said as an awkward laugh bubbled out. She fidgeted as if she wanted to be anywhere else, but clamped down. “Right, you’re in Ann’s class.” She pulled a pocket notebook from her waistband and hid behind it. “So what can I get you to drink?” She hid a little further behind her notebook. “N-nothing alcoholic.”

Akira straightened his grey gloves. “I don’t know what kind of person you think Ann befriends, but I wouldn’t drink even if I legally could .”

The girl wilted. “Sorry, you’re right. She’s pretty sharp, she wouldn’t hang out with you if you were really… like they all say. So would you like to try the Magic Fizz? It’s today’s special.”

Akira crossed his arms. “I believe I just clarified that I don’t drink.”

The brunette gave a nervous smile. “Oh, it’s not alcoholic. The specials on the sign outside have the alcoholic and the nightly mocktail – non-alcoholic.”

The transfer student uncrossed his arms. “I guess I could try it then.” He sat straighter in his chair. “Listen, I’m going to just come straight out. Ann was kind of concerned about gropers. I can understand why she’d be worried about an unreported sexual assaulter. Has anybody weird or abusive been around?”

Akemi let out a breath . “ I didn’t think she’d send someone.” S he scribbled onto her notepad, then stuck the pencil in the rings atop. “ Running into the occasional creep is just part of having a job. Lots of guys come through . I’ve had a couple grab my ass, but not even the Phantom Thief could stop that when there’s alcohol and so many run-down guys. I don’t even blame most of ‘em, the manager has my back and the one who got grabby in front of his friends apologized.” Eyebrows knitting together, she looked him in the eye. “If anything, the rat race out there is at fault. So can you promise me you won’t do anything?”

If the girl was right and this was a train of occasional inebriated men, there wasn’t anything he could do even as a Phantom Thief. Akira blew out a long breath through his nose, but nodded. She gave a relieved nod and trotted off, so he pulled out his phone and opened an online shogi game to pass the time.

Look what the cat dragged in,” a familiar male voice said, several minutes later. Looking up, the boy alternately referred to as either the Detective Prince or Defective Detective stood there in a collared white button-down shirt. Between the ironed folds and shine in his hair he still looked like he was ready for a TV studio. Without asking, he sat down in the other seat. “I didn’t know you were the classy sort to enjoy jazz dives.”

Akira pasted a smile and bit down on the urge to punch the arrogant prick. The bar wasn’t bad, but jazz was overrated. It was just another genre of music, not something that opened up the world like the classical composers Hifumi was introducing him to. “It’s a nice place.”

Akechi’s smile never wavered as he slid his chair closer. “A refuge from the outside. Who you are there doesn’t matter, everyone is equal before the music here. Have you sampled any of their fine drinks?”

If you’re the regular,” Akira said, scanning the self-styled detective, “What do you recommend?”

Their mocktails are particularly flavorful,” the fashionably-shaggy-haired boy said with a slight puff to his chest. “Other establishments try to cover up substandard or watered-down fruit juices with loads of sugar, but the flavors stand on their own here.”

Akemi chose that moment to return with a tray bearing three complicated drinks. She set one down on the table in front of the transfer student. “Your Magic Fizz, Kurusu-san.”

Akechi raised a black-gloved hand. “And one for myself, Akemi-chan. I could use some luck this week.” She nodded to him and moved on to the next table to set down their orders. The detective sat back, those eyes boring into the transfer student. “You’re full of surprises. Not going by Amamiya here?”

Akira took a sip, surprised by the brightness of the lime juice in the cold blended drink. “Well, with these rains I can’t go by my favorite, Lance Lyde.”

The detective’s smile evaporated for a long beat. “Well, I suppose one’s sense of humor isn’t necessarily tethered to taste in music.”

Akira sipped from his fruity drink. Given his experience at Luckless and Crossroads, he expected bars to serve nothing but beer, liquor, and harder liquor. None of the smells were appetizing there, but this could be something he got used to. “So, where’s your uphill battle?”

Politics,” Akechi spat. “As usual. There’s always an ‘old boys’ club’ about, but there’s a different conspiracy that’s pilfered billions of yen over the past fifteen years.” When the girl returned with his drink, he took it with that same, almost-unwavering for-the-cameras smile, then sipped and set it down on the table after Akemi moved on. “It’s a pity you weren’t here yesterday. Jazz Jin has a rotation of artists perform and there was a particularly enjoyable performance.”

Akira gave a nod and sipped his mocktail. “Must be nice if it’s as good as their fruity blends.”

The muscles around Akechi’s face relaxed and for the first time, that diminished smile looked real. If only for a few beats of the background music pumping through ceiling speakers. “You’re quite discerning.” He paused for a sip of his own drink. “It’s a little hard to afford some days, but what’s life without the finer things once in a while?” He took a small sip of his drink. “I took the liberty of doing some background research since you asked me for legal opinion… Kurusu . H ow much of an allowance do you get to be able to afford niceties like this despite a juvenile conviction?”

I don’t get an allowance,” Akira snapped, the blended ice in his glass sloshing. “I take what part-time jobs I can get. I’m afraid I don’t have the fortune of a trust fund stipend.”

Akechi laughed, though there was a sharpness to it, a rigidness in his posture, a glare hidden in those crimson eyes despite the plastic smile that set off warning sirens in the transfer student. “Let me correct a yarn spun since the media started calling me the second Detective Prince. I am not the beneficiary of a trust fund stipend. I accept charity as a matter of necessity, but I wouldn’t be working every contract the bungling police kick to the public if I could get more serious work.”

At least you can take your pick of employment,” Akira riposted. “I can’t even clerk at a grocery store with a pharmacy because their background check would throw me out without first consideration.”

You don’t have to deal with reams of paperwork,” Akechi replied, his glass in hand but forgotten. “I have to hold up an obsequious mask to self-important civil servants who’d thwart an investigation into corruption just to keep from being personally inconvenienced.”

Akira finished a sip and set his Magic Fizz down on the table. He lowered his voice, despite the unlikelihood of one of the spaced-away tables listening in. “That’s inconvenience versus inconvenience. The police everyone else assume is there to inform and help them are all looking for an excuse to bash me in the face with a baton and throw my life in jail forever.” He sipped. “They already have once.”

You’re unfettered,” Akechi shot back, green fluid swirling in his glass. “Where did you haunt, before discovering this hidden neighborhood treasure? That quaint coffee cafe?”

Akira shrugged, unsure if the feigned nonchalance threw off the detective who had to know other investigative reporters besides Ohya. “Better than being stuck in a shitty attic .”

A huff, then Akechi remembered his drink and took a sip. “I certainly understand the struggle of attempting to afford floor space in Tokyo,” Akechi said before taking a deeper drink of his mocktail. “So where are you from? You still have this look of either wonder or horror in your eyes, Tokyo natives are inured to it .”

Akira took a deeper drink and set his mocktail down. “A city on the end of the line. The edge of oblivion.”

Rural town?”

Akira pointed in lieu of verbal confirmation, then brought his phone out of sleep. No new messages from Hifumi. “Podunk nowhere, lagging almost forty years behind the megalopolis.

Akechi took another sip. “You surprise me, everybody else has rose-tinted glasses for their hometown. Especially if they aren’t enthralled with Tokyo.”

I grew up in more than one town, and never felt welcome in any of them. Some people are the golden children of the class.” He took a drink as if to say, ‘Not me.’ The boys stopped when a cluster of men in sloppy suits trotted in, Akemi leading them past to the raised tables against the far wall. Waiting for the other boy to finish a drink, Akira looked at the other boy’s half-full glass. “You’re a Tokyo native. How do you get your vittles?”

Akechi snorted with laughter. “Vittles! Your small-town dialect is slipping out.” He set down his drink to prevent the risk of laughing while drinking. “I’m afraid my resources are limited. I can’t afford better than a one-room flat. My clients pay for meals at locations of their choosing, but I can’t afford to eat at nice places often. I lack the time or kitchens to cook my own meals, so daikon and convenience store bentos make my staples. I’m envious of your ready access to curry. Do you cook?”

Akira sipped. He would have said yes before the incident at Amagi Inn. He picked up some prep skill, but every day seemed to highlight the gap between him and the professional chefs . And what little conversation he’d shared with Makoto showed her experience eclipsed his. Ryuji and Ann had different opinions of what constituted cooking, however. “Does the microwave count?”

The detective ’s laughter this time felt less deprecating. He held up his glass. “I’m surprised to find something else in common between us. Frozen meals and convenience store food serve the purpose, don’t they?”

Akira held his drink up to the light. He’d eaten plenty in and before Inaba, even if he lost his taste for them. “Frozen quickie-mart meals. Reminds me of Sparta.”

Akechi’s eyebrow rose and he finished a drink. “Sparta? As in the Greeks?”

Akira lowered his glass. “A Sybarite dined in Sparta and then said, ‘Now I know why the Spartans do not fear death’.”

The detective laughed, the sound more nasal than expected. After several moments, he set his half-downed glass on the table. “I must confess, this unexpected meeting has been quite refreshing. I’ve met clients here, but never simply… sat for a chat.” His red gaze bored into the transfer student. The pose of his body didn’t indicate a direct threat, but there was something unsettling about the following, “You’re a surprising individual, Kurusu-kun.”

His phone buzzed and Akira opened the messenger to see a text from Hifumi. [Apologies, everyone. I'm afraid that I can't join you all tomorrow. Mother is taking me to a series of interviews in Nerima-ku. I thought I'd have half a day, but she's moved my schedule around for a new photo shoot next week.]

Ann sent, [Is everything okay?]

[I'll survive,] Hifumi sent, then followed with, [It's Mother I'm worried about. She's been burning the midnight candle on both ends lately.]

Yusuke’s ID blinked in. [Our window to act before your mother reports Akira to the police is shrinking. Based on Futaba and Sensei, I suspect she will halt her offensive as soon as the process of her heart change begins, but we must still make our final infiltration and abscond with her Treasure to do so.]

Futaba sent, [I hate to say this, but I might need that time. I'm not going to have Medjed's website hack done by tomorrow morning. Maybe not tomorrow afternoon.]

[It's cutting things close, but could everyone be there to change Mitsuyo's heart on Saturday?] Makoto texted.

The various Phantom Thieves sent their affirmations, including Hifumi. Akira glanced down at the team leader perched in the leather satchel, but Morgana held a glare on the lower half of the detective’s body visible from the satchel on the floor. He sent his last affirmative and put his phone back into sleep mode, then took a deep drink and closed his eyes. He couldn’t understand how Hifumi could always have some concern to spare for other people, even someone abusive like her mother.

If you think this is good,” Akechi said from the other side of the table, “you should take the effort to come on live band day. There’s a whole other… power to the performance of a live jazz session. Hours of improvisation, complex and organic, giving birth to melody from chaos,” he said in the same reverential tone as parishioners reserved for God. “It reminds me of the euphoria I feel when I solve a case and the holding cell door slams closed.”

Akira opened his eyes. “Holding cell? Most people would think a detective’s job done when the case is solved. Report filed.”

The private detective gave a derisive snort. “Maybe people who think TV show detectives and the denouement implying a criminal will receive justice is the end of the story. But cases routinely stall on desks and it’s not until something has a court date that I can relax.” Akechi took a sip of his drink. “Because that’s what it takes to stop evil men. When the charges can’t be stopped. That or dropping dead.”

Dropping dead?”

Akechi gave a small laugh, the sound just practiced enough to raise the hair on the transfer student’s neck. “I suppose it’s not quite to my Detective Prince persona, but I admit I’ve read more than a few obituaries with great satisfaction.” He picked up his Magic Fizz and swirled it in the glass. “I must beg your apologies, I end up talking much more than I expect with you.”

Akira finished his mocktail, set it down, and projected his best subdued smile even if he felt like he and the detective were in the middle of a shogi match. “We’ll have to do this again, but I should go before I miss the last trains.”

Friday, 19 August 2016
Afternoon
Yongen, Leblanc

With no sounds of customers floating up from the cafe downstairs, Morgana trotted down to the sound of running water in the sink. Blue eyes met grey ones behind glasses and they shared a small nod before he went back to finishing the last of the lunch rush’s dishes. With neither rain nor a heat warning, more people were out and about and that meant the breakfast rush Boss enlisted Joker for went all the way into lunch. Those grey eyes were distant, but his posture lacked the hunch of his more nervous periods, so the transfer student must have been glad to keep himself busy.

Morgana sat down against the far booth seat and pondered. At first, he thought Joker was tireless, but it didn’t take long before the reality of human limits caused a crash. At least he wasn’t doing that as often with exercising himself to exhaustion before bed. Now that the team leader had a minute to think about it, he wasn’t pushing and running through every crowd anymore.

The bell rang, but he recognized the stomping footfalls even before Oracle called out, “I require coffee!” She walked without the spring he expected from her step after she awakened to Marcus Drusus, slumping into a chair in front of the manga arranged on the counter. She dug her fingers into her hair and growled.

Joker finished rinsing his latest dish and walked over, drying his hands. “Not having much luck?”

No!” Oracle roared. When Boss cleared his throat, she shrank back on the bar seat and mumbled, “Sorry.” She held her head in her hands again. “It’s not even that I’m not making progress. This seemed to be so much easier before. It’s not like I stopped, why is it more difficult now than two years ago?”

You’ve learned a lot, Oracle,” Morgana said, pacing over to hop onto the seat next to her. “But don’t forget that other people are also learning. You might have even taught them a trick or two, before you withdrew from the world. So it makes sense that even as good a hacker as you were before, the job might be more difficult now.”

Joker folded and set the towel down. “Maybe the problem is you’re just beating your head against the wall trying the same old solution when there’s a quicker, easier one you aren’t trying because you’re not looking at it with a clear mind. I used to think that mathematical derivatives were a pain in the ass, but Hifumi taught me a couple tricks for speeding through them and checking your answer. Take a break for a while and do something else, then take a different angle of attack.”

Boss set a cup of blended coffee in front of the girl. “Can you two get that cat out of here? We’re still open for business!”

Oracle spat, “Blah! I waited until after the lunch rush was over, nobody comes here except for breakfast.” She grabbed the team leader by his whiskered cheeks. “Do a trick for me.”

Ow!” Morgana cried, yanking himself away and retreating two chairs away.

You shouldn’t do that,” Joker reprimanded her. He looked to Boss. “She do stuff like that back in Shinjou?”

The restaurateur shrugged. “Wakaba didn’t like animal hair on her clothes so she never picked up a pet.” He chuffed in amusement. “Which is funny, as much a mess as you two made finger-painting.”

I was five!” Oracle protested. “I hadn’t even memorized the periodic table yet.”

Metal shuffled as Joker pulled a drawer open and stacked spoons. “Two? You’re telling me Director Isshiki did finger-painting? It’s hard to imagine the director doing something so… mundane.”

Boss chuckled. “She marched to the beat of her own drum, but she was still human. Got sick every November when the flu came ‘round.”

Oracle tapped her booted toes against the bar, a nostalgic smile spreading over her face. “I remember making chicken noodle soup from the can. It was my cooking accomplishment of the year.” A blush spread over her cheeks. “I forgot to take it out of the can once. At least the microwave door kept the fire inside.”

Joker continued stacking spoons away. “With all the manufacturing, it seemed like every school had a carpentry club. You ever get into that?”

Naw,” Oracle blurted. “Only thing I was ever interested in doing with my hands was typing. If it wasn’t electronic, I wasn’t interested.” Her feet kicked the bar again. “I guess I should be glad Mom bought me computers and encouraged me to get into programming.”

Metal clacked as Joker progressed. “Wanted to get started raising a backup prankster to drive my old man crazy?”

She waved a hand at him. “Houzan wasn’t even there until five years ago. Mom said there weren’t enough women in science and technology. As soon as I expressed interest in computers, she couldn’t get me computers or books fast enough.” Her kicking stopped and her gaze drooped to the counter as a finger traced the wood grain. “Mom was always so proud when I got something working.”

Boss nodded. “Liked her trips, too. She always looked forward to taking you to that river cruise down Mogami Park every year.”

Oracle’s finger continued tracing the wood grain. “I never thanked her for those. I kept pestering her for Duck Burger.”

Boss smiled. “She was good at putting two and two together. That’s what made her such a good administrator, always able to lay down the foundation. And she liked her play.” He bumped Joker’s arm. “You get your hands on those giant candy canes she liked decorating with, ‘round Christmas?”

That was her doing?” Joker slid the spoon drawer closed and started on chopsticks. “I thought she stopped at the morning office stretching session.”

She, Joker, and Boss traded stories about the ex-director of Blue Cove, but Oracle’s shoulders drooped more with each passing story until she started sniffling halfway through Boss’s recounting of a downtown matsuri in Shinjou.

What’s wrong, kiddo?” Boss said.

Her eyes welled over and Joker abandoned the kitchen work to dash around the counter. “Hey, what is it?”

When he reached an arm over her shoulders, Oracle latched onto him with fierce strength. “I was too big a baby to see how good I had it. There were so many things… so many times I never…” she hiccuped, “told Mom what she meant to me.”

Morgana returned to the seat next to Oracle despite the danger to his cheeks and pressed a paw against her leg. “Remember when she hugged you after you had that temper tantrum with the cups? She loved you even when times were tough. There’s no way a woman that smart didn’t see your affection.”

Boss came out from behind the counter to rest a hand on the girl. She didn’t let go of Joker, but she did lean into the new touch. He rested a hand on the transfer student as well, and to Morgana’s eyes it looked like the boy settled against the restaurateur’s hand as well. It took another few minutes before her tears stopped and her breathing settled, but between both men holding her up, she got there. “Don’t you worry about that, Futaba. She knew.” He sat up, but let his hands linger on the kids’ shoulders. “I’ll be here as long as you need me.” Boss’s eyes glanced to the transfer student and that hand tensed. “Uh, I mean, not like I want to hold you in or anything, but…”

Sputtering a laugh, Oracle straightened on her seat and wiped her face. “Sojiro, you’re like the stuffy uncle of the family who keeps the house so we all have a place to come back to.” Then her gaze fell on Joker and narrowed, a sharp grin spreading across her face. “And Akira’s like the cool uncle with the hot girlfriend.”

Joker’s face went red as a tomato. “F-Futaba!”

Oracle threw her head back and cackled.

Friday, 1 9 August 2016
Early Evening
Shibuya, Protein Lovers’ Gym

Stepping out of the showers, Akira pressed a corner of the towel against his ear and tilted his head to try to get out the last water. When another two men stepped in and started changing out of sweaty gym clothes, the transfer student edged away what little he could without actually touching any more of the busy gym changing room floor. Living and working in Tokyo forced him to get more used to other people, and he’d used public baths often when his mother locked him out at Inaba, but that didn’t overwrite years on years of waiting until the deep of night to shower at the Smiling Mountain Mental Institute.

Alliance Force, Assemble ! sang out from his cubby.

Akira rushed his pants on and checked the caller ID. Instead of Hifumi, he saw Crossroads Bar. Curious if there was an incident with the drunk reporter. “Funeral Director, Hadley Newham.”

A beat passed before a gravely voice that could have come from a two-meter-tall man who’d been smoking cigarettes since childhood spoke, “I guess the humor could work in a bar. Is Kurusu Akira there? Kaho-chan called out for a family illness.”

Swallowing, Akira hoped he hadn’t just cost himself a job. Maybe Makoto was right that he should cut back on his joke answers. “This is Akira. I’ll be there ASAP.”

Lala thanked him and hung up. Akira attacked his wet hair with the towel again before dressing the rest of the way, then heading to the train for Shinjuku’s Kabukichou neighborhood. Crowds of people choked the station and crammed the train, but having a destination and time limit helped him power through.

While on the way, his phone buzzed and the Phantom Thief chat lit up when Hifumi logged in. [Apologies for taking so long, Mother just left for her second job. What was the last calling card, just so I can know what kind of poetic or rhetorical devices you used?]

Futaba sent, [It was mine. I was lost in a mire of doubt and self-hatred after my mother died. Was killed, actually. Maybe by the same people out there causing mental shutdowns like the train conductor, which forced the resignation of the Minister of Transportation.]

Yuuki’s ID brightened. [Think it's the same as berserk episodes like the one that revealed Mitsubishi’s mileage scandal and forced Aikawa to resign?]

[I didn't know they went so high up. Maybe that black mask guy Kaneshiro mentioned is real. He must be super busy,] Ryuji sent.

Ann texted, [I'm just glad you're with us.]

[I see,] Hifumi sent. [Kitagawa-kun, what was on your calling card?]

[I did not have one,] he replied. [I was too afraid to step outside of the shadow of Madarame which was smothering me. It wasn't until the indomitable courage of Ann, who brought me into Sensei's Palace, that I awakened to my suppressed need to rebel against avarice. It is a change of heart, but of a sort more like yours when you decided to stand up to your mother.]

Three dots danced next to Ryuji’s ID. [So we had sloth for Futaba, and greed for that washed-up old artist. I still think greed made more sense than gluttony for Kaneshiro.]

Makoto replied, [We were looking for best fit from the vices in the Psychomachia since that's what we started with Kamoshida. From the outside I would have thought wrath would be the trait of a mob boss, but from the things we saw in his heart he was desperate to consume all the wealth of others so he wouldn't feel weak again. That made Kaneshiro a better fit for gluttony.]

Hifumi texted, [So do we work from wrath against Mother? She did say she had Sasaki's son's legs broken.]

Akira decided to contribute his own suspicions. [She also told Hifumi to lose her title match, and she's been involved in bet-fixing and money laundering from the files I saw in Kaneshiro's palace. Maybe greed?]

Ryuji replied, [I don't think so. From all the stuff we saw in her palace, I think money and even fame is just a means to an end. She went ape shirt when she caught Hifumi making out with her boyfriend. Damn, that was hot.]

The transfer student felt the embarrassed resignation when Hifumi sent, [I can't believe you saw me and Nobuyuki.]

Even though he was thinking it, Ryuji was the one who sent, [Who? I thought your Mom said some name starting with a K.]

[Kyousuke?] Hifumi replied.

[Kazuma,] Ryuji texted.

[A collection. You go, girl!] Futaba sent. [Akira, you've got competition for the heart of Hifumi!]

Three dots danced next to Hifumi’s ID for several seconds. [Please don't say such things, Futaba-chan!]

Makoto sent, [Can we all get back on track? Futaba, how is that progress on hacking Medjed's website going?]

[Oh, I finished that hours ago. I put a timer on a botnet to rewrite the root site after we get out of Hifumi's mom's palace tomorrow, as well as email a bunch of incriminating file images to the police. I thought it would be cool for Medjed and Hifumi's mom having a change of heart hitting the headlines at the same time.]

Yusuke texted, [Does it not take several days for a heart to actually change after the Shadow is defeated? Sensei withdrew from the public for almost a week, and you were unresponsive for more than 2 days.]

[Crap, lemme go change that timer.]

[Leave it,] Makoto sent. [We've delayed letting the world know Medjed is defeated for long enough. How can you be sure that one hacker hasn’t skipped town?]

[He ordered replacement parts from his work computer and still hasn't gotten his new CPU fan yet.] Futaba replied. [Cheapskate won't even pay for rush delivery when he's not spending other people's money. Just the cash he's embezzling from NTT. And as often as he's gaming on his work computer, it's not like he needs his home computer right away.]

Hifumi texted, [So you all have been using the Psychomachia as the basis for the calling cards?]

[It's the clearest organization of vices I know of that doesn't put veneration of authority in the center,] Akira sent. [As we are protesting the corruption of society innate in stratification, it seemed inappropriate to use Confucianism.]

[There's an element of pride, the source of all other sins, in Mother. However, I don't think that’s the root of HER sin.]

Futaba texted, [Bastet: Agreed. Vanity and bitterness aplenty, but pride feeds her palace rather than making it.] A beat later, she added, [Somebody else back me up, our leader is basically Bastet, right?]

[Can we all focus?] Makoto shot out. [I don't think greed fits any more than pride or wrath. She's given up too many opportunities to make money in order to isolate Hifumi. I could even imagine one of those arranged marriages, but she spent a lot to find blackmail on the industry leaders who approached her for such offers. Sloth doesn't seem appropriate either, as she is discouraging others and not herself. If she is indulgent in herself, perhaps gluttony?]

[Mother is measured in all she does,] Hifumi pointed out. [Even with her sins laid bare in that cognitive place, I never got the sense she wanted to throw all control to the wind.]

[Isn't it envy?] Ryuji sent. [She never says it, but everything she did was all about cutting down people who had something she didn't. Hifumi for being hotter than she was at her age, her bosses for having more power than she did, business people for being richer than she is.]

Three dots danced next to Ann’s ID. [Ryuji astounds again. That not only made sense, I think it's right on the nose.]

[Hey, I can figure things out, you know!]

Hifumi texted, [Having reviewed the Psychomachia, I can never think of a time in Mother's life that she would have been praised for her kindness. Her wit or work ethic, yes. She's been generous, though that may be calculated gestures. Mother praised me for getting good grades or maintaining a look she picked out for me. But Papa is the one who praised me for choosing what _I_ liked. As kindness is the opposition to envy, I think envy is the most appropriate.]

“…exit left,” the subway’s automated announcer intruded over the uproar in the transit car.

[Agreed,] Akira sent. [I'm heading to work, I'll trust you guys to finish the calling card without me.]

Friday, 19 August 2016
Evening
Shinjuku, Crossroads Bar

After the first wave left, the bar owner had Akira pull the shutters to close off the ex-dance-floor and funnel people to the bar counter. Despite being the end of the week, not many people came in, leaving Lala to catch up on inventory while he had to entertain the poor slobs who came to drown their sorrows.

Like a snippy office lady with short, dark hair and didn’t like hearing that Lala wasn’t available. “Lala always entertains me!”

Akira gave as flourished a bow as he could behind the constrained space behind the bar. “Mama Lala is indisposed, tonight you have the privilege of meeting the Director of Government Transparency, Dale Neverknow.”

She looked at her half-full glass. “I think I’m almost drunk enough for that to be funny.” She took a deep glug, then plopped it down onto a battered paper coaster. “C’mon, havin’ better lines than my old boyfriend ain’t a high bar.”

There was a spark in her eyes that contrasted with the angry hunch of her shoulders and made it impossible for Akira to look away. He wiped water spots from a glass out of the mechanical dishwasher that needed somebody to look at its hard water filter. “He hurt you?”

She let out a long huff, then took a deep glug of her beer. “Naw. But never trust a man who’s got a train of girls behind ‘im.”

Akira set his glass down, then started on the next one. “Can’t he still be kind and loyal to you? What if none of his previous relationships worked out?”

Pah!” the woman spat – more literally than in most cases. “Guys who can’t stick with a girl are the worst.” She leveled a glare at him. “You one’o those types, low-key handsome fella with a trail of broken hearts?”

No!” He almost dropped his glass, wiping at it with far more force than necessary. He took a breath to keep his tone down, drunks tended to have a hair trigger. “My… a girl I like had a few boyfriends in the past. But I still think about her every day. She’s nice, and smart, everything I never realized I wanted in a girl. What kind of horrible reason is it to reject someone just because I can’t be her first kiss?”

The office lady tilted her beer glass back and forth on the paper coaster, staring at the beer sloshing inside. “Huh. Never thought ‘bout it like that before.” A quiet few moments passed as he wiped spotted glasses and music floated out of ceiling speakers. “I don’ like this conversation any more. Can we go back to those dumb names before?”

Akira set down a polished glass, then picked up another clean-but-water-spotted one. “Maybe you’ve seen my late brother’s movie, Hell No. He was the lone man in the woods, Denny Juan Heredatt.” When she didn’t respond, he added, “You know, before the killer came out of the woods?”

She took another gulp. “I hate horror movies.”

Akira struggled to keep a frown off his face. Hifumi was so much easier company than this woman, even when she didn’t like his joke names she had a funny riposte to lead the conversation where she wanted. “My last boss didn’t like them either. Richard Tater always had to have everything his way.”

She stared at him.

Akira started wiping down another glass. “Really? Dick Tater?”

She took another glug. “I think I may want another.”

Friday, 19 August 2016
Late Evening
Shinjuku, Crossroads Bar

Coming back in from delivering another drunk to a taxi, Akira returned behind the bar. Only two people remained, one tapping a nervous beat onto the counter and the other sipping a mixed drink.

The proprietress finished mixing another cocktail and handed it to the nervous man, then turned to the transfer student in long sleeves. “Thanks for coming to fill in for Kaho-chan. Just having somebody else to help clean-up and entertaining my customers frees me up. Not all of them are as demanding as Kasumi-chan, but she’s always in a worse mood at the end of the week. I’m surprised how long you kept up your train of stories and jokes. She might not laugh much when she’s drinking, but she really did appreciate it.”

The front door swung open and another office worker who looked too tired to properly wear his business suit trudged in. His necktie was undone and the suit jacket looked rumpled and one size too large, though it might have been due to an awkward hunch. He plopped into the seat once occupied by the snippy office lady. “Can I get a strong one tonight, Lala-chan?”

Of course, Futoshi-chan.” She reached back to a bottle of aged rum. “White grapefruit juice, kiddo.” The transfer student nodded and helped her assemble the cocktail. Once it sat on the counter before the battered office worker, it looked like it took all his energy just to take it in hand. Lala rested a hand on her hip. “Boss bullying you again?”

Futoshi took a long sip, holding his glass with both hands as if sitting at a tea ceremony. “Any time I try to point out a flaw in his plans, even if it’ll be worse for all of us, he makes sure I know I’m lower than him. He’ll ask about how I liked licensing, as if I didn’t work for ten years to get out of there. And even when he doesn’t know I’m there, he’s always calling me useless. No matter how many structural drawings I fix, somehow he gets all the credit.”

Lala wagged a hand. “Those kind of people are the worst .”

Akira looked up from the sink behind the counter and dried his hands. Those people weren’t doing anything technically illegal, but made life a living hell for people like him and more. “You ever think of asking the Phantom Thief to change his heart?”

Futoshi finished a deep sip, despair in his eyes. “The vigilante who took down Kaneshiro and Madarame?” He lifted his glass again. “He may be real, but no way would he care about my problems. He hasn’t even done anything about Medjed, and they’ll destroy the economy in a couple days. It wouldn’t take much after crashing the stock market, with how interconnected everything is.”

Lala watched the transfer student take out his phone and open the Phansite. “Oho, you really think the Phantom Thief can steal his stress away?”

Futoshi let out a bitter laugh.

Akira knew he couldn’t – or shouldn’t – make any promises without knowing how the whole group would vote. It might have been easy to guess back when it was just him, Morgana, Ryuji and Ann. But they’d doubled their number since then. “Can’t hurt to put in a request, right? What’s his name?”

The battered office guy set his glass down and stared at the lowered level for several seconds. “Kishi Shinsuke.”

Akira typed in the name and held out his phone. “Like this?” The salaryman squinted at his phone for a minute before nodding, so the student brought back his phone and hit ‘submit’. “And now it’s out there.”

Lala smiled. “Aren’t you the charity worker, trying to help everybody out? Well, come on, the night’s late and you should be heading home. You’re still a minor and Shinjuku is dangerous at night.”

Akira smirked. “You’re right. There are people like me out.”

Notes:

The PSIA is the Public Security Intelligence Agency, Japan’s loose equivalent to the FBI in the US.

Aikawa was the president of Mitsubishi Motors Corp until his resignation in May, 2016 for the mileage scandal.

Hell No, the Sensible Horror Film is too funny not to mention when I get the chance. There’s not actually a lone man in the woods there, but the trope is common enough to work in the cliché of the victim who hears the antagonist too late.

Chapter 109: August 20th, Temple Collapse

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Saturday, 20 August 2016
Noon
Suginami-ku, Ogikubo

Akira side-stepped through the narrow walkway along the customer area of the ramen bar, following the track star towards the open spots in the back. Perfect. The aroma of savory ramen and sauteed vegetables left his mouth watering. “It sure smells good, but I’m not so sure about the full hour wait.”

Ryuji laughed. “Dude, ain’cha pick up on the crowds all over the place? There might be no lines in bumpkinland, but they’re in fron’na all the good places in the city.” He settled into a chair and looked around, a distant quality to his gaze. “Y’know, I ain’t been in this joint since we came here as a team. Sweat drippin’ down my face, noodles slidin’ down my throat… there ain’t no feelin’ like it.”

Akira sat onto the narrow chair across from the tiny table between he and Ryuji. “Was it more about the exercise, or grabbin’ sweaty guys?”

Ryuji kicked him under the table, though not with the force the practiced runner could muster. “C’mon, dude. I was in track , not wrestling . An’ you ain’t gotta make it sound all weird like that.” He set his elbows on the table and wove his fingers together. “I been wonderin’ how Nakaoka an’ the others are doin’ lately.”

Strike Force, Assemble! sang out of Akira’s phone. “Legal appeals, this is Bud Uronner.”

An amused sigh floated out from the phone before Hifumi spoke, “You always know how to break the tension, Aki.” A beat passed and she breathed in, an ominous air settling in. “I delivered the calling card, claiming somebody left it in her box. Mother was furious, but we can’t afford to wait, correct? I can be up at the station for Mother in half an hour. How soon can you be there?”

I’ll be there in thirty minutes,” he said, all trace of humor gone and his hunger forgotten. He jumped from his seat and locked eyes with the seated runner. “It’s show time.”

Ryuji’s eyes widened. “But we ain’t got our ramen yet!”

Saturday, 20 August 2016
Noon
Mitsuyo’s Temple, Front Bailey

Ann clicked her gun-light on and squinted down the iron sights along the top of the competitive sporting pistol. Despite using nail polish to paint a crosshair on the light, an even circle projected onto the plaster-coated walls, even more stark given the swirling clouds churning in a sky-spanning spiral above. Lightning without thunder flicked from rolling cloud to rolling cloud as if to the beat of an angry heart. She turned off the gun-light. Yusuke and Makoto helped Hifumi check the rifle Ryuji loaned her, while the already set-up Futaba and Morgana stood in that restless manner like the kids in her class waiting for the signal to start running around the field. “Here they are,” the blonde called when she spotted the dark jacket and coat of her other friends.

Akira slowed his jog to a trot, then stopped and braced his hands on his knees as he breathed heavy.

Ryuji was sweating, but kept his breathing in check as he came to a stop. “Yeah, an’ we’re starvin’ ‘cause he ran off before we could grab lunch.”

The Thieves finished readying weapons and distributing supplies, then Hifumi summoned Dihya to map out the rearranged layout of the Palace before the Phantom Thieves headed in. At least the fog had reduced to thin wisps over the ground. It was enough to leave an ethereal quality.

A bunch of those shrine-keeper Shadows patrolled the Hall of Sacrifice, forcing them into battles twice. Past that, the covered walkway extended only part-way over what appeared to be the same huge swampy courtyard they split up in that day Hifumi awakened to her Persona. While polished-wood walkways wrapped around the perimeter against the walls, they were patrolled by dozens of those Shadow shrine-keepers so Morgana directed them off the walkway and straight through the mire.

About halfway through, Yusuke yanked Ann back a heartbeat before something slammed into the marsh ahead of her, sending a bigger spray of water than the couple-centimeter-deep puddles should have made possible.

Standing up out of the impact, leathery wings unfurled from around the larger-than-life Shadow Mitsuyo. She looked down her nose at them from her vantage point, floating a meter or so up from the mire. “I had hoped you selfish brats would have learned your lessons earlier. I shall have to punish you most severely.”

Hifumi stepped up from the rear line, clenched fist raised. “The courage of man will not falter so easily!”

Shadow Mitsuyo spat out a laugh. “Courage, you say? Your infantile idealism won’t save you from consequences. Children don’t even know what’s for your own good.”

Makoto stood her ground at the front. “What ‘courage’ is there in fixing matches, and profiteering on the games of your own daughter?”

Do you think the Togo’s funds are unlimited? That I could leave her life, all our lives up to the whimsy of fate?” Shadow Mitsuyo tisked. “I wouldn’t have fallen in with Kaneshiro’s money launderers if I had all I needed.”

Hifumi lowered her fist, but her back remained straight. “You were never at risk of losing your family until you started working at that despicable hostess club. I know why things became hard with what happened to Papa, but… you changed! No amount of control was ever enough for you. I don’t even understand all of it. Why forbid me from dating, yet accept Ann-san without question?”

Laughing, Shadow Mitsuyo held a hand against her head. “ Still insisting on playing the ignorant slut? Men are motivated by only two things: power and lust. Boys will fight each other just for the opportunity to think themselves your footstool, I make no profit on their violence. The paparazzi would trip over each other to photograph not one but two beautiful girls. I wouldn’t even have to pay to put the Togo name to the front page. It would sell everywhere . Girls want to live vicariously through idols and could pick which ever one they wanted. Boys salivate just at the thought of a naked girl.

Is that it, then?” Hifumi responded her voice almost a whisper. “Was I never more than a commodity for you to sell for the highest bidder?”

Buying and selling is the way of the world,” Shadow Mitsuyo answered. “To deny that would be to hobble myself and give you to those who are less considerate than I.” She snapped her fingers, and Shadows began to burst out of the mire around them. Her voice hushed and lip curled in a snarl, she added, “I’ll not allow you to steal what belongs to me. Anything a woman owns must be bought with great price.”

Then darkness erupted under her, transforming into a pillar of fire before it receded into a four-meter-tall monstrosity. Where Shadow Togo once floated, something like a fusion of ox, man, and suit of armor towered over them. Its guttural voice boomed, “Those who will not bring sacrifice, will be sacrifice!” It chopped a white gauntleted hand down and the smaller Shadows advanced.

The Phantom Thieves broke into two groups, dividing the Shadows into two flanks so they couldn’t be overwhelmed from the uneven encirclement. Ann lined up with Akira, Yusuke, and Hifumi, leaving the others to handle the rest. She’d just have to believe in Morgana and Futaba-chan. “Any pointers, Hawk?”

Her red-garbed Persona manifested above her, its eye-patterned tower shields at the ready. “Those Garm could maneuver to put us all at a terrible disadvantage. Take them down before they can jump our lines!”

Ann yanked her sword and flicked it, the whip-sword extending through the air with the whistle of edged metal. She reached inside for Carmen’s blessing, and a cold fog trailed her weapon. She slashed, her strike scratching against the headless soldiers and one of the giant dog Shadows. While not delivering any telling damage, it drove them back enough to give her room to summon Carmen proper. “Joker!”

Akira nodded, a determined glint in his eyes that sent a thrill through her heart. Too bad he was smitten with the shogi maestra. “Let’s see what the twins beat into you, Sui-Ki!” The sword-wielding, purple-skinned oni from the bank twirled its blade above its head. Instead of shooting a bolt of ice at her, a shimmer of icy fog rippled around it, then around Carmen.

That invigorating sense like the first cold wind of winter shot through her. Ann let out a war cry and Carmen slapped her thorned whip into the ground. Instead of a weak flop, long if short-lived spikes of ice shot up as if driven from the ground by the force of the whip, radiating out in an arc in front of them, impaling red dogs and headless soldiers alike and plunging all the way to the bull-faced Shadow hanging back like a shogun behind his army.

An ice spike shot up and struck it straight in the chest, where it melted as if an ice cube pressed against a furnace. Thin gouges remained in what she started to suspect was a furnace, if with many little compartment openings.

That was the strongest ice Carmen’s ever thrown out there,” Ann whispered in horrified awe.

Yusuke blocked a sharp spine-whip, yanked to bring his katana in line with the headless soldier before him, then thrust into its chest, dissipating the Shadow. “Goemon!”

His Shadow manifested and blew into his pipe, loosing bolts of lightning into a Garm and two other headless soldiers. “Excellent coordination,” he said before one of the giant war-dogs landed behind him and reared back a claw for Hifumi before he spun about and powered a slash down, then up its body to dissipate it, “But there are more foes left to fell!”

Akira’s sub-machine gun spat in angry bursts, taking down a headless soldier before drilling into another Garm bounding at him. He clashed against its clawed paw with his machete, then drew back and shouted, “Neko Shogun!”

That short man in samurai armor somehow both cute and threatening manifested, its short sword parrying aside the Garm’s next clawed swipe before holding up its signal fan. An aura of foxfire shimmered around the war dog before it picked up and hurled into a pair of headless soldiers, bowling all of them over.

Joker!” Hifumi shouted, “Boost Reaper!”

He fell back from the front without a moment’s hesitation, turning to the other flank to call out, “ Nekomata!” It blew wind into the skeletal pirate, who spread the shredding winds.

Ann swung her whip-sword back and forth, her blows too weak to kill the handful of headless soldiers remaining, but when it caught around a Garm’s canine head it didn’t leave a scratch. She breathed in and called on Carmen’s power again, pulsing sharp ice into its skull. Already battered from Carmen’s ice-spikes and maybe a burst from Akira’s gun, it dissipated as smoke. She summoned her dancer Persona again as wind howled behind her, but didn’t see any other Garm.

Very well,” armored bull-man growled, “I’ll finish you myself.”

The Phantom Thieves reformed their lines against the bull-man walking on what seemed more a set of slender, armored arms than legs astride a segmented-armor tail. Morgana’s eyes grew wide with fear. “Oh, crap . I saw one of these deep in Mementos.”

It clenched a fist at her and Ann felt heat and cinders fluttering up from underneath her. For a brief moment she wondered if she was about to die.

Then she stood beside Hifumi, Dihya in the inferno raging up where Ann used to be, tower shields useless against the flames roaring from below. Hifumi shrieked in pain and the model caught her as blood flowed from the shogi maestra’s nose.

An eye-blink later, Ann stood on cracked glass, her arms empty but for the retracted form of the whip-sword in hand. Heat radiated up, but she didn’t let that stop her from giving the beast her best counter-attack. “Carmen!”

The ice bolt crashed against Bull Man’s furnace-like chest, slashing thin gouges but melting away before penetrating.

Morgana shot it with his crossbow, and the bolt stuck in the four-meter-tall beast’s neck like a toothpick.

Ann stepped back, braced behind her sword. “Byakko, you saw this thing before? What’s it vulnerable to?”

He retreated a step. “Bless energy, but I’m out of sacred rice!”

Bull Man grinned, teeth bared. “Harvesters of death, take these Thieves!” It snapped its fingers and a half-dozen headless soldiers burst from the swamp at its sides.

Let me try something,” Akira said from Hifumi’s side. “Nike!”

The Greek goddess of victory coalesced and held up her bladed hoops.

A whistle from above was all the warning before a javelin made of pure light slammed into the towering, armored behemoth. It stumbled and fell to the ground.

Then another whistle and another javelin of golden light slammed into a headless soldier, disintegrating it.

Ryuji lifted his square-spiked club in the air. “Effin’ awesome!”

Another whistle and a gold-light spike plunged into him, knocking the surprised runner to the ground with a pained yelp.

Yusuke tried to dismiss Goemon, but too late before another gold javelin slammed into the Persona. Then another fell into Marcus as it flew up and away, another into a headless soldier, then the next plunged into the swamp where Makoto was a heartbeat before her dodge, then the next into another headless soldier.

Joker, stop!” Hifumi shook the boy clutching his head, but got only an agonized growl and trickle of blood from his nose.

Morgana picked himself up from the gold spike landing on him with a pained groan. “It’s just like when he tried to use Apsaras to heal Reaper!”

Knowing one was coming for her, Ann braced under her retracted whip-sword as another light-spike plunged into one headless soldier, then another before hers landed. She would have celebrated the small victory if the last headless soldier didn’t raise its spine-whip and unleash an eerie laugh that penetrated all the way to the bottom of her soul. Ann felt her sword and pistol drop from her hands before she turned to flee.

At last Ryuji got close enough to Nike to wallop her with his iron-capped club, knocking the Persona and Akira down.

A staff tripped her and motes of light shot into her with a feeling of pins and needles, but the brief sensation pushed out the overwhelming fear. When the model looked up, rings deposited Futaba and the girl stretched out a hand. “I gotcha.”

Ann gave a shaky smile but accepted the help to her feet. Unfortunately, the confusion gave the armored bull-man enough time to recover as well, but with direction from Hifumi to avoid its strengths, the Phantom Thieves battered it down over the next few minutes.

Ann and the thieves gathered at a closed gate on the other side of the courtyard. She gave a relieved laugh. “Thanks, Oracle. I don’t know what that was, but I haven’t felt that scared since Kamoshida.”

Aw, you’re good,” the girl waved down. “I wonder if I can do that without having to fully summon my Persona, like you do when you go all icy whip on Shadows.”

Morgana hopped up to the runner’s shoulder. “It’s good that we found two new powers among the Thieves, but it looks like you’ve got another mental block, Joker.”

A what?” Futaba blurted.

Still struggling through ragged breathing, Akira blurted, “Sorry, guys. It’s like… that power was at the edge of my grip.” He ran a hand through his hair in frustration. “I don’t understand why she went berserk.”

Ryuji finished washing down a dose of Takemi’s powdered medicine by glugging down a canned energy drink. “Same thing happened when we were running ‘round Mementos tryin’ to get Kaneshiro’s name. We’d seen Shadows heal each other, an’ Joker picked up one.” He gave a nod to Makoto. “This was even before you came in. Byakko was tired, so Joker tried to whip out one’a them water babes an’ heal a stab I’d taken. Thought the crazy thing turned me to stone for a moment, but it healed all the effin’ Shadows instead an’ started fightin’ all of us. I had to smack it with my baseball bat before Joker snapped outta it an’ switched Personas.” He slid his club across his shoulders – dislodging Morgana – and dangled the other arm on it.

Morgana sighed. “I think you can overcome that mental block with a realization with one of your confidants. Assuming you’re actually confiding in anyone.” He shook his head. “But that’s something for later. We have one chance to steal Togo… er, Mitsuyo’s Treasure.” He turned to the gate Hifumi led them to and read the placard on it.

This thing all things devours:
Birds, beasts, trees, flowers;
Gnaws iron, bites steel;
Grinds hard stones to meal;
Slays king, ruins town,
And beats mountains down.”

Ann grasped the handle of her sheathed whip-sword to help fight back a shiver. “I haven’t liked the rest of your mom’s palace, but this is even darker than most.”

Should we not attempt to retrace one of our prior secured paths?” Yusuke pointed out.

Hifumi shook her head. “Mother’s been setting ambushes all over the temple. I’m trying to guide us down paths with the fewest Shadows to conserve our strength for the final confrontation against her.”

Makoto, tapping her gauntlet against her chin in thought, paused. “Beats mountains down… Is it time?”

The gate slid aside and Hifumi gave a disappointed sigh. “I can’t believe mother’s been harboring such despair in her heart. We read the Lord of the Rings together, I thought she understood the theme that despair is a sin for it attempts to judge a future that hasn’t come when the present is yet to be lived.”

Akira tugged at his longcoat. “I thought it was that evil can seduce anyone, which is why we have to look out for each other.”

It’s a story of multiple themes,” she said with a small nod.

Having been the only one to successfully block most of the damage from Nike’s shower of blessed spears, Ann took to the front. Akira stepped up beside her, Ryuji on her other side. Foggy hills stretched before them, stunted and leafless trees dotting the muted landscape.

Saturday, 20 August 2016
Noon
Mitsuyo’s Temple, Hall of Usurpation

Akira swept his P90 across the snarling dog statues flanking a gate etched with ‘Hall of Usurpation’. The laser dot slid over them without any sign they were anything but statues. He kept his gun at the ready as he advanced to the gate and its placard with the team leader.

An angry growl rumbled from Ryuji’s stomach behind him. “Sorry, dudes.”

Here,” Makoto said, drawing a greasy, wrapped burger. “I was thinking that public cognition of it being filling should help if we had trouble and there wasn’t enough medicine to go around.”

Mm-hm,” he muttered in thanks before snatching it, tearing the wrapping open, and devouring the burger with huge bites.

Futaba wrinkled her nose. “Eww, even I have better table manners than that. At least close your mouth.”

Morgana rolled his eyes and hopped up to the longcoated boy’s shoulder. “Let him eat and let’s the rest of us figure out this puzzle.” He stepped up to read the placard.

Voiceless I cry,
wingless I flutter.
Toothless I bite,
mouthless I mutter.”

Hifumi crossed her arms to suppress her nervous wiggling. It reminded him of a little schoolgirl who knew the answer but had been told by the teacher to let someone else go. By God, it was adorable.

Akira tapped his fingers on the gun dangling from his shoulder on a strap. “Animals cry, and according to animal activists they don’t have a voice, but even if mosquitos don’t need teeth to bite, they do need wings to flutter.”

You’re being too literal about the interpretation,” Hifumi prodded him, a look of confident challenge in her eyes. “You should have this. Yusuke said you grew up in smaller towns, that’s closer to nature.”

Akira crossed his arms and shifted his weight to his other foot. If Hifumi was going to challenge him, he couldn’t back down. “Without teeth or a mouth it probably isn’t an animal. A breeze flutters—” Her smile widened, that meant he had to be on the right track. “—zephyr, gale, wind?”

The gate slid into the wall and she gave that dazzling smile that sent his heart racing.

The moment would have been wonderful if a shrine-keeper Shadow wasn’t standing on the other side of the gate. “Intruder!” It burst into a red-furred dog flanked by two Daji, one of the demons who brought down the Jin Dynasty locking eyes with him before swiping a hand.

Akira’s vision filled with Hifumi, the sounds of fighting a distant thing for sensual moments until the crack of a club smashing a Shadow skull brought Mitsuyo’s Palace back into focus around him. Ice crystals faded from the dissipating smoke where a Shadow used to be in the fusion of a Shinto temple and warring-states-era castle. The other Phantom Thieves had all moved around the limited space at the new Hall’s entrance. Ryuji rested his club on his shoulder and shook his head at the longcoated boy. “Dude, why’s it seem like every time a Shadow hits Joker with somethin’ that ain’t a straight-up face punch, he’s down?”

Futaba looked straight at the bulge in his pants and sing-songed, “I’ll bet I know why!”

The longcoated boy growled, but Morgana jumped in. “Speculation can wait until we get to a safe room. We do have a time limit.”

The space within had a lower ceiling and polished dark wood flooring like the treasury tower, but broad halls and drooping-willow-like fixtures casting a dull grey light. Orderly rows of exhibits, like the fortified building with the memory of Hifumi kissing Kazuma, spread down the left and right walls. Almost monochrome paintings in silkscreen style enhanced the dulled sense, but some of the exhibits bore colors so bright it was gaudy. One depicted part of a grammar school centering on a dull-colored girl with a brown that resembled what might have been a third-grade Mitsuyo, with another girl with long black hair standing up and sharing a smile with the teacher in similar fluorescent colors.

Further down the broad hall, he recognized a younger Hifumi in the gold-trimmed white uniform of Ogawa Middle School. A backdrop implied the courtyard of a common school. An adult mannequin of Mitsuyo, one arm reached across her chest and her head dipped in shame, in a drab black dress stood back from a teacher in a bright green sweatervest. A speech bubble sign on a wire next to the teacher read, “She is the cutest girl I’ve ever had in my class.”

Hifumi came to a stop next to him, her head tilted and one of the glowing optics dimming in a way that made him think of a squint. “Yamato-sensei. I don’t remember Mother being so small or withdrawn, she just said, ‘You’re too kind’ and we moved on to the next booth at the culture fair.”

This is her heart,” Morgana said, leading the rest of the Thieves. “Based on the name of this hall, I’m guessing she felt replaced, maybe even attacked by the attention showed to you. It’s not a logical feeling, but the human heart isn’t always.”

What about this one?” Ann said, stopping at an exhibit in the center of the right-hand wall, almost twice the size of the others but lacking any bright colors at all. It resembled the office of that NHK director, but Mitsuyo’s color-drained garb was different and she stood well back from the desk, the mannequin’s head bowed and shoulders hunched. “Dismissed for family interruptions?”

Futaba’s fist clenched around her staff weapon. “She let that animal have his way with her, and they sacked her when her husband caught a long-term illness?”

The optics on Hifumi’s faceplate blazed bright red for a beat. “She… he what ?”

Yusuke rested his hands on his hips. “Ah, you were not with us the day we searched the Hall of NHK. She aimed for a serious promotion by attracting the attention of one of its Board of Directors, and he threatened her job if she did not provide sexual favors.”

Jaws tightening, Hifumi’s hands clenched and unclenched. “That bastard put his hands on Mom and then fired her when she took off time to help Papa? That was the one time in her life I’ve ever seen Mom cry.” She reached up to brush at the red knot in her hair. “It scared me almost as much as when the doctor said Papa had a blood clot.”

Ryuji rested his arms on the club slung across his back. “Hey, uh, how come there’s so many exhibits here ‘bout shogi?”

Hifumi let out a breath and the longcoated boy pressed a hand against her back. She leaned into it. “Mother blames shogi for Papa’s collapse. For taking him away from her.” Her eyes drifted around the broad hall. “Maybe for taking away her career at NHK. She loved working there, being in front of the camera. It was as much her stage as the Ashikaga shogunate was for Kan’ami.”

Don’t worry,” Akira said, injecting more certainty into his voice than he felt. “We’ll save her.”

Saturday, 20 August 2016
Noon
Mitsuyo’s Temple, Treasure Vault

The Phantom Thieves charged into the gaudy treasure room. A bolt of lightning flickered down from the clouds churning outside, reflecting on the polished dark wood floor. Morgana’s crossbow swayed as he scanned left, then across the huge room fit for any palace. The lack of Shadows felt even more disturbing than the swirling storm outside, after a path through at least a dozen Shadow ambushes. Stacks of glistening gold koban wrapped with twine added an organized clutter to the jeweled or carved stone statuary. Deeper in the huge room, Shadow Mitsuyo floated in front of the golden pedestal holding whatever the manifestation of her Treasure was.

Thunder rumbled and Rider jerked, a gauntleted hand clamping on Joker’s arm. They exchanged a look, Joker trying to look more confident than tense at her contact, but the team leader noticed him pull away from Rider and at Hawk even if it was a twitch.

Reaper stepped forward, club raised. “You’re pretty gutsy, showin’ up here without a ton of backup like you’ve been hidin’ behind this whole time.”

Shadow Mitsuyo’s blazing gold eyes narrowed. “Even a mediocre strategist knows when to use force and when to hold back.”

Hawk stormed from the back. “Don’t talk about strategy, Mother. You tried to turn me into a puppet just to turn others’ eyes to you. You chased away my friends, you… sullied my honor as a shogi player. I know some of it was because you were hurt in the past, but… how can that excuse it? You and Papa taught me it was each person’s responsibility to be more ethical than the society in which we are born.”

The Shadow snarled, “Children are meant to obey.”

To the leader’s surprise, Rider was the first to fire a shot at the Shadow. Smoke floated from her shotgun barrel for a moment as she breathed heavy. “How dare you slander the honor of my father! You don’t even know my family, the sleepless night after sleepless night Big Sis slaves away to investigate and build ironclad cases to put criminals behind bars!”

Shadow Mitsuyo turned up her nose. “To be slander, it must be false.”

From the rear line, Oracle’s staff weapon snapped open with the crackle of a charging energy weapon. “How dare a monster like you quote Babylon 5! The Minbari are too honorable for a greedy jerk like you to even reach their level!”

Shadow Mitsuyo waved off the little girl with a hand tipped in claws. “Your infantile idealism is just another thread for some puppet-master. If it wasn’t me, it would be someone else.” Her gold gaze fell on Hawk. “I keep those brain-rotting video games out of the house to keep you focused on what’s important. I give you unlimited funds for books. Vetted tutors and personal trainers. I would have paid tuition at that artsy private academy even if you hadn’t earned a full scholarship. I even paid for your braces—”

All of those things help you,” Joker bellowed. “Understanding that you need to invest in something you profit off of just makes you a less stupid tyrant.”

Mitsuyo’s gold-blazing eyes narrowed on the longcoated boy. “Fool. Everybody is for sale, the only difference is the price.” Tension crept into her eyebrows. “Better to know what you can profit on and exploit it while you can than put it on a pedestal where it does nobody any good, just for time and fate to steal it away. Buying and selling is just the way of the world. It’s what made Kaneshiro more powerful than any elected figurehead.”

Reaper held out his club as if a spear to stab at her. “Only when good peeps don’t do nothin’. That’s why we’re here. We’re gonna change your heart jus’ like we changed Kaneshiro’s, an’ the people are gonna finish things off.”

Mother’s Shadow grimaced. “You spit on me for doing what’s best for me, but you hooligans are doing the very same! Killing you will be a mercy.” She snapped her hands and enormous chests to the side popped open, Shadows pouring out and lining up to the Phantom Thieves’ left and right.

To Morgana’s pride, Rider and Reaper didn’t wait for a command to start unloading into the Shadows streaming out of two chests the size of dumpsters on each side, the latter whining, “I shoulda known she’d’a called in backup like a cheap bitch!”

Hawk closed her eyes and summoned Dihya. “Foes of justice, fall before righteousness!”

A clatter sounded around them as if armor retracted itself from each Shadow, then Hawk fell to her knees, gasping for breath. Joker grabbed her by the waist to keep her on her feet, but she turned to him with a firm, “Help them.”

Shadow Mitsuyo snarled and she snapped her fingers high in the air. “Dispose of them, mutt!”

The embossed wolf on the door rippled, then disgorged the giant cognition of the terrifying guard dog Hawk kept in the real world. It snarled just like his carved likeness and bounded in, bowling Joker over with huge clawed paws and snapping its jaws down on the cannon-arm of Kidd, drawing a pained cry from the runner.

Hawk spun about. “Antalas, heel!”

Kill them, you stupid mutt!”

The huge cognition looked back and forth between Hawk and Mitsuyo, giving a whine but his teeth still locked around Kidd.

Hawk left the center to step into the right flank held by Reaper and Oracle. “You two, fall back and focus on Mother!”

Oracle twirled her staff weapon, bashing a snake-man before leveling it at a human-faced lion and shooting it. “Are you crazy?”

Trust me! A good strategist knows the stakes of a gamble!”

Reaper swung his club off-hand, his right arm dangling, so Joker grabbed him by the good arm and hauled him up to the front line group with Panther. “Come on, Oracle!”

She took another shot, but when Hawk caught a Garm’s clawed swipe with a twirl of her cape and cast it aside, the hacker fell back.

Hawk parried the serpentine arms of a snake-man, then injected a bit of fear into her command, “Antalas, help!”

The giant cognition of her dog abandoned Kidd to come charging through the Shadows massing on the right flank, grabbing a human-faced lion Shadow like a chew toy and shaking it back and forth, then hurling it into one of the enormous treasure chests. The Shadow dissipated, and knocked the lid closed. Oracle let out a whoop, but Hawk wasn’t done. She raised her thumb and index finger to her mouth and blew a sharp whistle. Antalas spun about, knocking down another clump of terrified Shadows before he bounded to her side, then knelt his forepaw to let her vault up to his back. She had to lay flat against him, as close as his back was to the ceiling rafters, but Hawk directed the giant cognition of her dog to her mother. “Onward, faithful companion!”

The fanged cognition charged, bowling aside larger Shadows and destroying smaller ones.

Shadow Mitsuyo growled, tanking a bolt of lightning and parrying a machete from Joker before she kicked him into Ann, then caught the fanged muzzle of the cognition with both hands. It brought her to the ground, her stilettoed heels cutting gouges in the polished floor, but she still brought the huge cognition to a standstill. The cognition let out a wimper. Shadow Mitsuyo bellowed, “If you want something done right, you must be willing to sacrifice anything and do it yourself!”

She gave a yank and the cognitive guard dog stumbled, then the Palace Ruler blurred forward to grasp the base of its skull and give a mighty twist. The huge cognition let out a pained yelp before a crack, then collapsed to the ground and dissolved.

Hawk fell to the floor and landed on one hand, her visor optics shining bright as if in lieu of open shock.

Holy fuck,” Reaper blurted. “She just killed her own dog!”

I paid far more than that for a job shogi took away from me,” she said, sneer pulling her lips back to bare her pointed teeth. She back-handed Hawk, sending the girl flying into Joker, then held a hand high and let it drop, as if signaling a distant army. “Burning volley!”

Flaming bolts rained down on them, Fox using Goemon to shield himself and Panther while Hawk gripped her armored cloak with her off-hand and pulled it around Joker and herself. The barrage continued for long seconds before the last fire bolt fell.

Oracle closed her staff weapon. “I’m guessing she’s resistant to fire damage now.”

Hawk stood, Dihya manifesting above her for a brief beat. “Even moreso than Rider. Everything else should still wound her, champions of light!”

The treasure chests which disgorged Shadows before were already opening. Morgana slapped another bolt in his crossbow. “Hit the Palace Ruler! Then watch flanks!”

Here, Panther!” Akira summoned a purple-skinned oni which spat an ice bolt into Carmen, allowing the graceful dancer to hurl a massive trio of ice spears into the Palace Ruler.

Shadow Mitsuyo retreated back to the pedestal holding her Treasure, her enormous wings wrapping around her like a cocoon. Marcus’ rays and Ryuji’s bullets impacted without noticeable scratches.

Oracle turned to the Shadows coming up on the right flank with a whine, “Bosses with immune phases suck!”

Dihya hovered over the Thieves as they arrayed against the right and left flanks again. “Fox, switch with Reaper!”

The artist fell back from Morgana’s side, but it only took a moment before the runner ran in and put his brute force to good show with a clubbed bash against the snake-man slithering up on the team leader, then stepped into the encroaching Shadows to press his momentum and destroy a Daji.

Morgana scanned his side to see whether Joker would do better to boost one of his flank, or the opposite, but spotted a Daji charging some kind of psionic magic too late. She ran a finger down her exposed cleavage, “Serve your lust, betray your fair-weather friends.”

Joker’s machete tumbled to the ground and his P90 fell to its strap.

Great. Just when he was about to ask for a boost. Seeing those eyes clouded over, Morgana leaped at Joker. Behind him manifested the agile, clawed cat-burglar from the bank. Nekomata swiped with her left claws, then right, forcing Morgana to parry and backpedal. The exchange went on for several attempted blows until Hawk came in from the Persona’s side, trying to club it with the butt of her rifle held in her off hand. Nekomata deflected the clumsy blow, but the sudden move sent her claw into the floor, where it got stuck on a rough knot of wood.

Zorro!” Morgana knew how to purge mind control, just not a way to do it that didn’t hurt. The black-garbed champion of ladies picked up Joker, then tossed him into the ground. Nekomata dissipated.

Reaper cursed. “There’s gotta be some way to cut down on all them Shadows!”

The lids!” Rider shouted between shotgun blasts and fire bolts. “They’re tethered up with ropes! Byakko, can you cut them?”

Morgana slashed back another Typhon before those snake arms could bite him, then leaped on top of a headless soldier, over a Garm, but the next headless soldier was faster and caught him with its sharp spine-whip, slamming him down into the middle of the mob.

No, Byakko!” Panther cried out, then let loose a war cry. Three spiky balls of ice exploded into the Shadows around him, followed by a shout from Joker before that celestial serpent smashed through a handful of Shadows, its heads reared up and breathed beams of radiation on the remaining Shadows around.

Not one to waste an opportunity, Morgana rushed back through the corridor to the Phantom Thieves’ right flank. “We need an opening!”

Joker!” Hawk called out, Dihya suspended above her. “Boost Fox! His energy can harm the Shadows and Mother!”

Joker roared as if that could drive back the Shadows, and called out Raja Naga, which fed lightning into Goemon, who forked it into the Shadows. Well, at least one cleared flank was still something.

Then Joker bellowed again, followed by Fox as he directed a massive lightning bolt into the Palace Ruler. To the leader’s surprise, she fell to her knees and sparks danced over her limbs.

They couldn’t afford to pass up this opportunity, danger at the flanks or no. “Phantom Thieves, all in on the Palace Ruler!”

To his pride, all but Rider and Reaper, holding off the flanks, turned to dash against Shadow Mitsuyo.

They bashed and slashed her until she emitted a psychokinetic wave shoving them back, then her wings cocooned her. A fiery bolt from the hacker’s staff splashed against them without leaving a singe.

So much for your pride, you greedy hag!” Oracle said as she rejoined the right flank.

A wing knocked the artist back as the Shadow unfurled. “Greedy? Hag ?” Shadow Mitsuyo snarled as she returned to her float. “For taking care of myself, as all people do? What do you think you selfish children are doing by using force to get what you want? My actions are an exchange.” She raised a hand, darkness churning within the clawed appendage. “Life would teach you a much harsher lesson. At least my way is merciful.” Her fingers snapped closed and the darkness puffed away as she called, “Mamudoon.”

Dark circles traced under each of the Phantom Thieves, a gripping horror as time seemed to slow and their reactions slowed further. Morgana could only see the phantasm of a straw doll form in front of his eyes but knew each Phantom Thief perceived the same. A shadow of relief passed through him as he saw Panther shake off the curse magic and dive out of her circle. Darkness roared up and Morgana’s last remaining substitute homonculus crumbled, same as the one he gave Fox and Reaper.

He’d run out before giving one to Joker. The light went out of those defiant grey orbs and Joker’s body collapsed to the floor.

A Dark Place?

The Demiurge has penetrated the sanctum,” a feminine voice shouted. “I’ll hold it off, Master. Please flee!

Morgana’s senses began to sharpen, but still no vision met his eyes. A dull sense of cold, and the distant sound of shattering stone blocks reached his consciousness, but he couldn’t feel his arms or legs.

It’s too late to escape,” a nasal voice riposted with as much authority as the gentle man could. “But not too late to wrap up some hope and cast a torch into the darkness.” Something shifted and picked him up. Morgana sensed the next words were to him, “Bring Man’s champion back here.”

Then Morgana felt himself be thrown, not just through space but through reality itself. Still bound, he collided with something hard and lashed out with his arms to escape his dark confines.

Mitsuyo’s Temple, Treasure Vault

Morgana stumbled and clutched his face with his free hand. What was tha—?

Oracle bellowed a war cry and charged the Palace Ruler with enraged swings of her staff weapon.

Morgana blinked and shook his head. Leaving her hood down, Hawk scrambled to Joker’s cooling body, tears streaming down her face. She pulled his body onto her lap as Dihya hovered above them, light streaming from behind her Persona’s floating mask. One hand held his frizzy head and she pleaded, “Aki, come back.”

Her Persona broke apart into silver motes which soaked into the longcoated boy.

Joker’s chest rose and his eyelids fluttered under his mask before his red, gloved hand cupped her cheek. “Is this heaven?”

She…” Morgana struggled to comprehend what he just saw. “She just revived him…” He’d only seen a Shadow use Recarm once during his first escape from deep in Mementos. After a lucky hit took down a powerful Shadow, another revived the first before it could be lost to the collective unconscious. He realized discretion was the better part of valor that day.

The flurry of Oracle’s motion came to a sharp halt when Shadow Mitsuyo managed a parry and continued the motion to cut open Oracle’s throat and send her tumbling back.

Rider, heal Oracle! Joker, take her place and cut those Shadow chests!”

Rider’s reply was a defiant shout as she swiped through a gaggle of Shadows on Johanna, then came about with fire gushing. Joker took the silent route, but between his weapons and Nike he pushed back at the Shadows disrupted by Johanna.

Morgana readied his crossbow despite its diminishing ammunition and let a bolt fly as close to the Palace Ruler’s left eye as he could. “Come on, you ugly hag!”

Shadow Mitsuyo juked back, but turned her ire on the leader.

Morgana sensed the heat shimmering underneath himself a heartbeat before the inferno raged up, and when he dodged that another formed underneath his feet before the cinders from the first faded. Pillar after pillar of white-hot fire roared up and he had to put everything he had into staying one step ahead.

Just when he thought he’d run out of stamina just staying ahead of the Palace Ruler’s powerful flames, a spiked ball of ice larger than him sailed into the great Shadow and exploded, coating her in frost and exploding with sharp shards.

Despite her frozen arms and legs, Shadow Mitsuyo wrapped her huge wings around herself, and Oracle came to a stop next to the leader. “Aw, man! Now she’s gonna heal herself again.”

Morgana turned to take in the silence where there had been a raging, two-front battle against every Shadow they’d faced in the Palace. “You’re all better?”

Futaba brought her staff weapon to the ground with a confident tap. “Heh. Not just healed up, while you were distracting Evil Togo, we closed those Shadow spawners.”

Morgana loaded another bolt in his crossbow. “Good work, team.”

The wings unfurled from their impromptu cocoon and the Palace Ruler returned to floating above the floor as if gravity was beneath her.

Carmen shot a quick bolt of ice at the Palace Ruler, and it reflected straight back. Panther stumbled back with a grunt. “Looks like she’s changed things up again.”

I see, now. She’s reconfiguring each time she enters that shielded state. I’d avoid ice,” Hawk said from behind them. She reached for her mask, but those optics remained. “Sorry, I can’t draw out Dihya yet. But I wouldn’t trust she’s yielded her resistance to fire or curse yet.”

Undaunted, Reaper leveled his machine gun. “Then we just gotta smash ‘er down quick!”

Morgana wanted to slap a palm against his forehead at Reaper’s lack of thought, but he wasn’t necessarily wrong. As the arrayed Phantom Thieves let loose against the Palace Ruler, Shadow Mitsuyo responded with fire, ice, and wind the Thieves had to rely on Joker’s boosting to match. He sent Rider to the back with Hawk to keep an eye on the vanguard and heal serious injuries, then strained to psychokinetically pick up one of the larger busty statues in Mitsuyo’s likeness and hurl it at her, only for the Shadow to smash the heavy ceramic and go right back to exchanging blows with the others.

We’re tiring out faster than Mother is,” Hawk muttered with a frown.

Rider’s eyes darted back and forth as she sat astride Johanna. “We’ve fallen into a straight-on battle instead of trying to open up and exploit a weakness.”

Hifumi’s lips pursed. “If neither physical nor magical force will faze her, we shall have to create an opening.” She called out with all the thunder of a general, “Joker, boost Zorro! Throw everything you can pick up at her from every angle.”

Morgana wasn’t sure what she was planning, but Joker deflected Mitsuyo’s claws and backflipped for the room to change Persona without a heartbeat of hesitation. “Neko Shogun!”

Morgana felt strength thrum through him and closed his eyes to put all his concentration into his Persona. Jeweled statues, carved stone, and large shaped ceramic pots lifted up across the treasure vault. Most times he preferred to focus his concentration into one at a time to strengthen a throw, but this time he hurled everything Zorro could get a mental grip on with wild abandon.

Shadow Mitsuyo smashed ceramic, then caught and hurled aside a carved stone statue before a gold one half her size crashed into her left flank. Her parry against the next ceramic was late, breaking it but not in time to keep its shards from showering her, and far too late for the next stone statue.

Joker, boost Reaper!” Hawk shouted, “Concentrate your wind!”

The boys bellowed in time with their Personas, and Reaper shot a cone of shredding winds that not only slashed at the Palace Ruler but drew back in pieces of flying ceramic and statues to assail her again. The combined assault knocked her back, and Morgana ordered an all-out assault while she was down.

Dark smoke gushed and the last thing to fade were her wings, but the Palace Ruler shrank down to the battered woman in a showy business dress and pencil skirt. She clambered for the gold pedestal with her Treasure, only for Fox to slam his katana into her path. Shadow Mitsuyo sat back, tears trailing from her gold-blazing eyes. “It’s not fair. I gave my body for my career, and that was taken away. I gave my heart for my husband, and he was taken away. Nobody ever credited my hard work at mathematics or management, that just pricked men’s egos. The only thing people would praise me for is how beautiful I was.”

Fox stepped forward, sheathing his sword. “You treated your daughter like a pawn. A daughter is supposed to be the most precious thing a mother can have. My mother didn’t even live long enough to speak with me, but I know she loved me from the painting she left behind.”

Hawk shook off whatever trepidation she had and jogged forward, crouching to one knee in front of her mother’s Shadow to try to look her in the eye. “Mother, you should have gone to the police. You should have gone to Papa. You could have even come to me , I’d have heard you out.”

Shadow Togo levered herself up to all fours, then slumped back onto her legs. “Oh, Hifumi. You were twice as hard as everyone else. You were more kind than the world deserved, and you always wanted to help. But when you came along, everyone forgot my beauty for yours. ‘She’s the most adorable girl I’d ever seen’ they’d all tell me, no matter how long I’d spent on my eyelashes.” She reached out and ran her fingers under that dangling red knot in her hair. “We’d spend all day together, reading or watching Endeavour and brushing hair. Then you followed your father into shogi.”

Panther paced closer, her pistol in one hand and her retracted sword in her other. “Was that why you started hating shogi? Your daughter started to choose her own path, and it wasn’t yours?”

Shadow Mitsuyo gave a disappointed sigh, then ran her hands through Hawk’s hair and let the red knot threads fall. “When Hifumi came along, I was forgotten for her. I tried to be proud, she was my baby. But when she won that grade school tournament and defeated not only her fellow students but every single teacher at that school, they started calling her ‘genius girl’ and looked at me with pride.” Her hand cupped the back of Hawk’s head. “I struggled my whole life and nobody ever called me genius.”

Morgana stayed quiet and slipped around the others to get to the gold pedestal, where a grade-school certificate proclaimed Togo Hifumi the most brilliant shogi player ever to attend. Numerous signatures with well-wishing or other praise filled the margins. A few mentioned the surprise of such a ‘brilliant beauty’. He took it and hopped down to the Thieves circling close around the Palace Ruler.

All my life, people took from me and gave me so much less in return. I couldn’t even sell my body for the fame I wanted,” Shadow Mitsuyo said as she looked Hawk in the eye. “Even after Kaneshiro’s men discovered me working at that hostess club, he didn’t give a damn about me. Only how much of his money I could hide from tax assessors.”

Hawk squeezed a hand on her mother’s shoulder. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t there where you needed me, Mother.”

No,” Joker said, kneeling next to her. “You were dying under her boot. She could have gone to you and talked things out any time.” He turned a harder gaze to the Shadow. “Instead you chose to give in to jealousy and hurt everyone who had what you didn’t. Hifumi’s your daughter, not your puppet to use.”

Shadow Mitsuyo sniffed. “You’re right.” Her hand slipped from Hawk’s hair. “I was a horrible mother. I got so lost in missing out on the things I wanted, I wasn’t there to give you the life you deserved.” She looked up at the others. “If you can change me, please… change the man who made me trade my body for my job. Sugimura Morihiko. He won’t change himself.”

Morgana folded his crossbow. “Leave it to us.”

Rider, staying on her feet, looked down her nose at the Palace Ruler. “Go back to your self in the real world and make it right.”

Shadow Mitsuyo’s eyes welled over and she faded, her last words, “I’m sorry.”

Thunder clapped outside, drawing a jump from Rider before the enormous wood beams around them started to groan.

Time to book it,” Morgana shouted, holding the signed certificate in hand as he dashed for the balcony. He tied off the longest cord he had and slid down, the rest of the Phantom Thieves following him down the outside of the leaning tower. Cracks split the walls of the other temple-castle buildings, great chunks of stone and masonry falling down. Groaning on the tower became wood splitting and Morgana abandoned the cord about four meters up, transforming into the Citroen just before touching down.

The transformation surprised Oracle so much she lost her grip and smacked into his roof. She must not have been badly injured, because she popped up and cried out, “What the hell happened?”

Panther touched down on the roof and scrambled down. “We’ll explain later, get in!”

The rest of the Phantom Thieves descended and loaded in just as columns wider across than a man’s torso gave way and the whole tower tipped over towards them. Reaper tripped on the way in, dropping several bundles of stacked gold coins and a jeweled statuette he was carrying in his left hand. When he reached back for them, Joker shoved the runner. “Forget the trinkets, let’s go !”

Being the last person on, even before Joker closed the side door, Morgana spun his wheels and took off at a screech. Lightning flashed, as if just to highlight the dark shadow of the tower descending on them.

Sitting at the left side of the front bench, Hifumi peered up through the window. “Oh, no. At an acceleration of nine point eight meters per second per—”

Never tell me the odds!” Oracle declared from the passenger seat.

The Phantom Thieves shrieked as the shadow of the tipping tower darkened and Morgana reached into all his desperation for the last shreds of speed to escape through that gate straight ahead.

Notes:

Hifumi’s first use of Recarm uses roughly the same words, diminutive reference included, as Jesus in Mark 5:41 when he revives the daughter of Jairus. Jesus spoke Aramaic as would be the common tongue of the place and time, but I’ve never believed in any special power of one language over the meaning behind them and so gave Hifumi’s line the same entreaty in the narrative’s language.

The first version of this chapter had Hifumi speak about Sheakespeare and the Globe, but Japan’s theater tradition stretches back well before English, tracing to the 1400s with the versatile actor Kiyotsugu Kan’ami who is credited with first creating what would be recognized in the modern day as Noh theater.

Chapter 110: August 20th, 200km in the Wrong Lane

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Saturday, 20 August 2016
Early Evening
Yongen, Takemi Medical Clinic

Doctor Takemi noticed four people walk into her waiting lobby, their dress brighter than the usual drab clothing. But this was summer, people got adventurous when it was hot and their work or school closed. She finished her over-the-phone argument with one of her medication suppliers and bashed the ‘disconnect’ button with her thumb. It didn’t feel very satisfying, but slamming it onto the receiving station just for it to bounce behind her desk was even less so. She scribbled a few notes and tried not to notice how many of her once-reliable suppliers had backed out. So much for taking down Kaneshiro solving all her problems. Well, no point keeping the patients waiting. She slid the window open.

“…just a little tense,” a girl in a slimming navy-blue dress, and favoring her right wrist, said. The doctor noted the frizzy-haired boy who refused to take proper care of himself had all his focus on her.

The Niijima girl squared her shoulders and turned to face the other girl a little more straight-on, which angled her away from the front desk. “You flinched and almost lost the overhead strap when the train accelerated. At least see if Doctor Takemi needs you to put on a tension wrap or take some anti-inflammatories. The vast majority of our injuries in the Metaverse are psycho-somatic, but there is a degree of spill-over and treatment can prevent them from becoming real and lasting detriments.”

The tuxedo cat popped out of Frizzy’s leather satchel and gave a proud meow. If she didn’t know any better, the cat was trying to fit into the conversation.

Takemi barked, “What have you kids gotten into this time?” She would never admit she loved the way they jumped.

Do you mind if I go first?” Niijima said, waiting for the others to shake their heads before she rose, still pressing a hand against her stomach.

Takemi took her to the exam room, locked the door, and went through the standard checkup for somebody she suspected to be the victim of a yakuza beating. Niijima bore no marks on her face or neck, but once her poet blouse was off the old bruises on her abdomen and forearms were hard to miss. The doctor noted faint singes like electrical burns on her arm. “That’s odd, I thought Yatsuhashi was caught in the Shibuya sweep. Did you get these today, or several days ago?”

Niijima placed her hand over the singe, though seemed less ashamed and more confused. She looked to the kids’ tuxedo cat. “If you’re right that she already knows… that , I think telling her would only help her prescribe effective treatments.”

The tuxedo cat slumped on the floor in front of the girl and gave a defeated mew.

Niijima looked the doctor in the eye. “All right. The saying does go ‘never lie to your doctor or attorney.’ We’re the Phantom Thieves.” She paused to gauge the lack of reaction in the doctor. “This is a little hard to explain without sounding irrational, but we don’t change hearts in the real world, we do so in a place where physics and cognition are… no longer differentiable.”

Takemi sketched down another couple of notes. “And after the peyote wears off?”

Niijima’s eyebrow quirked up. “Pay oti?”

The cat paced in a circle, and if the doctor didn’t know any better she would’ve sworn he gave a snarky meow at the girl.

Crown, button, cactus?” Takemi offered. The girl’s cluelessness seemed genuine. “Psychoactive alkaloids, particularly mescaline. They’re particularly common in ‘spirit journeys’.”

Niijima displayed the electrical singe on her arm. “Could an imaginary trip cause electrical burns? Or leave Ann-san untouched by frostbite when the rest of us have trace marks, thanks to her Persona? We haven’t been here many times, but I’m sure you’ve noticed that I’ve never had marks from heat burns. I’m pretty sure the others will have some.”

The kid had a point, but the doctor wouldn’t just concede such a wild concept so easily. There were still ways for tripping kids to hurt themselves while high. “Are you telling me you kids wait until the witching hour to fight fragments of the collective unconscious?”

Niijima’s widened eyes seemed even more red in the indirect lighting. “You know about Shadows…? Wait, what do you mean ‘witching hour’?”

Takemi sat back in her chair. “You’re not referencing that supposed Kirijo document leaked by that handsome Detective Prince?”

Niijima and the cat both bristled, the latter letting out a brief but angry yowl. She gave a nod at him, then fixed her focus back on the doctor. “We have nothing to do with the Defective Detective. That hypocrite dares to call us glory hounds when he regularly takes to the air to prod a reaction out of judges or industry leaders. We risk our lives to free hearts from distortions that effectively imprison them.”

The cat punctuated her statement with a clipped meow and thrust out his chest.

It’s too dangerous to show you,” Niijima said, “But what we do is real. None of us had much of a choice to start, but we can’t stop when the stakes are so high.” She grit her teeth. “I… I sat back and told myself that Kamoshida was none of my business, so I buried my head in the sand as long as whatever rumors involving him didn’t impact me personally. I could have saved so many people if I’d just been less of a selfish coward. Being a Phantom Thief isn’t just idealism to free people from criminals’ distortions, it’s my penance. It’s my oath never to let what happened… happen again. If you were serious about wanting the truth, you have it. Now it’s up to you to listen and treat us based on the truth, or reject everything we’ve told you. If we can’t be honest with you and expect the same back, we can’t be your patients any more than you can be our doctor.”

A flicker of anger passed through Takemi, but the girl had a point. She’d been cataloging strange injuries for the past couple months, and while she expected the big confrontation to happen with that frizzy-haired boy… one of these kids, these Phantom Thieves still threw the gauntlet down in front of her. The college-educated part of her wanted to say the idea sounded too crazy to accept, but the evidence was confounding every ‘real world rational’ theory she’d come up with to date. If she was going to keep an eye on them, she had to take what they said when she demanded the truth. She took her clipboard and sketched down a few notes. “I guess that means I’ll save the aloe gel for the others.” She snatched a prescription sheet from her desk, scribbled down a few things, then handed it to her. “You can do stretching, but no heavy exercise for the next couple days.”

As the doctor got up to fetch some prepared mixes from the refrigerator, the Niijima girl balked. “That’s it?”

Takemi stepped into what was intended to be another patient exam room turned supply and refrigeration cabinet, retrieved a small jar, then returned to the exam room. “I’ll keep my eyes open, Niijima-chan. But be honest, would you believe someone if they said they whisked away to a mystical world where they got bruises that look a lot like the low-key torture yakuza inflicts? The only reason why I’m considering this is that only a few of you are coming in with frostbite in the summer, or minor electrical burns on some but not others. The yakuza is either too organized or too lazy to inflict such a strange array of injuries on kids. They’ll either kill all of you or beat all of you the same way on the same day.” She tried to swallow down the bitterness from knowing she played a role in that, however indirect it was, then handed over the cool jar. “This is a mixture of my own formation. Clean the affected region as much as you can first, then apply directly. It’ll inhibit inflammation and speed up healing. Unlike the medicated bandages Frizz buys for you guys, this needs at least some air flow for best effects. As hot as the summer is, I doubt heavy clothing will be an issue.”

Niijima took the jar, then waited for a print-out of exact instructions and side-effect warnings and departed for the waiting room.

Takemi followed, more to steal a glimpse of the kids’ acting before they knew a doctor’s eye was on them. Frizz had an arm around a new girl in that slimming, navy-blue dress over a budding figure. The princess-style hair cut looked generic to a boring degree to the doctor, but some boys went nuts for it. The way they leaned against each other, her eyes closed in shallow sleep and his arm hooked around her was the most relaxed she’d ever seen Kurusu. She made a mental note to tease him for it after a proper exam. No reason not to have a little fun as long as he was healthy.

Please,” the standing boy with blue hair pleaded as he scribbled with mad frenzy on a sketchpad, “Hold your earlier positions for a few more minutes.”

The girl blinked out of her nap and turned a no-nonsense look on him. “Kitagawa-kun, it’s been a long day and I just want to get back home and make sure Mother is okay. I know you all have been doing this for a while, but… well… it’s my mother. And I have so many questions. What happens to her blood pressure or oxygen level? Will she need more vitamins, or will it be okay if she goes a couple days without eating?”

Well look at the blossoming nurse,” Takemi said from the inner doorway.

The girl stiffened, then slipped behind a formal mask, stood, and gave a brief bow. “Oh. Good evening, Doctor. I’m no nurse, I just picked up a few things while helping them look after Papa.”

Takemi waved her clipboard. “Whatever. So which kiddo’s next?”

Frizz and both girls looked to the blue-haired boy scribbling away at a sketchpad. Then they rolled their eyes and looked between each other. “You go ahead,” Kurusu said.

She turned her right wrist with a great deal of care. “It’s just a little bit of tension, I’ll be fine with a bit of light rest. You go ahead.”

The tuxedo cat meowed up at them, then gave a rather pointed meow to Frizz, who let out a huff and blabbed, “ Fine , I’ll go next.”

The tuxedo cat slipped in with, and over the next few minutes Takemi went through the usual routine. Kurusu tried to play down his injuries, but a no-nonsense tone and threat to double his expenses got his long-sleeved shirt off. The redness of a minor burn marred his stomach and early bruising splotched across his rib cage, arms, and legs. “Tell the guy he hit like a girl?”

Kurusu snorted. “I never even said that before I met Makoto.”

Takemi felt a corner of her lip quirk up, but kept a smile off her face. Being a little progressive didn’t make up for recklessness. “I didn’t see you favoring one side or another. Any joint pain?”

He shook his head. As stubborn as the boy was, he knew not to outright lie to her about medical issues.

Takemi retrieved another jar of topical analgesic with some aloe from her bedroom planter to help the burn. “Wash the affected regions and apply directly.” She sat down and printed out a set of instructions, but instead of handing it straight to him, she turned in her chair. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed you picked up another stray out there.”

If she didn’t know better, the doctor would’ve sworn the cat gave a resigned meow like ‘you’ve done it now’.

Kurusu hunched as if preparing for combat. “Hifumi is not ‘some stray’, she’s the reason we changed her mother’s heart!”

The cat meowed.

Kurusu turned his gaze away from the cat. “I didn’t say there couldn’t be other reasons like the blackmail or money laundering.”

Hm.” Takemi recalled the way he had an arm around her even after sitting down. He’d helped the other girls in, but always disengaged. “I was assuming that adorable little troll you brought in the other day was joking. I figured you’d be the shy type who wouldn’t pick up a girlfriend until after college.” She pursed her lips and thought. He seemed the repressed type who overcompensated when the floodgates burst. “Are you two already prepared for safe sex? High school is not a good life stage to get pregnant.”

Frizz’s blush went all the way to his neck. “We’re not having sex! We haven’t even started dating yet!”

Odd. The two resting against each other made a picture that would’ve fit those sappy postcards. Still, women bore the brunt of costs in an unprotected relationship. “Good, then you’ll make sure to be prepared before something happens? I can’t count the number of times I sold emergency contraceptives to preachy abstinence girls. If you don’t want to buy condoms from a corner drugstore that’s fine, I sell the basics.”

His blush darkened and he covered his face with a hand. “ Doc ! We’re both Catholic.” The hand slid down, taking off his glasses with it, and his gaze slipped to the floor as he fiddled with the frames.

Listen, kiddo,” Takemi said, sitting back in her little swivel chair. “I leave the moralizing to the philosophers. I’m a doctor and I deal with the practical. Fact is, condoms and birth control do more to prevent unplanned pregnancies than shaming teenagers. Shaming just leads to more kids knowing they can’t trust adults. If you think you can ‘control yourself’, great. It’s still useful to have a backup plan. Especially if you’re both… ‘in the mood’.”

That blush, just starting to fade, came back even stronger than before. “ Doc ! We haven’t even kissed yet!”

Yet. So there’s desire. Still, there was no point shoving a box in his hands if he would refuse to use them. And medical supplies cost money. “At least promise me you’ll buy something if you even think the possibility could come up. Protection can be as important for you as it would be for her. Also, try to stop getting hurt.” She turned around and picked up the bill for the previous girl, adding the items for Kurusu. “Are they paying themselves, or are you taking care of the whole bill today?”

Oh,” he said, sounding much more calm now that business was forefront. “I’ll pay.”

She printed out a set of directions for his topical cream, then handed it to him without fanfare. “Very well, then. Send in the next one.”

He headed out, and a few seconds later entered the girl in a dress of conservative cut which still flattered her figure. She bowed as if introducing herself to a formal class, “Togo Hifumi. Please excuse the intrusion.”

Takemi motioned her clipboard to the exam bed. “Siddown and relax, kid. I’m a back alley doc, not a casting manager.” The girl did so, but her prim posture remained. Takemi shuffled through her desk for first-time patient paperwork. She could put it off when she still had chunks of cash come in from the yakuza, but the budget was tighter now. “So what got you? Fencing with Shiva?”

Togo-chan covered her right hand. “Oh, no. Mother’s Shadow killed an enlarged cognition of Antalas while I was riding him, and I fell. My Persona appears to be the only one of the group with a shield, that’s served to ward off things that hurt the others. They were so much more seriously injured, I didn’t want to make a fuss when our energy was almost as short as our supplies.”

The tuxedo cat hung his head and meowed.

The girl looked like she wanted to say something else to the cat before remembering the doctor. Instead, she held out her hand. “It… has been feeling a little more tight when I tilt my hand up or down.”

Lift your other hand as well,” Takemi said before settling into the usual procedure for checking sprain and swelling. Nothing visible yet, but if the patient was experiencing discomfort the fluid build-up might just be taking a while. With no pain or feeling of weight in the hand or fingers, it didn’t seem like there was any ligament damage, and she wasn’t favoring it enough to justify an X-ray. “Rest that hand for two days. No picking up anything heavier than chopsticks tomorrow. Keep it elevated above your heart to prevent swelling or fluid build-up.”

The girl’s left eye tensed. “That may be a little hard. My desk and the tables at home are all lower.”

Takemi fetched a cloth wist compress. “I heard you mention blood oxygen and vitamins. Where’d you learn about those things? Most kids your age have their hands full with history and grammar.”

Togo-chan’s green eyes fell and her shoulders drooped a fraction of a centimeter. “Papa has Guillain-Barré Syndrome. I’ve had to learn a fair bit about respiration and the peripheral nervous system, just as a matter of helping the nurses who see to him.”

Virally induced?”

Togo’s eyes swung up to the doctor, the intensity a teenager should have returning to them. “We don’t know. It started with a blood clot, but they held him for much longer than the day typical for clot treatment. Papa had arm weakness and shortness of breath after his release and suffered another collapse, and has been in and out of the hospital for over a year and a half.” She brushed her hair back over her ear, eyes growing distant. “I just wish there was something more I could do. I was trying to help mother raise more money to cure Papa, but there’s always some kind of new hoop or test the hospital’s requiring Papa to come in for.”

Takemi tapped a pen against her clipboard. “Odd, most hospitals are eager to get patients treated and back out into the world. It’s bad for reputations if people have recurring complications.” Unless they were trying to avoid admission of fault in causing a problem, but that wasn’t her business. She handed the rolled fabric compress. “This should be enough to apply tension and limit movement, plus help you remember to keep your hand elevated. If you experience further discomfort, apply ice for no longer than twenty minutes.”

Togo-chan gave a nod, but instead of getting up to go, she sat there for several awkward seconds. “Has… has Akira-kun ever… mentioned me? None of the other boys I knew were ever hesitant about physical…”

Intimacy?” Takemi said, forcing herself to slouch in her chair so she didn’t appear too interested. Let the patient decide how much she wanted to volunteer.

No.” Togo squinted for a beat. “I think… contact. He caught me from falling once or twice, but as gently as he’ll hold me, it’s like as soon as he realizes he’s making contact he recoils. He won’t hold my hand. We’ve been together for months and he’s never even kissed me.” She clasped her hands in her lap. “Every single other boy in my life either tried to force things or abandoned me the instant they came up against Mother. Akira rallied his friends to change her heart.” She fidgeted with her fingers. “But now that I may have Mother back for the first time in years, I feel like he’s preparing to move on and I’m losing more than I could ever gain even getting my family back.”

This was fast leaving Takemi’s field of expertise. “I’m a doctor of internal medicine, not a psychologist. Even if it wouldn’t violate doctor-patient confidentiality I couldn’t speculate on what goes through that boy’s head. But you know boys are dumb.”

Togo’s demeanor changed in a heartbeat. The growing hunch on a beaten-in prim posture vanished and she almost hopped off the bed. “Akira is not stupid. He’s smart and witty and is the only shogi partner I’ve had to put me in check since fourth grade.”

Not expected, but not the first time Takemi had to handle a patient who didn’t like hearing a doctor’s opinion. “Then talk to him directly about what you want. Sometimes the smartest people overthink things.” Takemi waved her clipboard at the door. “There’s no sign of ligament damage, just make sure to rest your hand and keep it elevated.”

Togo-chan stood, took a beat to compose herself, and gave a passing bow. “Thank you, Doctor.”

Takemi stood to see her out and check the situation. Niijima-chan had departed, but the tall boy stood in the middle of her lobby, still scribbling away at that sketchpad.

The cat, padding out after Togo-chan, meowed, and Akira stepped away from the artist to protest, “I did not look like that!”

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” Kitagawa’s voice boomed. “Art is meant to portray the slices of life we can not simply encapsulate with words. Sometimes that means the vulnerability, and sometimes the ugliness in us all!”

Thinking he was working on the sketch of Frizz and Togo-chan, Takemi stepped out from the exam room door. She caught a glimpse of a frizzy-haired boy in a high-necked trench coat before the artist flipped his sketchbook closed. “Did you need to be seen?”

The artist put his pencil away and followed her to the exam room. Once she got his asymmetric-design shirt off during the examination, she documented faded remnants of old bruises and the tense patches of skin from minor burns marred much of his torso and left arm. Most of it would be gone by tomorrow.

The others had fresher bruises,” she said as she scribbled a note page for personal files. “Didn’t you kids all get injured at the same time?”

We did,” Kitagawa said as if that was all there was to say.

She’d never felt like smacking a kid with her little clipboard so much since meeting these. “So why do yours look like they’re almost gone and Niijima-chan’s look a day old?”

His fingers tapped along his closed sketchbook. “Makoto did focus more on healing the others than on herself.” He glanced at the skin along his left arm, still bearing faint mottling from almost-healed burns. It made the doctor wonder how much more extensive it might have been. “I had been one of the more battered while defending the flank, especially when Togo-san’s Shadow called fire down on us.” His fingers tensed on the book. “But I could not bear to let Ann to take such a volley. To let such a smile dim would be a crime against art… against beauty itself.”

These children were going to drive her to grey early. She pulled in a deep breath. Focus on the injuries in front of you . “Since your bruising is at such a late stage, I don’t think topical medications would be beneficial enough. Aloe is one of the more frequent burn ointments, but as faded as yours appear almost any moisturizing cream should provide relief.”

He gave a nod and pulled his shirt back on without sign of objection.

Takemi glanced back to her notes. “You wouldn’t happen to know what is going on between Kurusu and Togo-chan?”

Kitagawa straightened his shirt. “I do not believe they are lovers yet, though it is difficult to decide which one is more enamoured of the other.” A corner of his mouth quirked up. “ Rarely in all of life have I seen one so strongly in the throes of fear or adoration as Akira . Ann is the bright soul who brings life everywhere she goes, but I never expected her friends to be so inspiring. I have gone from writer’s block to the fortune of not enough canvasses to depict his emotions.”

Takemi finished scratching down some notes. “I’m surprised you got that skittish boy’s permission to put his likeness in public.”

Kitagawa blinked. “Ah. I should do that. The idea that a painter must ask permission is still new to me. Art is not just a creation that beings notoriety to the painter, but a gift to the world.” He clasped his hands on his knee. “I did not realize it could be insensitive a thing to ask to paint someone until Akira explained Ann was one of Kamoshida’s victims. Before that point, all I understood was the natural world is filled with beauty, why would the human body be exempt? Sensei painted anything he wished, and received nothing but praise.”

Takemi could almost feel another grey hair pop into existence on her scalp. “I’m not old enough for this shit,” she muttered. She massaged her forehead. “Don’t you kids have parents to talk things out with?”

Kitagawa’s tone took on a note of resignation. “I never knew a father but Sensei, and Madarame killed my mother by taking her anti-seizure medication. Makoto-san’s father and mother are dead. Sakamoto-san has only spoken of his mother mother, who only this year achieved a single job sufficient to support herself and her son. Before then, she like Hifumi’s mother worked multiple jobs to support the household. Ann-san’s parents are the only ones I know of who are both alive and maintain regular contact, but they are abroad most of the year to keep their fashion business afloat. Akira’s are both alive but… have not been positive forces in his life.”

Takemi blinked. Another beat passed before she managed, “I think I understand what a cartoon character feels like when s he pulls a random rope and is buried beneath a ton of anvils. You kids deserve a therapist – a good one. I’m afraid that’s outside of my field.”

As Akira’s father was a psychologist, he is… disinclined to open up to one. Ann-san believed that he and Makoto were beginning a low-key relationship, but after helping him with Togo-san’s mother I suspect he will seek her out.”

The doctor pursed her lips. “That’s kind of what I’m concerned about. I doubt he’s even gotten the birds and bees speech, so he’s even less prepared for teenage hormones than most. And if he’s been starved for affection his whole life?”

The artist took his shirt back in hand, running a thumb over the light fabric. “You think he would… accost her?”

Takemi considered mentioning the girl’s attraction might surpass Frizz’s, but that might violate doctor patient confidentiality. “Women have libido as well as men. We’re just culturally expected not to explore it. As far as I’m concerned, that’s just responsible for more unprepared girls winding up pregnant. After which we’re treated like pariahs instead of the men who made it happen.” She waved her clipboard as if to shove the conversation tangent away. “Romance manga may portray sex like the happy ending after which there is no story, but that’s not real life. Consequences happen and I just want to make sure two kids don’t push each other to a place they’re not prepared to be.”

Kitagawa ran a thumb over the fabric of his shirt with an asymmetric stripe. “I find it hard to contemplate. Togo-san keeps to herself, even actively wards away very interested boys. And Akira rarely lets an opportunity to praise her virtue go by.”

She couldn’t be sure which might be more concerning: the possibility of both expecting the other to be the safe, stable one or them having wildly differing expectations in their unfolding relationship. “Well, there’s only so much I can do as a doctor of internal medicine. One last question so I can start adjusting your little band’s particular treatments: why is it that the others all had minor heat marring, except Niijima. Or trace electrical burns but you?”

Her Persona inclines to fire. Mine, Goemon, inclines to lightning. Magic of that particular sort has diminished impact on either ourselves or our Personas.”

Takemi set her clipboard to the desk and dug through the drawer with acetaminophen. She didn’t know which one made her feel more crazy: that the kids sounded like they were talking about an anime or the fact that her observations were lining up with what they were saying. Surely no other adult had to deal with this madness.

Kyoto, Police Department

Kurosawa unleashed a mighty sneeze, sending him stumbling into another cop coming down the hall from the opposite direction.

Gesundheit,” Inspector Hasegawa said, steadying the other officer before continuing on.

Yongen, Takemi Medical Clinic

Takemi popped two pills and washed it down with the lukewarm remains of her water bottle. “Send Frizz back in here so I can get this bill taken care of, and go get some rest. As long as you take tomorrow easy you shouldn’t have any permanent complications.”

Kitagawa donned his fashionable shirt and departed for the lobby.

Takemi reviewed her notes. Her patients were telling her they were facing magic, and that was the plausible explanation. Ugh. It might be easier to figure out what to do about the lovestruck morons. She drained the rest of her water bottle. “I’m going to need a vacation.”

I hear Amagi Inn is pleasant any time of year,” Kurusu said from the lobby door.

She tossed her empty water bottle at him. “You’re the one giving me grey hairs. And make sure you talk to that poor girl before you drive her neurotic. Maybe if you’d follow through a little more you’d be less wound-up as well.”

He nodded, but his gaze shot to the floor and his cheeks went pink.

Saturday, 20 August 2016
Late Evening
Yongen, Back Streets

Akira stepped out of the Takemi Medical Clinic, holding the door for the others. It felt like his mind whirled faster than the buzzing insects. He wanted to try to hold onto the victorious high from seeing Togo Mitsuyo beg forgiveness and promise to change as she faded away, but between his talk with Doctor Takemi and being so close to Hifumi, it was hard not to think about where he wanted the relationship to go. She incited desire in every fiber of his being. Wasn’t it enough that he confessed he liked her more than was appropriate? Akira fidgeted with his hands in his pockets. How would he even start? What would the others do?

He could imagine Ryuji slinging an arm around her, palming her toned posterior. “ Hey, we just beat up your mom. Wanna fuck?

The slap would echo across the alleys. For a beat, Akira cringed and added that to the list of things to pray forgiveness for. Even Ryuji wouldn’t be that insensitive.

Hifumi-san…?” he ventured at the same instant she said, “Akira?”

He shot a step back, then caught his stance and held his ground. Once he got his tongue working it spilled out as his heart rate skyrocketed, “I know it’s a bad time to tell you when you’re still scared about what exactly is going to happen to your mother, but I can’t stop thinking about you. Nobody’s ever pushed me to be better a better person but still accepted me how I am, and nobody’s ever been so kind and patient and I know I shouldn’t keep dreaming of you especially if it’s that way and I don’t even know where to start and—”

Her slender hand took him by the chin and tilted his head down a bit, then slid across his neck and hooked behind. His pounding heart shot into his throat. Her eyes closed and her face tilted up as his head tilted down to meet hers. The summer heat receded, city noise faded, and even the cracked concrete under his feet disappeared as his entire world became the softest lips against his.

Then her lips parted and his followed suit in confusion before her nimble tongue slid against his.

His heart jackhammering in his chest became too much to ignore. For a beat, he stood in the rain outside Mother’s rented house in Inaba, rhythmic feminine moans coming from the upstairs. His roar at Maruki played back in his mind, “ I am not like her!

His ice-cold limbs shoved and he stumbled back, falling to the ground.

His impact with the concrete brought the world back in sharp focus. The hot, muggy air. The relentless traffic. The news playing in Leblanc just meters away. And the tears filling Hifumi’s eyes before she spun on the ball of her foot and took off for the train station.

Akira tried to call out to her, but between losing his breath on impact with the ground and the wrenching in his gut he couldn’t emit more than a pathetic wheeze. The nausea doubled as she ran out of sight and his limbs shook so much he couldn’t even hold himself up as his limbs spasmed. He had to strain just to turn onto his side, and the warring clash of somebody inside my body with the burning want for more would have had him throwing up if he had anything.

Akira-san!” Yusuke’s voice accompanied rapid footsteps. “What happened? Togo-san just ran past me as if fleeing the demons of hell.”

The transfer student called on all his will and pride to shove himself to his feet despite the icy weakness in his limbs. Sheer stubbornness couldn’t terminate his trembling, but despite it pushed through and shoved back at the artist’s hand as he stormed into Leblanc.

The most annoying bell in existence tinkled above and Sojiro looked up from his book. “What happened to you, kid?”

Akechi, sitting at the bar, finished a sip of the coffee at his lips. “Maybe he’s as annoyed by the bombastic Phantom Thief as I am.” He went back to his coffee as the news anchor droned on about the hack of Medjed’s website.

Akira clenched his hands and stomped up the stairs, with every move wishing he could punch himself bloody.

Sunday, 21 August 2016
Late Evening
Shibuya, Station Square

Akira’s gloved hands clenched around the sign bearing Toranosuke’s name. He’d done this before, but whether it was the muggy summer air or crowds, today felt worse. The excited chatter in the crowd as passers-by talked about the Phantom Thief defeating Medjed just emphasized the difference.

Toranosuke-san held up a hand to emphasize, “The fact that the Phantom Thief is being lionized is condemnation not only of the mismanagement of our government, but passivity of ourselves. Our government and our courts are slow by design. But this terrible condition is one built by men’s hands, and by men’s hands it can be repaired! This election season, you must vote for the vigorous leaders you want to set policy from the top, but society is not the government alone. People need to support their candidates or the changes in platform that need to happen not next election season, but now !”

A man in a dark, crisp business suit and dark tie stepped out of the passing throng. “You’re never going to win the hearts and minds of the people by putting the burden on them. People want the government to take initiative without constant pushing by the people.”

Toranosuke-san’s eyes snapped wide. “Councilman Matsushita!” He glanced around, but only a handful of the seething crowd choking Station Square had their eyes on them. He led them to what privacy could be had at the end of the mock-up of a train car. “It’s been so long since we last spoke.”

Matsushita gave a smile, though it did not seem a pleasant one from the tightness on his face. “I’m surprised to see you’re still here wasting your time, Yoshida.” His eyes flicked to the sign Akira held. “And not even a sponsor from the Liberal Democratic Party? If you’re not going all-in with the conservatives flocking to the United Future Party, you won’t stand a chance without support all across the LDP’s coalition. Assuming it even survives the upcoming election.”

I didn’t realize politics was about surrendering to the prevailing winds,” Akira spat.

The suited man drew up to his full height, which gave him several centimeters over the transfer student. “ Responsible leadership is about enacting what people vote for, not forcing the will of the biggest populist of the party.” He tugged his suit jacket straight, even though it was straight before. “I’m not surprised to see a high schooler misunderstand the complicated world of government. Let me guess, you think the Phantom Thief will fix everything for you?”

No,” Akira snapped. “I think people are starting to treat the Phantom Thief like a wish-granting fairy and they’re getting fucking lazy.”

Toranosuke stepped between them before Akira could assemble a long-winded rebuttal. “Now, now. The Phantom Thief has done undeniable good, both in direct action and galvanizing the public.” He turned to face Matsushita straight on. “But the Phantom Thief is the shining example paving the way for the rest of us to follow. It would be a condemnation of ourselves not to follow bravery and defiance of corruption.”

Matsushita snorted. “ Defiance of corruption ? I can’t decide what’s more pathetic. That coming from a Kuramoto Child, or…” He leaned around the pudgy politician’s arm to look the transfer student straight in the eye. “Did he even explain his three strikes?”

Akira’s eyes narrowed behind his glasses. “I wasn’t aware I needed your permission to choose the company I keep. Or are you trying to pretend people never change?”

Now Matsushita threw his head back and laughed. “Change! That’s rich. People don’t change, they’re hammered until they fit through that square hole. Even the Phantom Thief breaks his victims. Probably at the behest of a wealthy, politically-connected benefactor.”

The transfer student would have lunged at the smug, suited bastard were it not for the campaigning politician’s hand coming to rest on his shoulder. “Don’t blame him too much, Kurusu-kun.” His eyes locked onto the fancy-suited man’s. “For all your talk of not changing, you’ve changed, Matsushita-san. You didn’t used to be so cut-throat. You were a Kuramoto Child as well.”

Matsushita shot a step forward, driving the other politician into the train car mock-up. His tone rose out of their private conversation. “We both failed our re-election campaigns. The difference is I learned how to play political calculus. You flushed your life down the tubes. Playing to a false idea of honesty isn’t how you win votes, No-Good Tora! It’s by telling them what they want to hear, and feeding them a loss-leader when the heat turns up.”

That white-gloved hand on Akira’s shoulder tightened.

Before the transfer student could decide how to push back into the fight, a familiar dark head of hair slipped out of the crowd. Ohya declared, “A reporter’s nose never fails her! I heard someone say Kuramoto Children.”

Matsushita swooped in like a hawk on fish in the river.

Akira whipped out his phone and shot the reporter a text. [Don't trust that politician.]

He heard her laugh, then slap the fine-suited politician’s arm as they melted into the crowd, but a beat later she replied, [I was born at night, not last night. Everybody lies, but everybody wants to know what happened to that half a billion yen.]

Akira’s eyebrows shot up. “Half a billion yen?”

Pressing a white-gloved hand against his head, Toranosuke-san leaned back against the car mock-up. “The number grows with the telling. I’d ask you to take a seat, but there are none here.” He took in and let out a long breath. “Have you already read about the ‘three strikes’ of ‘No-Good Tora’?” At the transfer student’s head shake, he cycled through another long breath. “I was a callow youth back then, the kind of brute who used political power like a bully uses his muscles. I had so little understanding of indirect consequences, I thought I was untouchable. Anyway, my first major mistake was taking a personal vacation instead of attending a meeting of the diet. Then I was accused of embezzling a large sum of money from the party – something on the order of three hundred million yen, if I remember the reporting after the fact.”

Akira noted he didn’t say he did it. Or didn’t, but this wasn’t the way to deflect attention. Toranosuke was clever, but seemed to put real value in integrity. If he did it, he’d have maneuvered the conversation away from the topic. “And the third?”

Toranosuke closed his eyes. “I called a voter an idiot at an open forum.”

Akira snorted. “So? Most of them are .”

The politician straightened and for a moment exerted the aura of a man twice his height. He held up a hand with one index finger, as if that was all the threat he needed. “Even if that might be true, a leader is a man who is so by choosing to hold himself to a higher standard, or he’s no right to tell others what to do.” That imposing aura diminished with a sigh. “After all, weren’t you or I foolish about something once in our lives?”

Akira’s face blazed and he thought of yesterday, when Hifumi graced him with a kiss and he reacted with panic. He still felt weak-kneed and shaky just thinking about it.

Toranosuke breathed out, looking like just an overweight man again. “I was already on the party’s ‘list’ for accusations of embezzlement, so that was the last straw they needed to force me out.”

Akira leaned against the wall separating the train car mock-up from the stairs down into the underground mall. “That guy was a ‘Kuramoto Child’ too, wasn’t he?”

Toranosuke clasped his hands, his gaze on the ground. “True, though he lacked my strikes so despite losing his next election, he recovered quickly. When I failed my re-election campaign, I realized I hadn’t earned my way the first time and wasn’t prepared for the legislature. I resolved to be the Yoshida I should have been to start with. With the help of my wife and children to tell me from the outside what I was, I turned myself around.”

He rubbed his grey-gloved hands against his burning cheeks. Did everything have to remind him of Hifumi? “Can somebody really recover if you’ve completely fucked yourself?”

The politician clasped his hands and looked over the boy. “There’s a role of luck and political calculus in career advancement, I admit, but Matsushita and I came from similar callow backgrounds. He was a professional wrestler with dreams of heroics in the Self-Defense Forces, if you can believe that. Now he is an esteemed member of the LDP. What you have to do is tend to your quality. You’re a youth with plenty of time to discover and shape himself. Why, my conviction now was tempered from the stubbornness of my foolhardy youth. If a washed-up man like me can do it, I’m sure you can as well. It seems hard, but you never know what obstacles wind up as stepping stones until looking back on it long after.”

Imagine how much further you’d be in life if people weren’t always calling you ‘No-Good Tora’,” Akira pointed out.

That was just Matsushita,” Toranosuke riposted, though his back slouched a bit.

Akira turned against the politician, his troubles with Hifumi and his parents fading into the depths of his mind now that he had an enemy – even if that was the pudgy man’s political rival. “It was ‘just’ him today. He didn’t hesitate to accuse you loudly and in public.” He pursed his lips. Having left Morgana behind when he changed for the gym where he spent most of the day trying to exercise his fears away, the team leader wasn’t there for immediate consultation. “But… maybe he was just having a bad day and he’ll change his mind.”

That night, Akira ran a web search and punched Matsushita Hiroyuki into the Nav to find a palace candidate.

Sunday, 21 August 2016
Night
Velvet Room

The steel slab against his back where an old but functional mattress should be clued him into his environs even before Akira opened his eyes to blue velvet. He had been expecting an abduction like this for weeks after changing Futaba’s heart, but nothing. Was this about the impending change of Togo’s heart? He stood up and approached the barred door.

Igor interlaced his long, gloved fingers and those bloodshot eyes narrowed. “Your progress in the reformation of society has been slowed of late. Have you been allowing yourself to be distracted?”

Akira grasped the bars. “We’re changing hearts and saving people, what more do you want?”

Caroline slammed her baton against the bars. Sparks flashed and a painful jolt shot through his fingers. “Our master has seen fit to speak to an ungrateful weakling like yourself. Clean that excess ear wax and try using those ears for once!”

His hands curled into fists. “We changed Togo Mitsuyo’s heart! That won’t just help Hifumi, there might be dozens, even hundreds of people ensnared in Kaneshiro’s financial schemes that she swept up thanks to her leadership in his money laundering. And before that we saved Futaba, who thought the only way out of unending suffering was her death!”

“For one who is so enamored with a strategist, you are showing remarkably little vision,” Igor said with the tone of an adult down to a petulant child. “Mankind stands on the brink of ruin. Your rehabilitation was not to save puppies from rain in the gutters, but to change the indolent ways of the masses. Your power to change hearts is to shake the very foundations, to burn away the rot that spreads through the apathetic masses who allow horrific crime after horrific crime.”

Akira opened his mouth, then closed it. Was it so easy to see through his excuses? The blackmail and conspiracy all sounded noble, but he changed Mitsuyo for Hifumi.

Justine brushed her braid from her shoulder. “Small steps may be progress, Inmate. However, you have been granted power in order to surpass the limits of ordinary mortals. Changing the heart of a girl haunted by her past gave you the tools necessary to defeat an unseen enemy.”

Caroline waggled her baton at him. “Just don’t get too proud for defeating weaklings who hid behind their devices. No matter how many people are talking about the ‘Phantom Thief’.”

“And it is there,” Igor said, some enthusiasm leaking back into his voice, “that ruin may be avoided. ‘Phantom Thief’ is whispered on the lips of people even beyond your country, now. Doors that you could not even perceive will be opened to you because of this. That is what shakes society.” He slipped his hands apart, gesturing one at the transfer student in stripes. “Even before changing the frenzied girl’s heart, you have known about man’s intrusion into research beyond the ken of mortal minds. That very research has been stolen by those with malicious intent.” That unsettling grin widened. “Will you fold to those of small minds and grandiose aims? Or shall you thwart those who seek power over all mankind?”

Akira blinked. Isn’t ‘power over all mankind’ implicit in the expectation that he could change mankind’s apathetic attitude? He searched through all the wisdom Hifumi had cultivated in him to try to give something that might tease out something useful from Igor, or the self-styled wardens. “Hearts are not cogs to be fashioned by crude design.” He lifted his hands back to the barred door, closing his fingers but keeping Caroline in view. “My old man sounded like a madman when he ranted about power surpassing old mankind. Was he actually… on to something?”

Igor clasped his hands on the desk. “You know well your father’s reach exceeded his grasp. But his ambition is itself a leash by those with greater designs, is it not?”

Akira’s fingers tightened on rough iron. Changing the whole world seemed so far beyond him it wasn’t even worth considering, but sticking his thumb in his old man’s eye? “I’ll give anything, do anything to see my old bastard fail. And anybody holding his leash.”

Chuckling, Igor clapped his hands. “There it is, the blazing heart who shall burn down any obstacle. That is the flame which might even overcome mankind. As your accomplices on your path of rehabilitation, we shall spare no expense in cooperating with you. I grant you power worthy of one with the charge to take on the indolence of mankind.”

He swished one hand, and Akira felt a wave of pressure wash through him. Even though he hadn’t called out Pillar of Heaven for weeks, he saw it in his mind’s eye. Stretching to infinity above, darkness and fire churned and even the cognitive ‘floor’ of his mindscape cracked beneath the massive column’s power. As if too much for fire and darkness alone, sparks began to crackle along its surface. A choice awaited for him, but something about his conversation with Maruki caused him to flinch back.

A-actually,” Akira said, cursing himself for his slip before the immense presence of the hunched troll. “If my rehabilitation and eventual goal of reforming mankind is to be one and the same road, may I have have something that aids me in reforging the fragments of power I absorb from the collective unconscious? Or broadens my capacity to take away from the wild power out there and helps me strengthen the Phantom Thieves?”

A long moment passed, Igor’s beady eyes staring into the boy.

Justine held her clipboard against her chest. “The power to fuse and enhance Personas is already something that Caroline and I are helping you to master. We provide you with as much strength as your heart can bear. There is more you are capable of, but to attempt to skip to the end would shatter you as surely as attempting to catch a falling building would your body. You must strengthen your bonds, to draw on their power as well as your own if you hope to survive wielding true might.”

Akira’s hands clenched the bars. “I can’t even heal them, and every time Futaba or Makoto does it I’m afraid they’ll start bleeding from the nose and it will be their last magic ever !” He sucked in a quick breath. “And when I tried to use Isis’ bless energy against Shadows in Mitsuyo’s palace, it hurt my friends! A blade that even cuts its sheathe is useless. What I need is something to help me take strength, even from my enemies, with my own bloody hands!”

A corner of Justine’s mouth turned up. “You must come see us more often, Inmate. Your rehabilitation has been speeding along. But—”

Igor waved a hand. The sensation of thrumming power within Pillar of Heaven dulled. “Justine. Caroline. Submit what would be necessary, whatever the inmate asks to toy with his ensnared Personas. They do not burden his heart as the ones he keeps at the forefront of his mind. You shall have double of it.” His legs crossed under the table. “Be sure, Inmate, not to let your guard down despite these blessings. Those of malicious designs stand ready to engage any move for their grand strategy.”

Akira opened his mouth to ask what the hell that was supposed to mean.

An alarm blared in the distance. Igor blinked and clasped his hands to look almost restful. “But time stands still for no-one. Night draws to a close, prisoner of fate. We shall meet again.”

Notes:

Yatsuhashi is a 1600s musician credited with bringing the koto out of ‘high court’ life and teaching it to the Japanese public at large.

Cartoons in America tend to use grand pianos or anvils, but the comedy trope in Japan seems to be a huge pile of washbasins when somebody needs to be buried by a sudden fall. I stuck with the one more likely to be familiar to an English-reading audience.

Chapter 111: August 22nd, Man at a Mark

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Monday, 22 August 2016
Late Morning
Suginami-ku, Yoshizawa Home

Yoshizawa looked into the mirror as she finished tying the ribbon in her hair. There. That was right. That looked like Kasumi, right? Of course. Fashionable yet practical, never giving up and never failing. Brave. Everybody’s favourite. She nodded into the mirror. “Okay, Yoshizawa Kasumi. Today’s another day!” She checked her over-the-summer assignments, sorted them away, then took out the notes for her next gymnastics routine.

Kasumi hummed through the song which would be playing as she conducted her routine. Her room wasn’t nearly large enough to play the routine proper, but she paced and spun in it anyway for what little practice putting her body through restricted motions could. Her pencil waved through the air like the ribbon’s handle and she could just see it swirling around her like a spirit, a dancing partner where someone should be beside her.

Her pencil hurled into the door, bouncing off with a soft thud.

The room wasn’t big enough. That had to be it. She couldn’t stretch out and execute the routine as it was meant to be performed. Should she call Father and ask him to rent some gym time for her? No, he would be arguing with KFTV’s chief of program scheduling around this time. Space. Space. She needed space. But she needed a critical eye to critique her performance and help her decide what she needed to focus on. Everything felt off. Even her heartbeat wasn’t steady like it needed to be to stick the landing.

She changed into her street exercise clothes. Ugh, but who to spot for her?

A grim, fearless face under dark, unkempt hair popped into her mind’s eye and her heart rate quickened. Then she stamped a foot on the ground. Yoshizawa Kasumi would not back down! Besides, she still owed him a training session. She took her phone and called.

Clock watching department, Colette O’Day,” his voice scratched through the speakers. At least the signal was good.

Kasumi steeled herself. “Would you be up for helping me with a few points of my routine, Senpai? The weather’s as good as summer’s going to get and I’d like to thank you for helping me pick out Dad’s glasses.”

Of course I’d help get your dad good glasses. Us four-eyes have to look out for each other. You don’t have to thank me for that,” Akira-senpai said. “But I’m available.”

Late Afternoon
Inokashira Park

Kasumi leaned against the back of the park bench and popped her insulated water bottle open, that blessed ice clinking inside as she tipped to gulp down a mouthful. Some days it took her hours to get in the zone, but with Senpai it was like the flick of a switch and then he couldn’t stop . And it pulled her along. Senpai had a surprising reservoir of energy before, but he was a machine today. She tamped down minor envy of men’s blood oxygen exchange rate advantage. He was the one who repeated the flip and tumble move, demanding every little criticism and testing every possible improvement for hours. She swirled a piece of ice around her mouth and savored the cold feeling.

Akira collapsed onto the bench, sweat pouring down his face and drenching his ratty, green, long-sleeved shirt.

Kasumi capped her bottle to cut off the temptation to guzzle. “You really know how to step up a workout, Senpai. I’ve been having trouble sticking the routine with Coach lately. I can’t even say exactly what the problem is, I’ve tried incorporating novel moves and going back to the basics, but sometimes I feel like my body isn’t mine.”

Senpai looked up at her, though with all the sweat dripping down his face it was no wonder he didn’t sit up. “Really? I guess I’ll… have to look up when girls’ growth spurts end. That’s kinda outta the realm of physical therapy.”

As he fell back into struggling to bring his breathing back down, Kasumi looked over the short, curled locks plastered to his face and rambled about Coach, her routines, and worries about her performance in a few days. Her mouth went one way, but her brain focused on this fellow athlete. So few boys were willing to push the envelope like him, which helped her push her boundaries. She reached out and traced a finger, pushing a dark lock slick with sweat. Something about this felt so… right. A feeling which had been eluding her so much of her life.

He never complained, and as she trailed off she realized she felt lighter, less encumbered than she had in months. After a while, Akira shoved himself up and guzzled from his insulated water bottle.

Now she stood and pulled his bottle away. “Whoa, Senpai! You’ll make yourself sick.”

He pulled against her, but as long as he’d been going, he didn’t have the strength to fight his bottle out of her hands. He let her set it aside and they sat against the bench. His shoulders sagged and a hunch that wasn’t there during practice bent his back. He picked up his metal water bottle, tapping his fingers on it.

What’s up, Senpai?” She fought to keep from leaning against him, he looked deflated but was still covered in sweat.

He opened his water bottle and took a more measured drink this time, then sat it down on his other side with a plonk . A droplet splattered out of it and disappeared against his sweat-darkened long-sleeved shirt. Akira leaned back against the bench as if he couldn’t bear to hold himself up any longer. “You and I are different in a few things – you’re a spectacular athlete.”

She preened, even though he exaggerated.

You just don’t see it because you’re measuring up against an idea of yourself in your head. But I understand what you were talking about, sinking hours into something… your heart and soul into it, just for it to blow up in your face.” He took off his glasses, lifted his bottle, then dumped ice water over his head. Well, it’s not like his shirt could’ve gotten much wetter. His face and closed eyes raised up in the shadow of the skyscraper blotting out their section of Inokashira, and he let a few seconds pass before he whispered, “I didn’t think Hifumi and I would wind up incompatible.” For a moment he looked smaller than ever before and he mumbled so quiet she wasn’t sure if she was supposed to hear, “Right when I realize I’d like a family.”

She sucked in a breath, feeling an empathetic coil in her gut. “That’s awful, Senpai! Somebody with as much heart as you deserves someone. You’ve been such a great exercise partner, if you ever need to talk – or just want to try out a routine – call me any time.”

Monday, 22 August 2016
Early Evening
Shinjuku, Crossroads Bar

Akira set the last cardboard carton of beer bottles onto the proper shelf in the walk-in refrigerator and looked around in satisfaction. Things had been messy and disorganized, but after a good hour’s work it could’ve been used for a commercial. He breathed in the chill air, feigning as if taking in the late autumn air of the mountains on a run-away from the Institute.

The door hauled open and the fans spun to high to maintain temperature. Lala stepped in and paused. “Looks much better. But nobody volunteers to clean the backrooms in a bar, especially as keen as you were to interact with different people. C’mon.” She grabbed a case of beer and led the way out of the refrigerated room. “Listen, kid. I went into bartending because I like the little stories. Over the years I learned when something’s up. You haven’t told a single joke since you came in.”

“We’ve been busy with people coming in to celebrate the defeat of Medjed,” he said, unable to meet her dark eyes.

“You should’a been here yesterday.” She braced the case against the wall with her hip and stared down the student. “Seriously, I am a professional listener.”

She wasn’t Maruki, but she did seem to have a similar style of conversation and every patron who spoke with her had a little less stoop to their shoulders afterwards. If life was going to drop an opportunity into his lap, he needed to learn to accept it. There were precious few adults worth coming clean to. “I think I just fucked up everything with Hifumi. I’m still not sure if I tried to push too far when her mother’s still…”

Against the relationship?”

To put it mildly,” Akira acknowledged. Better than saying ‘hasn’t finished changing her heart yet’. “Or not keeping up. I’ve been dreaming about being with her since we met, but when she kissed me I had flashbacks to Mother.” He raked a hand through his unkempt hair. “God, I’m such a moron. I know,” he tapped his temple, “that none of it’s the same, but my body reacted and then I couldn’t breathe and then she was running and then…” He raised a hand in the air as if that was it. “I thought everything about us clicked.” Being in different parts of the city made it harder to talk to her, and the last time he worked up the will to text her, she was updating the Phantom Thieves on group chat about her mother’s status and logged off as soon as she noticed him log in.

Sounds like hormones got a little ahead of you,” Lala said without trace of condemnation in her voice. She adjusted the beer and went back to bracing it against the wall with her hip. “Hate to break it to you, kid, but relationships don’t work by a mystic compatibility. It’s by hard work and there ain’t one that doesn’t have to work through rocky moments. If you value her you’ll try despite trouble, but if she values you, she’s got to respect you where you are, too. If she’s tryin’ to goad you where you’re not ready to be, that’s not fair to you either.”

Akira felt like his brain just flipped in his head. Or maybe the world around him. “ Excuse me?”

I’ve been bartending a long time, kid. I get the culture of saying it has to be the guy startin’ everything, runnin’ back to the girl an’ say he’s sorry every time, but if the relationship’s gonna work you both gotta be on the same page. Best you’re gonna get if you’re doing all the heavy lifting is fifty percent, and it’ll be a lot less than that pretty quick if it really is you doing all the work ‘cause you’ll put everything in the wrong place ‘cause she’s goin’ another direction.” Lala took the cardboard case in both hands. “Apologizing can be the hardest thing, but sometimes that’s the wrong thing to do. I know comedies still have girls usin’ the line ‘if you were really sorry, you’d know what you should be sorry for’, but if you run into a girl like that, run away. It isn’t even always about bein’ right and wrong. I mix one helluva ragoon. But if I try servin’ it to a guy who can’t stomach rum, even though it’s a good drink, it’s not right for him.”

What if I am always the one screwing things up? It’s one of the few consistencies in my life.” Akira fidgeted with his gloves. “The only thing I want is to make her happy, and the only thing I did was make her cry.”

Some people are going to judge you before they know you. Nothing you can do about that, all we can do is live best we can and treasure the people who get to know the real us.” She adjusted her grip. “You gotta value yourself or it won’t matter if she does. If she isn’t respecting you where you are, you can’t pull her along. Take things at your pace. Now c’mon, I can’t leave Kaho all alone up front on a day like this.”

They finished the short walk to the front and proceeded to disburse alcohol to patrons either commiserating the start of the work week or celebrating the recovery of the stock market after Medjed’s defeat.

Many minutes later, as the transfer student washed glasses behind the counter to keep up with use outstripping the dishwashing machine, a familiar black-haired reporter walked in. Ohya turned a too-wide smile on him and planted a hand on her hip. “So there’s my number-one Phantom Thief fan… who didn’t say one thing about Medjed.”

Am I the Phantom Thief’s keeper?”

Trying to get out of something by quoting the Bible?” She shot him a smirk and crossed her arms as if she’d won. “If you were really Catholic, you’d know that yes, Cain was Abel’s keeper. Eldest brother in the family is supposed to look out for the family.”

Akira’s mouth drifted open. Hifumi teaching him new things about the Bible or Catholicism happened every time they spoke, but getting schooled by a drunkard who believed in nothing was just embarrassing.

Ohya snorted in amusement. “Almost twelve percent of Tokyo’s Catholic, you think I never had to check into it as part of prep work?” Her gaze shifted to the bartender. “I’ll take my usual up in the booth.”

A woman at the bar raised her empty glass. “Top me up, Lala-chan!”

Coming up.” She nudged at the transfer student. “Booth should be unlocked, go make sure it’s cleaned up, m‘kay?”

Akira nodded and let the reporter lead the way to her booth overlooking the dance floor converted to drinking tables, as well as offering a glimpse of the front door. Both of the armless chairs were on their sides and a sticky residue covered the table under the clutter of empty beer bottles. “I’ll have to come back with a tray and wet rag.”

Once he returned, she’d curled up on the one stuffed chair with arms in the little booth, tapping away on her laptop in a manner reminding him of Futaba. “That posture’s bad for your back.”

She sneered at him. “Boo! Sticky tables are bad for my laptop. And I’m behind on my Phantom Thief quota. Damn boss is going ballistic that I didn’t have anything for Medjed. As if I was ever a tech writer!” She tapped away as he ripped bottles off whatever liquid they’d dried onto the table. “Does make me wonder if the Phantom Thief was just a blackmailing hacker all along.”

Akira arranged the bottles on a serving tray, tried to wipe a table the cloth clung to, but stubborn scrubbing took off the spilled beer. Tosa Kotomi flashed in his mind and he felt his shoulders hunch. “A lot of Kaneshiro’s underlings turned themselves in while his network was still strong. Even a master hacker wouldn’t have been able to get to so many.” Or push one to her death.

A single knock, then the door swung open and Lala stepped in, holding a tall glass of some orange liquid. “I’m going to charge KDDI next time they reserve a booth. Those animals never clean up after themselves.” She set the glass down on the table, then took the tray. “A lot of people have been leaving, so if you want to take five or ten up here to catch up with Ichiko-chan, we’ll be okay downstairs.”

The reporter waved. “Oh, don’t let me hold you up. Twenty-fourth at Inuri to ninth at Shujin is quite an achievement, especially for someone with a scrubbed class history until—” Her eyes snapped wide and she reached for her glass.

Akira stood from the table. “Until what ?”

Ohya closed her hand on her glass, but the bartender cleared her throat. The reporter set the glass down and sat back with a slouch. “Researching particular things is part of my job, okay?”

Flat stares met her. After a beat, Lala planted a hand on her hip. “Are you digging into my workers again ? How hypocritical is that when you’re so interested in privacy that you reserve a booth almost every night?”

Prostitution is one thing, but assault could cost you the bar!” Ohya shot back.

Akira felt a chill, and it wasn’t from the air conditioning. He knew Yuuki wouldn’t have betrayed his criminal record, which meant the reporter dug into his past on her own. He looked up at the bartender and swallowed. Maybe his brain was exhausted from trying to think of what to do about Hifumi, but he went blank when the only person offering him steady employment stood right there. Hell, even after graduation she might be the best offer he’d ever get.

Despite his expectation, Lala let out a sigh. “You think I didn’t know he had a record? You should’ve seen how sullen he went when I asked for his information. I’ve only seen that on peeps with nowhere to go. The kid’s done right by me the whole time I’ve known him. He wants a place to lay low and earn his keep. Some people just need a chance to be . You of all people should understand that.”

Ohya swallowed a gulp of her drink and set it on the table. “I guess Junior wouldn’t look up to you like he does if you weren’t the reliable sort. It was pretty weird for somebody with a scrubbed history – plus the same for both parents – to have a record.”

My old man’s the one with government connections,” Akira spat. “I never wanted anything to do with him. But nothing I did could get out of his shadow until I stopped his sponsor from raping a woman on a side street. My old man chose that guy’s money over my life.”

Both women’s eyes went wide. Ohya reached for her drink. “You’re not shitting me, are you, kid?”

Akira let his hands dangle at his sides. “You can ask Mishima. He got the detailed version.”

A heavy beat passed before Ohya took a long sip. “That explains why the case was so weird. Maybe you’re not so different from Kayo-chan. They slandered her when she was about to bust open a public funds embezzling story.”

Akira gave a bow of his head in commiseration. “I’m surprised they let her live.”

The reporter stared into her drink. “They didn’t.”

The bartender adjusted her grip on the tray covered with empty beer bottles. “I’ll go take care of your refill, Ichiko-chan. I don’t approve of you rooting around in the kid’s past without my asking, but if you’re putting your cards on the table I’ll leave it between you two. You’re in the same boat as far as labels. Besides, you’ll feel better without bottling up all that alcohol-fueled anxiety.” She stepped out and closed the booth door behind her.

Akira sat down on one of the righted chairs next to Ohya’s and let her drink for a while as he ruminated over what the bartender said. “You really think we’re alike?”

Her breath smelled of something sweet and some kind of alcohol his mother didn’t prefer, “I do. Lala-chan may collect strays like a mother hen, but she doesn’t vouch for just anyone.” She took a quick sip. “That’s why I vowed to avenge my partner.” Her eyes stared into the distance beyond the walls around them. “Murakami Kayo was the reliable one. I wanted information by any means necessary, but she… usually managed a legal way to get information. We blew so many scandals wide open.”

I wish I could say I had such a sterling past,” Akira said when silence overtook them. “I ran away from the old man more times than I can count, got into stupid fights at school.”

Ohya took another sip. “Careful, kiddo. I’m starting to think you’re reading from my notes.” She moved her laptop from the floor to the cleaned table and clutched her drink with both hands. “I was the ignored middle child. Acted out to get attention. Didn’t find my calling until I got caught with a boy in the school bathroom my last year of high school. Head of the disciplinary committee assigned me to the school newspaper to keep me out of trouble, and my life’s been all journalism ever since.”

Akira tossed the by now just damp rag from hand to hand. “Trespassing in a school bathroom seems kind of a dumb thing for a school to get hung up on.”

Ohya, halfway through another sip, almost snorted her drink. After several seconds of coughing, she set it down. After her laughing faded, she said, “Are you that innocent, kid? We were fucking.”

The illusion of Hifumi shedding her kimono and offering him her body sprang to Akira’s mind, and he found himself in a sudden coughing fit.

The intercom buzzed and Akira dove for the excuse. Lala spoke, “Sorry for cutting quality time short, but we need another hand clearing tables down here.”

Even as his face burned, Akira exclaimed, “On the way!”

Tuesday, 23 August 2016
Noon
Bunkyou-ku, Many Landscapes Studio

Hifumi stepped into the dressing room, where three women and a man with a clipboard waited. She exchanged the minimum acceptable social script and sat down to stew in her melancholy. Mother’s blood pressure remained high and her sleep fitful, but besides ennui she remained unresponsive. Papa’s breathing had taken a turn for the worst and medics rushed him to ICR Clinical Research Hospital where initial tests came back negative. Unable to tell the doctor about changing Mother’s heart, he convinced himself Mother must have an infection and moved Papa to a nearby clinic for isolation until she recovered. Without either Mother or Papa, her mind kept circling to her first kiss with Akira and her mood soured further. With Ann yet to arrive and the makeup team taking only a fraction of her concentration, she stared into the mirror.

As the surroundings faded into unimportant distance, the red garb of her inner self took the place of the shogi player’s reflection. Without the detached concentration necessary to scan the Metaverse, the mask of the Berber queen stared into her with disapproval. “ Have you so quickly decided to return to the path of surrender?”

What am I supposed to do?” Hifumi snapped. “Mother is insensate, Papa is locked away in a clinic. Rei-san is as kind as one of Mother’s employees can be but can’t do anything to help me.”

And the handsome general who held you when you wept?”

Her sides and lips ached for a beat, but with the makeup team busy outside her mind-scape she couldn’t wrap her own arms around herself for a pale imitation. Hifumi tisked. “He’ll cushion the hearts of others, but never rest his heart in my hands.” She sighed. “Maybe Mother was right and I was a fool for thinking someone so noble could ever want the rest of me. Boys like pure girls, not ones who flit from handsome face to handsome face.”

Dihya’s mask drew back for a beat. “The queen and her general lived to tell another day, such a rout does not a final defeat make.”

Hifumi hung her head. “That’s assuming I haven’t driven him into the arms of that vivacious blonde. They have history and mutual attraction.”

You can not close your eyes to the truths you have seen,” Dihya riposted. “When you confessed Mother’s sins, he rallied his army. When you were lonely, he set his brothers and sisters in arms at your feet.”

A woman on makeup repositioned her head, drawing Hifumi out of her inner dialog in time to see the door open. “Good day, Ann-san.”

A heartbeat passed as her blue eyes flicked about the bustling room. The pigtailed blonde flashed a smile more brilliant than any the shogi player felt she could give. “Hey, Hifumi! Let’s get out there and show the cameras who’s boss!”

Tuesday, 23 August 2016
Evening
Bunkyou-ku, Many Landscapes Studio

Ann breathed out a sigh of relief when the wardrobe and makeup team finally unpinned the fake flower arrangement in her hair. She thought she had great endurance, but her agency was so much faster and less fussy. Wearing expensive kimonos sounded fun until they wouldn’t even let her sit down, and even the stolid support of Hifumi didn’t mitigate the exhausting slog. Trying to pep up the shogi maestra also took quite a bit out of her, but the dark-haired girl started to defrost by the end of their long session and that buoyed Ann too. Shame they’d been surrounded by workers until now so Ann couldn’t ask about Phantom Thieving or get too personal. The blonde straightened her leggings. “Whew. Still, that was fun, huh, Hifumi?”

The other girl gave a weary smile. “Thank you for helping me through it, Ann-san. It was… the first time I enjoyed being in a studio.” She hiked her skirt into place and clipped it on.

Ann handed the other girl’s white undershirt, then slid her own on. Despite the polite nod something about her silence felt grating. Back in their street clothes, they stepped out of the changing room and headed for the front to sign out. “I couldn’t really ask with all the crew around, but is everything okay? I appreciate the reports on your mother’s health, but Akira’s the closest thing we’ve got to a doctor and you two never seem to be on the group chat at the same time anymore.” She thought back to Yusuke asking what happened ‘the other day’, which just led to Hifumi finishing her report and logging off chat. “Did something happen?”

Her pace mechanical, Hifumi spoke with the melancholic tone of a funeral, “I kissed him.”

Congra…” Ann started. When she heard others talking about things like that in the locker room, they were giddy. Wasn’t kissing a big deal? Fun? She tugged at Hifumi’s shoulder. “That’s not a good thing?”

Stopping and grabbing Ann’s hand with both of hers, Hifumi looked close to tears. “Oh, Ann, it was awful! It was like kissing a dead fish. He went cold !”

Ann stumbled. Akira was crazy about her, how could he screw that up? “Next time I see him, I’ll smack some sense into that moron .”

Hifumi sniffed, then reached into her purse for a tissue and dabbed at an eye. “Was any of it real?”

Ann clasped the shogi player’s hand with hers. “Hifumi… surely you know even better—”

Do I?” she snapped, the red string from her hair ornament jangling from her sudden turn. “He threw himself away. What is that, if not disgust? Fear? How can I have a boyfriend who’s afraid of me?” She tugged her hand away and dabbed her tissue at the other eye. “It’s even worse than if Akira-kun just has a broken bird fixation.”

Ann opened her mouth, but closed it as a sense of chill – and not the pleasant kind – slid down her spine. Akira knew something was wrong at Shujin, day one. He knew she and Shiho were close, and picked up on Kamoshida. Did he know Shiho was on Kamoshida’s list? The transfer student was very good at detecting abuse. He was the first to call Madarame and zero in on Yusuke. Was that the thing that drew him towards Shiho like a moth to the flame? That doctor-to-be detecting an untreated injury? He never made moves on Ann herself, but she also awakened to Carmen on the same day so it’s not like she was vulnerable for long. Even Carmen was uncertain as to whether Akira’s affection went further than attraction to classical beauty and a need to fix what was broken. “But… he likes the things you do.”

That just seemed to bring more gloom down on the shogi maestra. “So did Saiichi, and he still left me.”

Ann scowled. “If only Akira wasn’t such a pig-headed, stupid—”

Don’t!” Hifumi snapped, then caught herself. Her shoulders drooped and she turned for the exit. “He’s not even my boyfriend anymore and I still don’t like hearing people talk down to him.”

Listen, I know he can make things awkward…”

Hifumi drew her hand from Ann’s. “I spent my life burying my head to avoid unpleasant truths, but I left that behind when I awakened to Dihya. I can’t close my eyes anymore. Not for Mother, not even for Akira. I always wanted a man who treasured me. But when I shared a close gesture, he was disgusted . As much as I’d like to know what’s wrong with me, there’s no point discussing it unless he’s here ,” she pointed at the ground, “explaining it himself.” She brought up a hand to massage her temple. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to check on Mother and Papa. Until Mother recovers, I have two bedridden parents, and I don’t think I could stand losing more family.”

Ann’s phone buzzed, and that gave the shogi maestra pretense to leave. Growling, Ann checked her phone.

Yusuke’s ID winked up at her. [Takamaki-san, I have a conundrum. I have finished Love is Fear, but can not decide upon my next painting. It is as if each alternative is at war with the others in my mind, and my heart is the battlefield which suffers their exchange.]

She had [Would you get serious and help with the REAL problems?] all typed out before she stopped. He didn’t know what was going on with her newest friend. And it wasn’t likely Akira was going to the artist to bare his heart. She deleted that and sent, [I can't relax while two of my closest friends are hurting. Could you do two things for me? I'll call Makoto, too.]

[For one of such heart? I would do three.]

Ann felt a twisty smile fight its way out of her frown.

Evening
Akihabara, Sizzling Bowl Restaurant

Ann slid into the booth next to Yusuke as kitchenware clattered past the serving counter several meters away. Some people thought to be left alone you had to find a place with no-one else, but Ann learned long ago the more people were around, the less likely anyone would care to pay attention to you. The crowds became her refuge, even if she sometimes wore a hat to avoid the occasional stare at her blonde hair. This yakitori dive fit the bill, being closed off enough to know who was listening in but big enough that everybody kept their own company. She looked to her class president. “Thanks for coming, Senpai. Did Yusuke get you up to speed?”

We were comparing notes,” the class president said. She detailed the Phantom Thieves finally breaking the truth to Doctor Takemi, as well as the doctor already suspecting they were up to something but thought that involved car batteries and yakuza freezers. The only thing that surprised Ann was Takemi trying to bring up safe sex with Akira, according to Morgana.

I can’t say I’m surprised he didn’t take that well, I just wish I knew why.” Ann drummed her fingers on the table. It didn’t take a genius to notice the student president get fidgety. Wait, was she right earlier and he and her had a thing before he fell for Hifumi? “Makoto? How on Earth did you get Akira to spill to you?”

Makoto glanced to both sides, then leaned over the table. “Okay, but you have to promise to keep it a secret. You remember after that cognition of Sojiro shot Akira, and we found him near that thing he called a Sarcophagus?”

Yongen, Sakura Home, Futaba’s Room

The open curtains allowed the lights of the evening city to leak in. Futaba pressed her headphones tighter as if that could help her extract more details from the unfolding conversation over the bug on Yusuke’s phone. She couldn’t say how Makoto’s recounting of Akira’s mother felt so familiar to her, but somehow it seemed like the second time she heard of it. “Hifumi’s wrong. He wasn’t disgusted with her, he’s disgusted with himself. He thinks he’s like his mother.”

The hacker flopped onto her desk. “How’m I gonna get nieces and nephews at this rate?” As much fun as she liked having with all of the Phantom Thieves, there was something warm and safe about Akira. And there were sparks of that in Hifumi, who was just so nice it couldn’t be real. Her bugs told her something happened the night Akira drove Hifumi away, but it wasn’t until Ann enlisted Yusuke’s support that she learned it was a kiss. Akira and ‘Queen Togo’ were so adorable, if they didn’t get together she’d lose so much tease material!

And he wouldn’t be happy. That would be bad, too.

This would be so much easier if Akira just had a palace we could topple.” Mom’s research gave no indication a Palace and actualized inner self were incompatible, but Morgana insisted acceptance of a Persona did not allow the distortion necessary to have a Palace. The question was how to fix the rift between Akira and Hifumi. Why couldn’t he be at all like any of the manga she’d read? Except for the harem crap where the boring designated protagonist refused to commit, a kiss sealed the deal! It wasn’t supposed to break up the relationship when both had stars in their eyes!

She shot a quick text out to Mishima. It’s not like she could focus on the Phansite, anyway.

She already hacked Akira’s records from Shujin. His father went straight to a dead end, which did not surprise her. Some of the figures connected to Blue Cove were national cabinet appointees, maybe even intelligence. Wakaba herself had been scrubbed almost all the way back to university. But before marrying Houzan, Fumiko was subcontracted to a ‘morale consultation agency’. Not the most creative way to hide call girls, but nothing else seemed interesting from digital records. It didn’t take digging into bug recordings of his session with some counselor named Maruki to figure out Akira hated everything about his parents, but if his mother being a prostitute was enough to lock him out of sex, her dream of having little Akiras and Hifumis to keep her company in old age was doomed.

Her fist came down on her desk beside the keyboard. “No. A Sakura doesn’t give up so easy!” There had to be a way to rekindle the romance and get him over it. She looked into hiring mercs to kidnap them and lock them in a closet filled with aphrodisiacs, but that could lead to unintended consequences and if anything happened to Hifumi, Akira would never forgive the hacker.

She would never in a million years tell anyone how much that scared her.

Futaba thumped her head on the wrist rest of her mousepad. Why were people so complicated?

Akihabara, Sizzling Bowl Restaurant

When the artist held the door open for them, Ann waited for the class president to leave first, then stepped through after, flashing a smile at the artist. Getting everyone on the same page and arguing about what to do – or if there was anything they could do, despite Ann’s insistence – ate almost an hour.

Ann-san!” Yusuke rushed to come back alongside her as they headed to the train station. “Thank you for the delicious meal. Though, if I may ask, you requested I help you with two things. What was the second?”

Ann glanced left and right, then pulled the artist into an alley leading to the back entrance of a few small businesses. Once they were far enough in to be out of concern of the thoroughfare but also stay out of sight of the business back entrances, she stopped with him so close she could see his eyelashes. She could feel the flush on her cheeks from what she was about to ask. “All this with Hifumi got me thinking again… what’s the big deal? I hear girls at school talk about kissing, but I’ve never done it. I mean, besides Papa and Mama, but they don’t count. You?”

Yusuke crossed his arms, his eyes darting back in tiny movements as he searched through his memory. “Back when there were a handful of students at the atelier, we would discuss at length everything from the meaning of life to the best way to extend shampoo. When Sensei was out, we would sometimes play truth or dare. My first experience was in one, where I kissed Saki-senpai. That was years before she eloped with someone outside the atelier. I since granted six girls a kiss in middle school, at their request.” The corners of his mouth tugged down. “All were more interested in doing something with ‘one of Madarame’s’ so I began turning down such requests since attending Kosei. If there is supposed to be something special about a kiss, it should be with someone with whom there is… magic, I suppose.”

She straightened her skirt, finding it hard to meet his dark grey eyes all of the sudden. “Th-that makes sense.” The urge to turn around and bail on this embarrassing situation prodded at her, only for Carmen to rise up in the back of her mind and remind her that a woman should not be afraid to take what she wanted, even if the world said sensuality was forbidden. She straightened, the fire in her heart rekindled. “Could we…?”

He rested his hands on her hips. “To kiss the most beautiful woman in the world would hardly be a burden, Ann-san.”

She tilted her head up and he closed the distance. His lips were chapped, but his warm breath tickled her upper lip and a sense she could only describe as… electric passed between them. Despite his occasional awkwardness, once he committed he cast aside any nervousness he might have been feeling to hold her close with cautious, gentle pressure.

He pulled away with a smile and a dusting of pink on his own cheeks.

She let a beat pass, but there was something about his eyes, as if he was devoting every brain cell to soaking in every detail of the moment. She was still caught up in that charged sensation. “That was… nice. Akira and Hifumi don’t get what they’re missing. Wanna try another kind?”

His dark eyes gazed into hers. “If I possessed the whole world, I would give it all if you asked.” Her arms slipped around him as his tightened on her and they leaned in.

Tuesday, 23 August 2016
Early Evening
Yongen, Leblanc

Akira’s knife thudded in rapid succession through the bisected carrot on the cutting board. A piece jumped off and he stopped chopping, his other hand snatching for the carrot chunk before it could bounce to the floor.

Sojiro set a jar of coffee beans back on the shelf, but his eyes were on the transfer student. “That’s always impressive to see. I’m not such a bad cook myself, but even when these bones weren’t old I could never get that speed up.”

“Amagi Inn could have upwards of fifty guests a night. This was ‘keep up’ speed to them,” Akira explained. Before he could decide whether to go into the story of his first night trying to reach ‘restaurant speed’, his phone buzzed. His chest tightened from the prospect of trying to talk to Hifumi, but this was a bit early for her to post an update of her mother’s biometrics.

The group chat buzzed, but Ryuji’s ID sat on the top. [Hi, everyone! I figure we've all been sitting on our hands long enough. If we don't practice together, we'll get rusty.]

[Hifumi and I aren't done with the shoot,] Ann sent. [You can goof off on your own if you're bored.]

[I was thinking of us all practicing darts because it's been a while since we've done something as Phantom Thieves. But if you're going to be a bench, you can fork off.]

Yusuke, having logged in some time before, jumped in, [Takamaki-san is being responsible and fulfilling her obligations. If you can not accommodate the fact that we each have our schedules, then you are not entitled to her time.]

With Morgana still working on thieves’ tools upstairs, Akira decided somebody had to play the peacemaker. [Emotions running too high can ruin otherwise good plans. Everyone calm down. If you're already doing something, that's that. There's a lot of us by now, it's okay if some of us are busy.]

Ann logged off, but after a few moments, Yusuke sent, [You are correct, Akira-kun. If it is well with you, I was hoping to speak to Ann-san about my artist's block.]

[There's been an incident with a few Shujin students in a store they weren't supposed to be in,] Makoto sent. [I'm still busy trying to smooth things over with the disciplinary committee.]

Three dots danced next to Ryuji’s ID. [F. If everyone else is busy, you want to go play darts at Penguin Sniper? Morgana DID say the practice could help in the Metaverse.]

Akira hadn’t considered that point. He’d talked to Father Sugiyama and Lala about Hifumi, but still wound up stewing about her as long as he couldn’t talk to her, so some change of pace would help. [I'm almost done making salad for the week. You want me to bring Morgana?]

[I don't think he has the thumbs for darts, but up to you.]

Evening
Kichijoji, Penguin Sniper

Akira trotted up the steps, breathing a prayer of thanks for the air conditioning to batter away another day of high heat warning. It was so bad his weather app sent out a notice for the elderly to remain at home. After ascending the steps to the venue itself, he discovered Ryuji already paid for his fare. He paced to the dart board, still feeling the lingering effects of the blistering night outside. “Hey, Ryuji.”

The runner missed his dart throw. “Fuck.” By the time he turned around, he was back to smiles and bluster. “’Ey, you finally made it! Maybe this time we’ll be able to zero out 501.”

Akira let his gaze linger on the billiard tables, but the cover charge only allowed one event, not the whole floor.

Ryuji tapped the transfer student’s arm with a fist. “Hey. I know ‘xactly what you’re thinkin’ about. It’s all right.”

You weren’t there,” Akira snapped. He forced out a long breath, then pulled up one of the tall stools for waiting dart team players and plopped on it. “I thought she was perfect. We were…” He held up his hands, if only in memory of how much he wanted to close his arms around her then, even though his limbs felt like sacks of wet cement and wouldn’t respond at the time. “Then I fucked it up. Maybe forever.”

The dart board beeped as Ryuji’s last dart sailed into it. “Dude, I know what you’re feelin’. You just hit your first runner’s high. Well, love high, but it’s the same. You never felt it before an’ now you’re on the crash after. But you’re makin’ it worse, tryin’ to grab onto somethin’ that’s gonna come an’ go… by tryin’ to compare everythin’ to that first time when there was nothin’ in the world but you an’ the wind. Er, you an’ Hifumi. Think of it like breathin’. You gotta let that breath out or you’re jus’ gonna make yourself hurt more an’ pass out.” He retrieved the darts, then held them out. “So even if you don’t wanna do anythin’ else, you gotta make yourself. Or else you ain’t gonna run again.”

Akira stood and tossed his darts. Single twelve. Triple eighteen. Single five less than a centimeter from the triple twenty.

The track star gawked. “Daaamn, man. You were nailin’ it without tryin’ last time!”

Slipping his gloved hands into his pockets, Akira wished he was back at Leblanc so he could just go to bed. “Fits with the rest of my life.”

Ryuji rubbed his forehead. “Holy shit, dude. And you guys get on my case about havin’ a one-track mind.”

The woman I wanted to live the rest of my life with ran away,” Akira snapped, hands sliding out and clenching. “And it happened four days ago. I was too scared to text her until Monday, and that prolly pissed her off because she won’t answer my calls or texts.” He ran a gloved hand through his hair. “I thought I finally figured out life and she was at the center of it.”

Ryuji squared off against the transfer student. “So what good is obsessin’ about it gonna do?” He glanced around and lowered his voice. “Dude, we’ve been inside peeps’ hearts, that kinda thing is exactly what made them twisted. Why wouldn’t I be worried about you? I don’t want you to wind up like ‘Taba!”

Despite his gloves and long sleeves, Akira felt a chill descend on him. “She… told you?”

Ryuji yanked out the darts and returned. “Uh… we were there . In her Palace . ‘Cause she was so hung up on her ma, she wouldn’t live her own life.”

Akira let out a breath. His attempted suicide remained secret.

Ryuji transferred the darts into one hand and held up the emptied one. “And I say that as a dude whose only family is Ma.” The hand lowered and he let out a heavy breath. “I’ll be honest, if Ma got hit by a bus or somethin’ tomorrow, it would crush me. But… if I did nothing but think of her, it would be spittin’ on all the hard work she’s done tryin’ to give me a future an’ teach me to be a man.” He tapped the empty fist against the transfer student’s chest. “And I’mma be honest, I wouldn’t be able to say that if it weren’t for all of you. Yeah, even you . You saved a chick from a drunk even more messed-up than my old man. An’ she betrayed you. But even with a record, even gettin’ kicked outta the town you grew up in, you didn’t lay down an’ give up. You said ‘fuck you’ to everyone who wanted you to give up. You stood up to Kamoshida . So don’t you fuckin’ tell me life’s too hard after all the baddies we’ve beaten an’ all the peeps who got your back. Pull your head outta your ass and watch me school you in darts!”

Ryuji turned around and threw.

It would have been magnificent if the dart didn’t hit the single five. So close to the bull.

Ryuji grit his teeth and tried again, his second shot going wide again, but his third landing in the bull. He stepped in, retrieved the darts, and handed them to Akira.

He wanted to be angry with the track star, but the small mention about his mother brought him short. He was a man of the here and now, and treasured his mother in a way Akira still couldn’t quite wrap his head all the way around. If the runner could even contemplate that, it meant he was thinking way outside his usual zone. Akira took the darts and threw. He didn’t hit the triple twenty once, but it didn’t feel as pointless even if that game ended.

The atmosphere between them changed, but Ryuji seemed content to fill the void. He reset the lane and chatted about shoes and hydration and stretching as they settled into another game.

As they settled into the next and Akira’s throwing still hadn’t gotten more accurate, Ryuji paused. “Listen, I know those sexy times can be… not out of body, what’s the word… where everything but one thing fades away? For me, that’s runnin’. The city, the street, all of it goes away an’ I become one with the wind. You ever have that when runnin’? I know I talked ‘bout it, but you never have.”

Psychologists call it ‘flow’,” Akira said. He raised a dart and aimed. “I’ve had it. The old bastard tore up Discourse on Inequality. I didn’t even have the release of school, so I ripped a slat out of the bookshelf and tried to club him. He called for help and I took off. I felt like an escape artist in one of those old war movies, ducking orderlies and sliding under a weak point under the chain-link fence. The sun was sinking behind the mountains, but I didn’t care. I took off over the rocks and… everything fell away. Their yelling, the hills, everything.” He threw, and the dart landed on the inner twenty.

It wasn’t the triple, but it was the first time he’d thought about that feeling of being free in years.

Another dart, another single twenty.

I don’t know if I even felt like that with Hifumi,” Akira confessed, raising his last dart. “You think that’s proof we were never gonna click?”

Hard to say,” Ryuji said as he came back with the darts. Looks like this game was going to be up to his throwing again. “All the times I made out with chicks were either post-meet or post-practice, so it was kinda’ ridin’ from one high to another.” He continued as he threw, “There’s plenty of fish in the sea, ‘specially for broodin’ hero types like you.” The last dart landed, zeroing the game, and he threw his fists in the air.

While the runner retrieved darts, Akira hunched on his high stool. “Ryuji, girls go for good guys. And I’m… not. My grades aren’t even always good. I’m not reliable. I’ve got no real family. I don’t get simple things that everyone else just cruises through. Makoto’s said more than once that she’d like to strangle me because I keep making dumb jokes and won’t take things seriously, and I’ve even tried to stop.”

Ryuji stopped at the line. “Keep in mind that’s comin’ from Miss Model Student. She can’t laugh much with a stick up her ass.”

Akira adjusted his glasses. “She’s not entirely wrong. I want to be mister nice guy, but even I know I’m still a jerk to plenty of people.”

Some people are jerks. You’re the kind of guy who can’t help but return to sender.” He turned to the board. “And that’s pretty awesome when you’re givin’ back positive vibes, even when the whole school ain’t.”

I don’t even know how far my temper’s gonna take me until after somebody’s got a black eye.” His gaze fell to the floor. “Hell, there were a couple times were I almost punched out Ann. And she’s one of the nicest people I know.”

Eh,” Ryuji said, before letting a dart fly. “She’s way overbearing. The tits an’ ass I totally get, but I dunno why Morgana still thinks she’s the best thing ever.”

Akira took off his glasses to wipe the lenses. “What about a future? How likely is it that any college I apply to isn’t going to dig up my high school record? A job? I doubt I can support Hifumi on a bar job.”

Ryuji tossed his last dart and grunted. “First, we’re still in high school . We ain’t tryin’ to buy houses or nothin’. There’s tons of girls in Japan. If Hifumi’s the one you wanna hook up with for life, then effin’ go after her an’ don’t back down. I’ve seen you stare down Shadows . You served your lifetime quota of shit. In case I wasn’t clear before, fuck what the world thinks. We earned a shot at good things in our lives.” The runner retrieved the darts and handed them over.

Akira gave a nod, and it didn’t feel forced this time. Next time he saw Hifumi, he’d tell her why he was afraid.

His next throw hit a millimeter from the triple twenty.

Notes:

While training can eclipse the innate differences between men and women, studies of blood oxygen and lactate concentrations indicate consistent advantages in male athletes versus female athletes, accounting for similar conditions. The study I reviewed while writing this chapter was a 2007 study of badminton players. Yoshizawa, being a gymnast aiming at or near Olympic-level competition, would be aware of this, but might not be aware Akira’s hurting himself trying to keep up with her.

Chapter 112: August 24th, Temple Aftershocks

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Wednesday, 24 August 2016
Morning
Inokashira Park

Ryuji huffed sharp, even breaths in and out as he pushed through his day’s practice. The heat wave pressed down on him, but also discouraged most people and gave him a much more empty park where he could push his limits. It wasn’t as good as having a running buddy, but Makoto wasn’t interested and Akira still looked off his game at the end of dart night. Sometimes he really wished Akira picked up on Ann’s hints and was banging her, at least the problem would’ve been sorted out by now.

Breath in, breath out. There is no heat.

The path fell behind him, the world a phantom he left behind by sheer grit.

He slowed to a stop for a water break. The smell of pork and toasted sesame seeds infiltrated his nose. A new food cart vendor? He followed his nose to one of the busier paths under a willow tree and found a wrinkled woman with knobby fingers at a grill cart. Then his phone on his upper-arm-wrap buzzed. Ryuji waved the next pedestrian ahead and stepped aside.

Akira messaged the Phantom Thief group chat. [Morgana: Enough rest time has passed, people need to know even the smaller problems aren't too small for us. Who's ready for Mementos today?]

Futaba texted, [Ready flag up!]

Ryuji tapped away. [Working out, but all I'd need to do is shower and meet you at Mementos.] He frowned at the way auto-correct changed ‘Mementos’ to ‘Memory’. As if the guys didn’t give him grief for getting words wrong once in a while already.

[I've caught up on student council paperwork,] Makoto sent.

No sign of Ann, but her ID wasn’t lit up. Maybe working?

Hifumi’s ID lit up. [My session with the physical trainer doesn't end until 14:00.]

Wow. The leggiest girl in the Phantom thieves was still in the chat while Akira was in, she hadn’t done that since Saturday.

Akira texted, [Morgana: Then is everybody good to rally at Station Square, 14:30?]

Three dots danced next to Akira’s ID. Hifumi’s went dark as she logged off, and the dots disappeared from Akira’s ID.

Afternoon
Chiyoda, Togo Home

Legs sore from the day of intense workout, Hifumi paced down the street lined with manicured hedges and decorated property walls giving the homes a measure of privacy. She turned the corner to her home and froze. A police car sat in front of her house, with a black car parked along the street behind it. She fished in her purse for her phone, worry overriding the embarrassment that had been keeping her from the rest of the Phantom Thieves. The group chat had been quiet since Ann’s text at lunch, apologizing for being at a shoot for her agency today, followed by a supply shopping list by Akira with some questions and suggestions from the others. [There's a police cruiser in front of my house.]

Makoto texted, [Akira and I are cooking. We'll be there in ten.]

As she got closer, she could hear Antalas barking from the back yard. Hifumi hiked her purse further up her shoulder and dashed around the driveway to the back of the house. The garage was closed, but she could hear the husky’s paws scratching at the back porch as he raced from one window to the next. She punched in the code to the gate and slipped through.

Antalas dashed to her side, woofed up at her as if to ask what was going on, then spun to the back door and resumed barking.

She checked one of the security apps on her phone, but there was no sign of unauthorized entry to the house. Knowing her key fob would work from her pocket, she left it and opened the back door.

Antalas’ barking jumped in intensity and he shot at the door, letting loose a more threatening bark than she’d heard from him in months.

“Hifumi?” Mitsuyo’s voice called from the dining room. “Leave him outside so he doesn’t cause trouble.”

Her heart leaping in her chest, Hifumi had just enough presence of mind to push Antalas outside before closing the back door and dashing to the dining room. “Mother, you’re up!” It took her a beat to process the policeman in blue, and two men in suits at the table next to her. A scattering of papers littered the table between them.

One of the suited men gave her a dismissive nod. “It’s all right, Togo-chan. These policemen aren’t pressing charges against the rest of the Togo household.”

It took Hifumi a beat to recognize that voice as one of Mother’s lawyers, though she’d only heard him over the phone before. “What’s going on? What are police doing here?”

Mother looked up, the light makeup not quite hiding some puffiness around her eyes. “Please, just a moment.” She stood and reached out to her daughter. “I’m so sorry, Hifumi. I hoped to have questions and plans finished before you returned home. But I had to make it right.”

Hifumi returned the rare hug from Mother. A red flag rose in her mind at Mother’s mention of plans, because that was so much Mother. “What are you talking about? Mom, what are all of them doing here?”

Heaviness settled across Mother’s frame as she squeezed the girl close for a beat. “I wouldn’t be a good person, much less good mother, if I didn’t pay for the wrongs I’ve done. There are so many things I need to do.” She squeezed the girl a moment longer, then let her go. “And you deserve a better role model. Please read my letter to Shinpei when they let him out of the clinic. It’s on the vanity in our bedroom.” She turned to the police. “Could we finish this at the station? My daughter had nothing to do with my actions. I was the one who orchestrated everything.”

The policeman in blue glanced to the suited man yet to be identified, who gave a nod. The uniformed policeman stood and gestured to the door. “We’ll have to hold you separately from the general population until protective custody can be organized.”

General population? Protective custody?” Pain stabbed at her skull as she fought off realization. She blinked back tears. “No. Mother, I just got you back! You can’t go!”

The front doorbell rang and Antalas burst into renewed barking. Mother sighed. “Could you send whoever it is away?”

Hifumi paced to the front to head off whatever new dimension this disaster of a day was spinning into. She opened the door to a rolling wave of summer heat. Akira stood beyond, breathing hard, sweat beading across his face. She hadn’t even asked for him and he ran all the way here.

They looked across the threshold at each other and it took a beat before she felt tears trailing down her cheeks. A heartbeat later, he jumped in and threw his strong arms around her.

Too soon after, Mother came around the turn in the hall. Her sullen despondence melted into a hardened glare and she stormed closer. “You get away from my daughter!”

Leaving an arm around Akira to steady herself, Hifumi turned to the head of the house. Her heart changed, why was she still harping on him? “Mother! Aki’s done nothing but help me!”

Resolve unwavering, Mother took a firm step closer and she spoke over the barking, “You don’t know him. Assault… runaway… violence against his family…” Her piercing gaze fell on the sweating boy. “You’ll hurt her. And I will end you for it.”

He wouldn’t!”

Mother’s lawyer came up next to her. “Togo-san, we already have to deal with enough charges.”

Mother’s glare held on the transfer student. “You aren’t worthy of my daughter.”

She felt Akira flinch at her words, and his arm fell from her waist. He took in a brief breath before he forced himself to stand straighter. “No, ma’am. I’m not. She’s smarter than me, more spiritually attuned, has a more honorable family.” He swallowed. “But when she calls, I can’t help but answer.”

Togo-san?” the uniformed policeman said as he came to a stop next to Mother. “The interview must be finished, either here or at the station. The Kaneshiro task force has a lot of ground to cover.”

A pained look crossed Mother’s face before she looked from Akira to the officer. “I understand.”

Well, I don’t!” Hifumi shouted. She wiped at the tears trailing down her face.

Mother’s lawyer took a step closer, maddening pity in his eyes. “Your mother is pleading guilty to fraud, conspiracy to commit assault, and several other charges in exchange for her testimony against Kaneshiro’s money laundering operation.”

Mother reached out and rested a gentle hand on Hifumi’s shoulder. The firm control and detailed plans the strategist knew her for mixed with shining in her eyes she’d never seen before. “I’m sorry. But this is a fate I wrote for myself when I treated you and other children like pawns.” Her hand squeezed before she stepped around, then walked past Makoto just coming up to the porch. The police and lawyer followed her out.

Makoto stepped in, closing the door behind her as cars started outside, commiseration writ across her face. “This is an outcome we all knew was—”

Hifumi spun around though Akira held her back as she exploded, “I wanted my family back , not gone !”

Akira nudged her around and held her through her sobbing. After what felt like an eternity, she straightened up – though didn’t step back from his arms. “Could you get her some water?”

Hifumi’s independence warred with a growing exhaustion. She couldn’t deny it anymore – Mother was gone. Would be for a long time. Hifumi had all the independence she wanted and more. Letting a breath out, she leaned against Akira and gave Makoto directions to the kitchen. “Why does life have to be so clear after the fact?”

He rubbed a hand at the small of her back. “You’re regretting changing your mother’s heart?”

She wanted to say yes, but Dihya rumbled within. “Something was coming to a head. I wouldn’t have survived under her for much longer, she was getting worse. It’s losing her… or not being able to mend our relationship that I think I regret most. I didn’t even get to properly introduce you.” She brushed her fingers against the string dangling from her hair knot. “Did I tell you when I started wearing this?”

Your mother gave it to you during… some kind of celebration,” Akira answered.

Children’s Day,” she said, tightening the arm still around him. “I was starting to go with Papa to his shogi tournaments, which could take me pretty far from Tokyo, and she wanted me to have a good luck charm to remember our better days together.” She began to tremble from another round of crying clawing its way out of her.

Akira tightened his arms around her and waited with a patience she hadn’t earned.

Hifumi didn’t want to disengage from his warm support, but her legs felt like noodles. “Can we take this to the dining room? I need to sit down.”

Akira’s arms tightened around her. “Too much for one day?”

She gestured around the corner to the dining hall, and held an arm around his shoulders to keep from slipping to the floor. “Today was leg day and I think I overestimated myself.” Once there, despite wanting to stay in his warm embrace, Hifumi settled into a chair. When she noticed Makoto standing there with a glass of water, Hifumi wiped at her eyes. “I must apologize to you both. No, to all of you—”

Enough,” Makoto said with firm authority. “There’s no need to hold a formal front to us. We’re all friends in the same boat.” She stepped forward to offer the half-full glass. “I’m scared about what will happen to Big Sis once we can reach her Shadow, too.”

Overcome with concern, Hifumi reached out to clasp the class president’s hands holding the glass. “Oh, Makoto-san, I’m so sorry that we’ve been neglecting you. Has she hurt you?”

Makoto released the glass with one hand to take one of Hifumi’s. Smiling as she shook her head, she pushed the glass at the other girl. “I’m fine, thanks to all of you. She is so hyper-focused on her work she isn’t even home most days.” She released the glass to the shogi player’s hands, then clasped hers over Hifumi’s. “Right now, you are the one we’re all worried about.”

Hifumi let loose a laugh sounding more of nervousness than relief, but couldn’t help but feel buoyed up by the two Phantom Thieves who came running. “You are too much.” She wiped at her face. “I must look a mess right now.”

Akira offered her a beige, folded handkerchief and took the chair next to hers. “Still beautiful to me.”

Um…” Makoto’s eyes flicked to Akira. “I was going to recommend you explain about your mother, but if you two are already fine talking, I’ll just head out.” She headed for the dining room door.

Lowering his arm, Akira raised a palm to wipe his forehead, his cheeks flushed red.

Hifumi scanned his growing hunch and way his stormy grey eyes wouldn’t meet hers. She put a hand on his cheek to angle his face to her. “Did your mother wrong you, as well?”

His eyes, on hers for just a moment, flicked away. “This isn’t about my—”

Yes it is,” Makoto said, stepping back in. “The events of your life with your mother shaped who you are. Don’t let them shape an unhappy future just because she was selfish. Whatever happened Saturday affected us enough that Futaba, Ann, and Yusuke contacted me.” She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “Do you want me to go—?”

No, Inaba was the worst of my mother and you already saw that,” Akira said, gesturing a hand to another chair.

What do you mean?” Hifumi looked back and forth, which took more effort now that the others sat on either side of her. Envy stoked the sense of heat in her belly that Makoto knew secrets about Akira which she didn’t. “How did you see his mother?”

Makoto clasped her hands on the table. “Hifumi, do you remember some of the memory-exhibits in your mother’s Palace?” She waited for a nod. “Some of them earlier in the Palace had video screens like you might see at a higher-end museum. They’d kind of… pull you in and you experience a brief clip of the palace ruler’s memory. There were more of that… draw-you-in kind and none of the static museum-display types in Futaba’s Palace. One of the cognitions shot Akira, and put him into a trap where instead of reliving a brief moment in the Palace Ruler’s memory, it forced him to relive moments in his memory that correlated with the Palace Ruler’s pain – her mother. Well, for this trap, his mother. I had to… enter that trap. It took me several memories before I could get him to perceive me, then several more before he remembered we were all Phantom Thieves and he was stuck in a trap instead of back in that moment of his life.” Makoto cringed. “You see… Akira’s mother had a fixation with, um…”

Hedonism,” Akira snapped. “Let’s call it what it is. She drank like a fish, spent every weekend partying it up somewhere else, and fucked any man who caught her eye. Hell, that was her job when she met my old man. She chose it.”

Hifumi stared down at her hands in her lap, twisting as if she could wrestle her self-disgust. “No wonder you found me odious.”

Odious?”

The air felt thinner and her neck itched, but Hifumi forced her hands to stay in her lap. “I’ve had seven boyfriends before, I’m no different than—”

Akira took her hand with his. “Hifumi, who wouldn’t want you? You’re as kind as the canonized Saints, and as beautiful as you are smart.”

That heat pooling inside decided to move to her face and she took her hand from his. “I’m not nearly so smart as I… was made to appear. I’ve had a lot of time to think. Since Mother pointed it out, my opponents often made mistakes that no strategically honed mind would fall into. If I was really so smart, I would have acknowledged it before. That just makes me arrogant.”

Makoto patted the other girl’s shoulder. “Hifumi, anyone can be fooled by the right gambit. And a lot of people won’t pry into a flawed story that requires us to acknowledge faults in ourselves. I know that from personal experience. I was a member of Shujin’s student council, but I was so afraid of being demerited, I didn’t look into things even after several girls on the volleyball team left the school. I told myself I couldn’t have done anything for Shiho-kun after we learned she was… assaulted by Kamoshida, but I knew. Suspected. The same thing happened to my student council rival, Kiriko-san, last year. I could have done something for her , but she had that magnetic personality that just pulled people in and I hated that she could do that. So I let her go to him, unwarned, and coasted into the student council president spot she would have beaten me in any fair election for.”

Hifumi straightened in her chair. “I don’t believe that. But even if you were that kind of Makoto, that’s not the Makoto with Johanna here and now. You’re strong and brave and I think you’d even go up against the D iet if you saw injustice there.”

Makoto failed to fight down a shy smile. “Well, you aren’t arrogant. You’re one of the kindest, most humble people I know.” Then her smile spread and those crimson eyes locked on Akira. “And that’s been rubbing off on Akira, so let me be the first of us to say thank you for being a positive example he actually listens to .”

Hifumi folded her hands in her lap to resist the urge to fidget in front of them. “You mentioned contact with glimpses of memories of Palace Rulers. What… did you see through Mother’s eyes of myself and…?” It became too hard to keep her eyes on him and she swallowed against a tightness in her throat. “And my… other boyfriends?”

Makoto leaned against the table. “All of the ones I saw involving you were after you joined us.”

Akira’s face dusted with an adorable blush. “I… snuck in shortly after we first entered Futaba’s palace. Ryuji and Morgana snuck in after me – the original plan was to scout on my own. Anyway, we found a fortified building where most of your mother’s memories of you were. We saw you and Kazuo.”

Hifumi closed her eyes, shame bringing heat to her face. Of course it would be the one most likely to look worst from the outside. He loved kissing almost as much as she did. “My last boyfriend before I started Kosei and Mother forbade me from dating. He didn’t care for my taste in literature, but was so nice.”

Akira stared down at his gloved hands, their steel grey like a reflection of his eyes.

Makoto stood and settled the chair back at the tall, western-style table. “I’ll leave if you’d rather finish talking things out with just each other, but… would you two mind telling me what exactly happened on Saturday? I went straight home before the rest of you left the clinic.”

Hifumi looked to him and they both blushed, then averted their gaze. “We… kissed.”

Akira straightened on his chair. “You stuck your tongue in my mouth.”

Makoto tilted her head. “You guys are already frenching?”

Eyes falling, Akira’s blush went from a dusting on his cheeks to a solid coloration across his face. “Is that some kind of euphamism for sex?”

Despite the weighty aura of their conversation, Hifumi couldn’t hold in her laughter. Makoto was the one who always said she felt ignorant of the wider world, the shogi player didn’t think the adroit boy would be even less informed. Hifumi smothered her laughter when he retreated in his seat. “Akira, it’s another word for french kissing . It’s just a… passionate… kiss,” she trailed off as she realized, she and Akira had never shared a decorous kiss. She bowed in her seat. “I’m sorry, Aki. It had been so long since I had a boyfriend, I went right back to where I left off.”

Makoto shifted behind the shogi player.

Akira scowled at the class president. “Oh, don’t act like you’re some kind of expert.”

Makoto covered her mouth too late to hide her smirk. “The student council did have a rather extensive supplementary briefing on the code of conduct, particularly what acts are considered appropriate while in school uniform and what are not. That just happened to be one.” Makoto clasped her hands behind her back. “I just never really thought much about how valid it is to call an action appropriate or not until now, just whether it was prescribed. Well, it looks like the incident on Saturday is behind us, however you two decide to go about it. I have pasta soaking that I don’t want to congeal into a single mass.” She gave a brief bow and departed.

When the transfer student began to rise to follow, Hifumi grabbed his wrist. “Akira. I need to know the unvarnished truth.” Her eyes searched him, taking the anxious pinch to his shoulder blades and clench of his jaw as she sorted through the many answers she wanted. “Purity is important to a lot of people and the fact that I couldn’t give you my first kiss… You didn’t push me away because… I was too much like your mother?”

What?” He recoiled, which was a feat given he already sat down. “No!”

She didn’t need Dihya to tell her he put out a big deception flag. “Then what?”

He glanced up and reached a gloved hand to her, but not all the way. “Hifumi, I wasn’t afraid you’d be like my mother. I was afraid I was going to act like her.” He let out a breath and braced against the table. “I was ready to tear your clothes off and fuck you in the street. That was how… out of it I was with the way you made me feel. And I’ve never done good things when I’m that…”

She reached out to rest a hand on his. “Vulnerable?”

Not in control of myself?” he said, those stormy eyes down. At least he wasn’t withdrawing from her touch.

Hifumi sorted through the myriad thoughts competing in her head. “Maybe we can treat this as a learning experience and try to take things slower in the future?” The air felt thick, and he hadn’t responded. “I mean, as long as you still want there to be an… us?”

Her heart soared when his hand turned and squeezed hers.

Wednesday, 24 August 2016
Late Evening
Yongen, Leblanc Loft

Creaking reached his ears and Morgana sat up from his work replacing the homunculi wiped out by a single volley of Shadows. He didn’t want to be seen crafting precision instruments, but also didn’t want to stop until he had at least one for each Phantom Thief. Joker ascended the stairs, his hair still damp and his old clothes slung over a shoulder. The leader added a few finishing touches. This wouldn’t be enough for all the Phantom Thieves, but would do for the vanguard team. “What a day! Another Palace Ruler’s heart changed, and the impact of defeating Medjed is continuing to spread.” With Nightrider recounting Phantom Thief fan pages even in other languages, that meant they were going to be noticed by people outside Japan.

Joker paced to the laundry basket and tossed his dirty clothes in, then changed into his threadbare summer sleeping clothes and knelt before the tiny poster of Mary holding the body of Jesus. The usual hunch of his shoulders wasn’t here today, and his breaths came in a deeper, more steady rhythm than the team leader had seen in weeks.

The leader decided to give Joker a few minutes to pray. He popped into Oracle’s room occasionally to check on the rest of the team, but had been dedicating his time to replacing homunculi so he wouldn’t risk losing a Phantom Thief again. After Hawk texted the group about police in front of her house, Joker predictably bolted and Rider stayed just long enough to turn off the stove before Hawk’s mother was carted away by the police and tears gave way to a conversation he felt guilty for listening in on. Once Joker crossed himself, Morgana asked, “So, what do you think of today?”

Joker stood, sent out a text, then plugged his phone in and set it down. “I’ve got a long road ahead of me. But I think… now I have a path to take. I have a place.”

Morgana jumped onto the wide sill and paced across it, hopping past the blowing AC unit. “Having a place… it sounds so simple, but it means so much.” He sat down to try to hide the twitching in the tip of his tail. “All of you have a history to ground you. Even you, as turbulent as it was. When we get close to a Treasure, sometimes I get… a feeling. Like hearing an echo of something long ago. When we were fighting Shadow Togo… I got this flash. Maybe a memory.” He looked up, unable to hide the drooping to his ears or tail. “What if I’m not human?”

Hm. You’re right, I’m not sure you score high enough on the weirdness meter to be human.”

Don’t be half-assed about this,” Morgana snapped. “I’m the only one who can turn into a car. I can sniff out Treasures. I have more memories of dodging Shadows in Mementos than I do of grilled corn or gym class or shopping and all the things that you guys share.”

Joker’s phone buzzed, but he left it there to hold his stare with the team leader. “Morgana, you lost memories as a result of succumbing to some Palace Ruler’s dominion before you awakened to your Persona. You get hungry and have favorites and struggle against imperious adults for a better tomorrow. If that’s not human, I think most humans don’t measure up. You even speak Japanese, how could that have happened if you were a cat?” He stretched an arm. “You remember when I nominated you to be our leader?”

Morgana wrapped his tail around his feet. “I remember nominating you . Then you reversed it.”

Because you’re the one who made all this possible.” Joker crossed his legs and turned to face the leader straight on. “You saved Ann and I – hell, including all the other times we’ve fought together you’ve saved everyone’s butt a dozen times. You’re reliable and even though your emotions fuel you, they don’t consume you like mine do. You’re always on the look out for corruption, but to scour it away and not nuke it from orbit like I would. You always keep hope, not just in our teammates but even in the scumbags whose hearts we’re trying to change. You believed people could be better even before we did it the first time.”

Morgana felt a smile despite himself. He puffed out his chest. “Well, somebody has to be the reliable one. Might as well be the Phantom Thieves’ premier dashing gentleman.” He hopped across Joker’s knees, to the floor, then to the cushion serving as his bed on the bottom of the shelf. “Now go to sleep. We’ll want to be at the top of our game when we go to Mementos for real tomorrow. We can consult Rider and Hawk then.”

Chapter 113: August 25th, Scanning Mementos

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Thursday, 25 August 2016
Morning
Mementos Lobby

Makoto trotted down the steps into what should be the bustling Shibuya Underground. Blood-red emergency lights cast an unnerving pall over the space just a little bit off of ordinary. She heard the other members of the Phantom Thieves already ahead of her, assembling their weapons. Coming into the room she dubbed the Lobby, Makoto glanced over the dyed blond helping Hifumi assemble her rifle, a level of discomfort remaining despite wielding it twice in her mother’s Palace. Ann gave a few experimental swings to get used to the balance of the sword form of her whip-sword, Yusuke discussing stance next to her. Futaba skipped a separate melee weapon, choosing to use the staff weapon she took out of her pyramid. Something about the lighting here made the black roots of her hair look even more stark, the rest of her dyed-orange hair even more ethereal.

Finished with set-up, Hifumi nodded to the class president. “Makoto-san.”

“Code names,” Morgana interjected.

The shogi maestra slung her rifle. “I thought that was only necessary in Palaces. Why not use our regular names?”

Ann flashed a wide smile. “That wouldn’t be cool!”

Morgana sighed and paced closer. “Consider it an extension of the will of rebellion. Notice how you’re not wearing your regular clothing. It’s like armor, the reaction of your will of rebellion against the dominating will of the Palace Ruler. Or the distortions of the Metaverse, in the case of where we are now. I call it Mementos.”

Makoto finished assembling her shotgun and stood. “I’m ready. What are we waiting for?”

Futaba pointed her closed staff weapon at the corner. “For Joker to finish zonking out on his feet.”

Morgana rolled his eyes. “He’s meditating.”

Ryuji pulled back something on the light machine gun dangling on a strap, then let it go with a click. Boys and their toys. “He’s snoozin’ while the rest of us are rarin’ to go.”

Akira straightened, then turned around from staring into the corner. “I guess you don’t want one of these, then,” he displayed three cylindrical crystals in his now red-gloved palm. “What a pity.” He turned to Futaba. “I think you said your Persona didn’t like wind?”

The small girl scratched the back of her head with her staff weapon. “Right, it plays havoc with the targeting sensors and maneuvering thrusters.”

Akira reached into a pocket on his longcoat, then another, then one inside before a smirk. He drew the kind of bracelet that kids attach trinkets to and pressed it into a metal socket with a soft groan of metal bending to accept the crystal’s shape, then handed the bracelet over. “Then you may enjoy some resistance.”

Makoto remembered many times the Phantom Thieves had been hit by something that didn’t just hurt but could knock them down or ruin concentration, like ice did to her despite Johanna’s armor. “Wait, you can do that?”

I don’t understand the process, but it’s what I did for the fortifying gem I gave Yusuke.”

Ryuji blurted, “You gave a dude jewelry?”

Yusuke fished a fine pendant chain from the neck of his garb, revealing a similar crystal almost two centimeters long and covered with hard, angular facets. “Did all of you forget? This is one of the reasons I have been able to withstand the might of so many Shadows.”

Makoto cleared her throat before Futaba could get any wrong ideas. “It’s not without limitation, he had almost as many bruises after the battle against Togo-san’s Shadow as I did. But any advantage helps.”

Akira nodded, then threw a crystal to the team leader. “I figured if they work on our guns, a gem with lightning should work on your crossbow.”

Ryuji’s jaw flapped open and closed, and he glared. “ Dude , why didn’cha hand me one? Lightnin’s badass!”

The team leader unfolded his weapon and held the crystal against it, then braced the crossbow to his shoulder. “I’ll have to do it manually today, but I think I can modify this to accept one of those shards of power in the future. What’s the last one, Joker?”

Curse magic,” he said. “I sacrificed Osiris yesterday to make this. I was hoping for something that would protect against curse energy so what happened to… well, me couldn’t happen to any of you, but the twins said this crystal can only emit energy, not block it from coming in.”

The rest of the thieves glanced about. Makoto suspected everyone knew the expansion of tactical options would help, but laughing as darkness roared from beneath was so much Akira’s idiom it didn’t feel right to use that power herself. Even if it wouldn’t lead to her laughing maniacally.

Yusuke stepped forward. “I will use it. Rider-san has informed me that her wind crystal tires her, so I shall use this one sparingly, but it should reduce the burden on yourself.”

Morgana nodded and hopped onto the artist’s shoulder. “That’s all the preparations. Keep your eyes up, everyone. Mementos may not have an alarm level quite like a Palace, but we still don’t want to underestimate the amalgamated Shadows. Especially since we definitely shook society’s cognition enough to unlock at least one gate.” He turned to their newest member. “Hawk, your Persona has already shown talents in scanning. Can it determine how much further Mementos goes now that we’ve toppled another two Palaces?”

Hifumi held her hand to her face under the voluminous hood, and those three red lights winked out, then her red-garbed Persona holding a tower shield in each hand manifested above her. Its sedate floating mask stared into the stairs downwards, white light pulsing behind it. “No—”

Ryuji kicked at the tile floor. “So much for Miss Radar.”

Because it’s expanding.”

Ryuji balked. “Think it’s ‘cause of your ma? Or was the splash from Medjed just that big?”

While there are possible durations of after-effects, like soil following boulders breaking free in a landslide, those tend to lose momentum after a time,” Hifumi said, her tone cool and her concentration still focused through her Persona. “The rate of change is not slowing down. On the contrary, it is accelerating. It radiates out into Tokyo like the illumination from a lighthouse, imperfect rays stretching further in some degrees than others, but it is definitely growing downwards as we speak.”

Morgana drummed his fingers along his crossbow. “Hm. We already knew that Mementos had to be bigger than just the area we could reach when we searched for Kuraya Eisuke and my nose told me he was lower than the walls would let us travel.”

Futaba leaned against the artist. “What if Mementos isn’t about Treasures? What if it gets bigger from something else, like searches and trending words making Apple Pen Guy a big celebrity when his joke video went viral? Even the access counter on Mishima’s website might impact how big it grows.”

Makoto tightened her shotgun strap. “So Mementos might be granting us further passage as we become more prevalent in public cognition. Like favored reputation allowing further access, in the same way I got to see more of Tokyo’s police headquarters when Big Sis became a chief prosecutor at SIU.”

Oh!” Ryuji chirped. “Like famous peeps gettin’ free admission to parks an shi…stuff,” he corrected, his eyes flicking to the hacker, “Just for bein’ famous.”

Morgana’s ears curled against his large boy-form skull. “That’s… a very concise and apt description, Skull. I’d never even considered such a possibility.”

Yusuke raised a hand just enough to get Hifumi’s attention. “We had been speculating that each treasure stolen from a Palace caused shocks like an earthquake, and created new segments of Mementos.”

Dihya dissipated and those red lights under Hifumi’s hood glowed again as she took her hand away. “I wouldn’t be so hard on yourself. Any analysis is going to consist of qualitative as well as quantitative observations until experience allows the observer to craft proper measuring tools.”

Morgana hopped down and paced to the utility door. “Well, this way is a shortcut to the lowest rest stop we’ve discovered so far. Be careful, the Shadows tend to be pushovers at the surface, but there will be more powerful ones as we descend. Hawk? We’ll want to flex your Persona’s scanning capabilities, so just tell me when you want me to stop to take a scan.” He jumped to the ladder and slid down. Ryuji, Akira and Ann joined, though Yusuke showed a little more sense and clambered down.

Mementos, Path of Chemdah

Futaba followed the shogi maestra and the veteran thieves down the escalator. The crystal-vein things creeping from the vents above was odd enough, but the sickly yellow lights here made the hacker think of exotic diseases. Even the concrete walls seemed to sag just a bit, and the wood ties under the rail lines seemed warped. Barred windows separated what appeared to be one subway tunnel line from another, and huge chains glistening with dark red stretched high across the subway tunnels. “If this is what Tokyo’s subways look like, I take back thinking I missed out on the outdoors. At least the Tok’ra tunnels had cool hexagonal patterns all over.”

Bastet – er, Morgana walked out all the way to the edge of the derelict subway platform’s edge.

Ann kept shifting her weight from foot to foot in excitement even though it looked like the team leader was about to throw himself on the tracks. “Ooh, just wait.”

The hacker was about to say something when he did jump down, but instead of the light pad of feet, with a pop he transformed into a ghastly French van. The back of her mind remembered seeing the van before, but she’d been distracted by a zillion-story-tall tower collapsing at the time. She jumped what must have been half a meter in the air with an ‘eep’, and felt a warm yet validating feeling when her hands clutched Hifumi’s. “Bastet just turned into a van!”

Makoto wore more than a bit of a smug smirk. “It’s actually a Citroen minibus.”

Futaba took tentative steps to the edge of the station platform, hands on her goggles as she would on her glasses when scrutinizing something in the real world. “Did you gain this power by stealing Togo’s Treasure? Show us your other forms!” She clapped. “Oh! Can you turn into a helicopter and fly like Marcus?”

A terse beat passed before Morgana gave a flat, “No.”

Makoto stopped next to the shogi master. “He’s only ever been able to turn into the van.”

Futaba scoffed. “Motorcycles are cooler.”

Don’t underestimate four wheel drive!” he threw back, though the cringe he would have held in his cat or cartoony mascot boy forms carried through the tone.

Futaba pointed her staff weapon at the tracks. “We’re in a subway . Why would anybody want to be down on the tracks where trains are zipping around?”

Ryuji scratched his head with his club. “We only had to dodge trains a couple times. Besides, he’s a car , they’re pretty tough.”

Yeah, they have DR one-hundred slash… another car,” she said with a gesture at the tracks.

Ann placed a hand on her hip. Ecchi artists would’ve had a field day. “He can ram the creepy Shadow… clump thingies we’ll be running into. That’s how we kick off surprise attacks down here, they don’t have the convenient masks the palace-ruler-wrapped Shadows have.”

Nope!” Futaba tapped her summon and transport rings manifested around her, teleporting her into her safe, evade-ground-threats Persona. “Can fly, will avoid being mashed by big trains made of tons of steel.”

Makoto sighed. “I’ll stay close to her, I can traverse the tunnels on Johanna as well.”

Hifumi paused at the Morgana-bus’ side door. “Is all of Mementos this… unsettling?”

It’s the palace of the collective unconscious,” Morgana’s voice floated out of the van. Bus. Whatever. “So there will always be a sense that we’re intruding, or watched. Fortunately, we also don’t have to worry about a Palace security level. It would take an action against all of humanity to get the collective unconscious to change it.”

Ryuji, from his seat in the front, whined, “Can we just get goin’? Maybe we can reach that museum curator guy now.”

Curator guy?” Hifumi said, a faint shift of her hood with a small tilt of her head.

Ann’s hand clapped against her feline mask. “Oh, right. We taught them all about the Metaverse because we were already in the palaces, but we forgot to explain voting.”

Makoto nodded. “Right. The Shadows we target in Mementos might be a far smaller force than Palace Rulers, but changing a heart is no small matter. To prevent any abuse of the power to change hearts, we have to put any requested name to the all the Phantom Thieves, and agree unanimously before we change somebody’s heart.”

Futaba’s heart clenched in her chest. She threatened them into it, but they still brought it to a vote and found a way to empathize with her plight when they didn’t even know her. “If you guys can help someone like me, then I’ll back you up with anybody you’ve decided needs a heart change.”

Hifumi’s fingers ran along the edges of her cloak as she thought. She turned to the rider in black leather. “An understandable measure, but I believe I would like to know who today’s requests are and why they are targeted before I feel like I am prepared to give my concurrence.”

Yusuke placed his hand on the pommel of his katana. “As thoughtful as I would expect from a master strategist. We may take them in any order depending on how we come across them, but the first on the list was Deputy Curator of the Tokyo National Museum of Modern Art, Kuraya Eisuke. He is a wealthy, corrupt figure with extensive sway in the Japanese art world, and the one most directly responsible for blacklisting a fellow Madarame pupil. Despite Madarame’s confession, many of his students remain barred from the art world due to the remains of Sensei’s network. I am sure we can free them to pursue their heart’s desire if we change Curator Kuraya.”

The shogi maestra nodded. “Mother was progressively moving me from shogi to modeling. To bar somebody from what they have been raised in, one of the things they most love, is one of the cruelest fates a person can suffer. I vote to change his heart.”

Makoto nodded, a pleased grin forming under her heavy plate-iron mask. “Maybe we’ll even be able to question him about the ‘black mask’ Kaneshiro and Madarame spoke of. There was no sign of such an interloper in Togo’s Palace.”

Futaba brought Marcus down to the level of the station platform. “Black Mask?”

Ryuji’s eyes widened under his skull mask. “Ooh, right! We didn’t tell them ‘bout that! He’s a nasty dude, maybe even whole buncha guys, who’re sneakin’ into peeps hearts. ‘Shiro thought we were tryin’ to get rich like Black Mask, so he might be some asshole stealin’ peeps’ money as well as killin’ em in the Metaverse.”

Futaba ringed back down to the station platform, her jaw clenching. “Wait. You guys have leads on the monster who murdered Mom?”

Akira scratched his scalp. “Very little beyond ‘someone in the Metaverse’. We think it’s just one person because the few mentions have never indicated more than one at once. Though when I asked Yuuki to look up mental shutdowns and berserk episodes, he said if there’s not more than one, he or she works a lot faster than us. Someone who can come into the Metaverse and interact directly with palace rulers, if Madarame’s Shadow was right.”

Hifumi gave the hacker a moment to process that before clearing her throat. “The power to enter a person’s soul is one that could easily make a less ethically grounded person drunk on that power. We can ask the next Shadows, but we need to come to consensus and find them first.”

Right!” Makoto injected herself back in the conversation to steer it. “Yuuki also coaxed the name of a burglary ring leader, Makigami Kazuya, from his younger brother. His brother said he’s abusing him, as well.”

The shogi maestra’s mouth twisted into a bitter grimace before she regained her composition. “People treat burglaries like a petty crime because they usually don’t involve person-on-person crimes, but it only takes one innocent couple walking in on the wrong minute to become a murder and tear a family apart. Let us deliver swift retribution to this thoughtless parasite on the honest struggle of others!”

Futaba took a beat to wonder what stoked her passion before remembering an expose detailing a burglary gone wrong where her aunt and uncle were murdered, her cousin injured and comatose for several days. The outside world was scary enough, the hacker didn’t have to wonder why her cousin’s unnamed fiancee hid and called the police afterward.

Makoto tapped her chin. “There’s also the abusive girl you were telling me about.”

Hifumi’s red optics twinkled in a way that reminded the hacker of blinking. “Oh, Shimizu Hikari? I do hope we can change her heart, she was still at it when the trimester ended and her boyfriend is in my class. He looked worse each passing day.”

She looked to Futaba, who shrugged. “Hey, I already said I’m up for it if you guys already voted on it. You wouldn’t agree on someone who didn’t really need it.”

Oh!” Akira stepped closer, arm resting on his P90 dangling from a strap across his shoulder. “I posted it to the Phansite while I was working at Crossroads, but we didn’t bring it up at a staff meeting. There’s this abusive boss stealing his workers’ credit and treating them like shit. This guy who told Lala-san about it looked like he only came in to drink it away rather than jumping in front of a car because he was too tired from overwork. And if the boss is as incompetent as that type tends to be, his architectural designs might be flawed too.”

Morgana-bus rumbled on the tracks. “Bad enough just to be a jerk of a boss, but to steal from and burn out workers at an architectural company? Building collapses can kill lots of people at once. I say we make him see the light before death tolls on headlines do it.” The others echoed assent, and the Phantom Thieves explained another ten names before descending into Mementos to right wrongs crushing real people.

Thursday, 25 August 2016
Late Afternoon
Mementos Lobby

Futaba pulled in and let out deep breaths, her heart still pounding in her chest as she trudged into the lobby after the others. The lighting was better here, but that just made all the cuts and bruises the others sustained easier to see. It set the hacker even more on edge, given how careful Morgana and Makoto were about making sure the party was healed up and ready for questing.

The Phantom Thieves collapsed against the tiled walls and floor, Makoto helping the team leader tend to his wounds as Akira fussed over Hifumi. It would have been adorable if Futaba had the breath to tease him over it.

Ryuji plopped down next to the sexy blonde. “So which was your favorite, the level where all the lights were out or that one where that big Shadow turned into a whole swarm?”

Through her heavy breathing, Futaba managed, “You guys are nuts ! Is it like this every time?”

Akira paused, his eyes rolling up. “Mm. Both of those were new.”

Makoto packed her aid kit, handing it to Akira as he shifted from Hifumi to Yusuke, and stood from the team leader. “We don’t always go so deep, but we had no idea Sugimura Morihiko would be deeper than we can reach.”

This confirms the immense scale of Mementos,” Yusuke said before a yelp as Akira worked on his hand.

Futaba nodded. “Yeah, it’s huge .”

From the opposite side of the lobby, Ryuji blurted at the hacker, “Aw, c’mon! You get to, like, ride in your Persona!”

Makoto piped up, “It is tiring just to manifest your Persona. I felt it when I tried to follow her in Togo’s Palace, and I still rode in Byakko a few times. Futaba has been keeping hers out almost the entire time. The rest of us leave them at rest within our selves until we need them for battle.”

Ann took another gulp from one of the sport drinks they left in the lobby for recovery. “At least we got that pervert, Motokiyo.”

Futaba and Makoto also shivered at the memory of the Shadow of a subway groper who transformed into what the hacker would’ve sworn was a slimy, stunted cock who kept summoning other slimy blobs.

Morgana stretched his arm and watched the way his medicated bandages tensed. “So, Hawk…”

Hifumi averted her eyes. “ I’m sorry. Even after going all the way to the lowest floor open to us, I couldn’t detect any trace of Sugimura’s Shadow .”

Well, that probably means he split off into his own Palace,” Morgana replied. “But that wasn’t what I wanted to say. You’re our newest member and I wanted to ask how you feel. It can take a while to adapt to one’s Persona. We’ve all been through a trial by fire of sorts, but there’s an enormous amount of untapped potential for each of us. Even me. I’ve been using Zorro for almost two years, but I haven’t come close to the limit of his strength and abilities.”

Hifumi gave a shy smile that was hard to see under her voluminous hood, then popped open a canned tea the transfer student left for her on the way in. “Dihya’s ability to scan is like a whole new sense. I imagine it’s like what a deaf person would feel like if she could hear Festive Overture for the first time. I’m still working on narrowing down a Shadow’s weakness. It only takes an instant to detect their greatest strength.”

Morgana nodded. “That seems the best strategy. Just don’t risk yourself too much. Your Persona may have shields, but your bruises are proof enough that doesn’t mean immunity.”

She nodded, then took another sip of tea.

Morgana paced a bit closer to the shogi maestra. “Your Persona is the only one with significant scanning capabilities. Is there anything else you can tell us about Mementos?”

Hifumi swallowed another gulp of tea. “There’s something… labyrinthine about Mementos. As if everything in it swam in a soup of vices, and it’s not until we arrived that they crystallized into a fixed maze.”

Ann tilted her head a bit. “Even though we keep seeing so many Shadows over and over? I always thought they were organized.”

Hifumi’s lips pursed. “There could be a natural self-sorting. Sort of like stirring oil and water, leave them alone for long enough and they’ll separate again.” She tapped her chin for a beat. “That makes me think of something else. I was focused on either scanning Shadows while they were right in front of us, or looking for change of heart targets. But if Mementos is the palace of everyone, does it have a Treasure like Mother’s?”

Morgana’s mouth drifted open and his eyes widened. “I… it could . I know there’s something in the depths of Mementos that I need to find, but it’s so big and has so many smells… Did you detect it?”

The shogi maestra bit her lip. “No, sorry. I’ve been focusing on learning to lock on to specific Shadows and trying to scan for a Shadow’s weakness before any of you get hurt.”

Futaba waved her down. “Eh, it’s fine. I didn’t even know my Persona could heal peeps before Morgana did it right in front of me.” She flashed a big grin. “I can’t wait until I level up and get a new Persona power, though!”

Akira finished wrapping the artist’s hand, then stood. “Okay, anybody else got any other injuries before we leave?”

Morgana paced to the middle of the room. “I’ll take care of the last bit. Everybody, gather close. I only have enough energy to summon Zorro once.”

Futaba didn’t feel any major pain, but everything ached and she still felt a tingle from what she hoped was acid spat on her by Motokiyo. She levered herself up with her staff weapon and joined the others in the middle of the room. The burly black Persona manifested, then cool motes of light washed over the team before dismissing. Futaba took in a deep breath and felt relief at the lack of stabbing pains.

Nice job, everyone.” Ann stretched out one arm, then came to a stop in front of the longcoated boy. “I call first!” She turned around and crossed her arms, hands almost high enough to grasp her own shoulders.

Futaba’s cheeks warmed and she was about to shout something about cheating on Hifumi when Akira wrapped his arms around her and lifted her up, arcing his back, which bent hers as well. A series of cracks sounded and the hacker feared he’d dump a paralyzed girl down on the floor, but when he straightened and released, Ann pranced off with a contented sigh. Yusuke took position in front of the longcoated boy, and the same procedure repeated with him, then with the girl in black riding leathers.

Baffled by people walking away from what looked and sounded like a painful experience, Futaba stepped forward. “What is this witchcraft?”

He glared. “It’s chiropractics .”

Makoto turned to them, looking much less tense than the walk up the inactive escalators. “It’s part of his study of physical therapy.”

Hifumi stepped closer, looking as weighed down by her armored cloak as the hacker thought she’d be if it was hers. “You’re studying physical therapy to help the Phantom Thieves? That’s very prudent of you.”

He blushed under his mask and rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s not so special. More a fluke of fortune, I started studying to become a chiropractor when I met Father Motoori. He said I should get my certification after high school and open up a clinic somewhere.”

A heaviness settled on Futaba as she recalled the circumstances of how he met Father Motoori.

Hifumi beamed, which just intensified his blush. “That’s wonderful, Joker! I’ll be sure to ask my personal trainer if she can…” Her smile vanished.

Akira took a step closer, one hand raised but didn’t quite reach out to take her arm. “What’s wrong?”

She shook her head. “It’s nothing.”

He stepped closer, his feet wider. “It doesn’t look like nothing.”

Futaba would have laughed at Akira complaining at somebody else not talking about personal problems, but she was starting to understand why Mom loved those Korean soap operas. She stood close, listening rapt for whatever was about to come next.

Hifumi’s head tilted down, but after a couple beats she let out a breath. “We had to let go of my trainer. And a couple other family employees. I’m not even sure we’ll be able to keep Ueda-san or Yamaguchi-san. Mother’s letter to Papa was pretty certain several of her victims would sue and the proceedings would be especially hard on the family now that she’s turning grey accounts over to the tax bureau and we don’t have either her legitimate or illegitimate income.”

A pall began to settle over the Phantom thieves that Futaba did not want when they’d just kicked major Shadow ass. She jogged at him with an, “I’m next!” and handed the shogi maestra her staff weapon.

Akira shared a glance with the strategist before Hifumi gave a subtle tip of her head, then he adjusted the hacker’s arms so they were crossed high across her chest like on Ann. He wrapped his arms around her like the bear hugs her more prank-minded schoolmates might have delivered, lifted her up, and arched his back.

About a zillion things happened in her body, besides his touch making her feel like she was on fire on the outside and her bones creaking within. Futaba only made it one pop in before she tensed and kicked with both legs with a shocked cry, breaking out of his grip. She scuttled a few steps away, breathing heavy from that sudden blaze of heat she still felt on her face. “Whoa, whoa, whoa! You’re gonna snap my fragile li’l body in half!”

Makoto swallowed a gulp of sport drink and capped her bottle. “Your body isn’t that vulnerable, Oracle-chan. Especially after accepting your inner self, it takes a particularly powerful Shadow to actually break bones. Joker’s physical therapy techniques are primarily to help your musculature.”

You just need to relax,” Hifumi said. Whether it was noticing the growing hunch in Akira’s frame or whether she wanted to go next, she handed both the staff weapon and her rifle to the hacker. “I trust you,” she told him before she turned away and crossed her arms.

His breathing started to grow shallower and more rapid as his wide eyes took her in despite that heavy cloak.

Morgana was just close enough for the hacker to hear him mutter, “At this rate, Joker’s gonna need a session himself.”

Um!” Futaba started before all eyes fell on her. The sudden attention stole her breath for a moment before Marcus rumbled within her, reminding her that silence brought down empires. She straightened and took both weapons in one hand. “Your cloak has armor sewn in it.”

Oh, good point,” Hifumi said before reaching to her shoulders and tugging. Her cloak’s clasp came off with a faint snap and she handed it to the hacker, then returned to position in front of Akira. Futaba noted the tall girl’s hair in her Phantom Thief form was done up in a wide bun. No wonder that cloak never got caught.

With the attention now on Akira, he swallowed and wrapped his arms around Hifumi with quite a lot more care than the others. The lift, arch, and pop, then straighten and release were the same, and the shogi maestra seemed lighter on her feet. “How’s it?”

She twisted right, then left. “Oh, my. That’s much better.” She turned to him with a small smile on her face. “You’re well on your way to being a great doctor, Joker.”

His face went red as a tomato and he mumbled.

When the shogi maestra reached for her things, Futaba handed them back along with her staff weapon. “ Fine , let’s do this again. I promise I won’t freak out this time.”

She wasn’t sure she could keep that promise, but Marcus reminded her nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Futaba felt herself tense when his big arms wrapped around her, but she managed to keep herself from squirming or shrieking as her body creaked and snapped and popped as her feet left the floor. She almost lost her footing when he released and it was only Yusuke’s quick reflexes that caught her arm, but she recovered with just a bit of embarrassment.

It took far less energy to come back up. It felt like she’d been freed from one of those spring-suits insane martial artists used to train in anime. Futaba turned left and right at the hip, feeling almost none of the resistance that coiled around her during their last fight. “Wow, that is a big difference!”

Yusuke wore a sedate smile as he turned to the runner. “You see? You should partake as well.”

Nah,” Ryuji said, wiping his face with a damp cloth. “If I wanted to get felt up by a guy, I woulda taken up Captain Ikeda when he made a pass at me.”

Unable to punch him with the gauntlets on her hands, Makoto slapped him on the shoulder. “Fox was one of the first of us to step up to the plate.”

Ryuji flashed a smirk. “Maybe he’s batting for both teams?”

This time Ann swatted him.

Notes:

Futaba, being an internet-connected nerd, is the perfect excuse to sneak in a Humans and Households gag.

Dmitri Shostakovich’s Festive Overture was written during his period of denunciation by the soviet communist party for including too many traditional musical elements.

I had this chapter written a few weeks ago, but when you’re between jobs and trying to find a new place I didn’t even always have internet. Thanks to everyone for your patience, and the next chapters should be coming in more regularly.

Chapter 114: August 26th, City Ventures

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Friday, 26 August 2016
Early Morning
Yongen, Sakura House, Futaba’s Room

Futaba scrolled down the Phansite on one window, a list of results by one of her troll hunter bots in a different window alongside. She yawned, then rested her chin on her hand, braced against the desk. Time was an inconsistent enemy before, but today it crawled . Nothing interesting popped up on the Phansite, not possible requests or fires to put out. Granted, those tended to be in the afternoon.

She pulled up the group chat. [Sooo bored! Can we go kick butt and look for more shinies in Mementos? It can be like hunting rats in the sewer in every damn MMO out there.]

Makoto sent, [Morgana: One day of rest after a Metaverse dive.]

[You suck, Bastet.]

Her phone dinged and she brought up an incoming message from Mishima. [Sorry for the trouble, but could I ask you to look over the Phansite today? Ohya-san needs some help and I need to interview a couple transit workers in Edogawa-ku, then pull up some permits at city hall.]

She sent him a reply, [The Phansite will be fine, my bots are on it and they're WAY better than anybody else's.]

[There's more to managing the Phansite than just kicking trolls. A lot of people are depending on us. People who have no one else to go to, sometimes because the police say their problems are too small and others because the problems are too big.]

Ugh. Why did the Phansite creator have to be so good at guilt-tripping her? [Fine. But I can still do that and something else today.]

[Sure. Thank you,] he left.

Back in the Phantom Thief group chat, Yusuke tried to cajole the group into spending the day at the National Museum of Modern Art, but Ryuji shut that down with a hard, [Dude, that would be more boring than hanging out at home.]

[Then I shall spend the day painting as a result of what I learned on Tuesday,] Yusuke replied and logged off.

[There's no reason to be a jerk about it,] Ann texted. [Just because you skipped out on visiting the art exhibit doesn't mean the rest of us can't appreciate art.]

Makoto sent, [Morgana: Art is part of culture, and culture builds character.]

[Even the stuff between his toes?] Akira texted.

Ryuji wasted no time replying, [Dude! I'm a runner, I know better than you the feet are the most important part of the body.]

Before the hacker could adjust her perch, Makoto sent, [All of you settle down.]

A beat later, she sent, [Morgana: Futaba-chan, you were still nervous going out to Togo's Palace. Some new experiences could be good for you, but are you sure you're up for being out and about?]

Futaba tensed in her perch. Leave it to Miss Big Shot to highlight her anxiety.

Ryuji of all people was the one to change the conversation direction. [Hey, that's a good idea! You've got to go out into the city to go anywhere. Why not get a little of that and see new places by visiting the rest of us? We can all do cool shirt together.]

Hifumi joined the conversation to add, [Oh, like the senior staff playing poker night on Star Trek?]

Futaba did a little dance in her chair. Hifumi was enough of a nerd to have seen The Next Generation and remember some of the recurring elements! Maybe that meant the hacker could start deploying memes. It would be hard to misunderstand the Picard Facepalm. [That sounds like fun, actually.]

[Except not actually poker,] Hifumi added, a beat later explaining, [Everybody stopped playing card games with me at Ogawa and accused me of cheating. Some of that has been happening at Kosei after some of Mother's letters went out.]

[I find that hard to believe,] Akira texted. [You'd never cheat. The thrill of the chase is too sweet, the outcome is almost an afterthought.]

[I'm glad you understand. Counting cards is a very simple method available to everybody, and the mathematics of a 52 card deck are rather predictable.]

Futaba stared at her phone. The shogi maestra thought card counting was ‘very simple’?

Ann jumped back into the conversation, [What about movie night? I haven't really been involved with clubs since coming to Japan, but in New York one club or another would have the audio-visual room reserved almost every week just for the camaraderie-building experience.]

[Sounds cool to me,] Ryuji sent.

Futaba clapped in glee. Godzilla had been out for a couple weeks, but was still in theaters. Or they could rent something. [Ready flag up!]

[Well, if Futaba is for it, far be it from me to put a damper on things,] Hifumi sent. [My house has been disquietingly empty since Mother left, but I have to get things ready to bring Papa back from the clinic, so I'm afraid I won't be able to join you today.]

The hacker frowned. So much for setting up and spying on a proper date for the two hopefuls.

Then the boy himself had to ruin things. [I think I have enough to get us all tickets at Toyo Cinema. How are you feeling about cruising Shibuya's Central Street?]

Futaba’s mouth went dry and her legs felt weak. The only reason she was able to make it through the underground walkway while going to change Togo’s heart was Akira clinging to her and bulling through the crowd like her own personal snow-plow. She wanted to break out, but it was suicidal for a lowbie to run into a high-level area and Marcus reminded her that aggravating a still-healing wound could make it worse.

She growled and thudded a fist against her skull twice. Why did her own heart and body have to conspire against her? How was she going to make Mom proud like this?

Hifumi sent, [You don't like crowds, Akira. Futaba is even more uncomfortable in them. I know it's difficult in the biggest city in the world, but would there be a less crowded venue to take her to?]

Futaba let out a relieved breath. Akira chose well.

[Good point,] Ann conceded. [Hey, Akira. We took shelter under that theater near your place, but it didn't look like it was open then. Is renovation or whatever done?]

[I don't think it's in business. I've never even seen the lights on since my first day in,] Akira sent.

Futaba may have been sheltered at Sojiro’s, but she heard him talk about the place. [Sojiro says the owners are an elderly couple. They closed the place down a couple months ago when one of them got hurt.]

[Must be killing their finances,] Akira sent. [Even in Yongen, property ownership is not cheap.]

Ryuji jumped in, [You've got a pretty rock home theater-type setup, Hifumi.] A second later he corrected, [Rocker.] Then a moment later corrected to, [Rocking. Stupid auto-correct.]

Three dots danced next to Hifumi’s ID for a few seconds before she texted, [My house isn't so special, but Mother asked that I keep up my grades before she turned herself over to the police so I would feel I betrayed her last wish after her heart reformed if I just dropped cram school. And I have a lot of work to get things cleaned and ready for Papa when he's brought back. His immune system is already weak.]

[Oh, right,] Ryuji replied.

[I was wanting to get a long session in at the dojo today, could we make it after noon?] Makoto sent, receiving a chorus of ‘meh’s.

Akira sent, [My place is always open.]

[You have any movies rented?] Ryuji texted.

[Not today. I'd have to go to Scarlet. Any requests?]

Makoto sent, [Morgana: if Futaba-chan is feeling brave enough to explore new things, there should be enough structure for her to try a movie in theaters.] A beat passed before she added, [I'm afraid I tend to visit Cult 9 Cinema because they have more martial arts films. I don't think the environment would be appropriate for Futaba-chan.]

Futaba shrugged. The loft would’ve been her first choice, but part of that was it not really being a new place. Either way, she’d be surrounded by her fellow Phantom Thieves so she should have enough party bonuses to take on a new movie in a new place. As long as it wasn’t in Shibuya, Tokyo transit artery. [What about your place?] Futaba texted.

A beat passed, then three dots danced next to Makoto’s ID. [Sorry. Big Sis says I can't bring anybody over today. She's bringing work. She prefers to do her typing in the dining room and requires strict silence.]

[I don't have enough room for people to stay overnight,] Ryuji sent. [But there's enough space for 4 or 5 in the main room.] He sent directions to a high-rise in Setagaya-ku, almost on the border of Suginami-ku.

Ann texted, [Too far for me. My agency's been asking to book me a lot more since that shoot with Hifumi, and they want me at Arakawa-ku in the afternoon. I could use the spending money.]

Mishima-san sent, [If you're heading that way, maybe you might like a detour to the commerce district of Nakano-ku.] He posted a link to a merchandise shop with a photo of a storefront filled with intricate models from Gundam to Sailor Moon.

As the other Phantom Thieves bickered about what to do out in the city, Futaba opened up a search on the computer’s web browser, and felt herself salivate. This place sounded like the holy land of nerd-dom! [Nakano sounds awesome! When do we go?]

Hifumi sent, [Sorry I can't invite anyone today, but I hope you all have a fun time.]

Akira texted, [Give me ten minutes to finish this smoke bomb, it's a little more tricky making thieves' tools when Morgana's not here. Then I'll pick you up. You guys want to rally at Shibuya, or the station in Nakano?]

Ryuji replied, [Nakano's closer.]

Noon
Nakano-ku, Commercial District

As Futaba’s eyes took in treasure trove after treasure trove of memorabilia, the crowds faded away. She thought the one store Mishima pointed them to would be the one beacon of nerd figurine goodness, but the neighborhood was full of them! Shinjou had quite a few rail lines, as well as being on the end of the shinkansen , with all the accompanying trade advantages that provided, but she’d have to take to the internet and probably the darkweb to find such a selection of rare goods. For all Mom’s eagerness to buy her computer stuff, she was super stingy about figurines.

Spotting the distinctive green of Sailor Neptune’s wavy hair, Futaba shot through the crowd but had enough presence of mind not to press herself against the storefront’s glass. “Wow! A 1994 Sailor Moon Musical commemorative figurine!”

It took a moment, but Akira shouldered through people in his typical crowd-march. “Futaba! Don’t go running off like that.”

Her enthusiasm swept the hacker away and she popped up on her tip-toes for a moment. “But look! Look at this! It’s older than I am, but in mint condition. The little dimple in her smile, the wrinkles on the clothes.”

He leaned in and scanned in a very Sojiro-like way. “We could go out for sushi several times for that price tag.”

A dark-haired boy standing at the same window chuckled. “You should take a look at the Lawgiver Mark Two at the cosplay shop two doors down. That would pay for almost a month’s rent.”

Futaba thought she jumped her own height, and clamped onto Akira’s arm. How were there so many people with ranks in ninja? “Oh, y-yeah. I almost thought it was a movie prop.”

Akira chuckled and looked over at the other kid. “Hey, Kaoru-kun. What’re you up here for?”

The shorter boy wiped his forehead. “Just taking in the sights. I was kinda lookin’ for the RX-78NT at the gunpla place, but it would take years of allowance to afford one.”

I think I understand how Ryuji feels when I talk about Stargate now.” Akira chuckled. “You two should look into part-time work. It’s as close as you can get to money that doesn’t keep strings on how it’s spent after it’s in your pocket. Not everyone gets an allowance.” He shrugged. “I dunno why anybody would spend that much on some doll.”

They’re not dolls!” Futaba and the sensible boy with shorter hair snapped. They shared just one beat of eye contact, then she let him go first.

They’re pieces of history, a moment of culture frozen in a snapshot of time,” Kaoru said as he came alongside her.

She nodded. “Exactly!” Then rounded on Akira. “You don’t get it because you’re not a collector, but it’s not even just about the scale-accurate representation, it’s a work of art. You can feel the sculptor’s soul in the detail of his work!” She tapped her boot toe on the ground. “Besides, what part-time job could I do? Def not customer service.”

Kaoru shielded his eyes and gazed out into the crowds, but he didn’t stand much taller than the hacker so he couldn’t have been able to see far. “You guys see Dad around?”

Not yet,” Akira said, a slight narrowing of his eyes behind the magnification of his glasses. “What are both of you guys doing up here? I was starting to think Iwai-san lived down at the airsoft place.”

He takes off some days!” Kaoru scratched the back of his neck. “We were looking for gift ideas. My birthday was last month, but finances were so bad at the shop, Dad couldn’t afford any more than a replacement Playstation controller. I understand, but to be honest I’d rather have a good day with Dad. I just wish he wasn’t always busy with work.”

Akira nodded, but then his and the hacker’s phones buzzed. He got his out first, then reported, “Ann just arrived at the train station. Wanna meet her there?”

Futaba nodded and clutched his hand. “Charge on, my loyal minion!”

Ugh, please leave the fantasy role-play to Hifumi,” Akira complained, but with a roll of his eyes as if he expected it. He sent something to the group chat before returning his phone to his pocket. “Ryuji will meet us at the theater.”

The hacker spared a wave to Kaoru, but she kept close when Akira paced into the crowds. She couldn’t help her attention from being drawn to little animatronic kaiju or costumes of Overlord Zetta – the demon form, not the book form. Then she spotted a guy who radiated ‘bad news’. Grey baseball cap, a faded-green trenchcoat reminding her of Akira’s Phantom Thief form, and a gecko tattoo on his neck. Futaba tugged back against her Key Item. “Oh, crap! Yakuza, ten o’clock.”

What do we do until then?” the smug bastard said with a smirk. Akira looked, then paced around some slow pedestrians straight in the direction of her warning.

Futaba saw what he was doing and cursed. Leave it to her fearless rescuer to walk straight at the most dangerous person around. “Don’t walk up on him!”

Without bothering to lower his voice, Akira riposted, “He’s not so scary. Yo, Iwai-san.”

The man straightened from scanning a book display. “Well, well. I expected you in a run-down alley, not a market street like this.”

We’re dead. We’re so dead.” The hacker shot behind Akira, not caring how much like a timid toddler she might have looked. Wait, even Mister Scary knew her Key Item? She tugged on his sleeve. “Do you know people everywhere?”

Iwai looked down the transfer student’s arm to the girl clutching him. “Who’s the little lady?”

Akira twisted to look down at her, and she caught the flash of a smirk before he straightened to face the scary guy. “Dunno, I’ve never seen her before in my life.”

Futaba punched her Key Item in the side. She almost felt bad about the way he stumbled back with a pained gasp and clutched the impact. Maybe she should have pulled her punch, but he shouldn’t have said that!

Iwai chuckled. “Sister, huh?”

Basically.”

A moment of eye exchange passed and she felt like she missed out on a whole conversation before they blinked. Iwai adjusted the brim of his cap. “Not like I’m in a place to judge. I may have been a technical only child, but had plenty of brothers from another mother when I was growing up.”

How do you know so many people?” Futaba snapped. If she could divine the secret, maybe she could start recruiting her own following.

It took Akira a few more seconds to get his breath back, but a hand lingered on his side and he still didn’t quite stand straight. “He’s our arms dealer.”

Iwai locked eyes with the hacker. “He’s in one of his ‘everything’s a joke’ moods today, isn’t he?”

Futaba nodded.

Akira’s breath still came a bit halting when he turned to her as much as he could with her having gone back to clinging to one arm. “I mean that for real. Well, it’s kind of a joke.” He snapped his fingers. “Right, you’re still all about Goa’uld weaponry. You remember my P90?”

Uh-huh.”

Akira pointed to Big and Scary. “He’s the one we got all our gun models from, even Ryuji. Even added the modifications like my P90’s dot sight projector and silencer.”

Suppressor,” Iwai said. “I know it’s all models, but there’s no such thing as a ‘silent’ weapon in real life, and a lot of my clientele are very particular about historical or realistic details.”

Recalling all the times the runner nerded out about details to guns, Futaba nodded. “I guess Ryuji’s gotta get his fix somewhere.” She managed to make eye contact with Big and Scary for almost a second before shrinking back behind the transfer student. “…Sir.”

Iwai chuckled. “Chill out, kiddo. I don’t bite. I’m just here for business.”

I thought it was gift-hunting with your son,” Akira said, pointing in the general area he last saw Kaoru.

The cheer drained out of Big and Scary. “I’m… trying. I had some business to do here, too. A couple higher-end cosplay shops distribute my wares.”

Blonde pigtails resolved out of the crowd before Ann stepped out of the churning mass of pedestrians cruising the merchant lane of Nakano. “Hey, guys.” Her bright blue eyes flicked to Big and Scary next to her. “Oh, good day Iwai-san.”

Futaba didn’t want to just dismiss the model, but Big and Scary’s mention of cosplay made her wonder exactly what accessories he sold here. “Wares like the Lawgiver Mark Two?”

Ann’s eyes widened. “They even have Judge Dredd cosplay here?”

Judge what?” Akira arched an eyebrow.

Ann crossed her arms over her open-shouldered shirt. “American movie fetishizing authoritarianism. I’ll bet those United Future Party jackboots love it.”

Iwai tisked. “All kinds like the costumes or toys, it’s just those types who think it can or should be real. Everybody else knows it’s make-believe and should stay that way.”

Futaba peeked out a little more from behind her Key Item. “That one was yours? That’s amazing! It’s sleek like a practical firearm, but has all the polish and lights of a movie gun!”

Corners of his lips turning up, Iwai adjusted his cap brim. “Just a small-time professional. I only do movie or game models when both the pay and idea suits me because there’s so much out there that can’t be turned into a good physical model, but every piece is more than just business. It’s a professional’s mark on the world.”

He sounded a bit like herself when she tried explaining her custom-made code to the other Phantom Thieves. “I tote get it! Just like recoding your wifi sniffer so it works properly instead of throwing your hands in the air and saying ‘good enough’ with copied net code.”

He gave a nod to her and Akira, then to the busty model who just joined them, and departed in the direction Akira last pointed for his son.

It took long seconds before Futaba was ready to move again, but as soon as her brain processed the past half hour, she was ready to hop on the transfer student as if he was a literal steed. “I feel like I just leveled up a hundred times! I just talked to two strangers! And that guy wasn’t even so bad.”

Nice job, Futaba-chan!” Ann flashed a brilliant grin and offered a hand for a high-five.

Futaba wondered if her eyes sparkled as she clapped back with both of hers. For a beat, it felt more like Tokyo was a kiddie mat strewn with toys and she towered above it. Then her stomach growled and brought her back to the heat and pavement. “Uh, could we eat before the movie?”

Late Afternoon
Setagaya, Ryuji’s Home

Futaba tapped a boot against the concrete landing, weathered by many years. Keys jingled as the runner worked at the lock for a couple seconds, then popped the door open. Makoto, having joined them at the theater and stayed when Ann went to work, was first to follow the runner in. At Akira’s nudging, the hacker stepped in, with Akira closing the door behind.

A scant entryway with a closet to one side opened almost right away into what Futaba would have thought was a bomb zone. Movies, video games, manga, and numerous photos of a pudgy, dark-haired woman and a black-haired Ryuji occupied bookshelves on the left and right walls. Books rose up in stacks almost to her waist, creating towers to the clutter of binders, pamphlets, coupons, magazines, and newspapers. Three sitting cushions scattered in front of a respectable widescreen against one wall. Unlike a proper house with a division between living room, dining room, and kitchen, this one blended all three. Or more aptly repurposed one room smaller than Akira’s loft for all three. A large rice cooker box served as a dining room table, based on the paper plates with dried egg and rice on them . Beyond, filing cabinets and a mini-fridge doubled as counter space holding up hot plates, plug-in kettles, and an air fryer.

Yeah,” Ryuji drawled, “Sorry ‘bout the mess.”

No kidding!” Futaba blurted.

Makoto elbow-jabbed her, earning a glare. It was true, after all! Saying your house was messy was supposed to be a humble thing! At least she had the excuse of having crippling depression for a year. The class president rolled her eyes and looked over the shelves and pictures of a black-haired kid and woman. “I assume these are your mother?”

Ryuji shuffled on his feet and looked at the balcony doors instead of the photos and trophies. “Yeah. It’s nothin’ special.”

No, no,” Makoto protested. “Mom died when I was very young, but I remember her teaching me the basics of how to cook and keep up the house.” She reached out for a photo with the pudgy woman holding a stuffed tiger, post-dye Ryuji standing next to her and grinning ear to ear in front of an amusement park shooting gallery. Then she set it back on the shelf, her fingers lingering next to a photo of Ryuji in Shujin’s track uniform. Humble plastic frames showed various parks, school fields, gyms, and school courtyard celebrations. Almost all the photos centered on a black-haired Ryuji. “It looks like you’ve always been very close to your mother. And clearly she took joy in your athletic wins as well. I wondered, especially lately, what Mother would have thought of the things I’ve done. If she’d be proud of practicing martial arts like Dad, or disappointed I didn’t go out into the world and do more things like you did with your mom.”

Ryuji waved down. “Eh, those ain’t so much. For all those trophies I won, it’s not like I can use ‘em to try an’ get into a better college or job to help Mom pay for the place. The counselor was pretty clear I’d be lucky to get into a trade place with assaulting a teacher in my high school record. No club wants me, an’ without extra-curricular credits I ain’t goin’ nowhere with my grades.”

A beat of melancholy nodding passed. Akira rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah. Hifumi said things were a lot of the same with trying to get anywhere in the Pro Shogi Players’ Association. Thanks to her mother’s machinations, they all despise her as a fraud and are jealous of the fame from photo shoots she never even wanted to do.”

Makoto crossed her arms in thought. Then dropped her arms. “Then we’ll just have to change that. I’ll have to look back at the paperwork to see what I can do about clubs, but we can start immediately to look at your study practices.”

Ryuji looked more betrayed than excited. “Wha?”

Futaba could understand hating boring homework. “Um… maybe we can do that later? Akira said you have a gun collection?”

The runner’s eyes almost bulged out of his head and his smile spread from ear to ear. “Oh, totally! I’ve been collectin’ since after Ma packed and left the ol’ man. I got a copy of General Erwin Rommel’s P08 Luger. Or at least at the time I thought that’s what his sidearm was.” He dashed ahead to one of the side doors and the rest of the thieves followed him to what could have passed for a coffin hotel’s bedspace but with a futon piled in the corner instead of a raised bed. Ryuji tugged off a cloth covering a pegboard on the wall just past the door. A variety of short and long guns filled out at least twenty of a well-arranged collection. “Of course, after I did some reading and found out that the Luger Model 8 was replaced by the Walther P38 in 1939, so I got that with the money Ma gave me for gettin’ into Shujin…”

Friday, 26 August 2016
Evening
Shibuya, Untouchable

Akira folded up his two-person umbrella and shoved open the door as the team leader hunkered down in his leather satchel for shelter against the torrential rain. The downpour came down at just enough of an angle that despite his umbrella he was soaked from the knees down. Still, the team still had junk remaining from Kaneshiro’s bank and more waited from Madarame’s museum and Togo’s temple. No reason to let it pile up too much.

He stamped his feet on the rubber grid-mat at the front to knock some of the water off, then paused to listen for possible other customers and heard nothing. He headed straight for the window in the grating between the customers and Iwai tapping at a laptop further back from the window.

The proprietor tapped a button, then closed his computer. “So, it’s you again. No little sister?”

Rolling his eyes, Akira leaned his folded umbrella against the counter. “We’re not joined at the hip. She likes taking things at her own pace.”

Iwai tapped in a keystroke and closed his laptop. “Well, at least you come out of the crowd.”

Akira set down his satchel so the team leader could hop out and scope out the shop. “Why, you got fans stalking you?”

Iwai moved his short stool to the window and settled down . “I wouldn’t call ‘em fans. Can’t be one hundred percent who they’re with, but at least one person’s been tailing me since the weekend started.” He rubbed his chin. “The timing couldn’t be worse. I was hoping to wrap things up with Tsuda.”

The transfer student pulled a cloth bag out of his satchel and set it in the grating window. “Is Kaoru okay?”

Iwai’s lips pressed into a thin line. “I’ve never seen anyone tailin’ him, it’s me they’re interested in. Can’t say I’m too surprised. I sell realistic-looking gun models. Remember those cops bustin’ in here with a warrant, claiming I had some serious charges? That happens a couple times a year. Or it’s a person of interest for someone who does have serious charges. Pain in the ass every time.” He shrugged. “Leads to a week at court and I couldn’t afford that while payin’ Kaneshiro’s protection racket.”

Nodding, Akira pulled a cloth bag out of his satchel with great care. “So that’s why despite your models all being technically legal because they’re not real guns, you wanted that one out of here.”

He’s still suspicious,” Morgana said from the forest-camo waterproof jackets.

Akira untied the cloth bag and pushed it through the window in the welded grating. “Good thing Kaneshiro’s racket is gone.”

Iwai pulled out gold pens, lacquerware padded by crumpled newspaper, and an ivory comb. “You come up with the weirdest stuff. Don’t you know a museum director to take stuff like this to?”

Fresh out of deputy curators,” Akira said with a cheeky grin. When that just got a flat stare, the boy’s grin faded. “I figured things wouldn’t be all sunshine and rainbows just because Kaneshiro’s collectors are gone, but you’re still struggling?”

Iwai paused photographing the laquerware. “I took up model customization and surplus crap because I was good at it, but it’s never been the most profitable business. Remember what I said about trolls online spreadin’ rumors about my work bein’ knockoffs?”

Now a frown spread over Akira’s face. “Yeah.”

Iwai re-stacked laquerware bowls and cushioning newspaper, then began on a stack of plates. “He’s still hard at work. I wanted to avoid using a computer because I was always afraid of gettin’ in big trouble if it got hacked. Money was getting pretty tight a few years ago, and Kaoru convinced me to open up online custom orders. Saved my ass a couple times since then, but I’m down almost exclusively to foot traffic.”

And pretty much the only foot traffic you’re getting is us,” Joker summarized.

Iwai set aside a plate. “I have more customers than just you… but yeah, I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to keep paying rent for the shop. After Kaoru graduates middle school, we may have to move somewhere rent is cheaper. ‘Course, that’ll mean I’m gonna have to start rebuilding my commercial rep and he’ll have to start all over socially.”

Akira pulled out his phone and opened the group chat as the proprietor photographed the rest of the trinkets. [Hey, Futaba-kun. There's a troll harassing Iwai and decimating his online business. Do you think you'd be able to take care of it?]

While waiting for her response, he haggled over the value of the junk before slipping away the yen notes.

It wasn’t until he reached the door before the hacker responded. [I could look into Gun-san's troll. Which site is he on?]

Akira half-turned back to the proprietor. “Where’s the troll bothering you?”

Twitter, Facebook, Mixi, Instagram,” Iwai said as he shifted back to his laptop. “Seems like every time it comes up in conversation, Kaoru’s found it happening on another social media. I have no idea how he keeps things straight, much less notices stuff about me.”

After sending an update, Futaba responded, [Those are all the biggest in Japan. I'd need a suspicious amount of information. Then I'd need at least a day to trace the trolls' home node. I kind of want to join you guys in Mementos tomorrow, so I don't want to start a project like that when I should be trying to go to sleep. It was super fun going to Nakano with you guys today, but I need to crash.]

[Fair enough,] Akira replied. And given that his solution was a hacker, he couldn’t very well bring it up to the proprietor. The door opened, the downpour greeted him, and he clicked his umbrella open.

Saturday, 27 August 2016
Late Afternoon
Mementos Lobby

Hifumi held open the steel utility room door as the track star hauled himself up, the hacker over his shoulders. Both girls sweat after the heavy day with numerous Shadow ambushes, but the smaller girl dripped and her skin was still flush from over-exertion. Hifumi helped him lower the hacker to the ground as the rest of the Thieves trudged into the lobby.

Once Futaba was down, Ryuji passed her an energy drink and slouched against the wall as if today had not been a strenuous marathon. Hifumi was tempted to follow suit, but Mother beat into her that a lady must always be graceful and dignified. She took a sip of some canned tea Akira bought for her. The honey soothed a throat parched not just from hours of exertion but shouting down Shadows. Hifumi couldn’t help it, she got swept up in the moment in the Metaverse. As unnerving as this place was, the theatrics were so freeing.

Morgana waited as Makoto fastened another of Takemi’s medicated bandages on his arm, then flexed. They’d have to wait a while for those to take effect. In the mean time, he turned to Futaba-chan. “Shadows always react to the weather, it’s a wide-scale impact on human cognition. Most days don’t have this many ambushes. However, as fast as you’ve adapted to your Persona, I’m concerned about how fast you’re tiring out.

The shogi player couldn’t help but notice how unladylike Futaba’s sitting position was with her legs sprawled out. “‘Cause you guys are runnin’ all over the place!”

Rolling his eyes, Ryuji finished smearing medicated ointment on his leg. “Dude, you were flyin’ in your Persona the whole time.”

“Please,” Hifumi piped in to head off an argument among two of the most energetic of a very dynamic group. “Oracle-chan, how much physical exercise have you been getting? You remind me a little of myself when I tried out for Kosei’s hurdle race team.”

Ryuji un-rolled his pant leg down. “Whoa, you’re a runner, too?”

Hifumi cringed. “I… tried to be. I didn’t make the cut.” She returned focus to the slight girl in a circuitry-patterned jumpsuit. “Were you on your middle school’s hurdle relay , or some other team?”

Ick, no. Bekku was vice captain of the girls’ track club and she treated everyone like crap. I didn’t have to join a sport club, so I didn’t.”

Yusuke nodded. “Understandable.”

Ryuji looked like his eyes were attempting to merge with his skull mask. “Whaaat? You guys’re missin’ out. Track especially is where it’s at!”

Having folded up his crossbow a while ago, Morgana scratched his chin. “Well there’s one straightforward avenue of improvement. You need to exercise. Not only will it improve your general physical health, as you come to understand the strength of your own body your cognition will improve.”

They got treadmills in Protein Lovers’ Gym,” Ryuji suggested. “If you can’t have a strong body, how you gonna have a strong mind?”

Futaba rolled her eyes. “Phooey.”

It would be good for you,” Hifumi said. “We could start a routine together. Mother arranged a personal trainer for a while, but that just focused on strength and flexibility so I could hold a pose for the photo shoots she had planned. I could use some practice with cardio as well.”

Futaba-chan finished off her water bottle, then turned to Akira with a wide smirk on her face. “I think someone else would be more interested in helping you with cardio.”

Hifumi felt her face burn and she forgot to breathe for a beat as Akira sputtered, and his mask only seemed to highlight his blush . She wondered if her own face was as red. Futaba cackled with delight and Ryuji joined right in with his own chuckle. Makoto ignored the lot of them and checked the artist, who stood toe-to-toe with Shadow swordswomen in red several times.

Yusuke took on a subtle inquisitive expression. “Why? Has he attempted hurdle racing as well?”

Already sitting next to him, Ann leaned closer to whisper in his ear.

The painter said, “Ah.”

Hifumi swallowed another gulp of tea and brushed at her face as if that could wipe away the heat suffusing her body from the thought of sex.

Ryuji gulped a mouthful of his own sport drink, his eyes on the hacker. “You ‘member the sprints they made everyone do in middle school? Shujin ain’t got a proper track, but I can send you the parks nearby I practiced at.”

After he regained control of his breath, Akira took a drink from his thermos. “You guys remember the evasive tumble I showed you? That may be too advanced for Oracle, but the athlete who taught me might have good ideas for how to get Oracle up to speed.”

The Phantom Thieves finished reviewing the half-dozen requests they’d tackled, some of the names discovered from other Shadows today, then wrapped up general plans. As they stretched and got up to go, Ann was the first to call “Me first!” on the first back-cracking from Akira. A beat passed before the runner waved goodbye and trotted off, then the artist took his turn with the future chiropractor. Makoto and Futaba both went before Hifumi felt the heat fade from her cheeks and mustered the courage to walk up to the boy she wanted to share much more than a night with. Just like the first time, she doffed her cape, turned her back to him and crossed her arms high against her chest.

Akira wrapped his arms around her, a brief moment of blissful warmth before he tightened and lifted, arching his back. Her own popped, and when he set her down she felt lighter on her feet but disappointed when he withdrew his arms.

When Hifumi turned, he was still flexing an arm through a wide circle. “You’ve done a lot for us, but what about you?” She swallowed, fighting to keep from mumbling or blushing. “You were on the vanguard all day, you can’t pretend you’re not as battered or strained as the rest of us. There’s got to be something one of us can do.”

She caught Ann pause on the stairs, glancing over her shoulder at them, before smiling and heading up.

Akira looked even more tense than when he trudged in from the ladder well. “I’m used to fighting.” He wasn’t lying, he was fierce as an oni but fluid as a raging river. There was something about him that clicked when the battle was on. Like his life in the streets of Tokyo was the mask he struggled to hold and battling Shadows was the reality he lived and breathed.

Hifumi reached to take his far shoulder and pull him a bit closer. What kind of life could make a person more comfortable in the middle of a fight than out of one? “You shouldn’t have to be.” An idea came to her and her other hand came to rest at the hollow of his neck and she pressed with her thumbs.

He shot away as if her touch burned.

Hifumi didn’t bother to hide her frown. Again she thought of her conversation with Ann when she first voiced her suspicion that he had a broken bird fixation. Dihya rumbled within, but even before awakening to her Persona she had never been the type of person to resort to tears. Only the most despicable person used tears to compel other people. She thought things steadied between them when they rallied to fight in Mementos, but what if he was only able to set complications aside for a fight? Hifumi lowered her hands and took in a deep breath, even though she couldn’t nail down her plan for the conversation. “Joker, don’t you want there to be an us ?”

I…” He wouldn’t meet her gaze. He won’t even face her. “I just… I don’t want to make Mother’s mistakes.”

She settled her hands on his shoulders to angle him at her, though he still avoided her eyes. This felt too much like one step forward, one hop back. “You can’t reject everything about her.”

He tensed under her hands, though his grey eyes bored into her with the intensity of a lightning storm. “I want to do all those things, but… I’m not ready to… How can I even be a good father if I don’t know what that is?”

Hifumi boggled. “Joker, I’m not asking you to go that far.” Yet. “Do you think I want to be a mother right now ? I haven’t even graduated high school. I’m definitely not ready for that yet. But that doesn’t mean I have to be afraid of every step leading up to it, no matter how distant. I haven’t even been to your place. And you haven’t even stayed overnight at mine.” She let a hand drift down his waistcoat, though the chance to feel his chest soured by the way his eyes dropped from hers.

His blush spread and he looked further away.

Despite herself, her hand still on his shoulder tightened. Her jaw set and she felt herself draw in breath and start with more force than her higher order thinking knew was wise, “I like kissing. I want to do it, a lot. I want to go on dates and feed each other strawberries and do everything with you. But if you don’t even want to touch me…”

His hands clapped against her hips, hard , neither drawing her blissfully close, nor pushing her away. His face was deep red under his mask. “God… Hifumi, you don’t know what I can do when I’m not in control. I’ve hurt people before. There’s a reason I’m not bitter about being convicted of assault, I’ve done it. I don’t know if I can stop before—”

Do you trust me?”

He blinked, but the blazing intensity in his eyes faded as confusion wrinkled his forehead as his eyebrows rose behind his mask. “Hifumi, you’re not the problem. I want to be with you, in every possible meaning of the phrase. But Mother used people like toys. I—

She slid up her hand into his frizzy hair, enjoying what little she could from the soft feeling as his gaze dropped from hers. “I trust you. I believe in you. If you can’t see what you’re worth just by looking at yourself, look at the man I want to be with. Brave and funny and doing everything he does with his whole heart. In a sea of duplicitous, selfish people, you’re there to offer a hand and more to anyone.”

His mouth twisted as he refused to let himself smile, and at last he let go of her hips.

Her patience, strained from hours in Mementos, snapped. She spat out a short breath and he stepped away as if afraid she’d strike him. Her shoulder blades pinched together. “Is it so hard to ask for you to take some initiative? I don’t want to be the girl pushing her boyfriend into everything!”

Akira’s frown grew. “Well I don’t want to push anything too far!”

Too far?” Hifumi felt her chest rise as she pulled in a deep breath. “Is too far—?” She bit her tongue and stepped back before she could launch into a viperous, emotional tirade. It felt like vices squeezed on her head. “I’m sorry, I’m not up for something requiring mental acuity right now. I don’t want to make a move I’ll regret later. Getting Papa situated took a lot out of me.” She turned and stepped out.

Akira’s hand snagged her wrist. “Wait.”

All it would take was one tug and she could be on her way, but she stopped. Despite hydrating after the fighting, her head still pounded and she wanted to sleep until tomorrow. “I’m tired, Akira-san.”

He hesitated a long moment, then let go and stepped closer, his eyes on hers. “I’m sorry. Do… you want to come over tomorrow?”

The confident plop of leather boots descended the stairs, Makoto trotting into view a moment later. “Panther was…”

Dead silence suffused the lobby and the three Phantom Thieves looked at each other, tension thick in the air.

Go ahead,” Akira gestured his red-gloved hand at the president in black leather.

Makoto looked like the last time she realized Hifumi sprang a pincer attack and she took a step back, her heel hitting the step, and her hands rose. “Oh, I can come back if you two are having a disc—”

Narrow eyes flicking to the longcoated boy, Hifumi straightened her cloak on her shoulders. “No, Rider-san. We were done. Please go ahead.”

Makoto swallowed. A beat later she lowered her hands. “A-all right. Panther asked about a shopping trip, but I couldn’t remember when your shogi title match was. Shouldn’t that be coming up?”

Hifumi cringed. “Oh, no. It’s Wednesday and I haven’t been practicing!” She could feel pulses of pain in time with her heartbeat wrapped around her head and she clutched the offending skull. “Urg. And I won’t even have the chance on Tuesday, they’re holding a hearing in court and I need to be there to testify on behalf of Mother.”

Makoto gave a pitying smile. “I can always tell Ann to reschedule. You’ve been more than busy with everything going on with your mother. Akira has more experience than I do, but would you like me to join you for practice tomorrow?”

Oh, I wouldn’t want to take away plans you already—” Hifumi fretted. There was no way she didn’t see the sparks flying when she trotted down the stairs and the last thing the shogi player wanted was to pressure a new friend—

It’s no trouble,” Makoto said.

Akira stepped closer, raising his hand for a beat but drawing back before touching the shogi player. “We’ve practiced after Mass before. You want me to text you the directions?”

Makoto nodded.

Hifumi felt a warm thrum in her heart. It was such a breath of fresh air when Akira came to be with her, as welcome as his generous friends were it sometimes overwhelmed her. She bowed. “Thank you so much for your consideration.” She looked up to the boy himself. “Can we finish things tomorrow?”

Disappointment writ across his face, but his shoulders drooped a bit less as if having an answer, any answer, gave him the strength to carry on. He gave a smile that felt more a show for Makoto than reassurance for her. “After Mass? Oh! I think there’s a retired shogi federation member in the parish, maybe I can ask Father Sugiyama to hold him so you can practice?”

So willing to give, now there was the man she fell for. She nodded and they went their separate ways in peace before using the Nav to return to the real world.

Notes:

By some counts, Tokyo is the biggest city in the world by population at 39 million people in the urban area, with the second place Delhi coming in at 31 million.

In Royal, Futaba is the one who introduces Akira to Nakano. However, she’s explicitly a shut-in afraid of going out. It felt jarring for her to be showing him around to new spots in Tokyo. However, some of the events there fit nicely into Daywatch with the theme of tying additional characters together.

Judge Dredd’s makers described it as a satire of authoritarianism, critics and audiences had mixed reception. I don’t have strong opinions on the film and know nothing about the graphic novels it's based on, but it’s a good place to work in another reminder of Shido’s political party so the stage is set a little better than the game which did very little to indicate the threat of his party.

Chapter 115: August 27th, Buoyed Up

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Saturday, 27 August 2016
Evening
Yongen, Leblanc Loft

Morgana allowed himself to stretch out, his forepaws – hands! – clutching the floorboards and his tail stretching to the sky. He yawned wide, the air thick with humidity from the downpour still falling outside. He’d have to thank Oracle-chan again for bringing him to Leblanc before she went home.

A subtle tremor passed through the floor, though as loud as the rain was he couldn’t be sure if the door downstairs would be clear. Sure enough, a few moments later, Joker trudged up the stairs. His eyes stared a million meters into the distance, mechanical steps drove him to the laundry basket hamper.

Morgana slipped off his bed-cushion. “Oh, no. Don’t tell me you and Hawk had a fight.”

Joker sat down to pull off his socks. “We talked. She’s got so much going on and now it’s all piling up on her on the eve of the biggest game of her career.” He browsed through his new messages, and let out a breath of relief. “Father Sugiyama secured ex-shogi federation member Shinohara, and even Makoto will come help. Neither of us were feeling sharp enough for a real back and forth, so I’ll see her tomorrow. At least I can help her get ready for her title match.”

Morgana stretched forward, then backward. “Good. The Phantom Thieves are just hitting our stride, I don’t want internal spats to mess things up.” He looked over the transfer student as he changed into summer sleeping clothes. In the darkness of the downpour, it was hard to see the scars running down his forearms. He seemed much like a regular boy tired from a long day of whatever normal people did. That thought brought Morgana’s thoughts back to the fragment of a memory which resurfaced during their battle against Togo’s Shadow. “Do you remember… that moment when Togo’s Shadow used curse magic on all of us?”

Joker tugged on his pants. “I guess. It felt like I closed my eyes and everything just slipped away. Why?”

Morgana hopped up to the bed and felt his body sag. “I caught a flash of my past.” He tried to think of how to explain that it didn’t feel like there was anything before that moment, but there were so many holes in his past he couldn’t be certain. “I heard a man and woman. Or maybe girl, it’s hard to tell from voices when I can’t remember all of the context. They were running. Or being chased by something that caught up to them. I think she died.”

Joker yanked on his shirt and sat on the corner of the bed next to the team leader. “That’s rough. Were you there to help them? That seems like something you’d do.”

The team leader blinked. He hadn’t even considered that. “I… don’t know. I don’t know where or when it was, just that it was a place that was peaceful until some entity started breaking in. The man said something about a torch in the darkness.” He shrugged, feeling all the more helpless for having come so close but having no idea what happened next. “I didn’t have a chance to try to work it out at the time because that was right after Togo’s Shadow…” Morgana swallowed, unable to say ‘killed you’.

Joker cleared his throat. “Well, we can work it out now.”

Morgana smiled. Maybe he was rubbing off on the transfer student. He recounted what details he had of the memory. “So that’s why I haven’t been here… or maybe looking out for you like I should’ve. I’ve got a purpose I’m not living up to. I can’t even remember what it is.”

Before he could go on, Joker lay back on the bed. “You know how people see faces in the clouds?”

Morgana wrapped his tail around his feet to try to mask his nervousness. “Yeah, pareidolia.”

Joker hummed. “Humans are built to look for pattern. Meaning. But sometimes there’s just no pattern.”

Shooting to his feet, Morgana’s tail rose straight up and twitched. “You went out against your father’s wishes to be baptized in Catholicism because it offered you constructive purpose in life. You know there’s more to life than random happenstance.”

His stare bored up as if he could peer beyond the clouds pouring down on the roof. “I was an abandoned child turning into a wild animal. Not to discount Big K, a Catholic priest was basically the first human being to believe I could be something better than the child who burned down his school.” He cleared his throat. “Not that I did, but I might have if I never met him.”

Morgana breathed in and through force of will sought calm. “Humans can become better. Humanity can become better. That’s why we feel that righteous indignation and challenge the offenders. I guess we’re similar in more ways than one.” He paced to his cushion, but didn’t hop on yet. “You’re not certain about your purpose in life, and I don’t even remember mine.”

Joker stretched his arms up above his head. He sounded casual as he pushed out through a yawn, “Sounds like a pain in the neck.”

Turnabout was fair play, so Morgana twisted his head as if in deep thought. “Maybe you should look into physical therapy.”

Joker smirked. “What, like Victoria?”

The flier appeared in the leader’s mind. “Oh, yeah! They did have massages, didn’t they? That could be an option to get physical therapy for yourself like you give to the team.”

Joker’s face went red. “I… don’t think they mean real physical therapy-type massages.” Joker got up to retrieve his phone and sent out a good-night text to Hawk, then plugged in his phone and returned to bed. He might have glanced at the disapproval from the team leader, because as he sat back down to bed he granted, “Guess it can’t hurt to check next time.”

Sunday, 28 August 2016
Late Morning
Kanda Catholic Church

Already sitting against the wall, Akira let the other parishioners file out after the benediction and read through Hebrews to try to get a better sense of the context of the day’s reading. The day’s theme of humbleness felt like a cosmic joke when he wanted to help Hifumi practice for her big day and get the recognition she deserved for years of study and hard work in shogi. If nothing else, it proved God had to have a sense of humor. With Mass done, he shot out a text to let Makoto know the service was over and it was time to start practice.

Once his pew cleared out, Akira closed his Bible and scanned the sanctuary, feeling butterflies in his stomach when he spotted Hifumi a couple pews ahead. She already had her travel shogi board set up with a special formation, and a thrill passed through him as he slipped closer and saw her eyes dart over the board, planning move and counter-move before even reaching a hand out.

Her eyes snapped up, those deep green orbs drawing him in with inexorable force. “Good morning, Akira-kun. Thank you for coming.”

He plopped to the pew next to her. “For Queen Togo? Anywhere, any time.” Akira glanced out and didn’t see any sign of the fellow parishioner Father Sugiyama said he’d rope into practice, but the crowd was taking longer to dwindle than most days and he chatted in the narthex just outside the sanctuary. That could come later. “So what do we have here?”

She had a stack of books to her side and a pamphlet in hand. “This is Kubo Toshiake’s game last year against Hirose Akihito. As a Class A league match, it’s above my competition, but I’ve been neglecting my practice so I need to step up. Analyzing the strategies of past masters is a great way of challenging my own play.”

Akira nodded. “Shogi is all about setting up multiple beneficial outcomes and escapes so no one setback can ruin a whole game.”

She flashed him a warm smile. “Exactly!” She handed him the pamphlet detailing the moves taken in the 2015 game. It was all over the place, even more than his games with her.

Noon
Kanda Catholic Church

Father Sugiyama approached the pair of energetic youth chatting away in the pews. It was technically more noise than his agreement with Togo-chan when he let her practice in the sanctuary, but God demanded His followers put Him first, not only. And this was the first time he’d seen Togo-chan look so energized and yet so focused. So soon after her mother disappeared into protective custody, this could only be a good thing. “Good day, Son, Daughter,” he said with a bow. He knew Togo-chan knew all the shogi-practicing members of the parish, but for the sake of the new boy, the Father introduced the man trailing a step behind, “This is Shinohara. He was a member of the Shogi Professional Players’ Association until family health required him to withdraw several years ago.”

Hifumi shot to her feet and bowed. “Shinohara-san! Please excuse me for taking up time in your busy schedule.”

The middle-aged man with wiry hair gave a shallow bow back. “I only made it to first dan before I left, but to see the next generation take off would make this day well worth it.”

Afternoon
Kanda Catholic Church

Makoto swallowed, feeling a coil of trepidation at setting foot in somebody else’s place of worship. While she knew many people who followed both Shinto and Buddhist trappings, even Mother wasn’t a devout practitioner. And Catholicism was a whole different creature. Still, she was invited in, so with a steadying breath, she hauled open doors which swung much easier than they looked, and continued to the sanctuary. Colorful stained glass windows depicting men in halos broke up the long walls and let in streams of light like a prism, giving the sedate space an ethereal quality. Rows of benches lined an aisle, terminating just before a cloth-covered table in front of a cross. A couple people lingered, praying at the benches or kneeling at one of the niche alcoves at the back wall, but Makoto recognized the frizzy black and long, luxurious hair of her fellow Phantom Thieves.

“…but that leaves room on the right flank for the knight…” Akira said, leaning across the back of one of the bench ahead of Hifumi’s, before he noticed her. “Oh, good! Niijima-san, Shinohara-san.”

Makoto shared an acknowledging nod and sat down next to Akira to comment on the unfolding practice match with Hifumi.

Early Evening
Kanda Catholic Church

Akira scanned the board between Hifumi and Shinohara-san, A grumble rolled out and Akira levered up from his slouch across the back of the pew. The class president at the pew behind the board had a hand on her stomach.

Contrary to expectations, Shinohara-san clutched his belly. He checked his wristwatch, then stood. “Apologies, kids. I haven’t met such intense love of shogi before, but my nephew’s recital is at seven and I need to grab a bite to eat if I’m going to make it.”

“Of course,” Makoto stood up from the pew behind the board to give a bow of thanks with the shogi maestra to him as he left. She checked the time on her phone. “Actually, we’ve been at this for hours. We should all take a break. Big Sis is going to be home for dinner, so I should get going to make sure it’s ready for her. Did you two want to join? I mean… unless you’re just going to go make something at home.”

Hifumi blushed and fidgeted with the skirt of her beige dress. “I… wouldn’t have much at home.”

Deflating a bit, Makoto tried to meet the other girl’s eyes. “Oh, because of your mother? I’m sorry.”

Hifumi shook her head, her posture prim but a pretty pink lingering on her cheeks. “Oh, no. I don’t want to diminish what all you did to help save her heart. It’s hard because home is so empty now. To keep Papa’s nurse, we had to let go of a lot of the family employees like Rei-san. I hadn’t realized how dependent I was on her wonderful cooking before discovering I can’t use anything more complicated than the rice maker. I simply haven’t had time, and won’t for at least a few weeks between court visits and preparing for my title match.”

Makoto jumped in before he could finish processing. “That’s a pity. Ryuji’s been gunning for a beach trip and I was looking forward to seeing you there. Both of us could really use some time to cut back and catch some sun.”

Akira blinked, and for a moment his mind transported him to a sandy beach where the girls frolicked in risqué swimsuits. Makoto in a high-cut one-piece flaunting her developed musculature. Ann in a microbikini that flaunted sensual curves. Hifumi bursting out of the water like a dolphin, a slingshot bikini casting all inhibitions aside in the way only her regal manner could, droplets cascading down her lithesome body.

“Aki?” her fingertips pressed against his arm through the formal shirt sleeve.

He jumped to his feet. “S-sorry.” In a scramble to try to bring himself to something that wasn’t sacrilegious in a church sanctuary, he blurted, “W-wait. You’ve only been eating rice since your mother’s change of heart?”

Hifumi averted her gaze. “It’s fine, I hardly have the time to make anything.” She picked up a silver general. “I have been buying apples from a snack vendor on the way to the station.” She began packing away her shogi board and the others stepped in to help.

I understand what it’s like to be too stressed to want to eat, or even cook,” Akira commiserated. “Do you want me to bring you something?”

Her blush returned with extra force. “I couldn’t ask you to do that!”

Makoto scrolled down the group chat. “Leblanc has coffee and curry as regular menu items.”

Hifumi’s eyes widened a bit. “I love curry!” A shy smile eeked out. “I even have katsu kurry for ‘good luck’ before each match.”

You have victory curry before your games?” When she nodded, he felt his stomach flip inside. Even her puns were stealthy!

Makoto summarized from the group chat. “Ann’s asking about swimsuit shopping and Ryuji wants to know when we’re heading to the beach.” She started typing. “I think I have one, but I doubt Futaba-chan does.”

Make sure Ann doesn’t go crazy,” Akira said, handing the shogi maestra the last tile. “Futaba’s been a shut-in for a year and just going out is going to be stressful.”

The smile faded on Hifumi’s face. “Kosei is resuming on Wednesday, so I won’t have a free day before school is back in session. But you all should enjoy yourselves.” The blush on Hifumi deepened, though the twist to her face increased as she struggled between embarrassment and a smile. “You’ve already done so much, helping me get in my first really good practice session in months.” She settled her folding board in her purse and held out a hand. “But it’s been exhausting, so… walk me to the train station?”

Swallowing, Akira reached out a hand to take hers and savored what warmth he could get from her touch through his gloves.

Sunday, 28 August 2016
Late Evening
Shibuya, Station Square

Akira still felt light-headed as he trotted over the square from central street, the crowds still thicker than he liked but more people moving with a purpose than rush hour when it seemed like direction was forgotten. It and the night sky made it easier to navigate the dense city. His hand still tingled and he wondered how much stronger it might have been if his glove wasn’t in the way when she slipped her hand in his.

As the transfer student neared the statue of Hachiko, he heard a familiar voice call over the crowd hubub, “Passing on societal ills reinforces them, and does not guarantee that we ourselves will not face the suffering we are attempting to avoid. Just like a torn coat must be mended or the winter wind will blow through, we must come together and start making the small changes necessary or we will all become sick.”

One of the people slowing with the transfer student to listen spotted the politician, his sign, then scoffed. “What’s he gonna do without a party? Even the LDP ain’t gonna have a majority after the UFP wins the next election.”

Hearing the exchange, Yoshida called out louder, “You must not base your decision exclusively by the party a candidate aligns to. Every party needs to be mindful even to people that aren’t members, for our youth who have yet to enter any party are part of our society. If we ignore the strife of those coming soon, we give up prosperity for all.”

He continued speaking to a crowd with intermittent interest for the next few minutes, some stopping with interest and more to heckle. After long minutes the people stopping to listen ended, so Yoshida stepped down from his soap box and downed a deep glug from his water bottle, then gave a nod to the transfer student, leading them to a quiet spot beside the train car mockup to the student’s relief. “I’m pleased to see you again, young man. It might have been nice earlier, but on a hot day like this I doubt a sign holder would have made much difference.”

Akira rubbed the back of his neck, half of his mind engaging Yoshida and the other half trying to think of what kind of food to bring Hifumi. “Sorry, one of my friends has a tournament coming up and I had to wrangle some help so she could practice.”

Yoshida smiled and took another gulp of water. “It’s good to see the youth networking and helping each other. Never forget how useful that will be later on in life.”

Akira fell silent for a moment, expecting more anger from the politician. He sent a message some time late afternoon and Akira shot back a ‘busy’ since he was focused on Hifumi’s game. “You’re not mad I couldn’t come help earlier?”

Yoshida huffed, but his smile didn’t disappear. “Quite the contrary, young one. You’ve heard the number of people who think I have less than small chances to win my election. I’m more curious why you’d come to me when you’ve got friends to share these days with. Maybe even a special lady friend?”

It felt like flame blossomed over his face. “M-me? No!”

Yoshida chuckled. “Well, you’re in high school. That’s a time when most young people are beginning relationships.” He must have spotted the trepidation in the transfer student’s face, because his positive expression cooled. “You might not have found one yet, but don’t reject the opportunity. Why, if it wasn’t for the support of my wonderful wife, I may have given up on Tokyo, politics, maybe even life. She has been the voice correcting my mistakes – gently – and supporting me even when I lose sight of the opportunity in my life. If you run across someone like that, never let her go.” He grinned and uncapped his bottle. “Or him. I may have come from the past, but I’m not stuck in it.”

Akira tapped a toe on the ground, still feeling distracted by trying to guess what Hifumi would like. She bought Japanese curry at the tiny diner in Jinbocho when they met Makoto, a spicy noodle hut, Kanaoka’s Stir Fry… what would she like the most?

“If I may ask,” Yoshida said, capping his bottle, “Why come to me?”

Akira felt his phone buzz and slipped his hands in his pockets but left them there. “You’ve got good technique. A fearlessness to go into as exposed an environment as I can think of,” he slipped out his empty hand to gesture at the streaming crowds, “and you seem to genuinely believe that not only is society everybody’s responsibility, but that people can rise to the occasion.”

Yoshida chuckled. “Well, the elderly can be a little hasty to cast aspersions on the youth, but there wouldn’t be such a furor about the Phantom Thief trouncing Medjed if the youth didn’t hope for better. Even if the Phantom Thief doesn’t exist, it’s not a bad thing for society to have role models to look up to as we move into an uncertain future. It would be hard to be better than a figure who stands against corruption and remembers the littlest members of society, just as we in the Diet should.”

“We?”

Yoshida rubbed the back of his neck. “Force of habit, though I have been helping my wife make ends meet by serving as a consultant for advisory boards and various Diet caucuses. It’s about seeking out the individuals and connecting to them, no matter how large a unit they may be in. The same as in public speaking. Don’t just talk at the crowd, convey your thoughts as if speaking one-on-one. Look at one person when you drive home a point. It’s a bit of a juggle to speak personally without making any member feel left out, but practice will help smooth that out.” He tapped a white-gloved finger on his water bottle for a moment. “I remember you said you came here for public speaking rather than politics, but have you ever thought what you might do if you had the chance at politics? To change the world? Who might you be?”

Akira leaned against the rail car mockup. “When Jesus approached the Temple Mount and saw money changers cheating the faithful pilgrims, he flipped their tables and drove them out with an improvised whip.”

The politicians eyes stayed wide for long moments before he forced himself to blink. “That… sounds rather extreme.”

“The scales were balanced the next day,” Akira said, shrugging without taking his hands from his pockets. “And He healed people everywhere He went. A billion people today follow Him. Even if you don’t believe in what He said, He changed the world. I don’t think I’ll ever make an impact that big, but that’s the kind of thing I want to do. Better than my last exemplar.”

Yoshida chuckled. “Well, I must admit you’ve stoked my curiosity. I’ve met very few people whose hearts burn in their eyes like yours. I even feel a little bad for taking your time, you looked like you were deep in thought when you stopped to listen.”

Rubbing the back of his neck, Akira shrugged. “Just food, actually. Hifumi hasn’t been eating well since her family had to let their cook and housekeeper go. She’s helped me understand Catholicism so much better, having grown up in it to my less than a year. Making her something seems so little in comparison.”

Yoshida’s warm smile spread. “Not just ambitious, but considerate. You’re quite the lad, Kurusu-kun.”

Akira blinked. “No comment about cooking being a womanly thing?”

The politician let out a laugh. “Not even all women are master cooks, I wouldn’t frequent the nearby beef bowl if my wife was one. And my youngest son rejected the family tradition of social services entirely to become a sushi chef. If cooking is the gift you can contribute to your friend, that’s just using your gifts.” Before the student could think of how to respond, he lifted his water bottle. “You’ve stoked my curiosity, though. If you only converted recently, who was your role model before Jesus?”

Akira chuckled. He’d never spoken about his role models before, though most of his examples were what not to be. He straightened, hands closing into fists at his sides, feeling a little more like his Metaverse self. “The master of disguise: Arsène Lupin. No wall could stop him. No chain could bind him. The corrupt and powerful all over the world trembled at the sight of his calling card.”

Yoshida let loose a laugh, one which resonated with his whole body and pushed back the cacophony of the crowds still churning around. “Well, nobody can doubt your conviction. And you don’t seem to either ignore or long for popularity, which puts you far ahead of where I was when I was your age. It can be quite the double-edged sword.”

Akira hummed, but the pride he felt as he described the fantasy he once clung to before meeting Father Motoori faded in the face of the wizened man in front of him. Until coming to Tokyo, most of his life was pushed by what he rejected than what he emulated. “It’s easy enough to want something vague like ‘change the world’, but I need more than that to get started.”

Yoshida nodded. “Politics, public speaking, even life in general relies on a central philosophy to help us navigate. Or draw others to our cause. I don’t blame you for not feeling like you have a full road map, but it sounds like you have an honest goal you aren’t giving up on. Tenacity and clarity are both vital in communication.” He chuckled. “Ah, you remind me of the fire in me when I was a lad.” A generic text notification tone floated from his pocket and he checked his phone. “My apologies, I didn’t intend to keep you so late. I hope you’ve taken something useful from this old man’s example.”

Akira slipped his hands back in his pockets. “A bit. To be honest, I hadn’t thought much about what I wanted to be for a long time. My life’s been consumed by what I didn’t want. I didn’t have a lot of people who gave me room to be anything but their preconceptions until Big K. And he knew all about getting judged, he’s a tailor now but he says he got a lot of crap when he was in school because he knew how to sew.”

Yoshida gave another smile, a bit practiced but warmer than the social script gesture. “Well, I’m glad to have helped even if it was a small way.”

Notes:

In Japanese, the verb ‘to achieve victory’ is ‘katsu’. That is the same pronunciation of ‘katsu’ a breaded cutlet often made of pork and served on a bed of rice or curry. I didn’t actually know this the first time I saw the Jinbocho event because my study of Japanese hadn’t gotten that far (it’s N4 level vocabulary), but once I did I realized Hifumi’s punny.

Chapter 116: August 29th, Beach Prep

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Monday, 29 August 2016
Morning
Yongen, Leblanc

Dishes clattered as Akira rinsed off cups from the unexpected morning rush. Well, maybe not unexpected for the proprietor, but he might have just been practiced at masking surprise and chugging along at a brisk business pace. Before he even dried his hands, his phone buzzed from activity on the group chat.

It looked like Ann syncing with the class president for a shopping trip, [I have been putting this off since Friday, Makoto-san.]

[Sorry about Sunday, but I couldn't have gone with you on Friday. Student Council has too much to do to prepare for the class trip to Oahu,] Makoto sent back. [Speaking of that, Akira, you didn't respond to my email. You're one of the short list of students who haven't confirmed your passport is up to date.]

Akira raised an eyebrow. [Wait, I'm eligible? Shujin was making it out that I was still on probation.]

[You attended the mandatory session with the school counselor. And even though you WERE on academic probation due to the circumstances of your acceptance, placing ninth in the second years was more than enough to take away the last excuse even of the most hostile administrators.]

He leaned against the counter. [I'll have to check with Sojiro, but Mother completed the paperwork for my passport back when we were at Inaba.]

Futaba’s ID winked in. [Really? I didn't think she was that involved. Why'd she get proactive then?]

[She was looking into sending me to boarding schools overseas. The old man didn't want to pay, and neither did she.]

Hifumi texted, [Even after the things I saw of my own mother, I have difficulty comprehending such an unloving mother.]

[You sure you can't come?] Ann sent. [If any of us could use a vacation, it's you.]

[I've been neglecting my shogi practice, and I want to take advantage of Papa's waking time today. I'm afraid Mother's revelations have left me rather shaken. Even if I remained confident in my own skills, in a contest against somebody of equal skill it may come down to luck.]

[I'm sure you'll give them a queen's best,] Akira sent. [You guys do your shopping, I was going to see if Yoshizawa had any suggestions about Futaba's exercise before I stop at Makoto's to cook.]

Makoto texted, [You want to come with, Futaba-chan?]

[Oh, look at that weather report. Heat warning. Guess I'll just have to stay in my nice, safe, comfy air conditioning,] Futaba replied.

[I didn't see a heat wave warning today,] Ann pointed out.

[There wasn't. It's just a warm day.] Makoto texted, [Drastic times call for drastic measures.]

[Your words are as spiky as your shoulder pads,] Futaba sent. [I'll make a note never to pat you on the shoulder.]

[An interesting consideration,] Yusuke texted. [I have had the same thoughts.]

[Don't encourage her,] Makoto riposted.

Yuuki joined the chat to send, [Wait, Senpai wears spiky clothes? That's kind of hot.]

[Stop ganging up on me! No, and that isn't even the point!]

Ryuji’s ID lit up. [Hey, guys. What's all the fun about?]

[Girls' day. Don't interfere, Ryuji,] Ann sent.

Three dots danced next to Yuuki’s ID, then disappeared. Akira wondered if he saw the possible argument brewing and decided discretion was the better part of valor.

Futaba texted, [Note: Ann is as cold to Ryuji as her Persona.]

[But for real,] Ryuji sent. [We gotta get together before the beach party. And might as well try out swimsuits so we all know everything fits.]

Three dots danced in front of Makoto’s ID for a moment. [I don't think the front desk would let that many new people in.]

[My place is always open,] Akira sent. The only person he’d be nervous about seeing in his loft would be Hifumi, but she would be busy practicing today.

Yusuke sent, [If it helps any, Futaba-kun, even though I grew up in Tokyo I find it as perplexing as magnificent most days. It will take time for you to grow used to venturing out when you have not done so for many months.]

Sojiro paced from the register, his eyes scanning the coffee bean jars. “You got plans today, kiddo?”

I was going to see a schoolmate about exercise routines.” He slipped his phone away. “But since Prez reminded me, did you already get the school’s paperwork for the second-year trip?”

I had that signed and back a month ago,” the restaurateur said. “Your probation never said you were forbidden from leaving the country, and you’ve been behaving lately so I don’t see any reason you can’t go with your classmates.”

Akira nodded. “I guess I’m as ready for that as I’m going to be. And the customers are all gone, so I shouldn’t keep Yoshizawa-san waiting.”

Monday, 29 August 2016
Afternoon
Inokashira Park

The sun beat down on Akira and he pulled in a long breath, but the humid air gave little relief despite not having gone through intense exercise. Even having lived through weeks of a Tokyo summer, it felt wrong to the boy who grew up in the highlands. He only insisted in going through the paces of muscle-group-focused exercises for Futaba to have a better idea what they’d look like. He braced against a bench, stepping back with one leg to stretch out his calf, mimicking the gymnast.

If you haven’t used those muscles very often, you can’t just stretch out after the session. Remember to massage them before sleep or they’ll set you back tomorrow.” Yoshizawa held her hands against the bench back and sank twice as low as him, as if stringy elastic bands took the place of her muscles. She gave a nervous giggle. “I mean, I’m sure you use lots of those muscles, Senpai, but if your neighbor’s been a shut-in, she has a lot of catching up to do.”

Akira nodded and tried not to notice the feel of perspiration rolling down his face. One thing he wouldn’t be doing any time soon was taking Futaba out to exercise in the park. When she came up and relaxed, he slumped out of position and took out his phone to send some notes to group chat where Makoto and Ryuji could give feedback. Besides a reminder for himself, Makoto was the next most rounded person he knew for exercise and would be able to double-check the routine he pick ed up from the gymnast.

A deep gurgle rumbled from the gymnast. He could see the gymnast’s face going red before she turned away. Her shoulders and back hunched as if she’d been caught streaking or something.

Akira slipped his phone away to turn his attention to her. He mimed putting on a cap. “Impressive, Yoshizawa-san! How about I introduce you to my hat for Chief of Catering, Russell Upsumgrub?”

Yoshizawa snorted, failed to catch her breathing, and clung to the bench as laughter rolled out of her. “Well, when you’ve got high activity you have high caloric needs! Keeping in shape is all about balance. I could really go for an extra large beef bowl with soft-boiled egg. With pork soup and salad on the side. And a large mapo tofu.”

Akira felt more sweat roll down his neck. Each of those sounded like a whole meal. Still, the exercise-for-beginners session took much less time than he expected and consisted of a lot more telling him to tone down routines he already used. “Well, I was going to help Senpai make lunch for our beach trip tomorrow in exchange for some of her cooking technique. I wouldn’t mind getting a head start on cooking tips.”

Yoshizawa looked on him with wide eyes. “You even cook, Senpai? Wow, you’re talented in everything .” She stepped close – a little too close – those big eyes still boring into his.

Taking as subtle a step away as he could, Akira rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m not talented. I had no choice but to learn to take care of myself. I’ll bet it’s the same with you, right? You busted your a… butt for… how many years?”

Yoshizawa beamed and stepped back into that ‘just a little too close’ zone. “Oh, my sister and I…” She swallowed, a wobble passing through her posture, but she forced a smile and stepped back into his airspace, “have been aiming for world championships since we were in grammar school. I don’t even remember when we weren’t in gymnastics.”

He recognized the melancholy that settled over her when she mentioned her sister. A hollowness that stretched all the way to the bottom of her soul. When he felt the world closing in and nothing to look forward to he took a razor to his wrists. The best thing he could do is lead her somewhere else. “Talk about aiming for the top. That’s a lot cooler than my life.”

Yoshizawa shook her head. “Don’t say that, Senpai! You’re fearless, have great endurance, and I bet you can even make an amazing ramen. Just because something isn’t outwardly spectacular doesn’t mean it isn’t important. Or tasty.”

You’ve got grub on the brain,” Akira said with a chuckle. His mirth evaporated as they passed a trinket cart with a chain of hanging clips filled with what appeared to be Phantom Thief calling cards. Heart beat zooming, he paced closer and took one off to find only mild relief that it was a postcard in the style of a calling card, dominated by red and black and with cutout-style characters and bearing a spot-on duplicate of the top-hat with a flaming domino mask beneath. “I heard the Phantom Thief changed Medjed, but I didn’t ever expect to see people trying to merchandise them.”

The old woman at the cart squinted at him. “You don’t think it’s amazing that the Phantom Thief could even defeat no-good hackers? Why, they saved Japan!”

Did they?” Yoshizawa said, one hand on her stomach, her lips pressed into a thin line and heavy thought in her eyes. “I can’t say they’ve done anything wrong, especially with Kamoshida and Madarame. But isn’t it unhealthy for society to be dependent on someone else to fix its problems? A lot of the companies that were worried should have spent that time and money fixing their computer security, not waiting for the Phantom Thief to try to take out one random bad actor out there. Who knows how many more bad computer hackers there are out there?”

Computer cracker,” Akira said, even though Futaba-kun wasn’t near. “A person who does malicious acts with a computer is a computer cracker.”

The cart vendor grumped at them. “Who cares ? I almost lost my retirement investment. This cart hardly pays for itself and groceries.”

As if on cue, Cute but Annoying’s stomach growled again. She averted her gaze and crossed her arms. “S-sorry, Senpai.”

He handed the postcard back to the vendor. “Well, we don’t want to starve you. Let’s get some food.” No sooner had he turned back to the train station than his phone vibrated. “Excuse me a second.”

[Sorry about the delay,] Ann sent. [Makoto hasn’t updated her swimsuit since before Shujin so we kind of got sidetracked. Anyway, I found a couple options for Futaba-chan.] She sent a couple follow-up pictures of frilly, showy swimsuits.

Futaba wasted no time to shoot back, [Are you nuts? I have underwear that covers more than that!]

Akira texted, [ What about a tankini? I'm not going to pretend to be an expert in female garments, but the girls' swimsuits at Inuri covered the whole torso.]

[That is also the style at Kosei,] Yusuke sent. [It is a fine arts academy with some of the most open minds in Tokyo, but some of its financiers are rather conservative.]

[You need to be adventurous, Futaba-chan!] Ann texted. [This is your big graduation into the world. Just think about how far you've come. A good swimsuit is just the graduation uniform!]

Akira tried to push aside the mental image of Hifumi in a competition-style swimsuit. Then the next image of her in more glamorous apparel. He shook his head. Futaba. He had to help Futaba. [Futaba should have a say in what she wears to the beach, Ann. What's wrong with just throwing on a shirt or tank top and calling it a day?]

Makoto jumped in to add, [New experiences ARE good for you.]

[C'mon. Futaba is super cute! You should strut your stuff. A tankini wouldn't suit you,] Ann sent.

Several seconds passed. After the delay reached an uncomfortable point, he texted, [Futaba, as long as you're okay coming out with us, you have my support.]

When Ann started arguing and Ryuji interjected to ask for photos of the girls in swimsuits, Akira rolled his eyes and slipped his phone into his pocket. “Sorry for the delay. So do you do any cooking? You said something about picking things up from your mother during tumbles.”

Yoshizawa’s cheeks flushed a little pink. “Oh, Mom is so busy going back and forth to take care of Grandma – basically the clan matriarch – that she can’t come home much. Dad’s a wonderful father, but he’s hopeless in the kitchen, so we kind of had to learn it for ourselves.” Her gaze fell and her shoulders drooped. “I’m no good, myself. My sister was the one who could effortlessly take squid, soy, and whip up a mirin marinade.” She let out a long hum. “ Never overcooked ikayaki.”

Akira recognized the melancholy that swam in her eyes when she mentioned her sister, but asking about it would just push her into a depressive spiral. That would be the worst way to repay her for a day of instruction. “How do you keep it from getting rubbery?”

Oh, just a little salt in the marinade and keeping back on the heat,” Yoshizawa said, her back straightening as hunger and nostalgia wrapped her arms around herself. “The reason some restaurants serve rubbery squid is either it being frozen too slow too many times, or trying to cook it too fast at too high a temperature.”

He fell in step beside her as she chatted with energy and detail about all the different sauces and pastes her family made for squid or fish. Despite her claims of being a bad beginner, she knew way too much about how to make marinades for an amateur. He took notes as they made their way to the subway station.

Monday, 29 August 2016
Late Afternoon
Yongen, Leblanc

The bell tinkled above and Morgana poked his head out from the booth seat next to the artist. The girls were late, but instead of the shopping beauties, Joker trotted in with his leather satchel on one shoulder and locks of his dark hair dried in plastered-to-the-skin positions. No wonder he took so long with Yoshizawa. “Joker! Looks like we may have the team together today after all.”

He gave a small wave. “Didn’t expect to see you guys here.”

Oracle hopped up from her perch next to the runner. “Heya! You see Ann or Makoto?”

“No, I just stopped in to shower. Yoshizawa and I got to talking about parkour and safe tumbles. Good news though: I’ve got an exercise routine for you.” The runner, having gotten the email earlier, gave Joker a thumb up. He gave a nod back. “I just want to check with Makoto first.” He paused by the table to offer a fist and got a bump from the hacker and runner. “So you gettin’ out easier?”

Her brown eyes flicked down. “Dunno.”

Fox, as if sensing she needed an escape, straightened his history book in front of him. “Even the clearest-sighted of us can not change long-formed habits overnight.”

Morgana popped up on the table to give himself some extra height. “True, but I think we can all agree that Oracle’s made some impressive progress. From a shut-in to a Phantom Thief rescuing hearts with the best of us!”

Her head dipped down. “Aw, you’ll make me blush.” She lunged over the table to grab him by the whiskers.

Joker leaned to grab her arm. “Hey, no animal abuse.”

Reaper burst out laughing. “Right! No beatin’ up the team cat!”

Nerves short from mediating fights all day, the team leader scratched her and bared his teeth at the runner. “How many times do I have to say it? I. Am. Not. A. Cat!”

Boss stepped out of the kitchen. “How many times do I have to tell you kids not to play with the cat in the restaurant? I’m trying to keep a clean place.”

Oracle pulled her hand out of the transfer student’s grip. “You smoke indoors. Your argument is invalid.”

Joker chuckled and stepped back. “Yeah, and you let Ryuji in.”

Oracle cackled.

Reaper thumped a hand on his sports magazine. “Dude! I shower more’n you do! An’ what the eff is keepin the girls? ‘Koto said she was on the way like, ten minutes ago.”

As if summoned, the door swung open with the tinkling of the bell. Lady Ann and Rider stepped in, both bearing shopping bags, the latter giving a shallow bow. “Apologies for the lateness. I haven’t actually gone swimming since grammar school and we got sidetracked checking out multiple items for each of us.”

With a swiftness borne of Phantom Thievery, Joker snatched up the team leader by the arms. “Each of us? You even got one for Fearless Leader?”

With the student holding him under the arms, Morgana could only glare up at them. “I will bite you.”

As Joker put the team leader down, Lady Ann rolled her eyes. “ No . Swimsuits for us girls! We gotta look our best when we hit the beach.” She winked at the hacker.

Oracle recoiled as if asked to charge bears covered in honey. “Swimsuit? S-so you did…”

When she glanced at Joker, he shrugged. “I backed you up when she wanted to get you something racy, but I agree with Makoto. You gotta try new things.” He held up a hand. “Gimme one minute. I was practicing tumbling techniques with Yoshizawa-san and wanna get a shower in. You can try stuff out in the loft after I grab some clean clothes.” Lady Ann nodded and he jogged upstairs, rummaged a bit, then descended with a clean change folded in one hand. “You have a chance to read the email I sent about Yoshizawa’s exercise ideas?”

Rider shifted both bags to one hand. “We’ve been shopping. I’ll respond tonight after I’ve had a chance to look them up.”

Joker gave that palm-out salute, and stepped out.

Rider rolled her eyes and led the way up.

Lady Ann stopped at the booth. “C’mon, time to try it on. You can’t hit the beach if you’re not ready to strut your stuff. Our beach party is tomorrow, after all. You didn’t have one, right?”

Oracle shrank into her perch. “No, but—”

Lady Ann flashed a brilliant, heart-stopping smile. “Then it’s time to try it on!” When the hacker wouldn’t come out of her hunched perch, that smile dimmed but wouldn’t go away. “C’mon, when Akira backed you up and said not to get anything flashy, me and Makoto went right back to the racks to pick out a whole new lineup.” She held out a hand. “Now come on and let me show you how much a woman you are.”

A long beat passed before Oracle took that hand, then unfolded from her gargoyle-esque perch. Oracle and Lady Ann strode up, but Nightrider paused at the base of the stairs to glare at Reaper. “You know what’ll happen if you try and look, right?”

Despite not needing to, Reaper stood up and looked like he couldn’t decide what kind of salute to give. “Y-yes ma’am.”

She ascended, leaving the men to return to studies and yakking. Up until they heard the faintest trace of the girls. Morgana’s sensitive ears picked up shuffling and the faint scuffle of feet. If somebody told him ninjas were battling in the loft, he would’ve believed it. Just to make sure everything was okay, Morgana hopped down and paced closer.

Once he got to the cafe restroom door, he heard Rider say, “Wow, the fit is perfect ,” Rider said. “You are equal parts amazing and scary, Ann.”

As Morgana crept towards the cafe restroom door to better listen in, Lady Ann’s bold smile shone through her tone, “Fashion’s in my blood!”

Oracle squawked. “How can I go outside in this ? These barely cover anything!”

Pshaw!” Lady Ann replied, undeterred. “Swimsuits are like that. You can’t strut your stuff in a poofy dress.”

Rider cleared her throat. A distant part of Morgana noticed Reaper leaning from his seat at the booth table to listen in.

All right! Maybe you can,” Lady Ann said, exasperated. “But beaches are for swimsuits. Here, this off-the-shoulder deal will be more stylish than the tankini Akira recommended.”

More shuffling, with a few footfalls that hinted at less than cooperative movements.

Reaper’s face took on a pink coloration. “What are they doin ’ up there?”

Some more shuffling in the loft, but with lighter footsteps. “Fine. I’ve got to hand it to you, Ann, it’s good,” Oracle said, though she seemed more pleased than her begrudging words alone indicated.

Fox glanced up from his history book. “What would she even be using to examine herself? Akira does not have a mirror.” He missed the door swinging open. “What kind of swimsuit would meet with Futaba’s approval? Hm. That could almost be a painting all its own. What do you think Makoto-san would say?”

Morgana heard more footsteps, then Lady Ann’s hushed voice, “Wanna show off yours, Senpai?”

Joker entered and came to a stop next to the booth, wearing faded green slacks and a sky blue long-sleeved shirt. “I’m pretty sure she’d give a very definite answer.” His grey eyes locked onto the runner and he brandished a smirk perfect for his metaverse alter ego. “Go for it, Ryuji!”

Reaper bit down on the toothpick in his mouth. “Eff no!”

Morgana scoffed, but abandoned the effort to listen in now that there were three others who might call him out. He padded back to the booth and hopped up to the seat by Reaper, having to content himself with daydreams of the l ovely Lady Ann.

Boss trotted closer, a dish towel slung over one shoulder. “So Futaba’s really going to the beach, huh?” He shook his head, a distant quality to his gaze. “I never thought I’d see the day.”

Joker shrugged. “Maybe she just needed the right opportunity.”

Reaper held up his glass, ice clinking inside. “For real! She’s always lookin’ for a way to show peeps up.”

Boss took the towel in both hands. “Well, if she’s really ready, I hope you guys can help her make great memories.”

Monday, 29 August 2016
Early Evening
Yongen, Leblanc

Makoto trotted down, her swimsuit in the paper shopping bag on her arm. Akira sat in the booth, tapping at an online shogi game on his phone. “Thanks for letting us use your loft, Akira-kun. The other two give up?”

Akira glanced up from his phone game. “Ryuji bailed when he finished his magazine. Said he’d be out running Inokashira. Yusuke finished one of his sketches and said he’d spend the rest of the day painting.” He paused to submit his next move, but left most of his attention on her, which was unusual when he had a strategy game open. “Hey, uh… I mentioned that I was out this morning with Yoshizawa?”

“For exercises for Futaba-chan,” Makoto confirmed. “I said I’d look them up tonight. I need some time to socialize and unwind, too.” She heard the other girls descend the stairs, but hang back as if unwilling to walk into the conversation between herself and Akira.

His shoulders slouched a bit. “I know, but I also talked to her about cooking. I already asked Boss about making curry, but he did his last batch on Saturday and there’s still leftover today. Were you going to do anything for the beach trip tomorrow?”

Futaba chimed in, “Just pack some cup ramen and be done with it. I eat it every day.”

Akira pinched the bridge of his nose. “That’s way too much sodium, Futaba-kun.”

Maybe quinoa salad?” Ann said, stepping in and leaning against the wall next to the booth. “That’s big with models.”

He straightened his glasses, his eyes unfocused in that sorting-and-filing way Makoto recognized from herself and Big Sis. “Done.” His eyes locked back onto the class president. “Would you mind if I came with and helped you fix the beach party’s lunch? We didn’t even get to finish our talk on stir-fry thanks to the cops taking away Hifumi’s mother.”

Pursing her lips, Makoto crossed her arms. He may not have any advanced knowledge on sauce or harmonizing flavors, but he had a solid grasp on fundamental food prep. “Sure.” She made a quarter turn to glance at the hacker and vivacious blonde. “Interested?”

Ann brushed a pigtail off her shoulder. “Thanks, but Futaba and I were going to play Star Soldier.”

With no idea what that was, Makoto nodded and gestured the transfer student to the door. He nodded, retrieved his leather satchel and the team leader before stepping outside with her, where they waved and departed from the younger girls.

Akira came to a stop a pace away from her on the Yongen-Jaya platform. “Think Futaba-kun’s really ready for the beach?”

She let out an amused huff. She would never have imagined his protective side when she stalked him in Shibuya. “Think Ryuji will control himself?”

Akira ran his hand up his face and rubbed an eye. “Ugh. Maybe we can change all our plans without telling him?”

Makoto stepped closer to knock him with her elbow. “He’s brash, but he’s got a point. I tended to study all summer long,” she glanced around and leaned closer to whisper, “but we did spend almost all summer in the Metaverse.” She straightened and continued at a normal volume, “He seems to know what he’s talking about with a party to help us transition back to school.” Her smile faded as she thought back to their latest unanswered questions regarding the Metaverse. Morgana still didn’t know who he was, and Togo-san didn’t mention him, but she’d been trying to dig up information on the Metaverse and the lack of answers unnerved her. “I am still a little concerned about Black Mask. Who are they?”

He,” Akira said, his face impassive but a dead certainty in his voice. “I think Igor would have goaded me differently if there were a bunch of people. He thinks there’s only one.”

Makoto pursed her lips. “I did some reading. Futaba’s mother isn’t in any of Akechi’s mental shutdown lists, but he’s also specified that they aren’t exhaustive. I know her death matched the descriptions of mental shutdowns, but it was several months before the mental shutdown of an NTT manager. If Black Mask is really just one person…”

Morgana popped his head out of the leather bag as the train to Shibuya pulled in. “Black Mask could have been practicing for nearly two years. He could be powerful enough to take down palaces in less than a week.”

They separated into the train, but the conversation stimulated her conjecture so she took to the group chat. As expected, Ryuji was logged off and would probably remain so for hours if he just started running at Inokashira Park, and the same would be the case for the cloud-headed artist, but Ann and Mishima-kun’s ID’s lit up with Akira’s. Makoto summarized the conversation to the group and her difficulty finding anything on cognitive psience even despite checking obscure shops in Jinbocho for medical journals. [I just wish we knew for sure what the Black Mask is doing. Why he's doing it.]

[Money's my guess,] Akira texted. [Assassins for hire are a thing in the real world.]

[But why wouldn't he have a pattern?] Mishima texted. [Small-time managers at Duck Burger, hedge fund managers. And then there's the psychotic breakdowns of corrupt businessmen.]

Futaba joined the chat to ask about psychotic breakdowns, but at that point the train pulled into Shibuya Station so Makoto disembarked to take the line to Chiyoda-ku and home. She didn’t spot Akira, but foot traffic was up and he knew the way.

By the time Makoto found an empty overhead strap and brought back up the group chat, the conversation split between arguing over who had a psychotic breakdown and what the cognitive breakdowns could be about. As much to get the conversation back on track as to sate the curiosity which brought her to start the chat, Makoto sent, [But who could Black Mask be?]

Ann texted, [Do you think he's like us? Using the Metaverse for some ideological end?]

[What if it's the poisoned fruits of Mom's research? I've been looking up what happened to Mom's research and trying to find out what happened to her since Sojiro took me in,] Futaba sent. [The official story they told me was she burned her research, but she was obsessed with unlocking human cognition. She'd never do that.]

[She didn't,] Akira replied. [After she died, my old bastard continued research as if she was just out sick. They didn't even miss a day.]

Mishima of all people followed up, [Then it's impossible it was deleted. He would have to rebuild everything Futaba's mother did if it was destroyed. He would have to have it readily on-hand to continue without interruption. Akira, are you sure he never said anything about the data? Or where the servers were stored?]

[He mentioned transfer to an air-gap, but that just sounds like gibberish,] Akira sent.

[Motherless goat of all motherless goats!] Futaba sent.

Ann texted, [Did you just have a stroke?]

[Air gapping means a server that is physically disconnected from the internet,] Mishima explained. [If she's a computer cracker, I have a feeling it has to do with that.]

[Oh!] Ann replied. [Like that time Shiho made us infiltrate that Saeder-Krupp building because your decker couldn't access a server from the outside.]

[Precisely.]

[Now I'm confused,] Makoto sent.

[Shiho ran Shadowrun over skype,] Ann texted. [It's a role-playing game.]

[Let me guess,] Akira sent. [You played a mage who blew things up.]

[Street Sam, actually. Swords and pistols. Shiho would never let me get my hands on a mono-wire whip, no matter how much I wanted one.]

[That explains so many things.]

The train slid to a stop at Chiyoda-ku and Makoto slipped out. It seemed obvious that none of the Phantom Thieves had enough information to make an informed guess about Black Mask. She met Akira at the top of the stairs, and they ascended into what was fast becoming a sweltering summer evening. “Before we head to my flat, I was thinking of stopping by the grocer’s for ingredients. Do you have any ideas what you want tomorrow?”

He blew out a breath. “Hifumi’s testifying on her mother’s behalf.”

I mean food.” Makoto crossed her arms. If the transfer student gave any indication what ‘lovestruck’ was like, she counted herself fortunate never to have come anywhere near it.

Morgana poked his head out of the transfer student’s leather satchel. “And you’re coming with. Even Hifumi wants you to relax once in a while, so consider this an order from both of us!”

Oh, right.” He scratched his neck. “Well, Ann did mention quinoa salad. We made that regularly at Amagi Inn.”

Monday, 29 August 2016
Evening
Chiyoda-ku, Makoto’s Home

Makoto poured a tall pot of boiled soba noodles into a colander in the sink. The splashing brought the conversation about stir-fry sauce to a pause. Steam wafted up and she indulged in the fantasy of an alchemist transmuting some common metal into gold.

What about an acid flavor?” Akira swept sliced black olives into a wide steel bowl for the Amagi-style quinoa. “That’s not even one of the five tastes, is it?”

Acids are things like vinegar or lemon juice, it brightens the sauce.” Makoto bit down on her amazement at his speed as he chopped a carrot. She set the tall pot back on the burner and turned the gas down. “It’s hard to believe that you think you’re a beginner when you can do that. The college students at Ore no Beko aren’t that fast.”

Akira shrugged as if dicing a third of a kilogram of carrots was easy as walking. “This is the stuff the head chefs felt was beneath them at Amagi Inn, even the commis chef was eager to push it on me. But the sauces were the domain of the sous chefs. I heard at bigger kitchens, they’re done by a saucier who’s only outranked by the head chef.”

I’ve never known anyone who worked in a kitchen, so I couldn’t say.” Leaving the colander in the sink, Makoto slid the tall pot aside, put one of Mother’s cast-iron skillets on and tossed in sesame seeds. “But sauces are part of lots of regular food. No reason not to make them part of your personal repertoire.”

She could feel his eyes on the back of her neck before Akira set down the knife and side-stepped to watch her push sesame around the skillet. “What are you putting plain sesame over the gas for? You said you were making a cold sesame soba.”

She chased the sesame around, waiting for some to start taking on a golden color. “Toasting nuts or seeds greatly enhances the flavor.” Makoto glanced at the array of vegetables still arranged in neat piles around his cutting board for later chopping. “Are you sure Amagi Inn put that many vegetables in their quinoa?”

He pulled a cherry tomato onto the cutting board, sliced it in half, then tossed the halves in the big steel bowl with the other pre-cut things and reached for another. “Yeah. Isn’t that pretty typical for salads?”

Well, some kinds of salad, yes. But quinoa is traditionally plain.” Makoto reversed her direction of stirring, still waiting for the scent of sesame seeds to pop. “It’s not exactly anybody’s proud specialty, there’s so little to personalize about it.”

Akira hummed, halving cherry tomatoes with swift, rote motions. “You mentioned cooking with your mother. She have a ‘proud specialty’?”

The corners of her lips turned down. She had to dig through her memory to remember mother’s stir fry. “She’d make velveted beef or lamb.”

He squinted in thought. “Velvet? Like the fabric?”

Chuckling, Makoto reversed stir direction, splitting her attention between the seeds and him. “No. Velveting is marinating thin-sliced meat in a corn starch slurry. Helps it maintain moisture and soften that much more when you cook stir-fry. It’s fairly simple but makes for a wonderful texture, so she did it a lot before she died.”

A frown slipped over her face and she wondered why she let that slip.

He stopped slicing. “You think there’s something wrong because you don’t miss her?”

She turned on him to snarl. Why couldn’t he be his regular self with weird presumptions that were all off-base? Why’d he have to see through this ? At least Ryuji didn’t push where he wasn’t wanted!

The scent of over-toasted sesame seeds wafted into her nostrils. Makoto yanked the skillet off the gas and applied her anger to stirring, knocking some seeds onto the hot range. She flicked the burner off, still stirring to keep any of the over-toasted seeds from getting all the way to burnt.

I miss mine, sometimes.”

Her stirring slowed and she looked up at his grey eyes and their slight magnification under his glasses. “But… your mother was all over Japan . She didn’t respect your father.”

Neither did I. We had that in common.” He set the knife down and shrugged. “You only mentioned positive memories of either parent, but the nostalgia is always for your father. I just…”

There was a waver in his eyes that made the pinch in her stomach intensify. As if he said ‘doesn’t everyone but me have things perfect?’ Makoto took in a brief breath. “Things weren’t perfect with us. I think there’s always a little bit of clash between parents and children. Mom was always on my and Big Sis’ case to get our homework done early.”

Akira made a face as if he bit a lemon. “Even my old bastard did that.”

She didn’t like it when I played dress-up with Dad’s hat.” Makoto paused for a breath, but the memory springing to mind cut through her annoyance and it took all her effort to smother the chuckle. “God, I almost forgot about that. She was so supportive of Big Sis aiming for law school and me going my own way in life.” The corners of her mouth tugged down. “I can’t remember it very well, but Dad spent a lot of time at work. Maybe it was fear for his safety, one of those ‘one cop is enough for the family’, like Dragon’s Shadow 2.” She gave a last stir in the hot pan, then reached toward the far counter. “Mirin.”

This is some top shelf stuff.” He handed her the bottle of rice wine. “Are things okay with you and your sister?”

Makoto stirred, then reached towards the bowl of seaweed she shredded before yielding the cutting board to him. He passed it and she sprinkled in the thin strips. “I’m more scared on her behalf. Things were changing before summer break. She was really suspicious and I’m pretty sure opened an investigation into the Phantom Thieves, but… after she started cutting deals at work, she started coming home more. She stopped describing work like riding a tiger she could never get off, or a gamble where she always had to raise the bet.”

Morgana jumped up to a chair in the adjoining dining room. “That sounds good.”

Makoto stirred. “She was finally making a difference and could see it,” she felt a sad smile curl at her lips, made all the worse that it didn’t last. “But as the summer went on… more cases were transferred to the Kaneshiro unit. Away from her. She acted more short when she was talking to someone over the phone. Started staying at work longer. Pushed me for more names. Now she’s back to staying at work more than she’s home.”

Akira stepped closer but stopped short of reaching out for her. “She hasn’t… done anything to you?”

He could be so confusing sometimes. Needling just to see her pissed off one minute, and ready to intercede with her last remaining family the next. “No, Akira. I do have the group chat, if something happens I can easily put a call out to everyone. It’s just… frustrating to think we were making some progress earlier and that she’s backslid.” Makoto turned back to her sesame sauce.

Morgana popped up, paws on the back of the chair to elevate his eye level. “Your sister isn’t a Palace Ruler yet. She may have a distorted desire within, but it hasn’t become an all-consuming anchor. We haven’t been able to affect most people with Shadows in Mementos because we don’t know enough or have access to the person. You do.”

Akira shrugged, looking more helpless than most times. “We’ll be all about the city until after the beach party—”

We are not canceling Lady Ann’s beach party,” Morgana said, those bright blue eyes locking onto the transfer student. “And you are not sneaking into the Metaverse. Hawk isn’t even going to be available until after school starts again, or we would have checked out that lead you found on Matsushita Hiroyuki.”

Makoto forced a smile, drawing on her practice as student council president. “He’s right, Akira. Big Sis will still be here tomorrow. I suppose what makes it hurt so much is seeing her drown herself in work to try to fill the hole in her heart, just like I was doing before accepting Johanna.” She reached for a salt grinder. “Now finish those tomatoes and I’ll go over how velveting works.”

Notes:

English is super common in the programming world, and why would I give up the chance to quote Firefly’s Wash? I can use the excuse that it hit many meme circles.

Chapter 117: August 30th, Cool Sands

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Tuesday, 30 August 2016
Early Morning
Yongen, Back Streets

Akira adjusted the strap of his leather day satchel on his shoulder as he led Futaba out of Leblanc. Despite the early hour of the morning, he could already feel the heat of the day starting in the sunshine beaming down. His long-sleeved shirt helped with keeping direct sunlight off, but wouldn’t with shedding heat as the day went on. The orange-haired girl followed less than a pace behind.

Leaving the two customers for a bit, Sojiro followed them out. “You don’t let her out of your sight.” He crossed his arms. “And watch yourself around my daughter.”

Futaba gave a cheeky grin and shoulder-bumped the transfer student. “Oh, don’t worry. He’s already blinded by a special someone.”

Heat blazed over his face. “Futaba!”

The little troll’s grin widened even more. “You mad she couldn’t come today?”

“Not mad, I just don’t like it,” Akira said, putting his best nonchalant face on. Hifumi’s morning text indicated a busy day at the court house. Whether her testimony on behalf of her mother – and cooperation with the Kaneshiro task force – would compensate for her role in Kaneshiro’s money laundering operation he couldn’t guess.

Sojiro’s face remained cool as the mountain peak. “This is her first time out in a long time. Don’t let some gross dudes ruin it.”

Akira snapped a British salute. “I will keep her separated from Ryuji at all times.”

Futaba snorted.

The restaurateur took a step closer, his narrow gaze locked on the transfer student’s. “Summer and the beach is prime combination to bring out idiots. Don’t let anything happen to her.”

Futaba took a few steps closer to the train station and waved at them. “Don’t be such a worrywart! I may be low level, but if I never go out I’m never gonna get XP! Besides, we have a Stargate team bonus!” She grabbed Akira’s long sleeve. “C’mon, we’re gonna be late!”

Akira held fast against the middle-aged man. “Don’t worry. She has to go out into the world eventually, this is just a day trip. I’ll bring her back safe and sound.”

An old woman in a yellow sundress shuffled up to the entrance. “Oh, Boss! Are you greeting people at the door now?”

Sojiro huffed at the transfer student, but turned. “Just giving a send-off. I’ll get you your usual.”

Late Morning
Miura Beach

Akira sipped a cold, canned iced tea. While not as good as the cold-brewed ones he’d make at Inaba, the chill helped fight the sweltering sun. While there were thousands of people out and about, the beach was big enough to let them spread out a bit and it felt more like Shinjou. Well, with the heat it more resembled Inaba, but without the charm of a smaller town. He moved a lancer up on his phone shogi and hit End Turn.

Yusuke stood, shielding his eyes, then waved. “Over here!”

Moments later, Ann, Makoto, and Futaba slipped out of the crowd. Futaba seemed comfortable in an orange swimsuit with an off-the-shoulder shirt, though she stuck close to the class president. Makoto herself wore a frilly, flattering white bikini. His eyes might have lingered on her were it not for the stunning blonde next to her. Ann wore a high ponytail, like on the Marine Day celebration, if rougher in a way that somehow highlighted the tease in her face. A body he always knew was curvaceous turned out to be breath-taking, filling out a yellow-and-blue bikini that had all four of the male Phantom Thieves gawking.

Ryuji’s mouth hung open and a shocked, pleased sound leaked out.

Futaba nudged the blonde. “At last, we finally found a way to shut Ryuji up.”

Yusuke stepped closer. “You three are truly visions of feminine beauty,” he paused to take Ann’s hand, “but as always you shine brighter than the sun and take our breath away.”

Pink bloomed over Ann’s cheeks as she gave a shy smile.

The transfer student noticed Makoto’s face going pink and she wrapped her arms around herself. After a beat, she cleared her throat but still didn’t make eye contact as she sat down next to him. “Could I start with a soda? It’s almost lunch time, might as well sit down and relax. We spent enough time putting it together.”

Yusuke sat down opposite Ann, his eyes on the cooler Makoto left Akira to stake their spot in the morning. “Could there be anything more iconic than refreshing nourishment at a beach side vacation?”

Futaba dug through the ice-packed cooler. “Where’s my ramen?”

Akira popped open a plastic container of quinoa salad. “I never packed instant ramen. Didn’t you read about the college girl who died of a heart attack from sodium overdose after eating nothing but instant ramen? Makoto and I made real food.” He picked up a set of chopsticks as the others took their own portioned-out containers and dug in. “You need to watch what you eat. Instant ramen once in a while is one thing, but it shouldn’t be anybody’s staple.”

Futaba rolled her eyes at him. “Thanks, dad.”

While the hacker grumped, Ann poked at her salad. “Is this for real quinoa?”

Akira swallowed a bite. “Yeah, that’s what you asked for. Same as I used to make at Amagi Inn.” He noticed her scrutinizing gaze and the way she poked at a slice of black olive. “What’s wrong?”

She shook her head and ate, then swallowed. “Nothing, I just thought quinoa was always… boring. It’s the big thing for models because it’s low carb, but this has tons of veggies in it.” She popped a halved cherry tomato in her mouth. “Mm. You’re even better than the caterers.”

Yusuke slurped in a chilled soba noodle drenched in a dark soy sauce, then swallowed. “This is truly the work of a master.”

Akira gestured an elbow at the upperclassman as he dug into his salad. “Soba’s all Makoto.” He moved up a bishop and hit End Turn. “Now fall into my trap, you bastard, or I’ll never beat the real thing.”

Ryuji made far more noise in slurping down his soba. The minutes passed as they ate, but after a while, he paused when he noticed one member no longer chowing down. “You okay?”

Makoto just averted her crimson eyes.

Morgana swallowed a chunk of carp. “Honestly, Ryuji, is the context so hard to figure out? Girls in swimsuits work hard to look as slim as possible.”

Makoto’s phone buzzed and she checked the screen. “Boat’s ready.” She and the three girls all packed their lunches up. Ryuji scarfed down his lunch and Akira packed his up to follow.

Ann gave an abashed smile. “We only got a reservation for a three-person boat.”

Slumping against the folding beach chair, Akira gave a show smile. “That’s okay. I will remember this treason later.”

Futaba stuck out her tongue. He returned the gesture.

Ryuji crossed his arms, narrow gaze resting on the blonde. The annoyance in the gesture was undercut by the tupperware in one hand and chopsticks in the other. “What’re we s’posed to do?”

Ann flashed them an over-pleased smile. “Keep an eye on our spot?”

Akira brought up his phone shogi. “For you, I’ll keep two eyes.”

The model gave a cheery laugh that brought a blush to his face.

Despite still having some soba left, Ryuji grumped at her. “We’re for-real hotshots. Why you treatin’ us like spot sitters?”

Akira moved his knight over to capture his enemy’s bishop. “Because somebody’s got to do it. The closest I ever got to visiting a beach was first year at Inuri High. They made us clean up garbage around some dumpy river not even half an hour out from town. The water felt so slimy nobody even wanted to go swimming.”

Futaba’s face scrunched up. “Ewww!”

Ryuji closed a fist. “You can’t just walk off to have fun and leave us hangin’!”

Makoto shook her head and stood, turning to Ann. “They might be reliable in the Metaverse, but in reality…” She shook her head again, though the corners of her lips turned up.

Ann snickered. “You said it.” She flashed them a smirk. “Stealing treasure is nothing, but they’re too clueless to steal a girl’s heart.”

Your ‘queen’ is too good for you .

Akira felt himself crumple. He forced his focus to his shogi game and tried not to wonder how long Hifumi would humor him when she had so many better prospects. When she could have someone who could fully return her affection.

“We’re gonna miss the banana boat!” Futaba shouted before zipping off, forcing the other girls to give chase with their own pleas not to get lost or separated.

Ryuji slurped down the last of his soba and threw the plastic bowl to the beach towel. “They’re just jealous of how amazin’ we are.”

Eyes on his game, Akira hit End Turn and waited to see which counter-strategy he would have to deploy against his opponent. He wasn’t sure if she was really strong enough to brush off the amount of uncertainty swirling around her family at the moment with the court still adjudicating her mother’s guilty plea, but if it wasn’t for her insistence that they go celebrate, he wouldn’t have come. “Don’t be full of yourself, Ryuji.”

The runner and his annoyance remained undimmed, but at least he spoke at what was the closest a Sakamoto had to a private volume, “We risk our lives as Phantom Thieves. They don’t get it ‘cause they’re always ‘round. It’s like… those frogs and the boilin’ water.”

Yusuke looked up from his second bowl of food, shielding his eyes. “You are referring to Friedrich Goltz’s famed experiment with frogs?”

Ryuji’s grin returned. “Yeah, man!” Then dimmed. “I think.”

Akira moved up another pawn and hit End Turn. “You know he had to lobotomize the frogs to get them to stay, right? Intact frogs jumped out by the time the water hit twenty-five degrees.”

Head hanging, Ryuji managed that full-body slump that should have caused anybody else to fall over. “C’mon, ya know what I’m talkin’ about. We’ve gotta be way above the other dudes here. Why shouldn’t we party harder too?”

Those words tickled the memory of the last boy who thought he deserved access to Hifumi’s body, and Akira couldn’t stop a snarl from flickering across his face. He took in a breath and mumbled, “Tell me when you’re done stroking your ego.”

Despite the transfer student’s protest, Ryuji glared right back. “We’re special.” He flexed his shoulder and looked at the artist putting away the last of the lunch. “Ain’t that right?”

Snapping the lid of the cooler closed, Yusuke stood.  “Hm. There is a logic to what you say.”

To the transfer student’s surprise, Morgana’s tail drooped and his ears twitched. “How would we get Lady Ann to notice our special charm?”

Ryuji flashed a toothy, too-perfect grin. “We could steal you-know-what.”

Waiting for his shogi opponent to take his turn, Akira snarked, “The ring of the Dark Lord?”

The smack of Ryuji’s palm against his forehead filled the transfer student with satisfaction. “Dude, what is wrong with you? Girls’ hearts!” He turned his desperation to the artist. “C’mon, man, I bet we’ve got vibes ta put old heroes to shame. We outta follow the footsteps of Heracles and Diarmuid.”

Yusuke lowered the finger-frame he was staring at the beach to turn surprise to the runner. “You… you know of their ancient legends?”

Pumping a fist, Ryuji thrust his chest out and his grin grew. “Totally! Babes were all over ‘em.”

Of course that would be his criteria for a great hero.

Yusuke scratched at his hoodie. “Both of those venerated figures were betrayed to death, Heracles by his father Zeus and Diarmuid by his king.”

Ryuji flinched back a step, but in just an eyeblink even that gut punch was shoved back. “C’mon, dude. How can you know if Ann’s such hot stuff if you’ve never seen other chicks? You owe it to your art to get out there an’ see the world!” He stepped close and threw an arm around the artist’s shoulder. “You can’t paint with only one color, right? Real life’s totally the same. You gotta get out there an’ see what life’s got or you can’t appreciate what’s beautiful at home. Even if you’re all in on Ann, knowin’ how other girls are just enhances how you can appreciate her.

Now the artist fumbled. “I… your words do have a sense to them I cannot counter.”

Ryuji’s too-perfect grin could have blinded, and he closed in to hook his arm around the artist’s shoulders. “See? Variety’s the spice of life, you can’t savor it if you ain’t willin’ to try.” He let go of the artist to pace in front of the transfer student. “Come on, you need some action too. You got that brooding hero thing girls go nuts for, an’ if anyone needs to cut loose, it’s you.”

Akira finished his move and hit End Turn before glancing up from his phone. Heart still crumpled from the certainty that he could never deserve her, venom crept into his voice, “I’m not interested in ego-stroking. Hearts aren’t toys to play with.” Besides, he could travel the whole Earth and not find someone with Hifumi’s charm, wisdom, and kindness.

If Ryuji noticed the tone, he shrugged it off with greater ease than a duck letting rain slide down its back. “For real? Ain’t all life a game? How you gonna know how much you got if you never put yourself out there?”

“And where would I find anybody like Hifumi?” Akira spat back. In a hush, he added, “I don’t even deserve her. Why would I inflict myself on someone else?”

Ryuji gave a heavy huff, as if all of this was somehow supposed to be for the transfer student’s benefit. “Fine, I ain’t gonna drag you out if you really don’t wanna get out there. But you seriously need to stop puttin’ it like it’s somethin’ anyone deserves. Romance is what peeps want, an’ that’s it. Even ‘Fumi ain’t gonna like a dude who’s bitter.”

Akira was on his feet in a heartbeat, snarl bearing teeth, but he caught himself before he put a hand on the runner’s throat. “Don’t you dare. I know better than anyone she deserves better than me.”

“C’mon, Yusuke. Let’s do what men do.” They trotted off.

Morgana hopped onto the cooler next to the transfer student. “Hey, I know Ryuji’s childish about a lot of things, but he’s right that you need to loosen up and have fun while the sun is shining. She chose to be your friend because you chose to be hers, not after you changed her mother’s heart. Sitting around moping isn’t going to make the judge any faster.”

That voice telling him he could never be good enough for her echoed, and for a moment all he could feel was a crushing pressure inside and a desperate need to take her in his arms. Akira adjusted his glasses with his middle finger.

The team leader tisked. “Fine then, watch our spot while I keep those two from getting in too much trouble,” he said, before taking off after the artist and runner.

Tuesday, 30 August 2016
Afternoon
Miura Beach

Ryuji strutted over the sand, the artist and cat following after. Just showed what kind of a leader the cat was, he only got the spot by pretending to offer the role to a kid with crippling lack of self-worth. Pity he wouldn’t take a hint and come along to pick up chicks, getting some interest could’ve helped his image issues. If only the acrobatic runner wasn’t so stuck on one girl in particular. Sure she was hot but how could he know if she was so great if he never struck out into the world? Well, fine. At least the artist had enough true curiosity to take cue from a real man among men, though with the interest Morgana followed the runner almost wondered if he really used to be a human.

Ryuji bypassed a couple families and obvious couples hanging out. That would be the majority of the beach-goers this close to the end of summer break. Then his eyes alighted on the prize: a pair of girls sitting in beach chairs. No children, no guys. And they were in cute bikinis. Not a guarantee they came to the beach for some action, but it was a shot. He took a deep breath to put on his manliest facade and swaggered up to them, bearing a confident grin. “Yo, ladies.”

Buzz off,” the woman in a darker green said. “We’re talking.” She turned to the other young woman, someone college age-ish. “I just don’t know what to do with the quarterly bonus. Maybe I should’ve taken a loan and bought while the stock market was low, but after the Phantom Thief hacked Medjed, it’s almost back at an all-time high, and who knows when the next low is going to arrive?”

The other woman nodded. “Well, the market can go up, but the rule’s a rule for a reason. You never want to invest while the market’s high. That’s where the greatest potential for falling indices is. You want to wait until you’re doing well, and the market is not.”

Ryuji took a step closer. Maybe a different approach. “I hear you’re talking ‘bout the Phantom Thief.”

You idiot!” Morgana snapped at him. “Don’t you go giving us away just to show off to people who are already too busy to give you the time of day!”

Both young women dropped their boring conversation about the stock market and locked onto the black cat. The former cooed, “Ohhh! Look, it’s a cute widdle kittie!”

Now listen here,” Morgana protested, before Light Green Bikini got up and started scratching behind his ears. A thrum sounded from his throat. “Lower.”

Afternoon
Miura Beach

Ryuji trotted down the beach, looking for the next opportunity. Family, family, couple sharing a beach towel.

The rotten, no-good girl-stealing cat who certainly wasn’t a human trailed behind. “Don’t be jealous you don’t have a true gentleman’s magnetic personality. I can’t help if it shines through even despite this distorted body.”

He would have whirled around and kicked sand, but Ryuji spotted a prime target. A girl even cuter than Ann, if a bit shorter, standing in the shade of a beach umbrella, a hand over her eyes as she glanced this way and that. If that wasn’t a girl scoping for a stud, he’d buy the next group dinner. And that white bikini was so hot .

Hel-lo,” Ryuji greeted her with a grin.

The girl brushed at her curly, brown hair done up in pigtails by black scrunchies. Her eyes flicked to his hair for just one beat. “Not interested.”

He put his hands on his hips and thrust out his chest just a bit. Confidence, he told himself. “It’s a warm day, the sun is shining. It’s perfect to try something new!”

Her dark eyes glared at him. “I already have a date.”

Ryuji spied her small beach towel, just one small handbag, and a single empty soda can. He spread his hands. “And hey, I’m right here.”

But there are three of us,” Yusuke protested.

Footsteps shuffled over the sandy beach from the snack hut off by the bus stop. “Got us a few cold ones,” a man’s voice said. When the runner turned, he saw a muscular dude almost as tall as him, but brawny across the chest and arms carrying a sweating four-pack of cold beer. Clearly this guy skipped leg day but not anything else. “What’re you kids doing here?”

Ryuji ducked his head just a bit. “Just leaving.”

Feet padded after them and for a beat the runner thought she was going after the artist, but she instead knelt down. “I love cats!”

Afternoon
Miura Beach

After at least ten more minutes of spotting no promising potential, Ryuji spotted a girl pacing out of the water. This one wore a more conservative dark blue bikini and her wet hair cascaded down to mid-shoulder-blade but was plenty to get his blood pumping. He dashed a pace ahead so he and the artist still with him stood in any of her most likely paths. By this point he didn’t care if she went for the fruity artist, he would’ve settled for some giggling and eye candy. “Hey, hot stuff. You lookin’ for some company?”

The girl rolled her eyes. “Ugh. Boys . I came to the beach to swim .”

Afternoon
Miura Beach

Ryuji maintained his pace through sheer grit. This was the beach in the summer. The prime of his teenage years. Where were the thrilling experiences he kept hearing other people talking about? This should have been ground zero with hundreds of hot girls in sexy swimsuits. It was the perfect place to flaunt it! And so many were, but nobody wanted to go a step further!

Then a girl in a backless one-piece stepped out of the meandering crowds and closed on him. She had shoulder-length hair, a super cute smile, and junk in the trunk. Score!

She looked at the assembled group and clasped her hands together. “Your cat is sooo cute!”

Afternoon
Miura Beach

Ryuji stared out at the water as the surf advanced and retreated. The mighty ocean never looked so dull. It wasn’t striking out – that happened, it was just rolling the dice against life. Couldn’t have a chance of success without a chance of failure. It wasn’t that the only girl who traded conversation only wanted to talk to the artist.

It was that every single one went for the gods-damned cat!

Don’t worry,” Morgana said, and for a beat the runner wondered if he was about to dispense some sympathy. “Maybe in a hundred years you’ll have my gentleman’s charisma!” He laughed and bounded away around two fruity guys.

Ryuji whirled around and broke into a run after the no-good cat and give him an appropriate punishment like a dunk in the Pacific.

Tuesday, 30 August 2016
Late Afternoon
Miura Beach

As the boys packed up the towels, umbrella, and cooler, Futaba soaked in their praise but couldn’t help that hollow feeling gnawing at her insides. She tugged at the off-one-shoulder shirt which felt several sizes too big but also preserved her modesty. After some pacing, she managed to stop her feet at the water’s edge, descended into her familiar crouch, and looked out into the endless waves. She noticed even Akira seemed antsy and kept checking his phone. What would Mom have said about them? Would she have appreciated Ann’s exuberant cheer or picked it apart? Ryuji’s candor, honest to the point of crass? Yusuke’s almost alien perspective? Hifumi’s understated, hesitant friendliness?

She didn’t realize Akira approached until after he crouched next to her and patted her beach-shirted shoulder. “You okay?”

Ann stepped closer, but stopped a pace away. “Hey, you’re doing great, Futaba-chan!” She stepped closer to whisper to him, “What’s up?”

Futaba wiped at the tears she hadn’t realized she was shedding. “I thought everything would be fine after I accepted Marcus. That after people who had been in my mind, seen my memories, and confirmed that story about Mom was a lie…” She wiped, but the tears kept coming. Why was it so easy to put everything aside and go into Togo’s palace? Why’d everything have to pile on now? Why did such a carefree day have to come to resemble one of Mom’s trips to Mogami Park? Struggling to keep a brave face, she wiped harder. “I wished so hard I’d go to sleep and Mom would be there and it would all be a bad dream.”

Akira’s knee sank into the wet sand and he wrapped an arm around her. Her arms latched onto him of her own accord and he patted her head. “Don’t you cry. You’re strong.”

Ann smacked him across the top of his head and knelt down to rest a hand on the hacker’s shoulder. “Tears shed for another are a sign of strength. We know how much you loved your mother. It doesn’t matter if the rest of society is stupid. If you need to cry for your mother, every one of the Phantom Thieves are still with you.”

For some baffling reason, that shut off the waterworks and that rising sense of pressure inside Futaba ebbed.

Akira remained tense and avoided eye contact, but his grip on her loosened. “She’s probably right.”

Futaba let go of the transfer student to wipe her eyes and he let her stand back. “I remember every day with Mom. She’d wake up early to fix a boxed lunch for me, or add something special to the ones from the convenience store. She’d scold me for peeking at her notes, but work late into the night to unlock the mysteries of cognition.”

She could hear the others coming closer, but hanging a little past Akira and Ann. After a beat, Yusuke offered, “She was a woman who wouldn’t have wanted you to sleep your life away. You were a treasure to her just as surely as I was to the mother who painted Sayuri for me.”

Morgana, despite his cat-like dislike of all things wet, paced close. “Are you worried about your Shadow? Such a distortion would be obvious from problematic behavior in reality. You’ve accepted and overcome your distorted desires.”

And you guys already removed the core of my distorted reality. My desire to escape life is gone, I guess I’m just not quite as quick on figuring out how I’m supposed to go out into life.” Futaba brushed away sand.

It’s understandable that you felt trapped before,” Morgana said, before retreating from the advancing surf. “Your mind twisted itself into a labyrinth to try to handle the horrible real world you found yourself in.”

Yusuke took a step closer. “Just like I clung to Sensei for anything familiar, even when I knew he was hurting us, you found yourself in a labyrinth of your own fear. Your exact footsteps may have varied from ours, but we are not so different.”

Ryuji paced in and scratched his head. “Uh, I have a question. I tote get feelin’ bad when your Ma died, but you went after Akira ‘cause you heard ‘bout the Phantom Thieves, right?”

She nodded.

How’d you find ‘bout us specifically?” he said. “I mean, we were tryin’ to get famous so people’d know they ain’t alone out there. And you knew the Phantom Thieves could change hearts an’ weren’t havin’ any luck changin’ yourself on your own, but how’d you get to Akira to start things off?”

Futaba wrapped her arms around her torso. “Bug I put on Sojiro’s phone. At the time I was still traumatized from… my last home, and I wanted to be forewarned if he was planning on getting rid of me. He didn’t, but I was scared about being caught unprepared so I listened in on his bug and copied to any other convenient phones I had the chance.”

Makoto crossed her arms. “Futaba… have you bugged all our phones?”

The hacker tapped her chin. “I think I’m missing yours, actually. But I have plenty of bugs on phones in the police. Anyway, when I learned how close you were I thought ‘this is my chance to find someone who can save me’. Plus Sojiro’d been nice every time I saw him in Shinjou, and he protected me in Tokyo. When that lawyer came in and started threatening him, I thought I was about to lose everything all over again.” She awkwardly fiddled with her hands. “And, now here we are. I’m just glad that it worked. Now I’m even paying it forward by changing Hifumi’s mom.”

Makoto nodded. “That sounds horrible. Who would threaten a man just trying to protect a traumatized girl?”

Akira held out a flat hand against his scalp roughly where the bullying lawyer’s hair was parted. “Medium-height fascist chick with grey hair with an asymmetrical part. Threatened to revoke Boss’ custody.”

Makoto’s eyes went wide. “ Big Sis ?” She held her head. “I knew she’d been getting stressed since the summer break started, but I never imagined she’d threaten his ability to keep care of her.”

Maybe it was the horrified self-realization she recognized, but Futaba walked over to the president. “Don’t worry. She left and I’d never let anyone get between me and Sojiro again.” She gave a show smile and looked across the other Phantom Thieves. “We could even change her heart if we can just get deeper into Mementos.”

A distant quality entered the president’s crimson gaze. “I haven’t given up hope that we can change her heart before she gets so bad as to form her own Palace.”

Futaba gave a subtle nod of acknowledgment. “Well, you guys helped me. So I’m gonna help them. Besides, Mom definitely died of a mental shutdown. If Blue Cove air gapped Mom’s research, that means not only can I not get to it remotely, they’re definitely still conducting cognitive psience research. Maybe they were even directly responsible for killing her. I wanna know who and why.”

Morgana retreated from the advancing surf. “You think it’s related to the Black Mask we’re investigating?”

Futaba nodded. “I remember her notes said if the cognitive self is extinguished, the host self would die. Changing Hifumi’s mother should protect her from the Black Mask, but there’s still lots of people out there who are vulnerable to somebody killing and blackmailing people’s Shadows.” Her hands clenched into fists. “I’m gonna stop him, and I’m gonna avenge Mom.”

Just be careful,” Morgana pointed out. “Your mother died a year and a half ago. That means whoever is out there has more than a year of experience on all of you. Even I might be in danger and I’ve been navigating Mementos and people’s Palaces for almost two years.”

Futaba’s eyes narrowed. “I’ll be ready to take down the men in black.”

Akira tilted his head. “What’s this got to do with Will Smith?”

Futaba threw her hands in the air. “How can you know about movies like that and never have seen Star Wars?”

Ryuji cleared his throat, no smile on his face. “Well, far as I’m concerned, you proved yourself in Togo’s temple. As long as you ain’t got a petty reason like impressin’ a girlfriend, I got your back.”

A brief glare exchanged between he and Akira.

Makoto stepped in between them. “All right, you two. Akira, Futaba? Take our garbage to the dumpster. You two live in the same place, so head home as soon as we’re done. Ryuji? Help us finish packing up. It looks like a new wave of beach-goers is coming, so let’s get out of here. Check in on the group chat when you get there.”

Tuesday, 30 August 2016
Earl y Evening
Yongen, Bath House

Akira rubbed himself dry with a fresh towel, trying to scour the last feeling of wind-blown dust and that faint slimy feel seawater left behind. He didn’t get to see Hifumi in a swimsuit, but her text during the train ride indicated she’d be home to practice shogi with her father for her title match tomorrow. Futaba took the biggest step from her life as a shut in that he could have imagined. She looked even more comfortable than he did out there.

His phone buzzed as he finished toweling himself dry. More chat as the other Phantom Thieves got home, and what their next step should be. At least Morgana granted them tomorrow off, for Kosei’s school and for him to join Hifumi’s tournament in the evening. The last message on the group chat, Ryuji speculated on the cognitive assassin the Black Mask might turn out to be.

Futaba singled Akira out specifically to ask, [What about the Metaverse Navigator? Bastet doesn't use it, and everyone else says they got it from you. Who'd you get it from? Steal it from your old man before he kicked you to Tokyo?]

Akira set down the phone to change into fresh clothes. To tell them or not to tell them? Ah, who was he kidding? He didn’t back down when faced with some drunk who turned out to be his old bastard’s patron, he wouldn’t back down now. [A long-nosed guy in a strange not-quite-dream place gave it to me so I could change hearts.]

Makoto texted, [I shouldn't have expected you to give a serious answer.]

[That wasn't a joke. If you have a better answer for how I got a cell phone app that lets us go into a mind realm, I'm all ears.] Akira set the phone back down to pull on a new long-sleeved shirt to hide the scars on his wrists.

Yusuke texted, [Do we have any idea if this Black Mask assassin person uses the Nav as well?]

[No clue.] Futaba texted, [I recall a gate idea in Mom's notes while she was working at Blue Cove, but I don't think it went anywhere or I doubt they'd have hired Kurusu. Vice-Director Kurusu, not Akira.]

Yuuki logged in, and after a few moments of reading sent, [I find the idea of a gate to a mental world even harder to believe than a cell phone app.]

Akira chuckled. [Not as weird as the idea of people dying in the fog and appearing on top of TV antennas.]

[That's not funny, Akira-san,] Yuuki responded.

[Still not joking. Happened a couple years before I went to Tanizaki Middle School. A detective from the city snapped and killed a couple people. The papers called it the Fog Killer. His mental competence was called into question when he claimed to do it by pushing people into TVs, but I guess prosecutors were more interested in closing a case than not putting away a man who needed a straight-jacket more than a barred cell.]

Makoto texted, [That still doesn't explain how Black Mask is getting into the Metaverse to do his evil deeds. Or why.]

Ryuji jumped in to say, [Dudes, don't you remember what Madarame said? 'When he says you pay, you pay'. He's in it for the money.]

[I can imagine that just being able to go into a magic world and affect people without them being able to touch you would be a real power trip,] Yuuki sent. [You're the expert at computers, Futaba-san. What do you think of the app?]

Three dots danced next to Futaba’s ID for long seconds. [It's not really an app. It looks like one, but it's more like a pointer than a true app.]

Makoto texted, [Well, it seems like there aren't going to be any answers on that front, either. Might as well get some sleep. Good luck at school tomorrow, Yusuke and Hifumi-san. Akira, if Hifumi's really going through with talking about her mother the change of heart is going to come up. You should keep your distance so there aren't so many dots connecting her to us. No reason to draw police attention. For the rest of you, study. Shujin starts on Thursday.]

Notes:

Akira is referring to the temperature of the water in Celsius. For those with addiction to Fahrenheit, the non-lobotomized frogs jumped out shortly before the temperature reached 80 degrees.

Chapter 118: August 31st, Title Match

Chapter Text

Persona 5: Daywatch

Wednesday, 31 August 2016
After School
Kosei, Painting Studio

Yusuke smeared his number two brush into the twin smears of blue and white on his battered wood palette, swirling them together into a lighter blue just off of Ann’s eyes.

The west door slammed open and a junior classman shouted, “They’re here! The Venus of Shogi’s press conference is for real!”

Two of his fellow painters abandoned their works in progress without a second thought. “Think they’ll talk about her photo shoots? I can’t believe we have a babe like that at our school!”

Yusuke’s eyebrow arched. He wiped his paintbrush and set it on the slot in front of a partial painting of Ann. “Perhaps she is right and I should check my phone more often.” To his consternation, quite a conversation had sprung up and finished on the group chat while he was working on his painting, with Hifumi detailing her plans to hold a small press conference about her mother’s machinations, change of heart, and intentions not to throw today’s match. Akira seemed quite annoyed that Makoto and the team leader Morgana both wanted him to remain out so as to present fewer Phantom Thief connections, but ended up acquiescing to the team’s request for discretion. Attending her tournament would be easier to explain, she had plenty of admirers.

The Shujin student who gave him shelter for weeks might not be able to be here, but Yusuke owed it to him to provide what support an additional friend’s presence could. He made his way to the conference room in Academic Building Two, where a large crowd gathered and one of Kosei’s security guards tried to halt him.

A woman with short, dark hair and aviator glasses advanced, a digital camera hanging from a strap on her neck with a guest pass from the front office. When the security guard attempted to stop her too, she reached to a hip pouch and flashed a journalist’s badge. “Ohya of the Maiasa Newspaper.” Another two journalists, one with a large camera and tripod, presented their own credentials.

The guard nodded, “A moment.” He knocked once on the fogged-faux-glass door and opened it. Just inside, Hifumi stood talking to Kosei’s vice principal and wringing her hands. “Last wave of reporters, sir.”

He let Ohya through, but when the guard tried to stop Yusuke the commotion drew Hifumi’s attention. “Kitagawa-san! Please, come in.” She turned to the vice principal to explain, “He’s one of my few friends here at Kosei.”

The vice principal’s crossed arms tightened. “He’ll have to sit at the back and stay quiet.”

Yusuke nodded. If Akira could go through so much effort for him, standing in for Hifumi-san’s conference would be the least he could do. The guard closed the door and the last journalists filed in to their seats at folding tables or set up their cameras. The artist stepped closer to her and clasped his hands behind his back. “Are you sure about this?”

Hifumi held a firm, regal posture as she answered, “If the Phantom Thief can change my mother’s heart, it would be as cowardly as duplicitous of me to try to hide behind her machinations. Or to blame her for everything when I don’t know where her plans stopped and my own permissiveness began. I can’t even be certain how many of my victories are mine . I want to earn my place, wherever it is, and I can not do so while hiding behind the specter of falsehoods. Rumors of cheating or fixing have been out there for months anyway, the least this can do is clear the air and give me a chance to get an honest start. I would never willingly be part of such unsporting deceit. At least this way, I can set the message straight.”

Some of the nearby reporters whispered to each other about what was next up for the Venus of Shogi’s future shoots. When they began speculating on her cup size, the artist looked to the vice principal, who acted as if he couldn’t hear.

Ohya gave a smile which seemed just a bit too wide. “Talk about idealistic. Good luck, kid. You’re gonna need all you can get.”

From the whispers and glances between the journalists, Yusuke doubted Ohya was being generous, but he understood the idea of wanting to be recognized for one’s own talents. He gave a nod and received a thankful one from Hifumi before she headed to the lecturn at the front of the room where one of the office’s clerical staff double-checked her uniform for imperfection.

The next half hour stretched on as Hifumi explained her mother’s plotting, the pain when she found out, the shame of being used and not knowing what she had earned and what she hadn’t, her fierce fight with her mother when she found out, and a stupendous impression of surprise when her mother’s heart ‘suddenly changed’. No few of the journalists acted like sharks smelling blood in the water, but a couple seemed genuinely sympathetic to her plight of being trapped by her ambitious mother’s plans.

A man from Tokyo Today raised a hand, “What about the plot to throw your next match?”

A fire kindled in Hifumi’s green eyes and the artist wished he brought his sketch pad as she riposted, “There can be no sportsmanship without integrity. The best thing for truth is an open field. I know not precisely how many of my matches were fixed in my favor, but even if this is my first game without any outside interference, I shall not impugn the dignity of shogi by doing any less than my very best. And I hope my opponent will do the same.”

Yusuke smiled at the simple integrity.

A journalist from the internet magazine Clear raised a hand. “Is it true that your own mother sold those tell-alls airing your family’s dirty laundry?”

Closing her eyes for a slow breath in and out before opening them, Hifumi’s facade remained as calm as before. “It is, but I would prefer to focus on shogi.”

But you didn’t have any part of them?”

The vice principal stepped in to speak into the microphone, “Let us all remember that Togo-chan is a minor and victim of overly ambitious people, many of whom could and should have stopped things before they developed to the extent they did. Police investigations have already cleared her of participation in the alleged match fixing. None of what happened would have been possible without exploitation by adults who should know better.” He stepped back.

A man with a clip for ‘Tokyo Weekender’ in his hat took the next question. “Is it true that your mother was involved in the financial crimes of the Kaneshiro Group?”

Hifumi’s delivered a cool, “I can not tell you about a part of Mother’s life which may or may not have existed and was never shared.”

Kosei wishes it to be clear it does not condone any such unethical behaviour and would not associate with anyone who would.” The vice principal stepped in, but the conference spiraled out again and again. One of the less disciplined journalists even called her ‘Phony Princess’ and Yusuke sensed he would be hearing a lot of that over the coming weeks.

The allotted time passed and Kosei’s vice principal took Hifumi’s place behind the lectern to thank the press and shoo them away.

Yusuke, recognizing a person maintaining a dignified front through willpower alone, stayed as security showed the press away. The artist stepped forward, feeling compelled to speak when Akira couldn’t be here to do so. “Whatever the others say, I think that your choice here was an act of utmost bravery. I am certain Akira would be proud.”

She folded her hands together and he could tell she wanted to fidget. “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t scared. With these past few weeks it feels like my castle has turned out to be a house of cards. But I promise I will put up a good fight so I don’t embarrass myself. While we share other things in common, I feel like shogi brought Akira and I together.” She shifted her weight from foot to foot. “You don’t think Akira…?”

Yusuke scanned her noble attempt to mask her apprehension. “He has spoken nothing but praise of your intelligence and virtue. As long as you give your best, I cannot imagine he would do any less than respect your dignity.”

Hifumi shifted her weight to her right foot. “Even with as many of those hyenas want me to lose?”

Yusuke let out a huff of a laugh. “You wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. It is one of the things which draws Akira-san to you.” He drew his phone. “Shall I message the group and tell them you are on the way to the venue? I am certain Akira can be there to see you before it begins.”

She shifted her weight away. “The Association tournament hall does not permit school uniforms by players, it might be seen as unfair promotion. I need to stop home to change, and as much as I might like to be with him, I’m so nervous I’m afraid I’d throw up on my dress. But… the match will be streamed online, if you and the others would like to follow.”

He nodded and she departed, adding a link to the Pro Shogi Players’ Association site to the group chat.

Yusuke rushed back to the painting studio. His latest failure to capture Ann would have to wait, he had sketches to put to paper while the details were still fresh!

Wednesday, 31 August 2016
Evening
Pro Shogi Players’ Association Tournament Hall

Akira paced in the guest lobby of the tournament hall, his heart hammering from more than the perpetual crowd that made up pedestrian traffic. He still felt hot, not just due to the summer heat beating down. He reviewed the group chat, feeling a small smile from the number of other Phantom Thieves voicing their support but a nervousness that she didn’t give him a time or place to meet before the match started.

After giving a link to the Association stream, she texted, [I'm going in. I'll win with these very hands.]

[Give it all you've got, Queen Togo,] he’d replied. She hadn’t responded, but he didn’t know if that was due to time or if he said something wrong. When he noticed the other guests put on headphones, he plugged in a wired earbud Yuuki gave him and sat down to watch the stream.

Hifumi and her opponent bowed to each other and sat down on opposite sides of a tall, wood board. The commentators gave introductions and yammered about her opponent, but Akira’s heart hammered in his throat as he looked over the flattering purple dress draping down from her shoulders. The match began with even more noisy commentary than he expected despite reading up on historical shogi matches to help her. Both players advanced on all fronts, setting up move and counter-move without actually committing to a strike.

Then her opponent seized her lancer with a knight, adding three threatened pieces to half a dozen already contested across the rest of the board. The next few turns consisted of feints and retreats as she tried to regain the middle.

Is this the end for the Phony Princess?” a magazine journalist commentator blabbed.

Akira made a promise to look up his address so he could burn down the front yard topiary.

Bishops and silver generals advanced, pawns decimated as the sides jockeyed for position. When the stream showed her face, he could see her biting her lip in that way when he made a random move that threw off one of her twelve-step-in-advance plans and she was trying to plan back out to a dozen moves. Her formation’s center crumbled and a former shogi master commentator kept calling the end.

Then her silver general seized her opponent’s last knight and her opponent sat back to wipe sweat from his brow.

He heard a suited man at another table talk to the man next to him, “Now that was a master stroke. She just cut off three avenues of approach and she’s threatening four pieces he can’t defend.”

A long minute stretched before her opponent responded, capturing a silver general to try to head off a promotion. She slid her other lancer all the way up to capture the bishop guarding his king. She’d just opened up another four pieces to capture without reprisal.

The annoying journalist commentator admitted, “Maybe she is the real deal?”

Her opponent set down a captured rook, re-opening the center of the board. The next long minutes stretched as her captures were responded with capture and he kept blocking her attempts to close in on his king. Even Akira could see the point of no return when her opponent got a pawn into the promotion zone and Hifumi had to defend both from behind and in front.

There’s been a lot of back and forth, but I see at least three routes to checkmate in less than four moves,” the journalist commentator said.

Long seconds stretched on and she didn’t even reach for the board.

I concede,” Hifumi spoke at last.

The announcers went on about board analysis and passive-aggressive sniping at Hifumi, but she rose with the grace of a royal, bowed to her opponent, and headed to the edge of the tournament square where more reporters waited to hound her about the game.

Akira turned off the stream and took out his earbud. He didn’t care what those idiots had to say. She was up against a better opponent and went down fighting, with a great deal more grace than he would have. Even so, being a master of shogi was more than a point of pride. It was her . He had practice in humility in their private games, but this very public loss had to sting for her.

Hence his surprise when she strode out of the hall to the tournament room with her back straight, looking every bit as regal as the first day he saw her at Mass. It wasn’t until Hifumi met his eyes that her dignified bearing took a faint hunch and she averted her gaze.

Last time they had problems and walked away without talking, he spent days agonizing over thinking he’d screwed over the relationship forever. Chanting the mantra ‘Akira does not run’ in his mind, he stood up and paced to her while they were still in the relative privacy of the association hall.

She clasped her left arm with her right. As pretty as those green eyes were, they still wouldn’t meet his. “I’m ashamed. An ant would have served as more of a challenge against an elephant. I was a disgrace in front of yo—”

He reached out a hand to clasp her arm. “You were up against a mightier army than ever before. And you were as dignified as a queen, even at the end.” A bitter smile broke through her lips, and he drew her in to a hug.

She tensed for a moment, either in surprise or to push him away, but after a moment slipped an arm around him and relaxed. “You just won’t let me mope, will you?”

Akira relaxed just enough to let them look each other in the eye. “Your smile is too beautiful for me to give up seeing it one more time.”

A giggle slipped out and she leaned her head against his shoulder. “It’s strange. I lost and I’m not happy about that, but… I feel like I’ve been exorcised of a demon. The moment I realized victory was impossible, I felt at peace.” She squeezed against him and he wondered if she knew what her breasts pressing against him did to him. “I hope you can look at today as an example of what not to do.”

He wanted to give her a chaste kiss, or massage her shoulders, but he already spotted a couple eyes flick their way despite her challenger coming out and dominating the journalists’ attention . “You’ve been trying to teach me from the beginning that one must win the same as one loses: with valor and grace.” He opened his arms to step back. “Do you want to sit down somewhere quiet? I can buy you a cup of coffee.”

She drew her arms back and turned up her nose. “You’re far too kind. Haven’t you heard them? I’m the Phony Princess now.”

He took her chin with two fingers and gazed into those eyes he could drown in. “You’ll always be Queen Togo to me.”

She gave a hesitant smile that, combined with the purple dress cascading down her shoulders, made her look like a queen in court. “Don’t put me on too high a pedestal, Aki. A queen wouldn’t want to be out of reach of her general.”

Then I’ll learn to fly,” he said, feeling her small smile kindle his.

A flash threw their silhouettes on the wall and both knew there’d be no peace as long as they stayed there. “Leblanc?” she whispered for final confirmation. After his nod, she separated to face the last wave of reporters who hadn’t been allowed into the venue.

Late Evening
Yongen-Jaya Station

Akira paced back and forth on the train station, the cram of people replaced by the heat of the fading summer day. Another train pulled in and the doors opened, a handful of people pushing their way out.

At long last, Hifumi was one of those disembarking, looking side to side before spotting him. She stepped around a woman walking her bicycle out of the alley, then walked side-by-side into the narrow alleys, enjoying as relative a silence as Tokyo would ever allow. Hifumi flashed him a small smile and his stomach flipped. She and wrapped an arm around his to hold him close. “So, what shall we do for today’s date?”

Akira’s face blazed. “Today’s?”

She turned to him, that smile of hers driving the butterflies in his stomach. “Aki, what do you think we’ve been doing since May?”

The books and videos on dating poured through his mind and all he could think of was the number of things he hadn’t done. “B-but your mother’s rule…”

She tugged him tighter, her smile growing wider. “Aki, she made a rule. I do want to honor my father and mother, but that doesn’t mean I’m bound to do everything she says.” Her thumb traced up and down his arm. “When the right man came along, I wanted to date again.” Something about her smile sharpened, a hungry spark glinted in her eyes and stirred desire in him. Her face tilted up a bit, her lips puckering together.

His eyes drifted from hers to her lips and he couldn’t help but be aware of her body heat against his. Her purple dress somehow made it worse . His footing faltered.

I’m sorry.” Hifumi caught him, but there was a distance between them now. “I almost made the same mistake as last time, didn’t I? I’m so… eager to get to the stage some of my last relationship, I realized I never asked where you wanted to be.” A cringe crept across her face. “You don’t think I’m being… inappropriate?”

He straightened his long-sleeved shirt. “I don’t understand.”

She let go of his arm and stepped further away. “By… being so forward? I know some people say it’s wrong for the girl to make the first move or—”

No,” he said taking her hands and wishing he wasn’t wearing his gloves so he could feel her skin against his. “Hifumi, I’m not even sure where I am, much less where I want to be.” He squeezed just a little and he thought through his fellow Thieves for what advice they might give. Ryuji might have been indelicate sometimes, but he always knew what he was going for and that meant he was always ready to go. “I never thought about it before, but I… like a girl who knows what she wants.”

She sidled closer to him, a warm smile blooming on her face and that smoldering look in her eyes again. She slipped a hand up his chest to his neck to tilt his face down towards hers.

Hello!” Makoto called out from the alley behind, causing the pair to bolt apart. She looked over them in the alley again. “I just interrupted something, didn’t I?”

No!” Akira blurted, then mentally kicked himself when he noticed Hifumi take a subtle step away from him. “What are you doing here?”

Makoto held up a cloth shopping bag. “The party. Futaba invited us all to celebrate Hifumi’s first game.”

But she lost,” Akira said before seeing Hifumi flinch, and again wishing he could bash his head against the wall.

Makoto lowered the cloth bag. “I don’t pretend to be a master of shogi, but she gave a good show. I had trouble following along as the game progressed.” She held a knuckle to her lips for a beat. “I wonder if that’s the strategic equivalent an anime ninja fight where bystanders can’t see anything but a blur.”

Standing straight and proud, Hifumi gave a nod and polite smile. “That’s an interesting way to think of it. Well, if Futaba wants to host a party, let’s not keep her waiting.”

Akira nodded, waiting until the girls walked past to pull out his phone and confirm that Futaba did indeed invite the group to a party over group chat while he was crushed in the train car. Hifumi must have been busy talking her way out of the gaggle of reporters. He opened the door for them, letting the two girls step into the cafe.

Sojiro busied himself at the kitchenette while Ann and Yusuke chatted at the first booth. An empty booth sat between them and Futaba, who had a cup of coffee on the table in front of her but perched on the seat. She slipped out of the booth and gave a shy wave.

Ann glanced up at the door’s bell, and when nobody else spoke up she jumped to her feet to fill in the void, a glass of soda held high. “To first steps forward!”

Hifumi looked around at all of them with wide eyes for a beat. Then she sniffed. Then sniffled again. Then her eyes shone with unshed tears and her shoulders trembled.

Futaba ran over to jab a finger in the transfer student’s face. “What did you do?”

Tremulous laughter rolled out of Hifumi and her eyes welled over. She latched onto Akira’s arm. Through the laughter, she pushed out, “He… brought me in… to such wonderful people.”

Her undulant laughter transformed into hiccups, but after a minute between Hifumi’s grip on the transfer student’s arm and Makoto’s hand on her shoulder, she calmed down and took an offered tissue from Ann.

The bell jingled as the door swung open and Ryuji paced in. “Yo!”

Yusuke gave her a nod, contemplation in his eyes. “When Sensei changed, I felt the proverbial rug yanked out from under my feet. You have family to take care of, are you sure you are all right?”

Hifumi dabbed at her eyes with the tissue. “I’m still feeling… so many things. These past two weeks have been such a tumble, and I can’t even quiet my mind.” She slid her other hand down to interlace her fingers with Akira’s, drawing a full blush out of him. “I felt like I was in purgatory, where even my victories came with Pyrrhic loss.” Her beautiful green gaze dropped. “I have enough distance now to admit, I think part of me knew of my mother’s strategy. That my opponents weren’t always playing their best. I would have hated my life, even shogi.” She wiped at her face again. “But thanks to all of you, I’m free to go out into the world. To show the world the real Togo Hifumi, and play against the real people out there and not the fragments Mother screened.”

Yusuke lifted his coffee cup. “Then to the truth and new beginnings.”

Ryuji lifted a fist in the air and gave a whoop.

Sojiro came to a stop behind the counter next to the register. “Well, it’s late but I suppose I can whip up one last thing. What’ll it be?”

Wednesday, 3 1 August 2016
Late E vening
Yongen, Leblanc

Morgana licked at the oil on the plate, nothing left of the sardines but the spine. The rest of the Phantom Thieves chatted with a joviality as if they’d conquered a palace, and the leader couldn’t think of a time his heart had been so full. And he was sure it had nothing to do with his stomach.

The restroom door burst open and Futaba tromped out. “Sorry for dropping toxic waste in your bathroom, Akira.” She wouldn’t have said anything, but he kept the bathroom cleaner than the one at home. She came to a stop next to the middle booth where the Phantom Thieves had all gathered – Akira and Hifumi sharing a small wedge of the seat next to him, Ann and Yusuke across the table chatting over one of his sketches, and Makoto quizzing Ryuji with kanji flashcards she just happened to have in her purse. Futaba prided herself on having a mind like a steel trap, but the president was an academic machine .

Ryuji took the excuse to pause from the pressured study session to flash a smirk. “Hey, s’long as you weren’t thowin’ shit around.”

A scoff floated out from Makoto and she waggled the last notecard enough to sound above the easy banter. “There’s plenty of throwing with the eggs and stones at Toranosuke-san.”

Ann looked up from the soft penciled sketches. “Toranosuke-san?”

Akira perked, not often being able to explain a piece of Tokyo when everybody else had been there longer. “He’s the politician who’s making speeches at Station Square every couple nights. He’s always there on Sunday nights.” His gaze slid to the student president as his arm around Hifumi tightened. “What do you mean throwing eggs and stones? He’s usually pretty deft at talking hecklers around.”

Realizing she’d lost momentum with the runner, Makoto put her flashcards together and tapped them straight on the counter before working a rubber band around them. “He’s had recurring problems with a couple people in particular who used to come and throw eggs while he was setting up, but as I was passing him Thursday – two weeks back – I saw someone hit him in the face with a rock. I can’t be sure if it’s the same people escalating or new additions to the group, but the dark ties and striped button-down shirts were the same as his description of problem interns from before.”

Hifumi straightened against the transfer student. “Oh, my. Is there anything we can do to help?”

Futaba hopped onto the seat of the next booth and leaned over the seat back. “How does he know they’re interns?”

Straightening, Akira took a beat to sip his tea. “He’s a consultant for a couple political parties. Just because he hasn’t won an election in a while doesn’t mean he isn’t connected. That might be why representatives without a firm hold on their seats might be concerned about competition. Matsushita wouldn’t be above it, he’s got a Shadow but Mementos isn’t locking in as his keyword so I sent his information to Yuuki-san. See if he could figure out the location or keyword for us.”

Swallowing a gulp of iced coffee, Ann pondered for a beat. “I wonder if that’s why Yuu-kun asked me to help him look up some of the people in the LDP’s staffing office. He works there.”

Is that important?” Yusuke said, his gaze at last leaving his sketches.

Ryuji leaned in, bracing a hand on one knee. “This Matsushita guy a real big shot?”

Ann set her glass down. “He seemed to think so. Matsushita’s not a cabinet appointee yet, but he’s been a liason to external affairs and blocked a couple investigations into party finances.”

Akira’s eyes narrowed in thought. “That’s pretty suspicious. Toranosuke-san was in the same caucus with Matsushita when their political careers started, and he was accused of embezzling a hefty sum of money from campaign funds. In the hundreds of millions.”

Ann shook her head. “I doubt it. Between Yuu-kun’s newspaper club buddies and Ohya-san, he’s getting pretty good at spotting people who are big spenders. But Matsushita’s been pretty thrifty for over fifteen years. If he had pocketed that much, I doubt he’d still be near the bottom of net worth representatives for as long as he’s been in the LDP. One of his talking points has even been spending within one’s means, if a journalist found him throwing money around they definitely would have busted him years ago. People who would embezzle millions of yen tend to have recurring issues with spending.”

Ryuji shrugged. “Could be coverin’ for someone else. Corporate boardrooms and political parties both have peeps who stick together when cops come knockin’.”

Futaba reached for the artist’s sketchbook, only for him to tug the book out of her reach, even adjusting his seat to keep it away from her. “So what’s the connection to interns?”

Makoto squinted in thought for a few moments. “Mishima-kun did say over the group chat that Matsushita-san worked as a secretary of some power in the LDP’s staffing office. If he’s correct, he’d have the power to direct fresh personnel on harassment missions as a test of loyalty. Apparently he’s kept out other young people from inner party positions. He might not have the power to appoint a cabinet, but having the ear of the ones who do can be powerful in its own right.”

Morgana popped up, paws on the table to give himself a better vantage point. “Obstructing police and toying with young people desperate to prove themselves in politics could be signs of a troubled heart as well as somebody dangerous but passed over by society.”

Ryuji pulled out his phone and typed into the Nav. “Well, if he’s got a Shadow but ain’t in Mementos, that means it’s gonna be way harder to get in. You guys sure it’s worth it?”

I think it is,” Akira offered.

Makoto snapped a rubber band around her flashcards. “The Liberal Democratic Party has been the majority since we rewrote the constitution, and represents politicians all over the political spectrum.”

Except the United Future Party,” Futaba said. “Assuming those guys don’t take over completely after the next election. Every time they’re on TV, the talking heads keep saying they’re gonna sweep both houses of the Diet. Some jerk screwing around with the biggest political coalition against them would definitely be good news for them.”

Whoa,” Ryuji said, giving little clue as to how closely he paid attention in civics class. “So… this Matsushita could be a big deal.”

Then shall we infiltrate his heart?” Hifumi offered. “I see many ways he could be dangerous and keeping things low-key.

Yusuke switched his sketchbook to his right hand to keep it from Futaba’s grasping hands. “I second the motion. Sensei kept a public veneer of respectability. Matsushita has the opportunity to cause widespread harm to society, or protect those who are.”

All for?” Morgana called, receiving a chorus of ‘ayes’ but the artist who just gave a nod and switched his sketchbook to his other hand to keep it away from the hacker. “All against?” After a few beats of silence, the team leader cleared his throat. “Then unless an emergency comes up in the mean time, we’ll make Matsushita Hiroyuki our priority for a possible change of heart.”

Ryuji slipped off his stool and yawned without so much as an effort to cover his mouth. “Well, it’s gettin’ late. I told Ma I’d have dinner away, but she’s gonna be expectin’ me soon.”

Proving that yawns were infectious, one crawled out of Futaba’s mouth even as she tried to grab for the artist’s sketchbook. She sat back. “I better get to bed, too, if I’m gonna keep on day shift with you guys.” She flopped onto the back of the booth seat and almost onto Ann. “Carry me home!”

Notes:

Another thanks to RedVelvetKitty for editing the Kamoshida arc, but had to end beta reading due to real world time constraints. Thanks to Superdale33 who has picked up beta-editing. If you would like to help contribute to this story, any feedback is appreciated. Especially if you would like to act as a beta to check plot, characterization, or just bounce ideas. PM on FanFiction or email to my username at gmail.

And a big thanks to commenters. Constructive criticism helps refine the craft, and it's always great seeing what people like or think of the characters and story.