What We Need Here/Is A Little Bit Of Panic (Persona 5 Genderbent Protagonist)

[Darkenning]

Shin Megami Tensei Persona 5:
What We Need Here/Is A Little Bit Of Panic

The day was going about as well as it ever had. He only had a pair of customers, who had each bought a single cup of coffee and then proceeded to spend four hours talking at each other about allegedly weighty issues of the day instead of, oh, hypothetically, finishing their coffees and getting a refill or, fantastic notion, ordering some curry. Well, annoying as it was, at least they weren't making any demands on his own time, allowing him to find distraction from all the other stuff that was going wrong in his life. Like the crossword puzzle he was doing now.

"Let's see, vertical is … name of a shellfish used in cultivating pearls," Sojiro muttered to himself. Well, that had to be --

"Oyster," said a quiet voice to his left.

Right, oyster, and that worked with what was already -- wait. Sojiro looked up and in the direction of that quiet voice.

Standing at the far end of the counter was a young person wearing thick glasses and a black student jacket over a checkered skirt, holding a heavy black bag in front of her in both hands. It was really only the skirt that told him that he was regarding a young woman; nothing about her face, or her short-cropped, curly black hair, spoke of femininity. "Right," he said, almost reflexively. "That was today that --"

His train of thought was derailed when the customers announced that they were finished and leaving their payment on the table, in the process offering him a bewildering compliment that he might have wanted elaborated under other circumstances. (Why was it good that his café was in an alley?) But he was just a bit distracted by the arrival of this latest complication to his already complicated life.
"So," he said once the other two had made their exit, after noting the way that his new arrival had not even glanced in their direction as they left. "You're Akira, then."

"Kurusu Akira," she agreed, and offered a small bow.

"Right," said Sojiro. "I'm Sakura Sojiro, and you're in my custody for the next year. When I heard your name, I was expecting a boy, and finding out that … well, never mind that now. Follow me." He turned toward the staircase with that last instruction.

"Yessir," she replied.

Sojiro paused, considered telling the girl that he worked for a living, and then decided not to bother.

She was quiet following him up the stairs to the apartment above the café, and showed no reaction to either the size of the unit nor how cluttered it was.

"So I'll be leaving every day after I lock up," he explained. "You'll be alone at night, but if you make any trouble, at all, I'll throw your ass out the next day."

No reaction to that, either. She almost seemed to be ignoring him as she slowly walked across the cluttered apartment to look out the window.

He coughed. "So, if I understand what happened … you and some guy were working together to bait and mug some other person, but things got out of hand and your partner ran off and left you holding the bag, right?" He prepared to get the same non-response that he'd already gotten, complete with a snapped demand for her to pay attention.

"Yessir," she said without looking back at him. "That's what happened."

In the course of his life, Sojiro had developed certain of his faculties. One of them, carefully and painfully trained, was his bullshit detector, and it was blaring quite loudly now. And that was odd because the narrative that he'd just repeated, and that she was ostensibly confirming, was what had been described to him by what he'd thought were reliable sources. And yet her manner was that of someone forced to repeat a lie. Something odd was going on here, and Sojiro had the distinct suspicion that it was going to further complicate the complication to an already complicated life that this young woman represented.

"Well, never mind that, now," he said aloud, deciding not to waste time reminding her of the carrot and stick of her probation. "I'll be taking you to Shujin, tomorrow."

That got a response. "The school that I'm attending," she said without looking back at him.

He took it as an encouraging sign. "Yes. There aren't a lot of schools who'll accept people in your situation, you know. So, we're going to introduce you properly. It's sort of a waste of my Sunday but be grateful. Time was, I had a lot of women competing to be sitting where you --"

That got a response that was less than encouraging. Almost fast enough to make him fear that her neck broke, she whipped around to stare at him with wide, frightened eyes, while stepping back so that the back of her shirt pressed against the glass of the window. Another step back and she'd be pushing herself through that glass. She was terrified enough to consider that option, assuming that she was considering anything right then.

"Passenger seat of my car," Sojiro said, as quickly and as clearly as he could. "I'm talking about the passenger seat, all right? That's all."

She didn't stop staring at him, but there was a slight noise that told him she had moved a tiny amount forward from the glass.

"Right," said Sojiro, stepping backwards towards the staircase. "So, if you want to get this place cleaned up, or if you want to get some sleep, it's all your call. I'm going to be finishing up tonight's business downstairs. Probably come up to let you know when I'm leaving. I won't come up unannounced. All right?"

"Yessir," she said. Same tone as she'd used every time before.

Once again, he wanted to let her know that he was neither an officer nor a gentleman, but under the circumstances that was a bad idea. So, he made his escape.

And the day had been going so well, too.

---

The clank of chains.

The dripping of water.

Deeper darkness.

A moment, and then she closed her eyes again.

And then: "We know you are awake, inmate." A quiet female voice.

Similar, yet slightly louder: "Stop pretending! You are in the presence of our master!"

Eyes remained firmly shut.

"You're only making it harder for yourself, inmate!" said the second voice. A moment later, the sound of something firm striking metal, over and over again.

"Caroline, that does not seem to be working. And it annoys me more than it does the inmate."

For a wonder, the noise stopped.

"Very well," said the voice that did not belong to Caroline. "We'll try again later."

Silence, and darkness not so deep, and ultimately oblivion. What more could one ask?

 

[Darkenning]

The previous night at her other job had been a long one, and Sadayo would have preferred to lay in bed and recuperate rather than showing up bright and early at school for any reason. That the reason was standing beside the school's blancmange of a principal and being introduced to a juvenile delinquent who would be under her supervision made the whole situation that much worse. Just what she needed, really.

As the principal burbled his threats, which were quite novel, really, but she wasn't the one being threatened and so couldn't quite bring herself to take an interest, she studied the new student. It was disturbingly like looking at a picture of herself -- the way that the girl's hair seemed to go everywhere was really reminiscent of her own messy hairdo -- except that in actual pictures of herself at that age, humhum years ago, there had still been glimmers of hope in her eyes that hadn't quite gotten beat out of her by high school. Those were absent in this Kurusu girl.

That was probably good, though.

"Kawakami-sensei?" said the blancmange.

Sadayo abruptly realized that she had been asked to introduce herself and been in such a daze from her fatigue that she had completely ignored it. She coughed. "Yes," she said, not sure what she was agreeing to but wanting her agreement to be clear. "I'm Kawakami Sadayo. Um, be sure to read the school rules. Any violations will send you straight to the guidance office. And if by chance you cause any problems, I won't be able to protect you at all." What a weird thing to say. When had she been able to protect anybody?

And yet, behind those glasses, she had the strange feeling that she was seeing some sort of disappointment in the eyes of that girl. The whole thing was weird and kept getting weirder.

Deciding that asking for reassurance when she had just embarrassed herself like that was probably not a good idea, Sadayo pressed on. "Right, so, come to the faculty office when you arrive at school tomorrow. I'll show you to your classroom."

That got a polite bow out of the girl, at least.

"Sakura-san, please keep an eye on her," said the blanc-- principal to the girl's guardian. "If she should cause trouble outside of the school, it won't be --"

"Of course, of course," said the bearded man. "I'll be sure to remind her of the situation regularly. Well, if you'll excuse us both, I have a business to run, so we'll be on our way."

The weirdness continued. While the words were properly deferential, Sadayo had the distinct impression that Sakura was completely unimpressed with the principal. Which was understandable, because he wasn't all that impressive, but shouldn't he be pretending to make sure that the student followed his example?

---

"Heck of a situation," said one of her colleagues a few moments later, as they stood outside the school building beneath a covered walkway.

Sadayo shook her head. "I can't believe they pushed someone with a record on me. Well, I guess all the other female teachers do have seniority, so it does --"

"What is she like?" he interrupted.

"Eh?"

"What does she look like, this juvie we've been saddled with?"

The weirdness was never going to stop, it seemed. What did her looks matter? Despite her bewilderment, Sadayo nevertheless made an attempt to describe the student, giving just a bare bones level of detail, not mentioning any of the impressions she'd formed. Like how the girl had been hiding behind Sakura, as much as she could under the circumstances. And that flash of disappointment. None of his business, any of it.

"Got it," said Kamoshida, nodding firmly. "You don't have to worry about a thing. I'll be keeping an eye out for our little problem." And then he smiled, just like he had in the pictures from his victory all those years before.

Why did it suddenly seem so menacing?

Weirdness.

---

"Traffic's not moving at all," Sojiro grumbled, staring out at the traffic so as to avoid looking at the way that his passenger was all but hugging the passenger side door in an attempt to keep as much distance between the two of them as possible. It would have been funny if … no, it wouldn't.

"You'll be taking the train to school, starting tomorrow," he continued after a moment, just to fill the silent spaces more than anything else. "Think you can manage that?"

"Yessir," she said.

Standard Kurusu answer. "Well, just … just don't make any trouble for me, all right?" Sojiro repeated. "I've got a -- I've got other stuff to deal with, and I can't have you adding to the problems. I'm not sure why I agreed to this … well, no. I do know -- that's how the adult world works. I owed someone a few favors, and they know your parents, so they asked her, and she asked me, and now here we are. I owed favors. It's probably how you got in your situation with that guy, too."

"Yes," she said, eyes fixed on the road ahead. "I owe him a lot."

It was the first bit of personal information she had volunteered since she arrived. Sojiro opened his mouth to say that there were favors you should avoid incurring, but he was interrupted by the radio. "Repeating the hour's top story: a subway has derailed at Shibuya station, causing serious delays for traffic throughout --"

Sojiro shut it off. The last thing someone who was going to be traveling by train pretty frequently in the not too distant future needed was this sort of news. He glanced at his passenger.

No reaction to the news at all.

There was something seriously wrong with this young woman.

Of course there is, he added silently. Why else would she be around me?

---

Apparently, the inevitability of this encounter and the necessity of its occurrence had finally impressed themselves on the inmate, who had at last arisen from her bunk and walked over to the doorway. Caroline found it frustrating that the prisoner only rested her hands on the horizontal bars rather than gripping the vertical ones as would have been appropriate, but now was not the time to address it.

"Good evening," said the master. "I am Igor. Welcome to My Velvet Room."

No response. Caroline prepared to chastise the inmate for her lack of polite response to the greeting, but a subtle gesture from Justine stopped her.

"This place exists between mind and matter, and only those bound by a contract may enter," the master continued. "I have brought you here to discuss certain important matters concerning your life." He paused, to graciously permit a reaction to this declaration, but when one was not in evidence, he proceeded forth. "This place reflects your consciousness, and so it is not surprising that it resembles a prison. For you are, indeed, a prisoner of fate, and ruin awaits you if --"

Now there was a reaction, but it was more inappropriate than Caroline could possibly have expected. This inmate laughed.

"R-ruin?" she managed to say when the first moments of hysteria had spent themselves. "What more can you possibly do to me?"

"I speak of the end of all that is," the Master replied. "Only by rehabilitating yourself can you --"

The inmate stepped back from the gate to her cell.

"The Master is not done addressing you!" Caroline snapped.

Apparently, the inmate did not care, for she slumped back onto the bunk, facing towards the cell wall. Caroline glanced furiously towards Justine, hefting her truncheon, but a not-all-that-subtle head shake dissuade her.

"You have not directly refused, and so I will continue to observe your rehabilitation," said the Master, apparently unfazed by any of this. "The night is almost done, and more will be explained at a future time, when perhaps you will be more ready to hear it."

Caroline thought she heard a faint chuckle come from the inmate's collapsed form, but she saw no motion in the darkness of the cell. It vexed her all the same.

 

[Darkenning]

When he heard the soft sounds of footsteps descending the stairs, Sojiro found himself surprised. He had half-expected the girl to refuse to go to school, or at minimum to draw out the process of her first morning's departure. Yet there she was all the same, wearing the same uniform she had worn every time she had come down here. (She did have other clothes, right? No, he shouldn't wonder about that.)

With what was probably intended as a polite nod, she walked past where he was working behind the counter, eyes firmly on the street entrance.

"Hold it," he said to her.

She stopped in her tracks, and oh so slowly made a half turn to regard him with an only slightly less apprehensive look than she'd had when he commented about the passenger seat.

Sojiro let out an annoyed sigh. "Look, I'm not going to send you out there on an empty stomach. Sit down, but try to get it finished before the customers come in, all right?"

A moment of hesitation, or perhaps consideration, passed before she turned and came over to sit behind the counter. He considered commenting on that -- then decided that any jokes about potential poisoning would probably not go over any better than the other one had. He ladled out some curry and rice and set the plate down before her. She regarded it with what he took for mild confusion.

"What? That's my speciality, you know," he said.

With a mild shake of the head, she set down to eating it. The first spoonful was hesitant; later ones showed the first hints of enthusiasm that Sojiro had yet seen from her. She might just have been obliging his request to get it done before they had to open, but it had the same outcome. In just a few moments, the plate was clean.

"Thank you," she said.

"You're welcome," Sojiro said reflexively. "All right, then, you'd better hurry, you'll be late if you get lost."

She nodded once again, stood, and headed to the doorway. Just as he was about to ask her to switch the sign from closed to open, though, she paused and stared up at the sky for a moment. Turning on her heel, she walked briskly back towards the stairway, and was up out of sight before Sojiro could say anything. Then, much more quickly, she descended again, with an umbrella clutched tightly in her right hand.

"Oh," said Sojiro. "It's not supposed to rain yet."

"It might," she answered without looking at him.

"Please yourself," he said wearily.

She stopped at the door, this time pausing to take a deep breath. Then she opened the door and was on her way, and it was only when she was gone that Sojiro remembered that he'd wanted her to turn the sign over. He went and did it himself, grumbling all the while.

Half an hour later, while listening to the news -- as always, lately, on the subject of all those weird accidents -- he noticed that the rain was indeed coming down. "Huh," he muttered to himself.

---

The weather report was effing useless. Looking at her phone confirmed this opinion, as it was currently cheerfully informing her that it was just overcast, with rain not expected for another few hours. As her hoodie was starting to get soaked through, this seemed just a tad bit inaccurate.

So Ann took shelter beneath the awning of one of the boutiques on the way to the school, hoping to have a bit of respite from the downpour while glaring at the lying weather report -- as well as that one weird app that kept reappearing on her phone despite multiple attempts to delete it. Well, whatever, she had other worries besides the possibility that her phone had been hacked.

Just then, a tall girl in a Shujin uniform and glasses walked past, under the spread of an unusually large umbrella. No one that she recognized, but that didn't mean much. Well, time to take advantage of everyone's expectations of herself.

"Hey!" she called out.

The other girl paused and turned to look at her, blinking behind those thick glasses. "Y-yes?" she stammered.

"You go to Shujin, right?" she asked.

"Yes," she said again, then elaborated after a moment. "This is my first day."

"Oh, a transfer student," said Ann, feigning interest. "Listen, would you mind if I shared your umbrella? I'm gonna get drenched otherwise."

Okay, so it was a pretty pushy thing to ask, but if everyone thought she'd do just about anything to get what she wanted, why shouldn't she be a little bit pushy? Unfortunately, it looked like she might have come on just a bit too strong, what with the way that the new fish was half-way through a stammered reply.

Really unfortunately, Ann decided as a car pulled up to where the two of them were standing and the window rolled down. "Hey, Takamaki," said the source of all evil in a cheerful tone. "You two need a ride?"

Well, she would have wanted to avoid this, but it made for a less bad option, and so Ann opened her mouth to agree … then watched as the newbie turned to look back at Kamoshida with a look that would have befitted one of the non-final girls in a horror movie. And with a feeling like a switch turning on inside her head, Ann thought of a plausible sounding lie.

"Gee, thanks, Sensei," she said with what she was sure was wholly believable enthusiasm. "I'd love that! But I can't -- this girl is just starting here, today, and she got lost. I gotta show her the way there, on foot, y'know?" And she gave him a little smile. "It's the least I can do for a newbie!"

"A transfer student, eh?" he said, eyes now off Ann (yes!) but now on the other girl (not so much yes.) "Well. Take care, you two."

He rolled up the window and pulled away, and Ann let out a gigantic sigh of relief.

"I'm not lost, though," said the girl, finally finding her voice.

"No, but you don't know a shortcut that'll get us both to the main entrance and avoid the parking lot where that creepy perv Kamoshida is gonna be, surveying Shujin like it's his castle or something," Ann replied wearily. "You can thank me later. Let's go." She stepped under the umbrella and grabbed hold of it just above the part being held by the newbie.

"Okay," said said newbie, blinking rapidly.

 

[Darkenning]

Ann knew that it was probably really unfair of her to take this opportunity to vent about how unbelievably annoying she found it that she was the frequent recipient of Kamoshida's allegedly avuncular attentions and how even more unbelievably annoying it was that every other dumbass in the school apparently thought she was the happy recipient of said attentions and probably other things as well. "I'm so utterly not, though," she assured the recipient of her venting. She also knew that she should probably find out the newbie's name before going into all this, but meh whatever.

"Right," said the newbie, no longer blinking quite so rapidly but, yeah, still blinking.

"But I gotta put up with it, or my best friend -- really my only friend -- anyway, Shiho is on the volleyball team and I don't want her to lose her spot, and I'm pretty sure Kamoshida is enough of an asshole to take it away from her if I tell him to make like a tree and get lost."

"Leave," the newbie suggested.

Now Ann blinked, startled to be subjected to such a cruel request when she'd thought they were getting along. "Huh?"

"'Make and like a tree and leave'," she clarified. Oddly, her blinking had stopped as she did so.

"Oh," said Ann. She nodded slowly as she considered this. "Yeah, that would explain why mom and dad chuckled when we were watching that bit in the movie -- uh, I mean, thanks, uh …" She trailed off, hoping that her embarrassment wasn't too obvious.

"Kurusu Akira."

"Kurusu," she repeated. "Nice to meet you. Anyway, this is Shujin," she said, gesturing as they started to approach the castle. Having done so, she did a double take towards the subject of her gesture, and asked, "What the what?"

"Um?" said Kurusu, blinking again.

"Wait, no, there's no way that this -- I mean, okay, we could maybe have gotten lost in the alley, except that there's only one turn there, so no we really couldn't, and anyway I'm sure that I would have heard if someone was building a castle somewhere in the neighborhood, and --" With that, Ann frantically drew out her phone to check the location on Can't-Come-Up-With-An-Alias-For-GoogleMaps, and let out a hiss of frustration when she saw that it wasn't able to identify that at the moment. "Aw, come on!"

"M-maybe one of the clubs at school built up some sort of façade?" Kurusu suggested. "The drama club, maybe?"

"We don't have a drama club, and how would they get it done in one night?" said Ann, eyes still fixed on the imposing edifice before her.

Kurusu started to shrug, realized that Ann wasn't looking in her direction, and instead muttered, "I dunno."

Unable to identify any way to go around the weird obstacle, and unwilling to go back the way she came, Ann finally shook her head. "Come on, we're gonna have to find a way through this whatever-it-is."

"Couldn't we just --" Kurusu said, pointing back towards the alley.

"Nope," said Ann, firmly. "I said I was gonna get you to school like this, so I'm gonna get you to school like this. No retreat! Come on!" With that, she marched up the drawbridge towards the gateway into the castle. Much more hesitantly, Kurusu followed along behind her.

Within, they found themselves in some sort of foyer, with a checkerboard floor in front of gigantic double staircases.

"Okay," said Ann, starting to find herself fighting off panic. "Well, we can't go forward from here, so maybe we should go up those stairs, or see where one of the side passages leads, hopefully to something that will get us past all this and --

"Well, well, what have we here?" said a voice from above.

Both their heads tilted up to regard the source of that voice, and then stayed there.

"Uh … Takamaki?" asked Kurusu after a moment. "Do you have a twin sister?"

"What?" asked Ann in a strangled tone. "No!"

"Oh." A pause. "Are you sure?"

Standing on the balcony above the foyer was a dead ringer for Ann wearing a leopard print bikini, cat ears and, as far as either of them could see, nothing else. Except then there was not, for she had fearlessly leapt forward to tumble through the air and land lightly as a feather on the floor just a short distance in front of the two of them.

"Yes, I'm sure! What the -- no, never mind that now!" Ann pointed at her definitely-not-twin-sister, stifling any weird notions about what her parents might not have told her. "You! Who are you?!"

"I!" said the double, pointing up at the ceiling with one outstretched finger, then drawing it down rapidly. "Am! Takamaki Ann!" This last declaration was punctuated by a jiggling motion from her chest.

"You're what the whatting what?" Ann just about shrieked.

"I am the real Takamaki Ann!" continued the vision before them, doing a little spin as she spoke. "The one who knows all the naughty little secrets deep within the heart of the fake Takamaki Ann, that she wants to hide so badly! The one who knows how lonely she is, how much she yearns to accept the love that Lord Kamoshida keeps so selflessly offering her! That is who I am!"

"Wha -- the love -- Lord Kamo --" After these abortive attempts to repeat the absurdities she had just heard, Ann found herself sputtering incoherently for a few moments, before she found her words once more. "You're not me!" she shrieked, no just about.

A broad grin lit up on the face of the double … but only remained there for a few moments before dissolving into a pout. "Man, I miss the old days, sometimes," she said softly, then shook her head. "Yeah, whatever." Finger snap. "Seize them!"

Things became very confusing for a moment, and then everything went dark.

 

[Darkenning]

When Ann regained consciousness, she found herself sitting up on a wooden bench and gazing blearily towards a set of bars surrounding a door made of the same black metal, through which she could dimly perceive a brick-and-mortar corridor. Looking around in sudden panic, she saw that Kurusu was on a bench beside her own, curled up in a ball, and breathed a little easier. Whatever the whatever was going on here, at least she wasn't going through it alone.

"Hey!" she said. "Wake up!"

"I'm awake," Kurusu said, without moving out of her fetal position. Her voice, which had never gotten all that loud in their brief acquaintance, was now almost inaudible.

"Are you okay?" Ann asked, staring at her. "Did you get hurt when they, uh, what did they do to us, anyway?"

"Chokehold," said Kurusu, still not looking up. "And I'm fine. Why wouldn't I be fine? What's one more jail cell?"

Ann struggled for a few moments to find a response to that remark, then gave up on the effort once the screaming started. It was coming from down the hallway, a mixture of pleas for mercy and cries of incredible pain.

"Okay, I don't know what the heck any of this is, and I don't know who that crazy chick who didn't look that much like me was, and I don't know how anyone could possibly have sneaked up behind me to choke me, and right now I don't know much of anything if we're being honest and why not --" At this point in her monologue Ann got up from the bench and matched over to the bars to grab them and start trying to shake them. "-- but I've had about all I can take of all this, so lemme out of here, dammit!"

"Would you kindly be quiet?!" someone shouted in response.

Ann's eyes bulged. She hadn't really been expecting any reply to her plea, but that one was just bewildering. "Hello?" she called out again. "Is there someone else down here?"

"You have a lovely voice, young lady, but the fact that it is clearly tethered to a defective mind rather diminishes its appeal!" replied the voice that had answered. "I asked for quiet, and you answer my request with more noise! I am in the process of devising a clever plan to escape, and not only is your shouting an unwelcome distraction to my efforts, 'tis likely to draw down the guards upon us! Thus, let silence reign!"

"… did you just unironically use the expression 'tis?" asked Ann. "No, never mind that! Who are you? Where are we?"

There came a deep sigh. "Very well, since I will clearly not receive the quiet I so politely requested, some introductions are in order. I am Morgana, who infiltrated this palace in hopes of discovering its treasure with which to abscond. And we are, as I said, in the palace! Doesn't that clear everything up nicely?"

"No!" said Ann. "It doesn't! What do you mean, 'the palace'? And how do we get out of here?"

"What's this we?"

"What d'you mean, what's this we?" Ann retorted, glancing backwards. To her mild relief, Kurusu had roused herself from her collapse and silently walked over to stand just a bit behind her, blinking in confusion. "There's me and Kurusu in here, so obviously I mean --"

"Ah, so there's another one in there with you, who makes less noise. Hello, quiet person."

"Hi," said Kurusu.

"Hm-hm! I am somewhat better disposed towards you than I am to your associate, at the present, and so shall elaborate. A palace is a different world, separated from mundane reality and born out of the twisted desires of some individual, reflecting their hidden wishes."

Ann's eyes got big. "Huh? This is all -- I don't -- who's doing this, then?"

"That, alas, does not number among my collection of --"

"Kamoshida," interrupted Kurusu.

"Eh?" chorused Ann and Morgana off in the distance.

"What that girl who looked like you said --" Kurusu started to explain, speaking a bit more quickly but no less quietly.

"She didn't look like me!" Ann interrupted right back.

Kurusu didn't bother to pause. "-- she said that she accepted Kamoshida's love, so then this place must belong to --"

"My exalted self!" proclaimed a figure who stepped into sight on the other side of the bars, holding up his furry cape with one hand such that his chest and bikini briefs were in plain sight.

"Gahhhh!" shouted Ann, recoiling in what was less fear than abject disgust. "What are you wearing?!"

"The garments that befit my exalted self!" retorted someone who looked like Kamoshida in a crown. "And you shall refer to me as your Majesty, henceforth!"

"Oh, wow, wow, wow," Ann said, backing up further, not even really noticing that Kurusu was being pushed back as she tried to make herself unnoticed behind her. "I mean, I knew you were a messed-up guy, but I had no clue that you were this crazy!"

"Such insolence!" Kamoshida hissed, holding up a hand whose fingers flexed in spasms. "When my favored concubine informed me that there was an intruder within my domain who dared to ape her perfect form, I scarce believed that any would dare to do so! But now I begin to understand, for I also recognize your companion's features!" His trembling hand turned into a pointer. "This is your doing, is it not, Kurusu Akira? Your misdeeds now extend to this imposture!"

Ann heard Kurusu make a noise behind her.

Kamoshida's twisted face abruptly turned into a sick grin. "So then. Two prisoners have I, which suggests a fascinating dilemma. All-powerful I am, yet not all-present. I can only reward one of you with what your impertinence has won at a time, and refuse to entrust that pleasure to any other. Soooo then … which ever one of you pleads most winningly shall be set free, and the other suffer all the punishment. You may commence your begging at once!"

"Do you seriously think that either of us is going to --" Ann snapped at him.

"Pleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleaseplease!" shrieked Kurusu as she flung herself on her knees before him, head almost touching the floor of the cell.

 

[Darkenning]

"Pleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleaseplease!" shrieked Kurusu as she flung herself on her knees before him, head almost touching the floor of the cell.

"Wha--" Ann squawked briefly, jerking away.

"That's a good start," Kamoshida mused aloud with an approving nod. "But I think you can probably do better. So then." With that, he snapped his fingers.

Two large, armored figures stepped into sight from the darkness of the hallway, stepping towards the cell door.

"Okay, how the heck did those guys just show up without making any noise?" Ann complained, on some level glad of a distraction from the sight of her only ally in all this groveling like that. As the cell door opened -- noisily -- and the pair of knights or whatever they were supposed to be trooped in -- also noisily -- she opened her mouth to object that they were making noise now, so why hadn't they then, but they grabbed her and lifted her off the floor before she could do so. "Hey!" she shouted again.

Making a great show of ignoring her, Kamoshida walked up to where Kurusu was crouched on the floor. "One last demonstration of how pathetic you are, little delinquent," he smarmed down at her. "Kiss my exalted foot!" And the red slipper on his supposedly exalted extremity slid under her face.

Kurusu had stopped shrieking once the door opened, but she was still making mewling noises interspersed with repetitions of "please" while tears were running down her face. Nevertheless, she seemed to hesitate as she stared down at the slipper, and her hands clenched tightly over the ground.

"Kiss. My. Foot!" Kamoshida snarled.

"Don't do it!" Ann shouted. "He won't keep his stinking promise, you have to realize that!"

Kamoshida's head snapped up to stare at her. "And what if I don't?" he said. "I am the King! I do what I want and what I want is GGGGGGGGGGGGG!"

Ann blinked in confusion as Kamoshida's face went into some of the weirdest contortions she had ever seen on a man's face -- and since she worked in the fashion business, and had seen a lot of photographers mid-breakdown, that was saying something. With a sudden realization, she looked down.

One of those clenched hands had punched up into the bikini briefs, which were of course much too small to be concealing a cup. Almost as soon as Ann saw that, though, Kurusu let out a hissing sound and her head darted forward towards the so-called king's left shin.

This time Kamoshida let out a roar of pain as he fell back. "You bit me! You bit me you fucking whore!" Unfortunately, whatever injury he had just suffered might have startled him but was far from incapacitating, for he promptly kicked Kurusu with his other leg, hard enough to send her flying into the wall of the cell with a crunching sound.

And yet no cry of pain was to be heard, and Kurusu looked up from where she was collapsed against the wall. "You think I'd let you?" she said in a voice utterly unlike any she had used so far. "She tried to help me. She tried to help me! You think I'll let you hurt someone else who tried to help me you fucking prick?" She echoed his tone for that last bit, but there wasn't any mockery in it. More like madness.

"Kill her!" Kamoshida snarled at the knights holding Ann.

They promptly dropped her, paying her no mind as she cried out, "Wait, no," while they began to troop towards Kurusu, who --

And then, again, things got a little confusing.

---

So you finally started to fight back, hm? Not waiting to be rescued like some delicate blossom. No crying out for help? Wonderful! I was starting to think you would never find your spirit of rebellion. But I suppose that it would only make sense that it would take opposing a -- cough cough -- "king" to draw me out to face you.

I am thou, thou art I. Thou who will perform all manner of scandalous acts in the name of thy freedom! Call upon my name and release thy fury!

The first blow struck her face and sent her glasses flying. But there was something else on her face, now -- a mask. Heedless of the assailants surrounding her, she reached up to tear it off, feeling the blood flow out of her face as she did. It hurt so good. And the name was not on the tip of her tongue, but further back, just waiting to burst out.

"IRENE," she said.

Yes! cried the voice, which came, she noted without much surprise, from a seven foot tall, black-winged woman in an evening gown. I am IRENE, the soul of steel! Will you beg me for my favors?

"No," she said, as a great coat took form around her and a knife appeared in her hand.

That was the right answer, child. They are yours, for now.

The implications of that trailing comment were lost on her right then, as she turned to note in passing that the armored figures confronting her were, in truth, jack-o'-lanterns wearing pointed witch hats and trailing robes. Convenient, as she suspected that her knife would not have done much against actual armor. Then again, being a dagger of the mind, perhaps it would have cut through that metal as easily as it went through the pumpkins while she was considering this. The sliced squashes disappeared into puffs of smoke. Convenient, as it left the floor clear for the next steps of her pavane. Everything was all so convenient, now.

"What?" gasped Kamoshida as he watched his guards slain. "What are you --"

"I am fury released," she answered, bringing the knife up to point at him. "If you have last words, say them now." In the distance, she could hear IRENE's voice warning her that fighting this creature was not like fighting those knights, but she ignored it on the basis that she hadn't fought anyone. She'd killed them out of hand.

She'd kill him the same way.

Kamoshida's face, already twisted by shock, now distorted with anger. "You. Wretched. Peasant!" And one huge hand came up, looking a bit like someone preparing to spike a volleyball.

 

[Darkenning]

What our protagonist looks like.

Mundane form:

Note that her hair is not actually that long as of the current chapters. She grows it over the months of her war.

Thief form:

Both images by an artist who goes by eikaeikiaka.

 

[Darkenning]

Okay. Reviewing quickly, Kurusu was a superhero or something, and those guards had been pumpkins or something, and now Kamoshida was going to try and beat the hell out of her or … no, there was no alternative for that last bit; that was really what was about to happen, Ann decided. So, either Kurusu was about to get beat up, or she was about to stick a knife in a crazy teacher who was nonetheless still a teacher.

Neither of those options sounded all that appealing!

Ann did not normally think this quickly. It was a bit sickening if she was being honest but why bother. But while looking around desperately, her eyes seized upon a device that might get them both out of this without jailtime. She seized it, decided that there wasn't enough time to take a deep breath, and charged at Kamoshida's backside, knocking him off his feet thanks to his laser focus on Kurusu.

From the look on what she could see of Kurusu's face, the newbie-slash-superhero(?) seemed a bit surprised by this development, so Ann didn't waste breath telling her to follow. (Something told Ann that she wouldn't have done so, rendering this whole thing kind of pointless.) With the hand that wasn't holding the device, she grabbed hold of the collar of Kurusu's fancy schmancy coat and dragged her along as she ran out through the still-open door, slammed it shut behind them, and locked it with the keys she'd grabbed.

"Okay!" Ann gasped with a grin, looking at the still bewildered Kurusu. "Isn't that better than stabbing him?"

"No," Kurusu replied.

"Well, that, that is an opinion," Ann said, doing her best to sound agreeable.

"You venomous bitches!" shrieked Kamoshida, running up to the bars and grabbing them as he glared murderously at the two of them. (Ann was more than a bit freaked out by the way that his hands seemed to be deforming the bars slightly.) He began to describe in extensive and decidedly NSFW detail what he was going to do to the two of them when he got out of the cell.

"Let's got out of here!" said Ann, backing away from the bars quickly.

"Wouldn't it be simpler to just stab him through the spaces between those bars before he can do all that stuff?" asked Kurusu, staring at Kamoshida speculatively.

That got the so-called King to back away from the bars, though he kept right on uttering sexualized threats.

"No, see, that would be murder, and murder is wrong," Ann gently explained, as though to someone she realized might not be familiar with these concepts. (And given the dubious expression with which Kurusu was receiving them, she wasn't all that mistaken about this.) "Anyway, we've got to get out of here so we can tell everybody about what a dirtbag he is!"

"I know of a way out," said a familiar-sounding voice from further down the hall.

Ann whirled. "Wait, really? You -- OMG, you're a cat!"

For indeed, the occupant of the cell adjacent to the one in which they had lately been imprisoned was occupied by a small creature who greatly resembled a --

"Okay!" interrupted the voice which sounded like it should be coming from a much taller person. "I am only gonna say this once, both because I hate repeating myself and because it should be damn well obvious that it's the case, but I! Am! Not! A cat!"

"Are you sure?" asked Kurusu, looking at him skeptically.

"Yes, I'm sure!" wailed Morgana, if that was indeed his real name. "Now, lemme out of here and I'll show you the way out of the palace!"

"Guards! Guards!" shouted Kamoshida, having apparently run out of depraved tortures to inflict on the two of them.

"And you might want to do it quickly!"

Kurusu glanced at Ann, who was still holding the keys, and nodded sharply. For her part, Ann would have preferred to discuss the options here, with an aim towards maybe not trusting the weird cat-like creature based on whatever weird impulses were occurring to the murderous probably-not-a-superhero, but the thoughts of escape convinced her. She unlocked the door, and Morgana quickly walked out, making little squeaky noises as he did.

"Ah, the sweet taste of freedom returns to my mouth!" cried the allegedly-not-a-cat. "Now, follow me to the exit!" With that, he dashed off down the corridor, his legs turning to cartoon swirls apparently attached to his lower body. With a shrug, Kurusu followed closely.

Ann stared a moment at their backs. "My life makes no effing sense anymore," she said dazedly. Then added, pulling at her hair, "Agggh, and now I'm talking like Ryuji does, too!" With that, she dashed off after them.

 

[Darkenning]

Morgana led the two young students through the maze of twisty corridors, all alike, claiming to have plotted out the map of the area before his capture. Ann wanted to doubt that, but the maybe-not-a-cat never seemed to be at a loss for which way to go next, which suggested that he was either truthful and/or overconfident. Nevertheless, he successfully guided them past several potential encounters with the castle guards.

Worryingly, in Ann's view, Kurusu kept staring at the guards that they evaded with the same expression of homicidal intent that she'd worn while confronting Kamoshida. Even Morgana picked up on it, for the -- cartoon character, Ann decided abruptly -- eventually started giving Kurusu gestures that seemed to be saying, "Not yet." Ann would have preferred "Not at all," but under the circumstances she would take what she could get.

When they could speak more freely, Morgana continued to exposit about the nature of their environment. "Everything in here is shaped by the will of the Palace's owner," he was saying. "Those guards aren't people; they're Shadows that have been transformed to look like people. Only those who have the spirit of rebellion within them, like the two of us, can avoid that."

"Umm, there are three of us," Ann objected, frowning.

Morgana gave her an annoyed glance. "Indeed so. Perhaps you, too, have the spirit of rebellion within you."

"Well, that would be --"

"No one ever said you couldn't have it and still be an airhead," he added as he returned his gaze to what was before them.

Ann closed her mouth and glared scorchingly at the back of the cartoon cat's head. However, any retort she might have wanted to make was lost as she also saw a banner over the top of the corridor that they were about to enter, proclaiming it to be "King Kamoshida's Tender Loving Chambers of Torture."

"Oooookay," she said loudly. "I'm thinking that it might be time to reconsider our route!"

Morgana let out a noise somewhere between a mew and a sigh of frustration. "This is the quickest path to the egress!"

"I don't wanna see any bird displays, I wanna get out of here!"

"Egress means exit," Kurusu explained while Morgana just gaped in stupefaction.

"Correct, madame!" said Morgana, quickly recovering his elan. "Look, I don't really want to go through this place, either, and it's worse for me, because I've been through there before and you haven't. But I swear, with this hand on this heart --" He suited the gesture to the words. "-- that this is the fastest way to the exit from the palace."

Ann stared at him for a moment, before looking to Kurusu. "Is his heart really on that side?" she asked quietly.

Kurusu shrugged. "It would be if he were a cat, but he says that he's not, so --"

"It's the same for all the mammals, all right?!" Morgana interjected testily. "Look, just keep following me and try not to think too much about what you see or hear, all right? These aren't people, they're just Shadows shaped into looking like people. Not people."

That didn't help as much as Morgana probably -- hopefully -- intended. Even hurrying along behind him gave Ann several glimpses of what looked like people being beaten and branded, and the faces of the victims were those that she vaguely recognized. At least she could take comfort that the only ones there were the boys' team, not the girls' team, and definitely not one face out of them all. But thinking that made her stomach twist in disgust, and then a horrible thought came to her.

"Hey," she called out to Morgana. "This is all just stuff that he fantasizes about doing to people, right? Not things that he's done in, uh, real reality!"

"Yes and no," Morgana called back. "If he's abusing them like this in his palace, then he probably is being comparably cruel in the conscious world as well, so -- gack!"

Ann's face had gone incredibly pale at the cat's first response, and once she had head his elaboration, she dashed forward, passing a slightly startled looking Kurusu and catching up to Morgana, whom she promptly grabbed with both hands and brought up to her face. "Tell me that you haven't seen girls in volleyball uniforms getting treated like this," she snarled. "And you really want me to believe it!"

"I-I-I haven't!" Morgana cried, voice gone rather high. "I swear!"

She didn't really want to be convinced, but the panic the whatever was clearly feeling didn't sound like guilt to her ears, so she tossed him in Kurusu's direction. "Right. Which way to the egret? I mean egress. I mean -- ahhhh, screw it! Let's get out of here so I can get Shiho to quit volleyball!"

"So scary!" Morgana muttered as Ann ran off. A brief pause. "What are you doing?"

"Petting you," said Kurusu, who was. "Do you want me to stop?"

"… I don't recall having said so."

 

[Darkenning]

Somehow, despite a last-minute ambush by the King of the Castle, the two dirty rascals made their escape, with Morgana going his own way just before they emerged to find themselves exiting from the alley that they had entered to begin this bewildering experience. Which would have been a great ending for this episode, had they not promptly been seized upon by police officers who noted their truancy. That never happened in any adventure stories that Ann had read, not that she read a lot in the first place.

What was especially weird about the finale was the way that Kurusu -- who, not five minutes earlier, had been regarding the guards chasing after them with an expression better suited to the contemplation of a fine meal and had to be, once again, dragged away from the fight -- had been utterly petrified when the police had arrived, silently staring at them. Ann had been left to stammer out an explanation that she thought they bought about being asked by a teacher to go do an errand in the area, and then pulled Kurusu along with her back down the main street to the school.

"So what's this nonsense about being asked to do errands?" asked the guidance counsellor who was standing in front of the entryway, glaring down at the two of them as they arrived.

Clearly, whether or not the officer had believed her admittedly unconvincing narrative, he had decided to confirm it by calling the school. Ann supposed that this could be taken as proof that lying created more problems than it solved, but since she was sure that the truth about what had happened would have created just as many, that was less than helpful. Nevertheless, she struggled to find the words that would get them out of this, since Kurusu would probably be no help here, either.

"Kamoshida," said Kurusu, soft-voiced but audible. "I mean, Kamoshida-sensei. Asked us."

"Well, that sounds very plausible," replied the guidance counsellor, sarcastically.

"Good!" said Kamoshida, standing behind him. "Then we should probably let these kids get back to class, then!" His smile didn't look as much like a sneer as the expression on the face of the one in the Palace, but this version of Kamoshida still managed to seem fairly sinister.

"Ah?" said the counsellor, whirling around to look at him. "Uh, I-I mean, uh, you did send these students out to do an errand in the neighborhood?"

"Yes," he answered, offering only that.

"… why?" asked the counsellor.

Kamoshida's smile pulled back further to show his teeth. "Because," he answered.

The counsellor had clearly not been prepared for such an answer, and perhaps found it difficult to imagine a single-word retort of his own. Giving up the effort, if that was what his hemming and hawing had been covering, he led with, "I'm not sure that I understand why you would --"

"Maybe we should talk about it with the principal?" Kamoshida suggested mildly, teeth still quite in evidence.

The counsellor coughed. "No, no, that won't be necessary," he said quickly. Glancing over at his shoulder at the two students, he snapped out a brusque, "Get to class!" And then hurried quickly through the doors himself.

"Yes, you should get to class," agreed Kamoshida, who had not bothered to watch the counsellor's departure. "And you should both try to avoid making any more trouble for yourselves. Especially you, Kurusu-kun. I would hate to see you have to leave so soon. Right, Takamaki?"

"Oh, yeah," Ann replied. She had no idea what was going on right then, but the situation demanded agreement so that was what it got. With that, she and Kurusu -- who, she noted, kept Ann's body between herself and Kamoshida at all times -- headed up the stairs and in through the school doors.

"Does he remember what happened back there?" Ann asked of Kurusu once they were out of earshot.

"No," Kurusu replied. "But -- just like the Kamoshida in the palace, he wants to … hurt … us, and he can't do that if someone else gets us expelled. So, he is keeping us here. In this dungeon." The other girl's voice was just as quiet as it had been, but there was something there that had only been there in her furious outbursts before. A sign of an open wound.

Ann swallowed. "Well. I guess we're going to have to show him that we can escape again and again, then," she said, just to have something to say.

She wasn't at all prepared for Kurusu to clearly take a moment to think about that remark, and then nod once. "Deal," she said, and smiled for the first time in their brief acquaintance.

END PART ONE

 

[Darkenning]

PART TWO

The door jingled and Sojiro let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. "And you're back," he said to the girl. "Came straight home, I hope?"

"Yessir," she answered, without looking at him.

He wasn't sure why he'd asked the question. He'd kept an eye on the clock the whole time after the school was supposed to let out; there hadn't been nearly enough time for her to go anywhere. Shaking his head, he let out a grunt as he saw her walking past him while carrying the umbrella. "Put that in the rack by the door," he said.

She paused in front of him. There was, again, the slightest hint of hesitation, or maybe of defiance, before she turned and headed to do just as he'd said.

"So, no troubles at school?" he asked her back.

"Did they call you?" she asked the window.

Despite having found her softly voiced statements to be somewhat disconcerting at times, Sojiro found that he didn't enjoy getting a question as an answer to his question. "Why would they call me?" he asked, voice getting a bit sharper.

"If there was trouble, they would call you," she said, still seemingly focused on her umbrella.

"Then a straightforward yes or no would have done just fine, right?"

There was a moment more of pause before she turned to look at him. "Yessir. There was no trouble."

There had been trouble; that pause had had the character of a deep breath being taken. He considered pressing on the matter, but something took precedence. "Enough with the sir," he bit out. "If you want to call me something, call me Boss."

She stood there, as though parsing that straightforward request took an enormous amount of her brain's processing power. Just as he was about to tell her to forget it, though, she spoke again. "Yes boss," she said, with a nod.

It didn't feel like any sort of victory, but before he could move on to other matters of importance, his phone rang. Pulling it up out of his apron pocket, he gestured for the girl to head on up the stairs. For a wonder, she did so and was out of earshot by the time he answered the call. "Hey, what's up?" he said to the person on the other end.

---

"About time you've come to," groused Caroline as the inmate awoke in her cell and sat up on the bunk. "On your feet!" she snapped when this failed to be followed by the next step in the process.

"Our master wishes to speak with you," supplied Justine. "For your own sake, you would do well to listen better than you have heretofore."

For a wonder, that got through to the inmate, who rose from the bunk and approached the cell door. This time, though, she failed to so much as touch the bars, much less grip them in the correct manner. Caroline briefly considered the worth of instructing the inmate in the proper procedure, but the sound of the master's voice prevented that.

"First," he said, "let us celebrate our reunion."

Caroline could have sworn she heard a noise from the inmate at that point, but no one could possibly be so contemptible as to snort in answer to such a dignified request, not even the inmate. Telling herself that was all that stopped her from killing the girl where she stood, so she kept doing it.

"And I see you have awakened to your most remarkable powers," the master continued. "Your rehabilitation may now in truth commence."

"Rehabilitation?" repeated the inmate, only barely making it a question.

"We will address that further at a future date. For now, know that you are the power of Persona, to which you have awakened. Personas may be thought of as a mask, or perhaps as armor for your heart."

"Or a weapon," interrupted the inmate.

Caroline started to reconsider the worth of self-control in this specific instance.

"Or a weapon," agreed her master. "On to other matters. Have you come to appreciate the Metaverse Navigator which I have bestowed on you? It is the only way through which you will be able to travel into the Palaces into which you must steal." He permitted himself a chuckle. "Without it you will never be able to become the splendid thief that I know you can become."

"You have been granted a great --" Caroline began to summarize.

"This is nonsensical," interrupted the inmate again.

"What was that?" asked Justine while Caroline choked down a much more vituperative inquiry.

"I am pursuing rehabilitation ... by becoming a thief?" asked the ingrate.

"That is a better, nobler pursuit than what brought you here to begin with!" retorted Caroline.

"What was that?"

How odd. Why had she just taken a step back from the cell door, so that Justine was now in her field of vision as well and looking back at her with an expression of startlement almost as novel as the furious glare that the inmate was now directing towards her? What a ridiculous thing for her to have done. She would have to strive to do better.

"Control yourself or be controlled," said Justine, after a moment, turning back to look at the inmate. She was surely only addressing her, and not directing that message to any other individual who might be listening at the moment.

Another of those snorty sounds, and this time Caroline was almost sure that it had come from the resident of the cell, who stepped back to the bunk and collapsed onto it before she could utter any of the terrifying threats that she would think of any moment now.

 

[Darkenning]

What a lovely day it was!

Well, no, it wasn't really a lovely day at all, as the sky was filled with heavy clouds and lots of rain. But that was every bit as necessary for a healthy world as days of sunshine were, and everyone wanted a healthy world, right? Of course they did. So even though KASUMI YOSHIZAWA would personally have preferred sunshine, she would accept the rain, nonetheless. Besides, she had an umbrella for when she had to get off this train and walk the rest of the way to school, so the rain wouldn't bother her then, anyway. And right now, she had a sufficiently comfortable seat on the train --

Her eyes snapped open as she heard a soft grunt in front of her. Yes, standing before her was an elderly lady who could surely use this seat more than she could. Thus, KASUMI YOSHIZAWA promptly stood up. "Please, take my seat," she said. "My stop is coming right up."

"Are you sure?" asked the lady. "Well then --"

Before she could step forward and sit down, however, another gentleman pushed past her and claimed the seat. KASUMI YOSHIZAWA found herself privately impressed by the speed that he had just demonstrated. However, KASUMI YOSHIZAWA would never be so gauche as to openly admire such behavior. "Excuse me," she said, in tones of sweet reason. "That seat was for this lady and --"

He had fallen asleep as she spoke. How vexing.

"He's faking sleep, you know," said a soft voice not far away.

She glanced over at the person who had just spoke. Of course, KASUMI YOSHIZAWA immediately recognized that the young woman standing before her was wearing a school uniform just like the one that she herself was wearing. That was less interesting than the way that this woman was staring at the gen-- male individual who was snoring loudly and possibly falsely in front of her. Behind those glasses, there was an obvious hostility directed towards this person. It was a bit scary, really, though of course KASUMI YOSHIZAWA had no fear of any harm coming to anyone.

"Well, I'm sure that he has his reasons," she said. "Um, anyway, ma'am, I'm sorry. Please let me carry your luggage, at least."

"Thank you so much, dear," said the old lady as she passed over the bag she was holding. "It's not too heavy, is it?"

"Not at all!" replied KASUMI YOSHIZAWA, as she felt her left arm stretching further than it probably should. "I've, I've trained a lot, you see."

A few minutes later, she was able to hand -- had to hand the bag back to the old lady, when the train came to her stop. Rotating her shoulder a bit, KASUMI YOSHIZAWA saw the other girl in the Shujin uniform walking away towards the exit and hurried up to catch her. "Pardon me!" she said, and controlled the urge to flinch as that gaze was turned on her. It wasn't quite so intense at the moment, though, which was good. The older girl seemed more confused than anything else. "I just wanted to thank you for before," she explained.

"... for what?" she asked.

"For what you did on the train. With the older lady, and the g-gentleman," explained KASUMI YOSHIZAWA.

"... I didn't do anything, though."

"Well, uh, I-I-I suppose that you could look at it that way, but, anyway, I can tell that you're a second year at Shujin. I'm a first year there, myself, and I should really thank my senpai." She started to bow.

"... for what?" her senpai asked again, a bit more loudly.

KASUMI YOSHIZAWA froze. This ... this was not going the way that it was supposed to go. She was supposed to thank her senpai who would then graciously accept her thanks and then they would part ways with the sure knowledge that how things were supposed to go had been how things went and everything was right with the world and and and and --

"Okay, you're welcome," said her senpai. The voice had gotten quiet again, and the eyes behind that mas-- those glasses were regarding her not with suspicion and hostility but something else that had to be acceptance and not concern at all.

"Pardon me, then," said KASUMI YOSHIZAWA, feeling something that had to be happiness at being accepted and not relief at all, as she bowed politely and walked quickly away, not at all aware of any eyes gazing at her back as she did so.

---

Ann had wanted to talk to Shiho as soon as she got out of that -- for lack of a better term -- Palace yesterday. She had wanted it all through the school day that followed. She had wanted it when school ended. She had wanted it that night. Life kept not giving her what she wanted, which didn't come as much of a surprise since she had wanted all this weirdness to be a bad dream. If that wasn't going to happen, weird fate preventing her from talking to her best friend until right before classes were about to start was just moderately unfair.

"We need to talk," she shushed at Shiho as they met in the nook where the two of them usually hung out together.

"Yes, I got from your forty-two messages," Shiho replied. "What --"

"Why didn't you answer --"

"I was asleep," Shiho said. "And then it was morning. And now we're here. What's. Wrong?"

And now the real problem began. "What would you say if I asked you to quit volleyball?"

Shiho stared at her. "Uh ... I need more context if I'm going to give you a good answer."

"Yeah, that tracks. Okay, um ... let's just say that I've realized that Kamoshida-s- sen- ... gluck ... ahem ... your coach is doing some really bad things, and I don't want you to be anywhere near him. No matter what."

Shiho kept right on staring. "No matter what?" she repeated. "This is ... not ... hypothetical, is it?" she asked.

Ann wanted to say something reassuring. Nothing came to mind, so she just said, "Um."

Shiho nodded. "Well, then ... I guess I would say 'okay'."

Ann opened her mouth to engage in some special pleading, closed it as the full meaning of that response came to her, and stammered, "R-really? You'd give it up just like that?"

"You're asking me," Shiho said, a tiny frown suddenly on her face. "Why are you surprised that I say yes when you ask me something?"

"I, well, I mean -- I don't know what I mean!" She hugged her suddenly. "Thank you! Thank you! I know it must suck giving up something you're so good at --"

"I'm not that good," Shiho muttered into the embrace. "And I was only -- um, never mind, now."

"Okay, fine," said Ann, letting go, breathing heavily. "Just ... try to stay out of his way for a while, okay? I'll explain everything --" She paused to consider. "-- mostly, eventually."

"Right," said Shiho, whom Ann suspected was probably concluding that Ann was having some sort of breakdown. Well, that was probably closer to the truth than anything else.

 

[Darkenning]

It was kind of amazing how even with his head roughly parallel to the top of his desk, thanks to the cover provided by the ramrod straight back of the transfer student sitting in the seat ahead of him, he could somehow sense that Ushimaru was giving the whole class a look which declared, without even saying it --

"Hmph ... you all look like you've been spoiled growing up. Can't wait to see who disappoints me the most this year."

And then he was nice enough actually say what he was thinking. Such a dear kindly old man.

"That reminds me of something," the teacher went on. "There's a certain dictionary that defines a year as 'a period of 365 disappointments'. This is from what was first published as 'A Cynic's Dictionary', later known as 'The Devil's Dictionary', by the American author Ambrose Bierce." A slight pause. "Hey, new girl. Tell me what the Devil's Dictionary defines as the chief factor in the progress of the human race."

Well come on, now, that just plain sucked, how was some girl from the sticks supposed to know --

"Villains," she answered in the same quiet voice with which she'd introduced herself yesterday.

Errrr?

"Correct," said Ushimaru. He didn't sound all that surprised, though of course any sort of emotion other than contempt was utterly foreign to his usual tone of voice. "He actually used the word 'malefactors', but it usually gets translated as 'villains' in Japanese. We have a well-read student in our midst. Isn't that special. Now, before you all go getting excited," he added, raising his voice over the murmurs that this had provoked from much of the class, "you need to understand that this is from a book of sardonic witticisms. Uncritically accepting it as the truth is every bit as moronic as uncritically dismissing it as a lie.

"When you look into history, you may well find yourself thinking that a lot of the people who seem to have influenced history by moving it forward weren't really admirable. A lot of them were murderers, a lot of them were thieves, and an awful lot of them were sexual perverts of one stripe or another. But all that is a judgement that we can make because we live in a better world than they did, and it ignores that many of these people were not influencing history, but just the products of it. What I'm trying to say is, acting like a villain because someone you read about in history did something villainous is every bit as inane as acting like a villain because you saw one doing something 'cool' on TV. You don't live in history, you live in the present, and right now we don't need any more villains. Got it?"

Just as he'd been able to tell that Ushimaru was making air quotes with his hands when he'd said "cool", he was also able to sense that the 'got it' was being directed at the new kid. The crook, or so everyone was saying. Huh. Smarter than he would have thought. A bit interesting, really. But who was he kidding, there was no way that a girl like that would ever cross paths with --

A piece of chalk slammed into the top of his head, making him jerk back into a more upright posture.

"No sleeping in class!" Ushimaru snapped. Make that any emotion other than contempt and irritation.

Ryuji grimaced but remained upright.

---

"Okay," said Ann as soon as she saw Kurusu descending the stairs out of the school and stepped up beside her. "So, I told Shiho she needed to get out of the volleyball club and she said that she would and I also managed to stay out of the way of Kamoshida the whole day and now I want to go back there no matter how scary it is because I've got to know what the heck is up there."

"Hello," replied Kurusu.

"Right, yeah, hello. Sorry for ambushing you like this, but you're the only person I can talk to about these things." A momentary pause. "Well, really you're one of maybe two people I can actually talk to at all, everybody else here pretty much hates me."

Kurusu nodded. "Yes," she said. "I-I mean, I heard some people talking about you on my way to school this morning."

"And what were they saying?" asked Ann, rolling her eyes in annoyance.

There was maybe an eyeblink of hesitation before she answered. "I think you know."

"Yeah, I know. But I mean it, I want to --"

"Okay," Kurusu said with another nod. "We made a deal. And I think I know how to get back to that place." She fished her phone out of one of her blazer pockets. "There's this app on my phone --"

"Hey, yeah," Ann interrupted right back. "When we got out yesterday, there was this voice coming from your phone, saying, um, ah -- forget it, it probably doesn't matter. Look, can I take a look at this thing?"

Unhesitatingly, the other girl handed over the phone. Ann looked it over, noting that it was almost scarily void of functions -- just the actual phone, text, search engine and camera, plus one other spooky looking thing, an eye with a star in it. (Hadn't there been an idol, a while back, who wore a contact lens or something like that?) Thus, she forbore from asking which app, but simply opened it up. "Heeere we go," she said. "It's even got a search history, so we can --"

"Kamoshida-Shujin Academy-pervert-castle -- beginning navigation," announced the soft voice that she'd heard yesterday.

"Okay, so then we gotta -- uh --"

To Ann, it was a bit like the one time she had dropped her guard a bit and been roofied. (Fortunately, someone at the same party had recognized the symptoms and gotten her away from the would-be predator. She deeply regretted having next to no clear memories of either person involved.) The disorientation lasted only a moment, but when it lifted, everything looked the slightest bit off. Then she turned to look up at the castle gate that had replaced the school entrance and revised that "slightest bit" upwards.

"Well, we're back," she said.

"Yes," said Kurusu, not nearly as softly as she'd been speaking all this while.

Ann looked back at her and almost jumped back. "And you're dressed up again!"

"Yes," Kurusu said again, lifting up the knife she was holding to examine it carefully. "My arm is once more whole."

"Ooooookay then."

 

[Darkenning]

From somewhere nearby, there issued a rather frustrated sigh. "I hoped it might be just the noisy one, but I can see that you're both here." Morgana poked his head out from around the corner. "I can't believe the two of you came back after the narrow escape you had last time. Wait, no. I can't believe that I'm surprised that you two came back --"

"Zip it, all right," Ann said, privately relieved to have someone to talk to who didn't seem to be on the verge of flipping out at all times. "Look, Mogen --

"Morgana," the cat corrected.

"Morgana," Ann repeated through clenched teeth. "We need your help."

"You don't say," he drawled.

Biting back a retort, Ann pressed onward. "Can you get us to a place where we can take pictures of the students that are being tortured here? That way, we can identify who they are in the real world, and get them to admit what's going on to someone who can do something about Kamoshida!"

"I don't think that will work," said Kurusu, who had taken out her phone and was looking at it.

"What -- why not?" Ann asked.

Kurusu turned the display of the phone towards Ann, so that she could see that the screen was filled with a much larger version of the spooky starred eye design. "It's only running that app right now. When I try to switch to open another app, nothing happens."

Frantically, Ann pulled out her own phone and recoiled a bit when she saw that the creepy image was also being displayed. "What the what? It's on my phone too, now!"

"Maybe we could go there and memorize their faces?" Kurusu suggested, a bit hesitantly.

The fact that she was normally disturbingly confident when she was wearing that coat and mask told Ann that her associate was trying to salvage the plan she'd come up with. Normally, that would have been a sweet gesture, but under the circumstances -- Ann shook her head. "It wouldn't work. I've got next to no memory for guys' faces, they all sort of blur together for me."

"Seriously?" asked Morgana, tilting his head to the side.

"Unless someone wants to be called a cat with every sentence, someone should probably not make fun of other people's foibles!"

"Morgana," said Kurusu, forestalling the cat's no doubt pointed retort.

"Yes, Lady Akira?" replied Morgana with exquisite courtesy.

"'Lady Akira'?" repeated Ann, incredulously.

"You said that you had infiltrated this Palace when you were captured and put in that cell. You must have had some reason for doing that. Do you have a ... clever plan for dealing with this place and the one who made it?"

Morgana's face grew a smirk. "Indeedy-do! And while my efforts, embarked upon alone and without help, may have been somewhat inadequate for the task at hand --"

"'somewhat inadequate'?" repeated Ann, increduously.

"-- if I had competent assistance from someone whom I carefully trained in the Noble Arts of Phantom Thievery™, I am confident that victory would be well within our grasp! Will you make a deal with me, Lady Akira?" Morgana held out his paw, to be either shook or perhaps kissed. It was not clear which.

"Phantom Thievery," Kurusu murmured. "This must be what he was talking about."

Morgana blinked audibly. "What who was talking about?" he asked, sounding much less grandiloquent.

"A man with a big nose," she answered.

"... I don't get out much, so I'm not altogether certain how much that narrows down the field," said the noseless creature.

"Uh, 'scuse me," interrupted Ann, utterly bewildered by the turns this conversation had taken. "Shouldn't you be asking both of us about this?"

Morgana coughed into one of his paws. "Yes. Well. As I said earlier, it may well be that you possess the spirit of rebellion, despite everything."

"'despite ev--'" Ann started to repeat, more angrily than incredulously.

"But if so, then 'tis presently fast asleep. Nay, perhaps comatose, instead. You would do better to return to the material world, and leave this to those already prepared for it." He gestured towards the alleyway behind them.

"Oh really," said Ann, infuriated by this point. "Well, up your nose, pal!" With that, she stomped over to the main gates of the castle and began pounding on its timbers and occasionally yanking at the large handles on it. "Kamoshida, you lecherous freak!" she shouted at one point. "Open up this door so we can kick your ass!"

"... she cannot seriously imagine that we should go in through the front door, can she?" asked Morgana, beholding this despite clearly disbelieving the evidence of his senses. "Even someone completely untrained in thievery should know that you never go in through the front door! This is the basic of basic basics! Everyone knows that!"

"If everyone knows it, doesn't that mean that people who are watching out for thieves know it, too, and so will be paying more attention to alternative points of entry?" asked Kurusu. "Meaning that going in through the front would be the last thing they'd expect?"

Mogana attempted to answer that a few times, before slumping. "Just ... go get her and then follow me, will you?"

 

[Darkenning]

There then followed an extended period where Morgana led the two of them -- well, as he put it, led Kurusu and graciously permitted Ann to trail along behind the two of them -- through the twisting corners of the Palace, in the process teaching them about the need to ambush their opponents while also minimizing the chances that they might call for reinforcements. They were shown how Morgana could call upon his own Persona, a masked swordsman whom he called Zorro. (Ann was disappointed that said gigantic hologram or whatever it was didn't look like Antonio Banderas. She was also a bit surprised that Morgana didn't have Puss in Boots as a Persona, which could also have brought Antonio Banderas into the situation.)

During a rest stop in one of the rooms in the palace where Kamoshida's influence over the area was comparatively weak -- bits of the actual school room kept flickering in and out alongside bits of the dank dungeon -- the cat also explained his theory about how they could put an end to all this. "Deep in the heart of the Palace, there is an object -- a precious object, a treasure -- that is central to this Kamoshida's delusions about himself. If we were to steal it and take it away from here, his identity would collapse, and he would no longer be able to sustain the palace. Why, I daresay that, without his distorted desires to drive him onward, he might even completely reform and strive to live a virtuous life thereafter! Wouldn't that be just lovely?"

"Uh-huh," said Ann, regarding the cat with a dubious expression as he stood, declaiming all this, from the top a table, flickering between being covered with discarded mugs and dirty dishes or some kind of arts project. "And it's really just that simple? Sneak in, steal the sparkly, then saunter off whistling?"

"Wwwwwellll," said Morgana, tapping his forepaws together in the manner of someone twiddling their fingers.

"I knew it," Ann muttered, looking down in annoyance.

"What else, Morgana?" Kurusu pressed. She sounded patient, but as always there was something that was anything but tranquil in her eyes and the lines of her face.

"I was going to reveal it at the proper time, really," he assured them in a somewhat less-than-reassuring way. "Right now, the treasure only exists as an idea, not something we can cart away in our pockets. In order for that to change, we would have to alert the version of Kamoshida who exists in the material world to the idea that something will be stolen from him. The Kamoshida here knows everything that the Kamoshida there knows, you see. Which in turn means that the Kamoshida here would know to set up traps and, um, well, probably ambush us."

"So, that means you end up fighting him, anyway," Ann groaned, glancing briefly at Kurusu, and then flinching a bit.

"I'm not seeing a problem, here," Kurusu replied. "Morgana, what happens if the Kamoshida here should ... not survive ... the fight that he starts?"

Morgana looked extremely uncomfortable to be asked. "Well, ah, I guess he would probably die in the real world, too. But, I mean, we should probably try to avoid that, because we're thieves, not murderers."

"Oh," she said, without blinking once.

---

Despite everything, they decided to head into the dungeon to see whether either of them could try to recognize the faces of any of the students being tortured there. Unfortunately, Ann proved to be just as incapable of doing this as she'd predicted, and Kurusu had no better luck. Perhaps, if either of them had been more artistically gifted, or even devoted manga readers, things might have been different. But Ann was only a subject of art, and the only arts that Kurusu currently cared about were martial.

Resignedly, then, they decided to head out of the palace for today, at least. "So through here," said Morgana, leading them into the palace's foyer, "we can get back to the way we came in, and --"

"Well, well, what have we here, again?" said a familiar voice.

"Awwww, come on!" Ann groaned as she once more watched her doppleganger flip over the balcony to land before them.

"Wow!" said Morgana, eyes wide. "You were right! She doesn't look a thing like you!"

"Thank --"

"She's much sexier!"

"Awwww," said the cognitive version of Ann, blowing a kiss in Morgana's direction before sticking out her tongue at the infuriated material girl.

"I swear, once we get out of here, I'm going to make a pair of catskin gloves out of --"

"Yeah, yeah, save it," said cognitive Ann, as she -- again -- snapped her fingers. And, once again, castle guards seemed to materialize behind the three explorers and grab them. This time, though, Morgana and Kurusu were able to struggle free of their grip and pull away. Ann, of course, was in no position to do that.

"Let her go," said Kurusu, glaring at the false Ann.

"Hm, no, don't think so," replied that Ann, with a shake of her head. "But ... y'know, I've heard that thieves are all about making deals, right? Why not make a deal with me? I will let the two of you go, pretend to King Kamoshida that I never even saw you, and you can go your merry way." She seemed to saunter over to where Ann was being held above the ground, mouth firmly covered by the guards' hands. "I bet I could become much more like the real Takamaki if I tore her apart and incorporated parts of her into this mask that I'm wearing," she said, softy, as she reached up to run one gloved finger down the real Ann's cheek.

"I will never --" Kurusu started to say.

The cognitive Ann wheeled to glare at her. "Then I guess I'll sound the alarm instead, and countless guards will converge on this position to beat the shit out of you until you either flee or die. I get what I want either way. And what's the point of fighting for this one, anyway? She doesn't care about you. She doesn't care about anyone but herself! Her best friend has been aching to quit volleyball, and only staying on the team because she was scared that something would happen to her, but did she even notice? It's not that this girl doesn't love Kamoshida-sama, which I could vaguely understand, because not everybody will get the appeal. She just doesn't love anyone!"

"That's not true," Kurusu said.

Or did she say that? All of a sudden, it was hard for Ann to hear or even see what was going on around her. A roaring noise was filling her mind, and it hurt so much and --

Of course this pale imitation is never going to get it. It's not that you don't love, it's that you love who you love, not who loves you and feels entitled to be loved in return. And those whom you love should be on guard. Are you ready to show them how much love hurts?

I am thou, thou art I. Thou who wilt lure the fools to their doom and make them crave it. Call upon my name and unleash thy wrath!

Remembering, she forced her mouth opened and bit into the flesh of the hand that was holding her. With a muffled yelp, the hands around her face let go. With only one of the guards still restraining her, it was easy to get free -- as she dropped down and reached up to tear the mask she was wearing off her face.

"CARMEN!" she shrieked. There was a whip in her hand, now, and the false Ann was staring at her in shock as she slashed her across the face with it.

That face, nothing like her own, distorted further. Quite suddenly, there was a tiny, red-haired woman with wings in a blue dress in place of the false Ann. "Y'know, it's almost worth it to see something this beautiful?" said the Pixy in the moment before Ann slashed her once again.

 

[Darkenning]

Shiho had hoped that, after they were all through with classes and able to sit around and shoot the shit like they usually did, Ann might explain why she had gone from constantly encouraging her to stick with volleyball through thick and thin to all but begging her to quit. It had been sort of funny to watch, in the way that not-really-funny-things often were. But Ann had failed to materialize for their session, and now she was completely at a loss for what she should do with herself. The obvious solution, now that she had joined the 'go home early club', would be to go home early, but something was holding her here.

She even had a fairly good idea where Ann might be right now. Being her friend had ensured that she was almost as much of an outcast as Ann was, but she had heard the rumors about Ann showing up at school, yesterday, in the company of the new transfer student who everyone was describing as some sort of criminal mastermind. (The other part of the rumors, that the two of them had been dispatched on some mysterious errand by Kamoshida, was something that Shiho discounted reflexively.)

She had actually seen the transfer student yesterday. She had been putting away some sports equipment, and one of the bolls had slipped out of her hands and rolled across the hallway as the girl with messy hair and glasses had walked down the other side of it. She had caught the ball and handed it to Shiho, all without even slowing down, much less stopping long enough to accept any thanks. She walked on her way, like someone who was ... what was the word? Casing. That was what they called it when someone studied a place to prepare for a crime there, right?

Shiho let out a sad chuckle. She was doing it. The exact same thing all those people did when they talked about Ann, the exact same thing that everyone did about the transfer student -- putting the worst possible spin on what was probably something completely innocent. Of course, someone who was new in a school would try to explore it in order to get used to the place. And of course, someone who had only really had the chance to get to know one person in a school would spend time with them.

Even if that person had only one other friend there. Even if that left that other friend completely alone. Even if ... Shiho stopped the course of her thoughts, hugging herself to make the shaking stop as well. She really, really should go home, now.

"Uh, Suzui?"

Jerked out of her contemplations, Shiho blinked as she looked up to see that Mishima had managed to walk up to her without her realizing it. "Yes?" she answered his address hoping that her voice didn't sound frightened. She had no reason to be afraid of Mishima after all. Only of what might come with him.

And, indeed, after a moment of hesitation, he showed that her reason was right. "Kamoshida-sensei told me to go get you."

"Oh. Did he say what he wanted?" she asked.

"No," Mishima said. "He didn't say."

She wondered if that was true. She wondered if that mattered. Shiho took a deep breath. "I'm quitting volleyball," she told him.

Mishima blinked. Confusion suited him a lot better than dread, she thought. "Oh. Uh ... that's too bad?" he said, making it a question.

She nodded since there was nothing to say to that.

"Have you, have you told sensei, yet?" he asked then.

"No," she admitted.

"I guess that's not what this is about, then. Um. Well, you can probably tell him when you see him," he told her, nodding himself.

No. "Mishima ... did he tell you to go get me, or to go find me and tell me that I should go to his office?" she asked. This could never work. This couldn't possibly work. This was the only thing she could think of, so it had to work.

"Uh, he t-told me to go find you, but I think --"

"Did he tell you what to do if you couldn't find me?" she asked, speaking just a bit faster than she had been until now.

"No, but, I mean, I did find you, so --"

"But what if you didn't? What if you just ... didn't find me?" Shiho asked. Before he could offer the obvious answer and turn this into even more of an endless loop, she pushed on. "I'd be really grateful, Mishima. Really."

He stared at her, and his mouth worked a bit without any noise coming out. "Okay," he finally said. "I'll go do that, then. Um. See you ... later?" he concluded, making it another question.

She nodded since there was nothing to say to that, either, and she didn't trust herself to speak.

He turned and walked back the way that he had, she guessed, come up to her. She found herself grateful that he didn't look back towards her as he went. She was still sitting there when he moved out of sight, but not for much more than a second.

It wasn't until she was out of the school gates and halfway to Shibuya that it occurred to her what Kamoshida might do to the person who gave him that sort of bad news. She paused, then, and looked back towards the school.

But not for much more than a second.

 

[Darkenning]

Somewhere in the depths of Shibuya, there was a burger joint where Ann and Shiho had hung out in the times before Kamoshida had messed up the universe. When they had done that, they had cheerfully chattered to each other about everything and nothing, in hindsight probably annoying the other patrons. If those patrons were currently present -- not likely but not impossible -- they were probably relieved that Ann was not engaged in her usual stream-of-consciousness monologue, but rather slumped facedown over on top of the table across from Kurusu, who was sipping from her drink in her usual laconic reserve.

Eventually, though, Ann managed to recover enough of her vim and vigor to raise her head and gaze blearily across the table at Kurusu. "So, I wasn't imagining that, right? They were talking to each other while we were fighting the rest of the guards?"

Kurusu started to nod, hesitated, then said, slowly and precisely, "They were talking to each other. The other part, whether you were imagining that, is ... kind of complicated."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," replied Ann, slumping once more. She didn't look up as she continued talking. "I didn't understand what they were saying."

"It was in French."

That got her to look up. "You speak French?"

"Non," Kurusu replied shortly. "But I can recognize it."

"Why French, though?"

"Well, yours is a character from a French novel and opera, and mine is a character from an English story who had a background of having lived and sang in the opera in France, so it makes sense that they would have a connection like that and --"

"How do you know this stuff?" Ann asked plaintively.

The momentary animation that Kurusu had shown just then vanished like the glow from a lightbulb when the switch was turned off. "I just know stuff," she answered without meeting Ann's eyes.

Ann let out a long, weary sigh, and forced herself to sit up. Sort of, anyway; she was still slumped, but now she was leaning against the back of her chair and managing to hold her neck up so that she looked across the table at her ... co-conspirator? "Whatever," she said, both to herself and to Kurusu. "Seriously, forget all that. There's other stuff we gotta talk about. Look ... I get that you probably don't want to talk about how you ended up here."

Kurusu looked bewildered and opened her mouth to reply.

"Not here-here, Shujin-here," Ann pre-empted that remark. "Transfer-to-another-school-under-a-cloud-here. But ... I think maybe we gotta talk about it."

"Okay," Kurusu breathed after a moment. Before Ann could reply to that, she pushed on, still not looking up from the table. "If I try to talk about what happened to me, I'm just going to end up repeating all the things I learned to say to make them stop asking questions. So, instead, I'm going to tell you a story. And it's up to you to decide whether or not to believe it."

One deep breath. "There was a girl. A girl who lived in what she thought was a really boring town. There was nothing there for her. And that is funny, because as soon as things became such that she could never, ever go back there, everything about it seemed to gleam in her memories. But that's getting ahead of things.

"The girl had a bad habit. At night, she would sneak out of the house where she lived with her parents and go into town to have fun. She would sing, and dance, and play games ... and one night there was someone at the place where she was having fun who was interested in a different kind of fun. And she said no. And he didn't want to hear that. So, he dragged her out of that place, and to his car not far away, and --"

"O. M. G," said Ann, horrified.

"-- and that is when the story takes a turn," she said, affecting to have not heard the interruption. "Because someone came to help her. Someone stopped him. A hero came along." She let out a long, shuddering sigh. "And now both this girl and the hero were in trouble, because he was a big man. And he told her that if she didn't say that the hero had attacked him for no reason, he would make her pay for it." The monotone she had been telling all this abruptly shifted to what could only be described as a quiet howl. "But she was just so angry." Just as abruptly, the monotone came back. "So, she told him that she would never ever ever turn her back on someone who had helped her."

Kurusu stopped talking then.

Ann did not want to do what she did next. But she was used to doing things she did not want to do. She still hesitated, before asking, "And then what happened to them?"

"They put them both in jail. Two different jails. In hers, she was hurt. In his, he was killed." Delivered like bullet points on an agenda.

Much much too late, Ann's hands came up to cover her mouth.

"Eventually, she learned to say what they wanted to hear. Because it was her first offense, they gave her probation. And she was sent far, far away. And that was the end of the story." She punctuated it by sipping her drink. Or rather, by trying to suck up the dregs of what was in the glass through her straw.

"What was his name? The hero, I mean." Ann wasn't sure why she asked that, wasn't sure what difference it made. Was, as usual, not really sure of anything.

"I never learned it. He was just --" She broke off. "I guess you believe that story?" she asked, after a moment.

"Yes," said Ann, reaching out to touch the hand that was resting on the table. "I believe you."

She wasn't really prepared for the way that made Kurusu jolt back. "What?" she asked, hoarsely.

"Is it that crazy that I'd believe you?"

"No, no, I --" She looked around, confusedly. "Didn't you hear that?"

"I heard a really sad and grim story, yes, but I mean, I don't agree that it's over, yet," she said.

"That's not what I --" Now Kurusu slumped. "Never mind."

"So, I guess it makes sense that you'd want to ... really, really hurt someone who hurts people who've helped you," said Ann, abruptly conscious as she spoke that there might just possibly be people listening in on this conversation, who would become alarmed at the repeated, casual use of the word "kill". "But as the person in question, I would be upset if someone I cared about ... really, really hurt someone. So, maybe ... not?" she finished, a bit weakly.

But the message was received, even if response was just as weak. "Okay," Kurusu answered without looking at her. "But ... you know, now, that caring about me can be risky, right?"

"You are not some kind of a jinx," Ann retorted.

"Jinx," repeated Akira. "Hm."

 

[Darkenning]

Muß es sein?

"Welcome to the Velvet Room," said their extraordinarily patient master to the menace who was glaring through the bars at him. Bad enough that she did that, but she utterly ignored the scowls that the two of them -- yes, Justine was scowling, even if it people who weren't Caroline might not have been able to tell that she was -- were directing up at her. "Let us now resume our earlier conversation. Tell me, are you growing accustomed to this place?"

"What's one more cell?" said the inmate, and let out a rather inappropriate chuckle.

Their master tilted his head. "That demonstrates a somewhat admirable stoicism, which you may need if ruin is to be prevented. Yet that alone --indeed, you alone -- cannot stop it. But today you have entered into a partnership with another who has awakened to the power of Persona, correct?"

"Ann," said the inmate, continuing to glare.

"Involving yourself with others is an important step in your rehabilitation," explained the master. "I am of course not speaking of casual or superficial relationships. Your associates must be those who have, like you, been robbed of their proper places --"

But -- beyond belief, if not wholly unexpected by this point -- the wretch before the two of them dared interrupt. "My rehabilitation is not only becoming a thief, but dragging other people into becoming my accomplices? Other people who have suffered like I have? Are you out of your --"

"Personas are the strength of one's heart," interrupted Justine. "The stronger the bonds that surround you, the more power your Personas will gain."

"I don't care about power!" the inmate snapped, glaring down at her.

With calm that she had clearly learned from the good example that Caroline had given her, Justine glared back. "Your opponent does. That is indeed all that he cares about. You must be both better and stronger than him if you are to prevent ruin -- and so save many, as once you were saved."

The inmate jolted at that, and Caroline seized the opportunity. "There are countless people in this city who have talents that a weakling like you --"

"Shut up," said the inmate without looking at her. That was the worst part, the way that her eyes kept boring down at poor Justine, who was hiding the anxiety it must be causing her so admirably. Caroline decided to start slamming her truncheon against the bars no matter what Justine had said about doing so, to draw his attention away from her dear sister, for Justine's benefit of course and not because she wanted it on her or anything.

Before she could, however, the master spoke. "While harsh, she speaks the truth. You may well require a bond with her, or even myself, if you are to achieve your goals."

That at least got her attention off Justine. "You want to be my accomplice, too?" said the inmate, glaring at him, now. "Isn't ours a 'superficial relationship'?"

"It is if you make it so," replied the master. "Have we a deal?"

The inmate kept staring. At length, she finally spoke. "All right."

I am thou, thou art I. Thou hast acquired a new vow. It shall become the wings of rebellion that breaketh the chains of thy captivity. With the birth of the Fool Persona, I have obtained the winds of blessing that shall lead to freedom and power ...

The voice sounded achingly familiar to her, and yet she did not recognize it. She wanted to ask Justine if she did, but doubtless the answer would be the same. So frustrating. "This conversation is over!" she decreed. "Get lost, inmate!"

Still without even glancing in her direction -- ggggghhhh -- the inmate turned and collapsed back onto the cot.

"I actually had a few things more to say," said the master, in tones of mild reproach.

Caroline froze.

---

"He's angry," said Kurusu, sitting beside Ann and watching the teachers, led by Kamoshida, crushing the boys' volleyball team in a display of dominance almost as violent as what the cognitive versions of them were subjected to in the palace.

"He's always angry," Ann replied, eyes on where the girls' team were sitting, waiting for their turn in the barrel. "But yeah, more than usual. I think it's because Shiho must have told him that she was quitting the team right before this thing started. She was smart, waited until there were a lot of other people around to do it, and he still almost blew his top at her. Gawd, I hope I did the right thing by telling her to get out," she moaned. "What if he still hurts her and --"

"Where is she?" Kurusu asked.

"Over there, third from the right in the back row. Wearing a knee brace. Thanks to him, I bet," she added, angry now instead of fearful.

Kurusu didn't answer, looking where Ann had been looking. "Where did I --" she murmured, then shook her head. "None of them will help us, will they?" she asked.

"No," replied Ann. "Frustrating as hell, but they're all too scared of him. If only there was someone who was as mad at him, but not ... so ... scared ..." She trailed off as slowly she turned to look at the line of boys sitting on the ground watching the "game." "Ryuji's in your class, right?" she asked.

"Who?"

"That guy, there. With the bleached hair."

"Oh. Yes. He sits behind me."

"Maybe ..." Ann said, slowly. "Just maybe ..."

---

It wasn't that she wanted to watch the volleyball match with everyone else. Frankly, she thought it was a dumb display of dominance. But walking through the hallways with the rest of the student council, looking for those who were avoiding it, was not exactly her idea of an interesting morning, either. Still, it was something that had to be done -- or so she had been told -- and so she was doing it, because she always followed the rules and acted as an example for others and --

-- what?

For a moment, she thought she had to be imagining it. But she wasn't, and that was a moment she could never get back as she started running for the rooftop access, leaving the others behind in their confusion, finding the doors unsurprisingly open and getting out as she tried desperately to remember the name.

In the end, she had to guess. "Mishima!" she shouted. "Don't --"

On the other side of the fence, he turned to look back at her, and she froze at the look of terror and despair on that face. "I'm sorry," he said. "He was just too strong, he was just --"

And with those words, he bent forward at the waist and dived off the side of the building.

She stood like a statue for a moment, then dashed forward to the side of the roof to look down. Fumbling at her pocket, she pulled out her phone, dialling emergency services.

"Shujin Academy, student council president, Niijima Makoto. Please send the police," she said dazedly to the dispatcher.

No point in asking for an ambulance, she thought with a mind every bit as numb as her voice, staring at what was lying on the ground below. Not who. Not anymore.

Es muß sein.

END PART TWO

 

[Darkenning]

PART THREE

It was a simple plan, and Shiho was sure that nothing could possibly go wrong with it. She had already gotten through what should be the hardest part of it, telling him that she was quitting the team. He hadn't been able to do anything about it, just yell at her and make insinuations about what he would do. Time was, that would have been enough to make her back down. But though she was still frightened, there was something past the fear that kept her going. A light at the end of the tunnel.

So now, all that she had to do was wait until the girls turn on the court and then play her last volleyball game. (At least, her last one here. Shiho had hopes for a more enjoyable college volleyball experience.) Then she could and would leave, not bothering to change out of her jersey. That might get her in some trouble, but nothing that she couldn't handle. It should be smooth --

And then the principal showed up in the gym, looking even whiter than he usually did, and scuttled up to where Kamoshida was engaged in humiliating the boys' team. The principal started talking quietly to Kamoshida, saying something that Shiho couldn't hear despite the hush that had descended once the game had been interrupted.

Whatever it was, Kamoshida looked startled for a moment ... before slowly turning to glare at Shiho for what felt like an even longer moment.

When that interval ended, the coach looked away and started to address the whole room. "Okay. I'm afraid that today's rally has to come to a premature end, people. One of your classmates -- Mishima Yuuki -- has apparently had some sort of serious accident."

The principal got even whiter and reached out towards Kamoshida while shaking his head. Without even glancing at him, Kamoshida slapped the hand away.

"So everybody needs to go straight home," the coach continued. "Do not linger in the courtyard, do not gawk, just go get changed and then return to your homes. We'll tell you more tomorrow, when we know more." With that, he proceeded to slam the volleyball he was holding in one hand into the ball cart, as though to physically punctuate his remarks with one last display of talent.

Shiho was no longer really paying attention. From the moment that the name had been uttered, a terrible frozen feeling had descended on her brain, leaving her incapable of any sort of real thought, as the way that Kamoshida had looked at her before delivering this news played on the movie screen of her mind over and over again, with each review making it clear that he hadn't just been glaring at her. He'd been glaring accusatorily at her.

Someone -- Shiho couldn't tell who it was -- asked her if she was all right. She also made her answer in a physical gesture by practically jumping out of her chair and dashing out of the gym. She had no idea where she was going, but wherever it was, it was somewhere other than this place and that would be enough.

When Shiho regained awareness of her surroundings, she found herself in one of the obscure corners of the school building, curled up between a collection of unused lockers and some spare desks, along with a collection of umbrellas and, strangely, a shinai. There was also a vending machine with a cat on top of it, staring down at her.

Shiho blinked and did a double take. Yes, there was a cat. Why was there a cat? Why was a cat staring at her? These would all have been good questions to ask someone if there was anyone present other than a cat.

"Shiho!" shouted a familiar voice.

Well, here was some irony for you. Now there was someone to ask about the cat, and it was even someone whom Shiho would normally have wanted to have present so as to talk about everything and anything but really nothing, and whom she had even found herself missing a bunch lately. Under the circumstances, though, Ann was just about the last person she wanted anywhere near her. Irony. That had to be irony, right?

Before Shiho could start running again, though, she found herself cornered by Ann and the transfer student. As from some considerable distance, she watched the transfer student glance up at the cat and noted the conspicuous absence of any perplexity concerning the cat on her face. How strange! Was it her cat, perhaps? Before Shiho could follow her other impulse and ask about this, though, Ann was up in her face.

"What happened?" Ann asked, crouching in front of Shiho. "Why'd you run off like that? What did Kamoshida --"

"It was me," said Shiho. "I did it."

Ann stared at her in stupefaction. "Right," she said slowly. "B-but why, I asked. Why did you --"

"No," Shiho interrupted. "I did this to Mishima."

Ann's stupefaction endured. "Huh?" she asked.

The words came tumbling out. What had happened when Kamoshida got her alone. Why she had put up with it. Why, when Ann told her to stop putting up with it, she had not known how to do that. How she had asked Mishima to go in her place. How she had realized what was going to happen to him and then decided not to care about it. How the accident had to be --

"Stop, stop," interrupted Ann, pulling down the hand that had covered her mouth midway through all this. "No, no, this is not on you, this is on Mishima and it's definitely on Kamoshida, but it's not on you --"

There came the sound of something slamming into metal, and a yowl from the throat of a cat. Ann half-turned and Shiho looked up, both of them to see what it was.

The transfer student had slammed her clenched fist into the blue door of one of the lockers, and it was still resting there. That was not nearly as scary as the look on the face behind her mask. Wait, no, those were glasses, not a mask. Why had Shiho thought it was a mask?

"Hey, Akira," said Ann, sounding a bit frightened. "Remember what I said before?"

"I'm not going to take his life," said the transfer student. "But I'm going to take everything else."

 

[Darkenning]

Unless he was not only a total bastard, but the biggest dumbass to have ever walked the streets of Tokyo -- which Ryuji had to admit was possible -- Kamoshida had to have known that telling the kids not to linger in the courtyard or gawk was going to ensure that a whole swath of them were going to do just that. It was kind of disgusting, really, but Ryuji knew that he had no room to talk since he was right there in the lingering, gawking crowd.

The police or somebody had taped off the actual area where the body had come down. (Nobody had said anything more about what had happened, but falling from a great height was the only thing that made any sense for the so-called accident.) Before doing so, they had taken the body away but there was still a blood stain where it had landed. On some level, Ryuji found himself a bit surprised that there was no tape markings on the ground to indicate the precise location of the body like there would have been on TV; on another level, he was cussing himself out for having expected that.

Thinking like that made him just like all these other lingering gawkers, where he wanted to think of his decision to stick around as a principled refusal to do anything that bastard Kamoshida told him to do. Like them, or even worse, he thought with a glance upward to where the most elevated lingering gawker was standing, pressed up against the fence that ran along the edge of the roof and staring down. He couldn't make out her features, but the special student uniform reserved for the prez was fairly recognizable, so there was only one person that could possibly be. Probably really annoyed that this had happened during her term in office, she. No better than any of the lousy teachers.

Ryuji actually found himself a bit surprised that none of said lousy teachers had shown up to shoo away the lingering gawkers. Well, thinking like that was probably tempting fate, so he decided that he had seen enough and it was time to go. One last glance at the stain on the ground, one last shake of his head, and he turned to go.

His going was halted when he realized that someone was standing right behind him, gazing at him with a really seriously intense gaze. (Not a science fiction fan, Ryuji didn't know from lasers.) It was so weird to see someone staring at him that it took Ryuji a moment to recognize the transfer student who sat in front of him in class, Kurusu something or other. "Uh, hi?" he said.

"Hello," said Kurusu, the first word she had ever spoken to him. The next words would turn out to be far more memorable, such that in subsequent retellings the first word would be entirely forgotten. "I'm given to understand that you hate Kamoshida. How would you like to help to really fuck him up?"

"Ohhhhhhkay?" Ryuji answered like a suave man of the world.

---

"Now, I hope you understand that I'm not doubting any the shit you just told me," said Ryuji a few moments later as he followed along behind Kurusu down an alley. It seemed really important -- for the sake of his own health and well-being -- that she believed that she was not being doubted.

"Okay," replied Kurusu without a backwards glance.

"I mean, sure it's an effing crazy story! But hey, I'm an effing crazy guy!" he continued.

That got Kurusu to come to a sudden halt, and then sloooowly turn to look back at Ryuji. Her face was, of course, still unreadable.

"What?" he asked, trying to keep his voice from going too high.

"Why is it that you can say 'shit' but refuse to say 'fuck'?" she asked, sounding genuinely curious.

Not even remotely something he had ever expected to be asked, but whatevs. "Well, I mean, there's a lady present," he answered.

"... where?" asked the lady. Before Ryuji could answer, Kurusu blinked. "Oh. Never mind. Give me your phone. Unlocked. Please." That last was an obvious afterthought.

"Ohhhhhhhkkay," Ryuji answered like someone who got asked to give up his phone on a regular basis. He nevertheless did so after fishing it out of his pants pocket.

Kurusu took a moment to fiddle with the screen, then nodded sharply before turning the phone so that its screen, prominently displaying some weird red eye logo, was facing him. "Seen this before?"

"I don't do a lot of messing with the thing you know?" Ryuji answered. "I just use it to get calls from my m-- people. And not a lot of people."

Without seeming to have listened to him, Kurusu handed him back the phone while fishing in her own pockets to produce a card. She handed it to him. "Say the words on there. Please."

"Uhhh ..." This time, Ryuji didn't even get to the implicit agreement before he took a deep breath. "Kamoshida-Shujin-Pervert-Castle," he recited. "Owww!" he said a moment later. "What the eff just hapennnn --" He trailed off as the sight of what was now at the end of the alleyway impinged itself on his field of vision.

"For real?" he asked after a moment.

 

[Darkenning]

"I'm not sure how to answer that question," Kurusu answered, following Ryuji's gaze towards the palace.

"Hah?" asked Ryuji as he turned his wide-eyed gape on the person who had brought him here.

"'For real?'" she repeated. "I'm not sure how to answer that."

"Oh. Yeah, I guess that was a question," Ryuji said a bit dazedly. "Ah, so, then, inside that thing ..." He trailed off as he turned to look at the facade of the palace.

"Somewhere in there, there is a treasure. Something that Kamoshida views as --" Kurusu paused to look for the right word, nodding slightly and (to Ryuji's eyes, at least) smiling a bit right before she continued. "-- precious, and the excuse for all that he has done. If we take it away from this place, then we will take everything from him."

Ryuji couldn't help but flinch a bit at the not-all-that-well-hidden fury in Kurusu's tone during that last declaration. But, really, taking everything from that bastard sounded like a blast. "But first we gotta find the thing, right?"

Kurusu nodded.

Ryuji squared his shoulders. "Okay, then. Let's get going!" With that, he began marching towards the castle gates.

"Ah?" Kurusu said, watching him walk. Shaking her head violently, she dashed up in front of him. "No, th-that would be really dangerous. I don't think we should go in there without at least two more people."

Ryuji stared at here. "But you said that you and Takamaki went in there together."

"Yes, but that was an accident and we didn't know --"

"Okay, but who's the third guy?"

Kurusu looked away. "I think it would be better if he introduced himself," she muttered.

With a straight line like that, Ryuji was half-expecting for this person -- whom he envisioned as some kind of James Bond type -- to show up right then and there. But that was yet another expectation that was cruelly dashed. Ah well. "Okay, but you also said that going in there will give me some kind of power-up."

Kurusu was still looking away, but she nodded. "You have the spirit of rebellion, obviously."

Ryuji ran his hand through his dyed hair, smirking a bit. "Well, I guess you could say that I don't let people boss me around --"

She turned back to look at him a bit confusedly. "I was talking about the app on your phone."

"Right. Of course you were."

"But it's asleep. Your spirit of rebellion, I mean. Waking it up, the way that Takamaki and I did, is really painful. I don't ... I don't think I'd be able to get you safely out of the palace, afterwards, by myself."

"Okay, I get it," said Ryuji, who wasn't really sure that he did.

"Tomorrow," said Kurusu. "We'll all meet after school tomorrow, me, you, Takamaki and ... and go in together then."

"Deal," said Ryuji, reaching out to pat his new associate on the shoulder.

He was wholly unprepared for her to back away as an expression of mortal terror abruptly grew on that face. Before he could say anything, Kurusu was looking around the alleyway, seeming more confused than Ryuji himself did right then. The performance came to an end when she shook her head and looked right at him. "Don't. Touch me. Please." That time it was even more of an afterthought.

"Got it, got it," Ryuji quickly confirmed, holding up his hands at his shoulders in a hopefully-universal gesture of surrender.

Apparently, it was effective, for after a moment Kurusu nodded. "We go out this way," she said, and walked back the way that they came.

---

Bold as anything, the girl walked in through the door as though oblivious to the glare that Sojiro was giving her.

"This time I did get a call from your school," he declared before she could announce her arrival.

She froze in space at that remark.

"A boy in your year killed himself. Right?" he asked, tensely.

"I had nothing to do with it," she answered just a little too quickly, given how long she had previously taken to process answers to his questions.

"Why would you even need to prepare an answer like --" Sojiro started to demand.

"I mean, I didn't know him," she pressed on. "We'd never met."

For a wonder, that didn't trip the bullshit detector. "Fine," he said heavily. "That wasn't even -- your homeroom teacher called to let me know that they let you out of school early because of it. But here you are, returning as though you had gotten out of class at the same time as always. There's kind of a blank space in the timeline of your activities, wouldn't you say?"

This time, the answer took the usual delay. "I made some friends. We talked a bit."

And this time, there was a disturbing level of bullshit to be detected. "Uh huh," Sojiro replied, not giving any sign of his readings. "Good friends or bad friends?"

Another long pause. "I'm not really sure I can tell that just yet," she answered.

What he wanted to do was sit down, open the lockable refrigerator behind the bar, pull out one of the bottles within and start getting seriously drunk. What he did instead was to shake his head. "Whatever. Just remember, step out of line and you're out of here. All right, get to your room."

She started walking so as to heed his instructions.

"Wait," he added abruptly.

She paused without a glance in his direction.

"Are you hungry?"

A moment or so later, she answered, "Not really."

"Why did that take so much consideration?" Sojiro asked, voicing a bit of the frustration he was convinced he had managed to hide. "Never mind. Get."

She headed up the stairs and out of sight.

A moment later, Sojiro sat down and glared accusingly at the lockable refrigerator. "Two of them," he muttered. "What the hell was I thinking?"

 

[Darkenning]

"So where the eff is she?" Ryuji asked. As the first words he'd spoken in her presence since middle school, they probably lacked something. But Ann had to admit they were an improvement on the oppressive silence that had been between the two of them since they arrived at the school rooftop to find that they were the only ones there, with their third teammate nowhere to be seen.

On the other hand, they also demanded an answer, which was annoying. "I dunno. She said she'd be here when we talked at -- hey, she's in your class so wouldn't you have seen her more recently than that?"

"Well, yeah, but I didn't -- and you've known her longer than I have!" replied Ryuji, as if to demonstrate that he too could abruptly change directions in mid-statement.

"What does that have to do with -- you know what, never mind," said Ann, letting out a sigh. "This is going to be so awkward, isn't it?"

"It doesn't have to be."

She shook her head. "No, I think it does. Well, there's a way to get rid of the awkwardness. I didn't really want to go there, but if this is the only way to handle it, then I guess I have no choice. All right then." She took a deep breath, then fixed him with a glare. "I want my money, Ryuji."

He stared at her. "What money?"

"The money I loaned you in middle school. The money you never repaid." She made a beckoning gesture with one hand.

"For real?" Ryuji asked, less amazed than faintly revolted. "You been holding on to a grudge about that for three years? Unbelievable." He shook his head as he started fishing in his pants pockets. "Y'know what, though, fine. Even though you probably make more from one photo shoot than I get in allowance for a whole effing year, I'll give you back the five hundred yen you lent me."

"Plus interest," Ann reminded him.

He froze in mid-fishing. "Interest?" Ryuji asked in a strangled tone. "What, are you the First International Bank of Takamaki, now? You don't get to change interest for a five hundred yen loan!"

"Well, then, maybe I should look into confiscating what was purchased with my money!" Ann nearly snarled.

"Hey, no, not funny!" Ryuji snapped. "My mom loves that stupid dolphin!"

They glared at each other for a moment, before silently turning away from each other. "Fine," said Ann. "Your mom has it hard enough already."

"Thanks," said Ryuji, voice dripping with sarcasm. "So both of you are gonna be hating me after this."

Ann nodded sharply, but the reproof she was preparing about how that was entirely his own fault died unspoken. "Wait, both of us?" she asked, turning back to look at him. "You think Kurusu hates you?"

He didn't return her gaze. "Well, when she showed me all this shit yesterday, she ended up by freaking out at me, so yeah, I think she probably hates me. And all I did was try and pat her shoulder."

Smack went Ann's hand against her face. "Oh, Ryuji you nitwit," she groaned. "No, she doesn't hate you. She's afraid of you. I'm surprised that she went anywhere with you alone."

This got him to look at her, confusion obvious on his face. Before he could say anything, though, the rooftop door rattled and then opened, revealing the third member of their jolly pirate gang, slumped a bit under the weight of her bag. "I'm late," said Kurusu as she walked up to the pair of them. "Sry." It was too briefly voiced to be an actual "sorry".

"That's okay," said Ann.

"What gives?" said Ryuji. Both of them in about the same moment.

"First, Kawakami-sensei wanted to have a word with me about her conversation with S- my guardian, yesterday," Kurusu replied as she got the bag off of her back and started to set it down on the ground before. "And then I went looking for someone, and that took a while longer." With that, she unzipped the bag.

From within its central compartment, a black cat poked its head out.

"Uhhhokay," said Ryuji, staring down at said cat.

Ann also stared, but seemed unable to find her voice for a moment. And then she did. "OMG," she said. "I knew it! I effing well knew it! You are a cat!"

The cat hissed. "No, I damn well am not!" he snapped.

"... so ... did that not-a-cat just talk?" asked Ryuji, faintly.

 

[Darkenning]

"See?" the not-a-cat shrieked at Ann, gesturing frantically with his head in Ryuji's direction. (His paws were presumably being used to keep himself upright.) "He gets it! He's known me for less than a minute and he gets it! Why can you not get it?!" He took a deep breath, then, and turned to regard Ryuji with what was probably meant as a benevolent expression, but just came off as smug. "Greetings, good sir," he purred. "It is a pleasure to make the acquaintance of such a perspicacious individual. I am Morgana, your humble instructor in the Noble Art of Phantom Thievery."

"... kay," said Ryuji, regarding this with what was probably meant as a bewildered expression ... and came off as just that. Momentarily, he managed to lift his gaze to regard Kurusu. "I get why you thought he should introduce himself, now."

"Mmm," replied Kurusu, who then turned to look at Ann and spoke quietly. "How is Suzui-san?"

Ann sighed. "I got her home all right, yesterday, but she texted last night that she's not coming back to school while Kamoshida's still here. I dunno how long her 'rents are gonna put up with that, though."

"Right," Kurusu replied with a nod. "Then that's our deadline. We have to get this done before Suzui-san has to come back to school. If possible, by next Monday. Today, though ..." She trailed off, glancing over to where Ryuji was conversing with Morgana.

Ann followed her gaze and guessed at its implications. "We go in, get it done and then get the hell out?"

"Yes." Raising her voice. "Are you ready to go, then?" she asked Ryuji.

Ryuji's head snapped up. "Doubt it, but we better get a move on anyway. Oh! Yeah, that reminds me -- I thought about what you said about it being dangerous, so I brought somethin' that might make me seem a little more dangerous than I am!" He turned to where his own bag was resting.

"Oh, no. Don't tell me you've managed to hold on to one of those stupid Ultraman masks they sell at festivals or something," asked Ann, wearily.

"No, but I bet that would have been an awesome backup to what I actually did bring," he replied, producing a pistol from the bag.

Ann gaped. "OMFG, Ryuji, where the hell did you get a gun and why did you bring it to school?" she fairly shrieked.

Ryuji found himself stepping back from the force of her dismay. "Sheesh, why don't you go tell the whole world instead of just you, me, Morgana and -- hey, where'd she go?" he asked, defensive posturing momentarily forgotten.

Ann turned to see that there was indeed a vacant space where Kurusu had been only a moment or so earlier. "Wha--" she started to ask, then leaned back a bit. "Ah, thought so," she said, before returning her accusatory gaze to Ryuji. "It's a toy gun, right?" she asked heavily.

Still confused, Ryuji nodded hesitantly. "Yeah, all it does is make noise. I figured the sight of it might spook the monsters, though."

"Yes, because we all know supernatural monsters are terrified of guns," Ann replied disgustedly. Somewhat more loudly, she repeated, "Toy gun, just makes noises."

Slooooowwwly, Kurusu poked her head out from the staircase entryway where she had taken cover, clearly still spooked.

"Ohhh, you weren't kidding about her not hating me," said Ryuji. To his credit, he promptly hid the gun away in his pack.

"Yeah, she hasn't known you nearly long enough for that," Ann replied.

"Thanks."

"I'm sure Lady Akira will come to understand your admirable qualities in time, Sir Ryuji," Morgana assured him.

"Heh, thanks." This time, it sounded a bit more sincere.

"Sir?" Ann growled.

 

[Darkenning]

Actually entering the palace, as he hadn't the previous day, was surprising for Ryuji on a number of levels. First, this time when the phone did its thing, there was no abrupt searing pain in his head -- which was nice. The relief when that didn't happen almost distracted him from the other big change when they started approaching the palace gates.

"Holy shit, what are you two wearing?" he yelped.

"I can't believe I honestly thought this was a good idea," Ann groaned into the pink gloved hand that was covering most of what could be seen of her face behind the red panther mask, while also covering parts of said mask. But therefore doing nothing to cover up the bright red latex costume she wore, though her elbow was conveniently over the window that showed off her cleav--

"Stop leering, Ryuji," Ann growled, free hand audibly tightening on the handle of the coiled-up whip she was holding.

"Okay," he promptly said, and turned his gaze on Kurusu. The black form-fitting outfit that she was wearing was honestly no less sexy than Ann's was, even if it showed much less skin and seemed designed more to be concealed by the long black coat she wore over top of it. A bit more unnerving were the fancy red gloves she was wearing on hands that were already clutching a pair of knives.

None of that was the biggest change, though. After the business with the gun, Ryuji had started to notice a lot of other indications that told him that Ann had gotten it right, that Kurusu was afraid of him. When they were walking to the alley, Kurusu had always tried to keep Ann between herself and Ryuji. Looking back on it, she had actually kept a fair amount of space between them when the two of them had come here yesterday, until she hadn't had any choice but to close the distance in order to keep him from going in the palace.

Now, though? Now the girl in front of him didn't seem scared of anything. And when she talked, as she was now --

Aw man, she's talking! Ryuji pulled himself out of his somewhat dazed speculations to listen.

"-- an outward manifestation of one's will to rebel," she said, in what was hopefully the tail end of the first sentence she'd said, instead of a later one. "When yours is awakened, it will probably take a form like your own ideas of what a Phantom Thief should look like."

"... okay, then we may have a real problem on our hands, 'cause I have no effing clue what a Phantom Thief should look like," Ryuji commented, conscious of how smoothly Kurusu was talking, how confident she sounded.

"I'm sure you'll figure it out, Sir Ryuji," said Morgana's voice, and naturally that prompted Ryuji to look down at him.

For a whole five seconds before he finally said, "Dang, Morgana, you weren't kidding about not being a cat!"

"Indeed not!" said the cartoon character standing before him, posing with his -- fists, he guessed -- on his hips, looking like he thought there was a cape blowing in the wind behind him. "I said it before and I'll say it again --"

"Yeah, you're way more like an advertising mascot or something," said Ryuji.

"Ooogh," Ann muttered, hand still over her face.

Morgana ceased speech and indeed all motion. Just as Ryuji was starting to get a bit worried about him, he resumed speech, though much more quietly. "Well, that is indeed an opinion that someone could have."

"So, what exactly is your deal? I didn't have time to ask about that before."

Recovering a bit further, Morgana continued. "I am a human, though I seem to have lost the appearance of such in one of my adventures in the palaces or possibly in -- ahem, that's getting a bit ahead of the subject. It is my belief -- nay, my certain faith -- that by stealing the treasures to be found within these realms that I will eventually be able to regain my true form. At which point I will probably look like a charming young gentleman who shall be adored by all ladies!" He grinned broadly, teeth gleaming even in the dim light of the palace's exterior.

"Well, that is indeed an opinion that someone could have," Ann muttered with a shake of her head.

"Ahem," Morgana coughed loudly and fakely. "Well, all this tumult outside of the palace has likely given the Shadows cause to notice us. You had all better brace yourselves. We're counting on you, Joker!"

A moment of silence ensued as everyone stared at the advertising mascot.

"Who?" said Kurusu.

"You!" replied Morgana, pointing at the black-clad thief with a series of rapid hand gestures. "Phantom Thieves must have code names! That is the basic of basics! And you are our trump card when it comes to fighting strength, therefore --"

"No," replied Kurusu. No shake of her head. Just a quietly voiced refusal. "I don't like that name."

"Well, what should we call you, then?" asked Ryuji and Morgana in chorus.

"Jinx," said Ann.

"Okay," Kurusu agreed with a short nod.

"Huh?" asked Ann, startled. "No, I was just, they said the same thing so I was --"

"I like it," said Kurusu. "What do you want to be called?"

Ann regarded her teammate with some apprehension, but pushed through it. "Well, considering how I look, I suppose I should go by --"

"Cat," interjected Morgana with gleaming eyes.

"... Panther," Ann growled, the tail attached to the rear of her costume implausibly sticking out in a straight line behind her.

"And you are Mona," said Kurusu as she looked down at Morgana. "Because you're a real piece of work."

"I'll take that compliment," Morgana replied cheerfully.

"Do I get a codename?" asked Ryuji, grinning in excitement.

"We'll talk about it after you wake up," Ann replied. "For now, you're just 'hey you'."

"... well, I was expecting something way crueller, so I'm good with it."

 

[Darkenning]

"All right," said Mona, walking down the short corridor that led from their entryway to the big foyer, a bit ahead of Panther and Jinx, who were in turn just a bit ahead of Hey You. "It seems I was mistaken about the security being raised because of all the noise we made just now. We should be clear until we get deeper into the palace." With that, he pushed open the door and guided them all into the foyer.

Standing on the walkway above was King Kamoshida, surrounded by no less than six of his green-armored guards. "You dare come back here, you wretched thieves?!" he nearly shrieked.

"Or this could happen," Mona quickly added. "I was just about to discuss this alternative possibility."

"Sure you were," Panther replied with a shake of her head.

"Bad enough that you came in here once and sought to humiliate my exalted self!" the royal pain declaimed over the rather noisy sounds of the guards trooping down the stairs towards the party of four. "Bad enough that you returned, to steal away the life of my beloved consort, Whatever Her Name Was! But now you return again to offer further effrontery in this time of mourning! How despicable -- don't you agree, Whatever Your Name Is?"

Owing to the angle at which they were viewing his position and the fact that he'd been surrounded by the guards up until now, the thieves hadn't noticed that Kamoshida was not standing up there alone. There was a young man wearing what could be charitably called an outfit that consisted of black leather pants, a mesh shirt, a chain wrapped around his neck like a collar, and a gleeful adoring smile on his face. "Yes, Daddy!" he cried out. "Anything you say, Daddy!"

"Mishima?" Ryuji gasped. "Wait, you're supposed to be dead! And what the eff are you wearing, dude?"

"Okay, one of those is a bigger deal than the other one is!" Panther yelled back at him, resolving to have a little chat with Ryuji later about his fixation on clothes. Right now, though, there were more critical matters, as the guards reached the bottom of the stairs and exploded out of their armor to reveal that they were weird black horse-thingies with curvy green horns.

"Hmmm?" growled Kamoshida, peering down at them. "What's this? I see you wretches have brought with you an even more wretched individual with you -- the notorious 'Track Traitor' whose violent ways spelled the end of his teammates' dreams! What terrible taste in allies, you thieves."

"Oh, get bent you emeffer!" Ryuji shouted back, and in one smooth move pulled out the gun and pointed it up at Kamoshida.

Who stared down at him with an eyebrow raised and his arms folded across his chest. "And what do you imagine that you're going to do with that?" he asked, scorn dripping from every word.

"Um," replied Ryuji, unprepared for this reaction. I guess supernatural creatures really aren't scared of guns, he thought. Oh, man, if we live through this Ann is never gonna let me live this down.

"Don't panic, Sir Ryuji!" Mona cried out. "That gun may be more than it seems!"

"What the hey, Mona?" Ryuji replied, not taking his eyes off Kamoshida. "I told you, it doesn't even shoot pellets!"

"But we're in a cognition! Here, your mind makes it all real! If you truly believe that you can, then you can you fire that gun!"

The horse-thingies were already attacking Panther and Jinx. There was no time to really think about what Mona had said. Ryuji drew in a deep breath through his nose ... and pulled the trigger.

A loud popping noise ensued.

"Or that could happen," Mona added. "I was about to address that alternative poss--"

 

[Darkenning]

Ryuji blinked as he gazed across the floor of the foyer at the sight of the other three getting overwhelmed by repeated waves of those weird horse-things. Something seemed odd about his current circumstances. Hadn't he been standing over there, beside Morgana or Mona or whatever the cartoon character wanted to be called, when he took his shot at Kamoshida? (Okay, tried to take his shot.) How'd he gotten all the way over here, slumped on the floor against the wall beneath a window?

Oh, yeah, he realized a moment later as his gaze took in the golden-armored figure who was stomping towards him. That guy hit me and I flew all the way over here.

He wasn't sure where this bastard had come from; it was like he'd shown up out of nowhere once Ryuji pointed the gun towards the so-called King, and then made no noise at all as he strode up to smack Ryuji. Right now, he was clanking like the other armored guys had done as they came down the stairs, like he didn't see any more need for stealth. Or speed, given how slowly he was walking.

Get up, get up, Ryuji told himself, pushing himself up with his back against the wall. He managed to get most of the way into a standing position before he started to feel the all-too-familiar sensations of his leg screaming at him that he was asking too much of it. That hadn't happened in months, and its return was really unwelcome.

"Dammit," he groaned. "Am I gonna lose everything this time? I can't run, the track team is gone, and he's even killed people --"

"-- and once these three have met their fates," proclaimed Kamoshida from on high, "your fate shall be the same as theirs! But slower!"

"Sir Ryuji!" cried Mona, who was being stomped on by one of the horses.

"It's not over --" said Jinx, somehow blocking the horns of another one with her knife.

Weirdly, it was the former that did it. Despite how weird the little creature was, the respect and admiration that Mona had shown Ryuji since they met had been like a ray of light amidst the disgust and contempt that damn near everyone showed him. And now, someone else in his crew was gonna get hurt?

Nay, nix, never, m'boy! If ever there was a time to spit on your hands, hoist the black flag and start slitting throats, this surely was it! They think you're a scoundrel already, so be one already! No turning back now!

I am thou, thou art I. Fly the skull of rebellion and make them dread it! Call on my name and unleash thy terror!

The pain in his head, on his face, now dwarfed that in his leg, and he reached up to tear the mask he was wearing off his face.

"CAP'N KIDD!" he howled, in the moment before the vast pirate ship hovering above his head opened up with the sixteen cannons that lined its broadside, obliterating the golden knight before it could so much as utter a word.

---

"Guuhhhhh," Ryuji said a few moments later, once again slumped against a wall, but this time in the train station outside the palace.

"Which one do you want?" asked Ann, holding a pair of bottles as she stood over where he was seated, with Kurusu standing a bit behind her and Morgana once again in her bag.

"Which one's coffee?" asked Ryuji.

"... neither, they're both fizzy pops," Ann replied.

Shaking his head, he reached out to take the lemon-flavored fizzy pop, cracked open the lid and started downing it. "So, that was that Persona thing you were telling me about, right? I can fight, now?"

"Yes, and the gun should probably work after this, too," supplied Morgana. "I have a slingshot that I use the same way."

"Huh," said Ryuji, nodding.

Ann slowly turned to look at the cat. "Wait," she said. "Then how come you haven't used it already? That would have come in handy when --"

"Because reasons," Morgana answered with great solemnity.

"Fur. Gloves," Ann growled, hands starting to reach out for the bag. Kurusu subtly maneuvered to keep most of herself between Ann and Morgana, and Ann let her hands fall but kept on glaring.

"Cap'n Kidd. That's kind of awesome. He's like the original version of Gold Roger, right?" Ryuji said.

"Sort of, but that's kind of strange," said Kurusu, the first words she'd spoken since they left the palace.

"Strange how?" asked Ryuji.

She hesitated a moment, before speaking, much more rapidly than she usually did. "... my Persona, and Ann's Persona, too, are characters from stories. Captain Kidd was a real person. It doesn't really match up, unless maybe he's the storybook version of him ..." Now she trailed off, her lips still moving a bit but no sound being made.

Ryuji stared at this display without much understanding, then just nodded. "Whatever. I'm with you guys, now. Maybe we should exchange deets so that we can get in touch and make plans to go back in?"

That pulled Kurusu out of her daze. "'Deets'?" she repeated, sounding confused.

"Phone numbers," Ann explained. "We can save them to our phones, y'know?"

Kurusu blinked. "Oh," she said, in a way strongly suggestive of the idea that she did not, in fact, know.

Deciding not to explore the implications of that, Ann abruptly realized another difficulty attending the plan they were making. "Oh," she said. "You don't have a phone, right?" she asked Morgana.

"Alas, no," the cat replied. "But fret not, for I shall be able to observe any messages that are sent to Sir Ryuji, as I shall be living with him henceforth."

"Sorry?" said Ryuji, blinking.

"I'm sure it'll be no imposition," Morgana replied. "Though if you could arrange for regular supplies of fresh fish, that would be --"

"My building's got a strict no pets policy, dude. If they caught me bringing you home, my mom and I would be on the streets like that."

"Oh," said Morgana, clearly disappointed. "Well, um, I'm sure that the gracious Lady Ann would --"

"Guess again," Ann growled.

"He can live with me," said Kurusu. "I'll work it out."

 

[Darkenning]

"Are you crazy?" asked Sojiro.

He was not altogether sure what annoyed him more -- the fact that his boarder had brought a cat into his cafe while there were customers present and then boldly asked if she could keep it, or the fact that, after he had pulled her into an alcove to discuss this situation out of the sight of the aforementioned customers, she had once again responded to this quite straightforward question by taking a moment to consider her response.

"Y'know what, don't bother answering," he said at last when she opened her mouth to give a response.

She obligingly shut up.

"No, you cannot keep it," he answered when he was sure he wasn't about to be interrupted.

"Him," she quietly corrected.

"Fine, him," Sojiro agreed in exasperation. His eyes slammed shut. "Don't tell me you've already named him," he asked wearily.

"... I haven't."

Also once again, the bullshit detector was giving a wonky response. On the one hand, it told him that she was not lying ... but everything else about the manner in which that brief statement seemed an incredibly calculated lie. Someone else must have named the cat. That was the simplest explanation, and so probably not the right one.

"Regardless, you can't keep an animal in this place," Sojiro continued. "He is a walking, meowing health code violation. You are lucky I don't declare you in violation just for --"

"So I was reading this article recently," said a woman's voice from back in the cafe, clearly pitched to carry. "Did you know that there's some literature claiming that people who have to care for something -- an animal, usually -- often show better results when trying to remain on good behavior than people who are responsible for no one but themselves?"

"... no, I can't say that I did," responded a male voice. "Nor do I find my life greatly enhanced by that knowledge. Also, why are you talking to me?"

"That's what you do in cafes, isn't it? Socialize? I've seen you talking the Boss' ear off quite a bit in the past."

"Well, yes, but --"

Sojiro let out a frustrated sigh, then coughed as he realized that the kid was looking over his shoulder as though trying to catch a glimpse of the customers who'd just been speaking. The cough yanked her attention back onto Sojiro.

"Okay. You can keep the cat. But make sure he stays quiet, especially when there are customers in here. And, so help me, no matter how cute and furry and loveable he might be, if I find him wandering around in my kitchen, leaving fur and other debris there, you will both be out the door faster than you can say, 'Wah, Doraemon'! Got it?"

The girl nodded shortly, while the cat, now poking his head out of her bag, made a smug-sounding cat noise. Sojiro reminded himself, firmly, that cats could not understand human speech, and that this one probably sounded smug all the damned time.

"All right, then -- get. I'll bring up some fish later, but after that you have to feed him yourself."

The girl nodded again, somewhat more deeply, and promptly trooped up the stairs. Annoyed at all this, Sojiro headed back to the kitchen, pausing to look in a rather unimpressed manner at a certain punkish-attired customer. She in turn smiled at him while sipping her tea.

Owing favors was how the adult world worked.

---

"I think the ruler of this place likes me more than he likes you," Morgana told his host/pupil while surveying his new dwelling place.

"Since he doesn't like me at all, that's not much of an accomplishment," Kurusu replied wearily as she took off her uniform blazer and hung it up in the closet.

"Hm. Well, you have a rather clean room, here, so I'm impressed ... though it does still need some work to make it a proper headquarters for our operations. Of course, I have no intention of taking advantage of your hospitality for nothing. I will work for my keep."

"You're more than welcome to have any mice you catch."

"First of all, ew! Second, also ew! Finally, that's not even remotely what I meant! I will provide you with training in the construction and maintenance of infiltration tools."

"What, like lockpicks and that sort of thing?" she asked.

"Correct! They will be critical for our future operations. How about it? Have we a deal?"

The young woman was regarding him with a somewhat skeptical expression, but what she said was, "All right, it's a deal."

I am thou, thou art I. Thou hast acquired a new vow. It shall become the wings of rebellion that breaketh the chains of thy captivity. With the birth of the Magician Persona, I have obtained the winds of blessing that shall lead to freedom and enlightenment ...

Hm, thought Morgana. I think she heard that, too. Interesting. Aloud, what he started to say was, "By the way --"

"If you can make lockpicks, why were you locked in a cell when I met you?" Kurusu interrupted.

Morgana coughed. "Well, when within the palace, I lack the resources with which to manufacture them, and when without the palace, I lack ... certain other faculties that would be necessary for --"

"You don't have hands."

"I don't have hands."

"Right."

"Coming up," announced a voice from the staircase, and a moment or so later Sojiro arrived bearing a plate of fish and a confused expression. "Were you talking to that cat?" he asked.

"Yes," replied Kurusu promptly.

"Oooookay," the older man said as he brought the plate over to Morgana, who promptly set too without even bothering to offer thanks. "Takes all kinds. So what is his name, anyway?"

"Bernardo."

"Bernardo?" yowled Morgana, interrupting his feast.

"I don't think he likes that name very much," observed Sojiro.

"Oh well."

Note: Bernardo is Zorro's deaf-mute servant in the original stories, who sometimes only poses as deaf in later adaptations.

 

[Darkenning]

PART FOUR

Is this working?

R: Sure seems to be!

A: Yes, it's working.​

I've never done this.

R: You never texted with your friends back home?​

I could talk to them. Why would I need to text?

Never mind that, now. Where did you get the item you showed us?

R: You mean the gun?

R: Hello?

A: Yes, Ryuji, I think she might have meant the item she was trying to avoid
naming to avoid the possibility of these texts being used as evidence in our eventual trial.​

Yes.

R: Oh. Yeah. There's this shop in Shibuya that sells model guns. I'd be glad to take you there
if you want!​

Or you could just send me the address.

R: Uh, you really wanna do it alone?​

I won't be alone. Morgana says hi.

R: Right, right.​

---

Wrong, wrong, Ryuji thought to himself the next day, gazing fixedly at Kurusu's back while she somehow remained upright while nonetheless dozing through another one of Ushimaru's lectures on how much all of them sucked. He supposed that it would have been inspiring if he was the sort who found faked attention inspirational.

What it really did was make him worry. This girl, who had panicked at the mere sight of a fake gun in the hands of someone as harmless and innocent as Ryuji, was going to be heading to a store full of fake guns, run by someone way more intimidating and nowhere nearly as innocent. (Ryuji, not exactly a babe in the woods, had found that surly manager to be really disconcerting.) And then there were all the other dangerous elements of the neighborhood where the store was to be found. She was going to be going there alone except for the not-a-cat?

And hell, how was she supposed to work that, anyway? She'd have to go back to wherever the two of them were living to pick up the cat, which would lead to all sorts of questions --

Like why was her bag moving on the floor?

No, thought Ryuji as he watched through horrified eyes as the zippered-shut compartment of the bag opened up from the inside. She didn't seriously bring him into class with her.

Morgana poked his head out of the now-open compartment, looking around with interest for a moment before his bright blue eyes caught sight of Ryuji. He opened his mouth to utter some manner of greeting.

She did, oh eff, she did! he thought, shaking his head frantically.

For a wonder, Morgana took the meaning of that gesture and remained silent.

"You!" snapped Ushimaru, voice filled with murderous intent. "Pay attention! Is that how you listen when someone's talking to you?!"

Ryuji snapped to attention. He knew it would make no difference, but maybe, if he could see it coming, he might be able to --

"Kurusu!" the teacher yelled again, and then flung the chalk towards the occupant of the seat in front of Ryuji, who still seemed distracted by whatever private thoughts were occupying her.

And yet nevertheless caught the chalk between two fingers before it struck her.

The stunned whispers of the class seemed to draw Kurusu out of her daze; to Ryuji's eyes, she seemed almost as surprised to see herself holding the chalk in her hand as Ushimaru was aghast at the sight of it. With a shake of her head, she set the chalk down on top of her desk and focused her attention on the teacher.

Okay, maybe she'll be all right after all, thought Ryuji. ... nah.

 

[Darkenning]

"How do I let you talk me into these things?" asked Ann while peering around a corner.

"Clearly I am way more persuasive than I seem," Ryuji replied as he too peered. "Now shush, she'll hear us!"

"I like that explanation better than the alternative, that I'm way more gullible," she said, pulling her head back behind the corner.

Ryuji had sought her out as the school day ended and persuaded her to come along with him on his self-assigned mission to make sure nothing bad happened to Kurusu on her journey to Untouchable Airsofts. So far, they had seen her pause to listen to some old politician delivering a speech in the square outside the station, then move on to the alley where the store in question was to be found. She was walking up to the store as they spoke.

"Besides, I'm pretty sure that she knows we're here," Ann added.

"No chance!" Ryuji replied -- loudly -- as he too ducked back behind the corner. "We've been stealthy!"

"Doesn't matter," said Ann, shaking her head in grim certitude. "I'm positive she knows."

Ryuji started to frown. "Did you tell her about this?"

"No, she's just scary smart like that. But I'll bet you she knows."

The frown turned upside down in a hurry. "Okayyyyy!" Ryuji said through his somewhat maniacal grin. "I win, you forget all about that money I supposedly owe you. You win -- double it!"

Now Ann was smiling with equal ferocity. "I'll take those stakes!" She promptly looked around the corner again. "Okay, she's gone inside. From what you said, the guy in there is going to scare her away in just a minute, and then we can -- wait, who are those guys?"

Ryuji blinked and resumed his own surveillance, just in time to see a pair of dudes in coats and suits rushing up to the door of the store. "Oh shit, I think those are cops."

"What?" Ann barely avoided shrieking as she watched the "cops" enter the building. "Ryuji, what the hell kind of a store is this?"

"I told you, toy guns! Really effing realistic-looking toy guns ... and knives ... and some lengths of pipe ... and a few whips ... and ... um ..." Ryuji trailed off. "Y'know, maybe this wasn't such a good idea," he added.

"You think?" demanded Ann as she grabbed hold of his shirt with one hand while the other began to form a fist.

"Please don't hit him," Kurusu asked. "If we fall out with each other, it's all over."

The two stalkers snapped their heads in her direction. She had walked up to them without either of them noticing, while holding a paper bag in front of herself -- quite a bit in front of herself, and gingerly, as though she was holding something a bit dangerous.

"Are you okay?" Ann asked.

"I think so," Kurusu replied, pensively.

"What happened?" asked Ryuji.

"Well, I went in and took a look at their stock. Before I could make up my mind, though, the manager checked his watch and asked me to do him a favor by taking charge of this bag, without looking inside of it. Then those police officers showed up and said they wanted to have a word with him. So I left."

"And they let you just walk away?" asked Ann, hands up over her mouth.

Kurusu nodded. "I didn't think they would, and it was a bit scary. But they weren't interested in me. I don't think they even really noticed I had this bag." She pushed it towards Ryuji. "What's inside?"

Ryuji's eyes flickered between her and the bag. "Uh, didn't he ask you not to look inside of it?"

"Yes," she answered, nodding.

They stood a while in silence.

"He didn't ask you not to do that, though," Kurusu added.

"... right then," said Ryuji after a moment, taking the bag. "Boy, I hope this isn't dr-- oh, it's a gun. Wayyyy better than the one I picked up, this practically looks real." He started to reach inside.

"Thank you," said Kurusu, quickly taking it back and pulling the top of the bag closed once more. "I'll have to return this later."

"I bet he'll be grateful," said Mona from inside the backpack. "Maybe we can work out some sort of arrangement, we're going to need to pick up some supplies for when we go in the Palace again."

"Great idea, but there's something more important we need to talk about," said Ann. "Did you know we were following you?"

Kurusu blinked. "Nnno," she said, eyebrows raised.

"Ha!" laughed Ryuji, smirking at Ann.

"Not until I got to the store and heard someone saying 'no chance', at least," she added.

"Ha ha!" 'laughed' Ann, returning the smirk.

"Please don't hit her."

 

[Darkenning]

"... but never on a Sunday a Sunday the one day/I need a little rest," she sang to herself while leafing through an imported copy of Rolling Stone. And she really was committed to the notion of giving herself a rest from her real work, to prove to herself -- the only person whose opinion truly mattered -- that she was not pathological about her research, just focused and dedicated. There was a tiny voice in the back of her mind that whispered that someone who deliberately scheduled one day a week to avoid doing something was demonstrating signs of just such a pathology, but she had gotten used to ignoring that unhelpful voice.

Of course, she thought as the bell rang to inform her that the door had opened, taking a break from her real work did not mean that she was allowed to take a break from what she did to pay the bills. The silence that followed the door opening suggested something else. "... is this your first visit?" she asked without looking up from her magazine.

The silence following that greeting, on the other hand, got her to look up ... and blink in a rapid manner that would have put the lie to anyone who referred to her as languid. "Oh," said Takemi. "It's you."

"Yes," said the young woman in a Shujin uniform, carrying a heavy-looking backpack. "F-from Leblanc."

"From Leblanc," repeated the doctor, a smile teasing at her lips. "Hm. I was wondering whether you were going to come here."

Now the teenager was the one blinking rapidly, plainly confused.

"You don't have the slightest idea, do you?" asked Takemi, feeling a rare sensation of pity.

"I don't even know what I'm supposed to have an idea about," admitted the girl.

"... okay, then," said Takemi. "Head into the exam room, and I'll explain."

A few moments later, she was seated in her desk chair, watching the girl set her bag down on the floor beside the stool where she then sat down to face her. A moment or two elapsed as Takemi studied her vistor's face, looking for signs that she knew better than to expect.

Then she moved on. "To make a long story short, ten years ago, when I was a student, I took an elective that your father was teaching. It was fascinating stuff, if a bit outside of my usual interests, and I ended up getting to know the professor -- and your mother, too -- fairly well. I stayed in touch with them, and a few weeks ago, they contacted me to ask if there was some way I could give you shelter during your stay here in Tokyo. That wasn't an option, of course, but I happened to know someone else who had a room that wasn't being used, and who owed me a few favors. And that's how I know you, and how I know all about your situation. Any questions?" she asked.

The girl had already been almost as pale as Takemi herself when she came in. Now she was practically ghostly, and her eyes were tiny little dots. She really hadn't had any idea about any of this, it seemed.

"Well?" Takemi prompted.

"No," the girl peeped. "No questions."

"All right, then," said the doctor. "What brought you here?"

"I don't remember."

Takemi knew perfectly well that she often came off as intimidating. This was largely volitional, since she neither wanted nor needed any close personal contacts with other human beings. But she had been trying to seem friendly during this conversation. That promptly went out the window, and her patient expression went away in a burst of skepticism. "You don't remember?" she repeated.

"No," said the girl, stooping to pick up her bag and then standing up, ramrod straight. "It doesn't matter so much."

Forcing herself back to friendliness wasn't easy, given how profoundly unnatural it was, but Takemi tried all the same. "Look, if you're worried about the possibility that things we talk about will get back to your parents, don't be -- I take doctor-patient confidentiality really seriously, and, besides that, I know --"

"Good day," said the girl, bowing politely, and then briskly walking out through the patient entryway.

"That could have gone better," Takemi muttered.

Then the door swung open and the day got even better as Oyamada stormed in. "I'm sorry, you'll have to take a number like everybody else," she said with feigned patience.

"Enough of this!" he nearly roared. "You're the only one who could possibly be developing that medicine --"

"Nooo idea what you're talking about, dear sir," she replied.

"Don't play the fool! The rumors say that it's a pill that grants unlimited power!"

"... the rumors should really stop reading cultivation novels."

He ignored that. "This is the only warning I'll give you -- dispose of the drug and stop all research, or I'll get the police involved!"

"Okay, I'll get right on with disposing of the drug that doesn't exist. It should be easy enough," Takemi said, shaking her head in disbelief.

"You will not ruin my reputation ag--" he was continuing to rant, then whirled to look back at the door. "Someone's listening in on this, aren't they?" he almost hissed before flinging the door open.

There was no one in the waiting area, of course. It was hard to tell if Oyamada was more frustrated or more embarrassed, but he looked back at Takemi one more time. "No more warnings -- the next time I hear about any sort of medical research coming out of this hovel, I'll have you arrested!" With that, he stormed out of the room.

"Sure you don't want some medicine for that hypertension?" she called after him. It had almost been scary, this time. Oyamada had always been a jealous asshole, but this level of paranoia was nothing she'd ever seen from him before this. What was up with him?

---

"So I don't get it," Morgana said from the backpack. "She seemed way more friendly than the guy in the weapon shop --"

"Airsoft gun store," Kurusu corrected as she walked briskly in the direction of Leblanc.

Morgana pressed on without acknowledging that interjection. "-- but you were like five times as frightened of her! What gives?"

"I --" She paused, seemed to draw in a deep breath. "I have my reasons, okay? I'll figure something else out for the medicine you say we need."

"... okay, fine," replied Morgana, giving up.