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

[Darkenning]

"No, not fine," Morgana said a bit less than twenty-four hours later.

He had actually found himself a bit impressed by the first steps of the Plan B that his Wild Card had developed, since they involved waiting until the landlord had gone home for the night and then sneaking out of the building through the upstairs window to scale the wall to the street below. It was a fine demonstration of the Noble Arts of Phantom Thievery. Unfortunately, things had promptly gone wrong as the rest of the plan involved visiting a variety of 24 hour convenience stores and purchasing pain relievers there. Morgana had no idea of the medicinal quality of these products, but what he did know was that none of them had the right aura to be useful inside of a palace. So that was a bust, and only the sight of her scaling the wall and going back in through the window had soothed his temper.

Which had led to the current situation, after the end of Monday classes, in which Kurusu met with Ryuji and the other one to propose Plan C -- "go in without medicine and then be very, very careful". To their credit, the two of them had been almost as dubious about this notion as Morgana. Of course, in his own case, to call him "dubious" was the understatement of the century.

"I mean, isn't being cautious part of being a Phantom Thief?" asked Kurusu.

"There is being cautious, as in being prepared for the worst," Morgana explained, through clenched teeth, "and there is being a different kind of reckless, where you don't prepare for the worst and rely on optimistic projections of how careful you can be once the situation gets going!" With an effort, he calmed down. "Look, Akira -- do you mind if I call you Akira?" he asked.

"I don't see how I can stop you."

"Right, right. Akira, the fact that we always take weapons with us into the Palace is a sign that we need to expect possible conflict. And expecting possible conflict means expecting possible bad outcomes for those conflicts. With your plan, every time we run into danger, we would afterwards face a choice between retreating to the exit or pressing on despite injuries and thus inviting further injuries. Neither of those sounds desirable, right? You wanted to get this done as quickly as possible, right? For Suzui-san's sake, right?"

Morgana could feel Ann glaring at him for that last bit, and felt a bit like a heel watching Kurusu starting to crumple up on herself in response to all of this. But it was important enough that --

"Look, how'bout this?" interjected Ryuji. "I'll go see the doc instead. I mean, I've already got medical history!" With that, he slapped his bum leg and gave a probably mostly exaggerated wince. "Oh, doctor, it's gotten so much worse lately, please give me some pain pills!" he said in an exaggeratedly hapless tone.

Morgana turned to look at him. "That might be a viable solution, Sir --"

"No," said Kurusu, faintly. "I-I'll take care of it. I messed up, so I'll fix it. It may take a while though," she added as an afterthought.

"Okay," said Ann, speaking for the first time today. "So we'll wait here for you --"

"No," Kurusu repeated. "That won't work. I don't know how long this will take, and someone might come up here to check whether someone is hanging around after school. Uh, le-let's meet up outside, ah, that restaurant in Shibuya." She nodded once.

"All right," said Morgana. "Well, then, let's get --"

"You're going with Ann and Ryuji," Kurusu interrupted without glancing at the cat-shaped person. "I can't -- I need -- yeah," she concluded, then promptly turned on her heel and walked away alone, closing the rooftop access door heavily once she passed through it.

"Well, this is not what I was expectiyaaaaah!" Mona started out pensively and then squalled as Ann picked up the bag and brought his face up to her own, both due to the sudden motion and the decidedly unfriendly expression with which he was currently being regarded.

"What happened, cat?" Ann snarled.

"Okay, you are clearly really upset, so I'm not going to remind you that I am not --" Morgana started to say in a soothing and reasonable tone, then coughed before resuming in a much more outraged one. "I told you what happened!"

"You gave us an outline, not the effing details!" she retorted.

"... I just realized that you say 'effing' almost as much as I do," said Ryuji, watching all this in confusion. "Does she ever call you on it?"

"The details, Morgana!" Ann demanded, ignoring all that.

"I don't know what details you want, though!" Morgana protested. "All that happened was that we went in, and it turned out that the doctor, who's kind of sexy but obviously that couldn't be any problem for Kurusu, said some stuff about how she knew Kurusu's family and the next thing I know she's running out of the office and just pausing long enough to listen in on --"

Ann's face drained of color, and the bag slipped out of her hands. Morgana let out another squawk as Ryuji snatched the bag before it landed.

"Y'all right there?" Ryuji asked the not-a-cat.

"My life flashed before my eyes," Morgana said faintly. "I mean, there isn't much of it, but still --"

"I don't believe it. Why the hell didn't I even consider it?" asked Ann of no one in particular, ignoring this byplay.

"What? What?" Ryuji and Morgana asked.

"What kind of parents just let their adolescent daughter get sent to juvie and then put on probation miles away from them?" Ann asked, finally regarding them. "Answer, ones who are either more neglectful than mine, which is hard to imagine, or ones who --" Her eyes darted to Ryuji and then her lips momentarily clamped down.

"Oh," said Ryuji, aghast.

"So naturally, any reference to them is going to upset her! And we sent her back for more of that! WE ARE ALL FUCKING IDIOTS!" she concluded at the top of her lungs.

The roof access door opened noisily. "While there are many worse things than shouting profanity that someone could be doing on the off-limits rooftop after school hours," said a rather tense female voice, "that is still something contrary to school regulations."

 

[Darkenning]

"Aw, effff," groaned Ryuji as Morgana dropped down into the bag he was holding.

Emerging from the rooftop access was the second runner-up to the title of "person they least wanted to encounter". (Kamoshida, naturally, held the crown, with "every other teacher in the whole damn school" tied for second place.) "That technically wasn't profanity," said Niijima Makoto. "So you are only in a place you're not supposed to be at a time that you're not supposed to be. Still detention-worthy offenses. I'm giving you one more chance to clear out."

"We're going, we're going," said Ann, grabbing hold of Ryuji's sleeve and pulling him along with her as she walked briskly towards the doorway. But the satisfied look on the stucon president's face as she observed them obeying her "requests" further aggravated the already exasperated young woman. Without really meaning to, she found herself muttering, as she passed Makoto, "Another jumper would really mess up your record, wouldn't it?"

"What was that?" Makoto snapped.

"Uh --" Ann temporized, unwilling to go as far as blatantly claiming not to have said anything but regretting having let the words fly.

"... tell me, Takamaki-san," Makoto pressed on, turning back to look at the two of them. "Have you ever seen someone fall to their death?"

"Well, uh --"

"Let me elaborate. Have you ever seen someone fall to their death while you were running towards them in hopes of holding them up or talking them out of jumping? Have you ever looked down at what used to be a human being crumpled on the ground below you? Have you ever watched someone crying about how much someone else hurt them, to the point they just couldn't take it anymore?" The senior paused only a moment before continuing. "No? I didn't think you had, but who knows, these days. Well, anyway, when you've seen something like that, you can pass judgement on my motivations. Not until. Now, get out of the school and go the fuck home."

A noise came from the bag.

Makoto glanced at it. "Is there a cat in that thing?" she demanded.

With a glance at Ryuji, who seemed utterly petrified, Ann let out a deep, despairing sigh. "... no," she answered, knowing that she was never going to be allowed to live this down.

"Fine. Get gone."

Without any further discussion, Ann continued to guide Ryuji through the door and down the stairs.

"I don't effing believe it," he said after a moment. "We just heard the stooge-in-chief swearing!"

"Yeah, real world of wonders," Ann muttered. Right at the landing, however, she paused and looked back up at the door they'd just passed through.

"What?" asked Morgana, peeking out of the bag.

"Did she say she heard Mishima talking right before he jumped?" Ann asked, frown settling on her face. "What did he tell her? How much does she know?"

"I don't think we should inquire too closely into the affairs of scary people," suggested the officially-not-a-cat.

"Hell with that," replied Ann, who tromped back up the stairs and reached the doorway, looking through its window for a moment ... before turning back and tromping back down yet again. "Forget it," she said brusquely.

"What happened?" asked Ryuji, bewildered at this literal and figurative about-face.

"I said forget it," Ann repeated herself without looking at either of her comrades.

On the rooftop, seated almost exactly where Kurusu had been seated a few moments earlier, the heartless stooge-in-chief of the student council was seated with her face in her hands, with shoulders shaking violently.

 

[Darkenning]

This time, when the girl came in the clinic door, Takemi was gazing in bleary boredom at the empty waiting room, and so the arrival came as -- well, not no surprise, but certainly less of one. She watched as the girl came up to the desk, took a few breaths, opened her mouth, closed it again, and repeated the process a few times. It was too fascinating a routine to be interrupted.

When at last the girl made a noise, though, Takemi decided that she'd had enough fun with this. "Yessss?" she asked, tone somewhere on the border of inviting and threatening.

Another deep breath, then words came forth in a torrent. "I came to apologize."

Acting as though this wasn't a surprise was easy, though in truth it was. "Apologize for coming in to ask me something and then running off without asking for it, or for listening in on private conversations?" Takemi asked.

"Yes," said the girl. "Both. Yes," she repeated.

Privately, Takemi gave the girl a few points for having made no attempt to deny what had happened, given that her eavesdropping just been a guess on her own part. She didn't let that show, though. "All right. Step inside and we'll pick up where we left off."

Other than her guest not setting down the bag, which she didn't seem to be carrying, things went pretty much as they had yesterday, though Takemi locked the door to the waiting room before sitting down at her desk. "So let me reiterate my earlier point," she said. "I know that you may have heard that quite a few doctors, when treating young people like yourself, will breach client confidentiality when talking with their patients' parents or guardians. I don't judge them for doing that, but I don't do that myself. Anything you tell me won't get back to your parents, even if they ask. Okay?"

"They won't ask," the girl replied, not meeting Takemi's gaze.

Takemi began to make a reply to the response she had expected; fortunately, her ears and brain caught up with her mouth before she said anything. "Why won't they ask?" she asked after a moment. She was halfway sure that she was going to get sullen silence as a response.

"... when I got out of the center," the girl said, quietly, carefully, eyes fixed on the floor, "there was an envelope waiting for me at the desk. It had a train ticket in it, and the address of the place where I was supposed to go. And a note. Just three little words." A long pause. "'Don't come back.'"

"You're on probation for a year, right?" Takemi asked after what felt like a long time. "Just for the duration of the current school year. Not your senior year."

Each time Takemi finished a statement, the girl nodded.

"I see," she said at last. "Hm. Well. I wasn't expecting to be disillusioned about my mentors, today, but we don't always get what we expect, as I'm sure you're well aware. They're that disgusted by what you did, then?"

"No," said the girl. "They were always like this."

"... oh," said Takemi. "Oh. Okay, then. Well, if they're never going to ask, then I'll never be in a position to tell them anything, so now I'm a little confused about why you'd --"

"I --" the girl interrupted, then broke off, lifting her eyes to meet Takemi's gaze for just a second before snapping them away. "Didn't want to disillusion people when I need their help," she muttered at last.

To this, Takemi found it frankly impossible to make reply. "You were trying ... to protect them?" she asked at last.

The girl didn't move or speak in response.

"I see," Takemi finally said, even though she neither saw nor wanted to see. "So. You need my help. And I'm guessing that it has something to with what you overheard. Let me just clarify that I don't make super-serums here. I do engage in medical research that is a little ... eccentric. But everything I make is for the purpose of healing someone, not to ... make them forget. Do you understand?"

The girl nodded.

"All right. Second point. I am not even remotely qualified to act as a psychiatrist. If you want, I can refer you to --"

Now she shook her head, sharply.

"All right," Takemi repeated, even though she suspected that it was just about as far from all right as she was likely to get. "Third point. I will sell you some medicines that I think you might find helpful, but you have to do something for me. You have to come here, not just to buy this junk, but so that I can talk to you."

That got her to look up, a mildly confused expression replacing the shame and despair that had been there until now. "You want me to help with your research?" the girl asked.

"No," Takemi replied firmly. "I need well-adjusted guinea pigs for that and you, kiddo, are disqualified. I'm going to need to talk to you so that I can confirm for myself that you're not abusing the stuff that I'm selling you. I don't have much in the way of conscience, but I'm not going to help you like that. All right? Do we have a deal?"

"Yes," said the girl named Akira -- and wasn't this a strange time to think that? -- as she flinched for no reason Takemi could see.

 

[Darkenning]

The problem with hanging out with one's criminal accomplices, it seemed, was less the awkward pauses in conversation as the fact that said awkward pauses tended to be the conversation. Since you never knew who might be listening, you had to keep quiet about the various things you had seen and done. Later, maybe, that might change, as one or both them -- okay, mostly Ryuji -- would get more comfortable with the situation and start talking about secret stuff in public with neither care nor concern. But not right now.

It didn't help matters that both of them had other things on their minds right then. Ann was considering what she had learned and witnessed, its implications and significance, and felt no urge to discuss them with anyone else just yet. While Ryuji was keeping quiet for a much more pragmatic reason -- the last time he'd had a conversation with Ann, he'd wound up doubling the supposed debt that he owed her, and was in no hurry to further redouble it again.

That left Morgana, who was ironically the only one who could speak freely, given that nearly any eavesdropper would take his erudite observations for cat noises. Yet he too kept his peace, mostly hiding within the bag thrown over Ryuji's back but occasionally peeking out to take in the sights.

It was while doing so that Morgana caught sight of his Wild Card, and quietly announced, "There she is," to the other two would-be thieves. Watching them look around wildly before they, too, had eyes on Kurusu was by turns amusing and frustrating; he would have to come up with some way of indicating directions in the future. For now, though, he focused on the team's leader. In a way, the way that she was approaching, with a large paper bag in her hands, was eerily similar to the way that she'd looked coming out of the weapon shop.

"Are you okay?" Ann asked, compounding the similarities.

"I think so," Kurusu answered, for the trifecta.

Ann let out a sigh composed in equal parts of relief and frustration. "Is this how you're always going to answer that?"

"... no, if I don't think so, I'll tell you that," replied Kurusu, looking a bit bewildered at the question as she took the bag with Morgana in it away from Ryuji. "But anyway, I talked the doctor into selling me some medicine." She started to open the paper bag up. "Morgana, could you please check to see if it's --"

"No need," Morgana replied easily. "I can smell it, and we're good to go."

That got a raised eyebrow out of Kurusu. "You can smell it? I thought you had to see it to know --"

"I can see it, I can smell it, if you shake the boxes I'll be able to hear it. I am versatile," the cat-shaped creature declared with humility appropriate to his form. (None, in other words.)

Kurusu seemed dubious, but chose not to address that at this time. "Well, I hope that we won't need to use too much of any of it, because it was all pretty expensive." She gazed at the bag in a vaguely accusatory manner.

"Fret not -- we shall recoup our expenses from those whom we defeat within the palace," Morgana reassured her.

"Yeah, I'm still a little shaky on how that works," interjected Ryuji. "We beat these guys up, and they leave ... actual money behind? That we can bring back with us? How?"

"It just is," replied Morgana, and regally ignored the dubious expressions that this statement of obvious truth provoked.

"Well, okay, but maybe those of us who get paid ridiculous amounts of money for standing around and looking cute could chip in a little --" Ryuji started to say.

"Ryuji," Ann growled the name. "Every sen I get paid for my modeling goes in a security deposit my parents set up that I'm not allowed to even think about touching until I turn 21. Y'know, I bet that you have more money in your wallet right now than I do."

A wicked grim lit up Ryuji's features. "Same stakes?" he almost purred.

"Same stakes."

"... I wonder if they're going to keep doing this until Sir Ryuji owes her as much as this country's GDP," Morgana wondered aloud.

"Goddammit!"

"It seems likely," said Kurusu, nodding slightly. Then she took a deep breath. "Okay. Let's get going."