"And Bruce Wayne! Why are you dressed up like Batman?"
- Max Schreck
"When it comes to loving you, I can relate. We're two of a kind, I know how you operate. Baby, you are my ritual."
The Palace's distant audio system rumbled with the tribal workout song of some twisted alternate version of society. The royal chamber was strewn with unconscious Phantom Thieves like they were streamers tossed to the floor of an arena after a fierce gymnastics presentation.
The only Thief still on her feet was Kasumi. Clad in a high-cut leotard with an overcoat and a carnival mask, she looked like an aerobics dancer who'd fallen out of the light and joined a gang of foppish 18th century highwaymen. As fate would have it, the Palace guardian she was battling fashioned himself as a sort of demented fitness trainer. Named Flexcelion, the mechanical half-demon was built tall and lean and wore a striped black track suit. The overall impression he left was one of the Borg had decided to cosplay the Rock from his Corporation days.
Kasumi was in constant fluid motion as she dashed this way and that. She was an impossible to follow streak of black coattails and fiery ruby hair as she fought Flexcelion from all sides as a one-woman army. Every second she'd come cartwheeling out of one corner of the Palace, charge past Excelion with her rapier thrusting, and disappear into another corner. The Palace guardian mostly just stood mid-arena with his arms crossed and his posture as still as a statue, only occasionally stepping out of the way to dodge or raising a hand to fight back.
"Is that all you've got?" the Phantom Thief taunted as she danced her sword through a riposte. "I can kick through slime balls like you for breakfast!"
"You're leagues above the rest of these minor trifles," Flexcelion said as he casually swayed his head toward the fallen forms of Joker's team in the background. "You need a more strict grading system."
Suddenly, before Kasumi even had a chance to blink, the Shadow trainer whipped his right hand around her forearm and twisted the sword out of her grip.
"Five points off for your form," Flexcelion scolded with a passive but rigid tone.
He delivered an uppercut that sent the gymnastic Phantom Thief stumbling back on her stiletto heels.
"Three points off for your balance."
He performed a roundhouse kick that ended with his ankle planted in the soft part of Kasumi's waist. The wind came rushing out of her lungs in a quick painful gasp.
He followed up by grabbing the sides of her face with his palms.
"Seven points off for your delinquent rejection of authority."
He held her in place as he pounded her forehead with a flurry of ruthless headbutts that left her brain feeling as light and dainty as the rest of her body.
"And for the penalty round…"
Flexcelion scooped up his opponent's small 100-pound frame by her shoulders and thighs and hoisted her three feet over his head. Kasumi felt like she was floating off the ground as she stared up at the Palace ceiling with tiny bells ringing in her ears and blurry stars spinning in her eyes.
"…we'll play Break the Ballerina."
The Shadow swung his arms back down with all of the merciless demonic strength he possessed and smashed the small of Kasumi's back across the corner of his bent knee. Her spinal cord made a swift wet thwik sound as it snapped in two as if he were holding nothing more the fragile curved stem of a rose between his hands. Her vocal cords, similarly, made a bloodcurdling screaming sound.
Flexcelion shrugged and let Kasumi's crippled self roll to the carpet. He brushed his palms together like he was getting the dust off.
Kasumi groaned through clenched teeth as her body weakly convulsed from shock. She tried to crawl on her belly with only the upper parts of her body she could still control. Her legs dangled and flopped below her waist like two long thick strands of linguine. Every part of her felt like it was being attacked by a nauseating flood of agony and numbness.
"It's sad to see something so lovely in so much misery," Flexcelion said as he was looking down on his wounded prey. "But the only reason we fail is so we can learn to improve."
The Palace guardian twirled his fingers in the air. His hand was suddenly holding a small black baton decorated with red laces of yarn.
He knelt over Kasumi with vile intentions. He touched his fingers to her back under base of her ribs and above the top of her hips, feeling around for the precise spot where her spine had been rendered into porridge and making her gasp in agony along the way. Her squeals came the loudest when he found the right place and pressed the end of the baton against it. The strange tool phased through her Phantom Thief clothes, through her flesh, and directly into the bone, filling the generous gap left by the shattered vertebrae. She looked like a wind-up toy with a ribbon-covered key sticking out of her back.
And so he started to wind her. Flexcelion turned the handle in steady counter-clockwise motions, screwing the rod tighter and tighter into the ruined bones. The nerves started to mend as the baton crackled with black sparks. He continued cranking as streams of Shadow corruption trickled out of the rod and followed the trail up to Kasumi's brainstem.
As the baton was turned again and again, Kasumi's complaints became less shrill and more quiet. More relaxed. By the time the key was winded as tightly as it would go, she'd become completely silent. Her face was hidden between the Palace floor and the natural wavy red blankets formed by her hair.
Flexcelion stood up when the personal training session was finished. Kasumi—legs in included—shuffled quietly in a heap on the floor. She slowly rose up beside him with her head hanging forward and the baton still sticking out of her back. Its three short red tassels swished as she moved, adding an extra flair of color to her all-black attire.
By now, the rest of Joker's party was recovering from their defeat. Even though he hadn't seen everything that had happened since he fell from exhaustion, he was already getting the strange feeling he'd been dealt a bad deck of cards. Futaba was detecting there was a glitch in the system as she shook her dizzy head. Ryuji felt a chill that rattled his bones. Morgana sensed something that turned his stuffing cold. Makoto sensed there was a Damocles sword hanging over her head. Haru felt so scared she turned white. Ann and Yusuke picked up the scent of something rotten.
They all woke up to the same terrible sight: Flexcelion standing crossed-armed like he was King of the Palace with his nimble toy soldier at his side.
"Heh. You sure know how to get a girl adjusted," Kasumi giggled in her haunting Shadow-voice. Her pitch was slightly higher than usual and reverberated like she was talking through an old gramophone. She gently slid her mask off of her face and showed her eyes glowing bright yellow like a pair of unstable novas getting ready to incinerate a small group of planets.
Flexcelion chuckled from her side.
"Darling, why don't you go wiggle your little spandex muttonchops and show the rest of these amateurs why you're the main attraction?"
Kasumi tossed her mask away with her left hand while she stretched out her right. Her rapier rattled on the floor before flying back into her fingers as if they were magnetic. She gripped the hilt with one hand and smirked toward the recovering Phantom Thieves.
In a blur of whipping coat tails, flowing hair, and flailing yarn laces, Kasumi pranced into action.
Author's note: I think Flexcelion's boss theme would be a moody jazz remix of the "Do do do do" part of Hang Fire by the Rolling Stones.