A/N: Persona again! Except this time it's Persona 3! And I'm obsessed with the physical attacker again! Yay! Except this isn't about him, it's about Minato abusing save-states!
October full moon spoilers. You now know the whole plot.
I do not own Purseowner.
It isn't easy being himself, Minato thinks.
Leading a crack group of over-zealous teenagers to kill blobs using their head demons and slightly illegal weapons was a lot of responsibility to put on a sixteen-year-old's shoulders, but yeah, sure, Minato could take it. The Wild Card helped.
It was the other side of things that troubled him.
Friendship. People. Understanding.
He was bad with girls, so what? It didn't matter. He could just reset, go back and say the right thing, soothe Yukari's tempers and not spit Fuuka's 'cooking' all over her.
The power to reload had saved Minato's ass a few times. He had seen his friends die, strangled by chains, hit by their weaknesses, seen Death itself shoot his heart into pieces. He just went back to his last save so they wouldn't all be dead.
Sometimes, though, he got things mixed up. He forgot to re-equip people and they ended up being killed due to having shitty armour. He didn't re-accept requests from Elizabeth, even though she knew about his time-hopping and should have kept them anyways. He referenced events that had not happened.
It got weird sometimes, seeing his team-mates and them being Not-Dead.
The power of reloading was his most powerful. He relied on it.
One night, it failed.
October 4th.
He had not expected that at all. He'd seen the pile of equipment, shoved into the corner of Shinjiro's room. That was his one clue.
If Akihiko had only spoken up earlier-
Whatever.
He watches his senpai crumble, closes his eyes, and reloads.
He asks Akihiko. He looks at him with empty eyes and says, "Nah, there's nothing coming up... Why?"
He doesn't trust him. Shit. He won't get Shinjiro to stay without someone else's help.
He can't ask Mitsuru now; Akihiko will have said something to her-
So he reloads.
"Kirijo-senpai, is there any reason why Aragaki-senpai is so... troubled?"
She looks at him with guarded eyes. "I..."
Inwardly, he fistpumps.
She shakes her head, regal tresses brushing along her back and says "No, Arisato, I can't think why. I apologize."
He watches her walk off and hopes he's planted a seed of something to come in her head. Maybe she'll be more receptive than Akihiko, the meathead-
Three people, two bullets, one dead body
He reloads again, slightly frustrated.
This time, he goes for the direct approach.
"Aragaki..."
"What?" Shinjiro snaps, lips curled. He looks to be holding a cooking magazine, but it's all scrunched up in his fist.
"I would like you to know that we all value your safety. You too are prone to rash decisions and I hope-"
In a flash, Shinjiro has him pinned up against the wall, nose-to-nose.
"You're not telling me what to do, you hear me? I don't take orders from anyone but me!"
Minato stays silent.
Shinjiro drops him. "...I'm sorry," he says gruffly. "Just... don't try to stop me, okay, kid?"
The gun doesn't even look as harmful as their Evokers.
He reloads again.
And again.
And again.
He goes to desperate measures. He locks up Ken (the little shit escapes), he makes Fuuka babble at Shinjiro about cooking on the night of (how did that not work?), he assigns Koromaru to Aragaki (who distracts him with bacon), he tells Akihiko that he knows about October 4th and informs him to keep an eye on Shinjiro if he doesn't want him to die.
The boxer thinks it's some kind of sick joke and basically shuts down for the rest of the day. Jesus.
He reloads-
(renders Ken unconscious)
Reloads-
(takes the bullet)
Reloads-
(kills Takaya first)
But Shinjiro keeps dying.
He keeps sitting through that funereal assembly with people bitching.
The team keeps breaking apart.
He reloads one last time.
He does everything the same as the first time, except one thing.
On October 3rd, he gives Shinjiro a pocket watch.
He still dies, but that's okay. By now, Minato has given up.