I ain't got squat, and Atlus made a solid profit this past year-so I ain't worth suin'. Thanks to user Emmychao for letting me bounce ideas off, and then doing whatever I want anyway. All "after the end" stories are meant to stand alone, but they all interconnect - this one is tied in a bit more than some of the others. I write these stories for my wife - in particular, without her, there would be no Anna and John-and Anna was almost entirely her idea. Give her credit for what works, I'll take blame for what doesn't.
[I. Magician] The Pawn and the Played
(Famous Firsts)
Threecorn, Indiana, says the sign rolling by, and her hands drum on the wheel.
The car ahead is her mother's, and she's already got bumper stickers with cutsie "I'm divorced" one-liners plastered all over. She's been scowling for the last hour and a half of driving. In the car's rear windshield, she sees her little brother's head poke up, stick out his tongue at her.
She cranks her radio up louder, remembers the weird dream of the night before.
Everything had been blue.
A farmer reported the Thing In The Cornfield on a Tuesday. He was ignored, of course, but he kept bringing enough people by, who would then report the very same, that authorities finally obliged. It was the following Monday when he got his orders.
And now he was on a bus, passing by the sign for Threecorn, Indiana. Called back to the base from leave.
He didn't like operating like this on native soil. He didn't like how hush-hush everything seemed to be. And he didn't like the weird-ass dream he'd had the night before.
Everything had been blue.
School started on September ninth. It was only first period, when he sat on her desk.
"So, newbie! What's your name?" Anna Tracer looked up at her classmate, a... well, okay, he was handsome, would probably be more so if he got a more stylish pair of glasses and learned how to use an iron, but... His smirk was trés, trés punchable. "What? Don't give me that look." He rolled his eyes. "I'm just trying to be friendly. Sheesh." He shook his head. "So, what rank is your dad?"
Her face clouded. She considered her options. Tell him it was none of his business? Ehh, it was her first day, she should really try harder than that. Be honest, or make something up? "I'm not... that isn't..." She winced. She just wasn't the sort of person who had the Courage or Expression required to explain herself.
Maybe it would just be easier if she just didn't talk for, like, the whole first year in town. Let everyone else do her talking for her. Or, you know, she could leap in front of a bus. Whichever.
"Huh. Sorry." The boy slid into a seat next to her. "Didn't mean nothin' by it." He held out his hand. "I'm Jeffrey. Jeff. Er, Waterhouse. It's okay, I totally suck with people, too. But, actually, a lot of the people here do, 'cause of the 'army brat' thing. You'll fit right in." She shook his hand, somewhat tentatively, and he nodded. "Cool. If you need any help, like with homework or whatever, let me know, okay?"
"Thanks," she said, and she meant it—she wasn't sure that Jeff Waterhouse was a boy that she would have associated with, in her old life, but here, adrift and new, she was grateful that someone had bothered to reach out.
But then the lights seemed to dim, the whispered voice spoke, and as she watched Jeff's receding back as he took off for his next class, she couldn't help but knit her brow as she pondered the idea that she was, was "cosmically destined," to hang out with a boy that she'd just met. What the Hell did that mean?
Anna had never been in love before, but she wasn't sure that it worked that way.
Sgt. John Stone had barely dropped off his bags when he was led into a room to meet the new management.
The briefing room was empty, except for three men who were muttering about his "psyche profile." Apparently, he was the best suited for... whatever it was they wanted him to do. Oddly, that offered no comfort or reassurance.
The man dressed like an IBM salesman from the fifties was obviously the government liaison (he knew how this sort of thing worked by now), and he of course knew the officer in the mustache as the base lieutenant, but it was the third one, with the cheap little "Hello My Name Is" sticker stuck to his breast pocket, who put him off. Even as introductions were made all around, he stood off to the side, watching John with one finger constantly rubbing or picking at his lips.
He later determined that the man was with something called "The Kirijo Foundation," but that didn't actually mean anything to him.
When the briefing was finished, one Corporal from his squad was loitering outside, back to a wall and a yo-yo spinning down from his fist.
"How'd it go in there, Sarge?" John just raised an eyebrow at him and kept walking, but Corporal Matthew Forrester followed right in step behind. "Hey, I didn't ask what happened, I asked 'how was it,' like, did they put the grind on you?"
John had always been an able squad leader, but he had never really made friends with his team—he'd always been stuck in the middle between the rest of the grunts and the higher-ups, and it wasn't really a position that he enjoyed; he'd never, after all, been much of a people person. So Corporal Forrester's honest concern surprised him, perhaps unfairly, and he was just a little touched.
Which is when the lights seemed to dim for John, and the voices spoke, and John figured maybe he'd have to get used to calling Matthew by his first name.
It had been Jeff's idea to explore on the other side of the rift. Of course. Anna was beginning to learn that Jeff was very book-smart, but he was also pretty street-insane. And when the monsters first showed up? Of course it was her that had to call out the giant thing in her head to fight them off, because why should he have to clean up his own mess?
And yet, when they both vowed to go back in? Yeah, she had no cogent explanation or excuse for that one.
It's a good thing that they started collecting more people who were just as crazy as they were. Otherwise it'd be just the two of them, and that'd be embarrassing.
An observation station was set up outside the rift, hidden in the farmer's old barn. The comms officer stayed stationed there, and operated as their "ground control" whenever they were inside. Naturally, it was Matthew who pointed out that being inside the rift was probably the worst position available for a team attempting to find a way to close it.
John had wanted to shout Matthew's head right down into his shirt collar, but that was when the giant insect-thing showed up. His reaction to the incident, and how quickly he pasted the ugly thing, led him a long way back towards crediting those messed-up dreams. The problem for John, though, came in wondering how the hell the ol' U.S. of A. had managed to peg him as the likely candidate.
"Guessin' you must be the Chosen Hee-ro, Sarge." Matthew elbowed him on their way back to the evac point. And John had no retort for that, because Hell if it didn't look that way on the surface of things.
Anna tried to talk to everyone in town, every day. This was physically impossible, of course, but the attempt tended to pay off. People needed help, and they had information or useful tools and goods in exchange. And some people gave out information without requiring anything, although that information tended to be things she already suspected in one way or another. The best of them became something close to friends—though, not to the extent of the bonds that she was forging with particular people.
One student, though, had been hard to get a hold of, a more recent exchange student than even herself, apparently some kind of last-minute addition from Japan. He had a perpetual dark expression, frequently hidden within the billowing hood of his threadbare orange sweatshirt. Anna had him pegged right away as the angry, brooding type who turned out to have a soft, squishy center; what she hadn't expected was that he would feed her a continual line of BS, the more she got to know him. He seemed interested in her, though maybe not so much in that way, and was always asking her difficult questions.
Sometimes, she expected that this "Ken Amada" knew more than he was letting on, like he was following her and the others around. She wanted to talk to Jeff about it, but could never figure out what to say, what proof to offer of her suspicions. It was hard enough explaining to him, and to the others, why she was always running off to participate in after school programs and hanging out with strangers rather than focusing on the clear and present danger affecting their town.
It only got worse when they'd try shopping at Junes for supplies (the American branches sold rifles and ammunition to compete with other big box stores, and Aaron was always upgrading his weapons), because when Anna started thinking the store manager was watching them, too, that had to be paranoia.
But then, the whole town seemed to be growing paranoid. Rumors were rampant, more than even a small town should expect, and taken even more seriously, as well. While the military had done a good job keeping the rift out in the cornfield under wraps, the "UFO" story had drawn in tourists and counterculture people from all over. The town was adopting a new identity a bit at a time—the diner in the town square even had a little spaceship next to its logo, now. It made Anna wonder... what would happen when they finally got the rift closed?
John had found himself volunteering for an increasing number of irrelevant errands for other people, since he'd dreamed of the strange little man in the blue room. He was always finding strange trinkets for people he barely knew, or ferrying packages, or relaying messages. Usually, he was given physical compensation in some fashion, but sometimes the tasks were so arbitrary, and the reward so ephemeral, he wasn't sure why he bothered.
It was on one of these runs, bringing an overly-specific assortment of Topsicles to a guy doing KP on the base, that he first saw the reporter.
"Excuse me!" She was on the other side of the fence, waving him down. "Excuse me!"
He turned to one of the men on guard duty at the nearby gate. "Who is that?"
"Says she's with a Tokyo newspaper, Sarge." The guard shrugged. "We've been told her clearance to enter the base has been revoked, but she won't listen." He raised an eyebrow. "I don't suppose you could..."
John sighed. As he was doing everyone else's job, why not? He stalked over to where the woman was all but scrambling up the chain link to get in. "Can I help you, Miss...?"
"Yes! Thank you!" She patted her chest. "Maya Amano. I was supposed to be allowed access, I came all the way from Japan to do a feature..."
She was beautiful, though her jacket was pretty much the most hideous thing he'd ever seen that wasn't trying to kill him. Her English wasn't bad, behind the accent, probably give it a solid B to B+. He weighed his options on what to say, figured he could bend his "need to know" rule on this one. "What was that feature on, again?"
She grew still. "Oh, well... Sort of a 'day in the life' of an American soldier, you know? What's the term... human interest?"
Even if he couldn't tell how she was obviously lying, it wouldn't fit together—there was no need to fly to America when there were bases overseas she could annoy. The question, then, was why lie? She couldn't be lying about her credentials, that was too easy to check. He scratched at his stubble.
"Tell you what, Miss Amano-san. I'll talk to the CO and figure out what's going on with your clearance. But I am not promising you anything, you hear me? In return, you've gotta leave those poor boys at the gate alone."
"Yes! Of course!" She bowed. "Thank you so much!" He could feel her warm gratitude...
...And then there was that familiar buzz. Huh. "Lovers" Arcana? The Hell did that mean? Was he supposed to bang some random reporter who was trying to sneak in? Who the Hell was she?
He hefted the bag of Topsicles and headed to drop them off. He'd talk to the CO... after he did some research on Tarot cards. He was in way over his head.
Igor looked up as the door all but slammed open, and a high school girl on the verge of tears pointed a finger at him. "You! You never told me it would be this hard!"
..,At least, that's how it went in the fantasy, which seemed to come up more and more often these days. Instead, Anna was doing chores at home, matching socks in front of the television. The local news was becoming all but useless. None of their reports made logical sense anymore, and they seemed to know it.
Her mother was in the kitchen, and Anna could hear pans and dishes being slapped around with too much force. She was, Anna figured, talking to her lawyer. Her little brother, sprawled out on the floor in front of her with Featherman action figures (seemed like all kids were into nowadays was stuff from Japan), looked up at her with a worried expression. Anna shook her head. It seemed like the only times that she could try to make his bond work was when Mom wasn't around.
Jeff had complained about his parents today, when they were all hanging out, recovering from the midterms. She'd given him a Mudoon-strength glare, but of course Jeff only saw things in black and white, and so he was completely invulnerable to her instant death looks.
She pitched a pair of socks back into the basket and flopped back onto the couch. They would have to go back into the rift tomorrow, and she figured maybe Jeff could use some time on the bench.
It wasn't that John was stupid, or uneducated—far from it, really. It was just that he'd always inclined towards the maths and sciences; he was interested in what he felt had practical use, even if it wasn't practical for him that day. The liberal arts, that had always been a bit of wankery to him. Effete.
And so when he realized that he needed to learn (and quickly) about Jung, about the Tarot, and as much on mythology as he could stomach, he wasn't entirely sure where to start. The internet was okay, at first, but he felt like he was skimming stones across the surface of a lake without ever diving in. So, old-fashioned as he admittedly was, it didn't take long before he figured a library was the best bet. There was actually a small one on the base—they tried to be self-contained—but it was beyond useless. The public library in Threecorn, then, was his next stop—but it seemed like every book on the subjects that he needed was either checked out or just plain missing.
Which is why Sergeant John Stone found himself arranging dispensation to prowl the half-height stacks of the local high school library. He tried not to meet the eyes of the students as he moved from aisle to aisle, distinctly uncomfortable. It was pouring rain outside, and apparently half the student body had decided to take refuge in the library after school; only half of them appeared to be studying, and more than once John bumped into a young couple who had slipped into a corner to make out. That wasn't how he remembered high school.
Arms overflowing with books, he moved to the rear of the library, where there was a "project room" for student group work. There appeared to be a collection of kids in there, talking animatedly, but there were a few open chairs just outside that he could maybe use...
It happened when he was about ten feet from the kids on the other side of the door. Something exploded behind his eyes, and the books clattered to the floor as he clutched his temples. Through the red haze in his vision, he could see one single girl in the school group doing the same, and their eyes locked for only a moment before Stone turned around, gathered up as many books as he could, and made a tactical retreat.
Both of them, as the pain lessened and a semblance of clarity restored, understood the same thing. One of Igor's vague statements now made sense.
There were two "Fools," two holders of the Wild Card... and they could not approach each other without endangering both of their lives.
"I think we should make our HQ a little more mobile, if you follow me." Anna sloshed the ice in her cup around with her straw, and looked out over the parking lot. The Junes rooftop food court wasn't too crowded this early in the day, but there were still waves of housewives and college kids going in and out of the front doors below.
"You want to talk about what happened back there in the library, I'm open." Jeff sniffed at his hot dog. "Ugh. I swear, they're making these things from Shadow meat."
"That's gross." She kicked his shin under the table. "I don't know enough to tell you. I just... I don't think we're alone. In a good way. But I don't think we can rely on whoever it is."
"That's more confusing than if you hadn't said anything." He sighed and took a bite, then winced. After a couple of laborious chews, he looked up at her again. "We're doing okay, though. The team's finally balanced out, elementally-speaking."
"Yeah..." Anna pushed her tray to the center of the table and crossed her arms. "You've got the light and dark covered, Allison has lightning skills, Ricky's wind, Tori can do fire stuff, and now Aaron can fill in on ice. And that much is terrific, because you can't count me as ice anymore, like you did in the beginning, since I have to keep switching up."
"Which is another set of questions that I know you're not going to answer." Jeff had clearly given up on his hot dog. He dumped the meat on his plate and tossed the roll over the rail, where pigeons were attacking it before it had even landed on the parking lot below. His attitude had gotten worse, lately, and they both knew it. And both knew why.
It seemed like every time Anna and Jeff moved a step forward in their relationship, Anna was presented with a series of snare-traps, some of which would lock her into a friendship, and some of which would officially push the needle over into actually dating, and she wasn't sure how it had happened. Frequently it seemed like he'd take the opposite meaning of whatever she'd said, and whenever she tried to dodge the issue, she'd alienate him all over again.
Why should she have to decide this, and decide it now? There was too much at stake. And yet... if the world were to end tomorrow... would she want to face it alone?
She and her mother used to laugh at those action movies that her father would bring home, where the couple would hook up while the building was under siege by terrorists or whatever. Sure, she could imagine the excitement that would cause, the heightened passions, blah blah blah... but what about after? What did those couple have in common, when the danger was over?
She looked at Jeff sometimes, and wondered if, when all of this Shadow-fighting was over... Hell, when she had "solved" his problems interacting with his classmates... would he even have a use for her anymore as a friend? What good would trying a romance be? But then, they'd be in the world on the other side, and a Shadow's claws would reach for her, and he'd bolt forward to shove her aside and take the pain for himself, and she'd remember what a kind, gentle boy was hiding beneath the snotty exterior.
And she'd get confused all over again.
They kept breaking all the rules. That was the part that confused John the most. John had been in the service for a long time, and the rules were what the army was. That's how you kept men sane when they were marched off to die, beat 'em down with rules until those rules were instinct. Once John had understood the system, it had seemed practical. And that was John; pragmatic education, pragmatic lifestyle.
But now, jammed into a situation where they were fighting goddamned space aliens with magic powers, and the rules would be a comforting normalcy, they kept pulling that rug right back out.
Tonight, it was the officer's club being open to enlisted men. Sure, whatever. The town didn't have a decent bar from end to end, and John didn't want to look a gift horse in the mouth. So he slipped into a booth in the far corner, lit up a cigarette, and tried not to go mad. Which side of the rift was supposed to be Bizarro World again?
If they were going to keep making excuses for him, they might as well promote his ass. At least then he'd get a slight pay hike. Lord knows keeping the team stocked up on over-the-counter meds wasn't coming out of Uncle Sam's pocket.
Matthew appears out of nowhere, and he slides in across from John with a grin. "Well, don't this beat all?"
John's throat rumbled, moving phlegm from one place to another without really getting rid of it. "Sometimes I think this whole thing is some psych test. Like when they used to dope up pilots on LSD."
"I wish." Matthew was holding a too-big tumbler of something that would likely leave him unusable on the mission run the next day. "I think a good trip might calm me down at this point."
"I don't need to hear that." John rubbed at his eyes, the butt of the cigarette tapping against his forehead.
"Who's going in tomorrow?" Matthew waggled his eyebrows as he finished off half the tumbler in one long set of gulps.
John wasn't going to dignify that look. "Ramirez needs a turn back up at bat, so I can't bring in Stonewater, their weaknesses match. Which means we're hurting in the de-facto medic selection..."
Matthew placed the empty tumbler on the table and sighed. "Hey, Sarge... can I ask you, like, a personal question?" John stubbed out his cigarette and lit another immediately. Dealing with his erstwhile second and almost-partner almost always led to chain-smoking. "It's about women."
John let a solid half-minute pass and then said, "Well, now I'm going to start drinking."
Dad makes the same joke every week. "How about we go to the zoo?"
"This town doesn't have a zoo, Dad." And so they go somewhere normal instead, like Junes or the diner. The weekly visits are becoming routine, now, and that scares her a little, because it means the situation is beginning to feel like normal.
Anna hugged her arms as she and her father walked down the street. She wanted to believe that if she said just the right things, played the social link just the right way, the Emperor and Empress would get back together in the end. Somehow, though, she knew that not even the messed up rules that she'd been contractually obligated to follow would make things that simple.
"Something on your mind, Sport?" Her father looked skinnier than he ever had. She wondered if he was eating well; Mom had always done the cooking.
Oh, what the Hell, nobody else was going to ask her. She couldn't express it louder than a mumble, but it still came out. "Boy trouble."
"Oh yeah?" And he got all tense, and his fists clenched a little, and that part was so stereotypical that it sort of cheered her up, a little bit.
"Not like that, Dad, it's okay." She kicked at a loose chunk of asphalt, and watched it spiral towards the gutter. "I'm just... we can't figure out... I dunno... what we want from each other, I guess." She held up her hands at his stricken expression. "Not like that! God! I'm serious! He's..." Her shoulders slumped. "You'd probably like him, actually."
He stopped walking, rubbed at his scalp as he looked her over. "Anna... if you like this boy? I mean, if you think you might like him more than a couple of dates worth? Make sure he's someone... I don't know how to put this." He seemed small in his big heavy coat. "Have him meet your mother. If she thinks he's good for you, then you'll know it's not going to work." He started walking again, and it took Anna a moment to realize what her father was admitting to.
The first boy, Igor thought to himself, didn't appreciate what he'd been given until it was too late, and that was probably why he'd taken that bond for granted. The girl hadn't made the same mistake.
The second boy, that was a strange one. The delicate strangeness of love, and the double helix that it formed with fear. That boy had understood his needs, and it had been a chess game of acknowledgement and distraction with his first bond.
These two, however, who passed through in rapid succession (the Velvet Room's train car appearance had been fitted with an initially confused-seeming revolving door at its entrance), they held onto their first social link as a sort of lifeline, and yet their group dynamics held strong.
Truly, they were remarkable guests. But then, each and every guest that he'd ever welcomed to the Velvet Room had been remarkable. Indeed, he mused, every person was remarkable; if only they'd allow the bonds that they formed to show them how much so...
Maya had taken John to dinner in town; the whole thing had made him nervous, until he'd realized that she wasn't especially interested in him—at least, not romantically. She was full of questions about base operations, and about the "thing out in the cornfield," though she was careful not to outline how much of anything she actually knew.
Apparently enough of his evasions carried charm that, when she finally settled down, the small talk was downright pleasant. "Seriously, though," she was saying, and she was doing a better job keeping that accent down all the time, "You seem like a man with a lot on his mind."
That was one of those statements where you were supposed to laugh ironically. John just held up his drink in salute to her remark, and said nothing.
"Is it hard, living on the base? Do you make friends, or is it all..." She struggled for the word. "...Comrades?"
John absent-mindedly cracked a knuckle, then one more. "Nah, my unit is very tight. It wasn't always that way, but being in strange situations brings you together, I guess."
He offered, ever-so-briefly, an unguarded smile. The boys had staged an impromptu birthday surprise for him—Matthew's doing, apparently. And the young Corporal had pulled him aside in the middle, to offer him a personal thank you. They both knew why. When John had finally prodded Matthew to cut the crap and propose to his girl, the courage and the clarity had awakened a new Persona within him. It was tangible evidence that they both could see, that their relationships and their strength in combat were related, beyond even the trust of fellow soldiers. It was awe-inspiring, and terrifying.
And so he asked the waitress for a coffee, sat up a bit straighter, and ran a hand through his buzzcut. "How about you, Miss Amano-san? How are you? You seem like someone with a lot going on."
The school administration had been up and down on Anna's class of students; the Thanksgiving Day Game had been a disaster (hard to explain that it had been a loose Shadow), but the Winter Concert had gone off without a hitch. And so there was an unspoken understanding that the fate of prom night depended on how the students behaved on the field trip over to the base.
But none of that seemed to matter to Anna Tracer, because she had been having the best week ever. First she'd scored the sale of a lifetime on that crazy new home shopping program; then the note had arrived in her mailbox, telling her that the mysterious Sergeant John Stone would not be on the base during the field trip, leaving her free to enjoy it with her friends—and maybe find a few things out on the sly; and then, last night, the unthinkable, the unrepeatable, the moment of dread and hope and it had been so unexpectedly perfect.
Jeff didn't usually want to meet at night, and so her suspicions had been raised already. But she'd snuck out, anyway—too many trips out to the cornfield had left her seriously grounded—and they'd gone for a long drive around town in Jeff's battered old car, and he'd finally said it. And there was no doubt that he meant it—not with a new Persona forming before her eyes. And so when he'd found a secluded place to park, and maybe things had gone a little fast, she didn't have the slightest hesitation, and she still hadn't the slightest regret.
And now, as the students gathered in clusters within the base's perimeter, he found her and casually nudged her with an elbow. "Wanna go snooping?"
"What, with you?" And she winked at him, and he laughed, and for that moment it didn't seem to matter that the world might well be ending.
Things wouldn't go so well all down the line.
Anna would be betrayed by a member of her team, and John would suffer the loss of a squadmate.
Anna Tracer's beloved little brother would, of course, be taken, to use as a pawn—finally thrown into the rift.
Sergeant John Stone would suddenly and without warning lose the backing of his military superiors, and his team would be forced to choose between going rogue or letting the rift further expand.
And in the end, when the final moves were made, and John and Anna and their collective teammates would have to enter the rift, the undefended town would become overrun with Shadows.
But they wouldn't be alone.
And while the day would be won, to the extent that it could be, one of them would not come back. A sacrifice would be made, inspired by that first bond formed, that strongest bond held. And the other would be left to live, but to wonder ever after.