AN: The metaverse will work differently here, Persona users are definitely more powerful... or rather, their abilities are scaled to the crazy feats they regularly do while fighting with quite a bit of limits in real life. Yes, Valentine's Day is going to end in a global world war at this rate. In this case, Ichika's core character of forgiveness and all will be the same (mostly), but overall, this Ichika is just book smart to a ridiculous degree and he's basically not rich Batman. The protagonist of Persona 5 was just too awesome, so take a bit of that awesome and mix it with Ichika, I guess a rather competent and active protagonist will be formed... as soon as he figures out what the hell he wants to do outside of stealing treasures.

Stealing Treasures is easier than Real Life!

6 years later...

Metaverse, General Zhou Ling's Palace, China

Breaking into a sprint, his eyes locked onto the six security cameras lining the long hallway, quickly scanning for their line of sight and blind spots.

Reaching down to his belt with his right hand, he took hold of his self-modified Sig Sauer M17 and turned the safeties off.

He rushed, bent down and slid on the grey floor, barely making it to the blind-spot of the first camera.

Taking aim, he shot and destroyed the camera nearest to him before using his prodigious aiming skills to take out the rest of the cameras.

"Samurai! Hime! Camera's are out, the safe room is just up ahead." The young man called out to his two fellow infiltrator's code-names.

It would not do to use their real names in the cognitive world on the off chance that there might be observers. Of course, they could shed their disguise and formalities a bit once they reached to the safe room.

At their leader's signal, two red-haired teenagers emerged from the entrance of the hallway, having stayed back to keep guard over any Shadows that threatened to spawn in their target's Palace.

One of the teenager's was a young man the same age of the professional shooter (albeit his own skills in shooting wasn't far off considering his name's meaning) of the team, wearing antique Edo-period Samurai Armour for his costume with a black half-face plate that covered his upper half of his face. Some of his long red hair could be seen despite the large neck guard.

The other teenager was a very slender girl with the same long scarlet red hair of the young man, her attire consisted of a loose fitting short purple kimono with long sleeves, the robe ending halfway between her knees and waist. A white half-face fox mask with red lines covered the top of her face. Her legs covered by tight black leggings and she wore a pair of purple sandals on her feet. Overall her outfit resembled that of some fanservicey female japanese warrior from a Toei Musou Game, much to her chagrin.

Gotanda Dan and Gotanda Ran, a typical older brother and younger sister pair.

What was less typical was the fact that they are long time accomplices of the infiltration leader, Orimura Ichika, Code Name: Judge (His third code name, he just couldn't decide what he liked more)

"No alarms blaring an eardrum shattering alert. Guess that means we're in the clear, eh?" Dan, Ichika's best bro for life, commented in a laid-back manner that contrasted the serious nature of his costume.

"That, or that helmet of yours is so tight to the point where it's soundproof." Orimura Ichika quipped with a joking smile.

In contrast to the Japanese costumes of his two partners, his battle attire consists of a white, double-breasted trench coat, which has a "0" symbol on the middle to represent his Fool Arcana, with large buttoned cuffs and lapels, white trousers, and trench boots. Over this, he wears a tattered, ankle-length black cloak, and is fastened to the left with a single large button. Over his face was a black, bird-shaped mask with white highlights.

To many onlookers, it would have looked like a Nazi uniform designed by Hugo Boss with unfortunate implications. However, the young man wearing such an outfit was far from those sort of people personality wise.

Still, it was definitely 'Final Boss' worthy clothes.

Ichika still thought it was ironic that his costume would invoke Nazi imagery despite his initial Persona being Jewish. Then again, Nicodemus always did play along with the rest of the Pharisee's while keeping his real beliefs hidden. Ichika still hasn't figured out why his costume looked this way.

Ever since they got their powers, entering the Metaverse would automatically grant their costumes and masks.

"I heard your signal, didn't I?" Ichika's friend replied.

"Nah, you just followed your sister when she heard me calling out." Ichika insisted in a non-serious manner.

"Yeah! Onii's hearing is seriously damaged from playing video games with maximum volume." His younger sister snickered from beside her brother.

"The two of you really aren't going to let me off the 'Oven' incident anytime soon, are you?" Dan asked in a resigned tone.

"Nope! I almost got turned into a meal."

"Do you know how annoying it is to explain a sudden tan in front of my classmates?"

Ichika and Ran complained at the same time before glaring at Dan, remembering some horrible experiences from the last Palace they invaded.

"Well, I saved you both from Vitamin D deficiency." Dan waved it off.

"The whole school was bugging me over it for days." Ichika reminded Dan.

"And they also wondered if the both of us went to the beach together alone…" Ran muttered softly, remembering the insinuations of her classmates that she didn't particularly would have minded.

"What was that?" Ichika asked, not hearing what she had said.

"Nothing!" She dismissed.

"For the love of all the gods out there please get a girlfriend soon." Dan groaned.

"I really don't think it's that easy to get a girlfriend. All the girls seem to gossip and stay away from me." Ichika replied, unknown to him, it was mainly because every girl in his middle school was fangirling over him and that there were some 'unwritten rules' to associating with him.

The only exception was Dan's younger sister since they were already friends before Ichika got super popular for reasons unknown to him but known to the rest of the school.

"Haaaa…" Ran sighed listlessly as she walked over to the door, into the safe room.

"Did Ran just sigh? Oh crap, I think she's got the despair ailment. Where's that 'Happy Pop'!?" Ichika ran into the safe room while rummaging through his small but larger on the inside pouch for the despair curing lollipop.

"Poor Ran…" Her brother shook his head before going into the safe room, finding Ichika insisting rather physically that his sister should open her mouth for him, holding an unwrapped Happy Pop in his hand.

Naturally, he face palmed as his sister began misinterpreting his words in a lewd manner.

After a few minutes of resting, they began discussing strategy.

"Alright, we still have a bit of time left and very little ground left to cover. According to the maps we gathered, the command room is just up ahead. Dan, Ran, are you two up for pushing on? If all three of us don't think we're ready to take General Zhou Ling's treasure then we should head back for now." Ichika asked his two fellow Persona users.

Ichika had awakened his in the kidnapping incident six years ago, his sister finding him unconscious with a dozen dead mercenaries killed with his one spell used back then.

After that, his Persona, Nicodemus became a constant companion in his mind. He was a bit different in the sense that Nicodemus also had lots of knowledge and was unusual in that he wasn't just an aspect of himself, but he also knew things Ichika did not know.

From his past, his Persona was a teacher and made sure to drill a lot of knowledge into his mind. His supposedly useless 'Growth 3' skill back then apparently could be carried over in a different way in the real world, giving Ichika genius level skills of learning.

Not wanting to be weak and a burden to his older sister, Ichika had been discreetly training and studying his ass off in almost everything he could learn.

3 years later, when he entered middle school, he became good friends with Dan as they hit it off almost instantly. Visiting their family restaurant, he also met his little sister Ran there.

It was a few weeks into middle school that he entered his first palace.

It was thanks to a mysterious app called the Metaverse Navigator on his smartphone that brought him and Dan into the cognitive world and Palace of their first target. Ichika managed to re-summon Nicodemus for the first time since the kidnapping event and fended the shadows off.

It turned out that one of their teachers was a pedophile and was one for quite awhile, they discovered, but there was no evidence and he was the 'good' teacher in everyone's else's eyes.

It was the day that they found his Shadow self listing off some names of his targets that Dan awakened his power when his sister was being targeted.

Eventually, even his sister got dragged into a fight when stalking them for sneaking around town so much.

Long story short, they beat up the teacher's Shadow Self, grabbed his 'Treasure' (The cognitive source of his distorted world view), collapsed the Palace, and he ended up confessing his crimes in the real world after his mind was reformed.

Three cheers for the cognitive world! Of course, as kids during the time they had only barely comprehended that they were essentially brainwashing people to become 'normal' or perform 'heel-face turns' (trope).

Eventually, they got more and more daring as they went for bigger targets, including their own military officials and politicians. This time, however, they're going global by targeting a Chinese former IS Pilot who was now a prominent military official.

Their general rule of thumb was, if you're crazy enough to form a palace then we're going to have to break into their palaces. After all, a Palace is a manifestation of "distortion", strong negative and corrupt thoughts that warp the perceptions of people into a danger to themselves and others.

So far, that rule hasn't failed them yet.

"Um, what do you want to do, Ichika-kun?" As always, Ran was concerned about what the older boy is thinking about.

Ichika lifted his tattered cloak, double-checking the magazines he had attached to his belt.

"Personally I want to get this over with. Examination week is just days ahead, after all." Ichika voiced his opinion, getting some agreement all across the team.

On the topic of the team, they still haven't decided the name as they had all been going through some degree of Chuunibyou.

They ended up laughing and insulting each other's desired group names to the point where the discussion almost ended up toxic, hence, they postponed the decision until later.

"Mmhm! Onii agrees right? If we don't deal with the general's palace now then you'll end up using this as an excuse not to study." Ran, who was familiar with how lazy her brother can be at times, asked her brother while poking his sides.

"Ouch! Ouch! Stop it! Yeah yeah, let's fight on… after I take a nap." Dan took off his helmet, and lied on the floor in his uncomfortable armour.

*Snore*

"How does he sleep everywhere?" Ichika muttered while keeping quiet as to not disturb his friend.

"A survival mechanism when dealing with boring teachers?" Ran suggested.

"I understand that. But he could just hide some other books inside the textbooks and read them instead." Ichika nodded sagely while thinking of his efficient use of class time.

"You're so studious Ichika-kun!" Ran praised her crush who was still unaware of her feelings.

"A-ah, I guess. I try my best… I have to." He replied her, his serious and determined expression only made him more appealing in the young girl's mind.

Ichika reminisced on the fact that despite fighting back during that time, it was too late as he passed out immediately after grievously injuring all the mercenaries.

There was that one guy that decided to run away, but he was likely far gone by the time Chifuyu-nee got there, he believed.

His older sister didn't ask what had happened, believing him to have been knocked out and there had been some unknown assailant.

At least, that was what she told him, but he didn't believe that she believed that herself.

To him, it was a conundrum that he had no answers to.

He definitely couldn't tell her that he and his team were basically a secretive Lupin-esque thief that stole what people treasured the most.

And whilst he could summon his Persona briefly in the real world through great effort, he couldn't imagine just walking up to his older sister and saying "I have a Stand-like ability from Jojo's Bizarre Adventures and I used it to almost kill dozens of mercenaries at the tender age of 9."

That would probably make her think he's some traumatized survivor or something.

Deciding that it was no use thinking about it, he went ahead and went through some martial arts drills that Nicodemus learned from various mythical warriors from deep beneath the Sea of Souls.

Whilst they do manifest as facet's of users, within the sea of souls themselves they are more 'complete' as demons. It was still difficult for Ichika to grasp as they are all connected to, apparently, other versions of themselves from across the multiverse.

That was actually pretty scary, but still, useful to him as he used his enhanced learning to basically pull off a Bruce Wayne in becoming a multi-martial arts master.

Too bad the only practice buddy he truly had were his Persona's during their free-time and…

"Oh, you're awake Dan? It's time to get warmed up."

"Oh fuck no!"

Ichika spent 15 minutes or so pummeling Dan, in his own special way of teaching him to fight hand-to-hand combat.

Actually, it was just practice for Ichika on a human being that could actually take the hits, but he'd like to think that he had a grander purpose for curb stomping his best bro with his fists.

And besides, it's not like he'll be hurt that badly with his Samurai Armour on.

After that, he swapped his Persona to Kaguya Picaro, casting a Diarahan on Dan to heal his wounds completely.

'Great! Now we're all warmed up to steal the treasure!' Ichika thought to himself in a pleased manner.

Ran praised Ichika in a manner that roughly sounded like "Sasuga Ichika-kun!"

Dan cursed the betrayal of his sibling to Ichika's charms, he hoped that there would be some girl elsewhere that could seduce him so that his sister wouldn't try.

Worse case scenario, he'll let it happen and wait for the inevitable where multiple girls will massacre him on Valentine's day, or something.

As much as Ichika was a great buddy to him, and that he could trust Ichika with his life, he simply didn't know what to do with him at times.

They decided to have one last vote on whether they would leave the Palace from the Safe Room or continue on.

The Safe Room being a place where the target feels is less important, is a place of weak cognition and significantly less distorted to the rest of the Palace, making it a place they can return to in the real world and also teleport to Safe Rooms through the Metaverse Navigator app.

At this point, they were committed to stealing the treasure, so they voted to continue on.

"You know, I get that we're kinda like super spies from those American movies but…" Ichika began a conversation with Dan.

"Yeah?" He urged Ichika to continue on.

"But aren't we more like Phantom Thieves? You know, like in-"

"That's the campiest thing I have ever heard. Remember, that stuff is only bad-ass in America." Dan rebutted Ichika's attempt to call their group Phantom Thieves of Treasures/Desires/Hearts again.

"To be fair, we're in China now."

"That's even lamer then."

They managed to get to China quickly by going into the Metaverse and reaching a place where an airport would be. Since the Metaverse works on how people's thoughts and subconscious perceive the world, an airport is a place they believe that would bring them to other parts of the world, which surprisingly, functioned as a zone where they could teleport to other airports globally.

That, was when they started exporting their own brand of 'make the world a better place' activities.

Perhaps it was unusual for kids their age to do this sort of thing, but considering that they saw terrible people get away with crimes and abused their power from a young age, they were scarred in their own way and carried the resolve to not allow abuses like that when it was in their power to do so.

"I'm just thinking… maybe, after this Palace, we could consider getting some publicity, like, claim that we are responsible for the change in people's hearts." Ichika proposed.

"I don't know. It sounds like a hassle. Won't it just make things more difficult?" Dan disagreed.

"Um, whatever Ich- I mean, Judge thinks is right works for me." Ran quickly correctly her words to use his code-name before agreeing with Ichika's idea.

"Thanks Hime! Samurai, I'm just saying we need to think of preventive measures instead of reacting. If people knew that abusing their power over others would lead to us changing their hearts then at least there'll be less suffering in the world. There would be less people at risk, less children in danger of exploitation…"

"We'll talk about this another time, we're here." Dan cut Ichika off as they reached a large metal door, with an 'Authorized personnel only' warning in red painted on it.

"I got the Security ID Tag." Ran took out the tag they took from a security guard shadow earlier on, and swiped it.

They found the Target's shadow waiting for them.

"Guess we're not going to get out without a fight." Dan sighed, adjusting his helmet and unsheathing his katana.

Ran took out her Naginata, ready to strike.

And then the Shadow spoke… in Chinese.

"... Uh, Ichika, what is she saying?" Dan asked his multi-lingual friend, who seems to know every conceivable language thanks to a certain Jewish teacher in his head bugging him to learn as much as he can.

Ichika shouted something, pointed his finger, and pissed the Shadow General Zhou Ling off.

And then she equipped a cognitive version of her previous personal IS.

"... Oh shit…" Dan muttered.

"Uh, same strategy as last time?" Ran asked.

"...That's the 2nd generation Close-Combat type Lao Shan Long, I'll tank it's physical hits. You guys use the items we have and see if it has any weaknesses." Ichika quickly decided their strategy.

"Come, Kaguya Picaro!" Ichika called out, removing his mask, letting it disintegrated through white flames and summoning the woman that looked as if she were made out of blades, with a large half-crescent blade that protected her back.

As the Wild Card, according to Igor he could summon and hold multiple Persona's. He still needed to get many Persona's by recruiting them from the shadows who revealed their true demon forms in order to fuse them to his heart's contents, however.

"Let's slash them up, Yagyu Jubei!" Dan removed his face-plate which disappeared in black flames, summoning a helmet-less large Samurai figure with an eye patch over it's left eye.

"Drive them from these lands, Kaihime!" Ran shouted, removing her mask as scarlet flames formed a red humanoid female in a similar get-up to her costume behind her, the female Persona was seated on a horse and carried several weapons on her back.

Of course, their enemy didn't let just stand there leisurely and went ahead in assaulting them.

Ichika took the attacks head on, blocking the large blade that the False IS brought down on him easily thanks to Kaguya Picaro's Repel Physical ability, allowing him to deflect physical attacks with his bare hands.

Ran used Matarukaja to increase their attack power and Dan used Marakukaja to increase their defenses.

Meanwhile Ichika bought time by fighting hand-to-hand, dealing some damage before kicking the large exoskeleton right across the room with a powerful kick at hyper-sonic speeds.

They normally couldn't fight at such a level, but when their Persona's are out, the Persona's power is easily channeled through their bodies, allowing them to even evade natural lightning and fight at a speed that is beyond humans.

Although, they couldn't keep up that kind of pace for very long as they'll run out of power if their Persona manifested for too long or they used too many abilities.

"Shining Arrows!" Ichika shouted, getting lucky and rained down the maximum of eight waves of attacks.

Blessed arrows fell upon the dark false IS that flew into the skies after Ichika's kick, sending it tumbling into the ground.

"You know, I did think the enemies in the Palace were too easy before…" Ran commented, seeing the cognitive IS suffer heavy damage.

"So we're in a 'low-leveled' palace for sure, huh?" Dan resorted back to gaming terms while watching the devastation before taking action.

"My turn, Bufudyne!" Ran called out, bringing upon a torrent of ice upon the target.

As it shattered on the enemy, it didn't seem to do any special damage, other than to weaken it's shield further.

"It's not Ice for sure!" Ran noted, while making note that while Bless attacks weren't ineffective, it wasn't super effective either.

"I've got a hunch, let's try this out! Megaton Raid!" Dan's Persona Yagyu Jubei dashed forward, spin once and unsheathed it's sword in a Battoujutsu technique, dealing significant damage from it's blade while knocking it back.

"Rather than a weakness that's more of a critical hit." Ran mentioned, while inwardly glad that her brother got lucky.

"It's time for an All-Out Attack!" Ichika lead their full power assault as he revealed the blade of his hidden sword cane.

The two siblings followed suit, pummeling on the false IS with rapid strikes.

Long story short, they won by not letting their enemy hit them with some real firepower (Thermal cannons), grabbed the treasure (making sure not to kill the shadow just in case) and ran the fuck out of the collapsing Palace.

"Holy shit that was easier than I thought. Hahaha!" Dan laughed happily as they were running back to the airport where they came from with hyper-sonic speeds within the Metaverse.

"Onii! Don't get cocky!" Ran admonished her older brother petulantly.

"Man, I've been stressed out over nothing." Ichika chuckled as he reapplied the Masukukaja buff to keep up their insane speeds.

Normally it was very difficult to passively channel their Persona's powers into their bodies to fight at speeds that could rival an IS without summoning their Persona's, but the speed enhancing power made up for it. Such a workaround was needed as they needed to conserve their strength just in case.

"That's because Ichika-kun is really strong!" The scarlet red-head cheerfully praised her crush, who graciously accepted the compliment while her brother was cursing the fact he had such an unequal treatment.

"Anyway, what was the treasure?" Dan asked.

"A miniature nuclear bomb." Ichika blandly mentioned.

"Oh, I see… WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING HOLDING A NUCLEAR BOMB!" Dan panicked and started playfully strangling his male friend.

"It could be useful. We can just keep it in another of our 'Bag of Holdings' in case we need to blow something up to kingdom come." Ran defended Ichika while pulling her brother off him.

"Exactly! Thanks Ran!" Ichika gratefully breathed a deep breath of air from being released.

"What kind of person actually has a nuke as a Treasure?!" Dan raged against the heavens.

"Well, for a former IS pilot, she was a huge proponent of nuclear warfare. From what I got, she had a strong need to defend her country but believed that the IS would only make them on par but not superior to other countries, hence her near fanatical and brutal actions against her political rivals that disagreed." Ichika explained.

"How did you find out about all of this again?" Dan asked, getting a smug grin from his friend.

"Who's the Master Hacker?"

"*Sigh*... you are…"


Back to the real world

Eventually, they made it back to Japan and got out of the Metaverse in their respective homes.

Not that difficult as they were next door neighbors.

The next few days passed by peacefully, with all of them updating their weaponry using the Gotanda family forge that his grandfather had owned. And by 'updating', it meant 'forging', new weapons.

The burden of the work fell upon Orimura Ichika once again as Growth 3 is OP in real life, making him a master of way too many specializations, to the point where he may as well be Batman with prep time.

Secretly, Ichika kinda liked the idea of being Batman...

He visited the Velvet Room a few times to say hello to Igor and the attendant that he grew very fond of over the past few years.

Eventually it was time for examinations!

"Damn, how could the exam hall change to this place?" Ichika muttered as he checked his P.A.D., a smartphone that he, Dan and Ran used to access the Metaverse Navigator App and privately chat together to plan their infiltration.

Right now, Ichika was wondering why exactly his examination hall changed as he received an email notification to enter a different hall.

"That's really fishy since I didn't get a notification." Dan commented with a perplexed expression.

"I don't want Ran to skip class but do you think she'll be able to sneak around and follow me around?" Ichika asked the girl's' brother, who gave him a blank look before nodding and saying that 'She'll be happy to' do so.

Eventually, while Dan went to sit his exams, Ran made some excuse to get out of class and snuck around, following Ichika from the shadows.

For some reason, Ichika found an inactive IS in an empty exam hall way.

'Something tells me this is a trap but… ooh, it's an IS!… maybe I can dismantle some of it for parts?' Ichika rubbed his hands together greedily, a habit he forced himself to learn as to annoy Nicodemus since it was a racist Jewish stereotypical cartoon action.

He fashioned himself as a bit of a mechanic (fucking bullshit Growth 3 makes him a damn master) and lunged himself at the machine, thinking that he could use some of his Persona's super strength to tear apart some of it for his own use.

Unfortunately for him, instead of breaking apart like a good machine, it activated instead.

And then some adult woman ran through the door, conveniently seeing him trigger the activation.

"This isn't what it looks like!" He shouted to no avail.

Ichika was carted off in 'safe and secure' (it never actually is) vehicles to some facilities where he was interrogated and tested on in uh… invasive ways as they were trying to figure out why he could activate the women-only IS.

Ran followed him discreetly using her own super speed to catch up in the real world, until they used the Metaverse to conveniently skip through all the security and find his room.

However, it wasn't as if he could just escape now that they knew about him.

Still, he got Ran and Dan to sneak his laptop and other devices into the room he was kept in. He used his spare time to write a few hacking programs for later use when he would get his P.A.D. back from the government.

Thankfully, the Metaverse Navigation App had the nifty function of not being able to be seen by normal people who didn't have it forcefully installed into their phone (Persona users get it forcefully downloaded), three cheers for Igor!

He didn't think the long-nosed man was such a great app developer!

That, or he shoved all the work to Ichika's 'attendant' Lavenza.

Eventually, the government guys (whose names he wrote down to investigate later) told him that he would be forcefully enrolled in the IS Academy.

An all girls school for obvious reasons…

'FUUUCCCCKKKKKKK!' Ichika screamed internally.

When Dan and Ran dropped by to check on him at night, their reactions could not have been more different.

"Congratulations bro!"

"...An all girls school…"

Ran looked despondent whereas Dan was cheering him on, secretly hoping that he would get a girlfriend there and not date his sister.


Velvet Room

The day before his initiation, Ichika dreamt and found himself awake in a familiar Velvet Room.

"Welcome to the Velvet Room… It has been some long years, you have been an exceedingly hard working guest, but now it's time. The cards have shown that your fate will be most interesting." Igor chuckled as the cute girl with long platinum blonde hair holding the Persona Compendium looked slightly depressed.

"I'm going to get a card reading, aren't I?" Ichika asked, getting a nod from Igor.

Ichika walked towards the girl wearing a blue Victorian dress, stylish matching headband with white butterfly ornaments and yellow roses. Ichika couldn't help but note how cute Lavenza's pink lips were when she was pouting so heavily.

He gulped as she had a determined look on her face.

'For some reason, it seems that girls have a negative reaction to me attending the IS academy… I wonder why?' Ichika wondered, unfortunately, his high understanding is utterly geared for combat and non-woman related activities.

Arcana List

Fool - Orimura Ichika (Nicodemus), Not yet attained.

Magician- Gotanda Dan (Yagyu Jubei), Rank 8

Chariot - Gotanda Ran (Kaihime), Rank 7

Strength - Lavenza, Rank 7