This story is a work of fiction. Any similarities to events or persons living or dead in your world is purely coincidental.
Settle down, it'll all be clear
Don't pay no mind to the demons
They fill you with fear
The trouble, it might drag you down
If you get lost, you can always be found
Just know you're not alone
'Cause I'm gonna make this place your Home
4/19 Friday
After School
On any other day, Aiko would have been worried at how little she remembered about classes that day. There was nothing the teachers said that stood out to her, nothing that would stick in her mind for longer than the instant needed to acknowledge it. Kotone and Mr. Takao both had concerned expressions, but not enough to question her further.
There was only one path, one goal that mattered to her today.
"Over there", Pelagio instructed her once class was over. "That's the spot."
The spot was a yawning gap in the rock a short distance from the Yume Bay that she was honestly surprised not to have seen earlier. Or maybe I just wasn't looking. I didn't see the value in it until now.
Though the gap was actually three vertical feet up, there was also a pile of dry rocks which served as a rough stairway leading up to it. Inside, the cave stretched out into darkness, a mild coat of sand covering its floor and small stalactites upon the roof.
"You're sure that no one knows about this place?", Aiko asked him carefully, peering into the damp black. "We're not borrowing someone's private getaway?"
"Hmph. I have watched it for several days after discovering it", Pelagio promised with absolute confidence. "I have also explored it fully to locate any hazards. There is nothing of note in there, save for a pond at the bottom full of shellfish, and no one has visited it for days. Perhaps some students might wish to explore it out of curiosity, but that would be a rare occurrence. It is not so large as it seems."
"Hope it's not today", Aiko muttered as she ascended the steps into the cavern and began to remove her student uniform. "They might get the wrong idea."
While she had taken the early precaution of putting on a forest green swimsuit beneath it before heading out, Pelagio made sure to remain far outside of the cave until she was done stashing her uniform in a dry corner. I wonder... was he tempted? He's a bird, but he talks like someone older than a student. Regardless, the swimsuit wasn't the highly revealing type like the models wore, and it would hold up much better in the surf than normal clothes.
She tried to ignore just how eerily calm the waters had become as she waded into them. Once they were through the gate, the swimsuit became the familiar greatcoat and hat and she felt much better. Wait...
She looked down. The greatcoat was there, but it was... changed. It still looked worn and threadbare, but some of the colour missing from it had returned, albeit washed-out looking. Some of the previously frayed buttons were properly sewn back on, and her gloves felt less patchy as well. "Nice."
"Pardon, my lady?"
"Oh, nothing." As she spoke, a geyser of water far to their left announced the arrival of another masked Leviathan Shadow, but this one didn't look any faster than the last one. If anything, it was slower.
"Avoid it", she commanded of her friend-turned-vessel. "We don't have time to waste on that today."
"As you wish", Pelagio acknowledged, changing course as she adjusted the wide sails. "Though if our theory is correct, then our deadline is not until the 21st of this month. That is when this 'cleanse' is said to begin, yes?"
"True", she admitted. "Technically we do have two more days to spare before it's too late. But this is Mira's life we're talking about. I'm not leaving anything to chance. I'd have come even sooner, if it weren't for those detentions... No. We win here, or die trying."
Maybe I really am crazy. Driving a living ship past a giant masked beast in a sea without a sky, wearing an 18th century coat and sword while preparing to fight-
No. No more doubting. This is real. This is all real.
This is the most 'real' thing I have ever seen.
There was only one path.
"We love you, princess Mira!"
"She looked... tired", Pelagio commented as they hurried down the walkway towards the spire. "If I may say so, that was not nearly so inspired as her previous dance routine."
"She did", Aiko had to agree. Fortunately for them, the Shadows seemed to share in their master's lethargy. Only a few had tried attacking them, and it was nothing they hadn't seen and defeated before with their Personas. "Just have to hope she's not too tired to see us."
The rank and file might have been slacking, but the main guard on the spire was strong as ever. Four of the large box-shaped Shadows sat arrayed in formation around the front door, their words just as dead and mechanical as before.
"Halt, citizen. Princess Mira does not wish to be disturbed at this time."
"Are you sure about that?", Aiko asked before getting back on task. "I'm Aiko Tsuruga, and this is Pelagio. We're her friends."
"Processing. Searching database for friend listing Aiko Tsuruga and Pelagio." The eye flickered and flickered before stopping. "Listing found. Proceed, friends of princess Mira."
To their relief, the main door led into a large circular lift that bypassed all the floors of the spire they had previously forged through. Even if no Shadows attacked them now that they had been 'cleared', a walk up that many floors would have been exhausting by itself. They found Mira in the same place as before, among the metal village of young cognitions, this time actively working on some kind of unrecognisably advanced handhold contraption festooned with lights out in the main circle.
"The designator circuit is reversed", Mira murmured without seeing her new arrivals, though several of the kids looked interested in what she was doing. "Rear plasma connections are severed. This thing shouldn't even work at all, and yet... Oh! Tsuruga-chan! Perfect timing! I was wondering if you'd come back. I know you were disappointed before."
"I got held up", Aiko confessed with a sly grin. Despite their situation, it was good to see her roommate again. "Things have been... interesting at school. How about here?"
The momentary hesitation showing in Mira's face was all the proof Aiko needed. "It's good. I'm really getting better at making new machines. In fact, there was someone in the city today who actually proposed to me! I think he's serious!"
"Really?" Aiko stared past the violet protective fields into the array of lights and high technology spread beneath them. "I'd think any of the guys your age who live there would want to do that."
"Maybe", Mira acknowledged. "But he's the first one who worked up the courage to ask. He said we could do it after the cleanse was over."
She winced. Funny that you would speak of working up courage now. Surely she had more courage than a mere cognition. Pelagio was beside her, supporting her the whole way as she marshalled her strength of mind. "About the cleanse... no, I won't try to convince you that it's bad. But it's your deadline, senpai. If you aren't out of here two days from now, you can't leave. You'll be stuck here forever."
As expected, Mira didn't take this well. Her lips hardened and she gave Aiko an unwelcome look. "Stuck in heaven forever. So you're still trying this? I thought I'd made my point clear last time, and we could just enjoy each other's company. I know I enjoy yours. I told you, Tsuruga-san. I'm not going back."
"Then", Aiko declared, taking a deep breath as she reached down not for her cutlass, but for Mira's phone. "Consider this to be an intervention."
Mira didn't resist when she saw her phone being switched on. Without other context, it might have just been a friend showing her a funny video with it. Pelagio swept the steel village as Aiko booted the device up, content to leave her to the task at hand while he made sure that no Shadows interfered.
"I spoke with your father, Mr. Sorano", Aiko told her friend, scrolling down the list to a certain message originating from a number that was now familiar to both of them. "He had this to say, and some others joined in."
Moving her eyes back to Mira's, she hit the button to play the message.
Nothing happened. It took her a few seconds to process that there was no sound coming from the phone's speaker. No trace of Mr. Sorano's voice, even more thickly-accented than his daughter's. Looking at the phone, she hit the play button a second time. Again, there was nothing.
"What... why isn't it playing?"
A third tap. A fourth. Refreshing and hitting the button again did nothing. After another minute of fiddling with the phone to make it work, intense frustration took hold of her and she dropped the device to the ground, no longer caring if it was damaged as a result.
Why... why? It was working fine yesterday! No no no NO! This was supposed to deliver his message!
Mira looked distressed at her friend's anger, picking up her phone and staring into the screen. Hitting a few more buttons, she didn't seem surprised when nothing happened as she tried to play older messages or bring up the camera function.
"I think maybe our phones don't work properly in this dimension. Did you bring yours, Tsuruga-chan?"
"No", Aiko managed breathlessly, still hoarse from the mixture of rage and despair filling her. This was it. Her ultimate plan to convince Mira to abandon her Land once and for all... and it was completely useless.
She rose out of that helpless daze to find her hand touching the handle of her sword, about to cut loose and take out her frustrations on the dimension which had caused them, no matter how ineffective such an action would be, and likely to call Shadows down on them all the quicker.
"Mira-meisie."
Startled, they both turned to see Mr. Sorano standing before them in the square, or rather the cognition bearing his name and likeness. The joviality he had born last time was gone, or nearly so, and Mira looked similarly despondent seeing him in such a way. "Papa?"
"Mira-meisie, I know what has brought you here", the copy of Mr. Sorano told her in a tone heavy enough to support the central spire. "You have always been the brightest of our family, but you jump to conclusions. You believed that because I became angry with you, and sent you back to Koashimizu, I disliked you, or that I believed that your grades were more important than you... you are wrong."
Aiko could hardly believe what she was hearing from this simulacrum. Because she'd heard it before. This was, with a few minor changes, the exact message which Mr. Sorano had recorded for her.
Mira seemed to be having difficulty believing it as well. "P-papa?"
"You are the brightest, Mira-meisie. Brighter than me. All I wished was to nurture that, so that you could leave home one day and find a place in the modern world. I know how much you enjoy our home. It will always be there for you. We will always be there for you. At the same time, there are so many things that have developed outside of our home that I wished we might be able to enjoy more. The medicine of the outside world is better. There are systems there that I don't understand that allow you to view art and culture from anywhere in the world. You could be a star in any of those fields, Mira-meisie."
If his words were having the desired effect, Aiko couldn't tell. They had certainly reduced Mira to sullen tears, but it remained to be seen if that was good or bad. "Stop it! Papa, please stop!"
The false Mr. Sorano did not stop. "I only wanted what I believed was best for you. You are better than anything our home might be able to provide you. I believed that then, and I believe it now. I will always support you, and I am so sorry for becoming angry before. At home, we all... we all... we-we-we-we-w-w-w-w-www..."
As the man's voice began to loop unnaturally back on itself, so too did his body. It spasmed, wildly at first then more and more minutely, like an animatron running out of energy.
Then, a heartbeat after his eyes drew closed, Aiko realized that was exactly what it was.
"You knew?"
Unable to raise her head, Mira sniffed. "...Out of power. How did he say all that?"
She couldn't think of an answer to that question. Several other citizens of the village did not provide an answer either. What they did do was flank Mira, forming a circle of seven children and one woman. All of them had seemingly discarded their former playful facade and were looking just as solemn as the false Mr. Sorano had, the expression seeming somehow unnatural on their young, innocent faces.
As though this wasn't unnatural enough, Aiko thought warily. This version of Mr. Sorano was actually another machine, which meant the same was probably true for the others here.
They betrayed none of that secret. Though they took turns speaking to Mira in a language which Aiko did not understand, hearing a beautiful song in another language remained a pleasant sound, and so it was here. The emotion in their words seemed like it should be impossible for any machine to duplicate. Mira did understand the words, and Aiko would have bet anything that they were something close to the message she had recorded earlier.
The message which was not merely from her father, but from her entire family.
It took longer than she had remembered, each of the kids ranging from preschoolers to Mira's own age taking a turn, leaving the final words to the large bellied, soft-eyed woman who Aiko presumed was Mira's mother. Her words seemed the saddest, the most delicately delivered.
This turned out to be too much for the Land's ruler. She sank to her knees with her mother's final gentle syllables, hands knuckled over her eyes. No... they were clutching her head.
"Ek.. ek is... ek is... moeder."
Aiko would have waited weeks for her, but in truth it must have only taken a few minutes before Mira rose.
"It's me", she whispered brokenly to the neon sky. "It's my fault. This whole place sprung from my mind. From my foolishness. From my bitterness. I could have fought. I chose to run away. The voice called to me."
When Aiko could find no words, she was surprised to feel Pelagio walking up to them. "It gave you what your subconscious mind desired. Do you still desire it, Mirambela Sorano?"
A ripping noise, high and clear in the near silence of the village surrounded by child androids, drew her attention back to Mira, who had torn the skirt of her dress loose before standing. The hurt in her eyes was unmistakable, but so was the change that had come over her.
"No", she declared. "I don't. It's time. Let's get out of here."
The box Shadows parted like a river as Mirambela walked out of the spire with her friends, and the flying robots changed their courses to avoid her. The cognitions looked troubled by the sight of their ruler outside the sterile safety of her citadel, but were reassured by the mere sight of the one whom they claimed to adore, gossiping madly instead.
In fact, there was no hint of opposition until they were less than one hundred feet away from the end of the final walkway. Then, several of the floating platforms began to slam themselves together with that walkway until the resulting platform was wide enough to run two trucks along head to head, and a familiar cry came down to them.
"Where are you going, princess Mira?"
The three of them peered up at the same time to see Mira's Shadow descending from a higher walkway. She jumped down from there to land on the platform, heavy metal legs making a cacophonously loud crash. Her voice was still the same blend of Mira and malicious robot that Aiko remembered, if a bit more stressed than before for obvious reasons.
"It's dangerous for you to be outside the spire", the tall machine said with only small hints of courtesy. "I realize that these people are your friends, but the rest of the filth would take any opportunity to harm you, especially two days before the cleanse."
Seeing Aiko at a loss for what to say, Mirambela stepped forward, a cold anger in her tone that neither of them had ever seen from her before. "And why would they want to harm me? Because I ordered the cleanse? Funny... I don't remember ever doing that."
"You were very busy", her cyborg copy offered, the red lens casting across the other two absently. "Besides, stupid filth needs no reason to lash out and harm those who are smarter than them, and you are the smartest of us all."
Sensing rather than seeing the way that several lesser Shadows were now gathering around them, Mira took a step back.. and chuckled cynically. "That's why every machine I create works perfectly, yes? Because I'm the smartest. Because this is my world, the world of my dreams. So even if I have no clue what I'm actually doing, what I build will always work. I can't believe I only noticed that now, when I deliberately tried to build a failed device."
"So gifted", the Shadow remarked in admiration, though it hardly sounded like a compliment. "You couldn't even fail if you tried. That's our dear princess. But genius can't protect you from animals. That is why you created us. To protect you from their filth."
Mira shook her head, sorrow masking a potent anger that Aiko sensed in her every syllable. "I can do without your kind of protection, sentry. I'll be going now."
She was four steps further toward freedom when a vicious scowl appeared on the stolen copy of her face across from them, and the red lens glowed. Behind the Shadow, a violet field appeared to block the path.
"These so-called friends have corrupted your mind", the Shadow snarled, pointing her laser arm at Pelagio. "This is your world, princess. You can't seriously want to go back to that awful place, where you were tormented and shunned every day. Don't you remember Kujou? Remember Mattora? Remember how they all looked down on you, and said you were stupid? Remember what Papa said?"
Mira didn't falter from the words, only from the laser arm. "I do. But there are other people there... people who make it all worthwhile. And maybe, just maybe, it won't be so bad, if I actually stand up for myself."
That was the final straw, and even Mira knew to get behind Aiko and Pelagio as her Shadow let out a most un-robotic roar of disapproval. Around them, hundreds of of thick shiny cables began to snake their way onto the platform from above, each one crackling with electricity.
"-It's wrong", the massive sentry bearing her face protested, for once sounding more like a distressed Mirambela than a heartless machine trained to speak. "It's wrong, it's wrong, it's wrong, it's wrong, it's WRONG! I will not return! I will never return! Here I am loved! Here, all the bad people are punished! Here, everything is perfect! I won't leave! NEVER! You will not take me away from the world of my dreams!"
The cables made their purpose evident then as the two Persona-users drew their weapons and called upon their powers, each one forcibly jacking into dozens of circular ports on the Shadow's metal body. Once enough of them had attached, they formed a house-sized cone of mad wiring that lifted up as one... only to come away with the upper half of her body, leaving her huge legs lying uselessly on the ground.
Then, as they all stared up at her, at the impossible bulging mass of sci-fi wiring that had taken her, the Shadow reached up with her bulky left hand, and the metal hand clamped down and began to gruesomely tear at the skin of her face, until...
A sharp cry of cringing pain rang out across the city as the face came loose.
"Gods... just what are facing here?", Pelagio remarked in horror as the dead mask of brown flesh that had once been Mira's face dropped down to lie among the discarded robot legs as if it were a mere latex disguise. As a precaution, he reached up and touched his helmet to call his Persona.
"A pretender", Aiko provided for him, sounding only slightly less alarmed. "Something that masqueraded as Mira-senpai's loyal servant. Beneath her mask, there's nothing. Nothing but unfeeling metal."
"No", Mira disagreed, sounding the most frightened of them all. "That is still... me. That's the me that hated all the others for the way they treated me. The me that created the idea of 'filth'. Oh God..."
Despite her words, the only resemblance that the Shadow bore to its 'master' now was a vaguely feminine-shaped face. It bore no lingering shreds of Mirambela's flesh now, only stark metal and rivets, a set of sharp black lips frozen up like the masks seen on other Shadows. Its single eye was now more of a socket-shaped light bulb, glowing an angry gold as it surveyed and scanned its targets.
"Stupid filth that threaten my perfect world must be exterminated!", the Shadow screeched, its voice rapidly wavering between Mirambela and Microsoft Mary. Already, the space-age laser cannon on her right hand was charging, releasing a blast like the disc robots cranked up by a factor of ten.
Those had been the very first Shadows that Aiko had defeated. And, like as then, the only way out was to fight back with every part of her own consciousness. The cutlass was up in the space of a breath, blocking the shot and falling back only a few paces. Her other hand rose up to her hat, calling upon Anne Bonny. "I don't think so... Shadow-san."
That was the signal for for Pelagio and Galahad to strike, lunging forward to tear into her armour with his blade, though the slash left little in the way of damage behind and Aiko's blade did no better. Swaying back on the cables holding her from repeated blade impacts, the Shadow lifted up and pointed its laser arm once more. This time, what came out was not a laser, but a crackling current of electricity that floored Pelagio with a pained groan.
Dodging the arm as it swung around for her, Aiko caught an involuntary glimpse of all the lesser Shadows around her, none of them attacking, just standing there, watching the confrontation.
How many of them were secretly hoping that she and Pelagio would be the ones to finally bring down this metal monstrosity who had stolen their identities? How many had already lost themselves completely, becoming the mask?
"We need some more bite in our blades!", she muttered, switching to her most strength-focused Persona. "Crush them, Onkot! Tarukaja!"
That seemed to help Pelagio's sword cut deeper, but then the Shadow turned the surging electricity on her instead. Parrying it with a metal cutlass was an obvious mistake, and so Aiko merely gritted her teeth as she soaked up the pain. Being electrocuted was exactly as painful as she'd heard, though thankfully it wasn't enough voltage to make her black out entirely.
"My lady!", Pelagio called, seeing the attack. "Are you alright? I should use-"
"NO!", she cut him off, trying not to sound too on edge. "Not yet, keep attacking! That bronze giant's fire was worse, she's got to have more than this!"
"Correct for once!", the Shadow cried as the tethering cables hauled her further up, out of the reach of their swords even as Aiko finished placing Tarukaja on herself as well. Energy gathered in the laser arm now, charging up until the entire apparatus was glowing. "This will delete you for good! DELETE!"
Pelagio saw it coming, and raised his hand to use his protective spell from before, Praesi. When the stream of blinding power was finally released however, the transparent shield around her only held for an instant before shattering and allowing the rest of the current through to shock her further.
Biting back words her mother would have snapped out of her fuge and scolded her for, Aiko forced herself to remain standing until her healing was done. "You wanna fight long-distance then? Bufu!"
It was not water, but a wreath of ice which covered the enemy this time. Aiko had hoped the chill would penetrate deep into the circuitry, or whatever it really was that kept this mechanical monster going, but it merely cracked some of her armour. Getting the message, Pelagio raised his own sword to strike with the explosive power of Frei, which seemed to be only marginally more effective.
The Shadow reeled back under the combined magical assault, her armour ruptured but still holding, being worn down by repeated strikes. The red machine lens shifted over to Mira for just a moment before resuming her own offensive. "I cannot fall... I cannot! For the sake of my world, for my heaven..."
There was more crackling, but it came from above the Shadow as the hundreds of gathered power cables lit up in neon. As the three of them watched, the ruptures they had created in the Shadow's sleek metal plating began to close themselves back up, leaving the metal plates gleaming and factory new. "Hah! No filth can threaten me! Mazio!"
The vicious lightning struck them both now, Aiko noticing detatchedly that it seemed to affect Pelagio far worse and healing appropriately. Damn... Not good. If she can just keep healing with all those cables, there's no way we'll last... "Pelagio!"
Too busy and pained to correct her not addressing him as 'sir' for once in his life, her guardian grimaced, falling back before a stream of laser blasts. "My lady?"
"Get behind her and cut the cables! Stop that recharge!"
The large eyes on his helmet widened. "But... but you cannot face that Shadow alone!"
"Neither of us can face her if she keeps healing! Do it now!" Praying that none of the other Shadows would interfere with him, she turned back to face their main enemy, grimly acknowledging a final casting of Praesi from her guardian before she was left to face the enemy alone.
The shield wouldn't last long, she knew. It might only prevent the first attack, and particularly heavy attacks like the buster that Mira's Shadow was charging once more would pierce right through it. But... maybe there's a way to stop it from hurting me anyway. I just hope I figured this out right. Come on...
Leering, the Shadow pointed her arm and unleashed the torrent of raw power against her once more. "DELETE!"
"Take flight, Gu Huo Niao!"
The shield shattered even faster this time, allowing the storm of voltage to pour through and cover her in its fury, scalding nerves with the agonising pain of electrocution...
And Aiko stood up, completely unharmed, smiling in a way that she didn't often smile.
Behind her floated a gorgeous turquoise-skinned female demon with large blue-feathered wings and raven hair braided into sweeping fanned horns. The Persona smiled along with her, albeit far more cruelly than most humans were capable of.
The single bulb eye of Shadow Mira flashed in clear alarm.
"What?! Impossible!"
Securing her hat, Aiko shook her head. "No, Shadow-san. It's just something you never checked. I did. I noticed it when I was using this new Persona against your other Shadows- Gu Huo Niao is immune to electricity. You'd better stick to your laser attack now, because your lightning won't do much to me."
Mira's Shadow seemed to shake for a moment before pointing the laser arm again. No beam emerged, but the more powerful crackling electricity poured forth to shock her into death. "Impossible! Mazio!"
Aiko hadn't been telling the entire truth- the bolts still tingled, burning into her captain's coat, but not eliciting the howls of agony from her that it had before. It was more than enough.
Seeing the Shadow pull back out of melee range, she pointed her blade. "...Told you. Want to see what else it can do? Agi!"
Just as it had when the bronze giant called upon it, the enchanted flame billowed out to engulf her target, leaving scorch marks on the metal. She wouldn't call the damage significant, but coupled with recent developments, it clearly infuriated the Shadow even further. Another laser flew out, only to be handily intercepted by her cutlass.
Like those serving under her, the Shadow had now dropped all pretence of being anything close to an emotionless robot, even yielding occasional grunts of pain. She was far from done, however. The connecting cables surged once more to heal the enemy's burns, and then Aiko realized that while they had been distracted by the fight, a round hatch in the walkway had opened to remove the two metal legs and the flesh mask.
They had been swapped out for a domed, treaded base that almost looked like another metal-shelled Shadow at first. It showed no signs of life until Mira's Shadow was lowered on her cables down into the open dome section, the mechanisms of her lower torso connecting and fusing with something in there.
Wasting no time, the base suddenly revved up like a car, and Aiko had to throw herself to one side to avoid being squashed beneath treads. The Shadow cackled madly seeing this, turning and readying for another blind rush, screaming as she did.
"You dare to violate my heaven! You, the one who can just ignore the torments of Hell... How? How do you do it? I hate you! I HATE YOU! DELETE! DELEEEEETE!"
Aiko answered with a dose of Agi, but the berserk Shadow charged through the flames, rapid-firing the laser cannon now. That could be parried, but she quickly realised that she couldn't do that and still dodge the charge. Taking the less painful option was still painful, and the Shadow cried her imminent victory as multiple laser blasts scored her coat.
Then there was a barrage of slicing sounds from somewhere above, and the treads ground to a halt inches from Aiko's face. She stood, seeing all the cables connected to Mira's Shadow falling limply away like confetti. The effect was instantaneous- enemy's the upper torso wilted over, nearly lifeless save for her static-washed cries of anguish, unable to fire the laser arm any more.
One last cable, the one connected to an aperture on the back of the Shadow's neck, parted before Pelagio returned to the ground. "My sincerest apologies for the delay, my... Aiko."
"You've forgiven", she smirked in victory, raising a 'bro fist' that the Guardian stared at in confusion instead of reciprocating. "You did it way faster than I could have."
"How do you do it?", the Shadow interrupted their celebration in a quavering, broken tone, all her earlier rage banished. "How do you get through it? Every day, the torment. Every day, the horrible insults. Every day, they hate me... how?"
"That's simple."
The answer hadn't come from Aiko or Pelagio. Mirambela walked up to them, her face newly resolute. "Because she's strong. Stronger than I was at her age. She doesn't run those horrible words over and over in her head, or let them intrude on her dreams. She resists. She knows how meaningless they are. Verduur."
Her Shadow didn't look up. It sounded like it was crying now as it spoke to her equal and opposite, the other half of her mind. "Geen... ek kan nie... I can't do that. I'm too weak... I'm too pathetic. I need my sanctuary! I need my heaven!"
Pelagio drew his blade with a scowl, but Aiko held him back. "She's got it", she told him as Mira walked past them. "She knows just what to say to herself."
"Last year", Mira said slowly, approaching the shivering wreck without any fear. "Last year was a horrible time for me. I had no one. It just kept on piling up, and I knew that my father wouldn't understand. He believed that being smart meant that I would be popular, that I was smart enough to ignore the people like Kujou and Mattora who chose to harass me. Then, the final grades, and his anger, after we all saved up so much money to send me... and then I had to face it all over again. Another year of the same hell. I resigned myself to it, believing there was no other way. Too much."
She reached the base then, reaching one tender hand up to touch the tarnished steel cheek of the fallen Shadow's face. Dark oil tears flowed down to meet it, reflecting the flesh face beholding it.
"But I don't have to live like that any more. My father didn't make me study abroad because he didn't like me. He did it because he believed that I was the most gifted of his children. He had faith in me, even when I had none in myself. So did Tsuruga-san. So did everyone back home. They're all counting on me to become something special. Not because they want anything back from me... but because they love me. Because they want me to be happy."
The enormous Shadow began to dissipate then, both the armoured tank base and the upper torso becoming countless shining stars of bright violet and red. Scattering about in a round cloud, they did not dissipate, merely gathering around Mira, who didn't seem to notice.
"I will create my own happiness, with the help of the people who believe in me", she vowed, eyes closed now. "No matter who tries to stop it, I will not give in to them. I will dodge around their awful weapons, continuing in my joyful dance... for I am the Dancer."
The monstrous, dual crash of lightning gathered once more, this time resolving into the shape of a large, athletic woman with smiling bright purple lips and a red and yellow headdress. An exotic outfit of fiery crimson silk cloak and countless beads covered her but did nothing to obscure the inhuman grace of her movements, punctuated by the occasional small crackle of electricity running down her skin into her fingers.
"A Persona?", Pelagio called in surprise.
"What?", Aiko commented, her own happiness blunting sarcasm. "You didn't think she could do it? If I could, so could my Senpai... she just needed a little help from us."
"Eeparrei. I am Thou", the large Persona greeted her, speaking gently into all of their minds, not only Mira's. "Thou art I. Thou hast overcome thine despair, and unlocked the true strength of thine other self."
"Yes", wide-eyed Mira nodded, understanding without needing words. "I know. Ek is jy. You are me. I forgot. You're... Oya. And, you are... me."
"Through lightning and storms, through death and rebirth, heedless we dance forever on", the rising Persona spoke in an uplifting tone that Aiko knew originated from within the depths of Mira's own soul. "Those who seek our destruction shall only follow along behind us, and thus, become caught up in our dance, and part of it. Until there is only the dance, and the dancers. Now, we have sealed our contract. Break your chains of despair. Unleash my power, and pillage this dismal dawn of illusions!"
The voice was gone. Time resumed unhindered. The spirit had vanished, the invisible chains cast aside in useless fragments of thought.
Mira nearly collapsed then, but even as Aiko rushed in to support her she put out her other knee to stop her motion. "Senpai? Are you...?"
Turning, Mira smiled like she never had in all the time they had known each other. "I am, Tsuruga-san. Now, more than ever before." Far from collapsing, she wrapped both arms around her smaller body as if she might never let go. "Thank you. Thank you so much, for everything. I would never have woken up if you hadn't come here. You did more than I- than anyone- had any right to ask of you."
Embracing her back and trying not to cough from the press of the other girl's strength, Aiko nodded back, shedding tears of joy. I did it. I did it. It actually worked out. "Hey... you're my Senpai, and my roommate. You think I would just let you go? Let this weird place steal you away? Never. We watch out for each other, right? That was what I promised you when we met."
They broke apart then, and Mira nodded more soberly. "I know. 'Let's think positive', right? I think... I feel as close to you now as I do all my brothers and sisters back home. If ever you wish to visit us, it will be as family."
"I'd love that", Aiko was beaming until a loud crashing noise brought her back to reality. "Speaking of a change in location, we should probably go now."
It was easy to see what she meant. The noise had been caused by one of the steel trees suddenly losing power and toppling over, crashing into several walkways. As they watched, more and more of the towers began to follow suit. Cognitions everywhere began to scream in terror and run before disappearing into dust, and the Shadows had all scattered to the winds.
Mira could only nod in agreement. "Definitely time to go. Let's get out of this place."
Enemy Profile #2
Shadow Mirambela
Resist - Wind, Lightning (Drain)
Weakness - None
Abilities - Zio, Mazio, Deletion Buster, Recharge, Ramming
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