-2009-
Everyone sat in the dormitory lounge, looking for something to say.
Koromaru had trotted off with Mitsuru and Akihiko. That wasn't that strange, really. The dog had loved Shinjiro Aragaki as much or more than just about everyone. Nobody had ever seen such a weight reflected in an animal's face before. Aigis had whispered into his ear briefly, and then the two senpai had left with the dog in tow.
They were going to take care of the body. Nobody else had the guts, or the presumption, to go along with them. Junpei had cast one look towards Minato, who'd slowly shaken his head, and they'd watched them go.
Ken hadn't come back, yet. Everything had happened so fast, that nobody had yet gone to look for him. Minato didn't seem too worried, so they chose not to be, either. But then, Minato didn't look to be much of anything but tired. He kept zoning off, staring at patterns in the wallpaper for long periods of time. It wasn't like how he faded out in the lobby of Tartarus; it was just a slow shutdown of... caring, maybe. It had been his first failure. Yukari kept casting him glances, but didn't go to him.
Finally, Fuuka said something about a strong headache and wandered out of the lounge. It was only the original three members of the Tartarus Exploration Team, and Aigis, who seemed a little confused. The air felt thick.
"I could... go get some drinks from the machine upstairs." Junpei took off his cap and scratched at his head. The others didn't seem to excited by the idea. "You know what, nevermind..."
Aigis slowly loped over with her awkward gait and sat down in one of the chairs. She so rarely bothered to sit down when she didn't have to that the others turned out of habit to look. She smoothed out the skirt of her school uniform and frowned slightly.
"Permit me to ask a question." Yukari was already wincing and rolling her eyes, but the boys each nodded slowly. "Shinjiro-san left his usual body armor, axe, and other equipment here at the dormitory building when he went to the arranged meeting behind the station. Given his awareness of Ken's anger, does this not mean that he wished to die?"
Junpei gaped, and Yukari reared back as if to slap the android, but Minato spoke before she could get the chance.
"I... can't accept that, Aigis." Minato looked... he looked dry, like he was being slowly mummified before them. He spoke haltingly, and unsure. "I... I understand why you say that. But I can't accept it. I refuse to believe that people want death."
Yukari slumped. "Minato-kun..."
"No." He shook his head. "Death is... it's too big. I won't accept it. He... he didn't know what he really wanted. I refuse to believe that you all... I..." His face cracked. "I'm... going to my room." He stood, and his hands hung limply, out of his pockets, as he walked up the stairs.
"What was that about?" Junpei looked to Yukari, who was shaking her head. Neither of them saw Aigis's face, as she attempted to process the reaction of the boy she had sworn to protect. Facts lined up ever so briefly, seemed to route towards corrupted memory cells, and then collapsed into fault errors and stack overflows. She couldn't understand what she was thinking, which was an unusual feeling for an artificial intelligence. It was as if there was a truth there, just out of reach.
Not even Aigis understood why she felt so drawn to Minato Arisato. She felt as if there was a great Answer to her existence, and if she could only see it, those long-damaged parts of herself might reawaken. Perhaps then, she naively believed, she might be worthy of his attention.
Minato made it up to his room, shut the door, and then the tears came. His body shook, and he ripped the calendar from his wall, throwing it across the small dorm room in impotent fury before collapsing to his bed. He was asleep before he realized what was happening. He had no way of framing his guilt and his grief for others to understand. All the worse because some part of him had known that this outcome had been inevitable from the beginning. Like Shinjiro's life was an arrow fired from long ago, and it had only just now struck home.
Persona: After The End
-An Apocrypha-
(This story was written before the release of P4:G and P4UM)
Chapter Seven: What the Butler Saw
-2021-
...You can go where you want to go
(You gotta change the way you live)
Be who you want to be
Think confident, think positive...
"Hello, ma'am." Reiji Kido, with an ugly comb-forward haircut and a sour-looking tie, tried to slip his foot between the door and the frame before she could close it in his face. "I'm here to offer you a once in a lifetime opportunity, that's going to change your world forever."
The woman looked at Reiji and stiffened, as though his very aura was knocking her back. "This isn't a religious thing, is it?"
Reiji laughed, poorly. "No, ma'am. Although, when you see what these knives will do in your kitchen, you might just think you've found Heaven itself."
The door slammed hard on his foot. He cursed and pulled his leg back, falling backwards into a bush. His sample case landed square on his nose.
"Akihiko..." Chie Satonaka ran after her partner – her boyfriend – as he stormed out of the police station. "Hey, wait!" She winced as Officer Sanada punched a nearby lamppost, and made a solid dent in the metal. "Aki, come on, don't be that guy. Talk to me, already."
His shoulders raised and lowered, again and again. She didn't reach out for him; she already knew him better than that. She just jammed her hands into her pockets and waited him out. Finally, he turned and offered her a sheepish smile.
"Sorry. I just... I need some time to think. Alone."
She shook her head. "Partners, remember? This affects both of us."
That might have been the wrong thing to say. He scrunched up his face and looked away. "Give me a few hours. I'll meet you at the beef bowl place tonight at nine, okay?"
That was as good as she was going to get. She sighed.
"Don't do anything stupid, okay?" But he was already in the car and pulling out of the station parking lot.
-2009 (Timeline B-AB)-
Shinjiro reeled back as the bullet hit. It felt less like a pierce, and more like an explosion—the result of a silver pocketwatch shattering upon impact. Even as he flew backwards the realization came to him, and then, oddly, the beginnings of a joke. Having more time, killing time... something-something. Hamuko would be able to figure out the right wordplay, she was the clever one.
The watch didn't stop the bullet, Takaya's pistol was a very high caliber and the shot came from a very close range, but it slowed the bullet considerably. Of course, now there was also the shrapnel, pieces of silver tearing into him... his wild hair, Miki had always called him a werewolf. And then he cracked his head pretty hard when he landed.
What caused the coma, exactly? The doctors weren't one hundred percent sure. The trauma of surgery—it took some time to get him operated on, as the gunshot occurred during the Dark Hour—or perhaps their painkillers conflicted with whatever had been in his body, that the toxicology report could not identify. They didn't know anything about Kirijo Group suppressant drugs, they didn't even see what Chidori was popping into her mouth whenever the doctors leaved her alone. An argument was made, however, that the brain was just choosing not to respond. People had to fight to live, after major trauma, and it seemed as though Shinjiro was choosing not to fight at all.
-1995-
Reiji Kido had barely started high school, and he was already sitting in a police station in handcuffs.
It had been a... well, Reiji used the word "disagreement" when he spoke with the cop, a stuffy new guy called Kurosawa. Some kids had been teasing him, comparing him to his smarter, better-looking stepbrother. So he'd beaten them to bloody pulps. It was nothing to worry about, he argued. The cop looked ready to turn the violence right around to Reiji, which suited him fine.
As his mother was called, he looked down at his fists, which still had traces of blood. Part of him was pleased; the other part decidedly less so.
On the way back home, his mother talked about transferring him to another school. Which was a nice way of saying "get the embarrassment out of their hair." That suited him fine, too. He didn't need her (Didn't she know he was doing it all for her?). Let him forge his own path (He loved her). He'd bust up anyone who got in his way, if he had to.
-2009-
Shinjiro was in his usual place, loitering by the back door, when Minato found him. He always looked ready to bolt out that door when everyone turned their backs. Minato didn't like it, especially, but he hadn't found a way to connect with Shinjiro, not yet. The older boy seemed unusually perceptive, calling Minato on his frequent silences, things like that. He fought well for SEES, but he didn't seem interested in opening up. Compared to the many social links that Minato had formed, Shinjiro Aragaki was a logic problem that he hadn't been able to solve.
"Tomorrow's the big day." Shinjiro crossed his arms and looked at the younger leader. "You ready?"
Minato nodded, and Shinjiro clucked his tongue. When the leader of SEES turned to walk away, though, Shinji frowned. "Hey." The boy turned. "What are you going to do, when this is all over?"
The boy's eyes were hidden behind that damned hair again. He mumbled, "I hadn't really thought about it." But then he looked up, searching. "How about you?"
"Tch. Never mind." Shinji turned away. He wouldn't have to deal with this for much longer.
-2021-
Akihiko drove around for at least thirty minutes, aimlessly, slamming his hands against the steering wheel, before he finally sighed and picked a destination. It was, he supposed, a bit of denial on his part. It had been obvious from the beginning where he would go.
The cemetery looked much as it had the last time that he'd visited – it hadn't been very long. He tried to keep his visits to once a year, the better to look forward, rather than back. But this was different. What he was being asked to do... he felt all the worse for feeling that this moment had been coming for years.
The cold wind was picking up, and Aki actually had to pull on the coat that he was usually toting around over his shoulder. It was then that he noticed that somebody was standing by Shinji's gravestone. It was a man in an ill-fitting business suit. He eased closer slowly. Not that many people would come to visit Shinjiro Aragaki, and he knew pretty much all of them personally.
When the man turned to look at him with a sad smile, he was shocked to find that this, too, was someone he knew. Reiji Kido offered a wavering bow. "Hello, Aki. You've grown up."
"Kido-sensei..." Akihiko gave a long, low formal bow. "I haven't seen you in..."
"A lifetime?" Reiji looked at the gravestone. "I'm sorry about Shinji. I wish I could have..." He let his shoulders droop. "How are you?"
Aki didn't have the words. He looked at Shinji's stone, and back at Reiji. "Do you want to go somewhere?"
-2009 (Timeline B-AB)-
Hamuko wrapped Shinjiro's fingers around the pocket watch. He stared at her, and she just smiled, like she always did.
The smile was half-bullshit most of the time, and he knew it. These people couldn't use the toilet without asking for her orders, and yet not a one of them stopped to ask how she was doing. Kirijo, the idiot in the baseball cap, even Akihiko, who was leading her around by the nose and didn't even realize it. She had come to him, asked him what to do about Aki, and it had made him want to laugh.
Shinji wasn't the sort of person who'd deliberately steal a woman from his best friend, but things were progressing so quickly that not even he had realized what was going on until he was wrapped around her finger. What had he endured for her sake? Wearing a tuxedo into Tartarus, that had probably been the worst of it. Some long-dormant part of him had been flattered, yeah, and felt warmed by it. But then he'd seen that she'd wheedled the rest of the guys into doing the same thing, and Takeba had slapped a wad of yen into her hand.
He tried not to think about most of it too much, or he'd crack. He already saw how Ken followed her around, all but floating in the air. The damned kid was going to break her heart when she found out about why he'd signed on in the first place. Tomorrow. That was going to be the day. And if Ken was going to break her heart, what was he going to do to her?
Better to pretend that they didn't give each other the same looks across the dorm room lounge. Better to keep hiding by the exit, in the dark, where the others couldn't see him watch her every move. Better to get tomorrow over with, so that the guilt would leave him alone.
-1996-
...Power is the Reason
Why we all are fighting hard
Control your body, your soul, and heart
Yes, some of us who quit are like lambs to the slaughter
Lets try harder to reach the next stage...
It wasn't long after Reiji's transfer to St. Hermelin before he'd gotten himself in trouble again. This time, the police and the juvenile courts offered him an option to keep his record clean. Service work wasn't exactly Reiji's idea of a good time, but given the choices in front of him, he decided to take the lesser of two evils.
Which is how he'd check in with an officer once a week and bus over to an orphanage and help out. At first, they tried to get him to work with little kids, finger-painting and every other thing. That didn't work out. But a couple of the older kids got a look at his sculpted abdominals on a hot day on the small basketball court behind the building, and asked him if he knew how to fight. Soon, he was talking to the administration to hash out a program where he could do something to help that might not be so bad.
Self-defense was not, exactly, something that the orphanage wanted to promote in practice – some of the boys were too violent as it is – but enough people saw the benefit to providing a positive outlet for aggression that he was allowed to teach an informal class (under heavy supervision). Soon, basic lessons gave way to more formal boxing and wrestling matches, usually with duct-taped and ragged equipment.
It wasn't long before Reiji had two students who stood far above the others in raw skill—and aggression. That was how he got to know the young Akihiko Sanada and Shinjiro Aragaki.
-2021-
Akihiko and Reiji stood outside the orphanage, not looking at each other.
"Been a while since I came here." Aki grimaced. It had been rebuilt many years back, after Akihiko had left it behind—this he'd known. That the building looked so similar to how it used to, that he hadn't really expected. It was a ghost place, like Tartarus. Just being near it made him feel small again.
"Longer for me, obviously." Reiji wiped at his nose. "Let's go around back."
The old basketball court was there, still, though it was in, to put it mildly, a bit of disrepair. Aki winced. He should have asked Mitsuru to put some money into the old place, but he'd spent so much time trying to forget about it.
"I'll tell you, back then, I think I hated being here as much as you kids did." Reiji smiled, his tie flapping in the wind. "Now I kind of miss it."
Akihiko had so much he wanted to ask Reiji Kido, about what to do, what to feel. Instead, he just watched the older man nose his way around the orphanage grounds.
"I'd be a pretty big league dick if I claimed that it was all bad." Reiji toed at some weeds peeking up from the asphalt. "But a lot of it's been a waking nightmare."
"I know what that's like." Akihiko approached him, coughing once. "I hate to think what Shinji and I would've been like, though, if you hadn't been here."
-2006-
In Akihiko Sanada's last year of middle school, a beautiful girl came up to him and made an offer that he couldn't refuse.
He'd gotten a lot of "offers" since becoming the school's prize boxing champion. But this wasn't like the others, from insipid and callow girls who didn't see much to him besides a pair of arms. This was not an offer to date, or to "hang out," or any other kind of vague suggestion that had to do with their being seen with him in public.
This girl, instead, handed him a gun.
"You said you wanted to build your strength. What you really need is a riskier challenge. And with this, you can challenge 'them'..." Young Mitsuru Kirijo pressed the gun into his palm, flipped her curly hair with one hand, and walked away without giving him a second glance.
Aki looked at the gun for a long moment. It was lighter, didn't feel like he'd imagine a gun would feel. And he'd never thought he'd use a gun in the first place. But when noises down the hall heralded the return of the other students, he palmed the weapon and slipped it into his pocket.
That decision was the first time that he heard the whispered voice, the one that he'd later recognize as Polydeuces. It was a voice that he only barely realized that he'd heard, folding himself back into the crowd of cheering kids and letting them carry him back outside, where a familiar boy was skulking beneath a tree and looking at the stars.
"Hey." Akihiko kicked him, ignoring the other students. "You see that fight?"
"Whatever." Shinjiro shrugged. "You want a real match, you know where to find me."
Aki chuckled, but in the next moment he realized that he now had a secret, burning away in his pocket at that moment, and no idea what to do about his best and only friend.
-2009 (Timeline B-AB)-
Hamuko sat down next to the hospital bed. She was determined not to cry.
"I tried to think of something that you'd actually appreciate." She rubbed at her nose. "Or, at least, that you'd admit to appreciating." This was the first day since Shinjiro had been admitted to the hospital that she'd been able to get some time alone. Akihiko was there constantly; which was understandable, but she'd wanted, needed, time alone with him. "I figured that if I did things like read to you, or tell you about funny stuff that happened at the dorm, you'd probably roll your eyes at me." She sighed. "If you could. I'm probably going to do that stuff anyway—you can't stop me, after all—but, just this first time, I really wanted to..."
She took a deep breath. This wasn't "hard," this was agonizing. It was so unfair. And she knew damned well what the end of the story was. Even if he woke up... how much longer did he have? Hamuko didn't know. It could be ten years, but it probably wasn't. It probably wasn't one year.
"Yeah, so..." She unwrapped the parcel that she'd brought in. "I tried to think of what you'd appreciate. Like I said. And then I realized that I wasn't exactly sure what we had in common. Doesn't that sound stupid? After all of this time. Knowing how we feel. We both like cooking... and we both have a thing for exotic coffee... but, well, not much that I can do with that in the hospital, huh?" She placed the unwrapped box in her lap. "You knew all of this already, I know. You tried to get me to see it. Thing is, you didn't expect me to be so stubborn, did you?"
She opened the box and took out an MP3 player of the same model of her own, in a burnished silver. "Stubborn, and resourceful. See, that's what I figured out, while I was worrying about all of this. What did it meeeaaan, you know?" She clipped the headphones over his ears. "We have more in common than you think, Shinji. I know..." She sniffed, just a little. "I know we don't have that much time. You've pounded it into my head over and over. But I've met a lot of people this year. And... it's like they've all been teaching me the same lesson."
She fumbled a little with the player's controls. "You're such a meathead. You think we couldn't figure out what you were doing at that club? Like I wouldn't have gone with you in an instant. Big macho jerk." She turned the player on—it was full of pre-purchased songs: the collected discography of Risette. "Every one of them, Shinji... They've been teaching me to accept that people have to go. But... you don't have to go yet." She wiped at her eyes and stood up. "I'm going to be here when you wake up. I promise."
...I hear a voice that causes me to not give up
And go on all sort of paths
You hear a voice that causes your heart to say stay by my side
So that we can catch hold of our dreams
We've never noticed it, our dreams are within our reality
When we finally did, we had already become adults
As we pursued our hopes and dreams, there were many sad moments
But we overcame it all and managed to smile...
-1996-
Reiji watched as a young Akihiko swung with a loose arm, which Shinjiro easily batted away. The other boy had Aki's Featherman figure, and was holding it up just out of Aki's reach.
"Akihiko." Reiji waved him over. The young boy cast a dark glare at Shinjiro before stalking over to the teenager. "Your punches suck."
"He's stronger than me." Aki muttered it so that his friend (?) couldn't hear. "I just have to get stronger."
"Yeah, he's stronger than you, but Shinji uses his size more than his strength. He doesn't know jack about how to fight, either, but when two people don't know, the bigger guy's always gonna win." Reiji spit in the grass. "Okay, look. You want to be a better fighter, right?" The boy nodded. "Watch my hands."
Reiji took a deck of playing cards out of his jacket, and began shuffling them. The boy looked confused, but settled back and watched obediently as Reiji bridged the cards from one hand to the other, and then cut the deck with only two fingers. Without looking at the deck, he flicked the middle and a card popped out for Akihiko to remove. "Two of clubs, right?"
Shinjiro had come over to watch as well. "You stacked the deck."
Reiji grinned. "Okay, tough guy, you shuffle it yourself." He handed the deck to the boy in the dark beanie cap, who awkwardly shuffled all of the cards together. "Now, Aki here is looking at me like I'm an idiot." The younger boy blushed. "And that's cool, because I could crush him with one hand. But he's doing it because he doesn't know what this has to do with fighting. Do you?"
Shinji shook his head, handing the deck back.
"Then you should pay attention, too, because I'm about to school you both." He shuffled the deck again himself, and then flicked out a card. Shinji took it. "Two of clubs?"
Akihiko frowned. "Wait. You're using math. I saw this on television. You count the cards, or..."
"Do I look like I know math?" Reiji rolled his eyes. "Okay, okay. Fine. One more time. Here." He pointed to the card in Shinji's hand. "Hold on to that." He shuffled the cards, and flicked one out. Aki took it. "Two of clubs?"
"Tch." Shinjiro flicked his card back at Reiji. "This is stupid. What does this have to do with fighting?"
Reiji turned to Akihiko. "Were you watching my hands?"
"Uh." Akihiko looked down at his card.
"Look. You kids are killin' me. I'm tryin' to teach you something, here." He crouched down to meet them eye-to-eye. "There's like forty lessons in here." He sighed. "Okay. Here's the first one: when you're fighting someone, you watch them, and you watch yourself. It's too easy to stop paying attention to that stuff once you start swinging, but a good fighter can see the swing before the arm starts to move. You follow me?" They nodded uneasily. "But that's not the real one I'm getting at here. The point is, you guys saw me punch through boards the other day. But what I'm doing here isn't strength. Do you have to be strong? Hell yeah. But I can move my fingers like a freakin' piano player, and that's because fighting is also about finesse. You've gotta be in control of your every movement."
He grabbed the two boys and rotated them so that they faced each other, an arm's length apart. "Okay, Aki. Punch Shinjiro, but do it really slowly. Like you're underwater, or in a movie." Akihiko slowly raised his fist. "See? You're only workin' your arm. You're not paying attention to the rest of your body and what it's tellin' you." He grabbed Akihiko's arm, and guided it slowly towards Shinjiro, moving the rest of him with his other hand. "Throw your hip and shoulder into the punch, and your whole weight goes with it. Keep your wrist in the right position, or the punch buckles. You see?"
Akihiko's eyes were wide, like a fundamental mystery had been solved for him.
"Okay, now punch the palm of my hand, for real, like you're trying to bust my face open." Aki channeled power into his punch, launching it dead center for Reiji's hand. "Okay, better. Your feet aren't right, I can grab your wrist and topple you over like a clown. But you're getting it." He rubbed at his face and looked at both boys. "Strength ain't anything if you don't know what to do with it."
-2010 (Timeline B-AB?)-
In his coma, Shinjiro Aragaki experienced many things. Many overlapped, and there's not much to be said for chronology in a fever dream, but if there was a "first," then it was probably memories.
Shinji remembered his first meeting with Strega. It happened in the obvious place; Shinji was perched on top of the railing behind the Port Island Station, sharing a smoke with some idiot punks by the Mahjong place. It was the rare instance when Jin and Chidori had come out separately from Takaya (who was, apparently, in his own drug fugue that night).
Jin was looking for something, or someone. Chidori, as would become the usual, didn't seem to care where she was or what she was doing. Shinji knew that look on girl's faces, he'd seen it at the orphanage and he'd seen it since then. Some part of him wanted to slam Jin into a trash can and make Chidori go get help... but he had a hard time caring about much of anything at that point.
Someone pulled a knife on Chidori, and she looked at it blankly. Jin shortly broke the idiot's arm and scraped his face against a brick wall. Shinjiro didn't care about that. He did, however, sit up slightly so that he could ask the girl a question.
"You're not afraid of dyin', are you?"
It was so matter of fact that Chidori actually bothered to answer him, in an equally even tone. "I have known the day that I would die all my life." She was so serious, and there was something lucid in her eyes, then.
"How?" And it was clear to Jin and Chidori both that he wanted that same ability. Jin nodded to her, and she answered him.
"Medea told me."
And that was how he understood that they were Persona users. He would follow them around, when he could, but it wasn't long before Jin had convinced Takaya that Shinjiro was worth paying attention to. The creepy shirtless bastard studied his face, and agreed to let Jin give him some suppressants. Like manna. And as is the standard, the first hit was free. After that, he became their errand boy—when they remembered that he existed.
-2021-
Akihiko opened his wallet and handed something to Reiji. It was a creased and faded playing card: the two of clubs.
"I didn't get it, then. Not for a long time, really. Shinjiro didn't, either. But I thought a lot about it, after I got out of the orphanage."
Reiji took the card and stared at it. "Jesus. I didn't think you'd kept it."
"Shinji had his, too. It was the only thing I was able to keep, after..." After the fire. When Miki died. "Whatever happened to you, after you stopped coming to see us? We always wondered. You just vanished."
"I wouldn't know how to begin to explain." Reiji tugged at the basketball hoop, testing its strength.
He remembered Masao (that punk, he'd thought) prying him away from the SEBEC bastards at the blockade. The way that their leader had calmly regarded him, like he was under a microscope. And how after hating all of their guts, he wound up joining them anyway, pledging his life with theirs. Masao, Nanjou, Brown, Ayase... it was a group of freaks, and he was the biggest freak of all. Small wonder they became the only ones who cared. Maki, Yukino, they were always calling after him. Making sure he was all right. He wasn't, really. But he'd made his bed, and he had to lie in it.
"Ah, just a sad old story," he finally said, not looking at Akihiko. "I got a girl pregnant, you know? I say 'girl' like she isn't older than I am." He chuckled. "So now I sell knives."
Akihiko wasn't sure what to say to that. He looked up at the orphanage. It was as if the fire hadn't happened. Like history had been wiped away. He thought of the Abyss of Time. "Things aren't over until you die. There's always time."
Reiji chuckled, and turned back to his old student. "Let's 'think positive,' huh? I've heard that before. Why are you out here alone tonight, Aki? What's up with you?"
-2007-
Aki bowed to Shuji Ikutski with narrowed eyes. He didn't trust him.
His distrust didn't last, of course—how could it? Ikutski's facade was perfect in every respect. He was a creep, but in the way that many adults were creeps. He told bad jokes and crashed his bicycle into things, and what's more, he did it when he didn't think other people were around. Within a month and a half, Ikutski was just "The Chairman," the comedy relief of their three-man team.
And comedy relief was sorely needed. The dormitory was a big, empty building, with only two residents. And Akihiko had no idea what he was supposed to say to Mitsuru Kirijo, the prodigy. In those early days, he was in awe of her. Her focus and her strength of purpose.
Mitsuru had three goals, in order: First, to protect her father. Second, to eliminate the Shadows. Third, to become the best at everything she attempted, so that she could find a place for herself when the first two goals were no longer necessary.
Aki, on the other hand, only had one goal—an ill-defined desire to be stronger. That was how she'd won him over, and it wasn't long before he got his first taste of what it would take.
A small Shadow, what they'd later call a Maya, got loose during the Dark Hour, tearing up product in one of the stores in the strip mall. With Ikutski coordinating them over the radio from his place back at the dorm, Mitsuru and Akihiko went out to subdue. Neither of them were fully adept at using their Personas, yet. Mitsuru had been operating on survival instinct, when she was the only one who was battle-capable. There was a lot that they still didn't understand, and Ikutski suggested trying to capture the small, blob-like Shadow for study.
As much as Akihiko wanted to fight, even he had to agree it was a good play. Better that they know its weaknesses, so they could do some real damage later. He'd been taken to the outside gates of the large tower that formed in place of Gekkoukan High School, and he was itching to prowl around inside.
Unfortunately, whatever weaknesses it was that the Maya had, they were not ice or lightning. Even as Akihiko punched the thing square in its mask, electricity coursing through his arm, its other arms were wrapping around his legs, upending him into a stack of crates. He hit his head on something hard and everything sank underwater for a moment, until he heard Mitsuru's scream. She'd tried freezing the Maya whole in a block of ice, and it had punched right through.
Aki struggled to his feet. Some part of him absently noted that Ikutski wasn't saying anything over the radio. What a big help. Probably dozing with a book over his face. He grabbed a clothes rack and shook the garments free. The rack was built in two parts, and when the X-shaped top was removed, the lower half formed a suitable spear. He hoisted it and jammed it hard into the Maya, which Mitsuru was fending off awkwardly with her sword (a flimsy weapon for sporting and old-fashioned honor duels—useless, he grunted to himself)... but the Maya turned around quickly, and the legs of the stand cracked him in the nose.
He thought back to the lessons that Reiji Kido had taught him. The delinquent had only helped at their orphanage for about six months, but he'd taught Aki and Shinji more in that time than they'd learned from anyone else. Or at least, cared to learn. Watch its motions, predict, act accordingly. Be aware of your whole self. He flipped backwards as the Maya reached out for him, and the metal spear jammed in its side tangled with another display of products, holding it just long enough for Mitsuru to spear it a second time with her blade, which was covered in a thick layer of frost.
It was weakening. They might not be fighting it the right way, but they were still winning. Akihiko grabbed onto the metal debris that had impaled the creature and sent more voltage through it, even as he grasped onto its mask and pulled with all of his might. It grabbed his leg again, but this time he was ready—he was pulling back, and so all the Shadow was doing was giving him more leverage. Soon enough, the monster ripped apart in a mess of black and red ichor.
Blood painted the walls, thick chunks spattered the store's damaged merchandise... and then all of it began to dissolve, until there was nothing left. The store just looked like it had been looted. Self-cleaning... at least one thing worked in their favor.
Akihiko, though, flopped backwards onto his rear end with nothing holding him up, and stayed there, breathing heavily. Mitsuru was on her knees, massaging her wrist, and (if he wasn't mistaken) trembling, just a little.
"Well..." Her voice was hoarse. "Did you get what you wanted?"
He started laughing.
It broke the ice, at any rate. Akihiko started spending more time in the lounge, watching television or attending to his studies. It wasn't long before Mitsuru did the same. The place was too empty, too lonely, to do much else. At some point, Aki realized that he was taking his classes more seriously than he had at the orphanage. It wasn't hard to pinpoint the reason—Mitsuru was top of her class every time, and after that first battle, the competitive lines had been drawn.
But it was more than that, too. They were the only ones there, and the only ones who knew the truth about the Dark Hour. While they were not friends, they were something closer than that. And neither of them wanted to be unworthy of the other.
-2021-
Akihiko and Reiji sat on a small bench to one side of the old, burnt-out basketball court and listened to the sounds of the city.
"I'm being asked to choose between two impossible..." He frowned and started again. Reiji, perhaps embarrassed by his story earlier, didn't say anything. "There's what's right, and what might be right. But I have people that I... both sides are like family, or moreso."
Is this, he wondered, what it was like for Aigis? He remembered their battle in the arena. He had dodged bullets on that endless day. See the motions, predict, and act in full knowledge of your body. He had lost. But he'd lost to the one who was doing the right thing.
-2007-
Shinjiro stood with his arms crossed and a downright childish... petulant look. "I ain't leaving."
Aki looked from Shinji to Ikutski in horror as the older man made a "hmm" sound. "Well, he does have the potential."
Mitsuru, who seemed ill at ease, placed her teacup on the table and smoothed out her skirt. "But can he even control it? The tests are inconclusive at best..."
"Could control you with the back of my hand, rich girl," Shinji muttered so low that only Akihiko could hear. His horror mounted. This was... this was a phenomenally bad idea. Shinjiro, though, just stuck out his chin in defiance.
He'd barged in one evening without warning, told them that he was on to them. Said he'd seen Akihiko and Mitsuru battling a Shadow by Port Island Station, and that he wanted in. Akihiko hadn't even known that Shinji could experience the Dark Hour, as he had. He did know, however, that he was only doing this because Akihiko was here.
No, it was one thing for Aki to die in battle, but he wasn't going to risk Shinjiro. He'd voice a protest, and...
"All right. Let's try this out for a probationary period." Ikutski sipped his tea and smiled at Akihiko. "I'm sure that you'll be thrilled to have an old friend on the team."
Years later, Akihiko would wonder at the logic of it. Shinjiro would never, in his years on and off with SEES, ever trust Ikutski. And he'd be proven right, in the end, too late for Shinji to do a damned thing about it. But of course the reason was obvious. He'd had years to win Mitsuru's trust. Having Shinjiro in the dorm was the easiest, fastest way to bring Akihiko to heel. And it worked almost instantaneously.
Shinji threw his few things into another room on Akihiko's floor, and slammed the door without talking to his old friend. Aki wound up going up to the roof and shadowboxing for a few hours to burn off his anger. Mitsuru found him up there, and stared at him for a while with crossed arms before going back downstairs.
-2010 (Timeline B-AB?)-
Sometimes, in the coma, Shinjiro would remember things that had not happened. Instead of Hamuko, there was a shifty boy with dark hair, one who walked around with a lazy slouch and kept curled inward even as the women began following after him one by one.
The first time they met, in this dream, Shinjiro stared at the boy, and seemed to find him familiar. The boy made Castor pound against the walls within his own head. It wasn't until the very end, when he was bleeding out and the others arrived too little too late, that he saw what made the boy so familiar. Minato Arisato was death Himself.
What did he see and understand in that moment? Did he get an early glimpse of Ryoji Mochizuki, the Arbiter of Nyx? Did he see the little boy Pharos, sitting on the railing and kicking his legs? Or did he just see a teenager who watched Shinji die slowly, in inches, with a passive look and a dark, deep well within his eyes?
-2021-
They compared photos of their respective domestic partners. Reiji even elbowed Akihiko and gave him an exaggerated wink. There were times when Aki, looking at his old teacher, could sense a darkness that he could not describe. But his Persona had not been an overly sensitive creature – Caesar was made for violence – and Akihiko did not understand that Reiji, too, had a second self, a dark and terrifying one.
Reiji, for his part, could only detect a vague noble aura from his student, and attributed it to Aki being that rare breed, the "good cop."
As Akihiko explained in the loosest and most nonspecific terms the nature of his dilemma, Reiji listened thoughtfully. Aki did not explain that a loose coalition of Persona users had drafted both he and Chie in an attempt to get to the bottom of what Mitsuru and her new fiancée were up to. He did not explain the efforts that he'd expended for years making sure that he didn't know what Mitsuru was ever up to, no matter how often she asked him to be her confidante. He used euphemisms and talked around himself. Somehow, though, he got his point across, and Reiji sat and considered.
And remembered.
Yukino Mayuzumi's bright yellow Bruce Lee pants crinkled as she crouched down to get a better shot. Her camera clicked a dozen times as Reiji watched her get multiple angles of what looked to be claw marks in the side of a brick building.
"Gee, Yuki," Reiji drawled, "You take me to all the nicest places."
"You've got a great view of my ass from back there, Reiji, so I wouldn't complain." And he did! But he tried to focus on the damage to the wall, instead. It was, without a doubt, the sort of thing that a demon might leave behind.
Yukino had been a yanki—a delinquent—when she was younger, which made her by default one of the people in that group that he could tolerate the best. She knew the streets, she knew what it was to be angry, and she knew that being that way didn't make you less human, like a lot of their classmates seemed to think. When he got spotted coming out of the orphanage one day, it had been Yukino who had caught him (thank God), and she'd kept his secret ever since. They hadn't been friends, but there had been a wary respect.
When the Deva System turned on, though, and the demons and the zombies swarmed in, the group of them had become allies, and awkward friendships tended to form in situations like that. Yukino had been in charge of keeping the school safe, and at the time Reiji had figured it was chumpwork, the easy job for a girl who spent her after-school days working at a convenience store in a stupid red suit. But later he found out about the Snow Queen, and everything that had gone down, and he began to see what the rest of them had in her.
She'd always been the team's damned mother, checking their supply kits and ammo boxes, offering soothing words and all that. But she was a hardass, and that was something that he could appreciate. And when things went down again, a few years later, and everyone had to get together to back up the new kids, and he saw how Yukino had grown up... growing her hair out, ditching the skirt... he'd been very impressed.
But he'd already managed to screw up his life in the interim, fathering a child that he wasn't ready for. And maybe things weren't so great with the wife all the time, but he wasn't a cheater. He wouldn't treat his woman like dirt – the way that his own mother had been treated. And so he kept his distance from her, going to help out Maki with the dirty work instead. But Yukino singled him out at the reunion, bought him drinks, made him laugh, made him promise to call her.
For the most part, though, these "dates" had been a little small talk—Yukino kept up with most of the others, so she could answer his curiosity without his having to subject himself to abuse from guys like Masao or Kei, or endure swooning and pathological lying from Ayase—and then trips like this, investigating weird stuff that could end up being demon-related.
Usually, it wasn't. But they were in the Yamanote Circle, in downtown Tokyo, and during the Lockdown, everyone had wondered if maybe that event hadn't been "terrorism" at all. This only confirmed it.
Yukino stood up straight, rubbing at her back. She looked at him, and her expression was unreadable. "Kei has been lying to us."
"Eh?" He straightened his tie. "What are you talkin' about?"
She jerked a thumb at the claw marks. "One or two things like this, you can explain away with weird, coincidental stuff. The world's most unlikely truck accident, or whatever. But I've got eight or nine rolls of shots like this, now."
"I thought your camera was digital." Yukino smacked the back of his head. "Ow!"
"Listen! There was a full-fledged demon incident, and Kei pleaded ignorance. And not just to me. You-know-who asked him point blank, and he said no." She pinched the bridge of her nose. "His damned people were down here. I've spoken to witnesses."
"Er." Reiji rubbed his head. "Okay. But..." He grew silent. Damn, she was hot when she was angry. He held up his hands to calm her down. "Why would he lie?"
"I don't know." She shook her head and, for just a moment, leaned against him. "But I'm worried. Maybe we should all get together and talk about this."
Reiji sniffed once, and looked away. "Hey, yeah, sure. I'll just... you know, I'm so busy with the job and all, but..."
Yukino looked at him with an uncomfortable mixture of shock and disappointment. "Oh... Well..."
He wanted to ask her why she was always calling him out for these little missions. If it was about "business," why not get one of the other guys? Brown Uesugi had cleaned up his act... sort of... and would be down to help out the Team Mom whenever he wasn't filming that awful television show of his, or whatever it was that he did these days. Clearly their leader was still digging around when it came to this stuff. Yukino never asked him how he was, whether he was ready to throw himself in a wood chipper at any given moment, or whether he wondered if the best days of his life had already passed—days when he was a hair's breadth from dropping out of high school, constantly walking stiff because of blows he'd taken in an alleyfight.
He knew the moment the energy had sagged out of him. After the Deva System incident, he'd had hope for the future. And then one night he'd flicked on the TV at home and the news was reporting a fire at an orphanage.
-2007-
Shinjiro's beanie cap was sitting upside-down on the table in the lounge. Akihiko and Shinji were both trying to flick playing cards into the hat, which had flopped down into more of a nest-shape. Not the cards that Kido-sensei had given them, of course, a fresh pack. Like everything else they used, the cards had a Kirijo Group logo on the back.
Mitsuru was studying on the couch. She had three books open—one in Japanese, one in English, and one in French. She was looking to pick up German, after the exam week passed. Ikutski hadn't been seen in days. She was deliberately ignoring them, because earlier in the day they'd covered everything in her room with fake plastic spiders.
Shinjiro had forced his way into the building, yes, and then forced his way into SEES, and part of him wasn't even sure why he'd done it. Certainly Mitsuru always viewed him with suspicion.
In the old days, he knew, in the orphanage—he and Akihiko had been experiencing the same thing, and they'd both been too afraid to speak to the other. The change that the world would take on at midnight, when every liquid became thick, tarry blood and the other kids would become coffins. They didn't know what caused the change, or how it worked—they'd each pretend to be asleep, shivering under scratchy blankets, and so they couldn't be sure that the other person was also seeing it. Later, they figured it out together, and they'd both stand guard at Miki's coffin, worried that things would come out of the darkness.
Things did come, but not until later. They didn't see their first Shadow, either of them, until after the fire.
Why did Mitsuru Kirijo come for Akihiko, and not for him? It had rankled. They had been separated before, but not by something like this. So, Shinjiro figured he'd take care of it himself. Pencil-neck Ikutski just buckled to him, and he moved in across the hall from Aki.
When they showed him how to wake his Persona up and have it fight for him, the power was at first intoxicating, then quickly terrifying. Castor was full of rage, seemed to drag him around under its own will.
The headaches started then, but he kept them secret.
Every day, the three of them would orient into a new configuration. Three was a bad number for groups. Unbalanced. Akihiko and Mitsuru would study together, and Shinjiro would storm around the building slamming doors and smoking indoors. Or Akihiko and Shinjiro would wrestle in the command room, and Mitsuru would throw books at them and tell them to take it outside. Or, and this was the surprising one, Shinjiro would hover over Mitsuru, who didn't understand more than a third of the objects in their kitchen, and point out (in the most sullen and sarcastic tones possible) what she had to do in order to, say, make toast, or fry an egg. She would teach them (through osmosis, mainly—they didn't listen to her lectures) how to pass for gentlemen and upstanding students, and they taught her (also mostly through osmosis) how to converse with another human being without sounding like a robot.
Shinji's grades slowly began to climb, from failing to abysmal-but-passing. Akihiko cleaned himself up, and the girls at school quickly noticed... much to his chagrin. And their diverse fighting styles slowly began to meet in the middle... enabling them to work, if not exactly as a team, then certainly closer to it.
But.
Shinjiro's "oppressed poor man" schtick towards Mitsuru was getting tiresome for both of the other SEES members. What's more, Mitsuru was starting to feel the pressure at being an outnumbered woman in the group. And Shinjiro resented Akihiko's constant studying, his attempts to better himself. He called it "phony" (or, at least more caustic words to the same effect).
Akihiko, for his part, spent half his time terrified for Shinjiro's safety, and the other half angry at his reckless disregard. Castor was hard for Shinjiro to control, and almost all of his tactics boiled down to "brute force." He pounded on the Shadows like a wild animal, and before their remains would dissolve Akihiko was slowly getting used to the image of a Shinjiro covered in thick, slimy blood. Shinji took to wearing a heavy peacoat, to absorb the splashes of alien innards that would wash over him.
And, of course, they were all teenagers, sharing a house together. Alone. It would be stupid to suggest that they weren't all looking at each other in that way, even when they couldn't stand each other. All three of them were too damned good looking for their own good, and it led to stammered apologies and, at least once on Shinjiro's part, a hole punched in the wall of the stairwell. But their unspoken agreement not to make things worse by pursuing each other didn't seem to help cool those fires. After all, they could barely stand anyone else at Gekkoukan—where else were they going to turn?
There was another thing, too, that lingered between Akihiko and Shinjiro. Neither of them talked about Miki anymore. It just happened, like they were daring each other to bring it up first. But the longer it sat and festered, the worse it got. Aki and Shinji had not talked nearly so often after the fire, before Shinji kicked the dormitory door down and insisted he join their secret society. There was too much unresolved.
It was a situation that couldn't maintain its equilibrium for long. Something was going to snap. What none of them expected, was that when it did, someone innocent would get caught in the crossfire.
From Shinji's point of view, it was he who had fouled it all up for all three of them.
-1996-
One day, at random, a young girl came up to Reiji when he was sitting on the bench by the basketball court, pointedly not helping anyone, and asked him to do a card trick.
Without even looking at her, he took the deck from his pocket, shuffled them with one hand, and fanned the cards for her to pick one. He was dying for a cigarette, but he'd get busted bad if he was caught smoking on the orphanage grounds.
The girl pulled a card out, and he shuffled and flicked. "Two of clubs, right?" He nodded to the extended card. She removed it from the deck and held it up. The nine of diamonds. He blinked and looked at his cards. The girl grinned at him (she was still missing one or two baby teeth) and held up her card... or rather, cards, as she'd pulled two from the deck.
Reiji snatched the cards from her angrily. "You're cheating." But he couldn't help but laugh, anyway. "What's your name?"
"Miki." He'd heard that name before... Oh, right. Sanada's sister. He spit to one side, enjoying her scrunched up face.
"Miki, huh? Do Aki and Shinji pick on you?" She blushed. He thought so. Those boys doted on the girl like there wasn't anyone else alive. Which... wasn't that hard to understand, really. The girl was cute, and given everything else... He shrugged. "Tell you what. How about I teach you a couple of tricks, so you can get them back?" She nodded excitedly.
The next time he had a session at the orphanage, Shinjiro was walking around with a massive black eye, and Akihiko was laughing harder than anyone that he'd ever heard before.
-2007-
"She was, in a lot of ways, the only friend we'd had, and we were the only friend she had." Akihiko was sitting on Shinji's bed. Mitsuru was sitting next to him. The room still had most of his things—the absence of his hidden pack of cigarettes was the only sign that Shinjiro had returned to the room before he'd vanished. "And then, that day, when the building caught fire..."
Mitsuru knew all of this, actually. It had been in Sanada's file, and she'd known it before she approached him that very first day. But this was the first time that he was telling her. She just nodded slowly and let him continue.
"We couldn't do anything. Either of us. I tried to go back in, but the firefighters stopped me before I could. Someone had even held Shinji down so that he didn't try the same thing. We felt so..." Powerless. Weak.
They were both thinking about all that had happened in the last twenty-four hours. The rogue Shadow. The desperate chase, and the battle. Shinji had... he'd completely lost it. It wasn't even clear if it was Shinji, or Castor, that was doing it, but the result was the same. Just about an entire wall of that building had collapsed, and a woman had been beneath it. Her young son had been there, too, just watching...
Mitsuru's father himself had been forced to step in. They'd gotten the whole thing written off like a car had slammed through the wall, a drunk driver. The kid was an orphan now. Of course he was—what could be more appropriate?
The noise that the boy had made... Akihiko and Shinjiro had not heard a noise like that since the day that it had been they themselves who made it.
And now Shinji had vanished. In the wake of the accident he'd fled, and Aki couldn't catch him. Shinji knew all of the streets, the places to hide. He was just... gone.
Akihiko found himself, of all things, crying. He didn't think he had tears left after Miki. Didn't think that he'd allow himself again to be so weak. But there he was, bawling like a toddler. After a long moment, Mitsuru, awkward, antisocial ice queen Mitsuru, wrapped her long arms around him, and he clutched her like the mother he barely knew.
And so the long night went on. She wound up putting him to bed (in Shinji's bed, even) and slipping downstairs to open one of the antique cabinets in the lounge. There was a very old bottle of wine squirreled away, one that she'd saved for one of her father's very rare visits to the dormitory. She opened it, poured herself a glass... and threw it against the wall. When her composure finally returned, she took the bottle with her up to the roof, where she swigged from it and, after a long time of staring at Shinji's old ashtray, she pulled a half-smoked butt from the copper tin and lit it up.
-2010? (Timeline B-AB?)-
Shinjiro considered Chidori a kindred spirit. The girl, for her part, barely noticed him. These things stayed the same on both sides of the coin. The past remained the same, too; the fire, the bad foster parents, the time on the streets, the collapsed house and the death glare of Ken Amada. It was only Hamuko that was different, and Shinji never saw that the same death resided within her as well. He probably would have found it funny.
No, there was a brief period when he thought that maybe he had feelings for Chidori. Then he realized how irritating he found that placid tone and resigned stare. It was too much like his own, even though she had the comforting knowledge that he lacked. No, he didn't want her, he just wanted to be her, even if she was surrounded by ugly vicious scumbags. He was long past caring anymore.
Akihiko kept sniffing him out, kept visiting him again and again. At first it was awkward, then it made him angry, and then it became such habit that he stopped questioning it. Right about then, that final turn, was when Aki started asking for him to come back.
-2021-
"Do you mind if I smoke?" Reiji took a pack from his jacket pocket. "I, uh, I'm not allowed to do it at home." Akihiko shrugged. Reiji took a long drag and slugged his student on the shoulder. "What a pair we make, huh?"
Aki gave him a weak smile. "I guess so, yeah." It was probably a good thing that they were both so lost in their brooding. If either of them realized that Reiji was smoking in the shadow of the orphanage that had burned their lives down, it's entirely possible that the level of angst might have killed them.
That said, Reiji was careful to snuff out the remains of the cigarette with his fingers and carefully transfer the butt to his pocket when he had finished. "So, tell you what. You're gonna have to get back to your girl, soon, and she's probably going to kick your nuts in for jawing about all of this with me instead of her. But here's what I think. No matter how I feel about my life, I am smart enough to know what the right thing to do is. The problem is when you get your head stuck so far up yourself that you forget about it for a sec."
They both stood, and started walking back towards the car. In a high window of the orphanage, a small girl was peering at them through the window. They both gave the girl sad waves, and she gave one back.
"Shinji always reminded me of myself. I was a punk kid back then, so maybe I didn't do so much to help him, like I should have. But he did." Reiji scowled. "Stuff eats you up inside, and all you can do is let it out in the worst ways. But... you and he had the same, I dunno, 'good hearts,' I guess, all that sentimental crap." He made dismissive motions with his hands. "Thing is, sometimes when a friend is doing something to hurt themselves, you gotta step in. Nobody stepped in with me." He paused. "Or maybe they did, and I didn't see it for what it was." Now he had an uneasy smile. "Heh. Damn."
"What?"
"Ah, it's nothing. Look, if your friend is in trouble, you owe it to them to do what you can whether they appreciate it or not. If you're wrong about them, so what? You can apologize, or knock each other's lights out, or whatever, and move on. And if you're right, then you owe it to them to beat some sense in."
Akihiko pulled at his gloves. "You're probably right."
"Course I'm right, that's why you're carrying my 'business card' in your wallet." Reiji grinned. "Now drop me off with my old lady, so you can get back home to yours."
-2010? (Timeline B-AB?)-
Sometimes, in the coma, Shinjiro would be someplace else, watching things that he couldn't know, couldn't have sensed or understood. It was these moments, when he knew that he was finally dying.
One time, he was in a library, at a different high school. Ice covered the walls, thick crunchy snow was piled up in mounds all over the floor. And three students were burning books.
Hidehiko "Brown" Uesugi was pulling pages from a stack of old hardcovers and tossing them into the metal trash can where the fire raged. He shivered. Nothing seemed to work the chill out of his body, but still he fed the meager little bonfire—if nothing else, it kept his hands busy. Yukino kept looking at him, and he knew that she probably objected to he and Yuka burning the books, but she was too tired and hungry to object. "Where," he finally asked, "Did Elly go?"
Yukino shrugged. "She's probably following him on the shopping run."
Brown rolled his eyes. "Hopeless." But she just shrugged again.
When they were on the move, Yukino was a pretty damned incredible leader, he had to admit; she gave the demons no quarter, and they'd already taken on that first tower within the malformed school well under the cosmic time limit. Even "the other guy" kept deferring to her – if only because he was often focused on what was going on outside the school (which was to say, Maki). But the minute they stopped to rest, she started to shut down. It was Ms. Saeko. Yukino loved the teacher – they all did, but Yukino more than anyone – and they were all beginning to despair of ever rescuing her.
The big question on everyone's minds, of course, was who dug the damned mask out of storage and screwed this thing up in the first place? Everything was bad enough with the demons on the loose, before this thing started. Nothing made a damned bit of sense.
Nobody knew what had happened to Mark, either - Hidehiko had seen him last, arguably, when Mark and Nanjou had been on their way to the police station. But Nanjou had made it back, just barely, with a whole in his chest, and he'd been too delerious to explain. Mark, for all they knew, was dead. But neither Yukino nor their leader would let them voice the idea out loud.
Nanjou had barely made it inside the school before the ice had begun crawling up the walls. He was lucky enough to be lying on a bed down the hall, next to the one holding Maki's mother. He was being ministrated to by the world's most attractive school nurse, while Brown was fighting demons and trying to shake the image of the... thing... that had come out of Toro's belly.
Devil-Boy was shredding paper gleefully and sprinkling it into the fire like confetti. Yuka had been quiet lately. They all were probably hoping that she was thinking about what had happened in the cafeteria, but more likely she was gearing up for an epic whining fit. When even Brown thought you were being immature, that had to say something.
Elly finally returned, and she had a small plastic bag full of drugs from that whacko shop that had appeared elsewhere in the building. Her sword was freshly bloody, which means she'd had to fight on her way back. Behind her was The Boss, who just slumped against the doorjamb and let his eyelids fall for a moment.
Elly just shook her head - "I don't want to talk about it" - and sat next to Yukino. They both looked at the door set into one wall of the library. It led to the next tower.
"Can we rest a little longer?" Yuka only whispered it.
"No," said Elly.
"Yes," said Yukino. So they rested a little longer.
Brown crinkled his nose a little. They... none of them really liked each other. It didn't seem fair – stuff like this was supposed to make you bond together, right?
Finally, Yukino spoke up. "You know... if Ms. Saeko wasn't in danger... I don't know if I could do this. I think I would have just..." She didn't finish the thought. Mr. Man of Few Words just crouched down, drew designs in the snow, thinking. Finally, Elly shook her head.
"Honestly. It's not as bad as all that." Yuka looked ready to explode at that, but Hidehiko just grabbed her shoulder and shook his head. He was too damned tired for bad jokes, even. Having Yuka lose it would only set him off. "I know, I know... everything's frightfully miserable. But consider, for a moment, how much worse off we could be. We have power. Our Personas enable us to help. Everything that's happened, it could have happened without Mister Mysterious Butterfly stepping in, you know? And besides that..." She leaned back. "Besides that, we're doing things that nobody has ever done before. They may not be pleasant, and I might never sleep a full night again in my life, but... I refuse to have regrets."
"Damn." Brown shook his head. Yukino wrapped one arm around Elly and hugged her close. Devil-Boy tossed a Bible in the barrel and giggled a little... Brown socked him on the arm, hard enough to send him scurrying off to the opposite corner.
-2021-
When he entered their regular restaurant, Chie gave him the glower to end them all. Aki held up his hands. "You were right."
She didn't expect so little resistance, and so there was a delay while she switched tracks. That got Akihiko to the table and into his seat.
"Okay," he said, and despite his resolve he still felt his chest tighten, "Let's talk."
-2010? (?)-
When they stood before Nyx and raised their finger, Shinjiro was there with both of them, on death's door. "All right," he said, "Let's do this."
-2021-
Twenty-year old Takahisa Kido let the door slam as he stormed out. "Don't treat me like a damned kid!"
His father marched right after him, cell phone in hand. "Don't give me that crap! You're going to live in this house, I don't care how old you are, you're going to listen to my damned rules!"
"Oh, yeah, like your example's a great one to follow." The boy pointed angrily. "Like you were such a great student, like you have such a great job!"
Reiji... didn't exactly have a great retort for that, and some of the anger fell right out of him. "...At least I finished school..."
When people like Yukino or Maki would call, they'd ask: "So, how's your son?" And he'd just say something like: "Ah, you know how kids are," and change the subject. Maki, especially, saw through this in a heartbeat. Masao had taken one look at Takahisa as a baby and proclaimed that he had all of the bad attitude that his father did – a sort of doom-laden prophecy.
"Like I give a damn what you did." The boy pulled on his jacket. "I'm goin' out." And he stormed off.
Reiji sighed, just plopped down on the doorstep outside, and rubbed at his face. He didn't want to have to go back inside and have a second fight, this time with his wife. His wife, who he wasn't sure he even liked. Or at least, he wasn't sure that she liked him. He was pretty convinced, in fact, that she was cheating on him. Had even dialed half the number to the Kuzunoha agency, get Tamaki or her idiot husband to follow her around for a while – at least then he'd know for sure.
She'd lived in Sumaru City – she'd been a Sevens student back when he was at St. Hermelin. During all the business that happened that year, with the NWO, her house had collapsed, and this was not long after telling him that he was going to be a father. The same time that his stepbrother had risen from the dead. Boy, what a banner year that had been. But he'd wanted to do the right thing, he had been pretty sure that he loved her, and he knew that he loved the baby.
Now, though...
He dialed Yukino. Even if the woman was cheating on him, he'd never run around on her. He wouldn't be like his father, that was certain. But in all this time, he'd never put much thought into how Yukino had viewed his half-assed behavior. Especially when she had a husband that she was very into, by all accounts a real stand-up guy. And anyway, now he had new issues on his plate.
"Hello? Yeah. Yeah, it's me." He shifted the phone from one hand to the other, and flexed his hands. The calloused knuckles almost creaked with the motion, but when he turned the hand around, a playing card still slid right into his palm. Takahisa used to love the magic tricks when he was younger; which had been good, because sometimes it seemed like it was all he had to offer. "I'm calling to apologize. Hey, don't laugh. Yes, I've apologized before. Shut the Hell up." He was, despite himself, smiling a little.
He hadn't ever really talked about himself, either. Because he'd been humiliated. But she knew him better than that, didn't she? "Look, you're right. If Nanjou's hiding stuff, we should go talk to him, maybe put his teeth on the curb until he stops being such an as... Eh?" He snorted. "No, no. Hey, I wanted to ask you something. You're always dragging me out on your errands. How about next time we get a coffee and talk like people who didn't... yeah, exactly. Plus I could use some advice. Shut up, girl, you sound like Ayase. No, it's... business stuff."
He saw, at the end of the alley, that his son had returned. Was watching him. He tried to give the boy an easy smile, to wave him back over. He'd make this work, whatever was going to happen.
A better career, one where he could support the kid – give him a reason to be proud. Visit regularly. He wouldn't have to live there anymore. The kid had to be miserable, stuck between two people who didn't talk to each other. Maybe they could make it work with a separation, but if not, at least the kid wouldn't be in the middle. No wonder he was so messed up.
Why hadn't he thought about it much these past few years? Because he'd been thinking of himself. His own problems. He thought about how those once-a-week visits to the orphanage had been fulfilling in an unexpected way, and how he could have done so much more if he'd been old enough and wise enough to give half a damn. And maybe that still would have been true a week ago. But there was still time to start doing the right thing.
"When does the boss want to meet? I'll be there. I promise."
Takahisa was in front of the house now, with just the barest hint of tears in his eyes (too tough to really cry, just like his old man) and tight fists by his side. He ended the call.
"C'mere. I wanna tell you a story."
-2009 (Timeline B-AB)-
"You're a grumpy Gus." Hamuko leaned down to look up into Shinji's face. He glowered at her, and she just giggled.
"I'm dressed like a damned butler." He stuck one finger in his collar and tried to loosen it.
They were both standing just outside of the access point. Nobody was sure, exactly, what the Hell those portals in Tartarus were supposed to be, or perhaps better why they were there—who was supposed to use them? But then, nothing made sense in Tartarus.
Junpei and Akihiko had already slipped through the gateway, and were no doubt pulling off their ties down in the lobby. Hamuko, though, was standing in front of the access point and blocking Shinjiro's exit. "When you look at me like that," he mumbled, "you look just like Hamtaro."
She pouted. "Why do people keep saying that? Everyone always says that!" She crossed her arms. "Fuuka?"
Soft, lilting music filled their heads. It was Fuuka's newest pet project, providing some musical accompaniment to their exploratory trips into the tower. Sometimes it was over the radio, and sometimes her enjoyment of the music just seemed to drift right into their own minds. It had been a trial and error process, figuring out what kept them energetic during battle without distracting them. Mitsuru had wanted to complain—but then, their leader had headphones dangling from her neck even when facing off against a floor guardian, or one of the giant Shadows that emerged during the full moon.
This, though, was different, a classical waltz, and Shinjiro winced as Hamuko held out her hands.
"I don't dance."
"Tch. Idiot," she said in his own voice. "All guys say that, and they're all full of crap. C'mon, this was the only way that I could get you dressed up without the guys giving you a hard time. Fair is fair. If you do it in the tower, where Shadows can kill us, you can pretend it's macho, right?"
He hung his head and placed his hands in hers. She pulled him close.
"Didn't anyone ever teach you how to do this?"
They actually had held a dance, once, at the orphanage. The boys and girls were too embarrassed to look at each other, mostly. They'd just been kids. Except. As Hamuko pulled him and pushed him across the floor in the haunted tower, until he started to pick up the steps on his own (be aware of your own body, Kido-sensei had told them), he remembered that he had danced with a girl that day. Miki had stood on his feet, and he'd swung her around in great, loping strides, making her laugh. Akihiko pretended to get jealous, which made her laugh harder.
"Don't get that faraway look." She pulled his chin down. "Look at me. Pretend like you're enjoying this." He had no way, in his language, to tell her that he was enjoying it. She pressed her face against the front of his suit as he spun, and pretty soon he buckled under pressure and tried basic things that he'd seen on television, like twirling her (she did most of the work) and finally, dipping her low in his strong arms.
It would have been romantic, and they would likely have kissed, if Fuuka's voice didn't cut in, seeming to reverberate up and down the halls.
"I sense death."
Hamuko groaned. "It was fun while it lasted." They separated quickly, and she waved him on. "Let's go."
But when she stepped into the portal, Shinjiro lingered. The stale air in the tower grew colder and colder, and Shinji could almost picture ice slowly snaking its way up the walls. And then they were looking at each other.
The massive Reaper and Shinjiro had a long staredown. The personification of death itself seemed to hesitate, at the glare from the teenager. And then Shinji waved and stepped into the portal, even as the Reaper began to raise its weapon. Neither of them seemed bothered; they'd meet again very soon.
-2010-
It was on the eve of the end of the world, and Akihiko Sanada was wandering the halls of his high school. Many students had bailed—Nyx Cult posters were slapped over notices about sports meets and art showings. He wasn't sure what he was doing. There was so much to worry about, so much to do, but the descent of Nyx was just too big for him to frame properly in his mind. He knew that they'd fight. They would probably die trying. But past that...
He pushed open the back door, onto the practice field, and found that two second years were calling out to a group of jogging... children. They were young kids, using the field during school hours. He walked over, a confused frown twitching at his cheeks.
Aki recognized one of the Gekkoukan students as Yuko Nishiwaki, team manager for a number of the sports clubs. She was respected for a second year, a good student. When she turned to see a third-year student staring at her, she yelped, nearly knocking over her partner, who was balanced on a pair of crutches. Wait, he was familiar too... what was his name... Minato's friend. He'd been on Minato's track team earlier in the year.
"Sanada-san!" She looked over at the kids, who were ending their lap and coming back around to meet her. "I'm sorry! Don't tell anyone! Please!"
He waved her off. "What's going on?"
Yuko bit her lip. "They're fourth graders from the neighborhood. Some sixth graders had been picking on them, and so we've been kind of..."
The other boy piped in with, "Minato helped set us up."
"Of course he did." Aki's face softened. "They're running?"
Yuko blushed. Or blushed again. Or continued to blush. "They're supposed to beat them in a race."
"Hm. That's fine, but... maybe you should teach them how to stand up for themselves, too. If they're being picked on." Aki walked over towards the kids. Yuko and the boy on crutches followed, too surprised to object. He kneeled down to meet them at least closer to their level. He wasn't good with children... he remembered when Ken had arrived at the dorm, following him around like one of the girls at school. But this was something that he remembered very well. "You guys are getting picked on, huh?"
The kids shuffled, a little afraid to admit it.
Aki tried to smile. "Well, tell you what. I want to teach you all a few things." He laid his coat over his lap. "I think... Well, let me ask you. Is there ever a good time to fight?"
The kids looked at each other in confusion. Finally, one of them offered a hesitant, "To protect somebody?"
Aki nodded. "That's pretty much the only good time, yeah. And when you have the ability to fight to protect someone..." He smiled. "...You have to. You really do. But learning how to fight isn't always about fighting. It's about knowing that you can defend yourself—so that you won't be scared." Slowly, the kids started to pick up on it. "Okay. Now, the first rule? Is about watching the hands..."
The two second-year students watched in awe as Akihiko took the young kids through the way to stand, the way to move. Aki, though, was reminded of many things, and looking at the children taking the first steps towards no longer being afraid... he felt like maybe they could do it after all, fell Nyx. Maybe there would always be hope. He'd fight to protect them, just like he was taught.
-? (?)-
In his coma, Shinji imagined himself walking through an infinite expanse of white. This bit seemed rather predictable, really, although he didn't expect to bump into three people sitting at a card table when he did so.
He wasn't sure that he wanted to be around other people, and so he hesitated. But there was literally nothing else in existence, as far as he could tell, and so finally he let his shoulders slump and walk closer.
It was two adult men and a girl something like his own age. After a moment of panic, he saw that it was not a girl that he knew. This made it easier to get closer. One of them, a pale-looking man with blond hair and blue eyes, looked irritated and kept glancing at his watch.
-1997-
In a sort of alternate reality Mikage-Cho, people were also playing cards.
Of the nine people assembled in the small building, only four were awake. One girl, in fact, was sprawled out in the lap of their leader, who was silently looking at his cards. The boy in the yellow stocking cap was looking at them both with a mixture of emotions. Jealousy, regret, anger, resignation? Masao "Mark" Inaba didn't know how to feel.
The Historical Society building was free of demons, and so they'd decided to rest up. The Expel Mirror, which they'd already looted and shoved into a backpack, lay beside Kei Nanjou. Despite needing the rest, nobody seemed willing to sleep, and so Reiji Kido had pulled out his deck of cards. When even Kei had agreed that it would probably take their minds off of things, all of the yen had been dumped into a pile at their feet and divvied up. Currently, Reiji had about half of everyone's original kitties, and Masao was sure that he was cheating. But honestly, what did it matter, anymore?
Kei glanced at the backpack. "It's a shame, that we can't glance into this mirror and see the other world." Ever since Yamaoka had died, he'd occasionally let slip with these little philosophical comments. "To think that the Many Worlds Interpretation could be accurate... does our every choice provide another world somewhere?" Meaning, were there worlds where his butler was still alive? Kei hadn't appreciated the man who had all but raised him until it was too late. Masao wanted to joke about that, but didn't, because he'd been worried about his mother since this had all started.
"Ain't no sense worryin' about stuff like that." Reiji tossed in a card and drew its replacement. "Only matters what you do now." Their leader nodded his head slightly in agreement and held up two fingers. Reiji dealt him a pair of cards.
"I'm not implying otherwise, in a practical sense." Kei kept the cards in his hand. "I just think that it's cause for reflection." Masao snorted at the inadvertent pun, and Kei glared. "I don't think that it makes your actions lack value. Quite the opposite." He waited for Mark to drop three cards and take three more, and then continued. "More than that, though... Picture if, when you woke up in the morning, the face in the mirror was another you. You'd..." He frowned.
The boy in the earring glanced up and cleared his throat. "You'd never feel alone."
-2010? (Timeline B-AB?)-
For Shinjiro, at the brink of life and death, he saw the two Arisatos, the two who were one, as though they both existed.
Sometimes, their actions would line up precisely. As if they shared the same body. Sometimes, they were so different that he wouldn't have thought them connected. When Minato would sneak into the karaoke club and belt it out for an uncaring crowd, Hamuko was bussing tables in Chagall cafe and counting tips religiously, knowing that each yen went to something that might save someone's life. Minato would stand for an hour at the crane game at the arcade, dropping the claw over and over again to get the item that one friend had admired two weeks earlier. Hamuko would slave over a stove at the school, baking special cookies or pastries for each member of her team.
When Minato would go up to the roof, watch the stars, and try to remember his past... Hamuko would be downstairs, needling Shinji, throwing her future away on a man who couldn't share it with her.
One night, Minato looked up from his desk. He'd gotten distracted in his studies, and had scribbled "Sister?" in his notebook. Hamuko, though, kept reading, scratching out math formulas, and left Shinji to wonder what to make of that.
-? (?)-
He sat at the table. The man with dark hair was wearing a white mask.
"Welcome. We have been waiting for you for a long time, Shinjiro Aragaki."
Shinji ignored him, ignored both of the men, and looked at the girl. "Who are you?"
She shook her head. "My name is Tamaki Uchida. I don't know why I'm here."
The blond-haired man chuckled.
-2009?-
Shinji did not remember appearing before Minato, during his time as the Great Seal. Does that mean that it did not happen? Perhaps it doesn't matter.
Shinji did, however, remember a time when he passed by Minato speaking with the sick Akinari, on the bench by the shrine. He clucked his tongue and kept walking. The boy cared too much about anyone, he thought to himself. If it didn't get him killed, it would destroy him. Shinjiro had cared, and it had ruined him.
A shame, perhaps, that he hadn't lingered. Akinari's impending death might have given Shinjiro pause. They were, in some ways, very alike.
-2007-
Young Akihiko Sanada was shoving things into a blender when Mitsuru found him in the dorm's small kitchen. It was no doubt some sort of shake to go along with his training. Its color looked unnatural. Akihiko took some pride in how awful the things tasted – his ways of punishing himself were a little more subtle than his friend's, but they were both immature.
"Why," she asked him, "did you not tell me about him? I would have thought that you would want him here, if it's possible that he could fight."
Akihiko looked down, and stabbed a button on the blender. As it chugged, he sighed.
She waited him out. Mitsuru was nothing if not patient, deliberate. When the blender finally whirred to a stop, she continued. "You can't protect him. Not like that. Whatever he wants to do, he'll do it. We bore witness to that when he forced his way onto this team."
"I know." Akihiko poured the slurry into a tall glass. He gave her an ironic smile. "But if he's going to shoot himself in the head, I'd rather not be the one to put the gun into his hand."
-? (?)-
The man in the mask folded his hands. "You are at the intersection between life and death."
Shinjiro sneered. "When haven't I been?"
The blond-haired man laughed, slapped the table. "You. You I like, kid."
Tamaki was looking nervously from one of the men to the other. She seemed to recognize them both.
The man in the mask looked down. Despite not seeing his face, Shinji could sense that it was pained. "This moment is the culmination of your world's history. You two humans, who have never met each other, have had your fates inextricably linked."
In any other place, any other time, Shinji would scoff, or get angry, or offer a retort. But all things in this place were true. Shinjiro was still plugged into machines in an Iwatodai hospital. There was a scar over his heart, the shape of a starburst—left behind by an exploding watch. Somehow, Shinjiro also knew the names of the two men at the table. His debts were coming due.
-2021-
In a tastefully-decorated office, Kei Nanjou was looking at a folder and scowling.
It was the report on the events in Antarctica. He looked at them often. Particularly the sections on the "Great Mother" demons – one of whom bore resemblance to the Asura Queen, Nyx – and one called "Maya," whose powerset was certainly familiar, and who once made dreams reality. That these "Mother" demons had to be attacked first by destroying their "children..." it was all too close to the events of other incidents, particularly those in which Kei had been an active player.
It was as if every incident involving demons, or Personas, were just links in a chain, something that was leading somewhere. For his part, Kei did not want to see what culmination could result from all of these atrocities. Already, people were dying again, and this time in something larger in scope than he could have predicted. Something was happening, and Nanjou wondered bleakly if any of them would be capable of stopping it.
-? (?)-
When, exactly, did the butterfly first flap its wings?
Such things are hard to place. Perhaps the most likely origin of the world's new turning was in ancient Japan, when four men were called from across the great nation to serve at the feet of the Yatagarasu. It is believed that the deity had chosen these men from the whisperings of a butterfly. When they received their power, they henceforth had the ability to see, and to summon, the demons that walked amongst them.
The Four Kuzunohas had a strict code of honor that had served them well in their attempts to broker peace with the demons when possible, and war against them when necessary, to protect all of Japan. Unfortunately, one of the Kuzunohas, Raidou, broke this code. He was a Housoushi magician from Kyoto, and in his moral and mortal weakness he betrayed one of his fellow Kuzunohas in the quest for power.
A brave samurai named Tatsunoshin Suou chose to rise up against his corrupt and evil lord, Kiyotada Sumaru. He entered into an alliance with the magician, Raidou. The politics of the period were labyrinthine; each of the Kuzunoha dynasties had their own seats of power in those days. It was decided that Sumaru's evil must be halted, but the power that the lord held with the Shogun was so significant that a careful agreement was penned, outlining the level of participation that Raidou the First could undertake. This agreement was broken, when Sumaru bought the magician's non-interference. Without the support, Suou died bringing the lord down, and the Kuzunoha name was dishonored for centuries.
By the time the carnage had settled and the world had moved on, more people knew of the existence of demons, and the Four Families of the Kuzunohas were forever separated. The Yatagarasu cursed Raidou with the title Gouto-Douji, and he would forever after be forced to train those who followed in his lineage, only to watch them grow old and die. He would be immortal, but forever hold the shape of a common housecat.
The existence, and later frequent quelling, of these demons changed the world from what it might have been. The Taisho period of Japan lasted longer than it should have, and in the years following World War II, Japan was quicker to recover, and accepted more readily certain western influences while maintaining more fully its own national pride and identity. Fewer people died—because in the Taisho period, the greatest of the Kuzunohas, Raidou Kuzunoha the XIV, was able to slay the great Fiends that roamed this earth.
At this time, this same heir to the Raidou title did battle with a time-traveler from the future, an incident which caused ripples forwards and backwards in the timestream...
In the world that should have been, the demons grew stronger. The world eventually burned beneath their heels, until a brilliant man named STEVEN discovered the Demon Summoning Program, a piece of software that allowed a few spare young heroes to reclaim the earth, ever so briefly. The program had been created by Akemi Nakajima, a frustrated high school student who had damned the world with his own foolishness.
It would, too, have been a world that later collapsed into nothing in the Conception, a world that gave birth to the horrifying Hito-Shura, the most powerful mortal being in creation. Mankind would survive only barely, until the saviors known as the Embryon would raise them up into a new age.
This did not happen. The knowledge of the demons amongst us came early. Some said that it was the actions of Raidou the XIVth himself, who sent knowledge of the dark and secret worlds of the demons into the underground, to solidify the new future that he had helped create – a legacy of "spreading rumors" that would follow the Kuzunoha name into the twentieth century.
And so a boy named Hazama performed a ritual in his high school gym, and changed the flow of history forever.
-2009?-
Just once, for a single fleeting moment, the two Arisato children, separated by the flow of time, glimpsed each other in a mirror. It was just a flash in the periphery of their vision, a color of hair that did not match their own. It was quickly forgotten.
It occurred, coincidentally enough, on the afternoon before Shinjiro Aragaki died... or did not die.
What separated these worlds? What made time flow in another way? What branched off to make Hamuko Arisato's world, a world that Minato Arisato was made to experience from upon the Great Seal?
There was a woman named Yui, who had been a female detective in a man's world. It had been a constant struggle to prove herself. She was blessed in finding a man that respected her and became her equal, a fellow investigator who became her partner. When the time came to think about having children, it was Yui who decided most insistently that they must have a girl. She wanted to teach her daughter to be stronger even than she had been.
In one universe, Yui Shirogane got her wish with her first child. In another, she had to wait for the second.
-1996?-
Akemi Nakajima and Ideo Hazama had quite a bit in common—they were both brilliant students who were horribly abused by their classmates. In Nakajima's case, his creation of the Demon Summoning Program was the culmination of years of work and study—a fundamental connection was forged between magic and the hard sciences. Hazama, however, did not have nearly so much originality or intelligence. He lit candles, chanted from books, and made hand gestures. In the end, though, the results in both cases were similar.
Hazama's spell pulled Karukozaka High School out of its own universe and into Makai—the realm of demons. Only one girl stood against Hazama, who had declared himself the new Demon Emperor. Her name was Tamaki Uchida, and she was the destined final member of the fourth Kuzunoha bloodline.
-2001-
Maya Amano sat cross-legged on top of Chief Daisuke Todoroki's desk. The Kuzunoha Detective Agency was enabling her to spread rumors, rumors that were coming true. Tamaki Uchida, the girl sitting at that desk and typing into a computer, all but lived out of the office, those days – at least since her fiancee had gone missing. Maya was looking at a collection of books and DVD's that were piled up on a table next to a small television.
"Twentieth Century Boys... The Thing... Neon Genesis Evangelion... Twin Peaks..." Maya chuckled. "You have some dark tastes, Tamaki. And I never thought of you as much of an otaku."
"I'm not." Tamaki didn't look up. "Those are research." She wondered if Maya would be so quick to sit on the desk if she knew that "The Chief" was currently being inhabited by the ghost of a fallen Devil Summoner, heir to the title of Kyouji Kuzunoha.
Maya held up an old, battered videocassette. "Wow, a tape. You never even see these anymore." She looked at the title. "If?"
Tamaki shook her head. "Don't ask." She kept typing.
Maya frowned. "You knew all of them before, didn't you? Kei Nanjou and all of those others. Did you fight with them?"
"It wasn't my turn." She had pressed her rapier into the hands of the boy with the earring, and wished him luck. She had trusted him, understood that it was his place to save them. And when the school had frosted over at the whim of the Snow Queen, she had hid away in a small room with Satomi Tadashi, the classmate who was now her fiancée, and they'd held each other until it had all passed. That was all she wanted from life, now. Leave it to the others to solve. Let her be a normal girl, please, the kind who cried and hid.
And yet, there she was, happily working away as a Kuzunoha. She knew she'd never get that choice. Satomi was missing, and there was a Nekomata hiding away in her bathroom. Maybe, maybe this time when it was over.
-XXXX (?)-
Shinjiro and Tamaki chose to look at each other, rather than regard the two other figures at the table. There were cards strewn about, but whatever game they had been playing, it wasn't one that Shinji knew—they were not traditional playing cards, or hanafuda cards. They were western Tarot cards.
The blonde man finally spoke.
"Phil here..." He waved to the man in the mask. "Phil and I made a bargain, a long time ago." And it wasn't hard to guess that "a long time ago" for these two was very long indeed. "He was allowed to make one change, and I was allowed to make one change. A big change, a change that could not be explained away by a dream, or a vision. A god-level change, to coin a phrase." He chuckled. "So, he whispered in a God's ear. Oh, he did some things later, to be sure, but those were part of a separate bet. They didn't relate to our own deal." He glanced at the glowering figure across from him. "And he won't soon repeat that mistake, will you, Phil? Rebuked quite harshly by a mortal, quite harshly indeed." He grinned. "Now, he's been waiting for centuries to see when I was going to take my turn, and cash in on the other half of the deal."
Shinjiro didn't like where this was going.
Tamaki looked down. "This is my fault. If I had let Hazama win... maybe things might have evened out."
The blond-haired man laid his hand over hers. "No, I daresay not. Raidou the XIVth took care of that." He winked at Shinjiro. "Though, he might have had help."
"So." He clapped his hands together. "I've called the four of us here to complete the bargain. I get to take one of you. Which one shall it be?"
-2021-
In Gatten Sushi, one of the hippest joints in Sumaru City, a sushi chef was humming – quite loudly, in fact – as he prepared dishes for customers. The chef was something of a musician, in fact, and he offered live acoustic performances in his restaurant nearly every night, which had made it a big hang-out for the nearby Sevens and Cuss High students. Now, though, the customers were enduring a much briefer refrain, hummed over and over as if the chef was trying to dislodge it from his brain. One of those customers, a history teacher named Jun Kashihara, looked at the cards in his hands and smiled.
His opponent was too busy keeping an eye on the chef. Miyabi Hanakouji, who was in fact the chef's wife, had a crooked smile. "What is that song you're humming? That's not one of yours."
"It's Schubert, actually." Jun sorted the hanafuda cards around to line up the suits. "But do not ask me how he knows it."
The chef handed a plate to someone at the bar with a smile, and then made a pouting face at the two of them. "Awww, c'mon, are you trying to tell me that not even the great Michel can stand up to some old fart?"
Jun laid down a full suit. "December!" A full bouquet of Paulownia cards glared up at Miyabi, who frowned and looked back at her cards.
The chef, whose name was so obviously Eikichi Mishina, glanced at the clock. "Ah! Time for a break." He waved in the part-time help and excused himself from the customers at the bar. "All right! You've got me, Jun, I can never escape your piercing gaze... I did not write the song." He frowned. "Actually, I don't know where the Hell I heard it. It's been stuck in my head for days."
"It was originally a poem, and Schubert put it to music." Jun put a card in the discard pile. "It's one of my father's favorites. It's a lovely poem, actually. It's about a lovesick man who has lost his great love, who curses his own shadow for aping his grief." He had a wistful smile. "It always fills me with nostalgia, but for what, I couldn't tell you."
"Speaking of..." Miyabi tossed out a card, herself. "When is Lisa back in town?"
Jun smiled. "Her tour should be wrapping up within a week or two."
Eikichi sniffed. "Maybe this time Ginko will listen to me, take a lesson or two from my own songwriting gift."
Miyabi winked at Jun. "He's very excited, he just doesn't want to admit it."
"Judas!" Eikichi pointed at his wife. "J'accuse!"
Now Jun was humming the Schubert piece. "I don't know what it is about this piece that always catches in my throat. Like a sad moment that I've forgotten."
Miyabi sighed. "What's it called?"
"Der Doppelganger."
The door to the restaurant slid open and another familiar face entered. Miyabi let out a little squeal at the arrival of an old friend, and the men both waved over the harried and spacey looking woman with half a dozen pens stuck through different parts of her hair. "Chikarin! It's great to see you!"
Eikichi handed the woman a menu before she could speak. "Always nice to see an old friend – anything you want is on the house."
"Roger!" Chikarin started to look through the menu, then remembered something and slapped it closed. "Not Roger! News!" She slapped the table. "Item! Major reporter goes off the grid in America with young intern, causes scandal!" She crooked a thumb at herself. "They're moving me up!"
Michel nodded. "Hey, good for you – you deserve it!"
"Well, I hope the other reporter's okay..." Miyabi frowned.
Jun frowned as well, humming that song again.
-2010 (Timeline B-AB)-
Once upon a time, there was a boy named Shinjiro Aragaki.
He was an angry boy, and one day that anger caused him to hurt another person. Shinjiro was a soft, kind, scared young man at his core, and this hurt him deeply. And so this boy, he began to wish for death. He tried to keep himself bottled away with drugs, but these things did not make him better, and did not quiet the monster in his heart.
One day, his wish was given form, when the son of the woman he had wronged re-entered his life, with a burning black vengeance buried within his core. Shinjiro came to live with this son, knowing that death would soon follow. He and the son, and the others with them, fought together and found a respect that Shinjiro had barely known before.
He did not know that death itself also lived beneath the same roof. He was so focused on the son, he did not notice that it was death who issued the orders to them in battle.
Once upon a time, there was another Shinjiro Aragaki—the man who fell in love with death. And in doing so, finally wanted to live.
"He's flatlining!" Doctors and nurses crowded around the comatose Shinjiro, one of them rubbing together the ubiquitous paddles. "What the Hell happened here?"
A nurse was pushed aside, even as she spoke. "Nothing! He just started shaking himself apart!"
It was the night that SEES would storm the final floors of Tartarus.
The paddles were placed against Shinji's bare chest. "All right," said the doctor. "let's do this. Clear!"
And in the next moment, the Dark Hour struck.
-XXXX (?)-
Tamaki bowed her head. "I'll go."
But Shinjiro looked at the blond-haired man with suspicion. "No. To Hell with that. Take me." The girl looked panicked, the blond-haired man serene. "Leave her out of this."
In finally wanting to live, Shinjiro finally had something worth dying for. I'm sorry, Hamuko. But you'd hate me if I didn't, anyway.
The blond-haired man clapped his hands together. "Well. If we're all decided, then..." He leaned over and whispered in Shinji's ear. "I knew you'd say yes, if I brought the girl."
-2009-
Takaya leveled his revolver at Ken. Shinji dove in front of the boy, and the world went crimson, and then washed out as he fell.
Minato Arisato had not known that Shinjiro was missing his pocketwatch. He had never gone to find it, and had never returned it to him. The bullet drilled through Shinji, the teenager coughed up blood, and then he fell.
-2010 (Timeline B-AB)-
Shinji's eyes opened. Somewhere, he knew, Hamuko was dying.
He yanked the tubes forcibly from his arms as he struggled to stand. A nurse tried to restrain him, but he had become, over the years, a soldier – she hadn't a chance.
His peacoat was hanging on a hook by the door. He pulled it around himself and his hospital clothes as he stumbled out the door. He didn't notice his bare feet on the cold tile, or on the hot asphalt outside. He just ran. He plowed through hedges and cars swerved out of the way as he bolted across busy streets.
Some part of him remembered the blond-haired man, and his hand on Shinji's shoulder. But he was still there. And the man had said that he, Shinjiro would be taken. So why, now, was Hamuko... But he remembered, too, her single finger pointed to the sky.
He'd been in a bed for months. His legs shouldn't be that strong. He should have atrophy, or at least be too weak to run. But nothing was going to stop him.
Her headphones were dangling around his neck.
It was graduation day. Gekkoukan High School was crowded not only with the student body and the teachers, but parents and well-wishers. The cars were all but stacked on top of each other, and many people recognized him. Some tried to stop him, to say hello, do anything. Shinji elbowed a portly kid named Nozomi in the face to get him out of the way. By the time anyone with authority had noticed him, dressed in a coat and little else, he was already storming up the stairs.
His lungs burned, his heart was weak, and he fell once, cracking his shin hard on a step. His fingers scraped against the railing and pulled him back up.
In the moments before he reached the door for roof access, he still had thoughts for what the dreams had meant. Who the other girl was, or how when he woke he knew that she was here, that she would be here and slipping through his fingers. Minato's face had already fled his memory, but he wondered if there was some other him, some other Shinjiro somewhere, that would endure what he had avoided.
And then he was shouldering the door open, and she was in the android's lap. Her eyes were starting to close, but he had made it, had gotten just enough time to fall to his knees before her, to grab her hands and say whatever he could say as she faded away forever.
The others were coming up the stairs behind him. Akihiko was so surprised to see him that he nearly tripped over him, coming to a stop. They had only just remembered her. They were still realizing that her sleep was one that wouldn't end.
Where he'd pulled the tubes from his arms, there were trails of blood. He looked like he'd tried to kill himself. Which he had, again and again. And now, in her peaceful and eternal face, he was finding punishment for that sin.
-XXXX (?)-
The blond-haired man merely smiled at Philemon, rubbed two fingers together in that tiny violin gesture, and tilted his head slightly, as if he could hear the screams of Shinjiro Aragaki, Minato's Shinjiro Aragaki, as he kept falling and falling. A life ended in noble sacrifice, now sent down and down and down and down...
What would true Hell be like for someone like him? Perhaps a burning orphanage, being held down as a young girl was roasted alive again and again for eternity? Or perhaps just the knowledge that there was another him, one who had been given the perfect chance for happiness, and then knowing that this other him had lost it so completely?
"Check," said the blond-haired man, and he faded away. Philemon looked to the stricken Tamaki Uchida. Her soul had been saved – she would reside in Heaven forevermore with her late husband. But then, that was little better. Everyone but the blond-haired man that had sat down to cards (and, it was now abundantly obvious, chess) had lost, and lost in a way that they could not have fathomed.
Philemon could see enough of the future to see what had been wrought. The world had been saved at the cost of a man's soul, and two lives. And many more to come.
The question now, was what actions could he still take, without breaking his vow?
"Who was that? Was it really..." asked Tamaki, clutching at her arms, already starting to fade away.
Philemon shook his head. "A cypher. As he has always been."
Tamaki's last expressions were telling—a look of concern, and then joy, and then abject terror.
Philemon fluttered away, as well. There was much to do, and little human time in which to do it.
-2010 (Timeline B-AB)-
They were taking a vote around the table in the dorm lounge, as they had once before. This time, though, her presence was taken up by Shinjiro, who'd settled into her place at the table without a glance at the others. His hat was pulled down low over his eyes. Shinjiro had listened to all of this quietly, and when the awkward silence began again to build up, he leaned forward, and told them that he was going back for her.
How could he not? He had damned himself for her sake. And of the many times that he'd damned himself, he found that this was the only one that mattered.
The Key burned in his palm. The chance to go back and change things. A second chance for her, and for his soul. Maybe this time, he could be what she deserved.
-2009-
"Man, Shinjiro-senpai. It's like you're holding up that wall, the way you lean against it all of the time." Junpei grinned at the upperclassman, and received a glower in return.
"Leave him alone, Stupei." Yukari opened one of the boxes of delivery Chinese food and eyed the contents. "Who ordered this?"
Koromaru barked. "Koro-chan says that Shinjiro-senpai asked for that beef on his behalf." Aigis took the carton and headed for the kitchen to find a bowl to scoop it into. The dog followed behind her, wagging his tail.
"You and Koro-chan really get along, huh?" Ken was eying him with suspicion. Shinji just shrugged.
"He's the only one who'd put up with him." Akihiko gave a little smile to his old friend, spearing a piece of pork with a chopstick just before Junpei could get to it.
Minato, who had been munching on Teriyaki chicken very quietly through all of this, glanced up through his hair. "Wouldn't that be putting yourself on the dog's level, senpai?" Junpei tried to cover a laugh by coughing loudly into his fist. Aki frowned at him.
Shinjiro walked slowly up behind Minato, and then grabbed the box of chicken from him. He sniffed at it. "This is all MSG." He dropped it in Minato's lap. "At least the dog's smarter than most of you."
"Most?" Yukari muttered.
Shinji shook his head. "He's the only one who gets it." When he'd fought off the Shadow at the shrine, and taken that wicked slash across his belly, Koromaru had been willing to die. Had accepted it bravely. He had known loss, and did not despair for living on borrowed time. Shinjiro wasn't sure if he was like the dog, or wished to be.
Mitsuru, who was working on the computer behind the front desk, didn't look up. "Judging from the state of that coat, I'd imagine what you both 'have' is fleas, Shinji."
Junpei couldn't hold it in anymore. Mitsuru being the one to burn him caused a laughing fit that slid him right off the couch onto the floor.
Fuuka, though, looked at Shinji strangely. She had been doing that a lot more, lately. "Koro-chan always seems so happy. He's willing to fight, but I think he's glad to get a second chance at life." What, was she a mind-reader, now? He glared at the frail girl, but Minato cleared his throat, still wiping bits of chicken off of his school uniform pants.
"We could ask him, you know. Through Aigis."
Yukari rolled her eyes. "You're always going to her for everything, these days." Minato looked at her, confused, and she huffed.
Aigis was returning with the bowl, Koromaru jogging circles around her. Fuuka turned to them. "Koro-chan, what's the meaning of life?"
Koro barked. Aigis just stared, in that non-blinking way that she had. "He says that it is good food."
Fuuka, who had caught Shinji in the lounge with a cooking magazine, just chuckled. "Well, we can all agree on that."
Minato looked at Shinji, perhaps only to avoid Yukari's death-glare. "Well? What's your answer to the same question?"
Shinjiro, who didn't have an answer, just turned away. "To get by without getting asked dumb questions."
"Funny." Aki sat back. "I thought all humans were good for was asking dumb questions. That's how we tend to solve things."
"I guess that makes Stupei a philosopher." Yukari threw a balled up napkin at Junpei, who caught it in midair.
"Stop calling me that!"
Shinjiro Aragaki left the lounge, and headed up the many flights of stairs to the roof, where his ashtray sat. He lit a cigarette and looked up at the sky.
The door creaked behind him, and he turned. It was Ikutski, who adjusted his glasses. "Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't know anyone was up here..." Shinji glared at him. He didn't know how much of what Strega said was real and how much was bunk, but he didn't trust the man an inch. "Yes, well... I see that you got high so that you could smoke... Oh! That's a good one!" He made that dopey grin of his. "I'll have to remember that..."
"Uh-huh." Shinjiro flicked ash. "So, Chairman... since you're so full of good ideas tonight... what's the meaning of life?"
The way Ikutski's face tensed, for just a moment, was worth noting. "I'm not sure that life has a purpose, I'm afraid." He shrugged. "I suppose that doesn't sound right, does it?" Shinjiro crossed his arms. "Well... I think we all have to do good... Ah!" He smiled. "We have to give meaning to death. I suppose that's how I'd put it. Some try to do so by doing the most good, some try by dying with things, or power... yes, I think it's giving meaning to death." He seemed satisfied with himself. "Thank you, Shinjiro. I'm going to think about that one."
When he'd left, Shinji sat on the edge of the roof and considered how frustrating it was that the Chairman had said what made the most sense to him. That was almost enough to swerve him from the path that he was on.
But, he mused, to find meaning in death was to put death above living, and that was already what he'd done. As his cigarette burned down and the night grew darker, Shinji wondered if there could be another way to give meaning to death. If he had the right to dare suggest that his death could do more than put a single boy's mind to rest.
Rather than stub the butt out into the ashtray, he flicked it off into the night. In the end, he figured, it probably wouldn't matter.