September 5, 2015 – Saturday, Morning – Cloudy
The three girls ran inside the building, and saw that like Allie's rave warehouse, it actually bore a better resemblance to a real-world place on the inside. Like the lobby to a business building, there were chairs and a receptionist's desk, as well as a TV in the corner.
"Come on, this way! You've only got a few minutes before the bomb detonates!" A voice that sounded like Damien's with an ethereal echo came from the TV, which suddenly turned on to reveal what was apparently live camera footage from somewhere in the building. Idol Damien was nowhere to be seen, and instead the girls turned to see the real Damien hiding behind a wall, looking out to see faceless figures with guns firing down at him. He returned to his place of cover and reached off-camera to pick up a grenade, which he pulled the pin out of and waited for a few seconds before throwing it around the corner.
The TV feed cut off and was replaced by static. Allie worriedly looked at Lydia.
"A bomb? In here? We have to get up there!" Lydia looked over at F.Z., who was walking around and taking in all the scenery like she was a tourist.
"Come on, we have to find an elevator." Lydia led the girls further down the lobby, and came across an area with two elevators in it. She pressed the button with the up arrow on it, but it flashed momentarily instead of lighting up like it should have. Her eyes were immediately drawn to an object sticking out from the wall next to the button that looked like a card reader of some kind.
"It needs a key card. Allie, go back to the lobby and see if there isn't something like that back there. F.Z. You can sense Shadows, right?" Allie went back into the lobby to search.
"Yeah. What about it?"
"Okay. Well, if Allie doesn't find anything, we'll going to have go up the stairs and search until we find it. I have no idea what the layout of this place is, so the Shadows might try to ambush us."
"Oh, I get where you're going with this. You want me to tell you if there's any nearby that you can't see. I can do that. Yeah, I already know this place is crawling with Shadows. We might not have seen any in here yet, but they're definitely here." Lydia walked back towards the lobby and met Allie halfway through the hallway.
"Nothing. What are we going to do?"
"We're going to have to go upstairs and keep looking until we find it. F.Z.'s going to warn us if any Shadows are nearby. Come on!" The girls all ran past the elevators until they reached a large, open room with a central staircase. As they approached the staircase, blobs of goo dropped from the ceiling in front of them, two of them taking the form of the thug Shadows from outside and another assuming a slimmer, more feminine form that stood towards the back.
"Get out of our way!" Lydia looked into her mirror and focused on Fortuna, whom she saw in the mirror before it was consumed in blue flame. The blue-haired woman appeared before her and faced the Shadows.
"Garu!" Fortuna spun her wheel and a green-tinted gust of wind came and enveloped one of the thug Shadows, knocking it down.
"Magna!" Allie called on Medusa and targeted the other thug Shadow, bringing down a rock on its head.
"Hey, it looks like that Shadow's weak to wind! Hit the other one with it!" F.Z. called out from the back, sensing that Lydia's attack had struck a weak point in the Shadow.
"Got it! Garu!" Lydia targeted the Shadow that Allie had just hit with a wind attack, which connected and destroyed it. Now, the Shadow in the back decided to make its move, and concentrated for a moment before targeting Lydia with a cloud of ice crystals that solidified on top of Fortuna, damaging her.
"It likes ice, huh? Maybe you should try fire!" F.Z. suggested.
"We don't have any fire-based Personas. Allie! Let's try that combination attack again!" Lydia said. The two girls focused on the foe and attacked with both Garu and Magna at the same time. When the two spells collided, the rock from Magna bounced upwards and fell on the enemy a second time, crushing it into paste.
"You have discovered a new Fusion Spell. Its name is Double Fall." Fortuna's voice spoke aloud, catching the interest of F.Z. and Allie. The Shadows didn't leave anything behind this time, Lydia noticed.
"Fusion Spell? That makes it even cooler. What about the other one we used, back outside? What's that called?" Allie asked as Fortuna and Medusa disappeared. Lydia walked over to make sure there wasn't anything there.
"Ripple Smash. I guess every time we find a new way to combine our attacks, it results in a Fusion Spell. We should take advantage of them, because they definitely seem stronger than the individual spells."
"Yeah, but the both of you have to have the upper hand on the enemy first. Shadows are mindless, but they're not entirely stupid. They can tell when you're doing crap like that and will try to stop you if they can." F.Z. chimed in, having paid attention to the amount of focus both the girls needed to put in in order to execute the Fusion Spell.
"Let's keep going." The girls ran up the staircase and found themselves in an exact copy of the room that they were just in, except there wasn't another staircase that led upwards.
"There aren't any Shadows in this room." F.Z. said.
"Okay. Well, it looks like we'll have to explore whatever's on this floor." Lydia led them through the hallway at the corner of the room and found that it led to an open office space, filled with cubicles.
"Careful. There's something in here." F.Z. looked around, trying to pinpoint the Shadows' location.
"Then let's get rid of it before we start looking." Lydia said. She directed the other two to follow her as she carefully walked through the room, and found that there was a blob hiding underneath one of the tables.
"Found you! Fortuna, Garu!" She brought forth her Persona and attacked the Shadow before it was able to take shape, sending its two component Shadows flying into the wall of one of the cubicles. Allie summoned Medusa and the two girls quickly dispatched the Shadows, who left behind a pair of quartz seeds.
"Look! There are those seeds again!" Lydia approached them and saw that there was the coin card on one of the vines and the cup card on the other. She picked the coin card and the other card disappeared as the vines dissolved. The coin card transformed into a stack of dollar bills in her hand.
"What? These things can drop money?" She said, leafing through the bills. They were as crisp as if they had been freshly printed, and she wondered why in the world Shadows would spawn cards that turned into money, of all things.
"Well, it is nice to get paid for our efforts... I mean, it does make me feel a little bit better about the risks we're taking." Allie said as Lydia put the money away in her dress's pocket.
"If this card spawning thing keeps happening, I won't even need a part-time job. The only problem is that someone's eventually going to ask where we get the money from. Anyways, that's not important right now. F.Z., is it clear in here?" The translucent girl closed her eyes and focused on her sixth sense.
"Yeah. I don't sense any more Shadows in here. Let's split up and look around in here." The girls did just that, and gathered at the other end of the room with nothing in hand.
"Not a single clue, huh? Fine. We'll just have to keep looking." They went down the hall and found another office room full of cubicles, and repeated the same process as before. They dealt with whatever Shadows they came across, all of which were of the same two kinds they'd fought already, and in doing so Lydia found out that the cup cards healed and the green wand cards granted them more power. Allie's Persona even learned a new technique – Rakunda, which was capable of lowering the defenses of a single enemy. Eventually, they came to a staircase at the end of a narrow hallway.
"I hope we find the key soon. Running up all these floors would not only be wasting our time, but it's also going to tire us out. We can't afford to run out of energy." Allie said, feeling that about half of her mental energy needed to use magic attacks was spent.
"Don't worry, we'll find it. Come on." Lydia assured her and took the lead in going up the stairs. The third floor was dark compared to the previous two, with only some of the lights working. This area appeared to be a break room of some kind, but disorganized, with boxes all over the floor and papers strewn about everywhere. F.Z. felt a heavy presence in the room, and pointed over towards the microwave/fridge combo across from them.
"You see that microwave? Something's off about it. I think a Shadow might be hiding in it, and not just any ordinary one, either. Better keep your guard up." The girls slowly approached it, and when they got close enough, the microwave started up of its own accord. Lydia saw that inside of it was a card of some sort, rotating around on the plate as the microwave began to cook it.
"That's it! That's the key card! Fortuna!" She attacked the microwave with Garu, which caused the machine to morph into a Shadow, that had the microwave for its head and used the fridge as its body. It still had the key card inside what was now its mouth, and retaliated by attempting to smash them with its microwave head. Fortuna took the hit, which to Lydia felt very much like having an entire microwave thrown at her.
"Ow. Okay, this stupid thing is going down." She dispelled Fortuna and focused into her mirror to bring forth Ophelia, and started out by casting Sukukaja on herself. Allie used Magna on it, which knocked it back for a moment.
"That piece of shit's pretty sturdy! It can't focus on both of you at once, though. Divide and conquer!" F.Z. said as she watched from a distance. Lydia took her advice and decided to use her extra agility to quickly back away from the Shadow.
"Allie, use Rakunda on the Shadow. We'll be able to take it down more quickly!"
"Got it! Medusa!" The snake-headed rave queen glared at the Shadow, a purple glow emitting from her eyes that caused a similar light to appear around the Shadow for a brief moment.
"Now, Ophelia! Dia!" Ophelia appeared and healed Lydia. The Shadow decided that Medusa was the larger threat and decided to attack her, trying to bash her with its head. Allie willed Medusa to jump to the side, dodging the Shadow's attack.
"Let's see how you like this! Aqua!" Lydia had Ophelia hit the Shadow in the back of the head with water, which caused it to short out and fall over.
"Awesome! Time for a Fusion Spell!" Allie cried, and the two girls focused their next attack on the Shadow, creating Ripple Smash by having the two spells collide on top of the Shadow. The impact from the attack sent sparks flying from the Shadow, which managed to get back up.
"Oh, not done yet, huh? Come and get some, then!" F.Z. taunted. The Shadow then decided to gather its sparks and direct them outwards at both of the girls, resulting in an electrical attack that neither of them could dodge. Lydia crumpled to the floor due to Ophelia's weakness to electricity, and Allie shivered from the buzzing sensation the attack gave her.
"Well, fuck!" F.Z. commented as the Shadow turned to its nearest target in Medusa and attempted to smash her again. This time, she couldn't get out of the way, and Allie felt the pain of a microwave being thrown at her chest.
Lydia rose to her feet, upset that the Shadow had managed to get the upper hand on them. Allie was panting, and looked to her for direction on what to do next.
"This thing won't beat us. Allie, we've got it on the ropes! Let's do what we did one more time!"
"Okay!"
"Aqua!" Lydia felt a surge of power well up from within her, and her eyes briefly glowed as she called out her attack. Ophelia's jet of water hit the Shadow with more force than before, and the fridge door on its body flew open as it fell on its side, sparking.
"Now, Allie!" The two girls gathered their energy and attacked once more with their elemental spells, water and earth coming together to form Ripple Smash. The spell tore the Shadow's head from its body, the microwave slamming against the wall and falling to the floor, dented. The fridge fell over on the floor, its door loosely hanging from its hinges.
"When your resolve reaches its apex, the strength of our bond shines through and bolsters our next move." Ophelia explained. Lydia and Allie both felt the power from the Shadow flowing into them, granting them and their Personas more power.
"That was kinda tough." Allie said, her hands on her knees. Lydia had Ophelia heal the both of them and walked over to the dented microwave on the floor, opening its door and retrieving the key card.
"Yeah, but we did it. Let's get back to the elevator so we can find Damien!"
The girls went back the way they came, and managed to reach the elevator with only a few recurring Shadows getting in their way. Lydia felt that she was more than halfway spent on mental energy, and hoped that they would be able to get to Damien before it ran out; those cup cards were certainly helping, but they wouldn't be enough to restore them fully. She walked up to the card reader and slid the card through it, turning an LED on the reader green. This time, when she pressed the elevator's call button, it stayed lit, and after a few moments, a ding was heard as the elevator reached the ground floor.
"What's that?" F.Z. said as one of the doors opened to reveal a small white cabinet floating in midair. Lydia walked into the spacious elevator along with the others and decided to open the cabinet, and found a strange sphere with the letter 'M' on it with a down arrow underneath it. As soon as she took it out, the cabinet disappeared, and the elevator's doors closed.
"I'm not sure what this is supposed to be, but it doesn't seem harmful. We'll figure out what it does later. Allie, take us to the top."
"One step ahead of you." Allie had already pressed the button at the very top of the floor buttons, and the elevator began to quickly rise.
"F.Z., while we're here... I have to ask, how are you able to manipulate the grass and quartz? Were you always able to do that?" F.Z. shrugged, leaning on the wall of the elevator, and materialized a small piece of quartz that she played with in her hands.
"I guess. It gave me something to do besides watch people succumb to their Idols. That's why I'm wearing actual clothes, for one. When I woke up after being killed by my Idol, I wasn't wearing anything. It didn't feel right running around naked in here, even if no one could see me. But hell if I know why I'm able to do that. Why am I even still here, anyway? If I'm supposed to be dead, shouldn't I be in some sort of afterlife, or in a void of nothingness, or something? Ugh, whatever. Forget about that crap. What about your friend Damien?" F.Z. crushed the piece of quartz she was playing with into dust.
"He wanted to come here after he heard about the first time we were here. He put himself in danger knowing we'd come to save him." Allie said, sighing. F.Z. raised her eyebrows.
"He willingly came here, knowing what kind of place this is? Why? Dumbass." Lydia pursed her lips and noted that the elevator was almost at the top.
"I'd say it's more... bravado. He wanted the excitement, and because he saw how Allie matured after meeting her Idol, he wanted the opportunity to go through that same sort of growth too." Lydia said, the elevator coming to a stop and dinging. When the door opened, they all saw a TV screen mounted on the wall across from them, which turned on as they stepped out.
"You've got them now, Damien! The bomb's been defused and the enemy has nowhere left to run!" That ethereal voice that was no doubt Idol Damien's spoke over the footage of the real Damien tossing a set of wire cutters to the floor and getting up from a cylindrical object in the middle of a large room with sirens going off and running towards the stairs ahead of him.
"Lydia! That's the room just ahead of us, look!" Allie pointed to the end of the hallway, where the light from the sirens inside the room they were just watching was visible. The girls into the room and were greeted by a few more Shadows, there being five of them this time. Three of them were the masculine-looking thugs and the two in the back were the slimmer, feminine-looking ones.
"We don't have time for you!" Lydia cried as she summoned Fortuna.
"Petrify one of the back ones! I'm going to deal with the ones in front." Lydia said as she had Fortuna use Garu on the nearest Shadow, knocking it down. Allie got Medusa to target one of the backline Shadows with Petrava, which turned it to stone.
"That's one! Allie, get ready to use Magna on the other Shadow in the back!" Lydia targeted the next frontline Shadow with Garu, and knocked it down.
"And two! Allie, when I knock this last one down, we're going to use Ripple Smash!" She had found out that every time someone was hit with one of their weaknesses, it allowed whoever the attacker was a little extra time to execute another action. That had gone both ways, as she realized from the fights where she'd been hit with electricity while having Ophelia active. The final frontline Shadow was hit with another blast of wind, and Lydia could feel her mental energy beginning to run out as she looked towards Allie, who had Medusa in front of her focusing on the only Shadow that wasn't incapacitated.
Lydia shifted Personas and brought forth Ophelia.
"And three! Now, Allie! Ripple Smash!" The two girls focused their attacks on the slim-looking Shadow, and saw their spells combine to produce the earth-filled ripple that the attack was named for. It immediately wiped out all five Shadows at once, all of them leaving quartz seeds behind. Lydia saw that among the five cards available, there was one with two cups on it instead of a single cup, and took that. As expected, it healed more than the one-cup card, and the other cards disappeared.
Around a quarter of my mental energy left. It's going to have to be enough. We can't turn back now.
"How are you doing, Allie?"
"Pretty good. That cup card you got was really helpful. You look more tired than I do, though. You've been working really hard." Lydia began to walk towards the stairs at the corner of the room.
"We've all been working hard. Come on. Damien's waiting for us." The girls ran up the stairs and stood before a large set of double doors, which had the symbol of the phoenix from Damien's shirt emblazoned on it.
"I don't think I need to tell you this, but there's a lot of Shadow energy in there. I'm pretty certain Damien and his Idol are behind that door. So... don't die. Seriously, if you two bite it and leave me alone again, I'll never forgive either of you!" F.Z. said, her face holding a nervous expression. Lydia and Allie looked at each other, Allie shaking her head at F.Z.'s words.
"Don't worry, F.Z. No one's going to die today. We will save Damien. Lydia, are you ready?" Lydia looked within her mind to see which Persona she would lead off with. Since she had used Ophelia more than Fortuna, her initial Persona was stronger, having even learned Patra, a skill that could dispel mental ailments on someone. Fortuna had only learned another elemental attack, a basic ice attack called Bufu.
I guess I'll start off with Ophelia, and change it up if I need to. Actually, there's something I hadn't thought of before that I could do right now to help us prepare. I only have so much mental energy left to devote to boosts, but I have a feeling we're both going to need them.
"Ophelia." Lydia's Persona was brought forth in front of the door. The woman in the flowing gown turned to Allie and spoke.
"Allie. I shall grant us the power of Sukukaja before we enter. In this manner, we will not need to spend precious time in battle casting it." She waved her hand once to give Allie the buff, and then once again to give it to Lydia. She then disappeared, reverting to her form as Lydia's mirror.
"It's time." Lydia said, and walked up to the doors and pulled them both open as hard as she could.
The doors led to the roof outside, where Damien was standing before his idealized self. From up here, the girls could see that the valley really did seem to go on forever, with only a few trees dotting the landscape of grass and quartz as far as they could see. The roof was completely flat, the only defining characteristics of it being the four pillars of quartz that rose upwards from the corners of the it.
"Just as I expected, other me. I knew you had it in you! There isn't an adventure out there that you're not willing to undertake, no opportunity for excitement that you'd refuse. I mean, that's why you came here, isn't it? You wanted to meet me! And why shouldn't you have? You're-"
"Damien! Don't listen to him!" Lydia called out as the girls ran up to him. He turned around, momentarily surprised, but then shook his head, smiling.
"Oh, hey. You guys... you guys made it. I knew you would."
"Ah, yeah. Those lovely ladies over there are really something, aren't they?" Damien's Idol walked up next to him and slung his arm around his shoulder.
"Though, let's be honest with ourselves. They're not enough for you – nothing in your ordinary life is! You want to live life on the edge, you gotta be risking it all every day or else you're not really living! Well, guess what. This set of spy games I put you through? This is only just the beginning! Take me in, and I promise you every second of your life will be an adventure you never wanna quit." The Idol let go and stood between Damien and the girls.
"It's your choice." Damien looked into his other self's glowing brown eyes, and saw the same determination that he knew he had inside of him. His Idol knew what he was talking about, right down to the last detail.
"It was exciting. I have to admit, that was probably the most fun I've had in years." Damien said, looking down at the ground. He knew what this thing was trying to do. He came in here knowing what was going to happen. And yet, after having actually experienced the thrill of being a secret agent... now he wasn't so sure about himself.
"Damien. I know school can be a bore." Allie began to speak.
"I know that you want more out of your life, that you want to be this total badass. That's not a bad thing! But... adventuring every second of the day isn't what's going to make you happy. If you were always on the move, when could you have time to enjoy the solace of relaxation? When would you be able to spend time with your friends, or with your family? It's okay to dream about being on the edge sometimes, but you don't want to live there, Damien!" He listened to her words and then looked back at his Idol, who seemed unimpressed by Allie's little speech.
"Yeah. If I was always risking it all, that'd be the most selfish thing I've ever done. I'm not going to abandon my friends just for some cheap thrills. That's why... that's why I don't wanna be you." His Idol rolled his eyes and sighed, shaking his head in disappointment. The blue aura around him started turning black, and his body was beginning to show those moving black-and-white stripes.
"Then let me try one more time to convince you to join me. I'll show you that your destiny is above all of these ordinary people!" The stripes flashed and Damien's Idol began to be encased in quartz. Damien himself ran past it as this was happening and joined his friends on the other side.
"That was really good, Allie. Now get ready. F.Z., I need you to use your phasing ability to move around it and see if there are any weak points we can exploit. Damien... stay next to the doors." The chrysalis began to grow in size, and shattered to reveal the Idol's monstrous form.
It was a shiny, blue-suited man that stood a couple of feet above everyone else, with the emblem of the phoenix on the suit's breast. His hair was navy blue and was spiked up like Damien's typically was, and on his back was a circular pack with multiple implements sticking out of it. He stood in a defensive stance and held a pistol in his right hand, smirking with Damien's face down at the people that dared to oppose him.
"I am an Idol... everything in you that you wish you were." He spoke, and started by taking a shot at Allie. Thanks to her enhanced agility, she was able to see him raise the gun towards her and dodged the shot.
"Split up!" Lydia called as F.Z. turned into wind, that backpack of the Idol's having caught the ghost girl's eye. The two Persona-users opened with magic attacks, both of which did some damage to the Idol. F.Z. reformed inches behind the Idol, inspecting the backpack it wore. It looked like it was actually part of his body, so there was no way they could knock it off of him. The implements looked to be a ray gun, an antenna, a strange gray rod, and a rocket launcher.
"Now that's interesting." She turned back into wind and moved away from the Idol as it began its attack.
"Smart! But let's see how you do without that magic of yours..." He pulled out the antenna from his backpack and aimed it at Allie, releasing jagged black-and-green waves that enveloped her and Medusa. Allie found that her ability to express mental energy had been sealed, but not her ability to channel physical energy into her Persona.
F.Z. reformed next to Lydia, and pointed at the antenna that Idol Damien was returning to his backpack.
"Allie's magic is shot! You gotta take out that antenna of his somehow, or else you'll get sealed too! Also, it looks like he's got his own magical and physical kinds of weapons." She said, and turned into wind to get a different perspective again.
"Thanks. Allie! Try and use Medusa's physical attacks for now until the seal wears off!" Lydia called, and switched her Persona to Fortuna.
"Garu!" The blue-haired woman spun her wheel and sent green blades of wind at the Idol's backpack, which collided with it but did no special damage. It shook the implements somewhat, but ultimately they remained inside the backpack.
"Okay! Lunge!" Medusa charged at the Idol, turning him around towards Lydia as she knocked him aside. This caused him to drop his pistol, which went skidding across the roof until it was almost at the edge.
"Clever. But you act like I really needed that!" He pulled out the strange gray rod from his backpack, which turned out to be very long and required the use of two hands to wield properly. It looked like a giant leafblower, which he flicked the switch on and aimed it at Lydia.
"Goodbye!" He fired up the machine, which generated a heavy wind that threatened to push Lydia off of the building.
"It is foolish to think that wind can turn the odds in his favor against us." Fortuna spoke in Lydia's mind, and stood in front of her to block the gusts of the wind. This allowed her to walk forward against it, and when the Idol saw that his newest technique wasn't working, spun around to aim the machine's wind at Allie instead. Unlike Fortuna, Medusa was not resistant to wind, and so the both of them struggled to maintain their balance.
F.Z. regained her physical form perpendicular to the Idol's current attack, right next to Damien. Damien had taken cover behind one of the door, and was peeking out to watch the battle unfold.
"Should I feel bad that there's a part of me that thinks the thing trying to kill my friends is really, really cool?" He asked her. She looked back at him and frowned.
"Yeah, a little. You stay there, dumbass. I'm going back in." F.Z. transformed and got closer to the fray once more.
"Stop." Lydia directed Fortuna to sideswipe him with her next attack, another gust of wind. The attack pushed the machine's direction away from Allie, who used the opportunity to get away from the edge of the skyscraper's roof.
"Me, stop? How about you freeze!" The Idol returned the wind machine to his backpack and pulled out the ray gun, and fired it at Lydia. The blue beam turned out to be concentrated ice, that hit Fortuna and made Lydia feel like she'd been standing out in a blizzard.
We're never going to be able to concentrate long enough to get off a Fusion Spell like this! There has to be a way to get the upper hand against him... Lydia noticed that the pistol he had dropped earlier was still sitting near the edge. Could it be possible to pick it up and use it against him? Lydia knew that she didn't have much left in her to use magic, which was all her Personas were capable of.
There was only one way to find out.
"Allie! Charge him again! I'm going to go around the other way!" She called out, Allie nodding. Allie still felt the seal on her mind preventing her from using magic, but another Lunge she could still do.
"Medusa!" Her Persona made for the Idol, who was too distracted by the oncoming attack to notice Lydia running over towards the pistol. Even though it was much larger than a regular pistol, she found that she could still lift it without too much trouble. Medusa collided with the Idol, who had braced himself for the impact, and was now trying to resist her continued efforts to bowl him over.
"Good! Keep going!" Lydia encouraged Medusa as she ran closer to the Idol, its oversized pistol in her hands. F.Z. had reformed on the side of the Medusa and watched Lydia approach him.
"What are you doing? Do you even know how to use a gun?!" F.Z. shouted, watching as Medusa and the Idol struggled against each other. Lydia held the gun up just a few feet away from the Idol's ankle and pulled the trigger, which blasted its ankle clean off and sent black goo splattering across the roof. She aimed at its other ankle and fired again, the bullet tearing through the Idol's other ankle and sending more black goo flying. Without any way to stand, Medusa was able to push him to the ground, landing beside Lydia.
"Unbelievable! I'm not... I'm not done yet!" While on his back, he managed to pry the rocket launcher free and fired it at Medusa. The shell collided with her and sent her flying backwards, Allie landing on the ground feeling like she had just been run over by an exploding train. Lydia raised Idol Damien's own gun and pointed it at his head, not hesitating to pull the trigger. His head exploded from the impact of the shot, and as he began to crystallize into quartz, his implements began to do the same.
The Idol and his weapons crumbled into dust, and he now laid on the floor in his previous form as Damien came out from behind the doors.
"That. Was incredible. Seriously, Lydia, you'd probably make a better secret agent than I ever would." He said, still in awe at what he had just seen. He leaned over his Idol self, who was rubbing his head in pain.
"Damn... I don't get it. It might be the fact that she literally blew my head off making me stupid, but... how can you be okay with the mundane, other me?" Damien's other self looked him in the eyes, waiting for the answer. He put his hands behind his head and spoke.
"It's all about balance. You can think of life as just a game, but once you do that, you open up the possibility of losing that game. You showed me a really good time, remember? I don't regret going through your gauntlet, but at the end of the day, I want to be able to sleep in the silence of my bedroom just like anybody else. Sure, it might get boring sometimes, but I know that with my friends around, there'll always be something new to keep it interesting." He extended his hand towards his other self, who sat up and took it, smiling.
"That sounds like an adventure worth going on to me. Thanks for inviting me along." Blue flames consumed him, revealing an anthropomorphic falcon wearing a white hat that had a flaming yellow disk as its brim and a navy-blue suit similar to what Damien's Idol had worn, complete with black dress shoes. A circular mirror with tens of small, golden metallic curls representing the sun's corona floated before him.
"Our zeal for life burns hotter than the sun! Greetings, my other self. I am Ra, and it is my pleasure to be accompany you on this journey." Damien took hold on the mirror and looked up at Ra, the entity he now knew was his Persona.
"The pleasure... is mine." He said, and Ra disappeared within him. Damien looked over at Lydia, Allie, and F.Z., and smiled at them.
"It really happened. Everything turned out alright in the end! Thank you for having my back when I needed it most, you guys." He looked over at F.Z., who despite the victorious outcome didn't look too happy about it.
"You too, F.Z. I saw you trying to analyze the foe and help them out. You did good, too." F.Z. looked at Damien's mirror and nodded in acknowledgement.
"Yeah, thanks. But let me just say, that if it weren't for you and your hard-on for action, none of this would have ever happened in the first place. You put all the responsibility on your friends, dumbass. Though I guess they don't mind it all that much if they were willing to risk their lives to save you, so whatever." She pouted. Lydia shrugged, her and Allie having already had this discussion with Damien.
"Well, now what? I guess we go back home, then? F.Z., can you open a portal for us?" The ghost girl rolled her eyes and called the screwdriver-shaped piece of quartz into her hand, and attempted to drive it into space. Instead, the quartz tool merely went through air, surprising her as she nearly lost her balance from the unexpected motion.
"Oh, give me a fucking break. This damn building still has Shadow energy all over it. I noticed it happening with Allie's little creation, too – the Shadows seem to be using it as a nest. Pieces of shit are blocking my ability to create portals. We gotta get out of here before I can do it." That reminded Lydia of the circular object that was in the floating cabinet in the elevator, and pulled it out of her dress's pocket.
"What's that?" Damien asked. Lydia rotated it and felt the symbol on it softly pulsing as she ran her fingers across it. It wasn't a voice, necessarily, that called out to her from inside it, but a vibe of some sort, a feeling of being set free from an enclosure.
"I found it in a disappearing cupboard on the elevator. I'm not sure what it does, but... this thing is pulsing on the inside. It's as if it wants to leave this place, too. Here, Allie, feel the symbol." Lydia handed her the sphere, and Allie could sense the same desire to escape in the pulses.
"Damien, she's right. This thing wants to get out." She handed him the sphere, and he closed his eyes, putting his finger directly on the symbol to feel the sphere's soft pulsations.
"Yeah. It's not hostile or anything. It's like someone asking nicely to be let out. F.Z., do you want to feel it?" The ghost girl was surprised that he asked her, and found herself able to hold it in her translucent hands. Whereas the other three only felt a vague sense of what this object could do, feeling the pulses from it told her exactly what this thing was and what it was meant for.
"It's... a Goho-M. Like 'go home'? If you open this thing, it'll warp any friendly presences back to the entrance of whatever uh, dungeon, they're currently in. Here, Lydia, you take it. This thing's starting to creep me out." She handed the Goho-M back to her.
"A pocket warp back to the entrance. I guess fortune really did favor us today. Well, let's get out of here." Lydia opened the sphere, which burst with a light that teleported everyone back to the parking lot in front of the skyscraper. They all walked away from it until they were back on grassland, where F.Z. was able to open a portal with her quartz tool. Damien was about to step through the portal when Lydia stopped him and said,
"Hold on. Listen, F.Z... we're all really tired, and I'm sorry we have to do this again to you, but-"
"You gotta go and rest up and you'll come back once you have the time, I know, I know. I'm not stupid, I know you all busted your asses in there. Maybe next time you can come when there isn't someone without a Persona tagging along for the ride. I ain't going anywhere, you know where to find me. Now get going before the Shadows realize you're still here." Allie and Damien went through the exit portal, and Lydia waved goodbye to F.Z. as she walked through. All three of them ended up facing the other direction in Damien's bathroom, and just as before, the strain of fighting in the valley crashed down on them.
"Damien, I... am going to fall asleep on your couch, okay? Okay, thanks." Lydia murmured as she stumbled out of the bathroom, practically hugging the staircase railing to make sure she didn't fall as her clumsy steps took her down to the ground floor. She plopped down on the living room couch and immediately fell asleep.
"Yeah, I'm... it wasn't this bad last time, and now I'm really sleepy. Just... put out one of your high fantasy DVD box sets, tell your family we fell asleep watching those." Allie went downstairs and sat in one of the armchairs, putting up the legrest and closing her eyes. Damien followed the girls, now understanding what it was like for them when they left the girls' restroom back at school that first time, and did exactly as Allie suggested, taking out one of the box sets and putting in one of the DVDs from it, turning on the TV and leaving the movie playing as he sat down on the wooden chair across from Allie.
He picked up his phone from the coffee table and checked it to see how long they had been gone this time. Apparently, what had felt like at least an hour to them was only about fifteen minutes back over here, which didn't match up with what had happened last time. He sighed, figuring it best not to worry about the discrepancy. Time not flowing consistently between here and there was probably one of the least strange things about that place, he thought, and watched the movie until he fell asleep.
A/N: Thanks again to mightymareep98 for the review. Hope you liked the battle.
The next chapter will be a non-canon bonus chapter showing you what would've happened if Lydia and Allie fell in battle. It'll be significantly shorter than this one, for sure.