In the blink of an eye, Dave found himself standing with his friends in Asphodel.
"Aren't we supposed to wind up in the world holding the unregistered person?" John asked, looking around.
"Maybe that only applies if we go in at the same time as them. Who knows how long Vriska's been in here." Jade answered, stepping towards a door that wasn't in the arcade before.
"We don't know that it's Vriska yet." John said, looking in another direction for any clues.
"Yes we do." Dave said, pointing to the small bar-screen above the new door, which plainly read 'Vriska Serket: Prison of Manipulation'.
"Dammit." John muttered, approaching the door. "Then we need to get going."
Dave nodded and motioned for him to open the door. John complied and stepped through. Dave followed, as did Jade and Rose.
The term 'Prison' was quite appropriate. Before them was a dimly-lit prison hall, lined with the rusty bars of abandoned prison cells and decorated with eerie cobwebs.
"Looks like something straight out of a cheap horror film." John observed, summoning his hammer. Rose followed suit, and two abnormally sized sewing needles appeared in her hands. Though they looked impractical, they were likely sharp enough to be used as daggers.
"That'll work." Dave commented, swishing his katana around. "Let's get going."
The sound of metal bending rang from deeper in the prison, and was followed by a few metal bars being tossed into a wall not far from the kids' location. From beyond a newly-formed hole in the wall, a shadow that resembled a detached glove crawled towards the group.
Almost simultaneously, the four kids summoned their respective Persona cards. Dave called on his newest social link; that of The Strength; to see what sort of Persona it would grant him.
"Titan!" he shouted, the name coming to him subconsciously. The ability still seemed strange to him when he thought about it, but when put into practice, he took to it like it was second nature to him. Perhaps it was.
Dave slashed his card, and fading into its' place was a large, extremely muscular man outfitted in Roman centurion armor and wielding a massive sword. It was not unlike John's shadow self, albeit a few heads taller.
The hand-shadow 'stood' in a sense, using its finger appendages to pace back and forth erratically in front of the group. It seemed completely undaunted by the force the kids presented with their myriad of Personas.
John was the first to break the initial ceasefire, having Perseus charge forward to slam into the hand. The attack made contact and the hand went up in smoke like all shadows did when defeated; however, Dave spied two figures leaping out of the smoke.
"It split in two!" Jade shouted observantly, taking aim and firing at one of the new hands with her rifle. The new hand went up in smoke and did not split.
Dave took the cue and had Titan slam his sword into the remaining hand. The hand attempted to dodge but was struck, splitting into two smaller hands like the initial shadow.
"Oh, come on!" Dave groaned as Titan stood back up from the attack. As powerful as he was, Titan's swings and recoveries were slow.
Rose stepped up next. "Here, an easy solution!" she said, lifting one of her needles. Iris responded by lifting a hand and beating her pearlescent wings.
The two hands were suddenly surrounded by curse tags; Dave recognized them as the spell that had taken Jade out during the fight with Rose's shadow; Shadow Rose's spell only encompassed Jade and not the entire party, however.
The tags glowed and emitted a flash; when the light faded, the two hand shadows were gone. "A simple matter of destroying them simultaneously." clarified Rose, twirling around her needles with a smile.
"Nice." John said, lowering his hammer. "We'll let you handle any of them, then. I don't think I can make Perseus hit more than one thing at a time."
"Me and Hypnos can't either." Jade said, reloading her rifle. Dave wondered if it came with bullets when she conjured it. "We should move on."
Dave nodded and took point, venturing further into the prison with his friends. Their Personas followed in back of them, making not a sound. The group passed through the hole in the wall and came across a large door labeled with the words 'Solitary Confinement'.
"This must be it." Dave said, approaching the door and opening it.
The room beyond the door was almost completely dark, save for a light that shined on a girl in the middle of the room. The complete blackness that surrounded her made it hard to judge just how large the room was.
"Vriska?" John called, stepping into the room. He could easily recognize that it was her, but there was something odd about her. The biggest difference from her normal appearance was the fact that she had two horns sprouting from her head, one of them resembling a stinger and the other resembling an insect's claw. Her skin was also a pale grey as opposed to her normally fair skin.
Vriska looked up at the sound of John's voice. "John?" she called out, standing. "What's going on? Where's Gamzee?"
Dave walked in next after John. "Gamzee? What does he have to do with this?" he asked, surprised that their earlier guesses of Gamzee's involvement may have been correct.
"That asshole is the reason I'm in here!" Vriska stated angrily, looking at their group. "He did something to my head... made me type in some code into my computer. Now I'm stuck in here with that other version of myself and I've got these weird things..." she continued, touching the horns on her head. "I just want out!"
"But you can't leave." echoed a distorted version of Vriska's voice. "No one would be waiting for you on the outside anyway."
Vriska's eyes widened with a look of terror and she whirled her head around, looking for the source of the voice. "I already told you, leave me alone!"
"You think words will do me in? You think you can control me?"
Another Vriska, obviously her shadow self, crept into view from beyond the vast darkness in the room. "You think that you can just manipulate me like all the others, don't you? Telling me to go away will make it all better, right?" She mocked, chuckling lightly as she saw the real Vriska's face.
Vriska stood in silence, slightly trembling.
"No one likes you. You know that, right? Being a huge bitch to people to get what you want only works so much until they all get fed up with your bullshit. You end up with no friends acting like that. But you can't stop. You love the feeling of being in control. You catch them like flies in a spider's web, and toy with them until they can escape."
Vriska fell to her knees, shuddering even more.
"But your web is getting weaker. It's getting smaller, more brittle. Flies just buzz on past it. They know you. They know your nature. You go right around and blame them for how they avoid you, but you know deep down that it's your 're the bitch no one wants to be around because they know they'll be hurt. In your quest to make people like you; whether they want to or not; you're really just pushing them away."
"Stop!" Vriska shrieked. "Shut up! What do you know?"
"What DO I know?" Shadow Vriska asked, stepping around Vriska and softly stroking her hair. "I know all about you." she muttered softly, kneeling down to Vriska and looking her in the eyes. "I know everything there is to know about you. Because I am you."
Dave sighed. "Dammit, here it comes. We really need to attack before these shadows give their creepy speeches next time."
Rose shook her head. "It's good for a person to hear the things they repress from themselves. It helps them come to terms with who they are. You would be amazed as to how much more comfortable being one's self can be when they understand their entire psyche."
John and Jade nodded their heads. Dave often forgot the gravity of the situations that the others had to go through to get their Personas; in a way, he felt a little excluded. He wondered what his own shadow would tell him, had he had one.
"Go to hell! You're not me!" Vriska shouted, standing up and taking a swing at her shadow. Her shadow grinned and dissipated, re-appearing a few feet above in the air. Vriska looked on with tear-stained eyes,
"And there it is!" Shadow Vriska shouted, engulfing herself in the reddish-black smoke that was characteristic of the stronger shadows. The ball of smoke grew larger while Shadow Vriska cackled maniacally.
The group readied their weapons as the smoke faded from view, leaving behind a huge spider-like shadow Vriska that hung from the ceiling. She retained her horns and grey skin, while her face seemed mostly intact save for her one of her glasses lens being replaced by a fleshy eye patch with several glowing 'eyes 'adorning it. Her legs were quite angular and ended in blades at the joints and at the ends. The darkness faded from the room, revealing rusted metal walls completely coated in spider webs and various unreadable phrases written with black paint.
"I am a Shadow. The true self!" bellowed Shadow Vriska, crawling across the ceiling. "A web is both a prison for the hunter and the hunted! Just try and escape from mine!"
"Don't mind if I do!" John shouted, readying his hammer as Shadow Vriska dropped from the ceiling, hitting the ground with a loud thud just behind Vriska.
Vriska backed away but wasn't quick enough, her shadow gripping her with the un-bladed parts of her legs and quickly spinning a web around her. Vriska struggled despite being caught in the web cocoon, which Shadow Vriska attached to the ceiling.
John charged forward alongside Perseus and swung his hammer at Shadow Vriska's leg. Perseus readied itself to conjure up fierce winds in conjunction with John's assault.
"Is that all?" Shadow Vriska taunted, swinging her leg at John and knocking him away. The hit broke John's concentration, causing Perseus to lose its spell as it fell back.
"No heroics, Egbert!" Dave shouted, having Titan approach the shadow.
Shadow Vriska grinned and wove a web at Titan's feet from a distance, stopping its' advance completely. "I'm not even trying!" she shouted mockingly.
Dave groaned and concentrated, summoning Yatagarasu in place of Titan. Titan faded from view, leaving behind the webs that the Shadow have woven, and gave way to the three-legged crow Yatagarasu.
As Yatagarasu dove and weaved around the balls of web that the Shadow shot at it, Rose commanded Iris to fire bolts of lightning at the Shadow, causing temporary distraction.
Shadow Vriska roared in annoyance, approaching the group. Her every step with her bladed legs pierced the ground, shaking the room. Once in range, she began a barrage of slices with her two front legs.
Jade, Rose, and John's Personas swarmed in front of the group and blocked the onslaught as well as they could, though the hits taken by the Personas were felt by the kids as well.
Shadow Vriska suddenly roared as Dave dug his katana into her thorax, spilling blue blood onto the floor. Vriska rolled over, throwing Dave away into the wall.
The other three were able to rest for a moment as they recovered from Shadow Vriska's frenzied attack, with Jade speeding the process by curing each of the others with a spell from Hypnos.
Dave attempted to pull away from the wall, but found himself stuck in the webs. "Shit! Stuck! Stuck!" he shouted, unable to command his Persona well with his arms restrained. Yatagarasu flew around eratically while Dave struggled against his restraints, eventually running into the wall as well and becoming caught up in the web.
John, whose Persona was hardier than Rose or Jade's, stood ready to strike as Perseus once again readied a casting of a wind spell. Shadow Vriska angrily drove her bladed leg at John, who leaped out of the way. The Shadow's leg was stuck in the ground after striking it with such first, a situation that Perseus took advantage of by blowing a full-force wind at Shadow Vriska.
The Shadow was blown away, slamming into the ground not far from the group. "Wind must be her weakness!" Rose said, looking to John.
John nodded and looked up, noticing that his wind spell had blown away some of the webs lining the walls, freeing Dave, Yatagarasu, and knocking the cocoon that contained Vriska from the ceiling.
"Perseus!" he shouted, having his Persona conjure up another gust of wind in the center of the room.
The wind blew away the webs coating Vriska, who gasped at air once her mouth was freed from the cocoon. Shadow Vriska struggled to regain her balance but was unable to fight the oppresing winds that Perseus was creating.
John approached with his hammer, looking Shadow Vriska in the eyes.
"Lights out." he muttered, raising his hammer in the air and slamming it down on the downed Shadow's head, splattering blue blood across the floor. Dave tried his best to not laugh at the terrible one-liner.
Shadow Vriska dissipated into smoke and regained her former form of a Vriska clone, her head once again intact even though John had split her earlier one like a watermelon.
Vriska sighed and got up from the ground, weakly approaching the shadow. "You haven't had enough?" she asked, putting her arm around John's shoulder to support herself.
"Vriska, it's just going to attack again if you don't accept it." John told her, looking at her. Dave, Jade and Rose approached the two from behind, ready to act should Shadow Vriska attack once again. "Don't worry, we'd understand. We had to go through this too."
Vriska shook her head. "I... guess I don't have a choice. But she was right. She really was. She read me like a book."
Shadow Vriska looked down at the ground like a dog that had done something wrong.
"You're completely right. I'm a huge bitch." Vriska said, looking at her Shadow. "And people are always going to see me as a massive bitch. It's who I am. But I can accept that it's what's holding me back. Maybe that will help me change. You knew me, you knew what was wrong. You really are me."
The Shadow looked back up with a smile and faded away, being replaced by a tarot card marked with the number 9.
"The Hermit." Rose clarified. Dave was ever-grateful of her being able to make sense of the occult parts of the computer world; otherwise he'd be completely clueless.
The card then faded into a blue light, that bathed Vriska's persona; a bare-chested woman whose long blue hair fell down to cover her breasts. He lower body was that of a spider with a blue astrological symbol for 'Scorpio' adorning the abdomen.
"Arachne." Vriska muttered, her eyes closing as Arachne faded. After the blue light faded from her body, Vriska collapsed. John was able to catch her before she hit the ground.
"She must be exhausted." Jade said, feeling her forehead. "We need to get her out of here."
"Right." John said, looking down at the faint Vriska with a blush in his cheeks. He picked her up and took her through the newly formed door to exit the computer world, followed by the others.
The four of them woke up in the middle of the living room where they had been when they entered the computer world. The seniors stood around the living room on their computers as well, though they were awake.
"We were going to go in after you guys, but Asphodel wouldn't let us!" Jake said. "It said something about a player limit."
"Apparently each world can only hold four players at a time." Dirk said. "What were you guys doing in there? The new door wouldn't let us through while you four were in it. Who's 'Vriska'?"
The four juniors, primarily Rose, explained the situation to the seniors.
"So this Gamzee fella mind-controlled her or somethin'?" Roxy asked, sitting back in her armchair.
"That's what we're guessing." Dave said. "I guess she woke up in her dorm. It's not our physical bodies that dive into the computer after all. We're gonna talk to her tomorrow and see how many beans she can spill."
"Easy, though." John mentioned. "She's been through a lot. She was in there longer than the rest of us."
"True." Dave said. "Then it's decided. Egbert will be her knight in shining armor and will take on the heavy burder of talking to her."
"What?" John exclaimed, looking at him.
"Look, you were the one who smashed her Shadow's head in. If that doesn't designate you as the diplomat in this situation, I don't know what will." Dave replied, crossing his arms. "It's a great way to start a conversation. 'Wow, your face looks great when it's not smeared against the floor'."
Jade punched Dave on the arm. "Dave, quit it."
Dave looked at her with a hurt expression, but stopped with the teasing like she asked. "Seriously though, I think you should talk to her. She knows you best out of all of us. Ask her about the Gamzee situation. Let her know that you get what's up with her."
"Alright." John said, blushing. "Tomorrow then."
"Tomorrow." Dave repeated, looking to the stairs. "I'm beat. See you guys later."
"Same." Rose said, standing and heading to the stairs.
Jade patted John's shoulder as she followed. The seniors dispersed to get up to their own activities, having not been exhausted by a trip to the computer world.
Sighing, John stood and retired to his room as well.