"Something's not right!" Teddie shouts suddenly. "The nose knows when something is different and… whatever it is is making my fur stand straight up!" He tries to push past the invisible wall again.
"What do you mean Ted?" Kanji looks around their floor and can't see anything different. He's grown slightly impatient with all this standing around but, so far, Teddie has been keeping them updated. With little hints like "he has bearly any space between him and Marie left" and "He's pretty furocious!"
"Something doesn't smell right. It's beary different than anything I've smelled before!" He shivers. "I can tell it's a shadow, but it's not like the others!"
"Maybe...Sho's shadow?" Yosuke questions despite it not quite making sense. He already had a persona right? So would he even have a shadow?
"No sir-y!" Teddie shakes his head. "It's big and scaaary. But doesn't seem like one of those either."
This is when Mitsuru speaks up. Most of them had forgotten she'd even followed them in. Her face is pale, even more so than usual and she shivers.
""I've felt this before, in Tartarus, and it isn't good. He needs to get out of there quick." She remembers the sound of those rattling chains and the overwhelming fear that would swell on the floors where the Reaper would follow behind them too closely. This was a feeling she could never forget, even after all this time. "It must be a reaction from the Kirijo group's meddling. I didn't know those shadows could even get out…"
"You really think she wants to see you?" Growls a voice from behind Sho, teasingly.
Sho turns back to face the figure that looks like himself. The being stands with his back arched and two swords in his hand. He looks too much like him to just be some other shadow. Unusual though it may be, Minazuki seems to have the same cocky smile on his face that Sho use to brandish regularly.
"What the hell is this?!" Sho shouts to him. He walks up to the figure, seemingly unafraid. "After disappearing forever I find you in here and that's the first thing you say to me?!" He comes face to face with the other him, assuming he must be seeing Minazuki as he has done so many times before. "I thought you were dead."
"What? Minazuki?" The person looks down to himself and laughs. "Oh he is dead." Holding a sword out, dangerously close to the real Sho's face, the other him laughs. "And who's fault is that?!"
Waking up after the surgery had been more painful than anything Sho had never experienced before. He spent several days strapped down to the less than comfortable bed while scientists poked and prodded him. But, it was during this time that he gained his brother.
It had been late night, Sho was nearly asleep. He felt the odd sensation of someone too close to him, expecting it to be another one of the stupid men in white, he shot his eyes open and opened his mouth to speak. Instead, he had been met with his own likeness. Yet, he was much more calm than Sho and standing free of restraints.
"Wh-who are you?!" Sho shouts and attempts to pull himself out of the restraints. He's suddenly worried about what the surgery actually was. Had they cloned him because he wasn't good enough? Is that why he's stayed strapped to this damned bed?! Was he becoming useless just like so many of the other failures he'd fought over the years?!
"You can call me... Minazuki." The voice sounds the same as his but the smile is too calm. It's not a smile Sho knew how to mimic. "You are the only one that can see me, so please, calm down."
Sho looks around the room as if it was some kind of joke. He faces... Minazuki and squints one eye suspiciously.
"What the hell? I'm the only one? What the hell's that supposed to mean?"
"I came to protect you and help you to accomplish your goals."
"I don't need no friggin' protecting!" Sho lies through clenched teeth. No matter how much he wanted to believe that Dad was doing these things only to make him stronger, Sho couldn't help but deny that the tests and battle were becoming too painful. Sometimes he would find himself going unconscious from the overwhelming amount of pain after a series of tests or "experiments" as Dad so liked to call them. Staring at Minazuki, Sho shrugs the best he is able to while being restrained.
"And I don't have any goals as you put it."
"So you like the world you live in then?" Minazuki asks quietly. He looks back to his replica and touches the furious boy's forehead. "You don't have to answer that now. Rest. Let this pain pass." At his touch, Sho feels the pain he'd been feeling vanish before he falls asleep. This was a sleep more restful than Sho could ever recall but when he awoke it was almost as if too much time had passed. He couldn't remember the fight he supposedly did and try as he might, Sho couldn't shake the feeling that something wasn't right.
But each night, from then on, he and Minazuki would talk and share the tales that Sho came to know as his other life. His brother was there to protect him, to shield him from the things getting too hard even for someone as strong as him to withstand. At first, Sho had been offended by this. He was strong damnit! No one needed to help him!
However, having a friendship - even if it was with someone that no one else could see - was something Sho came to appreciate fully. He would confide in this strange new person and found that, for the first time in his life, he really, truly felt appreciated. Minazuki was smart, calm and way more in control than Sho had ever been.
This was probably why Minazuki got Tsukiyomi and not Sho. She was the quiet woman would sometimes join the two of them in the hollow room, simply observing them together. And while Minazuki could command her to do things, Sho could never get her to listen. It had been frustrating, of course, but also fascinating. So this was a persona. This was the thing that Dad had been trying so hard to create. Sho could understand why Dad had wanted one of these to be born within him when he first saw Tsukiyomi fight. She was powerful, able to take down foes in seconds, and she could use abilities Sho could only dream of having.
He hadn't expected Dad to be so upset that Minazuki had been the one to gain such powers, after all, weren't they kind of the same person? But Ikutski had been furious at the birth of another person within Sho. In fact, the day had come that he decided he would remove Minazuki. This thought terrified Sho in a way he'd never been. After being alone for so long, he couldn't imagine suffering through it again. Minazuki had given him someone to talk to, someone to learn from and confide in with the grueling battles were just too harsh. There had even been times where Minazuki had taken over when Sho couldn't see what good it would do to suffer through such a painful test.
While many of the scientists in witness assumed it was because Minazuki did not like the idea of being removed, Sho knew why Minazuki had tried to kill Dad. It was because Sho was tired of being alone and refused to let someone take his brother away. Never again did he want to suffer like that.
Minazuki's outbreak had been the final straw. Dad had to remove him. He couldn't risk that monster attempting to kill him again. Of course, in doing so, he nearly killed Sho and thus how the angry red head ended up in a coma with only Minazuki to keep him company. That loneliness from his earlier childhood would never be replaced. Even if his body withered away in a coma, Sho was happy to finally have someone who respected him and fought for him.
"You...aren't Minazuki?" Sho looks to the other version of himself almost sadly. He had thought, if only for a second, that he had found his brother.
"No. I'm the thing you fear most!" The doppelganger laughs then lowers his sword again. Moving in close, the thing allows the smile on it's face to grow even more.
"The…" Sho looks at it with narrow eyes. None of this was making any sense. If this person wasn't Minazuki who in the hell was it?! And the thing he fears most? What's that even supposed to mean!?
"Don't you see? I am you."
"How in the hell does that make any sense. I'm me." Sho stares the creature down as it laughs.
"The thing you fear more than anyone or anything else... I am you." He stares at the true version of himself, watching Sho's brilliant blue eyes grow twice in size. "All I am is a monster, capable only of killing and hurting those I care about." The voice so much like Sho's speaks tauntingly. "First Dad, then Minazuki now Marie. All of it, is because of me."
Sho stares at the thing and somehow he can't deny what it's saying. While he hadn't wanted to hear these things, it was almost like hearing Minazuki explain his thoughts to him. There had been nights where Sho was unable to make sense of the emotions welling in his chest and only because Minazuki had been rational enough to explain them did Sho ever understand.
In the distance, a quiet voice calls to Sho. She had thought she'd been imagining the voice as so many of the shadows had attempted to mimic the voice she'd grew to care about, but Marie could tell this one was different.
"Sho. Be careful." Her voice is tired and distant so Sho attempts to seek her out, but the other version of himself steps in the way.
"You can't ignore me!" It stares at him angrily and raises both swords as if to beg Sho to fight him. But Sho simply looks over the other man's shoulder to see Marie in chains, just in front of a huge shadow. His heart drops and his stomach does flips. Oddly enough, it's a feeling he's only know once or twice in his lifetime. Fear.
"Ok, fine." Sho looks at the reflection of himself and growls. "You're right. I always manage to fuck things up because I'm just a stupid little kid." He grumbles then knocks the swords out of the way of the person simply staring at him in befuddlement. "I'm afraid that I'll slip up and end up like I use to be before…" His voice ties up for a second, but Sho shakes his head. "Before Minazuki...died. I'm afraid of myself more than I'm afraid of pretty much anything else." He stares down this other self with narrow lips and overwhelming confidence. "But if you think you deserve more attention just because you are me then you are wrong." He stares at the other form and he walks forward. The menacing motions cause the other Sho to step backward. Together, they inch closer to the shadow wrought with chains. The chilling aura around the creature should frighten Sho, but it doesn't. Instead, the sight of seeing Marie so tired and captured scares him more even than himself.
"If you are me then you know I'm scared and...and yeah, I don't want to admit it, because it's friggin stupid! You can't escape yourself what good is it to be scared?!" Looking over to make sure Marie is still where she was, Sho swallows hard and tries to give her a reassuring nod. "But Minazuki taught me that sometimes you don't know yourself as well as you thought you did. So, if you say you are me, I believe you. And if you say that I'm afraid of myself, you're right. I am. But, I am not about to stand here and waste anymore time fighting you when the one I want to protect is right there!" Sho looks over to Marie and can finally make out the color of her eyes.
Teal. They are teal.