Chapter 50: Tonight we dine in hell
IMPORTANT: Fanfiction(dot)net don´t let me properly mark time jumps anymore so I had mark those using "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"!
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Loud applause could still be heard throughout the courtyard, especially for Akihiko Sanada who had proven in these last few months that he did his best to listen to everybody and to try and catch the culprit. With a somewhat awkward smile he endured the continuing applause, his colleague Chidori Yoshino who was standing next to him nodding towards the crowd in thanks.
"So they prevented Bagman-sensei from taking over Tanaba University.", Naoto said, suddenly standing next to the others of the group.
"Whoa! Where the hell did you come from?!", Yosuke screeched, completely taken by surprise that Naoto was suddenly there, and stumbled backwards, knocking over some students who angrily pushed him back.
"What do you mean?", Yukiko asked her.
Naoto sighed. "So you really didn´t notice it?", she said. "There have been several murders already at this university, and none of them have caused such an uproar among the authorities. But the last murder caused them to send in dozens of officials who immediately set up strict new rules. Can you imagine why?"
"Uh... well...", Kanji scratched the back of his head in thought while the new directors were holding their speech.
"Because this time a professor had been killed.", Souji suddenly sad. "The other times it had been students who had been killed!"
"Exactly.", Naoto agreed and nodded. "The students don´t really mean anything to the authorities. It´s the professors they´re worried about, especially because of the warning."
"Bastards!", Kou growled.
"So Bagman-sensei would have been the most logical successor.", Naoto continued. "You know the things he always says. He´s always placing himself and the other professors on a golden throne while the students are nothing but mere worms to him. I had thought they would choose him for sure."
"But they choose Sanada-san and that Yoshino woman instead.", Patty noted.
"Yes. The Kirijo Group interfered.", Naoto replied.
"Kirijo Group?", Chie asked. "What´s they have to do with our new directors?"
"Well, it´s well known that Akihiko-san and the person currently leading the Kirijo Group are old friends. There are also rumours that they´re more than just friends.", Naoto answered. "And Chidori Yoshino has been the personal secretary of Mitsuru Kirijo for years. It´s obvious who the real new director of this university is: Mitsuru Kirijo."
"So is that a good thing or a bad thing?", Patty asked. "I know that the Kirijo Group already has some experience in schools and such since they´re involved with Gekkoukan High School on Port Island."
"Well, our lives will certainly be easier than being led by Bagman-sensei.", Naoto opined and threw a confused glance at Mr. Bagman who had been applauding rather enthusiastically together with everyone else. Why would the man be so thrilled that those two people were now so supposed to lead Tanaba University when he´d nearly been made the new director himself? She followed the old professor´s gaze and noticed that it was resting on Akihiko who left most of the speech to Yoshino-san. Naoto had noticed numerous times now that the professor seemed to had a strange fixation on the young police officer, to be precise every time she ran into Mr. Bagman while discussing something with Akihiko. What exactly were the professors intentions in regards to Akihiko? She looked up to the sky in thought. Indeed, Mr. Bagman seemed to be on their side, with all those hints he had given them during Sideu´s stay in the TV world. But could Akihiko really be the cul--? No! She shook her head while perishing the thought, and looked up at the podium.
"... will the curfew be loosened somewhat from now on.", they could hear Yoshin speak. "You will be able to leave the campus during the day, but at night it will still be closed, for your own safety." She looked at Akihiko who nodded.
"Furthermore, we have decided to change the rules about the living arrangements.", the police officer continued the speech, the students looking at him in slight confusion. "We know that many of you have great fears because of this murder case, but have not enough money to live somewhere else. Thus we have decided that those individuals - mainly females - will be allowed to share a lounge with the opposite sex from now on so that they have at least the reassurance that a man is there to protect them." A few students grinned in a really nasty and perverted way while Mr. Bagman seemed rather angry about that decision.
"Of course, that doesn´t mean that we will just allow anyone to share a lounge with the opposite sex just to satisfy their sexual needs!", Akihiko continued. "If one wants to live with the opposite sex, they first have to fill in an application which we will review in detail."
Kou let his hopeful gaze wander towards Chie while Kanji stared at Naoto.
"Is something the matter, Tatsumi?", Naoto asked the tall man, one eyebrow raised in confusion.
"Uh...", Kanji hurriedly looked to the side.
"Senpaaaaiii~! I´m sooo scared at night with just Naoto being there in my room to protect me!", Rise squealed the next moment and hurriedly clung to Souji while the others only rolled their eyes.
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Hours later found the investigation team in one of Tokyo´s great shopping center where they went to shop for food in the Junes market... Well, some of them did shop for the so important food while some of them rather browsed through the cosmetics department (Rise), others spent hours in the sweets department (Patty), and some of them sped around in a shopping cart (Teddie) while being chased by an angry Yosuke through the market.
"Thank goodness we´re finally allowed to leave the university and get some new supplies. The only thing we had left in the fridge were all contaminated by that hypnotic. And eating caferteria food all the time isn´t the best solution.", Yukiko sighed in relief while following Chie through the steak department together with the others. She inspected her purse, only a little bit of money left. "Hmm..."
The others looked at her in pity, still remembering her angry mother, but refrained from suggesting to loan her some money. They all knew that she would never accept it.
"Well, if you don´t need that stuff anymore, you can give it to me.", Patty who had returned from the sweets department, her cart now full with sugar bombs, suggested.
"Uh, you sure you´ll be able to eat all those sweets by yourself, Patty?", Chie asked her, her own cart full of steaks.
"Oh, no, not all of them.", Pattc said, chuckling. "Some of them are for Hiro."
"Hiro?", Yukiko asked.
"Oh, of course, you wouldn´t know him.", Patty said. "Hiroshi Sideu, my cousin. He´s at Tanaba University at well."
"Really? Why did I never see him at one of your meetings?", Souji asked.
"W-well...", Patty started hesitantly. "He´s not really a person that fits the Sideu standard. He´s... hmm... How do you call someone like that...? Ah, yes! A goofball!"
"Okaaaay...", Kanji only said and threw a bag of chips into his cart.
"The old Patty Sideu would have never even deigned to look at him.", Patty continued. "But the new one does... I... Anyway, some of them are for Hiro. End of the story! That´s it! Bast! Capiche?!" She wrinkled her nose, her face beet-red in embarrassment, and quickly departed for the vegetables department to look for some cabbages.
"Patty-chan´s really cute when she´s embarrassed.", Rise giggled, having finally returned from her adventures with the newest cosmetics, and was now helping Naoto to fill their cart. "... Were are Teddie and Yosuke-senpai, anyway?"
"Playing tag.", Kou explained to her while rummaging through a stack of ham, wanting to get the best one of them.
"Aaaaah!!!", they suddenly could hear Patty screaming, followed by a screeching Yosuke and a loud crash.
"It seems Sideu has managed to find those two.", Naoto sighed in annoyance and followed the others to the vegetables department to find out what exactly had happened.
"Am I only imagining things or is Teddie rather fixated on Patty?", Kou asked the others.
"That´s fine with me.", Yukiko opined. "His constant talk about `scoring´ is slowly driving me insane."
"Where did Ted pick that word up anyway?", Kanji asked.
"Um...", Yukiko started and looked to the side in embarrassment, only her, Souji, Chie and Yosuke knowing when the blond Shadow had learned that word.
"Well, you should never wear any perfume that smells like jasmine.", Souji hurriedly said to spare Yukiko any explanations, earning himself an appreciate glance from Yukiko.
"What do you mean, Seta-senpai?", Naoto asked, puzzled.
"Well, ever since the day we´ve rescued Patty he´s been talking about how nice she smells.", Souji explained. "If I remember correctly she likes to wear a perfume that smells like jasmine."
"Must be really stimulating for him then. He normally isn´t that perverted.", Rise said.
"Perverted little fetishist...", Chie grumbled.
"Well, there´s gonna be a time when an innocent little boy becomes a full-grown man who want´s ta experiment a li´l bit.", Kanji said and nodded sagely. The others looked at him in disbelief, but forgot everything about what he´d said when they spotted the chaos in the vegetables department: Shelves after shelves lay on the ground, vegetable lying everyone, and among all that chaos Patty, Yosuke and Teddie - Teddie being captured beneath the upside-down lying shopping cart - were lying in a sea of cabbage.
"Perverted teddy bear...", Patty grumbled while trying to stand up and stopped in horror when she saw one of the angry clerks who had arrived at the department.
"Uh...", Yosuke stammered in embarrassment. "E-every day´s great at your Junes?"
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Later that day Teddie was once again sitting all alone in his lounge, new sugar stash in his lap and playing the online game at Souji´s laptop (Yosuke had permitted him to touch his laptop). He jumped up in horror when Souji returned from his trip in the TV world to teach Patty the basics of battle, and tried to hide the sugar in vain.
"S-sensei...!", Teddie started with fake happiness, but hung his head low in sadness when Souji wordlessly grabbed the sugar and threw it into the bin.
"Yosuke´s right. You´re definitely eating too much sugar.", Souji scolded him and tried with all his might to resist Teddie´s puppy dog eyes. The blond Shadow just had this child-like aura around him that would evoke parental feelings even in the greatest macho. But the worst thing about it was that Teddie had slowly started to realize this fact during the years they had spent apart and always tried to use it to his advantage. "Where´s Yosuke anyway?", he asked to get Teddie to stop using that look.
"I dunno.", Teddie replied while massacring a crowd of virtual sheep with the help of his online friend BoyWithBlueHair. "I had taken a nap in Sensei´s bed--" (At those words Souji took a short glance at his bed and noticed a faint trace of drool on his pillow) "-- and when I woke up Yosuke was already gone. He´d left some notice stuck on his laptop in which he´d told me not to touch it."
"... He did?", Souji slowly asked and stared at Yosuke´s laptop for a while before finally grabbing a chair and opening the laptop that had been on standby, thus booting itself up immediately when Souji opened it. The next moment had to turn down the laptop´s volume, though, since some loud techno music started playing a few seconds after. "What the hell...?!", he groaned and took a look at the Internet site the laptop had automatically loaded. It was the popular Internet site YouTube, and the video that had been loaded was titled `Tonight we dine in hell (Sparta Remix)´, uploaded by a user called `DiscoFrog2000´. The silver-haired man didn´t have to think twice about who that user was that had created that video which was some kind of parody of a well-known move (Author´s note: That video really exists. Here´s the link:www(dot) youtube (dot) com/watch?v=dBZNS2WRpyM&playnext_from=TL&videos=PAuhHGqfKKE). He listened to the video a few times, then he paused it. It was a rather strange, simple video, yet still... the components were rather fitting and the music wasn´t that bad at all. "So this is what Yosuke does in his free time when he´s here...", Souji mumbled and stared at the pause screen for a while before clicking to another site that had started loading when he´d opened the laptop. "4chan...", he read the site´s title and scrolled down, his eyes getting bigger and bigger by the second. 4chan seemed to be some kind of English forum where one could talk about everyone - meaning REALLY EVERYTHING - together with other anonymous users. But what had Souji so surprised weren´t all those different strange or disgusting topics - video games, bestiality, drugs, hentai and other such horrible things -, but rather the terminology the users used, like `SAGE GOES IN THE EMAIL FIELD! DO IT FAGGOT!´, `SAUCE NAO!´, `NEWFAG! BURN IN HELL!´ , `SAGE THE SHIT OUT OF THIS FAIL THREAD!!!´, `Y´ALL NIGGAS POSTIN´ IN A TROLL THREAD!´ or `GTFO OFF MY MOON KINGDOM!!!´. The silver-haired was completely beat by that strange world that presented himself in this strange forum.
"Oooh! That woman there got some huuuge melo--", Teddie began enthusiastically when Souji made the mistake of entering the hentai section, then hung his head low when Souji, disgusted by what he had seen, hurriedly went back to the section the page had first loaded, 4chan´s music section.
"Music again...", Souji mumbled and clicked on the third and last site that had loaded by itself: It was a completely normal chat site. Yosuke seemed to had himself logged off before leaving, but Souji managed to spot the user name `Garu´s Traitor´on a list of randomly chosen users, memorizing that user name and the site´s name before closing the laptop again. "Nothing..."
"Should there have been something, Sensei?", Teddie asked curiously.
"... No, of course not.", Souji said after a bit of hesitation, stood up and started to change his pillow slip. He couldn´t tell the blond Shadow what he was really thinking about... Just like Naoto had already decided that Ikas seemed to be the culprit, he, too, had come to a conclusion that made his stomach churn. "Yosuke..."
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Author´s note: Ikas, Bagman, Akihiko, Fuuka and now Yosuke: Those are people that are being suspected to be the culprit by the investigation team? But is the culprit really one of them? Or someone else? Well, only I know the answer for that question for now. ^^
Also, note that according to Persona 3 Chidori had lost all of her memories about the Dark Hour, meaning she can´t be exactly the same emo girl she once was. She also won´t have that much of a role in this story since she´d been crammed into it just a bit ago by me.
Kisdota-The Freak Gamer: It won´t really screw up the story. Akihiko said at the graveyard that Chidori sacrificed herself for Junpei. In both version (the one where she stays dead and the one where is revived) she sacrifices herself for him so that won´t screw up the story at all. If I had mentioned that she´d dead in that chapter, then I would have had a problem. ^^
