Ren lifted yet another wardrobe, this one a particularly robust oaken thing. The slime shadow he was hunting was not underneath, as it had not been underneath the last dozen or so pieces of oversized furniture. Frustration beginning to get to him, Ren used his persona-enhanced strength to fling the wardrobe behind him. With a loud splintering of wood and nails, it landed upon a pile of destroyed objects- desks, dressers, and other side items, all doomed to this new scrapheap for the sin of not having that god-damn slime under it.

Seriously!? What the hell is with this Seed anyway!? Why giant furniture!? Did this lowly yakuza goon secretly miss the days of being a toddler?

Ren closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He couldn't just go around looking under every piece of furniture in this place. Time was slower here than in the real world, but he couldn't afford to take forever. Makoto was outside in a yakuza strip club, guarding him as best she could. Ren needed a better strategy to find this damn slime.

But what did he have to work with? There was his Third-Eye, of course. It made some shadows and objects glow, but it wasn't x-ray vision. The dark furniture which blocked normal vision blocked his Third-Eye just as effectively. Next, Ren had persona-enhanced strength and speed, but though Seeds were small relative to Palaces, this place was still big enough to have way too much furniture to get through. And what if the slime simply oozed its way from unchecked furniture to get under the pile of checked furniture!? That may have already happened for all he knew.

And other than the enhanced physical capabilities, Arsene provided Ren some, for lack of a better word, 'magic spells'. Ren could curse things, but he was pretty sure slimes were highly resistant to that form of attack. Slimes hated fire, but since he and Makoto had moved forward without the other Phantom Thieves, Ann wasn't here to burn things. If she were here, she could set the whole place on fire and drive the slime into the open. Yet another point for the case that the Phantom Thieves were much better off sticking together.

Still, could Ren do something like what Ann could do? Could he curse the furniture?

He placed a gloved hand on a nearby office desk.

"Arsene," said Ren quietly, "Eiha."

Power flowed through him, the spell fired- but other than a dull flash of reddish light from Ren's palm, nothing seemed to happen. The desk appeared unaffected. Well… it was made of dead wood, so perhaps there was nothing left for Ren to curse. Regardless, it meant he couldn't curse the slime into the open by trying to get at the slime, due to resistance, or by attacking the furniture...

Into the open... Into the open! Ren needed to get the slime to come out, but he couldn't drive it out. So perhaps he could trick it? He could… try the ole' walk-away. It was dumb, but slimes were surely dumb, too. They were just.. slime. It was worth a shot.

Ren sighed loudly. "Well, damn! I can't find him!"

He stomped his feet and moved back in the direction of the infiltration window.

"Screw it! This bastard isn't worth my time!"

More stomping. All the way back to where the little window into the real world sat near the floor of the Seed. Then, Ren hopped up on top of a large bookshelf and laid himself flat to watch. He didn't have time to waste, but hopefully, the slime wouldn't stay hidden for much longer. Ren just hoped it would return to the central clearing, otherwise it could be anywhere in this Seed, not hiding, and Ren still wouldn't see the damn thing for all the clutter.

Ren waited. And waited. It wasn't working. This was just wasting more time. He needed to get back out there... No! Maybe the slime was about to come out. If he got up now, it would invalidate all the time invested so far!... Or he would stay on this bookshelf while something bad happened in the real world and Makoto didn't have any backup...

Damnit!

This whole infiltration was not a good idea. It was taking too long. This wasn't working. Ren leveraged his arms to get himself back up from his prone position. It might just be time to return to the real world and accept this as a foolhardy attempt.

Abruptly, Ren felt a pop inside his mind. He gasped in surprise, slumping back down onto his chest and instinctively grabbing his head. It wasn't painful exactly, but it was... wrong and unpleasant and powerful. Overwhelming. All Ren could do was curl into a ball and quiver.

Then the sensation was gone, as suddenly as it had first appeared. Ren's body untensed. He let out a ragged breath. What the fuck was that? A sense of urgency grew in Ren's chest. He didn't have any more time. He needed to get out of here and back to Makoto in the real world. Again, he started to lift himself up.

A wooden groan shattered the silence of the Seed. It sounded like a desk sliding on a concrete floor. Ren hunkered back down, his urgency morphing from anxious to excited. Maybe this was it! Maybe it was coming out and this mission could still be a success!

Ren peered into the dim twilight of the Seed, straining to see what he could of the central clearing. Nothing. Nothing. Noth- ah! Was that it? A dark smudge of something moved into the clearing. The slime. It was out. Now, Ren just needed a stealthy approach. He began to quietly rise yet again.

The color red pulsed through the walls of the Seed, like the taillights of a passing car at night. Ren froze, unsure if he saw what he saw. Then the Seed began to darken, like a cloud-obscured sun was setting behind the mountains. This was new. He'd never experienced such dramatic environment change in a Seed before. He swiveled his head all round, but didn't see anything else going on. It was just dark. Annoying, but not dangerous.

Ren returned his gaze to the central clearing. Now it was shrouded in darkness. If the slime were there or gone into hiding again, he had no way of knowing.

Unless…

Ren had not used his 'other' vision in a long time. It was worth a try.

Ren closed his eyes to the darkness, then opened his Third Eye. Everything was still darkly black, all except for a smudge of blue down where the Seed clearing should be. A blue, glowing aura, about the size and shape of a puddle of slime. So, it was still in the open. The mission could still be accomplished!

Then Ren noticed the Seed and everything in it… it was beginning to redden. All the dark, black shapes of the Seed's furniture gained detail and definition in a steadily growing red light. And from the floor of the seed… no from the ground underneath the floor, a red light was… growing, or rising? Yes, rising. Rising up from somewhere below, towards Ren and the Seed he was in. A simmering red star blazing out, rising out from the deep- an imminent, sanguine dawn.

Ren was no stranger to red auras. They always encompassed the strongest shadows which the Phantom Thieves faced: dangerous foes never to be taken lightly. He'd always felt trepidation before challenging such shadows; apprehension; fear for his friends. But as this red thing approached, Ren could only feel the empty vacuum of dread in the bottom of his gut, a paralytic frost of fear behind his eyes. He shivered, wide-eyed, hugging the top of his bookcase perch, as the red sun breached the ground of the Seed and its ruddy luminosity seared at his Third-Eye. He closed it, shuddering in pain.

Ren's two normal eyes reopened, and they saw only the black darkness of the shrouded Seed. Though he was now blind to the auras of shadows, Ren could still feel the presence of the new arrival. The dread still sat on his back, his mind was halfway to panic and unable to plan any sort of action.

"Trickster," said a voice in the dark.

Feminine. Youthful. Slightly jovial. Terrible.

"Come out."

The oppressive dread in Ren's mind increased. He knew instinctively that to answer was to die. Blind to the dark, unwilling to reuse his Third-Eye, Ren's ears kicked into overdrive, ringing with the sound of silence and his own pulse.

There was a slight slithering sound approaching. Ren went stiff. A hissing. A sound like leather on wood. Below him and to the right, and also to the left, then behind. Something was moving through the dark around his bookcase perch. Hunting him.

"I know you're in here, Trickster."

A louder hiss somewhere off to Ren's left.

"Aha. There you are."

Move! Run! Do something! Ren screamed at himself, but his body would not obey.

But before Ren could get himself to move, a familiar male voice broke the silence.

"NO! Not me! No!"

Ren heard more hissing, leathery scraping, wood snapping, furniture falling over in the dark, and a final fearful scream.

"Eh? You're not him," said the young voice. "But you will die for me, too."

A throat-tearing scream rolled through the dark and the Seed shuddered. The over-large bookcase under Ren wobbled as the earth quaked beneath it. The air filled with the sound of gravel raining down on wood surfaces. Ren couldn't see the Seed's sky in the dark, but he could feel it falling upon him in a sprinkle of debris. This miniature world was collapsing with the death of its creator.

Something terrible was in here with him, but Ren needed to move. He needed to escape. If he didn't move, he would certainly die. He clenched a fist and willed his body to move, sitting up in the black.

And if he was going to make it back to his window to the real world, Ren needed to see something other than dark. He closed his eyes, and opened the Third-Eye once more. The redlight was all about him, just as painful as before, but at least the light gave definition to the terrain and obstacles nearby. Ren could use that light to navigate the collapsing Seed.

He turned his head to look back toward the center of the room. The redlight aura seemed centered over the point where it first rose from the ground, as if it were prepared to sink back down. Eight tendrils came out from the aura's central point, a brightness that was mercifully obscured by intervening furniture. But the tendrils were up in the air and easy to see, seemingly engaged in serpentine exploration of the Seed. Thankfully, none of the tendrils were between Ren and ((he turned his head back towards the nearby ground)) and the… window?

He couldn't see it. But then again, he'd never looked at one of those windows with the Third-Eye, so maybe he couldn't see it that way. The window had to be there. It must be there. Ren took a deep breath, and another, pulling in air calmly and steadily. The dread began to fade. There was no more time for fear- it was move or die. He forced himself to roll off the bookcase.

His coattail slapped noisily against the side of a desk, loud even amidst the falling debris of the collapsing Seed. Ren heard new hissing in the distance, multiple sources of hissing. He spared a glance over his shoulder, wincing against the bright redness of the aura. The serpentine tendrils seemed to be orienting on him now.

"Found you! But where are you going? This is the only way in or out, you know."

Ren didn't know what the voice was talking about, but it didn't matter. He just needed to get to the window. And here it was! Or where it should be. He still couldn't see anything in the red-tinged world of his Third-Eye. Ren closed it. He reopened his normal eyes to the darkness and saw… nothing but black.

There was no window. No opening to the yakuza club where Makoto waited. Nothing at all! He was trapped, trapped with- whatever that red thing was!

Wait! There was something in the air. A blackness that was somehow darker than the surrounding black- like the shadow of a tree at night. It was small, roughly window-shaped. Ren reached for it and found his hand met no resistance. It was certainly an opening or hole of some sort. Perhaps the window just looked different now that-

*GO, FOOL!*

Ren jolted in surprise at Arsene's sudden outburst, but he obeyed and leapt face-first into the black.