2/4
I was in the middle of completing my chores for the day, when I received a message on the communicator. Checking it, I saw it was from Reimu.
aburaage: Hello, Crow, are you there?
pancakeman: Yes, I am here. What's up?
aburaage: I want you to come to the Shrine right away. It's urgent. Starburst, if you're available, I want you to come as well.
seeingstars: Sorry, I just got my thing, I was working on something else. I'll be right there.
I got my jacket on, explained to Masato that Reimu wanted to urgently see me, and he gave his blessing to let me head up to the Shrine.
At the Shrine, Reimu stood out in front, arms crossed and feet tapping impatiently. Just as I touched down, Marisa zoomed in behind me on her broom.
"Impeccable timing," I said to Marisa.
"Well, I'm super-duper fast, so I can be anywhere in Gensokyo that I want in a jiffy." She looked at Reimu. "Mornin' You're lookin' good, considerin' how hammered you got last night."
"That's not important right now," Reimu dismissed. "I have an important matter to discuss with the two of you… or rather, show both of you." She walked up the steps to the main shrine. "Come. It's in here."
As the two of us followed Reimu in, Marisa said to me, "she's in a heck of a mood today. Wonder what's up?"
"It must be very important, since she demanded we come here right away."
Inside the shrine, Reimu led us off to the side. She then looked at me. "Goro, do you recognize this man?"
"Do I recognize which-"
And that's when I saw Dr. Maruki.
"M-M-Maruki?"
He looked up at me. "...Akechi-kun? You're… alive?"
"Well of course I am!" I exclaimed. "The real question is, how did you get here?!"
"I should be asking you the same question," he said simply. "All this time, I thought you had died in Shido's Palace."
"HOW THE HELL DO YOU KNOW ABOUT THAT?" I shouted again.
Maruki looked down. "Heh… well, it's a long story, I suppose."
"I had another strange dream last night," Reimu said, "one where I was fighting alongside the 'Phantom Thieves,' just like that dream from before, against him and his Persona."
Dr. Maruki had a Persona? I… well, I was aware that Shido had stolen his cognitive psience research and assigned me to monitor him, but…
...well then. I guess THAT'S why I was never able to find his shadow to bump him off.
"After we beat him, I confronted him, and grabbed him when he tried to jump. Then I woke up. He was on the floor next to me, so I dragged him into this jail cell." She looked at the cell. "It was meant for Seija, for when she's eventually caught, but it can hold him just fine."
She looked back at us. "Moreover: he's the one responsible for the Outside incident. My apprehending him and holding him here, and the destruction of his fortress out there, means that the incident is resolved, the threat is no more."
Marisa crouched down and looked at him. "Damn. Never imagined the perp would be some dude with messy hair and thick glasses who needs to shave."
Maruki looked at her. "You are…"
"Marisa Kirisame, the love-colored magician. And this, of course, is Reimu Hakurei, keeper of the Hakurei Shrine, keeper of Gensokyo's balance and my best friend."
Maruki looked around. "Gensokyo... what kind of place is this, then?"
Reimu shook her head. "The place whose existence you threatened, even if you never knew of it. It's a place inside the Hakurei Border, a border between fantasy and reality, where everything the Outside no longer believes in ends up. Gods, youkai, monsters, rumors, ghosts… all of those things exist here. It is my duty to maintain the balance between them and the humans of Gensokyo, because if this balance is disrupted it would cease to exist." She turned to me. "The reason Goro is here is because he survived a seemingly unsurvivable event."
"That, and I was inside a palace as it disappeared, causing me to be erased from cognition," I explained. "But instead of dying, I came here. And now, you're dead, as far as the Outside is concerned. So, you have come here."
Maruki looked off to the side. "I see… so youkai and gods really do exist, all because of what people believe…"
"I hear that all the time," Reimu dismissed.
"No, I think it's very interesting," Maruki said. "I'm a cognitive researcher. I was investigating the collective unconscious before I knew the Metaverse even existed. I was on the brink of proving how what we perceived shaped the world around us."
"And now you have your proof," Reimu said. "What you tried to do out there, manipulate the cognitions of every human on Earth, threatened to throw Gensokyo's order so badly off-balance that it would have collapsed on itself." She bent over and glared at him. "Make no mistake: I've executed criminals for less severe offenses. Cheating the cycle of life and death. Humans becoming youkai. Gods abusing their power. If I wanted to, I could summon any Shinto god that I felt like to come and blow you to bits." She stepped back. "However, an attempted crime of this magnitude requires that those who run Gensokyo, the great Youkai Sages, come and personally decide your fate."
"The… Youkai Sages?" Maurki asked.
"The ones who made deals with dragons to create the Border to begin with," Reimu told him. "They will both have to come here, at once, to determine your fate. One of them is hibernating right now, so unfortunately, I have no choice but to detain you until she awakes. I say 'both' because there was a third who has been lost to time, and who hasn't made an appearance in a very long time. Should they appear, they would need to be present to decide your fate as well. For now, you are a prisoner of the Hakurei Shrine maiden. Am I clear?"
Maruki was silent. "...Rumi… I couldn't…"
"Eh, it could be worse," Marisa shrugged. "If Reimu let 'ya go, you'd prolly get brutally killed by some youkai anyway."
"That… doesn't sound very reassuring," I said.
Maruki sat down and contemplated his new situation. "My dream… my reality… I never could have imagined that I-"
"HEY KIDS WANNA SEE A DEAD BODY?"
All of a sudden, Yuyuko popped out of the wall behind Maruki, who jolted around and screamed "AHH WHAT THE HELL!" He jumped back so hard he slammed into the bars of the cell.
"What the - Yuyuko, what are you doing here?" Reimu asked.
Yuyuko fanned herself. "Oh, nothing, I was just told that you were keeping a pet human at the shrine~"
Reimu's face reddened. "I-I… who told you that?!"
"It was meeeee," said Suika, who sauntered into the room with a cheerful look on her face. "I was in the room at the time and saw you dragging him in. I was mist, though, so you probably didn't see me."
Reimu growled. "Gah, goddammit Suika, how many times have I told you not to do that?! Who else did you tell?"
"Yoohoo…" came a somewhat childlike voice.
Reimu's shoulders slumped. "...fuck me."
The door slid open, revealing a short girl in a pink dress, lilac hair, and a parasol, along with what appeared to be bat wings sticking out of her back. Next to her was a tall woman with silvery-white hair dressed like a maid, albeit with a rather short skirt and what appeared to be knives strapped to her thigh sticking out from underneath.
"Ah, so this is the man that Suika was talking about," the girl said as she approached Maruki. She then looked at me. "And you… you must be the gentleman that these two keep going on about."
"SHUT UP!" Reimu and Marisa shouted in unison. "IT'S NOT LIKE THAT!"
I looked at her. "I'm sorry, and you are…?"
"My, how rude. Kids these days simply don't have manners." She did a curtsey. "I am Remilia Scarlet, proprietor of the Scarlet Devil Mansion. And this is my head maid."
The maid bowed. "Hello, Akechi-san. I am Sakuya Izayoi."
Remillia went over to Maruki, and touched the underside of his chin with an extremely long, crimson fingernail. "My, you've found quite a tasty-looking man, Reimu."
"T-tasty?" Maruki stuttered.
"Indeed," Remilia smiled, showing one fang from the corner of her mouth. "Tell me, what is your blood type?"
"My… blood… type? Uh… A negative, I think?"
"...bleh." Remilia pushed back. "I'd rather drink cheap sake than A negative blood. You got off lucky." She rubbed her hands together. "Now, A B negative blood, that's a rather tasty delicacy you don't encounter often…"
I kept my mouth shut. If she found out that that happened to be my blood type…
Maruki took a breath. "Okay… so, ghosts and vampires. And Akechi-san is alive. What else is there?"
"Hopefully nothing more," Reimu sighed. "I swear to shit, Suika, if you told half of Gensokyo that this guy was here, then-"
"I heard Reimu's keeping a guy here?"
All of a sudden, Sanae rushed in, went straight for the cell and held onto it, pushing her huge breasts into the bars while Maruki tried his best to look away, when…
"Hello there, Maruki-san!" came a tiny voice.
Maruki looked down. "What the- it's a tiny person!"
A tiny girl, only a few centimeters tall, emerged from in between the bars, wearing a mahogany kimono and a bowl on her head for a hat. Then Alice arrived, with several dolls floating in the air behind her. Then Nitori phased in as her cloaking device deactivated. Then Ran walked in with Chen at her side. Then, well, I'm sure you get the idea at this point: Suika had seemingly invited every single outlandish girl she could think of to Reimu's, and all Reimu could do was stand there, petrified, as all of this unfolded.
Maruki, for his part, curled up into a ball in the corner of the cell. "What is… what's going on? Did I drink too much and simply imagine everything that happened last night, and now I'm seeing things?"
Marisa snickered. "I gotta admit, it's pretty fun watchin' him lose it."
"I mean, if he's come to Gensokyo, we may as well give him a proper welcome," Suika said.
"Yer right about that," Marisa smirked. "Reimu makes this place sound scary. In reality, it's more insane than anything else."
Nitori then wheeled in a giant keg of sake. "I brought enough to share!"
"WHY DID YOU COME PREPARED FOR A PARTY?!" Reimu yelled. "Y'all can't just come here and haunt the shrine whenever the hell you like, 'ye damn dirty youkai!"
Marisa giggled. "And it's even more fun when she devolves into a Kansai accent."
As much as Reimu protested, the other girls were bound and determined to drink that entire keg of sake right then and there. I managed to slip away with a couple dishes, one of which I poured into a teacup which I could slip through the bars for Maruki.
I seated myself in front of him, and offered him the cup. He readily accepted it.
"Sorry for the ruckus," I said. "They tend to be like that."
"I… can tell." Maruki took his cup and took a sip. "So… you were alive this whole time? How… how did you escape that night? Is it true that…"
I sighed. "Yes, I had been monitoring you for quite some time, and was well aware of your palace. I just never imagined that you also had a Persona, or the ability to control cognition on a mass scale…" I took a sip. "I assume Ren told you of my supposed demise, and you created a cognitive version of me to sate his desire?"
"Yes…" Maruki took another sip. "On the night of Christmas Eve, something happened which caused Mementos and the real world to merge. It was then that I awakened a Persona, and gained control of the collective unconscious. It was the culmination of my cognitive psience research. I wished to create a world in which there was no pain or suffering, and yet…"
He paused. I decided to cut in and continue my side of the story.
"In any case, I survived, but it was definitely a close call. I didn't die after my fight with the Phantom Thieves, I was merely knocked unconscious. I came to, just as Shido's treasure was being stolen and the ship broke apart. I attempted to escape on a piece of debris I used as a raft, before another explosion launched me into the water. Except… not quite. At that exact moment, the palace disappeared, with me still in it. So, I was wiped from cognition. Normally, that means I should have died. However, because Gensokyo exists, I was instead whisked away here. Even then, I still should have died, but I was rescued by a forest hermit. Since then, I've been living in the only human settlement, working as an assistant for a shopkeeper."
I sipped some more sake. "However, it didn't take long for my past to catch up with me, but not in the way you would think. Soon, I discovered that there are palace-like locations, known as 'fortresses,' with a central location, 'Ethos' linking them all. So far, I assembled a team of myself and six others, including Reimu and Marisa, to help me investigate them. We have taken down two fortresses, and turned one of their rulers into a member of our team, and the other, Yuyuko, into a valuable confidant. And, like Ren, I also awakened a Wildcard ability."
Maruki chuckled. "Sounds like you've been quite busy."
"Indeed," I said, "and from the sounds of things, so have you."
Maruki looked down. "I was so close to realizing my ideal reality… I never thought that resistance to it could have existed." He took a sip. "And I never could have anticipated Reimu-san showing up out of nowhere to stop me."
"We believe that in itself is an incident," I said. "I met a tapir who rules the Dream World; she explained to me that, last month, a force sent her 'dream body' to your palace, with the intent of killing you. If not for Marisa, it would have succeeded. Perhaps it sent Reimu alone this time, so that Marisa couldn't interfere." I sipped some more. "But, I suppose that doesn't matter now. Your plan for a 'perfect world' was foiled. For whatever reason, Reimu, instead of letting you die, decided to take you here, imprison you, and let the Sages hand down their judgement."
I leaned forward. "I'll be honest: given that your actions almost destroyed Gensokyo, I don't exactly trust you right now, not even if your threat has been neutralized. I'm almost certain Reimu still wants to kill you; I might be able to advocate for you and negotiate a better end for you, since even though I was spying on you and your actions, I still regard you as a friend. However, there is one thing you must agree to if you want my assistance."
"What is it?" Maruki asked.
"The truth about my past must remain a secret. So far, only Yuyuko and that tapir know the truth. Other members of my circle only know that I died in the Metaverse; they know nothing of my crimes or of Black Mask, they believe I was a member of the Phantom Thieves at the time. And everyone else believes I escaped death in a fire while investigating a case. If you let the truth slip, then, well…" I leaned in and glared at him. "I'm not above silencing you if I have to. Understand?"
Maruki hesitated. "Err… yes, I understand."
"I'm glad," I said. "And I do have another reason for wanting to have you around: you are an expert in cognitive psience, and even controlled a palace from which you could manipulate the cognition of the masses. A mind like yours would be an invaluable asset. In exchange, I will try to advocate for your release, for perhaps a lighter punishment. Ultimately, though, the decision would be theirs, so I will try my best to convince them."
Maruki nodded. "Thank you, Akechi-san."
"Please… you're free to simply call me 'Goro.' People here are generally informal."
Maruki drank the last of the sake and pushed the cup back over to me. "I sincerely hope you can atone for your own crimes as well.
"I hope I can as well…
I woke up later that night, inside the Velvet Room. Lavenza stood before me. Rika was off to the side. Igor looked upon me expectantly. And… there was a fourth face, one which I did not expect to see there.
"Welcome back," Lavenza bowed.
I looked over to the person to the side. "What… are you doing here?"
Doremy chuckled. "Well, this place does exist between dream and reality, so it's no surprise I can travel here. And besides…" She strutted up right beside Igor. "I'm here to visit my papa."
"Your… papa?"
Lavenza smiled. "My master is Doremy's father."
Doremy reached into her bag and pulled out a quill. She sighed. "I'm sorry I couldn't have done more against the God of Control. I hope you're okay now, and have had time to recover and rest."
"I believe you did admirably," Igor replied, "watching over the Phantom Thieves, and particularly our guest here. You have also done a magnificent job managing the Dream World, and that is your duty first and foremost."
"I know, but still. I wanted to help you more directly, however I could." She smiled. "But, I suppose it's in the past now, and I can't be more thankful to that man for rescuing you in my stead." She turned and looked at me. "And this gentleman… I believe he is capable of great things as well."
Rika stepped forward. "Yeah, capable of a lotta stuff." She pulled out a PDA. "My smart sensor told me that you got a Dekaja skill card on 'ya. Wanna go ahead and fuse that Nue I wanted 'ya to?"
"I don't see why not," I said.
…
"Me Nue. Me mysterious. Me your new mask. Nice to meet you."
Rika slung her wrench over her shoulder. "Excellent work as always, Goro. And, as promised, I got your next reward for you." She used her PDA to summon a third fusion tank. "I recently upgraded these things so you can fuse three Personas at once!"
"Three?" I asked.
"Yup. With three Personas, you can fuse 'em into something more powerful than usual. I've even got a list of the shit you can fuse this way!" She showed me her PDA, which has a list of names on it. "It ain't that big for now, of course, but I'm sure I'll come up with more later. And you'll help me come up with ideas for sure."
"Oh, uh… sure," I said.
"Cool. Now, I haven't fully tested it yet, so my next request is to have you fuse something off of the list. You don't need anything special for this one, just its ingredients. I want a Barbatos with Magarula. Got that?"
"Barbatos with Magarula… I think I do," I nodded.
"Cool. Now, normally I'm cool with you just showin' me Personas on my list, but this time, you'll need to do somethin' for me besides just show me the Persona."
"What is it?" I asked.
"I'll tell you when you have the Persona I want," Rika said. "Now, get to it. I'm sure you can go find a fortress somewhere with all the ingredients."
Doremy smiled. "Someone's fired up."
"She's been a huge help," Lavenza smiled. "As long as she gets paid, although I've found that offering her that strange-smelling, bubbly beverage that makes one feel strange makes her just as happy."
"You mean beer? Yeah, can't get enough of it. Want some?"
"That won't be necessary," Lavenza said. "Master has quite the supply."
Igor then reached under the desk and pulled out several bottles, including Sapporo, New Belgium Fat Tire, Heineken, Upslope Craft Lager, Red Hook and Great Divide Lager. "Humans make quite good beer, I have found."
"Where do you get all that?" I wondered.
"They got this trap door in the back that leads to the basement of a train station in Denver, Colorado," Rika said. "Why it goes there in particular, I've got no clue. I've been there myself, they got good shit." She then took out what looked like a cigarette. "And they also got good shit…"
"Hey, not in here!" Lavenza scrambled over and snatched the cigarette out of Rika's hand. "It took me a week to get the smell out of the carpet the last time you did that!" The two of them started arguing, with Igor just looking ahead awkwardly while me and Doremy looked at each other and shrugged.
"They'll be a while, I imagine," she said. "It might be best just to return for now and come back later."
"Agreed." I walked toward the entrance and into the light.
