"Okay, let's resume the infiltration."

Meeting up after school, the Black Knights had made their way to the outer perimeter of the Government Bureau and entered the Metaverse, returning to Clovis' Palace.

The guards seemed to be on slightly higher alert than last time. Shadow Clovis was still clearly on his guard after the confrontation two days ago. However, with Bishop's aid and knowledge of the route they needed to take, they were quickly able to retrace their steps through the theater with a minimum of entanglements. Before long, they found themselves back at the hall where they had encountered Shadow Clovis and fought his captain.

"No Shadows within; the coast is clear," Leila said quietly.

"Well done, Bishop." Lelouch turned to the other Black Knights. "I assume everyone is still fresh?"

"Affirmative, Zero," Kallen replied. Milly and Arthur chorused their own affirmations in turn.

"Then let us continue to press our advantage," he smirked.

"The Shadows further in are more powerful than the ones that we've seen so far, but we should be able to handle them," Leila advised. "Still, we should stay on our guard. My abilities are not infallible, and no matter how good the intelligence, the fog of war always remains. We don't know what other defenses the Palace's Ruler has within."

There were still the familiar dancing Apsaras Shadows, who showed up regularly to support other Shadows in battle, but Lelouch could usually talk his way out of fights with them by donning the mask of his own Apsaras, and he made good use of her healing and protective abilities. Besides the fire-casting Hua Po, the gossamer-winged sprites who they had previously encountered alongside Apsaras, they also found themselves confronting enemy Jack Frosts, whose mischievous streak now turned against the Black Knights as they tried to freeze the thieves solid, all while innocently giggling "Hee-ho!" Milly quickly turned the tables on them, summoning Medea and blasting them with Maragi.

"Don't melt us, hee-ho!" They moaned piteously, puddles already starting to form around them.

"I'll let you go if you assist us," Lelouch said, approaching with his own Jack Frost.

Like the Asparas Shadows, they were only too happy to rebel against Clovis when they saw that one of their own was allied with the intruders.

"Why didn't you say you had one of our brothers with you, hee-ho? Take this, Mister! Hee-ho!"

The Jack Frosts scurried off, but not before leaving a generous number of gifts behind for the Black Knights. Most were just sundries, but every little bit helped.

Another new type of Shadow was Ippon-Datara, an embittered one-eyed and one-legged blacksmith, wielding a heavy sledgehammer that could strike with great force. Ippon-Datara was resistant to Medea's fire spells, and not only did Master Cat's wind spells have no effect upon it, they bounced right off the blacksmith's armor, sending Milly diving for cover, but Suzuka Gozen quickly put the blacksmith out of his misery though sheer brute force.

"Your Persona is weak to wind?" Kallen asked.

Milly laughed nervously. "I guess it's because I'm so flighty. I leap from one idea to the next without a moment's delay," she said in a singsong voice. She paused. "But in all seriousness, a strong gale will knock Medea out of the air, and when she goes down, so do I."

Then there were the Makami, hunting wolf spirits with paper-thin, elongated bodies that made them seem like kites in the breeze. Their frail appearance belied a nasty bite, and they could cast Frei spells like Clovis' captain, though thankfully they lacked the same punch. They rode the winds gracefully and it was obvious that nuclear spells were going to be ineffective, but physical attacks worked just fine, and Lelouch soon had an idea.

"Slime!" He called. "Zio!"

The Makami indeed conducted electricity quite well, and the one he had targeted fell whimpering to the ground.

"Great job, Zero!" Kallen shouted, and he suddenly found her giving him a high-five, a spontaneous move that judging from her reaction seemed to surprise even her. But a most curious thing happened. Lelouch could feel the power of the Chariot flowing through him and responding to Kallen, feeding back into her. Could it be?

"Queen! Don't give them a moment to recover! Finish them off!"

"Um… Yeah, right away Zero!" she said, recovering from her embarrassment, and cleaving through not only the fallen Makami as it tried to rise, but the one next to it as well.

Was it just him, or did Suzuka Gozen's last strike seem unusually powerful? If that sort of resonance he had just felt was a repeatable phenomenon, it could open potent new battle strategies.

"What gave you the idea to use electricity?" Kallen asked afteward.

"I trust you're familiar with Benjamin Franklin's famous kite experiment?"

"Of course."

"It was a long shot, but it looks like it paid off."

The most dangerous but also the least common normal shadows that they encountered were the equine sages. Dispatching one on its own was hardly a problem, especially if the Black Knights got the drop on them, as their victory from two days before attested. However, the sages were swift, and unlike the one from before, which Lelouch could now only conclude to have been an aberrant Shadow, most seemed to prefer fire magic rather than wind, which they furiously leveled at the Black Knights.

Medea spread her cloak into wide sorcerous wings, using them to intercept the incoming fireballs. Milly gritted her teeth as her Persona was struck repeatedly. Medea was resistant to fire spells, but not impervious to them, and the barrage took a toll on her. But she was still standing when it was it was over.

She smiled.

"Hey boys, what's the matter?" She asked, batting her eyelashes. "Can't catch little old me?"

Milly was flirting with the Shadows? Horse-headed ones at that…

That was wrong on so many levels.

But there was a method to her madness. Medea held out her staff, and Milly shouted "Marin Karin!" A pink haze surrounded one of the Shadows, and its eyes glazed over. A bit of drool rolled from its mouth.

Somehow, Milly had the Shadow under her control.

Smirking triumphantly, Milly cracked her whip. "That's it! Now do my bidding! Fight for your new mistress!"

The brainwashed Shadow turned on its ally, blasting it with a fireball at point-blank range. Totally unprepared for the attack, the other Shadow was destroyed at once.

"Jeanne d'Arc!" Leila called as she pulled off her mask, her Persona appearing above her. "Psi!"

The psychedelic spiral of colors closed in on the still-brainwashed Shadow. While Leila's spells were considerably more powerful with an awakened Persona, normally they couldn't take out a Shadow in one strike unless it had been weakened first. But now, the Shadow burst, head first, and vanished.

"What just happened?" Arthur asked.

"Do you mean Diamond pulling a dominatrix act all of a sudden?" Kallen asked, sounding scandalized. "Or the Shadow's head exploding?"

"Both."

"That's what I'd like to know too," Lelouch added.

"Ooh, so you do know about that, Queen", Milly grinned. "I didn't know you were into such kinks!"

"I am not!"

"But you know about them," she smirked. "To think our frail flower isn't as strait-laced as we all thought…"

"Don't give me that crap, Diamond! You know that how I behave at school is just an act! Would a wallflower be sneaking around in other people's psyches, beating up Shadows?"

"I'm kidding! But you're too easy to tease, and your reactions are priceless! But if you must know the truth, it's a new trick I learned. It just seemed to come to me. I can't absorb Shadows and make them my own Personas like Zero can, but I can bewitch them for a moment."

"How fitting for Medea…" Kallen murmured darkly.

"That's not fair!" Milly said, suddenly pouting. "Medea didn't seduce Jason in the myth… it was the other way around! In fact, the gods made her fall in love with him! Then he abandoned her! It just makes me mad! Though I suppose people's cognition of her may be why she has such a skill…"

"You've been researching your Persona?" Lelouch asked.

"Of course! Haven't all of you?"

"I knew all about Suzuka Gozen," Kallen replied. "And Jeanne d'Arc hardly needs explanation," she said, glancing to Leila.

"But why did the Shadow's head explode?" Arthur asked, steering the conversation back on course.

"That was my doing," Leila replied sheepishly. "My Persona's Psi spells exploit weaknesses in the enemy's mental defenses. Normally, I can just manage a psychokinetic attack, but if their mental faculties are already impaired it's easy for me to get in past their defenses and… well, you saw the result…"

"Brutal…" Kallen murmured.

"Is melting a Shadow's head to slag really any different?"

"I suppose not," Kallen said with a shrug.

"It's regrettable…" Leila continued. "I didn't mean for such overkill."

"You ended the battle quickly, preventing potential harm to your teammates," Lelouch told her. "There's nothing to be ashamed of."

They continued to make their way through the theater. Lelouch found, through repeated trials, that the phenomenon he had experienced with Kallen earlier was indeed reproducible. It seemed to be linked to their emotional state. Namely, when their morale soared, such as when one of them was able to incapacitate or critically damage a shadow, and they offered encouragement to each other, power would be momentarily transferred along their bond, strengthening the other. In essence, they could entrust each other with a powerful follow-up attack, 'passing the baton' so to speak.

Igor had already emphasized to him how his bonds would strengthen his Personas. In comparison, the strange old man had glossed over how they would empower his allies in turn. Yet ridiculous as it sounded, the 'baton pass' technique was an even purer expression of weaponized friendship. Perhaps cognition made it possible in this world, but it was something he could use to his advantage.

Of course, it didn't escape Milly's notice, nor those of the other Black Knights, that he was suddenly trying to high-five them in battle, an act that normally would have been out of character for him. Since it was harmless, and it would stave off Milly's teasing, he explained to them what he had felt earlier and the apparent benefits of the 'baton pass'. He proceeded to test it with each of them in turn, but Milly, Leila, and Arthur couldn't quite produce the same reaction as with Kallen.

Was it because only his bond with Kallen had reached the point where such a resonance was possible? He would have to spend more time with each of them to see if they could acquire the ability as well. As for Milly, she took it as evidence that he and Kallen had a thing for each other, which they vehemently denied. They were partners in crime, not lovers!

Soon, they came to another chamber, and Leila held up a hand.

"There are no Shadows in there… but something doesn't feel quite right…. there's a great amount of Distortion ahead… Be on your guard, everyone."

They entered cautiously, lest they walk into a trap. Like the rest of the theater, the room was lavishly decorated. Of particular note were a number of statues of Clovis lining the sides of the room, vanity portraits of the Viceroy that portrayed him as a heroic figure, more of a demigod than a man. Narrowing his perception, Lelouch used his Third Eye. The rest of the room was cast into darkness, but the statues stood out brightly. It could not make their exact significance clear, but they certainly weren't ordinary statues, and they merited closer investigation.

"This way," he gestured. "Don't touch anything until we can figure out what's going on here."

The Black Knights nodded, and crept quietly behind him. At least they did until Kallen suddenly shouted, "What the hell?"

Lelouch turned around in alarm, only to find see Kallen, Milly, and Leila writhing as if to try to escape some unseen force holding them in place, but to no avail.

"Look at their feet!" Arthur cried.

Quickly glancing downward, he saw that the girls' shoes had been bleached white, and in the case of Leila, whose exposed skin could be seen just above the upper edge of her high heels, the same was true of her feet as well, with little streaks of gray mixed in. But that wasn't all. Bit by bit, the unnatural whiteness was encroaching upon the warm, living flesh of Leila's ankles and began working its way up her legs, converting them into cold, immaculate marble. Judging from their expressions, the others were in similar distress.

"They're turning to stone?" Lelouch asked, unable to believe what he was seeing.

"Indeed," Shadow Clovis' disembodied voice suddenly echoed through the chamber. "I was wondering when you would make it here. I've had some time to think since our last encounter, and I think I was too hasty in ordering their executions. Not only is it uncouth to harm a woman, but it would be so very wasteful. Thieves your companions may be, but they are quite lovely in their own rights, especially the one who pretends to be my Leila. Thus, I have commuted their sentences; they shall instead be preserved as works of art, to be admired by all those who visit my theater, and to serve as a warning to other would-be thieves."

"Are you just going to stand there, listening to him blather on?" Kallen snarled in exasperation, the transformation already well up the calves of her suit. "Do something, Zero!"

Lelouch considered his options, thinking quickly. Clovis' Cognition of the girls as art had to be what was petrifying them. In a sense, it worked by the same principles as any Palace, distorting reality to match the Ruler's own image of it. Normally, the Palace Ruler's Cognition was only strong enough to force those perceived as threats into wearing their Metaverse thief outfits. But there were places where the Ruler's Cognition was weaker, such as the safe rooms within a Palace, where the distortion would momentarily dissipate. What then would happen in the opposite situation, when the Palace Ruler's cognition was far stronger than usual in a location?

The answer was before his eyes; more drastic Distortions would be imposed like this, enough to overpower the resistance provided by their thief attire. But as they had seen in Villetta's Palace, especially strong Distortions tended to be less stable, practically falling apart on themselves before being haphazardly put back together. Shadow Villetta's throne room had been an island of imposed order amidst the chaos of the deepest parts of her Palace. This room didn't outwardly appear to have such a level of Distortion, so something had to be reinforcing Shadow Clovis' Cognition here.

The Clovis statues!

"Unfortunately, a would-be gentleman thief like yourself lacks the same 'artistic merit' as your female companions," Shadow Clovis' voice said, directly addressing Lelouch. "Nor have I any need for a mangy cat."

"Hey!" Arthur shouted, clearly offended.

"So I'm afraid that you two will still have to die," Shadow Clovis concluded.

Darkness suddenly gathered on the far end of the chamber. A chimera-like Shadow appeared, a large creature with a monkey's head, the limbs of a tiger, a body like that of a raccoon, and snakes for its tail.

"The Elevens could hardly hope to match my artistic genius, but I will still give them credit where credit is due," Shadow Clovis continued. "This Nue is a most marvelous creation of theirs, and like any proper Honorary Britannian in Area 11, it now serves my glory, a well-trained beast that knows its master! Nue, kill the boy and his cat! See to it that no harm comes to my lovely statues-to-be! I'll be there to collect them once you've disposed of the trash."

"As you command, Director Clovis," Nue growled as it began to advance.

"This is NOT good!" Arthur cried. He looked over his shoulders to the still struggling girls. "Can't you summon your Personas or something?"

"We'd be doing that, if we could," Milly replied. "But I can't reach my mask, or even strike a good pose for my statue!" She pouted. "I could have done so much better than this!"

"That's what you're thinking of right now?!" Kallen asked incredulously.

"It's better than panicking. GUTS! Besides, if I'm going to be on display, I at least want to look my best."

The transformation had begun to affect their other extremities by now. The girls' hands had already turned to finely sculpted stone, and judging from their more sluggish movements, most of their voluntary muscles had been paralyzed as well.

"We walked right into that trap, even though we knew something was coming," Leila sighed. "I'm sorry, everyone."

"Can't you come up with a plan, Zero?" Kallen called out. "Don't you have some Persona you can call upon to get us out of this mess?"

"Arthur," Lelouch said quickly. "Break off and destroy as many of the Clovis statues as you can. I'll try to hold the Nue's attention!"

"Got it!"

"Enough chatter! Here I come, thieves!" the Nue roared, charging forward, as Arthur darted off to the side.

Lelouch expected that the Nue would try to bite or claw him. But suddenly, he heard Kallen shout, "Zero! Above you! Look out!"

Lelouch leapt to the side, narrowly avoiding a comically large weight that had appeared out of nowhere, conjured by the Nue, causing the room to rumble as it landed. The weight disappeared after a moment, but if it had hit him, it would have surely cracked his skull, if not killed him outright.

Still, that gave him an idea…

As Arthur moved around the perimeter of the room, shattering each Clovis statue in turn with a blast of powerful wind from Master Cat, Lelouch backed himself toward the wall, positioning himself next to one of the Clovis statues. Arthur was doing an admirable job, and he had slowed the rate at which stone was encroaching on Kallen, Milly, and Leila's bodies, but it still wasn't doing so quickly enough on its own. Their lower bodies were all solid marble now, as well as their arms, with white splotches starting to appear along their shoulders, backs, and abdomens. If things kept up as they were, the three of them would be fully petrified before they could take down the Nue.

But perhaps he could speed along the destruction of the Clovis statues…

"Don't think you can hide, thief!" Nue snarled, preparing its Skull Cracker again, but Lelouch was ready for it. The weight appeared above him and crashed downward , but Lelouch sidestepped the attack. But the Clovis statue could not move, and was crushed into rubble.

"You'll pay for destroying the Director's property!"

"Oh… but I thought you just did," Lelouch smirked.

"Insolent fool!" The Nue lunged at him, but its enormous girth meant that it smashed through and knocked down several more Clovis statues.

"Keep it up, Zero!" Milly shouted.

"Don't you... mess this up!" Kallen managed.

"I... believe in you!" Leila gasped as she entered the final stages of petrification, her lips freezing into place a moment later as they were rendered in marble.

Milly and Kallen still had some time, but it seemed that Clovis' Cognition was focused on Leila, making her transformation progress faster. She was the one that his half-brother wished to possess and capture in art more than any other, meaning that Leila would be the first to become a statue. There were only a few precious seconds left, as her cheeks became polished stone, and her amethyst eyes started to become milky and opaque.

There was no more time to waste thinking about it. He darted over to a trio of Clovis statues, hoping to lure the Nue into lunging at him again. Thankfully, they were on the other side of the room from Leila, Kallen, and Milly. If the Nue was to knock any of them over, the parts of them that were stone would likely shatter just as easily as Clovis' statues had.

"Rrrgh!" the Nue roared, changing its tactics. "Maeiha!"

Multiple tendrils of cursed energy burst from the ground. Lelouch couldn't avoid being hit, pain rushing through him, but two the Clovis statues next to him were suddenly unbalanced and toppled to the ground, where they broke into pieces and vanished.

Not enough! Glancing across the room, he saw Leila silently staring back at him with blank stone orbs, perfectly still. She was gently gleaming white marble from head to toe, down to the last strand of hair, all fused together now into a single mass, but with each one individually sculpted.

Leila remained beautiful as a statue, classically even, he saw that now, with a certain natural poise that, under different circumstances, he might have found pleasing, as an academic matter of aesthetics. But in their brief time working together, he had glimpsed something else in her, deeper than her outward appearance, a quality that stone couldn't fully capture, and that she was diminished without. Her expression, or what he could see of it beneath her mask, petrified like the rest of her, was defiant but hopeful, which only made his failure feel worse.

"What a lovely piece!" He heard Shadow Clovis say. "A chef-d'oeuvre, as the French would put it! Marble really was the perfect medium to bring out a beauty as timeless as hers, and she's so much more agreeable without those troublesome opinions. I know that I said that I'd display her where all of my theater's patrons could admire her beauty, but seeing the finished work, I think that she'll look wonderful in my pri-"

"Shut up!" Lelouch shouted. "You-"

"Forgetting about me?" Arthur called out suddenly, interrupting both of them. "Master Cat! Garu!"

The booted feline Persona appeared and destroyed the final Clovis statue with a burst of wind. At once, Kallen, Milly, and Leila were fully flesh and blood again as the Cognition was stripped away, like it had been no more than a bad dream.

Now that they were free, the girls didn't waste any time to act.

"Suzuka Gozen!"

"Medea!"

"Jeanne d'Arc!"

A barrage of spells struck the Nue from behind, causing it howl in pain. It collapsed to the floor, shouting threats, but even it seemed to know that its time had come.

"Commence an all-out attack!" Lelouch shouted.

The Black Knights descended upon the Nue with unusual fury, and by the time that it exploded into bloody remains, there wasn't much left of it.

"Impossible…" Shadow Clovis' voice echoed through the chamber. "First you defeat the Dark Sun, and now Nue? Who are you thieves?" He sounded afraid.

"Show yourself, coward!" Kallen demanded. "Don't think you can just look down on us from on high!"

"As flattering as it is that you'd want to make a statue of me, I'll have to pass," Milly added.

"We're not just ornaments to adorn your Palace with," Leila said sharply. "You already have my double for that. Sooner or later, we'll have you cornered, Viceroy, and put an end to this madness of yours."

"It's funny how the so-called mighty overlook the smallest ones of all," Arthur smirked.

"We are the Black Knights," Lelouch concluded, laughing. "No matter what you throw at us, you cannot stop our justice!"

"Ingrates!" Shadow Clovis seethed. "I tried to give you a relatively painless end to your time as thieves, and a higher purpose as art, but this is how you repay my kindness? Guards! Hear me! Your Director, Clovis la Britannia, commands you! Double, no, triple all patrols! Apprehend these Black Knights at once! Do not rest until they are found, and make them regret that they ever set foot in here!"

The ambience of the Palace changed, red lights flashing through the corridors and alarms blaring all around.

"Looks like we really managed to piss him off," Kallen murmured.

"He's on high alert now," Arthur sighed. "This could get ugly really quick. We should make an exit before the whole Palace is swarming with Shadows."

"There's a gap in the Viceroy's Cognition just ahead…" Leila said.

"A safe room!" Milly exclaimed.

"Yes," Leila nodded. "We should be able to take cover there until the patrols pass."

"Then what are we waiting for?" Lelouch asked.

The safe room appeared to be a small break room, where administrative staff working in the Government Bureau might brew coffee, grab something to eat from a vending machine, or socialize with their colleagues before returning to their jobs. It certainly was a place that would be beneath the Viceroy's notice, which accounted for its relative lack of Distortion. Leila treated Lelouch's injury from Nue's curse, while the others took a moment to catch their breaths.

"At least those damn Clovis statues won't catch us off-guard next time," Kallen grumbled. "We now know to smash them on sight. I'm still pissed at being trapped like that!" She glanced over at Leila. "Even if it wasn't all the way, like her."

"I wouldn't have guessed such a thing was possible," Milly murmured.

"Now you see just how dangerous the power of Cognition is," Leila said, standing up as she dismissed Jeanne d'Arc. "Imagine how powerful Clovis would be if he could learn how to use Cognitive Psience to directly alter reality."

"He'd be like a god," Lelouch scowled. He turned to Leila. "Are you okay? You were-"

"I'm fine," she said, with a hint of a smile. "You and Arthur pulled through for us in the end." She leaned down and petted Arthur on the head, causing him to purr happily.

"But I-"

"If it wasn't for your quick thinking, Zero, we probably wouldn't have been able to escape from the Viceroy's trap. It was a brilliant stratagem on your part, turning the enemy's strength to your advantage, and you carried it out without hesitation, even though it was at great risk to yourself. So thank you."

Lelouch shook his head. "How can you be so calm about it? Weren't you frightened?"

"I'd be lying if I said otherwise," she said softly. "But physically, it didn't really hurt at all. It was more of a creeping sense of numbness than anything else."

Milly and Kallen nodded slowly.

"You heard what the Palace Ruler said," Lelia continued. "He dislikes the idea of hurting women, or at least doing so in person, and from the start, he distinguished it from an execution. That shaped his Cognition of the process, and if it hadn't been Cognitive in nature, we should have died from massive hemorrhaging wherever the stone cut off blood vessels, well before being fully petrified." A thoughtful look crossed her face. "In a way, I don't think the transformation was ever entirely real to begin with."

"What do you mean?" Kallen asked. "It seemed real enough to me. It couldn't have been just an illusion!"

"Yeah..." Milly said. "From what I saw, you really became a statue, Bishop, and we would have followed you in another minute or two."

"Yes and no," Leila replied. "I did become a statue, yes. I can't really say what it was like, because I was stone, and everyone knows that stone can't see, hear, feel, or think. But that was just the Cognition that Clovis managed to force upon me. Look around this very room. Do you see how it's shimmering, going between an ordinary break room in the Government Bureau and a room with all of the opulent decor of the Palace, like it's some kind of mirage?"

"I see what you're trying to say," Lelouch said. "In most areas, the Ruler's Cognition is powerful enough to cover up the reality that the Palace is based on with whatever he imagines it to be. In places like this room, his Cognition is weaker, and we can clearly see through the Distortion at times. But no matter where you are in the Palace, he can't change the underlying reality itself."

Leila's eyes lit up. "Exactly! Even though I became subject to the Distortion of his Palace, and thus part of its decor, I was still myself under that. By destroying those statues, you and Arthur weakened the Ruler's Cognition in the area enough to free us from the Distortion, casting aside Clovis' false images and revealing us as we had always been."

"You had time to think through all of that?" Kallen grumbled.

"I think I realized something else," Leila said. "Our Metaverse outfits appear when the Palace Ruler recognizes us as intruders, and so we appear as thieves. But they also represent our will to rebel against their authority. Such a strong rejection has to give us a great deal of resistance to the Distortions within his Palace. He needed many of those statues in one place to reinforce his Cognition enough to overpower that resistance. But..." she frowned. "Something's bothering me. "What if we were going against a Palace Ruler with a far stronger will than Clovis?"

"Are you saying - " Kallen started.

"Yes," Leila replied. "We could have been transformed instantly if the Ruler's Cognition was strong enough, with or without a resistance to his Distortions. And if they had a Cognition that affected us all equally..."

"Yikes," Milly blanched. "That would be game over for us."

"Don't treat this like it's a game," Lelouch said. "We can't discount the possibility of something like that, especially when we don't know exactly what aspects of Cognitive Psience Clovis is researching."

"That's true," Leila nodded. "But it has to be something that he considers important enough to be worth killing over."

"Do you have an estimate of how far we are from his Treasure?" Lelouch asked.

"As I said, my abilities are limited," Leila replied. "The further something is away from me, the less precisely I can read it. But the source of the distortion gives off the greatest response… so I'd conservatively estimate we're halfway to it."

"We've made excellent progress then. As of tomorrow, we'll have fifteen days until the planned demolition of Shinjuku. We should wait several days before our next infiltration. It will be extremely difficult, not to mention dangerous, to make progress while the Palace is in a heightened state of security."

"I agree," she replied. The others nodded as well. "I believe we can also resume our infiltration from here. We're not so high up that scaling the wall to the nearby window is impractical, and if we fix a rope here, the Shadows won't come in and remove it."

"My thoughts exactly. Is everyone in agreement?"

"Yes, Zero," the other Black Knights replied.

"Very well then. Good work today. I'll let you all know when we're ready for the next infiltration."

The pieces were moving into place. Lelouch knew it wouldn't be long before they discovered Clovis' secrets and his Treasure.

Days Until Shinjuku is Demolished: 15

A/N:

Baton Pass is a skill in Persona 5 in which instead of a character conducting their own follow-up attack after striking an enemy's weakness, they can pass the turn to one of their allies, boosting their damage / recovery power in the process. It typically unlocks after the Protagonist has earned a few ranks with a Confidant who is a member of the Phantom Thieves. Of Lelouch' current Confidants, Kallen is the only one who has developed her relationship sufficiently with him yet for them to Baton Pass to each other, but that will soon change as he spends time with his other Confidants. To my recollection, a formal explanation for why their strength increases during a Baton Pass is not given, so I devised one for this story. And of course, Lelouch being Lelouch, he very thoroughly tests his powers as he discovers them.

The trap with Clovis' statues is directly inspired by a hazard in the seventh Palace of Persona 5, in which standing nearby statues of the Palace Ruler would instantly change the Phantom Thieves into mice (because he thought that other people were like insignificant mice next to him) until they scurried out of the area of effect. Of course, Clovis' cognition is different (and weaker), so the effect in his Palace was changed to a gradual petrification that only affected the female Black Knights, which I believe is in line with Clovis' love of art and the female form. This also set up a fight with Nue, who was one of the midbosses of Persona 5's second palace, and only fought by two members of the Phantom Thieves, so there was that parallel as well, though the circumstances behind it are different in my story.

In mainline SMT titles, the "Force" line of skills, represented by the "Zan" skills is especially effective at breaking stone. While Persona does not have the "Zan" skills, they share a similar visual and wind theme with the "Garu" skills, which Arthur has, making him a natural choice to help Lelouch break Clovis' statues.

The Nue's "Skull Cracker" does indeed have such a comical animation in the game, but it definitely hits like a truck. It took me a few times when I was first playing P5.

Next up, more Confidant time, and continuing to probe into Clovis' Palace...

Edit: Extended the scene with the Clovis statues. It occurred to me that his Cognition was likely to be focused on Leila, upon re-reading Arthur's "Forgetting about me?" needed something to be more clearly in retort to, and it provided an opportunity to elaborate upon the mechanics of the Metaverse afterward.