The Irregulars moved through Mementos, pursuing a new lead on Britannia's Cognitive Psience research. Code-R may have been formally disbanded, but they had little doubt that Britannia was still quietly continuing to pursue the secrets of the Metaverse. Two of their members had listened in on Prince Schneizel's conversation on Kamine Island, where he said that he believed that the Emperor had an interest in Cognitive Psience. The fact that access to such a beautiful island was so tightly restricted when the ruins were its only other noteworthy feature was highly suspicious, and the fact that the Emperor's Palace had manifested there confirmed that far more was going on there than was apparent to them.
The Irregulars had never been as concerned with making a name for themselves as the Black Knights, but they had a vested interest in quietly investigating the truth behind the empire's secret research program, to understand why they had been made to suffer through it, or in Nemo's case, what she might have been subjected to. They were all fugitives, four of them from Code-R, abducted from Britannia's various Areas, and one former Princess, from the capital of Pendragon itself. It was an improbable partnership, but attention was the last thing any of them needed, and in spite of the difference in their backgrounds, it worked surprisingly well.
To Alice, it seemed that fate had brought Nunnally to them. After their breakout from the Code-R research lab in the Narita Mountains, the former experimental subjects had decided that they needed to get as far away as possible while Mao's rampage kept local Britannian forces busy. They could have chosen to team up with Mao, but he was obviously dangerously unbalanced, and as soon as he learned that they didn't intended to follow him, he had tried to kill them with his new Persona. They had, of course, escaped. While it was obvious to both Code-R and Mao that their next move would be to head to the Tokyo Settlement, at least they had a better chance of blending in among millions of inhabitants than remaining out in the open. But while that had brought them to the same city where their future leader resided, the odds of encountering any given individual there by chance was was small.
At first, Alice and her former lab escapees had spent most of their time hiding in the Metaverse. Soldiers couldn't follow them there, save the ones they had accidentally brought in with them, whom they had been forced to kill. For the most part, the Metaverse seemed safe. There were a few locations that seemed to be guarded by strange, shadowy creatures that were invariably hostile, but the escapees kept their distance from them. Still, they needed to return to the real world from time to time to obtain supplies like food, water, and clothing that wasn't Britannian straitjackets. At the time, they didn't have any money, as they weren't actively exploring Mementos or the Palaces, and in fact didn't know of them, so they had to turn to thievery to survive. They were assisted in their petty heists by the Metaverse Navigator, a mysterious app that had first installed itself on the phones they had stolen. Mao had actually given them their first MetNav-equipped phone during their escape from the lab, back when he thought they could serve as agents of his demented justice, tossing it to Sancia, the eldest of the Code-R test subjects, who was now known as Order. With the MetNav, they could slip back into reality, grab what they needed, and untraceably return to their Metaverse hideout before the authorities could arrive.
Yet soon they needed something that could not easily be stolen. Whether due to a prolonged stay in the Metaverse, the strain of Personas that had only partially manifested upon entering that world, unlike Mao's fully-realized Momus, and threatened to go out of control, or the lack of some unknown antidote that had been administered as a Code-R failsafe, their health began to deteriorate with alarming speed. Lucretia was the first to sicken, but soon all of them were displaying one or more symptoms of her affliction: splitting headaches, nausea, feelings of weakness, cool and clammy skin, and involuntary spasms.
They tried to treat Lucretia as best as they could, stealing medicine for her as they had their other supplies, but none of it seemed to work, and their primitive Personas were of no use either. Soon, they were forced to admit that they were out of their depth, and that Lucretia desperately needed professional treatment.
A hospital was the last place that any of them wanted to visit after their experiences with Code-R and the doctors who had experimented on them in the Narita laboratory. But they had few other options. They could seek out a back-alley doctor, but finding one would take time that they might not have, as such practitioners tended not to broadly advertise their services. Even if they could find one, such an establishment was more likely to exist in the ghettos, which posed its own risks to them. The ghettos were overwhelmingly populated by Japanese people who had lost almost everything to Britannia. While most had been beaten down and were just trying to get by, lingering resentment meant that there would some who would be hostile to any Britannian-looking foreigners who might set foot in the ghettos.
While all of the escapees in their group were from Areas that had been conquered by Britannia rather than being Britannians themselves, Alice and Lucretia could both pass as full Britannians, coming from Area 2, the former French territories in Canada, while Sancia, born in Area 3, the former Spanish possessions in Mexico, could pass as part Britannian as well. Of them, Dalque, who would become known as Power, was the only one who couldn't pass as being at least part Britannian, hailing from Area 6, which encompassed much of South America. As such, they could hardly expect to be warmly welcomed in the ghettos. Moreover, they had no special powers in the real world, and were in slowly failing health, meaning they would be easy prey for anyone looking to take their anger out on Britannians.
But while their mostly Britannian looks were a liability in the ghettos, they were an asset in the Tokyo Settlement, enabling them to move relatively freely through the city. Yes, they were behind a rash of thefts, but the ability to dive in and out of the Metaverse had limited their exposure, and so far they were unaware of significant media coverage of their crimes, nor an organized police response. Perhaps the remnants of Code-R had been quietly suppressing news about them, eager to avoid even more attention being drawn to their project than there had been in the wake of Prince Clovis' confession and presumed murder by the Black Knights, though they now knew the Black Knights had been innocent in Clovis' death. In any case, that had left the escapees with an opportunity that they could exploit.
They hadn't just blindly selected a hospital to seek treatment at. They had sought out an institution with a reputation for professionalism, privacy, and charity. If a hospital showed any signs of having been involved in any sort of shady business in the past, they rejected it. Before long, they had narrowed it down and decided which hospital they would gamble upon.
They should have been more careful.
Everything had seemed like it was going well when they arrived at the hospital's emergency department. They didn't have an appointment, but the staff had been friendly, and a doctor had agreed to see them. But Code-R's influence was far more pervasive than they could have imagined. Most of the nurses and doctors were innocent of any knowing involvement in Code-R, but they had begun screening for potential Persona-users, using the test that Dr. Fenette had developed, following a change in the hospital's management, under the guise of a new standard diagnostic test. The change was for the most part invisible to the general public, and so the lab escapees had no way of knowing about it at the time. But more importantly, the staff had received detailed, albeit falsified, files on Alice, Sancia, Lucretia, and Dalque, presenting them as escaped psychiatric patients who were dangers to themselves and others, and asked to quietly contain them until they could be transported back to a mental hospital. They each received treatment, for Code-R had no interest in four of its most promising test subjects dying prematurely if they could be safely recaptured, but a sedative was mixed into the medicine. From there, a call was sent out to the facility that they had supposedly escaped from, which was actually directed to the staff of the man who had been Code-R's highest-ranking enforcer and the one behind the hospital's recent management changes, Colonel Madd.
Madd was a thoroughly unpleasant man, and one that the escapees knew all too well. Once, Madd had been chosen to serve as the commanding officer of the special unit of Persona-users that Prince Clovis had hoped to create. In his regular inspections of his "unit", Madd had always referred to them as "Irregulars," a title that they would later claim for themselves in a show of defiance against him. Bald, large, and powerful, Madd had an intimidating physical presence, and his cantankerous nature was in no way helped by the fact that he was obviously not a pure-blooded Britannian. Having borne the scorn of his colleagues for too long, Madd now had a habit of brutalizing anyone who dared to disrespect him, and was driven to make a name for himself at any cost.
Alice and her unconscious companions had awoken in what appeared to be a storage area in the hospital's basement, which seemed to be be in the process of being hastily converted into a new Code-R site. Of course. Not only had Madd anticipated that they would eventually require medical attention, he was using the hospital's reputation as a shield. He couldn't use the Narita laboratory anymore, but few would think much if unconscious "patients" were brought into or transported through the hospital, let alone suspect that unethical research was being done there.
Madd had appeared, standing at a safe distance behind bulletproof glass, and berated them for being so ungrateful to run away from Narita. He said that he had been "perfecting" them, making them more than human. No, he had continued to rant, they would be among the first in a generation of truly human beings, standing above the mindless rabble, and the hospital would be one of the factories that would produce them henceforth.
Madd was of course, quite insane, and Alice and her friends wanted no more of his attempts to "perfect" them. But there wasn't any hope that anyone from the outside would come to save them. Mustering what strength she could, Alice had reached for her pocket with her hand. Her restraints prevented her from moving her arms much, but she had just enough mobility to wriggle her fingers and wrist around to do so. She found that her phone was still inside her pocket. They had been moved so quickly that they hadn't been subjected to a proper search.
Madd realized what she was reaching for, and taunted her, saying that there was no way that she could use the phone to call for help, as there was no cell reception in the room. That she might use her phone to enter the Metaverse never seemed to cross his mind. What neither of them had known was that her Metaverse Navigator had picked up on certain keywords during Madd's speech, and that when she activated the app it was primed to bring Alice and her fellow escapees to a new destination, the world within Madd's heart.
While the areas of the Metaverse that they had explored to that point had been for the most part a carbon copy of the real world, the hospital was now changed almost beyond recognition, into a noisy factory, the air permeated by the stench of blood. That alone was enough to tell them that, while they had escaped from Madd's clutches, they weren't safe yet.
Breaking out of their bonds was surprisingly easy. Alice had always felt a bit stronger and faster in the Metaverse, perhaps because of her latent Persona powers, and the treatment she had received earlier in the hospital had eased her symptoms, at least for now. Lucretia, whose condition had been the most severe, needed help, but soon all four of them were free.
As she had during the escape from Narita, Sancia had taken charge, calm and collected in spite of their grisly surroundings. It wasn't long before they encountered shadowy monsters like the ones that they had glimpsed elsewhere in the Metaverse, stalking the floor of the factory in force. Where there had been orderlies, nurses, and doctors, there were now tortured, cybernetic creatures, seeming more like zombies than anything else. Sancia recognized that incomplete as their Personas were, it was best to avoid fighting when they could, and so they began stealthily making their way through the factory, searching for an exit. Unlike other parts of the Metaverse, they couldn't use the MetNav to directly return to the real world from within the factory, and in any case doing so would dump them right back into Madd's clutches.
The nightmarish factory was cavernous, and it had seemed like it went on forever. They had no way of knowing much further than they had to go, but but Alice had known they would be in trouble if it went on for too much longer. While not as exhausting as fighting, darting from hiding place to hiding place was tiring them, and such exertion was definitely not good for Lucretia, considering her condition. The concentration of enemies in the factory was also steadily getting higher. The factory was on high alert, with klaxons blaring and everything flashing red around them.
But then, they saw her, a girl in a wheelchair, seemingly lost in the factory. Alice recalled feeling her heart clench. Her younger sister, a paraplegic, had died in a fire when she was little... the same fire that had let Code-R take her without trouble. For the briefest of moments, Alice even thought that the girl might even be her sister, or at least her sister as viewed through a looking-glass. But that was impossible. All that she had seen through the factory had made clear that it was Madd's world. Her fellow escapees were the only real things here, while everything else was a product of Madd's twisted mind.
Yet Madd had no reason to attach such importance to her sister, and as Alice looked more closely, she saw that the girl wasn't her sister at all. The girl was extremely pretty, with hair much longer than her sister's had ever been, light brown tresses that fell to the girl's hips, and she wore an unfamiliar pink school uniform with a tie emblazoned with a fleur de lis. With her eyes closed, the girl almost looked as if she could have been a sleeping princess from a fairytale, but that illusion was shattered by the look of anxiety on the girl's face. The girl was... calling for her brother.
Those calls hadn't helped the girl find her brother, but it looked like they had attracted the attention of enemies. Already, those shadowy creatures were creeping up behind the girl. Crippled and blind, she would fare far worse in a fight than even Lucretia in her failing health would. No, to call it fight would be wrong, since that implied that the girl could have fought back when by all appearances she was completely defenseless. It would have been a slaughter.
In that moment, Alice knew that she couldn't simply stand idly by while the creatures ended the girl's life. She had failed her sister, and she knew that she couldn't change the past, but it felt as if to let this girl die was to fail her sister again. Summoning her Persona, weak and formless as it was, Alice had leapt out from her hiding place and moved to protect the girl in the wheelchair.
She was able to save the girl with the help of her comrades, who had jumped into the fray as well, seeking to save her from her own recklessness, but her stunt proved fray drew the attention of even more guards, and before long Madd had caught up with them. But it wasn't Colonel Madd as they knew him. Like the former doctors and orderlies shambling through the factory, Madd had also become a cyborg, but his cybernetic enhancements seemed much better constructed and integrated with his body, even as they replaced much of it. But what Alice recalled most clearly of all had been Madd's chilling eyes, glowing supernatural gold as he glared at them. She now knew that it had been Madd's Shadow, but she had never encountered a person's Shadow before. Moreover, Shadow Madd was wrapped in a dark aura, radiating killing intent, far more virulent than even the worst of his rages that she had seen back in the Narita laboratory.
Shadow Madd had declared that they were failed experiments, which would have to be disposed of. He had then offered them the mock reassurance that he would rebuild their bodies better than ever before and purge them of their pesky wills, so that they would be perfect, obedient soldiers. Without their individuality, they would not be able to truly join the ranks of the new master race that he would create, but they would still be the first steps toward it.
Madd then ordered his men to subdue them. They had tried to fight back, but there were too many enemies, and soon they were sprawled on the floor, as Shadow Madd stood over them and laughed.
The girl in the wheelchair had protested, crying that he wouldn't get away with such inhumane experiments and hurting other people, but to Alice's horror, Shadow Madd had siezed the girl, lifting her out of her wheelchair and roughly tossing her to the floor.
"This is Britannia!" Shadow Madd had roared at the girl as she cringed in pain. "The strongest rule, and the weak perish! That's evolution, or so His Majesty says." Shadow Madd had then shook his head. "If you had the potential, we could rebuild your legs, and make you far more than just an invalid. But without it, you're worthless to me."
Shadow Madd had moved to strike the girl again, but he was thrown back without warning. For a moment, Alice thought that she was seeing things, but standing between the girl and Madd was a doppelgänger that looked just like the girl, but she was blonde and had the same glowing golden eyes and menacing aura that Shadow Madd did.
"You're going to die today," the girl's doppelganger had said to her original self. "You're going to die, and our brother will waste his life searching for you. When he can't find you, his vengeance will be terrible, and I wouldn't want to be whoever's standing in his way."
"Who are you?" the girl had asked, sounding as confused and frightened as Alice was. "Why can I see you?" Her eyes were still closed, so that should have been impossible, unless the girl was seeing her doppelgänger in her mind's eye.
"I'm you... I'm your Shadow, the darkness in your heart," the doppelgänger smirked. "I've always been a part of you, the feelings of anger, sadness, and resentment that you try to ignore. You put on a cheerful front for our brother so that he doesn't worry about you, but deep down you can't forgive what was done to us or our mother." The girl's Shadow snarled. "More than that, you willfully blind yourself to what's going on around you, pretending that it doesn't affect you, or that you can't do anything about it! Will you continue to close your eyes? Do you like being a girl who can't even stand on her own? Or do you want to be free, to strike back, and hurt those who have hurt you?" The girl's Shadow laughed. "Maybe you'll even tell yourself that you want the power to protect others. I don't really care. That power is yours... if you give me what I want."
Surprisingly, Shadow Madd had done nothing to stop the girl's Shadow, staring at the scene in fascination.
"What do you want?" the girl asked.
"Accept me as a part of yourself, and unleash the anger boiling within you! In exchange, I shall give you the power to make your wishes come true."
"Brother..." the girl whispered. Alice could already see the girl's decision on her face. The girl was willing to do anything to find her way back to her brother, even if it was a deal with the devil.
The Shadow knew it as well. "If you agree, then you already know what to say. Open your eyes, and make this contract with me!"
The girl and her Shadow spoke in unison. "Rise up, fallen princess, and fight back! From this day forward, we are of one mind and body. I am thou... thou art I. Let the nightmare begin!"
There was a gust of wind from nowhere, and the girl's Shadow, laughing maniacally, burst into bright blue flames, which wrapped themselves around her other self. A red, bird-shaped mask materialized on the girl's face, while her clothes were replaced with a dark blue skintight suit. The blue flames spread down the girl's hair, but instead of burning it, they seemed to dye it blonde, just like her Shadow's. And then the girl began screaming, pulling at the mask as if it was searing into her skin. There was a spray of blood as she ripped it off, but then a vicious smile spread on the girl's face, and she opened her eyes, also the same as her Shadow's, as a fully-formed Persona, dressed in the regal gown of a queen, appeared above and behind her, bound to the girl by phantom blue chains.
"Finally, I'm free!" the girl shouted in exultation, rising to her feet on legs that just moments before were too weak to support her. Or was it the girl's Shadow, now possessing her? Throwing out a hand in front of her, the girl/her Shadow pointed at Shadow Madd, their voices seeming to overlap with each other. "Punish this bastard, Elizabeth!"
The ensuing fight had been very one-sided. The girl's Persona tore relentlessly into Shadow Madd's guards, hurling curse magic at them and weakening them with conjured poisons. Alice recalled watching in amazement at the girl's deadly grace, and feeling ashamed that she was now the one being protected by the girl. Shadow Madd had fled when he realized how badly the battle was going against his men. For all of his intimidating presence, Madd was clearly more of a bully than anything else, picking on those weaker than him and relying on others to act in his place instead of facing those who could actually threaten him back.
As soon as the fight had ended, the golden glow had faded from the girl's eyes, revealing their natural violet color. However, her hair stayed blonde, and her outfit similarly remained transformed. Alice remembered the girl looking around in disbelief, as if she had been taking in the world for the first time.
"No way... I did all of that?" the girl had whispered. "This has to be a dream."
Of course, it hadn't been a dream, but in any case the girl had agreed to help them, introducing herself as Nunnally Lamperouge. According to her account, she had been at the hospital for one of her regularly-scheduled appointments, and had taken out her phone to listen to some music while she waited, when she heard a commotion outside. A rather nasty-sounding man, whom the staff had addressed as Colonel Madd, had started barking orders to search for fugitives of some kind, and demanding to know why they hadn't produced more 'candidates', to which the doctors had protested that they ran a hospital, not a factory. Nunnally hadn't had the slightest idea what sort of candidates they were talking about, but Madd had frightened her, and she found herself wanting to hide. Before she knew it, something had changed in the air around her. She hadn't been able to see, but she had sensed that she wasn't in her hospital room anymore, and had begun trying to find her way back when she ran into them.
From that moment on, Nunnally had effectively taken over the group that would soon become known as the Irregulars, at least in the field. While Nunnally wasn't a fellow Code-R escapee, it had been a purely pragmatic decision on Sancia's part to yield her command to the newcomer. Nunnally knew the way back, retracing her path through the factory, and was the only one among them who had a fully manifested Persona, making her their strongest combat asset. That was true even before Nunnally started capturing enemy Shadows and absorbing them into her mask as new Personas for her to wield. Nunnally had the best grasp of her own abilities, and if Sancia knew that if she tried to give Nunnally orders, she would just get in the way.
Nunnally could have gone her own way once they managed to return to the real world, but she wanted to keep helping them. Her motives hadn't been entirely altruistic. Even if Madd hadn't been constructing a new Code-R facility under her hospital, his interest in it and the tests that he was having the staff run in his search for those with "potential" was a major problem for her. Sooner or later, the real Madd would either discover her potential or pull patient records and perhaps notice certain inconsistencies in her file, leading him to discover her secret and that of her brother.
It was clear that Nunnally admired her brother in more than just a typical sibling way, and more than a teenage girl would ever admit, but Nunnally chose to keep him in the dark, knowing that he wouldn't approve of her new activities in the Metaverse. Nunnally became flustered when Dalque asked her one day, "Is it just me or is 'Onii-sama' the Japanese word for one's boyfriend? Because it sounds that way when you say it, Nemo," promptly denying it and telling Dalque that it was just a respectful term for an esteemed older brother. It was a line of conversation that Alice hadn't been at all amused by, feeling pangs of jealousy at the closeness of Nunnally's bond with her brother.
Ironically enough, Nunnally had ended up following her brother's example when she put together the plan to steal Madd's heart. She strongly disapproved of the idea of using the Metaverse to murder Madd, and got upset when Clovis' death was brought up, tearfully saying that even with everything he had done, he didn't deserve to die that way. But she knew from the example of her former gym teacher that it was possible to change someone's heart without killing them. The only push she needed was Shadow Madd's paranoid speculation that they were in his Palace to steal his "Treasure", and clarification of the term in a place that she referred to as the "Velvet Room". Alice couldn't fully appreciate what Nunnally meant, as she had no way to experience Nunnally's Velvet Room firsthand, but she had come to recognize that Nunnally's power was fundamentally different from theirs, and so she accepted it.
While none of them would ever match Nunnally's unique abilities, one by one the other Irregulars began to awaken to their true powers in Madd's Palace. It wasn't something that could be forced, the circumstances varying between individual members, though usually a confrontation with Shadow Madd and his minions was involved. Life-or-death situations really had a way of forcing one to recognize what was truly important to them, and that brought with it renewed determination to rebel against Madd's attempts to control them, which was what seemed to give true form to their Personas.
Alice's Persona took the form of Bradamante, the fierce female knight from medieval epic poems who had rebelled against the notions of a mere damsel in distress by undertaking a quest to save her loved one, as well as beating down anyone stupid enough to stand in her way. While Alice doubted that Bradamante had ever appeared that way in the original poems, her Persona took on it's summoner's blonde twintails, but they were far longer, perhaps in reflection of how she admired Nunnally's hair. Bradamante was garbed in white and blue, with golden epaulettes, tassets, and greaves, and a long, padded skirt wrapping around her legs and providing a measure of additional protection, while remaining loose enough to permit a high degree of mobility. Extremely swift with her lance, and equipped with a brilliantly shining shield, Bradamante was born from Alice's deep desire to always be there to protect Nunnally.
Their leader remained frighteningly capable in battle as Nemo, sometimes even entering a berserker state in which her eyes would have a golden glow. This enabled Nunnally to perform acts of violence upon Shadows that she normally would have no stomach for, and sometimes led to her using cruder language that one wouldn't imagine coming from a girl as sweet as Nunnally. Alice strongly suspected that this was part of the deal Nunnally had made with her Shadow. Most of the time, it stayed on a tight leash, and functioned as Nunnally's Persona, presenting a more acceptable front to the world. But there were times when it seemed that Nunnally allowed her Shadow to temporarily take over the body that they shared and fight in her stead without being held back. The Shadow's eyes also had a habit of flaring up in the Metaverse when Nunnally was particularly angry, as had happened when her brother had discovered her secret and suggested that she stop visiting the Metaverse. Mao was lucky that Nunnally had held her Shadow in check during their brief encounter, likely not wanting her brother to see that side of her. It was a far more sadistic personality, and while Nunnally had never killed a real person even in that state, there was a chance that she would have made an exception for Mao if she had let her Shadow take the reins. If she had it would have most assuredly been an especially painful death for him.
But in the real world, Nunnally remained startlingly vulnerable. She had ultimately regained her vision, but she could only use her legs in the Metaverse, and that was a major reason that Alice had accepted Nunnally's invitation to attend her school, so that she could stay close to her at all times. Nunnally already had a bodyguard in Sayoko, but Sayoko didn't have a Persona, and with Mao still on the loose at the time, Alice hadn't wanted to leave anything to chance.
Still, Alice was grateful for the opportunity to learn and pretend to have a normal life as a student. She should have been hopelessly behind, and her grades weren't great by any means, but part of Code-R's research had been mental enhancement to prepare its subjects for the strain of receiving new Personas, which meant that she could process new information quickly, something that was also invaluable when fighting at high speed. However, those same experiments had also messed with her head so much that she was no longer entirely sure what her original surname had been, so she had to pick a new one for herself when applying to Ashford Academy. Ever since escaping to the Metaverse and stumbling into Madd's Palace, Alice felt like she had fallen down the rabbit hole into a dark Wonderland, so she had taken the surname Liddell, after the namesake of the famous literary character.
As for the other Irregulars, Dalque's Persona was the pirate Anne Bonny, perhaps reflecting her distaste for any sort of rules. Sancia's other self manifested as Cynane, the half-sister of Alexander the Great, who had led a third of his armies. Lucretia's Persona became Lucia, the martyr who had been named the patron saint of the blind, and whose blessings were invoked against a number of afflictions. There had been a lively discussion regarding Lucretia's code name, including the suggestion of Oracle, but Lucretia, humble as ever, had politely declined, saying that it made her feel awkward to have such a title. She had then proposed the codename "Land" for herself, in reference to how her Persona would enable them to get a sense of the lay of the land within a Palace.
As each of them awakened to their true Personas, their symptoms began to vanish, without the need for further treatment, and soon even Lucretia had regained her strength. It was clear now that their sickness had been a result of their previously improperly induced Personas. With new vigor, they had stormed Madd's Palace after Nunnally left a calling card at the hospital. It was fortunate that the real Colonel Madd didn't know what his Shadow did, or she wouldn't have been to do so, but the fact that he hadn't come to arrest Nunnally and bring her in for experimentation after her initial awakening had been all the reassurance they needed.
Madd's cybernetic Shadow had put up a fierce fight, transforming into an even larger mechanical form that could barely qualify as remotely human, but he had been defeated. Madd was still raving about why they couldn't see the potential of his work, and how it would help so many people, but Nunnally had harsh words for him.
"You never cared about other people. If you truly wanted to help people, you wouldn't have tortured my friends and murdered countless others. You could have helped many, but you only cared about yourself!"
"Code-R started with the best of intentions, simply trying to unlock the secrets of the human mind," the defeated Shadow Madd had sighed. "But men like me wanted it to be something more ambitious. Our proposals gained the support of Prince Clovis, and from there, the project took on a life of its own. Now I see it was misguided from the start. There was no way that artificial Personas could ever beat the real thing. I wanted to be like a god, but you've punished me for that hubris."
That only earned Shadow Madd another tongue-lashing for not showing any remorse for his victims, just the failure of his project. That of course would change, once they had taken his Treasure.
It was disappointing that Madd hadn't confessed directly to the media. As another of the masterminds of Code-R, his testimony could have done tremendous damage to Britannia's Cognitive Psience research. As it was, there was simply the mention that his heart had been changed by a group calling itself the Irregulars, which was immediately overshadowed when the Black Knights changed the heart of the Black King. Even the hospital had managed to keep itself out of the news, as their calling card would have been damaging to its reputation. But with Clovis's death, the subsequent murders of most of Code-R's leading researchers, including Joesph Fenette, by an unknown assailant, now believed to be one of the Black Masks, and Madd's change of heart, Code-R was finally finished.
They had never found out what really happened to Madd after he turned himself in. Officially, he had been reprimanded, demoted, and reassigned, but the Irregulars didn't believe that for a second. Most of them were of the opinion that Madd had been quietly killed or else his new assignment was serving as a guinea pig for Britannia's broader research into Cognitive Psience, if whoever was directing that effort was feeling particularly vindictive.
Shaking her head, Alice brought herself back to the present. Code-R had made use of human traffickers; that was how Mao and many other victims had ended up in the program. Of course, reprehensible as they were, not all traffickers were involved in Code-R, though the Irregulars took pleasure in changing their hearts all the same. But there was a particular trafficking ring that they were pursuing now, the same one that was likely responsible for Mao's kidnapping. It had long operated between China and Area 11, and during the days of Code-R, it had been bringing people into Area 11. But now, if their information was correct, victims were flowing the other way, kidnapped from the ghettos around Tokyo and shipped to an undisclosed location in China.
Alice knew that Nunnally hadn't mentioned their lead to Lelouch yet, but it wasn't that their leader was trying to keep it a secret from him. Nunnally knew that her brother was busy trying to infiltrate High Eunuch Gao Hai's Palace at the Chinese Federation Consulate. She didn't want to distract him with an unconfirmed lead, especially when it was something that the Irregulars could handle on their own. But if it did prove to be something more, Nunnally would tell him.
They found their way to the Distortion where the ringleader of the traffickers, or rather, his Shadow, waited for them. They knew his type well, and were ready for him. Nunnally deftly changed from Persona to Persona, ensuring that the Irregulars always had the upper hand, and finished the battle by letting entering her berserker state and letting him taste her unleashed fury. They had him on his knees, begging them not to let the scary girl hurt him. It would have seemed pathetic, a grown man being so utterly terrified of a fourteen-year old girl, but one never messed with Nunnally when she had her Shadow's eyes if they knew what was good for them.
"Where have you been taking those people?" Nunnally demanded, blonde hair waving behind her in the wind created by her Persona, hovering threateningly over the trafficker's Shadow.
"Northwestern China, near the Taklamakan Desert," the trafficker's Shadow spluttered, anxiously eyeing Nunnally's Persona. "They always have someone pick them up before we get too close, but there has to be some large facility there if they need that many subjects."
"Subjects?" Nunnally pressed, golden eyes flaring. "I notice that you didn't say 'slaves'. So that facility is involved in the same sort of research that Prince Clovis was?"
"I don't know!" the trafficker's Shadow cried. "I knew not to ask those questions!"
"Is it a Britannian facility?" Sancta asked.
"Yes," the trafficker's Shadow nodded.
"But there's no way Britannia could construct such a large facility there unless-" Lucretia started.
"Unless they did so with the knowledge of the Chinese Federation," Sancia finished. "And you must have paid someone off if you're regularly transporting such large numbers of people between Area 11 and China. What do you say about that?"
"The Consul-General looks the other way if they receive a cut of the profits and deals with local officials for us."
The Irregulars froze. That personally tied Gao Hai, the Black Knights' current target, to Britannia's ongoing Cognitive Psience research programs. While it was possible that the High Eunuchs made deals behind each others' backs, if the facility was as large as the volume of trafficking suggested, it would likely be something that they were all aware of and intending to profit from through their relationship with Britannia. Schneizel's marriage treaty between the Empress and Prince Odysseyus was only the next step in solidifying that alliance.
"You really shouldn't have said that," a distorted voice said from behind them. "I may have let you live had I not heard that. Now you've left me with no choice but to eliminate you."
The Irregulars whirled to face the new threat, and Alice felt her blood run cold. There was a short young man dressed in what looked like noble attire, with a black vest and high military-style boots over a while undershirt and pants. A light blue cravat was tucked into the shirt, and a black cloak with golden epaulettes, lined in red and with a high collar, was draped around him. But what really frightened her was the expressionless black mask that covered the entirety of his face, revealing only the brown hair on his head.
This was the second Black Mask, the one that the Black Mask whom she had encountered with Nunnally underneath Ashford Academy had spoken of. He had been telling the truth! But it was too confusing to think of them in that way. Alice resolved that she would think of the one they had encountered before as Black Armor, and the assassin in front of them now as Black Mask, though really she had more important things to be worrying about, since at that moment Black Mask pulled out a gun and fired. The trafficker's Shadow let out a pained gasp, blood leaking from his chest, and then burst into dark wisps and vanished.
"Another victim of a mental shutdown," Black Mask murmured. Her turned to them. The Irregulars, I presume," he said amiably, as if he hadn't just casually murdered a man. Nor did he seem bothered by the fact that with the Shadow that had created it killed, the Distortion would likely collapse within minutes. Alice didn't want to think about what would happen if they were still trapped inside at that time.
"Does killing a man like that really mean nothing to you?" Nunnally demanded, trying to sound strong but clearly frightened, shocked back into her regular self by the horror of what she had just seen. "Do you even know how many people you've killed?"
"I can't remember how many people I've killed," Black Mask replied. "Nobody counts how many times they brush their teeth or eat a meal - same with this. But by your reactions," Black Mask continued, "I see that you know of me. You probably also realize that I have instructions to kill you, should the opportunity present itself." There was no malice in his words, which made him all the more unsettling.
"Oh yeah, we've heard of you!" Dalque replied, firing herself up. "I've been itching for a good fight!"
"Whether or not it is a good fight is irrelevant to my mission," Black Mask replied, though there was a hint of wry amusement in his voice. "All of you will die, and that will be the end of it."
"Do you really think you can take on all of us at once?" Dalque asked incredulously.
"Wait, Power, he's-" Lucretia began.
"I don't think," Black Mask replied. "I can." He reached for his mask and let out a cry. "Loki!"
Red flames wreathed Black Mask, preventing them from seeing his face, while his Persona rose behind him, a horned bipedal creature, striped like a zebra but far more dizzying to look at, with long red braids, hoof-like feet, and a long orange-red sword in its hands. None of them needed Lucretia to tell them that Loki was far more powerful than any of their individual Personas. They could feel it.
"We need to get him off balance," Nunnally said, steeling herself for what had to be done. "Then we run."
"Of course," Sancia nodded.
"Don't think that it will be easy!" Black Mask shouted. Loki swirled its blade in its hands, and black tendrils, seeming like a multitude of hands, shot from the ground, striking them repeatedly. They barely weathered the assault.
Nunnally issued orders. "Land, heal us! Everyone else, with me!" She grasped her own mask. "Shiki-Ouji!" It was a Persona that her brother had recommended to her, and it would protect her if Black Mask tried that attack again.
The voices of the other Irregulars chorused after hers as they summoned their own Personas.
"Bradamante!"
"Anne Bonny!"
"Cynane!"
"Lucia!"
Lucretia began casting Mediarama, a strong healing spell, while Alice cast Masukukaja, increasing the speed of all of the other Irregulars. Against an opponent like this, they couldn't afford to be hit. Sancia cast Bufula, conjuring ice crystals around Loki and its summoner, while Nunnally and Dalque rushed in toward Black Mask, each coming in on opposite sides. Nunnally let out a battle cry as she unleashed her other self once again, fiercely attacking Black Mask, but Loki was fast, and not only fended her off, but spun around to strike Anne Bonny as she tried to dive-bomb him, sending Dalque's Persona flying back and causing Dalque herself to double over in pain.
"Power, fall back and support!" Nunnally shouted.
Black Mask, seizing upon Nunnally's moment of distraction as she was focused on her teammates, leveled his gun at her and fired. With Shiki-Ouji as her Persona, she was in no real danger from his shot, the bullet stopping harmlessly inches away from her as it instead struck the wards upon her, which might as well have been an impenetrable wall. But seeing Black Mask very directly try to kill her friend filled Alice with fury.
"You'll pay for that! Bradamante!"
Moving at blinding speed, and with its offensive power further increased by Dalque's timely casting of Matarukaja, Alice's Persona charged Black Mask, spear in hand. Nunnally was quite understandably pissed as well, prompting another flurry of berserker strikes, though they seemed to do little to faze Black Mask. Alice couldn't see his expression, but if she had to guess, she would say that he was bored.
"It's time we end this," Black Mask announced. "Loki. Megidolaon."
Following his instructions, Loki began drawing in massive amounts of energy. Shiki-Ouji would do nothing to protect Nunnally against that, and it was clear that Black Mask intended to wipe the rest of them out too with Loki's coming spell. Alice knew that she had only one chance, and hoped Bradamante's aim would be true.
Bradamante hurled her spear, impaling Loki in the side. As they would say, a critical hit! Black Mask gasped, blood suddenly staining his undershirt, and the energy that Loki had been gathering dissipated harmlessly.
"This is our chance!" Lucretia cried.
"I know!" Nunnally shouted. "Everyone, retreat!"
They rushed past Black Mask before he could recover, out through the Distortion's portal and back into Mementos.
"Why didn't we just kill him when he had the chance and be done with it?" Dalque complained. "It's going to be like your brother and Mao all over again!"
"No," Sancia said. "Didn't you see, Power? He had barely begun to fight in earnest. He was toying with us. Speed dealt him a serious blow, yes, but cornered beasts are most dangerous... as he found out to his cost, if I may add. It was best to get away while we still could."
"I'm just glad that everyone's safe," Nunnally sighed, once again her normal self.
"There's no time to rest yet," Lucretia said frantically. "I'm sensing Loki coming after us through the tunnels, and quickly!"
"Seriously?!" Dalque whined. "This guy is really starting to tick me off!"
"We got lucky, thanks to Speed," Nunnally frowned, "but our chances at beating him in a fight are low at best. We need more time." A strange look passed over her face. "Land... do you sense The Reaper in our vicinity?"
"It's still some ways off," Lucretia hastily replied, "but-"
"Lead us toward it."
"Wait, Nemo, you can't-"
"That's a stunt your brother would pull!" Alice objected. "You really picked the wrong time to have him rub off on you, Nemo!"
"We can't win a fight with The Reaper, he probably can't either. As far as we can tell, he doesn't have an ability like yours, Land. We'll be able to see it coming! He won't!"
"A desperate strategy," Sancia sighed. "But I don't see any other option left to us."
In the end, it was far closer than any of them would have liked, but they successfully lured Black Mask into The Reaper's path, leaving the assassin to fight for his life while they made their escape.
"Land..." Nunnally asked at the entrance of Mementos, worry on her face. "Did he..." Her words trailed off, but Alice knew that leaving Black Mask to face almost certain death like that was weighing heavily on her conscience, even though he had tried to kill her not long ago, and had very likely been the one to kill her half-brother Clovis, whom she had once been close to, in spite of the monster he had become.
"I can't sense Loki or his summoner at all," Land replied softly. "But we're well out of range at this point. There's no way to know."
Nunnally nodded, and thanked her, but it was clear that Land's words were of no comfort to her as guilt gnawed away at her. She was convinced that she was as good as a murderer now.
Alice put a hand over Nunnally's shoulder. "I'm not going to say that it gets easier, Nemo. But why beat yourself up over it when you don't know for sure?"
Nunnally took several shallow breaths. "It's worse because I don't know for sure."
"You saw how strong that guy was," Alice continued. "Besides, his Persona was Loki, the god of trickery! If there's anyone with a Persona who could pull a fast one and make it look like he had died, it would be him!"
"I hope you're right," Nunnally sighed. She looked up. "We need to tell my brother what happened here today. About the Black Mask... and about what they're doing in China."
A/N:
It's been over two weeks. I never intended it to take so long to finish the interlude, which turned out to be a full chapter in length by itself, but it underwent multiple rewrites, and I was out for several days in the middle of it.
The idea from this interlude arose from the fact that I hadn't really done much with the Irregulars after introducing them to the story. It was an opportunity for a belated backstory, but I also wanted it to advance the main plot as well, hence the encounter with Black Mask at the end. I used Alice's POV through most of the chapter, as it seemed an interesting perspective on events that would allow a fuller account of what happened before the Irregulars met Nunnally.
Nunnally's relationship with her Shadow was based on her relationship with Nemo in Nightmare of Nunnally, who was pretty much her superpowered evil side. It's also known that Shadows can become Personas, and vice versa, and in P4 Adachi was able to use his Persona, even while it was heavily implied he was possessed by his Shadow. And yes, Nemo is considerably more vicious in Nightmare of Nunnally than Nunnally herself is, and uses language like "bastards". The way Nemo describes herself pretty explicitly makes her the equivalent of Nunnally's Shadow, being all of Nunnally's repressed rage and resentment.
As for the Irregular's Arcanas, if anyone wants to know them, here they are:
Nunnally Lamperogue, "Nemo" - Fool, Elizabeth III
Lucretia, "Land" - Priestess, Lucia
Sancia, "Order" - Empress, Cynane
Alice, "Speed" - Lovers, Bradamante
Dalque, "Power" - Chariot, Anne Bonny
Thanks to my beta readers for the suggestions regarding the Irregular's Personas. Technically, there are no poison skills in Persona 5 (though there are in Persona 4), but I felt that Eizabeth the III would have them (much to Nunnally's displeasure) based on the stories told about her in-universe. Elizabeth III is also Curse-aligned, as a parallel to Lelouch's initial Persona, and her ill-fated status as the last monarch of the British Islands.
One last note about the Irregulars. Their nationalities are never explicitly stated, although in canon they were Honorary Britannians, implying that they were from the various areas. Alice, Lucretia, and Sancia all have distinctly European names and appearances, but Britannia hadn't conquered parts of mainland Europe in R1, so I chose Areas for them that were former European colonies in North America. Dalque's darker complexion suggested that she was from a region that was closer to the equator, and of the territories that Britannia holds, that meant South America.
And with that lengthy author's note included, this actually becomes the longest chapter on record. Anyways, with any luck the next one won't take so long. However, work will be picking up again in another week or so, and my updating pace will probably slow to every 1-2 weeks, minimum (though last year, I rarely took longer than 3 weeks), so don't get anxious. I've already come this far and have no intention of stopping now.
Hope you enjoyed!