This story is a work of fiction. Any similarities to events or persons living or dead in your world is purely coincidental.
The Lights And Sounds And Smells And Souls Of A City
Born Of Torment And Ecstasy
6/12 Wednesday
After School
The bright-hulled vessel carved through the sea with a speed that seemed impossible given the rough state of the water. Even if it were perfectly calm, the Shadows dwelling on the nearby island were unused to having visitors.
Not that they didn't know the proper response to such a thing. As soon as the ship's gangplank lowered and three pirates walked onto the shore's gray dirt, the closest Shadows pounced.
That crew, in turn, knew the correct response to the attack. One of them, fair brown sugar haired and wearing a stylish red duster jacket, had a pair of revolvers up and out of his belt in less than a second, unleashing a stream of bullets into the enemy that was occasionally punctuated with blasts of fire.
The second one, clad in a revealing dancer's outfit and golden eye mask below pitch dark hair, chose instead to dodge the charging creatures, spinning and weaving around them with a supernatural grace until the time came to strike them down with bolts of lightning, or blasts of green hurricane-force winds. Those lucky few who actually got close enough instead were met by a pair of ornamental enamel daggers wielding with the same striking agility as the rest of her movements.
But the one who finally broke the horde's will and turned their rush into a panicked flight was the third one in the center, the pale-haired leader. Covered by a gold-buttoned captain's coat with a floppy-brimmed hat that blocked the enemy's sight of her eyes but not her own vision, she pulled out a slow but powerful flintlock pistol to fire at those at a distance before breaking out a far more fearsome weapon- a pair of period-era cutlasses that tore through mottled black flesh with every slash. When that failed, a vast, impossible to predict array of other skills were called on to destroy the survivors.
The Shadows who stopped long enough to look at their attackers would see nothing of the leader's face except lips twisted into a canny, almost cruel smirk, as if she already knew the battle's outcome before it had begun. With her prediction validated, the female captain lunged out towards a Shadow who was defeated, but not quite dead yet.
The Shadow, a shiny blue-skinned gargoyle shape toting a pitchfork after he'd shed the initial disguise of living black ooze with a bone white mask, quavered before the sight before him. As she drew closer, the Shadow could see further beneath the hat, making out a nose... and a single visible eye that burned with emerald fire.
"There's a new Land here", a young but focused-sounding, almost inhuman voice said. "Have you seen it?"
"N-no!", the creature protested, unable to fly any more with his every move hampered by all-consuming fear. "I swear, I dunno! I haven't seen any new Lands 'round here!"
"Are you sure?", the heavy contralto voice prodded his mind like it was a solid object. "Because, if you're lying to us... There are things we can do to you that will make you envy your comrades' fates."
"I swear, I don't know anything! Please, spare me! I'll do whatever you want!"
The lips turned up, as if satisfied with that answer. "There is one thing we can do to make sure of that. Join with me. You will get to see the new Land for yourself."
More than at a loss, the large-headed Shadow dropped his pitchfork in defeat. "Alright... You win. I'm Brute Bilwis. I'm just a farmer, really. But I might be able to help you some other way."
The Shadow became a riot of colors, surging around the captain before flowing into her-
And Makoto Nijima opened her eyes.
There wasn't very much for her to see. The heart monitor next to her bed defied expectations by being small enough to easily cart in and out of the hospital rooms, only making any noise if she was actually in danger. An IV stood next to the bed, always kept full but unused at the moment. The rest of the room had been kept in a low, sedate light for ease of sleep.
It was a relief for her to see that someone had been monitoring her, because a nurse opened the door less than thirty seconds later. Old looking, but still energetic, she locked her eyes into Makoto's and smiled.
"You're up. Are you able to remember why you're here?"
"I am", she halted, voice catching on vocal cords that hadn't seen use in several days. Her lips were cold and dry. Bitter-tasting, as if subjected to medicine.
Shiho Suzui, she flashed back on her memory of a petite, dark-haired girl. Considering her career- her careers, plural- she considered it amazing how few times she had been to hospitals. The first time had been when she'd tried to visit Shiho Suzui, who had thrown herself from the roof of Shujin Academy seven whole years ago. That visit had gone very badly, but-
Was this how Shiho had felt too, when she'd finally woken up? It felt like she was still sleeping, like the air in the room was too heavy and her body too light.
Like she was still in that dream world, where she'd seen a crew of Persona-users fighting Shadows. Just a dream, she told herself. Even if it wasn't, she was in no shape to react to it just yet. Her arm and leg bones ached terribly, and her skin felt unnaturally clammy beneath the bed sheet.
For now, just focus on getting better.
The nurse seemed happy to see that her patient had already made the most important deduction- that even if she was up, getting better was priority one. Now they could move on to other matters.
"You've been a very popular guest, miss Nijima. No surprise, since it was on all the local news."
"Who?"
The nurse looked like she was calling up a mental list. "Well, there was officer Hideki. A few other cops later on, as well as some high school students. Chief Kagasawa came by on Monday. Oh yes, Akira Kurusu. He's been visiting you every day."
Warmth flooded her being and she relaxed. "Thank you."
"Don't thank me. Thank Mr. Kurusu. And everyone else who came to wish you well."
"Yes", she nodded, still groggy. The diagnosis could wait. She felt fine, anyway. Nothing broken, which was a miracle considering how high she'd fallen from. "I plan to."
It was after the fourth island they'd cleared out that Mirambela began to lose patience.
Carefully patching up any injuries with restorative medical items instead of healing skills to spare her own reserve of energy, she gazed across the barren gray sand and sighed. "This is getting us nowhere. Maybe we should have prepared first."
Rapidly spinning one revolver on his gloved hand, Julian holstered it before responding. "Hey, we did prepare. Saber had medicine ready to go and everything."
"I mean, preparations to help us find this place", she elaborated with a pained expression, recognizing that she was beginning to revert to old habits and unable to stop them. "We should have waited a few days first, looked around to see who's disappeared."
"Which would be a few days taken off our time limit", Pelagio reminded her, calmly cleaning black goop off his shield and broadsword. "Hmph. Knowing who it was we sought would not aid us in determining the location of their Land."
"Still, frustrating. I get it.", Aiko acknowledged from her seat on a rock once she had made sure that the poison antidote they'd brought was working right, cleansing away the venom from another Shadow who had gotten too close. After the amount of it they had encountered in the previous Land, she knew it was important to be ready for any contingency. "Gunslinger's Land didn't take us this long to find, and I washed up on yours. All we have to do is keep checking the other islands and interrogating the Shadows there, and we should find something soon."
Mira remained uncertain. "But by the time we've done all that, we'll be too tired to actually fight the Shadows there."
"Which is why we need to at least locate it before we turn in for today", their captain pointed out. "Whoever it was, their life is on the clock now. I'd like to avoid cutting it as close as we did last time, if we can."
"And there's that lovely optimism again", Jiachi noted, gazing out across the dark horizon with creases of worry on his face. "Man! I had no idea just how big this place really was until now. Does it ever end?"
"If it does", Aiko warned him, "please call it out so we can change course. The last thing we want is to fall over the edge of the map."
"We have a map?"
"We do, actually", Pelagio explained, gesturing to his shiny beaked helmet with one gauntlet. "When I transform into a boat, one of my rooms is a map room. Dancer has been there before, I believe."
"When I was exploring", Mira shrugged. "We were on our way to your Land, and I was looking for something to do between Shadow attacks. Too bad the maps were all blank."
"My sincerest apologies", Pelagio bowed to them. "However, I can assure you we have no chance of becoming lost at sea, so long as we continue to mark down each island we visit. Excuse me a moment."
He took that time to walk out into the reflective water and transform back into the familiar shape of their ship. While the team had initially been excited to see that he had developed two new cannons since their last visit- one on each side, giving them a total of six- the repetition of invading each new island and defeating the Shadows there had slowly eroded that enthusiasm. At least, it had for Mira.
Aiko's ability helped a little. She'd made it a habit of taking one Shadow from each island as a new mask, or at least trying to. The bipedal tentacled chicken lizard on the previous island hadn't been cooperative, suddenly turning vicious even though it had no chance of victory alone. The others, she claimed, added not only to her power, but her knowledge of the surrounding area.
To prove that, they'd gone and dug up another treasure chest on a tiny spit of rock near Mira's Land. A treasure that only the Shadow called Bilwis had known of, which thankfully had not contained another Shadow, but a pair of gleaming silver daggers which Aiko had happily handed to Mira.
These prizes kept her spirits up longer, but as the search wore on and on, and she spent more time in the map room that anxiousness only rose. Julian was right. Faraway Lands was a vast ocean beyond any of their imaginations, and locating a single Land in it was a needle in several extremely hostile haystacks.
"What if", she blurted the realization without caring who heard. "What if Pelagio was wrong?"
Aiko startled her by descending from the mast on a rope. "What do you mean, wrong?"
Trying to remain steady, she shook her head. "What if no one came in here?"
Their captain pondered the idea, but seemed to discard it just as quickly. "That would make no sense. The only reason the gate appears is when someone wants to enter this world, and even then only at the time when the sun sets into the water, right?"
"And what", Mira asked fearfully, "what if that someone is... you?"
To her immense relief, Aiko didn't take visible offense to the suggestion, possibly already sensing how much she feared a reprisal over it. "It's true that one of the rules got broken. The gate is supposed to appear at the Yume Bay, and this time it was along the beach closer to the campus where Byzael-" She winced, biting down on a glove. If this portal hurt him... "Where the fishermen's boats usually rest."
"The exact same place it was the night before", Pelagio's voice emanated from the deck. "However, I did not see anyone go into it. I merely watched over the gate until it closed, and then flew directly to you."
"And yet no one else saw it?", Mira wondered out loud. "That seems weird too. None of this makes sense. Could it be some kind of trap?"
"If it is", Julian remarked dryly, drawn in by their conversation. "Then it's a pretty shitty trap. We've been kicking Shadow butt the whole way- Wild Bill is way stronger over on this side. Even if we get tired, we can leave whenever we want to, right?"
All eyes turned to their captain, who finally looked like she was beginning to share Mira's concerns, her eyes blinking rapidly trying to comprehend something they couldn't grasp.
"Yes... I think so. Still, if it was a trap, then..." Searching their surroundings again, she climbed the stairs to the upper deck rail and stared across the water to the north. "Just in case, I think we should check on the gate. We know it stays open for a few minutes in the real world, but we don't know how long it stays open on this side."
Pelagio sounded chagrined, but never defiant. "As you say, captain. Please adjust my main sail to the northeast then. We must change course."
The sensation of lapping water, the breeze, the stars... Ironically, Mira found all the sensations of sea travel more enjoyable now that they were no longer headed towards an uncertain fate, and back towards the safety of their own world.
More importantly, no one else gave even a hint that they considered her cowardly for suggesting it. Pelagio might have said something about it if the others weren't there, but she didn't mind. For all she could tell, it might have been the truth.
"There", Jiachi called from the upper deck rail, pointing left. "Gate ho! Or something."
The rift was still there, still unchanged from its usual state, always pulsing in a way that made it impossible to tell if water was going into or coming out of it. It was located far enough away from any Land that the area around it always felt strangely calm, signifying a 'safe zone' of sorts.
"Huh", Mira noted in a tone of deliberate forced conversation, walking up to Aiko now that they were safe. "Maybe it wasn't a trap after all. Maybe it was just a glitch?"
Their captain said nothing. Her body had become completely still, skin paling, her eyes racing about in a frightened panic, a white-gloved hand drifting down to uselessly grab the handle of her pistol as if to pull it free and shoot.
"Saber? What's wrong? Captain?"
Then, just as quickly as it had come, the trance was lost. In its place was raw terror.
"Change course, hard to port!", she shrieked at anyone who could hear the command and act on it. "Rig the topsail, NOW! Dancer, give it all the wind you can!"
Mira frowned, voice trailing off as she felt it. "What? But we're almost... there."
Water did not normally quake. Even though the properties of the Faraway Lands' water were obviously very different from normal, there were still many similarities. A reflective surface made entirely of liquid didn't normally tremble in a way that could be felt on a ship.
And yet, as they watched, the stars laid out upon this sea trembled.
They were far enough away to feel the shaking reduce slightly before it surged back one hundredfold. An enormous whirlpool gathering near the rift heralded it, growing wide enough to engulf Pelagio before allowing what lay beneath the surface to pass through it and crash deafeningly onto the surface, dousing them all even at this distance.
"Go!", Mira could still hear Aiko's screaming over the cacophony of the spray. "As fast as you can! Straight ahead!"
"What-", Mira coughed weakly, trying to stand after the impact had knocked her off her feet and left her dizzy. "What is that?"
The ship which had emerged was easily twice the length of Pelagio, and possessed twice the number of cannons. Threatening black armor plates covered every inch of the hull, while ringing clusters of chains tied between the frames somehow acted as sails. Likewise, despite having no visible crew, the ship vectored to chase them at such a speed she'd barely realized it had happened until coming face to face with the enormous hanging scythe at the front of the prow.
"It's the Reaper!", Aiko shouted. "Dancer, full speed! NOW!"
She didn't need to be told a third time. Her Persona's powers manifested, filling Pelagio's largest sails with a green wind swift and driving enough to be impossible in reality. It pushed the ship ahead so fast that she already felt the beginnings of motion sickness, although that would be preferable to the alternative. With that boost, the waves and rocks seemed to fly past them, the Lands mere momentary passerby.
Yet, when she looked back, the Reaper's ship was still there, tucked in behind them. If anything, it had actually gained distance on them since it had emerged.
There was a brief distraction for a moment when a giant octopus-shaped Leviathan Shadow blasted out of the depths, its frozen white jaws clearly intent on the Reaper instead of them. It came within fifty feet of the hull before six cannons of varying elemental powers fired as one, blasting the creature apart without even slowing down.
From up near the helm, Aiko faced forward, trying not to let fear transform into complete panic. "Guns?"
"Sorry!", came Julian's stressed shout from below decks. "Can't target him until he's closer!"
At which point we'll probably be dead since he outguns us and can take more punishment. She winced inwardly. This was starting to bring back bad memories of a certain train chase, except the Reaper's enormous warship had already shown better turning abilities. The same trick wouldn't work here.
Even from this distance, she could still hear the eerie rattling of chains coming from behind them, making it hard to think of anything but the most likely fate pursuing them.
"Saber, I can't-" Mira's voice sounded hoarse. "Can't keep this wind up much longer. Giving all I can..."
There's nothing you can do, a voice from nowhere began whispering in her mind. No way to escape. All lives are eventually cut off by the Reaper when their time comes. Accept your inevitable fate.
Go to hell, she thought back, a message intended for no one except the voice in her head, her grip on the steering wheel tightening further. My death is one thing. But Mira, Jiachi and Pelagio are counting on me.
Just as quickly as they had fallen into despair, her eyes rose back up again, casting out across the endless stretch of dark water for anything that might help them. Searching... and finding.
"There." Another minor island, dusty gray from left to right, over twice as long as it was wide. Various arching rock formations likely hid some Shadows, but that didn't stop her from hauling the ship's wheel over, changing course directly for the island's shore.
"Captain?", Pelagio's much more welcome, if concerned, voice reached her. "We cannot hide from the Reaper on that island as we did before. Once it locates a target-"
"It's fine", she promised. "Not planning to stay long. As soon as we hit the shore, transform and run to the beach on the other side."
"...Ah." Understanding, the ship's speed picked back up again to cross the last distance to the shore. Reverting to prevent a crash more than anything, Pelagio sped off down the sands, cutting down any opportunistic Shadows in his wake.
"Run!", she shouted to Mira and Julian, desperate to help them overcome their surprise at being so suddenly left on a beach by their vanishing ship. "Get to the other side, hurry!"
No other Shadows tried to stop them after the first wave. The rest had to be either scared of them, or scared of the ship that had now drawn close enough to make out the grim mechanical details of the rows of cannons and armor lining the sides, along with the scythe at the front that even now extended out and downward in preparation to strike a ship that was no longer there.
"Hurry! We have to keep going! Get to the other side, now!"
Seeing Mira trip in her haste and fall behind, Aiko thought they were lost for a moment, but then she felt the unseen pressure of Mira's Persona exuding a brief bit of power, and suddenly she was sprinting ahead of all of them, reaching the other side just as Pelagio waded into the water to transform again.
"On the guns as soon as you get on board!", their captain hollered after them. "Both of you! I'll be there as soon as I can!"
Jiachi's tone sounded alarmed, his eyes suddenly focused on her. "If you're planning on staying behind-"
"No!", she assured him as they both took a flying leap onto the gangplank. "Just need to check one thing first!"
The others saw it anyway, unable to stop themselves from pausing and staring as the Reaper's colossal ship slowed down, the dark waters beginning to gather around it in a wide circle again, spinning and spinning until the ship was steadily descending prow-first into a whirlpool; the reverse of how it had first appeared.
Within ten seconds, the entire ship had fallen into the abyss, and the pool began to close up as Mira breathed a visible sigh of relief. "Not yet", Ai told her. "We're not free yet. Get to the guns. As soon as you see another whirlpool open up near us, hit it with everything."
Gaping, she only starting running again when Julian grabbed her arm. That left their captain alone on the deck, moving around and trying to get a view of both sides of the ship at once.
Then, after a wait that seemed interminable but was likely only a few minutes, a stretch of water on their port side puckered up, and the whirlpool returned. "Now!", she shouted down to the others even while rushing down below to their location. "Port side! Don't shoot the ship! Shoot the whirlpool! GO!"
Two streams lanced out towards the gathering pool before she was even done speaking. Red and golden energy of flame and lightning pelted the edges of it, followed shortly by a third one of blue.
"Damn", he heard Jiachi growl beside her as Pelagio carefully shifted their position to them give a better angle. "That thing can really just move anywhere it wants to?!"
"Looks like it. Together now, on the far edge."
They saw the spire at the front of the ship arise from the depths once more, the curved scythe in its tip extending like some kind of colossal fishing hook before the rest of the juggernaut's mass followed it up... And then their unified triple shot flew past the prow, past the cannons and scythe to cause a segment of of the whirlpool's edge to explode. The broken segment began to spread immediately as the rest of the pool continued spinning, until the entire boarder collapsed.
The Breach followed after, gallons of water crashing together on the ship jutting all the way up trying to escape it before dragging the main body back down, hauling the prow further and further backwards until no trace of it remained. Seconds later, the pool itself was gone.
"YES!", Mira cheered, for a moment forgetting all her fears and throwing up her arms in wild celebration. "We did it! Right?"
"For now", Pelagio's voice came back hesitantly. "The Reaper can't be destroyed so simply, but it will be a moment before it can return to the surface. Hopefully, this was enough to cause it to lose our scent. Well done, all of you."
"Well done to our captain!", Jiachi put a supporting hand to her shoulder. "Never would've thought to do that myself."
"I wasn't completely sure", Aiko admitted soberly, pulling her hat down to hide her face. "I knew it had the power to create Breaches wherever it wanted, and doing that would be faster than going around that island to get at us. I knew it had to use power to do that, power just like the kind that our Personas and the Shadow use. All we needed was enough of it to disrupt the Breach as it was appearing."
"A fine plan, regardless", Pelagio's voice seconded, this time getting her to yield and just accept the praise, smiling as they ascended back to the main deck.
"Uh-huh. Take that, Niyoga."
"Huh?", Mira looked confused. "What's this about Niyoga-kun?"
Aiko shrugged helplessly. "Um. Nothing much. You remember when he wanted to talk to me in the library at the soccer game yesterday? It got... harsh between us at the end. He basically said I was stupid for not telling him about the other world. And you know how creative he is with insults."
Julian made a revolted face. "Typical. Niyoga calls people stupid all the time. It's how he gets through the day. Genius? More like pen- uh, never mind."
"We should get going", Aiko reminded them briskly. "The Reaper won't stay down forever. All we did was make it angry."
"What is that damn thing?", Jiachi wondered aloud, actually sounding shaken by how powerful and relentless their pursuer had been.
For once, Pelagio's voice didn't carry any animosity towards Jiachi's bluntness.
"Unfortunately, not even the Shadows know the truth of the Reaper's origins. They only know to avoid it as one might a vicious storm, save for the Leviathan Shadows who only see a meal in that cursed ship."
"Now they are stupid", Ai remarked before noticing her friend had frozen up. "Dancer? What's wrong? I know that was scary-"
Mirambela said nothing. She pointed up, over her shoulder, and the others followed her finger.
The Land towered over the seas, a large asymmetrical cluster of square towers lit up by powerful white floodlights. Each side stood layered with grids of identical glass rectangles reflecting the light back, each tower with what looked like large cables strewn between them.
Yet of all this, the most striking image had nothing to do with the buildings, but rather the score of lozenge-shaped, moody-looking zeppelins which drifted far overhead, each one dangling several indistinct black shapes down from them and illuminating the city further with their pairs of front-mounted lights.
Their captain recovered first, heading back to the helm and gripping the wheel. "Well. I think we found it."
"Not that I'm doubting you, Saber", Mira began patiently as they drew ever closer to the Land's shore, "but how do you know? This one could have been here for years."
Eyes breaking from their focus on the city before them, more wary of the zeppelins than anything else, Aiko nodded, tapping the brim of her hat. "Because none of my new masks know it. I don't just take them for their power, you know, but for what they know about which Lands are new. None of them had any memory about this one, which means it's new, which means it's got a good chance of being the one we're looking for."
"A good chance", Mira repeated. "Not a guarantee."
"Not a guarantee", she echoed back. "But a pretty good shot at least. All I want to do right now is learn the name of this Land's ruler. That way, we can figure out if this one is what we're looking for. After that, we'll head back home."
"That's good to know", Mira said gratefully. "For a moment, I was worried that you wanted us to try and rescue them from here on the very first day."
Far from looking insulted by the suggestion, she smiled back. "Don't worry. I'm not that crazy. I know we've been at this a while already, and this place already looks huge. Our Personas give us strength and make us faster, but even here we've got limits."
"We do. But I'm glad you're keeping that in mind. As well as what happened to us the last time we arrived in a Land for the first time."
"Sorry", Julian muttered from the mast.
Their captain snorted. "Don't apologize. That was your Shadow. And if the ruler's Shadow wants to come out and meet us now like then, all the better. It'll be easy to learn who they are then."
She made it a point to lead the way off the gangplank once Pelagio hit the small industrial port that served the Land as an entrance, her boots striking the wood and concrete, one gloved hand hovering in readiness at her cutlass handle. Several large metal shipping crates and boats lay around the area, but they seemed more decorative than anything else, showing no signs of enemy movement.
"Shame nobody else saw that", Julian cracked as the others made their way off less dramatically. "Full marks for bravado there."
She smiled, winking back. "Sorry for stealing your bit, Gunslinger."
"Hey, you owned it", he replied, scanning the area for trouble just as the others were- it was a routine they'd quickly gotten the hang of. "It's like I always say. People see confidence, and Shadows are a lot like people, right? If I were a Shadow seeing you strut like that, ready to rumble... I'd probably run."
"A weak Shadow would indeed run... to warn its friends and come back with greater numbers", Pelagio pointed out, smoothly reverting to his armored form again. "A strong one would wait in hiding and charge us when our guard is down. We must be cautious."
Ignoring how relieved Mira looked not to be the only one preaching restraint any more, Jiachi shrugged. "Whatevs. No matter what comes, we'll deal. I'm really getting the hang of this now."
Nothing bothered the group as they made their way out of the wharf and up a staircase onto the roof of the first tower. As suspected, the geography of this city paid little heed to logic, having streets and alleys slung down below the sea level of the entry point. More immediately noticeable was the way that the various floodlights were bright enough to cast everything there into either pitch black or blinding white, with little to nothing in between the two.
"So bright", Jiachi remarked, pensively shielding his eyes as if he was remembering how his own Land had reduced everything to gold and brown sepia tones. "Feels like a film Noir."
"Sort of", Aiko agreed, focusing less on the city's strange aesthetics and more on the plodding movement of the zeppelins overhead. Gazing over at the various cables connecting the rooftops, she noted how the rectangle windows allowed no sight inside of the buildings, how the cables seemed to have cages and occasionally man-sized silver rings dangling down from them on chains.
No people walked these streets. What few cars there were showed no sign of ever being used, merely empty props like the boats and crates at the wharf had been. "No cognitions", she murmured uneasily. "And where are the- oh."
The closest zeppelin had now drawn close enough for her to see clearly, and almost immediately wished it hadn't. The indistinguishable figures dangling down from each dirigible were now obvious bipedal figures, each one body bound and tied into a tight black outfit without any visible openings and hung there on their chains by the neck, not moving.
The searchlight nearly blinded them for a moment as it cast its glare over them, the voice following just as much of a sensory overload.
"HALT, CRIMINALS! REMAIN WHERE YOU ARE AND WAIT TO BE RESTRAINED IN THE NAME OF JUSTICE!"
Another noise, even louder but thankfully much shorter, cut the shouting off, and the light shining into their faces went away as well. Julian stood, his weapon in hand and pointed at the light he had just destroyed.
"What was that? You'll have to speak up!", he shouted back, the surrounding silence making his voice sound weak and alone no matter how much volume he put into it. "Couldn't quite hear ya there!"
The second searchlight on the other side of the ship narrowed up, turning and moving over to keep them in sight for a moment before another gunshot rang out and it was shattered as well. That sudden loss didn't prevent Aiko from seeing the way another zeppelin was changing course towards them, adjusting its headlights as well to keep them in sight.
Or the way the first one was lowering its bound figurines down all around them. Figures which sprang to life the moment they hit the floor, suddenly mobile marionettes, almost spider-like, occasionally twitching in a way that suggested sharp stabs of pain as they approached.
"Cognitions?", Mira asked worriedly as they were quickly surrounded by the faceless grotesques.
"Doesn't matter", Aiko said, pointing her flintlock at the closest one and firing, the powerful shot tearing through the black outfit and only intensifying the figure's artless spasms. "Either way, we can kill them." And it will be much easier than killing my cognition was.
She watched the spasms intensify until the entire outfit burst apart, whatever was left inside leaking out before forming into a different shape that would have been logically impossible for their bondage to contain. Taking shots from Mira and Julian, the rest of their attackers quickly followed suit, leaving behind a ring of enemies that were not as uniform but no less hideous for it.
"Shadows after all", she confirmed. She had seen some Shadows which were cute, or even beautiful. But from what she saw here, these ones seemed specifically chosen to share only the trait of wretched ugliness.
The most dominant type in the growing crowd, for example, was a purple-skinned man with short brown hair and the traditional black and white stripe prison outfit, forever bound in a floating wooden chair with a noose around his neck. Each one of them bore pained expressions fitting their situation, seeming more like an unwilling puppet to the chair that held them.
Another one, leading the charge, took the form of a headless knight clad in pale armor, the head still visibly alive and making expressions despite having a gory stump for a neck and clutched beneath one shoulder while the other arm brandished a sword.
The third type seemed determined to make up for the knight's lack of head, enormous white and red voodoo masks with leafy green manes and orange beaks encasing their craniums and making their scrawny blue-robed torsos and tiny arms look comically top heavy. The canes they bore hardly seemed enough to compensate for it, but none of them wobbled as they advanced.
Knowing without needing to count that they were outnumbered, Aiko pointed past a shambling knight towards one of the towers. "Break the ones along north side first. If they're too tough we can jump off there to escape."
No one answered her verbally. Instead, the sensation of the ability-enhancing skills Rakukaja, Tarukaja and Sukukaja being placed on her were the reply. They toughened her defenses, sharpened her blade, and lightened her feet all at once.
"Criminal scum!", one of the top heavy Shadows howled maniacally, a row of pearly white chompers below its mask sharp enough to be spikes. "Get them! They must work for Joker!"
Ignoring the gibbering of the others, Ai focused her own thoughts, calling upon her most reliable Persona. "Arise, Tam Lin!"
The snow-maned Persona which she'd come to rely on just as much as the Anne Bonny Persona it had been forged from descended, sword and armor looking far bleaker in this lighting but no less formidable.
"C'mon, you bastards!", she heard Jiachi shouting as had become his routine, drawing the enemy's attention to him at the expense of the others even as he riddled the enemy with bullets. "Bring it!"
As she'd noticed was often the case, much of what happened next became a blur in retrospect, impossible to pick apart one frenzied slash or defeated enemy from the next.
What she did manage to remember was much more important. Such as the fact that the prisoners in the floating chairs could use strong lightning skills if left alone, and that the big-headed ones could heal and even buff their allies.
Such as the fact that these Shadows didn't go down nearly as easily as any of the other ones they'd already fought today. Even after being struck by their weakness determined through trial and error- ice in the case of the big-headed ones and guns for the floating jailbirds- they refused to simply fold like so many before them had, only being destroyed after a concentrated effort from their team.
"Dancer!", she called over to where Mira had been engaged with a repulsive blue blob with glowing red eyes and a slack mouth. "Together!"
The other girl didn't need any further hints to what she meant. Her group-targeted wind skill picked up into a spinning gale large enough to cover the entire rooftop, joined quickly by its equivalent ice skill provided by Jack Frost; Mabufu. The stinging ice and screaming wind coalesced together, resulting in a biting blizzard that chilled even the casters. The true threat was the deadly flying chunks of hail, several of which impacted and destroyed the large-headed Shadows.
Yet their comrades did not flinch at the sight. Bearing the damage, they struck back as if nothing had happened, one long sword tearing a gash into Pelagio's armor and another blasting Mira back with a hot pink blast of psychokinetic power that demanded an immediate heal before she could resume the offensive.
Instead, their captain turned to where Julian had been furiously unloading dozens of shots into the closest enemies, shifting her own mind into the Persona of Lorelei. "Gunslinger, go!"
Once again, they filled the entire rooftop with the sound and fury of a combined elemental skill. The power of Mazan and Maragi came together, resulting in a blistering typhoon of heat that only spread Wild Bill's flames across dozens of targets. A few Shadows at the front winced, but taking in the entire battle made it disturbingly clear just how little damage the double attack had actually done to them.
"Thick hides!", she grumbled. Even the fragile-looking prisoners and their noose chairs required several slashes from Tam Lin before doing down. The others had held their own better, but the enemy had begun to coordinate their attacks now, breaking their formation instead of the other way around.
Finally, she'd had enough. It didn't take a genius tactician to recognize that they were minutes or less away from getting swarmed and slaughtered by this relentless enemy that simply didn't know when to stay down, that didn't seem to care about the pain they were receiving.
"Guardian, it's time! Do it!"
Immediately moving to cover Pelagio as she spoke, she saw one of the masked Shadows unleash a wave of bright scorching phosphorus against Mira's rapidly dodging form, while one of the headless knights gathered the power for some kind of special sword technique. The sinister circle of Lorelei's Makajam descended on the Shadow to block the attack before it could start-
And shattered.
Aiko stared at the knight's armor and the mocking expression on its severed head, confusion and the sense that something was very wrong here finally too much to ignore.
No. This isn't just thick hides. They're strong, but they're not that strong. Jiachi and the others are handling it better. Their skills are doing more damage to the Shadows than mine.
What's going on here?
In fact, Julian was taking advantage of the delay to shoot down one of the striped jailbird Shadows, but then took a surprise blast of pale blue gas to the face from another, falling down on the floor and snoozing loudly about chicken.
She saw another new type emerge from the crowd then, having held back until its enemies had been weakened by its allies to strike. Likely the pack leader by the way the others were so careful to stay far away from it, it looked like a gray-skinned, seven foot tall man had been eaten out and almost fully covered by a multicolored coral reef, a cluster of dark green barnacles that almost looked like an exposed brain bulging out of the hole where the creature's face should have been. One entire arm was missing as well, replaced by a hole-covered sponge cluster, but the remaining one was able to convey instructions despite having only three remaining fingers on it.
It was perhaps the most hideous Shadow Aiko could recall seeing in this Land full of hideous Shadows, and possibly the most powerful. Dark red toxin dripped from the three fingers like blood, and even as Mira carefully dodged that the Shadow focused energy to unleash a spiraling torrent of water beneath her- the Aqua skill taken up to the next level, Aques.
Mira pushed up off the spout, using the extra height to unleash Mazio on the crowd around them. It was joined shortly by Aiko's own Malaqua, the combined spell frying most of the closest enemy but doing little to the coral-encrusted humanoid. In response, the head barnacle opened up ever so slightly, the cracks running through it widening just enough so that something tiny and too fast to see could swarm out and hit the entire team from a dozen directions at once.
Not exactly hurt but extremely disoriented, Aiko felt another headless knight grabbing her sword arm, hauling her down so that the coral man could stick a nail into her. She had just enough time to hear Mira cry out in denial when a buffeting sensation threw the enemy back to a safe distance.
Recovering from the dizziness, she stared, expecting to see the towering spire turret which had defeated Julian's Shadow.
What she saw instead looked to be made of the same material and color as that form and the more common ship, but it was clearly neither of those. Instead, four gleaming metal wheels lay positioned around a curvy, sleek hot rod design, a familiar beaked face protecting a loudly revving motor at the front and two rows of cushioned seats behind it.
The car spoke with Pelagio's voice, though still tinged by fear. "Hurry, climb in! Bring Gunslinger!"
Grabbing Jiachi's soundly sleeping body and getting it into the seat along with the rest gave the enemy time to regroup, the surviving Shadows becoming a lethal pack under the tall coral man's unheard direction. Or perhaps they all were smart enough to be that organized without a leader.
Whatever the case, that organization fell apart as soon as Pelagio's silvery front grill smashed into them at just over seventy miles per hour, bowling the ranks of warped creatures aside and ignoring the sharp stings of lightning skills and psychokinetic blasts that resulted. As they made a screeching sharp turn around the leader that pressed Aiko into the driver door, she felt the pressure ease up on her chest as they spun back, running a pair the of floating jailbirds down before accelerating towards a brick railing.
"Y-you...", she managed to stammer at last without biting her tongue, "you're a car now?!"
"Yes. Apparently so", Pelagio's voice replied from all around them. "Please buckle up and hold on, captain. This will be rather dangerous."
Realizing too late what exactly he meant by that, she gripped the front wheel and screamed along with Mira as the car flew up and over the railing, gliding for what felt like several feet before gravity caught up to them.
Benihime Kujou knew that something was wrong with her boyfriend before his mouth opened.
For one, Kohru Tatsunoko was acting even more stiff and formal than he usually did around her. Considering what he was normally like, this was a feat worth noticing. For two, he'd asked them to meet in the abandoned storage shack at the school's unfinished pool after class.
Of course, she had other plans, insisting that they could meet in the student disciplinary council room in complete privacy, and as usual he cooperated.
That was one of many things that she loved about him. He didn't waste time trying to second-guess her. He already knew that her decisions were almost always the best ones, and even if he wanted to argue with her he wouldn't be so tactless as to do it in front of other students or, worse, teachers. To everyone else, they were a united front, and Tatsunoko knew the importance of that appearance well enough to place an emphasis on privacy.
As promised, they were alone. Everyone else had already gone home for the day, and yet the athletic flat-haired boy looked rarely pensive to be there, dark brown eyes scanning the shelves as if he expected listening devices.
Well, we do record the minutes of each meeting after all, she acknowledged with an amused smile. Just like when Kohru would record journal entries on the small microphone device he carried around on his belt, leaving little to memory wherever he could help it.
Yet, he showed no desire to have this recorded. Just the opposite. Intriguing. She sat back in her seat- the chairman's seat, naturally- and enjoyed simply admiring Tatsunoko's angular face and good looks.
Then he opened his mouth.
"Kujou-san. Thank you for coming out to meet me here. I'm sure you must be busy."
She giggled sharply, still entertained by his over-formality after all this time. "I'd gladly put aside anything to make time for you, Tatsu-kun."
After all, her own personal enjoyment of being with such a capable senior student was just the icing. The cake was watching and hearing and feeling the jealousy of the other girl students that resulted when they were together. They wanted him so badly they couldn't even hide it, but they knew who he was with. Even if the stalwart Tatsunoko seemed like the type to be swayed so easily by some clueless first-year, her own hard-earned reputation guaranteed no one would mess with him... Because that would mean messing with her.
Hearing none of these thoughts, Tatsunoko blinked slowly, his face grave.
"I've been thinking a lot about some things I've been hearing about over the last two months, as well as last year."
"Listening to rumors in the halls?" She sounded pleasantly surprised, hardly offended. "That's unusual for you, isn't it?"
Tatsunoko nodded in acceptance. "True. I'm not normally one for idle rumors. Too much else going on, too many things to plan, such as the summer trip and the Marine Day festival. You know me. The question on my mind right now... is if I really know you."
"Tatsu-kun?" She couldn't keep the worry out of her voice any longer.
Throwing up his hands on the desk as if admitting defeat, he shook his head sorrowfully. "Most rumors are just speculation and imagination, it's true. However, all rumors spring from either a desire, or a kernel of truth." Raising his head, he stared into her, probing, desperately trying to find something. "And unlike most people, once I heard a certain rumor enough times, I decided to fact-check it."
"I thought you just said you've been busy with school events", she pointed out.
"I have. Gathering the right information, interviewing students... it's taken me a long time in between classes and getting everything else done."
"W-what are you talking about, Tatsu-kun?"
With a noticeable effort to keep his face and posture dispassionate, he reached down, lifting his trusty microphone device onto the table. She had no idea where he had originally gotten that from, only that it was perhaps the only device used by students that wasn't internet-compatible. A relic of a forgotten age, and the thick metal covering only reinforced that notion.
"You need to stop this, Kujou-san. Now."
She didn't dare reply. Anything she might have guessed would merely come across as admission of guilt.
Sighing, he pressed a button on his device, letting another voice, a subdued girl's voice, speak for him. "My notes were completely soaked through. Someone poured water into my locker between classes... and then they wrote some awful things on it."
Click.
"-Can't ask for help any more on the online forums, I just get mocked, called names. I think it's because I'm a gai-"
Click.
"I overheard them at lunchtime. They were going to tape someone's dorm door shut, synchronizing their alarms so they could do it fast while someone distracted Ekuya-san. I wanted to tell them not to, but..."
Click.
"Horrible. Everyone was just laughing at that poor girl. I tried stopping her the last time she did that, and I got two month's detention."
Click.
"I'm scared whenever they're around. This isn't discipline. This is torment."
Click.
Stopping the device, he looked into her again, his wide eyes imploring for an answer. Any answer.
"I... I know we're not popular", she tried patiently. "We're the disciplinary committee, of course we're not popular. And we can't stop every incident either. There's not enough of us, and several of my best people quit recently. That just goes to show how bad the chaos in this school gets with all the gaijin around."
Wrong answer. She knew that as soon as his face darkened and his eyes narrowed.
"Then you'd be very interested to know that 7 out of 10 of the students who confessed to me are those 'gaijin' you mention with such disdain."
Who was in those recordings? She racked her brain, trying to identify the individual voices she'd just heard by their tone and type. Once she figured out who they were, they would all be punished. Severely.
"Of course they'd lie about it", she said anxiously. "They'd do anything they can to slander us for keeping them in line. They want a school where they're free to run wild, and my friends and I are the only thing standing in the way of that. Can't you see, Tatsu-kun?"
Far from being taken by the appeal, he seemed frozen for a moment, looking down at his microphone. "I...I don't know if I can. I'm surrounded by liars either way. However... one of those witnesses was Hirabayashi-san."
The name brought a familiar image into sight immediately. A svelte, ponytailed girl in second year with heavy-lidded eyes and a thin neck. One with seemingly boundless energy despite her frame.
"So?"
"Hirabayashi-san has worked with me on over a dozen events for the school", he said. "I've known her for years, and I trust her just as much as you."
Bitch. The word thundered through her head, threatening to burst out. Hirabayashi would pay dearly for betraying her. Ponytails were so easy to stick into things that proved highly distressing for the person attached to them. Pencil sharpeners, locker grilles, urinal valves... Trying to drive Tatsu-kun away from me by spreading wicked lies and getting other students to back her up, associating with Gaijin.
If this wasn't punished, the universe itself might cry out from the injustice.
"I'm sure that Hirabayashi-san was mistaken", she replied as sweetly as could be managed.
"Possibly", he acknowledged. "But when her words line up with so many others, I would be remiss in my duties not to pay attention to them. That's the purpose of having a student council, Kujou-san. To address issues that our student body has that prevent them from being comfortable here as Koashimizu, and help set up events they might enjoy. Not to harass students that you don't like."
Benihime's arm burned and a hollow feeling settled into the pit of her stomach that she didn't like at all. "So it's my fault then, that all the troublesome students who disrupt this academy's harmony just so happen to be gaijin?"
Looking sympathetic for a moment, Tatsunoko shrugged. "That would not be your fault. But the most alarming story I heard wasn't about them. This came from Sonoka-san."
Sonoka. Another betrayal. Just like Fushima. Yet another person she'd thought understood her, who she had thought was her friend, who had chosen to betray both her and the school.
Sonoka and Fushima had to be punished for their crimes as well.
Composing herself once again, she stared back. "So what did Sonoka-san lie to you about?"
Kohru began to reach for his device, then thought better of it, pain taking hold of his face and replacing his sympathy. "This happened in the first week of school. You accused a first-year student of stuffing her bra and ordered some of the other members to forcibly remove 'tissues'."
And now the scar on her arm was overheating, breaking into open flame until she couldn't look back at him any more, moving her unblemished arm to clutch the scarred one. "That", she whispered, "wasn't a first-year student. You know who that was."
Having been around her long enough, Kohru sighed. "Of course. The one I'm told you've been obsessing over endlessly. Though it's true that she might look a bit older than some her own age, Aiko Tsuruga is, in fact a first-year student of this academy."
"Aiko Tsuruga is an animal, Tastu-kun. She is a violent, wild, disgusting, promiscuous girl who has no place in any respectable school in all of Japan, never mind Koashimizu."
Pulling back, she grabbed her sleeve and revealed the scar tissue to him. It had healed long ago, but there was a mark there that she believed might last forever. "She did this to me", she reminded Kohru. "And her only punishment was three days of detention!"
Kohru looked thoughtful. "I've heard some things about her. She helped bring back the fencing club. I can appreciate that."
"As I said: violent. I wouldn't be surprised if she was abusing the other students there."
Kohru didn't seem surprised by the accusation. "You don't trust Umaeda-sensei?"
"Umaeda-sensei is old", she explained. "Hiding that from him would be easy."
"So what you're saying is you don't trust him." Kohru frowned. "There is another story about Tsuruga-chan that I heard about when I was looking around. Something else she brought back. Someone."
Blankly, she nodded. "Sorano." She'd heard that story as well, to her annoyance. Naturally, instead of just leaving the campus and the country like she should have, Mirambela Sorano had run away, casting the blame for her problems on the school. A blight on decent civilized people to the very end... and thanks to Tsuruga, it wasn't the end after all. Sorano had returned to plague them further after a few weeks.
"Just imagine", Kohru demanded of her. "How much bad publicity this academy would get if Sorano had actually gone the same way as Furusato-san, or died some other way. More importantly, an innocent girl was prevented from throwing her life away, or doing something else she would regret. I think, if the stories are true, we owe Tsuruga-san a favor."
Her scar felt like an inferno, every word Kohru said ramping up the heat until it was in her face and chest as well. "More lies", she rasped. "Sorano just wanted to cause problems for the school, making herself look like a victim."
"Possible", Kohru admitted soberly. "In a world so filled with deceptions, it's so difficult to tell what is the real truth. However..." Withdrawing his microphone, he shook his head pityingly at her. "I'm sorry Kujou-san, but the evidence is overwhelming. I will be putting forth a motion at the next student council meeting to have you removed from your position."
The heat... It surged into a crescendo before dropping into a numb chill from head to toe. "N-no... You can't do that!"
His brow shot up, looking more curious than mournful. "No? The rules are quite clear about this. Any student council member can put a motion forward if they feel any other member is having a negative effect on the student body. I've already shared what I found with the others- in private, just as we have done here. If a 70 percent majority is reached, then..."
He was too far across the table to touch, so her arm ended up being stuck halfway, desperately grasping for him. "Tatsu-kun, please. Don't do this."
He reached out and took her offered arm, making her think for a moment that he might do as she asked. "I didn't want to. I would have preferred it if we could have just stayed as we were. But if all this is true, then..." Acute, crushing pain clouded his gaze. "Then maybe you're not the type of person I want to be a couple with, Kujou-san. I'm sorry."
The vacant chill slowed everything down, leaving her hands feeling like ice. "I... I-I-I have...! I... have to...!"
It was all she could muster before stumbling out of the room, into the deserted hall. The dorms were too far away. She would never make it. Instead, the entrance to the 2nd floor restroom opened invitingly to her, and blissfully, no one was there.
No one to hear her throat let out a withered scream that she had never thought herself capable of making before. Normally, even when furious, she was much more composed than that, just as she had been taught.
Of course, normal was the farthest adjective from this situation. "Tsuruga", she snarled the name like the vilest of curses.
Tsuruga was the cause of all of this, she knew. Tsuruga was a demon, a devil disguised as a human brought into this world to torment her, to frustrate her again and again with her ability to anticipate any attempt to put her in her proper place. Each failed try had only weakened the rest of the SDC's confidence in her.
They were so damned blind. They couldn't see how damaging letting Tsuruga off the hook was for all of their reputations. What good was a disciplinary committee who couldn't discipline one errant student?
It was Tsuruga who had caused her friends, Sonoka and Fushima, to betray her, to betray the cause of the committee she'd devoted years of her time to. Meanwhile, disruptive students like Vitienne and Sorano and Rosea were allowed to do whatever they pleased.
Catching the brief glimpse of a mirror, Kujou realized that she was actually shaking. Too much anger. Too much injustice.
"She is a bitch." The words she'd long since become accustomed to concealing like weapons began to tumble out, now that she was too incensed to hold them back, private thoughts becoming realized words for the first time. "Tsuruga is a skank. She is the worst kind of ugly, rancid, used-up whore."
A while later, after she'd vented a few more things that would hopefully remain between her and the mirrors, she felt like she could think clearly again. The rage was still there of course, acid burning a hole in her gut, but alongside it was genuine sorrow.
Hirabayashi betrayed her. Sonoka betrayed her. Fushima betrayed her. And now, Tastunoko betrayed her. Even Hayato, who had once been her closest friend, had been slacking in her duties no matter how many times she was threatened to straighten up.
The SDC had no spine left after repeated setbacks. They would vote against her, or at least enough of them would. There was only one person left that she could really trust.
Daddy. She let a soft, mournful laugh escape. Whenever she felt alone, she could always think about her father, and how he would handle the situation.
While they had grown apart in the last few years due to his demanding work and her maturing, he would always remain an inspiration, a beacon of light in the darkness. It was that inspiration now which got her out of the restroom and back to the dorm, where she could safely collapse into her bed.
Daisuke Kujou wasn't merely a good provider for his dutiful daughter, and not merely a classy businessman. He was a true patriot, one of the key spokesmen for JCAP, and possessed of oratory skills to match. He'd been working at repairing Japan's sacred harmony for years now, always putting a good percentage of his paychecks towards helping other native citizens get the word out.
Before long, they found that the contributions from those same citizens flowed back the other way too. But Daisuke would never be so greedy as to take advantage of such fortune, never use money that was donated with a singe purpose in mind for his family's own expenses.
And it was he who taught her why harmony- be it in a country or an organization or school- was so very important.
Many years ago, long before you were born, we were blessed, he told her. People understood that we were an island adrift in a sea of barbarism, but we had something they didn't. Harmony. A collective understanding that unity of action is what allows our country to survive and prosper while others fall apart. The ability to put aside oneself for the good of the many.
The gaijin threaten that harmony. They seek to corrupt our beautiful country into their own. They are the reason so many of our own people struggle to find employment.
They are the reason your mother is dead.
Once, he'd even gone so far as to demonstrate to her using two types of beans during lunch, trying to illustrate how much a schism might cripple a nation, and how the infiltration of other bean types could weaken it even further until the entire enterprise collapsed from the rot.
Of course, he'd brought these ideas across much more forcefully in his public speeches, which she always enjoyed watching and wished she was given the chance to do the same in front of the school. A pity that her own skills in that field were so inferior to her father's, no matter how much she tried to fix that.
Still, she'd tried. She'd had some success too. Punishing the gaijin for their insolence,making their lives difficult, meant that all except the slow-witted of their number would understand that they weren't wanted, and go back to whatever hole they had come from. Over a dozen students had learned this lesson and returned home. These were accomplishments she could be proud of.
Until now. Now she was going to be stripped of her power to do that. Word would get out that the SDC had gone soft without her, and the gaijin would wreak havoc on the academy's reputation. They would lose their funding and in time, principal Yumika would have no choice but to close everything down.
Then the plague would spread and infect other schools in Japan, and the cycle would begin anew.
All because of Aiko Tsuruga.
At some point, she found herself out of the washroom, out of the main building, and entering her dorm. The door to Tsuruga and Sorano's room was closed and locked, making her breathe a sigh that she wasn't sure was relief or just more aggravation given form. She couldn't tell for sure now if she might have had the fortitude to go in there and give those two a piece of her mind.
Instead, she settled for repeatedly hammering the door. When it didn't open, she started speaking again in hushed tones.
"You think that you're special", she snarled, crying into the motionless wood, her hands slamming the door and neither refusing to break or feel pain. "You think you're some kind of pretty unicorn." Wham. "Some kind of gaijin savior." Wham.
"You're not."
Wham.
"I'll make everyone see-"
Wham.
"-what a bitch-"
Wham.
"-you really are."
It struck her then that it would have been very embarrassing if someone had actually been behind that door, but there was no sign of life. The sliver of open space beneath the door remained dark.
It was getting late, she knew. Just a few hours away from curfew. She briefly entertained the idea of waiting here for them to return until a familiar dark hime cut framing a hook-nosed face appeared from around the corner.
"Ekuya-senpai", Benihime nodded to their dorm head, immediately trying to look innocent.
The older girl set her lips and regarded her with a glare of annoyance, already quite familiar with her reputation and some of the things she had done to earn it. She also would never forget the time last year when Benihime had tried to have her removed from the position.
"Are you lost?", she asked in mock innocence. "Forgot your key, Kujou-san? Or did you so desperately need to speak with Tsuruga or Sorano that you would hammer on their door while others are trying to study?"
Apparently, sound carried further down the dorm halls than she'd thought. Bitch. How dare you question me when the school's sacred discipline and harmony is failing before your eyes and no one but me is doing a damn thing about it.
Of course, she couldn't say that. That would earn her detention, at the very least. Instead she managed a nervous smile back, a polite burst of light laughter.
"O-of course. Sorry about that, Ekuya-senpai. I've just been having a difficult day and I forgot which dorm room was mine for a moment." On a single thin finger, she raised up her room key, attached to the chain in her bag. "See? It doesn't work for this one, 'cause I forgot."
Looking unconvinced, Ekuya snorted and pointed down the hall. "Ground floor, 2nd room on the right."
Considering how grouchy their dorm head was normally, that was a blessing. Benihime waited until she was safely in her own dorm room before entertaining fantasies of having Ekuya fired, disgraced, tortured... She just hates everyone because her boyfriend left her and is never coming back to look at her ugly hatchet face.
Her father could make this right. He could fix it all. He could come in and make one of his famous speeches, get all these traitors punished as they should be. Get Aiko Tsuruga thrown back to Tokyo and placed where she belonged, in a Shibuya pleasure den.
But that wasn't his responsibility. It was hers. Her father had quite enough on his plate trying to wake the rest of Japan up to the insidious dangers they were ignoring, the dangers that even prime minister Tamagami wasn't doing enough to stop.
"Daddy", she mumbled into the bed, suddenly feeling helpless and weak. "What can I do?"
Powerfully shining lights made it difficult to open her eyes for long, but they had to be opened. Feeling her way out of whatever tangle they had fallen into was a losing proposition when time was their enemy.
Thankfully, there didn't seem to be any Shadows nearby at first. Just a morose, binary-lit alley stretching off in both directions framed by the same enormous buildings as before. Far, far overhead she could see the silhouette of a zeppelin, but it didn't seem to be directly interested in them just yet.
Grunting, Aiko hauled herself up, noting how Julian was lying down as well in a manner that suggested he had been forcibly sleeping until just now, Mirambela at his side trying to fix that. Pelagio, meanwhile, had remained on guard and alert in his armored form, though none of them looked completely ready for another fight after the disaster they'd just barely escaped from.
"You're up", Mira noted in relief. "Good. Now we can start to find a way out of here."
"No objections here", their captain agreed groggily. The memory of the fight was coming back now, and it wasn't a fond one. "They were strong."
"Yes", Pelagio agreed, hesitant to retreat from any battle but not willing to risk the lives of the ones he had sworn to protect. "Hmph. Perhaps we became overconfident, defeating so many weaker Shadows in other islands up to this point."
Standing, even Jiachi looked somewhat miffed. "That was crazy. Never seen Shadows coordinate like that, or charge in such a big swarm."
"Or be so durable", Aiko seconded. "It's fine. Shadows are always the toughest to fight the first time we meet them, 'cause we don't know their abilities and weaknesses, or just how much punishment they can take. Now we do."
Mira looked uncertain though as she helped Jiachi up from his enforced nap. "I don't know... I feel like they were definitely feeling pain when we hit them. It was more like... they didn't care. Catching us was more important to them than any pain we caused them."
"Because we're 'criminals'", Aiko mused in quiet mockery. "Criminals, huh... Guess we look the part."
"Because we defy the ruler's will", Pelagio pointed out. "Assuming our plan is not to submit and take on the values the ruler of this Land desires, we should prepare for further battles ahead."
"The ruler", Aiko noted, "who we don't know yet. We don't even know what 'values' they're pushing here. Unless it's wearing those ridiculous bondage outfits and hanging down from zeppelins."
Already anticipating what she was thinking, Mira shook her head. "Plenty of time for us to find all that out later, Saber. For now, we need to get out."
Sensing their leader's acknowledgment, Pelagio bowed. "I sense a Breach nearby. Down this street and behind the frivolously-decorated house."
"Frivolously...?", Julian muttered curiously. Sure enough, the large building Pelagio had spoken of was clearly the exterior of some kind of carnival or fun house, garish porcelain faces stretched into varying expressions, and framed by rows of blinking lights stymied by the rigidity of the setting's colors. A light ditty of fairground music played over it, though in this context it was more sinister than uplifting.
"Please tell me we don't have to go in there", Mira pleaded from the rear, shivering at the sight of it.
"We don't have to go in there", Pelagio replied. "That was painless, wasn't it? No, it's just past here, through that archway."
The archway in question looked to be built into the base of one of the largest buildings, colossal stone bricks arranged around a circular opening leading beneath the structure.
"And past them", Aiko sighed.
The archway was not empty or clean as the rest of the city. Strands of some thick organic substance trickled down from the top of the arch, and from two of them hung a pair of beings that could only be Shadows.
Through the faded green-skinned figures had humanoid tops, they wound up being far larger due to their bottoms belonging to some kind of enormous spider, each lying suspended upside down on lines of silk. Though they hadn't moved initially, the sudden noises made from legs skittering along the lines made it clear they were very much aware of their visitors, two passably human female heads turning around to behold the team and stretch their lips into expressions of feral pleasure.
"The criminals", one hissed in delight, a bowl cut of hair failing to obscure a mad glow in her eyes.
"Don't eat them", the other suggested in an equally sinuous cadence. "Catch them. Mistress Kaneshiro will punish us as reward."
Wasting no time, Jiachi drew his weapons with his customary speed and fired on both of the strands of silk. "Only two", he remarked. "Bring 'em down fast! AGI!"
They didn't even bother with the support skills this time. The enemy was temporarily thrown off by being suddenly dislodged from their spots and falling down to hit the ground, and Pelagio pounced with his sword before unleashing the Frei skill. On the other side, Mira struck with both daggers and lightning, backing off only when the latter failed to do damage.
Focusing on that one, Aiko reached up, calling on Lilim's power. "Dancer, get back! Agi!"
Easily recognizing the skill name by now, Mira leaped back from the thrashing demi-spider's legs, preparing for a blast of heat-
Which didn't come. Momentarily shocked, Aiko tightened her glove and focused again. "Agi!"
Nothing.
"Agi! AGI!"
Seeing the spider's legs twitching back to life, she stared at the specter of Lilim expecting some kind of answer, but the winged Persona offered none. Then the spider Shadow was back up and using its own skill without any problems. She recognized it as the inverse of Pelagio's Rakukaja technique, increasing the vulnerability of its target to all other forms of attack and making her skin itch as if the air itself was suddenly more potent than before.
What the hell? Why isn't it working? I'm not being sealed or anything.
Luckily, she wasn't alone. Her team continued the battle, bombarding the enemy with bullets and blasts, Mira finally deciding to perform her own improvised tactic, fusing her wind skill with Julian's fire skill to create the scorching maelstrom from before, burning both the insectoids alive and making the more injured of the two crumble to ash.
"Jack Frost!", she called out in desperation, switching the winged demon girl out for the familiar cute white and blue fairy. "Bufu!"
There was a shift, a brief sensation of the air around them lowering in temperature... but the enemy gave no sign of being hit by the usual ice she expected that skill to bring out. Cackling madly, the spider-woman gave a fanged grin and fired a spray of razor-tipped darts from her thorax only to be intercepted by Pelagio's shield skill.
"Bufu! Bufu! Pretty please, BUFU!"
Nothing. Always nothing. Jack Frost itself looked transparent, like a true ghost. Giving up with a cry of frustration, Aiko instead brought her cutlass down on the creature's head, cutting into the arm it chose to block with and giving Mira all the opening she needs to finish the creature off with her daggers and functional Persona.
It felt like she couldn't even see the Shadow fall, or the cobblestone entryway beyond. There were no Shadows left to attack, but she turned away, changing to multi-headed Dantalian and directing its psychokinetic power into a poster-covered wall.
"Psi!"
Nothing. The posters weren't even ruffled. She felt Mira's arm taking hers, trying to calm her down from what might have looked like her friend jumping at Shadows to them.
"Saber, it's alright. We beat them. It's alright."
But it wasn't alright. She looked back at Mira's gold eye mask as if frightened by a stranger, then back down at empty white gloves. "No... I don't understand. What is this? What happened? Why aren't my Personas working? They were a little weak last time, but this..."
"Probably just exhaustion", Jiachi suggested, though even his normally energetic voice sounded subdued with fright. "Like Dancer said, we've been fighting for a long while now. Gotta go back and rest up. I'm feeling kinda drained myself."
"I think we all are", Mira affirmed, pulling on Ai's arm. "Come on captain, let's go before more Shadows show up."
"Exhaustion", she repeated, continuing stare at her hands. "Exhaustion. Right." Right. That makes sense. I'm just tired. Mentally drained after all the fighting. I just need to rest up back home.
Yes. That's right. No problem.
It was comforting enough lie to get her walking to the breach that would get them to safety.
Enemy Profile #11: Arachne
Arcana: Hanged Man
Strength: Wind, Nuclear
Weakness: Gun
Abilities: Toxic Sting, Rakunda, Tera
Background: A spinstress from Greek myth who wove beautiful tapestries. They were so beautiful, she claimed that she was better than the goddess Pallas Athena. Angered by this, the goddess of wisdom challenged her to a spinning duel.
In some interpretations of the myth, Arachne defeated Athena. In others, Athena proved the superiority of the gods to man, and Arachne hung herself in distress. Whichever the case, Athena changed the poor girl into a spider so that she may weave forever, and because of this myth, all members of the spider family are called arachnids.
A/N: Saw some interesting April Fools stuff this week, like a fake trailer for Final Fantasy 16 and a Dancing All Night for Persona 2 XD
The Chapter title is still a song from the SMT series. It's from Digital Devil Saga 2.