Author's Notes: Happy 2018! I'd like to start this chapter off by saying that I'll totally have a better release schedule than I have lately, but I doubt anyone would believe me. I can't blame anyone for having that view, so I won't make promises - instead I'll just work harder on getting the chapters out and let that speak for me.

Big thanks to Firion for his feedback and input on the chapter. His ideas have been a huge help in CoE, and any mistakes are mine, not his.

Lastly, some responses to my awesome reviewers:

Buttsong: Glad you like it. One can never have too much sap. Your comment on timing is a good one, and something I took into consideration when writing this one, so thanks for pointing it out. Enjoy!

Greyjedi449t: You need wait no longer. Enjoy!

EmD23: Hey thanks for the review! I'm not sure that any game or explanation can be taken as canon for Personas and Shadows. P3 indicated the idea of Evokers and "unnatural" Personas, but considering that Mitsuru was part of the experiments and was manipulated into developing a Persona, and Aigis has a Persona when she only has a human chassis, I question where the line is between "real" and "not." And that's not even getting into the ideas that P4 and P5 bring into the mix, so I'm stuck going with what makes the most sense in the setting and running with it. Also, if SEES all evolve their Personas in the story, implying a high level of control over their power, then why would they still need Evokers when the P4 cast only uses cards? I don't know if there is a clear, hard answer when you line up the ideas of each game, so in-depth explanations are likely to contradict the games at some point or another. But thanks for bringing that stuff up; I'm glad I'm not the only one who's thought about it. Enjoy!

flyboy 179: I wouldn't have made the comparison to Berserk, but that is high praise. How is my work comparable?

witchofdathomir: Solid writing is what I do, so thank for the comments. I don't dislike Aigis, but a lot of the plot holes in the game revolve around her and she gets a handwave instead of explanations. I don't write that way, so I have to tackle the issues as they appear. She's not a punching bag, however, and nor is Ken. There's a method to the madness, and that will show itself later. Glad you're liking the fic, and enjoy the chapter!

Guest (May1): Aye aye, Capitan!

Yourpoet: Being hard on Ken was kind of the point, since we're looking at people who are facing the consequences of his actions rather than intentions (which were never good to begin with). That said, I rarely trash characters without value or purpose. Where Ken is involved, I see it more as tough love, as you'll see in the coming chapters. For your question, I kind of have to follow the events of the game, and that includes the ending. Will it be as sad and stop in the same place? That's still being discussed in the writing room, so we'll have to see when we get there.

Biblio388: Aww, thanks! Interactions and ideas are what I love most about good stories, so I'm glad that I can reproduce them well enough in my own works. If you like conversations and exchanges of ideas, then this chapter is definitely for you. Hope you like it!

Guest (May 5): It was a bit of a beast to write, I admit. Totally worth it though.

Genesic Savior: Koromaru was a lot of fun to write, particular since the sheer concept of a dog with a Persona is so strange that it lends itself to such liberties in writing. Strega felt like wasted potential in the game, and making them a real threat has been quite fun. Ahhh, the other side to the ice queen. Yes, Mitsuru has a human and feminine side, and her high IQ doesn't preclude her from inexperience and not knowing how to handle things of a romantic nature. It's been a pleasure to bring that side of her out. Glad you like where it's going with Ken, since that seems to be a point of contention at the moment. It did feel strange that the team would be so forgiving in the game when we consider just how bad it could have gone, and how bad it got. And the Aids, as you refer to them, felt like wasted potential in P3, especially when Elizabeth can leave the Velvet Room. There's too much fun to be had, both humour and intelligent discussion, to just leave them in the corner. Glad you're liking the fic, and I hope you enjoy the chapter!

Reginleif2000: Glad you've liked Mitsuru so far, and I won't spoil her Evoker's phrase just yet (as a teaser, you can expect to see it in the next chapter). Enjoy!

Geraze90: Glad you're liking the fic! Yeah, you don't need to have watched the anime to get the most out this little project, and I prefer to keep things accessible for the audience. Shinjiro's scene was hard to write, particularly given the ripple effects that it has, which you'll see here. Hope you like the chapter!

Thanks again to everyone who reviewed and commented. Let's get to the chapter now, shall we?

Chapter 13 - Volt

The room was like something out of Gundam. Polished metal surfaces, low lights and high tech, and a powerful organization's staff behind thick one-way windows. All that was missing was the claustrophobic feel of a cockpit, a giant mech obeying his commands as he fought in huge battles, and the emptiness of space all around him.

If it's missing those things, then it's probably not like Gundam at all, Ken thought. Maybe like Macross instead?

"Amada." Abe-san's gravelly voice echoed through the room via speaker. "Concentrate."

Ken straightened up and focused his thoughts, anticipating the next test and fearing it. He'd been in the Kirijo facility for nine days and everything was still new, especially this testing room with his zero-success record. Stop that, he told himself. There's no time to be afraid. "I'm sorry."

"Let's do this," the man instructed. "I want you to push yourself this time."

"How hard, sir?"

"Harder than if you were fighting real Shadows. Let me know when you're ready."

Ken took four seconds to breathe in and two to breathe out. His hands shook, even when he closed them into fists. "Okay."

"Begin."

With that word, a familiar, low-volume hum entered the room. Pressure like the bottom of a swimming pool surrounded him, and he grit his teeth and fought back. Fought for the cold, prickly radiance that had been his Persona. He dug at where Nemesis used to rest, tried to find the entity that had come to him between nightmares, both when he was sleeping and when he was awake.

This was how the Kirijo tested applicants of uncertain potential, he'd been told. Stress-testing them in a secure room that, apparently, even Akihiko-senpai couldn't destroy. Ken had first come in hopeful, but after six attempts he was becoming less and less sure of himself. Why wasn't this working? Where was Nemesis?

He closed his eyes and pushed outward, his body tensing as he clawed for some sign of his other self, some indication that he'd belonged with SEES once. That he wasn't worthless baggage. The noise of the room strobed in and out. He felt lightheaded and fever-sick. "Ne... Neme–" Pain jolted his eyes open like a slap and the name choked off in his throat. He couldn't finish saying it. Just thinking it gave him headaches now. His Persona always came with a dull pain in his muscles, but this felt way worse. This was like digging through granite with his bare fingers or igniting a match without a striker. Nemesis wasn't answering him, and worse, it didn't even feel like Nemesis was there anymore. In its place was the smell of torn drywall, slick redness on the floor, and the echoes of Mom's screams that got so loud that he couldn't hear anything else. The headache got so bad that Ken fell to his knees, about to be sick. The sound stopped and the pressure faded, leaving him scrabbling for breath.

"That's enough for today," Abe-san told him, the lights brightening and the door behind him opening. No words needed to be said – this was failure number seven.

Ken knew the drill and tried to get his bearings. The thorny sting of rejection twisted alongside the sinking feeling that he was wasting everyone's time. It wasn't just failing to bring Nemesis out, now he was scared of what would happen when that time ran out. He staggered to a stand, trying not to puke all over the floor again, and left once he could see straight.

"How did it go today?" Fuuka-san asked when he came into the waiting room.

"I'm still trying," he replied. As terrible as he felt, as he knew he looked, telling them lies felt like a waste of time. Still, he tried for a smile that felt fake even to him. Once he was in his seat across from her, Koro came over and curled up on his feet. "Hey boy."

"Koromaru-san was quite enthused by the idea of visiting you today," Aigis-san told him from where she was standing. "He seemed confident that you would succeed this time."

Even Koro was cheering for him. That made it worse.

"What's the problem?" Fuuka asked. "You seemed to have a handle on it when you came to us."

Ken knew what the problem was even if he couldn't say it. Can't say it. Won't say it. Saying it meant acknowledging it, meant looking at his life and seeing those few ragged threads disappear; even thinking of looking that deep made him flinch. Since he'd tried finding Nemesis again, he'd lost track of thirty-six hours, thinking it was night at noon and vise versa to the point of having nightmares while eating his lunch. He didn't know what happened after that, but whatever his keepers had medicated him with made getting out of bed a chore. He was trading off one crappy feeling for another, and he wasn't getting any closer to a resolution.

Resolution. Resolved. Solving the problem. He knew in his heart where the problem lie, but he didn't dare go near it. Without his Persona, the memories and feelings were as clear and sharp as broken glass. He couldn't keep them out anymore – not Mom, not Dad, and not Shinjiro-senpai. Especially not him; just the name made Ken sick.

"They'll figure it out," he stated, trying to dodge the issue while praying he'd be able to sleep tonight. He kept his hands together in his lap. No one would notice the shakes if he did that. "They're good at this stuff, right?" Be positive. Be confident. Things will be better that way. They might believe you.

Fuuka-san nodded, not looking very certain but trying to smile anyway.

"How is everyone else doing?"

Fuuka's smile struggled to stay on. Yukari-san and Junpei-san had come by to visit him before, and as much as they'd tried to keep up the mood, the conversation kept stopping. Shinjiro-senpai. Minato-san and Sakaki. Mitsuru-senpai and Akihiko-senpai. The cornerstones of their group were the least accessible, and he could see the strain they were feeling. Even Aigis seemed to be struggling to speak.

"Junpei-kun is visiting Yoshino in the hospital today," Fuuka-san replied, "and Yukari-san said she wanted to talk to her mother about something. They said they'll be by when they get a chance."

Ken knew that Yukari-san's family was hit-or-miss. Her father was a big deal in her life, but her mom was a blank space. "Is Yukari-san doing okay?"

"I'm not sure. She said she wanted to keep her promise to– Um, that is, she said that she was going to talk to her mom. It was important to her."

Tiptoeing around the subjects like they were rat traps made these visits almost hurt more than if they didn't happen. Ken wanted to talk to Akihiko-senpai and Arisato-senpai, to apologize and know that things would be okay, but they hadn't visited, hadn't talked to him. The best Ken could do was ask his keepers to pass on messages, but he hadn't gotten any responses. "That's good. Um, I'm getting better now, so I can come back soon, right?" It would be hard, going back to the dorm, but he could do it. He'd fight beside them again. Fight the Shadows, have a way to make the nightmares stop. All he had to do was bring Nemesis back, and not think of Shinjiro-senpai. Not think of him or the alleys. Or Sakaki and the gun or the blood and how– No don't think of that it's not my fault he's dead he killed her he kiLLED HER HE DIED HE–

"Ouch!" he let out, looking down at his ankle where Koro just bit him. "What was that for?"

"Koromaru-san believes that you were not in a positive state of mind," Aigis answered. "He feels that you should speak to someone if you are suffering from psychological trauma. I agree with his assessment; your biometric signs suggest that you were experiencing a state of emotional panic."

"Is that true, Ken?" Fuuka-san asked. "How bad is it getting?"

Bad. Terrible. Atrocious. Can't tell when it is sometimes, don't know what I can do should do want to do. "It's... I'm okay," he told her, smiling and tasting bile. "I'm okay." Just keep saying it. It'll come true if you say it. Don't think about it. It'll get better soon. I just have to succeed once, then they'll take me back, right? "I'm okay..."


"That's enough for today," Abe Saburo said through the microphone, ending the test. Amada's exertions ceased and he left the room, looking more downcast than usual. Abe looked over the readouts from the systems around him, not liking what he was seeing. He felt the itch for another smoke, but he'd promised his wife that four a day was his limit, and he wasn't going to scratch. He wanted to, though; testing kids like this reminded him of Kirijo Kouetsu's experiments, and that was a good reason for a nicotine escape.

"He's not getting any better," Ikeda Yasu, the assistant six years his junior, commented as he looked at the data. "If anything, it looks like he's getting worse."

"Much worse," Abe noted, turning his back to the one-way window showing the testing room. "And he's not just failing to summon a Persona now. He's not anywhere near threshold, and he's showing signs of physiological strain. Blood pressure spikes, lack of focus, sporadic appetite and periods of disconnect from what's going on around him: all signs of psychological problems. Failing a summoning is for the best right now."

Ikeda looked at the door Amada had gone through, pity in his eyes. "Do you have a recommendation?"

"On Mitsuru-san's instructions, Amada's been seeing Maeda Eiji for therapy sessions since he got here," Abe informed him. "Anything medical will have to come from his end. But as far as manifesting a Persona, I'm recommending to Takeharu-san that we shut the tests down until further notice. As Amada is right now, crossing threshold might break him completely."

"That's a bit extreme, but I can see your reasoning. His health should come first."

Abe thought back ten years to a person who wouldn't have cared about the welfare of the children in that very same testing room. A person whom the world was better off without. Some would have thought it crass to disrespect the dead, but the loss of Kirijo Kouetsu had been no loss at all.

"Still," Ikeda continued, "It's surprising to see Amada drop this much. Aragaki was important to the rest of SEES, but they aren't exhibiting the same problems. I thought that Personas blocked the horrors of fighting Shadows out of the mind, and that's why Persona-Users can fight the Shadows and still sleep at night. Even if we take Amada's age into account, isn't this drop excessive when compared to someone like Yamagishi?"

Abe clenched his fingers around the edge of his desk, still fighting the itch for that smoke. "It's not the same," he replied. Reading through Amada's files, which had been conspicuously absent from the archives until just recently, had felt like a trip into Dante's Inferno. "Aragaki accidentally killed Amada's mother and set off a cascade of bad luck for both of them. Amada's family disowned him, we covered the incident up, and Amada himself wasn't considered a likely candidate to manifest a Persona so he wasn't given any attention. Instead of grieving and getting past his losses, he turned them inward and defied our expectations, but it's not the same as the others." He looked up at the ceiling. "You know the origin of Nemesis, right? An ancient Greek deity sent to punish those who fall to hubris. It's an entity of vengeance and hatred, so Amada manifesting that entity wasn't a coincidence. Handling a Persona like that couldn't have been easy, especially for a child, and it showed. His combat records, comments from Mitsuru-san and Arisato, they all point to him not being ready to join SEES. That's probably because he was fighting against Nemesis along with everything about his mother that he hasn't dealt with. Maeda's reports can confirm this, but Amada's driving motivation up to now has probably been to kill Aragaki, and now that he's dead, Amada's performance drops. That's a causal relationship if I've ever seen one."

"You think he's still fighting with his mother's death?"

Abe looked at his associate and shrugged. "I don't see how he couldn't be. He's young, it's only been a few years, and nothing about his past suggests that he's reconciled what happened. He's been avoiding the issue all this time rather than facing it. We'll have to see what Maeda finds out, but I'll bet you a homemade dinner that Amada's going through some serious psychological problems right now."

Ikeda hesitated before answering. It was easy to figure out why – Abe's wife made some incredible meals and he wouldn't have bet one if he wasn't confident in his odds. "What sorts of problems do you think he's facing?" Ikeda asked instead.

Abe let out a breath, calling back those nightmares from Kouetsu's time. "Common problems with borderline Persona manifestations include schizophrenia despite having no prior history with it, nor the genetic markers for the condition; mental dissociation, of different intensities; depression and anxiety; stress-related health problems like accelerated damage to the heart and blood vessels; night terrors and hallucinations, both visual and auditory; violent behaviour or complete apathy; and all sorts of bodily problems if the Persona couldn't be controlled or if the user's body couldn't handle the strain, like what happened to Arisato a month ago when he fought Metis and back when he first met Sakaki. I'm impressed that Arisato survived, but it does get worse than what he went through. In Amada's case, I'd say he's suffering from mental issues like dissociation and nightmares, maybe some hallucinatory sensations if he's still trying to push Nemesis to the surface. I doubt we'll see any physical problems if we haven't already, but it's the mind that's the problem right now." Ikeda looked sick, and Abe continued. "It's not easy for them. The ones in SEES, those with a strong will to control a Persona, are lucky that they are fighting the Shadows. Those who don't make the cut don't live very long; they're better off never taking that step in the first place."

"Something about that bothers me," Ikeda professed. "Amada's combat records suggest that he wasn't ready to fight, but he seemed to have a handle on things leading up to Aragaki's death. Can someone regress as much as we've seen if they were strong enough to manifest a Persona in the first place? And if Amada wasn't strong enough to join SEES, then how on earth was he approved to be transferred to the dorm?"

The questions made Abe chuckle grimly. Ikeda hit upon the very thoughts that had been running through his head for the last few days. "I've never heard of someone being completely stable and then falling below their threshold. To my knowledge it's never happened, but that might be what we're seeing right now. Where Amada's combat reliability is concerned, that is a very good question. Either he was strong enough to be with SEES and he's truly lost his will to fight from Aragaki's death, or he was never that strong and he wasn't ready for the field operations in the first place, no matter what Arisato and Sanada put him through. Training someone with a poor foundation doesn't help no matter how much you accommodate them. To add to that, if Amada was ready for the Dark Hour, then he should have had some coping mechanisms to supplement what his Persona gave him, as a buffer against his fears. That's supposed to be the minimum requirement to fight Shadows in the first place. But he's presenting a battery of mental issues, suggesting that he didn't have the buffers the others do. Why was he there in the first place if he was so ill-suited for it?"

Ikeda gave him another wary look, the pieces starting to connect. "I feel like you're going somewhere with this. It's nowhere good, isn't it?"

"Takeharu-san sent me Amada's records," Abe told him. "They're spotty. The reports on his candidacy for SEES, his readiness for combat, and his psychological aptitude tests are either missing or done wrong. These things should have been triple-checked, but they weren't and he was approved anyway. Now we have a traumatized child on our hands and everyone's passing the buck. "

Understanding, and anger. "That's... If Amada wasn't properly tested, then he was sent to the dorm without the necessary preparation. For fighting or even for handling his Persona."

"Sent to the place where the person he hated the most was living." Abe continued, glad that Ikeda was sharp enough to keep up. "Aragaki might have joined later, but it's strange that no one thought that might be a problem. Even under the best of circumstances, someone should have said something when the pieces started falling into place. But they didn't, and now Amada breaking down seems more like a foregone conclusion than an unexpected outcome, doesn't it?"

Ikeda shook his head. "Who was responsible for those reports? It feels like too many things went wrong to be a coincidence, and you make it sound like it was intentional. Can we prove it?"

"If this all happened by accident then we're looking at an incredibly convenient clerical error, especially since no one's taking responsibility for the mistake. Pair that up with Sanada trying to save face for his friend and not saying anything, along with Mitsuru-san's ignorance of the situation and Amada's grudge, and it was a perfect storm looking for a place to happen. The timing is far too suspect to be accidental, and considering that Strega has a computer expert and we're missing reports, I wouldn't be surprised if there was foul play at work."

"Given what SEES has reported about Sakaki, manipulating Aragaki and Amada does seem like something he'd do."

Abe shrugged, unconvinced. "Maybe. I'm not sold on that idea yet. I've spoken to Maeda and he thinks that Sakaki's dangerous and powerful, but he's never interfered with our activities to that extent. Manipulating records is something Strega would do, but I don't know if Sakaki would set out to traumatize Amada and corner Aragaki if he didn't hate them already, and there's no evidence suggesting that he singled them out. Perhaps he had one of his allies do it, but I'd think that they would have done much more damage to our systems than change a few files if they could break in that easily. It would be easy to pin this on Strega, but they don't fit the bill yet."

"In that case, the alternative is that the mistakes were made internally, and if the mistakes were intentional..." Ikeda's eyes narrowed. "You think that someone inside the Kirijo Group did it."

"An insider would explain a great deal," Abe noted. "A group of traitors might make things easier, but they would also stand out. If it's one or two people, then I doubt they would have changed those files without thinking of how Aragaki's presence would affect Amada. If it was deliberate, it suggests someone who knows SEES well, from back to front with all their history, to pull this off. This person might also have connections to Strega's hacker to get past our normal procedures. So, yes, I think we need to consider that we have a traitor in our midst."


Chidori sometimes wondered if the Kirijo actually knew what they were doing. First they had abducted children and experimented on them to develop Personas, then they backed off and tried to help those very same kids after losing so many of them in a disaster of their own making. After that they trained teenagers to be fighters without telling them anything about Personas or Shadows or the Dark Hour despite being major researchers in those very topics. Now they were trying to rehabilitate her by sending her shrinks and boring her to death.

Considering all the crimes that the Group had to suspect her of, confinement to a hospital was the lightest punishment she could imagine. She slept when she wanted and ignored the staff's questions, yet they wouldn't kick her out so long as she didn't hurt anyone. They fed her and even gave her sketching materials when she asked nicely enough. Why on earth were they bothering? Did they have a plan of action in mind or had they forgotten about her again?

The only person to break up the monotony of days spent drawing and staring out the window was Iori, come by again to try and chat her up. It wasn't terrible novel of him to visit her; he'd been doing it ever since she'd been brought in. She would have preferred if he'd tried to interrogate her or pretended to be sly and get some answers about Takaya and Jin, but he didn't even try that. All he talked about were sports teams and TV shows and manga artists. Empty gossip. White noise.

Perhaps he had a different reason for visiting this time, though. The Kirijo had stepped up their efforts to get something out of her this morning, grim faces telling her that something had happened, and Iori looked conflicted and actually a bit thoughtful for a change. The look didn't suit him. "Why are you here?" she asked after he'd failed at small talk for several minutes.

He looked surprised that she spoke, as though he was expecting her to be his silent suffering soundboard. "Hm?"

"You usually come here when you think of something smart to say, or when the Kirijo want to make sure I won't kill their people. You've been trying your pick-up lines on me right from the beginning, and it seems like you think I'm some damsel you can save just by talking to her."

He blushed and looked away. Chidori snorted. Moron.

"But you're sad about something," she observed. "More than just sad. Something's bugging you, an itch under your skin, and you decided to come here. Why? I'm not giving you a shoulder to cry on."

"Everyone has to be somewhere, right?" he muttered, not meeting her eyes. "I decided to come here."

Chidori rubbed her face, cringing at his attempt to sound philosophical. "Who gave you that line? I'll kill them when I get out of here so no one else has to hear it."

He glared at her, anger and something dangerous flickering to life as he stood at full height next to her bed. "Watch it. You'll lose your good looks if you're such a bitch about everything."

Ahhh, there he was – the pissed-off teen who bit his tongue to be popular with the right people. Iori didn't let him out often enough. "I don't care about looking good for other people, and I'm a bitch no matter what. Even you have to have figured that out, so why are you here?"

"Do you have something better to do with your time? Watch TV, sleep, watch the world pass you by on the other side of the bars?"

She looked down at her sketchbook, flipping to some of her unfinished works. "Sounds preferable to your pointless talk."

He shook his head. "Fine. I had a question for you. What do you know about Shinjiro-senpai?"

Chidori raised an eyebrow, glancing up. A question with a clear, almost intelligent point. How odd, coming from him. "Why ask me? Go talk to Sanada or the Kirijo, unless you're afraid they'll chew you out for going behind their backs."

"Just answer the question," he pressed. "Those drugs he was taking, they're the same as yours. Why did he have them?"

The pieces started falling into place. The full moon had come and gone, the Kirijo suddenly grilled her, and now Iori was asking about Aragaki. Something had happened, and she felt her lips tug up at the thought of what that something might be. "Ask him yourself. Or is there a reason you can't do that?"

Iori was silent, and the way his eyes hardened and his hands clenched brought something like joy to her heart.

"You can't, can you?" she barbed. "He overdosed on his drugs, didn't he? Or did his Persona finally get the better of him? Choke him to death, may–"

Iori flashed forward and punched her pillow, his fist a scant inch from her face. "Your friend killed him!" he snapped, murder on his face. "Beat him down and shot him! Shinjiro-senpai was better than that, better than you ever will be, so fucking shut up!"

His snarl was right in front of her, and Chidori felt almost impressed. Here was the real face of the Kirijo Group's pet idiot. He floundered his way through life until something got him riled up, and then he reacted on impulse, not more thought to his actions than what he'd eat for lunch. How on earth did he work with the Kirijo girl? She was ice and laser focus; how did she put up with this bumbling monkey? How could someone so short-sighted ever manifest a Persona? "So he's dead. You know it was only a matter of time, right? If Takaya hadn't done it, the drugs would have, or he would have slipped up in a fight. Something was going to punch his ticket, sooner instead of later."

His fist trembled like it wanted to choke the life out of her. "Bullshit. That guy could fight through anything."

"Don't kid yourself. He made his choice and he knew he was on borrowed time. Thinking he was going to get out of this fight in one piece, that he'd get healed or survive, is a pipe dream. Takaya did him a mercy by giving him a good fight before he died. Better than him screwing up and getting one of you killed. Making him go through that would have been cruel."

He snorted and glared even harder. "Who the hell are you to talk about cruelty? That's exactly what you would have done if you'd had the chance."

She leaned forward a pinch. This was becoming interesting. Much more stimulating than listening to him talk about his usual pointless topics. "But I didn't. Aragaki would have been a good opponent for any of us. If he died fighting, then maybe he got what he wanted rather than his choices slowly killing him in bed. Maybe he was okay with how things turned out, though I doubt you'd think of it that way."

"What I think is that you're crazy," Iori snapped. "Worse, you don't care about living, do you? He was going to die at some point, so it's okay that he died now instead of later? Do you think the same of normal people? They'll die one day, so why not today?"

"If those normal people take drugs that will kill them much faster than if they lived a normal life, then maybe killing them fast and ending the charade is better than prolonging it. Keeping someone on life support isn't a mercy if it means torturing them."

He pulled his fist back, but the fire was still burning in his eyes. "You're pretty sick, do you know that? No normal person thinks about the best way to die like this."

She leaned back into her bed. How disappointing. "Is that the best you can do? Losing arguments and calling me names? And you've never known anyone who's terminally ill before, have you? They think of the end of their lives all the time."

"Enough about Senpai," he instructed. "Tell me something that interests you. What makes you tick? It can't just be drawing things and waiting for your Persona to kill you. Because say what you want about Shinjiro-senpai, but at least he fought instead of giving up and hiding in a bed before he died."

Chidori cracked a small smile. Now he was thinking. Of what words to use, of where to aim them. When he stopped trying to be a good guy, Iori could almost pass as competent in this little drama of theirs. "Nothing drives me. I already got what I wanted. Takaya will keep going whether I'm with him or not, and the world keeps turning even if I'm not here to see it. Having that, what else do I need?"

"It can't be that simple. Nothing about Strega is."

"Why not? Maybe you're overcomplicating things. People don't always need a strong reason to act in one way or another. Sometimes they're just doing what makes sense to them, simple or not, and acting in ways to make those ideas come true. Sometimes those ideas don't mix with polite society, but doesn't that make their reality, their sense of normal, as valid as yours?"

His answer was quick, but it lacked the same fire as before. "Killing innocent people seems like a big step from normal."

"Because your normal was different from mine. Mine involved a lot of people who deserved to die."

"Normal people who had no defense against a Persona," he noted, contempt entering his voice. "No chance to defend themselves against you and Sakaki, right? I've heard some stories about you, records from the Kirijo Group. You had an axe to grind with some normal people, so you murdered them."

She brushed his indignation aside with a flip of her hand. "Why wouldn't I? I had power, they had it coming, and them being defenseless doesn't mean they weren't bastards. If a criminal just throws the gun away and holds his hands up, is he immediately worth sparing if he's already killed people? Are abusive parents somehow less damaging if they only yell at their kids instead of beating them?" That last point seemed to hit him where it mattered, made him jerk in place and stare at her. Interesting. "Some people are garbage, and trash deserves to be burned in a dumpster. What's so hard to understand about that?"

"It's crazy, no matter what you say." He spoke with less and less passion now. It seemed the wind had gone out of his sails, leaving him adrift.

"To someone who follows the rules and laws of this society, sure. To me, you're crazy for having so much power and wasting it on trying to look cool around people who will never know what you did to help them. All you're doing is maintaining the status quo, letting those abusive parents yell at their kids because you see them as innocent. Enabling a crime, how does that make you feel?"

Iori glared at her but didn't say a word.

"That's insanity, if you ask me," she continued. "It's cowardice. You try to be the good guy, but you have all these rules telling you what you can and can't do. Is it strong to follow what society tells you, even if it's crazy? To go to school, get grades, and live the life you're supposed to based on the skewed system set by those in power when you could do so much more, how am I the crazy one?" She smirked and leaned closer. "Case and point: you want to kill me. Not actively, but under the surface, you know I'm your enemy. You know you could stop me from attacking you and your friends again if you just kill me here. Even better, you might save some other schoolgirl who gets lost in the Dark Hour." Chidori leaned her head back, offering her neck. "Do it. I won't live to see twenty-five anyway, so you'd be killing a rat compared to a human. If you don't, I'll kill you and your friends when I get out of here."

She saw the murderous glint in his eyes for only an instant before he snuffed it out.

"Go on. I recover fast, remember? Do it quick and get it over with."

"You don't mean that," he asserted, uncertainty and anger in his voice. "I won't play your game."

Chidori picked up her pencil sharpener and broke it against the bed rails, holding out the blade to show him before slicing it into her arm. She shivered in pain, in feeling something after so much nothing, and held up the four-inch cut for him, disbelieving, to see.

"What the hell are you doing?!"

"Making a point," she told him as the bleeding already began to slow down and the severed veins reconnected, muscles reattached, and the wound closed before his eyes. "If you want to spare your friends what I'll do to them, you'll have to kill me faster than Medea can heal me." She chuckled darkly. "If you need my permission to do that, or to even think on your own, then I grant it to you. Do the 'right' thing and spare whoever I kill next."

He was splotchy with fury, and she was beginning to see the seeds of real hate in his eyes.

"You can't," she pointed out, setting the blade on her bedside table, "because there are rules against you doing that. The doctors, the Kirijo, your friends, so many things are holding you back from what you want to do, what might save people in the future, and somehow following those rules makes you the good guy. You're crazy, and worse, you're pathetic."

"You think you're better for it?" he shot back, venom in his voice. "You talk like you're a hard-assed anarchist, but you break down crying whenever Minato comes by. Has breaking those rules and killing people made you any stronger? Has it given you something good? Has anything you've ever done mattered? You kill helpless girls, not asshole parents who beat their kids, so how is your way better for society? You're not even a vigilante with a higher cause to fight for: you're just a sore loser with a chip on her shoulder."

"A sore loser who had you down in a few seconds, remember?"

"Yeah, I remember," he spat back. "And I'll walk out of here soon while you stay here, eating the crap they serve for food. The pathetic guy will go on fighting and making a difference while the know-it-all stays here and waits for the world to end. That's a real victory you got there. Scored some serious points in life, didn't you?"

Chidori glowered at him, pencil in her fist as she looked at his neck. "Keep talking. It just means I'll kill the others first and make you watch."

He smiled, dark and cruel. "You're not good enough to fight them. You played your ace already, so they'll paint the walls with you. You screwed up, and we'll be ready for you when you're sick of living. You and that tattooed asshole."

The way he talked about Takaya caught her attention. It wasn't enmity toward an adversary, but rage just barely held back. She knew which angle to hit him from now. "You shouldn't underestimate Takaya. Aragaki did that and look what happened."

His smile twisted into a snarl. "The next time I see him, he's dead."

How amusing. She wanted to see that fight, even if she knew it wouldn't last very long. "Do your handlers know you're ready to go off on your own for a personal vendetta? Careful; they might pull back on your leash."

"Go to hell."

She couldn't help but laugh. "Is this really what you fight for? Fleeting emotions and a brotherly feud? What got you this far? What did you fight for before Aragaki came into your life?"

He snorted, crossing his arms. "What do you care?"

"I don't," she stated, "but you've taken up lots of my time talking about things that don't matter, so I want an answer in return. To bring out a Persona and fight the Shadows, you'd need a strong reason. Strong enough to keep the Persona in check, strong enough to keep you going. You don't sound like you have one, so how did you even get here? Did SEES pity you and give you a spare they had lying around?"

"You seem to know what's going on, so you tell me. Or do you not know? All your talk like you know everything, and you can't figure that much out?"

"I can live with unsatisfied curiosity. If you're going to be here, you may as well do something useful like answer a few questions. Leave if you want; it doesn't matter."

He was quiet for a few seconds before he spoke. "My reason for fighting, huh? The thing that brought my Persona out and the thing that keeps me going?"

"That's right."

Several somethings flickered under the surface. Strong, repressed feelings, moving by fast enough that she couldn't tell what they were. "That's my business," he told her finally. "If you don't care, then it doesn't matter, and if you do care, then you can think about it while you sit here doing nothing." He turned and left the room, slamming the door on the way out.

Chidori shook her head before picking up her pencil and working on her sketch. No loss there. Barbing him and seeing his emotions had been enough entertainment to keep her happy for a good long while. He'd looked thoughtful near the end. Did he actually have a reason to fight, or was he bluffing because he didn't have an answer? The question was academic at this point, but she wondered what his reasons for fighting were. Because whatever they were, they'd fall short if he ever fought Takaya. And she wanted to be there to see Iori fail that hard.


Black wasn't Mitsuru's colour. She could wear business suits without a problem when there was some contrast, but her complexion and hair colour didn't work with all black. When he'd first joined SEES, Akihiko had pointed that out to her with as much tact as any grade-schooler possessed. The resulting argument had gotten to the point of her challenging him to a duel and him taking her up on it. It had taken Shinji's comment of "he's a boxer, you're a fencer. How're you going to fight?" to calm them down.

Years later, Akihiko could confirm that all black still didn't do anything for her. Neither did grief as he sat across from her in the repurposed part of her room that she used for an office. The way her sorrow showed was subtle, not obvious to those she didn't know, but the signs were there: the pale cast to her skin, the way she squeezed her fingers together, the pauses in her words like she was keeping her voice from shaking. He'd known that she was cracking on the inside when they'd been at the funeral, but since then he'd seen those cracks turn into fissures. She was suffering, and it hurt to see her bear it all on her own.

He couldn't claim to have a better way to handle loss, however. When he'd lost his sister, he'd run to a local street gang and fought until they put him down, leaving him with more black and blue than the ocean at night. Shinji dying had sent him to the gym until he was ready to puke and then into two all-nighters in Tartarus with Aigis as support. It was stupid, and he knew that. Even if the adrenaline and risky fights were a massive high. Even if flirting with self-destruction brought him to life. As stupid as his methods were, at least he had them. Mitsuru wasn't good at letting her emotions show – a product of being in charge of people – and she acted like doing so was a failure.

He wanted her to be able to let go of that control and cleanse her wounds instead of covering them up while they festered, so he'd already put a call in to Arisato. Privacy be damned, she'd need her boyfriend to help her, even if she didn't want to take that step herself. In the meantime, Akihiko did what he knew she'd respond to: he talked about work. "Have we gotten anywhere on what the Appriser is?"

"Not as yet," she responded, the strain sounding in her voice like an off note in a melody.

"Pharos implied that he's tied to Arisato's Personas. He apparently started showing up when Arisato moved here, but hadn't made an appearance before then. Is it possible that Pharos is a Persona? Have you ever heard of something like that?"

"I haven't. It goes against everything we know about them. If they're aspects of ourselves, then how could one have its own will? Pharos seemed autonomous instead of under Arisato's control, and Arisato hasn't brought out a Persona like that so far. If Pharos is what you suggest, then I wonder why he exists in the first place."

"It sounds like you have a theory. Let's hear it," he prompted. If she talked about work, maybe she'd be able to work through her grief until Arisato got here.

She let out a breath. "Igor suggests that there's a grander plan to all of this, but a plan suggests a planner. If my grandfather was just a means to an end, then I wonder who dictated the end we're heading toward. What is waiting at the end of these events, and what does it want? Pharos suggested that the next Shadow will be the last, but then things will get harder. Will we meet this orchestrator at that time? If so, what should we do?"

Akihiko nodded. He'd been thinking along the same lines himself, and he hadn't found any answers. "I'd like to know what the Shadows have to do with all this. They're powerful and dangerous, but why them specifically? Do you know where they came from or where your grandfather found them?"

"I don't remember. I didn't ask and I don't think he ever said, and the records from back then in the Group's archives are destroyed or missing. I don't know how he even caught them in the first place. Given how strong they are, I can't imagine him bringing them in without an incredible cost of resources, even if he had Metis and Aigis and others to help him." She let out a short breath. "When I looked into the expenses and manpower numbers, I didn't find any answers. If Igor is telling the truth, then I wonder if it was easy to capture them because they wanted to be caught, so they could do what they needed to. And there's something else. I'm wondering if there have been any new ones or if everything we've fought so far has been the same Shadows that were in the labs ten years ago. If they haven't increased in number, then what were they doing in the first place? Where does this all begin?"

Cynicism tinged Akihiko's voice. "Nothing to help us on that angle either, right?"

"Correct. It's very irritating."

"It feels like we have to go off of what Igor said. Help Arisato kill the Shadows, take on whatever comes our way, and hope that our best is good enough. On that topic, I'd love to know why Arisato's special. Hearing Shadows, multiple Personas, a kid showing up in the Dark Hour and calling him Brother. He arrives exactly when things start to get worse and he helps us when we need it, and it's in the way we most need help with. You'd think he was designed for this stuff."

"I've noticed that, and it can't be a coincidence," she commented. "But I don't know where to take that line of thinking. I can't even guess what the conditions are for him to be the way he is. Why can he do everything that you just described when we don't have any precedents? Why is he unique?"

Akihiko counted on his fingers. "If we were talking about biology, then there's three options: inborn, environmental, or circumstantial. Do any of those apply here?"

"We can rule out an environmental cause," she began. "Nothing he's done or been exposed to would have these effects that wouldn't also affect the rest of us. His childhood was normal except for the death of his family, and neither of his parents showed potential for a Persona either. His sister died before she was of age to be tested, and we had no reason to do so. Also, I'd hesitate to call his powers innate. Evolution doesn't spike this fast, and I can't think of anything that might cause him to have these powers that wouldn't also have manifested in someone else. The odds that he was born this way out of chance and his skills are uniquely suited to help us here and now, that he's the unique first case... those are astronomical."

Akihiko nodded. "When you say it like that, it is too convenient. That leaves circumstance, and he's been strange right from the beginning."

She bristled a little at his words, and Akihiko hid a smile. It was good that she could react like that and come to Arisato's defense; there was hope for them already.

"Strange in that none of the rules apply to him," Akihiko corrected. "He's like the key to a lock in all this, but only as far as the Dark Hour stuff goes. Take the Persona stuff out of the equation, and he's as normal as any of us, no extra baggage or problems to speak of."

Mitsuru looked out her window before answering. "I question that. I don't think he's as normal as you describe."

"What do you mean?"

"It's hard to describe, but there are times when he doesn't react how I'd expect him to. He's taken to SEES very well, but it sometimes it feels like he's not really feeling what's going on around him, or that he's taking it all in and adapting too well. He also has problems where his family are concerned; Elizabeth-san mentioned it when I spoke to her."

Akihiko perked up. This was new. "What did she say?"

"That he doesn't connect with his past memories the way a normal person would," she began. "That something happened when his family died that makes him distant when the subject is brought up, and I know what she means. Sometimes it's like his memories aren't lining up, while other times he seems very blasé about what should have been traumatic. It's come up when I mentioned his parents and his sister, on more than one occasion. I wonder if he's having memory problems or if something's wrong. He doesn't talk about it, but it's clear that something's off, almost like he's disconnected from whatever happened."

"I assume you mean all of this past the point of a coping mechanism."

"Yes. It feels..." She huffed, irritation apparent on her face. "I don't know how to explain it. It's like an avoidance tactic, but he's not avoiding anything when you talk to him, and he doesn't show any signs of repression or psychological instability. But there's still something off about it all. The Group observed the same thing during his assessments, but we assumed that it was part of how he handled stress given that he took so well to SEES and the Shadows. He took to everything so well that we assumed it was a windfall and a show of a strong mind, but I wonder if that's actually the case. Elizabeth-san wouldn't say anything more about it other than that there was more to it than handling bad memories."

"His parents and sister died the night the Shadows got out," Akihiko noted. "If it was bad enough then maybe he has a–" There was that word again, "–unique way of handling things."

She gave him a look, and said nothing.

"I know," he conceded in disgust. "Even if that's the case, it still raises the question of how he does it and why it's only him. Which brings us right back to where we were before." Akihiko thought about it for a moment. "But his family died on the night the Shadows got out? And that was when the Dark Hour first started?"

"That's right."

"I wonder if there's a connection there. Something about the Dark Hour and how it first started, paired up with a traumatic incident like that. We can only see the results of things as they are now, after ten years of exposure and a lot of coping, but maybe that's the special first moment we're looking for."

"It could be," she granted with a thoughtful frown. "But we don't know what that might have been, and even if we did, we can't test it. If you're suggesting that his powers came from a unique occurrence in the Dark Hour, then we're back to relying on records we don't have and circumstances we can't verify. Not without experimenting on people and trying to recreate the situation."

"Right, but conceptually it's a place to start."

"I agree, and it's perhaps the best idea we have, though it doesn't tell us where to go from here, or why him specifically. I was near the labs when the Shadows escaped, as were members of our staff who are still working for the Group and child candidates. None of us have developed along the same lines as he has. And without a clear catalyst, we can't track any of this back."

An idea came to mind, and Akihiko remembered the pulse of power he'd felt the night Shinji died. "Something happened when the Shadows got out, but is it possible that Arisato wasn't the only one affected by it? What if Sakaki was hit by it too and that's why he's as strong as he is? Could that be why he's so crazy?"

Mitsuru clenched her hands at the name. "I don't know." Then she looked over at him. "But don't think that this only goes one way."

Akihiko leaned back, eyes narrowing from how she'd taken control of the conversation. "Meaning?"

Her eyes sharpened, a glimmer of her usual self under everything else. "I appreciate your concern for my wellbeing, but I want to know how you're doing. With Shinjiro, with how things turned out. With Amada."

Neither said anything, then he wilted a little under her stare. "What do you want me to say?"

"The truth."

The hardest thing to get to, and it was even harder to say. "The truth is... I don't know. Everything Shinji said made sense back then, but neither of us thought it'd go like this. He's gone, and Amada's a mess. Sakaki gets away with murder and we're left holding the bag. How does any of this add up?"

"It doesn't," she noted immediately, "which is why I'm surprised you went along with it."

He clenched his teeth, felt the anger rising but kept it banked. She wasn't his enemy, and she was the last person in the world he wanted to alienate. "I got the third degree from Arisato already. If I'm going to hear it from you, can we skip it?"

"I wasn't going to go that far," she assured him steadily. "I just want to know if you need any help. You went to Tartarus with Aigis. Did that work? We have some time before the next Shadow; I can arrange to have someone speak with you."

"I appreciate that, and I mean it. But I don't think it'll help. Things are what they are, and I have to handle it."

"Are you handling it?"

He nodded. "I'm working on it." That wasn't a sure thing, and he knew it, but he was hoping that she knew him well enough to let him do things without any interference.

It was a few seconds before she spoke. "All right. Do it your way, but let me know if you need anything. It's not just about SEES; we don't need to lose you too."

He got what she meant, and her trust hit him where it counted. She was responsible for the team, and she was taking a risk if she didn't follow up on him when she should have. Akihiko promised himself that he wasn't going to make her look bad, if it was the last thing he did. "Thanks, Mitsuru." He checked his phone and saw the message he'd been looking for. He cut off the sensitive stuff and got out of his chair. "I'll keep digging into Arisato's past and the Dark Hour, see if anyone knows anything. I'll keep in touch, but I want to stay busy for now."

"I understand. Let me help you."

"No, you need to take a step back and get some rest."

She looked surprised, lips pursed and eyebrow raised. The gesture was normal and familiar, and took some weight off his shoulders. "Pardon me? Are you telling me what to do?"

"Yeah, I am. Someone needs to. You look like you need some time to get over Shinji. Take the time you need, but don't let it become a deadweight; he'd hate you if you did."

"I'm fine, Akihiko," she tried to say when her voice cracked.

"I doubt it, and I think you need someone else's help right now." He turned and headed out the door, feeling her confusion as he walked. When he entered the hallway, he met Arisato's expectant stare. "It's up to you now. Do what you can."

"I'll try," the younger student replied, dubious. "I've never done this before, you know."

"Your odds are better than mine. Don't let her push you away, you'll come up with something."

Arisato rolled his eyes. "Thanks for the vote of confidence."

"No problem."

Akihiko heard Mitsuru shuffling around in her room, probably curious who he was talking to. It was time to leave. He turned toward the stairs, not slowing down at the inquiries and looks following him until he was around the corner. He slumped to the side, letting the wall hold him up while he rubbed his face.

It was all a mess. No, a fucking disaster was a better word for it. He hadn't spoken to Amada, and he knew he needed to, but there was so much blame going around that he didn't know what to say. He had to deal with himself first, and he had no idea where to start. He'd heard it from Mitsuru and Arisato, but even his own mind was asking him why he'd kept silent about Shinji, why he hadn't seen things ending badly.

What answer could he give? With his best friend's body attached to his mistakes, what words would work? Who could he apologize to? Who would listen? Could he talk to Amada? About what?

Akihiko hissed a breath out and straightened. He couldn't fix the problems that Shinji had left them with, but there was more going on than that. There were threads to pull and leads to follow up on, and he owed it to Mitsuru to see this stuff through to the end. He owed it to Shinji and the rest of the team, and he owed it to himself to keep fighting, no matter how much it hurt.

"One broken, bloody step at a time," he said to himself, remembering the words from his first boxing coach. He headed for the doors to the dorm, plans in hand. He had people to see and questions to ask. After that, he'd figure it out. Even if he couldn't fix things with Shinji, he could get ready for the next Shadow and look out for his people. They deserved that much.


Minato braced himself as Mitsuru-senpai came to the door. He wasn't sure what Akihiko-senpai had expected him to accomplish. The text reading She needs your help hadn't explained much, and the last time Minato had helped someone get through the death of a friend had been Yukari. He wasn't good with funerals and he'd be the first to admit it, so what was he supposed to do?

Mitsuru-senpai didn't look surprised when she saw him. If anything, she looked a bit resigned. "Akihiko asked you to come, didn't he?" she asked, sending a glare after her comrade that lacked any bite at all.

"That's right."

"He's trying to help," she told him with a tone of finality. "It's unnecessary. If you have plans today, you shouldn't miss them."

Minato looked at her closer. Their relationship had been a source of amusement for Akihiko-senpai, but it wasn't likely that he would have set this up without a reason. Mitsuru-senpai didn't look good, either. The slight trembling to her hands, the stressed look in her eyes, the unnatural tension of her stance. She reminded Minato of the broken metal shards that Dad brought home once, a case where the materials hadn't handled the strain of the bridge they'd been built into. Twisted, strained, raggedly ripped apart under immense pressure. "I wasn't doing anything that can't wait."

Her response was a dismissive wave of the hand. "Surely anything must be better than following his crazy texts."

She was dodging the issue, probably because she didn't want to let go of her control. Minato wondered if there was anyone she could do that around, anyone she could be weak with. That sounds like a boyfriend, he thought. That was why Akihiko-senpai had sent him the text, and Minato knew what had to happen. "I doubt he did this on a lark, Senpai. Can I come in?"

She blinked. "Excuse me?"

"Can I come in?" he repeated. "Or can you come out here?"

"Why?"

"Because you look like you need it."

"You're mistaken."

He stepped closer, not breaking eye contact as his fears fell away. He didn't need to know how someone else's boyfriend would handle this situation. He just needed to know what he'd do for her, and this was Mitsuru-senpai, the girl he'd fought beside for months. "I don't think I am, and I can't leave you alone. No good boyfriend would."

She blushed a bit, and didn't respond.

"You can decide what we talk about and what we do," he continued, "but I'm not leaving, so don't ask me to."

"Suppose I did," she posited with a weak smirk. "Suppose I closed the door right now. What would you do?"

"Stay right here, outside your door all night if I needed to. Or find a way through your window."

She took him seriously enough to turn and take note of the large window in her room, probably considering what he'd need to do to follow through on that promise. "That wouldn't be necessary."

"Thanks, but I'll decide what's necessary for my girlfriend. Being there for her when she needs it should be par for the course."

"Are you sure?"

How was he supposed to know? He was going off of what sounded smooth right now, and he couldn't let her brush him off. "Maybe not for other guys. But it is for me."

She was quiet for a moment, then stepped aside and held out a hand in welcome. "Sit wherever you like," she offered. "Can I get you anything?"

Minato looked around the converted office in the corner of what felt like a woman's parlour, the mix of feminine and practical catching his eye. Combat magazines weighed down by bottles of sword oil, an elegant mirror flanked by stands of thin armour, containers of tea bags and cups on one side of the cluttered desk, an ultramodern computer on the other. There were books on every wall, every shelf, so many that she was using books as ends to hold up more books. It wasn't what he expected of a girl's domain. He'd seen into Yukari's room the few times he'd had to retrieve her for their operations when he'd first moved to the dorm. The pink peppermint and lacy girliness she surrounded herself with felt sentient, waiting to smother him if he stepped too far into its realm. By contrast, this room felt familiar, as though Senpai's nature had seeped into her surroundings. Intelligent, classy, distinct but not intimidating. He felt like he could breathe here. "I'm fine, thanks."

She closed the door and stood by it, folding her fingers and waiting. He waited in turn, and the air became uncomfortable. What did one say? What words worked? He took the plunge with the lamest thing that came to mind, wanting to at least say something. "Are you okay?"

She looked distracted. "Am I okay?"

"About Shinjiro-senpai," Minato clarified. "About everything that happened. You were friends, so this can't be easy."

"I've had my time to grieve," she assured him distantly.

"Has it been enough?"

"It would have to be, wouldn't it? Life stops for no one."

Minato huffed out a breath. She sounded like the students who spouted off philosophical lines without ever thinking of what the words actually meant. She must be in a really bad place if she was this much on autopilot. "That's not productive, Senpai. I get that work needs to be done, but if you break down in the process, that's just adding to the problem, isn't it?"

"Do you think I'm likely to break down?"

"I think anyone would need a break after the crap we've gone through lately. If you don't take the time to stabilize, it'll stick with you and get worse. Either you'll collapse or make a mistake. Someone else could get hurt in that case."

"Are you lecturing me?"

"If I have to. The others are my responsibility too. I don't want something to happen to them, and I don't want something to happen to you." He stepped closer, gaining confidence the more they spoke. "You haven't answered the question, either. Are you okay?"

She stayed quiet and backed into herself, lacking her usual certainty and not meeting his eyes.

"Because this is a good time to not be okay. Shinjiro-senpai, everything that happened with Ken, now this stuff with the Kirijo Group and Pharos, it's more than any of us can handle on our own. That includes you, and I don't want to see you break because you're trying to be strong for us." He saw that she was shifting, and he tried another approach. "No one expects you to handle this by yourself. Not if it's going to hurt you."

She hesitated, shuffled in place like she had worms in her shoes. "If... Even if that were the case, with everything that needs to be done, there's no place for hysterics."

"Then don't be hysterical. Just do what comes naturally."

She said nothing, but he could feel her control cracking. The more she held back, the worse she got. He knew that losing control, even where no one could see her, with someone she trusted, was a show of vulnerability, of weakness, that she couldn't allow.

Minato knew she'd break into pieces before she let herself give in, so he took the decision out of her hands. He crossed the distance between them and hugged her. "It's okay if you let go. I don't mind."

She shook her head even as her hands shakingly came up around him. "No one respects a leader who falls apart," she protested. "We can't afford that."

"You lost a friend, Senpai. They'll understand. And this stays between us. No one else will know about it."

"If... if I do... what you say, then you're part of this too," she choked out, the words quivering with her hands. "You can't regret it later."

"We're in this together, Senpai. I won't regret it."

She nodded, then shakily came over to him, lowering her head. "You can't talk about this with anyone," she added, starting to crack. "If you do, I'll hunt you down."

"Not a word," he promised, tightening his hold on her.

She set her face against his shoulder, and it took a moment for him to realize she was crying. Quietly, so quiet he almost couldn't hear it, but she wept. Her trembling arms squeezed him. Her fingers clamped into his shoulders, her nails bit in. Then her resolve broke under her grief and she truly cried against him, letting everything out. He endured. Her battle-honed muscles meant he wasn't going anywhere without taking her along, and he held her as firmly as felt comfortable. She cried hard enough to gasp, and he looked past her so she could maintain the scant illusion of privacy. A flickering of something rippled in his heart, like a drop on still water. His Personas stirred, but went back to sleep. Her grief felt familiar, like he could relate to what she was going through, but... from where? He blinked the thought away and awkwardly stroked her hair in a clumsy attempt at comfort. It smelled like apples, he realized, and he let the scent run through him. She cried harder and he let her tighten her grasp on him even more. It was several minutes before he heard what sounded like a question. "Hm?"

She spoke into his shoulder, muffled but still intelligible. "Why didn't he tell me? Why did he keep it to himself? Why did he go off on his own? It's like he was a dying animal, knowing his time was up and leaving it all behind."

Minato shook his head. They all had questions for Shinjiro-senpai, and Minato had never thought they wouldn't have the chance to ask. "I don't know. Maybe his time was really coming up. Maybe that was why he came back in the first place."

"To die? We could have helped him! I wanted to help him!"

"I think he knew that. Out of anyone, he would have."

"Should I have pushed harder?" she asked, looking up, begging for an answer. "Could I have changed him? Maybe if I'd been there when he was fighting Sakaki, Shinjiro wouldn't–"

"Don't do that," Minato whispered. "This isn't your fault. Don't focus on what might have been. You'll drive yourself crazy. We did everything we could with what we had."

"It wasn't enough."

"No, it wasn't. But we still have a job to do, right?"

She hiccupped against him. "With me at the front? With secrets and lies everywhere? You're better off leading them, not me. I couldn't see something that was right in front of me, what will happen the next time something goes wrong?"

"Don't do that," Minato repeated. "You're only one person. You couldn't have known what was going on in Shinjiro-senpai's head. None of us did, and that's not your burden to bear."

"Then whose is it?"

What a question, but the answer came as soon as she asked. "All of us. In some part, we all played a part and made mistakes that made it worse." Minato dug into the memories of that night and pulled up one thing that he'd remember for the rest of his life. "Besides, I think Shinjiro-senpai knew what he was doing. He fought to keep Ken safe, and that was his choice. That's the sort of person he was, right?"

She nodded weakly.

"Then try to remember it that way. You can't control people and how things turn out, no matter what those people mean to you."

"A better leader might have picked something up. Might have stopped him from dying."

"You're not giving yourself enough credit," he pointed out softly, not letting her go. "You'll learn from this. You won't let anyone else die, and you won't let us fall apart."

"You'll need more than my effort to do it if the worst comes," she replied, sniffling with impressive dignity.

"Maybe so, but I trust you to run the show. I'm here, and so is Akihiko-senpai. We won't let this happen again."

She pulled back enough to look at him, watery eyes bloodshot. "Is that a promise you can keep? Is that a promise any of us can keep?"

Minato felt the weight of her expectations, the hopes and fears of someone who'd been through more than he could imagine. It was a daunting burden she bore, but he nodded with certainty. "I'll make it, and I'll keep it. Shinjiro-senpai dying was a setback, but we've had a lot of victories. We've pushed through some pretty bad fights and we've always won. We're not going to stop now. No matter what happens with Ken or Strega or the Shadows. Losing now... that's not in the cards for any of us."

"That's... not easy to believe, you know."

"I get that, but it's what I believe. Whatever comes up, we'll make it work, and we'll do it as a team. You don't have to do this all on your own."

She leaned back down to his shoulder, saying nothing for a while as her tears stopped and her sniffles ceased.

This was a chance to be inspirational, he knew. A perfect moment where she'd learn that she could trust him. He braced himself and went into it the best he could. "I know that's pretty lame, but I'll come up with a better speech tomorrow. How does that sound?"

"I don't think it's lame," she murmured back. "I'll take it just as it is."

Minato chuckled awkwardly. So it worked. That made things harder; what was he supposed to say now? She spared him the trouble by loosening her grasp and backing up a little. She still looked conflicted and grief-stricken, caught between ideas or words.

Minato glanced behind them and came to a decision. "Let's sit down," he offered, still holding her.

She nodded, curling up on the couch next to him and glomping onto him again. She kept her head turned toward the couch, eyes closed. "You don't mind right?"

Minato tightened his hold on her a little. "Not at all. Take what you need." Several minutes of silence passed, him providing the security and her taking it in, before his next ideas came to his lips. "We should... that is, I want to go on another date with you. Before the next full moon."

Of any reaction she could have given him, she surprised him by chuckling. "You picked an odd time to bring that up."

"Not that odd. There are some new places I want to go to with you."

She sighed, shifting around until she was comfortable. "I'd like that."

He smiled, feeling like he'd gotten another mark in the "win" column. He went through some different ideas and new places, but partway through his list she'd stopped answering. He brushed her hair aside and realized she'd fallen asleep. He was squished into a corner, and the plush couch wasn't that comfortable. But moving around too much risked waking her up, and he wasn't sure that he'd be able to get her to rest this easily if that happened. His options laid in front of him, he did what a good boyfriend should do: he endured. His waist was cramping up from how he was sitting, and the pillows he was leaning on were already becoming uncomfortable, and the arm of the couch was digging into his back, but he'd get through it for her.

He smirked at his own cheesiness. If he'd used that line on her, she'd have laughed at him for sure. This worked fine. He stroked her hair some more, setting a soft kiss on her head. "Rest well, Mitsuru," he whispered in the quiet of the room, soaking in the scent of her hair and the feeling of her warm weight against him until it lulled him to sleep.


Aigis closed the door to her room, reluctant to be in her quarters. The SEES members had chosen to spend this beautiful Saturday with their own pursuits. Fuuka-san and Yukari-san had gone to visit Ken-san, who had been under the care of the Kirijo Group for sixteen days now, while Junpei-san and Akihiko-san had taken Koromaru-san to the local park. And Minato-san and Mitsuru-san had left the dorm in the morning, their vitals suggesting a positive state of mind. Their improved mood might have been related to their subtle, shared gestures of affection, like holding hands when they were alone or smiling at each other in a way that was different from how they smiled at others. Aigis lacked the computational metrics to determine what was required for people to "become close" to each other, and Palladion had offered no further data outside of it being "a human quirk." But while she couldn't relate on a personal level – she couldn't make her circuits mimic the physiological responses that Minato-san's presence caused in Mitsuru-san's body – she understood this human affectation as being very important to social bonding and team building. Perhaps an in-depth explanation might have assisted her understanding, but even she knew that what lie between her teammates was personal. They worked to maintain a degree of secrecy about their emotional states around others, so Aigis wouldn't make their efforts turn to nothing. That wasn't what a friend would do.

She gave a human-sounding sigh as that word – friend – emerged in her cogitators. Her mission had been clear when she'd first awoken: destroy Shadows and protect the humans who fought them. She wasn't required to become personally involved with SEES outside of what required her to be part of the team. She hadn't set out to make friends and become close to the inhabitants of the dorm, and she hadn't even considered it likely that she would do so by accident given that she lacked the social programming and necessary interaction protocols to best blend in with people. But due to the efforts of Fuuka-san and Yukari-san, she'd begun experiencing what her database searches concluded were "feelings of affection" and "a sense of belonging" with her team. Koromaru-san seemed to enjoy his walks with her, insisting that she threw the ball the furthest out of the group. Junpei-san had asked her to be his sparring partner since the death of Shinjiro-san, stating that he wanted to become stronger. Even Minato-san had expressed some concern over her wellbeing today, observing that her passing up the chance to visit Ken-san was unusual for her. That his regards for her had become so mundane after he'd met her with distrust and hostility was something that made her feel... happy? Him trusting her served the purpose of team cohesion, but she liked that he cared enough about her state of mind to inquire after it. These feelings were fascinating, varied and confusing. Did humans feel this way all the time? If so, how did they function properly? Or was this more characteristic of one having friends?

Aigis walked across her room, past the arranged crates of ammunition and spare parts, the racks of firearms and the cases of high-explosive ordnance, to the work table in the corner. She took distinct enjoyment from sitting in the chair that she'd personally chosen during a shopping trip that Yukari-san had insisted upon. Set on the corner of the table – also picked out in that shopping trip – were souvenirs from the local arcade that Junpei-san frequented, some animals that Fuuka-san had put together from spare circuitry and wiring, and a series of manuals that Mitsuru-san had given her upon request: "Interacting with People as an Anti-Shadow Weapon," "Firearm Restrictions in Japanese Cities," and "Humans and Machines are Different: Procedures for Organic Maintenance and Repairs," among the book titles. The trinkets – for they were such, being unnecessary for her everyday functioning – had become welcome gifts from her comrades, valuables that she treasured in a way that defied her usual pragmatism.

Perhaps that was where her reluctance to be alone originated from. Instead of visiting Ken-san or enjoying the sunny day, she'd sequestered herself indoors, devoting her cogitators to a problem she still had no answer to. There was a sense of letting the group down by not being with them and helping where she could, and telling herself that she had work to do wasn't true enough for her to feel like she had, as Fuuka-san might say, a "clear conscience." The discomfort was a stirring near her midsection that Palladion had identified as "guilt." It hadn't started as a pleasant feeling, and it had gotten worse the longer she kept her thoughts to herself.

Much as her human side might dislike keeping things from SEES, however, she knew that it was necessary. She needed to properly process what was coming and how she was going to handle it, and that meant dealing with some sense of unease.

First, there was the matter of the Shadows. She remembered enough of what happened under Kouetsu-san's supervision to know that there had been thirteen Shadows in the Kirijo Group's laboratories before the incident that had freed them. Of those thirteen, two remained, and the next would manifest in eleven days. After this one was eliminated, only Death would remain.

That led to her second problem. She couldn't be certain how much sway Death had over Minato-san as he was now. He'd not yet expressed the symptoms of the Shadow's traits, none of the fury at the living or the uncontrollably murderous impulses that she had faced on the bridge. That Minato-san was still human after what she had done was so remarkable that she'd been tempted, more than once, to ask him how he was managing such a thing without being consumed by it. According to the Kirijo Group's profile on him, he expressed all of the psychological traits needed to manifest and control a Persona. His effective coping mechanisms and unusual sense of humour had stood out as reasons for him to join SEES, and she could see how well they served him. Even without the ability to change Personas, he was almost a perfect candidate for SEES.

That was the conundrum, however. Was she seeing the effects of Minato-san's personality as it truly was? Or was Death working into his psyche more subtly to make him better at killing Shadows? Was Death still in its old form or had it changed due to being contained in a person for so long? And when Death arose, would Minato-san be strong enough to fight it? Would he be aware of the Shadow when that time came? Could he be saved and Death destroyed? Could SEES fight him with the efficiency needed to prevail if they needed to? Aigis had seen Minato-san struggle to protect his friends, had observed him interacting with people at school and in the community. She was confident, within the ninetieth percentile, that he was a genuinely good person. Could she truly fight him, knowing that he might die or be mentally damaged in the process, for something he was not responsible for?

Was Minato-san's strength of will and good character enough to stop Death? How would he act if he knew the truth? Would he accept her if she told him about her part in Death's imprisonment? Would he understand the situation she was in right now?

If her sigh had been human-inspired, then her folding her arms on the table and resting her face into them was, where gestures were concerned, as human as it got. Her logic subroutines were chasing themselves in circles, the questions compounding the longer she thought about them. The more time she spent with the group, the more problems arose. She'd restricted herself to fighting with her firearms, for fear of revealing the upgrades Palladion had received and inviting inquiries. If that happened, then many uncomfortable questions would arise, and Mitsuru-san would have reason to suspend her combat privileges for not talking about what had happened to Metis. She couldn't ask too deeply into Minato-san's past without him wondering what inspired her curiosity. She couldn't risk getting to close to the rest of SEES in the event that she had to fight Death when it emerged. And as though that weren't enough, she had played a role in creating these problems. If she had spoken earnestly about things before, then there might have been time to address some of the issues and find some answers. Now they were too close to the next Shadow to take that risk, yet her silence hadn't helped her come to a decision. What could she do now? To whom could she speak about these problems?

Her comm went off just then, pulling her out of her introspection. She was grateful for the distraction that it granted her. "This is Aigis," she said once she opened the channel, moderating her tone to erase any hint of discomfort.

"Good morning! It's Ikutsuki," the dorm director greeted her. "Might I have a moment?"

Aigis stood up and set her chair exactly in its place. Perhaps she could speak to Ikutsuki-san about some of her concerns. "Come in. My door is open."

Ikutsuki-san entered a few seconds later, glancing around her room enough that he didn't bump into anything explosive as he walked over to her. "I'm glad you're here," he began, smiling, "though it's odd not to see you with the others. Didn't you have any plans with them today?"

She quelled the emotions that tried to manifest at his words, not prepared to reveal how she felt unless she needed to. "I have some plans of my own, places I intend to go later. I will inform someone of my departure before I leave. How can I help you?"

If he suspected her of lying, he didn't show it. "I wanted your opinion on something. It's related to the Shadows, so I thought I'd come to you."

Good. She could deal with Shadow-related work far better than she could personal problems. "If I can help you, I will."

"Excellent. I overheard Minato-kun use a term the other day, but it doesn't register in the Kirijo Group's databanks."

Aigis frowned. That was strange. Why wouldn't the Kirijo Group know about a word tied to the Shadows? "What is the term?"

"The Appriser."

Aigis felt a jolt fire through her motor cortices, the closest she could come to being shocked still. Had... she heard him right? She activated her auditory cognition protocols and replayed the conversation six times in triplicate, hearing the word over and over but not ready to accept it. "I... That word... Who said it?"

"Minato-kun," Ikutsuki-san supplied. "Mitsuru-san and Kirijo-san have also been investigating it, but I don't know if they've had any more luck than I have. If so, they haven't told me."

If Minato-san knew that word... if he understood what it meant... "Might... Do you know the context? When did he first say it?"

He nodded. "It was around the time that Junpei-kun was kidnapped by Yoshino, after the fight with the Shadow in Paulownia mall. He hasn't brought it up in conversation, so I don't know the exact context or whether he thinks it means anything. I'm not even sure where he heard it, but the Group has been searching for some relevance to it since then, in conjunction with research and information gathered before the incident ten years ago. It's an odd word and you were around back then, so I thought I'd ask."

127 different answers presented themselves in her social matrices, ranging from admissions to subversions. She couldn't process the implications fast enough, tripping over herself to understand what this development changed in her plans. Her primary cogitator created 539 reasons and outcomes for that word to be brought up now; only 4 of them were in some way positive. She wouldn't let an uncertainty push her into drastic actions, however. There was too much she didn't know, so she fell back to what was becoming familiar territory. "I admit that I haven't heard the word before. I don't recall it being used ten years ago, either. I'm afraid I can't help you."

Ikutsuki-san frowned. "That's strange. If it was tied to the Shadows, I thought you might have heard it used in Kouetsu-san's research. You're sure?"

"Yes."

He nodded. "I see. That's unfortunate, but if the databases don't have anything on it then it might be nonsense. Perhaps it's the name of one of those foreign bands he listens to," he chuckled, beginning a one-sided conversation about the baffling proclivities and taste in music of the young.

There were too many unknowns at play for her to engage in a clear course of action. If she wanted to use this information, she had to eliminate the extraneous variables. It was fortunate that Ikutsuki-san was present for some inquiries. "May I ask a question?"

"Of course."

"Minato-san's development with his Persona. How has he done since he came to the dorm?"

Ikustuki-san looked surprised at her question. "Why do you ask? If you're looking for information on his field performance, then you'd know more about him than I would."

"Allow me to clarify. I am referring to when he first moved here. His ability to manifest more than one Persona is unprecedented, and it is no exaggeration to say that SEES would be disadvantaged without him. But I am curious if his development has been without any abnormalities that might have presented themselves before I joined him. Given that his case is so exceptional, it is logical that he would have developed differently than Akihiko-san or Mitsuru-san. If there are any lingering complications, especially in light of his extensive injuries when he fought Metis–" It hurt to say those words. The remains of her sister's programming, now completely merged with her own, stung when she thought of how Metis was terminated. "–then I feel I should have contingencies in place if he should be unable to fight."

He chuckled, nodding reminiscently. "You're quite correct, and I agree that his skills have been exemplary where his Personas are concerned. He's been quite the adventure to study, I must say. First the incident when he first moved here, then being able to use different Personas and manifest them so effectively, and then his fight with Metis and the damage he did to himself, but you already know about that one. And he has so many Personas! I don't know where he gets them all, but I think that he's broken more rules than the others ever made."

"Pardon me, but what incident are you referring to? What happened when he arrived?"

"I suppose you wouldn't know about it," Ikutsuki-san noted. "Now that I think about it, only Yukari-chan, Mitsuru-san and Akihiko-kun would, and none of them have brought it up since then. I'm referring to his first use of a Persona, his awakening if you will," he clarified. "It was... very unusual. So unusual that there were concerns if he would be viable to join SEES, actually."

"He has used many Personas since I met him. Was concern raised when he exhibited more than one? "

"No, him using different Personas was seen as an asset more than a handicap," Ikutsuki-san explained. "His field tests showed that he was quite suited for what he was doing and he wasn't experiencing anything out of place for a Persona-User, so having more than one wasn't given much concern beyond its novelty. No, this Persona was different, and to my knowledge he hasn't used it since that day. We asked him about it, but it seems he doesn't recall what we mean. Before summoning it and after the Shadows were dead, he mostly remembers what happened, but that one fight is a blank for him. Perhaps that was caused by the adrenaline and the excitement of being in such a novel situation so soon after moving here. Memory blanks have happened when someone first manifests their Persona, especially if the situation is stressful enough, and he was given a clean bill of health after, so we've never thought more of it."

A unique Persona? Why had he manifested it if it was his first summoning? And why hadn't he used it since? "Perhaps he discarded the Persona because it didn't suit his needs anymore," Aigis suggested. "Was it strong?"

"Very. Yukari-chan was put out of the fight, you see, and Mitsuru-san and Akihiko-kun were too far away to help. There were quite a few Shadows attacking us, one of the large ones leading the pack. When I think back to it, this was probably on a night of the full moon, back in the beginning of April. We would have been overrun, but the Persona that Minato-kun summoned killed them all, including the large one, by itself."

Aigis's circuits went cold with dread. She didn't need Palladion to tell her what the emotion was or where it came from. "This Persona fought a Shadow normally seen on the nights of the full moon? Alone? And it won?"

"That's correct. It destroyed that Shadow and its cohorts, and still seemed to have power to spare."

To fight something so strong on its own and win... And this was in April, when Minato first moved to the island. If he was exhibiting power like that so long ago... "That's... very powerful. And he's never used that Persona since?"

"Not to my knowledge. I've asked Mitsuru-san to notify me if she sees it again, but she hasn't said anything so far. The Group feels that he summoned the Persona as a stress response given that he exhibited symptoms of extreme pain soon after the Shadow died. He was hospitalized for days afterward, and we think that with SEES helping him, he hasn't been pushed to that point since. Perhaps he won't use it again since he has his other Personas, or perhaps he can't bring it out given that he didn't summon it when he fought Metis. Maybe it was a fluke from his ability to have more than one Persona and he's moved beyond that one now, as you suggest. We don't know."

That the Persona hadn't re-emerged since then was encouraging, but that it existed at all was still a cause for concern. Aigis registered the slow twisting in her stomach, a "bad feeling" as she'd heard it called. She wouldn't act without information, however. She needed more than conjecture. "If this happened on the dorm rooftop, then I assume you have footage of it from the building's CCTV systems. Could you show that footage to me?"

Ikutsuki-san looked a bit surprised, but nodded. "If you like, certainly. It will have to be later, I'm afraid – I have quite a busy schedule this week. Speaking of which, I have a meeting that I need to leave for."

"Whenever you can accommodate me. I'd be quite interested in seeing this Persona."

"Very well. I'll make some time and let you know."

"Thank you," she murmured as he left. She couldn't go to SEES with these questions. The immediate queries they would bring up were too hazardous right now. Ikutsuki-san already believed her, so she would wait for him. Her circuits were alight with possible scenarios and even more rampant thoughts.

A Persona strong enough to kill a Shadow like that, summoned by the person who had Death sealed inside of him. Was this a coincidence or a sign? Had it been getting stronger or was it still dormant? Could Minato-san control that power as he was now?

Could she take that risk?


Ken hesitated, familiarity playing tag with trepidation along his nerves as he entered Maeda-san's office. It had been almost three weeks of failures to bring out a Persona. Ken's schedule had to accommodate private classes, the reasoning being that he was to try and maintain a level of academic achievement for some sense of normalcy. They'd helped, but the stress test Abe-san had scheduled two days ago had gone as badly as the previous seven attempts had. Now Maeda-san requested an unscheduled meeting, and Ken couldn't keep the butterflies from fluttering in spite of the comfortable surroundings.

The room was like a high-tech library, books in shelves along the wall while computer monitors were set up at the desk and near Maeda-san's chair. Everything smelled like coffee, paper and circuits. It seemed like the sort of place Fuuka-san would love to visit.

"Good morning Ken-kun," Maeda-san greeted from where he was seated. "Are you ready?"

Out of the Kirijo employees in the facility, Maeda-san was someone whom Ken was most on the fence about. On one hand, the man had a calm vibe to him, from his trimmed beard and kind eyes and voice to his suit that looked like it had been made in the 80s. He wasn't pushy or demanding, he never gave the impression that Ken was wasting his time, and his soft voice made it easy to talk about almost anything. On the other hand, Maeda-san asked the worst questions.

"Yes," Ken answered, trying and failing to find some kind of centre.

"Good," Maeda-san replied, nodding to the chair Ken usually sat in during their sessions. "Please, sit. Do you have any questions? Any concerns?"

"No, sir," Ken replied as he went to his chair.

"How are you feeling? You didn't look well last time."

Ken remembered last time. He remembered feeling pale and sick before the session was over. He remembered the nightmares the questions had given him. Worst of all, he remembered Mom, and those nightmares were enough to make him gag right now. "I'm fine, sir," he choked out.

"You don't look fine. I've heard you haven't been sleeping well."

"I'm fine enough to do this," Ken insisted. He was fine. He had to be. If he was fine, he'd get better, and once he was better, Nemesis would come back. He'd be normal with Nemesis. Then he could go back to SEES. Everything would work out. It would.

Maeda-san didn't look convinced, but he shifted in his soft, plush chair. Ken noticed that the chairs were on the hardwood of Maeda-san's office instead of the carpet, and there was a colourful bucket nearby this time. "Tell me about SEES," Maeda-san began, pen ready above his notepad once Ken was situated.

Ken blinked. That seemed like an easy question. "You know about them already, don't you?"

"Yes, but I want to hear your perspective on them. Just say whatever comes to mind."

"I hope they're doing all right," was Ken's honest reply. It wasn't hard to talk about the team. "Arisato-senpai and Mitsuru-senpai are probably handling things after... after Shinjiro-senpai died. If they keep going to Tartarus, they'll be at a disadvantage."

"Go on," Maeda-san prompted.

"Shinjiro-senpai was a strong fighter," Ken continued, the words coming easier, "so I'm sure they're having a hard time without him. He got along with Junpei-san and Akihiko-senpai... I'm sure Akihiko-senpai's still mad about everything. It's not my fault, though. It isn't. I... I didn't want to leave them alone, or go to the alleys, but I had to. I didn't have a choice. I didn't. But it's... is it my fault? It's not. Right?"

"Is what your fault?"

"Shinjiro-senpai," Ken said almost before Maeda-san was done asking. The thoughts swirled in his head, making him dizzy enough to grab the chair arms to stay still. But it was easy to talk like this. Talking made the thoughts easier to handle. "Sakaki killing him. I'm sure Akihiko-senpai hates me for it; I haven't seen him since I left the dorm. I couldn't help Shinjiro-senpai though. I... everything he did, all the nightmares, I couldn't help it if–"

"Amada, that's enough."

"–what was I supposed to do? Fight? Sakaki wasn't supposed to be there, he shouldn't have been there. I couldn't do anything about it!"

"Amada," Maeda-san stated firmly. "Stop it."

Ken had to hold the words back, almost afraid of not talking now that he was on a roll. "What?"

"Stop it. We're not talking about SEES anymore. We're done talking about them, and the subject's changed. Don't even think about them now, all right?"

As if by command, thoughts of Shinjiro-senpai dropped. "O... okay."

"Tell me about your mother," Maeda-san told him softly. "Whatever comes to mind."

Ken could barely breathe as the memories returned. The crashing in the alley. The living room wall destroyed. Her blood all over the floor, her body almost cut in half. Gasping and shaking as she died. "She's dead. Right in front of me. Maybe if I'd had Neme–" He couldn't finish the name – lightning shot through his mind. "–my Persona back then, she wouldn't be dead. I couldn't help her. Couldn't save her. Neither could Dad. I'd never heard of a Persona before. Do you think I could have saved her back then?" The anger, grief so heavy it choked the lungs. Dad's eyes, red and glassy. The knight appearing in dreams. Castor, covered in red. The demon that changed everything.

"What else?"

"Sorry?"

"About your mother," Maeda-san clarified. "What else can you tell me?"

"She... was wearing blue when she died. She always liked blue." The blue didn't stay. Blood didn't turn it purple, but dark and wet. Blue smelled like shredded wood and drywall. It looked like armour and darkness. "She wasn't wearing it at the funeral. They had a closed casket. They had to, but I could've protected her if I'd had a Persona, right? I should have protected her."

Maeda-san was quiet, scratching notes on paper before touching the console on the table next to his chair. "Is that all you want to say?"

"You asked about Mom. Did I do it wrong?"

"There is no right or wrong. I wanted to see where your mind was, that's all."

Ken didn't know what the answer was then. He wasn't even sure of what had been thoughts and what had been words. "Can I go back to SEES if I keep meeting with you?"

"Why do you want to go back? If you do, you'll have to fight Shadows, and that's dangerous."

"I can do that," Ken assured him, trying to smile. "If I get my Persona back, I can fight."

"It sounds like you want to fight. Tell me why," Maeda-san instructed.

"Because I need to. If I go back they can help me get my Persona. Then..."

"Then what?"

"Um..." Then things can be normal. Then the nightmares go away. Then I have a reason to fight and I won't be... "Personas protect us from our fear, don't they? They make it so we can fight Shadows."

"That's part of how it works, yes."

"Then I need my Persona," Ken deduced. If he had his Persona, the nightmares would go away. His past would go away. It made perfect sense. "If I go back to SEES, they'll help me get it back."

Maeda-san's eyes glittered behind his glasses. "Do you have fears that you want to be protected from?"

Mom, Dad, Shinjiro-senpai. Mom dying. Living. Alone. "I guess. But everyone's like that, right?"

Maeda-san scratched down some more notes before sighing. "That won't be happening, Amada."

Ken deflated into his chair. "What? Why?"

"Because you're nowhere near ready," Maeda-san explained. "That's clear from you saying what was on your mind. You're not handling the past at all – you're not even coping at this point. You're in no condition to fight, and I won't send an unprepared child into SEES like this. That's not in your best interests, and it's not safe for the others."

He wasn't a kid. Kids didn't lose their parents like that. They didn't fight monsters in the middle of the night. "I'm fine," Ken insisted. "I'll be fine if I can get my Persona."

"What's your Persona's name?" Maeda-san inquired.

"It's Nem–" Another jolt, too obvious to hide. "Umm, you know what it is."

"Tell me anyway."

"I... why?"

Maeda-san tapped on his notepad, seeming to be deep in thought. "As I understand it, Personas aren't just animate parts of your mind. They have an attitude and a will of their own. If you can't summon Nemesis, if you can't even say its name, then there's something that you need to fix before you can go anywhere. That you can't tells me that you haven't handled what has happened, thus you can't fight. You're not ready to go back."

Ken deflated even more, annoyed that he'd been set up. "You know about Personas?"

"The Group wouldn't have let me talk to you if I didn't," Maeda-san pointed out. "Right now you're ruminating, which means you're stuck in the past and you can't move beyond it. I didn't ask how your mother died, but that's what you talked about. I asked about SEES, but you talked about Shinjiro-san and Sakaki. Everything you've gone through is weighing you down, and you haven't dealt with any of it. With your mind like this, I won't recommend that you go back to SEES."

"But... what am I supposed to do? Can't you fix me?"

"I'll absolutely try my best to help you. But that's all I can do: try to help. You're a big part of this equation, and you have to come to terms with what happened before anything can change." Maeda-san turned toward the door as someone knocked. "Our session is over. Abe-san had something he wanted to talk to you about."

Ken shrank at the name. Abe-san came across as nice, but every time Ken failed, it felt like he was wasting the man's time. "If... if we have to."

Maeda-san welcomed Abe-san in before going back to his desk. The test operator, smelling of cigarettes, approached like business as usual and sat in one of the empty chairs.

"H-hi, Abe-san," Ken tried

"Hello Amada. Maeda-san's talked to you, right?"

"Yes sir. Did he talk to you?"

"I've seen your records up to now. If things had changed, he would have informed me, but it looks like they haven't."

The sounded final. Final enough that Ken grabbed desperately for a thread. "Um... I'm feeling my Persona better now, so I'd like to keep trying the tests."

"Amada," Maeda-san reprimanded gently from his desk. "Don't lie."

"I'm not!"

"You're in no state to be tested seriously," Abe-san told him firmly. "Your results the other day proved that. We've taken a break so we don't push you, but that hasn't helped. You also haven't gotten better in the last hour, and we won't take risks with your wellbeing now."

"But this wasn't a problem before!" Ken insisted. "I was fine and you passed me when I joined SEES the first time, didn't you?"

"We're re-examining your case," Abe-san noted. "And I have some questions for you about that, but those will come later. Here's how this works: your proficiency tests need to go through me first, and I'm not clearing you until you can manifest a Persona properly. The numbers say you're getting worse instead of better, so saying you're getting closer isn't going to change things. Maeda says you're not fit to fight right now. I agree with him. Until you work out your mental problems, you're grounded."

Ken wanted to leave. He'd take being alone in his room over the sense that he was truly broken and useless, but he was afraid that Abe-san would kick him out for good if he left now. "So... what happens now?"

Abe-san shrugged. "That's up to you. I've apprised Mitsuru-san and Kirijo-san of your situation. We can offer you the therapy to help you get back on your feet and see how well you do. If you recover, maybe you'll have a place with SEES. If you don't, then we go through other channels until we get an answer. We're keeping your family situation in mind as we consider where you end up, and we're going to do things properly this time." Abe-san let out a breath. "I've also been instructed to make you an offer. Do you want to leave SEES and your Persona and the Dark Hour behind?"

Ken wasn't sure he heard the man right. What he'd said didn't seem possible. "What? I'm... not sure I understand."

"It's a simple question: do you want to go back to being a normal person?"

Author's Note: Dun dun duuuun! Evil cliffhanger is evil, but which part did you like the most? Let me know in a review, and I'll see you in the next chapter!