Author's Notes: You can't rush perfection, and that's what this chapter is. This whole story is perfect, naturally, but this chapter in particular.
thirdegree101: That would indeed be a pretty sappy scene, wouldn't it? I'd love to write it, but will I be able to? We'll have to see. Thanks for the review.
B1ackAshes: Thanks for the review! It was fun to take the cliché (and it is a cliché at this point, hot springs and someone walking in on someone else) and do something different with it. That it resulted in some sap between Minato and Mitsuru, that was a bonus. You're interested in Ryoji, eh? Good, good, because that'll be a blast when we get there. Enjoy the chapter.
Seika41: A fair point, I must have missed that. Thanks for the tip.
emoprotagonist: You do raise a good point: what would a fuming, jealous Mitsuru look like? Possessive yet restrained by the rules of society that discourage duels over her man and using a Persona against normal people. That's a nice thought. And it's been a long time coming, the hot spring scene, and I was looking forward to subverting the usual tired old trope into something, well, better. I'm glad you liked Ryoji's scene, it was fun to write, and... well, how much of it will come together with the story? We'll see. Thanks for the review, and enjoy!
Special thanks to Firion on this chapter. I know I say that every time, but it's especially true on this one. That said, fair warning: this chapter gets dark. If you're squeamish, give it a pass.
For those you who're still here, enjoy.
Chapter 22 - Fendente
The rest of the Kyoto trip passed in a flash. Minato had avoided the more embarrassing feats of his classmates – some of whom went red whenever someone mentioned karaoke or dancers at the bar – and was enjoying the trip to the temple on their last day. The girls had spent the morning shopping, Yukari dragging Mitsuru off in a flurry of feminine enthusiasm and Fuuka following with laughter, looking archly at Minato but not saying anything. That was fine – he didn't need anyone asking about where he disappeared to when the girls were in the hot springs, or why Mitsuru was in such high spirits this morning.
He'd never be able to go into a hot spring without remembering how she looked, of course, and that was assuming she wasn't there with him when he did. The same applied to staying at an old-style inn. She'd probably planned it that way, and even if she hadn't, she probably wouldn't object to leaving such an indelible mark on him.
He wasn't certain what effect his conversation with Mochizuki had – Minato was still wondering if he'd dreamed the whole thing – but the errant flirt had left him alone all day. Whenever they crossed paths, it was by genuine accident, and Mochizuki seemed to be thinking about something so hard he was actually missing opportunities to hit on the girls. That wasn't to say that Mochizuki had given up being annoying, of course – he'd turned contemplative, not undergone brain surgery – but it was a marked difference from how the trip had started. The only thing Minato could think would have caused a change like that would have been their conversation the night before, but he couldn't think of anything he'd said that would be so impactful as to inspire change. Either way, he wasn't going to say anything. As it was, Minato was with Ken, Koro, Akihiko-senpai and Junpei, who was red-eyed and talking a mile a minute about the antics of their peers.
By the time the class was heading toward the Chion-in Temple, the last big site on the trip, the girls had caught up to them, shopping bags in hand (which they promptly handed to the guys to carry). Minato took Mitsuru's purchases – thankfully few in number and small in size – and stepped in next to her while Junpei and Yukari bickered over why he should carry everything she bought. A fitting question; she'd bought a lot.
"Did you have fun?" he asked his girlfriend.
"I did. I'm not used to shopping like Take– Yukari does. She finds the best stuff at good prices, and I don't know how she does it."
"Experience and practice, probably." Minato was in a relationship, and thus didn't look at other girls beyond impersonal observations and polite communication, but Yukari put work into making sure she looked good. Whether it was because she spent her nights getting spattered with Shadow blood and making her money off their loot from Tartarus, or because shopping was therapy, or for some other reason, she made an effort to be attractive. Other girls sniped at her for that, considering Yukari was still single and didn't do anything with the male attention her looks got her, and that only seemed to reinforce Yukari's good looks. When Minato learned about those girls, he imagined that Yukari focused on her appearance partly to spite them, and he'd stopped complaining about her shopping expeditions ever since.
"It's a good skill," Mitsuru continued. "She even helped Fuuka get some computer parts at a discount."
"So that's what she bought. I had to wonder. It sounds like you're getting comfortable with them, calling them by name."
Mitsuru sighed. "It's taking a while. Yukari started keeping a tally and told me I owed her lunch every third time I slipped up."
"That's good incentive, and it seems like you're doing well."
"Not really; I've bought her four lunches so far."
Minato laughed. It was amazing how Mitsuru was so mature and in-control with school and work, but her blind spots to the simplest things made her girlish and almost shy. She would probably blush if he said it, but those moments made her undeniably cute. Of course that meant he had to say it, and she did indeed turn red.
They came to the entrance to the temple complex, perfectly maintained and framed by the pink and green leaves of the trees on each side. The class stopped and stared at first as the guide mentioned which movies had been shot on the staircase, which actors played in which roles, and the students immediately began to line up for photos, whether the teachers allowed them or not. SEES went through the massive gates and up the steps, taking their time to see it all from each angle. Koro seemed right at home, frolicking with people and playing with the children, but always staying close to Ken. The students marveled at him and lined up to take pictures with him, and the groundskeepers smiled in acceptance and recognition. Even if this wasn't his shrine, it was clear to everyone that Koro belonged here.
When they came to the top, they stopped to admire the view. The grand expanse of the grounds, the torii and offering boxes and charms turning in the wind, the smaller temples and the ancient graveyard further up, it was like the shrine back in Tatsumi Port Island, but on a scale none of them had seen before. They paired off and saw everything they could, and it was two hours later when Akihiko-senpai texted them and gathered them at the main temple. "It wouldn't be a trip to Kyoto without a picture," he commented. He called to one of the third-year students – a girl wearing the armband of the photography club – and gestured to the others. It took a minute to find the right angle, and despite the crowds and enthusiasm around them, people stayed out of the way, not wanting to disrupt a picture Sanada Akihiko and Kirijo Mitsuru were part of.
Ken stood up straight behind Koro, who turned for the camera by himself with a canine grin that somehow looked dignified. Fuuka chuckled and Yukari rolled her eyes when Junpei struck a pose between them. Akihiko-senpai stood off-from-centre, and Mitsuru was close enough to Minato to make it clear to anyone who saw them who she was with. Minato slid his arm around her waist and tugged her close, ignoring some of the glares coming from the students around them.
The photography student snapped her pictures, taking different angles and shuffling them around until she was satisfied. Some were just of the girls, some of the guys, and Mitsuru made a request for some shots of just her and her beau. Minato played it up a little and looked adoringly at her in a few of them, sparking off a blush in his girl and laughter and cheers from the others. Minato could hear the nails being driven into his coffin with the camera shutter – a lot of guys and no few girls were unhappy that their Mitsuru-senpai wasn't available anymore – but he wasn't going to pass up the opportunity for the memories. After everything that had happened in the past few weeks, it felt like things were coming back to the new normal for the group. Minato chuckled ruefully.
"What is it?" Mitsuru asked.
He told her his thoughts. "It's been a blast, and I'd love to come back, but it seems... naive, I guess. Escapist. Tartarus, the Shadows, Strega, everything back home's waiting for us, and it's not like they'll just up and go away."
"That just means we'll face it when it comes."
Minato squared his shoulders and smiled. "Yeah. Whatever comes, we'll handle it."
No matter how bad it got.
Doctors scurrying around, taking tests and looking at charts. Nurses handling her to maintain a standard of health when she'd stopped doing it herself. Security outside the door that had the nameplate "Yoshino, Chidori", ready to act even after she'd been here for months. Cleaning staff keeping everything spotless, antiseptic, free of bacteria. Killing the smallest forms of life and believing it was for the better.
Once, when she first came here, she'd imagine she could hear the screams of the microbes as the bleach hit the floor and walls. She'd torture the custodians by playing hysteria, crying and demanding why they had to destroy such a promising form of life. She'd weep as the floors were mopped and the windows cleaned, and they would think she was crazy. During her check-ups, she would ask nurses if the pregnant women in the maternity ward had decided to end their child's life early on the end of a suction tube, or if they'd chosen to give birth and subject the little bundle of joy to a long, torturous existence of slow decay and dreams that would give way to disappointment and a cruel, lingering end to their existence, probably only after having offspring and starting the cycle over. To the doctors, she simply asked how many people had died in their care, then suggested numbers when they didn't answer.
The custodians avoided her after that, or wore headphones when in her room. The nurses stopped talking to her about getting better. One even overlooked the scissors she'd stolen, and the noise and mess when the sheets were turned red an hour later, now that had been fun.
Fun. What had that felt like? It seemed like such a quaint concept now. Back when she'd been admitted, she'd done anything to keep her mind distracted from him – Arisato – and that thing he had inside him. She'd been terrified of him, she remembered, of that annihilator of all existence, the murky shadow that loathed all who lived. She'd toy with that idiot who kept coming by to visit her, she'd torment the staff when she could get away with it, and she'd think of new avenues of self-mutilation just to keep things interesting.
She knew differently now, oh how she knew differently. Back then she'd thought that thing was all she had to fear, that life had run out of things that could hurt her. She'd been so blasé about her life because, without real risk, where was the value? If she could feel anything now, she'd desperately hit her past self for being so lacking in imagination. Hit herself with a refrigerator from seven floors up, or fall in front of a moving truck going highway speed, or maybe tie steaks around herself and jump into a shark tank. It would be fine – Medea would heal her – and her past self might have realized there were things out there that were much, much worse.
When the full moon came and went, she'd felt the Shadow die. It had shocked her; from this far away, that shouldn't have happened. But then the next night she felt that thing erupt into the world in all its furious, killing glory, and she knew fear. Not the trembling that plagued her in the Kirijo holding cells when she'd been a child, not the pain of her foster homes, not the shaking hands that the Shadows once inspired in her. No, that thing awakened in her a primordial sense of utter, persistent terror. It was the very antithesis to life, harboured in someone who swore that he would stop the Shadows and save people. If she'd had the energy to laugh, the stability of mind to appreciate the irony, she might have. If things had stopped there, she might have just wanted to die.
But they hadn't stopped there, because when that thing revealed itself, it was just a precursor for what she felt next: the slow, agonizing approach of something infinitely worse. The end of everything, the darkness that snuffed out all existence, as old as the void itself. No anger or hatred from this one, no rage against life or even joy at the chance to end it. No, this newcomer ended life because that was what it did. It didn't have to think about it, or work at it, or desire to do it. It was, and therefore it simply did.
Chidori didn't know what being could have such power, and she couldn't imagine what was drawing it closer or how it was connected to the Shadows and everything that was going on. But Medea helpfully provided a name for the entity, so now Chidori knew what was twisting her existence into a living nightmare: Nyx.
Every day it got a little closer, a little larger in the night sky. A little more real from the catastrophic imaginings the mind fabricated about such a being. It was likely, she'd surmised when she spared the energy to do so, that the mortal mind couldn't comprehend what Nyx looked like. Human senses, meagre and crude, wouldn't be able to process such a thing in its entirety, so Nyx would probably seem like something different to every person who saw it, a nightmare in the flesh that stripped away one's sanity before it could be fully comprehended. Right now, she suspected that sensitives and the deranged could feel it and were going different flavours of crazy. Normal people wouldn't notice much difference outside of poor rest or persistent bad dreams, but they would get worse as the day approached, when Nyx wiped all life off the face of the planet.
All life except her. She would be the last, and unable to die but subjected to every torment Nyx could conjure up. Melting skin and shattered bones; slow, crushing suffocation; fire; ice; being buried alive; maybe, just maybe, being left alone with the howls of the dead on the wind, all around her. Eternal night would fall on humanity, but Yoshino Chidori would continue to exist, tethered to life by Medea's healing power. Not out of tortured malice or cruelty, but simply by nature, and that made it so much worse.
The more Chidori appreciated the enormity of what was coming, the more she thought of ways to die, to leave this mortal coil before Nyx arrived. She'd thought of finding where they kept the heavy drugs and injecting a massive overdose. She'd thought of hanging herself on her bed sheets, of cutting her neck with glass if she could break the window, of snapping her neck so severely she couldn't be healed, of anything. But the more she thought along those lines, the more Medea provided her with assurances that she would be healed, that after so long away from combat she would be fixed up quicker than ever. She'd begged her Persona to kill her, to stop the healing for just a minute so she could escape her fate. Medea didn't seem to understand the desire, instead assuring her all the more that she would survive anything and everything that came at her.
Chidori gave up at that point and sank into despair. She didn't know whether the doctors talked to her or the nurses cleaned her. She didn't know whether time passed or not. Nothing mattered but Nyx and the hell it would bring. If Chidori could have wept over her circumstances, over her past ignorance and cavalier attitude toward her own freedom, she would have soaked her bed in tears. She might have begged to go back to that night when she'd cracked and been taken prisoner, now deprived of the chance to run far away and never learn what she knew now. Instead, she did nothing but lie there, through days and nights and the Dark Hour. Lie there and wait for the end.
It was some nights later – she didn't know how many – when someone came into her room. Perhaps it was a doctor or security guard here to exercise a fetish involving catatonic teenage patients, or some family member of a nurse she'd tormented, here for their revenge. If it had been anything so interesting, she might have found some joy in the futility of it all.
"Good evening, Chi-chan."
But it was no one like that. It was Strega, her old comrades.
"Come on, let's get you out of here." Jin approached the restraints on her bed, looking at them and working out a way to release her.
She hadn't seen her allies since before she'd come here. She hadn't heard about them since before the last Shadow died. And it hadn't occurred to her, not for a moment, to contact them. What difference would it make?
"Why?" she asked, her voice raspy from lack of use.
"What do you mean? We'll get you out of here, then you can get back at these Kirijo bastards for what they've done to you."
"They've done nothing to me. It wouldn't matter if they did."
"What do you mean? Of course it matters."
Jin continued talking, but Chidori tuned him out, looking at Takaya. Had he always looked like this? He was stronger now, ripe with power from Hypnos, alive with purpose, and somehow more than the flesh he walked around in. He resonated with the same power as the thing in Arisato, except that's all there was. No mystery or pretense, no feelings to get in the way. Just cold honesty, deeper than words. He was a servant of Nyx, another death-dealer playing from the same deck, none of the other voices under the surface that made Arisato sound crazy and feel alive. Death pulsed in Takaya with a steady heartbeat, the brightness of his eyes like the glow off a marble gravestone. Did he feel it like she did? Did he know he was serving a thing that would eradicate him as a matter of course? Would it have bothered him if he knew?
Should she tell him? Would it matter?
"I'm not helping you," she told them, cutting Jin off.
"Why is that?" Takaya asked. "What's wrong? What have the Kirijo done to you?"
"Nothing. They can't do anything to me now. No one can."
"If we get you out of here, you'll change your mind," Jin insisted. "We've got better resources, more chances to hit the Kirijo, and someone who knows how they work. He wants the same thing we do. You'll see if you come with us."
Purpose, focus, hatred for an enemy. How pointless. "It's not going to matter. Him, you, SEES, everyone. You're all dead."
"You think the Kirijo will do us in?"
Was Jin always this fixated on the small, insignificant things? Had that been why he'd hit the ceiling of his abilities so easily? He didn't feel much different from before, despite the fresh zeal in his eyes. Moros was no different, so Jin had come this far but had learned nothing, had developed not at all. "They're irrelevant," she told them. "What's coming, it will kill everyone. Everything, including you. Except me. Your benefactor can't stop that. Neither of you can stop it."
"Suppose we don't try to stop it," Takaya suggested.
"It will come whether you help or not. And then, what does it matter when everything's dead?"
"We're different," Jin insisted.
"No. You're blind and loyal, two willing pawns. Hypnos and Moros, you've been going in this direction since the beginning, either because you chose it or because it chose you. But it doesn't matter. Once Nyx comes, you'll be dead like everyone else."
"After everything we've been through, we got you this far... Are you betraying us?"
Chidori sighed, then bothered herself enough to wave them off. "If that's how narrow your mind is, go away. Talking's a waste of time, but doubly so if you can't see what's happening right in front of you. Even pawns would be able to see the game being played, but you're not even that."
"What do you want, Chi-chan?" Takaya's voice was soft, maybe because he understood.
A flicker of hope fired in her. The chance, the faint opportunity, appeared like a thread over a chasm. "Give me the suppressants, as many as you have, and give me your gun. Help me suppress Medea so I can die, or kill me yourself. Make it painless, for old time's sake."
"No way!" Jin snapped. "We came here to get you out; why would you want to die?!"
"Because I'll survive when Nyx comes, and I won't be able to die. You're helping it get here, so you won't save me or be able to spare me. If we've ever been friends, then kill me now."
They were silent, first in possible shock, then long enough to make their answer clear.
"If you can't do that, then we're done. No point in talking to someone who won't listen, same as there's no point in anything you're doing now. You can't outrun Nyx, you won't fight it, and your spat with SEES won't change anything, no matter who's helping you now." She narrowed her eyes. "Or, if they know the Kirijo Group that well, whoever has lied to you and is pulling your strings, watching you dance like good little puppets."
"Chidori–"
"Get out. I won't say it again."
Jin went pale, fist clenched and trembling. Takaya watched her, then took a bag that smelled of blade oil and rattled of chains and hid it under her bed.
"Goodbye, Chi-chan." They left, Takaya dragging Jin behind him.
Chidori turned away from them, and the night drifted by without interruption. But she knew her axes and her Evoker were there, ready to use if she wanted, and that changed things.
The next day passed quietly. The nurses did what they always did, the custodians rushed through her room like usual, and soon enough it was night again. The Dark Hour approached. Through the time she pretended to be asleep or catatonic, she was distracted from Nyx's approach by the knowledge of her weapons being so close. The thought of escape beckoned, the chance to do something instead of waiting to die.
Would it matter if she took it? Dying here in the hospital or dying out in the streets, both were futile if Medea put her back together afterward. The Shadows wouldn't be any better at finishing her off, and she doubted Nyx would take an early request even if Chidori could reach out and chat.
But there was one option, one she hadn't thought of until now. Jin and Takaya wouldn't kill her, but there was one more death-dealer out there. One who wouldn't be as sentimental, who wouldn't hold back if she gave him the right incentive. It could work. No, it would work. She knew Arisato was close to the Kirijo woman, and Chidori knew what would set her off.
It made sense. It was simple to execute. It would work. Mind made up, Chidori pulled Medea from the hazy depths of her soul and snapped the restraints, destroying the monitoring equipment after it blared out twice. Chidori got out of bed, cuffs still on, and ran Medea's magic through her muscles, atrophied from long disuse. The pain from her Persona's feedback was familiar and comforting, and any damage she incurred from using Medea like this was healed almost immediately. But the pain, oh how she felt it. It was like being alive again. Chidori pushed Medea harder and left the Evoker behind. She stretched and pulled her axes out of the bag. Oiled and sharpened to a surgical edge. She smiled, but then her eye caught on the last thing in Takaya's bag: her dress.
Chidori looked at it, held it up. So many months spent wearing rags when she was younger, she'd been glad to have gotten this dress, made just for her. No one else had one like it, and no other girl looked like she did back then. The people who complimented her appearance, the boys who hit on her, even the animals she spent time with, there were so many memories in it. All those memories, coupled with the times she'd washed blood out of it, this was her badge of honour, her membership in Strega.
She wiped the edges of her axes with the dress. Then she tossed it to the ground and left the room, weapons in hand, chains floating around her as power crackled in the air.
Had this been Takaya's aim? Did he want her to break out and wreak havoc, as some part of his larger plot? Was there someone he wanted her to kill, someone who would be caught in the crossfire? Was he using her as a distraction against SEES, knowing she couldn't die?
Who cares.
The two guards at her door went down first. Even alert from the sound of her monitors going off, they weren't fast enough. She slashed and they fell and screamed, sprayed blood on her, and they stopped screaming when she swung again. The spraying took a bit longer to stop, but then the hallway alarms went off, red lights mixing with white to give everyone a good look at who had gotten out of her room. She turned the corner and faced three more guards, one who commanded her to stop, lie down, and drop her weapons. One axe flew out and severed a neck, but the other two guards opened fire. Medea blocked some of them, half-manifested around her, but other bullets tore into Chidori, bringing her to her knees.
Ah, now this was pain. She'd forgotten how intense it could be. Two of the bullets had gone right through, ripping muscle and intestines that began to stitch together almost immediately. One bullet had fragmented after breaking one of her ribs and shredding a lung, but the bones pulled together and mended, the tissue was repaired, and the lead shards – normally needing surgery to extract, and thus a concern in her past life – were wrapped in tissue to harmlessly float in her body, or to be extracted as a tumor later.
The guards lowered their guns, thinking they'd killed her. She glanced up and threw her axes, and they died with their guts on the ground. She kept walking past them, then cut at their necks to make sure they were dead. She looked for the radio room where the Kirijo woman talked to her people. Some of the night staff got careless and tried to run from her, and they painted the sterile walls red, spatters and spurts and bloody handprints that lingered after the pleas and screams died. Some of the staff were smart enough not to catch her attention in the first place, escaping down stairwells or cramming into the elevator. She didn't bother with them.
Ah, there it was: the radio room.
She blew the door open, interrupting a man who was frantically speaking into the receiver, the video screen live. He looked at her in naked horror. Someone was shouting at him on the line.
"Is that Kirijo Mitsuru?" Chidori asked.
The man nodded, and the woman in question answered over the speakers in the room, "Yes, it is. I will listen to your demands, but don't attack any more of my–"
Chidori chopped off the man's hand, and his screams cut the woman off. Blood got all over the video screen, even more when Chidori sank an axe into his neck to shut him up, carotid spray hitting the walls and ceiling.
Chidori looked into the camera, seeing what looked like a control room on the screen. Probably some hi-tech place in that dorm they all lived in. "He was too loud," she explained.
Kirijo's grating teeth rattled the speakers, her eyes so full of anger that Chidori could feel it from here. "You... filth..."
Chidori wiped her axe blade on her smock, staring at the screen. "I'm sure I have your attention now. It's almost time for the Dark Hour. I'm going to Tartarus. If you want to stop me, or get revenge for everyone I've killed, come find me there. Bring Arisato with you."
Kirijo's eyes narrowed. "If I promise to do that, will you stop killing people?"
"I'll kill who I want. You'll have to stop me if you want to save them." Chidori smirked. "But I doubt you could do it. I don't die, you see. So bring Arisato and that killer Persona of his. The sooner the better, if you want to save anyone."
Chidori shattered the radio with a blow from Medea and left the room, encountering two doctors who looked like they were running to the emergency exit located right around the corner.
What bad luck.
The first one tried to back away, hands out and voice calm. He choked and gurgled when her axe crunched into his chest, and the second one scrambled back to the wall. She looked at him, her other axe gleaming .
"Please," he whimpered, "I have a family, a wife, a baby."
"Doesn't matter," Chidori intoned, resting the blade on his neck. "Did this guy have a family too?"
The doctor nodded, skin chalky, eyes frantic.
"Then that's not something that will stop me from killing you, is it?" She drew her blade back, prepared to cut–
Then she stopped. For some reason, that detail made her think of that idiot Iori. All the crap he'd said about protecting people came to mind, helping them with his Persona, being more than her because of it. Using his powers for good, like some hero in an afternoon TV show. Protecting the weak, making sure parents got home at night to see their kids, risking himself for people who would never know him, never pay him back or even understand how he'd saved them. How pathetic.
But was it? Was there something special in helping people? Some intrinsic reward for not leaving them to die?
"You love your family?" Chidori asked.
The doctor stared at her, then nodded jerkily.
She pulled the axe back, pointed at the exit. "Then go see them. I won't kill you."
He hesitated, clearly not believing her. But she stood and watched, waited as he got up unsteadily, as he circled around her, as he ran for the door.
There. She'd chosen not to kill. She'd bereaved one family and spared another.
And it didn't feel any different. It felt the same as killing.
It felt like nothing.
The lights flickered out and the Dark Hour began. The tower of light glowed through the windows, beckoning to her. It was familiar and welcoming, yet even more suffocating from the gravity of Nyx.
Only for a little while longer. With that, she headed for Tartarus.
Junpei clenched his teeth as they ran into Tartarus. Mitsuru-senpai had briefed them after waking them all up, apprising them of the situation as they scrambled into their armour. He couldn't believe Yoshino would do something this crazy, nihilistic or not. But then again, if anyone could break out of a guarded hospital, could kill that many people, and expect to get away with it, it would be her.
Mitsuru-senpai gave them their orders in a cold, clipped voice, and they stepped into the teleporter on the first floor.
Then everything went sideways. Rather than a blink and a step onto the desired floor, it felt like he'd been thrown into a washing machine on the spin cycle. He'd felt this before, the whirling riptides of the Dark Hour flinging him around as he passed through the different floors and tossing him where they wanted. He clutched his sword and Evoker, trying to find the ground under his feet while he waited for the ride to end and felt like he was going to part company with his skin. When the speed and vertigo red lined, he suddenly stopped, on a familiar floor of the tower. He was alone and certain the others had been scattered as well. He tried calling for Fuuka, but got nothing. Once he got his roiling stomach under control, he stared looking for a safe place to hunker down.
He checked his corners and headed out. He knew the steps to this floor, would probably never forget them: this was where he'd awoken after their fight with the last Shadow. This was where Ikutsuki turned traitor and where Thanatos came out. He still had nightmares of that thing manifesting, and it was with reluctant steps that he made his way to the familiar outdoor ledge of Tartarus. He'd stay here until he could contact Fuuka or until the others found him.
When he got there, what he saw stopped him cold.
It was like something out of a horror movie. Not the cheap slasher flicks that made Fuuka run for the door, but the really screwy ones that kept you up for days. Yoshino was dressed in a smock from the hospital, but it was covered in blood. Long smears and curved spurts, redder than her hair. Her calves and feet, her hands and face, all spattered crimson. There were holes and tears in the smock's torso, naked, unmarred flesh beneath. Junpei could catch glimpses of stomach and boob underneath, but there was nothing remotely erotic about the sight. All it did was add to the unnerving, inhuman feel to the scene.
Worst of all was her eyes. She'd always had that cold look to her, and even when she'd cut herself to unsettle him they had a morbid gleam of humour. Now there was nothing at all, like eyes stuck in a mannequin, and it made him break out in a cold sweat. This was how it felt to face the Shadows during the full moon, how facing Takaya had been. The alien distortion that ran through him when his eyes told him what he was seeing was human, but his brain understood it wasn't.
Someone lodged firmly in the uncanny, a monster in human skin.
"What are you doing here?" she asked, her voice monotone. The usual venom was missing, and it barely sounded like her.
He tried to speak, tried to find his anger, but his words kept slipping away.
She gestured with her axes. "I told Kirijo that I wanted Arisato to come after me. Did she send you instead? If that's the case, maybe I should have killed more of her people."
Junpei grit his teeth. His anger flared up just fine now. "We all came as soon as we got your little greeting video. The others'll be here in a minute. I've gotta say, you picked a hell of a spot to stop running."
His provocation drifted by her, but she gestured, telling him to elaborate.
"This is where Senpai's dad died," Junpei explained. "Where that asshole Ikutsuki showed his colours, and where Minato brought Thanatos out and fought Aigis. Seems like an odd coincidence that you'd come here if you're provoking him."
She looked around, then at the ground, then back up at him. "I didn't know that. But it's fitting. If he brought that thing out here once, he can do it again. The associative memories will help him, too."
"Have you seen Thanatos? No matter how good you heal, it'll kill you."
"I know; that's the point."
"Wh... what? You want to die?"
"You're all going to die anyway. Even an idiot like you should be able to feel it, how the Dark Hour has shifted. The Shadows are dead, and now Nyx is coming. Nothing's going to stop it from getting here, and when it does, everyone dies."
Nyx. The thing that was riling up the Shadows, that had been the cause of Fuuka's nightmares since their fight on the bridge. Junpei trembled as the name ran over him, clenching his fist on his sword hilt to stop from shaking.
"Everyone except me," Yoshino concluded.
"So you do want to die instead. You killed innocent people and now you're running, using Minato as an easy way out?"
A flicker of anger lit her eyes, but even that look alien, and the distorted sense of the emotion was more frightening. "Easy? You'd take an alternative too if you could live through anything, if you'd be tortured for eternity while everything else is destroyed. You'll be lucky if you even see Nyx arrive before it kills you. But not me. I'll be stuck there, forever, without a way to die."
Junpei absorbed the words, then snorted. "Coward. If you're under the gun from this thing, why not fight it? We've been fighting the Shadows the whole time and we've never lost. That proves something can be done. But you're giving up on living and saddling us up with your bullshit before checking out? All because you're afraid of the dark? Am I supposed to feel sorry for you?"
Yoshino spun her axes. "You wouldn't get it."
"Try me. Lots of people have a hard time at life and keep going. They fight for things to get better, they screw up and learn from it even when it's the hardest thing in the world. You think you're better than them, those normal people in the coffins down there? At least they haven't given up on living. At least they're still trying, even just a little."
"All they're doing is delaying the inevitable. They're horses with blinders on, ignorant to what's coming. Do you think that they'd be so noble, so admirable, if they saw what we see? If they've gone through what we have? Would they see you as a hero, you who trail behind Kirijo and Arisato and have to fight when no one can see you? They'd turn on you, crush you, while you tried to save them."
"Some might. A lot wouldn't. There're good people out there who would do the right thing even if they knew it wouldn't end well. And you have no idea because you'd rather run away than grow a pair and try living."
"Living or dying is academic at this point. Nyx is coming, and that means it's the end of everything, so nothing has any meaning outside what idiots like you think." She smirked, a hollow gesture that showed the emptiness inside. "If it's all going to end, then it's all arbitrary, and if it's arbitrary, then what difference does it make what I do or choose?"
The pieces clicked for Junpei, and the picture came into real-life focus. This wasn't the girl he'd chatted up at the fountain. He wasn't sure of that person existed before and was gone now, or if he'd just wanted her to be there so he'd have someone to show off to. But this person, this thing in human form, was beyond his reach. Everything he valued in life had no meaning to her. There was no chance of talking to her about the future because she didn't have one anymore, and without a future, how could someone value the present?
"But you do raise the point of the importance of life," she continued, thumbing her blades. "I hadn't thought about it before, so insignificant you are, but your life has value to me as bait, doesn't it?" She glowed, and that bestial Persona formed around her. "If I kill you, painfully and slowly and leave you in pieces, then Arisato will get angry, won't he? He'd kill me for sure then."
An axe flashed out, and Junpei had to spin to get out of the way. He was off-centre when she attacked with the other axe, playing for room and focusing Hermes. His flames and blades hammered into Medea, but any wounds he inflicted were healed before the next one even landed. He dove and blew the floor up, creating a smoke screen and sending debris flying at her, trying to get a better angle. Her axes flew out again, narrowly missing where he'd been, but then attacking further away.
He glimpsed her through the smoke, side exposed. He grit his teeth, threw his weight behind Hermes and slammed his heel into the ground. A vacuum of blades ripped from his outstretched hand, twisting in a razor-sharp cyclone.
Medea crouched to protect Yoshino, but it wasn't enough. She flinched and blood sprayed across the ground, her startled cry galvanizing him for another attack.
He stopped cold when her eyes met his. Her left arm was almost completely severed below the elbow, holding on by tattered flesh, but the blood stopped gushing from the wound. It stopped in mid-air, hung like a twisting glob of fluid in mid-air for a second, then it rushed back into her arm. She pushed her forearm back into the stump and flexed her left hand. The wound had healed right before his eyes, a severed limb restored almost perfectly, and she flipped her axe up like nothing had happened.
His gawking nearly cost him his head. The blade and spike of her axe drove into his chest, cutting into his shoulder, and only his armour and trained reflexes stopped the wound from being worse. He jumped over the follow-up cut that would have sliced his legs off and began to run and tumble, firing off his Evoker and hitting her with whatever he could.
His blows were connecting, but they weren't enough. And the others weren't here yet.
It wasn't good enough. He was coming up short.
He swung his sword and tangled her axe and chains with it, almost losing balance from the momentum. She pulled with the force of her Persona and he sent Hermes's blades down, shattering the chain and sending the links scattering across the ground.
She just smirked. The chains began to reform with muscle and sinew, and she yanked her axe back. Now she was even more nimble, Medea helping send the weapons around like hooked fingers.
Junpei spun away, taking a cut across the back. Only his armour saved his life. He tumbled and tried to feint, but a blade swooped in and cut into his chest, cracking ribs underneath. He was cornered. She approached slowly, looking like she wanted him to try something just so she could take him apart.
This was the end of the line. He should be scared right now, but all he felt was anger. "Not good enough." Those had been her words. Life was pointless if it ended, so there was no point in fighting for something better. It was easier to never try if there was a chance to fail. And even success held no value because eventually the person would die, or fail, or succeed elsewhere and render the first success pointless.
Every fight he'd won, every step he'd taken and every scar to show for his victories, about to be snuffed out because of this death-loving bitch. She'd skin him alive, slowly, and then crush his skull while singing to him for pissing her off. All his victories, his triumphs with the others, gone like they never happened. Better that he'd never tried than get this far and fail.
Those words sounded familiar. Not in his voice, not in Yoshino's, but in his old man's. Not out of determination to turn a bad situation good, but in defeat worn around the neck like a boat anchor. A defeat that would be used as an excuse to never try again, to never even hope for success.
Give up. Quit while you're ahead. You can only fail once, and then you're done.
His teeth grit so hard his vision doubled. His skin heated so hot it cooked the sweat off his body.
Fuck that.
He ignored the memories of his broken family, of all the hurtful words that could never be taken back. He stood and rose above the nagging doubts, the insecurities he'd felt on the team since the day he joined, and he threw himself deeper, holding nothing back.
Junpei saw Kenji, who had crashed in the worst way when he'd had his heart broken. Kenji who used rock bottom as a foundation to stand and laugh again, who had grown even after losing more than he thought he ever had.
Junpei remembered Shinjiro-senpai, who'd borne the weight of his mistakes and faced his death like a man. His mistakes had defined his life after that night, but he hadn't let that stop him from doing what was right.
Junpei heard Yuka-tan, who'd been bearing her family's burden for years, who had grown warped and complicated and downright annoying, but still helped the very people she was investigating. Rather than let her past define her, she'd reached out and been there for the team.
And most of all, there was Minato, their infuriating leader who was the best at everything, the strongest without trying, the goal post whom Junpei had been chasing after since he moved to the dorm. With everything going on, the very ground falling out from under him, that guy didn't stop. He'd screwed up perhaps the most often out of any of them, being twisted around every time they fought a new Shadow, thrown into the middle of a fight he didn't ask for. But he fought and bled and kept going until he won and got the girl in the end.
Junpei grinned. "I won't let you get ahead of me," he said, staring at Yoshino and Medea.
Hermes wasn't enough by itself. Neither had been Polydeuces for Akihiko-senpai or Nemesis for Ken.
So become something stronger.
The axes whipped forward, too fast for him to deflect and he had no room left to dodge.
He didn't see the threat, didn't perceive the imminent end of his life. All Iori Junpei imagined was Minato just on the other side of the night. He'd need help to fight Nyx. He'd need friends to keep him going. And he'd need good competition so he had to keep up his A-game.
Junpei raised his Evoker and pulled the trigger, blowing the darkness apart in a maelstrom of fire and blades. Hermes melted into the forge of its master's will, formed anew into something that would suffice for this fight and the ones to come.
The name came to Junpei's lips, naturally like he always knew what awaited him just beneath the surface:
"Trismegistus."
The Persona formed, molten and dripping steel that turned into swords. The heat should have been stifling, but it passed Junpei by like a breeze at the beach. Yoshino's axes were shattered, she and Medea blown back by the awakening of this new contender. Medea looked unsteady. Yoshino looked hopeful.
Junpei brought up his sword in a salute, knowing this was the last time he'd ever see her. Then he fired and set his Persona loose.
Where Hermes hadn't been able to attack fast enough to keep up with Medea's healing, Trismegistus had no such problem. The swords it flung cut into Medea's limbs, but rather than vanishing, they melted into the wounds and stopped them from mending. Medea howled in pain, and Yoshino stepped back. Trismegistus sent a flurry of blades into Medea, each one slowing the Persona down more, pinning it in place.
Finally, the bestial Persona cracked and vanished with a forlorn cry, reaching for Yoshino and falling short.
Then Yoshino turned, and Trismegistus fired a spike straight at her. No defence was raised, and she didn't even try to move. It cut into her chest at a sharp downward angle and staked her to the ground. Her axes fell from nerveless fingers, she twitched as her body, so used to healing itself, began to die.
Junpei limped over as Trismegistus flashed and vanished, the spike disappearing with it. Yoshino fell to the ground, her hands over her wound– no, dug into it like she wanted to make sure it stayed open. He stood above her, watching as her eyes shifted from heartless to somehow happy. "This was what you wanted, right?"
"I figured you'd die before you'd have that kind of strength. And now to get it just as everything's going to end, it's kind of funny. So much power given to an idiot like you, it's like casting pearls before swine."
"Go to hell. This is what you could have had if you'd put some effort into your life like the rest of us, instead of killing innocent people or running away."
She laughed, coughing blood. "Doesn't matter. Nyx would still be coming, it will kill everything when it gets here, and everything would have happened no matter what. With Strega, with you, or if I'd run to the ends of the earth, death is coming for all of us. For me it came a bit sooner, that's all."
"I'm sorry I went too far, in that case. It would be nice if you'd survived because we won, so maybe you'd see all your nihilistic bullshit was for nothing. Where would that put you and your stupid ideas then?"
Her bloody smile, lips red and teeth spattered, widened as she gestured him closer.
He cocked an eyebrow and checked where her weapons were before he stepped next to her.
She reached out with a dripping hand and grabbed his foot, and a jolt ran through him. Something foreign slipped into him and Trismegistus railed against it, burning hot and sending Junpei's heart tripping. In a moment it had passed, but his ribs ached and his wounds itched. He realized that his wounds were healing right then and there. "What the hell was that?"
"She was coming back," Yoshino wheezed. "She'd try to keep me alive, so I gave her to you."
Trismegistus bubbled like molten metal in Junpei's ears, analyzing what it was and determining that some of her regeneration had been passed on. Not so much that Medea had infected him, but it was definitely there.
"You're so sure of yourself," she rasped, "that you'll face Nyx and fight the good fight. Let's see you actually do it. You'll live through everything like I did, you'll see everything you love burn to the ground, and you'll have no way out. When you're there, in that hell, remember me, won't you?"
Junpei stared at her. She was almost gone. She'd pushed him and made him end the life of another human being, used him as her easy ticket to the grave. There was no pity in him, no sympathy or misplaced puppy love. Only anger and focus - like hell he'd let her have the last word. "The joke's on you," he shot back. "Because I'll keep fighting to protect those normal people you hate so much. I'll fight the Shadows with the others and we'll kill Nyx, then we'll go on living our lives. We'll find our own futures and make the most of life, and the only thing I'll remember about you is that instead of fighting Nyx or helping people not become like you, you decided to give up early. You're an example of what I won't be like, and that's it."
She rattled her last gasping laugh. "So sure and willing to fight. So blind. Keep believing, because you'll fail when it matters most. I almost wish I could see it." She slumped back and left the mortal coil, her body going still.
Junpei stared at her. He'd never seen a dead person before. He knelt and arranged her hands over the wound and closed her eyes – because even if she'd been a monster, he was still human enough to give her that much respect – then stepped back and stared at the moon. The Dark Hour felt turbulent, and as the combat high faded, he felt fear from the approaching being. Nyx. The thing behind the Shadows, the entity sitting where all the roads met. It was easy to imagine running from something like that, throwing everything away and making tracks. But if it could kill everyone, then running would just mean dying tired. And Junpei was done running.
It was minutes later, he didn't know how many, when Akihiko-senpai found him. "Junpei, you okay?" Then the boxer saw Yoshino laying there and approached cautiously.
"Yeah. Is everyone else all right?"
"I don't know about Mitsuru and Takeba. Arisato and Yamagishi are fine. So are Ken and Koromaru, I'm pretty sure."
"Glad to hear it."
"Is she... did you...?"
"She wanted to die. That's why she came here." Junpei straightened his ball cap. "Hey Senpai. If you had the chance to leave all this stuff behind, cut loose with no strings, would you take it?"
"What're you talking about? Where'd that come from?"
"It was something she said."
Akihiko-senpai's expression showed he didn't get it. "Fair enough. No, I wouldn't. Not for any reason. We've come too far."
"I figured you'd say that. Me neither."
The boxer looked about to say something when the wall three floors above them blew out. A metallic hand hammered against the edges, breaking free to the sounds of combat.
"Damn it!" Akihiko-senpai swore. "That's where the girls must be. C'mon!"
Junpei ran back into Tartarus, back into the fight, hot on his senpai's heels.
