Fox was dying. Pinned to the ground by an unimaginable power and wheezing with barely formed breaths, he could all but count the moments before he finally succumbed to his injuries. He'd always been able to find the inherent beauty in everything, before, but the realization that there was nothing artistic in death rings hollow. Art was nothing but a fleeting love next to the allconsuming emotional upheaval that Yaldabaoth's very presence inspired.
There's darkness, then, twin swirls of delicate blue wings and a soft child's voice, a stark dichotomy against the violence that Fox had participated in mere moments ago. There's another person speaking, Joker, perhaps, but Fox can hardly make out their conversation past the incessant roaring in his ears. The cerulean light expands, unyielding in its brilliance.
Yusuke opens his eyes to a familiar canvas. Sunlight streams through an open window into a warm wooden room, illuminating the sweeping amber gradients and delicate black detail work. He's holding a paintbrush dipped in red, the pointed tip mere millimeters away from the surface of the painting. The work in front of him is something he knows well, one that he had toiled on for weeks in order to be declared satisfactory for Madarame's exhibition in May. Instinctually, he completes the brush stroke, highlighting the spindly limb of a tree.
A kindly voice speaks over his shoulder, one that Yusuke hasn't truly heard in months but has echoed in his ears at every showcase all the same. "Yus-kun," his mentor chides, honey sweet as he says the familiar nickname, "while it is commendable that you wish to approach this piece with such ambition, you know that the addition of multiple warm tones causes the painting to lack the creative simplicity that you are attempting to evoke." The "if this isn't perfect, it will be reflected badly upon me, and the consequences will be grave" goes unsaid.
Yusuke's head whips around, breath stopping as he comes face to face with Madarame. Sensei looks back at him with soft, brown eyes. Brown, not ethereal gold, as they had been when they bored into his own just hours ago. Real.
Panicked, Yusuke launches himself backward, his paintbrush streaking a brilliant scarlet line haphazardly across the careful landscape like a bloody wound. He lands on the floor in an ungainly mess and frantically clambers backwards, keeping Sensei fully in his sight. Yaldabaoth must have created realistic illusions in order to tamper with their concentration, another display of sadistic control over his team by separating them to confront their individual nightmares.
If Yusuke was seeing his Sensei in front of him in a perfect snapshot from his life before the fated change of heart, he could barely imagine what the others were going through.
"Yusuke!" Sensei rushes around Yusuke's abandoned seat. He refuses to kneel, instead looming above Yusuke and blocking out the meager light. Madarame clasps a frail hand on Yusuke's shoulder, expression pinched in worry. His thumb brushes gently over an exposed collarbone, a breadcrumb of affection, enough to convince his ward that he's cared for, loved within the walls of the decrepit shack he had called home.
Once, Yusuke might have fallen for it. He knows better than to, now.
He throws off Madarame's hand and brandishes his paintbrush like a pathetic imitation of his katana. "What did you do?" he demands, and the incredibly tangible imitation of Madarame rears back at the ice in his tone. "What have you done with the others?"
"Yusuke," Sensei says patiently, "you're not making any sense." When Yusuke starts shaking his head stubbornly, he adds, "I've noticed that you've been staying up late in order to complete your projects. You haven't been eating, have you?"
There wouldn't have been food in the atelier anyway. There hardly ever was. Right now, Yusuke only needed to escape this petty illusion and find his way back to the others, into the sickening fusion of Shibuya and Mementos.
Yusuke pushes himself to his feet, relishing the immediate height advantage he gains over his former mentor. He was no longer wearing his kitsune mask, which meant that he had somehow exited the Metaverse. He trusted that he wouldn't need it to overpower Yaldabaoth's imitation of Madarame. He squares his shoulders, a hard-fought gesture that Madarame himself would never have expected of his ward. The existence of a plan, simple and half-formed as it may be, was comforting, a reliable goal to work towards and a welcome distraction from the expanding horror in his chest.
"What form of manipulation is this? What can you possibly hope to gain from showing me the form of my mother's murderer?" Yusuke jeers at him, Yaldabaoth under a shudderingly familiar face.
Madarame's eyes widen comically. "What are you talking about?"
"Did you dig through my memories, Yaldabaoth? Or did you learn about it when the real Madarame confessed?" He sweeps his arm in front of him, and the fake Madarame stumbles back. The illusion is the only thing blocking him from the exit. "Your imitation is as pathetic as the phony Sayuris!"
"'Phony Sayuris?'" Madarame echoes, gaze hardening. "Yusuke, you don't know of what you're speaking!"
Through months of working through his art block with Akira, Yusuke knows that Madarame had, deep in his heart, cared for him. He had been abruptly saddled with the task of raising a young child, and at the beginning, attempted to do so to the best of his ability. Madarame had nurtured Yusuke's love for art and taught him the advanced techniques that now elevated him above his fellow students at Kosei.
Those morsels of positive memories did nothing to change Madarame's actions. He'd plagiarized the work of his students, draining away their passion until they abandoned him, or worse. He had kept Yusuke locked away from the rest of the world, neglecting his health and happiness in order to transform him into the perfect blueprint to base upon his future abuse of his trusting pupils. In the end, he'd never seen Yusuke as anything more than just another of his poor works of art, something to be greedily consumed until it had been squeezed dry of all its usefulness and discarded.
Yusuke was never granted the chance to confront his former sensei about his wrongdoings outside of the Metaverse. If he was forced to be entirely honest, he could not deny that he was relishing the opportunity.
Yusuke advances. "My mother was the one who painted the original Sayuri, and you killed her! You defaced her final work and then created cheap copies because of your own overwhelming greed." A few more steps, and he'd be out the door, away from Madarame and his shack. He finds himself pausing, instead. "You were never an artist," he hisses. "You are nothing but a despicable fiend who wears the skin of an artist!"
"Yusuke," Madarame spits his name like it's an insult, humble pretenses vanishing with the underlying threats, "I would think twice before making any rash decisions! The idiots of the art world worship me."
"Then they worship a false, meager shell of a human being!"
"Who would believe you, then? You have no proof. You are nothing without me! I could kick you out on the street right now and destroy your entire future, and no one would even think to care!"
"I have no need for your influences or excuses. Everything you have done, I know that I can do better! Unlike you, I can stand with my own merit, rather than stealing it away from others!"
"I will destroy you before you can even think to open your mouth!" Madarame snarls at him, fists clenched, pinning Yusuke under the same terrifying gaze that had followed him since childhood. He can hardly stop himself from shying away. The world feels too solid.
Always, the Metaverse has a certain dream-like quality. It was built upon the distortions of others, after all, and people viewed reality through a discolored lens. It is evident in the buoyancy and splashes of neon colors underneath their boots whenever the Phantom Thieves infiltrated Palaces. Everything was decided by one's mental fortitude rather than physical. Their senses sharpened, as if the air itself was lighter and easier to navigate. Pain felt different. Even when Shibuya had melded with Mementos, the familiar trappings of the Metaverse had not faded from their minds.
Yusuke feels none of that, now. It's worse, even - he hasn't felt this physically weakened since before he had joined the Phantom Thieves. He had never shared Ryuji and Akira's obsessive affinity for training, but they had occasionally managed to drag him along on their gym excursions anyway. His poor money management made his eating habits woeful at the best of times, but his friends had always ensured that he was never at the brink of complete starvation.
It's like none of the events of the past few months had ever happened. As if everything that Yusuke had worked for had been wiped away in a single fell swoop.
Yusuke wasn't in the Metaverse. That meant the Madarame in front of him was real, wasn't he?
He needs to escape and find the others, now. And like a cornered animal, the panic makes him desperate.
Yusuke had always been on the overly malnourished side of healthy, and Madarame was much stronger than he appeared. It's almost embarrassingly easy in the way Madarame dodges Yusuke's harried punch and uses the forward momentum to all but bowl him over, catching him around the waist and slamming him unceremoniously against the doorframe. Yusuke's breath hitches painfully, and he slams his elbow into Madarame's shoulder. Madarame caves underneath the sharp pressure with a grunt, vice grip faltering. Before Yusuke can clamber out of the cage of his arms, Madarame retaliates by hitting Yusuke across the head with enough force to make faint stars bloom across his vision.
Madarame bares his teeth at him, animalistic in a way that Yusuke had never before seen him, even within the garish confines of his own gilded Palace. The last time he had threatened Yusuke in the real world, it was with the promise to call security to have him dragged away from the only place he'd ever called home kicking and screaming. Now, with the accusations of assisted murder and implied kidnapping alongside the initial forgery, the consequences are disastrous. No matter how correct Madarame was in his assumption that Yusuke's voice would be drowned out and ostracized against his own, even one dissenting opinion, especially forthcoming from someone so famously close to him, was enough to put an irreparable dent in his constructed reputation and sow doubt for years to come.
Yusuke had never thought to question why his room had no windows or only ever locked from the outside until Madarame shoves him within it and traps him inside. Stumbling to his feet, he immediately lunges towards the door, scrabbling at the handle desperately. When that fails, he shoves his shoulder against the unyielding door. Furious, he yells, "You cannot keep me trapped in here forever!"
Madarame's breathing is ragged even through the wooden barrier. "You will stay in there for as long as it takes you to know better than to accuse me of obvious falsehoods!"
Yusuke steps away from the door and forces himself to take a few rationalizing breaths to calm himself. He needs to stay level-headed in this impossible situation. As Madarame raves outside, Yusuke catalogues his room and is unsurprised to find nothing of value. In all the time he had lived at the atelier, his bedroom has always been sparse. His futon was shoved into the corner, barely covered by a thinning sheet. The sketches tacked onto the walls were drawn on cheap paper rather than canvas, hurried pieces he'd created late at night and early in the morning when the sudden snapshots of images in his head became too overwhelming to wait for him to dash to the studio or find proper supplies beyond the nearest chunk of charcoal. He had a heavy wooden dresser, but he currently did not possess the raw physical strength needed to force it through the locked door. It would not have been an issue with Kamu Susano-o's help, but stuck alone in reality as he was, he was no match for its weight.
Yusuke puts a hand on his chin, analyzing the situation. This was the most basic component of artistry, after all: figuring out how to combine elements in order to create something entirely new. All he needed to do was fit his resources together like puzzle pieces, as easy as working with different mediums within the same work of art.
Brute force is out of the question, and the only point of exit was the door before him. The main lock was built into the outside door handle, sealable with a turn rather than requiring a key. The opposite handle, facing the bedroom, was a different story. Carved into it was a tiny, hexagonal hole, only a few millimeters in diameter. In theory, the cavity was deep enough to go through the wood door and into the opposite handle. Yusuke knows its purpose: it was meant to be picked open by a skinny metal rod, the ultimate failsafe if the inside doors jammed shut as they were often known to do. He's only seen one of those such devices utilized twice during his stay with Madarame, as the doors were rarely locked in the first place.
There was a device within every room with a lock in the house. In theory, if he were to locate the lockpick within the bedroom, he would be able to escape. However, he'd never learned the skill of lock picking, only ever bearing witness to Akira or one of Madarame's past students doing so. This lock was, at the very least, much more simple to navigate than the ones present in the Metaverse or on the atelier's front door. It couldn't possibly take a vast amount of time or effort to figure out how to correctly maneuver it.
The only problem with the plan is that Yusuke knows without a doubt that the pick is not in his room. It is currently in the studio, where it has resided for some weeks now. Attempting fine detail work on a sculpture, he'd determined that the thin, flattened edges were much better suited to carve delicate lines through clay rather than sitting unused, awaiting a rare scenario. He'd never bothered to return it to its proper place in his room, instead adding it to his precious collection of artistic instruments.
He truly was a fool, wasn't he?
The most viable solution would be to craft his own version. Yusuke is nothing if not a perfectionist, but he would accept even the most crude of makeshift devices if it could force the door open.
Madarame has finally fallen silent through the barrier, but Yusuke spares him no thought as he stalks further into his room, searching for a suitable replacement. His main problem would be the width: small enough to fit into the hole but large enough to still interact with the internal mechanisms. That criteria alone immediately eliminated most of the items in his room, unless he found a way to properly shave them down to a proper size. The closest thing he had to a blade were the tacks studded into the wall, but the razor sharp tips were useless for carving and too short to be utilized on their own.
His gaze trails from the tacks to the sketches they're attached to. Or, more accurately, the paper those drawings reside on. He'd have to fold it multiple times over to get close to the strength and width required, which was a near impossible task to accomplish with such a delicate, thin material that tended to tear into pieces if he made too hard a pencil scratch, much less a crease. He would have to layer it thickly to ensure that it wouldn't immediately fall apart upon being forced blindly into metal. It was far from ideal, but it was currently the best idea that he had.
If he were to be blunt, it was also the only idea he had. The others would have been able to figure out something cleverer and easier than folding multiple sheets of paper together with little way to attach them, but it was only Yusuke that was stuck here. He had to reunite with his friends as quickly as possible. He had no clue what they were going through, or even where they ended up. Perhaps he was the only one to travel back through time, leaving himself stranded months away from the rest of the Phantom Thieves and their siege upon Yaldabaoth. Were they searching for him? Did they have any idea what had happened?
He cannot afford to dwell on those questions currently. Right now, there's nothing to be done for them other than him finding a way out of Madarame's clutches. With purpose, he approaches the drawings, carefully detaching them from the wall and shuffling them in his hands. He sits down, circled by a loose ring of forgotten tacks, and stacks them neatly in front of him, altogether barely the height of a single centimeter.
His head still aches from Madarame's hit, and his current body is exhausted from its recent lack of sleep. Nevertheless, Yusuke reaches for the top of the pile and gets to work.