A sound of Shattering glass echoed in the dark dance room, and the large bulk of Take mikazuchi appeared striking the arachnid monstrosity with all its considerable strenght, making it recoil to the other side of the large room hitting the wall and destroying the medium sized bar.
Taking advantage of the shadow's staggered state the Team regrouped togheter and faced down their opponent while keeping themselves scattered to avoid being hit all at once.
"YOU BRATS!!" The spider-bot bellowed as fire sprouted from its human body fingertips that was promptly gathered in fireballs as they immediately headed at full speed toward the party.
"Watch out , chie and mitsuru-san" rise urgently warned her friends
The tall redhead narrowly dodged with a cartwheel, but chie was less lucky getting grazed by the fire column erupting from where the fire ball had hit the ground.
"Oww" the brown haired girl exclaimed, Yukiko immediatly summoned konohana sakuya and used a healing spell to help her downed friend.
" it's never easy with the elements.. so lets try wind. Go Jiraya "yosuke said, jumping to hit his card as his frog-sona threw a shuriken that turned into massive tornado as its made its way to the target.
The wind engulfed the shadow, severely cutting across its frame as it shrieked in pain.
"Nice opening hanamura-senpai" naoto complimented lining her gun and pulling the trigger, hitting the shadow square in the face with two rapid fire bullets" Narukami!!"
" PAZUZU!!!" The leader shouted breaking the card with his right hand as the lion headed winged demon appeared and raised its arm summoning another strong wind that hit the spider making it scream in anguish again. It quickly got back up and started vibrating like a poweful engine
"We need more speed" she raised her gun shaped evoker to the her own head and pulled the trigger" PENTESILHEA" The whip wielding blue clad fencer tensed her chain in front of her red mask as a green gentle aura surrounded the persona users who started feeling a lot sharper and quicker on their feet.
"YOU ARE NOT GOING TO STOP ME !!!" The enraged monster screamed as it started attacking everyone quickly, with its spider legs almost becoming a blur such was their speed. The teenagers dodged as much as they could but still got a little slashed up in places.
As the attack neared its end and teddie summoned his Kamui to heal everybody, Yu noticed a single spider leg raising to its full lenght and then coming down at full speed ... right towards the distracted Rise staring at her persona's monitor to help her team.
Yu felt his breath hitch as he tried to warn her at the last second" Ri.." but it was too late as the leg hit the floor with a loud clang. It had hit nothing.
The boy looked wide eyed seeing his girlfriend standing just a few millimeters at the side of the leg, having miraculously dodged it somehow, her own face showing absolute surprise at her feat, clearly visible even under her visor.
But before acknowledging the event, both of them had to guard against a wall of flames conjured by the woman's shadow.
As the flames dissipated, a peeved female voice was heard
" ah, I've had it with this lady "
Tomoe appeared from the smoke and summoned a powerful golden coated rocket punch that headed at full speed towards the shadow underbelly and hit it with a loud bang that echoed troughout the chamber.
The distorted gasp puncuated the rising form of the spider woman, hit with such violence to be launched in the air. And at the apex of its forced jump, kanji could be heard shouting " NICE ASSIST , CHIE-SENPAI" as take mikazuchi appeared in frefall above its target.the skeleton painted golem stabbed with its lightining shaped massive spear as they fell to the ground in a loud crash, the impact shattering many panels and the persona's bulk crushing the shadow which writhed in pain.
"NOW, SENPAI" Rise urgently screamed to yu.
"ODIN!!!" the gray headed teen summoned the purple skinned king of asgard who raised its mighty spear Gungnir to the sky, calling a maelstrom of green winds that completely engulphed the spider shadow, shredding it horribly as it shrieked in utter agony.
After a beat of uncertainity as the winds lifted, the shadow finally started dissipating diminishing in size, until only the bride was left in its crater.
Belly down, she started crying in despair, sobbing uncontrollably.
"Why ?..." she could be heard among the sobs "I just want him back here... with me . I don't wanna be taken away from him again ... enough. I can't take it anymore ."
As the sobbing echoed out in the orange chamber, the IT looked at each other in confusion, relatively unused to the utter despair the shadow was showing.
"Ow... my head " the kidnapped redhead said as she came to, from the floor of her cage.
The blue bear quickly waddled to the cage opening it to let the woman out and help her up. " Are you okay MJ-chan ? " teddie said sugarly.
The woman had a surprised expression for the bear as she got to her feet" uhm ... sure, thanks"
She was accompanied to the edge of the small crater where the shadow still layed.
Mitsuru quickly voluntereed in calming the woman down and presenting her to everyone, she promptly thanked them until her eyes finally fell on the prone figure on the ground.
As she stared at it thoughtfully and uncertain, she heard " It's a part of you, you know"
MJ turned to look on the other redheaded girl of the group, the one with twin tails of a darker shade called Rise.
" she is something you'd rather not see but... she is still a part of you. You can't hide from it or erase it, you need to embrace it and learn from it. It's something that took me a long time to understand myself" the short girl said with a small frown and a weird depth in her big brown eyes .
As she mulled her words over, Those eyes gave MJ pause. They looked... familiar.
Another wrenching sob, wrestled mary jane's attention back to the figure in white, and after a while she determinedly made her way closer to her.
"Hey" she told the shadow with command" get up" .
The shadow ignored her, still crying.
"Come on, get up " she repeated " if you are me, you know that mary jane watson doesn't pine after anyone. And if we do ..." she paused, her tone becoming more resigned " we do because we know we lost something amazing."
At this her doppelganger finally looked her in the eyes, her yellow orbs showing more sadness, regret and maybe a spark of hope amid the tears now.
MJ continued, " And Peter was the best thing that ever happened to us, even in spite of all we went through. And ... I do want him back, if he'll have us despite all the cold shoulders and moments we haven't been there for him. And even if he won't have us, I hope he won't stop us from being his best friend again."
The shadow stood back up in front of her, while hearing this. A more serene expression now marring its wet face.
"After all," MJ concluded with a small smile " Life without Peter Parker? it's just no fun".
The shadow nodded and started transfiguring, cloaked in a calming blue glow.
The strenght of mary jane's heart had allowed her shadow to become the mask to face the hardships of life . Her Persona.
The new form was slightly similar to its shadow appearance but at the same time very different .
It was quite smaller than the previous monstrosity but still stood quite tall, its spider body more contained and proportioned. Said body was now a smooth pearly white, decorated in carved strings of red that lined its shape.
The biggest changes were to the human body though.
The body was also a smooth white now and beatiful, with blue web like carvings near the chest area, and a serene face with green light bulb-like eyes, you'd see on a car. The hair was smooth and perfect now with a silk like texture, that fanned out behind the figure like a curtain, reaching just the small of her back. The only out of place detail was a dark red chain constricting the figure's arms, that after a little strain was shattered in a loud crash.
A name slowly left MJ's lips on her awed face, coming to her instinctually from somewhere deep within
"Arachne"
The woman gave a little stage bow with her upper torso, and slowly disappeared from sight leaving behind a small blue card spinning towards Mary Jane's raised left hand.
The card showed two stylized figures, one male and one female under a heart shaped tree, representing the Lovers arcana.
"This is my..." she said holding the slowly spinning card, floating in her hand, looking at it more closely.
" Persona " Yu said leading the others closer now " yes, miss watson" he continued with an encouraging smile
Mary Jane looked a little puzzled for a second, before a smug smirk lit up her face " I really wanna see what the next wise guy is gonna try to pull with me no... " but as she was saying this the card entered back into her body as normal, and a look of complete shock suddenly appeared on her face, her eyes becoming distant and filling with tears .
It was too much. As she fainted for the strain of being in the tv world and this unexplained shock. As the Investigation team fussed around her in concern and Yu caught her fall, holding her, every one could clearly hear her last words before losing consciousness again.
A broken " No... We didn't..." filled the dark room.
Elsewhere
"Uhm " a figure clad in darkness mused to themselves.
' so' they tought ' the forgotten goddess's toy box has created a wrench in my plans.'
They had felt the change, the shift in their scheming web of arrangements and deals, all bound to achieve a certain purpose.
' Well, no matter' the figure smirked evilly " with the Titan missing and the heroes of earth looking for him or busy elsewhere, I can put things into motion immediately.I' ll send one of my newest minions to take care of this loose end'
'After all' they raised their red skinned clawed hand, grasping and closing it in a fist 'that dark reflection I need, it's about ripe for the taking'
A weird tense silence had befallen the investigation team.
They were already back in the real world , heading for the amagi Inn, the unconscious redheaded woman riding piggyback on Kanji.
The rain filled dark clouds above did nothing to ease the team tension, either.
Trying to break them out of their reverie, Yu asked" So ... does anyone have any Idea of what happened to her ?"
Teddie, now back out of his costume , answered sheepishly first " I dunno, Sensei, MJ-chan's bearsona was beautiful but I didn't smell any malice coming from it, that weird smell had also disappeared already"
"Me neither , Kuzeon felt nothing " Rise said from a little further back, right behind Kanji, watching Mary Jane carefully for some reason even she couldn't explain.
" I don't know partner , we were usually exausthed after gaining our personas but not to the point of fainting, what happend to her feels ... fishy somehow."yosuke said tentatively
Naoto also added " I may not be a body language expert, senpai, but when she re-merged with her persona, her eyes became distant like she was remembering something."she touched her chin in tought saying this.
Silence fell again as they went, every one lost in their own reflections.
Until...
" Woooh" kanji said losing his balance because of a puddle of water , mary jane's limp form slipping out of his grasp.
But no fall followed
Somehow Rise had caught the falling form of the older woman holding her bridal style. She had a good grasp and a very surprised look.
"Sorry Rise , thanks for the save" kanji thanked his classmate, hearing the commotion yu had also reached back and helped move mj back on kanji, who restarted making his way forward while being more careful.
In all of this, Rise's face kept it's stunned expression, eyes still staring unblinking.
"Hey, don't worry, you caught her" yu smiled assuringly, but still getting no reaction from his girlfriend "Rise? What's wrong ?"
She finally looked at him " nothing, everything is a-okay" she faked a smile and moved past his uncertain expression.
Her stare turned back on her hands as they got closer to the Inn.
Thinking
She felt so... light.
A.N. transitioning chapter and setup for incoming revelations . One more chapter in Inaba and then we are gonna be jumping to another couple of elsewheres and characters . And only another 2 chapters before spider-man is actually featured in this fic . Anyway I hope you enjoyed the chapter and that I gave a good description of MJ's persona. I chose arachne for a couple of reasons: 1 . Clear and simple mithology, mother of spiders as she should be 2. Greek mithology personas were the theme for P3, the first one I played 3. Greek tragedies are one of the first form of theater, it fits .Let me know what you all think, see ya