Daichi: Now, returning to your normally scheduled crazy train.

Verity: We own nothing.

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"So, you have Personas, right?" Ryoji asked, hoping that the answer was 'yes'. It was bad enough that humans were there to begin with. They didn't need to be helpless, too.

"I have one, Yosuke doesn't," Souji replied. Better than nothing, at least.

"What kind?"

"Izanagi. Lightning." Okay, that was good. "Also, Fool Arcana, whatever that means." Better? Worse? He didn't even know. There wasn't exactly a large sample size.

"Have you been to a place called the Velvet Room, by any chance?" Like he didn't know the answer. A Fool shows up, and the world starts changing. That was just how things were.

"...Once. I thought it was just a dream." Ryoji sighed. There went any chance of a relatively normal year. He wondered what a peaceful life would be like.

Probably boring.

"Yeah, Igor does that. His own master asked me to deliver a contract for him once, spiralled into averting the apocalypse. They're overly cryptic, but far too helpful to ignore."

"Igor? Velvet Room?" Yosuke asked, reminding Ryoji that there was a normal in the area and that maybe they shouldn't have been talking so loudly. Even with Shadow Saki gone, the area was still full of Shadows.

Souji groaned. "Is now really the time? I literally just realized that it even actually happened. We're surrounded by fog, and still have no idea what's going on, with the exception of hopefully Mochizuki-senpai." Yeah, maybe leaving them clueless was a bad idea. He did not want to be responsible for a new Persona User getting in over his head.

So he set into an admittedly-abridged explanation of the world around them.

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In hindsight, maybe he shouldn't have left Teddie alone like he did. The little bear was more than capable of finding his way home, and wouldn't be attacked, but his sense of time wasn't the greatest given that this world had no day or night, and they had yet to find a watch that would fit him.

In addition, he was now carting around one newbie Persona User and a normal person, who were human and therefore unable to see through the fog. And the only one who had a possible solution was currently missing.

Ryoji supposed he had brought in on himself, and Metis had already chewed him out for it, but they were asking him to be responsible. There was a reason it was the robot who handled their budget.

"So, how do you know Teddie, anyway?" Yosuke asked. "Did you just fall in here one day like we did, or-"

"I live here," He replied. If they were going to come in very often- Souji was a Fool, of course they would- than he might as well not try to hide it.

"I thought you said you lived with Yuki-san."

"I do. We live here. She has a Persona, too. We're actually strong enough that most of the time, the Shadows don't bother trying to fight us. They just run right in the opposite direction."

Souji paused. "That reminds me… just how many Persona Users are there, anyway? In Inaba, at least."

Ryoji shrugged. "Us, Metis, presumably whoever's throwing people into television sets and, as of last night, Saki-chan."

"Senpai has a Persona? How did she get it?" Yosuke asked, completely failing to mask his excitement at the possibility of superpowers, even with what Ryoji assumed to be a killer headache.

"She faced her inner demons and came out on top."

Souji winced. "Yeah, really glad I didn't have to do that."

"Come on! That sounds easy!"

"Oh? Is it, now?" And cue Shadow Yosuke. Because today clearly needed to make itself even more difficult.

Maybe it was time to look into life insurance.

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"So, it's not that easy, is it, Yosuke?" Souji snapped, bracing himself for yet another column of wind. "Mochizuki-senpai, do something!" Ryoji was- well, Souji couldn't see him, but in this fog, that meant nothing.

"I would, if this battlefield had any sort of good footing! My magic doesn't work on him!" Shadow Yosuke had started by knocking over several walls, and the collateral damage had just gotten worse from there.

"How do you know that? You didn't even try!"

"Instant death magic doesn't work on Shadows above a certain size! And that's all the magic Thanatos has!" Said Persona made a brief appearance, if only to shield its wielder from the next burst of wind. "You have good magic, blast him with lightning!" Right. Magic. That thing he could now apparently use.

What he wouldn't give to be normal. But that had apparently gone out the window when he made the mistake of answering an odd boy on the street. Not even then, but during his first dream of the Velvet Room, before he could set foot in Inaba in the first place.

Nice to know his sanity was apparently a lost cause from the start. "Izanagi! Zio!" He wasn't sure why the frog fell to the ground twitching. The attack hadn't been all that strong. Not that he was complaining. The Shadow was annoying.

"Wow! That was a beary powerful attack!" A new voice- Teddie. He'd shown up while they were fighting the Shadow that had appeared while they were searching for him. All Yosuke's fault, of course. Even if it weren't his Shadow, he was the one who tempted fate so blatantly, given that their lives seemed to have suddenly turned into some kind of horror game.

"And there's our possible escape route," Ryoji remarked. Souji was pretty sure the other Persona User was grinning, though he couldn't actually tell. "Where have you been?"

"I should be asking you that!" The little bear shot back. "You left me here and never came back!"

"I had to take Saki-chan to the hospital! And don't say you couldn't find the way back- we both know your nose is better than that!"

"Um… shouldn't we be focusing on… I don't know… the strongest Shadow I've ever seen?" Not that he'd seen many Shadows so far- just the ones he'd met on the way here, and they weren't all that powerful.

Thanatos appeared and cleaved Shadow Yosuke down the middle, returning him to his human imitation. "How's that?"

Souji was officially done with this town.

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Verity: ...To be fair, I would be, too.

Daichi: Next time, we get to see the official formation of an actual team… such as it is, anyway. They're not very cohesive, in case you hadn't noticed.