The two Wild Cards faced off, staring into each others' eyes from a few paces away as though each was daring the other to move.
"Do I...know you?" Yu ventured. Something about his aura felt familiar.
"I shouldn't think so," Joker replied, "unless you're one of those cops who was involved in that November fiasco two years ago."
"I'm not a cop, I'm a journalist."
"Almost as bad. So quick to put out whatever the corrupt people in power want you to, regardless of who gets hurt by it."
Yu bristled. "What makes you think I'm the kind of person who would bow to such people?"
"Here's a better question: how do I know you're not?" Joker demanded. Yu clenched his jaw and laid a hand on his katana as Joker similarly adopted a battle stance.
"I'm a Persona-user like you. A Wild Card," Yu tried to reason. "Does that mean nothing?"
"Goro Akechi was also a Persona-user," Joker told him. Yu's eyes widened in surprise. "With Robin Hood, he hid behind a mask of justice. But when he switched to Loki, he revealed his true self. A murderous psychopath who sought revenge on Shido for abandoning him and his mother." Yu stumbled back in shock. "He tried to pin all the mental shutdowns he caused on my group, my family. Then he tried to kill us. So you can understand why I don't trust you, Persona-users or not."
Yu swallowed. This was not going as well as he'd expected. He'd only brought his sword for insurance, but Joker seemed like he wanted a fight. He had to de-escalate the situation, fast.
"Okay, okay. You don't trust us. So why don't we just leave and-"
There was another soft thud as the third Phantom Thief, a red-haired girl in a black coat and mask, landed behind Rise and himself and unsheathed a long rapier, blocking the way they'd come.
"Unacceptable," Joker growled. His voice was dark and angry. "Your navigator is capable of locating us. We cannot have our secrets made known." A silver knife slid out of his sleeve and into his hand. "You can leave if you wish. She's coming with us."
Yu's eyes went flat. "No."
Joker tilted his head. "You're willing to fight then?"
Yu unsheathed his katana. "Gladly."
Joker shot forward like a bullet and slashed his knife at Yu's face, but the older Wild Card was more than ready for the attack, catching the Phantom Thief's blade with his own and parrying it. Rise backed off deeper into the alley as Yu and Joker exchanged blows, their strikes becoming faster and more furious as they continued to fight.
Yu slashed horizontally, but Joker leapt over the blow, landing against the wall of the alley and jumping off with incredible agility, once again trying to slash at Yu's head and arms. Yu was forced to duck as the Phantom Thief flew over his head, but he continued to press the attack, slashing at the walls as Joker continued to wall-jump off of them. Joker was quick and clever. Yu could barely keep his eyes on him as the black coat threatened to make his figure vanish entirely in the shadows. This was unlike any fight Yu had ever fought before.
Yu caught one more midair slash with his sword, but when he looked up into Joker's face, he was smiling. Something in Yu's mind clicked as Joker vaulted over him and Yu dashed back towards the spot where Joker was about to land, desperately slashing at the spot. Joker skipped back, barely evading the sword. He'd been aiming for Rise, who was backed up all the way to the dead end of the alleyway. Yu was furious.
"You. Will. Never. Take her!" Yu hissed. Releasing one hand from the hilt of his blade, he held it out, and blue fire gushed forth. A single spinning tarot card appeared above his hand. He was ready to get serious.
But when he looked back at Joker, the Phantom Thief was smiling again. His knife was nowhere to be seen. His battle stance eased, and he began to clap slowly.
"Impressive fight, Narukami," Joker congratulated him. "I know all I need to know. I am willing to trust you."
"Eh?" Yu was confused, but the red-haired Phantom Thief was already sheathing her rapier. She and Oracle walked up to stand beside their leader.
"Sorry for testing you," the red-haired girl apologized. "You very clearly care deeply for your companion."
Yu sighed and lowered his katana. "What is this, a video game?" He sheathed his blade and looked back at the three Phantom Thieves. "My team and I came here so we could meet up with our friend and find your group so we could learn to cooperate with each other. Now that Shadows are appearing all over the world, we're going to be needing all the help we can get to keep our lives intact."
"Your concerns are my own, Yu Narukami," Joker replied. "Let us call our respective teams and meet up at our hideout. Since we're going to be trusting each other, there should be no secrets between us."
"Especially about the Shadows' world," Yu added.
"We call it the Metaverse," Joker told him.
"A good name for it," Yu admitted. He held out his hand. Joker shook it. When they separated, Yu asked, "Can I call you anything besides Joker?"
Joker grinned. "Once you get to Café Leblanc in Yongen-Jaya, all your questions will be answered."
Joker spun and shot a grappling cable from his sleeve, which latched onto the roof of one of the buildings and carried him up the side. The red-haired girl followed. Oracle was surrounded in a green bubble and floated up into the air, where a triangular UFO-shaped Persona formed around her and flew away.
Yu grimaced. "Do they have to make things so difficult?"
It took another hour before Yu and Rise could meet up with the rest of the Investigation Team, explain what had happened, and get everyone on the train to Yongen-Jaya. By the time they got off the train, Rise had already confirmed that the Phantom Thieves had all gathered together again. By tracking their location, it was a simple matter to locate Café Leblanc.
"Oh, good. You're here," Oracle's voice suddenly sounded in their minds. Everyone jumped in alarm. "Just tell the owner you're looking for a game of cards and he'll tell you where to go."
"Um...okay?" Yu ventured, but the voice was gone.
"What the hell was that?" Chie demanded.
"That was the voice of the Phantom Thieves' navigator," Rise explained.
"Whoever she is, she sounds bear-y cute!" Teddie remarked.
"Enough of that, let's just go!" Yosuke urged.
Yu opened the door of the café, and the little bell above the door rang. Behind the counter was a middle-aged man in a pink shirt and a black apron. His hair was slicked back and his beard was very pointy.
His eyes narrowed as the group of young adults walked in. "Welcome," he greeted them cautiously.
Yu scratched the back of his head nervously. "Ah, I'm supposed to tell you...I'm looking for a game of cards?"
The owner sighed. "What's your name, kid?"
"Yu Narukami."
"Sojiro Sakura. The stairs are over there." He pointed down to the end of the café. "You give any of those kids trouble, and you answer to me, got it?"
"Understood," Yu agreed. He motioned for his group to follow him up the stairs.
Yu hadn't known what to expect from the Phantom Thieves' hideout, but the attic of the café was certainly a more useful space than the food court of Junes. The space had been recently cleaned, the floor covered with a rug and a series of new couches and chairs lined the room alongside a decorative plant, a workbench, and a card table. Several boxes had been pushed and stacked out of the way behind the stairs or under the table or the workbench so the space wouldn't feel cluttered.
A number of people were scattered around the room waiting for the Investigation Team to arrive. All of them were younger than the members of the Investigation Team, but only by a few years. None of them wore costumes like Joker or Oracle had, but they were still clearly the Phantom Thieves. A pair of blondes seated next to each other at the table, an orange-haired girl tapping furiously at her computer, a midnight-haired youth sketching in a notebook, a red-haired girl who could only be the third Phantom Thief Yu had encountered earlier sitting next to a floofy-haired girl in a pink sweater, and another pair who were very clearly the leaders of the whole operation: a crimson-eyed brunette girl with an aura of power, and a handsome guy with black hair and glasses, whose smirk and steel-gray eyes Yu immediately recognized.
Joker.
No one was speaking. The Phantom Thieves just looked on warily as the members of the Investigation Team filed inside. Finally, Joker stood and slipped his phone into his pocket.
"Greetings," he said in that rich, snarky voice of his. "Welcome to the hideout of the Phantom Thieves of Hearts."
"Your hideout is in an attic?" Yukiko asked, looking around at the place.
"Like the Junes food court is any better," Chie remarked snarkily.
"Hey!" Yosuke complained.
Joker chuckled. "I know it may not be some fancy superhero lair, but it's serviceable, it's roomy enough for all of us, and there's a café downstairs if you want to order anything. It served us quite well back when I was on probation and had to keep my head down outside the Metaverse."
"You were put on probation?" Kanji asked. He seemed a little scared.
"A false allegation of assault. Long story," he said, waving away the topic. "Now, introductions. My name is Ren Amamiya, better known as the leader of the Phantom Thieves of Hearts, Joker." He bowed elegantly, though the smirk on his face made it seem a little mocking. "And this is my team." He gestured to the rest of the Thieves in the room.
The brunette who'd been sitting next to Ren spoke first. "Makoto Niijima, also known as Queen. I'm Joker's second-in-command and the strategist of the Phantom Thieves."
The male blonde went next. "Skull, though you can call me Ryuji Sakamoto."
The other blonde continued, "Ann Takamaki. I go by Panther."
The orange-haired girl raised her hand, still not looking up from her computer. "Futaba Sakura, a.k.a. Oracle, at your service."
The floofy-haired girl stood and gave her own elegant bow. "Haru Okumura. As a Phantom Thief, I am known as Noir."
The scarlet-haired girl followed suit. "Sumire Yoshizawa, also known as Violet of the Phantom Thieves."
The midnight-haired young man looked up from his sketching and said in an enchanting voice, "Yusuke Kitagawa, better known in the Phantom Thieves as Fox."
"And I," came an unexpected and somewhat boyish voice, "am Morgana."
Everyone in the Investigation Team whipped their heads around, searching for the source of the last voice. "Over here, amateurs." The source of the voice was sitting on top of the workbench.
"A-a-" Kanji stuttered.
"A cat?" Yukiko sounded only mildly surprised.
"Why is the cat talking!?" Chie was almost screaming.
Morgana jumped onto the card table. "I am not a cat! I am Morgana! Don't you forget that!"
"But...you look like a cat," Yu objected in a confused voice.
Morgana scowled. There was a flash of blue fire and suddenly Morgana was a bulbous-headed, anthropomorphic creature. "Still think I'm a cat?" he challenged.
"Well...yes?" Yu ventured.
Morgana did a double facepalm and bent over with a massive sigh.
"Dude, you're gonna have to get used to that eventually," Ryuji told him.
"Hey, don't feel bad!" Teddie interrupted. "You do make a bear-y cute cat!"
"C-cute!?"
"Alright, before we get any further off topic," Makoto interrupted, "why don't you all introduce yourselves?"
"I suppose we might as well," Yosuke muttered before straightening up and saying in a loud and clear voice. "I am Yosuke Hanamura of the Yasoinaba Investigation Team! Good to meet you all!"
Chie crossed her arms and looked at him with an expression that said 'Really?' "Chie Satonaka. Nice to meet you."
"Chie!" Yosuke complained. "You really gonna-!"
He was interrupted by Kanji clearing his throat. "Kanji Tatsumi. Don't try anything funny, and you're all cool with me."
"Yukiko Amagi," Yukiko continued. "A pleasure."
"I am Teddie!" Teddie proclaimed. "Meeting new Bear-sona users is always a pleasure!"
"Rise Kujikawa," Rise continued. "I'm-"
"Wait, Risette!?" Ann interrupted, shooting to her feet.
"Uh, who?" Ryuji asked.
"Risette! She's a super famous and popular idol!"
"Wait, for real!?" Now he was staring.
"Alright, enough of that," Yu interrupted. "I guess I'm last. Yu Narukami. I'm the leader and the Wild Card of the Investigation Team. Good to meet you. We are however missing a member: Naoto Shirogane. She works for the SIU here in Tokyo."
"We're currently missing a couple of members ourselves," Ren admitted. "Last year during the EMMA fiasco, we were joined by Inspector Zenkichi Hasegawa in Kyoto and an AI by the name of Sophia. Zenkichi's going to be headed back to Kyoto soon, and Sophia is on a trip with her creator, and we don't really know where she is right now."
"Well," Makoto ventured, "now that we've all introduced ourselves, shall we begin our meeting? I would like to compare notes between each of our experiences in the Metaverse."
"Before that," Chie interjected, "can I get something meaty to eat? I'm starving."
Joker-no, Ren smirked. "I'll head downstairs and help boss whip up some stuff. Coffee, curry, sandwiches, what does everyone want?"
It took almost an hour for Ren to get all the orders and make enough food and coffee for fifteen people and a cat. By the time he came back up, the Phantom Thieves and the Investigation Team were chatting and laughing with each other like old friends.
"Dude," Ryuji was saying, "The girls on your team are that bad at cooking? Man, I'm glad we've got Ren."
Yosuke made a noise halfway between a laugh and a sigh. "Yeah, 'course on our end, we've got Yu to handle cooking. He's not good enough to open a restaurant or anything, but it's way better than Mystery Food X."
"I don't even want to know what that's like," Ann remarked with a cringe.
"You don't have to," Ren cut in, placing a pair of large serving plates on the table. Both were loaded with different kinds of sandwiches.
Chie eyed the two piles. "Which ones have the most meat?"
"That pile," Ren pointed. Chie immediately grabbed a pair and started shoving them in her mouth.
Futaba peeked around her computer. "Where's my curry?" she demanded.
"It's coming, it's coming!" Ren insisted. "I can't carry everything all at once." He went back downstairs and came back up with a pair of trays with chopsticks and plates of curry. Futaba immediately snagged one and started eating while Ren went back down to fetch everyone's drinks.
Once Ren was back with them, the conversation naturally changed to that of Personas. The Investigation Team naturally wanted to know where the Phantom Thieves kept their gear and costumes, and all conversation died when Ren suddenly changed into Joker in a flash of blue.
"Whoa!" an alarmed Kanji suddenly shouted, jumping back. "You can just change? Just like that?"
"Just like that," Ren confirmed, reverting to his black t-shirt and jeans. "I assume you guys don't have costumes?"
"No, we just summon a tarot card representing our Arcana and destroy it," Yukiko replied, holding up a hand. A blue flame flickered to life in her palm, and an etherial blue Preistess tarot card appeared, spinning above her palm. "You all summon your Personas by removing your masks, correct?"
"That's right," Makoto confirmed. "The masks of our Phantom Thief outfits represent the masks around our hearts. It's not necessary for us to physically remove them to summon our Personas and recently we have learned to summon our powers even without our Phantom Thief outfits, but it's a nice symbolic gesture."
"But if we're all Persona-users, then why is the nature of our Persona-summoning so different from each other?" Rise asked.
"Maybe I can help with that a little," Morgana answered. He'd reverted to normal cat form earlier. "Firstly, Investigation Team. How did you awaken to your Personas?"
"The usual way," Yu explained, "was that when one of us entered the Metaverse through a TV, they would encounter their Shadow, which would taunt them with all the parts of themselves that they find...hard to deal with."
"Understatement," Kanji muttered. "Sometimes the stuff they spouted was so twisted, it was borderline bullshit."
Yu continued, "If the subject then refused that the Shadow was themselves, the Shadow would go berserk and attack, after which those of us with Personas would defeat it, and when the subject then accepted their Shadow, it would become their Persona."
"Quite different from our awakenings then," Yusuke mused.
"Except for me," Futaba chirped, poking her head up. "I'm the only one of us who actually faced my Shadow, though I didn't deny it."
"What did you do?" Yosuke asked.
"Well, I didn't just accept her like a begrudging contract," Futaba laughed. "I seized her. Once I saw the truths she was trying to tell me despite my tortured and twisted mind at the time, I seized hold of them with both hands like my life depended on it. I set my heart and mind right then and there that I would never, ever forgive those evil adults that blamed me for the mental shutdown they caused in my mom."
Futaba's voice had been increasing in intensity ever since she'd started speaking, and the Investigation Team were looking on with wide and shocked eyes as they heard her spit out those final words. "Someone inflicted a mental shutdown in your mom?" Rise asked in a quiet, shocked tone.
"About five years ago now," Futaba confirmed. "Former politician and Phantom Thief target Masayoshi Shido and his conspirators had their eyes on my mom's cognitive psience research, so they had someone trigger a mental shutdown in her while she was stepping out in front of a car. Then they forged a suicide note claiming I made her life hell to cover it up, with no regard that forcing me to listen to it in front of all my relatives also made the next couple years of my life hell."
"God...Futaba…!" Rise was almost in tears. Yu wrapped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her in to his chest.
"All of us have similar stories," Ren said darkly. "I mentioned how I was arrested and put on probation for an assault I didn't commit. What I didn't mention was that I had to transfer to Shujin Academy, where the gym teacher leaked my record to ostracize me, broke Ryuji's leg out of spite the previous year, and made unwanted advances on Ann and her best friend Shiho."
Ann clenched her fist. "My blood boils just thinking about that bastard Kamoshida!"
Ren nodded and continued, "Yusuke was raised by an artist who stole his work, Makoto was treated as a tool by the Principal and as useless by everyone else, Haru was subjected to an uncaring father and an abusive fiancé, and Sumire was almost destroyed by depression after her twin sister's death. Basically, we've all suffered. But when the critical moment came, in that one instance where something was there to finally push us over the edge, we heard the voice of our Personas. Our awakenings were...painful. First you feel a skull-splitting headache as your Persona speaks to you in your mind, then the mask materializes on your face, and you want to pull it off, but it's sealed to your skin so when you finally get it off, you rip off half your face with it. And then...then you feel it. The sheer power and ecstasy of finally revealing who you really are and making the choice to fight back."
Once again, the entire Investigation Team was shocked into silence. Yosuke was the first to speak up once more. "Damn...I don't think any of us have gone through something that intense."
"I mean, facing Izanami was one thing," Chie remarked wonderingly, "but if just the awakening involved ripping half your face off, I don't know if I even want to know what else you've all been through."
"We cheated death too," Haru said pleasantly.
"Twice in Ren's case," Makoto confirmed.
"Alright, alright," Kanji interrupted. "For now, I think I'm just going to stop you there."
"So how did your meeting with the Phantom Thieves go?" Naoto asked.
Yosuke averted his gaze. "Well..."
Rise picked up, "Once their leader was done testing how trustworthy Yu was, we got along pretty well. But they're...not like us."
"How so?"
"Well, for starters, they're all a good bit stronger than us," Rise started.
"What, really?" Chie demanded.
"I compared our readings to theirs," Rise insisted. "Even their talking cat has a stronger Persona than ours."
Naoto raised her eyebrows. "I didn't know they had a talking cat."
"Just don't call him that to his face," Yu cautioned. "His name's Morgana and he doesn't like being called a cat, and he wants to be human but doesn't know how to become one."
"I tried to give him a little advice," Teddie offered, "but he was acting like he could bear-ly understand it."
"Talking cat aside," Naoto continued, "what else did you learn?"
"They're all intense as hell," Kanji said bluntly.
"How so?" Naoto asked.
"Remember how Rise said their leader had to figure out how trustworthy I was?" Yu asked. At Naoto's confirmation, he continued, "Well, he did that by goading me into fighting him by threatening Rise."
"WHAT?" Chie cried out, springing to her feet. "That lousy, hot, stinking-!"
"Easy, Chie," Yukiko told her, grabbing her friend's arm. "It was only a test, remember?"
"That doesn't make it right! He threatened one of our friends!"
"Also, did you just call him hot?" Yosuke asked.
Chie froze. "Well-I mean...it just slipped out, and...he is," she tried to protest. She was already blushing a little.
"So? What does that have to do with-!" Yosuke yelped and skipped back out of reach as Chie aimed a kick at him.
"Alright, enough," Naoto told them. "So their leader put you through a trial by combat?"
"That's not the only reason they're so intense," Kanji elaborated. "Those backstories they gave us...I mean, I thought I had it bad, but those guys? They've been through hell and back."
Naoto's eyes widened. "What?"
"It came up when we were discussing Persona awakenings," Yu told her. "Only their navigator ever actually faced her Shadow. They were all pushed around, forced to suffer in silence until they reached their breaking point. Then the mask appears on their face and they end up ripping half their face off before their Persona just explodes out of them."
"I could hardly bear to listen it was so intense," Teddie whined.
"Alright, we're not here to pity them," Naoto told them. "We're here to make contact, which we've done, learn from them, which we could probably do a bit more of, and help fight back against the Shadow outbreaks however we can. We still have a little time left all together like this, so let's make the most of it while we can."
"You think we can even hold a candle to the Phantom Thieves?" Chie asked. "One of them even mentioned that they can use some of their powers even without the outfits, let alone calling their Personas!"
Naoto frowned at this statement. "What makes you think we can't do it too?"
Yu held out his hand and concentrated. After a few tense seconds of waiting, he felt a slight chill as power filled his chest and ran down his arm. Arcs of electricity popped and snapped across his palm and fingers as the other members of the Investigation Team looked on, wide-eyed.
"Well, that answers that question," he remarked mildly.