Akane turned around to address the rest of the class. "My name is Akane Hasegawa. It is good to meet you." She gave a slight bow.
"Hasegawa? That sounds familiar."
"Dude! Zenkichi Hasegawa!"
"You mean Wolf? The Phantom Thief!?"
"You think they're related?"
Both Akane and Kawakami-sensei sighed, Kawakami-sensei perhaps a little more obviously. "Alright, settle down," Kawakami-sensei told the class. "Hasegawa-chan, you can sit at that seat on the side there. Let's hope you're not as much of a troublemaker as the transfer student I had for homeroom a couple years ago."
Akane couldn't help but give a slight snort of laughter as she heard that. She had an inkling of who that had been.
The moment the lunch began, Akane was instantly surrounded by a group of her more brazen classmates.
"Hey, if your name's Hasegawa, does that mean you're related to Zenkichi Hasegawa?"
Akane had already come prepared with a response though. "It's a common name," she said simply.
The other students pulled back a little in disappointment as they got what she was implying. "Boo, that's disappointing," the girl who'd asked her the question muttered. "It would be so cool if you were related."
"Tell me about it," Akane snorted. "At my old school, after the Outbreak, virtually everyone was demanding to know if I was related to Wolf. I don't suppose the rumor mill here at Shujin is any better?"
"Not a chance, sorry," one of the other girls answered. "Shujin is pretty notorious for having a fast rumor mill. You hear new stories every week."
"Anyway, you want to come with us?" The first girl asked. "I know we only came here at first because we wanted to ask about the Phantom Thieves, but you seem pretty cool and we should probably get to the student store for lunch before everything's sold out, so do you want to come with us?"
Akane flashed a grin. "Sure! Let's go!"
Akane got up from her desk and the four other girls dashed with her down the hall and down the stairs, headed for the student store. About halfway there, Akane ventured, "I just realized, I never got your name."
The lead girl was struck by this and gave a self-deprecating snort. "Oh, sorry. Where are my manners? I'm Mita Eri. Nice to meet you!"
Akane smiled back, but in doing so momentarily neglected to look where she was going and almost ran into a second-year who was just entering the stairwell. He reacted swiftly, stepping out of the way seemingly without effort to avoid the hurrying girls. Akane's own reaction was similarly swift, skidding to a halt before she could risk stumbling into him. Unfortunately, the girl behind her wasn't so lucky, stumbling over her feet as she tried to stop herself from careening into Akane.
"You alright?" the boy asked in a concerned tone.
"Fine, fine," the girl waved him off before looking him in the eyes and immediately freezing.
The boy raised one arching eyebrow. "What did I do?"
"Nothing! Nothing!" she immediately stammered. "I just-uh-we're in a hurry to get to the Student Store before it gets too packed."
"Don't let a nobody like me keep you waiting then," he told her, waving their group down the stairs before him. His strange eyes met Akane's briefly as he looked over the group, and just for an instant, Cosette stirred in her soul. Then they continued down the stairs.
There was already a line at the Student Store when they got there, so they settled in for the wait. The boy had followed them down the stairwell and ignored the line, opting instead to head straight for the courtyard, so Akane assumed he'd brought a bento or something.
Eri turned to the girl who'd almost bumped into Akane on the stairwell. "You sure you're okay, Fumiko?"
"I'm fine, Mita," Fumiko answered. "Just didn't realize that was him until he stopped to talk to me."
"That was who?" Akane asked.
"Right, you wouldn't know," Eri remembered. "That boy back there was Kenzo Okuda. No one even looked at him twice before the Outbreak, mostly because he always keeps to himself, but apparently sometime around the end of last semester, something happened and he got one of those Personas."
Akane's head swiveled to look in the direction Okuda had gone. "He's a Persona-user?" If that was true, it was no wonder she felt a reaction from Cosette.
One of the other girls nodded enthusiastically. "I saw him in Akihabara over the summer, fighting a gang of lesser Shadows. His Persona looked like a hairy, deformed man toting a big bronze bell, and he was hucking fireballs and punching them with his bare hands."
"He must hang out in Akihabara pretty often," the last girl added. "A fire-using Persona-user apparently saved my little brother from a Greater Shadow in that area as well, and he described his Persona to be pretty similar to what you just said."
"So it's pretty common knowledge that he's a Persona-user?" Akane asked. "In that case, he can't be one of the Phantom Thieves, can he?"
"Nah, he didn't have a costume. The Phantom Thieves all have costumes. Apparently he's also said some malarkey about being only Hunter Class? Whatever that means."
"Wait, I think I saw someone talking about that online," Akane mentioned. "Apparently, Persona-users who can't summon their Persona by themselves and require a catalyst to do it are Hunter Class, those who can summon a Persona without a catalyst are Sage Class, and the last group, Phantom Class Persona-users, have costumes that reflect their image of themselves and additional physical enhancements."
"So if he's Hunter Class, that means he needs a special item or something to use his Persona?" Eri concluded. "Either way, it's still kinda unfair that he gets to be a Persona-user."
"Unfair?" Akane questioned. "From what the Phantom Thieves have said, practically everyone has the potential."
"Well, yeah, that's what they say," one of the other girls replied. "But how do you even go about doing the things they talk about? Facing yourself? Your Shadow? Not exactly a weekend at the movies, you know?"
"Well, if it were easy, wouldn't that defeat the purpose?" Akane asked. "People are only strong because they've had to do things that are hard. If it weren't hard to awaken to a Persona, it wouldn't make us stronger."
That made them stop for a minute. "Well, I don't suppose we can argue with that logic," Eri conceded. Then she brightened. "Oh, hey, it's our turn."
I definitely hadn't imagined it when I'd felt Quasimodo stir as I'd met that younger girl's eyes. More than likely she was a Persona-user as well. I'd picked up from my classroom's grapevine that a new student with the last name Hasegawa was transfering to Shujin, as well as the questions of whether she was related to a certain Wolf. It wasn't hard to pick up on, since Zenkichi Hasegawa was well-known as the only Phantom Thief whose identity was known to the public.
Although speaking of the rumor mill, now I was starting to regret openly using Quasimodo over the summer. Essentially the entire school knew I was a Persona-user now, despite the pains I'd taken to hide the Vane of Order. Listening in on all the gossip in my classroom seemed to confirm this easily. Oh, well. It wasn't like I was fighting Shadows downtown for fame or the fun of it. I didn't really care what anyone else thought of me. All I really wanted was for people to leave me alone. I'd take that over getting harassed all the time any day.
As soon as that thought crossed my mind, my phone buzzed. I groaned and pulled it out. Then my eyebrows knit in confusion. The number was one I didn't recognize, but the message was…
?: I am Alibaba, a member of the Phantom Thieves.
?: I wish to speak with you, Kenzo Okuda.
Cocking an eyebrow, I typed out a reply.
Me: The only people who have this number are my parents.
Me: That can only mean you hacked my phone.
Me: And the Phantom Thief I know who would be most likely to do that would be…
Me: Their navigator, Oracle.
I had to wait a few more minutes for a response.
?: Fine, yes, I'm Oracle.
?: But damn I didn't think you'd be that good at deductions
Me: I'm good at thinking outside the box. Especially handy in these times.
Me: About all I'm good at if we're being honest.
?: So not true, Joker told me how you wasted that Tsuchigumo Shadow in Akihabara
?: and you picked up on Shadows dropping Spellstone before anyone else
?: and it's because of you that we know about the VOs
Me: Okay, fine, you've made your point.
?: Really not safe for you to be using the VO though.
Me: I have a plan to deal with that.
?: Do tell.
Me: All I have to do is awaken to a real Persona as a Sage Class Persona-user
Me: And the best way to do that is to face my Shadow
Me: In theory, if I goad the VO enough, it might force my Shadow to corporealize and attack me with it
Me: If I stall for time with some talk, I can personally accept it and gain a real Persona.
?: There are so many leaps in logic there, I don't even know what to say.
Me: I know, it's only the bare bones of a plan
?: How do you even know that the VO will try that?
?: What makes you so sure you can deal with your Shadow on your own?
?: Are you an utter moron?
Me: One question at a time please.
Me: The VO probably won't try to kill me. It wants to control me, and having my Shadow do it by force seems to be the best way to do it if it can't do it subtly.
Me: A person's Shadow is all the parts of themselves they don't like to see. I know that.
Me: But I've done a lot of introspection. It might be hard to admit all my faults, but I'm also honest to a fault, so it shouldn't be too hard for me compared to some others.
Me: Also yes, it is entirely possible that I am an utter moron.
?: You'd just admit that?
Me: I told you, I'm honest to a fault. Besides, there are two human traits that are truly infinite: their creativity, and their stupidity.
?: You're a philosopher too?
?: Is there anything you can't do?
Me: Can't code, though I probably could if I put in the time.
?: Yeah, leave that to me.
Me: Speaking of, I'm curious about something.
?: What?
Me: Is Futaba Sakura one of you?
There was a long pause.
?: HOW?
Me: I'm in her class.
Me: She seemed really shaken right before the first Outbreak and kept muttering about Shadows.
Me: She then immediately disappeared after the students were evacuated from the classrooms.
?: …
?: Okay, now you're starting to freak me out.
I blinked at that response. I started to type out a reply, but suddenly the Messenger app told me This number does not exist and closed me out. I connected the pieces in my brain and immediately felt bad. I was definitely going to have to apologize for making her uncomfortable at some point.
I internally cursed myself. I just had to screw things up, as always.
Sumire met with Futaba at the front of the school as planned. "So how did it go?" the redhead asked her fellow ginger.
"He figured out that it was me," Futaba reported. She still sounded shaken.
Sumire was shocked. "What? How?"
"He saw my reaction when I first sensed the Outbreak and noticed that I'd disappeared after the earthquake evacuation," Futaba told her. "Then he asked me directly if Futaba Sakura was a Phantom Thief."
"Well, look on the bright side," Sumire responded. "Even if he knows who you are, he won't tell anyone. He's known Ren for a while now and hasn't told anyone."
"Yeah, I get that," Futaba told her senpai. "It's just that...he throws me off. It's like Inari talking about his art, except with Okuda, he puts together all these random things and just states his conclusion like it should be perfectly obvious what he's talking about. He came up with an actual plan for getting that Vane of Order to let him face his Shadow and everything! Seriously, no wonder he's going to be a Wild Card once he gets that thing out of his hand."
"Couldn't he just have it surgically removed?" Sumire asked. "That would be simpler."
"Probably not safe," Futaba answered. "I don't know what kinds of defense mechanisms that feather has, but it's probably better to leave it alone for now. Anyway, let's get back to Leblanc. I'm dying for some Sojiro curry right now. Also, I want my daily dose of baby catboy Mona."
"Futaba, you should really learn to leave him alone," Sumire chastised.
"I can't help iiiit, he's too adorable!" Futaba whined. "So unfair that he gets to be the cute one now. That used to be my thing!"
Sumire couldn't help but give a slight giggle as the pair entered the subway. Futaba just never changed.
I was still in a fairly melancholy mood as I walked home from Shujin. I was boredly tossing a small chunk of Spellstone in my hand as I walked, not that I really needed it. I noticed a pair of lesser Shadows down an alleyway as I passed, and without pausing snatched the Spellstone out of the air, muttered the trigger word under my breath, and chucked the marble-sized rock at them. The Maragi spell immediately blasted both Shadows and disintegrated them.
My brow knit as a thought crossed my mind. I'd been experimenting with Spellstone all summer ever since that guy with the jet-black hair who led the Phantom Thieves learned what the stuff was for, so was there any reason for me not to head over to their hideout and compare notes? After all, there was only so much I could learn with Quasimodo's fire skills, an unreliable instant-kill curse attack, Evil Smile, and Tentarafoo.
Before long, I was standing at the door to my family's apartment complex. We lived on the bottom floor (my mom absolutely hated carrying things up and down stairs) and had a fairly humble living, but everything was clean, neat, and well-organized, again courtesy of my mom. Speaking of whom, she called out from the kitchen as soon as I opened the door. "Hello-o! Did you have a good day?"
"Fine, I guess," I told her.
"Is your hand giving you any more trouble?" she asked more seriously.
"Nothing today. And even if it did give me any grief, I've been getting a lot better about dealing with it."
"Hm. Well, be sure to tell me if it acts up again. By the way, I noticed that you have a lot of those rocks left over in your room while I was vacuuming this morning. Be sure to do something with them; I don't want them all over the place."
"Don't worry, I might have a place in mind they might be able to be kept," I told her. "I'll be headed out as soon as I change out of my uniform. (Why do they have to make these things so stiff?)"
"Be sure to be back by dinnertime, okay?" she told me. "And don't you dare come home hurt again. As if I didn't worry about you enough already."
I didn't say anything back as I entered my room. My younger brother was already home. He didn't say a word to me from where he lay on the lower level of our bunk bed, only giving me a brief glance before returning his attention to his phone. I mentally shrugged and wandered over to the closet, where I dropped off my schoolbag and reached inside for the bucket of Spellstone. I gathered up all the stones on my desk, both enchanted and unenchanted, dropped them off in the bucket, and mentally calculated how much I had. The bucket was about three-quarters full, an amount that I could easily carry inconspicuously in my schoolbag if I took out most of the textbooks.
A few minutes later, I was headed for Yongen-Jaya. I remembered jet-hair saying that a black and white cat would lead me to a café, where I could tell the owner I was looking for a game of cards. The trouble was, I didn't know what café I was looking for. But as I wandered down the road, a flash of movement caught my eye. And what do you know, it was a black cat with white paws, muzzle, and tail tip and a yellow neckerchief around its neck lying quite conspicuously on top of a nearby fence.
The cat looked up as I approached and met my gaze. For a moment I just stopped and stood there, both of us staring each other down. I broke the silence. "Sooo...are you going to lead me to a café now?"
The cat seemed to smirk at me and gave an amused-sounding purr before jumping down from the fence and scampering down a back alley. I turned and quickly followed, turning a corner just in time to see a poof of smoke envelop the cat. In its place stood a twelve-year-old child with a mischievous grin and black cat ears. "Nice to see you again, Kenzo," the catboy told me, opening the door of a tiny hole-in-the-wall café called Leblanc. "I'm Morgana. Though I have to say, we didn't expect you to take so long to come find this place."
"Um...okay," I said uncertainly as I walked in after him. The first thing I noticed was the simple, homey decor and the fragrant aromas wafting from behind the counters. The man behind the counter seemed to be in his fifties or so, with a pointy goatee and slicked-back black hair. Two girls occupied the counter, a smaller girl with light orange hair, and a slightly older girl with dark red hair, both chowing down on substantial plates of curry.
"Welcome," the man behind the counter told me, as Morgana let the door swing shut behind us. A poof next to me informed me he'd turned back into a cat right before he leaped up onto the counter. The man addressed the cat. "So this is the guy?"
"Kenzo Okuda, yeah," Morgana told him.
"Apologies for the intrusion," I told him. "I'm Kenzo Okuda. And...I'm apparently supposed to tell you I'm looking for a deck-no, a game of cards. (yeah, that was the passphrase.)"
The old man chuckled. "I'm Sojiro Sakura, but everyone around here calls me Boss. And no need to be so polite." He turned to the girls. "Futaba, Yoshizawa-chan, why don't you two take him upstairs, get him acquainted with the others?"
The orange-haired girl ducked her head and tried to say quietly, "Boff am no doff ehdd."
"Futaba, swallow before you try to talk," the red-haired girl said gently. She had already inhaled her food. I could have sworn she still had half of her plate left when I came in…
Futaba gulped down her mouthful and made out, "But I'm not done yet!"
"Then finish up," Sakura-san told her.
"Fine!" Futaba shoveled the last of her curry in her mouth as Sakura-san continued to wipe down the counter. In the meantime, the red-haired girl turned to address me.
"Very nice to meet you, kouhai" she told me. "My name is Sumire Yoshizawa. I've been doing gymnastics at Shujin Academy for the last two years, and I'm probably the most inexperienced member of the Phantom Thieves."
"Nice to meet you," I replied easily. "Kenzo Okuda, Hunter Class Persona-user. And once I get this Vane of Order out of my hand, I'll have the potential to become a Wild Card like your leader."
Futaba swallowed her last bite of curry and hopped down from her seat. "Well, you've got a high bar to meet, buddy. Futaba Sakura, though I also go by Oracle and Alibaba. Nice to meet you. Though considering we're in the same class at school, I'm sure you already know more or less who I am."
"True," I acknowledged, "although it wasn't until our messages earlier that I put two and two together about your Thief identity. Sorry for making you uncomfortable about that by the way."
"Eh, you're fine," Futaba told me. "I was just surprised is all. Two years ago, I probably wouldn't have gotten over it so fast, but I've racked up a lot more EXP since then! Still, now that you're here, we can finally test something I've been wanting to show off for a while now. Come on!"
The smaller girl seized me by the wrist and dragged me over to the staircase, Sumire stifling a giggle at Futaba's excitement before following behind. Upstairs from the café was a fairly bare-bones attic, though it contained a desk, a matress, a plant, and some boxes of coffee beans, finished off with a Phantom Thieves' banner next to the window. Futaba dragged me into the center of the room and had me face the wall in between the desk and the small television.
"Alright, now push against that wall," Futaba ordered. My brow knit in confusion, but I did as I was asked. The wall didn't budge. "As I'd hoped," Futaba said. "Now stay right there, and once I'm out of sight, try again." Before I could question these instructions, Futaba pushed against the wall, which slid back and out of the way to reveal a hidden passage. Futaba bounced inside and slid the wall back into place, closing the secret door with a satisfying-sounding click.
As Sumire came up the stairs behind me, I pushed against the wall again, and it slid open for me to reveal a madly-grinning orange-haired gremlin. "What was all that about?" I asked, joining her in the room beyond the hidden door.
"Oh, Futaba-chan was just testing her newest creation with a Vane of Order we picked up," Sumire answered.
Futaba elaborated, "I managed to wire it into a mechanism that programmed the door so that it can only be opened by someone who has seen the door open before. Anyone who hasn't will only see a wall, and the door will become one to them."
"Ah, I suppose that makes sense," I replied. I looked around the black-painted main room with its red carpet and furniture, decorated with elaborate paintings of the Phantom Thieves and their Personas, as well as a few Shadows. "This is quite the nice place you have here. Very stylish."
"Nyehehe!" Futaba snickered. "Welcome to the Thieves' Den!"
"Have a seat," Sumire offered. "We'll see who's here at the moment and fetch them." She and Futaba headed down the hall, and I took them up on the offer, having a seat on a small chair and pulling my schoolbag onto my lap so I could take out a few samples of Spellstone. Before long, I heard footsteps coming from the hallway and turned to see a familiar black-haired girl come to a halt just inside the room.
"You're that girl from the stairs at Shujin," I remembered. "So you are a Persona-user. I thought that was the case considering how I felt Quasimodo stir when I looked at you."
"I felt something from Cosette myself," the girl told me, walking over to where I was seated, "though you've been a little less discreet with your powers if what the rumors have been telling me are true. Akane Hasegawa, better known by the Phantom Thieves as Raven."
"Ah, so you joined them recently?" I inferred. "That's nice. I'm Kenzo Okuda. I'm not a Phantom Thief, and I still have a long way to go, but it's nice to know you're a peer."
Another voice came from the hallway. "Oh, looks like they've already met." Futaba and Sumire were back, bringing with them their jet-haired leader and his girlfriend, a small girl with a crimson pixie cut, and a lanky blue-haired fellow.
"I think this is everyone that's here at the moment," Futaba stated, sparking another round of introductions.
"Where are the rest?" I inquired after we finished.
"Let's see," Makoto murmured, "Zenkichi's at work, Haru is dealing with company business, and Morgana's still out. But where are…?"
"I believe Ann and Ryuji went to the gym after they finished classes," Yusuke mentioned.
"Ugh, could they get any more obvious?" Futaba griped. "Seriously, one of them should just ask the other out already and get it over with."
"I think Ann's too embarrassed and Ryuji's too afraid of getting killed by Morgana," Ren remarked. Then he discarded the snarky grin and focused on me. "Anyways, good to see you again, Okuda. You had much luck with the Spellstone since we last met?"
"I've done about as much research as I could by myself," I reported. I laid out several samples as I spoke. "The first thing I learned from enchanting this stuff is that I could only enchant Spellstone with skills that use mana. Or magical energy, or whatever you want to call it. I couldn't enchant them with Quasimodo's Bash or Sledgehammer skills, because those are physical attacks that cost physical energy or whatever. Secondly, the larger the stone, the more mana-costly the spell they can contain. If you try to enchant a stone with a spell too costly for it to contain, it'll explode. If the spell costs less than 75% of the amount of mana the stone can contain, the mana will be absorbed and the stone will fail to enchant. It also costs about 15% more mana to enchant a stone than it does to directly use the spell. Finally, you (obviously) can't enchant a stone with multiple spells."
"But how can you tell which stones have which spells?" Makoto asked, leaning over the table to examine a pair of stones enchanted with fire spells. They both glowed red, but were of different sizes.
In answer, I told her, "Try picking one up."
Makoto did so, and her eyebrows raised in surprise. "Agilao?" The spell's name rose unbidden to her lips.
"That's right," I told everyone. "Just touching a piece of enchanted Spellstone will tell you what it's enchanted with."
"Impressive," Ren said. "Do you know if people without Personas can use Spellstone too?"
"Unfortunately, no," I said regretfully. "I had my younger sister try to use a weak Agi stone on a lesser Shadow before, but it didn't activate, and I had to be the one to finish it off. But that might just be because she doesn't yet have the potential to awaken to a Persona. If you know anyone who does have the potential but hasn't awakened yet, maybe we could contact them and see if they can use these?"
"That sounds fairly plausible," Sophia spoke up for the first time. "This theory must be tested."
"Well, Hifumi's fairly close to awakening," Ren spoke up again, "and Mishima's not far behind. I'll get in touch with them and see what they can do with this stuff."
"While you're out doing that," I interrupted as he rose from his seat. I reached for my bag and dumped all the unenchanted Spellstone I had out of it. "Any chance you guys could take all this off my hands?"
Ren stepped down the stairs, Makoto right behind him as they headed back into Leblanc. "Hey, Boss," he greeted Sojiro as he stepped into the café. "The others are still showing the new guy around. I'm going to head out with Makoto for a bit."
"Before you do that," Sojiro interrupted, "there's some people here to see you."
"Huh?" Ren asked. Sojiro smirked at him and nodded at the booth closest to the door. Ren followed his gaze and immediately froze, a grin of pure elation spreading across his face.
Sitting there, looking at him, was a man and a woman. The man had short black hair and a smile as wide as the sea. The woman's hair was long, wavy, and black, and her gaze was warm and motherly.
"Mom! Dad!"