I gave a slight grunt as my brain fought its way back to consciousness. My eyes struggled to open, but I winced and shrank back as the light of dawn hit me full in the face. I sat up in bed and stretched like a cat. Today was the start of the class trip to Inaba.

Once I had smoothed out my bedsheets, I hopped off the top bunk and landed as quietly as I could. Tsuneo was still in bed, like usual. I glanced at him as I went over to the closet for my uniform. I shrugged. He did things his way, I did them mine.

The three-bedroom apartment that we lived in was smaller than my parents liked, but for what it was worth it worked for us. My parents had the master bedroom, my brother and I had a bunk bed in the boys' bedroom, and my two younger sisters shared another bunk bed in the girls' bedroom. The house had gotten a little less crowded lately now that our eldest sister, Mira, was away in America going to college, but it had done little to decrease the amount of stuff we had.

The walls of the living room were lined with bookshelves, bearing hundreds of books, movies, and old tape recordings, many of which our family had had ample time to learn to appreciate. Mom's plants sat well-watered and catching the morning sun by the window, with a decorative vine hanging over them. The soft couch and chairs were a dark blue and the rug they sat on was a heavy blue with sweeping vinelike and floral designs in cream, red, green, and cyan patterns. Per Mom's need to always keep things clean, every surface was spotless.

Out in the kitchen, Mom had already set up a simple breakfast. Ours was a family of mixed heritage, my dad being more than half Finnish with only his male line being Japanese, and my mom another "hafu" as they called them here, a half-Japanese with Irish, Indian, and even a few Native American ancestors on her mother's side. And since my mom loved to cook, that meant something different every day. Of course the traditional Japanese staples of rice and miso were present, but they were accompanied by a different pastry every day. Today's were ordinary-seeming buns, but knowing Shizuko Okuda, they were probably filled with something.

I switched my equipped Persona to Archangel. Archangel's primary magic was bless, but it also had some psychic magic, which was one of my favorites. Striding into the kitchen, I flicked my fingers at one of the cupboard doors, catching the corner in an aura of violet energy and flicking it open. Still using my powers, I selected a plate off the top and maneuvered it down into my hands before reaching up to manually close the cupboard door.

Mom looked up from the book she was reading as she ate her own breakfast. "Kenzo, could you please not use your powers on the kitchenware? I don't want to have to clean up if you end up dropping something."

"Sorry Mom," I told her as I sat down at my own spot. "Fortunately, I have yet to drop anything with my psychic abilities."

Mom gave me a skeptical look as I sat down at the table. "Your father and I had a talk last night concerning your… activities lately."

I looked at her but said nothing, silently prompting her to continue. "We think it's good that you're doing what you can to help make the city safer, but we're still really worried about you putting yourself in danger like this. So we want to be kept in the loop about everything you're doing from here on out, and we want to know immediately if there is anything at all that we can do to help keep you safe out there."

I nodded along, thinking on the request (even though it wasn't really a request) when Dad walked into the room. Yoshito Okuda was not tall, (I was almost taller than him by now), but he had a somewhat bulkier frame than the average Japanese man, most likely courtesy of his Finnish blood. I also occasionally liked to joke that he aged like a hobbit, since his strong jaw, twinkling eyes, and fluffy brown hair had barely changed at all since he married Mom. As he walked into the kitchen though, I noticed his usually passive attitude had been replaced with one of stern thoughtfulness, one that intensified as he noticed me at the table.

Mom was the worrier of the family, but if Dad was feeling the same way after last night's discussion, it spoke volumes about how seriously they were taking this.

"Hey, Dad," I greeted him.

"Hi, dear," Mom added in. "I was just talking to Kenzo about what we discussed last night."

Dad nodded grimly as he picked up the pot from the coffee maker and poured himself a cup. "Serious stuff you're getting involved in, Kenzo," he told me, opening the fridge to grab some milk.

"Deadly serious," I confirmed somberly, taking a bite of my pastry. Almond filling. Always a favorite, especially of mine and my younger sisters.

"And you're going to be out of town for your class trip for the next few days," Dad continued, sipping his coffee. "So when you get back, the three of us are all going to sit down and have a talk about everything you've been getting into."

"That's going to be a long discussion," I noted. "I don't know everything yet, and the entire concept of the Metaverse is quite complicated."

"That's why we're waiting until you get back and not having that discussion now," Mom told me. "I know we can't exactly stop you from doing everything you've been doing, hunting Shadows or whatever, and considering how it keeps people from being attacked by them and the fact that you're getting older and more independent, it would be wrong of us to try. But that doesn't change the fact that this… activity is dangerous, and we want to make sure that you're consistently coming home in one piece."

I continued to nod along to this. Interrupting and trying to explain that healing spells existed would most likely spin the conversation off into reasons why I couldn't always rely on my magic. Conversations with Mom had a tendency of doing that. She thought of everything.

"I understand," I told them. "When I get back from the school trip, I'll tell you everything I know about this business and all the things I can think of that you can help me with."

"Kenzo!" My youngest sister, Mizuki, came joke-crying out of the hallway. "Chi-chi's being mean to me! Can you please zap her?"

I sighed and kneaded my forehead. "It was just that one time, when are you going to let it go?"

"Come on! Pleeeeaaase zap her!"

"Why would I do that?"

"She won't stop saying fishy!" The ultimate crime.

I gave another sigh, Mom and Dad exchanged amused looks, and down the hallway, I could hear Chiyo cackling hysterically. Naturally, everyone could tell that Mizuki was only fake-whining, and secretly enjoyed arguments with her sister as much as Chiyo did. The two of them were younger than both myself and Tsuneo, Chiyo sporting Dad's fluffy brown hair and sky-blue eyes coupled with Mom's narrower bone structure, while Mizuki was a black-haired glasses girl with a slightly less petite build, but was still shorter than Chiyo on account of her age.

"You girls never change. And here I thought when Mira went off to college you might calm down a little."

"No way," Tsuneo grumbled, finally stepping out of his room. "They just went from bugging Mira to bugging everyone else."

I smirked at him. "Like you did to me before you turned into an edgy teenager?"

Tsuneo just glared at me and swiped a plate. His expression said, Get me out of this house of weirdos.

Tsuneo was by far the most "normal" of all my siblings. A born athlete, with a love of games and a competitive streak to rival my own. The main difference was that he didn't really mind losing that much, and craved any sort of challenge, so as we grew older and I started to grow away from sports and gravitate more towards crafts and stories, it left my brother without someone to compete with. This left him becoming more distant to the rest of the family and gravitating more towards his friends from school. People who saw us together usually had a hard time believing we were brothers, and I couldn't exactly blame them, since not only were our interests and personalities quite different, Tsuneo had also inherited Dad's square jaw and powerful bone structure and Mom's curly hair (though it was the same shade of brown as Dad's) and dark brown eyes, a stark contrast to my piercing sea-gray eyes, short-cut straight hair, angular features, and lean bone structure.

Mizuki rolled her eyes at Tsuneo. "You're no fun," she told him before turning back to me. "Please, Kenzo? Can you please zap Chi-Chi for me?"

"Acting cute like that isn't going to motivate me you know," I told her. "Also, I'm trying to eat here."

"But she's being mean to me-"

I directed a finger at another pastry and directed it to swoop across the table and hover in Mizuki's face. "Here, have some breakfast. See if that helps."

Mizuki didn't bother taking the pastry and instead bit out of it directly. I saw her entire face light up as soon as she tasted the almond filling. "Chi-Chi! I'm enjoying the almond pastries without you!"

"WHAT!?" came an outraged cry from down the hall. "No fair!"

I barked a laugh as Chiyo came charging down the hall. The girls started making noise, Tsuneo was just trying to eat, Mom and Dad tried to calm the girls down when they got too loud, and everyone had absolutely forgotten about my newfound powers.

It was great.

"Wow, I didn't expect you to have a family that big," Shen remarked. "I thought Japan had declining birth rates?"

"We were all born in America, remember?" I reminded him. "So that doesn't really apply to us."

Shen shrugged. "I was just wondering if your parents were trying to solve that particular issue all on their own."

"Nah, five kids is enough crazy for one household."

"So, your parents… they've been supporting all of you, right?" Arisu finally spoke up. She'd been strangely silent since I'd started talking about my family. "Do they have any sort of… expectations for your future?"

I frowned and considered. "Well, it's kind of hard for them not to," I admitted. "I mean, back when we were living in America, the entire lot of us were basically too smart for the schools to handle. Our reading levels were far beyond the grade recommendations, we basically never missed a question on quizzes or tests, and sometimes when I got bored, I turned my spelling sentences into little stories. So yeah, our parents obviously expect us to choose a field that we're interested in and excel in it to the best of our abilities."

Arisu's attention shifted back to her thoughts at these words. Obviously she was experiencing some sort of problem with her family, but while I didn't want to pry if the subject was too sensitive, there was always the chance I might be able to help if that was the case.

"Now arriving in Yasoinaba. End of the line: Yasoinaba."

My moment of indecision was cut off by the sound of the train speakers announcing our arrival in Inaba. I looked at Arisu. "I'd like to continue this discussion with you later, if you don't mind."

Arisu glanced at me briefly before giving a slow nod. Despite how we'd gotten closer since she'd joined the Shadow hunting, Arisu was clearly still reluctant to open up. That just meant I had to do a better job at being her friend.

There were some very clear sounds of disappointment from the rest of our classmates as we got off the train. "Risette seriously lives here? There's nothing here," a girl said at my elbow.

Her friend countered, "I told you there's no way we'd actually be able to meet her. She's an idol, she's way too busy to meet with everyone that visits her hometown."

"Alright, settle down everyone," Kawakami-sensei was saying. "I know there's not much here, but this is where you all voted to come. At the very least we can enjoy the comforts of the countryside while we're out here on this trip. Barring that-"

Kawakami-sensei was interrupted by the rumble of a motorcycle. She quickly motioned for everyone to back out of the way as a steel-armored two-wheeler rumbled up to the station and came to a halt. The rider wore a black coat with silver buckles and a black helmet with the visor also lined with silver, and a katana was slung at his hip on a leather baldric. He coolly stepped off his bike and as he leaned against it, his helmet vanished in a flash of blue fire, replaced with a thick-browed steel mask.

"I heard we had a class on tour this week," drawled Yu Narukami. "Need a guide?"

It had taken quite a while to get people to calm down and the fangirling to stop. Narukami had been inhumanly patient with everyone, smiling casually and taking questions one at a time.

"Is Risette here too?"

"She's on tour around the country at the moment."

"What about the rest of your team?"

"You might see them around town every now and then."

"When's the wedding?"

"Later this winter."

"Can we see you fight Shadows?"

"I'm pretty sure your chaperones don't want me putting you all in danger like that."

"Can we at least see your Persona?"

"Which one?"

"Your strongest one!"

Narukami smirked at the person who'd asked that question. "Should've guessed you'd ask that." He made a dramatic twirl, his coat flaring, and cast his mask to the ground. "Izanagi-no-Okami!" At his cry, the white-robed creator deity flashed into existence before him, spinning his double-ended sword staff in one hand before slamming it into the ground with a force that made the ground tremble. Everyone in the crowd of students fell silent at the display.

"Alright, I think that's enough questions for now," Narukami stated, summoning his Ultimate Persona back to his mask. "I'll have to confer with your chaperones for a minute to figure out how best to offer my assistance, so in the meantime, make sure you're all here and didn't forget anything on the train."

As expected, the tour of Inaba was fairly basic (it was just an ordinary countryside town after all) but in pretty much everyone's eyes, just having Narukami along as a tour guide substantially elevated the tour experience. Every site he pointed out had a story. Master Daidara's metalworks, where his team bought much of their gear. The Tofu Shop run by Rise's grandmother, where the team had caught a stalker before Rise's kidnapping. The store where the Investigation Team had bought their medicines, and a couple of stories about the close calls that said medicines had saved them from.

Now, everyone was standing outside Tatsumi Textiles. It was a simple, traditional little place, though the impression was offset by the presence of another sleek, armored motorcycle just outside the door. "Now, why don't we meet one of my teammates?" Narukami said before stepping up to the door and knocking twice. "Hey, Kanji! You free right now?"

There was a sound of footsteps from inside before the door swung open. The man who opened it was tall and buff, with neatly-combed black hair, a handsome black leather jacket over a simple gray tee, and a rather hard expression. I had seen Kanji Tatsumi at the big meeting earlier that week, but seeing him towering over basically everyone else there did wonders to highlight his monstrous physique.

"Yo, Senpai," Tatsumi greeted the silver-haired Wild Card. "This that class you said was comin' by?"

"That's right," Narukami told him, turning back to the class. "May I present Kanji Tatsumi, our team's muscle."

"He works at a textile shop?" one of the boys asked, a little confused.

"Heck yeah, I do!" Tatsumi barked. "The stuff I make is so frickin' cute it'll give you diabetes!"

Basically everyone was baffled by this declaration. Shen whispered to me, "If he's that bold about it, no wonder he has a Persona."

"Listen up, kids, because this is an important lesson that took me way too long to learn," Tatsumi began. "If you wanna be a real man, you gotta do what you love and put your whole heart into it. That way, it doesn't matter what anyone else says about you. Who cares that I like making dolls for kids? I'll tell ya who: those kids do, and they love 'em! So stop by anytime you want while you're here, whether you want a man's advice or just want to buy something. Can't guarantee I'll be here all the time, since everyone on the team takes turns patrolling for Shadows as well, but if you see me around town, just give me a holler."

Everyone's opinion of Kanji Tatsumi flipped pretty quickly after that. Several girls promised to come back once they had the time, and Tatsumi had welcomed their patronage. Once we were done with the tour of the shopping district, Narukami led everyone out to the Samegawa Flood Plain, overlooking the river.

"This seems like a good time to stop for some lunch," Kawakami-sensei noted. "Anyone here not have a bento?" A few people raised their hands. "Well, we just passed all those places in the shopping district. If you want some lunch, form a group and grab some takeout. Just make sure you come back by the time you're done so we can move on."

As people began to take various seats on the soft grass of the floodplain, I exchanged glances with Shen and Arisu and motioned in Narukami's direction. The two of them silently agreed and we all moved to join him where he sat a little ways away from the class. He'd let his Rebel's Garb fade and was now dressed only in a simple white t-shirt and jeans. He looked up as we approached.

"Kenzo Okuda," he greeted me pleasantly. "Good to see that you have recovered."

"And then some," I concurred before motioning to my companions. "My friends are Shen Kurata-Yang and Arisu Fukuda."

Narukami dipped his head to them both. "Pleasure to meet you both. And please, call me Yu."

"Pleasure to meet you too," Arisu replied.

"Always nice to meet a fellow Persona-user," Shen said casually.

Yu's gaze moved to the Shackles on Shen and Arisu's wrists. "Joker mentioned those to me. How're the Shattering Shackles working out for you?"

"Wait, you can see past the perception filter on those?" I asked.

Yu shrugged. "Ever since Izanagi first evolved into Izanagi-no-Okami, I've become better at seeing past lies and illusions. That ability has only gotten stronger since the Outbreak, and now that I have my Zero Skill, Perfect Memory, nothing ever slips under my nose anymore. And if the illusion is too powerful, well…" Yu slipped a hand into his pocket and produced an orb that fit perfectly in the palm of his hand, clear as crystal and shining as though it had a drop of sun at its core. "That's what this is for."

"What is it?" Shen inquired.

"The Orb of Sight," Yu explained. "It was given to me by Igor to allow me to see Izanami's true form when I fought her at the end of the 2011 murder case. This artifact pierces through all lies and all illusions, regardless of their strength or subtlety." He pocketed the orb again. "I reckon the Phantom Thieves also have a few artifacts that they like to keep around, in case they're ever needed again."

I was baffled at these words. "Oracle's already building doors that become walls unless you've seen them open before, rooms that are bigger on the inside, and gadgets that let you Awaken to supernatural powers, and you're telling me they might have even more stuff?"

Yu shrugged carelessly. I exchanged a look with Shen. "We really need to up our game," Shen told me.

Yu chuckled. "Don't try to move too fast and wear yourselves out," he cautioned. "Remember, this stuff is dangerous. It took our team an entire year to reach the end of our journey, and if I've got my dates right, so did the Thieves and the Shadow Operatives. And even now, we're still growing. As long as you take things slow and be true to yourselves, things will work out fine."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence," I told him. "Still, can't exactly hurt to know about the kinds of things all my senpai have gone through, can it? So come on, tell us about how the Metaverse worked for you."

What followed was a lengthy discussion about the TV world and how it and the dungeons within it functioned. How when someone appeared on TV and became suddenly well-known, their silhouette would appear on the Midnight Channel, which prompted another kidnapping, followed by the victim being thrown into the TV. The three of us were rather surprised that during Yu's time, normal Shadows didn't take the form of Personae, but rather looked like crawling spirits or possessed objects. Yu had instead gained new Personae by picking up one of a random set of cards dropped by defeated Shadows, cards that he could then give to Igor and Margaret, his attendant, to fuse into new Personae.

"A bit of a strange system, but I suppose I can see the logic behind it," I said.

"But then why did Shadows look like Personae for the Phantom Thieves?" Arisu wondered.

Yu gave a helpless shrug. "I don't think anyone knows the full reason. Could be any number of things. Could be greater awareness of what Shadows really are, could be it was because of the Metaverse encroaching more and more on the real world, could be because the Phantom Thieves were fighting Shadows deeper in the Metaverse than we were, I don't know. And at this point, I don't think anyone will ever find out."

Yu continued, telling us about how he and the Investigation Team had slowly put together what had been happening in Inaba since the beginning of the Midnight Channel. How the murders had been perpetrated by Tohru Adachi, who then tricked Taro Namatame, now the town's mayor, into continuing the kidnappings, thinking that he was saving them, when in reality, it was Yu and his friends who were going into the TV and rescuing them. How they'd confronted Adachi and defeated the Sagiri he'd turned into. And finally, how on the final day, he'd confronted Izanami and defeated her, and the fog in the TV world had vanished, revealing a sparkling garden and forest in its place.

"It's still there actually," Yu concluded. "Teddie especially likes to go back there every now and then. He's started calling it the "Garden of Hearts". Apparently while Shadows do sometimes appear in it, especially in the old dungeons, they're mostly either not hostile or kept at bay by the light and even a few of the plants and flowers in there."

"Is it still possible for someone's Personal Shadow to appear in there?" Shen asked.

My head snapped around to glare at him. "You're not thinking what I think you are, are you?"

Shen grinned. "What? I'm not stupid, I wouldn't go in alone. Plus, we have probably the most powerful Persona-user in the entire world at the moment right here." He waved in Yu's direction. "Nothing to worry about at all."

Arisu gave him a skeptical look. "How do you know he's-"

"Because he's a Phantom Class Wild Card like Joker, but he's been doing this for longer, which means he's probably more powerful."

"Flattering," Yu told him. "And if you want to visit the Garden on your free time, I don't really have any issue with it. I have the rest of the week off after all. Here, I'll give you my number." Our attention was momentarily diverted as Kawakami-sensie stood up from her seat and began calling for everyone to start finishing up so they could move on. "Better make it quick, since it seems we'll be moving on soon."

"Sure." I retrieved my phone from my pocket and opened it up so I could enter Yu's contact information. I stepped back and bumped into someone. "Oh, my apologies."

"Don't worry about it," the girl said. Her androgynous partner nodded in my direction and they started walking away."

"Kenzo…" I heard Yu's warning. I had noticed it too. My phone wasn't the only thing that was no longer in my pocket.

"Look you two, if you wanted something from me, you could've just asked," I called out, glaring pointedly at the two of them. The pair froze in their tracks. Then they nodded to each other and took off running.

I sighed. "Deinonychus, Sukukaja," I chanted, casting a speed buff on myself. I looked at Shen and Arisu. "I'll handle this. Just make sure Kawakami-sensei knows that I'll be back in a bit."

Then I was off in a dead sprint, running to catch two thieves.