A/N: The revised Chapter 2 is here! Enjoy! (And review. XD)
Shun Wakahisa, Riko realized after talking to him for about ten minutes, was a hard guy to characterize at first glance. Her first impression of him was that he was an exceptionally disillusioned individual. And yet he was willing to work pro bono, which she found contradictory. His stated reason basically amounted to 'you won't pay me anyway, so I might as well just start off knowing that I'm working for nothing. Saves me the trouble of being disappointed later on'. She'd opened her mouth to object, but he'd just given her a look and she'd decided to let it go. His attitude was all the more confusing because he looked to only be a couple years older than she was; normally people in their age range were a lot more easy-going. She briefly wondered if his attitude was an act, a front to seem more adult or businesslike or something, but then she dismissed it as being totally not her problem. She needed this guy's help to find Serizawa. As soon as they worked that out, she'd be on her way and would more than likely never see him ever again.
"So, Riko-san," he said, "you said you're looking for someone?"
She nodded, sitting down in the chair in front of his desk. "I need to find this person, immediately."
"A relative?"
"No."
"Friend?"
"No."
"Friend of a friend?"
"No."
He gave her an inscrutable look. "Why are you looking for this person, if you don't know them personally?"
She hesitated, then shrugged. "Sorry, but I can't explain. And you wouldn't believe me if I tried. Just know that it's extremely important. I need to find this person," she repeated insistently.
"You keep saying 'this person'…Is it a he or a she?"
She flushed. "I don't know."
He arched an eyebrow. "Oh?"
Her blush deepened. "I don't know whether it's a man or a woman. I only have the name."
He tsked disapprovingly. "That's not very helpful."
She crossed her arms and glared at him. "If I knew who I was looking for, I wouldn't be here asking for your help."
He sighed gustily. "I suppose that's true." He flipped open a notebook. "What's the name?"
"Ulala Serizawa."
"Ulala?" he repeated in disbelief.
She shrugged. "Don't look at me."
"Well, it's not a common name, so that should help, I guess."
"Thank you for doing this," she said sincerely.
He glanced at her. "I haven't done anything yet."
She shrugged. "But you will, and I'm grateful."
He shook his head, but said nothing.
She left not long after that, with Shun's assurance that he'd call her once he found something. She'd thanked him again, and left the office. She'd considered giving him the other names on the list, but had decided against it. It would have brought up altogether too many questions, none of which she could answer without seeming insane. And it probably wouldn't have helped in any case.
She pulled out the sheet of paper and scanned it. Igor had admitted to leaving off some information, notably the last names of the main four on her list. Which left her with very little to go on, really.
Ulala Serizawa
Baofu
Katsuya Suou
*Eikichi
*Lisa
*Jun
*Tatsuya
Maya Amano
She had no idea if Baofu was another first name, or if it were a last name, or even an alias; after all, it meant 'revenge' in Mandarin, so if someone wanted to disappear and change their identity for a payback motive, the name would fit.
She scanned down the rest of the list, skipping over the main four. For whatever reason, her focus landed on the last name, Maya Amano.
At least I can be sure this one's a girl, she thought. She'd never heard of a boy named Maya. She just couldn't decide if she wanted to go back to the library for another online people-search or just go home for the day; she'd left her apartment at seven in the morning and it was almost four in the afternoon; she'd been at it for almost nine hours now.
She kicked at a pebble on the sidewalk and sent it skittering down the pavement. Nine hours she'd spent searching for Ulala Serizawa, with nothing to show for it. I wouldn't have expected people-finding to be this hard.
Suddenly the bouncing pebble stopped midair. She stared at it, then looked up and down the street. The cars had stopped, as had the cyclist who been pedaling furiously just moments before.
"I need to invest in an actual weapon at some point," she mused, looking around for Shadows. "Just using Sara all the time isn't a good idea…" she added, using her nickname for her Persona. She spotted two Shadows, black wolf-like creatures like before. Dark Hounds, she called them. One circled behind her while the other prowled straight towards her.
She clapped her hands together. "Sarasvati!"
Her Persona appeared. "Mabufu," she ordered, sending her Persona to attack both enemies at once. Her Persona obeyed, shattering ice upon both Dark Hounds. She repeated this twice more before the Hounds disintegrated, defeated.
She watched as time restarted and everything moved on as if nothing had happened. She watched as the cars drove by, their occupants unaware. The cyclist zoomed by, equally unaffected.
She felt very alone in that moment, watching the bustling people around her continue their lives, focused on whatever mundane tasks they thought were important.
All of these people…They have no idea what's really going on. She shivered, and zipped up her jacket, even though her shivers came from the chill of loneliness, and not the chill of the air.
Shun Wakahisa sat behind his desk. It had been almost two hours since the girl called Riko had left. He'd been working almost nonstop since she left, except for a moment when his computer had frozen, not long after the girl had gone. For the second time that day, in fact. He wondered if he should buy a new computer. One that periodically froze up for no apparent reason wasn't the most effective for his work.
Shaking his head, he reviewed his notes. He'd managed to find Ulala Serizawa after all, despite the total lack of information he'd had to work with. The person in question was a woman in her 30's, with strange hair and strange attire. She was living in an area of the city that was a half hour train ride away. He picked up his phone.
"This is Riko," the voice on the other end said.
"Good evening, Riko-san. I'm sorry to disturb you so late, but I've found Serizawa-san."
"Oh." He heard her surprise through the phone. "That was fast."
"I'm very good at what I do." Anyone who didn't know him might have said such a statement was bragging, but it was just the simple truth; a similar truth was that his job was more or less the only thing he was good at, at least from his own perspective.
There was a moment of silence, and then "So, who is it?"
"A woman in her thirties who lives and works over in the Yashu District."
Her tone of voice indicated that she was not thrilled with this bit of information. "That's across the city."
"It is," he agreed.
"Is there any way you can call her, and ask her to come here?"
"Riko-san?"
"Yeah?"
"You don't know this person, correct?"
"…Right."
"So would it not seem strange for me to call Serizawa-san, tell her there is a Riko-san who wants to speak with her, and ask her to come here, with no proper explanation for why?"
"…You have a point."
"Yes, I know."
"What did you have in mind then? I can't afford the train fare," she added.
"I'll pay for you," he said, the words tumbling from his mouth with absolutely no forethought whatsoever.
"What?" came the incredulous answer.
"I like to see my cases through to the end," he informed her. And it was technically the truth, in general. "So I'll be accompanying you. I'm not exactly rich either, but I can afford to pay for your train fare as well as mine."
"Thank you."
He snorted. "Again with the thanks. I'm not doing anything impressive."
"I disagree," the quiet voice answered seriously. "This is extremely important, and I'm incredibly grateful."
He could hear the sincerity in her voice, and it made him feel awkward. Gratitude always did. "It's nothing. Look, when are you free to go Yashu?"
"I don't have work tomorrow. Is tomorrow okay for you?"
"Tomorrow is fine," he answered, while at the same time wondering what the girl's job was. She looked to be around eighteen or nineteen; she could very well still be in school. Not that he was in any position to judge a person's age; he was only twenty-two, at least ten years younger than any other private detective in the city. For all he knew the girl could be a prodigy of some sort and had graduated early, or simply looked younger than her actual age.
He shook his head, clearing his thoughts. "Meet me here at the office at eight a.m. We can walk to the station from here."
"Okay," Riko agreed. "I'll see you tomorrow then."
"Wait a moment," he said before she could hang up.
"…Yes?"
"You never told me your last name."
"No. No, I didn't."
Riko snapped her phone shut before Shun could say anything else. She was glad he was helping her, but the last thing she needed was him knowing her full name and investigating her. Because if he found her records, the odds were he'd stop helping her. It didn't matter that the records didn't reflect even a fraction of the whole story. What was written there was taken as the truth by those who read it, and she couldn't afford to lose Shun's help at this point; she needed to find Tatsuya and the others as soon as possible. He knew where exactly Serizawa was and she didn't, and Serizawa was the only link she currently had to Tatsuya.
She leaned back in her chair, and glanced at her reflection in the vanity mirror. Pale green eyes stared back at her, and her black hair was in a shaggy disheveled pixie cut, nothing like the long braid she used to wear down her back.
Her phone beeped suddenly. She flipped it open, and saw an automatic service message from her cell company telling her that the cost of her bill had been automatically withdrawn from her bank account.
She deleted the message and closed her phone.
Riko tapped her foot as she rang the doorbell to Shun's office. She'd tried the door, but it was locked. She rang the doorbell again, impatient.
"Hello? Wakahisa-san?" She jabbed the button again. "Hello?"
"Knock it off!" came an irritated voice from inside, muffled by the door.
She pressed the buzzer one more time and then took a step back, crossing her arms.
The door opened, and Shun emerged, looking decidedly sleepy and disheveled. Unlike the previous day when he'd been wearing a simple white dress shirt and slacks, today he was in a blue turtleneck and jeans, and his hair was sticking up in all directions. He looked like an exhausted college student.
She arched an eyebrow. "Did I wake you?"
He rubbed a hand over his face. "Sorry. My alarm didn't go off."
She tilted her head. "We can put this off if you like." Well, actually she couldn't afford to wait, but she felt an odd tug at her heart seeing the young private detective looking the way he did. "Are you okay, Wakahisa-san?"
He nodded jerkily. "I'm fine. And you can just call me Shun if you want; 'Wakahisa-san' always makes me feel like someone's talking to my uncle or my father, not me."
"Alright then...Shun. Are you really okay? You look kinda beat."
He gave another quick nod. "I'll be alright. I was just up late working another case for a friend of mine. Just let me grab my wallet and we can go."
She nodded. "Okay."
He came back a moment later, his wallet in hand and his hair looking a little more tidy. "Shall we?"
She smiled. "Yeah. Let's go."
"So…" Shun said after they'd walked halfway to the train station in silence, "how old are you?"
She blinked, surprised. Of all the things for him to ask, that question had not crossed hr mind. "How old do I look?"
"Seventeen, eighteen?"
"I'm nineteen," she answered.
"Ah, so you have graduated high school, then."
"Ehhh…Not exactly."
He looked over at her. "What do you mean, 'not exactly'?"
"I dropped out in my senior year," she said honestly.
"Why?"
The answer to that question strayed into dangerous territory, and she bristled without quite meaning to. "Some stuff happened, alright? That's all you need to know."
He frowned, but let it go, obviously sensing that it was a sensitive topic.
"How old are you?" Riko asked suddenly, not sure where the impulse to ask had come from, but figuring what the hell, why not.
"Twenty-two."
"Huh."
"What?"
"Nothing. It's just that you look…you know, good."
"Good?" he repeated, confused.
"You know. Hot, sexy, handsome." She shrugged, and then blushed slightly. "Not that I care," she added hastily. "It's just an observation." She had neither the time nor the inclination to date anyone. Even if she did she'd have to find someone who was either okay with their girlfriend running off to fight monsters or someone who also had the Potential. Both situations were extremely unlikely.
"So….do you have a job?" Shun asked after a slightly awkward silence.
"Uh, yeah. I work at a café."
"Which café?"
"Kiki's."
He raised an eyebrow. "Isn't that a maid café?"
She flushed again. "Yeah. What of it?"
He shook his head. "Nothing. You just don't seem like the type to work at a café like that."
She shrugged, blush subsiding. "I know the owner. After I dropped out of school I needed a job, so she hired me."
"Nice of her."
"Mm." She bit her lip. "Look, why are you asking me all of this? I didn't hire you to research me."
"Technically you didn't hire me at all," he pointed out. "I volunteered, remember? Pro bono."
"And I said that I can pay you! Maybe not all at once, but eventually I'll have enough money to cover-"
Suddenly everything stopped moving, except her.
And oddly enough, Shun Wakahisa.
She stared at him. "You're still moving."
He glanced at her, as if she'd lost her mind. "Yeah?" Then he noticed that the rest of the world seemed to have frozen in place. "…What the hell?"
She looked at him as if he were an alien. "You're still moving," she repeated.
"Why has everything else stopped?!" he demanded, spinning around. "What the hell's going on?"
"…I don't believe it…" she laughed weakly, covering her eyes with a hand. "You have the Potential?"
"What are you talking about?!" Shun asked angrily, whirling to face her. "What's going on here?"
She didn't answer, just kept chuckling quietly in a half-hearted sort of way.
"Hey!" he grabbed her shoulders and shook her. "Explain what the hell this is right now!"
She stopped laughing suddenly and yanked away from him. "Hands off," she said irritably.
"What. Is. Going. On."
"Hmm…" She looked around. "Well, we're about to be attacked by a monster. Maybe more than one monster, actually. Won't know until they show themselves."
He frowned, still confused. "What are you talking about? Monsters?"
"Shadows," she clarified. "They're called Shadows. They take a lot of different shapes."
"Shadows," he repeated.
She nodded. "Yes. They used to show up in a different way in the past, but here time stops when they show up to attack whoever their target is. Normally people don't notice," she added. "Only those with the Potential are able to move around normally. I'm told it's similar to a prior phenomenon called the 'Dark Hour', though I have no idea what that actually is so…." She shrugged. "Basically, time stops when Shadows appears."
"So why aren't we frozen like the rest of them?" Shun asked weakly, gesturing to the frozen cars and pedestrians. "Why can we still move around?"
"I'm a Persona user." She looked at him seriously. "And it seems you are, too."
"…Persona?"
She opened her mouth to answer, and then stopped, hearing a sound. She spun around. "Here they come!"
"What?" He whirled around, and saw three large blobs of black lurching towards them. "Those are Shadows?!"
"They'll show their true forms once they get closer," she informed him.
"What do you mean, 'true form'?!" This was without a doubt the most confusing conversation of his life.
Before Riko could answer, the Shadows did it for him, morphing into new shapes. Eventually, they resembled large lions covered in spikes.
"That's new," Riko observed. "I've never seen a type like this before."
"This sort of thing is normal for you?!"
"Remember how I said that I couldn't tell you why I needed to find that person?" she asked offhandedly, taking a couple steps forward. "This is the reason."
He stared at her.
"I'm not lying," she said, glaring at him. "Now, you're useless without your Persona. Since you obviously have no idea how to summon it, just stay out of the way."
"Stay out of the-!" He felt a surge of irritation. "Just who do you think you are?!"
But the girl was ignoring him. She clapped her hands together, and suddenly energy swirled around her, coalescing in the figure of a woman; dressed in green with a gold headdress, with what seemed to be a white scarf of some sort, carrying an instrument.
"That's…?"
"My Persona," Riko told him. "Sarasvati." Mabufu, she ordered mentally. She didn't want to shout her attacks with Shun standing right there. It would lead to a slew of new questions; besides, it would be embarrassing.
Ice crystals shattered over the Shadows, but seemed to have little effect. "Well," she said, looking at the enemies, "that's not good." Suddenly one of the Shadows lunged at her. She leapt to the side, only to be swatted down by one of the other Shadows. She crashed into the hard pavement, skinning her elbow.
Shit. She rolled, barely dodging the next paw that slammed down. She made to stand, and discovered that she'd been effectively boxed in by two of the three shadows. The third was going after Shun.
"Hurry up and run!" she shouted, feeling oddly panicked. It was one thing for her to get killed by Shadows; it was another thing entirely for someone else to get dragged down with her. She'd known the risks going in, more or less. Shun was innocent, and didn't deserve to pay for her carelessness. "Run!"
Shun however, seemed to stuck in place, too scared to move.
"Wakahisa-san!" she yelled, narrowly avoiding a clawing to the face. "Shun!"
He jumped slightly, startled, and looked at her. Then he looked at the Shadow coming after him.
She shouted something as the Shadow leapt at him, but it was drowned out by a sudden blasting sound. The sound was accompanied by a bright flash of light, and she shut her eyes to avoid being blinded.
When she opened them, all she could do was gawk.
Shun had summoned his Persona. It seemed to be a large man, dressed simply, with some sort of horned helmet, carrying a large hammer.
"Thor," Shun whispered, barely loud enough for her to hear.
Suddenly Thor slammed his hammer down on the attacking Shadow, and it dissolved in nothingness.
It was then that Riko remembered that she was about to be killed by two very volatile Shadows. She moved to clap her hands together, but before she could summon Saravati, two blasts of lightning came from the sky and obliterated the Shadows.
She turned to look at Shun. He gave her a weak smile, and then collapsed. She ran to his side, and noticed that sometime during the fight he'd gotten injured. Badly injured, if the bloodstains seeping through his shirt were any indication. And she wasn't doing much better herself. For all that her elbow was the most painful injury, the deep gash across her shoulders from where she'd been clawed and slammed into the ground was likely the more serious injury, the pain likely masked only by the shock her body was going into.
Well, that's just super. We're both injured and exhausted. What a lovely day this turned out to be. Unfortunately, no amount of her dry humor was going to help heal them. And she needed to hurry and do something before time returned to normal. Otherwise someone was bound to notice that two people who'd been walking by normally were suddenly on the ground bleeding. No one was that oblivious. She bit her lip. Help…Please….I need help. She clenched her fists. Help. Nothing. Overcome with frustration, she slammed her fist into the ground, and suddenly there was another bright flash.
And then nothing.
A/N: Well, that was Chapter 2, revised and edited and whatnot.
I'm pleased with how it turned out, and I hope you guys are, too. For those of you who are new to the fic and wondering 'revised? new version? what's she talking about?', the original version of this chapter (and the story in general) was a little choppy in places, and Shun's behavior was a little... inconsistent, I guess you could say? But in any case, I went back through and fixed things up, and I hope you like it. Also, a few little things changed, like the order of the list of names Igor gave to Riko; this is significant only in the sense that the original order of the list did not match with the plotline I later mapped out. I discovered this itty bitty error while re-reading the old/original chapters, went "Whoopsie" and decided it was finally time to do a mini-overhaul on the whole story. Hence the shiny new revised chapters I am now posting in place of the old ones. XD
That being said...this was the only other chapter I actually had posted, out of all the ones I had set to go, meaning that all chapters posted after this will be new material for all you lovely readers. Meaning that this overhaul is probably a way bigger deal for me than it is for any of you. Oh well. XD
In any case, kindly review and let me know what you think. Feedback is always appreciated. :D
