-2009 (Stray Sheep, Third Day)-
- - G A M E O V E R - -
"God dammit." Orlando Haddick slapped the Rapunzel machine and, with wishful thinking, fished his finger into coin return bay. He could never be so lucky. In fact, in an idle thought he wondered if he'd experienced a single bit of solid luck since she'd left him.
"Hey, get back over here!" Jonny Ariga waved him over from their usual table. That was less likely to mean "I missed your company" as it did "Save me from Toby," so Orlando amused himself by stalling; he loitered by the jukebox, finally keying up a track. "Lamb Game between and " - yeah, that sounded about right. "Orlando!" He sighed.
"He's not going to stop asking." Erica Anderson had appeared at his side with a single shake of her hips.
"Why don't you go distract Toby?" Orlando looked at the distressingly attractive Erica and tried to block out what she looked like in high school.
"Jeeeealous?" She winked, and he pulled his hat brim over his eyes.
"Not even a little bit, Erica." At this point, the young mechanic was the lesser of two evils, and so Orlando plopped himself back into his booth, where The Boss had left a fresh drink waiting. Jonny was looking at him, pleadingly. Jonny's eyes were bloodshot, and his cigarette had burned down without touching his lips. Orlando knew that face – he was wearing it now, himself. Vincent's face, at least without that dumbfounded look. The nightmares were... well, not spreading, nightmares don't spread, not like how Erica claimed, but maybe it was a memetic thing? Orlando understood machines, this wetware stuff was too much for him.
"Hey, Orlando..." Toby Nebbins was, as always, bouncing just a bit in his seat. Normally a look from Jonny was enough to calm him down, but Jonny was half-awake today. "The Chief doesn't want me to look into that space tourism thing."
"That's because you'll never afford it." Orlando held up his drink. "False hope, Toby." Toby cast a glance over at Erica, and Jonny rolled his eyes.
"I still can't believe this is a thing that people can just go do. Go off into space on a joyride." He stubbed out his cigarette.
"Blame the Japanese." Orlando shrugged. "They've leaped so far ahead lately. They made it possible in the first place, and we're offering it now to be competitive."
Toby looked from one older man to the other. "Why are they so far ahead, then? Are they smarter?" Jonny punched Toby on the arm. "Ow! Hey, what was that for?"
"Well, they could be, or could not be, but it's sort of irrelevant." Orlando sniffed. "Since the thirties, they've been moving forward nonstop – they were smart enough to stay out of world wars, and they made friends with us when it looked like a good idea. That's just my opnion, anyway."
"You don't need to go into space, Toby." Jonny shook his head. "Your head's in the clouds already." He glanced over at the bar's entrance, and winced. "Anyway, history time's over, back to psychology."
Vincent Brooks slumped over to them, dropped roughly next to Orlando, and slammed his head into the table. "Katherine's pregnant."
Orlando winced. "Game over."
Persona: After The End
-An Apocrypha-
(This story was written before the release of P4:G and P4UM)
Chapter Three: An Answer to a Question Nobody Asked
-2021-
Threecorn, Indiana, said the sign rolling by, and Anna Tracer's hands drummed on the wheel.
The car ahead was her mother's, and she'd already gotten bumper stickers with cutsie "I'm divorced" one-liners plastered all over. She'd been scowling for the last hour and a half of driving. In the car's rear windshield, she saw her little brother's head poke up, stick out his tongue at her.
She cranked her radio up louder, remembered the weird dream of the night before.
Everything had been blue.
A farmer reported the Thing In The Cornfield on a Tuesday. He was ignored, of course, but he kept bringing enough people by, who would then report the very same, that authorities finally obliged. It was the following Monday when Sgt. John Stone got his orders.
And now he was on a bus, passing by the sign for Threecorn, Indiana. Called back to the base from leave.
He didn't like operating like this on native soil. He didn't like how hush-hush everything seemed to be. And he didn't like the weird-ass dream he'd had the night before.
Everything had been blue.
The rented car all but fishtailed as the driver made a last-second lane change. The passenger, twenty-two-year old Ken Amada, grabbed the handle built-in above his window. "Whoa!"
A sign flew past him, welcoming him to Threecorn, Indiana.
The car's driver, a beautiful woman in a designer, heart-laden jacket, was grinning. "C'mon, Amada! Live a little!" She wasn't used to driving on an American road, but it didn't seem like there was much that Maya Amano couldn't adapt to.
Ken had never been entirely clear with Maya on the fate of his mother; he wondered for a brief moment if the official version of the story would have caused her not to be so rough on the road. But he didn't like mentioning the incident, when he couldn't tell the truth.
Particularly not to a woman who had been so encouraging in his choice of career path-he had, after all, been all of twelve or thirteen when they first met-and so kind to him overall, the occasional scare notwithstanding. She thought of herself as his senpai, and he knew it. He just already had a very select group of people who'd earned that title the hard way. Maya had no idea, he thought, that she was mentoring the story of the century, and he was a little bitter about keeping it that way.
He pulled the map out of the glovebox and unfolded the part pertaining to Threecorn. If you were to limit yourself to, say, only the half-dozen most important landmarks, it wasn't hard to figure out what to look for. There was the farmland to the west, which was basically part of town by property line only. There was the military base to the southeast, which was their final destination. There was the—he tried to remember the word in English—the "sprawl," a collection of department stores and strip malls to the northeast where the town reached out to touch the highway. There was the town square.
And – and this one Ken only noted from past experience – there was a high school.
"Well, we're almost there." Maya smiled at him. "Let's settle in, take it easy, and start early tomorrow. If we're lucky, maybe we can treat the rest of the week as a vacation in America."
Ken nodded, and pointed towards the windshield, so that she would look back and see the bus that she'd almost rammed into. She hardly paid it heed, just turned the volume up on the Risette CD and sang along.
...Your affection
Your affection
Taking pride from fear
Past will tell you when to make yourself a hero...
He figured it was going to be a long week.
But they wouldn't leave town for a whole year.
School started on September ninth. It was only first period, when he sat on her desk.
"So, newbie! What's your name?" Anna Tracer looked up at her classmate, a... well, okay, he was handsome, would probably be more so if he got a more stylish pair of glasses and learned how to use an iron, but... His smirk was trés, trés punchable. "What? Don't give me that look." He rolled his eyes. "I'm just trying to be friendly. Sheesh." He shook his head. "So, what rank is your dad?"
Her face clouded. She considered her options. Tell him it was none of his business? Ehh, it was her first day, she should really try harder than that. Be honest, or make something up? "I'm not... that isn't..." She winced. She just wasn't the sort of person who had the Courage or Expression required to explain herself.
Maybe it would just be easier if she just didn't talk for, like, the whole first year in town. Let everyone else do her talking for her. Or, you know, she could leap in front of a bus. Whichever.
"Huh. Sorry." The boy slid into a seat next to her. "Didn't mean nothin' by it." He held out his hand. "I'm Jeffrey. Jeff. Er, Waterhouse. It's okay, I totally suck with people, too. But, actually, a lot of the people here do, 'cause of the 'army brat' thing. You'll fit right in." She shook his hand, somewhat tentatively, and he nodded. "Cool. If you need any help, like with homework or whatever, let me know, okay?"
"Thanks," she said, and she meant it—she wasn't sure that Jeff Waterhouse was a boy that she would have associated with, in her old life, but here, adrift and new, she was grateful that someone had bothered to reach out.
But then the lights seemed to dim, the whispered voice spoke, and as she watched Jeff's receding back as he took off for his next class, she couldn't help but knit her brow as she pondered the idea that she was, was "cosmically destined," to hang out with a boy that she'd just met. What the Hell did that mean?
Anna had never been in love before, but she wasn't sure that it worked that way.
Sgt. John Stone had barely dropped off his bags when he was led into a room to meet the new management.
The briefing room was empty, except for three men who were muttering about his "psyche profile." Apparently, he was the best suited for... whatever it was they wanted him to do. Oddly, that offered no comfort or reassurance.
The man dressed like an IBM salesman from the fifties was obviously the government liaison (he knew how this sort of thing worked by now), and he of course knew the officer in the mustache as the base lieutenant, but it was the third one, with the cheap little "Hello My Name Is" sticker stuck to his breast pocket, who put him off. Even as introductions were made all around, he stood off to the side, watching John with one finger constantly rubbing or picking at his lips.
He later determined that the man was with something called "The Kirijo Foundation," but that didn't actually mean anything to him.
When the briefing was finished, one Corporal from his squad was loitering outside, back to a wall and a yo-yo spinning down from his fist.
"How'd it go in there, Sarge?" John just raised an eyebrow at him and kept walking, but Corporal Matthew Forrester followed right in step behind. "Hey, I didn't ask what happened, I asked 'how was it,' like, did they put the grind on you?"
John had always been an able squad leader, but he had never really made friends with his team—he'd always been stuck in the middle between the rest of the grunts and the higher-ups, and it wasn't really a position that he enjoyed; he'd never, after all, been much of a people person. So Corporal Forrester's honest concern surprised him, perhaps unfairly, and he was just a little touched.
Which is when the lights seemed to dim for John, and the voices spoke, and John figured maybe he'd have to get used to calling Matthew by his first name.
Sometimes, Ken had dreams.
They weren't dreams that made sense; not like the nightmares, which were clearly about things that had happened. The dreams, instead, were about things that could have been real, felt so close to real, that he often woke up wondering if he and his life, instead, were the dreams.
Naturally, Shinjiro was alive.
It was back on that one day, the one that had repeated. He would stare down into the Abyss, and he'd know that Shinjiro was standing behind him. Probably with his arms crossed, pretending to be bored by the whole thing. But there was such, such nervous tension in his Senpai, he knew without even turning around.
Each time he dreamed, he wanted to turn around, to tell Shinjiro that it would be okay. Something he always recalled right before the dream was over, that Shinjiro hadn't wanted to come back to the dorm that day, that he'd blown off Fuuka-san in every phone call, and had only come back begrudgingly when the emergency call had gone out. But each time he went to turn around, he'd wake in his bed in sweat-stained sheets and feel like throwing up.
He'd consider calling Akihiko, and then instead turn over in bed, pull the covers over his face, and fail to get back to sleep.
It had been Jeff's idea to explore on the other side of the rift. Of course. Anna was beginning to learn that Jeff was very book-smart, but he was also pretty street-insane. And when the monsters first showed up? Of course it was her that had to call out the giant thing in her head to fight them off, because why should he have to clean up his own mess?
And yet, when they both vowed to go back in? Yeah, she had no cogent explanation or excuse for that one.
It's a good thing that they started collecting more people who were just as crazy as they were. Otherwise it'd be just the two of them, and that'd be embarrassing.
An observation station was set up outside the rift, hidden in the farmer's old barn. The comms officer stayed stationed there, and operated as their "ground control" whenever they were inside. Naturally, it was Matthew who pointed out that being inside the rift was probably the worst position available for a team attempting to find a way to close it.
John had wanted to shout Matthew's head right down into his shirt collar, but that was when the giant insect-thing showed up. His reaction to the incident, and how quickly he pasted the ugly thing, led him a long way back towards crediting those messed-up dreams. The problem for John, though, came in wondering how the hell the ol' U.S. of A. had managed to peg him as the likely candidate.
"Guessin' you must be the Chosen Hee-ro, Sarge." Matthew elbowed him on their way back to the evac point. And John had no retort for that, because Hell if it didn't look that way on the surface of things.
They were taking a vote around the table in the dorm lounge, as they had once before. This time, though, her presence was taken up by Shinjiro, who'd settled into her place at the table without a glance at the others. His hat was pulled down low over his eyes.
Mitsuru spoke first—her sacrifice was too important to dare tampering with, she said. They would use the key to open the door to the dorm building and try to regain their lives. It's what she would have wanted, she argued, and Yukari was quick to fall in line behind.
Junpei's fists rapped against the table and he couldn't meet anyone's eyes. He was scared, scared to go against Nyx again, and maybe he wanted to go back and maybe he didn't, but he was too scared, too, of making the decision. It had been her, after all, who'd made the decisions for them. Koromaru had barked in solidarity.
Shinjiro had listened to all of this quietly, and when the awkward silence began again to build up, he leaned forward, and told them that he was going back for her.
Every pair of eyes turned to Shinjiro, and Ken thought it was unfair of them to be shocked.
Ken didn't like the burning anger that he saw in Shinjiro's eyes whenever he looked at Aigis, it made him shake, but he thought about her smile, the way his heart had lifted every time she took him out—thought about the way she'd treated him like an adult. She'd said he'd grow to like coffee, and he was, slowly, but it was the milk he'd kept drinking for her sake.
And he owed Shinjiro so much, too much to even voice aloud. And so he agreed with Shinjiro, despite his misgivings, and vowed to stand by his side. The older man had looked uncomfortable, had clearly wanted to push Ken aside for Ken's own benefit (always protecting him), and yet... there was an unmistakable gratitude there, deep down, that helped firm Ken's resolve.
And so his gaze fell, along with Fuuka's and Aigis's (and everyone else's), to Akihiko, who didn't look up at all.
Ken got an unfortunate call; unfortunate, in that the familiar voice caused him to spill his morning coffee all over himself.
"Amada."
He scrambled to wipe the hot coffee from his lap. It was the blend that Shinjiro had once asked him to stock in the dorm, those few months where they had shared a home, and breathing in the dusky aroma as the sun rose was one of the only ways to think of him (and Minato, for that matter) without grief or regret. He was lucky that Maya had gone out early for... some reason.
"Amada?"
"I'm here." He had to regulate his tone with her, for all the good it would do.
"I was wondering if you could do me a favor."
He sighed, dropped the mass of paper towels into a bin. "I'm fine, how are you?"
There was a long pause. "I'm sorry. You're right, that is rude and unfair."
"...I'm not even in the country right now, anyway," Ken offered, but he wasn't surprised when this didn't faze her.
"I know. That's why I'm asking you. Do you have a pen?"
He wanted to say no. "Yes."
"If I understand it correctly..." As though she'd ever make a mistake! "They are opening a new branch of Junes in the town where you're staying."
"Yes... We drove past it coming in." Ken frowns. "I didn't think they had them in America."
"It's branching out." This digression seemed to bore her. "I believe that the corporation is angling for a buy-out from one of the similar American retailer chains. At any rate, I want you to see if you can get hired onto the staff that's there, setting up the store for its grand opening."
"Okay." He went over to the motel room door and pulled on his shoes. He was still unused to the way everyone in America walked all over the damned place in their shoes, tracking dirt around in people's homes. "Who am I supposed to be spying on?"
"I'll give you a physical description." And it was a thorough one, too thorough for her not to know the guy's name, too. Which meant, Ken understood, that he wasn't supposed to identify with the man. Was he a target of some kind? "And, Amada... this should be safe, but... be careful, nonetheless. I still have fondness for you."
"Yes, Senpai." Though you had a funny way of showing it. "What time is it, there?" But she'd already hung up.
When Ken was still only thirteen or so, Maya had once almost caught him, when he was using the copiers at work to make a double of the Shirogane file that he had stolen. The data was comprehensive, and it would take longer to study than he'd hoped; he needed to replace the originals before the detective's investigations got Mitsuru's further attention.
"It's for a school project," he mumbled awkwardly at Maya, and when she offered to help he all but panicked. But someone else called her away, and he stuffed everything into his bag. Better to use the library next time.
It was happenstance only, that Ken had been visiting Mitsuru at the offices of the newly-minted Kirijo Foundation when Naoto Shirogane's name had first come up. Mitsuru had tried to deflect him, as he'd just tried to deflect Maya; Ken, however, at least knew what the report on her desk had to concern, for her to want him not to see. After that, it just took a little cleverness, and (Mitsuru's weakness) a little bit of embarrassment.
They were keeping tabs on the private detective, who was working on a serial murder case in a small rural town called Inaba—one that Ken was aware of from school. Apparently, Shirogane-san had spent an abnormal amount of time digging into things like what had happened in Iwatodai, and Mitsuru's response had been characteristically calculated—the leak of a project file from her grandfather's days, on what Personas and Shadows were believed to be... and a hand-delivered message to the detective to stay out of it.
Ken knew that Mitsuru didn't want the truth to go public. He didn't want that either, exactly—he knew it would cause a panic—but the attempts to keep things under wraps had led to things like his mother's death—and Shinjiro's, and Mitsuru's own father's—to be written off as accidents, and that he couldn't stand.
So he would take matters into his own hands, and compile as much data as he could—he'd figure out the best solution as he went along.
The arena was lit by several torches. Ken squinted, and he could see what looked like human figures softly revolving in the center of each flame. Mitsuru... Yukari... Junpei... Koromaru...
Shinjiro made a clucking noise at the four people standing on the other side of the arena. "Hell of a game you guys are playing."
Aigis couldn't meet their eyes, and Metis didn't look like she understood the remark... but Akihiko reeled back as though he'd been hit. Ken wanted to reach out to him, but...
"No, really. Four against two. I can see the conviction, here." Shinjiro pulled off his cap. "Ain't gonna prove you're right, if you stomp us. I'll kick my way back up from Hell to stop you from doing something this stupid."
Fuuka covered her eyes. "Shinjiro-san..."
"Don't make us do this!" Akihiko raised his fists. "I... not even for you, I can't..."
"Tch." Shinjiro swung his axe loosely to the side, and replaced his hat. "Let's get this shit over with."
Ken tried to find the words, any words, to stop what was about to happen. But none came. And so he lifted his spear.
The Junes lobby was open, so that they could take applications. Ken stepped in through the sliding doors, and jammed his hands in his pockets. Maya had called him on the way over.
"Something really big is up, after all. Rumors in town are all crazy, something about a UFO out in the cornfield, if you can believe it. And the base called off the interview." She sounded far too excited. "I'm gonna need your help. Meet at lunch?"
"Sure." He should be there already, and instead he was here, looking at a cardboard standee of the Junes mascot, a blue bear in a red and white clown suit.
...Lost destiny
Far outcry
They hear you no more
Numb feeling
Whole dizziness
Deep scars
No pain
No sanity
Body aching
Control your own face
Invisible real enemy
Ruin your mind deep down...
Ken barely brought his spear up quickly enough to block a rushing punch from Aigis. The force knocked him backwards, and he was only just able to plant the point in the ground and spin around the pole to kick her in the face.
He could hear Fuuka's voice, from deep within Juno's protective shell. "Be careful! Ken is invulnerable to light attacks, and Shinjiro to dark!" Those were instant-kill attacks, and the way that Aigis seemed to re-file that information away as she turned to line up another shot scared him. Would they really... kill them both, just to get the keys?
Akihiko and Shinjiro were fighting, halfway across the arena floor. They were moving so fast, he could barely track the moves, but even with the disparity of their choice in weapons, they were so evenly matched, neither giving an inch of ground... Akihiko threw an uppercut inside of Shinji's axe swing, and he in turn pulled back on the axe handle, collapsing Aki's elbow and drawing him in close enough for a vicious headbutt to the nose. They were fighting too hard to feel.
They had been fighting each other all their lives, and it was a kind of love that Ken didn't quite understand, a kind he'd wanted for himself. Now, though, this was different. He was rolling beneath machine gun fire from Aigis and still, he was more afraid for the two men, brothers, who were out for each other's blood.
Ken hadn't yet studied Greek mythology or Roman history or any of the sources of their Persona's titles; and so when Shinjiro's Persona had ascended upon Hamuko's death, he'd been confused at the way Akihiko had laughed when he'd heard its name. Who, he'd asked Shinjiro later, afraid the older man would laugh at him, was "Brutus?"
Ken called for Kala-Nemi, and a bolt of lightning shot from his hand into Aigis. Circuits shorted out, and her neck twisted at an inhuman angle, but she moved as if it had barely fazed her, punching forward with the force of a God's Hand. He barely dodged past, and the force propelled her past and allowed some distance between them, which he took advantage of with a series of healing spells directed at both Shinjiro and himself.
Then he saw Metis.
Ken still, after all this time, had no idea what to think about Aigis's sister, the black-clad robot who had appeared at the moment of the Abyss of Time's opening—and who had immediately attacked him, nearly killing him without a thought. The others, it seemed, were none too comfortable with her either, but Aigis had apparently reached some kind of agreement with her, and since then they'd been inseparable. In truth, it had made his skin crawl, working alongside her, but... hadn't he only joined SEES in the first place in order to kill the man that he now stood beside, in defiance of his own better judgement?
Metis spoke softly. "Entering Orgia Mode." She aimed square at Ken, and it almost looked like she was smiling.
"Shinjiro-senpai!" Ken used his spear to pole vault over the leaping Aigis, but he'd never close the gap in time.
But Shinjiro darted to the side, then, out of his clutch with Akihiko, and got his arms around Metis's arms and neck in a sleeper hold. It was too late for Metis to disengage Orgia, and steam poured from her eyes as she began firing repeatedly from her fingers. Her massive hammer clanged to the floor, and Shinjiro almost tripped, but he managed to pull Metis around, directing her fire away from Ken—and towards Akihiko.
Seeing it, Akihiko hesitated. Just for a second, but a second was enough.
Yosuke Hanamura didn't seem like a bad man. He seemed like a sad one, and yes, maybe a little slow, but a good person. But Ken remembered his name from the Shirogane file. He was a Persona-user. And as he'd learned from Junpei Iori, sometimes the most dangerous men were the ones who didn't let you see how seriously they truly took the world.
He first appears in an apron, with plaster in his hair, and a pair of headphones around his neck. The headphones remind Ken of Minato, and make him just a little angry. But no, this man with tired eyes just mumbles out a "Every day's great at your Junes!" and looks over Ken's application with skepticism.
"I'm a recent transfer student," Ken lies, and Hanamura seems relieved and grateful to speak Japanese again with someone, anyone. He tells Ken, English had been one of his best subjects in high school, but that it wasn't saying much.
"Do you have an American work permit? Or, a green card, or..." He scratched his head, unsure of what Ken actually does need.
"I just..." Ken tries to put the little boy mask on again, the one he'd worn during that first summer month at the dorm, and he can see Hanamura cracking a little bit already. "I need someplace to go. I could... I could help you with my English!"
Some construction worker or something, someone helping set up the shelving, hollers at them from the sales floor in English. "Geez, Yosuke, we all figured you swung that way, but little boys?"
Hanamura tenses up, and looks ready to explode. His English was good enough to understand that remark, at least. Ken takes a step back.
"I should maybe leave you alone."
When the Junes manager turns back, his eyes are clenched shut, and Ken's application is crushed in his fist. "I'll meet you tomorrow, no, Wednesday is better. That diner in the town square. I'll pay you wages for English tutoring. Okay?" Spit out so angrily, it left Ken with little choice but to nod. It was like Hanamura had something to prove, but Ken couldn't guess to whom.
Aigis moved first, and even as Ken was course-correcting, she was interposed between Akihiko and the rapid-fire, taking a series of armor-piercing shells in the chest.
If Metis understood that she had harmed the sister that she'd sworn to protect, she didn't show it. She was in the process of overheating, and when Shinjiro let her go, she slumped to the floor in a heap. Aigis, on the other hand, was trying to get back to her feet, though her damage was extensive. Akihiko just stared at his best friend in shock.
"How could you?"
Shinjiro picked his axe back up and slung it over his shoulder. "How couldn't I? Why do you think I'm doing this, Aki?"
"But... this..."
"No buts!" Shinji swung the axe down hard, burying it in the ground at Akihiko's feet. Ken caught up to them and stopped short before he tripped over it. "I'm gonna go back and get her! Someone has to!"
"Shinji..." Akihiko held up his open palms. "What she did... there had to be a reason... we can't just take that away."
"Then let me die instead, dammit!" Shinji slapped his own chest. "I'm going to die anyway! If the drugs don't do it, then the Brut' will! I'll go do whatever she had to, like I would have in the first place if I hadn't been..." He turned away from both of them, hunching up his shoulders. "No reason good enough for it to be her and not me."
"We all loved her," started Akihiko, but Shinji was on him in a minute, his fist around Aki's shirt collar.
"You don't get to say that." He shoved Akihiko back. "You know what finally got her to talk to me? Her being all sick with worry about you." Aigis had finally gotten to a standing position, and her self-repairing functions were beginning to kick in. He pointed at her. "You stay there, Pinocchio, the men are talking."
Ken laid a hand on the man's sleeve. "Shinjiro-senpai..."
But he only glared at Akihiko. "You know why she chose me?" He chuckled darkly. "Because I was the one who gave a damn."
Apparently, the rift had opened the week previous. It had already grown. It was similar to the thing in Antarctica, the thing he'd heard Mitsuru's staff discuss in whispered tones when they thought he wasn't listening.
Ken stood in the cornfield and watched the hole in space as it seemed to rotate. He wanted more than anything to step inside, to see if it was like Tartarus. But Maya would wonder where he had gone. Instead, he called Mitsuru.
"Yes?"
"I need a favor."
"I'm fine, Amada, how are you?" With a slight mocking tone. This was as close to good humor as Mitsuru got, and so he pressed his advantage.
"I need you to cancel my scholarship, and get me enrolled in an American high school." Even at twenty-two, he could pass for younger.
Oddly, or not, she didn't question him at all.
Aigis laid a hand on Akihiko's shoulder. "I understand, Shinjiro-san. From the time of my birth, I have thought of nothing but her."
"Tch." Shinjiro shook his head. "Why the Hell did you get her power? Never mind, I know why." He looked over at Ken. "When you messed up, and you hurt a kid, you found a way to move on and protect them. I didn't."
Ken took Shinjiro's hand. "But, Shinjiro-senpai... you did."
His first day as a transfer student didn't go that well. It started after first period, when he was the only one who didn't get up to move to his next class. Apparently, nobody had told him that in America, it wasn't the teachers who moved around. And while his English was good, enough to get Maya to agree to bring him along in the first place, he was finding that it wasn't always good enough to follow the lessons.
He did find a likely suspect, however. A girl in his homeroom, conveniently enough, Anna Tracer, had all the signs. She didn't talk much, but when she was called on, she always seemed to have the answers. When she wasn't called on, she spent about half the time dozing. Sometimes he saw her rip small corners from her notebook paper and chew it. And while she acted awkward and anti-social, it seemed like everyone in the school was captivated by her, wanted her to solve their problems.
She was almost too much like Minato.
They agreed to go back—to watch. To see, and to understand.
Shinjiro took one look at Erebus, and lifted his axe. "All right... let's do this."
Anna tried to talk to everyone in town, every day. This was physically impossible, of course, but the attempt tended to pay off. People needed help, and they had information or useful tools and goods in exchange. And some people gave out information without requiring anything, although that information tended to be things she already suspected in one way or another. The best of them became something close to friends—though, not to the extent of the bonds that she was forging with particular people.
One student, though, had been hard to get a hold of, a more recent exchange student than even herself, apparently some kind of last-minute addition from Japan. He had a perpetual dark expression, frequently hidden within the billowing hood of his threadbare orange sweatshirt. Anna had him pegged right away as the angry, brooding type who turned out to have a soft, squishy center; what she hadn't expected was that he would feed her a continual line of BS, the more she got to know him. He seemed interested in her, though maybe not so much in that way, and was always asking her difficult questions.
Sometimes, she expected that this "Ken Amada" knew more than he was letting on, like he was following her and the others around. She wanted to talk to Jeff about it, but could never figure out what to say, what proof to offer of her suspicions. It was hard enough explaining to him, and to the others, why she was always running off to participate in after school programs and hanging out with strangers rather than focusing on the clear and present danger affecting their town.
It only got worse when they'd try shopping at Junes for supplies (the American branches sold rifles and ammunition to compete with other big box stores, and Aaron was always upgrading his weapons), because when Anna started thinking the store manager was watching them, too, that had to be paranoia.
But then, the whole town seemed to be growing paranoid. Rumors were rampant, more than even a small town should expect, and taken even more seriously, as well. While the military had done a good job keeping the rift out in the cornfield under wraps, the "UFO" story had drawn in tourists and counterculture people from all over. The town was adopting a new identity a bit at a time—the diner in the town square even had a little spaceship next to its logo, now. It made Anna wonder... what would happen when they finally got the rift closed?
John had found himself volunteering for an increasing number of irrelevant errands for other people, since he'd dreamed of the strange little man in the blue room. He was always finding strange trinkets for people he barely knew, or ferrying packages, or relaying messages. Usually, he was given physical compensation in some fashion, but sometimes the tasks were so arbitrary, and the reward so ephemeral, he wasn't sure why he bothered.
It was on one of these runs, bringing an overly-specific assortment of Topsicles to a guy doing KP on the base, that he first saw the reporter.
"Excuse me!" She was on the other side of the fence, waving him down. "Excuse me!"
He turned to one of the men on guard duty at the nearby gate. "Who is that?"
"Says she's with a Tokyo newspaper, Sarge." The guard shrugged. "We've been told her clearance to enter the base has been revoked, but she won't listen." He raised an eyebrow. "I don't suppose you could..."
John sighed. As he was doing everyone else's job, why not? He stalked over to where the woman was all but scrambling up the chain link to get in. "Can I help you, Miss...?"
"Yes! Thank you!" She patted her chest. "Maya Amano. I was supposed to be allowed access, I came all the way from Japan to do a feature..."
She was beautiful, though her jacket was pretty much the most hideous thing he'd ever seen that wasn't trying to kill him. Her English wasn't bad, behind the accent, probably give it a solid B to B+. He weighed his options on what to say, figured he could bend his "need to know" rule on this one. "What was that feature on, again?"
She grew still. "Oh, well... Sort of a 'day in the life' of an American soldier, you know? What's the term... human interest?"
Even if he couldn't tell how she was obviously lying, it wouldn't fit together—there was no need to fly to America when there were bases overseas she could annoy. The question, then, was why lie? She couldn't be lying about her credentials, that was too easy to check. He scratched at his stubble.
"Tell you what, Miss Amano-san. I'll talk to the CO and figure out what's going on with your clearance. But I am not promising you anything, you hear me? In return, you've gotta leave those poor boys at the gate alone."
"Yes! Of course!" She bowed. "Thank you so much!" He could feel her warm gratitude...
...And then there was that familiar buzz. Huh. "Lovers" Arcana? The Hell did that mean? Was he supposed to bang some random reporter who was trying to sneak in? Who the Hell was she?
He hefted the bag of Topsicles and headed to drop them off. He'd talk to the CO... after he did some research on Tarot cards. He was in way over his head.
-2013-
Junpei Iori sat on a bench outside of Port Island Station, while a woman sketched quietly next to him.
A two-edged miracle had brought her back into his life. The most tragic sort of hope. His hands worked the brim of his cap as he waited for something to reach her. The Abyss of Time had been only a few years previous. He'd seen Yukari collapse to the floor and beg to see Minato Arisato one more time, and some part of him had died. Because he'd gotten his wish, and it was all the harder.
"How's it going over there?" He glanced over at the woman, whose long red hair now covered a plain blouse and slacks that didn't look right on her at all.
"Fine." Chidori just kept shading with her colored pencil, and he reached his hand into his jacket.
"Good, good. That's good. Um. I was wondering, y'know, if you don't mind... I've got some pictures, here. Photos. Not great pictures like you make."
She sighed. "I will not remember them, Junpei."
"That's okay! It's totally okay. I just wanted to show them to you." And he held them out to her.
She hardly glanced at each one before moving on to the next. They were well-shot; Minato had not been the best photographer in his school club, but he had an eye that Junpei had envied (like he'd envied everything else). He used to wonder, if he'd had Minato's gift, if it had been something that he could impress Chidori with. But she didn't seem to care about the composition of the shots, just wanted to appease the strange boy who spent so much time with her so that he'd leave her to her sketchbook.
There were pictures of Yukari and Mitsuru in Kyoto, of Junpei and Fuuka in the park when they'd all played baseball. Akihiko and Shinjiro wrestling in the lounge. And less personal shots, too, just well-framed views of the shrine or of people walking in the mall. One of Junpei's old favorites had been the candid shot, taken from behind a planter, of Officer Kurosawa attempting to eat a giant sub sandwich.
She kept flipping through them, faster and faster, and then stopped.
"Wait."
Junpei looked over, and frowned. It was a picture of Shuji Ikutski, asleep on a couch in the dorm lounge. Minato had taken the picture because Junpei had drawn all over Ikutski's face in magic marker. Yukari could be seen off in one corner, laughing her head off. Not even Mitsuru had gotten mad at them over that one. He had forgotten all about it until that moment, when her finger tapped the sleeping Ikutski.
"Who is this?"
"Uh." Junpei wiped at his mouth. He hadn't wanted to push her that hard, would never have kept that photograph in the stack if he'd realized it had been in there. "Well..."
"He is a bad person, isn't he?" Barely stated as a question at all.
"He was, yeah." Junpei gently placed a hand on her shoulder. "He was. But he's gone, now."
"That's good. Yes." She handed him back the pictures. "...Thank you, Junpei." And she rested her head against his shoulder.
He breathed in the scent of her hair and closed his eyes, not wanting that moment to end.
Junpei thought about Yukari, and Aigis too, losing the one who had given their life meaning, and realized, that he could wait as long as it took. One day, she would remember the things that mattered. And until that day there dwelled within him a spring of life, a hope that she had given him and that would never go out.
"I don't see you as much as I would have thought." Maya stabbed at her salad with a fork.
"Oh... I'm sorry." Ken was futzing with the napkin dispenser at his table. He was thinking about the evoker that he'd left on the other side of the Pacific. There had been just no way to sneak it aboard the flight. And now he was in America, with no way of summoning his Persona. "I just want to keep up with my studies... now that we're going to be here for longer."
"Ken, you know I would have sent you back in a flash." Maya frowned. "I can investigate this thing for the rest of my life, if I want to, but you have a life that you need to get back to."
Yes, of course he does. A Kirijo-paid apartment, a Kirijo-paid scholarship, his only friends a bunch of veterans who have trouble talking about anything but their secret, private war when they meet under the same roof? Junpei had offered to take him in, without even asking Chidori, he was so passionate about it; but as grateful as Ken had been at the offer to be out from under Mitsuru's thumb, he knew that the real problem would exist no matter what roof he slept under—this, Personas, this was all he knew, and all his life would ever have room for.
And now it was happening again, and he had to stay on the sidelines.
He wondered if there was any way he could explain all of that to Maya, and make her understand it.
It was his third month in town when the Kirijo Foundation opened a branch in town.
Yosuke flopped over, an English dictionary covering his face. Ken, who was sitting on the man's bed, waited patiently.
"Hey, Ken... you ever feel like your best days are behind you?"
Ken looked at him, and considered Shirogane's notes. Hanamura, despite his attitude, should be considered a second-level threat, following closely behind Seta and Tatsumi. He appears to be a driving force behind the group's activities, perhaps more obsessed even than Seta—a relation to one of the victims? While Hanamura may not be the smartest member, and he is decidedly immature, he is likely to be incredibly dangerous if provoked.
"I dunno..." Yosuke didn't lift the book, just reached out with both hands as though there was something beyond the ceiling that he could grasp. "I feel sometimes like... I don't know why I'm saying this to you, but..."
One day, a short while later, Anna Tracer came up to him out of the blue, and asked him if they could hang out after school.
-2001-
In the heat of the moment, Maya wasn't sure who said "You know what to do," but they were right: she did. As the repellant producer Ginji Sasaki screamed, she spun the dual pink pistols around her fingers and fired.
For an instant, the meeting room of Smile Mall was a constellation of glass shards; Maya covered her face, and Ulala turned to shout something in her direction. But in the next instant, they had all realized their mistake. The collected protoplasmic Kegare washed over Sasaki, and as it sprayed in all directions the wind went out of Maya and she hit the ground: Katsuya was tackling her out of the way, shielding her with his body.
The pools of Kegare (defilement, tsumi, the stuff of pure Magatsuhi) were still moving, even upon landing. Nanjou was shouting something about the Science Lab – Maya remembered the tubes of Kegare there, their eerie pinkish glow, the splashes that looked like reaching hands – and Eriko was drawing her sword.
The dark puddles at their feet that looked like shadows, they began to solidify, like gelatin, and it was then that Maya saw Sasaki's grinning Joker face. She aimed her pistols, but the shadows – the demons – were already rising up in a wave to protect him.
"Shoggoths," she heard someone (Baofu? Nanjou?) say, and the battle was on.
Maya still dreamed about the unnatural way that those shoggoths – those Shadows – had moved, so very like the thing that had awaited them at the end of their trip into the collective unconscious, and even years later, an ocean away, she'd occasionally start in bed, clutch the sheets to her chest, and wonder if it had been her who had made the Innocent Sin.
Igor looked up as the door all but slammed open, and a high school girl on the verge of tears pointed a finger at him. "You! You never told me it would be this hard!"
..,At least, that's how it went in the fantasy, which seemed to come up more and more often these days. Instead, Anna was doing chores at home, matching socks in front of the television. The local news was becoming all but useless. None of their reports made logical sense anymore, and they seemed to know it.
Her mother was in the kitchen, and Anna could hear pans and dishes being slapped around with too much force. She was, Anna figured, talking to her lawyer. Her little brother, sprawled out on the floor in front of her with Featherman action figures (seemed like all kids were into nowadays was stuff from Japan), looked up at her with a worried expression. Anna shook her head. It seemed like the only times that she could try to make his bond work was when Mom wasn't around.
Jeff had complained about his parents today, when they were all hanging out, recovering from the midterms. She'd given him a Mudoon-strength glare, but of course Jeff only saw things in black and white, and so he was completely invulnerable to her instant death looks.
She pitched a pair of socks back into the basket and flopped back onto the couch. They would have to go back into the rift tomorrow, and she figured maybe Jeff could use some time on the bench.
It wasn't that John was stupid, or uneducated—far from it, really. It was just that he'd always inclined towards the maths and sciences; he was interested in what he felt had practical use, even if it wasn't practical for him that day. The liberal arts, that had always been a bit of wankery to him. Effete.
And so when he realized that he needed to learn (and quickly) about Jung, about the Tarot, and as much on mythology as he could stomach, he wasn't entirely sure where to start. The internet was okay, at first, but he felt like he was skimming stones across the surface of a lake without ever diving in. So, old-fashioned as he admittedly was, it didn't take long before he figured a library was the best bet. There was actually a small one on the base—they tried to be self-contained—but it was beyond useless. The public library in Threecorn, then, was his next stop—but it seemed like every book on the subjects that he needed was either checked out or just plain missing.
Which is why Sergeant John Stone found himself arranging dispensation to prowl the half-height stacks of the local high school library. He tried not to meet the eyes of the students as he moved from aisle to aisle, distinctly uncomfortable. It was pouring rain outside, and apparently half the student body had decided to take refuge in the library after school; only half of them appeared to be studying, and more than once John bumped into a young couple who had slipped into a corner to make out. That wasn't how he remembered high school.
Arms overflowing with books, he moved to the rear of the library, where there was a "project room" for student group work. There appeared to be a collection of kids in there, talking animatedly, but there were a few open chairs just outside that he could maybe use...
It happened when he was about ten feet from the kids on the other side of the door. Something exploded behind his eyes, and the books clattered to the floor as he clutched his temples. Through the red haze in his vision, he could see one single girl in the school group doing the same, and their eyes locked for only a moment before Stone turned around, gathered up as many books as he could, and made a tactical retreat.
Both of them, as the pain lessened and a semblance of clarity restored, understood the same thing. One of Igor's vague statements now made sense.
There were two "Fools," two holders of the Wild Card... and they could not approach each other without endangering both of their lives.
-2009-
One night when Ken was eleven years old, he stepped out onto the roof of the dorm building, to find that he wasn't alone.
Koromaru didn't get up from where he was lying peacefully, but he did offer a wave of his tail in greetings. The boy sitting on the edge of the roof, however, inclined his head and called back to him.
"Hey, Ken-kun. I was hoping it was you."
"Me?" He approached Minato slowly. The older boy was the only one whom Ken couldn't figure out. The girls were patronizing, but well-intentioned, and the boys were... well, Sanada-san and Shinjiro-san knew the truth, and Junpei was nice, but tended to leave him alone. Minato Arisato, though, their leader, seemed to look at Ken in a different way every time they spoke. It was a little unnerving, and he wondered what Yukari saw in him (she didn't think he knew, but he wasn't stupid, just young).
"Yeah, you. C'mere." He waved Ken over. "Come sit with me." Ken looked uneasily at the lip of the roof, where Minato's legs dangled. It was a four-story drop. "Would you believe I hate heights? I know, that's stupid. All we do every night is climb a tower into, like, space, or wherever. I try not to look out the windows."
Ken carefully sat on the edge, but facing in the opposite direction, so that his feet were still planted. "I didn't think you were afraid of anything."
"Oh, I've got courage to spare," Minato drawled, and placed a hand on Ken's shoulder. "But that just means I'm dumb enough to do what Mitsuru tells me." He chuckled. "Hey, let me ask you something. It's personal, though, is that okay?"
"Um, sure, okay." He liked Minato's laugh—it was the way he laughed with Junpei, at grown-up jokes.
"You stayed at an orphanage, right? After... you know, your mom?" Ken winced, but nodded. He would prove he could be grown-up enough to have this conversation. And he wouldn't talk about Shinjiro, because he knew Minato would try to stop him. "Was it the same one that they stayed in? You know, earlier?"
Ken glanced at the door to the stairs. The thought had never occurred to him before. "I... I don't know. I'm not sure which one was theirs. I guess it could have been." That was a disturbing thought.
"I want to tell you a secret, Ken-kun." Minato was looking out at the view from their building. It wasn't an especially tall one, but you could still get a nice view of the Moonlight Bridge, when the sky was clear. "Just you." When Ken turned to him, he smiled, his eyes hidden beneath his long bangs. "I think I stayed there, too."
"Really?" Ken gaped.
"I'm don't really remember, but..." Minato lifted his hair out of his eyes, for just a moment. "When I think about things, from a long time ago, I get these headaches. So I try not to. But, it's possible... I mean, I'm here now, and I know I spent some time, you know, without a family..." He smiled weakly. "You know, Yukari and I fought my first Shadow here, on this roof. When I first came here."
"It came all the way to the dorm?" Ken found Koro-chan's head in his lap, and scratched behind his ears.
"Yeah." Minato let his hair fall again, and wiped at his mouth. "I think I scared Yukari a lot, that night. She doesn't like to talk about it."
Ken didn't know what to say. He didn't understand why he was the one being told these things at all.
"I think something bad is going to happen, Ken." Minato shook his head. "I don't know what it will be. I go to this fortune teller sometimes, at Club Escapade, and..." He shrugged. "I don't know. I have to assume it will be that I screw things up, because I'm in charge." He looked at Ken. "I'm telling you, because the others will ask me questions, and I can't answer them." Minato placed his hand on Ken's head, but didn't tousle his hair the way that the others did. "I know that you have questions that you don't want to answer, either."
-2021-
"I think we should make our HQ a little more mobile, if you follow me." Anna sloshed the ice in her cup around with her straw, and looked out over the parking lot. The Junes rooftop food court wasn't too crowded this early in the day, but there were still waves of housewives and college kids going in and out of the front doors below.
"You want to talk about what happened back there in the library, I'm open." Jeff sniffed at his hot dog. "Ugh. I swear, they're making these things from Shadow meat."
"That's gross." She kicked his shin under the table. "I don't know enough to tell you. I just... I don't think we're alone. In a good way. But I don't think we can rely on whoever it is."
"That's more confusing than if you hadn't said anything." He sighed and took a bite, then winced. After a couple of laborious chews, he looked up at her again. "We're doing okay, though. The team's finally balanced out, elementally-speaking."
"Yeah..." Anna pushed her tray to the center of the table and crossed her arms. "You've got the light and dark covered, Allison has lightning skills, Ricky's wind, Tori can do fire stuff, and now Aaron can fill in on ice. And that much is terrific, because you can't count me as ice anymore, like you did in the beginning, since I have to keep switching up."
"Which is another set of questions that I know you're not going to answer." Jeff had clearly given up on his hot dog. He dumped the meat on his plate and tossed the roll over the rail, where pigeons were attacking it before it had even landed on the parking lot below. His attitude had gotten worse, lately, and they both knew it. And both knew why.
It seemed like every time Anna and Jeff moved a step forward in their relationship, Anna was presented with a series of snare-traps, some of which would lock her into a friendship, and some of which would officially push the needle over into actually dating, and she wasn't sure how it had happened. Frequently it seemed like he'd take the opposite meaning of whatever she'd said, and whenever she tried to dodge the issue, she'd alienate him all over again.
Why should she have to decide this, and decide it now? There was too much at stake. And yet... if the world were to end tomorrow... would she want to face it alone?
She and her mother used to laugh at those action movies that her father would bring home, where the couple would hook up while the building was under siege by terrorists or whatever. Sure, she could imagine the excitement that would cause, the heightened passions, blah blah blah... but what about after? What did those couple have in common, when the danger was over?
She looked at Jeff sometimes, and wondered if, when all of this Shadow-fighting was over... Hell, when she had "solved" his problems interacting with his classmates... would he even have a use for her anymore as a friend? What good would trying a romance be? But then, they'd be in the world on the other side, and a Shadow's claws would reach for her, and he'd bolt forward to shove her aside and take the pain for himself, and she'd remember what a kind, gentle boy was hiding beneath the snotty exterior.
And she'd get confused all over again.
They kept breaking all the rules. That was the part that confused John the most. John had been in the service for a long time, and the rules were what the army was. That's how you kept men sane when they were marched off to die, beat 'em down with rules until those rules were instinct. Once John had understood the system, it had seemed practical. And that was John; pragmatic education, pragmatic lifestyle.
But now, jammed into a situation where they were fighting goddamned space aliens with magic powers, and the rules would be a comforting normalcy, they kept pulling that rug right back out.
Tonight, it was the officer's club being open to enlisted men. Sure, whatever. The town didn't have a decent bar from end to end, and John didn't want to look a gift horse in the mouth. So he slipped into a booth in the far corner, lit up a cigarette, and tried not to go mad. Which side of the rift was supposed to be Bizarro World again?
If they were going to keep making excuses for him, they might as well promote his ass. At least then he'd get a slight pay hike. Lord knows keeping the team stocked up on over-the-counter meds wasn't coming out of Uncle Sam's pocket.
Matthew appears out of nowhere, and he slides in across from John with a grin. "Well, don't this beat all?"
John's throat rumbled, moving phlegm from one place to another without really getting rid of it. "Sometimes I think this whole thing is some psych test. Like when they used to dope up pilots on LSD."
"I wish." Matthew was holding a too-big tumbler of something that would likely leave him unusable on the mission run the next day. "I think a good trip might calm me down at this point."
"I don't need to hear that." John rubbed at his eyes, the butt of the cigarette tapping against his forehead.
"Who's going in tomorrow?" Matthew waggled his eyebrows as he finished off half the tumbler in one long set of gulps.
John wasn't going to dignify that look. "Ramirez needs a turn back up at bat, so I can't bring in Stonewater, their weaknesses match. Which means we're hurting in the de-facto medic selection..."
Matthew placed the empty tumbler on the table and sighed. "Hey, Sarge... can I ask you, like, a personal question?" John stubbed out his cigarette and lit another immediately. Dealing with his erstwhile second and almost-partner almost always led to chain-smoking. "It's about women."
John let a solid half-minute pass and then said, "Well, now I'm going to start drinking."
Ken had to flip himself over a bench in the lobby and hide behind it, when Yosuke Hamamura entered the Kirijo Foundation building. He listened as the young man with the headphones tried in vain to get the receptionist to explain what, exactly it was that the Foundation did. Yosuke tried humor, and then charm, and neither worked; then he tried rage, and threats, and that didn't work either. He pitied the Junes manager, who slammed the glass door hard as he stormed out.
When he was gone, Ken almost came out of hiding before he saw that the man had been replaced by Maya. She tried things in almost the same order, though when she failed, she offered a false smile and walked out calmly.
Later, Ken was sitting on a desk in the school newspaper's tiny room as Anna Tracer tried to solve his problems. She knew the right things to say, but she wasn't getting anywhere. Probably, most of the people who formed bonds with her didn't lie to her each step of the way.
"Let me ask you something." Ken slid off the desk. "Would you die for your friends, if you had to?"
Anna tensed. "Of course! But... why would you ask that?"
"This is bigger than you think it is. I want to help you."
They said, the students did, that in America, all you needed was a dream and the will to achieve it. He'd asked what made that different from Japan, or anywhere, but they'd insisted. The American Dream, they'd called it. He'd thought it was funny, at first, and then a little irritating. But every Persona incident was different, and rumors and myths and ideas always held more power when the Shadows came. It was clear that whatever was beyond the rift, it was testing the identities of groups, this time, and that included national ideas, national myths and identities. If America believed itself to be its own myth-maker and wish-granter, then within the boundaries of Threecorn, Indiana, that belief had a power.
Ken saw the hesitation in Anna's eyes, the one that Minato used to have whenever he tried to figure out the precise thing to say. "I don't even know you."
Ken thought of Minato welcoming Ryoji into their home. "You don't have to know me. There isn't much to know. Just let me fight beside you."
And then: "I don't know what you're talking about."
Ken nodded slowly, and walked out. He never gave her the folder, and he never saw Anna's reaction to the shattering sound in her ears as the Justice Social Link reversed.
Dad makes the same joke every week. "How about we go to the zoo?"
"This town doesn't have a zoo, Dad." And so they go somewhere normal instead, like Junes or the diner. The weekly visits are becoming routine, now, and that scares her a little, because it means the situation is beginning to feel like normal.
Anna hugged her arms as she and her father walked down the street. She wanted to believe that if she said just the right things, played the social link just the right way, the Emperor and Empress would get back together in the end. Somehow, though, she knew that not even the messed up rules that she'd been contractually obligated to follow would make things that simple.
"Something on your mind, Sport?" Her father looked skinnier than he ever had. She wondered if he was eating well; Mom had always done the cooking.
Oh, what the Hell, nobody else was going to ask her. She couldn't express it louder than a mumble, but it still came out. "Boy trouble."
"Oh yeah?" And he got all tense, and his fists clenched a little, and that part was so stereotypical that it sort of cheered her up, a little bit.
"Not like that, Dad, it's okay." She kicked at a loose chunk of asphalt, and watched it spiral towards the gutter. "I'm just... we can't figure out... I dunno... what we want from each other, I guess." She held up her hands at his stricken expression. "Not like that! God! I'm serious! He's..." Her shoulders slumped. "You'd probably like him, actually."
He stopped walking, rubbed at his scalp as he looked her over. "Anna... if you like this boy? I mean, if you think you might like him more than a couple of dates worth? Make sure he's someone... I don't know how to put this." He seemed small in his big heavy coat. "Have him meet your mother. If she thinks he's good for you, then you'll know it's not going to work." He started walking again, and it took Anna a moment to realize what her father was admitting to.
Maya had taken John to dinner in town; the whole thing had made him nervous, until he'd realized that she wasn't especially interested in him—at least, not romantically. She was full of questions about base operations, and about the "thing out in the cornfield," though she was careful not to outline how much of anything she actually knew.
Apparently enough of his evasions carried charm that, when she finally settled down, the small talk was downright pleasant. "Seriously, though," she was saying, and she was doing a better job keeping that accent down all the time, "You seem like a man with a lot on his mind."
That was one of those statements where you were supposed to laugh ironically. John just held up his drink in salute to her remark, and said nothing.
"Is it hard, living on the base? Do you make friends, or is it all..." She struggled for the word. "...Comrades?"
John absent-mindedly cracked a knuckle, then one more. "Nah, my unit is very tight. It wasn't always that way, but being in strange situations brings you together, I guess."
He offered, ever-so-briefly, an unguarded smile. The boys had staged an impromptu birthday surprise for him—Matthew's doing, apparently. And the young Corporal had pulled him aside in the middle, to offer him a personal thank you. They both knew why. When John had finally prodded Matthew to cut the crap and propose to his girl, the courage and the clarity had awakened a new Persona within him. It was tangible evidence that they both could see, that their relationships and their strength in combat were related, beyond even the trust of fellow soldiers. It was awe-inspiring, and terrifying.
And so he asked the waitress for a coffee, sat up a bit straighter, and ran a hand through his buzzcut. "How about you, Miss Amano-san? How are you? You seem like someone with a lot going on."
The door to the dormitory finally swung open. The Abyss of Time had dissolved. They were free.
Ken practically leaped down the stairs, to take in the sun.
Everyone was saying their awkward good-byes, and soon Mitsuru and Fuuka and Junpei had left, Junpei taking Koromaru with him. And there was that long silence, before Shinjiro offered Aigis his hand.
"Shinjiro-san..." As Aigis was shaking it firmly... "You do not have another place to stay." Spoken as a fact, not asked as a question. Yukari had offered to take Aigis in, and Ken could see Yukari's panic at the suggestion that Aigis was about to bring the glowering man in the topcoat with her.
"We'll figure it out." Shinjiro placed a gentle hand on Ken's shoulder, and Ken's eyes widened.
And then the girls had left, and there were only three confused young men, looking at each other and trying to figure out what to say.
"You've been too reckless with your support for the American government and military." Nanjou sniffed. "And I don't like your hands-off approach with the boy."
"You don't know Amada like I do." Mitsuru picked up the glass of wine which she'd left half-finished. "The less he knows, and the more he believes he's operating against me, the more likely he'll be to stay within the parameters we've set."
"He sounds like a liability, when you phrase it in those terms."
Mitsuru shook her head. "No, Ken was, is, the greatest and most pure of all of us." She looked out at the skyline. "Save one, who's no longer with us."
-2009-
...Leave this valid memory
The spirit inside of consciousness
And this lone prayer
Keep life on the coat rack...
The hate-craved fools just don't stop
As you clear away from death,
The world is all I've sent you...
One day, when Ken Amada was eleven years old, he approached Junpei Iori and asked him to teach him baseball.
The older boy fumbled with his magazine and looked up, incredulous. "Me? Why me?" But he was smiling, too, delighted in a way that Ken hadn't predicted. And so they'd gone out to the quiet street just outside their dormitory, and Junpei had shown Ken how to stand, how to hold his bat. It was hard only for Ken to remember not to hold it as he did his spear.
After a while, Ken glanced at the dorm and saw Minato sitting on the steps, his eyes shining as the other two boys played. It had been he who'd suggested that Ken go to Junpei with the idea, and he'd been right, he'd never seen Junpei so earnest.
"Well, look at this." Behind Minato, some of the others had come out to see what had caused the commotion. "Junpei, you can't teach him how to play unless he has someone to play against." Akhiko was smiling, and came down the stairs.
"I'll have you know, I was a softball star back in middle school." Yukari skipped right down behind her Senpai, and Junpei shook his fist at her.
"Softball ain't baseball!"
"Close enough for how you play, Stupei!" She caught the ball Ken had tossed her, and soon a poorly-staffed game had broken out in the middle of the street. Ken laughed as Fuuka struggled with the cap that Junpei had shoved onto her head, and Yukari tried to explain the rules to Aigis. Mitsuru and Shinjiro stood watching behind Minato, and at least Mitsuru was smiling.
When Ikutski dropped by on his bicycle, they forced him to play catcher. Koro-chan was kept busy fetching stray balls and gnawing at the chain of sausages that Shinjiro had snuck out to him.
When some of Minato's classmates walked by, though, even he had to come off the stairs, and the action was pushed to a nearby park. Kazushi was pressed into pitcher, so he'd go easier on his leg, and Kenji, Keisuke, and Yuko split amongst the two teams. Yukari dragged Mitsuru onto the field by one arm, and Junpei thrust a bat into her hands.
It was one of the nicest days that Ken would ever have. But sometimes all he could remember was the way Shinjiro prowled the edges, leaned against fences, and growled at the people who tried to get him to participate. He always had one eye on Ken, and Ken one eye on him. October was close, so very close, and they both knew what was coming.
When it was over, he told himself, it would fix everything. Make everything right again. But then he would look out to the field, and see everyone laughing as Aigis slid so hard that she drove a groove into the ground, and Fuuka and Keisuke futzing over their camera so that they could get everyone in the shot, and Minato smiling as Yukari and Junpei saw a side of each other that neither had expected; and he prayed for October to never come.
-2021-
The school administration had been up and down on Anna's class of students; the Thanksgiving Day Game had been a disaster (hard to explain that it had been a loose Shadow), but the Winter Concert had gone off without a hitch. And so there was an unspoken understanding that the fate of prom night depended on how the students behaved on the field trip over to the base.
But none of that seemed to matter to Anna Tracer, because she had been having the best week ever. First she'd scored the sale of a lifetime on that crazy new home shopping program; then the note had arrived in her mailbox, telling her that the mysterious Sergeant John Stone would not be on the base during the field trip, leaving her free to enjoy it with her friends—and maybe find a few things out on the sly; and then, last night, the unthinkable, the unrepeatable, the moment of dread and hope and it had been so unexpectedly perfect.
Jeff didn't usually want to meet at night, and so her suspicions had been raised already. But she'd snuck out, anyway—too many trips out to the cornfield had left her seriously grounded—and they'd gone for a long drive around town in Jeff's battered old car, and he'd finally said it. And there was no doubt that he meant it—not with a new Persona forming before her eyes. And so when he'd found a secluded place to park, and maybe things had gone a little fast, she didn't have the slightest hesitation, and she still hadn't the slightest regret.
And now, as the students gathered in clusters within the base's perimeter, he found her and casually nudged her with an elbow. "Wanna go snooping?"
"What, with you?" And she winked at him, and he laughed, and for that moment it didn't seem to matter that the world might well be ending.
"Shinji..." Akihiko shook his head.
Shinjiro shrugged. "Just shut up, and let's go."
"Huh?" The young man with the silver hair cocked his head.
"We're staying at your place, 'till we figure it out. I'll make dinner, and Ken will clean up." He glanced at Ken, and though he wasn't smiling, Ken saw something funny around Shinji's eyes. "He's always carrying that scrub brush around anyway, right?"
"Um, sure!" Ken jammed his hands into the pockets of his sweatshirt.
"All right." Akihiko was smiling.
"Though... I'd like to stop by the cemetery first." Shinjiro took off his heavy coat, and rolled up the sleeves of his turtleneck. "Got some things I wanna say to her."
"Yeah... me too." Akihiko stepped in line with Ken, and with his brother in all but blood, and they walked down the quiet street together.
Ken thought about the doors they had looked through, one after another. "Do you think... Do you think there's a world, where she didn't have to do it? A world where she could be happy?"
Akihiko nodded. "I see it sometimes... when I close my eyes."
Shinjiro said nothing, just placed a hand on each of their shoulders and shoved them, playfully, and the three of them watched the sun rise over Iwatodai.
Sometimes they had to look away and try to ignore the way Shinjiro coughed.
Things wouldn't go so well all down the line.
Anna would be betrayed by a member of her team, and John would suffer the loss of a squadmate. And her beloved little brother would, of course, be taken, to use as a pawn—finally thrown into the rift.
Sergeant John Stone would suddenly and without warning lose the backing of his military superiors, and his team would be forced to choose between going rogue or letting the rift further expand.
And in the end, when the final moves were made, and John and Anna and their collective teammates would have to enter the rift, and would not return.
While they were absent, the undefended town would become overrun with Shadows.
But they wouldn't be alone.
Maya was standing in the town square, outside of the Kirijo Foundation building, when the Turret shadow began to roll down Main Street. The giant tank huffed like a fairy tale wolf and trained its barrel on her to fire.
She was thrown clear by a charging Yosuke Hanamura, and they both smashed through the Foundation's glass doors. They rose to their feet as one, and though each didn't know what the other possessed, their call for "Persona!" spoke as one.
In the recent years, of course, much of the population at each Shadow outbreak had offered little resistance; in places like the Japanese Iwatodai and Inaba incidents, people were reduced to shuffling cattle, infected with Apathy or with the Fog of Untruths, a sort of Willful ignorance that led to an ease of harvesting.
It hadn't always been thus. There had been times when the people would resist. And this time, they would again.
Susano-O and Artemis were warriors, and so were the man and woman who held aspects of them within themselves.
They offered each other a surprised little smile, and stepped forward, toward the Shadow.
The rift in the cornfield rippled and beckoned, and Ken reached out his hand. There was another world, the world of his dreams, and it wasn't so different. Was that the world that lay beyond?
He couldn't help the Wild Cards, and he couldn't help his friends. But maybe, in another world, a world where he could have stood beside the man who saved him, there was a chance for him to make things right.
Turning his back on the havoc that had come to Threecorn, Indiana, he stepped out of the world.
Freedom was having nothing left to lose, and in a world of rumors, outside of the flow of time, his hand might find the hand of the girl who'd haunted his dreams. He would find a way to carry her home.
"All right," he said, "let's do this."