-2021-

Theodore had been perusing an older Compendium one moment, and the next he was somewhere else, with a strange painful sensation in his left ear.

He was, he realized, outside-actually outside, and it was without his master's permission! This was very bad. And the pain to his ear had not ceased. Still, it was, as near as he could tell, a beautiful day, with a shining sun (he saw it so rarely!) and there were birds and grass and trees and things to look at, so it didn't seem so bad.

Though, now that he thought about it, he seemed to be moving... oh! It was his own legs pushing him forward, that was reassuring, but why? And his ear really did hurt...

It occurred to him, finally, to consider looking in a different direction, and he realized that his eldest sister was dragging him by his ear.

"Margaret?"

Her face looked stern, that is, more stern than usual, which was bad news for Theo; and it meant that he probably would, in fact, be reprimanded for being outside the Velvet Room, in the world of men.

"Sister?"

She released him, and just stared for a moment, She was breathing heavily. Oh! Good for her. She was always so quick to look down upon Theodore and Elizabeth when they tried things like breathing heavily, or playing the spoons. He smiled at her.

"Theodore," she muttered, "please don't smile at me like that."

"Okay." He stopped. Perhaps she was embarrassed? Well, if there was one thing he understood (even if he wasn't going to admit to it), it was certainly being embarrassed.

"I don't have time for this," she sighed, and crossed her arms.

"Margaret, you seem perturbed."

"Yes. Yes, very good, Theo. I can see that your time outside has done wonders for your ability to read emotions."

He pouted. "That is cruel sarcasm, sister."

She was not happy to be outside, that must be it. He did not understand why—it was her idea to bring him here. And he liked being outside in the world of men. And women. And dogs. And fish. And trees and benches and cars and planes and blenders and high school and governments and...

Margaret was snapping her fingers in front of his face. "Theo!"

He fussed with his tie a bit. "Yes?"

Her mouth thinned. "As much as it galls me to admit this, Theodore, I need your assistance."

"You need me?" Theo could not help smiling, puffing his chest out a little. This, he considered, might be the first time, in all of their long existences within the Velvet Room, that she had so much as suggested that he could be of use. "I am unsure, is this an appropriate situation in which one can 'shed happy tears?' Because I..."

She was snapping her fingers in front of his face again. "Focus, Theo."

"But, why have you brought me to..." He looked around what appeared to be a small park in an urban area.

"Because I can no longer enter the Velvet Room, now that I have left it." This caught Theo's attention sure enough, and he turned around to gape at her. "And thus, I had to bring you with me upon my exit." She held up her hand before he could speak. "You will no doubt be welcomed back, as your transgression was unwilling. So please attend to me now so that you can go back."

"I... very well." He resumed his more usual posture, straightening out his back, and checking just once with his hand to make sure his hat was properly in place. "What would you have of me?"

Margaret sighed, pinched the bridge of her nose. "I need to know what you did."

"...Beg pardon?"

"I need to find Elizabeth. She is surely helping, or has helped, the boy who is the Great Seal. So I am asking you again, Theo, while I still have patience... what did you do? How did you free the girl from her Seal?"

Theodore did something very strange, then, without thinking about it. He had probably witnessed The Girl do it at some point... But when he bit his thumbnail and winced, Margaret apparently read meaning into it, because she clutched her hair, looked at the sky, and screamed in frustration.

Persona: After The End

-An Apocrypha-

(This story was written before the release of P4:G and P4UM)

Chapter Four: Painting Outside the Lines

Hidehiko "Brown" Uesugi held up his glass and turned it in his hands. Sometimes, he mused, he just shouldn't pick up the phone.

He was in a bar, an American bar, in... okay, he actually couldn't even remember the city anymore. Just the latest in a whirlwind global tour. "Persona Tour 2021," that's what he'd call it, if he could say a damned thing to anyone.

Brown wasn't much of a celebrity anymore – okay, yeah, a bit, but not like Elly, his time in the spotlight had more or less come and gone, and good riddance if it meant spending time with people like Junko Kurosu – but he was enough of one to get away with The Plan. And so he'd been everywhere, these last few years, every continent (Hidehiko's adventures in Antarctica, there was a bestselling novel for you), getting the information that he was able to dig up, whenever he could. Information on Persona incidents, and on Demon incidents, and anything else that might fit the bill.

It had been Elly's plan, but of course it had been you-know-who that had actually picked up the phone and called him, had asked him to do it. Otherwise he might have turned it down. And no matter what he'd said in those days, there'd been no question that he was their leader, right up until the end.

How could he say no? Nobody had ever said it, but they'd all been in that mess because he'd made that stupid bet with Masao. All that Hell because he'd wanted a free hamburger. Maki told him not to blame himself, sometimes, but that was only because she blamed herself. Well, she was a therapist, anyway; what else would she say to him?

Maki Sonomura stood for a moment in silence, in the dim light, and then raised her arm in a smooth arc. The paint drew across in a thin line, like a blade; she stepped back to view the results.

The studio that her husband had put together for her in their home was warm, comforting, and fully stocked; the one thing that it didn't have were the decorations that were nearly everywhere else in their home, and at her place of business: toys, childhood affections, juvenalia... she'd been weaning herself down slowly for over a decade, now, and the studio was completely clean. The room where they received guests, too, and their bedroom. It was slow progress, but it was progress.

They were the trappings of an old life, and while she was a more complete person than she had ever been (thanks to him, all thanks to him), she was a licensed therapist, and she was aware that problems don't "cure" themselves overnight. It took work, maintenance, loving support. She had that, and still it was an uphill climb – be it one filled with the joys of a loving marriage.

They hadn't been able to have children – she hadn't been comfortable with that, and he understood – but there was still time, there was always time.

The painting was abstract – most of her paintings always had been. But she saw more than just a feeling, or a concept, when she looked at them. She saw stories, places, people. Sometimes they were of things she knew, but just as frequently they were impressions of things that she didn't, could only sense in some vague way. This study in warm colors was a man who'd stood in line in front of her in a Rosa Candida outlet a few weeks earlier. He'd been trying to find a gift for his daughter, and was fumbling in an adorable fashion. But this was not an image of how she felt in seeing him – it was an image of what lay beneath that self.

It was so easy to think of Persona as some sort of magical power granted to the gifted. Certainly, many of them had felt that way back in 1997, when Philemon had spoken to them from the collective unconscious; but in truth it was what he'd actually said, that Persona was a part of each person, the sides that they showed the world in turn. What her friends had been able to do – what her Ideal Self, her Shadow, had been able to do – that was indeed something elevated, a synchrony with their inner selves, a bridging of the gap between man and demon. But even without Philemon's gift, people had things that slept inside of them, and sometimes Maki could feel those things – abstract sensations that were each individual works of art.

They had called it "Persona resonance," but really it was just the ability to reach out and find a level of understanding with another person.

And so when Maki came into contact with a beautiful soul, as she had with the man at the store, she would try to capture some part of that to share with the world. Because they all could use the reminder that this world held such people within it.

-XXXX (Time is nothing in the Velvet Room)-

Igor sat, and waited.

One wouldn't think, necessarily, that one would have to "wait" in a place outside of the regular flow of time, a place that existed as a suburb of the collective unconscious itself. But humanity, it had no perception of anything but linear time, and when those chosen by Igor's master needed to enter the Velvet Room, they did so at what could be mistaken for random. Igor, and those who shared this space, did not need food or rest; they were ever-patient. But they were autonomous souls, and at least to a point, and so it was that there were moments like these: the girl and the soldier would not return for a period of time, and he had no other expected guests for even longer.

Which wasn't to say that he'd never had unexpected guests; it had, in fact, been one of his favorite patrons who had dragged the con artist Youichi Makimura into the Velvet Room while he had been in her custody. And there were always the occasional gifted; someone with a psychic glimpse or a pointed dream, who would be shown brief hospitality before they passed on.

Which was all to say that Igor had little to do but watch the Demon Artist paint, but a great deal to think about, as he waited in his assigned place for the next visitation.

The artist was painting an image specifically for Igor at the moment, as a way of greeting – they had not seen each other for a time, however indeterminate that time might have been. It was an image of "Pinocchio" - the Demon Artist had always had a pointed sense of humor. Igor steepled his fingers and thought of his past – a possession that he was so rarely expected to have.

-2021-

You could be forgiven for thinking that Masao Inaba was bitter. He lost out on the love of his life, who had chosen his best friend. That would be enough for most people, anyway.

And yet there he was, duffel of spray cans over his shoulder, making another masterpiece under cover of night in New York City, with a stupid grin on his face. He even had the old yellow stocking cap on, the one he only wore now when he was painting like this.

You couldn't call it "tagging" anymore: when the storeowner woke up the next morning and found a "Susano original" on his outside wall, his property values would go through the roof and his business would triple. The press outlets had even stopped calling Mark "the Japanese Banksy," ever since it was Japan's Coolest magazine that had gotten the big interview and not them.

No, Mark was having the time of his life, and maybe he hadn't met anyone as perfect as Maki yet, but he had a long line of women wiling to audition. And his mother was well taken care of, too, which never stopped being a load off of his mind.

He cinched up the nylon cord attached to the pulley by his belt buckle and raised himself up another foot, so that he could touch up the details. He had artist's assistants who'd kill to come out and help him on projects like these, but he liked the solitude of this part of the job, and he'd had years of experience being a nobody who did this the same way every other nobody did it, so he always turned them down.

This was a good thing, because when the incident occurred a moment later, nobody else got hurt.

Where had Brown been? Hm. He mulled it over while he drank.

That place in the UK... had it been England, or one of the other countries? He didn't even remember. The rumors had talked about old faerie legends, Arthurian tradition, and – given that the epicenter had likely been a secluded boarding house – likely a bit of Harry Potter, too. That must have been a trip. All that "hero's journey" stuff would mess with a teenager's head.

There was the Parisian art school, too. That was another glamourous locale. He couldn't imagine what the "dungeons" had looked like in that escapade.

He... didn't have much luck in the small village in... what African country had it been? It had sounded made up. He'd stuck out like a sore thumb there, but he'd at least been able to do some nice publicity for an area that could use a little more support from the first world. Brown wasn't the world's most charitable soul, but he wasn't an asshole, either.

Dozens of other places, too, all around. Rich places and poor places. Large communities and small ones. The only solid links were the usual ones – kids did a lot of the heavy lifting, most of it happened without the rest of the world knowing, and things got real ugly. If a tenth of the rumors were true, the world should have ended a hundred times over by now.

The Plan, as outlined, was not without its self-serving aspects. In traveling the world, Brown was raising his own publicity; he was becoming known as a man of the world, a socially-conscious star. There was talk, ever-so-slightly, of putting him back on television. A real show, not some fading grab for attention. If anything, people were remembering his fame more fondly than they'd regarded it the first time. But obviously, that hadn't been the goal.

The goal had been to check up on Nanjou.

-2013-

She first met him when he was apologising.

Mitsuru Kirijo came to her office early one morning to find that Kei Nanjou was already there, motorcycle helmet clutched under his arm. Before she could call security, he gave her a long, low bow, and from his aristocratic bearing, she knew that the bow was as close as a man like him would come to groveling at her feet. It bought him sixty seconds.

That had been all he needed.

The Kirijo Group had split with the Nanjo Group long ago. When the explosion occurred however—the one that had claimed the lives of her grandfather, Yukari Takeba's father, and was a part of the incident that also killed Minato Arisato's parents, when Aigis had sealed Ryoji Mochizuki away within him—much of what was left of the Nanjo Group folded in on itself, and her father began making overtures to buy up what was left, in hopes of getting access to their files and technology. In the process, Mitsuru had been arranged to marry a vile and disrespectful young man that Minato helped free her from.

What she hadn't known, what her father Takeharu Kirijo had not told her before he died at Shuji Ikutski's hands, was that Kei Nanjou had also been attempting to regain control of his former company. He and his fellow alumni at St. Hermelin High School had been some of the first recorded Persona users, and much of her grandfather's research had been based on an earlier incident in which they were involved. It was that incident, among others, for which Kei Nanjou had been trying to atone. It was a sentiment that Mitsuru understood very well.

When her father died, Kei was able to buy up all of Nanjou's stocks in the ensuing chaos. For this opportunism, he had apologised. But he also apologised on behalf of his corporation for her arranged marriage, something that he had taken no part in. This generosity had touched her. And while his wealth and power had not impressed her (she was his every match in that department), what had impressed her, she was a little ashamed to admit, was his motorcycle.

They had taken trips out to the country villages where her father had occasionally brought her on summer trips, and they'd raced together. She'd been amazed to discover that there was somebody who could truly act as her equal. Not even Minato, for all of his many positive qualities, could match her in areas that Kei could (and she hadn't a chance, anyway—not even she was so naïve as to miss the way that he looked at Takeba, her closest friend). When she and Kei grew closer, she was also surprised to discover that sometimes a relationship could be easy in ways that had never been explained to her. She felt that her father would have been impressed with Kei Nanjou, as well. Perhaps never more so than when he admitted to her that while he would indeed be interested in progressing their relationship, he needed first to establish his desires regarding their combined front against possible resurgences in Persona incidents—so that those overtures would not be confused with other ones.

-XXXX (Time is nothing in the Velvet Room)-

Nanashi's fingers pressed down on the piano keys, and the music did not deviate, but he was looking at his master. Or perhaps "look" was the wrong word – a perfect blue ribbon was drawn across his eyes, ostensibly to aid his focus, as for Nanashi, his music should be all. Music of the heart and the soul, music capable even of stirring his master into the tears caused by the telephone on his table. Call it instead "sensing," but either way he knew that his master was troubled.

This was unprecedented. Nothing could distress the servant of Philemon. Not the world's ending, not the fate of Wild Card or Paradox Boy could stir him in this fashion.

Belladonna had noticed, as well; and while her voice did not waver, and the fingers of her hands, clamped so tightly over her ears, did not tremble – their song took on a new emotion of its own, a concern for their beloved master.

-1945-

The construct had been carved, and most delicately, at the turn of the past century; but it was not given life until much of the world was burning.

In an underground laboratory, a scientist was wringing his black-gloved hands as he regarded the construct. It had been a doll, once, a marionette of exquisite construction and extremely lifelife – if decidedly creepy in form, with its glaring eyes and long protuberance of a nose.

The scientist, whose name was Victor, had acquired the doll for the culmination of his life's work – the study of life and what lay beyond. It was a pursuit that had drawn him to the side of devil summoners in years past, and it had gained him immortality itself. But the one thing he had not yet done was create new life.

As Victor began the process, however, there was a commotion from above, the sound of splintering wood, and he knew that he was too late. It had not been the first time that the ignorant had discovered his experiments and risen against him – he had been chased from his very homeland for that reason.

Dr. Victor pulled on his long red cape and cast one last look at the puppet, where energy was already beginning to collect. It was too late to stop the process, and removing the doll partway through would be disastrous. He would have to leave it behind, a fate that he cursed even as he slipped through a back passageway. His escape route had already been planned. He'd be at sea within the hour.

While the building above Dr. Victor's laboratory burned, the townspeople never discovered the doll that was receiving life. Because at the moment that the doll was waking, at a moment where, in some other world or time, a bomb of unspeakable devastation would detonate and change the world, a butterfly landed gracefully on the doll's cheek, just below its opening eye.

-2021-

...Yo LV
yo yo yo yo yo yo yo yo yo yo
yo yo...

It wasn't that they didn't trust Nanjou – not exactly.

Brown waved the bartender, a large man in dark glasses, over for another drink. He'd been recommended the Cuba Libre; not Brown's usual drink, but it tasted just right for mood he was in.

Nanjou would answer the phone, or at least get right back to you when you called. That was admirable. But Nanjou had made it clear that he hadn't needed anyone's help – at least, beyond his fiancee's – when it came to Persona matters. The way that Maki told it, Nanjou wasn't being evasive for the wrong reasons; he believed that if he took this on himself, everyone else could live a normal life. This, also, was admirable. Maki was worried that he still carried guilt over his father's complicity in the actions of the NWO, but more to the point, by holding them all at arm's length, he was unofficially speaking for them in these matters, and that was what set them all on edge.

It hadn't been that way before – when Kandori had returned from death itself, he'd worked with Elly at least (a period which she herself was evasive regarding! Hmmm), but even then he hadn't called the two people who should've known first: Maki and Reiji. And since then...

Someone slid onto a stool at the corner of the bar, and the way that his eyes moved behind his glasses suggested to Hidehiko that this was the man he'd agreed to meet. He eased closer and signaled to the bartender that he'd be covering the man's beverages for the evening.

"You're just like she described you." The man offered the bartender an uneasy glance as he took the drink.

"Uh... 'she'?"

"Maya Amano." He took a belt of his drink. "Sorry. My name's Justin. Justin Bailey." He wiped his hands on his vest.

"You know Amano?" Brown's eyes narrowed.

"Oh, we just met at a thing. Years ago. Hardly a journalist that wasn't there. We're not friends, or anything." He looked around the bar, as if he expected friendly faces. "She's a wonderful woman. Most of the room was taken with her. But she had a tendency to talk more about her friends than herself, and I guess that included you."

This wasn't expected, but it wasn't entirely unreasonable, either. "Well... anyway, I wanted to meet you to ask you about..."

"The Weakening Deaths, yeah. 'The Woman's Curse.' Well, I interviewed a lot of the involved people back then – including one of the officers involved in the initial investigation... Officer Morgan Cortez." He didn't even need to check his notebook; the case had been many years earlier. As Brown had suspected, he had been personally involved. "I am very concerned with the confidentiality of most of my sources, here – Officer Cortez is the only one in the public record – so I'm not sure what you want to ask me."

"Whatever you can tell me." Brown took off his hat and placed it on the bar. The bartender was viewing him with suspicion – okay, that meant the bar itself had likely been a major location during the incident, as well.

People tended to think that Brown was stupid; it was true that he rarely appeared to be taking things seriously, but he paid more attention than he was given credit for. Somehow, he suspected that had been the reason it was he who was asked to follow up on these cases.

He noticed a single black ant crawling along the edge of the bar. Without a second thought, he slammed his fist down and crushed it.

"Can you tell me about the cause of death?" He made a vague gesture with his hands. "They said that there were no wounds. There were some cases back in Japan that..."

"Yeah, yeah, I heard about those. The 'apathy syndrome,' right?"

"And the Hanged Man Killings. I'm not sure if word of that might have made it to the States." Brown wiped his hand with a napkin.

"Well, this wasn't like those. The people – the men – they were desiccated. Like they'd been drained of something, you know?"

"Mmm." And they had not, apparently, still been able to walk around, dead or no. The facts didn't line up exactly, but they never quite did.

-2018-

Chidori Yoshino was working on her latest painting when she heard the whine. She blinked and looked to the clock. She was an hour behind... again. She frowned and went to rinse off her brush and palette. The whine came again, from the living room. "I'm coming!" And at that, the sound immediately stopped. She shook her head and finished her clean-up as quickly as she was able. She always lost time when she painted; there were things in her work that she was trying to approach, and she just could not figure out how.

They were, she sometimes worried, things within her that she could not approach.

When she entered the living room, the source of the whine did not even look up at her, busy watching the television – that ratty old boxed set of The True Battles of Real Men. She sighed. "I am here now. Can you wait another moment, or will you be dying immediately?"

The source of the whine lifted his head slightly, and barked once.

"Very well. Let's eat, then." Koromaru stood slowly and followed her into the kitchen.

The old Shiba Inu had come with the marriage. Chidori would not have believed that she would care for a dog in her home, but Koromaru - "Koro-chan" - was not only the world's most well-behaved dog, he was unusually intelligent, as far as she knew. Ever since Junpei had brought the dog into her home, his habits had slowly become ingrained in her – a dog that watched television on his own! - but the most peculiar was that he wouldn't eat unless she sat and ate her own meals in the room with him, as if he was worried that she wouldn't eat without the reminder. It as if he knew that she'd endured long stays in hospitals in the past, that she'd had troubles that would lead her not to eat; a fact that she couldn't reasonably expect a dog to pick up on.

She rarely had problems of that nature anymore; her husband had seen to that, to best of his ability. But she could get lonely, and occasionally a little depressed, being at home alone with her artwork while Junpei was at work. So she liked having the company.

Koromaru walked a little more slowly than he used to; he also took more naps than he had when she first knew him. This shouldn't be strange – dogs got older – but in Koro-chan, it seemed unnatural. Shiba Inus generally lived twelve to fifteen years, was what she'd read, but their dog had been more or less full grown when she first met him, and it was now... eight years later? Nine? Ten? She lost track of time, sometimes. But Koromaru didn't look elderly, just worn out. She'd asked Junpei about it once; he'd just laughed and said that Koromaru was the sort of dog who'd never die. It worried her sometimes. He was so protective... what would he do when he lost his best friend? But then, what would she ever do if she lost either of them?

They settled into eat, and Chidori's mind went back to her work. There was something missing from the latest painting, and she needed to draw it out. She thought it may well be something dark, like a memory. But she didn't need to conceive of the memory specifically – art was a mirror, you cast your own reflection, could only ever see your own shadows. She just had to fit the missing piece in, and the story would tell itself.

-2021-

Brown exited the bar into the rain.

Justin had been both helpful and not helpful. He'd clearly been forthcoming with the facts, but there were things that he was holding back; in Brown's experience, that meant he knew things that could not be real, not without being crazy. Like an alternate universe created from the dreams of a sick girl; like rumors becoming reality. Brown couldn't very well ask the questions that he really wanted to without attracting attention. Or looking like a madman.

"Were there demons influencing events?"

"Did anyone face off against their own Shadow?"

"Were people trapped in some other world, far more deadly than our own?"

Well. The upside of The Plan was that it wasn't his job to make sense of the facts – just to relay them to Elly and let her sort them out. It looked like Nanjou missed this case back in 2009, and his fiancee was dealing with her own business back then.

On to new business.

-XXXX (Time is nothing in the Velvet Room)-

Igor sighed.

Existence for denizens of the Velvet Room was such that service was all; their lives, such as they were, were defined by their charge from Philemon, their lord and master. It was noble service, and Igor was pleased to have a role so important. And to think of the guests that he had beheld! The nobility of the Wild Cards; the courage of the others. He had lived to see Shadows with the strength of heart to form their own Personas; to see a machine think and feel as a human did (a story close to his own heart!); to see the forging of the Seal, and the resolution of the Paradox.

And yet, for the first time, he felt discontent.

It was this that caused him to plumb his own meager recollections for an understanding. Memory could be naught but perfect here for one such as him, residing within the collective unconscious itself. And in seeing his anomalous birth, something occurred to Igor for the first time.

He had a "father."

Dr. Victor had been trying to create life, and create life he had; he had formed, without even his own knowledge, a bond that could not be broken. Igor suspected that despite Dr. Victor's own years of service to the Devil Summoners in a similar function to Igor's own, that they would find little to like within each other. Igor had certainly never been a "child," his very birth had been into a life of willing servitude to powers beyond them both. He was no Pinocchio, not in a body such as his, well-carved to be forever old: he was Pulcinella, avatar of trickster spirits. One whose love had always been expressed through aggression.

It occurred to him that his discontent was concern; realizing that he had a father helped him realize that he had concern for his own "children," who were now imperiled. Perhaps he could practice what he preached.

He inclined his head ever so slightly. "I am going to act of my own accord."

Nanashi hit a low note on his piano. "I did not see anything."

Belladonna lowered her voice in sync. "I~ did not hear anything~"

The Demon Artist just smiled and continued painting, not saying anything.

-2021-

...Feeling all pressured by the peers and the media

Gettin' jiggy with confined place I'm tellin ya

Anywhere ya be from New York to Siberia

Gotta feel your own beat and shake your derriere

I'mma put it down

Grabbin' this crown

Put your dollars on the ground

Gonna double upnow

Six to five to four to three-two

One more time heavy punchline about to bruise...

Margaret was once again aboard a train car, but this one was moving. She found it hard to consider it an improvement.

The worst of it was, Theo had been right about something. She had gone to the ticket vendor and upended her purse, spilling thousands of yen on the man's counter for two tickets to Inaba, but she had not specified the bullet train. Now they sat across from each other, Theodore staring out the window and Margaret digging her perfect nails into her knees.

Her display in that park had been undignified, but a little therapeutic in a way that she didn't entirely understand. It had, however, frightened Theo into silence. She had many questions for her younger brother, but something told her that broaching them immediately may be unwise.

"Theodore...?" She tried to speak as gently as she knew how. He looked up, and his expression was... hurt? Perhaps she did not understand. "May I ask what you are thinking about?"

"My belongings." He turned back to the window, as the Japanese countryside rolled on. Theo's collection was a child's inventory of trinkets; Mah-jong tiles and empty drink containers, strange garments that did not fit him, They had been, she mused, his way of communicating with The Girl, by trading trifle for trifle. They were objects with memory. She had nothing of The Boy, had only given to him. One of the only physical objects that she'd treasured, her precious bookmark, and only then because her master had given it to her when her service began.

"Is this because you do not remember how you freed her? Has this caused upset?"

He rolled his eyes back towards her, and there was something that she'd never seen in her brother's expression before: pity. "No, Margaret. It is because my belongings are one way in which Elizabeth and I are still alike."

In that moment, she felt like she understood her brother a little better than she had before.

And then there was a flaring sensation behind her left eye, something throbbing and nostalgic, the sound of a chain snapping into place, and a whispered voice that she almost recognised...

Thou art I... And I am thou...

Thou hast established a new bond...

It takes you forward towards the time of the healing...

Thou shalt be blessed when creating Personas of the Beggar arcana...

Margaret coughed into her fist, and Theodore looked at her with concern. "Sister?" He reached forward, and then pulled his hand back. "Are you well?" She shook her head.

Healing? Beggar?

Igor had not actually spoken to her of social links... not every guest of the Velvet Room had been required to rely upon them, although the strongest ones had. But they had each possessed the Wild Card, and surely she did not?

But it was more than that, it was the one sitting across from her, unsure of what to do with his hands.

The incident was this:

Mark was just stuffing his spray-can into his duffel when he heard a noise from above. He was then hit with a blinding pain in his frontal lobe, and his arm jerked the wrong way in response. The cord was released from the catch in the pulley, and he began to fall.

Mark wasn't high enough up that he would die, but he likely would have broken something. But Mark had the power of Persona, and Susano-O acted as fast as Mark could think, enveloping him in an earthly vortex – wind rushed in all directions, slowing his descent to the ground and pushing outward. Cars parked on the nearby street were pushed a foot closer to the traffic lane, and a streetlight shook violently, but the damage was minimal as Mark's feet touched the ground.

The pain was familiar, like an echo. Mark had sensed a strong Persona resonance above him, sharply and suddenly. That he'd even been able to use his powers was a bad sign – he was on a side street in a normal city, not in some alternate world or demonic enclave. Using the rope to pull and the wind that he created to push, he scaled the wall quickly, looking for his assailant – as whoever or whatever it had been, it had definitely been hostile.

The sensation, though, was now gone, and there was nothing to be seen on the roof, or from its vantage point.

"Too weird," he muttered under his breath, and did the responsible thing – pulled out his cell phone and made to dial his best friend, the man who'd once led he and his friends into battle.

Before his finger could hit the quick-dial button, however, something hit him hard from the side. His brain exploded again in the sudden flare of Persona resonance, and his phone went flying off of the roof.

Unable to see his attacker, he chose to erupt in a zandyne spell, a massive blast that encompassed most of the roof. The casting of the spell made him dizzy – if it was from being out of practice, or using the spell in an area unlike the warped places his magic had once been effective, he had no way of knowing, but his knees buckled and he had to grip the stone lip around the roof's edge to insure he wouldn't fall off, himself.

It was night and there were few bystanders, but at this rate someone would be hurt – likely Mark himself, at the rate he was going.

Weighing his options (Battle, Contact, Item, Retreat?) he chose to do two things. One worked, and one did not.

The one that did not work should be given points for ingenuity – Mark took one of the spray cans and fired a stream of paint around him in a circle. If it was that his attacker was invisible, perhaps this would mark them.

Even as this failed, however, he was enacting the plan that did work – jumping off of the roof.

With control of the wind to guide him, he was able to glide out and land on a passing bus. Retreating felt sour, but he didn't know what it was that had attacked him; and without his phone, he needed to get somewhere safe to call the others.

His head was pounding, and his stomach was trying desperately to push something back up. But he was alive for the moment, and he needed to reconnoiter, figure out what the Hell was going on before that status changed on him.

In the sleepy town of Inaba, there was a textile shop in the central shopping district. It did fair business, for its size, but it was perhaps better known for a small but popular line of dolls crafted by the store's owner, Kanji Tatsumi. A gruff and imposing man, he was nonetheless a surprisingly gentle soul and had a grace and delicacy in his hands that came out in the expressive dolls which sold not only locally, but online as well. If anything, they sold too well—Tatsumi had been forced to raise the price consistently to keep his order level manageable, as he would not settle for anything less than fully handmade, and his few trusted apprentices could not mass produce them any faster.

Less well known was that the same textile shop was also the home of a branch headquarters of the Shirogane Detective Agency, and that Tatsumi's wife carried the somewhat inexplicable and gender-confused sobriquet of "Detective Prince"-the rare private detective who was respected across most of Japan's police force.

This Detective Prince had taken on greater and greater caseloads in recent years, because her mentor and the Agency's "chairman emeritus" had taken ill of late. Naoto Shirogane had found herself torn in many directions, of late: her duties as a wife, as an investigator, as a grand-daughter, and as a person unto herself had all grown more demanding at an almost exponential rate since the day that Yakushiji-san had arrived in person to inform her of her grandfather's failing health.

And so it was that she found herself at her desk at home, rubbing at her eyes as a cat curled around her legs. Gouto was her grandfather's cat, and she'd agreed to take him in to ease the load on both Grampa and Yakushiji-san, but their relationship was touch and go at best. Kanji, for his part, loved anything both cute and fuzzy, and so Gouto's arrival had been welcomed instantly; he took care of most of the cat's care for her, recognizing a way to help without getting in her way. Naoto, though, for her part, found the cat to be incredibly forceful when it wanted her attention, something of which not even her husband was guilty (they'd taken time to find the right rhythm, to be sure, but now it was so comfortable she still sometimes hated herself for denying herself the opportunity for so long).

Even now, Gouto was being demanding. Absently reaching down to pet him, apparently, was not enough, and the cat jumped up on her desk. She sighed and shifted her paperwork to accommodate him. She had finally put one of her longer cases to bed, and Kanji needed an evening to finish a special order, and so she'd been blessed with a single night in which to pursue her ongoing personal investigation. The desk had been cluttered with notes and documents pertaining to the mysterious boy, and the incident in Iwatodai that he must have been involved with. The more information that she was able to recover, the less she was able to connect. It was a feeling that she had experienced only once before, and that had been the Hanged Man Killings. Which supported her theory: that it had been a Persona incident, and that the boy who could only be her brother had been in the center of it.

"Naoto?" Kanji appeared at the door to her study. "You need food?"

"No, I'm..." She realized that the sour pit in her stomach meant that she hadn't eaten in... two, three... seven hours. She winced. "Yes, that would be best."

"Good." He nodded. "I'm taking a half-hour break. Souzai Daigaku carry-out?

"I don't... their meat..." She pinched her nose. "Aiya's?"

"Yeah, okay." He knocked on her door frame once, and then left her alone. She smiled.

His shadow had been all flesh, and hers cold steel; his Persona was a towering golem, and hers would flit in the palms of her hands. Naoto had not understood the parallelism until later, when she would return to the textile shop at the end of a long case, dump her jacket in a chair and find dinner waiting for her, or a lunch of (back when she could stand it) take-out croquettes.

Hiding from Teddie and his desire to be made a woman, all that time ago, she'd slipped into the audience of a school play and found herself pondering an earlier request, from someone who wanted her to make him a man. The performances were dire, and the script a butchery, but still it prompted a remembrance of curling up with a leather-bound collection in her Grampa's study. "There are more things in Heaven and earth, Horatio..." What a perfect summation of that year's caseload; of the places she now walked, of Seta the crutch, and the man she didn't fully understand until Seta had gone.

A man afraid to behave in ways like a woman, and a woman hiding in the form of a man. To think: she'd stuck her tongue out at Grampa that day, saying the plays didn't have the life to them of her beloved noir pulps and mysteries. He'd been, as always, trying to impart to her a lesson that she didn't comprehend.

A shared look on the day she could have died, and it hadn't been enough. A moment of contemplation in a crowded audience hadn't been enough. The way her heart had stirred when he returned her to sense in the hospital hadn't, either, or the way she found herself looking at him when he grabbed Adachi and slammed him into the wall a day later... She'd no frame of reference. Not even when she wrinkled a love letter in her hands by the shoe boxes and spoke of love without understanding, and Seta had smiled that private, understanding smile. No, it hadn't been until she found herself so shockingly comfortable telling him her fears, and he had listened until she made her own decisions. Only then, understanding his supposed thickheadedness was a mask for his fears, the way her intelligence had been hers.

It was understanding the parallels that had made their romance possible. After that, it was only logical.

She was shocked out of her reverie when a clump of papers crashed to the floor. Gouto looked very self-satisfied as half of her files on the Arisato case were shuffled together. "Accursed cat," she muttered, and bent down to pick them up, when she noticed a particular photograph beneath Gouto's paw.

Much of her legwork on the case had been reconstructed; someone had broken into her pay locker in Okina City Station and taken her original research. That none of her other similar bolt-holes had been hit suggested that it was a deliberate action regarding this particular case, which led her to believe that it had been orchestrated by Mitsuru Kirijo, who was proving to be a formidable adversary. She had clearly, for instance, gotten to Takeba early enough that questioning her without a legal pretense had proven impossible. Sanada, as well, was a dead end—even if she could find a way to interrogate him without raising Chie's ire (skillful positioning, that), his ties with Kirijo were both too strong to give out information and too fractured to have recent news.

The photograph that Gouto almost seemed to have singled out, however, raised an altogether different possibility. She smiled, thinly, ran her hand along the cat's back, and wondered if there was anyone awake at this hour who could supply her with scholarship records.

Yuka Ayase had, in her opinion, been failing upwards for twenty-four years.

Oh, you wouldn't know it to look at her. She married a good man, finally, and she had a few wonderful children. She even worked in a good job; and it was because she wanted to, not because she had to – her husband's success was great enough to care for the whole family, if it had been what she wanted. Sometimes she volunteered in her community, and her neighbors found her a pleasure.

By any normal standard, she was not only successful, but a positive contributor to society. It was, perhaps, a question of philosophy, a subject that Ayase had not been good at in her school days... actually, come to think, she'd been poor at pretty much all subjects, but... the question being: Was it not heroic in its way to do these things? To improve the world in small ways and to live a good life? Not everyone could be a doctor, or a scientist, or a police officer, a firefighter.

That was a salient argument! Or, as Ayase herself might have said in her youth, "that, like, totally makes sense? I guess?" The problem was circumstantial. Contextual.

Consider this moment from 2001. The woman in question had just returned home (it matters not from where), and as she entered her living room, she found her landline phone ringing. The Caller ID recognized the number, and it displayed the owner of the incoming call as Eriko Kirishima. This woman, Yuka Ayase, she saw that name on the digital screen and chose not to pick up the phone, despite her shared history with the other woman.

But "ah," you say, many great and heroic quests begun with a quite-literal denial of the call. Miss Ayase's fear was understandable, but she could have rallied from that moment. But consider this: She received a subsequent call from Yukino Mayuzumi and again chose not to answer. And then, she received yet another call, from Maki Sonomura. This, also, she ignored.

We can make reasonable hypotheses about the contents of these phone calls. In Sumaru City, something very important and dangerous was happening in 2001, and it's entirely possible that these women who had called Yuka Ayase could have used her assistance. Because Yuka Ayase was, like them, a holder of a power called Persona.

Surely they must have felt her assistance would be valuable, because she received two more phone calls that night, from even more unlikely sources: Kei Nanjou and Reiji Kido. But yes, she ignored these calls as well – more than that, in fact, she deleted the calls from the telephone memory, so that it was as if none of these five failed telephone calls took place. No messages had been left. History was seemingly wiped clean.

Do you judge Ayase's actions as immoral? Or would you find such judgment unfair? She had, after all, been a full participant in one "heroic" quest in her life already. Perhaps she had earned the right to live her life free of such obligations. She had signed no contract, not even within the confines of the Velvet Room. It had not been required, in fact, of any of the teenagers who had been directly summoned by Philemon in person.

The important fact in this case, however, is that Yuka Ayase herself felt that she had done the wrong thing. Do any of us deserve the happiness of a loving marriage, of gainful employment, of doting children? Whatever your own interpretation, there was a dark part of Ayase's heart that felt that she did not. One might say, at the risk of sounding facetious, that it cast a shadow over her whole adult life.

This would certainly serve to explain her behavior at her high school reunion; when Kenta Yokouchi (heavily intoxicated) embarrassed himself in front of her, and his own wife, she took it as due penance, even after twenty years of history smoothing over the pain that she'd dealt him. She offered a reasonable lie to her husband (she was still so very good at lying) and that was the end of it.

More to the point, though, and sadly – it serves to explain the manner in which she died.

It was a confluence of timing, that Ayase would be home alone in her house for three weeks. Her husband was away on business, which wasn't routine but was also not unusual; her children were on school trips or out of the house or staying with friends or family – the nature of it all is immaterial. But on the second day of twenty-one days, she woke with a nasty cough, one that found her spitting a not insignificant amount of blood into her master bathroom sink.

At first, it appeared to be nothing. Later, when she found blood on an earlobe, she knew that it was most definitely something. And while she'd never been the most adept of her former group when it came to understanding the messages of her own Persona, some part of her knew that this was not a solely medical matter. The reasonable thing to do would be to immediately call upon one of her old friends, to ask them for help.

But, she asked herself, what if they didn't pick up?

By the fifth day, she was slowly dying on her living room carpet, and it was too late to rethink her decision. Again, we might not find this fair... but fairness never had much to do with it.