-2009 (Timeline B-AB)-
Vincent Brooks rolled over in his sleep, one foot toppling over a half-empty beer can perched on the corner of a bureau. His tiny apartment on Shirakawa Boulevard did not afford a lot of space to move, and so these cans were scattered on every available surface, often with precarious balance. When the can fell, it took too more with it; the sound of the clinking, in Vincent's dream, was something akin to rain outside of a window.
In the dream, that window was a fancy grating inlaid into an old wooden door, the kind with lots of hand-carved moulding. Like something you'd see in a church – which was appropriate, because where he was sitting looked like nothing so much as a confessional.
In the other side of the confessional, a soft voice, like a child's, was giggling to (him?)self. "Congratulations. You've made it even higher. I never would've guessed."
Vincent's fingernails could almost feel the grain of the wood in the bench beneath him as his knuckles tightened. He never even noticed that he was in his boxers anymore, or the horns that emerged from his massive hairstyle. "Yeah, well, the indomitable human spirit, huh?"
"Interesting point of view." The voice, who had called himself Astaroth, seemed overly amused. "She's quite proud of you, you know." Meaning Ishtar – Trisha – who on some level was watching everything that he did. "You'll make a fine consort."
"I never said I was interested. I really thought this business was all done." Vincent slapped at the thin port between the two halves of the confessional with his pillow. "I thought I won, that you all were going to leave me alone."
"Well, he said that he would leave you alone." Astaroth almost – almost – seemed apologetic. "But she didn't. Don't worry. Everything will work out as it should."
"Easy for you to say," Vincent muttered. "Hey, what if I don't want to be reemployed?"
"You should take the offer, actually." Softly: "I expect your world won't be around long enough for you to treasure your freedom."
"What? Hey!" Vincent pounded on the wall. "What does that mean?" But the confession booth was already rising, shuttling Vincent higher and higher in the dream-tower.
Persona: After The End
-An Apocrypha-
(This story was written before the release of P4:G and P4UM)
Chapter Six: Unsubtle Reminders
-2021-
Mark cursed as he cut his finger open. It was a small cut, but it was something like the thousandth indignity of the day, and he was getting a little tired of it. Opening the sealed plastic blister pack holding the cell phone was turning out to be more difficult than battling demons in the Deva Yuga.
He was lying nearly flat in the bed of a pickup truck, heading roughly southwest. The driver who'd picked him up on the side of the highway was a big guy with a beard who hadn't liked talking about himself – he looked tough enough that Mark had been forced to admit it was the safest ride he was going to get. He was trying to get out of populated areas, and if he stole a car then half of New York State would be on his ass the whole way.
He'd been attacked at least four more times after the initial incident in New York City. Basically, any time that he slowed down or paused for a break, the thing would be after him. He'd ditched his old, treasured hat to change his profile (he might not be a huge celebrity, but he was noticed occasionally in the city) and found something long and metal to use as a makeshift weapon, but every time he tried to go get supplies, it became a pitched battle against something that he could not see, which made him look like a homeless lunatic and endangered bystanders.
He'd been forced to shoplift the phone, which meant that it'd get called in – they'd assume he was something like a drug dealer, and if they could narrow down the phone number, they'd get it shut down – but he only needed to make one call. He'd tried payphones and public phones, but whatever it was did not want him calling in a Nanjou air strike or something, and it always went at him then. Whatever the big guy did, he didn't carry a phone (perhaps the last one alive in a first world country who didn't?), and so he was prying at vacuum-sealed plastic.
He'd rehearsed the lines in his head to make them as brief as possible. In the event that he was able to get off two calls, the first would be to The Boss, the second to Kei Nanjou. Then he'd toss the phone off the truck and into the woods that were zipping past, so that – in the exceedingly unlikely event that the phone could be traced – they couldn't follow the trail back to him.
Finally the clamshell packaging popped open, and Mark scrambled with only slightly-bloodied fingers to check the battery and get the phone booted up. He had to assume that if he was being attacked, the others were as well. He had to pray that they were still safe.
When the phone was initialized and ready, he dialed the international extensions and started calling phone numbers in Japan.
At each one, the line would go dead.
He hadn't even taken the phone away from his ear when something pushed down on the rear of the truck hard and then let go, causing the rear to bounce up. The rear wheels lost the road long enough for the truck to fishtail at high speeds, sending the whole thing rolling over off of the highway.
Katsuya went down to one of the firing ranges, where his brother Tatsuya was lining up a shot against a paper silhouette. He waited for his brother to take his shots, and then approached as he was pulling off the giant headphones. "Hey."
"Oh! Hey." Tatsuya hit the switch to bring the silhouette up to the firing line. He had a nice tight cluster around the bullseye. "What are you doing here?"
"I was wondering if I could get your help with a case."
"Oh?" Tatsuya blinked in surprise. "You never ask me for help."
"Yeah, I know." He took off his glasses and wiped them with a handkerchief. "Maybe that's... I could use some fresh ears."
"Shoot." Tatsuya looked at the bullseye. "Or, you know, whatever."
Katsuya replaced his glasses and pulled the silhouette from its clips. "There's one for the fridge."
"Knock it off." He slugged his older brother in the shoulder. "What did you need?"
"Well." He curled the paper into a tube. "There's a business under suspicion of being a front. They're smarter than the average perp, though... Their books are clean, they've got powerful friends..."
"Like, an organized crime thing?"
"Organized is a word, that's for sure." He slapped the tube against his palm. "We keep probing all the angles of this thing, and we're coming up short. It's too risky to put someone on the inside. We might be entirely wrong about them, as it is, but they're damned suspicious no matter what they're doing."
"Well..." Tatsuya stuck his hands in his pockets. "Who's the weakest link in the chain that you know of? Is there someone that can be pressed under a pretense?"
Katsuya frowned. That was the question, wasn't it? He'd been living his life for years as though Tatsuya was the weak link, the one that fold them all under. But really, it was him that was the weak link. Sometimes, he barely recognized himself anymore.
Tatsuya was still thinking it over. "You could claim it was mistaken charges after the fact. Just sweat them out, like on a drug charge or something, and see if they leak anything to follow upwards. If you don't make it about the big business, they can't be sure you're on them."
"It's not a bad play." He nodded. Except that Kirijo kept her people off of the streets. But Katsuya didn't want to tell his brother any more, lest he start exploring it on his own. And he couldn't be sure what it would take to set him off. "Hey, I'll buy you a coffee."
"Sure." He gathered his things. "I brought the bike, though. I shouldn't go too far."
The bike. Katsuya almost took a step back. "No, that's... fine..."
He had to talk to Kurosawa. Maybe there was a way to get someone on the inside.
-XXXX (Time slippage within the TV realm)-
Teddie approached the shape in the distance with some trepidation. It didn't look human.
He was something more than a Shadow, in the ways that it mattered, but he was still enough of one that when his senses flared, it wasn't just his (if he might say so himself) legendary nose, but also things that would be harder to explain in human words to Yosuke or to Sensei. Rise-chan, who was the one who came the closest to understanding, sometimes called them "auras" or "resonances," but that wasn't exactly it. It was just a feeling.
And the feeling that Teddie was having at that moment was that whatever it was intruding on his domain, his world, because no matter what place was his true home, this was where he'd been born... whatever it was, it wasn't evil. Not like the other Shadows, the ones that he secretly thought of like his "fake family," unlike the real one that Sensei and the others had given him.
When he got closer, he first realized his mistake, and then was confused all over again. His mistake was that the intruder's shape did not look human because it was only partway through the gateway, was only partway lodged into a television in the other world. He trotted forward.
"Hello!" He waved his arms. How wonderful! Teddie always loved meeting new people, and if he could share this special place with them, that was even better.
But... His trotting slowed as he considered the possibility that this was someone like Tohru Adachi, a bad man who had thrown people into his world back when it was still dangerous – or even Taro Namatame, who had done bad things, but was sorta-kinda a good person, even if he'd hurt Nana-chan, a crime that he still had trouble forgiving. What if this was a person who was going to use this world for bad reasons again?
This was a considered opinion, and well worth taking seriously, but Teddie forgot all about it when he was close enough to see that the "intruder," and it turned out to be a beautiful blonde girl.
"Well, hel-lo..." Teddie stepped forward pointedly, for maximum squeaking – he was pretty sure that girls loved the squeaks – and offered a hand to the girl. "I am beary pleased to meet you. My name is Teddie, and welcome to my world."
The girl, who had been calmly and dispassionately regarding the the strange world on the other side of the television, fixed her eyes on Teddie. There was a pause for just a moment – Teddie put some weight on one foot to get an extra squeak in – and then she shifted her shoulder so that her arm could reach through the opening. She outstretched her own hand.
"Greetings."
And then she began to fire bullets from her fingertips.
-2021-
Afternoon; all was silent, save for the spinning blades of the overhead fan.
The worst thing about being a private detective was when the phone didn't ring. Since starting up the "finding people business," Kaoru "Baofu" Saga and Ulala Serizawa had spent far too many days throwing darts, talking trash, drinking in the office, and otherwise failing to meet their rent.
Which wasn't to say that they weren't good at their jobs; while they weren't necessarily the most personable agency in the index, they were second-best in all of Japan, if not worldwide. The problem, of course, was that the top-rated agency was essentially down the street from them, and their "Mom and Pop Shop" couldn't quite compete with the Junes Megastore that was the well-connected and respected Shirogane Detective Agency.
Which was what made it all the more absurd when both of their lines started ringing at once.
There was a comedy of errors as Baofu and Ulala argued over who would pick up which line, punctuated with Ulala tossing a coffee mug at Baofu's head, but soon phones went to ears in perfect synchronicity.
They were, both of those calls, messages from the past.
"You think the bikes are an angle?"
Katsuya shrugged. "You said that Kirijo was a motorcycle enthusiast."
"Well, sure." Kurosawa scratched at his face. "But you'll never get her on a violation. She's the cleanest driver in Japan."
"And second place would go to Kei Nanjou." Katsuya nodded. "But the two of them have to be riding them together. We both figure they're thick as thieves. They couldn't resist that. It's a way in."
Love was always leverage. Katsuya understood it better than most.
On a late night when Yukari couldn't sleep, the door buzzer went off, and she put down her book in irritation. She couldn't imagine who would come calling on her at that hour, when she was already in her robe and halfway through the glass of wine that never seemed to help her get to sleep like it was supposed to.
She punched the intercom harder than was necessary. "Hello?" There was silence on the other end, and her nails dug into her palm. Some kid playing a joke. She wondered if she could get her bow out of the closet quickly enough to peg the kid behind the knee as he ran away. "Hello?"
"It's... It's Minato."
Yukino Mayuzumi had just woken up one morning a few years earlier feeling very drained; this wasn't so unusual in and of itself – she was a jet-setting photojournalist, and that was an exhausting job. And even when she wasn't zipping around the globe, capturing the worst of humanity, she was pouring a lot of what she had into her other photographic career, an artistic one – trying to capture humanity's best.
It was a difficult thing, being able to do both. Many superlative photographers were only good at doing one or the other, and there was no shame in that – her own husband, a great photojournalist himself, had a better eye for the bad than for the good. Though it was his constant striving to capture the other that gave him many of the traits that she'd fallen in love with. But when Yukki had finally put to bed the idea that she might instead become a teacher like her beloved Ms. Saeko instead of a photographer, she'd realized that maybe she could use her camera to do some of that teaching instead. Her best friends – Maya, Maki, Eriko – had pushed her to keep at it, and it was in balancing the two sides that she'd found a way to be truly happy.
No, she had a good life, but it was fair to say it was a tiring one. And so at first she didn't notice the change. But after some indeterminate period of time feeling drained, feeling like there was less of her, she'd figured out what it was. Her Persona – it was just... gone.
She'd put the call out to her friends, and nobody else was experiencing the same problem. Hell, Brown had even suggested – tentatively, to be fair, or at least tentatively for him, and not disrespectfully – that maybe it was her imagination, just a byproduct of stress.
After a while, though, with no change, it had become this thing, this dark spot in her life, that never went away. There were lots of calls to Maki, who was getting used to being the official Persona User Therapist, and those helped; she also did the logical thing, and went to go pray at Alaya Shrine – every Alaya Shrine, in fact, that she could find. Once or twice, she even embarrassed herself by interrogating random butterflies that she'd see, as if every one of them had a hotline to You-Know-Who. But nothing came of any of it, there was no threat, and she'd been forced to just... deal with it.
The only person who took it more seriously than her, it seemed, was Kei Nanjou. After the initial period of cautious skepticism, he'd had her come in for a battery of tests at a Nanjou Group laboratory. And whenever she'd submit, he'd bring around for more and more, without ever finding anything.
The most recent had been at a different building – belonging to the Kirijo Foundation, the name of the joint-founded charity organization belonging to Nanjou and his fiancee, Mitsuru Kirijo. Which is how she found herself in one of those paper gowns, sitting on butcher paper in an empty white room, being stared at by a girl with hair that looked like sea foam.
"It's true... I don't sense any kind of resonance." Fuuka Yamagishi frowned, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath. "It's... strange... sort of like there's a vacuum, only the air doesn't rush in to fill it."
"Right." Yukki sighed. "Can I go, now?"
When Yamagishi had left, and there had been a long enough interval for her to get dressed, Nanjou entered the lab room and leaned against the doorjamb. He was in a labcoat, and for once the number '1' embroidery was comparatively subtle, just over the breast pocket area like a logo. "I promise you that we will figure this out."
She offered him a weak smile. "I didn't realize you cared this much." He looked a little hurt, and she lolled her head. "Sorry. That was unfair."
"I learned the value of friendship a long time ago, Mayuzumi," he almost whispered, and adjusted his glasses so that the light that the lamps reflected off of them would hide his eyes from her.
"I know. I know." She leaned against the doctor's table and rubbed at her face. "It's just... hard."
Yukino had never been Kei's best friend or anything, but it was true: he had grown a lot over the years. What they'd all gone through – twice – had been more than enough to make that happen. And she got the vague sense that Kirijo had been good for him, too. The more time that he'd thrown into this company, though, and the more that he'd pulled away from the others, the easier it was to believe that he was his older self. It worried some of the others, Maki especially, but there was a small, solipsistic part of Yukki that wondered if Nanjou's efforts had been on her, Yukino's, behalf.
"Kei." She looked up. "Why did you guys decide to go with her name for the foundation? It doesn't feel very... Number One of you, y'know?"
He snorted. "I have vowed, for Yamaoka's sake if not my own, to be the number one man in Japan. Not the number one name. At least in Mitsuru's case, she had a father who could be admired." He looked just a little smaller, then, like the just-a-little-awkward teenager (despite his raised nose) that she remembered from high school.
"You know, you don't have to make up for his shortcomings."
He offered an ironic smile. "Perhaps not... but somebody certainly should."
"Yasoinaba Station. Yaso. Inaba. Station."
The train was announcing its arrival, and Margaret and Theodore found their way slowly first to their feet, and then to the doors. Walking on a moving train was a new experience – but then, everything was.
Margaret had chosen Inaba because it was the only place in the outside world that she had much recollection of. Even that was limited to what she knew from The Boy, and the briefest moment outside the blue door, when she'd made herself a bit more like her siblings. Given her limited options, this was the closest thing to familiar that she had.
Theodore's face was darting here and there; he wanted to see everything, try everything. He also wasn't saying so, either out of decorum or fear of his older sister.
She'd no idea where to start. Visitors to the Velvet Room seldom did, though at least they had the knowledge of their own world to sustain them. She needed to come up with some kind of logical plan, something that could be tackled in small stages, and then advance in that fashion. Thinking in terms like those kept her from going insane.
How could Theo not remember? Some part of him had saved His Girl, just as Elizabeth had saved Her Boy. How could he have no recollection of what he'd done?
Perhaps better to move back a step. Why had Theo come home, and Elizabeth had not? Whatever the reason was for that, it may go a step towards explaining the other part. But in order to explain that, perhaps she should move back a step further...
That her mind was now establishing something like rational methods of deduction calmed her, but also distracted from an increasing sensation in her abdomen, a strange discomfort. Could something have made her sick? Perhaps Inaba was still plagued with the fog of...
"You are hungry," Theodore noted.
"...So I am." Margaret flushed. "There were places to dine within view of the last Entrance our... the last Entrance your master had opened in this town. Can you sense where that is?"
Theo looked up at the sky for a moment, then nodded. "This way." He walked with purpose, and Margaret was forced to follow.
It was a good plan, until Tatsuya volunteered to be the cyclist.
He appeared outside the bar one evening without warning, with his helmet under his arm and an all-too-proud grin on his face, a dead-on match for the photo on Katsuya's desk.
"How did you..."
"C'mon, everyone knows you guys are working on something here all the time. I asked around, found out what people had overheard, and made some connections. You think Kirijo's fishy, I'm here to help. Off the record and all." Tatsuya tossed him the helmet. "Unless you think you can match me on a bike."
"I don't want..."
Kurosawa cut him off. "It makes sense. We need someone who can keep up with them."
And when Tatsuya met Kei Nanjou? Which of them would recognize the other first? Or if he learned more than he should about Personas? What if he remembered Maya? There had to be a better way.
But if Tatsuya was locked out, he'd keep snooping. He'd take the case himself, and he wouldn't know to keep the knowledge away from Akihiko Sanada.
"They're not gonna kill him, Suou." Kurosawa shook his head. "I don't know how far I trust them on their own, but I trusted them that far, before. This is about information."
Information for Maya. The one who stood between Katsuya and his brother, holding them apart. And if they were up to trouble, and Katsuya didn't dig it up? He thought about Kei Nanjou. The man had helped them out, but he'd been an arrogant little prick about it, and he'd held things back. He hadn't trusted him then, and like Kurosawa, he wasn't sure how far that extended. Not to endangering Tatsuya, but...
God in Heaven. When had he started sounding like Baofu?
"I've already figured out where they go to race." Tatsuya crossed his arms. "Are we doing this or not?"
Katsuya couldn't figure out a way to call it off without giving the game away.
Baofu took his feet off of his desk and slowly sat up straighter as he listened to the voice on the other end of the phone. "Kuzunoha, huh? Been a while since somebody called in that marker."
Ulala was casting him glances even as she tried to focus on her own phone call, from a surprising source. "Ma-ya, come on, calm down... I can't... We haven't even spoken since the..."
Baofu was scratching something out on a notepad. "You can't be serious. Why the Hell would we want to... Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Well, that's... No, I ain't saying that at all. Well, we're trying to be on the... Yeah, I hear you."
"America?" Ulala scratched at her head. "You want us to... oh, it's here, okay, but why... no, I haven't... No! Come on, don't be like that, I'm just..."
Baofu spun a coin on his desk with two fingers. "Well, I admit the challenge of it's a little... No. I'm not... Look, I think you've got me all wrong, here, let's start over..."
"Do you want us to call... Of course you don't. That's not what I said! Ma-ya... No, I get it, this is big, but why can't we come there, then, and help you... Uh...huh. Well, I... Okay! Yes, I am 'thinking positive!' I just want to... Right. Do you really think that... Huh."
"It's going to cost you pretty big." Baofu flicked the coin, and it buried itself deeply in the wall opposite of his desk. "Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Well, that doesn't pay the rent. Ain't what I said. Oh, for... Fine. Yeah, I get it. I'll expect you to contact me. Right, whatever," He hung up.
"Take care of yourself, girl, seriously... No, I... Yeah, you too. Ciao..." Ulala placed the receiver gently on the cradle, and then smashed the phone with her fist.
Baofu looked at her for a long moment. "You're payin' to replace that."
Ulala gave him a dry look. "Morimoto Sanitarium."
Baofu's eyebrows shot above his dark glasses. "You too?"
"Wait, what?"
"Yeah. Thought that place burned to the ground." Baofu looked angry. He was over what had happened, but dredging up old memories like this was... "Should've stayed that way."
"I don't think Ma-ya wants us to burn it down..."
"Neither does Kuzunoha." He drummed his fingers on the desk. "Let's compare notes and sketch out a plan of attack, get this over with. I don't like it."
Ulala rolled her eyes. "Were you going to ask my opinion before jumping into this?"
"If that was Amano on the phone, then I wouldn't think I'd have to."
Ulala fumed. She hated it, hated it, when he was right.
-XXXX (Time slippage in the TV realm)-
Teddie had been standing on the top of a sloping hill when he had reached out to the blond girl, and so when her weapon began to fire, instinct was enough to save him. He kicked his feet out with a sharp "Yipe!" and his rotund body rolled down the hill, out of the range of her fire – at least for as long as it took for her to emerge fully into his world.
His fur was grass-stained. This girl was mean!
He strapped his claw weapon onto one paw just in time to see the girl standing at the top of the small hill. She fired again, but he was able to call out a "Bearsona!" just in time; a bufudyne spell proved to be enough, freezing the moisture in the air into a thick slab of ice which deflected the bullets and sent them off in all directions. He cowered behind the slab. He'd never had to fight anything before without Sensei... and even if Sensei was here, he didn't have his Persona anymore.
In one sense, none of the Investigation Team but Teddie had them; without the presence of Shadows or Izanami, there had been no more calling of the giant guardian deities, as the world just didn't seem to support them. Not the real world, and not even this world within the televisions, this world close to the collective unconscious. Rise-chan, maybe, had access to some of her sensitory abilities, but the others wouldn't be throwing magic around any time soon, even if they still had Personas slumbering within.
But Souji Seta's was more than just closed off, the way that every person's other self was closed to them – it was actively gone. It had scared Teddie a little... it was a little like being soulless. But Sensei had been strong enough to thrive even without it, and there was very little change in him, except when it came to Teddie's nose. The reason for it was obvious: after Izanagi had chosen to help in the final battle, he'd left, and there was a vacant spot where He'd once been.
Which left Teddie as the only one of his friends able to fight. If this girl was out to hurt them, he might be the only one who could protect them.
And so he stopped cowering, let out a suitably ursine growl, and charged at the girl... even if he was leaving little squeaks as he ran.
-2021-
Margaret and Theodore had made it to Inaba's shopping district eventually. They weren't used to walking long distances, but the prospect of food, and the constant novelty of almost everything around them, kept their legs in motion until they were able to find a place to eat. They could afford anything that they could desire, but Margaret believed in being inconspicuous, and so they settled for blocks of something called "tofu" purchased from an old woman who ran a shop in the heart of the district. Thinking, perhaps, of their master's master, they retired to a nearby shrine, where there was a place that they could sit in the grass in the shade and eat without bothering anyone.
They were both dealing with sensory overload and culture shock. Too much that was new and strange all at once. Margaret would just have to focus.
There was an animal giving them a suspicious eye from a bush across the way. She chose to ignore it.
"What," she asked when she felt that Theodore had been given sufficient time to rest, "do we know so far?"
He scrunched up his face. "In both worlds, the Wild Card was removed from the Seal without harming it." Then he looked down. "Something happened, so that I cannot recall what was done."
She shook her head. "Whatever was done affected things so that Elizabeth did not return, but you did. I believe that whatever prompted this difference is what is causing your memory alteration." But what could affect the memory of a resident of the Velvet Room? That was the question.
The sun passed behind a cloud for a moment, and shadows fell across the shrine. The natural world was a strange and wondrous place. She wished that she'd not been so curt to the Demon Artist now. He was allowed to enter and leave whenever he wished – he could have helped her now, if he'd so desired.
She remembered that she had left the confines of the Velvet Room once before, with Igor's blessing – and in fact with him in tow. They had appeared within The Boy's high school, during some sort of event. Igor had offered fortune telling services to the students there, and the look on The Boy's face when he found them there had been quite amusing. But she had never understood why they had done that thing. The answer had to be, she understood now, that he'd wanted her to see at least a brief glimpse of this world, as if he'd known that she'd be forced to come here one day in a fashion like this.
Her master had been trying to help her, but had been unable to tell her so. Which implied that either he had been ordered to by great Philemon, or that he'd taken his own initiative in a way that broke no rules. Which meant that he'd expected these events, or had known literally about them, for a long time.
Wait...
"Time." Margaret looked at her brother. "The Abyss of Time had led to the Seal, or rather, had provided access."
Theo frowned. "The Abyss is closed, sister. We both know this."
She nodded. "And their dormitory is nothing but a human building again. But time itself may be the key. If time had been changed, it may explain the dislocation. Your memory..." She held out her hand, fingers splayed. "We have always existed in all times, yes? Some part of us in each world. The you who saved The Girl and the you who did not are both the you of the Velvet Room." She curled in one finger. "But if time had been changed..."
"It might disrupt my collective memory?" Theo looked alarmed, and rightly so. It was unnatural. They were supposed to exist outside of and beyond time. For a part of Theodore to be so severed, it implied that something had happened to time powerful enough to affect servants of Philemon. What's more... "My memory would resolve in time, would correlate all my collective knowledge, unless..." He was starting to get it. "Temporal flow was still in flux, the path still changing."
"Which means that whatever is happening is still occurring." Margaret nodded. "And if a part of you is even now being altered – what is happening to our sister?"
-1989-
Daisuke Todoroki was not a great detective. He knew that. But, like any P.I., he knew how to handle an everyday cheating-husband case. Unfortunately, this wasn't turning out to be one.
He jammed some fries into his mouth and peered through the binoculars. What he saw was-
-1991-
Daisuke Todoroki was not a great detective. He knew that. But, like any P.I., he knew how to handle an everyday cheating-husband case. Unfortunately, this wasn't turning out to be one.
He jammed some fries into his mouth and peered through the binoculars. What he saw was not a cheating husband so much as a man with too much free time on his hands. Kashihara was further up the mountain, and he and the other teacher, Okamura, were examining something and chatting amiably, but this was definitely not a romantic interlude. Kashihara then picked a flower and looked at it pensively.
It wasn't hard to figure out what was on the man's mind. Kashihara had a son, a frail kid who had a thing for flowers. The boy didn't have many friends. Kashihara was saying something to Okamura, then, firmly but not unkindly. The woman looked disappointed.
I've enjoyed this work we've been doing, but I need to devote more time to my son.
A car door slammed somewhere, and Todoroki scanned around. There – someone was approaching the pair of Sevens teachers now with a scowl. An old man with an expensive-looking walking stick. He looked familiar... Kashihara was repeating his withdrawal from the project to the old man, who looked decidedly unhappy about it.
Wait. Sudou. The hotshot lawyer. The detective blinked. He'd seen the old man in the newspaper. He was wealthy, had bought up and renovated Honmaru Park, and people were suggesting that he had an easy shot at political office. What did this bigshot want with two high school teachers?
Wait... The senior that had been seen with them – that had to be the man's son. Interesting.
Kashihara was standing firm on his point, and began stalking down the mountain. Sudou looked ready to club the man with his cane, but Okamura was calming him down.
This was weird, but it might be valuable. There was a fancy prosecutor in this city, Saga, who had been drumming up the idea that Sudou was corrupt, that he was doing deals with men on the police force. Todoroki wasn't sure what this meant, but he'd guess that Saga might pay for the information on its sheer weirdness value alone.
He got the car started. He might be a crappy detective, but he may have stumbled onto a big payout anyway.
-2021-
It was a small village, a few train trips away from the city. They arranged to get Tatsuya and his bike there.
They played it like it was an organized crime angle. They put a wire on Tatsuya, and Katsuya and Kurosawa sat in a car and listened in as Tatsuya tooled around the village on his motorcycle like he had nowhere to be. It wasn't long before Kirijo and Nanjou were passing him by, and then the game was on.
The first step was to impress. Tatsuya roared past them on his own bike, did a quick donut in a nearby plaza, and then flew past in the other direction. That annoyed them, without a doubt. When Tatsuya made his next pass, he tossed them a wave. Nanjou, who still had a big blue number one on his jacket, wasn't going to take the insult without showing up the young upstart. And apparently Mitsuru Kirijo was tickled at the idea of a race, because in short order the three of them were tearing up the empty roadway.
Katsuya was looking at himself in the rear view mirror. Sweat was beading on his brow. This was a stupid way to end the world. He thought about his brother out there, and realized what an angsty little child he had been. What would she think of him, as he was now? It was only now that he was remembering why he'd sacrificed so much for Tatsuya. He how many times he'd nearly lost his brother... including due to his own personality.
As if he could hear Katsuya's thoughts, his brother spoke over the wire. "Hey, I think it's working. Looks like you worried for nothing, Katsuya." His voice was a whisper underneath the growl of the motorcycle engine. "Let's think positive, huh?"
Katsuya's blood went cold. The bikes kept racing.
A gun tapped on the car window.
Souji Seta was surrounded by beautiful women.
This was a usual occurrence, and so he didn't seem fazed by it. But then, to the outside observer, there didn't appear to be much that did faze the young, silver-haired husband of pop idol Rise Kujikawa. He had appeared mysteriously, not so very long into Risette's comeback tour, and since then had been a hot topic among gossip hounds and rumor mongers; and yet, standing amidst a group of starlets who were giggling and hanging on his every word, he couldn't possibly look more comfortable.
It was only his wife, passing by with a glass in hand, who heard his whispered plea for help.
"You've got to get me out of here."
She elbowed him in the ribs. "Come on! I helped set this up! You've got to let me enjoy these while I'm still able." Rise placed her empty glass on a passing waiter's tray and ignored Souji's incredulous look. Her hand kept reaching to cup her belly, but she forced herself to stop. The news wasn't yet public.
They were at a charity benefit for victims of the Tokyo Lockdown incident. It had been quite the news story—the entire Yamanote line had been the victims of terrorism or... something... (Naoto couldn't trace things high enough up any ladders, and none of their people had been downtown when it happened) and there were a lot of orphaned children and a lot of injured people out of the workforce—to say nothing of the damage to Tokyo's economy from the major downtown area sustaining such damage.
Rise had put a lot of funding into the event, and she was performing a small set on the stage that had been erected at one end of the function hall. Even now, one of her opening acts—a small independent performer who had apparently been trapped inside the Lockdown for that whole hellish week—was wrapping up one of her own songs.
...Inside of the darkness of the heart
In the seemingly imitative town
Although the lie has been seen through,
I still cling to those affectionate words
The world reflects in gray
It passes fleetingly
Just feeling despair
Destroy the distorted mirage
Delete all of the world to do over again...
She was good. Rise made a mental note to have her open for her next tour, when she was able to... she stopped herself. No, she wouldn't be touring for a little while, anyway. As it was, Yoshino Harusawa hadn't made much of an impression on her, personally speaking. She certainly wasn't very interested in "Risette." Rise wondered if it was some kind of indie versus pop thing.
But then, what she didn't say to her husband was that a lot of people at the benefit were giving her the cold shoulder, despite everything that she'd poured into putting the whole thing together. She was the pop idol or the tofu girl, and neither of those interested the high-rollers who were pouring money into the charity to look good on camera. It made her think about the parasitic reporters who had made things so much worse in Inaba.
The minute that she'd turned away from her husband, the girls had swarmed him again. Talk about parasites... Rise accepted the world's daintiest sandwich from another passing tray and almost crashed into a supermodel.
"Oh!" Eriko Kirishima nearly spilled her drink.
"Sorry," Rise muttered.
"No big deal," Elly said in English, and winked. "Risette, yeah? I've always wanted to meet you!"
"Oh really?" Rise could not imagine what they would have in common. Elly Kirishima wasn't a Japanese star, she was a worldwide star, and was known for being as intelligent as she was beautiful. Back when she'd cut her hair short, half of the women that Rise knew in show business had quickly followed suit.
"Oh, absolutely... we must do lunch sometime..." But whatever else Elly might have said was cut off as the assembled guests began to murmur at the entrance of a new guest. Rise had to stand on tip-toes to get the view that came naturally to Elly, whose face had darkened slightly. There was a woman with the most incredible red hair, handing her coat to a waiting attendant and dressed in a gown that was sending women scurrying out of the hall in embarrassment of their own fall behind the trends.
Rise knew the face, even though she'd never met the woman personally. She was the largest financial backer of the charity event—unsurprising, considering the size and wealth of her vaguely-defined charity foundation.
Mitsuru Kirijo had arrived, and then some.
-XXXX (Time slippage in the TV realm)-
Aigis had sensed that the being on the other side of the television was a Shadow instantly, and her initial programming had taken hold. It would be hard to fault her – in the microsecond that it had taken her to adjust to the strange dimensions of this other realm, the only calculation that she'd had time to make was whether to call for Yukari.
She was there, getting ready for bed, on the other side of the screen. Yukari's evoker was buried beneath a mound of dirty laundry in her room, but she'd be able to get to it if there was an emergency. They were all too well-trained. But Aigis was struck by something very human in that moment as she opened fire on the strange, bear-like Shadow. It was, perhaps, selfishness; Yukari was her family, the living testament to the promise that they had made in honor of the one they'd been forced to leave behind. And besides – Minato had chosen her, Yukari, and Aigis could never let him down so fully as to let Yukari be hurt.
And so she'd dropped fully into this other world, let the window close behind her.
The Shadow had initially maintained a defensive posture, and so Aigis pursued it partway down the hill. But when the creature charged forward, and she leapt upward into a somersault over its head, there was an ever-so-brief break in the constant computation of battle strategies that allowed her senses to fully register what it is that she was fighting.
The Anomaly!
As she landed, the bear punched forward, and a bullet of ice launched at her head. She was easily able to fire a shot to smash the projectile apart, and she rolled to cover behind a rocky outcropping nearby.
She had first sensed the anomaly in 1999, but it wasn't until 2009 that she was able to determine what it meant. It was a Shadow, but not also not one. The first Anomaly had been Ryoji Mochizuki, of course, an avatar of Death itself. Over a decade later, and she was still processing how Ryoji had made her feel. His kindness and understanding, his monstrosity, his inevitability... her culpability.
The second time that she'd sensed the anomaly, she hadn't understood what it meant, either, attributing it to the Abyss of Time, or to the Shadow of Minato Arisato that had stalked its corridors. It was not until the defeat of Erebus that she had truly understood – or perhaps she always had, but had been afraid to see it.
Her arm was lined up, parallel to the rock face, targeting the approaching Shadow.
Sister?
She held her fire.
The bear tackled her.
-2021-
The car stopped, only halfway to the mountain.
"What are you doing?" Ulala frowned.
"The one thing that Kuzunoha asked, that Amano didn't." Baofu reached into the back seat and grabbed a parcel. It was a thick padded envelope, bulging in the middle to accommodate its awkwardly-shaped contents. It looked, to Ulala, like a piece of puffy cereal. He climbed out of the car, leaving the engine running. "Five minutes."
He entered the storefront next to the car. A courier service – same-day delivery.
Kurosawa and Katsuya placed their hands on the hood of the car as they were frisked. From inside the car, the radio crackled with Tatsuya's tinny voice. "Hey, they peeled off. Do you think they were tipped?"
More like they'd been fooled – all it had taken was a red-haired wig and a #1 jacket.
A different red-headed woman, with close-cropped hair and an ugly-looking rifle, watched the two cops as she reported in. Then she looked at Katsuya. "My name is Captain Misaki Izuna. And you boys are way out of your jurisdiction."
"SDF?" Katsuya grunted as one of her men finished checking him. Her uniform looked like Self Defense Force, but the logos were sanded off, like an off-brand model.
"Sure, let's go with that." She offered a weak smile and motioned for them to stand with her rifle.
"Kirijo's operatives," mumbled Kurosawa.
"I've been asked not to detain you for too long, but I do have a message from Kei Nanjou." She shouldered her weapon. "He said, and I quote, 'Don't be so stupid, Katsuya. Next time, just ask.' End quote. Bad boys."
The other goons were already climbing back into their jeep. Katsuya kicked the dirt. "She must pay pretty well."
"Let me refer back to my employer's message, here." She shook her head. "Don't be so stupid. You have no idea what they're trying to do. They saved a lot of lives in the Tokyo Lockdown, and elsewhere. You'd be better off signing up."
"And who holds them accountable?" Kurosawa spit. "I helped Kirijo the first time around. Her father would be ashamed at her presumption."
"I'll tell her you said so." She climbed into the jeep. "Have a pleasant ride home, gentlemen. Don't forget to claim your partner." The jeep drove off.
Katsuya looked at Kurosawa. "Well, now what?"
Margaret and Theo were loitering in the electronics department of a major department store chain.
Margaret had not known the precise method by which The Boy would come closer to the collective unconscious. Television was an abstract idea to the Velvet Siblings. However, she had known that it was something window-like, and that the location had been a central one in town. From there, it wasn't hard to figure out – not when the brother and sister had seen a giant inflatable bear floating above the Junes Megastore. They'd both met The Star in the past; it was essentially a beacon, drawing them in.
Now they were staring at the largest television in the department. It was not the original model, of course; that had long been sold – to one Souji Seta, in fact, the only "extravagant" purchase that he'd made with the money that was now half-his as the husband of a popular pop idol. A memento. It was, however, the unit that Teddie had recently used to return to his world on "vacation." The locations in the real world, apparently, corresponded to the locations in the other realm.
These were not thoughts that occurred to the Siblings – instead, they were considering the plan.
It was simple enough – they needed to be in a place of distorted time, something similar to the Velvet Room, but without the wards and guardianship that kept that place safe. From there, they would see what they could sense, find some way beyond, to where they truly needed to go. It was a vague and unsatisfying plan, but it was all they'd been able to come up with.
Margaret placed a single finger on the surface of the television's screen, and it rippled. Despite not possessing the gift of Izanami, they could pass through – they were, after all, not traditional humans, not even after Margaret's "eviction."
They could see through to the other side. And what they saw was The Star himself, battling another very familiar figure.
Margaret looked to her brother, who nodded silently. If these two had met, were engaged in combat in that place, it was as good as an endorsement that they'd made the right decision. And the Velvet Siblings each owed it to their respective Wild Cards to separate the two, before they could be hurt.
They linked hands and pushed through the television.
There was a feeling like falling, and then ground scraped across their faces, something warm and wet.
She was able to open her eyes first. What she saw was not a verdant plain. It was dark, and red, and pulsing. They had been brought somewhere else. Against their will.
Theo rolled over and coughed. "Sister... where...?"
Margaret shut her eyes, tried to will them back to the land beyond the television, but she could not. She was... oh, that's what that felt like. She was terrified. She looked over at her brother.
"This is... This is the Amala Network."
Rise glanced back at her husband, and found him staring at the newly-arrived knockout. Her jealously flared for just a moment, until she recognized the look in Souji's eyes. The "This person needs help" look. She turned back to Elly to excuse herself, hoping to find out what her husband was thinking, but Elly was already gone... as she'd made a beeline straight for Kirijo, who looked none-too-pleased to see the model's approach.
Rise ducked between two tycoons so that she could get close enough to eavesdrop (which was, of course, what the whole room was doing). Elly was going through the social graces, giving Kirijo one of those rich people kisses-to-the-air-by-the-cheek that was oh-so-fake, and winked at Mitsuru in a way that made Rise uncomfortable on behalf of everyone in the room.
"Darling! We meet in person at last!"
Kiriko had a glare that could cause earthquakes. "Yes, is was... 'Ellen,' wasn't it?"
Elly sniffed. "Oh, my friends call me Elly, but please, it's 'Eriko,' of course." Somebody in the crowd sneezed. "You know, my make-up girl, she swears that we could be twins."
The room temperature kept dropping. Rise had the urge to tell Souji that Agi skills would be effective. Mitsuru smiled, just barely. "You think? I don't see it, myself."
Elly placed a hand on Mitsuru's shoulder and laughed. "You are a card, Mitsuru, darling." Those in the front row could see Elly's fingers tighten, ever so slightly. "So... are you treating my Nate all right?"
This actually prompted a raised eyebrow in the other woman. "Nate?"
"Oh, that's a name that we used to tease Kei with, back in high school. You know how kids are." She smiled. "You know, I heard a rumor that you and I share a common love..." The smile widened. "We simply must fence sometime. I just might surprise you."
"As delightful as that sounds, I have such a busy schedule these days..." Mitsuru smiled thinly and removed Elly's hand from her shoulder. "I'm sure that you understand."
"Oh, I've no doubt of that at all." Elly bowed, but it was such a quick and high bow that it was almost like a slap to Kirijo's cheek. "Don't work too hard, Mitsuru."
"Of course not... this is a party, isn't it?" Mitsuru tossed her a wave. "Now, where is the organizer? I must pay my compliments. This is quite a reception."
Rise knew that Kirijo meant her, and she backed her way through the crowd so that when Kirijo found her, she wouldn't be too close to the dust-up. She found that Souji had met her halfway, and his hand found the small of her back. She exhaled, and only then realized that she was holding her breath.
"All things being equal," her husband whispered, "I'd rather be golfing right now."
"Golfing" was their private codeword for the time that they'd spent in the television world. Rise found that she could hardly disagree.
"I take back everything I said earlier." Rise backed a step into him. "Get us out of here."
"Uh-uh. You still have a set to perform." Souji looked back towards the approaching Kirijo, who was halted every two steps in order to pay respects to some investor or business associate. "Besides, Naoto would murder us if we didn't take this opportunity to feel out her Great White Whale."
"You're terrifying when you're fearless." She took his hand. "Also adorable. But this one looks like she could cast a Thousand Curses." Which was something that they did not joke about, and so Souji gave her a worried glance, but she just shrugged at him helplessly.
"Hey. Come on now." He gave her an evil smile. "Don't disappoint Naoto, or she'll tell our secret to Kanji. And then everyone will know. And Teddie will be over every day..."
"Okay! Okay!" She held up her hands in surrender, and that was when Mitsuru found them.
"I'm calling to apologize." Katsuya diced onions and threw them into the pot. "I've been a damned fool, and you've had to put up with it."
"It's not all as bad as you make it out to be." Maki's voice was calm and assured on the other end. "Are you repairing things with your brother, then?"
"He's dozing on my couch right now, with a cat on top of his head." He rummaged through one of the cabinets for the small set of western spices he'd bought. "Lucky bastard doesn't have to dope himself up twelve ways just to pet the thing."
She chuckled. "I know that I don't have to tell you this, but one epiphany doesn't make the feelings go away. You'll find that as you go on, you'll feel that way again, and you shouldn't hesitate to call me."
"Yeah." He sipped at the sauce. "Thanks." He clicked the phone off, and threw a wooden spoon at Tatsuya's rear end, which was jutting upward.
"Eh? Whuzzat?"
"Dinner's ready. Clean yourself up, and quit embarrassing me."
Taro Namatame lay still, and awaited death.
He should be so lucky, he thought; he'd avoided it so many times by now that it was a sick cosmic joke. At first, it was little things, like just barely avoiding getting hit by a car when he was a child. His former employer the councilman running late at the Diet building, and their missing a flight that crashed. In retrospect, these coincidences (were they?) couldn't help but strengthen his delusion that he'd been chosen as a savior, a delusion that no amount of regret would wipe away.
He'd almost killed himself, when Mayumi left him. He'd been in the drunken stupor to end them all, that night, and he nearly opened up his wrists in the bathtub, to save everyone the hassle. What had stopped him was the rumor about the television coming true a second time. He saw the girl, Saki Konishi, and he thought that he could rescue her, make up for everything that had happened. Cheating on his wife, Mayumi's death... he found a strength inside him that he hadn't known was there. When he'd called the police, the officer on the other end of the line had all but told him to go through with it; what was there to stop him?
And then he'd taken his own trip inside the television, the struggling Nanako Dojima in his arms. He should have died then, too. Ripped limb from limb by the monsters. But he'd found he had power, there. First strength, and then power. It was no wonder that Namatame had thought that destiny had laid the road out for him. And he should have died when the kids came for him, with their own powers. The doubt that they'd laid in his heart.
He'd tried to throw himself out the window, when Nanako's father had come to his door. But he was prevented from doing so, by the same kids; the same kids who then argued over whether to throw him back inside the television, to what would surely be a more fatal trip than his last. But if there was a God, He wanted Taro Namatame to suffer, and the decision was made to let him live.
But all of those paled in comparison to when the other detective came, the one he knew from that fated phone call. That was surely when he should have died. Detective Adachi's face had looked worse than any Shadow inside the television, a horrible smile as he lifted the pillow to put it over Namatame's face. Taro didn't struggle. He'd figured it was only fair. But a nurse came to the door, and so Adachi had signed his transfer papers.
Namatame didn't argue at his hearing. He told the complete truth. But the statements about other realities and monsters within the television left the court convinced that he was mad. And he probably was. They sentenced him to Morimoto Sanitarium, and locked him away in a white room. This one didn't have a large-screen TV. It didn't have anything but a hospital bed and equal visits from doctors and security.
And so he lay there, day after day, for years, waiting for death to finally come for him. Ever scared that in the end, he might live forever. His life and soul were already forfeit; it would only be right for him to suffer eternally.
And perhaps he was right, and perhaps he was wrong, but something very different happened instead.
There was a sound like breaking glass, and then the unmistakable thumps and slams of violence down the hall. At first, Namatame stayed in his bed; it was a psychiatric hospital, after all, and sometimes patients got out of control. But the scuffle was too big, too loud, to be just one or two unruly men. And so he slowly climbed up to his knees, looking out the window in his door. He saw one of the guards run past, only to drop suddenly as though he'd been shot. He got up quickly, stumbling in his paper slippers, and pressed up to the door. His breath began to fog up the window even as he saw a second shot embed itself in the wall opposite him. He squinted, and saw what wasn't a bullet at all, but a bottle cap, jammed into the wall hard enough to leave long, splintery cracks.
And then the door was forced open, and he was falling backwards. Before he landed, he felt a burly arm wrap around his midsection and a second pair of hands was forcing a thick bag around his head and shoulders. As everything went dark, he had the sense of mind to wonder in awe that there was, in fact, a far more appropriate and ironic punishment available to him for his sins.
The night was cold; Rise immediately rubbed at her arms when the three of them stepped out on the balcony. But Mitsuru had not felt cold much at all, since her first trip into the lobby of Tartarus, when her Persona awakened.
Souji Seta crossed his arms and looked at her with an expression that she remembered. It was Minato's blank-faced stare, taking in more than she ever could.
"Well," he said, "You have us at your mercy."
The three Persona-users faced off on the balcony as the party continued inside.
"I suppose that I should start by confirming what we both know." Mitsuru flicked a lock of hair out of her face. "Which is to say, what really happened in the town of Inaba at the time of the Hanged Man Killings."
Souji Seta was again surrounded by beautiful women. This time, one of them was his wife; it was the other one that made him want to escape. He saw two dialogue choices laid before him—pleading ignorance and fessing up—which were both going to lead to the same result. He wasn't really thinking about either of them: oddly, he was thinking about Yosuke Hanamura.
A long time ago, Igor had promised him that the bonds that he'd forged would remain forever—bonds that "could not be broken." And yet, in the time since the battle with Izanami, things had fallen into, let's say, serious disrepair. Souji's marriage was blissfully happy, it was true, and his extended family in Inaba were as close to him, and to each other, as they'd ever been. But the further afield he went, the more everyone had grown apart.
It had happened, some part of him knew, when he'd decided to marry Rise. Until then, even with the physical distance between some of them, everything had held in the same loose balance that it always had. But once he'd acted on the desires of his heart, people had begun making choices. Some, like Kanji and Naoto, were both obvious and safe. Others were not so much at all. And Souji thought about Yosuke, and felt very, very guilty for something that he knew wasn't really his own fault at all.
It didn't make sense, that things would be so stable in high school, of all places. There was a period during that time, Souji knew, when he was all but toying with the affections of many girls. He had been young, and stressed to the point of desperation, and feeling like so much offal, cast away by parents too busy to attend to their own son. But through all of that, everyone smiled, took it in stride, and the social links that he'd formed kept moving forward a step at a time. Maybe it had been the drive to catch the killer that had held them together, and without that as a unifying force... sometimes Souji thought of Margaret, who had told him of another boy, a boy that her sister had loved, whose fate had ended very differently, and he almost envied that boy.
And now the last thing to fall apart, the secrecy that they'd kept, shattering to pieces in the hands of this woman, a woman that he knew had something weighing upon her even as she leaned on them, and on Naoto. He opened his mouth to speak. It didn't matter what he was going to say, anyway.
Kirijo's phone rang.
She held up one finger, turned away, and looked at the caller ID. "One moment." She put the phone to her head, smiling slightly. "I didn't think you'd call me." Her warm voice, combined with the spectacle earlier, left few doubts as to who must be on the other end of the line. But then her face fell. "What?"
Rise edged up to Souji, and he put his arm around her. Something was very wrong.
"What do you mean, you've lost him? He's..." Her hair fell back over one eye. "I'm with Subject 4A right now, actually. Yes, like we'd discussed. This is absurd, Kei, 4B wouldn't escape on his... taken?" Her confusion was making everyone edgy. Rise's grabbed onto Souji's hand. "You're telling me that someone actively tried to..." She looked up into the night sky. "Is 4C secure? Well, figure it out, Kei, you know he's the most dangerous... Don't snap at me!" Her eyes could raze whole cities. "We'll talk about this later, I have... Yes, exactly. Report to me as soon as you... I know. I know." She hung up, and looked at the couple once again.
Souji was breathing heavily. "Which one is which?"
She looked uncertain. "I'm not sure that..."
"Which one is which, Kirijo?" Souji grabbed the rail of the balcony with his free hand. "Which one was taken?"
It took time to get the clearance to visit him at the prison. He was an embarrassment to the police force, after all, and so they'd stuck him in a hole so deep that only a select few could even find him in the records. It took the clout that their corporations had with the government to make a "drop-in visit" of the sort that they were proposing.
And so by the time that Kei had gotten people down there, it was too late.
The Nanjou Group representatives were still in the waiting room when the guard went to open his cell. There was a burnt out fluorescent in that hall, and so at first the guard could not see through the shadows of the cell. It was only when the door slid open and the guard stepped inside that the body of Tohru Adachi was found, apparently having hung himself with his own bedsheets.
Mitsuru looked at the two other people on the balcony and sighed.
Takeharu Kirijo turned and stared down the Ergo Division Scientist, cradling his daughter in his arms. "Why are you so happy about it! Now... Mitsuru can never escape from the destiny of atonement... She'll spend her life bound to our cursed legacy, when she should be finding her own way. What's so bright about that...?"
Mitsuru weakly reached up and touched her father's face. "Don't worry, Father... I chose this for myself... I'll protect you... Father..."
She had vowed not to make the same mistakes. That she wouldn't let anyone else get hurt, the way that she and her friends had been hurt. That nobody else would be lost, the way that Minato and Shinjiro, and her father and Takeba's, had all been lost. That she would complete her father's vow to use the Kirijo Group's assets to make the world a better place, to atone for what it had done.
In the end, she knew, she hadn't done a very good job of it. They'd staunched the bleeding quickly in Antarctica, and they'd been able to supply aid in France, and the UK, and other places. But the Tokyo Lockdown had been the clearest sign. She couldn't do it. Not enough, never enough. And now the worst was happening – somebody, or something, that knew the identities of Persona-users was making their move. A part of her wanted to blame Ken Amada, or Naoto Shirogane, but she blamed herself.
She pressed a stud on her bracelet. "Code Black. Be careful with the secondary asset, she's fragile."
"What-" But Souji had barely gotten it out, when the operatives appeared from everywhere. The people at the gala, save one, barely had time to notice before the two Persona-users were subdued and spirited away. Without a Persona, without a weapon, not even Souji could fight them all off, not without endangering Rise. And so the two of them were scooped up like party favors.
The one who did notice, though, tried to push her way through the crowd to get to the balcony. Mitsuru saw her and flicked her hair. She raised her hand in the motion of a fencing salute, and followed her operatives down the rope from the balcony. By the time Elly had reached them, the rope had been released and there was no sign that any of the three people had been there.
The gossip columns would have a field day with Rise missing her set, but she was a temperamental pop idol. The only person who'd expect an immediate check-in would be Inoue-san, her manager, and he was already being attended to. Elly could take it up with Kei. Mitsuru had bigger things to worry about.
If there was going to be a war, she'd assure that humanity won it.
The three of them met in the bar, and Tatsuya slid in next to his brother. Katsuya cracked his knuckles and watched as Kurosawa laid out three shots.
"So."
Kurosawa closed his eyes. "I was half-convinced that you were going to give this up."
"No, I think I have a better idea." He glanced at his brother, and then back to his friend. "I think we need to widen the circle." And he knew the two officers to ask.
Karukozaka High School, late at night. Baofu slammed the car door and looked around. The moon was lost behind a cloud and the stars were nowhere to be seen, but Baofu did not remove his dark glasses. Ulala cast one last uneasy glance at the large sack in the back of the car and got out herself.
"I don't like this." The parking lot was empty. If they were supposed to meet their contact here, it didn't look like they'd arrived yet. "It's starting to smell real funny."
"I think that was the guy." Baofu inclined his head towards the car. "I think he wet himself."
"Don't be you, just for a minute here." Ulala flexed her fingers, and then curled them into fists. "Maya said that we'd pass him on and be home clear. So where's the mystery girl acting on her behalf?"
"Damned Kuzunoha bullshit. Again." Baofu flipped a coin into the air and caught it. "That was supposed to be a stealth mission, you know."
"You're one to talk." She shook her head. "That went south real fast. This whole thing's starting to feel like a set-up." But it couldn't have been anyone but Maya on the other end of that phone call. Ulala threw a few punches into the air. "Do you think-"
Baofu held up a hand to silence her. There was a figure approaching from the shadows, half-hidden by a thick tree at the edge of the school grounds. A few steps further, and it was clearly a girl not that much younger than themselves. She held up a hand, herself, and looked around.
"Are you alone?" She cast one last glance behind her and then stepped into the view cast by the car's headlights.
Baofu frowned. "Wait. I know you."
"We both do." Ulala frowned.
Tamaki Uchida held a hand before her face to block out the light. "We can't stay here. You were probably followed." The Devil Summoner craned her neck to look into the car. "You have him?"
"Not until we get some damned answers." Baofu took a step forward, but Ulala grabbed his sleeve.
"You've helped us before. Right? Sometimes my memory goes a little fuzzy about those days, but you were one of them. Why did we have to go back to that place and take this guy?"
"It's not safe for him." She shook her head. "Look, I'll explain on the way. We have to move. They've..." Her face grew pained. "They've already killed my husband. Killed everyone."
"What? Who?" Ulala held out her arms. "Who did? And who said we were going anywhere with you? That wasn't part of the deal!"
Tamaki didn't answer. She opened and closed her mouth a few times, but only blood came out. As she fell to the ground, Baofu and Ulala naturally moved to put their backs together, but there wasn't so much as a sound.
"Get in the car and be ready to split." Baofu hissed. Then they moved, Ulala jumping in through the car window and Baofu grabbing up Tamaki's body. She spun the car around him and flung the door open so that he could dive in with the body, and the car took off.
Tamaki was still alive, but only barely. She was mumbling something to herself. "Flowing pure, the Kanda River looks up to sacred Mt. Fuji from afarrrrrr..."
As they sped down the street, Baofu searched Tamaki's body for any sign of a wound, but there was none. All he found was a folded sheet of paper tucked into her sweater, bearing instructions.
"Gather 'round, O youth with bravest heaaaarrts, gather 'round, and sing out proud..."
Ulala had her foot stomped down on the gas. Baofu was slapping Tamaki's bloody and tear-stained cheeks. "C'mon, girl, don't give up on us, here, what the Hell is going on?"
Her voice was so weak, like a whisper. "Karu High, Karu High, Karukozaka..." Cough. "High Schooooooooool!" And then... nothing.
Tamaki Uchida, the first Persona-user, was dead. She had been a Devil Summoner, a Detective, a student, a wife, a friend. She had been the place where it had all began.
Somewhere, somewhen, somehow, a familiar face watched the two sleuths escape with their kidnapping victim and the corpse that they had inherited, and smiled. War had been officially declared. Humanity's time was now marked in weeks.
They stared at each other, on her doorstep.
The first place Yukari's eyes traveled, when she had the wherewithal to move her eyes at all, was to his hands, shoved deep in his pockets. The way they'd always been.
He looked like he had that day. Like he always had. And some part of her, deep down, realized with horror that she did not. That she had grown old without him in her life, and it was an old Yukari Takeba that was looking at the miracle, was being looked at from beneath and through a shoji screen of dark hair. Twelve years...
"Is it... 2011?" Minato mumbled.
"What?" Yukari started to reach out. "What... no... it's..."
"Time... time dilation... it should be..." And Minato Arisato faltered, swaying ever so slightly, and then his eyes rolled back and he passed out into Yukari's arms.