-2008-
A police officer named Tatsuya Suou was hiking up the side of Mt. Katatsumuri on his day off, when he bumped into a monk.
This wasn't as random as it might seem; the mountain was home to a quiet beautiful monastery, actually, where young disciples learned the martial arts. When he was a teenager, Tatsuya had read about the monastery in an issue of Coolest – the pictures had been extraordinary, enough to catch the eye of even a slightly-jaded biker kid. This monk, however, was not wearing the traditional robes of that monastery. For that matter, he was wearing sneakers and smoking a fat cigar.
"How ya doin', kid?" The monk nodded to Tatsuya. "Enjoying the nature walk?"
"Uh... yes. Yes, I am." Weird to be called "kid" at his age, but the monk certainly had some years on him. He strolled over, glancing over at what had the monk's attention – a plaque referring to the many guardian deity figurines scattered around the mountain. "Are you from around here, yourself?"
"Nah. The head monk higher up is an old friend of mine." He offered a hand. "Mutatsu."
He shook it. "Tatsuya."
"Good strong name." Mutatsu nodded. "Nah, I'm just here on a visit, and I thought I'd walk around for a while and soak it all in. Do you know the story behind these little statues?" Tatsuya shook his head – but there was a part of him that wondered if maybe he had heard it, and perhaps just forgotten? "Well, story goes, a traveling monk – and no, before you ask, it wasn't me – he pitied the souls of children who had died while wandering lost through this forest."
Mutatsu found a nearby rock and eased himself down. "Hold on, hold on." He stretched out his legs. "God, I'm old." He put a fresh cigar up to his lips. "Got a light, kid?" Tatsuya fished in his pockets. "Never mind, never mind, I've got it." He lit the cigar and took a few puffs, testing it out. "Right, where was I? Oh, yeah. So, the monk stayed in the forest and carved all these little guardians, the Sae-no-kami, to keep the children company, protect their spirits, until they found their way out of the forest. The children, though, wanted the monk to stay with them in the forest forever. And when the six deities had their carvings finished, the children were able to find their way home, but the monk couldn't. Because for every prayer the monk made for the children's souls to leave in peace, a prayer to match came from the children for him to stay."
"It's a sad story." Tatsuya sat down on the grass beside the monk, tried to enjoy the mountain breeze.
"What's the lesson?"
"Hm." Tatsuya looked up at the sky. "I suppose that children can be cruel, even in their innocence."
Mutatsu snickered. "That's the official line, anyway."
"What's your take on it?"
Mutatsu flicked some ash. "I'd say the message is, 'No good deed goes unpunished.' What do you think?"
Tatsuya smiled, looked at the old monk. "I'd say that you sound like my father."
The monk's expression darkened. "Perhaps it's best you be moving on."
There was a flower by Mutatsu's feet. Tatsuya reached over, picked it and held it up. "What... what is this flower?" A familiar bloom, with long, pink petals.
Mutatsu frowned. "Aster Tataricus. Means 'I won't forget you.' Not the right time of year for it, either."
Tatsuya spun the stem in his fingers. A single tear formed at the corner of one eye, and he wasn't sure why.
Persona: After The End
-An Apocrypha-
(This story was written before the release of P4:G and P4UM)
Chapter Eight: Theory and Practice (For Want of a Nail)
-2011 (Timeline B-AB)-
The first full sign that something was wrong, was when Kanji Tatsumi's corpse was found strung upside-down from the torii at the entrance to the shrine in the Inaba shopping district.
Souji Seta stared at the body from the other side of the police cordon. In the middle of the town's dying commercial zone, there was no real way to hide it from the people until it had been taken down. Souji's uncle and his young partner were arguing up at the front of the crowd, and behind him Yosuke Hanamura was seething in rage. Chie had taken Yukiko away from the scene – she'd known Kanji growing up, and it had all been too much for her.
Souji shook his head as the tall teenager's body was carefully lifted by a pair of firefighters who had been called in. Just like the others, there were no visible wounds, no clear sign of what had killed him. He could hear housewives gossiping – he'd been a delinquent boy, but he'd been strong enough to battle with biker gangs. What could have done such a thing to him? But Souji knew the answer to that question.
Tatsumi had been lost in the Midnight Channel, and Souji and his friends had been unable to find him.
"How did this happen?" Yosuke asked him. Souji looked down. They had figured out that Kanji was the next victim, but that was as far as they'd managed to go. His abrasive personality had kept scaring them off, and when he was taken, they didn't know enough about him for Teddie to pinpoint his location in the fog. Who was Kanji Tatsumi? A thug, maybe. A good son, possibly. His mother had made a scarf for Mayumi Yamano. It... just hadn't been much to go on.
Dojima waved off the crowd as the body was loaded into an ambulance. Nobody, not even Souji Seta, saw Tohru Adachi's slight smile.
When the Investigation Team went to go talk to Rise Kujikawa, it was Yukiko who stayed with the boys, and desperately tried to convince the pop idol of the danger. She had been more sullen and reserved, after Kanji had died, and she was all but frantic, knocking over wrapped blocks of tofu as she tried to grab at Rise's shirt. Between her, and Yosuke's addled fanboy attitude, Rise did not trust them a whit (even if the taller boy, the quiet one with the silver hair, was – she had to admit – pretty darned cute).
Detective Adachi was loitering around outside the tofu shop, and the kids and Adachi both saw the stalker at the same time. They gave chase, but the boys couldn't quite catch up with him, and when he turned a corner he was gone. Had it been the killer? Adachi put out an APB. The Investigation Team began to assume, and so their theorizing went way off course.
With no potential suspect in lock-up, Dojima's off-and-on Papa Bear attitude grew stricter at home. The police investigation was split, with many considering it now a full-on manhunt for the suspicious photographer. And Souji was always acting so strange... Dojima finally banned him from leaving the house at night – for his safety, if nothing else. Nanako was horrified, and she believed in her Big Bro, but she was also a responsible and obedient daughter. She was all but a watchdog in the Dojima house.
When Rise was taken, Souji and the rest of his team decided to cut class to go into the television. Kanji had been the third body, and a fourth had already turned up – their homeroom teacher, Kinshiro Morooka. The class trip had been canceled, and the students asked to stay in their homes for the weekend. When they returned to school the following Monday, "King Moron" was just gone. They couldn't afford to let anyone else die.
They had been getting nowhere. They had to act – never mind the consequences.
In the Marukyu Striptease, Rise was at the mercy of her Shadow when the team stormed in, knocking aside the pink-and-purple curtains. They were too late to prevent Rise from denying her Shadow, and it grew into a writhing behemoth – one that could sense their every move. It fell upon the bravery of the timid and innocent Teddie to save them... only for Teddie's own Shadow to emerge from the darkness, spurred on by Rise's self-doubt.
Souji Seta and his friends were a man short already in the battle, but that was only part of the problem. No, Rise's earlier doubts and distrust were not enough to change who she was as a person – or, for that matter, to wipe clear the image of Souji emerging with his golf club held high, like an avenging knight. But they were enough to cause a moment's hesitation.
That moment was enough.
Teddie's Shadow had massive ice powers, and the extraordinarily deadly Nihil Hand, a savage blast of pure dark energy that could not be shielded against. The latter sent the team reeling, which prevented them from blocking the former. Yukiko Amagi was encased from head to toe in ice... and shattered with one swipe of the Shadow's claw.
By the time Rise was coordinating the team, Souji, Yosuke, and Chie were battered and bloody. They pulled out a victory over the massive feral bear, but it was close and desperate – and they had lost one of their number.
Chie withdrew into herself at first, and Souji attended to her. Rise followed Souji like a wounded puppy. She was still in love with her precious senpai, but there was none of the bubbly, romantic idol left in her. There was only a shroud of guilt, and an empty core. Yosuke prowled the streets, and he was a wild animal, slamming classmates into walls and demanding answers to his questions.
Dojima relaxed his grounding of Souji at first, sympathetic to Chie's loss, but Yosuke's rage left him marked as a delinquent trouble-maker by the Inaba PD, and Souji was ordered not to associate with him. They'd already gotten in trouble with the police once that year, for waving swords about in a public place. Souji resented the commands, and the delicate balance in the Dojima home started to fray. Souji answered questions wrong, and Nanako started to resent the father who was never home, as well.
And then Mitsuo Kubo's identity became clear. Adachi no doubt helped spur them on, but everyone remembered the way the troubled student from a rival school had pursued Yukiko, the way he'd creeped them all out. Souji couldn't keep Yosuke and Chie under control, and the trip into Kubo's section of the Midnight Channel, a game-like environment called Void Quest, threatened at any moment to fall into a bloodbath.
…We hold our heads in regret
Until the dawn
Nobody comes
Let the butterflies spread until the dawn...
It should not be a surprise, really, what happened.
Yosuke took one look at Mitsuo Kubo, and did not give him the chance to deny his Shadow, to give it power and individuality. Instead, he took his two kunai and rammed them hard into Kubo's chest.
Souji moved forward to stop him, but nobody else did. They wanted it to be over. They had lost too much. Chie dropped to her knees and threw up, but as she wiped at her mouth with the sleeve of her jacket – the jacket that Yukiko had given her so long ago – there was a cold fire there, a resolve. Rise collapsed into herself. Teddie said nothing, just shook in place.
When they emerged in the electronics department of Junes, they had brought the body with them. They did not have an investigator on their side, they were all known for cutting class, swinging weapons in a department store... And Dojima had suspected his troubled nephew since almost the minute he'd arrived in town. Souji had not bonded with his uncle, had not made them meals and rebuilt the relationship between Dojima and his daughter.
Instead, Souji and Yosuke were found in Junes with the corpse of a serial killer. Yosuke was covered in blood. Chie and Rise were crying, slumped on the floor by the television.
Honestly, what would you have done, if you were Detective Ryotaro Dojima? What would you have thought?
Every change in our lives, every action we take makes ripples that are felt in ways that we could never expect.
It is not that Naoto Shirogane was more special than any other member of the Inaba Investigation Team. It is as Igor had told Souji once, in a dream. It is the bonds that we forge. Every person is valuable, and the loss of them changes us. Take any one member out, and see how things collapse. Without Yosuke, they would never dare to enter the television in the first place, and certainly not together, as a team. Without Chie, or Yukiko, the other would fall. Without Kanji, the group spins apart, chasing dead leads, and Naoto is viewed as an enemy. And without Souji, of course, the whole thing never happens at all. A different person is chosen by Izanami, and her victory is assured.
This is the world that Hamuko Arisato built. A world without Naoto, as in a world without any given one of them, is one where the world dies.
Not that Hamuko could have known. She hadn't even known her parents; they were indistinct memories, buried beneath the incarnation of death that had been trapped within her. By the time that she had known who and what she was, her own fate had been, if one will pardon the word choice... sealed.
It was a different world, with Hamuko Arisato in it; though she could hardly be held to blame for it. If anything, her birth was something of an innocent sin – and not hers, but her mother's; Yui Shirogane's desire for a daughter, wholly innocent and understandable, unwittingly damning.
Tohru Adachi slid into a seat across the table from Souji Seta. "Hey, kid. How are you doing?" Souji just stared at the young detective, who chuckled. They were in the interrogation room. Yosuke was all but catatonic in one of the holding cells further back in the building. "I just wanted to say something to you, while we could still talk."
Souji blinked slowly. Everything had fallen apart, and Souji was finding it hard to care.
Adachi waited for a suitably dramatic few moments, and then grinned. "Gotcha."
At first, the high school boy didn't understand. And then he did. He jerked his arms, but they were handcuffed to the table.
"Now now, none of that. Your uncle slugged you pretty good, you don't want another one of those." Adachi clucked his tongue and wagged a finger. "I just thought, you know, there's no point in being a sore winner." He leaned in. "Did you dream about her, too?"
Souji was still struggling against his bonds. Adachi sighed.
"Please, don't make this harder than it has to be." He put his feet up on the table. "I've got to hand it to you. You kids were tougher than I thought you'd be. You got pretty far along. You failed, but you tried real hard. Most kids these days, they're so lazy." Adachi waggled his feet at the captive. "You're strong. You'll do okay in prison. Hell! You'll probably be running it in a week." The detective gave Souji an innocent look over the tips of his shoes. "I can't say the same for your bum-buddy in the cell, though."
Souji stood, kicking his chair back. He screamed incoherently, and tried to swing his leg up and around the chain to kick at the serial killer. Adachi laughed and leaned back just far enough.
"Whoa, whoa! A little hostile! You're not taking this game in the right spirit, you know? What do you want me to do, strangle Hanamura with my tie while we're transferring him out?" There was a serious edge in Adachi's voice that wasn't there before, and Souji stopped short, breathing heavily.
"Why," he growled, and the detective told him. He told him everything.
-XXXX (Time slippage in the TV realm)-
"Well, gee, Ai-chan, I'm awful sorry about getting your dress dirty." Teddie laid back and looked at the perfect clouds of his world.
"It is of no concern." Aigis, for her part, was still studying the strange Shadow. He was no longer in his original shape – he had shed the ursine form and now looked human. Looked, in fact, quite beautiful, in a way that was instantly recognizable, despite their different features, as the same strange beauty that Ryoji once had. It was very peculiar to view a Shadow this way, even now, and it was a strange thing to process. It was strange enough, in fact, that like herself, he looked even then like a teenager, despite living an adult's number of years. "It is an old dress, that I only use now to sleep in."
Teddie bolted upright. "Reeeeaaalllly?" His eyes widened. "I am beholding the luminous Ai-chan in her pretty PJ's?" He mocked fainting. "My life, it has been worth it."
They had worked their way first to an awkward détente, and then finally, when they had both convinced each other that they were no threat, the explanations had slowly come. Aigis had been concerned about returning to Yukari before she worried, but Teddie assured her that he could keep track of time's strange flow within his realm, and so they had finally agreed to just sit and talk.
Teddie opened a cooler that he had brought from the human world, and offered her a Topsicle, which was actually a food that Aigis could eat somewhat properly – she couldn't swallow too much organic matter at once without flushing clean, but her tongue was able to approximate human taste... at least in theory. Junpei had insisted that her tongue did not work right, as she enjoyed the minute samples of cooking that she could process from both Yukari and Fuuka. So she held the Topsicle carefully, and they took turns asking questions about what it was like to be not-quite-human in a human's world.
It was nice – was, maybe, one of the nicest days that she'd experienced since Minato had become the Seal.
"I wasn't sure I'd ever meet someone else who knew how I feel, Ai-chan." Teddie hugged his knees.
"I did meet two people who knew how I felt. And both of them are now gone."
"What happened to them?"
Aigis smoothed out her old dress. "One of them, I helped kill. The other..." She looked at Teddie. She wondered, actually, what Metis would have thought of him. She gave him a reassuring smile, but didn't finish her sentence.
"I hope you can meet all my friends. Sensei, and Rise-chan, and Yosuke, and..." Teddie trailed off. "But they don't seem to get along as well as they used to." He pouted. "I don't understand. I thought that we'd all be together forever, but..."
Aigis stood up on tottering legs. "Someone taught me, a long time ago, that being human means understanding that all things end in time. It is true that I wished to see him tonight, but I know that his leaving us was the right thing. I have promised to honor his memory in moving on." She offered Teddie a hand and helped him up. "My friends, as well, have grown distant from each other over the years. That a... a bond cannot be broken, does not mean that it cannot be stretched or strained. And..." She smiled. "And we can always forge new ones, more new ones every day." She looked out at the sprawling fields. "Will you show me your world?"
Teddie giggled. "Well, let it never be said that I'm a bear who doesn't know how to treat a lady on a date!" He linked arms with her and they took new steps. Aigis, for her part, was charmed, but... was he serious that they were on a date?
-2011 (Timeline B-AB)-
Chie Satonaka had always wanted to be a superhero. From when she was small, she'd dedicated herself to protecting the weak, and maybe not always in the smartest or most effective ways, but her good heart (and legs that were deadly weapons) had carried her through her life. It was why she'd taken in the Junes boy, whom the town hated, and it was why she'd gone along with his insane plan to find the killer of Mayumi Yamano and Saki Konishi. When Yukiko had been thrown into the television, things had become personal, and that was that.
Now, though, things were very different. Souji and Yosuke were locked up tight. Yosuke would almost certainly get the death penalty; the only question for the courts seemed to be how significant of an accomplice Souji had been. Yukiko was dead. Chie had been deemed a victim, and had gone along with it—the only way she could imagine to, at the time, find a way to get the boys free. But in the light of day, it was clear how impossible that would be. She had lost them all, Rise's old manager had made sure that she was viewed as a victim as well—celebrity was useful that way—and nobody wanted to suspect a pair of teen girls, anyway. Rise was still in town, but it wasn't sure for how long.
A blessing came when Teddie came to their world. He had, through sheer force of will, forged himself a human body so that he could be with the girls. Teddie was meek, there were no bad jokes or talks of 'scoring.' He still spoke in bear puns, yes, but there was little joy in it – that was apparently how his brain worked, and so they quickly grew to ignore it.
What was there to do, after what had happened? Chie and Rise were torn up with survivor's guilt, with rage and despair, and in grasping for straws they finally settled on figuring out why things were the way they were. They went over all of the facts they had, hoping to figure out what the Midnight Channel was and why it had come to exist. Chie also knew that she was the one who had brought up the cursed rumor in the first place. She felt conned, and wanted to strike back somehow. Some way.
In going over the facts again, though, they came to one inescapable conclusion. Nothing lined up if Mitsuo Kubo was the killer. But the idea that Kubo had killed anyone but their teacher King Moron... it was too large to accept. The idea that things had gone so badly for nothing, or close to it... they refused to believe.
Time passed, and the school trip came around. Chie and Rise were to go to Iwatodai, to Tatsumi Port Island, with the rest of their class. Numbly, they climbed onto the train with everyone else. They sat together, and the other students made jokes—apparently Yukiko's death was already out of their minds. Rise would just place her head against the window and stare at the passing cities. Chie chewed away at her thumbs.
When they arrived at Iwatodai station, they were so out of it that as they milled about in the mass of students, they didn't realize that they were being watched. A man in a peacoat, and his dog, were both keeping a close eye on them from across the plaza.
-2021-
Yukari just sat, fists both clenched around her coffee mug like a lifeline, as she watched him sleep on the couch. She wasn't sure how she'd even been able to get him inside and upstairs, but she had, and now he was laid out on the couch, still in his old Gekkoukan uniform, dozing like he had during dozens of class periods back when they'd all been younger and happier.
All of them but him, anyway. Minato Arisato, still in the body of a high schooler. With even the same headphones, which she'd coiled up and left on the coffee table next to him. He shifted slightly, as if to remind her that he was real, and alive, and bound to wake up sooner or later.
She should call them. Any of them, all of them. Mitsuru, and Junpei, everyone. But she was terrified, that if she looked away from him for a second, he'd vanish again into thin air. Had Aigis done this? Was this why she was gone? Could correlation be causation in this case?
Minato rolled over in his sleep. He was mumbling something.
She eased over, as quietly as possible. Her hands were shaking. Did his being back mean the Seal had broken? Did this... time slippage... mean that they were all in danger, somehow? Surely it couldn't have just been a miracle.
She crooked her ear. Most of it was indistinct, but one word was clear enough to make out.
"Hamuko."
And God help her, she actually felt jealous.
-2011 (Timeline B-AB)-
Kashiwagi, their homeroom teacher, managed to put the student body in a love hotel for the night, of all places. Chie just grabbed Rise by her shirt and hissed, "Get us out of here."
Neither of them felt up for much in the way of partying, but one of the few places that Rise knew that was open at that hour was Club Escapade, in the Paulownia Mall. Rise had gotten them fake ID's, long before the trip, and they both grabbed strong drinks and hid away in the upper level booth.
The club still served alcohol. Hidetoshi Odagiri wasn't on the road on the night when the drunk driver left the club, because his own life had changed. The change saved his life. He didn't go out as often as he would have, because he was still mourning a former classmate whom he had fallen in love with, a classmate that had died on the roof of their school on graduation day. Odagiri would get over things in time, but that night he just hadn't felt like leaving home.
Because of this, Chie and Rise were pretty well blitzed when Mitsuru Kirijo and Shinjiro Aragaki entered the club and sat in their booth.
Naoto was not there, to play a cat and mouse game with Mitsuru, and so she was not as confident that the situation would be handled – or maybe the higher bodycount was enough to get her to step in. That Shinjiro invited himself along was more inexplicable. Perhaps he just had a thing, now, for rescuing girls in trouble, like it would make up for the past. Or maybe the resolve that he found within the Abyss of Time had formed him into something more like an active "hero." Or maybe, just being around, he wasn't going to trust Mitsuru to handle anything – it wasn't like Akihiko was going to stand in her way.
Shinjiro crossed his arms, looked at the pop idol. "I've... always been a big fan of yours." Ken had tried to take up Hamuko's slack, teaching him to open up.
Rise slurred her words. "Oh, eh? Howzabout you and we play the King's Game?"
Shinji blanched. He knew what that was. One time, he, Mitsuru, and Akihiko had...
Mitsuru cleared her throat. "We know what you've been doing. We want to help you."
"Gotta Recarm spell up your ass, do ya?" Chie tried to remember how westerners flipped people off, but held up the wrong finger. Unfortunately, the image came off entirely wrong to the two former members of SEES, and Mitsuru had to clamp a hand on Shinjiro's knee, so he didn't do something stupid. "Nothin' you can do will fix this."
Mitsuru had been trying to figure out a way to get Souji Seta and his partner out of prison before the worst happened. So far, their efforts had been fruitless. Some people were advocating a full-scale jailbreak, but that would cost the Kirijo Group everything. That said, there were things that she could do for them.
She looked to Shinjiro, who nodded once. He would get Akihiko and Ken, and they would go to assist.
Their team was stronger, closer-knit, despite what happened in the Abyss of Time. Hamuko had been close to each of them, had drawn them all together. They all wanted to work together—for her sake.
-XXXX (Time slippage in the TV realm)-
Don'tsayscoringdon'tsayscoringdon'tsayscoring...
Teddie was living his dream. There he was, with a beautiful girl (okay, not precisely human, which is what he'd expected, but she was at least as close as he was, so all was good on that front) on his arm, strolling through some of the most beautiful places of his world. And she knew what he was, and she... well, it wasn't that she didn't care, because it had definitely bothered her at first, but she was coming to accept it, and that was surely all he could ask for. No, this was ranking up high on the best moments of all time – up there with the weekend of the pageant, and even the night when Sensei had accepted him for what he truly was – when he'd figured out even more than the others had, even Nao-chan, and still welcomed him with open arms.
So he was, in his mind at least, desperately flailing about, trying to prevent himself from screwing this one up. He knew he had the capacity to get this right, knew that if Sensei could do it, so could he – he wasn't a young bear anymore, he was world-wise, at least more than he used to be – he just had to, to show the right sides of himself to Ai-chan. And hey! That's what Personas were, right? As an experienced Persona user, certainly Teddie could manage that.
He remembered the one piece of advice that Sensei had given him on that sad day when he and Rise had left town, after the wedding: "Whatever Yosuke tells you, just do the opposite, and you'll be fine."
They were down by one of the lakes, where the water was so clear that even at its center, you could peer straight to the bottom. There were fish-like things there again – more and more types of life kept finding their way back, every time Teddie returned here. He pointed them out, and she watched with fascination.
"I remember the first time I saw fish." She touched her lips. "It was Yakushima. I had left the lab without supervision. It was the day that I met him again... after ten years... I was just standing on the pier, looking out at the life beneath the surface." She was smiling. "I was trying to figure something out. A memory. At the time, I thought it was data corruption. I was trying to understand that I had buried something within him, that it was swimming around inside of him."
That Teddie had met the boy she was talking about had been the strangest twist of all. Sometimes he worried, the way she talked about him, that she thought of him the way that Rise-chan thought of Sensei. But then he thought about how he'd met that boy, and he understood that it was more like the way Yosuke sometimes thought of Saki Konishi, who'd been thrown into the TV. An important memory. Teddie didn't have important memories of anything earlier than when Sensei first came into his world – just that it had once been like it now was. But from the time he had met his friends... those memories he cherished, especially as they got farther away. He let her remember, and when she turned back to him, she looked grateful – but was still focused on him.
Maybe he had a chance, after all!
-2011 (Timeline B-AB)-
Junpei had taken Chidori to see specialists some distance away – it was decided best not to call him unless it was absolutely needed. Yukari and Aigis, though, boarded the first train to Inaba that they could find, with Fuuka in tow. Akihiko and Shinjiro, however, were not inclined to wait on their hands until someone else was thrown into the television. So Teddie made glasses for the three boys (hipster, reading, and aviator for Shinji, Aki, and Ken respectively) – and something that looked a bit like diving goggles for Koromaru – and the six of them went into the realm of Shadows to reconnoiter. It wouldn't be the same as Tartarus, so it would be better to get the lay of the land, learn how things worked, before a more serious expedition could be led deeper in.
They arrived on the platform that had served as the Investigation Team's staging area, and it seemed at first as if everything was going according to plan. They would go to a place they already knew, make a few probing strikes on Shadows to gauge their strength, and then back out. Chie refused to return to the castle – it was too painful, not after Yukiko had died – and so she remained with Rise on the platform, surrounded by chalk outlines that were all too suggestive, as Teddie guided the members of SEES to the site of the only successful rescue.
As they were on their way, Mitsuru Kirijo was undertaking her own investigation, out in the human world. If Mitsuo Kubo was not the killer, then who was? She'd make inroads on her own, join the rest of her team when she was able. She'd also be ready to receive the rest of SEES as they finally arrived in town.
Their timetable was one week – after which, Rise would be shipped out of town for her protection. It was the longest extension that she'd been able to wrangle from her handlers, and it wasn't clear yet whether Mitsuru and the others would need her, especially not until they determined how the fog of the TV realm affected Fuuka's senses.
Unfortunately, Mitsuru made a miscalculation. She'd been able to meet with the girls privately back in Iwatodai after Shinjiro and Koromaru had sensed their resonances, but in a small town like Inaba, her presence was harder to disguise, even dolled up as a tourist. She didn't have the full weight of the Kirijo Group to throw around – she was really only just out of high school, the transition of authority was taking time – and it wasn't long before someone recognized her. Within thirty minutes, reporters were jamming microphones into her face.
Her methods for getting them out of the way might have caused her PR firm some minor strokes, but at least, she thought, it was an inconvenience easily dealt with.
During that broadcast, however, there was a man angrily attacking his boiled cabbage dinner who thought that she was an "uptight bitch," if maybe something of a looker, and began turning that thought over and over in his mind.
In the castle, though, things were perhaps even worse. Because while the group of Shadows that SEES had found in the first room were not that physically impressive, it was only once they'd engaged them in battle that they learned that the deity running the show had decided that evokers were "cheating."
Akihiko and the others had felt the buzzing in their heads when holding their evokers, as they always had when in Tartarus; but now, when they pulled the triggers, nothing happened at all.
-2021-
Minato sat across the table from Yukari; they were having trouble meeting each others' eyes.
"How about a coffee? Or, no, maybe tea..." She pulled at her sleeve.
"Coffee sounds... nice." He looked like a cornered animal. She retreated into the kitchen, and grabbed a pair of mugs from the cabinet...
...And then the world turned sideways, and the mugs were shattering in the sink, and the tears started coming.
"Are you okay?" Coming from the other room.
"F-Fine, just... I tripped, it's okay." She wiped at her face with a dishrag, and tried to keep her hands from shaking.
There was a long moment – and that was it, it had all been a late night dream that she would wake up from, a full-stop sheet-twisting dream that would send her hands to the sides of the toilet bowl – and then he spoke again.
"Where's Aigis?"
-2011 (Timeline B-AB)-
SEES were experienced fighters, and with more than just their Personas. They'd come in with well-maintained weapons. These three members, in fact, knew each other's moves better than pretty much anyone. Against weak Shadows like those that they were fighting, it's not like they were going to die. And they did have Teddie with them, who was fully capable of using his own Persona.
What's more, Koromaru had no trouble summoning his own Persona. The loyal Shiba Inu tore through Shadows on his own, without even the clicking sound of his own evoker collar. Koro-chan's Persona had never had to evolve – whatever issues the warrior dog might have had – perhaps those involving his original master, the priest at the shrine who'd died and left Koromaru alone until he'd found SEES – he had no need to work through them. Or maybe another opponent had once again underestimated the dog. Either way, he was able to take much of the weight off of the others.
But it's fair to say that the moment when their evokers failed was a bit of a blow to morale.
It was decided a tactical retreat was the smart decision, at least until they could figure out why their evokers were not working. Not even these three gung-ho males were interested in a suicide run through the fog-filled castle, particularly for no reason. Keeping a tight four-point configuration, they eased their way back to the castle's entrance.
Which was now sealed shut. And the door didn't budge for anything, be it axe-blade or bufudyne.
The castle, apparently, had new owners. Three of them, in fact.
Their initial exploration was only supposed to take thirty minutes at most. By the one-hour mark, Chie and Rise began to despair. Particularly as Teddie was their only way out of the TV realm.
It was at the three hour mark when Rise sensed that someone new had been thrown into the television.
-XXXX (Time slippage in the TV realm)-
It was some time later, while walking along the edge of that lake, that Aigis and Teddie came upon something peculiar.
The first warning sign was that it did not appear natural. It was rectangular, with the kind of edges that suggested a manmade creation. Such things no longer existed in Teddie's realm – no longer were there things like the Magatsu liquor store, or the sprawling endless bathhouse. This suggested "foreign" in a way that even Aigis's own arrival had not, and put them both on edge.
The second warning sign was that they could not sense it with anything but their eyes. None of Aigis's advanced technological sensitory equipment, neither Teddie's special nose nor his Persona's abilities – it was as if the rectangle was a blank space in the world, a displacement of air molecules.
Teddie allowed that he did not know every square inch of his world in all its grandiose size, and so it was possible that the object was not a threat. But they both approached on their guard, both concerned at the possible return of Shadows – the dangerous Shadows, the Children of Maya.
What they found, as they grew closer, was a lemonade stand.
Slapped together out of uneven planks, with a handscrawled sign above, it was every bit the archetypal image of such a child-run establishment, right down to the single glass pitcher resting on its counter. Teddie and Aigis both edged closer, perplexed, as the stand's owner waved them closer. It was, they soon realized, designed unusually in one respect; it was adult-sized, as it was a fully-grown man who was sitting on a small stool behind the counter, and in a tailored suit. He smiled, kept waving them closer.
"Hi there!" The blond-haired man at the lemonade stand put his elbows on the counter and looked up at them. "Can I get you something?"
-2011 (Timeline B-AB)-
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
It had been Ikutski all over again. Mitsuru rolled over. The wind had been knocked out of her, but she was largely unhurt. She had thought working with the police would get things done faster, but she hadn't anticipated that the culprit might be in the police. In a fight, Mitsuru could have taken him. But all it had taken was one good shove and she was inside the television.
Taking stock of her surroundings, her heart sunk. It was a tangled morass of boardrooms and laboratories – it was, in fact, some perverted version of her grandfather's old private labs. A place that she knew very well, and wished that she didn't.
And she was not alone.
A young girl, only a few years old, red-haired and in a white dress, fixed her with a desperate look. "Daddy?"
Mitsuru made it up to her knees. "Are you lost?" She wheezed the words out as equilibrium restored. "Don't be scared. I'll get you home."
The girl just cocked her head. "Daddy? I can't do things without you." She crept closer. Mitsuru was having a hard time seeing through the fog, but when she got a glimpse of the girl's eyes, they were a bright yellow.
Oh. Oh, dear.
"Daddy, I know I said I was strong, but now that you're gone, I just keep leaning on people." The girl didn't seem so scared anymore. More like amused. "Hamuko and Yukari, they're the strong ones. Please, Daddy, can't you come back, so you can do my thinking for me? It's so haaaard..."
"Nn." Mitsuru edged herself up by gripping a nearby chair... a chair with stirrups. Her grandfather's examination table. Oh, please, no.
"Daaaddy..." The girl spun in place on one foot. "I didn't even learn how to eat a hamburger until a couple of years ago. How am I going to run a whole company without you? I can't do anything." She grinned through the fog. "I couldn't save Daddy. I couldn't save Hamuko. I can't even save myself from an idiot detective serial killer. And now I'm going to die here."
-2021-
Yukari held her coffee mug and stared at Minato, and tried to cope.
He held his, and tried not to look at her. Finally, he spoke, softly. "I can't summon my Persona, anymore."
She snorted, and the fact that she was able to do so closed the gap, just a little. "Of course, you can't. There's no Dark Hour anymore." Because of you.
"No... I meant..." He turned the mug so that the handle faced the other way. "It's... gone. All of them are gone."
And he was so much like a lost little boy in that moment, so unlike the Minato who had calmly taken her in his arms on the beach, that she feared there would be no hope for them at all.
As if he'd heard her speak, he clutched at his face. "I'm sorry... for me, it's only been two years... time dilation... two years and forever."
"I still don't understand it..." She whispered. "We..." We buried you. More than that, we cremated you, she thought to herself, and your ashes were scattered off the Moonlight Bridge. We were all there. I'd almost had to fight Akihiko, when he'd wanted to bury you next to Shinjiro and his damned sister.
He offered a weak smile.
She wanted to take him to bed. She wanted to throw him out the window. She wanted to curl up in his lap, and cry herself to sleep.
"I know I have to see everyone." He sighed, and lilted a bit, and she realized how tired he was, even after having slept. She always used to tease him, the way he'd doze off in class all the time; now, she wondered if he'd ever not be tired again. "Eventually. I just thought... you know..."
She felt them on her cheeks, before she realized they were coming all over again.
-2011 (Timeline B-AB)-
Akihiko stared at his Shadow, tried not to look back at the others.
"You're right. You're absolutely part of me. I've failed at almost everything I've ever done – failed to save Miki, failed to help Shinji, failed to see through Ikutski... and... and I failed with Hamuko most of all." His voice caught on her name. "I've covered up all of my insecurities for years in anger and determination and arrogance and everything else, and that wasn't enough to deal with them." He clenched his fists. "I am more than that. I am more than you. But you are part of me. And I don't have time to let you get in my way."
His Shadow hesitated for a long moment, and then chuckled, offering a salute. And then he vanished. Since they'd first started hearing the Shadow's voice in the castle's corridors, the halls had licked with flames – the same flames that had burned down the orphanage. Now those flames were slowly dissipating, making it easier to go on. Akihiko could feel Caesar again, somewhere in the back of his mind, limbering up and getting ready to move on.
"W...Wow." Teddie swayed. "I've never seen anyone accept their Shadow like that, without fighting it."
"Sanada-san?" Ken placed a hand on his shoulder. "Are you...?"
"Just..." Akihiko sunk to his knees. "Just give me a minute." And he threw up all over the carpet.
-XXXX (What use is time, within the Amala Network?)-
Theodore and Margaret eased down the damp, dark corridors of the Amala Network slowly, one step at a time, and back to back.
They had no weapons. Margaret was also alarmed to find that she did not seem to be able to summon a Persona, despite having been chosen to appear as a guest in the Velvet Room. On one level this made sense – she should have been able to sense that part of herself by now, if she was going to be able to do anything with it.
The only thing that she and her brother were able to sense, however, was that they were not alone. Things were scurrying about in the dark.
In a sort of backwards and stupid way, this was what they had wanted – the Amala Network touched all places, all times – it would be the perfect way to find a new route to the Seal. Of course, even the most rudimentary logic would have told you that somehow being drawn unprepared and unarmed into Hell itself was probably not a "plan" so much as it was a death sentence.
There were many things whispering, all around them.
Margaret did not turn when she addressed her brother. "If we are to die here, I wish you to know – I am sorry for all the times that I have been unkind to you."
Theodore's voice sounded almost amused. "I would say the same, sister – except I'm not sure that I've ever been unkind to you."
Something at the far end of the corridor roared.
"Perhaps we should run?" He didn't sound afraid – just posing the question.
"They'll sense weakness in us. We keep edging slowly – at the least, we can die courageously." Margaret joined hands with her brother and they took another few steps down the hall, to where one path branched off around a corner.
When they reached it, they saw something blue moving quickly in that direction. The two Velvet Siblings swung about so that Margaret was facing the new threat, with Theodore watching the rear guard, and that was apparently where they were going to make their stand. Margaret had never really thought about "dying, as it had seemed such a foreign notion to a denizen of the Velvet Room. Now, she was finding it difficult to think of anything else, a coming to terms with mortality that was all too rushed.
"Bless you, Master Philemon," she said, "for the lives that you have allowed us to lead."
The blue shape in the dark resolved finally into something humanoid. And then Margaret yelped.
It was Elizabeth, running towards them – one hand clutching a gaping, bleeding wound in her side... and the other keeping a Persona Compendium jammed into her armpit as she ran.
-2011 (Timeline B-AB)-
Taro Namatame hadn't been sure what to believe.
First, he'd thrown the Amagi girl into the television – and that had worked! He'd saved her! But then, when he'd done it to the big kid, the one who worked at the textiles place, that had definitely not worked. He had been in the crowd that saw the body taken down from its place hanging above the shrine, and he'd wondered if it had somehow been his fault. But his one success, in light of all the people who had died without his intervention (Oh, Mayumi...), prompted him to try one last time. He'd do what he could to help the idol, Risette, even if he was damning himself in the process. And when that had worked...
When the news broke that the real killer, the high schooler, had been caught, he'd been able to breathe more easily at last. He wasn't sure what the future held, but at least Mayumi's ghost could rest. But what point was there left to life? Many times, he considered killing himself. But something always stopped him. Some lingering doubt, some strange belief that he had something left to do.
And then Mitsuru Kirijo had gone missing.
It had taken time to process, to work out the mathematics of what was real, what it all meant. What had he done, what had others done... Eventually, there seemed no way out of the conclusion that whatever it was that the television was doing, he'd made some kind of mistake along the way. Namatame wasn't a bad man, just a weak one. And for Mayumi's sake, at least, he'd try to make it right.
Upon plunging into the television to rescue the young heiress... he became a puppet of Ameno-Sagiri within twenty minutes.
-2020-
In Aoyama Cemetary, three high school students are nursing their wounds and looking at a priestess.
"So you are all safe. It is as I thought... You're demon tamers, as well." She raised her hand in greeting. "I am Amane Kuzuryu, maiden of the Shomonkai. It's nice to meet you..."
"R-right. I'm Atsuro Kihara, and this is Yuzu Tanikawa..." Atsuro stammered out introductions as the priestes and the third student studied each other's faces. This was a girl who moments earlier had used magic on unspeakable power to attack the giant demon that had threatened them. None of the teens had yet had time to process all that had happened that day, from the moment that they'd been given the strange COMPs – demon-summoning computers – up until now, after the sun had gone down and they'd twice had to battle for their lives.
Kuzuryu nodded to them each in turn. "The Wendigo seems to have released his minions into this cemetery. I have set a simple barrier around this place tonight. It's best if you stayed here."
The third student, the quiet one, cleared his throat. "Your name. Have we heard it before?"
She blinked, then nodded, slowly. "It is also the name of the nine-headed dragon deity... the Shomonkai have a a story about it. It is said that the dragon is one of God's great weapons, that will one day destroy the world."
"That's a lot of meaning to put into one name." Yuzu rubbed at her arms. She hadn't been dealing well with events thus far.
"It's only a story, Yuzu." Atsuro shook his head, but Amane, for her part, just raised her eyebrows. His head bowed. "Though... I guess after everything that's happened today..."
"God would only strike down the unjust." The priestess turned away from them. "This I believe strongly. Humanity deserves still to survive, if they've only the will for it." And she faded into the shadows.
-2011 (Timeline B-AB)-
At the highest point of the castle, in what would be the lord's keep, the four members of SEES, battered and broken, finally burst through the door with Teddie at their heels. With Ken's Shadow dealt with, they'd at least had a full team of four with which to battle the generic Shadows in the castle, but they were weak, and sick, and Akihiko was swaying a bit. Teddie was drained of everything he had, trying to protect the boys and heal them when the damage got to be too significant, and he'd been forced to hang back of late, offering enemy analysis but not much else.
After a rescue, the procedure had always been to retreat, let everyone recover before going back into the television – but this time, they were not allowed to escape. They had to just keep on pushing forward. Nobody knew how long they'd been in the castle, and nobody knew if the girls back at the staging area were okay.
But they'd made it – there was only one Shadow left to defeat.
On the throne, Shinjiro's Shadow had one leg swung over the armrest and a lit cigarette bouncing on his lip.
"Tch," he said, "what took you so long?"
"Let's get this over with." Shinji jammed his axe into the floor and walked right up to his Shadow without it. "We all know I suck. Say whatever you want. I'm a murderer and an asshole, right? Go ahead."
The Shadow rolled its eyes. "You think you've got yourself all figured out, do you?"
"I'm a coward, I spent all that time living on the streets homeless because I couldn't own up to what I'd done. I took drugs and whatever else." Shinji pounded at his chest. "Go ahead, man, hit me with your best shot. I'm you and you're me, right?"
The Shadow sighed. "All right." He swung his leg over and sat up straight, tossed the cigarette away, and locked eyes with Shinjiro. "I'm glad she's gone."
"...What?" Shinjiro rocked back on his heels mid-step.
"Yeah! Hey, you wanted me to be honest, so I'm being honest." The Shadow stood up. "I'm glad she's gone, because it's easier to love a memory." He held out his arms. "I'm glad she's gone, because I don't have the balls to die in front of her. I'm glad she's gone, because if she was still alive, she would've figured out by now what a worthless scumbag I am. I'm glad she's gone, because my life is much less work without her. I'm glad she's gone, because I know that I'm free to throw myself in front of a train whenever I want without thinking about her."
"Shinji..." Akihiko's voice was raspy.
"Oh no," Teddie murmured.
The Shadow did a little jig right there, with his arms still out to encompass the world. "I'm glad she's gone! I count my lucky stars every day! And I count my lucky stars every god-damned day that the stupid robot could talk me out of saving the life of my so-called girlfriend, because if I'd hung on to that key, I'd never have had the stones to go through with it!" He got right up in Shinji's face. "If I'd had that key, everyone I know would've seen me let her rot on The Seal, and count myself blessed!"
"No..." Ken pulled on Shinjiro's sleeve. "Don't-"
"That's not me." Shinjiro grabbed his Shadow. "That ain't true! You don't speak for me!"
The Shadow burst out into laughter, and Shinjiro blacked out. Before his body had even hit the floor, the Shadow had changed.
"It's going to attack!" Teddie put his paws up in front of his eyes, trembling. Koromaru growled.
Where the Shadow had stood, there was now something giant, and monstrous. A pale rider, holding its scythe high. But its steed was no horse – it was riding a massive, ambling human corpse – a corpse that Ken recognized, as he cried out.
"Mom!"
Akihiko shoved Ken out of the scythe's path and rolled, crying out as the blade cut across his back.
The pale rider stood atop a mountain of dead girls. Each one wore barrettes in a pattern that spelled out XXII.
-XXXX (What use is time, within the Amala Network?)-
The third Velvet Sibling fell against her older sister. Her mouth opened and closed, but she was having trouble speaking.
"Elizabeth!" Margaret wrapped her arm around the younger woman's waist. "What..."
"No time." Theodore elbowed his sister in the back. "They are coming. Now."
Margaret grabbed hold of Elizabeth's book. It was, of course, Her Boy's compendium. And a fine collection of Personas that was. Some would not be accessible to them – Orpheus, Thanatos, Messiah, these were too linked to their true owner. But it was power enough to deal with whatever was coming.
"...Can fight..." Elizabeth staggered back to her feet. "Just... let me..."
There wasn't much time for argument. Margaret glanced at Theo, and winced once as she ripped the binding on the compendium. She handed a third of the pages to her brother, and a third to her sister. What she'd just done was unthinkable, but she had done a lot of unthinkable things already in the time since Igor had asked her to sit before him. There was no point in thinking about it now.
The first demons emerged from the darkness. She knew their faces.
Nebiros, and Belial. The Baron in Black, and The Count in Red. It would have been too much, she supposed, for it to just be a swarm of Pixies.
Belial pointed his trident at the three siblings, and licked what would be his lips. "I wonder... do you also tassste of velvet?"
Elizabeth was weak, but her eyes seemed clear. Each of the Siblings drew a couple of cards from their respective sheaf of pages.
And then they each heard a voice in their minds, one that even then had a vague sense of bemusement. "There are two enemies."
"Master Igor!" Theodore called on a Persona, threw a wall of flame between the demons and the siblings. It didn't seem to bother the demons much at all.
"Fire is ineffective against these enemies." Igor sounded a bit like he was reading off of a cue card. "I'd suggest... ice attacks, or perhaps 'hama' skills."
Theo cast Margaret a "What the Hell?" look, but Margaret was too busy flipping through her collection of pages to pay it much notice.
She was with her family. Her whole family. Perhaps they had a chance of surviving, after all.
-2011 (Timeline B-AB)-
Yukari frowned, scanning the small crowd clustered around Yasoinaba Station one more time. "I don't know where they are. Mitsuru at least should be here..."
While Aigis scanned the crowds curiously, Fuuka was trying her cellphone. "I can't get a signal on any of them."
"Something's wrong..." Yukari pulled at her hair. This was too strange. And all three girls had the same fear deep down – that they'd lose another of their number, still so soon after Hamuko. She didn't think anyone could bear it.
Suddenly, Aigis took off at a swift stride. "Huh? Aigis?" But the android did not answer to Fuuka's hail, and she and Yukari were forced to follow her into the unfamiliar town.
"Aigis, what's wrong? What are you..." But around the second corner, Aigis had stopped, and she was staring at a bush.
"What's gotten into you?" Yukari approached her. "Aigis, we can't afford to get separated, not until we-" And then she saw what Aigis was actually looking at: hidden in the bush was an animal. "Huh?" She crouched down, but the fox (for that's what it was) did not remove his gaze from the android. Then, he let out a series of yipping noises.
Fuuka looked at Aigis. "Can you understand him? Like with Koro-chan?"
Aigis turned, as though noticing the girls for the first time. "She was calling me from the station. The others are in trouble. We have to hurry."
-2021-
"Come to bed." Yukari took his hand.
"Are you sure?" Minato placed his other hand over hers. "I don't want to... I know this is hard."
"It's okay." She wasn't sure how exactly, and she could hardly believe she was suggesting it, but... well, he was at least eighteen, give or take a hundred years, and when her eyes were closed, maybe she could just... Oh God, this was too weird. Her other hand found his face. "It will be okay now. I don't know how, but... It will." Because maybe if she could convince him, she could convince herself. He'd always been the strong one. If he could believe it, he'd carry her the rest of the way.
She lightly pulled him to his feet, and his arms wrapped around her, and that much at least felt right – surely, the rest could be figured out when the sun had come up.
And then there was a thump upstairs, a loud bang, and the arrhythmic stomps of a familiar duck walk.
Aigis had come home. They released each other slowly, clasped hands, and turned to the stairwell doorway to greet her.
-2011 (Timeline B-AB)-
The fox was able to get them inside a television – a series of misadventures that in other circumstances would have been funny and interesting. When they reached the the realm that Izanami had carved out for her experiment, however, all they found were two frightened girls, weak from hunger and terrified of anything that moved. They must have been a truly pitiable sight, because just this once the fox provided some healing herbs for them at, well, only minimal cost.
When one of them was capable of speaking, it became clear that when the rain had stopped, not long before the girls had arrived in town, Mitsuru had been killed by whatever was lurking within her personal dungeon.
Yukari advocated going after the boys – Fuuka could stay with the others, the fox could take them back out of the television – but Aigis had another thought. She paced around the perimeter of the staging area, repeating the words "Please show yourselves" in a dispassionate tone. It was, in fact, a strange sort of parody of the Persona Game. Upon her completed lap, apparently her voice had been heard; a blue door appeared in her final corner, and she opened it to step into the Velvet Room.
The limousine carrying Igor and Margaret had changed since the last time that Souji Seta had stepped inside. It was not moving, and everything was inclined slightly to the right, as if it had been run off of the road. The driver of the limousine, Margaret muttered under her breath, was also missing. Igor informed the android, one of his favorite guests, that there was little that he could do for her. That if there was still hope for this world, she and her friends would be forced to find it elsewhere. It was the second day of the seven that Mitsuru had given SEES to resolve the situation in Inaba; Igor implied that the deadline existed far beyond Rise Kujikawa's presence in town, and that the world itself as humanity knew it may only have five days left.
When Aigis exited the Velvet Room, she was still trying to process what she had been told. Things were bleaker than they had been since Ryoji had revealed his true self. And in that battle-ready situation, she might be forgiven for what happened next – what, really, almost happened under different circumstances in another world.
When she stepped once again onto the stage that had served as the center of the Investigation Team's forays into the Shadow realm, she detected a Shadow amongst the team, and immediately fired upon it. In this case, the weakened Teddie never stood a chance.
-XXXX (What use is time, within the Amala Network?)-
As Belial and Nebiros fell, so did Elizabeth.
Margaret clutched at her sister, eased her down into the muck that ran through the floor sluices so that she wouldn't injure herself further. "I have you, sister."
"I didn't think... that you would come for me." Elizabeth winced. The whole front of her dress was one large red stain. In the mess, Margaret could not tell what was actually the wound and what wasn't. "I... thought that you hated me... for my desertion of duty..."
"I met a Boy as you did, Elizabeth. I understand now." Margaret wiped at her eyes. "You did as I now would do. I'm sorry. I have been a poor sister to you both... and you saved us... both of us... carrying your compendium..."
Elizabeth offered a small smile before passing out. Margaret heard a familiar voice in her head.
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 Fountain arcana...
A sign, at least, that Elizabeth was still alive and with them – if they could get her someplace to be healed, and quickly.
"Sister..." Theodore was not looking at his wounded twin. He was instead gazing down the hall, where there was movement. "We need to escape."
Margaret, cradling Elizabeth in her arms, worked her way back to her feet. "What is it?" Theo looked afraid.
The image down the corridor again resolved into a blue-clad figure, again feminine and humanoid. Margaret stumbled backwards. This was not good. There were few figures who could truly scare one of the Velvet Siblings when they were at their full strength, but this was one of them. This, in fact, was one who would even set their Master ill at ease.
"What do we do?" Theo was looking at her.
"We cannot run." She hefted her sister's weight. "Not carrying Elizabeth. And if we did, we'd be dead in seconds."
"Uncle Red?" The little girl in blue had reached the still-warm corpses of the demons that the trio had been able to kill, and stopped. "Uncle Black?" The girl didn't look distraught or angry, so much as confused. "I'm all alone again?" She looked at Margaret and Theodore. "That means you'll have to play with me."
Theodore held up his pages from the compendium. "If I fight, do you think you can escape with her?"
Margaret shook her head. "Don't be stupid. We just found her. We can't separate again. We'll stand or die together."
The little girl didn't seem to notice anything they said. "Will you play with me?" She stepped over the corpses of her "uncles" and drew nearer. "Won't you do just one thing for me? Please?" She was smiling. "Pretty please?"
"For the record," Theo offered, "I'm officially done with the world outside. I'd like to go home now."
Alice pointed at them. "Won't you please die for me?"
-2011 (Timeline B-AB)-
Shinjiro Aragaki had finally been able to accept the darkest part of himself, and once again he could summon upon Brutus. His Persona looked a great deal like Akihiko's; it was sleek black stone where Akihiko's was white marble, and it was the small figure in its core, and its face, that were purest white. That they were complements, as they had been before, was unsurprising, but it was only now that Shinji was able to see his Persona as also derivative of the pale rider, of the incarnation of death itself. Appropriate enough for him on his own, doubly more so after having been touched by Hamuko Arisato.
It had not been without cost. Aki had a bleeding wound in his abdomen to go with his busted ribs, and Ken had a broken arm. But they'd made it. The trek out of the castle was child's play in comparison, and Teddie had explained that there was a source of healing outside that would be able to take care of their injuries, if they could only make it back.
But when they'd returned to the girls at long last – finding Fuuka and Yukari had joined them – they had not been able to rest before reeling in shock as Aigis acted on instinct, killing Teddie before they could warn her off. And now they learned that Mitsuru, too, had also not made it.
It was as if it had all been for nothing. That the entire story, everything, had been for nothing. A waste.
They did not know that other things were happening elsewhere.
It started, apropos enough, with Maya Amano. Maya was a real journalist; she was not the sort to go muck-raking, drag people's families into sensational news stories about serial killers. But when Mitsuru Kirijo was counted amongst the dead, that was enough to get her nose for news moving. If anything about Inaba had smelled before, now it stunk to high heaven. Kirijo had been tied to the situation in Iwatodai, a story that had the unmistakable aroma of Persona about it.
Maya called Kei Nanjou. Kei Nanjou made more calls.
With four days left to go, half the known Persona-users in Japan were on their way to Inaba.
-XXXX (Time slippage in the TV realm)-
"Guys, let me start by saying – I love the locks. Truly." The blond-haired man looked at the two not-quite-humans standing on the other side of his lemonade stand. "Blondes have more fun, am I right? Especially you." He pointed to Teddie. "I swear, if I was the kid-having type, you could almost pass for... ah, but you're not interested in my flights of fantasy."
"Identify yourself." Aigis took a step forward, as if to interpose herself between the man and Teddie.
"Oh, you two are the cutest. Did we make a love match? How bitterly, boringly ironic." He rolled his eyes. "Sit. Sit sit sit sit sit. Don't be rude." He waved to the two small stools sitting in front of the lemonade stand.
Aigis did not trust the man, but she had also not trusted Teddie, and she'd nearly killed someone who now, she wished to get to know better. So hesitantly, casting a glance at the nervous Shadow, she sat. He slowly sat next to her, and the man nodded.
"Good, good." He smiled. "Can I offer you something to drink? No? Hm." He poured himself a glass, but then he looked at it and pursed his lips. "Actually, I don't want to drink this either." He put the glass aside. "I'm sorry to disrupt your picnic. You both looked like you were enjoying yourselves."
Aigis frowned. "You still have not told us your name."
"I know, I know, it's irritating, but it's a sort of... shtick that I have." He made a vague gesture with his hand. "Believe it or not, humans like it when I'm coy. It conforms to this image they have of me and what I do." He leaned in conspiratorially. "Not that any of us here are really 'humans,' though, right?" He winked.
Aigis was thinking of Ryoji. Teddie was thinking of Izanami. Neither of them were exactly put at ease.
"Ah, relax, relax. There's no harm in being honest, is there? Isn't 'accepting yourself' a big part of what you kids are all about? If that's true, then why are they always making you more human? I mean, they treat the 'dog' as a damned human. So to speak, that is. Maybe you should try being truer to yourselves, you know?"
Aigis crossed her arms. "How do you know so much about us?"
"For the same reason that I can appear here?" He gestured out at the lake. "Truly beautiful. Your world is a wonderful place, Teddie, wonderful." His lips twitched. "Not that it's really your world, of course. You didn't make it."
Teddie frowned. "W-Well... it's my home. You didn't make it either."
"No..." he admitted, "But it was my idea. I'm full of ideas like this."
Aigis rested one hand on the table, palm down. Her fingers were pointed at the man, which if he truly knew her could be taken as a threat or an entreaty. "You have talked in a circuitous way, and your tone has been ambiguous. I am asking you to state your intentions plainly, as I suspect they are hostile."
The blond-haired man sighed. "Look. You both came here because you wanted something. Aigis, you want to see him again, yes? You did what you thought was the 'right thing' before and you feel all good about it, but some part of you wanted to see him again. Am I right?" She said nothing. "And Teddie. You wanted to know once and for all if it was true, what you think about your true origin. You know, really, but you wanted confirmation. Right, again?" Teddie shrunk from his gaze.
"You are not trustworthy." Aigis's eyes narrowed.
"What, my nose isn't long enough for you to take seriously? Seriously, that old dancing block of wood talks in thirty-yen riddles and all you do is follow his lead. Look, I'm here as a gesture of good will, believe it or not. I look for the ones who have the spark. I'd say you two have it. And my company is always offering employment opportunities to folks like you."
"Ai-chan..." Teddie was shaking his head. "I don't think this is a good person."
"I agree." Aigis primed her weapons. "Vacate these premises immediately."
"Oh, like suddenly you care about intruding, as if you didn't do the same thing a few months ago."
Aigis hesitated, but only for a second. "Hours."
"Mm. Yeah, you'd think so. Sorry! Guess I forgot to mention, people in my vicinity get a little slippery sometimes when it comes to time. Ask your old boyfriend. Or his grandfather." He drummed his fingers on the counter. "Look, this isn't going how I'd hoped, but I can't say that I'm surprised. It was sort of a last minute idea, really. I just have a fondness for you two, thought maybe I'd offer you the chance to live when the rest of humanity dies out." He sighed. "You can't blame me for trying, really, but it's not a huge loss on my part. I've already got what I needed."
"Whatever threat you pose to mankind, you will be stopped." Aigis fired, but the bullets passed through the blond-haired man without so much as a ripple.
"Don't. Really. The more boring you are, the less inclined I am to be charitable." The blond-haired man's expression darkened and pointed at her. "Look, I like humanity. But I'm an ends-justify-the-means type of guy. And you can't 'stop' me from doing anything." He ticked off on his fingers. Since you two have been having your picnic inside the TV, I've killed at least seven Persona users, okay? Take solace in the fact that I haven't enjoyed any of it so far." He paused. "Well, none of the killings. The other thing, I enjoyed that a little bit."
"Ai-chan..." Teddie pulled at her sleeve. "We've got to warn the others!"
A ring of flames burst from the ground around them and the lemonade stand.
"You'll leave when I'm done talking to you." The blond-haired man's voice echoed across the entire realm, and it seemed as if the world shook at his every word.
-2011 (Timeline B-AB)-
Inaba is a small town in rural Japan. If anything, it is known for the small but well-run Amagi Inn; otherwise, it is not an especially notable town. Its signature dish is steak.
Nobody ever cared much for Inaba – nobody ever noticed it much at all. Its level of tourism was off and on, and nothing exciting had ever happened there. Until the Hanged Man murders. Once the reporters had caught wind of the grisly story, all of Japan had been flooded with the most remote details of Inaba's day to day life, as well as how it had been disrupted by these horrific killings.
That the first killing had been a celebrity in the middle of a scandal fueled much of the attention, and it also proved to be eerily prescient – soon enough after, the reports included a missing idol singer, one who was later found with a dead body. And after that, the beautiful young heir to a major corporation was found murdered in town, as well. If anything, the average Japanese citizen viewed the Hanged Man murders as a string of celebrity killings – it made for a far sexier story than a mix-matched group of victims that included a number of insignificant high school students.
Suffice to say, Inaba after the death of Kirijo was not only a media bedlam, but a population explosion. People from throughout Japan were flocking to the town to gawk. There were whole gypsy camps set up on the banks of the Samegawa river, filled with obsessive fans of "true crime" and celebrity-spotters. Smaller crimes became more frequent throughout town, and the harried police force, already on the verge of being considered a joke by the rest of the nation's peacekeepers, were constantly distracted and harried by trespassers, minor assault, stalking, vandalism, juvenile delinquency, drug use, and other cases that were getting in the way of the country's most-watched murder investigation.
It seemed as though some celebrities were looking to be seen in Inaba as some kind of badge of courage – token charity efforts were going in all kinds of directions, and soon it seemed like you couldn't take two steps without tripping over a well-known name. TV host Hidehiko Uesugi, supermodel Eriko Kirishima, even young magnate Kei Nanjou (who was rumored to be buying up Kirijo stock by the crateful).
Other independent services kept offering aid, as well. Therapists like Maki Sonomura, people-finders like Kaoru Saga and Ulala Serizawa, even detectives like Katsuya Suou who had accrued enough vacation time to apparently cruise other town's crime investigations. Some even said that the elderly head of the Shirogane Detective Agency had been seen in town, asking people questions in a soft voice.
Detective Ryotaro Dojima could barely keep up with the goings-on in town anymore, and he was pushed to his breaking point. He barely went home anymore – which was just as well, because arresting his nephew had shocked his daughter into something just shy of a catatonic state.
Then, one day, his partner vanished.
Adachi was hemmed in all sides. So many Persona users in town making their own investigations, it was impossible for him not to learn of some of them. And while the game had been fun, better than he'd expected, things were looking more and more bleak for him. There was no way for him to flee town without being noticed.
So he fled into the television.
Maki was the first one to sense that it was the television being used, but they did not have a method for entry. Nanjou got to work theorizing, and the others explored other ideas as they worked. They'd probably have found a way in, in time. But time was running out.
The second that Adachi set foot in the realm in the television, Fuuka and Rise were both able to detect them, and between them triangulate his position. Chie, Akihiko, Shinjiro, Ken, Aigis, and Koromaru were in pursuit immediately; Yukari stayed behind to guard the two girls who were keeping tabs on his position, unable to help without glasses. Teddie had made the glasses, and he was now... gone. Aigis, at least, could compensate somewhat with her android lenses. And she'd already faced her Shadow.
They split into two teams of three, and in that way were able to flank Adachi within the depths of Magatsu Inaba. Against all of them, even in their state, he didn't have a chance. Not when he knew there was little point in escaping back to the real world, where there was an armada of Persona users waiting for him to come out. He'd expected teenagers. He didn't expect what he got.
While they were beating the tar out of him, though, on the outside a man with an earring was walking down the commercial district of Inaba with Tamaki Uchida by his side, considering what little he knew of the Hanged Man killings, and conferring with the seasoned detective (and devil summoner) on what might really have set the whole thing off.
It was raining again, of course, and would be raining for just a couple more days.
It all happened close to the same moment. Adachi hit the ground hard – he might never walk again. But he'd given a good enough fight that the others were weakened, tired. At that moment, the God of Fog rose up over the nearby ridge, dangling its puppet Namatame, and ready to attack. And Tamaki and her companion came upon a woman at the nearby gas station who looked very suspicious, and who seemed to recognize them.
These heroes all, they had fought the impossible fights before. They had beaten back gods and defeated the darknesses that lay within their own hearts. It would be fair to place your faith in them, to believe that even this, they could overcome. That even without Souji Seta, whose defiant stand inspired the assistance of the god Izanagi, they could defeat these foes and save their world. It would be fair to believe that even though it was not their fight, even though they had suffered losses and did not have full information, that they could win as they had won countless times before.
It would be fair to believe that.
But still they failed.
This was a universe that, from the beginning, had been designed to fail.
-XXXX (Time slippage in the TV realm)-
Aigis and Teddie were trapped within the ring of fire with their unknown assailant.
"Now," he said, in a voice that echoed not just in their ears but somewhere deep within their bodies,"Shut up until I... eh? There, unhurt by the towering columns of fire, was a single fly, buzzing about the blond-hared man in a smooth arc. "Hm. Hold on, I need to take this." The fly came in close and... hovered next to the man's ear. "Mmhm. Uh-huh. I see. Well, that's a shame about those three – I liked them – but glad to know the plan worked." The fly zipped back behind the man and seemed to vanish.
Teddie coughed and swayed a bit.
"Well, that was good news for me and bad news for you. Looks like your last, best hope of turning the bus back around just took the bait. I've been watching you kids pull miracles out enough times, I won't be arrogant to say that this is a lock, but..." He stood, dusting off his pant legs. "I have a few more things left to say, and then I'll leave you to it, okay? Like I said before, I don't want to hurt you."
Teddie pressed against Aigis's arm. "Ai-chan... I... I don't feel beary good at all, all of a sudden..."
"Look, let me be clear." The blond-haired man leaned in. "I have been planning this for centuries. Everything that you've done, every victory, was orchestrated to make this possible. Okay? None of you would exist in the first place if it weren't for me. That's not arrogance, that's statement of fact. My advice to you is to join your families and enjoy the time you have left, because if I was a human, that's what I'd do." He sighed. "None of this is getting through to you."
Aigis couldn't move. Something was preventing her, had been since the flames had risen with the blond-haired man's little tantrum.
"That said... if you all want to struggle, throw yourselves against a wall, that's fine with me. I won't be offended. I'm a big believer in survival of the fittest, you know?" He chuckled. "All right, I'm almost done, hold on..." He turned. "Hey, come out here for a second."
Teddie dropped to his knees. "What's..." He looked pale, he was sweating... Aigis tried to reach out to him, but she still couldn't move.
A man walked right through the towers of fire as if they were not here. He had dark hair, a black suit, and a red scarf over his shoulders. The blond-haired man looked at him and rolled his eyes.
"Take that off. You look ridiculous – that outfit's not going to do you any good here."
The man in black shrugged. "I like this suit. I had it tailor-made." He blurred for a second, and then he was dressed in white, as the blond-haired man was. Only this was something like a school uniform, and the man's face was now chalk-white as well, with grinning red lips.
"I take it back. That looks even stupider." The blond-haired man turned back to his captives as his "partner" reverted back. "Wasn't it nicer when we could have just sat at the counter and drank lemonade? That would have been charming! Anyway, you don't know this fellow, but he knows you." The man in black was grinning. "Personally, I don't care for this guy, or his methods – so over the top! - but he's been pretty useful to me. I wanted to give you a chance to meet."
The man in black came over, looked Aigis up and down. "Truly remarkable. I never thought they'd get this far along so quickly."
Teddie was down on his hands and knees, shaking. "Leave... her... alone..."
"Don't talk back to your father." The man in black kicked Teddie in the stomach, and he rolled over, just shy of hitting the flames. Aigis tried to fight whatever was holding her in place, but it was as if she couldn't send impulses down to her joints. She couldn't even actively struggle. "I brought you into this world, and I can take you out."
The blond-haired man clucked his tongue. "I despise abusive father figures. Don't you? But then, that's what this is all about."
-XXXX (Time is eternal for the Seal)-
Theodore placed his hands on Hamuko Arisato's cheeks. "Do not be afraid. I have discovered a way."
Theodore only discovered the way when the limousine "crashed" – that is, when it was clear that this world was doomed. In a world where the fog of untruths was enshrouding the world, the Seal was weakening – more people were wishing for what they should not, and the despair was calling Erebus closer to Nyx. Could Hamuko hold it in check? Perhaps, perhaps not. But Izanami could not be stopped without Souji Seta – mankind was losing itself in that fog, and there was little point left in her sacrifice.
It's all been for nothing? She looked at Theodore with despair of her own. My sacrifice didn't save them?
Theodore shook his head. "If you had known that it would give the world two years it would not have had, would you have turned it down?" Which was a question which answered itself. "But no, it has not been for nothing." Because the deck had somehow been stacked. "Can you feel the presence on the other side of my heart, Hamuko Arisato?"
You have a twin sister, Theodore? Oh, she's so beautiful...
"You can feel that she, as well, is standing before the Seal. I need you to pour all of your strength through me, and into her, and through her, into him. As I dissipate this Seal, his Seal will grow stronger – you will be saving him, freeing him, as you yourself shall be freed. Can you feel him?"
Oh, yes, I can!
"Good... I know you can. He is your other self, Hamuko... you are he, and he is you... we're going to save both of you together, now..."
But, but Theo... what use is my freedom, in such a world? There's truly nothing left?
He offered her a reassuring smile. "One step at a time."
And they both closed their eyes, and all the pain and the determination and the hope and every other part of her seemed to pool somewhere above her heart, like a knot of tension one might find in their back, and she pushed it up, up, up into her face, where Theodore's warm hands seemed to absorb it.
"It's working, Hamuko. It's working. You can do this."
She wondered what the other Seal was like. Theo said it was a boy? A brother for her, then. She'd always wanted a brother. She supposed that's why she'd been so quick to collect all of those boys, those strong and wonderful boys of hers, Junpei, Ken, Akihiko... and, well...
Is there a Shinjiro over there, Theo? Is he okay?
"Focus, Hamuko... we're almost there..." He tightened his hands on her face. "Your friends don't know this, but all of their fighting, all of their sacrifices, have been to give you this chance."
I think... I think this is it... I feel the Seal giving way...
And then Theo was letting go of her... and then she was falling... falling... falling...
Live a good life, other me... make sure all of this was worth it...
And then a hand caught hold of hers, a boy's hand, small, slender even, but strong. She could feel her fall slowing down... but...
"I won't let you go, Hamuko-senpai! I promise!"
Ken? Is that...you sound so...
"Hang on!"
-2021-
Aigis staggered across the floor of her bedroom as all systems returned to normal. She wasn't sure how she'd gotten home. Apparently the two men had been done with them...?
She looked at Teddie's limp form in her arms. He barely breathing. "Teddie-kun?" He wheezed slightly. "I will save you. I promise you. I will not fail you, too."
He mumbled something. "Sensei," that had to be it.
She nearly tripped over his discarded bear suit. Apparently, it had been tossed back into the human world after them. What could she do?
After a moment of thought that passed at the speed of light from one processor to the next, she knew. She didn't like it, but she knew how to save him.
There was talking emanating from downstairs. She kicked her bedroom door open, moved awkwardly down the stairs, clutching Teddie's body to her bosom like a child's as she maneuvered.
"Aigis!" Yukari reached out with one hand.
"...Teddie!" Minato's jaw dropped.
If you had asked her, before the crisis; whether seeing his face again, from where he stood by Yukari, would cause her a moment's pause, would cause all other thoughts to cease; if you had asked her that before, she would have said obviously yes. But she held the dying Teddie tightly and looked at the other boy she'd sworn once to protect, and just said: "I need your help."
-2011 (Timeline B-AB)-
Philemon stood and watched the world's devastation.
There were infinite worlds – every minor deviation caused its own branch in time. And every subset of infinity was of course infinity. Which meant that every slightest fraction of a moment, an infinite number of worlds were dying, were failed projects.
Philemon thought briefly of the mortal Tatsuya Suou.
Human minds had not the scope to conceive; but being of all human minds, Philemon could. There were other worlds adrift in the sea of time where things had been different. But this world, this singular branch, was so intrinsically linked with one another – the one that Philemon himself had helped to create, the one that he thought of as his own – that he was nonetheless mournful of its loss.
And yet, its use was now clear. Hamuko Arisato would have a better world, a better home, to return to. If only the next few human weeks were not the end for that world, as well...
A figure in black appeared next to Philemon.
"Gotcha again, didn't I?"
"You were defeated by them before."
Nyarlathotep laughed. "Lose a battle, win an argument – I figure I still come out on top."
Philemon turned to look at him. "The humanity of our world, they proved you wrong in time."
Nyarlathotep, still in the skinsuit of Akinari Kashihara, raised an eyebrow and made a gesture with his arms, like stabbing with a spear. "At best, we had a draw." He shrugged. "You know, they say they hate me, but it's that old story they have about the scorpion. They know it's my nature. You, though... you, they hate. Couldn't even explain it to The Seal, could you? Not to his face. Afraid of getting another little punch to the face? You're so delicate."
"The lightbringer suggested the same." Philemon smiled. "But perhaps I am as he is. Willing to play the villain, to get what I truly desire."
Nyarlathotep scowled. "There will be nothing left of them when we are done."
Philemon tilted his head slightly. "Are you weary of losing, then, that you choose suicide? For without them, you are nothing."
"Infinite worlds, infinite chances for me to exist." Nyarlathotep started to fade away. "I am allowed to be petty. I am in their image, after all."
Philemon turned back to the world of Hamuko Arisato, the world which no longer contained her. "You forget, then, that what you hate in me is also in them. And it will always be stronger." The countdown had begun. He had stayed to watch their valiant last gasps, his children, the heirs to Persona; stayed to watch them prove themselves worthy of his faith... prove themselves capable of the ordeal to come.
This offshoot world had been created to fail, but even then they had been the best of humanity. The odds were only the slimmest margin better in Minato Arisato's world... but given that, they would no doubt succeed.