Author's Note: I just wanted to drop a shoutout to an author whose work I've been enjoying recently. Ari Moriarty's Dreamgirl is quite an excellent longfic about... well, a lot of things, actually, but anyway I've been really impressed by how the story expands on the Persona universe and adds new depth to it and it's really worth checking out.

Now... I seem to remember we were left with a little cliffhanger in the chapter before last... let's get back to that, shall we? Also, the genderbends might not be OCs, but there is one OC in this story - and you've met them already. Enjoy!

#06: Caught you at last

"Dammit, Kanji, you ass!" Kajiko hissed, and she stamped her foot with frustration. "You couldn't have kept your mouth shut? Now he's found us!"

"You sayin' I did this?" Kanji couldn't believe how intolerably stupid his girl self was being. "It's your own fault for putting all this bullshit back in my head!"

Next to them, the Laughing Table sprang to its feet, bristling with fear like a startled alley cat and wobbling on its unbalanced limbs. Within its collection of objects, whose orbits were fraying into nervy chaos, the cup struck against the disk and drew a spray of sparks.

The newly materialized Shadow Kanji pouted and struck a pose."It feels like ages I've been searching… It really took you that long to think me up again? Did I not make enough of an imprrressssionn on you?"

"No, you were pretty damn memorable," muttered Kajiko. "And that really blows, because I'm really gonna want to forget most of—Ack!" She gagged and then stuttered out a stream of explosively punctuated profanity.

"Oh, what naughty language—" Shadow Kanji began to say, but then it actually looked down at what had prompted this, and its expression contorted into an indecisive blend of emotions. It was apparently unsure whether to drop its jaw in disbelief, burst out laughing, or simply cringe at the sight. Spooked by the arrival of Kanji's yellow-eyed and mostly naked double, the three-legged Laughing Table had sprung straight off the floor, folded like a school desk in midair, and landed squarely in Kajiko's arms.

"What the heck is with that thing?" Kanji yelped, his anger at the girl easily switching targets. "Hey, uh, Kaji-kun! You okay? You need any help with—?"

"No, no," Kajiko choked out, trying to force the table away, but succeeding only in stretching its legs out like black putty or gooey bungee cords. It had clamped its fingers tightly on her shoulders. "I'm just fine! No need to—Argh!"

"It's not trying to strangle you?" Kanji asked worriedly.

"Nah, it's just being all skittish and shit…" The words came out a little muffled. At this point, the table was perched on her shoulders, so Kajiko was practically wearing it as a form of boxy headgear. Its masked tablecloth, in an oddly fitting manner, was draped entirely over the girl's face and its sticky black knees were knocking with fright.

"How the hell did this one monster get to be so… so frikkin' friendly?" Kanji wondered aloud. "What gives?"

"Obviously one of you did this to it," Shadow Kanji said in bored tones, examining its fingernails. "Something had to have bestowed it with that… appallingly primitive… sense of self that it's displaying. But you'll never escape other Shadows so easily. This one might have been born from the more innocent stock but really, the rest of them are quite malicious."

"Right, like you," grumbled Kanji. "We noticed."

"You wound me, Kanji!" the Shadow boy exclaimed. "I'm only trying to free your inner passion and lust for—"

"Yeah, whatever," said Kanji, not wanting to hear the rest of this. To Kajiko he called, "Uh…'s long as it ain't killing you I don't mind it, I guess…"

Shadow Kanji gasped and blazed. "You're all so… so heartless!" it sniffed loudly. "You'll accept that freakish mutt of a Shadow but not me?"

"What did you just say?" Kajiko snapped. Her voice buzzed and thrummed as it passed through the thin mouth-slit in the Shadow's mask. She wrenched the Laughing Table off her head and placed it on her firmly on her shoulder, where it perched like a parrot. "Just what have you got against Table, ya punk?" She glowered at Shadow Kanji. "Is it 'cause Table's a girl?"

Shadow Kanji stared at Kajiko. "You're not serious," it said flatly.

"I'm not joking!" yelled the girl. "Say any more shit about Table-chan and I'll twist your head around!"

"Table-chan?! How can you tell that thing's a girl?" asked Kanji, caught up a bit with speculation. "Does it even have a gender?"

"Nah, probably not…" The girl rolled her eyes. "Figured since your Shadow doesn't seem to like her very much, we might as well call her a girl."

This seemed to anger the Shadow further. "You're making fun of me," it accused them. "Just like everyone else does!" It rounded on Kanji. "And I just loathe it when people make fun of you, isn't that right?"

Kanji shrugged. "So? Who wouldn't?" he said. "But if they cross a line, I don't let them get any more crap by me, you hear? No one messes with Kanji Tatsumi!"

"You keep on telling yourself that," said the Shadow smugly, "But does it really make you feel all that better? All you do is bury your true feelings and push people away…" It started laughing, as if realizing the punchline to an absurd joke. "And you honestly pretend to think that you like it that way!"

"Pretend?" Kanji repeated. "I'm not hiding anything!"

"Oh, but you aaareee," Shadow Kanji sang. "You don't think anyone really falls for that tough-guy act? It's so obvious that you're trying too hard to cover me up! Like you don't need anyone's approval for anything, when really you can't stand to be around people because you're afraid of their disapproval! You don't want them around to remind you how normal you're not!"

"Who says I'm not normal?" shouted Kanji. "And that's all bullshit! I'm not afraid of anyone's opinion of me!" He looked down in bitter disgust. "It just… ain't right for a man to let that kinda thing get to him."

Shadow Kanji was descending from its pillar of steam. It balanced delicately on the lip of the bath as the water roiled behind it. "But it does get to you," it said, raking its yellow eyes over its human counterpart. "And you're… just… sick of it!" With the serpent's seductive whisper it said, "That's why I'm you and you're me… Because you're tired of hiding the real Kanji from everyone, which means I'm here to expose your – my – true self to everyone watching!"

"Wh-what?!" Kanji stammered, dumbstruck. He gave a strangled cry of fury, and combed his gaze over the ceiling. "You're sayin'… you're sayin' people are watching this? How the hell are they—"

"Oh they just love to tune in on a rainy night," said Shadow Kanji. "I wouldn't want the viewers to be disappointed… And it's really what you want, after all! Think of it as a burden lifted off your chest."

"How are people watching this?" Kanji snarled. "Are there cameras in this place? Tell me where they are so I can smash them in already!"

"Look at you…" smirked the Shadow. "Pretending to be so mortified by the idea of having your inner desires broadcast to the world when what you really want all along is to just be rid of their pesky little ideas about gender and manhood. And what better place to fully embrace yourself, what better place to transcend gender barriers than here?"

"You sure transcended me right into this godawful place," muttered Kajiko. On her shoulder, Table bobbed up and down as if in agreement. "But I ain't so sure that was the gender barrier you were aiming at."

Shadow Kanji pretended not to have heard her. It puckered its lips with false sympathy. "You don't have to worry about those awful, judgmental girls, either," it said. "This place is for a man's man only. You'll fit right in!"

"Hell no! I ain't buyin' any of this man's man BS you're trying to sell me!" Kanji snapped to his Shadow. "I got nothing to prove to anybody, and I ain't scared of chicks either! So just cut the crap already! I've had enough of your damn mind games!"

"Puh-leeze," Shadow Kanji said, rolling its eyes. "You're the one who's dodging the real issue here, not me. I just don't have time to waste when there could be so many delicious young men to romance…"

Kanji went pink and was about to yell a protest, but Kajiko, surprisingly, beat him to it. "Oh, yeah?" she demanded, marching up to the bath's wide, flat edge where Shadow Kanji was perched. "How the hell do you plan to do that?" She spread her arms out and swept over the expanse of the high-ceilinged room. "Where exactly d'you think you're gonna find all these pretty naked men you keep going on about? I guess you didn't notice before 'cause of all that fog, but this place is pretty damn empty. You're the only one who actually wants to be here!"

"You think I don't know that?!" Shadow Kanji shrieked. Startled, Kajiko shied back, dislodging the surprised Table, who fell onto the carpet and hid behind her legs. After a brief delay, the table's quartet of items dropped out of the air and bounced off its counter. The Shadow boy stamped his foot. "Dammit, of course it's empty! You think ANYONE really wants to be around me?" It pointed an accusing finger at Kanji. "And it's all YOUR fault! If you just made up your damn mind about who you were, you wouldn't have to push everyone away because you're too scared they'll decide all that for you!"

"He's actually… kind of got a point," Kajiko slowly admitted, as, beside her, Table scrambled to retrieve its items. "In a sort of messed-up way, but..."

Kanji, with a loud rustle of his jacket-cape, stomped up and readied himself for a fight. "No freaking way he does!" he shouted, and then faced his Shadow. "I know perfectly well who I am, and it ain't you!"

Shadow Kanji began to laugh in a very forced way, rising into the air once more as black fire and steam and rose petals swirled around it, forming a huge cloud that obscured it entirely. "Finally! I've been waiting forever to hear you say that out loud," it gloated from within the vortex of darkness. "Because I'm sooo tired of being locked away in your mind, Kanji! I want to come out and you're in! My! WAY!" The Shadow inhaled sharply, like someone trying to remain calm while their emotions raged out of control. "But not for long… Didn't one of you ask once what happens to a Shadow when its source dies? I guess we'll find out…"

A twinge of horror crept along Kanji's skin. Despite everything, he hadn't really believed that Shadow Kanji posed an actual threat. It had been the inhuman Shadows that had been attacking them so far, with the exception of that freaky table, and how scary could a naked sissy guy who looked like you really be, anyway?

"What the hell is with you?" Kajiko shouted at the ascending Shadow. "You're going to kill us because you're lonely? Cause if we're dead, you got nobody."

The Shadow paused its ascent in mid-air, a full three meters above them. The twists of smoke uncurled and revealed Shadow Kanji's shocked expression. The aura around it was peppered with squares of static. "Wh-what did you…?"

"You deaf or something?" complained Kajiko. "I said, are you seriously going to kill us because you're lonely!"

"L-lonely?" Shadow Kanji stuttered. "Is that what I—"

Because now Shadow Kanji was wobbling in midair, trying to keep its balance. The swatches of noise that had appeared had to be a sign that it was weakening. Kanji felt that this was his turn to think and act quickly. A man had to take matters into his own hands, right?

"Yo, Kaji-kun?" he said. "Can I borrow the Table for a sec?"

"What're you gonna—?" Kajiko started to ask, but Kanji didn't wait for her to finish before he scooped up the piece of living furniture, folded its legs in, and flung it with all his might at his Shadow. The Table rebounded off of Shadow Kanji's forehead, bounced once on the lip of the bath, and then skittered away along the floor, its cloth trailing behind it like the tail of a red checkered comet.

Kanji's dazed Shadow succumbed at last to gravity and toppled out of the air, striking the water with an ignominious splash.

"Is… is that it, then?" Kanji said after a pause. "Did we—?"

The waves had just begun to settle when the water roiled up again. Shadow Kanji emerged and heaved for air. "Did you k-kill me?" the Shadow finished for him bitterly. Its teeth were chattering, and when it spoke, its voice was almost fully human. "Don't be stupid… Shit, th-that's c-cold. How did the bath g-get so c-cold?!"

Both Kanji and Kajiko snorted a little, mostly at how the Shadow had been rendered so bedraggled and harmless by something so simple and mundane.

The boy draped himself limply over the side and spat out a bit of blood. "Having fun beating your poor little other self up?" he pouted. "You're just a couple of bullies…" His – no, its, because Kanji wasn't going to let the normal voice fool him – its yellow gaze zeroed in on Kajiko, whose expression had changed from one of amusement to one of shock. "L-let's all throw furniture at the queer, huh?"

"What? N-no!" the girl protested, turning red. "It's not the same!"

Kanji noticed her distress and wondered at it. "Right! It ain't the same thing at all!" he snapped, deciding to stick up for his girl self anyway. "You attacked us first, ya moron! Said you were going to kill us! Don't go looking for sympathy!"

"You attacked me… long before… I even had a face…" The Shadow coughed, and water dribbled from the corner of its mouth. "I'm just paying you back for what you did to me!"

"The hell are you goin' on about? I didn't do anything to you!" Kanji told it angrily. "And neither did she! So lay off!" He grabbed Kajiko's arm. "Let's just… get out of here while we can, okay?"

Kajiko struggled against these urgings to retreat. "And I'm not a bully!" she said. "You got that? I stick up for myself, a-and for other people! That's what it's about! Nothin' wrong with it!"

Chuckling, the Shadow pushed its upper body out of the water and loomed over the girl, its pale eyes bright and leering even as the rest of its face filled with darkness. "Well, would you look at that," it hissed, tightening its grip on the rim of the bath until its knuckles were white. "What a beast of a Shadow you must have, darling… I can read all that repressed passion and tension on your face like it was an open book…"

"Yeah, well, I don't read books," Kanji said flatly, breaking the spell. "… you still want to say you're me?"

The Shadow looked very put out for a moment. It hauled itself up out of the water and swung its legs over the side of the bath, seating itself on the ledge. Thankfully, its towel had survived the dunking. "Oh… tut! Always so literal!" it said. "Fine. I admit it. Maybe that was a poor analogy. But we both know you're not quite as thick-headed as you seem."

"You sayin' I'm… smart?" Kanji asked, confused. His eyes narrowed. "Or are you sayin' that I act stupid?" He put up a fist. "Well? Which is it?"

"Uh. Both, I think," said Kajiko. "But…"

"Ugh! Why is it so frosty in here?" Kanji's Shadow whimpered and clutched his bare shoulders, shivering. "It's supposed to be a sauna! Th-this is why I don't let g— why I don't let unappreciative people in here!" He seemed to contract into himself, instinctively trying to cover up despite his previously flippant disregard for modesty. "They completely ruin the, the sensual atmosphere! W-with their… their damn… their damn coldness!" He… no, it, IT! What was wrong with Kanji?... It sneezed and then glared daggers at Kajiko. "This is all your doing, isn't it? Y-you just had to drag your stupid frikkin' Shadow world with you wherever you go!"

"I'm… bringing it with me?" Kajiko asked blankly. "I didn't know…"

At this point, Kanji had no idea what to say or do… everything was getting to be so confusing, and it was perhaps even more discomforting to see his Shadow acting more or less like himself than like a complete stranger. Kajiko seemed to be just as lost, but thankfully she was taking the lead here despite that. It was probably easier for Kajiko, since the Shadow had never claimed to be her.

"I guess it did get weirdly chilly in here," the girl gruffly admitted. "But look, I didn't mean to…" Kajiko untied her school jacket from around her waist and took a cautious step forwards. "You can have it, okay? You'll… uh… you'll catch a cold or something if you go around wet and naked like this." Awkwardly, she handed the jacket to Shadow Kanji.

The Shadow took the garment and stared at it. "You're g-giving me…?"

Kajiko let out an embarrassed huff of air. "Just… put the damn thing on already!" she grumbled. "Before I change my mind!"

Shadow Kanji balled the jacket up and threw it back right into Kajiko's face. "I don't want it!" he exclaimed petulantly. "What I want is for you to go back to your own world and stay there! Is that t-too much to ask? Just leave me alone!" And with that, the soggy Shadow flounced away.

"You could have at least thanked her, you asshole!" Kanji yelled after the boy. "Dammit, what is with him?"

The door handle rattled for a bit as Shadow Kanji discovered the odd lock that had grown on the entrance to the room. Kanji wondered briefly if this would actually stop his Shadow's exit, but then, with a muffled sob, the Shadow boy collapsed into black ooze and puddled away through the floorboards.

Kanji cast his eyes down to focus on patch of wood by his shoes, and then muttered, as if coming to an uncomfortable revelation, "Is that what I'm really… what I really seem like to people?"

"What, gay?" asked Kajiko, fiercely ironing out her jacket between her thigh and the heel of one hand. "How should I know?"

"Not th-that!" Kanji shot back, a little shocked that she'd put it so baldly. It was admittedly a little silly to do so, but he'd been skirting around the topic this whole time. "I meant, you know, an ungrateful dickhead who pushes everyone away!"

"I don't know about what other people think but…" Kajiko paused as she fit her arm into a sleeve of her jacket, and then, a little self-consciously, she changed her mind and laid it on her shoulders, as one does a cape. "I guess it doesn't really mean much coming from me since I kinda am you, but… I think you're pretty cool for a guy."

Kanji was surprised to find that her sentiment had birthed a kind of fullness in him. The feeling settled in his chest like a warm and fluffy newborn. "No, it really…" He battled through a sense of embarrassed relief. "It really does mean a… a lot…" Out of habit, he attempted to put on a stubborn scowl, but his swelling mood leaked past it, and his features relaxed into almost sheepish good humor. "It means I probably don't hate myself as much as I thought. 'S nice to know." Kanji stuffed his thumbs in his pockets and inspected the empty room. "So what now?"

"What now what?" said Kajiko distractedly. "Hey, wait… is Table-chan okay?" She started to collect the items that had been strewn around her feet when the table's focus on them had broken. While holding the other three objects in the crook of one arm, she eyed the severed, opposable leg with thinly veiled discomfort.

"I dunno… I did throw it at a guy…" Feeling guilty, Kanji cautiously approached the fallen table and knelt down. "Um… sorry about that…" He picked it up by the edge and hoped it was either dead or and still friendly.

The Table slowly stirred and levered itself off the ground.

"You're a… you're a pretty chill table, Table-chan," said Kanji desperately. "You're all chill and not a killing-people table at all. That just ain't you." He frantically tried to wave Kajiko over. "Hey, Kaji! Give it… uh, give the table her stuff already. Give 'er her arm."

"It's a leg," said Kajiko. "Do I really gotta pick it up? And just what did you mean by, 'what now?'"

"Well it's got a hand on it so I figure it's an arm now, and yeah, you do. Don't be a— don't be all squishy about this."

"I'm not being… argh, okay, here's your arm, Table-chan… I have no clue why you'd want to carry it around with—ah! Oh, jeez…" Kajiko dropped the limb hurriedly, and it bobbed in the air above the Table. Its fingers had curled into a thumbs-up. "It can still move… That's a little freaky. What now what?"

Kanji met the blank staring gaze of the Laughing Table. "Uh… I guess that means it ain't mad at me?" he said hopefully. "Thumbs up is good?"

The hand folded into a peace sign and the table gave this a cheery little wave before placidly beginning to juggle the four items, including the arm, once again. "W-wow…" said Kanji, going red. "It really is pretty cute now…"

"What now what?" Kajiko repeated, as Kanji stood up. The girl crossed her arms. "Isn't it obvious? Look, didn't the other Kanji say that it was too late? That the Shadows didn't have anything in their way to keep 'em from attacking us?"

"You tryin' to say we're as good as dead and should just give up, huh?" Kanji said angrily. "That it?"

"Not unless that's what you're thinking," Kajiko returned. "And I know it ain't. I'm just saying it's not so hard to work out what we gotta do." She drew herself up. "I'm sayin' we gotta find a way out, and fight our way out if we have to. You get me?"

Kanji clapped a hand on the girl's shoulder. "Sounds like my kind of plan! And hell," he laughed. "It sorta was. You know, you ain't such a bad guy yourself. For someone who ain't a guy, that is. Kidding," he added hastily. "I'm just teasin' you."

The girl didn't seem all that bothered this time around, anyway. "All right… you ready to kick a little ass around here?" she asked him.

"Damn straight!" Kanji cheered. He pumped a fist in the air. "Ready when you are! Let's do this!"

The shout seemed to die echoless and flat, swallowed by the ceiling without reply. Kanji held his triumphant pose for a long moment, and then slowly put his fist down.

"Uh… yeah… cool…" He looked around uncertainly. "So… what do we... do now?"

The halls offered no easy answer.

Oh and yes, the OC is Table-chan. Call it a whim (even though it wasn't really but that's not important yet). It seemed a welcome break from all the Kanjis to me.