AN: Thank you NightmareKnight1 and DodemGM for your reviews. As I thought, actually hearing from other people that my format-change idea wasn't a bad one has helped me feel more confident about it.

Anyway, as promised, here is what I wrote of Chapter 4 in the old format. It's shorter than the previous chapter, but I feel like it'd be too confusing to label the next chapter as the fourth when its contents are still canon to my fanfiction.

I hope you all enjoy it.

April 7 – Thursday

Futaba Sakura's PoV

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaand, done!" declared Futaba, or rather Alibaba. She had just anonymously posted evidence of a yakuza's extortion of high schoolers. She'd even deleted all of his blackmail material, which he had stored digitally.

However, Futaba's satisfaction lasted barely five seconds. The hacktivism had been a good distraction, but now that it was over, her thoughts immediately returned to the Urano.

It hadn't been difficult for Futaba to hack Urano's phone, nor to use that access to confirm that the bookworm and Morgana (who Urano could apparently talk to) had vanished from the house without a trace yesterday. Futaba hadn't thought that Urano was lying, but now she knew for certain that the bookworm really did visit the Metaverse.

A small part of Futaba — okay, a massive part of Futaba — wanted to know how it was that Urano had discovered and entered the Metaverse. Unfortunately, between guilt over assuming the worst of Urano, relying on her for a change in cognition, and Futaba's general social awkwardness, it was impossible for the shut-in to ask.

Maybe, at some point after her heart was stolen, Futaba would find the courage to ask.

Urano Motosu's PoV

The school day flew by. Aside from when I stopped by the library to exchange 'The Book Thief' for 'Zorro, the Outlaw,' everything was a blur. And, after getting back home, I blitzed through my homework before returning to Futaba's Palace with Morgana.

Thanks to our efforts yesterday, it took no time at all to reach where we had left off. According to the map, past the door was a corridor leading to the quote-unquote 'Chamber of Rejection.' Morgana and I entered the chamber and found, to our surprise, Shadow Futaba. She stood at a split in the passageway, with a path going forward and one going to the right.

"So you've come," said Shadow Futaba as we approached. "Follow me."

Not waiting for a response, she immediately began walking down the right pathway.

"Wait, Futaba!" I exclaimed, chasing after the Palace Ruler. "Slow down! I– Oof!"

I had almost caught up to her when Morgana tackled me to the ground. Before I could even think to ask why he'd tackled me, I got the answer in the form of spikes shooting out of the ground a few centimeters in front of me. They passed straight through Shadow Futaba, who then faded away as if she were a ghost.

"…Thanks," I said to Morgana, slightly dazed from almost dying. As we got up, I noticed something in the area beyond the spikes. "Is that another one of those reflective panels?"

"Yeah," confirmed Morgana. "But we won't be able to open any doors with it unless we figure out a way to deactivate that spike trap."

With no other options available, we took the forward-going path. As we traversed the area it led to, we encountered a troublesome new Shadow.

"Agi!" I shouted, firing Isis's final elemental attack in the hope that it would be the enemy's weakness. Not only had Bless, and physical attacks been unsuccessful, but Elec did less damage than normal. And Wind actually healed it!

"Die!" bellowed the enemy, which I decided to name Anzu. It had the body of a large bird with black and dark blue feathers, while its head was that of a lion with a bright orange mane. "Assault Dive!"

Anzu swooped down, slamming into Morgana with the force of a truck. The not-cat groaned, using Dia on himself to heal the damage somewhat.

This had been the Shadow's strategy for fighting us. It would alternate targets, injuring one of us enough that the other had to battle it alone while the first one healed. Anzu was slowly whittling us down as we made ineffective attack after ineffective attack. Our only hope of breaking this cycle was to find the Shadow's weakness and then strike while it was down.

However, as I groped around in my bag for the Elemental Set, looking for the Freeze Spray – Ice being the only element we had left – I felt a tug inside of me. It came from the part of me that contained my Personas. I could tell that it was Liesel, asking me to use her.

Despite knowing that Isis had both of Liesel's skills and was stronger, I swapped over to my original Persona. I had suspected that she had more power hidden within, and I tell now that I was right. By facing Anzu here and now, a new ability unlocked within of Liesel.

"Assault Dive!" bellowed Anzu, targeting me this time.

"Dream Needle!" I shouted, prompting Liesel to fire her gun at the charging Shadow. The effect of her Gun attack was instantaneous, disrupting Anzu's attack and causing it to crash into the ground. I turned to Morgana, who'd finished recovering. "It's All-Out Attack time!"

With that declaration, the two of us pounced on the fallen Shadow. Despite the trouble it had caused us, Anzu was overwhelmed. As we concluded our assault and its body dissolve, I felt the urge to take a victory pose. (Morgana must've been rubbing off on me.)

I pulled out 'Zorro, the Outlaw.' Opening the book, I declared, "Quoth the Raven, Nevermore."

My odd impulse satisfied, Morgana and I returned to our search for a way to shut off the spike trap.

Morgana's PoV

Morgana felt a trace of delight when Urano posed after their All-Out Attack. Despite her speed in learning the skills of a phantom thief, Urano hadn't shown much interest in the style element until now.

Before he could bring it up with her, though, the two of them found an Anubis statue with a green gem, just like the ones from yesterday. However, as Morgana moved to grab the shiny treasure, Urano grabbed his hand.

"Wait," she said, pointing to a stone tablet next to the statue that he hadn't noticed. "The tablet says that anyone who steals the gem will be cursed. I don't think we should take it."

"But what if we need it later?" asked Morgana, definitely not looking for an excuse to grab the gem. "How bad could this 'curse' be, anyway?"

"For all we know, the 'curse' will irreversibly cut off the path forward," replied Urano. "Besides, we can always come back here and take it if we need to."

"But… urgh, fine," he grumbled, unable to refute her arguments.

The duo continued forward. Their progress was uneventful, probably not due to leaving the gem behind, until they reach a space with a large button and a view of the reflective from earlier.

After preparing – in case the button to trigger a trap – they pressed it. The only visible effect was that some wall lights turned from red lines to green lines.

"Do you think maybe that shut off the spike trap?" asked Urano, uncertain.

"There's only one way to find out," answered Morgana.

The two of them retraced their steps and found that the spike trap had, in fact, been disabled. They simply walked over it and carried on down the corridors of the tomb, sneaking by Shadows as often as fighting.

Eventually, they found another Anubis statue and stone tablet. Unfortunately, there wasn't a green gem this time.

"'Any who attempts to steal this gem shall be cursed'?" read Urano, confused. "It's the same as the previous tablet. But there isn't a gem here?"

Not sure what else to do, the two of them continued down the passageway. They found another button, only to be kept from it by a barrier of arrows that shot from the walls.

Without a way past the arrow trap, Urano and Morgana returned to the tablet/statue pair in search of clues. As they looked around, Morgana noticed that the statue and tablet were surrounded by a set of pillars with glowing red lines, just like those that had been near the spike trap when it was active. And, when he thought back, there had been similar pillars around the previous statue/tablet pair, but with green lines.

"I've got it!" shouted Morgana. "That arrow trap is the 'curse,' and it'll only deactivate once this statue has a gem."

"That doesn't really help us, though," replied Urano. "We don't have this statue's missing gem."

"We don't need it. We can just use the previous statue's gem. After all, there's no need for us to worry about the first 'curse' when we've already deactivated the spike trap."

A few minutes later, he was proven right. After moving the gem over, the were able to walk over to the button and press it without becoming pincushions. And press it they did, activating a ballista that destroyed the wall the reflective panel was shining light onto, which revealed a new passageway.

After taking the green gem back from the statue (no sense in leaving it there, thought Morgana), the duo explored the newly unearthed passage. They found that the passage had a side room with a locked treasure chest, which they spent their sole lockpick opening it.

Inside the chest was a shiny ring that reduced damage from Elec skills (which Morgana immediately put on), a shiny turquoise gem (which Morgana immediately pocketed), and a not-shiny consumable that restored the energy used by Personas and Shadows to activate their skills (which Urano stowed away for now).

In Morgana's opinion, the lockpick was well spent.

Urano Motosu's PoV

"Why are there locked treasure chests in a Palace?" I wondered. After sorting out the loot, we continued down the passageway. "Are they supposed to represent something? Or is it an effect of the cognition of video game dungeons?"

"I don't know," admitted Morgana, taking a brief moment away from admiring his new ring. "But, as long as I get treasure from it, I don't really care."

"Do you have a treasure addiction?" I snarked.

"Says the girl with the book addiction."

"At least you can read books. All you can do with treasure is admire it or sell it."

The two of us probably would have kept our exchange going for a bit longer, but we came across another reflective panel. This one had a control panel that, when we touched it, activated a screen on the wall opposite of the one that the light beam was being reflected onto.

On the screen was a simple puzzle, where we had to switch around out-of-order pieces of a picture until the image was whole. It wasn't hard to complete, and the end result was a picture of an adult reading something to a crying Futaba.

"'I should never have had Futaba. She was always such a bother.' It seems you caused your mother a great deal of trouble, Futaba. She must have had some kind of maternity neurosis."

A disembodied male voice spoke, making me angrier with every word. How dare he say something so cruel! I didn't fully understand what the voice was talking about, but it was obvious that his words came from one of Futaba's memories and that he was blaming her for Wakaba's suicide. Nobody should ever say anything like that, especially to a mourning child!

As my blood boiled, the reflective panel rotated the beam of light onto the screen, thankfully making the terrible image vanish. The fact that empty space where the screen had been led to the main corridor – meaning that the giant, sealed door blocking the way forward was now unlocked – was only a secondary benefit.

"Hey, Morgana," I began as we jumped down through the new opening and made our way through the second giant door. My voice was harsh, brimming with barely contained fury. "The next Shadow we find… we're attacking it."

"Wait, what!?" exclaimed Morgana, baffled by my decision. Did he not understand the true meaning behind the screen? I was… mostly sure that I told him about Wakaba. "Why!?"

"Because I suddenly have a lot of rage that I want to let out."

Morgana gave me a look of fear, but he kept following and didn't try to talk me out of my decision. Not that he could've succeeded. We entered the Chamber of Guilt, not bothering to stop in the Safe Room.

If I had been calmer, I probably would've pitied the poor, unsuspecting Shadows that we came across.

AN: Next chapter will start after the end of Palace exploration, when it is finally time for the Phantom Thieves to meet Futaba face-to-face.

Also, below is a new scene. I hadn't written it when I decided to change the format, but I wanted to and thought that it would be a bit out of place squeezed in the start of the next chapter (i.e. right before the calling card and final boss).

Urano Motosu's PoV

"Kouha!" I shouted, having Liesel firing a Bless attack at the enemy. Unfortunately, the skill had no effect, as the Shadow was apparently immune to Bless.

"Frei!" said Thoth, striking me with Nuke damage. I crumpled under the attack, as Nuke (along with Curse) was Liesel's weakness. Truly, it couldn't have been a worse matchup.

"Urano, we need to get out of here!" cried Morgana, worried about my condition. "Use the Vanish Ball you made!"

"No!" I rejected, switching over to Naga. "I won't run away! Double Fang!"

My Persona used his spear to strike Thoth twice. The Shadow grunted as he was hit, meaning that I had done some damage.

"Garu!" added in Morgana, blasting Thoth after realizing that I wouldn't be taking 'no' for an answer.

I grew tensed for a moment, but thankfully it seemed that Wind wasn't this Shadow's weakness.

"Taunt!" said Thoth, triggering an unnatural fury in Morgana. The not-cat gave a shout of Rage and attacked the Shadow with his sword, putting more force behind his swing than usual.

No! Why would you do that, Thoth!?

Thankfully, the Shadow wasn't destroyed, and Morgana calmed down after his attack. I mean, I would've hated it if the not-cat had accidentally finished off Thoth instead of giving me a chance to negotiate with him (hence why I hadn't used Isis to probe for weaknesses). There's no way I would pass up recruiting a Shadow that carries a book with him, after all.

Hmm… What was written in Thoth's book anyway? Hieroglyphics maybe? Lorem ipsum?

I grinned, eager to find out the truth for myself.