As the sound of electric guitar and drums began filling my ears as Keeper of Lust began its riff, I grit my teeth, not daring to take my eyes off the damn thing. My fingers slipped into my pockets. "Futaba, what the hell are you doing?! Run!" Not hearing the sound of footsteps, I chanced a glance behind me.
The girl was petrified behind me, eyes wide as dinnerplates.
"Shit-" I fumbled in my purse for anything I could use, but I was interrupted by the Pixie flying right into my face.
"You're not getting away! Garu!" She said, placing both arms in front of my chest. My eyes widened, instinctively trying to slap her away, but by the time I'd even raised my arms, I was sailing away on a cutting gale that threw me back and into Futaba, the both of us rolling for several feet, almost onto the train tracks.
Shit. Now we're even farther from the exit.
Gritting my teeth as I felt the pain in my chest, I noted that at the very least the clothes I'd looted from Futaba's palace were doing their job. I began getting back up-
"Not a chance! Dormina!"
I tried to dodge, but soon found out that the attack wasn't aimed for me at all, as the High Pixie charged us once more and began raining powder from her wings onto Futaba. Similarly, she was struggling to get up, but after a moment, I could see her eyes flutter back into unconsciousness.
"Well now, brats, where's my pay-" She said, gently landing on top of Futaba's head, but I managed to interrupt her as I chucked the magatama at her, thankfully managing to not hit Futaba.
I had to blink the imprint of the Pixie out of my vision as she screamed, nearly having flashbanged myself as Nuke energy coursed through her and gave me an x-ray of her body, knocking her off of Futaba- and more importantly, knocking her down.
Still, I could tell I had done basically jackshit to her. Entirely conscious of this fact, I lunged forward, snatching her off the floor and taking out my dagger to point it at her throat. I felt a little ridicolous for needing to do this to someone who I could easily pick up with one hand... but that feeling died when I felt her almost pry my hand open with ease, the only thing preventing her from doing so being the dagger pointed at her throat. This was the strength of a shadow from a palace whose owner I hadn't made my bitch through... less than reliable methods.
"You're going to stop doing that if you want to keep your head." I hissed out. It was bullshit, and I knew it- but hopefully she didn't.
Now Playing - Talk
The guitar and drums settled into something calmer, but still tense.
Her eyes morphed into an expression of terror and frustration before snorting and locking her gaze on mine. "Well, I guess you're the boss now. What do you want? Just make sure to be gentle with me..." She crooned breathily, her plea amplified with a shift of her shoulders that rubbed against the insides of my knuckles. "Won't you just leave me be?"
I huffed. I wasn't even into girls, but of course, the first time one flirted with me was when I was holding her at knifepoint. This was just wrong. "Who tells me that when you're free, you won't just go back to attacking us again?"
She slumped over. "Good point... but I can't just let you go without getting Master Kaneshiro's money." I began sweating as in one swift move she freed her arms, but instead of doing anything, she brought one to her chin in a thinking pose while the other began drumming on my hand with her fingers. "Tell you what, kid. I'm after your money, not your life. If you give me all the money you're carrying on you, I'll teach you a little something to make sure your girlfriend doesn't die."
I blinked. "She's not-" I started to say before my blood froze as I turned back to look at Futaba. Bleeding from the head. No longer snoring from being asleep, but rather being flat-out unconscious. I turned back towards the fairy.
"So, what'll it be?" she asked cheekily. "You kill me, she dies too."
With a glare and grit teeth, I lowered myself on the ground and placed her down, rifling through my bag and pulling out all of the money that I'd gathered through my metaverse hunting. It wasn't a lot, but it had been a fair amount, and now... well, now it served another purpose, I suppose. I had some fruit in my bag and a bead, but if she kept attacking us, it made for a moot point.
"I knew you were reasonable after all." She cooed. "Well, don't mind if I do~," she said, but I pulled out another magatama, this time red in color.
"The healing." I ground out.
"And what do you think that's supposed to do?" She raised an eyebrow. "I may not be resistant to fire, but are you resistant to me?"
"Depends on how quick you think yourself on the draw. Can you do said ass-kicking before I shatter this on the money pile?"
The way she froze said it all. She took a breath, before huffing. "The nerve of kids, nowadays. Now I know why Master Kaneshiro doesn't like you." And then, she pulled a minuscule card out of her... cleavage, ugh, before flying up and handing it to me.
"This is... a skill card?" I said, more as confirmation of what I already suspected.
"That's right. You heal her yourself. Diarama!" She said, before snapping her fingers as green light fell around her, healing what damage I'd done with the nuke magatama. Suddenly, she zipped in front of me, flying and grabbing me by the cheeks. "Listen, sweetings. Since you've been so nice to me" Is holding someone at knifepoint nice? "let me tell you two things. First, when you have an advantage over someone, you don't just let them con you out of a victory- don't look at me like that, the girl is a bit banged up but fine. I'm like, the nicest girl around, but anyone else would have totally killed you. Capiche?"
My cheeks are being smushed tightly by someone whose height is that of my forearm. I don't know how to feel about that, and in the interest of not spraying her with saliva, I just nod.
"Secondly, from one shadow to another, I don't know what you're doing with a human, but they bring a ton of trouble. I recommend you dip out." She pauses. "Man, you've got some soft cheeks. This is nice."
The next few seconds passed as the shadow decided to play with my face for entertainment before remembering herself. "Right, gotta go. Toodle-oo!" And with that, she melted back into the shadow on the floor, absorbing the money, before turning back into an ATM woman and running away.
"But I'm a human..." I trailed off, unable to say it before she ran away.
...that was weird. And uncomfortable. I wonder if the ditzy attitude comes from the fact that she's a fairy.
Sighing as I processed the weirdest mugging someone's got to have ever received in the history of ever, I slid the headphones off my head, not willing to hear music right now, as I focused on the very tiny skill card. What the hell do I do with-
Right as I thought that, the card turned into sparkles and disappeared.
Uh.
Turning back to the still-unconscious form of Futaba, I frowned. Diarama was the second tier of healing. Should definitely do the job. "Diarama?"
As Futaba's prone form is enveloped by green lights and the cuts vanish, I'm reminded that I also took a Garu to the face. I wasn't... really feeling too banged up, but it couldn't hurt. "Diarama."
Green light enveloped me in turn, and the bruised feeling I felt was substituted by something that felt a little like heartburn. Like having sprinted without having done any jogging first. Eugh. Don't like that.
...it just occurred to me that I'm using the skill without a Persona. First of all- how? Secondly, how?
It's the same question, but it bears repeating.
"Did we get 'em?" I hear a murmur next to me, and my eyes track to Futaba once more, slowly peeling herself off the ground with a look of disgust.
"Nope. You were a sitting duck and I got mugged." I reply with a shrug.
"Shit. Aren't you supposed to take me to like, a tutorial level first, instead of straight to the boss?"
I smirked at her. "Isn't the first part of every shounen manga the protagonist getting their shit kicked in so that the stakes are firmly set?"
"I could've gone for a more girly shoujo approach, for once, you know. Too bad you're not some cute animal companion that introduces me to an ancient secret..." She paused. "Are you?"
At that, my smirk turned into flat-out laughter as I thought about the idea of Morgana meeting Futaba right now.
"Can't say I am, no. Still... this blunder was definitely on me not thinking about which parts of the palace I brought you into, but we managed to pull through. The rest of the journey should be safer. You up to continue?"
I saw it for a moment, the same look of fear that had her paralyzed as we- well, I- fought the pixie, but it was soon after replaced by a look of defiance. "As you said. We got our shit kicked in by a pint-sized mage. Show me how to not make that happen again."
I smirked as I got back up. "That, as long as you're willing to reach out to the truth," I honestly had to fight to not roll my eyes at my own cringeworthy lines, but it was like one of the core themes of the series, I think, "is something I can most definitely do."
"So let me get this straight: you essentially went out of your way to gaslight a teenager into obtaining magic powers?"
I winced at that. "Not quite?"
As it turns out, Futaba was most definitely not willing to reach out to the truth.
Or, well, not immediately. Apparently, a brief fight in the Metaverse made her very "eepy" and left her feeling like shit, which… was fair. But that meant that I barely had enough time to get her back home before she passed out on me- and we both realized that she did not, in fact, have the keys to her household.
A moment of panic later, I had to figure out how to drag an asleep girl inside her own house as I realized that I could briefly dip into the Metaverse with her, drag her into the house, and then dip out. That left the question of which Palace to use…
But apparently, Kamoshida had done his research on Joker more than I realized, because this whole neighborhood apparently did exist in his cognition. I was worried about having to use Shido's palace and what would happen if we appeared underwater, but this worked. Sure, the house turned into a lurid slum, but we had to endure it for barely a few seconds before we returned to reality.
She made it to her bed and promptly became completely unresponsive.
After that, I slept. I was also feeling extremely tired from the entire scuffle, but sleeping had no longer been a real thing for me in a while, substituted by brief bouts of zoning out. And yet, I slept in the middle of some random street like a baby. Most likely all the action of the last few days had finally taken out of me that incredible reservoir of stamina this ghostly form offered.
The following morning saw me return to Takeyoshi's house feeling rather weirded out, which leads us to the current conversation, and my answer. The boy motioned for me to go on.
Well, not quite?" I mused, scratching my cheek. "None of what I told her, strictly speaking, was a lie. Everything was there, I just kickstarted it into motion."
The boy hummed in consideration. "I have more questions, such as how you even knew about it... but I doubt you have a satisfactory answer from what you've told me. And you did bring me both video and material proof of the things you said before. Plus that app you spoke of installed itself automatically on my phone the day after you came back last." I shot up from the floor in surprise.
"You didn't use it, did you?"
"Didn't know how." He shrugged. "Which is a shame, because I could've run experiments in the meantime, but-"
"You've listened to my entire story about how I've almost gotten killed several times in the Metaverse and you want to run experiments on it?"
"I've listened to how you're an adrenaline junkie who messed things up in a teenager's mind so bad that he needed to clean up after himself and messed up the transportation to the parallel dimension. Forgive me if your account is not necessarily brimming with confidence." He deadpanned.
"I had more of an idea of what I was doing, at least. And for some god-forsaken reason, I'm stupidly durable. Also-" I stepped closer to him, grabbing him by the hem of his shirt and easily lifting him up. Not bringing him in my face, just lifting. "I'm practically an adult, you're a prepubescent kid. Even Futaba has height and weight on you." I deadpanned back at him, before putting him back down.
"...point taken." he fixed his two-piece before staring back at me with a scowl. "I'll keep the experimentation to when I have you between me and whatever thing is trying to kill you or me. Happy?"
I took a deep breath. "Yes. No. Wait. Shit." I pulled my phone out of my pocket, opened up Harmony, and typed out at my only other contact there "DO NOT USE THE NAVIGATOR WITHOUT ME THERE".
Not online, which hopefully meant she was still comatose. "Okay, yes. Happy."
"Good. Also, your powers of observation are criminally low. I've got the weapons and armor you requested, and you didn't even say anything." he commented, pointing behind me. I turned around, and when did that get there?
"That" being a large glass container- like, two meters tall- with what looked like a Power Ranger's suit, mounted on a mannequin. Specifically, the black one. Except this one had also bird-themed stuff on it, presumably due to the whole "Neo Featherman" thing.
"I'm not wearing that." I blurted out immediately, turning back to stare at him in incredulity.
"I wasn't asking you to." he facepalmed. "But you wouldn't expect me to be able to ship in weapons and armor directly without raising eyebrows? You saw what happened with a relatively innocent science experiment." My eyebrows flew under my hair at the words 'relatively innocent'. "So when I told my grandparents I was interested in more 'normal' things for someone my age and my grounding was over, they were all too happy to let me make a small expense. Coupled with the fact that they're not exactly savvy in terms of technology, and well... a telescopic baton and an airsoft gun slip in easily as cosmetics." He walked over to the case himself, opening it with a key.
"And while I don't expect you to go around in a full suit of armor, given that I probably weigh more than you soaking wet despite the differences in our height" he gave me a shove that had me stumble back through the wall, making me fall to the floor. Incredulous, I walked back through. "As I just demonstrated, you could do with bracers, shin guards, and something to keep your vitals from being hit."
"...point taken," I grumbled back at him. I didn't miss being overweight, but neither was I comfortable with being starved. "Seriously though, how much money do you have to just throw at these things?"
"A lot. I'm considering this an investment on you, but don't get used to me just throwing money around willy unless it's for a real good reason, especially since I'm still working on getting full access to my funds."
"...got it. And Thank you." I nodded earnestly.
As I inspected the Power Ran- NEO Featherman costume, I began thinking about the situation.
Futaba was a teenager, almost my age, even though she had some pretty severe issues. And I knew for a fact that she had the potential to overcome said issues like I knew that she had the potential to summon a Persona, though admittedly I was a bit iffy on the details of how a "Support" persona would translate into being able to handle herself.
I had none of the same certainties about the boy. He fit certain anime stereotypes that the games were fond of, but that was hardly confirmation. Hell, my own fighting style was dependent on foreknowledge of my enemy to consistently hit their weaknesses, ambushes, item usage to punch above my weight class, and just plain old "hit them while they're down".
"Look, Take-" "Takeyoshi-kun, genkan de hen'na on'nanoko ga anata no koto o kiite kimasu!" I was interrupted by hearing his grandmother shouting from below the floor.
Soundwaves carried weirdly for me.
Looking back up, I raised an eyebrow in askance, only to meet his own disbelieving look. "I caught like... the word "door"."
"They say there's a weird girl at the door asking about me."
It took me a moment to get the idea, but then I balked. "No way, she couldn't have..." I muttered, walking through the wall and stuck my head through the wall and the floor of the next room. Had to stretch my neck out a little to poke my eyes over the ceiling, but there I saw an elderly man, standing with his arms crossed in front of a panicking Futaba.
Our eyes locked for a moment, and she seemed even more out of sorts. I poked my head back in.
"Holy shit, she's here. How?"
"You tell me."
I shook my head. "Go get her in. Might as well get our answers straight from the source. Say she's your... I dunno, girlfriend or something."
His expression grew pinched. "You don't come up with good lies often, do you?"
"Sue me, I haven't had human contact that isn't with NEETs in two weeks! Go!"
Don't go venturing into the Metaverse without a Persona, kids. It doesn't end well.
I'm gonna be changing my update schedule! Updating 4 fics all at the same time is hard, man . instead, I will be uploading one update at the start of each month, and every week thereafter, it'll be another fic (In the order of The Elemental Nations Gamer Experience - Comfort By Candlelight - Royal Business - Syzygy). But don't worry! This month, I'm doing my start-of-month update, *and* this new update!
If you wish to support my writing, you can check me out on the place of patrons where I post five chapters ahead. Alternatively, you can always PM me in private if you wish to commission something written where we can hash out the details. Otherwise, a review is still more than enough, and I can't be thankful enough for it.
I now also have a Discord Server! If you want to come talk to me about anything and interact with other people reading my works, here's the link! /xuSVQY7bw3
Drink water, stay awesome. Nick of Name, out. :)