Content warning: one slit throat

Literally: to jump at each other's throats
Meaning: to attack each other, to vehemently argue

The lift took its sweet time taking Goro and Sumire to the top. The gymnast awkwardly glanced at the detective. "What's a… pytknt?"

"A what?"

"That's what your name tag says."

Goro glanced down at his jacket - If we're being precise, the name-tag said РУТКИТ. "Truth be told, I don't know," he shrugged. "The Persona associated with this costume alludes to a Russian work, and the revolver I gained during my awakening was a Russian Army sidearm, so I wouldn't be shocked if it meant something in that language. 'Crow', perhaps?"

The lift finally opened, and the two stepped out. A staircase led them past a (promptly looted) treasure chest to a large crowded lobby, filled with multiple free-standing boards, plastered with some sort of announcements, leaflets and notices.

"How far did you go with Joker?"

"You mean senpai? I tried asking him out, but he politely turned me down."

Goro sighed. "How much of this Palace did you explore?"

"Oh!" Her cheeks for a brief moment matched her hair and coat. "Um, not that far. I just… stumbled into a bad guy, got scared, and then se-, um, Joker and… does the cat have a codename?"

"Mona."

"Yes, Joker and Mona defeated it and pulled me out." She sheepishly scanned her surroundings. "There were no people here last time."

"They are just cognitions, for the record. How the Palace ruler perceives other people." Goro walked up to one of the boards and skimmed through its contents. A lot of nice round words about ending suffering and happiness being within the reader's grasp - the type that put a cynic like him on edge. "You know," he thought out loud, "in order to access a Palace, you need three keywords. The name of the ruler, the location, and the nature of the distortion." He turned to the gymnast. "Did you mention anyone out loud right before being pulled in?"

"I…" Sumire's expression became uneasy. "I rambled a bit to myself about how I do nothing but cause trouble for… for senpai…"

Goro glanced around. "I don't think it's Joker's Palace. Making everyone happy does sound like a distorted desire he could harbour, but the overall aesthetic of this plaaa-oof!"

He collapsed to the ground. Both him and Sumire realized that there's a glossy black tentacle wrapped around his ankles, which then crept up and restrained his legs and arms. "What the mmph?!" The last word was muffled by the tip of the tentacle covering his mouth at just the right moment. Then, he ended up forcefully yanked deeper into the Palace.

"Goro-san!" The parts of Sumire's brain that screamed 'run and don't look back' were immediately overruled by the 'do not leave him behind' parts, and so she gave chase. The tentacle moved rapidly yet carefully, making sure that the detective wouldn't get bumped on the corners or anything. Even someone less trained than her wouldn't have a problem keeping up with it. A group of shadowy-looking creatures in lab coats tried to block her way, but, fueled by adrenaline, she slid under them, barely losing any momentum, and continued her pursuit.

After a few minutes, Goro arrived at the front of an audience section of a large stage, almost immediately followed by Sumire. The two noticed that the other end of the appendage was attached to the wrist of a humanoid-looking shadowy creature in a white suit. Someone else was standing next to it, an adult, no older than late twenties, in a matching suit and neatly slicked-back hair. The light bounced off of the lenses of his glasses, hiding his eyes and adding to the general aura of intimidation.

The detective ended up being put upright on the ground, so that he stood on his own two feet, but remained restrained by the tentacle. In the right orientation, the guy with the glasses seemed familiar to him for some reason. The gymnast realized that she miiight have gotten in way over her head, but stood defiantly, and clumsily raised her guard. "Let him go!" she demanded.

The bespectacled man turned to her. In that exact moment, Sumire remembered that, back in October, when complaining to herself, she said she's causing trouble for her senpai and for…

"…Maruki-san?!"

Of course, Goro thought. The similarity was there. Even in a well-tailored suit and with a new haircut, he still resembled that random concerned cabbie from December. The one he confessed his crimes to, when his mask slipped. What were the goddamn odds?

"Welcome, Sumire," he said. "I'm sorry for greeting you in such an, ahem, unorthodox manner," he shot a pointed glare at his captive, "but you don't seem to be aware who your companion really is."

The voice matched too. And instead of just snapping his neck then and there, he was going to make a show of revealing his past to Yoshizawa. What an asshole.

She gave the detective an awkward glance. "What do you mean? He's Goro Akechi, i-isn't he? Soon-to-be-former celebrity?"

"Well, that is all correct." There was bitterness in the therapist's tone. "But there's more to him than that. To quote the man himself:"

Maruki snapped his fingers and the lights in the room darkened. The screen on the stage lit up, showing a video of the detective sitting in the back of a car. "Oh, sorry, you need more context," he said, then clasped his gloved hands. "I've been working as an assassin for Masayoshi Shido over the past two or so years. All the mental shutdowns from that period are on my conscience."

The clip stopped and the lights turned back on. "I didn't connect the dots until after he had told me that," Maruki added, "but I've realized that a lot of my colleagues working on cognitive psience suffered from mental shutdowns as well. It's a relatively small field, most people knew each other, if barely." He turned to Goro. "I assume you were sent after me as well, but something prevented you from finishing the job."

Yes. That's why his name sounded familiar. He had spent a week trying to find his goddamn Shadow in Mementos. He didn't have a Palace either - until now? This probably was his domain, that would explain why he had control over this and was able to play his memory on the big scre-

His eyes. They weren't golden. This wasn't a Shadow, this was the real Maruki. What on earth was happeni-

"Is…" Sumire's voice snapped him back to reality. She kept staring at him the whole time, still trying to process what the therapist had just revealed. "Is that true? Did you… do all that?"

The tip of the tentacle moved out of the way, allowing him to speak. He could've made excuses, he could've mentioned his efforts to atone and take Shido down, he could've invoked Akira - both of them probably held him in high regards, just like the detective did, saying he knew about all this and spared him could've gotten him out of this trainwreck.

But he was not the type to beg for his life, so he just said, in the most neutral tone possible: "Yes. It is all true."

Sumire felt like someone had punched her in the gut. Even though she had other things on her mind that year, the news about the mental shutdowns reached her in some capacity. So much tragedy, so much death, all caused by the man in front of her. And he wasn't even remorseful about that, that was the most irritating thing about it, he just stared at her with this blank expressio-

And then, based on the knowledge she had at the moment, she came to a conclusion that was simultaneously reasonable in those circumstances and completely wrong. "…you killed senpai."

"No, I didn't!" Goro protested, drawing a line at accepting responsibility for sins he didn't commit - this time, at least.

"Ah, yes, you were completely unrelatedly just living his life!" she snarked, the shock on her face replaced with rage and determination. "You either killed him or ratted him out to the police again!"

"Um-"

"You know nothing about what I've done and why, so shut it!" Goro didn't let Maruki speak up. "You're just a fucking rookie that blundered into a Palace once and thinks that makes her hot shit!" He attempted to free himself, but all he managed was a defiant wiggle.

"Oh, you think I can't touch you because I don't have a Persona, huh?" Her eyes turned golden. "That I'm just a second banana, not smart enough to see through your two-facedness, not strong enough to go toe-to-toe with you?" A mask materialized on her face, and she grabbed its rim. "Think again, Crow!"

She yanked it off with little effort and blue flames engulfed her. When she emerged, her red coat had been replaced by a bodysuit, high-heeled shoes, stockings going past her knees, and an open coat, all in dark gray or black. A silver tuck was hanging from a matching decorative belt around her waist. With one last flame, a mask appeared on her face - a pointy black crescent with silver engravings on it.

Above her, floated a Persona - a crystal humanoid in a skirt, in various shades of blue, with a light azure bow on her head, free-flowing white fur cape, and gold trimmings everywhere. A name flashed in the gymnast's mind - Cendrillon.

"Oh my…" Maruki whispered, too taken aback to intervene.

Sumire felt power coursing through her, and it was exhilarating. She unholstered her weapon and inspected it, a wide grin adorning her face. "What do you say to this, huh?" she asked Goro.

"Wooow, I am impressed," he rolled his eyes, unimpressed. "You know, since you don't need me anymore, I'll just go and throw myself under a speeding car or someth-"

At the time, he didn't know why she reacted so badly to that line. Her face twisted in a grimace, and she slashed blindly in his direction, not aiming at anything in particular, just trying to get him to shut the hell up. Unfortunately, not aiming also means not aiming to avoid vital areas, and her tuck's sharp tip went… well, you read the content warning, didn't you?

Then, silence, broken only by gurgles emitted by Goro. The realization hit Sumire, and she dropped her weapon on the ground with a clang, shocked. "Oh God…" She started taking deep breaths. "I d-d-didn't mean to-"

And then another tentacle restrained her.

"This went horrendously," Maruki muttered, genuinely apologetic, then waved his hand at the detective.

His throat was promptly healed, which meant he was able to scream: "You've made a show out of revealing my wetwork to her, what the fuck did you expe-"

Both Goro and Sumire calm down, and remain calm for the following ten minutes or so. Not this shit again…

"To answer your question," the therapist explained, "I didn't expect you to reopen an old wound of hers, and I didn't expect her to overreact in such a way."

"It wasn't intentional on my end," the detective reassured him, forcefully serene. "I am responsible for… a lot, but this time, I merely tried to help her. Yoshizawa approached me because she was concerned about the current situation. Dead people came back to life, Joker mysteriously vanished, and this Palace is for some reason visible in the real world."

"And who's Joker?"

"Akira-senpai," Sumire replied, tranquil. "Do you know anything about his disappearance, Maruki-san?"

He didn't reply to this at first. The tentacles retracted back into the sleeves of the goon standing beside him, releasing the two. "First of all," he turned to Goro, "I owe you an apology. I incorrectly assumed you were an immediate threat to Sumire or myself."

"Then why didn't you just neutralize me in whatever way you found fit, without the smoke and mirrors?"

"Sumire deserved to know-"

"Could we please get back to the main point?" she gently butted in. "What is happening and where is Akira-senpai?"

After a pause, Maruki awkwardly glanced aside. "I think I'll let someone else explain it."

"What do you mea-"

The therapist snapped his fingers again and the ground underneath the two gave way. After a very brief fall they landed on the ground, Goro cushioning Sumire's fall. "Ow!"

"Sorry!" She sprung back up and helped the detective get from the floor. The two then scanned their surroundings. They were in someone's bedroom. A futon was rolled up and tied in the corner, next to a shelf with a few books on it: The Curse of Capistrano, The Three Musketeers, The Master and Margarita. A small plywood desk was standing in the opposite corner, with a chair right beside it. On the desk there were an open laptop, a wireless mouse connected to it, and an unfolded practice balisong. The two glanced out of a window, wide enough to climb out of. The surroundings were unquestionably too rural for Tokyo.

"I think we should leave," Goro said. "Promptly."

Before he could try and open the window, the exit door slid open, revealing a familiar face. He was wearing his PJs and carrying a mug of hot coffee in his free hand.

"Goro?"

"Akira?"

"Senpai?"