Futaba picked herself up from the ground and adjusted her glasses.
She was in some sort of storage room. A few rows of metal shelves stored all sorts of things – pots, pans, garden gnomes, missiles, buckets… By the walls were a few large trunks – locked, and she lacked Akira's skill with picking locks – and desks. On top of one of them was an intimidating-looking lifesize robot prop. From the look of the place, the apocalypse had happened and she had slept through it. She pulled out her phone – no signal. Mildly concerning.
Deeming the building uninteresting enough, she decided to leave it and start looking for her friends. She opened the door, and the first thing she saw outside was a massive green-skinned humanoid, twice as tall as she was, with biceps larger than her torso, holding a missile launcher at the ready.
She ducked back into the building, slamming the door behind herself. Loudly. Too loudly. There was a moment of silence, and then, footsteps.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
The footsteps were getting closer. There had to be another green giant she didn't notice but who had noticed her. She scanned the room for any nook good enough to hide and came up empty. Maybe she ended up in a Palace of some sort and this was just another variant of a Shadow? She focused in an attempt to summon her Persona, to no avail. Goddammit, she had a min-maxed build and dumped strength, she was going to get pubstomped unless there was something in the room she could've hacked to distract-
Her eyes stopped on the robot, specifically on the threatening-looking buzzsaw. If the world was taken over by orcs, maybe the robot was functional too? And maybe if she turned it on, it'd take commands from her and get them to back off? The equation had a lot of unknown variables; there was a non-zero chance of things backfiring spectacularly, but there was also a non-zero chance of an orc blowing her up, and she decided to assume p1 was larger than p2. She inspected the robot's chassis and noticed an on-off switch at the bottom of it; taught by her experience with all things computer science, she flicked it off and back on.
The exhaust came to life and she recoiled away from it with a startled gasp.
The robot has righted itself up and floated in the air, holding its appendages at the ready. The three stalks attached to its round core lifted up and a sensor on each turned towards her.
That had seemed a better idea a moment before. RIP in pieces, Futaba thought.
"Hello!" it proclaimed, in a vaguely posh-sounding voice. "Could you please direct me to mistress Tabitha?"
"Uhhh…" Futaba knew English – most worthwhile CS tutorials were in that language, and she had a habit of watching videos of Brits snarking about video games on top of that. The challenging part was getting her bearings together to answer the question. "No, n-n-not really. I'm k-k-kinda lost myself."
The door to the storage shed was slammed open, and a sledgehammer-wielding orc stuck his head inside. "Who's there?!" he barked.
Futaba dived under the desk, while the robot floated closer to the orc. "Greetings, my good lady," it asked him, unintimidated. "Would you happen to know where I can find mistress Tabitha?"
From her hiding spot, Futaba saw the orc reply "Uh, she's over there." Then, he turned around and left, and the robot followed, closing the door behind itself.
"[Luck check… nat twenty,]" she muttered to herself. She wasn't out of danger yet, but she had bought herself some time. She could've waited until nightfall to try and sneak out of this shack. She had at least a few hours of downtime before that point, maybe the assorted garbage stored in there could be kitbashed into something useful.
With that thought, she got out of her hiding spot and was about to start taking stock when the door was slammed open again. A pale blue orc stuck her head in. At least, Futaba assumed the orc identified as female, because of the blond wig and glasses with heart-shaped frames she was wearing. Futaba failed the Agility check and, instead of hiding, stood still like a deer in the headlights.
"Human?" said the orc, in a less murderous tone than Futaba expected. "Did you… did you fix Rhonda?"
"Indeed she did!" the robot from before cheerfully piped up from behind her.
Futaba's mouth gave up and so she just nodded ferociously.
"I… I dunno how I can thank you…" said the orc. "She means so much to me-"
"Mistress Tabitha?" Rhonda said. "Sorry to interrupt, but we should be heading off. Our journey has been much delayed, but we can catch up if we hurry."
"Yes, yes," Tabitha nodded, then reached for something. She tossed it vaguely in Futaba's direction – she was too paralyzed to catch it and so it just bounced off of her chest. "That's the key to the crates. I-I gotta go now."
She turned around and left without closing the door behind.
"Uh, should we kill the-"
"NOBODY TOUCH THE HUMAN!" Tabitha interrupted one of the orcs.
After a moment, Futaba dared to slowly approach the exit and glance outside. She focused on watching a group of armed orcs quietly heading out, following Tabitha and Rhonda as they headed towards the exit.
"[No immediate danger, good,]" she mumbled to herself. Her brain then threw a bluescreen and she passed out.
"Lass?"
Ann felt someone gently tapping her cheek. She opened her eyes and saw an older woman in glasses crouching over her.
"Oh, thank heavens you came to," the old lady said. "Are you feeling alright? We do have a medic, but she's… a last resort."
Ann quietly noted the language change. "I'm fine… I think." She got up from the ground and scanned her surroundings. She was at what might have been a gas station a few centuries before. It was surrounded by a tent, probably some form of communal dining area, a few battered houses, a roadside motel, and a large statue of a dinosaur.
"Where am I?" she asked.
"Novac," the old lady replied. "We're by Route 95, between Vegas and Searchlight. And how did you end up in this predicament?"
"I…" Ann had about three seconds to come up with a passable lie. "I'm not sure. I…" She pretended to focus. "I was traveling with my friends… we met up with some guy that shared snacks with us… and the rest is a blur."
"Good Lord…" The old lady seemed upset by the prospect. "The audacity of some people… Will anyone come looking for you? With all due respect, you don't seem like you'd survive far from civilization."
"No offense taken," she replied, trying to hide how concerning the implications of that sentence were. "And yeah, I think my friends will look for me once they all wake up from… whatever that was." That wasn't even a lie. "I just hope they're alright."
"Don't tell me you bought that bull-hockey, Crawford."
The two turned and saw a messy-looking bearded vagrant leaning against the wall of the motel. "What are you talking about?" the old lady asked him.
"She's obviously an exile from another realm, banished here by unjust gods." After a pause, the vagrant added: "Though she might have some ancestry in this world, on account of her eyes and hair."
"Creepy," Ann remarked, playing up her discomfort.
"Scram, No-Bark," Crawford ordered. He did so with a grumble, and she turned back to Ann. "I'm sorry about him." She adjusted her glasses. "Since we don't know when… or if… your friends come back to pick you up, you might need a place to stay."
Ann nodded in response.
Crawford pointed at the motel behind her. "I own that there fine establishment. I can set you up with a room free of charge, and give you some caps to survive a day or two, but I expect you to get a job. An honest one, mind – it's not that kind of motel."
The assumption felt insulting, but Ann her tongue – leaning into the 'poor lost girl' image seemed like the most reasonable option for now. "O-of course. But… where can I find an honest job in the area?"
"Ask around," she replied.
"Mooooo!"
"[Five more minutes…]" Yusuke turned away from the source of the sound. Then, his brain realized that a cow mooing in his earshot was kind of unusual and got up from the ground.
He was near the ruins of a farmhouse – burned down, as far as he could tell. Next to him were two graves, marked only by clumsily-made unmarked crosses, and a pair of rickety wooden animal pens. One held odd creatures – massive beasts, as tall as he was, with thick brown fur and impressive, vaguely sheepy horns. The other held cows, mostly as he remembered them, except blemished and each with an inexplicable second head. In what he considered a blessing, none of them seemed hostile.
"[Ah, yes,]" he realized. "[The God of Control banished us.]" He pulled out his phone – you guessed it, no signal. He scanned his surroundings and immediately noticed a small settlement within walking distance. Maybe the others went there, and if not, maybe he could've found some information about them or the world he was in.
He set off, taking off his jacket as the heat of the Mojave was starting to get to him. As he had gotten a bit closer, more and more details about the town in front of him seemed low-key eerie. The white building (a church, maybe? it resembled something he had seen in pursuit of reference art some time ago) by the side of the town was mostly destroyed, one of the houses had its doors boarded up, and there didn't seem to be any people arou-
"Hey!"
Yusuke spun on his heel and noticed a squad of soldiers with assault rifles approaching him. For a brief moment, he considered running or diving between the houses, but decided against it – if they wanted to shoot him, they wouldn't have drawn his attention first.
"Hang on there, traveler," the squad leader said in lieu of a greeting. "You'll want to steer clear of this place - the whole town is irradiated to high hell."
The Phantom Thieves we have followed up to this point, for one reason or another, had ended up with a decent grasp of English allowing them to communicate with Mojave's inhabitants.
"[Uh… you wouldn't happen to speak Japanese, would you?]"
Yusuke, however, didn't speak a lick of it.
"What?"
"[Japanese language,]" Yusuke repeated, slowly.
The squad leader sighed and pointed at one of the warning signs around the perimeter. "Ra-di-o-ac-tiv-i-ty," he said, slowly. "Bad. No go. Go west, then north." He pointed in the direction he had just come from. "West, then north."
Yusuke understood that the settlement in front of him was irradiated – the trefoil transcended language, thankfully – but everything else went over his head. Then, an idea popped into his head – if he could understand symbols, so could they. He pulled out a sketchpad and a pen he had in his jacket's inner pocket, drew a horizontal line at around one-thirds of the page, then covered the top third in radioactivity hazard symbols.
"What is he doing?" one of the foot soldiers asked.
Yusuke continued – he covered the other two-thirds of the sheet with question marks, then added two thick dots near the separating line. He showed the drawing to the squad leader, pointed at the two dots with his pen, then at himself, then at him.
The squad leader needed a moment to figure out what this weird person (he would've taken him for a tribal, but he was too pale and too well-dressed) wanted from him. It then clicked: "He doesn't know the area and needs a map," he said, then turned to his underlings. "Do we have a map?"
"Yes, sir," one of the privates responded.
"Bring it over." The squad leader turned to Yusuke and pointed at him. "You." He then made a walking motion with his index and middle fingers. "Come with me."
Him and Yusuke marched away a bit from the camp, up a small hill. As soon as they got to its top, they were able to see a landmark in the distance – a large statue of a T-rex holding up a thermometer. The squad leader remembered from high school that that 'dinosaur' was 'dinosaurio' in Spanish, so maybe the weird blue-haired kid's language also had a similar word for it. "There." He pointed at the landmark. "What is that?"
Yusuke squinted a bit. "Kyōryū?" Noticing the squad leader rolling his eyes, he made a second guess: "Doragon?"
Fine, it's a dragon then, the squad leader thought. "Yes, dragon." He pointed at Yusuke. "You." He made a walking gesture. "Go." He pointed at the dinosaur statue. "To dragon."
"Sir, I brought you the map," the private proclaimed, trotting up to them with a folded piece of paper in his hand.
"Good, put it on the ground." Without asking for permission, the squad leader took Yusuke's sketchpad and pen. The private unfolded the map and he flipped the page and started redrawing it, beginning by drawing an arrow pointing up, marking north, and then marking their current location with a dot and noting down the settlement's name.
"Se-a-ru…" Yusuke attempted to read it.
"Searchlight," the squad leader helped.
This language makes no damn sense, Yusuke thought.
The squad leader continued copying, focusing mostly on the roads and the settlements among them. He marked down a place called Novac, another called Nipton, and one named Ranger Station Charlie, reading the names out to Yusuke as he went. He then drew small skulls and crossbones near all roads except the one leading to Novac through the ranger station. To finish, he doodled a small T-rex near Novac. "This road," he pointed with the pen at the line going to the left from the dot marking Searchlight, "is this road," he then pointed at the damaged asphalt road leading away from the irradiated area. "Safest road. Others not safe. Go to dragon."
"[Yes.]" Yusuke took the pad and pen and noted down the Japanese transcriptions of the names of the settlements.
This language makes no damn sense, the squad leader thought, watching his hand move – a universal rallying cry of monolinguals.
"[Thank you,]" Yusuke bowed, then turned around and marched in the direction he was pointed at.
The squad leader and the foot soldier watched him walk up to the road and follow it as directed. "Sir, why did you send him to Novac?" the foot soldier asked. "Nipton's closer, isn't it?"
"He doesn't speak English and doesn't know the area," the squad leader replied. "Nipton isn't the place for a fish out of water like him."
Not that far away, a guy materialized a meter or so above the ground and landed on the floor with a thud.
He picked himself up and inspected his surroundings. He was in a thoroughly rusted carcass of what looked like a mobile home. The only thing worth noting was a bottle of water standing by his side. He got out and tried to investigate the area. He was in some sort of a trailer park, filled with wrecks like the one he had just emerged from. He heard some skittering and noticed two large scorpions that in turn noticed him and attempted to approach him.
After double-checking that there were no witnesses in the vicinity, he pulled out a suppressed handgun and chambered a round. Two quiet shots later, the scorpions ceased to pose a threat.
"[Well,]" he said to himself, "[judging by the wildlife I'm not in Japan any… more…]"
He trailed off, noticing the thick plumes of black smoke coming from a nearby town. He then realized that there's a dead man in front of one of the trailers, with what looked like a futuristic weapon in his hands. Keeping his handgun at the ready, he decided to approach the source of the smoke – a person with a functioning self-preservation instinct would've walked in the exact opposite direction, but he had lost what remained of it a few weeks before. Or two and a half centuries before if we're being technical.
He left the trailer park through the hole in the chain-link fence and entered the town proper. The smoke was coming from large tire fires, with some broken trees and cut down telephone posts acting as fuel. There were a few tattered banners scattered around, a golden bull on a crimson background. As he emerged from behind the skeleton of something that used to be a detached house, he saw the main road leading towards a building with 'Nipton Hall' written above the entrance.
He also saw the people on both sides of it. Ten men or so, crucified on shortened telephone poles. They were alive, for the time being, but obviously in pain, struggling against their own body weight, suffering too much to even notice his presence.
"[What the fuck…]" he whispered to himself.
He was not a noble man. An assassin, a turncoat, a bastard in both meanings of the word. And yet, what was happening in front of him was… cruel. It was ostentatious cruelty beyond what both him and his handler were capable of, crossing a line he hadn't been aware existed at that point. It was incomprehensible enough for him to stand there, like a deer in the headlights, at a loss of what he should do.
He didn't notice a group of five soldiers standing by the town hall door. They were all dressed in facsimiles of Roman armor – football protection chest and shoulder pads worn over a catcher's vest, all reinforced with leather, and worn over crimson shirts, with dark-gray skirts and of them, their leader, was also wearing a pelt from a coyote's head in lieu of less ridiculous headwear. He marched towards the newcomer. The foot soldiers followed, drawing their weapons – two of them had .357 lever action rifles, the others had throwing spears. The newcomer was still too fixated on the crosses to acknowledge the Legionaries' presence, and so their leader greeted him: "Ave."
He snapped out of his stupor and recoiled away from him, pointing his pistol at him, but not firing yet.
"Put down your weapon, Profligate," the leader demanded, in a soft tone of voice completely at odds with the carnage around them. "I will not lash you to a cross like the rest of these degenerates. It's useful that you came by. What is your name?"
"Akechi." He lowered the handgun, but kept it unholstered. "Akechi Goro."