Where is he?
It's the Dark Hour and they're all waiting in silence for any news of tonight's battlefield location, well, almost all of them. For the first time since he joined, Junpei is not here and it's making the juniors uneasy. Mitsuru hovers near Ikutsuki, who's calmly sitting in his favorite chair in the command room, legs crossed and fixing Yamagishi with an expectant stare.
"Have you found the shadow yet?"
Fuuka opens her eyes and shakes her head, sounding a tad deflated.
"No, it might take me a while to go through the whole city. Please, give me some time."
Looking upward and holding her hands together in almost prayer, she keeps scanning.
Iori wouldn't miss this, he's been talking about saving girls from Apathy all week.
And then it clicks. Minako told him about the poor souls, she mentioned it multiple times as the moon waned, and Akihiko raises his eyes to look at her suddenly.
"Where would you say you saw the biggest concentration of victims in the last week?"
You're paying attention to them because it disturbs you.
Mitsuru eyes him quizzically at his outburst while their leader frowns in thought.
"Fuuka, can you try scanning near the mall?"
The navigator nods, eyes still closed, then gasps after a little while.
"It's vague, but it's there… how did you know? It's weird, I can feel it, but for some reason I can't quite pinpoint its exact location…"
Shinji, hanging back near a window like an intruder, fixes his gaze on Yamagishi; his whisper has a compassion that's at odds with his gruff expression.
"Would it help you if we were closer? I think we have enough to go on."
"It might, senpai… I'm trying to narrow it down though."
Minato makes his way to the room's doorway as footsteps echo in the heavy silence, and the corridor flooring creaks.
"Did you find Junpei?"
Yukari looks like she's been running and she's still holding her cellphone in her hand.
"He didn't take any of my calls before the Dark Hour began and he's not anywhere near the dorm. What is he doing? He knows tonight's a full moon!"
Ken stands straight next to her, trying to look taller. He seemed uncomfortable in the command room earlier and eventually volunteered to check around for signs of Junpei's whereabouts.
"I looked in his room, and his backpack's not there, it doesn't look like he even came back from school."
Still concentrating, Fuuka speaks up.
"I'm not picking up his signal either. Should I take more time to look for him, just in case?"
Ikutsuki gets up and waves his hand dismissively, readjusting his glasses before glancing at Mitsuru.
"Leave it, he's young, maybe he got distracted… For now, we should focus on the shadow."
Shinji squints at the chairman and his eyes flicker toward Akihiko briefly, there's a tightening to his mouth that betrays an annoyance with the man. Mitsuru smooths her skirt and moves decisively toward the corridor, boot heels clacking hard.
"We can't afford to waste any more time. We need to get moving."
Minako falls into step after the rest of the juniors file out, and Akihiko joins her while clenching his fingers, full of tension. This seems like an ill-omened start and they're all feeling it.
Aragaki hangs behind the group with Koromaru while they walk, keeping an eye on the procession led by an all-business Mitsuru. It's only when Minako breaks off to hang around her class peers like a portable sun of enthusiasm that her twin lags back in her stead, hands in his pockets. Shinji maps his steps to his, speaking low, and Akihiko can barely make out their words as he glances around for any sign of life.
"Arisato… Did Iori say anything about this?"
Minato shakes his head to move some hair from his face, his brows furrowed in worry.
"No… When class ended he bolted off without talking to us."
"Hmm…"
The red coat might be facing straight ahead, but the hazel glare keeps looking sideways when Akihiko takes stock of his friend for the fifth time.
"Shinji, what's-"
"It's nothing."
But his scowl says otherwise, and he keeps peering in the alleys like a hawk.
I thought you didn't care about those persona-users, you liar.
There's no sign of Strega so far, but Akihiko stays close to Minako and the juniors, just in case. Guns are no joke.
Taking some deep breaths and concentrating hard near the mall's blood-red fountain, Fuuka stands surrounded by the supportive girls of SEES. She's been frantic in proving her worth tonight, frazzled at not being successful as usual in her scans, but she eventually murmurs.
"I think… It feels like… a web? It's beneath us."
Aigis stands to attention, blue eyes alight.
"A web…? Perhaps it's related to the old power cables underground. Back when the island was still being developed, this is where the main power station was located. Many of these cables remain underground in a sprawling network with a similar pattern."
Thinking back to early spring, Akihiko looks to Mitsuru.
"Could the shadow have attached itself to those cables, like the one in the monorail, or that tank?"
"If it does, it must have a main body…"
Shinji blinks and looks at the twins.
"Wait a minute… I overhead the manager of Escapade a while back… He was saying the power supply's been acting up lately. There was a big outage because of it that forced him to cancel some idol event. Apparently, they remodeled a command room in the basement of the mall because of it."
She's right, he does pay attention to everything.
Minako eyes him appreciatively and nods before turning to Fuuka.
"Does that help your search?"
"Yes, I can see it now, the shadow is in a square room under Escapade, two levels down!"
Minato dusts his coat sleeve absently and unsheathes his sword with a smirk, glancing at his sister.
"I guess we're club diving tonight, too."
Wait, what?
As soon as they navigate below the initial concrete level, Akihiko's ears fill with an incessant buzzing, almost as if there's a lightbulb on life support hanging close to his head. It feels disorienting, it has no direct source, it's simply a pressure skimming all around him in the gloom and he knows exactly what this is.
High voltage… That one's for me.
The darkness thickens as they descend deeper, the ambient static level keeps rising substantially and he's twitching from it now. Fuuka's voice reverberates in their minds.
"It's close, and it knows you're here. It's feeding on the nearby generators to absorb power into its body. We'll have to cut its supply sources to truly hurt it!"
Minako exchanges silently with her brother and narrows her eyes, he briefly glances at Aigis and Ken in passing with a nod before she speaks.
"We'll keep it busy and buy some time, take care of those generators and come back here when you can."
What awaits on the other side of the door is a tentacled nightmare brimming with power. The shadow has its appendages diving into the floor's plating to leech energy from the network like a supernatural vortex gaining strength, mane flying wild.
Taking point at Minako's urging, Akihiko grins, feeling giddy from the charge in the air and the impending challenge.
Shinji sizes their enemy up, adjusting his battle axe and not intimidated in the slightest.
"So, this is one of those huge Shadows, huh. Well, not like it changes much, just don't be a show-off Aki…"
Things start off simple enough, Minako and Mitsuru keep showering debilitating sparks around and enhance their defenses, while both adoptive brothers wail on the enemy with little effect.
"Fuuka can't find weaknesses, we'll have to chip at it!"
Aragaki groans and keeps chopping at the wires, dancing around the ice Mitsuru conjures when the cables suddenly start pulsing.
"Watch it! Incoming!"
Akihiko doesn't even bother getting out of the way when the outpour of electricity rattles everyone's bones. He stays in place to shield Minako from the lightning, barely getting singed and keeps pummeling the mass of coils with abandon, while she fires her evoker to heal their wounds. She jumps into the fray through his strikes like a dancer and he slides backward briefly to cripple the enemy again when she signs for it before sidestepping back in with an explosive sucker punch. Some of the wires damaged by Mitsuru's conjured cold snap in half, dangling, and a section of the floor's network stops glowing.
Their strikes get more and more effective as the support team destroys more of the generators, eventually getting rid of them all. The Hermit suddenly supercharges with a heave of desperation, siphoning every bit of energy that's left before it dissipates. The shadow spasms and flails, glowing again and Yamagishi sounds ominous when she speaks to them all.
"This is different from before… Its sources are cut off yet it's much stronger now! Watch out!"
They're slowly getting winded, and all hell breaks loose when the rest of the team come back to join them. Just as they try to enter the room, the Hermit unleashes a blinding wave of energy sparks, more powerful than any it mustered before. It acts as a flashbang and smoke fills the air in droves on impact. From melee range, Akihiko can barely see anything after a few feet and tries repositioning to get a better feel of the battlefield. Only Shinji's large persona, towering like a giant outlined in light somewhat above and behind Minako's small frame is visible behind him, arching back to ram their enemy with its long horn.
Suddenly, Nemesis actualizes over their leader and showers giant spears of light rapidly to cover her, hitting Castor and the shadow both as Ken screams in pure rage from the entrance.
"Don't touch her!"
What the hell is he doing?
The ambient lighting amps up when energized tentacles snap toward that shrill noise and Aragaki jumps in the way to cover him immediately, already bleeding from the accidental assault on his persona yet not caring in the slightest.
"Amada! Get back!"
The kid back steps in shock, almost dropping his spear and Yukari steps in his place to shoot at the coils. Shinji chops at his restraints with one-handed strikes like he's felling wood, despite being continuously assaulted with sparks that make his coat smolder.
"Akihiko, free him! Mitsuru-senpai, help me!"
There's Minako's voice coming from farther back and numerous flashes of blue fire light up the foggy air are before healing beams rain down on everyone. Minato joins the fray near Ken, pushing him back toward Aigis, who got paralyzed with shock by the blast.
"Ken, heal her, stay ranged and watch your aim!"
His sword is slashing the wires holding Aragaki while Akihiko tries to force the shadow to let go with rattling cross combos, eventually loosening them enough for Shinji to shrug the cables off his frame. He's looking better since Mitsuru's healing him but he's coughing.
"It's going berserk! Go all out!"
Koromaru howls for flames and arrows connect to the shadow's hole of a face in quick succession. Ken is assisting the robot maiden, the twins are actualizing various personas next to Mitsuru, and yet it's not going down. The shadow is building up electrostatic again and everything around it is lashed with lightning beams like a shield, dampening their strikes.
That won't stop me though, I can get in there!
He gleefully runs in melee, snap punching on the Hermit's torso while dancing amid the chaos; the shadow is on its last legs and it can't take much more.
A thrashing mass of tentacles leaking lightning draws back then forward like a coiled arm to crash through Mitsuru's walls of ice, aimed toward the juniors that stand behind him at some distance. That immediately takes him out of his furious assault and he back steps quickly to intercept.
He slides in the way and blocks the incoming attack the best he can, yet some of the wires still snake around his frame to hit Minako and Yukari, hard enough to throw them on the floor. He manages to rip one of the cables that bypassed him with a thundering clap of his knuckles and the frayed end goes wild, a snaking hose full of liquid pain that bites the left side of his head, just above the ear.
This is nothing, shake it off!
The smell of burnt hair fills his nostrils but he ignores the sting and keeps trying to score hits through his blockade before it changes course to the others, aided by Shinji's axe. Minato helps his sister and Takeba get back up and jumps in as well, slashing mercilessly.
Minako's evoker goes off to shower soothing motes around all of them and Nemesis' light spears trusts into the tendrils he's holding back, transfixing a few until they fray and lose force. A hail of Aigis' bullets and Penthesilea's assault gets the rest to recoil back to the shadow like it burned its fingers on a stove.
"Shinji! Double up, just like old times!"
Akihiko shoots himself to free Polydeuces and Castor joins him. Both summons charge forward in tandem to skewer the shadow with stinger and horn just as it's about to unleash another wave of lightning, and it finally crumbles to black dust.
He's so full of sparks at that moment he's probably dangerous to the touch, yet he's never felt surer of his power. His elation wavers when he sees Minako staring at Polydeuces and Castor, side by side before they flicker out of existence, with an expression he can't describe. She clearly noticed the spearhead embedded in Castor, and his own persona's stinger devoid of its harpoon.