Persona 5: Daywatch

Monday, 23 May 2016
Early Evening
Shibuya, Teikyuu Building Walkway

Akira leaned back against the rail at the observation windows, waiting for his online opponent to make another move in his doomed shogi game. With the conductive pads on his gloves, he didn't even have to take off the black material to keep playing. They complimented his dark trousers against his white long-sleeved shirt, even if the ensemble made him resemble every other boring Joe on the street. Before he could advance his lancer into the promotion zone, the track star jogged up to the transfer student.

"Yo, bro." Ryuji glanced at the frizzy-haired student's hands. "What's up with the gloves?"

Standing up from the rail, Akira sent back a hooded stare. "Ryuji, I usually wear gloves. I'm just not allowed to at Shujin because the uniform specifically forbids it." Looking back to his phone, he slid his lance up and hit 'end turn' with the conductive pad of his grey gloves.

Morgana poked up out of the school satchel. "Oh geez, Reaper. Didn't you change after Shujin?"

Ann's voice floated out from behind the transfer student, "Did you forget we're going to Shinjuku?"

Ryuji stood up and raised an eyebrow for a moment. Then he jerked straight and his eyes widened. "Da-yum. Not like I'm complainin', but whadda you in a dress for?"

Akira turned around to look at Ann in a maroon, high-necked dress that draped over her bust and cascaded down her body. Feeling heat spread on his cheeks, he managed to drag his eyes from her chest to her head and the straight black hair spilling off it. "Y…you dyed your hair?"

"It's a wig so I can go out without getting stared at the whole time. Bought it after you-know-who touched my hair the first time." Ann glared at Ryuji, noticing him eyeing her. "I didn't want to look like a student when we got to Shinjuku."

Ryuji took one stomping step at her. "Get off my case, okay? Today's runnin' day, I had to rush just to get here after I got outta the showers. Like anyone's even going to notice."

Sighing, Akira moved up his rook and hit end turn. "Ryuji, you'll be a liability. Go home."

"What?" he snapped. "I rode the train for—"

"Reaper," Morgana said, settling his front paws on Akira's shoulder. "People are talking about Kamoshida and Shujin all over. If you go, the cops are going to catch you."

"C'mon, man," Ryuji whined at the bespectacled teen. "You an' me, we can make it a bro night! I'll even be your wingman."

Ann's eyes narrowed and she leaned in to hiss, "It's not the safest place in Tokyo, Ryuji. Hell, that mafioso's territory might even extend all the way up there. At least with Akira, I think we'll be able to sneak wherever we need to go. You'll get spotted five minutes in, and then we lose that journalist who might have the rest of that name we need."

Akira slid his bishop onto the enemy's gold general and hit 'end turn'. "Don't try to make it a big thing, Ryuji. Ann and I have been teaming together longer."

He glared. "For what, like a day?" Ryuji kicked at the floor. "Fine, even I can see when I'm not wanted. But you better get that effin' name." He stormed away.

Turning to him, Ann rubbed her fingers against her temples. "Sorry about that. I'm sure he's real about wanting to help out, he's just too good at sticking out even when he doesn't want to."

"Yeah, kinda like the flamboyant cuttlefish," Akira said, holding the shogi game between them as if it could keep him from looking at her shapely figure. He posed and said at a low register, "Fuck blending in with the world, why doesn't the world try to blend in with me?" Straightening, he chuckled and added, "I get him, but I've gotta keep the mission first. And I'm sure that you'll watch my back." He pointed at her black hair. "You even thought to disguise your hair, I should probably do somethin' to mine too."

Ann's cheeks took on a faint rosy tint that went with the dark red dress she wore. "Th-thanks."

Monday, 23 May 2016
Late Evening
Shinjuku, Red-Light District

Akira pushed past a clump of salarymen, stumbling onto the street in Shinjuku. Garish signs shone bright lights down every lane he could see, shades of red dominated many displays. The light shone off his wet, finger-combed hair. When Ann came up right behind him he said, "I can see why this place is called the Red-Light District."

Morgana peeked out from the transfer student's leather bag. "Stop gawking. You already look like a tourist."

Akira frowned. "Give me a little bit of a break. I grew up in small neighborhoods for most of my life, this is the complete opposite of a podunk mountain village." He brought out his phone and leaned against a theater building with Ann to let a pack of young office workers cruise for the next bar. The pounding music from a rocker bar down the street made it hard to think. "Address says it's just up ahead on the right."

A pair of tall, foreign men stumbled through the quintet of office workers, one tripping against Akira as he put away his phone. The transfer student bared his teeth and cocked his fist back.

Ann reached out to grab him before he could loose a swing, taking his arm in hers and guiding him across the street. She didn't seem to notice most of the motion pressed his arm against her breast.

Akira spent the time trying to breathe while being closer to a prettier girl than he'd ever been before. Her steady poise reminded him of Shiho. With the wig, he could almost imagine it was the sweet girl from Shujin walking him through the over-crowded city district. Once they reached the opposite sidewalk, he was glad for the signage glare to conceal the blush blazing across his face. Unfortunately, her grip also put him at an angle to see a crisp, blue uniform resolve out of the crowd, and the transfer student noticed the cop look straight at him and Ann.

Akira tensed his arm around hers and steered the pair down the road forking to the right, hoping the cop would pass on by. "Fuzz, eight o'clock."

A quick glance back showed the blue-garbed man navigating the crowd toward them.

Speeding up his pace, Akira advanced until a small, fold-out table blocked his path. Sensing the cop still on their tail, he slipped his arm out from hers and gave a subtle gesture to the padded stool.

The young lady sitting behind the covered table looked at the two disguised high schoolers with wide, dark eyes. "Ah, so you've come to hear your fortune?"

Akira jammed his gloved hand in his pocket for his wallet. "Yeah!" he said with fake enthusiasm, grumbling on the inside about the short time since paying off the doctor.

Ann sat down just as the cop stepped out of the disorganized crowd. "Hi, Miss Fortune Teller."

The woman gave a closed-lip smile and brief chuckle. "Please, honored customer. I am just Chihaya. Would you and your boyfriend like an affinity reading?"

He felt his blush blaze anew, as Ann stammered with a similar darkening of her cheeks. "O-oh, no. He's not—"

Akira set his hand on her shoulder and squeezed, giving a smile showing clenched teeth. "We're not worried about that. Just whatever fortune you think best."

Chihaya looked at Ann, her eyes narrowing in scrutiny. "Oh, my. You poor thing. I can sense that you've been beset by tragedy lately." She laid down a set of ornate cards.

Akira bit his tongue to keep from complaining about cold reading techniques while the cop stood there, watching them. It wouldn't take much to guess from the stress signals in Ann's pose that she suffered something lately. He could feel some of his hairs stand on end at the very premise of using theatrics to play on others' emotions. Whether for entertainment like his mother, or to lord power over others like his father.

Ann seemed not to notice, taking in a breath at Chihaya's vague statement which could apply to almost every human being on the planet. "You're right! My best friend jumped off the roof last month, and she's still in the hospital."

Chihaya flipped a card, then let out a relieved breath. "The good news is that your friend can recover. Fortune says that as you grow stronger, so shall she."

Ann took hand still resting on her shoulder, clenching it with far more strength than Akira thought she had. Just when he was about to let out a pained groan, he noticed a tear slip out from one of her eyes. Letting out a sound between a laugh and a gurgle, she squeezed even harder on his fingers. "Hear that? She'll get better."

Grunting, he took her hand and pulled his out, his glove slipping off from the strength of her grip. She relinquished it to him and he tugged it back on. "She was always going to get better. Suzui-san's too tough to get brought down by that bastard."

Another tear slipped down her face, but Ann gave him a thin smile and grasped his hand again – still looking a little like a drowning sailor grasping at flotsam, but without the crushing grip this time.

Chihaya brushed at some of her long, brown hair and looked down at the cards. She cringed, then hovered her hand back and forth over the remaining cards. Her fingers grabbed a card and flipped it over with the suddenness of a snapping turtle. The sham woman's cringe grew and she glanced to Akira. "Are you sure you want me to read this?"

"Pfft."

"Akira," Ann chastised, letting go of his hand to wipe at her face. "Would you just answer the question?"

He worked his jaw open, then closed before he felt himself centered enough to answer the con-woman. She may be a fraud, but she also gave Ann enough sense of hope to draw tears and if he started a diatribe here and now, he knew it would escalate and the cop would just cuff him and add another tally to his weekly quota. "Don't let me stop you. You got somethin' to say? Say it."

Chihaya took in a deep breath, her eyes locking back on the card she flipped for a long moment before looking Ann in the eyes. "You shall not find love on the road you now walk. You shall find it only if you look into the unknown, from a place you would never have thought even a short time ago. Even so, it shall not be far." She settled back on her own padded stool and gave a sympathetic smile. "Five thousand yen."

Ann's eyes snapped wide. "Five thousand?" She dug into her dainty purse of the same deep red as her dress, then looked up at Akira and cringed. "Uh… I only have three thousand. Could you spot me?"

Akira rolled his eyes. He drew his wallet and slapped down two thousand-yen notes, but couldn't keep his mouth shut and jabbed a finger at the fraudster. "You're still an emotionally manipulative con."

The cop stepped forward, hand reaching down to the pouches at his waist. Chihaya lifted up a hand to stop him. "It's all right, Officer Toriyama. Anybody would be shaken by the news fate delivered through me. I think it will be all right if he just has some time to think."

The man in blue let his hand fall to his side and gave the fortune fraudster a nod, then turned and strode back into the chaotic crowd.

"Thank you," Ann said with a small bow in her seat.

"Don't thank a charlatan." Before the model even got back to her feet, Akira turned to the larger thoroughfare, bulling through the crowd and letting his compatriot chase after.

Slowing down at an unmarked door across the street from a sex toy shop, a buck-toothed man in a heavy brown business suit rubbed his hands. "Hey, man. Lookin' for a place to blow off steam? Or get the… eh, heart pumpin'?"

Akira raised one eyebrow.

The huckster clasped his hands together. "Touch all you want, no added fees. Whatever you're lookin' for, we've got." He pointed a finger-gun at the transfer student. "Cutest girls in town. Guaranteed."

"Akira!" Ann shouted, before maneuvering through the crowd behind him.

The huckster's lip curled up at her, but in a blink he was all smiles again. "Hey, if you've already got your own, we got rooms for a quickie."

Memories of thumping and moaning from beyond the locked front door sounded in his mind's ears, red crept in on the edges of his vision, Akira shot him a snarl. "Fucking gigolo!" He advanced as the pimp fell back. "You're no better than the whores you hide behind closed doors." He spat on the sidewalk in front of the huckster.

Ann grabbed his arm and pulled him further down the road. "Whoa, c'mon, Akira." When the transfer student finally turned back to the sidewalk ahead, she patted him on the back. "You weren't even that mad at the fortune teller." She tugged him against a building, her blue eyes gazing into his plaintively. "You want to talk about it?"

Akira clenched his jaw for a moment and slipped his gloved hands into his pockets. Going off about his mother here wouldn't help. "It's nothing." He pulled out his phone and brought up the map to find their destination. "Crossroads Bar. Should be right around here."

A woman in a black pencil skirt, her dark hair in the remnants of what might have been a tight hair bun that morning stumbled out of a nearby club entrance, vomiting on the sidewalk.

Akira backed up into Ann in revulsion, and Morgana poked his head up out of the satchel slung over his shoulder and read the lit sign above. "Beer, whiskey, and wine. Looks like some office workers really throw themselves into the bar setting."

Akira turned away from the clear fluid. "If anybody needs a reason to become a tea-totaler, they just need to look at a drinker."

Ann settled next to him, her eyes coming down from the sign. "Maybe, but that's Crossroads. That reporter should be somewhere in there." She walked around the vomit with him and they stepped into a modest club.

An extensive wet bar stretched out along the wall to his right, the back wall covered with pictures of famous patrons. A tiled space lit by a dancing, colored light-show took up the center of the main floor, open to the balconies on the second floor. Drunk office workers scattered across the booths lining the walls and four-seat tables in the middle.

Ann made a quick scan of the occupants. "I expected a hole in the wall, not an ex-nightclub. Not as busy as I thought."

Akira nodded. "Yeah, if there's anyone who can give Russians a run for an alcoholism trophy, it's office grunts."

She shot him a cool, disapproving look. "So how'd we know which one's the reporter? She got a profile online?"

Akira shook his head. "I thought of that on the way to Shibuya, but Maiasa Newspaper only had a super-short blurb about her being an investigative journalist. Didn't even have a profile photo." Glancing around, he stepped up to the bar and sat down in one of the leather-covered seats, Ann taking the open one next to him.

An overweight woman in a bright blue kimono and makeup so heavy it looked theatrical came up to the pair. She wore a microphone and speaker earpiece clipped to her left ear. When she spoke, she sounded like she'd been smoking since childhood. "Oh, aren't you a delectable set of morsels?" She leaned down at him, hand on her back. "Are you sure you're old enough to be cruising bars?"

Akira reached into his pocket and handed her the Maiasa Newspaper business card with the reporter's handwriting on the back. "I have it on good authority that Ohya-san is here. I need to speak with her. About private business."

The woman took the business card and flipped it around, scrutinizing the hand-penned writing on the back. Her eyes flicked up, then around before she handed the card back. "Spends more time around here than she does at home, I suspect." The heavyset woman looked at the two for several long moments. "You look like fine people, but I'm afraid I can only bring one up to see her. She's been getting skittish since the Hashiba Clan got pushed out of the neighborhood. Not as safe as it used to be."

Ann looked at the transfer student and sighed. "You should do it. You're better at reading people than I am, and I figure you'll know something she might want. To be honest, I'm not sure I could figure out how to get a professional journalist to talk to me."

Akira nodded, then spared a glance at his school companion before turning to the bartender. "She going to be safe down here alone?"

The woman behind the bar waved a hand at him. "Oh, honey, there's cameras all over the lower level here. I'll have one of the girls keep an eye on her, just in case, mkay?" She ducked into the swinging door behind the bar.

A few moments she later with a twenty-something girl with dark hair and old-style kimono, one of the layers glowing under one of the black-lights on the bar. She gave an unconvincing smile. "Hi, I'm Kaho."

Akira nodded. "Yoshida, and this is Akemi."

"And I'm Lala," the heavyset woman said, gesturing the glass bottles in both hands at herself. She guided him through a swinging door and up a set of stairs to a small booth overlooking the tables.

Akira turned on a recorder, then slipped his phone into his pocket before following the bartender in.

A black-haired woman in a rumpled T-shirt and jeans sat curled up on an overstuffed chair, a laptop open on the stubby table next to her. She turned her head and glared at the overweight woman in the blue kimono. "I asked for a Tokyo Sidecar, Lala-chan."

Unperturbed, Lala set the two condensation-beaded beers down on the table next to the laptop. "You've been drinking since you came in, Ichiko-chan. No more hard liquor for you tonight, even in mixed drinks." She gestured to Akira. "The kid had one of your signed cards." She wiggled her eyebrows enough for it to show despite the makeup. "You picked up a real young-un this time. Just don't give him anything to drink, okay? He's got a nice young lady to escort home."

Akira wrinkled his nose at the stink of booze on the black-haired woman.

Ohya scrutinized him with greater intensity than seemed fitting for somebody about to be cut off at a bar. After a moment, she waved the bartender off. "Yeah, yeah, Lala-chan." The bartender slipped away, and Ohya sat up. Her dark eyes looked clearer than moments ago, though it wasn't very easy to tell as low as the mood-lighting was.

Akira sat down in one of the other overstuffed seats and set his bag next to the table. He gestured his chin at her computer, cyan light emanating from its screen. "You know, it's bad for your eyes to stare at a back-lit screen in the dark." He tapped the frames on his lenses. "That's why I've got such dorky glasses."

Ohya gave a sultry smile and leaned back. Did she know that was the same way Shiho showed herself off in Kamoshida's palace, or did all women just know that was an unfairly sexy pose? "I've had doctors before, but you're a bit young."

Akira sat back in his chair, his face burning in embarrassment. Seeing women flirt was nothing new, but at him was.

The reporter laughed. "Take it easy, kid. You're too high-strung. So where'd you hear about Murakami?"

"Homeless artist in Shibuya," Akira replied, trying to puzzle out how inebriated she really was. "Said he talked with her about his no-good mentor."

Ohya grunted. "Damn, I was hoping we were done with Madarame." She sat up and set her beer down on the table, opening something on her computer and typing with practiced speed for several seconds. Then she took a carabiner out of her right pocket, keys jangling against waterproof memory sticks dangling from the oval. She tossed it up just enough to grab a metal loop, then use it to pry the cap off one of the beers. She took a deep drink before righting the bottle and holding it up for examination. "Benjamin Franklin was right."

Akira tilted his head and raised an eyebrow. "The guy who invented bifocals?"

Still gazing at the bottle held aloft, Ohya explained, "Beer is proof that god loves us and wants us to be happy." She then brought it back and took another deep drink. After a sharp exhale, she looked more morose than when she started. "And a woman needs some reinforcement when she's dumped into entertainment from politics. Where investigations uncovered real dirt." Her frown sharpened. "Not the latest Phantom Thief fad my boss thinks is coming." She took another deep swig, then stared at the bottle. "I don't even have any connections. Bastard."

Morgana sat up from the satchel, his eyes glistening in the dim light reflecting in the shadows. "Oh! Mishima knows all about Kamoshida. And he'd go pretty far out of his way to help us out."

Nodding, Akira tapped his fingers on the padded arm of his chair. "I could help with that," he told her. "In exchange for help with that name I emailed you."

Ohya sat up, her eyes clearer and more focused than expected for somebody having been drinking for an hour. When the corners of her lips tugged up, he suspected she was testing him all along. "You know somebody at Shujin?" Her brow furrowed. "It would have to be good."

Glancing at the team leader, Akira frowned. When the guide nodded, he looked up to the reporter. "I'll set something up." He straightened in his armchair. "So about the rest of that name?"

Her eyes slid over to him, that sharp look returned. "You're looking for a swimming trip with concrete shoes if you're thinking of tangling with the mafia."

Akira leaned forward in his armchair. "Who said I was thinking of it? My friends' lives are at stake," he shot back. He paused for a long breath to try to find that calm he knew hunters needed. "One's a doctor. They're extorting her, and they'll kill her soon if I can't find a third option. And don't dare tell me to leave it to the cops, if I could do that I wouldn't be here."

Ohya pushed herself up from her slouch. "You're for real, aren't you?"

He opened his hands. "You get your source on Kamoshida, the public gets their salacious stories, and I pass along the names of the mafia's leaders to a guy who knows the Phantom Thief." He leaned forward, elbows bracing on his knees. "So… do we have a deal?"

She looked back at him for a long moment. Seconds ticked by before she took a quick swig of her second beer. "Well, you got guts. That's for sure." She paused for another swig. "But guts alone just make for bad mornings after."

He grit his teeth. "If the Phantom Thief can swoop in on a rapist whose school was protecting with a veil of secrecy for years, don't you think they can get a Mafioso?"

Ohya stared at him for a long few seconds before she burst out laughing. It went on for a while before she took another swig from the beer bottle. "You really believe that a Phantom Thief was even responsible for that pervert coach's confession?"

Akira planted his hands on the armrests of his chair, fingers digging in. "Test it. If I'm wrong, then what's happening now keeps happening. If I'm right and the Phantom Thief is real, this don turns around and potentially his whole mafia branch collapses. Can you let an opportunity like this pass by?"

The reporter stared him in the eye. At last, she sat up in her stuffed chair. "You're a true believer." She took a sip of beer, then swirled it around in the bottle, staring at it for a moment. "I don't know how you stumbled across his name, but your tip was right. His full name is Kaneshiro Junya. For such a rich guy, he has almost no web presence. I mean suspiciously little, like you'll only get if you've got professional scrubbers. He buys servers just to keep his name from blogs and web news."

Morgana looked at the transfer student. "No wonder Reaper and the Phansite maker couldn't find him."

Akira edged forward in his seat. "But where is he?"

Ohya took another sip of beer, her eyes never leaving the transfer student. "That one was a lot harder. It looks like he doesn't have any preferred hangouts. Best I could find is a hostess club named Spiral that he personally inspects several times a week."

Morgana settled his feet closer in, the tip of his tail twitching back and forth. "That's not enough, especially if it's not a precious location to him. Kamoshida thought of the school as his personal domain, a place where his power could have no limits or question."

Akira gave the team leader a shallow nod before looking back to the reporter. "No home?"

She sat back and took a deep swig of beer. "Two, one in Sumida-ku and another in Hana, Hawaii. Based on me being able to find them, I'm pretty sure they're business show-houses and not hearth and home."

Akira pulled out his phone, a few ideas buzzing in his head but nothing concrete enough to make a search. Mishima was so much better at this kind of thing.

Morgana paced higher up the transfer student's padded chair arms. "See if she's been able to find out what his distortion is."

Swallowing, Akira brought up the chat and sent a ping out to Mishima. "So what's this Kaneshiro's obsession? Snorting china white? Whacking everybody who challenges him?"

Ohya paused, her beer halfway to her ruby-sheathed lips, one eyebrow quirked. "What difference would it make?"

Akira shrugged, feeling tension seep throughout his frame. His question gave something away, he could see it in the gears whirling behind her eyes. "Anything I can pass along could help the Phantom Thief." His phone rumbled in his pocket and he looked down, glad for the distraction.

[What's up, Akira-san?] Mishima wrote.

[Would you be willing to give an interview or two about the Kamoshida thing to a reporter? We might be able to get some positive publicity out of this.]

Seconds passed and the transfer student imagined Mishima pacing in a small bedroom like Yoshida's before responding. [I'll do anything I can to help the Phantom Thieves. My life is lighter than a feather.]

"And duty is heavier than a mountain," Akira muttered, finishing the old adage. Thanking Mishima, he closed the chat. Looking up, the reporter held her stance, so he took the sheet. "His name is Mishima. Shujin. You want me to email you his number?"

She took a deep drink, finishing the last of her beer, then nodded. "If you want a journalist's intuition, Kaneshiro runs on money. Just…" her brows knitted together, "don't get caught, kid."

Akira nodded, stood, and collected his satchel to go.

Before he reached the door, Ohya smiled. She held her hand to her eye, finger and thumb curled into a circle. "Be seeing you."

He trotted down the narrow hall but paused at the top of the stairs and brought up the Navigator. "Kaneshiro Junya."

"Candidate found."

"Yes!" Akira pumped a fist and jostled the team leader hiding in his satchel.

"That was step one," Morgana cautioned him. "We still need a location and distortion. For now, let's meet up with the others."

Akira entered Spiral Hostess Club into the location.

The Nav's synthesized voice blurted, "Condition has not been met."

"Fuck," he spat before he trotted down the stairs and back to Ann. He strode out to the bar where Ann slapped a hand on the bar and snorted with laughter, the bartender in blue giggling along with.

Lala looked up at him and gave a wave. "You came just a minute late, Sugar. I was just telling your darling friend here about my first month running Crossroads."

Ann turned around on the stool and braced at his frown. "You didn't get it?"

Morgana poked his head out of the bag. "His name, yes. His location and distortion, no."

Akira faltered. "Well, we don't know the whole bit for sure, but we have leads."

Lala chuckled. "You sound so much like Ichiko-chan used to." She glanced at a quartet of small monitors hanging down just behind the bar, then clapped her hands to her cheeks. "Oh, my. It's getting late! You kids are delectable, but it's almost curfew."

Ann grabbed the half-full glass and took a deep drink of the orange liquid filtering between half-melted ice cubes, then set it down. "Thanks for the fruit juice, Lala-san!" She took him by the arm and they hustled outside, where far fewer people prowled the streets. Once nobody lingered close enough to overhear, she leaned in closer to him. "So what happened?"

Morgana popped up out of Akira's satchel, resting his paws on his shoulder. "The mafia leader's name is a start, Lady Ann! All we need to do is piece together his distortion and location."

A strange man's voice, spoken just a little higher than his natural register, said, "Ooh, look at the potential in this one!"

Turning to the speaker, the transfer student saw two men in bright, flamboyant garb approaching. "And the one he has on his arm… well, the hair's so bland, but that dress is simply superb!"

Ann raised an eyebrow, unsure whether she was being praised or insulted. She ended up settling on a smile. "Um, thanks."

The flamboyant man with a white scarf tied around his neck reached for Akira's wet, finger-combed-back hair. "Oh, no, no, no! He's not taking proper care of that mane of his."

While that one reached out at him, the other closed on Ann.

Akira brought up his left leg, but instead of kicking, his hand slipped into the boot and came out with a flick knife that sprang open with a click. Stepping between Ann and the weirdos, Akira held it up to the reaching man's face. "Back off!"

Ann's eyes snapped wide. "Akira, are you crazy? Put that away!"

Both flamboyant men cried out and fled down another street, but the commotion drew another cop on foot patrol. Swearing, Akira dropped the knife and ran with Ann all the way to the train station.

Pausing for breath, the two looked at each other and laughed. Ann gave him a soft look and said, "You shouldn't have brought something like that, but thanks for being willing to step in. I know you meant well."

Akira rubbed his gloved fingertips through his hair to get it back to normal. "Yeah, I'm better at being prepared than keeping it cool. See you at school tomorrow. Let's get started on that bastard's Palace, pronto."

AN: There are two major reasons for the change to who accompanies Akira to Ohya. Taking Ryuji while he was still in his school uniform bothered me, not only did Morgana notice but he even pointed out it was a liability that could easily have landed Akira in jail for violating curfew while on probation. Second is the closer relationship he and Ann have, in the canon game Ryuji was the bro who survived the first trip to what Joseph Campbell would call the strange world. In Daywatch, it was Ann and she was nearly brutalized by her worst nightmare in front of him. Her even considering offering herself to keep Akira from being slowly killed was not lost on him.

With Ryuji out, there left much less room for the shoddy "laugh at gays or crossdressers" joke from the original game, and even though Royal's English translators changed the script due to foreign fan backlash, it felt wrong for there not even to be an option for Akira to be a damn human and say "look folks, you've got it wrong. Ryuji's my friend and he's not into whatever you're trying to push him." Instead their presence became an opportunity to tease at the lingering demons inside that Akira has yet to defeat.

Mifune Chihaya was a very useful character for gameplay mechanics, but her plot always felt very forced to me. For one, it goes even wilder into "because magic" left field even for a setting where you have mind monsters. While there are a lot of people suckered by mysticism in Japan, there is a strong and growing current of rationalists who want nothing more than to leave those archaisms in the past. She isn't forgotten, though. The fact that Akira can't see a reason to exploit a relationship there doesn't mean that another trickster couldn't have noticed her.