Good Day Readers! Obviously, I do not own anything connected to the Persona series in general or Persona 5 specifically, I DO own Chiba Natsumi and Anais Ouvrard, along with Natsumi's immediate family members and the original Personas that will be showing up on occasion.
I would appreciate any responses that you have, please enjoy.
Chapter 19: - Pushing Further In
"Up ahead is a corridor shaped like an L," Mona warned. Joker carefully pushed open the door that would take us there only to quickly pull it close. "Let me guess, knight on the other side of the door," Mona commented. It was pretty obvious that was the case when there would have been no other reason for Joker to suddenly pull close the door when we needed to advance in that direction.
"Yeah, and it was looking this way. We need to wait to avoid being detected," Joker answered. That makes more sense; Joker calmly opened up the door only a small crack and peered through it to assess what the knight on the other side was going to be doing. "Okay, let's move!" Joker ordered. He pushed the door open and quickly bolted through it toward the enemy, the rest of us tailed after him as Joker leapt up and tore the mask from his face.
"Seriously, these guys again?" Skull questioned. Not surprising given that the Shadows that had popped out happened to be a Pixie, a Mandrake and a Jack-O-Lantern; one gun blast, one Garu Spell and a fireball later strung together by a trio of Baton Passes allowed us to commence an All-Out Attack and clear them out. "You'd think we'd be facing off against stronger guys," Skull complained.
"Be careful what you wish for Skull. The further into the Palace we move, the stronger the Shadows become, but they also become new which means we won't know their weakness putting us at a disadvantage. At least until I can see them," I warned. We kept pushing on and found another knight hiding around the edge, fortunately we used the sneaking advice that Mona gave us to sneak up on the knight and ambush it.
More familiar Shadows were faced down which we easily managed to deal with and proceeded to move towards the door. We stepped out onto a balcony that overlooked the main entrance hall, however there was a slight problem as it seemed that the only visible way forward was blocked by some more bars and there didn't seem to be anything we could use to open the bars with none of us able to reach our arms through to deactivate the ram head on the other side.
"What the heck?! Are we stuck here?" Skull exclaimed. Panther proceeded to shush him due to the fact that there were Shadows down below marching around and could potentially spot us if we weren't careful; I turned around to look around for any potential hidden stairway with Mona also looking around, we needed that pathway if we wanted to advance and fulfil our goal.
"Guys," Joker called. I looked around but found that our leader had miraculously disappeared. "Up here," Joker's voice came again. I tilted my head up and raised an inquisitive eyebrow when I saw Joker stood on a beam that cut across the air above our heads with a smirk on his face that seemed to be edging towards cockiness. "Use the shelf at the end of the hallway to get up here," Joker insisted. He also pointed towards our right to indicate where he meant.
There was indeed a white shelf there, Mona hopped over and easily jumped up onto it before climbing up a second time and then walking onto the railing over our heads. I walked over and hauled myself up before joining the other two with Skull being forced to go next by Panther as the blonde girl came up last. We walked down the beam towards the metal top of a chandelier that hung over the entry hall. Looking out there appeared to be two more in close proximity to each other that would allow us to reach the other side.
"Joker, we could use those to cross over," I pointed out. Joker looked at me and then over to where I was gesturing before nodding his head in agreement, he jumped over to the metal, but it started to swing slightly from the landing. "We're going to have to take this slowly, one at a time, in order to avoid being caught or the chandeliers snapping," I admitted. Mona let out a hum of agreement before jumping over to the now unmoving object.
Thankfully Mona's small size prevented it from moving much which allowed me to jump over, followed by the other two once it had stopped moving. Joker leapt over to the next one which caused the chandelier to swing backwards, I grabbed a hold of the railing in order to keep myself up right as Panther and Skull did the same with Mona holding onto Skull's leg in place of the railing. I looked over the edge and felt my heart thumping loudly in my chest, not from the heights though as I didn't fear that, instead it was from the possibility that the swaying might attract attention anyway.
Once it stopped moving, we crossed over individually with Joker now having to hold on as our arrival rocked the chandelier. Once everyone was over the process repeated once again, my mouth ran a little dry at the tension I could feel building across my skin. Joker leapt over to the railing that mirrored the one we had used to reach the chandeliers, all of us carefully made our way over and my heart finally started to calm down from the mad pace it had kicked up to.
"Hey! Look here!" Panther called. Her voice was soft enough that it wouldn't risk attracting unwanted attention but still enough to catch ours, we looked over at the model and found she was pointing to a window. "There's no glass there so we can head through it," Panther commented. Mona hopped over and proceeded to poke his head out the window.
"It leads to the front of the Palace, it might be useful as an escape route or a quick exit," Mona revealed. That might be handy to have, especially if there didn't happened to be a Safe Room nearby and we needed to escape quickly. We proceeded to hop down to the floor and moved into the nearby room which had green walls instead of red with tables and chairs scattered about. "Hrm? This feeling… maybe there's a Safe Room," Mona commented.
"We also have a chest, but it's locked," Skull pointed out. There was a chest there but the padlock on it was quite sizeable, I'd seen a few of them but had never been able to find a key to open them; Mona let out one of his confident laughs before nudging the back of Joker's leg to move him forward, I saw a faint grimace appear on Joker's face as he moved closer to the chest.
Once in front of it, he reached into one of his pockets and proceeded to pull out two fine strips of metal which he slid into the keyhole. Tense moments passed as Joker worked his hands in precise movements, occasionally stopping when he seemed to catch something inside and pulled the strips back. His eyebrows were drawn together as a tense expression covered his face until he finally caused a clicking sound to echo and the padlock unlatched.
"Ha! I knew you could do it Joker!" Mona cheered. Joker sighed heavily before looking at the item he had used, needless to say it was completely mangled. "Well, I guess we'll just have to made some more at some point," Mona stated. Joker nodded his head before proceeding to throw the items away so that he could reach in and take out the chest's contents, which was armour that quickly bonded to his own. With that secured, we passed through the doorway into the next part of the castle.
"If the map's right, we've still got a long way to go," Skull commented. I looked down and saw that Mona had the map out once again and moved it from the area we'd just been in, to the area we were currently standing at, Skull was right as there was a lot more ground to cover and without the full map, we were unfortunately oblivious as to the full scope of the Palace.
"That's not all, there are an awful lot of patrolling Shadows, too. Now, you can't just blindly rush into a fight. First you need to ascertain how strong they are," Mona stated. Skull proceeded to ask exactly how that was supposed to be achieved, Mona proceeded to turn to look at me. "Amazon, you knew that demon from when Panther awoke was strong, can your eyes help with that? Without straining them obviously," Mona wondered.
"Don't worry Mona, doing that is easy for me. It'll be no trouble for my eyes," I answered. Mona seemed to deflate from relief at my words, with that we carefully watched the knight at the bottom of the stairs as Joker carefully crept forward, with all of us behind him as we approached the knight who rounded the corner.
Slipping into hiding, Joker peered around the corner before darting out to a spot around the corner and then leaping up onto the knight's shoulders and tearing the mask off. We gathered around our leader as the Shadow reformed itself, this time into a dark purple-black furred cat with piercing green eyes, it was stood on its' hind legs wearing a red cloak that fluttered around it, a red hat reminiscent of a witch's hat yet with a white feather curling around it was situated on the head, a grey belt was wrapped around its' waist and held a red sheath to its' side, likely a match to the gleaming sword it held, and a pair of red boots with spurs around the ankles covered its' hind legs.
"What's this Puss in Boots?" Skull mockingly asked. I also saw that he was going to reach up for his mask, so I quickly grabbed his hand and jerked it downwards in order to prevent him from doing something truly ridiculous, why he hadn't waited for me to finish up looking this Shadow over, I don't know; I'm just glad I was fast enough to stop him.
"No. This is called Cait Sith. It's also resistant to electricity. Zorro and Bicorn are better left to this," I insisted. I released my grip on him as Joker moved forward and pulled his mask off, revealing Bicorn. The twin horned beast unleashed his own Garu magic onto one of the cats and knocking it flat to the ground. Joker proceeded to pass the job over to Mona who used the Baton Pass strengthening ability to clear off the other Cait Sith. All of us leapt in, forming a star enclosure around the downed Shadow.
"I'm scared mister… what should I do?" Cait Sith wailed. It seemed worried about what was going to happen to it now that we had procced to hem it in as we had; I looked over at Joker wondering what he would possibly be going to do, I wasn't sure of Cait Sith's capabilities so it could be something useful or something Joker already had covered.
"Lend me your power," Joker insisted. He was appeared to be a lot more comfortable with doing this, maybe he had come to terms with the fact that he wasn't really threatening people and that allowed him to relax, or the determination to stop Kamoshida was superseding everything else such as his uncertainty, but now wasn't the time to ask.
"Then, let's talk! I gotta find out if you're a weird human or not!" Cait Sith declared. That… that was an odd thing to be focused on, oh who am I kidding, the whole darn Metaverse was weird so Shadows being weird about their preferences shouldn't surprise me in the least; for his part, Joker didn't look all that bothered at all. "Hey, uh, so you know I'm just a little kid, right? You're s'posed to go easy on kids! Are you stupid? Do you go to school and get stupid grades?" Cait Sith ranted. Joker seemed to be thinking if his darting eyes were any answered.
"I'm good at P.E.," Joker answered. I gave the boy a look, trying to understand what our leader was doing – then again, his conversation with Bicorn had been weird as well – with that answer, but the little cat seemed happy with that answer as it cheerfully claimed that the brain was a muscle too… not entirely sure on the facts of that claim but I kept my lips closed as Panther looked a little baffled. Skull just shook his head at her as Mona kept a stiff face.
"Hey, how come you keep coming here? I wanna know. Ain't people your age suppose'ta be out on dates and stuff instead?" Cait Sith asked. Joker seemed a little more certain as a grin appeared on his face which, actually now that I think it, that grin did seem to be rather char… Natsumi?! Will you focus on the Shadow you might have to shoot! Goodness girl, stop acting weird!
"Right after this kid," Joker answered. Was… was he choosing his words based on how the Shadow was or just saying whatever randomness popped into his head? Well, whatever his reasoning, those words seemed to resonate with the Shadow as it insisted that Joker go on his 'date' instead, but then I sensed the same power that had come from Pixie when we set her free and Cait Sith jumped to his feet full of renewed energy.
"You know, I'm not really a Shadow! I came from the humans' sea of souls! My real name is Cait Sith! You and I are the same, mister!" Cait Sith declared. With that, the Shadow broke the chains of the Palace and turned into a mask before flying into Joker's own mask; we all relaxed and slipped our ranged weapons back to their resting places.
"This one has Fire magic, that'll be handy for anything with a fire weakness, I was honestly expecting Electricity after what you said about its' resistance Amazon," Joker admitted. That was fortunate, with Agathion covering Electricity and Bicorn handling physical and Wind, another type was better than a double up; of course, Arsène and Pixie were suspiciously absent during the battles.
"The more variety, the better for our infiltration," Mona chimed. Skull let out a loud agreement, however I focused on what I had sensed when the chain broke before the mask transformation, at that moment I had sensed a bond between Cait Sith and Mona, which had felt identical to the one I sensed between Agathion and Skull.
"We should keep moving," Panther encouraged. We did as she suggested and walked towards the corner at the end only to end up ducking down behind it when a Shadow turned out to be on the other end. "Amazon?" Panther asked. A slightly uncertain note within her voice as she looked at me, however I proceeded to give her a smile and a thumbs up to confirm that we would be safe dealing with this Shadow.
At my confirmation, Joker darted out to engage the enemy which turned out to be a solitary Silky. One well placed Fire spell from Joker's new Persona later and she was knocked down. We executed our hold up only for Joker to start soothing the unhappy spirit who was quite upset that we had attacked her in the first place. He reassured her and we got a Persona, this one wielding Ice magic which was very nice, but this time there was no sensation of connection.
'Am I losing my head or something?' I thought. It wasn't the best time for me to be potentially losing my mind, but without any explanation as to why I was suddenly sensing these bonds between Joker's Personas and two of our comrades, their own Personas certainly but not these other ones. We proceeded further down the hallway with Joker swiping more stuff out of ornaments and then up the stairs.
Upon reaching the zenith, we discovered another knight, so the ambush was executed and we got treated to something unexpected. The Shadows that popped out of the goo happened to be a trio of Agathion, which at least meant I got a good look at them since I didn't really focus on it in the Personas; at least now I knew what its' affinities were.
"Don't use guns or electricity! Agathion is resistant. Earth or Wind will work best!" Joker revealed. I looked at him with a raised eyebrow since that was normally me giving out the information, but since he was in possession of an Agathion then it made sense that he'd know the little spirit's weakness straight away. "Oh, er… sorry Amazon," Joker mumbled. He clasped the back of his head as he said those words.
"It's fine. If you've got the knowledge, then it helps. Now you said Earth works right?" I responded. Joker nodded so I reached for my mask. "Sing Phantom!" I commanded. Phantom manifest and unleashed a storm of rocks at one of the little jar spirits. "Mona! You're up!" I called. Darting over, I gathered Phantom's energy into my hand as Mona leapt into the air, we struck our hands and I felt the energy phase into Mona.
"Zorro!" Mona called. The masked sword wielder appeared and promptly surrounded another of the spirits in a whirl of wind. "Joker! It's up to you!" Mona decided. Darting over the two of them exchanged a Baton Pass and Joker quickly ended it by having Bicorn surrounded the only remaining floating Shadow with his own windstorm.
"Okay, let's finish this!" Joker insisted. We all dived in for the All-Out Attack, easily wiping the spirits off the field, we walked through the arch that lay beyond the knight's patrol area only to come across more arches that had bars slicing across the opening the arches created and a ram's head hanging next to it and a ram head on the wall that connected to the one containing the arches.
"Seriously!? More bars?" Skull exclaimed. He couldn't be entirely blamed seeing as this was the third set that we had come across during our little infiltration and since they barred the only visible way forward – Mona was consulting the map at this moment – then we were stuck until we found a way to open it up. Joker walked up to the ram beside the arches and pulled, but nothing happened, he began to walk over to the other ram head only to stop.
"There's another one over there," Joker stated. He extended his left hand to point beyond the section of wall that was in that direction, pulling the limb back in, he turned around to face us. "Amazon, I hate to ask this, but we're going to need your eyes again," Joker stated. His expression was tense and his hands curled tightly, clearly he didn't like the idea of using my Betwixt eyes after what had happened the last time.
"Joker, it's alright. I'll be fine," I reassured. Focusing myself, I opened up Second Sight and followed the faint trail of footsteps around the section of wall that had hidden a third ram head and then all the way down until finding a fourth; sharply tugging on the chain hanging I waited for a few moments but received no sound of the bars having been retracted which caused me to frown slightly.
"Maybe it's like the last one and we need to pull two of them," Panther suggested. That was the likely case – I hope it doesn't end up being all four in some kind of special order – so I proceeded to follow the footsteps back around and over to the ram head beside the arches. "But Joker already tried that one, didn't he?" Panther questioned. Her perplexation was understandable.
"It might be that you have to pull the one Amazon did first, before this one," Mona suggested. Whatever caused this one to be locked, I reached out and proceeded to pull down on the chain, opening up the bars. "Yep, that was it! Let's go!" Mona encouraged. I relaxed my eyes and we proceeded to walk through the arch; only to end up stopping still at the sight that greeted up from beyond it.
"Are you eff kiddin' me?! This has got to be some kind of crazy joke!?" Skull exclaimed. A large room that was set up like it was expecting a feast – complete with cognitive food – surrounded on two sides by arches with bars slicing through those openings as well, thus effectively blocking our way forward once more… this was getting a touch ridiculous by this point. Although at least this time there were two arches open, but they led straight ahead of us and looked to lead to a dead end.
"There are an awful lot of bars in here for being… what looks like a dining room?" Panther agreed. Mona made his own agreement known but immediately pivoted to bringing out the map, he set it upon the table nearest us so that we could gather around and look at it easily, he lifted a paw and pointed to our right with it looking like he was pointed to barred arches beyond the barred arches that were currently trapping us.
"There's a path beyond those bars there," Mona stated. Which meant we had to find a way out of this infernal trap and then open up those bars in order for us to move forward; Panther commented on how things were being made tough for us by them, it certainly seemed like Shadow Kamoshida was doing everything in his power to stop us from advancing.
"Eh, it shouldn't be too hard. Let's just get it done," Skull insisted. His arms were carelessly thrown behind his head as he rocked his body back and forth; Joker looked at me with an intensity in his eyes and I figured what he was silently asking; giving our leader a nod to reassure him – which didn't work if the remaining intensity was anything to go by – I started to focus my eyes once again.
Moving over to one of the ram heads on the set of arches to the right, I pulled on the chain which raised two sets of bars in the arches up. Yet it also dropped the two that had been open when we entered. Joker slipped through the open gap, so we followed after him, but once around I immediately tugged on the chain that lay in the ram's head directly behind the one I'd just activated. This caused a reverse of before to happen, but it also opened up the two arches directly in front of us.
"Why did you do that Amazon?" Mona asked. The others had been moving forward when Mona spoke up which caused them to turn back around and notice what I had done, Panther immediately looked confused at the actions I had taken while Skull ended up looking between me and the blocked arches alternatively; Joker on the other hand seemed completely calm as he raised an eyebrow in my direction.
"Follow my instincts, my eyes show that the ones who opened up those arches then closed them immediately afterwards. We're probably going to end up looping around," I explained. Moving up to the now open arches, I stepped through followed by all the others and immediately activated a third ram's head which closed the open arches and opened up the ones I had just closed. "Assume there's a method to the madness," I reassured. I also relaxed my eyes since we didn't need them at the moment.
"Vent, we can crawl through there," Joker suggested. He immediately hopped up and pulled himself inside the square opening, Mona followed shortly after, I climbed up the shelving that lay underneath it and slipped myself inside the dark entrance; it was uncomfortably close, but I was at least able to move forward slightly, dragging myself along using my elbows and hands until I reached the end.
Pulling myself out, I end up catching my foot on the edge of my skirt and tumbled down. Thankfully, Joker's exceptional reflexes meant that he caught me just before I hit the ground. An embarrassed apology escaped my lips and I wondered about what to do regarding if there were any more vents to crawl through in order to avoid this scene repeating itself once again.
Skull and Panther soon emerged and we ducked into the room at the back of this one, finding a treasure chest which turned out to contain some armour. The armour and Joker's Armour didn't start glowing, although that might have been because the armour, he was holding happened to be rather discoloured looking instead of clean like what had been dropped by Tam Lin.
"Hey… that stuff is disgusting. You should get it cleaned somewhere," Mona complained. He wasn't wrong either as the fabric was so dirty that I couldn't even tell what the colour was meant to be. "Come to think of it, I remember seeing a Shadow with one… maybe if we negotiate properly, we can get one," Mona pointed out. Although his flattened ears and grim expression showed he wasn't happy about the idea of going around and collecting them.
"Amazon, can we bring stuff from the cognitive world into the real world?" Joker asked. I confirmed this to him and saw a spark get lit within his eyes. "Perhaps I can take this to the laundromat near LeBlanc," Joker muttered. He then folded it up and tucked it into one of his pockets… did we all just decided that Rebels had infinite pockets or was this another weird quirk of the Metaverse?
Awakening my Second Sight once again, I pulled the chain of the ram head that was in the same room as us, causing bars to rise. We found that all of the bars blocking our way had been raised up, with thankful smiles on their faces I relaxed my eyes – feeling an ache start to press into the organs – and we darted through them.
Of course, we immediately ran into a knight which turned into a pair of Cait Siths when we ambushed it in the kitchen. I could feel my body start to get warm just by being near the flames that were used to make the food, thank goodness my Metaverse affinities didn't cross over with me. On the other hand, Panther looked completely relaxed as she even seemed to angle herself closer to the flames.
Some Wind spells later along with an All-Out Attack ended the two feline creatures. We approached the doorway at the back as I fruitless fanned myself to try and ward off the incessant heat that seemed to be clinging to me. Joker opened the door only to close it again, signalling that a knight had been facing our direction just like last time. Joker cracked the door open a small amount once more and waited until the knight turned away.
Quickly pushing the door open, Joker darted out and pounced upon the enemy as the rest of us quickly followed after him. A duo of Silky manifested, but a fire ball from Joker and Panther had them knocked down and eliminated quick as we could manage. We walked down to the door at the end of what I think was a wine cellar – without it being underground – that we had walked into. Joker pressed his hand against the door but it wouldn't budge so he slammed his shoulder against it, only for that to fail and he moved back, cupping his right shoulder as he did.
"That doesn't look like a lock we can pick," Skull pointed out. He was gesturing towards a contraption on the door that had two metal bars crossing over the handle area with red lights. Honestly it looked rather advanced for what had been a rather medieval looking environment for the most part; it was rather bizarre to see such a thing.
"Even if we could, we don't have a lockpick to open it," Joker stated. He then proceeded to turn around and looked at the room with critical eyes. "Up on the shelves, there's a vent we could use to reach the other side," Joker insisted. He then hopped up onto the shelves and leapt over to the one nearest the wall, we followed after him with Mona going in next and I ducked in after him.
"Hey, Skull! If you even dare look up, I'll kick you into next week!" Panther threatened. Skull promised not to look but insisted Panther get a move on, as I turned around the corner, I saw that Mona had stopped crawling because Joker was crouched by the entrance which prevented the cat from being able to leave the vent.
"What's wrong?" I quietly asked. Mona looked back at me with a look in his eyes that I'd come to realise was connected to the appearance of an enemy. "Can we still ambush it?" I wondered. Mona nodded his head with certainty as Joker carefully shuffled himself away from the opening which allowed Mona to move out and I reached the exit, seeing that the knight was on the floor in front of us facing towards a chest.
Reaching back, I gathered my skirt up and stepped out to join the other two, the shelving we stood on was getting a little full, so I ducked down near the opening and shook my head at Panther who had just reached the opening. She shuffled as close as possible and looked around, quickly understanding the situation we were in.
"Let's take whatever is in that treasure chest too!" Mona quietly insisted. Panther was quick to softly point out how there was a guard present. "That's okay. Hey, Joker, do you think you can ambush it from here?" Mona questioned. Joker nodded his head and then crouched down before leaping forward to land on the knight's shoulders. Mona and I scrambled down to join Joker as he pulled the mask off, Panther and Skull quickly joined the rest of us.
A Jack-o-Lantern emerged from the goop, so Joker quickly blasted it with a swirl of wind which knocked it to the ground. However, the strangest thing happened afterwards, Jack-o-Lantern held up its' lantern as if to use it as a shield against any further attacks from us which caused me to look at Mona who seemed surprised by the event but not as if he hadn't experienced it before.
"Hee-ho, I surrender! Please have mercy, ho!" Jack-o-Lantern pleaded. My eyes widened in surprise as I'd never expected a Shadow to just suddenly beg for their life after we managed to knock them down; I looked over at Joker who was blinking his grey eyes which clearly showed that he was surprised by the event as much as I was. Skull and Panther were also surprised by the event, meaning only Mona had known that this was a possibility.
"Why don't you lend me your power?" Joker asked. Unlike the last three Shadows, this one immediately jumped at the chance to join Joker and declared its' name to him; as he did, I felt that sensation of a bond appear once again, between Jack-o-Lantern and Mona again; this was starting to get really weird and I was wishing that I could find Igor and Lavenza to get some answers.
"I didn't realise even Shadows beg for their lives… that's actually kind of surprising," Panther commented. Since Shadows had different personalities and reacted based upon human perception, maybe certain types of Shadows were more inclined to start begging as opposed to other types of Shadows; Mona wondered if we could purposely create that situation.
"It might be difficult though, there could be a lot of variables as to why a Shadow starts to beg and we may not be able to know them all. It might be best if we focus on what we can do, striking weaknesses and conducting Hold Ups," I advised. As useful as a Shadow begging was, we couldn't hinge all hopes of obtaining the Personas Joker would need to fill out his attack capabilities, better to focus on what we knew definitely worked on the Shadows instead.
Joker opened up the chest and pulled out what looked to be a green coloured ring that had the sensation of wind coming off. Mona claimed it had a special power and Joker slipped it on over his red glove. He then moved over to the door and pushed it open, revealing a hallway beyond it and the first door on the right had a mechanism attached to it like the one in the wine cellar but without the red lights and instead possessing a dial that could be turned. Joker twisted the dial which caused the bars on it to slide to the side before he pushed on the door, opening it up.
"Well, at least now we know how to open these doors," Joker commented. That would at least make it easy if we had to travel some distance back to the Safe Room in order to rest, we kept moving and found our way into another tower, but this time we came across a significant problem in this one, the staircase was rather horrifically broken up in several places which prevented us from ascending up it.
"Man… looks like it's in pretty bad shape," Mona stated. That was putting it mildly, there was absolutely no way that any of us could get passed those broken portions, even Mona with his cat like capabilities would be stuck here; thankfully I had brought something due to having found other parts of the castle in states of disrepair like this so I kind of expected it to happen.
"Uhhh, I don't think we're goin' any further this way," Skull claimed. Panther suggested that we check somewhere else, but this was our only way as all other routes I'd tried ended up in dead ends, any other routes would likely be hidden within the missing map piece. However, Mona drew all of our attention upwards to what looked to be a brass hook held by another ram head. "What about it? Are we throwin' a rope over that and climb' it?" Skull wondered.
"Phantom thieves do things a bit more stylishly than that and I know just what'll do the trick," Mona stated. However, he turned and saw that I happened to be holding onto a thick coil of rope the end which had been swinging right in his peripheral vision. "That's… a little too prepared Amazon," Mona stated. Despite his words, a smile was clear on his fur lined lips which caused me to shrug my shoulders.
"It's not when I've encountered this issue beforehand," I responded. Hooking the rope over my shoulder, I looked down at the cat creature. "Now, what's this stylish thing you were mentioning?" I asked. If the method that Mona had would work better than the rope then we'd use that; Mona moved over to Joker and proceeded to strap something onto his left wrist, celebrating that it was a proper fit.
"What did you strap onto me?" Joker asked. Mona explained that it was something he'd been working on in secret and revealed that it was a grappling hook. "I'll try it," Joker stated. He moved forward slightly and lifted his left arm, bracing it with his right arm, he fired the grappling hook and it twisted around the hook that lay above us; moving his hand over, he pulled on a portion of the contraption.
In response, Joker was yanked off his feet and into the air, he flipped over the railing when he was close enough to it and easily landed on his feet. He looked down at us as Skull excitedly exclaimed about what had happened; as for me on the other hand, I tied one end of the rope to an arrow and proceeded to prepare to fire it. The arrow sliced through the air and hit the wall behind Joker as the rope uncoiled until the tail end of it just swung slightly off the ground.
"We might be needing more of those grappling hooks Mona, but the rope should work for now," I stated. Mona agreed, as he did Joker pulled my arrow free and took a hold of the object; all of us proceeded to climb up the rope until we reached Joker's location and I coiled the rope up again. "Let's keep moving shall we," I suggested. Joker nodded and briefly climbed up the stairs to find a treasure chest which gave him another piece of discoloured armour.
We proceeded down the stairs until we reached and entry way, but the moment we did, I blanched and quickly grabbed Joker, dragging him back before he could be spotted by the Shadow at the end of the corridor. The major reason why, was that this particular enemy was surrounded by that same eerie red aura that I'd seen before.
"Of course there are savage Shadows," I growled. Poking my head forward, I saw the knight standing there with its' overbearing intensity, Skull commented on how he was bad news. "You've no idea how right you are, Skull. Savage Shadows are more powerful than regular Shadows and to make things worse, they're also more observant, which means that unless we're completely still when in hiding, they might just spot us," I warned.
"In that case, it might be best if me or Amazon ambush him, we're capable of staying still more than any of you," Mona suggested. Skull agreed as did Panther, Skull was too full of energy while Panther might know how to strike and hold a pose, that didn't exactly translate to being able to remain still. "What do you think Joker?" Mona asked.
"Amazon, you do it. You seem to have experience with these Shadows," Joker insisted. Nodding my head, I kept my attention on the Shadow until it turned its' back on my direction, I quickly darted to the nearest corner and crouched behind it before darting out to duck behind a chair just as the knight turned around; I held my breath with my heart thundering like a drum in my ears as the knight marched passed my location, I wait a few more moments before surging forward.
"Let's see what you really look like!" I declared. Yanking the mask free, I jumped down to the ground and watched as a red coated horse with an armoured man sat upon his back, it wasn't Eligor, a blue-grey armour covered his body and a spear was held in its' hand. "Berith, huh? It nullifies Gun, resists Fire. But you've got a weakness to Ice," I commented. As I had been, the others had made their way over to stand behind the Shadow. "I wouldn't bother trying to negotiate with this one! They never listen to reason!" I warned.
"Fine then! Silky! Ravage them!" Joker commanded. The housemaid spirit appeared and brought a freezing cold spear of ice to bear upon the Berith, the ice skewered into it which ended up knocking it onto the ground. "Everyone! Charge in!" Joker ordered. I darted in close and swung down my naginata at the creature; Mona, Joker and Skull also moved in and I was rather pleased to see the two boys putting use what I had told them, along with Panther who was lashing out at the Shadow with barely any breath between blows for the creature.
The moment it made the movement to rise, we all dove back. Berith shakily rose to the feet of the horse, so Mona took the chance. He used Zorro to unleash a burst of Wind. Yet Berith didn't seem to be phased by it, which caused an annoyed grimace to curl upon his lips. Skull proceeded to blast it with electricity, but that had the same results as the Garu spell.
"Amazon! Get ready!" Panther encouraged. I was a bit surprised by the girl's call. Glancing over, I saw her lash out her whip towards the enemy Shadow. It twirled around a leg of the horse. Panther used that anchor point to yank the Shadow off balance. A sharp whinny escaped the horse and I caught on to what the blonde girl was attempting to do.
Whipping my mask off I immediately used Phantom to slam a bunch of rocks onto the armoured man. Berith was knocked to the floor which surprised us. When Joker made a motion to attack, I shook my head. There was something else I had in mind, I utilised Phantom to increase Joker's magical attack via Makakaja.
The horse climbed back to its' feet and Berith immediately lunged forward. His spear gleamed as he thrust it down towards Joker. The raven haired boy did two things at once. He pulled himself out the way whilst raising his dagger towards the spear. This was actually a good thing as Joker dodge didn't take him out of the way enough, but the raised dagger diverted the attack away from his shoulder. It instead scored across his face.
Joker quickly reacted and proceeded to unleash a frigid blast of his Silky's Bufu Spell. The Spell's enhanced state dealt more damage this time and knocked Berith straight to the floor. Instead of starting the All-Out Attack, Joker instead darted for Mona and slapped his hand against the eager cat's paw. Mona proceeded to unleash his Wind Magic upon the downed Shadow to deal greater damage to it.
Skull pulled off his mask, but instead of using Kidd's Electricity, he used a new ability. Our battles had strengthened our Personas and for the others that granted new capabilities. Skull could now utilise a Skill. Kidd surged forward and slammed the boat hard into Berith. Panther elected to use her healing magic instead of attack so that Skull's Life Energy was restored.
I quickly unleashed a pulse of Gravity at the enemy to try and weaken it further, but this damned horseman was holding on quite stubbornly. Berith eventually rose back to his feet and flourished his weapon towards Panther this time. Skull darted over and blocked the attack with his pipe. Panther spun out from behind Skull and snapped her whip out, landing a harsh strike.
The horse stumbled away from the duo as Mona unleashed his Wind upon the Shadow. I decided to refresh the increase of offensive strength upon Joker. A breath of thanks escaped him before he used Silky's magic to freeze over the Berith once more. With it knocked down again, and appearing a little woozy this time, Joker ordered our All-Out Attack. This action dissipated it into pure smoke.
We all breathed a sigh of relief at the end of that battle, we proceeded to move around until we came upon another Safe Room which Mona had sensed as they moved to help me against Berith. We dropped into the chairs as Joker pulled out a small kit of stamina recovery, he set about doling it out to each of us, but it was only small, so it barely recovered our depleted energy, but it at least did something for our flagging energy reserves.
Departing from the Safe Room, Joker looped us back around to where we fought the Berith as there had bene a barred door hidden behind it. However, there was a slight difference between the ram's head here and the others we'd encountered, it was surrounded by a golden rectangle which also contained a small circular depression underneath the head. Skull commented about how we knew what to do and reached for the chain.
"Wait!" Mona insisted. As he did, the cat-like creature leapt onto Joker's shoulder and looked over the contraption as Skull frowned and pulled his hand back. "There's a round indentation underneath… it looks like it won't move unless we fill that," Mona reasoned. Panther commented on how the key we required could be anywhere. "We'd best get looking then," Mona suggested. He then hopped back onto the ground.
We walked back around to the Safe Room and headed down to the other end of the hall – needing to duck into corners when we found more knights wandering about – we pushed open the door that we found and immediately had to dive for cover when we discovered a knight waiting for us. Joker quickly ambushed it to reveal a murky green coloured horse that floated in the air, it had red eyes and water plants for a mane and lower body.
"It's a Kelpie! It's resistant to ice but weak to electricity!" I informed. One short and sharp bolt from Captain Kidd had the creature down on the floor, Joker managed to convince this one to join him as well after a short conversation… although once again I was left floundered by the weirdness of that conversation.
However, as we were preparing to leave, something caught my eye, glancing over I saw it was a simple book which was no surprise since we were in a room with a bookcase, but there was something about this book that stood out. Walking over, I picked it up, flipping it over to try and get more information about it I found that there was no information on the back of the book, so I turned back and looked at the title, The Queen Book? What could that mean?
"What is it? Are you curious about that book? We can just take it if that's the case," Mona wondered. I nodded and proceeded to slip the book into one of my pockets and we slipped out the room; we proceeded to stealth through the corridor and room, ambushing each of the knights allowing Joker to gain a hold of an Incubus. We also gained a hold of The Beefcake Book and The Slave Book which gave off the same strange sensation as The Queen Book.
We headed for the corridor that shot off from this end, only to discover another savage Shadow patrolling down it. A quick discussion later and we decided to avoid fighting it given how difficult the last one was, we waited for it to turned around before making our move. Darting into cover, we quickly reached a door on our left which we proceeded to dive through as quickly as possible in order to avoid being seen and Mona swiftly closed it behind us.
"Woah, it's so musty," Panther commented. I looked around and saw we were in a library with chairs and tables, a globe and ladders scattered about the room; Mona commented on how fishy it seemed and immediately decided that there was a secret mechanism hidden somewhere. "Do you think it's linked to those books we've been picking up?" Panther asked.
"Maybe. Only one way to find out," I commented. We immediately spread out in order to look around for the place where these books could go, although I ended up finding a fourth book to join our small collection. "I found another book. This one is called The King Book. Given the surroundings, it's likely about Kamoshida," I informed. A small sneer curling on my lips at the thought of holding anything to do with him.
"Come over here then, I think it goes here," Panther called. I turned and walked over to the girl. "See here, 'The History of Kamoshida Suguru', 'Tracing Kamoshida's Steps', 'Kamoshida's Heroisms', 'Kamoshida's Law'. It's all about him… real disgustingly about him," Panther sneered. A vicious twist of her lips marred her face. I lifted up the fourth book I'd got and found a gap, sliding it in I heard something click.
"Mona! I think we've found your secret mechanism. We likely need to slot the books into the cases in order to activate them," I called. Mona was happy that he had been proven right, I turned around and found Skull and Joker were looking over the other shelves that were in this room until Skull came to a stop rather suddenly.
"Urgh… Amazon. You might want to get over here with that first book. I think I found where it goes," Skull called. However, his tone sounded rather disturbed, furrowing my eyebrows I made my way over to the bookcase and immediately saw why Skull had been so disturbed by this section of the shelves. "'Takamaki Ann: The Charming Doll'. He's disgusting," Skull sneered. I looked over the other books.
"This one has Suzui-san's name on it. I recognise a few other names as well; all these books must be on the female students. You said it Skull, he's disgusting," I commented. I looked over when something caught my eye and saw Panther standing there, her hands curled into fists as her body vibrated with rage at the sight. "Don't worry Panther, we'll stop him. That's a promise," I reassured. With that, I slipped the Queen Book into the gap that was there and another click sounded.
"The Slave Book. It goes here," Joker spoke. His voice was cold though, we turned around to see him standing in front of another section and I could detect the tension curling across his entire body. "This section is about the male students," Joker admitted. That made sense, pulling out the book I walked over to stand beside him.
"'Sakamoto Ryūji: The Vulgar Ape'. There's one here for Skull," Mona pointed out. That was just rude, but it also showed how little Kamoshida actually thought of the male students, I quickly found the gap and all but threw the book into its' position; another click resounded and then grinding accompanied it, causing all of us to turned around and watch as a section of the case pulled back and slid away to reveal another room beyond.
"Woah, it opened up," Skull exclaimed. Joker walked towards it and we followed after him, only to find that the room was barely lit by the candles and two torches inside but it was enough for me to realise that the photographs scattered across the back wall were all of Suzui! "Ugh… the hell is this room? There're tons of pictures of Suzui in here!" Skull exclaimed. Panther looked horrified by the surroundings as her mouth opened in shock.
"It's a shrine," I sneered. The implications of this room caused a nauseous feeling to burn within my stomach. "Are you okay Panther?" I asked. I rested a hand on the red clad girl's shoulder, seeing tears starting to burn in her eyes as she bent over slightly; drawing in a breath, Panther pulled herself upright and a fire burned within her eyes.
"I'll be fine. But we definitely need to make him pay. I feel even more motivated to do this now," Panther insisted. We all agreed to that even without the vocal confirmation of such a feeling, a clinking sound echoed and we turned over finding Joker had lifted something up, it actually looked like some kind of medal.
"Think this could be the key we're looking for?" Joker asked. Mona agreed and so Joker pocketed the object before turning around with something else in his hand. "We also got the other piece of the map here," Joker revealed. At least something good came of finding this horror show of a shrine, Joker handed it to Mona who immediately started to leaf through it.
"Yeah, look. It has to be here," Mona revealed. He had flipped all the way to the back and pulled out a piece that seemed to be referring to a large building that seemed somewhat isolated from the rest of the Palace. "Considering our current position… I'd say we're about halfway there," Mona commented. Skull insisted that we hurry over there. "No. Now that we know how much we have left, we can calculate the best way to pace ourselves," Mona insisted.
"Let's keep exploring, we can rest or stop when necessary," Joker insisted. We turned to leave the room, only to run into a rather big problem; that being a knight walking in and immediately spotting us and charging up to confront us, yet when he burst into the goop and two Bicorns manifested, I noticed another pile of goo on the floor.
It was crackling with energy and was black and blue instead black and red. When the Shadow formed, it was another Bicorn, but the abnormal colouring of the goo was reflected on the Bicorn's body with blue and purple energy cloaking it. Oh, that was not good, it seemed that Mona also recognised the creature for what it was by his unclear comment that only showed he recognised it.
"What's up with that one? It's mumblin' to itself, but… it's not makin' any moves," Skull commented. That was how these Shadows were, Mona warned that this Shadow might be problematic for us. "Alright, then I'll go take care of it!" Skull declared. He started to charge forward with his weapon raised to make a strike at the dangerous Shadow we'd come across.
"Panther! Stop him!" I called. Thankfully the cat themed girl understood my words and lashed a strike right in front of Skull's path, forcing the boy to stumble backwards. "First off: That was reckless, especially when you know it's weak to your magic speciality! Second: Attacking that Shadow will cause it to retaliate against you immediately! We need to eliminate it with one strike!" I warned.
"Alright! Agathion!" Joker declared. He pulled of his mask, manifesting the little jar spirit. "Ravage them! Zio!" Joker called. The lightning bolt slammed into the Shadow which caused it to be taken out – these Shadows took more damage than the others did – the Shadow pulled in on itself, turning into a little orb before erupting outwards and blasting outwards to strike the other two Bicorns with its' weird energy.
"What the… it exploded?" Skull questioned. He was right to be completely baffled by the occurrence as I had been when eliminating my first such Shadow; Mona insisted that he focus on the battle for now, we quickly eliminated the other two Bicorns and I picked up the Bead that had been dropped, it would recharge all lost Life Energy, so it was handy to have one of these. "Okay, what was that Shadow?" Skull asked.
"I call those scary ones Disaster Shadows. It's best to strike at their weaknesses and deal with them immediately, or alternatively restrict their movements with ailments and deal with them afterwards. If attacked though, they'll always strike backwards immediately so we need to be careful. If we run across any more of those, I say that we focus on them first!" Mona pointed out. We could all relax now that the Disaster Shadow was gone.
"Oh, know what? We never ended up using that weird bodybuilding book," Panther pointed out. It was strange that I'd suddenly been drawn to it only for it to turn out to be unnecessary in solving this puzzle, Skull wasn't bothered by this. "Still, I wonder why we haven't used it yet," Panther wondered. Mona insisted that we focus on pushing further into the Palace.
We slipped out of the hallway, and Joker spotted a chest. He quickly darted for it and grabbed the contents; he made his way back over to us and we all moved into the vacant area of the place. Joker held up the object which turned out to be a mace, Skull's weapon immediately started to glow brightly before the new weapon was absorbed and replaced the old once. Skull let out a whoop of excitement and started to get in some practice swings with his weapon.
"Hey, Amazon. I think I know where that strange book goes," Joker stated. He held out his hand and I set it into his, he headed over to a small bookcase out in the open and slotted it into the opening, but it still jutted out. "Something's blocking it," Joker commented. He pulled the book out and then reached in, when he pulled his hand out, I saw he was holding a bottle. "Protein?" Joker wondered.
"It can heal us, so it'll be useful to have on hand," I commented. Joker nodded and put it away as he stuck the book back into its' place. "Shall we open up that gate now," I suggested. Joker nodded his head and we walked over to the blocked door, inserting the medal allowed the chain to be released and one quick tug caused the bars to slide back, thus allowing us to keep moving onwards.
We entered into a room with a set of stairs going down and a red carpet covering the floor with pots of red roses dotted about. Descending down, we found another Safe Room and quickly entered into it so that it could be marked into our minds in order for us to quickly get back to here if we needed to drop out. Stepping back out into the hallway, we down to an arch that had bars, but it was actually open this time around, and through to the door that lay in the room at the end.
"Hold on Joker!" Mona hissed. Which was no surprise as the place he'd been about to step out into happened to be very open, there didn't appear to be any place that we could find to hide away. "This place is huge… yet there are no guards? That seems suspicious," Mona commented. There was that too, along with the overall atmosphere, it had changed slightly as if something about this place was special.
"But the Treasure's up ahead, right? We don't got a choice but to keep goin'," Skull pointed out. Mona agreed but he seemed reluctant and instead insisted on us being vigilant if we ended up continuing on; however, he ended up turning to look at Joker, likely wanting to make sure that our leader was on board with moving ahead.
"Let's go," Joker insisted. We stepped into the room and immediately came to a stop. "This place, it looks a place of worship," Joker commented. He was right, what with the long wooden benches, the stained glass, high ceiling, assortment of flora and candles… plus the really big statue of Kamoshida at the other end made it obvious who the source of worship was. As we stood across from it, the surrounding shimmered and waver into their real world counterpart before sliding back.
"Wait, was that… the gym?" Panther asked. It had definitely been the gym and honestly, such a perception of that place made a whole lot of sense – disturbing sense – given who we were dealing with; I'm just surprised that it took us this long to come across the darn thing, I had actually expected it to show up earlier than this, given the cavern had been the piano room with Ouvrard.
"I get it… the gym's some kinda holy place for him. He's a god there," Skull spat. A sneer coated every word as his lips curled into an angry expression, we walked a bit close to the large statue, was it bad I had the itch in my fingers to tear it down? I noticed that the podium the statue stood on was cordoned off by rope looping around it.
"I can't believe he can think like that! Especially after what he did to Shiho!" Panther exclaimed. A choke cut off any more words and I looked over to see the girl covering her mouth, Skull rested a comforting hand on her shoulder, his expression showing that he at least understood the pain that Panther was enduring at the moment; he lifted his head up to glare at the statue once more.
"God, that bastard makes me so freakin' sick! Just you wait Kamoshida!" Skull declared. He raised a fist to shake it at the statue, I could feel my own disgust growing within me the longer we spent in this place; I quickly glanced at Joker to see that he was incredibly tense as he stared at the statue, all of us except for Mona had reasons to hate him.
"I see… so you're the ones who tampered with the library," A voice claimed. I immediately summoned my naginata and reached up to grip a hold of my mask with the others immediately following my movements. "It seems my time waiting here has paid off," The voice commented. At that, a knight in golden armour sprang into existence in front of us. "Just as that ape there said, this place is a holy ground for our great King Kamoshida. It is preposterous for miscreants like yourselves to come waltzing in like this!" The Guard Captain declared. Well, that was rude to be calling Skull an ape, but given what we saw in the library that was how Kamoshida viewed the blonde.
The Shadow dissolved into goo before emerging in its' true form. It was a tall man, hovering off the ground thanks to the pair of red wings, he had tanned skin and blue eyes with no pupils or sclera, chainmail armour, a helmet, greaves and gauntlets covered its' body. A red feather jutted from the top of its' helm with a red and white cloth partially wrapped around its' right side, in its' hand was a longsword with the sheath for it hanging at the left side.
"You will pay for defying King Kamoshida! With your lives!" The Shadow declared. It then reared its' sword back and flew down to us, jabbing its' sword out towards us. Thankfully we all dodged about in order to avoid the strike. Mona complained about having known this would happen, before encouraging us to take it down. I had already anticipated this and had the information already at hand.
"Archangel! It's weak to Electricity and Curse but nullifies Bless! It's also more powerful than we are!" I warned. It was strange, the minor creatures might have been somewhat stronger than what I faced in Ouvrard's Palace, but apart from the Belphegor, all of the most powerful Shadows had actually been weaker than the strongest Shadows I'd faced in my first Palace; perhaps in response to the aura that each Palace sent out… now was not the time to be thinking such things? Especially when the Archangel seemed to strengthen itself.
"Look! He's trying to do something! It's important to guard if you think you're in danger!" Mona advised. If it had managed to increase its' capabilities, then we were definitely in danger; Mona immediately sent out a blast of wind, but the attack was practically a tickle to the Shadow. Panther used Carmen to blast it with fire, but the same thing as the Wind was the result.
"Captain Kidd!" Skull cried. The pirate Persona manifested and immediately unleashed a blast of Electricity. With Archangel down, Skull darted over to Joker and they crashed hands. Joker pulled off his mask and unleashed Agathion's own Zio spell upon it. This reduced it to a dizzy state. Taking advantage of its' distraction was the best thing to do.
Pulling of the mask, I had Phantom boost Skull's magical offense. But before I could try to do the same to Joker, Archangel fluttered his wings and rose into the air. The angry entity immediately charged forward to swing its' sword down at me. I swung my naginata up and caught the blade, gripping tightly with my right hand as my left braced the shaft to keep it up.
A small cry came along with the swish of something flying through the air. Suddenly, Archangel was pulled away from me and tossed towards the ugly statue. He rapidly moved his wings to regain balance. Only for a several small ball to be rapid fired at his wings. The damage wasn't great, but the balls hit hard enough to dislodge some feathers.
I quickly boosted Joker's magical offense and our leader capitalised on it. He used Agathion again, slamming the Shadow with an empowered burst of Electricity. A quick Baton Pass to Skull allowed the punk to do the exact same with his new strength. Despite this, it felt like we weren't making any progress on stopping this thing.
We needed a way to deal more damage. But how? I'd already empowered the two main damage dealer – true, I could do the same thing to Mona and Panther, just conservation of Soul Power was important given that I didn't have much – we needed something else. But what that something else was, I certainly couldn't provide it.
The Archangel recovered and immediately seemed to charge itself up once again. Whatever that did, I didn't like the idea of being struck by it. Skull made to pull off his mask, but Joker threw out a hand stopping him. A raised eyebrow was my only sign of curiosity as I kept my eyes on the Shadow. We couldn't take the risk that it of using our distracted state to attack us and deal significant damage.
"Hold it off! I need to check something in my Personas!" Joker ordered. I nodded my head and immediately darted forward, swinging my naginata towards the Archangel. It glided out of the way, but not enough to avoid all my attack's swing. A line tore across the right hand wing, sending more feathers fluttering down. The air was broken by a sharp crack that was followed by a whip landing on the Shadow's left leg.
Mona darted over and swung his arm down to slash through the feathers of the left wing. This destabilised the Shadow as it tilted from side to side. Skull charged in and slammed his foot into the Archangel's torso. The Shadow was surprised by this and flinched backwards. Allowing Skull to swing his weapon hard into the Shadow, cracking a few links of chainmail. This also sent him stumbling to the ground.
Joker seemed to have found what he was looking for as he marched forward. He pulled his mask off and Jack-o-Lantern appeared. Instead of a burst of fire, Jack-o-Lantern raised its' lantern and I sensed a weakening energy flowing out of the lantern to twist around the Archangel. I couldn't tell exactly what had been weakened but whether attack or defence, it would certainly help us in the long run of this.
"I've weakened his defensive power! Strike now!" Joker commanded. Skull grinned widely before we were all forced to dodge. The Archangel had surged to its' feet suddenly and charged towards us. Most of us avoided the attack, but Skull got caught. The sword pierced into his right shoulder, causing a scream to tear from his mouth. "SKULL!" Joker screamed. Skull tumbled to the ground as the Archangel charged itself up again, even with his sword still pierced into the blonde boy.
A sharp and painful scream echoed. Then a tangle of leather whirled around the Shadow and dragged him away, sword and all. Skull began to fall but I got over fast enough to support the boy and slowly lower him to the ground. Mona shot over and quickly used Zorro's healing ability. Meanwhile Joker took vengeance for Skull by hitting the weakened Archangel with a blast from Agathion's Zio.
"I'mma okay," Skull grumbled. However, I didn't back away until he was properly up on both feet. Once up, the Archangel flew towards us once more. I glided out and clashed my naginata against the sword, blocking it from hurting the others. Of course, Panther took the chance. She struck out hard with her whip into the black of the Shadow, forcing out a scream of pain. "Payback time!" Skull cried.
Deciding to be smart, I flipped away from the Shadow, fully expecting a blast of electrical energy. I also scooped Mona up to ensure he was outside the blast radius. The electrical fury of Skull's rage thundered down onto the Archangel which quickly dropped the infuriating Shadow to the ground. Skull cast his eyes over his shoulder in order to look at Joker.
"Let's do it everyone!" Joker encouraged. With that, he led us forward in our collective All-Out Attack. We hacked and slashed. Snapped and cracked with all our strength. Every attack, every move was made in order to stop this Shadow from getting up. We had to stop it if we wanted to move further on with our infiltration. To succeed meant we had to defeat this infernal Shadow and prevent it interfering anymore.
I could feel the Archangel moving, jerking upwards. Joker immediately called for us to fall backwards. But this time I didn't listen. Instead, I pulled my weapon back and thrust it downwards. Down into the face of the Shadow. The severe damage of that action caused it to burst into a bunch of shadowy particles.
"And don't come back!" Skull loudly declared.