Persona 5: Daywatch

Wednesday, 20 April 2016
After School
Kamoshida's Castle

Slinking through the narrow, open space, Akira led the others down to a balcony over an audience hall. A padded throne glistened with gold at the end.

Ryuji dusted his hands. "Easy peasy."

"Shh!" Morgana crept to the balcony, followed by the others on their bellies. Kamoshida sat on an ornate gold throne before a thick formation of gray knights.

Akira crept back a little, a snarl on his face. He whispered to the others, "Shit. We can't take him down now. There's too many soldiers, even for all of us together."

Morgana looked at him through a hooded gaze. "Don't forget that our goal is the Treasure, not his Shadow. It's the Treasure that's chaining his Shadow. If we don't take care of that, we're more likely to cause a mental shutdown."

"That's the brain-dead thing, right?" Ryuji looked around, then gawked at the impressions in the ceiling.

Ann's fists curled. "Then let's keep moving."

Slinking low along the balcony, the thieves came to an ornate, narrow door. Ryuji came to a crouch next to it, allowing Morgana to hop on his shoulder and pick the lock as Akira watched. After slipping through, closing the door behind them, they stood up and relaxed.

Ryuji stared at the pair of heavy, cedar doors beyond, wrapped in iron banding. "Damn, these doors look like they could take a battering ram."

Akira crossed his arms. "If I was an evil castle prick, I'd hide my treasure behind something like this." He looked down to Morgana. "You think you can get us in?"

Morgana smirked. "Please. Watch the master at work." Just a couple seconds of fiddling later, the lock popped. "With a little more training, maybe one day even you will be able to do that, Joker."

"Whatever," he said, pushing open the door to the treasury. Gold statuettes scattered over mounds of gold coins.

Ryuji's eyes popped wide as dinner plates, a stupid grin on his face. "Holy shit! Is all this loot the treasure?" He stepped into the piles of gold, picking up a heavy candlestand in the detailed likeness of a nude girl. "Man, this freak really is a pervert."

Akira picked up handfuls of gold oval coins, recognizing them from pictures in his history textbook on the warring states period. "For all the western styling, I'd have expected his treasures to be English pounds or something."

Ann held up a heavy gold necklace lacking any gems to break up the yellow sheen. "For someone with such a gaudy castle, I expected him to have more… interesting jewelry at the end."

"All of that's just set dressing." Morgana hopped up on a gold vase near the middle of the room, surrounded by deep piles of gold coins and trinkets. "This is the Treasure."

Akira slipped his hands into his pockets, making no effort to hide the dubious expression on his face. "That cloudy thing? Sorry, but I'm gonna have to go with Ryuji on this."

"Don't get ahead of me," Morgana scolded. "Remember, this is a cognitive world, not a physical one. Just finding the Treasure," he gestured to the shifting cloud, "is just the first step. Everybody knows they have desires, but for most people, we understand on a deep level that they're not physical things. In order to make the treasure manifest, we need to make the person aware their desire is in fact a Treasure just the same as any physical thing that can be stolen."

Akira blinked. "Wait, are you telling me we have to warn them we're gonna come in?"

"Yes."

Akira waved his hands. "I'm gonna have to put a negatory on that plan. Telling people you're gonna do something just guarantees you get caught."

Morgana crossed his arms. "No it doesn't. And there's no other way to make the treasure manifest. We have to send the conscious person a calling card. The conscious person and their Shadow are connected. A change in one affects the other, and because the Treasure is connected to the Shadow that will make the Treasure vulnerable."

Ryuji danced in glee, gold statuettes in both hands. "A calling card, it's totally like one of those awesome heist stories!"

Akira's lips pressed into a thin line.

Noticing Akira's reluctance, Ann cleared her throat. "I say we give it a shot. If a calling card can make the Treasure vulnerable, it should do the same for their Shadow, right?"

Morgana's ears drooped and he sent a despairing look to Akira. "Yes, but I have no idea what exactly it will do to the Shadow."

The temporarily-sans-glasses-thief crossed his arms. "So we've done all we can here?"

Morgana nodded. "Until we send the calling card."

Akira gave a curt nod. "Then we leave and do it. Kamoshida's had enough of a reprieve for what he did to Suzui-san."

Thursday, 21 April 2016
After School
Shujin, Rooftop

Ryuji huddled under the overhang, watching rain pour down over the school roof. "Man, it sucks tryin' ta meet when it's raining."

Ignoring the complaining, Akira got straight to the topic at hand. "We've been maintaining pretty well as we crawled up that tower, so I think a day of rest should be plenty. I think we should take the castle tomorrow and bring Kamoshida to an end. That means we need to have the calling card ready by tomorrow."

Ryuji backed away from a large drip splash. "Couldn't we have sent one at the beginnin' of all this?"

Morgana, still huddled in Akira's bag set against the wall, shook his head. "A calling card is meant to create a sense of threat and manifestation through focus. As time passes, that mental sense of possessive fear fades and the Treasure disappears."

Akira looked down at their metaverse expert. "How long does it last?"

"Until their cognition has time to lapse back into a sense of security, like any mental reset. Generally, that's when they next sleep."

Ryuji boggled, accidentally stepping back into the rain dripping down the side of the overhang. "Less than a day? That's like no time at all!"

Akira leaned against the wall. "That's why we all need to be ready to send it. Ann, I know you need to work, is it okay if Ryuji and I write it?"

"I'll be here too!" Morgana chirped from the bag.

Ann shot a wary glare at Ryuji. "It better not have spelling errors in it, okay? The embarrassment would kill me."

Akira nodded. "And we'll have to make sure they can't tell who wrote it. If we leave a handwritten note we might as well write 'this is my confession' and sign our names."

Ryuji jumped in excitement at a sudden idea, splashing the water running along the roof. "We can just use magazine cutouts, like all those TV villains who leave anonymous letters."

Akira snorted, but fell silent for several seconds. "That's just archaic enough to work. You got a print center nearby?"

Ryuji tilted his head. "Why would we need that?"

"Copies," Akira said, pulling out his phone to get started with what they would need for a good draft. "We need a lot. If the school sees just one little note, they'll throw it out as a stupid prank. If we plaster it over the billboards, everybody will see it and they won't be able to cover it up anymore."

Ann gave him a predatory smile. "Smart. You've really thought about this."

Morgana piped up from the bag, "We'll only have one shot at this. If we fail now, another calling card most likely won't have enough impact to make the Treasure manifest again."

"Don't worry," Akira said, tone grim. "We'll only need one shot to take down Kamoshida. He won't get away with all the things he's done. Come on, Ryuji. Let's hit the library. I need to get some studying in, too."

"Dude, we're gearin' to take down the king of assholes and you want to study?"

"They've got dictionaries and a couple thesauri down in the library and I want to make sure that calling card will do the job without pointing straight back at us. See you later, Ann."

Ryuji sighed. "At least let's go to the diner. It'll be quieter there."

Friday, 22 April 2016
Morning
Shujin's Front Entrance

Akira trotted in the front doors, hearing the buzz of conversation deeper inside right away. The noise hammered him, a directionless cacophony making his stomach clench. Despite the discomfort, he proceeded inside to a mob at the front billboards plastered with calling cards. Clumps of students surrounded every billboard on the first floor, each one strewn with calling cards.

An excitable girl with wiry hair jogged up to the group from behind him, stopping next to Mishima near the back of the crowd. "What's all this about?"

The class representative stood steady as a statue, his gaze hollow and fixed on the dozen cards pasted over the billboard. They reminded the transfer student of a shark's, as if they peered into an unfathomable void. "Somebody left calling cards. They've been here since I got here for study early in the morning."

Ann came to a stop next to Akira, and the two shared an acknowledging glance before Mishima read the card to the excitable girl.

"Sir Kamoshida Suguru, the pitiful sinner consumed by lust. You force your twisted desires on students that can't fight back. You abuse the weak and dishonor the pure. Your punishment shall be visited upon you by your own hand. I, the Phantom Thief of Hearts, shall take your distorted desires without fail."

Ann tilted her head closer to Akira and mumbled, "Ryuji wrote that? I can almost take it seriously." The two walked further down the hall to Ryuji. "Sakamoto, did you really write all that?"

Ryuji smirked, though as tall as she was he couldn't look down his nose at her. "It's like poetry, ain't it?"

Morgana popped out of Akira's bag, eyes narrow. "I'm the one who came up with most of the phrasing. You wanted to say 'we know how shitty you are'."

Ann crossed her arms and shot a cold frown at Ryuji. "That sounds like a child failing to sound like an adult." She glanced at Akira, still next to her. "But why Phantom Thief?"

Akira grumbled, shoving his hands in his pockets. "They insisted on thieves, even though that sounds stupid."

Ryuji and Morgana both groaned. The runner sent him a hooded gaze. "C'mon, man. Not this again."

Morgana snapped from the interior of the transfer student's satchel, "Gentlemen thieves are cool and stylish, we steal from the rich and give to the poor."

Lowering his voice to keep from being overheard by the crowd focused on the calling-card-plastered billboards, Akira said, "Thieves don't lend courage to the innocent, and hardly fear in the guilty."

Slumping, Ryuji rolled his eyes. "It ain't the same thing as bandits, dude. It's takin' on the big dogs to keep the little guys from getting' crushed. Like privateers."

Morgana glared at Ryuji. "We were not going to be Sea Dogs."

"Well," Ann said, cutting off further argument, "what's done is done."

A frown still tugging at his face, Akira shrugged. "I figured there wasn't a better candidate for somebody acting out the deadly sin of lust."

Ann's eyebrows rose and her head tilted to one side. "Deadly sin?"

Akira nodded. "It's from a poem the Catholic Church used to use to teach to help people remember virtues and vices. You've got seven virtues and vices in contrasting pairs." He lifted a hand to point to himself. "Mine is wrath. Its opposite is patience."

Ryuji slipped his hands in his pockets, shoulders relaxed. "Yeah. Those two kept wantin' to change stuff, so we browsed tons'o stuff online for reference."

Akira gave a wide, bright smile. "And my search history is still squeaky clean."

Ryuji's eyes popped wide. "Oh, crap." He pulled out his phone and opened the web navigator.

Morgana sighed. "I still wish somebody with some artistic talent could've done the logo."

Akira leaned his back against the wall. "I'll commission one of those homeless artists in Inokashira Park for something next time." He pulled out his phone, passing it from hand to hand as he stared up and out. "Hell, there's probably some in Shibuya."

Ryuji kicked a sneaker against the floor, drawing a high squeak. "You know what? You want some artsy fartsy thing, go to Kosei." He spared a glare at Akira. "At least I could make something that looked like a top hat."

Morgana snickered from inside the bookbag.

Akira glared down at it. "Traitor."

The excitable girl from earlier jerked back from the mob. "Does that mean those scary rumors are true?"

The majority of the student mob broke, dashing for their classrooms before Akira could see Kamoshida coming in from the front gates, looking for the source of the commotion. He seemed annoyed but collected until his eyes fell on the calling cards. The remaining students backed far away.

Akira navigated to the video app, glancing at his compatriots. "Exit stage left." Ann and Ryuji took the courtyard doors out and Akira began the recording, setting his smartphone on the electrical box near the corner, setting his bag under it.

Kamoshida's shoulders hunched and his hands curled into fists before he roared, "Who put these here?"

Morgana peeked out from the bag to say, "I'd say that is impact positive."

Students scattered as Kamoshida snatched for them, then spotted Akira watching with his hands in his pockets. The towering teacher stormed closer, an anger borne from fear etched across his face. "Was this you?"

Akira pushed his glasses up with his middle finger, slipping his hand back into his pocket. "Was what me?" When Kamoshida took a step closer, Akira smirked but kept his posture neutral for the camera. "No, wait, let me guess. It doesn't matter because I'll be expelled soon anyway?"

Kamoshida's face twisted, settling into rage as he grabbed Akira and lifted him in the air with one hand.

A momentary tremor prickled his skin, but Akira kept his eyes on Kamoshida's. For an instant, he could've sworn they reflected gold light. Still, it wouldn't take much to weasel out of an assault charge with just grabbing the jacket. Akira swallowed, narrowing his eyes. "Right, because it takes a big man to attack a student with his hands in his pockets."

Kamoshida threw Akira into the wall and stormed away, frame vibrating with pent-up anger.

Akira crawled off the floor, feeling the impact still pulse along his arm and hip. Pushing aside the discomfort, he took his bag, smart phone, and stopped the recording.

Morgana popped his head out. "You're way too reckless."

"I prefer 'daredevil with a plan'," Akira said, sending the recording to Niko Video.