Persona 5: Daywatch

Monday, 6 June 2016
Night
Velvet Room

The clang of a baton on bars pierced his ears before he opened his eyes to a room covered in crushed velvet. The sedate blue contrasted with Caroline's shout, "On your feet, Inmate! Our master has deigned to speak with you."

A chuckle floated from the desk in the middle of the panopticon. The balding man with long grey hair and an unnaturally long nose grinned over folded hands. "Excellent work, Phantom Thief. Your work of rehabilitating society is rehabilitating your self as well. A gluttonous monster deposed, and what of you?" That glass ball on a cylinder with iron pins rested on the desk next to him, though it looked to have about a dozen pins and twice that many marbles of various colors inside.

Akira stood up, taking slow steps to drag the ball on a chain so he didn't trip on the bar door this time. Wild speculation on his own tenuous psyche could wait. "He said something about an enemy in a black mask, someone exploiting others' hearts for profit."

The unnerving grin widened. Just a little, but it didn't have much face left to spread on. "Interesting."

Akira grasped the bars on his door. "Who is he? What's that black mask guy doing in people's heads?"

A scoff floated from the stunted girl in a warden costume to his left. "Why do you waste our master's precious time with questions you already know the answer to, Inmate?"

He glared at her. "Would I ask if I knew?"

"Think carefully," Igor said, smile stretched as ever, "about what you know."

Akira grit his teeth. "Kaneshiro said there was some black mask…and that he was exploiting others' hearts for profit."

Justine let out a scoff. "And how many is 'he'?"

Akira let go with one of his hands. "One."

Igor nodded, holding out a thin hand. "And if he wears a mask?"

Akira brought his free hand up to his own face. While he lacked his Phantom Thief costume at the moment, the memory of his mask over his face pressed down. "He's gotta be just like me. He's some douche-bag with a Persona, going around screwing with people." He reached back for the door. "How do I find him? Can I?"

A low, rumbling chuckle floated out from the center of the panopticon. "One of many interesting possibilities, is it not?"

Akira narrowed his eyes, scanning the easy posture of the tuxedoed man. "I thought you were supposed to aid me. How can I knock down ever bigger Shadows if I can't outgun them?"

Igor chuckled. "Perhaps it is time to bequeath you with another boon. Consider it a reward for this most fascinating turn of the times." Igor clapped his hands, eyes flicking to the girls cosplaying as wardens. "Set up the chair."

Caroline and Justine shared a glance, then nodded to each other.

Snatching his hands back, Akira stepped back from the door. "The chair? Is this a Monty Python joke?"

"A tool of execution." Justine tapped her clipboard against her side as if nothing were out of the ordinary. "By sacrificing your Personas, with our help you can convert them into shards of power that can help you by other means."

"Yeah!" the eye-patched girl with the hair bun shouted at him. "Next time you come back, we'll have an execution chamber ready to change your Personas into what you need to over-power your puny enemies."

Akira crossed his arms. "And if the idea of executing pieces of my mind isn't exactly something I'm up to?"

Justine held a blank stare on him, though something about her facial features fell. "You must be willing to give up parts of yourself to become different." She held up one hand. "Now the night draws to a close. Until next time…"

Tuesday, 7 June 2016
After School
Mementos, Path of Aiyatsbus

Striding out of Shadow Morihiko's personal distorted space of Mementos, Akira looked both ways. The emergency lighting in this sector shone with magenta, bright enough to get a scope of the nearby environment at a glance but not enough to chase away the deep darkness of this twisting mockery of Tokyo's subways. Akira tried to tell himself it was that stark contrasts that made him think he kept seeing movement stalking them within the shadows.

Morgana popped into his bus form and Ryuji waved the transfer student over. "Hey, dude! You fallin' asleep on your feet?" He raised turned to the other Phantom Thieves in the Morgana-bus only six feet away, his voice undimmed, "Told you all that six in one day was too many for 'im."

Akira shook his head and folded his sub-machine gun's wire stock before following Ryuji into the middle bench.

Makoto turned around in the driver's seat. "Think we can get Madam Ikenouchi?"

Akira adjusted the fit of his gloves. "Let's do it."

Ann grunted and flopped back against her seat in the front passenger. "Ugh. I've still got to read Ki no Tsurayugi."

Ryuji peered out his window, then leaned across Akira to look out the side door's window. At least he kept the assault rifle in his lap pointed away. "Let's put the hurt on those mafia assholes!"

Akira smiled. "You're awfully enthusiastic."

Ryuji gave him a toothy grin. "Eff yeah, dude! I had to sit out, like, the whole palace. Now's my chance to show those mafia dipshits ain't nobody can run from the Phantom Thieves."

Ann crossed her arms and shot a narrow gaze at him. "You mean to free the oppressed from injustice?"

Ryuji waved a hand down at her. "Ya know what I mean. Anyway, I think we all got a lot stronger in Mementos. If it wasn't for Kaneshiro's thugs in real life, I bet I'd'a been up for the whole Palace. These Shadows feel like a warm up. Ya get me?"

Akira held up a hand. "Hell yeah, man."

The runner clapped his upraised hand, then looked to the student council president scanning a list of names in the pocket notebook in her hand. "Takin' down more names for your sis?"

Makoto nodded, but kept her torso mostly pointed forward despite Morgana being the one driving. "Most of today's are sex traffickers, but even if they're not as dangerous as the drug pushers, that's going to be a lot of girls who don't have to be afraid anymore." She clicked her pen closed and pushed it through the spiral of wire at the top. "You know, I was worried about Big Sis when we first started slipping her names. This is going to make more work for her and the other prosecutors. And when she called yesterday, she sounded furious when that story broke about the Phantom Thieves getting Kaneshiro. SIU had been on him for years." She rubbed her arm underneath the spiked pauldron. "She's always been driven, but…" Makoto shook her head. "I don't know."

Ann leaned back in her front passenger seat. "I hope that means she's not going after us. Those names were a lot of hard work and she's definitely getting credit for snapping those ones up."

Morgana pulled up to another station with descending escalators and popped back into his catboy form. He led the team halfway down the escalators before the sound of rattling chains echoed from a distant tunnel, and his tail shot straight out. "Okay, enough exploring."

Makoto held a hand over her mouth, but that failed to entirely conceal her yawn. Or the pained twitch in her left side. "No, it's okay. I'm good for one more heart."

Morgana roared, "We are leaving now!"

When he took off running up the escalator, the others followed at a jog. Ann twirled a finger through the tip of a pigtail. "What's up, Byakko?"

Morgana dove off the station platform and popped back into the Morgana-bus. "Get in," he commanded. Sensing the gravity of his words if not understanding the situation, the team piled in. He shot down the tunnels, slowing at each corner before rocketing on. "Those chains mean something is on the prowl that we do not want to run into." The team ascended two floors before returning to a sub-station with the steel door to a shortcut ladder.

With the team leader out of breath, Akira said what was on everyone's minds. "What the hell was—?"

Morgana brought a finger to his mouth, his eyes wide. The blue orbs searched left and right before he motioned the thieves closer. "Remember what I said when I first introduced you to Mementos?"

Akira thought back. "Shadows rarely come up. So there are some weird ones that do?"

Morgana's arms fell and shoulders slouched. "No. It's Shadows coming down." He took a deep breath, eyes flicking over the assembled Phantom Thieves. "Remember how I didn't let you guys linger up on the surface? Even though it seems empty… there are Shadows there. Sometimes big ones."

Ryuji slung his rifle by its strap, letting it dangle from his shoulder. "Bigger than Kamoshida?"

The short team leader nodded. "Way stronger. All of us together wouldn't be a match for one of them."

Makoto paced to one of the benches and sat, taking her time stretching her left arm out, though she couldn't conceal a cringe of pain in her face.

Lips pressing together, Akira sat down next to her. "Busted arm, or shoulder?"

"Back, actually," she said, eyes away but shoulders tense. She fidgeted with her hands in her lap, but made obvious effort to feign that nonchalant pose with her back too straight.

"Here," Akira said, shifting on his seat to face her directly. "Face the stairs up, I'll see if I can't isolate the problem."

"You have a Persona that can heal our bodily damage?"

"More mundane than that. I'm studying medicine." She swallowed, then nodded. Akira pressed his fingertips against the back of her leather biker getup. She jerked, tense, but stayed sitting. Pressing in, he pressed his fingertips across her trapezius muscle. Searching for a problem to diagnose helped him focus away from the fact that he was touching a girl as athletic as him.

He found a clench as tight as a rock under the leather and Makoto jerked away.

Ryuji flashed them a leering grin. "Whoa. You cheatin' on Ann?"

Pink spread over the model's cheeks. "Ryuji! We're not going out!"

"Yeah," Morgana blurted. "He's clearly going for somebody who can nerd out."

Snapping to her feet and away from the transfer student, Makoto's blush darkened even more than the model's. "We are not a couple!"

Akira rose to his feet, glaring at Ryuji. "You were there when I told Shiho I was going to become a chiropractor. Diagnosis is a fundamental part of physical therapy."

The utility door popped open and Morgana dropped back to the floor. "Enough jaw-flapping, everyone. Time for the Phantom Thieves to disperse and rest. We've done a lot of good today, let's make sure we take care of ourselves so we can do so again."

Ryuji, tapping his foot in impatience, raced in.

They climbed up the shorter-than-it-should-be ladder to the lobby, but Akira snagged Makoto's wrist before they could head out. "Hey, Rider. Doctor Takemi's not quite a physical therapist, but you really need to see someone about those muscle knots you've got. If left untreated it could eventually cause muscle tearing."

She rubbed her fingers against the base of her neck, eyes squinting. Makoto took in a deep breath and for a moment he expected her to walk off, but instead she turned to him. "You're saying I'm not taking care of myself." Sighing, she lifted her eyes to his. "Big Sis and I are a lot alike. She's very driven and comfortable battering down rote problems. Am I going about this all too mechanically?"

Akira clasped his hands together, the very picture of serious contemplation. "Beep boop. Unit zero two confirms."

Makoto scowled. She stormed a few steps away, but stopped short of the stairs to the surface. After a brief breath, she rubbed her left arm. "I thought I changed when I awakened to my Persona and fought alongside the rest of you, but apparently it wasn't as much change as I thought."

The slump of her posture reminded him of himself, and making fun of somebody in an existential problem felt like what his father would do. Akira stepped closer and patted her arm just under the pauldron. "Hey, I know we don't always see eye-to-eye on everything, but I'm trying to get better too. If you need my help… Maybe next time we can start on the right foot."

Her face twisted, but after a moment she straightened. A twinge of pain flitted over her face. "Thanks, Joker."

She turned and walked out, past a translucent, blue barred door just a meter from the stairs. The wanna-be warden twins stood next to it, both of them holding a finger to their lips when he opened his mouth.

Akira looked back up the stairs after his upperclassman. "What's wrong with her?"

Contrary to his expectations, the cosplaying child with a hairbun and baton stepped back further behind the corner. The sound of Makoto's bootsteps faded.

Justine held her unsettling, dispassionate gaze on the transfer student. "We are here for you, Inmate. Remember that we are your conspirators as long as you are on the path to rehabilitation. You have been forming bonds with those – like you – denied a place to belong."

"Okay, first I don't think rehabilitate means what you think it means." Akira ran a hand back through his hair. The wanna-be warden with a clipboard betrayed no emotions or intentions and that set his teeth on edge. "I don't understand how befriending people down on their luck is supposed to make me more powerful."

Caroline brandished her baton at him. "You've already used it, Inmate!"

Akira stopped at just flinching back from her baton. His eyebrows arched and he slipped his gloved hands in his dark longcoat's pockets. "What the hell are you talking about?"

Justine held out her clipboard-holding hand at the door. "Come, let us explain and put to action. Our master has deigned to grant you a boon." The glowing blue door of bars swung open, a dull blue like a still curtain inside. She strode in, vanishing into the plane of whatever it was. He looked behind the door, no sign of shadow or movement in the corner beyond.

A shoe in his lower back knocked him stumbling into the doorway. The first thing he noticed as he caught his footing was the clean stone floor and sedate, neutral lighting. Bars stretched across the cell wall opening to the center of the unsettling panopticon, a soft blue covering almost everything but the grey stone. Igor's desk piled with papers in the center of the rug with a V on it. Like before, that strange marble-filled tube sat in the middle. A high-backed, bland wood chair sat off to the side, like a forgotten decoration. Akira swallowed when he looked closer and saw iron manacles, and a spiraling wire jutting from the top of the back, arcing up and forward to terminate in an iron cap.

The twins wearing hats collectively spelling Oxymoron stepped into view from beside the cell bars. Justine held her clipboard close, looking at it instead of him. "We intended to introduce you to fusing Personas later, but you have exceeded our expectations by beginning this process yourself in the lair of the gluttonous."

Caroline jabbed her baton at him, sparks flying when it tapped the bars. "You mean stumbling blindly around, entirely out of order. Our master offered you the chair first for a reason, Inmate!"

Akira scratched his hair, noticing that his gloves and swanky, high-necked coat and the rest of his Phantom Thief attire had been replaced by the rough white-and-black striped uniform. "Lair of the gluttonous… Kaneshiro's bank? What 'fusion' happened there? The time I accidentally fireballed Makoto because Morgana thought we could pool our Personas' magic power?"

Justine let the paper fall flat against the clipboard and turned a piercing gaze on him with that unnatural gold eye reminding him of a Goa'uld System Lord. "Think, Inmate. The one whose power, integrity, and resolve you sought when you saw your own was not enough to save your friends."

Akira thought through the very short list of people he thought had integrity. But adding power… "Father Sugiyama?"

Justine gave a slow shake of her head. "You do not trust him. You could only have fused a Persona if you both trust and receive trust from."

Akira took the bars in both hands. "Wait… that star-scaled serpent."

Without even having to speak its name, motes of silvery light gathered in the open chamber, coalescing into the serpent the size of a small van. Ananta Shesha's hooded cobra-heads spread as it stretched as if to say it was ready and waiting.

Justine gave a shallow nod, but if the light wasn't playing tricks on him he thought he saw a shallow smile tug at her lips.

A clang rang and electricity zapped through the bars. The transfer student jerked away to glare at the aggressive warden-wanna-be. Caroline glared right back, her expression undimmed from the restriction of only having one eye. "That's just one quality from one bond, Inmate! If you want any hope of true power, you'll need to reach out to many who have talents a weakling like you doesn't. Using those bonds as a basis, we'll help you forge that into power."

Justine gave a shallow nod. "Prove yourself and we will even help you strengthen your Personas. For now, we will show you the boon our master bestowed upon you."

When she gestured to the electric chair, Akira backed up a step. "Listen. I may have wanted to escape suffering before, but since meeting Father Motoori I have a different perspective on the value of life."

Caroline's baton clashed against the bars again, sparks zipping between the contact points. "Coward! It's not even for you, it's for your Personas. By sacrificing fragments of the power you're taking from others, you can concentrate it into something even a clumsy thug like you can make use of. Perhaps the other thieves you've made contracts with."

The prospect of being able to offer something useful to the others gave Akira pause. "How exactly does this work?"

Justine took her clipboard in both hands. "Think of the Persona you wish us to take to the chair."

He stepped back up to the bars. "Power from others…" He thought back to the bank, when the others introduced Makoto to his ability to talk Shadows into joining them. But what would help the whole team? He had a couple Personas with the power of ice, but Ann surpassed his strength without even trying. He acquired Orthrus in the halls of the bank, but Makoto seemed at least as strong in literal fire power. More to the point, what was the biggest gap the Phantom Thieves faced? Captain Kidd had plenty of speed and strength, though it only seemed to be able to use its wind either offensively or to increase its mobility.

"That's it," he breathed. The gap in the team's strength. Within the center of the panopticon, flutters of flame sparked and motes of light gathered into the distorted figure of a muscled humanoid, its bony joints standing out against its brawny arms and legs, a hole through the white oni's face.

The twins led Fuu-Ki to the chair, threw a tarp over him, and shoved what he would have sworn was a smaller figure wrapped in a tarp into the chair. The iron restraints pinched over wrists and ankles. Justine paused next to the bound Persona to look up at Akira.

He took a deep breath. "Father Sugiyama always did say I needed to learn to let go."

Caroline flicked a switch on the far side and a quick jolt blazed. Instead of a long spasm and agonized shrieks like he expected from horror movies, the entire Persona burst into a swirl held back by the strange tarp, raging for just a moment before the tarp settled down, to all appearances empty.

Justine cast the tarp to the hot-headed twin and picked up a green crystal shorter than a finger, crossing the panopticon to set it on the shelf jutting through a slot beside his barred door. Her one eye bored into him. "You may use this to imbue your weapons with the power sacrificed. You have already begun the next task on your road to rehabilitation by joining the strengths of your Personas with the strength of an ally's Persona. By learning how to join power there, you will be ready to merge power here. Do so once again and we will discuss fusing Personas the next time you come here."