Persona 5: Daywatch

Monday, 25 July 2016
Early Evening
Yongen, Back Streets

Yusuke stumbled into the streets radiating with heat. Were it not for the blonde's support, however faltering her footsteps might have been, he would have fallen to the merciless pavement. From the groans and hisses around him, the rest of the Phantom Thieves were in no better condition. Worse, if the unusual shuffling steps from Akira were any indication. At least the heat was starting to drop as the clouds in the sky turned golden. "Even were we not low on medicines, now seems to be the time to seek out the doctor."

"Uh-huh," Ryuji blurted. He walked with a stiffer posture than usual, his pace favoring his left leg.

Lacking the capability to support any of them, the team leader trapped in the body of a tuxedo cat paced ahead of them to the Takemi Medical Clinic.

The sleepy doctor looked up at them from her work at a computer behind the window. Before she even took in the whole group, her eyes grew wide, her brows high, and she stood with her hands on her hips. "All of you?"

Akira tripped over his own feet and collapsed to the floor.

Ann mumbled under her breath, "That's gonna make things better."

Takemi swept an analytic gaze over the team. "Anybody have bleeding or broken bones?"

Ann shook her head. "No, Doctor."

The doctor set a With a Patient sign on the window sill, then disappeared. A moment later, the inner lobby door unlocked and swung open. She looked straight at the class president. "Are you well enough to help drag this bonehead back?"

Makoto nodded and aided the doctor in picking up and carrying Akira to the exam room. Morgana slipped in with them.

The other Phantom Thieves plopped into the stiff foam-padded chairs to wait.

Ryuji was the first to grow too bored for the silence. "Geez, whaddya think Akira did to cheese off the doc?"

"Think for once in your life, Ryuji," Ann snapped from Yusuke's other side. "She was getting suspicious before, and that was when only two of us at a time had to come. Now that it's the whole team? It's not like she's a back-street cyberdoc who owes the Street Sam a life debt."

"Bwuh?"

Yusuke left his query at an arched eyebrow.

Ann groaned and pressed her face in her hands. "Ugh. One of Shiho and Yuuki's games. We'd play over Skype every Sunday."

A click sounded from the exam room door.

Ann wrapped her arms around her torso. "Well that wasn't ominous."

Ryuji stared at the inner door for a few moments, then looked back at the other Phantom Thieves. "Well, at least it's the class prez in there. If it was you, doc would'a had things figured out just off'a your actin'."

She jammed her arms tighter and turned away, but the motions all at once drew a flinch out of her.

"Takamaki-san, are you all right?"

She squinted and rubbed at the side of her ribs. "It didn't seem so bad, but that Garuda must've hit Carmen harder than I'd realized. With all the excitement of getting Akira back, I didn't even realize it until just now."

Ryuji's foot tapped with impatience. "Whaddya think they're talkin' 'bout in there?"

"Gee," she shot back from Yusuke's opposite side. "I dunno. Why don't I send Carmen in there to spy on something happening in another room in the real world?"

"I'm just sayin'!"

Yusuke raised his hands. "Given the stakes of our current circumstances, could you two please settle down and remember the challenge before us is not each other, it is a doctor who has been suspicious of Akira-san for weeks?"

Silence stretched on for long moments, muffled speaking tones from the women in the exam room. The artist couldn't decide if he would have preferred raised voices to listen in, or a silence hinting at no problem to have to explain later. His Kosei classmates expected fights to be loud, but he learned from Madarame hushed conversations could be more concerning. Then a plaintive yowl came from the team leader.

Ryuji cringed. "Maaan, whadda we even say?"

Yusuke's gaze lowered to the floor on the far side of the room. "Sensei used to say it was best to speak the truth, for there is no despoiler of those with integrity – but he also stopped giving Saki-san lessons when she admitted she was considering leaving the atelier."

The three descended into arguing without even being able to decide on how evasive to be until a clunk echoed from the inner door before it swung open.

Morgana bounded out of the exam room. He rounded on the track star. "Don't say anything about the Metaverse!" He began pacing in a tight circle.

Makoto came out with a wrist brace on her left hand, but despite the brown paper bag sticking up out of her purse, she looked like a beaten dog. She shuffled to the others and whispered, "I never said it, but I think she knows."

"Thank you, Niijima-san. Get home and rest." Doctor Takemi stopped in the doorway and glared at the pacing team leader. "I don't care what you kids say, I'm not a veterinarian and I'm not prescribing sedatives for your neurotic cat."

The vehement protests and corrections from all the other Phantom Thieves, especially the team leader himself, drove Yusuke to stand. "Oh, he isn't a cat. His form was distorted—"

Ann hopped up, grabbing his battered arm by mistake. Despite his flinch, her fingers clamped down hard enough to hurt. "He means to say he's like a member of the family, not just some pet!"

The neighborhood clinic doctor looked at the artist with the same intensity as Madarame used to turn on Nakanohara after learning of the elder pupil's job at a local branch bank. Her eyes flicked to the blonde holding him. Then she stepped back and aside. "In."

Makoto trudged to the front door, avoiding the others' eyes the whole way.

Ann swallowed, then gave a stiff smile which only highlighted the coiling tension throughout her body. "It'll be fine, guys!"

Yusuke shivered as she stepped into the exam room. At least he would never be unsure if she was lying to him.

After the lock clicked, Ryuji rounded on the remaining thieves. "So whadda we do? Seriously, that doc has gotta have magic powers or somethin'. She gets ten answers from every question she asks! An' worse, she's one o' those chicks who got legs an' knows it!"

Morgana let out a sigh loud enough for both boys to know he wanted their attention. "Focus, Reaper. I don't know what she may have ascertained in most of our past treatments. Joker said she thought it was yakuza, and I don't think he'd lie without cause. She is clearly intelligent and has been cataloging our injuries, at least mentally, so we can't count on trying to fib something she's already seen evidence to the contrary."

Ryuji threw his hands in the air. "Then how the eff we gonna get outta this one? I don' even remember all the ways I got hurt by Shadows."

Yusuke pursed his lips. "This is starting to sound very much like our last argument. If this doctor thinks we are beset by yakuza enforcers, would it not be best to allow her to think that?"

Morgana's tail twitch-flicked behind him. "If that still worked, yes. But when I snuck in there with Nightrider, she started questioning why there were so many bruises in soft tissue without either clear sign of defensive bruising or abrasions from restraint. Or when we got those bruises, because apparently some look older than others even if we all got them today."

Ryuji scratched his head, then winced. "Howzat work?"

"Apparently bruising is when blood gets under the skin, and the hemoglobin metabolizes." The diminutive leader got up and started pacing in a circle again. "Joker kinda came out of it and was explaining it, but I had to bite him to shut him up when he started also explaining the injuries all came from the same fight." Morgana stopped and sat with a sigh. "I can't think of how to better describe our injuries for her treatment without revealing the Metaverse."

A click echoed and the exam room door opened. Ann strode out, holding a brown paper bag with her teeth as she re-tied one of her voluminous pigtails with her hands. That done, she took the bag in her hands. When the artist sent her a look of inquiry, she shrugged her shoulders. "Good luck."

Doctor Takemi's eyes fell on the artist's. "In."

Yusuke decided a doctor who could cow such solid members of the team was not one to provoke, so he took the doctor's orders and stepped inside. A modest examination room with a single bed lay before him, green plastic sheeting separating the exam room from what appeared to be storage by the impressions of boxes stacked on the far side. That the doctor closed and locked the door on the team leader did not pass unnoticed. "Where is Akira-kun?"

"Resting in another room," she said, terse. The hand holding a small clipboard jerked out at the exam room's bed. "I sincerely hope that little twerp's not representative of your generation." The next ten minutes contained a terse, rapid-fire medical history questioning more allergies than he knew existed.

"So," she said, looking him straight in the eye with a steadiness which reminded him of owls watching mice. "Kitagawa-kun, who surely isn't involved with illicit extra-curricular activity… Care to tell me how you injured your arm?"

"It was… my own carelessness." At her direction, he slipped the shirt off so she could examine the bruise directly. Despite Makoto's healing, a mottled purple-yellow marred the skin. That would take a few days to disappear, so Makoto and the team leader came up with a cover story on the way. "I thought I would engage in heroics to impress Takamaki-san." He hummed. Describing how the Metaverse turned a model sword into a sharp reality would make him seem mad. Best not even mention the model sword at all. "I swung… a branch, but slipped. Between my fall and the rebound, it struck me instead of the cads who threatened Takamaki-san."

Doctor Takemi poked at it, her eyes more on his than the wound when her finger dug in. She sat back down. "Should've put ice on it. An ice pack when you get back home will help the bruising and swelling go down faster, but it's still going to smart for a day." She scribbled on her pad, then twirled the pen in her fingers. "When did this happen?"

"This morning."

She scribbled for a bit, disdain slipping into her face. "How many…cads were on her?" She said with a brief poke over her shoulder at the hall deeper in the small clinic.

"Three," Yusuke said, deciding to keep things simple. The obelisk Shadows seemed to annoy Akira more, but Anubis still battled them all.

She finished writing, then underlined. "That's interesting. Takamaki said it was yesterday. Niijima said two, today, and somehow showed signs of minor frostbite. Kurusu said four." She stretched out, her pen scribbling over her clipboard. "I'm surprised the little idiot could count, he's got fewer brain cells than room temperature."

"There were four before they merged!"

She smiled and clicked to retract her pen.

Yusuke swallowed. This doctor was cleverer than expected… and more interested – the only doctors Madarame brought him to wanted to treat no further than the illness brought before them. "I… I meant before one fled."

"Oh," she said, still looking like the cat that ate the canary. "I'm sure. After all, it's so easy to get minor electrical burns, frostbite in the summer, and deep bruising in the shape of rubber bullet impacts when no police in the Tokyo departments were issued with riot gear in the days before." She crossed her long legs towards him. "And all, coincidentally, shortly before a public change of heart."

Yusuke's jaw worked open, then closed. He let a breath out, then in. "We can't stop. Souls are at stake."

Her posture straightened in the chair. "Please tell me you kids aren't doing something as insane as trying to conduct your own exorcisms."

Yusuke brought his hand to his chin. "Akira may be a member of the Catholic Church, but the rest of us are not." He tapped his fingers. "Maybe that shogi maestra he is fond of, but she isn't involved."

To his surprise, the doctor's straight posture relaxed at that, though he wasn't sure how to interpret the faint smirk. "A girl? I was starting to think that uptight little boy was too shy to have an outlet."

The urge to defend the transfer student drove Yusuke to stand. "Akira-san is quite possibly the most earnest, self-sacrificing soul I know after Takamaki-san. He carries more burdens than any man I have known." He cleared his throat and sat when he realized she wasn't sending out any further threatening flags. "His rest has always been more plagued than mine. Slower to drift off, fitful with nightmares. Though I am sure the heat is making it even harder for a boy who has only had a couple months to acclimatize to Tokyo."

He could almost see the filing and sorting going on behind her eyes. "Is he one of those idiots turning the AC off half the week to save electricity when it's a heat warning?"

"Nonsense." Yusuke gave a chuckle. "He does not have air conditioning at all."

Doctor Takemi set her pen and clipboard on the desk with conscious precision, then ran her hands into her short hair as if she couldn't decide quite where to start ripping it out. "You're telling me his parents sent a boy born and raised in the mountains to a home in Tokyo which doesn't even have cooling?"

Yusuke thought of the times he stared up at the underside of the roof as they waited for sleep to claim them. "I would assume the rafters let out some of the heat out from his living space." He described the rustic charm of the loft, his words spilling out a little faster as the doctor's gaze grew more and more intense.

"Are you telling me he is living in an uninsulated space directly exposed to the sun all day long?"

He swallowed.

"Get dressed." She scrabbled through some papers on her desk and scratched out a prescription. "Ice at least ten minutes on that bruise, then ten minutes off, if you experience discomfort in your arm." She shot up and filled a small box with anti-inflammatories with rote precision, rage leaking out of her stiff visage like flames under a door gap.

Takemi unlocked the door and escorted him back to the lobby, where the other three Thieves dropped into a sudden hush from their conspiratorial huddle. The door slammed behind him, and a moment later she paced to the window, wireless phone in hand. Her voice was soft as the cooing of a dove as she inquired, "Sakura Sojiro? I have you down as the guardian of Kurusu Akira." She took down the busy sign and slid the window closed before continuing.

The artist sat down next to Ann, glad the runner left the spot open.

Ryuji didn't even wait for him to sit all the way down before blurting, "Dude! What the eff happened?"

Yusuke folded the prescription and slipped it into his pocket. "She is aware Akira has been lying to her about how we have been receiving injuries, and knows not all of them can have come from some mundane source. However, I believe she has been overtaken by another priority at the moment."

Ann tilted her head. "What?"

Despite the muffling of the closed window at the doctor's desk, all the Thieves heard Takemi bellow, "Do you know what heat stroke does to developing brain tissue?"

"Perhaps Makoto was correct, and discretion is the better part of valor." Yusuke started to rise.

Ryuji's powerful grip brought him back down. "Dude, the eff happened in there?"

"I just described the rustic conditions of the loft in which Akira lives," Yusuke said, noticing the suspicious squint from the team leader who insisted he was not a cat. "That he does not have a window air conditioning unit, and there is a quaint view of the roof and rafters. I don't see what the fuss is about. Madarame's atelier is much the same."

Morgana blinked. "That doesn't sound extreme." He looked over to the natural blonde whose eyes widened. "What?"

Ann held her hand to her head. "Wait, that was the building roof?"

Ryuji's eyebrows arched. "So what?"

Ann plopped a hand on her face. "Ryuji, you don't get it 'cause you grew up here. It's just another summer to you, like all the others. Akira's from up in the mountains where it's, like, ten degrees cooler. I was the same my first year here, when I started middle school. It was so much hotter than Rauma I didn't even wanna go outside, and I had AC everywhere." She cringed. "Oh, geez. If social services ever came and saw he was in an uninsulated loft with no AC, they might call it unlivable conditions and put Akira in a group home… or worse, a legal guardian who'd treat him like garbage and watch him like a hawk so he never has time to go thieving with us."

Yusuke straightened. "Then I offer my Phantom Thief funds to pay for a window unit. I have only spent some of it on bean sprouts and art supplies."

Morgana paced in a little circle. "I doubt you could pay for it yourself, but you shouldn't. I'll put my funds in as well."

"Me too," Ann said.

Morgana sat down before the others, looking stern. "Lady Ann? Call Nightrider. We have a Phantom Thief proposal for the group to vote on. Joker's only got one place to legally call home as long as he's in Tokyo. Boss may be a demanding guy, but he's been understanding and given Joker a lot of freedom, even done stuff like taught him how to make coffee and some of his cooking."

She opened a line, despite the confusion in her sapphire eyes. "Hey, Makoto? Morgana's got a vote to help Akira stay with Boss." She listened for a moment. "No, it's about the heat. None of us realized it until he passed out and the doctor said something about a risk of heat stroke. So we're all going to chip in to buy him a window AC unit."

Morgana's tail twitched.

Ann gave one of her beatific smiles. "Awesome, Prez!" She looked out at the others. "She said she's in. She's already shopping online and said she'll post the options to the group chat."

Yusuke whipped out his sketchpad. That smile had to be captured!

Tuesday, 26 July 2014
Early Morning
Yongen, Takemi Medical Clinic

Akira opened his sleep-encrusted eyes. His back popped as he stretched his limbs and threw off the stiff, hypo-allergenic sheet. His mouth felt raw, but he hadn't brushed since going into Futaba's palace on Sunday. He disentangled his legs from the sheet and sat up from a raised foam-plastic mattress. He remembered coming to the clinic, then struggling back into consciousness to help Makoto last night before passing out again. Based on the white plastic siding on the walls and smell of chemicals he knew he was still in the clinic.

A door slamming closed snapped his senses on high alert. He looked around for weapons, then his shoes – not just for the knife hidden in it. The oxygen canister, even if not full, would be too heavy for him to pick up without help. Footsteps neared and he reached for a metal chair in a corner, but stopped when he recognized the plonk of platform shoes.

The door swung open and Doctor Takemi strode in, sans her usual white coat. She wore the same dark, spiderweb-patterned dress he first saw her in, but bore an irritated glare he'd never seen from her before. "So, how did my little Phantom Thief sleep?"

Akira choked on air. He turned and coughed for a few seconds until he regained control of his breathing, then tugged at his rumpled shirt to get a sense of control. "I don't… don't know what you mean."

Steady as the tides, Takemi took a deep step closer. Clipboard in one hand, she snagged his wrist with strong fingers, the pads of two fingers tensing. Rudimentary knowledge of pressure points flashed through his mind before he realized her eyes had un-focused. Then she released his hand, took her pen in her right with a click to extend the point, and scribbled. "I'm a doctor. People lie, and treating them properly often relies on seeing when they're saying something other than the truth and judging what that really is. Your friends had some… interesting things to say yesterday."

Akira shot straight. They couldn't have been stupid enough to spill any concrete particulars. He hadn't been awake for most of Makoto's interrogation, but she looked awkward at the best of times and the team leader kept trying to coach her so she couldn't have just spilled everything. "Well… you already know about the yakuza."

Her brown eyes narrowed. "When a bunch of troublemakers walk into a mafia kitchen, they're all thrown into the freezer. Yet somehow only one of your friends showed signs of serious frostbite. And minor burns on that bottle blond." Her eyes narrowed into angry slits. "And you brought in yet another battered boy. Isn't it bad enough to get yourself beaten up on whatever crusade you've gotten yourself into? Why can't you kids just leave the world to pick itself up?"

Akira faced off against her. "Because nobody would come for me!"

The air conditioning thrummed in the ceiling.

Takemi's eyes flicked over him, but kept coming back to a stop on his as if they could divine something he hadn't said. She sighed and moved a box of graduated cylinders from the chair in one corner and set it on a taller stack of boxes. She slouched into the seat, chin in hand as she looked at him. "You remember asking me how I got into medicine?"

His mind turned over. She tended to avoid talking about her past, except when he grilled her about it to buoy her spirits when Masa's spectre still loomed over her. "Spending months in a hospital when you were a girl."

She waggled her clipboard at him. "Months every year," Takemi corrected. "I had a glandular condition which resulted in a compromised immune system. It wasn't contagious, but that never stopped anyone from treating me like I was. It started with wanting to understand what was wrong with me, and kept going because at least books and medical journals wouldn't call me ghost girl and leave me all alone in the school yard."

Grey eyes fell to the scuffed wood floor. Feeling the need to sit down like the doctor, Akira hopped back onto the raised, foam-plastic mat and clasped his hands in his lap.

Takemi sighed, but at least when she looked up at him it wasn't with that condescending anger he expected. "Medicine saved me, and I wanted to save others like it did me."

Akira couldn't quite make himself meet the doctor's eyes. At least she followed through. His dream of going into medicine meant squat when the results of his life were sprains, black eyes, and tears. "That why you're working so hard trying to finish that formula and suspension for Miwa-chan?"

"Not just her," Takemi retorted, sounding more disappointed. "I don't like all the bustle and randomness of being a neighborhood clinic doctor, but with the yakuza gone it's my only legitimate source of income." She pursed her lips, her brown eyes boring straight into him. "I don't like seeing people hurt. Especially repeatedly."

Akira forced himself to straighten, even though that put his eye level quite a bit above hers. "And I can't turn a blind eye to people who are suffering, abandoned by the world. That's the kind of cowardice my parents would do."

Her searching gaze probed his for long moments before she sighed. "I can guess how that shy girl with the headband might have come under a predator's sights, but you didn't stop there. Coming in with that pretty blonde thing with the strained ankle? Bruising on that try-hard who thinks shirts make him a delinquent?" She let the clipboard fall to her lap. "And then the boy from la-la land? Are you seeking out children with even less common sense than you?"

Akira's posture tensed. "None of us can just sit back and do nothing when the people around us are hurting. We're fighting back the only way we know how."

She responded in kind, "I've already seen the scars on your wrists. I could just tie you up and drug you to keep you out of trouble."

His heart rate rose, but this was the kind of conflict he'd been fighting his whole life. He brandished his best smirk and held a hand against his chest. "Why, Doctor, I didn't even think we were far enough for dinner."

She lashed out, smacking his knees with her clipboard. Despite that, her frown seemed shallower. "You and your friends are getting increasingly odd injuries." She paused for a steadying breath. "Don't make me the doctor who has to certify a children's suicide pact."

The desperation and accusing look on Morgana's face when he castigated Akira earlier came to mind. "I can't tell you we'll never be in danger in the future. But I can tell you none of us want to die."

She didn't stop him from walking out after that.

AN: It seems like most of the confidants figure out Akira's a Phantom Thief by the end of the arc, in some cases it makes sense. Kawakami and Hifumi both explicitly mention the timing and lack of anybody else in the know. For Takemi it wouldn't take much for her to piece things together even if she's not being given a more realistic treatment like I'm doing for Daywatch. She was a doctor who cared in the game, even if medical research does NOT work that way. Don't worry, she'll still get help with Miwa and Oyamada. You don't experiment on a treatment for one person by giving it to a person without that disease and hoping Joe Normal doesn't die, that wouldn't even give you useful data. For Yoshida I always thought it felt weird for him to say it outright to start with, much less figure it out when you did nothing directly for him, and there's little indication the Phantom Thieves were ever mentioned in his presence. He chose to bring it up himself without a sign it was a part of the public discourse he could expand his platform by bringing up. That is part of what will be handled differently in Daywatch. That and it seemed remiss not to use a responsible adult and politician as a foil to Shido.