Persona 5: Daywatch

by Ganheim

Akira is banished to Tokyo by his own father. What begins as a near-suicidal quest for vengeance becomes a desperate attempt to turn the pieces of his life into an honest whole. Aided by clever strategists and opposed by supernatural puppeteers, one lost boy's quest for something greater clashes those who would think themselves gods over men, and demons within. AU elements.

119. September 1st, Chained to Death

Persona 5: Daywatch

Thursday, 1 September 2016
Early Morning
Yongen, Leblanc

Futaba tapped her feet against the counter's base board. Several text windows sat open on her laptop. Her bots hummed along and her new phone-bugs in the police department were functioning normally, but weren't in the right place to shed light on Makoto-san's big sister.

Wood groaned as light footfalls trotted down the steps and a few seconds later, took a momentary detour into the bathroom. After the sound of running water, Akira stepped out, slipping his grey gloves on. As soon as his eyes locked on her, they widened. "You're still up?"

On the one hand, she was pleased he could recognize her and talk this early in the morning. Mom could do little more than groan before she got her first cup of coffee. On the other, how dare he impugn her ability! Especially after that heartwarming party she pulled together yesterday. At least her future nieces and nephews looked to be safe. She stuck her nose in the air. "For your information, I'm on the day shift now." She kicked her feet against the base board and gave a shy smile. "That way we can all do our thing." She scanned him up and down, the first time she'd seen him in anything other than casual street clothes, neither the height nor worst of fashion. His pants were a black-and-red plaid she couldn't imagine him ever choosing to wear, and while he always wore long sleeves this was his first white shirt, with a double chevron on the collar. "What's with the uniform?"

Akira adjusted the strap of an unfamiliar black satchel on his shoulder, with the team leader peering up from within. "They make us wear these in school and prison."

Sojiro ladled some curry on a plate with rice and brought it out to the counter. "Don't say that like they're the same thing."

The student caught her staring at him and picked at his white shirt. "What, something wrong with it?"

"It looks great," she admitted. Then let a smirk slip across her lips. "You're the one who looks weird."

He stuck out his tongue at her.

She returned the gesture, feeling like she was right back on the beach where it was hot and there were people but she was raring to go.

"Eat," Sojiro demanded. "You don't have much time." As the transfer student clasped his hands, he turned the television on and half paid attention to the Prime Minister yammering about national security and the Phantom Thief. He turned down the volume and rolled his eyes. "Even the Prime Minister's talking about that guy?"

Futaba bounced on her seat, still feeling energized from last night. "He's a paragon of justice."

Morgana popped out onto Akira's shoulder with a smile. "We're being recognized across the country, and at the hearth. Not bad if I do say so myself."

Akira swallowed a mouthful of curry. "Let's not get carried away. We need to keep a sense of perspective." He went back to shoveling in curry faster than she'd ever seen him eat before. Well, eating with a clear sense of haste. He wasn't at a Ryuji pace yet, but Akira always savored food and she heard him praise the curry before. It was weird to see him rushing.

Morgana gave a pleased hum. "As cool under praise as under fire? I bet you stole that from me."

Futaba gave her best smirk. "You sure don't have any modesty left."

Morgana balked.

Akira swallowed. "Please don't get into an argument on my shoulder." He raced through the rest of the morning plate of curry, then stood and bowed to Sojiro, then slipped in to the fridge for a few lunches. "Thank you. But I need to head out if I'm going to catch Yusuke in Shibuya."

Futaba tilted her head. "Why're you feeding Inari?"

Akira set one of the tupperware into his school satchel, then let Morgana back in. "Hifumi said she hasn't been eating well. He's delivering her lunch, in exchange for getting one himself." Satchel back on his shoulder, he sent a text and strode into the loud, never-stopping city.

Thursday, 1 September 2016
Morning
Shujin, Class 2-D

Akira slipped into the class not long before the bell would ring. Most of the several dozen students were already at their desks, chatting away in an uproar threatening to push him back out into the halls. He clenched his hands and forced himself to his seat. "Hey, Mishima-san."

The class representative was slumped on his arms, folded over on his desk. His face turned towards the windows, a cough mask concealing his cheeks and mouth but leaving plenty of space to see deep circles etched below his closed eyes. Maybe it was just the light, but he looked a couple kilograms lighter than last time they'd met. At least his chest rose and fell in slow, rhythmic breathing.

The transfer student set his school satchel down so the team leader could slip into the cover of the desk. A hand patting his shoulder triggered his proximity warning and he whirled around just to come face-to-face with the smiling blonde beauty. "Oh. Hey, Ann."

As boisterous as the rest of the room was, he had to read her lips as much as hear her say, "I can't believe we're already into the second term. Doesn't it feel like summer vacation's always too short?"

Akira shrugged. "We were pretty busy. In a way, we got to go through time and to other planets. I used to have to read pretty hefty books to get that."

Ann snorted back laughter, but her smile showed enough. "I'm not sure how you think something that interesting."

"We got to visit a desert world like Abydos." When incomprehension gazed back at him, he sighed. "Uh… like a trip to Cairo, but intergalactic. Then ancient Kyoto. We had stuff to take care of, but still got to see some sights. Maybe I'll even get to see Kyoto in real life one day."

Ann brightened. "I see what you mean. And I got to snag a bamboo back scratcher that looks like it came from a museum."

The front door slid open with a thud and Kawakami-sensei paced in, looking a bit less tired than usual. She set down her binder, gave a deliberate cough, then clapped her hands to get everyone's attention. "In your seats, everyone. Time for homeroom. You already had your vacation, and the school trip is next week. You kids get all the breaks. I hope you all followed the student council's email and double-checked your passport and paperwork."

The model headed for her seat, and Akira nudged Yuuki awake to get to the administrative functions. Those finished, Kawakami sat down with her binder to go through lesson plans and called an end to homeroom.

Ann rose, her eyes on the back-to-sleep class representative, but two girls cornered her at the back of the room. The one with shorter brown hair asked the model, "Takamaki-san. You speak English, right?"

"Sure," Ann said. "It's nothing special, I just lived there."

The shoulder-length-haired girl gave a little cheer as if she found something. "Cool! Could we ask you if we have questions about it?"

"I guess," she said. Her phone buzzed at the same time as Akira's and Yuuki's, and she disengaged from the girls to check on the group chat.

Hifumi and Yuuki's IDs remained dark, but the others lit up after Ryuji sent, [Everyone's talking about the Phantom Thief. Being famous is so cool!]

Morgana shook his head. "There he goes about fame again."

[This totally cute chick said she'd go out with the Phantom Thief. Think I could take her out?]

Yusuke blinked into the chat, [That sounds unwise. Please consider the repercussions.]

[That's not what the Phantom Thieves are about,] Akira sent.

[We can hold a staff meeting after school gets out,] Makoto texted. [Mishima-san?]

Akira sent, [He's out cold.]

[He was up even later than me,] Futaba sent. [We meeting here, or somewhere else?]

[It would be better not to remain too long in any one location,] Makoto noted. [A less frequented neutral location might be preferable. Would you be able to escort Futaba-chan from Yongen?]

[Kosei is having an informational assembly about our class trip to LA, but will release after,] Yusuke texted. [I can escort her if we must.]

Thursday, 1 September 2016
After School
Shujin, Class 2-D

When the class representative trudged out without a word, Akira decided the guy needed sleep more than the Phantom Thieves needed a new lead. Everybody would have some adjustment time to get back to school. For himself, it was time to review notes and get a head start on the homework issued today. He shot out a quick text to Hifumi to wish her a good day and hope she enjoyed the lunch he sent her way with Yusuke in the early morning, then brought out his notes to tidy things up before deciding which homework to start on.

A while passed before his phone rumbled in his pocket. A text from Makoto stared up at him, [Come to the nurse's office right now.]

A sense of dread seeped through him and Akira scrambled to pack, almost forgetting to hide Morgana. Rushing through the halls, for the first time Akira was glad for the wide berth the student body still gave him. In the nurse's office, a curtain shielded one of the beds. Makoto and the black-haired girl who spent after school texting in the hall outside his class sat in front of the nurse's desk. A woman he'd never seen sat in the nurse's chair, maybe mid-twenties with her braided hair pinned in a sloppy bun. Granted, the only time he set foot in the nurse's office during school hours was to bring Yuuki during the volleyball rally.

At the noise of the door bursting open, Makoto jerked, but when her eyes locked with his she let out a breath. "Good, there you are."

Akira glanced around the nurse's office. Nobody seemed sick. "You look okay. What's the emergency?"

Makoto nodded to the younger Shujin student next to her. "Ishikawa-kun?"

The girl wrestled with her hands. "Mishima-san collapsed in Newspaper Club. He mentioned off-hand that Madarame might poison him, do you think—?"

The nurse rolled her eyes and opened a notepad to block whatever had been on her computer screen. "Calm down, kiddo. There's no sign of foul play. Just lack of sleep combined with low blood sugar and iron. Hasn't had a good meal in a while, if I was to hazard a guess."

Akira let out a relieved breath and leaned a hand on Makoto's chair back. "That's all?"

The new nurse shot a narrow glare at him and turned on her swiveling office chair. "Young man, heart disease is Japan's leading cause of death and stress is the primary reason for it. We've already got enough sick, old people in Japan, we don't need sick young people."

Shrugging, Akira said, "It's just a little missed food or sleep. Isn't that everyone?"

Makoto and the nurse both scrutinized him with thin-lipped expressions. The president crossed her arms. "Have you had any fainting spells, Akira?"

He took his hand from the post of her chair and straightened. "Hey, what's the interrogation for? Mishima just needs a hot meal."

The nurse pressed two fingers against her temple and took a deep breath in and out. She turned a narrow stare on him. "One missed meal or short night is not going to result in a collapse. This is the result of chronic shortage of sleep and malnutrition. If you're really his friend, you're not going to let him go like that."

Makoto stood and bowed to the nurse. "Thank you, Kubo-san. I'll talk to him and Akira will make sure he gets home safe." She gave a brief bow to Ishikawa. "Thanks for helping Mishima-kun here."

They all stood and the girl from Newspaper Club paused at the door to throw a concerned look over her shoulder, biting her lip before leaving.

The nurse led them to the beds and pushed the curtain back just enough to let them in. His class representative had been quiet and lethargic, but seemed past his coughing spells. He still wore a cough mask. A half-drunk bottle of cloudy-white sport drink sat at the little table against the wall.

Makoto nodded to the nurse. "Could we speak in private? I still have hope we can take care of this without letters going home to parents."

Akira decided not to mention that the parents referenced did nothing through Kamoshida's reign of terror and wouldn't do squat now. The nurse seemed to agree anyway and gave a bow before stepping back out of the curtained-off bed.

Akira let the president to the head of the bed, but with the president looking concerned and serious he slipped his hands in his pockets to try to balance that out with a sense of nonchalant normalcy. "Hey, Yuuki-san. You feeling better?"

The representative's brown eyes slid away. With the mask, it was hard to see if he frowned, but his brows drew together. "Sorry for the trouble, guys. I guess that's all I've ever been."

Makoto stamped a foot. "That sounds like the kind of thing Kamoshida's victims would say while he was still in power."

The class representative reached a hand over his belly to grip his opposite elbow. "I am guilty of the things I have done."

Akira found his feigned nonchalance slipping away and he jerked his hands out of his pockets. He pushed his glasses back up his nose, teeth bared. "But not the things you haven't done. I thought we talked about this. You did not hurt Shiho. Kamoshida did. Kamoshida is the one responsible."

Yuuki turned on his side, back to the three as he stared at the wall. "It couldn't have happened if it wasn't for me. And then…" He took in a deep breath, his eyes flicking up to the transfer student. "That happened."

Makoto's eyebrows arched and she shifted her weight to her other foot as her piercing gaze shot to the transfer student.

Akira felt a bead of sweat trickle down his neck. "Guy talk. We'll go over it on the way home."

The president scanned the representative as if her gaze could peel away his reluctance and divine the true problem lurking inside. "Mishima-kun, you've been a member of the Phantom Thieves for longer than I have, but both as a member fighting to change hearts for the better and as student council president who sat back and let Kamoshida get away with Shiho—"

Yuuki flinched.

"—and Ann and Kiriko." Makoto leaned against the bed, her eyes on the floor. "I understand what it's like to desperately want to have been able to do something. To take on a heavy burden in an attempt to make up for what happened. I would give anything to go back and do things differently." She sat on the foot of the bed. "Kiriko-kun definitely would have won the student council election, but that would have been worth it. I can wish and lie awake at night about it a million times, but I'm here, not back then." She glanced to Akira, then the class representative. "Looking back only robs me of today for a day someone else already took."

The 2-D class representative took another drink from the bottle. "Shiho didn't deserve the injuries from that fall off the roof. But as horrible as that was, what drove her off that roof…" He wrapped his arms around himself. "It should have been me."

Makoto reached for his hand, but stopped short, her limb hovering for awkward seconds before she pulled it back. "Even if we want to think about the past, Mishima-kun, be honest about it. If you knew everything then you know now, could you have done anything?"

Yuuki set down the bottle on the small cabinet-table next to the bed and turned away from them.

Morgana popped his head out of the transfer student's satchel. "We're not going to get through to him when he's like this. He has a Shadow."

Makoto jerked around to the team leader and gave a nervous glance around as if fearing the nurse might overhear if she was there to notice the team leader. She stepped closer and whispered, "He has a Palace? You're sure?"

Morgana shook his head. "A Palace, no. However, don't you recognize obsession? A distorted desire warping his whole life outlook and behavior?" He looked up. "Joker? Call the team. You and Nightrider might be enough vanguard for a quick scan, but somebody else to back you up would be good. And we'll want Hawk in case his Shadow's deep enough I can't immediately pick up on it."

Thursday, 1 September 2016
After School
Mementos, Station Square

Akira tugged at his red gloves, his long coat swishing after him as he paced back and forth in the distorted version of Station Square. Granted, it was less crowded and therefore more comfortable than the real place, but the red sky was too dark for twilight but too even for overcast. Ann sat on a planter with a dead version of the green fern in the real world but looked no more comfortable than the longcoated student. Ryuji leaned against the plinth to the statue of Hachiko, arms crossed and expression inscrutable.

Makoto looked up from her seat against the wall next to the stairs down. "Pacing isn't going to make the others get here any faster."

A dark figure in a large, hooded cloak jogged from around the train car mockup and Hifumi said, "Ah, there you are, Akira-kun."

"Codenames," Makoto corrected as she stood. "Remember that we're in the Metaverse. Code-names help reinforce our will of rebellion." She granted a brief pause for the artist following a couple paces after.

Hifumi bowed at the waist. "Apologies."

A low whirring sound approached from the west and the Phantom Thieves, minus Hifumi, dove for cover behind planters and benches. It took until the Monabus came to a stop before Akira recognized the sound. It reverberated in a different way in the closed-in tunnels. The long passenger door slid open, but the hacker sat frozen in the bench seat, gripping the driver's seat in front of her. A second passed. Then another. Morgana said, "Uh, Oracle. We're there. You can get out now."

She sat there, hands still on the headrest of the driver's seat.

Makoto tilted her head, trying to discern what was wrong. "Oracle?"

Hifumi stepped up to the van's sliding door and saw nothing binding the hacker there. "Oracle?"

She reached in and the instant her hand touched the hacker's shoulder, Futaba clamped onto her and let out a wail that went on until her breath gave out. Which took quite a while for an out-of-shape ex-shut-in.

Hifumi patted the smaller girl's back with one hand and reached under her hood with her other. The red figure of Dihya manifested over her for a moment, then dismissed. "You seem unharmed. Did you encounter Shadows on the way?"

Futaba pulled in a long, deep breath. The president and artist both held their hands to their ears. "Byakko drives like a maniac on the surface roads!"

With the hacker out of his cabin, Morgana popped back into his catboy form. "I was trying to get back here before something could happen. Besides, it's not like there's room to get up to full throttle in the tunnels."

Hifumi tisked at the team leader. "You were speeding. It's different on a train when the lane of travel is isolated."

Morgana thrust his nose in the air. "The road conditions dictate… wait, you knew how fast I was going?"

"Yes," she said, as if confirming a cloud in the sky. "I stopped to scan for trouble as soon as Y—Fox and I entered the Metaverse, and again on the way. I know it's wise to make our separate ways into the Metaverse to reduce the chance of anybody identifying us as Phantom Thieves, but I was worried. After you got into Shibuya, I didn't even need to manifest Dihya to know where you were."

"Cool," Akira said. "Can you mark Mishima Yuuki from here?"

Hifumi brought her hand back to her mask and the red glow disappeared as Dihya formed above her. "I have never met your class representative. Has he been making aggressive or grandiose statements?"

Akira scratched the back of his head. "He's been pushing for weird requests sometimes. Like this lawyer guy he thought was taking advantage of Risette."

Bored, Futaba wavered from her heels to the balls of her feet. "I mean… lawyer."

"Taking advantage of in a romantic sense," Akira said with a shrug. "Sounds like the kind of thing entertainment rags would make up out of nothing."

Morgana planted his little hands on his little hips. "If he thought there was a solid case, he would have sent it to the group chat like he did all the others." He looked up at the girls. "Remember that Palaces and Shadows aren't necessarily evil, they're born from distorted desires." His blue eyes fell on the hacker. "The desire to escape suffering." Back to the longcoated boy. "You know him better than me, what would his distortion be?"

Akira took in a deep breath, and thought back to the day he talked to Yuuki on the roof. "He thinks he needs to suffer to make up for what happened to Shiho."

Dismissing her Persona, Hifumi looked across the group. "Who is Shiho?"

"One of my underclassmen," Makoto said, her eyes closed under her heavy iron mask. "Another victim I did nothing to save from Kamoshida." The hand not holding her shotgun clenched into a fist. "She… jumped off the roof. I will not repeat those mistakes."

Hifumi's red optics swiveled to the longcoated boy and he tried to give her a look promising to explain later, but didn't feel like doing it in front of Makoto. Risking his life for a fellow fighter was one thing, but he still didn't forgive her for letting things get to the point of Shiho's rape or dismissing it as 'horseplay'. He didn't know if he would ever be able to forgive her for that.

Ann held a hand to her head. "This is partly my fault. He was my friend since he and Shiho started going steady."

Futaba nodded. "He doesn't have my ability to hack personal information, but he's threatened people who talked crap about us on the Phansite."

Ryuji shook his head, his focus staying on Ann. "I wasn't buddy with him like you were, but he ain't a bad dude. He was even willing to run with me a couple times, he just sucks at it."

Morgana put away his folded crossbow. "Maybe so, but even Madarame wasn't mean to everyone. A Shadow is formed from the repressed inner self, not the face presented to society."

Ryuji rubbed at his forehead – or at least the skull mask over it. "Dudes, I get that, but… we're talkin' 'bout changin' the heart of someone we know. Of one o' us. If we start goin' after anybody who's in the way—"

"You changed my heart," Futaba pointed out. "Mishima isn't just 'in the way'. He created one of the most prominent Phantom Thief sites on the internet. If we don't act, all of the fame he's helped us acquire could be reversed and he could put the cops on the fast track to all of us. All the work we've done to help people will just become another instrument of terror for the establishment."

"Well," Ryuji said, his eyes darting about in thought. "Can't we talk to 'im? Try an' solve this without usin' the Nav for everything? Black Mask is using the Metaverse to get anything he wants out of peeps, I don't wanna go that way."

"He's not just unstable," Akira said. "I had to talk him out of trying to copycat Shiho once. If he gets more unstable, he'll try again and I have a feeling it'll be a very public attempt."

Yusuke nodded. "I agree. We have spoken little, but he has reminded me of the troubled times before you all freed me from Madarame."

Hifumi straightened her heavy hood. "In a twisted way, our very success and fame may have provided the very avenue for him to draw negative comparisons. By seeing us save those people, and knowing he couldn't save the one he loved, I can only imagine the dark pit of despair he finds himself in."

Makoto paced to the stairs down and paused. "It's also possible we might be able to do this without a fight at all. He can't have formed a Shadow until recently, we might be able to convince him to break free of his distortion with some clever negotiation. We won't know until we find him."

Mementos, Mishima Yuuki's Distortion

Hifumi stepped out of the 'Monabus' and checked to make sure Futaba-chan seemed fine as she ringed back to the ground from her flying Persona. With everyone present and accounted for, she turned her focus to the figure pacing in the middle of the room.

A hunched posture made the figure seem like an angry child storming in a small circle. His eyes glowed, and through the smoky darkness swirling around him she could just make out hair shorter but even more unkempt than Akira's. He wore dark slacks and a white shirt not tucked into his pants, ragged edges catching in the false wind swirling around him. "…and maybe this Matsushita guy would know someone bigger than Medjed." He shook his fists. "No, no, that'll never work! Medjed was bigger than national, Shiho'll know I did it just to get acknowledgment. Something more humble… she'll understand financial crimes. Odo Nozomi." He shook his head with violent motion. "No, no! Not enough!"

Akira trod forward, leaving his gun on its strap down but slipping his knife into his left hand. "Yuuki-san—"

Shadow Mishima whipped around and the smoky darkness around him sped up. "Who are you? What do you want with me? Can't you see I have work to do?"

Akira reached up to his mask and slid it up. "Yuuki-san, it's me. Akira. We're worried about you."

"Worried?" Shadow Mishima stepped back and forth as if he walked on unstable ground, hunched as if he wanted to throw up. His hands clenched his head. "About me? I was a zero, I was nothing until Shiho. She was the one who made my life worth living."

Ann-san came alongside Akira and slid her mask up as well. "No, Yuu-kun. You were the one she was waiting for. Someone who respected what she loved without putting her on a pedestal." Akira blushed and looked down at that, but Ann took another step forward, hand on her chest. "You believed in me just because Shiho did. You never judged us, never white-knighted us. I know you think Shiho was the only one with a big heart, but you were too! You both drew that out of each other."

Shadow Mishima let loose a laugh, something that might have been a cackle from Futaba-chan but carried a pain hers did not. "I knew what I was before she came along. The dust on everyone's feet. I was even ready to accept it before Shiho took pity on me." The smoky darkness swirling around him began to thicken. "You can't even fathom the agony of going from less than nothing to that, and having it all ripped away from me!"

Hidden behind his back, Akira's hand tightened on his machete. "Life may not always seem like a gift, but the struggle through it is—"

"You should understand me!" Shadow Mishima howled, wind whipping around, standing up taller than his frame seemed to accommodate before, just for his pained gyrations to intensify. "You tried to kill yourself too! Why deny me when you got to go all the way?"

The blonde's jaw drop was impossible to miss and Hifumi would've sworn her heart stopped. She didn't even realize Dihya dissipated.

"This isn't about me," Akira shot back.

"Of course it is!" Shadow Mishima wailed as darkness swirled around him. "I'm not even a zero, I'm a negative. Because of me, you were almost expelled, Shiho almost died, and I even slowed you down against that hacker who broke into your phone."

"I'm right here," Futaba mumbled. Her eyes weren't visible under her goggles, but from her tone she was still stunned.

What light filtered through the darkness glinted from tear trails down Shadow Mishima's face. Wrapping his arms around himself, he bellowed, "Why do all of you have to get so close to me? To show me heroism and love and accomplishment just to yank them out from under me? To keep them just out of my reach? Why can't you just be merciful and kill me?"

Futaba-chan tensed next to the shogi player, "He's about to go full Atoli."

The darkness thickened into a roiling cocoon around him and exploded out, knocking Akira and Ann-san sliding to the ground.

Where Shadow Mishima once wailed, a burning turtle ship sat. Flames burned at the low wooden base, a pole thrusting up like a sailing ship's mast. A figure was chained to it, wrapped in cloths and chains but so knobby-jointed it resembled less a human than monster. Chains locked the hands to the top of the pole, and wrapped the body against the mast, dozens of swords and spears impaling it.

Morgana readied his crossbow. "Look alive, Phantom Thieves! Hawk, strengths and vulnerabilities. Oracle, hang back and be prepared to heal if the Shadow surprises us."

The flames on transformed Shadow Mishima roared, engulfing him to his waist in dancing yellow. The Shadow heaved at Ann-san like a drunk stumbling toward a light post. Chunks of fiery lumber launched at her.

Hifumi clenched her jaw and interposed Dihya, who slammed her tower shields together and held her ground. The shogi player grit her teeth against the pain as flaming detritus slammed into her Persona and exploded in even more fire.

She let go and Dihya returned above her, Ann at the front. Hifumi stumbled to one knee and sucked in breaths as if she just finished laps in Kosei's pool.

"Thanks," Ann-san spared over her shoulder before summoning Carmen, who launched a ball of ice into the pyre ship. It drew a growl from the Shadow, but the flames roared anew the instant the spiky sphere detonated.

Hifumi left the others to do battle with their friend, the hesitation and empathetic pain on their faces causing a twisting in her own gut. But they were depending on her to guide them to safety, so she pulled herself to her feet and closed her eyes. Dihya manifested above her, and to her surprise she did not see a strong resistance to fire. "No significant weaknesses I can detect yet, but despite its flames it isn't immune to fire. Guard if it focuses on you, I think its abilities center on physical force. I'm not sure what to interpret about its tone regarding curses, probe with small attacks first."

"Yuuki, stop!" Ann-san shouted at the agonized Shadow. "We don't want to hurt you!"

"I don't deserve to live!"

Akira sprayed bullets low along the pyre's iron-banded wooden bottom, and the bullets deflected at odd angles.

Goemon danced forward to smash his bladed pipe down onto the pyre, but when it failed to sink in the Persona retreated.

Yusuke ejected his carbine's magazine, pressed a black crystal and slapped the magazine back into place. He took aim at the impaled figure chained onto the burning pyre and pulled the trigger. Dark bolts lanced at the monstrous humanoid shrouded in tattered clothes, and rips in those clothes disappeared.

"Absorption!" Hifumi shouted. "That's what's different. Everything else should work, champions of order!"

Morgana sprang forward, leaping up to slash and rebound with the precision of years of practice. With some cajoling by himself and guidance from Hawk, he led them through the fight until the glutton-for-punishment Shadow could take no more and reverted.

Shadow Mishima curled into the fetal position on the black stone floor and wept. "Why did you stop? I deserve so much more."

Ann-san sniffed back tears without success and knelt next to the Shadow to rest a hand on his arm. "The entire reason we became Phantom Thieves was to free people from suffering. Especially victims like you."

"How can I be a victim? So many people were hurt because of me." Shadow Mishima hiccuped. "Shiho's hurt because of me. I was just a boring nothing before her. She is the special one who made Shujin warm and bearable. You guys have the power to change people, maybe even the world." He slumped onto his back, gold eyes staring into the ceiling. "I'll never be able to pay for what I did to her."

When the blonde sniffled, Hifumi stepped forward. "Did she ever say she wanted you to pay?"

A beat passed before Shadow Mishima said, "No. But it's the only right thing to—"

"No buts," Makoto-san said, coming to a stop between the blonde and shogi player. "If the relationship between you two was even more intimate than the friendship we all share, it was a mutual exchange and she gained even more from her kindness than she gave up."

Yusuke-san came to a stop on the shogi player's other side. "Was it not the same for you? Every moment I give to Ann becomes an etching in time I would not trade for all the gold in the world."

Shadow Mishima's glowing gold eyes slid past them to the longcoated boy. "I suppose you're going to tell me life is still a gift?"

Ryuji swaggered to the ring next to the Shadow. "'Course it is. You get to run, an' eat steak, an' check out hot chicks. Life's got so much rockin' stuff to do. Even though parts of it suck – trust me, I know, I attend Shujin too, an' they took the track team away from me – you gotta put some more of the awesome stuff in. It's too short to spend all your time on every spider beneath a flower."

"I think you mean thorn," Makoto-san corrected.

"Ya know what I mean," Ryuji riposted as if they were all jocular buddies instead of just having fought a boy who confessed to wanting to die. He looked back down to the Shadow lying on its back. "We get life can be shitty, but it can be awesome too. That's why you gotta lean into the awesome. The world ain't gonna jus' give you a break, so you gotta make it outta what ever you can get your hands on."

Shadow Mishima looked up at them, his lips still curled in a frown. "So is that how you're going to do it? Change my heart because I've become a thorn?"

Akira joined the ring. "No. You can change your own heart. Because you're smart enough to realize the idea of you needing to balance things is never going to work. You know you'll never balance because she was so amazing you think nothing you do can ever match, much less make up for what happened. But what would she say? She'd want you to value yourself. If you can't do that, your mistaken impressions aren't just a risk to your relationship, they run the risk of blinding yourself to ways of helping her. Your unhappiness can't make up for hers."

Shadow Mishima pushed himself up to a sloppy seated position. "You… you understand… I guess you're one of the only ones who might. You fell in love with her, too." He let out a sigh. "She was worth more than all of Shujin put together." He wiped at his face. "You guys are the ones worth something."

Morgana hopped up to the crouching blonde's shoulder. "Your life has value just because it's your life. Hurting yourself doesn't add to your life's value. On the contrary, you're our ally… our friend. When you hurt yourself, that means there's less for all of us to rely on. You have to decide what's of real value to you, and feed that. That's not something the Phantom Thieves can do for you."

Ryuji turned around. "C'mon, guys. He's got enough to digest for a while. Let's leave 'im to it." He began marching to the exit from the small pocket distortion.

Ann jogged after him. "But we haven't stolen his Treasure yet. Isn't he still at risk of developing into a more twisted Shadow?"

Morgana hopped up to the artist's shoulder, the nearest member of the team following them out. "I don't think so. He didn't have the same fade-away as many of the more developed… maybe I should say more twisted Shadows we've come across, but his also hasn't spent as long feeding his distortion. Just by that talk, we've given him something to break his own distortion with."

They stepped out of the distortion and the portal's spiral slowed. Hifumi smiled. "I think he'll be fine. He'd already given up the seed of his distorted desires as we talked."

Akira came alongside the artist. "But it didn't look like our full, usual procedure. Isn't there a risk he'll rebuild his Treasure?"

Morgana folded his crossbow. "We can't guarantee that he'll never have distorted thoughts in the future, but we helped him free himself from his Treasure today. The rest is on him."

Makoto-san nodded. "Do you think…?"

Hifumi suspected she knew what the Shujin president wanted, so she called out Dihya and scanned for Niijima Sae. "Your sister is still much lower in Mementos. Did you want to see if we can reach her?"

A beat passed before Makoto-san shook her head. "We only rallied to investigate Mishima. Not all of us even have weapons, we shouldn't risk going deeper."

Morgana gave a proud nod. "That's my second in command. Don't worry, we'll work on her. After all, we equipped a budding Shadow to change himself. If it can work on one, we may be able to reverse course on one that's been building for years." He hopped ahead and popped into the van.

Yusuke slipped into the back bench, running a hand along the back of the next seat. "Who designed the aesthetics of your interior, Byakko?"

Morgana gave a slight sway conveying the impression of a proud nod. "Yours truly."

"We have something else to discuss," Hifumi stated with grim firmness as she took the last seat, the middle bench. She crossed her arms and glared at the longcoated boy in the front passenger seat. "Did you think none of us heard Mishima-san when he said you both attempted suicide?"

Marcus floated through the tunnel ahead of them.

Akira began to sweat. "Hey, if Oracle can fly around in Mementos, maybe I should test if—"

The doors locked and the Monabus accelerated down the underground rail lines. "This talk has been too long in coming, Joker."

Sitting behind the steering wheel, Makoto-san snapped, "When were you going to share something so serious with us?" With the team leader doing the driving, she turned in the seat to glare straight at him. "Hm?" Her gaze slid to the artist. "Did you know?"

Yusuke's outward calm remained undisturbed, but she detected a faint hitch to his breath. "I saw scars on his wrists, but he never brought it up so it never seemed appropriate to ask."

Futaba-chan's voice floated out from Marcus keeping a small lead on the van. "Why's it such a big deal? I was the same way, and I'm good now."

Ann's voice boomed, "That's because we changed your heart! It's why we changed your heart!"

Hifumi pursed her lips. "Is that why you've always been on the vanguard?"

"You are reckless," Makoto accused from the driver's seat, bracing as Morgana took a turn.

"But also defiant," Yusuke-san pointed out.

"For real," Ryuji blurted from next to the hacker, the wide eyes of somebody still trying to process. "You're a fighter, when life spits on you, you spit back!"

Marcus dipped as it swung through a curve in the tunnel. Futaba said, "I don't get it. People did tell you to give up and you fought harder just to spite them. Even with your mom at Tanizaki… you weren't happy, but you accepted conditions with her. You had a plan to get another year with her."

The shogi player would have felt more confident if he didn't avoid her eyes when he said, "I know what you're going to say. Suicide is a sin."

Heart clenching, Hifumi reached forward to clasp his shoulder. "Nobody turns to ending his own life on a lark. Tell me how you came to such a terrible place."

The Thieves threw against the left side of the Monabus when he sped around another many-masked monstrosity. Once they steadied, Akira's shoulder slumped under the shogi player's hand. "I knew I could survive a year at Inuri if I had an escape. So I studied and fought and made myself a big enough pain in the ass to make the old man want to get rid of me but not so much she wouldn't take me in. When it was time for the conference with tax assessors and lawyers as part of their yearly bickering over how much of his paycheck she got to have, how many 'visits' he got to have, it was my best time to make a case."

Yusuke leaned forward. "And?"

Akira's red gloves pressed against the dashboard ahead of him. "She told me she didn't even want me for all the old bastard's money. I decided to take my life into my own hands if it was the last thing I did. Next thing I knew was waking up in the hospital with Father Motoori holding vigil at the trauma outpatient ward. He told me about Jesus and the redemption of sins. He baptised me the following Sunday."

The rest of the drive to the stairs up passed in silence, and he refused to meet their eyes. They advanced up a dark escalator, boarded the Monabus again, and continued to a train stop with a utility door where they continued to the lobby. Lacking a weapon today, Hifumi waited until he disassembled and put away his sub-machine gun before she took bold action, stepped right against him, and hugged her arms around him.

Akira straightened against her, but then Futaba latched onto him from one side. Ann joined, and he gave a weak push once. She held on. He let out what sounded like a wet cough before trembling passed through his whole frame. Hifumi and Futaba tightened their arms, and he wept tears that may have been waiting for years.

After the long minutes of his agony passed, they stood back, every one of the Phantom Thieves still there with him. Hifumi pushed up his mask to look him straight in the eye and wipe away some of the tear trails with her thumb. "Other people betrayed you, but we won't. We're your friends. If your kin weren't good enough to be your family, we will be." She rubbed a gloved hand against his cheek. "I'm very serious about you."

He may have attempted a forced laugh, but just spat out a hiccup against her. Those stormy grey eyes fell, flicked back up, then fell again. "You can do a lot better than me."

She bopped him on the nose. "No do overs."

His tears already spent, Akira wrapped his arms around her waist and drew her close, regardless of the others still present.

Hifumi leaned against him, but there was more she wanted to discuss today. "Could the rest of you give us a few minutes?"

Ryuji coughed into a fist, then declared, "Yeah! We outta be goin'."

Makoto tilted her head in confusion. "But—"

The runner grabbed her by the arm and hauled her up the stairs, flashing Akira a thumbs-up before disappearing upstairs.

Yusuke met Hifumi's gaze and gave a soft smile and nod before departing.

"You okay?" Ann brushed a pigtail off her shoulder.

Hifumi looked up at the longcoated boy, unsure exactly how to ask.

He gazed into her eyes. "No. But who is? Everybody's trying to get 'good enough to get by', aren't we?"

That must have been enough, as Ann spared one brief glance to Hifumi before ascending the stairs. Futaba's shadow cast from something above, and a beat later Ann's voice said, "Give them some space," then her shadow extended over Futaba's and they both departed up the steps.

Hifumi cupped his cheek with one hand, staring into those eyes as turbulent as a typhoon. "Promise me one thing, Aki. Promise you'll come to me, or go to someone else, but never try—"

His arms tightened around her waist. "Don't worry. I won't. One of the things Father Motoori impressed upon me was the incalculable value of life, and how even in the midst of pain it isn't for man to judge his own time as over. That's for a higher power."

Hifumi let out a relieved breath and slumped against him. She wanted to know what Mishima's Shadow meant by claiming Aki'd fallen for Shiho, but the choking atmosphere was only now dissipating. As much as she wanted to know his heart was all for her, she didn't want to poison what resolution this day had brought. She had too many things to think about, herself, to trust she could be as patient and strategic as a new conversation might require. She ran a hand through his hair one last time, savoring the intimacy and cute blush on his face before she stepped back. "We should probably go and rest. I'm busy with school until late tomorrow, but are you free this Sunday?"

AN: I think the P5 game devs turned Futaba into a nerd kitchen sink, but .Hack/GU doesn't just have a great soundtrack, it also was popular in Japan. It's probable Futaba played or knew it. Depending on who you ask Atoli was either a habitual damsel in distress with co-dependent personality disorder played straight or deconstructed (to her detractors, she does get better as the trilogy goes on), the fact that we're never shown her offline life makes it difficult to tell if she really gets better or is still in need of therapy by the end. Either way, her "Why won't you look at me? Nobody looks at me!" encapsulated the struggle to balance independence with social fulfillment.