Good Day Readers! Obviously, I do not own anything connected to the Persona series in general or Persona 5 specifically, I DO own Chiba Natsumi and Anais Ouvrard, along with Natsumi's immediate family members and the original Personas that will be showing up on occasion.
I would appreciate any responses that you have, please enjoy
Chapter 65: The Impossible Palace
Since we had finally acquired the name necessary for our infiltration to begin, all of us met up in Shibuya, it was better to meet here than at the café since we'd probably need to take off to wherever the location was. Everyone except for Ryūji had shown up and it was starting to get unnerving that the boy had yet to arrive, I know I hadn't appeared concerned in the Chat last night, but if Ryūji had got hurt then that was really worrying. Luckily for us, the blonde boy soon moved through the crowd towards us.
"I can't believe you guys ditched me yesterday! I almost entered a world I want nothing to do with!" Ryūji yelled. My eye widened at this, I followed Ryūji gaze and found his brown eyes were locked on Ren and Morgana; Ren looked down at his shoes and shifted his weight slightly, while Morgana's eyes were moving to look everywhere except at the accusing blonde.
"What are you talking about?" Ann wondered. It was rather confusing the string of words that had escaped Ryūji since I wasn't entirely sure what to make of what he had just accused Ren and Morgana or doing, it seemed true given how the two of them were acting; but I was a little more concerned by how scared Ryūji actually sounded about this mysterious world.
"Better question, do we actually want to know?" I suggested. Because anything that scared Ryūji was something I was deeply concerned about hearing or even encountering since he always seemed pretty unflappable, even in the most bizarre of circumstances; he hadn't even really seemed afraid upon ending up in the Metaverse for the first time.
"Nothing!" Ryūji exclaimed. That caused my eyebrows to rise up since he seemed deeply opposed to even speaking about what had happened to him, I shot a look over at Ann who seemed equally spooked by what had just occurred. "Just start it up, Yusuke," Ryūji insisted. No one said anything in response to this as all our eyes drifted over to look at Yusuke.
"Okay," Yusuke agreed. He seemed a little perturbed by the scene Ryūji had caused, but proceeded to comply with the boy's desire and pulled out his phone to quickly bring up the Meta-Nav. "As Ann already check, Kaneshiro's name does get a hit, which means we need the other keywords now," Yusuke admitted. Now came the time to start guessing, I could start looking but the more information could be better before I randomly start trying to search the other world; especially since we didn't have a concrete location unlike with Madarame and his shack.
"What he thinks of as his Palace and where it is," Morgana reminded. The form of the Palace might actually be the easier one this time around as opposed to the location. "But we don't have any clues other than people falling victim around here," Morgana pointed out. Which was somewhat worrying, Shibuya was the only place we knew had a definite connection to Kaneshiro. "We'll just have to try whatever keywords we can come up with," Morgana decided. The guessing game was probably going to be the best way to go at this rate.
"Urgh, that's gonna be impossible… how many buildings do you think there are in Shibuya?" Ryūji complained. I didn't actually think it was impossible; all we had to do was think about the information we had on Kaneshiro; he forced students to smuggle drugs by offering a high pay-out and then blackmails them with an insane price attached in order to get rid of them.
"Not necessarily," I admitted. Everyone proceeded to look over at me with curious expressions as I tried to put my thoughts into order about what I needed to say. "Iida told me and Ren that he's being blackmailed and they want an exorbitant amount of money to get rid of it, money which can only be gained by taking part in this job," I pointed out. Ren seemed to perk up as Yusuke gripped his chin in contemplation.
"Ah, that means the cash flow simply ends up going back to this Kaneshiro in the end," Yusuke realised. Which caused me to smile as understanding came upon Ann's and Ryūji's expressions while a satisfied purr began to escape from Morgana. "Which means his goal is likely tied up in money," Yusuke commented. So, we were probably looking at a Greed based distortion for this Palace.
"Which means we can use that to narrow down what buildings Kaneshiro might think off for storing money," Ren added on. An energy seized over our entire group as we moved in a little closer to each other, we were definitely getting closer to fulfilling Niijima-senpai's request; at least we would have more than four days to proceed with the infiltration part.
"And if we figure out what the challenge is, we may be able to guess where it is by association," Yusuke suggested. That was a reasonable thing to suggest but it was quite clear that he was forgetting something that would make finding it much easier than randomly guessing where it could be connected to on this plane of existence.
"Or we just figure it out, then have Natsumi take a look with her special eyes," Ann reminded. I smiled in response to her words as Yusuke nodded his head in agreement with what had just been said; apparently, he had forgotten about what my eyes were capable of doing, but we needed to focus on figuring out its' shape first.
"Hmm… it's prolly somewhere he's got complete control over… maybe a garden? You know like a hidden vault or something," Ryūji suggested. It wasn't a bad suggestion, but unfortunately it wasn't right, I wouldn't be too surprised if the idea of money ended up affecting how the Palace's appearance ended up coming out.
"Since he likes money, so… what about a money bath? I've seen people online with things like that!" Ann cheerfully suggested. I did not understand how people could do something so ridiculous just because they had a large amount of money, also the suggestion was rather odd in and of itself, but it still wasn't a hit, this caused my lips to pull into a frown.
"No… not even close," Yusuke stated. He then looked at Ren who seemed to be contemplative from the look on his face. "How about it, Ren? Can you think of anything?" Yusuke asked. Ren adjusted his stance and seemed to be thinking about something before lifting his head in order to look at the rest of us with an almost rock solid certainty in his eyes.
"Why not start with the most obvious one?" Ren suggested. The others looked at each other in confusion as to what he could possibly have been meaning with those words; a sigh escaped the boy, but it was softened by the smile that came onto his lips shortly after. "A bank," Ren commented. That really did seem to be the most obvious answer and as luck would have it, that actually got a hit.
"So, he thinks of somewhere in this city as his own bank!" Yusuke realised. It was a pretty ugly thing to think that he believed somewhere was a place where he could store and retrieve money, but it certainly fit the deranged mind that we were currently dealing with; this Kaneshiro had caused more wide spread harm because of his cruelty than any other Ruler we'd faced down before, I was looking forward to stopping him from abusing the innocent people he was hurting.
"I thought it'd be something less realistic. That's all it is, huh?" Ann commented. It wasn't like the other Palaces had been unrealistic to be fair, a castle, museum and opera house were all pretty standard buildings; the only place we'd been in the other world that even slightly stood out was Mementos and that was probably more based on the source being a vast amalgamation of thoughts.
"Now then, what location would Kaneshiro think of as his bank?" Morgana wondered. With those words it was probably time for me to start using my eyes to look around, hopefully I'd be able to see a flicker of the distortion easily from down here; but if not then it would be a pretty simple task of finding a location that would get me high enough above Shibuya, accessing it might be the difficult part though.
"Alright, I'll take a quick look," I decided. Closing my eyes, I started my mantra before slowly allowing my eyes to open and take in the sight of the Palace, a vast green sky was the first thing I notice, which was a little worrying, but as I lowered my eyes I quickly understood why the green stretched out so wide. I felt my mouth run dry as my heart hammered away in my chest, my breath started to quicken as my eyes darted about looking for just a small sign of hope… and finding none. "Oh gods. That shouldn't be… this can't…," I rambled.
"Natsumi! What is it?! What's wrong?" Ren's voice came. But there was a strange sort of echo-y sound to it, all I focused on was the all-encompassing green sky that blanketed our surroundings. Suddenly, hands clamped onto my ears and I was forcibly jerked back to reality as Ren looked at me with wide eyes, he slowly removed his hands but kept them cupped around my ears. "What is it?" Ren asked. He sounded panicked and as he should be given what I knew.
"Shibuya. The Palace is all of Shibuya," I revealed. Horror descended onto Ren's face as he realised what had terrified me so much, to make things worse, the Meta-Nav proceeded to activate and drag us over to the Metaverse; I was confronted with the awful scene that I had just seen with everyone jumping in shock as they took in the expanse that we would have to deal with in this infernal place.
"Damnit! I wasn't expecting this!" Skull exclaimed. He was looking around rapidly with his Rebel Weapon at the ready for a fight, but I didn't actually sense any Shadows in this portion of the Palace which was a little unusual; not that we could focus on that when a small and rather meek sound escaped from Panther. I looked at her as did everyone else and I saw her face was pale which made the red of her mask stand out more.
"I'm more concerned about what those are!" Panther called. She raised her hand, which was shaking and jumping rapidly to point in a direction closer to the shopping area; Joker steadied me and we looked in the direction, only for all of my blood to chill at the sight that greeted us, for all around us were walking ATMs.
"Walking ATMs! That must be his cognition of people," Fox realised. That was the only conclusion that could be made from seeing this sight, where people would normally be walking around and instead it was a representation of how little Kaneshiro actually viewed the people as humans. "So, this is what Kaneshiro considers a bank," Fox sneered. I know that Madarame viewed people as paintings, but even then, they still had a human shape within the frames… there was something wrong with this Palace, more than even the others.
"Despicable! I knew he was a criminal, but this is horrendous!" Joker snarled. It was truly sickening to see the utter apathy that Kaneshiro possessed when it came to the people he was hurting; to only see them as things to take money from instead of the victims he was hurting… my stomach was threatening to revolt the longer I focused on this fact and instead tore my gaze away from the people.
"I never thought it would be the entire district," Mona admitted. That was as worrying as the horror of Kaneshiro's cognition of people, for the Palace to be this massive was quite a difficult obstacle for us to overcome since the buildings could obscure the actual Palace and we might miss the actual Palace if we didn't know that it looked any different to reality. "Look around us, the distortion is affecting the whole of Shibuya," Mona pointed out. The others started to gaze around to take full stock of our situation.
"Huh? Whaddya mean?" Skull asked. I looked at the boy, bewildered by what he had just said as I thought it was rather obvious as to why this was so strange, he had seen for himself that the further away from a Palace one was, then the more the cognitive realm actually looked like the physical world; it was how him and Joker had ended up getting tricked into the Metaverse that first time after all.
"Ohhh, that's right! Even when we were in the castle and the museum, the city outside looked normal. And I'm guessing the opera house was the same," Panther remembered. I was relieved that someone had actually remembered this bit of information, especially since Panther hadn't ever physically experienced the sensation.
"Pretty much, the distortions of the last three were extremely localised to a specific building. Here, this is more spread out than anything I could have anticipated," I explained. Which just made our job of finding the Palace that much harder since it could be anywhere in Shibuya and we might not even know it unless we ended up stumbling over it, which seemed quite probable at the moment.
"He sees everyone in Shibuya as his patron," Fox bemoaned. I looked over at the boy and found that he had been busy gazing around at the people walking around us, I moved over and gently lay a hand on his arm; Fox was biting hard on his bottom lip but at least the skin hadn't been broken because of his worrying, not that I blamed him in the least due to the horrible sight before us.
"No surprise for a mafia boss," Skull sneered. I nodded my head in agreement to those words, it really was no surprise that someone like Kaneshiro would actually believe he had any right to pull money from everyone that chose to come to Shibuya; he was a loathsome individual to be confronted with, but I suppose that was what we got for targeting someone who didn't bother hiding that he was evil.
"It's best we focus on finding Kaneshiro's location and stealing his Treasure as soon as possible," Fox suggested. He seemed to have recovered himself now, he turned to look at the rest of us with a steely glint within his eyes; it was pretty important for us to get started, especially since we were currently free of any Shadows which would make our investigation easier so long as they remained gone.
"Yeah, his hideout's gotta be somewhere around here. Let's go look for it," Skull encouraged. He seemed rather energetic but that was probably because we now had something to focus upon instead of wandering around blindly now; we started to move off, but I didn't detect one set of footsteps and instead turned to face the motionless individual, who turned out to be Joker which caused my eyebrows to furrow in confusion.
"What's up Joker?" Mona asked. Our navigator had also stopped and turned back to look at our leader, Joker seemed to be deep in thought as he looked at the ground while tapping his foot rapidly; when Mona spoke, it pulled Joker out of his thoughts and he turned to look at us with an uncertain expression on his face as if he was struggling to think about something that seemed crucial.
"I don't know… I just think we're missing something, something important," Joker explained. I couldn't deny that that it did seem like there was some kind of important puzzle piece that we were lacking regarding this Palace, but I couldn't figure out what it was that we were missing about this latest challenge we'd found ourselves confronting.
"Perhaps as we search, you'll figure it out," I suggested. It was really the only thing that I could think of in the moment, Palaces always ended up containing the answers to their own questions, though we wouldn't be able to rely upon using the physical word to overcome the issue given how vast the space this Palace was occupying happened to be.
"Hopefully. And hopefully it's nothing bad," Joker agreed. With that we started to walk into the shopping area in the hopes that we would be able to locate the place we were hunting for; I flexed my hand and just barely held back from summoning my Rebel's Weapon, yet I wished for the heavy wood in my hand simply for some kind of a comfort for the current state of my nerves
"In any case, let's look for a bank. There should be a huge one around here somewhere," Mona reminded. That was true, looking for any building that was even somewhat similar to a bank would be the best bet to finding the entrance to the actual Palace, all we had to do then was find a way to get inside of the damn thing.
The shopping district looked almost ill when we properly entered it, thanks to the green sky that loomed over us, it darkened the surrounding considerably which gave it an unsettling atmosphere, but those horrible cognitions still stuck out even in the gloom. I felt like I was going to jump out of my skin given the current pressure that was weighing upon all of us.
"Hey!" Panther cried. I did end up jumping at hearing Panther speak, I turned to see what she wanted us to see and felt my heart sink when I saw that only a short distance away was an ATM, but this one possessed a broken screen and it was smoking as well. "Look at that person trembling over there… do you think he's a victim? We should talk to him!" Panther suggested. That was quite a likely possibility, we approached and Skull wondered if they even could talk given the lack of mouths. "Excuse me, can we-," Panther began to speak.
"Ah! P-Please forgive me!" The person screamed. We jumped back at the sudden scream that had escaped from this person and my heart gave a sad lurch at hearing the terror that was inside the voice that had come from this cognition; for this individual to be so terrified of strangers approaching him or her just randomly made me wonder what Kaneshiro had done to make this person live in such fear.
"What happened?" Joker soothingly asked. He held up his hands as if to show that he meant no threat to this individual while giving the rest of us wary looks, likely concerned about the fear that had emanated from the cognition as the rest of us were; Panther's hand was clasped over her mouth while Skull was tense all over, Fox was looking at the ground as for Mona, his eyes were tightly closed.
"I-I don't have any more, please! I'm telling you, not even one yen!" The person panickily declared. Oh gods, this person thought we were part of Kaneshiro's group, but to think that the fear this cognition was feeling had to come from the actual person and that it was this intense; I shudder to think what the person endured at the hands of Kaneshiro to be this terrified.
"Whoa, cool it. We're not tryin' to mug you or anything," Skull insisted. He sounded a little panicky as he said those words, probably trying to reassure the cognition that we truly weren't here to harm the cognition like it so deeply feared was going to happen; of course, given the shaking that covered the cognition I don't think it was working.
"Please, I don't want to end up like the others!" The person pleaded. Well, that was an unsettling piece of information to be given to us, if there were people in a worse condition than this cognition was then that deeply concerned me about what had happened to cause these people to be in that much worse state and what it could potentially entail.
"Were you assaulted?" Fox asked. All that got was a terrified scream from the person, I really don't think we were going to be getting any concrete information out of this individual; the terror that was felt overwhelmed any bit of rationale, whether that was how the actual person was or not I couldn't tell but it was a horrid thing to contemplate someone enduring all of this because of a malicious individual.
"There's no doubt he's a victim, but he can't even hold a goddamn conversation. Let's try someone else," Skull suggested. It was probably best that we did walk away for now, we back away from the trembling cognition and started to move away; I flicked my eyes about hoping to find something that will make this grip even slightly worthwhile given the lack of anything we cruelty had going for us.
"Are those…," Fox spoke up. His words brought us to a sharp stop and we all looked over to see what he was talking about and I felt my heart sink when I saw that off to the side were more people collapsed on the pavement; those must have been the other people who had been mentioned by the previous cognition we'd spoken to.
"This is terrible… all of these are real people, right?" Panther asked. It was pretty horrible to witness just how deeply people had suffered because of Kaneshiro, to be led here on the ground probably indicated something rather terrible about their actually physical predicament even if we didn't know all of the details.
"The representations of them at least. But if this is how Kaneshiro views them in here, then it's likely that's their condition in reality as well," I sombrely stated. If this was how they were then that probably meant they had no money to even take care of themselves; or worse the mental trauma of having to deal with Kaneshiro had caused them to shut down completely.
"This is effed up," Skull breathed. I couldn't agree more with his words, it was pretty sickening that this was happening, the slaves at Kamoshida's had been awful but… I didn't know how to articulate it, simply that there seemed to be something more evil about this situation then there had been about the castle's cognitions.
"I don't think we can talk to any of the ones here," Mona softly suggested. That was a pretty obvious fact, there was nothing to be gained from standing near the scene and we certainly couldn't help them either, we walked away from the collapsed cognitions, but I felt like my heart was being pressed down into the ground to leave them behind like that, even if I knew there was nothing we could do for them.
"Tch, all of these are Kaneshiro's victims," Skull cursed. We had reached the cinema which pretty much cut off any further progression and we had found nothing except for more of those highly disturbing cognitions; there continued to be no sign of any Shadows, not even the warning sensation that typically accompanied their presence.
"That would appear to be the case, but there is nobody we can speak to, let alone a bank anywhere," Fox commented. He was quite right about this fact; nothing had leapt out to me as being the Palace and it seemed to be the same for everyone else. "Let us try checking around the station once more. We may have overlooked something important," Fox suggested.
"We've got nothing to lose, let's go," Joker agreed. On the way back, we spotted another badly damaged cognition, but unlike the first one this one couldn't even speak in full sentences, all it claimed was it had fallen from a place where 'Kaneshiro leaves no tracks' which seemed like an oddly specific set of words to use. But when the others tried to find out more, it begged to be allowed to rest and then promptly collapsed. After that, we decided to talk for a moment about what we knew.
"They have apparently fallen quite far," Fox pointed out. That was pretty obvious from the bad damage that the most recent cognition had just suffered from, it was actually a little terrifying to think that they were associating their current situation as falling, as if it was considered a sin to no longer be able to stop Kaneshiro from blackmailing them.
"Wait a second… they've 'fallen' from a place where Kaneshiro doesn't leave any tracks," Mona reminded. All of us proceeded to focus upon the healer who seemed to be contemplating something, which he must have considered rather important. "Could that mean they we were actually thrown down from somewhere high up?" Mona wondered. That was something that could be possible since we were in such a strange world.
"Given this is the world of the mind, we should probably take everything that is said literally, since just about anything is possible," I suggested. If they were really thrown from a high up place, then we had probably been looking in the wrong place for the Palace's proper location; it would be better for us to start looking upwards properly from now on.
"Do you two mean like a skyscraper? Uhhh, there ain't any of those around here, I don't think…," Skull trailed off. That's right, there weren't any skyscrapers in this immediate area, but that didn't mean that the Palace was an actual skyscraper, it might instead be some place important to him that had been transformed into such a tall building.
"No, but what if it was somewhere just as high!" Joker exclaimed. He suddenly took a step back and quickly looked upwards, I turned in order to follow his gaze – curious about what he had thought of – but suddenly my eyes caught on movement within the shopping area, I focused on the disturbance that had suddenly appeared.
"W-Wait! What's that?!" Panther exclaimed. I realised that the movement was actually money, it was flying up into the air and, when tracing its' path, that was when I looked up and saw it. High above our heads something was moving through the sky with a glittery surface to it which I knew meant that had to be a Palace.
"Is that it?!" Skull exclaimed. I couldn't blame him since I think the rest of us were equally as shocked about the development, I hadn't anticipated that a Palace would take on the appearance of a building that was flying through the sky! It seemed like we were facing a greater problem than any of us could have been expecting. "That's a bank?! That's a Palace?!" Skull exclaimed.
"Up in the air… no wonder we couldn't find it," Fox breathed. He was right, there was no chance any of us would have been expecting to look for a building all the way up there, especially since we'd all been expecting something that had roots on the ground; it was such a baffling twist that I wouldn't have believed it if I wasn't seeing it myself now.
"'Kaneshiro doesn't leave any tracks', huh? Figure it'd be floating," Mona commented. Mona was right, it was probably also a representation as to how Kaneshiro believed that he was untouchable since the police didn't have even the tiniest shred of evidence to try and stop him; the ego on this man needed to be knocked down, perhaps we'd get lucky and the Palace would end up dropping to earth.
"So, how do we get up there? Can you turn into a helicopter, Mona?" Panther asked. All of us proceeded to look down at Mona as we awaited his response, as for Moan himself… well he dropped onto his hands and knees at that, which was as good an answer as anything he might have spoken; we were going to need another plan.
"No… just a van," Mona revealed. It was pretty bad that we had lost our most immediate way to reach up to the Palace's location which meant that we now needed to come up with a way to lower the bank and that meant directing affecting Kaneshiro's cognition, which was made all that harder by the fact that we didn't have any ready access to Kaneshiro.
"You're useless! C'mon, don't you have some kinda secret gadget or somethin'!?" Skull snapped. That was going a bit far! After all it wasn't like Mona was capable of seeing into the future, otherwise I'm fairly certain that we wouldn't need to make a guessing game as a way of finding a way to reach the Palaces in the Metaverse. I reached over and pushed on Skull's shoulder to make sure he looked at me.
"Skull! It's not like we're any better. No one anticipated a flying Palace! So don't called Mona useless!" I lectured. I glared angrily at him, I couldn't believe that he had actually said something like that to our best healer, no one on this team was useless since we all had a part to play that only Joker could replace if we were ever taken out; so, what Skull had said was rather cruel in my mind.
"Besides, I'm not some robot cat!" Mona exclaimed. He had leapt to his feet and was angrily glaring at Skull, likely enraged by the words that had been spoken to him, although it seemed that he wasn't aware of what he had called himself. "I mean, I'm not a cat at all!" Mona corrected. Ah, now he realised what he had done.
"This may be the limit of what we can do today," Fox reasoned. I had to agree with his words, we currently had no way to reach the Palace at such a high level as I'm fairly certain that there was no chance of me being able to shoot an arrow up to that height or there being a rope long enough for us to use in order to climb up to that height.
"I don't like falling back so soon, but Fox is right," Joker spoke up. Everyone proceeded to focus on our leader who was currently glaring at the floating Palace quite vehemently. "With that kind of an obstacle, we're going to need a plan to reach it before we can even start planning how to reach the Treasure," Joker admitted. An unfortunately true viewpoint given our woefully underprepared state.
"Leaving now is a good idea. I think that has really dampened our morale. We need to recover that otherwise fights will become more difficult," I agreed. To enter a fight with us in our current state would probably cause us to end up taking more damage than we normally would, due to us not being in as fighting fit condition within our minds.
"Let's think about it some more tomorrow, okay?" Panther suggested. At least everyone seemed to be getting on board with Fox's suggestion, Skull was the only one that seemed to be annoyed by the fact that we needed to leave this place already; but it wasn't like we had much of a choice in the matter since something unexpected had decided to show its' annoying self.
"Alright, we should get out of here for now! Run for it!" Mona declared. We turned and left behind the impossible Palace.
*Persona 5 Royal*
I think I was more tired than normal after going into the Metaverse, though that might have been because of the way that this introduction to a Palace was much more mentally taxing than any other had been. My phone suddenly went off, I reached for it and checked what it was about only to see that it was Ohya suddenly contacting me.
Ohya: Evening!
Ohya: You free?
Natsumi: Not to leave my house.
Natsumi: Draining day.
Ohya: Messages are fine.
Ohya: I already warned that curly haired friend of yours.
Ohya: But you need to know too, just in case.
Ohya: Your friend is interested in a guy called Kaneshiro Junya and he's more dangerous than I thought.
Ohya: I ended up digging a little deeper since the police have nothing.
Ohya: It turns out he has some really shady connection. I'm not saying any more than that.
Natsumi: Well that's unnerving.
Ohya: Yeah, he's not someone a teenager should mess with. Keep an eye on your friend.
Ohya: Otherwise, who knows what'll happen to him.
Natsumi: Alright. Thank you, Ohya-san.
Ohya: Well that's all I wanted to say. G'night.
With that ominous warning I think it was best for me to check in on Ren, so I proceeded to pull up my leader's contact information and quickly pressed the call button, hopeful he wasn't involved in anything that might require his full attention. Luckily for me the phone was soon picked up and I called out a greeting into the phone so that Ren would know I was on the other end.
"Hi Natsumi, what's up?" Ren asked. I guess that Ohya must not have told him that she was intending to inform me of the new and unsettling information that she had managed to uncover about our target; I wasn't sure if I actually wanted to know the details of what Ohya had found or if I would prefer to remain in the dark about all those potentially gory details.
"Ohya-san just contacted me. She told me how Kaneshiro might be more dangerous than we expected. Same as you," I explained. It was probably best to ensure that he knew we would be on the same page regarding the danger that Kaneshiro was capable of, especially as that would potentially affect how the Palace ended up presenting obstacles towards us.
"It's not like we can't stop though; we'll just have to be more careful than before," Ren stated. He was very right that we couldn't just turn our backs on the situation, we couldn't just abandon the people who were suffering because of his action; especially not with the blackmail being set against us by Niijima-senpai putting us on a rather time sensitive deadline. We'd just have to act as fast and precise as possible.
"Agreed, see you tomorrow," I agreed. We proceeded to hang up and I set the phone down, rubbing my hands over my face as I tried to think about what to do.