The Music of Freedom

by DemonSessama

Chiba Natsumi is trapped in a living hell and isolated from the rest of the world, though the latter is a choice of her own making, but a stumble into a bizarre world too strange to be real unlocks a power within that sings for her freedom. With this power Natsumi finds she can no longer be silent over cruelties committed and finds she might not be as alone as she believes she is.

68. Chapter 68

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.

Since the Showtimes are introduced in this, I am open to suggestions about Showtimes, not only for Natsumi but also for the other Phantoms as well, I only really have one planned for Natsumi but the partner for that is a LONG way off.

I would appreciate any responses that you have, please enjoy

Chapter 68: - Into the Bank

It was the next day and I'd been going through the usual routine of walking towards Shūjin with Ren when I spotted Makoto a short distance ahead of us, after everything that happened yesterday, I really wanted to talk to her. I looked at Ren, who seemed to understand my concerns without me even saying a word as he gently pushed against my shoulder to encourage me to go ahead; Makoto saw me coming so motioned for me to follow her and we eventually reached the student council room.

"Hey, um… good grief, what do I call you now," I greeted. This was so awkward that I didn't even known what to say to her, for so long I'd just been referring to her as Niijima-senpai out loud and in my head but it became quite obvious yesterday that I still thought of her as my friend Mako-chan, so it seemed best to leave it up to her to decide how she wanted to go forward with whatever the heck our relationship was.

"Well, I really enjoyed hearing you call me Mako-chan again," Makoto admitted. Well, that was a relief to hear her say so, I hadn't known what her would respond with, but it was a relief to know that she was willing to let me refer to her as I had for some time. "It's been so long, Natsu-chan," Makoto added on. A sad smile came onto Makoto's lips and I couldn't help but return it to her with a sad one of my own.

"Very long… and I'm sorry," I admitted. It was something that I felt needed to be said now that the two of us were actually talking to each other after allowing the gulf to appear between us; Makoto's eyes widened at my words, clearly having not expected me to suddenly give her an apology which was out of the blue to her.

"Sorry?" Makoto echoed. It really wasn't a surprise that she would be so confused by the suddenness of my apology, but I needed to at least say it before we got any further in this discussion; I took in a deep breath so that I could at least feel some kind of control before I started to explain my thought process to her.

"For how I was acting, I was rather cold to you. Maybe if I hadn't been so cold then you wouldn't have felt so alone, nor would you have run off and almost got yourself hurt by Kaneshiro," I explained. It was something I'd been struggling with since finding her at the school; I wasn't entirely sure if I should approach her or not given how different I was to the girl she would have remembered and she was incredibly different to how I had remembered her.

"Natsu-chan, you don't have to apologise," Makoto insisted. Makoto walked up to me and gently gripped my arms just above my elbows, a serious expression on her face. "Honestly, I think I'm only starting to understand what happened to you after what you spoke of," Makoto stated. I could already tell where this conversation was going even before Makoto spoke. "You were Ouvrard's student, yes?" Makoto questioned. Not that I think she needed an answer to confirm what she already knew.

"Yes, I just didn't want to get into such a thing when there were bigger problems to be dealing with," I answered. It was honestly how I had felt at the time, apart from my usual dislike of talking about what I went through with Ouvrard; Makoto nodded her head in agreement to my words since what had been happening yesterday was rather imposing as opposed to rehashing my issues for what felt like the billionth time.

"I understand, which is why I respected your choice. I suppose it's also why you aren't in any of the music clubs; I always found that strange but could never work up the nerve to speak to you about it," Makoto revealed. A small frown appeared on her lips as she said those words, but it was still accurate since I had been in music clubs before so it would seem odd to anyone who knew me as to why I had a sudden change.

"Pretty much, I lost all joy I ever had for singing after what happened," I commented. It was rather disheartening to say out loud, essentially when it caused Makoto's expression to fall even further, it was sad but still true after everything that had happened to me; Makoto's grip on my arms briefly tightened before letting go as if she was trying to pass something on through her grip.

"A tragedy, if you ask me. I can still recall you singing those openings you loved, you were so good at it I was convinced you'd become a professional one day," Makoto admitted. A smile that seemed to be neither happy or sad curled onto my lips at her comment since I could definitely recall those days, even if I had forgotten the faces that my family would make when hearing me sing.

*Persona 5 Royal*

Sitting in Ushimaru-sensei's class I pretty much expected the disturbance that cropped up, despite it happening in our other classes, Ryūji seemed to have a habit of choosing this class more than any other to start sending messages. I pulled the device out of my pocket and opened up the Chat, though I had to quickly change my mind when I realised that it was actually a completely different person who had started the Chat this time around.

Yusuke: I realise this is a mite late, but how shall I refer to you, Niijima-san?

Yusuke: I believe some courtesy should be shown to those who are our senior, especially as we aren't close to you like Natsumi is.

Ryūji: Oh yeah… should we call you Niijima-san, or like, Niijima-senpai?

Makoto: No need to be formal. Just treat me the same way you would anyone else.

Ren: Alright.

Ann: I already just call her by name.

Natsumi: And you guys already know what I call her.

Natsumi: Which I'm sticking with.

Ryūji: For real Ann!? Did something happen?

Ann: That's a secret between us girls!

Ryūji: Damnit, that sounds like fun.

Natsumi: Don't type stuff like that.

Natsumi: It sounds strange.

Makoto: All of you may call me by my first name. No need to hesitate.

Yusuke: Very well, I shall do just that.

Despite our best efforts to remain undetected, Ren was still forced to dodge more torpedo chalk that our teacher had sent flying at him; he was getting rather good at that and I wasn't sure if that was a good or bad thing.

*Persona 5 Royal*

Once school was over, we all proceeded to gather at the café so that we could appropriately handle the difficulties that we were bound to face within the Palace, especially when taking in an absolutely rookie like we were about to. It still didn't sit well with me that we were going to take Makoto into such dangers unprepared, but with how stubborn she could be, there wasn't much that I could do about it except trust in Ren's judgment.

"I never imagined I would end up helping you guys. Things would get interesting if my sister ever found out," Makoto admitted. I hope and pray that never ends up happening because having Sae coming after us would not be good for my health; I'm fairly certain that even if Takemi-sensei and Maruki-sensei were to work together there was probably no hope for me, that's how concerned I was about Sae hunting us down.

"There's no time to be getting sentimental here," Morgana warned. It really was better for us to focus on the more immediate issue that we were facing than the danger that was present to us from a far-off source; Sae was currently not an issue and that was going to need to be all the attention that I actually gave her. Thankfully Morgana's words cleared my darkening thoughts and I refocused myself upon the much more present danger.

"Yes, I understand," Makoto agreed. At least Makoto had also refocused her attention on the more important matter at hand. "I do have one request about all of this though," Makoto admitted. Everyone focused their attention on her, curious about what she could possibly want to know. "Can you teach me how to be what we need to be? Like… about the other world, for example," Makoto asked. It was a valid question for anyone to ask given the bizarreness that was the Metaverse.

"That depends on what you want to know. Somethings we can't answer because we simply don't know it," I admitted. I them proceeded to look about and make sure that no one was nearby so that they couldn't overhear our discussion primarily as a precautionary measure. "And definitely not a conversation for out here," I whispered. Pitching my voice much lower was also a precaution but I'd rather be safe than sorry after what happened recently.

"True, we cannot allow anyone to overhear these conversations, it is much too risky… as has been evidently proven," Yusuke agreed. His eyes shot a glare at Ryūji who proceeded to wilt just a little at the sharp look he was receiving but he said nothing; perhaps realising he didn't really have a place to stand on if he attempted to defend himself since he was the one who had caused this situation in the first place, even if we had gained a capable ally because of it.

"Well, I know what it is from going there once since it was plenty easy to see," Makoto revealed. Well, that was a relief to know since it meant that we wouldn't need to explain the absolute basics to her. "But it's the method that elides me… I mean, it's a smartphone navigation app," Makoto pointed out. An admittedly appropriate thing for her to be concerned about since it was… bizarre to use an app to reach the other world, as weird as climbing through a TV.

"Well, you only need a name, a location and a distortion. After the first entry, the challenge is bookmarked," Yusuke explained. That was pretty much how it worked ever since we had manged to somehow use it the first time; even now I didn't understand how Igor had manged to slip that app onto Ren's phone so soon after he arrived in Tokyo.

"You really just make it sound like an ordinary app… aren't there any dangers associated with it?" Makoto wondered. I furrowed my eyebrows at those words, after all we had used the app plenty and no one had been adversely affected by its' use so there didn't seem to be any danger; in fact, it didn't make sense for the app to be harmful to us given how often we would need to use it for it to actually be effective.

"Don't worry 'bout that! We've already been a bunch of times and-," Ryūji began to reassure. However, given the sharp look that Makoto sent his way which caused him to falter just a bit, there was something else on the upperclassman's mind as to what she was meaning when referring to the danger that the app posed to us.

"That's not what I mean," Makoto cut across. Everyone focused their attention on Makoto, clearly wondering what it was that she was referring to. "It's a navigation app, right? Couldn't someone easily access our history on the server?" Makoto wondered. That curiosity caused all of us to exchange wide eyed looks of confusion and surprise. "Wait, why are you looking at me like that? Has nobody thought of this before!?" Makoto exclaimed.

"Now she's catchin' me off guard too," Ryūji commented. But the more that I thought about it, the more I was certain that there wasn't anything to worry about, after all it wasn't exactly connected to anywhere in this world in a physical sense and even if there was any recorded data about what we were doing, could that really be understood. Didn't Rise mention how a friend of hers had come from the other world and been completely unreadable by our medical machines.

"No," I admitted. Everyone's attention focused on me, but none more intently that Makoto's fierce red gaze. "After all it doesn't link to anywhere in this world, how exactly would that translate to data of our world, I'd expect it to come out as a lot of gibberish to anyone that understand coding or other computer languages," I explained. Understanding seemed to come upon the others' faces when they realised what I was talking about.

"But we don't know where it came from, right? It showed up on my phone without any input from me," Makoto revealed. Ah, so it had gone and jumped onto her phone, it was a little eerie how easily it was able to do such a thing. "Do you two know anything about it, Ren-kun, Natsu-chan?" Makoto asked. I turned to look at Ren who was sat almost across from me.

"Um… how do I explain this," Ren muttered. His grey eyes were darting all over the place but clearly in a manner to indicate his frantic thought process, while his fingers were twisting in a manner that implied some nerves; well, if I was going to drop this particular bombshell then it might as well be now which might at least cure Ren of his sudden bout of nerves about the oddness he need to explain.

"You mean the Velvet Room?" I asked. Ren's head practically cracked off his spine as he spun to look at me with wide grey eyes that caused me to bite my lips and suppress the laughter that bubbled up within me at the shocked look he currently had. "Who do you think taught me about my eyes or anything else I knew?" I asked. It really was curious that he'd never even approached me about the possibility as to who had managed to train me for my first Palace.

"Well, it's just none of them ever mentioned you," Ren revealed. The way he said that caused my eyebrows to furrow together in confusion; none of them? A bit of an odd way to refer to Igor and Lavenza since neither would have made more sense. "But that makes sense to be honest," Ren agreed. Well at least he agreed it made sense; but a sudden throat clearing brought the both of us back to the problem at hand.

"What are you two talking about?" Ann asked. The others were also looking at us with confused looks, though that wasn't really that much of a surprise since we were talking about something with very little context and it would naturally go over the rest of their head since we weren't exactly explaining ourselves as we spoke.

"The person who taught me also helps Ren cultivate his other selves, that's why they're so varied and different," I explained. A look of comprehension appeared on their faces as they seemed to understand just what we were talking about with that little bit of information; we'd obviously need to explain more, especially with whatever Ren wanted to say about the Meta-Nav before I'd interrupted his thoughts.

"He also told me he made the app to help us. Sounds like he's done this sort of thing a lot," Ren added on. That was putting it mildly if everything I knew was true, Igor might change up his attendants with every new guest but thanks to that I knew that Igor had at least been involved with at least two other teams of Personas; and who knew how many more had come before us to protect humanity from danger.

"The place this happens is called the Velvet Room, a place that exists between though and dream," I admitted. That seemed to confuse them but it wasn't exactly like I could just explain it to them in a way that made any kind of sense. "It's something you have to see to believe unfortunately," I stated. Hopefully that would be enough to settle them into accepting my words without further question.

"But this man, you trust him?" Makoto asked. There was a sceptical look within her eyes, likely wondering if she could actually trust a mysterious individual that she'd never met just because me and Ren said such a thing; it was an understandable position but one that I hoped she wouldn't be unable to let go of when I gave her my answer.

"Yes," Me and Ren answered in unison. However, despite my voice being very firm and almost fierce in my defence of Igor's trustworthiness, the way Ren had said it was rather different; it sounded like he wasn't entirely sure of his trust in the Velvet Room's proprietor, the little waver in his voice and the way his eyes were cast down made that pretty obvious, yet I couldn't help but wonder why he seemed so unsure.

"I don't fully understand, but I think Natsumi's right. We don't have to worry about people accessing our data. This app is incredibly special, on par with Natsumi's eyes, it wasn't made by any ordinary means," Morgana spoke up. But he sounded odd as well, as if there was something troubling about the things that had been said; his tail was eerily still and his posture seemed unnaturally tense since he was normally rather relaxed.

"True, an app that allows you to enter another world isn't exactly commonplace," Makoto agreed. At least Makoto sounded normal and she understood how bizarre this app was, so we likely weren't going to be in danger from people looking at data, I'm more concerned about if someone could get into the Chats, since there was the damning evidence. "Well, Sis doesn't know about our social activities, so I suppose that information is safe for now," Makoto commented.

"We're still learning things ourselves. I hope your sharp wit can help us with that," Morgana stated. I'm certain that Makoto's keen insight would be useful to us, as much as Morgana's instincts were already a benefit to us; each of us had strengths that were beneficial to the team, every new addition was a new source of strength and support for us.

"Thank you, I'll try my best," Makoto agreed. She then pulled out her phone and show us the blackmail that Kaneshiro had been 'kind' enough to share with her. "More importantly, we need to stop him from releasing this photo. If the public gets a hold of them," Makoto reminded. That really was something we had to avoid anyone finding out otherwise there was no imaging the amount of trouble we could end up in.

"Jail for Ren, expulsion or the rest of us at least and Sae-kun coming down on me and you, Mako-chan. All things I'd like to avoid," I finished up. To make things worse, Makoto revealed the monster had a picture of her in a similar situation to the other four which meant I was the only one with partial protection, basically making my attempt to protect her completely worthless in the end.

"C'mon, we just gotta take care of him before the time limit. We'll bounce back from this," Ryūji encouraged. Everyone seemed to perk up at hearing the words that he had spoken and I could sense a lightening to the atmosphere that had previously weighed us down. "Plus people'll really start admirin' us if we can manage to take this bastard down!" Ryūji added on.

"Yeah, this is the perfect opportunity. We have to succeed, no matter what!" Morgana affirmed. With our discussion out of the way, we proceeded to step out the café and quickly found a secluded area to safely activate the Meta-Nav without anyone accidentally getting caught.

*Persona 5 Royal*

"So, what am I going to be called?" Makoto asked. It was a valid thing for her to ask since we desperately needed to figure that bit out before getting into the meat of the Palace. "You all were using codenames, weren't you?" Makoto pointed out. Everyone was now paying attention to our advisor as they realised the importance of what Makoto was saying.

"You're quite perceptive," Fox complimented. It really wasn't that hard to figure out since she knew all of our names and yet we hadn't been using them in the Palace when we were here last time; though the question did remain what exactly where we supposed to call Makoto based upon her outfit? The others had seemed kind of easy in the long run compared to this one since nothing really stood out.

"This time's a hard one… maybe somethin' like Shoulder Pads?" Skull suggested. I proceeded to look over at him with my mouth hanging open as I struggled to process what he had just suggested; because to be quite frank that was the most ridiculous name I had ever heard any of them suggest so far and then had been some pretty odd ideas thrown out for the other two that joined.

"Why in the world did you focus on that?" Mona asked. At least someone had actually been able to speak in regard to their confusion, since the other three were all staring at Skull with stunned expressions; Makoto had such a blank expression that I couldn't quite read what it was she could possibly be feeling about that suggestion.

"I refuse to be called that," Makoto declared. Well, that definitely cancelled out that idea, I wasn't entirely sure what had possessed Skull to suggest such a thing when it wasn't liked by the person who it was being suggested by; hopefully we could find a name soon otherwise we'd be forced to return to reality pretty quickly which none of us wanted to do without accomplishing something.

"What about Rider?" Fox suggested. A bit more sensible, it did borrow from something at least that would make sense given the way Johanna had ended up shaped – still trying to puzzle that one out – however I could tell from the slight frown on Makoto's face that she wasn't particularly keen on this suggestion that had been made.

"Sounds too much like a smuggler. Next," Makoto stated. Well, if that was what she thought, that was what she thought, there wouldn't be a chance for us to convince her that she should take it; I kept wracking my mind hoping to come up with a suggestion that would be sensible and something that Makoto would be willing to accept as her codename.

"Fixer?" Panther spoke up. It seemed a reasonable suggestion since we were insisting that she be our advisor and fixers were typically people who crafted intricate plans in order to protect the politicians of this country; as much as I despised that particular job, there was something to be said for how capable those fixers were at weaving their protection.

"I'm not a mastermind though. Next," Makoto responded. We were seriously starting to run out of options here, this was definitely more difficult than naming any of the others had been and I was getting a little concerned. "Won't you give me something better to work with?" Makoto wondered. She looked at all of us, likely waiting for someone to say something that she would be happy to accept as a codename.

"She reminds me of an empress," Mona stated. I think someone was developing another crush from that comment, then again Mona did seem to admire Panther a heavy amount and he was also rather sweet to me on occasion from some of the compliments he paid us during our battles; he was probably just being a gentleman.

"Amazon, I'm open to suggestions here, you know her best," Joker requested. Everyone turned to look at me, so I quickly closed my eyes in order to avoid seeing that sight even though I still felt the weight of their pressing upon me; I thought back over the memories I shared with Makoto in order to think of something that might help, that was when I managed to recall something which caused my eyes to open.

"What about Queen," I suggested. Makoto seemed intrigued and that was the only reaction that I cared to acknowledge since it was the most important. "Well, we used to play Chess as children and you're our advisor which means you need to have a flexible perspective to deal with all our unique capabilities and the Queen piece could move in any direction, so it seems appropriate, plus you always played as black and that's pretty much what you're wearing," I explained.

"Huh, that's actually pretty good," Joker commented. Well at least someone else had approved of the suggestion that I had made, hopefully this would solve the name issue and we could start on getting our route to the Treasure sorted; Makoto didn't seem opposed to the name but she also hadn't said anything yet.

"Whoa, I totally see it!" Panther complimented. I was probably blushing in response to the compliment that had been given, there certainly seemed to be a warmth bubbling within my cheeks at such a comment being given; I didn't think it was anything particularly special yet for someone to think so highly of it was a bit embarrassing.

"It fits so well that I'm at a loss for words here," Mona stated. I was definitely blushing now if the scorching I felt was any indication, I ducked my head down and allowed my shoulders to rise up to my ears as the embarrassment started to get stronger; it was good that others seemed to approve but to state that approval so highly wasn't something I expected and I wasn't entirely sure how to respond.

"Queen… it has a nice ring to it," Makoto agreed. At her words, I perked up ever so slightly and looked at Makoto whose lips were curled into a gentle smile. "I like it. Let's go with that," Makoto agreed. Well, that caused my embarrassment to be washed away as I was relieved to hear that she had accepted the name, which meant we could finally get our heist underway. "Now then, could you explain to me the strategy for this mission?" Queen questioned.

"Strategy?" Skull asked. I looked at him in confusion, why did he have to make it sound like we didn't have a strategy, sure it wasn't a comprehensive and detailed step by step guide of how we operated, but considering this was only the third or second heist then I'd think our basic operating method was pretty good for what we needed to do.

"You don't have one? Wait. The Phantoms were acting without any plans!?" Queen exclaimed. There was also the fact that Queen would go on to assume that we hadn't been acting with any actual direction, I gave Skull a deeply unimpressed look at the fact that he had caused Queen to make the wrong assumption about how we operated.

"Not exactly," Joker spoke up. Queen looked at Joker, apparently deciding to focus on whatever our leader had to say. "It's more our plans are vague since we don't actually know what's inside a Palace, they develop as we search the Palace. Basically, our steps: secure an entrance that isn't the front door, locate the map of the Palace, determine the Treasure's location, locate nearest Safe Room to Treasure, send Calling Card in the physical world, steal the manifested Treasure, and fight whatever the enemy throws at us," Joker clarified. He raised his fingers with each step until the last one which caused him to shrug.

"Yeah, I provide navigation when needed once we have the map," Mona added on. Queen looked down at Mona as she took in this bit of information, she had relaxed a little when Joker listed their steps and relaxed just a little bit more upon hearing Mona's addition; but I wouldn't say she was completely relaxed given how tense her eyes seemed to be.

"Do we really need a plan?" Skull asked. I barely held back from cracking Skull across the back of his head at that question, Queen on the other hand proceeded to glare daggers at Skull who let out a small yelp at the look he was being given; Joker's head was in his hand while Panther was giving Skull an unimpressed look of her own, Fox was gazing at the sky as if he was praying for something while Mona was scowling at Skull.

"Please take them to find an entrance while me and Mona handle explaining the intricacies of fighting here, that's where Queen will likely shine best," I pleaded. Joker, thankfully, agreed by wordless moving around and dragging his best friend away by the collar of his jacket with Fox and Panther trailing after him while I focus on Queen who seemed ready as if this was a school lesson. "There are two different ways Personas fight, Skills which deal physical damage that is also carried by our Rebel's Weapons or our ranged weapons," I began. Queen touched the revolver currently resting at her side.

"The other side is Spells, they're split into a lot of different types," Mona added on. We pretty much bounced back and forth the explanation of the Spells between myself and Mona with Queen paying deep attention to whoever was talking about and I could see how she was already turning the information over in her head. Once we were done, we headed over to the others who were gathered in the central courtyard.

"Right Queen, we typically split into two groups when making our way in, what exactly can Johanna do?" Joker asked. He seemed energised as he looked at us which at least meant that we had a route in, Joker also seemed to be thinking something over as he said those words; probably how best he would go about dividing us up into groups.

"She utilises Nuclear Magic of both target types, with one multi-target Skill, a single-target Defensive boosting Spell, a single-target Forget Ailment and a multi-target Healing Spell," Queen answered. That was actually a pretty wide range of abilities that she possessed, even the others seemed stunned by how flexible Johanna had turned out to be for a single Persona, only Carmen and Zorro came close with their four types which was much greater than Phantom and Captain Kidd being limited to only two, not counting any passive abilities of course.

"Right then, okay first off, I'm changing up the Chain of Command. I'm still leading this so long as you're all fine with that," Joker began. No one argued and Queen even seemed eager to agree from the almost bobble head motion her head made as she nodded. "Queen, I'm moving you up to second-in-command. No offense Mona, but this relieves you of a task which allows you to focus on navigation which is already a massive job in of itself," Joker explained.

"I understand Joker, besides Queen seems like a better fit to that job than me," Mona agreed. He did seem a little down but at least he understood where Joker was coming from with those words; I gently patted Mona on the head to try and reassure him which caused him to smile up at me a little and I relaxed seeing that expression.

"However," Joker called. "Mona and Amazon, you two are sharing the third-in-command spot. Since we split into two teams, I'll need you two to be the back up leaders for me or Queen in case we're taken out in a fight. You both have skills the other doesn't possess but your shared knowledge and experience makes it the logical choice," Joker decided. Everyone seemed fine with this idea from the nods that came and Mona had perked up much more. "Right, for this, I'll be upfront with Amazon for her eyes since we're bound to need them and Fox. This puts Queen with the other most experienced members, I'm counting on you guys to support her until she's got her bearings. After that we might change up the teams, but we'll see," Joker decided.

"Will you be alright with so many healers in one group?" Queen questioned. All Joker gave as a response was a sharp nod of his head to those words, Queen didn't look happy but she seemed to accept that this was Joker's decision. "Any objections?" Queen questioned. However, the firmness in her voice implied that she didn't actually want to hear any such things.

"N-None Queen!" Skull squeaked. I gave the boy a raised eyebrow look at the response that he had just yelped out, actually everyone was staring at Skull a little wide eyed at his response; and I might have been hallucinating, I could have sworn that there was something like a staining of red appearing at the edges of Skull's mask.

"I bet Skull's definitely the type that'll be under a girl's thumb," Panther commented. Her words caused me to snort as I tried to reign in the laughter that those words had caused, because if I was honest then I could definitely see that happening; despite how much of a fighter Skull seemed to be, it did feel like he was willing to fold at Queen's stern voice.

"Mona, will you begin navigating us?" Queen requested. Yet again, her voice made it seem like this was much closer to an order than it was to a request; Mona proceeded to jump slightly in place with his eyes going rather wide as he stared at Queen with a rather unreadable expression upon his face beyond those widened eyes.

"Y-Yes, Queen!" Mona agreed. Well, it seemed like Mona might have been in the same boat as Skull since his response was very similar to Skull's had been, I proceeded to look at Panther with a small smile curling onto my lips at the surprised look she was throwing the human turned cat due to his manner of response.

"I think Mona's the same way," I commented. Panther looked at me and proceeded to grin in response to the words, it really was a surprise to see how these two might actually like being bossed about by someone, it was something rather surprising, but probably best that we just roll with the situation instead of questioning it.

"Quite right," Fox agreed. With our discussion done, we turned to face the Palace, it was quite clear that we couldn't get in through the front door even with the actual door having been busted down by Queen – which she for some reason seemed ashamed of briefly – due to the large planks they had cutting across the gaping hole; luckily, we found an in via the set of stairs hidden underneath a piggy bank statue.

"I don't remember seeing this place before, where exactly are we?" Queen wondered. The pathway the piggy bank had been hiding brought us into a room that was a bit more furnished that previously seen and I certainly didn't recognise it, which meant we could be anywhere and that was a little concerning since we were now walking blind.

"There has to be a map somewhere. For now, let's try to explore and search for the Treasure," Mona insisted. Joker made sure that we stayed together as we walked down the corridor; but right as we were about to turn the corner was when Panther suddenly gasped. All of us stopped moving as I felt my body tense up at whatever could have happened to make Panther release such a sound.

"H-Hold on a second! What is that!?" Panther questioned. She extended her pink gloved hand to point towards an opening, I peered through it and saw it was the main entrance to the bank – which was a good thing – but the thing that Panther was so worried about happened to be a Shadow; I could tell just from looking at it, but there was a major problem with its' shape which set off warning bells quite loudly for me.

"A Shadow in the shape of a dog… it seems this place has its' own watchdogs," Fox commented. That was a serious problem for us, sure a new shape for the Shadows before we tore the masks off wasn't that much of a big deal as we'd run across plenty of those already in the other Palaces; but I was a lot more concerned about what advantages the dog shape might provide to the Shadow.

"Hmm… I don't like the looks of this," Mona admitted. At least someone else seemed wary of what this new form could mean to us, he had even pitched his voice much lower than normal, likely in an attempt to avoid being caught by the entity only a short distance away from us; all we could hope for was that it did remain in its' current position without being a risk to us.

"Y'mean 'cause you're a cat?" Skull asked. It seemed he really didn't understand the significance of having such a Shadow in our way and the look that Mona sent him proved that he also wasn't impressed with the way that Skull was acting so blasé; plus, the added fact that Skull's voice had been much louder than Mona's which could risk attracting the attention of something we wanted to avoid.

"We need to move! Now!" I warned. My voice was lowered like Mona's, but the harshness of my tone managed to draw everyone's attention to me and the tense expression craved across my face. "It's in the shape of a dog! Meaning its' senses are heightened!" I added on. That seemed to finally snap some sense into Skull at least as he looked worried at the possibility of us being easily detected.

"Or it could hunt us down much faster than other Shadows in human shape!" Mona exclaimed. That wasn't something that any of us wanted to deal with since it was liable to bark and draw other Shadows to us which would cause no end of trouble. "But, if it does end up making trouble for us, that could actually work out in our favour. We'll have a chance to finally show off our surprise finisher," Mona admitted. I had no idea what this surprise finisher Mona could be referring to.

"Sorry to butt in, we've been spotted!" Queen warned. All of us looked over and quickly saw that the dog shaped Shadow was charging towards us, we quickly prepared our weapons as it charged towards us with my hand moving towards my mask as it came to a stop and transformed. It became a two headed dog with a skeletal tail, dark yellow skin and dark green fur around the neck and back; it was known as Orthrus and quickly used both its' two heads to take a bite each out of Mona.

"Heh, not bad, but love always burns the brightest when facing down an opponent like this!" Mona declared. I looked down at the cat, completely confused as to why he wasn't waiting for me to give out information like was normal in the battles. "Panther, I think the moment's finally arrived, it's showtime!" Mona announced. Now, I was really confused and I looked up at Joker for clarification as to what was going on, but even he looked confused.

"Eh? You wanna do that right now!?" Panther questioned. Well at least someone had an idea about what was going on, in fact Joker seemed to understand what was being spoken about. "Geez, fine. Here we go!" Panther complied. Some kind of energy seemed to rush out of the two of them and when the glow they emitted faded, I saw our surroundings had changed to be a lush flowered covered field.

Panther and Mona were a short distance in front of us with the enemy even further away, but then Mona suddenly reached behind him and somehow a large bouquet of roses popped into existence which he extended to Panther, with a declaration of feelings that he didn't exactly explain. Panther seemed touched by the gesture and leapt towards Mona with her hand reached out as Mona responded, the background turned pink with a heart shape enveloping the two, it was as if I was watching some sappy romantic anime.

Everything changed when Panther reached into the bouquet and pulled out two submachine guns! She did a little pirouette while firing them off, that made the rest of us duck for cover, before posing with Mona; they proceeded to jump into the air where Panther rapid fired at Orthrus before Mona decided to end things with a bomb attack. They landed on the ground with Panther on her knees as Orthrus was instantly wiped out; the world then turned back to normal.

"Dude, what was that just now!? When'd you guys figure out how to do something like that!?" Skull questioned. At least someone could talk because I was still trying to process how we had bene transported to some other world and how whatever that was had dealt enough damage to instantly wipe out the enemy we were facing down.

"Heheheh! It's simply the fruit of our secret, passionate training," Mona claimed. Okay, no! The cat needed to spill those beans right now! Because if the rest of us could somehow tap into that same power, then our battles were going to be made much easier; I still have no idea what that insanity could have been, but it was definitely something that I wanted to ensure all of us could use in some manner.

"Hmm, yeah, I guess we did put some effort into it. Still, I'm surprised it went so well," Panther admitted. Why was she so utterly calm about this?! That was some insane thing we'd just witnessed! Not the weirdest but it was certainly something shocking when so unexpected. "Oh, you know what it could've been. Maybe it was because of the thing Jose gave us? That… star-shaped thing?" Panther wondered. Those of us who had initially formed the Phantoms looked at Panther and then looked at Joker, while Queen and Fox seemed extremely confused by the conversation.

"The star did glow when Mona mentioned this in the physical world, maybe it reacts to really powerful but well-meaning desires," Joker spoke. He proceeded to pull the star out of his pocket and it almost felt like something had slightly diminished about it; not enough to be worrying but it was still something I could sense.

"So, in other words, the… star, I guess we'll call it… reacted to Mona's wish to fight alongside Panther?" Queen summarised. At least she was following along with the conversation despite the vagueness with which we were talking about this; it didn't seem we'd need to explain about Jose since we were bound to run into him soon enough given how often he appeared for flowers and stamps.

"And that is not the craziest thing I've heard since getting introduced to this world," I stated. It was definitely something that needed to be said, as odd as a wish granting star might sound it really wasn't the craziest thing that I had ever ended up running into since coming to the Metaverse that first time; plus, if it was useful then we should try and take full advantage of it instead of letting it go to waste.

"Wish granting stars… if that's truly the case, we're just encountering one strange phenomenon after another," Fox claimed. He was right that it was rather odd; I was still trying to work out how we could possibly make use of its' power since talking about it in the physical world did seem a rather vague way of activating it.

"I don't really get it… but, what I know is, if Mona and Panther can pull that off, can't we do it too? Wouldn't that be sick!?" Skull claimed. He seemed rather excited but at least someone else had caught on to how we could make use of it. "Hey Fox, you wanna try comin' up with one o' those badass moves of our own?" Skull asked. That was a surprise, I'd figured he'd ask Joker before anyone else. "We could call it, like… Art Run or somethin'!" Skull rambled. All Fox did was sigh which I think was a hard no.

"There's a lot we don't understand about how this works… as usual," Mona commented. That was probably always going to be a running theme regarding the Metaverse, the more we learned something then the more questions I just ended up having in the end; especially with a wish granting start given to us by a possible attendant-in-training.

"Very true, but it was certainly powerful which could make it a useful tool in tight situations," I stated. That was the thing we should probably focus on more than the unexplainable parts of the star's powers; making use of this power was definitely for the best, especially if it was strong enough to instantly take out a single enemy.

"Amazon's right, if we use that star right then we'll be more ready than ever for our battles!" Mona cheered. With that discussion done with, we proceeded to head up a set of stairs but all that led us to was a dead-end by a corrugated metal door. We went back down the stairs and broke off into our assigned teams with Joker leading me and Fox out into the main entrance area, which had two guards.

We proceeded to creep towards one as I saw Mona guiding the others to the other enemy, once we were close enough, Joker leapt upon the Shadow and tore its' mask off revealing two High Pixies. Joker didn't even wait for me to read off its' affinities, he quickly pulled out his gun and fired off a single shot at each Shadow; they were sent down from the attack which allowed the three of us to dive in and quickly eliminated them.

We moved to the back area and found the corridor that led to where Shadow Kaneshiro had tried to threaten us was locked, but the area where the tellers would be working did supply us with a portable battery. We moved out and head through the other door that was present which allowed us to see a partition area, quickly creeping forward allowed us to peer around and see a Shadow moving towards an elevator which it entered and then the machine descended.

"It looks like there are lower floors here too," Panther acknowledged. That wasn't such a surprise to me given the cavern that had been under the opera house or those who knew of Kamoshida's twisted dungeon; still that probably meant there was a large place that we would need to search in order to find the Treasure if it wasn't anywhere up here.

"So long as there isn't anything like that huge, gold, not on the map distortion, we should be fine," I commented. Those of us who knew what I was talking about had several different reactions to my reminder, but they all pretty much were some version of expressing extreme discomfort with the thought of running across something like that again.

"True, but that elevator is lacking a control panel," Fox pointed out. That was certainly a problem that we would have to contend with if we wanted to get to the lower levels and that elevator happened to be our only way down to that lower level; the first question we had to handle was where the controls for the elevator could possibly be located.

"They probably control it from a security room. It's a simple, but effective measure of screening," Mona theorised. Which meant that we had to locate that control room in order to find whatever way we could to get down there; hopefully that was easier done than said or thought in my case, we would need to move soon, or risk being spotted by the Shadows that were shambling about.

"That must mean they really don't want anyone going down there," Queen admitted. Very true, if they were trying to tightly control who went into the lower levels then there was every chance that something valuable was down there; whether that was the actual Treasure or the Will Seeds, it would be useful for us to actually find out.

"And that's probably exactly where we want to go," Joker stated. All of us nodded our heads and we then proceeded to move, we moved into a small area full of cubicles where there was another Shadow stomping about; the small space meant it would be difficult to creep about, which led to Joker promptly pouncing upon it and revealing that it was three Orobas. Joker pulled off his mask to reveal a purple skinned woman with long black hair, she had gold jewellery on arms, wrists, ankles, the head, and around her waist, there was a red and white wrap around her waist and legs, she carried two swords, one in each hand.

Cold energy spread from the woman across all three of the enemies which knocked them down instantly. We dived in and tore into the group swiftly, but weren't able to destroy all three Orobas. Luckily, Fox with the Ring of Attachment's immediate passive effect was able to finish them off with another Ice Spell. It was starting to feel like we were getting rather lucky, running into Shadows who Joker knew the weaknesses off and were easy to handle, but the really worry was how long such a thing would last.

With our enemy finished off, Joker guided us through a door that led to more cubicles and a chest containing some small vials capable of brainwashing, after that Joker brought us over to the cabinets at the back of the room and climbed up them. We climbed until we reached the top and leapt onto the wall that separated the two groups of cubicles, carefully walking across the wall brought us to a grapple point which allowed us to shoot across and land on the upper area.

It was here that we came across Queen's group who must have reached this area via the staircase, we moved closer to each other, but each leader proceeded to turn to look at the interesting object that had caught their eye. I looked over and raised an eyebrow then I spotted a door which had a set of bars shuttered close over it.

"There are bars here… we won't be able to open the door like this," Queen claimed. That was fairly obvious, but the interesting thing was that right beside it happened to be a white rectangle box with a red light over it; but whatever the words were meant to be over it seemed to be rather garbled instead of something understandable.

"It seems we may be able to pass if we have a particular item thought," Fox pointed out. We definitely needed to find that object, with that we set off and started to look around for any signs of the object that we were likely to need in order to pass, but that only led to another closed door and the corrugated metal gate from earlier with the latter having a similar contraption beside it which when pressed caused the gate to rise up. We drifted back together but Joker leapt up onto some cabinets.

"There's a vent up here," Joker revealed. He then proceeded to duck inside and I quickly saw his coat disappear around a corner into the darkness of the vent; Mona bounced forward and then climbed up after Joker which allowed him to start crawl through into the darkness, a small moan escaped from my side and I turned to look seeing Panther shuffling about in place

"Oh gross… I really hope there aren't any spiders in here," Panther groaned. I patted Panther on the shoulder in order to comfort her, as Skull darted forward to quickly climb in; he had seemed to be sweating slightly as he did which led me to suspect that Queen had something to do with getting him to move before any of us did so.

"We need to lay low. Let's push past our fears and continue on," Queen encouraged. Fox had already climbed into the vent by the time Queen had finished, Panther took a deep breath and nodded her head, she then quickly moved forward and entered into the vent with only a little reluctance; but this did cause me to look at Queen since there was something I wanted to check as a precaution.

"Speaking of fears, are you still-?" I began to ask. The thing was, Queen had a pretty crippling fear when we were friends, it was something I needed to make sure she either had or didn't have since we may end up running across something that would cause that phobia to end up being triggered and I wanted to ensure I was prepared beforehand, since Queen's reactions could be… extreme.

"Yes!" Queen snapped. My mouth clacked shut as Queen stared at me with extremely wide eyes before proceeding to flush as red as Yoshizawa's hair colour, clearly ashamed of the reaction she had given. "Sorry, but please don't tell the others?" Queen pleaded. They might find out, they might not, I couldn't really say what would happen, so it didn't seem right to just reveal it, especially in light of Queen's response.

"Lips, sealed," I promised. I made the motion for sealing them and then proceeded to enter the vent and just managed to catch the tail end of Joker deciding to attack a Shadow on the other side, I quickly crawled after the others and jumped out as Joker ambushed the enemy with Queen quickly joining us as well to surround it. Surprisingly enough, it looked a lot like a Slime yet was known under a different name, Black Ooze, with it being black in colour with a red colour on top with yellow eyes.

"It's resistant to all Skill types and Ice. It Blocks Curse but is Weak to Electric, Psychic and Bless," I warned. Unfortunately, a foul stench began to emanate from one of the Shadows, the moment it properly hit me, I started to cough. It was heavy and dry, irritating my throat and leaving a foul taste within my mouth. It felt like something cloying was stuck within my mouth and I couldn't get rid of no matter how much I heaved.

"A-Archangel! Ravage them!" Joker commanded. The armoured angel appeared and unleashed a rain of light down upon them. "Mona! What happened to us?!" Joker demanded. I don't think it was just us that had been affected; the four Shadows all seemed a little flagging as well, but I couldn't identify exactly what it was that had happened.

"I think… it somehow, we've been made rather susceptible to ailments!" Mona realised. That wasn't good, it probably meant that whatever other abilities it had where geared towards Ailments which would allow it to hurt us on a much greater level. It didn't help that one of the Black Ooze recovered and attacked. A large hammer appeared in the air and it swung down, striking towards Skull. The boy wasn't fast enough and ended up knocked to the ground, he appeared to have been rendered dizzy by the attack.

"Skull!" Queen cried. She darted over to the boy in order to check him over. Panther immediately retaliated by using Carmen to put the recovered Ooze under a Sleep Spell. I tore off my mask and used Magry to batter all of the Shadows and hopefully give us more breathing room. Fox followed up with his own multi-target Skill despite the resistance. As for Mona, he quickly used a healing Spell which allowed Skull to get back to his feet, but he seemed a bit unsteady still.

It wasn't helped when one of the Oozes proceeded to recover from the attacks. Another Sledgehammer attack and it was coming straight for Mona. Luckily Mona was able to dodge over the attack before it could actually strike him. I breathed a sigh of relief that he had managed to escape from harm. Skull pulled away from Queen and tried to move forward, only for Joker to grab his should and stop him.

"You need to rest Skull, I'll take over here," Joker insisted. He then pulled off his mask, bringing out the Flauros Persona. It unleashed a powerful, hypnotic energy similar to Panther's Dormina across the entire group of enemies which immediately caused them to fall into a deep slumber that prevented them from reacting to what was happening around them. "Panther, use that new accessory I gave you," Joker insisted.

Panther sharply nodded her head and quickly extended the ring that almost blended in with her pink gloves. A psychokinetic energy surrounded one of the Oozes and it was the one that had tried to attack Mona. It was swiftly knocked down and allowed all of us to dive in to attack them. Only two of them were destroyed, but then the Black Oozes recovered, they proceeded to run away from the fight. Or at least they tried to, but we managed to finish them off.

"Phew, we managed somehow," Queen claimed. She proceeded to start looking around with curious eyes as she realised that we were in some kind of special room given the numerous cameras that were on one side of the room. "This appears to be some kind of monitoring room. I hope we can find clues in here," Queen admitted. It was probably the best bet to locate something that we might need.

"Hey guys, I think I found something! Ain't this some kinda key card?" Skull revealed. He had moved over to the cameras and held the object out to us; it did seem to be a type of key card but apart from the word 'employee' I couldn't make heads or tails of the information that was on it, it was a little bizarre to find such a twisted language in here.

"And over here is a map," Fox revealed. All of us looked away from the key card in order to focus on our canine masked friend and found that he was right, stuck on the board was a map, or at the very least a piece of the map we'd needed. "As expected, there seems to be quite a large basement floor," Fox stated. Skull and Joker quickly moved over to pry it off the wall and handed it to Mona.

"Joker's probably right about that being where the Treasure is," Mona admitted. That had seemed pretty obvious, to have a tightly controlled elevator heading down would definitely mean something fishy was going on down there; however, there was a pretty significant problem we had to deal with that was starting to seem like a recurring theme here.

"However, only a portion of it is depicted here," Fox claimed. Why did the Palaces enjoy cutting up their maps into two pieces? It was rather annoying that we needed to keep finding them, but I suppose no Ruler would believe they'd leave a whole map lying around. "Unless we can obtain another map, we won't know for certain," Fox added on. Again, something that was becoming a recurring theme.

"A cursory glance shows this building alone has one underground level. It would probably make sense to head there first," Mona advised. That seemed like the best thing for us to do, the question still remained as to how we needed to reach it, even with the fact that we'd taken out the person observing the monitoring room, there could be others around or someone else might come in between us leaving and reaching the elevator.

"Shall we go to that elevator we found back there then," Fox suggested. A small sound escaped from someone and everyone proceeded to focus on the source; Queen was holding her chin as she looked at the map, probably committing what she could to memory while mulling over the things that she now knew about the Palace.

"That should be our last resort. First, let's see if there is anywhere to use this key card," Queen decided. That was likely the safest option for us to follow since it would avoid us immediately being caught by anyone or we might actually come across whatever danger could appear between our wandering about and actually reaching the elevator.

"Oh! Didn't we pass by a door we couldn't open on the way here?" Panther reminded. That did seem to be something that we should check out, hopefully the key card that Joker took from Skull could be able to work; we left the room after removing the bars from the door inside, which allowed us to open up the sealed door from earlier that had no visible way in.

Sticking together, we returned to the first barred door and quickly opened it, inside was a large yet dim room with a giant metal grate covering the centre of the room that had a small portion pulled open and two large wheels on either side of it; suddenly, the wheels began to spin and something rose up to rest underneath the grate

"Is that the elevator?" Queen asked. It seemed very likely that was the case for it to suddenly come up out of nowhere, still to know that the door they had been keeping locked with a key card was just the top of an elevator made me really question what could have possibly been going through Kaneshiro's mind to create that viewpoint since it was rather bizarre in all honesty.

"Yeah, it has to be the one they're controlling externally. So, this is right above it," Mona agreed. I looked around but couldn't see anything that indicated that there was anything suspicious going on in this room, it was likely that there weren't any cameras present in this room which was quite the relief since we weren't spotted yet.

"So, what, this is the control room or something? What's the point of comin' here?" Skull wondered. He was giving the room a questionable look as he gazed around, however I did think it was rather obvious what we could do by coming to this location; especially what with that section of the grate being left open.

"We can hop on the elevator from above and ride it down to the basement with no one else the wiser," Joker commented. That did seem to be the best thing for us to do since without any camera here, no one would know that we had been able to get down to the lower levels until we actually made it there; and even then, it might not be for a while depending upon where we managed to get out.

"Perceptive as usual," Mona praised. Joker smiled at those words and rubbed at the back of his head as if embarrassed about the compliment, but it did make a lot of sense for us to do this; especially since it had seemed to be the only way for us to actually get to the lower level given our exploration of this floor had turned up nothing that wasn't most likely hidden behind the locked doors which we had little chance of opening from this side.

"I see. We sneak atop it, then wait for it to move on its own," Fox admitted. That really was the only thing we could, it certainly seemed like Skull was at least understanding what the plan we were concocting would be now that we had access to this room; hopefully we'd be able to find the missing piece of the map as well.

"It does sound like that plan will take us further down," Queen agreed. Joker walked over to the opening and quickly climbed through it; the rest of us followed after him and Panther dropped onto the elevator's top just in time for the elevator to start moving, we all crouched down to keep our balance with the way the elevator shook as it moved downwards. As soon as it came to a stop Joker found our way out, a ventilation shaft that brought us to the beams of a room, once we found a safe spot to get down, we used the rope to carefully lower ourselves down with Mona jumping down with the other end of the rope.

"So, this is the basement?" Skull wondered. It didn't seem like any basement, instead it looked like just another ordinary section of the bank, admittedly the furnishings were of a darker colour and the overall look was much dimmer than the one upstairs but still, it wouldn't have been that out of place to see a room like this on the upper level.

"All security, listen up!" A voice commanded. The voice caused all of us to jump as we looked around since it was Shadow Kaneshiro. "It looks like some rats have infested this place! Under no circumstances let them further down! Strengthen security as much as you can! Understood?" Shadow Kaneshiro ordered. Well, it seemed quite apparent that while he knew we were down here, he didn't know our precise location.

"It seems painfully obvious where the Treasure is now," Fox stated. Shadow Kaneshiro's reaction to our appearance truly couldn't have made it anymore obvious as to the location of the Treasure, his mere rage at the thought of us managing to get lower in the Palace was practically handing us the other half of the map with a brightly coloured sign pointing towards the Treasure's exact spot.

"But the map from earlier doesn't show that much… I wonder if there's another one somewhere," Panther worried. That was the main issue we'd have to resolve as moving much deeper without that second piece would be extremely inadvisable since we could end up being blindsided by anything that we couldn't anticipate do to walking around without any foreknowledge

"It was the same in the castle and the museum, so probably," Joker reassured. That was quite true, I hadn't ever found the map for the opera house, but it had likely been the same in there, split into two pieces to denote the different sections that I had encountered; all we really needed to focus on was finding the other piece which always seemed to be en route to the Treasure.

"In any case, heading down should be the best move. Let's keep our eyes out for a map while we explore!" Mona encouraged. We quickly left the room through the only door and thankfully we discovered a Safe Room at last; once we registered it, we left and moved towards the corridor that ran parallel to the one containing the Safe Room.

"Wait! That's!" Mona exclaimed. But his call stopped us and just in time too, for lining the corridors walls, there were security cameras shining right in our path; this must have been the security system that Shadow Kaneshiro had been so boastful about when we last saw him, hopefully it wasn't as impenetrable as he liked to think that it was.

"A security camera… they'll probably tighten their guard if we show up on there," Queen warned. Which was something we wanted to avoid since tipping them off to our location would lead to them surging towards us and pinning us in this corridor, likely against such overwhelming numbers that we'd end up being forced to retreat if we weren't completely overwhelmed by the assault.

"Amazon, can you use your eyes to see the camera's range?" Mona asked. I move forward and proceeded to take a look, thankfully my eyes did show that there actually was a way for us to get passed the cameras without being spotted; I motioned for the others to follow me and guided them passed the glowing circles that denoted each camera's range until we reached the other side of corridor.

"What's wrong Joker?" Queen asked. I turned and saw that Joker was focused on something, I followed his gaze and found that stuck to the end of the hallway was a red sign with white writing, with a silver box underneath the sign and looking like it could be opened up if the handle was any indication. Underneath that was a yellowish box with an electrical power sign on the front of it.

"Is that a device of some kind? Let's go check it out," Mona encouraged. We drifted a bit closer to the object as I looked over the set-up which seemed quite curious to me. "It seems to be a power supply box for something," Mona admitted. That was pretty obvious from the sign on the yellow-ish box, but the writing on the red sign was still a little difficult to make out, except for one word.

"The word camera is written on it," Queen pointed out. That just caused Mona to encourage Joker to 'destroy it' which he did by kicking it and the cameras behind us were swiftly disabled; at least we now had a way to get rid of the cameras if we came across anymore, which was quite likely all things considered based on previous experience.

"Okay, I'm going to take Amazon and Mona up front. I don't want to but given what we've come across Amazon's eyes will be necessary to secure safe passage if we come across anymore cameras," Joker decided. We reorganised ourselves and then opened the door only to find a Shadow right on the other side, we all fell back and hid, but the Shadow didn't turn around, so we leapt out to attack it.

It turned out to be an Oni, so Queen used this opportunity to help us refine our exploitation of the Ailment Spells some of us carried to use what we decided to call Technical Damage against the enemies afflicted with the status ailments. Also, we learned that Johanna had a Trait known as Gaia Pact which increased the chance of Shock from Electrical Spells, Burn from Fire Spells, Freeze from Ice Spells, and Dizzy from Earth Spells actually taking effect on the enemy which gave a secondary avenue to use Technical Damage apart from the Ailment Spells.

We went through the doorway that led to a stairwell into of down the corridor prowling with Shadows, as we made our way to go up the stairs, I was forced to stop us. The reason for this was that two security cameras were position right at the middle section which completely blanketed the area and forced us to return to the lower area so that we could locate the power box; we returned to the Shadow patrolled corridor.

Unfortunately, that also had cameras dotted about, so we decided to go about this sensibly and took up our sneaking position. We slipped into the side passage and found the power box… but a quick check proved it hadn't disabled the cameras we wanted, merely the ones in the hallway we had to sneak through. We kept looking and found a chest containing an odd black rock within a chest in one room and another power box which was swiftly broken.

We made our way back and quickly ascended the stairs which led to a very long hallway, luckily it was also completely clear so we darted down it as fast as we could until we reached the door at the end. We slowed down and stepped through the door into a room that was much more open than the previous rooms we'd moved through on this level, it was more like the rooms on the ground level.

"Woah! What is this?" Skull asked. He was looking around the area with wide eyes at the size of the room, there were two sets of stairs that went down and then stairs that went up right in front of them and doors at the end of the upwards stairs; but the door I could see was barred from being open, I also spotted a chest that seemed like it was probably important .

"It is an exceedingly spacious room," Fox commented. We all nodded our heads in agreement since the room was quite different, I continued looking around and spotted the four cameras that ran along the section right in front of us alongside what looked to be something similar to the laser bars from the museum.

"According to the map, we should be able to head down from here," Mona revealed. Well, that was something that would be useful, if we located the way down then we'd be one step closer to the Treasure which was a bit concerning since we'd yet to find the map, unless it was located in that lower area which put us at a disadvantage.

"Hey, did you hear? It sounds like those intruders are wreaking havoc in here," A voice claimed. Mona insisted we be quiet in order to hear it; Queen clamped a hand over Skull's mouth to ensure he'd remain quite as we all looked forward to where there was a slight depression in the wall with the cameras. "So, this floor's… and Kaneshiro-san ordered us to," The Shadow kept speaking. We couldn't hear all of it, but it was enough.

"Yeah, but still… I mean with these two keys… to happen?" Another Shadow spoke. That mention of two keys certainly piqued my interest since it seemed to be rather important; Queen much have felt the same way as she drifted forward slightly, whatever they were talking about had to be important with our heist in some manner.

"Hmm? Keys? What're those Shadows talkin' about?" Skull wondered. Queen jolted up and spun to look at Skull who had spoken rather loudly but that was exactly why she'd cover his mouth, only it seemed Queen had forgotten that reason in her curiosity, so she was more annoyed with herself than she was with Skull's question.

"I wasn't able to pick up everything they said. If only we could get closer," Queen admitted. Which was a slight issue, but hopefully one we could overcome, unfortunately for us, at that moment the security cameras proceeded to turn on which meant there wasn't a chance for us to get closer; in fact, we couldn't even try to sneak pass, due to the range covering all of the hallway that reached the door the Shadows were in.

"There are Shadows in there. It's probably too dangerous to get any closer right now," Panther claimed. There was also that since we had alerted them to our presence which meant they'd be on guard just in case someone ended up showing up; even if we could use the rope to climb down from somewhere above, it'd be in full view of the room the Shadows were in and we were bound to be attacked the moment that we showed up.

"I'm curious about the conversation they were having, but there's nothing we can do about it at the moment," Queen lamented. Hopefully we'd be able to figure out what the keys were that had been mentioned by the Shadows so suddenly. "For now, let's just focusing on finding a way down," Queen suggested. We headed down and then up one of the pair of stairs right beside us and Joker happily smashed the power box that was there.

"We shut off some of the cameras in front of the guard room but not all of them though," Fox commented. I looked back and found that only the far cameras on either side of the room had been shut down, which meant that we would need to find another power box to crush if we wanted to reach the door and those suspicious Shadows.

"The rest of them must be connected to a different power source. Looks like we need to check elsewhere," Mona suggested. The door right beside us was sealed up tight, so no way through there, but we did manage to find a new weapon for Skull who was quite happy about that; there was another sealed door, so we headed down to the lower central area and then down the stairs that were there… only to end up finding something that was quite astonishing.

"Is this some kind of vault?" Skull asked. It certainly had the look of a vault with its' large, round surface and a bunch of wheels and bolts dotted across the surface, beside the doorway were two identical terminals that matched the silver-grey colour scheme of the vault; I turned to look at Mona but found that he was consulting the map alongside Queen, said teammate proceeded to raise her head.

"According to the map, there's a great deal more beyond here," Queen stated. A vault wouldn't lead to a great deal more space beyond it, which meant Skull's assumption was actually wrong and this seemingly vault like object was something else entirely; though the way it was designed certainly indicated that Kaneshiro valued whatever was beyond it as highly as he would something you'd put in an actual vault.

"Then this is not a vault, but a partition of sorts. The terminals there must be how you open it," Fox suggested. That seemed the most likely conclusion that was presented to the scenario we had encountered; the question remained as to how we were meant to open the partition since it didn't look like the terminals would take the key card that Joker had been using so far.

"B-But both of them have key slots," Panther pointed out. That they did, and the moment I saw those two keyholes, an idea sparked into existence based upon the conversation that we'd just overheard which had contained a seemingly innocuous phrase that now carried much more meaning now that we'd found this partition.

"And those Shadows mentioned keys," I reminded. I turned to look at the others and each of them gained widened eyes, likely realising just the kind of answer that we had stumbled upon, if the keys that those Shadows had been talking about were also the keys that were required for us to open up this section; there was only one thing for us to do.

"Which means beating those Shadows might just provide us with the means to get through here," Joker finished. I nodded my head in agreement with those words while Queen allowed a strained curl to come upon her lips as she realised the situation we were now in; in order to get the keys, we had to deal with those Shadows, who were likely much stronger than normal Shadows if they guarded those keys.

"For real? Ugh… it's such a pain in the ass how secure this place is," Skull complained. I couldn't really argue with him, none of the other Palaces had contained this level of security, but Shadow Kaneshiro had bragged about having a sophisticated one; it seemed likely that we'd come across even more security measures the deeper in that we managed to move.

"Well, it is important," Joker reminded. He wasn't wrong since the lower we went then the closer to the heart of the Palace that we were likely to reach; Shadow Kaneshiro was pretty desperate to stop us from doing such a thing after realising that we weren't about to bow down and tremble before him like so many other people had already done.

"It would seem that's correct. This may lead further down, just as Kaneshiro had mentioned," Fox agreed. Which meant getting those keys was an extremely important step that we needed to take in order to continue with our heist; now the only issue was how exactly we could locate the power box for the security cameras impeding our progress.

"And further down means closer to the Treasure," Mona pointed out. He swiftly folded up the map and proceeded to tuck it away, clearly having decided on something important. "Let's head back to that room once the cameras are down!" Mona suggested. We all nodded our heads, with that done, we headed down the left-hand path which led to a long stairwell until we reached another hallway with a dog Shadow patrolling it. It was necessary to ambush it given its' heightened senses could detect us if we weren't careful.

More Orthrus came out, but we were well prepared for this enemy with Joker and Fox primarily taking over the fighting given their abilities. Once the enemy was defeated, we kept moving and somehow ended up looping back around to where we found the Safe Room, so Joker opened the gate separating us from it, we entered into a nearby small room and Joker broke the power box there. Sadly, it wasn't for the cameras we needed, so we instead decided to move down the right hand path from the vault partition to hopefully find something.

"Hmm, I'm sensing something!" Mona claimed. He'd done this right after we turned around a corner, all of us immediately turned to face the human turned cat who was looking around intently. "Joker! There might be a Will Seed nearby, let's keep an eye out for it!" Mona encouraged. That was something we definitely needed to find then. Joker located a grapple hook and quickly zipped to the upper level, but a Savage Shadow was there, forcing us to strike.

When Joker tore the mask off, out came a large creature with green skin, shockingly it was actually missing arms which was quite a surprise since I'd never seem this, it had horns with grey hair that was tied up, the creature was dressed in white with rope wrapped around its' torso. This thing seemed to feel similar to Iwai and it honestly fit given that it seemed rather intimidating just like he did.

"Take-Minakata is resistant to Electricity and Curse! Weak to Psy!" I revealed. Which meant things were rather difficult for us, as expected in this type as a fight. Knowing what needed to be done, I quickly used my newly gained Samanda on the enemy. Joker made sure to boost his own magical power while Panther used her ring to attack. With Take-Minakata knocked down, Panther took the opportunity to Baton Pass to Joker.

Our leader used the increase strength to make a critical strike. Orthrus' Agilao dealt some more damage and even managed to subject it to a Burn. We couldn't use the All-Out Attack now, but with Take-Minakata so dazed, it was our advantage. Skull and Fox proceeded to use their Skills to attack with me, Queen and Mona using the best Spells we had to deal more damage. That was when Take-Minakata recovered and proceeded to attack.

This took the form of an area of effect Electricity Spell that crackled down upon us, I barely dodged out of the way. But Mona wasn't so lucky as he got knocked out. This allowed Take-Minakata to use a multi-target Skill that did manage to catch me. But the damage seemed so minor that it might as well not have been there at all.

"That lightning felt a lot stronger than normal!" Panther exclaimed. That was true, but we couldn't allow such a thing to distract us, I moved around and quickly used Tera on Take-Minakata. Queen followed up with a Frei Spell. Joker darted in to use Matador's Psi Spell. With Take-Minakata down, all of us dove in to attack it as much as possible before it started to move, which caused all of us to fall back.

Panther quickly used her Psi Ring to send Take-Minakata to the ground once more, allowing us to dive in. Falling back, we watched as Take-Minakata got to its' feet and proceeded to attack. It was a powerful attack that rammed into Joker. Thankfully, he managed to withstand it. This allowed Skull and Fox to use their Skills to damage the Shadow even further. Mona made the cautious move and quickly healed every one of the wounds we'd ended up accumulating before we made another attack.

Take-Minakata unleashed another wide physical attack, but it was the same weak force as before. I was confusing as to why the Shadow used it, but now wasn't the time for questions. Instead, I used Gry on Take-Minakata to deal some damage. By fortune, the attack managed to deal some more damage than before. Fox reached out to use Sukukaja on Panther, Panther quickly used Dormina on Take-Minakata instead.

It took hold of the Shadow and allowed Joker to utilise Matador's Psychokinetic Magic. The damage was increased enough for Take-Minakata to have finally been wounded enough to burst into smoke, after one last attack from Fox's Goemon that is. All of us were feeling a little more drained than normal, so Joker took advantage of the current emptiness of the area to pull out some food and coffee from LeBlanc to revive our Soul Power in case we found ourselves in this situation again.

We jumped to an upper level first in order to get a chest that was spotted, granting us some Psy Magatama, Joker also opened a door with the key card before we approached the Will Seed door. It was like an elevator door in appearance, with yen notes scattered all over the surface and green cloth draping over the entrance.

"Give me money. Money… is power. You don't need smarts if you got the dough!" Kaneshiro's voice echoed. Joker quickly cut through the ribbons and pushed the door open; we moved further into the room and Joker scooped up the Will Seed which quickly restored our mildly drained Soul Power, he turned to look at me and extended the newly claimed object so that I could learn that distortion we were dealing with.

"It's Gluttony," I revealed. That might have seemed like a bit of an oddity given how Kaneshiro seemed concerned with money, but I think it was that exact focus that really explained this distortion. "He's so obsessed with money, money and nothing but money that it's practically wasteful in his hunger for it," I commented.

Joker looked mildly disturbed by this information, we slipped through the door that Joker had opened and found ourselves back in front of the door where those two Shadows were located. We returned to the left hand path and started to investigate the rooms we hadn't before, we managed to get a hold of some Snuff Soul while searching; eventually we did find the power box and shut it down while also finding a route back to the front of the Palace. With everything turned off, we returned to the room with the Shadows.

"Alright, we've made it this far! Looks like there are Shadows in there. Let's hide and listen in on them," Mona insisted. With that warning, we crouched low and shuffled closer to the door so that we could listen in on the Shadows without worrying about being seen by them; Mona and Joker were the closest with the rest of us hunched up as much as possible behind the two of them.

"About those intruders," A Shadow spoke. It seemed like this one was more cautious, which could present a problem to us as we tried to figure out how to deal with it; though I was also curious to know what it could possibly be that they were discussing, clearly it was about us, but I was a little interested in knowing what they were going to say.

"Oh? Are you really that concerned?" The other one wondered. He was much more aggressive sounding that the other one, which could work both for us and against us. "Don't be. We have the keys they need, so things should be okay as long as we protect them," The Shadow insisted. Well, that confirmed what we needed to know and we pulled away from the room to have a proper discussion.

"So, you guys really think they're talking about those keys?" Skull wondered. It seemed that was the most likely case, there was a possibility that they were talking about a different set of keys entirely, but there wasn't much we could do until we actually tried the keys; but that required getting a hold of them first and foremost.

"Considering they said that we'd need them then I guess so," Joker admitted. Skull seemed to relax a little at hearing the confirmation from our leader, Panther also seemed relieved by this knowledge; I was more concerned with how we were going to go about getting the keys with the two of them cooped up in that room.

"Just as expected, those are highly likely to be what opens the partition," Fox stated. Queen and Mona nodded their heads in agreement with those words, now all we needed to move forward, was to work out a plan to defeat those two Shadows and claim the keys that would get us to the next step of the Palace and hopefully closer to the Treasure.

"What're we gonna do then? Beat 'em up and take the keys?" Skull suggested. All of us proceeded to give the blonde punk a completely deadpan look at this suggestion, in fact the sound of something being ground against something else echoed through the air; did Skull seriously think that we could just barge into that room and attack them without at least thinking calmly about the situation.

"Really, Skull? Just look at 'em. They're not your average Shadows," Mona warned. He was quite right, apart from the yellow coverings that they wore which denoted them as seemingly different to the ordinary Shadows we'd seen prowling about, there was a distinct sensation of power coming from them. "Anyone in charge of such important keys must be extremely strong," Mona added on.

"And there's two of them; dealing with both of them would be tough. Plus, they could go and sound the alarm," Panther reminded. Those were all things that we seriously needed to consider before actually diving into the fight, especially since taking them on together was much too risky for us to even contemplate.

"The simplest answer is not to fight both of them at once, divide and conquer," I pointed out. Everyone turned to look at me with widened eyes, but it was the most logical choice for us to make, Queen quickly realised this and I immediately saw the wheels in her mind spin and clicking pieces into place that would enable us to draw the two Shadows apart.

"Remember that monitoring room upstairs, the room we found the map in?" Queen asked. Everyone turned their gazes to focus on Queen who had a confident expression on her face as she explained her plan. "There was some communication equipment there as well. We can use that to lure one away," Queen insisted. A gleam entered Joker's eyes as he seemed to realise the path that Queen's mind was following.

"By separating them we can use our combined power to overwhelm whatever strong enemy comes out and seize each key," Joker explained. The others finally understood as they brightened up considerably at the prospect of simply dealing with each enemy on an individual basis instead of in a group that would put us at a greater risk.

"I agree it's definitely safer than facing both of them at the same time," Panther admitted. The others all seemed to be coming to agree to this plan, so when Queen suggested we get moving, we did so by using the shortcut between the two levels that we had discovered to make the journey easier for us; we entered the room as Queen headed over to the microphone.

"Okay, I'll give it a try, are we ready?" Queen asked. She seemed a little nervous about the position that she would have to take to draw the Shadow up to us, but she seemed to be the only one who could figure out how to work the communication equipment; Joker walked up to Queen and gently rested a hand between her shoulder blades.

"Let's do it," Joker encouraged. Queen firmly nodded her head and then we all quickly hid to avoid being seen by the Shadow when it first came through the door; otherwise, it might end up calling for help for fleeing back downstairs which would put us in a rather difficult situation, plus this would also allow us to block its' escape path to prevent that happening.

"Okay, stay quiet while I'm doing this," Queen insisted. She turned to look at the device and reached out to activate it. "Come in, security room! This is the monitoring room! We've been ambushed by intruders! Requesting backup, immediately! One person would be perfect!" Queen called. She released the device and stepped back with a slightly concerned expression on her face.

"Roger that! We'll send someone your way at once!" The Shadow responded. She breathed out in relief and then quickly darted over to hide in her own place as we waited, we watched the camera feed for the Shadow's journey; soon enough the door to the room flew open as footsteps came in. "Hm! There's no one here," The Shadow commented. At that comment, we sprung down and slammed the door closed, ensuring that the Shadow was now trapped with us, Queen had disabled the communication device after we got our answer to prevent the Shadow from trying to call for any back-up; it was now completely isolated from any of its' allies.

"Not exactly," Skull mocked. He had a rather large grin on his face as he said those words and this caused the Shadow to spin around to look at us; its' glowing red eyes seemed to narrow in annoyance at our presence but we weren't going to be deterred; hopefully it had the key that we needed on its' person.

"Y-You're! This was a trap!? You bastards!" The Shadow snapped. It proceeded to turn into a large blue creature that was dressed in white with blue armour running along the forearms and latched around its' neck, creepily enough there was a purple hole in place of any facial features, it carried a double bladed sword in one hand.

"Fuu-Ki is resistant to Gun damage! Drains Wind and Weak to Electricity!" I warned. The enemy immediately proceeded to unleash a wave of wind that lashed out towards all of us. I quickly hunched down and covered myself since the wind was too swift for me to completely avoid and it felt much stronger than previous Wind Spells. Mona had darted over and managed to protect Skull from having his Weakness struck. Queen quickly healed all of our wounds.

I used Samanda on Fuu-Ki. Fox followed up with a Sukukaja upon Skull who seemed to be gearing up for his attack. Joker pulled off his mask, revealing Nue who sent out a pulse of energy I was familiar with to wrap around Skull and increase his offensive Magic. With Skull as strengthened as possible, he quickly used Zio on the enemy which knocked it down. We all jumped in and quickly started to attack it as swiftly as we could before needing to pull backwards as it started to rise back up.

Once back on its' feet, Fuu-Ki proceeded to send another wall of wind flying directly at us. Except this time, it was a single target Spell and careening straight for Skull. He was unable to dodge the attack and got knocked down because of it. Fuu-Ki proceeded to lash out at Fox, but Goemon's Trait kicked in and saved him. Mona didn't falter and instead used Patra upon Skull, allowing him to get back on his feet. We'd need to be supportive of Skull since Joker seemed to be lacking an Electricity wielding Persona.

What followed was essentially Skull doing most of the attacking with Mona primarily on healing duty, with occasional aid from Panther and Queen. The rest of us alternated between supporting using Support or Ailment Spells to help Skull deal as much damage as possible and actually damaging Fuu Ki. Eventually the Shadow disappeared in a burst of smoke which caused it to fade away and something clanged onto the floor in its' place.

"Ooh! He had a key!" Mona cheered. Joker moved forward and scooped the object up to look at it, its' colouring did match the terminals and vault-partition which was a good indicator that this key would indeed be capable of opening that partition; hopefully we could get the key from the more aggressive of the two Shadows.

"Guess that went pretty well, huh?" Skull commented. It had been advantageous for us that the enemy was weak to Electricity, which allowed it to keep being knocked to the ground so that we would be able to deal with it easily; plus the numerous Spells we'd unleashed to weaken it or strengthen ourselves had given us quite the edge as well.

"That means there should only be one Shadow in the security room!" Queen reminded. That would be the thing that we needed to deal with and soon; any joy from our victory almost seemed to evaporate at the reminder that we would need to engage with another enemy quite quickly, but we were all resolved to see this through.

"Let's get going there right away!" Joker insisted. We quickly made the journey back down to the room, all of us looked at each other with a little hit of wariness but we followed after Joker as he led us up to the door, where we heard the Shadow inside worrying about his companion since he'd been missing long enough for concern to start rising up.

"We'll be heading right into battle when we charge in there! Are you ready for this?" Mona asked. Joker quickly had us run our Life Energy and Soul Power reserves pass him and we quickly topped ourselves up before he led us into the room; once more we barricaded the entrance with a few more covering the communication device that they had with them.

"Hm? Who are you!?" The Shadow demanded. It seemed like he really didn't know who we were despite the fact that they had been talking about us not too long ago, you really think it would make sense for the Shadow to realise that we were the intruders they had been warned about by Shadow Kaneshiro; or I might be putting too much faith in the logical capabilities of the Shadows.

"We're here for the other key!" Skull declared. He was grinning quite broadly as he said those words, as if revelling in the fact that we'd managed to catch the Shadows off guard so superbly; it really was thanks to Queens quick thinking that we even managed to get a hold of the plan that would allow us to be victorious in these fights.

"What!? Then that comm earlier… how dare you!" The Shadow snarled. It transformed into a Sui-Ki, which quickly decided our strategy; Joker, Queen and Mona via the Atom Ring focused on continually damaging it, while the rest of us supported them as best we could with Samanda and Makakaja, Tarunda, Sukukaja, and Physical attacks. Me and Panther also focused on avoiding any of Sui-Ki's ice attacks that came flying at us while Mona focused on all the healing that we required, soon enough the enemy was defeated and the key clattered against the ground.

"Perfect! We've obtained both keys now!" Fox celebrated. It was quite a relief, especially since we were able to confirm that this key was an almost exact match for the key we had already managed to claim, all we had to do now was head down to the partition and try both of them on the terminals to see if they really did work.

"Oh, just one moment!" Queen insisted. We looked at the advisor and saw that she was staring right passed us, we followed her gaze and saw something pinned to the wall that we were certainly going to need. "Doesn't this map have information that the one we currently have is lacking," Queen commented. Mona bounded forward as Queen got it free for him to look at.

"Maybe it can tell us what the bank is like further down," Panther suggested. We all gathered around our Wind expert as he quickly started to look over the map to identify what our next steps would look like; hopefully the Treasure wouldn't be too far away from us once we got through the partition, because even though we had topped up, it might be advisable for us to rest at some point.

"How's it look? You see where the Treasure is?" Skull asked. Mona didn't directly answer and instead he continued to leaf through the map before eventually stopping on a place that looked like it was a large circular area from what could be faintly made out, the maps always got brighter when we had actually entered that area.

"Well, the most suspicious part is the deepest area. Look here. There's an elevator that leads down. The Treasure must be past there," Mona answered. It did seem to be something that was a little suspicious, because it seemed that this Palace had a fair number of underground levels to it, completely different to the other two we'd done prior to this.

"The map seems to indicate that the area beyond the partition is rather large as well," Fox commented. It certainly seemed that way when Mona had been flipping through it, which meant reaching the elevator would take a little bit of time, which was unlikely to be an easy journey for us even with the idea of the keys being a protective measure to keep people like us out of the deeper recess.

"I'm sure security will keep getting more intense from here onward too. We need to be careful," Mona insisted. We moved around the room a little, but Joker ended up running across a Treasure Demon known as Queen's Necklace, luckily the opponent was easily dealt with thanks to Joker's Matador and Joker was able to claim control of it. We proceeded to head down to the vault styled partition with Skull and Panther taking the keys up to the terminals.

"Okay… let's try turnin' them at the same time," Skull suggested. It was probably how it actually needed to be done in order to get the partition to open, hopefully we would be able to get through it with little issue now that we were here, though the nervous tension hanging over us was definitely not helping

"On three! One, two… three!" Panther counted. They proceeded to twist the keys on Panther's word and the partition rumbled as it finally opened for us, the space beyond was a large room with a bridge like structure and its' most defining feature had to be that the floor was swathed in yen notes while more rained down from the unseen ceiling.

"This took some time, but we managed to force it open," Fox stated. I'm not sure if the others had taken notice of the rather unsettling sight that was staring at us, but I wasn't about to draw everyone's attention away from at least taking a moment to breath in the fact that we'd managed to overcome the obstacle that had been blocking our way.

"Great teamwork, everyone," Joker complimented. All of us turned to look at Joker and I could tell, he had truly meant the compliment, there was a sheen to his eyes and the genuine relaxed nature to his smile were all the proof that we needed to know that fact; he seemed rather proud of what we had accomplished just now.

"Yes, I agree. The cooperation of our whole team is what helped us through this particular ordeal," Queen spoke. She also seemed to be smiling rather broadly as she said those words, hopefully we could keep working well together within this next section; we moved towards the partition and that was when everyone froze as they took in the money strew about on the floor in such a careless manner.

"Dude… there's money all over the floor," Skull breathed. He seemed partially shocked and partially horrified by the sight that was in front of us, I looked over the edge of the bridge and immediately felt like being sick, but not because of the height. Instead, it was because of the fact, that far below our feet seemed to be even more money just collecting into the floor all the way at the bottom of this place.

"So, he took all of this from the weak," Mona seethed. It was so horrible to contemplate, knowing that he had taken it and seeing how terrified the cognitions of his 'customers' was one thing, but this was evidence of a completely different variety, a variety that churned my stomach into a maelstrom that caused me to press a hand over my mouth in order to keep the contents of my stomach inside of it.

"He's going to pay for this," Queen vowed. Hearing that fury actually managed to ground me as I pulled away and quickly fell into place at Joker's side, we advance through the door at the end and while one door seemed to be a dead end and another was sealed, the third one opened and led us into a dark blue room.

"Joker! Hide!" Mona warned. On our navigator's orders, we dove into the shadows in order to avoid being spotted by the Shadows that were patrolling this room, but that was when I noticed that there was a security camera attached to the wall, which meant getting passed would be harder than we initially thought.

"More cameras?" Skull asked. He was right, but at the same time, I noticed that he was a little off, there was a blinking light attached to these cameras and every so often it would vanishing from sight for several moments before eventually starting up again; whatever these camera actually were, they had to be operating differently to the cameras we had previously encountered.

"No… these ones seem different from what we've seen before… they turn off and on," Mona claimed. At least someone else had spotted what was going on with these cameras, though it was a little odd that we had encountered cameras that seemed to be randomly turning themselves on and off since that created a blind spot if people were able to figure it out.

"It might be a surveillance system that switches between multiple cameras for efficient coverage," Queen theorised. That was probably right, but it still didn't make much sense to me, because of the blind spot thing and it just seemed reckless to think that switching between multiple cameras provided more efficient coverage than just having every area watched by cameras at all times.

"That just means we gotta pass by when it's not recordin', yeah?" Skull asked. That would be the only way for us to get passed it without being spotted; I proceeded to move forward so that I was a bit closer and could clearly see the most likely area where the circle that denoted the camera's range would be found before activating my eyes.

"That should work… but there are guards to watch out for too. We should proceed with caution!" Mona reminded. Joker gently tugged on my elbow, giving me a worried look, but I gave him a reassuring smile and then utilised my eyes; once the camera turned off, I darted over and turned in order to help the others across. We remained in hiding as we moved through the room towards the other side and quickly slipped out.

The room was empty, but we found a vent that linked to the small ledge outside the windows we had just darted pass, we crept across the ledge as Mona revealed he sensed a Will Seed, a quick look over the edge proved it was lower down, close to the pit of money I'd seen from the bridge. Sadly, there didn't seem to be a way for us to reach the Will Seed from our current location, meaning we had to keep looking.

We dropped over the edge of the ledge we were on and kept moving across another ledge until we reached a vent which allowed us to leave the ledge and enter a room nearby. Once more, we had to dodge cameras and Shadows through a nearly identical hallway to the last one, but we luckily found the elevator that we would need to reach the lower level.

Retracing our steps, we found a way to go back on ourselves through the sealed door we encounter earlier, when we headed back to the lower level, we needed to sit and wait for an opportunity, there was a clean corridor with only small statue plinths to hide behind with a pair of cameras that completely cut off the corridor when they were on and a Shadow. So, we needed to wait for the cameras to turn off and the Shadow to be in ambush range. Once it was in range, Joker leapt forward and quickly tore the mask off to reveal two Orobas and two High Pixies which were quickly dealt with thanks to Fox's Ice and Queen's revolver.

We got passed another pair of cameras and found a locked door, but there was a vent that we managed to use instead, this led us to a grapple point that allowed us to obtain a black kogatana that seemed rather similar to the black rock we had found earlier in its' texture and oddity. The only issue is that it was directly opposite the Will Seed chamber and there didn't seem to be any way across to it from our location.

We returned to the hallway and found another vent system, allowing us to slip out on to the ledge which ended up at a drop down at its' end, this luckily led to a grapple hook that allowed Joker – since the rest weren't too sure about being able to make the initial jump required to reach the ring – to swing over and get the Will Seed. We met back up at the hallway with both vents and made our way to the elevator, at last taking it down to that lower level.

We stepped out the elevator only to immediately spot a dog shaped Shadow up ahead, to make things worse there wasn't much in the way of places for us to hide in this open area. The Shadow charged at us before transforming into three Orthrus, I was starting to wonder if we'd ever run into new Shadows at this rate since the fights were being ridiculously easy since we were very aware of the enemies' weaknesses now. We finished off our opponents and went through the only exit from the hallway which led to a small balcony like area with two sets of stairs leading down, on the balcony was a small pile of money.

"Huh? Do you hear something coming from below?" Panther asked. I closed my eyes to focus on my hearing and, sure enough, I did actually hear something; it was a voice that sounded slightly familiar, but I was unable to make out any of the words that might help make sense of what the conversation was about. Opening my eyes I walked to the edge along with the rest and we looked down, finding the source easily.

"Isn't that Kaneshiro? What's he doin' down there?" Skull wondered. Whatever it was, it was likely related to the Treasure since there happened to be another elevator behind him which was bound to take us down into the depths of this Palace which was hopefully that big round area we saw on the map; the only problem was the large yellow clad Shadow that was stood in front of Shadow Kaneshiro.

"It is difficult to hear what he's saying from where we are now," Fox commented. That was certainly an issue for us, but there wasn't anything we had on us that could amplify sound and allow us to hear what it was they were saying; there was only one way for us to actually learn more and that was likely to be putting us into another battle very soon.

"Let's try and get closer then," Joker insisted. With that said, we broke off into our two teams and moved towards the stairs, unfortunately at the second downwards set, we quickly encountered a problem in the form of a patrolling Shadow; all of us dived into hiding places and waited for the Shadow to move passed each spot. Once Joker was clear he got out and quickly moved down the stairs, Mona followed him and I was the last to move; luckily all of us escaped.

We reached the end of the steps, coming across more piles of money and another Shadow, luckily for us this time there were multiple pillars that we could hide behind to ensure our safety when sneaking passed. There was a final set of stairs to descend, but after those we reached the level that Shadow Kaneshiro was stood on with the others meeting us at that location; all the while, the Ruler and Shadow were oblivious to our presence. Queen needed to quickly take Joker with her up the path they came down but when they got back, Queen's weapon had changed.

"We may enter a battle if we get any closer. Are you ready?" Mona asked. Joker quickly looked at all of us, we were definitely drained and I think that was showing on each of our faces but no amount of Soul Power restoration would help in that regard; it was likely that we'd have to stop after this battle for the day.

"Let's get this done," Joker decided. With our leader's decision made, we turned towards our enemy and quickly made our way forward; despite the approach and the rather threatening aura rolling off of Queen in powerful waves, they remained completely oblivious to our approach… so my childhood friend decided to do something about that.

"Kaneshiro!" Queen yelled. Her voice sliced through the air like it was a physical weapon and it was actually rather fun to see Shadow Kaneshiro leap into the air from his surprise; the Shadow on the other hand simply whipped around to face us with its' weapon at the ready and a deadly glare upon its' face; this was a powerful Shadow that we'd need to deal with.

"Y-You bastards… how did you get this far!? What about my security!?" Shadow Kaneshiro panicked. It hadn't exactly been that difficult if I was completely honest, once the tricks had been figured out then it was easy for us to bypass all the safety measures Shadow Kaneshiro had thought would keep us isolated from the location.

"Sorry, that shit was a piece of cake for us!" Skull declared. It wasn't that easy, but it had certainly come close, though I was reluctant to correct Skull because it was actually rather delightful to see Shadow Kaneshiro start to squirm in place like a pathetic worm at the thought that we'd been able to so easily breach his oh so prized security system.

"Well, I wouldn't say it was that simple," Fox commented. A sharp gasp suddenly followed and I couldn't resist looking back, Fox was hopping slightly on one foot with a pained expression on what I could see beyond his mask; meanwhile Panther was stood beside him with a too sweet grin on her face. It was easy enough to understand what had happened, so I turned back to look at the Ruler who was still panicking.

"H-Hey, finish off these vermin here! Keep them away from the elevator at all costs!" Shadow Kaneshiro ordered. Well, here was the fight that we had been expecting to come; the large Shadow moved towards us which covered Shadow Kaneshiro from view and I couldn't even try to see him as it swiftly transformed. It turned into three Shadows; Sui-Ki, Fuu-Ki and a new one that was a large golden creature, clad in red pants with pale and green attachments to it, there were matching shoes on its' feet but other than that there weren't any clothes.

"The gold one is Kin-Ki! It Reflects Gun and is Resistant to Physical!" I warned. Before any of us could react, the new golden enemy proceeded to surround itself with some kind of intensifying power which I definitely didn't like the sensation of. We would need to be on guard with three powerful enemies staring us down especially as one didn't have any weakness that we could exploit.

"Mona! Queen! Focus on Sui-Ki! Skull! Panther! You two deal with Fuu-Ki! Fox! Amazon! With me!" Joker commanded. I really wish that I had access to a multi-target magical offense or defence affecting Spell, but with nothing like that, I could only focus on reducing Kin-Ki's defence against our Spells. Fox quickly used Sukukaja on Joker which allowed him to bring out Flauros, an energy spread from it and struck each of the enemies, it only managed to hit the other two though.

When it did, they suddenly seemed completely confused by what had happened to them. Kin-Ki proceeded to unleash a powerful attack that radiated across the entire field, it was a pain that cut across my form that tore parts of my armour. No one else was better off, Joker quickly healed our wounds and Fox made the first attack. He summoned icicles that crusted across Kin-Ki's form but it didn't manage to freeze it sadly.

I didn't know what Joker was planning with the Ailment, so instead I simply used my new Spell to attack. Phantom's Terazi brought down a much larger spike of rock onto Kin-Ki's head. It wasn't rendered Dizzy like I had hoped but at least some more damage had been dealt. Kin-Ki proceeded to use a defence raising Spell but it was for the Physical and not Magical which meant Samanda was still in effect.

Joker quickly moved to use Matador's Mapsi, which had the added benefit of knocking down Sui-Ki and Fuu-Ki along with damaging Kin-Ki. I followed up with a Gry Spell as Fox used his Bufu Spell again. Thankfully this time, it actually managed to inflict a Freeze upon Kin-Ki that prevented it from moving. Joker quickly touched his mask and then tore it off to bring out Atalanta. The Grecian warrior proceeded to use a multi target attack that shredded through all of the enemies and dealt some severe damage to Kin-Ki.

With Kin-Ki knocked down, the three of us dove in to attack, quickly hacking and stabbing as much as we possibly could. Once we fell back, Kin-Ki immediately used that same sensation of increasing its' power that I had felt at the start. Joker brought out Flauros and used it to unleash a brilliant flash of light that I was half convince would blind me, by some miracle it didn't. But the same could not be said for all of our enemies who were rather cross-eyed and appeared to be stumbling about in a dazed state. All it would take was one attack to send them all down. Me, Mona and Skull quickly dealt such attacks, allowing all of us to dive in to attack as one.

Our attacks were strong enough to finally eliminate Sui-Ki and Fuu-Ki, but unlike us, the others had been able to constantly deal out attacks against Weak spots and All-Out Attacks with a few Technical damages from Ailments. With only Kin-Ki remaining we were in the final stretch of this battle which was a relief.

Suddenly a rush of power seemed to gather into two individuals, these were Panther and Mona, they looked at each and nodded their heads. With a flash, we were transported to the same grassy field from the last time these two had used their… Showtime for lack of a better term to give it. The two proceeded to execute their moves, dealing serious damage. They pulled back and we returned to the bank's interior with Kin-Ki slumping forward quite heavily.

Not wanting to take any chances, I quickly inflicted Samanda upon it once more, just to give us any kind of edge possible. Kin-Ki wasn't about to go down without a fight as it unleashed another powerful Physical Attack against us. The same level of damage was dealt out, but Mona was on hand to repair all of our wounds instantly. We proceeded to hammer out Spells at a rapid pace to end the enemy's looming shadow of blocking us. Eventually a final Agilao from Joker brought it down to the ground.

"Where is Kaneshiro?" Queen questioned. Now that the enemies had been defeated, we were greeted with the rather irritating sight that was a current lack of the Ruler; we could have done with being able to interrogate him if he had managed to stick around, but clearly the cowardly worm knew when to flee from a situation.

"Grr, he took off while we were busy fightin'," Skull complained. It had to have been his only chance to escape since we would have been thoroughly distracted by the entire fight, especially not trying to die at the hands of Kin-Ki; however, there was something out of place on the floor, simply because it didn't look anything like the other yen notes that had constantly been getting in the way during our fight.

"Yes, but… he seems to have been in a hurry. He left this behind," Fox revealed. Joker moved over and scooped it up before turning to show it off to the rest of us which caused me to raise an eyebrow at the odd appearance of this object. "It's a journal. Let us see what lies inside," Fox suggested. Joker opened it up and seemed rather baffled by whatever was inside so turned it over to let us read it. "R equals C equals zero, I equals one, H equals two," Fox read. Well, now I understood why Joker had been so confused. "What could this mean?" Fox wondered. There was also another problem to deal with.

"The pages afterwards have been torn out as well. Could it be a code of some sort?" Queen theorised. The ragged and mismatched edges of the missing pages stood out starkly against the black binding of the journal and the only whole page we had; whatever was on those pages Shadow Kaneshiro clearly had no desire for us to know about it.

"If we're not gonna figure this shit out now, we should just keep goin' forward yeah?" Skull suggested. That was the best course, we didn't know if those codes would become of any use or not; it was probably best to keep going until we knew if the information was actually a necessity, then we could look at searching for these other journal pages.

"Considering Kaneshiro's reaction, this elevator should lead us to the innermost part of the bank," Mona pointed out. Which directly translated to the closest possible location we had of the Treasure. "If so, it'll be the most secure area as well. Let's make sure we're ready for whatever awaits!" Mona warned. At that Joker turned to look at us rather grimly.

"In which case, let's fall back for the day and rest up," Joker suggested. We were exhausted, especially after that fight, so falling back was a necessity; fortunately, there was a Safe Room directly behind us which made for an easy escape.

*Persona 5 Royal*

It would not be inaccurate to say that I basically collapsed onto the couch I had in my house the moment I got back, it was so exhausting going through the Metaverse and today had been more draining that normal. I blame that solely on the security cameras I had to get us passed which rather drained my eyes, I'm just glad it hadn't proven much of a problem until near the end. Though that meant I didn't really want to look at my phone when it went off with a Chat alert.

Yusuke: Hm, there has been no sign yet of Kaneshiro acting on his threat.

Ryūji: He prolly thinks his money's just gonna come rolling in.

Yusuke: He does have the upper hand on us, after all.

Ann: If that picture got out, who knows what would end up happening to Ren…

Ryūji: Guess worst-case scenario'd be he gets expelled.

Natsumi: I think it'll be worse than that.

Makoto: Natsumi is right. With Ren under probation…

Ren: Stop!

Ren: I don't want to think about that!

Makoto: I'm so sorry, this is all my fault.

Ryūji: C'mon, stop that. I mean you're the one who's in the most trouble right now.

Natsumi: He's right. Kaneshiro seemed to be more focused on you than us.

Makoto: My sister is a prosecutor… this will surely be a problem for her as well. What should I do?

Yusuke: Kaneshiro must surely be taking that aspect into account too.

Ren: We need to stop him.

Ryūji: For sure. Even the police are having trouble with that bastard. We'll be heroes if we catch him!

Ann: High risk, high reward

Natsumi: An accurate way of describing this heist.

Makoto: You're all so positive.

Yusuke: Hm… in a way your recklessness is the only reason we are now able to pursue this change of heart.

Ryūji: Totally. We're in deep shit, so we're gonna do whatever we can to get out of it.

Natsumi: Which seems to be a running theme unfortunately.

Natsumi: Expulsion, Legal action and now blackmail.

Ren: It seems the bad guys like giving us time limits.

Makoto: That… is quite the unsettling bit of information.

Yusuke: It is also quite strange hearing something so positive from Ryūji.

Ryūji: Shuddup!

Ann: Alright Leader! You can decide when we meet up!

Ren: Everything went well today thanks to our new advisor, so let's dive back in tomorrow.

I set the phone down and dragged myself off the couch in order to find what would be suitable for a very quick and light meal since I really just wanted to climb into my bed and sleep for the next week.