Good Day Readers! Obviously, I do not own anything connected to the Persona series in general or Persona 5 specifically, I DO own Chiba Natsumi and Anais Ouvrard, along with Natsumi's immediate family members and the original Personas that will be showing up on occasion.
I would appreciate any responses that you have, please enjoy
Chapter 66: - Reckless Actions
School could not have passed fast enough in my opinion, I was desperate to actually meet up with the others and discuss our current situation which was – to put it mildly – very unfortunate. We needed to do something about the fact the Palace was floating and the only thing I could think of at the moment was a way to force Kaneshiro's cognition to change… which had its' own special set of problems attached to it.
"I've been seeing a lot of shows on TV lately about these Phantoms," Usami-sensei began. I tried to refocus on the lesson so as to avoid people getting suspicious about my lack of attention. "I just wonder, why bother stealing hearts? You can't do anything with them. They have no monetary value, either," Usami-sensei stated. Well, she wasn't wrong, hearts really did possess any value in money, but they were more valuable in other ways. "If I were them, I would go for something with a concrete, clear value like gold," Usami-sensei explained. Maybe if we were normal thieves but we definitely weren't "Speaking of, there's another kind of metal that's very valuable in its' own way. They're called minor metals, and they're used in many electronics. In fact, most of you probably have some on your person right now. On your pockets, in your pursues," Usami-sensei spoke. That might explain why some phones were so stupidly expensive, despite it being ridiculous. "Were you listening Takamaki-san? Give me one example of something most of you have that contain minor metals," Usami-sensei asked.
"Huh?!" Ann exclaimed. Apparently, she hadn't been listening, not that I blame her since she was probably focused upon the conundrum that we were facing in this Palace. "Oh, yeah, I can-," Ann rambled. Quickly, Ann closed her mouth and leaned back in her chair was her eyes darted over to me. "Wow, I don't know at all," Ann admitted. I didn't feel like she needed to be that worried, the answer was pretty obvious if you calmed down and thought about it calmly. "Sorry you two, can you help me out. Something that uses minor metals and all of us have something like that on us?" Ann asked.
"What does Ryūji constantly blow up when we're in class?" I reminded. It might seem mean, but I also hoped that it would cause Ann to be able to connect the dots on what the possibility would be just from my words; Ann looked at me in confusion, but in the next breath, her eyes went wide with understanding at what my implication had been.
"She's right, it'll definitely be the smartphone, it's the only thing all of us share," Ren agreed. He had a smile on his face, perhaps understanding what my intention had been behind the attempt to coax information into fruition for Ann; Ann turned back to the front of the desk and confidently relayed the conclusion she had managed to come to.
"Precisely!" Usami-sensei praised. She seemed quite pleased by the answer and turned to focus on the rest of the class. "A lot of minor metals are excavated in China. Some countries simply produce more than others. Ninety percent of the minor metals used in Japan are imported. But a lot of the recyclable garbage we throw away contains minor metals too. In other words, a junkyard is much more valuable than someone's heart," Usami-sensei explained.
But she was wrong, in the grand scheme of things, a person's heart was their most priceless treasure.
*Persona 5 Royal*
"We ain't got nothin'," Ryūji complained. All of us had gathered at the café in order to discuss our current situation, unfortunately there wasn't exactly much that could be done about the flying machine that was causing us so much trouble, although the way that Ryūji just spoke caused a small pulse of annoyance to run through me.
"It's we haven't got anything, or we've got nothing Ryūji. The double negative implies we have something which we decidedly do not," I chastised. Ryūji frowned at me in response, but I wasn't going to change my add on anything else; instead, it would be best for us to focus on the situation that we were currently facing down.
"Unless you count the flying problem as something," Yusuke commented. It was done with little mirth, not that I truly blame him since while the flying bank was something, it was the kind of something that was a massive pain in the neck for us to be dealing with and I'm sure all of us could have done without it actually appearing since any obstacle we had to deal with was quite troublesome given our limited time frame.
"Are we out of luck?" Ann wondered. All of us proceeded to look at Ann as I lightly bit my lip, because the mere idea of us being unable to clear this challenge was painful; people were going to keep suffering because of Kaneshiro so long as he remained active and he'd draw in more people just to increase the suffering.
"It's no fair his Palace is up in the sky," Morgana complained. That was quite true, but it was just a representation of how Kaneshiro perceived himself as untouchable which meant there had to be a way to make it so that Kaneshiro believed that – at the very least – we could touch him which would at least let us get into his Palace and actually do something about him instead of worrying.
"If only we could contact the real Kaneshiro," Yusuke stated. That was really the only thing that we could do at the moment, but that also was the biggest difficulty we had to deal with, nobody had been able to tell us anything about Kaneshiro before we went to Ohya and something told us it'd be a stretch to ask her, even if she was willing to tell us; given her warning the other day, something told me she wasn't going to be forthcoming.
"That might help if we could force a change in his cognition," I admitted. It was really the only thing that we could do at the moment, but that definitely made things so much more difficult for us since finding him would probably be akin to pulling teeth with a delicate strand of silk; before we could continue though, I sensed someone approaching us and I looked over seeing that Niijima-senpai was approaching us with
"What do you want?" Ann lethargically demanded. She seemed rather exhausted given her demeanour as opposed to how she normally reacted to this particular individual approaching us; that didn't mean that I wasn't prepared to watch the two of them to ensure nothing ended up going wrong between the two of them since it would be best to avoid a scene being caused.
"Nothing in particular. I just saw you all together here," Niijima-senpai admitted. I had to wonder if that was actually true given that she had suddenly decided to show up at our discussion when we were stuck in our heist; if she learned that then it was highly probably that she might just decide to fulfil the blackmail attempt, after all I didn't really know Niijima-senpai anymore nowadays.
"That so?!" Ryūji accused. He seemed to be thinking some pretty dark thoughts as his voice was laced with a significant amount of annoyance towards the girl; then against, I think that was the emotions that everyone was currently dealing it was just that Ryūji was being much more open about it, while Ren and Yusuke were silently staring at Niijima-senpai who seemed undaunted by the hostility being thrown at her.
"You seem to be having quite a bit of trouble," Niijima-senpai acknowledged. That was putting it mildly, but it wasn't like any of us were going to confess to her about that, after all it wasn't like Niijima-senpai would believe us about the other world. Plus, there was the fact that telling her could end any number of ways, but most of them probably involved us being taken away and not necessarily by the police.
"So, you're here to check up on us?" Ann questioned. She seemed more energetic now but that wasn't necessarily a good thing, given the way her eyes hardened as she glared at the older girl. "You may be the student council president, but when it comes to what we do, you're useless," Ann insulted. She looked at me and mouthed sorry, but I couldn't argue, Makoto really couldn't help us solve this situation we were stuck in.
"Useless?" Niijima-senpai repeated. It seemed that word had struck an unexpected chord within the brunette, I looked at her and found that while her red eyes were wide, it was more like she wasn't actually seeing what was happening before her; my lips pulled into a frown as I tried to figure out what was going on with her.
"To be frank, yes," Yusuke agreed. It was unlikely to help whatever was going on within Niijima-senpai's mind, in fact given the way she went tense all over, it was apparent that the brunette girl's state had only been made worse by the agreement Yusuke had made about her capability; I thinned my lips since I didn't like hearing this kind of discussion, but it wasn't inaccurate either so I couldn't speak up against it.
"Just stay on your high horse and watch. Or do you want to eavesdrop, since you're so good at it," Ann snapped. It seemed that Niijima-senpai's continued presence was only serving to make the blonde model angrier the longer she stayed here, I adjusted my position and was about to speak up in order to get Niijima-senpai to leave us alone.
"So, you wish to get in contact with Kaneshiro," Niijima-senpai asked. My jaw clacked shut as I warily looked at Niijima-senpai, because I did not like that, the way she said it was setting off plenty of alarm bells in my mind. "That is what you were just discussing, weren't you?" Niijima-senpai questioned. All of us looked at each other as someone confirmed that this was true. "It seemed you just needed to find out where he is," Niijima-senpai insisted.
"Yeah, it is like that," Ren answered. He sounded rather confused by what was going on with our student council president, then again I think the majority of us were certainly confounded by the oddness that was going on here regarding how Niijima-senpai was acting; I was currently trying to puzzle out why she was being so odd
"Hey! You don't gotta answer her honestly!" Ryūji protested. Ren just shrugged his shoulders, apparently not thinking anything wrong with confirming what Niijima-senpai had already managed to puzzle out; there really wasn't any danger to us since she was apparently aware of what we had been discussing even without us saying anything to her.
"I'm not," Niijima-senpai muttered. I diverted my attention back to her as I furrowed my eyebrows, Niijima-senpai seemed to be dealing with something pretty intense, in fact it was stirring up the weak embers of her Will of Rebellion into something that was just a little stronger than before; something was clearly going on with her that none of us knew about.
"Senpai, what's wrong?" I asked. I also raised my hand in an effort to reach out to her, there had to be something going on it was clearly affecting her state of mind; however, before my hand could reach her Makoto pulled her hand back, I tried not to feel too hurt by that action. But the girl went as far as to turn her back on us and her Will of Rebellion briefly flared bright enough that I was almost sure it would hurt my eyes.
"Fine. I'll help you meet Kaneshiro," Niijima-senpai decided. I had been rubbing my eyes after the brief flash had happened but hearing that caused my hands to still as my eyes widened; I managed to drop my hands and snap my head up in order to properly gape in shock at the nonsensical words that had just escaped from Makoto.
"WHAT?!" I exclaimed. It didn't make any sense and despite my desire to not cause a scene, I didn't seem to be in control of my voice when that word managed to escape from me; Makoto didn't answer me and instead she proceeded to walk away from us, but I just knew that wasn't going to be a good thing to allow to happen.
"What exactly is she planning on doing?" Yusuke wondered. I didn't give any more thought to my actions, instead I snapped my hand out and seized my bag, I then practically leapt to my feet and bolted out of the booth. "Ah! Natsumi!" Yusuke yelled. But I didn't stop, because Makoto knew where to find his thugs and that was likely where she was going; instead, I lunged out of the café and snapped my head about.
But I couldn't see a single indication of where she currently was, which meant she had likely started to run the moment the left the café, gritting my teeth tightly I immediately bolted towards the central shopping area. I needed to catch up with Makoto before she ended up doing something reckless and landing in a dangerous situation because of her own actions.
"Niijima-senpai!" I called. If she or the goons knew someone was looking for her, then it might stop the situation from spiralling out of control, especially when I reached the shopping district which seemed unusually packed today, I looked around but saw there was no sign of her. "Makoto!" I yelled. But still there was no response except a few odd looks, but I didn't care for them as I instead felt my breathing start to get out of control. "Mako-chan!" I cried. I needed to find her before it was too late, I couldn't risk failing her again.
"Natsumi, you gotta calm down!" A voice yelled. It sounded male but I couldn't really make it out, too concerned with trying to find Makoto even as my vision seemed to be fading at the edges. "Breath with me okay!" The voice ordered. I could hear the rhythm of breath and I almost instinctively started to follow it, slowly but surely getting myself under control once again and I managed to get my senses back to functioning normally.
The darkness that had been creeping its' way across my vision faded away and I knew that my breathing was finally settling back to normal, when I finally gulped down one last large breath. I focused and found the other Phantoms in front of me, each of them giving me concerned looks, but the person at the centre happened to be Ryūji his hands tightly gripped my shoulder as he looked at me intently.
"You cool?" Ryūji asked. He seemed very in control, steady like a rock as opposed to his normal fiery manner, but that almost seemed to calm me just as much as the breathing exercises had managed to do; my mouth felt a little dry so I tried to wet it a little, figuring they'd prefer to actually hear me speak as opposed to just nodding my head.
"I'm good," I reassured. My voice sounded a little rough when I spoke, so Ann quickly handed me a bottle of water, they all seemed relieved by my response as I took some gulps of water before handing the bottle back to Ann, I reached up to my face and found that it happened to be wet from tears, I wiped them away and focused upon the crowd that were moving about.
"There are way too many people here!" Morgana exclaimed. Morgana wasn't wrong, it would have been difficult to make my way through the throng of people without tripping or something in my prior state of mind; even now it would be a chore to get through them in order to reach the alleyway we had been the other day.
"We're never gonna find her," Ryūji claimed. But that wasn't true, I knew exactly where Makoto was heading and the only obstacle present to us would be pushing our way through the crowd in order to reach that location; but we needed to get moving quickly otherwise Makoto could end up in a world of trouble she wasn't prepared for.
"The alley, from the other day! That's where Mako-chan is heading! It's where we met Kaneshiro's thugs!" I exclaimed. Suddenly, Ren's phone went off, this caused all of us to turn around since it was a bit suspicious of him to end up with a call so suddenly; our leader pulled the object out and quickly answered the object.
"Hello?" Ren greeted. Soon after, Ren's eyes widened and they quickly darted to me. "Niijima! Where are you?" Ren demanded. My breathing caught, but at least she seemed safe to be calling us. "No! Tell me where you are now! Natsumi is losing her mind. Also, why do you want me to record this call," Ren snapped. I might not understand what Makoto's plan was, but that didn't stop me from quickly pulled out my phone and activated its' voice recorder function, then handed it to Ren who held the two phones close together as he put his phone on speaker.
"Do you guys know Kaneshiro?" Makoto's voice questioned. Ryūji called her an idiot and demanded to know what she was doing, but at least he did it quietly but that still got him shushed by Ann. "I heard I could find someone name Kaneshiro if I came to Central Street," Makoto carried on. That had to be the place that we reach then in order to stop this wacky plan.
"She's being too rash!" Yusuke chastised. It was rash, almost too rash for someone as calm and methodical as I recalled Makoto to be, clearly the things Ann and Yusuke had said ended up causing something to catch inside of Makoto which made her take this action; there's no way this hare-brained scheme wasn't going to end up with someone hurt at the end of it, most likely Makoto.
"Then let's stop her before this carries on!" I insisted. We ran in that direction, pushing our way through the crowd primarily thanks to Ryūji bolting on ahead of the rest of us – he better not hurt himself doing that! – but, by the time we reached the location, we ended up arriving only to see Makoto had got into a car and was driven away from us.
"Hey! Wasn't that-?!" Ryūji wondered. We all nodded our heads to show that we had seen what Ryūji thought, but it was more than that, just before the car had driven off, I'd seen two other people accompanying Makoto; the worst bit was that as I focused on them, I ended up recognising them just before they managed to drive off.
"Those were the peddlers we saw the other day!" I realised. That was more irritating than I cared to admit, I had just thought them to be some creepy sounding counterfeit sellers, not the kind of people that we had been searching for all along; that was not a reassuring thing to learn especially with them having managed to escape from us.
"So they were Kaneshiro's goons all along," Morgana claimed. He seemed just as annoyed as I was at having missed such an obvious link, it I had accepted their offer the other day then I might have been able to get us into the Palace by now; I had screwed up with the choice I ended up making by walking away from them instead of pursuing all leads.
"She still on?" Ann asked. Thankfully, Ann's voice dragged me back and I turned around to look at Ren who was still holding the phones near each other to ensure the conversation remained as recorded as possible so that whatever Makoto was thinking of doing with this recording would be usable; Ren quickly looked at his phone with hard eyes.
"Yes! We need to follow them!" Ren ordered. As he did, we heard some of their discussion how Makoto was being taken to Kaneshiro, but they wouldn't hurt her so long as she was Kaneshiro's customer, Makoto demanded to know their destination, we darted through the alley to the other end which happened to be a main vehicle driving area which put a wrinkle in our following plan quite quickly.
"Ryūji get a taxi! I'll-," Yusuke began to order. But he suddenly stopped himself and pulled out a pad then quickly drew something on it, I looked at him confused by the actions he'd taken. "Okay, I've got their licence plate. My sketching skills have come in handy," Yusuke admitted. I was greatly relieved to hear that he had managed to do such a thing, it really was handy that we had found him.
"Thank you, Yusuke," I breathed. Yusuke looked at me with a stern expression and nodded his head, I focused back on the others as Ryūji tried to hail a cab but was simply ignored; the apathy of the other people of Tokyo was always annoying, but right now it was choosing to act at the worst possible time which was starting to tick me off.
"Agh, shit, he ignored me!" Ryūji hissed. It was rather annoying to happen, Ryūji started to look for the next taxi we could use. "Damnit, I said STOP!" Ryūji roared. As he did, the lunatic threw himself out into the road, forcing the next taxi to slam hard on the breaks to avoid hitting him. "Hurry up and get in!" Ryūji ordered. I'm fairly certain that Ryūji's stunt had shaved a few years off of my life.
"You lunatic, thank you!" I exclaimed. I quickly piled myself into the back area with Ann joining me as Ren and Ryūji also squeezed themselves in while Yusuke had got into the front passenger seat and order the driver to follow after the licence plate; I could feel my legs bouncing in agitation at the fact that we were falling behind Makoto with every passing moment.
"Hey, we'll reach her, I promise," Ann reassured. She reached over to grip my hand and held onto me as I gripped her hand back with more strength that might have been necessary, but I needed the anchor point since the drive seemed to be taking forever as Yusuke and occasionally Ren through Makoto's keen eyes directed our rather flustered cab driver.
By the time we came to a stop, Makoto had fallen silent, we piled out of the cab as Ren threw the fare into the passenger seat; none of us stopped the man from speeding away as we darted into the building. We still couldn't hear anything but followed as best we could; when we finally reached the end and got inside, I saw Makoto forced onto the floor by a man with her hands pinned against her back.
"What in the world?!" Ann exclaimed. Someone demanded to know who we were, but I didn't listen to him. Instead, I walked over and sucker punched the guy holding Makoto down and then grabbed the girl; I quickly dragged her away and held Makoto against me, allowing me to feel her trembling body, but thankfully she seemed unharmed.
"Niijima-san!" Yusuke called. I shook my head to show that she wasn't wounded in anyway, before turning my head to look at the rest of the room, apart from the two peddlers and the goon I'd punched; there were only two other people in the room all the way at the back, a man and a woman, the woman was gaudily dressed and didn't seem all that impressive so I focused my attention on the man.
"What the hell'd you do to her!?" Ryūji demanded. The man would likely be short when stood up and also happened to be rather overweight, his brown hair was long and it also appeared to be slicked back. He was wearing a suit, but I could just tell due to my time around the higher end kind of retail that this suit was of the cheap variety, he was also wearing golden jewellery. All in all, I knew who this man had to be without him even speaking a word simply from how he was dressed.
"Ohhh, I get it," The guy in the back commented. That must be him, Kaneshiro, I would have been impressed if we weren't in such a dangerous situation thanks to Makoto's actions. "You got followed; you dumb shits!" Kaneshiro spat. He then leaned forward and opened a briefcase that I saw was filled to the brim with money; he then looked at the woman beside him. "That bag you saw the other day, the crocodile one. How much was it?" He asked. Despite sounding angry just before, he seemed incredibly calm now, when he received an exorbitant answer, the man grabbed the money and passed it to the woman. "Better thank those guys," Kaneshiro insisted. I did not like where this was going.
"And I suppose you want us to reimburse you," I sneered. This caused the man to turn his attention to me and his gaze roved up and down my form, yet it wasn't like Kamoshida's, no this was assessing and calculating; frankly that made it even more disturbing than I normally would have found such a gaze. A small snort escaped Kaneshiro as he crossed his arms over his chest.
"Ohh, a smart lady and she's pretty too. Too bad you're way too young to be of any use to me," Kaneshiro stated. I didn't like the way he said that, as if he thought I'd aid him in his criminal scheme. "I'm royally pissed right now. Can you tell? You know how spending money relieves stress?" Kaneshiro wondered. I definitely didn't like the way that Kaneshiro was speaking. "It's you goddamn brats sniffing around like dogs and barging in here like you own the joint!" Kaneshiro snapped. None of the others seemed to have figured it out if their confused expressions darting between me and Kaneshiro were anything to go by. "See this empty space? I'm so pissed that now there's a three million yen gap here. It pisses me off even more if I don't fill it up. I'm a perfectionist. So, like your friend already summarise, good luck," Kaneshiro informed.
"What is that supposed to mean?" Yusuke questioned. In response to that question, Kaneshiro pull out his phone, guessing what he must have been planning to do I quickly turned my face away and hid Makoto's face as best I could in the few seconds I had, but the others weren't lucky and their picture was likely taken from the clinking sound I heard.
"Come on, you all look so tense and two of you can't even be seen," Kaneshiro complained. Well, that was reassuring to know Makoto was safe, but everyone else was in deep trouble. "I think I'll call it… 'Debauchery of Minors at a Club'. So, can I send this to your school?" Kaneshiro questioned. A malicious grin on his face as he said those words. "Oh, damn, I got booze and cigs in the shot! Maybe some drugs too?" Kaneshiro commented.
"Blackmail, again!" Ren exclaimed. At least someone had at last caught on, but yes it appeared that we were going to be blackmailed once more in this Palace; that was more than a little weird that it had ended up happening twice in this same heist, we definitely needed to succeed in this now, because unlike Makoto this man had no concept of morals and would definitely force us into a dangerous position.
"Ah, this is hilarious. I feed on dumb shits like you… understand pretty little student council president?" Kaneshiro remarked. Yeah, we'd already surmised that this was the case given where his money was being dragged from. "Now listen up. Run your mouth to the police and I'll break all of you, starting with your families. I want to give you the usual month, but well, you have such a large group here… three weeks. Bring three million yen by then. No less. Summer bonuses are around the corner, you know? It'll be easy if you beg your mummies and daddies," Kaneshiro mocked. The men surrounding us began to laugh. "Now get out of my sight. I'm about to have some fun," Kaneshiro snapped.
"What!? To hell with that!" Ryūji yelled. Yeah, because there was no way that we could pay such a sum especially since Ren was separated from his parents, Ann's were out of town, the parents of Makoto, Yusuke and I were dead, Ryūji's mum was too poor to help and unless it came down to it there was no way in hell I was asking my uncle for help.
"Don't both with him. Makoto's safety is more important right now," Morgana insisted. Yeah, we did need to get out of here before something ended up going wrong for us, especially if Kaneshiro ended up actually getting angry at us for refusing; I kept Makoto close at my side as I turned to look at the others to ensure they heard me.
"Let's get out of here," I insisted. I then proceeded to start leaving that room while pulling Makoto along with me, footsteps indicated that the others were following along with me which was a relief, once we got outside the building, Makoto pulled away from me as we continued to move; Ren handed me and Makoto our phones back while pocketing his own phone.
"I'm so sorry…," Makoto apologised. That caused all of us to stop and the many emotions which had been running through me during the entire chase caused me to pivot around and march up to Makoto, I didn't have a chance of holding them back now that we were out of danger of probably getting hurt by an extremely dangerous individual.
"You should be!" I yelled. Makoto flinched back at my words, though I was glad that no one else was around for this. "What were you thinking?! Putting yourself in so much danger because of that! What if we couldn't follow you?! You could have been hurt! Or worse! How could you be so reckless Mako-chan!? What would Sae-kun think if she learned her sister just turned up dead one day?! Or vanished off the face of the earth completely!? You can't take such actions on your own!" I ranted.
"I… I didn't mean to drag any of you into this," Makoto claimed. She looked down at her feet, but I was fairly certain she wasn't getting the point that I was attempting to make; I ended up letting out an aggravated groan and proceeded to jab my finger into Makoto's forehead, the girl blinked her red eyes in surprise as I stared hard at her.
"That is the last thing I'm concerned about! I'm concerned about you! Will you get that through your thick skull and into your genius brain!" I lectured. Makoto's eyes blinked in surprise at my words, as if she hadn't expected for me to say those things to her; but she needed to realise that her life and safety had been more important to me – all of us even – than the danger we'd ended up tripping into.
"You're worried… about me?" Makoto asked. She had continued to blink her eyes as if thinking that would change the words I had spoken and the meaning that they had to have, because that was the truth; I'd been so worried about Makoto getting hurt because of her own reckless actions that I had – as Ren put it – been losing my mind.
"That is certainly the way it sounds," Yusuke remarked. I pulled my finger back and turned to give Yusuke an unimpressed look since he certainly seemed proud of having said those words, even if it was just to clarify Makoto's thought process; the painter gave me a smile which caused me to shake my head at him but at least Makoto seemed to be perking up slightly.
"She's definitely more concerned about you than what just happened," Ann agreed. I moved over and nudged the blonde with my arm, but the girl gave me a warm smile and simply nudged me back with more enthusiasm; at least things were starting to lighten up after the tense atmosphere that had followed us from the café to this location… actually where the heck were we?
"For real, you sure dropped us in hot water," Ryūji agreed. His words distracted me from my curiosity as to our location and also proceeded to remind us of our current situation which definitely dampened our lightening atmosphere; this also caused Makoto to hunch in on herself and look down at her shoes once more apparently concerned
"I was stupid," Makoto commented. Well none of us could really disagree with those words since it had been extremely insane for her to take such a stupid move when it brought the kind of danger that it had brough to us; but I think she was probably beating herself up too hard about it, what's done is done, better to focus on our response to it than wallowing in the mistake that had been made.
"I must agree. You should've easily imagined this happening. Or the other things Natsumi implied," Yusuke reprimanded. I looked over sharply at Yusuke for what he had just said, we really needed to get our minds off of such things and instead focus on the things that actually required our attention rather than stumbling over old ground.
"Hey, Yusuke," Ann chastised. I was glad someone else was also speaking up about what had been said, even if it wasn't much at least someone was saying something; I looked back over at Makoto and found that she was still looking down at her feet looking very uncomfortable and me being completely clueless about how to help her out of this mind set.
"I was so caught up in trying to be useful," Makoto admitted. It seemed that she was still obsessing over what had happened in the café, Ann looked down at her feet and nudged the ground with her shoes; clearly, she felt ashamed over what she had said and if Yusuke's uncomfortable shuffling was anything to go by then he probably felt the exact same way about the entire incident as well.
"Alright, enough of the blame game! What's done is done," Ryūji soothed. I was glad someone else had said something because we really needed to jerk Makoto out of her own head before we ended up losing her inside of it for a while; although from the unchanging posture and closing of her eyes I could only guess that the words hadn't worked on her like I hoped they would.
"I'm going to cause trouble for Sis too," Makoto carried on. Okay that was enough, I proceeded to walk over and clapped my hands onto Makoto's shoulders which caused her to jolt slightly before lifting her head to look at me as I stared at her; hopefully what I was about to say would be some kind of comfort to her.
"Not if we deal with Kaneshiro before the three weeks are up. Sae-kun will never have to know," I insisted. That was the thing we needed to focus on at the moment, dealing with Kaneshiro was the reason for this whole mess even happening and stealing his Treasure would cause him to turn himself over, thus allowing us to escape from the ridiculous debt that he forced all of us in to.
"Sis? Sae-kun?" Ann asked. Me and Makoto stepped apart and turned to look at the rest who were giving us curious looks, of course they wouldn't understand about Makoto's family situation since I'd never spoken of it to them and Makoto wasn't exactly explaining everything clearly either; I gently nudged Makoto to hopefully get her talking to them.
"My older sister, Niijima Sae, has a commendable job and she's a much more remarkable person than me… a lot happened after we lost our father three years ago, so it's just us living together. But I'm still a child, so all I am is a burden to her," Makoto explained. I furrowed my eyebrows at this, I hadn't expected the pained tone that Makoto would take when talking about Sae; she'd always been happy and bragging.
"And that's why you were so reckless?" Yusuke asked. It seemed to be the most likely conclusion given everything that had happened, though I couldn't understand what had caused Makoto to come to the conclusion that she was useless; true she likely couldn't contribute any money to the house due to needing to focus on her studies, but I wouldn't necessarily call her useless since she probably handled all the household chores.
"I just wanted to be useful in some way to someone," Makoto admitted. I gently placed a hand on her back between Makoto's shoulder blades, I still couldn't think of a way to properly comfort her but at the least I would be able to stand here and provide some kind of physical sensation to show that she wasn't necessarily alone at the moment.
"Y'know, I might not get your whole situation, but ain't it a bit off saying that you're useless to her?" Ryūji wondered. I smiled at the boy, glad that someone else was trying to find ways to help Makoto realise that she wasn't being useless, in fact it might actually be the opposite… unless Sae had said something like that which would be completely out of line for the person I remembered, but Makoto had changed, so why not Sae as well.
"It's the truth though," Makoto claimed. She stepped away from my hand which caused me to pull back with a small frown on my face. "In particular, I have to apologise for what happened to you," Makoto admitted. Her gaze at Ann who released a confused sound. "Now that I think on it, the truth about Kamoshida must've been covered up by the whole school. I had my suspicions, but… I couldn't do anything about it… no I didn't do anything. Had I cared enough, I could've done something," Makoto explained. Ann looked uncertain. "People like me… must really be what others call scum of the earth," Makoto claimed.
"Real scum wouldn't just call themselves that," Ann insisted. Makoto looked at Ann confused, but I'm glad that Ann had said that with her stark defiance, even though she looked so sad at the same time. "I'm the same. It's just like you said before: I was the closest to Shiho, but I didn't do anything… besides, Kamoshida's the one to blame. Shiho understand that… and I do too," Ann claimed
"You didn't have a place to belong either… isn't that right?" Yusuke asked. It was certainly starting to seem that way, even though she ran the student council I think it was becoming increasingly clear that Makoto didn't really have any place where she actually felt comfortable, much like the rest of us had been before we managed to find each other.
"Me either?" Makoto asked. She was looking between each of us – bar Morgana of course – with confusion plain on her face, but it would probably take some explanation so that she would understand and unless we were bringing her with us to the Metaverse then we definitely didn't want to be having that conversation; especially since we were currently out on the streets, which is the one place I would hate to be overheard.
"We won't let anyone fall victim again," Ann vowed. Her eyes had gone rather hard, but it was pretty apparent she was gearing up to face Kaneshiro, despite the lateness we could probably still try to investigate the Palace if we really wanted to do such a thing; although I can't be sure if anything would have changed after that 'discussion' we ended up having after finding Kaneshiro.
"What does it look like?" Ren suddenly asked. We turned to look at him with confusion clear on everyone's faces but I realised he was looking at me and I knew what he meant, I quickly turned around and looked at Makoto once more; but this time I focused on her Will of Rebellion and got quite the surprise.
"It's big… very big. It could Awaken!" I realised. I couldn't entirely be sure what had happened between the café and just now, but something must have been gathering within Makoto's heart, perhaps it wasn't known to her mind yet, but she was literally on the very cusp of Awakening her Person much like Ryūji had always been.
"Seriously!?/Woah!/Incredible!" Ryūji, Ann and Yusuke exclaimed. All three of them seemed shocked by the revelation, but I actually think they sounded rather excited, Morgana seemed curious as he had drifted closer to stare at Makoto intently while Ren was smiling quite broadly; of course, Makoto was completely confused as to what we were discussing.
"I thought that might be the case," Ren admitted. He moved closer to Makoto who focused upon our leader with the same intensity that he was staring at her with. "You might think you're useless to your sister, plus your actions were incredibly reckless, but I think you were useful just now. You might have just helped us find a way to complete your request," Ren claimed. Makoto's eyes widened in surprise, having not expected those words.
"Whaddya mean Ren?" Ryūji asked. The others seemed a little confused by what Ren had just said but I think there had to be something to what Ren was saying, a way that Makoto had helped us that would allow us to fulfil the request to bring down Kaneshiro; Morgana suddenly jumped up as if frightened or excited by something.
"Kaneshiro's cognition has been changed!" Morgana realised. All of our heads dropped down to focus on Morgana as Ren smiled, Makoto followed several moments later, but she was clearly confused by what we were doing. "Makoto is now considered a customer, perhaps even a special customer, therefore Makoto should be able to enter the Palace making her our key," Morgana explained. Oh of course! I had been thinking of some way to change his cognition to get us entry and Makoto went and made it happen without even realising it.
"And we can go in with her to keep her safe," Ren insisted. That was the obvious thing we had to do and I was doing it regardless; there was no way in heaven or hell that I was just going to allow Makoto to walk into the Metaverse unarmed and unprotected, especially when there were likely to be Shadows slithering around in the Palace where we needed her to go.
"Wait!" Makoto exclaimed. Our excitement at getting inside froze at Makoto's words and we turned to look at her, Makoto's eyes were darting between us as she tried to understand what was happening. "I don't know what you're talking about, but I'll do something about the money, so you can just drop the case with Kaneshiro," Makoto insisted. Those of us on the Phantoms looked at each other before refocusing on Makoto.
"'Cept we're all caught up in this now, doesn't seem right to just walk away," Ryūji commented. It was pretty much all of us, sure I had covered my face and Makoto's own from being caught in that photograph, but if Kaneshiro ever did send it to the school then it would be pretty easy for the people there to identify Makoto depending on how well I'd done and they'd absolutely point me out as the only ravenette girl the others were close to, plus Kaneshiro could easily provide descriptions after seeing us.
"We can't have you rushing things on your own anymore and making the situation worse," Yusuke insisted. There was also that aspect as well, Makoto would likely learn from this mistake, but it was pretty safe to say that we were going to be wary about allowing Makoto to just run off and do whatever she wanted after this incident.
"Plus, we now have a way to solve this situation with our own power, so there's no need to worry," Ann reassured. She had a big smile on her face, perhaps rather glad that our luck had managed to turn so greatly in our favour and so suddenly as well; though I wish it had happened without Makoto getting hurt or the blackmail being used against us… again.
"You wanted to see our justice, right?" I reminded. Makoto looked at me and slowly nodded her head, making it known that she did indeed remember the reason why she had assigned us the task of taking down Kaneshiro in the first place, along with saving the other students of Shūjin. "Well, now you're going to," I stated.
"Let's head for Shibuya, now!" Ren ordered. Needless to say, Makoto was rather confused by what was going on, but it was a case of seeing is believing in this sense; we started to walk back to Shibuya with Ann using a map on her phone in order to guide us in the right direction while the rest of us kept an eye out for any danger as Morgana guarded the front of our group.
Once we arrived, I gripped Makoto's hand and activated the Meta-Nav, bringing her with us just as it had done to Yusuke.