Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Ann does not want to go to school today.

Her parents won't mind if she doesn't. They probably won't even notice. She's not exactly sure where in the world they are, so why should they have the right to know where she is?

These thoughts whirl around Ann's mind in an unhappy tornado, a familiar pattern of doubt and depression. She doesn't want to go to school. She doesn't want to see Kamoshida.

...She doesn't want to leave Shiho alone.

Ann's not exactly sure what happens at volleyball practice, but she does know that Kamoshida is bad news. It's an open secret among most of the girls at Shujin that Kamoshida is a creep. He leers at them in gym class, snaps pictures when he thinks nobody is looking, and uses any excuse he can find to touch, with plausible deniability.

Ann remembers that he had once walked up to a girl in Ann's class to tell her that her bra strap is showing. Ann remembers the color the other girl's face had turned when he put his thumb on the pink strap of her bra where it peeks out from under her uniform. Her face had been the color of--of absolute humiliation, a blotchy dark red around a sick, pale bloodlessness.

"Thanks," the girl had whispered. She'd raised her hand to fix it, but Kamoshida's hand was on her shoulder, covering the bra strap just barely visible through her summer uniform, and he didn't move his finger away. He'd been standing directly behind the girl, Ann remembers. Hovering at her back so the girl couldn't even see him without turning all the way around. Ann had watched him tuck his finger under the girl's still visible bra strap, almost hypnotized by the wrongness of that movement. Not sure what to do or say, not sure why this teacher was touching her fifteen year old classmate's bra.

This had been last year, within a month of starting at Shujin. For most of them, people like Kamoshida still only existed as vague warnings, or strangers on a train. Even for Ann, who had already been modelling by then, she still thought of the kinds of people that would do that as somehow... other. A certain kind of guy, usually older but not always, that hangs around on set without a clear purpose, just... leering.

Teachers aren't supposed to do that.

So Ann had just stood there with everyone else, in silence, watching but not protesting. She hadn't said anything, and neither had any of her classmates. They'd let it happen, the girls too confused and uncomfortable to say a word, the boys not even noticing. It had set up the precedent for how they would all go on to deal with him for the rest of the year. That they're supposed to be silent and ashamed of what he's doing to them, and that no one else is going to speak up and say anything.

For Ann, who had very quickly earned the unwanted label as Kamoshida's favorite, it had been a very long year.

And now they're second years, and the only bright spot Ann can see on the horizon is that she might not be one of his favorites this year. There might be first years he likes more than her-- everyone knows he practically ignores the third years, after all. He has a whole new incoming class of younger girls to gawp at, and Ann might be a little safer now that she's a second year.

Of course, wishing him on an unsuspecting class of younger students isn't really a silver lining at all. Ann squeezes her eyes tight shut, and feels horrible.

It's raining this morning, perfectly matching Ann's mood. She opens her umbrella as she steps out of the station and starts walking toward Shujin. The rain has gotten worse since she left her apartment this morning, and a chilly wind keeps blowing gusts of water sideways under her umbrella. Ann, shivering, squints ahead of her to see if there's somewhere dry to stop and wait out the worst of the weather. To her relief, there's a covered patch of sidewalk just ahead of her, half protected by a store awning, and better than nothing.

There's already another Shujin student standing there, but Ann avoids eye contact because she just doesn't want to make conversation right now. She takes a spot out of the way and just stares at the sidewalk in front of her, not really seeing it, or anything else, until a car stops right in front of her.

"Hey!" Kamoshida calls.

Ann's heart sinks. Can't she even have the rest of the walk to school before she has to deal with him? She looks up, blinking, and forces herself to smile. She can't quite force herself to say anything, but Kamoshida clearly doesn't care.

"Do you need a ride?" Kamoshida asks.

Ann does not. Shujin is only about a five minute walk from here, even in the heavy rain. And Ann knows from unfortunate experience what the drive is going to be like. Kamoshida's comments getting worse and worse. Him taking every corner too fast and too hard, so he has an excuse to reach over and put his arm over her chest or her lap, laughing at his own driving and telling her to be careful, as his hand gropes its way onto her body.

She wants to say no. But he'll argue if she does, demanding an explanation and refusing to accept any excuse Ann can think up. The argument will stretch on and on and on, Ann increasingly uncomfortable, Kamoshida trying to cajole her into the car because can't she see there are cars behind him? Doesn't she realize she's making him hold up traffic?

There's no way this ends with her walking to school, so the only question is whether she has to argue about it first. Ann steps forward, resigned and mostly just hoping this will be quick.

And Kamoshida, maybe seeing he's won with Ann, shifts his attention to the other Shujin student standing under the awning next to her. "And who's your friend?" he asks.

Ann looks over for the first time, and her heart sinks when she sees that this a first year girl. Eyes wide, hair plastered to her face from the rain, no umbrella in sight, And Ann, in the end, can't be the one to lead a younger girl straight to Kamoshida.

"You just reminded me," she says, with a high, nervous laugh. "I actually told her we could share an umbrella since she forgot hers." She braces herself for something that feels like it's going to be very rude, and puts her hands on the younger girl's shoulders, giving her a little nudge. "So sorry!" she calls over her shoulder, and slips herself and the first year into the gap between two buildings.

Away from Kamoshida. For now.

"I'm so sorry," she says, dropping her arms as soon as they're out of sight of the street. "That was--Kamoshida, he..." she struggles to find words for the thing nobody ever wants to talk about.

The girl doesn't answer at first. She's just standing where she'd been when Ann drops her shoulders. She looks panicked, and when she does finally speak, she just says, "I knew I didn't want to go to school," in a very small, quiet voice.

"Oh no," Ann says, immediately guilty. "It's not that bad at Shujin, I promise. Kamoshida's just the worst." 

"That was the volleyball coach, right?" the first year asks. "I saw his picture on the school website."

Ann nods.

"He's a creep?" the girl asks.

Ann hesitates. She's not sure how to answer. He is, honestly, a creep. But if she admits that now, how is she supposed to go on and explain why they all just go along with it? "I think I know how to get to the school from here," she says, avoiding the question completely. "Do you want to share my umbrella, since I did drag you back here?"

"No," the first year mumbles, and she keeps several feet between herself and Ann as they walk through the alleys toward Shujin. Ann is acutely aware of the fact that they're two teenage girls in a back alley, and as soon as she can, she steers them back to the main roads, and feels a little better.

They reach Shujin without any more drama, and Ann gestures at the school with minimal enthusiasm. She's trying for this new student, but it's hard after the morning she's had already. "Here we are," she says. "Welcome to Shujin."

The first year makes a flat noise.

Ann tries to reassure her. "Kamoshida will probably be in the gym by now," she says. "So you don't have to worry about running into him."

"Until my class has gym," the first year says.

"Well," Ann admits. "That's true."

"I should have stayed home," the first year says again.

Me too, Ann thinks. But she feels really bad about making this girl's first day of high school harder than it has to be, so she tries to cheer her up. "It won't be that bad," she says. "And hey, if you have a hard time today, you can come find me. If you want?" If she hasn't already made too terrible of a first impression. "We can walk to the station together after school."

The first year looks genuinely surprised at Ann's offer. Then she relaxes. Just a little. "Maybe," she says.

"I'll look for you after class," Ann says.

The first year nods. She squares her shoulders, and says, "Well, I guess it's time to storm the castle."

Ann laughs, and the first cracks a smile too, and then a muffled voice from inside the first year's bag announces, "Candidate found. Beginning navigation."

And then, as far as Ann can tell, the world flips upside down. There's a short, sharp sensation like falling (but not exactly like falling, falling is too simple to compare this to), and the whole world ripples. It changes too as it ripples, darkening and distorting. But the worst change is to the school itself.

"I was joking," the girl whispers, staring up at it. "I didn't actually want to storm a castle."

"So you see it too?" Ann asks.

"The school turned into a castle," the first year says. "Or we just got issekai-ed."

"I... don't think that's something that happens in real life," Ann says.

"So what do you think it is?" the first year asks. Oddly, at least to Ann who is completely freaking out, the younger girl seems more confident now that they're... wherever they are. Ann on the other hand very desperately wishes they were back in the reassuringly crowded street outside the actual Shujin--this place is empty except for the two of them, and it's raising goose bumps up and down Ann's arms.

"We should get out of here," she says.

"How?" asks the first year. Which, Ann has to admit, is a good point. They hadn't actually gone anywhere to get here, so how can they leave?

"Okay," Ann says. "So if we can't leave, what can we do?"

They look at each other. Then they look at where the school is supposed to be. Then the first year, with much less confidence than she'd shown a minute before, suggests, "... we could storm the castle for real, maybe?"

-//-

Futaba really should have stayed home. When Sojiro insisted that she just try school, that she just give it a shot for one day, she should have sealed herself into her tomb of a bedroom, and refused to come out ever again.

But...

He's been so worried lately. Which like yeah, fair, family services have been up his butt about that thing with probation guy, and Futaba... well, she doesn't know for sure that he's actually wrong to be worried that it's going to be a mark against him. Maybe they really are watching him more closely now. Maybe they really will take her away if she can't look more normal.

So she goes to school. The train is sheer torture. Futaba panics and has to get off a station early to get away from the feeling of being packed in like a sardine inside that cramped metal tube. The crowds aren't any better on the sidewalk, though, and everyone's huddled under umbrellas that make them take up more space than they usually would. It's hard for Futaba to get enough space to pass between them, never mind enough space to be comfortable, and that's why she'd ended up hiding under a covering, trembling and trying to work up the courage to keep going.

Then things had gotten way worse. A teacher had showed up to be creepy at Futaba and a nearby upperclassman, and that upperclassman had physically dragged her into a back alley.

And now the school is a castle, and the rest of the world feels empty, and there's nothing they can do except go into the creepy magic castle, and that's horrible.

At least the crowds are gone. Futaba has no clue what's going on, but now that it's just her and this one other girl, she's kind of almost functional.

Which of course is when a third person melts out of the shadows around the castle's base. It's like he's just appeared from nowhere, the dark of his long, black coat unfurling from the castle in a fluid, quick movement that startles Futaba into freezing in place. He seems to move too fast, somehow, and too easily. Like a spider when you think you're safe because it's all the way on the other side of the room, and then suddenly it's scuttled right over to you, way faster than it should be able to on its tiny legs.

That's how this guy moves. Too fast, too sure. In what seems like not enough time at all, he's standing in front of them. The older girl, whose name Futaba still hasn't asked about, she is so bad at this, startles backward. But Futaba is has always been on the frozen end of the freeze-fight-flight-fawn spectrum, so she just... stands there. 

The guy stands lightly balanced on heeled shoes, looking like he's ready to dart away at a second's notice. He's wearing the dark coat Futaba had noticed already, red gloves, and a white mask. He's taller than either Futaba or the other girl, but it's hard to guess their age. Close to theirs, probably? The mask only covers about half his face, around the eyes, but it does a surprisingly good job of hiding him. Futaba doesn't know what to think of him.

"You two shouldn't be here," he says, and Futaba is on edge enough that it sounds like a threat, until she takes deep breaths to clam down, and is able to see this as a warning. 

"Why not?" the older girl asks, and the boy answers immediately.

"It's dangerous," he says, and there's an odd, almost bitter note in his voice when he adds, "There are Shadows here."

"What's a Shadow?" she asks.

"You don't know what a Shadow is?" he asks. And then, when both of them look at him with blank expressions--he's obviously not talking about an ordinary patch of darkness, those aren't dangerous, and anyway Futaba can hear the capital S--his expression changes. "You don't know what a Shadow is," he says again. But this time, it's not a question. He says it almost wonderingly, and his whole demeanor relaxes. Where before he'd looked ready to dash away at any second, now he suddenly seems to settle.

"I can explain," he offers. "I don't know why you're here, but as long as you are, you'll need to know how to stay safe. And honestly, I don't get to talk to that many people. So it'll be nice to have the chance to talk."

Futaba doesn't get to talk to many people either, but she's super okay with that. This guy doesn't sound like he is. And since they don't know how they'd gotten here, it'd be nice to know which parts of this place are dangerous. She glances over at the other girl, who shrugs and nods, then says. "That would be great."

"Awesome," the guy says. He glances over his shoulder at the castle, half squinting at it like he's doing some unknown mental math. Then he nods and looks back at them. "cue should be safe way over here," he says. "I don't think the Shadows will bother us if we sit here and talk."

So that's what they do. They sit on the ground, arranged in a little circle like kids hanging out on the playground.

This is--)

(Is this how making friends works? Is that what's going on here?)

They sit on the ground, and Futaba's maybe-new-Shujin-friend asks, "Can we do introductions first? I don't know who either of you are."

"You two don't know each other?" the guy asks.

"We just met this morning," the other girl says. "On the way to school. And now we're here."

"Sounds kind of awkward," the guy says, with a flash of a smile.

"It's been a weird morning." The girl smiles. She's a lot better at smiling than Futaba is. "I'm Ann Takamaki."

Futaba half raises her hand. "Futaba Saku--what?" She flinches as the guy makes a noise, and holds up a hand like he wants to stop Futaba and the newly named Takasaki from saying anything.

"It's just that this might not be the safest place to be talking about your--our--" The guy corrects himself quickly, words almost tripping over each other in his rush. "It's not a safe place to use real names."

"Why not?" Takamaki asks.

"Because,' the guy says. "We're inside someone's heart. Not a nice someone's heart, either, if the way this place looks like is anything to go by."

Futaba almost kicks him in the face as she jerks and scrabbles into a kneeling position. She's too nervous around these people to actually stand up and look down at them, but if it wasn't for her crippling lack of social skills, she'd be jumping to her feet, pacing around, shaking this guy by the shoulders until he tells her everything he knows.

"Are you okay?" Takamaki asks.

"We're inside someone's heart," she says.

"Yeah," the guy says. "I can expl--"

"You don't understand," Futaba says. "My mom researched that! She was studying--well, her research theorized that there's a world inside peoples' subconscious, but I mean yeah, if you want to get metaphorical about it, you could call it a world inside a person's heart."

"So you know about this place already?" Takamaki asks, looking lost.

"Nope!" Futaba says, resisting the urge to cackle. "Just theory!" She points at the guy, and says, "I need you to tell me everything!"

And to his credit, he does. Or if not everything, then at least most of it, anyway. He explains Palaces, Shadows, Persona, and this place that they're in. He talks about cognition, which is so exactly like what Futaba has read in her mom's notes that she just stares at the guy the whole time, wishing she had her laptop to record every word he says.

She says she wants to see a Shadow for herself.

"No," the guy says. "I won't--take you to see a Shadow. It's dangerous to go near any of those Shadows without a way to fight.

Futaba opens her mouth, then closes it again. Yeah, there's no way she can argue that she'd be able to fight anything. But does that mean she's not even going to try and see more of this Palace. It's exactly what her om had described in her research!

It's real, and Futaba has proof of it right here in front of her. "I have to see it," she says, and doesn't care when the other two exchange worried looks, like maybe she's gone a little bit crazy. She's seen that so many times already, so what's one more? Especially when it's something this important?

"Why do you want to go see it so badly?" Takamaki asks, turning to Futaba.

"It's..." Futaba takes a deep breath. "My mom was studying this. And I got most of her old notes after--" For a second, guilt rises up, threatening to choke her. "After she died, I got most of her research. And it's real. It's here. I have to see it for myself."

"Your mom researched this?" Takamaki asks.

Futaba nods furiously. "I need to see it," she says, and looks over at the guy. He's hard to read behind his mask, and Futaba's anxious brain really likes to imagine people are judging her even when things are way less weird than they are now. But she's not getting any bad vibes from him, somehow. He just looks like he's thinking hard, and then eventually he nods. "Yeah," he says. "Okay. But you have to stay with me, and we're not going too far in. You can't fight."

"You said that before," Takamaki says, as first the guy and then Futaba stand up. Takamaki is on her feet right behind them, which surprises Futaba because it's not her mom's research, and she doesn't look like the kind of person that would want to get within five miles of a castle full of apparently dangerous Shadows packed into someone's heart.

Maybe she's underestimating her.

"Does that mean you can fight?" Takamaki continues.

The guy gestures, a quick, casual flick of one arm that brushes his coat back and shows them the wicked looking knife at his hip. "I can hold my own," he says, his smile just as audible in his voice as it is on his face. 

"Then let's go!" Futaba says, and this time at least the guy doesn't try to argue anymore. He looks entirely down for leading two people he's just met into the dangerous situation he'd just tried to warn them away from, and Futaba, despite having known him for all of about ten minutes. She follows him down toward the castle, barely noticing when he draws his knife, balancing it easily in his right hand, his whole posture shifting as he walks so that he's ready to fight, ready to defend her and Takamaki, ready to meet whatever's inside the castle and come out on top.

No.

She barely sees that, because in almost no time at all they're inside, and there are Shadows.

That must be what they are, Futaba decides as she looks at them.

The castle, on the inside, is exactly what Futaba expects it to be. It's like the platonic idea of a castle. Like the subconscious concept. No--not like the subconscious concept of a castle, but literally exactly that. This is what someone, whoever's Palace this is, thinks a castle is supposed to be. Not something they've thought about and planned, but an idea that's grown up organically in their own mind. It will have been taken from TV, from overacted dramas and over the top anime. From history classes in school, and foreign movies, and maybe visits to Destinyland. All the same things that had shaped her idea of a castle, and Takamaki's, and their still nameless guide's.

Actually, now that she's thinking about it, she really needs something to call him. Otherwise she's never going to be able to focus on the platonic subconscious ideal of castles.

"So I know you don't want to say your name while we're in here," she says. "But is there something I can call you?"

"You could have asked before we went inside the dangerous castle full of Shadows," the guy points out. He doesn't sound upset, though--actually, Futaba's pretty sure she can hear a laugh in his voice.

"I was thinking about other things," she says. "So is there?"

"Joker works," he says.

It's not a name, actually, but maybe Futaba shouldn't have expected that. If he'd been worried about their names, of course he'd be even more worried about his own. At least Joker gives her something to call him in her head.

"Okay," Takamaki says. She still sounds a little nervous, butis trying not to show it--and oh boy does that tone sound familiar to Futaba. "So... Joker. How far into thisplace do we need to go before we find Shadows?"

"It shouldn't be far," Joker says. His eyes scan the scene in front of them, and fix at last on something Futaba hasn't noticed yet. There's a hallway down at one end of the entryway, and walking up it, flanked by two guards...

"What's he doing here?"

"That's Kamoshida," Takamaki says. "How is Kamoshida here?"

"It's not the him of the real world," Joker says, shifting smoothly to stand in front o Futaba and Takamaki. "This is his Shadow, built around his subconscious mind. Those guards--" He gestures at the two knights on either side of Kamoshida. "They're Shadows too, pulled from the collective unconscious of humanity."

"There's a difference?" Takamaki asks.

'"Yes," Joker says. "They--yes, there definitely is a difference."

"Oh," Takamaki says. Then, "Why is Kamoshida's Shadow naked?

Joker doesn't have time to answer that before Kamoshida's Shadow is on them, but Futaba knows the answer anyway. This is Kamoshida's heart. his Palace--she likes Joker's terms for these things-- and even though she'd only met him for like half a second before Takasaki showed up to save her, Futaba already knows he's a creep. His shadow is just saying the quiet part out loud, that's all.

"Well," Kamoshida's Shadow says, leering at Takamaki over Joker's shoulder. "There you are. A little bit overdressed for the occasion, but we can fix that."

"Ew," Joker says, and his nose under his mask crinkles up in obvious disgust.

"Excuse me?" Takamaki demands.

"Come here," Kamoshida's Shadow says, waving one hand imperiously at her.

"No way." Takamaki says. She laughs with absolutely no humor whatsoever. "Are you kidding? Are you hearing yourself?"

Joker's posture keeps shifting, Futaba notices. As Takamaki gets angrier, Joker first seems like he's really trying to keep himself between Takamaki and Kamoshida's Shadow. Then, as Takamaki bristles with rage, he seems to slip a little. He keeps looking sideways at Takamaki, almost... expectant?

"Your place is with me," Kamoshida's Shadow says. He's not even angry that Takasaki is yelling at him, or that Joker is holding a knife with clear intent to use it. He's almost oblivious, obviously expecting that everything is just going to fall into line with his Palace, his world.

Futaba looks at Kamoshida, and she's completely, utterly torn on how to feel. Looking at Kamoshida's shadow here is like being back on the sidewalk on her way to Shujin, except that everything he'd bothered to hide before is out in the open for everyone to see. Whether they want to or not. And so Futaba, the introvert, the shut in, is trembling in her shoes over seeing this unfiltered Kamoshida leering at their group.

But also, this is exactly the kind of stuff her mom had been researching when she'd died. This is what she'd wanted so desperately that she'd killed herself because Futaba kept whining at her to work on it less. 

Futaba has to know, she has to see for herself, what had made that research so important. She'd driven her mom to her death over this, and so she needs this all to matter.

(Still, Kamoshida's Shadow is terrifying)

While she's standing there, shaken and torn by indecision, Takamaki apparently makes a decision. Futaba has only been half paying attention to her, but the older girl's whole posture has gone so tense it must be hurting her, and now she says in a tight voice, "No way."

Kamoshida's Shadow laughs at her. A little snort, like he's watching a cat do something funny online. 

And that laugh, apparently, breaks Takamaki. She screams, and Futaba feels Joker pull her away, putting a hand on each of her shoulders and half lifting her up off the ground, turning and shielding her with his body as an explosion of power suddenly bursts free from Takamaki. Futaba, squirming desperately to be able to see what's going on (without necessarily breaking out of Joker's protective grasp, because actually what the fuck), gets a glimpse of Takamaki with blood on her face and something red in her hand, screaming in wordless outrage at Kamoshida's Shadow.

Futaba wonders how long Takamaki has been bottling this up inside her. She wonders if Takamaki is okay. That blood doesn't look good, and the burst of power that Joker had pulled her back from had blown Kamoshida and his guards halfway across the room. They crash into a wall in a mangled smashing of bodies and metal, and fall to the ground in a pile on top of each other.

And there is something new in the air, hovering protectively, angrily, over Takamaki. Futaba has never seen anything like this before, but she knows immediately what is. Joker had described things like this. He'd called them Persona.

"Woah..." Takamaki breathes, staring up at the thing. Her anger at Kamoshida isn't gone, Futaba can still see that conviction burning in her, but it's different now. Less helpless, maybe?

(Futaba is jealous)

Joker is looking at the same thing Futaba is, the same thing Takamaki is, and he laughs. "Carmen!" he calls, and the thing, the Persona, turns its head to look at him. Joker gives it a sweeping, full body bow, and when he lifts his face again, eyes dancing, he says, "Welcome to the show."

The Persona--Carmen?--gives him a nod of its head in acknowledgment. Its face is hard to read, but Futaba guesses maybe amused? Entertained? Its almost laughing at Joker, but it doesn't seem mean.

There's a sound from the far end of the room, and Futaba's attention is immediately redirected. "Actually," she says, taking a nervous couple of steps back. "I'm starting to think that now might be a good time to get out of here?"

"Right," Joker says, and whirls around, gesturing for Futaba and Takamaki to follow. Both of them do. Possibly-Carmen (Futaba still isn't sure if Joker's guess at its name had been right) disappears as they hurry away. In the more empty space it leaves behind, Futaba finally notices that Takamaki's clothes have changed too. They look--uh. Well, they look like something from the parts of the Internet Kamoshida probably hangs out.

"What are you wearing?" Futaba demands, as they run.

Takamaki seems to notice for the first time, looking down at her new clothes and shrieking. And just like that, they go up in smoke, leaving her back in her school uniform.

"Later problem," Joker says, and since they are still being chased, he's probably right. He half turns to look over his shoulder at them, and says, "You two need to get out of here.'

"What about you?" Takamaki asks, in the same second that Futaba says, "We don't even know how we got here!"

"My way in doesn't really help anyone else," Joker says. which is a funny thing to say that Futaba doesn't have time to examine. "You have to have done something."

Takamaki looks over her shoulder at Futaba and says, "I thought I heard something in your phone when we got here that said it was navigating? Can it get us back?"

Futaba hesitates. She wants to say no, because her phone isn't even in her bag. and the one that is there, she's not supposed to have. But she shrugs her bag off her shoulder, grabs the stolen--borrowed--phone, and flicks past the hacked lock screen. Her eyes go wide. "There actually is something here!" she blurts. "I don't know how it got on the phone, but there's some kind of navigation app."

Joker slows until he's level with where Futaba is trailing behind the other two and cranes his neck to look over her shoulder at the screen. "Well there you go," he says, and leans in to tap a button that says 'return to real world'.

"Wait--!" Futaba says, but it's too late. The world twists, the way it had earlier when they entered the Palace, and after a confusing few seconds, spits her and Takamaki out, across the street from school. Joker is nowhere to be seen.

Futaba stares at her phone, and then at Takasaki, who is leaning back against a wall, breathing hard. For long seconds they just stare, and then, because of everything else they've been through this morning, she has to ask. "Takamaki," she says. "Are we friends?"

And Takamaki doesn't laugh at her. She smiles, but it's a nice smile. "Call me Ann," she says.

-//-

Akira wakes up with a start as a ruler slams down onto the desk in front of him. Only half aware of what's going on, and primed for violence by every morning of the last few weeks, he instinctively tries to shy away from the sound. It doesn't go amazingly well for him, and he tangles himself around the desk instead, and just barely manages to get his eyes open in time to avoid hitting the floor.

His watching classmates are not kind. Very few of them even try not to laugh, and their teacher drones out. "Please try to be less of a disruption, Kurusu. Lights out is at ten, and you are meant to be asleep at that point. Not in my classroom. Understood?"

Akira really should agree. Keep his head down, avoid arguing, just say whatever the teacher wants to hear. But something in him sparks instead, something leftover from the dream he'd been started out of, and instead he says, "No."

"Kurusu--"

He makes the mistake of looking up at his teacher, who is holding the ruler like he'd very much like to bring it down on Akira instead of the desk, and wavers. Gives in. Training schools aren't meant to be as bad as actual jail jails, but in his experience so far, they're closer to that than regular schools. The students are still locked up, in their classrooms during the day and in cramped dorms that are basically cells overnight. They're still guarded. They're still looked down on like they have no value at all.

He lowers his gaze.

The something in him sparks again, and as his teacher moves on, goes back to lecturing, he promises himself that next time he won't back down. Next time, he'll find the right words. The right way to rebel while he's in the worst place in the world to do that.

He sits there, eyes on his desk, listening to the teacher just enough to be able to reply if his teacher decides to test whether or not he's awake by calling on him. It doesn't take that much of his brain, and with the rest of his attention he's busy wishing, hard that his probation hadn't fallen through. He keeps thinking of what life would be like right now, if he was there instead of here. A guard had mentioned at his intake here that his potential probation officer had been planning to have him stay in the attic over the cafe he runs, and since that breaks several parole requirements, the whole program had been declared unfit for purpose.

Akira doesn't care about whatever requirements it's breaking. He thinks it would have been amazing to be there, relatively free, even on probation, sleeping in an attic instead of a cell. 

The guard had mentioned the name of the cafe, too. Laughed over it. He'd called it Leblanc, and Akira had grabbed at the name of the place that could have been his home, the place that represents the difference between having freedom and not, and keeps it tucked in close to him. For long nights in a dorm-cell with no windows, and for moments like this when he desperately wants to be anywhere else.

Class continues. Akira thinks about Leblanc. He does not doze off again, although it's a close thing. He knows there are consequences to being caught breaking rules too many times. He doesn't want those consequences. But..

Well, he kind of wishes he could close his eyes and drop back into his earlier dream. He can't remember it, not one single detail, but he has a feeling it had been special.

Chapter Text

Joker doesn't linger long in the castle Palace after the two girls disappear. This place is awful, and now that they've annoyed its ruler, Joker really doesn't want to stick around and wait out the rising alarm levels.

(But maybe he'll come back later, he can't help thinking with a little burst of optimism)

(He will if those girls do, and they don't seem like the kind of people that will be happy about leaving it alone)

But for right now, it's smarter to go and find somewhere else to be. And he might not be the most intelligent Shadow in the collective unconscious, but he's at least not dumb enough to try and take on a Palace Ruler by himself.

Sometimes, Joker catches himself wondering if his other self is any smarter than he is. He has no idea what that person is like, who he is or even what he's called. 'Joker' is a name that he'd given himself months ago just for the thrill of watching the reaction it had prompted in the moment, and then it had just stuck. He needs something to call himself, especially if he's going to keep running into humans in random Palaces, and so... Joker.

Probably his other self has a much more normal name. One that had been picked, probably, by parents that cared about what to call him. He's probably living a completely normal life, whoever he is. Going to school, hanging out with friends, coming home to his family. Joker has absolutely no access to his other self's conscious mind, and so he doesn't know who that actually is. He doesn't know his name, or his school, or any single thing about him. Joker doesn't even know what had happened to make him exist the way that he does.

Because Joker is a Shadow who knows that he's a Shadow. And he's never been able to figure out why--his best and only guess is that his other self has a will of rebellion so strong that it had shocked him into self awareness, even without his other self being in the metaverse.

He hopes that's right.

He really wants to believe that his other self has that kind of a rebellion, because he trusts, without a shred of evidence (but also without an iota of doubt) in that unknown other self. Joker had been born with the words I Am Thou and Thou  Art I stamped onto his heart. And so while he doesn't even know that other self's name, he believes in him.

Not that any of that really helps him right now, because his other self isn't here, but two other humans are. Or had been, until about thirty seconds ago, and that means that this Palace is a bad place for him to be. Right now, what Joker really needs is to give Kamoshida's Shadow some space. 

So he turns to face Kamoshida's Shadow and his perusing guards, gives them a mocking grin and a bow, and then leaves the Palace. He doesn't--of course--go by the same mysterious phone app that the two visitors had used earlier, but by simply letting himself... slip away. Into the collective unconscious that all Shadows are born from.

He's not really supposed to be here, he knows. He's not part of any kind of collective anything, hasn't been since the first time he opened his eyes in a Palace.

(Not his Palace, which is the weird part)

(Joker still doesn't know how he ended up on that ship, any more than he knows why he exists the way he does)

But the collective unconscious is the easiest way between Palaces for someone without access to the real world, and Joker is, after all, a Thief. He knows he is, recognizes that its an integral, inseparable part of his being. And he revels in it, which is why he keeps coming back to the sea of souls again and again. To dart through a place he's not supposed to be, and know that there's nothing, even there, that can catch him.

What does that tell him about his other self, he sometimes wonders. Is he a thief too? A criminal, a burglar, a pickpocket? Or does he only dream of heists?

(Joker likes to believe it's closer to the second. He'd been born with I Am Thou and Thou Art I stamped onto his heart, and that heart doesn't feel like a criminal's)

Today, as he slips lightly through the sea of Souls, unseen and undetected, Joker catches himself searching for something specific. The blonde girl, the one with Carmen, who had given him a name too steeped in reality to feel like something a Shadow should use--she has a Persona now. No Shadow, no Palace. But the second girl, the younger one, she's different. And she'd known enough from her mother's research to scare him, because if she knows about Shadows, if she has real world knowledge, will she be able to figure out he's one himself?

Joker wants to see them again. Humans in Palaces are exciting, and now he knows of three that can get in and out from the real world. He can't just pass up the chance to meet with them again, but if they figure out what he is, they'll never want to see him again. 

Still, he isn't exactly sure how to make friends. Other Shadows aren't particularly interested, and the sole example of humanity he's had before today is not particularly interested in friendship.

(Joker is working on it)

(It's fascinating and fun and he should actually check in on him soon, but friendship is definitely the wrong word for whatever's happening there)

This morning, Joker had felt ripples in the Sea of Soul that couldn't possibly have come from Shadows. Following it back to its source had brought him to Kamoshida's Palace, and his two new human potential-friends. Now he searches through the collective unconscious, searching for something that he's not even sure is there. And he finds it, which is both a good and a bad thing, because what he finds is her Shadow. 

Futaba's.

That's what she'd called herself, a name Joker is trying to avoid using because it doesn't feel like a name she would have given him, if she'd known what he is. But he doesn't have anything else to call her right now, just like he doesn't have another name for Ann, and so with some reluctance he allows himself to think the names. Maybe, if they see each other again, he'll be able to push codenames, something he'll feel more comfortable using. It's not even a completely selfish, impulse because it probably isn't a great idea for the Shadow of someone like Kamoshida to know exactly who's wandering around in his heart.

But that's going to have to wait, because there's nothing human here in Futaba's Palace when Joker takes his first step inside. Just him and her Shadow, and a few dozen smaller, roaming Shadows in the Palace around them.

Joker elects to avoid them as he slips through the Palace--still small, still growing--to search for its Ruler. He wants to talk to Futaba's Shadow, and announcing himself by starting a fight isn't going to be the best first impression. Instead he strides through her Palace's front entrance, into a Pyramid that still feels like it has quite a lot of room to grow, and stands in the center of the floor with his hands in the pockets of his long coat, waiting for her to notice him.

It doesn't take long. Joker is aware of her eyes on him before he sees her for himself, but he doesn't say anything, and pretends he hasn't noticed. The real Futaba had been nervous--right up until she understood where she was, at least--so it's not strange to think her Shadow could be too. And anyway, Joker has nowhere he needs to be. He stands and waits until finally, eventually, the other Shadow makes her cautious way down to the entryway to join him.

The first words out of her mouth are, "Do I know you?" 

"Not exactly," Joker says. He studies her as she studies him, doing his best to keep his expression calm and cool, and to hide his surprise.

He's never seen both a person's Shadow and their real self before, and so he's never realized they're identical. He should have, maybe, because Ann and Futaba this morning had recognized Kamoshida by his Shadow immediately, but he hadn't quite connected the dots with everything else going on. But he can really see the lines of Futaba's face in her Shadow's. If it hadn't been for their eyes, they could have been twins.

(So does that mean...)

(Has he been wearing his other self's face all this time?)

(He has to fight the urge to put a hand on his face, to feel features that might be telling him a little more about the person he wants most to know)

"I met your other self this morning," he tells Futaba. "And I wanted to come and meet you, too."

"Oh..?"

She drifts closer, the uncertain movement reminding Joker more of a ghost than a Shadow. She's dressed in all white, too, some vaguely Egyptian thing, and looks about ready to dart away at the first sign of some threatening movement from him. 

Joker waits for her to come on her own terms, and focuses his energy on being as nonthreatening as possible. It still takes her a while to get close, but eventually she does, her eyes narrowed as she studies him. "How did a Shadow meet my other self?" she asks, and there's a lace edge of suspicion in her voice. 

"I met her in a Palace."

"In a Palace?" the other Shadow demands.

Joker nods.

"Whose?"

"A king's," Joker says, and the pharaoh in front of him nods. 

"How did she get there?" she asks.

"Something on her phone," Joker says. "I don't know."

He expects more questions, but Futaba's Shadow is quiet for a very long time. Finally, though, she asks, "Was it your Palace?"

"I don't have one," Joker says.

She scoffs.

"I don't," Joker insists, a smile playing around the edges of his mouth at her reaction. As much as he's trying not to, he can't help enjoying himself here. This is serious business, and if he can't learn more about Futaba from her Shadow, he'll be kind of playing with fire if he ever sees her and Ann again.

"Okay," Futaba's Shadow says, rolling her eyes. "Sure, if you say so." 

"Do I look like a king?" Joker asks, in mock outrage. As she relaxes, he lets himself expand a little bit, holding himself a little less tensely, leaning into the dramatics that have always come naturally to him. "Because I would never."

"Do you know what?" Futaba's Shadow asks. "I think I actually believe you." She eyes him up and down and adds, "I don't know what you are, but you're no king."

"I'm a Thief," Joker says.

"I don't know if I want a Thief in my Palace," Futaba's Shadow says.

"Well I'm here," Joker says. "And I didn't come to rob you. I only came to talk."

"Because you met my other self?" she asks.

"That's right."

"Lucky," Futaba breathes. She barely seems aware that she'd whispered it, and Joker doesn't point it out. Anyway, there's only a heartbeat between when she lets the word slip out, and when she leans forward, and asks, "What was she like?"

"Your other self?"

A nod. Only one, tentative and uncertain, but Joker understands. He'd want to know too.

And so he tells her what he knows.

He's not sure how long they sit and talk, but it feels like a while. Joker explains what had happened in Kamoshida's Palace this morning, first in broad outlines and then in more specific detail when Futaba's Shadow insists on it. The conversation might have taken a lot less time, actually, except that Futaba's Shadow is distractable and struggles to focus sometimes. Joker doesn't blame her. She's here because Futaba has a distorted heart, and the fierce focus that the real person had shown this morning is only waveringly there in her Shadow. Sometimes she narrows her eyes and asks questions and cares, but then other times she pulls back and eyes him with the suspicion of a Palace's ruler instead.

When he finally runs out of things to say, Futaba's Shadow has settled into a distant, barely aware posture--cross legged on the ground next to Joker in a similar position, her head in her hand and her eyes somewhere far away. A very long time after Joker has finished talking, she says, "I think you should probably leave."

"Are you alright?"

She shakes her head no. "Not right now," she says, and she refocuses on him with what looks like a lot of effort. "But maybe later I can see you again? I liked hearing about her."

(There's a wistful tone in her voice, and Joker knows she means Futaba)

Joker hesitates. He hasn't learned what he came here to learn--he's told Futaba's Shadow a lot about why he's interested in her and her other self, but he hasn't learned anything in return about how much of a threat the real Futaba is to him. 

But he's not going to find anything else while she's feeling like this, so he nods and stands up. "I'll come back," he promises. "Maybe I'll even see her again before then. Maybe I'll have more to say."

And then he turns and leaves, before he overstays his welcome in this distorted heart.

-//-

It's afternoon by the time Ann and Futaba make it back to Shujin. Ann is given a disapproving lecture and sent to class, but Futaba's dad is actually there, at the school, looking like he's just about had a heart attack over his daughter being missing. The school must have called him, Ann guesses as she closes the door on the two of them and the principal, heading back to class on her own. And apparently he'd dropped everything to rush over to Shujin to try and find her.

Ann wonders what time zone her parents are in, and if they've even heard whatever message the school probably left them about her non-arrival this morning. If they have, they haven't reached out to her about it. She doesn't have any missed calls or texts on her phone.

Oh, well.

It's not like this is a surprise.

It's tough to sit through her afternoon classes. Ann is exhausted after everything that had happened in the castle this morning, and she sits with her chin on her hand, staring out the window with her eyes drooping closed, trying hard to stay awake. There's an empty desk in front of her that only makes her more visible to her teachers, and she's really struggling to stay awake enough to at least avoid being called out.

The only thing that helps is thinking about what had happened while she and Futaba were in the castle itself. Shadow Kamoshida, Joker, and most importantly Carmen. Ann can feel that something had changed inside her the second she awoke that Persona. She doesn't really understand exactly how she's changed yet, but she knows it's in a way that's important.

And it's a terrible idea, but... she wants to go back.

Joker had obviously known more about that world than Ann does. So had Futaba, actually, but Joker had been answering Futaba's questions just like he'd been answering Ann's, so he's the expert if anyone is. If she wants to get answers about what had happened to her, she's going to have to go back to that Palace, and get her information from Joker.

She's pretty sure that she can go back now. That she has the ability. There's a new app on her phone called the Metanav, and Ann has a sneaking suspicion that it's the same navigation app that Futaba had found on her phone. That means that Ann should be able to figure out how to use it herself, and bring herself back there. And as long as that really is the same app, she doesn't have to worry about getting stuck there, either--they know the trick for getting out now. And she has Carmen for while she's in there, which means that this isn't that stupid of an idea at all, really.

It just... feels incredibly stupid.

Ann struggles with herself for most of the afternoon, wavering back and forth between wanting to go back, and giving in to her common sense impulse to never think about it again. Because it would be common sense to stay, wouldn't it?

Carmen doesn't think it would. Ann can feel that with an odd certainty, her own feeling but also distinct from her. Like Carmen is egging her into something she already wants to do, encouraging rebellion against the expectation that she's just going to go back to class and stay out of trouble for the rest of the year.

Ann... doesn't want to stay out of trouble. Not if it means never getting closure on what had happened this morning.

So after class, when she's checked in with Shiho and wished her good luck with practice--

(And Ann hesitates at this, because she's seen Kamoshida's Shadow, and even though she knows he's not going to do the same things at school as his Shadow had done in his Palace...)

(Well, what is he doing?)

--she heads up to the first year rooms to see if she can find Futaba. At first, she has no luck, and starts to think that maybe Futaba's dad had taken her home instead of sending her back to class. She's just about resigned herself to waiting for tomorrow, so she can try and corner Futaba before classes, when a pair of first years hurry past with their heads together, whispering and laughing about something Ann only catches a snatch of.

"--crying in the bathroom since sixth period--"

"--couldn't even bother to show up this morning--"

"I know, can you believe it?"

And she doesn't know, not for sure, that it's Futaba they're laughing at. But how many other first years had missed class this morning? It's worth checking, anyway, so Ann pokes her head into the girls' bathroom down the hall and, when she doesn't see anyone immediately, walks inside. Quietly, listening hard for the sound of the crying those first years had been laughing about.

She doesn't hear crying, but she does hear the ragged gasping breathing of someone trying not to. Whoever's crying, and she still doesn't known for sure that it's Futaba, they've obviously heard her come in. 

"Hey!" she calls, voice echoing a little on the tile. "You don't have to come out if you don't want to, but if you don't want to walk out of school alone, I'm about to head out myself."

There's a brief pause. Then the door to the last stall creaks open, and sure enough there's Futaba, her eyes almost as red as her hair from crying. Her gaze darts away as soon as Ann meets it, and Futaba asks, "What are you doing here?"

"I was looking for you," Ann says, refusing to sound sorry for Futaba, or make a big deal out of her crying, or anything that will make her feel more self conscious. Ann's spent her share of time crying in school bathrooms, especially in middle school, and so she knows that the worst part is when she has to walk back out, not knowing how many classmates are going to still be in the halls to laugh at her. It had always been better when Shiho was around too, to walk with her, and distract her with conversation, and give her something to look at with her own watery eyes apart from whoever or whatever's bothering her.

(Shiho is a good friend, the best one she can imagine, but when you only have one friend in the whole school, that's a whole lot of people that aren't your friend)

"Why?" Futaba asks.

"Uh," Ann says. "Because of that castle we saw on the way in this morning? I've been thinking all afternoon about whether we should go back or not, and I definitely don't want to go back without you."

Futaba hesitates. Then she asks, "Really?"

Ann nods.

"You didn't just... hear I ran in here and feel sorry for me?"

"I didn't even know for sure it was you until you came out," Ann assures her.

"But you offered to walk home with me," Futaba says.

Ann hadn't been offering to walk anyone all the way home, exactly, just out of the school, but honestly she has nowhere to be for the next few hours, and this will give them time to talk about going back to the Palace. So she says, "I know it's hard to walk out alone."

Futaba considers all of this for several seconds, then she says, very abruptly, "I was a shut in last year. I don't think I was ready to come back after all. When we got back late, everyone stared."

"Then we'll just have to go after school next time," Ann says, and Futaba cracks a smile. Ann takes that as encouragement. "It'll get better," she says. "This school's the worst with rumors, your class will find something else to talk about soon and get bored of you. And tomorrow if you want, you can come eat lunch with me and my friend Shiho. You'll like her, she's nice."

And it's better than holing up in the bathroom, like Ann is half worried Futaba will if she doesn't have anyone to stop her.

Futaba doesn't answer, but her half smile doesn't go away. And she actually leaves the half-safety of the stall she's still standing inside, joining Ann at the bathroom door and then walking out with her. "Okay," she says. "But if we want to talk about going back to the Palace, we should get that done today. I don't think we should talk about it too much more at school."

"Sure," Ann agrees.

"Ooh! And I can show you how to message securely on your phone so no else can get into our conversations--"

And she's off, chattering a mile a minute about nothing Ann can understand. But it distracts her, at least, and getting Futaba out of the school isn't as tough as getting her out of the bathroom had been. Once she's in her zone, apparently, she's fine.

Futaba goes a little quiet when they're on the train, cringing away from anyone that gets too close to her, but that's Ann's cue to keep up her own side of the conversation. She doesn't think Futaba cares much more about the new crepe shop she'd over the weekend than Ann had been able to follow the details of her phone security plans, but Ann decides that it's better for Futaba to be listening to her than getting lost in her own thoughts, and then they're off the train and making their way through the quiet backstreets of a neighborhood Ann has never been to before.

Futaba doesn't take Ann back to her house, as she'd expected, but to a coffee shop called Leblanc where the same man that had been in the principal's office is working behind the counter. Her dad, Ann had assumed at the time, not now she remembers Futaba's choice of the word guardian, and wonders.

"Sojiro!" Futaba cries, as soon as they're through the door. "I'm home! And I brought a friend."

Her guardian looks up, first at Futaba and then at Ann. And Ann reads relief in his face, quickly overwriting concern, and then she sees a genuine smile as he looks back at Futaba. "Afternoon went better than the morning did?" he asks.

"Yep!" Futaba says, and her voice barely shakes with the lie at all. "All good!"

"And you made a friend," Sojiro says. His voice shakes a little too. "Let me get you both something to eat."

"We're going to go upstairs," Futaba announces. "We have stuff to talk about and we don't want to bother anyone."

"Up in the attic?" Sojiro asks. "It's a little..."

"It's just a little dust," Futaba says. "My room's way worse."

Sojiro... does not argue.

And that's how Ann finds herself holed up in an attic over a cafe with a girl she's just met today, sharing coffee and curry while dust swirls in the air around them, and they make whispered--and occasionally not so whispered, as they get more excited--plans to go back to the cognitive world they'd stumbled into that moring.

"I need to know more about that place," Futaba says. 

"And I want to know what Kamoshida's doing there," Ann says. "Or what his Shadow's doing?" She hesitates, frowning. "I just want to understand. My friend's on his volleyball team. I need to make sure she's okay."

"We can do that too," Futaba says. "Oh, and we should probably see if we can find Joker again, too."

"Yeah," Ann says. "I'd really like to know what's going on with that guy."

-//-

Akira is hurrying to the mess hall--or the cafeteria, according to staff, who never admit what all the inmates here know, that this place is less school than prison--when he hears the sound of raised voices from down a hall. Laughter, two older boys jeering each other on, and under it the sound of a much younger boy, possibly crying.

It's none of Akira's business, he reminds himself. This place, it doesn't like when people get involved with each other. The adults come down hard on what they call fraternization, and any sane person would probably have said was friendship. In their chores, when they're assigned to kitchen or cleaning duty, to the tasks that are supposed to teach them to be good, cooperative members of societies when they get out of here, those they're expected to do with each other, and without complaint. But in their scant free time, or the transitions between classes or study or chores?

Absolutely not.

So Akira should know better than to get himself involved in whatever's going on, around the corner and down the hall. He's only in here in the first place because he'd gotten himself involved in something he wasn't supposed to. He'd heard someone calling for help, and he'd...

He'd helped.

Like he helps now, feet moving faster as he follows the sound of the jeering laughter to a janitor's closet he knows is used to keep the heavy duty cleaning supplies. No chemicals, of course, those are kept under lock and key, for the same reason practical labs aren't taught in their dry chemistry classes. But the buckets and mops for cleaning up spills, the vacuums, the ancient ladder for reaching out of place corners they all know is going to fall on someone and kill them someday.

And, Akira sees as he dashes close, today it holds a boy, too. 

Akira barely gets a glimpse of his face before the two older boys, obviously the ones whose laughter had echoed down the hall toward him earlier, slam the door on his face. But that glimpse he gets tells him a lot. It tells him that the boy is afraid,. of course he is, but also that he's mad. He's not giving up, even though he's the one inside the closet with two of the biggest kids here--both nineteen and just this side of aging into the adult prison system--holding it shut on him. He's spitting mad and fighting back, and once Akira's seen that, there's no way he's turning around.

(He's always had a thing for the rebel, the sneak, the underdog)

So he keeps running.

And he doesn't...

He doesn't fight. Throwing the first punch in a place like this is a surefire way to get yourself assigned extra chores if you're lucky, isolated if you're not, or moved out of the training school altogether if you really have no luck at all.

Akira, arrested for an assault he hadn't committed, and denied probation because of the decisions of adults far beyond his ability to influence his own fate, has no illusions about his luck. It's shit, if it even exists. And so he doesn't throw the first punch. Or any punch. He narrows his gaze, focusing his full attention on the first of the two boys, the one standing farther from the closet door, and closer to the wall. He stares until the weight of it seems to make the boy uncomfortable, and he turns and sees Akira.

"You can't just lock some new kid in the closet," Akira says, loud enough to draw both boys' attention to him. He knows the new kid is new because this is a small school, and even though Akira had been the new one up until about five seconds ago when he saw this kid being shoved into the supply closet, he's been busy making it his business to learn everything he can about everyone. And this kid, until just now, hadn't been part of that everyone.

"He's been there all morning," the kid he'd been staring at laughs. "Found him before breakfast this morning, no one's come looking yet." His smile stretches out wide, and he adds, "Figure we can keep him here until after dinner at least."

"Maybe tomorrow morning if we can get him to shut up," says the other one.

Assholes, Akira decides. Not everyone here is, some of them are scared, or riding out their time here, or just angry. 

(Akira is one of the angry ones)

(He'd started off scared, the night he was arrested, but every single second since he realized that no one believes him, the anger's just been living under his skin, waiting for its moment)

But these two are assholes, which in this case is good. They're assholes, and so Akira isn't surprised when the closer one, the one he'd been staring at, trying to provoke, shoves a hand at him.

Akira ducks, so the hand hits the wall.

Or more specifically, the fire alarm Akira has just ducked away from.

All three of them turn to look at the camera in the hallway behind them, Akira grinning for the first time in days, the assholes suddenly nervous.

"They're going to check the tape now," Akira says, helpfully. Because of the insistence that this is a school and not a jail (it's definitely a jail), the camera footage isn't constantly monitored. It's spot checked, but it's only specifically looked at when something goes wrong.

The two assholes run, and Akira seizes his chance to grab the closet, elbow the lock, and catch the boy that falls out of the door.

"Okay," he says, before hello. "So I know you've been locked in a closet all day, and I wasn't the one that did that or pulled the fire alarm, but I'm actually ninety percent sure that camera's busted so they're just going to punish whoever they find here." 

That's the other thing about the camera footage only being spot checked. No one pays attention if one or two get... quietly disconnected, and Akira (who has been watching, who has been learning faces with the desperation of someone with no other weapons) had noticed the cut in the wires last Tuesday.

So they run, to the fenced yard they use for gym class, and where the whole school is being evacuated to. At least they're not the only ones breathless there, everyone is excited about this disruption in the normal routine. A pair of guards stand by the gate, on watch and ready to open it only if the prison turns out to literally be on fire, while the teachers do their best to keep the prisoner students under control, and the remaining guards go to investigate the mess Akira and the new kid have just run from.

It's chaos, and Akira pulls the new kid to the opposite side of the yard from the two assholes. New kid, to his credit, sees what he's doing and does not protest.

"Are you okay?" Akira asks, when things finally feel safe. 

"I'm fine," new kid spits. He still looks angry, but now Akira gets a better look at his face beyond the anger. New kid is... he's really a kid. Akira knows that this place won't admit anyone under than twelve, but new kid must be a young twelve, because he could have passed for ten or eleven. He's drowning in the plain uniforms they all wear here, white short sleeved shirts and stiff grey pants. His shoes look at least a size or two too big, and his hair sticks up in every direction. His eyes are very wide, and very blue.

"Good," Akira says. "My name's Akira, and I'm new here too." he smiles, and it's a surprisingly real smile on his face. Not like the one that had come from getting the asshole to punch the fire alarm, but a real smile that he hopes can be at least a little reassuring to new kid. 

"Yeah..." new kid says. He's looking past Akira, wide eyed and a little lost. "I'm Morgana."

"Morgana," Akira repeats, wrapping his mouth around the unfamiliar name. Between that and the blue eyes, he's pretty sure this kid is at least partially not Japanese, but he guesses that doesn't really matter. He's here, a prisoner just like all the rest of them. "So what are you in for, Morgana?"

Morgana frowns, hunching his shoulders, and it makes him look even smaller. More wet cat than kid. And he says, "I don't remember."

Well, Akira thinks with a sigh. Morgana isn't the only one here that doesn't want to think about what they've been arrested for. Not the only one that says nothing, or I don't remember, or even Akira's own it wasn't me.

"That's okay," he says. "In here, trust me." He stares at the guards. "No one cares what you did."

(Or didn't do)

"Stick with me," he says, quietly. "I don't know what I'm doing either, but..." He looks at Morgana. The kid that claims he doesn't remember so that he won't have to remember, and decides that he isn't done helping. 

He's not done getting himself into trouble that he should have stayed out of.

Chapter Text

Morgana is not entirely sure that he's supposed to be here.

He doesn't remember what he'd done to be arrested, or how why he'd been sentenced here. Apparently this is something that very rarely happens for kids his age--his class of middle school first years only has three people in it, including him--so most people seem to assume that he's either done something especially awful, or else that he has parents that hadn't fought particularly hard to keep him. Morgana, whose first memory is waking up here, in the same hallway where he'd been shoved into the cleaning closet (the same hallway where he'd met Akira), can only make the same guesses as everyone else.

He hasn't told anyone except Akira that he doesn't remember how he'd gotten here, and Akira seems to think that Morgana is choosing not to remember, or using it as an excuse to not talk about it. He's sympathetic, even nice about it, and so--at least so far, a week after they'd met--Morgana hasn't quite managed to work up the courage to explain.

And anyway, what would he explain? Morgana doesn't know where he'd come from, what he'd done, or how he'd gotten here. All he can do is wait out his sentence, like everyone else. And since Akira is about the only good thing in this place, the only thing that ever makes him feel like he's where he's supposed to be, Morgana stays quiet. He doesn't want to risk making things worse for either of them.

It helps that Akira, as the newest arrival before Morgana, is next up to have a dorm cellmate assigned to his room. Morgana, after a brief period of confusion when the warden and his assistants don't quite seem to know what to do with him, is paired with Akira, given an inmate number, and put in classes. Despite whatever paperwork mixup had confused them at first, the adults fairly quickly lose interest in Morgana. He's here, which means he's supposed to be here, and he'll be released when his sentence is up, just like everyone else. That means Morgana, just like everyone else, spends his days chafing against chores, classes, and the containment of the school. If he hadn't had a friend, he doesn't know how he would have gotten through it.

Akira is four years older, but doesn't seem to mind helping Morgana with homework during supposedly independent study, or when Morgana spends his evening free time with him. He doesn't ask about Morgana's past, once he learns that Morgana has nothing to say, but he tells Morgana all about his. He explains that he'd been arrested for an assault he hadn't done, talks about the parents that haven't acted the same toward him since the arrest, and explains that he should have been on probation this year at a place called Leblanc.

He really wants to be there now, Morgana can tell. He gets this distant look in his eyes when he talks about it, and his voice goes wistful. The two of them turn it into a kind of game, imagining what this place neither of them will ever see might be like in real life. It's not like they're the only ones playing games like this, everyone seems to have some version of pretending they're home and free and not here, and this is just the one the two of them have settled on.

They dream up rainy days with cups of coffee on tables next to long windows, warm and dry inside next to a roaring fireplace. A sunny room hanging with plants and smelling like baked goods. Akira catches the name Leblanc on a book in the library one day and imagines a cafe in a library or a bookstore, with customers nursing coffee or tea with their noses buried in books. Morgana suggests a cat cafe.

It's hard to tell if their game makes Akira feel better or worse about being here instead of there, but they play it anyway. There's not that much else to do, and he at least says it doesn't bother him. He says Morgana is helping, and Morgana feels like that's what he's supposed to do, so he doesn't argue. Akira is the nicest person he's met here, which means that Akira is the nicest person Morgana can remember ever meeting. He talks with Akira about Leblanc, reminds him to go to bed when he stays up past lights out with a book and the flashlight he'd smuggled in, even starts teaching him to make little tools with bits and pieces they scrounge up around the school when he turns out to be surprisingly good at that.

Akira is his friend, the only one he has, and Morgana thinks that even though Akira has his past and his memories, he might not have anyone else either. He's talked about his parents, and how they changed when he was arrested, but he doesn't talk about anyone else. No friends or classmates. On Sundays, when the school allows calls and visitors, Akira stays with Morgana in the cafeteria and a badly homebrewed game of two player Tycoon, instead of rushing out with most of the others.

And then, a week into Morgana's incarceration, he has a nightmare.

It's the first dream he can remember, actually. The first time he hasn't gone to bed exhausted and too tired to dream. So at first, he doesn't even realize what's going on. He's just... somewhere dark. And he's not himself. Not anything. He's just an idea, a presence without a body, and all around him there are other nothings.

(Shadows, whispers a part of himself he barely recognizes)

(A part of himself he hasn't needed, and whose certainty in contrast to his otherwise missing memories makes him shy away)

And then, he is something. He is a horrible something, rising out of a dark puddle on a horrible distortion of a nightmare, and when he opens his eyes he knows without seeing them that they're not blue, they're a bright, nightmare yellow--

A hand on his shoulder pulls him out of the dream, and Morgana turns toward it in half asleep desperation, clutching at the hand, at the person it belongs to, at Akira, who sits next to Morgana on his bed and lets himself be held. 

When Morgana has calmed down enough to be embarrassed, he tries to pull away. Akira doesn't exactly hold him back, but he doesn't let go, either. His arm stays safely circled around Morgana's shoulders, letting him know he's allowed to stay where he is, if he wants. And he says, "I have nightmares too."

It takes Morgana a second to realize nightmare is the right word for what he's just dreamed, but when the dots connect, he nods. 

"My nightmare..." he hesitates. "I don't want to talk about it."

"That's okay," Akira says. It's too dark to see his face, but Morgana thinks he hears a tiny smile in his voice. "Mine are mostly just prisons. Some of them are weird, though. I had one the other day that was all blue."

"Mmm," Morgana says. He still really doesn't want to talk about his. There's something deeply horrifying to him about what he'd dreamed, and he doesn't even know what it means. Just that he doesn't want it to ever be true. 

Akira goes quiet. 

He doesn't leave.

And Morgana, with no past and no family, finds himself wondering if this is what having a brother feels like. 

-//-

(Akira, although he'd never admit it to Morgana while he's trying to comfort him, catches himself wondering just about the same thing)

(That, and if he'd ever be able to go back to surviving here without a real friend)

-//-

Joker spends nearly every afternoon of the week after meeting the girls from Shujin exploring Kamoshida's Palace with them. With Panther and Oracle, to use the codenames they'd come up with on their second visit--Panther for her mask, and Oracle because even though she doesn't have a Persona herself yet, her Shadow is still elsewhere, she has a good memory for Shadow strengths and weaknesses. The third or fourth time she yells at them to remember a particular strength or weakness, the name just kind of sticks.

Panther and Oracle.

His first two friends.

And the thing he wants most is to show off to those friends, to impress them, to convince them to keep coming back. They're from the real world, a place Joker only knows about because the cognitive world implies that it exists. He can look around at his world, and make guesses, but the he knows he'll never understand exactly what the real world is actually like. Panther and Oracle obviously do, they live there, with all its excitements and distractions. Joker isn't confident yet that they'd choose to keep coming back here when they could be there instead, and he is desperate and hungry for friendships and bonds. 

That's why, by the time they've seen most of Kamoshida's Palace, Joker suggests they make a trip to Mementos. The Shadows there aren't too much stronger, and he's confident that he and Panther can handle them together. Carmen has strong magic, and since Joker is a Shadow himself, it's possible for him to grab a knife or a gun, like the kind he sometimes finds in chests, and fight as well. 

So Mementos should be well within what they can do, and Joker isn't really worried about how things will go when the three of them take their first trip there forever. If anything, he's excited--Panther might need a little encouragement when she sees what Mementos looks like, but he had warned them, so hopefully she'll be prepared. And Oracle will be thrilled at the chance to see anything new for herself, he hopes.

And then they'll have the whole of Mementos to explore, and that's a lot bigger than Kamoshida's Palace. They might have to figure out a way to get them past the locked doors, since they're not Shadows, but well... that's why Joker had showed up early today. This place is meant for things like him, and he can pass through its doors easily. Would have been able to even if he hadn't been a Thief. But the other two will need help, and so Joker goes Mementos, to the only human he knows of that has found a way past the doors.

There's a ripple in the already distorted air around him, and Joker grins in anticipation as someone steps through.

The boy in the sharp, dark, clothes, with the helmetlike mask that covers almost all of his face, takes one look around. He sees Joker, and his eyes narrow. "Again?" he asks.

"Hi, Crow," Joker says, completely unable to hide his delight. 

"What are you doing here?" Crow complains. "Why are you always here, don't you have anything better to do?"

"Better than spending time with you?" Joker teases, and is rewarded with a growl from Crow, and a determined attempt to walk past him and leave. Joker responds, without missing a beat, by following. "I have something I wanted to ask you, if you have to know."

"Whatever it is," Crow says. "No. I have work to do, and you get in the way."

"Only when you're trying to kill peoples' Shadows," Joker says. He doesn't think--doesn't want to think, maybe--that Crow really knows what happens to the people in the real world whose Shadow he hurts. He can't know, the way Joker so intimately does, that a person and their Shadow are inexorably tied together, and that killing a Shadow would kill the person as well, if not necessarily physically. 

Crow doesn't say anything.

Joker stops in place, and grabs Crow's arm to stop him too. "Crow," he says, and even though he doesn't stop smiling, he makes his voice dangerous. "Are you thinking of killing someone's Shadow today?"

"Get off me," Crow says, shaking his arm until he dislodges Joker's hand. "And no, information only. For some reasons I've gotten a lot less assassination missions since someone started blocking me from my targets."

"Give me a little more credit than that," Joker says. "Sometimes I help the Shadows fight, too. And you're welcome, by the way. Congratulations on getting less terrible murder missions from your terrible mystery boss."

"I want the terrible murder missions," Crow says, and Joker knows he's won this particular verbal spar when he hears the whine Crow is fighting to keep out of his voice, and the angry way he turns his face away in the split second after the realization of what he's just said hits him. "I need to do something," he says, voice more forcibly controlled now. "And I can't unless my boss trusts me. He won't if I can't do everything he tells me to."

"I think you need a new boss," Joker says, not for the first time. "You don't need him."

There's a pause. Then Crow changes the subject, and asks, "What did you want from me today?"

"I want to know what you did to get down to the lower levels here," Joker says, without missing a beat. 

"I've seen you down there too," Crow says dismissively. "You obviously already know."

He doesn't, actually. Not unless Crow is also secretly a Shadow that Mementos is perfectly happy to let pass on his own. And Joker would know by now if that were true--Crow, he is sure, is completely, fascinatingly human. "I break in," he bluffs, leaning on his reputation as a Thief, daring Crow to call him out on it, just to see what he'll say. "I need to know how you're actually supposed to do it."

"Bullshit, you break in," Crow snaps, ignoring Joker's question. "That's not a real answer, that's just you avoiding the question."

"And that's you avoiding mine," Joker points out, reasonably enough to annoy Crow. 

"Why are you like this?" he demands.

"Like what?" Joker asks, in his best attempt at an innocent tone.

(It's not particularly good)

(He's not particularly innocent)

Crow groans. "Fine," he says. "If you need to know that badly, you get deeper into Mementos by making yourself more well known."

"Oh!" Joker snaps his fingers as he connects the dots. "You worm yourself deeper into the public cognition, and you can get farther down in everyone's Palace. Crow, that's brilliant."

"It's common sense," Crow says (but his face is red from something that's stopped being anger). "If you weren't so busy doing everything the hard way, you'd know it already."

"I don't know any other way to live," Joker says. And it's true. He doesn't. If he wasn't a Thief and a show off and a whole lot of trouble, he wouldn't be anything at all. "Does that mean you're famous, Crow?"

It's pretty hard to render Crow speechless, but this does it. He chokes out something that isn't words, and ends with an incoherent noise.

"Does that mean yes?" Joker asks. "What are you famous for? If you just reacted like that says it's something embarrassing."

"Don't you dare go looking for me," Crow says.

"If you're that famous," Joker says. "Maybe I'll see you somewhere." He won't, of course, but he half wonders if his other self could. Just like Joker will never have the chance to find out what kind of apparently mortifying fame Crow has in the real world, his other self will never know why it matters, even if he does hear about Crow there. "Maybe I won't even have to try."

"Has anyone ever told you," Crow grinds out, through gritted teeth. "That you're insufferable?"

"Only you," Joker says. From above them, in a layer of Mementos that their feet have carried them far away from while they've been bickering, he feels the distortion of someone new arriving. Panther and Oracle, it has to be--it's about the right time. "But listen, if you're not here to kill any Shadows, I'll leave you to it."

Crow eyes him distrustfully. And is Joker imagining the edge of disappointment in his expression? He can't be. Surely. "Just like that?" he asks. 

"We both know I'll find you if it turns out you're here to do something... stupid," Joker says.

"It's none of your business," Crow says. But then he adds, "It's just information," anyway.

"Good," Joker says. "Then I'll see you around."

And he turns on his heel, long coat flapping behind him, before rushing up to find his friends.

-//-

Akechi watches Joker disappear into the shadows of Mementos, and has to take several long, deep breaths, closing his eyes and counting to ten, before he can even think of continuing. It's always like this. Every time they interact. And just like every other time, Akechi knows that he won't be able to get today's conversation out of his head for at least the rest of the day--he'll be trying to parse through Joker's unusual comments, the question he shouldn't have had to ask, and that damn, cocky smile.

Joker makes absolutely no sense. Sometimes it seems like he knows everything about Mementos and Palaces, while other times he's completely clueless about things Akechi had figured out ages ago. And yet...

And yet ever since their chaotic first meeting--an incident Akechi still aggressively tries not to think about--they've been consistently, relentlessly in each other's lives. Joker crashes Akechi's Mementos trips. He argues with every hit Akechi is ordered to do, making it difficult if not impossible to finish his missions. 

He can fight Shadows. He can even fight Shadows that represent people in the real world. But he finds that he struggles to fight against Joker again and again and again, every time, only to be defeated in the end.

Joker doesn't even fight with a Persona.

He must have one, he's here, he has the costume, but he will not condescend to summon his Persona to fight Akechi, and in the end Akechi is afraid that this is the real reason he's started telling Shido he can't target Shadows directly anymore--that Mementos is changing, evolving protections, anything he needs to say to excuse his drop in productivity. Because if Joker would only summon, would only face him on equal terms, Akechi would do it every day until the end of time. It's the implicit condescension of Joker facing him with only his knife and his gun that makes Akechi's pride refuse to keep fighting. Especially because the one time Akechi had tried to fight without his own Persona, Joker had laughed in delight instead of the frustration Akechi had wanted to see in him, and then had won the fight in the end anyway.

(He'd dashed across the open space between them, graceful as ever in the oppressive atmosphere of Mementos, laughing)

(He'd knocked Akechi's light sword aside with the butt of his own knife almost before Akechi knew what was happening, and knocked him flat on his back, pinning him to the ground)

(They'd stayed like that for one long, frozen moment. Their faces so close together that Akechi could feel the itch of Joker's curls falling against his forehead, before Joker had grinned and rolled away, the obvious winner between the two of them)

Akechi had sworn that day that he would never let Joker embarrass him like that again, would never face him in a fight until he could feel confident that it would be on equal terms. And, since Joker seems to somehow always known when Akechi steps foot into Mementos or a Palace, that has meant Akechi can't take any more of Shido's more... objectionable missions. Because Joker would certainly object, and Akechi doesn't think he could stand the humiliation of the fight.

Not yet.

Not until he's stronger.

So research it is. Coaxing secrets out of Shadows, or occasionally whispering suggestions of paranoia and fear that drive one deeper down, triggering anxiety in the real world. It's not as much as Akechi wants to be able to do, but for now it'll have to do. Shido, while displeased, can't actually prove that Akechi is lying when he says Mementos has changed.

He can't prove that Akechi could still kill for him if he wanted to, and that the only thing standing between him and a completed mission for Shido is the single other person with metaverse access. And the losing fight with him that Akechi's pride won't let him engage with, for now.

His plan is... it's taken a hit, but is still standing. Akechi can still do what he wants to, as long as he doesn't fail again. 

With a little noise of frustration, aimed at Joker--wherever he is--Akechi storms down another floor of Mementos, and goes looking for the subject of his mission. He'd brought some items he wants to experiment with today. Maybe, if he has time when he's done, he'll set something on fire.

Things would have been so much easier, he can't help thinking, if Joker had never shown up. Akechi is still haunted by the day they'd met in Shido's Palace, in that the specter of that memory just looms over him whenever he's trying his hardest not to think about it, refusing to pass on no matter how hard he tries to kill it. He and Joker have run into each other so many times since then that Akechi has lost track. They've fought, with fists and weapons and words and--on Akechi's side--with Persona. They've even fought on the same side, once in a while. Akechi doesn't always come to Mementos on missions for Shido. Sometimes he just needs some spare cash. Or wants to test a new weapon. Or is looking for... well, he doesn't necessarily--

Joker's conversation, coming from the only other person with metaverse access (as far as Akechi is aware), is not terrible. Even if he does sometimes insist on speaking to Akechi's Persona instead of directly to him. And Joker has proved in fights against Akechi that he's good at that, even if he does have the advantage of numbers, since he only ever does that when he's joining the side of a Shadow.

They both get something out of fighting together, is the point. Akechi gets occasional assistance and someone to trade information with, and Joker gets... whatever the fuck Joker gets out of this. It must be something, Akechi assumes, because Joker keeps agreeing to fight with him, even as he also keeps cheerfully reminding Akechi he'll fight against him at the least provocation. 

(It's as if he knows Akechi is burning up inside, waiting for his chance to fight him again)

(As if he knows that more and more, every Shadow Akechi fights, every bit of strength his Persona gain, it's all building toward what he sees an inevitable rematch)

(One that he has to win, this time)

Actually, Akechi realizes with an unwelcome flip somewhere in his gut. This is the first time Joker has ever left. Normally Akechi is the first one out of Mementos or a Palace at the end of the day. He'll get fed up with Joker's dramatics, or have to run to be in time for another obligation, and leave behind.

So Joker apparently having somewhere else to be is a sudden break from his previously observed behavior, and Akechi is... uneasy with the implications of that. 

No, he tells himself firmly. There's nothing strange about this. The new school year has just started, and Joker--whatever and whoever else he might be in the real world--is certainly high school aged. He might even be a first year, which would mean he's adjusting to a new school, a new course load, new classmates and new friends--

Akechi shakes his head sharply, and turns away with a snarl. Enough of this. Enough wasting his time and his energy on someone that's not even here at the moment. He has work to do, and he doesn't need Joker to get it done.

-//-

Normally, Futaba struggles to go new places on her own. And normally, if she'd had plans to go somewhere new after school with someone, and that someone had to cancel last minute, Futaba wouldn't have even considered going by herself anyway. She would have made her excuses, or maybe just ghosted, and gone back home to Sojiro where it's safe.

But this isn't a normal day, and these aren't normal circumstances, and... and if she's being honest, Ann and Joker aren't just normal friends. They're good ones, who have never left her behind or even hinted that she's less useful than they are just because she doesn't have a Persona, like Ann, and can't fight, like Joker. They make her feel useful and even wanted, and like they're really, actually friends.

And all of that is why she's here. Because Ann had texted from the hospital and asked her to go without her, to meet up with Joker in Mementos.

Ann can't go with her because she  won't leave Shiho's side while the doctors can't even say if she's going to live.

And Ann had asked Futaba to go because if anyone in the world would know how to use the unique access they have to Kamoshida's Shadow to get revenge for hurting Shiho so much she jumped off a roof--

It would be Joker.

Futaba had seen everything that happened. Her classroom is up on the third floor, and if Shiho had jumped at any other time, Futaba would have missed it completely. You can barely even see the courtyard from up there, and even if her classmates had seen something and gone running to crowd the windows and squint down to ground level, Futaba would have scrambled in the other direction, to the back of the room and away from the crowds. 

But they hadn't been in their classroom. They'd been in gym, which Futaba (as usual) had spent trying to avoid both Kamoshida and as much physical exertion as possible. She'd actually been making a point of limping to the nurse's office, slowly so that it wouldn't be worth sending her back to class when the nurse realized she doesn't actually have a sprained ankle, wandering in a random direction and planning to tell anyone who asked that she's a lost first year--

When Shiho had fallen into the courtyard, right as Futaba got there.

She will never, never forget that moment. The blur of Shiho tumbling, almost in slow motion, even though she must have been going really fast, actually. So out of place that for a horrible second Futaba's instinct had been to laugh. Just--the absurdity of seeing someone in such an obviously wrong position.

What are you doing there, Shiho?

You're not supposed to be in the courtyard in the middle of class, every limb sticking out at a different angle, uniform blowing upward with the speed of the fall.

And then she'd heard the smack of Shiho hitting the ground, the snap of something that isn't supposed to, and the laugh had turned into a scream as she realized what she was seeing.

(Just like her mom, just like watching her step into traffic--)

Futaba had run. Not away, as she'd really wanted to, but toward Shiho where she'd been crumpled on the ground. She doesn't know Shiho very well, she keeps hiding and leaving when Ann tries to coax her into having lunch all together, keeps pretending she doesn't see when Shiho smiles and waves at her in the hall. Shiho is Ann's friend, not Futaba's, and she might have been very nice since the first time they met, but Futaba has already made two friends this month, and hadn't felt ready for three.

But it's different seeing Shiho on the ground. All broken like a doll that someone had thrown away and forgotten about. Like the time Futaba had been alone in her room and heard a voice (her mom's voice, even though her mom is gone), so she'd thrown her headphones in a panic, and knocked one of her Featherman figures to the ground.

Shiho isn't a figure though. She's a human being, who had been nice, even though Futaba had run away and ignored her.

Futaba doesn't know what to do. She doesn't even think of going to get help, because there is not a single bone in her until-recently-shut-in body that thinks of going to other people when she's afraid. So she just... she goes to Shiho, and holds her hand, which is still warm, and cries out of fear and an echo-y kind of loss because someone she barely knows but might have if she'd been braver had just dropped off a roof right in front of her.

Soon enough, and to Futaba's huge relief, other people come running up. A crowd of curious students. Panicking teachers. Ann, who screams the way Shiho should have been when she fell, only Shiho had been so quiet, had been completely quiet, like she was already resigned--

Futaba stumbles away and throws up. From the crowd as much as Shiho. And when she's done vomiting her entire stomach into a bush, she looks up and sees Kamoshida. He's supposed to be with her class right now, so maybe he'd come looking for her. Maybe he'd heard all the noise. Either way, Futaba sees him see the crowd, and Shiho. 

She sees realization hit him. A moment of confusion, then panic, then anger.

Futaba isn't good at people. But she's seen his heart, his Shadow, and she knows that all he's thinking about is how this is going to effect him.

Which means that this is his fault.

It means that every time Ann's worried about Shiho in volleyball practice, she'd been right.

"Joker," Futaba says, as soon as she sees him. Her voice cracks on that one word, and his easy smile vanishes, and some of the bounce goes out of his step.

"Oracle?" he asks. "Is everything okay?" He's actually frowning now. "Where's Panther?"

Futaba ignores both questions, and asks her own instead. "How do we stop Kamoshida?" she demands. "We can go inside his heart and see his Shadow, how do we stop him from doing terrible things?" Her hands ball up into fists, and Shiho's broken body flashes up in front of her eyes again. She shakes her head hard to clear it. "What do we do to make sure that he's the one that gets hurt?"

Joker doesn't say anything for what feels like forever. He looks at Futaba like he's weighing her up. Finally he seems to decide, and he says, "Well, there's something we could try. I've never done it, because it would be a lot to try on my own. We'd have to go all the way to the most strongly guarded part of his Palace, warm him that we're coming, and take the distorted desires that formed the Palace in the first place, but we could do it." He looks at her, absolutely still. Futaba... she doesn't think she's ever seen him stop moving so completely. "If you're serious, we could change his heart."

Chapter Text

Joker doesn't want to sit at the entrance to Mementos with an obviously upset Oracle while he explains Treasures to her. Crow is still somewhere below them, and he doesn't have to know much about humans to figure out that they wouldn't get along. Crow still hasn't warmed up to Joker invading what he so obviously sees as his space--something Joker thinks is hilarious--and will probably be even less open to Oracle.

(He'll think she's weak, because she can't fight)

(Sometimes, Joker is amazed at how much Crow doesn't understand)

Joker hasn't known Oracle as long as he has Crow, but he's spent time with both her and her Shadow, and so he's already pretty sure she won't be excited to start meeting new people. Better to keep everyone separate, at least for now. 

So, here they are. On the surface of Mementos, where Shadows rarely bother to go, and Crow certainly won't have any interest in. But it's safe enough to bring an unarmed Oracle to, and so Joker is pretty proud of this solution.

Once they're up on the surface, Oracle looks around and shudders. "This place is creepy," she says.

"You think so?" Joker asks. "You're not going to like the rest of Mementos, in that case. It's a lot worse underground."

"I saw the entrance," Oracle says. "That's..." she hesitates before settling on, "Fine. But up here it's so close to reality, it's creepy. It's just Shibuya, if Shibuya was dark and empty and--" She ends by making a face, which luckily means that she misses Joker's expression as he absorbs this. He's not surprised to find out the underground sections of Mementos is different from the real world, but now he can't help imagining...

He closes his eyes, and pretends he's standing in a square full of light, and people. Imagines his other self at his side, finally being whole. 

Joker is so hungry, in a way, for reality. And for the one person that connects him to it.

Oracle makes a kind of eurgh sound, and Joker forces his eyes open, forces himself to focus. "Do you know anything about Treasures?" he asks, and is surprised by how normal he makes his voice sound. It's almost like he hadn't just been thinking about the gaping, empty space inside of him at all.

The question seems to distract her from her growing unease, because Oracle's death grip on her sides lessens a little, and she takes a deep breath before turning to look at him. Her bare face is incredibly open as she looks at him without a mask, Joker can't help noticing. He's not used to that, and the open hurt she's been wearing in her expression since she stumbled into Mementos today makes him really want to help her.

(She is after all--he's pretty sure--a friend)

(Joker pushes down his own distracted thoughts of reality, for his friend)

"I don't know the word," Oracle says. "But--Mom used different terms for almost everything in her research. Maybe if you described it?"

So Joker summarizes what Treasures are. He tells her about how every distortion is born from a single seed, some element that represents the reason that they see the world the way they do. He explains to her that, in theory, stealing that seed, that Treasure, will cause the whole Palace, and therefore the distortion, to collapse. He explains to Oracle that he doesn't know exactly what that would do to the real Kamoshida, but that it would force him to see exactly what he'd done, without the comfort of his distortion to shield him from the horror of his own actions. 

"It wouldn't be easy," he finishes. "You'd--we--" He pauses, then pushes on quickly to try and cover his slip. "Someone would have to send him a warning in the real world, to let him know we're coming for his Treasure. Otherwise it won't appear in a form that's solid enough for us to steal."

"Mom's research sort of had something like this," Oracle says, her bare face pinched together in concentration. "But nothing like how to do it, or anything." Her expression turns worried, and she asks, "Are you sure we have to tell the real Kamoshida we're coming?"

"Yep," Joker says. "And I'm not going to lie, it is going to put the whole Palace on high alert." There's no way around that--if you tell a Shadow, or in this case their other self--that you're on your way to steal their most valuable possession, that Shadow is going to do absolutely everything in their power to protect it.

"Then why don't we not tell Kamoshida?" Futaba asks. "He doesn't even know about Palaces or Shadows, so wouldn't we have to explain all that first? And then he'd probably have us locked up or something."

"Well first of all," Joker says. "I think you should probably do it anonymously. Safer that way, and--" He flashes her a grin. "More fun, don't you think?"

Oracle looks unconvinced, and says, "I think your version of fun is pretty different from mine." She takes a deep breath, though, and adds, "Anonymous is definitely safer, though. That's true."

"And you don't have to go into detail," Joker adds. He doesn't have to understand how it's happening, just that someone's coming for his distorted heart. Deep down, he knows what he's doing is twisted. Even if he doesn't consciously recognize the threat, his Shadow will. He'll realize his Treasure is in danger, and that on its own should be enough to force it into a solid shape."

"Should be," Oracle repeats.

"Well yeah, sure," Joker says with a loose shrug. "I told you, I've never tried this before. Never know how something's going to go until you try it, do you?"

"If you've never tried it before," Oracle says. "How do you know it'll work at all?"

The question throws Joker more than he wants to admit. He doesn't have an easy explanation ready that would explain how he could have learned this, and he can't just tell her that it's something Shadows just intrinsically know. Even Joker, who doesn't have a Palace or a Treasure of his own, has an intrinsic understanding of how it's supposed to work. 

With no other option, he falls back on looking mysterious and empty bluster. "I've spent enough time here to get a feel for it," he says, hiding his hands away in the pockets of his long coat, and tilting his face so that even the part that's not covered by his mask is more or less in shadow. "You're just going to have to trust me, Oracle."

He expects her to roll her eyes at him, to shoot back with one of the smart comments he's gotten used to hearing from both her and her Shadow. 

But Oracle doesn't do that. Instead she nods, a wavering little gesture, and says, "Okay."

"...okay?" Joker repeats. He's a little thrown, despite himself, by how serious she sounds as she says it. 

"We don't have any other choice," Oracle explains, her voice dropping to a volume so low Joker can barely hear it. "Shiho jumped off a roof because of Kamoshida today. He can't keep doing that to people." She hugs herself, and despite... everything. Despite the quiver in her voice, despite the way she curls in on herself, despite the tears at the corners of her eyes, there's hard steel in her when she tells Joker, "This is the only chance we have to make him pay. So I'm trusting that you know what you're doing."

Joker stares back at her, and it's like she's lifting that steel onto his shoulders, giving it to him as his burden to carry. Trust me, he'd said, and she'd answered, I will.

She shouldn't, of course. He's a Shadow, a Thief, darting from one Palace to another, knowing full well he'll never find his own Treasure in any of them. That if he's lucky, there will never be a Treasure at all. His life is one dare after another, risk after risk, cocky grins and easy laughs because he has nothing else at all but his own intrinsic self. She should not trust him. Even Joker knows that he is meant for the thrill of dark corners and midnight escapes, not for people--for real, actual humans--to lean on.

(He has a choice)

(To step forward into this new kind of responsibility, or to make it a joke, and turn away)

-//-

In the middle of math homework, in the near silence of his and Morgana's shared room, Akira feels his breath catch.

He feels, without knowing why, like he is standing on the edge of something unbearably important. And nonsensically, from nowhere, a thought hits him.

Was your previous decision a mistake, then?

And he knows, without understanding how he knows, that the decision in question was the one that brought him here. To step in and try to help someone he barely knew, even though he had no way of knowing then what he does now. That there's a cost to helping people, and that cost can be heavy.

Akira takes a deep breath, and then another one, fighting to still his racing heart. 

Across the room, the sound of Morgana's pencil on his own homework slows, and then stops. "Akira?" he asks. "Are you okay?"

"Fine," Akira assures him, and with the smile he gives the younger boy--and the one he gets in return--he knows his answer. He didn't have to try and help, that night. He hadn't understood, then. But he'd understood the cost of helping when he'd risked punishment to help Morgana, and so it turns out he hasn't learned his lesson at all. It's not a mistake to reach out to other people, no matter the circumstances, no matter the cost.

The anxious squeeze in his chest eases. The weird moment passes.

And Akira goes back to his homework, feeling oddly at peace.

-//-

Joker lets out a breath, and then--following some urge he can't quite parse--turns and gives Oracle a hug. He moves slow, uncertain on his own account as much as hers, but Oracle doesn't complain, and when she folds with some relief into the hug, Joker feels a part of him tremble and shake and bend in response, molding itself into something new. Shadows, he feels, aren't supposed to do this. Aren't supposed to sacrifice for humans, to call them friends, to meet them as equals.

"I promise," he tells Oracle, and feels the heavy weight of a chain between them, linking them together in some more than physical way. "I'm not going to let you down."

-//-

Ann stays at the hospital until Shiho's parents get there. For almost an hour she paces anxiously in the emergency room waiting room, knowing no one will tell her anything because she's just a friend and classmate, not Shiho's family, but too scared and anxious to go anywhere else. At some point a nurse mistakes her for a patient waiting to be checked in, and suggests kindly that she should sit down and wait to be seen, because her face looks very pale and she might pass out if she's not careful. It makes Ann feel awful. Shiho is somewhere she can't get to, in an operating room where doctors are trying to save her life, fighting for her life while it's Ann's fault, and for some reason people are worrying about her.

It's not fair. The whole world should have stopped when Shiho jumped. The whole world should be holding its breath, waiting to find out if Ann's friend--her oldest friend, her best friend--is going to live.

Or if she's going to die because Ann hadn't said anything, even after she saw what's really going on in Kamoshida's heart. If she'd really make a scene at school, if she'd made Shiho promise she wouldn't go back to volleyball practice, if she'd tried anything, maybe they'd all be back at class now. Instead, Shiho is somewhere deep in a hospital, and Ann is pacing in an emergency room, tears of shame burning in her eyes because people feel sorry for her.

When the Suzuis arrive, Ann almost runs. She wants to be here for Shiho, but one look at her parents' stricken, horrified faces is enough to drive her away. She can't look at them, can't think of anything to say. So she flees.

She's not going anywhere specific, not thinking ahead at all, but she hasn't gotten very far anyway when Futaba calls her. For anyone else, right in this moment, Ann doesn't think she would have answered. But even though Futaba hasn't known Shiho as long or as well, nowhere near as long or as well, she had been the one to find her. So maybe, out of everyone in the world, Futaba is the one that comes the closest to being able to understand how Ann's feeling right now. So she wipes her face, tries to steady her breathing, and answers the phone.

"Ann!" Futaba says, and she sounds, unexpectedly, urgent.

"What's wrong?" Ann asks, her heart almost stopping. "What else happened?"

"Nothing," Futaba says. "But I went to see Joker."

"Oh," Ann says. She'd almost forgotten that she'd asked Futaba to go without her. She's amazed she'd been able to think of that at all, with Shiho in such bad condition. "How... did he have any ideas?"

"He did," Futaba says. "He knows how to make Kamoshida suffer for what he did. But we need to talk about it in person. Can you come to Leblanc?"

Ann feels entirely lost. She doesn't know where she is, physically or mentally. But Joker knows a way to make Kamoshida pay, and for that she'll go anywhere. Carmen is a burning inferno in her heart urging her to make things right for her friend, and Ann is in complete agreement. "Yeah," she says. "I'll get there as fast as I can."

She takes a cab, in the end. She's not too familiar with this area of Tokyo, and also not too familiar with Yongen-Jaya. Instead of trying to unravel the subway schedule to get there, she just bites the bullet and pays for a cab with Shadow fighting money. It gets her close to Leblanc, at least, and the little bit of a walk Ann needs to get the rest of the way to the cafe actually helps her legs to stop shaking, a little.

Futaba is nowhere in sight when Ann gets inside, but Sojiro is behind the counter, his face drawn. When Ann comes in, he winces at the sight of her. Ann realizes she must look awful, but she can't manage to pull herself together, and only shrugs.

"Your school sent out an email to parents," Sojiro says. "I heard what happened."

Ann nods. The cafe is silent, except for the low drone of the TV in the background.

"Futaba says she's your friend," Sojiro says at last.

"Yeah," Ann says, very quietly.

Sojiro nods. He doesn't say I'm sorry, or anything like that, which is good because Ann thinks she would have exploded into flames if someone had dared to try and be sorry at her right now. Instead, he tells her, "Futaba's upstairs. I'll bring some coffee up in a few minutes."

And that, somehow, feels more okay than a sorry would have.

When Ann trudges upstairs, she finds Futaba sitting cross legged on the musty old mattress in the corner, deeply absorbed in something on her laptop. And before Ann even has a chance to say hello, Futaba says, "We have to convince Joker to meet up with us outside Palaces. It's kind of a pain to have to go back and forth. And I think we might need to find someone else that can use a Persona, since I haven't been able to yet. Joker has an idea, but he said it'd be dangerous, and I' not sure that you and him are going to be enough fighters."

Ann has no idea what Joker's idea is, but after a second of confusion, she grabs onto the one thing she'd been able to follow, and says, "Maybe you could try to fight like Joker does. He doesn't have a Persona either."

"Have you seen what he can do with a knife?" Futaba says. "I'd be lucky if I didn't drop it on myself."

She looks up at Ann, and Ann can see all the uncertainty she's been fighting so hard to hide when she says, "So... so maybe we need another person."

Shiho, is Ann's first thought. Just instinct, because she's been toying with the idea of telling her best friend about this hidden world since day one, and it would be so great to have this to share with her. But Shiho isn't okay. And if she was, they wouldn't need this desperate plan to make Kamoshida pay.

The anger of that last thought gives her an idea. "I might know someone," she admits. "But I don't know if you'll be okay with meeting him." Futaba had started high school by hiding in a bathroom, and Ann knows it had happened more than once since that first day. 

But she doesn't know anyone else to suggest. 

"Who is it?" Futaba asks.

"A second year named Ryuji Sakamoto," Ann explains. "Last year he got kicked off the track team for fighting Kamoshida. If he was willing to do that in the real world, I think he'd probably fight Kamoshida's Shadow."

"I think I've heard some classmates talking about him," Futaba says uncertainly. "He's the guy with the died hair? Blonde?"

Ann nods.

Futaba looks extremely unconvinced.

"Okay look," Ann says, the words spilling out of her all at once. "I know he's probably not the kind of guy you want to have to spend your free time with, but we need someone else that can fight, and I don't know many that would be willing."

Futaba does not look convinced. Ann isn't exactly surprised, but she's also being honest. She really can't think of anyone else that might be willing to help them make Kamoshida pay, and even if she could, she doesn't know if they'd want to get involved in all of this. In other worlds, and Shadows that fight back, and her and Futaba and Joker. That's a lot to ask, of someone they don't even know.

But Ann has known Ryuji Sakamoto for a while now, and she thinks that he might be willing. The whole school knows about what had happened to his leg, how Kamoshida had put him in the hospital (fought back, the rumor mill says, but Ann has seen Kamoshida's Palace, and disagrees). They all know how the track team had disbanded. If anyone has a reason to want Kamoshida gone, it's him.

"It's okay to be nervous," Ann tells Futaba. "And you don't have to talk to him. I'll find a way to get him on his own at school and... explain whatever it seems like he might believe." Which, now that she says it out loud, seems like kind of a tall order.

Futaba thinks about this, biting her lip. Then after several seconds, she says, "If you get him into the Palace, it'll probably be easier to convince him if he sees it for himself. And then I--I think I can handle meeting someone new if you and Joker are both there too." She takes a deep breath and adds, "Anyway, this is important. Shiho didn't deserve that."

Ann's breath catches. No, Shiko hadn't deserved that. Ann knows she hadn't. But hearing it from someone that had barely known her will never stop meaning everything. It hits her like a truck, but a good truck. "Okay," she says. "I'll meet you in Kamoshida's Palace tomorrow. With Sakamoto."

And Futaba, for the first time since Ann walked into the cafe today, smiles. Laughs, actually. "That guy has no clue what he's about to be dragged into." she says.

Ann cracks a smile, because yeah. Ryuji Sakamoto is about to have a pretty big surprise.

-//-

Ryuji has no clue what's going on when Ann Takamaki steps in front of him on the sidewalk on his way out of school. More surprised than angry, he looks up at her and says, "What the--"

"I'm really, really sorry about this!" she says, and the whole world wobbles, waves, and forms itself up into something new. Ryuji blinks, robs at his eyes, and tries to take in the sight of a whole fucking castle where the school had been.

"Huh?" he says, unintelligently.

"Okay." Takamaki says. "So, this is--"

"What are you wearing?"

Her face turns as red as her suddenly skintight outfit. "That doesn't matter!" she says.

"But why are you-- "

"I'm trying to explain," Takamaki says, "This is Kamoshida's heart."

"His what?" Ryuji demands, his voice getting louder through sheer, what-the-fuck confusion. "I don't want to be in that asshole's heart! That's gross!"

"It's not his literal heart!"

"Well what do you expect me to think, if you just--"

"Mind if I help?"

Ryuji hadn't realized anyone else was there, but with those words there suddenly is. A kid about their age has suddenly materialized from the shadows at the base of the castle, stepping between Ryuji and Takamaki in a swirl of long, dark fabric. Ryuji takes a step back, some instinct sensing danger from how quick and quiet the movement had been, and only when he's put several feet of distance between them does he actually take in this new person.

Dark hair, about his age, a little taller, wearing a long coat and a mask. He's confident, every line in his body practically screams that he knows what he's doing, and that unlike Ryuji--or even Takamaki, even though she'd brought him in here--he's comfortable in whatever this place is.

"Okay," the guy says. "So this is what's called a Palace. It's not part of the real world, it's a place born from the distortions in Kamoshida's heart. That means it reflects the way he sees the world--he sees the school as his own personal castle, a place he can rule over, and take what he wants."

"No way places like that exist," Ryuji says. "This is a joke, right?"

"Nope," the guy says. He gestures at the castle, a kind of flick of his hand, apparently careless, but Ryuji somehow doubts it is. "We can show you, if you want to see for yourself."

It's obviously a challenge, but Ryuji has never been good at backing down. "Okay," he says instead. "Yeah, show me."

"Is that a good idea?"

Ryuji looks past mask guy to see--he's a little relieved, actually--a girl dressed in a totally normal Shujin uniform. After mask guy, and Takamaki's unexpected cat suit, Ryuji is starting to feel like he'd tripped and fallen into a costume party.

"Hey," he says, raising a hand in greeting. "What the fuck, right?"

She doesn't answer, just goes slightly pale and takes a step or two sideways, so the other two are between her and Ryuji.

"Uh," he says. "Sorry?" 

She mumbles something, but Ryuji can't hear it, and neither of the other two seem to think it's worth getting upset over. Instead, the guy in the mask just says, "Let's get going. I'm Joker."

"What--"

"We use codenames," Takamaki says. 

"Why?" Ryuji asks. "I mean, it's cool, but why?"

"Oracle could probably explain it pretty well," Joker says, and gives the girl in the Shujin uniform a little nudge with his shoulder.

"O-oh!" she says, and jumps a little.

"I know you love explaining this stuff," he says.

She makes a face at him. He laughs and makes one back, and under this weird encouragement, she seems to get a little bit braver.

"Okay," she says, not quite looking at Ryuji but sort of in his general direction, at least. "So... so because this is part of Kamoshida's cognition, it's connected to his subconscious. That means he might be at least partially aware of what's going on in here."

"Wait," Ryuji says. "So you mean Kamoshida knows he's got a castle inside his heart, or whatever?"

"It's not literal," Oracle says. "And I don't think he really knows all the details. It's more like... because this world is built on his subconscious desires, he might be able to subconsciously know who we are if we run around saying our real names."

Ryuji is... kind of following this. "So," he says. "Is that what the masks are for? Why don't you got one too?"

"That's something different," Oracle says. "I..." she hesitates, and falls back a step or two. "I can't really do that."

"Do what?"

But by this point, they're inside the castle, and Ryuji gets his answer firsthand. Joker laughs, and calls, "Panther, you ready to show off a little?"

"I guess now's the time," Ann says, and the two of them practically run forward, into a guard on patrol that Ryuji hadn't even noticed. Ryuji is too surprised to even move, otherwise he definitely would have gone running after them (because when has he ever avoided a fight?). And because he doesn't get a chance to move, he has a clear view of Takamaki reaching up, pulling off her mask...

And summoning something fucking awesome.

Ryuji has absolutely no clue what he's seeing, except that suddenly there's something floating in the air above Takamaki, and that something is setting the guards on fire. While Joker seems happy to dash through the fray, stabbing enemies with a knife he'd pulled with a flourish, and causing general chaos, whatever Takamaki's doing makes Ryuji's jaw drop.

The fight ends when Joker dashes through the last enemy, his dagger melting it away into nothing. He slides past the spot where it had been, coat flapping behind him, and skids to a stop in front of Ryuji. "So yeah," he says, not even slightly out of breath. "Did you see how Panther was fighting?"

"Uh," Ryuji says. "Yeah."

"That's what the masks are for," Joker says brightly. 

"For fighting monsters with ghosts," Ryuji says.

"Shadows with Persona," Joker says. "But pretty much, yeah. End goal is to fight through all the Shadows in Kamoshida's Palace until we get to the Treasure at the center of his heart, and force him to confront how distorted he is. And Oracle was catching me up earlier, before you and Panther got in. It sounds like you have a pretty good reason to fight him too."

"Not exactly following how that would work," Ryuji admits.

"It'll make more sense when we get there," he says. "Are you in?"

"I don't even know if any of you are sane," Ryuji says. 

"If we're insane," Oracle says. "So are you. Because you're seeing this too, right?"

"You, uh." Ryuji rubs awkwardly at his hair. "Okay yeah, you have a point."

"And you want to fight Kamoshida," Takamaki says. "Right? Everyone knows he put you in the hospital last year."

Ryuji's leg aches, and his blood boils. "Okay," he says. "Yeah. Fuck that guy, I'm in. Dunno what's going on, but I'm in."

Takamaki breathes a sigh of relief. Oracle seems a little less tense. Joker laughs, and says, "Okay! First thing we're going to do then is throw you at a bunch of Shadows and hope you awaken your Persona fast."

"Wait, what--"

-//-

In the end, Joker is please with how quickly the new guy--deemed Skull the second the rest of them see his mask--awakens his Persona. Captain Kidd buzzes with electricity, the same way Skull seems to constantly need to be moving. He's confused but excited, especially after he awakens Captain Kidd and gets it. 

Joker has a feeling they're going to get along like a house on fire, and he's excited to keep going, to charge through Kamoshida's Palace and see how long he holds up against the combined force of their team of four. Joker has never stolen a Treasure before, has never considered it possible all on his own, and he's not telling Crow how Treasures work when Crow can't even be trusted to wander around Mementos unsupervised without defaulting to petulant attempts at murder.

(Crow has plenty of strengths, Joker has a great time driving him up a wall whenever they see each other, but wow is he quick to leap to destroying Shadows when he starts running out of ideas)

This group is different. This group, Joker genuinely thinks he can trust.

He's happy to have Skull in the group. Happy to have Captain Kidd, too. This brings them up to three fighters, himself and Panther and Skull, and that feels like enough--hopefully--to get through the Palace to the Treasure. They've already been making pretty good progress with only him and Panther, so adding another fighter can only possibly help. 

Oracle and Panther show Skull the app they use to get out, and take him home. Fair enough, he seems exhausted, and no one should be asked to keep fighting after going through an awakening.

Joker, of course, stays where he is.

He thinks about going to see Oracle's Shadow, or wandering around to find something interesting to stick his nose into, but in the end he finds himself back in Mementos, at the same surface level spot that he'd brought Oracle to when he explained Treasures to her. There still aren't any Shadows here, just Joker all on his own, so he sits on a bench, leaning back with one leg up on the seat, and pulls off his mask. Idly turns it between his fingers, and looks out at the dark, empty vista of a place Oracle had insisted is packed full of people in reality. 

He feels naked without the mask, face bare as he tries to imagine what this place would look like, crowded with people, passing through, going who knows where. School? Work? Where else do people go to fill up their days, in normal lives that aren't consumed with Palaces and Shadows?

He doesn't know.

But he pretends he does. Sits on that bench and shows his face to a world with no one there to see it, and wonders if he might see his other self pass through this square, if he could see into the real world.

It's a sad, pathetic, lonely thought. But he's seen two people awaken their Persona now, and it's only a matter of time until the moment is right for Oracle to be introduced to her Palace as well. And Joker can't help wishing, with every fiber of his being, that one day he'll meet his other self, and have that moment of acceptance too. That he'll look into a face like his, and a heart like his, and forge a contract, and know that he's found home at last.

Chapter Text

The day that the three humans send the calling card to Kamoshida, Joker casually asks for a copy to keep for himself. Skull, who had apparently been the one to make them, is thrilled to show off his hard work. Joker reads the words, takes in the art, and says, "We should come up with a name."

"Yeah," Skull admits. By this point, only a week after his awakening, he's already comfortable enough in the metaverse to be sprawled out in Shibuya-Mementos, taking up most of the space on a bench while Joker leans against a statue nearby. "Feels like it needs a signature or something, but are kept arguing about it at school so are just left it blank."

"I'll try and think of something too," Joker says, even though it's a little too late for that. Skull has already given him the full story of the school's reaction to this morning's calling card delivery, so he knows it's too late for it to make a difference. Still, maybe there could be a next time. Maybe there are other Palaces with terrible adults out there, and they'll get to go after another Treasure when they've taken this one. 

That would be nice, Joker thinks. It would be nice to think there's still something exciting to look forward to.

"Oh yeah," Skull says. "I wanted to ask you about a name while I was working on it, but the girls said no one has your number." 

"I don't even have my number," Joker says, and because he says it like a joke, Skull laughs.

"But seriously," he says. " "How do we contact you in the real world? You're creepy good at knowing where we're going to show up in Palaces, but the rest of us are talking about hanging out somewhere when this is all over. Even Oracle said she might show, but it won't be the same without you."

Joker's chest squeezes at Skull's casual mention about all this being over, but he shoves it down, hard. Oracle will still want to come back to learn more about what her mom had been researching, and... and maybe the others will still be interested too?

(If they're not, there's absolutely nothing Joker can do about it)

(He can't follow them into the real world, so if they decide they're done with Palaces, he'll never see them again) 

"I don't think it's a good idea for us to meet in the real world," he says. He keeps his tone light, almost flicking the words away from him. It would be so much easier if that was an option, but it's not. If there's a way for him to even leave the metaverse, he doesn't know it.

"What, "Skull says, "For real?"

"Sorry," Joker says. "My life outside here is... complicated." He justifies this white lie to himself by telling himself that it's not even necessarily a lie at all. It might even be true, for all he knows. Why else would he be here, a full and individual Shadow without a Palace or even a bubble in Mementos?

Skull squints at him. "So the shadow fighting in an alternate dimension thing is the not complicated part of your life?" 

Joker just smiles and shrugs. 

"Shit," Skull says, sounding mostly impressed. "Your life sounds like a mess."

"I wouldn't want an easy one anyway," Joker says. "Anyway--" he holds up the calling card. "Thanks for bringing this by. Mind if I keep it?"

"sure," Skull says. "I still have tons at home anyway."

"Maybe throw them out," Joker suggests, pocketing the card. "If anyone looks into you, that's evidence."

Skull winces. "Yeah," he admits. "Probably a good idea." He stands up and says, "See you at the Palace tomorrow, then?""

"See you." Joker says. "But let's meet outside the castle. The alarm levew will probably jump now he's seen the calling card, and I don't want anyone getting hurt."

"You got it," skull says, and leaves. Joker watches the spot where he'd disappeared for several seconds, then pockets the card and nods to himself. There's nothing he can do to help with making or delivering the calling card, but there is something he can do that none of th others do.

Because none of the others know about crow.

And as fun as it is for Joker to poke and prod at Crow, it might be a good idea to plant seeds of the idea that there's no one else but him to blame for the up coming change of heart.

(Crow is... dangerous)

(Excitingly dangerous, in Joker's opinion, but these are his friends and he will keep them safe)

-//-

Akechi has made it halfway through his planned Mementos itinerary--uninterrupted for once--when Joker finally appears.

"You're late," Akechi snaps, the second he notices Joker slip out of the Shadows ahead of him. He delivers a vicious final blow to to a stray Shadow that had the misfortune to have stumbled across his path moments before, then he rounds on Joker, irritated.

Joker laughs. "Were you waiting on me?" he teases. "Crow, I'm touched."

"How am I supposed to focus on fighting when I'm waiting on you to show up and ruin things?" Akechi demands. "You--what is this?"

Joker, with a little flourish and his usual cocky grin, has pulled out a card from somewhere in his coat. Akechi takes it before he realizes what he's doing. 

"It's a calling card," Joker says. HIs eyes spark behind his mask, and Akechi looks determinedly away. Joker's eyes are so ridiculously expressive. He hates it.

"A what card?" Akechi asks suspiciously. "It's for me?"

"No," Joker says, and when Akechi looks down he sees that's true. He reads the ransom note of a calling card, gears turning with every word, then frowns and looks back up at Joker.

"Who's Kamoshida?" he asks.

"Maybe you'll hear about him soon," Joker says, "It's just a little project I've been working on in my spare time." He smirks, and adds, "Maybe if you weren't always leaving me on my own..."

"Why are you like this?" Akechi complains, brandishing the calling card. "Are you genuinely telling me you can't be left on your own for five seconds without doing whatever this is?"

"Why am I like what?" Joker asks, so innocent it makes Akechi want to slam his head into a wall.

"You're too much trouble to be left without supervision," Akechi says, exasperated. "And too annoying for me to waste time supervising you. Don't your parents spend any time actually parenting you?"

"That question seems a little personal, don't you think?" Joker asks.

"Honestly," Akechi says, and is surprised even as the word comes out that he does actually intend to be honest. That's not normal for him. "I think I've known you long enough that I should know at least something personal about you."

"Because I know so much about you?"" Joker asks.

But the thing is, Akechi can't shake off the feeling that Joker does actually know plenty about him. He knows that Akechi is trapped working for someone he hates but needs to be close to. He knows that Akechi both can and will stoop to depths Joker hates, all in the name of his revenge.

Akechi doesn't know a single equivalent fact about Joker.

...except that whoever Kamoshida is, and whatever taking a heart means, he must be someone Joker is personally connected to, in the real world. It's a lead, and it starts gears turning in Akechi's head. Joker plays games, and this doesn't feel out of character for him. Just another move in whatever game Joker thinks they're playing. The only difference now is that for the first time, Akechi thinks this might be a game he can play too. He can look into this Kamoshida, and possibly find out more about Joker in the process.

And that's a tempting thought.

"Did you want something else?" he asks, trying to hide his sudden spike of interest under his usual irritated rush to get Joker out of his way. If Joker realizes he's just handed over a link to his real life, outside mementos, he might take steps of his own. Akechi isn't so eager to throw away his one advantage.

"Not today," Joker says, and leans over to tap the card Akechi's still holding. "I have a heart to change. Can't do that if I wear myself out now on fighting Shadows here, can I?"

He says it like everyone should know what it takes to change a heart, and Akechi hates admitting to anything he doesn't know. So he just grunts, and shoves the strange calling card into a pocket for later. 

"Then I'll see you some other day," he says. "When you're less busy."

Joker laughs. "Do you know what?" he asks. "I think that's the first time I've ever heard you say you want to see me again."

"That's not what I--"

"I'll be looking forward to it," Joker says, and he's grinning broadly as he steps back, into the darkness, and disappears into Mementos.

Akechi tears through a half dozen more roaming Shadows before he leaves, purely out of spite. But when he gets back to the bustling streets of real world Shibuya, he still has Joker stuck in his head. The calling card is a weight in his pocket, and the whole encounter is cycling through his head over and over, until the only think Akechi can focus on is how absolutely jaw droppingly irritating Joker is. Akechi finds his mind wandering back to the day they'd met, for what he's ashamed to admit is not the first time.

He still remembers it, with startling clarity.

(He'd been in Shido's Palace. Sightseeing, in a way. He never goes inside, doesn't want Shido catching wind of him there, but he makes it a part of his routine to stop by anyway. Once or twice a month, just to stand on the deck of that ship and stare at the heart of the man he's sworn revenge on, to remind himself what he's fighting for, to fill himself up with hate)

(On this particular occasion, as Akechi stood in the dead center of the deck, fists clenched by his sides, glaring up at the ship, he'd been interrupted. The interruption had been just a small sound. Behind him, somewhere out of sight, barely audible but immediately noticeable because it shouldn't have been there at all. Akechi remembers the way he'd spun around, hand on his mask, ready to summon a Persona against the sound of ragged, shallow breathing)

(Not as ready as he should have been, though. For just a moment, when Akechi first laid eyes on the person he'd later learn to call Joker, he'd seen something... weak. Something scared. For the blink of an eye, all he'd seen was a boy in jeans and a long sleeved t-shirt, on his knees and bent over, breathing too loudly through some unknown pain. And then the moment had passed. Joker's metaverse outfit had formed around him, and as his mask appeared from nowhere, his head had snapped up to lock gazes with Akechi. And then he'd lunged.)

(Akechi hadn't expected him to move so fast. Before he'd even had a chance to try and summon either Robin Hood or Loki, he'd found himself flat on his back with this still-a-stranger Joker on top of him, so close that Akechi could feel Joker's breath on his face, and the vague tickle of his hair falling around both of them. He can still remember that with surprising clarity)

(Then Akechi had kicked back, had fought, and Joker had gone feral in a way Akechi has never seen from him since. Fighting him had been like fighting a Shadow, cornered in an ambush. Desperate and mindless, unrelenting in his attempts to really hurt Akechi.)

(They'd fought. Eventually, Akechi had gotten enough leverage to get himself out from under Joker, but he'd been hurt, bruised and bloody, and if Joker had kept fighting, Akechi isn't sure he would have survived. In the end, as much as he likes to pretend he could have made a way out with his own two hands--he just can't know, not for sure. What had really saved him is that Joker had seemed to suddenly come to himself. Akechi had watched him shake his head like a dog trying to drive flies away. Watched him press a hand to his mask, then to his chest, then stumble backwards, blinking and visibly... what? Scared, still? Confused? Upset somehow, at least. And then he'd been gone, vanishing back to the real world, Akechi assumes.) 

(He'd just left, and he'd let Akechi live.)

Akechi has seen plenty of Joker since then. Has fought him since then, even. But never since the day they met has Akechi seen that feral Joker. He's seen charming Joker, laughing Joker, devil may care Joker, but not the one, single Joker he most wants to see again. The only one he'd ever really felt close to understanding. Oh, there are flashes of it, sure. Joker can be ruthless when he wants to be, And Akechi thinks he might not be anything but knives and sharp edges behind his easy, show off smile. But there had been something different, that first day. Joker had been scared enough, hurt enough, to fight like his life depended on it. It had been something Akechi could connect to, and something he hasn't seen since.

And he doesn't know why.

Why the ferocity of that first day? Why never again since then? He knows nothing about Joker, so he has no idea what had sent him into Shido's Palace in that state, on that particular day.

Maybe Kamoshida will give him the answers he's been looking for. This could be his chance for a lead, at least, for the Joker of the real world to tell him something true and real that Akechi can't see in here, behind the mask. It's a chance, a clue, a lead.

He's a detective. As a cover, yes, and a way to get him deeper into mementos. But cover or not, he'd chosen that particular deception for a reason. He's a detective, so what's he supposed to do--not investigate?

Fat chance.

-//-

Akira has a problem, and the problem's name is Kanzaki.

To be fair, Kanzaki is more of everyone's problem than Akira's specifically. He's one of the admin staff at the prison school, and absolutely the worst one. Of all the adults involved in their imprisonment and education--all the guards, all the teachers, even the old warden who reminds them constantly that they're just a bunch of delinquents and always smells like garlic--Kanzaki is the biggest problem of all.

Kanzaki isn't that much older than most of the student-prisoners. Some of them that have been here for a while remember him showing up at the start of last school year. He'd apparently been fresh out of college, and looked so close to the age of the students that both kids and adults gave him--according to an older kid Akira sometimes has kitchen duty with--a lot of shit for it.

Akira has a hard time picturing that, because the Kanzaki he knows has made a huge effort to look as strict, rigid, and overall adult as possible. He wears crisp, ironed shirts in black or grey (never white, which might have accidentally looked like the student uniforms), and combs his hair back in a style Akira might have expected from someone about fifty or sixty years old.

He's 22 or 23, doing his best to look 45. And it's not just the way he looks, it's the absolute hatred in his face when he looks (down at the prisoners. Even before Akira heard his story and learned the why, he could tell that Kanzaki has it out for all of them.

Kanzaki isn't around often, luckily. He's a paper pusher that works mostly in the public facing office students aren't allowed into, processing intake and outtake, ordering supplies, and doing who knows what else. Akira knows about intake because he, like everyone else, had been marched through the office on his first day, where he'd been given his uniforms--one set for school days, one for Sundays, and one for sleeping in--handed over everything personal from the outside world, and been walked into his new life.

(Well--he'd taken most of his personal things)

(Like almost everyone else, he'd gotten a few things in that he shouldn't have)

And Akira knows the second, knows that Kanzaki is in charge of supplies for the building, because they're always short on everything. Not enough for the other adults to really notice, but enough for the student-prisoners to feel it.

When there's not quite enough food for dinner, Akira hears the cook musing to herself that she'll have to ask Kanzaki to get more in the next shipment. When classes are short on paper and pencils, their teachers make notes for Kanzaki, and move right on with the lessons while not every student has what they need to take notes. They hear it again and again. Enough to know that no sane, competent person could be doing this on accident. 

And today he is Akira's problem, because he is Morgana's problem. And Akira has decided that for as long as they're both here, Morgana's problems are his problems. And Morgana had come to him after the end of the day's classes with the news that one of his classmates is supposed to be getting medicine that she is not, in fact, getting.

"It's not a big deal," Morgana whispers, at the start of homework time. "They're for allergies, so it's not like she's going to die or anything. But she's supposed to get them, and she's feeling sick because she isn't. He makes a face. "And that's not fair."

It's not. And Akira had grown up with his parents telling him over and over again that life isn't fair. They'd told him when he was in Kindergarten and he hadn't gotten the toy he wanted for his birthday. They'd told him when he was ten, and missed a school trip because he was home with the flu. They'd told him when he was in middle school, and had failed a test after studying as hard as he could for it.

And they'd told him when he was arrested, for something he hadn't even done.

Life isn't fair, Akira, they'd told him, and looked at him like they were thinking that maybe it was, because maybe he had assaulted that man after all.

Morgana looks at Akira now like no one, in his entire life, has ever told him that life is unfair. Absolutely outraged. And so Akira can't bring himself to say anything except, "We'll figure out a way to get her medicine to her."

(Morgana's class is tiny)

(Tiny in terms of class size, and tiny physically)

(They're the youngest and smallest and least prepared for everything here, and it's really not fair that one of them isn't getting medicine she needs)

So Akira has asked around, and discovered that there is one other person in the building that takes the same allergy medicine that Morgana's classmate is supposed to have. And that person, as luck would have it, is Kanzaki himself.

So here they are, during their evening free time, long after all the staff apart from guards have left, breaking into the administrative section of the building.

It's not going to be that hard, Akira's... pretty sure. Morgana actually knows how to make lockpicks from scratch, and while he'd left the actual lockpicking to Akira, it's not like the locks here are that hard. Compared to actually making them from scratch, which Akira really wants to learn how to do at some point, he doesn't think that poking around in a lock is going to be that hard.

Or at least he hadn't, until he found himself kneeling on the floor in front of the door to the administration section, focused on a surprisingly tricky lock while Morgana keeps anxious watch from just this side of a nearby corner.

"Did you get it yet?" Morgana whispers.

"Getting there," Akira says. 

(He has no idea if he is)

To distract Morgana, he says, "So there's something I've been thinking about all afternoon."

"Yeah?" Morgana asks.

"If you had a group of thieves," Akira says, speaking a little slower than usual because he's so focused on the lock in front of him. "And I mean a really cool group of thieves, what would you name them?"

Morgana blinks, and then laughs. "Is that what we are?" he asks. "A really cool couple of thieves?"

Akira hesitates. The truth is, the question has been somewhere at the back of his mind all afternoon, even before he realized what he was going to have to do to help Morgana's classmate. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he's already been thinking about thieves, almost daydreaming about a band of them creeping through the shadows, taking from the rich and giving to the poor. Or... something like that, anyway. If he's going to spend his time in class staring out the window imagining daring heists and unlikely escapes, he wants to believe that these thieves are doing something noble, too.

Luckily, Morgana doesn't seem to notice his hesitation. He'd instantly latched onto the question, and his nervous expression starts to shift into something much more excited. He taps his fingers against the wall next to him, rocks forward a little on his feet, and looks a lot less nervous than he had a few seconds before. Akira goes back to fully focusing on the lock, and has just managed to wriggle the lock into a position that makes the whole thing go click when Morgana blurts out, "Phantom Thieves!"

"Phantom Thieves?" Akira echoes, turning to look back over his shoulder at Morgana.

"Yeah," Morgana says, his chest puffed up with pride. "That's the best name for the coolest group of thieves."

Akira considers for a second, then nods and stands up, giving the door a little push open. "Yeah," he says. "You're right. I think I like that." 

(He likes it a lot, actually)

(Some distant, far off part of him, the part of him that daydreams about heists is warm with satisfaction over the idea of the Phantom Thieves)

Then there's no more time to think about it, because he's slipping through the door, dashing down a hall, and into an unlocked office with Kanzaki on the nameplate. The desk is disturbingly neat, and Akira finds a bottle of allergy pills in the second drawer he checks. He shoves them into a pocket, slams the drawer closed, and darts back to the school side.

(He does, just before he leaves, casts a look back at the door on the other side of administration)

(The one with the real locks, and real alarms--the one that leads to Tokyo, and freedom)

"There you go," he says, handing the pills to Morgana. "Get that to your classmate, but don't let anyone see, okay? The guards are going to think you're handing out drugs if they notice."

"Technically I am," Morgana says.

"Technically," Akira admits. "But don't tempt fate, okay? I'm glad we got to help your friend, but I don't want to get you in any trouble either." This is a cold place, and it's not exactly easy to make friends. His friendship with Morgana had been quick and firm, and he doesn't want to lose Morgana to any worse situation than the one they're both already stuck in.

"I know," Morgana says. "I mean, we're Phantom Thieves now, right?"

Akira smiles, just a little, because their allergy medicine heist isn't exactly the kind of thing he's been daydreaming about. But Morgana is so excited, and it had been a little thrilling. "Maybe someday when we're both out of here we'll do some real phantom thieving," he says, half joking. "Give them something to really lock us up for."

"They'd never catch us," Morgana says, holding himself proud with a smug satisfaction. "We'd be two steps ahead of the cops."

"Oh yeah," Akira agrees, because it's easy to agree to something as far away from their current reality as that. "We'd run rings about them."

"We could have a secret hideout," Morgana says enthusiastically.

Akira, who has never been to any part of Tokyo apart from this one building, says, "Maybe Leblanc would be a good one."

"Yeah," Morgana says. "Maybe. Or maybe--"

And then he's off, mind racing from one idea to the next. Akira nods along, but privately he's not convinced that there's a better hideout anywhere in Tokyo than the cozy coffeeshop he's imagined Leblanc into.

(He could have been there right now)

(Could have been living in an attic that smells like coffee instead of a cell that smells mostly of years of teenage residents)

Morgana catches his attention again when he asks, "You really just want our secret hideout to be at Leblanc, don't you?"

"Maybe," Akira admits, and moves the conversation on before Morgana can call him out for being weird and obsessed with a place he's never even seen. It's just--he'd been so close to a year that would have been so much better than the reality they're stuck in. He would have missed Morgana, of course, but he's happy to imagine Morgana there with him too.

They could have had so much better.

It's not fair.

(Life isn't fair)

When Morgana eventually runs off to find his classmate that had needed the allergy medicine in the first place, Akira slips off back to their room. The excitement of the heist has gone a little bit flat, thinking about how much better things could have been, and he has to force a smile for Morgana later that night. 

(It's just a little seed, but something unhappy is starting to grow inside him)

(Even right after a win, he can't help feeling like even being here is losing)

-//-

Chapter Text

Akira goes a little under a week before running into Kanzaki. Instantly he stiffens, nervous but trying to hide it, and ducks his head to pass Kanzaki without making eye contact, speeding up as he goes, He doesn't think he's done the wrong thing, but he's worried about giving too much away through his body language. He's almost past Kanzaki when the man calls, "Kurusu? Come here a minute."

Well... shit.

Akira reluctantly steps to one side of the hallway, out of the way of foot traffic heading for the cafeteria. It's Sunday, which means their time is mostly their own, and also that visitors are allowed in the afternoon. This is as much school as prison, which means that after a quick sign in process, visitors are just brought to the cafeteria to meet with whoever they'd come to see. Since it's such an easy process, a lot of people come every week to visit their kids or siblings or friends. It's a real high point in the week, and so half the school is heading to the cafeteria, exactly where Akira had been going before Kanzaki called him over.

(He's never had a visitor himself. His parents and friends are... well, his parents aren't interested, and his friends aren't, since the arrest)

(But it's lunchtime and he's hungry, so to the cafeteria he goes)

A few people shoot Akira sympathetic looks on their way past, but Kanzaki waits until they're gone before narrowing his eyes at Akira and asking, "Are you aware that there are cameras on the administrative side of the building, Kurusu? Not just this side?"

Akira feels himself go cold all over, but fights for control over his expression. There's no reason to admit to anything. "Why do you ask?" he says instead, his voice as flat and unemotional as he can make it.

"Stealing medication is a crime," Kanzaki tells him. He's obviously trying to make his tone serious, Akira thinks, but he doesn't quite have the gravitas to pull it off. "A serious crime. The kind of serious crime that gets kids like you sent to worse places than this."

It's an over the counter allergy medicine, Akira wants to say. It's not like he stole a bag of cocaine. Instead, he pushes his eyebrows together and frowns, trying to look as confused as possible. It seems safer than saying anything.

"Of course," Kanzaki says, lowering his voice slightly. "A student that's stupid enough to break into the administrative building for controlled substances-- "

Allergy medicine, Akira mentally corrects.

"A kid like that might still be smart enough to recognize when... other opportunities present themselves," Kanzaki finishes. "Other little jobs, that might just keep some camera footage out of the wrong hands."

Huh, Akira thinks, distantly. He's never been blackmailed before.

"Think about it," Kanzaki says, and with one final smirk he leaves.

Akira very strongly wants to say something, make a rude gesture, a face, something. In the last few months, he's been exposed to all kinds of really horrible adults. The man he'd been accused of assaulting. The police and judge that had decided he was guilty based on absolutely nothing. The probation workers that had decided to declare cafe Leblanc an unacceptable living situation, so that he'd never even gotten a chance to see it.

But Kanzaki is a special kind of--of evil. The slow way he wears down everyone here, without any of the other adults ever noticing. And now Akira's messed up, and gotten himself under Kanzaki's thumb. What's Kanzaki even going to ask him to do? He knows Akira can get to the other side of the building now, is there something he wants there? It can't be anything on this side because he could confiscate anything he wanted.

"Hey!" Morgana calls from down the hall, snapping Akin out of his distracted thoughts. "Akira, someone came to see you!"

"Kanzaki?" Akira asks, with absolutely no enthusiasm whatsoever. Saying the name sends a hot prickle of anger through him. He doesn't want to be under Kanzaki's thumb. There has to be something he can do to get out of this, and Akira's going to find it. "Yeah," he tells Morgana. "I've already talked to him."

"Kanzaki?" Morgan makes a face. "Ew, no. Not him. Someone came to visit you."

Akira stares, waiting for the other shoe to drop. But Morgana's expression doesn't change, and Akira doesn't really think his friend would lie to him. If Morgana had come to tell him that someone's here to visit him, it's because someone had actually come here to visit him. 

(He just can't think of a single person that would want to)

"Okay," he says at last, with a helpless shrug. This afternoon has long since fallen out of his control, and it's only 12:05. "Let's go find out who it is."

Morgana, who never gets visitors either, nods and waits for Akira to reach him before he starts walking too, excited and eager. As he makes guesses about who it is and why--apparently he hadn't asked for a name before coming back to find Akira--it suddenly hits Akira that Kanzaki hadn't threatened Morgana. Either he doesn't know Morgana had been involved, he's saving that threat for later, or he doesn't understand that Akira would have caved a lot faster to protect Morgana than himself. 

Morgana's just a kid. He deserves all of this even less than the rest of them do, and Akira has made himself responsible for him. He's something between a little brother and a good friend, the best friend Akira has here, and Kanzaki--at least for right now--isn't threatening him.

Things aren't, quite, as bad as they'd seemed. 

He goes to find out who his visitor is.

-//-

Sojiro finds the cellphone in Futaba's room while she's at school, and for a second he panics slightly, thinking it's hers. She's been doing an incredibly good job about attending school this year, missing fewer days than he ever could have hoped, and even making friends.

But he still doesn't like the idea of not being able to contact her if he needs to. Things can always go wrong, and she has had some bad days since the start of the school year. So he sees the phone abandoned on her desk, and starts to worry, until his mind catches up with what he's seeing, and he realizes that this isn't hers. He's seen this before, and he knows whose it is. 

Before Sojiro had slipped up and announced to the wrong person that he was planning to house him in the cafe's attic, he was supposed to host a kid here, for the year long duration of his court appointed probation. The kid--Kurusu, that's his name--had been redirected to a reform school instead, but some of his things had still been sent to Sojiro. He's still not sure who had done that, whether it's an administrative mix up or if his parents had done it, but either way, a small box of personal effects had arrived just before the start of the school year. 

Sojiro had looked through it, feeling increasingly guilty as he did so. There had been the phone of course, the same one he's holding now. A couple of well read books. Some casual clothes, a toothbrush. It's simultaneously too little for a kid supposedly moving in for a year, and too much for Sojiro to want to look at. He hadn't exactly been excited about the idea of bringing a delinquent into his cafe, but...

Well, this isn't fair on the kid. He'd been sentenced to probation, and because Sojiro hadn't been able to provide an adequate place for that probation to be based, he'd been sent to reform school instead. He'd put the box up in the attic, where the kid should have been, and done his best to just.. not think about it. He definitely hadn't been thinking about the possibility of Futaba finding and taking the phone for herself.

He takes it back, and makes a decision as he does so. This is something he's avoided thinking about for long enough, but Kurusu's things don't belong to him any more than they belong to Futaba. They can't keep his things, and that means Sojiro is going to have to find a way to return the box. He'd made half an effort when the box first arrived, calling the probation department that had arranged tings in the first place, but then not following up when they never called back.

So now he's going to have to take matters into his own hands.

Futaba comes back late that evening, looking exhausted but pleased with herself over something she doesn't explain to him, and Sojiro has to ruin her good mood by reminding her over dinner that stealing is wrong.

"What?" she asks, flinching back so hard from this comment that Sojiro almost immediately starts second guessing his tone. He's still feeling his way blindly through helping her, and he's made a lot of mistakes. This feels like one of them, and it's a tightrope between not hurting her and not letting her think it's okay to steal phones. 

"Why would you think I'm stealing anything?" Futaba asks, looking at him like a deer caught in a car's headlights. 

"Because I found this in your room," Sojiro says, pulling the phone out of his pocket and holding it up for her to see.

"Oh," Futaba says. "That."

(What else had she expected him to accuse her of stealing?)

For a second she seems to sag with relief, but then her eyes go wide and she says, "Wait, I need that!"

"You have your own phone," Sojiro points out.

"I know," Futaba says. "But there's something on it that... it's..." She makes a face and falls face first onto the table. "Sojiroooooo!"

But he refuses to budge, no matter how much she pleads. He doesn't give in that night, or the next day, and then on Sunday he drives down to the reform school where Kurusu is spending the year, in time for the visiting hours he'd confirmed by phone the day before. There's a surprising amount of people here. Most of them look like they're probably parents of the students here, but some of them are probably friends, and there are some younger kids that he guesses are siblings. As Sojiro waits for his turn to be signed in, a woman a few years younger than him turns and asks, "First time?"

Sojiro had thought he'd been doing a fairly good job hiding his discomfort. "Is it that obvious?" he asks.

"Not exactly," she says. "It's just that a lot of us are here every week, so we get to know each other."

Sure enough, a lot of the people standing in line are talking in twos or threes, asking after people, or wondering how their week has been. "That must be nice for the kids here," he says.

"This is a lot better than other places they could be," the woman says, dropping her voice slightly. "It's a reform school, but it's still a school. It's not a prison. We all want what's best for our kids."

"I see," Sojiro says, not sure what else to say.

"Is it your son here?" the woman asks. "Or your daughter?"

"Neither," Sojiro says. "I'm here to see--he's a family friend. I'm checking in on him. His parents aren't near Tokyo." All true enough, technically. For a given value of true. He'd only heard about Kurusu in the first place through a customer who claimed to be a family friend, and as far as Sojiro knows, his parents actually aren't anywhere near here.

"Well that's good of you," the woman says, and smiles at him before moving up to the front of the line to scrawl her name on a sheet, and move into the school. Sojiro's own check in takes a little longer, since he hasn't been here before, but once he's shown his ID, left his phone on a designated shelf nearby, and added his own signature to the sign in sheet, he's allowed back as well.

The school has a slightly grim looking cafeteria, it turns out, where students are allowed to meet with their visitors. Sojiro doesn't realize until he gets there that he actually has no idea what Kurusu looks like, and so he catches the eye of the first kid he sees without anyone else around, and asks, "Do you know Akira Kurusu?"

The kid, who barely looks old enough for middle school, looks at him with obvious curiosity, and says, "He's my roommate. Are you his dad?"

"No," Sojiro says quickly. "Just a visitor."

The kid looks at him with naked curiosity, but Sojiro thinks he can see something else on his face, too. He seems almost protective, and Sojiro is fairly sure that he's not going to help find Akira unless Sojiro convinces him it'll be a good idea. 

"I have some of his things," Sojiro says, keeping his voice the same kind of casual he uses when Futaba is having an especially hard time leaving the house. "It's a little bit of a long story--" Because he has no idea how much this kid knows about Kurusu's near brush with probation. "But I do want to talk to him about that."

Curiosity finally wins on the boy's face, and he says, "I can go find him for you. We don't get visitors, so he probably isn't expecting anyone, and he might not come over here."

He announces this lack of visitors like plain fact, but as he runs off, Sojiro can't help the unexpected twist of pity. All around them are parents reuniting with their children, and when he'd arrived, he'd seen so many families that were obviously familiar with each other. It must be very difficult to watch that happening every weekend, and know that no one's coming for you.

Two or three minutes later, the kid comes back with an older boy that Sojiro assumes must be Kurusu. He looks... relatively ordinary, Sojiro thinks. A little on the tall side, with glasses and hair that's managing to be unruly even with the close, short haircut that seems to be a requirement for students here. For a second, before the younger kid points Sojiro out, Kurusu's expression seems tired, and a little worn down. Sojiro knows the feeling, but Kurusu is probably--what, sixteen? Seventeen? He shouldn't be feeling that, yet.

Then Kurusu makes eye contact with him across the room, and pulls himself together with a moment of conscious effort. Sojiro sees this, and makes an effort to not look too judgmental as the two boys come to sit down across from him at one of the cafeteria tables.

"You're Akira Kurusu?" Sojiro asks.

"Yeah," the older boy says. He's obviously wary, but there's a flash of interest in his eyes behind his glasses too. It's a little like when Futaba has been holed up in her room for a few days, and finally comes out to tell him at length about something Featherman. It's almost instinct to try and encourage it in this stranger now. "Morgana said that you came to see me?"

Morgana's an unusual name, but Sojiro only nods like it's totally normal, and answers the question. "My name's Sojiro Sakura," he says. "I was supposed to be your probation officer this year."

"Oh!" Akira says, and even though he clamps his mouth shut a second later, awkward and embarrassed. But that had been a burst of genuine, unfiltered excitement, and Sojiro smiles softly at the sight of it.

"Does that mean you run Leblanc?" Morgana asks, leaning forward. "Akira talks about it all the time."

Kurusu flushes slightly. "Not all the time," he says. To Sojiro, he adds, "I heard the reason my probation fell through is because I was supposed to stay in the attic, but someone decided that wasn't livable."

"That's the whole story," Sojiro says, a little bit more gruffly than he'd meant. But, if he's being honest, he's feeling more than a little guilty right now. He hadn't been excited, exactly, about the idea of having a kid on probation to take care of for the year. But he'd heard the kid's story, and it had sounded like something he could do to help. He knows what can happen to a kid that gets lost in a system, because it had happened to Futaba, and so he'd agreed.

Being found ineligible as a guardian probation officer had not been part of the plan, and Sojiro wishes he could go back in time and keep his mouth shut. Kurusu seems like a reasonable kid, based on first impressions, and this isn't a school for kids that are too far gone to be rehabilitated. Sojiro can't stop thinking that Kurusu probably would have been better off with his probation. 

The fact that he's here and not there is Sojiro's fault.

"But I got some boxes of your things a few weeks ago," Sojiro says. "I thought it was about time I came to see where it was supposed to go." He doesn't mention that this visit had been spurred by Futaba getting a little too curious about Kurusu's phone--she's his first priority, and what Kurusu doesn't know won't hurt him. 

Kurusu looks briefly uncomfortable, and after a second of hesitation, he asks, "I know this might not be something you can say yes to," he says. "But can you hang onto it?"

Sojiro blinks, too surprised to answer immediately.

"Not forever, or anything," Kurusu says quickly. "I'm only in here for as long as my probation was supposed to last, so I'll be out in the spring. At the end of the school year. I can come and get it myself, then, it's just that a lot of the things you got probably wouldn't be allowed in here."

"I can see that," Sojiro says. The teachers here would have a much harder time keeping their students in line if all of them had phones, he's sure, and this is supposed to be a reform school. "But you don't want me to mail any of it back to your parents or anything?"

"No," Kurusu says, so immediately that Sojiro has to fight the instinct to be suspicious. But there are a lot of reasons he might not want his things with his parents, and it's not up to Sojiro to pry. Maybe they have a poor relationship. Maybe it had gotten worse after Kurusu was arrested. And after all, he's seen firsthand with Futaba how even blood relatives can hurt the children they're supposed to be in charge of.

For now, there's absolutely no reason for Sojiro to say no. The box has already been up in his attic for a few weeks, and there's no reason they can't stay up there indefinitely. He'll have to keep a sharper eye on Futaba to make sure she's not taking any more phones, but she's a good kid. He's pretty sure that this isn't going to happen again. 

"Is there anything from your box of things that you can have while you're in here?" Sojiro asks, and Kurusu's expression lights up in surprise for just a second before he manages to school it back into polite indifference. 

"Some of the books, maybe," he says. "There's a library here and they don't mind what we read, it's just... not all that big."

"I'll come back the next time I have a free weekend, then," Sojiro says.

"You don't have to," Kurusu says.

"It'd be nice, though," Morgana adds, even though Sojiro doesn't even have anything for him. He has every appearance of just being happy to be here, included in the conversation. As soon as he realizes this, Sojiro finds himself trying to think of something he can do for him, too.

"What about food?" he asks the two boys. "Is that allowed?"

Two nods, and Sojiro is relieved. He doesn't know a lot about kids and how to help them, but he does at least understand curry. And it's already helped one hurting teenager, had gotten Futaba out of her room even before her friends helped her start doing it regularly. Maybe it'll at least be able to do something for these two.

(He half wants to ask Morgana what he'd been arrested for, how he could possibly have ended up in here, looking more hopeful than anyone else Sojiro has seen, at only--what, ten or eleven years old?)

(But he doesn't think he really wants to know the answer to that question, so he doesn't ask)

"Alright then," he says, standing up. "I'll be back the next weekend I'm free."

He's turned and started to walk away when Kurusu says--so quietly that Sojiro isn't sure if he was supposed to have heard it--"Thank you."

He barely hears the words, but he can tell they're sincerely meant. To him, this has been a moderately inconvenient drive out to a part of Tokyo he never really has a reason to visit. But this is something different to these two kids, who haven't had a single visitor in all the time they've been here.

He'll come back. Sojiro knows himself well enough to recognize that he isn't going to break this promise.

-//-

The newly christened Phantom Thieves are supposed to all meet up together for a celebration after Kamoshida's change of heart, but in the end it's only Ann and Ryuji. Futaba is having one of her especially bad days when she doesn't want to leave her house, and Joker had given three separate, ridiculous explanations for why he won't be able to make it. He'd obviously been teasing when he gave all three, but it had kind of annoyed Ann anyway. She wishes he'd just tell them why he isn't coming, or tell them anything about why he won't meet them outside the metaverse. But he won't say a word, just smiles and laughs it off, side stepping any questions about his real life outside their metaverse trips.

And so here she is, at a nice hotel buffet with literally just Ryuji, who is already kind of in a bad mood even before he comes back from the bathroom complaining that he'd run into a group of unpleasant adults on the way there.

"I think this celebration kind of went wrong," he mutters, sliding down in his seat.

"I think it did," Ann sighs. "We're missing two people, and it's just not the same without the whole group."

"And there's just a bunch of assholes around instead," Ryuji complains. He heaves a sigh and asks, "Do you want to just get out of here?"

It had been Ann's idea to come here, and on the surface it's everything she'd thought she wants. Delicious food, the best desserts she's seen in ages, and a real sheen of glamor over everything everything. But underneath, there are the adults that Ryuji had run into by the bathroom, and the snide looks from the people at the tables next to them. 

"Yeah," she says. "Let's get out of here."

They gather their things and leave the buffet, neither of them saying anything until they're out on the street. Then Ryuji says, "I've been thinking."

"About what?" Ann asks.

"There's a lot of shitty adults around," Ryuji says. "It's not just Kamoshida."

"You know this is supposed to be a celebration, right?" Ann asks. "I know it wasn't a very good one, but I still like to think we made a difference."

"Oh yeah," Ryuji says quickly. "I mean, for sure. Kamoshida's a real asshole, and it's great he's going to be get locked up or whatever. But come on, there's so many more of them. So why don't we just keep going?"

Ann hesitates, staring at him. Then she asks, "You mean, do another Palace?"

"Yeah!" Ryuji says. "If we get the right target, maybe we can help a whole bunch of people, like we helped everyone Kamoshida was targeting. And we just got this cool new codename, right?" He beams, the smile making him look like an overenthusiastic middle schooler. But since Ann is busy chewing on his suggestion, she barely notices it, and doesn't comment on it at all. "Don't you want the Phantom Thieves to keep going?" he asks Ann. "Isn't this a good thing?"

"It is," Ann admits. "But who would we target?"

"No clue," Ryuji says, still excited. "But maybe we can pitch it to Joker and Futaba, and see if they have any ideas?"

"It'll probably cheer Futaba up," Ann says. "And..." She thinks about Shiho, broken in the hospital. About Kamoshida, confessing he was wrong. There was no way he was ever going to do that if he was left to his own devices. He'd just keep doing the same thing. To girls like Shiho, who had ended up under his power because they wanted to play volleyball. To girls like Futaba, who have the bad luck to wander into his line of sight without any clue who he is. And to... to girls like Ann.

Because she'd been a victim too.

"And you're right," she finishes.  "We should do this again."

Ryuji's smile, that energetic middle schooler's grin, melts into something more genuine. Something that Ann can definitely agree with. Ryuji might be the newest member of the group, but he's definitely pushing them forward--even now, she can see him already grabbing his phone, probably to start brainstorming new targets on absolutely no information, which seems pretty typical of him, honestly. She's turning to smile back at him when she notices something out of the corner of her eye, and the smile completely vanishes.

"I think," she says, dropping her voice slightly. "Someone's following us."

Ryuji turns immediately, and Ann resists--barely--the urge to facepalm. "Don't just look," she hisses at him.

"It's just some guy," Ryuji says, as if some guy following them isn't exactly the problem. Ann spares a second to be viciously jealous of Ryuji for not needing to worry about the way people look at him for just daring to walk around in public, but stamps it down. She's a Phantom Thief. So is Ryuji. They'd changed Kamoshida's heart, and he'd groveled for forgiveness over what he'd done to Shiho. Because of them.

Ann holds her head a little higher, and tells herself she's not going to be afraid of just some guy.

"I'm gonna ask him what he thinks he's doing," Ryuji says, and before Ann can argue that no this isn't what she meant by not being afraid, you don't have to go looking for trouble, he's already spun around to glare at the guy.

Ann turns around too. Ryuji might be about to make a scene and cause some trouble, but he's her teammate, and that means she'll back him up. Even when it feels like maybe he's doing something dumb.

For the first time as she turns, Ann gets a good look at the boy that's been following them this whole time. She's caught glimpses of someone tall just behind her often enough to feel confident that she's being followed, but now she sees that the tall someone can't be any older than her and Ryuji. And he's taller than both of them, sure, but he's also skinny in a slightly concerning way, and he looks startled when they both turn around.

"What do you want?" Ryuji asks. "Or you just planning to follow us all the way home."

The stranger recovers pretty quickly, ad bows to both of them. "I'm sorry for following you," he says. "It was not to intentionally upset you. I was just trying to figure out how to ask..." For the first time he turns and looks at Ann. "I saw you," he explains. "And immediately thought that you are exactly the kind of person I need as my muse."

"Muse?" Ann repeats, completely confused.

The strange boy nods, very seriously. Then he seems to remember that most people would need more of an explanation than just 'yes'. "I am a student artist," he explains. "I study under the artist Madarame."

"Oh!" Ann says. "I think I've heard of him. "Or his name, anyway. I think. He has an exhibit coming up, right?"

"That's right," he says. "Ichiryusai Madarame. If you're interested, I'd be able to get you a ticket to Sensei's exhibit."

"I..." Ann hesitates, mostly because she's not sure how to let him down in a way that will let her walk away without this random stranger (whose name she still doesn't even know) trying to follow her, or start an argument. She's seen plenty of creeps before, after all. But to her surprise, Ryuji looks at his phone, looks up at her, looks at the stranger, and then says, "You should definitely go, Ann."

She glares at him, and hopes he gets the message that she is not happy with him for just saying her name in front of this slightly weird stranger. But before she can think of what she's supposed to say next, Ryuji angles his phone so she can see his screen over the guy's shoulder. He'd apparently managed to get his phone open to the metanav in time to catch--well, it must have been that artist's name, right? Madarame? Because the boy hasn't given his name yet.

What kind of Palace would an artist have?

What kind of distortion is in his heart?

Ann looks at Ryuji, and nods. He nods back, and just like that, they're on the same page. Madarame might not end up being their next target, but he's definitely someone worth looking into. And it'll help, when they go back to Joker and Futaba, if they already have a potential target in mind for all of them to check out together. Better than going back to the two of them with no ideas and only the vague desire to change another heart, anyway.

She turns back to the boy, and says, "Actually, yes. I would love to check out this exhibit, if you have tickets."

Chapter Text

Joker does not have the words for the way he feels, when Panther and Skull swing by mementos to explain about the potential new target they've tracked down in the artist Madarame. It's a good feeling, definitely, almost like the heady excitement of leaping through an especially dangerous Palace.

They came back. It's been a few days since he's seen them, and he's been sort of--off, lately? Like there's a vice around his chest, something he can't see, only feel. A tug, like an animal at the end of a rope. And yeah, he can shake it off pretty easily, but it's there and it's new and it's weird and it's just--it's not quite right.

(When he closes his eyes, he can almost hear--something)

(A rhythmic, far off sound that scares him, deep down and for reasons he can't name)

But now his friends are back, and Joker feels like he's walking on air. He'd half wondered if they'd be upset after their last conversation, when he'd told them he couldn't goto their celebration. Turns out, no-- they've just been busy, and Oracle has been going through a tough phase where she couldn't really leave the house.

This part, at least, isn't really a surprise. Joker's been by her Palace, and it's been growing. Her shadow had barely wanted to see him, and when she did eventually relax her guard enough to let him in, she'd mostly cried instead of talking.. Now Joker knows exactly the behavior that corresponds to in the real world, and it's different from just knowing one side.

Part of Joker wonders if it would be wrong of him to just tell the others everything. Oracle has a Palace. She has a distortion and a Treasure and she's going to need help to fix it, so... why don't they try?

(Because he's not sure her Shadow would ever forgive him for exposing the safe haven she's made that Palace into)

(And if her Shadow, her other half can't forgive him, how could he possibly keep Oracle as a friend?)

"So what do we know about Madarame?" he asks. That's something else to talk about, something that will let him put off making any decisions about Oracle's Palace for now. "You said he's an artist?"

"That's pretty much all are know," Panther admits. "I've heard his name, and I've seen signs for a show he's doing soon, but I think we'll have to do more research.""

Research that Joker won't be able to help with. The most he could possibly do is get into Madarame's Palace from this side, but even if that might help figure out his distortion, he'd have some questions to answer about how he'd gotten in. And he's trying really hard to deflect attention away from why he doesn't have the same way to get in and out of Palaces the same way they do.

"The student of his that you ran into would probably be the best lead," he says. "He'll know things that aren't public record, right?"

"And that's why we're going to the art show thing." Skull says. "You wanna come?"

He offers so easily, even though Joker has never once been able to say yes. "When is it?" he asks.

"The 15ᵗʰ," Ann says.

Joker has no clue when that is. He doesn't know what the date is today. But he fakes a sheepish smile and says, "Sorry but wouldn't you know it--I can't get out of my plans that day."

"Someday," Panther says. "We're going to have to let you pick the day or something so we can make sure that meetup actually works. Me and skull were just talking about how weird it is when it's just part of the group. "she smiles at him from under her mask. "It'd be nice to just hang out. And I want you to meet Shino, since you helped stop Kamoshida."

"Yeah," Joker says. "I'd really like that."

They talk a little more about the kinds of things Panther and Skull (and Oracle, if she's feeling up to it) should look out for at Madarame's art show, and then they decide to head down to Mementos for a while just to get some practice in. The other two apparently have a classmate that had set up a website where people have started making requests. No one wants to start changing hearts without full group agreement, and Oracle isn't here, but they can at least investigate the Palace seeds those Shadows are likely to be in. And Joker's been meaning to talk to Panther for ages, to point out that most everything here is cognitive, and if she wants something more comfortable, she just has to realize it's possible.

Before he has a chance to pull Panther aside, though, Skull grabs him. Joker sees it coming. but just kind of blinks down at skull's hand on his elbow. "What's up?" he asks

"It's just--"Skull lets go of Joker's arm and takes a half step back, looking awkward. "Guess I just wanted to say we all know your excuses for not meeting up in real life are bullshit, right?" Joker opens his mouth, ready to give an excuse that doesn't technically exist yet, but Skull holds a hand up to stop him.

"Look," he says. "If you have shit going on you're not ready to tell us about, that's fine. We wouldn't have been able to change Kamoshida's heart without you. Probably wouldn't have even made it through the Palace. You don't have to keep lying. you can just tell us you're not ready to hang out in the real world. And the second you are ready to tell us what's up, we'll be right there to help you figure it out. Okay?"

Joker so wishes that was true. Luckily Skull seems to have reached the end of his ability to feel awkard, so he shoots Joker a double thumbs up and run down the escalator after Panther.

-//-

Yusuke had not expected to have anyone to invite to his sensei's art exhibit. He'd been explicitly banned from asking anyone from school who might have recognized his style in the piece he'd donated to help with Sensei's current art block. And even if that ban hadn't been in place, Yusuke doesn't think he's close enough to any of his classmates to have invited them.

So it's lucky, in a way, that when he'd spotted the girl that he'd originally asked to be his model, the conversation had ended up veering away to the show instead. He'd invited both her and her friend, and now that the show has actually opened, the two of them had both showed up. They'd even brought a third friend, a small girl with very bright orange hair that only stops looking nervous when he somehow gets sucked into a long argument with her about Featherman fan art.

(Yusuke knows almost nothing about Featherman, but she has several examples of fan made art on her phone to share, and somewhere in the middle of that, they find their argument)

It's very strange, actually, but the three of them--Ann Takamaki, Ryuji Sakamoto, and Futaba Sakura--turn an event he'd been vaguely dreading into something that passes very quickly. At least this opening does--Yusuke is faintly dreading the next few weeks, but he's known from the beginning that it was going to be slightly painful to have to let go of his art, and pretend it belongs to somebody else. Even if that somebody is Sensei, who deserves it more than anyone.

In the last half hour of the opening, Yusuke finds himself holed up in an out of the way hallway--in the back, leading to a staff room and the public toilets-- with Futaba and Ryoji. Ann, who seems to have the most interest in art out of the three of them, is still in the main gallery, but Ryuji had pulled Yosuke aside to explain Futaba is getting overwhelmed by the crowds, and to ask if there's anywhere quieter they cargo. The answer is this oddly placed hallway, but Yosuke is slowly realizing that even that might not be good enough.

(Once, when Yusuke was small and there had still been other students at the atelier, he'd been the one hiding out of sight, overwhelmed by the amount of adults)

(It's only because of the help of older students back then that he knows what to do now)

"We can take a walk," he announces.

Yusuke doesn't quite know what to say. Compared to most people his age, he knows he's had less friends than the average, and it feels very much like that would have been helpful experience to have at this point. He glances past her at Ann and Ryuji, hoping for help.

"We could go see Joker," Ann says. "Mementos is right around here, and you can't exactly call it crowded."

Yosuke doesn't know what that means, but Futaba seems to. She hesitates, and looks vaguely hopeful, before her expression deflates again. "We can't just--"and jerks her head at Yusuke.

"Nah," Ryuji says. "It's cool, we wanted to get them two to talk, right?"

"We don't even know if he'll be in Mementos," Futaba says. She still looks like she desperately wants to just say yes. "He did say he was busy today."

Ryuji snorts. "Bet," he says.

The two girls exchange a look, Futaba still looking very small and uncomfortable. That's what makes him speak up and say, "We could try going to wherever you all have in mind."

Now they're all looking at him. Yusuke can only offer a shrug in response--he isn't bothered by crowds, but there are certainly situations that he's been uncomfortable in, and wanted to leave.

Finally, Ryuji shrugs. "Yeah okay," he says, and pulls out his phone. "Probably close enough to the station from here, yeah?" he asks, and without waiting for an answer taps definitively away at it.

And the whole world changes.

It's a marvel. Yusuke had begun his journey to learn the language of art long before he learned to read and write. He had studied the way light changes a scene through sunsets, and sunrises. Through artificial light compared to natural.

And this light is different from any other kind he's seen. Eerie. Ominous.

"This is where you wanted to go?" he asks uncertainly, turning in a slow circle to take in the full effect. It's not bad, actually, if you ignore the obvious implication of blood here and there.

Futaba is already lightening up, the pinched tension on her face easing off. "It's less crowded," she says. "That's better than back at that exhibit."

Yusuke, still looking around at the eerie, empty streets, finds this hard to dispute. Then he remembers what the other three had been arguing earlier and asks, "Who's Joker?"

"A friend of ours," Ryuji says. He's dressed differently, Yusuke notices. As is Ann. "He hangs out here."

An odd choice, Yusuke thinks, but maybe this Joker has some reason for it. He doesn't understand where this is (the word Mementos on its own means nothing to him), but it seems unappealing. To most people, at least. He himself can imagine coming back here to paint, but this is the kind of opinion that most people would not appreciate. He keeps it to himself, and wonders if maybe Joker has his own reasons to want to be here too. This seems like the kind of place that odd people would like.

"And there he is," Ann says with a sigh. Intrigued, Yusuke turns around to see where she's looking, and feels his eyes widen at the sight of someone swinging in with—what is that? A grappling hook? When he lands, it's with an absolute confidence that Yusuke can only really compare to Madarame, and some of his more well off associates. But his posture is more welcoming than warning, and his eyes are excited as he studies Yusuke. Yusuke looks right back at him, noting the sharp angles he stands at, like a coiled spring, ready to spring into movement, and the vibrant gold of his eyes behind his mask.

(They are very, very bright, and catch Fox's attention immediately)

(He's never seen eyes that look like that, and he can't help but notice and stare)

"Who's this?" the boy in the mask—Joker—asks, shifting his gaze from Yusuke to the others. "I didn't expect you to bring a new friend back."

"Are we friends?" Yusuke asks, also looking at the others.

"Oh!" Joker says. "Are we enemies?"

Everyone else immediately protests this, which is oddly nice even before Joker's coat moves enough for Yusuke to realize that there's a long, sharp looking knife sheathed at his hip. He's not sure whether Joker would have actually been willing to use it on him, but he's also glad to not have to find out in a way that might have been painful.

"This is Madarame's student," Ann says. "The one we were telling you about."

"Oh!" Joker says.

"Yeah…" Ryuji scratches the back of his head and makes a face. "Oracle wasn't feeling great in the crowd, and I guess we were gonna try and talk to him anyway, so… we brought him back?"

"You wanted to talk to me?" Yusuke asks. He's thinking of more questions the longer they stand here, such as where are we and why does Joker have a knife and how did everyone change clothes so fast, actually? but finding out that they'd specifically wanted to talk to him, out of everyone they could have chosen to talk to, is unusual. He's more used to being ignored by his peers. "What did you want to talk about?"

Everyone else looks at each other, having the kind of silent conversation that Yusuke himself has never been part of. There are a couple of nods, and a few shrugs, and then Joker looks back at him, a grin on his face that seems to be inviting trouble, and says, "Let me tell you about Palaces."

-//-

Ann has no idea how they manage to get Yusuke on board with changing Madarame's heart, after. It takes a lot of explanation, a demonstration in Mementos, and then finally, when they figure out the keywords, seeing Madarame's Palace for himself. He does eventually awaken though, and he does join them, and they do, all together, get through Madarame's Palace.

Yusuke never once questions Joker, which is impressive considering how odd he is. But Yusuke is pretty odd himself, so maybe that makes sense.

Honestly, maybe they're all a bit odd. No one normal would do this, would they?

But if anything, Yusuke has fit in really, really well. He has a good reason to want to see Madarame have a change of heart, once he realizes what he's really like. That he's a liar and abusive, and that he steals art for nothing but his own selfish desires.

…she thinks it's the art that makes him the most upset.

The worst part about Yusuke becoming more comfortable with the team, is that with every passing day, Futaba is getting less comfortable. She skips more and more trips to both Madarame's Palace and Mementos, and Ann eventually decides that she's going to have to talk to her about it.

"I know you're not good with people," she says one day, when she corners Futaba hiding in the bathroom after school. "But we're not just people, and you have to—oh, you look awful."

It's the middle of homeroom, and neither of them is supposed to be here. Ann had spotted Futaba going in by pure chance, and then hung around to wait for her to come out. When she hadn't by the time classes were about to start for the day, Ann had shrugged and gone in after her.

"I didn't sleep last night," Futaba sighs. "School's been… really hard lately."

"I like seeing you here," Ann says, cautiously. It doesn't feel like the right thing to say, but she doesn't know what is.

"I like seeing everyone too," Futaba says, but her face—her expression is hard to look at. Ann wonders if she's telling the truth, or if it's just too hard for her to be around the rest of them right now. Obviously Ann knows she's always had a problem with crowds, and school, but she's been okay with the rest of the Phantom Thieves so far.

"I noticed you've been around less," she says, as tactfully as possible.

"It was easier before Yusuke joined," Futaba says. "I didn't feel so left out. But even he has a Persona now."

And Futaba still doesn't. Might never have one, if things keep going the way things have been.

"I think I'll just try and sneak out during lunch," Futaba says quietly, as Ann struggles to find the words to argue. "I just want to go home."

Ann makes a decision. "I'll wait here with you then," she says. "And when you leave, I'll walk you home."

"You don't have to…"

Ann smiles. "What are friends for?" she asks.

(But the smile doesn't feel quite real)

(Futaba is hurting in ways she doesn't know how to help)

-//-

The day they send the calling card to Madarame, Joker is surprised by Fox coming to Mementos on his own to visit. It's the first time he's do ne that, and even though he makes an excuse of wanting to show Joker the new calling card, it's obviously not the whole reason he's come.

Sure enough, it only takes him about five minutes to look right at Joker and ask, "Can I draw you?"

"Sure," Joker says. "How does that work?"

Fox doesn't answer right away, though. He looks surprised, and after a few seconds of silence, says, "People don't usually just say yes."

"Why?" Joker asks. Fox is an artist—artists make art. Joker doesn't known why Fox has chosen him as his next target, but it seems natural to him that it would have to be someone or something. Might as well be him. From Joker's perspective, it's really important to let people be who they are—the same way he wants to be a Persona for someone, Fox wants to be an artist. It only makes sense to help with that.

Fox looks away at the question, brow furrowed at the question. "I suppose it's strange to know someone is looking at you," he says, after a while. "Seeing you. And of course it's not what people do."

"It's what you do, though," Joker says.

"Which makes me strange," Fox says. "People don't like strange."

"But you asked me anyway," Joker says, with a little shrug. "So who cares what they think?"

"I wonder," Fox says, but doesn't elaborate.

(Something else Joker doesn't understand, without the context of the real world?)

(Or something Fox specifically is struggling with?)

"Well I don't mind," Joker says, to paint over the awkward moment. "I don't have plans."

Fox nods, but his gaze is somewhere distant, and he doesn't say anything. He's already thinking about how he's going to draw, Joker realizes, even before he pulls out a sketchbook from his bag. It' slike Fox gets that invitation to go ahead and draw him, and he'd responsed by just… going somewhere else. His own private little world. Like a Palace, maybe, but… better.

He watches Fox do what he loves, and feels… something he doesn't think he could put into words, even if he tried. Jealous. Hungry. Sad, and lonely.

Maybe this is why people don't want to be drawn, when Fox asks.

"I've been wanting to draw your eyes," Fox says, as he's finishing. "I noticed them the day we met."

Joker resists the urge to go still, and consciously puts the effort into keeping his muscles from tensing. What exactly does Fox mean by saying he'd noticed his eyes? It's tempting to just take it at face value, and think that Fox is paying him a compliment. But what if it's more than that? What if he's noticed that Joker has the same yellow gold eyes as every other Shadow? He's observant, if selectively so, and if this is something that's caught his attention, then Joker thinks it would be selling the newest Phantom Thief short to just assume he hasn't noticed the similarity.

Is this his way of telling Joker that he knows what he is?

"Well thanks," he says, keeping his tone completely casual, as if Fox's comments about his eyes had been nothing but a compliment. "No one's ever wanted to draw my eyes before."

"Mm," Fox says. He's already focused on his sketchbook, looking up only occasionally, and with a gaze that doesn't flinch and doesn't waver as he studies Joker's face. It's impossible to tell what he's thinking, and Joker finds himself feeling oddly naked, even with his mask to hide his face.

(A part of him, staring back at Fox, wants to pull that mask off)

(Wants to tell this observant new friend to look at him, really look, and to look for the person in the real world that has the same one)

(Find me)

"Anyone can draw something simple," Fox says, which might or might not be an answer to Joker's comment. "You barely even have to look. But when you see something unusual…" He trails off. At first, Joker thinks he's mulling over his next comment, but as the silence stretches out, he realizes—no, Fox has just gotten distracted and is focused on his drawing.

Slowly, Joker starts to relax. He's still not sure whether Fox has noticed the similarity between his own eyes and the eyes of other Shadows. But he does know that Fox trusts him enough to completely tune him out while he focuses on his drawing, and that has to mean something, right? It has to mean that Fox doesn't see him as a monster or an enemy.

Which he's not. Of course. He is desperately, almost painfully hungry for these friends. He's terrified of losing them, and of being just a Shadow, just a monster.

"Fox," he says, his own voice uncertain. It's an unfamiliar sound in his ears, because he usually thrives on confidence, or at least pretending at confidence. "Do you know…?"

Fox looks up at him, seemingly recalled back to himself at the sound of his own name. For a long moment they just watch each other without breaking eye contact, and Joker feels the question do you know what I am? pressing hard on his tongue, almost wanting to be asked. He wants to hear that no, Fox has no idea. He also wants to hear that he knows and doesn't care. Either would be fine, reassuring.

But maybe Fox doesn't know.

Maybe, if Joker asked, that would be telling Fox his most important secret.

"Never mind," Joker says, with a laugh, shaking his head and breaking the moment. "Listen, it's getting late and we're fighting Madarame's Shadow tomorrow, right? You should probably get home and get some rest."

"Ah," Fox says, standing with some small air of regret and starting to pack his drawing supplies away. "You're right. And you should get home as well."

"Yeah," Joker lies. "I'll be out in a few minutes, don't worry about me."

Fox snorts. "I think," he says. "It would be impossible to worry about you. You always make all this look so easy."

And then he's gone, and Joker is left alone in the world he can't actually leave.

-//-

The next day they change Madarame's heart.

Oracle doesn't join them.

Two days after that, Joker decides that it's time to take a risk. "I don't know the keywords," he tells the rest of the group. "But she has a Palace, and I think she needs help."