Chapter Text
I just remembered why the name Takashi Kido seemed familiar as I stared at Takashi's father, Reiji Kido.
Takashi invited me to his place to discuss our plan to investigate and deal with the Shadows.
So, I was just bit suprised when I went to ring the door instead of Takashi answering, it was his dad, I was even more surprised that I actually recognized him.
Alice quickly appeared behind him and led me to Takashi's room, she apparently needed no invitation as apparently she was staying with them while her parents were away, in the room we started to discuss what to do with the Shadow.
"I think we are doing our best in regards to these Shadows..." muttered Takashi, "but I still have a weird feeling that we are messing with things we don't fully understand."
I was tempted to agree with him. These Shadows in Mitakihara were definitely far weirder than maybe even the Demons in P1 and P2. There's also the problem of Nyarlathotep being involved, which I also wasn't a fan of, but there was little I could do in that regard, if Philemon wanted us to be his pieces, then there was little we could do to get out.
Alice, though, was far more enthusiastic about this whole thing. "C'mon, I'm sure we can deal with it, right Naoki?"
I reluctantly nodded. Even with all my doubts, I was sure that we could manage it, and if we need some help, it would not be far from us.
So we agreed to go hunt some Shadows tomorrow.
"Great. Now, how about we take some time to play relax," said a grinning Alice as she went to the shelf in the room to get out an old Wii game—or I guess the Wii is not that old here—it was Mario Kart Wii.
And after playing some video games, I made my way home.
Well now I know that Alice's and Takashi's parents are Persona users, that could come in handy in the future depending on, of course, where we end up. That's a plus at least.
A week has passed since then, we ran into another Persona user during that time, but other than that barely anything of importance happened.
We continued to deal with Shadows around the area, and so far everything was working out well.
Ahhh, I am sure the next Shadow world will also be just as easy the previous ones were.
...
...
...
I skid back from the shadows attack. Behind me, Alice and Takashi were gasping for air, and I was less exhausted than them, mostly because I navigated for the most part.
That being said I couldn't really do anything against this Shadow. For some reason almost all of the shadows we encountered so far were weak to Light element. That would be great news for us, if there was someone in our small party whose Persona specialized in that, or if we gained a Persona which had that element.
Unfortunately, for some reason, non Personas of ours had that, not even ones we fused into our current Personas had that skill. I was kind of tempted to blame Nyarlathotep for that.
So far we made due with secondary weaknesses of the shadows which were much easier to exploit. But this one was different. It's only weakness was light and it was immune to all other elements.
I mean what the genuine fuck is this? We really should start looking into weapons, but I doubt that an old weapon smith just lives in Mitakihara, and that he would even sell us his weapons...
Takashi hit it with some Megido hoping that that would bring it down, but this Shadow was way too durable, and soon enough Takashi got exhausted from casting so much all mighty spells.
Which caused us to use our Personas physical moves against it, this, in return, caused us to become very exhausted as the Shadow just withstood all of them.
The smaller shadows came at me, and I was easily able to dispatch them, however, wity the boss shadow I had more problems as I was barely able to dodge its attacks.
"Okay! We're retreating!" I shouted at my two teammates who were barely able to stand. "You two start running, I'll hold it off for a few seconds then I'll retreat as well."
Alice nooded weakly. "Got it..."
I concentrated and soon enough a card appeared in the palm of my hand with a different Persona.
"Fuck..." muttered Alice from behind me as the small Shadows blocked her path, "why couldn't we just get a Persona with Light skill."
Then I heard someone running in the labyrinth, and I wondered, Homura, it could only be her, right?
"Kala-Nemi! Hamaon!" shouted a voice from behind us, and I heard the familiar glass breaking sound.
The light magic struck all the Shadow and they all soon disintegrated with the boss leaving behind only that weird egg like thing.
Takashi turned to look at our savior. "...Senpai?"
I slowly turned around, and sure enough there stood a familiar face to me, Ken Amada. I...wasn't expecting to see any modern 'Persona characters' here in Mitakihara.
Naoya, Elly, and Reiji living here was already quiet surprising, but having a P3 character here was even more surprising for some reason.
Not to mention the fact that apparently he was a student in our school, as Takashi called him 'Senpai' and he wore our school uniform.
Ken looked at us in concern. "Are you three alright?"
I took a deep breath to anwser him. "Relatively fine..."
"Could be better, but it could be worse, thankfully we're not dead..." said Takashi as he nearly fell over.
Alice winced. "Eh, by the way, how did you know we were here and how did upu get here, Senpai?"
"A blue butterfly lead me here, I wasn't sure why I followed it, but I felt like I needed to...and so I am here." anwsered Ken.
Well...thanks Phil you really saved us this time.
Ken then straightened up. "Ah...I forgot to introduce myself. My name is Amada Ken."
We then introduced ourselves to him. And he decided to invite us to his place, which we agreed to after Takashi and Alice were able to stand up without falling over.
And so we made our way to his apartment, where as soon as he opened was greeted by a familiar shiba who jumped up at Ken and licked his face.
Koromaru then turned his attention towards us before he relaxed. Ken got up from the ground with a smile, and seeing Koromaru relaxed also did the same.
"This is Koromaru. He's my best friend."
"Aw, ain't you the cutest little thing!" Alice said as she knelt on the ground to pet the dog.
Koromaru accepted the pets with grace and he nuzzled up to her.
Ken then sat down and made some coffee for us. It wasn't the best coffee that I ever had, but it was decent enough.
"Right, to start I would like to know what you were doing in a Shadow Nest?" he asked us while we sat down.
"Mostly just investigating them, we were thinking that they were the cause of all the strange disappearances around town, and we'll were searching for clues to support our theory, which we found when we saw a normal person in the world two days ago."
Ken eyed me with guarded look before he started to relax. "Okay. In that case I feel comfortable enough to reveal this info, Koro-chan and I are a part of a secret government agency meant to deal with incidents like this. We have been investigating the dissappearances, but we couldn't find an entrance into the Shadow Nest. Thanks to tou three, we might be able to put and end to this Shadow Nest."
Alice's eyes lit up as she asked excitedly, "Oh! Oh! What's the agency called? What do you do? Can we become memebers? Can we meet other members?"
Ken chuckled at her enthusiasm. "You're certainly excited. As for your questions, it is called the Shadow Operatives, and as the name suggests we deal with Shadow related incidents, as for my part, I am reserve member, so the only incidents that I get called in are the real dire ones.
"As for becoming a member; only those who are over 18 can become a full member, while those under can only be reserve. And for meeting other members, three should soon show up here."
Alice looked like she could jump out a window with her level of excitement. Takashi, on the other hand, didn't seem to be that enthused about this whole thing.
"Right, before they arrive can you tell me what you know about the Shadow Nest of this area? Fuuka-san, a Shadow Operatives and our primary navigator, was barely able to detect any activity around the area even when she was physically here," he asked us with some concern in his voice.
"It's not really a single nest, it's more like multiple small ones, with what we call boss shadows in each of them. Those shadows also for some reason drop these..." as I said this I extended my hand in his direction to show him the weird egg like thing that almost every shadow boss had dropped so far, "We don't know what these are, or what they are used for. So far I had been keeping them with me."
Ken nooded along as he took the weird egg thing from my hand and examined it. "Could I have this? I would like for the Shadow Operatives to have a look at it."
I shrugged at his request. "Sure, there's nothing that we can do with them, and so you'll be doing us a favor by taking them off of me as I am far more comfortable having these handled by professionals."
"Then, I have another question. Would the three of you be fine with talking with the leader of the Shadow Operatives?"
Alice shot out of her seat with excitement, wincing a little. "Yeah I'd love to!"
I had no problems with this arrangement so I shrugged in acceptance. In fact it would be great to have some backup, and I know that I could trust them. Now the only question that remained: Should I tell them about Alice's parents and Takashi's dad being Persona users?
I mean only Takashi's dad is around at the moment, and not to talk down Reiji, but he's not that strong plus I don't he would approve his son getting involved in Persona business.
Ken frowned as he glanced down at his phone.
Something didn't feel quite right to me either, so I decided to ask him, "Is something wrong, Ken-senpai?"
Ken laughed a little as he waved his hands in a dismissive way. "Oh…it's nothing,"—he threw a glance at the door—"I just thought that my guardians should be back by now—"
Suddenly his phone started to ring, he looked at the number and let out a sigh as he glanced at us and he went to pick it up.
"Minako-san? Is something wrong?"
Minako? Huh…well…that's something, I wonder if this is a twin AU or a Minako survived AU, OR maybe a both AU.
"…"
"Huh? What do you mean you can't enter Mitakihara?"
"…"
Whatever she said made Ken more agitated as he grimaced.
"Actually…I just discovered a small Shadow Nest. I also encountered three new Persona users…" he trailed off as he mentioned us.
"…"
"She will?…Ok."
He hung up, turned towards us and said, "There's a small…problem…for some reason they couldn't get back inside Mitakihara when they left to investigate a small Shadow Nest they detected. There seems to be some sort of barrier which keeps Persona users out."
"Wait what?" I asked astonished at that.
I don't think such a barrier ever existed in any Persona games, sure in Persona 1 the entire city had a barrier around it, but that worked on all people not just Persona users. Was this something that the Crawling Chaos set up?
"In any case, the leader of the Shadow Operatives would like to talk with the three of you now," Ken said as he went to close to the large TV in the room.
"Is that fine with you?" he asked us as he was doing something to TV.
"Ugh...yeah sure," I said with a pause.
And soon enough the TV flickered and a familiar red haired woman appeared on the screen.
"Testing. Amada, can you hear and see me?" asked Mitsuru Kirijo.
"Yeah, Mitsuru-san, we can see and hear you." Ken told her.
The red haired woman nodded and glanced at us; just with her gaze she looked like she could freeze us.
"Hello, I am Kirijo Mitsuru, the leader of the Shadow Operatives among other things. I am here to talk to you three about this local Shadow Nest in Mitakihara.
"This conversation is being recorded. Are you fine with that?" her tone indicated that saying 'no' was not an anwser.
I cast a look over to Takashi and Alice, who obviously were feeling somewhat reluctant. Nevertheless, having the Shadow Operatives on our side would be a plus, so I said, "Yes, that would be fine."
Mitsuru nodded. "Very well, could you introduce yourselves?"
"My name is Kaname Naoki, I am 14 years old, and student at Mitakihara Middle School."
Alice and Takashi glanced at each other before they started to say their names as well.
"Toudou Alice, classmate of Naoki and also 14 years old.", "Kido Takashi, second year, classmate of these two and also 14 years old."
"Just, what were you three doing in a Shadow Nest?" asked Mitsuru.
Alice straightened up as she answered, "We were investigating whether the Shadows had anything to do with disappearances around Mitakihara. After all they are the cause of the Apathy syndrome, so we thought that they might be behind the dissappearances as well."
A small smile appeared on Mitsuru's face before it soon vanished; being replaced by a professional look.
"You three seem to know quite a bit about Shadows, if don't mind revealing it, can you tell me who told you all this information?"
I shifted awkwardly. "It was me."
Her eyes swept to mine. "How exactly did you know those things, Kaname-san?"
This was going to be awkward. Well this was going to get even more awkward. "I played a game called Persona."
"What do you mean by that?" asked Ken from the side.
Alice replied to his question, "We all played a game called Persona, and we all gained our Personas from that game."
Mitsuru raised her eyebrows. "Is that so?
"In any case, to our next question do these Shadows drop anything say: money, swords, drink, etc.?"
I pulled out the weird like which I picked up. "The boss Shadows almost always drop these, but the smaller ones never drop anything."
"Boss Shadows?" she inquired.
"The strongest Shadows inside individual Shadow worlds."
Her attention turned back to weird black egg and she squinted at it. "I am unfamiliar with this object, Amada, does it look familiar to you?"
Ken took a closer look at it before he replied, "No, Mitsuru-san, I don't know what it could be."
I choose at that moment to say, "Before you ask us, we also have no idea what these, or what they can be used for either."
"Is there truly nothing that you could tell us about it?" asked Mitsuru.
"I am not that great in the whole...uh scanning things thing, but I could tell that something is not right with whatever it is," muttered Takashi as he looked the egg like thing in my hand.
The woman on the screen hummed in response as she looked over what was presented to her before she turned her attention back to Takashi. "I suppose then, that you are this little group's preliminary navigator?"
"Uh...N-no that's all of us, but Naoki is probably little better at it than me or Alice is. He gets the weaknesses of Shadows faster than either of us do." replied Takashi
Mitsuru raised her eyebrows at that. "You're saying that all three of you could function as navigators?"
"Y-yes, is that not normal?" he as asked.
Ken shifted awkwardly at the side as he anwsered, "It's...not common, in our group there were two people who could function as navigators, Mitsuru-san was one of them."
Mitsuru cleared her throat and we all turned back to her. "To get back on topic, with all three of you being Navigators, are you able to detect these Shadows Nests?"
Alice, Takashi and I nodded. Mitsuru let out a small hum to that.
"Weird, that our most powerful navigator was barely able to sense these small Shadow Nests..." she muttered.
"Is it truly weird that we all can sense them?" asked Alice.
"Persona abilities are certainly unique, so having someone be better at something than someone else is not surprising, but having three people at the same time be able to navigate and be able to track those Shadow Nests suggests something quite suspicious to me."
Alice shifted awkwardly to the side as she looked at ground.
Mitsuru sighed as she glanced at each of us. "I am not saying that there's anything suspicious about you, what I am saying is that there is something suspicious about your circumstances."
There was awkward silence for a few seconds after that statement.
"Can you further tell us how you gained your Personas? We would like for you to tell us more about this Persona game."
"We got them from a...man?...named Philemon, he appeared before after we played the game, and he granted them to us for passing his test, which was to remember our names." anwsered Takashi.
Misturu raised her eyebrows as we told her how we got our Personas. "This Philemon, what did he call himself?"
Alice scratched the back of her head. "I can't really remember that, it was so long ago..."
"He called himself a being between consciousness and unconsciousness." I told her.
Misturu looked to the side at someone. "Another Cognitive Being then."
Takashi then asked, "Is that concerning?"
"We can't tell, but it might be. He may become dangerous to you in the near future, but now to our next question: can any one of you summon multiple Personas?"
Takashi hesitated a bit. "I-is that something rare as well? We all can do that."
At that statement, Misturu's eyes widened. "What?! Can you explain it more thoroughly, what exactly do you mean that you can all do that?" she said this with more forceful tone.
"T-that's just it...we defeat those Shadows and these cards appear before us, and—"
"We're aware of how that mechanism works. It was just...surprising to hear that all three of you are Wildcards, that is the ability to use multiple Personas..."
Ken looked to be deep in thought as he said to Mitsuru, "We know that cognitive beings can grant the power of the Wildcard to people, as happened with Narukami-san.
"So this is not something totally implausible, however, it's still quite weird how there are so many Wildcards..." he trailed off towards the end.
"In any case, would you be willing to tell us if you know any other Persona users?" asked Mitsuru as she went back on topic.
"Well...there's that Homura girl..." trailed off Alice.
"Hmm?" proded us Misturu.
"Akemi Homura, I met her when I was going home after we finished dealing with a Shadow and Takashi and Alice met her two days ago when went into a Shadow world." I told her.
"Akemi Homura, you say?" asked Ken from the side.
Mitsuru turned her eyes towards Ken. "You know the girl?"
Ken shook his head. "Not personally, but the Vice-Principle told me that we were getting a new transfer student next week, and she happens to be called Akemi Homura."
"Are you normally told about transfer students? The only ones I can remember being told about were the twins, but that was because they were to stay in our dorm." Misturu asked with a small smile.
Huh, so it is a twin AU...now the question is if both survived or just one?
Ken hesitated on whether to continue, before he ultimately decided to do so. "No, I am not normally, our school is quite large, so I am only told when there there's reason for me to be told. However, there were some circumstances in regards to her, which I'd not like to talk about, that made me be in the know."
Alice looked up at him with a grin and asked, "So, was Homura a special case 'cause she had some sort of athletic sponsorship or something, I mean just yesterday I saw her do that 100 meter sprint faster than anyone in the entire school."
Ken looked conflicted before he sighed out loud and said, "Please don't tell anyone else this; the only reason I am even sharing because she has a Persona.
"She has a weak heart and suffered from a heart attack; I was told this to make sure that she wasn't bullied by other students because of it."
"Ahh..." winced Alice on the side, her grin falling.
I blinked as I processed that. "Wait a second, if she has heart problems, then how is she doing those athletic stunts around school?"
Ken frowned at that question. "I am not sure, maybe she healed when she got her Persona Mitsuru, do you know if anything similar to this ever happen?"
The woman on the screen hummed. "Not that I know; Personas do enhance the strength of their users. However, that enhancement doesn't just automatically heal issues like that."
I frowned, something wasn't adding up, no matter how I looked at it, Homura was way too suspicious of a person.
Suddenly I looked down on my phone as I got a message.
"Well now she wants to talk to us in a nearby Café about joining us; you can accompany us, Senpai, if you want to," I said to them as I showed them the message.
"Joining you?" asked Ken.
"Eh, yeah, we offered he a spot on our team when we met her in the Shadow world."
Ken glanced at Mitsuru who nodded. "I have already asked every question that I wanted to, and in my opinion they are a trustworthy group."
We are? I mean yeah compared to Strega it'd be night and day, but we are still a group about whom he barely knows anything about. Well I guess he got good vibes from us or something...
Ken then went to disconnect Mitsuru and we then existed; unfortunately, without Koromaru as I didn't think the Café would allow him in.
Ken did promise to buy him something; he did perk up at that.
While we made our way to the Café which Homura selected, Ken asked us a few more questions.
Mainly about us all being able to use multiple Personas. He further got confused when we brought up that we need the Persona to align to our arcana or close to it, in order to get the Personas.
This confounded him even further, as he struggled to wrap his mind around the fact that none of us had the Fool Arcana.
"I see you picked up someone else as well." murmured Homura as we sat down next to her in the Café.
"Amada Ken, third year student at Mitakihara Middle School, it's nice to meet you Akemi-san," Ken introduced himself to her with a small bow.
Homura narrowed her eyes at him before she let out a sigh. "Nice to meet you, Amada-san.
"As for now, I came here to discuss our alliance. If you wish to form an alliance with me, I'd require something of you."
"And that'd be...?" I prompted her.
"Those black egg like jewelry, I would require that you give them to me."
"You know what they are then?" asked Takashi with raised eyebrows.
"I know what they can be used for."
"You're not denying that you know what they are." pressed Takashi on.
"I am not."
I sighed aloud. This whole thing wasn't going anywhere.
We proceeded to aks her a few more questions in relations to those weird agg like things, which she anwsered with vaguer and edgier anwsers as the time went on.
I mean just what kind of anwser is, "...longer than you have known..." to the question, "How long ago did these Shadows start to drop them?"
"So, say Akemi-san, can you also use multiple Personas?" asked Ken.
He was most likely digging for more information for the Shadow Operatives about whatever was going on here with multiple people being able to use more than 1 Persona.
Homura merely nodded.
"In that case how exactly do you fuse Personas?" asked Ken as he switched to a topic, which hopefully, Homura was less reluctant to anwser.
Homura held her hand up to her chin, it looked she wasn't going to anwser, but then she spoke, "A man named Igor fuses my Personas in a place called the Velvet Room."
I frowned at that. Something was not quite right with that statement—she wasn't lying or anything—but something just was not right with Igor helping her, and I didn't know why I felt that. Ever since I came here to Mitakihara, my memories were quite foggy on some detail for some reason...
Meanwhile, on the side I noticed that Ken eyes shot Homura a wide look, which he quickly covered up before she could notice it.
I let out a loud sigh. "Alright, it's clear that you are not that trusting of us, that being said, we are willing to overlook this if you promise to tell us this in the future and if you promise to join us wherever we go."
Takashi shot me a look, which I responded with a look of my own promising to explain my reasoning.
Homura looked me dead in the eyes. "Very well, I promise that I will tell you what they are in the future and that I'll accompany your group to fight Shadows."
"Well then, are we in agreement with allowing Akemi Homura to join our group?" I asked the others.
Takashi frowned and Ken looked somewhat concerned as well. So, Alice and I had quite a bit of work to convince them to allow Homura to join.
Thankfully, Ken wasn't really a member of the team, so I didn't really need to convince him, I just said that we will deal with any problems that may arise from this deal, and that seemed to satisfy him enough.
Takashi on the other, required a full frontal Alice assault; Alice begged him till he was fine with allowing her to join.
I let out a breath of relief when he agreed, and soon after Homura said her goodbye to us as she left the Café.
"Oh, thank God, that that went really well," I muttered as we also went to leave and head home.
"By the way, Ken-senpai," I called out to the boy who stopped and turned when he heard me calling out his name, "would you be interested in joining us? We could use someone of you talent, and you, yourself, said that you are currently the only Shadow Operative in Mitakihara, so you can guide us in all of this."
Alice and Takashi also stopped as soon as they heard my question.
"I...I will talk to Mitsuru-san, but I am not opposed to it, and I doubt she would be either. It would be more beneficial for the Shadow Operatives if I joined with Homura being a..." he trailed off. "I'll just talk with Mitsuru-san and Minako."
Alice shot a curious look at him, no doubt thinking what Homura could be that got Ken this interested in her.
But we soon parted ways, with me being hopeful that with both Ken and Homura we would be able to change whatever was going on in Mitakihara, and to hopefully put an end to whatever Nyarlathotep was planning.