Seeker of Truth

“Naoto…”

That Shirogane character is the one that explained the situation then… A stolen weapon… that bit of sensitive information wasn’t supposed to go anywhere.

Not that Minato had met them personally nor did he think Souji was someone to mistrust and he also assumed that the company he kept was also people he could rely on. That Kanji boy proved that much but… well, regardless he made a mental note of the situation. From what he was told by his Senpai things were rocky at best. It was true they were after a stolen weapon and they also wanted to look into this place but that info being passed out was a hazard—

Minato’s head snaps forward and up towards the television hanging from the ceiling, eyes narrowing before turning his head in surprise at the surge of power in the room. The crackling brought to life a smiting lance of lightning to destroy the TV, utterly frying it in a magnificent explosion.

Bright blue eyes watched the Persona as it retreated splendidly back into its Host. Minato couldn’t help but smile in amusement. “Not bad.” Was muttered quietly to himself before returning back to his previous stoic face.

Eyes closed as he continued to think to himself and sort through all the information he had for the time being. “Right—What you said it true. We were looking for a stolen weapon. We’re not sure what it does or how it’s used but as you can imagine that only makes the situation all the more dire. It was a weapon to destroy shadows. Just like my robotic friend.”

Well, there wasn’t any reason to hold information back now and if things were going to fall in place they needed to trust each other now.

“As I’m sure you can understand, information like this isn’t shared lightly. I trust you with all this in good faith, despite your friend telling you about some of it, to begin with.

But I can’t say for certain what we’re dealing with but it’s clear that the figure on the TV is the enemy, either the one behind all this or the voice of it. Getting to that thing is as good of a place as any to start I’d say. I hope I can count on your support since with the way things are we might not be able to get any more back up.”

Turning abruptly and walking towards the opposite way he had entered the room he reached a hand out and only stopped once it went flat against the air as if stopped by an invisible or glass wall. “First things first. We’ll need to keep progressing and since the enemy doesn’t seem keen to allow us to travel as a group—“

His hand tensed as a bright blue light emerged from him. Messiah came levitating in the air with blue shard dissipating around him as if the air itself shattered in the Persona’s emergence.

“I’m tired of these walls being in my way.”

‘HA!’

Messiah roared out as its eyes light up and the coffin lids, connected by chains came shattering against the wall. The loud sound that erupted afterward was nearly earsplitting but once the dust settled- Minato’s hand hung in the air, no long resting against anything. He panted obviously having exerted himself a fair deal. “That was tougher than I thought it’d be.”

He turned back. “Com’on. I’m sure they’ll repair this wall or try something else. Let’s keep moving.”

 Now that he had found someone not likely to get influenced by whatever sort of veil this enemy is creating, he deemed it worth it to use power to attempt to breach the barrier. Luckily for him, it worked out but he was sure the enemy would try to adapt.

     Shock glues my feet to the floor momentarily before I can bring myself to proceed.  After a deep breath and a shake of my head, my nerves return to me enough to follow after my senior Persona user through the breach he’s made.

     His Persona, its power is overwhelming.  Strength isn’t everything in a fight, but that’s thing’s like bringing a tank to a fistfight.  Even with all of Izanagi’s godly power, I’m not totally confident I could beat him in a straight fight.

     Messiah... it’s on a completely different level from anything else I’ve seen.  From my understanding of Personae, our Shadows take on the archetypes of mythical figures complimentary to our psyches.  It’s like weaponized Jungian psychology in layman’s terms.  In example, Yosuke prefers speed to strength and is something of a trickster, so his Persona manifested first as Jiraiya and later as Susano-o twice over.  While my Shadow is an outlier thanks to Izanami’s interference in its development, I gradually grew into the role of the benevolent creator deity.  Minato’s Persona is wholly different in that essence.  His other self hasn’t adopted the form of any one specific figure of legend; it’s taken on the archetype that all Messianic figures draw upon.  To ascend beyond the individual to that of the conceptual, I didn’t know such a thing was possible for Personae.

     Of course, there’s also what possessing that Persona says about him.  Minato must really be something else to have attained this kind of spiritual power.  His other self manifesting as something so inherently selfless tells me volumes about who he is.  Honestly, it’s a relief to know my gut was right.  My senior really is a good person.  Even so, being a Messiah entails a certain obvious fate.  How does death and resurrection tie into his identity?  Using his Persona did seems to tire him out a good deal, like anytime you use a physical skill, but it almost seemed worse somehow.

     Lost in thought as we run through this seemingly endless elongation of my school’s hallways, something finally pulls me from my ruminations.  The shades mimicking the form and behavior of students all freeze in place before their heads all snap to the two of us.  Solid crimson eyes form on their blank, featureless faces as their bodies begin to twist and distort into that of their true monstrous nature.

    “Crap,”  I exclaim as I draw my sword and prepare for their advance on us.  “Looks like the game master’s pissed we broke the rules.  Guess it’s the goon squad’s turn.  Here they come!”

     I bisect a Shadow as it lunges for me, keeping my back to Minato in a basic defensive tactic.  Summoning up another card, I crush it, commanding Izangi to fight in tandem with me as the horde descends upon us.  Our swords cut through mass after slimy mass of the creatures, ensuring my ally’s flank remains protected.

     Over the crackling of thunder and crash of our blades, I try to continue our conversation.  “Whoever’s running this thing is disguising themselves as my friends, Rise and Teddie.  Yeah, I know, pop idol and living mascot; it’s a long story.”

     I grunt in exertion as I kick one Shadow back before slicing through the one come to take its place in the next instant.  Honestly, it’s a little disconcerting cutting down things that were pretending to be my former classmates not five minutes ago, but I’m really doing my best to push that thought as far down into the recesses of my mind as I can right now.

     “The real Rise got in touch with me a little while ago, told me the culprit’s holed up in the PA room with her as a hostage.  Seeing as this place is modeled after my old school for some reason, we should be able to get there if we keep heading this way.  If we bust in there and take down the whoever’s doing this, we should be able to-  Gah!!”

     A Shadow latches on to my sword arm, interrupting me as its talon like claws tear into my uniform.  Izanagi is quick to obliterate it before it can inflict anything worse than a mean scratch to my person.  Freed from restraint, I return to slashing away at our enemies with a renewed fervor.

     Why the hell is this happening to my town anyway?  And exactly on the Golden Week I came back on, no less.  This labyrinth is even using Yaso High as its basis.  I don’t understand what would be obsessed enough with my life to target me like this.  To design a construct of this magnitude would require an absurd level of spiritual power.  For a Persona user or a Shadow, that would entail an equally absurd degree of psychological complex being in play.

     Wait, that reminds me.  We’re not the only people in here.  I ran into that weird girl with the accent calling herself the student council president.  Since when the hell did we even have a student council anyway?  I lost track of her because she could walk through all these stupid invisible walls, but- 

     ...Oh, god damn it.  That’s what’s going on here.  My detective skills really are getting rusty.

It sounds impossible - but I’ve never seen someone so sincere, and I’m actually inclined to believe him. Given everything I’ve already seen in such a short space of time, it sounds nothing short of plausible, at the very least - and I get the feeling that denying it is only going to waste time that we really don’t have. The power has already been out for far too long; any more time spent idle is coming directly out of the life force of some very sick people. As a doctor, I can’t abide that.

“Shadows?” It makes some sense, I guess. If the monsters feed on emotion, a hospital is probably like a feast to them. Emotions of all sorts run through these halls day-in, day-out. I’m about to open my mouth and as if that’s the reason that the corridors are so empty when I’m interrupted by something lunging at us. The sight is enough to freeze me in my tracks for a moment, but it doesn’t seem to phase the other male. In a move that seems almost effortless, he slices clean through the thing - the Shadow - leaving only a pile of goo where it had been just moments previous. 

I exhale a breath that I hadn’t quite realised had gotten stuck, and suppress a shiver. It’s just hit me all over again that I really have no means of defending myself– but there’s no time to stand and fret. I keep moving, purposefully picking up my pace as far as this weight on my shoulders will allow.

“Not that much farther. It’s just down at the end of this next corridor.” I hope the patients inside are okay. If what the man is saying is true, and the more powerful Shadows have been attracted to the psychiatric ward, surely they’re all in danger. A weight settles in the pit of my stomach as we get closer - though I’m not sure if that’s down to nerves or if it’s because this sense of exhaustion is getting worse and not better as time goes on. To distract myself, I clear my throat and glance back at the agent.

“Sorry, did I catch your name?” He feels familiar, somehow, even though I’m pretty certain we’ve never met. “Dr Hiraga - but, uh, please just call me Keisuke.”

     I stifle a small chuckle and scratch the back of my head with my free hand, forcing a pained smile as I follow after the young doctor around the hallway corner.

     “Right, introductions, sorry.  It’s Seta, Souji Seta.”  In my defense, it’s a tense situation, but maybe letting him know I’m not just some random guy with magic powers carrying around a samurai sword would have put him better at ease initially.  “I’m a private eye whenever I’m not dealing with this nonsense.  Supernatural threat aside, it’s a pleasure to meet you, Keisuke.”

     The longer we stay in contact the more sure of it I feel.  Just as I draw on the strength of my friends, I can sense the same type of unbreakable connection between Keisuke and someone else.  There’s no doubt he’s close to a Persona user, but whoever that could be is something I don’t have the time deduce at present.

     On the last leg of our journey, the far end of the passage ahead of us is especially dark compared to what we’ve been through so far.  It seems like it just ends in pitch blackness.  I would owe that to the lack of windows, but seeing one caked over in black slime on my immediate right eliminates that possibility.  Straining my eyes, I finally see what’s in our way.

     It’s worse than a lack of light.  There’s a horde of Shadows completely packing this hallway, forming a physical wall of darkness.  I was right.  They’ve been drawn to the psych ward en masse.  As if sensing my focused sight, hundreds of pairs of red eyes blink into existence, all of them staring at the two of us.  This many Shadows...  It’s just absurd.  As weak as they are, I don’t have time to fight them all by virtue of their sheer numbers.  

     Withdrawing my sword once more, I step several paces in front of the other man and beckon another card into existence.  “I’m going to make a hole.  Follow me through it and don’t stop running until you’re on the other side of the door.”

     Trying to hit them all at once won’t work.  Even with a mass spell, I doubt my range would be wide enough to target them all.  I’ll have to focus everything I’ve got into one strike and clear a path.  If we can reach the one causing this, we won’t have to worry about the small fry.

     Electricity crackles at my fingertips as I summon my arcane power into physical form.   “Strike true,” commanding my other self, I crush the construct in my hand.  “Ziodyne!”

     The thunder god takes form once more, unleashing a pillar of lightning from his core.  The searing light cuts through the viscous creatures, forcing open a divide in their barricade.  Darting forward, I sprint through the shattered legion and drive my forearm into the ward’s door, slamming it shut behind me as soon as I see my companion join me.

     With nervous laughter cutting in between my heaving breaths, I lean against the door, thankful for the barrier it presents between us and them.  “Heh...  Funny thing about Shadows...  They can’t figure out how to open doors...  Isn’t that the weirdest thing?”

     I turn my hung head to the good doctor, only to see more than one of him in the room.  Haunting yellow eyes gaze down at his own face through the same pair of spectacles.  At once, it clicks in my mind.  Of course, Keisuke would have the strongest Shadow here.

     The prospect of my ordinary friends ever facing their other selves has always been a fear of mine.  Even with the support I’ve offered to help them accept themselves, I can’t begin to imagine what effect being linked to my power might have on them.  For the friend of another Wild Card, how much worse might that be?

although the happy news, she did her best to try and contain herself, her own emotions. private life was something she had the right to preserve, in its security, especially when it came to people directly associated with the Group, one way or another. for privacy remained of vital importance, even when exposed to extreme danger, to press or even wealthy organizations like hers; it remained something untouchable, and joyeuse - something Mitsuru herself had often tried to grasp and almost selfishly taste, especially during her last years of high school, long before the tragedy of her father’s demise, or the past arranged marriage contract.  yet now, with Shadow Operatives and college, there had to be important and urgent matters to be respected, before anything else – as her name and her legacy required her to do. she had not minded though: love was not to be doubted, in its authenticity and warmth, nor in the way it made certain people feel and act, in the darkest of the times or simply in the plain daily routines of the everyday life - yet it was certainly, still, not the right time for her to develop such strong bonds, emotions of that kind. if not for herself, then, for the partner !  

they would have been fine. and in case, it wouldn’t have costed her much to eventually intervene and lend them a hand. Shirogane Naoto would have certainly been able to look out for herself. and with the boy, she would have also been in safe hands  ( oh ? – or could it be whole way around ?!  the thought seemed somewhat funny to imagine ). she had all the right capabilities; more than often had that group of Persona Users showed it to Mitsuru herself. in a way, to have tried to make them all step inside, in the face of true danger and possible death, now, made her almost feel guilty. to rely on others was still quite hard for her  –  yet not impossible.

                «  Of course I understand, yes.  As also this one is, too.                 This world I happen to have been born and raised in is                 not that different too. Although dangerous, precautions -                 as you mentioned, must be taken, and I understand.  »

her character and natural reactions had taken the best of her, both in body and emotions. that was not to be repeated or– could it be– ?  had it awaken silent, maybe forgotten memories ?  the thought was bittersweet as much as happy, but totally inapprorpiate to examine or study at the current time. what counted was to have the apparent freedom of relying on them, if in need. they would have certainly go far, at that pace. so young… !  surely, if juvenile love was turning into something greater, it’d been all the better for them. no need to be worried of her possible reactions, or for embarrassment; she would have kept the fact to herself anyway, 

                «  Hm– only if that is okay with you.  We are no agency                 and you must know, more or less, just how many Users                 are now part of the Group… it is complicated but I’d cost                 much. And I’m not talking about money. I believe I told you                 about Shadows sightings and studies, of course, if you still                 intend of somewhat keep on relying on your Persona,                 as I hope. Much more stressful of a normal detective                 career, or a place in the police forces… ah– but I remain                 extremely thankful. Your help and investigations will, with                 no doubt, prove to be valuable and helpful.  »

a cost. as the conversation began returning to its previous serious and mature tones, the girl felt the sudden urge of stretching her leg; a old habit and reflex, that found little satisfaction, confined by the desk and chair. she wasn’t doing it again, right ?  she had no further intentions of preventing the boy and his friends and companions to work with them - not again. to repeat the same mistake once more would have been childish and pointless: they were not kids anymore. but they had to be fully prepared, sure of what all of that work, all the future sacrifices would have meant - when still actively dealing with the supernatural. growing fond of that little group and its members  -  memories be damned !  -  and owing them her own life too, made the girl find herself in a pretty difficult position.

     Alright, I can consider us officially on the Kirijo payroll now.  It’ll be nice not having to worry about a shortage of cases now.  The Shirogane fortune is by no means incapable of supporting us, but as a matter of personal pride I’d rather earn a living rather than sponge off my girlfriend’s family.

     With that, I think we’ve covered everything I intended to get into today.  My friends of course will need to have their own conversations with Kirijo-san but as their leader, I think I did a pretty good job today.  I didn’t do anything horribly embarrassing and didn’t get into a bizarre tournament fight with the leader of our senior Persona users.  Chalk up another win for the Investigation Team!

     “We’re happy to help.  Please, don’t hesitate to contact us if you think our services could be of use.”

     Out of nervousness, I withdraw my phone and quickly scan my contacts for a Kirijo Mitsuru, flipping it shut with a sigh of relief after I find her number.  I didn’t forget to exchange contact information with her after we first met.  Thank you, past Souji, for not making today any harder on me.

     As things stand now however, there’s only one thing left for me to do here.  Despite our cooperation with Shadow Operatives, there are still blank spaces in regards to their history.  While Public Security’s files on them are extensive, reading about something can only tell you so much and the Kirijo Group is a private company.  There’s still truth to be found here and it’s not in my nature to ignore such a thing.

     “That should be everything on my end.  I’ll be sure to keep you notified of any Shadow-related incidents we come across independently of your organization, but I was hoping you could answer a few questions for me.”

     The Shadow Operatives didn’t start out as a government contracted private security organization.  Before the mess with Labrys and Minazuki, they were a bunch of high school kids fighting Shadows, just like we were.  The similarities are blatant to the point of being painful and I don’t believe in coincidences.  Between several of the operatives’ reactions to me and what I could parse out from Margaret’s sister, I’ve got more than enough reason to believe I’m not the first of my kind.  If there really was another Wild Card before me, I need to know exactly who they were and what happened to them.  Should the pattern hold and more kids get dragged into our line of work, we need to be available as seniors to help them stay on the right path.