#mirrorproject

So, Aikoto, right? Yes, ultimately, the tragedy that they will never be together because of the narrative dooming them is the main focus of most of what centers around them. But, well... this time, things are a bit different. In this version of the story, Sakuya isn't actually so quick to fall for Aigis. I mean, she's kind of Weird by human standards. Like, picking the lock to Sakuya's room to just kind of stand over them as they sleep kind of weird. So Sakuya...kind of doesn't really want to interact with her.

The events of November don't help this at all, and they essentially mentally put "Aigis DNI" in their metaphorical bio. Aigis, meanwhile, is a bit too lost in her own head to really contest that. As time went on, though, Aigis gained a better grasp of the concept of living, and Sakuya began to see a more sympathetic side to her personality… Unfortunately, though, their fate was already before them. It's New Year's Eve. Humanity is pretty fucked and everyone is going to die soon. Thankfully, since Ryoji is still alive, SEES has a choice. Either kill him and delay the Fall, erasing everyone's memory of it coming for a blissfully ignorant end…or, face up against a pretty much impossible battle against Nyx herself. What option do you think Sakuya chose? I'll give you a second to guess... .......... Time's up! The correct answer is... The wrong option. Why? Well, maybe... They had enough. They rejected their own heart just to get away from everything. They rejected their chance because they thought no one had flowered enough for them to form any attachment to the people around them. They never truly learned to face their own fate, as the Velvet Room had so desperately needed them to do. That's why they were brought back to the beginning the first time. To make the right choice.

With that, we arrive at Persona 3 FES with a freshly revived Sakuya, now realizing just how shitty of a choice they just made.

Well, actually, they realized it a bit earlier, but they expected for their own death to be penitence for their sins which is how they kept calm after all of that. Unfortunately, they're still alive, so they're miserable and a horrible person.

Their knowledge of the loop is nothing more than a vague sense of deja vu and a broad knowledge that they made a horrible, horrible choice in a past life, so for the moment…they try to give Aigis another chance.

Much to their horror, however, Aigis has absolutely no recollection of the moments they had together in the past timeline, which Sakuya still remembers astonishingly clearly. But, in following her Social Link arc and her attempts to find her answer… Sakuya falls for her. And Aigis falls for them. Aigis is the one to confess she has these feelings first, (in her own way of course) and Sakuya is happy to accept her into their arms having fallen for her since…probably late December of the previous timeline. That's all well and good. However, Sakuya's enjoyment of the relationship is massively tainted by the fact that they know for sure everyone is (probably) going to die in a few months' time. So, for once in their life, they find a… admittedly very fickle…reason to actually try to fight this time. Well, two. One, so that them and Aigis can have a slim chance to be happy for just a little longer. Two, so that if they do end up dying they'll at least have the closure of not having to wait for what feels like eons for it. They choose to leave Ryoji alone, but…they can't do it. They can't manage to win against Nyx. But at least…at least they tried, right…?

But they come back again. They're still alive. Why? They made the right choice, where did they go wrong? Why does no one else remember this? Why is nothing changing but what's in their own pockets? What do they have to do to be forgiven? Why is everything they try to say, try to do differently… utterly useless? It's going to end the same either way. So is there a point in even trying…?

During this time, Sakuya really starts to lean on Aigis… perhaps a little too much.

Well, actually, that's a lie. Sakuya is essentially desperately trying to rely on her for emotional support instead of, you know, doing normal fluffy relationship stuff. This is a HORRIBLE idea for three reasons. 1: Sakuya is the only person who has any sort of idea of what they're talking about. 2: Aigis is, by nature, still a machine and kind of sucks at emotional stuff. 3: Sakuya is not emotionally stable enough to actually get Aigis to properly engage with the full range of human emotions at this point. So, obviously, they don't get the support they need from Aigis, and thanks to that coupled with the influence of Orpheus…they start thinking that she's just as useless as the rest of the cast. With that, the two begin to slowly and painfully fall out of love from the Side Games - Part 1 timeline region until the Portable timeline region where they formally mentally "break up" with Aigis. ...Oh, yeah, and just to rub salt into the wound. In this world, all of the side games canonically happened as separate resets. Remember Persona Q? Okay, so first of all it wasn't a dream. Second of all, Hayato (P4 Hero, she/her) was their destined partner during the whole Group Date Cafe thing. But there's actually a little more to it than "Ah, yes, the other Mirror Project canon couple almost got married years before they formally met and got together because funny bankita reference." The two did actually have a few more interactions beyond that, where Sakuya opened up to someone other than Aigis for once and got some semblance of actual compassion in return. Which… finally got Sakuya to question whether their relationship with Aigis was working for either of them. And figure out that they were, in fact, bisexual as all hell, but honestly if they weren't shoving down their feelings half the time I feel like Ryoji would've sparked that awakening way earlier. Aigis is against their relationship though… presumably she's become emotionally dependent on them as well. Unfortunately, Sakuya isn't exactly over their emotional reliance on her either, so they kind of end up dropping the ball midway through.

that image was bigger than I thought. apologies for the inconvenience. we now return to our regularly scheduled text post.

At this point, they're emotionally exhausted and have started to realize this isn't going to work out for them so they mentally forbid themselves from even trying to talk to Aigis. (Putting "Aigis DNI" back in that metaphorical bio, I guess, but now for an actually justified reason.) Much to her continued confusion, of course, because all this time she's been spared the memory of just how messy their relationship is/was.

She's becoming predictable to them. With nearly every word they say, they can anticipate what she would say in response. A machine designed to repeat the same script thinking it will hold weight every time is useless to them. All of their teammates, all of their friends… they're all machines. There's no use trying to look back at them if they'll just see nothing there. They're the only one who can change this world. They're the only one who can defy Fortuna's will. So, they make a plan to finally defeat the Goddess of the Night…

They know full-well that defeating the Goddess of the Night will result in their death. And they're completely fine with that. Elated, even… it just means they're going to be free soon. Free of this nightmare they've been repeating for years and years. Free of these people repeating the same things over and over ad nauseum, free of Aigis, free of Ryoji… They start to become unlike their usual self as the months pass. They start talking to their friends more, saying and showing just how much they care about them. (See: Linked Episodes) They start giving away rare items they've hoarded in their bag since the Original Timeline to the members of SEES…even to some of the other NPC Social Links! … The truth is, they just want to tie up loose ends before they're gone for real this time. They haven't even bothered to cut their hair shorter like they usually do between timelines. There were days where they went straight to bed after school because no one was available and they didn't need the stats anymore. There were days where they didn't even get up at all.|| They knew exactly what to say to everyone already to win their hearts, after all. They came up that day completely ready to give their life away…

But no, Fortuna just HAD to spare them instead of giving them the sweet release of death.

Their plan works, to an extent, but instead of dying they arrive in the world of The Mirror Project in a…very strange act of mercy. Eventually, through a different path, we got to the present day where they're actually somewhat okay…but that's a story for a different book. For now, have these Ryomina doodles I drew depicting kind of how they are in this whole situation.

They kind of just say shit to him knowing that he won't remember any of it just to have someone to bounce the ideas plaguing their mind off of. It helps that Ryoji is the one person Sakuya gets some guaranteed alone time with regardless of whether or not they can muster themselves to talk to the other Social Links in that timeline.

In this AU, Adachi, instead of just kind of existing and having a social link, takes a less...hidden approach in getting away with mass murder. Not to say he particularly wanted to, of course. Had he not thought he was alone for a mere moment's time and mumbled out too much information when Yukiko went "missing", he would have been happy to throw Namatame under the bus for everything. ...Thankfully, though, what he said seemed to strike a chord with these kids. They knew for a fact that the TV World existed. So, in an attempt to keep suspicion off of his back, he informs them that he knows of this world...and wants to "help" them. Of course, he wouldn't be going into there himself. The oppressive aura of his power...well, it'd erode any trust the team might have developed in him. And he couldn't tell them everything, because that would just be counterproductive. But what could a few literal teenagers do against an array of threats much bigger than them? He'd only have to divulge a small sliver, and the problem would solve itself!

It turned out that the literal teenagers could do quite a bit against arrays of threats much bigger than them.

And last time he checked, his plan to throw Namatame under the bus went straight out of the window when he didn't go through with "saving" those who appeared on the Midnight Channel. Which was a crying shame, really. It meant he wouldn't be able to get back at that asshole quite as effectively, and he'd have to get a bit more blood on his hands.

So it's time for plan B: Get back at their leader, who had the gall to indirectly thwart his revenge.

(Besides, she kind of pissed Adachi off. Why's she so nice to him? Why does she want to spend time with him so bad? Is this pity or something? Was his boss trying to make him into a decent human being? To Adachi, it's really fucking annoying.)

Obviously, he can't have her throw people right into the TV World like Namatame. She may be awfully obedient, but she's not stupid. Or, well, not THAT stupid. He can, however, make her complicit in subtle things that point to her being the perpetrator. Like a little helper! These include but are certainly not limited to:

Taking out the trash that totally does not contain an unconscious person covered in trash to avoid suspicion

Using Hayato's conversational skills to convince someone to go to a certain location

Putting just enough of an ominous warning in Hayato's mind so that she is technically the only one who was in the TV world when someone fell in

Around November, when Naoto has been with the team for a while and the facade starts to wear thin, Adachi shifts to implicating Hayato when she's not around. After all, at that point the evidence is meant to be stacked against her, and the team (due to his relative accuracy in predictions) had come to trust him as a source of information. So they start doing their own research. Adachi seemed a bit shady, but there was frankly no reason a literal murderer would be giving them information, especially considering it was actually true. Namatame, the only other logical culprit, seems to have relatively clean hands. The other members of the Investigation Team were off of the table due to them having been victims before and thus having no motive. (Also, they wouldn't have been able to murder the victims before them without a Persona.)

By that logic, the only member of their ranks capable of reaching through the TV without facing a Shadow in battle first was their leader.

Looking at it more deeply, even the way she acted was shady - though they couldn't have known Adachi's role in the whole endeavor, her leaving meetings early seemed to almost always coordinate to a new victim of the Midnight Channel.

...Besides that...as much as the team hated to admit it, no one else seemed to turn up to the Dojima household the day Nanako went missing. And Hayato...just stared into the distance completely blankly at the thought of So the only person who could have reached in and taken her away...was Hayato.

No one could mess with Nanako and make it out of this situation in one piece. Especially not her own cousin.

...There was one problem, though.

Hayato didn't do any of that!

Her intent was never to kill, just to help. And she would never even think to throw Nanako in the TV!

(In truth, she couldn't have known what she was doing. She was taken advantage of by someone she trusted, and it wasn't her fault for not seeing that. But no one knows that except for Adachi, so...)

Considering what they've seen, the Investigation Team isn't exactly compelled to believe her story.

And, like what we see in our version of the story, Hayato's Shadow "Izanagi" is the final nail in the coffin...

"..."

"...Once this charade ends...once we find the true culprit...you'll forget all about me, won't you?"

"You'll have homes you can return to. People you still want to make things right with. But...what will be left for me?"

"I'm...pathetic. I have nothing of my own to rely on. I can't even trust my own friends not to leave me behind if I don't give them a reason to stay. If I don't put a show on their screens, then..."

"They'll see someone horrible. Someone utterly repulsive."

"They'll leave her to rot, just like they did back in her hometown."

The Shadow turns sharply to the camera.

"That's why I hid the truth from you all. That I was the one who set all of this in motion."

"If I could hold onto you for just a bit longer, even if I had to put people's lives at risk...I could do anything."

"Even drag my own little sister down with me."

At this point, the Investigation Team has heard enough. Without a voice of reason like Hayato to calm them down, their anger gets the better of their logic, and...

...yeah, they shove her into the TV World with no clear way out. Fun stuff.

Unfortunately for Inaba, this is exactly the point Izanami was trying to prove with her little social experiment. The part of Izanagi waiting in Hayato's heart that wanted to seek the truth was nearly completely gone at this point, so Izanami figured it was about time to bring ruin upon their idiot selves.

Just as everything seems hopeless, however...someone waiting in a space between mind and matter grants her a strange act of mercy.

Below Hayato's feet, the world she thought she'd be trapped in for the rest of eternity is folding outwards into the black void, though it seems she can't call upon her Persona to try and push it backwards. As the folds expand, she has no choice but to fall forward into whatever the future holds for her...

Of course, Inaba is still fated not to survive the fallout. There are still two others that Izanami can draw out strength from, after all. The phenomenon is just slightly more localized, as shown in the diagram below.

You might be wondering how Hayato saw the events of Persona Q, considering that it happens before all of this and I talked about it in my previous lore dump on Sakuya's side. However, I think that's better suited for a different book. For now, have this shitty meme I made the night I came up with this.

(Apparently this meme is old enough that most people don't recognize it anymore, so here's the original...)