The world warped and churned before settling into an unnatural silence in the alley.
As they approached the castle, the air felt charged.
"Looks like he's suspicious of something," Morgana began, eyes narrowed.
"Huh, what do you mean?" Ann asked.
"Do you feel that in the air? The Metaverse is reacting to Kamoshida's thoughts. Security level went up."
"Do you think maybe he's panicking because of his threat to Ann?" Ryuji asked.
"That would imply he feels some sort of guilt," Shiho scoffed.
....
"Well," Ren said, adjusting his gloves and holstering his handgun, "everyone equipped?"
"Hell yeah!" Ryuji exclaimed, racking his shotgun.
Ren paused at the sound.
Then drew his handgun and aimed at the wall.
Click.
Bang.
"WOAH—"
"FREAKIN SWEET—"
A clean hole sat in the castle wall, the Metaverse slowly repairing it like a bruise fading in reverse.
"...I'm so glad the tommy gun had its safety on," Ann muttered, slightly pale.
"Right." Ren holstered the gun. "So they work."
Morgana nodded with the smugness one would expect from a cat.
---
"Before we go in," Morgana said, "we should establish codenames."
"Codenames," Ryuji repeated. He was already grinning. "Okay yeah. I want something cool."
"You don't get to pick your own," Morgana said.
"Then who—"
Morgana looked at Ren. "...Like he can be Joker."
"Huh, why?"
"Because I have the feeling he is gonna be our trump card when it comes to fighting strength."
"Okay, okay, okay, what about me?!" Ryuji asked impatiently.
"Skull," Morgana said, nodding at Ryuji.
Ryuji opened his mouth.
Closed it.
Opened it again.
"...Well I was expecting an insult, but it works with the mask," he mumbled.
"You can be Mona," Ryuji declared, looking at Morgana.
"I'm not a—" Morgana stopped. Considered. "Wait. Fine. It's acceptable."
"Dove," Shiho said quietly before anyone could assign her one.
Everyone looked at her.
"I already had one in mind, it's a symbol of freedom and peace," she said with a gentle smile.
Morgana nodded with approval.
They all looked at Ann.
"I don't have a Persona, so I can't fight," she said. "I'll wait."
"Alright," Ren said. "Joker, Skull, Mona, Dove. Let's move."
---
Morgana had found a ventilation shaft on the western wall during their previous run — too small for the castle's cognition to bother guarding, just wide enough for a person to move through if they didn't mind the close quarters.
They minded slightly.
Ryuji minded considerably.
"I'm stuck," Ryuji whispered.
"You're not stuck," Morgana whispered back. "You're hesitating."
"There's a difference?"
"Move your left shoulder first," Shiho said from behind him.
Ryuji moved his left shoulder and, voila, he was no longer stuck.
"...Thanks," he muttered.
They moved through the shaft in single file — Morgana first, then Ren, then Ann, then Shiho, then Ryuji, who muttered a continuous quiet commentary about ladies first.
The shaft opened to a small room. Ren slammed the ventilation grate loose, knocking it out, and the team crawled into the room.
They collected themselves and exited into a hallway — a door leading in one direction and the Grand Hall in another.
In the Grand Hall, two guards patrolled in slow arcs. Above, the ceiling vaulted into painted excess — Kamoshida's face worked into the fresco at least four times.
Ann looked at it.
"He painted himself into the ceiling," she whispered.
"Four times," Shiho whispered back.
"Of course he did," Ann said, in a tone of exhausted recognition.
Ren was already mapping the patrol routes. He tapped Morgana's shoulder and gestured —.
Morgana nodded.
---
The opposite door opened into a room, which led to a corridor that descended.
The light changed as they went deeper — warmer, redder, the architecture shifting from cold stone to something that felt more personal. More interior.
"This place feels like him," Morgana said, with distaste.
Nobody asked him to elaborate.
---
The room was through a set of double doors at the end of a long corridor.
Ren heard it before he opened them — a sound that sat wrong, too regular, too controlled. He held up a fist and the group stopped.
He opened the door a crack.
Inside: a large chamber, vaulted ceiling. Standing at intervals across it were girls in half-removed volleyball uniforms, moving through drills with mechanical repetition while making indecent noises, asking for "love" from Kamoshida.
At the center of the room, watching, Kamoshida stood with arms crossed, wearing his crown.
Beside him, standing with her hands clasped and her eyes down, was a girl in a bikini with Ann's face.
Ann went very still behind Ren.
He felt it rather than saw it — the quality of her stillness, different from calm, the held-breath quality of someone looking at something that hurt to look at.
He let the door close silently.
"We need another way in," he murmured.
"There's a side entrance," Morgana said. "Left passage. It comes out behind him."
"Behind," Ren said with a grin. "Good."
---
The side passage was narrower, darker, the walls pressing in close. They moved through it quickly and came out in an alcove behind the throne dais, screened by a hanging that smelled like stone dust.
Through the gap, Ren could see the room properly.
The cognitive girls moved through their drills, continuously moaning. Shadow Kamoshida watched with his chin in his hand, observing with the specific quality of attention that made observers feel disgusted.
The cognitive Ann stood motionless beside the king.
Then Shadow Kamoshida spoke.
"You understand why you're here," he said, to no one in particular. To everyone in the room.
The cognitive Ann didn't answer.
"You're useful," he continued. "That's not nothing. Some people aren't even that."
Ryuji's hand tightened on his mace.
Ren put a hand on his arm.
Not yet.
"Pretty," Shadow Kamoshida continued, in the tone of someone bestowing a compliment they expected to be received with gratitude. "Cooperative. What more does a girl like you need to be?"
The real Ann, in the alcove, was not moving.
Ren looked at her.
Her face was very controlled.
Too controlled.
"Ann," Shiho whispered.
"I'm fine," Ann said. Her voice was steady. Her hands were not.
"You don't have to listen to this," Shiho said.
"I know." Ann was still watching through the gap. "I know what he thinks. I've always known what he thinks. It's just—" She stopped. "It's different hearing it out loud."
Shadow Kamoshida continued in the same pleasant tone.
"A body like that, a face like that — it opens doors. That's a gift. The girls who don't understand that, who waste it trying to be something else—" He shook his head. "Sad, really."
The cognitive Ann said nothing.
She smiled.
It was the smile Ren had seen in the throne room on their first visit — perfect, present, completely hollow.
That was what he saw when he looked at her.
That smile was what he thought she was.
Ann made a small sound.
Not loud. Not dramatic. Just the sound of something hitting a point it couldn't absorb.
"He doesn't see me," she said quietly. "He's never seen me. That's — that's not me. I would never—" She stopped. Her breath was unsteady. "Why does it feel like it is?"
"Because you've heard it so many times you started to believe it," Shiho said.
Ann looked at her.
"I'm covered in bruises from a man who did the same thing," Shiho said, very quietly. "Dressed it up differently. Told me it was about potential, about the team, about how special I was. Different words. Same thing." Her voice was steady in the way that comes from having already done the hard work of saying something out loud once before. "It's not about you, Ann. It's never been about you. It's about what he can take."
Ann was quiet.
In the room, Shadow Kamoshida kept talking.
"The girls who cooperate—"
"I'm so tired," Ann said softly, "of being seen."
The words hung in the alcove.
Shiho reached out and took Ann's hand.
Ann looked down at their joined hands.
Then she looked up.
Something in her expression changed — not hardened, not softened, but clarified. The way a signal clears when you find the right frequency.
"I'm not what he sees," she said.
Not to anyone. Just out loud.
"No," Shiho said. "You're not."
"I'm not cooperative. I'm not grateful. I'm not—" Ann's voice caught. "I'm not that smile."
The blue flame started at her feet.
Slow at first.
Then not slow.
Ren stepped back instinctively, drawing the group with him as the flame rose — not dangerous, not burning, but present in a way that filled the alcove completely.
Ann stood in the center of it.
Her hand came up to her face.
Where the mask would form.
She didn't tear it.
She didn't have to.
It didn't settle against her skin so much as ignite — bright red, elegant, and then gone in a flare of blue and gold as the flame consumed Ann's body entirely entirely.
"I am thou," a voice said, low and warm and furious and free.
"Thou art I."
"I am the one they thought they could possess. The one whom burned the script they wrote for me."
The flame collapsed inward.
Ann stood in the center of its absence.
A skintight red bodysuit. A cosmetic tail accessory clipped above her butt. Her mask held loosely in one hand — a visage of a fierce panther. Her hair loose. Her expression not triumphant.
Just done.
Angry.
Behind her, Carmen materialized — not with a crash or a declaration, but with quiet certainty.
She looked at the room.
And she smiled.
Not the hollow smile of the cognition beside the king.
A completely different kind.
"Well," Ann said.
Her voice had the layered quality now — her own, and underneath it something that had been choosing its moment for a very long time.
'This time the awakening was quiet? What is the criteria here for an awakening? I guess it works for us in this situation however...' Ren thought.
"Let's introduce ourselves, shall we?" Ann said rebelliously, striding forward.
---