Chapter Text
It starts in Futaba's Palace.
Skull already isn't a fan. All the puzzles and lasers make him feel like he's ten steps behind the rest of the thieves, barely hanging on while Queen and Joker barrel through them like they're kid shit. Panther at least looks confused, but sometimes she'll get a light in her eyes like she just pieced it together right before Joker clicks that last button. Skull doesn't get that.
It's fine. He knows he's not the brains of this operation; he's here to kick ass and shoot lightning at shadows. Any idiot can beat up shadows, and luckily 'any idiot' could be printed on Ryuji Sakamoto's business cards. If he had business cards. Do people still use business cards?
"Focus up, Skull," Joker calls from the front.
"Dude, you've gotta stop reading my mind. It's freaky as shit."
Joker does a jaunty little smirk and salutes. Skull's heart beats against his chest. It does that a lot in the Metaverse. But that's normal. High stress thievery an' all.
Joker gets the jump on another shadow, and it spits out one of those bastards in the coffins that’ll turn you into a rat. Skull, having been a rat, can say with total confidence that it sucked and he doesn’t ever want it to happen again. So when it’s his turn in the rotation, he reaches for the part of himself where he knows Kidd is, cries “Persona!” and summons him to do some real damage.
Come on, Skull thinks to himself, don’t be such a screw up. Turning into a rat again ain’t cool.
And… well, Captain Kidd comes. It doesn’t start as drastic as that. But Skull feels something. He wishes he was better at words, or paying more attention. It’s like… friction? Something got caught in the gears and it took a second to grind them through.
But even before Skull can start worrying about it, the feeling passes and Kidd arrives. Skull forgets it even happened when Joker does a one-handed backflip over Kidd’s sweeping blow, which collides solidly with the side of the shadow’s ugly face. “Dude!” Skull yells, as the shadow staggers backwards. Joker smirks, whirls, throws his dagger straight into the shadow’s forehead.
“Skull!”
Skull doesn’t even think: he pours half a thunderstorm into Joker’s blade, channeling everything he’s got into the makeshift lightning rod, and the shadow swells as it nearly blows up from the inside with the force. Skull grabs Joker by his giant collar and throws them both out of the way half a second before the shadow explodes into chunks of shadow-dust, spare electricity, and fluttering yen. Static crackles like confetti.
And then it’s quiet, and Skull’s still got Joker half in his arms as they stare at the shadow’s remains.
“That was fun,” says Joker. He sounds supremely content to have Skull half-supporting his weight, like some kinda weird ballroom dip.
“My hair is a frizzy mess with all this static,” Panther complains from the back-up team.
Skull lets go of Joker because Joker doesn’t seem to be moving anywhere. “Dude, I know it’s looks super cool and all but why you always gotta be doing fancy shit like that?” he complains. “I coulda hit you, and then where’d we be?”
Joker straightens his own overcoat’s lapels as if it’s nothing. “I knew you wouldn’t,” he says. “I know I can count on you.”
“‘S no reason to go be doin’ backflips over Personas!” Skull cries, but Joker’s grin just looks more unrepentant, so Skull gives it up, muttering about crazy leaders and their show-off stunts. I know I can count on you. Skull can feel his chest tighten like a coiled spring. Skull doesn’t think about the odd moment again.
*
It escalates in Mementos.
They’re taking care of a few requests down in the subway tunnels, getting settled into Navi being around as the navigator. A stalker here, an abusive shithead there, the guy hurting cats especially gets everyone’s blood pumping. Navi’s smart, and more than being smart, she’s a natural with Necronomicon. There’s a couple hiccups early on when she doesn’t get what her powers are telling her, or she doesn’t know how to tell them fast enough, but they adjust quick and she adjusts quicker. She gets really good at yelling over the sound of spells. The first time Navi interrupts Joker in the middle of an order, she apologizes the instant the shadow goes down, but half a second later they’re all congratulating and thanking her for saving their asses.
By the end of the day, she’s bossing them around while Joker smiles at her indulgently. Well, most of them are smiling at her indulgently. Not just Joker. Skull just happened to notice Joker doing it first, is all. “I said your other right, Skull!” she cries, when a blast of wind nearly clips him. “Ugh, no, no! I said it resists electric—”
Yeah, he knows! Skull didn’t forget, okay, he just got a little confused! “Megaton Raid!” he cries, and nearly staggers with the force of that Kidd slams the shadow into the ground, and then pops into ashes like a squeezed grape.
“Oh!” says Navi, as the dust settles. “I forgot about physical… I suppose you’re good for something after all, Skull!”
Something in Skull’s chest squeezes. Panther snickers at Navi’s cheeky tone. Joker’s already raiding the shadow’s remains for cash and supplies, the freakin’ klepto, but Skull sees his shoulders shake like he does when he does those little silent laughs and smiles with his eyes.
And for one moment, Kidd just hangs there in the air over where the shadow used to be. He doesn’t vanish like he always does, like he’s supposed to. Joker bends down to pick up a sliver of gold, his back open and exposed under Kidd’s yellow stare. Kidd’s giant, claw-like hand flexes; his nails scrape together like knives.
And then Skull blinks, and Kidd vanishes.
“I’m so happy Navi’s finally coming out of her shell,” Panther whispers to Skull when they pile back onto the Monabus.
Navi’s fighting with Fox over his hoard of art supplies interfering with her hoard of portable game consoles. Mona’s getting increasingly exasperated with either one of them keeping a hoard of anything under his seats. Navi sticks her tongue out at Fox, who seems perplexed by this human ritual. She looks really happy, actually. “Yeah,” Skull says, and really means it.
*
The first time it happens for real—
…The first time it happens in a way Skull can’t ignore, the Thieves split up to flee an army of shadows The Beauty Thief (god, what a shitty codename) unleashed on them by opening an impossible door. Skull’s confused, annoyed, pissed, and a bunch of other words he’d probably know if he spent more time reading. People were already getting antsy about how long it was taking to change Okumura’s heart, and now there’s all this bullshit in the way?
Shitty goddamn cat, dumbass fight, had to get in his face, didn’t you, Skull? Yeah, that sure helped, made everything so effing EASY!
Skull ducks behind a console, and the red holograms telling him to hurry up and get back to work add a real sense of irony to the whole mess. He’s trying! But something keeps screwing up, and his teams keep getting wrapped up in bullshit.
Yeah, ‘something’. Wonder what it could possibly be.
He’s watching a tin can shadow robot roll past and waiting for his chance to move again when Skull’s heart jackknifes in his chest and the pain doesn’t stop. He gasps, tries to pull in oxygen around the sudden stabbing in his throat, but it’s not working, the pain is almost blinding and he can’t pass out here.
Skull spots a hallway, a dead end with a door leading into a breakroom. None of the robots ever get breaks, so he sprints for it right as his vision starts going red. His bad leg lights up like a grease fire but he makes it inside and the door slams shut behind him. Okumura’s cognition of a breakroom is covered in inch-thick dust, and Ryuji might have time to call him an asshole for that as soon as he can breathe again.
The stabbing pain gets worse. It’s like someone’s jerking the knife around, scraping all the bones and shit in the way. He squeezes his eyes and breathes. Forces air past the pain. Air makes everything better, focus on breathing first, breathe breathe breathe. Ignore the fire, that’s not important, what’s important is getting oxygen to his stupid muscles. All his senses turn off and he sticks air into his body whether his chest likes it or not.
The pain builds, and builds, and Skull thinks This is bad this is really bad it’s not working when—
“Oi! Skull! Where’d you run off to?” Navi’s voice says in his ear. Scared the hell out of him the first couple of times it happened. “Actually, don’t answer that, I know where you are. I can see you lurking there doing nothing!”
“Is Queen with him?” asks Panther’s voice, broadcasted through Necronomicon.
“Nah, Queen’s down the other hallway. But she’s not a dumbass, so she can wait for me to get to her. Hey, Skull, I’m talking to you!”
Skull takes ragged breath. It actually goes in and comes out. Holy shit. He’s not dying. This would be a super lame way to die. Also it’d probably traumatize the shit out of Navi if she had to hear him die over Necronomicon’s communication line.
“Don’t ignore me!”
Skull coughs. “Geez, Navi, let a guy catch his breath.”
“Yeah, but Joker’s being a mother hen again,” says Navi’s voice.
“I’m worried,” says Joker’s voice.
Skull can picture it: Joker doing his rounds after an ambush, appraising them all for wounds, looking them all up and down with his careful gaze even when they say they’re fine, Panther brushing him off with a cheerful laugh. The way he passes out more bandages than they need, more Recov-R’s than is really necessary.
“Move, Skull!” Navi says. “Queen’s already on her way. We can’t wait for you forever!”
“I’m movin’, I’m movin’,” says Skull, and stands up. A bolt of pain lances up his hip and he hisses. His head spins.
“Well, move faster! I’m getting more shadow readings just down the hall and they’re coming this way!”
Oh, shit—a shadow attack right after they’ve regrouped always sucks. Skull knows for a fact it’s one of the few things that pisses Joker off, even if Joker won’t admit it. He takes a step and his leg feels like it’s trying to tear the joint apart from the inside—piece of shit, can’t even hold his weight anymore, let alone run.
Eff that. He grips his steel pipe harder and moves faster. Ain’t no way he’s gonna let shadows mess with his team. They’re counting on him, aren’t they?
He can feel his own breath rattling in his throat, like a cog that’s come loose.
*
RYUJI: yo ann
ANN: It’s 11 pm
RYUJI: can you get asthma even if ur not a kid
ANN: Wh
ANN: You can’t get asthma
ANN: ……………I think
RYUJI: ????
RYUJI: dont people get asthma from like, shitty dads smoking around their kids
ANN: Oh my god really
RYUJI: ????????
RYUJI: did
RYUJI: did you not know that
ANN: Look if you wanted like, factual answers, you should have talked to Makoto
RYUJI: i dont wanna die tho
ANN: Haha
ANN: Ok ok I looked it up just for you
ANN: Apparently you can get your lungs messed up from a whole bunch of things!!
ANN: Not just when you’re a kid either
RYUJI: oh really?
RYUJI: like what
ANN: You could also google this yourself you know
ANN: But like, uhhhh, asbestos?
ANN: Like if you’re breathing in weird things?
ANN: Also WebMD tells me that sometimes it’s genetic
ANN: And also sometimes stupid things just happen
RYUJI: so like
RYUJI: you just live and then living hecks up your lungs and then you die?
ANN: I guess so
ANN: Apparently also sometimes people have trouble breathing because of panic attacks I guess?
ANN: So like psychological reasons too
ANN: Idk I’m not a doctor
RYUJI: oh
ANN: Wait a minute
ANN: Is this about our biology homework
RYUJI: no!
RYUJI: i already did that!
ANN: Lollllll
RYUJI: ok maybe i didnt
RYUJI: and maybe im pushin that off to the last second
RYUJI: but if i WERE doing my bio hw i wouldn’t ask u for help with it unless i wanted an even worse grade than i already got
ANN: HEY
ANN: Just because it’s true doesn’t mean you should say it!!!!!!!!
ANN: What do you wanna know about lungs for anyway then
RYUJI: oh uh idk
RYUJI: just curious i guess
*
Well, alright. Ryuji might be dumb in the head, but he knows when something’s up with his body. And he’s not gonna let that shit get bad. Injuries just get worse if you try and run with ‘em. Ryuji used to tell the track team first-years all the time to go sit it out, fix their injuries, save their health, and live to run another day. Used to piss Kamoshida off like nothing else. (Dick.)
Now Ryuji’s on a different team altogether, and he’s not gonna be a brash dumbass about it. He’s serious about this Phantom Thief thing, you know, even if that shitty cat thinks he isn’t. He’s serious enough to go to the school nurse if he gotta, so Ryuji knocks on her door during lunch. “Yo, Ms. Sugase!” Ryuji says.
Sugase looks up from her clipboard with the same level look she gives everyone. Her hair’s gotten shorter, though. “Oh. It’s you,” she says, before he can tell her he likes the new hairdo. She doesn’t quite sound happy to see him. “What is it?”
Behind her, Takeishi looks up from where he’s got one leg propped up on a chair, track uniform joggers rolled up to reveal the athletic tape he’s applying to his knee. Takeishi’s eyes narrow.
“Can I help you?” Ms. Sugase says pointedly, when Ryuji says nothing.
Takeishi breaks eye contact first. Somehow, it doesn’t make Ryuji feel like he’s won the staring contest, but that Takeishi’s dismissing him, like a bug that doesn’t deserve his time. “Tch,” says Ryuji, before he can stop himself.
“Sakamoto, I can’t condone you taking naps in my office if you’re not on the team anymore.”
Holy shit? The eff is her problem? Like she wasn’t the person who put him on the EMT stretcher herself, or gave him Gatorade when his electrolytes were low. She used to let him hang out in her office when he got too antsy during class and felt like he was going to bounce off the walls, but the second he’d off the team, suddenly he’s just a piece of shit skippin’ class, is that it? “Never mind,” Ryuji says, and Sugase’s eyes narrow. Takeishi pulls out another strip of athletic tape with vengeance. “Whatever.”
“Sakamoto, if you’re quite done blocking the door—”
“I got it, Ms. Sugase,” Ryuji says. “I’ll get outta your hair.” And like the delinquent he is, he hikes his bag up higher and puts his head down lower and slouches away.
*
It’s probably nothin’ big.
Kinda like how his history project due next week is nothin’ big, and he’ll just ignore it until it’s the night before and cram everything all at once. That’s how school works anyway, right?
He doesn’t like how much free time he has with his afternoons, because for ages that was Track Time, and how it’s just a whole fat lot of nothing. And it’s like he never really figured out what else he was supposed to be doin’ with himself, you know? What’s he gonna do—go to the library? He’s not a nerd. Cram school? Mom’s barely gettin’ him through Shujin with the cash they’ve got, and it’s not like cram’s gonna make Ryuji any less dumb.
He lurks around the arcade a bit. No matter how he stands, he can’t seem to get his hip to sit right. He tries sitting down. The pain starts crawling down his leg again.
He goes home instead.
There, he throws his duffel on the floor, collapses on the squeaky couch in the living room, and props his leg up like a effin’ invalid in a hospital TV show. It actually does help, but hell if it doesn’t look stupid. And now he’s bored as shit with four hours of homework to do, so he fiddles with his chat messenger instead. Pulls up Akira’s chat. Rereads the last couple of messages:
AKIRA: Sorry, I can’t today. What about tomorrow?
RYUJI: yeah man no problem
RYUJI: give that gamer kid hell!!!
RYUJI: but in a nice way you know what i mean
AKIRA: Haha
AKIRA: Thx ;)
That was yesterday. Maybe Akira’s shady doctor friend would know something about his asbestos-asthma? But then Akira would get all worried and then it’d probably be nothing in the end, anyway. Ryuji’s other leg is bouncing up and down like mad and he can’t seem to make it stop. He really, really wants to go for a run right now and keep running until all this nervous energy’s gone and he can stop thinking because, let’s be real, thinking’s never been his best feature. But he can’t because his effin’ leg won’t goddamn heal.
Hell with his stupid asthma thing.
Ryuji closes the messenger just as the apartment door opens and Mom comes in, looking tired and wrinkled, and spots him sitting with his leg propped up on the couch. She frowns.
“I’m home,” she says.
Dammit. He meant to sit in a less obvious position when he heard her come in. She never says anything about it anymore, but she’ll spend time worryin’ about him and his dumbass leg. It’s not even that bad today, just the background radiation sort of ache he gets when it rains. (Shit, he completely forgot that maybe the reason his leg’s being a little bitch today is because of the weather.)
Ryuji tries to pull his leg down from the pillow but in, like, a cool and chill way, not like he’s guiltily hiding the fact that all the rehab she paid for never really worked out. “Welcome home. How’s today?”
She smiles, but its thin. “Oh, just fine. Same as always.”
Translated, she means as shitty as always, but not in any kind of way she’s willing to talk about with him. It drives him nuts sometimes, how much his mom puts up with. “Yeah?” he says.
She’s taking off her shoes now, slow and careful, avoiding aches and pains of her own. Her uniform is washed and neat, but worn down in places. Frayed seams, thin stockings, hair escaping the severe bun she put it in this morning. Her bag goes up on the same hook as always, and the fake leather is peeling away in all the spots it bends, but it holds steady and carries everything it needs to just as good as the day she bought it. Ryuji respects that bag.
“Manami talked about her wedding again,” Mom says, like an olive branch.
“Does she ever talk about anything else?”
“Well, she is excited. Third time’s the charm, she says.”
Ryuji laughs, and his mom smiles, but this time it feels more real. Less acted out.
“Do you want to take first bath? I’ll get dinner started in the meantime.”
Ryuji wants to let her get first bath and say he’ll get dinner started, but he’s burned too much food to make that mistake again. So he says “Sure,” instead, and walks to the bathroom like his leg doesn’t hurt at all.
*
Asthma or no asthma, panic attacks or not, asbestos or not, shitty leg or not—they gotta get supplies and Skull isn’t gonna be the one to complain. He knows doin’ well in Palaces and junk is all in the prep, you know? You gotta have Mementos supplies before you can kick Okumura Foods robot ass.
Even if they gotta walk all over god damn Mementos because the Monabus effin’ bailed on them.
It’s fine. He’ll ice his leg later. He’s been through worse. He won’t die.
It takes them nearly half an hour to convince Joker to let them split up and search for supplies in pairs, because they literally can’t cover the entire Mementos floor as one group without the Monabus carting them around, but Joker agrees eventually. And it even goes alright: Navi keeps them all connected via Necronomicon, and it feels like even though Skull’s partnered up with Fox, the rest of the team isn’t too far away. By the time they reconvene, everyone’s got a hoard of treasure to add to the pile, and everyone’s smiling, so hell if Skull’s gonna be the one to say he needs to sit down or his leg’s gonna split in half. He offers to carry their sack of pilfered loot.
Joker looks up from the stack of yen he’s counting, and his eyes flick down to Skull’s leg for just a moment. “I can carry it,” says Joker.
“Nah, it’s fine, give it here. You’re the one who spent all day coverin’ weaknesses.” (Since Mona’s not here to cover wind resistance anymore.)
“I can carry it,” says Queen.
“Hell no!” Like Skull’s gonna let the girls carry it when they’ve still got three guys on the team. “Hand it over, man.”
“You don’t have to take care of everyone else all the time,” says Joker.
“Speak for yourself, dude.”
Joker sweeps up his pile of yen, does another unnecessary coin trick across the backs of his knuckles, and disappears the stack into his pockets. “That’ll be enough,” Joker says, instead of responding. “We should head for the exit.”
“Speaking of,” Queen says, “didn’t Mona say something about not staying on one floor of Mementos too long?”
Panther frowns. “Yeah, he did. I wonder why… We always left whenever he told us to move, but I wonder if something bad happens if we stay too long?”
Fox, staring intensely at a goopy mass hanging from the ceiling, adds, “Perhaps it was a matter of caution? Shadows coming for us once we’ve made our presence obvious.”
Skull mutters, “Or he was makin’ it up.”
“Skull!” Panther says crossly.
“What! We’re just gonna take him at his word? I bet nothing bad happens even if we stay here for the rest of the—”
A chill runs down Skull’s spine.
Judging by everyone else’s faces, they all felt it too. Even Fox stops eyeing that glob of shadow on the ceiling. The air’s changed, suddenly colder, suddenly more hostile.
“What was that…?” says Panther.
Everyone turns to look at Navi. She laughs nervously. “Um. Powerful?”
That’s not Navi to not explain herself. Fox frowns. “How powerful? Comparable to a Palace ruler, would you say?”
“Like ‘it doesn’t even show up on the scale’ powerful,” says Navi. “But, uh... it’s getting closer.”
“...We’re leaving,” Joker says. He packs up everything in record time, and he sprints off like a flash with his sack of treasures over his shoulder like a real thief. The rest of them take off after him, following close as they can behind him. Skull’s not in the lead, by a goddamn longshot, but he’s keeping up with the back of the pack, next to Navi. She’s got the look of someone wearing the bravest face they can. A determined frown under her huge red goggles, but she’s running all wrong and her breathing’s shaky. Skull moves in closer to her.
“How far to the exit?”
Navi keeps her eyes forward, but she answers. “Far. At this rate we’ll be at the exit in—”
The sound of chains dragging across the floor rings through the tunnels.
“— twelve minutes! Whatever it is, it’s still five tunnels away from us! We can make it!”
The chains rattle again, like demented bells. Skull looks behind him, but all he can see is the darkness of Mementos stretching down the tracks. Skull looks ahead and tries to focus on running. The Thieves are a unit, all pointed towards one goal, getting the hell out of dodge as fast as their legs can carry them.
“What the hell!” Navi cries.
“What is it?” Queen says. She barely sounds winded and is running in perfect, long-legged form. Skull’s so out of shape he can barely glare at her.
“It’s picking up speed! I think it’s trying to cut us off—Joker! Go left!”
Joker skids and takes the next left hard. They’re following Joker through a left turn, listening to the chains get closer and closer when suddenly the sound of chains vanishes altogether, and there’s no noise left but their running feet on the concrete. Joker doesn’t slow down at all, which is good, because the chains might be gone but the air’s gettin’ colder.
“Three minutes to the exit!” Navi announces. “Whatever this thing is, it’s two-hundred meters away!”
“Meters?!” Skull yelps. He coulda sworn “five tunnels” meant at least a kilometer away!
“But the chains are gone!” Panther cries.
“I just see things, Panther! I don’t know what’s going on either!”
“Less talking! Move!” Queen shouts. Panther grabs Navi’s hand and puts on another burst of speed, and Navi nearly stumbles until Skull steadies her.
“One minute to the exit! The powerful reading is fifty meters off!”
If anything, not hearing the chains is worse, because every time Skull turns around to look over his shoulder, he can’t see anything and it's freaky. “How is it so fast?!”
“Perhaps it has natural camoflau—”
“Run don’t talk, Fox!” Even those few words made Fox slow down and now Skull’s pushing him forward like he can physically make him run faster. Shit, shit, Skull’s definitely in the back of the pack now, but he doesn’t know if he could live with himself if he let any of the other slower runners get caught by whatever-the-hell this thing is.
“Fifty seconds! Twenty meters!”
Come on, Skull thinks. Come on, he’s supposed to be good at runnin’, come on—
“Ten meters! Five meters!”
—they’re so close, they’re right there, he can see the tunnel that takes them up to the escalators—
“Wait!” Navi yelps. Joker, goddamn him, actually slows down. “Wait, what’s going on? I’m getting the reading from… right where we are? It caught up with us, but...”
“What?” says Queen.
“Yeah, according to my scanners, the thing should be right on top of us by—”
And then the ceiling explodes.
Dust and the sound of infrastructure crumbling and chains, rattling, the snick of knives against knives, Navi screaming in Skull’s ear through Neconomicon’s speakers. Someone’s yelling for them to run. There’s grit in Skull’s eyes. Smoke in his lungs. Where was Navi? Where’s Panther? Where’s Joker? Weren’t they both just beside him half a second ago? He can hear metal slithering across the ground behind him.
“I SAID RUN!” Joker’s voice bellows.
Skull bolts before he’s even picked a direction and he has no idea which direction that is. Everything is darkness and confusion, but he’s running, and despite all the shit Kamoshida heaped on him that day he didn’t make him forget how to run.
He’s sprinting, torn between keeping good running form and scrubbing the dust from his face, running literally blind, but the sound of chains is right behind him, not slithering slowly anymore. It clatters frantically against the tracks, it’s so fast, but the exit is so close, if Skull can just reach it before this thing does—
“Skull! Stop! Turn around, you’re going the wrong way!”
A bolt of magic wind hits him. Wind sucks, cuts through to Skull’s core in a way no other magic does, strips him down and hurts in a way he can hardly even describe to the others. It sends him flying, full seconds in the air, limbs pinwheelin’ like a cartoon, and then he hits the ground so hard he effin’ bounces and skids on the cognitive concrete for a few seconds extra. It’s only thanks to Metaverse reflexes that he gets back on his feet. He finally blinks the dust out of his eyes.
It’s a shadow. Technically. The air around it seethes with energy, bloodstained leather floating freely off its body. The blood is bright red, still fresh, throwing off steam into the cold air of Mementos that grows even colder, even sharper, with the shadow’s presence. Around it, chainlinks clatter and all Skull can think is that they sound delighted, goddamn thrilled to have caught him alone. Its head is covered with a hood, as bloody as the rest, and all Skull can see through it is a piercing white eye. A vulture eye.
The guns, rusted red, point at him, and he only just dives out of the way of an attack that would have killed him. Two shots and it would have been over.
“Skull! Hang on! Damn, I think it’s blocking your signal, I can’t pin your location down at all—stay wherever you are! We’ll find some way to get to you! Do not engage; I repeat, do not eng—”
When Necronomicon’s signal cuts out, Skull realizes he’s going to die.
Some days, Ryuji lies in bed and wonders if he can ever explain to his mom how much he loves her, because she’s really got to know and because he’s running on borrowed time. He should have died when his dad slammed him head-first into their dishwasher at age eight. Then he should have died when he opened his fat gob and Kamoshida raised his fist for the first time. Then he should’ve been kicked out of Shujin and left to die on the street when they pulled his scholarship. And then he should’ve died in Kamoshida’s castle.
He doesn’t really know how to describe it, but he’s not lucky to still be alive. He’s just taking up space that he shouldn’t, using time that isn’t his, because someone else made the stupid decision to keep him around for a little while longer. He isn’t supposed to be here, y’know? This is all just a sorry mistake, and he figured the universe would come and correct it sooner or later.
If Skull weren’t such a big idiot, he’d accept the end with grace and his head held high.
But Skull’s just too god damn stupid to go out with dignity.
“Persona!”
Captain Kidd explodes into being. “Megaton Raid!” Skull commands, and the subway tracks rattle under the force of Kidd’s power.
The shadow doesn’t even stagger. Oh, shit, Navi wasn’t kiddin’ about how powerful it is.
“Piece of shit!” Skull snarls. “Come on, then! Ziodyne!”
Lightning snaps. Blooms into thunder deep in Skull’s chest.
The shadow keeps coming.
He’s going to die.
This isn’t going to be like Kamoshida’s castle, where he thought he was going to die only for Akira to pull Arsene out of nowhere, or where he thought he was going to die only for Ryuji to manifest Kidd himself. There isn’t going to be a last-minute ditch that saves him. He’s not going to pass out and wake up to Ms. Sugase putting him in the ambulance. He’s not going to get out of this by his mother signing the divorce papers and fighting tooth and nail to keep custody of him.
There’s no more extensions. No more chances. This is it. He’s going to die. He can feel it in his heart.
But the thing about expecting something, about waitin’ around for the mistake the universe kept making to finally get fixed?
(It’s kind of a relief when it finally happens.)
The shadow points a gun directly at Skull’s head, and he thinks, Well, this sucks ass. I’m gettin’ shot out back like a lame dog, and decides in that moment to die standing up. Waste of space like him at least gets to be the distraction that lets everyone else get away.
He hopes that nobody comes after him. If this is gonna happen, he doesn’t want anyone else to get caught in the crossfire.
(He hopes that the Metaverse doesn’t leave a body for Akira to find.)
But as if to kick Skull in the dick one last time, his chest starts to burn. Violently, like back at Okumura’s Palace, chasing the air out of his lungs, stinging his throat with smoke, before he knows it he’s on his knees, because of course he goddamn is, no matter how much he wants to die standing up. He can feel himself start to retch, like his body does when he’s run too hard, and he can’t do anything to stop the reflex anymore; his chest convulses, and like bile, Kidd bursts out of him.
It hurts. It doesn’t feel like manifesting his true self. It feels like something got torn right out of him, is splitting apart, and it’s not cleansing fire like when he awakened but an acid burn crawling and squirming and he can’t get it out, it just settles deeper and rots him from the inside, hollowing him out.
Kidd flickers, juttering in and out of being, and then thrashes like he’s been struck with his own lightning, clutching his head, swinging wildly back and forth. Makes a goddamn pair of them, honestly. The shadow stops, like it’s confused. It’s got its long-barreled gun aimed right at Skull but doesn’t pull the trigger. When Kidd stops flickering, he manifests more solidly and more clearly than Skull’s ever seen him, and Skull has no idea what the shadow’s doing anymore because all he can see is Kidd’s back.
Kidd’s heaving. Long knife-fingers digging into Kidd’s own face. He thinks he can hear the screech of metal on Kidd’s bones.
Kidd’s fist whips around and slams the shadow into the wall before Skull can even see it happen.
The entire tunnel shakes. If Skull weren’t on his knees before, he’d have fallen right on his ass. Even the shadow bastard looks shocked, insofar as a one-eyed no-faced shadow can look, and struggles to stand back up from the small crater its body made in the wall. There’s a screaming in Skull’s ears that he doesn’t recognize and he prays it isn’t him until he realizes that it’s coming from Kidd, one long distorted human shriek through the sound of seawater and radio static; and then Kidd slams the bottom of his ship right into the shadow’s face with a crunch, and then again, and then again, like a schoolyard bully pounding some victim’s face into the dirt, like every other delinquent his teachers ever said Skull was. The shadow doesn’t even have a chance to run. The shadow’s hands jerk like death throes around its guns.
“Stop!”
Kidd reels back and slams his cannon-fist directly into the shadow’s face. Skull can hear something breaking between the shadow’s head and the wall behind it. The shadow drops its gun.
“Stop!”
And Kidd holds the thing’s head in place with his cannon and wraps his other hand around its neck and starts pulling, like he’s going to tear the neck right out from between the shadow’s head and shoulders and the roar deepens, like a wounded animal, echoing in Skull’s chest like it’s coming from his own mouth.
“I said STOP!”
Kidd lets go.
The shadow, for all its ooky-spooky scary bullshit, does the equivalent of an elegant scramble to get out from between Kidd and the wall, whirls once, and vanishes, leaving his dropped gun. Hell, Skull wishes he could do the same. The splitting acid-rot in Skull’s lungs hasn’t gone away and his head is killing him, but he lets himself curl on the ground until his forehead touches Mementos’ metal tracks. He hadn’t wanted that. He hadn’t wanted this at all.
“Come back, Captain Kidd,” he says, and pushes himself back up. Kidd does not come back. Kidd’s still hanging in the air, like he doesn’t know what to do with himself now that the shadow’s gone. “Kidd. The hell. ‘s good. You beat the shit outta him, you can…”
Slowly, Captain Kidd’s head turns to look at Skull.
There’s no wildness in Kidd’s eyes anymore. He’s not screaming. It’s not the look of someone out of control.
It’s the look of a predator knowing exactly what he’s doing, and finding the prey he’s always wanted all along.
Skull scrambles and bolts before he even thinks, his body short circuiting into the shape it knows best. Run, run, run the hell away from that, but his leg was being a shithead before any of this happened and it gives out on him all at once.
Kidd doesn’t waste any time. As Skull falls, Kidd catches him the throat and jerks him into the air like a caught fish, holding him up one handed. Skull never thought much about Kidd’s nails before, and now the sharp metallic points of them on his skin is all Skull can feel, all Skull can remember, all there is in the universe. For a second, Kidd just holds him up by the neck. Time’s stuck. Nothing moves.
Captain Kidd starts squeezing.
It’s slow. The hand clamped down on Skull’s throat, long fingers wrapped completely around, thumb digging into his windpipe. The claws slice into Skull’s skin, and they’re like chips of ice. Skull reaches up, pulls against that hand. It’s like trying to bend steel. He can’t make it budge an inch. There’s spots in his vision, dancing floaty spots, the kind he used to get after he pushed himself so hard he collapsed at the end of the track, back on the tarmac, watching them like daytime fireflies on clear blue skies but in Mementos it’s so dark they stand out even more, bright flickers of glitter on smokey ugly black and he can feel his body begin to convulse—
His ass hits the floor. He doesn’t fall all the way back, but it’s goddamn close, only his survival instinct kicking in at the last moment. He sucks in air hard through his squashed windpipe even as his body coughs desperately, because the stupid thing can’t figure out whether it needs air or needs to reject it all at once. He can’t lay on his back, there’s danger here, he needs to…
Wait.
Captain Kidd is gone.
Skull’s heart thumps in his chest.
“This—” He chokes. His voice sounds like dogshit, raspy and strained. He can feel the words trying to force themselves out of his crushed, fleshy windpipe, his lungs are still on fire, and the imprint of Kidd’s fingers burn like cuts. Even breathing is painful—like asthma, haha—as he forces air down his crumpled throat.
He’s so glad he’s alone, and no one can see him collapse on the Mementos tracks from damage his own Persona did to him.
“This isn’t asthma,” he whispers. “Is it.”