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Akechi finally decided to use his wild card abilities, and start fusing personas. At the moment, him and Mishima were looking for an Ame-no-Uzume to fuse for a certain persona, but in mementos it was taking quite a while to get one. Eventually, the two come across a rest stop.
"About damn time." Akechi grumbles, dropping down into the bus station seat.
"This is the last area that we've been to before, after this it'll be something completely new." Mishima said, clearly concerned about it. Akechi could tell he wanted to go back, and he was fine with leaving him here at the rest stop, but he was pretty sure that wasn't what Mishima wanted.
"You said that last time and we made it out alive." Akechi deadpans. He was too exhausted to add any sort of playfulness or aggression to his voice.
"Its just...." Mishima pauses, and then sighs. "..Here. I got some stuff from a chest earlier." said Mishima, handing him 2 chewing souls. "That should be enough for now, right? Otherwise we're goanna have to track down Jose."
"I dont want to search for anything or anyone else in this godforsaken place. Unless we find him along the way, I'll just try to conserve energy."
"Alright. I've got more stuff, just so you know."
"...I don't plan on needing it." Akechi responded.
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Two floors later, Mishima downed some SP items to use one of his costlier skills.
"Dolos. Use shadow search." he sighed out. A few moments pass, before Mishima suddenly perks up. Akechi raises his eyebrows expectantly.
"..Its here. On this floor."
"....Thats all?"
"I see the same weird blobs of whatever shadows are made of as you, y'know. Can't really get into the specifics." Seeing Akechi bite his lip in frustration, Mishima makes an offer.
"I'll take them on, you can skip out. Just heal me if I get too hurt?"
Akechi paused for a moment, and then visibly relaxed, his posture going from straight to leaning off a bit to the side. "Sure. Thanks."
"Just trying to help. I'll tell you when I catch the Ame-no-Uzume."
"Technically I'll be the one doing the catching." said Akechi, leaning against the wall of the rundown subway tunnel.
"Yeah yeah.." Mishima sighed, walking away to approach the first shadow. He wished just as bad as Akechi, probably more, that he could tell what persona a shadow is before battle, but he didn't think he'd be getting any skill like that anytime soon.
Akechi sat back and closed his eyes, listening to Mishima unenthusiastically call for his persona and various moves. Kougaon, eiagon, the works. The random sounds of gunfire, swinging, and thumping were almost calming, until he heard Mishima call out his name.
"Akechi! A little help here?" Mishima yelped, narrowly dodging what seemed to be a shadow that specialized in physical moves.
"What, healing?" Akechi quickly asked.
"No, it's null to light and dark."
"...You've got physical moves don't you?"
"Yeah, but not enough healing items to account for using them and taking the hits."
"Alright, I'll just take the rest of these bastards out myself." Akechi grimaced.
"Thanks, sorry."
"It's fine. This little break was nice while it lasted." he said, before calling Loki in that overly aggressive manner of his. Mishima smirked, careful not to audibly show his amusement. He didn't want to piss Akechi off while his persona was called. He thought he'd probably freeze him and leave him in mementos.
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After clearing out the whole floor, one shadow was left. The two gazed at each other, before setting determined glares onto the shadow.
The fight was suddenly put to a halt when Mishima used Psiodyne. While Akechi tried talking the shadow into becoming a persona for him, Mishima stared almost exasperatedly at his change in demeanor. He really could put his "Detective Prince" act on whenever he wanted, huh?
Finally, the shadow accepted Akechi's offer. Both boys let out a long sigh.
"Lets get the fuck out of here....!" Mishima groaned.
"Let's." Akechi responded. "You did really well taking out all those shadows back to back."
"You were pretty good at convincing that shadow to help you out."
"We all have our talents, right?" he responded.
At that, Mishima fell silent. Right. Talents. Could this be called a talent? His persona. His abilities in the metaverse. These were more than a hobby, more than a talent. This was everything to him. This was all he had. Akechi had fame and was loved by people all over Tokyo. His charisma and amazing detective abilities will always be with him, even when hes not in the metaverse. All Mishima had was volleyball (which he never wanted to do again), and these stupid powers.
"Its just that some skills are sweet talking and some are murder." he mumbled.
Akechi looked at Mishima for a few seconds before looking ahead again. "I'd say I'm just as good at murder as you are, thanks."
Mishima glared at him in response.
"What, you don't wanna be on par with the best of the best?" Akechi continued.
Mishima began to hold his own hand, seeking anyway to ground himself. "...Not really, no. That's great in any other situation than....this." Mishima choked out. "I never saw myself as anything more than a loser, and if not a loser then just a lackey for a group of fucking criminals. Not...not someone who kills people. Or weird mythological beings." Mishima's hands were clasped so tightly together that they were shaking now, along with his voice and the rest of him.
Akechi knew what he was looking at, and knew even more that he wouldn't be able to handle it. Mishima was about to have a panic attack when both of them had just got done clearing out 10 floors of mementos. Akechi would probably start crying with him, if that happened.
"...Give me your hand." Akechi said.
Mishima stayed silent, but the confusion was apparent enough on his face. Looking at Akechi offering his hand, he felt himself relax, if just a little. He separated his hands and wiped one off on his coat. He looked away, in case Akechi grimaced at the thought of how sweaty his hands were. He didn't. Akechi knew panic attacks were stressful, sweating didn't even cover the worst of his.
Mishima grabs onto Akechi's hand, trying to slow down his frantic breaths as he feels the weight and warmth between his fingers. After a handful of seconds, he's sufficiently calm. His face didn't look happy, but it had gone from looking like he was deathly afraid and about to throw up, to just looking extremely drained. Mishima thought about letting go of Akechi's hand, but the thought dispersed when he felt a light squeeze. Looking over at Akechi, he saw him with an expression on his face that he hadn't seen before, relief. He assumed it was because Akechi was relieved he didn't have a meltdown in mementos. But that relief eventually morphed into contentedness, and eventually embarrassment as they kept walking with their hands intertwined.
By the time they'd made it back to the entrance of mementos, they were extremely aware of their hands clasped together. Despite this, they didn't let go until making it all the way to Akechi's apartment.