Chapter Text
“It’s going to be all right, Koko.” This is the last thing Minako hears before her brother blasts her in the face with a Ziodyne.
She gets why he’s doing it. Honestly, it’s sort of relieving that they aren’t going to argue over which one of them has to die. Even more so that it’s not going to be her. But a Ziodyne? Really? They couldn’t have at least tried to talk this out like adults? He had to jump right to knocking her unconscious?
When she blinks awake, outside a school that used to be a tower, there are still dark spots behind her eyelids, and she can’t focus on anything. Junpei pulls her to her feet. Aigis proclaims her vital signs are normal.
Nobody asks Minato what the hell he was thinking. Probably because they understand that it’s her job. And she would be yelling at him, if she could just see clearly. This is her first time experiencing a Revival Bead, and it’s easy to see that it doesn’t work miracles.
Not that she didn’t already know that, after the last four months. There are some things even Samarecarm can’t heal. She’s tried.
So they walk. The streetlights are shining bright. The moon looks as normal as it possibly can. It’s so quiet she can hear her watch ticking.
Minako wonders how she can lecture someone who is absolutely living on borrowed time without coming across as heartless. It’s something she’s wondered since meeting Akinari, and never come across an answer for. It’s unfortunate, because with the way her life’s turned out, that sort of conversation is apparently in high demand.
In none of her imaginings does it include her brother stopping right before they reach the monorail. “Hey, Koko. I have a present for you.”
It’s a card. By itself, this isn’t surprising. They’ve always been able to trade Personas around, something about being twin Wild Cards makes their souls incredibly compatible, to the point where Pharos was bouncing between them without a care in the world, even when he was most tightly sealed away. After Nyx, this is probably worth worrying about, but that’s a problem for Future Minako.
Present Minako is staring at a card she never expected to see handed to her. “It’s… the ten of Wands?” A shift. “Three of them?” For one thing, this isn’t how Shuffle Time has ever worked.
For another, the strongest enemies never cause Shuffle Time. And Minato managed to trigger it against Nyx?
She wants to say this is the weirdest part of her night, because that way she doesn’t have to acknowledge the rest of it.
“For that Persona you’ve been using. I know you don’t like looking ahead, but I think it’ll help.” This implies that he’s asked Igor about the potential future capabilities of her Personas. Maybe she should have been paying more attention than just assuming he was flirting with Elizabeth all the time.
“Help with what?” She takes the cards anyway. As per usual, they dissolve upon contact with her skin. The burst of power, too, is a pretty normal thing. The name of the spell settling into her bones is not. “...Salvation?” There’s usually nothing telling her what a new spell does, aside from trying it out. But that name…
The others are shambling up the stairs, in that annoying combination of sleep deprivation and Persona overuse that makes concentration impossible. Aigis is looking back at them, but even she will eventually be overcome by the need to rest.
Hopefully, this isn’t before Minato inevitably collapses on top of her. “You should give it a try.” He already sounds short of breath. Is it because of the battle, or because he’s dying? There’s no good way to ask. “Someone needs to tell him that the world isn’t ending… So he doesn’t have an excuse for sleeping in anymore.”
…If she leaves now, will her brother still be alive when she gets back?
By the time this question no longer has her stunned- or maybe it's just the residual electricity, she's not really sure- the train’s already left without her.
Breaking into a hospital shouldn’t be easy. But then, she’s done it before, albeit under cover of Dark Hour.
A cover she doesn’t have now, and never will again. In that sense, waiting until visiting hours in the morning might have been a better idea, but she isn’t sure what things will look like in the morning. Will she even remember the possibility?
She’s pretty sure she will, since it’s past one AM and her mind is as clear as it can be under those conditions, but that doesn’t mean nothing will happen when she goes to sleep.
Or when she inevitably passes out, because she can already tell how massive the magic cost of the spell is, more than anything she’s cast before that isn’t named Armageddon, and it’s not even Dark Hour. With those things combined… it’s hard to say this has a chance at working.
But it has to. It’s the one thing they haven’t tried.
All that practice from the past few months must have paid off, or maybe kinder gods than Nyx have chosen to take pity on her, because it’s incredibly easy to get to where she needs to be. The nurses on duty must all be busy elsewhere.
Probably dealing with recovering victims of Apathy Syndrome. They’re going to have their hands full with that for a while. No one strictly has to be in this room at a given moment, it doesn’t need anything special. As long as the machines are running.
That makes this easier. Makes it possible.
The possibility shouldn’t be so terrifying.
“...Hey, Shinji, can you hear me?” She asks him this every time. He never responds. Some part of her always hopes that this time will be different. “I’ve got something new to try. Igor- have I told you about him?- He said me and Toto shouldn’t have anything outside our grasp, now.”
She knows those words can’t be taken entirely literally. If they could, she wouldn’t have taken a lightning bolt to the face so her brother can go be stupid and self-sacrificing.
But she’s seventeen years old, her brother is dying, and her boyfriend is in a coma. She is going to pump herself up as much as possible just so she doesn’t have to think of the alternative.
The Dark Hour is gone. But she raises her Evoker to her temple and pulls the trigger anyway. Her brother used the power of the Universe to stop Nyx from ending the world. Compared to that… this should be easy.
“Sandalphon.” She closes her eyes, so the light that naturally emanates from her Persona won’t leave her blind. She’s pretty sure someone’s going to notice she’s here. “Salvation.’
Minako wants to say she’s good at magic. Minato charges ahead, waving a sword around, and she brings up the rear with whatever Fuuka says the enemy is weak to. She’s cast Mahamaon, Thunder Reign, Mediarahan, Samarecarm. Armageddon, once, after which she immediately passed out from the backlash and woke up in the Tartarus lobby fifteen minutes later.
Theo still hasn’t let her live that down.
Salvation is… a bit different. There’s a base magic cost, of course, everything has that unless it’s called Armageddon.
But there’s the option of putting in more. The upper cost is… definitely something she could pay, if it were the Dark Hour and she hadn’t just spent most of the night preventing the apocalypse. Unfortunately, neither of those things are true.
That isn’t going to stop her.
There are two types of spells, focused and widespread. It takes Minako about five seconds to realize that Salvation is a widespread spell, which is probably going to have consequences for whoever’s in the room next door, but it’s not like that’d be the first unexplained recovery to happen at this hospital. Five more ticks of her watch, and it dimly occurs to her that spells don’t usually take this long to cast.
Five more ticks. She wonders how she hasn’t run out of magic yet. By this point, she should not be conscious.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
“...Mina?” Oh. She knows that voice.
With that realization comes the slightly more urgent one about her head being about to come into contact with the hospital floor.
…On the bright side, at least it’ll be easy to get a doctor.
Her head erupts into pain, and she loses consciousness for the second time that night.