[fanfiction] The Long Road [1/?]
Title: The Long Road
Part: [1/?]
Fandom: Persona 3/Persona 4 crossover; elements borrowed from Persona: Trinity Soul.
Characters: NanakoxKen; ensemble
Warnings: None.
Summary: Seven years after the Fall is prevented, the Dark Hour appears once again. Ten years after the Midnight Channel goes off the air, Souji boards a train to go back to Inaba - and never arrives.
Notes: Uh, I don't even know if it counts as fanfic as a whole. More like...a retelling of events leading up to Rush Back and beyond. So maybe, notes?
Spoilers for Persona 3 and Persona 4.
-
She's fourteen when she first wakes up to a sea of sickly green moonlight, to the puddle of blood in her floor, and to the coffins out in the street. Horrible dream, she thinks, going back under her covers and willing herself to go back to sleep - willing herself to ignore the shadows moving in a corner.
-
On the first day of high school, she makes the acquaintance of the girl living across the street - pale, monochrome, except for the crimson and pink irises of her eyes. She's standing off into a corner nearest the stairs, looking particularly lost as a couple of senior girls whisper about her loudly, and Nanako marches up to her and tells the seniors to scram. Injustice of any kind was something she couldn't tolerate, and who the hell cared if the tormentors were bigger than her?
The day ends with the both of them nursing a split lip and with a spectacular black eye apiece. It also ends with them being friends.
"It's weird," Ishiguro Anami - Nami-chan - mutters over the phone two nights later. "Is it because - "
"It's a shitty way to treat someone else," Nanako replies, careful to keep her voice down; her father wouldn't take too lightly to her swearing. "They'll get used to it."
"You'd think they don't know what being an albino is," comes the pained reply, and she blinks her flashlight twice. Another smudge of light answers from across the street, and soft laughter filters through phone lines.
"Because they're stupid," she manages to get out between giggles, and they bid goodnight to each other.
-
Ted - oh, she remembers him. He helped out, sometimes, at Junes, but that's the extent that she knows. It's so hazy that she can't even remember how old he was back then; it's that he was friends with Souji's crowd, and that's that.
So it's a surprise that she runs into him early in the school year, standing in the middle of the corridor and stopping traffic by asking girls out. Honestly.
-
Yuuta's starting high school as well, in the same class, and Nanako loses no time in intoducing Nami and Ted and him to each other. Yuuta looks half-scared of the girl, and Ted - well, Ted.
Ted just froze there where he sat, octopi-hotdog falling sadly from his chopsticks to his rice, while Nanako and Nami beamed twin smiles. Weighing, calculating; it was a look that no first-year student should have - and then Ted asked Nami out on a date.
The girl just - stared - and then turned as red as she could (which was saying much, since she did have skin as pale as chalk), before chucking her can of coffee at Ted's head and stomping off.
"Whoa," Yuuta said, awed, handing over a couple of paper napkins when Ted started complaining that Nami broke his nose.
-
Ted won't ask her on a date, for that matter. When asked, he just shivers, and the rose he pins on his breast seems to shrivel up.
Not that she's insulted, or something. Whatever, it's Ted.
-
She's fifteen when she first heads off on a solo vacation trip to where Souji currently teaches - Iwadotai, city of bright promise and twinkling lights and more importantly, her cousin - and she promptly gets lost. Not her fault that her sense of direction is named Dad and left behind in rural (still, really, Yosuke insists) Inaba.
She wanders around, and she won't even call Souji, because her arrival was supposed to be a surprise; she's the one to go to him, instead of the opposite. Nanako ends up resting on a bench in the still-alive-by-this-hour-wow Pawlonia Mall, and when she opens her eyes once again, there's blood by her feet and a coffin standing next to her.
Nightmare? She gives herself a bruise and she still doesn't wake up.
It feels familiar, somehow, from her childhood. She remembers running along TV tower supports and hiding when the shadows come alive across the corner; of just resting beside a dais of blue marble and watching the flowers sway until her big brother came. She was delirious back then, her father had told her, because she had been very sick and almost ended up dying in the hospital - and the records that Chie-san had showed her worked out perfectly.
Nanako didn't like fuzzy stuff, however. She had a sharp eye for facts and a knack for the logical side of things, so she squared her shoulders, took out some mace, and walked around the Mall. What the hell was going on - ?
It isn't a trick of the light. She whirls around, and the shadow behind her blinks bright yellow beetle-eyes. She sprays it with mace, and it doesn't even flinch.
Heart pounding and mind being an endless series of exclamation points, Nanako looks around for something to fight it with, and she takes a nearby chair and brandishes it. Whatever this is, she sure isn't letting it touch her.
The shadow lunges forward. She swings with all her might, and sends it flying.
Where does she go from here, she wonders frantically. She's lost and tired and goddamn terrified; she has no idea how to get to where Souji's apartment building is. It's unlikely that she can ask anyone for directions, seeing that all she can see are coffins spaced unevenly on pavement.
But she's stubborn. She'll shoulder on, and she grits her teeth and starts walking.
There's another shadow coming alive in front of her, oozing from around a stall with stringy black arms waving high in invisible wind. It's pulsing red and violet and adrenalin courses through her system. Better head it off, better catch than be caught off-guard, and with a yell she charges towards it.
The hands stop the chair dead and crush it into splinters of metal and plastic; Nanako finds herself staring into the face of certain injury (or death, or whatever that would hurt). To hell with it, she screams, and there's a faint tug - have fun! - on her sleeve before bright light sears through her closed eyes.
Something echoes within her; something large and majestic and warm and familiar. There's a tarot card glowing faintly blue right at her eye level, spinning Justice, and by instinct (by memory) she holds her palm under it and crushes it into slivers of light.
Hama - !
The memories of her childhood flood back.
So does the rush of power, and the next thing she knows is that there are footsteps running towards her and that the world's pitching up and down and that everything blacks out.
-
The Iwadotai Chief-of-Police is watching over her when she wakes. Akihiko Sanada, she learns later, had the same ability as hers, and was willing to give her training to control it. He was part of the Agency - a complex series of networks spread across Port Island - dedicated to finding Persona users and protecting them. A rare breed, he had said jokingly, as he handed her the directions to Souji's apartment.
She tried to absorb as much information as she could, but as expected, the technicalities were held from her. Too young, she thought they thought which was almost certainly true, and no matter how she sulked she was just patted on the head like a good girl and sent on her way.
Nanako pretends not to notice that she's seen her complete profile being refreshed on-screen, nor the fact that she doesn't miss the horrified expression on Sanada-san's face when she mentions the same thing happening back home.
-
Souji yells at her for a couple of minutes when she arrives, waving meekly, at his apartment. His anger doesn't last long, however, and he asks her what kind of cake she wants when he comes back.
-
Well, Sanada-san did promise that he'd train her, but she didn't know that it would be by proxy, and it would come in the form of a baby-faced, mild-mannered Gekkoukan High junior named Ken Amada.
Amada calls her on her phone - of course they'd know her phone number - and arranges to meet at eleven-thirty, in front of the apartment complex. Nanako doesn't have any difficulties crawling around fire escapes, and even Amada has to look impressed when she arrives, on the dot.
He despairs when the Dark Hour - that was what they called it - doesn't show; how could he teach her when there wasn't any opponent? (and she was really kind of weirded out by how Amada could switch from zen to rage in less that a second) and an idea hits Nanako so hard she reels.
"Can you find me a widescreen TV, Amada-san?" she asks, and he looks bewildered.
-
It was reckless, to go on a vague memory and an even blurrier sense of direction, but the place was right and the moving shadows weak.
Amada's Persona was named Kala-Nemi, and it almost gave Nanako a coronary when he first summoned her. Finding someone shooting himself in the head was bound to do that, and she had almost knocked the Evoker out of his grip.
"What the fuck," she muttered, and he just shrugged at her before casting a Hama on a shadow.
It also helped that she could pick her way back through the dense fog - by listening to a little kid's voice who told her when to turn right or left or go anywhere. Amada...didn't need to know that, anyway.
-
Souji never notices the Dark Hour, for some reason. Nanako doesn't tell him about it, either.
-
The Dark Hour always appears on a full moon now, Amada says, the both of them chugging coffees that he had the foresight to bring. (Stupid electricity blackout, no lights anywhere, ugh.) Her knuckledusters bump against the handle of his spear, to make a point, as she asks Amada how long he's known he can summon his Persona.
(Now? So - back then - ?)
A tired expression crosses his face. "Seven years."
Ten years old, she calculates mentally, and the coffee stops cold in her throat. As Amada asks her is she's all right, she decides to stop asking questions for a while.
-
She has to come back to Inaba; her classes are starting up again. Amada promises to keep in touch.
As Nanako boards her train she decides that the thought is something that she's going to look forward to.
-
Barely a month passes after she had come back when something makes her wake up. It's an uneasy feeling, and she nearly trips when she hurriedly slips into a coat and boots and crawls out her window.
When she looks back into her room, she really, really hopes she's just imagined the boy sitting on her bed.
-
"Jeez, you're a moron," she chides Amada as the Diarama does its work. "Didn't it ever occur to you to ask for directions?"
He went into the TV by himself, contrary to what Nanako had drilled into his head. Sanada needed a scout, he said, and Nanako hit him upside the head, causing the both of them to wince. Predictably, he got lost about five minutes after stepping in.
That feeling told her to head straight for the electronics shop at Junes and dive straight in - it was no less clear in her mind that she'd be able to find Amada, wherever he was. And she did, miraculously, (The voice told her so.) catching his arms while he stumbled blindly in the fog with a large bruise blooming across his ribs.
That's a start. Nanako carefully tells him how long and which directions he should go, and he disappears off into the fog, back into Iwadotai.
She climbs back out of the TV, in Junes, and Ted's waiting for her when she comes out.
Ted - well, to put it succintly - Ted is pissed. Nanako's not supposed to remember anything, he says, while he wrings his hands and shoots her glances like she's betrayed him or something.
"Amada was in trouble!" she hisses. "He'd be eaten by Shadows if I didn't get to him."
The blond stops pacing at the word Shadow, and the look he gives her is so shocked that Nanako would've laughed if the situation wasn't so serious.
-
The next time they meet in her dungeon, they're three instead of two, and Ted lends her a pair of his claws. The both of them are stunned when the glasses Ted hands them clear up the fog instantly.
Amada looks lost when Nanako introduces him to Ted. A few hours later, they're both talking avidly about Featherman Ranger R, and debating on the probability that this ranger would appear before the current season ended. Boys.
-
Nami turns into something of a legend; once the boys get over the fact that she was an albino, they start to fall all over themselves to ask her out. The girl herself shoots them down, however, with a few well-placed acid words and for the more stubborn, a more physical warning.
Yuuta's been acting really strangely around her as well; the normally energetic boy is skitterish around her. Nanako frequently wonders if there was something that she had done, or something that Yuuta had done, but a quick Interrogation (as the first-years and sometimes, the senpais, call it) had cleared that up.
Persona training's going really good. Ted says he isn't so rusty anymore, and Amada pounces on that statement and they go off into a corner while Nanako checks out a treasure chest.
-
Ted asks her if she's told Souji - or Chie-san, or Yukiko-san, or anyone else. Nanako stares at him. Why should she? They've probably forgotten all about it.
-
It's Amada's high school graduation, Sanada-san tells her, and Nanako calls him to say congratulations. He's graduated near the top of his class, captain of the soccer team, youngest president of the Student Council. And of course, specialist of nightly forays into the TV world, on top of all that. Overachieving dork.
Nanako tells him so, in the middle of the call. He sounds quite surprised that she calls, but his voice is warm and grateful.
-
Amada - Ken - calls her in the middle of lunch during her sixteenth birthday, and tells her to meet up with him in the TV world.
What he didn't tell her was that he was waiting with a brand-new set of claws, a set of hair-ties, and a birthday cake. The equipment's from the Agency, he explains, and the ties were from a certain Aigis, but the cake was all him.
Ken sees Inaba for the first time, and they celebrate her birthday (a day late, who cares) on the banks of the Samegawa, with candles and everything and when their eyes meet, Nanako's breath catches in her throat.
She asks about his plans for university, and he answers that he had already gotten into Port Island University, and was waiting for a reply from Tokyo U, among others. Don't worry, he says, I'll still be able to train with you, and she kind of wants to shake his shoulders and ask if that's what just she really is. He, in turn, says that the moon and the stars aren't this clear in the city, and says that she's lucky.
Nanako stares at him for a moment.
"Yeah, well," she points at a star near the horizon, "Pretty lucky. I can always see my mom's star twinkling like crazy."
Ken gives her a look, before leaning back on the grass. "Maybe your mom is having tea with my parents, then."
There's something solidifying between them, and Nanako just...stares at his profile, slowly feeling more mortified by the second. The jab didn't work, and it was only a matter of time before Ken turned...rage-y on her. Or something. Because death was a subject not many people dared to breach, and this, in jest -
"Hope they're having fun, huh?" he murmurs, turning his head to look at her and smiling faintly - and then she knows it's all right.
He walks her home. Only not, because the Dark Hour's pale moon still shines above them, and it's more like of a precaution. She doesn't care, anyway, if only to remember that secretly pleased smile Ken thought he hid well.
-
"Well, someone's happy," Nami sing-songs, plunking down a box of orange juice on Nanako's desk, and beside her, Yuuta shuffles his feet. "Seeing anyone, Na-chan?"
Nanako sends a practiced deadpan look at her. "No."
The other girl elbows her childhood friend in the ribs, and he scratches his head. "What?"
-
Yuuta asks to see her, alone, on the rooftop; Nami's conspiring with Ted hasn't gone unnoticed. When Nanako looks back over her shoulder she can just see the quick dart of grey and blond behind one of the generators, and she sighs.
Yuuta's one of the boys who gave her something back for White Day, she remembers. She's not blind to see what's going to happen next, and she's surprised at the strength behind her mindset.
"Nanako, I - "
She squints at his silhouette, sighs, and steps closer.
"Yuu-kun...I..." Pause. He's looking at her with an unreadable expression on his face. "I can't."
His face crumples, and her heart aches, pounds unbearably when it does. When he asks, a little too casually, Nanako has to commend him for keeping his cool. "Is there someone else?"
She nods, a little hesitantly at first, but the thought takes firm shape in her mind and she nods proudly in the end.
-
The next dungeon run - this time, Rise-san's (and Ken still can't believe that she's on a first-name basis with a former idol) - and she starts feeling jumpy. And awkward. Because now that she knows how she feels, and with her stupid brain coming to a halt whenever Ken asks if she's feeling okay, she can't concentrate.
Never mind that the dungeon is a complete parody of a love hotel. She just stamps it down and keeps on slaying Shadows, anyway.
-
Chie-san got promoted to Junior detective, and Nanako was overjoyed. She was her favourite...not-aunt, if there was such a term, and when she asked the police officer to give her lessons in taekwondo, Chie just beamed at her and got straight to work.
Her father didn't think it odd - she was bound to pick up Satonaka's ways, anyway, with the inordinate amount of time she spent at the station. What she had trouble explaining, however, was the fact that she kept coming home with deadly weapons, pieces of armour, and vials of potion. Not that she actually told her father that they were real.
She was a master of the need-to-know basis, after all - so she just told him she joined drama club.
-
She spends her vacation at Port Island again, and she meets Aigis - the one who gave her the hair ties that she was wearing - for the first time. Nanako's stunned to find out she's an android (what the hell was the Agency doing...?). She's even more shocked when she finds out that she can summon a Persona of her own.
-
Naoto-san invites Souji - and her, by extension - to a small academic gathering, something of her cousin's business. It's a coat-and-tie affair, and since Souji is bringing Rise-san, he tells her she can call up one of her friends to go to Iwadotai, and that all expenses will be paid by the Shirogane Group.
Shirogane Group! Nanako's head spins. Was Naoto-san's family that powerful?
On the other hand, Nanako has the perfect idea of who to bring to such an occasion. She picks up her phone, and dials for Ken. God knows he's going to round on her - but he can't do that if he doesn't know what for.
Ken arrives, ringing Souji's doorbell for the first time, bewildered at her invitation. Nanako lunges for the intercom, but Souji arrives there first, and it's a good ten minutes of questioning before Ken can even come up. When the boy arrives at the front door, Souji gives her a Look and she sulkily retreats to her room.
An hour later, Nanako comes out, only to find Ken gone and Souji with a harried look on his face.
-
The next day, Ken rings the doorbell again. And the day after that. It continues for a week, until her cousin finally, grudgingly, allows him to come in and talk to her freely.
Souji would make a terrifying father, someday, she muses, and Ken laughs at her prediction.
-
Mitsuru Kirijo was there at the banquet, and Ken points her out. Nanako stares at the two heads of the Groups - Kirijo, Shirogane - as they sign a mutual contract, and she somehow, somewhere, she could feel wheels starting to turn.
Sanada-san was there as well, together with Aigis-san, who had concealed her machinery perfectly. Nanako doesn't dare introduce them to Souji, since it would be highly suspicious for a girl of her age to know such powerful people, but she does introduce Ken to Naoto-san and Rise-san. Ken introduces her to Mitsuru-san (and it was Nanako's turn to be shocked that he's on first-name terms with one of the most powerful people in Japan) and one of her chief technicians, Fuuka-san. He adds that he should introduce her to Junpei-san and Yukari-sensei and -
He cuts off there. Naoto calls them both over for social pleasantries.
The function ends well into the night. Souji tells Ken that he can crash on the couch if it's too late to go back home, before disappearing into his room Rise. Nanako snorts at that - they've been out for much, much later when training, and he always manages to drag himself back to his apartment - and brings Ken and herself a mug of coffee. She hopes Souji's room is soundproof; she really doesn't need to know what he's going to get up to. (Literally.)
Ken lolls his head lazily as he stretches on the couch, and she rolls her eyes as she sits down on the carpet, sandwiched between him and the coffee table. They reach out for the same mug, and their hands touch.
He looks at her. She looks at him.
And then Ken places his palms on either side of her face and kisses her.
Part: [1/?]
Fandom: Persona 3/Persona 4 crossover; elements borrowed from Persona: Trinity Soul.
Characters: NanakoxKen; ensemble
Warnings: None.
Summary: Seven years after the Fall is prevented, the Dark Hour appears once again. Ten years after the Midnight Channel goes off the air, Souji boards a train to go back to Inaba - and never arrives.
Notes: Uh, I don't even know if it counts as fanfic as a whole. More like...a retelling of events leading up to Rush Back and beyond. So maybe, notes?
Spoilers for Persona 3 and Persona 4.
-
She's fourteen when she first wakes up to a sea of sickly green moonlight, to the puddle of blood in her floor, and to the coffins out in the street. Horrible dream, she thinks, going back under her covers and willing herself to go back to sleep - willing herself to ignore the shadows moving in a corner.
-
On the first day of high school, she makes the acquaintance of the girl living across the street - pale, monochrome, except for the crimson and pink irises of her eyes. She's standing off into a corner nearest the stairs, looking particularly lost as a couple of senior girls whisper about her loudly, and Nanako marches up to her and tells the seniors to scram. Injustice of any kind was something she couldn't tolerate, and who the hell cared if the tormentors were bigger than her?
The day ends with the both of them nursing a split lip and with a spectacular black eye apiece. It also ends with them being friends.
"It's weird," Ishiguro Anami - Nami-chan - mutters over the phone two nights later. "Is it because - "
"It's a shitty way to treat someone else," Nanako replies, careful to keep her voice down; her father wouldn't take too lightly to her swearing. "They'll get used to it."
"You'd think they don't know what being an albino is," comes the pained reply, and she blinks her flashlight twice. Another smudge of light answers from across the street, and soft laughter filters through phone lines.
"Because they're stupid," she manages to get out between giggles, and they bid goodnight to each other.
-
Ted - oh, she remembers him. He helped out, sometimes, at Junes, but that's the extent that she knows. It's so hazy that she can't even remember how old he was back then; it's that he was friends with Souji's crowd, and that's that.
So it's a surprise that she runs into him early in the school year, standing in the middle of the corridor and stopping traffic by asking girls out. Honestly.
-
Yuuta's starting high school as well, in the same class, and Nanako loses no time in intoducing Nami and Ted and him to each other. Yuuta looks half-scared of the girl, and Ted - well, Ted.
Ted just froze there where he sat, octopi-hotdog falling sadly from his chopsticks to his rice, while Nanako and Nami beamed twin smiles. Weighing, calculating; it was a look that no first-year student should have - and then Ted asked Nami out on a date.
The girl just - stared - and then turned as red as she could (which was saying much, since she did have skin as pale as chalk), before chucking her can of coffee at Ted's head and stomping off.
"Whoa," Yuuta said, awed, handing over a couple of paper napkins when Ted started complaining that Nami broke his nose.
-
Ted won't ask her on a date, for that matter. When asked, he just shivers, and the rose he pins on his breast seems to shrivel up.
Not that she's insulted, or something. Whatever, it's Ted.
-
She's fifteen when she first heads off on a solo vacation trip to where Souji currently teaches - Iwadotai, city of bright promise and twinkling lights and more importantly, her cousin - and she promptly gets lost. Not her fault that her sense of direction is named Dad and left behind in rural (still, really, Yosuke insists) Inaba.
She wanders around, and she won't even call Souji, because her arrival was supposed to be a surprise; she's the one to go to him, instead of the opposite. Nanako ends up resting on a bench in the still-alive-by-this-hour-wow Pawlonia Mall, and when she opens her eyes once again, there's blood by her feet and a coffin standing next to her.
Nightmare? She gives herself a bruise and she still doesn't wake up.
It feels familiar, somehow, from her childhood. She remembers running along TV tower supports and hiding when the shadows come alive across the corner; of just resting beside a dais of blue marble and watching the flowers sway until her big brother came. She was delirious back then, her father had told her, because she had been very sick and almost ended up dying in the hospital - and the records that Chie-san had showed her worked out perfectly.
Nanako didn't like fuzzy stuff, however. She had a sharp eye for facts and a knack for the logical side of things, so she squared her shoulders, took out some mace, and walked around the Mall. What the hell was going on - ?
It isn't a trick of the light. She whirls around, and the shadow behind her blinks bright yellow beetle-eyes. She sprays it with mace, and it doesn't even flinch.
Heart pounding and mind being an endless series of exclamation points, Nanako looks around for something to fight it with, and she takes a nearby chair and brandishes it. Whatever this is, she sure isn't letting it touch her.
The shadow lunges forward. She swings with all her might, and sends it flying.
Where does she go from here, she wonders frantically. She's lost and tired and goddamn terrified; she has no idea how to get to where Souji's apartment building is. It's unlikely that she can ask anyone for directions, seeing that all she can see are coffins spaced unevenly on pavement.
But she's stubborn. She'll shoulder on, and she grits her teeth and starts walking.
There's another shadow coming alive in front of her, oozing from around a stall with stringy black arms waving high in invisible wind. It's pulsing red and violet and adrenalin courses through her system. Better head it off, better catch than be caught off-guard, and with a yell she charges towards it.
The hands stop the chair dead and crush it into splinters of metal and plastic; Nanako finds herself staring into the face of certain injury (or death, or whatever that would hurt). To hell with it, she screams, and there's a faint tug - have fun! - on her sleeve before bright light sears through her closed eyes.
Something echoes within her; something large and majestic and warm and familiar. There's a tarot card glowing faintly blue right at her eye level, spinning Justice, and by instinct (by memory) she holds her palm under it and crushes it into slivers of light.
Hama - !
The memories of her childhood flood back.
So does the rush of power, and the next thing she knows is that there are footsteps running towards her and that the world's pitching up and down and that everything blacks out.
-
The Iwadotai Chief-of-Police is watching over her when she wakes. Akihiko Sanada, she learns later, had the same ability as hers, and was willing to give her training to control it. He was part of the Agency - a complex series of networks spread across Port Island - dedicated to finding Persona users and protecting them. A rare breed, he had said jokingly, as he handed her the directions to Souji's apartment.
She tried to absorb as much information as she could, but as expected, the technicalities were held from her. Too young, she thought they thought which was almost certainly true, and no matter how she sulked she was just patted on the head like a good girl and sent on her way.
Nanako pretends not to notice that she's seen her complete profile being refreshed on-screen, nor the fact that she doesn't miss the horrified expression on Sanada-san's face when she mentions the same thing happening back home.
-
Souji yells at her for a couple of minutes when she arrives, waving meekly, at his apartment. His anger doesn't last long, however, and he asks her what kind of cake she wants when he comes back.
-
Well, Sanada-san did promise that he'd train her, but she didn't know that it would be by proxy, and it would come in the form of a baby-faced, mild-mannered Gekkoukan High junior named Ken Amada.
Amada calls her on her phone - of course they'd know her phone number - and arranges to meet at eleven-thirty, in front of the apartment complex. Nanako doesn't have any difficulties crawling around fire escapes, and even Amada has to look impressed when she arrives, on the dot.
He despairs when the Dark Hour - that was what they called it - doesn't show; how could he teach her when there wasn't any opponent? (and she was really kind of weirded out by how Amada could switch from zen to rage in less that a second) and an idea hits Nanako so hard she reels.
"Can you find me a widescreen TV, Amada-san?" she asks, and he looks bewildered.
-
It was reckless, to go on a vague memory and an even blurrier sense of direction, but the place was right and the moving shadows weak.
Amada's Persona was named Kala-Nemi, and it almost gave Nanako a coronary when he first summoned her. Finding someone shooting himself in the head was bound to do that, and she had almost knocked the Evoker out of his grip.
"What the fuck," she muttered, and he just shrugged at her before casting a Hama on a shadow.
It also helped that she could pick her way back through the dense fog - by listening to a little kid's voice who told her when to turn right or left or go anywhere. Amada...didn't need to know that, anyway.
-
Souji never notices the Dark Hour, for some reason. Nanako doesn't tell him about it, either.
-
The Dark Hour always appears on a full moon now, Amada says, the both of them chugging coffees that he had the foresight to bring. (Stupid electricity blackout, no lights anywhere, ugh.) Her knuckledusters bump against the handle of his spear, to make a point, as she asks Amada how long he's known he can summon his Persona.
(Now? So - back then - ?)
A tired expression crosses his face. "Seven years."
Ten years old, she calculates mentally, and the coffee stops cold in her throat. As Amada asks her is she's all right, she decides to stop asking questions for a while.
-
She has to come back to Inaba; her classes are starting up again. Amada promises to keep in touch.
As Nanako boards her train she decides that the thought is something that she's going to look forward to.
-
Barely a month passes after she had come back when something makes her wake up. It's an uneasy feeling, and she nearly trips when she hurriedly slips into a coat and boots and crawls out her window.
When she looks back into her room, she really, really hopes she's just imagined the boy sitting on her bed.
-
"Jeez, you're a moron," she chides Amada as the Diarama does its work. "Didn't it ever occur to you to ask for directions?"
He went into the TV by himself, contrary to what Nanako had drilled into his head. Sanada needed a scout, he said, and Nanako hit him upside the head, causing the both of them to wince. Predictably, he got lost about five minutes after stepping in.
That feeling told her to head straight for the electronics shop at Junes and dive straight in - it was no less clear in her mind that she'd be able to find Amada, wherever he was. And she did, miraculously, (The voice told her so.) catching his arms while he stumbled blindly in the fog with a large bruise blooming across his ribs.
That's a start. Nanako carefully tells him how long and which directions he should go, and he disappears off into the fog, back into Iwadotai.
She climbs back out of the TV, in Junes, and Ted's waiting for her when she comes out.
Ted - well, to put it succintly - Ted is pissed. Nanako's not supposed to remember anything, he says, while he wrings his hands and shoots her glances like she's betrayed him or something.
"Amada was in trouble!" she hisses. "He'd be eaten by Shadows if I didn't get to him."
The blond stops pacing at the word Shadow, and the look he gives her is so shocked that Nanako would've laughed if the situation wasn't so serious.
-
The next time they meet in her dungeon, they're three instead of two, and Ted lends her a pair of his claws. The both of them are stunned when the glasses Ted hands them clear up the fog instantly.
Amada looks lost when Nanako introduces him to Ted. A few hours later, they're both talking avidly about Featherman Ranger R, and debating on the probability that this ranger would appear before the current season ended. Boys.
-
Nami turns into something of a legend; once the boys get over the fact that she was an albino, they start to fall all over themselves to ask her out. The girl herself shoots them down, however, with a few well-placed acid words and for the more stubborn, a more physical warning.
Yuuta's been acting really strangely around her as well; the normally energetic boy is skitterish around her. Nanako frequently wonders if there was something that she had done, or something that Yuuta had done, but a quick Interrogation (as the first-years and sometimes, the senpais, call it) had cleared that up.
Persona training's going really good. Ted says he isn't so rusty anymore, and Amada pounces on that statement and they go off into a corner while Nanako checks out a treasure chest.
-
Ted asks her if she's told Souji - or Chie-san, or Yukiko-san, or anyone else. Nanako stares at him. Why should she? They've probably forgotten all about it.
-
It's Amada's high school graduation, Sanada-san tells her, and Nanako calls him to say congratulations. He's graduated near the top of his class, captain of the soccer team, youngest president of the Student Council. And of course, specialist of nightly forays into the TV world, on top of all that. Overachieving dork.
Nanako tells him so, in the middle of the call. He sounds quite surprised that she calls, but his voice is warm and grateful.
-
Amada - Ken - calls her in the middle of lunch during her sixteenth birthday, and tells her to meet up with him in the TV world.
What he didn't tell her was that he was waiting with a brand-new set of claws, a set of hair-ties, and a birthday cake. The equipment's from the Agency, he explains, and the ties were from a certain Aigis, but the cake was all him.
Ken sees Inaba for the first time, and they celebrate her birthday (a day late, who cares) on the banks of the Samegawa, with candles and everything and when their eyes meet, Nanako's breath catches in her throat.
She asks about his plans for university, and he answers that he had already gotten into Port Island University, and was waiting for a reply from Tokyo U, among others. Don't worry, he says, I'll still be able to train with you, and she kind of wants to shake his shoulders and ask if that's what just she really is. He, in turn, says that the moon and the stars aren't this clear in the city, and says that she's lucky.
Nanako stares at him for a moment.
"Yeah, well," she points at a star near the horizon, "Pretty lucky. I can always see my mom's star twinkling like crazy."
Ken gives her a look, before leaning back on the grass. "Maybe your mom is having tea with my parents, then."
There's something solidifying between them, and Nanako just...stares at his profile, slowly feeling more mortified by the second. The jab didn't work, and it was only a matter of time before Ken turned...rage-y on her. Or something. Because death was a subject not many people dared to breach, and this, in jest -
"Hope they're having fun, huh?" he murmurs, turning his head to look at her and smiling faintly - and then she knows it's all right.
He walks her home. Only not, because the Dark Hour's pale moon still shines above them, and it's more like of a precaution. She doesn't care, anyway, if only to remember that secretly pleased smile Ken thought he hid well.
-
"Well, someone's happy," Nami sing-songs, plunking down a box of orange juice on Nanako's desk, and beside her, Yuuta shuffles his feet. "Seeing anyone, Na-chan?"
Nanako sends a practiced deadpan look at her. "No."
The other girl elbows her childhood friend in the ribs, and he scratches his head. "What?"
-
Yuuta asks to see her, alone, on the rooftop; Nami's conspiring with Ted hasn't gone unnoticed. When Nanako looks back over her shoulder she can just see the quick dart of grey and blond behind one of the generators, and she sighs.
Yuuta's one of the boys who gave her something back for White Day, she remembers. She's not blind to see what's going to happen next, and she's surprised at the strength behind her mindset.
"Nanako, I - "
She squints at his silhouette, sighs, and steps closer.
"Yuu-kun...I..." Pause. He's looking at her with an unreadable expression on his face. "I can't."
His face crumples, and her heart aches, pounds unbearably when it does. When he asks, a little too casually, Nanako has to commend him for keeping his cool. "Is there someone else?"
She nods, a little hesitantly at first, but the thought takes firm shape in her mind and she nods proudly in the end.
-
The next dungeon run - this time, Rise-san's (and Ken still can't believe that she's on a first-name basis with a former idol) - and she starts feeling jumpy. And awkward. Because now that she knows how she feels, and with her stupid brain coming to a halt whenever Ken asks if she's feeling okay, she can't concentrate.
Never mind that the dungeon is a complete parody of a love hotel. She just stamps it down and keeps on slaying Shadows, anyway.
-
Chie-san got promoted to Junior detective, and Nanako was overjoyed. She was her favourite...not-aunt, if there was such a term, and when she asked the police officer to give her lessons in taekwondo, Chie just beamed at her and got straight to work.
Her father didn't think it odd - she was bound to pick up Satonaka's ways, anyway, with the inordinate amount of time she spent at the station. What she had trouble explaining, however, was the fact that she kept coming home with deadly weapons, pieces of armour, and vials of potion. Not that she actually told her father that they were real.
She was a master of the need-to-know basis, after all - so she just told him she joined drama club.
-
She spends her vacation at Port Island again, and she meets Aigis - the one who gave her the hair ties that she was wearing - for the first time. Nanako's stunned to find out she's an android (what the hell was the Agency doing...?). She's even more shocked when she finds out that she can summon a Persona of her own.
-
Naoto-san invites Souji - and her, by extension - to a small academic gathering, something of her cousin's business. It's a coat-and-tie affair, and since Souji is bringing Rise-san, he tells her she can call up one of her friends to go to Iwadotai, and that all expenses will be paid by the Shirogane Group.
Shirogane Group! Nanako's head spins. Was Naoto-san's family that powerful?
On the other hand, Nanako has the perfect idea of who to bring to such an occasion. She picks up her phone, and dials for Ken. God knows he's going to round on her - but he can't do that if he doesn't know what for.
Ken arrives, ringing Souji's doorbell for the first time, bewildered at her invitation. Nanako lunges for the intercom, but Souji arrives there first, and it's a good ten minutes of questioning before Ken can even come up. When the boy arrives at the front door, Souji gives her a Look and she sulkily retreats to her room.
An hour later, Nanako comes out, only to find Ken gone and Souji with a harried look on his face.
-
The next day, Ken rings the doorbell again. And the day after that. It continues for a week, until her cousin finally, grudgingly, allows him to come in and talk to her freely.
Souji would make a terrifying father, someday, she muses, and Ken laughs at her prediction.
-
Mitsuru Kirijo was there at the banquet, and Ken points her out. Nanako stares at the two heads of the Groups - Kirijo, Shirogane - as they sign a mutual contract, and she somehow, somewhere, she could feel wheels starting to turn.
Sanada-san was there as well, together with Aigis-san, who had concealed her machinery perfectly. Nanako doesn't dare introduce them to Souji, since it would be highly suspicious for a girl of her age to know such powerful people, but she does introduce Ken to Naoto-san and Rise-san. Ken introduces her to Mitsuru-san (and it was Nanako's turn to be shocked that he's on first-name terms with one of the most powerful people in Japan) and one of her chief technicians, Fuuka-san. He adds that he should introduce her to Junpei-san and Yukari-sensei and -
He cuts off there. Naoto calls them both over for social pleasantries.
The function ends well into the night. Souji tells Ken that he can crash on the couch if it's too late to go back home, before disappearing into his room Rise. Nanako snorts at that - they've been out for much, much later when training, and he always manages to drag himself back to his apartment - and brings Ken and herself a mug of coffee. She hopes Souji's room is soundproof; she really doesn't need to know what he's going to get up to. (Literally.)
Ken lolls his head lazily as he stretches on the couch, and she rolls her eyes as she sits down on the carpet, sandwiched between him and the coffee table. They reach out for the same mug, and their hands touch.
He looks at her. She looks at him.
And then Ken places his palms on either side of her face and kisses her.