If someone had asked Chidori Yoshino, back before everything, what she saw herself being when she grew up, she didn't think 'assassin' would have been at the top of the list. She didn't even think it would have made the top fifty of potential professions, if only because she wasn't sure young children even fully realized that assassination was a thing.
And yet, there she was, listening to Jin and Takaya talk about their planned next target.
"We'll need to be extra careful with this one," Jin stated. "I mean, you said he had a Persona?"
"That's what the client told me," Takaya confirmed. Their mysterious client's name had yet to be spoken in any capacity. For all Chidori knew, said client had been made up so Takaya had an excuse to shoot people. It seemed like the sort of thing that he would do, and explained how said client would have known about Personas. "You might recognize the name, actually- Shinjiro Aragaki."
That name sounded familiar, but it took a few moments for Chidori to remember where. Right. He was another Persona User they'd met who'd been having issues with control. Takaya had offered to supply his with Suppressants, he said he'd think about it, and they never saw him again.
Jin blinked. "He's still alive? I thought the Shadows had gotten to him."
"No, he just threw himself on Kirijo's good graces." The utter disdain in Takaya's voice was nothing new- Chidori could feel the same way, sometimes- but something about this was different. Maybe it was just how Takaya seemed to sound that way about everything, these days. Even her, if she couldn't locate one of their targets as quickly as possible.
But has that ever been the only reason?
Chidori blinked back Medea's words. What did it matter if there'd ever been another reason? Everything else that he could have been displeased with was... corrected, in one way or another. Usually with his own personal touch, but there were... exceptions.
She shook her head. Thinking on that could only cause trouble. "What are we being paid?"
"We get to keep having access to Suppressants for the foreseeable future. I wouldn't worry too much about our target, though- apparently, he's given away his Evoker." Takaya didn't sound too upset over the fact that his contact was apparently extorting them.
In hindsight, while this had never been her first career choice, that should still have been a pretty major red flag.
On the night when they were told to strike, the moon was full.
Chidori never knew what to think about full moons. They could be sort of pretty, if a bit boring to try and draw, but it also made the Shadows ornery, and there was something to be said for not having to slosh through a puddle of Maya every time she wanted to go for a midnight stroll.
Still, despite the phase of the moon... she couldn't really sense a lot of Shadows around.
Instead, as she guided Jin and Takaya to their target, she detected a small number of Persona Users, one of them painfully familiar. She sent out another ping, just to be sure, and listened to the answers she got in return.
Hypnos. Moros. Castor. Nemesis. Hermes. Zorro.
The name Mercurius was nowhere to be found, it seemed. But this was another potential variable- Takaya had presumably accepted the job on the assumption that Aragaki would be on his own, and therefore defenseless.
Perhaps Chidori should have warned him. As the Navigator of Strega, it was her duty to make sure that Jin and Takaya were informed of any potential threats, such as the presence of Persona Users who presumably did have their own Evokers, or, in the case of the cat, some other way of using them.
But then she remembered the last time she had spoken to Morgana. And she didn't say anything.
Aragaki was waiting for them when they got there, his friends out of sight. Either Takaya's contact had sold them out, they were supremely unlucky, or he'd learned of their plans some other way. "...Huh. Should have known it'd be you guys he hired. There's not a lot of Persona Users in this city, after all."
"I'm surprised you remembered us," Takaya said. He sounded confident as always. "What with how you vanished after our last conversation."
Shinjiro rolled his eyes. "Trust me, there's no one in town who looks as ridiculous as you do." He had to have been similarly confident to Takaya, to be able to talk back to him like that. Chidori wasn't sure she could have done it. "And again, there's not a lot of Persona Users around here. This isn't exactly Mikage-Cho." What was Mikage-Cho!?
"I suppose that's a fair point." Takaya drew his gun, slowly, as if to savor the moment. "Still, if you know why we're here... let's get on with it, shall we?"
Before he could fire, however, there was a burst of some kind of magic that Chidori didn't recognize, but that made Medea tremble in fear, and in an instant, what he held was no longer a gun, but a large piece of scrap metal that would probably explode if it were to come into contact with a stray spark of some kind. "Not. Happening."
A small boy stepped out into the open, golden eyes staring down the members of Strega.
"Kid..." Aragaki breathed, sounding just as confused as Chidori was, "What did you just do?"
"It doesn't matter," The boy stated. "I'm not letting him kill you again."
The one unfamiliar person here, a boy with a baseball cap, blinked at him. "Again?" There was no answer offered.
Takaya sighed. "...Well. So much for doing this cleanly." As if he'd ever had any intention of doing this cleanly. The victims of his gun, if anything, looked even worse off than some of the ones that they immolated, if only because the immolation victims didn't necessarily leave bodies to look badly off. "Still, it shouldn't be that much more difficult to deal with. A child, a feline of some description, a man without his Evoker... There's only one real threat here."
"...Yeah, about that." Aragaki snapped his fingers, and a Persona burst into existence behind him in a flash of blue light. An impressive display of control, particularly for someone who, a bit over a year ago, had been just as badly off as they were. "Turns out there's a lot of stuff Ikutsuki doesn't know about."
Ikutsuki. The name of the man who, years ago, had made Chidori's life hell. It wasn't the least common surname around, but given how these people were affiliated with the Kirijo Group... "Did you say Ikutsuki?"
"Did-did Takaya never mention who hired you?" The boy sounded more concerned than anything else now. "I guess that explains why you'd work for him, though, you seem a lot smarter than Jin does."
It was probably just a stroke of luck that saved the boy from a messy death at Jin's hands, but whatever it was, Chidori couldn't help but be almost glad for it. If only because, in a sense, he'd given her a compliment.
Besides... he'd also given her something to think about.
"Why are you doing this?" Morgana asked, his tail swishing. "You didn't seem like that kind of person!"
Chidori couldn't look him in the eye. The last time she'd seen him, she'd sent him away for his own safety, because Takaya didn't want anything that would distract her from her job as Strega's Navigator. Before Naganaki Shrine burned to the ground.
"Are you sure?" She asked, quietly. "When did you ever listen to me?" She was pretty sure, by this point, that the cat mostly liked to hear the sound of his own voice.
There was a burst of the unfamiliar magic that the boy used, and she was knocked to the ground, Medea and the power they'd been pulling together dissipating in a flash.
"So, what happened at the shrine, you wanted that?" It was an accusation she'd expected, but one she'd dreaded hearing all the same.
"...Takaya said it was a distraction," She said, quietly, not trying to deny it no matter how false it was. "Distractions have to be removed."
"Do you really believe that?" The boy with the baseball cap asked. She didn't really think of him as a threat- his Persona, Hermes, couldn't actually do her much harm- but Takaya would probably have wanted her to Mudoon him on principle. Some nights, she wasn't sure he would have been satisfied unless he could leave a river of blood in the streets that the Dark Hour wouldn't clear. This was one of them.
"Takaya believes that. He's our leader." He'd taken charge from the start, Jin idolized him... it really was either follow him or get left behind. Even when it took them to the point of apparently accepting jobs from Shuji Ikutsuki.
"But what about you? Do you want this?" It seemed a genuine question, though Chidori could sense it was backed up by the force of magic, a slingshot, and the boy's sword, which actually might have been somewhat threatening. It was the sort of thing she had to actually think about.
And when she did think about it, the answer was clear. "Chidori, what are you doing!?" Jin hissed, but it was too late. Her weapon was already cast to the side.
In that moment, she made another decision, and withdrew Medea's protection from the other two. "I surrender."
There was, of course, a price to be paid for that decision. When Takaya retreated, he took Jin with him, but neither of them bothered to spare her a second glance. If anything, the glare they'd given her after she'd surrendered told her not to follow after them.
Thankfully, the group she'd been fighting hadn't seemed to mind her tagging along for the time being, and they'd even asked her to help testify against Ikutsuki since they hated him as well, so despite once again being connected to the Kirijo Group, Chidori thought that things really couldn't have been going much better.
The boy from that night- Junpei, she remembered after a few seconds- sat down near to her. "You doing all right?" He asked. "I know it can't be great, with your friends leaving you and all..." Sometimes, it felt like nobody remembered how she'd first shown up. Or maybe it was just that having a common enemy meant they could forgive a lot of things. She couldn't tell which one.
"It's... not as bad as it could have been." Besides, the Takaya and Jin that had been her friends had vanished at some point between their leaving the lab and the present day, though Chidori wasn't sure just when it had happened. Probably at about the same time Takaya picked up an interest in guns. "It's been... interesting, so far." Mostly in terms of realizing that they'd never stood a chance against this group, and that following Takaya against them was probably something that would have gotten her killed.
Sure, she'd never thought she had a high life expectancy, but it might have been a better idea not to throw it away unless she knew it would actually achieve whatever she aimed to accomplish.
"Yeah, we're a pretty colorful group." That was a definite understatement. "Still, you... don't really have anything, do you? Just what you brought with you to fight, really..." She didn't even have that at the moment. She'd only been allowed to keep her Evoker because Medea got upset when she was away from it.
"There's not much I miss," She tried to reassure him. "I didn't have anything I couldn't replace. Just a sketchbook and some pencils." The things within she was never getting back, but the ability to express herself had always been much more important than the final product.
"Oh, so you like to draw?"
"Sometimes. It can help me remember that I'm alive." She didn't think he'd understand anything more than that.
But maybe he did, because there was a new sketchbook and some pencils with her name on them sitting on the counter a few days later.
It was nice to get to draw things again.
The next time Chidori saw Jin and Takaya in person, they had been frozen into blocks of ice, and a girl who bore great resemblance to Liz had just vanished into another part of the mall.
"We can turn them in to the proper authorities once the Dark Hour has ended," Kirijo stated, before glancing at Chidori and Aragaki. "Unless one of you disagrees?"
Aragaki shrugged. "I'm fine with it," He said, as if Takaya hadn't attempted to kill him just a couple of months ago. "Yoshino?"
Once upon a time, Jin and Takaya had been Chidori's friends. Seeing them in jail... it would hurt, quite a bit, particularly when there were parts of her that only the two of them could understand properly.
But then... it couldn't be that much different from not seeing them at all.
Jin's eyes within the ice block were almost accusing, staring at Chidori unmovingly as she spoke. "...It'd be safer that way, wouldn't it?" Safer for the people who had taken her in, despite not having any reason to do so. Safer for Junpei, who if she'd met him while she was with Takaya, would have been labeled as a distraction and dealt with accordingly.
To be fair, the fact that you want to kiss him all the time is very distracting.
Safer for her, because Takaya didn't seem to have more than casual disdain for most anything these days, and Jin only ever seemed to care about Takaya anymore, without thinking even about himself.
But it still hurt.
She wasn't sure how Kirijo handled transporting the two to the relevant authorities, but they were gone from Iwatodai by the time it was properly morning.
Unless she felt like visiting a prison in another city, odds were that Chidori would never see them again.
Somehow, that hurt even worse than the fact that, by this point, they probably saw her as an enemy.
In this strange place that wasn't part of their world, Personas worked differently than they did on the outside. They could all acquire a second Persona, so long as said Persona belonged to a specific group of Arcana.
Chidori stared down at her list. The names of the Hermit and Fortune Arcanas stared up at her.
"Could you remind me," She started, quietly, "What it is that determines what Arcanas may be safely used?"
"Like the power of the Wild Card, the Arcanas you have an affinity for are based on the bonds you share with others," The little one, Lavenza, explained. "...Is there a problem?"
"...Not particularly." Not that she could answer, anyway. Of course she had a bond with the two of them. Even if they hated her now, they'd all been through things that nobody else could ever hope to understand, and that was the sort of thing that could tie people together for life.
At the same time... it was strange, that even after all that had happened, she could still, in some way, connect to their powers.
It was like she'd be connecting to the people that they'd once been. The ones who disappeared when she wasn't looking. The friends that she didn't even know when she'd stopped having. Or if they even still cared.
Making up her mind, she turned to the pair of Wild Cards. "Do either of you have a Persona of the Fortune Arcana with you?"
Maybe, if she used powers that came from theirs, things would be just a bit clearer.
If not in that, than at least in how Fortuna was also a Navigator.
