For some reason I'm getting a headache while trying to understand your post, do you mind simplifying it and grabbing relevant quotes for easier reference? Thanks.
She meant it, too. Amu got glimpses of nightmares—of dark figures stalking the room around what looked like a ten-year-old, a little kid with a face covered by long, messy, brown hair. She was holding a teddy bear, sleeping in a pool of shadow—and Akane was fighting to get past them, and Naomi was there, with a burst of fire, and-
Kana frowned. "Don't look at that. Here-"
-and then it was replaced with the memory of the same young girl, hugging Kana.
This is a 10-year-old girl with a teddy bear and brown hair.
The Yui we've seen in recent chapters and presumably that Amu has been seeing lounging around the house so far previously has black hair and is clearly younger than 10-years old. Amu estimated 8-years at most to Naoto.
The "simple explanation" Amu has been working under by default is that she just misjudged the age from Kana's memory and that the hair has been dyed, either dyed black from brown after escaping or was dyed brown at Manticore in the memory.
Now, assume for a moment that there was no mistake - that the "Yui" seen in the memory was really 10-years-old and that neither her nor the Yui seen later dyed their hair at any point. And therefore, is not the same person as this 8-year-old Yui who Amu has been seeing aroud the house.
So who was that Yui in the memory?
We've just been given a potential answer - she could have been this one:
"Sorry," he added quickly, radiating sheepishness and sounding honestly apologetic for startling her. He stepped backwards to give her some space. "Are you Nanami Yui? The daughter of Nanami Asahi?"
"What? No!" Kana stared at him. "I'm her younger sister. Nanami Akane." She stared at him a bit harder. Didn't he know anything?
That Yui from the memory might not have been a younger sister, but an older one, Yui Nanami, the elder Nanami sibling.
The Yui from the memory was in a "pool of shadow" surrounded by "dark figures", which sounds like being in the middle of an experiment and both Naomi and Akane were fighting to reach her, which sounds like a rescue attempt. If this Yui in the memory was Yui Nanami, Akane's older sister, and she was being experimented on, you now have a question of when these experiments first began.
I'm thinking that she was being experimented on as early as this interlude.
Her mother didn't immediately answer when Akane asked how sister was doing:
"I'm hungry!" Kana repeated, not caring that she was whining now. "I don't have any more money and- and there's nowhere to buy food! And you haven't said how Yui's doing! Is she okay?"
Silence answered her.
"...Mom?" she said after a second or so, dread clawing its way up her chest; her heart thumping loudly in her ears. "Is Yui okay?"
Content warning: It's probably as bad as you thought. There's a summary in the voting block in case you'd rather not read this.
Kana's story didn't last much longer after that.
Amu tried not to think about the cold feeling that had settled over her. Instead she kept her gaze on Kana, taking in her expression—the downturned corners of her mouth, the creases on her brow—and the way Kana felt was like a girl whose world was falling apart around her. Like someone who had already cried too much, and could no longer summon up more tears even if she wanted to.
"Yui is your big sister?" Amu asked finally, her voice quiet and small and lost—lost and drifting like a child in a storm.
She'd meant to ask it telepathically, but she'd spoken aloud instead—her thoughts had been fragmented by horror and she hadn't been able to keep it all in line properly; hadn't been able to quite force everything where it was supposed to be.
Kana's tale had been one thing, and Utau had spoken that aloud. Had made a show of it, at first, amused at the drama of a young child. Until- until the emotions underlying those endearing moments had overwhelmed her and she'd been forced to speak the rest of it in whispers. And Amu had been frozen by it all; transfixed by Kana's memories of the same as they spun towards disaster.
"Not the same girl," Kana replied, hugging herself tightly. "Yui-chan didn't have a name. I named her after my big sister. So I would love her." She stared at the ground for a second or two—the roiling mass of shadows that was her aura ebbing slightly in intensity as her shoulders slumped. "I did love her. I still love her, she's the best, but she isn't Yui. I miss my big sister and she isn't- I couldn't- couldn't-"
Amu filled in the rest of the sentence herself, by reading Kana's mind. Yui's broken leg had been just that, but their mother had taken the... opportunity...
A present for her tenth birthday-
Utau fought down the nausea building in her stomach, as memories of Yui's daily routine bubbled up from the depths of Kana's mind—of cheerful, happy Yui with her scuffed pink sneakers and her brown hair tied back with ribbons; Yui with her gentle smile and her-
Damaged mind.
-wait-
"Your mother was teaching her what?" Amu whispered, shock overriding everything else. "Magic? How?"
Kana was silent at that, unable or unwilling to answer—and her aura's darkness surged again, the shadows casting an eerie glow about the room as they roiled in response to her thoughts and memories.
Whatever the case, it hadn't gone well. Whatever Kana's mother had done to Yui hadn't worked properly—and the little girl who had emerged from the experiment had been scarred not only emotionally, but mentally. She'd been an empty shell, living more by instinct than by any sort of reason or intellect.
Their mother had searched desperately for a solution, and had found Kana in the depths of the building. In the room where they kept children to-
"S-so Yui-chan is..."
"One of my mother's experiments," Kana answered quietly. "She tried to, I don't know, copy Yui's core. It almost worked."
Kana's expression was a blighted thing, a ghostly grin twisted with grief and pain and anger and self-loathing—emotions that had no place on anyone's face, much less Kana's. That was just her face; her inner self felt somehow worse. Kana's soul was writhing in agony, and it hurt to look at—it hurt to feel; it was an acid in her veins, burning away at her, and Amu had no choice but to bear it. To push deeper, so Kana would know she was there.
"Mom 'rescued' me," Kana said. "And I got to see Yui. But I didn't go home that day. I was trapped there. In Manticore." She gestured vaguely at their surroundings; at the illusion of a wrecked laboratory they were standing in. "This place. Mom showed me the ropes. Taught me to be useful. Told me I had talent, more than my sister, and if I did everything right we'd get her back."
The shadowy amalgamation of memories pretending to be a laboratory cracked into motes of dust, fading away into nothingness as she spoke, as the maelstrom of emotion that surrounded her dwindled down into nothingness—into something small and quiet and exhausted.
Kana slumped down against the wall and slid to the floor with a dull thud, her head leaning back against the concrete; her gaze locked onto Amu's—a look of quiet despair in her eyes as she continued speaking.
"And I tried. I tried so hard," Kana whispered; her voice small and quiet in the empty space where a laboratory had once stood; in this barren hallway of memory and lies and corpses. "But Yui-nee was in a coma, Yui-chan's mind wasn't right anymore, and Mom couldn't fix it, no matter how hard she tried- I could tell, I could tell," Kana spat, grinding her teeth in frustration as her fingers dug into her skirt—as her hands clutched at the fabric like it was a lifeline in a stormy sea. "Her mind was full of holes. The experiments she did, the drugs- nothing worked."
Her head dipped down to rest on her knees; her shoulders slumped in defeat as she spoke again.
"Mom told me how minds work. Personas, Shadows, all of that-" Kana looked up at Amu, realising her incomprehension. "-I'll tell you later. So I tried..." She swallowed nervously; her mouth moving up and down as she struggled to get the words out. "I tried to fix her mind myself, but-" Her mouth twisted into a rictus of pain. "I made everything worse. And mom was going to throw her away. Even though half of her was Yui. ...that's when Naomi got to me."
Amu heard her take a deep breath, saw her tense up for a few seconds as she gathered up her courage; watched Kana's mouth open, as the girl got ready to speak again—and Amu was suddenly certain that whatever Kana would say next would not be something she should hear.
"-stop," Amu said quietly, cutting Kana off before she could speak. "Kana." She made to pull the girl into a hug, then paused.
She'd hugged Kana before, had clung to her the second she'd seen her in the room—but that had been in response to fear and nervousness, and hadn't really meant anything. This... this was different. This was important. It couldn't just be a hug. It needed to be more than that. But Amu didn't know how. Didn't know what she could say that would make this better.
Maybe nothing could.
So she took a deep breath instead—closed her eyes to give herself a moment of peace—and tried to quiet her racing thoughts; tried to ignore the frantic pounding of her heart as she folded her arms around Kana regardless, squeezing as hard as she could. As hard as she had ever hugged anyone in her life. Squeezing Kana like she could squeeze out all the sadness and hurt; like if she hugged Kana enough then things would be okay again.
Like somehow this would fix it; like she wasn't afraid of breaking her newest- best friend in half because Kana was so small and fragile-feeling and Kana was stronger than this but it didn't matter because this was Important, Kana was important, and so Amu couldn't help but treat Kana as gently as she could because-
"I just want to go home," Kana whispered quietly, crying into her shirt. "I don't want to fight. I don't want to kill people like Riku anymore. I… don't want to have to save Yui. I don't want to have to be the good one. I just want to see my mom again." She looked up at Amu, her expression so full of pleading and self-hate and sorrow that Amu couldn't help but flinch back from it—wishing desperately that she could do something, anything, but not knowing how; not knowing what.
Because-
Because Amu wanted things to be okay again.
Because Amu was worried and upset—so upset she could cry; so upset she did cry, hot tears dripping down her cheeks and wetting Kana's clothes, which were the uniform of Kana's grade school. Because Amu just wanted to hug Kana forever and ever until everything was okay again.
Because Kana still loved her mother.
Because none of this was fair.
Shirogane's presence was a distant, tolerant thing at the edge of her awareness. An interested spectator of Amu's actions. A silent question hanging unspoken in the air—and she didn't know how to answer her. She didn't know what she wanted to hear from her; didn't understand how Shirogane wasn't radiating horror, like she and Utau both. Kana's mind was an open wound; a pool of anguish and self-loathing and more fear than Amu knew how to handle—but Shirogane wasn't horrified by any of that.
'She can't see it,' Utau softly told her, whispering directly into Amu's thoughts instead of using words. 'She's not a telepath.'
Amu couldn't respond to that thought, true though it was. She felt like anyone who wasn't utterly blind would see how Kana felt about herself; about what she'd been forced to do. But Shirogane couldn't.
Though Shirogane's poker face had cracked.
Anyone who wasn't blind would know-
Know-
Would know how unfair it was.
And now Kana was the one holding Amu up, hugging her back as Amu's legs failed beneath her—as Amu's strength left her and she collapsed forward onto Kana; sobbing quietly into her chest; feeling weak and useless and out of her depth; so far out of her depth that it wasn't even funny.
"There's always a story," said Shirogane. "Even if this one is worse than most. Amu, Utau-"
Her voice was gentle and kind, in a way that reminded Amu of Mom—but sharper, with an edge hidden behind it that had been missing before. Her mind was hidden, but Amu could almost make out anger. She raised her head slightly at that, looking up at Shirogane through tear-stained eyes.
"-Kana," Shirogane finished. "I know who's chasing you. But do you want to say it?"
Kana sniffled quietly, scrubbing at her eyes with one sleeve before wiping it off on her pants.
"Yui's shadow tried to kill her," she said quietly, avoiding Shirogane's face. "-so I know. The one chasing me is Kana. I'm-"
Her voice wavered as she spoke, not quite cracking. Her voice was low and soft and Amu couldn't help but feel her strain to hold herself together. Her mind was frayed, too raw to feel much beyond her grief. Amu reached out for her thoughts again—letting her own merge with Kana's once more, to help hold her together.
She felt Kana relax fractionally.
"I'm Kana's Shadow," Kana continued in a whisper, shuddering visibly as she spoke. "Her true self. And now that we've torn apart she's chasing me. When she finds me, she'll kill me. And I don't want to be a killer anymore."
It was a bleak certainty. A statement of fact without any shred of doubt or hope in it.
"Does she know what will happen if she does?" Shirogane asked after a second or so—her voice carefully neutral and unemotional; a stark contrast to Amu's internal turmoil, which Utau was doing her best to suppress.
Kana hesitated for a moment or so.
"Yes," she said. "She's counting on it."
= = =
Kana was 'rescued', and while not allowed to go home, her mother tried teaching her instead. She'd previously attempted to teach Yui magic, which backfired badly, damaging her mind; a lot of what follows is Asahi (the mother)—and Kana—attempting to somehow heal her.
None of it works. They eventually create Yui-chan, copying the working parts of Yui into a receptive child; this also doesn't work. Naomi gets to Kana during the fallout, and convinces her to help them escape. Amu asks her not to explain the details.
Kana abandoned her family in the process, and still wants to go home. She's so full of self-loathing about this that—now that they've been separated—she intends to kill her own shadow, fully knowing what this will cause.
That was a lot more talking than "You get one question, two at most" suggested we had time for. "She's right behind me." Did she run into Hikaru and get into a psi battle that held her up? Or stop to go to the bathroom?
If Big Yui is still physically intact and Asahi hears about the Lock, she is going to want that so bad. And we already heard Manticore comes up in the next Saaya interlude somehow. If we really do have to rescue Saaya again...
Sounds like part of why Kana hates this part of her is because it's the part that drove her to participate in Manticore's crimes.
I started suspecting the "soul copy" thing after Pistachio's last post, but after what happened with Dream Ami and Regular Ami looking nothing alike, and then Sakura's resemblance to Kana being inconsequential, I decided I just have no idea what the heck Baughn is doing with character appearances.
I don't think we can, but if we could, what I'd go for here is a Chara Transformation with Shadow Kana. Make it so Kana can't kill her shadow without going through us.
That was a lot more talking than "You get one question, two at most" suggested we had time for. "She's right behind me." Did she run into Hikaru and get into a psi battle that held her up? Or stop to go to the bathroom?
So. First thoughts are that we shouldn't be running away. Even assuming this level of ...everything is due to the Fog we'd probably have to deal with this again in the future (or have it happen offscreen)?
(Further thoughts may be in spoiler boxes because of TWs)
This chapter tells us where Yui (the 8-year-old-one) came from and why she looks different from the memory..... but annoyingly, still doesn't tell us where heck the brat currently is.
Kana's currently feeling lousy enough to off her own Shadow and put herself into a coma, but the immediate events leading up to here are still a mystery. Even if this has been building up for a while, the exact straw that broke the camel's back is unknown. Did Yui snap first, did Kana, or was it both of them? Why? What even is it that Kana normally does when Yui is sleeping? Would help more if we knew the immediate reason she/they snapped.
But oh well, got to work with what we've been given, I guess.
I don't think we can, but if we could, what I'd go for here is a Chara Transformation with Shadow Kana. Make it so Kana can't kill her shadow without going through us.
Shadow Kana isn't a Chara, so I have feeling that if Amu - herself a Shadow - tried to merge with her, it would be like 2 Shadows merging to "bulk up". Like Taro Namatame did in Nanako's domain. If it did work, I'm not sure if it would be especially healthy.... but more to the point, Kana might still try to fight her anyway, irrespective of Amu being melded with her Shadow.
One thing I can think of that might avoid a fight is for Amu to offer to try and help mend Yui's broken mind using Su, the way Su repaired Nikaido's Heart's Egg.
I do not know if it would actually be possible for her and Amu wouldn't either, all she would be able to do is offer to try. We still don't know where Yui actually is right now either. Depending on what happened to her in the leadup to this incident, such an offer might be received with more skepticism or less. Especially if Kana already tried a similar thing herself, she may have lost faith in the idea of it being possible.
Big Yui being a vegetable sounds like she's the victim of Apathy Syndrome to me.
Small Yui being a "copy of Yui's core", I'm not quite sure what to make of. If Big Yui ended up in a coma due to her Shadow trying to kill her, it probably means the Shadow died in that incident, so Small Yui doesn't sound like she was the recipient of an involuntary Shadow transplant.
Sounds more like Asahi tried to recreate or clone Big Yui's Shadow somehow to reinsert it into her daughter and it didn't come out quite right, resulting in Small Yui (or something else that Kana tried to do more soul surgery on and subsequently botched to create Small Yui).
Gonna need to re-read the chapter and scrutinize it again, but these are my first thoughts.
@Baughn
Preliminary questions:
1) Can we assume that Kana's mom is the director of Manticore? (Incidentally, things seem to point towards Kana rejecting her name in whatever happened with Naomi)
2) Can we assume that Kana's mom has never heard of mind healing rooms?
If so, it seems a fair assumption that JPs are unrelated to Manticore, and that we can try and persuade Kana to leave child!Yui to JPs?
(Given the whole cognitive matter problem, it does seem Kana's efforts were doomed because she needs Dreamwalking as well for this?)
1) Can we assume that Kana's mom is the director of Manticore? (Incidentally, things seem to point towards Kana rejecting her name in whatever happened with Naomi)
I'm sure she would have used one if she knew such a thing would help. I'm not confirming that it would have, nor even that one wasn't used. I think you might be overestimating them; the room JPs put Saaya in is designed to isolate the patient from the world outside, and that helps in some cases.
Ok. So. First, we know that unless Something Weird is going on a Shadow is the part of a person that is rejected (or their inner weaknesses, as Baughn put it earlier). So what does the Shadow not wanting to murder people and her general demeanor here mean?
"I don't want to fight. I don't want to kill people like Riku anymore. I… don't want to have to save Yui. I don't want to have to be the good one. I just want to see my mom again."
Silver lining is that I'm pretty sure Naoto isn't going to attack the Shadow first thing anymore, but we may need to think of a distraction or a way to break Kana's resolve (we can fix any damage in the process later) so she has no choice* but to accept her Shadow and process this stuff later?
Because I suspect Shadow Yui poked Kana right in the trauma (Psionically or by words), and together with the Fog this is making Kana thinks she needs to kill her weakness and aversion to harming those who would affect Yui, or fall into a coma so she can't hurt anyone anymore.
And regarding her wanting to see her mom again.........
The vote option made it sound like we had time for 4 lines of hurried dialogue, tops. Not a whole flashback sequence and all the crying and hugs. We could have fit a lot more than 2 questions into that time.
The vote option made it sound like we had time for 4 lines of hurried dialogue, tops. Not a whole flashback sequence and all the crying and hugs. We could have fit a lot more than 2 questions into that time.
I wasn't really expecting you to vote to do it by telepathy. >_>
Not sure why I didn't, but that's how it goes. Pretty much the only thing you didn't get from that is why she's here, and the reason isn't that you didn't ask -- Kana simply doesn't know.
"Who's following you" turned into "Amu chases the entire graph structure of that question". It isn't a trick you can expect will always work.
Some people are sorcerers, and sorcery works by coaxing your mind into interlacing with the cogs of reality, putting yourself in a spot where either reality will break (= your magic works), or else... you will. Now, of course that sort of damage gets repaired, same as any other, but if you're doing it more than once in a blue moon... or if you make a serious enough mistake... then you will still, eventually, go insane.
I think this was the more likely option? (Effectively, I suspect Kana kept rolling the relevant dice combination while training, and kept accumulating botches as time went on)
About the vote...
We have to let Naoto take point here because she's the only one not emotionally compromised - but we also need to write suggestions for what to do next based on what we gathered here, or otherwise why did we even ask?
It is unlikely we are going to get anywhere while Kana still has this single minded focus, and so short of tiring her out we need to break her resolve somehow, without doing damage we can't fix by talking later on if possible.
Alternatively, we could have Amu connect to Kana (both of them?) and try and shore together her Integrity using the Key?
Telepathy having higher bandwidth than normal speech. In general, it doesn't. In general people work too differently to get beyond regular speech, typically by way of writing into the auditory center. Ninety percent of the mind control skill is "understand WTF you're looking at".
Of course higher levels of skill help, but this is a skill you should expect to involve projects any time you try to do anything more complicated than blunt force. Mind Control is the skill for mind-healing as well -- yes -- but there's a reason it's called Mind Control and not Arbitrary Mind Editing. It's much, much easier to find a lever you can slam a hammer into than it is to build something that works well on its own.
...
And I was all set to demonstrate that. Except, this is Kana and Amu. The two characters who have already done the work needed for that. Amu and Utau get close, but they work a bit too differently -- and Utau can't pull off her half of the connection. Even worse, it's Kana's Shadow.
...
So you got a flashback, which isn't really how Amu experienced it, but it's got the same information in it and was probably a better read than a highly technical, barely-understood (even to Amu) set of descriptions would have been. Please excuse me while I recalibrate my plans to fit.
Well, unironically I can't think of anything stopping Kana from skipping the Shadow and putting herself into a coma directly except for her not thinking of it and also wanting to be more symbolic about this, so only working on the physical side of things isn't quite enough?
I think I want to lead by offering Kana food. She probably hasn't eaten in quite a while. It could help get her to hesitate a little, even if she doesn't take it.
How about cake and chocolate milk, like we had that day we first met? Try to evoke some memories of our friendship.
Well, unironically I can't think of anything stopping Kana from skipping the Shadow and putting herself into a coma directly except for her not thinking of it and also wanting to be more symbolic about this, so only working on the physical side of things isn't quite enough?
Yeah, she can do that. She's had plenty of time to do it, too. The fact that she hasn't says things about how determined she is or isn't, and what she's really after.
De-escalating, essentially, and perhaps trying to throw Kana off her game through dissonance?
Seems like a good idea (Naoto will likely prepare for an imminent fight as-is), and there's no reason for Amu not to offer to shore Kana (Real)'s mind up in the meantime with the Key if necessary.
We ask her to wait a while afterwards and see if she still wants to go ahead then.
Sounds like the start of a plan at least.
Baughn, would Naoto be willing to loan Kana her Fog glasses and have Utau shield Naoto from the Fog in the meantime?
Okay, I'm a little confused about the sequence of events here. Is this correct?
- Kana's mother tries to teach Kana's sister magic
- Kana's sister suffers serious mental abrasion
- Kana's mother tries to transplant what's left of Kana's sister into a fresh(?) (and somewhat younger) experimental subject, this doesn't achieve the desired results
- Kana attempts to "fix" this and also fails
- The person we know as "Yui" is the result of these experiments, some combination of Kana's sister and some other random child
- Recently, Yui's Shadow tried to kill her, which is probably a result of her heightened internal conflicts
- Kana is now trying to kill her own Shadow, possibly as some kind of elaborate suicide attempt?
- Kana's mother tries to teach Kana's sister magic (as a 10 year old birthday gift, since I don't think Asahi wanted to train her daughters so they could contribute to Manticore initially?)
- Kana's sister suffers serious mental abrasion (see the Overgrowth Infromational for what probably happened)
- Kana's mother tries to transplant what's left of Kana's sister into a fresh(?) (and somewhat younger) experimental subject, this doesn't achieve the desired results.
- Kana and Asahi attempts to "fix" this and also fails, Kana making things worse (?) in the process
- The person we know as "Yui" is the result of these experiments, some combination of Kana's sister and some other random child - After a while Asahi gives up and tries to throw "Yui" away (we don't actually know OOC what that means, but it's probably nothing good)
- Naomi 'got to' Kana at that point, somehow (what exactly happened then and afterwards will likely remain a mystery for the near future)
- Some time afterwards, she killed people (Riku is one of them, not that we have any idea who that is), likely in order to get out of Manticore.
- Recently, Yui's Shadow tried to kill her, which is probably a result of her heightened internal conflicts
- Kana is now trying to kill her own Shadow, possibly as some kind of elaborate suicide attempt?
Should be mostly correct as far as I can tell.
Regarding your last point, jury is still out on what Kana actually wants - figuring this out will likely be very important to get better outcomes later on after this whole mess settles down.
Depends on how a Shadow works in relation to the main individual tbh, I'm not familiar with the deeper lore of Persona - what does rejection actually mean? Whatever trait/thoughts that is rejected being dialed up to 11 in the Shadow, and dialed to 0 in the main individual?
Is there a thing called partial rejection?
Can there be traits/thoughts that persist between both of them if it's not rejected?
How does 'provoking a Shadow' and 'accepting a Shadow' work narratively?
Can't really figure this out properly without knowing which of what Kana's Shadow is showing now belongs to which box - our only confirmed clue is that Kana wants to kill her Shadow, knowing that it will send her into a coma at best for some reason?
Probably these three, but the first one is likely more internally focused in practice -
How could I (still want to) go back after all this? How do I think I deserve to go back?
that sort of thought-lines I imagine
In a sense Kana's story is one that of a child bearing far too much responsibility, and being taught to use her agency in harmful ways for the sake of a better outcome; one that did not materialise and which she internalised was due to her own inability. Her emotional state seems to keep getting worse whenever nostalgia starts coming in, for understandable reasons.
Perhaps Kana just wants to not have to care anymore, to stop so she can't hurt others through her actions or failures.
Can we offer her a rest that doesn't rely on her killing her own Shadow? If we can convince her (not easy) this may still be resolvable without a fight.
