Monsters and Masks (Persona 5/Bleach Quest)

Fuck it, I'm doing it.

---

"My name is Zangetsu!"

You shout it from the top of one of the many skyscrapers around you, just because you finally can! That old man isn't stopping you anymore! You leap from the building with joy, bounding from rooftop to rooftop with the unrestrained freedom you've always, always wanted but never had because of your reserved, stronger other half. He never let you out to play, never let you speak to your... owner? Master? You don't like either of those words, but you're not sure what the "real" one of you actually is to you. Neither half of you has ever met him, even now, when he comes so close to your world but enters that snow-covered hellscape next door instead.

You consider popping over there yourself and giving that icy lady a piece of your mind for stealing your... you, even though you know you can't actually do it. That's not your Ability. You're just a bundle of damn excellent instincts. Half-Hollow, half-Zanpakuto, all badass, that's you. You land on the other Zangetsu's favorite flagpole with a cocky grin on your face. "Hey, old man! I stole your spot!" You call out to the other-you who took your name to keep the real-you safer. There's no answer, no flare of indignation from within like you know you sent him dozens of times over the last 15 years.

You stand on the flagpole for a few minutes and then tip backwards onto the side of the building it's on. "Damn, it's too quiet in here."

Before school starts, you send a text message to Ichigo, specifically not using the Monster Hunters Anonymous groupchat. This is sensitive information, and it's up to him if he wants to bring Rukia with him or not.



That arranged, you resume your secret mission; sneaking Morgana into your desk while none of the more tattling-inclined members of your class are looking at you. The cat whispers to you, his meowing subsumed in the pre-homeroom chatter of the class, "Do you think you can take him into the Velvet Room? That would go a long way towards proving your point."

You shake your head. "Don't think so. I wasn't the one that brought you guys into the Velvet Room that one time, and nobody ever saw me go into it before." You take out your notebook and pencils, acting normal even as you give asides to your feline friend. "I'll try, but not today." The teacher enters the room, stalling your conversation with Morgana, and the day seems to drag absurdly slowly towards lunch. Still, eventually the hour of truth arrives, and you smuggle your feline partner in crime onto the roof to meet with the orange-haired freshman. He's already on the roof, probably because he didn't have an animal to smuggle up here. Then again, he did have a short woman to give the slip, and they could be clingy when they wanted to be. Still, he had managed to come alone. I had no illusions that Rukia wouldn't be hearing most of this later, but it'd be Ichigo's choice how much to share with everyone.

After letting the silence linger for just a couple seconds, you decide to just get right down to brass tacks. "So, what'd you read in your short Google walk? About Cognitive Psience, I mean."

"Not much," Ichigo responds. "Seems a little far-fetched to me, cognitive worlds and all that kind of thing, but then I turn into a ghost and stab monsters with an oversized tanto, so stones and glass houses."

You hadn't really thought of it like that, but Ichigo makes a fairly good point. Your own experiences in the Metaverse have probably been a huge factor in how well you're coping with this new flavor of weirdness in your hometown, now that you think about it. Then again, without your Third Eye, you'd never have caught on to anything about this madness, so you're back to square one in figuring out why you're so calm. "Right, well, first the easy part then. Cognitive Psience is a real field, and the cognitive world exists. Wakaba Isshiki's research is the best in the field if you feel like doing any homework on it later. Now for the strange part."

"Stranger than entire worlds in someone's head?"

"As a matter of fact, yes. You remember all that odd stuff that happened in Tokyo last year? The Phantom Thieves of Hearts, the mental breakdown incidents, all those criminals confessing their crimes to the world? Oh, and let's not forget Christmas Eve." You knew you weren't forgetting Christmas Eve any time soon. Fading from existence almost entirely was traumatic as hell.

"Yeah, why?" Ichigo looks at you suspiciously.

You let Morgana out of your bag, and he's carrying a very familiar mask. You'd needed real life versions of your Metaverse costumes for that video, which meant you all needed real masks. Morgana was holding your Joker mask, plain as day, happily swishing his tail back and forth as Ichigo looks from you, to the cat, and back to you. You smile back at your cat when he makes a snide remark through the mask; "Strawberry kid looks like a fish, doesn't he?"

Morgana has a point; Ichigo's connected the dots, and now he's gaping at you. "Wait, you're Joker?"

You take this opportunity to sweep your fake glasses off your eyes and take a dramatic bow, accepting your mask from Morgana while you're bent over and putting it on before you straighten. "The one and only."

"Alright, that's impressive," Ichigo allows, but he's recovered quickly. "But why are you telling me?"

"Well, here comes the awkward part. The Phantom Thieves, and I'm not telling you who the others are but they're nobody you would know anyway, used the cognitive world, the Metaverse, to force those criminals to have a change of heart and admit their crimes. I'm something called a Trickster, which is someone who's able to connect to other people's... minds, souls, or both, I'm not quite clear but recent evidence suggests both. I'm able to form Vows with people by finding a common ground with them, and by cultivating my relationship with one of the sources of these Vows, I can learn new abilities from them, and the connection eventually feeds back enough that they get some benefit from it, too, especially if they're Persona users like the Phantom Thieves."

"Persona users?" Ichigo interrupts, looking a little confused again.

"Complicated and not relevant unless we somehow enter a cognitive world," you deflect, not wanting to get into a whole other complicated explanation in the middle of your first complicated explanation.

"Right."

"So, here's where we've hit a problem. I've never had this happen before, but we accidentally formed a Vow yesterday."

"Wait, what? When? I didn't agree to any of this!"

"Yeah, I didn't exactly do it on purpose either. It was that kid in the park. We both reacted the exact same way; we wanted to save him from that Hollow. That second of synchronized gut instinct was enough for me to reach out to your soul, and, well, you leak power like a sieve. The problem is the power you leaked to me is sentient."

"It's what?" Ichigo looks horrified at the thought of holding another consciousness in his body, which leads me to think it's a bad time to tell him about Shadows.

"Yeah, and it hates me. I've managed to contain it in the Velvet Room for now, which is a sort of... nexus for a Trickster's abilities, and I don't think it can get out, but it's your power and if I don't keep it imprisoned it'll ruin my soul."

"What." Ichigo deadpans. Which... is pretty much the same reaction I expected. It's a pretty big infodump.

"Yeah. It calls itself your Quincy abilities, and it has some kind of grudge against your Shinigami powers, and my Trickster powers. From what I can tell, it wouldn't be fond of anything but itself."

Ichigo looks at you, head tilted. "Why didn't it show up when I needed a way to fight that Hollow back a couple weeks ago?"

"The truck thing?" Ichigo confirms your guess with a nod. "Maybe it couldn't? Maybe it was asleep or something. Could be that my Trickster powers woke it up when it moved from your soul to the Velvet Room."

Ichigo nods in response. "As good a guess as any, I guess."

"But anyway, you deserved to know, since I've never accidentally stolen a chunk of someone's soul with my power, to my knowledge. If we keep hanging out together, I should be able to give him back once the Vow is strong enough to transfer him, and I understand him enough to not wind up skewered on that sword he likes so much."

"Wait, so a part of my soul tried to stab you inside your soul?"

"More like the conference room off to the side of my soul," you say diplomatically, decidedly not telling Ichigo that the Velvet Room takes the form of a prison for you and his Quincy abilities are currently locked in one of the cells.

"The point remains!" The redhead exclaims.

"Well, now you know."

Your conversation is interrupted by both your and Ichigo's phones ringing. Rukia's summoning the both of you to deal with another Hollow, using the MHA group chat. She sent the message twice for some reason, but it got through and that's the important thing. "Time to go, I guess, right, Ichigo?"

He puts his phone away and grins. "Guess so. Let's go see what the midget wants, shall we?"

---

Where does Rukia call you two?
[] The park again.
[] The riverbank.
[] The graveyard.

What do you guys think of the text message thing? Cool? Stupid? Too gimmicky? It does have a couple limitations; no pics, no group texts. Also, I don't know how to fake timestamps, but I think timestamps and dates could fall under willing suspension of disbelief. If it bugs people, I won't do it again.