Amu reached towards Kana at the same time as Su, and brushed against a wall of self-loathing. A roiling maelstrom of fear, anger and desperation; of hatred and guilt, and…
A mind that had been flayed. There was no other word for it.
On the surface, and at first glance, she'd looked almost fine. Ignoring the bloody clothes and the thirst and wounds and the wild look she'd had in her eyes, Second Kana still looked like... looked like Kana. Amu's friend, just... torn open and raw and hurting like hell on every level! Not fine, except compared to the reality. Every moment was a battle for self-control; every inch of her mind thrummed with an aching desire to shout and scream at Shadow-Kana, at Shirogane—at the world at large for allowing things like this to happen in the first place!
Amu had meant to at least let Su heal her burns without distraction, but that was impossible. Because Second Kana's mind was torn open. If First's was a pearl without its protective shell, then Second's was what was left after it had exploded from the inside, and Kana—Second Kana—was holding herself together with nothing but force. Force that was rapidly dwindling, now that she'd given up the fight. Kana no longer cared to keep herself alive.
The first impact of that was loss of consciousness.
There was, in every—well, in every healthy mind—a kind of travelling wave. Amu wasn't sure how else to put it, except like that. A wave that spun a circle around their mind a few times per second, a bit like a super-fast lighthouse… except that wave was missing in Kana, and hadn't been there to begin with. She'd made do with force instead.
That wave was also missing in people who were sleeping. Defined sleep, as far as she could tell. So had Kana been asleep?
…well, she certainly was now.
"Can you heal her?" Shirogane asked. Amu startled, almost forgetting to reply—so wrapped up in Kana's thoughts and feelings that everything else had faded into the background. "We'll need to evacuate her quickly if you can't."
"I can try," said Amu after a second's pause—hesitating before committing herself fully, in case there was a problem she didn't know about or…
Because she didn't like to make decisions? …was that why? 'Dia?' …Dia didn't answer, but then she rarely did. Ran and Su, however, shot her a muted sense of amusement in response. Yeah, that was why, so… perhaps she ought to start?
"I can try," she told Shirogane again, more confidently this time.
The burns were actually easy. Su flung herself at Kana's wounds while Amu was still finding her balance, diagnosing Kana with—nothing immediately fatal or hard for Su to fix—thank god. Burns across a large fraction of her body. Minor dehydration. Starvation—Kana hadn't eaten in at least three days—which meant her wounds were festering instead of healing, but nothing Su couldn't immediately take care of.
It still felt bad. It still felt very bad to see Kana like that, so beaten down that Amu was...
There were lots of thoughts about Manticore in Kana, a lot of guilt about—about—about what she'd done to herself! Not so much a burden of shame as an uncomfortable awareness of having screwed up monumentally and then kept going regardless—and-
Kana was asleep- no, not even asleep. Kana was comatose, but was reaching out to Amu regardless. Possibly on instinct. Except this- it felt like-
Pieces of her mind were coming loose.
Now that Kana had lost the singular purpose that was driving her, they'd decided that Amu was a safer place to be than Kana. Not the central pieces, not the really crucial ones, though half of those were actually in the other Kana, but if she couldn't fix this then… then it would be bad, right? This had to be.
"Kana?" she said out loud, a bit of desperation tinging her voice. "Um- Shadow-Kana? Er-"
"Just 'Kana' is fine," said Shadow-Kana dully from behind her, sounding—and feeling—as exhausted as Amu felt herself. She stepped closer, wincing as she felt the wounds in Kana's mind. "Fuck me."
"She'll be okay," Amu assured Shadow-Kana quickly, wishing she knew what to do. "She's... just..."
"Really?" Kana said sceptically. "You sure about that? I can feel what's happening as easily as you. She's dying."
Amu couldn't reply.
Shadow-Kana pursed her lips thoughtfully in response, a flicker of alarm running through her before she went still again. Some of the Kana-pieces had changed course, flowing towards Shadow-Kana now instead of Amu. Others, staying behind, were fighting to stay within the original Kana; knowing that that was the right place to be, even if the comatose Kana couldn't hold herself together anymore.
"What do you want me to do?" Shadow-Kana asked again, this time with a quiet, resolute determination; staring at herself with a focused intensity Amu wasn't sure she'd be capable of if their positions were reversed. "Tell me what to do."
"I..." Amu took a deep breath in an effort to focus her thoughts. "Can you hold her together? I'll try to heal her, so... can you keep her from dissolving?"
Shadow-Kana paused a second, then nodded stiffly. She knelt down next to Amu and laid a hand on Kana's shoulder, then one on her head—and squeezed, a wave of effort spreading outwards, trying to impose some kind of order on chaos itself. Amu tried to follow what she was doing, but couldn't.
"Shit," she muttered to herself as Amu continued working. "Shit."
It was working, though. Shadow-Kana felt disgusted just from touching her other half, but she was keeping her intact. Possibly just so her pieces wouldn't all end up in Amu instead. Or possibly because she didn't want to die... or maybe because-
"Utau?" Amu said.
"I don't have the foggiest idea what you want me to do," Utau admitted, but knelt beside her anyway. She, too, winced as she saw Kana's burns up close. "Why..."
"Later," Amu promised quietly as she tried to fix... everything that was wrong with Kana, all at once. She didn't know where to begin or what to prioritise. This wasn't as bad as Saaya had been... but Saaya had been literally in pieces, and she'd had the Lock at the time! All she could really do was wait for Kana to squeeze Kana's parts together, then move the pieces that seemed to fit with each other next to each other and hope they connected. It somewhat worked.
Oh, right.
"Try touching the Key to her?" Amu suggested, feeling a little helpless.
Utau grunted, but did as requested.
"It isn't doing anything," she said a few moments later.
"Oh." Amu stared down at the girl who lay on the ground before her, unsure what to say or do. If the Key didn't help, then... "Can you keep an eye on her injuries?
Utau nodded.
"Then... I think I need to talk to Kana." Amu let out a breath as she did so, feeling rather miserable. "Er-"
"Do what you have to do," Utau said quietly, her fingers brushing lightly against Amu's arm.
Amu gave her a grateful nod, then retreated into herself—shuddering briefly at the sudden switch from 'physical' to 'mental' reality. Her physical body slumped against Utau, who caught it in surprise. Mentally, however...
'I need to know how to fix this,' she told Kana. Shadow Kana, who was the one who was conscious and able to respond. 'I know you don't like her. I... I don't think I like her either. She tried to kill us! But I'm not going to let you die, and if she dies then so do you, right? I won't let that happen.'
Amu meant it. She'd come here for Kana and she wouldn't leave without her. Definitely not with Kana in two pieces!
Shadow-Kana laughed mentally in response—more of a brittle chortle than an actual laugh. An abrupt change of mood that made Amu want to reach out and hug her. Only half her focus was on the conversation, however. The other half helped hold Kana together, her mental fingers sliding around Shadow-Kana's to hold back the fragments of Kana that still were doing their best to run away. Su was still working on the burns, and that took some of her concentration as well. She didn't have enough left to run her body.
'Shirogane told me the basics,' she told Kana. 'Kana looks like she exploded from the inside. So explain to me. Please. What is a Shadow?'
Because Amu could tell.
She'd never met this 'shadow-self' version of Kana before, but she knew it regardless. It was the deepest, most hidden part of Kana—supposedly?
Except that every time they'd met, she'd also met Kana's 'shadow-self'. It was the deepest, most secret, most private part of Kana... and also the part of her most likely to reach out. She'd figured out why Shadow-Kana felt so immediately familiar—this was the exact part of Kana that she always would link up with. Usually it was deeper, and more an endpoint than the entire thing, but it was there. It really liked her. It was the part of Kana that did. She should have…
She should have noticed. But she hadn't.
Shadow Kana muttered something to herself, then let out a sigh and explained:
'Shadows are you, but you refuse to be them.'
Amu didn't understand. Or, well, she got that part, but...
'So... Shadows are copies? No? They can't be. But you're talking to me. You sound normal, so..?'
'Yes and no,' Shadow-Kana said tiredly, still holding onto herself—clinging to herself—with grim determination. 'Not in the proper sense. If she dies, I'll die. If I die... you heard Shirogane. She might survive, but it won't be much of a life.'
'Then why-'
'Is there any part of you that you refuse to admit?' Shadow-Kana asked her in turn. 'Something you'd go through hell not to tell to anyone?'
Amu wasn't sure how to respond to that, and was relieved when Shadow-Kana continued explaining a moment later:
'It's... look.' Her mental image shrugged. 'A Shadow is... they're you. Just you from a different perspective. And no, I'm not going into detail on this. This feels a hell of a lot different than I imagined it would when Mom was explaining. But they're you, not an evil twin or whatever. I'm her true self. Or truthful self, at least, like Shirogane said. We're still the same person.'
'But she... you don't seem alike?' Amu pointed out hesitantly. 'She seemed less... well... sane.'
'I'm pretty sure it's weird that I'm this sane after being cut in half,' Kana countered. 'And I think that's mostly 'cause I can see how my own mind works. So I can keep it together, regardless of what she says. That's... not how shadows usually function. Even so, she didn't actually get around to denying me properly. Not in a way that would release the limits of being her shadow.'
'So you're…' Amu wondered. 'Like a chara, then? Since they're still linked to me, I mean?'
'Yes,' said Kana flatly, then flinched as if burned by the admission—forcing herself to hold back from saying anything else by sheer force of will. 'And Amu-chan, I think I'm starting to get how you work. It's easier to tell when I'm like this.'
'...what?' Was that important?
'You're a shadow,' Kana answered slowly; haltingly, like she was doing something wrong just by speaking those words aloud. 'I don't know why it didn't click before. It should have. You're a shadow, without a persona keeping you locked away from the world. Your charas are to you, like the other Kana is to me. It shouldn't work that way at all. But you... I think... when we talk like this...'
She trailed off for a moment. Amu waited patiently, if curiously, not wanting to interrupt as Kana searched for the right words.
'Never mind,' Shadow-Kana eventually said, sounding embarrassed all of a sudden. 'I have no idea what I'm talking about. It can't work that way. Saving Kana... right.' She let out a puff of air. 'If you had an isolation chamber you could put her in, she'd be fine after a month or so. Might lose her telepathy, if she doesn't manage to accept me, but she'd still be...' She hesitated. 'She'd still be Kana. It's harder to break someone's mind than you think, so long as they still have a brain.'
But she might not like Amu anymore. Was that what her shadow-self was implying?
'...maybe?' Shadow-Kana admitted weakly in response, a moment later. 'It's hard to say without... I mean I like you and I don't really want to integrate her at all because... because... I want to go home,' she said finally, sounding about ready to cry. 'I just want to go home.'
And there it was. That was what Amu had been afraid of. That was what Kana didn't want to acknowledge or admit to.
Kana's mother was a piece of work; a monster, judging from her memories, worse than any of the people Amu had met—and often fought—in Easter. The same people who'd ruined her trust in adults. Being worse than that… that took some doing!
But unlike Utau's so-called stepfather, Kana's mother genuinely loved her. She couldn't blame her friend for wanting to go home… could she? Definitely not. And if Shirogane—no, if her own eyes were still working right, then the Kana she was talking to was just a single part of Kana as a whole. Amu wouldn't, couldn't protest that.
But that didn't mean she knew what to say.
'You're… allowed to want your mother,' Amu tried, gaining speed as she spoke. It came out a little stilted. 'It's okay. She… I'd be scared if mine was like that, Kana. But I can't imagine ever not wanting to go home. Not even if I couldn't.'
'But I could!' Shadow-Kana insisted.
'You could,' Amu acknowledged. It was an option. Technically.
Shadow-Kana already knew what she was going to say. She laughed again, this time a broken, unhappy sound that tore at Amu's heart. It hurt. Amu could tell that it hurt. It was just… there wasn't enough time…
'I just don't think I'd like you if you did,' she said.
Kana shuddered. Somewhere in the back of her mind, Amu wondered what this looked like to Utau. She had to try to teach her. Once she was done feeling like a louse.
'What if you come with me?' she asked, on instinct. 'Once all of this is over? I can't promise your mother back. But I can-' She sent Kana images. Playing with her sister. Mom, baking cookies with her. All… all the things that Kana couldn't have, that she missed so much, but- 'Please?' she begged. 'Kana? I know you'd like it. And mom would love you, honest.'
'That's a lie,' Kana pointed out. 'She's scared of me.'
That might be true, but…
'And Naomi won't allow it,' Shadow-Kana said. 'But... Naomi isn't here. The part of me that cares what she thinks is on the floor. The other Scavengers got captured. It's just me and Yui now.' She smiled slightly. 'Are you trying to broker a compromise?'
Amu smiled back at her, feeling a little silly all of a sudden.
'Is it working?'
Shadow-Kana shook her head in response, not that she could see it; a twinkle of humour present in her thoughts regardless. She liked Amu's idea. Would it help at all, was the question? She'd leave the question of 'convincing Mom' for another day.
'Do you think you could join back with Other Kana if she agrees to try it?' Amu asked. 'I know there's Yui and the others, but… there's got to be another way. I have a lot of friends. We saved Utau already, and she was… nearly as badly off! There's got to be an option that doesn't need you to sacrifice yourself. Right? …is that a decent compromise?'
'Don't quit your day job,' Kana joked back at Amu. 'Fine. Fine. If she agrees to. If all you want is to stabilise her, then we just have to keep doing what we're doing. It might take half an hour, but she should at least wake up, and then she'll be able to talk.'
'And then you can come home with me?' Amu asked her hopefully.
'...that'll be up to her,' Shadow-Kana answered.
⁂
"Mom studies souls," Shadow-Kana said. "What makes us people. Why we work the way we do. The difference between sorcerers and ordinary people—stuff like that."
They'd patched up Kana's wounds, and now they were waiting for her to wake up so they could feed her. She wasn't precisely starving, but there was—according to Kana—nothing here to eat, and she'd gone hungry for several days.
Her Shadow mostly seemed nervous. She absolutely, one hundred percent didn't want to fight against Kana, a fact that still made Shirogane look like she'd swallowed a coffee-scented pineapple. Kana's mind was starting to congeal a little, Amu thought, so maybe she'd wake up soon?
Not that Amu was an expert.
And so, lacking any other options, Shadow-Kana was explaining herself.
"...she's also why I know how shadows work," she said. "I'm her 'true self', all that jazz. It's sort of obvious from this side, but I've known for years."
Shirogane nodded.
"I did wonder," she said. "What would happen if someone already knew. I take it she still doesn't accept you."
Yes, that had been fairly obvious- Amu thought.
"Accept that I'm part of her?" Kana said. "Sure. Accept that I should be? Nope." She sighed, running a hand along the back of her head. "Probably 'cause of… all the stuff we can do. I'm a little saner than the usual shadow, because I can see the flaws and dead ends and work around them. Kana makes up for it, by being a little…"
"Homicidal?" Utau offered.
"...unfortunately," Shadow-Kana agreed. "We're bad at lying to ourselves. Not so bad at… yeah. That."
A shiver ran through Kana's body, bringing them all up short. Amu stared at her for a while, but a full minute passed and nothing more happened. More of her mind had joined up, however. There was a rapid ping-pong of pulses passing between Kana and her shadow, nothing so complicated as a thought, but it seemed to be giving her a scaffolding.
Could she… should she? Amu gave in, and patted Kana's hair a little. The others obligingly didn't notice. The conversation continued.
"Shadows are supposed to be rejected," Shirogane said. "It's a part of how they're made."
A pause.
"Would you care to elaborate?"
"No."
Shadow-Kana glowered at Shirogane, and then rolled her eyes. "Then I'll do it. Like I care to keep their secrets, seriously. Shadows are the part of you that you reject—I'm pretty sure you know that. Yeah? I sure do. But they're also a lot more. Every part that isn't conscious, if you look at it the right way. Lots and lots of stuff, most not really shadow-related. Mom studies souls, so she knows just where to cut them to get pieces that do what you want."
Kana shivered again as she spoke, in part because the remnants of her burns still ached, and in part because her thoughts kept misbehaving. This time they didn't pay it as much mind.
Was- what Kana had said- also what she'd done to herself? …no, to the shadows she'd found? What Amu could see of her mind suggested that it was. The unconscious Kana's mind was still messed up, but there were all sorts of… other pieces. Flecks of burning gold, or oily ashes…
Shadow-Kana removed each one carefully as soon as she noticed, and Amu tried to follow her lead, but she was mostly relegated to observer. Still. Between Amu and Kana's shadow-self, they were keeping her from… dying. Kana wasn't healed. Couldn't heal, Amu suspected, unless the two of them fused. Definitely couldn't live outside this place.
According to Shadow-Kana it should have been possible for her to leave, except that her shadow-self would stay behind. Normally that would be fine—physically separating them didn't mean tearing their mind in half, and might in fact help them reintegrate—but right now Shadow-Kana was one of the two people keeping Kana from a bad case of permanent coma.
'Apathy syndrome,' she'd called it.
The problem was, Kana genuinely seemed to think she'd be better off with a gigantic Shadow-Kana-sized hole in her. Amu didn't know what to say about that. Nobody—nobody she knew—would have called that line of thinking sane. But Kana didn't feel sane. Defining 'sane' as 'not literally falling apart'.
"-and this whole thing," Shadow-Kana said. "You reject your shadow, then have a fight with it! Accept it, maybe. Suddenly, great powers! Or great embarrassment, right? Because the only way you can properly reject something like me is if someone's there to see it, and did I forget to mention they're the parts of you that you dislike? Mom certainly didn't. That's why she got so excited when I learned to mind-control people."
Shirogane frowned at that. "There's always an audience," she said. "Even if no one wants to see it."
"Sure, there has to be! Mom thought I'd be able to make someone 'reject' a specific part of them. To make a specific power, or maybe just make them controllable," Shadow-Kana said. "Not that it ever worked. You sound like you've experience. Seen this before?"
"Nothing... precisely like this, no," Shirogane replied cautiously. "Although I know a few people who have, ah-" She waved one hand at the unconscious Kana in a vague gesture, before letting it fall back to her side again. "-gone through something like this."
"Of course you have," Shadow-Kana said, nodding to herself. "Otherwise you wouldn't be a Blank."
Shirogane paused at that.
"And what, exactly, is a 'blank'?" she asked.
"Someone like you," Shadow-Kana said dismissively. "I bet magic barely works on you. Right? And stuff like contracts, curses, anything that'd touch your mind... I bet you don't even know that's possible. Because..." She trailed off, her eyebrows raising in surprise as Shirogane nodded along to her words.
"I believe I can see where you're going," Shirogane said. "We'd noticed. I have comrades. Sometimes we fought beings that induced fear or temporary insanity, but it had little effect on me. If any. I had thought that was simply my inherent rationality."
The girl rolled her eyes at those last words. "No. You're just immune. Which means, if anyone from that side of the block ever even noticed you, they'd have stayed away. You can't sign contracts, so there's no chance they'd try to trade. And people like you are too scary to cross." She blinked at Shirogane's suddenly slightly pensive expression.
Kana moaned in her sleep. Simultaneously, Amu felt her mind light up from one end to the other, pain signals finally making it through. There was no damage to her body anymore, but…
"She's about to wake up," Amu said.
Her shadow grimaced. "...then I'll make this fast. Amu, Kana was trying to kill me so she could take me apart. I told you, she's not actually suicidal. I don't know what you've planned, but- don't start with that. We took a phoenix apart, bet you anything she thought it'd work better on me. Also, um… I'll try to keep myself together, but…"
"I'm not letting her hurt you," Amu insisted.
Shirogane, for some reason, pinched her nose.
Amu didn't get a chance to ask for the reason, as Second Kana had woken up properly, and was glaring daggers at the Shadow.
At least they were metaphorical daggers, though the Shadow Kana had taken the reasonable precaution of moving so that the Blank was between them.
"You let me wake up, huh?" It sounded as bitter as her thoughts felt, resting in Amu's hands.
Shadow Kana shook her head, offended by the question and frowning past Shirogane. "That isn't the sort of person we want to be. Of course we did. You're the one that tried to kill me."
"I tried to take you apart," Kana countered, as though that was an improvement. "I was trying to make myself better. It should be possible. I did it with the damn phoenix. That turned out to be a poor idea." she finished tiredly, her breathing a little less ragged than it had been when she woke. "Amu, don't stop whatever it is you're doing. I'm starting to feel normal again."
Amu decided not to mention that Shadow-Kana was doing most of it.
"Normal… we haven't been normal in a long time, Me."
Amu hesitated, scolded herself for hesitating again, then stopped herself as Utau nudged her and nodded at Shirogane.
Who seemed to think that the two Kana's arguing was a positive? Or at least she wasn't objecting to the Shadow Kana using her as a safety barrier to throw her comments from. This would be a lot easier if she could just tell what the detective wanted, rather than guessing.
"Let me guess, 'normal' would be running back to Mom?"
"You know that isn't what I meant." Shadow-Kana groaned. "-but it's not like she would hurt us if we did!"
"No?" Second Kana retorted with a snarl, her eyes flaring red for a moment. "Do you really think that?"
"Yes!" Shadow-Kana nearly shouted back at her—though her expression faltered slightly at that, the anger on her face twisting into a sadder expression. "Because she could have. Remember? She let us escape instead of letting us get hurt. She'd still take us back, if we asked her to."
Second Kana went silent, staring at the ground; unwilling or unable to meet First Kana's gaze any longer. Shadow-Kana continued speaking regardless.
"She loves us," Shadow-Kana insisted. "She loves Yui-neechan, she loves us, and she's why there were always convenient, nearly unprotected stockpiles of Naomi and Aoi's drugs that we could steal. So we wouldn't be at risk while doing it. If she wanted to hurt us she already would've. But instead she loves us; she gives us pretty clothes and her time and- and everything- s-she let us kill her colleagues so we'd be safe..."
Shadow-Kana trailed off, sniffling quietly as tears dripped down her cheeks while Second Kana glared in disgust.
'I want to go home.'
The thought wasn't so much a whisper as an idea. An aching desire that had nowhere else to go but inside Kana's mind; yet inside that mind it ran into Amu, who was still holding her together.
'I want to go home!'
Second Kana growled, nearly launching herself at her shadow, for no apparent reason so far as Shirogane and Utau were concerned. Utau at least could feel her emotions—but Kana's emotions had been such a whirlpool the entire evening, Amu wouldn't blame her if she tried to tune them out. Amu, fortunately, couldn't technically feel them. She could tell what they were—yes, and absolutely—but that wasn't quite the same thing.
'Don't do it!' Amu warned, before Shirogane was forced to hold her back.
She wasn't sure to what degree the 'Kana' she was looking at cared about her opinion. But she stopped moving, at least. After a moment she settled back, slumping down.
Amu took a chance, and dived into the mess of Kana's thoughts.
She had to know.
…
It hurt. To see someone so close to her be happy while she wasn't. To be happy for her while Kana wasn't. To be so sure that she'd never see her family again, that she was a terrible person for wanting to. It wasn't just her mother and her sister. She'd had a father as well, who might or might not also be a monster. She'd had an aunt, who definitely was.
A father who'd let her ride his shoulders and named her 'Kana'. The same aunt who'd taught her to read, and who always had a piece of candy in her pocket, until the day her parents would no longer let her visit.
It hurt more, to know she'd be an awful person for returning.
…
Except…
…
Was it even possible to talk to Kana? Amu had to assume it was. There was a wall in Kana's mind. Even as broken-down as she was, she was holding her shadow-self at a distance. If she didn't—if Kana just fully relaxed, which wasn't the same thing as being unconscious—then Amu thought they'd have fused back together by now. Maybe that was wishful thinking.
Maybe it wasn't.
"Shirogane…" she said, looking above Kana at the stranger. She was taking a risk here. "Do you think it's wrong of Kana to want to go home?"
It took a moment. Shirogane shifted, narrowing her eyes at Amu for a moment.
"To want to go home?" she stressed. "No. To actually do it?" She hesitated. "Not even that. It's the right decision not to, from what I have heard, and a mature one. Perhaps overly so."
Now it was Kana's turn to shift, shrinking slightly in on herself. Shirogane finished.
"You're a human being, and a child. You're allowed to want to go home."
The wall in Kana's mind trembled at her words, the jagged pieces of it briefly aligning themselves into a more coherent whole—and then Kana held her shadow-self apart. Again.
"That's not very fair, Amu-chan," said Second Kana. Her voice was soft, almost broken, but still loud enough that the others could hear it. "How am I supposed to..?"
To... what? Fight? Shout at them? Complain that they'd overheard all her secrets?
Yes, all of that. But Kana didn't want to fight her. And even if she were to try...
"You're not," Amu said. "You'd just hate yourself more," she said, propelling a surge of calm and acceptance into Kana's subconscious. "You know what always makes me feel better?" she asked out loud.
"Maybe..?" Kana hazarded.
"Food," Amu declared. "We both need to calm down, and some cake sounds about right. What about you?" She looked at Shirogane questioningly.
"...tapioca pudding?" Shirogane replied after a few seconds of silence; a brief expression of amusement flickering across her face at the absurdity of the situation they were in. "My father made some occasionally."
"Utau?" Amu prodded.
Utau stared at the three of them for a few seconds before blinking quietly and tilting her head to one side. "...salt ramen?" she offered hesitantly.
Amu clapped her hands together, selecting absurdity. "Salt chocolate ramen pudding it is, then. Who's hungry?"
Kana's stomach rumbled.
⁂
Strawberry chocolate cake was served. With chocolate milk, because in Kana's opinion—either one—you could never have such a thing as too much chocolate. And in Ran's opinion everything was better with strawberries on top! So, of course, chocolate strawberry cake was the obvious solution.
Calming down was the solution, and Amu let Su take over for a little while. The girl was, after all, unflappable.
One of the desks of the half-melted Abandoned Laboratory (tm) (subtitles provided by Su) was repurposed into a table (subtitle: thanks Yui). Paper plates, paper cups and plastic knives were procured from seemingly nowhere (subtitle: oh wait, literally nowhere) and shortly thereafter—as Utau watched with a mixture of bemusement and fond exasperation—Amu quietly slipped back into her own body, relaxed and ready to do nothing more strenuous than eat cake with her friends.
Right…
Well, it wasn't like she'd ever gone away. Ran and Su weren't different people, they were more like... different personalities.
Which was how she tried explaining that to Kana, sitting with one Kana to her left, Utau to her right, and the second Kana to the right of Utau. Shirogane watched their tea party with something like befuddlement, having been given a big plate of pudding to snack on.
The fight hadn't been averted, but it was… on hold.
"But I don't act like her," Kana pointed out between bites of her cake. "And you're not like Su. Very much not Su. ...dunno about Ran."
"I think that makes her more likely to be right," Amu countered. "Besides, my eyes are glowy too. See?"
Really, 'being a shadow' helped make sense of a whole lot of weird situations. Not, Amu admitted, that she had any idea what the claim was supposed to imply—other than having yellow, glowy eyes. It made sense of that at least.
She nibbled her cake.
Kana wasn't nibbling. Kana was still starving, and had devoured three slices of cake before Utau had even finished her first; two cups of milk before Amu had even filled hers; and was halfway through a fourth slice now.
She wasn't sure if she should count Shadow Kana's slices separately, but enough questions had been raised about what the two actually were for her to leave that question well enough alone.
Amu pursed her lips at the thought, frowning thoughtfully as she cut her own cake into tiny, bite-sized pieces and let the strawberry sauce run all over them. Then she shrugged helplessly and leaned back in her seat, stabbing a piece of strawberry cake with a plastic knife and putting it in her mouth before asking Utau how her cake was doing.
"Very... salty," Utau replied after a few seconds. "I don't think I've ever had ramen-flavoured chocolate before."
"That's because it's made with ramen," Amu informed her, grinning at Utau's dumbfounded expression. "Just like regular chocolate is made from beans. I don't know what kind of ramen this is, though..." she added, prodding the unknown fluffy substance dubiously with one plastic knife before cutting herself a bite-sized piece. "But Kana needed something more nutritious. Right, Kana?"
"...yeah," Kana said after a few seconds of hesitation—hiding an uncomfortable flinch at the words. "It's good." She coughed and sat up straighter. "I..."
Amu sighed. "You're thinking too much," she told Kana quietly. "I just want you to be happy. So please, talk to us. I want all sides of you to be happy."
'If you absolutely have to hurt yourself, at least tell us why?'
"I'll try," Kana replied after a moment or so; and this time Amu was certain there was no strain on her at all. She was, for now, in balance.
It was a balance that involved Amu holding Kana upright, which she couldn't do forever. But that was still a sort of balance.
⁂
"Mom studies souls," Kana repeated, for the third time that day. "What makes us people, but it's also what lets magic work. Like what you call psionics?" She looked questioningly at Amu, who shrugged at her. "What the two of us can use? It's one type of magic, but there are a lot of others.
"Because of that... well, my family is secretive about a lot of things," Kana continued after a few seconds of thought. "And because I ran away when I was ten... or was I eleven?" She frowned, scratching her chin thoughtfully with one finger before giving up and continuing on. "Because I left when I was young, there's a lot she couldn't tell me. Traditionally, apparently, kids aren't told anything at all until they're twelve. But the thing is..." Kana drew a deep breath.
"Mom did the same thing," she said. "Ran away from home, I mean. Because her family is nuts, and she was scared of raising me where they could find us. The only one who knows where she lives is Aunt Noriko, and Mom hasn't let her visit since... for years. I'm not sure." Kana grimaced slightly. "Mom thinks they're evil madmen. Says it all, don't you think?"
She waved her hands around at the ruins of Manticore around them as she spoke—at the ruined laboratory full of computers and dead screens and security cameras everywhere, the surgical tools in one corner, the molten scrap of child-sized cages stuffed into a corner—before grimacing slightly at the sight of Amu's stricken face and hastily resuming her explanation.
"She started studying psionics, because... Amu, have you ever pushed so hard you've gotten tired? Tried to do something you couldn't, without realising you couldn't?" Kana looked expectantly at Amu, who hesitated for a moment or so before nodding once at her.
"Of course." Obviously?
"If you do that with ordinary magic, you get brain damage," Shadow-Kana supplied. "Serious brain damage. Even if it's only once. It doesn't happen to persona users, like..." She hesitated, looking at Shirogane. "...you? I doubt I'm getting one from this absurdity."
Kana and Shadow-Kana were both trying to pretend the other didn't exist. That didn't stop them completing each other's sentences.
"I see," Shirogane replied, shaking her head. "I'd never heard."
"Getting back to mom, her self-declared life's work was to figure out why persona users don't hurt themselves by using their power. And then Manticore offered to let her work with psionics, which..." Kana hesitated, glancing at Shirogane. Being a Kana, somebody forged on.
"Which are kinda just better at everything," Shadow-Kana said. "Betcha you can just do a few tricks. Right? Two or three at most. They're strong, but you've got what might as well be a spell list. There's no way you can do anything offensive other than that lightning. Thing is though, lightning works on most things. Especially if you're also really hard to hurt."
Shirogane nodded, a slight smile playing on her lips.
"But psions are more... general," Kana continued, a hint of pride seeping into her voice as she spoke. "'Cause we're not leveraging fixed archetypes. We don't use psionics, we are the psionics. ...and unlike sorcerers like mom, using it doesn't hurt us." She held up one finger for emphasis. "Which means we can just sorta... make shit up on the spot. There's no fixed structure."
'Is that why you practically flayed yourself?' Amu asked—a private whisper inside their heads to keep Shirogane from overhearing. 'Because you were trying to-'
Kana shook her head slightly at Amu's words, sending a trickle of denial through their link and continuing on regardless. 'Accident. Kinda. I saw my shadow and I kinda just-'
'How!? And why!?'
Kana held her head against an apparent headache. More words tried to make their way out of her mouth, from 'everything she said was a lie!' to 'it wasn't my fault'—before finally settling on nothing at all. With a little help from Amu. Kana's self-control was, bluntly, shot—they were substituting for it by mind-controlling her. Amu didn't think she even realised what she was doing half the time.
But Amu was more than willing to help her along.
She just sort of hoped the story would lead to some kind of resolution.
⁂
It mainly seemed to lead to exposition.
"Psionics are a new thing," Kana said, after scarfing down a bit more 'cake'. "They started popping up a bit less than a decade ago, for no obvious reason at all. 'least, none that mom or Manticore has heard about. It's worldwide, but she says there are more in Europe and Japan. Particularly Japan. Hence Manticore.
"I don't really know what it was like at first. I've heard people say their job is to keep Japan safe from psionics, but I don't know when that turned into keeping kids in cages. Probably after they found out what psionics can do."
"Mind control?" Amu asked.
"Yeah. No. That's just me, and mom's not scared of me. Anyhow... that was later. It's more stuff like..." She waved one hand vaguely towards Shirogane before taking a bite out of another piece of cake and continuing on while chewing.
She was definitely just trying to avoid the point.
"Flamethrowers," she got out between the crumbs, swallowing and gesturing vaguely upwards with one hand. "Teleporting knives into people. Kids that move so fast, they might as well be teleporting. And you, Amu. I saw you on TV, tearing demons to pieces with your mind. You know that'd be scary, yeah? 'cause, um. We saw that, and then I thought, 'Wow. I had lunch with that girl, and she didn't murder me.'" Kana sagged. "And the speedster? That's my sister's friend, Yuna. She's… really nice. Or she was, the last time I saw her," she said glumly. "Three years ago. Her brother still thinks she's alive."
'...because I told him,' Kana told her. 'Don't tell anyone. He might get disappeared as well.'
Amu blinked, and then blinked again as she tried to make the dots line up. Kana saw the horror in her mind and shook her head—a brief rueful smile flickering across her face as she did so.
"I still can't believe Naomi thought you might be dangerous," she said quietly, mostly to herself, a hint of amused incredulity colouring her voice. "I wanted to find you in the hospital, Amu. Never think I didn't. Naomi's the one who decided... you're probably..."
'...obviously not a plant from Manticore,' she continued silently, making Amu shiver briefly as she completed that sentence inside her mind, feeling the truth of it from Kana's mind. 'You're not the problem.'
"...Kana," Amu started.
"Yeah?" Both of them answered.
Amu paused.
"You started calling me Amu again," she finally pointed out. Shadow-Kana perked up a little. "Is that…"
"I'm feeling more like myself, yeah. I guess." Kana shivered. "Just don't stop holding on to me, please? Um." She glanced down at her hands, which weren't in contact with Amu at all, and pointedly didn't look at her Shadow. After a moment, she tentatively stretched out some fingers in Amu's direction. Amu gratefully let herself touch them.
Kana shivered a little, but her mind felt a lot more… manageable.
Shirogane held up a hand, interrupting them with a quiet cough.
"I've also seen the footage," she said gently. "Of Hinamori-san defeating the demons. I expect that describes a large fraction of the planet now. Hinamori-san, you're walking around with a loaded gun at all times. I shouldn't need to explain why that would frighten people."
Amu considered that for a few seconds and then nodded silently in agreement. Utau slipped a hand around Amu's shoulders as she did so.
Shirogane continued. "Unlike what many people think, there is no absolute rule against minors handling weapons in our country," she explained calmly, her tone reassuringly neutral. "But if they do so, it must be for a good reason—usually out of necessity—and in addition they must be suitably trained. In your case no such training officially exists, as yet, but you should expect to hear from someone soon. I don't necessarily think you should worry. If you've gone this long without harming anyone, then..." Shirogane shrugged, letting the sentence trail off as she did so. "They can't afford to look bad to the public. That's going to include this Manticore.
"Given your powers—and your personality—if it were up to me I'd allow an exception in your case." Shirogane continued on, her words still measured and calm in spite of the topic. "That may not be the case for many people less experienced with violence, which is a point I imagine is being discussed at higher levels of government right now. It does not surprise me that an organisation meant to preempt the issue already exists. However, given what I have heard of it thus far..."
Shirogane leaned forward in her seat slightly as she continued speaking; a frown on her face and her voice growing sharper by degrees. "I cannot help but find myself disapproving."
'That's something,' Amu heard Kana think. 'Even if it's not helpful at all...'
"Anyway," Kana said aloud. "Manticore was already nasty. And then Mom tried to teach Yui magic, and it all went..."
"Pear-shaped?" Utau suggested when Kana trailed off again, her words causing Amu to smile briefly. Only briefly.
"Badly," Kana said. "Really badly. I don't really want to talk 'bout it. Is that okay? Please?"
"Sure," Amu said softly, tightening her grip on Kana's hand again. "And I'd rather talk about you."
"...don't we have a dragon to kill or something?" Kana asked after a few seconds of silence.
Amu gave her an unhappy look, and Kana sighed heavily in response, closing her eyes for a second or two.
"Yui-chan is right here," she said. "That's her power. Making places. Turning herself into places, when she takes it too far. It's why I can't let her sleep on her own… well, that and the monsters from her nightmares, like…" She gestured uncomfortably at the room around them. "These. Sometimes I'm in them as well. Those are the worst. But I've never seen her this… spread out. Somewhere in here there'll still be that little girl… if we can find her."
"Kana," Amu said. "About your Shadow-self..."
Kana let out a bitter chuckle.
"Mom and her 'true self' bullshit," she replied quietly; a sad smile flickering across her face as she spoke, before it melted away into something resembling disgust. "My shadow wants to give up on Yui-chan, Amu. All these years, all that fighting, and she wants to just give up and go home. Like nothing's ever changed. Like I don't know Mom is just as bad as my grandpa."
Shadow Kana started to speak up in protest, a building rage that barely stopped at Amu's slightly panicked mental nudge.
"...would you ever do that?" Amu asked after a second or so, a hint of a tremor in her voice as she spoke that vanished under a wave of calm. Courtesy of Ran.
'Of course not.'
Kana closed her eyes with a grimace at Amu's distress, and let out a shuddering breath before answering. "Never," she said firmly. "Not in a million years. I'll find her. Even if it takes a thousand years. She won't die while she's here. She just isn't… her."
'Then does it matter if there's still a part of you that wants to?' Amu wanted to ask. 'That Shadow-Kana looks so wrong to you. She's still you. Do you really have to kill her?'
The answer was instant, even if Kana didn't want it to be: Yes. Yes, she did. She couldn't. But she did.
Amu opened her mouth to protest, only to find herself interrupted by Utau.
"And would accepting her change you?" Utau asked quietly—a slightly sad smile on her face, Iru scratching her neck as she spoke. "Would accepting her mean you'd go back to your mother? Would it make you a different person than the one Amu seems to love?"
Utau gestured at Kana as she spoke—one hand towards the girl, the other resting on Amu's shoulder; warm and comforting and unwavering—her voice growing firmer by the second.
"Or would you still be the same person you were last week, but with a new perspective on who you could be?" Utau challenged. "Is that such a bad thing? If you're anything like me…" Utau trailed off at those last words, her expression twisting into something uncomfortable for a split-second before she forced it back into neutrality again. "-you'll do the right thing regardless, once you know."
Utau clenched Amu's hand, trembling slightly.
"...no," Kana said. "No, I don't suppose it would." She sighed. "I've tried being a demon. If you've got a better idea… I guess I can try being me."
= = =
And then what?
There's no huge question of whether or not she'll pull herself together. You'd need to be insane to not want that, and Kana has recovered… sufficiently. There's still a question of on what terms, which will be the final vote of this arc. Yui still needs rescue, but in typical Persona form she'll be fine for now; no-one ever worried people would starve to death while they were searching for them. Which is odd, now I think of it.
A few options present themselves. Note that these select not just Kana's living situation, but how the next scene plays out; it'll work in a way that makes this happen.
[ ] Amu's bid.
- Amu wants to take Kana home, because of course she does. Hopefully Kana will be more welcome than a certain catboy. She isn't repeating her mistake of hiding a boarder, but she doesn't want to let Kana out of sight.
- This was Amu's first idea for a compromise, and something along these lines would have the best impact on her mentality.
- Obvious flaw: Kana is a confessed murderer, Naoto will want to do something about that.
- The primary story effect is she'll be around a lot, although it'll be some time before she's active in any non-fluff manner other than perhaps hunting down Yui. Naoto would visit to keep an eye on her.
[ ] Naoto's bid.
- The twelve-year-old being a "self-confessed murderer" is a big concern, but so is everything she's heard tonight, and Naoto isn't going to march Kana up to the nearest police station. For… a number of reasons. She might, however, want to sit on her. Yes—that makes two people who'd quite like Kana to live with them, if for very different reasons.
- There's a part of Kana who really wants someone older to take charge. There are also large parts of Kana that would object violently to this. It depends a lot on how competent Naoto is; fortunately, she is highly competent.
- Obvious flaw: Kana doesn't want to.
- The primary story effect is it'll pull in the rest of the investigation crew a great deal faster, and possibly the Kirijo group as well. At a distance, however; Naoto isn't likely to ask Amu for help in any normal situation.
- Although chances are she'll visit to introduce herself as Ami's teacher. Because someone has to babysit her.
[ ] Utau's bid.
- Look, Kana mostly needs someone with a vague idea of what she's been going through.
- This person doesn't exist, but Utau thinks she has a shot. And has connections enough to help Kana rent an apartment of her own, to let her keep some distance if that's what she wants. It's not clear that she does, but it would prevent a great deal of potential fallout.
- Obvious flaw: Kana really shouldn't be on her own. Amu is willing to be a 24/7 bodyguard, so why are we leaving her to herself? She can't even cook well!
- Kana would like the idea at first, but quickly mess up. She never has lived on her own, and isn't the type to do well. In practice it devolves to Amu's bid, slightly delayed. Or Naoto's. Depends.
- The primary story effect is a mildly depressed Kana, who might realise she's not as grown up as she thinks.
[ ] Kana's bid.
- Kana is entirely capable of running away and handling herself, or at least she thinks she is. She can escape. Probably. And then she can… visit Amu while hunting down Yui? She isn't exactly sure what her plan is.
- She'd be creaking at the seams. Not much hope of a clean reintegration if this is the best she can come up with.
- Too many flaws to mention. I don't think anyone will go for this.
- The primary story effect is… do you want a tragedy? Look, I'm including this because I feel she should get a say. Not because her idea is a good one.
[ ] Write-in
- You don't have to write-in. Directly expanding on one of the canned options is mostly pointless; any details you add would likely come up as in-story votes regardless. Though you can if you want, or to propose something very different.
