Archive of Our Own

Seeing Yusuke drawing in Le Blanc was hardly an uncommon sight. It was to the point where they had a box of his art supplies under the counter. However….

"Yusuke, what is that?" Akira asked, gesturing towards his sketchbook.

"Ah, Akira!" Yusuke gestured in a grandiose manner at the page he had been working on. "It occurred to me that the Phantom Thief aesthetic has quite a bit in common with what is popularly referred to as the steampunk movement, so I sought to reimagine your costume as-"

"No, I mean what is that I'm holding in your drawing?"

"Oh, a pokeball."

"A pokeball?"

"For Morgana."

Akira looked around in alarm, absolutely sure that Yusuke was going to be mauled by a furry feline projectile, but thankfully Morgana hadn't been close enough to hear.

"Commercialization of art can be problematic, but this was a very generous commission," Yusuke said in that half flat/half annoyed tone of voice he used when he had to acknowledge that sometimes he needed to be a responsible adult.

Akira tilted his head and squinted in hopes that it would make the image make more sense. Maybe he had finally gotten to the point where he needed real glasses instead of the costume glasses he normally wore to look less intimidating? "Someone asked for a picture of me as Morgana's pokemon trainer?"

"Not as such, but the two of you fit the OC they asked for."

Arsene didn't say a word, but Akira could feel the metaphysical embodiment of his spirit of rebellion project a feeling of just utter done with this crap into the sea of his soul.

Akira turned to see a very amused Sojiro smirking at them behind his paper. "Hey, Boss? How much vacation time do I have saved up?" Disappearing off into the countryside and just not dealing with society for a few weeks sounded great right now.

"Seriously, man? Couldn't you have chosen to go somewhere with something to do?" Ryuji complained after looking through the entire cottage, which took all of half a minute.

"There's cows to milk and chickens to… egg?" Akira tried.

"Your city raised ass is going to starve to death," Ryuji replied flatly, which was fairly hypocritical coming from him.

"The couple did say they'd come out to give us lessons in the morning," Yusuke said distractedly as he looked out the window through his fingers held in a frame.

Morgana just settled on the couch in a curl, not dignifying any of them with a response.

Normally, Akira was very glad for the unbreakable, literally soul deep bonds he had formed. Unfortunately, he did have a history of being abducted by the government and tortured, so while pretty much everyone was willing to let him out of their individual sights for a month or so, no one was willing to let him out of everyone's sight for longer than it took for him to go to the bathroom. This might not have been so bad if Morgana counted as proper supervision, but unfortunately, cats can't operate phones and most of the people Akira considered to be actual responsible adults were busy doing responsible adult things.

Out of those he didn't consider real adults yet but might pass muster if you squinted, Ann was already booked for a modeling shoot in some tropical paradise, Futaba might literally die from having anything less than gigabit internet, Yuuki had just gotten a new job and it was competition season for Sumire.

That left Yusuke and Ryuji, and while neither of them individually counted as responsible adults, Makoto and Haru reluctantly agreed that solely for the purpose of making sure Akira wasn't disappeared by the government the two of them might add up to a single responsible adult. Barely. (Haru was a lot nicer about this conclusion, but still fundamentally agreed with it.)

Normally, Akira would have said that taking those two along would defeat the purpose of getting away from it all, but when your list of possible vacation activities - again, based on historical precedent - included throwing down with a god, artificial or not, well, at least he'd have a full combat party available.

That AI god went a long way towards explaining why Akira chose to rent a cottage in the countryside where, theoretically, he wouldn't need to see another person for the rest of the month. The Shinoharas, a retired couple who still lived with the rest of their family on their farm, rented out a few cottages on their property to city slickers who wanted to try the simple life. Akira got the distinct feeling that they didn't really make any money off the business but instead did it mostly to laugh at how out of depth their customers got.

To be fair, the cottage and the plot of land they were given looked exactly like what Akira was expecting: a small traditional cottage, furnished with plenty of soft quilts with a large vegetable garden and buildings with livestock. With a full pantry they had decent odds of making it through the month without needing to talk with anyone else. They were also close enough to the nearest town that they could get groceries and had cell service, so they weren't completely out of luck if they had trouble.

Yusuke had his easel and art supplies so Akira was pretty confident that the young artist would hardly notice being in the countryside. He was a lot less confident that Ryuji would manage with nothing but his cell phone games.

"You know this isn't like Harvest Moon and you can't just throw seeds on the ground, right?" Ryuji asked as he settled in an armchair with his cell in hand.

Akira adjusted his glasses. "Obviously you need to use the hoe tool on the ground first and then water for a few days depending on the plant."

"Okay, the fact that you had that on the tip of your tongue makes me less confident."

Akira rolled his eyes. "Worst case is we go into town for groceries every other day."

"Every other day?"

"I plan on doing a lot of baking."

Ryuji stared at him for a long moment. "Are you for real?"

Akira shrugged. "It's not like there's an oven I can use back home."

"Dude, if I didn't know how little you were paying in rent, I'd suggest just moving out of Sojiro's attic."

"And make Futaba go through the trouble of putting electronic surveillance in my new place?"

Ryuji rolled his eyes. "The worst part is that that wasn't even sarcasm. I'm half afraid she's going to send a swarm of drones to watch us here."

"Nah, she was good," Morgana chimed in. "She only put in seven trackers in our stuff."

"Our stuff meaning just you and Akira or me and Yusuke, too?"

Morgana looked at Ryuji like he was an idiot. "What do you think?"

"...That I should buy new luggage if I ever need to go through airport security."

Akira shook his head. "You're not lucky enough that she stuck to just luggage."

"Ya think I can get new underwear in town?"

"You are the dumbest smart person I know," Morgana said with the best judgemental look he could give. Seeing as he was a cat, that was very judgemental. "We haven't even been here for two full days yet!"

In Akira's defense, he was just trying to be efficient. If you heated the oven up, well, you might as well use it for more than one loaf of bread, right? No use wasting the fact that the oven was already heated. Plus, they were near the mountains so the weather was cold enough that a little extra heat from the oven was welcome. Basically, he didn't see a good reason to stop baking until he realized that the kitchen table was so full of bread that they didn't really have room to eat on it.

"At least I found out I enjoy baking?"

"This is just like the time you ran us ragged in Mementos trying to get blank skill cards. I swear you can literally warp time when you're doing boring, repetitive tasks. It felt like we were in there for days instead of just one afternoon. How did you even get this many loaves of bread out of the oven in just one day?"

"Efficient space packing?"

Ryuji stuck his head in. "More fresh bread? Score!"

Morgana looked back and forth between the table and Ryuji a few times. "Wait, this is like the fourth time he's taken bread. So this isn't even all that you baked today."

Ryuji blinked as he finally processed how much bread was sitting there. "Huh. Did we even have enough flour for this much bread?"

Morgana sat back and threw his paws in the air. "I know!"

Akira shrugged. "I guess we're going to town for supplies after all."

"After you finish all this bread!" Morgana demanded.

Ryuji shrugged. "Shouldn't take too long."

Morgana hung his head. "You three are human garbage disposals."

"We're growing boys! Hey, hey! You should try making rolls next."

"Well, the oven is still hot-"

Morgana hissed at him.

Morgana had kicked Akira out of the cottage the next day out of a fear of a yeast driven apocalypse (Akira personally thought that spawning a bread related shadow was more likely, but wasn't stupid enough to say that out loud), so he sat with Ryuji and Yusuke on the porch with a basket of bread and some milk fresh from the cow. (It had taken a few days to stop automatically assuming that warm milk had gone bad, but Akira had finally gotten over it.) If the weather had been different, Akira might have gone fishing, but it was damp and cool, so he settled on the bench with a comforter and a copy of "Cry of Cthulhu". Something about the weather made the title seem appropriate.

Ryuji was, as expected, defeating the purpose of getting away from it all by watching videos on his cell phone. Akira didn't complain too much since he was using earbuds and was also under the comforter generating heat. Yusuke, on the other hand, was a painting machine, going through watercolors like he was going to fight another god tomorrow.

"Did you get an order for a bunch of pictures of trees?" Ryuji finally asked.

They couldn't see it from their angle, but they could hear the frown in Yusuke's voice. "This is actually something one of my teachers suggested, around the time we first met." Akira assumed Yusuke meant when the artist met the Phantom Thieves and not his teacher, but didn't think it was worth the effort to get a clarification. "He told us a story about a pottery class where the teacher divided the class into two with different grading."

Ryuji perked up. "Oh, I think I heard of this. One half was graded on how many pots they could make during the term and the other was graded on the single best pot they made. And the fast half became better than the good half because they were practicing more."

"I thought my teacher said it was cups, but now that you say that I'm not sure."

"Wasn't the whole thing supposed to be a lesson about practicing for ten thousand hours making you a master?"

Akira winced. "Yoshitsune has some definite things to say about that. Practicing a flawed cut ten thousand times will only make you a master of a flawed cut."

Yusuke nodded. "My teacher agreed, but he did say that sometimes you should practice speed painting, if for no other reason than learning to recover from mistakes."

"This something you do often?" Ryuji asked.

Yusuke shook his head. "I usually find it too… boring isn't the right word, but it's close. Think boring but with more irritation mixed in. This place is soothing enough that it blunts that irritation. Plus, there are enough trees that I can draw a different tree for each repetition."

Ryuji craned his neck. "The paintings all look the same to me."

Akira tuned out the resulting lecture. Hey, he'd lay down his life for Ryuji's in a heartbeat, but he wasn't going to protect him from his own stupidity for anything less than life and death - well, probably maiming too, but definitely not just a lecture. In the meantime, Yoshitsune settled down, admitting that practicing for raw speed was a legitimate exercise as long as it wasn't the only thing you did.

The next day Ryuji made an emergency trip back to town. It wasn't particularly far, seeing as they were close enough they still had a cell signal. Still it wasn't as if they were out of food, even if Akira told the blond to get more flour. Akira suspected Ryuji really did find a tracking device in his underwear, but he wasn't going to ask. It would just encourage Futaba if they made a big deal out of it. As such, he didn't expect what Ryuji came back with.

"Seriously, a case of instant ramen?" At least he had also gotten more flour. Still, it made Akira regret having rented the car a little. Unfortunately, the logic of being able to get back home quickly in case of a demon invasion or something was still valid.

"Hey, a sudden extreme change in diet is bad for you."

"Sure, now you learn to lie," Morgana griped.

"You didn't give Akira this much trouble over the coffee he brought."

"That's because he's an addict."

"Hey!"

"He isn't wrong," Yusuke, the traitor, chimed in.

"But, yeah, the town is a total snooze fest. It looks like there was a drive-in theater around during the nineties, but it closed down years ago." Ryuji turned to Akira. "I don't know how you're getting by. You were the one who was constantly going to the batting cages or the movies or fishing and stuff."

"I don't get bored because I get along with the voices in my head."

Ryuji rolled his eyes. "Way to sound like a crazy person."

Akira shrugged. "It's literally true."

"You ever use that line on anyone not in the know?"

"They usually think I'm joking."

Morgana sighed. "I wonder why."

Ryuji poked at Morgana. "Says the talking cat."

At this point Akira swore that the two of them just enjoyed fighting with each other.

"You said most people. How have others reacted?" Yusuke asked, subtly shifting away from Ryuji and Morgana.

"One guy thought I was being a condescending bastard who was looking down on his lack of discipline." Akira shrugged. "Pretty much his exact words."

That managed to derail Ryuji and Morgana's impending argument. "I think that says more about that guy than it does you," Morgana said.

"Says something like 'Guy with a shadow here?'" Ryuji asked.

"It could be just someone having a bad day," Yusuke volunteered, but he didn't sound very sure of himself.

Akira shrugged. "Never saw him again."

Ryuji sighed. "Kind of feels like what we did was just, dunno, impermanent."

Akira raised an eyebrow. "We saved the world. That sounds pretty permanent to me."

"Yeah, if only the damn thing would just stay saved."

Akira put his hand on Ryuji's shoulder. "And when the next god who needs his teeth kicked in shows up, we'll kick his teeth in."

Ryuji grinned, all of it teeth. "Damn right we will."

"And then have a coffee to celebrate."

Ryuji's face fell. "I can't tell if you're really that much of an addict or you're just messing with me."

"It can be both," Morgana said flatly.

Morgana, somewhat appalled at how quickly the boys had gotten through all the bread Akira had baked, let Akira back into the kitchen. To be honest, Akira was a bit appalled as well, but he wasn't going to admit that. It probably had something to do with how little meat and vegetables they had been eating. The garden was right there, but honestly they had been too lazy to harvest from it. They should probably do something about that… which meant Akira should do something about that.

He briefly considered sending Ryuji back to town for veggies, but he'd probably just come back with more instant ramen. Plus, Ryuji decided to go for a hike through the trees. Akira was a little concerned that Ryuji might get lost, but decided to have faith in his friend. (And if nothing else Ryuji could follow the smell of the baking back to the cottage. He'd be worried about relying basically on anime logic here, but this was Ryuji and food.)

"How does brioche sound?" They definitely had enough eggs for it.

"Like a lot of work." Morgana didn't even open his eyes to respond to that. "Do we even have enough room in the fridge to proof the dough?"

Two things struck Akira. One, Morgana was absolutely right about not having the room to refrigerate the dough overnight, and, two, Morgana knew how to make brioche off the top of his head. Considering it was highly unlikely that was information Igor had stuck in his head when creating the non-cat, that meant Morgana had learned on his own.

Well, Akira wasn't going to call out his partner for his obvious interest in disgustingly rich baked goods. They were lucky Morgana wasn't really a cat because if he was, his diet would have killed him. Though, to be fair, it was probably killing all of them, just a lot more slowly.

Akira sighed. "I should probably give the vegetable garden a good look."

Morgana made a disinterested cat noise and buried himself under a quilt.

With that cheerful note, Akira went outside to catalog just what was in the garden. Thankfully it was labeled with those plastic things you shove into the ground, including expected harvest dates. Plant signs? Haru would know what they were called. Yeah, Akira knew what ginger looked like in the store, but he would have never been able to tell the leafy part from any other leafy thing above ground. He at least could recognize an onion plant, but he had no idea how to tell if it was time to harvest it without some sort of guidance.

Akira considered the neatly labeled rows carefully and re-evaluated his original thought about why the couple ran this business. It wouldn't surprise him if someone told him that they did it in part just to show off their gardening skills. He considered the size of the garden again. Or they just really liked growing plants but thought harvesting was for chumps.

That would make him a chump, wouldn't it?

He shook his head. Well, there were potatoes, so maybe he could make some curry bread. Looking at the garden, it seemed that the only thing he'd need would be some bread crumbs for the coating, so he'd need to bake more bread, shred it and bake the crumbs- Huh. Did that mean that he'd be baking the same flour three times? The strangest parts of his life actually had very little to do with the supernatural.

Akira stopped and considered that for a moment. Did that mean he was getting entirely too used to the supernatural or did that have more to do with the parts of daily life the people just didn't think about? Considering he literally made his vacation plans around the possibility that there would be an attack by a random god, he was tempted to say the former, but seriously, he was going to bake this same thing three times - voluntarily - just so that his curry bread would have a pleasant crunch to it. Was it really worth that effort?

Well, Sojiro's approach to cooking had always been very scientific, so Akira would honor that by doing a controlled study. Half an hour later Akira came to the conclusion that he had spent entirely too much time listening to Tae talk about experimental design in between bouts of extremely inappropriate and deliberately disturbing flirting, because he had a fairly robust four stage experimental procedure in place.

As he looked up he saw Ryuji coming back from his hike.

"Hope you like curry pan! We'll be eating a lot the next few days."

"Nice. They have curry in the vegetable garden?"

Akira gave Ryuji a long look. "You know that curry isn't a vegetable, right?"

Ryuji rolled his eyes. "I mean the veggies that you can grind up for curry powder."

Akira looked in the direction of the garden. "I don't think so. I'm pretty sure most of them won't grow around here without a greenhouse." Akira looked back at Ryuji who flopped angrily on the loveseat. "You okay?"

"Just fine."

"Ryuji…."

"Fine. Remember what we were talking about with another god maybe showing up?"

Akira nodded. "Good excuse for coffee."

Ryuji gave him a flat stare. "Now I know you're messing with me. Anyway, and you remember that time when we all woke up, absolutely certain there were other Persona users out there?"

"No, I completely forgot about the time I woke up so suddenly I hit my head and needed stitches."

"Okay, dumb question."

"You think?"

Ryuji held up his hands apologetically. "Right, so I was wondering what if we knew about another group because they fought a god, but lost? And, you know, got wiped out of humanity's cognition? I mean that almost happened to us."

"Ryuji, the idea of going to the middle of nowhere was to get away from existential questions."

"Well, it's not impossible," Morgana chimed in.

Akira shook his head. "Look, I'm just going to do my ridiculously over engineered curry bread experiment, read some books I've read before and chill out with nature for the rest of the month. Looking for some signs that a group of Persona users did a mutual kill on a forgotten god can wait that long."

Akira felt a buzz on his phone. Taking it out he groaned. "Damnit, Futaba, I thought you only put trackers on us, not microphones."

"She looking into it?" Ryuji asked.

Akira nodded. "Yeah."

"She only put the microphones on Yusuke and Ryuji," Morgana chimed in. "You and I just have trackers."

Ryuji patted his clothes. "Damnit. Okay, whole new wardrobe this time."

Akira gave him a pat on the back. "At least I can say that I didn't corrupt her."

Ryuji shot him a dirty look. "You sure didn't help."

"Uh… you do remember that our first contact involved her blackmailing us? Using information she got from bugging us?"

"I was repressing that, dammit."

"I mean she's practically an angel now."

Ryuji rolled his eyes. "You're just saying that because she has the room bugged and can hear you. Now, c'mon, I'll help you with your food blasphemy."

"Food blasphemy?"

"You're messing with curry bread. If that doesn't count as food blasphemy I don't know what does."

Trying to make curry bread without drying the bread crumbs basically didn't even get to the baking stage, so the first day's batch was curry bread that was breaded with oven dried bread crumbs and without bread crumbs at all.

"Seriously, dude!?" Ryuji all but shouted at Yusuke.

"Aesthetically, the bread crumbs are superior, but in terms of an actual culinary item, I believe that the version without bread crumbs is a more appealing product."

Akira looked at him and then carefully took bites out of one of each of the curry breads. "I can't say it's the same without the crunch," Akira concluded.

Ryuji threw his arms in the air. "Exactly!"

"But it's less messy without the bread crumbs," Yusuke countered.

Ryuji sighed. "You mean the thing that's most important to you is how convenient it is?"

Yusuke nodded happily. "When it comes to pastries."

Akira and Ryuji exchanged a glance, mutually deciding not to delve into the topic. Yusuke almost assuredly wanted to eat quickly so he would have more time to paint. If they hadn't checked for his shadow, Akira would be worried that he was the subject of a distortion. Still, Akira could recall Yusuke eating for pleasure, so he wasn't completely gone.

"They'd be better fried," Ryuji finally said.

Akira glanced over to the kitchen. "We're not really set up for it here." The couple renting the place probably didn't want anyone burning the building down after a grease fire. "I suppose I could try a pan fry, but it's really not the same."

"Plus you have to be even more careful eating them with the grease," Yusuke added.

Ryuji shook his head and then took bites out of the two varieties of curry bread. "Thing is, it's better with the bread crumbs, but I'm not sure it's worth the extra effort."

Akira shook his head. "I don't think it's supposed to be that much extra effort if you know what you're doing and bake regularly."

Ryuji looked at him as if he grew another head. "I know practice makes things easier, but that's still a lot of work."

"No, I mean, if we weren't a bunch of savages who just tear hunks off our bread and actually cut slices, we'd probably have a lot of crumbs just eating bread."

"I think Cocytus would produce quite a few crumbs," Yusuke commented idly.

Akira gave him his best unimpressed look. "I'm not using a combat knife on bread."

Ryuji glanced back at the oven. "Now, I'm kinda curious."

"You know where that knife has been. You want to eat bits of Yaldabaoth?"

Ryuji shrugged. "As long as it's not bits of Kamoshida."

"You have washed it, yes?" Yusuke ventured.

"Of course I washed it! I even used Agidyne on it just to be sure it's completely disinfected. I'm just not sure that fire and bleach are enough to ensure that spiritual diseases are gone."

"You could always nuke it," Ryuji offered.

Akira glared at him. "I don't think making it radioactive would make it any safer as a utensil."

"...That's a joke right?" Ryuji looked at his hands. "I mean we got hit by enough nuke attacks that if it was really radiation we'd all have cancer by now, right?"

"Ryuji, there's a reason why I keep Fafnir around, and it isn't because I expect to carry a lot of gold in day to day life."

"Uh…, Yusuke?"

"While dying early would be troublesome, it would do my career wonders."

"That's not-"

"Idiot!" Morgana chimed in. "Don't you remember that time Queen decided to use a dosimeter when we went into Mementos? She already checked for that."

Ryuji crossed his arms and glared at Akira and Yusuke. "You guys suck."

"Not our fault you forgot. You know that she cares about that kind of stuff." Akira leaned back. "I almost wish she had a palace. I'd love to see what a JISHA compliant supervillain lair would look like."

Yusuke grabbed his sketchbook, inspiration obviously having struck him. "Guard rails!" he said happily, though Akira couldn't tell if that was artistic happiness or just imagining some of the crazy places they'd been with actual safety measures in place.

Ryuji frowned. "Ya really think her palace would be a supervillain lair? I mean she's got that rebel biker chick vibe going in the metaverse. Dunno. Think she might go more for a prison or something."

Akira waved a curry bun in his direction. "Ah ah ah. I have dibs on a prison."

Ryuji shuddered. "Right. I was repressing that."

"Thankfully, there seems to be little relationship between one's persona and one's palace," Yusuke said without looking up from his sketchbook. "Considering Futaba."

Ryuji stuck his tongue out and made a face. "The pyramid was creepy enough. Don't even want to think what it would have been like with tentacle horrors."

Akira closed his eyes to think. "Weren't there nagas and lamias? Maybe if we left things alone they would have turned into tentacle horrors." Raising his voice, he announced to the room, "But I'm glad we didn't have to find out."

Ryuji made silent whipping motions at him, to which Akira just shrugged. Futaba was family. The least he could do was reassure her that he was glad that they had taken care of her palace quickly.

Akira stretched as he got ready to get into the car for the long drive out.

"Man, I'm going to miss it here," Ryuji said as he slid into the back seat.

"Didn't get too bored?"

"Oh, man, so bored, but, you know, it's kind of nice."

"Especially considering the alternative," Yusuke chimed in from the passenger seat where he had a book open. "It was nice that the world didn't end while we were on vacation."

Morgana jumped on the seat and swatted Yusuke's head. "Don't tempt fate like that."

"I'm sure-"

Yusuke was interrupted by the sky turning blood red in every direction. Stars in unfamiliar constellations burned across the sky, forming what seemed like malevolent words in an eldritch tongue.

"See what you did?" Morgana hissed.

"I'm reasonably certain there's no causal connection here," Yusuke replied, though it sounded like even he didn't believe the words coming out of his mouth.

Akira sighed and popped open the trunk where their weapons were. "Okay, let's kill this god or whatever it is and then I'm going to see if the Shinoharas are willing to sell this place." It looked like Akira's choices were to never go on vacation again or just retire early, and right now an early retirement was looking pretty damn nice.

Ryuji groaned as he got back out of the car. "I'll go in halves with you. Hell, I'll buy the cow."

Morgana hopped onto the car's roof and pointed with a paw. "It feels like whatever's happening is in that direction." Which, of course, was Tokyo.

Yusuke snapped his book shut. "Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more."