The walk back from Tartarus was a funeral procession without a body.
No one spoke. The only sounds were the crunch of our shoes on the crystallized grass and the heavy, rhythmic pulse of the tower fading behind us. The green-tinged air felt thicker than usual, choked with the unspoken horror of what they had witnessed. What I had done.
I could feel their eyes on my back. Junpei's eyes were wide with superstitious fear, keeping a clear three-step distance behind me. Yukari's glances were quick and nervous, like a bird about to take flight.
Akihiko's gaze was a steady, heavy pressure between my shoulder blades, analyzing and dissecting the threat. And Mitsuru…
I could feel her stare like a physical touch, cold and sharp, a scalpel trying to pry open my skull to see the machinery inside.
Only Makoto walked beside me, his silence a different quality altogether. It wasn't accusatory or fearful. It was… companionable. As if we were two travelers on the same dark road, and he had simply accepted that my path was strewn with sharper stones.
The Dark Hour ended, and the world snapped back into vibrant, noisy color. The transition was jarring. The return of sound felt like an assault after the utter silence of the Shadow's end.
Inside the dorm, the tension didn't break; it solidified.
"Explain." The word came from Akihiko the moment the door clicked shut. He stood in the middle of the common room, arms crossed, his posture all hard lines and coiled energy.
"I can't," I said, my voice hollow. My hands were trembling. I shoved them into my pockets. "I told you. I just wanted it gone. And then… it was."
"It didn't die," Mitsuru stated, her voice cutting through the room. She stood by the window, her back to us, looking out at the now-normal city.
"There was no dissipation of energy, no residual psychic feedback. It was… erased. Catalogued data, deleted from reality." She turned, and her crimson eyes were alight with a fierce, troubled intensity.
"That is not how Personas work. That is not how Shadows work. The energy has to go somewhere. What is your persona, Tanaka? What is its function?"
Her questions were bullets. I had no armor. "I don't know," I whispered, the confession feeling like a failure.
"See? This is what I was talking about!" Junpei burst out, throwing his hands up. "He's a loose cannon! He points at something, and poof! What if he gets spooked and points at one of us? Huh?"
"Junpei, that's enough," Yukari said, but her voice lacked conviction. She was hugging herself, looking at the floor.
"It's a valid concern," Akihiko said, his gaze never leaving me. "We operate on trust and predictable power sets. His is neither. Until we understand it, he's a liability in the field."
The word 'liability' hit me like a physical blow. I was back to being a problem, a thing to be managed. The brief flicker of control I'd felt on the rooftop was a cruel joke.
"It's not a weapon."
The voice was quiet, but it cut through the argument. Everyone turned to look at Makoto. He had been so silent we'd almost forgotten he was there. He was looking at me, his head tilted slightly.
"What?" Mitsuru asked.
"His Persona," Makoto said, his tone utterly matter-of-fact. "It's not a weapon. It's a cage. Or maybe a lock."
A profound silence filled the room. He had put words to the feeling I couldn't articulate. The Entity wasn't a sword; it was a prison door. And last night, I had asked it to open just a crack.
Makoto's simple statement changed the chemistry of the room. The fear didn't vanish, but it morphed. It was no longer just fear of an unpredictable power but fear of an unknown purpose.
"A lock…" Mitsuru repeated, her scientific mind latching onto the concept. "Designed to contain what?"
No one had an answer.
The decision was made without my input. I was benched. Indefinitely. I was to continue my physical and mental training with Akihiko, but I was forbidden from joining Tartarus expeditions until further notice. I was to be studied, understood, and only then, perhaps, trusted.
The following days were a study in isolation. At school, I was a ghost. In the dorm, I was a specimen. Akihiko put me through brutal training regimens, pushing my body to its limits, trying to forge a vessel strong enough to contain whatever I was.
My sessions with Mitsuru were worse. She would sit with me in the command room, showing me diagrams of Persona energy flows, historical texts on Jungian psychology, and Kirijo Group data logs on Shadow behavior.
She was trying to find a box to put me in, a classification that would make me make sense.
Through it all, the Entity was silent. It watched these proceedings with what I could only feel was a profound sense of detachment. It didn't care about push-ups or textbooks. It was waiting.
The only respite was Makoto. He didn't try to train me or analyze me. Sometimes, he would just sit in the common room while I studied, his presence a quiet anchor in the storm. Once, he slid a cup of coffee towards me.
Another time, he was reading a book on quantum physics for fun, and he pointed to a passage about quantum erasure, where observing a particle can literally erase its past. He didn't say anything. He just looked at me and then back at the book. The message was clear: you are not alone in the strange and unexplainable.
It was during one of these silent evenings that the air changed. It was a few minutes before midnight. I was in my room, trying to read, when the pressure started to build. It wasn't the usual prelude to the Dark Hour. This was sharper and more localized. A psychic screech of pain and fury.
The Dark Hour washed over the world. The green hue returned. But something was wrong. The dorm felt… thin and strained.
A scream tore through the silence. From the sound, it's obviously from Yukari.
We all burst from our rooms at the same time. Yukari was backed against the wall in the hallway, her Evoker shaking in her hand. Junpei and Akihiko were already there, weapons ready. Mitsuru emerged from the command room, her face grim.
It was a Shadow. But not outside. It was inside the dorm. It had oozed through the walls, a writhing, many-limbed thing made of broken furniture and shattered glass, a manifestation of the building's own latent fears. It was a violation. Our sanctuary had been breached.
"Impossible!" Mitsuru breathed, her eyes wide. "The defensive charms…"
The Shadow lunged. Akihiko and Junpei met it, Caesar and Hermes flashing into existence. But their attacks seemed to slide off it. It was drawing power from the dorm itself, regenerating as fast as they could damage it. It swatted Akihiko aside, sending him crashing into a wall. It backhanded Junpei, his Persona flickering out.
"Everyone, fall back to the command room!" Mitsuru commanded, her own Evoker rising to her temple.
But it was too fast. A limb of splintered wood and shadow shot towards Yukari, who was still stunned against the wall.
I didn't think. I didn't have an Evoker. I didn't need one.
The fear for Yukari, the violation of this safe space, the sight of my teammates falling—it was a key turning in a lock. I didn't ask the Entity. I demanded.
The world narrowed to a single point: the attacking limb.
Stop.
The thought was not a word but a command of absolute negation.
The air between the Shadow and Yukari solidified. Not into a wall, but into a concept: the concept of "HALT."
The shadowy limb didn't hit a barrier; it simply ceased its forward motion. It didn't freeze. It lost all momentum, all purpose, as if the very idea of its movement had been deleted from reality. The limb hung in the air, inert and meaningless, before dissolving into dust.
The Shadow let out a shriek of pure cognitive dissonance. It couldn't comprehend what was happening.
Everyone was staring at me again. But this time, the fear was mixed with something else. Awe. And relief.
Mitsuru recovered first. "Now! All together!"
Penthesilea, Caesar, Hermes, and Io—Yukari's Persona—all attacked in unison. Blasted by ice, lightning, fire, and wind, the disoriented Shadow couldn't regenerate. It shattered into a million pieces, its core dissonance finally overwhelming it.
The green hue faded. The Dark Hour was over.
We stood in the wrecked hallway, panting. The silence was broken by Junpei's groan as he picked himself up. "What… what was that?"
Yukari looked from the spot where the Shadow had been to me. Her fear was gone, replaced by a stunned, dawning gratitude. "You… you saved me."
Akihiko walked over, clapping a hand on my shoulder. It was a firm, solid weight. "Good instinct," he grunted. There was no praise in his voice, but there was a new, hard-won respect. "You used the right tool for the job."
Mitsuru approached me last. Her expression was unreadable, a whirlwind of scientific curiosity and dawning strategic understanding.
"A lock," she murmured, echoing Makoto's words from days before. "You didn't destroy it. You… locked away its ability to attack." She looked at me, and for the first time, I saw not a problem but a potential. A terrifying, unpredictable potential.
"It seems your benching is over, Tanaka. We have a great deal to learn about your capabilities. And it appears we must learn it quickly." I looked at their faces—Yukari's gratitude, Junpei's bewildered acceptance, Akihiko's grim approval, and Mitsuru's calculating gaze.
I had proven my use. I was no longer just a liability. I... had become a necessary evil.
And standing slightly apart, Makoto gave me that same, quiet, knowing look. He understood the cost. I was now truly one of them, not despite my darkness, but because of it. The cage was now part of the team. And I had never felt more alone.