Prologue: The Ninth Heist
Plasmadon
Verified Freak-of-Nature
A/N: Starting a new story is always fun, isn't it? Persona has always been one of my favorite series, and with Persona 5--my personal favorite--finally 100% completed, I'm feeling the fanfiction itch come a-calling. Enjoy, lads!
The scented candle sitting on one of his many shelves sputtered. Briefly, he glanced up, watching the flame dance in the barest flicker of wind, then returned to his paperwork. After a moment, the light exuding from it stabilized, and he breathed a heavy breath, full of vanilla and bourbon.
Ethan Barker’s office didn’t have much in the way of character. Despite what people assumed from Colin’s lab, most personal effects were outright banned on the Rig, and the few that could be brought in had to be heavily screened. He’d barely managed to convince the security team that a candle was less dangerous than the myriad equipment Colin was likely tinkering with on the lower floors.
The candle flickered again, and he had to force his eyes to stay glued to the forms in front of him. Yet another mundane patrol report, committed to rote, tedious memorization. If the higher-ups had noticed that nearly all of his patrol sitreps were identical to the letter, they hadn’t said anything. He cracked a smile when he realized that Piggot likely didn’t do anything more than sweep the lot of them with a cursory glance. If a crime occurred in the city, it would be on the news. Invariably, even the smaller vandalisms and petty thefts got found out.
Another few seconds ticked by with his fingers weaving steadily sloppier letters onto the page. He caught another whiff of vanilla and allowed a bit of tension to seep from his shoulders. If only he could shunt these on Colin, like every other bit of paperwork. There would be more time to casually manhandle things in the training room, maybe plan a movie with Amanda later. There was some new action flick out, and while—ironically—he preferred the sappy romances, she would love a spate of physically-impossible action scenes.
Focus. He sighed and pushed through the last of the report, his handwriting regressing to the lower limits of legible. Frankly, when he finally pushed away from his desk, it looked more like a continuous scribble in the vague shape of a sentence, but so long as the archivists could decipher it then he’d be off the hook. He took to standing from the padded leather chair he’d been lounging in and popped his back. The sound echoed with a crackle from the wick of the candle.
A buzz interrupted his musings. He’d never picked up his phone so fast in his life. “You’re coming to save me, right?” he begged.
“Oh, hush,” the voice said. Amanda Barker was a cruel mistress indeed. “You do realize they give you the bare minimum, right?”
“And I do the bare minimum.” She didn’t respond, so he twirled around his cozy little office and snuffed the candle. Curls of smoke wafted through the room. “What’s up? Piggot want us to debrief on that patrol?”
“If she did, you wouldn’t be writing that report, now would you?” He raised an eyebrow at her aggrieved tone. He knew he’d closed the fridge before he’d sprinted to work that morning, so it couldn’t have been another complaint about the power bill. Maybe someone from Marketing had stopped by?
None of the Protectorate heroes liked Marketing, after all.
“Just… come to the lobby. I’ve convinced Piggot to give us the rest of the day off, and there’s an errand that’s come up.”
“Puppy, you alright?” He glanced down, then back up. Almost on reflex, he’d begun to unsuit. The self-sealing seam that ran from one wrist to the other had been half-undone before he even remembered he was holding a phone to his ear. “Time of the month came early?”
“Ethan, just please come down here.” There was the fond exasperation he was looking for. Whatever it was that was bothering her, it couldn’t have been enough to completely snuff her sarcastic side. He murmured an affirmative and tossed his phone to the chair as he undid the rest of his costume. A rushed application of deodorant and his civilian clothes later found him leaning against the glass of the main elevator. A few of the pencil-pushers glanced at him, eyebrows raised, but they didn’t say anything. The half-tucked shirt and crooked tie might have been a bit much.
Meh.
Amanda’s eyes locked with his own the minute the doors opened. She’d pulled on a pair of jeans and a simple blouse, even though he knew she’d been wearing her suit just a few moments before; traces of blue dye still edged along her bare arms in vaguely serpentine patterns. “Let’s get going,” she said as he approached. “I’ll explain on the way.”
She waved him to their shiny little sedan and nearly pushed him inside. “Hey, what’s the rush?” A grin cracked along his face. “Don’t tell me you’re that excited about getting off work early. I’m happy to, puppy, but it’s a little early for—”
“Not sex, you lummox!” she groaned. Her mouth worked, but when no sound came out she seemed to think better of it. Instead, she jammed the key into the ignition and passed her phone over. “Just… read the email. We need to be at the airport as soon as possible. Oh, why didn’t I clean the family room yesterday?”
Shrugging, still grinning, Ethan navigated to her inbox. The most recent message caught his eye; not because it was labeled as “urgent”, but because the subject was a series of characters he couldn’t even begin to decipher. Instead of cracking off a remark, however, he forcibly sealed his lips and began to read.
‘To Ms. Amanda Barker,
I cannot express my gratitude for you allowing me to stay with you for the next eight months. I understand we are family, however removed we might be, and it warms my heart to know that someone was willing to take me in.’
“I can already feel the sass,” he joked. She grunted at him, eyes on the road and fingers tapping impatiently. He grabbed a hand and rubbed his thumb along the back of her palm, delighting in how soft her skin was. “Hey, relax. Whatever it is, it’ll turn out fine.”
“Yeah. Yeah, it will.” When she offered him a small, grateful smile, he returned it and continued to read.
‘Thanks to a recent misunderstanding with my parents, I am afraid I will have to impose on you. I understand the arrangements have already been discussed thoroughly between yourself and my parents. Do not worry about me being a nuisance; I will do my utmost to stay out of trouble while I am in Brockton Bay. I hope to speak more closely with you when I arrive.’
Short, sweet, and to the point. The language was oddly stiff, as though the writer wasn’t used to sending letters in English. He supposed they wouldn’t, given that the email was signed with the same series of characters that made up the subject.
“So who’s this from?” he asked.
Amanda shook her fingers out—first one hand, then the other. The series of pops and clicks that emanated from her joints sent a shiver down his spine. “I have a cousin, twice removed I think, that lives in Japan. Her son recently had to move away from the school he was attending, and they didn’t have anywhere to keep him. Since nobody else in the family had the room, they reached out to me, and since we have two unused bedrooms…”
“I see where you’re going with this.” He scanned the email again. “Hang on, eight months?”
“I’m really sorry for not talking to you about this Ethan,” she said. At least she looked genuinely remorseful, her eyes slightly downcast and her knuckles almost white on the steering wheel. “If it makes you feel better, everything I’ve been told about him says that he’s completely polite and self-sufficient. He won’t be too much of a strain on our budget, at least.”
Ethan snorted at that. The two of them combined made more than any suburban couple had any right to, and for the most part, the funds had been sitting in an unused savings account for years. Even if they had to house four people, it would barely dent their savings. “Don’t worry about it. This came up quickly?”
She nodded. “It was only brought up two days ago, and things have been so hectic, what with Armsmaster drilling us on those new protocols and everything. He’s only seventeen, Ethan, and none of the rest of them wanted to take him in.”
“And he sounds like a perfect gentleman too.” He grunted to point out that she was starting to stray a bit too far to the right. She jerked to correct course, causing an unpleasant jolt to run through his stomach. Force redirection or not, motion sickness was always a pain in the ass to deal with.
Fortunately, Amanda had managed to destress as the drive lengthened, and by the time they pulled into the airport parking garage her shoulders sloped down instead of bunching into tense ridges. She hurried out of the car, Ethan only a half-step behind. Idly, he wondered if she was using her power; despite standing at a meager five-foot-three-inches, her gait matched his step for step.
They bolted through security as quickly as they could, flashing their Protectorate-issued badges to hurry the process along, and edged their way through the stations. “His flight got here a half hour ago,” Ethan heard his lovely wife murmuring. “He must already have gotten his bags and everything.”
A meow caught his attention, and he glanced down. A black cat, paws and muzzle white as snow, stared up at him with yellow-green eyes. “Well hello there, little guy,” he cooed. He stooped down to scratch the cat behind its ears, eliciting a rough purr.
“Ethan, come on!” Amanda called. “We don’t have time to waste!”
“You go on ahead!” he shouted back. A few of the nearby travelers edged away. He’d always been told his voice was powerful, even at a whisper. “I’ll find out who owns this little guy!” A gentle tug pulled his fingers towards the cat, as though he was drawn to it.
Then again, he liked cute and cuddly things. Why were cats any different?
Amanda huffed and rolled her eyes, but eventually she turned and raced through the terminals to find her something-removed relative. Ethan pulled the cat up, allowing it to settle on his shoulders. He could feel the loud purring as a gentle buzz against the back of his skull. “You got a name?” he asked it. It chuffed, then scraped at the tag attached to a collar around its neck. If anything, Ethan could have sworn it looked offended by the thing. He peeked at the metal.
“Morgana, huh? Thought that was a girl’s name. Wait, are you a girl?” The cat batted him over the head. “Okay, not a girl! Sheesh.” The thing, cute as it was, had an oddly intelligent streak to it. Like it understood him, beyond simple tricks and orders like dogs could learn. “Hey, if you’re so smart, why don’t you point me towards whoever owns you?”
The cat chuffed again and leapt down from his shoulders. It skillfully weaved through the throng of fliers, its tail erect in the air like a beacon. When it had gotten far enough, it glanced back at him. ‘You coming?’ it seemed to say.
“Well, alright then.” Maybe it was the side effect of some parahuman power? He dismissed the thought. It couldn’t be. Even powered civilians were strictly checked by airport security, lax as it was in the States. A cat displaying that sort of intelligence would raise enough flags that officials would check. Must just be a really smart cat.
He sighed and took off at a jog, following the cat as best he could. Just in case, he readied his power. Using it in his civilian guise was the worst possible scenario, of course, but it would have to do in a pinch.
Alas, it was not to be. He managed to catch sight of Amanda trying to peer over the heads of passersby, standing next to a tall youth with tousled black hair. The glasses on his face made his eyes seem bigger than they actually were, but otherwise he could see the barest resemblance to his wife. They had the same jawline, the same dimples that spread along their cheeks when they smiled. The cat swept up to the boy, where it promptly buried itself in the backpack he had slung over one shoulder.
“Ah, there he is!” Amanda waved him over as he approached. “This is my husband, Ethan.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mister Barker,” the boy said. His English might as well have been impeccable; he could detect the faintest trace of an accent—he’d gotten oddly good at that with his experience breaking criminals out of containment—but it was negligible enough that the boy wouldn’t have any trouble being understood.
“Call me Ethan, kid. Everyone does.” He stuck out his hand. The boy shook it. A bit of a weak grip, but that was okay. He hadn’t expected a hulking musclehead anyway. “What’s your name?”
“Ah.” The boy smiled to himself, as if he were remembering some sort of joke. That was a tricky little smile, right there, one that Ethan thoroughly enjoyed seeing on the next generation of juvenile delinquents.
“Call me Akira. Akira Kurusu.”
The scented candle sitting on one of his many shelves sputtered. Briefly, he glanced up, watching the flame dance in the barest flicker of wind, then returned to his paperwork. After a moment, the light exuding from it stabilized, and he breathed a heavy breath, full of vanilla and bourbon.
Ethan Barker’s office didn’t have much in the way of character. Despite what people assumed from Colin’s lab, most personal effects were outright banned on the Rig, and the few that could be brought in had to be heavily screened. He’d barely managed to convince the security team that a candle was less dangerous than the myriad equipment Colin was likely tinkering with on the lower floors.
The candle flickered again, and he had to force his eyes to stay glued to the forms in front of him. Yet another mundane patrol report, committed to rote, tedious memorization. If the higher-ups had noticed that nearly all of his patrol sitreps were identical to the letter, they hadn’t said anything. He cracked a smile when he realized that Piggot likely didn’t do anything more than sweep the lot of them with a cursory glance. If a crime occurred in the city, it would be on the news. Invariably, even the smaller vandalisms and petty thefts got found out.
Another few seconds ticked by with his fingers weaving steadily sloppier letters onto the page. He caught another whiff of vanilla and allowed a bit of tension to seep from his shoulders. If only he could shunt these on Colin, like every other bit of paperwork. There would be more time to casually manhandle things in the training room, maybe plan a movie with Amanda later. There was some new action flick out, and while—ironically—he preferred the sappy romances, she would love a spate of physically-impossible action scenes.
Focus. He sighed and pushed through the last of the report, his handwriting regressing to the lower limits of legible. Frankly, when he finally pushed away from his desk, it looked more like a continuous scribble in the vague shape of a sentence, but so long as the archivists could decipher it then he’d be off the hook. He took to standing from the padded leather chair he’d been lounging in and popped his back. The sound echoed with a crackle from the wick of the candle.
A buzz interrupted his musings. He’d never picked up his phone so fast in his life. “You’re coming to save me, right?” he begged.
“Oh, hush,” the voice said. Amanda Barker was a cruel mistress indeed. “You do realize they give you the bare minimum, right?”
“And I do the bare minimum.” She didn’t respond, so he twirled around his cozy little office and snuffed the candle. Curls of smoke wafted through the room. “What’s up? Piggot want us to debrief on that patrol?”
“If she did, you wouldn’t be writing that report, now would you?” He raised an eyebrow at her aggrieved tone. He knew he’d closed the fridge before he’d sprinted to work that morning, so it couldn’t have been another complaint about the power bill. Maybe someone from Marketing had stopped by?
None of the Protectorate heroes liked Marketing, after all.
“Just… come to the lobby. I’ve convinced Piggot to give us the rest of the day off, and there’s an errand that’s come up.”
“Puppy, you alright?” He glanced down, then back up. Almost on reflex, he’d begun to unsuit. The self-sealing seam that ran from one wrist to the other had been half-undone before he even remembered he was holding a phone to his ear. “Time of the month came early?”
“Ethan, just please come down here.” There was the fond exasperation he was looking for. Whatever it was that was bothering her, it couldn’t have been enough to completely snuff her sarcastic side. He murmured an affirmative and tossed his phone to the chair as he undid the rest of his costume. A rushed application of deodorant and his civilian clothes later found him leaning against the glass of the main elevator. A few of the pencil-pushers glanced at him, eyebrows raised, but they didn’t say anything. The half-tucked shirt and crooked tie might have been a bit much.
Meh.
Amanda’s eyes locked with his own the minute the doors opened. She’d pulled on a pair of jeans and a simple blouse, even though he knew she’d been wearing her suit just a few moments before; traces of blue dye still edged along her bare arms in vaguely serpentine patterns. “Let’s get going,” she said as he approached. “I’ll explain on the way.”
She waved him to their shiny little sedan and nearly pushed him inside. “Hey, what’s the rush?” A grin cracked along his face. “Don’t tell me you’re that excited about getting off work early. I’m happy to, puppy, but it’s a little early for—”
“Not sex, you lummox!” she groaned. Her mouth worked, but when no sound came out she seemed to think better of it. Instead, she jammed the key into the ignition and passed her phone over. “Just… read the email. We need to be at the airport as soon as possible. Oh, why didn’t I clean the family room yesterday?”
Shrugging, still grinning, Ethan navigated to her inbox. The most recent message caught his eye; not because it was labeled as “urgent”, but because the subject was a series of characters he couldn’t even begin to decipher. Instead of cracking off a remark, however, he forcibly sealed his lips and began to read.
‘To Ms. Amanda Barker,
I cannot express my gratitude for you allowing me to stay with you for the next eight months. I understand we are family, however removed we might be, and it warms my heart to know that someone was willing to take me in.’
“I can already feel the sass,” he joked. She grunted at him, eyes on the road and fingers tapping impatiently. He grabbed a hand and rubbed his thumb along the back of her palm, delighting in how soft her skin was. “Hey, relax. Whatever it is, it’ll turn out fine.”
“Yeah. Yeah, it will.” When she offered him a small, grateful smile, he returned it and continued to read.
‘Thanks to a recent misunderstanding with my parents, I am afraid I will have to impose on you. I understand the arrangements have already been discussed thoroughly between yourself and my parents. Do not worry about me being a nuisance; I will do my utmost to stay out of trouble while I am in Brockton Bay. I hope to speak more closely with you when I arrive.’
Short, sweet, and to the point. The language was oddly stiff, as though the writer wasn’t used to sending letters in English. He supposed they wouldn’t, given that the email was signed with the same series of characters that made up the subject.
“So who’s this from?” he asked.
Amanda shook her fingers out—first one hand, then the other. The series of pops and clicks that emanated from her joints sent a shiver down his spine. “I have a cousin, twice removed I think, that lives in Japan. Her son recently had to move away from the school he was attending, and they didn’t have anywhere to keep him. Since nobody else in the family had the room, they reached out to me, and since we have two unused bedrooms…”
“I see where you’re going with this.” He scanned the email again. “Hang on, eight months?”
“I’m really sorry for not talking to you about this Ethan,” she said. At least she looked genuinely remorseful, her eyes slightly downcast and her knuckles almost white on the steering wheel. “If it makes you feel better, everything I’ve been told about him says that he’s completely polite and self-sufficient. He won’t be too much of a strain on our budget, at least.”
Ethan snorted at that. The two of them combined made more than any suburban couple had any right to, and for the most part, the funds had been sitting in an unused savings account for years. Even if they had to house four people, it would barely dent their savings. “Don’t worry about it. This came up quickly?”
She nodded. “It was only brought up two days ago, and things have been so hectic, what with Armsmaster drilling us on those new protocols and everything. He’s only seventeen, Ethan, and none of the rest of them wanted to take him in.”
“And he sounds like a perfect gentleman too.” He grunted to point out that she was starting to stray a bit too far to the right. She jerked to correct course, causing an unpleasant jolt to run through his stomach. Force redirection or not, motion sickness was always a pain in the ass to deal with.
Fortunately, Amanda had managed to destress as the drive lengthened, and by the time they pulled into the airport parking garage her shoulders sloped down instead of bunching into tense ridges. She hurried out of the car, Ethan only a half-step behind. Idly, he wondered if she was using her power; despite standing at a meager five-foot-three-inches, her gait matched his step for step.
They bolted through security as quickly as they could, flashing their Protectorate-issued badges to hurry the process along, and edged their way through the stations. “His flight got here a half hour ago,” Ethan heard his lovely wife murmuring. “He must already have gotten his bags and everything.”
A meow caught his attention, and he glanced down. A black cat, paws and muzzle white as snow, stared up at him with yellow-green eyes. “Well hello there, little guy,” he cooed. He stooped down to scratch the cat behind its ears, eliciting a rough purr.
“Ethan, come on!” Amanda called. “We don’t have time to waste!”
“You go on ahead!” he shouted back. A few of the nearby travelers edged away. He’d always been told his voice was powerful, even at a whisper. “I’ll find out who owns this little guy!” A gentle tug pulled his fingers towards the cat, as though he was drawn to it.
Then again, he liked cute and cuddly things. Why were cats any different?
Amanda huffed and rolled her eyes, but eventually she turned and raced through the terminals to find her something-removed relative. Ethan pulled the cat up, allowing it to settle on his shoulders. He could feel the loud purring as a gentle buzz against the back of his skull. “You got a name?” he asked it. It chuffed, then scraped at the tag attached to a collar around its neck. If anything, Ethan could have sworn it looked offended by the thing. He peeked at the metal.
“Morgana, huh? Thought that was a girl’s name. Wait, are you a girl?” The cat batted him over the head. “Okay, not a girl! Sheesh.” The thing, cute as it was, had an oddly intelligent streak to it. Like it understood him, beyond simple tricks and orders like dogs could learn. “Hey, if you’re so smart, why don’t you point me towards whoever owns you?”
The cat chuffed again and leapt down from his shoulders. It skillfully weaved through the throng of fliers, its tail erect in the air like a beacon. When it had gotten far enough, it glanced back at him. ‘You coming?’ it seemed to say.
“Well, alright then.” Maybe it was the side effect of some parahuman power? He dismissed the thought. It couldn’t be. Even powered civilians were strictly checked by airport security, lax as it was in the States. A cat displaying that sort of intelligence would raise enough flags that officials would check. Must just be a really smart cat.
He sighed and took off at a jog, following the cat as best he could. Just in case, he readied his power. Using it in his civilian guise was the worst possible scenario, of course, but it would have to do in a pinch.
Alas, it was not to be. He managed to catch sight of Amanda trying to peer over the heads of passersby, standing next to a tall youth with tousled black hair. The glasses on his face made his eyes seem bigger than they actually were, but otherwise he could see the barest resemblance to his wife. They had the same jawline, the same dimples that spread along their cheeks when they smiled. The cat swept up to the boy, where it promptly buried itself in the backpack he had slung over one shoulder.
“Ah, there he is!” Amanda waved him over as he approached. “This is my husband, Ethan.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mister Barker,” the boy said. His English might as well have been impeccable; he could detect the faintest trace of an accent—he’d gotten oddly good at that with his experience breaking criminals out of containment—but it was negligible enough that the boy wouldn’t have any trouble being understood.
“Call me Ethan, kid. Everyone does.” He stuck out his hand. The boy shook it. A bit of a weak grip, but that was okay. He hadn’t expected a hulking musclehead anyway. “What’s your name?”
“Ah.” The boy smiled to himself, as if he were remembering some sort of joke. That was a tricky little smile, right there, one that Ethan thoroughly enjoyed seeing on the next generation of juvenile delinquents.
“Call me Akira. Akira Kurusu.”
