So yeah, its been a while.

I'm not gonna lie, I hit a major burnout, and struggled with a lot of things back home mentally. Don't worry, I've gotten much better now, but I finally did something worth while, and plan to make a schedule for myself, as it would help a lot. Please, PLEASE comment what you think, it really helps me out, and thanks for your time.

Enjoy!

Finding something that really breaks out of the realm of your wildest dreams felt like an impossibility at this point. Mementos had shattered any iota of surprise or expectation for Kuro. The bizarre twists and turns of the dimension, added to it the strangest looking monsters straight out of a lovecraftian nightmare, made surprises a thing of the past. This however was something new. Perhaps it was the fact that this was the second palace he's ever been in, but the scenery was something else.

The palace was built similar to Kuro's home, although the size seemed a lot different. It was as if the whole world had decided to put the lofty teens under a microscope. Every piece of furniture, household object, right down to the ornaments on the tables was the colossal sized. The usually small table near the entrance was the size of a one story building, the family pictures on the walls not much smaller. The carpet ahead looked like a grey jungle of loose fluff and stitchings, impossible to trek due to its thickness. The front entrance looked like a labyrinth of epic proportions, with just the foreword hall spreading out as far as the eye could see. The giant lights overhead gleamed like a pink sun, spreading a magenta glow around the entire area, the smell of strawberries and sweet candy permeating the air.

A music box the size of a building played a soft tune one wouldn't hear outside of an amusement park. A real charming, peppy jingle played with bells, singing and drum rolls. Toys were strewn about here or there, from nutcrackers to dolls to random stuffed animals, as if a young child had been left at home unattended and started causing a mess. Some of those toys were belonging to a Wonderpark playset, with carnival attractions that had come to life before their eyes. The air just felt light, bursting with life, and it couldn't make Beast's stomach knot any more than it already has. This kind of place reeked of deception. At least, that was what his instincts told him. Skull and Queen looked like they were enjoying the sights at least, Skull taking a large whiff of the cotton candy air.

"Man, take a look at this place! It's like we're in the actual park, only… massive!" Ryuji cheered.

"I feel like a little kid in here." Queen chatted, taking a little leap to check out all the attractions.

"Such a wonder to the imagination." Fox said, miming a picture frame with his hands. "Perhaps this is the perspective of a young girl in such a place like this. So massive, bright and colorful. Perhaps I could have time to draw this."

"Not a chance. We need to get going." Beast impatiently said. "The more time we waste, the less we time we have to find this treasure."

Joker clutched his shoulder. "Any idea what this treasure is supposed to look like? A momento or something?"

"Not too sure to be honest." Beast answered, scratching his chin. "Yukina isn't really one for collecting things. Most of this stuff were things that our parents got for her before they died. I don't even remember seeing her play with these once." He cleared his throat uncomfortably. "I don't even think they knew that she didn't like these, they were so deep in work." He ruffled his own hair, taking a deep breath. "M-Maybe the treasure is somewhere in her room. It's upstairs. It's a thought at least." He uttered, trying to get out of this conversation as fast as possible.

"Well, for now, we're in the clear. Her palace doesn't seem too much on the alert, and no shadows patrolling around. We should use this time wisely." Fox warned, signalling for the others to follow.

Each made a dash, circling around the many attractions, from carousels to roller coasters, to lifts, anything to suit anyone's fancy. Live stuffed animals stared blankly back at them, not missing a beat and waving their stubs at the group. It was disconcerting to say the least, with their lifeless beady eyes seemingly penetrating them. They weren't that many around fortunately, and despite them being shadows, they didn't seem nearly as hostile as the ones outside. They made their way to a humongous wall of would stretching as far as the eye could see, which would soon come to be known as, the stairs.

"Well, I don't see ourselves getting up there any time soon?" Skull said with a sigh. "Dammit, did we hit a roadblock already? If the treasure is up there, then we're screwed."

Though Kuro knew the house like the back of his hand. Well enough to figure out a better idea at least. He pointed toward the ceiling. "There's an entrance to the vents up there. I don't know how it's placed, but at least it's a way upstairs."

With the help of some well placed ornaments, the group hopped to the top of the doorside table, shifting across the large monument that was a small bowl of fruits, they hopped onto the wall-adorned picture frames, leaping from piece to piece. Each of the shadows down below stared almost malevolently at them from their stations, completely frozen in place, some with their heads eerily tilted. It sent shivers down his spine just looking at them.

"Hey, you think they know something that we don't?" Beast asked.

"Considering the fact that they're shadows, most likely." Queen replied. "It is rather strange though. If their intent was to harm us, don't you think they should have tried something by now? It isn't like they haven't had the opportunity."

"Maybe they're scared. Probably 'cuz we're way too strong for those assholes." Skull jeered with a grin, which disappeared all but suddenly when he looked off the picture frame edge to the ground, which looked a little hazy. "That's a long way to the ground floor. Hey, what would happen if I spat off the edge? You think I'd hit one of them?"

"Oh no you don't. Don't start spitting in my house." Beast shot back. They continued up, making their way to a fire alarm placed nearly on the ceiling. Beast squinted his eyes, pointing at the grates not that far away. "That should be it. Hopefully we can get in and get out fast."

"Oh my, look at how much our boy has grown." A voice called from above them. Every part of Beast froze to the core, like liquid nitrogen flowed through his veins. That couldn't be real, could it? That voice was one he hadn't heard in so many years.

"It's a wonder he's still alive with how he's been living." A deeper voice reverberated. A voice that filled him with fear with its sharp anger. The group halted, going nearly back to back in a circle, trying to figure out the source of the sound before two figures dropped from the ventilation shaft grates, landing in tandem with each other on the hardened plastic. It was as if the world had crashed down, only to rise up again nearly at the same time.

"Mom? D-dad?" Beast nearly whimpered.

"In the flesh." His mother said, looking back at him. It was as though they hadn't aged a day. They looked exactly the same as the last time he'd seen them. Their last day at work before collapsing from bodily and mental stress, never waking up again. His mother's hair was unkempt, tied in a messy bun, with a poorly buttoned, her work skirt torn at the side, and one of her heels snapped. His father looked just as slovenly, hair uncombed and messy, similar to Kuro's, his business suit covered in patches and and tears, tie askew and poorly knotted.

Their eyes. Beast couldn't look at them. They resembled the shadow Kuro that he met prior, golden and lifeless, almost cruel in a sense. His father raised a finger. "One job. I had given you one job. To keep your sister safe, and you can't even do that? Worthless."

Beast flinched, chest tightening.

"How many chances do you need? There is only so much give we can grant before we give up, Kuro." His mother echoed. "Failing school, failing your sister, failing at even boxing, one of the few things you were good at. How can you even stand yourself?"

Beast clutched the hem of his tights, teeth grit. "Stop." He rasped.

"Don't bother listening to them, buddy. They aren't real." Joker said.

The couple cackled, joining hands, bursting into a mass of black and red ink, steadily morphing together. The sickening shape left behind was a shadow bearing a rather ghostly visage, pale tails replacing their legs, which were conjoined together. Their faces had all but disappeared, replaced by gleaming red holes for eyes, their bodies seemingly made of some cloud-like material. A misty miasma coated them, bathing them in what looked like pale fire in slow motion.

Beast's heart hammered away, legs nearly giving out from the amount of shaking. This was a nightmare. It had to be. Just another round with the sandman gone horribly wrong. This whole thing had to be just one horrible dream. A jet of blue fire flying toward his face said otherwise. Caught in a daze, Beast was too surprised to move. Queen tackled him to the ground, the jet sailing just over their heads. The heat was quite a good wake up call to just how much danger he was in. Queen shouted something, but it sounded like it came from underwater, the blood rushing in his ears drowning everything except what he didn't want to hear.

There was no moment before this, no instant in his life where he had this sort of heavy despair. He couldn't even move, or breathe properly as the sickening image of his parents were just puppets on strings, mocking him. It took a moment for him to speak. "You're not really here. You're not. Just… some voice in the back of my head."

"There you go, lying again. I thought those belt lashes whipped that trait out of you." His father growled, raising his hand. A jet of blue fire shot for him again, instinct forcing his body to roll away, not without catching the tail ends of his twin-tailed scarf aflame. Beast winced, a small painful memory of a belt cracking against his back fired into his mind.

"Hold still and give in, son." His mother chimed in. "What is the point anymore? What future do you have? What more have you got to lose when you always fail?"

Beast's kusarigama fell out of his hands, clattering lifelessly to the plastic ground. His head hung low. "I… I don't…" He mumbled, feeling the heat of flames slowly approach his face. He didn't want to move this time.

Joker intervened this time, aggressively shoving him out of the way. Beast hit the ground with a loud thud, knocking the air out of his lungs. He looked back at Beast, teeth grit. "What's the matter with you?"

Beast barely let out a whimper in response, feeling utterly defeated. Just destroyed from the inside out. They were right. There was no denying that they were right. A kid who spent his entire life fighting, being aggressive, never stopping to see what he's done, like some raging bull charging without any regard to consequence, couldn't be anything but a failure. Someone who didn't even deserve to stay alive. Beast's head hung low. Why? That word echoed in his mind as he pounded the ground. Why couldn't he do anything right? Why?!

Joker took a deep breath. "Arsen. Distraction." He said, summoning his top-hatted persona with but a snap of his fingers. The red-suited demon persona raised its clawed hand, causing a torrent of black flames to border under his parents, bursting into an explosion of black and red fire, adorned with a malicious face on it. It did its job, effectively causing some damage. His parents were definitely occupied, summoning more shadows to her side in the shape of Andra's. The other Phantom thieves intervened, leaving Beast and Joker alone.

Joker sighed. "Are you just going to sit there and wait? Aren't you supposed to be the demon of Shujin Academy? The man who never quits?"

"Who the hell told you that?" Beast hollowly asked. He let out a little scoff. "Doesn't quit, he says. You really don't know a damn thing about me, do you?" Joker opened his mouth, but Beast cut him off. "Don't start with your speeches. Friendship isn't going to get my life back. Justice isn't going to make me sleep better at night. Silly little dreams won't get me a future, especially when I can't do anything right."

Joker squatted at his side, nudging him. "Beast, you really don't believe them, do you? You still need to get revenge on Okumura, right? Save your sister?"

"Why bother? I can't graduate, I can't box worth a damn anymore, I can't even summon a damn persona. My sister? Revenge? I'll just fail at that too. Like everything else."

"So you're just going to stop trying? Just because you'll fail?" Joker demanded. Beast didn't answer, just sitting, staring at the ground. "No, you're quitting because that's the easiest thing you can do. Listen, you're right. In the grand scheme of things, I really don't know you, and I don't understand, but shrinking into a little ball and crying isn't going to stop this. If you want to finally succeed in something, stop feeling sorry for yourself. While you're buried in your own self pity, you're family, your future, it's all going to crumble away. Push. If you fail, push harder. Keep going. Why? Because the ones who succeed are the ones that keep going."

Beast repeated those words a few times in his head, thinking hard about it. Joker stood up and stretched. "Sorry. I may have talked your ear off. Excuse me. I have my team to push." He rushed off, dagger drawn, off to the battle.

Push? Was that all there was to it? It couldn't be so simple. Then again, Beast was expecting some kind of magical answer or solution. Some sort of miracle manual to get him out of this rut, but could the answer be so simple? He stared at the ground, brows furrowed, fingers curling into fists. He grit his teeth, feeling his body shake with a familiar rage that he tried desperately to suppress. He shook his head.

No. If he wanted to get angry, he had to get angry. If he was sad, he had to be sad. No more bottling it under, just hoping it would go away. Control it. Temper it. Use it. The more he felt it consume him, the more he felt a burning passion. He had to push on, eh? If that were the case, he would push as hard as he could. He rose to his feet, feeling invigorated, eyes finally wide open.

Have you finally found the truth, boy?

The voice of his persona. Beast welcomed it with an animalistic grin. "Yeah. Rage isn't enough, neither is just being sad and sorry for myself. I have to push and keep going, not stay in one place and scream. Enough. I'm fucking done being a helpless, hapless little shit wondering around, waiting for someone to solve my problems and scream and shout when nothing happens. Enough, goddammit!" His heart hammered away in his chest, pumping fresh adrenaline into his system. His breath came out in heaves through his nose. He had never felt so alive.

Good. Very good. The storm inside is waiting to be unleashed. Shout my name so that I may tear your enemies to ribbons, and carve your future into reality!

Beast grit his teeth, gripping the mask that was practically glued to his face, and tugged. Tugged hard. Instantly, a blinding, searing pain made him scream and nearly lock up. It was as though his flesh was forcibly splitting apart. He didn't give in, pulling even harder until the mask was entirely torn off, leaving a bloody mess over his eyes. Even so, despite the pain, despite the blindness… he grinned.

"Tear them to pieces, Adam the Leper!"

The blood erupted into deep blue flames, his face healing quickly. In a pool of blue phantasmal flames at his back, a new figure billowed to life, bearing a thick blue coat taught tight, leaving designs and creases similar to that of a raven's wing. Red eyes gleamed out of the shadows of the hood, nothing else seen. Something told him he didn't want to see what was under that hood. Chains spiraled around him rapidly, with a knife in one hand, and a spiked chain in another completely skeletal hand.

"I may be a failure, but I'll be damned if I don't try and be better." Beast rasped. "What sort of 'demon' would I be anyway if I just laid down and bled? Tear them apart!"

In an instant, Adam vanished, reappearing on the other side of the crowd of andra's. Slowly, the shadows were split asunder, vanishing in pools of black and red ink. The other thieves gaped back at him. Beast nearly laughed. Did they honestly think he knew what he was doing?

"Our son is capable of summoning one of those things as well?" His mother mused.

"So he is." His father said. "It won't stop us. He is still far too weak. This will be yet another failure he must contend with."

"Not this time." He growled. "This time, I'm coming out on top."

Adam charged forward at rapid speed, a cone of yellow burning energy surrounding it. It smashed directly down onto the deformed couple, jamming straight into the ground, cracking the hardened plastic with ease, nearly smashing the structure in half. The couple tried to escape, soaring over the edge and into open air, but Adam wouldn't let up, streaking through the air to meet them, clashing a few times in mid air. One of the spiked chains coiled around his father's ghostly midsection, spinning them around and throwing them back to the surface.

Light coated the persona's skeletal fingertips, coating the area around his parents in a harsh light, burning away their part of the ground. His parent's let out a shrill shriek before disappearing into a blot of black and red ink, back into the original form of his parents, on their hands and knees. Adam returned to Beast, nodding its head before disappearing, seemingly into Kuro's shadow. He sighed, approaching the couple slowly.

"I'm… sorry." He admitted. "Ever since you died, I just couldn't stay out of trouble. I didn't know what else I could do. Nothing I could do was good enough for anyone, so why bother trying?" He sucked a breath in through his teeth, trying to keep it together. "Even now, I don't know if this is what I should be doing, or if this is even the right thing, but I have to try. I'm sorry I was never a good enough son to you."

The pair looked at him blankly, his fathers' brows furrowed, as though they were looking at him for the first time. His mother's mouth quivered. "Oh my boy…"

"Kuro... " His father breathed. "Did you get taller? Or do I need new glasses?"

Beast's chest clenched. "I… think I did."

"Good. I was waiting for you to pass me up one day." His father joined his mother smiling a him before fading away into a shadowy haze.

Beast took a shaky breath, letting a few tears drop down. It was over. For now at least. He was hurt, having not known this sort of pain since his parents passed away for the first time, but now, he had never felt so alive. Like a butterfly straight from a cocoon, he felt like his heart and soul were soaring, leaving the broken shell of the past behind.

"Right then. Shall we get going?" He asked before everything went black and he fell back onto the ground.

/

Kuro woke up on the hard pavement outside of his house, feeling as though someone had taken a hammer to his head. He groaned, shifting over to his side, clutching both sides of his head. The sun above was trying to blind him, and no one could tell him otherwise. "Will someone for the love of god please turn off the lights?" He groaned.

"Yeah, I think he's fine." Ryuji said, standing over him.

"I don't know, he looks a little pale. Do you think we should take him to a doctor?" Makoto asked.

"No doctor." Kuro groaned. "I have enough issues with that office already. Ugh, my head." He sat up slowly, already feeling the effects of headrush mounting on him. What a joy to be alive, hot, sweaty, and wondering what demented diety decided to ring a few gongs in your dome. "Is this normal?"

"For about all of us, yes." Akira answered. "Some have it worse than others. Yusuke got very queasy, while me? I just outright passed out and was nearly an hour late for school the next day."

"Oh don't remind me about school right now. The last thing I want to think about is school right now." He sucked in a breath, standing up. "Thanks for going with me in there. Really, I can't thank you enough."

"Dude, don't make it weird." Ryuji said, looking a very surprised and slightly put off.

"Since when did the Demon of Shujin Academy apologize for anything? What an odd day this is." Makoto pondered.

"Watch it, Nijima." He growled.

He looked back at his house, feeling a little sense of dread and anxiety, but a little hope as well. This battle was still far from over. Hell no. It was just getting started.