Disclaimer: The Persona series of video games and all associated fictional characters or locations are the intellectual property of our lords and masters, the game designers of Atlus, and whoever else has legal ownership of whatever and whichever. The only things that I claim ownership of are this work of fan fiction itself, and the original characters created for it: Kyo Morinaga (who is based largely on Kyo Charinko, a character who I have written as in Persona-based forum roleplaying stories), her mother Eri, and any others who I create during the process of writing future chapters. I do not intend to derive any monetary profit through the writing and publication of this fan work, and strongly recommend that anyone reading this support the official product by buying and playing Persona 5 themselves — both because this story might be a difficult one to follow without doing so beforehand, but also because it is just a damn good game.

Revision Note: At any point in time, with or without out notice, small mistakes, typos, and other minor changes may be made to any chapter of this story as I become aware of them. I will only post additional notes such as this one when an important update or rewrite is posted.

Tokyo Butterfly
- a Persona 5 fan novel -
by
The One True Nobody

~ V ~

It occurred to him that his chances were best if he did nothing at all,
if he just stepped out of it and let events run their course.

But he could disrupt them.
He could get a signal out from inside the building.
He could force them to direct their attention to him,
or whatever they thought he was.

He had that going for him.

— Chapter 6, Nothing Lasts Forever
by Roderick Thorp

~ V ~

"Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker."

— John McClane, Die Hard

- Prologue -
"A Fly in the Ointment"

When Kyo Morinaga opened the passenger-side door of her mother's car, she felt as if she could breathe again.

It wasn't as if she hated her mother. On the contrary, things had been... a lot more civil between the two of them since the divorce. It seemed her father had been the source of most of her mother's inflexibility up until now. The problem was that it had only been about two months since they had said their goodbyes to Akio Morinaga and Osaka. At this point, neither mother nor daughter was sure where things stood between them yet, or even where they wanted them to stand.

Eri Morinaga — maiden name Okumura: her parents were related to the CEO of some big food company that Kyo didn't give two shits about because Wild Duck was just better — sat in the driver's seat of the sleek aqua Toyota that had been willingly signed over to her by her ex-husband. She remained where she was for a few seconds with hands rested on the steering wheel, taking a few stealthy deep breaths as if it were her here to take Shujin Academy's entrance and placement exam rather than her teen daughter.

Kyo supposed she understood her mother's nervousness, but really, tests had never been a problem and Eri knew it. Kyo didn't even know why her mother and everyone else had always gotten on her case about studying for the silly things. Whenever she needed to take a test, the information was easy enough to pluck out of her memory of this or that class lecture, even if she'd only been half-paying-attention at the time. Really, it was no big deal. She usually made the upper half of the class rankings, even. Why bother trying so hard just to get higher on an arbitrary list when she could coast through the day and still do what she needed to make the graduation requirements? Well, her mom had been better about pestering her than she usually was, so maybe she was just worried that not pressuring Kyo to excel would be the difference between getting in and needing to apply at another school. Was it just another mom thing, then? Maybe, Kyo thought. It was a new thing, not looking at her mother's actions through the tinted lens of the unreasonable bitch that Kyo had believed her to be until the incident... a product of Kyo's own imagination and skewed understanding of the world, she now knew.

The green-haired girl took her phone out and glanced at the lock screen, which told her it was about twelve noon, March 28th. Provided she passed whatever passed for an entrance exam in this place of alleged learning, she'd be attending her senior year here starting when it began in a matter of days. Slipping her phone into her pocket, she allowed herself a thin smile and shook her head. This school would work for her about as well as anywhere else. As long as she wasn't in Osaka anymore, with the memories and regrets, Shujin Academy could have been a wooden shack in a grassy field staffed by Ichabod Crane for all she cared, and she would have still taken the chance to leave all of that behind for good.

"Well," said Eri, turning the key in the ignition. The car's purring engine went quiet, and she slipped the key into her purse. "Let's go win you some academic excellence."

"That's what they tell me's sold here," Kyo deadpanned, her eyes going as flat as her voice as she surveyed the building they'd parked in front of. "You never did say why you were so keen on me applyin' to this one in particular. Does it have bagels on Monday mornings, or somethin'?"

Eri, a woman with shoulder-length, neatly-cut hair, stepped out of the car and straightened her classy-looking skirt, every bit the image of a prim mother in her thirties. Her hair was something between a brown and a blonde shade, which next to Kyo's fir-tree-green hair made her look like the long-suffering mother of a delinquent punk. The truth was the opposite. Both the woman and her daughter were genetically cursed with unnatural-looking green hair, and Eri dyed hers to match her parents. Kyo suspected that Eri had been adopted, but had never seen the point in prying into it if her mom didn't want to share. She had no idea whether her grandparents had pressured her mom into dying her hair to look "normal" or not, as Eri had once forced Kyo to do, but Eri had never left her hair its natural color for as long as Kyo's memory could recall. Probably she'd been anxious of her stern, no-fun-allowed spouse's reaction if she ever had.

Kyo stepped around the car, its newly-washed surface reflecting her own image in the sun as she passed: a short girl in a boy's Shujin uniform with hands stuffed in roomy pants-pockets, a boyish mop of green atop her head, almost a mullet in how gracelessly uncombed she always let it sit. Her right eye was exposed and her left was obscured by a side-swept curtain of the stuff. The result was that students usually mistook her for a boy until they got near enough to notice that she had a bit more going on in the hip and chest areas than even an idiot could mistake for being masculine. She fully expected that someone would get on her case about her look and her boys' uniform before the day was done and had already decided on anti-bullshit countermeasures.

The bagel quip had earned her a stern look from her mother and nothing else. As usual, the stick up her butt kept her from engaging in any banter, reason number one why civility was the best they'd managed to achieve so far. Kyo sighed and fell into step to the right of her mother, climbing alongside her up the front steps of the large building, which would have been a fairly impressive structure if it wasn't crammed in amidst the legendary labyrinth of architectural claustrophobia that was the city of Tokyo.

"So?" Kyo prompted as they drew level with the front door. "Why Shujin? Am I bein' charged with indecent exposure o' my comic shelf? That Sex Criminals graphic novel wasn't mine, I swear! Never seen it before, officer. That's my story, and I'm stickin' to it!"

Even Eri had to crack a smile at that one. The school's name was such obvious bad pun material that Kyo would be very surprised if she went a week of classes without someone cracking the same kind of joke at lunch or something. Her mom still didn't take the cue to banter, though. What a disappointing parent she was.

"I just thought it would be nice if you had at least one person to talk to on your first day," Eri said, with an earnestness Kyo rarely heard from her. Kyo cocked an eyebrow and tilted her head. Eri, glancing at her in time to catch this dubious expression, blushed a little and added: "You have a cousin... well, I mean, I have a niece, sort of, who attends school here. Haru-chan, Kunikazu-kun's daughter. She's close to your age. You might have an easier time here with her help, I thought."

Kunikazu...? Kyo stopped, hand outstretched and holding one of the long line of entry doors open in front of her face, her eyes going deadpan. Kunikazu Okumura, president of Okumura Foods, which meant Haru-chan was the pampered daughter of a corporate overlord. Great.

"I don't get along with the snooty rich types," she said dully. Eri, who had taken a few steps further, faltered a bit. But she immediately dug in her metaphorical heels by pushing the door Kyo had been holding so that it was now fully open, nudging Kyo with an elbow to get her moving again.

"Don't be ridiculous. Haru-chan is the nicest young woman I've ever met."

"Everyone you know is nicer to you than me," Kyo pointed out without a change in expression. "You don't give 'em reason t' be snooty at ya. You don't even talk like an Osaka gal 'cause you don't want anyone stereotypin' ya."

"You could stand to rein your own quirks in a little too, you know," Eri said. "Society doesn't reward obstinate individuality."

Kyo noted that her mom's jaw looked a bit tight, like she was barely resisting the urge to grit her teeth and grunt out her words through them in her frustration. Kyo would have argued the point two months ago, but now that she understood her mother's motivations better, she didn't want to get into an argument with her.

She bit back her retort and instead answered with a dismissive huff. Deadpan eyes returned to simple boredom as she tilted her head around, taking in the look of the place. A few people passed them by on their way to the left or right wings of the building, and turned their heads to gawk openly at Kyo's hair, but she didn't bother acknowledging them. The school was mostly empty, with only a few people visiting it to deal with this or that pre-school-year piece of business.

A muscular man with the most phenomenal chin Kyo had ever seen stood nearby the unoccupied glass-window counter just past the lockers (was that the school shop, Kyo wondered?), giving Eri a friendly, charming grin. Kyo stopped a half-second before her mother did and blinked exactly once. Not only did he have a chin worthy of mother-humping Timmverse Batman, he had hair that wouldn't have been out of place in an an old American high school sitcom. His eyes flitted to her briefly and his charming grin faltered. As her eyes met his, Kyo grinned a grin that was just barely sarcastic enough that he'd probably be trying to figure out if it was genuine or not. He held her gaze for just long enough that she could see that she had succeeded in prompting this question in his brain, and then his attention turned back to Eri.

Yep, he's already jumpin' to conclusions about me, Kyo thought. But she didn't know enough about who he was to have any idea whether it'd be trouble for her down the line. He looked like he probably taught phys ed, so how high could his standing in the school possibly be...?

"You must be Morinaga-san," the man said, the smile back on at full force. Kyo looked sidelong at her mother, whose lips had subtly curved down, an expression swiftly hidden as Chin introduced himself. "My name is Suguru Kamoshida. I'll be showing you and your daughter to the principal's office and to the testing room after that. We only have a few late applicants, so it's just your daughter today."

Aha! She noticed it, too. You're a chip off the old block after all, mom! Or should that be the other way around? ...Whatever.

Eri nonetheless bent into a polite half-bow. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Kamoshida-san," she said, elegant politeness making damn sure the man didn't know that he'd already lost points with her. "I'm looking forward to learning about what Shujin Academy has to offer for my daughter's future."

Kamoshida of the Hero's Chin waved Eri off. "There's no need to be so formal, Morinaga-san, it makes me feel old. You can call me by my first name, if you like." He turned and gestured to indicate that the two of them should follow him down the halls, and so they did as he continued to speak. "Shujin Academy is a school with a fine reputation and a first-class staff of teachers. Anyone who excels here pretty much has their pick of Japan's top universities. Our recommendation carries enough weight to sink a cruise ship! Even the President of Okumura Foods has trusted us with his child's education."

"Yeah, so I've heard," Kyo said casually. "Haru's sorta my cousin. It's how we found out about this place. High recommendations, y'know."

Eri looked momentarily dumbstruck by Kyo's interruption, but Kamoshida didn't notice this because his attention snapped to Kyo and the utterly gobsmacked face that betrayed him before he managed to hide it was definitely worth throwing him that little curve ball to bear witness to. Now he didn't know what to think about her, Kyo knew, and it sent her into a fit of silent, internal giggling as she wondered what his attitude would be once he processed it. Would he kiss up to her? That would just be the funniest goddamn thing if he did.

"Is that right?" Kamoshida said. "Well, that's certainly a surprise..."

"She doesn't look the type?" Eri prompted. There was understated, but definite, challenge in her tone. Kamoshida stopped outside a door, which Kyo saw was labeled as the office of Principal Kobayakawa, and held up a hand in a light, placating gesture. Kyo's eyes lingered on the nameplate. Kobayakawa? Like the samurai clan? Psh. What a mouthful. But then Kyo remembered a certain samurai history nerd back home whose fanatical blabbering was the reason she had connected the name to history at all. A lead weight dropped on her heart like a cartoon anvil, a whiplash halt to her thoughts; her mood darkened on contact with it. She had to wrench her attention back to the present to refocus on Kamoshida's reply.

"I didn't think anyone related to the Okumura family would dye their hair. I apologize. I shouldn't judge a book by its cover. I'm sure no one will give her any trouble over it, though."

The volume of his voice had gone up and he was opening the door as he spoke. Kyo snorted under her breath. Oh, it was that kind of school, was it? Kamoshida wasn't apologizing to Eri, not really. He was trying to stealthily alert Principal Kobayakawa so there wouldn't be another faux pas when she entered the room. Which meant this was most definitely an executive faculty of ass-kissers and ass-kissees. Joy of joys. Let the eyes roll out of their sockets and down the road, down the road, down the road...

~ V ~

Her meeting with the bald, overweight principal passed in a blur of fake pleasantry and then she followed Kamoshida to the room where she took the placement test, leaving her mother behind to speak with Kobayakawa. After that, she and her mother enjoyed some food in the cafeteria (it wasn't bad, as school food went) while her test was fast-tracked through the grading process (they really were kissing up!) and then she was told that the test-giver would be her new homeroom teacher. Definitely the highlight of the experience, finding out that she'd have to spend the year under the eye of a man who seemed to have a stick up his rear end fit to make the one in her mom's look like a Q-tip by comparison.

No one even bothered to tell her that she needed to wear the girls' uniform, let alone get on her case about her "dyed" hair. Kyo didn't know whether to be relieved that she'd been spared the pain in the ass, or annoyed that her plan to trick them into letting her wear the boys' uniform had gone to waste.

Kamoshida walked them back to the front gate when all of the introductions were over with and the papers filled out. He didn't seem like such a bad guy, even if the way he'd made a point to warn Kobayakawa that she was, what, royalty or something? ...whatever... had put a bit of a black mark on her first impression of him. At least he seemed laid-back enough that she could maybe get along with the guy, and since phys ed was Kyo's favorite subject, that was what really mattered. It was good to know that she could spend a year talking to the guy regularly without wanting to Falcon Punch him and his stupid chin all the way to fucking Tokushima — like she'd wanted to with her last P.E. coach, the condescending prick.

Kamoshida was regaling her mother with more of Shujin's undoubtedly fascinating history of producing outstanding members of society (it was some hospital director named Oyamada that he was blithering about now) when Kyo decided to cut in and ask about something that was actually useful:

"So, Kamoshida-sensei. Is it sensei, or is it Coach? I don't think I caught what you teach."

Kamoshida laughed. "Coach," he said.

"Coach? Ooh, then you're defs the one t' ask."

Eri looked quizzically at Kyo, who was rolling her shoulders in a way that made her look like a very small, petite wrestler stepping out of the ring after an easy fight.

"I'm an exercisin' kinda gal," she said. "And I know senior year's late for it, but I was thinkin', like, is there an openin' in one o' the girls' sports teams? I need an extracurricular activity that'll really make me sweat."

Kamoshida's smile vanished, replaced by blank surprise. But then he grinned a grin that said her question was a lucky break he wasn't expecting the moment before. Kyo got her answer for why that was just a moment later.

"As it happens, I'm coach of the school's volleyball teams," he said. Kyo was caught off-guard by that, for the first time in the evening.

"Both teams?" Eri asked, clearly impressed. A moment later Kyo blurted out, "Girls' and Boys'?"

Kamoshida laughed a good-natured laugh as they passed through the front gate, coming to a stop about twenty paces from where Eri had parked the car.

"I get that reaction a lot," he said jovially. "But as I was about to say, a few members of the Girls' Volleyball Team graduated this month, so we have openings. If you're good enough to make a splash at tryouts, you might just take one." He glanced around, then leaned in with an apologetic look and put a hand to one side of his mouth in the universal gesture for I don't want anyone to overhear me saying this. "It's not a politically correct observation, so forgive me for saying this... but our school has high athletic standards, and it's a bit harder to find young girls who can take the pressure. So if you think you've already got that kind of edge, I'd put money on getting in."

Kyo took this in, turning it over and considering the possibilities. High athletic standards, huh? She did know that the sports teams at her previous schools were more of the blasé casual kind — only ever really standing out when a natural talent or two happened to shine for a while and carry the team through their games. It would be interesting to see how she could measure up to her teammates in a sport when the heat was on, really on, though! Was volleyball the one she wanted to try, though? One school year wasn't much of a window for haphazard experimentation.

"I don't s'pose this school has a girls' boxin' team?" she asked hopefully. Kamoshida's eyes went wide as saucers. Eri shook her head and huffed, expressing her disapproval of the question in the only way a mother who had long since run out of words could.

"Absolutely not. We don't even have a boy's team anymore. The powers that be found reason to decide it would just encourage male students to violence, so it was disbanded a couple of years ago. But why would girls want a boxing team at all? We never had one to begin with."

Kyo's eyes went deadpan. "That's not 'xactly politically correct t' say, either," she said blandly. "But okay. If fightin' ain't an option, volleyball might be a good one for me. I'll give it a think and keep an eye on the notice board for tryouts. Thanks, Coach!"

"I'll be seeing you in P.E. one way or another, since I handle the senior class," Kamoshida said, settling back and nodding. "I hope to see you at tryouts. And Eri-san, if she does decide to join the volleyball team, I think it would be good if you and I can confer about your daughter's schedule. My volleyball team is a fast track to an athletic scholarship, you know. So it would be in the interests of her future to get the most she can out of it."

His tone struck Kyo as a teeny bit canoodling now, and she had to fight back a defensive bristle before she even had a chance to make sense of that. Had Kamoshida been trying to imply something, or was her imagination just getting the better of her?

The hope that Kyo was going crazy seemed harder to cling to when her mother's answer came with that same subtle tone of challenge and warning that Eri had employed earlier, suggesting that she had noticed the same thing.

"Maybe it would, but that's for Kyo-chan to decide. I'll talk with her before I speak with you."

Kyo couldn't stop her head from snapping around to stare at her mother. It was the second time in as many minutes that something had caught her off guard, and it would have driven her wariness of Kamoshida out of her mind if she hadn't been so wrong-footed just now. But her mother had just said that... that...

"Of course," Kamoshida said easily. "I didn't mean to imply otherwise. I just wanted to assure you that it would be worth cutting into her study time for it. A lot of parents worry about that in senior year, because of entrance exams. If I had five yen for every time a student has asked me to talk to their father about what volleyball could do for their future prospects! Since you're here now, I just wanted to make sure you were aware of her options."

Eri nodded. "I'll take it under advisement," she said, unreadably polite. "Thank you for your assistance today, Suguru-san. We had better get going now, though. I'd like to get on the road before rush hour, so I can make dinner on time."

Kyo had to admire her mother's calm attitude in the face of... whatever Kamoshida had just been doing. Maybe he really had just been making sure a student's mother knew what was what. It wasn't like she lived in a thriller manga, where every little gesture and expression had to have absolute meaning — this wasn't a frickin' episode of Death Note.

Kamoshida smiled, though he seemed to have been discomforted by Eri's deliberately cordial response. He waved his hand at Eri, nodded in farewell to Kyo, and said, "Drive safely then, Morinaga-san. And I look forward to your decision, Kyo-san!"

He turned and strolled comfortably right back through the gates. Kyo watched him climb the stairs to the front doors of the school, whistling a bland tune to himself that he'd probably heard on his car radio. When he was out of sight, she turned to lock eyes with her mother.

"It's for me t' decide, huh?" she echoed, her voice quiet and... damn her treacherous vocal chords, it sounded sentimentally grateful even to her own ears.

Eri, who had half-turned to walk back to the car already, paused and looked back at her daughter, nonplussed. Then she seemed to catch on to what this meant to Kyo. Her eyes softened.

"Yes," she answered, face and voice both gentle now. "It's for you to decide. Just, Kyo-chan, please. For your own sake and for my peace of mind, try to think of your own future seriously for a change. This is your senior year. You won't be able to just float along like you've been doing until now. I don't want you to regret this year when you're establishing yourself as an adult, that's all."

Kyo's face, which had remained mostly within the spectrum that existed between boredom and exasperation up to this point, split into a smile she couldn't help letting take control of her facial muscles. Maybe civil wasn't the best she and her mother could manage, after all. She nodded, suddenly willing to try to do what her mother had told her to do for the first time in a long time. Tilted her head down as she got moving so that her hair obscured her traitorous eyes more effectively, she set off for the car in front of her mother.

"Thanks, mom," she whispered, so quiet that she knew it would go unheard. Her mother's footsteps resumed behind her. Kyo lifted a hand as if to scratch her nose as a cover for thumbing a bit of gathering moisture from her eyelashes.

"Let's go win me some academic excellence," y'say? Well... I guess I can give it the ol' college try. A little bit o' cram school never killed anyone.

~ V ~

Eternity rippled endlessly with a million what-ifs the what-ifs attached to them, a million and another million for every micro-instant that played out. A being sat behind a desk, surrounded by the bars of the prison cells that comprised the bulk of this Room, the Room that reflected his Trickster's soul. Soon it would be time to call him here, but not yet. Nevertheless, he continued to observe the wheels that were in motion, and timeless eternity's many ripples continued to produce intriguing results, lives touching lives and those lives touching ever more lives, with causes and effects both good and bad in infinite mixtures, an ordered mandala of infuriating chaos. It was horrifying and beautiful all at the same time.

A specific ripple crossed his awareness, and beneath a long nose, his smile widened. How interesting the game was shaping up to be. He pondered this new element for the long stretch of an instant, and nodded to himself. Yes, she would make for an effective dose of yet more chaos. The truth of human desire might become all the clearer before the end if he encouraged her involvement. The entity closed his eyes and reached out with his will. The next time she unlocked her mobile phone, she would see the key to her destiny occupying its "Home" screen along with the device's other applications. How would she respond to the Metaverse Navigator, he wondered, and how long would it take her to discover its true function? The next few days would certainly be interesting.

But it would be some time until she had a chance to affect the course of things again. For now, other matters required the lion's share of his attention.

The awareness which sat on the knife's edge between dreams and reality shifted his gaze. He looked forward to seeing how this would alter the Journey that his Trickster was destined to embark on soon.

Next Time: As our unwitting monkey-in-the-wrench sets out to explore her new home city in the days before the start of her new school life, things get interesting when she notices a strange new application installed on her phone. Kyo isn't the type to just dump such a thing in the virtual trash and forget about it, and her attempts to figure out what it is might bear unexpected fruit...

Author's Note:

The concept for this project — which is shaping up to be quite the ambitious, long-haul kind of writing endeavor — came to mind as I was reading other works of Persona 5 fan fiction, specifically those which insert OCs (original characters, for the uninitiated) into the world and events of the game.

It has long been a pet peeve of mine that fan fiction tends to follow a by-the-numbers template that comes carbon-fused to any popular concept, and in this case what made me lose interest was the lack of a real impact on the plot's events by whatever character gets added to the mix. There is no sense of "butterfly effect" to their actions or how they effect the story — these fanfics tend to amount to a novelization of the game as-it-already-exists, with occasional incursions by a character who is new but has minimal impact, wants to be important, wants you to think they're important, and may even have a large original plotline awkwardly crammed into a portion of the story that originally had nothing going on and had room for it... but isn't really necessary to any sort of cohesive plot direction. Even if they get a big touching group photo at the end.

Like a certain poetry enthusiast in a specific re-release, who shall remain tactfully nameless.

So for this story my goal is quite simple. We will be experiencing the story of Ren Amamiya and his cohorts again, but there will be an OC. This OC will be the focus of the story and its primary perspective character, not because she is a magical second Wild Card (she isn't), or a self-insert with foreknowledge of the story's events (nope nope, although that certainly is fun to play around with), or somehow capable of channeling the author's meta-perception of the cast and plot into a fantasy power trip rant against all the characters and story points that the author hates (the bane of my time in the Harry Potter section, for sure).

No, this OC will simply be a character with her own past, motivations, and agenda, clever enough to be a Trickster in her own right — just as I've been writing her since before I even knew Persona 5's release date. But her most important aspect will be that her presence in the story changes the course of events drastically compared to the plot that unfolds in the game that this story is based on. From the very start of this story, everything is already and will continue to be very different.

Characters that were unimportant may be rendered vital to the plot. Important characters may end up playing a background role instead. Adversity that was hopeless before may become suddenly surmountable and situations that seemed oh so simple and non-threatening in the game may become teeth-chatteringly perilous for our heroes. This is not the story of the Phantom Thieves of Hearts. This is the story of the Tokyo Butterfly and the havoc she caused on their year-long train ride to society's day of ruin.

I hope you all find it as interesting to think about while reading it as I am finding it to ponder while writing it. It will probably take a decent chunk of time to produce the first official "Chapter" of this story, since I'm aiming for a pretty high average chapter length. I'll try to keep a fairly brisk pace with it, though! I really do want to get back into the habit of writing like this regularly, whether it's fan fiction or not.

— Lewis Medeiros,
April 5th, 2018 at 4:50 AM