Jailrat (Persona 4, English)

When Adachi decided to receive punishments for his deeds, this wasn't what he had been thinking of. (One Shot. Written for dancingpurge @tumblr)

Can also be found on Ao3 and Fanfiction.net

There's a lot of things that can go wrong with waking up in the morning.

Your alarm clock could fail to go off, causing you to oversleep. You might get a case of a bad hair day. Maybe you'll wake up to realize you've contracted a fever, complete with stuffy nose and a stomach that's dead-set on killing you. You could also wake up to a text telling you that you just lost 10.000 Yen in some freak tax-incident. Or maybe you wake up to find your house on fire. Who knows? Anything is possible.

And when we say "anything" we mean "anything". Absolutely 100% and without fail anything that you can image might one morning be your reality. At least that's the conclusion Tohru Adachi came to one sunny Friday morning in his cozy little jail-cell.

Despite the pleasant weather that day, there were a myriad of things going wrong with it from the very beginning. First of all, your blanket is generally not supposed to be so thick and heavy that it crushes you underneath. Secondly, your blanket is generally not supposed to cover your entire body, including your head. Thirdly, your blanket is generally not meant to be so long that you need to pull yourself several meter until you you finally see a literal light at the end of the tunnel.

By now Tohru Adachi knew that something very strange was going on. Not that it shocked him, seeing how his life had been filled with strange occurrences ever since that fateful day he first decided to give the elusive, rumored Midnight Channel a watch, but this was still mildly disconcerting to say the least.

He retracted the "mildly" part as soon as he he finally reached to outside of his prison of cloth and filling material, entering back into the environment of the actual prison and realizing just how screwed over exactly things were. Tohru Adachi found himself sitting on top of a bed that probably measured a good 15 meters in width and 40 meters in length, adorned with a gigantic blanket and a pillow the size of a massive hill. This gigantic bed was located in a hall of titanic measures which appeared to be a perfect replica of his jail cell, complete with giant sized, but on-scale replications of all further furniture and the entirety of Adachi's few possessions.

Of course he knew that none of these things were actually replicas at all. What was really going on was that Adachi himself had shrunken down to thumb-size.

"...Shit."

This was all he had to say on the matter. Quite frankly, not much can still faze you once you've been beat within an inch of your life by a teenager with a glowing scar and an alliance with the god of fire. Still, this came dangerously close to being surprising and he had to admit that it had indeed been pretty low on the list of crazy things he had still expected to happen to him in his wasted life.

"OK... Now how do we get out of this mess?"

Adachi got up on his feet and scratched the back of his neck, taking a look around the cell and trying to figure out what to do. This was a harder task to accomplish than it sounded, seeing how one's bodily height was a quite hard thing to combat. A deep sigh. No matter how pointless it seemed to tackle this problem, it was quite clear it wouldn't be solving itself any time soon. There was no way around it, he had to get off this bed. This fact on mind, Tohru Adachi carefully, very carefully, as to not slip off and end up becoming a teeny-tiny pancake on the surprisingly distant floor, made his way past the pillow, to the bed's metal frame and tried to hang on to the leg in the upper left corner of the piece of furniture. So far, so good. Now he only had to be extremely careful in climbing his way down here, otherwise he would-

-Aaaand, already it had happened. While Adachi was still wondering to himself if whichever strange, otherworldly force decided that it would be funny to play around with the body-height of a 20-something serial killer ever considered if it wouldn't be quite rude to force physical labor of this extent onto such a clearly effort-adverse individual as him, Adachi found himself slipping off the metal pole he was holding on to, legs first, then his hands lost their grip as well. With a high-pitched scream of the extraordinary kind, Adachi proceeded to freely fall all the way down... Right into a half-empty plastic cup of water he had left there the previous night. The echo of the splashing sound filled the solitary cell of Tohru Adachi with a hint of noise before the room briefly, just for a few moments, returned to complete silence. Then Adachi reemerged from the waters of sustainment, gasping for breath and coughing up liquid.

Adachi was lucky. The water had been deep enough to feather off his wall, but not so deep that he would have drowned in it. That was good. On the other hand, this also meant that he was now trapped in this half-empty, opaque cup of water with no way of getting out. That was bad. Pushing and kicking didn't help either; There was too much water for him to hit the walls of the cup with any sort of significant power. Climbing out was likewise out of question. It seemed that the only good thing to be said about Adachi's situation was that at very least he wouldn't die of dehydration in here.

While Adachi was still contemplating his unpleasant predicament, the bleeping sound of a key-card being scanned at the cell's door caught his attention. Huh. Was somebody actually about to enter the room?

"I swear Sir, he was clearly in his bed one moment and the next he was gone! I am not just making this up!"

"And where is he supposed to have disappeared to? Did he just randomly ascend to a higher plane of existence!? Argh... Out of the way! We'll check this goddamn room until there's nothing left to turn over!"

Seeing how he was stuck in an opaque cup, Adachi could not see the owners of the two panicked voices that had just entered into his cell, however, he recognized them either way. One of them was that young, fairly naive Guard who was often in charge of supervising his cell and to whom Adachi would often tell exciting, breath-taking (and 100% made-up) "authentic" stories from his days as a top-cop in the exciting city of Name Not Announced, in exchange for treats from the snack-bar that Adachi would not usually have access to in solitary. The other was the Correctional Lieutenant who would always give said Guard the evil eye when the remains of aforementioned snacks were found in Adachi's cell. Either way, they were just who Adachi would have expected to show up in a case like this. After all he did just suddenly 'disappear' like in some magic trick. Now they were seemingly being headless chicken trying to determine his exact location. Adachi almost felt moved to tears by their dedication to him, except for the fact that he knew very well that the only reason they cared was that just "misplacing" a high-profile inmate like him would get their asses fired before they could even utter "booze".

The pair of prison staff searched Adachi's cell under spat curses and whispered woes for their own sorry futures for about 15 minutes, before the Correctional Lieutenant loudly secured his nomination for Captain Obvious of the Year by screaming that Adachi was "Not here fuck it all to hell!" Adachi would have found this turn of events very amusing, hadn't it been for his soaked clothing making him continuously more and more uncomfortable in his own skin. He really, really needed to get out of here already.

As so often, life decided to be ironic and indeed get him 'out of there'... Out of the prison cell, that is, not out of the cup. This was due to aforementioned cup being picked up by aforementioned young, naive guard as he was about to leave. When Adachi felt the motions under his feet, he already dreaded what was about to happen. His fears turned out to be prophetic: On the way outside, the stressed and probably slightly dehydrated Guard closed his eyes and moved the cup to his lips with the clear intent to chuck down the remaining liquid contents of the vessel. Horrified but silent (He didn't know what these people did with littlest-tiny detectives-turned-serial-killers, and frankly, he didn't want to find out), Adachi grabbed on to the edge of the cup as soon as it came into reach and held on for his dear life. So it came that Tohru Adachi, ex-detective and feared serial killer, found himself dangling just a few centimeter above the mouth of a Correctional Officer with very, very unclean teeth and stinky breath, which was now gently stroking through Adachi's hair, wet clothing and across his skin. What a beautiful day this was.

The cup was too slippery. He wouldn't be able to hold on for much longer. Adachi knew that, but seeing how he had no intentions of becoming an accidental, cannibaltastic morning snack, he had to come up with a way of getting out of this situation, fast. He looked around for just a few moments before she swung his legs, once, twice, trice, and then threw himself off the cup, using his whole body to direct his course of flight. Not into the mouth, not into the mouth, not into the mouth-

He managed to aim for the Guard's uniform and clung to it, quickly let go, grabbed back on a little further down and continued this until he found himself on the guy's jeans. From there he carefully, but swiftly allowed himself to slip down the legs of the guy's pant, reaching solid ground.

Now things had to go very quickly. Hush, hush, around the corner to safety! Behind him Adachi could hear the voices of those two blokes:

"Huh? What the..."

"Hm? Did you see something?"

"Um, not really, but... Uhh... I just thought I felt something crawling down my leg... A mouse or something..."

"Of course, because that mouse went through all the trouble climbing up into your trousers for funnsies."

"Sir, I swear, I am not making this up."

"Sure you're not. Now stop fooling around and help me figure out this bullshit situation!"

By the time the Guard took a look around Adachi was around the corner and out of sight. Being fairly quick on your feet had its advantages, yep. Now if only that skill could help him get things back to normal.

In any case, Adachi's problems had doubled by now. No longer was he simply a shrunken jailbird, nooo, now he was a shrunken jailbird outside his cell! For some people the later part might have sounded like a blessing, but one must remember that Adachi had, in fact, no intentions of escaping imprisonment. Not only would doing so have gone against the few principles he had established for himself, it would also have caused various unpleasant side-effects such as being wanted all across Japan, in addition to being barely 4cm tall. Not a desirable lifestyle at all.

As if Adachi didn't have enough trouble with his prison life as it was. It weren't the guards or other inmates that were causing him problems, at least not to such an extent, but even now, months after the fact, the investigations into his case still hadn't been concluded entirely. There just was no conclusive evidence against him. The psychologists and forensic investigators, the detectives, the superiors, none of them had any idea what to do with the truthful yet unbelievable testimony Adachi had kept faithfully reciting to them ever since Day 1, word for word accurate to the actual events. It only made sense that they weren't inclined to believe his words, of course, he was throwing a lot of supernatural stuff onto them with his claims, but that didn't change that it was the truth. Nothing but the truth.

He was keeping his promise and abiding by the rules of the world. Just what those kids had demanded of him. So why was fate still putting goddamn road blocks into his path? It were times like these that he seriously doubted the point of his persistence again...

His mind had drifted off too far. Before Adachi knew it, he realized he had just aimlessly wandered along the wall of the hallway with no goal in sight. He was wet, cold, wasn't wearing shoes... And he didn't want to ask if this day could get any worse. He knew what kind of results tempting fate tended to have for him. Eventually Adachi spotted something that brought a glimmer resembling 'hope' into the day's grey outlook. There was a barred hole in the wall, a vent of sorts, just in his reach and wide enough for him to crawl through! What amazing luck! ...Or so he would thought if there hadn't been a million unfortunate possibilities about this apparent vent coming to his mind. After all, who knew where it led? The toilets, the kitchen, the canalization, a garbage dumb? With his luck, Adachi would find himself plummeting straight into an incinerator if he dared to use this escape route. Was the risk really worth the possible merit? Adachi stood there, his fingers on his chin, considering these very pressing questions as if he had all the time in the world, until he realized that he did in fact not have all the time in the world. Thump, thump, thump. Steps were approaching fast and swiftly from down the corridor. Officers were beginning to swarm out, darting all across the place. With these people on the lose around here, one of them was bound to find Adachi sooner or later - If they didn't step on him first, that is.

Presented with the options of possible graceful incineration VS possibly ending up as icky dirt on the underside of somebody's shoe, Adachi decided that glorified firewood might not be such a bad career-path after all and leap towards the vent. Through the bars and in he went!

The first thing Adachi noticed now was that he wasn't falling. Good, yes, solid ground under his feet was good. He was also able to walk without suddenly sliding around and it seemed fairly dry around here. Even better. It was, however, pretty dark on the other side of the vent, making it hard for Adachi to tell where he was going. The first wall he hit and used as an orientation to guide him on was made of metal, confirming his suspicion that he was probably inside of a pipe or duct of some kind. Now if only this duct led somewhere interesting, this situation might just turn out marginally less crappy than it was. All he had to do was walk on carefully, watch out for any possible sources of light, make sure it was save before he checked out any openings and then-

...Talking about sources of light, the first one Adachi spotted in the distance was a little odd. Two yellowish, mildly glowing dots were visible across from the path he had entered through. They didn't seem to come from an exit of any sort. Much more, they appeared to be caused by some sort of reflective surface, which also seemed to be moving up and down and up and down over and over again, ever so slightly. When Adachi heard a loud hissing that came from the reflective dots, he froze in place as it began to dawn on him what exactly he was facing. Confirmation didn't let him wait for long: With shrill feeping sounds, the "dots", now identified as the eyes of what was probably a humongous rat, dashed towards Adachi with great noise as the vermin's fat body smacked against the metal ground of the duct over and over. There was one word on Adachi's mind in this situation: Run. Run, run like the air that was actually meant to pass through this vent! Run like your life depended on it, because it probably does! Run, Tohru Adachi, zoom around the corner, madly dash through the long tunnel, dash, dash, all to escape the terrible beast that has come to smite your for your sins!

It should be mentioned here that Tohru Adachi considers 'crushed by an overweight rat' to be a fairly embarrassing and pathetic way to die.

The chase continued, Adachi sweating and repeatedly having to stop himself from letting out loud, high-pitched screams as he moved his lazy feet as quickly as it was possible this early in the day (Hey, they couldn't all be morning people right?), desperately and more than just figuratively seeking for the light at the end of the tunnel.

Eventually he lost the ground under his feet. Literally. And so it seemed fate had not been so kind as to spare him the dreaded free-fall through the dusty duct after all. It had merely postpone it a little.

There was no longer any reason to hold back now, was there? Free of all shame, Adachi unleashed the most pathetic scream his tiny vocal chords could muster and mentally prepared to meet his untimely demise as he descended further and further into the darkness of the unknown with increasing speed.

His journey found an end, not in an incinerator, but at a close-meshed grid made of a fairly flexible material, almost cloth-like. It must have been part of the air-vent system as well, except this one vent was apparently located on the ceiling of its room, rather than on the bottom. Feathering off its material like it were a trampoline, Adachi's fall was stopped by this particular vent's grid after he bounced off it for approximately three times and finally came to a definitive halt. As for how Adachi was still alive after this ordeal you can attribute this to his greatly reduced mass, the softness of the grid's material and narrative convenience. What a poor comedy this would be if our protagonist ended up horribly mangled by a grid! What a bloody mess that would be! We do not have the sufficient amount of slapstick-prowess to pull that off!

...Ahem, in any case. Let us return to Tohru Adachi.

Though Adachi's head was currently spinning and his acute dizziness was not exactly helped by the dazzling light that was now shining into his darkness-adjusted eyes so brightly and suddenly, he did not need long to determine that he was, in fact, still alive, which was already an enormous gain to his current primary goal of not dying. That was quite promising, even if he felt painful bruises steadily forming all over his body and his tired legs refusing to move any further than they already had today. Even if he had still been vital enough to get up and run some more, it wasn't like he would have gotten very far: Aside from the other side of the grid that he had ended up on, the pit he was in now was an utter dead end. There were no sideway paths to slip away through and attempting to climb back up would have been nothing short of suicidal. For now, Adachi was stuck sitting right where he was. How nice.

Begrudgingly Adachi murmured a couple of curses to himself before submitting to his fate and deciding that, since there wasn't anything better to do for him here, he might just as well check out where exactly it was that he had ended up here. So he bent down and began to peek through the grid.

His location was then quickly determined: As soon as Adachi's eyes had become adjusted to the light again he could quickly tell that right to his feet was the prison's visiting room, the same one he very occasionally used himself to speak to people who wanted to see him for whatever odd reason. In fact, it seemed as if one of these very odd reasons had taken possession of a poor soul once again today: The ex-detective's eyes widened when he saw that one of the individuals currently in the room beneath him was none other than his old partner... The old-fashioned slave driver with an F in parenting, Ryotaro Dojima.

What was Dojima-san doing here that early in the morning? Adachi couldn't remember having anything scheduled today. Then again, this was just like Dojima-san, showing up whenever his timetable allowed it without asking beforehand. Not like he could just ask Adachi, what with him being in prison and all, but the point was that Dojima-san was likely visiting in the spur of the moment today. Otherwise the prison staff would have informed Adachi about this beforehand.

Ha Ha Ha... Really now, though? Today of all days? Talk about terrible timing. Dojima-san really had a gift for being at the wrong place at the wrong time, didn't he?

Or... Maybe it was Adachi himself who had this gift. After all, it was Adachi who was here now, shrunk down to pocket size and stuck up behind a grid when Dojima-san was down there to visit him. To see him...

"What do you mean, 'he's not available right now'? It's the visiting hours! I was told there was no interrogation scheduled today!"

Ah yes. The dulcid sounds of Dojima-san's scolding, impatient yells. One thing he certainly didn't miss about being a free man. Though, Adachi had to admit, this was significantly more amusing to watch now that he wasn't the rant's target. Infinitely more amusing, in fact. Why did he not have any popcorn up here?

The shivering Guard backed away from Dojima-san slowly, clearly intimidated by the detective's powerful, em, 'presence'. He took a moment to clear his throat before finally formulating a response to him.

"We're really dreadfully sorry, Sir, but I just doubt Adachi-san will be able to receive visitors today. If you came back tomorrow, then maybe..."

"Don't give me that! I don't care if I can see him today or tomorrow, I wanna know what the heck is going on here. You can't fool me, I know perfectly well how these places run! If he were sick or scheduled for anything you would be telling me straight-out. Saying that he's 'unable to receive visitors' either means that you can't get him to leave his cell or that you can't find him! And if it's the former, well, then I'd suggest you make some fire under that guy's butt real quick, since I came here to visit him and I'm not taking a 'no' for an answer."

"Umm..."

"What do you mean 'you can't find him'!?"

"I-I never said that Sir! Calm down, please!"

Adachi had to admit, he was fairly surprised by this. He had seen Dojima-san worked up before, but it was rare to see him jump to conclusions or lose his cool so utterly and completely. For a brief moment Adachi wondered if Dojima-san maybe knew about the kind of treatment he had been getting here during the interrogations. Was that the reason he was being so distrustful towards the staff when it came to Adachi's wellbeing? After all, if there was one thing Dojima-san could win an award in it was being needlessly concerned for Adachi. He was quite good at that. But then Adachi recalled his current predicament and decided that if you were going to be concerned about him, this was probably the best possible time to do so.

The conversation beneath continued. Adachi listened in some more.

"How in heaven's name do you just 'misplace' a prisoner!? What kind of irresponsible, disfunctional jail is this place? Is everyone here out of their minds!? I swear to you, if you don't show me proof that Adachi has, in fact, not somehow gone mysteriously missing while under your care, your superiors will hear of this!"

"Sir, I promise you, we are doing everything possible to us to make sure Adachi-san will be ready to receive the usual visits again by tomorrow morning. The situation will be resolved in due time, so please, just stay calm and..."

"In other words, you have no idea where he is, am I right?"

Silence. That was all the Guard had to offer in response to that. Dojima's glare that moment was not exactly inviting. It was the seething, deadly kind, that could boil the ocean and level cities if eyes had such powers. Still, after a few moments he had to realize that his persistence would not bear any fruit here. With a scoff, Dojima threw his jacket over his shoulder and turned around.

"Tch... Fine then. If he isn't there, then I guess I've got no business here. ...I should probably just go straight to the head of the place and get his take on all of this..."

Dojima began to walk towards the exit when a small sound other than his footsteps was heard. Adachi took a closer look and saw that a small item that hadn't been there before was now lying on the floor. Did it fall out of Dojima-san's pocket?

"Ah, Sir...! You dropped this!"

"Hm?"

Stopping in his tracks, Dojima waited on the guard, who followed after him, picking up the small item to hand it back to its owner. Now that it was lifted up like this, Adachi could actually make out what it was ever so vaguely: A keychain with a tiny textile figure of some sort of character on it . He recognized this weird shape from somewhere, what was it again? The Junes Mascot? Right, there was that one part timer who would always run all about town in an outfit like that. Probably the one person in town with a shittier job than him, he'd imagine.

Dojima-san was taking a closer look at the small item.

"Ah, right... That's for Adachi. You can keep that here and give it to him once you find him," Dojima-san then added some mumbling under his breath "...If you ever find him, that is."

"For Adachi-san, Sir?" The Guard then asked with curiousity in his voice. "This thing?"

Dojima-san nodded, "Yeah. My daughter made it for him. I told her that I was going to visit him, so she demanded I take it with me. She said it's a 'Good Love Charm'."

"Sir, I think you mean 'Good Luck Charm'."

"Ha Ha, yes, that's what everyone would think, right? But with those kids..." Dojima-san briefly paused, the rubbed the back of his neck. "Let's just say my daughter has some pretty interesting friends that she gets this stuff from."

"I see, ahaha. Well, that's just how children are, Sir!"

"Yeah, maybe... I probably shouldn't be encouraging this kind of behavior though. Ahh..." There was a weird cross between a smile and exhaustion on Dojima-san's face as he said this. "Let's just call it a 'Charm' then and be done with it."

With those words, Dojima-san turned around to leave again. He was already at the door when something else occurred to him and he turned for one last time.

"Oh... Don't take that as an invitation to just ignore everything I said before, though. I am going to follow up on it. So you'd better tell your bosses to make sure that by tomorrow,Adachi is back behind bars, where he belongs."

"Y-Yes, Sir!"

The Guard saluted and bowed deeply as Dojima-san turned for the door again and finally took his leave. With the Guard left with nothing but his own sweat drops, silence returned to the room.

Adachi sat on top of his grid and was silent. The Guard had long tugged away the keychain in his own pocket, and yet it was still on the prisoner's mind. Vibrant with its colors and that silly grin that was sewn onto it in yarn. So Nanako-chan made it... Adachi wondered who taught her to sew like that. Or who that friend was who came up with something as moronic as "Good Love Charms".

How had Dojima-san and Nanako-chan been doing lately? Had their home life been harmonious? Did Dojima-san still get home late on every occasion he got, swamping himself with overtime for absolutely no reason? What about Yu-kun? He should have returned to the big city by now, right?

Suddenly Adachi felt a tight knot in his stomach. Somewhere, deep inside, he found himself wondering, just a little bit, what Inaba was like now. And if there were people that remembered him there. People other than Dojima-san or Nanako-chan. Or Yu-kun. People who still thought of him some time... Maybe even fondly...

...

...He lost track of time. Not that there was much to track, what with him stuck in that vent with nowhere to go. When Adachi took a look to check again, he saw that the Guard had left the room by now, meaning it was just him and the silence here now. Well, almost. Briefly Adachi could feel and hear an uncomfortable rumbling down in his guts. Either this was yesterday's tuna surprise finally causing his insides to rebel, or he really, really needed to get something between his teeth already. Preferably something substantial.

This was stupid. Was he seriously just going to sit up here for the rest of his life? Slowly starving to death in an air-vent until his bones are one day found and forensic DNA tests manage to determine that this amazingly is indeed an actual human skeleton and that of a long-vanished, infamous lunatic at it? What a way to go. When Adachi decided to receive punishments for his deeds, this wasn't what he had been thinking of... Damn it, was there really no way to get out here?

Just when Adachi was about to doze off and sleep a little about this hunger-inducing futility, a loud sound startled him awake. Spinning to look down the vent again, he could see through the grid that the door to the room had opened once again. Alongside the Guard from before, a young woman who looked like she was still in her teens, dressed in a fancy suit and wearing glasses, stepped into the room. Adachi thought he vaguely recognized her from somewhere, but all he could come up with was that he thought she looked like some kind of television announcer.

"Miss, are you really sure about this? Again, we can't guarantee you that he will be able to receive you. He might not come."

"He will come," The young woman said. "And until that, I'll wait here."

"But why in here? There is a perfectly comfortable waiting room outside. And it could take hours..."

The woman shook her head unimpressed. "No. Here is good. I'll wait in here."

"Well, if you say so, Miss..."

Clearly the Guard couldn't make heads or tails of the young woman's request, but she looked fairly well-off, so she probably was in the position to make odd demands like these. That's how it worked. Throw a few bills at the officers and they might just do you a favor. Given that Adachi was pretty sure he didn't know this girl personally, that was probably what had happened here too. After all, what other currently absent prisoner could she possibly be visiting?

...Wait, she was trying to visit him? Of all people? A young, good-looking girl like her, who was probably rolling in cash too? What kind of backwards parallel universe was this? And why did he end up in it now and not two years ago? Given, she didn't seem to be the type that was easy to talk to, but that wasn't too bad... She had a style, and money, and looks, and showed interest... Wait, what in all of the possible hells was he even thinking right now!? This wasn't the time for that - scratch that - it would never again be the time for that!

Why was a woman like her visiting him? Why would she go as far as to demand to wait on him in the visiting room? And why today, of all days?

These were questions Adachi was still busy asking himself while the woman down in the visitor's room made another demand on the Guard.

"Oh, by the way, I don't need you here."

"Huh? But, Miss, I have to be present and supervise the visi-"

"But there's no one here now. So it's not a visit. Right?"

"Um, yes, but..."

"Then you don't need to be here," The woman stated like it were the most obvious fact in the world. She then nodded, as if to confirm herself further. "You can leave now. I'll wait here by myself."

"Miss..."

"... I don't like people who argue with me. It's annoying."

At this point, the Guard stopped talking back, clearly dumbfounded by the young woman's persistence. Her cold eyes gave him a shiver and it probably didn't help that he had already taken prior damage from Dojima-san's glare before. Unable to oppose the fashionable invader's demands, the Guard finally just scuttled away and closed the door behind himself.

And then it was that girl in the room under Adachi and nobody else.

It were a long couple of minutes of absolutely nothing. The girl just paced through the room, paying the walls far more attention than they deserved. Adachi observed her nervously, wondering if she was up to anything. For the longest while it seemed as if not much was going to happen though. Then, however...

In midst of her walking about in the room, the girl suddenly stopped and her big, dark green eyes focused on a specific spot on the wall. At first Adachi didn't understand what she was looking at. Then he realized a slight glimmer from that particular spot. That must have been where the security camera of the room was hidden...

"Zio." The girl voiced with her lips slightly puckered.

Suddenly there was a popping sound mixed with the cracking of plastic and glass. Adachi starred at the wall where the glimmering camera lense had been, now finding only a smoking hole there. The security camera seemed to have spontaneously combusted. Slowly, almost mechanically, Adachi turned his head to stare at the young woman beneath him. Did this just happen how he thought it happened-?

...She was looking at him. Her green eyes were turned right up to the vent, focusing on it very intensely. Adachi could feel her gaze meeting his. She saw him. She knew he was there. And yet, she didn't look shocked in the least, not even slightly startled...!

"Garu." The girl whispered this time and at once all of Adachi's terror from before when he was falling into this dead end came flooding back to him.

All of a sudden, there was wind. Not just a slight breeze, but a strong gust, like caused by a storm, rushing past Adachi, drying up the last few wet spots on his body, ripping on his clothing, on his hair, violently pushing into his back. The physical strain of it became more and more intense, and likewise the strain on the grid he was sitting on was quite considerable.

One cracking sound. Two cracking sounds... Bam. The grid broke off at its edges and fell to the ground. And so did Adachi. Once again. It was the encore he never asked for.

"G-GAHHHHHHH!"

Adachi's fall lasted for two meters, then he was caught in a cup formed by his attacker's hands. The girl with the green eyes first slightly poked her prisoner with her pointing finger, as if to make sure that he had arrived in one piece and was, in fact still alive. In reaction to that Adachi twitched, causing his captor to nod to herself as if she were satisfied with these results. She then headed for the glass partition in the center of the room and sat down by it. Tilting her cupped hand over, she placed Adachi on the white table in front of her. As his shoulder hit the hard plastic surface, the battered jailbird could already feel plenty of new bruises forming all over his body. He was pretty sure that even if he was lucky enough to survive this ordeal, his whole body would still be feeling sore for a week at least.

"Ah. There you are. You took a while," He heard the girl's voice say while he was still busy getting his limbs back in order. "I was wondering when you'd come."

"Ungh..." Adachi didn't know what horrified him more: The fact that it was possible to feel this much pain in such a tiny body, or how unnaturally calm his beautiful but probably clinically insane tormentor was about this all. "Gah! Who... The hell... Are you...?" He coughed out his first question to her.

The girl, looking as unimpressed as ever, moved her head slightly to the side so she could rest her chin on her hand. The black locks framing her faces swung along with her motions.

"Me? ...Marie," she gave her incredibly unhelpful reply, only to reconsider and expand on it a few seconds later. "I'm... One who protects wishes, I guess."

"...You 'protect' wishes?" Adachi asked, amazed by how little what she had just said made sense. Then again, it wasn't like any of what had happened today made sense. In any case, the girl nodded and continued talking with a bored face.

"Yeah..." She pondered for a moment before she continued. "You know, when you have something you really want to do but think it's not possible? Until you are like 'Ah, I'll just give up'? That's the kind of wish I protect. So people don't just give up on them. I exist because many people want their wishes to come true. I am something like... Their 'collective will', I guess. "

"...So, basically you're telling me that you are the Blue Fairy."

That was funny, because Adachi definitely didn't remember wishing upon a star. He couldn't even see any stars from that tiny-ass window he had in his cell.

"Hm, no, not really. It's more like I'm a goddess."

Oh, right, of course. Because that made sooooo much more sense!

"I've never heard of a goddess called 'Marie' before." Adachi slanted his eyes, utterly convinced that this woman was insane. And dangerous. Dangerous and insane... Actually, in a weird way, she might just be his type after all.

"Well, but I am," the girl called 'Marie' replied. "I am Marie and I am a goddess. Is that a problem?"

Adachi felt like there was a distinct possibility of him being swatted if he replied with anything other than a "No", so he kept snarking urges to himself and shook his head.

"Alright then, um... 'Marie-sama'..." It felt incredibly silly saying that. "And why exactly are you here? I don't remember wishing for anything lately... Especially not for being the size of a piece of Sushi."

Adachi had a distinct feeling that this woman had something to do with his current situation. Not just because she had strange powers and was at the right place at just the right time, but also because she gave him a rather odd feeling. It was hard to place, but it felt as if he was supposed to be familiar with her. As if he had had an important encounter with this person already in the past.

The girl called 'Marie' continued her expositions.

"I don't fulfill wishes. I just protect them," she said. "So all I do is give people the possibility to make their wishes come true. I can't just give them what they want. That's the old rule. I don't run on that."

'The old rule'? Just what in the world did she mean by that? Was this 'godhood' she had some kind of post that was just passed from one person to the other? Was there some sort of celestial bureau taking care of which 40-something loser would get his divorced wife to come back to him and who wouldn't? Or which stupid kid would pass his tests despite studying jack-shit, just because he tossed some 5 Yen into an offering box and clapped his hands three times? Very strange that an official of an 'institution' like that would only be paying him a visit now, as opposed to several years ago, when it actually still mattered.

Still...Somehow, this all seemed so strangely familiar to him. He still couldn't tell why, but her words and descriptions seemed to resonate with something inside him, a strange hint of awareness that felt as if it recognized this person before him.

"Your wish was about to be lost. So I came to make sure it wouldn't be."

Surprised by these words, Adachi raised his head. "My... Wish?" What did she mean?

"You wanted to abide to the rules of this world. But because of how everything happened, there was no evidence against you. And so they've just kept asking the same questions, over and over. You've grown very tired of that. You're showing the truth, but you can't make it stick. It's frustrating."

Adachi said nothing. There was no mistake in what she was saying. All of it, every single word, every little assessment, it was all true.

"To prove that you did what you did, you need to show that you could have done what happened. But that's not that easy. Normal people don't believe in these things anymore. They don't believe a person could make other people disappear. That he could cause them to die by bringing them to a place that doesn't exist in the real world."

"And... So?" Even though Adachi had realized by now that this woman was more than just all talk, he still couldn't quite make sense of what she was trying to explain here. "What has that do with any of this? If you think that me suddenly disappearing from my cell will make them believe that I could have killed people by pushing them into a TV, I hate to disappoint you, Missy, but it's not that easy. If it were, I'd just have tried a botched break-out ages ago."

Marie used her free hand and started playing with her hair.

"There are... People. People, who work with the police, hidden in the shadows. They deal with cases that don't make senses to normal people, but only to people who have that 'potential'... The powers that the others call 'Persona'."

Adachi's eyes widened a bit. "Persona..."

That word again. That strange word that had been haunting him ever since these brats had caught him and ended his game. So this women knew it too. She too was involved with Personas and with Shadows. Somehow, she knew the 'Truth'.

Now, that only left the question of why exactly he had never known that the police had a secret department for paranormal investigations, but he guessed that if he had known, it wouldn't exactly have been secret anymore. He decided to give her the benefit of the doubt there.

"The people who deal with these cases can help make your wish possible. In their cases the normal rules don't apply. That's so the truth can count for what it really is, no matter how impossible it seems. But in order for them to take this case, they need to be called first."

And that was when the last puzzle piece finally clicked and everything began to make sense to Adachi. Finally he understood.

"...By putting me at the center of something so weird that absolutely nobody in the entire staff can even begin to explain what happened, they'll have no choice but to call those MIB on me." That was... Actually quite brilliant, he had to admit.

"Exactly," Marie nodded. "If the people here see you like this, it will become one of their cases... The 'Shadow Operatives'."

"...OK, Missy. That's some pretty good problem-solving you did for me there. You have my kudos for that. Still..." Now that he had accepted the existence of parallel worlds, monsters, super powers, the MIB and fairy-goddesses and that nothing could faze him anymore, Tohru Adachi decided to point out that one tiny logic-flaw he could see in this almighty mistress' amazing scheme. He pointed his finger to the vent overhead. "Was this all really necessary?"

He put a lot of emphasis on the 'all' part, to ensure she would understand that he meant the whole ordeal, not just the part where he fell down a terrifyingly deep pit. Twice.

"Hm. Nope." Marie replied nonchalantly, causing Adachi's jaw to drop a little. She continued talking before he had a chance to complain. "I didn't even need to make you small, actually. That was just to get you here."

"Get me... How in the world did you know that that would get me here!?"

Marie shrugged, "I guessed."

...This warranted a pause. A long. Drawn out. Silent. Pause.

"S-So... I went through all this shit... The cup, almost being breakfast, the rat, my unintentional claustrophobic skydiving adventures... Just so you could play a game of 'Lab-Rat in the Maze'!?"

"Hey. Putting it like that it just sounds stupid."

"...Because IT IS!"

"You annoy me."

"..."

Well, if this had proven one thing to Adachi, then that was that this girl was indeed most definitely a goddess. She did the impossible and nothing about her made sense, not even her motivations. Yep, sure sounded like a mythological figure in his book! But, all snark aside...

"OK then, let me ask a different question: Why did you even need me here?" Adachi sounded slightly more aggressive in his asking this time. "Excuse me, but I kind of fail to see the part in your plan that requires me to meet you face to face."

"That's because that's not part of the same plan," Marie grumpily replied, as if it were the most logical thing in the world. "I needed to meet you while I was here already. I still need to get that stuff back, after all."

"Stuff?" Once more, Adachi was nothing short of utterly confused, stretching out both arms and gesturing to Marie with them. "What 'stuff'!?"

Instead of answering his question, Marie finally stopped messing with her hair and brought her right hand's pointing finger down, touching Adachi's head with it. That moment a cold, ticklish feeling took a hold of him. There was a strange pull from her finger, almost like having a blood sample taken. The process only lasted a couple of seconds, then Marie pulled her hand back and gave that self-affirming nod of hers again.

"There. That should do it. I left just enough so can keep your potential and don't forget everything that happened. The rest is back with me now."

For some reason Adachi felt really dizzy and exhausted all of a sudden. Forget the 'blood sample' this felt more like fully fledged blood loss. Even though he had only a vague idea of what just happened, he did understand that whatever she did just now took a lot of power away from him. Supporting his head with his hands, Adachi had to take a moment to catch his breath. Still dazed he could hear Marie making an announcement.

"Alright. That would be all. Time to wrap this up."

"...And by 'wrap up', you mean...?" He had only known this woman for ten minutes, but it was enough to make him dread what would come next.

"Well," Marie began speaking. "Over in the other room, they are holding a big conference right now."

"Yeah?"

"About you."

"And?"

"And about how you kind of just disappeared."

"So?"

"So..." Marie put a finger to her lips. "I'm going to bring you right there."

"...Say what?"

"And make you grow back to normal once you're there. For everyone to see."

"WHAT."

"The middle of the table should do." Utterly ignoring the protest in both, Adachi's face and his voice, Marie gathered some energy in her palm and began to cast her magic again. "Alright... Traesto, Patra and... Bon Voyage, False Devil; May we meet again; when your Black Star shines in Blazing Gold; and the Town of Ruins; has become a Paradise. Farewell and Welcome. Arcadia Reborn."

"WHAT, WHAT, WHAAAAAT!?"

That was all Adachi still got to say before a dazzling light enveloped him, silencing his perplexed yells, and he found himself disappearing and caried away by the girl's magic spell...

-Fin