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When Shiho’s Persona awakens, it’s exhilarating—at first, anyway. The sense of power, of possibility, of discovering a side of yourself you didn’t know was there: it’s hard to resist getting swept up in it all.
I am Ariane, and I will always be with you, her other self says. Walk with me out of the dungeons and into the light. Shiho takes her hand and for a moment it really feels like everything is going to be okay now.
But then the fear sets in. Not fear for her own well-being, but fear that she’s not good enough for this. Not strong enough, not whole enough. She’s been through rehab, but her legs still start hurting when she’s been walking or standing for a while, or sometimes just when it’s about to rain, and even without that, her stamina isn’t what it once was. She used to be one of the top athletes on her team, and now with this new kind of team, she’s not sure she’ll be anything but dead weight.
By her side, Ann is beaming. “Shiho! This is so cool! Now we can work together!”
And that’s its own problem, honestly, because they haven’t been seeing each other regularly since that meeting on the rooftop, and that means they haven’t really talked about what happened there. Shiho confessed her feelings, and Ann just didn’t respond. What does that mean? Does Ann not understand how Shiho meant it when she said “I love you”? Is she choosing to ignore it? And now they’re going to be in close proximity, but not in a way that’s going to make it easier to talk about the state of things between them.
Shiho tries to shove all that aside and forces a smile. “I just hope I don’t disappoint you.”
“You could never,” Ann says, all sincerity, and Shiho looks away.
—
Since the Metaverse is a place of cognition, Shiho wonders at first if the body she navigates it with isn’t her real body, if the pain only comes because she expects it to. So she tries for a while to believe that it won’t come, that her body will move as easily as it used to.
It doesn’t work.
Sitting on the bus to rest her legs while her teammates carry on the fight, she leans back against the seat and shuts her eyes. Maybe my will just isn’t strong enough, she thinks.
She doesn’t mean it to start a conversation, but she’s forgotten she’s not alone in her own mind down here.
Your will is very strong, says Ariane, sounding almost offended. Not everyone could carry on through everything you’ve been through.
Which is nice to hear, in a way, but at the same time, it’s confirmation that she’s not going to willpower her way out of this. She’s going to have to find a way to work within her limits.
Too bad that Shiho has never really been good at not pushing herself.
—
Shiho’s Persona is a physical attacker, which makes sense—probably that is who she is at a deep and fundamental level, someone who’s more inclined to get in there and spike a monster (or whatever these things are) like a volleyball than to stand back and cast spells. It’s sort of nice to know that hasn’t changed even if she isn’t quite up to leaping into the fray herself right now. She also discovers that Ariane is good for making the others faster and stronger, which she supposes is her team-player spirit coming through.
So she has a solid role on the team, and a lot of things she can do without putting herself too much in harm’s way. Which is good. Someone whose leg bones had to be pieced together like a hundred-piece jigsaw puzzle less than a year ago probably shouldn’t be letting herself get hit by monsters (or whatever they are) more than is strictly necessary.
Except there’s Ann. Ann, who is beautiful and talented and extremely precious to Shiho and also very, very fragile. She can barely take a single hit without collapsing.
And Shiho tries very hard to refrain from throwing herself bodily between Ann and any enemy that so much as looks at her funny. She really does. But you can’t expect a girl to tolerate watching her best friend be mauled by weird manifestations of the collective subconscious forever, can you?
So one day some nasty thing with too many limbs and eyes in the wrong places is bearing down on Ann, and Shiho, well, throws herself bodily between them.
The irony is that the hit that she takes probably isn’t what’s worst for her—as she’s leaping in, something gives in her right knee and she collapses to the ground, which, on the bright side, means the blow from the enemy only clips her.
She struggles back to her feet, pain lancing through her leg the whole time. At least Ann is okay. And luckily, the enemy goes down in only a few more hits.
When the battle is over, Ann looks Shiho over and frowns. “Shiho, do you need to go back to a safe room?”
Shiho’s first impulse is, of course, to say that she’s fine and she can keep going, but she’s aware that as soon as she tries to take a step, it will become obvious that that’s not true, because her right leg isn’t really holding her weight at the moment. “... Yeah. I think I do.”
“I’ll take you back. The others should be able to carry on without us.” She glances over at Ren for confirmation.
He nods. “Do what you need to do. We’ll be fine.”
Ann holds out an arm. “Here—you can lean on me.”
“Thanks,” says Shiho. She feels bad having to take Ann up on it, but at the same time, it is kind of nice to be close to her.
Together, they make their awkward way back to the nearest safe room. Thankfully, since their merry band just thinned out the Shadows in the area, they’re able to make it there without being attacked.
Ann helps Shiho to a chair, but stays standing herself, hovering nervously nearby. “Are you... okay?” she asks. “Like, did you break something? Uh, re-break something? Or....”
“I don’t think so,” Shiho says. “I can’t tell for sure, but I think it’s just a muscle or a ligament or something. See, it turns out that when you break your leg in a zillion places, it has knock-on effects on pretty much everything. I don’t recommend it,” she adds—an admittedly weak attempt to make the whole thing into a joke.
Ann doesn’t laugh. “Shiho,” she says, very seriously, “what you did for me back there... please don’t do that again.”
“Maybe if you went to the gym more, I wouldn’t feel like I need to,” Shiho says, still trying for humor. “You’ve got no muscle at all. One hit and you crumple like tissue paper.”
This, at least, gets a smile out of Ann. “Now you sound more like the Shiho I know. You’ve been so down the last few weeks, you haven’t even been giving me a hard time at all.”
Shiho smiles back, almost genuinely. “Well, if you absolutely insist, I can try to be meaner to you.”
Ann’s expression sobers suddenly. “Wait, I see what you’re doing,” she says. “You’re changing the subject! Shiho, we need to talk about what just happened.”
Shiho accepts that there’s no way out of this conversation now, and says, “I just don’t like seeing you get hurt, okay?”
“Well, I don’t like seeing you get hurt, and I can bounce back more easily than you can right now. And... and I don’t want you to sacrifice yourself for me.”
She doesn’t say again, but Shiho can hear the ghost of the word there anyway. Which, that’s not exactly what happened the first time, but Shiho’s not stupid, and she can tell that arguing would be missing the point. Fortunately, it turns out that Shiho doesn't need to think about what to say instead, because Ann goes on.
“When... when we were on the rooftop together...” she begins. Then she clenches her hands and takes a deep breath. “That time, you said ‘I love you.’ And I didn't say anything, because I was taken by surprise, and I wasn't sure what I felt or what I wanted to do about it. But I do love you, Shiho. You're more important to me than anyone else in the whole entire world, and if anything happened to you I don't know what I would do.” Her voice is coming out kind of choked now, and there are tears in her eyes. “So... so please take care of yourself, okay?”
Shiho is tearing up too, and at this moment she would love to hug Ann, maybe even kiss her, but she can’t (or at least shouldn’t) stand up from the chair, so she settles for reaching out to take Ann’s hand.
“I’ll try,” she promises.
“Thanks,” says Ann.
But then Shiho can’t resist adding, “Consider what I said about the gym, though, okay?”
To Shiho’s great satisfaction, this surprises a watery laugh out of Ann.
“Sure,” says Ann. “I guess that’s only fair.”