Getting to the Treasure was almost disappointingly easy.
Almost.
The Palace was still screaming at them the entire way, alarms blaring while red light swept over gold walls and every Shadow in the museum apparently received an emergency memo titled KILL THESE SPECIFIC TEENAGERS, but they knew the route now. Morgana shouted directions without slowing down, Ryuji smashed a guard sideways when it tried to cut Yusuke off, Ann's whip caught another around the ankle and pulled it directly into Shiho's spear, and Orihime fired three quick shots into the thing's chest before wincing. "Sorry!" One apology. Progress! Ren ducked beneath a sword, drove his dagger into the Shadow's side and kicked it toward Morgana. "Mona!" Wind hit it immediately, sending the thing through a decorative screen with a loud CRASH! Yusuke's head turned as they passed. "Palace," Ren reminded him. "I am aware." "You're making the face." "I am mourning the craftsmanship, not the object." Goemon appeared faintly over Yusuke's shoulder. "Run faster." "...Yes."
They reached the final Treasure Hall with everyone still breathing, which Ren was willing to call a success.
The Treasure waited below them exactly where Morgana said it would, hidden beneath cloth and large enough to obviously be a painting. More importantly, there were no guards around it. No lasers. No Shadows. Nothing.
Ren stopped.
Ryuji stopped beside him and slowly looked around. "Okay."
Ann immediately pointed at him. "Don't."
"I didn't say anything!"
"You were going to!"
"I was gonna say this looks suspicious!"
Shiho glanced over. "That is significantly smarter than what I expected."
"HEY!"
Ren ignored them and activated Third Eye. Gold flooded his vision, cognitive lines crawling across the chamber and converging on the covered frame below. Treasure. Definitely the Treasure. Probably. His eyes narrowed. "Something's wrong."
Morgana's tail twitched. "What?"
"It's too easy."
Ryuji tightened his grip on his mace. "You know what? I'm with him."
Ann looked between them. "...That's somehow making me more nervous."
There wasn't another route, though, so they moved. Morgana reached the monitoring room controls while Ren and Shiho watched the entrances, and the crane groaned into motion. The hook descended, caught the enormous frame and slowly hauled it toward the upper walkway.
Nothing happened.
That was becoming offensive.
The frame reached them. Ryuji's hand went immediately toward the cloth, stopped halfway there, and he looked at Morgana first.
Morgana blinked.
Ryuji spread his arms. "See?! I can learn!"
"Pull it."
"Right."
The cloth came away.
...
A stupid doodled face stared back at them from inside an ornate golden frame.
Ren stared.
Ryuji stared.
Yusuke stared.
Morgana's fur puffed out. "It's a fake!"
"Yes," Ann said flatly. "Thank you."
Ryuji's eye twitched. "That motherfucker."
Slow applause echoed from above.
Yusuke went rigid.
Ren looked up.
Shadow Madarame stood on the upper balcony with another covered frame beside him, several guards arranged behind him while he smiled down at them as if this entire thing had been a private joke.
"Bravo. Truly. To think a collection of unruly children would make it this far."
Ryuji immediately lifted his mace. "Come down here and say that!"
"Skull."
"What?! I wanna hit him!"
Madarame barely glanced at him. His eyes went directly to Yusuke.
Of course.
"You always were talented, Yusuke. Unfortunately, talent without gratitude eventually becomes ugliness."
Yusuke's fingers tightened around the hilt of his katana. Ren noticed. Shiho did too.
Neither stepped between them.
Yusuke didn't need that anymore.
Madarame placed a hand against the covered painting beside him. "Since you have gone to such extraordinary lengths, perhaps you deserve to see what you came for."
He removed the cloth.
Yusuke stopped breathing.
The Sayuri.
But not the Sayuri hanging in every copy, puzzle and stolen reproduction throughout the Palace.
This one was complete.
The woman held an infant against her chest.
Ren understood a heartbeat before Yusuke whispered, "...Mother?"
Nobody said anything.
Madarame smiled.
Then he told him.
Yusuke's mother had painted the Sayuri. Her final work. A self-portrait created while her health was already failing, preserving herself holding the son she loved in case she wasn't there long enough for him to remember it.
Madarame had seen it.
And wanted it.
One day she suffered a seizure in front of him.
He could have called for help.
He didn't.
He watched her die.
Then took the painting.
By the time he finished, Ann had one hand over her mouth, Ryuji looked physically ill, and Orihime's face had gone completely white. Shiho's spear lowered slightly because her grip was shaking hard enough to make the tip move. Arsène had gone utterly silent inside Ren's head.
Madarame kept talking.
Somehow that was worse.
He had painted over the child. The mother's expression became harder to understand without the baby, and people loved mystery. Critics talked. People stared. The work became famous.
Then he copied it.
Again.
And again.
And again.
Yusuke didn't move.
Ren could almost watch years rearrange themselves behind his eyes. Every meal Madarame had provided. Every lesson. Every reminder that Yusuke owed him. Every moment Yusuke had desperately separated the man who raised him from the man exploiting him because surely somewhere underneath all of that there had once been something real.
Madarame had let his mother die for a painting.
Then raised her child beneath the altered version.
"Yusuke..." Ann whispered.
His eyes closed.
One breath.
Then another.
When they opened again, his hand had stopped shaking.
"Goemon."
Blue flame rolled upward.
Goemon appeared behind him with his pipe resting against one shoulder. He didn't say anything clever. Didn't smile.
He just looked at Madarame.
'Yeah.'
Yusuke drew his katana. "For years, I believed gratitude demanded silence. That a student who questioned his master was simply arrogant."
Madarame frowned.
Yusuke looked toward his mother's painting once more.
Then back at him.
"I was wrong."
Goemon's mouth finally curled.
'Hit him.'
Yusuke stepped forward.
"Gladly."
The Palace screamed with Madarame.
Gold frames ripped themselves from the walls as paint exploded across the balcony. His Shadow stretched, distorted and split apart until his face occupied four enormous floating canvases—a pair of eyes, a nose and a massive painted mouth suspended around the chamber.
Ryuji stared upward.
"What the FUCK?!"
The mouth immediately lunged.
"Move!" Morgana yelled.
Ryuji barely got his mace up before enormous teeth closed around it and flung him across the floor. He rolled, caught himself and came back up furious. "Okay! Mouth first!"
He charged.
"WAIT—"
His mace slammed into the lips.
Gold light flashed.
The crack he'd created disappeared.
Ryuji froze.
The mouth looked healthier.
"...I healed it."
"Back off!" Ren's Third Eye flared, gold lines exploding across the four paintings. He didn't understand every rule yet, but the way the mouth pulled physical force inward was obvious now. "Mouth absorbs physical!"
"COULD'VE USED THAT THREE SECONDS AGO!"
"I LEARNED IT TWO SECONDS AGO!"
One of the eyes flashed.
Fire gathered.
Ann moved before Ren could even call her name, her whip snapping around Yusuke's waist as the bolt screamed toward him. "Move!"
"What—"
She yanked.
Yusuke flew sideways and the fire detonated where he'd been standing, forcing Ann forward with his weight until Shiho caught her by the shoulder and stabilized both of them.
Yusuke blinked. "...Thank you."
"Stay alive first!"
"Reasonable."
The nose pulled in a breath.
Morgana's ears flattened. "DOWN!"
Wind ripped across the chamber. Ren dropped beneath it while Shiho planted her spear and leaned into the blast. Orihime grabbed Morgana before he could be thrown off the walkway, his claws immediately digging into her sleeve.
"I had that!"
"You were horizontal!"
"I knew where I was going!"
"Focus!" Ren shouted.
Third Eye again.
Four elemental currents flowed into the eyes and vanished.
Fire.
Ice.
Lightning.
Wind.
"Don't use the basic elements on the eyes!" Ren snapped, then tracked a darker series of affinities folding into the nose. Bless. Curse. Two others he barely recognized from Regent. "Nose eats the weird stuff! Physical and gun should work on those three. Magic on the mouth!"
Ryuji grinned. "So I get to hit everything except the teeth."
"Pretty much."
"Great!"
He went straight for an eye.
Captain Kidd appeared over him, but Ryuji kept the lightning holstered and simply brought the mace across with everything he had. CRACK! The frame buckled.
Orihime raised her gun at the opposite eye and fired twice, forcing it away from whatever spell it had been preparing. Shiho was already beneath the nose, Scáthach appearing behind her as it tried to drift out of reach.
"Up."
Shiho shifted her grip and thrust. The nose twisted away.
Scáthach flicked two fingers.
"Snap."
A rune cracked into the side of the frame and ruined its dodge. Shiho's spear punched through the corner a heartbeat later.
"Got you."
The mouth opened wide.
Ann was already facing it. "Carmen!"
Blue fire erupted.
"Agi!"
Flames rolled directly into its open jaws. The mouth shrieked and jerked backward, which gave Morgana exactly the space he needed to leap from Orihime's arms.
"Zorro! Garu!"
Wind slammed into it from underneath.
Yusuke saw where it was moving.
"Goemon."
'Don't stare.'
"I wasn't."
'You were about to.'
"...Bufu."
Ice burst into the mouth's escape route instead of chasing it. The painting recoiled straight into the freezing air and cracked along one edge.
Goemon nodded once.
'Better.'
Yusuke's lips twitched.
Ren switched.
"Jack Frost!"
"Hee-HO!"
"Bufu!"
More ice hit the mouth from the opposite side.
Ann's whip immediately caught the frame.
"Again!"
Ren grinned. "Bufu!"
The painted jaw split.
Then black liquid sprayed across the room.
Ren barely processed it before it hit him.
Cold paint splattered across his coat, gloves and mask.
His Third Eye spasmed.
Every current in the room suddenly felt wrong.
Sharp.
Dangerous.
Morgana's pupils shrank. "Joker!"
"What?"
"The paint! Everything's reading as a weakness!"
Wonderful.
One of the eyes flashed with lightning.
Ren moved.
Not fast enough.
Shiho hit him in the shoulder and both of them went down as the bolt carved through the air over their heads.
"Thanks."
"Later!"
The mouth lunged for them.
Ren switched again.
"Shiki-Ouji!"
Paper folded itself into a towering warrior in front of them. The painted teeth slammed into Shiki-Ouji instead.
Nothing.
The Persona barely shifted.
Ren blinked.
Shiki-Ouji turned its blank face slightly toward the mouth.
Somehow that looked judgmental.
'Thank you, my Trickster.'
Ren smiled beneath his mask.
Oh.
Useful.
"Joker!" Morgana yelled. "Less admiring your Persona, more fighting!"
"Right."
Ryuji broke the damaged eye.
Orihime's gunfire cracked the second.
Shiho ripped her spear free from the nose and immediately drove it into a different section before it could escape. Yusuke and Ann kept the mouth occupied while Morgana alternated between pushing it into their spells and yelling whenever someone got too close to an absorbing section.
Then the broken eye regenerated.
Ryuji stopped.
"...Oh, fuck you."
The frame rebuilt itself from paint.
Morgana's ears flattened. "We need to take them down close together!"
"Would've been helpful earlier!"
"I AM ALSO LEARNING!"
Ren looked around.
Right eye damaged again.
Left eye cracked.
Nose heavily damaged.
Mouth barely holding together.
Good.
"Don't finish anything yet!"
Ryuji's mace stopped inches from the eye.
"WHAT?!"
"Bring them low!"
Ann understood first. "Then break them together."
Shiho grinned. "Better."
Yusuke adjusted his stance.
Morgana nodded. "Exactly!"
Ryuji stared at all of them. "I was gonna do that."
"No you weren't," three people said.
"Fuck you!"
The fight changed.
Not slower.
More controlled.
Ryuji stopped trying to obliterate the eye and started breaking pieces from the frame instead. Shiho used the flat of her spear to redirect the nose whenever it tried to escape, while Orihime alternated shots between both eyes to interrupt casting without finishing them. Ann, Morgana and Yusuke battered the mouth with carefully spaced magic.
Ren watched all four.
Health wasn't a number in front of him.
But damage had shape.
Cracks.
Warped frames.
Paint struggling to hold itself together.
The right eye wobbled.
The left couldn't fully open.
The nose was leaking paint.
The mouth had lost half its teeth.
"Ready!"
Everyone shifted.
"Three!"
Ryuji planted his foot.
"Two!"
Ann pulled the mouth down.
Shiho lowered her spear.
Orihime steadied her aim.
Yusuke exhaled.
"One!"
Chaos.
Ryuji's mace demolished the right eye.
Orihime shot directly through the left.
Shiho's spear split the nose.
"Carmen! Agi!"
"Zorro! Garu!"
"Goemon! Bufu!"
"Jack Frost!"
Fire, wind and ice crashed together across the mouth.
The four portraits shattered within seconds of each other.
Madarame dropped out of the collapsing paintings.
He barely hit the ground before the team moved.
Not a formation.
They didn't need one anymore.
Ryuji came from the left and forced Madarame backward. Ann's whip caught his wrist when he tried to raise it. Morgana's wind broke his balance, Shiho struck the side of his knee, and Yusuke stepped into the opening with his katana already moving.
Madarame saw him.
Flinched.
Yusuke hesitated for exactly one heartbeat.
Goemon spoke.
'His choice.'
Yusuke's expression hardened.
"Bufu."
Ice erupted beneath Madarame and sent him tumbling across the gold floor.
Ren switched to Shiki-Ouji.
"Tarukaja. Skull."
Power wrapped around Ryuji.
His grin became vicious.
"Oh, NOW we're talking!"
He charged.
Madarame slammed both hands against the floor.
Paint erupted everywhere.
Four figures climbed out of it.
Each had Madarame's face.
Red robes.
Blue.
Yellow.
Green.
Ryuji stopped mid-charge.
"...Why are there more of him?"
Yusuke looked genuinely offended.
"Counterfeits."
Shadow Madarame's eye twitched. "Excuse me?"
Yusuke looked over the copies.
"They lack detail."
Goemon laughed.
Madarame's face darkened.
The red copy threw fire at Yusuke.
He answered instinctively.
"Bufu!"
Ice struck it head-on.
The counterfeit shattered.
Ren saw it.
Red.
Fire.
Weak to ice.
The blue Madarame immediately hurled ice toward Yusuke in return, but Ann was already moving.
"Carmen! Agi!"
Fire swallowed it.
Yellow crackled with electricity.
Morgana's eyes lit.
"Garu!"
Wind tore straight through the copy.
Green raised its hands and wind began gathering.
Ryuji pointed.
"Captain!"
Lightning crashed down.
Four copies.
Four elements.
Opposites.
Ren smiled.
Okay.
That was almost insultingly game-like.
Madarame screamed and replaced the destroyed copies.
The fight exploded outward again.
Ren reached for Regent.
Stopped.
Eight elements.
All multi-target.
Normally absurdly useful.
Here?
He looked at the red copy reflecting fire while the blue one prepared ice beside it.
Yeah.
No.
Blanketing the room with magic when at least one target wanted to throw it back in his face was a fantastic way to kill himself.
Regent's dignified voice drifted through his mind.
'Prudent.'
'Glad you agree.'
'Try not to die.'
'Working on it.'
Ryuji and Yusuke took red whenever one appeared. Ann hunted blue. Morgana intercepted yellow. Ryuji shifted onto green whenever he wasn't helping Yusuke, while Ren filled gaps with Jack Frost and Shiki-Ouji rather than dumping Regent's entire spell list into the room like an idiot.
Shiho ignored the color puzzle whenever possible.
She went after the real Madarame.
Every time he tried to settle into a safe position behind his copies, she was there. A spear haft into his wrist. A thrust that made him step sideways. A rune placed exactly where he wanted to retreat.
"Stop moving!"
Shiho smiled.
"No."
Orihime took the same approach from farther away. Madarame raised a hand to summon another counterfeit and a bullet clipped the sleeve beside his wrist.
He recoiled.
Orihime winced. "Sorry—"
Then immediately caught herself.
Her expression changed.
"...Actually, no. You let Yusuke's mother die."
BANG!
Madarame yelped.
Ren grinned beneath his mask.
"That's my girl, Hime!"
Orihime's face went scarlet.
"FIGHT!"
The copies kept coming.
Then they started getting worse.
A new red Madarame rose from the paint, swayed once and fell asleep standing up.
Everyone paused for approximately half a second.
Yusuke stared at it.
Then at Madarame.
"Your reproductions are deteriorating."
"I KNOW!"
Goemon barked a laugh.
Another copy appeared with its robe half the wrong color and immediately tripped over itself.
Madarame looked horrified.
Ren understood.
His cognition was destabilizing.
Good.
"Ignore the bad copies! Real one!"
They collapsed inward.
Madarame saw it happening and panicked.
The remaining counterfeits threw everything they had.
Fire streaked toward Ann and forced her sideways.
Ice clipped Yusuke's shoulder before he could fully dodge.
A bolt of electricity struck the floor between Ryuji and Shiho, splitting them apart.
Wind threw Morgana into Ren's legs.
Nobody stopped.
Ann rolled up onto one knee and burned the blue counterfeit that had hit Yusuke. Yusuke froze the red one attacking her without even looking away from Madarame. Ryuji came through the opening Shiho created and drove his mace into the real Shadow's ribs. Morgana pushed from below with Garu. Orihime fired over his head.
Madarame stumbled.
"Fox!"
Ren didn't need to finish.
Yusuke was already there.
Goemon appeared behind him.
'Don't overthink it.'
"I am not."
His blade struck Madarame's chest.
Ice burst through the impact.
Madarame staggered backward directly into Shiho's spear haft.
Ann's whip caught his arm.
Ryuji hit the other side.
Morgana's wind lifted him just enough to ruin his footing.
Ren switched.
"Shiki-Ouji."
Paper folded.
Two gunshots cracked beside Ren's own.
Three impacts hit almost together.
Madarame crashed onto his back.
The counterfeits vanished.
Silence hit the room hard.
For several seconds there was nothing except breathing.
Ryuji leaned heavily on his mace. "Please tell me we're done."
Morgana watched Madarame.
His ears slowly relaxed.
"...Yeah."
Ann lowered her whip.
Shiho rested the end of her spear against the floor.
Orihime immediately began looking everyone over for anything bleeding badly enough to require Maria.
Yusuke stood closest to Madarame.
Without the portraits and copies, his Shadow looked pathetic.
An old man on the ground beside the Sayuri.
Madarame reached weakly toward the painting.
Yusuke's katana shifted.
His hand stopped.
"I..."
Then Madarame shuddered.
Ren frowned.
Another tremor ran through him.
Harder.
His fingers curled against the floor.
Yusuke took half a step forward. "Sensei?"
Madarame's entire body convulsed.
His back arched.
Then he vomited.
White fluid splashed against the gold floor.
Everyone froze.
Not paint.
Not spit.
Thick.
Chalk-white.
Madarame coughed violently and more poured from his mouth, stringing from his lips before hitting the ground.
Then it moved.
Ren's stomach dropped.
The white bile crawled back toward him.
Up his chin.
Across his cheek.
Against gravity.
"No..." Madarame clawed at his face. "What is this?!"
Morgana's fur stood completely on end.
"Joker..."
Ren couldn't answer.
White mask.
Chest hole.
Chains.
Hunger.
Rukia's explanation slammed into place.
No.
Wrong.
Madarame wasn't dead.
More importantly, this wasn't even physically Madarame.
It was his Shadow.
That should have made this impossible!
The white substance hardened around one cheek, turning from bile into something closer to bone as a ridge spread beneath Madarame's eye. Another piece formed along his jaw while the old man's fingers desperately scratched at it.
Ren's blood went cold.
"BACK UP!"
Madarame screamed.
Something burst from his shoulder before anybody could move properly.
Not an arm.
Not anymore.
A black-white limb snapped across the chamber and hit Ryuji's raised mace hard enough to send him skidding backward. The recoil turned it toward Ann; she caught it with her whip for half a second before a second growth raked across her forearm and tore free. Shiho stepped between them, spear shaft coming up, and took the next impact across the ribs.
"Dove!"
"Still here!"
Orihime rushed toward her.
The half-changed Madarame twisted.
A clawed extension caught Orihime across the shoulder and spun her onto one knee.
Yusuke moved.
"Get away from them!"
His katana came down.
Madarame caught it with one hand.
Yusuke's eyes widened.
The fingers around the blade stretched, nails whitening and sharpening as they scraped down the steel and across Yusuke's sleeve before Goemon barked—
'Move!'
Yusuke ripped himself free.
Morgana came from the side.
"Garu!"
Wind hammered Madarame.
He barely shifted.
His changing arm whipped outward and caught Morgana across the body, throwing him hard enough that he bounced once before scrambling desperately for footing.
"Mona!"
"I'm up!"
Ren went toward him.
Pain flashed cold across his wrist.
He jerked back on instinct as something sharp passed across his chest, close enough to slice fabric but not flesh.
Everybody had been pushed away now.
Madarame stood in the center.
Barely.
His body was shaking so violently his knees kept buckling.
The mask had spread over half his face.
White bone surrounding one eye.
A jagged ridge down his cheek.
Something like teeth beginning to shape itself over his mouth.
No.
Ren didn't know exactly what happened when a Hollow mask finished forming.
He knew enough.
"Jack Frost!"
Blue fire burst around him.
"Hee-HO!"
Ren pointed directly at Madarame's face.
"The white stuff! Freeze it!"
Jack Frost threw both hands forward.
"Bufu!"
Ice struck Madarame's head.
Ann gasped. "REN!"
"Not him!"
He saw it.
Third Eye.
The cold crawled differently through the white material.
Madarame's Shadow underneath remained warm, unstable, distorted.
The forming mask hardened instantly.
Good.
The white substance was still moving underneath itself, trying to spread while the outer layer froze.
That created tension.
Cracks.
One beside the eye.
One through the forming jaw.
Another where the mask hadn't fully connected near the temple.
Ren switched.
Not Shiki-Ouji.
Arsène.
Blue flame ripped upward.
The gentleman thief emerged behind him, wings spread.
'There.'
Ren saw it too.
Three fractures.
One structure.
Don't attack Madarame.
Break the thing attached to him.
Ren drew his handgun.
"Skull!"
Ryuji looked up immediately.
Ren pointed at the frozen mask.
"Not him. White part."
Ryuji understood.
His mace came off the floor.
"Got it!"
"Dove! Jaw!"
Shiho was already moving.
"Hime, keep him still!"
Orihime hesitated for less than a second before Maria appeared behind her.
Soft light gathered—not healing Madarame, not exactly, but pressing around his shoulders as Orihime desperately tried to keep the thrashing Shadow from tearing his own face apart.
"Fox!"
Yusuke's eyes followed the crack near the eye.
Goemon leaned over his shoulder.
'You know what to do.'
"Yes."
Everything happened together.
Ren fired into the fracture at the temple.
Yusuke's katana struck the frozen edge beside the eye.
Shiho drove the butt of her spear against the forming jaw.
Ryuji's mace hit last.
CRACK!
For half a heartbeat nothing changed.
Then every fracture joined.
The half-formed mask exploded.
White shards sprayed across the floor.
Madarame screamed once.
Then collapsed.
Nobody moved.
A piece of bone landed near Ann's boot.
It dissolved before her eyes.
"...What," Ryuji said.
Not a question.
Ann still had one hand around her injured arm. "What the FUCK was that?!"
Ren stared at Madarame.
"I don't know."
"You just coordinated us like you knew!"
"I knew what the mask meant!"
"Which is?!"
"Hollow!"
Silence.
Orihime went pale.
Morgana's ears lowered.
Yusuke looked from Ren to Madarame. "But Kuchiki said Hollows are dead souls."
"Yes."
"And Sensei is alive."
"Yes."
"And this is his Shadow."
"Also yes."
Yusuke waited.
Ren rubbed his forehead.
"I am aware those three things do not fit together."
Madarame coughed.
Seven weapons came up.
He recoiled so violently that Ren immediately stopped.
"No!"
Madarame scrambled backward with both hands raised, terror replacing every trace of his earlier arrogance. One hand flew to his face.
"Get it off!"
There was nothing there.
No white substance.
No bone.
No strange limbs.
No hole.
Ren opened Third Eye.
Shadow Madarame.
Distorted.
Terrified.
But otherwise exactly what he had been before.
Madarame touched his cheek again.
"What... what was that?"
Ren's stomach tightened.
"You don't know?"
"No!"
That answer was worse.
Much worse.
Yusuke slowly lowered his katana.
Madarame looked at him and flinched.
For the first time since they'd entered this Palace, there was no performance left.
No master.
No famous artist.
No lectures about gratitude.
Just a frightened old man sitting beneath the thing he'd built from everyone else's work.
Yusuke looked toward the Sayuri.
Then back at him.
"I will not forgive you today."
Madarame's eyes lowered.
"Perhaps I never will."
No response.
"But that has nothing to do with what you must do now."
Yusuke stepped toward his mother's painting and lifted it carefully from its frame.
"Return to yourself."
Madarame swallowed.
"Confess."
His shoulders trembled.
"Tell them what you did. All of it."
Goemon appeared behind Yusuke.
Quiet this time.
Simply standing with him.
Madarame lowered his head.
Then his eyes shifted past them.
Fear sharpened again.
"No..."
Ren noticed.
"What?"
Madarame stared toward the dark edge of the gallery.
"The other one..."
Morgana's ears rose.
"What other one?"
"The intruder." Madarame's voice shook. "Before you. Someone else entered my museum."
Ren went very still.
Madarame swallowed.
"A man wearing a black mask."
Nobody spoke.
Arsène shifted inside Ren.
Morgana looked at him.
Ren looked back.
Great.
A Shadow had nearly become a Hollow despite being neither dead nor a normal soul, and apparently there was still some black-masked asshole wandering around the Metaverse doing God knew what.
Perfect.
Absolutely fucking perfect.
The Palace shook.
Gold cracked across the wall.
Morgana jumped. "We can panic about that OUTSIDE!"
The floor lurched underneath them.
Ryuji almost lost his footing. "YEAH! GREAT PLAN!"
They ran.
Yusuke kept the Sayuri pressed carefully against his chest. Shiho moved despite favoring one side, Ann stayed beside her without making a big deal about it, and Orihime ran close enough to both that Maria could appear the second either actually needed her. Morgana took the lead. Ryuji brought up the rear for several seconds before realizing Ren wasn't beside him.
"Joker!"
Ren stood at the doorway.
He looked back once.
Shadow Madarame remained in the collapsing gallery.
Normal.
Scared.
One hand still pressed against the cheek where the mask had been.
No white bone.
No hole.
Nothing.
That should have helped.
It didn't.
"JOKER!"
"Coming!"
Ren turned and ran.
Because apparently stealing one asshole's heart couldn't just solve one problem.
That would have been too fucking convenient.
---