Ren could barely keep a straight face as he watched Orihime pelt Iwai with a bunch of questions.
It was extremely obvious that the girl was just being kind and was genuinely interested in the store and why he ran it.
Which made it funnier, because tough-guy Iwai couldn't bring himself to tell her to leave him alone.
Ren was on the receiving end of a scowl when Iwai noticed the schadenfreude on his face.
Best not to annoy him too much.
---
"Thanks for coming. Don't bring your entire group here again," Iwai said plainly as the team checked out.
"Get a bigger shop," Ren suggested with a shrug of his shoulders, paying the man for the model weapons.
"Are you gonna pay for it? Because I know I'm not."
"Fair."
The team bought a semi-automatic airsoft gun for Yusuke. He insisted on getting a model katana for his melee weapon. His reasoning was that the katana called to him and felt as though it was a brush he was destined to learn to use.
Whatever that meant.
---
The team arrived some distance away from Madarame's shack.
Their faces were filled with excitement and anxiety.
Finally, it was time to infiltrate!
Hopefully, Yusuke could awaken to his Persona.
'I won't let him be hurt anyway,' Ren thought firmly.
Glancing at his team, he gave a gentle smile.
'Not one of them will be.'
He didn't notice that the team picked up on his shift in energy.
They weren't sure what had changed.
But they knew that Joker was back and ready for action.
A cold, synthetic voice rang out from Ren's phone, signaling the start of the infiltration.
[Beginning Navigation.]
---
They vanished again!
Rukia was irritated. How could she help them when they just outright vanished like that?!
"Guess I'll hunt some Hollows and perform Konsō," she muttered.
She was worried about the increasing frequency of mental shutdowns.
When someone suffered from one, their spirit would collapse. Not only would they not become a ghost upon death, but the soul of the victim itself all but vanished, leaving nothing but stray Reiatsu in the area.
If it weren't for that, she wouldn't have even known that souls were vanishing.
"What is going on?" she sighed in frustration as she glanced once more at the location where her friends had vanished. Then her form flickered off the telephone pole she was standing on.
The area was left in eerie silence.
---
Meanwhile, the team had just finished briefing Yusuke on the Metaverse. He found the extended metaphor of the cognitive world fascinating. The more he learned about it, the more his desire to paint grew.
This was a world he shared with his friends.
Something others could see alongside him.
Making this into art would be fantastic, would it not?
What other wonders awaited him in the future?
How exciting!
"So what should his code name be?" Morgana asked the team.
The parking lot outside the museum was silent for a moment while they thought.
"Da Vinci," Yusuke announced with great determination.
"No," Ryuji interrupted.
"Why?!"
Apparently, Yusuke was offended.
"I think it's fine," Ren shrugged. "We were lazy with Hime's code name. What's wrong with Da Vinci?"
"It doesn't mesh with the group, right?!"
Ren couldn't help but chuckle at his friends' antics.
---
Yusuke was in shock.
He hadn't really entered the Palace when he had been here with Ren and Morgana.
Joker and Mona.
Now that he had a better understanding of the world, and had it explained to him in a few different ways, he understood it better.
Basically, if you believed you could do it, you probably could.
He watched the group hop from the tops of cars onto the garden wall and sneak toward the roof.
He didn't say anything, but he was a bit worried he wouldn't be able to do that.
To his own shock, he managed.
Once they arrived inside the museum, stylishly sliding down a rope from a skylight, Yusuke grimaced when he saw the paintings on the walls.
He recognized some of them.
---