Chapter Text
“I’m not wasting my time on this. Keep it busy.”
Goro throws the order behind him as an afterthought. He’s already walking away.
He has no problem admitting it: he’s still not used to being a part of a team. Not this team—excessive, colorful, loud. Ten of them total counting Goro, which they do. Nine if they leave Goro out, which they would if they had a choice. Nine warm bodies. Excessive and colorful and loud and full of stupid questions. They’re practically made to be a distraction.
No, Goro isn’t used to being a part of a team. He doesn’t particularly like to spend his time managing other people when there’s work to be done. He doesn’t enjoy dealing with Crow, where are you going? or Crow, what are you doing?
For now, though, the team can be useful.
Goro has already made it halfway across the enormous chamber that makes up this part of Maruki’s Palace when he hears Panther ask that pleasant cognitive attendant, “Haha, sooo, what were the rules again?”
The rules are simple. Instructions given to research subjects usually are. Simple rules that have been tested, checked, tested again, double-checked, approved, double-approved. The rules are simple because the complexity is hidden behind the rules, obfuscated from the subjects, for only the researchers to know lest their experiment be compromised.
The rules are simple: enter an experimental space as a group. A team. Make wishes. Be happy. Earn points. After every subject individually earns 100 points, the elevator to the next area will unlock for the group. They’ll be allowed into Maruki’s “paradise,” which should be the last part of his Palace. They can continue their infiltration. Those are the rules.
But what’s behind those rules? Goro doesn’t want to find out. Easier not to play at all.
This section of the Palace is immense, truly worthy of the stadium it replaced. The concourse is labcoat-white, shining, taller than Goro’s corrected vision has the ability to see, its ceiling hidden somewhere in light and fog and clouds. It’s too quiet here for the amount of activity the space holds—streams of cognitive humans pouring in from the entrance, checking in with rows upon rows of kind and patient cognitive attendants, then filing into mysterious boxy subchambers just like the one the Phantom Thieves are parked in front of now. The research subjects disappear from view for minutes—sometimes seconds—and then they can be seen flying up in glass elevators at the back of the room, on their way to paradise.
Goro peers around a subchamber. Just one of these things is as large as a house, and there are dozens of them here. From the outside it’s just a brilliant white cube, with no windows or doors besides its attendant-guarded entrance. He tests its integrity, gives it a good whack. It doesn’t budge. Walls inside Palaces usually don’t.
“We can wish for whatever we want in there?” he hears Oracle ask. “Does that mean I can wish for Skull to be bald?”
“What the hell!”
“I’m sorry, all wishes must be physically possible and within reason,” the cognitive attendant says kindly and patiently. “And no wish may affect another member of your group.”
Goro tests the integrity of the wall one more time, just in case. No, shooting it with his gun doesn’t work either.
Brute force isn’t the play here. Cleverness, then.
He races from end to end of the main chamber. He keeps an eye out for vents, crawlspaces, catwalks, staff doors, any other doors besides the door they entered through and the doors the attendants are guarding. It’s an easy job because this place is so clean and white. It’s easy to see there’s no other way out.
Goro can feel Joker’s eyes on him. It seems the leader of the Phantom Thieves is growing impatient with his role as just another distraction.
“It’s perfectly safe!” the cognitive attendant says kindly and patiently, answering another stupid question. “The wellbeing of our guests is our first priority. We allow nothing harmful or illegal inside our facilities.”
Now it’s just fucking lying.
The farthest wall of this chamber is taken up by countless elevators rising up impossibly high into the sky—and that sky is their goal. The wall is perfectly smooth. The elevators are metallic and shining and encased in impenetrable glass. There’s nothing to grab onto. Goro climbs to the top of one of those experimental subchambers, just like the one that kind and patient cognitive attendant wants to trap them inside. It’s tall, but practically nothing in the face of the infinite height he’s facing. Goro doesn’t care. You never know until you try. He has to try. He can’t be trapped in a house in a Palace for an unknown amount of time with the Phantom Thieves. He can’t be trapped in a house in a Palace for an unknown amount of time with Joker.
He takes a running leap at the back wall. It’s a solid jump—he gets higher than he thought he would, which is not high at all. He even manages to use his momentum to scuttle up a couple extra meters before his clawed gauntlets and feet fail him and gravity slowly drags him back down.
He tries again.
Of course not. Brute force won’t work, remember?
Palaces are built on a foundation of cognition, even strange, fucked-up Palaces ruled by a god-like Persona-user. If a Palace Ruler believes a wall is impassable, it is simply impassable. Maruki is a high school counselor, he doesn’t know a thing about the tensile strength of commercial building materials. Not even the Tsar Bomba could make a dent in this thing.
Goro jumps down from the roof of the subchamber and starts making his way back to the group. Joker has his grappling hook out now. He’s spinning its hooked end gracefully in a circle, a faraway look in his eyes, but hasn’t made a move yet. That means he hasn’t found anything useful, just like Goro.
“The elevator to the Twilight Corridor will not activate until each member of your party has earned 100 happiness points,” the cognitive attendant says again, kindly and patiently.
Oh, what infinite kindness and patience it has! What a kind and patient world Maruki is creating!
Goro walks up to the cognition while it’s talking and rips its staff lanyard off its neck with one hard yank. It sways forward from the motion, keeping a tight grip on the clipboard full of fake psientific nonsense resting on its arm. It’s still smiling.
“Earning 100 happiness points takes on average only a few minutes, so please don’t worry!” the kind and patient cognitive attendant says, not missing a beat. “If you would like to revisit your orientation at any point during The Happiness Game! there are modules inside ready for your use.”
Having the cognition’s lanyard in his possession doesn’t grant Goro access to the subchamber. Of course it wouldn’t. It doesn’t work on any of the other subchambers either. Of course not. The staff lanyards of the other attendants don’t work. Of course not! Backtracking to the previous room to find a way around this one doesn’t work either. It only confirms what Goro knew the instant they all approached the cognitive attendant the first time. They have to agree to the game. They have to play the game. There’s no way around it. This is what Maruki wants.
“You all know the drill,” Queen says. “This involves everybody, so we’re not doing it unless we agree to it unanimously. Anyone has the option to veto. No one will hold it against you.”
Joker finally puts his grappling hook away. “We still have eight days until the deadline. We can find another way around.”
“There is no other way around,” Goro says.
He’s always hated the Palaces of rule-followers. The order and neatness of them makes his skin crawl. How they force him to bend into the shape they want, to follow along with their rules. To play their games exactly the way they’re supposed to be played, down to the letter.
Good people, besides whatever terrible distortion lies within their heart. Law-abiding citizens. People who don’t lie, cheat, trick, or steal. They’re all just so painfully boring. Boring Palaces for boring people. He can say a lot about Niijima Sae, but at least her Palace was fun.
“We can find another way,” Joker says again.
It’s such a shame Goro won’t ever know what Joker’s Palace might have been like.
“Perhaps we can,” Goro says. “But another way will take time. It will take investigation outside the Palace, and possibly even contact with Maruki himself—which I’ll remind you all is an unrealistic endeavor. We have eight days until the deadline. Do you think we can afford to waste any of them?”
Goro waits patiently as the Phantom Thieves take some quiet time to use their brains.
“Well, we can always just leave, yeah? If it’s not workin’?” Skull turns to the cognition. “You’re not keeping us prisoner here if we agree to this stupid game, are you?”
“You can leave The Happiness Game! at any time,” the cognition says with a smile. “But please be aware that your points will be reset if you choose to play The Happiness Game! again!”
Joker looks at his circle of Thieves. He looks at Goro, standing just outside of it. And he nods.
Signing up for The Happiness Game! is terribly nostalgic. Maruki’s cognition has gone all-in on his old researcher persona for this part of his Palace. Goro takes a clipboard, one of ten manifested out of thin air, and rifles through the pages of the packet clipped onto it. The words and numbers and forms on the pages change every time he looks away from them. Cognition is fickle.
He doesn’t need to read it. He knows what this is—he filled out these forms out over and over and over, faking his name, his age, his medical history, his family history. No one cared to check their accuracy then. No one will care now. Goro leaves the entire thing blank besides the only thing they truly want, which is his signature along the dotted line on the last page of the packet.
He tosses his clipboard at the cognition and is the first to walk through the door, into the game.