Cutscene: Bears, Bubbles, Breakins, Books

Yosuke Hanamura sat in his apartment. In all honesty, it was a good day! New website released, magazine beginning its distributions,

and negotiations set up for his vending machines--life was looking up! A satisfactory day. All he had to do now was track down Thora

Kobayashi, and--

The events that followed were a bit of a blur. What he remembered of it was mostly that a teddy bear had threatened to assassinate him,

and had insisted he find Kanji Tatsumi, before leaving.

In retrospect, as he touched his neck where the plush's inexplicably sharp claws had been, that was the third magical bear he'd ever

had to deal with in his life. That was entirely too high a number of magical bears.

--

"Okay, sure, Yuuka, you can...stay at my place for the weekend next week. Yeah! That's...cool," Hanamura said, a timely ten minutes after Chiba's departure.

Except, of course, that her boyfriend was going to look askance at the girl staying in his apartment. Not that Yosuke *could* cheat on

Maki, seeing as though her id could teleport in at her at any time. And Kidzuki could...

There was the alarming realization that Tohya Kidzuki probably knew if he was sleeping with people, if they were Persona-Users. The realization

was...kinda distressing. Did resonance, like, change when that happened? Fucking resonance /bullsh--

His train of thought was interrupted by a commercial.

He couldn't really mentally register much about it. There was a face of an actor quickly flashing across, and it was him...? No. No, it

wasn't him. Yosuke leaned forward, hand pressed to his temple, brushing his hair aside. No, when it came to people on TV that weren't

him, there was precisely one option. And that one option was pushing *that soda*.

A perfectly innocent plastic bottle of soda died for the sins of Daigan's reappearance, its form split on the kitchenette floor. The

Cielo Mist's loss will be avenged later.

--

To paraphrase the mid-day, succintly.

Phone: *ring*

Yosuke: 'Thora, I need you t-'

Thora: Can't, kidnapped.

Yosuke: Fuck.

Yosuke clapped the phone shut. He really, desperately wanted to be upset or worried about Kobayashi. On the other hand, it wasn't like

her boyfriend wasn't going to mount some kind of rescue team, and it wasn't like he didn't have things to do. On the upside, he could

call the Secretary up. He could get the student record--

Oh, right. Shirou was the secretary, which meant that he would probably want Yosuke to rescue Thora /first/ before he got any favors,

thus nullifying the entire expediency thing he'd been going for.

A day firmly, firmly wasted, ending in a train ride to Port Island. After all, he had to check on one of his other plans. It turns out

the secret to success really is just throwing all your plans out there and riding on the ones that work, see, and with a firm, brisk

confidence, as reality warped around him, Yosuke stepped into Tartarus.

His vending machine had been desecrated.

Where was the money? Who had broken the locks? Yosuke unslung the backpack full of replacement supplies as he determined the full

extent of the damages. Surely, they hadn't stolen the supplies--

Not only had they stolen the supplies, they had so 'kindly' resupplied it for him. ...With soda. Argilla. Berry. Soda.

Whoever these vandals were, they--

Yosuke flashed back to earlier, and realized that to a certain degree, perhaps he should expect some sort of response, some sort of

simple reply to telling the death cult to go look at a vending machine. He guesses he should not have expected some sort of

profitability from nihilists.

Hanamura remained resignedly angry at Strega for the whole affair, though. He decided also to blame them for the toe he stubbed kicking

the vending machine in anger. That was also definitely their fault.

---

Nine hours later, Yosuke looked at his notepad.

Plans had been written. Thus far, all he had to do was break into two places, possibly in the same night. Then organize an expedition

into a monster-filled hellhole, and /hopefully/ find some magic metal that will let him do god knows what, but /assumedly/ something

awesome. He may have to organize a raid on the hideout of a death cult and/or see if Kandori is interested in the contents of a

mysterious book and maybe collaborate on making or doing whatever it is this book says.

... All in all, seemed like a good place to start, but felt too simple. He laid back on the couch, and closed his eyes.