Phantom Thieves of Hope - A Danganronpa X Persona 5 Story.

Chapter 41: Ultimate Summer Camp

Beneath the Beautiful Dead - NoteBlock

If there was one good thing among many other bad or annoying things that came from the situation, it's that the summer break made it a lot easier to meet up and discuss plans of action. Since nobody had school or classes, they could show up to the Thieves' Den any time, any day, so long as they weren't busy with other stuff.

What delayed them most right now would be the favors and preparations that Makoto handled, spending time with the confidants of the Phantom Thieves. But he put that to the wayside and reconvened with the team the following day in the Den. He stood on one side of the whiteboard that had a selection of Komaru's sketches on it, showing several familiar faces, including Izuru, Chiaki, and Tengan (the Izuru sketch had an arrow pointing at it with the words "piss baby" attached to it. Toko's personal touch.)

Next to it was a list of fact checks, and a documentation of the teams' current progress, with some hastily scribbled childlike drawings of a gorilla, horse, snake, bird, and tiger, symbolizing the monsters that had attacked the team last time.

Kaede stood on the other side of the whiteboard, using her spear (well, it was a wooden stick in the real world, but still) and used it as a baton of sorts, pointing to whatever was on the board. Toko and Kyoko sat sensibly and upright on Toko's bed, while Komaru sat lazily in the beanbag, with Monomi on her lap. Shuichi was perched on the seat of the workbench where Makoto usually made lockpicks and other tools.

"Alright, listen up!" Kaede tapped the whiteboard, shifting into boot camp mode, "Let's all get our heads in the game people! As of today, the expedition into Izuru Kamukura's Palace has officially begun! Now, let's all face the music. This is very much unlike any other Palace that we've dealt with before."

"Yes, most certainly. Honestly, I'm quite surprised," Monomi said, "we had a nasty scare when we went in the first time. We'll have to make sure that we enter the Metaverse closer to the school than we did before, even if we risk people spotting us."

"Guess we don't have much of a choice in case we feel like going for a swim again..." Komaru pouted, "What's the deal with that anyway? Aside from the archipelago itself, everywhere you look in that place is just ocean!"

"Thinking back, maybe we should have expected that. The literal DEFINITION of an island is a piece of land surrounded by water," Toko remarked.

"Well, every other time we've entered a Palace, it's just been normal cityscapes aside from the distortion itself," Makoto pointed out, "so much so that the first time around with Towa, we didn't even know we'd entered the Palace."

"However, that still remains a part of the Palace," Monomi educated, "it was still cognition, even though the city wasn't warped. My only assumption is that Izuru doesn't know what the outside world looks like because he isn't permitted to leave Hope's Peak Academy. It doesn't exist in his subconscious as a result."

"It could also be the case that he knows but doesn't have interest, therefore it doesn't have a lasting impression on his consciousness," Kyoko theorized, "aside from that, one of the big aspects of this Palace is how much of a paradise Hajime/Izuru sees Hope's Peak as, and isolates it, and himself by extension, from the rest of the world. Hence why such a vast ocean exists."

"Though I doubt many well-known criminals are reclusive like him," Kaede stated, "that should hopefully mean that this "drowning" businitch won't happen to us in the future."

"Well, at least we know what to do when we enter this time. But that's not the problem at hand," Makoto piped up, "even not counting the monsters that came out of the statue last time, something tells me that this infiltration and exploration isn't going to go as swimmingly as it did last time."