So um… since people actually responded that tidbit I posted, I went ahead and finished it.  

Title: Stopwatch

By:  Me, Chibi

Fandom:  Persona 4

Pairing:  Kanji and Naoto (of course)

Warnings:  SPOILERS TO THE END OF THE GAME, spoilers to the Persona 4 anime, spoilers to everything o.k.?  Angst, character death (?), attempting to use Kanji’s wonderful dialect, and the fact that I haven’t written fic in a long time.

Notes:  Got this idea after seeing the preview for the last episode of the anime and seeing that the team gets third level personas (in P4 Golden, at least).  Considering how their persona leveled up in the anime, I thought, well now that there’s a third level, maybe they’ll level up like this.  Also, I like how the anime made it so when the persona was hit, the persona user felt it, so I mix that idea in this fic with the standards of the game (you know, the characters having weapons and all that).

Extra Note:  Fixed the formatting, since tumblr seemed to eat it when I posted it originally.

People often say that when tragedy strikes, everything moves in slow motion.  For Naoto Shirogane it is the exact opposite.  Time has two types of speed for her on March 21st – too fast, and stopped.

I.  Too Fast

They’re standing in front of the large television screen at Junes once again, the rag-tag team of mismatched teenagers hand-picked by a kidnapper with the heart of a misguided hero.  They were supposed to be at the train station, saying their final goodbyes to their friend, their senpai, their leader, their everything.  Bag packed, he had been ready and not ready to leave them, promising to keep in touch, smile on his face but eyes betraying his true feelings.    

Then time sped up, prison letters discovered, conductors showing themselves and the real final pieces of their year long puzzle being put together.

Yosuke-senpai says something encouraging, grin wide and headphones blaring some song full of electric guitars and drums.  Chie-senpai responds to his words, says something that Yukiko-senpai must find amusing because she can’t stop laughing.  It gets the group in good spirits, or at least Naoto thinks it does, time is moving too fast for her to figure out if the laughter and smiles are real or fake.  All she can think to do is offer some sort of encouraging quip of her own, “Let’s end this.”  It sounds acceptable in her head and it gets everyone to nod, but her heart isn’t feeling it.  Her heart feels sick, it’s gone rotten like spoiled milk, but with time being in fast motion she can’t figure out why.  

I.  Stopped

The world hurts to look at because of it’s strange construction.  It’s a bizarre pattern of red and black, the sky too white like flipping on a light switch in the dark when trying to sleep.  The color match ups don’t make any sense, zigzags in one room, squares in another.  There’s blocks floating in the air, pillars closing in, it’s so quiet it’s noisy, buzzing through everyone’s ears as they move forward.  Senpai mentions something about this place looking familiar and when Yosuke-senpai asks for an explanation he doesn’t get a feasible response, “I don’t know, it just… does.”  Naoto files it away in her head with the ever-growing list of things senpai knows and can do that they can’t, somewhere to the left of summoning multiple persona and fusing persona together like some sort of magician.  

As the team moves forward she hears someone clearing their throat to get her attention.  This is the part where time stops, her body turning her around to face one Kanji Tatsumi.  He’s standing there, equipped with a skull tank top and too much height for a boy his age.  He’s rubbing the back of his head, eyes wandering all around focusing on everything but her, “I…” he tries to speak, but he only manages to get a letter out, “I-I…”

“Yes?”

“I… fer a second, wanna talk… fer a second…”

“What is on your mind, Tatsumi-kun?”

“I jus…” he stops again, swishing the words inside his mouth before he speaks again “… you… nervous?”

“Nervous?”  She frowns, “You mean about this creature we are about to face?”

“Yeah, jus… got a bad feelin’ is all,” he’s fidgeting, looking down at his shoes, “So I… jus in case-”

“Guys!”  They both turn to see Chie-senpai standing at the end of the pathway, hands on her hips, track jacket frowning at them, “Come on!  We need to keep moving!”

“Awwww, senpai, let them have a moment,” the sweet bubblegum voice of Rise Kujikawa echoes around them and smacks against Tatsumi-kun’s face, causing his cheeks to grow red.  

Naoto pulls the brim of her hat down, covering her eyes with it and ducking her head, “Perhaps we should discuss this later,” she mutters, silently cursing her cheeks for growing warm.  What she wishes she would’ve done – in hindsight – is say something to ease Tatsumi-kun’s worries it will be all right or we will be taking senpai to the train station before you know it although nobody wants to do that, to be honest, but it’s better than fighting some woman who thinks she’s a goddess.  

But time is moving again and she never gets the chance.

II.  Too Fast

They had been winning.

Had been.

They had gone in prepared, like a team of mighty warriors ready to save the people of their humble little town – again.  Their attacks had landed perfectly, they had moved together as one, weakening the giant goddess before them and ready to prove to her who this world belonged to.

Then time sped up.

The goddess changes before them, a beautiful corpse with crinkled tree branches for limbs.  Her anatomy is all wrong, spinal cord too long with too many arms, each part of her body the color of dried up blood that Naoto swears she can smell.  It’s amazing how her clothing stays a perfect, heavenly white, because she swears this thing is dripping with wet shadows of black.    

Their persona begin to unwillingly bow before her, being knocked down and forced to their knees, her voice dry and mocking their very existence.  Things are moving too quickly to come up with a strategy.  Yosuke-senpai attacks with a gust of wind and the goddess treats it like a breeze of autumn air, basking it before she she strikes his persona down.  Senpai cries out his name, sends his black coat wearing warrior over with a large bolt of lightning.  It has no effect, the goddess laughing and grabbing hold of Izanagi.  There’s a story behind them Naoto’s mind whispers, some legend she remembers reading that she wishes she would’ve thought of before jumping through the T.V. 

Yosuke-senpai manages to speak Susanoo’s name again, his persona a fast blur of blue and wild red hair.  Izanami is faster, tosses senpai’s persona into Yosuke’s like it’s a ball that can be flung across the yard.  Chie and Yukiko-senpai join forces at this point, moving in sync like trained dancers.  Suzuka Gongen and Amaterasu attack as one, one an armored warrior, the other pure energy and beautiful wings.  They don’t intimidate Izanami at all, who rudely interrupts their dance, cackling like a mad witch who lives in a tiny old house at the end of the block.  Yukiko-senpai’s fire is put out, Chie-senpai’s kung-fu master put in its place, and the girls are forced to sit and watch with the rest of their fallen comrades.  

Kujikawa-san is trying to talk to all of them, Kanzeon’s visor covering her eyes, hands clasped together in a silent prayer please make it through this please please please.  She’s scanning for weaknesses, searching for clues, but all she sees is Tatsumi-san’s large hunk of a persona being flung back like a toothpick.  Teddie lets out a cry – complete with a pun, even now of all times – and his round little helper charges forward.  It’s smacked down like a pesky fly and the goddess laughs again.  

Too fast.  Much too fast.  Naoto is firing a bullet through the card that drifts in front of her, Yamato Takeru graceful and swift, following her every command.  She manages to get a hit in, she thinks, but the world is stuck in fast motion so she can’t tell if the sword makes contact with the goddess’ twisted  flesh.  Naoto’s on the ground in seconds, hat barely on her head, hand gripping tightly onto her gun as she tries to stand up.  

She hears – rather than sees – Tatsumi-kun make his move.  Clank clank clank clank goes Rokuten Maoh and the boy is yelling – always yelling, for her.  The rotten milk feeling of her heart is starting to curdle jus got a bad feelin’ he had said, and she’s starting to feel it too.  She’s not sure what’s happening, her persona is buzzing in her head, speaking too quickly get up get up get up and hurry before he- but she can’t even get her legs to push her body up and she obviously needs to be able to stand up before doing anything please, hurry, that creature is going to-

And then Kujikawa-san screams, Rokuten Maoh’s mechanical steps put to a halt.

When she finally manages to stand up she’s greeted to the sight of the large persona in front of her, protecting her, sharp shadows piercing through its glorious fire red armor.  The shadows recoil away and she swears there’s blood coating them bleeding? but is that possible for a persona?  Still, she recognizes what blood looks like, has seen it, felt it, tasted it when taking a couple of nasty hits in battle.  There’s too much of it, caressing Rokuten Maoh’s chest as the persona’s body fades in and out with a scrambled mess of static.  She tries to speak it’s name but before she can it’s gone, fading away in a burst of energy like fireflies that drift into the sky.  The blood is now spread across the floor, Izanami actually moaning, relishing in the feel of fresh blood on her skin.  

Fast.  Everything moves too fast.  Naoto’s looking around, eyes wide as she puts together the appropriate letters to speak the name, “Tatsumi-kun?”  She speaks louder when she doesn’t get a response, “Tatsumi-kun!”  There’s a blur of red, Yukiko-senpai’s beautiful sweater, as the girl runs past her and to the right.  Naoto follows after her, over to where everyone else is gathered together.  Tatsumi-kun is on the strangely textured ground, breathing irregular, eyes squeezed shut.  Yukiko-senpai is saying something summoning Yamato Takeru tells her healing.  It’s always seemed to work in the past, but as Yukiko-senpai’s voice grows hoarse from shouting to Amaterasu it’s clear that, in this moment, it’s not working.  It only manages to shimmer around Tatsumi-kun for a moment before fading away.

Kujikawa-san is blubbering something, tears sliding down her pretty face, eyes red and burning for the fallen Tatsumi-kun.  Naoto wants to say something but he beats her to it, their eyes meeting, and for the first time since they were in the hospital with Nanako he doesn’t back down.

II.  Stopped

“C’mere,” he says, and it takes her off guard.  His voice isn’t as strong as she’s use to it being, skin pale like ash and breaths a pathetic wheeze of air.  She kneels down by his head, tries to tell him to not move when he tries to push himself up, but in seconds his head is resting in her lap and he’s looking up at her, “H-hey… want… tell ya somethin’”

“Shhh,” she shakes her head, “Please, do not say anything.”  

Now that time has come to a stop, she can absolutely feel each beat of her heart.  It’s pounding against her chest and she can feel her eyes growing wet as she looks at the boy who rests against her.  There’s things she’s feeling, things her persona are saying foolish, so foolish and how could I not realize-

“I gotta,” he says, “… iss my only chance,” he says, and Naoto feels her mind growing irrational.

“Do not talk like that!”  She’s shouting.  She rarely raises her voice but she feels the need to shout, “You will be fine!”  It’s a lie, of course, she can tell that it is.  Her friends are standing around the two of them and she can recognize the sound of their tears – she remembers them, painfully, from the hospital with Nanako, “Do not say anything, just rest, you will be-”

III.  Too Fast

His arm stretches up and his hand grabs her by the back of her neck, pulling her down as he tilts his neck up. 

III.  Stopped

Their lips meet, pressed against one another and Naoto stares him down during the entire thing.  His face is flushed, fingers shaking against the back of her neck, touching the tips of her short hair.  His lips are conveying a thousand feelings at once and she understands each and every one of them.  I like ya and I always have and sorry it took so long and iss hard admittin’ these things, ya know?   

IV.  Too Fast

Just when her brain registers the fact that she should kiss him back the goddess is saying something, thin, rotted limbs moving around her.  There are shadows around Tatsumi-kun’s legs and he’s yanked away from Naoto.  She’s up and moving, racing after him and saying, “K-Kanji,” his first name, they’ve shared a kiss so she can scream it now, “Kanji!”  She can’t run fast enough, can’t reach him, and soon he’s being swallowed whole by the darkness.

IV.  Stopped

V.  Too Fast

There’s a card in front of her face, eyes narrowed as she whips her gun out and fires.  She doesn’t notice that her persona looks different, is wearing red and has long, beautiful locks of hair.  She doesn’t hear senpai screaming at her to stop – begging, actually – and telling her that the goddess is too dangerous.  She’s giving commands that she didn’t possess before, attacking with a ferocity that she didn’t know existed inside of her.  Die she’s angry, angrier than she had been with Namatame, shaking in rage die, die her new persona is screaming in her mind, taking its hits from fighting alone but getting right back up die die die. 

Before, she had been cold and irrational, wanting to throw that man though that T.V.  

Before, she had been cool and logical, wanting to take Adachi down.

Now, she’s a mix of everything, walking towards Izanami and firing her gun, hitting anything she can aim at and reloading as her persona attacks at the same time.  

Die.  Die die die.  Die!  

It’s not enough but it, at least, is doing damage.  The rotten goddess at least looks annoyed, even lets out a couple of cries of pain, then she declares that it’s time to get serious.

It’s the second time Kujikawa-san has screamed, Naoto can hear it behind her, and then suddenly everything hurts.

V.  Stopped

She feels like she’s floating.

Naoto opens her eyes and wonders if this is what it feels like to be dead.  Her body is in-tact when it definitely shouldn’t be, her hat in one piece when it had been torn to shreds by whatever attack Izanami had performed against her.  The world around her is nothing but gray, no sort of architecture anywhere in sight.  All she can do is walk forward and wonder what happened to the others, hope that they at least took that creature down.

Maybe, if she keeps walking forward, she’ll find Kanji somewhere in this nowhere space.  Instead, she finds senpai, laying on the ground and not moving.  

No.  

No no no.  

This is not how it’s supposed to work out.  They are supposed to be victorious – as childish as that logic is, of course people can lose sometimes.  But they’re the heroes, right?  At least, according to Yosuke and Chie-senpai they are.  Heroes don’t die – again, childish, heroes can most certainly die, unless if their super power is to stay alive.  Humans die everyday and they’re just children, when you get down to it, just because they can summon creatures worthy of comic book covers doesn’t make them invincible.  

Childish.  Absolutely childish.  But now that she’s dead, who cares if she’s childish for a moment.

So she speaks to senpai, tries to coax him into waking up because if anyone can beat a dreadful goddess, he can, right?  He needed their strength before to fight that rainbow eyeball in December, perhaps he needs it now, too.

So she keeps speaking, and after a moment she swears that she hears others speaking too.  Voices she recognizes from school, Dojima-san, Nanako-chan, the members of their team, and-… is that…?

VI.  Too Fast

She’s running again but she doesn’t know where, looking around the empty void and trying to find SENPAI!  he had screamed, he had been talking to senpai too, but where…?

Then, suddenly, there’s a flash of light.  Naoto is forced to shield her eyes for a moment then slowly lowers her arm, squinting.  In the distance she can see senpai, his glasses laying forgotten on the ground, and the black jacket wearing persona is now dressed in white.  Something’s happening, she’s not sure what it is but she suddenly feels an unreasonable amount of hope.  Izanami is screaming, body crumbling away, and below Naoto’s feet there’s suddenly… grass.  And flowers.  The area is bright but in a completely different way.  It’s not a shallow shade of white, but it’s warm, like… 

… sunshine?

Naoto looks around, staring at everything around her.  It’s a field of flowers, butterflies flying around, birds chirping.  It’s peaceful, the harsh yellow of the T.V. world replaced with something from a greeting card.  

“Naoto?!”

VI.  Stopped

She really wants to turn around and move but she can’t.  Her feet are firmly planted in a bed of daisies.  She can hear him running behind her, running up to her, “Naoto!”  and she can recognize his voice – always does, she always does.  Her eyes are tearing up and part of her wants them to stop, the other part smacking her and telling her to let it go, turn around, and let the tall boy embrace her.

VII.  Too Fast

She’s in his arms now – he had to drop to his knees to do it properly.  Her arms are around his neck and she’s trembling, actually trembling from the relief she feels with seeing him again.  She wants to say something, do something, anything, but once again he makes the first move and is kissing her for the second time that day.

“Awwwwww!  You guys!”

“Way to go, Kanji!”

It’s a dreadful team up, Kujikawa-san and Yosuke-senpai, and their combined voices cause both Kanji and Naoto to pull away and blush.  Although, Kanji does manage to sputter out something along the lines of, “You’re dead!” before he gets up and races after Yosuke-senpai, who just laughs and tells Kanji how it’s about time, man and been crushing on her since she was a dude.  

This tidbit of information makes Naoto blush a bit more, and when she looks at senpai he just nods his agreement, “It’s true,” he says, to which Kanji begs him to shut up already!  He does, indeed, shut up, but both Chie and Yukiko-senpai chime in their parts – or rather, Chie-senpai does, Yukiko-senpai is too busy laughing over Yosuke-senpai’s impending doom by Kanji’s fists.  

And then Teddie says something about Kanji finally scoring, which puts the moment into a pleasant – but awkward – stop.