The Royal Strikers

Chapter Four: Humanity's Companion

Hello, everybody! The New World Fool and CloudStrife07 here, coming at you with a new chapter of The Royal Strikers! Again, we'd like to thank you all for your support on this endeavor. We can see that Joker's little comeback towards Shadow Alice caused quite a bit of excitement, if the reviews and comments are anything to go by. We actually got that line from a P5S let's play that we are using for research in addition to playing the game for ourselves. In fact, and we apologize if this disappoints anyone, Ren and Sumire haven't quite gotten that far into their relationship... yet.

That aside, it is our hope that we can continue to entertain you all as we have been. Well, I think that's about enough on our end. Let us start the game!

Chapter Four

Humanity's Companion

Joker, Crow, Mona, and Skull were all escorted to what seemed to be the castle's garbage chute. Each of the human thieves were being dangled in front of the chute by their restraints while Mona was being manhandled by one of the Shadows. One by one, the Shadows cut Joker, Crow, Skull, and Mona free from their binds, making them all fall down the chute. Mona was the last one to follow, simply being tossed down the chute like an inanimate object.

At the bottom of the chute, everyone was piled onto each other, Mona on top of Crow, Joker underneath Crow, and Skull piled on by everyone else. Everyone except for Mona groaned from the pain in each other's backs, especially Skull.

"Ow ow ow ow ow...! Hey, you guys okay?" Skull asked with his eyes closed tight.

"What do you think, dumbass...?" Crow groaned.

"Crow, don't be a dick..." Joker groaned. "...Skull's just being courteous."

"Well in any case, we're all still alive, luckily," Mona said.

Mona hopped off of Crow so that he and the others could get up. Once he was up, Joker took his knife and cut Mona loose from his bindings before taking a look around, quickly realizing that he and his companions were in a large garbage dump.

"Okay, I've heard of getting dumped by a girlfriend or boyfriend before, but I'm pretty sure that's just supposed to be an expression," said Joker, before wincing as a brief spike of pain ran through his head from where he'd been whacked by both that Sentry's baton and Shadow Alice's cane.

"Hey, man, you okay?" asked Skull, a look of concern on his face. "She whacked you pretty good."

"Doesn't help that one of her Sentries hit me in the head not long before that," Joker said. "But, yeah, I'll be fine."

"Good to know. Damn that Alice, acting like she's top shit. I'm gonna be so pissed off until we finally get back at her! No way in hell does she get to have any right to act like she can just step all- " Skull paused, feeling that awkward feeling returning to him. "...over you ...like that."

"No worries, I'll get back at her before long." Joker said. "... Although, as much as I hate to admit it, it actually did feel kinda good."

Skull looked at Joker, dumbfounded and in utter disbelief.

"What are you, some kind of masochist?!" Skull practically shouted.

"I can't believe I'm saying this, but I honestly always thought that you were more of the sadistic type," Mona said while shaking his head with his eyes closed.

"...I suppose I'm a bit of both." Joker said as he shrugged his shoulders. "But, more importantly, we need to look around for a way out of here. Once we're out of this place, Skull, Mona, and I will meet up with the others and figure out our next move. If real people are getting pulled into Palaces and having those strange jewels taken from them, then the Phantom Thieves can't leave this be."