Working With Phantoms

Stray Realms

June 30th

Madran's POV

Madran arrived at lunch to see that everyone except for Suga and Haru had arrived.

"Hey, everyone, what's up?"

"Uh, Suga told me that she'd be a bit late, and Haru's... I dunno, watering flowers or something."

Madran nodded at Akira and looked at Rosana.

"Well, what did you think about yesterday? I mean, I wish that I could seen the fight, but..."

"What exactly happened?"

"Wysteria got her ultimate persona, uh, Nadja."

Morgana licked his paw and looked at Madran.

"So, uh, what happened there?"

"Her shadow appeared on Monday, taunted her, and gave her until Wednesday to choose to either die in a few months or right then and there. After Wysteria obviously chose to live, her shadow went berserk and started trying to ruin everything until Wysteria apparently fought her, beat her, and accepted her once more."

"Sounds like an eventful Wednesday."

"You bet. Oh, here they are."

Madran saw Suga and Haru walking and talking together. Once they arrived, Suga looked around with a much less stressed complexion than before.

"Well, how is everyone?"

Everyone gave their response, and Suga nodded.

"Gosh, yesterday was crazy. I told Haru, and she agrees."

"Yep. I don't really understand much of it, but it seems that Camas-sama knows what she's doing."

Rosana nodded, and the group carried on a lively conversation until lunch ended, and they had to leave. Then, after school was over, Madran went back home, hung out with Elia for some time, and left to the Velvet Room with Chicory.

"Hey, everyone, I'm here!"

Madran looked around to see that everyone except for Maya had arrived. Then, after sitting down and waiting, Maya arrived.

"Hey, sorry I'm late!"

Maya sat down next to Philemon.

"Well, Ken and Margaret, you have the floor."

Ken and Margaret stood up, with Margaret clearing her throat.

"Well, I felt... a pull to visit the door that my sister had opened, and I met with the Shadow Operatives. The only ones who really showed much interest in my presence were Aigis, Mitsuru, and Ken, and I informed them of a detail I had found while you all were calming Ixtab: I have detected... distortions in the Universe door, and upon examination, I found details of this separate timeline merging with this one via the Universe door."

"Then, I asked Aigis to see her research, and the things we saw in there resembled many of her notes on the Tensei timeline."

"Ooh, sounds cool! Can we see it?"

"Sure. Ken, if you would..."

Ken nodded and walked with everyone to the Universe door. Then, once they went through, Madran saw that the area did look much like how it usually did, but also had several white trees and other similarly-colored flora that formed a massive forest.

"Uh... why is there a forest here?"

Madran looked around.

"This was here when we investigated. Hey, Margaret-"