History Fanfic / ForewarnedIsForearmed

** One for Akira specifically - when ''Forewarned'' began, he was an orphan, with only two dead parents and a temporary fostering with Dojima to his name. By the end of ''Forearmed'', [[spoiler:he has ''four'' parents - not only did Dojima officially adopt him, he managed to bring his parents, Emi and Ryou Kurusu, and Dojima's dead wife Chisato BackFromTheDead]].

** While all of the Phantom Thieves have the usual Metaverse Nav app with the red eye, Yu has a different Nav app with a blue butterfly, [[spoiler: provided by the remnants of Lavenza's power. When Yaldabaoth decides to end his game early after Okumura's Palace by shattering Akira's soul and damaging the Velvet Room, the red eye Nav is removed from all of the Thieves' phones, leaving them at a loss on how to get into the Metaverse until Yu shows them his different app, which can then be installed on everyone's phones through the usual means.]]

** Ken chooses Hawk as his for seemingly no particular reason...in reality because Hawk is the leader of the Phoenix Rangers.

*** On the other side, Akechi has more success infiltrating and manipulating the Shujin Phantom Thieves than he did in ''Forearmed''. He turns the bad luck of Ann triggering his Nav to enter Kamoshida's Palace, Ryuji stumbling onto their operations, Makoto learning of their identities, and the inevitability of recruiting Haru to get through her Father's Palace into strengths, manipulating them for his own ends as the de facto leader of their group. They discover the power to change hearts by accident when Ryuji copies Madarame's calling card and tweaks it to give to Kamoshida, and use it thenceforth for Mementos targets and Kaneshiro, whose name Akechi accidentally lets slip. And all the while, he plays them against Akira's group and convincing each that the other was responsible for the mental shutdowns and [[spoiler:Okumura's death. However, this success comes crashing down when the two groups finally meet in Sae's Palace and Ann and Shiho recognise each other. From there it doesn't take them too long to start working together.]]

* ResurrectionSickness: Akira hasn't been 100% since he came back to life: his stamina is lacking just in the real world, let alone the Metaverse. Fortunately, Lavenza realizes the reason in Chapter 2: they revived him using his twenty Arcana links, but one of them, the Devil, was incomplete. When that bond is properly reforged, Akira is finally fully alive again.

* ForWantOfANail: Subverted. For the most part, Akira's presence does little to change the events of ''Persona 4's'' plot, and Lavenza tries her hardest to keep things that way out of fear of causing a BadFuture.

* ForWantOfANail: Compared to the previous story, Akira's ExperiencedProtagonist mindset changes a whole bunch of things.
** Akira quickly picks up on Kamoshida's pervertedness from the outset and manages to convince Ann not to step into his car. As a result, Akira makes it to class on time while Ryuji and Ann enter Kamoshida's Palace first. In fact, he doesn't learn about it until long after he gets back in the game by entering Futaba's Palace.
** Akira reaches out to Futaba after she tries to sneak into Leblanc to plant a bug to listen in on him. As a result, he and Yusuke are able to help Futaba confront her trauma and get her obtain her Persona before Ryuji and Ann are able to get much of anywhere in Kamoshida's Palace. This means that the Phantom Thieves are a much bigger party from the outset.
*** It also means that when Medjed rears its head later that year, [[AntiClimax Futaba handles it with barely a misstep]].
*** Futaba awakened her Persona by accepting it and before Akira had any inkling that there was a conspiracy going on, and as a result, the knowledge that her mother was murdered via a mental shutdown doesn't come up, until Mitsuru Kirijo tells her in a conversation during the summer.
** Due to Akira entering Kamoshida's Palace late, Akechi makes the mistake of revealing himself far too soon in his attempts to turn Ryuji and Ann into {{Unwitting Pawn}}s. As a result, he's blindsided by the arrival of Akira and Morgana and scrambles to change his plans. But Akira's connection to Naoto through Yu soon has the Phantom Thieves pinning Akechi as a traitor even before the infamous pancake comment.
** Madarame's previous experience with Akira means that he hates him for distracting Yusuke from producing more works of art to pass off as Madarame's own. Because of this, Madarame's Shadow instantly jacks up the security level at the mere sight of Akira, forcing him to sit out Madarame's Palace until the time comes to steal Madarame's heart, when the security is going to be jacked up anyways.
** Akira picks up on the fact that [[spoiler:the Igor he meets in the Velvet Room is fake]] partway through the events of ''Persona Q'' (which happens right before Okumura's Palace) and confronts him about it after Okumura's death. As a result, [[spoiler:Yaldabaoth decides to seal off the Velvet Room and shatter Akira's soul across the Sea of Souls. And if not for Elizabeth and Jose, it would've been fatal]].

* RageBreakingPoint: Post ''Persona Q'', Akira is thoroughly worn down at the realization that [[spoiler:Igor is a fake, Lavenza was separated into Caroline and Justine, and that they have to find a missing piece of Lavenza's soul to re-fuse her. Kunikazu Okumura's death at the hands of Akechi and Fake Igor talking about it as a mere part of his game is the last straw, and he accuses Fake Igor of being an impostor to his face. [[DoNotTauntCthulhu It doesn't end well]].]]

** The Thieves rescue [[spoiler: Akechi after he got stabbed by the Conspiracy's agents]].

* SuperpowerfulGenetics: [[spoiler: At the climax of ''Persona Q2'', Emi and Ryou awaken a shared Persona - Arsene. This Persona would apparently be later passed on to their son, Akira]].

* ThrowTheDogABone: After the events in Inaba and [[spoiler:Ishikawa retracting her false testimony]], Akira is scheduled for a re-hearing about his probation and eventually gets it terminated, allowing him to officially see Nanako and Dojima again. The only downside is him having to miss the Hawaii trip - which is also a blessing in disguise as it [[spoiler:allows him and the remaining Thieves (Nanako, Futaba, Morgana, and Daiki) to save Kobayakawa's Shadow from being killed by Akechi]].

* UnderestimatingBadassery: Akechi keeps falling afoul of this on account of [[ExperiencedProtagonist Akira's previous experiences with the Metaverse]] and his connection to the [[VideoGame/Persona4 Investigation Team]] and [[VideoGame/Persona3 Shadow Operatives]]. His attempt to ingratiate himself with Ann and Ryuji and turn them into {{Unwitting Pawn}}s goes awry when Akira shows up and supplants him as the most experienced Persona-user around, his attempt to get an investigating Naoto blacklisted from Tokyo only leads to the others pinning him as a traitor, and the fact that Yu Narukami can fight off a ''Reaper'' single-handedly fills him with dread. Even his attempt to target them with Medjed falls flat when Futaba dismantles it in less than a day, putting him in a lot of hot water with the Conspiracy.
* UnderTheSea: [[spoiler:Ryoko Ishikawa's]] Palace is an oversized fishbowl with UnderwaterRuins as the centrepiece, and the Thieves have to figure out how to fight underwater fast. It symbolises how after [[spoiler: she falsely testified against Akira and put him on probation, all the rumours flying around the town about what actually happened with her at the centre of it all makes her feel like a fish in a fishbowl]].

** Chapter 42: It turns out that Masayoshi Shido, in addition for being responsible for the situation Akira found himself in with the false charge and the worsened situation he found himself in in this story, was also responsible for [[spoiler:Akira falling through the cracks of the foster system back when he was a junior politician. Instead of managing his parents estate until Akira was old enough, [[EvilIsPetty he stole and embezzled the inheritance for himself after they died, not even bothering to look for any inheritors]].]]

** Akira's mother Emi once dated a guy named Amamiya (with "Ren Amamiya" being Joker's other canon name) before settling on Ryou Kurusu.

* Doorstopper: Forearmed alone is over 1,000,000 words long. The series as a whole is over 1,500,000 words long, and counting.

* CrypticBackgroundReference: At one point there's a segment from the POV of Akira from the time of Forgone, and he recalls an unusual event that happened in the intervening years:

* CrypticBackgroundReference: At one point Akira from the time of Forgone speaks to his younger self in the Velvet Room, and recalls an unusual event that happened in the intervening years:

* {{Crossover}}: As a result of becoming a Velvet Room attendant, Akira is able to meet guests from other universes, including other versions of himself. These so far include ''[[https://archiveofourown.org/works/39986892/ Last One Out, Close the Door Behind You]]'', ''[[https://archiveofourown.org/works/35940559/ Chained Wings]]'' and ''[[https://archiveofourown.org/works/45623410/ Breaking (all the) Things]]''. [[spoiler:Chapter 5 adds
the Akira from ''[[https://archiveofourown.org/works/27169132 Shadow Talk]]'', Ren and Akira from ''[[https://archiveofourown.org/works/45149287 It Takes Two]]'' and a younger Akira from the ''Forearmed: Inaba'' timeline.]]

* {{Crossover}}: As a result of becoming a Velvet Room attendant, Akira is able to meet guests from other universes, including other versions of himself. These so far include ''[[https://archiveofourown.org/works/39986892/ Last One Out, Close the Door Behind You]]'', ''[[https://archiveofourown.org/works/35940559/ Chained Wings]]'' and ''[[https://archiveofourown.org/works/45623410/ Breaking (all the) Things]]''.

* RelatedInTheAdaptation: [[spoiler:Alice Hiiragi is Taro Namatame and Misuzu Hiiragi’s daughter]].

* ResurrectionSickness: Akira hasn't been 100% since he came back to life: his stamina is lacking just in the real world, let alone the Metaverse. Fortunately, Lavenza realizes the reason in Chapter 2: they revived him using his twenty Arcana links, but one of them, the Devil, was incomplete. So reforging that bond should fix him.

* PlotRelevantAgeUp: [[spoiler:After Caroline and Justine are recombined in 2016, Lavenza is visibly older, estimated to be around Akira's age if not slightly older. This is explained by her having kept a portion of herself within Akira for safekeeping, with that portion having "grown up" alongside Akira.]]

* DramaticIrony: The "Broken" version of Akira talks about how his first encounter with Shido played out in his timeline: just before he could get involved, someone came up and punched out Shido for real before running away. This story leaves Akira baffled about who would do that and why.

* KidFromTheFuture: [[spoiler:Emi is astonished to learn that Akira is her teenaged son from the future, and the thought of having more family to hurt shocks her so badly that she has a mental breakdown and decides to bury herself in another one of Nagi's movies to return to the "comfort" of nihilism and depression so she wouldn't have to confront it.]]

* HornetHole: Chapter 3 centers around the Palace of Rina Fujisawa, an OriginalCharacter at Gekkoukan High School who takes “[[AlphaBitch Queen Bee]]” to the literal extreme.

-->Well, there are probably a lot of people that would want to punch him, but Akira's having a hard time imagining why anyone actually would. [[WhoWouldBeStupidEnough Even Akechi, he's pretty sure, is smarter than that]]. And Akechi hates Shido and is certified Bad At Plans, so that's saying something.