Being a hero is a beautiful madness.
Stealing Dreams
is a Persona 5 and Changeling: The Lost (with elements of other Chronicles of Darkness games, especially Mage: The Awakening) Fusion Fic by Leliel12, with some elements from Æon.
Life has not gone well for eight Japanese teenagers, outcast from society. By definition, it can't have, given how each of them has ended up taken from their mundane lives and forced into hard service in the strange wilds of Arcadia, homeland of The Fair Folk - a service that eventually made them a bit fae themselves. More fae than their masters would have liked, since they promptly used that newly fae nature and access to Contracts to escape.
Unfortunately for them, the Earth they came back to is still the Gothic Punk mess of hidden factions that is the New World of Darkness, with the True Fae only one part of a much stranger world that humanity very loudly ignores. Once you're part of that world, it refuses to leave you alone, so (with a little push from a strange long-nosed man who they met on the way back), they join together for mutual protection - and to make sure anyone who tries to spoil their freedom soon regrets trying.
Which is good, because as it turns out, if an ancient sect of sorcerers have their way, it won't be just their freedom on the line...
Note that unmarked spoilers on the identity of the main villains are beneath this line.
Stealing Dreams provides examples of:
- Acquainted in Real Life: The Phantoms encounter a masked changeling they dub Dog Head, and are later horrified to learn Dog Head saw their faces and recognized them, meaning they're someone the team knows. Unfortunately, with glamours at play, there's no way to easily identify who Dog Head is, though it's implied to be Akechi.
- Adaptational Badass: Quite a few, as many unpowered characters are varieties of esohuman:
- Ichiko Ohya, Yohei Kiritani, and Hikari are three of the four Seasonal Monarchs of the Freehold the Phantoms are part of.
- Both Sadayo Kawakami and Yuuki Mishima are both hunters; for Mishima, it's downplayed, because as a member of Network Zero he's more interested in cataloguing the monsters than hunting them, but Kawakami is part-demon and can become a hulking oni outright.
- Shiho Suzui, normally a victim of Kamoshida, ends up Awakening as an Acanthus mage and proves vital to Kamoshida's defeat.
- Kamoshida is actually downplayed; while he is a member of the Seers of the Throne, it turns out he was only a provisional member, as his powers were on loan from the Seers; they turn out to be harder to control than a true mage's, and a pissed-off Kobayakawa takes them back after the coach's maiming.
- Shinya Oda, a normal kid who happens to be good at gun games in the original, is here an ancient mummy, thousands of years old, with Eldritch powers even the Phantoms can barely comprehend.
- Sumire Yoshizawa is an experienced Deviant and is the Monster Lord of a group of Coalition clones.
- Adaptational Personality Change: Albeit one that makes sense, but due to Makoto being put through the wringer hard in her Durance, Makoto's self-esteem plummeted and she exhibits what's strongly implied to be a case of PTSD and explicitly a case of Dissociative Identity Disorder. On good days, she's a Shrinking Violet in stark contrast to the serious woman she was in canon. We currently don't know all of the details regarding Makoto's Durance, but one-shots set in the universe indicate it may very well have been repeated abuse and even rape.
- Adaptational Species Change: Morgana was (not) a cat and a creation of the Velvet Room in canon. Here, he's a changeling Kid Hero who everyone can tell was originally human.
- Adaptational Nationality: While Morgana has amnesia, he suspects he's originally Irish due to being able to speak English and Gaelic.
- Adaptational Name Change:
- Joker / the Persona 5 protagonist, usually called Akira Kurusu or Ren Amamiya, is named Shinobu Hattori.
- The Phantom Thieves of Hearts instead call themselves the Phantoms of Arcadia.
- The Black Mask is referred to as Dog Head due to the creator feeling it fit the setting better. The mask they wear also resembles a jackal's head.
- Adaptational Superpower Change: While Personas do not exist in the Chronicles of Darkness, all the Phantoms are changelings.
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Word of God states that most of SEES were Sin-Eaters, with Aigis being an Unfleshed Promethean.
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- Adaptational Villainy: Downplayed. Sumire is a member of the Get of Typhon and The Mole, but she has no ill will towards the Phantoms and was mostly trying to avoid accidentally causing a Right Hand Versus Left Hand situation. Day to day, she prefers to be a Nice Girl.
- Break the Cutie: Happens to changelings as a matter of course, but Makoto has suffered the worst of it, having become a Shrinking Violet with a Split Personality due to her mistreatment.
- Do Not Adjust Your Set: Because the Phantoms can't steal Kamoshida's heart, they end up broadcasting his sins to a teacher meeting, using a digital mascot called Lord Sek (voiced by Morgana).
- Differently Powered Individuals: The supernatural folk of the Chronicles of Darkness, specifically the ones who can pretend to be normal humans for a long period of time, are called "esohumans," with Word of God saying it was stolen from the Mage Chronicler's Guide. Seers of the Throne also tend to call non-mage esohumans "Fallspawn" or "terats", both Fantastic Slurs.
- Drives Like Crazy: Haru, just as in canon - which, when combined with the Hedge, results in some outright impossible stunts, as the Hedge warped into a tesseract when she became accidental getaway driver.
- Mama Bear: Thanks to her hybridization with a Coalition progenitor, Sumire has a naturally strong maternal instinct towards Coalition clones and considers herself their mother - that, along with avenging Kasumi, is why she is a Vigilante Woman seeking to kill every Seer associated with her mutation, as she knows they were intended to be Slave Mooks for the Seers.
- Minor Crime Reveals Major Plot: Trying to stop Kamoshida's harassment of Shujin students ends up revealing the existence of Seers of the Throne, due to him helping to run a recruitment network for Shujin students via scholarships.
- Mythology Gag: When meeting Akechi at the TV studio, he brings up pancakes. Though, unlike in the game, Shinobu doesn't instantly realize something's wrong.
- Nebulous Evil Organization: The Seers of the Throne, who Ann nicknames the magical mafia.
- Oh, Crap!: The group has this reaction upon learning Dog Head has seen their faces, and even worse, recognized them.
- Poke in the Third Eye: Dog Head discovers Kawakami's kuda-gitsune, and makes it their own spying mechanism by using a Contract to view everything the creature has seen in the past month. Which unfortunately, includes the Phantoms' faces.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: Seers have a noted tendency to look down on non-mage esohumans, even more so than mundanes. Shido goes out of his way to bully Makoto and Morgana when he recognizes them as changelings.
- Rock Monster: What little can be glimpsed of Dog Head beneath the suit is onyx-like skin. Unfortunately, the Phantoms can't use that unique skin to identify them, since with a glamour they could be anyone.
- Running Gag: Futaba repeatedly misidentifies people as vampires.
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Shipping: As the tags note, Futaba and Shinobu, Makoto and Haru, and Ann and Shiho are all couples. Along with Orthus/Dog Head and Sumire. - What Did You Expect When You Named It ____?: Kaneshiro's "Project Medea" was named to contrast the larger Project Helios - the Seer plan to clone Coalition troops. As mentioned by several characters, naming your Super-Soldier project after a woman best known for how total her revenge against against her abuse was is not a smart idea if you plan on not using volunteers. True to form, Sumire broke out after being converted into a progenitor hybrid and is now helping seek revenge against the Seers.
