Fanfic / Throw Away Your Mask

Instead of dying, Akechi finds himself eight years in the past. With his persona abilities still intact, he has to find a way to stop the end of the world.
And work with a bunch of teenagers who thinks he's a child.
Akechi would've preferred to stay dead.

Throw Away Your Mask is a Persona 5 Crossover Fix Fic by MollyPollyKinz.

After Akechi Goro dies, he wakes up in the body of his 10-year-old self living in a foster home in Iwatodai. With no clue how he time-traveled or how to get back, he winds up involved with Gekkoukan High's Specialized Extracurricular Execution Squad and the strange case of the Dark Hour. Between the mysterious denizens of the Velvet Room and the even more mysterious being claiming to be Akira’s uncle, Kurusu Tsuyoshi, Akechi will need to learn to trust his allies if he wants to make it out of this unscathed.

The first chapter was published in September 2023, and currently updates bi-weekly on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Spoilers for the canon events of Persona 2, Persona 3, Persona 4, and Persona 5 Royal will be unmarked. You Have Been Warned!

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Throw Away Your Mask contains examples of:

• 1000 Origami Cranes: Ryoji gives Akechi some origami paper from Kyoto and the suggestion that if they and Minato work together, they'll only need to fold 333 cranes each and then they can share the wish. Akechi folds three from the paper he's given; after Nyx is sealed, Ryoji tells Akechi that between him and Minato they folded 997 cranes, including the one Ryoji gave to Akechi. Although Akechi doesn't say anything, Ryoji assumes that Akechi folded the last three. Later, when Akechi goes missing in the Midnight Channel, Minato says that Ryoji has been "stress folding cranes".
• Absurdly-Long Limousine: A very downplayed example compared to her limo in canon, but Mitsuru travels to Inaba in a limousine the length of "at least two ordinary cars" to the bafflement of the Investigation Team and teasing from SEES.
• Abusive Parents: Yu assumes Akechi's parents are abusive for having seemingly dumped him in Inaba, and Akechi's dungeon does very little to assuage that (given that it's mostly true, albeit not for non-parent Mitsuru who Yu is initally suspicious of). Yu's own parents are also this mixed with Parental Abandonment, making Akechi's dungeon stressful enough to provoke Yu's shadow.
• Adaptational Early Appearance:
  • Ken becomes one of Akechi's social links in May 2009; around a month earlier than his first cameo in canon, and much earlier than his rise to plot importance.
  • Theodore mentions Margaret and Lavenza to Akechi while he's living in Iwatodai. Lavenza later joins him, Elizabeth, and Akechi on a trip to the aquarium.
  • Akira lives in Inaba, and he and Akechi meet when the latter moves to investigate the serial murder case there.
• Amnesia Missed a Spot: Akechi regains his wiped memories of the Dark Hour very quickly due to how laser-guided the Laser-Guided Amnesia was: he still remembered his time-travel, and it's not hard to figure out something is amiss from there.
• Angsty Surviving Twin: Implied to be the case with Minato. He had a sister, and Theodore says the guest he was supposed to attend died when she was young, suggesting that the female protagonist^note commonly interpreted as Minato's twin based on material like the stageplay existed but died in the Moonlight Bridge accident. She's never named, but Minato talks about her sometimes, like when he suggests building sandcastles at Yakushima or when explaining his hesitation over not killing Ryoji.
• Bag of Spilling: Despite having already awoken to his Persona, Akechi is still confronted by his Shadows upon being thrown inside the TV World. Potentially justified as it's been more than a year since he last summoned his Persona, which would give a sufficient amount of time for his Personas to revert to Shadows during that period of dormancy.
• Beach Episode: SEES' trip to Yakushima, complete with beach volleyball, Operation Friend Hunt, sandcastles, and an Anti-Shadow Suppression Weapon.
• Born as an Adult: Ryoji, who – other than his time as Pharos – started his human life as a teenager. During Akechi's 12th birthday party, he stops to wonder if he Really Was Born Yesterday or if he's Really 700 Years Old, much to Minato's concern.
• Burn Baby Burn:
  • Shinjiro and Akechi set up a bonfire on the dorm roof to burn everything Ikutsuki gave them, only stopping short at their evokers. Akihiko is exasperated, but joins them with a bag of marshmallows.
    Akihiko: I miss Mitsuru.
  • Elizabeth, Akechi, Akihiko, Shinjiro, and the rest of SEES burn as much of Strega's stuff as they can find after Elizabeth and Akihiko figure out their base was in the orphanage that he and Shinjiro lived in as kids from what Akechi mentioned about the place he was kidnapped in.
• Butterfly of Transformation: A black butterfly sometimes watches the Persona-users when there's a chance they'll do something morally dubious; there's one on the window sill on Akechi's first day of class in Iwatodai, and much later there's one watching Yukiko and Yosuke discuss whether Yu could be the killer based on what his shadow said. An All There in the Manual case of Dramatic Irony is in play here: a savvy reader knows that Nyarlathotep is often represented by black butterflies.
• Call-Forward:
  • Akechi recounts a ghost story to Junpei seemingly about the Midnight Channel, having heard it from Akira.
  • Ken calls the new TV replacing the one Akechi broke so big he could fall into it.
  • When Junpei says that he should've shoved Shido harder, Yukari tells him off because Shido could've pressed charges.
• Canon Character All Along: As of this writing, it is all but said that the entity claiming to be Kurusu Tsuyoshi is actually Nyarlathotep disguised as Akira’s actual uncle, if his yellow eyes and his penchant of being disguised as someone else in Persona 2 is any indication.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • The healing items Akechi gives Shinjiro for his birthday later save him from succumbing to his wounds on October 4th.
  • A literal example in Akechi stealing Takaya's revolver. It's fired during Chidori and Akechi's scuffle the night after she learns he has it, non-lethally injuring her shoulder, and again later by Akihiko, accidentally killing Chidori while trying to shoot Takaya.
• Childish Pillow Fight: Akechi chucks a pillow at Shijiro for teasing him about being physically thirteen, which devolves into a full pillow fight between them and Akihiko after Mitsuru leaves.
• Cloudcuckoolander's Minder: Akechi does his absolute best to avoid being embarrassed by Elizabeth and Theodore on their trips outside the room, to mixed success.
  Elizabeth: I wonder if the door requires any offering as a request for its service. That’s what you humans do for those who serve you, is it not?
  Akechi, instantly: That won’t be necessary. The best thing to do is to walk through the doors as silently as possible.
• Continuity Nod: Lavenza asks if the Velvet Room could become an aquarium.
• Deus Exit Machina: After being told of the killer's methods by Akechi, the Shadow Operatives discover they can't enter the TV World and (incorrectly) theorize that it's because they haven't faced their Shadows. This is despite the Shadow Operatives having no issue using their Personas in the TV World during Persona 4: Arena. They could have found and finished the case too quickly if they could, after all.
• Doorstopper: The author says the full story is around 560,000 words total. As of chapter 50, the story is over 300,000 words.
• Elephant in the Living Room: Akechi doesn't know why there's a fox in the TV World, and the Investigation Team have no answers for him.
  Akechi: Why is there a fox?
  Yosuke: Don't question it too much.
  Akechi: What does the fox do with the money?
  Yukiko: We don't really know.
• Evil Uncle: Tsuyoshi, despite his gold eyes and knowledge of various metaverse concepts, claims to be Akira's uncle. Akechi doesn't believe him for even a second.
• First-Name Basis: After Takaya takes to calling Akechi by his first name to frustrate him, Akechi tells Ken and Shinjiro that they can call him Goro so that Takaya isn't the only person who does. Over time, he softens about it for other people as well; by mid-2010, all of SEES call him Goro.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: Akechi gets a scar on his cheek from Jin throwing a knife at him in an attempt to stop his escape. Good guy scar or not, it doesn't stop the Rugged Scar rumor mill at school, and Akechi hardly wants to tell the true story.
• He Knows Too Much: It's implied that Adachi was the person who kidnapped Akechi and threw him into the Midnight Channel shortly after Kanji was rescued, because Akechi correctly guessed that Adachi is the culprit and hoped to get rid of him.
• Innocent Awkward Question: Akechi asks a lot of questions about the "fun hotels" to embarrass Junpei and Yukari. Of course, Akechi knows full well what Love Hotels are, and is only asking to mess with them.
• In Spite of a Nail: In spite of Akechi's time-traveling, SEES' adventure still hits most of The Stations of the Canon to broadly the same outcomes. Even so, Akechi worries that he had an adverse effect on the timeline, not helped by Ikutsuki telling him his help was invaluable as everything turns for the worse in the months following.
• Interface Spoiler: A few of the tags can be used to guess about events before they occur, such as "Shadow Akechi Goro".
• Internal Reveal: Akechi reveals his murders, death, and subsequent time-travel to Shinjiro and Ken during the October full moon, and inadvertently to SEES the next day. Much later, he explains the same set of events to the Investigation Team after his TV World dungeon leaves them with a lot of unanswered questions.
• Joke and Receive: When asked by Adachi if he has any ideas of who could be behind the murders, Akechi suggests it could be Adachi himself with the motive of being bored with life in Inaba, mostly to mess with him. Unbeknownst to Akechi, he just correctly guessed the killer and the motive.
• Last-Name Basis:
  • Akechi calls the other members of SEES by their last names in both dialogue and narration; gradually he moves to First-Name Basis as he grows closer to them, with the occasional switch back when frustrated or betrayed. Similarly, Akechi insists on being called by his last name for most people, to the point of snapping at people who call him Goro without permission.
  • The narration in Akechi's POV during Part 1 also near-exclusively calls Akechi by his last name, with Word of God hinting that it has to do with "how Goro sees himself". By Part 2, Goro is called by his first name in narration, and his shadow is called by his last.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
  • Minato says that Chagall Cafe's coffee "makes you more charming", and visiting the nurse's office gives him courage.
  • Junpei compares Akechi's time-traveling to a New Game Plus. (Akechi admits that there's quite a few similarities.)
  • Akechi and Minato explicitly refer to "ranking up" social links.
• The Lethal Connotation of Guns and Others: Downplayed compared to Persona 3 canon: Takaya's revolver shoots several more people, but only one named character ever succumbs to their wounds.
• Like Father, Like Son: Akechi meets his Shadow after being thrown into the TV world, who takes the form of his 18-year-old self wearing a suit and orange sunglasses reminiscent of Shido's style.
• Loose Floorboard Hiding Spot: Discussed by Junpei and Akechi; when Junpei complains that hiding Takaya's gun under Akechi's bed was too obvious, Akechi retorts that "this isn't a novel" and that he "doesn't have loose floorboards".
• Named by the Adaptation: The protagonists of Persona 3 and 5 are given their names from their respective mangas: Arisato Minato and Kurusu Akira. The Persona 4 protagonist is given his name from the anime and Arena, Narukami Yu.
• No Hero Discount: Yu happily accepts Mitsuru's gift of supplies in favor of saving his wallet, and Akechi quips that all that money could just as easily disappear to compendium summons.
• Noodle Incident: A curious consequence of the fic being mostly Akechi's POV: several moments from canon become noodle incidents by Akechi's lack of presence and unwillingness to ask, such as Minato and Yukari's encounter with the Lovers Arcana shadow, or the "whole mess" at the Kyoto hot springs that Ryoji glosses over.
• Not in Front of the Kid:
  • Yukari shushes Junpei while he's talking about the love hotels, since the allegedly-eleven-year-old Akechi is part of the conversation.
  • Akechi and Shinjiro aren't great at not swearing in front of Nanako; at one point, Akechi wonders whether Dojima or Yu would kill him first for accidentally teaching her swear words.
    Akechi: Oh, fuc–shut up.
    Shinjiro: Great job, dumbass. You were really made to be around children.
    Akechi: You’re doing a fantastic job of it yourself.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted. Minato sees that he can fuse what seems to be Akechi’s persona Loki, asking Akechi why he can do that. It turns out to be a completely separate persona different from Akechi’s that happened to share a name.
• Offscreen Romance: Minato and Ryoji are this mixed with a downplayed case of Implied Love Interest. They're never explicitly shown to have a romantic relationship, but the tags include "Implied Mochizuki Ryoji/Persona 3 Protagonist", they spend a long time upstairs on the day Ryoji comes to hear SEES' answer about fighting Nyx, and Minato returns wearing Ryoji's ring.
• Original Generation: Yamamoto Emiko, a Genki Girl who sits next to Akechi at Gekkoukan Elementary School and serves as his Strength Arcana social link. She acts as a Foil to Akechi and Ken, highlighting their Troubling Unchildlike Behavior with her far brighter outlook.
• Peggy Sue: The premise of the story is that Akechi time-travels eight years back into his ten-year-old self. Unlike most examples, as he never joined S.E.E.S. and the Investigation Team in the original timeline, he knows as much as the other characters and can be caught off-guard. For example, he does not know Ikutsuki’s true motives nor does he know who the killer is.
• Queer Establishing Moment: Akechi doesn't mince words about the fact that he's gay, very bluntly coming out when the situation calls for it. In the mean time though, he's more concerned with the fact that he's eight years behind his mental age, justifying Have I Mentioned I Am Gay?.
  Akechi: First of all, I am eleven and have no interest in romance at the moment. Second of all, even if I were interested in romance, I have no romantic feelings toward Amada-kun. Third of all, yes, I like boys. Don’t be weird about it, Iori.
• Reckless Pacifist: The Investigation Team only realize the level of danger they were putting their rescuees in after Akechi explains his backstory and tells them that killing a person's shadow kills them in real life.
• Relationship Values: After certain scenes where Akechi spends time with his social links, the numerical value of the rank is shown. Minato and Akechi lampshade this:
  Akechi: But, while we're being honest with each other, I have to ask: you only wanted to hang out with me to rank up my social link, correct?
  Minato: [shamelessly nods] I was bored.
• Remember That You Trust Me: Akechi doesn't trust anyone (or says he doesn't, anyway), but he's still building rapport with SEES enough to be upset when betrayed. Shinjiro, Mitsuru, and Takeharu try to remind him life without trusting anyone is a miserable thing.
• Rugged Scar: An In-Universe example from Akechi's classmates, who see his cheek scar and assume he's some sort of delinquent who lost a gang fight.
• Sarcastic Confession: After a conversation with Akechi where he correctly guessed (albeit as an attempt at trolling) both Adachi's identity as the murderer and his motive, Adachi sarcastically notes that "It's not my fault that nothing happens in this town. Except for the occasional murder, obviously."
• Saying Too Much: Akechi does this when stressed, like when he describes himself as having more combat experience than most of SEES, or when he blurts out the truth about his time-travel to the rest of SEES having assumed they had already heard from Shinjiro and Ken. It usually gets caught by Mitsuru or another member of SEES.
• Scarily Specific Story: Akechi adds some thinly veiled threats to the ghost story he tells Junpei, saying the boy didn't like the teenager because she "kept telling terrible ghost stories to people who didn't want to hear them".
  Junpei: Akechi is kind of scary. He just told me a really creepy ghost story, and I think he was implying that people like me get killed and turn into ghosts that haunt televisions.
• Secretly Dying: Played with in the aftermath of the Great Seal being cast. While it's ultimately subverted, Minato and Ryoji spend most of the month before the rest of SEES remember exhausted all the time from the strain, and Aigis and Akechi are understandably frustrated when Ryoji explains this on March 5th, since an unexplained death would have been worse.
• Seen It All: After Junpei learns Chidori was going to kill him, he considers that he'd previously also learned that Akechi is a time-traveling former hitman and that Ken was planning on killing Shinjiro, and decides that it isn't all that surprising.
• Sidelined Protagonist Crossover: Downplayed with Minato. The story primarily follows Akechi and the people and social links he interacts with, but Minato is still doing all of his own protagonist things in the background and off-screen.
• Sleep Paralysis Creature: Minato explains to a baffled and more than a little concerned Akechi that the conversation he was having in his room in the middle of the night was with Pharos, his sleep paralysis demon. It's only discussed though; Pharos isn't actually a sleep paralysis demon.
• Socially Awkward Hero: Minato may be SEES' Wildcard-wielding field leader, but he'll phone-call Akechi to ask if he wants to go to the movies because knocking on his door is "awkward", or feel the need to "fill the silence" with his kidnapper, or near-literally run away from Ryoji flirting with him.
• Spared by the Adaptation:
  • Potentially downplayed by Shinjiro, who doesn't die on October 4th but says he has at most two years left thanks to his use of persona suppressants.
  • Ultimately averted by Chidori, who still dies in a skirmish with Strega despite the altered circumstances.
  • Played straight by Minato and Ryoji, with the latter getting spat out by the Nyx Avatar then helping with the Great Seal to save the former.
• The Stakeout: The Investigation Team ineffectually stakeout Marukyu Tofu after Rise appears on the Midnight Channel: they're joined by Adachi stuck on babysitting/cilantro-buying duty, they pace back and forth in front of the shop until Akechi gets them an alibi in the form of sitting and eating ice-cream, they get massively distracted by the first suspicious passerby looking into the store, and by the time Akechi convinces everyone (sans Adachi) that the stalker is just a stalker, Rise has disappeared.
• Standard Female Grab Area: Rare Male Example; both times Akechi is kidnapped, he's initially grabbed by the shoulder. Downplayed by him still struggling (if ineffectually) after being grabbed, and justified by Tsuyoshi being supernaturally strong and the Midnight Channel kidnapper immediately drugging him.
• Superman Stays Out of Gotham: The Shadow Operatives discover that they are ultimately unable to enter the TV World after traveling to Inaba following Akechi's abduction and subsequent rescue by the Investigation Team.
• Supernatural Gold Eyes: Tsuyoshi immediately sets off Akechi's suspicion because of his yellow eyes, similar to those of shadows or the Velvet attendants.
• Tarot Motifs: Very common for a Persona work. Invoked by Akechi, who takes to the library to research the major Arcana and what they mean about the people he's met following the establishment of his first few social links.
• Time Skip: Chapter 43 skips ahead a year, from June 2010 to June 2011 and the events of Persona 4.
• Titled After the Song: The fic is named after the song that plays while fighting Maruki in Persona 5 Royal.
• Tragic Keepsake:
  • Chidori gives Junpei the necklace she bought for him as she dies.
  • Ryoji brings max social link presents for Akechi and Minato; the scarf he planned to give Minato for the former, and the ring he wore for the latter. Ultimately subverted as Ryoji was Spared by the Adaptation.
• Trauma Button:
  • Akechi's Trauma Conga Line gives him several: having a gun pointed at him reminds him of his death, and water reminds him of the Lovers shadow's brainwashing; not to mention that the bathtub incident in itself reminded him of finding his mother's body in the bathtub. Shido also causes him to freak out, with Akechi running off from SEES' celebration dinner when he first establishes his (very unwanted) social link with him, throwing his book at the TV hard enough to break it when Shido appears on it, or hitting Elizabeth with Theodore's clipboard for saying Shido is important to him.
  • Akihiko says that Akechi being held at gunpoint reminded him of being unable to help his sister, which was one of the reasons why he was angry at Akechi keeping his knowledge of Strega a secret.
  • Akechi's Midnight Channel dungeon and the Investigation Team's assumptions about him trigger Yu's abandonment issues enough to manifest his shadow while they're trying to rescue Akechi.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior:
  • Zig-zagged by Akechi. Various characters read him as being worryingly mature, but he doesn't act like the eleven-year-old he appears as because he isn't one.
  • Ken, as usual, but he and Akechi seem all the more worse off when contrasted with Emiko.
• Trust Password: Played for Laughs; when Akechi tries to figure whether Shinjiro is a real person or a cognition, he asks him to tell him something he's never told anyone:
  Akechi: Tell me something only you would know. Something you’ve never told anyone.
  Shinjiro: Fine, fine. I really like cooking.
  Akechi: Are you playing with me?
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Emiko reacts to Akechi telling her about the Dark Hour after Strega tries to kill her by deciding to go to bed.
• Unwitting Test Subject: While the six-year-old Mitsuru was somewhat aware of what was happening, she only knew she had "potential" and didn't understand what her grandfather was researching or what she was needed for.
• Your Days Are Numbered: Shinjiro's use of persona supressants greatly shortens his lifespan; when he reveals that he's dying in late 2009, he estimates he has maybe two years left, and by mid-2011 he's noticeably weaker.
• You Have No Idea Who You're Dealing With: Used by Tsuyoshi when Akechi brushes off his taunts in January.

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