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Fanfic / Oh Alice, There's no Reflection in the Looking Glass

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Key art illustrated by the author (intothefrisson)
What do you mean?” Ryuji tilted his head.
“It’s called Just Die. It reduces the SP needed for Insta kill skills like Mudoon or 'Please Die for Me' to zero.”
Ryuji and Ann blinked and blinked again trying to figure out what Morgana is trying to say. He watched as the gears churn in their head and they come to an epiphany, their faces growing horrified at the implications.
“Wait, you are saying. Joker can insta-kill literally everything in this palace. WITHOUT using SP at all?!” Ryuji clarified in astonishment because there is no way there isn’t a catch to this. “Without repercussion?!”
“Yes. That is exactly what I’m saying.”
Oh Alice, There's no Reflection in the Looking Glass, Chapter 2

Kurusu Akira is strange. Sometimes he seems carefree and other times, he is a dependable leader. Albeit reckless. And yet, he seems to know more than he lets on and sometimes, some of the things he says and acts are often contradictory to each other. The Phantom Thieves can't make heads or tails about what to think about him and their suspicion of him grows.

Oh Alice, There's no Reflection in the Looking Glass is a Persona 5 New Game Plus Time travel AU story written by intothefrisson which can be found in AO3 here. The story was published in 2020 and has been completed as of March 14 2023.

The author has also done animations and illustrations for the story which has been complied in her twitter here.


Oh Alice, There's no Reflection in the Looking Glass contains the following tropes:

  • Adapted Out: Except for Jose, Maruki and Kasumi are the only Royal introduced characters who are not included in the story and the third semester is omitted out of the story entirely.
  • Adaptational Angst Upgrade: Poor Akira gets through this in one way or another in a long Trauma Conga Line such as feeling part of his soul being torn away and destroyed during each fusion via guillotine, unadressed trauma of his childhood from neglectful parents and survivors guilt due to having to see everyone he cared and loved for disappear right in front of his eyes... and then sent back right at the beginning of his journey shortly after.
  • Alice Allusion: All over the story with the Wonderland allegories and Alice being Akira's most commonly used Persona to a point of being his Signature Persona instead of Arsene due to the time travel elements. Akira's Palace is also ridden with Alice in Wonderland references, albeit with negative meanings instead of the whimsical examples of the trope. The real Akira in his childhood is also represented by Alice the Persona in his Palace.
  • Ambiguous Ending: The Epilogue Video is intended to be such by the author so the readers can interpret how Akira's journey ultimately ended. However, the Epilogue video is majorly interpreted as Akira reaching a Bittersweet Ending where despite having finally defeated Yaldabaoth for good, Akira is sent back in time again in another New Game Plus with a photo of the thieves on a road trip in March before sending Akira back home to Inaba on his phone. However, hope is not lost. Akira now knows the truth of his journey and what it is that he needed to do to solve it all once more. Additionally, he also received a message from an unknown number, implied to be a time traveling Akechi, contacting him so Akira isn't alone to face the journey and its hurdles anymore.
  • Ascended Extra: Jose, who can only be interacted with in Mementos in Persona 5 Royal and served as an Optional Boss in the Third Semester, plays a major role as he interacts with Akira and eventually, the rest of his confidants over the course of the story.
  • Be Careful What You Wish For: In a flashback of Akira's past in his Palace, Akira once wished that he would actually be featured and brought into the Midnight Channel so he could have friends. A few years and a time loop later, Akira survived his Heroic Sacrifice by being brought into a copy of the Midnight Channel dungeon via Mementos as his Palace and didn't have a fun experience with it.
  • Big Brother Worship: Shinya greatly admired Akira and in the scenes he appeared in, he shows a lot of admiration for him when mentioned. Jose also admires Akira to an extent due to Akira telling him a lot about humans.
  • Broken Ace: Akira, in virtue of New Game Plus, is the strongest member among the phantom thieves and with a maxed stat, he would be considered a true ace and jack of all trades. However, Akira is also hiding lots of emotional baggage from the Trauma Conga Line that he suffered in the first timeline and tries to hide them through jokes and lots of disassociation.
  • Butterfly of Doom: Akira, in an effort to try and proceed to go through the year in Tokyo, tried to fix things such as having the thieves interact with Akechi and doing things solo. However, his lack of transparency over this led to the thieves suspecting that he is Shido's assassin and later lambast him for it, among some of the unintended consequences that he made. Because of this, Okumura still got killed, but Shido pretends that it was Akechi's doing when in reality, Shido had someone else to do the job. Akira not wanting to address the elephant in the room that was Yaldabaoth due to not having the knowledge that Yaldabaoth has taken over the Velvet Room left him distrustful and refuse to venture deeper into Memento's depths, that it took finding Akira's Midnight channel-esque Palace for the thieves to learn Akira's deal.
  • Cassandra Truth: Due to the Velvet Room being invisible to anyone but the Wild Cards, Ryuji, Morgana, Ann, Yusuke and Makoto treat Akira's talk of the Velvet Room as this. Only Akechi, who had been visited by Margaret would believe him but since Akira has yet to speak of Velvet Room again to anyone else since, he didn't speak of it and the thieves only finally see that Akira had been telling the truth when they see Akira's memory of the painful first "Fusion" process in Akira's Palace.
  • Chekhov's Gun: Akira invited Akechi to the Yongenjaya bathhouse and gifted Akechi a cheap ring that is part of the bath bomb set that he bought. Akechi used the ring to get to Akira's Velvet Room.
  • Cool Big Bro: Akira has the admiration of Jose and Shinya who both think he's cool and taught them a lot of things. Akira himself is very fond of the two.
  • Crossover Cameo: From Persona 4, Margaret makes a return as Akechi's attendant and Yu appears in a memory of Akira's past before later showing up in person to give Akira a pep talk that will motivate him to finally move forward.
  • Dramatic Irony:
    • After noticing how some details about Akira don't add up, the thieves grew suspicious of Akira to a point that they thought he was the Metaverse assassin that Madarame mentioned. The actual assassin was Akechi, not Akira.
    • After the Cassandra Truth moment with Ryuji, Ann, Yusuke, Makoto and Morgana, Akira rarely mentioned the Velvet Room again... except Akechi later gets his own Velvet Room with Margaret as his assistant and he would have believed in Akira about it if Akira actually spoke about it.
    • In Akira's palace, a memory shows Akira! Alice touching the TV and wonder if he could have friends if he showed up in the Midnight channel. Considering that you are brought to a personalized dungeon based on your insecurities and hidden fears and had to face your shadow lest you are at risk of being killed by them if you show up in the Midnight Channel, this is a very bad idea.
  • Deconstruction Fic: To time loop and New Game Plus esque stories in Persona 5 fanworks. While most stories had Joker taking the situation as well as he could while trying to save as many lives as he can, Oh Alice shows how mentally draining and suffering it can be on Akira due to Akira being brought back in time from one of the most traumatic events of his year in Tokyo and unlike similar stories, Akira didn't get to confront or realize that Yaldabaoth has been posing as the fake Igor at all. As a result Akira didn't take being brought back in time well that he had spent several loops being depressed before he decided to move forward to try anyway, but Akira moves forward in a manner that is self-destructive on Akira himself as Akira tries to ignore all the trauma that is piling up on his mind.
  • Despair Event Horizon: Before the current time loop, Akira spent several loops in perpetual despair over being erased and failing to defeat the Holy Grail the first time to a point of being a Death Seeker.
  • Doorstopper: As of completion, the story has approximately around 496,000 words total.
  • Flower Motifs: During the Fireworks festival, Akira showed up with a Yukata that has Begonia and Red Spider lily flower motifs in its design. Begonia's are known to symbolize harmonious communication and individuality... but its more well known for its negative connotations as a warning of misfortune, dark thoughts and a sign to be cautious. Red Spider lillies, on the other hand, are flowers that are commonly associated with death due to not only commonly growing near graveyards, they also represent final goodbyes. They represent Akira's thoughts about his time looping and how he felt that he lost a part of himself when he and the rest of the thieves are erased in the first timeline and how the current iteration of his friends are like ghosts to him.
  • Foreshadowing:
    • When Ryuji, Ann and Morgana asked about Arsene after they saw Alice, Akira disassociated from the question. We later learn that Akira had traumatic flashbacks of the first time he fused Arsene and Pixie via the Guillotine.
    • In Chapter 6, Chihaya gave Akira a fortune reading with the Reversed Wheel of Fortune, Two and Ten of Swords before explaining what they mean. Chihaya accidentally saw through Akira's struggle with his time traveling through her tarot reading, all of which gets elaborated on when the thieves explored his Palace.
    • Akira doesn't like visiting Mementos unless necessary or to see Jose and he also avoided going over a particular section in the Shibuya station square. Akira knew what is actually waiting at the Depths of Mementos due to his time travel and he see's the section in the Shibuya station square as where he and the rest of the thieves died and last disappear from reality.
    • During the fireworks Festival, Akira showed up with a Yukata that had Begonia and Red spider lily flowers in its design. When spoken to, Haru admits that she was initially against Akira wearing it due to her familiarity of Hanakotoba before conceding to let Akira wear it. This later symbolized Akira's true feelings and the nature of his Palace as those flowers are famously known for their negative connotations.
    • Akira slowly lost his Persona starting from Arsene. Akira's disassociation cause him to reject parts of his soul and self and culminated to Arsene becoming Akira's Shadow in his Palace.
  • Heel–Face Turn: A combination of Akira engineering events to get Akechi to befriend the rest of the thieves and Akira unintentionally making himself suspicious to the thieves and mistaken to be the Metaverse Assassin has Akechi fully joining the thieves as an ally.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: Akira is the one to get the life boat for their escape instead of Ryuji and didn't make it out... or so it seemed until the thieves enter Mementos and found Akira's Palace in the Metaverse space.
  • Hero-Worshipper: Akira, coming from Inaba in this story, had met Yu from a distance and greatly admired him for the things he did to the people of Inaba and wanted to be like him before he was sent to Tokyo for his probation.
  • Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Until chapters that focus on the thieves exploring Akira's palace and rescuing him, and the epilogue, the rest of the chapters are named by sentences that summarized the chapter in some way, going "The one where Akira tries to get Ryuji to commit jailbreak " and so on.
  • Intergenerational Friendship: The story includes extra interactions and friendships between confidants such as Shinya with Iwai.
  • I Just Want to Have Friends: After seeing how everyone rescued from the Midnight Channel becomes friends with Yu, Akira wishes to have friends of his own like Yu did and his biggest wish was to have more time with the friends he made in Tokyo. He also wished that he could be friends with Yu in the past.
  • Jerkass Realization: Akechi called the thieves (Sans Haru) out for being so sure in convicting Akira for being the Metaverse Assassin when they refuse to hear his side of the story and call them out to be no different than the people who falsely convicted Akira in the first place. While the thieves eventually comes around to apologize and give Akira another chance, Makoto took longer to do so.
  • Leaning on the Fourth Wall: After learning about Yaldabaoth taking over the Velvet Room, Futaba says how it felt like they are close to the ending of a RPG Game.
    Futaba: Seriously, feels like the ending to some JRPG.
  • Locked Out of the Loop: Due to the thieves distrust on Akira due to his actions beforehand, Akira only told Akechi about the canonical Gambit Roulette to trick Shido of Akira's death. The rest of Akira's confidants and fellow thieves had spent a few days believing he actually died until Akira finally informed them of his survival.
  • Meaningful Echo:
    • Early in the story, Akira outright said to Ryuji that he'd die for Ryuji's sake. After they finally defeated Shido and the palace is collapsing, Akira did just that. Though thankfully, his Heroic Sacrifice didn't take.
  • Mythology Gag:
    • In Sae's Palace, the fake name Akira suggested to Futaba for his Casino card is "Amamiya Ren". Amamiya Ren is Joker's canonical name from the Anime which gets officialized in future media releases.
    • Akira's Palace works similarly like the Midnight Channel dungeons in Persona 4 than the traditional Palace's in Persona 5.
  • New Game Plus: Essentially the nature of Akira's time travel due to having Alice, Yoshitsune and Kaguya Picaro as part of his main fighters. Except unlike most examples of stories in this nature, Akira is brought back in time after he and his friends were erased from reality by Yaldabaoth, but without actually confronting the fake Igor in the Velvet Room and make the Velvet twins remember their true identity as Lavenza, and he is still traumatized from the experience.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Akira's flightiness and habit of withholding crucial information ends up making the rest of his friends suspicious that Akira is the Black Mask (Who is Akechi himself) which comes to a blow when Akira skipping the Hawaii trip due to food poisoning and then going to Mementos solo to see Jose around the time Kobayakawa was killed by Akechi happened at the same time and point all suspicion onto Akira himself, splintering the group.
  • "Not So Different" Remark: After Akira was rescued from his Palace, he later met Yu, whom he admired from afar due to his friend group and achievements in his childhood and when Yu started talking about how and why he arrived in Inaba at first, Akira realized that the man he admired for years isn't so different from him after all.
  • Parental Neglect: Akira's parents are emotionally neglectful and in one instance of memory in Akira's Palace, they call Akira to be overreacting over a scooter crash, this only fueled the loneliness of his childhood and he even selfishly admitted that he was actually happy to leave Inaba because it means he doesn't have to talk with or stay around his emotionally neglectful parents for any longer.
  • Pet the Dog: Akechi could’ve joined in on the rest of the Phantom Thieves (except for Haru) on accusing Joker of being the Metaverse Assassin to keep his identity a secret, but instead opted to defend him from them, calling them out for refusing to listen to his side of the story and making them no better than the people who framed Akira.
  • Poor Communication Kills: Akira had a bad habit of witholding some information out of the thieves and went solo on his own once in a while. This comes to a blow when Kobayakawa is killed by Akechi around the same time that he went to Mementos and the rest of the thieves suspect and fully convict Akira to be the Metaverse assassin. Akira also didn't tell the thieves about his time traveling until they enter his Palace and in his defense, he knew that it would sound impossible and hard to believe and when Akira finally admits it to them, the other thieves, Akechi included, couldn't fully begrudge him for it after seeing Akira's memories.
  • Psychic Nosebleed: Overusing the Third Eye has this side effect on Akira.
  • She Is Not My Girlfriend: Morgana gets along with a cat named Snowflake living in Yongenjaya and when pointed out by Futaba, Morgana's reaction is to vehemently deny it.
  • Ship Tease: Akechi/Akira is the major ship that is heavily teased but there are also small hints peppered in others.
  • Shout-Out:
    • Among Us is referenced at several points with one chapter having an illustration of Morgana pressing the "Discussion" button to talk with the thieves about their thoughts of Akira's actions. Chapter 18 also ends with a similar line from the game where the thieves react to Akira's "suicide".
    Akira was NOT the imposter.
    • Near the finale, Futaba and Ryuji had one to NieR: Automata when discussing how to restore reality after Yaldabaoth is banished from the Velvet Room now that he is exposed.
    Futaba: By any anime or video game logic, defeating the big baddie at the end is a definite way to fix things! We just have to kick ass and save the world!
    Ryuji: Clearly you haven't played Nier Automata...
    Futaba: Really, Ryuji? Are we going there? That's what you choose to compare this to?
  • Stepford Smiler: Akira spent a majority of the story all smiles and jokey but is revealed to be hurting from the failure of his previous timeline on top of the trauma of his childhood with emotionally neglectful parents, and when he first realized that he time traveled, he didn't take it well and went through several loops of Despair Event Horizons before deciding to try and reform the Phantom thieves.
  • Title Drop: The fic's title was quoted in Chapter 25 via Akira! Alice in Akira's palace.
    Akira! Alice: I hardly even recognize myself in the looking glass anymore. What good is a looking glass of the reflection that isn't even your own? Oh, Alice, there's no reflection in the looking glass because the person you see looking back isn't you.
  • Took a Level in Jerkass: Most of the thieves went under this due to Akira's poor communication (Though they eventually had a Jerkass Realization through Akechi and gave Akira another chance) but Makoto had the harshest reaction among the thieves to Akira acting on his own and gave him the hardest time due to his supposed "betrayal" and suspected of being the Black Mask. Akechi calling her out for being alike to Sae more than she realize and then Akira's "death" via the interrogation was how Makoto finally eased up from her antagonism of Akira for his actions.
  • Trauma Conga Line: Akira doesn't have the greatest childhood with emotionally neglectful parents and a Friendless Background that left him yearning for friends and even though he is still falsely convicted by Shido, Akira admits that part of him felt happy to be away from Inaba. And then there's everything that Persona 5 canon has put him through and Akira completely breaks as he saw his allies disappear one by one due to Yaldabaoth's machinations after they failed to defeat him the first time... and then he went back to the start of his arrival in Tokyo at April 9 and didn't take it well for several loops before finally putting his act together to reform the Phantom Thieves in the current timeline.
  • Unishment: Adventuring on Akira's Palace has the thieves learn that Akira actually saw his probation to Tokyo as this very trope despite his initial hesitation to interfere. Akira was actually glad that he doesn't have to stay and deal with his neglectful parents or stay stuck in Inaba any longer.
  • Wham Episode:
    • Chapter 11 ends with Futaba seeing the news of Kobayakawa's murder and with all the clues they could find pointing to Akira to be the suspect in the Thieves point of view and him happening to be leaving on his own to the Metaverse, Futaba made a call to the thieves.
    • Chapter 18 ends with the Thieves reacting to Akira's "Suicide" live the day after the heist in Sae's Palace.
  • Wham Line:
    Futaba: No, uh, something happened, and Akira isn't going to make it to Hawaii.
    • In Chapter 23, after Akira is supposedly dead from his Heroic Sacrifice, Akechi heard the unplugged analog TV in Akira's attic room turn on and hear a sound coming out.
    "Good evening, ladies and gentlemen!"
    • Akira!Alice touches the blank TV screen after looking longingly after the Investigation team and said this as the reflection of Alice changes to that of a young Akira, hinting to one of the causes for Akira's palace to form.
    “If I ended up on that channel too….” Alice muttered quietly as she talked to herself, “If I ended up on that channel like I was supposed to, would I make friends too?”
  • What the Hell, Hero?:
    • Akira's action and leaving the thieves out of the loop about going to Mementos on his own and them suspecting that Akira is the Black Mask has Akira be on the receiving end of this from them (Sans Haru and Akechi) and it took a while for the thieves to give Akira another chance.
    • Akechi blasted at the thieves and especially Makoto who Took a Level in Jerkass over their suspicion of Akira being the black mask and not let Akira himself speak up, calling them to be no better than the people accusing Akira for a crime he never committed. Makoto took a while to actually give Akira another chance due to her own personal gripes and feeling that Akira doesn't see her as an equal for his lack of transparency regarding his actions.
    • Once he finally made his resolve of rebellion clear in the finale, Akira lambasted at Caroline and Justine for claiming the guillotine fusion to be helping his rehabilitation when it felt more like ripping parts of his soul away hence his traumatic reaction when Arsene and Pixie are first fused. This gets to them and Margaret calling them out for being fooled by Yaldabaoth and forsaking humanity in the process was all that it needed for Caroline and Justine to remember their true duty and identity as Lavenza.
  • You Wouldn't Believe Me If I Told You: Akira is so used to not having his own voice heard that he didn't tell anything about his time traveling to the thieves, the suffering he went through and also left out some crucial information about it from them. After seeing Akira's memories in his Palace, the Phantom Thieves admit that they didn't exactly have a good record of listening to Akira before.

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