The direction were a trick, the party was ambushed!

They knew something was wrong the instant Morgana busted through the brick wall in the black recesses of Mementos. Packs of Shadows began swarming in from all sides. Their retreat was blocked by an equally large wave up the corridor they had just traversed.

"This is bad..." Ann muttered to herself.

"You don't know the half of it!" A nearly identical voice came from the shadows, affecting a higher lilt than Ann and sounding a bit more vacant.

Ann's draw dropped as a doppleganger of herself emerged, scantily dressed in purple high heels, incredibly sheer leopard print black on purple bikini, and wearing a jeweled crown stylized into cat ears.

"Y-you?" Ann stammered.

"Isn't that the cognition from Kamoshida's Palace? Shouldn't she be...dead? Or vanished, or whatever?" Ryuji asked.

"Yeah. This doesn't make sense."

"Who are you? Why do you look like that bastard's twisted fantasy of me?" Ann spat out.

"Didn't you hear? I'm King Kamoshida's princess! You were so mean to him! How could you treat a king like that?"

"That sick son of a bitch was never a king to anything except his own ego! How...how are you even here?" Ann snapped back.

"It was scary! The castle was breaking and falling! So I ran! I ran and ran and ran and ran and then I stopped. And I wasn't in the castle anymore. I was here."

"....You found a backdoor into Mementos from the Palace? That...may be possible. This reality probably could sustain a refuge from a destroyed Palace, even a cognition. But stumbling from one Metaverse realm into another by dumb luck seems way too coincidental. Something brought you here..." Morgana speculated.

"Maybe? But who cares!" The cognition asked, brandishing a large bullwhip similar to Ann's weapon of choice.

"....What are you doing?" Ann asked.

"Don't you remember? King Kamoshida pronounced the sentence for your impudence earlier...right before you stabbed me! RUDE! But as the sole survivor of his court, I must carry out his will. You are to be cut to pieces, one bit at a time!"

The Phantom thieves readied for combat, but the shadows swarmed around them, separating Ann from the group. With a wicked grin her slutty alter ego snapped the whip. To Ann's shock, the crack created a long slash in her costume but left the naked flesh beneath untouched.

"Buuuuut that doesn't sound very nice. Getting cut up and killed wasn't very much fun, you know! Annnnd my King never TECHNICALLLLLLY never said to cut your body into tiny pieces, even though I think he probably wanted to do that, too. But all he said for sure is he wanted to cut your clothes to pieces first, so I'll avenge him by doing that! One piece at a time, your gonna be nakies and helpless! And no worries! I know you naughty thieves have cool transformy powers and normal real world clothes hidden under those costumes! We'll make sure those get torn up too. We wouldn't want you going back to the real world if you aren't 100% bare ass naked!"

Ann's eye twitched.