"Sure, why not?" Joker grins. 

When they next duck into a side room, she tears off the mask of one of the shadows that's waiting there.

It struggles at first, trying to fight her off, but with Skull's help pulling it down and a gust of wind from Mona, Joker can pin the guard and rip the mask free.

It shifts into a Jack O'Lantern. "Eep! Don't kill me!"

Joker keeps her dagger back. "I'm not going to kill you."

"They really could be anything under the masks, huh?"

Mona nods. "They're all just echoes of spirits from the sea of souls, copied in here by Shadow Kamoshida to staff the Palace."

"What do you want?"

"I'd like help taking down Kamoshida, if you were willing to lend me your strength."

"S'better than dispersing!"

It melts down into a blur of light and flows into her mask.

"Huh. Okay." Joker gets up from where she's been crouching on the ground and stretches. 

"Let's keep it up."

Clover smiles. "At this rate you're going to get super strong super fast."

"Yeah, hopefully."

And on they can go to ambush another shadow or two. Joker's going to take opportunities to strip the shadows of their masks when she's safe to do so.

She manages to acquire an Angel and a Bicorn, giving her access to Bless and Wind, on top of the Curse, Electric, and Fire she already had from Julie, Pixie, and Jack O'Lantern.

Once the guards are cleared out, the team has a moment to notice some books have been pulled partly out of the bookshelves in the rooms. They seem a bit incongruous for the shelves they're in, too: a book about a king in a bookcase full of books about the Shujin girls, a book about slaves in a shelf about training and building muscle, a book about beefcake in the section on the boys volleyball team, and a book about queens in a section on Kamoshida's triumphs and his life.

If she thinks like Kamoshida... 

The king comes first. Then comes the queen. Then everyone else is a slave. 

She tries pushing in those three books in that order.

If that doesn't work, she'll try organizing the books so that the book on beefcake goes with the muscle building, the book about a king goes with Kamoshida's triumphs, the book on slaves goes with the boys' volleyball team, and the book about queens on the bookcase about Shujin girls.

That angel earlier was blatantly in bondage. It feels like this is starting to be kind of a theme. 

Relocating the books does the trick. Once Joker puts all three in place, one of the bookshelves swings out, revealing a small hidden staircase.

"Nice. On up we go."

Joker leads as they go up the stairs. 

"Whatever's up here must be important."

"Yeah."

At the top of the stairs, they find a group of eight shadows guarding a door that looks like something out of a strip club.

Joker frowns, staying out of sight on the landing below. "Tough fight, but I want to see what's on the other side of that door. I'll lead with Julie and my dagger, the rest of you follow." 

She gives the countdown, then darts forward, ripping off her mask as she closes to call Julie then following up with her dagger. 

Why does everyone else get cool powers and not her? 

Ann supports with her Tkachev, careful not to fire too close to Joker. 

Skull beats down a guard and tears off his mask to have Captain Kidd blast lightning through two guards in a line, the second one having been trying to sneak around the side of the group and attack Ann.

Mona shuts down another guard's advance with Zorro's wind, and stabs a nearby guard with their cutlass.