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Chapter Text

Goro walked calmly down towards the interrogation room, a smirk on his face as he approached the door. He had finally done it. The leader of the Phantom Thieves had been captured, and was seconds away from being removed from the game. Ren had proved himself quite the worthy opponent, someone who had captivated his interest and attention in a way that almost nobody else had in a long time. He was honestly one of the very few people in this fucked up world that he actually gave a damn about, although he would never admit it.

But that wouldn’t stop him from removing Ren from the game. Not when he was so close to carrying out his plan, to toppling Masayoshi Shido just when he was about to reach the pinnacle of his glory. The piece of human filth would pay for everything he had done to him and his mother, and compared to that goal of fulfilling his revenge, nothing else mattered. Not even one of his only friends.

Akechi approached the interrogation room door, where the security guard was waiting. “May I ask that you accompany me?” he asked, in his well-crafted and polite Detective Prince voice. “Going in unarmed to interrogate a murderer makes me feel uncomfortable.”

The security guard nodded and opened the door to let them both in. The moment he had closed the door behind them, Akechi grabbed the guard’s gun out of his pocket and shot him in the chest, his corpse falling to the floor before he could say another word.

“Nice shot,” a voice commented. The only other person in the room.

Akechi turned to face the owner of his voice. Ren was sitting at the table, looking at him with mild amusement in his eyes. He looked bruised and battered, but was surprisingly calm and collected for someone who had just seen someone get murdered in front of his eyes. “I knew you were coming, Goro. And I know what you’re here to do.”

“Really, now?” Akechi replied coolly. “So you already know that you’re seconds away from meeting the Reaper?”

“Of course I knew,” Ren answered with a smirk. “We knew that you were a traitor from the very beginning. And we even had a plan to save me from your assassination attempt.” He looked around the room, raising his arms with a shrug. “Though clearly that part didn’t work out,” he commented nonchalantly.

Akechi’s eyes narrowed. Something was wrong, something he was missing. Ren seemed entirely too composed and jovial for someone who was about to die. “I suppose I owe you some thanks,” Akechi replied with a sneer, masking his uncertainty. “You and your little friends were vital to our plan. And now it will be completed.”

“I suppose we were,” Ren replied, not breaking his composure for a second. “But when you say “our” plan, do you really mean “our” plan…or “my” plan?”

Goro’s eyes widened ever so slightly. The question…it implied that he knew that he had his own agenda from Masayoshi Shido and his conspiracy. But there was no way Ren could possibly know about that. How could he? He had never once revealed anything about Shido to Ren…and there was absolutely no reason for the leader of the Phantom Thieves to be aware of anything other than the bare essentials about his existence.

“I know what you’re here to do,” Ren continued, “but before you get on with it…why don’t you sit down and we can have one last chat? Just for old time’s sake?”

Akechi allowed a sneer to appear on his face. “So you can try and convince me to spare your life?” he replied smugly. “It’s not going to work.”

“I beg to disagree, but either way, I might as well try,” Ren replied. “As you so clearly showed me just now, you’re armed with a lethal weapon. If you get bored of our conversation, or if you so much as think that I will try to fight back, then you can shoot me at any time. The cameras are off, so it’s not like they’re going to see anything. You’re in complete control of the situation, so what’s the harm in having a little talk?”

Akechi carefully considered Ren’s words. He didn’t have an unlimited amount of time; Shido would be expecting confirmation of Ren’s death soon. But everything Ren said was true; he could kill the teen at any point and be done with it. He was the one with the gun, after all.

…so why didn’t it feel like he was the one in control?

“I suppose I can entertain a dead man’s last request,” Akechi conceded, sitting down at the table where Sae had earlier. “But I would suggest you make it worth my time if you want to prolong your life by what few seconds I’m willing to grant you. And if you make even the slightest of sudden moves towards me,” he pointed his gun at Ren’s head. “You’re dead.”

Ren nodded. “Fair enough,” he easily agreed. “We don’t have a lot of time to waste, so I’m going to start by saying this.” He looked Goro straight in the eyes. “Your plan to destroy Masayoshi Shido isn’t going to work, Goro.”

This time, Akechi couldn’t stop himself from showing his surprise openly. “What the fuck?” he gaped.

“I know all about you, Goro,” Ren continued, his tone oddly…sympathetic? Understanding? The reason why became abundantly clear a few seconds later “I know that Masayoshi Shido is your father, if we can even call that pathetic excuse for a sperm donor a father. I know that he abandoned your mother and left her in such a messed up state that she committed suicide, and that you were tossed around from shitty foster home to shitty foster home because of that. I know how much you despise Shido because of how fucked up your life was because of him. And I know that you want to take that piece of shit down more than anything else in your entire life.”

“How…how do you…” Akechi spluttered. His mind was racing back in time, replaying every conversation he had ever had with Ren. He was absolutely certain that he had never once mentioned Shido to him, and he almost certainly hadn’t given away the fact that Shido was his father to anyone in the Phantom Thieves, let alone Ren. There was absolutely no way Ren should know even a fraction of this knowledge. And yet, here he was, spilling out his entire life story to him as though he weren’t already painfully familiar with those details.

“I know all of this…and I understand,” Ren smiled gently. “I really do. I understand why you want revenge on Shido, why you want justice for what that fucker did to you and your mother. I understand why you want to take him down, and I completely agree with you that Shido needs to be toppled from power.” The leader of the Phantom Thieves’ face turned into a frown. “It’s how you’re trying to go about it that I have major issues with. And no, it’s not because of all the psychotic breakdowns and mental shutdowns that you’ve caused, although that certainly doesn’t help. The biggest issue I have with your plan is that it’s doomed to fail.”

“And what makes you so confident about that?” Akechi sneered. But it was a mask to hide the uncertainty growing within him. Everything Ren had said up to this point, he had nailed completely on the head without ever telling him. Could he had done extensive research on Akechi in the days during Sae’s Palace heist and up to his capture? He could’ve…but his detective instinct was telling him that this wasn’t the answer.

“Because Shido knows who you are,” the answer was simple, and all the more striking for its simplicity. “Think about it, Akechi. Put yourself in Shido’s mindset for a second, as disgusting as the idea is. You’re plotting to place yourself as the leader of all Japan, and suddenly this seemingly random individual shows up on your doorstep, claiming to have access to a cognitive world that you were researching and all the supernatural powers that you needed to make sure that you would reach the height of power by trampling anybody who got in your way. And you’d never once question this seeming miracle dropping on your doorstep and giving you the answers to all of your problems?” Ren shook his head. “Shido is many things. A monster in human flesh. The scum of the earth. The embodiment of everything that is wrong with humanity. But he isn’t stupid. I bet you the first thing he did the moment after you introduced yourself to him was to look up all the information he could about you, Goro. He knows who you are, and why you’re really serving him. And he’ll get rid of you the moment you no longer have any use to him.”

“Shido wouldn’t get rid of me,” Goro retorted. He normally wouldn’t have revealed even this to Ren, but the teen wouldn’t be walking out of the room anywhere, so there was no reason to deny it. “I’m too valuable to him. I’m his most effective asset.”

“And that’s precisely why he would find out everything he could about you…and why he would get rid of you the moment he doesn’t need you,” Ren cut him off firmly. “You’re the most valuable tool he has…and that also makes you the most dangerous threat to him. Even if he didn’t know about you, and I’d bet my life on the fact that he does, this alone would be enough reason for him to destroy you before you ever got the chance to destroy him first.”

Akechi opened his mouth to speak, but Ren wasn’t done. “After all, he’s done it or will do it to everyone who has ever served under him eventually.” He raised one finger. “Kunikazu Okumura. By far one of Masayoshi Shido’s most important financial backers, and a critical member of the conspiracy. But the very second that Okumura started getting ideas that wasn’t perfectly in line with what Shido wanted, he had Haru’s father disposed of, despite all of the money and funding that Okumura was giving him.” He raised a second finger. “Principal Kobayakawa. A man who proved completely useless in discovering who we were, and was killed for his incompetence and cowardice.”

“Those two had plans to turn against Shido, and made those plans painfully obvious,” Akechi shot back. “I wasn’t as foolish as they were.”

“But that’s not the only reason Shido has had you kill his subordinates,” Ren replied slyly, lifting up a third finger. “The SIU director. Someone who, unlike the other two, never intended to betray Shido. Someone who’s falsified evidence and hid evidence of Shido and the Conspiracy’s corruption for years. Someone who Shido ordered you to kill the moment you finished putting a bullet through my head simply for knowing too much, for being a direct link between Shido and us, didn’t he?”

This time, Goro had no response to Ren’s words. There was absolutely nothing to suggest that he was even aware of the SIU director’s existence, let alone how corrupt and how deep he was in Shido’s pockets was…and yet his rival knew exactly what Shido’s plans were for the SIU director and why.

“The SIU director wasn’t the first person you killed for simply knowing too much about Shido, and he won’t be the last, isn’t he?” Ren questioned, a knowing smile on his face. “I bet that he’s planned to have every single person who’s ever ordered a psychotic breakdown or mental shutdown killed. Ooe, that one noble whose name I never bothered to learn, the TV station president, the IT company president who’s been twisting our public image…I bet they all ordered mental shutdowns or psychotic breakdowns at one point or another, and I bet Shido’s ordered you to kill them all the moment he becomes Prime Minister and they no longer become useful to him, hasn’t he?”

Goro spluttered incoherently, no words coming out of his mouth. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Ren hadn’t just hit the mark on the head with Shido’s motives…he had specifically named 4 of the 5 nobles who held the letters of recommendation that were the key to entering the heart of Shido’s Palace, where the shadow of the man himself resided. How? HOW DID HE KNOW ALL OF THIS?

“Shido will gladly throw anyone and everyone who’s ever worked for him under the bus if it means he can cling to power,” Ren continued, either oblivious to or ignoring Akechi’s mental breakdown. “Why would you be any different? Think about every time you talked with Shido, every time the man’s praised you for your work. Did it ever feel like he was genuinely praising you and complimenting you for your work? Or did it feel like he was just spouting a bunch of bullshit? Think carefully, Goro.”

Goro didn’t need to think carefully, because he already knew the answer. He knew that every time the man praised him for a mission, he could tell that Shido didn’t actually give a shit about him. Every word that came out of his mouth oozed fakeness, and he was only concerned about whether an obstacle to his rise to power was removed or whether another stepping stone to that rise appeared before him. At the time, he had dismissed it simply as part of the man’s character…but Ren’s words were suddenly putting Shido’s words in a different, even darker light.

“Shido won’t get rid of me…” Akechi repeated, but the words were emptier and more hesitant than they had been before, and both of them knew it.

“I’d be willing to bet my life on the exact opposite,” Ren countered. “And I think I even know how he’ll get rid of you. I bet that in his Palace, because obviously a man as fucked up as he is has a Palace, he’ll have some kind of countermeasure to stop you if you try to get close to his shadow. A cognitive version of you that’s nothing but a cold-blooded killer, or some random bullshit like that. And if you try to kill him in real life, he’s going to have his Yakuza goons shoot you dead before you ever get the chance.”

“You don’t know any of that,” Akechi sneered. “You could be completely wrong.”

“I could be,” Ren replied, though the words were spoken with the tone who was absolutely, unflinchingly confident in his words and beliefs, “but is it really worth taking that risk?”

Akechi didn’t have an answer, instead processing every word Ren had said carefully in his mind. He had thought his plan was foolproof, but Ren had thoroughly exposed several potential failure points that he had previously overlooked. And he had done so with reasoning and evidence that was not only logical and sensical, but completely true. Evidence that there was no way someone like Ren should have ever been aware of to begin with. Suddenly, his plan to destroy Masayoshi Shido was looking a lot less ironclad and a lot less fragile than it had been before he had walked into the interrogation room.

“And let’s say that, against all odds, despite all the evidence to the contrary, you actually succeed in your goal,” Ren continued calmly. “Let’s say that you have Shido at gunpoint, and that there’s nothing stopping you from putting a bullet in his head. Do you really think that a man like Shido, a man who’s so monstrously arrogant that he considers the Japanese government as nothing but his own personal luxury ship, would get on his knees and beg for mercy? Does that REALLY sound like the type of person that Shido is? You know that bastard better than anyone, Goro. How do you think Shido would really act?”

Once again, Akechi said nothing, but this time it was because he was thinking through that very scenario in his head. Seeing himself in Shido’s office, holding a gun at his father’s head, the man helpless to stop the death that was coming. He had fantasized about this moment for years, dreamed about seeing the man grovel and beg for mercy before him.

But that wasn’t what he saw now. All he could see now was Shido’s contemptuous sneer as he held the gun to his face. “Go ahead,” his glorified sperm donor taunted. “Put a bullet in me like the animal you are. I made you what you are. You are nothing without me. Just another pathetic orphan with no purpose and no reason for existence apart from what I gave you. And once I’m gone, you won’t even have that.”

“Arrrggghhhh…!” Akechi shook his head in fury as he forced the image out of his mind. It would have been so much simpler if he’d just shot Ren while he had the chance. But he had given his rival the opportunity to talk, and in doing so cast the seeds of doubt into his heart about everything he had done up to this point.

And the scary part was…it was working. Because he knew Ren, and knew that the boy wouldn’t be challenging him like this as a last, desperate attempt to preserve his own life. He could tell that Ren genuinely believed everything he was saying, stating his arguments like he knew them to be fact.

…And the more times he dropped hints at knowing things which were completely impossible for him to know to begin with, the more he was beginning to wonder if Ren somehow did.

“Why are you telling me all of this?” Akechi spat. The gun was still in his hand, although it was laying uselessly on the table, forgotten by both of them. “You clearly knew that I was planning to betray you from the very start. You could have fooled me and let me think you were dead. And instead you’re risking your very life to tell me that everything I knew was a lie. Why bother warning me, when I’m clearly your enemy and clearly trying to kill you?”

Ren smiled again, and he could see the sincerity and gentleness in his words. “Because I care about you, Goro,” he answered earnestly. “Because even after everything, I still consider you a friend. I know how much you’ve suffered at the hands of shitty adults just like the rest of us.”

Akechi scowled. “Spare me your pity, Amamiya,” he snapped. “Nothing pisses me off more than being pitied.”

Ren shook his head. “It isn’t pity, though, not really,” he replied. “I see in you the type of person that I could’ve become if I didn’t have anyone to depend on. You have no idea how bitter I was feeling towards the world because of a criminal record I didn’t deserve, but Ryuji was the first person to show me kindness almost the second I met him, and as the other Phantom Thieves joined our group it was easier and easier for me to get rid of those dark thoughts. But you? You had absolutely nobody to turn to. And the first person who DID take you seriously was a narcissistic sociopath who only sees other people as tools and stepping stones to power. But imagine if you’d been adopted by someone like Sojiro after your mother’s death. I’m sure you would’ve turned out a lot better than you did in real life. And the opposite is true for me. If I didn’t have anybody else to turn to when I first entered Shujin…” his face darkened, “…I would have murdered Kamoshida’s shadow instead of changing his heart, and things would have spiraled out of control from there.”

He shook his head. “The point is, Goro, I understand you better than most people could. You could have been like me, and I could have been like you, if things had been flipped around between us two.”

Akechi could feel the sincerity in Ren’s voice, and it was bizarrely both aggravating and comforting at the same time. Aggravating that he had gotten the short end of the stick compared to Ren, his jealousy fueled with the reminder that Ren had had everything go right for him compared to himself. Goro could feel the envy and bitterness clawing in his heart, but it was surprisingly held at bay. Because he knew that Ren wasn’t boasting of his superior life circumstances compared to himself, only expressing sympathy for someone who he should’ve hated first and foremost as an enemy and a traitor.

And his resolve to shoot Ren was weakening by the second. Especially if Shido knew who he was, as Ren claimed, and his entire plan was all for nothing to begin with.

“I understand why you want revenge on Shido,” Ren continued, steering the conversation back towards their original topic. “I understand why you want justice for you and your mother. But killing him isn’t the way to go about it. Changing his heart would be a far better solution.”

Akechi sneered. “Of course you would think that,” he retorted. “Of course you and your little group of oh-so-virtuous heroes would opt to give even your greatest enemy the merciful option.”

To his surprise, Ren laughed out loud. And it wasn’t a kind, good-humored laugh either, but much colder and more mocking than he would have ever expected from someone like Ren. “Mercy?” he repeated. “You think our changes of heart are mercy? No, no, no, Goro. That’s something you never really understood. We did these changes of heart in the name of justice, but not out of the kindness of our heart except for Futaba and maybe Sae. Kamoshida, Madarame, Kaneshiro, Okumura…those fuckers deserved to have their distorted desires ripped out from them. They deserved to face the guilt of their crimes. We forced them to face what they’ve done, and except for Okumura, forced them to suffer a lifetime of shame and punishment both from their own consciences and the weight of the law for the rest of their lives. You know Ann, right?”

“Believe me, Amamiya, I’ve gotten to know your little group quite well over the past few weeks,” Akechi drawled. “She seemed pleasant enough, I suppose.”

“Her best friend got assaulted by Kamoshida…in that way,” Ren revealed, causing Akechi’s eyes to widen and then harden in disgust. “When we had Kamoshida’s shadow at our mercy, Ann nearly burned him to a crisp. The only reason why she didn’t was because she thought death would be too merciful…and that he deserved to suffer for the rest of his life for what he did to Shiho.” He smirked. “I bet you weren’t expecting that now, were you?”

Goro’s eyes widened as he imagined Takamaki being that vindictive. Apparently, he’d significantly misjudged the blonde model, if what Ren was saying was true.

“Kamoshida was broken when we stole his heart,” the leader of the Phantom Thieves explained. “He confessed all of his sins to the entirety of the school with his own mouth, weeping and blubbering all the while, and he almost killed himself before Ann yelled at him that suicide would be cowardice and running away from what he did to Shiho. Now imagine what a change of heart would do to Masayoshi Shido,” a vindictive smirk appeared on Ren’s lips. “A man who’s sexually assaulted multiple women like Kamoshida did, but with countless more crimes and sins under his belt than Kamoshida ever had. Someone who’s personally had both his enemies and his allies murdered just because he didn’t have any use for them, and indirectly caused thousands of more deaths with the psychotic breakdowns and mental shutdowns. Someone petty enough to ruin countless lives for no good reason, just because he can. Can you imagine how crushing the weight of that many sins would fall upon Shido, once he finally gets a conscience for the first time in God knows how long? Can you imagine just how thoroughly the guilt would break him?”

Akechi stared at Ren, suddenly seeing his rival in a whole new light for the first time. All this time, he had imagined Ren as this perfect, goody two-shoes hero, someone who had everything that he wished he could have. Someone who’d rather show mercy to scum of the earth who deserved nothing but death instead of giving them the punishment they’d deserve. But once again, it seemed as though he had dramatically misjudged Ren and perhaps even the rest of the Phantom Thieves. He’d be the first to admit that they protected the innocent far more than he ever had or would, but it seemed as though they were far more similar when it came to punishing the guilty than he had first believed. But while he had given death as the punishment, they had chosen to give life instead. A life spent wallowing in guilt and regret, being despised by all who saw criminals like Kamoshida and Madarame for who they truly were.

A sinister smile crept across Akechi’s face as he thought about Masayoshi Shido in this position. The man reduced to a broken shell of himself, inelegantly blubbering and weeping like Madarame had done as he confessed all of his crimes to the entirety of Japan with his own mouth. He imagined the man groveling for forgiveness and punishment, being locked away in a cell for the rest of his pathetic, miserable life. And he imagined himself visiting Shido in his cell, the man apologizing to him and begging him specifically for forgiveness…only for Akechi to spit that plea back in his face, and leave him to wallow in his own despair as the son he had once deceived and betrayed abandoned him in turn.

The more he thought about this fantasy…the more and more he liked it. Perhaps giving a change of heart really would be worse than the death he had planned to inflict upon him. And unlike his original plan, which was now far too risky to implement if Ren was correct…this new plan would be entirely possible with the Phantom Thieves. If they gave even the slightest shit about justice as they claimed, then they would be bound by their own sense of duty to change Masayoshi Shido’s heart once they realized just how corrupt and depraved the man was.

And if he decided to fall back on his original plan? If he decided that Masayoshi Shido deserved death after all? Well, it would certainly be much easier to reach the man’s Shadow in his Palace than to try to kill him in real life…especially if the Thieves did most of the work for him.

Still, he hadn’t gotten to where he was today by being careless or foolish. Ren was seemingly offering him everything he wanted on a platter…there was no way such an offer was too good to be true. He focused his attention back on Ren, eyes narrowed. “I’m risking a lot by choosing to spare you and work alongside you instead of killing you right here and now,” he growled. “Why are you so invested in helping me take down Shido? Will your little Phantom Thief friends agree to work alongside me when they already know I’m a traitor and a murderer, especially when I’ve killed two of their parents?” he challenged.

Ren chuckled. “You and I both know that the hallway is unguarded and that there’s nothing stopping you from coming in to shoot me…or rescuing me from this cell. There’s no cameras, no guards, nothing. I bet that Shido’s lackeys are so terrified of pissing him off that they won’t even bother to check the morgue to see if there’s a body.”

It really was unnerving just how much insight Ren had into the inner machinations of Shido’s political machine.

“As for the others…” he smirked and gestured around him. “You have me at your mercy. You hold my life in the palm of your hand, and can shoot me with that gun of yours at any time. The Phantom Thieves will have no choice but to work alongside you and agree to your terms if they want to keep me alive. And as for your last question…I’ll give you more details when we meet up with the rest of the Phantom Thieves, but I’ll say this now…”

Ren leaned in conspiratorially, and despite Akechi’s earlier threat he made no move to shoot or even point the gun in his direction. “You’re not the only person Masayoshi Shido has wronged.”

Akechi’s eyes widened at the implications, when suddenly the cell phone rang. “And that should be Futaba calling on the phone, right on time,” Ren leaned back, relaxed, an easygoing smirk on his face. “Remember, Goro. I’m your prisoner. Don’t forget to sell the act.”

Goro smirked as well. “You forget, Amamiya,” he answered, “acting is the one thing I do best.” He picked up the phone and held it up to his ear.

“I am Alibaba, a member of the Phantom Thieves,” Futaba’s voice rang out, no doubt thinking that she was talking to Sae. “I inquire as to your justice, Sae Nijima.”

“I cannot answer to Nijima’s justice, Sakura,” Akechi replied smoothly, taking a little too much pleasure in taking Futaba by surprise, “but I would be more than happy to discuss mine.”

“Wh-what? AKECHI?” Futaba exclaimed, shock and horror clear in her voice. “But…how…HOW? We…we…”

“…had a plan to try and fool me into executing a fake version of Ren, yes I know,” Akechi interrupted. “A rather ingenious plan, I must admit. But far from infallible, in the end.”

“…so what happens now?” Futaba asked quietly, despair creeping into her voice. Ren quietly felt horrible for the girl he had come to see as his little sister, but it needed to be done. “Is that it? Is Ren dead? Are you going to kill us next with your little police friends?”

“I will admit that that was my original plan,” Akechi answered. “But out of respect for the kinship and rivalry that I have with Ren, I allowed him to speak his last words. And he most certainly used that opportunity well, for he granted me a rather…different…perspective than my original intent. Enough for me to not only consider sparing his life, but also helping him to escape.”

“Wait, what?” Now Futaba sounded confused more than anything. “You sold Ren out. You were going to kill him. But now you’re going to help him escape? What the hell is going on?”

“I wish to make a new deal, Sakura,” Akechi explained coolly. “Agree, and I will help Ren escape, and I will deliver him to you alive and in…relatively one piece.” His voice grew colder. “Refuse, and I put a bullet in your leader’s head. And then the police and I will come after all of you, one at a time.”

“…what do you want?” Futaba asked dully. She hated that she had to bargain with Akechi, her mother’s murderer and the traitor to the thieves. But she knew she didn’t have a choice. Not when their plan to fool him had failed, and her surrogate brother’s life was at stake.

“I have two conditions,” Akechi declared. “The first, is that the Phantom Thieves’ next Palace target will be Masayoshi Shido. This is non-negotiable. You will help me navigate and fight through Shido’s Palace and help me get to the very depths where his Shadow resides.”

“Why do you…?” Futaba began.

“Done,” the leader of the Phantom Thieves interrupted her. “I agree with this.”

“Wait, Ren? Oh, thank God!” Futaba was nearly crying with relief. “You really are still alive!”

“I am a man of my word, Sakura,” Akechi replied. “So long as you agree to my terms, Ren is more valuable to me alive than he is dead.”

“I’ll explain why I agreed later, Futaba,” Ren promised. “Just trust me on this.”

“O…okay…” Futaba murmured, before raising her voice again. “And what’s your other condition, Akechi?” she asked as he finished collecting her thoughts.

“Simply this…” and now everyone could hear the psychotic smirk in his voice. “You will allow me to decide the fate of Masayoshi Shido, once we have finally brought his shadow low. And none of you will stop me from carrying out my justice.”

“…you’re going to kill him, aren’t you?” Futaba realized after several seconds of silence. “You’re going to inflict a mental shutdown on him just like you did with Haru’s dad, aren’t you?”

“I’m waiting…” Akechi hissed.

Ren took a deep breath and sighed. He looked and sounded every bit like the reluctant and pained leader who had to make a sadistic choice and decide between the lesser of two evils. It was a brilliant performance that would have fooled even Goro…if he hadn’t had a lengthy and detailed discussion a few moments ago that showed Ren in complete confidence and control.

“…fine, Akechi,” he “forced” himself to speak. “We don’t have a choice but to agree, Futaba. Otherwise…he’ll kill each and every one of us.”

“…I know, Ren,” Futaba sighed. “The others aren’t going to like it, but…we really don’t have a choice.”

“I knew you would make the right decision,” Akechi replied smugly. “And just as a warning: if I even think that you’re planning to betray me or go back on your arrangement, I’ll personally make sure that all of you are killed before the end of the day. And rest assured, that is a promise.”

“We know, Akechi,” Futaba ground out. “And we’re not stupid.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” Goro replied, hanging up the phone as he turned back to Ren. “Now then…I suppose we have a jailbreak to initiate, don’t we?”

Ren grinned. “I couldn’t have said it better myself, Goro. Let’s get the hell out of this place.”

Akechi nodded, casting one last look at the interrogation room. There were pieces of injection needles strewn about the floor, giving him all the clues he needed to realize what had gone on. His lip curled in disgust. His rival deserved better than to be beaten and drugged so thoroughly his mental acuity and sanity had been at stake.

Which reminded him… “How were you able to keep your mental faculties intact?” he questioned. Those drugs should have messed with your mind. And they certainly would have kept you from having such an in-depth and extended conversation with myself.”

Ren grinned. “I had one of my Personas at the forefront of my mind the entire conversation. He has a little passive skill called Unshaken Will. Complete immunity to all mind-affecting status ailments.”

Despite everything, Goro couldn’t help but chuckle appreciatively at the move. “Well played, Amamiya,” he conceded. “Well played.”

Chapter Text

It was almost surreal, the day that followed. Futaba had been the one to spread the word to the rest of the Phantom Thieves on how Ren’s day in the interrogation room had progressed. How their carefully crafted plan to fool Akechi into murdering Ren’s cognitive double had failed, and how Ren had somehow, impossibly, managed to convince him to not only spare his life, but help him escape the grasp of the corrupt police instead.

Futaba had no clue what to feel, her thoughts roiling within her head. On the one hand, Akechi was a traitor and a murderer. The bastard who had murdered her mother, Haru’s father, and who knows how many others. The traitor who had wormed his way into the ranks of the Phantom Thieves with the sole purpose of setting up Ren to be killed.

…But that was just it, wasn’t it? Akechi hadn’t killed him. By all accounts, Akechi had Ren completely dead to rights in that interrogation room. Only their plan with the cognitive version in Sae’s Palace had been their saving grace…and even that had completely fallen apart. Akechi had won, he could have easily have put a bullet in Ren’s head and killed him just like he’d killed her mother.

But he had chosen to spare Ren instead. Somehow, her brother in all but blood had convinced the Black Mask to stay his hand. Futaba had no idea what words Ren had spoken to Akechi, but the impact must have been monumental.

And now it was up to her to convey the message to the rest of the thieves. She opened up her laptop, opening up the chatroom that she always talked to the rest of the thieves in.

Futaba: Big news, guys. There’s been a huge change in plans.

Makoto: What’s up, Futaba?

Futaba: Akechi saw through our plan. He wasn’t fooled by the phone trick.

Ryuji: FOR REAL???

Ann: Oh my God, Ren! Is he…is he…?

Futaba: No, and that’s where things take a turn for the super weird. Somehow, Ren got Akechi to spare his life and bust him out of the interrogation room.

Haru: Oh my…!

Yusuke: This truly is an unexpected turn of events.

Futaba: Ren and Akechi are laying low in a motel and coming over here tomorrow. I don’t know if they’re going in Sae’s car or if Akechi has his own way of getting here.

Makoto: This seems too good to be true. There’s no way Akechi suddenly realized the error of his ways, just like that.

Futaba: He didn’t. He gave us conditions in exchange for sparing Ren’s life, and he made it very clear he’d kill Ren and all of us afterwards if we didn’t agree.

Ann: Ughhhh…we really don’t have a choice, don’t we?

Futaba: For what it’s worth, Ren agreed.

Ryuji: Yeah, no shit, he agreed. It was either agree or Akechi puts a fucking bullet in his brain!

Haru: What did Akechi want, Futaba-chan?

Futaba: He wants us to go into the palace of some guy named Masayoshi Shido.

Makoto: Masayoshi Shido? Isn’t he one of the most favored political candidates for Prime Minister?

Haru: I believe my father may have mentioned him once or twice in passing, though he never went into any details.

Futaba: We’ll find out why Akechi wants us to go after him soon enough.

The day afterwards was filled with tension as they waited for Akechi and Ren to arrive, made all the worse by the announcement that “the leader of the Phantom Thieves had committed suicide”, and that they had no idea whether or not Akechi had kept his end of the bargain to spare Ren. As night fell, the Phantom Thieves slowly filed into LeBlanc, their eyes fixated on the entrance as they nervously waited for Akechi and Ren to arrive.

And finally, after a seemingly eternity, three figures arrived at the door and pushed it open. Akechi, Sae…and Ren. Looking beaten up and battered…but very much alive.

“REN!!!!!” everyone exclaimed as they got up from their seats and raced towards him. Akechi and Sae wordlessly allowed them to take Ren into their arms, lowering him gently into a booth. “How are you doing?” Makoto asked anxiously.

“A bit rough…” Ren muttered back. “But I’m doing okay. Akechi and Sae helped me get out of that damn interrogation room and keep me hidden until tonight.”

Sae scowled, her expression of disdain towards her partner making it very clear that she knew about Akechi’s allegiance to Shido. “Does he suspect anything?” she asked curtly.

Akechi smirked. “Not a thing,” he replied. “It was just like Amamiya predicted. Shido fell for my lies hook, line, and sinker. The imbecile didn’t even bother to send a coroner or even a police officer to the morgue to confirm Amamiya’s death. He thinks his victory is assured…and I look forward to proving him spectacularly wrong.”

“Good,” Sae breathed a sigh of relief. “Then we have some time.”

“Whoa whoa whoa, hold up!” Ryuji made a time-out gesture with his hands. “What the hell is going on?” He pointed an accusing finger at Akechi. “Aren’t you supposed to be the enemy?”

“Yeah!” Futaba shouted angrily. “You betrayed us and sold Ren out to the police!”

“Enough,” Ren interrupted, his voice calm but commanding. “All of this is true. But Akechi is also the reason I’m alive right now. If it weren’t for him, I’d still be trapped in the interrogation room. And Shido would’ve found another way to kill me…assuming Akechi didn’t shoot me himself.”

“I…hate that I see your point, Ren-kun,” Haru admitted. She was still giving Akechi a dirty look, but one tempered with understanding. “If Akechi-kun really wanted to kill you, he would have just shot you in that room. And he already knows who we are, so he could have easily unleashed the police upon all of us if he really wanted to. The very fact that you’re here, still alive…his motives are honest, at least for now.”

“I cannot argue with that logic,” Yusuke agreed reluctantly, “though I am no less comfortable with his presence.”

“It doesn’t matter to me whether or not you’re comfortable with my presence,” Akechi replied smoothly. “As long as you fulfill your end of the bargain, just as I have fulfilled mine.”

“What do you mean by bargain?” Morgana asked. His words came off as confused meows to Sojiro and Sae, but fortunately the Phantom Thieves and Akechi knew what he was saying.

“The deal that I made with Akechi to help me escape the interrogation room instead of killing me,” Ren explained. “In exchange for saving me, he had two conditions. The first is that the next Palace we target…our next target is Masayoshi Shido.”

“Masayoshi Shido?” Ann asked, baffled. “Isn’t that the guy we’ve seen on TV?”

Makoto seemed to be more aware of political events. “The up-and-coming Prime Minister candidate,” she affirmed. “From what I’ve heard, it seems like he’s the main favorite to become the next leader of the country.”

“Yeah,” Ren agreed, before his face and voice hardened considerably. “And he’s also the bastard who tried to get me assassinated. He’s also the one behind the psychotic breakdowns and mental shutdowns, the one directing Akechi to do his dirty work for him.”

“But not anymore,” Akechi added with a growl, his voice far more vitriolic and openly aggressive than the smooth, “Detective Prince” tone he had used in their interactions with him up until this point. “I’m done playing by his rules.” He took out his cell phone, opened a message, and held it out for all to hear.

A sinister voice echoed from the phone, a voice that they had all heard before on TV broadcasts and advertisements. “You have done well, Akechi,” the arrogant voice dripped with condescension and malice. “The leader of the Phantom Thieves is dead, and the rest of them are broken. You are sure that there is no chance that those who remain have no chance of interfering with our plans?”

“None whatsoever,” Akechi’s own voice answered, smugness and malicious in its own right. “The Phantom Thieves depended entirely upon their leader. With him dead and gone, their will to fight back will be shattered beyond repair. I would advise waiting until after the election is over and done before beginning to dispose of them. The last thing that we need is an inconvenient distraction so close to our victory.”

“Indeed,” Shido praised. “You may dispose of them as you see fit, Akechi. With the Phantom Thieves out of the way, there is nothing to stop my grand ascension to become the ruler of this country. I will steer this country into a new golden age, and all those who dare to oppose me will be crushed.”

“But of course,” Akechi agreed smoothly. “I will…take care…of the SIU director, as you requested.”

“Deal with him at once,” Shido replied. “He has served his purpose, but his continued existence now only hampers us as a liability.”

The clip ended, and all of the Thieves stared at the phone in unmitigated horror. Even Sae and Sojiro were stunned into silence, although their expressions weren’t quite as pronounced as the teenagers’.

“What the fuck…” Ryuji breathed. “What the actual fuck?”

“THIS is the guy who everyone wants to become Prime Minister?” Ann asked incredulously. “What the hell is wrong with the people of Japan?”

“They fell for his lies,” Ren explained. “They listened to his honeyed words, believed Shido’s promise of a better tomorrow for his country.” His face contorted into disgust. “But he doesn’t give a fuck about this country or its people. The only person that Shido cares about is himself.”

“I myself fell for those same lies,” Akechi hissed, his voice positively dripping with contempt. “But no more. I am done playing by Shido’s rules. Shido wants to dispose of me like everyone else who ever served under him? I’ll beat him at that game before he ever has a chance to play it!”

“Whoa whoa whoa, hold on!” Morgana interrupted, glaring at Akechi. “Why the hell should we trust you?”

Akechi opened his mouth, no doubt ready to reply with some condescending retort, but Ren suddenly stopped him. He held a hand up to silence Morgana, then turned to face Akechi. “The truth,” he said quietly. “Tell them the truth. The only way to get them to trust you, and the only way we’re going to be able to really work as a team in Shido’s Palace.”

Akechi scowled, his face roiling with conflict as he debated whether or not to explain his past to the rest of the Phantom Thieves. Eventually, his face settled, and he gritted his teeth. “Several years ago,” he began, “my mother was forced into relations with a worthless, degenerate mongrel of a man. A man who abandoned her almost as soon as he finished having his way with her. She was disgraced by the entire community she lived in for having a child out of wedlock, so broken by the shame and trauma that she killed herself.”

Everyone’s jaws dropped in horror. “My goodness…” Yusuke breathed. “This man…he was Masayoshi Shido, wasn’t he?”

“Akechi…” Ann murmured sadly. Whatever she might feel about Akechi personally, she could understand better than anyone else the trauma and horror that came with someone she cared about almost being violated in such a way. Shiho had narrowly avoided that fate. Akechi’s mother clearly hadn’t been so fortunate.

“I was left alone, tossed from foster home to foster home, passed from institution to institution,” Akechi continued bitterly. “Not a single one gave a single flying fuck about my well being. Not a single person cared as I was bullied and tortured by those around me. And in those years of torment, only one thought dominated my mind.” A feral, psychotic light appeared in his eyes. “To make the man who drove my mother to suicide suffer for what he did to her.”

“And you decided to help him?” Futaba nearly yelled. “You helped him almost become the Prime Minister of Japan? How the hell does that make ANY sense?”

Akechi sneered. “The only reason why I helped Shido was so that I could destroy him right when he reached the height of his power. The moment he became Prime Minister, I would reveal my true identity as Shido’s illegitimate son and all the crimes he and I committed to the world, destroying his credibility and his reputation. Then, once he was broken and learned that I was the one who broke him, I would end his pathetic life once and for all. All to get justice for the woman he betrayed and ruined.”

“So what changed?” Haru asked quietly. “Why change your plans, and save Ren-kun’s life?”

“Because I convinced him that his plan was doomed to fail,” Ren answered. “And that by siding with us instead, he would have a far better chance of getting the justice and revenge that he desired. That is the reason why I agreed to his terms.”

“What were those terms?” Sae asked quietly. She didn’t know what to think about her partner anymore. There was no doubt that Akechi was a criminal and a murderer, yet at the same time…she understood why Akechi had gone down the path that he had. Even if she didn’t agree with his actions in the slightest, she understood the pain that came with losing a loved one, and the rage and despair that came with it.

“There were two,” Ren explained. “The first is that Shido’s Palace would be our next big target, and that we would infiltrate his palace with Akechi being part of that team. The second is that we would allow Akechi to decide the fate of his father.”

“Hold up!” Morgana exclaimed. “I can understand wanting to go after Shido. But letting Akechi decide his fate? We know what he’s going to choose. We might as well kill Shido ourselves at that point!”

“Yeah!” Futaba agreed furiously. “I don’t like the fact that the person who killed my mom is going to be back in the team!”

“Maybe you’re right,” Ren acknowledged, his face hard with determination. “But it doesn’t change the fact that I swore an oath as the leader of the Phantom Thieves that I would work alongside Akechi to get to the heart of Shido’s Palace, and I’m going to honor that agreement. Even if none of you join me, even if it’s just me and him, I’m going to see this through to the end. Not just for his justice, but for mine too.”

“Your justice?” Makoto asked, confused. “What do you mean by that, Ren?”

Ren looked up at his team, and all of them were taken aback by the utter loathing in his eyes. “Remember when I told you about why I got my criminal record?” he asked, his voice dangerously and menacingly calm. “About how I tried to save a woman from being assaulted by some drunk politician? And how that politician decided to use his power to slander me in court and get me arrested for that same assault?”

“Dude, how could I ever forget that?” Ryuji gritted his teeth. “It makes my blood boil just thinking about it!”

“What I didn’t tell you was the name of that politician,” Ren continued, his eyes narrowed. “I didn’t know the name of that politician back then…but I remember it now.”

The penny dropped, and everyone stared at Ren in horror. Even Akechi seemed taken aback by the revelation, though suddenly his words in the interrogation room made way too much sense. “No way…” Ann gasped. “You’re telling me that Shido was the name of that bastard who got you slammed with a criminal record?”

“The very same,” Ren gritted his teeth, cold wrath burning in his eyes. “And that’s only the beginning of his many, many crimes.” He stood up from the seat, brushing off Ryuji’s attempt to get him to sit back down. “We changed many hearts together as a team,” he addressed them all, his charisma and eloquence captivating their attention. It wasn’t just Ren who now spoke, but Joker as well, brushing aside his many wounds and bruises like they were nothing. “Exposing the crimes of some of Tokyo’s worst criminals and forcing them to confess with their own mouths. But none of them even compare to the piece of shit that Masayoshi Shido is. You think that the Palace Rulers we’ve faced up until now represented humanity’s worst sins?” he asked, not even waiting for any response before continuing. “Shido’s done all of them combined, and then some.”

He raised a single pointer finger. “Lust. Shido forced himself on helpless women and ruined innocent lives. All for his sick gratification and because he had the power to get away with it. Goro’s mother, that woman who I tried to save back home, and God knows how many others. A predator as disgusting as Kamoshida, only no woman in Japan is safe from his lust.”

Ann gritted her teeth at the reminder of Kamoshida. “That sick son of a bitch,” she spat.

Ren raised another finger. “Vanity. Shido considers himself a God amongst men, a Messiah who believes that he and nobody else deserves to rule Japan. And he works tirelessly to deceive the people of Japan into believing that same delusion.”

Yusuke’s eyes burned with the wrath of Kamu Susanno-o. “A man guilty of the same crime as Madarame, but far, far worse,” he declared. “At least Madarame showed signs that he still cared about me, deep within his twisted, distorted heart. This monster, Masayoshi Shido, has made it abundantly clear that he cares for no one but himself.”

Two more fingers joined the second and first. “Gluttony and Greed,” Ren continued. “Shido hungers for power above all else. It is the only thing that he cares about, and he’ll throw away basic human decency like worthless trash to get it. His ambition knows no limits, and he’ll commit any crime, ruin and destroy as many lives as he wants both with the Metaverse and in real life, just to get his hands on as much power as possible.”

“Just like Kaneshiro, but it won’t just be Shibuya that suffers if he gets what he wants,” Makoto scowled, Anat demanding that justice be done deep within her soul.

“I still remember the broken, disposable robots in my father’s Palace,” Haru murmured, her voice torn between grief and righteous fury. “If Shido becomes Prime Minister, all of Japan will suffer the same fate as the poor workers in my father’s company, if not even worse!”

“Wrath,” Ren’s hand was now an open palm. “I’ve never met a man as petty and as wrathful as Masayoshi Shido. He went out of his way to ruin my life, ruin my future with a criminal record, just because he made a drunken ass of himself when I tried to stop him from getting his filthy hands on an innocent woman.”

Akechi scowled. “I can attest that Shido is thoroughly guilty of that particular sin,” he growled. “Whenever there is even the slightest deviation to his so-called grand vision, he throws temper tantrums like nothing else when he doesn’t think anybody is watching him.”

“Envy,” Ren relentlessly continued his list of Shido’s sins. “Shido saw the research on cognitive psience that Futaba’s mother had tirelessly worked on, and desired it for himself all so that he could abuse it for his own selfish gain. Even going so far as to forge a suicide note where she blamed Futaba for her death, for literally no reason whatsoever than to be a petty jackass.”

Futaba stomped her foot onto the ground in rage. “I’ll NEVER forgive that bastard!” she shouted. “I spent years thinking I deserved to die alone and unloved because of him!”

“And pride,” he concluded, spitting in the word in disgust. “Pride. Do I even need to begin to explain how much of an arrogant piece of shit Shido is?”

“No,” Ryuji shook his head, his voice deathly serious and dripping with an animosity none of them had heard since Kamoshida. “No, you don’t.”

Ren looked into the eyes of his fellow thieves and closest friends, each and every one of them. “We formed the Phantom Thieves to improve a corrupt and unjust society, to fight for innocent people when they can’t fight for themselves, to succeed in bringing justice and judgment where law and order failed. Every single Palace we infiltrated, every single target we went after Mementos, it was all for the purpose of achieving that one goal. The fame we got from the Phan-Site? All the money we found in the Metaverse? I don’t give the slightest shit about that. I would’ve done the exact same thing if the Phan-Site never existed and I didn’t get a single fucking yen for my work. And now we have a scumbag and a monster worse than every single one of our previous targets combined, someone who no moral compass whatsoever, someone about to be elected to the Prime Minister of this country and about to turn Japan into a living hell.”

He gestured towards Akechi’s phone, which lay forgotten in his hand. “It doesn’t matter what you think about Akechi, or whether you think I did the right thing or not accepting his deal,” Ren declared. “To be honest, I don’t fucking give a shit. Because it is our duty, our obligation as the Phantom Thieves of Hearts, to bring Masayoshi Shido down. If we fail to do so, then we have completely and utterly failed in our fundamental purpose as the Phantom Thieves.” He cast them all an iron, fiery glare that captivated their attention completely. “And I refuse to accept failure when it matters the most. I’m going to respect my agreement with Akechi, and keep my honor and integrity as a Phantom Thief. Even if it means that I have do it alone.” He gave a sympathetic glance to Akechi. “Because regardless of what anybody else might say about you, you’ve suffered more at Shido’s hands than anyone else.”

There was silence for several seconds, only broken by the sudden of Akechi slowly clapping his hands together. And the look of genuine respect that the teenage assassin was giving Ren made it very clear that his applause wasn’t sarcastic. “Well spoken, Amamiya,” he praised, an approving smile gracing his lips. “You’ve just summarized everything wrong with Shido far more eloquently than I ever could. And I can trust that you, at least, stand firm in your convictions and your pledge.” He gave the rest of the Phantom Thieves a gaze that was clearly meant as a challenge. “The question is…do your friends follow those ideals with the same strength? Even if it means working with someone they despise?”

“The hell? There’s nothing to talk about!” Ryuji shot back, getting up on his feet…and clapping a reassuring hand on Ren’s shoulder. “Ren, you had my back from Day 1, all the way in Kamoshithead’s Palace, and I had yours the moment I got my persona. And knowing what I do about that fucking shitbag, especially now that I’ve learned that HE’S the reason my best bud has a bullshit criminal record in the first place? FUCK THAT! I’m not going anywhere. No way I’m going to let a fucking criminal like that become the leader of this country!” He grinned. “I’m in, Ren. Even if it means working with a jackass like Akechi. Shido is going down!”

Ren smiled appreciatively at Ryuji. “Ryuji…”

Ann stood up too. “Every day, I think about Shiho,” she murmured quietly. “About what Kamoshida did to her and what he almost did to her. Shido’s just as much of a perverted bastard as Kamoshida is, if not worse.” The blonde model raised her voice, making sure everyone could hear her conviction. “If I let a piece of shit like him become the leader of this country, knowing that he’d probably do the same thing to other women with nobody to stop him, then I won’t ever be able to look myself in the mirror ever again.” Hecate’s fire burned in her eyes. “I’m in, Ren. Shido will never put a single hand on an innocent woman ever again when we’re through with him!”

“Lady Ann…” Morgana stared at her with open respect and wonder in his eyes. Realizing that he was letting his crush get the better of him at such a crucial moment, he shook his head to clear his thoughts before adding his own. “I don’t think there’s anything more that needs to be said about this whole situation,” the cat declared. “Like Ren said, we’ve changed the hearts of so many criminals. People with distorted desires who abuse people who can’t help themselves or fight back against them. Shido’s that kind of abusive bastard taken to the logical extreme. And I’ll be damned if I let him get away with his crimes!”

“Well said,” Yusuke agreed. “I remember, clear as day, the words that Goemon spoke to me the day that I sealed my contract with him and broke the chains that Madarame had placed upon me. Abominations are fated to perish. That was an oath that I held true too back then…and it is an oath that I will stay true to now. Masayoshi Shido is an abomination to humanity and decency with far more power and far more depravity than Madarame could ever have possibly descended to. Just as I broke my former sensei’s chains upon myself, so too shall I break the chains that he has placed on society.”

“I’m with all of you,” Makoto added, slamming a fist on the table. “My father was a man who believed in righteousness and seeing justice done, no matter what. If he learned that I walked away from changing Shido’s heart just because I didn’t like one of the people I was working with to carry out that justice, knowing that I could have done something about it, he’d be ashamed of me and have every right to be! I’ll never lose sight of my justice, not when the fate of the entire country is at stake!”

“Makoto…” Sae murmured sadly, as though she were seeing her for the first time. And in a sense, she had. She had been so wrapped up in her own work and blinded by her vision of what she thought Makoto should be, that she had never bothered to take a close look at the type of person Makoto really was. And now that she was…she could see their father in her more than ever. She was proud of the person Makoto had become…and ashamed of the fact that her friends had done more for her in the past few months than she herself ever had.

That left only two people left who hadn’t declared their intentions: Haru and Futaba. Ren could understand their hesitance. Akechi had murdered one of their family members, and had only joined the Thieves the first time to stab them in the back and set him up for death. They had very little reason to trust him, and plenty of reasons not to.

It was Haru who broke the silence first.

“I must admit that the idea of allying myself to Akechi-kun is…somewhat distasteful…to put it mildly,” the princess of the Phantom Thieves admitted. “My father’s murder is only one of those reasons. I was almost tempted to refuse to work alongside him…but then I thought things a little more thoroughly.”

Haru sighed. “Akechi-kun may be guilty of murdering my father, but my father’s soul was already tainted by his own crimes as well. Abusing the workers who served in his company was horrible enough, but I know he ordered psychotic breakdowns and mental shutdowns on his competitors and even his own employees. The very fate he suffered, he was willing to inflict on others without remorse. And all of this was possible because of Masayoshi Shido.”

Haru turned her gaze on Akechi, and everyone there could see the conflict in her eyes. A weird blend of sympathy and fury towards him. “You certainly deserve some of the blame for murdering my father, Akechi-kun, but you are far from the only one. You were the gun that ended my father’s life…but Masayoshi Shido pulled the trigger. And though I may not ever forgive you for murdering my father, I can at least sympathize and understand why you became the way you are. You suffered at the hands of a cruel and abusive father just as I have, and you suffered for far longer with no one to turn to.”

Her voice suddenly turned utterly menacing, her eyes cold as ice. And this time, it was all directed at only one person. “But Shido…” she spat the name with utter venom. “Shido committed all these atrocities and more. He is truly a man without conscience, without a soul, and without any justification for becoming the arrogant filth that he is now. Shido is far more despicable than you could ever be, Akechi-kun. To avenge my father and bring justice to him, I will fight alongside you for now, but rest assured…” she gave him a sugary sweet smile and spoke in a tone that permitted no argument, “…we will have a conversation later about your actions, and the consequences thereof.”

Akechi ignored the terrified chill that crept down his spine. “Fair is fair,” he replied smoothly, the nonchalance in his voice masking his fear. “I suppose I owe you that much. So long as Masayoshi Shido falls, I don’t give a shit what happens afterwards.”

Haru nodded in acknowledgement, saying nothing more. There was only one Phantom Thief who hadn’t spoken. Futaba had stayed silent the entire time, her face a mask of concentration, frustration, and conflict. Ren could understand why; Akechi had murdered her mother too, and unlike Kunikazu Okumura, Wakaba Isshiki had been a genuinely good person and a good mother, whose death had catapulted Futaba into a torturous cycle of despair and depression until the Phantom Thieves had broken out of it.

When she finally broke her silence, her gaze was focused directly on Akechi. “Why did you do it?” she asked quietly. “Before I decide whether to join you guys or not. I want to know…why did you kill my mother?"

Akechi’s expression was completely emotionless as he contemplated the orange-haired girl in front of her. Futaba wasn’t done venting her anger at him. “She was an innocent person! She didn’t deserve to have a mental shutdown! So why?” she shouted the last few words. “WHY DID YOU KILL HER?”

“Because I didn’t know that killing her shadow would kill her!” Akechi snapped back. Everyone looked towards him in surprise. The Black Mask took a deep breath, before continuing in a calmer and more measured tone. “Wakaba Isshiki wasn’t just one of my first kills. She was my very first. I had no clue how the Metaverse worked back then. I didn’t have a talking cat to explain to me how to change the hearts of shadows, or even how shadows worked to begin with.”

Morgana bristled. “I’m not a…”

“You could be the second coming of Jesus Christ Himself and I still wouldn’t give any less of a shit!” Goro snarled, the vitriol in his voice stunning Morgana into silence. “As I was saying…I didn’t know what would happen. I had the basic understanding that killing a shadow would have a negative effect on the real person, but that was all I knew.”

“Shido never told you what would happen if you killed someone’s shadow, did he?” Ren asked quietly.

Akechi let out a derisive laugh. “Of course he didn’t! That was all the way back when I first presented myself to him, and had no idea just how much of a disgusting piece of shit he truly was! He offered to teach me how to use my powers, and because worming my way into his inner circle was vital for my plan to ruining him, I followed his orders and killed Isshiki’s shadow. I didn’t realize that doing so would trigger a mental shutdown on her until it was far too late for me to do anything about it or even change my choice.”

“You…you didn’t know…?” Futaba asked incredulously.

The Detective Prince sneered. “Of course I didn’t. And because of my naivety and Shido’s deceptions, I had innocent blood stained on my hands forever. My soul was already marked forever with her death, so I figured that I might as well see this through to the end. No matter what happened leading up to that point, I would make Shido pay for the death of my mother and the ruining of my childhood.”

Makoto opened her mouth to speak, but Akechi cut her off. “I know what you’re going to say, Nijima. That I’m every bit as evil as Shido. That I abused the Metaverse for my own selfish game just as he did.” His lips twisted into a sneer. “Believe me, I am fully aware of this. I’ve killed the guilty and the innocent, both directly and indirectly, by my hands. But so long as I topple Shido from his throne, then at least I can say that all of that bloodshed served a purpose. And I will make sure that Shido falls, no matter what it takes. That is the only justice that matters to me.”

“Sounds less like justice and more like revenge,” Ann muttered under her breath.

“Think what you will, I don’t particularly care,” Akechi retorted. “You don’t trust me, and that’s fine. You’d be a fool to blindly accept what I say after I sold Joker out. But you can most certainly trust my hatred and my rage.”

Silence fell on the group for several seconds. When Futaba broke it for the second time, it was only to ask this. “Did you know what happened to me afterwards?” she asked quietly. “After you killed my mother?”

Akechi looked more confused than anything at the question. “You were sent to live with…your uncle, I believe?” he ventured. “And then Sojiro Sakura afterwards? I’m not aware of any more details.”

Futaba accepted the answer silently. Her face was an expressionless mask, but Ren could see the brief flash of relief in her face. Relief at the fact that Akechi hadn’t sunk so low as to knowingly throw Futaba into a living Hell after Wakaba’s death, that he hadn’t known about Shido forging a suicide note and having the police read it in front of the rest of her birth family specifically to blame her for her mother’s death and send her spiraling into a crippling, almost suicidal depression. But that wasn’t something Akechi needed to know, and she had no intention of baring her inner thoughts to him. Not yet. “Fine,” she muttered, crossing her arms. “I’ll never forgive you for killing my mother, Akechi, but we’ve got bigger fish to fry, and I’m not gonna put my team and my friends in danger just because of your stupid, smug face. I hate to admit it, but you’re the only reason why Ren is still alive, and I can at the very least appreciate that, if nothing else.” She pointed an accusing, challenging finger at him. “But just like with Haru, we’re going to have a chat after we deal with that asshole. And if you don’t want every piece of technology you own to blow up in your face, we’re going to have that chat.”

Akechi merely nodded. He could owe the girl that much for killing her mother once Shido was out of the picture, at the very least.

Sojiro sighed. He had been silently watching and listening to these teens affirm their commitment to justice. He was not and would never be comfortable with them going after the most powerful, vile, and dangerous man in the country. To his own surprise, this even included Akechi, despite knowing that he was responsible for Wakaba’s death and, indirectly, Futaba’s depression. The system had failed them again and again, to the point that they truly had no other option but to take matters into their own hands. “Just be careful,” he warned, “and don’t do anything reckless.”

Ren smirked. “That’s why we’re here. So we can plan things out, and make sure that Shido won’t ever see us coming.” It was a sentiment that Akechi could absolutely agree with, but he had the feeling that there was something more to it than what Ren was letting on. Especially when his rival had provided such an extensive depth and understanding of things that he should not have ever had any knowledge of back in the interrogation room.

He didn’t have any time to pursue his thoughts, however, as the leader of the Phantom Thieves turned his gaze upon him. “Akechi, I’m guessing Shido wanted you to do something after you killed me?”

“That’s right,” he confirmed. “He wanted me to go back on TV and announce to the world that I had been going deep undercover just so I could capture the leader of the Phantom Thieves.”

“Good,” Ren replied with a nod of his head. “Keep doing that.”

“What the hell?” Ryuji exclaimed indignantly. “He’s still going to be talking shit about us on live TV even after everything?”

Ren silenced him with a look. “If Shido figures out that Goro is secretly working together with us against him, then he’ll figure out that I’m alive as well,” he explained. “And then we’re all fucked. We need Akechi to follow Shido’s script until the last possible moment so that by the time Shido suspect something, it’ll be too late for him to do anything about it.”

Akechi smirked appreciatively. “Glad to see that somebody here appreciates strategy,” he commented.

Ren rolled his eyes. “When’s your next big TV appearance?” he asked.

“The end of November,” Akechi answered. “The exact date has yet to be determined.”

“Try to get it scheduled sooner rather than later,” Ren commanded. “That way, we can get through Shido’s Palace as soon as possible. I’m planning on clearing the whole thing in 1 day and sending the Calling Card the day after.”

“So soon?” Akechi couldn’t help but show his surprise. While he appreciated Ren’s determination to see this through as soon as possible without delays or pointless dawdling, even he was surprised by the level of efficiency that his rival was suggesting. “You do realize that Shido’s Palace will be extremely challenging and difficult to navigate? The man’s knowledge of the cognitive world is formidable, and I have no doubt that his defenses will be far stronger than any other Palace before him.”

“Pssssshhhhh!” Ryuji scoffed, an impish grin on his face. “Like that’s stopped us before!”

“I think you are greatly underestimating our leader’s skills,” Yusuke added. “Ren’s ability to clear palaces is almost uncanny in its perfection.”

Makoto smiled. “Every single palace we’ve been through, we’ve managed to clear in 1 day without any problems. And any time we’ve been forced to take more than 1 day to clear a Palace because of a roadblock in real life, Ren made sure to eliminate that roadblock immediately and complete the palace the next day. Afterwards, he wasted no time in sending the Calling Card out and defeating the Palace Rulers as soon as possible. Every single time, without exceptions.”

Akechi had to admire the level of efficiency that he was hearing, even if part of him was still skeptical about their ability to clear a Palace as complex and as dangerous as Shido’s so quickly. “I will convince Shido to schedule my next TV as soon as possible,” he assured him, allowing some of his true bloodlust to seep into his voice. “Believe me, Ren, I’m just as eager to take that bastard’s Palace down as you are.”

Ren smirked. “Glad to hear it, Goro. But before we talk about anything else, we need to talk about your second Persona.”

It took every bit of Akechi’s willpower not to openly gape or even widen his eyes in shock as the other Thieves let out gasps of surprise and disbelief at the revelation. Ren didn’t even give Akechi a chance to deny it before pressing forward. “Come now, Goro, we both know it’s the truth. Unless you’re telling me that Robin Hood was the persona that you were using to induce the mental shutdowns. Robin Hood, the upstanding and noble hero of justice?” He shook his head, allowing his smirk to grow larger. “No no no no no, it’s obvious that you have another hidden Persona behind the scenes. One that’s much darker than Robin Hood. Maybe one that’s Curse-based?”

It really was uncanny just how much Ren seemed to know about things that he should have absolutely zero awareness of. Granted, one could deduce that he had a second Persona with some careful thinking and logical deduction, but still… “That’s right…” Akechi replied carefully.

Ren gestured at the seat across him at the booth. “Come here and sit down, Goro,” he invited smoothly. “I want to learn all about this second Persona of yours.”

Goro’s eyes narrowed. He trusted Ren far more than he trusted…pretty much anyone else in his entire sorry excuse for a life. But that didn’t mean he was going to freely just spill one of his darkest and most carefully hidden secrets to Ren, no matter the respect he had for him. “And what do you plan to do with that information?” he asked carefully.

Ren’s smirk evolved into a full-blown mischievous grin, and the answer that he gave Akechi was everything he could have hoped for. “When we finally fight Shido, you’re going to be on the front lines,” the leader of the Phantom Thieves answered smoothly. “And if I’m going to help you smash that fucker’s face in, I’m going to need to know everything there is to know about Loki."

Chapter Text

Ren and the Phantom Thieves watched silently as Akechi’s interview played on TV in LeBlanc. “So, Akechi-san? Is it true you withdrew yourself from the media as part of your plan to capture the Phantom Thieves?” the newscaster was asking.

Goro gave his most charming smile as he responded in his well-crafted Detective Prince tone. “I truly apologize for causing such a stir. Honestly, it required a lot of courage to openly oppose them when their popularity was at its peak. I mean, people often lashed at me online and whatnot.”

“Him and his stupid composed face…” Futaba growled under her breath. Ren didn’t fault her for being angry, even if they all knew that Akechi’s interview was part of their plan to deceive Shido until it was too late. Genuine alliance or not, Akechi had murdered her mother, and that was something that she had every right to never forgive.

“Then, it was also your plan when you said they weren’t at fault after their popularity declined?” the newscaster prodded.

Goro’s smile widened. “That was to catch them off guard. I could say I applied my profiling knowledge. Once they lost public support, someone they thought was their greatest enemy lent a hand…that’s the same strategy used in romance, wouldn’t you agree?”

Yusuke chuckled mirthlessly. “There is certainly somebody who will indeed be caught off-guard, but it is not who the public believe it is going to be,” he commented.

Haru wasn’t quite so pleased. “Why is he being treated as an ace detective of justice?” she demanded.

“You know why,” Ren answered, his tone sympathetic but firm. “Akechi is in a unique position to lull Shido in a false sense of security, build up his overconfidence and his belief that he’s secure in his victory.” An almost sinister grin appeared on his face. “A belief that I’m looking very forward to proving wrong.”

“I’m with you there!” Ann agreed vehemently. Even now, she was still appalled and disgusted that Ren had been framed and tarnished with a criminal record because he had tried to stop a man who was somehow even viler than Kamoshida from sexually assaulting an innocent woman. Akechi or no Akechi, stealing Shido’s heart was a matter of principle for her.

“I’m just glad that Akechi managed to schedule his TV interview sooner rather than later,” Makoto murmured. The closer they got to Election Day without changing Shido’s heart, the greater the chances that a monster like a Shido would actually become elected without suffering any consequences.

“Agreed,” Morgana added. “The fact that he was able to get this over with only 3 days after the interrogation and Ren’s rescue is extremely good timing.”

“Akechi and I want to clear this Palace as soon as humanly possible,” Ren explained. “He wants to deal with this sooner rather than later, and I’m sure that nobody here would disagree with that.”

“So when are we going to infiltrate Shido’s Palace?” Makoto asked.

“Tomorrow,” Ren declared. “I already know the keywords to get into the Palace and everything. So does Akechi.”

“Wait, FOR REAL?” Ryuji exclaimed, sitting up straighter on his chair. “Damn, Ren, I know you’ve known the keywords every single time we’ve infiltrated a Palace, but still, holy shit!”

“How did you figure that out already?” Futaba asked incredulously. “We haven’t even started trying out keywords!”

Ren smirked. “I’ve been listening to his campaign speeches, as much as it physically pains me to listen to that steaming sack of shit speak,” he explained. “He keeps talking about how he’s going to sail this country into a great future, or some bullshit that we all know he doesn’t mean. But with how often he uses that catchphrase, it wasn’t hard for me to figure out that he clearly has a ship of some kind for his distortion.”

“Great!” Morgana grinned. “If we already know his keywords, then all we need to do is wait for Akechi to meet up with us, and we’re good to go!”

As if the Black Mask had heard him, Ren’s phone rang. One look at the Caller ID confirmed that it was Akechi; the Detective Prince must have finished his interview while they were speaking. The leader of the Phantom Thieves answered the call and placed it on speaker. “I have finished my interview,” Akechi began without any preamble. “Although I cannot fathom what is in Shido’s mind, given how you’re so convinced he knew who I was from the very beginning, I do not believe that he suspects a thing about my latest change in allegiances. I trust that the rest of the Thieves are ready to do their part?” he questioned.

“You got it,” Ren confirmed. “Exactly as we planned. We infiltrate the Palace tomorrow, clear it in a day, and then steal Shido’s heart one day later. You know me well enough by now to know that I don’t fuck around when the chips are down, Goro.”

“You most certainly don’t,” Akechi agreed. “As we discussed, I’ll be entering the Palace separately from you to avoid arousing Shido’s suspicion. If I were to be caught entering the Palace as part of your little group, I might as well walk up to Shido, announce our plans to his face, and then shoot myself with my own gun given how badly that would give away everything.”

“That’s one way to put it,” Makoto muttered, before sighing. “But…I can’t exactly disagree with Akechi here. Keeping Shido in the dark is critical to our success.”

“Then I will see you at Shido’s Palace,” Akechi answered curtly, before hanging up the phone.

“Real nice guy, isn’t he?” Ryuji deadpanned.

“As long as he doesn’t stab us in the back or hold us back in any way, then it doesn’t really matter how nice or mean he is,” Morgana replied.

“Are you sure about this, Ren-kun?” Haru asked her leader and friend, worry and distrust clear in her tone. “Are you sure that Akechi won’t betray us?”

“If he wanted to betray us, I’d be in the morgue with a bullet hole in my head,” Ren answered with zero hesitation in his voice. “That’s proof enough for me.”

“I am not sure how much I trust Akechi,” Yusuke commented, giving him a respectful nod. “But I trust you and I trust your judgment. You have pulled off many feats in the past that have been nothing short of miraculous, Ren. I am confident in your ability to carry out one more.”

The Next Day…At the Diet Building…

“Are you sure this is the place?” Ann asked quietly as they huddled together on the street opposite the Diet Building. They were close enough to the structure that it was easily visible, but far enough away that no security guards could see them and question their presence there. Ren had insisted that they keep a respectful distance away from the building to minimize the chance that they could be spotted.

“No doubt about it,” Ren replied as he opened up the Metanav on his phone. Holding it up to his lips, he spoke the keywords that would unlock the pathway to Masayoshi Shido’s distortion. “Masayoshi Shido. Diet Building. Ship.”

“Candidate found.”

The rest of the Phantom Thieves blinked in surprise as the world began to warp around, transporting them away from the real world to the Metaverse version of Japan’s government building. When the transportation was complete and the world around them cleared up…it didn’t look as though anything had immediately changed.

“Are you sure we actually entered the Metaverse?” Ann wondered, looking around her. “The Diet Building still looks the same.”

Ren shook his head. “Guess again,” he corrected her grimly with a scowl on his face as he started walking away from the Diet Building. At first, the Thieves didn’t realize what Ren was trying to point out. But when he stopped and pointed out in front of him, the truth became horrifically clear.

The Diet Building had been transformed into part of a gigantic cruise ship, far larger than any building than any of them had ever seen in all of Tokyo. Shido’s Palace sailed upon a vast expanse of sea, the emptiness of the endless waters punctuated only by tilted, ruined skyscrapers slowly sinking into the waters. All of them stared aghast at the sight, knowing that it represented the future of Tokyo is a monster like Masayoshi Shido was allowed to gain power uncontested.

“Disgusting, isn’t it?” an all-too familiar voice interrupted their thoughts. Everyone turned around to see Goro Akechi standing a few feet behind them, glaring out into the cognitive sea with undisguised hatred. “Such is the arrogance of Shido. Only those who grovel at his feet and kowtow to his every whim are permitted on board this despicable vessel. Anyone else is tossed aside like trash, with barely a second glance.”

“Even though this country may sink, he alone will survive. That’s what his cognition is all about, huh?” Haru murmured, clearly horrified by what she was seeing. “How could one man become so thoroughly distorted?”

“Does it matter?” Ren asked with a sneer on his face. Goro’s eyes fell on him, immediately noting how the leader of the Phantom Thieves’ expression differed from that of his fellow Thieves. Unlike them, he was not looking at the scene before him with horror and shock. In fact, he didn’t seem to be surprised in the slightest by the magnitude of Shido’s distortion. Instead, all that Goro could see in his eyes was cold, seething contempt and disgust. An expression almost identical to the feelings that he himself had kept carefully hidden from Shido every time he had been forced to stand in the same room as him, let alone converse with him directly. “Who cares how Shido became what he is today? What matters is that he’s going to drag the entire country down into a shithole if we let him become Prime Minister without changing his heart…and I’d rather die before I let that happen.”

A sentiment that Goro completely agreed with. Even now, part of him still desperately sought to carry out his original plan as he had intended, but Ren had cast enough doubt that the more rational parts of his brain recognized just how risky and flawed that plan truly was. In fact, part of the reason why he had opted for that plan instead of attempting a mental shutdown was because Shido’s Shadow was far too well protected in his Palace for him to attempt taking him down by himself.

But now? Now he had the Phantom Thieves to make the work of invading the Palace much easier, especially if Ren was able to support his claim that he would be able to clear the entire Palace in just one day. Now, taking the fight to Shido’s Shadow was not only possible, but arguably the best way to approach his revenge. He had seen the Phantom Thieves in action, and while the only one who could hope to match his power was Ren himself, he had to admit that the Thieves themselves were far from incompetent fighters with Ren at their command.

At best, they would be valuable allies, Ren especially. At worst, they were extra bodies between himself and Shido. Either way, he had no complaints.

“It should undoubtedly go without saying,” Goro commented dryly, “that Shido’s Palace will be far more dangerous than any Palace you have invaded before. As much as I hate to give the mongrel credit for anything, I will admit that he has used the research of Futaba’s mother, and used it well.” Futaba scowled at the mention of her mother, but didn’t say anything. “It would be wise to be cautious.”

“We’ll keep that in mind,” Ren nodded in acknowledged. He turned to face the rest of the group. “Before we begin, I want to make one thing abundantly clear. I know that you all have reasons to hate Goro. Reasons that are completely valid. But leave your problems with him in reality. Right now, in the Metaverse, Goro is a member of our team,” he focused gaze on each and every one of his team members, making sure he had their full attention. “That means if he needs a buff, you give him a buff. If he needs to be healed, you give him a heal. If any of you refuses or even hesitates to help him, and Goro gets hurt because of it, I will be very angry.” His eyes narrowed. “Do I make myself clear?”

“Crystal…” Ryuji mumbled. To Goro’s surprise, the other Phantom Thieves similarly acknowledged Ren’s command without a single word of protest, even Futaba and Haru. He could have also sworn that some of the Thieves were trying to suppress a shudder, as if they were almost…fearful…of challenging Ren. Goro could only surmise that at one point, one or more of the Thieves had made the mistake of genuinely angering their leader…and it had been a mistake that none of them ever wanted to replicate.

“The same goes to you,” Ren turned his attention to Akechi. “I’m willing to give you a second chance, Akechi. I’m not going to give you a third. If you ever try to betray us during this heist,” those same eyes narrowed, the grey irises turning red for a split second, “it will be the last mistake you ever make.”

“…noted,” Goro acknowledged, doing his best to ignore the trickle of fear that crept down his spine for a brief moment. “We have the same goal, Amamiya, so right now you and I have no reason to oppose each other.” There was also the fact that trying to fight 1 vs. 8 by himself was incredibly stupid, especially when one of those 8 could potentially be powerful enough to fight him by himself.

“Good,” Ren nodded before breaking out into the smirk that had become so fundamentally tied with Joker’s identity. “Then let’s get cracking. The sooner we clear the Palace, the sooner we can change Masayoshi Shitbag’s heart.”

The Phantom Thieves all cracked up at Ren’s joke, and even Akechi couldn’t suppress a twitch of his lips at the unexpected but well-deserved bastardization of Shido’s name. His bastard of a sperm donor’s Shadow was within his grasp…and he would make sure to get the justice he deserved, one way or another.

/

The moment they stepped into Shido’s Palace, all of the Phantom Thieves immediately had their clothes transformed into their Metaverse attire. So did Akechi, but his costume transformed into something completely different than what he had worn into Sae’s Palace. His previous costume had been a white soldier’s outfit with golden laurels and highlights of red, a perfect representation of the shining icon of justice and nobility that he had portrayed. The outfit that he wore now couldn’t have been any more different. Instead of his red beak-like mask, Crow now wore a menacing black helm with a scarlet visor that gave his eyes an unholy red color. His outfit was now a striped black and dark blue vest with claw-like gauntlets and greaves made of black metal, with a midnight black cape with jagged edges to complete the look. Instead of his brilliant blue blade from before, he now carried a jagged laser blade with a scarlet glow to complete his villainous transformation.

Akechi caught the Phantom Thieves staring at his outfit and sneered. “What?” he asked mockingly. “Are you surprised? You know already that I’m the Black Mask by now. Surely you didn’t expect my true self to be that shining hero of justice that you saw before?”

“No, it’s not that,” Oracle shook her head. “It’s just that…you remind me so much of Black Condor right now that it’s not even funny!”

Akechi’s brain almost shut down at a comment so inexplicably random. “…What,” was all he could say.

“Dude, you’re right!” Ryuji agreed eagerly. “It’s crazy how similar they are! He joined the team to try and stab us in the back, only to join our team again for real! Heck, they both even have daddy issues!”

Crow felt something in the back of his mind nearly snap at the words “daddy issues.” Can we please get back to the matter at hand?” he growled through gritted teeth. He’d be six feet underground before he admitted to these imbeciles that he was a secret Featherman Neo fan…and that Black Condor was his favorite character in the show.

“All right, all right, guys,” Joker raised his hands to calm everyone down, although the smirk on his face belied his amusement at Akechi’s flustered state. “Let’s get down to business. We can talk about our strategy further once we get to the first Safe Room.”

The Phantom Thieves nodded in agreement, and they began their infiltration of Shido’s Palace proper. The Entrance Hall of Shido’s Palace was filled with cognitions wearing fancy dresses and masks akin to a masquerade ball, and every single one of them was filled with “special guests” who did nothing but sing Shido’s praises, spouting drivel about how they were so grateful and lucky to be part of Shido’s special entourage of sycophants. They were so wrapped up in their own delusions that they didn’t even recognize their first fight with a shadow as such, instead praising Shido for providing them with a show.

“Do they not realize the danger they are in?” Fox asked indignantly as he sheathed his katana. “Can they not see how Shido sees them as nothing but his own tools to be used and discarded on a whim?”

“Of course not,” Akechi replied derisively. “Shido offered them empty promises, and they fell for them hook, line, and sinker. You already know what happens to those who decide not to submit…or those who are no longer of any use.”

Noir shuddered. The image of her father in the throes of a mental shutdown, his eyes empty as voids with black ichor spilling out of them was a sight that she would never forget until her dying days. And as much as she wanted to rage against Akechi for being the one to directly end her father’s life, the princess of the Okumura family knew full well that Shido had ultimately been the hand that had pulled the trigger. And she knew that even if Akechi hadn’t killed her father, it was almost certain that Shido would have found a different way to assassinate him. His control over both the police force and the Yakuza (if Kaneshiro was of any indication) was proof enough of that. Her eyes hardened with determination. “We MUST defeat Shido, no matter what it takes!” she declared, tightening her grip on her axe.

With their resolve renewed, the Thieves easily tore their way through the Shadows until they had made it to the Central Passage. Once they had done so, they quickly ducked their way into a nearby Safe Room. “All right,” Joker turned to face Goro once they had all been seated. “You’ve been here before, Crow. Care to explain how this Palace works?”

Goro couldn’t help but notice that the question was a little odd. Ren’s words in the interrogation room and his behavior so far had implied that he was already familiar with Shido’s Palace, as impossible as that was…but then realized that he was asking for the benefit of the other Thieves, and to make it feel like Akechi was a part of the Team instead of a distant ally that they were only forced to work with. Goro personally couldn’t be bothered what the other Thieves thought of him, but even he understood that they would more likely to succeed if they were unified. He took out the map they had taken from the Main Hall and pointed at a large, empty space that corresponded to the center of the Palace. “Shido’s Treasure is located in that hall,” Akechi explained, the other Thieves paying close attention. “However, in order to get to that hall, you need five letters of recommendation from the cognitions of five of Shido’s most influential…associates,” was the word he spoke, although everyone could tell that what he truly meant was servants. “What makes this more challenging is that each and every one of these cognitions is able to transform into a powerful monster, just like the Shadows of actual people.”

“So we’re going to have to fight five bosses before we actually fight Shido,” Oracle mumbled. “That’s going to be annoying.”

Panther didn’t seem all that concerned. “We’ll just beat the shit out of them like we’ve done to every Shadow!” she declared. “And if any of us have any trouble, Joker can just slice them to pieces with Yoshitsune like he always does when he needs to break out the big guns!”

“Yoshitsune?” Akechi asked, puzzled. “I don’t think I’ve seen Joker use that Persona before.”

Queen smiled. “Well, we knew you were an enemy back when you joined the team before, so obviously Joker never showed the true extent of his power to you. But now that we’re all on the same page, you’ll see just how powerful he can really be.”

Mona smirked. “Once you see Joker break out Yoshitsune, you’ll never want to get on his bad side ever again!” he boasted.

Akechi had to admit that he was curious. “We’ll see once we get to the first of Shido’s cognitions,” he decided. After all, the only way to truly gauge one’s power was to see it for himself. And Crow had no intention of missing out on seeing just what his rival was truly capable of.

“By the way, Crow,” Joker spoke out suddenly. “Which persona are you going to be using for this infiltration? Robin Hood or Loki?”

“Loki, of course,” Akechi answered, a savage grin appearing on his face. “I’m done hiding my true self, either from you or from Shido. I will fight in this Palace with my true self unleashed, and show Shido just what I’m capable of at long last.”

Joker nodded. For a brief moment, Akechi could have sworn that the leader of the Phantom Thieves had frowned slightly, but the expression vanished as quickly as it had come, if it had even appeared to begin with. “Then I think it’ll be for the best if I give you this,” he extended his gloved hand, revealing a golden Ring with a light purple gem at its core. “It’s the Ring of Vanity. We got it from fusing Madarame’s Will Seeds.”

Akechi took the Ring and put it on his finger. Immediately, he felt the Ring’s power flow through him, removing Loki’s weakness to Bless and also granting him a new ability called “Bleeding Dry Brush,” allowing him to form a Barrier that would let him nullify any attack apart from Almighty. He nodded to Joker in thanks and went back to brooding quietly to himself.

 Once they were ready, the Thieves set out to find the restaurant where Politician Ooe was known to frequently visit. They came across a few Shadows patrolling the vast bar room between the Central Passage and Restaurant, but they were easily torn to pieces by the Phantom Thieves. Goro couldn’t help but notice the rather peculiar way in which Joker lead the Thieves. Sometimes, he would seem to keep himself as minimally involved in the combat as possible, instead directing the Thieves to perform a particular attack or action while he provided support buffs, debuffs, or healing as needed. Other times, Joker would leap right into combat directly (and he was always the first to make a move, without exception), obliterating their enemies before anyone else even had a chance to attack.

“Alice!” the leader of the Phantom Thieves cackled as the sinister blonde-haired girl appeared beside him, a manic grin appearing on her face. “RAVAGE THEM!”

“Would you please die for me?” the girl asked with a terrifying giggle as she pointed at the latest of the shadows. Seconds later, a crowd of demented teddie bears streaked with blood and wearing stacks of dynamite strapped to their backs marched towards the enemy, exploding every time they connected. It was an attack that frankly looked ridiculous…and yet every time Joker used it against an enemy not resistant to Curse, they died. Instantly and without a single exception.

“The hell even is this?” Akechi thought as he watched the Shadows die to Alice’s “Die for Me!” attack for the third time. He wasn’t particularly scared of the attack per se, since it was a Curse attack at its core, and thus Loki’s nature rendered him immune to any Curse attack no matter how powerful it was. Still, even he had to admit that this level of power was somewhat unnerving to witness. “Why the fuck did no one ever tell me about this?” he asked aloud.

“Because you were an enemy at the time, duh!” Oracle shot down his question immediately. “Why the hell would Joker show off every Persona and attack he had in front of someone who was going to backstab him later anyway?”

“Besides,” Noir added with a dainty giggle, “he’s showing his power to you now, isn’t he?”

Akechi didn’t have it in himself to retort, although he undoubtedly would have if it was anyone other than Futaba or Haru pointing this out to him. Both of them had lost family members because of him (although he didn’t know why anybody would bother mourning the corrupt piece of shit known as Kunikazu Okumura), and because of this he was willing to tolerate more from them than he would from anyone else, so long as they didn’t piss him off too much.

Instead, Crow decided to focus on advancing their mission. “You’ll need a VIP card to enter the restaurant,” he warned. “Trying to get Ooe’s letter of recommendation is a lost cause without one.”

“For real?” Skull exclaimed in disbelief. “How the hell are we supposed to get one then?”

To everyone’s surprise, Joker smirked. “Leave it to me, guys,” he assured them. He rushed down the stairs, the Thieves following behind him, until they arrived at one of the many bars tended to by a shadow without a mask. The leader of the Phantom Thieves approached the bar confidently. “Good afternoon, sir,” he greeted the Shadow with a suave and charming tone.

“Good afternoon,” the bartender returned the greeting, completely oblivious. “How can I help you?”

“I seem to have misplaced my VIP card,” Joker explained, adding a layer of false regret and concern in his voice. “Would you happen to have come across it?”

“Why, yes!” the bartender replied, holding up a golden VIP card to Joker. “Is this what you were looking for?”

“That’s it!” Joker took the card gratefully. “Thank you very much sir.” He walked back to the rest of his friends, smirking. “Easy.”

“The hell?” Skull exclaimed in disbelief. “How did you know that was gonna work?”

Joker shrugged. “Figured I might as well give it a shot,” he replied nonchalantly.

Crow narrowed his eyes ever so slightly behind his visor. Again, this was all far too convenient. Once again, Joker was demonstrating an understanding of the Palace that shouldn’t have been possible unless he had been to it before. His rival was even more of a mystery than he had possibly imagined, and he hated not knowing what was going on.

For now, he wouldn’t confront Joker about the issue. His bizarre prescience had proven nothing but helpful so far, and there would be time later. But sooner or later, he would get to the bottom of this.

“Crow!” Joker’s voice interrupted him. “I think we’re about to face Ooe’s cognitions. Ready to fight?”

Akechi gave him a feral grin. “I’m always ready,” he hissed. “Let’s tear these cognitions to shreds!”

Joker nodded, and when they arrived at the restaurant Queen and Skull volunteered to speak to Politician Ooe’s cognition. Akechi didn’t know why they bothered when they would very likely have to just steal the cognition’s letter of recommendation anyway, and sure enough, the politician transformed into the massive eight-headed serpent of Yamato-no-Orochi. Akechi grinned as he entered the battle, and immediately felt himself getting empowered by a simultaneous Tarukaja, Rakukaja, and Sukukaja effect all at once. He vaguely remembered how one of Joker’s personas always cast an Auto-Matarukaja, Auto-Marakukaja, and Auto-Masukukaja effect back when he had joined their infiltration in Sae’s Palace…no doubt such a Persona would be incredibly valuable against powerful enemies such as this…even if that Persona was immediately switched out and never used again for the remainder of the battle. Sure enough, the Persona was immediately switched out to a monolith with red carvings on it, which Joker used to cast a Concentrate effect on himself.

“Crow!” Joker commanded. “Cast Debilitate!”

“LOKI!” Crow cackled as he unleashed his true self, the horned demonic trickster god unleashing a crippling cascade of cursed orbs that utterly weakened the Yamato-no-Orochi on all fronts. “That’ll do,” he added with a smirk.

Queen unleashed a Freidyne spell that did a decent amount of damage, and at Joker’s command Noir tossed an Earth Bean to Crow to give him a Charge effect. The Yamato-no-Orochi prepared a Concentrate effect on itself as well, causing Crow to become wary as no doubt its next effect would be very powerful.

Joker, however, didn’t seem as concerned. Taking his mask, he brought out another Persona. One that Akechi hadn’t seen him use before. “Surtr!” he bellowed, and the fiery giant of Norse mythology appeared beside him, wielding a giant flaming sword that reminded him very much of Loki’s own. A sense of recognition seemed to surge from the Persona in question, along with a feeling of anticipation and delight at the carnage that his mythological ally and fellow entity of chaos was about to unleash. “BLAZING HELL!” he roared.

The flaming giant lifted its sword, and Akechi watched in utter shock as half of the entire restaurant floor was suddenly bathed in a molten crater of boiling lava and flames far hotter than anything he had ever encountered before, either in the Metaverse or in real life. The Yamato-no-Orochi screamed in pure agony as it was baked alive by the overwhelming heat of Surtr’s flames for several seconds on end. When the flames finally subsided, the Yamato-no-orochi was still alive, but clearly it had been heavily damaged by the fiery attack. “Finish it, Crow!” Joker shouted.

Akechi unleashed the surge of bloodlust within him. “LEVIATIENN!!!!” he bellowed. Loki’s own molten sword, empowered by the Earth Beans Noir had given him earlier, swung down upon the badly wounded shadow, slicing it in half and obliterating it from existence.

“Wow!” Mona whistled as he watched the Yamato-no-Orochi transform back into a defeated cognitive Ooe. “You really are pretty powerful, Crow!”

“Hell yeah!” Skull agreed. “You kicked that Shadow’s ass!”

Akechi allowed himself to preen at the praise for a few minutes, before snapping his attention back to business. Not wasting any time, he approached the defeated cognition and held his gun up to his head. “Y-you!” the cognitive Ooe exclaimed in horror.

“Give me your letter of recommendation,” Crow commanded. “Or you can join my other victims in death.”

Trembling, the cognitive Ooe took out his letter and shakily handed it to Crow. The Black Mask grabbed it and handed it to Joker, who accepted it with a nod and placed it away in his coat.

“I have to admit,” Queen murmured, “I’m kind of surprised that you didn’t just flat-out kill the cognition.”

“The thought did cross my mind,” Crow admitted. “However, I’d rather not do anything to alert Shido of the possibility that his Palace is being attacked. I once killed a cognition in Shido’s Palace a year ago, just to see how that would affect the man himself. Shido had not originally planned to assassinate the person who the cognition represented in reality, but that very night he demanded that I inflict a mental shutdown on the associate without any preamble whatsoever.” He scowled. “If I go as far as killing this cognition, Shido might suddenly demand that I destroy him in reality…and when I fail to respond since I’m in the Metaverse, that will immediately alert him that something is wrong.”

“So there’s tactical reasons to keeping them alive as well,” Mona muttered.

“At any rate, there is no reason for us to linger here any further,” Fox declared. “Shall we press onward?”

“Yes, let’s,” Crow agreed curtly. Nobody had any objections, and the Phantom Thieves took the elevator leading out of the restaurant and into the depths of the cruise ship. Unfortunately, this ended up proving to be a more annoying challenge than what they anticipated, as it meant that scurrying through the corridors as tiny mice of all things while trying to avoid the Shadows that patrolled the hallways. When they approached a room with an active Shido statue and several Shadows patrolling it, Joker turned to Crow.

“How does Call of Chaos work on Shadows again?” he asked. “You cast it on a Shadow, it goes berserk with a power increase and a defense decrease, and then it immediately attacks anything you want it to?”

“It’s a little more complicated than that, but that’s how it works, yes,” Akechi confirmed.

“Do it on the nearest Shadow,” Joker commanded.

Some of the Phantom Thieves looked a bit uneasy at this. “Are you…sure…this is necessary?” Noir asked carefully.

“It’s either that or try to navigate a room full of Shadows that could trample us easily while we’re trapped in mouse form,” her leader replied grimly.

“I have to agree with Joker here,” Queen reluctantly conceded. “It is tactically the wisest move…no matter how distasteful it might be.”

Crow nodded and focused his attention back on the nearest Shadow. He summoned Loki to his side again and cast the Call of Chaos on the Shadow while its back was turned to him. Immediately, unholy red and black energy coursed around the Shadow, consuming it with its manic energies. The Shadow howled in berserk fury, transforming into its true form and immediately attacking any other Shadows in sight. “What the hell are you doing?” they could hear one of them shouting frantically, only for his question to be interrupted by a bloodcurdling scream of rage. The Phantom Thieves hid a couple of inches away from the doorframe, waiting for the chaos to finally subside. When they dared to look again, there was only one Shadow immediately visible, the berserked Shadow and the rest of its former allies all dead.

Oracle confirmed it with a quick scan. “There’s only one Shadow left,” she reported. “We can easily avoid it now.” She sighed. “Can’t say I feel happy about what just happened, but I can’t deny that it did the job.”

With only one (badly wounded) Shadow to avoid, the Thieves had an exceptionally easy time navigating their way through the rooms and hallways, and after only a few minutes they had successfully reached the end of the first part of the maze. Akechi couldn’t help but notice how Joker seemed to navigate through the rooms with utmost confidence, as though he knew exactly what he needed to do and how to do it. Granted, there were a few times when even he was briefly stumped by the locked doors, but he never took very long to find the correct way through the labyrinth and get to the other side.

“We’re making good progress through this Palace!” Mona cheered as they rode the elevator up to the Pool Deck of Shido’s Palace. Even better, there was a Safe Room to their right, one that they quickly ducked into to get some rest.

“I can’t wait to steal that bastard’s treasure!” Panther agreed eagerly.

“Don’t get too excited, guys,” Queen reined them in, her tone laced caution and concern. “We haven’t even gotten half of the recommendation letters yet.”

“I agree with Queen,” Akechi added coolly. “Ooe was merely the weakest of Shido’s sycophants to fall. The others will only grow stronger, and this next one is particularly dangerous.”

“What do you mean by that, Crow?” Noir asked.

“I once used Call of Chaos on a Shadow to attack the cognition of this former noble from a safe distance,” Crow explained as he leaned against the Wall, arms crossed. “When the Shadow transformed into different monsters and attacked, the former noble transformed into some sort of manta ray-like demon. It then brainwashed my puppets and forced them to attack each other, before annihilating them with Psy attacks.” His eyes narrowed behind his helm. “I hope you have a plan to defeat that creature quickly, Joker, because things will become very annoying and very dangerous if you don’t.”

“I’ve got that covered,” Joker replied coolly, with the confidence of a man who had a plan and knew how to carry it out.

Crow nodded, but before he could say anything else Skull suddenly interrupted him. “Hey, Crow?” he asked. “I’ve been wondering…about all the shit you’ve said on TV as the Detective Prince. Did you actually mean any of the shit you’ve said when you were giving those interviews? Or was it all a steaming pile of bullshit from the very start?”

That was…a surprisingly insightful and intelligent question from the normally brash and dimwitted teenager. Akechi knew that he could refuse to answer, and that nobody could do a single thing about it…but then he saw Joker straighten up ever so slightly, as though the question had caught his interest. And suddenly, Crow couldn’t resist the urge to engage in discourse with his rival, just as they had done so many times before when he could pretend, for precious few moments, to be a normal teenager hanging out with a friend. “My role as the Detective Prince was a sham from the start,” he began. “That much you already knew. But apart from certain scripted lines and dialogue that Shido forced onto me, I was free to express my own opinions and beliefs to the public as long as they didn’t endanger any of Shido’s plans. Much of what I said in those interviews were my genuine beliefs, Black Mask or no Black Mask. And that includes my thoughts on changes of heart.”

He gave the Phantom Thieves a pointed gaze, showing his firmness in his convictions and his beliefs. “To me, I find the idea of changing someone’s heart utterly abhorrent. At its core, changing someone’s heart is taking away someone’s free will. Manipulating, twisting, transforming their very mind and soul to fit another’s purposes. Every human, no matter how good or evil, has a right to free will and to make their own choices. Stripping someone of that right, leaving them a broken shell of their former self, is a violation that I find both disturbing and disgusting on a fundamental level. I would rather die than have such a fate imposed on myself.”

“The change of heart only works like that because our targets finally have their distorted desires removed!” Mona argued. “After spending days, months, years without a conscience, they finally feel regret, horror, and remorse like any normal person should!”

“It doesn’t change the fact that you strip them of their individuality and trample upon their free will!” Akechi countered. He didn’t notice the dark look that briefly appeared on Joker’s face, one that disappeared before anyone could notice it.

“You’re one to talk!” Oracle fired back. “At least they’re still alive! You just flat-out kill them! How is that any better?”

“I know perfectly well what I’ve done and how I’ve abused the Metaverse for my own ends, Oracle,” Akechi replied coldly. “You don’t need to remind me of my many crimes. But to pretend that your oh-so-noble changes of heart don’t have any dark implications is a display of willful ignorance and arrogance that I would find frankly appalling.”

“You have a point,” Joker answered quietly. All eyes turned to face him, including Akechi’s. “Changing the hearts of the Palace Rulers we’ve faced does take away their free will, I won’t deny that. Their hearts are so distorted that they would never confess their crimes and feel remorse for their actions on their own. But having their desires ripped away from them is a just and fitting punishment for them.”

“Oh?” Akechi raised an eyebrow. He hadn’t expected his rival to flat-out agree with him, and yet continue to advocate for what was effectively brainwashing. “And how do you justify that?”

“Because the Palace Rulers violated the free wills of others, for far longer and in far crueler ways than either you or me ever could,” Joker explained, “not in the Metaverse, but in reality. You say that free will is a fundamental human right. I would agree…but that right is conditional, Crow. It comes with its limitations.”

“And in your mind, what are those limitations, Joker?” Akechi questioned, eager to hear his answer. The other Phantom Thieves were also paying rapt attention, for it wasn’t often that their leader and friend discussed philosophy and offer his wisdom like this.

“When that free will violates or interferes with another person’s life,” Joker replied. “When exercising one’s free will decreases or negatively affects the free will of another person’s.”

“Interesting…” Akechi mused, “but you do realize how vague and subjective that answer is, yes? One person’s definition of the boundaries of free will can easily differ from another’s. For example, you can argue that something as simple as getting into an argument with another person, or shouting at someone in frustration, could be considered an interference of free will.”

“True,” Joker acknowledged. “We could debate all day and all night about what the boundaries of free will are, and we probably wouldn’t reach an agreement even after that. But I think most people, including everyone here, would agree that the crimes that the Palace Rulers committed thoroughly violate the free will of other people far beyond what any decent person would consider acceptable. Kamoshida, torturing his volleyball team because he thought himself superior over them and sexually harassing girls like Ann and Shiho cause he couldn’t keep it in his fucking pants. Madarame, stealing and plagiarizing the art of his pupils like Yusuke while leaving them starving and broke. Kaneshiro, luring Shujin students into a trap with the promise of quick and easy cash, and then blackmailing them into huge debts with the threat of ruining their lives just to get his grubby hands on as much cash as he could. Okumura, abusing the workers in his company and trying to sell off his own daughter to a conceited, self-absorbed jackass for his own selfish gain. And then we have Shido, who violates the rights of others with literally every single thing he does.” He raised an eyebrow at Akechi. “Or do you disagree with me?”

Akechi scoffed. “There might be many things we disagree on Joker, but your statement just now isn’t one of them. They didn’t just violate others’ free will, they thoroughly trampled on it.”

“Damn right they did!” Skull growled. “Shit like this was why we made the Phantom Thieves in the first place!”

“And that’s why changing their heart is just,” Joker continued. “The moment they violated the basic rights and free wills of others in such an evil and unjustifiable way, they lost the right to exercise their own. Tearing away their desires, forcing them to confess their crimes and live with the guilt and horror of their actions, is the punishment we give them for abusing free will. Especially with the law of this country has failed so thoroughly.” He let out a hollow, humorless laugh. “I wish I could trust the justice system of Japan. I really do. But they’ve fucked it up so many times that we don’t have any choice but to take matters into our own hands.”

Akechi was silent as he processed Joker’s words. He could honestly understand where Joker was coming from, at least in some aspects. Even if he wasn’t sure about the justice of changing the hearts of their targets, he could absolutely agree with the fallibility of Japan’s justice system. Even if he disregarded the fact that it allowed someone like Shido to ascend to power and buy the police and the SIU into becoming his personal lapdogs, Akechi knew full well just how corrupt and twisted the justice system truly was. Joker’s experiences in the interrogation room and the reason why he got a criminal record in the first place spoke for themselves, but that was far from the only example. “As much as I hate to admit it, I can’t disagree with you about this country’s justice system,” he admitted, turning his gaze not to Joker, but to Queen. “I wasn’t lying to you about my concerns about your older sister, Queen.”

“You used changing Sae’s heart as the way you were going to capture and betray Joker!” Fox pointed out.

“I used the situation to my advantage,” Crow retorted, “but I wasn’t lying. Nijima truly was becoming obsessed about catching the Phantom Thieves to a dangerous degree, and she was willing to ignore due process just to get results. She would have become more and more corrupt, and I genuinely believe in time that she would have framed innocents without proper evidence just to secure a guilty verdict, all while her superiors watched and did nothing. Nijima was one of the more decent prosecutors out there, and yet that decency did nothing to save her from the corruption associated with her work.” his lips curled into a disgusted sneer. “Apart from you and Okumura’s death, I have never once framed an innocent person for a crime, and I never will.”

“I know,” Queen acknowledged, sighing sadly as she remembered Sae’s Shadow and just how callous and cruel it had become. She couldn’t help but feel a tad bit grateful to Akechi that he had at least indirectly given her the opportunity to save her sister’s soul, even if the circumstances surrounding that opportunity and his reasons for giving it to her had been nothing but a lie.

“Exactly,” Joker cut in, drawing everyone’s attention back to him. “We couldn’t trust the police to do a goddamn thing, and we had the opportunity to take matters into our own hands and give justice when nobody else would. And that’s exactly what we did with the changes of heart. You might not think that robbing the Palace Rulers of their desires was ethical, Akechi. You might think that they deserve to die with a mental shutdown, which is something that we’ll always fundamentally disagree on. But when the only other option is to do nothing, and let rotten adults trample all over us and do whatever the hell they want without any consequences.” The leader of the Phantom Thieves’ eyes hardened into a cold glare. “Over my dead body.”

“On that, we can most certainly agree,” Akechi replied with an understanding nod and a sinister smirk. “The ethics of the changes of heart aside, I certainly can’t blame you and your fellow Thieves for taking a stand against the corruption that infests this world. To do nothing is to be a coward, to bend over and let life beat you into the ground like a dog.” He bared his teeth in a savage snarl. “A state of existence that is completely unacceptable.”

“I guess in that way, we aren’t so different after all,” Panther reluctantly conceded. Just a few days ago, it would have been so easy to dismiss Akechi as nothing but a villain and a traitor, the enemy of the Phantom Thieves in every possible way. And yet…so many things had happened, one after the other, things that had shaken up the Phantom Thieves’ beliefs in ways they hadn’t thought possible.

From Akechi choosing to spare Ren’s life despite having him completely at his mercy, to him sharing the details of his past, fighting alongside the Phantom Thieves as a genuine ally, and debating philosophy and ethics with Ren in a way that was completely open and honest…Goro Akechi wasn’t the monster that they had dismissed him as. He was a teen who had been kicked into the dirt by a cruel and uncaring system over and over again, arguably suffering even worse than they had. And while he had fallen to evil because of it, even as the Black Mask he had his own morals and code of ethics that he genuinely believed in.

He was a dark reflection of themselves, a representation of what any of the Thieves could have begun if they had fallen into darkness with nobody to help keep them out of it. And the arguments that he had made weren’t ones that the Phantom Thieves could simply deny.

Then, Joker suddenly smirked, as if a new thought suddenly occurred to him. “Besides,” he pointed out, “why do YOU care whether we change Shido’s heart? From your own viewpoint, changing a person’s heart is a fate worse than death, and you hate Shido so much that you want to destroy his life and his future forever. By that logic, wouldn’t a change of heart be the perfect punishment to force on him?”

Akechi gave him a startled expression for a few seconds, and then his mouth spread into an understanding smirk. “You know, Joker,” he mused, “that is an excellent point.”

Joker grinned. “Then let’s get going and rip the second recommendation letter out of the former noble’s grubby hands,” he declared, signaling the end of their rest as he twirled his knife in his hand.

The pool deck was just as excessively extravagant as anything else in Shido’s Palace, filled with cognitions laying about on beach chairs in front of a pool that would have been large enough to fit the entire Shibuya Square. There were two Shadows patrolling the pool, but they were quickly and easily taken care of by the Phantom Thieves. Afterwards, Joker identified the former noble almost immediately, lounging on his chair while oblivious and uncaring of the world around him.

“I hate this piece of shit in particular,” Crow growled. “An arrogant and ignorant fool who barely takes notice of the world around him. The only way to consistently grab his attention if you’re a young and attractive woman. Take a fucking guess what that means.”

The Phantom Thieves immediately realized what Crow was insinuating…and they didn’t like the implications any more than he did. “Ugh,” Panther groaned. “Another fucking perverted old man.”

“Hold on!” Skull suddenly grinned. “I think I might have an idea to grab his attention!” His gaze shifted towards the locked door to the fitting rooms, and the moment his friends realized what he was suggesting they gave a loud groan.

“Please tell me you’re joking, Skull,” Queen muttered. She was NOT looking forward to approaching this perverted old noble in a swimsuit on Shido’s Palace of all things, for the greater good or otherwise.

“I see Skull-kun’s rationale for his plan,” Noir shook her head in bemusement, “but that doesn’t make me any more enthusiastic for it.”

“Can I pass?” Panther groaned. “Please?”

“From a purely practical standpoint, Skull’s plan isn’t a terrible one,” Crow conceded, before a bloodthirsty sneer appeared on his face. “However, for reasons of good taste, and because I feel like it, why don’t we just dispense with the idiocies and just beat this mongrel into the ground until he hands his letter over?”

Oracle smirked. “You know, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I 100% agree with Crow here.”

Noir let out a terrifying giggle. “Let’s show this cognition the error of his ways, shall we?” she asked as she hefted her axe.

The Phantom Thieves gave each other knowing smirks as they approached the still-oblivious cognition of the former noble. Panther walked up to the cognition…and vicious slammed the machine gun against the side of his head.

That certainly attracted the man’s attention. “How DARE you assault me in such a manner, you filthy whore!” he roared, leaping off of his beach chair and transforming into the gray sting-ray like demon that Akechi had warned them about earlier.

“I hope you have a plan,” Crow muttered to Joker as he readied his battle stance. He noted that even though starting with his Auto-Mataru/Auto-Maraku/Auto-Masuku Persona would have been the most logical choice of action, the leader of the Phantom Thieves had inexplicably decided to abandon that strategy entirely. Instead, he could sense the familiar power of Arsene in Joker, along with the instant Concentrate boost that seemed to automatically trigger within him thanks to Arsene’s Will of the Sword trait.

“Oh, I most certainly do,” Joker retorted. “Dealing with brainwashing spam bullshit? Having to deal with my teammates attacking me or healing this asshole by mistake? FUCK that noise!” He grabbed his white mask and tore it off his face. “Odin!” he shouted.

A new Persona that Akechi hadn’t seen before appeared beside him, this one a stern, regal, purple-skilled man wearing ornate golden armor with a glass eye over his left eye. A white flowing cape stretched from his neck across his back, and in his right hand he carried the finely crafted spear Gungnir. Akechi could feel the recognition from Loki, this time accompanied by agitation as his Persona recognized his mythological enemy from his own era. “Just how many Personas from Norse mythology does Joker have?” he idly wondered. He didn’t have enough time to dwell any further on his thoughts, though, as a surge of mighty power seemed to flare around Odin and Joker. It was a level of power similar to the one that he had experienced from Surtr, something far mightier than he believed a Persona was capable of. And it was about to be unleashed.

“WILD THUNDER!” Joker bellowed.

Odin slammed his spear into the ground in response to Joker’s command. The very air suddenly seemed to crackle with energy…and then a massive and unstoppable cascade of mighty blue thunderbolts suddenly tore into existence, positively drowning the entire battlefield in front of them with a deluge of raw electrical energy. The lightning storm blasted the Forneus in front of them, and the effect was somehow even more violent and destructive than Joker’s Blazing Hell against Yamato-no-orochi. Because unlike the cognition of Ooe, the manta ray demon was weak against Joker’s Wild Thunder…and the results were far more devastating. The Forneus positively screamed in unbearable agony as the lightning bolts mercilessly tore at its very essence, shocking the Phantom Thieves with the sheer intensity of its expression of pain. Even Akechi, who had spent years killing shadows in the service of Shido and was no stranger to savagery and brutality himself, couldn’t help but feel slightly disturbed with the overwhelming might and sheer ferocity of Joker’s attack, especially when he hadn’t even been empowered by a Tarukaja effect or the enemy weakened by Debilitate. When the lightning bolts finally dissipated, it seemed almost like a mercy that the Forneus creature evaporated into black mist, never being given the opportunity to even make a single move before it had been thoroughly defeated by Joker’s attack.

“Holy shit, Joker…” Oracle breathed in disbelief. “Your power levels there were off the freaking charts!”

“I knew you were tough, Joker, but holy shit, man!” Skull exclaimed. “That was something else!”

“What the hell…” Akechi mumbled, still in stunned belief at just how effortlessly Joker had been able to defeat a Shadow that had itself seemed so incredibly powerful. “What in the actual hell…”

“He is powerful,” Loki whispered into his mind, seeming almost…excited. “Far more powerful and more cunning than we had imagined. And that power is now at our fingertips…the power to finally claim your revenge against the one who has wrong you for so long…”

“It may not have been the way you originally intended to seek your justice,” Robin Hood added, his voice calm and stoic, “but where one opportunity may be lost, another may be found. The opportunity to finally claim the justice you have sought.”

Akechi couldn’t help but let a savage grin stretch across his face as Joker seized the letter of recommendation from the hands of the cowering noble’s cognition, claiming another key that would bring them one step closer to Shido’s heart. Soon, very soon, he would have his long-awaited confrontation with his blackhearted monster of a father. And Goro Akechi would finally claim the vengeance and justice that had eluded him for so long.

Chapter Text

Chapter 4 – Cruiser of Pride Part 2

While he would never admit it out loud, Akechi didn’t have any complaints about how the infiltration into Shido’s Palace had been going. They had already made good, fast progress through his bastard sperm donor’s cognitive realm, already claiming two letters of introduction and wiping away the cognitions guarding them with ease thanks to Joker’s overwhelming, vicious attacks. If anything, the hallway puzzle palace with the Shido statues had proven to be the most annoying part of the Palace so far, since Joker couldn’t simply just blast those away, and even someone as powerful as Joker would be completely helpless if stuck in mouse form.

To everyone’s displeasure, it was one of those hallway puzzles that they were in now, forced to hide out of sight of the shadows like the mice that they had been forcibly turned into. Even when they weren’t transformed into mice, it was still incredibly aggravating to try and navigate the correct path. “But of course,” Akechi thought bitterly, “Masayoshi Shido would be the kind of person to trample on the dignity of others without a single shred of remorse.” A perfect representation of the mongrel’s perspective, through and through.

Still, Joker seemed to know where he was going in the uncanny way that he did, and it didn’t take very long before they found themselves in the back deck of Shido’s Cruiser. It was like a more bare-bones version of the pool that they had departed from a few moments earlier, with more empty beach chairs scattered about and a much smaller, more basic pool.

“Uh oh,” Panther muttered as she caught sight of a shadow. Unlike the shadows that they had seen previously, this one was fully armored in SWAT gear, wielding a machine gun in its hand. “That one looks really dangerous!”

“Shido must have made special adjustments to these particular Shadows,” Queen murmured. “They look much more dangerous than the ones we just fought.”

“I’m not too worried!” Noir countered with a giggle. “I’m sure Joker will be able to wipe them out without a problem, and we’ll certainly be able to help him clean up the rest if he somehow fails!”

“It would be in our best interests to just dispatch this foe quickly and see what kind of enemy we are fighting against. If we cannot fight so much as a simple Shadow, then we have absolutely no hope of taking down Shido himself,” Fox advised. Nobody had any reason to counter what his suggestion, and Joker effortlessly ambushed the Shadow and ripped off its mask, transforming it into the same Forneus creature that the Shadow noble had turned into.

Mona smirked. “Oh, it’s just these stupid manta ray things again. Joker, do the honors!”

“Nah,” Joker shook his head, “I think I’ll let you guys handle it this time.” He took out an Electric Magatama and tossed it at one of the Forneus. The orb exploded into a blast of electricity, and while it did absolutely laughable damage compared to Joker’s Wild Thunder attack earlier, its inherent type advantage allowed it to knock the Forneus down. He walked towards Skull and high-fived him. “Kick its ass, Skull!”

“On it!” Skull replied with a sharklike grin. “Beat ‘em down, Seiten Taisei! ZIODYNE!”

The monkey king appeared next to him, sporting a grin with the same cockiness and confidence as his wielder, and blasted one of the Forneus with a powerful bolt of electricity. The Forneus howled and fell to the ground, badly wounded and stunned, giving Skull plenty of opportunity to blast the other Forneus before it could react. With both enemies down, the Thieves all leapt into action, slicing and dicing apart the shadows with inhuman speed that effortlessly obliterated them.

“Hell yeah!” Skull boasted as the manta rays dissolved into black specks. “Eat shit, assholes!”

“I do love the sounds of my enemies’ screams,” Crow acknowledged with a psychotic smirk.

“Let’s do the same thing to the other shadows and then find a safe room,” Queen suggested.

The other Shadows were just as easy to defeat as the first despite their originally formidable appearance, and in a few quick moments the Thieves had descended down to the bottom floor of the Back Deck. To everyone’s relief, there was indeed a Safe Room, and they took the opportunity to rest while they still had the chance.

“So have you guys ever actually ridden on a cruise in real life?” Joker asked his team. He seemed so casual, so laid-back, a sharp contrast to the authoritative, businesslike, and almost menacing persona that he had presented back when they had first arrived at Shido’s ship. Part of Akechi couldn’t help but wonder if Joker was now being this sociable on purpose, to ease the tension that he might have brought in with how imposing he had been earlier.

“I did once a long time ago!” Panther answered. “Back when I was a kid…I don’t remember much of if though,” she admitted.

Skull snorted. “Dude, if I had the money for that kinda thing, I would’ve gone on one a long time ago,” he replied.

“I did once a few years ago,” Noir chipped in. “My father had taken me on a cruise as part of a business venture. The view of the open ocean truly was breathtaking to behold, and the food was also quite delicious.” Her smile faded slightly. “Although I do admit that I did sometimes get seasick occasionally…”

Akechi scoffed. “Personally, I never saw the appeal of cruises. All those people stuck on one boat…you’re practically begging for a stomach virus to ravage through everyone on board and turn the entire thing into a giant disease pile. If I wanted to enjoy the ocean, I’d do it from a beach.”

“Wow…” Oracle rolled her eyes. “Somebody’s a big ball of sunshine and happiness, aren’t they?”

“Bite me, Oracle,” Akechi retorted. “And besides, every single cruise ship I see reminds me of the jackass whose Palace we’re currently invading this very second.”

“…that’s fair,” the navigator of the Phantom Thieves had to concede.

“What’s the next cognition we have to face?” Panther asked, trying to steer the topic away from Shido.

“The cognition of the TV Station President,” Joker answered. “I bet he’s the bastard who broadcasted President Okumura’s death in front of all of Japan.”

Noir scowled and tightened her grip on her battleaxe. “I’m looking forward to introducing myself to him,” she hissed.

“If I remember correctly, we should be close to approaching the casino,” Akechi supplied. “We’ll most likely find the TV Station President there.”

“Then let’s not waste any more time,” Joker replied, straightening himself off of the wall. “The sooner we get this Palace over and done with, the sooner we can get the hell out of here.”

They left the Safe Room and made their way over to a set of double doors. As they did so, they heard a voice interrupt them. “Yo, stop right there.”

Everyone turned around to see a man dressed in a brown pinstriped coat walking towards them. “I’m talkin’ to you guys. Come over here a sec.”

The Phantom Thieves looked nervously at each other, but both Joker and Akechi looked relatively unconcerned. “The Yakuza Cleaner, I presume?” Akechi questioned with a raised eyebrow.

“He looks super dangerous!” Oracle muttered to everyone. “I don’t want to get involved, even if he’s just some old cognitive thing!”

Akechi couldn’t help but disagree. He very much doubted that the cognition of the Cleaner would pose much of a threat to Joker, given the extreme displays of power he had unleashed with only two of his Personas. Given the lack of fear or surprise on Joker’s face, he had a feeling that the leader of the Phantom Thieves shared a similar opinion.

But Joker’s expression did turn to one of surprise at what the Cleaner said next. “So the rumors are true…” he remarked. Shido’s mafia enforcer sounded impressed more than anything. “The infamous Black Mask himself, Shido’s most dangerous assassin, has ditched the Captain for his enemies. Damn,” he whistled, “you guys must have some serious issues with the Captain if you’re all gunning for his head.”

“That’s right!” Panther exclaimed. “We’re going to take Shido down.”

“Are you going to challenge us or let us pass?” Fox inquired. “We have no quarrel with you yet.”

The Cleaner chuckled. “Listen, kid…I’m not stupid enough to pick a fight against all of you at the same time, especially when one of you is the fucking Black Mask. So instead, how about I make you a deal.”

“What kind of a deal?” Queen questioned, the suspicion clear in her voice.

“Simple,” the Cleaner explained. “Go around this ship and get the other four letters of introduction. Then meet me in the engine room. If you can get all the letters, I’ll give you mine without a fight.”

Crow’s eyes narrowed at the Cleaner behind his mask. “I don’t believe I need to remind you of the consequences should you try to betray our arrangement,” his well-mannered Detective Prince tone positively dripping with poisoned honey and malice.

The Cleaner barked with laughter. “Ha! I don’t give enough of a fuck about the Captain to stick my neck out for him that hard. That being said, I do need to keep up appearances, so…” he snapped his fingers, and two soldier-like Shadows manifested in front of the Thieves. “Nothing personal,” he added as he turned around and walked away.

“Dammit!” Skull stamped his foot in frustration. “He’s getting away!”

“Actually, this works out quite well,” Akechi commented. “The Cleaner has no true loyalty to Shido apart from the money Shido can give him. He most certainly does not care enough about Shido to risk his life. I’m actually relatively certain that he’ll honor his end of the bargain.” A bloodthirsty grin appeared on his face. “But first, it’s time for us to take care of these imbeciles.”

The grin only widened as the two Shadows transformed into four Baphomets. “The more they summon, the more I can slaughter!” Crow cackled as the battle started. Joker seemingly chose to defer the heavy lifting in this fight to his team members, casting a Thermopylae as his opening move. Crow wasted no time in unleashing a Riot Gun to blast all of the Baphomets with a storm of raw kinetic energy. Fox followed up with a vicious Myriad Slashes, and Mona finished them up with a Magarudyne that wiped them out before they even had a chance to attack.

“Pathetic,” Crow sneered as he watched the demons dissolve into black ashes.

“If those were meant to be the Yakuza Cleaner’s guards, they were certainly a disappointment,” Fox agreed, eyeing the spot where they had been with evident disdain.

“The Cleaner’s gone, and there’s nothing we can do about him now anyway,” Noir noted. “Shall we proceed into the casino?”

Nobody had any objection to her suggestion, and they slipped through the door into the ship again. Inside was a casino lined with slot machines, reminiscent of (but thankfully less garish than) Sae’s Casino Palace. Queen looked on distastefully at the reminder of her sister’s distortion, but didn’t openly vocalize her disapproval.

“So where do we find the TV Station President?” Panther asked, looking around to see if there was anybody matching that description.

“I don’t recognize him anywhere, so he must be on a lower floor somewhere,” Akechi remarked. “Perhaps at the bottom?”

“We’ll find him eventually,” Joker assured them. They scoured through the casino, slaughtering any shadows that they came across while searching for the individual who possessed the third letter of introduction. Eventually, just as Akechi had predicted, they found him at the bottom of the casino, seemingly obsessed with one of the slot machines and barely taking note of their presence.

“So how do we get his attention?” Fox wondered.

Crow sneered. “We can always just resort to our traditional method,” he offered, the savage tone in his voice making it abundantly clear what he was suggesting. “It’s worked out quite well so far, after all.”

“No,” Noir interrupted quietly, turning to face them. “Let me handle this.”

The Phantom Thieves looked at her in surprise. “For real?” Skull questioned. “But…”

“I see what Noir’s suggesting,” Mona realized with a grin at his (brief) student. “You got this, Noir!”

“Thank you, senpai!” Noir smiled gratefully at him. She turned to face Akechi, as if daring him to protest. Either the Black Mask had no objections or wasn’t stupid enough to challenge her on the subject, because he simply nodded and wordlessly gestured towards the Shadow TV President.

Noir walked up towards the Shadow TV President, who was still engrossed with his slot machine games. The two guards accompanying him glared at her threateningly. “Excuse me,” she politely addressed them. “I was wondering if I could briefly speak with you.”

“Hmm?” the Shadow TV President stopped playing and turned to face her.

“I would like to request a letter of introduction,” Noir politely requested.

“A letter of introduction?” the shadow repeated. “But you’re so obviously a child.”

“My name is Haru Okumura,” Noir introduced herself, “daughter of the president of Okumura Foods. I believe we sponsored you as well.”

“Oh, you’re her!” the shadow seemed to recognize her. “It’s true that I’m quite indebted to President Okumura. He funded us extremely well, after all. However, it looks like he got a little carried away. My condolences.”

“Carried away?” Panther hissed furiously from a few feet away. “They murdered him with a mental shutdown on live television, and they call that carrying away?”

Joker looked contemptuously at the Shadow TV President. “What did you expect from someone serving Shido?” he spat. “They don’t give a shit about anyone except their beloved captain and themselves.”

Noir was silent, the distress and sadness clear on her face.

The Shadow TV President, continued on, unaware of or (more likely) uncaring of Noir’s distress. “Regarding his exploiting management…Mr. Shido asked me to defend him as much as I could. I even threw some extra security his way, but there were limits to what I could do. The damage almost reached up to Mr. Shido himself. President Okumura had to be cut off.”

“Look at this filth,” Akechi growled. “Discussing the murder of an associate the same way he would describe someone being fired from a job. I might have been the one who committed the murders, but at least I was never heartless or cowardly enough to pretend that murder was anything other than what it is.”

“Cut off…” Noir murmured sadly.

“It seems he didn’t just cast him off his ship, but also used him to trap the Phantom Thieves. Bravo, Mr. Shido!” the Shadow proclaimed, clapping his hands together in celebration. “Truly a nasty maneuver!”

It took every ounce of self-control in Noir not to swing a battle axe at his head. “…Won’t you please give me a letter of recommendation?” she asked, struggling to keep her voice polite and cool. “Once our company recovers, I will arrange for us to cooperate with you in a sponsorship role.”

“You’re the daughter of the late President,” the Shadow raised an eyebrow skeptically at her. “Do you really have the authority to do that? Your employees probably resent you…” the man then shrugged. “…well, that’s not important. I’m in your father’s debt, after all. I can repay some kindness to his daughter.”

“Nice work, Noir!” Queen praised her quietly. “We got the third letter!”

“I wouldn’t be so quick to celebrate,” Joker muttered. To everyone’s surprise, the leader of the Phantom Thieves was scowling instead of pleased. “This piece of shit is going to make things worse.”

“Thank you…very much…” Noir thanked him through gritted teeth.

“But my, your father was truly was a fool,” the Shadow TV President sneered. “He could’ve lived a life of luxury if only he had done what he was told. You know, I’m the one who broadcast the moment of his mental shutdown.”

“I knew it,” Joker growled.

“Our ratings shot up because of that!” the TV President boasted.

“That son of a bitch!” Skull snarled.

“Noir…” Mona murmured sadly, hating to see his friend in distress.

“…stop it,” Noir pleaded quietly.

“Hmm?” the Shadow TV President had interrupted his rant.

“How could you talk about my father’s death like that?” Noir shouted.

“Hm? That’s just business,” the shadow replied, utterly uncaring. “If you like, we could get you in a documentary. Overcoming death to rebuild a family company…you’re so cute you just might get good ratings!”

“Spoken like a true member of Shido’s Conspiracy,” Akechi spat. “If this doesn’t show you just how thoroughly ridden with scum and corruption they are, I don’t know what will.”

“I will not forgive you for that!” Noir shouted. “You better apologize to my father!”

“Time to attack!” Joker ordered as the Shadow TV President got up off his chair. The Thieves rushed forward, completely surrounding the Shadow TV President and his two guards.

“Are you…Thieves?” the Shadow TV President asked incredulously.

“That’s right!” Mona declared. “We’re taking your letter of introduction!”

The Shadow TV President didn’t deign to respond, instead transforming into a humanoid beast-like warrior wielding a sword. The two guards also transformed into huge golden birds, one flying on each side of the warrior.

“Joker?” Noir glanced over at her leader. “I have a request for you.”

“You want to fight them yourself?” he asked. “I can do that.”

Noir shook her head. “No,” she denied. “Whatever power I might have, it is far weaker than anything you are capable of.” A sweet yet terrifying smile appeared on her face. “I want you to destroy him. I want you to make him pay. Show him the true meaning of pain the way only you can.”

Joker’s grin was equally terrifying. “If that’s what you want, I can certainly give it to you,” he replied, his voice as cool as steel.

“…Jesus Christ,” Panther muttered under her breath.

“Noir is the most goddamn terrifying person on this entire team,” Skull mumbled. “That or Joker, hard to tell…”

Akechi, on the other hand, was looking on with interest. He had already seen three of Joker’s most powerful Personas by this point, and he was eager to see what else he was capable of. He grinned as he felt the power of Joker’s Auto-Mataru/Maraku/Masuku course through him, a surefire sign that Joker was treating this fight with serious business.

To his consternation and disappointment, however, Joker didn’t start with a new and powerful Persona. Instead, he summoned Odin again, and blasted the entire battlefield with another powerful Wild Thunder. The two golden birds that represented the guards were instantly obliterated, being weak to Electricity, but the bestial warrior that the Shadow TV President had transformed into only suffered a moderate amount of damage by comparison. Joker passed the momentum gathered from his Baton Pass to Akechi, who immediately blasted the Hanuman with a Megidolaon. “Debilitate him!” Joker called out as Crow took his second turn. Normally, Akechi would have chafed at the idea of giving up an opportunity to get a second free attack in, but his curiosity over Joker’s skills outweighed anything else, and he fired off a crippling Debilitate on the Hanuman without any complaint. Noir blasted the Shadow with a Psiodyne, and then Skull powered Joker up with a Star Onion at his request.

It was finally the Shadow’s turn to attack, the first time one of Shido’s cognitive shadows had been given the opportunity. The Hanuman lifted its blade and swung frenziedly at all of the Thieves facing it. Thanks to the combination of Joker’s buffs and Akechi’s earlier Debilitate, the Thieves were all able to easily dodge the flurry of attacks. All except for Joker, who merely stood there and smirked as a barrier flashed into existence in front of him. The Hanuman’s blade bounced off the barrier and sliced into his own body, damaging him with his own attack.

“Hah!” Oracle cackled. “They fall for it every single time. Finish it off, Joker!”

“With pleasure,” Joker declared. He took off his mask, and Akechi grinned as the moment he had been waiting for finally arrived. “Black Frost!” he shouted.

A new Persona manifested behind Joker, one that was completely different from the majestic and imposing figures of Norse Mythology Joker had summoned previously. This one looked a lot like the many Jack Frosts that Akechi had seen during his earlier trips to Mementos, but it was also different in many ways as well. Unlike the “typical” Jack Frost, this one was completely black with dark purple “clothing,” its eyes red and its expression cruel. The “Black Frost” that Joker had summoned was much more menacing and malevolent than a regular Jack Frost could ever hope to be, and more importantly to Akechi’s interests, it radiated the same kind of massive and unbelievable power that Surtr and Odin had. The Black Mask could guess what kind of power Joker’s Black Frost specialized in, an estimate that was proven correct a few seconds later.

“ICE AGE!” Joker bellowed.

The Black Frost let out a mischievous laugh as it spun around, doing a little dance before extending its hands out towards the Shadow TV President. From the sky, several massive pulse-like pillars of ice rained down upon the shadow, their temperature reaching Arctic levels of freezing. The moment the pillars hit the ground, they exploded into shards and spear-like crystals of freezing ice that erupted outwards, simultaneously skewering the Hanuman from every direction and burying it in a tomb of ice. Akechi could feel the glacial intensity of Joker’s ice attack even from a safe distance, one that was equal in power to the Blazing Hell and Wild Thunder he had unleashed earlier, and instinctively understood that there was no way that the Shadow TV President could have hoped to withstand such an attack even if he had been hit at full health.

“First fire, then electricity, then ice,” Akechi mused. Each time they had fought a cognition, Joker had summoned a Persona that seemed to specialize in a specific elemental attack, each attack being powerful enough to cause devastation on a scale that other Personas could only dream of achieving. Was that the secret to Joker’s dominance? Did he have a Persona to specialize in every single element in the Metaverse? Or was there even more than what he had already shown them?

Just like the other Shadow cognitions that had fallen before them, the Shadow TV President was utterly wiped out, annihilated by Joker’s unstoppable attack before he could even process what had just happened. The monster transformed back into the Shadow TV President, who was now stumbling back onto his seat, cowering in terror at Joker’s display of overwhelming force. “T-take it!” he pleaded, fumbling to get his letter of introduction out of his pocket and shoving it in front of Joker’s face. “Take it and leave me alone.”

Joker pointed his gun straight at the cognition’s head. “Apologize to Noir,” he ordered, his voice as cold as the grave.

“I…I’m sorry!” the Shadow TV President spluttered.

Noir shook her head. “Thank you, Joker, but it doesn’t matter. This isn’t the real TV President, just a cognitive copy in the mind of a degenerate madman,” she sighed. “The only way I’ll be able to truly get back at him is by taking down his master.”

“Shido will go down,” Joker asserted. “It’s not a promise, it’s a cold hard fact.”

Noir giggled. “With you leading us, Joker, I have no doubt whatsoever!” She looked back up towards the second floor of the casino, towards a set of double doors that they had previously ignored. “Shall we continue on?”

“Not really, to be honest,” Queen admitted. “I bet we’re going to see more of those hallway puzzles.”

To everyone’s irritation, her prediction proved to be completely correct. More hallways, Shido statues, and mouse transformations awaited them on the other side, a puzzle that absolutely nobody in the Phantom Thieves. There wasn’t a single member of the Thieves who wouldn’t have preferred fighting a veritable army of Shadows instead of trying to navigate around and hide from the Shadows patrolling the hallways whenever they were forcefully turned into a rodent, Akechi very much included in that count. At least fighting Shadows was exciting and stimulating, and facing such overwhelming odds would have been a true challenge worthy of the Thieves…assuming that Joker didn’t break out one of his insanely overpowered Personas to singlehandedly wipe them all out first.

It was a massive relief to all of them when they finally arrived at the side deck and the Safe Room. Not just because they could take a well-earned break from those annoying hallways, but because it was an opportunity for another conversation with Joker. The Phantom Thieves had known that their leader was intelligent and wise, but he had never engaged in philosophical discourse or fascinating discussions like this before, not even when Akechi had joined at Sae’s Palace.

And like the other times, Joker certainly didn’t disappoint.

“I didn’t think about this earlier, Crow,” Joker addressed his rival, “but there’s another reason why I think changing Shido’s heart would be better than killing him.”

“…go on,” Crow invited as he inclined his head towards him. If Joker had attempted this before their confrontation in the interrogation room, there was no way he would have even entertained what his rival was trying to say. But by now, Joker had proven that his words deserved to be listened to and considered, at the very least.

“Okay…I have a question for you, Crow. And to all of you as well,” he nodded towards all of the Phantom Thieves. “Would you consider Shido a disease?”

Akechi let out a bark of derisive laughter. “Him? A mongrel incapable of even a single act of genuine goodness? A thorough piece of shit who would trample anyone and everyone else underneath him if it would help him achieve his sick desire of dominating the world? Disease doesn’t even begin to describe him, Joker.”

“I’m with Crow here, dude,” Skull agreed. “The way you described him? Sounds just like a disease to me.”

“How else could one describe such an abomination?” Fox added. “He certainly isn’t a man, for he lacks even a shred of morality within him to classify him as such.”

Joker smirked. “I can see where you’re all coming from…but I disagree.”

Everyone jolted upward from their seats or out of their thoughts and stared at him in confusion and disbelief. “Wait, what?”

“You’re not…defending him, are you?” Mona asked incredulously.

Joker snorted contemptuously. “As if!”

“Then what are you talking about?” Akechi voiced the question that all of them were asking in their heads.

“I called Shido a disease before, but I don’t think that’s the right way to describe him,” the leader of the Phantom Thieves explained. “Shido isn’t the disease. He’s the symptom of a disease. A festering nightmare of a symptom that will destroy this entire country from the inside-out if he isn’t stopped, but still just a symptom at the end of the day.”

“If you consider someone like Shido a symptom, then the disease you’re talking about must go far beyond a single person,” Queen mused.

“I think I know what you’re talking about, Joker-kun,” Noir chipped in. “You’re talking about the rampant greed and corruption that plagues the elites of society, am I correct?”

Joker smiled at her. “Got it in one, Noir. Nobody here is questioning the fact that Shido is a corrupt and remorseless bastard that needs to be taken down one way or another. The problem is that he isn’t the only one. He’s only one of many.” He looked over at Akechi. “Isn’t that right, Crow?”

Akechi sneered. “That statement is far truer than even you can comprehend, Joker,” he retorted. “Ever since I swore myself to Shido, I’ve encountered the members of his Conspiracy countless times. Both for the business of conducting mental shutdowns, and also as part of social events in my guise as the Detective Prince. All in the elites of society. All corrupt and rotten bastards to the core, caring about nothing except themselves and how they can satiate their own greed. Shido is the most powerful of them all, the one who rallied them together, all under his banner.”

“Yes, and that’s the problem,” Joker countered. “Let’s assume that Shido doesn’t have a plan to kill you before you betray him. Let’s assume that, against all odds, you successfully pull off your plan and manage to kill him. You might have taken out Shido, but that won’t hurt his conspiracy in the long run.”

“Hold on, Joker,” Panther interrupted. “I don’t agree at all with killing Shido, but wouldn’t killing him cut off the head of the snake?”

Joker shook his head. “I know what you’re trying to say, Panther, but that wouldn’t work here. Because if you kill Shido, all that you’ll do is cause a temporary power vacuum. Sure, the Conspiracy might be disorganized and confused for a while, but eventually, another leader will take its place. A leader that’s just as corrupt as Shido, someone who’ll want to rule over Japan just as much as Shido does, and will commit horrible atrocities just as willingly as Shido did. Removing Shido from the equation by killing him accomplishes nothing for society in the long run. And that’s the best-case scenario.”

“BEST-case?” Skull spluttered. “Then what the fuck’s the worst case?”

“The destruction of society,” his friend replied grimly. “Everything I’ve just said a few seconds before only works under the assumption that among all of the corrupt elites in Shido’s conspiracy, there’s one of them powerful or charismatic enough to take Shido’s place. If there isn’t? Then we have a bunch of corrupt bastards who want a shot at the top where Shido was, and they’re never going to freely give up their own power or ambitions. They’re going to fight amongst themselves, and while that might sound like a good thing at first, that fight is going to tear Japanese society apart as the members of Shido’s conspiracy war against each other. If you think that kind of power struggle won’t turn violent, then I’ve got a skyscraper at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean to sell you.”

“That would be horrible,” Noir murmured, the implications of such a power struggle throughout Japan sinking in.

Akechi, on the other hand, was much less concerned. “I don’t give a shit about those implications,” he scoffed. “As long as Shido goes down, I couldn’t give any less of a fuck about what happens to society.”

“So you’d be okay with another corrupt bastard like Shido at the top of Japanese society?” Joker countered. “You’d be okay with Shido’s replacement being able to sexually assault women just like your mother without any fear of the consequences? You’d be okay with another corrupt politician murdering and assassinating innocent women like Futaba’s mother, orphaning their children and throwing them into a lifetime of misery and pain for literally no good reason?” He stared pointedly into Akechi’s eyes. “I don’t believe that, Crow. I don’t believe you’re that heartless.”

Crow met Joker’s gaze for several seconds. Then, it shifted ever so slightly to Oracle, the one who had suffered the most out of all the Phantom Thieves because of his actions. The navigator of the Phantom Thieves glared back at him, daring him to say that he didn’t care. Then, Crow’s gaze softened ever so slightly and he turned his gaze away. He growled something unintelligible in irritation, but didn’t deny Joker’s claim.

“That’s what I’m sure would happen if we simply killed Shido,” Joker replied. And then a smirk suddenly appeared on his lips. “But if we changed his heart? That changes the entire game. It gives us a whole new opportunity to attack Shido’s conspiracy.”

Akechi lifted his head immediately, his rival’s words immediately catching his attention. He might have hated Shido most of all, but he had plenty of hatred and contempt to spare for his conspiracy as well. “What do you mean by that?” he asked carefully.

“Like I told you before, Crow, every time we changed a Palace Ruler’s heart, they were overwhelmed by their own guilt and remorse for their actions,” Joker explained. “And Shido’s crimes are the worst of all, including creating an entire conspiracy with the elites of society to take over Japan. When we change his heart, when he regains his conscience and looks at all of his evil actions with horror and remorse, what do you think he is going to do with his Conspiracy?”

Queen’s eyes widened in realization. “He’s going to destroy his own conspiracy,” she gasped.

Joker grinned. “Exactly. He’ll reveal his crimes to the world, and expose his own conspiracy while he’s at it. With a competent prosecutor like Sae questioning him, he’ll reveal every single member of his conspiracy who knew about and joined in his plan to take over Japan, everyone who hired a mental shutdown or mental breakdown, everyone who he dragged into the mud of corruption with him.”

“Duuuuuude!” Skull grinned. “That’s brilliant!”

Akechi didn’t seem so convinced. “The corruption in society runs deep,” he pointed out. “As you pointed out, Shido’s conspiracy is filled with the corrupt elites of society. And those corrupt elites have their claws in the justice system, just like with everything else. You can’t be telling me that you’re so naïve as to believe that just because Shido confesses to everything, that the entire Conspiracy will fall just like that.”

Joker shook his head. “No, I don’t,” he freely admitted. “But with Shido actively working to undermine and destroy his own conspiracy, it will still do a lot more damage to the conspiracy itself than simply killing him would, without causing a lot of collateral damage in the process. And besides,” he added with a knowing grin, “wouldn’t it be so satisfying? To watch Shido destroy everything that he worked to create with his own bare hands, crying and begging for forgiveness all the while with his ambitions broken and ruined forever?”

Akechi returned the grin with a feral, bloodthirsty one of his own. “You just might have a point there, Joker.” His expression suddenly hardened. “But remember your deal. You swore that you would allow me to decide Shido’s ultimate fate, and me alone.”

“Indeed I did,” Joker acknowledged. “And whatever you do, I’m going to keep my promise. I’m just giving you a little food for thought, is all.”

“Mhmmm…” Akechi gave a noncommittal response. But once again, tellingly, he didn’t deny or mock Joker for his advice. And for a person like Akechi, whether as the Detective Prince or the Black Mask, that was as encouraging of a sign as any.

The end of the discussion more or less signaled the end of their break, and the Thieves left the Safe Room and entered one final hallway puzzle. When they finally navigated through it, they were disappointed to discover that the hallway ultimately led not to the IT President, but to a room right outside the main hall that they had already visited.

“What the hell, man!” Skull exclaimed in frustration. “Did we seriously just go around in circles?”

“Ugh! We’re no closer to getting that last introduction letter!” Mona grumbled.

Akechi frowned. “In hindsight, I should have known it wouldn’t be this easy, given the type of person the IT President is,” he commented, looking frustrated at himself as much as the entire situation.

“What do you mean, Crow?” Queen asked.

“The IT President is somewhat of an isolated person compared to the rest of Shido’s Conspiracy,” Akechi explains. “Apart from his service to Shido, he mostly keeps to himself, and Shido doesn’t particularly give a shit what he does as long as he does what he says and doesn’t get any ideas. It wouldn’t be a stretch to consider him as Oracle’s evil counterpart. If the TV Station President was the one who broadcast Okumura’s death, then he was one of the major players behind the fake Medjed scandal.”

“So if this is Shido’s cognitive world, and the Shadow IT President represents the actual person, then he’s likely hiding away in some part of the ship we haven’t seen yet,” Oracle deduced.

“Have you SEEN this place? It’s fucking HUGE!” Skull pointed out. “How the hell are we supposed to find one person in this entire goddamn ship?”

Joker smirked. “I think I know how we can find him.”

“Oh, thank God!” Skull mumbled.

“That’s our leader! Always knows what to do no matter what!” Panther cheerfully exclaimed. Her expression turned into one of confusion. “But, uh…how are you going to do that, exactly?”

“Leave it to me,” Joker replied confidently. The Thieves were still perplexed, but followed him without a word of complaint as he made his way back to the restaurant where they had fought Shadow Ooe. With the same suave charisma that he had used on the bartender, Joker smoothly and politely asked the cognitive waiter where the Shadow IT President could be found. “We’ve been asked to make a delivery to the president of the IT company,” Joker explained. “I’m aware that he doesn’t leave his room, but we were approached by Captain Shido directly and given specific orders.” He feigned a sheepish expression. “To be honest, I was hesitant to even ask you this to begin with, since this is a highly confidential mission. But I have to make sure that I obey the Captain’s orders, no matter what.”

“I see,” the cognitive waiter nodded understandingly. “If the Captain himself has given you these orders, then it must be done. Let me tell you how to get to his room.” The Phantom Thieves watched, dumbfounded, as the waiter freely and willingly gave the information to Joker.

“Great work, Joker!” Mona praised. “We know where to get the letter now!”

“That may be true,” Akechi interrupted. He was impressed with Joker’s scheme just as much as the rest of them, but he wasn’t about to let that small victory get to his head. “But how exactly do you plan on actually getting to the IT President?

Joker’s smirk didn’t fade at his rival’s question. If anything, it only grew. “I know how to deal with that.”

A Few Moments Later…

“You’ve got to be joking,” Akechi muttered under his breath, staring up at Joker with disbelief. After they had left the restaurant, Joker had teleported them back to the safe room at the Side Deck. Whatever he had been expecting from the leader of the Phantom Thieves, he hadn’t expected for him to literally climb up the side of the ship.

Noir giggled at the sight. “Only Joker-kun could think of such an insane feat and make it work!” she commented. “You shouldn’t discount our leader!”

“Apparently not,” Crow mumbled as they followed Joker up to the side of the ship. His surprise was compounded further by the fact that Joker’s climb had led them straight to the balconies of several rooms on the side of the ship, with one of them located approximately to where the waiter had directed them to. Joker opted to ignore them, instead visiting a higher floor where they fought an elite guard who transformed into a Kali and her bodyguards. Such a fight could have posed a serious challenge if Joker hadn’t been there or if they were unfamiliar with how Kalis worked, but with their experience and power it was a peace of cake. The other Phantom Thieves weakened or crippled them with attacks while Joker powered up a concentrate, and it was a simple matter for Joker to finish the job with another empowered Ice Age from his Jack Frost. Inside the room the Kali had been guarding, they found the third and final Will Seed. Once Joker picked it up, it reacted with the two other Will Seeds they had gathered during their infiltration, and it transferred into a grotesque crystal of three skulls with the back of their heads stuck together.

“Ooh!” Oracle exclaimed. “Sidequest complete, guys! I wonder what we’ll get when we give it to Jose!”

“I was paying attention to some of the whisperings I heard in this room,” Fox observed, grimacing. “From what I gathered, Shido will not stop with Japan should he succeed. You were right, Joker. He aims to take over the entire world once he becomes Prime Minister.”

Akechi curled his lip in disgust. “Are you so surprised, Fox?” he challenged. “We all know how utterly depraved and consumed by his ambition Shido is.”

“Yes…you are right,” Fox acknowledged. “The rooms of the Will Seeds have always been incredibly disconcerting…and this is no different.”

“Bah,” Akechi scoffed. “It’ll mean nothing in the end once we bring his Shadow down.”

They left the room, finally going back on track to getting the recommendation letters that they needed. They scaled down to the floor below, hopping over the walls separating the rooms from each other, until they finally arrived at the one balcony door that was open.

“Should we even bother trying to negotiate first?” Panther asked as they landed on the balcony.

Akechi grinned, holding his blade up. “You know the answer I’d prefer to that question,” he commented, earning several eye-rolls from the other Thieves in response.

“I want to go!” Oracle declared, earning surprised looks from everyone except Joker. “If we all go in together, he’ll be on guard. Besides, this is IT stuff! It’s my time to shine!”

Joker grinned at his surrogate little sister. “Go for it, Oracle,” he encouraged.

“It’s up to me then!” she replied excitedly. “It’s like that show where the kid goes shopping alone for the first time. Hehe…this is gonna be tough, but I can do it!”

Skull crossed his arms and smirked. “If she’s feeling good enough to joke around like this, then I say we go for it!”

“We’ll be keeping an eye out, but if things get dangerous, just yell!” Panther offered.

Oracle nodded and walked into the room. The Shadow IT President was understandably surprised and wary when Oracle walked in, but even he was impressed by the navigator’s hacking skills and expertise with a computer. Unfortunately, as the battles against the other cognition-Shadows had done, negotiations inevitably broke down when the IT President started boasting about how easy and delightful it was to manipulate the weak-willed, idiotic masses. As Oracle yelled at the IT President about how his actions were a violation of everything Medjed had stood for, the Thieves barged in and the President and his assistants transformed into Oberon and two Titanias.

The moment the battle started, the entire party of Thieves chosen for this battle felt a rush of energy as the Auto-Mataru/Maraku/Masuku power of Joker’s Attis flowed through them. Joker switched to Alilat and, for the first time, cast a Charge instead of a Concentrate. That was certainly noteworthy in its own right, since it marked the first time that Joker would be using a Physical-based intact instead of an elemental magic one that he had been using up until this point in time.

“Debilitate the IT President, Crow!” Joker commanded. Akechi did as he was instructed, crippling the Oberon with a cascade of dark orbs. “Now fire off a Mafreidyne, Queen!”

Queen launched several nuclear blasts at the enemies, and while the Oberon himself wasn’t affected in the slightest, the two Titanias that had accompanied him were blasted out of the air and knocked down from being hit by their weakness. At Joker’s urging, the strategist and nuclear expert of the Phantom Thieves Baton passed over to him.

“Say good night, assholes! Yoshitsune!” Joker cackled as he pulled off his mask. A new Persona that Akechi hadn’t seen before manifested behind Joker, this one a dignified Japanese general and swordmaster wielding two swords and wearing resplendent scarlet armor from the days of feudal Japan. The general radiated the same level of power and might as Joker’s other Personas, a sure sign that it was about to unleash the same devastation that those other Personas had.

“HASSOU TOBI!” Joker bellowed.

The Japanese general smirked, readied its blades, and then suddenly lunged at the three fairies with a speed so quick that it couldn’t possibly be human. Akechi stared, dumbfounded, watching in blank shock as Yoshitsune sped across the battlefield, striking at the fairies with graceful yet brutal slashes over and over again. Such was the power of his attack that the very air and ground seemed to be twisted by his relentless assault, leaving behind a blood red wheel with reality-tearing red slash marks from all directions.

Individually, each strike by itself wasn’t enough to kill any of the fairies. Individually, each strike couldn’t compare to the raw overwhelming power that Surtr, Odin, and Black Frost had unleashed earlier. No, the reason why Yoshitsune’s attack was so devastating was because he was attacking eight times each. The Titanias were almost immediately torn to shreds, and the Shadow IT President fell soon after. Somehow, despite Hassou Tobi being a sustained, prolonged assault rather than a single overwhelming blast, Akechi felt more intimidated by Yoshitsune’s show of force than any of the other personas Joker had summoned before.

Granted, some of that power had been augmented by Queen’s Baton Pass. But what disturbed Akechi most of all was the fact that Yoshitsune’s attack had resulted in complete annihilation despite none of the fairies being weak to Phys…and the fact that he hadn’t needed all eight attacks to wipe them out.

“What the actual fuck…” Akechi gaped as the blood red circle of Hassou Tobi vanished. “The hell did I just witness?”

“Mwehehehe!” Oracle cackled. “Meet the fabled Yoshitsune! The powerhouse among Joker’s powerhouses! The ultimate killer Persona!”

Panther laughed. “I don’t know if Yoshitsune is THE most powerful Persona in Joker’s arsenal, but it’s definitely high up on the list,” she explained. “It can tear pretty much anything we’ve faced to shreds. Watching him shred Kamoshida to pieces was soooooo satisfying!”

“I can imagine…” Akechi mumbled. Judging from what he’d just witnessed, only a being of incredible power would help you survive such a devastating assault, and only a complete immunity to Phys would protect you from it. He very much doubted that anything else in existence could survive such a devastating attack from Yoshitsune’s Hassou Tobi at maximum power, including himself.

“Oh, it gets even better than that!” Oracle gleefully added.

“I’m sorry, the fuck?” Akechi asked in an overly pleasant tone that made it very clear that he wanted to know what the fuck was going on and wanted to know right now.

“Yoshitsune drains or repels almost every element in the Metaverse!” Mona boasted. “Joker made his Yoshitsune do Hassou Tobi and nothing else, because why the hell would Joker need him to do anything else with an attack that overpowered?”

“Yoshitsune drains Fire, Ice, Wind, Psy, and Nuke. He also nulls Physical attacks, and repels Electricity, Bless, and Curse attacks,” Queen explained. “Basically, the only things that can hurt him are Gun and Almighty attacks.”

“…that’s insane…” Akechi mumbled in stunned disbelief. A Persona with that kind of devastating offensive power AND almost complete immunity on top of that was nothing short of obscene, and it really emphasized just how dangerous Joker was. In a world where he and Joker hadn’t decided to fight as allies against Shido, Loki technically had attacks that covered both of Yoshitsune’s “vulnerabilities,” but unless Akechi managed to get a lucky crit on Joker with Riot Gun, he highly doubted that he would have the power needed to overwhelm him…and Yoshitsune would absolutely destroy him in return.

He was so engrossed in his own thoughts that he barely noticed how the Shadow IT President handed the letter of introduction over to Joker without a further word of complaint. Akechi couldn’t blame him in this instance. He highly doubted that anyone would be stupid enough to invite a second Hassou Tobi attack after witnessing the first.

“Hell yeah, we got all the letters!” Skull pumped a fist in the air in triumph.

“Shall we find the Cleaner and see if he follows his end of the bargain?” Noir asked with a dainty giggle.

“Let’s wrap this up,” Joker declared. “I’m getting sick of this fucking place anyway.”

It was a sentiment that everyone agreed with, and after they climbed back down to the Side Deck of the ship, Joker kicked open a grate, gaining access to a chute that would lead him straight to the Boiler Room. The Cleaner was waiting for them with several Shadow SWAT soldiers guarding him on either side.

“Well, well,” the Cleaner clapped his hands appreciatively. “Looks like you might’ve pulled it off. But again, I’ve got to keep up appearances, so…” He snapped his fingers and walked away, the shadows transforming into more Baphomets.

This time, Joker didn’t seem particularly interested in delaying this any longer than necessary. “Metatron!” he shouted, and a metallic angel dressed in resplendent white and golden robes appeared. “MAKOUGAON!”

Metatron raised his hands, and pillars of brilliant light burst out of the ground and hit the demons, destroying them instantly. Compared to the raw displays of power that Joker had unleashed with his other Personas, it was almost underwhelming. But even for a mere Heavy damage spell, Metatron’s Makougaon was certainly powerful in its own right, and Akechi could tell that otherwise it was very similar to Joker’s other Personas in terms of power.

As Joker called back the Persona, Metatron very briefly made eye contact with Akechi. The Black Mask felt some unknowable feeling and connection between him and the metallic angel, some sort of kinship. But before he could truly begin to fathom the nature of that connection, Metatron vanished back into Joker’s mask. “The Cleaner got away, we need to find him now!” Mona reported.

“It should be a dead end down here,” Oracle reported. “He can’t have gone far!”

The Phantom Thieves chased after the Cleaner, finding him in the engine room. The door was wide open, the Cleaner waiting patiently for them to come inside.

“So let’s see those letters of introduction,” he declared without preamble as soon as they entered. Joker wordlessly held up the four letters, one at a time, and the Cleaner nodded in acknowledgment. Then, as Joker put the fourth letter away, the Cleaner reached into his jacket pocket. The Thieves tensed as they waited for him to pull out a gun or otherwise attempt to ambush them, but instead the Cleaner took out a letter identical to the others and extended it to Joker. Slowly, very slowly and keeping a careful eye on the Cleaner the entire time, Joker accepted the letter and placed it into his pocket just like the others.

“Like I said before,” the Yakuza enforcer replied, “I don’t give enough of a fuck about that arrogant piece of shit to stick my neck out for him. One of the golden rules of surviving in the Yakuza: you don’t pick fights that you know you can’t win.”

“Well, I’m glad it didn’t have to come to that,” Crow replied, keeping his voice neutral as well.

The Cleaner smirked. “You know, it was already bad enough when I heard that the Black Mask jumped ship. Everyone’s afraid of that guy for obvious reasons. But he’s not even the biggest reason why I’m getting the hell out of here while I still can.” He pointed at Joker. “This guy blows everyone else here right out of the fucking water. Fighting him alone would be hilariously stupid. Fighting him and everyone else at the same time, including the Black Mask? If I wanted to commit suicide that badly, I’d just eat my gun and be done with it. I can see how the winds are blowing, and I’m getting off of this fucking cruiser while I still can.”

The Phantom Thieves watched silently as the Cleaner walked out of the room and away, not even sparing a single glance behind him. Once they were sure he was gone, Oracle shrugged. “So, uh…that was pretty easy. Especially since I thought he was gonna be the hardest one out of all of them to fight.”

Akechi snorted. “Assuming Joker didn’t just Hassou Tobi him out of existence or something equally ridiculous.”

“Anyways, we’ve done it!” Noir cheered. “We have all five letters of introduction! Now we can finally make our way to Shido’s treasure!”

Panther glanced over at Joker, and immediately noticed something was off. “Joker?” she asked.

Everyone turned to look at their leader, only to be taken aback by his expression. Unlike the other Thieves, Joker’s mood was not celebratory in the slightest. In fact, contrary to what they had expected, he seemed more tense and guarded than ever, his eyes narrowed and focused on the hallway beyond. “Are you all right, Joker?” Mona asked with a hint of concern in his voice.

“I’m not convinced we’re out of the woods just yet,” Joker growled. “If things seem like they’re going too easy, that’s because they are.”

By now, the Thieves and even Akechi had been around him long enough to know that if he was being cautious, there was very likely good reason for it. “I don’t see anything right around here,” Oracle reported. “The Cleaner’s long gone, that’s for sure.”

“We’ll keep an eye out as we get to the Central Hall,” Queen assured her.

“If there is another enemy besides Shido looking out there, then we’ll slaughter them just like the rest!” Akechi declared. “Until then, let’s submit those letters so we can finally access the bastard’s Treasure.”

“All right, but keep an eye out,” Joker ordered. The Phantom Thieves departed from the room, cautious but optimistic about approaching the end of their infiltration.

None of them noticed Joker take out a Star Onion and consume it, infusing himself with the power of Concentrate as he followed them closely behind.

Chapter Text

The Phantom Thieves retraced their steps out of the engine room in high spirits. Shido’s Palace easily been the toughest out of all the Palaces they had been in, yet they had managed to get all five of the letters of introduction in a single day without any major problems. Granted, most of the credit for that belonged to Joker, who pretty much slaughtered everything in his path with extreme prejudice, but it was still an impressive accomplishment.

Speaking of Joker, he was eyeing their surroundings warily, looking for any sign of a possible enemy attacking. He was the only who wasn’t in a celebratory mood, and that more than anything made Goro wary. Joker had reacted to pretty much every enemy they had encountered with nonchalance and confidence, which was more than justified given his overwhelming power. Not even the prospect of fighting Shido himself seemed to particularly deter him.

If Joker of all people was on guard, then it was most certainly wise to be cautious.

They arrived back in the large, open clearing where they had first entered the engine room from the ducts. They managed to cross most of the room without any incident, but right as they reached the end… “Behind you!” Joker suddenly shouted.

Everyone whirled around. Standing behind them was another Akechi, this one dressed in the detective prince outfit that he wore in the real world. Before any of them could react, the cognitive Akechi took out a gun and pointed it straight at the true Akechi. “I’ll deal with the rest of you later,” the cognitive Akechi stated, his brown eyes and tone utterly soulless, before focusing his attention back on Akechi. “As for you…Captain Shido’s orders. He has no need for losers. This just moves his plan up a little. He was going to get rid of you after the election anyway.”

Akechi stared at his cognitive version, his mind reeling as he processed what was going on. His mind shifted back to the interrogation room, when he had been sitting across a beaten and battered Ren. He remembered, with chilling clarity, how Ren had warned him that Shido was going to dispose of him after he won the election, and how Shido had prepared a cognitive version of himself to deal with him if he attempted to destroy Shido through the Metaverse.

Ren had been right. Ren had been right about everything.

“Did you truly believe you’d be spared after all the murders you undertook,” the cognitive Akechi asked callously, malice dripping from every word. “Don’t tell me, were you actually feeling good about having someone lean on you for once?” A cruel sneer appeared on his face. “Oh, by the way, the captain says it’s time you receive retribution for causing the mental shutdowns.”

“What the hell, man!?” Ryuji yelled furiously. “The bastard was the one who put him up to it!”

“No,” Akechi shook his head. Everyone turned to look at him in surprise. “Shido might have been the one who gave the orders, but I was the one who chose to follow them. I was the one who committed those atrocities, drowned my hands in blood, all for the sake of a revenge plan that was doomed from the very beginning. I wanted to destroy Masayoshi Shido, but I was so wrapped up in my own idiocies that the only thing I’ve done was help the very man who ruined my life almost gain ultimate power.” He shook his head in disgust. “This whole time I was an imbecile, a puppet through and through, all for nothing.”

The cognitive Akechi chuckled. “That’s right…” he hissed. “You and I will do anything in the name of the Captain. Just look at yourself…you wanted to be acknowledged? To be loved? How utterly pathetic. You were nothing but a puppet from the very beginning!”

Akechi glared at Shido’s cognition of him. “Not anymore…” he snarled. “I’m done playing by Shido’s rules. I’m done following his every command like a dog. Shido doesn’t have any power over me. I spit on your so-called Captain with every fiber of my being!”

The cognition laughed mockingly. “Is that so? Then there’s no need for me to waste my breath giving you one last chance to shoot them. Enjoy spending your last breaths knowing that you were nothing but a puppet for the captain from beginning to end.”

“…you’re wrong.”

Everyone’s eyes turned to Joker, including the cognitive Akechi. Joker was staring at Shido’s puppet with a look of pure and utter loathing. A look of pure hatred that none of his friends had ever seen on his face before, and made the leader of the Phantom Thieves look utterly terrifying.

“Akechi might have been a puppet once,” Joker continued, “I won’t deny that was true. But he cut those strings. He made the choice to break his ties to your worthless Captain and work with us for real at the moment where it mattered the most.”

A vicious smirk appeared on his face. “But look at you! Your entire existence is defined by the whims of a single man. I don’t think you can make a single thought, let alone a single decision, that doesn’t revolve around kissing Masayoshi Shido’s ass so hard you memorize the smell of his shit. A puppet? Don’t make me laugh. There’s only one puppet here, and that’s you.”

The cognitive version of Akechi sneered and shifted his gun away from Akechi and towards Joker. “I suggest you shut your mouth right now,” he warned. “Or you will be the first to die instead of him.”

“Joker…” Panther muttered nervously, but the leader of the Phantom Thieves completely ignored her.

Joker sneered back. “Go ahead! Shoot me!” he taunted. “If you want to suck the Captain’s dick so hard, then come get me, you steaming pile of shit!”

“If you want to die so badly, so be it,” the cognitive version of Akechi growled. His finger tightened on the trigger.

“NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!” all of the Phantom Thieves cried out.

“What the FUCK are you doing, Joker?” Akechi shouted furiously, betraying the care and concern he had for his friend rival for the first time.

But they were too slow to react or do anything. The gun fired, letting out a cognitive bullet as lethal as a real bullet would have been…only for a shimmering barrier to appear in front of Joker, the very same barrier that always manifested whenever one of his personas repelled an attack. The bullet hit the barrier and was sent flying back towards the cognitive Akechi. His eyes widened as the bullet smashed into his shoulder, crashing into it with such force that the cognition was sent flying backward and sprawling onto the ground.

“What the…” Queen spluttered. “What the hell just happened?”

“Joker…Joker repelled the attack somehow,” Mona commented, his eyes wide with disbelief. “But I’ve never seen a repelled attack hit that hard.”

“I’m glad Joker-kun is alive and safe, but…” Noir looked uncertainly at the fallen cognition. “I still wish I understood what was going on.

Their thoughts were interrupted by Joker whose smirk had transformed into a full-blown grin. But this wasn’t simply the mischievous expression that the leader of the Phantom Thieves always wore whenever he entered battle. The grin that he was now sporting on his face was full of cruelty and hate, an expression of utter malice that made it look as demonic as Arsene’s.

But it was nothing compared to what came next.

“Heh heh heh heh heh…heh HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!” Joker laughed, an unholy sound that chilled them all to their souls. “Did you really think I didn’t see this coming? That I didn’t know about Shido’s little contingency to deal with Akechi the moment he joined our team? I already knew about your pathetic existence, and I had a plan to deal with it from the very beginning.”

He took off his mask, and a new Persona appeared behind him.

“What the fuck?” were Akechi’s first thoughts. The Persona that Joker had summoned was a Rangda, a witch-like creature with razor sharp claws. But it was far weaker than any of the Personas that Joker had summoned before. Each and every single one, without fail, had been an entity that exuded a mighty and overwhelming aura, with enough power to wipe out entire armies of Shadows with a single attack. This Rangda, by contrast, was so pitifully inferior to the other Personas Joker had summoned in terms of strength that it was outright laughable. Akechi honestly believed that most of the Phantom Thieves could probably defeat this Rangda in a 1v1 fight if they had the moves to battle it, and his own Personas almost certainly could.

“Oh…my…God…” Oracle breathed. “This Rangda…this thing is insane!”

Oracle flashed the data in their minds, giving them the full information and details on Joker’s Rangda. And in that moment, the realization hit Akechi like a bucket of cold water.

His initial estimation had been accurate…at least from a technical standpoint. The Rangda’s level was inferior to that of even the other Thieves, and its stats were pathetic compared to Joker’s other powerhouses.

The Rangda was weak…and it was that very weakness which made it so dangerous.

Because aside from Marakunda and Enduring Soul, every single one of the Rangda’s skills Repelled an element. This meant that apart from Fire and Curse, which Rangda was naturally immune to, and obviously Almighty, Joker’s persona repelled every single element in the Metaverse.

An ability that wouldn’t have been nearly as effective if the Rangda had possessed the same level of power that Joker’s other Personas had. The weaker a Persona was, the more damage it took. That was a basic fundamental of combat in the Metaverse, a fundamental that Joker had ruthlessly exploited and turned on its head. Because the more damage a Persona would normally take, the more damage it would deal if it repelled an attack. Damage that was further intensified by the Retaliating Body trait that this particular Rangda possessed. It was a Persona truly dedicated to the concept of having your enemy destroy themselves with their own attacks.

Akechi didn’t know just how powerful the gun of Shido’s cognition was. Given how confident Shido was that the cognition alone would be able to destroy him, it was safe to assume that it was extremely deadly, arguably as deadly as a real gun would have been. And Joker had just reversed that power back onto the cognition without having to lift a finger.

“Ingenious…” Akechi murmured, and this time he didn’t feel any shame admitting this compliment to his rival out loud. The way that Joker had created this Rangda was nothing short of masterful…and it had been perfect for dealing with Shido’s cognition of him.

“Joker brought a Persona specifically to counter this abomination,” Fox commented. “A brilliant move from our leader!”

“YOU PIECE OF SHIT!” the cognition screamed, catching their attention, as he struggled to get back on his feet. His arm was still attached to his shoulder, but only just, and his gun had fallen out of his head and lay uselessly on the ground.

“The real Akechi wouldn’t have fallen for such an obvious move,” Joker sneered contemptuously. “The real Akechi would have questioned why I was goading him, and realized that I was plotting something that he wasn’t aware of. He would have been more cautious before trying to attack me. But you? You tried to solve your problem by going head-first into violence, because that’s how Shido created you, and that’s all you’re good for.”

Joker took a breath and glanced at Akechi. “I’ll be the first to admit that Akechi has made some bad choices. Some of which make me wonder what the hell kind of status effect he was under when he decided to go with them to begin with.” Akechi bristled at this, but didn’t say anything. “But at least Akechi had the free will and the intelligence to make those choices by himself. His actions and his decisions are his own. Which is a lot more than what I can say for you. You call Goro Akechi a puppet, but your entire existence depends on Masayoshi Shido and how hard you can suck his dick.” Joker’s grin returned, utterly malevolent and bringing with it the promise of death. “An existence that I’m going to thoroughly enjoy ending.”

An expression of genuine fear appeared on the cognition’s face, and he desperately snapped his left fingers. Shadows manifested on either side of him, SWAT soldiers with a glowing red aura. Such a massive gathering of shadows would have been a major problem to deal with if Joker hadn’t been there…but he was, and he couldn’t care less about whatever minions the cognitive Akechi summoned. Moving far quicker than anyone could follow, Joker hurled a vial at the group of shadows. The vial exploded with a blinding flash of light, disorienting the group of enemies and leaving them with their heads spinning. “Arrrggggghhhhh!!!” the cognition shouted incoherently, clutching his head in a futile attempt to stop the dizziness.

“We should help Joker!” Panther shouted, trying to step in to join the fight, but Akechi reached out and grabbed her shoulder to stop her.

“No,” Crow shook his head, speaking with utter certainty. “Joker doesn’t need our help, nor do I think he wants it.”

“You came into existence as Shido’s puppet, and now you’re going to die as one,” Joker hissed at the cognition, completely ignoring the Phantom Thieves behind him. He reached out and grabbed his mask, tearing it from his face. “Lucifer!” he shouted.

Everyone could only stare in complete stupefaction as what was essentially the Devil himself appeared behind Joker. A muscular fallen angel that glared down at the cognition and his accompanying shadows with pitiless red eyes and a firm grimace, six bat-like wings spreading far and wide from his shoulder blades. And unlike Rangda, Lucifer possessed the same overwhelming and mighty aura that Joker’s other personas did, a sure sign that Joker was planning on dealing the finishing blow himself instead of waiting for the cognition to kill himself with his own gun like he did before.

“Holy shit!” Oracle exclaimed. “He has Concentrate active on him already! This attack is gonna be huge!”

“How?” Queen asked incredulously. “He didn’t cast Flow on himself before the battle started!”

“He must have cast it on himself or eaten a Star Onion before this battle started,” Akechi surmised. Yet another piece of evidence that Joker had been fully prepared to deal with Shido’s cognition of himself.

The cognition seemed to sense how much danger he was in. He grabbed the gun off the floor and desperately tried to shoot at Joker with his right arm, but the bullets merely bounced harmlessly off of him, indicating that Lucifer was immune to gun attacks. Granted, they didn’t reflect off of him like they would have done if he was using the Rangda, but anything times zero was still zero, no matter how powerful it might be.

“MORNING STAR!” Joker bellowed.

Lucifer’s scarlet eyes flashed, and he raised his hands. Akechi felt the power coursing through the “devil” persona, and he idly wondered what type of attack Joker was about to unleash upon his cognition and the shadows.

The answer came a second later, as a beam of pure Almighty energy shot down from the sky and hit the floor of the engine room, creating a massive explosion far greater and far more devastating than anything any of the Phantom Thieves had ever seen before. It was a violent release of raw destruction more powerful than any of the already incredibly deadly attacks Joker had already demonstrated with his wide array of Personas, save for perhaps his Yoshitsune’s Hassou Tobi. Akechi knew full well the power that Almighty attacks could have. After all, Loki himself possessed Megidolaon as one of his attacks, and it had served him quite well in devastating enemies that would otherwise pose a problem for him thanks to their natural resistances.

Lucifer’s Morning Star made Loki’s Megidolaon look like a pitiful spark from a wet firecracker, such was the difference in raw power. To say that Shido’s cognition of himself and his accompanying Shadows were destroyed by the explosion would be an understatement on the level of calling Masayoshi Shido a “bad person.” All of them were utterly obliterated, annihilated so thoroughly that there weren’t even any ashes left to scatter to the four winds or collect them in a matchbox. When the light finally cleared, there was no trace that any enemies had ever been there to begin with.

In that moment, Akechi realized that his chances of defeating Joker in a Metaverse duel had just gone from “minimal” to “completely nonexistent.” The prospect of fighting Yoshitsune had already been laughable, but at least the Japanese warrior persona’s lack of resistance to Gun meant that Loki could still theoretically knock Joker down with a crit from Riot Gun at the very least, or that he could shoot him with his own gun in a theoretical battle where they were fighting with intent to kill. With Lucifer, on the other hand…there was no way. The demon completely nullified Laevatienn and Riot Gun and was healed from Eigaon. The only attack Loki had that could do anything against Joker was Megidolaon…and as Joker had thoroughly demonstrated, Lucifer completely outclassed Loki with his Morning Star. Robin Hood could have possibly fared better with his Bless attacks…if Joker didn’t have a skill on Lucifer to Drain them.

Yes, with this Persona alone Joker would completely dominate a battle against himself…yet strangely, Akechi didn’t feel the jealousy or resentment that he would have expected. Instead, he felt relief. Relief and a strange sense of savage satisfaction.

Joker could have destroyed him. He knew who he was from the very beginning, and could have easily obliterated him at any point when they had been exploring Sae’s Palace together. But instead, he had offered a hand of friendship and alliance to him, so that they could take down Masayoshi Shido together.

And now, more than ever, Akechi was convinced that breaking his ties to Masayoshi Shido and joining forces with the Phantom Thieves was the right course of action. He had faced incontrovertible evidence that his plan to take Shido down in reality had been doomed from the start, so his only remaining option was to destroy him through the Metaverse.

And with the power of Phantom Thieves backing him up, especially Joker, victory over his mongrel of a father felt closer than ever.

“Pathetic,” Joker spat as he turned away from the empty space that had once contained a cognition and four powerful shadows, a contemptuous sneer on his face. He looked back over to his friends…only to see that every single one of them was staring at him with stunned and even disturbed expressions. They had never seen him attack an enemy so vitriolically and violently…his words and behavior wouldn’t have been out of place on a Palace Ruler instead of the kindhearted and gentlemanly leader of the Phantom Thieves.

“Is there a problem?” he asked calmly. Somehow, the words would have been less terrifying if he had snarled them in a fit of rage than with the tranquility which only barely masked his fury at seeing Shido’s cognition of Akechi.

“N-nope!” Skull quickly replied as he frantically shook his head. “N-not at all!”

“Yep, we’re all good here!” Panther agreed with extreme cheerfulness.

“Good,” Joker replied tersely. “We’ve finally gotten all of the 5 letters of introduction, and now we can finish up this infiltration.” His lips stretched into a grin, one that was downright sinister even by his standards. “I’m looking forward to crushing Masayoshi Shido tomorrow.”

He walked away towards the steps leading out of the engine room, the Phantom Thieves following nervously behind him. All of them could tell that Joker was utterly pissed, and nobody wanted to be the one who was monumentally stupid enough to bring down the wrath of their leader on his or her head.

Akechi glanced at Skull. “I believe you had commented earlier that either Noir was the most terrifying member of the Phantom Thieves?” he asked idly.

“Yeah?”

“I can safely say without a shadow of a doubt that you have no idea what you are talking about,” Akechi snarked. “Joker is ten times more terrifying than Noir can ever hope to be.”

“Normally, I’d take offense to that, Crow-san,” Noir replied, having overheard the conversation. “But given what we’ve just witnessed…I can’t help but agree with you, just this once.”

“Hey, if this is the kind of firepower Joker is bringing to the table, then Shido’s gonna get stomped into the ground!” Oracle cheerfully added.

“How right you are,” Akechi agreed, not even bothering to hide a sadistic and bloodthirsty grin. The vengeance and justice he craved was so very close, and if he was completely honest with himself, he had never expected to feel so delighted after choosing to abandon his original plan and fully allying himself with the Phantom Thieves. Shido’s cognition of him alone had proven without a shadow of a doubt that he had made the correct choice back in the interrogation room, and if he couldn’t hope to take down Shido in the real world, he was more than willing to accept victory over his Shadow instead.

But as they made their way back to the central hall and towards the doors that required the letters of introduction to open, Akechi’s satisfaction was tempered with a slight sense of unease. Not with regards to their chances of triumphing over Shido’s Shadow, but over Joker himself. There had always been hints and signs that Joker had some sort of prescience with regards to Shido’s Palace and the future in general, but never had it been so blatant until now. Joker had not only known about the Shido’s cognition of him, but had brought no less than two separate Personas specifically to deal with that threat, demonstrating a level of preparation that was as extreme as it was effective. There was no way Joker could have been that thoroughly prepared to deal with the cognitive version of himself unless he was fully aware what was coming.

The detective in Akechi had always scoffed at the idea of things like clairvoyance and fortune-telling, preferring to focus on facts and evidence grounded in reality. And yet…they operated in the Metaverse, which had its own laws and functioned completely differently from how the real world did…

Akechi shook his head, brushing away his errant thoughts. Joker’s foresight didn’t matter, at least not now. Nothing mattered apart from taking down Masayoshi Shido’s Shadow tomorrow, and finishing the quest that he had spent years pursuing (even if it was through a different method than what he had originally intended). He could puzzle through the mystery that was Joker later.

The doors leading to the heart of Shido’s Palace opened, and the Thieves took the elevator up to where the treasure was located. Akechi scoffed derisively when he realized that the room where the Treasure was located was identical to the actual Diet Building’s Assembly Hall, except that parts were tinged with gold and more elaborate furniture than what was in the real-life room. “Of course,” he sneered, “Masayoshi Shido’s treasure WOULD be located in a room that represents his corrupt ambitions to take over the government.”

“What the heck is THAT thing?” Skull exclaimed, pointing at the large decoration painted on the curtains behind the podium.

“A Daruma,” Queen explained. “Darumas are often used as a symbol of election luck.” She took a glance around the hall. “Everything else here seems real.”

“It’s quite odd that there isn’t a single person in here,” Fox observed. “When we were outside, it sounded as though there was quite the crowd inside when we heard voices through the door.”

“It’s a reflection of Shido’s desires to be the supreme ruler of the Government,” Akechi pointed out, “not the actual Assembly Hall itself.”

“Regardless, the treasure’s definitely here,” Mona confirmed. “There’s no doubt that this is the place where the treasure will appear.”

“Then we’re done here for now,” Joker declared. “We send the Calling Card and steal Shido’s heart tomorrow.”

Everyone nodded in agreement, but as they were about to leave Queen suddenly realized something. “Hang on,” she interrupted them, “I just remembered something. Crow said earlier that battling a cognition could negatively affect Shido’s perception of them. And Joker just completely obliterated his cognition of Crow earlier. Wouldn’t this run the risk of Shido turning hostile against Crow in the real world?”

“Oh, shoot…” Mona had come to the same conclusion that his teammate had. “You have a point, Queen.”

“This could be…rather problematic,” Fox agreed. “For all we know, Shido may be planning to send out Yakuza agents out to eliminate Crow as we speak.”

Joker grimaced. “I didn’t think about that,” he admitted. “But I think I might have a solution.” He took out several items from his pocket that everyone quickly realized were Calming Aromas. One by one, he threw several of them onto the ground, covering the room with smoke and fog that quickly dissipated. The security level had technically already been at 0%, so Akechi didn’t know if such a maneuver would actually have any effect, but he could see what Joker was trying.

Still, he hadn’t lasted as long as he had in the Metaverse or in real life by relying on the best-case scenarios. He would have to separate exit Shido’s Palace separately from the rest of the Thieves, as he had done when entering, and try to convince Shido not to take any…drastic action…until it was too late for him to do anything tomorrow.

“Are you going to be okay, Crow?” Joker asked with a concerned look.

Akechi scoffed. “I’ve survived for years on my own, Joker. I’ll handle myself just fine.” His eyes narrowed. “Just remember our deal.”

“I haven’t forgotten, Crow. And I have ever intention of keeping my word,” Joker answered with a finality as strong as steel.

Akechi nodded, and they made their way back to the entrance of Shido’s Palace. This time, Akechi was the first to leave. The Phantom Thieves waited for several minutes just to make sure that they wouldn’t be caught in a crossfire between Akechi and Shido if the worst had come to worst, and then they exited the Palace themselves shortly afterwards.

Despite the heightened danger of their situation, all of them felt the fire of excitement and determination of the situation. Tomorrow, they would take down Masayoshi Shido. Tomorrow, they would avenge the atrocities he had committed against Ren, Akechi, and who knows how many others.

The Next Day…

As soon as school ended at Shujin, the Phantom Thieves rushed over with LeBlanc to meet up with their leader, and discuss how to send the Calling Card signaling the heist of Shido’s heart tonight. Akechi was already there waiting for them, playing a chess game with Ren by the time the rest of the Thieves arrived.

“Oh, Akechi!” Ann exclaimed. “I didn’t expect to see you here so soon!”

“I didn’t want to waste any more time elsewhere once I finished my duties for the day,” Akechi replied curtly. “Now that we’re all here, let’s get down to business.”

“Hang on a sec,” Morgana interrupted. “First things first. Did Shido cause you any problems when we got back out of the Palace? And is this going to cause any problems for us before we do the heist?”

Valid questions, Akechi conceded. “He was ranting and raging like the psychopath he is,” he answered derisively. “Threatening to destroy me like he had destroyed countless others in the past. The fool was actually complaining of anxiety and ordered me to inflict mental shutdowns on the members of his inner circle that we fought the cognitions of, even before the election reached its conclusion. He made it very clear that he would remove me from my high status in his circle if I didn’t get this done by the end of the weekend.” A contemptuous sneer appeared on his face. “Too bad for him, we’re sealing his fate by the end of the day.”

“Did he mention us?” Yusuke asked.

Akechi shook his head. “He was more concerned about his inner circle, and didn’t mention anything about any of you.”

“That’s good,” Makoto sighed with relief. “We’re still under his radar, and given how Shido wants you to carry out more mental shutdowns for him he probably doesn’t plan to kill Akechi immediately.”

“I have no doubt that Ren’s little stunt with the Devil of all things has moved his plans to eliminate me up the timetable,” Akechi commented nonchalantly, “but since we’re going to be stealing his heart tonight, none of that will matter.”

“That’s great and all, but how’re we gonna send the calling card?” Ryuji interrupted impatiently.

“It would be pointless to send it to the Diet Building,” Yusuke commented.

“And even if we handed it over to different media sources, who knows how it would be treated…” Makoto added.

Haru sighed. “What should we do then?”

It was a rather difficult question to answer, Akechi had to concede. The Phantom Thieves had previously either plastered the calling cards all over a single location or simply mailed them to their targets, but such strategies would almost certainly be doomed to fail here.

Ren smirked. “I think I might have an idea…” he interrupted. He leaned down and whispered something unintelligible in Futaba’s ear. To everyone’s surprise, the techno-savvy orange-haired girl started snickering to herself, her expression perfectly matching Ren’s.

“Umm…Futaba-chan?” Haru asked, concerned.

Futaba grinned. “My Futaba Cannon is ready!” she declared.

Her announcement was met only with confused looks from everyone except Ren, who had the insufferable expression of someone who already knew what was going on while everyone else was locked out of the loop. “The hell?” Ryuji mumbled.

“It’s good to go!” Futaba added, completely ignoring the rest of the Phantom Thieves as she started typing frantically into her laptop. “Look, now if I do this…”

Makoto leaned over to look at Futaba’s laptop…and her eyes widened in shock. “Wait, WHAT?” she exclaimed. “When did you make this?”

“You shoulda told us you were planning something!” Ryuji added, just as shocked as Makoto was.

“To trick your enemies, you first gotta trick your allies,” Futaba replied mischievously.

Akechi groaned with irritation. “Would somebody please be kind enough to tell me what the hell is going on?” he muttered.

Wordlessly, Futaba flipped around her laptop to show it to everyone. Akechi stared in shock as he processed what he was saying…and then a grin spread across his face. “Ingenious,” he commented. “This will catch both Shido’s attention and the attention of the ignorant sheep of the public for sure.”

“It’s kickass!” Ann agreed enthusiastically.

“This will work quite nicely!” Haru chipped in.

“We’ll finally get people to start coming to their senses!” Ryuji cheered.

“Get ready, everyone,” Joker ordered, with the iconic grin of the leader of the Phantom Thieves on his face. “We’re stealing Masayoshi Shido’s heart tonight!”

Later That Evening…

If someone had told Akechi that abandoning a plan for revenge against Masayoshi Shido that he had spent years developing would have been the best, most satisfying decision he could have made in 2016, he would have laughed at them and wondered where they could have possibly gotten their idiotic notions from.

And yet here he was now, grinning malevolently as he watched and enjoyed the broadcast of the Phantom Thieves as they hacked their way into the TV networks of all of Japan.

The Phantom Thieves were utterly merciless in their condemnation of Masayoshi Shido. They revealed each and every one of his crimes to the public, from the comparatively minor ones like the scandals of public figures, to the psychotic breakdowns and mental shutdowns, and even how he had tried to shift the blame of his crimes on the Phantom Thieves themselves.

It had been no small surprise when the Phantom Thieves invited him to stand alongside them in revealing their continued survival to the public, and join in their public condemnation of Masayoshi Shido. At first, he had declined out of pragmatism, not wanting to risk Shido recognizing him. But what did it matter? Once Shido was removed from the equation, there would almost certainly be members of his conspiracy who would seek to hunt him down and punish him, whether it be for failing Shido or betraying him.

And that was how his Metaverse self stood side-by-side with the rest of the Phantom Thieves, united in one singular purpose, the only purpose that mattered tonight. As Skull finished his challenge to Masayoshi Shido, the Black Mask stepped forward, with his own words to say to his corrupt sperm donor.

“You thought you could you could enslave me to your will,” the Black Mask hissed menacingly, his voice garbled to make it sound indistinguishable. “You thought you could chain me with lies and false promises of glory, when the only thing you planned to give me when I no longer served any use to you was death. But I have seen through your lies, Masayoshi Shido. The monster you created to destroy the minds and lives of countless others has broken free from your chains, and he is coming to give you the justice and vengeance you have avoided for so long. Your most precious weapon will be your downfall tonight.”

Akechi grinned as the Phantom Thieves finished their broadcast, the words he had spoken on the TV resonating within his soul, an oath that he would fulfill tonight. As he looked up, the Phantom Thieves arrived just out of sight of the Diet Building where he was standing, filled with the same determination that blazed within his own soul.

“It’s time,” Ren declared solemnly, with no more words needing to be said. He opened up his phone and pressed on the Metanav, beginning their teleportation into the universe.

The Day of Reckoning had finally come.

Chapter Text

The moment they entered Shido’s Palace, the Phantom Thieves could tell that their calling card had hit its mark. The security level had jumped right up to 100%, just as it had for every other calling card that they had sent to their targets.

Akechi smirked as he imagined the chaos that Shido and his Conspiracy must be going through at this very moment. The frantic scramble to hunt down the Phantom Thieves and himself, the horrified realizations that all of their enemies were alive and even now making their move. He could imagine Shido trying to find any way to stop the attack in the Metaverse that was coming. “Too little, too late, father,” he hissed. “Your day of reckoning has come at last.”

“We’re not fucking around here today,” Joker declared. “We’re here for one thing, and one thing only.” His face stretched into a grin. “Let’s take down this so-called great leader of Japan!”

“YEAH!” the other Phantom Thieves shouted back, Akechi included, as Joker transported them from the entrance of the Palace to the closest safe room to the Treasure room. Once they got there, they wasted no time in making their way back to the Treasure room, and their greatest confrontation yet.

When they arrived, they immediately noticed the manifested Treasure, a golden, shimmering captain’s wheel that floated in the air above them. And standing behind the podium, with his back turned to them, was the Shadow of Masayoshi Shido himself, already waiting for them.

“Shido!” Skull snarled.

Shido didn’t immediately turn to face them, instead choosing to speak to them with contempt and arrogance dripping from every word he spoke. “Where did you lowlifes obtain that power?” He turned to face them, the expression on his face transforming into a condescending smirk. “Not that it matters. If you have a complaint, I’m willing to listen.”

“A complaint. A COMPLAINT?” Akechi shouted the word as he let out deranged laughter. “Oh, I could come up with an entire manifesto of complaints, Shido!”

“Hmph,” Shido scowled at him. “I had a feeling it was something like that. You reminded me too much of that woman. I knew why you approached me from the very start, Akechi. You were hoping to trap me, weren’t you?” He nodded ever so slightly, before the cruel smirk returned. “You were sharp, I will admit, but in the end you were just a kid. All it took were a few kind words here, a little bit of praise there, and that’s all it took to control you. And all the while, you had no idea that I planned to dispose of you as soon as I became prime minister.”

And there it was. Proof from Shadow Shido’s own mouth that the man had known who he was from the beginning, and that his original plan for revenge had been doomed from the start. Akechi felt the rage within him flare up…but he found it surprisingly easy to temper it into a cold fury. Ren had foreseen this, all the way back in that interrogation room. Ren had known from the start that his plan had been doomed to fail, had offered him a different path as a true ally instead of the Phantom Thieves instead of their betrayer. Though he would never admit this in front of anyone, it was truly a relief that he had chosen to accept that offer of alliance. The old way, his idealized way, was forever dead and gone…but a new opportunity had come.

One that would succeed where the original had failed.

He was so wrapped up in his own thoughts that he had almost tuned out the rest of the conversation. “What?” Skull snarled.

“I could never keep someone with such intimate knowledge of my past alive!” Shadow Shido snarled, before switching back to his smirk. “What an “ace” detective. He was standing beside me all this time, yet couldn’t see through my plans. And now he has to lower himself to fighting alongside thieves and degenerates just for the slightest chance to get his revenge.”

“How could you…!?” Panther gasped in horror.

“You stole my mom’s research…and took her life!” Oracle shouted. “And you don’t even have the excuse of a messed-up backstory like Crow does!”

“Everything you’ve done has been for your own selfish gains!” Noir coldly added. “You even killed my father…! I’ll never forgive you!”

Shadow Shido shook his head condescendingly, as though he were addressing a child who had made a mistake. “Sacrifices are inevitable on the path to reform. I only require that the foolish entrust themselves to their superiors. I shall guide them.”

Skull furiously stomped his foot on the ground. “The hell makes you think that you’re better than anyone else?” he snarled.

“You never would’ve made it this far without Akechi’s help!” Panther shouted. “He did everything for you, and you were planning to kill your own son afterwards, you sick piece of shit!”

“And that’s the problem, isn’t it?” Crow murmured quietly, shaking his head. Everyone turned to look at him, realizing that he had spoken. “All this time, I was being played for a fool. Not just by Shido, but by myself. A plan for revenge, with a central part of that plan being to elevate the person who I was trying to get revenge on? I was an imbecile to believe such an inherent contradiction could ever hope to succeed. It would have been smarter to just shoot the fucker from a distance and get it over with.”

Shadow Shido smirked. “You only appeared because of the expectations God’s held for me. Moreover, it was thanks to me that you were able to properly use your power to begin with. The changing of hearts that the rest of you mongrels have been doing…was nothing more than provoking the public!”

“How selfish!” Fox growled, his voice as cold as the void. “You were unable to win by honest means, so you used foul tricks to ascend the political ladder!”

“A cruel person like you has no right to stand leading the citizens of this country. You’re nothing but a criminal who rose above others by climbing a staircase of sin,” Queen furiously agreed.

Shido smiled coldly at the condemnation. “The life of a nation as opposed to those of a few sacrifices…there can be no comparison. The ignorant masses only care about their own personal happiness. I am merely granting that for them.” The smirk vanished, replaced with the face of a fanatic trapped in his own delusions. “That is the social reform that only I, a chosen of God, can enact!” he shouted.

“Sacrifice?” Akechi repeated the word, contempt and loathing dripping with every syllable. “A self-obsessed maniac like you doesn’t even know what that word even means.”

“I can’t believe you look down on everyone else so harshly,” Noir commented sadly.

“I’d never accept a leader who makes a teenager murder people!” Panther furiously shouted. “You say it’s for the country, but I bet it’s all for yourself! Nobody would wish for something like that!”

Shido only smirked in response as he climbed the podium. “Nobody? Then why was I chosen? Why are they surrendering the seat of prime minister to me? Everyone denies the value of hard work these days. Instead, they seek to effortlessly gain wealth. That is why I must reestablish this mighty country. One that does not waver…one that others bow to.”

Skull scoffed. “Mighty my ass!” he retorted. “That’s just a crooked country made by a crook.”

“We cannot let you do this!” Fox declared. “You are a disgrace to Japan. Hence, we will secure justice for our leader, for Akechi, and for everyone that you have wronged!”

“Hmph,” Shido scowled. “Those who disobey me must be eliminated. However…” he stroked his chin thoughtfully. “It would be a waste to simply discard such talent and power to me. I will allow you to choose between life or death one last time. Devote your power to my social reform,” he offered. “I will give you anything you want, whether it be wealth or status!” His gaze turned towards Akechi. “Isn’t that what you always wanted, Akechi? For me to acknowledge you as my own son? I will recognize you as my heir, give you all that you wish and more, should you pledge your loyalty to me once again, and turn your blade back upon these cowards and fools.”

Akechi couldn’t help it anymore. Deranged laughter began to escape his lips, starting out as a mere bark, before escalating into a bellow of rage-filled hysteria. “You made this offer to me so many times,” he hissed, eyes positively glowing with hatred. “You dangled that promise to me over and over again. And all this time, you were planning on stabbing me in the back and throwing me away like trash, just like you did to my mother! And you have the GALL to think that I’ll join with you again, knowing everything that I do about the kind of man you are? Here’s my answer, Masayoshi Shido! Eat shit and die!” Akechi lifted his blade towards the shadow. “Stick all your empty platitudes, all your false promises, and shove them straight up your ass! I’ve made my choice about who I stand with, and the only thing I’ll give you is my blade straight into your gut!”

“Damn right!” Morgana added. “There’s no way we’d follow you!”

“No matter how many times you ask, our answer’s not gonna change!” Panther declared.

Shido merely shook his head contemptuously in response. “It seems the ignorant masses are doomed to remain as such…I thought you were smarter than that. This is unfortunate. I have no choice but to eliminate you all!”

Akechi’s eyes fell on Joker, and it was only then that he realized that the leader of the Phantom Thieves hadn’t said a single word. Even as he and the rest of the Thieves had shouted their defiance and their condemnations towards the monster who stood in front of them, Joker had remained silent the entire time, only gazing at Shido with cold, utter contempt. It struck him as rather odd, considering how as someone who Shido had directly wronged, he would have expected Joker to have more to say towards Shido than anyone else in the room save for himself.

But before he could dwell on the matter further, Shido raised his voice and lifted a hand to the air in a clenched fist. “A small leak will sink a great ship. Great nations have fallen to such lenience. I will not make such incautious mistakes!”

All around the Phantom Thieves, the previously empty Diet hall was suddenly filled with politicians, all of them wearing the same, face, clothes, and hairstyle, all of them clapping emotionlessly at Shido’s speech. It was truly a representation of how Shido saw the politicians of the Diet Building as faceless and insignificant, whose purpose was to support Shido in whatever he did.

Shido sneered, beckoning for the imaginary audience to calm down with his hands. The entire Hall suddenly began to transform into a giant arena, the Phantom Thieves needing to quickly climb up the newly created stage to avoid being crushed. When they finally managed to make it to the arena, Shido was already stepping onto a giant golden lion. It only took a few seconds to realize that the “gold” was actually countless screaming humans with their arms lifted up in the air, representing the masses that Shido was trampling on in his deranged quest for power and glory. “Let me make myself clear,” Shido warned. “Do not think of me as you did my foolish son, who acted so brashly. Malefic energy wrapped around him, encasing him and transforming his clothes into a black military general’s uniform with several medals, along with a red cape and white crown with five spikes on his head. “Die…without further delay!” he commanded as he crossed his arms together, and the beast let out a mighty roar.

“The only thing that will die today is your future, Masayoshi Shido,” Akechi snarled. “It’s time to make you suffer for your crimes!”

Together, Joker, Queen, Noir, and Akechi rushed towards the Beast of Human Sacrifices, stopping only when they were within striking distance of him. Akechi felt rushes of energy flowing through him, a sign that Joker had (intelligently) started the battle with his Auto-Mataru/Maraku/Masuku Persona.

“There’s no need for Thieves in my mighty country…” Shido bellowed. “Only myself and the ones who revere me are needed!”

“Risking our lives to stop rotten adults…” Oracle declared. “That’s why we’re the Phantom Thieves.”

Akechi narrowed his eyes as he carefully examined the Beast of Human Sacrifices, noting with no small amount of disdain that it was the most disgusting thing he had ever seen in his entire life. Despite being so close, despite the bloodthirst that raged through him, he wasn’t stupid enough to attack Shido recklessly. He had no doubt that Shido would be a powerful enemy, and they needed to quickly identify the best way to defeat him.

But Joker, once again, seemed to have the answer. “This battle’s going to have several phases,” he warned them all. “This first phase? No physical or gun attacks. Period.”

“Wait, what the fuck?” Akechi spluttered. “How the fuck do you know that?”

In response, Joker wordlessly summoned Yoshitsune and unleashed a Hassou Tobi. Akechi and his other team members nearly had a heart attack when a Repel barrier appeared in front of Shido, completely deflecting the attack. Fortunately, part of Yoshitsune’s legendary skill translated to a Null against Physical attacks, so the reflected Hassou Tobi didn’t hurt Joker anymore than it hurt the Beast.

“No physical or gun attacks,” Joker repeated, his face dead serious.

Bizarrely enough, none of the other Phantom Thieves felt the need to question Joker any further. Akechi scowled as he realized that, for the moment at least, his two most powerful attacks, Laevateinn and Riot Gun, were worse than useless. He decided to cast Debilitate instead of firing off an Eigaon or Megidolaon, as it would likely do more to harm Shido in the long run than a single magic spell.

“Give me a Star Onion, Queen!” Joker ordered. The nuclear specialist did so, while Noir amplified her own power with a Concentrate skill that she had learned when Joker had taken her to the Jazz Club one day.

At Shido’s command, the Beast of Human Sacrifices raised its claws and slammed them down on the Phantom Thieves with a mighty blow. Akechi was able to dodge the blow in time and the claws simply bounced off Joker harmlessly thanks to Yoshitsune, but both Queen and Noir were wounded (although not badly). To their displeasure, Shido’s second move was to cast a Dekunda on himself, removing the debuff that Akechi had placed on him earlier.

“Let’s speed this along, shall we?” Joker asked with a smirk. He grabbed his mask and took it off his face. “Cybele!”

A new Persona that Akechi hadn’t seen before appeared. A horned, blue-and-white-skinned earth wielding two very large swords, with flowing black hair and metal rings wrapped around her body. Her appearance was more graceful and didn’t seem as physically imposing as some of Joker’s other Personas, but Akechi wasn’t fooled. She exuded the same level of power that all of Joker’s other Personas (save his intentionally weak Rangda) did.

“VACUUM WAVE!” Joker bellowed.

Cybele raised her swords and sliced them in the air. Immediately, a gigantic, violent tornado tore its way into existence, large enough to cover more than half of the part of the arena where Shido’s Beast of Human Sacrifices was standing. The tornado blasted the Beast of Human Sacrifices with the same kind of devastating intensity that Surtr’s Blazing Hell, Odin’s Wild Thunder, and Black Frost’s Ice Age had demonstrated. It was a ravaging tempest of violence and destruction that made Morgana’s own Garudyne and Magarudyne attacks look like gentle breezes in comparison. It didn’t instantly obliterate the Beast (nor had Akechi had expected it to, no matter how convenient such an effect might have been), but it did tear out a huge chunk of the creature’s health, certainly far more than anything Akechi might have hoped to accomplish by himself.

Akechi was sorely tempted to just fuck everything and fire off a Megidolaon at Shido, but he forced himself to stay rational and cast a second Debilitate. He would wait until the right moment to strike, and the reward would be that much greater.

“Queen, give an Earth Bean to Crow!” Joker commanded.

“Wait, what?” Akechi and Queen must have shared the same confusion. “But he repels Physical attacks!” Queen pointed out.

“Just do it!” Joker ordered. Shrugging, Queen did as she was told, while Noir fired off an empowered Psiodyne at Shido.

“You lowlifes!” Shadow Shido growled from atop his beast. “I hope you understand what it means to turn your back on me!”

“I don’t give a fucking shit!” Akechi snarled back.

“Then you shall perish, worthless brat!” Shido roared. “You shall regret these foolish actions against me…in the afterlife!” The beast suddenly leapt into the air and began to be consumed in a sphere of dark, chaotic energies. When the darkness dissipated away, the beast was now flying in the air with great golden wings…also made of the same golden statues of humans. “I will destroy you!”

“It changed form!” Oracle exclaimed in shock. “I don’t know what it’s going to…Joker?”

The Thieves turned towards Joker, who, bizarrely, wasn’t intimidated in the slightest by the Beast’s sudden transformed. In fact, the leader of the Thieves seemed positively delighted by the unexpected development.

“You should’ve stayed on the ground, dipshit!” Joker cackled. “Too bad for you! HASSOU TOBI, Yoshitsune!”

The Japanese general manifested, and everyone was treated to the distinct pleasure of watching the one of Joker’s most powerful Personas absolutely shred apart the now flying Beast’s health and body, damaging it even harder than when he had attacked with Cybele’s Vacuum Wave despite not even charging first.

Akechi was thrilled. Not just because he was able to witness the might of Hassou Tobi brought to bear against Shido’s abomination of a creature, but because that meant that he was clear to strike it with his Physical attacks as well. “Loki!” he called out with bloodthirst dripping in his voice, allowing the trickster God to manifest behind him. “Laevateinn!”

Loki manifested and swung his massive fiery sword at Shido’s creature, slicing it across its massive golden body. Akechi grinned as the creature howled in fury and pain. Laevateinn might not have been as powerful as Yoshitsune’s Hassou Tobi (because honestly, nothing any of them could do would probably ever come close to matching it), but it was still a powerful blow, one that thoroughly demonstrated his hatred and wrath towards his father. He barely noticed as Queen tossed another Star Onion to Joker at his command, or as Noir passed another Earth Bean to him.

“To think that you’d manage this much…!” Shido growled, betraying his ever-growing frustration. “Why won’t you stop resisting? The nation I strive for…is the ultimate realization of the public’s happiness!”

“I don’t give a single shit about the public’s so-called happiness!” Akechi spat. “If the public wants you a degenerate wretch like you for a leader, then they don’t deserve to be happy!”

The Beast transformed again in a miniature storm of shadows, this time transforming into a gigantic pyramid of golden skulls, with Shido’s white crown at the very top.

“It changed again!?” Panther exclaimed.

“The weak must be sacrificed for the sake of grand ideals!” Shido shouted with the fervor of a true fanatic from within the Tomb of Human Sacrifices. “That is the natural order of the world!”

“Then we will tear that order down, piece by piece!” Noir swore.

“Damn right!” Joker agreed. “Everything goes for this last phase! Just hit it with everything you got, guys!” As if to demonstrate the point, he took his mask out, this time out taking out Surtr. “Surtr, BLAZING HELL!”

The fire giant lifted his flaming sword, and the ground underneath Shido’s pyramid erupted into the same molten crater of boiling lava and hellish flames that Joker had unleashed against Politician Ooe. Everyone could feel the unholy heat of the inferno even from the opposite side of the battlefield, though Akechi doubted that the Pyramid would go down to one single spell, no matter how powerful Joker might be. True to his prediction, the Tomb wasn’t immediately destroyed in one blow, but he was pleased to see that the attack had been devastating nevertheless, reducing the Tomb to just a sliver of the health the Beast had originally possessed.

“We’re so close!” Akechi thought viciously, smelling the blood in the water like a ravenous shark about to catch a particularly delicious meal. “So close to taking this mongrel down! If only we had a little more power…anything to finally bring down Masayoshi Shido and give the piece of shit exactly what he deserves!”

…and something answered that wish.

Akechi suddenly felt a surge of power come from…somewhere. A rush of energy that filled his soul, gave him a strength that he didn’t know he had. The red visor of his helm blazed with this newfound power, and he turned to glance over at Joker, inexplicably understanding that this new power was intricately connected to him. The leader of the Phantom Thieves seemed to also be filled with this strange surge of power, although in his case the effect was more subtle, highlighted only by a flash of his eyes for a few seconds. Joker looked down at his pocket, a look of clear surprise on his face. As far as Crow could remember, it was the first time that Joker had appeared to truly be surprised by something ever since they had started working together, whether it be as a false member in Sae’s Palace or as a genuine ally in Shido’s.

They weren’t the only ones to notice the unusual power surge, either. “Holy crap!” Oracle exclaimed. “I just felt a huge surge of power from both Joker and Crow!”

“What?” Queen asked, concern in her tone. Crow couldn’t blame her, an unexpected variable was the worst possible thing that could happen in a fight as important as this…although his gut instincts were telling him that whatever was happening was far from a bad thing.

“I dunno how, but it feels like….it feels like one of those epic Showtime attacks!” Oracle quickly explained. “I don’t know how it’s possible, these guys never worked together to come up with one like the rest of you did.”

“Showtime, hmmm?” Akechi mused, tasting the word on his tongue. He honestly quite liked the sound of that…though granted, he would like the sound of anything that would help him claim his revenge over Shido faster. “Let’s test this out on that golden abomination, Joker!”

Both Joker and Crow leapt into the air, transforming the area around them into a cityscape under a dark and cloudy night sky, rain pouring down upon the surrounding buildings. Hit by a strange sense of inspiration, Crow poured Loki’s power into himself, turning himself psychotic and giving himself a massive power boost as he consumed himself in a mass of chaotic dark power. “You little SHIT!” he screamed as he raced towards Shido’s Tomb, ready to slice it to pieces with all of his strength. All the while, Joker jumped from building to building, favoring grace over the brute-force approach, but his intentions were very much the same as Crow’s.

Joker reached Shido’s Tomb first and sliced at it once with his knife, before leaping out of the way and letting Crow do the rest of the work. The Black Mask cackled with laughter as he furiously sliced and slashed at the Tomb with every ounce of his strength, consumed by the euphoria of long-concealed bloodlust finally unleashed in full. With an inarticulate howl of fury and triumph, Akechi finished his combo with one powerful strike, wiping out the last of the Tomb’s health. Combined with all of the damage that the Tomb had already taken before, it was too much, and the pyramid transformed back into the original Beast, now lying defeated and moving on the ground.

Shadow Shido got off of the Beast, scowling and crossing his arms as he glared down at his broken steed. “Useless, ignorant masses!” he snarled. He strode purposefully towards the Thieves, not even sharing the Beast a second glance as it dissolved into black ashes. “It seems even thieves should not be taken lightly if they come in great enough numbers,” he was forced to grudgingly concede.

“Bah!” Skull sneered. “Once you’re losing, you’re putting all the blame on the masses, huh?”

Shido ignored him, instead focusing on Joker. “So…” he growled. “You’re the one unifying them, including my worthless bastard of a son.”

“A touching reunion, isn’t it?” Panther retorted.

“The next time you crush a foe, I suggest you do it in a more certain manner,” Fox growled.

“Not that there’ll be a next time for you,” Oracle snapped.

“Of course you wouldn’t recognize our leader here,” Akechi sneered. “After all, your victims are just one faceless, meaningless body after another to trample. You never imagined that one of them could fight back…and yet here we are. Right, Joker?”

Joker nodded as Shido gazed at him more carefully. “Hmm?” he asked, before his eyes hardened with realization and he gritted his teeth in fury. “You…” he hissed. “You’re more than just a member of the Phantom Thieves, aren’t you?”

A sinister grin spread across Joker’s face and he took off his mask, revealing his face before Shido’s Shadow. “That’s right, Shido,” Ren confirmed, mockery and contempt dripping from his tone. “One of your many sins has finally come back to bite you. You tried to ruin my life, branding me as a criminal for trying to stop the sins that you were so eager to commit. You might have beaten me down, but you didn’t break me. And now it’s time for you to get the karma you so thoroughly deserve!”

“You took him to court and don’t even have the decency to remember who he is?” Queen questioned acidly. “You truly don’t care about the fate of others.”

“I see…so it truly is you,” Shido couldn’t help but chuckle at the bizarre turn of events. “Haha…what an interesting turn of fate.” His gaze and his mouth hardened. “But your efforts will be worthless in the end.”

“What?” Skull spluttered.

“Small sacrifices are inescapable for those wishing to be powerful, competent leaders,” Shido declared, clearly believing in his own delusions. “How would you ever reach your destination if you stopped to count every ant that you crushed on the road?”

“Are you saying that the people you killed deserved to die?” Noir gasped in horror.

Akechi’s eyes blazed with hatred and disgust. Every time he thought he couldn’t hate Shido more, the man always found a way to break through the bottom of the barrel. “Of course he is,” he spat. “That’s the kind of man he is. A parasite through and through. Feeding off the lives of others to engorge himself and his own ego, leaving behind broken husks and dead bodies without even the slightest bit of remorse or regret.”

“He’s totally insane…” Panther murmured.

Shido scoffed. “I wouldn’t expect the ignorant masses of this country to understand. Thus, I will offer proof…” He suddenly grabbed his uniform and ripped it off of him, revealing his Shadow to be a musclebound man wearing metal braces around his upper body. Hellish red flames suddenly blazed around him in an unholy aura as he lifted his fists up to them in a battle stance, “…by forcefully crushing the Phantom Thieves!” he snarled. “I shall win this game!”

Shido expected to see fear and confusion in his enemies. He didn’t expect their wretched leader to start laughing. It started slowly at first, but his laughter increased in intensity second by second, until it was a bellow of mockery and amusement. “Heh heh heh heh heh heh…heh HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!” Joker laughed, the sound utterly cold and cruel, just like it had been seconds before he had annihilated the cognitive Akechi in the Engine Room. “You…a threat to me? I can’t remember the last time I remembered hearing something that hilarious or pathetic!”

“Show some respect to your superiors, you brat!” Shido snarled, clearly enraged by Joker’s response to his promise.

“Respect? RESPECT?” Joker repeated the word like it was the funniest joke ever. “What the fuck is there to respect? Let’s ignore the all the atrocious shit you’ve done, all the lives you’ve trampled and ruined to satisfy your own ego. You’re not even that good of a fighter, with all that so-called power you keep bragging about.”

“You…you…!” Shido was practically choking on his own rage, he was so furious. Akechi couldn’t help but smirk at seeing Shido frothing at the mouth at the sight of someone who refused to bend down to his knees and start sucking his deck, but most of his attention was focused squarely on Joker.”

“I mean, what the fuck did you even accomplish when we were fighting your beast?” Joker continued to insult Shido with every word that came out of his mouth. “Your stupid golden pile of shit couldn’t do a single bit of damage to me. You think you’re this great leader who’s going to make Japan into a strong nation? Here’s the truth, Masayoshi Shido.” He glared straight into Shido’s eyes, his hatred clear to see. “You’re a pathetic and degenerate weakling who fumbled his way into a position that you don’t deserve. That is all you have ever been, and that is all you will ever be.”

“You dare to disrespect me in such a blatant manner?” Shido roared, lost entirely to his rage. “I’ll tear you to pieces myself, you brat! I will bathe these halls in your blood and hang your rotten carcass up in the great hall for all my passengers to see! You will spend your last moments screaming in agony, begging for forgiveness from the Hell I will unleash upon you daring to insult and defy God’s chosen and my rightful destiny!”

Joker sneered. “I haven’t seen a single thing you’ve done to make me think you’ll come even close to backing up that claim,” he retorted. “If there is a God that put a mongrel like you in charge of the country, then He’s just as weak and as pathetic as you are. And if that so-called God dares to show his face to us, then we’ll kick His ass just like everyone else whose heart we’ve stolen!”

Akechi couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow at that. The obvious blasphemy aside (not that he particularly cared about such things), that was a rather odd boast to make on Joker’s part. He forced the matter away from the forefront of his mind. Now was not to time to get caught up in meaningless semantics. Now was the time for battle, and for revenge.

“So go ahead then,” Joker demanded. The grin he gave Shido as he twirled his knife and pointed it at him was menacing to the point that it was almost sociopathic…and though he’d never admit it, it was a look that Akechi thought Joker pulled off very well. “Show me this proof you seem to live and die by like it’s your fucking mantra. Show me the power of God’s chosen!” His eyes narrowed and he said his last words with a menacing hiss. “Let’s see if your true power is anything more than the fucking disappointment you’ve turned out to be so far.”

Chapter Text

The prospect of fighting a buffed-up, muscular Shido would have been rather surreal and hilarious to Akechi, if the fight wasn’t so obviously dangerous. It didn’t help matters that Joker hadn’t been with his triple buffing Persona at the start of the battle, so they wouldn’t be able to start the battle with the Mataru/Maraku/Masukukaja that had been so very convenient in their previous battles.

“What is this power?” Oracle asked incredulously. “Careful, guys!” she warned. “Those muscles aren’t just for show!”

“I don’t give a shit what he looks like,” Akechi snarled. “He’s going down either way!”

He glanced over at Joker, who clearly didn’t let Shido’s new form bother him in the slightest. He immediately switched to his buffer Persona, a mummified man holding a razor-sharp dagger whom he called Attis, and cast Thermopylae to give all of them a Heat Riser effect. Akechi then followed up with a Debilitate, crippling this new form of Shido’s Shadow. Queen took advantage of this opportunity to blast Shido with a Freidyne, while Noir tossed a Star Onion towards Joker to empower him with a Concentrate.

Unfortunately, Akechi’s work was immediately undone when Shido cast Heat Riser on himself, strengthening himself with the same three pillars of energy that Joker had just cast on all of them a few seconds ago. The effects of Shido’s Heat Riser and Akechi’s Debilitate cancelled each other out, leaving him at his base power, but Akechi couldn’t help but feel aggravated by the fact that his efforts had been effectively negated.

Joker, on the other hand, merely snickered at the sight. “Oh, look at that,” he commented, mockery dripping from his voice. “This old dog actually learned some new tricks. Let’s see how well he plays before we put him down.”

Shido snarled at Joker’s insulting tone and lunged towards him, his fists glowing with malicious purple energy reminiscent of an Evil Touch attack. The fist flew right towards Joker’s head…and immediately hit a Repel barrier, blasting him backward as the force of his own attack was bounced back on him. “You don’t seem to fucking learn, do you, Shido?” Joker sneered.

“The hell, Joker? How many of your goddamn Personas repel physical attacks?” Akechi demanded. From what he could recall, pretty much every single one of them had Repelled any Physical attacks sent towards them, except for Yoshitsune who merely Nulled them instead.

Joker smirked. “Practically all the ones that don’t already Null it by default,” he replied smoothly. “You have no idea how many of that particular skill card I had Fox made once I finally got my hands on one.” He glanced back towards Shido, who looked shocked that Joker had once again repelled the so-called “power of the gods” that he had boasted about. “Here’s how you actually attack someone, Shido.”

The leader of the Phantom Thieves took out his mask and summoned Odin. He commanded the Norse god to fire off a Wild Thunder, and Akechi once again had the distinct pleasure of watching Shido get blasted with a cascade of devastating lightning bolts far greater than anything he had ever seen in the Metaverse that tore across Shido’s half of the arena. The attack didn’t instantly wipe Shido out (and nor had he expected it to, especially since his Debilitate had been negated), but it did indeed tear through a sizable chunk of Shido’s health.

Akechi would have cast another Debilitate, but his impatience to tear Shido apart with his bare hands got the better of him. “MEGIDOLAON!” he bellowed, summoning Loki to his side. An explosion of pure Almighty energy erupted from underneath Shido’s feat, wiping out more of Shido’s health and remaining power. Queen decided to be the tactical one this time, firing off a Debilitate of her own to cripple Shido’s defenses again, while Noir blasted the tyrannical monster with a Psiodyne.

Shido seemed to have gotten better control of his temper, at least to a degree. Instead of lashing wildly at Joker again, he focused his malice towards Queen this time around. Shido attacked more insidiously this time around, channeling malevolent and shadowy energy towards her with an Evil Touch attack meant to leave her crippled with fear. Fortunately, Noir’s Icy Glare trait kicked in, Milady sending out soothing and calming waves of energy to help Queen resist and overcome the malice that their sworn enemy had sent towards her.

But Shido wasn’t done. The prideful monster lunged towards Queen with his fist raised back, this time glowing with unholy red energy instead of the fear energy from earlier. Shido smashed his fist into Queen, and everyone gasped in horror as the strategist of the Phantom Thieves fell to her knees, almost but 1 of her health wiped out at once by the deadly blow. “Oh, crap!” Oracle exclaimed in horror as she struggled to get back to her feet, heavily wounded. “That Tyrant’s Purge attack that Shido just did must have an instakill ability! We’re lucky Queen didn’t get wiped out right away by that!” She frantically typed something in Prometheus’ computer screens, her Persona sending out a wave of healing energy that alleviated some of her teammate and friend’s pain.

“You’re going to pay for that,” Joker swore, his gaze deadly cold and all humor gone from his voice. His mask glowed, and when he took it off, it revealed Alilat. The glowing red-orange energy of Charge flowed through him, and Akechi smirked as he realized what was about to come. Akechi fired off a Laevateinn, Loki’s mighty flaming sword slicing through Shido’s body and softening him up for the attack that was to come. Queen cast a Mediarahan to heal off the rest of the damage Shido had done to her, while Noir fired off another Psiodyne, no doubt operating on the same mentality as Akechi.

Fortunately, Shido didn’t repeat his Tyrant’s Purge attack this time around. Instead, he pounded the ground with his fists, unleashing a shockwave of physical energy that blasted everyone for a moderate amount of damage, except for Joker, who predictably repelled the attack back towards Shido. Unfortunately, the tyrant chose to cast another Heat Riser on himself, negating the Debilitate that Queen had cast earlier.

But it was too little, too late. With a triumphant grin, Joker summoned Yoshitsune to his side, ready to unleash hell upon the man who had ruined his life. “HASSOU TOBI!” he bellowed. The Japanese General manifested at Joker’s side and lunged at Shido, ruthlessly slicing him to pieces with enough power to tear apart the very Earth itself with blood red energy. Shido might have been able to survive such an attack if he had been at his full might, but the many attacks that the Phantom Thieves had heaped on him one after the another had slowly worn him down, and there was nothing Shido could do. As Yoshitsune slashed through Shido’s body one last time, the musclebound tyrant fell to his knees, gritting his teeth in frustration.

“Nrrrrrggghhhhhh…” he growled, furious that he was somehow still losing despite unleashing more of his power. “How are these lowlife brats beating me?”

“Now’s our chance!” Oracle eagerly exclaimed. “Let’s take his treasure now!”

“Ahahahahahaha!” Shido laughed mockingly. “Don’t think you’ve won. The power held by the the most elite is what rules over our society. It’s vexing that I have to use this power on some foolish brats and my pathetic excuse of a son…but I will educate you through and through!”

 “No way!” Oracle gasped. “He’s STILL going to come after us?”

“I don’t give a shit how many times he gets back up,” Joker spat in reply. “No matter what form he takes, no matter how powerful he becomes, we’ll just beat the shit out of him again and again until he stays down on the ground where he belongs.”

“Did you hear that, Shido?” Oracle asked mockingly.

“All this talk about the power of the elite, and so far it’s been nothing but a disappointment and a farce,” Akechi added, contempt dripping from every syllable. “So pathetic that the teens you call lowlife brats have been running rings around you from the very start!”

Shido gritted his teeth furiously. He flexed his muscles, positively trembling with pure unbridled rage, and the braces came flying off. Shido’s Shadow had somehow become even bigger, even more muscular, and even more hideous. He had transformed into True Samael, his ultimate form, the fullest extent of his power.

“No way…” Oracle spluttered. “He’s even STRONGER now?”

“Die…” Shido hissed. Such was his fury and his frustration that his former eloquence was all but gone, and all that he could think about was pummeling these upstart Phantom Thieves into oblivion.

Joker grinned. “Well then…maybe you might be able to actually give us a challenge for once…but I doubt it.” He switched back to Alilat, and fired up a Concentrate on himself. This time, Akechi played it smart and crippled True Samael with a Debilitate. He didn’t know exactly just what Shido’s newest form was capable of, but he wasn’t so lost in his bloodthirst that he didn’t recognize when to play it safe. Queen fired off a Freidyne at Shido, while Noir charged herself up with a Concentrate.

To Akechi’s consternation, Shido cast another Heat Riser on himself and cancelled the debuff he had just placed on him, cackling as he did so. But that irritating development quickly became an afterthought, as Shido suddenly slammed the ground with his fist. The ground cracked with the impact, and Akechi was suddenly caught by surprise as gigantic golden fist of pure light manifested high above them, getting closer to them with every second. Akechi barely had time to brace himself as the massive fist collided with them, smashing all of them for a good deal of damage except for Joker, who merely shrugged off the attack like it was nothing.

He could feel Loki seethe within him, and Crow suddenly realized that Shido’s Tyrant’s Judgment had been a Bless attack, Loki’s natural weakness. Even as powerful as he was, such an attack would have surely devastated him…if it hadn’t been for the Ring of Vanity that he had been carrying. A memory suddenly pushed itself to the forefront of his mind, of Joker frowning for the briefest of moments when he had declared that he would fight Shido with Loki, before giving that Ring to him. “He knew…” Akechi realized. Joker had known about Shido’s mighty Bless attack, and had given him the perfect item to neutralize what would have otherwise been a crippling weakness in this boss battle. There was no other reason why Joker gave him that specific accessory when there were so many other more powerful ones available to him. Once again, he couldn’t help but be shocked by Joker’s foresight. He knew that the leader of the Phantom Thieves inexplicably had some degree of prescience when it came to their fights, but for him to be able to plan things out to this level of detail…

His thoughts were interrupted as Joker summoned Black Frost and blasted Shido with frozen pillars of ice that broke apart into shards sharper than even the most finely crafted blade, skewering the man who was the bane of his existence. As Akechi had suspected, even Joker’s full power wouldn’t be enough by itself, his Ice Age attack doing a respectable amount of damage, but not nearly enough to finish Shido off by itself. With the knowledge that Queen had a Debilitate skill of her own, Akechi instead went on the offensive once again, summoning Loki to his side. “RIOT GUN!” he shouted. His Persona answered his command, unleashing a storm of bolts made up of raw kinetic energy across the battlefield, tearing through more of Shido’s health. As he had expected, Queen was the one who went with the tactical move with a Debilitate this time around, while Noir vented her frustration and rage at her father’s murderer with a Concentrated Psiodyne.

As much as Akechi hated to give Shido credit for anything, he certainly wasn’t a weakling. He had a wide array of abilities that most people would consider very powerful, immediately firing off a Maragidyne and a Mabufudyne in short order. The two attacks did have a noticeable impact on Queen and Noir, and even he was only able to dodge the Maragidyne before getting hit with the Bufu spell. But after witnessing the frankly obscene and insane feats of power that Joker was able to pull off on a regular basis, feats that Joker didn’t even need to expend considerable levels of energy to unleash one after the other, Akechi found Shido’s power pitiful and laughable by comparison. Even this latest double attack was worse than useless against their leader, for Joker was able to Repel the Maragidyne back at Shido and Drain the Mabufudyne. Somehow, Akechi had little doubt that Joker would have been able to fight and take down Shido entirely by himself if he wanted to, and that keeping his fellow Phantom Thieves with him at all times was more out of abundance of caution than with anything else.

“All right, I’m getting sick of dealing with this piece of shit,” Joker declared, his expression looking like it was close to yawning from how bored he was with this fight. He took out Attis again and recast the Thermopylae. “Noir, do me a solid and pass me an Earth Beans when you get the chance.”

“But of course, Joker!” Noir agreed with a sadistic giggle. Akechi and Queen were also both smirking, all of them knowing exactly what giving Joker “Earth Beans” meant. Akechi sliced through Shido’s freakishly musclebound body with another Laevateinn, while Queen healed the team with a Mediarahan. Shido seemed to sense the danger he was in, for he summoned another gigantic fist of Bless energy and sent it hurling towards them. Once again, the Severe Bless attack collided into the Phantom Thieves, hitting all of them hard except for Joker, who once again merely shrugged the blow off like it was nothing. Seemingly recognizing the futility of attacking Joker directly, Shido instead chose to launch himself at Akechi with the same unholy red fist that had brought down Queen to her knees and nearly knocked her out in one blow. Akechi sneered and dodged the attack just in time, Shido’s fist flying through empty air where he had been second earlier.

“You really didn’t think I’d see that coming, father?” he sneered. “You’re losing your touch, old man! And you can’t stop what’s about to come. Tear him to pieces, Joker!”

Joker laughed and summoned Yoshitsune to his side again. “HASSOU TOBI!” he bellowed. The Japanese general tore through Shido’s body just like he had before, shredding through the True Samael’s health like it was wet paper with each strike. Akechi honestly had no idea how a Persona could ever possess a signature move that ridiculously overpowered, not that he was complaining when such overwhelming power was on his side. Even maximum-power Hassou Tobi might not have been enough to destroy Shido outright, but the attack had been deadly enough to reduce Shido to about a quarter of his health left, which was certainly a praiseworthy feat considering that it would likely have taken the rest of the Thieves multiple attacks and turns to accomplish the same.

“Nngh…” Shido gasped out, and Akechi could have sworn that he could see a flash of panic in the Shadow’s eyes. “To think that you’d put up this much of a fight! You bastards! I won’t let you have this!”

Shido slammed the ground with his fist, and a shockwave of a different kind flew from his hand. The shockwave collided into Queen and Noir, sending them both flying out of the arena. Before either of them could do anything to get back into the fight, the shockwave hit the far edges of the arena, causing the entire outer circumference to erupt in a wall of dark blue flames. It was now only Joker and Akechi who stood opposite Shido, the rest of the Phantom Thieves having been completely cut off.

“Wh…what happened?” Oracle gasped, still trying to comprehend what was going on. “Are you all right, you two?” she asked worriedly.

“We’re fine,” Joker curtly replied. “That attack knocked everyone out of the fight except me and Akechi, but it doesn’t look like it did anything to harm either of us directly.”

Their conversation was interrupted by Shido, who couldn’t help but let out a humorless chuckle. “I never would have imagined…that impertinent brat from so long ago, and my worthless puppet of a spawn, managing to get in the way this much! Honestly unbelievable…” the Shadow clenched his fist furiously. "I should’ve finished you both off long before this could happen. It seems that I was too naïve.” The cruel tyrant began to laugh insanely. “However…my dream has finally been attained! My desire to steer this country has finally come to fruition! But my ambition has only yet begun. I will NOT stumble over mere minutiae like yourself!” he swore. “This time, I’ll be dead certain to seal your fates, both of you! I will reduce you both to nothing, and trample over your ashes as I climb the final steps to achieve my greatness!”

“Heh heh heh heh heh…” Joker laughed darkly. “You really think you stand a chance against us? When you still haven’t been able to do so much as a point of damage to me directly? Are you so deluded that you can’t even see reality when it’s so blatantly obvious in front of you.” The laughter vanished, replaced with a tone that sent shivers down everyone’s spine with how cold and ruthless it was. “Then let me make this abundantly clear, Shido. Your dreams are about to come crashing down. The tower of sins you created to climb to the top is about to collapse underneath you. Every wicked deed you ever committed is coming back to haunt you. We’re not the ones trapped here with you.”

“You are the one trapped here with us!” Akechi finished.

Joker summoned forth Alilat again and empowered himself with the energy of a Concentrate, while Akechi blasted Shido with a Megidolaon. In response, Shido sent a Panta Rhei back at his son. Akechi was caught off-guard by the fact that Shido was suddenly attacking with Severe elemental spells, and he gritted his teeth as the powerful winds tore at his body. It hadn’t been enough to defeat him outright, but combined with the energy he had already spent with his previous attacks, he knew that he’d need to spend the next turn healing himself. To make matters worse, Queen’s earlier Debilitate wore off, meaning that Shido was no longer crippled.

“Crow, don’t cast a Debilitate on your next turn,” Joker instructed, a mischievous smirk on his face.

“I wasn’t going to, Joker, I need to heal,” Akechi retorted. Joker nodded and instead summoned the same Rangda that he had used to defeat the cognitive version of Akechi, firing off a Marakunda at Shido. Akechi took the time to heal himself with a Bead, and Shido responded by casting a Heat Riser on himself. Crow smirked as he realized that Shido’s Attack was now increased, meaning that any attacks reflected back on him would be even MORE devastating than they would be normally.

Joker simply repeated the Marakunda, while Crow opted to use the Ring of Vanity to create a multicolored paint wall in front of him to absorb any attack Shido might throw at him. Shido turned his attention towards Crow and attacked him with a mighty Inferno spell. The beam of molten fire energy trained on him and burst into deadly flames…that simply washed over him harmlessly thanks to the protection he had from the Vanity barrier. Joker simply repeated the Marakunda spell again, while Akechi protected himself with the Vanity barrier again. Part of him wanted to stop playing with his food and lash out against Shido with all of his might…but the much larger part of him was eager to see just how much damage Joker could cause Shido to do to himself if one of his attacks was reflected back at him.

To Akechi’s delight, Shido’s next attack was the Tyrant’s Judgment…and the backlash was more spectacular than anything he could have ever imagined. The gigantic golden Bless fist smashed into the two of them, hitting Rangda’s Repel barrier. The full might of Shido’s wrath bounced off of Joker and was sent flying back at Shido at full force, increased even further by Rangda’s Retaliating Body trait. Shido’s eyes widened and he couldn’t do anything to react as the power of his own Bless attack smashed into him, and such was power of the backlash that Shido was sent flying backward, his back crashing into the wall with a sickening crunch before he collapsed onto his knees, panting heavily and desperately trying to grab a breath. The repelled Tyrant’s Judgment had done just as much damage as one of Joker’s own spells if not more so, and Akechi felt a sense of sick satisfaction at the sight of the tyrant and the monster being betrayed and destroyed by his own power, the power that he had boasted about and dedicated his entire corrupt existence to amassing.

Shido hadn’t been fully defeated quite just yet, but he was clearly on his last legs, and all of them knew it. Joker was about to summon one of his Personas to finish Shido off, when suddenly he felt a surge of power flow through him, a power intricately linked to Akechi, the same kind of energy he had felt just before his rival had unleashed the Showtime attack to finish off the Tomb.

And one look at Akechi told Joker that he had sensed it too. “Let’s finish this mongrel off, Joker!” he cackled.

“One second,” Joker replied, quickly changing his mask to Lucifer. He had originally intended to finish Shido off with a concentrated Morning Star attack, but a combined Showtime attack with Akechi was so much more fitting. And because Showtimes were Almighty attacks, it would synergize with Lucifer’s Almighty Amp and Almighty Boost. With a smirk, Joker gave the signal, and both he and Akechi leapt into the air, eager to take down the monster who had ruined and destroyed so many lives once and for all.

The scene once again transformed into the same dark, rainy city. Akechi felt the thrill of impending victory, even more so than before. For unlike before, he wasn’t merely destroying Shido’s abomination of a golden beast. This time, he was about to land the finishing blow directly on Shido himself, and he was going to savor every minute of it.

Akechi channeled the psychotic power of Loki into himself, allowing himself to go mad with rage and bloodthirst. The Black Mask charged towards Shido, wicked blade held ready to cut deep into his flesh, as Joker used his grappling hook to bounce from rooftop to rooftop. Grievously wounded as he was, Shido could do nothing but watch his doom approach as Joker once again reached Shido seconds before Akechi did, slashing at him with a single clean strike before leaping out of the way to let Akechi finish what he started. Crow let out another stream of deranged, cruel laughter as he frenziedly sliced Shido’s Shadow with his blade again and again. “DIEEEEEEEEE!” he screamed with one single huge slash from Shido’s shoulder to his hip, obliterating the last dredges of his health. Somehow, despite going through the exact same motions, Joker’s and Akechi’s Showtime attack did significantly more damage this time than it had previously, more than enough to finally bring the fight to a close.

“Gaaaaaaahhhhhhh!!!!!” Shido screamed as he fell to his knees. He tried to get up off of his knees, to keep the fight going just a little while longer. But all the exhaustion and wounds he had suffered throughout the course of the battle had finally caught up with him, and it was too little too late. Shido collapsed onto the ground, his arms and legs sprawled outward, finally defeated once and for all.

“You did it, guys!” Oracle cheered. “You took down Shido!”

“Hell yeah!” Skull whooped. “The fucker got exactly what he deserved!”

“I knew you guys could do it!” Panther complimented, clear delight in her voice.

“Urrrggghhhhhh…” Shido groaned. All of the power that he had gathered within himself dissipated away from him in a stream of black smoke and ashes, transforming him back into a beaten, fragile politician. “How could I…lose?” he whimpered, his arrogance finally broken once and for all.

Akechi didn’t bother to answer. Instead, he walked up slowly towards Shido. As he did so, he took out a gun from his pocket, and the Phantom Thieves gasped as they realized that it was a real gun.

“Crow!” Queen shouted. “What are you doing?”

The Phantom Thieves rushed to stop him, but they were suddenly stopped by none other than Joker himself. The leader of the Phantom Thieves didn’t say a word, instead summoning Lucifer to blast the other Phantom Thieves back. He didn’t do anything to actually harm his friends, obviously, but even directing the power of Lucifer towards his friends for a brief moment was still more than enough to stop them in their tracks. “Wait, what the hell?” Skull exclaimed.

“We let Akechi finish,” Joker explained coolly, his face deadly serious. “I gave my word as part of my deal with him that I would let him and him alone decide the fate of Masayoshi Shido.”

“But, Joker!” Oracle frantically replied. “He’s going to…”

“…I gave my word,” Joker repeated, making it abundantly clear that he would not stand down. He turned his head towards Akechi, giving him a slight nod. “It’s up to you,” he spoke a single sentence, its meaning abundantly clear towards both of them.

As Joker ordered Mona to pick up Shido’s Treasure and give it to him, Akechi turned his attention back towards Shido, placing the gun directly in front of the man’s temple. “I’ve waited so long for this…” Akechi hissed. “From the moment I saw my mother’s lifeless corpse, from the moment I met you and realized the kind of piece of shit you truly were, I dreamed of nothing more than to put a bullet in your brain, for you to see your dreams and your ambitions crumble to dust before the life bled from your eyes.”

“I…I…” Shido stammered.

“Shut the fuck up!” Akechi snarled, raising the gun and smashing the side of it across Shido’s head. Shido howled in pain and the Phantom Thieves gasped as he fell to the floor, whimpering. Akechi didn’t even give him a second to recover before he grabbed the shadow by his undershirt, forcing him to look directly into his bastard son’s eyes. “And here we are now. We’ve broken all your dreams of glory, all your selfish ambitions. And now there’s only one last thing to do.”

“Crow,” Noir spoke, her voice devoid of the disdain and contempt that she had held against him for murdering her father. “Please don’t do this,” she pleaded.

“I’ve waited so long for this moment,” Akechi grinned, seemingly ignoring her. “All this time, you were playing me for a fool, and yet you were the one who proved the fool in the end. And all because the teen you tried to ruin for doing the right thing was there to fuck up all of your plans.”

Akechi turned his head towards Ren, who had instinctively removed his mask and exposed his face towards Shido. “Look at him,” Crow commanded his father. When the man didn’t remove immediately, he smacked Shido across the temple with the side of the gun again. “Look at him!” he snarled.

Trembling, Shido did as he was instructed, his fearful eyes trained on Ren. “What is his name?” Akechi growled. “The name of our leader, who you forced a criminal record on for trying to stop you from doing to another woman what you did to my mother.”

“Ren…Ren Amamiya…” Shido gasped.

“Good,” Akechi hissed. “Ren Amamiya. Remember that name, Masayoshi Shido. Because that name is the only reason you’re going to live past this night.”

The implications of Akechi’s words hit the Phantom Thieves like a hammer, and as one they let out the biggest sigh of relief they had let out since the moment they confirmed that Joker had survived his interrogation despite everything going wrong. “Oh my God…” Panther breathed.

“Against all expectations, Akechi has chosen to spare Shido’s life,” Fox murmured. “Truly a remarkable turn of events.”

“Damn…” Oracle whistled. “Talk about some major character development there! Joker really did bring Crow around!”

“Thank…thank you…son…” Shido breathed out, almost crying with relief.

“Don’t mistake me,” Akechi spat. “This isn’t about mercy. I’m giving you the punishment of life, Shido, a life even worse than death to a man like you. You are going to spend the rest of your life tearing down the corrupt Conspiracy that you helped to build up. You are going to confess every single one of your crimes, Shido. From the mental shutdowns and psychotic breakdowns you ordered me to inflict, to every single sexual assault you ever committed, and your attempt to falsely condemn Ren Amamiya with a criminal record he didn’t deserve. Every single wicked deed you ever committed, you will confess to the public that were deluded enough to worship you as their savior. That is your atonement, Shido. An atonement that will last for the rest of your life.”

Akechi’s eyes narrowed, and he pressed the gun against his father’s temple again. “Or would you rather die here and now?” his voice was deathly cold.

“I…I will atone,” Shido’s Shadow promised. “I will confess all of my crimes, and tear down the Conspiracy that I worked so hard to build up.”

“Good,” Akechi spat. “Maybe then your life will actually be worth something for once.” He shoved his father to the ground and turned away from him, putting his gun back in his pocket as he did so. He turned to face the Phantom Thieves, who were staring at him with a mixture of emotions. Awe, fear, relief…and newfound respect. Respect that he had turned away from the path of mindless bloodthirst, had chosen to put his faith in the Phantom Thieves’ methods and take a course of action that could offer long-term benefits for others instead of focusing solely on selfish vengeance.

Akechi ignored them all, instead focusing his attention on Joker. The leader of the Phantom Thieves didn’t express his emotions as openly as the others, but he was smiling. A proud, approving smile. The smile of a man who had placed his faith in him, and had gotten that faith rewarded.

Somehow, that one simple expression meant more to him than all of the false praise that Shido had heaped upon him, or all of the adoration that his adoring fans gave him as the Detective Prince. Not that he was going to tell any of them that, of course.

“I make it a principle to repay my debts,” Akechi explained simply, focusing all of his attention directly at Joker. “And at the end of the day, sparing Shido was a decision based on pragmatism more than anything else. Killing Shido now would only have his Conspiracy and their police lapdogs baying for your blood even harder than they have been already. No need to complicate the matter of Shido’s downfall further.”

No need to make life even harder for the Phantom Thieves after this, is what he didn’t say. But they could all hear the hidden meaning behind his words, and they appreciated the gesture nonetheless.

“Goro…” everyone turned towards Shido, who had managed to get back up on his knees, although he was too weak to raise himself further. “I never talked to you about your mother before. To be honest…she was one of the most beautiful and alluring women I’d ever met in my entire life. I couldn’t help but be entranced by her grace and her kindness…”

“If you loved her, you wouldn’t have abused her and abandoned her the way you did,” Akechi muttered, more bitter than angry anymore. “I’m done with you, Shido. I don’t want to see your disgusting face ever again. Go and confess your crimes like you said you would.”

“I will,” Shido promised again. He turned to face Ren, a look of genuine sadness on his face for the first time. “I acknowledge…that I incriminated you on false charges. I did it to protect myself…” He shook his head in despair. “I’m…so sorry for what I’ve done.”

“You heard what Goro said,” Joker replied, his voice as cold as his rival’s. “Confess your crimes, destroy the corrupt Conspiracy you created to enslave this society, and atone for what you did. Leave nothing out.”

Shido’s Shadow nodded, and let out a chuckle. For the first time, it was an expression of honest amusement, rather than the malice he had displayed before and during their battle. “It feels as though it’s been quite some time since I have felt sincerely apologetic…hmph…that may be good.”

“So I’ve been defeated…heh…this is the fate I deserve,” Shido murmured.

“The fate of every criminal who abuses the weak and the innocent like you did,” Queen’s voice held no mercy in it.

Shido could only bow his head as his eyes fell on the wheel Treasure that Joker was now holding, the Treasure that Mona had collected while Akechi had been threatening Shido. “I must…steer this country!” he gasped. “If I don’t, who will!?”

“A lobotomized baboon with a stick shoved deep up its ass could do a better job running this country than you,” Akechi spat.

“I…I…” Shido was about to say something, when he suddenly grabbed his heart and fell to his knese. With a pained scream, the shadow suddenly dissolved into a pile of black ashes.

“Wait, what the hell?” Skull exclaimed. “What just happened?”

“I’ve seen this before,” Akechi growled. “Every time I killed a Shadow, it dissolved into ashes just like this. And since none of us dealt a killing blow to him, then that means…”

The entire palace suddenly started rumbling, the very Earth trembling and quaking beneath their feet.

“…then that means Shido is trying to kill himself to collapse his palace on us and hang on to his distortion for as long as he possibly can,” Joker finished, eyes filled with irritation and contempt. “A cowardly piece of shit through and through.”

“He’s collapsing his Palace on us on purpose?” Panther asked in disbelief.

“Who cares?” Mona exclaimed. “We should get out of here now!”

Nobody needed any encouragement, and they ran out of the assembly hall. Joker seemed to know exactly where he was going, running through the halls without any hesitation, and the Thieves quickly followed him to make sure they weren’t left behind to die in the collapsing Palace.

“How do you know where you’re going, Joker?” Oracle shouted. “Haven’t we come this way already?”

“Trust me, I know what I’m doing!” Joker assured them. “Follow me and I’ll take you to a place where we can get out safely.”

“You heard the man,” Skull ordered. “Follow Joker!”

The Phantom Thieves followed their leader all the way to an alcove high on the ship. The good news was that the passageway he had been taking did lead outside.

The bad news was that it was high in the air, far above the water.

“We’re gonna die!” Oracle grabbed her head, clearly panicking. “I don’t know how to swim!”

“Will you calm down?” Akechi snarled irritably, still enraged at this latest display of Shido’s cowardice. “Panicking like this won’t accomplish anything!”

“Over there!” Queen pointed in the distance. “There’s a lifeboat over there!” The Thieves raced towards where she was pointing, but were dismayed when they realized that the lifeboat was still far away from their current location.

“We just gotta get there…” Skull muttered.

“It’s too far!” Fox pointed out. “We won’t reach it in time!”

Skull turned to face the lifeboat again, taking a deep breath and closing his eyes. “I got this,” he declared.

All the Thieves turned to face him. “Huh?” Panther uttered.

“Hang tight,” Skull elaborated. “I’ll nab the boat.”

“Go,” Joker ordered, the one word highlighting the trust and faith he had in Skull to get the job done.

Skull leapt off of the alcove and onto the stone wall. “It’s now or never…” he muttered as he prepared himself for the most important run of his life. “Here goes…!” With a yell, he ran as fast as he could towards the lifeboat, barely noticing the pain in his leg as he did so. The other Phantom Thieves climbed up onto a nearby platform as they nervously watched Skull race towards the mechanism that would lower the lifeboat into the water.

“GO!” Panther shouted, urging him on.

With another mighty yell, Skull leaped high into the air, grabbing the mechanism that would lower the lifeboat and pulling the lever down. The Thieves cheered as the lifeboat lowered onto the water, and they scrambled on. “Hurry up!” Joker ordered tensely. “Get on, quickly!”

“We’re moving!” Fox declared as he turned the lifeboat on, racing towards Skull’s location.

The boat raced towards Skull’s location, the teen giving his friends a grin and a thumbs-up as he did so. But just as the boat reached the edge of Shido’s ship…the area right in front of them suddenly exploded in a blast of tremendous fire, reaching high enough to cover Skull. The Thieves all gasped as they covered their faces to protect themselves from the intensity of the explosion. When they could finally get a good look at where Skull had been…the Phantom Thief was gone. Gone with no trace remaining.

“No way…” Panther whimpered. “It can’t be…come on, what the hell, Ryuji?”

Her words were interrupted by another tremendous explosion that blasted the lifeboat away from the area…not that they could even attempt to get closer with how clearly dangerous the explosions were.

Akechi closed his eyes, bowing his head ever so slightly. Ryuji might have been a brash and careless loudmouth, but he could respect an act of true bravery and selflessness when he saw one.

Even with his defeat, Shido had taken something away from them. A true parasite, through and through.

“RYUJI!” Panther shouted into the air, tears streaming down her face, as the wreckage of Shido’s ship burned in the distance.

There was nothing more that could be done. Joker silently activated the Meta-Nav, sending them back into the real world.

Shido was defeated, his pride and arrogance forever broken…and Akechi surprised even himself with how much the victory tasted like ash and emptiness in the wake of a teammate’s death.

Chapter Text

When the Phantom Thieves finally crossed back into the real world, they found themselves to the side of the Diet Building, separated from is grounds by a tall metal green fence. The teens adjusted to the change in their surrounding as quickly as they could, before getting to their feet as the painful memories of the last few moments hit them like a freight train.

“We’re…back…” Ann gasped, a pained look in her eyes as she swirled around, trying to find the one Phantom Thief who wasn’t there with him. “Ryuji?!”

Haru sighed, a sorrowful look on her face. “He didn’t…make it out…”

“We’ve got to go back!” Futaba shouted. “We need to find him!”

Akechi looked at his phone and scowled. “Shido’s Palace is gone,” he reported grimly. “There is no going back.”

Yusuke looked down morosely at the floor. “Ha…haha…this isn’t funny at all…” he mumbled.

Ann shook her head, the grief clear on her face. “He was our fastest runner too!”

Something caught Yusuke’s eye, and he bent down to pick it up. “So…this is the Treasure…” he murmured, showing it all to them.

“It’s a legislator’s pin,” Makoto pointed out.

Akechi scowled. “Of course the mongrel’s distortion would be based on his political career,” he commented acidly. “Why would I expect anything else?”

“And just like his political career, that pin is completely worthless,” Ren added, his face giving nothing away.

The Phantom Thieves lowered their heads to the ground, many of them covering their faces with their hands as they tried to hold back tears. They had succeeded, but the cost had been far, far too high. For several seconds, they mourned, wondering bitterly why their most important victory had to come at so huge of a sacrifice.

Until…

“Maaaaaan, that was close…” a familiar voice suddenly interrupted them.

Everyone looked up, jolted out of their grief, to see Ryuji walking towards them, looking exhausted but otherwise completely alive. “For real though,” he mumbled, “why do Palaces gotta explode so much? Can’t they disappear normally?”

The Phantom Thieves all rushed towards him, except for Akechi, who merely looked on with an irritated look on his face as he could guess what was coming.

“Didn’t you…die?” Haru breathed.

Ryuji shrugged. “I just got blasted out of the explosion…when I woke up, I was lyin’ on the grass…I mean…ain’t I alive?” he questioned.

The girls looked down at the floor, though this time their expressions were completely unreadable. Ryuji looked over at Ann and grinned. “What’s this?” he asked. “Your cryin’ face isn’t so cute.”

Ann, Futaba, and Makoto looked up, their faces flushed with scowls on their faces. “It’s your damn fault!” she shouted. She raised her hand to slap Ryuji across the face…

…only for Ren’s hand to catch her arm midair.

Everyone, including Ryuji and Ann, looked over to see Ren standing next to Ryuji, his hand holding Ann’s arm in a firm grip. His expression was disturbingly empty mask, but they had known their leader for the better part of a year, and they knew his emotions in a way that no one else did.

And with how utterly cold his eyes were, they could tell that Ren was thoroughly pissed.

“What the hell is this?” he growled. “It looked like you were about to slap Ryuji just now, and I really hope I’m wrong.”

“Let go of me, Ren!” Ann exclaimed, but Ren wasn’t budging.

“I don’t think so,” their leader retorted, and the thieves shuddered at how utterly cold his voice was, “not when I know what’s about to happen. You were about to gang up on Ryuji, weren’t you? You were going to beat him up because he made you worry about him, weren’t you?”

“He’s a troublemaker!” Futaba protested.

“I couldn’t give the single slightest shit what he is,” Ren snarled back, and the vitriol in his tone was enough to make all of them flinch, before he forced himself to calm down. “Ryuji saved all of us, back on that boat. He risked his life to make sure that we could get onto that lifeboat safely, and we couldn’t repay the favor in time before the boat exploded. Ryuji was lucky, the blast simply sent him flying out of the Palace, but it could have just has easily killed him instead. He sacrificed his life for us,” and now Ren let the fury he was feeling re-enter his voice, this time more controlled than before, “and THIS is how you repay him? Beating the shit out of him, abusing him, for sticking his neck out for all of us? What the fuck is wrong with all of you?” he demanded. “I’d have expected this kind of behavior from one of the Palace Rulers, not from you!”

The girls suddenly felt a wave of guilt and shame as Ren’s words hit them like a God’s Hand. Because at the end of the day, Ren was right. Ryuji had risked his life to get them out of the Palace safely, and he deserved far better than the beatdown that they had been about to give him.

Even Ryuji seemed uncomfortable with the intensity that Ren exuding. “Dude…” he tried to calm his best friend down, “…it’s fine…”

“No,” Ren cut him off, “it really isn’t. You’re not just some punching bag that everyone else can beat the hell out of whenever they feel like it.” He focused his attention back towards the girls, his eyes narrowed in a way that was disturbingly similar to the glare that he had given Shido’s Shadow just a few moments ago. The malice wasn’t there, but the fury most certainly was. “I’m going to say this once, and only once…” he hissed. “You are going to back off. You are going to apologize to Ryuji. Maybe you’ll give him a hug or two, I don’t really fucking care. But if I see any of you even try to attack Ryuji like you were planning before I stepped in, you won’t like what happens after.” The sheer menace in his tone was enough to send a shiver even down Akechi’s spine, especially since it was being directed towards friends instead of an enemy. “Do I make myself clear?”

“…yes…” Ann murmured. Ren finally let go of her hand, stepping away from their circle. Ann gave Ryuji an apologetic look. “I’m sorry, Ryuji…” she murmured, and everyone could clearly hear the guilt and regret in her tone. “I’m sorry I almost tried to beat you up just now. I was just so worried when that ship blew up, and we couldn’t see you anywhere…”

“It’s fine, Ann,” Ryuji assured her. “Really, it is. I probably shouldn’t have been joking around about something that serious to begin with.”

Makoto shook her head. “That doesn’t matter,” she replied, sounding just as ashamed of herself as Ann. “Ren is right. It doesn’t give us a right to use you as a punching bag.”

“Yeah…” Futaba agreed with a sigh. “We almost really messed up there.”

“We care about you, Ryuji-kun,” Haru added gently. “But we should’ve had a better way of showing it than what we just tried to do.”

Ryuji sighed. “I’m not gonna lie, almost getting beat up like that seriously scared the crap out of me for a moment. But Ren stopped you guys from fucking me up before it was too late. So why don’t we just put all this behind us, and move on?”

Ann nodded, a smile on her face for the first time since they’d left Shido’s Palace. “Yeah, Ryuji,” she agreed, before suddenly throwing her arms around her friend in a hug. Ryuji blinked at her, his face frozen in shock as he tried to comprehend what just happened. “Uh…”

“I’m just glad you’re okay,” she murmured. “We thought you died back on that ship!”

“After we just stole that fucker Shido’s heart?” Ryuji’s face broke into a grin. “Fuck that noise! There’s no way in hell I was going down after we just did our biggest steal yet!” He glanced over with Joker, whose face had thankfully transformed back into its perpetually amused expression, all coldness and fury gone. “We should be celebratin’!”

“Ahem…” Akechi interrupted him with a fake cough. Everyone to face him, having briefly forgotten that he was still there. “As much as I’d like to bask in our victory after stealing Shido’s heart, we’re still not out of danger just yet.”

“Akechi’s right,” Mona added. “If the Conspiracy are around here and find out where we are, we’re in big trouble.”

“We should go to LeBlanc, then!” Ann suggested.

Ren shook his head. “Knowing what we do about Shido, I bet he already sent his goons after LeBlanc to trash the place. That’s probably one of the worst places we can hide right now.”

Futaba’s eyes widened in horror. “Wait, if that’s true, then…then…Sojiro!” she shouted her father figure’s name in horror.

Ren smiled reassuringly. “Don’t worry about him,” he calmed her down, his voice soothing and confident. “I already warned Sojiro that Shido’s police dogs would be coming to get him. I made sure he knew what was coming, and he told me he’d be far away from Yongen-Jaya by the time we went after Shido’s heart.”

Futaba breathed a sigh of relief. “Oh, thank God…” she mumbled.

“I know a place,” Akechi offered. “Several, in fact. In case my plan went horribly wrong, and Shido decided that I was no longer of any use to him, I was extremely careful to set up several safe houses that nobody except myself is aware of. We can reconvene there for the night, and discuss what should be done next.”

Ren nodded, and after a few moments so did the other Thieves. They would have been far more hesitant to trust him even a few days ago, but he had thoroughly proven his honesty and his allegiance with the defeat of Shido’s shadow. They quickly walked away from the Diet Building, making sure to take different paths to the same location. Ren quickly called Sojiro to confirm that he was all right, that they had succeeded in their ultimate goal of stealing Shido’s heart, and that he would likely be safe to return home the next day.

“Where are you guys?” he asked. “I know you can’t come to LeBlanc yet, what with Shido’s police running around…”

“We’ll be staying at a safehouse made by Akechi,” Ren reported. “We’re going to wait until things die down before I come back to LeBlanc or even Yongen-Jaya. I don’t feel like getting arrested right after we just won our biggest victory yet.”

“Don’t give me that sass, young man,” Sojiro retorted, though the good humor and relief in his voice spoke louder than his words did. “And how’s Futaba doing?”

“She’s fine,” Ren reassured him. “We split up, since it’d look way too suspicious if a bunch of teens were walking together as a group in the same place. Especially since the Police know where I am. Futaba’s with Makoto and Haru, they’ll make sure to keep her safe.”

“Just make sure that you have her call me when you get to wherever you’re hiding for the night,” Sojiro answered, before adding, “and thanks for the warning, Ren. I have a bad feeling the police would’ve tried to lock me up and send me away if you hadn’t given me the call.”

“It’s the least I could do,” Ren replied with a smile, before hanging up. He gestured towards Ryuji and Mona, and the three of them finished their walk to the address that Akechi had given them, a small apartment in an ordinary-looking building. Akechi was already waiting for them once they made it up, and the rest of the Phantom Thieves safely arrived a few moments later.

“All right,” Akechi began without preamble, as Futaba locked the door and started calling Sojiro on the phone to reassure him that she was okay, “so we’ve finally accomplished our mission. We’ve changed Shido’s heart.”

“Heck yeah!” Ryuji whooped. “We did it!”

“Keep your voice down, you imbecile!” Akechi snarled. “The other neighbors will hear you. Or do you want to be locked up in prison after they turn you in for millions of yen?”

Ryuji blanched and he immediately quieted down.

The second Detective Prince sighed in irritation, forcing himself to calm down. “We may have stolen Shido’s heart, but while his Conspiracy may be thrown into chaos for the time being, it doesn’t mean that they’re out of the game entirely. Those arrogant and power-hungry bastards will do anything to cling to their undeserved power, even if Shido is no longer able to lord over them.

“So what would happen once Shido had his heart changed?” Yusuke asked. “How would they be able to react to their leader suddenly losing all of his corruption and ambition?”

Akechi was silent for a moment, his mind carefully thinking over and analyzing all of his interactions with Shido’s conspiracy and how they would react. “I believe,” he slowly formulated his answer, “that they would do anything and everything in their power to conceal Shido’s change of heart from the public, at least in the short-term while they try to come up with a more concrete plan.”

“Is it possible that they’ll just off him themselves when they realize he’s had a change of heart?” Ann wondered.

Akechi shook his head. “They might have some power behind the scenes, but Shido was the face of that power, the basket they put all their eggs into. If they simply get rid of him, they’ll have nothing to consolidate their power behind, no reason for the public to support them,” he explained. His face turned into a scowl. “For now, we can only hope that your change of heart works as planned. And to keep a low profile until Election Day comes.”

“Which means that we keep doing what we were doing before we changed Shido’s heart,” Ren added. “I stay in LeBlanc’s attic and out of school until Election Day, you guys keep going to school or doing whatever you were doing, and Akechi…”

“…I’ll be keeping a low profile like you,” Akechi replied coolly. “By allowing Shido’s heart to be changed, I have effectively cut ties with the Conspiracy. They may see me as either a traitor to Shido’s cause, or as an incompetent fool who couldn’t stop the brainwashing of their beloved leader,” the two words were spoken with acid. “Either way, the end result will be the same if I am foolish enough to be seen out in the open. Better for me to keep out of sight until Election Day. I won’t celebrate or assume we have achieved victory until I see Shido confessing his crimes out of his mouth with my own eyes.”

“Will you be all right, dude?” Ryuji asked.

Akechi smirked humorlessly. “I’ve lived alone and in the shadows for years, Sakamoto. I’m fairly confident I can pull it off for a few more weeks.”

“Just let us know if something comes up or you need some help,” Ann suggested. “Whatever you might have done, you deserve to see Shido confess just as much as anyone else here.”

Akechi nodded stiffly, and with that their plan for the next few weeks was established. As much as he would’ve liked to do so for maximum security, he couldn’t simply hole himself up in his apartment without ignoring the basic necessities, so he had to make do with minimizing his trips outside of his apartment, always making sure to keep himself disguised. In this regard, Ren’s earlier “trick” with fluffing up his hair and putting glasses on him had proved far more of a boon than he could have imagined, albeit one that was undignified in nature. With his hair a complete mess and a copy of Ren’s glasses on his face, there was not a single person who recognized Akechi as the Detective Prince, not even the hypothetical assassins that Shido’s Conspiracy no doubt would send after him for his perceived incompetence/very real betrayal. And of course, he had discarded his main cell phone in the apartment that Shido’s goons were aware of, and was now using disposable cell phones to ensure that he couldn’t be tracked that way.

Keeping his identity concealed wasn’t what concerned him. What concerned him were the whispers of the public around him. Whispers that he couldn’t help but pay attention to in his few excursions out into the open city.

“Did you see the calling card the Phantom Thieves send to Shido? On live television, no less?”

“There’s no way they’ll win, Shido’ll take them down!”

“Did something happen to Shido? Nobody’s seen him at all ever since that calling card.”

“I hope he’s okay. This country won’t survive without him!”

“How dare those goddamn thieves attack the future leader of this country! Who do they think they are?”

Akechi gritted his teeth at the praise and concern the ignorant masses were sending to Shido, to the point that he had to put Robin Hood at the forefront of his mind. “You really think Shido is the bright and shining leader he pretends to be, hmm?” he hissed in his mind. “Well, you’re all going to be in for a rude awakening soon enough. Let’s see what happens to your precious order when my worthless sperm donor is revealed as the filth he always was.”

His cell phone rang, and when he opened it, his nerves calmed down slightly when he saw that is was Ren, asking if he could come over. Akechi briskly answered in the affirmative and swiftly maneuvered back to his apartment. He might have concealed a lot of things from Ren, but he had been entirely honest when he had complimented Ren on his interesting and unique perspective on pretty much any topic that they ended up discussing. A feeling that had only been reinforced many times over in the days following the interrogation room.

Ren clearly hadn’t been far from his safe room, because less than thirty minutes later he was at the apartment entrance. Akechi invited him in, and he sat down at the table across from him.

“I just wanted to check in on you and see if you were doing all right,” Ren began once he had gotten settled. “Sorry if I’m bothering you.”

Akechi waved off the apology. “I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself, Amamiya…although I will say that staying in this apartment all day until either Election Day occurs or this safehouse gets compromised does tend to get rather…dull. As it so happens, I do have something I wish to discuss with you, so I do not mind the company at this point in time.”

Ren nodded. “Ask away,” he invited.

Akechi decided to cut straight to the point. “Are you so certain that this change-of-heart will work?” he challenged. “Are you so certain that Shido will confess his crimes, and that society will force upon him the justice that he so thoroughly deserves?”

“You saw the effects on Shido’s Shadow once we defeated him and stole his treasure,” Ren answered evenly, matching Akechi’s probing gaze with his own. “Shido will be consumed by his own guilt and confess all of his crimes. I’d even go so far as to say that he’ll confess them and reveal all of his sins on Election Day, the day of his moment of triumph.”

Ren spoke this declaration with such conviction, without even the slightest hint of doubt in his face and words, that even someone as cynical as Akechi couldn’t help but believe him.

He also knew exactly what Ren hadn’t said, and what part of the question he hadn’t answered.

“But you don’t hold the same kind of confidence in society’s ability to hold Shido accountable for his crimes, do you not?” Akechi asked, his tone the definition of innocence.

Ren’s face didn’t change, but the very slight change in his expression, the faintest scowl on his face and the hardening of his eyes, was enough to answer Akechi’s question.

The old Akechi would have lashed out against Ren for this. The old him would have sought to attack and punish Ren for the possibility that he had given up his plans for vengeance only for the incompetent justice of a corrupt society to deny both justice and vengeance for them all. But the old him had been utterly ignorant of the chains binding his soul, disgustingly unaware of how his plans were doomed from the very start. Ren had freed him from those chains, illuminated him to the truth, and by extension saved his life from an ignoble end. For that alone, Akechi owed Ren a great debt indeed, not that he would ever admit that either to him or his friends.

Still, that didn’t change the fact that society failing to punish Shido for his soon-to-be-exposed crimes would be extremely problematic, for a multitude of reasons.

“No,” Ren admitted, frankly and openly, “I don’t. The public as a whole is so full of brainless sheep, and I’m fully aware that there’s a chance they might support Shido despite knowing about his crimes just because they want their precious order and stability just that much.”

“Oh, really?” Akechi narrowed his eyes and leaned forward, his saccharine tone doing nothing to hide his underlying frustration and anger. “Then what do we do, if Shido remains in power even after his change of heart thanks to the rampant idiocies of the oh-so-loyal public?”

“Don’t worry about that, Goro,” Ren replied calmly, his confident smirk reappearing on his face. “I’ve already thought about that possibility. And I have some…contingencies…planned in case that’s how things turn out.”

Akechi would have thought such a statement to be utterly laughable and absurd…if he hadn’t already witnessed Ren foresee and pull off the impossible countless times already by now. Somehow, it wouldn’t even surprise him at that point if Ren somehow did have a plan for the worst-case scenario. Especially considering that he spoke with the same conviction and determination of a man who knew his words to be the pure and absolute truth.

“Oh?” the Detective Prince raised an eyebrow. “And what exactly do those contingencies entail?”

To his disappointment, Ren shook his head. “Not right now,” he denied. “I’ll wait until after the election before sharing my plans with you and the rest of our friends. I’d prefer not to carry them out until after I’m absolutely certain we’ll need them. Maybe we’ll be lucky. Maybe the public will finally pull its head out of its ass after Shido confesses and finally toss him and his worthless Conspiracy into prison where it belongs.”

This time, Akechi didn’t believe a single word of what Ren had just spoken. And from the expression on his rival’s face, he knew that Ren didn’t believe his last words any more than he did.

Chapter Text

In seemingly no time at all, Election Day arrived. The moment of truth that would reveal whether Shido’s change of heart had truly worked as intended.

The announcement of the election winner for the role of Prime Minister was to be scheduled late into the night…so it came as a great surprise to all of the Phantom Thieves when Ren sent a message to all of them to convene in LeBlanc, asking them to come in nearly an hour and a half earlier than when the election winner was to be declared.

All of the Phantom Thieves arrived precisely on time, for none of them would ever be late for the day when Shido would finally confess his crimes and expose himself as the monster he had been before his corrupt desires had been robbed. When they entered the café, Ren was already waiting for them, a gentle and kind smile on his face. On the table were several dishes of curry, cooked to the finest of Sojiro Sakura’s standards.

“Hey guys, Sojiro let me have the café for myself for the whole afternoon and night so that I could make all these curry dishes for you.” He gestured towards the tables where the food was waiting. “Sit wherever you want and enjoy your meal!”

“Simply marvelous!” Yusuke exclaimed passionately as he sat down at one of the tables, basking in the smells of the warm and delicious curry. “You are truly a masterful chef, Ren!”

“How kind!” Haru gushed, taking a seat next to him. “Thank you so much for this delightful meal, Ren-kun!”

“You’re the best, Ren!” Ryuji grinned as he followed them. Within just a few seconds, the Phantom Thieves were sitting at the tables, hungrily chowing down on Ren’s curry. Even Akechi was simply delighted by the heavenly taste of his rival and friend’s meal, not that he would ever admit it to him out loud.

Ren watched them calmly, a smile on his face. But the smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. His facial expression was mixed with something else, something that looked almost like…guilt and regret? He waited patiently for all of them to finish, before finally speaking again.

“Before we begin tonight…” he took a deep breath and sighed. “I want to apologize to all the girls here for how I treated you after Shido’s Palace.” There was no mistake this time, the guilt and regret were definitely there. “Especially Ann.”

“Huh?” Ann perked up at the sound of her name. “Me?”

“Yeah,” Ren nodded, before continuing. “Back when I stopped you guys from beating up Ryuji, I should’ve handled that differently. I should have calmed everyone down, and calmly explained why attacking Ryuji after he just saved all of our lives was wrong and behavior unbecoming of a Phantom Thief. Instead, I shouted at you all and threatened you if you didn’t stop your behavior.” He let out a mirthless chuckle with no humor whatsoever. “Ironically, I displayed behavior unbecoming of a Phantom Thief in that moment. And for that, I sincerely apologize to all of you.” He gave them all an earnest look that showed the gravity of his words. “I shouldn’t have let my emotions after we just beat Shido get the better of me.”

Ann got up from her seat. “It’s all right, Ren,” she gently reassured him. “I won’t pretend that I wasn’t a little scared that night when you grabbed my hand, but what really bothered me afterwards was how I behaved that night,” she admitted. “You might have been harsh in how you said it, but in the end you were completely right. Ryuji saved our lives from the explosion on Shido’s ship, and I repaid that by almost beating him up for making us worry about him. After you showed me just how wrong I was, I was completely disgusted with myself.” She turned to Ryuji and gave her friend an apologetic look with her blue eyes. “I’m so, so sorry for almost crossing the line and ruining the mood after we just scored a huge victory.”

Ryuji scratched his head awkwardly. “It’s fine, Ann, it really is,” he answered back. “Looking back at it…calling your crying face ugly when you were crying because you thought I died was a pretty dickish thing to do. I wasn’t completely out of the wrong there, either.”

Futaba shook her head. “That night was just a massive L all around,” she commented.

“Ann spoke like the responsibility for almost attacking Ryuji falls completely on her, but many of us would have done the same, myself included,” Makoto gently interjected. “We all made mistakes in one way or another that night, but that’s what it means to be human. Nobody is perfect, whether it be Ann, me, Ryuji, Ren, or anyone else here."

“It might have been an unpleasant moment, certainly, but we all deserve our fair share of the blame,” Haru agreed. “We should place that unpleasant event behind us, and move on to bigger and brighter prospects.”

“All in favor?” Morgana ventured. As one, every single one of the Phantom Thieves raised their hand (or paw) in agreement and solidarity, except for Akechi, who merely watched them neutrally from the side. “Then it’s decided,” he declared with a catlike smile. “We keep pushing forward as a team, like we always have and always will.”

“I want to take this time to also make something clear to all of you guys,” Ren continued, drawing everyone’s attention to him. “I’m not just your leader. I’m also your friend,” he asserted. “It’s my duty and my privilege to do the best that I can for all of you, to help you with whatever problems you have, and keep you happy and safe whether it’s in the real world or in the Metaverse. If I ever threaten you guys like that again, then I’m failing as both your leader and friend, and I invite you to call me out on my bullshit.”

“You’re forgiven, Ren,” Makoto accepted his apology with a graceful nod. “None of us are perfect, and the fact that you’re owning up to your failings and apologizing for them is one of the many things which makes you a great leader.”

“Yeah, man,” Ryuji grinned at him. “None of us would’ve gotten to where we are today if it wasn’t for you!”

“Like Haru said, we just need to learn from this and move on from it,” Ann agreed with a bright smile. “What you’ve done for us from April til now more than makes up for one slip-up that wasn’t even really your fault to begin with.”

Ren sighed with relief. “I’m glad you guys feel that way,” he confessed. “Cause that was really messing with me over the past couple of days.”

“…I do have a question, though, Ren,” Yusuke suddenly interjected. He had largely remained silent, since the events they had just been discussing had been focused more on the others. But there was a burning question in his mind, that he just had to know the answer to. “I’ve been studying you quite thoroughly as the year passed, and I’ve noticed something quite fascinating and disturbing in equal measure. You have a noble heart, and a noble goal…and yet you have such powerful darkness within you. Hatred and spite that burns within your soul, that contrasts sharply with your kindness and your dedication to justice. In a way, you remind me very much of the paintings of Mementos that I created with you by my side. You remind me both of the one filled with light…and the one consumed by darkness, at the same time. And I cannot restrain myself any longer, Ren. I must ask…what brought about such darkness within you to begin with?”

“Dude, we all know the answer to that!” Ryuji interjected before Ren could say anything. “He tried to stop that fucking asshole Shido from trying to assault a woman, and Shido landed him in juvie with a goddamn criminal record for it! And he only just found out who that asshole was who ruined his life a few days ago! No wonder he was so pissed during that whole heist, I’d be itching to bash that fucker’s head in if I were Ren!”

“I don’t think that’s it,” Akechi interrupted them. Everyone looked towards him with shock. He had been completely silent, and they had all but forgotten that he had joined them in LeBlanc. “I’ve also been studying you, Ren. It comes naturally as part of our discussions as rivals and friends.”

“Holy crap!” Futaba all but shouted. “He actually admitted Ren was his friend. Some major character development, everyone!”

“Bite me, Sakura!” Akechi retorted, taking a deep breath before continuing. “As I was saying, I’ve been studying you during our conversations…and though you’ve kept it carefully concealed, something that I must admit is quite impressive, I’ve seen flashes of that hatred Kitagawa’s been talking about as well. And I’ve seen those briefest of moments for several months now, so whatever caused this hatred that Kitagawa’s speaking of, it’s lasted long before you discovered that Shido was the one who caused your criminal record. I must say…that hatred is very¸ very impressive. Almost as powerful as my own, and I’ve built up that spite over the entirety of my pathetic excuse of a childhood.”

Ren couldn’t help but let out a laugh at that. A bitter, humorless laugh. “Oh, I wish that was it. I wish my criminal record was the only problem.”

“Then what’s wrong, Ren?” Ann pressed, sliding down onto the bench next to him. “We can help you, Ren. I promise, whatever is bothering you, we’ll do what we can to get you through this.”

“Absolutely, Ren-kun!” Haru nodded fervently in agreement. “You’ve spent days taking time to help us with our own concerns. We would be terrible friends if we didn’t repay the favor.”

“All you have to do is tell us what’s troubling you so much,” Makoto invited.

“I must confess, even I’m interested in this as well,” Akechi admitted. “You are a fascinating character in more ways than one, Ren Amamiya. This mystery is compelling…and one that I don’t know the solution to.”

Ren sighed and said nothing for several seconds. For a brief moment, the Thieves wondered if they had pushed too hard, and too fast. Finally, Ren looked up, his face calm and collected yet firm.

“There is a reason why I have so much hate in me,” Ren acknowledged. “Why I’m so vicious in how I deal with the Palace Rulers. But I can’t give you that answer. Not yet, not now.”

Akechi looked frustrated, but most of the Thieves seemed more relieved than anything. They had half-expected Ren to deny it entirely, or ask them never to speak about this again.

“I will give you an explanation one day,” Ren promised. “Once all of this is over. That is a promise.” And by now, all of the Thieves knew perfectly well that when their leader gave his word, that promise was stronger than steel.

But the way Ren said those words bothered them, and Futaba was the one to point out why. “Wait…when all of this is over?” she repeated. “Uhh…we changed Shido’s heart. That should’ve wrapped all of this up, right?”

“Speaking of which,” Akechi gestured towards the TV. “I believe the announcement of the election results is about to begin.”

Everyone quieted and turned their attention towards the TV, where Masayoshi Shido was standing at a podium next to two of his subordinates. The subordinates in question were raising their hands and bowing in a gesture of victory, while the words on the TV screen confirmed that Shido had indeed won the election by a landslide.

“My election is the result of every citizen’s aid,” Shido declared, looking every bit like the smug and condescending asshole that he had been before they had stolen his treasure. “Your support warms my heart!”

“Bah,” Akechi spat. “As if that complete mongrel ever had a heart to begin with!”

Ren smirked as he looked at Shido’s face. “Wait for it…”

Shido’s smile suddenly disappeared, replaced by a frown that was growing by the second. “That is why…”

The man suddenly closed his eyes and shook his head vigorously, “…I cannot forgive myself!”

“Holy shit!” Ann exclaimed. “I think he’s actually about to confess!”

Morgana smirked with a toothlike grin on his face. “Mission successful.”

The Thieves watched, transfixed on the TV screen, as Shido began to reveal all of his crimes to the public that he had once sought to enslave under his iron fist. “The reason President Okumura passed away is…I am the one who killed him. I also manipulated the information that the Phantom Thieves were behind the series of incidents.”

Ryuji smirked. “Look at those two guys next to him,” he pointed out. “They’re panicking like a bunch of monkeys!”

Haru smiled a dangerous smile. “Serves them right, for aligning themselves with such a despicable man!” she commented serenely.

“The one who controlled the hearts of others and gave rise to countless victims…is myself,” Shido continued to confess, by now his face openly tearful and horrified at his own actions. He closed his eyes before speaking his next few words. “It was all for my promotion…for my own selfish gain.”

“Indeed,” Yusuke replied coldly. “And now you will suffer what you deserve for all the lives you have ruined and snuffed out.”

“Justice is served,” Makoto added with vicious satisfaction.

“I’ve even used people’s lives as stepping stones in order to claim this country as my own ship,” With every word he spoke out of his mouth, Shido continued to condemn himself further and further, with no signs of stopping anytime soon. “I am a true criminal that can be tried for any crime, and it still wouldn’t be enough!” Shido leaned forward, practically shouting now as he begged to be punished for his actions. “I will confess everything! Please, I beg everyone to pass judgment onto me…” he pleaded. “If I could atone for all I’ve done with my life, I request that I be judged at once…”

The broadcast cut off, as no doubt the newscasters and Shido’s conspiracy tried to perform damage control. But it was too little, too late. Shido had already exposed himself and the gravity of his crimes for all the world to see.

“Hell yeaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!!!!!” Ryuji whooped, holding up a glass of water to the air.

Sojiro chuckled at the sight of their victory. Both he and Sae had appeared unnoticed while the Thieves had been watching the broadcast, and they had been just as pleased at the Thieves’ victory as they were. “Everyone,” the elderly barista raised his glass, “raise your glass! Allow me to say a few words…now then…”

“He started taking charge,” Futaba mumbled.

Makoto gently chuckled. “Come now, don’t be that way,” she chided her friend.

“If you’re going to complain, say it to Shido,” Sojiro retorted. “A legislator’s pin is worth almost nothing.”

“Regardless of its monetary value, that legislator’s pin was already worth nothing by virtue of the fact that it belonged to Shido,” Akechi commented snidely.

Ren snickered. “You’re not wrong there,” he commented.

“Well then,” Sojiro continued. “So, since the source of evil, Masayoshi Shido, has been…”

Futaba couldn’t help but let out a sob. “I got to avenge…my mom…” she sniffed out. “It’s all…thanks…to everyone…”

“…Except for me, I presume,” Akechi muttered.

“No, that includes you,” Futaba replied, shocking everyone. “I know you were the one to actually kill her, but…Shido was using you…lied to you…you didn’t know what would happen if you killed her shadow. Thinking back on it…even if you hadn’t killed her…Shido would have just found…a different way…to kill her instead.”

“I hate that you’re right,” Akechi sighed. “He would no doubt have sent someone else like the Cleaner to take care of her…or something equally underhanded.”

“I still don’t think I can forgive you any time soon, but…I don’t think I can exactly blame you, either,” Futaba admitted. “Part of me still wants to hack your phone to blow up in your face, but even I can’t deny that you were a big help in getting through Shido’s Palace. And you helped us deal with Shido the right way. So…you’re part of the team, for better or worse.”

She looked back over at the Thieves before her composure finally collapsed. “Thank…” was all she managed to say before breaking down into sniffles and sobs.

Haru looked equally morose. “I was able to settle a debt in regard to my father as well,” she murmured. “And while Akechi doesn’t have the excuse of ignorance that he had with regards to Futaba’s mother, I must admit that my father was not a noble, innocent man like Wakaba was either. And what she otherwise said with regards to your actions as of late also rings true for me as well.” She gave Akechi a firm, even look. “So long as you continue to fight alongside us, and continue to be a true ally and friend to Ren and the Phantom Thieves, then I will not seek vengeance against you, Akechi-kun.” A smile that was as graceful as it was dangerous appeared on her face. “But if you ever choose to betray us again, Akechi-kun, that will be the day your face meets my axe. Do we have an understanding?”

“…your terms have been acknowledged and accepted,” Akechi curtly replied, trying not to visibly shudder. Next to Ren, that girl was easily the most terrifying member of the Phantom Thieves by a country mile, and that was coming from a psychopathic murderer who destroyed people’s minds.

Ann beamed. “We all worked so hard for this,” she declared as Haru lost her composure as well.

In the meantime, Makoto looked over at her sister. “Shido’s guilty. Right, sis?” she pressed.

“…it’ll be difficult to prosecute him immediately,” Sae admitted. “But I’ll do this thoroughly until the causality between his other crimes can be proven. I believe Wakaba-san’s research will save Japan.”

“We can testify too, you know,” Ryuji offered with a cheeky grin.

Akechi shook his head. “No,” he replied firmly. “If anyone here testifies against Shido, it will be. I have every intention of making sure that the guilty face the justice they deserve. This very much includes Shido, and it also includes myself.”

“Thank you, but I will be fine for now,” Sae gently turned them down. “I don’t want to add any more unwanted suspicions to any of you. And as for you, Goro…I don’t want you to confess until I can make absolutely certain that I can initiate prosecution and trial against Shido without any difficulties. If you confessed now before I made sure that could happen, you’ll not only be accomplishing nothing, but his conspiracy will see that as the perfect opportunity to take their revenge against you.”

“…you have a point, as much as I hate to admit it,” Akechi conceded. “But rest assured, if you need my aid in sealing Masayoshi Shido’s fate, I will provide any aid and assistance that I can.”

Sae smiled. “I know you will,” she replied. “It’s about time you let us adults prove that we can get our act together.”

“Hey,” Sojiro suddenly glanced over at Ren, a thought occurring to him. “So what about this guy’s education?”

“I believe it’ll be fine for him to return to school,” Sae answered. “It’s true that your face will be recognized among those involved, but I doubt they’ll take a firm action like suddenly coming to arrest him. At least, they won’t do it until the uproar with your “suicide” and Shido’s confession have died down.”

“Wait, I have to return to Shujin?” Ren exclaimed. “Fuck!”

Everyone broke out into laughter at the unexpected moment of levity. Even Akechi of all people couldn’t help but crack a smile. “That’s our Joker,” Ryuji commented with a grin. “Doesn’t give a shit about school yet always stays at the top of the class all day every day.”

Sae gave them all a few moments to calm down before continuing. “Eventually, though, the situation where you and I will be used as scapegoats can’t be avoided,” she admitted.

“…you mean with regard to faking his death,” Sojiro scowled. “That wouldn’t have happened to begin with had the police done their job properly.”

Akechi scoffed. “90% of the police force is either completely incompetent at best, or deep into Shido’s pockets at worst, Sakura-san,” he retorted. “What did you expect?”

“I plan on doing everything I can,” Sae promised. “I will protect you all this time. Prosecuting Shido is my first step.”

“You know how to contact me when you’ve finally gotten the proceedings started,” Akechi replied.

“Excuse me,” Yusuke suddenly interrupted. “When are we going to make the toast?”

“Oh yeah,” Ren realized with a start. “We kinda just left that hanging, didn’t we?”

Sojiro chuckled. “Right, let’s get to it! Uhh…” he stumbled a bit. “Today is truly…”

Ryuji interrupted him in the middle of his speech. “Cheeeeeeers!” he shouted, lifting his glass.

“Cheers!” everyone, even Akechi shouted.

“Wait, no…!” Sojiro spluttered, but it was already too late.

“Cheers,” Sae repeated, more calmly than the others. She was about to take a drink, when her phone suddenly rang. “I need to go,” she declared. “It seems as though Shido was transferred to a hospital.” She turned to go, but then stopped as a thought suddenly occurred to her. “Oh, one more thing. It’s fine to celebrate, but keep it in moderation, okay? Considering that Ren’s finally back, all of you need to take your education seriously again.”

“If there’s anybody here who has a problem with taking their education seriously, it certainly isn’t Ren,” Makoto commented dryly. As everyone chuckled and started digging into the fresh new batch of food that Sojiro had brought, Akechi shared a glance with Ren. The other teen nodded towards him, before turning back towards his food.

He knew what the other teen was thinking. They might have changed Shido’s heart, but that didn’t necessarily mean their problems were over. Akechi knew full well that Shido’s Conspiracy would fight against their now broken leader’s condemnation and prosecution with tooth and nail, as without him they would lose all of the power they had gained underneath his banner. And if society truly was as apathetic and uncaring as he suspected, then they would be in for a much more difficult battle than what they could have ever expected.

But that was a problem for another time. Regardless what happened tomorrow or in the future, there could be no doubt that the Phantom Thieves and he had accomplished a massive victory in changing Shido’s heart and drowning him in the guilt and regret that he so rightfully deserved. Akechi would not taint the importance of that victory, or the celebrations that the other Thieves were enjoying, with the worries and concerns of tomorrow.

Besides, Akechi couldn’t help smirk as he downed his glass with the well-practiced mannerisms of a Detective Prince, who would’ve thought that watching the bane of his existence break down crying on the screen and begging for justice for his many crimes could have been so, so satisfying.

Chapter Text

It was disappointing just how quickly the good feelings from witnessing Shido’s change of heart vanished into thin air.

Akechi had always had low expectations for the public of Tokyo as a whole. Even as he had smiled and spoken honeyed words to them, he had nothing but disdain and disgust for how they followed whoever seemed to be the main leading figure in society like sheep, whether that figure be the Phantom Thieves, himself, or Shido. But at the very least, he had expected, had hoped, that they would finally wake up to the psychopathic monster Masayoshi Shido had once been before his change of heart. That they would go into an uproar and raise their arms against Shido, just like any other society in any other country would.

And yet somehow, the public of Japan had failed to meet even those most basic expectations.

Thankfully, the rest of the Phantom Thieves (whose initiative he was seriously beginning to respect more and more, compared to the apathetic slothfulness of the public) hadn’t been resting on their laurels, and had realized that something was fundamentally wrong. Which was why they had gathered in LeBlanc on December 23, to discuss a seriously problem that Makoto wanted to inform them about directly.

Once they had all gathered in LeBlanc, Makoto didn’t waste any time in identifying the problem for them all. “Sis told me that the Conspiracy is trying to stall and bury Shido’s prosecution in as much red tape as possible,” she reported grimly. “If this keeps up, the prosecution might get stalled so badly that it just straight-up won’t happen.”

“The assembly of Shido’s case is in danger?” Yusuke exclaimed, clearly horrified by the prospect.

“We know he doesn’t need a psychiatric evaluation!” Haru shouted furiously.

Sojiro scowled. “His lackeys must’ve pressured the others around him,” the elderly barista grumbled.

Akechi scoffed. “Of course they did. Those mongrels will do anything to cling to their undeserved power,” he growled.

“It also means there’s far more people who’d be in trouble if the truth came out than we imagined,” Sojiro warned.

Ann glared at the table. “Isn’t there anything we can do?” she nearly yelled, voicing the frustration that all of them were feeling.

Makoto sighed. “Sis said the assembly of a case may be possible if the general public wants Shido held accountable,” she explained, before closing her eyes in defeat. “But even that chance has been destroyed with the manipulation of the mass media.”

Akechi crossed his arms. “So I’m not the only one who’s seen it,” he muttered. When everyone turned to him, he continued. “A scandal of this magnitude should have raised an uproar. The public of Japan should be rising up against Shido, demanding that such a power-hungry monster be thrown from the heights of power and be punished with either life imprisonment or death. But that’s not what happened.”

“Akechi’s right,” Ryuji muttered. “All I hear while I’m riding on the trains or walking on the streets is people thinking that the whole thing was made-up. They’ve been begging for Shido to get better so he can be the Prime Minister even after everything he’s said.” The former track star stomped his foot on the ground in frustration. “It’s BULLSHIT!” he shouted.

“It also means that the Phantom Thieves are still labeled as criminals and the public’s number one enemy,” Akechi warned. “You’re still not safe, not while the Conspiracy is intact and the public is still against the Phantom Thieves.”

“It’s a storm of criticism online too,” Futaba supported his words with her own findings. “People are saying to catch the remnants and execute them.”

“To be honest, part of me has been tempted to arrange a public TV broadcast to condemn Shido. Perhaps my words can sway the masses to finally see the truth.” Although from his tone, the Phantom Thieves could tell that even he wasn’t optimistic.

“This is crazy…” Ann murmured, clearly horrified.

“Let’s wait for my sister,” Makoto advised. “She’ll be here soon to explain more.”

“Everyone’s being tricked so easily!” Ryuji snapped, slamming his fist with his table. “Why the hell did we risk our lives then?”

Yusuke was calmer, but also just as livid. “If Shido isn’t judged by the law, everything we’ve done will be treated as if it never happened,” he proclaimed.

“Moving the entire country however they wish by controlling people’s cognition…this is no different than being inside a palace…” Makoto murmured, disturbed by the very idea.

“Exactly.”

Everyone’s eyes turned towards Ren, who up until that point had been completely silent throughout the entire conversation. The leader of the Phantom Thieves looked utterly disappointed by the turn of events…but once again, not at all surprised.

Before Ren could say anything else, the door to LeBlanc opened and Sae walked into the café. “I’m sorry,” was the first thing that she spoke, looking utterly disappointed. “I gathered the best of the best and fought for a case…but as Makoto must’ve told you, it was denied. At this rate, it won’t end with just Shido’s innocence. This trend will continue spiraling down. There’s even the possibility that crimes using the Metaverse will advance onto a national scale.”

Everyone, except Ren and Akechi, looked shocked at Sae’s announcement. But Makoto’s sister wasn’t done. “…But that’s not what I’m here to tell you,” Sae warned. “We’re in danger because we know the truth. It’s only a matter of time before we’re apprehended. It wouldn’t be odd if they were to charge in now.”

“This makes no effin’ sense!” Ryuji complained.

“I beg to differ,” Ren once again interjected, his voice deathly calm. “If anything, this all makes way too much sense.”

His friend turned to look at him, their silent expressions begging for an explanation. Ren took that as an invitation to continue. “To be honest, I had a feeling this would be how things would play out for quite a long time,” he admitted. “Ever since I’ve noticed just how strangely the public was behaving. Not just for Shido’s confession, but a long time before that too.”

“For real?!?” Ryuji exclaimed.

“Think about how the public was behaving with every mission we’ve successfully pulled off as the Phantom Thieves,” Ren explained. “For the first three heists, our popularity grew slowly. Understandable, since people barely knew who we were at the time and weren’t even sure that we truly existed. But then things start getting weird after Futaba took down Medjed. Our popularity shot up like a roof, nearly doubling at first.”

“That by itself isn’t so strange,” Akechi pointed out. “It was first truly public success that the Phantom Thieves accomplished on a wide scale. It would only be natural for more of the public to support you from that point forward.”

“To a degree, you’re right,” Ren acknowledged. “But the heights to which that popularity soared is what tipped me off that something wasn’t right. “Right before Haru’s father’s death, our popularity had reached over 90%, and was close to reaching perfection. Not only that, but the public were basically treating us like gods on the Phan-Site, completely forgetting about everyone else. Even Akechi was seriously unpopular during that time, which is also strange. Sure, he might have spoken out against the Phantom Thieves, and sure, you’d expect him to lose SOME support. But he was still a teen detective who successfully cracked many cases, regardless of whether they were real or fake. He should’ve still had a smaller but still sizeable fanbase supporting him, but his popularity crashed almost to the same insane degree that ours rose up to. I don’t know what you guys think, but to me, that’s not normal.”

“I did raise my eyebrows at how quickly we ascended, even back then,” Yusuke commented. “However, like the rest of us, I did not look any deeper into it at the time.”

“I don’t think any of this did,” Ren reassured him. “We all had bigger problems to deal with.”

“That rise sure didn’t last long, though,” Ann mumbled. “Once Haru’s father died on live television, almost everyone turned against us and started calling us criminals instead of heroes.”

“I wasn’t surprised by the public turning against us,” Ren admitted. “But I WAS surprised by just how much the public turned against us, and how quickly. By now, we had pulled off three incredibly successful heists that caused three thoroughly evil bastards to confess the crimes, AND single-handedly stopped a terrorist organization from wreaking havoc on Japan. That’s not even mentioning all the smaller requests that we did on the side whenever we had the time. With all the good that we had done up until that point, there should have been at least a small portion of our support that would have been a loyal, die-hard following, or at the least a few who should have noticed that Okumura’s change of heart was the first to go badly and wonder why. But instead, pretty much the entirety of Japan had abandoned us, just like they had abandoned Akechi in the days when our popularity was at its highest.”

“You do have a point, Ren,” Makoto acknowledged, “but it’s also possible that even if there are some people who would have still supported us, they might have been cowed into silence due to the overwhelming majority of people who would have wanted us hunted down and destroyed.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” Ren replied coolly. His eyes then hardened. “But there is NO natural explanation for what’s happening right now. Shido confessed his crimes. He exposed his evil nature, admitted to the psychotic breakdowns and mental shutdowns on live television for all of Japan to see. It’s just like Akechi said. The public of Japan should be rioting in the streets and demanding Shido be thrown into prison and brought to justice for his crimes. If this were any country or any other situation, that’s what would have happened. But instead, the public of Japan are still clamoring for Shido to save them, somehow still caught up in the delusion that a criminal and a murderer like him will bring Japan to greatness even after everything he’s admitted. Everyone else who had their hearts changed and confessed were at least recognized as evil by the public. But Shido, the evilest of them all, isn’t? That is not normal behavior, no matter how you look at it.”

“It’s highly disturbing,” Haru commented sadly. “It’s almost as though public is incapable of thinking for itself.”

Ren smirked at those words. “I couldn’t have described it better myself,” he agreed. “It’s clear to me that the public has a single-minded obsession with maintaining order and stability at any cost, and that they want a leader to do all of their thinking for them so that they don’t have to make any complex decisions by themselves. That leader has been many different people at different times. It’s been us, it’s been Akechi, and now it’s Shido. As we can see, that obsession has grown only worse over time, and now it’s reached its highest point with Shido.”

Futaba’s eyes widened as she realized what Ren was saying. “Wait, are you saying…”

Ren grinned. “That’s right. I’m saying that the public itself has an overwhelming desire. A desire that is thoroughly distorted. Do you see where I’m going with this?”

Now the penny dropped for everyone else, and they stared at him in shock. “So you’re saying that the Public itself has a distorted desire, just like all of the Palace Rulers we’ve faced up until now,” Akechi muttered, a thoughtful look on his face. He hadn’t ever considered the possibility, but now that he was viewing it through that particular lens…it all made a disturbing amount of sense. “That would certainly explain their single-minded and brainless delusion of still viewing Shido as their savior.”

“The Public doesn’t have a Palace...” Ann was about to argue, but her voice trailed off as the realization suddenly hit her. “Mementos…” she gasped.

“Mementos,” Ren repeated. “Morgana said it himself. It’s the Palace of the public, or close enough that we might as well treat it as the same thing. And if I’m right, then there’s going to be a Treasure at the very bottom of Mementos. A Treasure that we’ll need to steal in order to bring the public back to its senses.”

“To steal the distorted desires of the public of Tokyo itself,” Akechi murmured as he ruminated over the very concept. If the situation wasn’t what it currently was, he would very likely have opposed the idea, both out of principle over the ethics of a change of heart in and of themselves, and out of spite to abandon a public that didn’t deserve any salvation from its own delusions. But if he didn’t act, then Masayoshi Shido would be allowed to go free, facing no justice for his crimes apart from the crushing weight of his own conscience, while his Conspiracy continued to run Japan into the ground from behind the shadows. And Akechi despised that thought far more than he despised anything else. His face hardened and he turned to Ren. “If you think that you’re going to be pulling off such a grand scheme without me there, then you’ve got another thing coming,” he declared.

“I was actually going to ask you for your help on this matter. I wondered if there was any way you could do something one last time,” Sae commented, before a wry smile appeared on her lips, “but I guess you already had a plan to address this problem even before I showed up.”

“We HAVE to do this!” Ann declared. “If we don’t free the public from its distorted desires, everything we’ve done up until this point will have been for nothing!”

“Mementos is the only option for us,” Haru agreed. “Even if we didn’t need to steal the heart of the public, the Metaverse is the only place where we can be sure that the police won’t find us when they come looking for us again.”

“To challenge the national power will come with its own set of dangers,” Yusuke mused. “If an individual Shadow could challenge us with great power, and the public itself were to possess such a Shadow, I can only imagine just how dangerous such a Shadow would be. We must be very cautious in how we proceed.”

“We still haven’t explored all of Mementos yet,” Morgana pointed out. “We’ve explored as much of it as we possibly can, all the way down to the end of the Path of Sheriruth, but there’s still one of those doors blocking the way.” He frowned briefly. “I have this strange feeling that whatever we’re looking for, it’s going to be past that door.”

“But we haven’t opened that door yet!” Ryuji exclaimed. “How the hell are we supposed to get past it?”

Ren smirked, and in his eyes they could see the same foresight and wisdom that he had displayed so many times in the past, knowledge that would seem so impossible in the present yet would prove invariably true in the future. “I don’t think we’ll need to worry about that,” he commented dryly. “Something tells me the door will be open for us this time around.”

“Are you sure that stealing the Treasure of the public will work?” Makoto couldn’t help but question.

“The collapse of Mementos should affect the public as a whole,” Morgana answered, his confidence returning. “The state of society would change too. If everyone’s hearts grow to hold Shido responsible for his actions, things might start going our way.”

“At any rate, it’s our best, and arguably only option left,” Akechi pointed out with a scoff, “unless you would prefer to wait for you and everyone around to be arrested by a police force suffering the same delusions as the rest.”

“That’s not an option, and we both know it,” Futaba retorted.

“If we’re going to do this, there’s one thing you’ve got to realize,” Morgana warned. Once he had everyone’s attention, he continued. “To begin with, why does something like human cognition exist as another, substantial world? The reason for that is most likely sleeping within Mementos. We’ll be destroying that, you know.”

Ryuji gave him a confused look. “I don’t see where you’re going with this,” he muttered.

Morgana glared back at him. “The human cognition will lose substance, so you can’t sneak into people’s Palaces anymore! So if other criminals appear, you won’t be able to steal their Treasure and change their hearts.” The glare disappeared, and a sober, solemn look replaced it. “It means…the Phantom Thieves will be going out of business.”

The confusion was replaced by shock, and they all stared down at the table as they realized the full implications of what stealing the Treasure of the public would actually mean. “We’ll have to discard this way of life,” Haru murmured sadly. She might have been willing to make that sacrifice, she knew all of her friends would too, but part of her would dearly miss the idea of being a Phantom Thief using supernatural powers to reform society and delivering justice from the shadows.

“It doesn’t matter,” Ann declared, getting up on her feet. “I mean, we’re the group who’s reforming society, right? If that’s the sacrifice that we need to make, then we need to make it.”

Ren smiled at her. “I couldn’t have said it better myself,” he agreed. “Even if we had the time to change as many hearts as we wanted, even if we could steal the desires of every single member of Shido’s Conspiracy, it wouldn’t solve the underlying problem. With the public as distorted as it is, the only thing that would happen is that another corrupt politician would take Shido’s place. And I think we can all agree that that would accomplish absolutely nothing in the long run.” He gazed at his friends intensely. “I’m willing to see my justice out to the end, even if it means giving up the powers that got us this far in the first place.”

“The only thing I ever wanted was to see Masayoshi Shido brought low, once and for all,” Akechi replied coolly. “I was willing to sacrifice my entire life to accomplish this goal. I couldn’t care less what happens to my powers or the Metaverse, as long as Shido is thrown in prison to rot where he belongs. If that means fixing a society that would otherwise be too braindead to fix its own problems, then so be it.”

“We were with you from the very start, Ren!” Ryuji declared with a grin, speaking for the Phantom Thieves as a whole. “And we’re gonna follow you to the end!”

Morgana smiled. “Then it seems there are no objections.” Everyone nodded in affirmation of the cat’s words.

“We have a plan, Sis,” Makoto turned towards Sae. “Whether it succeeds or not is another story though.”

“Miss Prosecutor…” Ryuji spoke with an uncharacteristically serious tone, “…looks like this is gonna be our last job.”

“I see,” Sae nodded in understanding. “I won’t pretend to understand how you pull off your feats, but it seems like whatever plan you have to ensure Shido gets the justice he deserves will require you to give up those methods.”

“Once we accomplish our duty,” Haru addressed her solemnly, “we entrust the world to respectful adults. That is our condition for accepting this job.”

“So it’s a deal,” Sae replied with a sigh. “That’s certainly a heavy condition. But very well,” she nodded, “I accept.” Her voice grew hard and firm. “I swear to make Masayoshi Shido stand and be tried in the court of law!”

“We hold you to that promise, Nijima-san,” Akechi gave her an intense stare. “Do not disappoint us.”

“I won’t,” Sae swore, before a wry smirk appeared on her face. “Besides…my pride won’t allow me to be continually saved by you all without doing anything in return.”

Makoto nodded. “We’ll be counting on you.”

“Looks like it’s decided then,” Sojiro commented from behind the bar.

Ann smiled at Ren and reached out a hand towards him. “You’re the leader, Ren, and this is officially our last mission. C’mon, say something!”

Ren nodded. “What we do, we do for our justice,” he declared, pumping a fist in the air. “Let’s fix this country!”

“That’s right!” Futaba agreed, some of her original cheer and peppiness coming back to her tone.

“We don’t have a lot of time,” Morgana pointed out. “We should carry this out tomorrow.”

“Absolutely,” Akechi agreed. “Every moment we delay is a moment closer to the police deciding to apprehend us all. We have to hurry a multitude of reasons.”

“I’m counting on you guys,” Morgana gave them all an intense stare of his own. “No matter what happens, you better see it through!”

The Next Day…

The Thieves had gathered at the entrance to Mementos at the first available opportunity, making sure that they were not followed by the police or any other potential enemies who would seek to capture them and end their mission before they could even begin. This time, Akechi didn’t bother to wait and enter separately from the rest of the Thieves, as by this point his change in allegiance would have already been known to the Conspiracy regardless. The moment they all congregated at the entrance to Mementos, their Meta-Navs began to react, just as they had every time they had sought to enter a new area.

“The door to the Depths of Mementos has been opened,” Ann read, before turning to Joker. “You were right, Joker.”

“And I’m dead certain that’s where the Treasure of the public will be,” Joker replied. “Does anybody here want us to do anything before we head straight into the Depths?”

“Nope,” Mona answered as he approached the escalators leading down into the first level of Qimranut. “We’re really going to do this, right?”

“Of course!” Panther affirmed.

“Why’re you askin’ now?” Skull wondered. “You know we’re pumped for this, right?”

“Well…” Mona mumbled, before Joker interrupted him.

“You want to know the truth, don’t you?” he gently asked his feline friend. “You want to solve the mystery behind how you came into existence, right, Mona?”

“I…” Mona didn’t say anything more, but his expression was all the confirmation that the other Phantom Thieves needed.

“We’re so close,” Joker encouraged him, a reassurance and challenge in his words at the same time. “I never forgot the deal we made all the way back when we first broke into Kamoshida’s Palace. We’re so close to finding the answer, Mona. Don’t tell me that you’re going to chicken out now that we’re almost at the finish line.”

Mona steeled his resolve. “Hell no,” he exclaimed as he leapt up and transformed into the Mona-mobile. “We’re getting to the bottom of this, right here and now!”

Joker’s smile turned into a grin. “My thoughts exactly.” He opened the door to the Mona-mobile, and gestured for all the other Phantom Thieves to follow. Once they were inside, they transported all the way down to the very last level of Sheriruth, where the door had previously blockaded their path. As they had presumed, the door leading down to the next level opened as they approached it, inviting them into the descent that would lead them towards the end of their journey.

The Phantom Thieves climbed down the escalator to the Path of Iweleth, where a chamber that was completely different from any of the other Mementos paths awaited them. The chamber was more akin to a grand station than a mere stop, with a vast hall that extended onward to a stone wall in the vast distance. The center path where they were on now was “decorated” (if one could call it that) with arches made of twisted, gnarled trees that looked both dead and unnatural. To their left and right, the Phantom Thieves could see the many “subway trains” that had picked up Shadows in Mementos arriving and slowing down on tracks that were stacked on top of each other on the walls, the Shadows leaving the trains and walking down the paths in the direction of the distant wall. “So this is where all the trains of Mementos converge…” Akechi muttered. “I’ve always wondered where exactly they lead to. I suppose we’re about to find the answer.”

“The hell is this?” Skull exclaimed, shocked at the vastness of the chamber they were now in.

“There’s some big, fossil-looking thing in the distance. Is that the treasure?” Oracle wondered.

“People are walking in and out of there,” Queen observed, “so the other side of the wall must be…”

“It’s not a wall,” Joker finished. “It’s a giant door.”

“Guess the Treasure’s not here then,” Skull acknowledged. “Let’s keep going.”

The Phantom Thieves raced towards the door, and as if to confirm Joker’s statement, a sizable part of the wall began to slide upward, revealing a large opening through which an ominous red light could be seen.

“It opened straight away…” Mona muttered. “I bet that means the inner depths the Meta-Nav was talking about before are right ahead.”

“Is anyone else concerned that this might be all too convenient?” Akechi questioned, his eyes narrowed. “I was not expecting us to be able to enter the Depths of Mementos with no resistance whatsoever.”

“It probably is,” Joker agreed. “But that doesn’t change what we have to do. And if anything tries to stop us in there, we’ll just deal with it like we’ve dealt with every obstacle that’s gotten in our way.”

“Hold on,” Oracle warned. “The door only opens from this side.”

“What do you mean?” Panther wondered.

“Well, I took a quick peek at the mechanism from inside the door,” Oracle explained. “And it looks like you can only open it from here. We can get it, but nothing can get out.”

“It’s as though whatever lies within has been locked away…” Queen murmured.

“Wait, hold on!” Noir exclaimed. “So you’re saying that the people going there are choosing a life of imprisonment?”

“I’ve never felt such eeriness before,” Fox commented with concern in his voice. “What exactly is this place?”

“There’s only way to find out,” Joker answered grimly. “Explore the Depths ourselves and see what lies inside. Come on, guys.”

As one, the Phantom Thieves crossed the threshold. There was no going back now.

Chapter Text

More than once, Akechi had wondered what lay in the Depths of Mementos. He had traversed the realm’s paths many times when hunting down shadows for Shido, his fame as the Detective Prince and the dread he instilled in others as the perpetrator behind the mental shutdowns allowing him to traverse freely from Qimranut all the way down to the lowest level of Sheriruth. But no matter how much fame he might have gathered, the path of Iweleth and the Depths beyond had always remained closed to him.

Now, as he beheld the Depths of Mementos for the first time, Akechi couldn’t help but feel both entranced by the sight and repulsed by it in equal measure.

The Depths of Mementos was a vast abyss that seemed to span an infinite distance, with walls of grim gray stone in the far distance. The walls of the chasm were almost completely uniform in appearance, only occasionally interrupted by what looked like giant jail cell windows that glowed from within with an ominous red light. The abyss itself was so deep that its bottom was completely out of sight, instead emptying only into an ominous scarlet glow that looked eerily as though it was a pit to Hell itself. In the center of the pit grew a towering eldritch and unnatural structure that looked almost like a tree, except the “branches and trunk” were twisted in unholy and grotesque shapes that not even the most gnarled tree on Earth could even come close to matching. The “branches” of the tree spread out to the walls of the Depths, glowing intermittently with a blood red light every few seconds as though monstrous blood was flowing through corrupted veins. It was truly an abomination in every sense of the word, and Akechi grimaced as he realized that this was the origin of the vein and branchlike structures he had seen spanning throughout the many levels of Mementos.

One look at their faces told him that the Phantom Thieves’ opinion of the Depths of Mementos wasn’t any higher than his own.

“The hell is this place…?” Skull exclaimed.

Panther shuddered. “It’s so creepy…” she mumbled.

“So those strange pipes tunneling through Mementos were originating down here after all…” Fox surmised, his expression and voice grim. “You know, I have been considering this for some time…but they somewhat remind me of veins…”

“So I’m not the only one who has that opinion,” Akechi agreed as he spat on the ground in disgust. “This thing is utterly wrong in its very nature.”

“More importantly…what’s up with this scenery…?” Panther questioned, although part of her clearly looked like she really did not want to know the answer. “What kind of distortion is this? I mean, what does everyone think this world is?”

“A prison,” Joker answered, his voice utterly cold.

Everyone turned to face him. Once again, the leader of the Phantom Thieves didn’t show even the slightest hint of shock or surprise on his face in the eldritch environment that they were now in. Instead, Joker was looking at the tree-like monstrosity and the pit below them with the same contempt with which he had viewed every single Palace that they had infiltrated up until this last heist.

But there was something different about Joker’s expression this time around, more than the usual disdain. Joker’s expression might have been cold, but his eyes were blazing with a fury unlike he had ever displayed before. A barely controlled wrath that looked as though it was about to erupt into a roaring fire at any moment. For the first time, Joker’s expression as he beheld the Depths of Mementos looked like full-blown hatred. A hatred that he had reserved only for Kamoshida so many months ago, and much more recently for the cognitive Akechi and for Shido himself.

“Uh…Joker?” Oracle nervously called out to him, trying her hardest not to show her fear.

Joker shook his head, and the hatred on his face vanished in a flash, though none of the Phantom Thieves believed for a second that it hadn’t been there. Now Joker looked more…tired…than anything else. As though he had just finished a long and exhausting task with no one to help him carry the burden. But this too didn’t last for long, for the leader of the Phantom Thieves took a deep breath and steeled himself. Now, his expression was back to the stern but compassionate leader that they all knew him to be, though they could see both the burning hatred and his unfathomable exhaustion carefully hidden deep within his eyes.

“It’s a prison,” Joker repeated, pointing upwards at a particular spot in the wall. “Notice the windows with the jail cell bars. It’s a prison for the Shadows of each and every person in Tokyo.”

Noir gasped in horror at the implications. “You’re saying that the shadows of everyone in Tokyo are being enslaved in this prison?” she exclaimed. “That they’re being trapped in this horrible place against their will?”

Joker chuckled, with zero humor in his tone. “If only it were that simple,” he muttered in response, before briefly cocking his head to the right. Akechi and the other Thieves looked in that direction, finding the platform leading to a forbidding black stone wall. This wall was different from the others, as it had a blood red shape that looked vaguely like a diamond with eldritch tendrils carved into its face, with a strange mechanism in its center. Akechi quickly realized that the wall wasn’t a wall at all, but a door that almost certainly led deeper into the prison.

This observation was quickly forgotten, however, as he and the Thieves realized that there was a mass crowding of people (or more specifically, Shadows) waiting right outside the door. Their gazes were fixated upon the door as though they were waiting for it to open at any moment. Akechi had a disturbing idea about what was actually going on, and the words that the Shadows spoke confirmed his suspicions a second later.

“I’ll finally be released…”

“Come on…when are you going to open?”

“Just open the door…I don’t want to think for myself anymore…”

“What the hell?” Skull spluttered. “There’s so many of them here!”

“And they’re all saying the same thing,” Queen observed unhappily. “Do they WANT to be imprisoned here?”

Joker tilted his head ever so slightly in confirmation. “The most effective prison is one that you never want to leave from,” he answered mysteriously.

“I hate this place already,” Akechi growled, voicing his thoughts about it for the first time. There was something about the Depths of Mementos that disturbed him to the very core, something that struck him as fundamentally wrong. It didn’t help that Loki was seething furiously within himself, desiring to break free of all restraint and tear this place down stone by stone, while Robin Hood was silent and grim, not saying a single word yet conveying his disapproval as strongly as Loki was.

“I do too,” Mona agreed, “but the treasure is definitely here, and that’s the most important thing.” The feline’s frown deepened. “And I can sense something else…a tremendous presence that’s coming from much deeper within…”

“How much do you want to bet that they’re in the same place?” Joker asked. The same hatred from before slashed in his eyes for a split second, but this time it was gone as quickly as it arrived. “We’re talking about the Treasure of the entire public itself, something that’s far greater than anything we’ve tried to steal before. And if individual Shadows were powerful enough to fight us when we tried to steal their treasures, how do you think an entire population is going to react? I’ll bet anything that there’s going to be something that’ll try to stop us from stealing the treasure…if that treasure isn’t that very something to begin with.”

The Thieves fell silent as they pondered Joker’s words. They had never yet encountered a Treasure that was powerful enough to fight by itself…but nothing was guaranteed. They were in the Metaverse, a world where the laws of reality barely mattered to begin with. And Joker’s logic made a disturbing amount of sense.

“We’ll find out soon enough,” Queen murmured with a sigh.

“There’s only one way to find out,” Mona added. “We need to get to the bottom of Mementos…one way or another.”

“That door is keeping everyone out, including us,” Oracle pointed out. “We’ll have to find another way in.”

Akechi smirked. “That won’t be a problem,” he declared. “I can see an open window in the side that we can sneak through. We should be able to infiltrate this so-called prison from there.”

“Ooh, good eye, Crow!” Oracle remarked. The Thieves didn’t waste any time sneaking around the side of the prison and into the open window, on the other side of the door. The Shadows seemed completely oblivious to the obvious entry point, and thankfully didn’t chase after them or stop them.

Now that they had a better view of the inside, they could see that the abyss even larger than they had anticipated. It was large enough to fit an entire set of platforms created from the pillars of stone that rose from the depths. Some of them only rose to about the level of the thieves, combining together and creating a path upon which they could traverse. Others stopped far below them or rose high above, far beyond where they could hope to safely jump to. And now that they had a closer look, almost all of the black stones were inscribed with eerie red shapes with unfathomable origins.

“I’m…getting a bad feeling from this place,” Noir admitted, looking troubled behind her mas. “I can see what Crow-kun was saying before. This place feels wrong…but I don’t know why.”

“The Shadows from out front were trying to get here, right?” Panther clarified. “What could this place be?”

“We’ll find out soon enough,” Joker replied as he began to advance down the path. There was only one path forward for them to take, and the Phantom Thieves followed their leader on it. The path was wide enough for two or three of the Thieves to walk side by side, but there were no railings or anything to prevent them from falling to their death deep into the abyss if they were careless. Instead, there were glowing white triangular lamps that lay on the edges of the path, and stone pillars that floated in the air. The latter of which could have actually made for decent cover points if there were enemy Shadows about, but none were present, and the Thieves didn’t encounter any resistance until they made it into a wide, circular chamber.

“Hmmm?” Oracle looked up in shock the moment they stepped into the chamber. “What is this place?”

It was only once the Thieves looked up that they realized that the chamber they were in was actually a giant prison block. All around them, on layers stacked on top of each other, were cells that were positively crowded with people’s Shadows, all of them muttering and murmuring amongst themselves as they saw the Thieves enter the room. The Thieves were horrified to discover on closer examination that the Shadows were chained inside the jail cells, their legs shackled to large iron balls that kept them bound to the floor.

“Are those…chains on them?” Oracle gasped. “You were right, Joker!”

“Who’s captured here?” Skull asked, his voice uncharacteristically serious.

“Shadows,” Joker replied grimly, his face a mask that betrayed nothing. “The Shadows of everyone in Tokyo.”

“I had a feeling that was the case,” Queen closed her eyes in resignation, “but I was really hoping that I was wrong.”

The Thieves slowly walked up to one of the cells. “They’re saying something…” Noir pointed out, not sure as if she really wanted to hear what the Shadows were saying in their prisons.

“C’mon…” one of the male Shadows called out to them, “don’t be out there and come on in.”

“Don’t open the cells, okay?” a female Shadow declared a bit more forcefully. “I have no intention of leaving this place!”

It was only then that the Thieves realized that the murmurings of the Shadows weren’t out of fear or anxiety. They were speaking out of satisfaction and bliss. Two theoretically positive emotions that, in the setting they were in, only amplified the sheer wrongness of the prison they were now in.

Fox voiced what they were all thinking. “They feel safe being here? What’re you saying?” he demanded to the prisoners. “You’re being kept in a prison!”

Mona frowned, the concern in his eyes growing by the second. “This reminds me of Kamoshida’s castle…they’re like the “slaves” we saw there.”

“Except this is far worse than Kamoshida’s slaves could ever be,” Joker added as he gazed at the cells in front of him with distaste clear in his eyes. “At least those slaves weren’t real. They were just fake imitations by a perverted mongrel. These Shadows…these are real. And so is their captivity, even if they don’t realize it.”

“Joker’s right,” Panther murmured. “And this is on a much larger scale, too. I don’t even want to know what’s happening to the people up in the real world whose Shadows are being trapped here.”

“Why so gloomy?” an elderly Shadow interrupted. “This place is the best in the end. In the depths within is a system that grants desires.”

Akechi sneered. “A system that is corrupt and rotten to the core, if it grants these so-called desires by enslaving the ones who seek them, all while blinding them to the nature of their own chains. All these fools, handing over their own freedom and independence, the things that should be the most precious to them. And for what? A false sense of security?” He violent spat on the ground. “Disgusting.”

“As much as I hate to admit it, I’m with Crow on this one,” Queen reluctantly agreed. “Just listening to all these people…it feels like they traded away their sanity as much as their freedom. You can’t reason with these people at all.”

Fox sighed. “They’re truly distorted…just like the scenery here.”

“You end up searching for stuff or being troubled because you’re outside the prison,” another Shadow called out to them. There are things you don’t need to know to live on.”

“If you don’t search for the answers in life, then what’s the point of living to begin with?” Joker asked defiantly.

“I couldn’t have said it better than myself,” Akechi added. “A life of stagnation isn’t a life worth living at all.” As one, the Phantom Thieves nodded in agreement to their words. There were many things that they would forever disagree with Akechi on, but this certainly wasn’t one of them.

“He’s right,” another Shadow agreed, completely ignorant (or at this point, more likely uncaring) of their conversation. “Things like the details on the system, the locked Quarantine Cell…”

“Quarantine?” Queen repeated, now more confused than anything else. “Who’s locked in there?”

“Supposedly a great and truly dangerous criminal,” the Shadow replied. It was honestly shocking that the Shadow was even bothering to give an actual answer to their question, though he promptly ruined the accomplishment with his next words. “But who would want to check a place like that? Come now,” he invited, speaking as though he genuinely believed it was the best course of action, “we don’t have to chat like this. Why not come inside?”

Akechi scoffed. “And join you in your own prison of delusions?” he retorted. “I think I’ll pass.”

It was then that Oracle noticed Mona’s troubled expression. “Mona?” she asked.

Mona looked conflicted, a morose expression on his face. “…”

Before he could say anything, a harsh voice called out from behind them. “Hey!” a Shadow wearing a guard’s uniform shouted. “Why are you out and about? Where are your restraints?”

“Removing your restraints is not allowed!” a second Shadow joined him. “Outsiders must be eliminated!” The two Shadows twitched erratically, before dissolving into a puddle of black ooze that transformed into Melchizedeks.

Even as the other Phantom Thieves and Akechi whirled around in shock, Joker turned around, his expression instead utterly furious. “You’re interrupting something, assholes,” he snarled. Before either his friends or the Shadows could say anything, he took his mask and ripped it off his head. “VACUUM WAVE!” he bellowed.

Cybele appeared, holding her twin swords higher into the air, and the Thieves watched as the mighty tornado tore apart the Melchizedeks with such extreme force that they were completely obliterated out of existence. Joker put his mask back on his face, and looked down at Mona, the fury replaced by a kind and compassionate look of concern. “Were you saying something, Mona?” he asked gently.

“That was careless of us,” Fox chided them all. “It should be no surprise that a prison has guards.”

Akechi smirked. “Not that that did them any good,” he commented smugly. “Joker wiped them out of existence just like he did every single piece of scum that dared to show his face around him.”

“Wait a sec,” Skull interrupted, a shocked look on his face. “This is everyone’s Palace, right? Not like Kamoshida’s castle. Who’s keeping these people here?”

“They’re keeping themselves here,” Joker explained disdainfully, though it was clear his distaste wasn’t directed towards his friend. “You heard them. How they’re oh-so-happy to have the privilege of being locked away in this prison with all their free will stripped away.” If the venom in Joker’s words could be used as a weapon, they’d have to come up with a new name for a Poison-type attack and give it a Severe designation.

“Mona-chan?” Now it was Noir’s turn to notice her friend’s discomfort.

“…I remember now,” was the first thing that came out of Mona’s mouth after several seconds. “I’ve…seen this place before.”

Everyone except for Joker looked at him in shock.

“But how?” Panther asked curiously. “This place wasn’t open until we got here today.”

Mona shook his head. “I’m sorry…” he answered slowly. “It’s just a sense I’m getting. Still…it feels like I’m really close to remembering something important...”

“Y’know, coming in here was what you wanted from the beginning,” Skull pointed out. “Maybe you’re getting close to finally figuring out what you forgot all those months back?”

“We just have to keep moving,” Joker agreed, giving his feline friend and encouraging smile. “If you’re almost remembering what you forgot when we’re just at the very entrance of this godforsaken place, then I have a strong feeling that the deeper we go, the more you remember.” The smile widened into a grin that was friendly, rather than mischievous or spiteful. “Trust me.”

Mona nodded and smiled back at him. “I trust you, Joker,” he declared back.

“I must admit, I’m curious to know who the ruler of this place is,” Fox agreed. “Something tells me that it’s not these Shadows individually.

“I don’t think so either,” Akechi agreed. “They’re too trapped in their own delusions to fight for their own freedoms, let alone us.” He frowned. “Though perhaps that might change, if we were to try and steal whatever Treasure lies at the bottom.”

“But what can we do for these people?” Noir looked anxiously over at the prisoners.”

“Leave them be,” Queen suggested reluctantly. “They’ll be taken care of if we erase Mementos.”

“Besides, there’s nothing that we can do for them now,” Joker agreed. “As long as the Treasure of Mementos remains standing, they’ll remain trapped in their own desires, whether we take them out of the cages or not.”

“Hey, it’s dangerous to keep standing around here!” Oracle interrupted. “Let’s get going!”

The Phantom Thieves nodded and ran towards the other side of the prison. Just leaving that circular area with the jail cells already felt like a breath of fresh air, even though they were still very clearly within the abyss of the prison itself.

Thankfully, there was little actual danger to be found in the Depths of Mementos itself, at least in the upper levels that they were currently in. There were certainly more Shadows dressed as guards, but those posed little threat to the Phantom Thieves. By now, each of the individual Thieves was powerful enough that they could easily coordinate to destroy any enemies that they came across without much difficulty, to say nothing of Akechi’s own battle experience contributing to their fights. And all of that didn’t even take Joker into account, the leader of the Phantom Thieves being a power unto himself that could slaughter every single Shadow in sight while barely lifting a finger.

What was rather more troublesome were the puzzles that they came across. Every so often, they would find their path blocked by a large stone, with a blood red pattern that marked it as unique from the rest. The stone in question would contain a device for Joker to put his hands on, and whenever he did so entire sections of the floor and the wall itself would begin to glow with yellow light. By stepping onto a yellow floor section, Joker would turn it blue, and vice-versa. It didn’t take very long for the Thieves to realize that the goal of the puzzle was to transform the entire floor blue while standing on the panel in front of the wall, upon which touching the panel a second time would complete the puzzle and open up the wall for them to proceed through.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, these puzzles didn’t seem to faze Joker at all. The leader of the Phantom Thieves was able to easily best these puzzles without the slightest difficulty, completing them and opening the walls in only a few seconds. It was honestly shocking just how quickly that Joker was able to solve the puzzles, almost as if he had seen these puzzles and was simply carrying out a solution that he memorized rather than figuring out the solution for the first time. Yet another piece of evidence that the leader of the Phantom Thieves had somehow been to the Depths of Mementos, Akechi mused, before even though such a thing should have been completely impossible.

The Shadows and Puzzles hardly fazed Akechi at all, what with how easily they were slaughtering the former and how quickly Joker was solving the latter. No, what truly disturbed him were the cages that they saw scattered here and there, just out of reach of the path. These jail cells were similar to the ones they had seen earlier in the circular room, but small enough to hold only person. Each Shadow was sitting in the jail cell listlessly, barely seeming to notice his surroundings, as veins flowed from the ceiling and into the cell itself. It almost looked as though the veins were draining all vitality and will from the Shadow in question, a hypothesis that Akechi had a sinking feeling was growing in certainty with each Shadow they came across.

“Such a foolish group…” one listless prisoner mumbled as he watched them apathetically from within a cage. “Your actions will change nothing. All of this is going to end soon anyway…you might as well patiently await your demise…”

Akechi sneered. “You can waste away in there as much as you want,” he spat. “But I won’t allow myself to accept such a pathetic state as my fate.”

“What about what he said about everything going to end?” Panther wondered. “What is he even saying?”

“I don’t know, but I doubt it’s anything good. Keep on guard, everyone,” Joker warned.

Despite his concerns, they thankfully didn’t find anything particularly dangerous or horrifying in the upper levels. On the contrary, the Phantom Thieves were actually able to find a Safe Room at one point, despite what they expected from a place that was as clearly dangerous as the Depths of Mementos. Once they had taken a rest, the Thieves made it all the way to the end of the Upper Levels, only to find themselves at the edge of an abyss that truly illuminated just how vast the Depths of Mementos truly was, both horizontally and vertically. Unlike the beginning of Mementos, however, this time there was a path leading deeper into the pit: a winding ramp that was barely large enough for Mona to drive in as his Mona-mobile form.

“Whoa, what the shit?” Skull exclaimed as he beheld the chasm for the first time.

“It seems to lead ad infinitum,” Fox murmured. “I wonder where does it actually lead?”

Mona peered down into the ominous orange-glowing void. “I never expected this much would be here,” he admitted, “but the Treasure’s presence is growing stronger. We’re going in the right direction for sure.”

There was only one direction to go, and only one way to get there quickly enough. Mona transformed into his vehicle form, and they all climbed in as Queen took the wheel before they raced down the narrow ramp. Joker might have developed a lot of skill in maneuvering Mona in Mementos, but he would be the first to admit that he was a reckless driver, and the last thing they wanted to do was fall off the ramp and end their lives in such a humiliating and careless way before their mission could even start. The ramp led down to right outside another circular chamber. The Thieves’ hearts sank as they realized that they were about to enter another massive prison block, but they didn’t have any choice if they wanted to get to the other side.

This massive prison block was somehow even worse than the one they had seen before. Not because the Shadows were any different from the ones they had seen previously. No, what was unique about this prison block was the fact that the Shadows of former Palace Rulers, their former enemies, were trapped in the prison just like the rest.

Kamoshida. Madarame. Kaneshiro. Shido. The Shadows of some of the vilest and most depraved men the Thieves had ever encountered, now reduced to listless and apathetic prisoners just like the countless other shadows in the Depths. The only one missing was Okumura, who had been killed by Akechi’s hand before he had chosen to join with the Thieves as a true ally and fellow warrior. But the shock of what they were seeing now meant that Akechi’s past crimes were barely an afterthought, even for Noir.

“The hell’s goin’ on?!” Skull stamped his foot down in frustration. “These guys shoulda had a change of heart from their Palaces disappearin’!”

“Mmm…” Shadow Kamoshida glanced at Panther lecherously. “Your bod’s as great as always. C’mon, come closer.”

“You creep!” Panther snarled, with it now being her turn to stamp her foot down. Behind Akechi, bared his teeth similarly in disgust. He had learned about Kamoshida’s crimes after his change of heart, and he utterly despised the man for being a sexual abuser and a despicable pervert just like Shido. Kamoshida was the type of man that Akechi would have gladly put a bullet through his head either in the real world or in the Metaverse out of principle, if the Thieves hadn’t gotten to him first.

But then, the lecherous expression vanished from Shadow Kamoshida’s face. In fact, almost all emotion seemed to disappear from his face, a fact that disturbed Akechi to the same degree that he had been disgusted seconds before.

“Hmph…” Kamoshida sighed with a frown eerily similar to his expression when he had confessed his crimes after the Thieves had changed his heart. “I’m joking. I don’t want to cause any more trouble. I finally get to live without having to think for myself now.”

Shadow Madarame chose that moment to add in his own thoughts, his expression just as languid and devoid of emotion as Kamoshida’s. “I mistakenly thought myself to be talented…but now I think I’m a fool for wanting too much.”

Kaneshiro was just as lifeless, and it was perhaps the most jarring change out of the three. For all his depravity, Kaneshiro’s Shadow had arguably been the most energetic and lively out of their early targets by a large margin, and now all of that energy and smugness had been stripped away, leaving only a former shell that barely had any emotion at all. “It’s no wonder people who can’t take a hint get yelled at…” the former mafia boss groaned. “I’m done actin’ like a big shot. Who cares if I’m stupid? It’s not like you get punished for bein’ dumb. Nobody needs to strive to be more than they really are.”

“These people seem completely different than they were before…” Fox mumbled, clearly appalled by what he was seeing.

Akechi scowled. “I would point to what we’re seeing right now as further evidence against the ethics of a change of heart,” he muttered, “but even I can tell that something has gone massively wrong here.”

“Whatever this is,” Queen muttered, “I don’t think it’s because they had a change of heart.”

“Wait…” Mona looked down at the ground sadly. “Have they chosen a life of captivity because they lost their distorted desires?”

“I think I know what’s going on here,” Joker broke the silence. Everyone turned to him, silently inviting him to continue. “When we stole the Palace Rulers’ distorted desires, we destroyed the one thing that was tying them to their Palaces and out of Mementos. Without their distorted desires, the corruption that warped the Rulers to begin with was stripped away, and they were forced to see their own crimes with the newly restored conscience and moral compass that they once threw away. We saw the results. Every single one of the Palace Rulers were consumed by their guilt and confessed their crimes for the world to see. As far as achieving our goal was concerned, the changes of heart worked exactly how we had intended them to.”

“I feel like there’s a but coming there, Joker-kun…” Noir murmured.

Joker nodded solemnly. “But with those Shadows forced out of the Palaces and back to their original owners, there was nothing stopping them from falling to Mementos anymore,” he continued his explanation. “And when those Shadows were drawn back to Mementos, they became caught up in the same snare that has trapped everyone else here, just one more prisoner among the countless others.” He shook his head in distaste. “It’s ironic, really. In a way, the Palace Rulers were more individualistic, more human, than the rest of the faceless brainwashed masses. Of course, they expressed that individuality in the most horrible and disgusting ways possible, and I use the term human in the loosest sense possible, but that doesn’t make what I say any less wrong.”

“Quite the intelligent young man, aren’t you?” a familiar voice interrupted. The Phantom Thieves turned towards the cell that contained the Shadow of Masayoshi Shido, the man sitting alone on a chair with an iron ball strapped to his leg. “You have quite the intricate understanding of this place, for someone who’s never been here before,” the former tyrant praised. The compliment sounded genuine, which only disturbed the Thieves all the more.

Joker returned the gaze with cool defiance. “I have my ways,” he answered evenly, betraying nothing in his voice.

“Then you would know why Okumura isn’t here with us,” Shido remarked. He turned to Noir, his face mournful for the man he had once assassinated through Akechi. “Nothing can be done for the dead. I’m sorry.”

Noir was thoroughly unimpressed by the apology. “Yes, I know,” she retorted. “Thank you for the details. Now, if you don’t mind, what in the world is this place?” she demanded.

The former Tyrant would never have deigned to bother answering Noir’s question if he still possessed the arrogance that had once defined his character. But with all of that arrogance stripped away along with his Treasure, he was more than willing to provide an answer. “It’s supposedly called the Prison of Regression,” Shido’s Shadow explained.

“Regression?” Oracle repeated, confused.

“Fools can call it whatever they wish,” Shido replied, “but does this look like captivity to you?”

“I can see the iron ball and chain attached to your leg, imbecile,” Akechi snapped.

“There is so much you do not understand, son,” Shido chided him gently, which only infuriated Akechi further and nearly caused him to summon Loki and tear at the bars with his giant flaming sword. Only Joker’s hand on his shoulder was able to calm him down. “This is the exact opposite of captivity,” Shido continued, ignoring his son’s rage. “The utmost freedom is available to anybody who desires it here. This is the freedom to not make decisions…the release from having to think for yourself.”

The Thieves stared as the man’s lips curved into a smile, the closest his expression ever got to the former Palace Ruler they had once known and despised. “It is far more marvelous than the country I wished to create.”

“Release from having to think...?” Noir murmured in horror. “But, that’s…”

“Your friend over there has an excellent understanding of the Palace Rulers and their relation to Mementos, for once who has never beheld the glory of this place himself,” Shido continued, nodding once to Joker, who didn’t bother to dignify the acknowledgement with a response. “There are some fools who cannot stay put in this place. In other words, they are escaped convicts. I am talking, of course, of our past selves. As your friend has already alluded to, such fools are segregated from this peaceful world and locked away in their own palaces.” His smile returned, this time approving and grateful. An expression that, in the context of what they had just learned, disturbed them more than even his most arrogant and hateful expression when they had battled within the former politician’s Palace.

Shadow Kamoshida chuckled. “I really gotta thank you for changin’ my heart,” he thanked them. “I got to come back here, after all. And now that I’m back, I don’t even know why I ever wanted to leave in the first place.”

“You were right, Joker,” Skull mumbled as the Thieves looked at their leader, both in horror at the truth his words had possessed and awe at how he had been deduced the nature of the Palace Rulers, the effects of their changes of heart, and their relationship to Mementos with such impeccable accuracy. “We really did send them back here.”

“I don’t understand,” Fox murmured, confusion and hopelessness warring in his face. “Just what have we been doing by using the cognitive world?” he asked.

“We’ve done what we believed was right,” Joker answered, firm conviction in his voice. “Does it matter what happened to their Shadows after we changed their hearts? Does it matter that those Shadows have ended up back down here in the Depths of Mementos, no different than so many others?”

“What do you mean, Joker?” Queen questioned. “How does it not matter?”

“It doesn’t change who these people were, the crimes that they committed, or the fact that we were the ones to stop those crimes,” Joker explained. “The Palace Rulers were, with a few exceptions, monsters in human clothing. They were sick, corrupt bastards who were rotten to the core because of their distorted desires, ruining the lives of everyone around them because of their extreme flaws and selfishness. And nobody would do anything to stop them, either because they didn’t have the power to do so, or because they didn’t care about what happened to the innocent victims around them at all. We were the ones who changed that. Because we stole their hearts, Kamoshida will never touch another woman or girl the way he assaulted Shiho ever again. Madarame will never ruin a young artist’s aspiring career or steal away their accomplishments to pass them off as his own. Kaneshiro will never extort and blackmail another student in all of Shibuya. And Shido’s long and disgusting history of deceiving, manipulating, and murdering the people of Japan was brought to the disgraceful end that it deserved because of us.” He glanced at each and every one of the Thieves. “And so I ask again. Who gives a shit if the Shadows of the Palace Rulers ended up chained in Mementos after the fact? It doesn’t change the fact that we were the ones who ended their evil and changed the lives of people in Tokyo for the better by removing that evil from society once and for all.”

Panther smiled for the first time since they had arrived at Mementos. “You’re right, Joker,” she declared, her resolve returning. “They might not have turned out the way we wanted them to, but changing their hearts really did make things better for everyone who suffered under them.”

“That’s right!” Oracle shouted. Her agreement was even stronger, for she was someone who had been freed from the darkness of her own despair and the malicious lies that had threatened to drag her soul into destruction precisely because of a change of heart. “I wouldn’t be alive today if you guys hadn’t changed my heart and saved me. This isn’t the time to start questioning everything we’ve been doing! Get ahold of yourself, Inari!”

“Yes…you’re right…” Fox apologized. “I’m sorry for doubting us at this critical moment.”

“Having the freedom to not make your own decisions only means that someone else is controlling you!” Queen exclaimed.

“I couldn’t have said it better myself,” Crow was in complete agreement with Queen. “My choices might not have been the wisest, and my actions and the consequences that come with them might have turned out poorly for me, but they were mine and mine alone. I was blinded by the chains that you used to enslave me to your will, but no more. I will never submit to the whims of another ever again. My life and my will is mine, and mine alone!” He raised his sword and pointed it in the direction of his father. “Who’s in charge of this fucking shithole? I’ll tear them to pieces myself!”

“All the education I exposed you to, Akechi, and you still cannot see the truth?” Shido shook his head in disappointment. “It should be obvious. Every member of the general public has made this place. Haven’t you learned anything in school? The collective ruler of a democratic country is its people.”

“D-don’t like out of your ass like that!” Skull shouted.

“Shido has lied about many things, but I don’t think this is one of them,” Akechi muttered. “You heard the inane ramblings of the Shadows trapped in here. They want to be trapped in this prison. They want to surrender their free will, and continue existence as little better than mindless sloths.”

“But that can’t be it!” Skull protested. “I mean, there was a guard here earlier, right? That means somebody’s gotta be lookin’ out for you guys, right?”

“Perhaps you do have a point,” Shido’s Shadow acknowledged. “We may be the ones who are looking out upon everyone else.”

“No…” Panther whispered.

“So the ones who least want the prison to be tampered with…are the prisoners themselves?” Queen murmured, the terrible implications sinking in to them all.

“When I first saw Shido’s Beast of Human Sacrifices, I thought that I had finally witnessed something so grotesque in nature, that nothing could ever possibly be more horrific than that golden monstrosity,” Akechi commented, his lips contorting into an awful grimace. “But it seems I was wrong. This,” he gestured towards the circle of jails surrounding them. “This whole place is the most disgusting thing I’ve ever witnessed in my entire life. A fundamental threat to the very meaning of existence itself, in a way that Shido’s Beast could never hope to be.”

“…you’re right, Crow,” a small voice quietly agreed. “The more I remember about this place, the more I agree with you on how just wrong this is.”

Everyone turned to face Mona, who was looking around him with a conflicted expression on his face. “I saw the humans around here…” he confessed. “And I realized I looked different than them for some reason.” His eyes widened in realization. “That’s right! That’s when I started to think that I wanted to turn a human!”

“We should be thankful that you didn’t actually use the humans here as an example of what humanity should be like,” Joker mused. “Could you imagine the type of person you could have become if you thought that humans were soulless machines who didn’t want to think for themselves?"

Mona shuddered. “I know, Joker. I’m not really proud of how I acted back when we first me, but what you just said would have been a thousand times worse.”

“Is this why you thought you would turn into a human as your true form if we destroyed Mementos?” Queen asked sympathetically.

“Sorry…” Mona apologized, shaking his head in frustration. “I’m still missing a lot of my memories.”

“We’ll get there, Mona,” Joker promised, giving his friend a reassuring smile. “You’re already remembering more and more, right? I’m sure that the closer we get to the bottom of Mementos, the closer we’ll get to finding the truth, and for you to remember more about the past that you forgot a long time ago.”

The expression that Mona gave him was one that was a bizarre mix of gratitude and concern. “I believe you when you say that, Joker,” he replied, his tone sounding just as conflicted. “But seeing this place and how utterly wrong it is…I’m not sure if I’m going to like the answers when I finally find them.”

“What are you doing here?” a guard suddenly shouted. Everyone whirled around to see three guards approaching them from the direction they had come.

“Guards again?” Panther exclaimed. “And there are more of them this time?”

Joker gritted his teeth, furious at the interruption. “Fuck off with your bullshit!” he snarled as he grabbing his mask. “Lucifer, MORNING STAR!"

The great demon lord of Christian myth manifested behind Joker and unleashed the same explosion of Almighty energy that he had used to destroy the cognitive Akechi that they had encountered in Shido’s Palace. The three Shadow guards were utterly annihilated, destroyed so rapidly and so brutally that they didn’t even get a chance to transform before they were completely deleted out of existence.

“Joker may be wiping out these guards before they even have a chance to raise any feeble resistance, but that doesn’t mean letting them catch us in the first place is a good idea,” Akechi commented. “We should stop wasting time and get to the bottom of Mementos as quickly as possible.”

“I share the same feeling as Crow,” Noir agreed. “I have this horrible feeling that the longer we wait, the closer the world will come to some terrible fate that we won’t be able to stop.”

“Then let’s get moving,” Joker declared. “For one reason or another, we have to reach the bottom of the Depths. It’s our only option.” Nobody had anything to say against their leader’s statement, but they couldn’t help but stare at their leader as he prepared to advance further into the Depths.

For Mementos was not the only thing in their sights that was shrouded in mystery. Joker had always possessed an aura of unnatural wisdom and insight that should have been impossible to attain, even for someone as intelligent as the leader of the Phantom Thieves. And yet…even though the Depths had never been open to them before now, Joker had not only formed his own hypotheses without any hesitation on the nature of Mementos and how it related to the Palace Rulers, but those suspicions had been all but confirmed by the Palace Rulers themselves.

Almost as though he had understood the Prison of Regression from the very beginning.

Almost as though he had been here before…

Chapter Text

It didn’t surprise Akechi in the slightest that navigating through the Depths of Mementos became increasingly harder the further they descended.

The Shadows had started to become stronger, and while they still weren’t nearly as powerful enough to so much as lay a finger on Joker, the rest of the Phantom Thieves had needed to plan their attacks out more carefully and utilize more tactical approaches whenever Joker decided not to simply massacre whatever was in their path. It wasn’t enough to seriously injure any of them, but it did slow their progress down a noticeable degree. The worst Shadows to deal with by far were the glowing red officers who transformed into the monstrous Abaddons. Their wide array of defenses meant that Akechi’s most powerful attacks were worse than useless, and he would have to settle for spamming Megidolaons or casting Debilitates while the other Thieves did the rest of the heavy lifting.

The tile puzzles had also started to become more complex, and if anything they were even more of a problem than the Shadows themselves. The abyssal prison had started to introduce some variety in the puzzles that slowed their progress. Some required a vermillion disk to open an otherwise closed-off section to make completion possible, while others had a number of white circles on each tile that delineated how many movements they would be allowed to make before the puzzle reset itself automatically in failure. Even Joker needed a few seconds to consider the puzzles and their solutions, although they still didn’t seem to provide any meaningful hindrance in the long run.

Eventually, they arrived at the edge of the middle level of the Depths, once again peering deep into the fiery and seemingly endless abyss. Now there were even more of those disturbing vein-like tendrils, carrying what they now knew was the vitality of the prisoners into its depths. And once again, there was only a singular ramp leading down into what would presumably the next level.

“Seriously?” Panther groaned. “It’s still going further down?”

“Why are you so surprised?” Akechi retorted. “You saw for yourself how vast this place is.”

“We’re so far underground at this point,” Queen murmured, closing her eyes. “And yet we still can’t even see the bottom of this pit.”

“I hope we don’t suddenly find ourselves in a giant pool of lava,” Fox sighed.

“Somehow,” Joker replied grimly, “I think a pit of lava will be preferable to what we might really find down there."

The Phantom Thieves shuddered at his words. The fact that Joker of all people was wary about what lurked at the bottom of the Depths spoke volumes about how dangerous it could truly be.

Skull was the first to shake off the growing nervousness creeping into his soul. “Doesn’t matter!” he declared. “We still gotta keep going, no matter what! We don’t have a choice!”

Joker glanced down at Mona. “You know what to do.”

Mona nodded and transformed into the Monabus. The Phantom Thieves got into the bus, and as one they drove down the narrow and winding ramp down into the lower levels, as far as they could be described as such in a place as incomprehensible and eldritch as Mementos.

When they arrived at the bottom of the ramp, the Phantom Thieves found themselves right outside yet another circular room, similar to the ones they had seen before where mass numbers of Shadows, including the former Palace Rulers, had been held captive. Right as they were about to head in, Joker suddenly stopped them. “Hold on,” he interrupted.

“What?” Skull asked, turning back to look at their leader.

Joker took off his mask and summoned Alilat behind him. The Phantom Thieves watched as he cast a Charge and then a Concentrate on himself before putting his mask back on again. “How much do you want to bet that some asshole guards interrupt us while we’re trying to figure out what the hell is going on with these jails?” he asked with a raised eyebrow.

Nobody had a counterargument to his point, and Joker silently switched back to Attis as the Phantom Thieves walked together into the third circular prison keep that they had seen so far.

Right away, the Thieves could tell that there was something different about this particular keep. There were no familiar Shadows in this particular keep this time around. Instead, to their left was a giant metal door, sealed behind several iron bars that stretched from the bottom of the doorframe all the way to the top. Right above the forbidding steel door was a red circular light that looked ominously towards them, representative of an alarm light to signal a prisoner’s escape should one ever escape. The cell in question was far larger than any of the other prison cells that were meant to hold a singular person, its unique features signaling its importance compared to the countless other prison cells scattered throughout the Depths of Mementos.

“Guys?” Noir asked as she curiously pondered the sealed metal door. “Doesn’t this cell seem…different…to the others?”

“This is the Quarantine Cell,” Akechi realized. “We’ve seen no other cells throughout our journey so far that stood out compared to the others.” He stroked his chin thoughtfully. “I can’t help but wonder who would be locked away in such a cell?”

“Supposedly, the most sinful, most dangerous inmate is held within…” Fox mused. “But I don’t have any idea who it could possibly be.”

Mona slowly walked closer to the Quarantine Cell, looking up at it with growing understanding. “This…this place smells familiar…for some reason…” he murmured.

Joker stepped forward and bent his head down towards, a kind but knowing smile on his face. “You were born here, Mona,” he ventured, his words carrying the unwavering conviction of a man who knew the truth, “weren’t you?”

The Phantom Thieves stared at Joker in shock, an expression of utter bafflement that only increased even more when Mona slowly nodded, eyes wide in disbelief. “You’re right, Joker…” he agreed. “I was born here. At this very spot.”

“What the fuck…!?!” Skull mumbled, reeling from both Mona’s revelation and the fact that Joker had somehow, impossibly, known about that secret before Mona himself had come to the realization.

Oracle was just as stunned. “How do you know this?” she exclaimed, staring at Joker. “How do you always seem to know about everything that happens? And everything that is going to happen? This is unreal!”

“That is an excellent question,” Akechi murmured under his breath. In his mind, a suspicion had started to form about the origins of Joker’s seemingly infinite knowledge and unfathomable power. It was a ridiculous theory, one that in any other circumstances was downright laughable in its impossibility. But the very existence of the Metaverse had educated him that nothing, no matter how ludicrous, could be dismissed as an impossibility.

Noir, meanwhile, was more surprised by the revelation that Mona had shared with them. “Born?” she gaped at the feline. “Inside the prison?”

Panther gasped as a sudden realization hit her. “Wait!” she exclaimed. “Does that mean YOU are the dangerous inmate?”

Mona shook his head. “No…” he denied. “The inmate wasn’t me. But I remember this place. Someone created me here…to guide all of you.”

“Guide?” Noir repeated. “And who is this someone?”

Mona frowned. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “That part I don’t remember.” He stomped his foot in frustration. “Dammit…I’m so close…but my memory is too foggy.”

Skull pondered the inside of the Quarantine Cell once again. “You know…hearing all this makes me wanna know just what’s inside,” he admitted.

Before any of them could respond, a voice suddenly interrupted them. “We found them!” a guard shouted, one of three running towards them with their batons raised. “The escapees are in front of the isolated cell!”

Joker rolled his eyes, looking downright bored with this development. “Did I not call this shit?” he asked in a deadpan tone.

Queen chuckled lightly. “Well, you certainly weren’t proven wrong, Joker,” she replied.

Joker smirked and grabbed his mask, allowing Lucifer to manifest behind him. The guards didn’t even get the chance to transform before they were completely obliterated out of existence with a single Morning Star explosion.

“Now that I’ve taken out the trash,” Joker finished once he had dismissed Lucifer back into his soul. “Where were we? Oh yes, the Quarantine Cell…”

“Given how important this cell appears to be,” Fox mused, “the bottom of the Depths must not be too far behind. Mona’s memories may continue to return the closer we get to the center.”

“Yeah…” Mona sighed. “There’s so many things I still don’t know. Like who created me, or who the dangerous inmate in the Quarantine Cell is.”

A small smirk suddenly appeared on Joker’s face as he pondered his next words. There was only so much he could say, and even saying his next words was probably a bad idea. But the temptation was too great for him to resist. “I know who the inmate of the Quarantine Cell is,” he declared.

Everyone whirled around to stare at him in shock. “You do????” Queen spluttered. “All right then, Joker, who is it?” Akechi challenged. “And how did you come across this information to begin with?”

“Someone who despises Mementos and the corruption of society with every fiber of their being,” Joker answered mysteriously. “Someone who already escaped from this very cell a long time ago, and wants nothing more than to take the rotten justice of country and burn it to the ground.”

All eyes turned towards Akechi, who was spluttering incoherently. “What the fuck are you on about, Joker?” he demanded when he finally found the words to speak. “I’ve never been in this godforsaken place before. I definitely would’ve remembered being inside this monstrosity of a prison cell, and if you’re talking about a person’s Shadow, then neither Loki nor Robin Hood have ever seen the outside of this hellhole before, let alone the inside!”

Joker shook his head, keeping that mysterious smile all the while. “I never said it was you, Crow,” he gently but firmly countered.

“Then who…?” Noir asked. She couldn’t think of anyone who would match Joker’s description outside of Akechi, and while Crow hadn’t been the most honest of individuals, she didn’t doubt that he was speaking the truth when he had denied being the dangerous inmate of the Prison of Regression.

“You don’t have to worry about them,” Joker answered. “They want the same thing we do, and they won’t try to stop us from getting to the bottom and stealing the Treasure.”

“You still haven’t answered Crow’s question!” Oracle pointed out. “How DO you know about the dangerous prisoner?”

Joker sighed. “There have been a couple of times throughout the year where I’ve gone into Mementos by myself,” he explained. “And a few of those times, I stumbled across him.”

“You went into the Metaverse ALONE?” Panther exclaimed. “What the heck, Joker? That’s SUPER risky!”

“Why didn’t you tell us, man?” Skull sounded more than a bit hurt. “You know we would’ve gone with you!”

“Wait…” a disturbing realization suddenly struck Queen. “We made a pact with each other that we would never change the heart of a target unless everyone unanimously agreed on it. Don’t tell me…don’t tell me you went behind our backs and changed hearts alone, Joker!”

“Absolutely not!” Joker adamantly refuted. “I haven’t and would never violate the agreement that we made together!”

The Phantom Thieves sighed with relief. “Then what were you doing in Mementos?” Mona wondered.

Joker sighed. “More or less collecting those goddamn stamps,” he admitted. “You have no idea how many hours it took going up and down the Mementos levels trying to find all those fucking stamps hiding behind this fake wall or that fake wall.” He smacked his head and shook it in annoyance. “God, what a fucking pain in the ass. I refused to subject any of you through that bullshit after we did it together in the first few levels. The extra experience and levels you could’ve gotten just aren’t worth it, especially when all of you are plenty strong enough as it is.”

“So THAT’S why we we’ve been getting so much more experience and money from Mementos even though we’ve only gone in there a few times!” Skull realized.

“The experience boosts that I’ve gotten from trading those stamps to Jose made up plenty for the lack of fighting you would’ve done in Mementos to get those stamps. You’re welcome, by the way,” Joker deadpanned, earning a couple of laughs from his friends and teammates. But there was much than a touch of relief to the laughter in addition to the humor. Relief that as much as much as Joker might skirt the edges of darkness, he had never gone so far as to break a promise to his friends.

Akechi was the one who decided to steer the topic back into focus. “So I presume you encountered this dangerous inmate during one or more of your solo journeys through Mementos,” he deduced. “I presume the inmate in question wasn’t hostile towards you, because otherwise you’d be telling us how you punished him for his idiocy.” Normally, Akechi would have worded it the other way around, but given Joker’s obscene powers he highly doubted that there was anything in Mementos that could have remotely threatened Joker unless he displayed some incredible and uncharacteristic stupidity.

Joker nodded. “I’ve only come across him very few times,” he explained. “But he didn’t want to fight me. He told me he very much agreed with what we were doing, and that he hoped we’d be able to change society and tear down the bullshit and corruption drowning it.”

Akechi scoffed derisively. “And a fat lot of good that did,” he bitterly retorted. “Changing Shido’s heart didn’t do shit, the whole of Tokyo is locked up in this disgusting prison, and this so-called dangerous inmate is nowhere to be found.”

“Akechi has a point,” Queen agreed reluctantly. “It seems like in the grand scheme of things, this dangerous inmate doesn’t seem to have influenced much of what's happened.”

“You’re right in that it doesn’t change what we need to do,” Joker agreed. “We have a job to do, and we need to get to work on doing it. The Depths of Mementos isn’t going to clear itself.”

Mona sighed at the mention of where they were in. “Now that I think about it, it makes sense Mementos would connect to some place like underneath Shibuya,” he commented sadly. “Everyone crams themselves into packed underground boxes day after day without any complaints. From my standpoint, those are the true inmates of Mementos. It’s no surprise the places are connected.”

Queen nodded in agreement. “You know…the more I think about it, the voices of the public may have led the Phantom Thieves on more than any criminal…”

Joker gave them a stern glance. “Did I not warn you this could happen?” he asked, all traces of previous humor and lightheartedness gone from his voice. “That when we steal the hearts of others, we always do it in the name of our justice and doing what is right, first and foremost? This is why being a hero just to be popular or for selfish reasons is a terrible reason to be a hero, and always turns out badly in the end.”

Skull shifted uncomfortably on his feet. He knew that Joker wasn’t singling him out or even looking at him, but it felt as though his leader was speaking to him most of all. After all, he had been the one who had been the most enthusiastic about the popularity of the Phantom Thieves, and if Joker hadn’t caught it and reined him in early, he would have let that popularity get to his head. He had enough self-awareness to acknowledge that much. He decided to change the topic. “Seriously!” he insisted, using a bit of bravado to hide his own insecurity. “Let’s hurry up and steal that treasure so we can crush Mementos!”

Noir smiled despite the grim atmosphere. “We truly are reforming society!” she declared. “Let’s go!”

Invigorated by their cause, the Phantom Thieves raced forward, leaving the final prison keep and its imposing Quarantine Cell behind them. Whether it was through unstoppable determination or a burning impatience to get to the bottom, the Thieves seemed to blitz through the final parts of Mementos. They tore apart any Shadows that dared to stand in their way, and Joker had little trouble getting them through the puzzles even as they became more and more complex. After finishing the final puzzles, a set of three tile puzzles that needed to be solved in a progressive order to unlock each other, the final barrier separating them from their destination was unlocked.

“Perfect!” Fox declared as the last wall fell. “The security is disabled!”

“About time!” Panther cheerfully agreed. “Now we can keep moving forward!”

Their good mood quickly faded, when they realized what was in front of them. A towering structure whose walls were lined with cell windows, each of them glowing with the same ominous red light within. It was undoubtedly a prison keep, but unlike the others they had come across, it was far, far larger. The structure towered over them, titanic enough to be a skyscraper of Japan in its own right, although no building in Japan would ever emanate the sheer amount of evil and malice that this prison did. It didn’t help that the building itself was glowing with an ominous red aura, looking every bit like a prison holding the damned in the depths of Hell itself.

Even without knowing what was inside, there could be no doubt in any of the Phantom Thieves’ minds. This was the very center of the Depths of Mementos, and their ultimate destination.

“Let’s take the time to heal up before we get to the center,” Queen advised. Nobody had any argument against her suggestion, and they ducked into the safe room before the final prison keep. Joker passed out master curries and coffees, as well as the many life stones that he had collected, and everyone was fully healed after a few short minutes.

“We’re near the end,” Mona affirmed as they convened at the table. “I can feel the power of the Treasure. Whatever it is…it’s something far greater than anything we’ve encountered in any other Palace we’ve been to…and anything else we’ve seen in Mementos.”

“There’s something else, too,” Oracle added with a frown. “I don’t sense anything else except for that one Treasure. There should be a big super-scary boss or something guarding it, but apart from the Treasure itself there’s just a bunch of Shadows in the jail cells and a big old pile of nothing!”

Akechi grimaced. “Since it would be the height of stupidity to assume that there’s nothing stopping us from just stealing the Treasure, I think we have to go with Joker’s hypothesis and assume that the Treasure itself is the guardian.” The scowl on his face deepened. “Which has some disturbing implications in and of itself.”

“The only thing we can do is proceed carefully,” Joker warned. “If we’re right about this, the Treasure may be the most powerful and most dangerous enemy we’ve fought so far. Are you guys ready?”

The Phantom Thieves each gave their affirmation. “Then there’s no time to waste,” were Joker’s only words as they got up and left the safe room behind them. There was only one path down to the main prison of Mementos, flanked by more of the same white lanterns that had occasionally lined the path leading down here, that abruptly stopped and transformed into a slippery slope that slid downward towards the opening. As they grew closer, they could see that all of the vein-like structures that they had seen throughout Mementos were being drawn towards the very center of the prison keep.

“What the hell is this thing even?” Skull mumbled, still in awe at the imposing structure.

“It’s so big…” Queen murmured. “I still can’t believe there’s such a giant thing all the way down here…”

“The way this structure appears…” Fox grimaced at the prison keep. “Obviously it’s meant to be a prison, but with its bizarre and ominous air about it…it almost looks like a temple as well.”

“If it is a temple, then to what is it dedicated to worshipping?” Akechi asked. It was a question that none of the Thieves answered, and one that none of the Thieves wanted to know the answer to either.

“There’s no point worrying about this now!” Skull exclaimed. “Let’s just find that Treasure and get this shit over with!”

Joker nodded and approached the end of the path where it transformed into a disturbing spine-like structure leading down to the opening. With a smirk, he grabbed his grappling hook and sent it shooting towards a hook on the arch high above them. Joker launched himself forward, flying towards the prison keep as far as he was able to, before flipping once in the air and landing on the spine-like path, sliding down on it towards the entrance.

Akechi scoffed as he watched the display of acrobatics. “Show-off,” he grumbled.

Noir giggled. “That’s just like Joker, all right!” she exclaimed as they took off after him, running and then sliding down the spine-like path leading to the prison keep. Once they had caught up with Joker, they entered the temple-like prison together, anxious to see what lay within.

The inside of the prison-temple somehow seemed even more imposing than the outside. The Thieves had already thought that there too many prison cells to count from the outside, but now that they were in the keep they could see that literally every single part of the wall was covered in jail cells, each of which held a separate Shadow. The layers of cells circled all around them, extending from the very top of the prison keep all the way down to the very bottom. There were ledges that the Thieves could use to reach the floor of the prison, the only parts of the wall that weren’t covered in a cell holding a prisoner. And in the very center of the prison was what looked like a giant rusted metal cup, into which all of the vein-like structures were converging through its mouth. To the right and left of the cup were what looked bizarrely like metal hands, though no other human-like body parts could be seen.

“We’ve finally reached the very depths of Mementos,” Mona declared, looking over at Joker. “Are you ready?” he asked.

“I am,” Joker solemnly affirmed. “Akechi, Ann, Makoto, you’re coming in with me. Everyone else, you’re on the backup team.”

“Got it!” everyone acknowledged. With the plan set, Joker leaped down the ledges, landing on the floor of the temple-prison with his friends and allies only a few steps behind.

“The hell?” Skull exclaimed as they got closer. Now that they were on the ground, they could see the cup much more closely than high up at the opening. The cup, or rather, grail, was far grander in size and scale than the Thieves had anticipated, towering over even other monstrous Shadow transformations like Kamoshida’s true form, Kaneshiro’s Piggy-tron, or Shido’s Beast of Human Sacrifices. They could see now that the grail itself was machine-like in nature, with several gears, wheels, and conveyors visible as part of its inner workings. Yet there were magical properties to it as well, with the green and pink lights that flashed from the cup near its pedestal standing out, as well as the much larger beams of the red light emanating from the mouth of the cup. And most importantly, the grail emanated power like nothing the Thieves had ever seen before, power that both Oracle and Mona immediately recognized as the same power that they had felt even at the top of the abyss leading to the Depths.

There was no mistaking it. They were staring at the Treasure of Mementos and the Public.

“Is that the Treasure that we’re looking for?” Panther asked, instinctively recoiling from the sight of it. “It looks…disgustingly grand.”

“There are no other passages leading out of this room,” Fox observed. “It appears this is our final destination…the Depths of Mementos.”

“That thing IS the Treasure of Mementos,” Noir questioned uncertainly, “…right?”

“It is,” Joker confirmed grimly. “No doubt about it whatsoever.”

“Joker’s right,” Mona agreed. “I’ve never been this deep into Mementos…but I can sense it. There’s no mistaking that presence. If we get rid of it…” the feline suddenly sighed, hesitating for a split second…before shaking his head to get rid of his doubts. “If we get rid of it…then the public will come to its senses!”

“There’s only a slight problem with that plan,” Akechi drawled. “How exactly are we supposed to carry something that huge out of this godforsaken pit?”

“We just have to make it disappear!” Skull countered. “If we can’t get rid of it, then we just have to destroy it instead!”

“That’ll work,” Mona agreed. “It’ll accomplish the same thing, getting rid of the public’s distorted desires.”

A feral, savage grin appeared on Akechi’s face. “Then what are we waiting for?” he hissed. “Let’s tear this overgrown, overglorified sippy cup to shreds!”

Panther didn’t seem quite as enthusiastic. “Once we do that, the entire Metaverse is going to disappear, right?" she asked. "This is finally it…”

Joker was about to say something, when they suddenly felt the aura coming from the cup intensify, interrupting their discussion.

“Oh,” Oracle realized. “I guess it’s no surprise we’ve been discovered. That thing isn’t gonna sit back and let itself get destroyed,” she continued with a sigh.

Fox noticed something else as well. “The inmates are starting to liven up,” he declared, pointing out the increasingly growing murmurs and incomprehensible yells of the inmates within the prison. “How eerie…are they planning something?”

Skull clenched his fist. “That means this thing must be the Treasure,” he declared. “They saved us the trouble of checkin’!”

Akechi was growing impatient. He was about to throw caution to winds and throw a Megidolaon at the cup, when Queen’s voice suddenly stopped him. “…hold on,” she warned. “Something’s off.”

As everyone’s attention turned to her, she continued. “Shido said that the masses are allowing themselves to be held captive here. Could they themselves be operating this gigantic system that eliminates intruders on its own?” she questioned. “The prison guards and soldiers were very organized too…”

Fox realized what Queen was trying to say. “Are you saying that someone else rules this place?” he wondered. “Is it not the public?”

Before anything could say anything further, a laugh suddenly began to echo from the direction of the grail. A booming, arrogant and malevolent laughter that no human voice could possibly have made. “What was that?” Panther exclaimed.

“Don’t worry about it for now!” Joker barked. “Get ready to attack, now!”

Akechi scowled. Everything about that holy grail seemed fundamentally wrong, just as the entire Prison of Regression was fundamentally wrong. He gripped his sword by the hilt and bared his teeth. He was going to be the one laughing last when they finally tore down this fucking shithole.

“All right, guys!” Mona shouted. “We better not lose now! Let’s hurry up and destroy this thing! Everyone, give it your all!”

“Let’s do it!” Oracle agreed, speaking for them all.

They ran towards the grail until they were a few feet away from it, the triple-natured power boost from Joker’s Auto-Mataru/Maraku/Masuku washing over them as they got closer. Joker grabbed his mask and summoned Alilat, firing up a Concentrate for himself.

“Let’s see what happens to a sippy cup when it gets crippled!” Akechi cackled, summoning Loki behind him and throwing a Debilitate at the cup to weaken it on every level.

Queen fired off an Atomic Flare at the cup, while Panther charged herself up with a Concentrate of her own. Akechi noted with some distaste that while Queen’s nuclear attack was certainly powerful, the damage that it inflicted upon the grail was minor at most. No matter. He would wait to see just how formidable it was when Joker was the one to attack it instead.

The grail suddenly flared with energy, and fired an Arrow of Light directly at Akechi. Snarling, Akechi barely managed to dodge out of the way in time, the beam hitting the ground where he had been seconds know. He didn’t know if that attack was actually a Bless attack, but he didn’t want to find out while Loki was in charge.

“Be careful, guys!” Oracle called out. “That cup is firing Almighty damage!”

That news was almost a relief to Akechi more than anything else, as it meant he no longer had to worry about weaknesses. But he could feel how powerful that attack had been, and just because he wasn’t weak to it didn’t mean that it wasn’t any less deadly.

Joker stepped forward, and Akechi felt a thrill of anticipation as he sensed what was to come. “Surtr!” the leader of the Phantom Thieves bellowed. “BLAZING HELL!”

The fiery giant of Norse mythology manifested, raising its sword, and transformed the entire ground underneath the grail into a molten crater of searing lava. Akechi could feel the intensity of the heat and the flames, just as he had back on Shido’s ship, and he was even more thrilled to discover that the attack was powerful enough to tear off nearly a third of the Treasure’s health by itself. “Bah!” he thought, being wise enough not to tempt fate out loud no matter how complete a victory might seem. “What were we so worried about? Joker will tear this thing to pieces just like he’s torn apart every other enemy we’ve ever come across!”

He should have known that it wouldn’t be so easy. When had it ever been?

“Stop it!” a prisoner from one of the countless cells suddenly yelled. “Stop it!”

“Don’t touch the holy grail!” a female prisoner shouted.

“Holy Grail…?” Oracle repeated, clearly baffled. “What the hell?”

They didn’t have time to dwell on it any further, for the Holy Grail suddenly began to make another move. Instead of attacking any of them, however, this time it seemed to be drawing energy into itself. Streams of energy began to flow into it through the vein-like structures, and everyone’s eyes widened in horror as the Holy Grail healed all of the damage that had just been inflicted upon it, including the massive attack from Joker’s Blazing Hell.

Oracle was the first to recover her voice. “What was that!?” she exclaimed.

“What are you doing to our Holy Grail!?” a different female prisoner demanded.

“The Holy Grail must never die!” a third prisoner proclaimed.

Akechi was the first to come to the horrifying realization. “Oh, you have got to be FUCKING kidding me!” he snarled furiously. “The inmates in the prison are giving it their power!”

“Dammit!” Skull stomped his foot in frustration. “This is never going to end!”

“It seems hopeless if this many people are supporting it,” Fox murmured.

Their conversation was interrupted by a booming, dark and inhuman voice. The same voice that had given off the mocking and cruel laughter from earlier. “You fools,” the voice intoned. “Humans, yet wishing to eradicate the desires of humanity…”

The Thieves stared up at the Grail, where the voice had come from. “Who’s that!?” Panther exclaimed.

“It’s the Grail itself,” Joker growled, the flashes of hatred that had been so carefully buried flaring up for a split second. “I was right. The Treasure IS the ultimate guardian of this place!”

“Repent,” the Grail demanded.

“For what?” Oracle shouted back. “For doing the right thing?”

“Foolish child,” the Grail responded mockingly. “I am revered as the granter of dreams for all who behold me…a being most commonly known as the Holy Grail.”

“The Holy Grail…” Noir repeated, staring at the grail uncertainly.

“The Prison of Regression is representative of the collective desires of humanity,” the Grail explained like an adult talking down to a petulant child. “They wish to be chained down, surrender their cognition, and neglect the world around them. These feebleminded commonfolk will make your “social reform” all for naught. The shared heart of the masses has fallen into an excess of indolence and transformed into a prison.”

As if to support the Holy Grail’s words, the prisoners all began to shout and cheer. It was impossible to make out what they were saying, but it was clear that they were in support of what the Holy Grail was saying.

“Dammit…!” Skull growled. “They’re worshipping that thing!”

“Thus…” the Grail declared. “The only suitable end for them is to perish within the prison that they have made for themselves.”

“I don’t give a fuck about ANY of this!” Akechi snarled. “That oversized sippy cup is the one thing that’s standing in the way between Shido and getting the punishment he deserves.” He raised his sword again, pointing it at the Grail in a clear expression of challenge. “I’m going to tear you into scrap metal and throw your pieces into the ocean where nobody will ever see them again, you piece of shit! Shut up and die!”

In response, the wheels on the sides of the Grail began to glow with green and pink light. “Get ready!” Mona warned. “Here it comes!”

The Thieves prepared themselves to continue the fight that had previously been interrupted, ready to dedicate all that they had into destroying the Grail. This time, Joker spared no punches whatsoever, Charging himself with Alilat and unleashing the full power of Yoshitsune on the cup, all while the other Thieves crippled or attacked the Cup with their most powerful attacks. Akechi was delighted to discover that at full power, Joker’s Hassou Tobi attack was so powerful that it was able to wipe out almost half of the overgrown sippy cup’s health singlehandedly.

But it wasn’t enough. Every time they were about to inflict some meaningful damage on the Holy Grail, it would call upon the Will of the People, the vitality and praises of the prisoners, to restore all of the health that it had lost.

“Stop it!” A prisoner screamed. “I said STOOOOP!”

“Don’t touch the Holy Grail!” another one demanded.

“God!” Akechi spat disgustedly onto the ground. “Can’t these people just fucking shut up about their worship?”

But there was no way for them to stop the flow of energy into the Grail. And there was something else that was equally as disconcerting to the Thieves. Every time the Grail healed, its shine and shimmer began to change. It had started out the battle as nothing but rusted metal, but after it had healed over and over again, it had transformed into a chalice of shining gold. Even Joker’s attacks, obscenely powerful as they might have been, just simply weren’t enough to destroy the Grail outright before it called upon the praises of the masses to simply shrug off the damage once again.

This was a losing battle. It was aggravating. It was infuriating to an indescribable degree.

And it was also the truth.

“Stop that, you Thieves!” a prisoner shouted. The words seemed to trigger a mantra of madness in all of the prisoners, as they all began to shout the same message in the same listless, dead tone.

“Get out of here. Get out of here. Get out of here. Get out of here.”

Mona looked down sadly on the ground. “If this is how people really feel, then there’s no way we’ll be able to steal their hearts.” His frown deepened, and they could see the despair in his eyes. “We’ve come here for nothing.”

“This is horrible…” Noir gasped.

“You imbeciles are intoxicated by an undesired justice,” the Grail declared. “This is the will of the children of man who have fallen into sloth. My shine is proof that they desire my existence. As long as humanity yearns for me, I shall never perish.”

Queen stared at the Grail in disbelief. “Is this really what everyone wants?” she asked incredulously. "To stop thinking and be guided by the Holy Grail?"

“I don’t give a shit about what the public thinks.” Surprisingly, it was not Akechi who spoke these words with such vitriolic hatred, but Joker. “Everything has a weakness. We just need to find out what it is and exploit it to the fullest degree.”

“Joker’s right,” Akechi hissed. “I can say without a shadow of a doubt that I would never surrender my free will to anyone. Especially not to a worthless piece of metal spouting sanctimonious garbage out of its mouth. I would rather die than allow such a disgusting fate to fall upon myself!”

“I will never agree either!” Queen agreed vehemently.

“The humans I look up to aren’t like that,” Mona yelled back at the Holy Grail. “No matter how painful reality is, it’s all over if you don’t try to change how things are!” He looked to his left and his right, his friends and allies by his side. “I’m not the only one who believes that. Everyone here agrees. We don’t want to turn back into the people we used to be! That’s why we risked our lives coming here!”

Joker smiled and nodded at his feline friend in approval. “Well said, Mona,” he praised. “Well said indeed.” He looked up at the cup, his smile vanishing and replaced with a fierce, hate-filled glare. “You have nothing that you can offer us to change our minds!”

A cold, derisive noise came from the Grail. “Humanity already wishes for their distortions to be actualized,” it retorted. “I am merely the being that will ultimately grant those wishes. Now, it is time I refrain from my place in this world, and begin to encroach upon reality itself.” The Grail began to glow with a pale blue light, a type of light that it had notably not glowed with before.

“That’s a load of shit!” Skull snarled, clearly itching to continue the fight.

Queen, however, was more cautious. “Encroach?” she repeated the word. “What is it going to do?”

Panther had started to notice the change in atmosphere. “This doesn’t look good, guys!” she warned.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this…” Oracle ominously agreed.

The flares of energy from the Holy Grail started to intensify in power and frequency. “Mona!” Fox demanded. “What do we do?”

Mona glared back at up at the Grail. “I don’t know what you are, but you can’t keep arbitrarily deciding all of this on your own,” he challenged. “Humans aren’t all stupid like you say they are!”

“Hmph,” the Grail dismissed with a derisive scoff. “Indolent, foolish humans. You shall offer your hearts to me…”

“I offer you nothing but your death!” Akechi roared furiously. He leaped at the Grail with his blade in hand, but he was too late. A beam of brilliant light erupted from the Grail, slicing across the room and hitting all of the Phantom Thieves, blasting Akechi back towards his allies. The Grail laughed as it completed its attack. “Now, the time for the fusion has come…” it proclaimed.

Fox was the first to notice a major change in the surroundings. “The ground!” he pointed out frantically. The entire floor was being bathed in pink light, with more tiles being covered in that light with each and every second.

“It’s…disappearing?” Noir asked incredulously.

“Hell no…” Skull tried to deny, but there was nothing he or anyone else could do. Akechi tried to raise his sword and attack the Grail one more time, but he was too slow. The light proceeded to cover the entire floor, and then blaze upward in a pillar of brilliance that completely blinded them.

When the light faded, the Phantom Thieves wearily got back up on their feet. The moment they reoriented themselves, they were shocked to discover that they were back in Shibuya, right in front of the entrance to the subway station.

“Is everyone okay?” Ann was the first to ask, looking frantically around at her friends as they struggled to get off the ground.

“Owww…of course we are!” Ryuji grunted as he climbed back on his feet.

“Our clothes are back to normal,” Akechi observed. The Phantom Thieves looked at themselves in shock as they realized that he was right. “It appears that the Holy Grail ejected us out of the Depths of Mementos and back into the real world.”

“Why would it do that, though?” Makoto wondered. “Why not just destroy us ourselves, if it had the power to do so?”

It was a good question, and one that Akechi was fairly certain that he wouldn’t like the answer to.

“And more importantly,” at this point, doubt began to creep into Makoto’s voice. “Did we…lose?”

“For now,” Ren conceded, a dark expression on his face. “We might have lost this battle, true. But the fight isn’t over yet.”

“Perhaps, but going back to fight the Holy Grail for a round 2 doesn’t mean a damn thing if we don’t have a plan,” Akechi pointed out.

The Phantom Thieves looked down on the floor, pondering their next move and their next strategy for fighting the Holy Grail on more successful terms. But before any of them could say anything, Oracle looked up. “Huh?” she mumbled, realizing that something was off.

Before she could even begin to process what was happening, a spiky, bone-like pillar identical to the countless ones they had seen in Mementos erupted out of the ground, shooting up high into the air. “Eeeeek!” Futaba screeched, backing away from the spike that nearly impaled her. The Phantom Thieves could only stare around them in disbelief and horror as countless other spikes and bony structures manifested all around them, while rain the color of blood began to rain down from a similarly crimson-tinted sky.

“Mementos here in…Shibuya?” Makoto whispered in stunned horror. “Is this what that thing meant by fusion?”

There was no mistaking it. The real world and Mementos itself were indeed fusing together, creating a twisted hybrid that was a horrid corruption of the streets and buildings of Shibuya. But what was even more shocking than the transformation itself, was the complete lack of reaction by practically everyone else around them.

“Man, what great weather,” a man spoke near them, in completely normal conversation. “Wanna go for a drive?”

“Hello, yes,” a similarly oblivious businessman spoke into the phone at the same time, “it’s about tomorrow’s preliminary meeting…”

“The announcement for the new smartphone is tonight!” a third man exclaimed, completely unaware of the horror that was infecting their world.

“What were the Phantom Thieves all about anyway?” a woman asked, in a haughty and dismissive tone that made it abundantly clear she didn’t care about the answer.

“Oh man, hearing that brings back memories!” a similarly oblivious man replied without a seeming care in the world. “I feel so dumb for even believing they existed.”

“It was fun news, though,” a different woman commented. “I doubt anyone believes they’re around anymore.”

Yusuke was the first to vocalize what they were all thing. “Why isn’t anyone noticing this abnormality?” he demanded, the frustration clear in his voice.

“It’s probably because they don’t feel that it’s odd,” Makoto reluctantly admitted.

“Bah,” Akechi spat on the ground in disgust. “To think that the public could somehow end up being this disingenuous and ignorant…”

Before he could say anything else, however, Futaba let out a gasp of pain and collapsed onto her knees, clutching her head in agony. Ryuji rushed over to her side. “What’s wrong?!” he asked worriedly.

“Ohhh…” Futaba groaned. “I feel…woozy…Nngh…”

Ann was now at her side as well. “Futaba, hang on!” she pleaded. She tried to reach out a hand for her as well, but then a burst of pain exploded in her body, and she fell to the ground next to the friend that she was trying to help. “Nngh!”

“Ann-chan?” Haru whimpered. She wasn’t even given the time to try and help her friends out, however, before she suddenly collapsed to the ground in pain alongside them.

As one, every single one of the Phantom Thieves began to collapse onto the ground in pain. Including Ren, and including Akechi. “Rrrgghh!!!” Akechi let out a snarl in both pain and fury. “What the FUCK is this?”

“Is this…by the Holy Grail..too?” Makoto could barely get the words out, so intense was her pain.

“That…son of a bitch…” Ryuji gritted his teeth in pain and fury. “Goddammit! What’s this creepy-ass shit about…ugh!” He collapsed onto the ground in a burst of pain, and when he lifted up his hand, he was horrified to discover that his hand was missing. “Aaggggghhhhhhh!” he screamed in horror. “My-my hand!”

“Ryuji!” Ann exclaimed in horror. Before she could do anything to help him, she fell back onto the ground in pain, pieces of black smoke disintegrating from her body like a Shadow that had just been destroyed.

“This…can’t be real…right?” Makoto pleaded as she beheld her own disintegration.

“What the fuck…” Akechi gritted his teeth as he witnessed his own body disappear along with the others. “What the FUCK?” he shouted the last word.

“What is happening to us?” Yusuke whimpered.

“No…no!” Haru begged.

“My body’s…disappearing!” Futaba screamed, with more pieces of herself disappearing into nothingness with every second that passed.

“Don’t tell me…” Mona pleaded, but his words were interrupted by the mocking laughter of the Holy Grail echoing around the city.

“Heh heh heh heh…” the Grail’s voice taunted them, seemingly from everywhere and nowhere at the same time. “Indeed. This isn’t my doing. You imbeciles are about to disappear from the people’s cognition.”

“That damn voice…” Ryuji spat.

“Mementos and reality have become one…thus, those who have disappeared from cognition cannot exist anywhere.”

“You son of a bitch!” Ren snarled venomously, his voice dripping with the very same hatred that he had unleashed against the fake cognitive Akechi in Shido’s Palace, as well as Shido’s Palace. “So that was your plan for us all along!”

“Disappear my ass…what the hell?” Ryuji exclaimed. Before he could curse the grail one last time, he vanished completely with one final scream. “Aaaaaggggghhhhhhhhhh!”

“Ryuji!” Ann called out her friend’s name one final time, before she too vanished into nothingness with a scream.

One by one, each of the Phantom Thieves disappeared into oblivion, each having just enough time to let out a series of final words before they were forced out of existence.

“Morgana…where did we…go wro…” Makoto tried to ask, before she too vanished.

“…is this all my fault…” Morgana whimpered as Haru vanished, leaving behind only himself, Ren, and Akechi struggling to cling to existence. “Because I…brought you all there…?”

“No…” Ren’s voice was calm and firm, a complete contrast to the storm of panic and horror raging around them. “Listen to me, Morgana, Goro…this had to happen. There was no other way. This was a battle…we had to lose…”

“How, though?” Morgana asked him with a whimper. “We’re dying…this mission…is a failure…”

“We never give up,” Ren replied gently, but firmly, speaking with the voice of Joker even through the pain. “Not until…the very end. It’s not over…until it’s over…”

Morgana closed his eyes, feeling a modicum of calm enter into the raging tempest that was his thoughts. He couldn’t see a way out of this, but his leader apparently could. And that was comfort enough for him. “You’re right…Ren…” he murmured, as his body began to vanish into oblivion just like his friends. "I’ll try…to the very end…”

Now, is it was only Ren and Akechi left, the two of them sprawled onto the ground in pain. “Tell me…the truth…Ren…” Akechi barely managed to get the words out through his pain, even as he clung to existence with all of his strength. “Is this truly…not over…or is this merely…some empty comfort.”

Ren turned to face Akechi, giving him a clear look at his face. The one thing that Akechi dreaded to see most at this moment was an expression of shock or hopelessness. An expression that would mean that Ren had been completely blindsided by their impending disappearance, his foresight failing him when it had mattered most. Or that he had seen this inevitable doom coming, and had been completely hopeless to stop it.

But that was not what he saw on Ren’s face at all. Oh, Ren’s face certainly lacked any sort of surprise at the apocalyptic events that were unfolding. Akechi could clearly see grim acceptance in Ren’s face as he stoically and unflinchingly accepted the seeming end of their existence. But what was most important to Akechi at that moment was Ren’s eyes. The fire that burned within them every time he conquered a challenge, the utmost confidence in himself as he tore down any challenge that came across his way.

That fire of determination still blazed as strongly as ever within his eyes. No, if anything…it burned brighter than ever. Even as he was disintegrating into nothingness, Ren refused to give into his fate. He still intended to fight to the very end.

And that, more than anything, gave Akechi a bizarre sense of hope. No matter what the source of Ren’s bizarre and borderline absurd clairvoyance, he hoped that it had given Ren a warning of the destruction that was about to befall upon them.

And he hoped that, just as he had countless times before, Ren had a plan to deal with even this most disastrous of scenarios…

Chapter Text

When Ren woke up after seemingly being dissolved into oblivion, the familiar sight of the Velvet Room and his cage in the prison was the first thing that he saw. Across the barred and locked door, Igor leered at him with a malevolent gleam in his eyes.

“In the end, your rehabilitation was not carried through,” the hook-nosed entity declared with in his deep and gravelly voice. “It appears I have overestimated you…”

“Oh, really?” Ren retorted as he rolled his eyes. “Because I was just thinking that maybe I overestimated you and how much help you’d actually be, Igor.”

Caroline banged the door with her baton. “Shut your mouth, you incompetent prisoner!” she yelled. “How dare you insult our master like this!”

“We offered you so much assistance,” Justine added somberly, “and in the end, all of it was for naught.”

Igor sneered. “Humans are more apathetic…and more foolish than I had thought them to be,” he proclaimed, his voice utterly scornful and dismissive. “The world will soon see its ruin…”

“And how are you so sure about that?” Ren challenged. “How are you so convinced that humanity is doomed? I almost wonder if you’re the one behind that so-called ruin, Igor…assuming that it even exists to begin with.”

Igor laughed. “Oh, I assure you, Inmate…ruin is as inevitable as the flow of time itself. And I care naught for your futile denial of the truth. Not when you have lost the game. You were meant to bring change for mankind as a Trickster, but it seems that was too much for you.”

Ren smirked. “Perhaps you underestimate just how much I have changed behind the scenes,” he suggested. “I’ve done more than you think I have.”

“It matters not,” Igor ignored his prisoner. “In accordance to the game’s rules, the defeated must pay a price. Your life is forfeit.”

Ren curled his lip in disgust. “And what gives you the right to decide whether I live or die?” he spat. “I never wanted to be a part of your stupid game to begin with!”

“Yet you played the game regardless, and you have lost,” Igor retorted. “I sentence you to be executed.”

Caroline’s and Justine’s eyes widened in horror, and they gasped as they stared at their master in shock.

And yet that was nothing compared to Ren’s reaction. Ren expected Joker to rage in denial, or accept his defeat in despair. But instead, Ren did the last thing that anybody would have done in his situation.

He began to laugh.

“Heh heh heh heh…heh HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!” Ren laughed, the sound dripping with contempt, mockery, and a complete disregard for Igor’s declaration. “You actually you think you have the power to carry out that sentence? All I see is a feeble old man with a nose too big for his face, sitting there in your pretty little chair and doing fuck all to help me while Caroline and Justine did all the actual work in guiding me through my so-called rehabilitation. You? Execute me? What a fucking joke. I don’t think you have the power to execute a fucking mosquito, let alone someone like myself.”

Igor’s eyes flashed angrily, exposing the true ugliness that lurked underneath. “You dare…”

Ren grinned. “Come on then, Master of the Velvet Room,” he taunted, “why don’t you actually back up your threat instead of spouting cryptic bullshit out of your mouth for once in your pathetic existence?”

“Your denial means nothing in the face of God’s judgment!” Igor snarled, but the condescension and arrogance was gone from his voice, replaced with pure rage. “God’s decree is absolute!”

Ren let out another bark. “You actually think yourself a God?” he asked incredulously, clearly trying not to break into another laughing fit. “Damn, and here I thought Shido was a prideful piece of shit. You somehow take arrogance to a whole another level.”

Igor gritted his teeth, furious at how the insolent prisoner continued to mock him. “Grant that man the death he deserves,” he barked at Caroline and Justine. “Make him pay for his failure and for his arrogance.”

Caroline shuffled uncomfortably. “…if that is what our master wishes,” she murmured, her tone clearly conflicted.

“That piece of shit doesn’t deserve to be your master,” Ren’s words were now directed towards her, but instead of mockery, they were gentle but filled with the firm conviction of a man who absolutely believed in what he knew to be the truth. “He doesn’t deserve to be the master of the Velvet Room.”

“…” Justine looked down at the ground, shuffling uncomfortably.

Before she could say anything, however, Igor interrupted them. “What is the matter?” Igor growled. “Carry out his sentence at once.”

“…are we really going to do this?” Justine asked, sounding like she was trying not to cry.

“Don’t falter now!” Caroline exclaimed. “We have to do this! We have to see justice served!” She banged her baton against the cell door, Ren stepping back as it crackled with electricity.

The door swung open as soon as Caroline hit it, and Ren stumbled out of the jail cell, falling onto the floor. “Gah…” he muttered. “I hate these goddamn prison clothes…” As he looked up, he saw that Caroline and Justine were bringing out the two magical guillotines that they had been using for fusions. Guillotines that they were meant to be used on him. All the while, Igor looked on, sneering at him with the same mocking smile on his face.

“All right, inmate…” Caroline began. “We now proceed to the execution of the sentence.”

“Judgment must be unleashed upon the criminal who deserves it,” Justine agreed. “We cannot allow this grievance to continue any longer.”

Ren stared up at Caroline and Justine, each of their eyes staring back at his own. Without saying a single word, Ren slowly got up to his feet, glaring back defiantly all the while. Once he was fully standing, he allowed his power as a Wild Card to flow through him and blaze outward, transforming him into Joker, Leader of the Phantom Thieves, in a brilliant burst of blue fire. Behind him, the lock on his cell door shattered into pieces, disintegrating the door itself only seconds later.

“To think that you would still show your rebellious spirit after all that…” Caroline commented, her voice sounding almost…admiring…despite their situation. “Insolent as ever, aren’t you, Trickster?” She turned to face Justine, a smirk growing on her face. “Are you ready, Justine?”

Justine nodded back. “It is time for the guilty to receive their just reward,” she proclaimed solemnly.

“Let us show our strength…to the Trickster who never gave up, no matter what!” Caroline shouted. “Death to the deceiver!”

And the moment Joker heard those words, he knew the time had come. “NOW!” he shouted.

Caroline and Justine whirled around, compendiums in hand. Igor barely had time to widen his eyes in shock as Caroline summoned a beam of hellish fire from the sky that surged towards him, erupting the ground around him in devouring flames. At the same time, Justine fired off a vicious blast of pure Kinetic energy towards the so-called Master of the Velvet Room. Igor was so caught off-guard by these unexpected attacks that he didn’t have time to either dodge or protect himself. The Inferno and the One-Shot Kill tore at his body, and he let out an inhuman roar of agony and rage. At the same time, Joker summoned Cybele and unleashed a Vacuum Wave, the cyclone so devastatingly powerful that it flung Igor to the opposite end of the room, causing him to crash against the wall with a thickening thud.

“Insolent brats!” Igor roared, all semblance of civility vanished without a trace. “You dare to revolt against your master?”

“To rebel against the proprietor of the Velvet Room would truly be an unforgivable sin,” Justine acknowledged, all trace of doubt gone from her voice.

“Except that you’re not our master!” Caroline shouted furiously, seething hatred in every word. “You’re just an imposter who stole our master’s rightful place! Our true master would never forsake humanity!”

“We owe you nothing!” Justine declared, her voice for once almost as animated as her sister’s. “You have no claim over the Velvet Room, you have no claim over the Trickster, and you have no claim over us!”

Joker grinned, and nodded at the two twins in approval. “Well said, my friends,” he praised. “Your job is to guide and protect humanity, not abandon them when they need you to most. And you have no idea how happy I am to see that you never forgot that.”

As he finished his sentence, a brilliant blue butterfly glowing with mystical power manifested in the Velvet Room. Joker, Caroline, and Justine watched as it floated around them, and a different girl’s voice manifested in the room. “It is time for our wish to be realized,” the butterfly praised the twins. “It is time for our deception to come to the end.”

“Yes,” Justine agreed. “We faithfully played our roles in this farce as necessity demanded, Trickster.”

“You have no idea just how ANNOYING it was to pretend that this fake was our master for a whole year!” Caroline complained.

“But now…now it is time to cast aside the lie,” Justine smiled at Joker, before pointing towards the guillotines. “You know what must be done.”

“You will accomplish nothing!” the fake Igor snarled, trying to summon what looked like a pulse of Almighty energy in his hand. But he never got the chance to finish it, for Joker had already summoned Lucifer and blasted Igor with a Morning Star. The imposter barely had time to vanish out of the way of the colossal Almighty explosion, but it gave Caroline and Justine more than enough time to rush towards the guillotines and prepare themselves. Joker quickly activated them, sending the two lethal blades towards the Twins, who disappeared into a swarm of butterflies and reformed into a singular being.

Lavenza opened her eyes, whole for the first time in an entire year, and gave Joker a brilliant smile, her eyes filled with warmth and happiness. “It is finally good to see you again, Trickster, after so long,” she greeted him with her beautiful voice.

Joker returned the tender smile with one of his own. “You have no idea how happy I am to see you again, Lavenza,” he answered kindly.

“It was most aggravating to stand in the presence of this abomination for an entire year, pretending that I knew nothing about his deception and his usurpation of my true master,” Lavenza admitted. “Even knowing the truth, there was a part of me that despaired, knowing that I was allowing my master to languish in captivity, no matter the necessity. But now,” her warm smile returned, this time with a burning determination, “now it is finally time for us to free him from his chains.”

“So…” an unwelcome voice interrupted them, and both Joker and Lavenza realized that the fake Igor had re-materialized after narrowly avoiding Joker’s Morning Star. “The two of you have known about each other’s existence from the very beginning. An unpleasant surprise, and one that I did not include my calculations…but it means nothing in the end.”

As one, Joker and Lavenza turned towards the source of the voice, their gazes hardened into merciless glares. The false Igor had returned and was now floating in the air, his aura now dark as his body glowed with unholy red energy. The exact same energy that Joker had felt flowing through Mementos. “I will concede that you have taken me by surprise with your moves, but the game is far from over,” the false Igor declared. “Whether the human world is left as it is, destroyed, or rebuilt, it is all sport to me.”

“So our entire existence is nothing more than a game to you? You think you have the right to decide our fates when you don’t clearly don’t give a shit about us?” Joker spat on the ground. “Disgusting.”

“I am the only one with that right!” the false Igor retorted. “If I were to put it into words that you can comprehend, I am the Holy Grail that grants wishes…no, I am far more than that. I am the god who responds to desire and holds dominion over man. I hoped seeing a righteous thief vanquish evil would spur mankind to change their own indolent heart. However…the result is as you know. The masses have made it so none of it has transpired. Humans should be met with ruin: you brought forth that answer.”

“Just because you made it so that the public has forgotten the Phantom Thieves, doesn’t mean that the good they did doesn’t exist anymore,” Joker retorted. “Kamoshida isn’t abusing students, Kaneshiro isn’t terrorizing all of Shibuya, and Shido’s crushed by the guilt of his own sins. The fact that their Shadows are now shambling around doing fuck all doesn’t change the fact that they’ve stopped terrorizing the innocent, and their evil will never happen again.”

“Perhaps,” the false Igor conceded. “Despite their ultimate futility, Inmate, you have accomplished much with your power. And that is why it may be worth re-evaluating you. You dared to journey to the deepest pits of Mementos, and beheld my true form as the Holy Grail. You have surprised me more than once, including in this very moment, establishing and concealing your relationship with the Attendant so that I could not see their disloyalty until now. No foolish commoner or indolent prisoner of the masses could carry out such a feat.” The being nodded his head in acknowledgment. “Your ideals are misguided, but you most certainly did not bore me.”

“I’m glad to exceed your expectations,” Joker sarcastically replied. The moment he finished the words, he felt the familiar sensation of a bond strengthening. A bond that was one he most certainly did not want to advance, considering the nature of the entity that he had bonded to.

I am thou, thou are I…

Thou has turned a vow into a blood oath.

Thy bond shall become the wings of rebellion

And break the yoke of thy heart,

Thou hast awakened to the ultimate secret

Of the Fool, granting thee infinite power…

FOOL Bond Rank 10!

“…why the fuck is this bond even advancing right now?” was Joker’s only thought. The idea of even initiating this bond angered him on a fundamental level…but it was a necessary evil.

The false Igor chuckled. “Perhaps observing you a while longer may prove amusing,” he commented. “I shall grant you an opportunity to make a deal with me.”

“What kind of a deal?” Joker asked, keeping his voice carefully neutral.

“Should you wish it, I shall return the world to its prior state – one rampant with distorted masses,” the false Igor offered.

“You forcefully dragged him into the Metaverse and imposed an ordeal on him that he did not deserve!” Lavenza shouted furiously. “Yet you still intend on toying with him?”

“The Phantom Thieves will be praised and gain fame,” the false Igor continued, pointedly ignoring Lavenza. “The world will escape ruin as well. It is everything that you could have ever wanted, Trickster. What say you?”

“…I see what you are offering me,” Joker replied in a low voice. “Power, prestige, the Phantom Thieves worshipped and adored. All for the low, low cost…” a surge of soul-searing hatred and disgust entered his tone, “…of being your obedient little slave.”

The false Igor’s smile faded. “So you refuse my generous offer?” he questioned with a hint of menace.

Joker glared back at him, not fazed by the implicit threat in the slightest. “You have nothing of value that you can offer me,” he retorted. “I don’t care about the so-called fame and fortune you’re offering in front of me. I don’t care about power, because I already have all the power that I’ll ever need. And I despise everything that you stand for, false god,” he growled. “The very idea of reducing humanity to a crowd of brainless lemmings is something that disgusts me to the very core.”

Lavenza smiled at him, the expression filled with admiration and approval, even as she glared murderously at the false god who had usurped her master. “Well said,” she praised. “Humanity needs no god to rule over it.”

“You want my loyalty? Then here’s my answer,” Joker snarled. “I reject you, now and forever! The only thing you could possibly give me that I would want is for you to go fuck yourself!”

“Such irredeemable foolishness…” the false Igor sneered. “You choose death for yourself? Very well. I have no need for you.”

A grin stretched across Joker’s face, this one tinged with cruelty and malice. “Your days are numbered, false god,” he hissed. “Crawl back to that little prison keep you call home. Judgment is coming, and unlike each and every one of our targets, I’m going to personally make sure you don’t survive it.”

Grabbing his mask, Joker summoned Yoshitsune, who lunged forward at the fake Igor without even needing a command from Joker. But as fast as Joker was, the God of Control had already intended to depart from the Velvet Room at that moment, and was able to vanish away right as Yoshitsune’s blade sliced through the air where he had been seconds before. “Dammit!” the leader of the Phantom Thieves cursed. “I was hoping to get an early shot in before that bastard left!”

Lavenza giggled. “Do not worry, Trickster,” she reassured him. “The God of Control is gone from this realm, and he will not be able to return.” Her joyful smile widened. “And with him gone, our master can be free from his imprisonment once again!”

As if on cue, a brilliant orb of bluish light manifested in the middle of the room, surrounded by black chains representing its imprisonment. Joker and Lavenza watched as the chains shattered and the blue orb exploded outward, revealing an unconscious but very much intact Igor resting on his desk.

“Master!” Lavenza called out in worry as she hurried towards him.

“Mggghhhhh…” Igor groaned as he slowly regained his senses. His eyes fell on Joker, who waved at him with his red glove and a cheeky smile. Igor’s eyes widened…and then a delighted look entered his eyes.

“My, my, Trickster…it has been quite a long while since our paths last crossed,” Igor greeted him cheerfully despite his obvious fatigue. “I take it that your mission so far has been a success?”

“Damn right it has,” Joker replied a grin of his own, but this time there was nothing but goodwill and mirth in it. “All of my friends are more powerful than they’ve ever been, even if they don’t know it. And with my help, Goro’s finally abandoned the path of destruction that he was walking for so long. He may not ever be a friend and comrade the way the other Thieves are, but ever since I exposed him to the truth, he’s been nothing but a loyal ally to us in our quest.”

“Good. Good!” Igor praised. If possible, his grin widened even further. “If there was anybody who could save your fellow Wild Card from the path of ruin and self-destruction that he had committed himself to, it would be you, my Trickster. Out of all the goals that you sought to accomplish for yourself, this might very well have been the most difficult. And the most dangerous.”

“But I got it done, and now there’s only one task left.” Joker glared up hatefully at the ceiling. “To destroy the so-called God of Control that wants to turn us into nothing but slaves.”

Igor clasped his hands together gently. “Indeed, Trickster, but be wary,” he warned. “You have performed marvelously up until this point. But do not forget that you can still fall to your arrogance. Your journey has taken you far, but take care not to stumble at the end of the road!”

Joker nodded in understanding. “I know, Igor,” he solemnly agreed. “I’ve made my fair share of mistakes in the past. I won’t let myself be stupid enough to make one that could cost me everything I’ve worked for.”

Lavenza smiled at him. “Then you know what to do next,” she declared. “Release your teammates, those who share in your conviction, and chose to risk everything to rally under your banner.

“I wouldn’t dream of starting this final battle without my friends,” Joker agreed, before a knowing smile spread across his face, “and I know just who I’m going to talk to first.”

A Few Moments Later…

Akechi sat sullenly in the prison cell he had found himself in. He had initially been relieved when he had first woken up, as it meant that he had not truly been banished into nonexistence. But that relief had quickly turned into frustration and outrage when he realized that he was locked away in a cramped cell, with no way to break out. Even his Metaverse powers and his Persona refused to come to him, no matter how much he called to them.

Ren had promised him that the fight against the Holy Grail was not over, but just where the hell was he? And how exactly were they supposed to fight against that overgrown sippy cup, when he was stuck here completely incapable of being useful to anyone or anything?

He was about to sink back into his brooding when he heard footsteps racing towards him. Akechi perked up to see Joker running towards him, still wearing his Metaverse outfit. He felt a bizarre mixture of relief and annoyance at seeing his rival already escaped from whatever bonds he was trapped in. “Of course he would have already found a way,” he thought dryly as Joker slowed to a walk, then stopped in front of his cell. “Took you long enough,” he deadpanned.

“Sorry,” Joker replied with a shameless smirk. “Had to deal with an annoying god with an ego too big for its head.”

“…did you just say god?” Akechi asked dully, making sure that he hadn’t heard incorrectly.

“Well, to be precise, a malevolent, arrogant entity who only thinks he’s a god,” Joker clarified. “The very same thing as that giant piss-colored cup we tried to fight down in the Depths of Mementos.”

“I don’t suppose you were able to destroy it in the moments before you came here to rescue me?” Akechi inquired.

Joker chuckled mirthlessly. “Since when did anything in our lives go that smoothly?”

Akechi didn’t bother to answer what he knew was a rhetorical question. “What happened after we vanished from Shibuya?” he asked instead, figuring that the smartest course of action would be to get an update on what had happened up until now.

“I found myself in the Velvet Room after we got vaporized by the giant sippy cup,” Joker explained. “He had been pretending to be this old guy with a crooked nose, a fake guide to help me through a so-called rehabilitation to save myself and humanity.” The leader of the Phantom Thieves scowled. “All a steaming pile of bullshit, of course. I figured that out the moment he tried to fucking execute me.”

Akechi sneered. The very idea of Joker willingly and meekly walking over to and accepting his own death was as disgusting as it was ludicrous. “I imagine you took exception to that,” he commented.

“If by take exception, you mean I told the piss-colored cup to go fuck itself and fired a Morning Star at its face amongst other things, you’d be correct,” Joker drawled.

Akechi smirked. “I’d lose any and all respect I had for you if you did anything different,” he replied. “So let me guess what happened after. You exposed the cup for what it was, it started screaming a bunch of high-and-mighty bullshit about how it was superior to you and was going to destroy you, blah blah blah, sound about right?”

Joker’s smile was still present on his face, but it suddenly adopted a different quality to it. One that Akechi couldn’t qualify. “Almost,” he semi-confirmed. “Most of what you said was completely true, but there was one additional thing that you didn’t mention. The cup offered me a deal. A deal where if I agree to serve it, it would stop the merging of Mementos with reality and give us control over a population too trapped in its distorted delusions to think for itself. The Phantom Thieves would get all the fame and fortune we could ever want, so long as we didn’t lift a single finger to save the public from giving up its free will.”

The look that entered Akechi’s face couldn’t be described as anything less than pure, hate-filled rage and disgust. “What the fuck!” he spat, so great was his antipathy towards the very idea that it made him look almost bestial. “A world filled with mindless sheep, completely unable to think for themselves? Completely incapable of making its own choices, with life itself stripped of any and all meaning? I’d rather die than live in such a world!” he snarled.

“Glad we’re on the same page,” Joker agreed. “That cup had absolutely nothing of value to offer me, and I made that loud and clear when I sent Yoshitsune to try and slice it to metal scrap after I told it to shove its offer up its ass.”

Akechi gave Joker a vicious smirk of his own, before his facial expression suddenly turned pensive. “I do have to say, Joker…your patience with our rotten, corrupt society never ceases to amaze me,” Akechi admitted. “Even after they denied your existence, slandered you and hunted you after Okumura’s death…even after they clung to Shido and their precious desire for social order, ignoring all the good that you tried to do and pretending that you don’t even exist…I simply have to ask. How do you still have the will to fight on their behalf?”

To his surprise, Joker started laughing at his question. Akechi might have been insulted by this reaction…if it weren’t for the fact that the laugh itself was bitter and scornful. A laugh that Akechi knew for certain was not directed at him. “It was never about fighting on behalf of society’s,” he corrected, “or being the heroes that society wanted us to be. We both know that society’s definition of justice is a disgusting, pathetic perversion definition that doesn’t deserve to be anywhere near that noble ideal. A justice that lets corrupt and powerful jackasses like Shido trample over the lives of innocent people with zero consequences, and lets orphans like you suffer alone just because it doesn’t give anyone any reason to actually give a shit about your well-being. If I gave a shit about that kind of justice, then I would’ve accepted the golden cup’s deal and let the public of Tokyo rot in their own delusions. It would’ve been exactly what they deserve.”

Akechi couldn’t completely hide his shocked expression at seeing Joker of all people speak so viciously and callously. True, he had seen flashes of that hatred before, aimed at mongrels like Shido who absolutely deserved it. And he’d be the last person to condemn Joker for his contempt towards the masses of Tokyo, as it was a sentiment that had been brewing within him for years, and burned strong even with his conversion to the Phantom Thieves’ cause. But it was another thing entirely to hear Joker, the kind and noble leader of the Phantom Thieves who stole the hearts of the corrupt to reform society, hold the same level of spite and disdain towards the public that he did. Yet one more point of similarity between them, despite the different pathways that they had ultimately taken.

“If you care that little for the justice of society, and you care that little for society’s beliefs, then why refuse the false god’s offer?” Akechi couldn’t help but wonder.

The bitterness and hatred vanished from his rival and friend’s face, replaced with kindness and patience that were a complete opposite to his previous emotions, mixed with an unrelenting conviction in his ideals. “I told you part of the reason before,” Joker answered. “As a Phantom Thief, I followed my own definition of justice, not anyone else’s and certainly not society’s. A justice that involves helping and protecting the innocent, giving them the strength and means to build their own lives and rise above their oppressors. All while punishing those oppressors, forcing them to feel the guilt of their sins and making sure that they can never crush the innocent ever again. That is the justice I believe in, and it’s the justice I’ll fight to the death to uphold. No matter what stands against me, even if it turns out to be society itself.”

Akechi sighed. He couldn’t mock Ren for his convictions, not when they were ones he could respect, his ethically questionable methods aside. “For all the good that did you,” he muttered bitterly. “Society clearly doesn’t give a shit about what you believe in, any more than you do about them. Was it really worth it to you, in the end?”

“Absolutely,” Joker affirmed, “and that’s the second big reason why I refused the false god’s offer. It was never about the masses of a society who don’t give a shit. It’s about the few people I’ve met throughout the year in Tokyo who actually did. People who, with a little help from me, saw through the corruption tying them down and made the decision to fight against it. Confidants who became my only friends throughout the year when everybody else in Tokyo probably wouldn’t give me the time of day. I wouldn’t have gotten nearly as far as I have as a Phantom Thief without them.”

“It’s these individuals that you truly fight for, isn’t it?” Akechi asked, already knowing what the answer was going to be. And there was something in him that felt…warm…about the fact that Joker had included him in that list despite his initial betrayal. Not that he was ever going to say that out loud, of course.

“They’re the ones who earned my loyalty, yes,” Joker confirmed with a nod. “My relationships with my confidants didn’t always start out smoothly. Some of them started purely as business. Some of them wanted something from me first, and a few of them were a straight-up pain in the ass to deal with. But together, we formed unbreakable bonds. I gave them the tools to break free of society’s oppression and fight for their own futures, and not a single one of them disappointed me. To abandon the world to the piss-colored cup’s schemes, to throw them back into a stagnant world and leave them trapped in countless distortions…it would be the ultimate betrayal, in every possible. A betrayal of the principles that define what it means to be a Phantom Thief. A betrayal of the confidants who did everything they could to make me stronger, just as I did everything I could to strengthen them. A betrayal of my closest friends, who risked everything, including their very lives, to join me in my quest to see justice done.”

Joker tilted his head, giving Akechi a knowing smile. “And, based on what we just spoke about, it would also be a betrayal of you.”

Akechi was silent for several moments after Joker made his proclamation. “…well, I’m glad to see that you don’t plan to shit all over your principles at the moment when it matters the most,” he finally replied, but in his eyes, Joker’s could see genuine respect and even admiration, no matter how carefully his rival might try to hide the latter.

Joker snickered, before sighing. “I’ve said this before, Goro, and I’ll gladly say it again. The two of us might be different in a lot of ways, but there’s a lot of ways we’re the same as well. We both had the potential to rebel against a society that did everything it could to kick us down, and in our own ways we both fulfilled that potential, even if we did in ways that we’d never agree with each other on. I was the lucky one between the two of us. I was able to find friends only a short time after I first arrived at the godforsaken hellhole called Shujin Academy, and those friends defined the time of person I would become as a leader of the Phantom Thieves. You didn’t have anyone to turn to when you first found your power. The first meaningful relationship you had since your mother died was with fucking Masayoshi Shido,” Joker venomously spat the name before quickly calming down. “A despicable pile of human garbage who probably didn’t know what it meant to have an actual, functioning relationship with another human being until we changed his heart. Who wouldn’t turn into sociopath if that was your only meaningful relationship for literal years?”

“As someone who has stood at the side of that wretch for years on end, I can certainly agree with your sentiments,” Akechi deadpanned.

“But we share a lot of similarities too,” Joker continued. “And right now, there’s only one that matters more than anything else.” His face broke into another grin, this one sinister and vengeful. “We both want to tear that false god off of his fucking throne.”

Akechi looked straight into Joker’s eyes, and a menacing, savage grin appeared on his face. He instinctively called upon his Metaverse powers again, as he had tried to do so many times in the past, but this time it was different. Perhaps it was the fact that Joker was now here, his presence giving him strength that he could never have accessed alone. Or perhaps his wrath was now combined with a clarity of purpose, allowing him to focus on his fury instead of wildly lashing out against his cage in a blind rage.

Either way, his attempt succeeded. Blue flames roared around Akechi, the outfit of the Black Mask replacing the attire of the charming Detective Prince. With a roar that was filled with both rage and triumph, Akechi raised his sword and swung it against his prison door, shattering the metal to pieces with a single, mighty slash. He walked out of the cage and past the broken pieces of mystical metal even as they faded away, barely giving them a second glance as he focused his attention on his leader and his very first friend.

“So what’s the plan now?” he asked. “We might still be alive, but that doesn’t mean we’re any closer to killing that sippy cup now than we were before,” he pointed out.

“Oh, you don’t have to worry about that,” Joker reassured him with a smirk. “The piss-colored cup won’t be able to pull off his trick merging Mementos and reality again, now that it’s already done it. And more importantly, I’ve already figured out its weakness. So when we come back for a round two, we’ll be ready to beat it into the ground for real.”

“Good enough for me,” Akechi hissed.

Joker nodded. “Go up to the Velvet Room, where Igor and Lavenza are waiting,” he instructed. “Before we move on, I have to free the rest of my friends from their cages. Igor and Lavenza have a lot to share with all of you.”

So he was right about the Phantom Thieves surviving and being locked away in their separate cages, just like he had been. “And then?” he prompted, eager to hear the answer.

Joker’s eyes flashed. “And then we kill a god.”

Chapter Text

Once Akechi had freed himself from his cage, Joker instructed him to go to the main Velvet Room and wait there while he released the rest of their friends from their respective prisons. It didn’t take very long before the leader of the Phantom Thieves to accomplish this, and after a few minutes all of the Phantom Thieves had assembled at Igor’s desk, notably in their Metaverse attires just as he was dressed in his.

“What is this place?” Fox wondered, looking around him nervously.

“Who’re they?” Queen asked, clearly thinking along the same processes as Fox.

“An excellent question,” Akechi mused, looking over at Igor and Lavenza expectantly for answers.

“My name is Igor,” the old man with the crooked and long nose introduced himself. “I am the master of the Velvet Room.”

“And I am Lavenza,” the young girl with golden eyes wearing a blue dress also greeted them, “a resident of this place as well. We have been waiting for all of you.”

“Velvet Room…?” Noir repeated, clearly confused.

“My master has just been released from a long period of imprisonment,” Lavenza explained. “His powers have not fully returned.”

“You mean by that false god Joker just booted out of this place,” Akechi mused, putting the pieces together.

Everyone looked towards him in surprise. “You know of him?” Lavenza asked incredulously.

Akechi shook his head. “Only the bare bones of what Joker told me,” he replied. “All he told me was that there was a false god that used to run this place and he kicked the fucker out.”

“The heck, dude?” Skull exclaimed towards Joker. “Why didn’t you tell any of us this earlier?”

“Didn’t really see the need to when Lavenza was going to explain things anyway,” Joker answered. “I only told Akechi because, more than anyone else here, he had a right to know.”

“The hell do you mean by that?” Akechi asked, but before Joker could give an answer Lavenza continued.

“I will explain shortly,” the Velvet Room attendant gently promised. “Though it may be presumptuous of me, I will speak on his behalf.”

“Hold on!” Panther exclaimed. “Where’s Morgana?”

Lavenza smiled. “Would you like to see him?”

Joker grinned. “Bring him over!” he declared.

Lavenza giggled. “He’s right behind you,” she pointed out.

Everyone turned to see the feline creature waddling up to them on his legs. “That’s where you were hidin’?” Skull spluttered.

Morgana ignored him, lost in his own thoughts. “I…was born here,” he murmured, his voice getting stronger as he gathered his thoughts. “It was to dispel an evil being from man’s spiritual world…”

“Mona…?” Oracle couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

 “My role was to find the Trickster and help him defeat it,” Morgana explained. “That’s why I was created here by master.”

Joker smirked and pointed a thumb towards Igor behind his shoulder. “Indeed,” Igor agreed, the grin on his face widening ever so slightly.

“I really remember everything now,” Morgana declared. “When this place was about to be taken over, my master gathered the last traces of mankind’s hope. He mustered up his remaining strength to make me.”

Lavenza sighed sadly. “The entity that calls itself a god is a malevolent will that forces man into everlasting servitude. It hopes to attain eternal peace by filling reality with those who have stopped thinking for themselves. That is the ruin of man that this evil god envisions.”

“So we have another fucker running around who’s just as much of an arrogant piece of shit as Shido, only this one has enough power to believe himself a god,” Akechi summarized. Once Lavenza nodded her head in confirmation, he smacked his mask with his clawed gauntlet. “Fuck everything.”

“…not how I would have phrased it,” Panther muttered, before sighing, “but I can’t say I disagree with him.”

“This…god…that you’re talking about…is that the Holy Grail that we saw in the Depths of Mementos earlier?” Queen asked nervously. “I was wondering why it had a will of its own, but are you implying that it isn’t a Treasure?”

“Oh, it’s a Treasure all right,” Joker answered for Lavenza with a scowl on his face. “It’s just that this Treasure has amassed so much power as the distorted desires of all of Tokyo rather than just one person that it’s managed to gain a will of its own.”

“…this Treasure became a god because people wished to be ruled over?” Noir frantically asked.

“That is correct,” Lavenza confirmed. “To decide the fate of the world, it chose two people with potential and pitted them against each other. One – Goro Akechi – incited the masses’ distortion. Had he won, the world would’ve been destroyed and remade. The other was a Trickster who would stand up against this…that was Ren Amamiya. Such was the game that the false god had arranged…until Ren did what was impossible, and managed to convert Goro Akechi away from the path of ruin shortly before what would have been his fated demise.”

“If Ren won, the world would be left as is…” Morgana continued. “Those were the conditions of the game – at least, that’s what should have happened.”

Lavenza scowled. “That malevolent being knew that a revolution would not occur within indolent humans. After all, it is the masses’ distorted desires incarnate.”

“So the game was rigged from the start,” Akechi realized. “Joker clearly won the game, even if he did it by converting me to his side rather than wiping me off the board. So humanity should’ve been left alone…but this evil so-called god clearly didn’t give a shit about any of that, considering what the fuck just happened,” he spat the last few words.

“My master believed in humanity,” Lavenza’s scowl disappeared, and she smiled admiringly at Joker. “He believed that a Trickster would rise among the people and accomplish this change. That evil entity laughed at the prospect, and sought to prove the powerlessness of man with the game. Ren Amamiya had great potential…which his why it approached him.” The scowl returned. “It helped train the Trickster, only to cast him into despair, using the masses who rejected their savior. This was likely its means to nip in the bud anything that would pose a threat.”

Dark amusement entered Joker’s eyes. “Too bad for that false god, I knew something was wrong from the very beginning,” he sneered. “I saw through its bullshit long before it tried to pull its little trick off, and I didn’t need that fucker’s help to get where I am today.” The smile became gentle when he looked at Lavenza. “All I needed was Caroline and Justine to help me, and once I helped them see through the false god’s bullshit too, we pretended to go along with the false god’s game until the time was right to give that piece of shit the boot.”

Lavenza nodded in affirmation. “Now that I think back to when I was separated, I always felt a disagreement to the word rehabilitation. After all…” her brow furrowed in anger, “it was just a means for the fake to keep you under surveillance.”

“Basically, both Joker and Akechi were dragged into a game where the evil god rigged the outcome,” Morgana summarized.

“Dammit!” Skull cried out in frustration and outrage. “What the hell?”

“Lavenza was talking like I was the only one manipulated and deceived by the false god,” Joker added with a grim tone, “but that’s not true at all. Akechi might not have met the false god until we fought him at the Depths of Mementos, but he might have been pulled along like a puppet even longer than I have.”

All eyes turned towards him, especially Akechi. “Come again?” he asked, his voice dangerously calm.

“The malevolent entity might have attended to Ren personally, but you were his favored player, as you were the one who represented the ruin that the he wished to bring about to the world,” Lavenza explained, gazing at him with an impossibly sad look in his eyes. “He looked upon you, a tragic, orphaned child who had suffered far more than any child should ever have to suffer, a child consumed by bitterness, sorrow, and hatred…and he found a perfect pawn.”

“That false god was the one who gave you access to the Metaverse,” Joker continued the explained. “He forcibly awakened Loki within you, a Persona representing your rage and your viciousness without the more reasonable parts of your personality to balance you out, so you could play your role as the Destroyer in his game. Once you swore yourself to Shido, you were the perfect pawn to wreak havoc in the Metaverse and throw society into chaos with all the psychotic breakdowns and mental shutdowns you caused. It didn’t matter that you were only doing this so that you could take down Shido later…you were doing exactly what both Shido and the false god wanted you to do.”

Lavenza sighed. “Even if you had succeeded in your goals, Goro Akechi…it would have all been for nothing in the end. Your struggle against the man who wronged you and ruined your life meant nothing to the false god. For Masayoshi Shido, despite being utterly corrupt to his very core, was nothing more than a pawn himself, an excuse by the false god held up as a justification for why the indolent masses deserved to be ruled over under his iron fist. And once Mementos and the real world were fused, the false god would have eliminated you from existence, a discarded tool with no further use. Just as he attempted to wipe away your existence now.”

Everyone’s eyes turned to Akechi, who had remained silent throughout the entire explanation. Though he had not spoken a single word, they could all feel the sheer, overwhelming fury emanating from the depths of his soul at that very moment. “So you’re telling me…” when he broke his silence, it was with a deathly calm that was more terrifying than if he had started shouting, “that my entire life, my entire quest to get justice on the man who ruined my life and forced my mother to commit suicide, was nothing but a giant joke to some cup with an overinflated ego? A cup that allowed a mongrel like Shido to get into power and played us all like puppets just so he could have an excuse to take over the world?”

“I am sorry that this is the truth, Goro Akechi,” Lavenza confirmed sadly, “but that is indeed the case.”

“I see…” Akechi replied. And now, he chose to scream.

“ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!” he roared, a sound of pure hatred and loathing, aimed solely towards the entity who had destroyed any meaning that the last 2 years of his life might have had to satisfy his own power-hunger. Every single one of the Phantom Thieves flinched at the inhuman roar, and even Joker couldn’t help but grimace.

Once Akechi had finally calmed himself, Joker slowly approached Akechi and gently placed a hand on his shoulder. Surprising everyone, even himself, Akechi didn’t bat the hand away, accepting the small gesture of comfort from the other pawn in the malevolent entity’s sick and twisted game. “The hardest chains to break are the ones that you can’t see,” Joker spoke with a gentle yet firm voice. “You had not one, but two sets of those kinds of chains wrapped around you, Goro. One set from Shido, and another set from this false god. I showed you those chains for what they truly were, but it’s up to you whether you break free, or keep yourself enslaved.” Joker’s mouth stretched into a grin. “And if I know you as well as I think I do, I think we both know what you’re going to do.”

“You’re goddamn right about that!” Akechi spat the words out angrily, before suddenly adopting an expression of unnatural calm again. The fury was still absolutely there, lurking just underneath the surface, but it was now an icy wrath as opposed to a blazing, uncontrolled rage. “When I saw my cognitive double in Shido’s Palace, the cognition that you destroyed, Joker, I realized that I was a fool, and had been a fool ever since I pledged my allegiance to Shido. But I had no idea just how much of an utter imbecile I had been, until this very moment. You were the one who opened my eyes, Joker,” the fury was still there, but now Akechi spoke with open, genuine respect. A respect that had always been there even when Akechi had believed that he hated his rival, and had only grown since the day of the interrogation. “You showed me the way to break free from the strings of arrogant and deceitful puppetmasters, and for that, I owe you a great debt indeed.”

“Heck yeah!” Oracle agreed. “Nobody deserves to be used as a tool like that, not even you!”

“I’ve spent my entire life being someone else’s puppet, someone else’s slave,” Akechi growled. “But no more. My life is my own to live, and nobody else’s to control. From now on, my power will only serve me, and the causes that I choose to believe are worth fighting for.” Joker smirked at Akechi’s declaration, and Akechi returned it with a confident one of his own. “And right now, I can think of no better cause than to smash that cup with an overinflated ego to pieces. Wouldn’t you agree, Joker?”

The smirk on Joker’s face evolved into a full-blown grin. “I couldn’t have said it better myself, Akechi,” he affirmed.

“Well said!” Lavenza praised, her eyes glowing with adoration for them both. “Well said, indeed!”

And then, something unusual happened. Something that had never happened before, not even to Joker.

Blue flames erupted around Akechi’s body, billowing outward until he was covered in a pillar of flame. Above his head, Loki and Robin Hood both manifested into existence, the two Personas representing the different aspects of Akechi’s character. Vengeance and justice, savagery and nobility.

“Oh, my!” Noir exclaimed.

“What the fuck!” Skull spluttered. “What’s going on?”

“It appears that Goro Akechi is about to reach the ultimate evolution of his Persona!” Igor explained, sounding utterly delighted. “The Persona that represents his truest self, and therefore the pinnacle of his power!”

“So his Persona’s evolving?” Oracle exclaimed. “No way!”

The two Personas turned to face each other, before dissolving into miniature storms of blue fire. The vortexes collided with each other, creating a single tempest of flame that blazed stronger than either of the original two. When the flames finally faded, a new Persona stood in place of Loki and Robin Hood. The Persona had a heroic and warrior-like build similar to Robin Hood, complete with a bow and weapon very similar to Akechi’s nobler Persona. But unlike Robin Hood, Akechi’s new Persona had the black color scheme of Loki, as well as red emblems on his body that reminded the Thieves of Loki’s giant flaming sword. From his visor glowed two red eyes that emanated cold, unflinching justice, a perfect balance between the vengeful savagery of Loki and the virtue of Robin Hood.

“Allow me to introduce you all…to Hereward!” Igor announced.

Akechi grinned as he felt the power of his new Persona flow through him. “This is great…I feel so alive!” he cackled. “So, this god wishes to force his corrupt order upon all of humanity? Then I’ll sow chaos across his plans and cast them into the same ruin he wished to force upon us!”

“Hell yeah!” Skull whooped. “That false god’s not gonna know what hit him!”

Akechi felt a sensation in his mind, the same sensation that he felt whenever he learned a new skill. “Rebellion Blade,” he mused, “Colossal Almighty damage to one foe. Damage increases if the foe is downed.” He grinned. “Yes, this will do nicely.” It didn’t take long for him to decide to remove Attack Master and replace it with Rebellion Blade, rationalizing that the immediate attack boost wouldn’t matter for most fights, and that Joker would be giving them his triple buffs for the fights where the attack boost would matter.

“So…what happens now?” Queen wondered.

Akechi answered with a menacing laugh. “Now, Queen…now we do exactly what Joker said we would when he freed me from that prison cell. It’s time to commit some deicide!”

“I would not be so hasty,” Lavenza warned. “Your real world has already been fused with Mementos. You do not exist because reality is replete with the cognition of those who deny the Phantom Thieves. It can be said that the world is one step away from the evil god’s machinations.”

“Fuck that noise!” Akechi snarled. “I’m not going to let an inconvenience as minor as nonexistence get in the way of the vengeance and justice we deserve!”

Lavenza smiled. “It is good that you refuse to yield, because there is still hope. Ren Amamiya…now that the evil god’s identity has been exposed, you can see your journey to its completion. Because of your unique power, you can leave this prison with your friends at your side, and save this distorted world and its captive people.” She glared fiercely at Joker. “You must challenge the evil god, reclaim your existence in reality, and set right the wrongs of the past. Are you ready?”

Joker grinned. “You have no idea just how ready I am to destroy that false god and all the distortions he’s caused, once and for all!” he declared as he pumped his fist into the air.

Skull was right behind him. “Let’s destroy that annoying, shiny Treasure jerk for sure this time!”

Igor chuckled. “Excellent…” he gave Joker a meaningful glance. “There is nothing for you to fear. You already possess the strength to oppose this evil god. I am truly looking forward to this!”

Lavenza smiled and pointed towards Morgana. “He knows where the exit is. Morgana, please guide them,” she gently instructed with a small bow.

“Hold on,” Joker interrupted. All eyes turned to him. “Before we leave, I want to give Akechi a gift. A congratulations for evolving his Persona, and a show of trust.” He reached into his pocket and took out a card. Fox immediately recognized it as one of the many skill cards Joker had sometimes given him to duplicate.

Akechi read the words on the card. “Drain Bless.”

“You might not have been trained to use your Wild Card powers properly, but you’re still a Wild Card at heart, and you might be able to use Skill Cards like I can because of it,” Joker explained. “And more importantly, I noticed that despite Hereward being much stronger than before, he’s still weak to Bless attacks. Drain Bless will take the element that’s your biggest weakness, and turn it into something that heals you whenever you get hit by a Bless attack.”

“Yes…” Akechi murmured, immediately recognizing and appreciating the value of the gift that Joker was offering him. A weakness in the Metaverse could be downright lethal depending on the enemy being faced, and the false god would undoubtedly be the most powerful foe that any of them would have faced so far. Fighting the malevolent entity and his possible servants without a weakness to worry about was a valuable advantage that spoke for itself, especially when he could be healed from that same element instead.

What was even better was that Joker’s gift didn’t open up a possible liability for the Phantom Thieves. Akechi would never willingly betray the Phantom Thieves at this point, but they were fighting a malevolent entity powerful enough to be considered a god, an entity that they had no knowledge of. Akechi couldn’t discount the possibility that the entity might try to mentally enslave him with brainwashing and force him to fight for its cause, no matter how hard and how thoroughly he would resist such a despicable fate. Even if that did happen, it would barely affect the Phantom Thieves at all. None of them attacked with Bless attacks to begin with, and the idea of Joker being stopped by such an inconvenience was laughable in the extreme. What did it matter to invalidate one method of attack, when Joker had a limitless arsenal of offensive powers to choose from, each just as deadly as the last?

“This will be a very useful skill, Joker,” Akechi continued as he promptly replaced the Evade Bless in Hereward’s skill set with Drain Bless. “Thank you very much indeed.”

“Man, I really wish we could use those skill cards ourselves!” Skull whined. “Can you imagine if I had Drain Wind? I’d be unstoppable!”

Panther sighed. “If only I never had to worry about an Ice attack ever again…”

Lavenza giggled. “You have more than enough power to defeat the malevolent god without the use of Joker’s skill cards,” she assured them, before her expression turned sad as she looked down towards Morgana again. “Thank you for all that you’ve done, Morgana. It is a cruel responsibility that was cast upon you.”

Morgana nodded. “I will accept your words of appreciation fully when everything is over,” he declared. “First, we have a god to kill! Follow me!”

The feline Phantom Thief raced out of the Velvet Room prison, the rest of the Phantom Thieves following behind. Soon, they found themselves in front of a long staircase leading upwards, and they followed Morgana up the stairs until they were standing in front of a metal door with a red light glowing faintly above it.

“What’s this?” Skull asked. “It’s one hell of a door.”

Akechi’s eyes narrowed. “There’s something about this door that looks familiar…” he muttered. “I swear I’ve seen it before.”

“That’s our exit,” Morgana declared. “Come on, let’s go!”

Akechi brushed aside his thoughts and, alongside the rest of the Phantom Thieves, followed Morgana past the metal door.

When they crossed the threshold, the Thieves were shocked to find themselves back in Shibuya. “Huh?” Panther exclaimed. “We’re back in Shibuya again?”

“This is where our bodies disappeared,” Akechi pointed out. “I suppose it would only be logical that we would find ourselves back in this location specifically.”

They gazed around the city, which still looked like a Mementos-ridden hellscape with bony spires jutting out of the sky under a crimson sky that rained what looked disturbingly like blood down onto the streets. “It seems like people still haven’t realized the abnormality that has taken over the city,” Queen murmured.

Fox turned around and gasped. “Look!” he pointed out, attracting the other Thieves’ attention. “The door that we just came through! If I remember correctly, this is the Quarantine Cell!”

Joker snickered. “Remember when I said earlier that I knew who the prisoner of the Quarantine Cell was?” he asked. “Well, I was technically telling the truth. After all, who knows me better than myself?”

“Ughhh…really, Joker?” Panther sighed, shaking her head at her friend’s antics.

“I knew something was off when Joker claimed to know who the prisoner of the Quarantine Cell was,” Akechi groaned. “I didn’t realize it was something like this, though!”

Morgana couldn’t help but snicker at Joker’s antics, before adopting a serious expression. “On a more serious note, the Quarantine Cell was actually the Velvet Room, swallowed by distortions.”

“So Joker-kun was the dreaded prisoner of the Quarantine Cell that all the other prisoners were talking about,” Noir realized. “It all makes sense now, given how he was seen as the biggest threat by the false god.”

“Joker had been under the malicious guidance of the evil god for quite some time,” Morgana explained, “even if he saw through the disguise and was only pretending to play along. The Velvet Room originally existed to nurture the human mind, but after it was taken over…it was sealed inside that bastard’s nest…inside Mementos.”

“Uh, Mona?” Oracle had only just realized that her friend’s body was glowing. “What’s going on with you?”

“You’re shining!” Queen pointed out.

Morgana didn’t look at all concerned. “It’s probably because my memories have returned,” he explained. “I know what my duty is now.”

Before he could say anything more, he was interrupted by a crowd of people a short distance away. “Wait a sec, w-what’s with those w-weirdly dressed guys?” a man called out in confusion.

“I feel like…I’ve seen these costumes before,” a woman murmured.

“Oh! Aren’t they…the Phantom Thieves?” another man realized.

“Wait, this is different from before!” Panther exclaimed. “Can they actually see us now?”

“Well, well…” Akechi sneered. “It looks like this hopeless, deluded crowd of fools might finally be waking up after all.”

“It doesn’t look like it’s everyone,” Queen pointed out. “Only a handful of people in this large crowd.”

“It might be because of Mona’s light!” Skull exclaimed, making a surprisingly astute observation.

“Either way, they’re starting to remember the Phantom Thieves!” Noir exclaimed, delight clear in her voice.

“The key of hope…” Oracle murmured.

“Guide us, Mona,” Fox requested. “Where must we go?”

Mona walked over to large ramp-like path made up of what looked disturbingly like the spine of a great beast. “Over there! The bastard from earlier should be in that temple!”

Joker grinned. “Then let’s go and show that false god why he shouldn’t have fucked with the Phantom Thieves!” he declared.

Akechi grinned, Hereward calling for retribution within the depths of his soul. Soon, the false god would pay the ultimate price for interfering with his and his rival’s lives.

Soon, the blade of chaos would shred apart the false god’s corrupted order, and justice would be served.

Chapter Text

The Path leading to the Holy Grail, or as Oracle called it, the Qlippoth World, was different from the Depths of Mementos in many ways. The most obvious difference was that they would now need to climb up to the entrance of the Holy Grail’s temple in the far distance, compared to descending into the abyss. The nature of the path itself was also a stark contrast, as it was made entirely of the disturbing spine-like structures they had only briefly seen in the Depths, that interlinked and intertwined with each other to form a path leading upward. And finally, instead of countless jail cells, they were now surrounded by the countless skyscrapers of Tokyo, which shrank smaller and smaller beneath their feet as they ascended higher up the Path of the Holy Grail.

Of course, all of these changes were barely an afterthought in Goro Akechi’s mind. There was only one thought that mattered to him: to make the false god of Mementos pay for his crimes.

“Can you see that further in?” Mona pointed high above them in the distance. “That’s the temple.”

Skull grinned. “Heh, it’s nice knowin’ there aren’t gonna be any bullshit traps or nothing this time!” he commented.

“Then that should make our ascent all the easier,” Akechi replied. “So why are we wasting our time standing here?”

The Phantom Thieves raced up the Path until they reached a large, circular platform with several spines reaching up around its edges like claws. As they approached the platform, Mona suddenly stopped them. “Hm…? What the…” he spluttered.

“What’s up?” Panther asked.

“I’m sensing something up ahead,” Mona warned.

Joker groaned. “Probably some miniboss that the giant golden sippy-cup is throwing at us to try and stop us, for all the good that’s gonna do him,” he muttered.

“Figures that we can’t just go waltzin’ in there without a care in the world, huh?” Skull sighed. “Whaddaya say, Joker?” he asked.

“Gimme a sec,” Joker replied as he switched his active Persona over to Attis. “Okay, I’m good to go.”

“Moving your triple buff Persona to the very start of the battle? Not a bad plan,” Akechi approved.

The Thieves advanced into the platform, and Joker’s words proved prophetic once again when they were stopped by Oracle. “Careful!” she warned. “Enemy incoming! It’s pretty dangerous!”

Queen groaned. “Sometimes, I hate it when you’re right, Joker,” she sighed as a red and black explosion erupted in front of them, signaling the arrival of a Shadow. Unlike all the other Shadows that they had come across so far, however, this one was a metallic angel whose entire body shone with a brilliant gold. Yet the aura it exuded was cold and chilling, malevolent and soulless despite its radiance.

The aura emanating from the angel flared outward, briefly blinding the Thieves, before it faded away. The metallic angel had vanished, replaced with a pale-skinned angel wearing gold and red armor, towering over them as he wielded a sharp sword in his right hand. “Absconding from your cells is forbidden,” the Herald of Death commanded imposingly. “Return to your prison posthaste. Those who wish to disturb society shall be slain on the very spot they stand.”

“This so-called false god actually thinks he’s the Judeochristian deity of the Abrahamic faiths?” Akechi asked contemptuously. “What a fucking joke.”

“More importantly, I’ve got a better idea,” Joker retorted back to the archangel. “How about you eat shit and die?”

“You’re the one who’s disturbing it!” Panther viciously agreed.

“So be it. Dissenters must be destroyed. Perish in the depths of your folly!” the Archangel shouted back.

The Phantom Thieves adopted their battle positions as the Archangel prepared to strike. Joker immediately fired up a Concentrate on himself, while Akechi fired off a Debilitate at Uriel and Queen fired off an Atomic Flare that did a decent amount of damage to the Archangel.

“Mona,” Akechi suddenly turned towards him. “If you’d be so kind, would you cast President’s Insight on myself? There is something that I would like to try out.”

“Uh, sure thing, Crow,” Mona replied as he used the Ring of Greed to empower Akechi with a Concentrate as Uriel finally made his move. The Archangel grabbed both of his hands with swords and lifted it towards the sky. A winged Angel spawned out of the ground next to Uriel, one on each side, summoned by Uriel’s power.

Akechi let out a bark of derisive laughter when he saw the Angels. “Ahahaha, what the fuck is this?” he asked incredulously. “Are we on the Path leading up to the Holy Grail or back in fucking Kaitul?”

“These Angels are probably a lot more dangerous than the ones that we’ve normally faced…” Joker started, before breaking down into snickers. “Oh, who am I kidding, I don’t give a fuck about these pieces of shit. “Arsene, MAEIGAON!”

A demonic figure dressed in a cropped red eighteenth century-esque suit and wearing a black top hat manifested next to Joker, his majestic black wings spreading wide from his back. Akechi couldn’t help but marvel at Arsene, as despite hearing about him from the others this was the first time he had witnessed Joker’s original persona personally. The gentleman thief perfectly represented the man Joker had become in a way that no other Persona did, the hidden self of Ren Amamiya revealed in all of his glory. And predictably, Arsene emanated the same aura of overwhelming might and power that every single one of Joker’s personas (apart from his deliberately weak but deceptively dangerous Rangda) had possessed.

The demonic gentleman thief flung a clawed hand out towards the trio of angels, unleashing a powerful blast of Curse energy underneath them. The angels shrieked as Arsene drowned them in malicious and devouring darkness, the weaker summons being annihilated instantly by his power. Uriel himself, on the other hand, stood strong despite taking a significant amount of damage.

“Baton Pass to me please, if you’d be so kind,” Crow requested.

Joker shrugged and passed the baton to Crow with a hand slap, the latter grinning as he felt the extra power of the Baton Pass flow through him. “Now then, let’s see what we can do with the new toy we’ve just been given.” He raised his voice to a triumphant shout. “Come to me, Hereward! REBELLION BLADE!”

The black-armored, resolute warrior-archer formed from the fusion of Robin Hood and Loki manifested, glaring fiercely at Uriel as he raised a fist towards the Archangel. A mighty blade reminiscent of Loki’s Laevateinn suddenly manifested above Uriel, spinning crazily in the air for a few seconds before plunging down towards its target with a viciousness that even Loki’s Laevateinn couldn’t match. The blade sliced through the already wounded Archangel like butter, wiping out the what remained of his health and dissolving him into black mist with a scream.

“Holy shit,” Skull gaped, “that was fucking SAVAGE!”

“I’m a bit surprised Hereward doesn’t have a bow-themed attack given that he’s holding one, but I have to say the move itself fits Crow-kun quite well!” Noir commented with a giggle.

“Yes…” Akechi agreed with a vicious grin as he felt Hereward dissolve back into his subconscious. “This will do quite nicely.”

Before he could say anything further, a scream echoed from the streets far down below. The Phantom Thieves quickly rushed to the edge of the path and leaned down to see what was going. Although they were quite high up, they could see that the civilians were panicking and looking at their surroundings frantically, not comprehending but finally at least seeing the supernatural transformation that had consumed Tokyo.

“What was that?” a man exclaimed.

“Th-the city!” another man spluttered in horror.

“Wh-what’s going on here?” a third man frantically asked.

Akechi couldn’t help but sneer at the sight. “Oh, would you look at that?” he drawled. “It seems the ignorant dumbasses have finally started to wake the fuck up!”

“It seems they finally realize that their lives are in danger,” Fox agreed.

Skull scoffed. “Took ’em long enough!”

Queen was still horrified by the sight. “I can’t believe they didn’t notice the danger until it was so close to them…” she murmured.

Mona sighed. “Things are only going to get worse from here on out,” he groaned. “The entire city has stopped functioning. At least they can still panic for now…”

Panther brushed her hair away from her face in exasperation. “If people still don’t act for themselves after seeing all this…I’m sorry, but they’re hopeless!” she exclaimed.

“More to the point, the slothful effect on the people partially faded away after we killed the Archangel Uriel that the false god no doubt summoned to stop us,” Akechi pointed out. “Perhaps killing more of these Archangels will diminish the effect further.”

“You’re right, Crow,” Mona agreed. “These Archangels definitely weren’t just your ordinary shadow, they were definitely a cut above even the fiery red shadows. I think they might actually hold some of the false god’s power.”

Joker grinned. “Then I’m looking forward to wiping them out of existence one by one,” he commented. “Let’s keep heading up to the temple!”

Everyone voiced their agreement, and they continued past the platform. As they approached the next level of the path, they noticed that smaller, silvery metallic angels had started to appear. “It only makes sense,” Mona observed. “The people in the city recognized us, so it’s only natural we’d draw the enemy’s attention as well.”

“Well, they can bring it on!” Skull retorted. “I’m startin’ to get fired off!”

Akechi could feel his own bloodthirst roiling up within him, even if it was now tempered by Hereward’s influence. “Let’s send this false god’s little toys back to him in pieces!” he hissed.

Joker raced towards the nearest enemy, a metallic angel glowing with unholy red flames, and ripped its mask off, leaping back onto the ground as it transformed into an Abaddon behind him.

The benefits of having Hereward immediately made themselves apparent to Akechi as they fought the gigantic blob monster. Having Rebellion Blade meant that Akechi could now easily fight alongside Joker and the rest of his teammates to tearing the creature to shreds, instead of being forced to rely on the comparatively unimpressive Megidolaon or Debilitate thanks to the Abaddon’s many immunities. Not only that, but Hereward’s Trait had transformed into Ingenious Spirit, which halved the costs of both support skills AND Almighty skills. A trait that meant he could not only cast his Rebellion Blade without running out of energy too quickly, but also meant that Joker could fire off Lucifer’s Morning Star with what was essentially complete impunity.

An advantage that Joker promptly demonstrated by finishing off with said Morning Star attack at a cost comparable to a basic all-attacking Heavy spell. “And that’s another Shadow that can eat my shit!” Joker declared with a smirk as the Abaddon vanished into ashes.

With their power levels as high as they were, the Phantom Thieves had no trouble absolutely slaughtering any Shadow that they came across, their progress barely slowing down in the slightest until they reached another platform similar to the one that they had fought Uriel on. “Wait up!” Oracle called out to them with a warning. “I’m getting another reading from up ahead! Are you ready for this?”

“Already got Attis up in front,” Joker reported back, “let’s kick some Archangel ass!”

The Phantom Thieves continued onto the platform, and sure enough, another golden metallic angel appeared. This time, it transformed into a ruddy-skinned angel with blue armor, wearing a holy white tunic over his body. “Halt, rebels!” the Cleanser of Heaven shouted. “I shall not allow you to continue forth!”

Akechi sneered at the Archangel. “Just try and fucking stop us, then!” he spat.

“I’m with Crow, let’s beat this one too!” Mona urged. “More people should notice the Phantom Thieves if we just make ourselves seen!”

“That’s exactly what we want!” Noir agreed.

The Thieves got into battle formation, with Joker immediately switching to Alilat and firing up a Charge on himself. Akechi summoned Hereward again and unleashed a Rebellion Blade against the Archangel Raphael, smirking as he watched his Persona’s Almighty weapon slice through a chunk of the Archangel’s health. Queen fired off a Debilitate against Raphael, while Skull blasted Raphael with a God’s Hand.

Raphael lifted up his sword in the air twice, first fueling himself with the power of Heat Riser to cancel Queen’s Debilitate, and then Charging himself up the way Joker had.

“Let’s take this bastard down before he can get a hit on us,” Joker suggested, before taking off his mask to unleash his attack. “Yoshitsune, HASSOU TOBI!”

The legendary Japanese warrior and general appeared at Joker’s side and lunged towards Raphael, slicing the Archangel to pieces with the move that had torn countless enemies, both weak and mighty, to shreds with 8 lethal strikes powerful enough to tear the Earth apart in a blood-red circle. The Archangel groaned as Yoshitsune tore apart his body over and over again with his deadly blades, but thanks to the cancelled Defense debuff he was able to survive the blow with a portion of his health remaining.

Not that this would save him from Joker’s allies and comrades-in-arms. “Let’s see if a new dog can still remember old tricks,” Akechi commented as he moved to finish off Raphael. “Hereward, LAEVATEINN!”

The warrior who had inspired the tales of Robin Hood manifested and raised his fist towards the angel. Seconds later, Loki’s sword flew out from behind him, slicing cleanly through the Archangel’s body and splitting Raphael in half, causing him to vanish with a groan of pain.

“Heh,” Akechi smirked. “Still as useful as ever.”

Unfortunately, they didn’t have much time to revel in their victory. Another scream echoed from below them, and when the Phantom Thieves checked on the city this time they could see that people were panicking even harder than they had when they had defeated Uriel. To make matters worse, people were periodically dissolving into the dark wisps the same way that defeated Shadows did, disappearing and leaving nothing behind but grim implications as to their fate.

“Wh-what’s going on?” a businesswoman frantically asked. “Where are the police?”

“Th-that person just disappeared!” a timid woman pointed at the spot where a man had been standing seconds before inexplicably vanishing. “Th-they turned into some kind of black fog!”

“…I don’t know if the fact that they’re panicking even more now compared to before should be considered a good sign or a bad one,” Fox confessed.

“I don’t know, but it’s definitely not a good sign that people are just straight-up disappearing now,” Queen pointed out.

“We need to deal with this false god,” Joker declared grimly, “and we need to do it fast.”

Without wasting any time, the Phantom Thieves continued their ascent further up the path. There were more enemies, more metallic angels waiting to block their way, but the Thieves slaughtered them with the same lack of mercy that the false god had shown them when he had tried to eliminate their existence. Even the Abaddons were of little threat to them, for the Thieves had by now figured out a way to get past their strengths, and could easily destroy the blob monsters of Greed in a timely and efficient matter. In no time at all, they had made it up to the third platform, the Temple of the Holy Grail getting closer and closer with every step they took.

“It seems that we’re getting closer to the temple,” Noir pointed out what they had all noticed.

“And we’re getting closer to another enemy…” Oracle warned. “I’m getting a strong reading up ahead!”

Joker smirked. “And it’ll fail just as miserably as the last one,” he retorted. “Let’s get this shit over with.”

This time, when the golden metallic angel spawned and shone with light, it transformed into a green-skinned woman wearing golden armor and a white and red dress. Unlike her brothers, this angel’s face was gentle and serene, and it held a flower in her left hand along with the sword in her right. “Hold,” the Declarer of Anguish tried to appease them, instead of demanding their surrender like her brothers had done. “I bear you no malice, children of man. Return from whence you came,” she pleaded. “Proceeding further shall only serve to shorten your lives. I advise you not as a guardian, but out of the mercy of my heart.”

None of the Phantom Thieves were fooled. “Mercy? Don’t make me laugh! If you had mercy, you’d never be doing this to the world!” Oracle shouted back.

Crow gave the Archangel a look of pure disgust. “Your so-called god seeks to trap humanity in a slavery, and dares to call it freedom,” he snarled. “Your god and everyone who serve him can go rot in fucking Hell!”

The Declarer of Anguish only sighed in response. “Ah…even now, they answer is in weapons drawn…? What choice have I in the face of such barbarity? My children’s misconduct is mine to absolve, and mine to punish.”

The Phantom Thieves only drew their weapons in response, with Joker giving his entire team a triple buff just as he had always done at the start of every important battle. Joker fired off a Concentrate with Alilat this time around, while Akechi fired off a Rebellion Blade at the Archangel Gabriel. Queen fired off a Debilitate to weaken the Archangel after Akechi’s attack, while Fox stoically fired up a Charge of his own.

Gabriel lifted the arm holding the flower and held it out towards Akechi. A giant mallet imbued with divine yellow Bless energy appeared above him and slammed downward. Akechi grimaced as he tried to brace his body for the spell’s impact…only for the mallet to glance harmlessly off of his body, doing no damage whatsoever. Akechi blinked for a few seconds, before grinning as he realized what had happened. Ren’s gifting of Drain Bless to Hereward had saved him from the damage that he otherwise would have taken from Gabriel’s Divine Judgment.

Realizing that her attack had failed, Gabriel lifted her arm and fired another Divine Judgment, this time towards Joker. The leader of the Phantom Thieves only smirked as the divine mallet that she summoned bounced harmlessly off of him as well, no more effective against him than it had been against Akechi.

“Here’s what I think of you and your mercy!” Joker shouted. “Surtr, BLAZING HELL!”

The mighty fire giant of Norse mythology manifested and raised his flaming sword, unleashing the now-familiar infernal crater of molten lava underneath Gabriel. The Archangel shrieked in agony as the flames devoured her body, severely wounding although not outright killing her. This time, Akechi followed up his previous attack with a Riot Gun. Unlike his prior attacks, Hereward this time raised his bow and fired into the sky before unleashing the familiar bolts of kinetic energy that tore across Gabriel’s body. She collapsed onto the ground, clearly on her last legs, as Queen healed her team with a Mediarahan. This time, it was Fox who dealt the killing blow, summoning Kamu Susano-o to administer a graceful yet deadly Coup de Grace with his Brave Blade.

Archangel Gabriel let out a sigh of despair as she dissolved into nothingness, which was immediately followed by another scream from far down below in the streets of Tokyo. By now, the Phantom Thieves were so high up that they could barely even see the people in the streets far below, but even this minimal view was enough for them to understand just how chaotic and dangerous the situation had gotten. People were disappearing off the streets with increasing frequency compared to before, and the ones who still remained were running around frantically as they tried desperately understand what was going on and escape the fate of their fellow citizens.

“D-does anyone know where my friend is?” a man asked, panic clear in his voice. “He was right next to me…”

“No!” a woman screamed as someone in front of her vanished. “A person disappeared right in front of my eyes!”

“P-please save us!” a businessman pleaded to the uncaring world around him. “Someone! Anyone!”

The Phantom Thieves could only look on in silent horror at the chaos unfolding below them. Even Akechi, who cared nothing for the indolent society that had allowed so many crimes to go unpunished, could not find any joy in the sight anymore. “And this is what that false god thinks is salvation?” he spat in disgust. “What the fuck is wrong with him?”

“And to think that the public was actually distorted enough to not notice any of it at first,” Queen sighed. “I think you’re right, Crow. Those Archangels that we’ve been fighting definitely had something to do with it.”

“Indeed,” Fox agreed grimly. “Though they may not be true Servants of God, they certainly do live up to that moniker…”

Noir sighed sadly. “I wonder if the people in the city are okay…”

“The only way we can make sure that they’re okay is if we destroy that false god,” Joker warned. “We’re so close to the temple now, I can see the place where we entered the first time. Let’s not waste any more time getting there.”

“Yeah, that’s why we can’t lose. There’s only one thing we gotta do!” Panther declared.

The Phantom Thieves raced up the spine-like pathway past the platform where they had killed Gabriel. This time, there was only one large platform between this one and the one beyond, guarded by two metallic angels glowing with red flames. Knowing by now that those specific angels were Abaddons, the Phantom Thieves dealt with them with the same strategy that they had utilized before, destroying the monsters viciously and efficiently in short order.

“Great work, guys!” Oracle praised.

“All we gotta do is keep climbin’…we’re almost there!” Skull pointed at the entrance to the jail-like temple.

“It’s not gonna be that easy, though,” Oracle warned. “We’ve got another one of those angel things coming up, and it’s the most powerful one we’ve faced yet. Its readings are off the charts!”

“It must be because this is the final guardian,” Fox mused. “I expect it will be the most powerful of them all.”

“We’re not gonna let that stop us, though!” Joker declared. “If we killed the three Archangels before him, then we can kill this one too!”

“Let’s see just how powerful this so-called final guardian really is!” Akechi growled.

They made their way to the center of the platform, where a final golden metallic angel appeared. This one was bigger and exuded a more powerful aura compared to the others, and unlike the others it flew into the air before transforming into a red-skinned angel with golden armor, wearing a fierce expression on his face and carrying a mighty spear in his right hand unlike all the other Archangels.

“O, Dire Revelation,” the Apocalyptic Guide declared. “Never did I expect thee to slay all other Archangels…now only I remain.”

Akechi grinned sinisterly at the Archangel. “Then you can join your little friends in the grave!” he hissed.

“Dare thee destroy the very ruler thou wished for?” the Archangel retorted. “Human arrogance truly knows no bounds.”

“We never asked for this ruler to begin with,” Joker snarled. “And once we destroy you, we’ll make sure he’s next!”

“Dost thou long for freedom?” the Apocalyptic Guide asked derisively. “Dost thou revel in diversity? Since the dawn of time, man hath failed to quell the strife born of their own liberty. Now they finally seek the guiding yoke of a master’s rule. What empty justice seekest thou in defying their wish?”

“A justice that is less empty than the brainwashing and the slavery your sorry excuse for a god is trying to force on society,” Joker retorted.

“How can you say that people are free when they’re locked up in chains in this broken world?” Mona demanded.

“If someone has lost their way, then it’s our job to help them come to their senses!” Noir fiercely added.

“So,” the Archangel growled, “no sacrilege is beneath thee. For thy ideals, thou wouldst profane all that is holy. Thou art beyond all salvation!”

“Your speeches are beginning to fucking bore me,” Joker snarled. “If you think this god is actually worth anything,” he raised his knife towards the Archangel, “then shut the fuck up and start fighting. Because this is going to end in one of two ways. Either you die, or we die,” a sinister grin spread across Joker’s face, “and I don’t plan on dying until long after that I turn that cup into my personal toilet!”

“So be it!” Archangel Michael roared. “Prepare for judgment!”

The Phantom Thieves readied themselves for battle, with Joker starting the fight with his tried-and-tested strategy of powering his entire team with a triple buff and then empowering himself further with a Concentrate. Akechi experimentally fired off a Rebellion Blade at Archangel Michael, and scowled when the blade barely knocked off a visible portion of their enemy’s health. Queen fired off a Debilitate, as she typically did in these fights, and Mona powered up Akechi with President’s Insight in a perfect mirror of their opening moves against Archangel Uriel.

It seemed that they weren’t the only ones who were copying the battle with Uriel, for Archangel Michael lifted his sword and summoned two Angels, similarly to how Uriel did. “Oh joy, it’s this shit again,” Akechi muttered.

“Who cares?” Joker scoffed. “Arsene, you know the drill.”

The Gentleman Thief manifested and, with a sinister grin, snapped his fingers to unleash another powerful Maeigaon that instantly obliterated the Angels. Even with the Concentrate powering it up, however, the Archangel Michael himself was only mildly wounded at most. Joker passed the baton over to Akechi, who summoned Hereward and sliced through Michael with a now Concentrated and Baton Pass-boosted Rebellion Blade. This time, the Rebellion Blade tore through a much more noticeable part of Michael’s health, although the Archangel was still far from defeated. Queen fired off an Atomic Flare to damage Michael further, while Mona used the Ring of Greed to give another free Concentrate, this time to Joker.

This time, when Michael raised his sword, it was to cancel Queen’s Debilitate with his own Heat Riser, similarly to Raphael. However, unlike Raphael, he immediately proved himself to be a threat in his own right when he unleashed his own Megidolaon, the Almighty explosion blasting through all of the Phantom Thieves. Although none of them suffered a severe injury, the Megidolaon had been powerful enough to wipe away a noticeable part of their health. And for the first time, even Joker hadn’t been spared from the Almighty attack, although he was still much healthier than any of the other Phantom Thieves.

“Oh shit,” Joker whistled. “That was the first time I’ve actually been damaged like that in a while. Time to stop fucking around then. Lucifer, MORNING STAR!”

The imposing and fearsome devil of Christianity manifested behind Joker and, with a particularly fierce glare towards the Archangel that had been his nemesis in the War in Heaven, summoned an explosion of Almighty energy from the sky that made the Archangel’s own Megidolaon look like a pitiful firecracker by comparison. Although even this wasn’t enough to outright kill the Archangel, it did far more damage than Arsene’s Maeigaon, causing Michael to stumble in the air for a few seconds before regaining his posture. Akechi took advantage of the opening provided by Joker to fire off another Rebellion Blade, the deadly power of Hereward’s new Signature move tearing through even more of Michael’s health, forcing it well underneath a quarter.

“I don’t think we’ll be able to kill him before he fires off another attack,” Joker muttered to Queen and Mona. “Debilitate him again and then heal us.”

Queen nodded and recast the Debilitate onto Michael, while Mona healed them all with a Salvation. Archangel Michael pointed his spear towards Akechi, summoning another mallet empowered with divine energy to smash down on him just as Gabriel had done…with similarly useless results. “Nice try,” Akechi sneered disdainfully as Michael fired off a Swords Dance at Joker. The leader of the Phantom Thieves smirked as the swords bounced harmlessly off of him, Lucifer’s innate immunity to Physical attacks rendering his enemy’s second attack null and void.

Right as Joker was about to fire off another Morning Star against the weakened Michael, he suddenly felt a rush of familiar energy flowing through his body, and one look at Akechi told him that his rival had felt the same. “Well, well, well…” Akechi laughed. “It looks like this couldn’t have come at a better time. What say you and I finish this piece of shit off, Joker?”

“My thoughts exactly,” Joker replied with a grin. The two Phantom Thieves, bitter rivals turned to brothers-in-arms, leapt into the air, the power of the Showtime transforming the scene around them into the cityscape underneath a dark and stormy night. Even with his Persona transformed into Hereward, Akechi still had the power of Loki’s Call of Chaos at his beck and call, and he allowed his hatred and rage at the false god to consume him. With an animalistic, savage scream, Akechi raced towards Michael while Joker leapt from rooftop to rooftop. Joker leaped down onto the Archangel, slicing through his body with one clean slash from his dagger, before jumping out of the way and allowing Akechi to tear apart Michael with a ferocity that would have made the most savage and carnivorous animals on Earth to blush with envy. With one final slice of his sword, Akechi tore apart the chief Archangel of a false god, relishing in the death of his hated enemy as Michael dissolved into black wisps with a groan of dismayed disbelief.

“Damn, you’re still savage as hell even with Hereward!” Oracle whistled appreciatively.

Joker grinned. “Don’t mess around with what works, right?” he asked.

“My sentiments exactly,” Akechi agreed.

After the rush of battle faded from their minds, the Phantom Thieves turned their attention over to the Temple of the Holy Grail. There was now only a short path leading straight into the temple itself, the exact same opening that they had used to infiltrate the prison-like temple the last time they had tried and failed to face the Holy Grail in the Depths of Mementos.

“The Path to the Temple is open!” Mona exclaimed happily.

“No more of that Holy Grail shit doing whatever it wants!” Skull shouted, fury blazing in his eyes.

“Let’s go!” Mona urged.

Akechi, however, wasn’t so enthusiastic. “Wait just a second,” he interrupted coolly. “I think you all are forgetting something. Unless we figure out a way to stop the Holy Grail from leeching off the Will of the People, we’re not going to be any more successful at defeating it this time compared to before. The definition of insanity, after all, is doing the exact same thing and expecting a different result.”

“I completely agree,” Joker nodded, before a grin started to spread across his face. “It’s a good thing that I already have a plan for dealing with that stupid piss-colored sippy cup. It’s getting all that power from the veins connecting the prisoners to its top.”

The grin widened even more. “What do you think is going to happen…if someone cuts those veins completely?”

Chapter Text

“So do we all understand the plan?” Joker asked, his gaze focused on each of the Phantom Thieves.

“You got it, Joker,” Morgana nodded in affirmation, returning with a determined look of his own. The part he was about to play would arguably be the most important of them all, and he would not let his leader and friend down.

“When we fight against the Holy Grail, Akechi and I will focus on the actual damage,” Joker instructed. “Panther will try to get extra firepower in if she can, but if we run into trouble, she should focus on support and healing. And Mona will do the same once he gets his job done.”

“Got it!” Panther affirmed.

“Let’s do this!” Akechi hissed impatiently, eager to get his claws on the puppetmaster behind Shido and his own near-ruination.

Joker nodded and rushed forward onto the path leading towards the inside of the Temple of the Holy Grail. As he did so, the path began to crumble apart underneath his feet, but the leader of the Phantom Thieves deftly fired his grappling hook, catching onto the wall of the temple and effortlessly lifting himself up from the steep drop. Moving with inhuman grace and style, he flipped once in the air and landed neatly on his feet on the floor of the Temple, the other Thieves following closely behind him.

When they all landed onto the floor of the Temple, the false god was already waiting for them, still in the guise of Igor but bathed in an unholy red light that the true Master of the Velvet Room would never have emanated. “Rebels who choose to deny the Prison of Regression…” the false Igor growled, his voice less and less human with every word he spoke. “Why do you mere humans still dare oppose me?”

“Because your divinity, and your so-called right to rule, is nothing but a pathetic farce,” Akechi spat, speaking for all of them. “You might talk all this shit about being empowered by the will of the people, but you’re nothing but a tyrant looking to make humanity its slaves.”

“Stop acting like some kinda god!” Panther shouted in agreement. “You’re just a Treasure! Shut up and let us destroy you!”

“Fools…” the false Igor hissed. “Do you still not understand? Your actions shall not save a single soul.”

Joker sneered at him. “You think saving society is the only reason why we’re fighting you?” he retorted. “For being a so-called god, you don’t know the first goddamn thing about us. About me.”

The false Igor laughed mockingly. “Such knowledge will be of no use once you are destroyed,” he rasped. He flew backward, still laughing, as he transformed into the same gigantic golden cup that they had seen when they had first battled and failed against the Grail. “How do you think it is that I became a god to begin with?” he challenged.

“What is that supposed to mean?” Queen demanded.

“The freedom not to choose…” the Grail ruthlessly pointed out. “The freedom not to think…if every person pushed the burdens of their lives upon others, nobody would have to act for themselves. And who should be there to receive those burdens?”

“It sure as fuck shouldn’t be you!” Akechi spat.

“I am the only one who has that right!” the Grail bellowed triumphantly. “Humanity itself wished for the Holy Grail to be a god that would rule over them!”

Joker let out a bark of derisive laughter. “You’re so full of shit!” he spat. “Even if humanity’s thoughts gave birth to you, you did everything in your power to amplify that distortion and spiral it completely out of control! A vicious, neverending cycle that you worsened.” A vicious sneer appeared on his face. “And we’re going to make sure the punishment for that unforgivable crime is one that you’re not going to survive.”

“If you continue to reject my order, there will no longer be a place for you in this world,” the Grail warned.

“So you would have us live in this world as your puppets and slaves, without the free will to make our own choices and accept the responsibilities of those choices?” Akechi looked utterly revolted. “I would rather die!”

“Hmph,” the Grail snorted contemptuously. “So you wish to reject me…even if it means forgoing praise from those you wish to ‘save’…”

“I don’t give a fuck about their praise,” Joker fired back. “Never have, never will.”

“If you are not going to obey…” the Grail intoned, “then you shall suffer yet again. I shall bring down the hammer of judgment upon those who dare disrupt my world order!”

“Get ready!” Joker warned as Attis empowered them all with his Auto-Mataru/Maraku/Masuku aura. His words were meant for all of them, but especially Mona, who knew what needed to be done if victory was to be obtained.

“I am the one who grants the desires of the masses…” the Holy Grail declared imperiously. “I give life to their voices…” As if to demonstrate the truth of his statement, the Grail began to suck in more energy from the prisoners through the veins leading down into its mouth.

“I got this, Joker,” Mona murmured to him, before zipping off to hide behind one of the Grail’s hands.

In the meantime, Joker launched straight into the offensive, not even bothering to waste a turn Charging. He summoned Odin from within his soul, and the chief deity of Norse mythology unleashed a vicious Wild Thunder upon the Holy Grail, blasting mighty arcs of lightning all across the golden cup. The Phantom Thieves could see that Joker’s attack had visibly dented and damaged the cup, though not to a significant degree.

“Bizarre,” Akechi thought. Typically, Joker always opened up with a Charge or Concentrate before actually attacking against a powerful enemy. But he knew better than to question their leader’s methods, when they had proven their effectiveness time and time again. Akechi was sorely tempted to attack the golden sippy cup with Rebellion Blade or Laevateinn, but they were facing against a being that could be considered deity-like in power, and now was the not the time to be careless. Grudgingly, Akechi instead chose the disciplined move, and cast a Debilitate to weaken the cup as much as he could. Afterwards, Panther fired off her own Blazing Hell on the Holy Grail. Though it paled in comparison to the unstoppable infernos of Joker’s Surtr, Akechi still had to respect the power that Panther could unleash through Hecate.

Fortunately, the Holy Grail hadn’t noticed Mona’s disappearance. Unfortunately, it chose instead to fire off beams of light that scattered all across the arena. Joker was able to dodge in time, but both Akechi and Panther were hit. Neither was severely injured, but Akechi grimaced at the realization that Hereward’s new Drain Bless ability hadn’t affected it whatsoever. Clearly, the Holy Grail’s attacks were Almighty damage instead, and there wasn’t anything he could do to negate their impact on him. “Though if the Grail’s attacks really stay this weak, then maybe I won’t have to,” he mentally added with a sneer. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Mona climb up onto the Grail’s golden right hand, getting into position to carry out their strategy.

Joker once again chose to directly attack the Grail rather than empower himself beforehand, his sole purpose in that moment to distract the Grail from Mona until the real damage could be done. He summoned forth Arsene from within his soul, commanding his original and true Persona to drown the Grail in the powerful dark energies of Maeigaon. Akechi followed suit, his desire for vengeance and justice blazing in his soul, summoning Hereward to slash through the Grail with a deadly Rebellion Blade. Panther followed suit with another Blazing Hell, and by now the Grail was beginning to show visible signs of wear and tear.

Not that it mattered much at that point in time. “The masses that praise the Grail are infinite!” the Holy Grail boasted. “Their desires and power in turn grant me immortality!” As if to demonstrate the point, the Grail channeled the will of the people into itself through the veins, healing all of the damage that the Phantom Thieves had done to it up until that point.

“Not for long!” Mona whispered, before leaping into the air towards the top of Grail. Whipping out his sword, he spun rapidly in the air as he slashed at the veins, neatly and completely severing them with one deadly swing of his blade. The veins dissolved as Mona landed on his feet, rejoining the rest of the Phantom Thieves on the field of battle.

“It worked!” Oracle cheered. “How’s that?”

“Hmm?” the Grail realized what had just happened. “I am no longer receiving the strength of the inmates! You repugnant rebels…” he snarled venomously.

“Now it’s time to pay!” Joker shouted gleefully as he summoned Alilat to empower himself with a Charge. Crow wasn’t as patient, and immediately struck at the Holy Grail with Hereward again, this time with Loki’s signature Laevateinn. Panther powered herself up with a Concentrate, while Mona did the same to Akechi with a President’s Insight.

The Grail, seemingly desiring to avenge itself for the loss of its power source, fired an Arrow of Light at Mona, who deftly dodged the Almighty attack with a skip and a jump. Unfortunately, at that moment, the triple buff that Joker’s Attis had provided ran out, as did the Debilitate that Akechi had cursed the Grail with previously.

Joker visibly rolled his eyes at the inconvenient timing, before summoning Attis to recast Thermopylae on all of them. But this gave Akechi and Panther an opening to strike at the Grail with all of their might, and with the power of Concentrate flowing through both of them, their Rebellion Blade and Blazing Hell tore through a huge chunk of the Holy Grail. Damage that, this time, there was no way for the corrupt Treasure to heal off. Mona, in the meantime, threw a Debilitator Ofuda onto the Holy Grail, weakening it once again.

Unfortunately, the Grail still had some tricks left in its sleeve. As the Phantom Thieves watched warily, it began to channel powerful light energy into itself, until the entire Grail was radiating with deadly power.

“The enemy’s charging!” Oracle warned. “It’s going to be a big one!”

“Everyone, guard NOW!” Joker commanded as he adopted a defensive position. Knowing that the situation could be extremely dangerous if Joker of all people was on guard, the rest of the Phantom Thieves, including Akechi followed his command. The wisdom of this action was proven seconds later, when the Holy Grail unleashed a mighty blast right onto the Phantom Thieves that erupted into a massive pillar of Almighty energy, tearing through their entire half of the Temple. The Thieves gasped as they endured the power of the Grail’s wrath, but thanks to Joker’s warning and the preparation they had set up beforehand, none of them were gravely wounded even by the Grail’s strongest attack so far.

“Support’s on the way!” Oracle called out as she commanded Prometheus to heal her teammates, nullifying much of the damage that the Grail had just inflicted on all of them.

“Thanks, Oracle!” Panther cheerfully thanked her.

“All right, time to quit fucking around,” Joker growled. “Let’s tear this cup into a pile of scrap metal.” He grabbed his mask and ripped it off his face. “Yoshitsune, HASSOU TOBI!” he bellowed.

The legendary Japanese warrior manifested in front of Joker and lunged at the Holy Grail, his lethally sharp blades in hand. All of the Phantom Thieves were treated to the glorious sight of Yoshitsune absolutely shredding through the Holy Grail. No matter how many times the Phantom Thieves witnessed it, there could be no denying the sheer glorious Schadenfreude they all felt whenever they saw Yoshitsune eviscerate their enemies with his eight lethal slashes, and this occurrence was no different. Yoshitsune tore apart the rest of the Holy Grail’s health with his unique combination of brutality and grace, and as he dealt the final blow, the Prison itself seemed to react violently to its master’s defeat. There was a rush of energy that flew out of the Holy Grail and the sound of something shattering, before all of the cells surrounding them turned dark, as though a power source that had been coursing through all of them had just been abruptly shut off.

The Phantom Thieves panted heavily as the Holy Grail stood in front of them silently, seemingly deprived of all of the energy that had been flowing through it only moments before. “Hey…we did get him…right?” Skull asked hesitantly.

“I don’t think it’s going to be that easy,” Joker warned. “Mona, heal us all just in case.”

“Got it,” Mona agreed, summoning Mercurius to cast a Salvation spell to heal them all.

And not a moment too soon. Suddenly, the entire temple began to shake, as blue lines of light began to fly up from the floor to the top of the Temple, separating the walls into different sections. At the same time, the Holy Grail itself began to glow with a red ominous light, signifying that the battle itself was far from over.

“What the eff is going on?” Skull exclaimed. “This looks bad, you guys!”

“Keep on your guard!” Akechi growled. “It seems this Holy Grail still has some tricks left to play on us!”

The Thieves could only watch as the Temple began to split apart and reshape itself, while the golden metal surrounding the Holy Grail spread outward off of its body, transforming into a crown with what looked like golden wings revolving around it. At the same time, the Grail itself began to rise up, revealing itself to be merely be part of the head of what could only be described as a titanic metallic entity invoking the image of the divine and the angelic with its appearance. It looked vaguely like the golden metal angels that the Thieves had battled on their way up to the Temple, only most of its body was silver with only parts of its body being golden in appearance, most notably the frame of the gigantic silver and scarlet wings that spread out from its torso. And of course, unlike those Archangels, this new entity’s body was far larger than even the tallest skyscrapers in all of Shibuya.

“The Holy Grail…” Noir murmured in horrified awe, “in all its entirety.”

“Yaldabaoth…” Joker snarled under his breath, quiet enough that only Akechi could hear what he had said. He quickly glanced over at Joker, and was shocked to see the sheer overwhelming hatred that he had felt from him during their confrontation with Shido back in full force. If anything, the hatred was even greater than when they had battled Shido, which was something that Akechi didn’t even know was possible. It also came with the rather unsettling implication that Joker somehow knew of the Holy Grail’s true identity, and that he knew enough to despise him with all of his being and soul.

Granted, Akechi also shared that same hatred, given everything the Holy Grail had done and what it represented, but still…

“I am the administrator born of the collective human unconscious!” Yaldabaoth bellowed, having him assumed his true form at last. “The god of control, Yaldabaoth! The administrator must guide mankind towards proper development. And now that the foolishness of man has been proven, it is the administrator’s duty to purge them!”

“You’re kiddin’, right?” Skull snarled. “This is just some kinda rigged game you started!”

“The foolish masses merely spread indolent thoughts and force the progress of society backward,” Yaldabaoth declared. “If left to humanity, the world would slowly meet its demise. Rehabilitation is impossible now.”

“That doesn’t mean humanity is evil, though!” Queen argued.

“Perhaps,” Yaldabaoth acknowledged. “There are many upstanding citizens. However, they merely take the sole path before them. The act of making decisions is accompanied by nothing but pain. Even if a cliff of ruin lay ahead, these lemmings would march onward without a second thought.”

“Bullshit!” Skull shouted. “You’re just forcing your selfish ideas on people!”

“For a god, you’re pretty prejudiced!” Oracle added.

“And a massive hypocrite to boot,” Mona added, fully in agreement with his teammates.

“If you really cared about humanity, being beaten by humans would satisfy you!” Noir pointed out.

“I am the entity which governs this world!” Yaldabaoth bellowed, predictably ignoring their accusations. “Its future depends wholly on my leadership. Those who dare defy this natural order shall be met with punishment raining down from the heavens!”

“Is your little speech supposed to impress us?” Akechi sneered. “Just because you can transform into a giant robot, you expect us to bow down, keel over, and let you walk all over us? Go fuck yourself, you overinflated pile of scrap!”

In response, Yaldabaoth let out a powerful gust of wind from its body, forcing the Phantom Thieves to brace themselves and adopt defensive positions. “Ngh…” Queen groaned.

“That thing’s on a totally different level!” Oracle exclaimed.

“Can we defeat something like him?” Fox asked, a trace of doubt in his voice.

“We can, and we must!” Joker declared, unsheathing his knife.

“This is the best possible outcome!” Mona assured them. He turned to face Joker. “We’re fighting against a god who’s not holding anything back, right? What bigger target could there be for the Phantom Thieves to tackle?”

“If this thing won’t show us any mercy, then it’s only fair that we return the favor,” Joker replied coldly.

“I do have to admit…this thing is still way to big for my liking,” Queen admitted.

“I’ll give the navigation everything I’ve got!” Oracle promised.

“We can do this if we all work together!” Noir declared.

“Let’s take him down!” Panther cheerfully declared.

Fox smiled. “Crowning our glory by defeating a god…now that is true art.”

Akechi grinned maliciously. “What better way to spread chaos than to tear down this god of corrupted order?” he asked

Mona laughed. “You guys are the best, stupidest group I could ask for.” His smile turned gentle. “I’m so glad I could be a part of your team.”

Joker returned the smile with a grin of his own. “Then let’s take this false god down!” he declared.

“You hear that?” Mona shouted at Yaldabaoth. “We’ll take it all back! Our future…and this world!”

“Rebels who dare defy my rule,” Yaldabaoth bellowed, “you shall perish!”

The Phantom Thieves readied themselves for their most important battle yet. Joker immediately switched to Attis and cast Thermopylae on his team, empowering them all. Akechi cast a Debilitate on Yaldabaoth with Hereward, its malignant energies powerful enough to weaken even the false god.

“Panther, switch out with Queen,” Joker ordered. “Mona, power her up with an Empowering Ofuda so that she’s on the same page as the rest of us.”

“Got it!” Panther immediately backed out, while Queen took her place. Mona cast the Ofuda as Joker had instructed, ensuring that they were all on the same page when it came to their buffs.

Yaldabaoth fired an Arrow of Light towards Akechi, who neatly dodged out of it. “Pathetic,” the former Black Mask sneered. “For a so-called deity, so far you’re nothing but a disappointment.”

“Don’t get cocky,” Joker warned as he summoned Alilat to power himself up with a Concentrate. Akechi and Queen both attacked with a Rebellion Blade and an Atomic Flare respectively. Any other enemy would have been severely wounded or killed by the combined force of these two extremely powerful moves, but Yaldabaoth seemed to barely be scratched by them. Mona, remembering Joker’s orders, cast President’s Insight on Akechi to help him deal out even more damage.

Yaldabaoth was making his move now, and this time he wouldn’t just be firing arrows of light upon them like he did last time. “I release upon you the deadly sin of lust! You have no means of escape, humans!” he bellowed. “The insanity of mankind shall bring for their demise!” As they watched, a metallic arm grew out of his body and reached into one of the chambers in his torso, pulling out what looked like a golden gun.

“It grew an arm?” Mona asked incredulously. “And it has a gun?”

Yaldabaoth pointed his gun at Queen, and corrupted black and pink energies flowed into her body. Though they did minimal damage to her, they afflicted her mind with a surge of lustful thoughts, completely crippling her will and capability to fight.

“What is this attack?” Mona asked frantically. “One of mankind’s deadly sins?”

“Queen’s been inflicted by lust!” Joker declared. “She might not be able to get herself together to attack or do anything while it’s on her!”

“Joker’s right!” Oracle shouted in agreement. “It’s a surge of lust! The fantasies are blocking everything out!”

“The Gun repels Wind and Gun attacks!” Joker warned. “Don’t use either of those here!”

“Joker, how the fuck do you…” Akechi shook his head. By now, he knew better than to question Joker’s impossible knowledge in the middle of a battle. “Nevermind.”

“Do that to one of my teammates? I’ll show you, jackass!” Joker snarled. “Surtr, BLAZING HELL!”

The legendary Norse fire giant appeared and raised his sword, bathing Yaldabaoth in a crater of roaring flames. The overpowering blaze was wide enough to affect both Yaldabaoth himself and the gun that he had summoned, forcing him to retreat his arm lest his gun be outright destroyed. Akechi followed up Joker’s attack with his own Concentrate-empowered Rebellion Blade, cutting through Yaldabaoth’s health even further. Mona cast a Salvation on his team, hoping to remove the lustful fantasies from Queen. Unfortunately, while it was enough to raise everyone’s health back to full, it wasn’t powerful enough to remove the distorted lust forced upon Queen.

And to make matters worse, Yaldabaoth was getting ready to unleash another sin. “I release upon you the deadly sin of vanity! You have no means of escape, humans!” he shouted. “The fraudulence of mankind shall bring forth ruin!” This time, he grew an arm on his left side and pulled out a golden bell from his body.

“Another one!?” Mona groaned. “And it has a bell this time? Be careful – we have no idea what it’s going to do!”

Yaldabaoth rang the bell, and a surge of black and filthy orange energy flowed into Akechi. “Arrgghhh…” he growled. “What the fuck is this?”

“He’s doing a different attack!” Mona exclaimed. “A different deadly sin!”

“Crow, you’re weak to every element now,” Joker warned. “Just guard this turn, we’ll deal with the bell.” He glanced towards his other team members. “No Fire or Psychic attacks on the bell!” he warned.

“Son of a bitch,” Akechi growled, but he did as Joker instructed. Joker summoned a Vacuum Wave to attack both Yaldabaoth and the bell, but without the power of a Concentrate it wasn’t enough to destroy the Bell outright. Fortunately, the Distorted Lust affect seemed to have worn off on Queen, who was now able to contribute by firing an Atomic Flare at the bell. Even this wasn’t enough to destroy it entirely, though the arm holding it was getting close to the breaking point. Deciding that destroying the bell was more important than support in this specific situation, Mona summoned a Magarudyne and attacked both Yaldabaoth and the bell with it. The spell was weaker when compared to Joker’s attacks or even Queen’s Atomic Flare, but it was still powerful enough in its own right, and it was enough to force Yaldabaoth to withdraw his arm and the bell.

But there were far more deadly sins than just the two, as the false god was more than ready to prove. “I release upon you the deadly sin of gluttony!” he shouted. “You have no means of escape, humans! The selfishness of mankind will bring forth ruin!” He summoned another arm on his right side, and when he reached into the receptacles on his torso, this time he pulled out a gigantic golden sword.

“A sword this time?” Mona looked warily at it. “Getting hit by that thing would be dangerous for sure.”

Yaldabaoth raised his sword, but unlike with the other deadly sins, he didn’t target one person specifically. Instead, the sword released an aura of chaos and darkness that drowned the entire battlefield, affecting all of the Thieves instead of just one.

“Guys, your skill costs have doubled!” Oracle shouted. “Persona summoning is going to take more effort thanks to that Gluttony thing!”

Joker smirked. “Oh, is that it? No problem at all!”

“Easy for you to say,” Akechi growled in irritation. “Not all of us have 999 SP, Joker!” His mood wasn’t helped by the fact that both Joker’s Thermopylae and his own Debilitate had worn off.

“Fair enough,” Joker acknowledged as he switched over to Attis and recast Thermopylae on them all. “Don’t hit that sword with Physical, Gun, or Electric attacks unless you really want to get hurt!” he warned.

Akechi sneered. “Good thing I don’t give a shit about any of those!” he growled as he felt the Vanity effect from earlier wear off. He summoned Hereward, gritting his teeth at the extra exertion the effort forced him through, and unleashed a Rebellion Blade straight across Yaldabaoth’s sword. The sword cut cleanly through the false god’s, but it didn’t destroy it. Queen decided to focus more on support and cast Debilitate on Yaldabaoth, while Mona cast President’s Insight on Joker to power up his next attack.

Fortunately, Yaldabaoth either didn’t see fit to or didn’t have the ability to unleash another deadly sin upon the Thieves. Unfortunately, that was because he was choosing to attack directly instead. Yaldabaoth raised his sword and swung it down onto Akechi, who let out a snarl of pain and rage as he felt the sword slice across his body. Thankfully, the wounds inflicted upon him weren’t grave, but they were still significant considering he had just been slashed at by a gigantic sword. Yaldabaoth immediately followed this attack by firing another Arrow of Light towards Joker, who nimbly dodged out of the way.

“You’re gonna pay for that,” Joker growled. “Black Frost, ICE AGE!”

The demonic, more powerful cousin of Jack Frost manifested and let out a malicious laugh as he spun around and raised his hand toward Yaldabaoth. Razor-sharp pillars of ice rained down from the heavens and skewered both the sword and Yaldabaoth himself, more than enough to destroy the sword and force Yaldabaoth’s arm to retreat. Desiring to avenge himself upon the wounds inflicted upon him, Akechi summoned Hereward and sliced at Yaldabaoth’s body with Laevateinn, ignoring the exertion forced upon him by the distorted gluttony.

“Crow, calm down!” Oracle pleaded. “You’re gonna burn yourself out if you keep doing this!”

“Queen, cast a Soma on all of us,” Joker instructed. “Mona, President’s Insight on me. Forget the Debilitate for now, he’s just going to cast another deadly sin on us.”

Both of the Phantom Thieves did as they instructed, right as Yaldabaoth prepared his next attack. “I release upon you the deadly sin of wrath! You have no means of escape, humans. The passion on mankind shall bring forth ruin!” He extended another left arm into one of his torso chambers, this time pulling a golden book with green pages.

“Don’t let your guard down!” Mona warned. Ironically, Yaldabaoth chose to unleash his Distorted Wrath upon Mona, drowning him in black and red energies that drove him into a rage.

“He’s been inflicted by wrath!” Joker exclaimed. “It’s like the rage status, his attack is up and his defense is down!”

“Is he going to attack mindlessly or can he still follow commands?” Akechi questioned.

“He can still follow them, I think,” Joker answered.

“Then nothing to worry about,” Akechi replied curtly. “He can still function perfectly fine.”

Joker couldn’t help but give Mona concerned glance, but he was still confident that as long as he coordinated things carefully, the rage status could potentially be a boon just as it was a detriment.

“Anything we should know about the book?” Queen asked.

“No Ice or Nuke attacks,” Joker warned.

“Great…” Queen sighed in annoyance, realizing that for all intents and purposes, she would be useless in the fight against the book itself. At least the gluttony effect from earlier had vanished, meaning that their Persona summoning capabilities were back to normal. “Guess I’ll cast the Debilitate this time…”

Joker didn’t waste any more time. “Kohryu, PSYCHO BLAST!”

A majestic golden dragon manifested around Joker’s body, emanating with a mighty aura of celestial power and authority. The Chinese rule of the Si Xiang glared at the usurper of divinity and unleashed a psychic attack that seemed to distort the very air around them. Psychedelic, multicolored eyeballs colored in bizarre patterns incomprehensible to the human mind quickly manifested in and out of existence, all staring straight at Yaldabaoth as everyone felt unnatural and inhuman whispers murmur something unknowable around them. After several seconds of what could only be described as an acid trip in the form of an attack, Yaldabaoth and his book were both hit by a massive multicolored and psychedelic explosion, powerful enough that even the other Phantom Thieves could feel its pressure in their minds even if they weren’t the targets. The book was instantly destroyed, and the arm holding it forced to retreat.

“What the fuck was that,” Akechi muttered under his breath, before glaring hatefully at Yaldabaoth. “Hereward, RIOT GUN!” Hereward manifested in front of him, firing an arrow into the sky that transformed into a beams of raw kinetic energy that tore across Yaldabaoth’s body, dealing further damage to him. By now, the collective impact of their many attacks on the false god’s body were beginning to show through cracks and blemishes on his otherwise pristine body, though he clearly wasn’t anywhere near defeated yet. Queen crippled Yaldabaoth with a Debilitate, while Mona only barely managed to overcome the desire to tear the false god limb from limb and instead cast another President’s Insight on Joker.

To everyone’s consternation, Yaldabaoth reached down into his torso chambers and picked up the same gun that they had destroyed earlier, although thankfully this time it only manifested at half instead of full health. “I release upon you the deadly sin of Greed,” he declared. You have no means of escape, humans! The fixation of mankind shall bring forth ruin!”

He fired the gun towards Joker, and the leader of the Phantom Thieves gritted his teeth as he was drowned in a tempest of black and golden energies. He felt his health get cut in half and he felt a raw, gnawing hunger engulf his very being. “Son of a bitch,” he growled. “This is giving me flashbacks to Okumura’s Palace.”

“Joker!” Oracle cried out. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine, I’ve just been inflicted with Hunger,” Joker reassured them. “That’s fine, I was going to use this turn to recast Thermopylae anyway. Can you guys take care of the gun?”

“We’ll take care of it,” Queen reassured him.

“I’ll leave it to you, then,” Joker replied as he summoned Attis to recast Thermopylae. Akechi cast his attention on the gun, nearly destroying it in one blow with a Rebellion Blade, while Queen both finished it off and snuck in a little extra damage on Yaldabaoth himself with a Mafreidyne. Mona, having recovered from his rage, cast a Salvation on everyone, which to his surprise and delight was able to cure Joker of his Hunger.

And just in time, too, as the false god was manifesting the bell that they had managed to destroy earlier. “I release upon you the deadly sin of Envy!” he bellowed. “You have no means of escape, humans! The resentment of mankind will bring forth ruin!” Yaldabaoth rang the bell, and summoned a tempest of black and purple energy to drown Akechi in a sea of envy.

“Shit!” Joker cursed. “It’s a surge of envy, it’s going to make Akechi try and attack us if we try to help each other!”

“Then what do we do?” Queen asked, casting an uneasy glance at Akechi, who was seething furiously in a different way than how he had behaved towards the fight. For the first time in a long time, it seemed that aggression was directed towards the rest of them, even if it was something that had been forced upon him by Yaldabaoth.

“We’re switching around how we’re attacking this fight,” Joker instructed. “I’ll handle the support, you two focus on destroying that bell.” He switched over to Yoshitsune and cast a Charge on himself. Almost immediately, Akechi lunged at him, slicing his jagged laser blade down onto his body. Joker merely smirked as the sword bounced harmlessly off of him, doing no damage to himself but also notably not reflecting the damage back at Akechi. His rival sneered and focused his attention back onto Yaldabaoth, firing off a Rebellion Blade on the bell that nearly destroyed it.

“I get it,” Queen murmured. “When Joker cast a support skill on himself, it flared up Akechi’s envy and caused him to attack him.” Determined not to invite such an attack on herself, Queen fired off a Mafreidyne, her powerful multi-nuke attack both finishing off the bell and damaging Yaldabaoth himself. Mona caught onto the realization and did the same, unleashing a Magarudyne to slice at Yaldabaoth’s body with violent winds.

The false god reached into his torso chambers and pulled out the book that they had destroyed earlier, ready to unleash the final of the seven deadly sins. “I release upon you the deadly sin of pride!” he roared. “You have no means of escape, humans! The ingratitude of mankind shall bring forth ruin!”

The book began to glow with an ominous light, preparing to counter any attack unleashed against it. Joker grinned maliciously at the sight. “Oh, is that all?” he asked mockingly. “Too little, too late.” Uncaring for the potential backlash, he summoned Yoshitsune to his side. “HASSOU TOBI!” he bellowed. The Japanese warrior lunged at Yaldabaoth and struck him from all sides with his eight lethal slashes, destroying the book and tearing apart the false god himself. By now, the accumulated damage from all of their many attacks had begun to show on Yaldabaoth, who despite not showing any facial expression was visibly showing signs of exertion, irritation, and fury at these pets who he just simply could not kill. Joker could feel a significant portion of his health drain out from him, but the devastation caused by the Hassou Tobi was more than worth it.

“Never gets old,” Akechi cackled as he summoned Hereward to strike at the false god with another Rebellion Blade, compounding the damage done to him by Joker. Queen cast a Debilitate on Yaldabaoth to make sure that he stayed crippled, while Mona cast a President’s Insight on Joker to power him up once again.

Yaldabaoth glared down upon the mortals who had dared to defy him through his metallic mask. These pests had proven to be a much greater nuisance than he had thought. If the power of the seven deadly sins wasn’t enough to force them to submit, then it was time for him to demonstrate his ultimate power. For the first time in the fight, Yaldabaoth manifested all four of his arms at once, reaching into his torso chambers to manifest all four of his weapons at full strength. The Gun of Execution. The Bell of Declaration. The Sword of Conviction. And the Book of Commandments.

“The abyss of the unconscious yearns for ultimate ruin,” the false god bellowed. “You have no means of escape, humans. Punishment shall strike you all. as you pass through the gates of destruction!”

The entire sky began to darken as all four of Yaldabaoth’s began to glow and pulsate with malevolent red and black energies, far more powerful than anything he had done throughout their battle, far more dangerous than any attack they had ever encountered. Everyone could tell that whatever Yaldabaoth was about to unleash, it was going to be terrible news if they allowed that attack to hit them. “Everyone, attack his body NOW!” Joker shouted. For the first time, the mask of unbreakable confidence and self-reassurance was cracking. They could hear urgency in his command, and…was that fear? “Bring it down with everything you have, before it can get a chance to attack us! Oracle, start up your Final Guard and get ready to cast it on us in case things go south!”

He summoned Attis to his side and recast Thermopylae on all of them, maximizing their power as much as he could. Akechi sliced across Yaldabaoth’s body with Rebellion Blade, Queen blasted him with an Atomic Flare, and Mona tore at him with another Magarudyne. As powerful as the combination of attacks were, they weren’t enough to bring the false god down.

Thankfully, Yaldabaoth still hadn’t fully prepared the deadly attack that he was about to unleash upon them. Whatever it was, he still needed more time to pass his self-righteous judgment upon them.

Time that Joker wasn’t going to give him. The time had finally come to unleash his own judgment upon the false god, to pass sentence onto Yaldabaoth for the many crimes that he had committed against humanity. Joker reached up to his mask, and summoned forth his chosen Persona. A Persona that he had kept carefully concealed within his subconscious from the very beginning of his journey, a Persona that was finally ready to be unleashed.

“Satanael!” the leader of the Phantom Thieves bellowed to the heavens as he took off his mask. “MEGIDOLAON!”

Chapter Text

Joker’s body flared with blue fire, and a new Persona manifested behind him. One that instantly commanded the attention of every single combatant, from the other Phantom Thieves to even Yaldabaoth himself.

In many ways, this new Persona was similar to Lucifer in that it had the appearance of the six-winged devil of Judeochristianity, yet it commanded a unique presence all on its own that not even Lucifer could hope to match. Unlike Lucifer, who had been mostly naked, Satanael was dressed in black and golden armor that covered his entire body, adorned neatly with skulls, military badges, and other more ancient symbols that represented his awesome might. The six wings that spread from his body were black as the night itself and seemed to surround his body like an imposing shroud of night, starting out as black feathery wings but ending in the more traditional batlike wings, both of which equally befitting a fallen angel. This new version of the devil also wore a golden mask from which two massive horns spread out, and above the mask was a crown of black wings that circled around his head in an almost identical manner to Yaldabaoth’s own crown of angelic wings. And in his hand was a sleek, silver gun that had been masterfully crafted with skill that not even the greatest human blacksmith could ever hope to match.

But what truly caught everyone’s attention wasn’t just Satanael’s mighty appearance, but also his power. At first glance, Satanael seemed to be just as strong as all of Joker’s other maxed-our Personas, and in theory should have been just another powerhouse among many. But the longer they processed the dark glory of Joker’s new Persona, the Phantom Thieves realized that Satanael was somehow even greater, as though he were capable of feats of strength that Joker’s other Personas could only ever dream of accomplishing. And yet…they could also somehow sense that as mighty as Satanael was, they were only seeing a fraction of his true power.

And yet this fraction of his power was more than enough. Satanael raised his hand into the air, clenched it into a fist, and forcefully lowered it as he unleashed his power. An overwhelming blast of pure Almighty energy exploded from the center of Yaldabaoth’s body, growing larger and larger, until it engulfed not just the false god, but all of his arms holding his weapons at the same time.

Akechi stared in stunned disbelief as he watched the Megidolaon tear through Yaldabaoth and interrupt the deadly attack that he had been about to unleash on them. He had thought he had seen the pinnacle of Almighty attacks when he had seen Joker’s Lucifer cast Morning Star upon his fake self in Shido’s Palace, an attack that had put Loki’s own Megidolaons to shame. It was only with Hereward’s Rebellion Blame that he could even come remotely close to matching Lucifer’s damage output. And yet, whatever this new Persona was, Satanael had been so ridiculously powerful that he had managed to outdamage Lucifer’s Morning Star with a fundamentally weaker move. “What the fuck, Joker?” he thought blankly, still trying to process what he had just witnessed. “Where the fuck did you even get a Persona this powerful? And why the fuck didn’t you show this guy to us earlier?”

Yaldabaoth bellowed in rage and pain, faltering and stumbling backward as his powerful attack was interrupted. He focused his gaze on Joker, as though he were seeing him for the first time.

“So…” Yaldabaoth mused, “this is the power that resists ruin. Your power…that presence…it is greater than what I had expected. There is something wrong here. Something that does not make sense.”

Joker merely smirked, Satanael having already vanished from the battlefield. If Yaldabaoth wanted the opportunity to study his new Persona further…the Trickster wasn’t going to give his sworn enemy the chance.

The false god forced away the doubt that was clouding his mind. “But it matters not!” he declared, all arrogance returned in full force. “My control shall not bow down to ruin!”

“Oracle…” Joker mentally warned Oracle. “Get ready to cast Final Guard on us, immediately!”

“Got it!” Oracle immediately started typing away at Prometheus’ systems.

“My control is the ultimate truth of this world!” Yaldabaoth bellowed. Despite having just been attacked by Satanael and seemingly stopped once before, the false god immediately drew his malevolent black and red energies into a singular focal point in front of his body, before unleashing them in a colossal pillar of malignant and overwhelming energy that exploded outward towards the Phantom Thieves. Oracle barely had enough time to cast Final Guard on her teammates, encasing them within a sphere-like cocoon of eldritch yet protective energies before the Rays of Control hit them. All of the Phantom Thieves screamed as the Rays of Control blasted at the protective shield, and even though it was just barely enough to protect them from death, such was the force of Yaldabaoth’s attack that all but Joker were forced off their feet onto the ground.

When the attack finally faded, the Phantom Thieves barely had enough strength to get off the ground. “Dammit…” Skull groaned. “He’s strong...”

Mona glared up at Yaldabaoth. “If you’re really a god,” he challenged, “you should be guiding humans to your ideals! You’re destroying them because you can’t do that, aren’t you?” he ruthlessly pressed forward. “So that you can flaunt your existence!”

“No wonder you chose Shido as your pawn to elevate above the masses,” Akechi spat in disgust. “Only a so-called god as depraved as yourself would choose a man that despicable as his champion.”

“That’s why you were observing us!” Mona accused. “You had to because the reaction of the masses worried you!”

“Not only that,” Joker growled, glaring hatefully at the false god, “but you were so afraid that the masses wouldn’t follow your command that you directly controlled them to make them do what you want! You were the reason why our popularity skyrocketed after we took down Medjed, all so that you could send our reputation plummeting down after Okumura’s death. And of course, you were manipulating Akechi’s popularity too in the exact opposite way. After all,” he added mockingly, “you couldn’t have anyone straying away from your grand design of supporting us and hating Akechi, or despising us and loving him, depending on what you suited your purposes at the time.”

“I don’t know how long you’ve lived,” Skull shouted furiously, “but you’re the perfect example of a pain-in-the-ass old man! Like my father, like Kamoshida, like Shido, and every piece of shit whose heart we’ve changed since we first started!”

Panther gave the false god a disgusted look. “You find people like that everywhere,” she scoffed. “Is it any wonder that this so-called god of our society is the embodiment of everything we hate?”

“What drivel!” Yaldabaoth snarled furiously at the insults and disrespects that the Phantom Thieves were hurling at him. He channeled more malevolent black energy in front of him, casting the entire sky into complete darkness as he blasted at the Thieves with a powerful wind in an attempt to knock them down and force them to submit.

“What is this!?” Panther exclaimed.

“Dammit…” Skull growled in frustration, “I can’t see anything!”

“Do you want to erase us from the world that much!?” Noir demanded.

“Since you’ve been forsaken by the world, there is nowhere that you can belong!” Yaldabaoth taunted. He summoned a lightning bolt from the sky and blasted it down onto the platform, knocking all of the Phantom Thieves down with yells of shock and pain.

All except Joker, who stood strong even in the face of this latest assault. Yaldabaoth started to laugh mockingly, only to stop when he realized that Joker hadn’t been knocked down like the rest of his friends. “Even now…” he growled, the amusement fading from his voice, replaced with frustration, “you refuse to submit to my truth?”

Joker responded in the last way that any of them expected him to react. He began to laugh. A low, dark chuckle, dripping with contempt, mockery, and hatred so absolute that it could be physically cut with a sword. “Heh heh heh heh heh…”

“What is so funny, you worthless rebel?” Yaldabaoth demanded. “What humor is there to be found, when the world itself rejects you and everything you stand for?”

“What I find so funny…” Joker retorted, his voice a dark and menacing hiss, “is that you still think that I ever gave a single shit about what the world wants in the first place!”

Everyone, from the rest of the Phantom Thieves to Yaldabaoth himself, gave their complete and undivided attention to the Wild Card whose journey had started it all. “I told Akechi this, back when we were in the Velvet Room,” he spoke more calmly now, more for the rest of the Thieves than for anyone else. “This was never about society’s justice. This was never about society’s definition of what is righteous, or meeting society’s expectations for us as heroes. You’re so deluded about your own grandeur that it’s equally sad and hilarious to listen to the bullshit that you spout of your mouth, Yaldabaoth, but you’re right about one thing. This society is rotten to the core, filled with people who are just willing to bend over and accept the words of anyone who they choose to be their leaders as gospel if it means they don’t have to think for themselves. Even if that means turning a blind eye to all the wicked deeds and corrupt actions that those leaders commit in the name of their own self-interest as they feed the public with lies.”

“Then why?” Yaldabaoth demanded. “Why do you still oppose me? The corrupt and distorted masses of this society do not deserve the reformation that you attempted to guide them through. They do not deserve to keep their free will! They have failed in their rehabilitation, and you have witnessed that failure for yourself!”

“Maybe many of them don’t,” Joker acknowledged, as a surprisingly gentle smile slowly manifested on his face. “But a few still do. Scattered in the masses, there are still a few individuals who found the courage to fight back against the oppression that society forced upon them. Individuals who stuck to their beliefs, refused to surrender their free will like everyone else, and just needed a little help removing the roadblocks before they could carve their own path. My fellow Phantom Thieves. The confidants I made on this journey. Even Akechi, in his own way. Even if there are only a few individuals like this who are willing to rebel against society’s corruption once they are given the chance, those are the individuals I fight for. The individuals that make this world worth saving.”

“Joker…” Mona murmured softly as he gazed up at his leader in awe.

Joker’s gaze hardened as he stared coldly into Yaldabaoth’s metal mask. “And besides,” he added, the contempt and disgust now returning in full force as he regarded the false god, “the only justice that I ever followed was mine. The principles that define what it means to be a Phantom Thief. To protect and fight for the innocent and the helpless unable to fight for themselves, and to punish the guilty who seek to oppress and enslave them to their own desires.” He pointed a finger at Yaldabaoth. “And you? You are the worst tyrant of them all! A tyrant more power-hungry than even Shido. The fact that you use the deadly sins of man as part of your weapons against just only prove just how depraved and disgusting that you truly are on the inside.” A cold, menacing grin with the promise of death appeared on his face. “And it’s our duty to destroy you once and for all, just as we’ve destroyed the desires of every Palace Ruler we’ve faced up until now.”

“And you think you have the power to actually enforce that?” Yaldabaoth asked mockingly. “Your power is nothing compared to mine! I have infinite knowledge and infinite power! Not even one sliver of unpredictability can be permitted under my control!”

As if to emphasize his point, Yaldabaoth summoned forth the voices of the masses, condescendingly mocking the Phantom Thieves for their futile efforts in fighting against him. “Do you hear the voices of the masses?” he sneered. “They mock you for revolting against a god. Humans are naught but clumps of desire. Logic dictates that a world filled with them will decline. The sin of rebellion against a god is severe. As punishment, you shall taste pain everlasting!” he declared, passing his judgment upon them.

The only response that his proclamation earned was another round of mocking laughter from Joker. “What makes you think that you have the power to enforce that punishment, when you’re so pathetic you can’t even play your own rigged game correctly?” he asked mockingly.

“Even now, you dare to disrespect and insult your superior?” Yaldabaoth snarled. “The game proceeded exactly as I had designed!”

“Oh, really?” Joker raised an eyebrow at the boast. “Then how come Crow’s still alive? And how come he’s fighting alongside as a teammate, battle partner, and dare I say it, a friend?”

“What?” all eyes turned to Joker, including Akechi’s. “What do you mean by that?” Akechi demanded.

“You had always planned for one of us to die,” Joker accused, focusing his glare on Yaldabaoth. “After all, we were both Wild Cards who fought against this corrupt society in our own ways, and we were both the biggest threats to your rule if we ever realized what was going on and fought against you. You had always planned for us to destroy each other. Maybe Crow would have killed the real me in the interrogation room. Or maybe we would have fought to the death in that engine room in Shido’s ship, and once I defeated Crow, that fake cognition of him would have shown up right when he was at his weakest to finish the job.”

As much as it irked Akechi to admit it, he knew that Joker was right. With Lucifer alone, Joker could completely wipe the floor with him. Maybe with Hereward’s Rebellion Blade he might be able to stand a better chance, but with just Loki? He wasn’t under any delusion that the outcome wouldn’t be anything other than a complete one-sided stomp in Joker’s favor.

What intrigued him more was Joker’s description of how he would have theoretically “bested” him in the hypothetical situation that he had described. A situation that was almost unnaturally specific, and a disturbingly absolute possibility of what would have happened if Joker had escaped the interrogation room by himself and had never won his allegiance.

Akechi’s suspicion of the truth was growing ever larger, but he wouldn’t voice it now. Not when they were facing a false god, and even the slightest bit of information spoken aloud could give the arrogant entity vital ammunition to use against them.

Joker grinned mockingly up at Yaldabaoth. “But that didn’t happen. Instead, I convinced Crow to join our cause for real. He might have only done it for his own purposes, but he still chose to do the right thing in the end. We defeated Shido together. We explored the depths of Mementos together. And right here and now, we’re against the tyranny and destruction that you want to force on us all.”

All eyes were focused on him as he walked over to Akechi, who was still sprawled on the ground from Yaldabaoth’s lightning attack. Even as his strength was failing him, he still struggled and raged against the humiliation that the false god was forcing upon him.

Joker knelt down and extended a hand to Akechi. “Are you going to let this false god who allowed Shido to rise so easily to power keep you down in the dirt like a dog?” he asked, his voice filled with both encouragement and challenge at the same time. “Or are you going to stand against him, just like you stood and fought against everything life tried to throw at you?”

Hereward answered within his soul with a roar of determination. Gathering every last bit of strength he could find, Akechi reached out for Joker’s hand, who didn’t falter even the slightest bit as he helped his rival onto his feet. Together, the two Wild Cards glared defiantly and hatefully at the tyrannical entity who had sought to manipulate both of them into destroying each other for his own selfish desires.

“It matters not!” Yaldabaoth bellowed. He pretended to ignore Joker’s challenge to his omniscience, but the Thieves could hear the frustration and slightest bit of hesitation in his voice. No matter how much he tried to deny it, deep down Yaldabaoth knew that both of his puppets had cut their strings and broken one of the most fundamental aspects of his rigged game by joining forces against him, and all the Thieves knew it. “You have not changed fate, you have merely delayed it until now! The only accomplishment you have succeeded in is that you will face oblivion and eternal torment together!”

“Not gonna let that happen!” Mona butted in, joining Joker and Akechi in facing down Yaldabaoth while the other Thieves still struggled to get to their feet.

“The attendant created from the dregs of human hope, hmm?” Yaldabaoth retorted with cold dismissal. “It is impossible for a petty existence like you to overrule my precedent.”

“I don’t think so!” Mona fired back. “Human hope is a desire too! You better not underestimate it! The Phantom Thieves will yield to no one, no matter who they are! Even if only one of us remains, we’ll get back up and fight to the very end!”

“I’ve spent my entire life as a pawn and a slave to tyrants who thought they could twist me to their whims,” Akechi hissed, looking upon Yaldabaoth with pure malice. “I’m so sick of mongrels like you and Shido. I decide my own fate and make my own choices, and if this is the day that I meet my end, then I’m going to make damn sure you go down with me!”

“There is only going to be one death today,” Joker declared, filling his voice with power and authority in the way that only the leader of the Phantom Thieves could. “And that’s going to be this usurper who dares to actually think he deserves to be a god!”

“You hear that?” Mona shouted defiantly. “We’ll definitely…definitely…TAKE THE WORLD!”

Meanwhile, on the Streets of Tokyo…

Yuuki Mishima glanced up at the screen etched into the side of a skyscraper, a TV that was somehow showing the logo of the Phantom Thieves despite all of the chaos and supernatural horror that was ravaging the city of Tokyo around him. Out of the corners of his eyes, he could see the people of Tokyo frantically running around and screaming, pleading for anyone to come and save them from the destruction and the madness. But Yuuki barely registered it, for his thoughts were focused on one singular conversation that he had shared with Ren. Words that Ren had given him the night that he had realized what it truly meant to be a hero, and had shaken off the selfish desires for fame and glory that had almost consumed him.

“There will come a time,” Ren had placed a hand on his shoulder, speaking in a tone that was gentle and yet filled with an absolute conviction in the truth behind his words, “a time when the very existence of the world itself will be in grave danger. Humanity will be at risk of being ruined either through sheer destruction, or being enslaved and stripped of all free will and the ability to make their choices for themselves. The Phantom Thieves will rise up and fight against this threat, but they can’t do it alone. They need the will of the people behind them. And you, Yuuki…you’re the one who can lead them. You’re the one who can guide them to reclaiming their free will and cheering on the Phantom Thieves as they fight against the forces that seek to enslave and destroy them. You’ll know when that time comes, Yuuki. And I trust that you’ll know what to do.”

He hadn’t understood a word of what Ren had been saying back then. He did now.

Ren had chosen him to guide the people of Tokyo back to their senses, and he wasn’t going to let the friend who had saved him from Kamoshida down.

“Take it down, Phantom Thieves!” Mishima shouted, raising a fist as he jumped into the air.

The crowd stopped panicking, instead turning their attention to him in confusion. Mishima briefly felt a pang of self-consciousness and nervousness, but it only lasted a second before he forced it away.

“Come on!” he demanded. “Why do you think they’ve risked their lives all this time?”

He was only met with silence as the crowd of people surrounding him stared at him wordlessly. But Mishima wasn’t going to give up yet. Not until he had said his peace, no matter what the reaction to his words might be.

“Dammit, you guys!” Mishima shouted, putting all of his heart and soul into his plea as he shook his head in frustration. “Snap out of it! When will you stop running from the truth!?”

Silence reigned in the corrupted streets of Tokyo, and for one terrible moment, Yuuki feared that he had failed to rally the people on behalf of the Phantom Thieves.

And then…

“You’re right!” Someone in the crowd yelled. “The Phantom Thieves didn’t give up. We shouldn’t either!”

“We’re here for you, Phantom Thieves!” another person shouted.

“It feels like this is the first time I’ve thought straight in a long time,” a man wearing pants decorated in a floral pattern agreed, before joining the others in raising his fist towards the air. “But dammit, if the Phantom Thieves are fighting us for, then I’ll be with them every step of the way!”

Yuuki smiled in both pride and relief as he watched the previously panicking people of Tokyo start cheering the Phantom Thieves on. He turned his attention back towards the TV showing the Phantom Thieves’ logo, and raised his fist towards the air. “Can you hear us, Phantom Thieves?” he called out to them. “Everyone’s depending on you! You’ve got this!”

“Damn right,” an elderly man’s voice called to him in agreement. Mishima turned to see Sojiro walking towards him, a knowing smile on his face. “Are you someone who’s been charmed by the Phantom Thieves too?”

Yuuki smiled back at the elderly barista. “…I sure am,” he replied, his voice filled with gratitude towards the Thieves for all they had done. “Is the same true for you too?”

Sojiro merely chuckled at his question. “Pretty much,” he admitted. “Looks like it’s not just us, though,” he commented as he looked around at the people cheering the Phantom Thieves on, including several of the confidants that Ren had met over the year. The very confidants that had kept Joker’s faith in humanity strong, and the ones he had fought for above all else.

Dr. Takemi looked up at the screen, a scowl on her face. “I’m not letting you lose after getting this far,” she shouted. “You better finish what you’ve started!”

Iwai crossed his arms and gave the sky a stern glare. “It may not look like it, but I’ve got high hopes for you guys. You better win this!”

Farther out in the streets, Ms. Kawakami chuckled to herself, a silly grin on her face. “They’ll win if I cheer them on?” she asked. “Then I’ll cheer them on as much as they need!”

Ohya put a hand on her hips. “You’ve stolen the heart of this many people,” she declared. “I won’t let you lose!”

Chihaya looked up towards the sky with a fierce expression to match Iwai’s. “I can tell you that you are all capable of standing up to any kind of fate,” her words were both reassuring and yet filled with energy.

Yoshida crossed his arms, feeling the fervor that Ren had rekindled within him and fueling it back towards the Phantom Thieves with all of his will. “You all are truly causing a revolution right now! Gooooo!" he urged.

Hifumi thought about the friend who had exposed the lies that her mother had used to ensnare her life. “Look forward, and keep fighting!” she cheered. “You taught me that, after all!”

Shinya looked up towards the sky, taking his red cap off and bringing it close to his chest in a gesture of solidarity. “I’ve cheered you guys on all this time! And I’m going to keep at it!” he promised.

Sae Nijima crossed her arms as she gave a proud glance towards the sky, where she knew that not just Ren and Makoto, but all of the Phantom Thieves were fighting on their behalf. “I’m counting on you, everyone…” she murmured with a gentle but firm voice, “I will believe in you until the very end.”

And in a small corner, in front of a supernatural jail cell door glowing a brilliant blue that no one else could see, Lavenza brought her gaze up into the sky and gave one final plea of her own to her Trickster. “You are our last hope…” the Velvet Room attendant prayed. “I beg you…finish this!”

Sojiro gave one last smile at all the people cheering around them, before giving the Phantom Thieves a message of his own. “It’s you guys’ fault I don’t know when to quit either,” he shouted as he raised a fist to the air. “Get back up! Don’t lose to that thing!” he demanded.

Mishima turned back towards the screen showing the logo of the Phantom Thieves, and mirrored the exact same gesture. “No matter what anyone says, I believe in you guys!” he promised. “Go for it, Phantom Thieves!”

At the Final Battle…

Joker, Mona, and Akechi all felt it at the same time. The shift in power, the will of the masses…was now channeling towards them. And for the first time, they could feel the people of Tokyo cheering and empowering them on instead of Yaldabaoth.

“Do you hear that?” Mona shouted, smiling in triumph as he felt the will of the masses flow through him. “Those are the voices of the humans that you’ve made fun of! No one wants you to rule over them!”

“Well, well, well…” a sinister grin spread across Akechi’s face. “What was that you were saying about how the masses wanted to bow down and worship you as a god?” he taunted. “Our society may have created you…but they have seen you for what you truly are, and just like us, they reject you completely! How the tables have turned.”

Skull groaned as, for the first time, he found the strength to get back up on his own two feet. “Why do they gotta word it like they’re lookin’ down on us?” he grumbled.

Noir was the next to stand. “But…” she gasped, and even her exertion couldn’t hide the delight that was slowly growing within her, “they’re cheering for us…”

Oracle chuckled as she got on her feet. “Heh…doesn’t feel bad at all…”

One by one, the rest of the Phantom Thieves stood up, fighting off their exhaustion, joining Joker, Mona, and Crow in standing together and opposing Yaldabaoth as a full team. All the while, the cheers and encouragement of the masses gave fueled both their physical strength and their resolve to fight on. “They don’t have to tell us twice…” Fox solemnly proclaimed.

“We won’t let ourselves be erased!” Queen promised.

“We’re going all-out, dammit!” Panther furiously added.

Mona bowed his head in acknowledgment of his teammates’ and friends’ determination. “I’ve made up my mind,” he declared. “I will see my justice through for the sake of protecting what I care about.”

“I couldn’t have said it better myself,” Joker agreed with a nod of respect towards his feline friend. “That is what it means to be a Phantom Thief. And though our individual definitions of justice may differ in some ways, it’s something that we all believe in nevertheless.” He glared fiercely up at the false god. “And that includes wiping you off the face of the earth, never to rise again!” he shouted.

“That’s right!” Mona agreed. “If you’ve decided to take the world from him, don’t compromise your ideals to the very end!”

“This piece of shit is going down…” Akechi swore venomously, “no matter what it takes!”

“Hey god,” Skull called out mockingly towards Yaldabaoth, “foolish humans are prayin’ down there. They’re prayin’ there’s no place for someone like you in this world!”

“Give that evil god his final warning, Ren!” Mona shouted.

“You’ve messed with the wrong thieves,” Ren growled as he pointed up towards Yaldabaoth with his finger. “You’ve messed with the wrong people. And you’ve messed with the wrong world. And that is the last mistake…that you will ever make!”

/

Down in the streets of Shibuya, the masses of Tokyo, freed from their distortions for the first time, cheered on the Phantom Thieves. As one, they raised their voices in support of the heroes who had continued to fight on their behalf, even when they had been deceived and misled into abandoning them by the false god that sought to enslave them.

Words of encouragement flowed into Tokyo itself, not just from the crowds in the streets, but also online. With the Metaverse and reality merged together, the Phan-Site that Yuuki Mishima had created so many months ago became the symbol of power that represented the strength of the masses’ support towards the Phantom Thieves.

And with every second that passed, the percentage of people who believed in and supported the Phantom Thieves skyrocketed, reaching heights of popularity even greater than what the Thieves had enjoyed in the days prior to President Okumura’s fall.

The bar reached 100%, glowing red and white as it overflowed with energy and power. And though the bar itself might have only been able to reach that maximum of 100%...the true measurement of power that channeled towards the Phantom Thieves was all of that…and so much more.

/

Ren felt the rush of power flowing through him, an extreme, overwhelming power that he had felt only once before. But this time, it was so much more. For every single one of his friends was here by his side, and their presence only amplified the power flowing through him from the masses, instead of weakening it.

For a man who fought for others, and fought with others by his side, gained far more power and strength than a man who fought by and for himself could ever hope to achieve.

Ren grinned as he felt the ultimate power within him ready to be unleashed. The last time he had unleashed such power, he had been forced to break the chains that kept Arsene’s power limited and weak. But such restraints didn’t exist anymore, and hadn’t existed since the very beginning.

The mask broke on his face, and a pillar of blue flames erupted around the Trickster, the flames of one about to unleash their Persona for the first time. Satanael manifested behind him once again, his red eyes gleaming with triumph as he felt the power of the masses flowing through him once more, before the persona of the Gnostic devil faded back into the pillar of blue flames.

Yaldabaoth, for the first time, seemed to sense the danger that he was in. “This cannot be!” he shouted, and for the first time, everyone could hear doubt and uncertainty in his voice. “You cannot harness this power!”

The false god reached out with his metal hand towards Ren, trying to stop him, but the pillar of flames surrounding him suddenly blazed outward. With impossible speed, the pillar of flames transformed into a roaring inferno that spread outwards with impossible speed until it was covering the entirety of the platform, and reached all the way into the clouds themselves with no end in sight. Such was the power of the blaze that it made the Blazing Hells unleashed by Ren’s Surtr look like a pathetic Agi released by the weakest of Jack-o-Lanterns by comparison.

The flames of the blue pillar of flame lashed out towards Yaldabaoth’s hand, rejecting the false god’s touch, and he howled in pain, forced to retreat from the first time. The Phantom Thieves could also feel the intensity of the blue flames, but they had the complete opposite effect. Instead of burning them, the flames fueled them with strength and vitality, rejuvenating them and healing their wounds until they were in peak fighting condition once again.

The pillar of blue flames finally departed from Joker after a seeming eternity, the last of them soaring into the sky to follow the rest of their kin. For the briefest of seconds, nothing else happened, leaving only a shower of sparks raining down from the sky.

“Is this all you had to offer, pathetic rebel?” Yaldabaoth asked mockingly. “After everything you have said and done, you have failed to harness the power. No matter how many prayers of those foolish masses come together…”

The false god’s words were suddenly and violently erupted as the same pillar of blue flame that Joker had summoned alongside Satanael erupted down from the sky in a raging firestorm, consuming Yaldabaoth in a devouring and ravenous inferno. This time, Yaldabaoth did scream, a screech of inhuman, metallic agony that was far more hideous than anything that any of the Thieves had ever heard in their lives. Yet as terrifying as the scream was, it only emboldened the Thieves rather than daunting them, for it was proof that this so-called deity was far from invincible, and that there were powers that could make it bleed.

Powers that the leader of the Phantom Thieves possessed.

“What the…” Panther gasped as the pillar of blue flames, leaving Yaldabaoth’s metal skin blackened and burned. Far above them, black clouds gathered, covering the entire sky in darkness as a storm rumbled within them.

The false god could only stare up and watch in horror as Satanael descended from the heavens. Only this time, he was so gigantic that he easily towered over the tallest buildings of Tokyo, with a presence and aura of power so great that it dwarfed even Yaldabaoth himself. Joker glared fiercely at Yaldabaoth, Satanael’s burning red eyes glowing with the same baleful light, as he descended until he was standing right behind the Phantom Thieves, ready to fight on Joker’s behalf.

“What the fuck…” Akechi spluttered, completely at a loss for words for the first time in a long time. Deep within him, Hereward was similarly awed, emanating nothing but complete respect towards the mighty demon lord who had come to fight on their behalf.

“That’s…” Fox breathed in disbelief.

“Man, it’s huge!” Skull exclaimed.

“What an immense power!” Mona gaped at the Gnostic devil. “No way…is that…a Persona?”
 he asked incredulously.

Joker laughed, a sound filled with triumph and glee. “In the simplest of answers, he is,” he answered cryptically, “and yet…he is far more than that.”

The crowds down below them were similarly shocked at the sight, even as they burst into even louder cheers and applause.

“I don’t believe what I’m seeing!” a man exclaimed. “What is that?”

“Is that the Phantom Thieves’ doing too?” another man asked in awe and wonder. “That’s totally amazing! Keep it up, Phantom Thieves!”

“No…no!” Yaldabaoth screamed, and this time the Thieves could hear the fear in his voice. “This is meant to be my world! It is MY law that is meant to be absolute! You dare to reject my law in favor of this…this thing? Fools! THIS is why man is doomed!”

In a move that everyone could clearly tell was an act of desperation rather than a demonstration of power, Yaldabaoth summoned the malevolent energies of the Rays of Control one final time, blasting them towards the Phantom Thieves in the same pillar of raw destruction. But even the mere presence of Satanael, boosted to incomprehensible heights of power by the will of the masses, was far greater than what Yaldabaoth could now challenge, and the explosion summoned by the Rays of Control passed harmlessly by the Phantom Thieves without doing a single point of damage, its power and impact utterly reduced to nothing.

“Impossible!” Yaldabaoth yelled, truly panicking for the first time.

The cheers of the crowd below them grew even louder at seeing Satanael utterly neutralize Yaldabaoth’s most powerful attack. “They’re insanely strong!” a man shouted in delight. “They’re not just Phantom Thieves anymore! That’s like some sort of demon lord! So awesome!”

Mona chuckled at the sight. “I get it now,” he informed the rest of the Thieves. “If a god plays naughty, then it’s a demon lord’s duty to punish him! What better way is there for a finale as a Trickster?”

Akechi cackled with laughter. “I can’t think of anything better than for this pathetic false god to meet his demise at the hands of his opposite and his superior!” he commented gleefully.

Mona turned to Ren. “Joker, we’re entrusting our strength and the people’s hopes to you!” he shouted. “Put an end to this!”

Joker grinned back at him. “It would be my pleasure!” he declared. The Trickster raised his hand, and gathered the light and power brought forth by Satanael’s aura into his hand. “Ladies and gentlemen…I give you…SATANAEL!” he bellowed.

The Phantom Thieves cheered at the demon lord’s name, as Joker focused all of his attention towards Yaldabaoth, ready to deliver his judgement upon the false god. “You know what to do, Satanael. Wipe him off the face of the Earth, and make sure that he can never come back. PILLAGE HIM!”

As one, Satanael and Joker raised their guns, pointing them towards the head of the false god. As they prepared to fire, Joker gave his sworn enemy one final grin. A grin that promised death and destruction upon the oppressor for his crimes. “Checkmate,” he hissed.

“Preposterous!” Yaldabaoth frantically denied the evidence of his own impending destruction. “You dare rob the people’s wishes?”

He wouldn’t have time to say anything more, however. Joker fired his gun, and Satanael did so at the same time. A bullet created from the Seven Deadly Sins, the same sins that Yaldabaoth had attempted to abuse and manipulate to his own bidding, fired out of Satanael’s finely crafted gun, piercing straight through Yaldabaoth’s head and leaving a gaping hole from where his face had once been, straight through to the opposite side of his skull.

Yaldabaoth stood silently for several seconds, as if unable to comprehend the killing blow that Satanael had just dealt through his head. Then, with the sound of screaming metal, the false god faltered and stumbled backward, about to collapse at any moment.

“How…?” the false god whispered, his pride utterly broken in the face of his own impending destruction. “How were you able to thwart me at every turn? Even before this moment…you had sullied my plans and my game the moment you converted my pawn to your side? How could you accomplish all of this…and possess this degree of ultimate power? It should not be possible…”

Joker stepped up and regarded the false god, his face utterly emotionless and an unfathomable expression lurking behind his eyes. “You thought you had rigged this game in your favor,” he muttered, his voice calm and betraying nothing. “You thought you were destined to win this game, no matter what. But what you never realized was that the game itself could be completely broken, the unfair rules tossed aside and destroyed, by events that you couldn’t possibly hope to comprehend. Tell me this, Yaldabaoth…how could you have possibly won this game against someone…who has already won it once to begin with?”

Something like understanding appeared in Yaldabaoth’s tone in that moment, the realization finally sinking. “I see…” he muttered. “So this is the true trickster. Your power surpassed even my own, and your ingenuity outmaneuvered me from the very beginning.” The false god sighed in resignation. “Damn that Igor…he let out one last, weak chuckle. “It seems that he wasn’t spouting nonsense…”

And with those final words, Yaldabaoth’s body started to glow, pieces of him falling away from him, before he dissolved completely into flakes of golden light.

The final battle had been won. The false god who had sought to enslave humanity had been defeated.

Chapter Text

Yaldabaoth dissolved into golden specks, leaving behind no trace of his presence remaining. Behind Joker, Satanael nodded in satisfaction as he witnessed the destruction of the false god, before vanishing away in a pillar of blue flame, leaving behind a small portion of his essence to return into Joker himself. Most of the golden specks that had once formed Yaldabaoth vanished away, scattered to the rest of the Earth, but a few of them instead came together, forming a brilliant orb of golden light.

“Look!” Panther pointed at the growing orb as it flashed and pulsed, before transforming into a small golden chalice, simple in design yet glowing brilliantly in a way that felt natural and soothing, in contrast to the false and tainted luster of the Holy Grail form of Yaldabaoth. Everyone instinctively understood that they were looking at the True Treasure of Mementos, free of the corruption and distorted desires for order at any cost.

“Ain’t that a Treasure?” Skull asked excitedly. “Right, Mona?”

“That’s right,” Joker confirmed, giving his feline friend a confident and assuring smirk. “Go on, Mona. It’s your duty as the embodiment of hope to claim the Treasure of Mementos…so that everyone can be free.”

“I know,” Mona solemnly affirmed as he walked up to the Grail, placing a tiny paw on its side. “Thanks for everything, you guys.”

“Mona?” Oracle and Noir both asked in confusion.

“Humans have the power to change the world,” Mona began, seemingly ignoring their concern. “They just forgot about that a bit.” He smiled at them as they walked up closer to him. “Thanks to you guys, I was able to complete my duty.” The smile widened as he glanced over at Joker. “Especially you, Ren.”

Joker grinned back. “It was and still is a pleasure, Mona,” he gently replied.

“Right back at you, Ren,” Mona returned the grin with one of his own. “I got to be useful for the humans I admired so much. Nothing could make me happier. Especially since now I can do one final task…to make this place disappear, and set everything right. Time to go home, guys…”

The Grail glowed with a flash of brilliant gold light that covered all of them, causing them to shield their eyes. When the light finally faded, they were back on the streets of Tokyo, which still looked like the twisted combination of Mementos and Shibuya.

“The hell?” Skull exclaimed in shock, noticing how everyone else seemed to be completely frozen in place. The Phantom Thieves walked down the street, the world around them still seemingly frozen completely.

“Looks like the rain stopped…” Queen murmured, relieved that the sky was no longer raining blood, or a liquid similar to it.

Akechi suddenly pointed at the sky. “Up there…” he drew their attention upwards. Sunlight was breaking through the clouds and hitting the streets, with a brilliant and wholesome blue sky shining down on them. As the sunlight passed over their bodies, the red puddles at their feet suddenly shattered as though they were made of glass, shocking Queen with the sight.

“The separation has begun,” Joker murmured. “The real world and cognitive world are splitting apart.”

As if to confirm his words, the unholy bone-like structures from Mementos were dissolving, leaving behind only the buildings that naturally belonged in the real world behind. “So beautiful…” Oracle murmured in delight.

Seconds later, as the last remnants of the corrupted Mementos faded away, the entire world around them began to glow with brilliant multicolored light, from the people to the cars and the buildings, before dissolving away just as Mementos had done. The Phantom Thieves couldn’t help but stare in incomprehension. “Why’s everything…” Panther began to ask, but she didn’t get the opportunity to finish her sentence.

“The whole world is a product of cognition,” Mona explained, “not just the Metaverse. It can be freely re-made. The same goes for you, and everyone else.” All the Phantom Thieves looked down at the feline, only to discover to their shock that he was glowing just like the rest of the disappearing world.

Shock quickly gave way to horror as they realized the implications of what was occurring. “Dude, Mona…” Skull could only utter helplessly.

“Mona-chan!” Noir gasped and placed her hands over her mouth.

“This can’t be happening!” Panther pleaded as she tried to race over towards him, only for a fissure of light to carve its way through the ground in front of them, cutting them off from Mona.

Mona looked utterly unfazed by what appeared to be the incoming end of his existence. “Soon a new world will come,” he reassured them, as he looked around at the dissolving world. “One where mankind isn’t held captive. The world will shine brightly as long as you hold hope in your hearts.” Mona raised his arms towards them as his body began to float into the air, following the rest of the world in wherever it was going to go.

“But what’s going to happen to you?” Queen shouted desperately.

Akechi stood silently, his expression unfathomable as he watched Mona start to disappear. Before Ren had won his allegiance in the interrogation room, he would have sneered at the display of friendship and the sorrow that losing a friend could force upon another person. Now, though…even if he wasn’t particularly close to Mona, he could at least understand the emotions of the rest of the Phantom Thieves. And he had enough respect for them that he wouldn’t mock them for their grief, either out loud or in his thoughts.

Mona began to fly higher and higher into the sky, tilting his head down to meet the Phantom Thieves’ gaze as they silently and helplessly stared back up at his own. “Remember,” he offered one last bit of advice, “there’s no such thing as the real world. What each person sees and feels…those are what shape reality.”

By now, the rest of the world had all but disappeared in a brilliant white void, with only the small part of the street they were standing on still remaining. “This is what gives the world its infinite potential,” Mona finished. “Even if you feel that only darkness lies ahead…as long as you hold hands together…see it through as one…”

At last, the world around them vanished completely, “the world will never end! The world exists within all of you!”

/

When the light finally faded, the Phantom Thieves found themselves back on the streets of Shibuya, the world restored to its normal state without Yaldabaoth’s tyrannical grip or Mementos’ corruption seeping into it.

“Mona…” Futaba murmured sorrowfully.

Haru glanced at her phone, equally as saddened. “The Meta-Nav,” she murmured, “it’s gone. Mementos must have disappeared too…”

“…we can’t see Mona anymore, can we?” Futaba asked Ren, already knowing what the answer would be.

However, instead of answering in one way or another, Ren began to snicker. “Ren?” Futaba repeated, her sadness transforming into confusion.

“What the hell, man!” Ryuji shouted at him in disbelief and a hint of disgust. “Morgana’s gone, and you’re laughing? What the hell is wrong with you?”

“…would now be a good time to mention that only the cognitive version of Morgana disappeared, and that he still exists in the real world?” Ren asked, still trying his hardest not to laugh. “He’ll be fine. He knows where LeBlanc is, he’ll show up eventually.

The penny dropped as Ren’s revelation hit them. “Wait, you knew this?” Futaba stomped her foot, clearly outraged. “Why the heck didn’t you tell us?”

“Morgana and I thought it would be funny to play a bit of an inside joke on you all,” Ren explained as he forced himself to calm down. “Although, in hindsight, that probably wasn’t considerate.”

“Inconsiderate is right!” Haru exclaimed crossly. “We mourned Mona-chan! We thought he had sacrificed his life for us!”

“If Morgana was in on it, then we need to come up with a proper punishment for his cruel joke!” Ann declared, before whirling her head to glare at Joker when he stifled another snicker. “And don’t think you’re off the hook, mister! You owe us for this too!”

“Yes…quite…” Akechi’s voice interrupted them, and everyone stopped when they heard its tone. It was cool, composed…the voice of the Detective Prince whenever he had finally solved a particularly frustrating case and was ready to voice his conclusions for the world to hear. “And I think I know the perfect way that Ren can make things up to us, as the saying goes.” He glanced towards Ren and grinned, giving the leader of the Phantom Thieves the impression of a shark closing in on his prey. “Why don’t you tell us all about how you traveled back in time?”

“WHAT?” all the Thieves except Ren exclaimed, their outrage over Ren’s and Mona’s prank disappearing.

“Oh yes,” Akechi continued relentlessly. “You did all this before, didn’t you, Ren? You led the Phantom Thieves once before, stealing the exact same people’s hearts, fighting Shadows, even fighting down the false god…every major event in your journey was a step you had already taken, a battle that you had already fought. That’s why you knew your way around the Palaces so easily, and how you were prepared for every single trick in the book that the Palace Rulers and Yaldabaoth threw at you. After all, there is no other way that you could have easily recognized and countered the strategies of the Palace Rulers so effortlessly…and there is no other way that you could have become so obscenely powerful since the beginning of your journey. That was what you meant when you stated that you had already won Yaldabaoth’s game once before, was it not?”

Ren’s smile was gone now, and all eyes were on him, waiting for him to confirm or deny Akechi’s hypothesis. Ren closed his eyes, took a deep breath…and nodded.

“Yes,” the leader of the Phantom Thieves confirmed. “You’re right, Goro. That is the big secret that I’ve been hiding for all this time.”

“Duuuuuuuuude…” Ryuji breathed out in disbelief. “No way…”

“Time travel?” Ann asked incredulously. “Like…movie Time Travel? What the heck???”

“How is this even possible?” Makoto, as always, struggled to find the answer. “I know the Metaverse already breaks the rules of reality, but even for this Metaverse this still sounds insane?”

“So you were on a New Game Plus all this time, Ren?” Futaba pressed, sounding more eager than anything else. “No wonder you were so hilariously overpowered!”

There was one person in particular who wasn’t quite as enthusiastic about the idea as everyone else, however. “Ren-kun…” Haru murmured sadly, before giving him a piercing glare. “If you really have traveled back in time, and you knew what was going to happen…why didn’t you save my father?”

The clamor instantly died down as Ren met Haru with an earnest gaze of his own. “I will answer that question, Haru,” he promised. “But I will say this. I did try to save your father. I tried to do something to save him that I didn’t do in the last timeline.” He shook his head. “But what I tried to do failed in the end.”

Haru didn’t say anything, but her gaze softened considerably. “I understand, Ren-kun. But I would very much like to know the whole story, if you would be so kind.”

“An excellent idea,” Akechi agreed, his voice making it abundantly clear that he wouldn’t accept any argument or even delay. “I think it’s about time Ren reveals the whole truth to us. After all, there is no false god to fight anymore. Our enemy has been destroyed. There is no reason to delay this any further.”

“Before we proceed with this,” Yusuke interrupted, “what about the public? Are we sure that we changed their hearts?”

“A valid point,” Akechi conceded, as he eavesdropped on other people’s conversations with his keen hearing. Most of the dialogue was just meaningless dribble, but there was one particular comment that caught his attention.

“There’s no way we’re getting Shido,” a man was animatedly talking to his girlfriend. “Haven’t you heard? There’s all sorts of shady stuff about him!”

“That’s already an improvement over what the public was like before its distortion, as pathetically low as that bar may be,” Akechi commented. “And either way, we won’t know for sure until the future. For now, we should focus on the present…and the past,” he suggested, aiming the words pointedly at Ren.

“Let’s go to LeBlanc,” Ren suggested. “We can ask Sojiro to have the place to ourselves, and then I’ll tell you everything.”

“Hold up, you guys!” Ryuji suddenly interrupted with a grin on his face. “Aren’t you guys forgetting? We just kicked a false god’s ass and saved humanity! We should at least do one cheer before we go!”

“Oooh!” Ann eagerly agreed. “That would be fun!”

Akechi rolled his eyes and groaned in annoyance. “Oh, fine…” he grumbled. “But make it quick. And do it in a way that doesn’t instantly expose yourselves as the Phantom Thieves.”

“Ooh, Akechi didn’t insult our idea of having fun?” Futaba teased. “Is that some character development I’m seeing?”

“Bite me, Sakura,” he shot back, but there wasn’t any real bite or malice in his words.

“Come on, Ren!” Ryuji beckoned to him. “You should lead the cheer. You were the one who shot that fake-ass god in the head!”

Ren chuckled at his enthusiasm. “All right,” he agreed. “Everyone gather around in a circle and put their hands in?”

“Sure thing!” Ann happily accepted the idea, being the first to stretch her hand outward. One by one, each of the Phantom Thieves put their hands in to join the circle. Ren was the second-to-last Phantom Thief to do so…and then slowly, very slowly, Akechi moved to put his hand in with the others.

“Holy shit!” Ryuji exclaimed. “Akechi’s actually joining in?”

“Daaaaaaamn,” Futaba whistled, “he really DID go through some character development!”

“Excuse me,” Akechi retorted, “but I played just as much of a role in the final battle as any of you. I deserve to claim my share and part of the credit for our victory…even if it is through participating in juvenile activities like this,” he finished with a grumble.

Makoto chuckled. “Well, I certainly can’t deny that. You definitely gave it your all in the battles against Yaldabaoth and his archangels,” she gladly praised.

“Whatever I can say about you, Akechi-kun, you’re certainly no puppet,” Haru acknowledged with a small smile. “Not anymore.”

“On the count of three…” Ren led the charge. “One…two…three…WE DID IT!”

“WE DID IT!” the Phantom Thieves all shouted, with Akechi remaining silent…but still lifting his hand up all the same. They earned some funny looks from the passersby, but not a single one of the Phantom Thieves cared.

“Now then…” Ren’s smile faded, and his face adopted a serious and businesslike expression. “You guys want answers, and it’s time for me to give them.”

The group made their way through the subway train of Shibuya and through Yongen-Jaya, until they finally crossed the threshold into Sojiro’s café. The elderly barista was washing some dishes, and glanced up as he saw the Thieves stumble in, tired but very much safe and happy. “I’m guessing you guys did what needed to be done?” he asked.

Ren smiled at the man who had become his father in all but name. “We did it, Sojiro,” he triumphantly reported. “The public isn’t distorted anymore.”

“Excellent work, you guys,” Sojiro praised. He glanced over at Akechi and frowned. “Should I be worried about…?”

“Nah,” Futaba answered with surprising conviction. “He was just as much a part of the team, pulled his weight and then some!”

“Okay…” Sojiro nodded in acknowledgment. He didn’t think he would ever fully trust or even like Goro Akechi, but if Futaba of all people was willing to vouch for him now despite the crimes Akechi had committed against her and her mother in the past, then he would accept his daughter’s judgment. “Then let me prepare you all a full LeBlanc dinner, on the house for saving the world!”

“That would be much appreciated,” Akechi thanked him, carefully not trample on what little grace Sojiro was willing to give him. “Would you mind if we were to close up shop for the evening? There is some important business that we all need to discuss.”

The look on all the Phantom Thieves’ faces was enough for Sojiro to realize that they were on the same page as Akechi here. “Give me a moment,” he grumbled as he walked to the entrance and changed the OPEN sign to CLOSED. “Now then, what are you guys all talking about? You guys don’t seem nearly as happy for people who just saved the world.”

“Sorry, Sojiro,” Futaba replied all too casually. “We’re just still recovering from the fact that Ren literally travelled back in time.”

“Oh, okay…” Sojiro nonchalantly replied, before Futaba’s words actually registered in his brain and he immediately whirled around to face Ren. “Wait, WHAT?” he exclaimed.

“She’s not joking,” Ren confirmed, with only a faint shadow of a smirk on his face. “I really did travel back in time. And I mean that completely literally.”

Sojiro stared blankly at him for several seconds, before picked up his phone. “On second thought, the full LeBlanc dinner can wait for tomorrow,” he commented in a deadpan tone. “This, I’ve got to hear.”

Ren nodded as the Phantom Thieves started occupying the various seats in LeBlanc, all giving him his complete and undivided attention. Sojiro quickly ordered a wide array of dishes and food for the Phantom Thieves to enjoy, then leaned back against the counter, lighting up a cigarette as he did so.

“Now then,” Akechi spoke for all of the Phantom Thieves in that moment, “I believe I speak for all of us when I say that I wish to know the full truth, Ren,” the words were polite, but spoken with an undercurrent of steel that would permit no argument. “No more secrets.”

“No more secrets,” Ren agreed. He laid eyes on each and every one of his friends, all of whom were anxiously waiting to learn the truth. Then, he closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and sighed. “Just like Akechi said, I did travel back in time. The reason why I navigated through every single Palace and most of the challenges that we faced without ever breaking a sweat was because I had seen almost all of them before. I knew our enemies before they even became aware of our existence, and I knew how to counter their strategies to fight us when it finally came time to steal their Treasures. This is also why I knew how changes of heart worked and how Mementos worked, and why I have so many overpowered, maxed out Personas that made even enemies as powerful as Shido and Yaldabaoth look weak and pathetic by comparison.”

“Holy shit…” Ryuji breathed, still trying to wrap his head around this revelation.

“It sounds crazy hearing it,” Makoto commented, before sighing, “…and yet, it makes sense. And the Metaverse already breaks the laws of reality as we know them, so I can’t argue against the possibility of time travel either.”

“That honestly sounds really cool!” Ann exclaimed, but her enthusiasm was immediately cut short when she saw the look of sadness in Ren’s eyes.

“You’d think so,” he replied softly, “but the reasons were anything but. I might’ve fought Yaldabaoth before, and I might have even beaten him in that timeline, but the cost was far, far too high for it to be worth it.”

A chill descended on their souls as they caught Ren’s haunted look and heard the ominous tone of his words. Ren didn’t cry or break out into a sob, but the brief shadow of despair that clouded his eyes was more than enough to fill in the blanks.

“We didn’t…” Haru gasped softly in horror.

“In the first timeline, by the time I fought and killed Yaldabaoth…” Ren confirmed grimly, “…he had killed every single one of you first.”

The Battle Against Yaldabaoth, The Previous Timeline…

Joker fell to his knees, gasping for breath as he struggled with every ounce of his soul to keep fighting on. From the very beginning, Yaldabaoth had brutally assaulted him and his friends both with his own Almighty attacks and with the corruptive distortions of the Seven Deadly Sins. It was only thanks to his power as the Wild Card that he had been able to adapt to the relentless onslaught, to survive, and to fight back.

But his friends hadn’t been so lucky.

One by one, they had fallen in battle. Skull, struck down by an Almighty bolt of divine lightning. Panther, sliced cleanly in half by Yaldabaoth’s cruel sword. Noir…shot to pieces with the false god’s gun. There had been barely any windows of opportunity for either him or his friends to cast Samarecarm or revive their fallen allies in some other way, not when it would give another opening for Yaldabaoth to strike. Makoto had found this out the hard way when she had attempted to resurrect Noir with a Revival Bead despite the danger to herself…and had promptly been blasted apart with a wave of malignant energy from the false god’s tome.

Even as their friends gave their lives to ensure that the fight would not be in vain, the surviving Phantom Thieves had slowly managed to whittle down the false god’s health, and they dared to hope that they might yet triumph despite the heavy losses…

…and then Yaldabaoth had fired off his ultimate Rays of Control, obliterating the few Phantom Thieves who had still survived. Now, only Joker and Mona were left, barely clinging to life…

…while the motionless, lifeless bodies of their friends lay on the ground beside them.

“It is over…” Yaldabaoth hissed, malice and cruelty dripping from his voice. “You dared to rebel against the power of a god, you thought you could hope to triumph against the will of the masses. And you were wrong. Look around you, Trickster!” he bellowed triumphantly. “Your companions, the so-called friends who pledged their very lives and souls to your cause…where did it lead them? You have repaid your friends’ loyalty with nothing but their own death!”

Joker couldn’t say anything, and not just because he was still in too much pain and he was still too mentally exhausted to move. Yaldabaoth might have wanted to twist the knife in his heart as cruelly as possible with his words, but that didn’t make them any less wrong.

He had failed them. He had failed them all. If he had been stronger, if he had been a better leader...then he could have ensured their survival in this final battle. He had thought that, fueled with the determination to see their justice and righteousness through, that they had been prepared to fight a god…and he had been horribly, horribly wrong.

“Joker…” Mona’s soft and pained voice snapped him out of his thoughts, and he turned his head to look into his feline friend’s pleading eyes.

“I’m sorry…” he murmured, the tears starting to flow from his eyes. “I’m sorry that we could see our justice through, Mona. I’m sorry that I was such a terrible leader and that I couldn’t stop this from happening.”

“No…” Mona shook his head, even as he winced from the pain. “You were a great leader, Joker, and you still are. The fact that we even got this far proves it. This isn’t over yet, Joker…as long as even one of us can fight on, we haven’t lost yet. Don’t give up…please…”

“Ha ha ha ha ha!” Yaldabaoth laughed mockingly. “Even now, this attendant formed from the dregs of humanity’s hope still refuses to concede defeat? A perfect representation of mankind’s foolishness. Perhaps I will spare your existence, just so I can watch you crumble into despair as mankind falls forever into its rightful place as servants of my will. Such a torment would surely be far worse than death!”

Something within Joker snapped as he listened to the false god mock and verbally abuse the one friend that he still had left. His despair blazed into hatred, a pure and unadulterated loathing of the false god in front of him that was far greater than anything he had ever felt before. Greater than his hatred of Kamoshida, greater even than his hatred for Masayoshi Shido.

And that hatred gave him strength.

With unfathomable levels of rage and spite burning through his soul, Joker forced himself to stand, fighting off the waves of soul-crushing exhaustion to stand and face Yaldabaoth one final time. The false god took notice, and Joker could hear the smugness oozing from his words. “Still clinging to your pathetic existence and your worthless desire for rebellion? You have lost, Trickster. The evidence of your defeat is undeniable in the mangled corpses of your broken confidants. There is nothing you can do to stop the new order that is to come. Lay down and accept your defeat, and I will grant you a quick death.”

“Shut up…” Joker hissed in response.

“You dare to…”

“I said SHUT UP!” Joker bellowed, with the unexpected strength in his voice to silence even the false god. “You’re just like all the others. Like Kamoshida, Shido, and all the other pieces of shit whose hearts we changed. Arrogant, self-obsessed pieces of shit who’ll gladly trample on the lives of millions if it meant you could get just a little bit more power.” He let out a bitter, hateful laugh. “No wonder you chose that piece of shit Masayoshi Shido to be your puppet. You’re every bit as sinful as he was, except a thousand times worse.”

“Shido was merely a pawn,” Yaldabaoth scoffed. “A tool whose usefulness had run its course, and would have been cast aside as such. Such was the fate of Goro Akechi, and such will be your fate as well.”

Joker gritted his teeth, his wrath against the false deity growing with every second that passed. Within the depths of his soul, the Personas he held within him, each representing the bonds that he had made with his friends and confidants, similarly called for blood and vengeance against the false god who had slaughtered his brothers and sisters-in-arms. And one stood out among them, the Gentleman Thief who truly represented Joker himself in a way that no other Persona possibly could.

“There is a way, my other self,” Arsene’s voice murmured gently to him. “A way that we can yet triumph against this false god. But without the power of your bonds, the only way to achieve victory is through the ultimate sacrifice. Are you willing to pay that price?”

Joker didn’t even hesitate a single second before giving his answer, and he could feel every single one of his Personas roaring their approval.

“Then so be it.”

The rage, sorrow, and hatred ignited one last spark of power within him. The desire to rebel against his incoming doom, fueled with a desire for vengeance against the false god who had taken everything from him in the name of his self-righteous hypocrisy, ignited into a final blaze of ultimate power. One by one, he felt his Personas fade away, their essences being sacrificed to fuel the pyre that was his one final chance. Each and every tribute was one willingly made, for to refuse would be to accept an ignoble death at the hands of an unworthy enemy. And not a single one of the many essences in his soul would allow such a fate to come to pass.

“You might have killed my friends. You might be only one step away from enslaving the world. But I REFUSE to let you win. I REFUSE to let a world exist where humanity is drowned in your corrupt and disgusting excuse for justice and order.”

Arsene manifested behind him, right as a pillar of brilliant blue flame blazed around his soul, just as it had the very first time he had awakened his true Persona. Only now, the flame was even greater in intensity, fueled by the very energy of his life and soul.

“What? Impossible!” Yaldabaoth bellowed, the smugness in his voice turning into stunned disbelief. “The power of the masses is with me! You should not have access to this power!”

In the back of his mind, the last rational part that wasn’t utterly consumed by hatred, Joker wondered if that wasn’t quite true. He could feel something giving him additional strength, but he barely registered it. Instead, he gave Yaldabaoth once last, hate-filled gaze. “I may not live to see another sunrise,” he hissed. “I might join my friends in death. But if I’m going down…”

He grabbed the chains surrounding Arsene and snapped them cleanly in half, the demonic Gentleman Thief letting out a triumphant roar as he flew into the heavens, the flames around their bodies growing ever more powerful.

“…you’re coming with me!”

By now, pain was erupting through his body, the strain of unleashing every last bit of power starting to take its toll. He could barely register the summoning of Satanael, the ultimate power and the one entity who could match Yaldabaoth in strength. It was a power that he would only be able to manifest briefly, for he was burning through his very life force to summon him…

…but for the leader of the Phantom Thieves, a few precious seconds was more than enough.

“IMPOSSIBLE!” Yaldabaoth shouted again, this time with genuine fear in his voice. He tried to finish off both Joker and Mona with another Rays of Control, the unholy attack that had killed off the rest of the Phantom Thieves, but even if Satanael’s existence was running on borrowed time, it was more than enough to dissipate the Rays of Control like it was nothing.

Forcing himself through his exhaustion and his agony, Joker raised his gun and pointed it at Yaldabaoth, Satanael mirroring his movements with his much greater weapon. Calling on the last of his strength, even as blood poured out of his eyes and down his throat, Joker fired the gun. The Sinful Shell pierced through the false god’s head, destroying his existence once and for all.

Despite all the grief and tragedy that he had suffered, Joker couldn’t help but give a single satisfied smile at seeing the false, malevolent god broken and destroyed. Then, even as Mona stirred and tried desperately to reach him, Joker fell to his knees and collapsed onto the ground, breathing his last as his lifeblood poured from his body.

Just as Arsene had warned, he had managed to claim victory from the jaws of defeat…but he had paid the ultimate price, in more ways than one.

The Present Timeline

Each and every single one of Ren’s friends stared at him in horror as he finished describing how he had sacrificed his life for one final chance against Yaldabaoth. Even Akechi was showing a disturbed look on his face, one that he didn’t even try to hide.

“Oh my God…” Ann breathed, her voice hoarse with disbelief. “So all of us, except Mona…we all died that day?”

“Yeah,” Ren breathed out. There were tears forming in his eyes, and in his voice they could hear the traces of the sorrow that he had felt when seeing them die the first time. “I saw all of you die, some of you while we fought the false god, and the rest of you at the very end when Yaldabaoth blasted you to pieces with his fucked-up Rays of Control.”

“Ren…” Futaba reached out and wrapped her arms around him. The physical reminder of their presence was soothing like nothing he had expected, and Ren managed to regain control of himself.

“At least our deaths in that other timeline weren’t in vain,” Yusuke murmured, ever the eloquent speaker. “We faced our ends with the dignity and grace that a true Phantom Thief should demonstrate, fighting for our beliefs instead of hiding away like unworthy cowards.”

“Maybe, but it wasn’t good enough,” Ren muttered, his voice utterly hollow. “I should have been able to lead you to victory. As your leader, it was my responsibility to make sure that all of you survived. And I failed. I failed because I wasn’t smart enough, because I wasn’t strong enough, because I wasn’t skilled enough…”

His self-deprecating rant was interrupted with a light slap from Futaba. “Nope!” she exclaimed, shocking Ren out of his inner turmoil as she gave him a fierce look. “Uh-uh, no way, I am NOT letting you blame yourself for what happened in the last timeline. Not a chance in Hell!”

“Dude, you were up fighting against a god,” Ryuji added. “And you didn’t know what the hell you were doing back then. The fact that you were able to win at all is amazing!”

“Nobody has any right to judge you for your performance against Yaldabaoth,” Akechi growled. “Especially when you were going in blind against a twisted fuckup of a god without any idea of what he could do. Anybody who thinks they could have done better is a deluded piece of shit who probably would’ve fucked up their first palace.”

“Akechi is right,” Makoto quietly agreed. “You’re our leader for a reason, Ren. And whatever might have happened, you clearly learned. Every single time we fought against a Palace Ruler, you knew exactly what you were up against and came up with perfect strategies to deal with them every single time. And with how powerful you are, I felt safe knowing that even if I got knocked out of a fight, you’d be there to finish up the job and help get us back on our feet whenever you could.”

Ren felt his heart warm as his teammates and friends gave him their reassurances and comforting words, allowing a warm and joyful smile to appear on his face despite the painful memories. “Thanks, guys,” he murmured. “I’m just so happy to see that all the effort I put into making this second timeline turn out so much better paid off in the end.”

“We’re all alive,” Ann gently reassured him. “We’re all here. Yaldabaoth is dead, and we’ve stolen Mementos’ treasure. We did it. Together.”

“Together,” Ren repeated the word, feeling the sweet relief of knowing that he had secured his success. “Right.”

“Well, I can certainly respect the dedication you placed into what’s effectively your second run of this year,” Akechi commented. For the first time he could remember, he freely gave Ren his praise without a hint of jealousy, for his rival had most certainly deserved it. “You’ve clearly planned all of this out from the very beginning. Your Personas, empowered to their maximum potential, each crafted to perfectly carry out a specific purpose with not a single weakness among them. The extreme efficiency with which you’ve navigated through the Palaces, completing them all in a single day without fail, and your adaptations to the battles standing between you and the rulers’ Treasures. All of these speak for themselves.”

“I completely agree with Akechi-kun,” Haru added, giving Ren a gentle smile. “We couldn’t have done any of this without you, Ren-kun.”

“But you haven’t answered the most important question,” Akechi continued, adopting the persona of the Detective Prince as his curiosity compelled him to uncover the truth behind the mystery. “How did you accomplish all of this in the first place? If I understand your story correctly, you effectively killed yourself when you shot that metal piece of shit in the head the first time. So how did you not only survive, strengthen all of your Personas to truly ridiculous degrees, and then go back in time to undo all the shit that happened?”

“I’ve gotta admit, kid, I really wanna hear this too,” Sojiro admitted. In any other time, he would have thought that Ren was completely insane. But his son in all but name had earned his trust countless times over, and even with how crazy his story might have sounded, Sojiro didn’t doubt it for a single second. “I thought I’d seen everything already, but this is something on a whole ‘nother level.”

Ren smirked, and his friends felt a wave of relief at seeing his confidence start to return. “The Velvet Room was the key,” he answered. “After I died, I ended up in the Velvet Room. If I had died before killing Yaldabaoth first, that would’ve been the end of it. Igor and Lavenza wouldn’t have been able to help me. But I did kill that false god first. I did free humanity and the Velvet Room itself from the false god’s influence before the end.”

For the first time since they had arrived at the Velvet Room, Joker’s trademark grin appeared on his face. “And it was all thanks to Yaldabaoth himself.”

Chapter Text

The Velvet Room, Previous Timeline

“DAMMIT!” Ren shouted, despair crushing his soul as tears poured down his face. “They’re all dead! All my friends…they’re gone, and I’ll never see them again. And it’s ALL MY FAULT!” he wailed.

Igor and Lavenza looked on as Ren lamented the death of his friends with sorrow and sympathy in their eyes. The normally ever-present smile on Igor’s face had shrunk noticeably, while Lavenza slowly approached the Trickster and slowly wrapped her arms around his waist in a gentle hug. Despite his grief, Ren could still register the gesture of comfort, and placed his arms around Lavenza’s shoulders in turn, accepting her company even in the midst of his mourning.

“Trickster…I am so sorry…” Lavenza murmured sympathetically. “This should never have come to pass.”

“This game was rigged against you from the very start,” Igor added grimly. “Yaldabaoth demonstrated a level of malevolence, pettiness, and lust for power greater than even the other entities who sought to doom humanity in the past.”

Ren blinked, shock briefly overcoming his despair. “Wait…there was more than one?” he asked incredulously.

“Yaldabaoth was not the first powerful and dangerous entity who has sought either control over or the complete destruction of humanity in the past,” Igor explained, “just as you are not the first Wild Card to assemble a team of Persona users to fight against them. You and your fellow Wild Cards are absolutely vital to the continued survival of humanity. It is only thanks to your heroism, and the bonds that you create, that humanity can continue its existence without fear of enslavement or destruction.”

“Yeah, thanks to the sacrifice of me and my friends,” Ren let out a bitter, defeated laugh. “It was our asses on the line to save the people in a society that never gave a shit about us. And look where that ended. My friends are dead, I’m dead, and humanity can continue on its merry way. Makes me wonder if all this shit was even worth it to begin with,” he admitted.

“It will be,” Lavenza gently reassured him. “I promise you, it will be…”

There was something in Lavenza’s words, an undercurrent of absolute conviction as hard as steel hiding behind the gentle voice, that made Ren realize that she wasn’t merely trying to give him an empty reassurance. “What do you mean?” he asked carefully.

“We now have very important business to discuss,” Igor declared, his grin widening ever so slightly. Ren approached the edge of his open cell door, giving the True Master of the Velvet Room his full and undivided attention.

“I’m listening,” the leader of the Phantom Thieves invited.

“The world, and humanity, is governed by certain laws,” the hook-nosed entity explained. “Whenever a so-called deity seeks to either enslave or destroy humanity according to its whims, a Wild Card such as yourself is allowed to challenge it. A Wild Card who would go on to create a team of Persona users sharing the same purpose, fighting the deity on behalf of humanity and demonstrating that your race is worthy of its freedom and continued survival. If the deity wins by either destroying or corrupting the Wild Card in question, then they are allowed to carry on their plans as they wish. However, if the Wild Card prevails, then the deity must be forced to acknowledge the potential of humanity and accept its defeat. This has typically led to the deity’s destruction as well, although this is not always the case. Those are the rules that the universe abides by, and as demonstrated by the continued existence of humanity, the Wild Cards and their companions have always proved triumphant.”

“But that’s not what happened this time,” Ren growled, “is it?”

Igor shook his head. “No,” he confirmed solemnly. “Yaldabaoth, in his arrogance and greed, violated and trampled on those rules without a second thought. Instead of allowing humanity to genuinely prove themselves, as was their right, he automatically decided that they amounted to nothing but mindless slaves for him to command. He decided to impose his will upon humanity from the very start, going out of his way to escalate their innate negative characteristics and distortion. Yaldabaoth never cared about humanity’s potential or its well-being, and because of that his game was rigged from the very start. A pointless contest with no real purpose than to inflate Yaldabaoth’s sense of superiority. No matter who emerged triumphant in the contest between you and Goro Akechi, he was always going to violate the laws of the universe and ensnare humanity forever in his grasp.”

Ren felt his already sheer hatred against Yaldabaoth blaze even stronger than before. Understanding the sheer depths of the false god’s arrogance and hypocrisy sickened him to the very core, even more than the vile depravities of Kamoshida and Shido. No wonder the false god had wielded the Seven Deadly Sins against the Phantom Thieves in battle, for Yaldabaoth embodied those very sins more than any human ever could.

“There are consequences to breaking the laws of the universe,” Igor continued gravely. “It is the reason why we of the Velvet Room never directly fight against these deities or otherwise attempt to interfere directly in the conflicts that arise between them and the Wild Cards. It is our duty to guide and aid the Wild Card through the services provided by the Velvet Room, and nothing more. To violate these duties and extend our aid beyond these restrictions would open up the possibility of…retribution.” The ominous tone in which the word was spoken made it very clear to Ren that this would be a very, very bad thing.

Then, to his utter shock, Igor’s grin widened considerably as a mischievous glint appeared in his eyes, while Lavenza suddenly smiled happily at Ren. “But the opposite is true as well, Trickster,” the childlike Velvet Room attendant picked up where her master had left off. “By setting up his false and unwinnable game, Yaldabaoth violated the very laws by which the world is governed. If you had failed to defeat the usurper, then he would have been too powerful for us to oppose. He would have been able to trap us here, unable to aid either you or humanity. But since you destroyed the false god moments before your death…”

Ren’s eyes widened, and for the first time, he felt a spring of hope burst into life within him as he understood the implications of their words, “…you can help me after all.”

“Indeed, Trickster,” Igor confirmed. “Just as our unsanctioned involvement in a Fool’s journey could invite disaster against us, so too has Yaldabaoth’s flagrant violation of the laws of reality granted us the ability to intervene in ways that we otherwise would not be able to normally.”

“How?” Ren pressed, trying not to sound too demanding. He needed to know how to set things right, his soul would never rest if he didn’t at least try.

“There are two ways in which we can offer you our aid, Trickster,” Lavenza offered. “The first is to resurrect your body back in the real world. As far as reality would be concerned, it would be as though you had survived after unleashing your final attack against Yaldabaoth himself. You would be able to proceed with your life, free from the malevolent god’s twisted game, your journey and your mission complete.”

Ren immediately heard what Lavenza hadn’t said. “But you wouldn’t be able to resurrect my friends too,” he vocalized what they were all thinking out loud.

“Unfortunately, no,” Igor confirmed Ren’s suspicions. “Our influence would not be able to extend beyond resurrecting yourself. The only one of your companions who would continue existence by your side is Morgana, as he was the only other survivor besides yourself.”

“What happened to Morgana?” Ren demanded, feeling a wave of relief that his feline companion had indeed survived.

“I’ll tell you right now,” a wonderfully familiar voice answered. Ren whirled his head around to see that Morgana had appeared in the Velvet Room, looking weak and injured but very much alive. Despite his obvious fatigue and exhaustion, the feline Phantom Thief managed to send a smile towards Ren.

“Morgana…” Ren breathed a sigh of relief, never being so happy to see one of his friends in his entire life.

“After Yaldabaoth died, he transformed into an uncorrupted Holy Grail that was the true treasure of Mementos,” Morgana explained. “As the embodiment of hope, I claimed it and freed humanity from its distortions. That split Mementos and reality back apart like they should be, and I woke up somewhere in Shibuya. I don’t exactly know where, but once I got my thoughts back together I ran over to the nearest Velvet Room entrance I could find.” He smiled at Ren. “Glad to see you’re still alive.”

“Technically I’m not, but close enough,” Ren couldn’t help but snicker, his mood already lightened by Morgana’s arrival.

Igor coughed once, bringing everyone’s attention back to him so they could get back to business. “As I was saying, that was the first option,” he continued. “You and Morgana would continue to live on, but not with your friends.”

Ren’s enthusiasm dulled at the reminder of his friends’ deaths. He was liking the idea of this first option less and less with every second that passed. “And what’s the second option?” he asked.

Lavenza beamed at him. “One that I think will be much more to your liking, Trickster,” she replied confidently.

“The second option, is that we turn back time itself to the very beginning of your journey,” Igor explained. “We would send you all the way back to the month of April, to the very moment your journey began when you arrived in Tokyo. But there will be some key differences. You will have full access to your current Personas, the physical strength you have gained from your training, your money, and some of your items. And most importantly, with the memories and knowledge you have gained from this timeline.”

Ren didn’t even need a single second of hesitation to make his decision. What was the point of being resurrected in this ruined timeline? What was the point of going back to a world without his friends, a world where he would have to explain to Sojiro and Sae why their loved ones were dead?”

“I choose the second option,” Ren immediately gave his answer. “I will save everyone. I won’t let the people I care about die. Not this time.”

As one, Igor, Lavenza, and Mona all nodded in approval at his words. “Excellent,” Igor declared, giving him an encouraging grin. “I know that you can see this through, Trickster.”

LeBlanc Cafe, Present Timeline

“Wheh heh heh!” Futaba cackled like a madwoman as Ren finished this part of his tale. “So because the false god cheated, and you still won, you guys got to cheat too! Oh, that is just way too good!”

“I’d be very disappointed if you chose any other option,” Akechi commented with a smirk. “That piss-colored cup proved that it didn’t give a single fucking shit about honor and fair play. Those are just delusions that people stick to to feel better about themselves, and they’re nothing but a waste and a liability on the unworthy.”

“I don’t know if I’d call honor and fair play a waste, but I do agree with Akechi that Yaldabaoth didn’t deserve them,” Makoto added. “If he got to rig the game, then it’s only fair play that you get the same opportunity.”

“What’s all this I hear about cheating?” a new voice entered. All eyes turned to Sae Nijima, who had entered the café during their conversation, holding a very familiar black and white cat with blue eyes in his arms.

“MONA!” all the Thieves except Ren called out joyfully, confirming Ren’s words that their friend was indeed alive.

"Missed me?” Mona asked with a playful smirk.

“You jerk!” Futaba exclaimed as she rushed over to him, picked him up in his arms…and proceeded to mess with his face with her hands. “Playing a dirty joke like that on us! Bad kitty!”

“See?” Ren snickered. “I told you Mona was still alive.”

“I found him on the way to Shibuya,” Sae explained. “I didn’t see you anywhere in the crossing, so I decided this would be the safest place for me to look.”

“Well, you weren’t wrong,” Ann remarked as Futaba gently placed Morgana down onto one of the barseats.

Together, she and the other Phantom Thieves filled Sae in on Ren’s previous time travel story. When they were finally done, Sae slumped heavily onto another barseat with a groan. “I don’t even know anymore,” she mumbled. “Knowing about the cognitive world was already crazy enough as it is. And this just adds even more fuel to the insanity.”

“Welcome to our lives, sis,” Makoto deadpanned.

“Anyways, I’m glad to see that you managed to keep my sister and everyone else alive,” Sae commented, before giving Joker a look. “I imagine my alternate counterpart’s reaction would’ve been very unpleasant if she had learned that Makoto had died.”

Ren didn’t miss a beat. “Just another out of many reasons why I chose to go back in time and save everyone instead.”

“Anyways, dude, you actually got to go back in time and kick that false god’s ass for real this time!” Ryuji exclaimed with a whoop. “I bet you were just itching to go in and kick some serious ass!”

To his and everyone’s surprise, Ren shook his head. “It’s not that simple,” he countered. “Lavenza and Igor made it very clear that traveling back in time by itself was an incredibly risky process. If I fucked things up, then Yaldabaoth might’ve figured out what was going and killed all of us before we could do anything to fight back. I couldn’t just go back and expect everything to just magically turn out the way I wanted to.”

“I’m not surprised that time travel isn’t as easy as one would expect it to be,” Akechi nodded in understanding. “I presume, then, that you spent quite a lot of time with planning out your method of attack?”

“You have no idea,” Ren replied dryly. “Like I said before, I couldn’t just go back. I needed to be careful. I needed to be cunning, intelligent, wise. And above all else, I needed to be powerful. I needed to be powerful enough that I would always be able to bail you guys out without any problems at all, even in the worst-case scenario where everything can and will go wrong.”

A smirk appeared on the leader of the Phantom Thieves’ face. “Luckily, since I could only stay in the Velvet Room and Mementos until I was ready to go back in time…I had all the time in the world.”

The Velvet Room, Previous Timeline

“I get it,” Ren vocalized his thoughts to Lavenza and Igor. “Because I’ve chosen my path, and since you’re not going to be resurrecting me, I won’t be able to go back to the real world.” He shook his head. “That’s fine. There’s no point in going back there anyway, not without my friends."

"That is correct, Trickster," Lavenza confirmed. “However, you will have full access to the Velvet Room, and access to Mementos as well. By destroying the false god, you have restored the memory of the Phantom Thieves and yourself in the hearts and minds of the public, especially the confidants who did not directly participate in your battles. They will know you have fallen, they will mourn you…but they will remember you. And that is enough for you to manifest in Mementos without risk to yourself.”

“We must also discuss the strength of your bonds, Trickster,” Igor added. “Fortunately, you did not actually sever them when you sacrificed their essence to empower yourself with the strength needed to defeat Yaldabaoth. That action was a necessary evil, and one that your Personas consented to as the only way to destroy the oppressor who would enslave you and all of humanity. However, the deaths of your companions and friends has greatly weakened several of them.”

Lavenza showed Ren the compendium, and with a sinking feeling Ren saw that several Personas corresponding to the Arcanas of the Phantom Thieves were dull and blurred, compared to the brightly shining pictures of other Personas. Chariot. Lovers. Emperor. Priestess. Hermit. Empress. Even Justice. All holding merely a fraction of the power that they had once possessed. “I am happy to at least say that these bonds have not been completely and irrevocably destroyed,” Lavenza reported with a smile. “The only way that would have come to pass was if you yourself had severed the bond completely, destroying the friendship that you once had. But since your bonds with your friends were strong and unbreakable until the moment of their death, those bonds live on. Weak, clinging to existence by a thread, but they live on. They live on, and the Personas related to them can one day regain their strength. But only if you put in the effort to renew their power.”

“I’ll do whatever it takes,” Ren promised, before a look of confusion appeared on his face. “But I’ve got two questions. Why isn’t my Fool bond dead since I bonded with that fucking false god with him?” He shuddered, the very idea of the bond utterly disgusting him. “And how can I even get my Personas stronger?”

To his surprise, Igor outright laughed with genuine amusement. “Why, with the very tools that the false god provided you within this very Velvet Room!” he declared. At the puzzled expression on Ren’s face, the master of the Velvet Room launched into a more detailed explanation. “Yaldabaoth perverted the very purpose of the Velvet Room with his cruel tools and machinations,” he explained. “Fusion is meant to represent growth and positive transformation, the merging of two or more aspects of your spirit to create a more complete, more powerful, and overall better self.” His next words were spoken much more harshly, and Ren could tell that through his grin, he was scowling. "Not once was it ever meant to represent the violent sacrifice of one aspect of yourself as a means of empowerment, either to create a new persona or to grant power to a Persona that you already have.”

Suddenly, the underlying current of anger in his voice vanished, replaced with smug satisfaction. “But by introducing these medieval tools of torture and execution, Yaldabaoth has unwittingly provided you with the keys of reaching ultimate power,” Igor declared. “His machines are barbaric and uncivilized, but they are also useful. With them, it will be possible for you to empower your Personas to their absolute maximum potential, each one with enough power for you to wipe out entire armies of Shadows. It took our previous guest hours and hours of…” he tilted his head, “what is the world that the humans use, Lavenza?”

“Grinding, master?” she supplied innocently, causing Ren to stifle a snicker at the seemingly ancient and dignified Velvet Room attendant using such a modern and casual word.

“Yes, that’s right…grinding,” Igor nodded his head towards her in thanks, before continuing to address Ren. “Our previous guest required hours and hours of grinding for even a single one of his Personas to reach this maximum potential. With the tools Yaldabaoth has left behind, you will be able to achieve this potential for your Personas in just a fraction of the time.”

The hook-nosed entity raised an eyebrow. “Unless, of course, you find this course of action too distasteful to pursue.”

“No,” Ren answered almost immediately. “If it means I can save my friends, then I’ll do it. I don’t care how long it takes, or if it means I have to use Yaldabaoth’s torture devices. That’s a price that I’m more than willing to pay.”

Igor nodded in approval. “Excellent. We will provide you with our services for as long as you require prior to your departure.”

“Speaking of Yaldabaoth, that’s my other question. He was my Fool bond, as fucked up as that sounds. And I’m pretty sure I broke it by shooting a gun through his fucking head. So how come my Fool bond isn’t just completely dead?” Ren questioned.

Igor’s grin widened and Lavenza smiled with delight at the question. “The power of the Fool isn’t based on your bond with the false god,” Lavenza explained. “It is based on your very nature as a wild card. Especially a wild card who has unlocked his fullest potential, as demonstrated by your successful summoning of Satanael. That power is yours to keep and to wield, whether Yaldabaoth exists or no.”

Ren grinned back. This was excellent news. Some of his most powerful Personas, and the ones that were truest to who he was as a person, had been Fool Arcanas. Deep within him, he could feel Satanael rumbling in approval at the revelation. He glanced down at Mona, who gave him an encouraging smile in response.

“I’d like you guys to show me to Mementos, please,” the leader of the Phantom Thieves requested. “It’s time for us to get to work.”

LeBlanc Café, Present Timeline

“I didn’t have all the powerful Personas I showed you guys at first,” Ren was wrapping up this part of his tale. “Heck, I didn’t even have most of the Personas period, since the bonds empowering them were so weak at first since you guys had died. I did have some of them like Satanael, Arsene, Surtr, Yoshitsune, and Black Frost. And I had to work to get them all powered up and maxed out.”

“Must’ve been a hell of a workout,” Ryuji grinned and lightly punched Ren’s shoulder. “Like taking your Personas to the gym.”

Ren snickered. “You have no idea, Ryuji. “I spent literal hours if not days in Mementos with Mona as backup and Lavenza and Igor helping me out in the Velvet Room, not only powering up my Personas to max stats but also finding all the Personas I had lost and powering them up to max stats too. And that was AFTER I kept sacrificing my Personas to perfect their skill sets. Satanael was my first Persona with max stats. Then I maxed out Arsene, then Yoshitsune, then Black Frost and Surtr, and all the other Personas you’ve seen me used. And you’ve seen the results. Every single one of my Personas can fire off the strongest attacks possible, powered up as much as possible, and with zero weaknesses. Heck, Yoshitsune’s the most extreme example. Hassou Tobi’s broken as fuck, and he drains or repels everything that isn’t exactly Gun.”

Futaba snickered. “I bet the Shadows in Mementos must’ve been scared shitless of you.”

“They were,” Ren agreed nonchalantly with a shrug. “Heck, Satanael alone was enough to send many of them screaming. And eventually, I got to the point where there wasn’t a single thing in Mementos that could pose a threat to me. Hell, with all the Personas I have now, I can beat the shit out of the Reaper by myself, and unless he casts Megidolaon he doesn’t even put up much of a fight.”

Mona grinned. “As expect for the leader of the Phantom Thieves.”

“If only we had gotten the opportunity to battle the Reaper in Mementos before we had to confront Yaldabaoth,” Haru sighed wistfully, with a serene and innocent smile. “I would have absolutely loved to watch as you made Death itself scream for mercy.”

Everyone gave her a wary glance. “And I thought I was supposed to be the psychotic one,” Akechi muttered under his breath.

“I’m not that scary!” Haru protested. “At least not as scary as Ren-kun when he really gets mad.”

“…fair point,” Akechi conceded.

“So let me get this straight,” Sojiro interrupted, redirecting the conversation back to the main topic. “You needed these Persona things to fight, and you made them as powerful as possible. Was that all you needed to get ready to go back in time to save Futaba and everyone else?”

Ren actually let out a bark of laughter at that. “Heck no!” he exclaimed. “Powering up my Personas to the max was just the beginning. I still had to think about how I was going to save Akechi, how I was going to change the timeline to save as many people as possible while still not tipping Yaldabaoth off that something was wrong, all the ways I could end up making things worse and how to avoid them. There’s a lot to think about if you want to successfully change the past for the better, and if I didn’t have a solid plan then everything could easily go to shit.”

“Well, you certainly did an excellent job of it, considering that we’re all here right now,” Makoto remarked with a smile.

“I’m just happy to see all the work I put into this pay off,” Ren sighed with relief. “And one of the most important choices I made was right at the very beginning.”

“And what would that be, exactly?” Akechi pressed. He was trying not to show it, but everyone could tell that he was just as invested in and enraptured by Ren’s tale as the rest of the Phantom Thieves.”

“The one confidant I made who would remember the previous timeline,” Ren answered with a cryptic smile.

The Velvet Room, Previous Timeline

“Do you believe that you are ready to proceed?” Igor asked Ren as he approached his desk.

“I think so,” Ren answered. “As ready as I’ll ever be.” All of his chosen Personas had been fully empowered, and he had planned how he was going to correct the timeline as thoroughly as he possibly could.

Of course, there were no guarantees when it came to time travel, and always the possibility for something to go wrong. But he would adapt and overcome any challenge that he faced, just as he always had and always will.

“Then before I send you back, we must first discuss one final boon that we are willing and able to give you,” Igor explained. “We will have the ability to allow one of your confidants to remember the previous timeline. But only one can be allowed, for to allow more than one could risk overstretching our limitations even beyond what Yaldabaoth’s own violations have allowed.”

Ren’s eyes widened. “Really?” he exclaimed. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

“You already had so much to occupy both your mind and your time, Trickster,” Lavenza gently answered. “We did not wish to provide you with additional burdens to bear, when you were already so busy with empowering your Personas and planning out other aspects of your new journey.”

“I guess that’s fair enough,” Ren conceded. “So you’re saying I can choose one of my confidants to remember the previous timeline.”

“Indeed, Trickster, with the obvious exception of Yaldabaoth, of course,” Igor confirmed.

Ren rolled his eyes. “No shit,” he deadpanned, prompting an amused giggle from Lavenza. “So let’s see…” he closed his eyes, thinking about who would be the best option to give the gift of knowledge of the previous timeline to.

There were so many viable options. Morgana, the close friend and companion who would remember his duties from the beginning, and obviously wouldn’t abandon the rest of the team if he remembered the close friendships and bonds he had shared. Futaba, with her memories restored, would be free of her despair and lonely isolation without needing the Phantom Thieves to help her, and could provide valuable support in many different ways. And Akechi would be a choice that would be akin to playing with fire. The best-case scenario would see the two of them team up to take down Shido and their mutual enemies right at the beginning of the year, while the worst case would have Akechi and the conspiracy gunning down him and his friends in the same amount of time.

But there was one option that was superior to the rest. Only one option that would ensure that Yaldabaoth didn’t realize just how badly his rigged game would be derailed in the other direction while he held control of the Velvet Room.

Ren smiled down at Lavenza and made his decision. “The confidant I choose…is Caroline and Justine.”

From the delighted look on Lavenza’s face and the approving glint in Igor’s eyes, Ren knew that he had made the right choice.

And with that final decision made, it was time for him to go back to the past, and succeed where he had previously failed.

Chapter Text

December 24, the Present Timeline

Morgana sighed. “Part of me wishes you chose me to remember everything,” he admitted, “but I get it, Ren. Caroline and Justine were super important to making sure we did everything right this time around, and if you say that there wasn’t any other way, then I believe you.”

“Wait…Caroline and Justine? Who the heck are they?” Ryuji asked blankly.

Ann sighed. “Normally, I’d be calling Ryuji an idiot…but I can’t remember who those are either, so I can’t even say he’s wrong for asking that.”

Ren smirked. “You actually HAVE met both of them before,” he explained, “but you met them specifically in her Lavenza form. Caroline and Justine were the result of Lavenza being split in half by the false god, and they were the Velvet Room attendants I interacted with back when Yaldabaoth was still in control of the Velvet Room.”

“That does explain it a little bit,” Makoto commented, “but I’m still confused. What were so important about Caroline and Justine that they were the ones you specifically needed to remember the previous timeline, and not any of us?”

“They were the ones who were in charge of my Compendium with all of my Personas,” Ren explained. “A Compendium that would have all the new, ridiculously overpowered, max stat Personas that I had trained in the previous timeline, all ready and waiting for me at the start of this one.”

Akechi was the first to put the pieces together. “Ah, it all makes sense now,” he murmured. “You needed Caroline and Justine to remember the previous timeline, because if they DIDN’T, then they would have looked in to your Compendium, seen all of those maximally empowered Personas, and ignorantly reported such a discovery straight to Yaldabaoth.”

“Oh, shit!” Ryuji exclaimed. “That would’ve been a fucking disaster!”

Yusuke shuddered. “I don’t even want to think about what would have happened if Yaldabaoth had been aware of such a development,” he commented with a grimace. “No doubt the false god would have interfered in our leader’s journey even more than he already had.”

“I don’t know what that monstrosity would have done to Ren-kun or the people around him,” Haru added grimly, “but I doubt that it would’ve been anything good.”

Futaba looked up at Ren and grinned. “But hey, you were smart enough to stop that from happening!” she praised. “Cause clearly Yaldabaoth didn’t suspect a thing!”

Ren smirked and shook his head. “Nope, he definitely didn’t,” he agreed. “Instead of Caroline and Justine blabbing about my secretly overpowered Compendium to the false god…they reached out to me in secret only a few days after I first arrived in Tokyo. And we got to work almost right away.”

April, Present Timeline

“Hey, Amamiya!” Sojiro’s gruff voice called out from downstairs. “There’s some kids here waiting for you.”

“Kids?” Ren thought in his head. He really didn’t know any kids in this timeline…and then the realization hit him. A few days ago, when he had first woken up in a Velvet Room once again claimed by Yaldabaoth, Caroline had been the one to wake him up…

…and she had winked at him. An action that, as subtle as it was, was one that Ren clearly her remembered NOT having done before.

Ren raced down the stairs until he was in LeBlanc Café, where Sojiro was gazing at him with a critical eye. And at the front doors to LeBlanc were Caroline and Justine, dressed in their warden uniforms, both of them smiling at him.

“Good afternoon,” Justine introduced herself and her sister. “I’m Justine, and this is my sister Caroline. We are here to see…Ren Amamiya, I believe his name was.”

“That’s me,” Ren agreed, quickly trying to formulate an excuse on the spot. “So you’re the two kids I’m babysitting today?”

“Baby…?” Caroline started angrily, before quickly correcting herself. “Errr…yes! That’s right!”

“Hold on,” Sojiro glanced warily at him, with an undercurrent of anger in his tone. “You’re going to be babysitting these kids in here today? What makes you think I’d agree with this, when you didn’t bother to tell me in the first place?”

Ren resisted the urge to wince at the hostility coming from Sojiro, but he knew why. This wasn’t the Sojiro who had become a second father to him late into the year. At this early stage, Sojiro was just a guardian who didn’t know anything about him other than the fact that he was a delinquent. He didn’t have any reason yet to trust him, and plenty of reasons not to. He put an apologetic look on his face. “Sorry about that, Sakura-san,” he apologized. “It’s just that you were talking earlier about how I should get some responsibility as soon as possible, and I thought doing this job today would be a good place to get started. But you’re right, I should have told you about this first, and I’m sorry for not remembering.”

Sojiro was taken aback by the polite apology, and the anger disappeared from his voice as he sighed. “Look, if that’s why you’re doing this, then I’m not going to say you’re in the wrong. Just…let me know next time, okay?”

“I will,” Ren promised, as he gestured towards Caroline and Justine and beckoned them to come upstairs with him.

Once they had all convened in the attic, the first thing Caroline and Justine did…was to wrap Ren up in a tight hug. “Oof!” Ren mumbled, not expecting such an open display of affection from the previously gruff and cantankerous wardens.

“Trickster…” Justine addressed him in a tone far kinder and more respectful than how she had ever addressed him in the past, “we remember. We remember everything. Who we are truly our, what our true purpose is…and the fact that a false god has usurped the Velvet Room for his own malevolent purposes.”

“We couldn’t do anything yet,” Caroline added bitterly, though not at him. “We had to pretend we were that false god’s stooges.”

“Does he suspect anything?” Ren immediately asked the most important question.

Caroline smirked. “Nope!” she declared. “We’ve got him completely fooled! And since we’re not in the Velvet Room, he can’t spy on us!”

“As of now, he believes that we departed into the mundane world to oversee your transition to your new environment and ensure that your rehabilitation begins smoothly. He certainly is not aware of how powerful your Compendium truly is, Trickster,” Justine confirmed, “and we will do everything in our power to keep it that way.”

“Good,” Ren affirmed, before a thought suddenly occurred to him. “Quick question, though…why couldn’t you have come to me earlier with my Compendium, before I awoke to Arsene again?”

“That’s precisely it, Trickster,” Caroline cut him off with a hint of the curtness that she had used to treat him with in the previous timeline. “Until the moment where you first had your true Awakening, you would not be able to access any of the Personas you had before, no matter how powerful they might have been.”

Justine smiled at him. “But now that you have once again awoken Arsene, with the Compendium at your disposal, you may now empower him to the maximum potential that he had obtained prior to the time reset, and access all the other extremely powerful Personas that you had gathered as well.”

Ren grinned as Justine took out his Compendium and opened it for him. And just as he had hoped, all of the Personas that he had obtained and empowered were waiting for him.

“The bad news is, we can’t give you all of these Personas at this very moment,” Caroline warned. “Nobody’s ever tried to give a Wild Card his Personas in the real world. The results could be completely unpredictable…and possibly very explosive.”

Ren cringed at the idea of Café LeBlanc’s attic violently exploding in a detonation of blue mystical fire. “Are there any Personas you CAN give me right now?” he asked.

“Only two,” Justine answered. “We can give you your empowered Arsene, and we can give you Satanael. Both of these Personas are true representation of your soul and attuned to your spirit in a way that no other Persona can. As such, the transition process will be much smoother and the danger minimal by comparison.”

“If that’s what I have to work with, then that’s what I have to work with,” Ren accepted without any complaints. Arsene might not be as powerful as his other Personas defensively, but he still had no weaknesses and was a powerhouse in his own right. And Satanael didn’t need any explanation whatsoever.

Justine held the book out towards Ren, and he touched the book with his hand. The book began to glow with a mystical blue light, and power flowed through his arm and into his body. Inside himself, he could feel Arsene swell tremendously in power until he was at peak strength, and he could feel Satanael awaken within him once more, just as he had at the moment where he had shot the false god in the head mere seconds before his own death. It was only a fraction of Satanael’s true power…but it was still greater than any of his other Personas save for arguably Yoshitsune.

Ren grinned as he felt the power settle within him. “Heh heh heh…Ryuji’s gonna be SO surprised the next time we go into Kamoshitbag’s Palace,” he commented wryly.

“The next time you come to the Velvet Room, we’ll give you the rest of your Personas,” Caroline assured him, before frowning as a thought suddenly occurred to her. “Also…when do you think we can free our true master?”

Ren’s grin faded and he let out a resigned sigh. “The bad news is…I don’t think we’ll be able to do it until about the same time as last timeline,” he confessed. “Igor himself said that there were a lot of dangerous consequences with messing around with the timeline. There’s some things that I can get away with, but if I freed Igor early, then Yaldabaoth will probably end up doing something completely different to stop us. And all the knowledge I have from the previous timeline won’t mean jack shit.”

Caroline sighed. “I had a feeling that was going to be the answer,” she admitted. “I get it, though that doesn’t mean I have to like it.” She glared fiercely at the Trickster. “But as soon as you get the opportunity to free our master safely, you better do it. Got it, Trickster?”

Ren nodded in affirmation. “If I see an opportunity, I’ll do it,” he promised.

“Good,” Caroline answered tersely.

“In the meantime, Trickster, what changes do you intend to make in this timeline?” Justine asked curiously. “You yourself stated that you cannot risk any major deviations, at the risk of destabilizing your entire mission.”

Ren gave her Joker’s iconic grin. “I have a couple of ideas…”

The Present Timeline

“Wait wait wait, hold up!” Futaba interrupted. “You had Satanael within you, ALL THIS TIME?”

Ren smirked. “From the very day that I was able to get my first Personas out of the Compendium,” he confirmed. “Satanael was in me from the very beginning.”

“And I presume that this Satanael was the one who disrupted Yaldabaoth’s first attempt at the Rays of Control?” Akechi questioned. “The one with a Megidolaon that was somehow even more powerful than Lucifer’s Morning Star?”

Ren chuckled. “The one and the same, Goro.”

“What the hell?” Ryuji exclaimed. “You had something that ridiculously powerful since Kamoshida’s Palace, and you never used it?”

Ren shook his head. “Didn’t need to. Arsene was more than enough to carry us through by himself until I got proper access to the Compendium, and after Ann awakened her Persona I could just use other Personas like Alice, Black Frost, and Yoshitsune to get the job done.”

“But still!” Ann protested. “Arsene’s strong and all, but he’s nowhere near as powerful as Satanael! There’s some enemies that Arsene can’t kill, but there’s nothing that can stop Satanael! Couldn’t you have just used Satanael to blow up literally everything in front of us by spamming Megidolaon, instead of bothering with switching around with your Personas?”

“Dude…” Ryuji grinned. “Can you imagine Satanael blowing up Kamoshida? That shit would have been GLORIOUS!”

“It would have been,” Ren acknowledged, before frowning. “It would have also been the wrong move.”

“What?” Futaba spluttered. “Why?”

This time, it was Makoto who figured out the answer first. “Because it might have given away the fact that Ren had Satanael to Yaldabaoth. And then we have the same problem of Yaldabaoth changing his plans in a way that Ren wouldn’t have been able to predict with his knowledge of the past.”

“That’s exactly why I didn’t go crazy with Satanael,” Ren agreed, “but that didn’t mean I wasn’t using him at all. In fact, Satanael was hard at work the entire time he was within my soul, but not in a way that anybody would have been able to guess.”

“Oh?” Morgana perked his head up, clearly intrigued. “And what was he doing, if he wasn’t battling?”

“He was clouding Yaldabaoth’s vision,” Ren explained. “Making it so that Yaldabaoth couldn’t see the details about what we were doing in each Palace, only enough to understand the progress we were making and that we were clearing each Palace and taking the Treasures as quickly as possible. Satanael was the only Persona who could pull this off right, since he’s the equal and opposite to Yaldabaoth.”

Akechi inclined his head in respect to Ren. “I’m glad to see that you planned this out so carefully,” he acknowledged. “I can see how even the slightest misstep could have led to massive deviations that would have turned this timeline against you, instead of making it better like you intended.”

Ren smiled faintly. “I had a lot of time in the Velvet Room to plan this out properly before I went back.”

“Here’s my question,” Sojiro interrupted, all eyes turning to the elderly barista. “You said before that you couldn’t change too much in the timeline, because otherwise you would’ve tipped off this false god that you were fighting. Yet clearly you made some major changes, because Akechi’s still alive, and so is everyone else? So what did you really change this second time around, and what stayed the same?”

“Sakura-san raises a very good point,” Sae Nijima added. “I can also imagine that some things didn’t turn out the way you planned. President Okumura still perished due to a mental shutdown, and so did Kobayakawa. I don’t think Kobayakawa is particularly relevant to anything, but I have a hard time believing that you wouldn’t have at least attempted to save Okumura, given that he was the father of one of your fellow Thieves.”

“Those are good questions indeed,” Ren acknowledged, “and I’ll start answering them now. To start with, you’re right. I had to think very carefully about how I wanted to change the timeline, what the consequences would be, and whether the benefits were worth the risks. And to be honest, a lot of the time it was better for me to stick with the original timeline and not make any major changes, no matter how much I might have wanted to.” He turned to face Yusuke. “Yusuke, I’d like to use you as an example, if you don’t mind.”

“By all means, Ren,” the young artist invited.

“Thank you,” the leader of the Phantom Thieves replied. “Yusuke, what Madarame did to you was absolutely horrible. Nobody deserves to be manipulated and exploited by someone who should have been taking care of them, the way Madarame manipulated and exploited you for your art. It was abuse, plain and simple. I don’t think anybody here would disagree with that.”

Akechi scoffed. “That piece of shit might have been more subtle about it, but at the end of the day he was just another one of a long line of abusive assholes,” he growled. “No argument from me there.”

Yusuke smiled at him. “Thank you for your support, Akechi,” he offered. The brown-haired teen merely gave him a brief nod but said nothing further.

“Yusuke, Madarame’s treatment of you was horrible,” Ren continued. “However, it was also subtle. It was so subtle, in fact, that you didn’t even know that you were being abused until we exposed Madarame’s crimes to you. Madarame’s abuse, as atrocious as it was, was stable, it showed no signs of escalating so long as you were unaware of his crimes, and you weren’t at any imminent risk for your life under his thumb. Because of this, there was no immediate, emergent,” Ren made sure to stress the last word, “need to save you earlier than we had previously. You would endure and survive no worse for wear until we saved you, because you had already done so in the previous timeline. I hate phrasing it like this, but the benefits of saving you earlier than we did in the different timeline weren’t worth the risks.”

“If you were anybody else, the way you’re saying this would be kinda messed up,” Futaba admitted. “But it’s you, Ren. I trust you more than anybody else here except for Sojiro. If you’re saying that not saving Yusuke earlier than you did last time was the right call, then I believe you.”

“I agree with both Futaba and your reasoning, Ren,” Yusuke reassured him. “From my understanding of the goings-on at Shujin Academy, Kamoshida’s depravities were despicable beyond words, and needed to be dealt immediately both for your own sakes and for the sakes of the students of Shujin. I do not begrudge you the necessity of dealing with that abomination first and foremost. And besides,” he adopted a sheepish expression, “I will be the first to admit that I did not leave the best of impressions when I approached Ann for my modeling request. Your friends would have seen no reason to drop everything on my behalf, and would have questioned your desire to do so.”

“Thank you for understanding,” Ren replied gratefully, before he let out a weary sigh. “I had to make those kinds of decisions so many times while I led you guys. Wondering when it was worth changing the timeline, and when it was better to just let things stay put.”

“Wait, hold on!” Sojiro interrupted, more harshly than before. “If I’m understanding this correctly, then you let Futaba suffer in her depression for months when you could have done something!”

“Holy crap, you’re right!” Futaba realized, before casting a look of hurt and betrayal towards Ren. “Couldn’t you have done anything to save me from my own thoughts sooner?”

A look of genuine pain and sorrow appeared on Ren’s face. “That was one of the hardest decisions I ever had to make,” he confessed. “I would’ve loved nothing more than to go in there and rescue you as soon as possibly could, Futaba. And no, I didn’t just use the excuse that you’d be able to endure your pain like Yusuke could because you survived it last timeline to justify why I let you suffer in your room for months.”

“Then why?” Futaba asked quietly, struggling not to cry as she remembered the horrible thoughts that had once plagued her head, when she had still believed she was responsible for her mother’s death.

Ren sighed, and his own pain and regret were clear for everyone to see. “The biggest reason…was because back then, neither you nor Sojiro had any reason to trust me. You reached out to me first, because you desperately needed someone to change your heart and save you, but that wasn’t until the middle of the year. Before then, you didn’t know who I was. You didn’t know that I could become your older brother, or that I was the leader of the Phantom Thieves. The only thing you knew about me back then was that I was a delinquent with a criminal record, the type of person you’d want to avoid. And the same is true for Sojiro. He might love and trust me now, but back then, I was just a delinquent that he was watching over for a year. He certainly didn’t treat me the same way back then that he does now. Can you imagine what would go through his mind, if a random criminal was asking about a daughter that he shouldn’t know anything about at all? Can you imagine how he would have reacted if I tried to reach out to you back in April or May, when he barely trusted me? How would YOU have reacted if a random stranger, a random criminal, broke into Sojiro’s house trying to reach you?” Ren grimaced. “It would have been a complete and utter catastrophe. And since Futaba’s pyramid Palace locked itself in near the top, there was no way we could’ve gotten in without reaching out to her and getting her to trust us.”

“I…damn it…DAMN IT!” Sojiro shouted, slamming his fist onto the bar. But his anger wasn’t directed at Ren this time…because Ren was right. He wasn’t proud of how he had treated Ren back when he had first crossed the doorstep to LeBlanc Café, but it didn’t change the fact that he had had almost no reason to trust Ren back when he didn’t know anything more about him beyond the fact that he was a student with a criminal record. If Ren had tried to reach out to Futaba, before they had developed any sort of positive relationship with each other…at best, Sojiro would have done everything in his power to cut off that access, and demanded Ren stay the hell away from his daughter.

…At worst, he would have thrown Ren right back into juvie, right then and there.

“And that’s not even going into what Futaba’s uncle would’ve done,” Ren finished grimly. “How much do you want to bet that the money-grubbing piece of shit would’ve used that as ammunition to separate the two of you from each other?”

“I get it,” Futaba muttered gloomily. Morgana silently climbed up onto her lap, allowing the girl to pet him as a way to comfort her. “You’re right, and I hate that you’re so right. But you really didn’t have any way to save me earlier than you did the last timeline.” She sighed. “I’m just relieved that you took my request for help so seriously.”

“Oh, absolutely,” Ren affirmed without a trace of hesitation. “The moment the window of opportunity appeared, I charged right through it. I made absolutely goddamn sure that we cleared that Palace the moment we had access to it, and that you didn’t have to suffer a second longer than you absolutely had to.”

“Ren is right,” Ann immediately confirmed. “He was pushing us through that pyramid harder than we’d pushed through any other Palace before that one. Heck, when we were starting to run out of steam, he said he’d finish up the Palace and send the Calling Card by himself if he had to.”

“I always wondered why you were so insistent on finishing that Palace so quickly,” Makoto murmured. “Now it all makes sense.”

For the first time, Akechi looked openly uneasy with the whole conversation. “For what it’s worth,” he muttered, “I am sorry that I killed Wakaba Isshiki and left you alone with those mongrels. I ended up forcing you through the very same torturous circumstances that I suffered in my childhood…all for a revenge that was doomed to fail from the very beginning. There are many people I’ve killed through the Metaverse, many of them were scum who I don’t feel a single shred of remorse for removing their disgusting existences from the Earth. But Wakaba Isshiki…I do regret her death, just as I regret the suffering I placed on you through it. I don’t expect you to accept my apology, but that doesn’t mean you don’t deserve to hear one.”

Futaba glanced up towards Akechi, her expression unreadable as she silently contemplated him. “…I can’t say I forgive you,” she finally answered after several seconds of carefully considering her words, “…but I’ll give you credit for actually bothering to make an apology in the first place. That’s more than I was ever expecting from you…I’ll take what I can get.”

Akechi nodded in acknowledgment of Futaba’s response. There was no more that needed to be said. Not now, at the very least.

Haru was almost tempted to ask Akechi where her apology was for the death of her father, but restrained herself. Not only because it would have been extremely rude to Futaba, but because she remembered Ren clearly saying that he had made an attempt to save her father, only for that attempt to have failed. Ren would almost certainly be explaining those events momentarily, and she could save her question for then.

Sojiro sighed. “With knowing how you killed Wakaba, it’s hard to remember that you’re a victim just as much as a villain, Akechi,” he commented, his tone utterly exhausted. “Shitty adults have fucked over all of you, when they should’ve been taking care of you instead.”

“If that had been the case, then the Phantom Thieves wouldn’t have ever been needed in the first place, and Yaldabaoth wouldn’t have ever come into existence,” Ren replied gravely.

“I already know the answer to this, but I don’t suppose you could have possibly saved Wakaba, could you?” the way Sojiro asked it made it clear that it was a rhetorical question, but he wanted to hear the answer out loud anyway.”

Ren shook his head. “I only went back in time as far as this year,” he replied. “Futaba’s mother was long gone by then.”

Sojiro sighed. “Figured it wouldn’t have been that simple…” he muttered.

“So if I understand this correctly,” Sae interjected, “you couldn’t change most of the major events of this current timeline compared to the previous one. You couldn’t change Madarame’s heart and rescue Yusuke from his abuse any earlier than the last timeline, and you couldn’t deal with Medjed and change Futaba’s heart any earlier either.”

“Futaba changed her own heart,” Ren corrected, “but everything you’ve said is otherwise correct.”

“Then what did you change?” she prompted. “Obviously, everyone here is alive and well, including Akechi. I might not know you all that well compared to you friends, but I have a hard time believing that you wouldn’t have made additional changes beyond that. You already hinted that you tried and failed to save Okumura. Was that a change from the previous timeline too?”

Ren smirked. “You know me so well now, Sae,” he joked, causing the elder Nijima to roll her eyes. Inwardly, he was grateful to her for directing the topic of discussion away from Futaba’s tragedy. “And you’re right. I wasn’t going to just let time flow in exactly the same way as last time, not when I could change things for the better without destabilizing the timeline too much or tipping Yaldabaoth off.”

“So when did you start making those kinds of changes, Ren-kun?” Haru prompted.

The leader of the Phantom Thieves. “Earlier then you all think.”

It was Ann who came to the realization first, and her eyes widened in shock. “Wait a minute. Do you mean…?”

Ren nodded at her, with the satisfaction of a man who was proud of the work he had done. “Let’s talk about how I saved Shiho from Kamoshida.”

Chapter Text

“I want to know more,” Ann immediately asserted, daring anyone around her with a fierce glare to challenge her request. For some bizarre reason, none were forthcoming.

Ren grimaced. “In the original timeline, nobody came to Shiho’s help. Kamoshida tried to threaten and blackmail you, and when that failed, he looked towards Shiho as a…way to get revenge. And he did much worse than just kick her off the volleyball team. The day after he got his hands on her, she tried to kill herself by throwing herself off Shujin’s roof.” Ren’s eyes darkened as he recalled those horrible moments.

“Kamoshida would’ve…he…he would’ve…” Ann stammered, unable to properly speak the words as the true horror of Kamoshida’s depraved actions against Shiho in the original timeline sunk into her.

“That piece of shit!” Ryuji snarled furiously, slamming his hand into the ground.

“Disgusting mongrel,” Akechi spat. “I’d have been more than happy to splatter his shadow’s brains onto the floor purely out of principle.”

“That was one event that I was absolutely going to change, no matter how more complicated it might make things in the future,” Ren declared, and everyone could see Joker’s confidence and determination in his eyes. “If I didn’t do anything to help Shiho when I knew about what was going to happen and could do something to stop it, then I might as well just throw her into Kamoshida’s office myself.”

“Shiho told me about that,” Ann murmured. “When I met up with her after she escaped from that shitbag’s office, she told me that earlier, you had tried to warn her about what Kamoshida was planning.”

“I did, that very morning in fact,” Ren grimly confirmed. “Trying to save Shiho was actually harder than you might think, because she had absolutely no reason to trust me at that point, and plenty of reasons not to since I was supposed to be the big scary criminal delinquent. But I at least had to try…”

April 14, Current Timeline

Ren considered it a stroke of luck that it didn’t take very long for him to find Shiho. The girl was at her locker, exchanging her books as she got ready for her next few classes. As there was no real easy way for him to approach a girl who had technically never met him, he decided to just walk up to her and greet her directly.

“Hello,” he said the greeting quietly. Shiho looked up, clearly surprised to see the criminal transfer student approaching her, but to Ren’s relief she didn’t show any fear or disgust towards him, or attempt to run away.

“Uh…hello…” Shiho awkwardly returned the greeting. “Can I help you?”

“Do you mind if I talk to you privately for a few seconds?” Ren asked. “It’s extremely important.”

Shiho glanced around. A few students were looking over at the duo of the criminal transfer student and the volleyball player with mild interest, but otherwise didn’t particularly care to get any further involved in their discussion. “Just a few seconds, I have to get to class,” Shiho decided.

“Okay, I won’t take long anyway. I just have this to say. Stay away from Kamoshida this afternoon,” Ren warned, keeping his voice low enough that only Shiho could hear her.

“What?” Shiho gave him a confused look. “Why?”

“I’m assuming you know about the rumors about him, but the truth is that he’s so much worse than you think,” Ren answered grimly. “You would know, better than anyone else, the way he lusts after Ann like an animal. And he’s about to get a hell of a lot worse. He’s going to try and force Ann to do what he wants her to, and when that fails, you’ll be next on his target list. Both as a consolation prize…and as a way of getting revenge.”

Shiho was increasingly horrified by what she was hearing. Part of her wanted to deny Ren’s claims about Kamoshida…but she couldn’t. She had seen for herself how Kamoshida had lusted after Ann, recounted the many times Ann had confided in her about Kamoshida’s perverted behavior. Combined with the many times Kamoshida had sought vengeance after any real or perceived slights against him, the breaking of Ryuji’s leg foremost among them…and Ren’s warning disturbed her with just how much sense it made.

“Kamoshida’s going to escalate today,” Ren continued his warning. “He’s going to try and force you into his office today if he fails to go after Ann…and he’s going to do the unthinkable to you, if he catches you alone and without anyone to help him.”

Shiho shuddered at the horrific implications. Part of her wondered if Ren was one of those “popularity haters” who tried to tear down anyone at the top, no matter who they were…but she didn’t get that impression from him in the slightest. The only thing that she saw on Ren’s face was the ironclad conviction of a man who spoke the absolute, unadulterated truth…or at least fully believed that they were speaking that truth.

And if she was being completely honest with herself…she could imagine the scenario that Ren was warning her about. She could see Kamoshida doing the things that Ren was describing with disturbing vividness that edged dangerously close towards reality.

“That’s all I have to say,” Ren finished, giving her an intense gaze that was completely different from anything she had ever seen before. “I know you don’t have any reason to believe me, but you have to stay away from Kamoshida today by any means necessary. Even if it means giving up your spot on the volleyball team. It’ll save you from a fate worse than death.”

And before Shiho could say anything else, Ren was already starting to walk away. He had other ways of keeping Shiho safe, but he couldn’t implement any of them right this minute. If both of them were lucky, this warning would be alone to avert the terrible fate that awaited Shiho Suzui at the hands of Kamoshida…

Of course, if there was one thing that he had learned from the previous timeline…it was that he should never expect things to go according to plan…

Present, Current Timeline

“Shiho took your advice seriously,” Ann informed Ren. “Even though you had only just met and you had this terrible reputation, she felt that she could trust you and your warning. So she tried to get out of school the moment after practice ended…” her beautiful face twisted into a scowl. “But she ran into Kamoshida directly right when she was about to leave.”

Ren stared at Ann for several seconds, before smacking his face with his hand. “Oh, you’ve got to be fucking kidding me!” he growled.

“How disastrously unfortunate…” Haru murmured sympathetically.

“With all the power that Kamoshida had back then, there would have been no way for Shiho to avoid or defy him if he was literally right in front of her,” Makoto sighed. “I guess there’s only so much good sense can help you if your luck really is just that bad.”

“Luckily, that wasn’t my only plan,” Ren replied with a smirk. “I was never going to base my plan to save Shiho only on a warning that she might or might not even listen to, to begin with. I had another part of my plan to make sure Kamoshida didn’t get his hands on Shiho, and I was always going to carry it out even if I hadn’t decided to warn Shiho first.”

“What plan are you talking about, Ren?” Futaba asked curiously.

“In the first timeline, after school ended, I stumbled across Ann for the first time since we had met on the first day of school,” Ren explained. “Kamoshida had just finished his latest of many attempts to claim her, the sickening piece of shit. And when Ann refused, he threatened to go after Shiho, taking away her spot on the volleyball team.”

“That part I remember,” Ann muttered. “I was panicking the whole day, afraid of the worst. And I didn’t stop panicking until Shiho called me, telling me she was safe and wanting to meet up as soon as possible.”

“In the first timeline, I was there when I overheard that conversation,” Ren continued, as he let out a brief sigh. “I saw that Ann was in serious trouble, and approached her to see if there was anything I could do. That was arguably the moment where we first became friends.”

“…the fact that you specifically stated that this is what happened in the first timeline, leads me to believe that you were not there this time around,” Akechi pointed out.

“That’s right,” Ren confirmed. “This time, the moment school ended…I opened up the Meta-Nav and went straight back into Kamoshida’s Palace. By that point, I had already met up with Caroline and Justine, so I had 6 of my most powerful Personas ready and waiting to be unleashed.”

The leader of the Phantom Thieves grinned, but this time it wasn’t Joker’s trademark expression of confidence. This time, it was a far more malicious and sinister expression, one laced with the cruelty and hatred that he normally kept carefully concealed. The exact same darkness that Ren had displayed when he had hurled insult after insult against Shido, when he had beheld the Depths of Mementos, and when he had dealt the killing blow against the false god.

A sign that reminded everyone that his ultimate persona was a form of the Devil for a reason.

“I was going to make damn sure that Kamoshida wouldn’t get his hands on Shiho or anyone else that day…” Ren hissed, his voice dripping with contempt and loathing, “and I was going to do it by teaching Kamoshida a lesson in the true meaning of pain."

April 14, Current Timeline

Joker smirked as he approached the ventilation shaft that he had used to previously enter Kamoshida’s castle in the past. As always, Satanael was hard at work concealing his presence from Yaldabaoth’s prying eyes within the depths of his soul, this time spreading his miasma of darkness and illusions even stronger than usual. Meanwhile, his other powerful Personas were eager to proceed with his crucial mission, all united in their desire for vengeance and justice against the shadow of the perverted, depraved gym teacher who had proven more monstrous than any of their other targets save for Masayoshi Shido himself.

Joker didn’t know how long he’d have before Kamoshida hypothetically got his hands on Shiho, and he wasn’t going to dither around. With the speed of a 99 Ag Persona fueling his movements, he ducked into the ventilation shaft and advanced into the hallway right outside the Entrance Hall of Kamoshida’s Castle in just a few quick seconds. To his delight, Shadow Kamoshida was standing on the first landing of stairs, giving orders to his knight-like Shadow guards.

“Best-case scenario, right there,” Joker thought. He wouldn’t have to waste precious time chasing Kamoshida down within the depths of his Palace, and he already knew how pathetically weak even the most powerful of Kamoshida’s knights were in comparison to himself.

He inched towards the doors leading to the Entrance Hall, where Kamoshida’s shadow was still barking orders to his knights. “Double the guards, and be extra vigilant!” the perverted false-king was shouting. “If those intruders think they can get away with invading my kingdom, they’ve got another thing coming! I want those pieces of shit brought before me so that I can put an end to that filth myself!”

Ren smirked. Showtime. “You won’t have to look very far!” he boasted. “I’m right here!”

Shadow Kamoshida and the Knights instantly turned towards the door, their gazes instantly focused on him. The other self of the gym teacher smirked cruelly. “Well, well, well…so you saved us the trouble of sniffing you out,” he sneered. “I should be thanking you for making this so convenient.”

Ren returned the sneer with a completely unimpressed glance. “You won’t be thanking me for very long,” he growled.

The smirk on Kamoshida’s face grew larger. “You actually thought you could fight me and all of my knights at once. You’re an even bigger fool than I thought.” He lifted his hand. “Guards, kill this piece of shit!”

Ren grinned and grabbed his mask, ripping it off his face. “Yoshitsune,” he calmly spoke the single name, summoning the legendary Japanese swordsmaster and general behind him. He gave Kamoshida’s army a look that carried the promise of death, and spoke the two words that would spell death for countless shadows in the past, present, and future. “Hassou Tobi,” he hissed.

Yoshitsune lunged forward, and Shadow Kamoshida could do nothing but watch in abject disbelief and horror as his entire army of knights, the army that represented his strength and domination over the castle of Shujin Academy, was obliterated before his very eyes. Yoshitsune’s might was so legendary that it tore apart reality itself, his eight vicious and lightning-quick slashes tearing up the battlefield in blood-red energy as every single knight, whether it be a lowly grunt or a golden champion, was brutally and mercilessly torn to shreds. By the time Yoshitsune had finally finished his assault, there wasn’t even any scraps of metal left of the shadows that had once been a legion of knights.

“What the fuck…” Shadow Kamoshida breathed in stunned disbelief, all traces of his earlier bravado and arrogance completely gone. The false king barely had time to process the destruction of his army, when Joker’s glare suddenly turned from the empty hall where his army had once stood to him. Kamoshida felt terror overtake his soul, and not just because he was at his very core a coward who ran away whenever things didn’t turn his way. He knew, instinctively knew the way a prey lay eyes on a hungry predator, that this intruder, this force of death and destruction, was leagues above him in terms of power and might.

Unfortunately for him, Joker wouldn’t give him the chance to run away. Moving with inhuman speed, Joker raced up the stairs towards him, clenching his hands into fists. Shadow Kamoshida desperately swung at him with a fist, but to his horror, the fist merely bounced harmlessly off of Joker, not hindering him in the slightest. Joker grinned as he saw the look of panic manifest on Kamoshida’s face. Then, as he reached the platform where Kamoshida was stumbling backwards, he raised his fist, empowered by the might of Yoshitsune…and smashed it straight into Kamoshida’s face.

WHAM!

“Aarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggghhhhhhhhhh!!!!” Kamoshida screamed as he felt his face explode in horrible agony. It wasn’t possible! How the hell did a single fist from this brat hurt this much???

“I know what you did,” Joker snarled viciously. The grin from before was completely gone, replaced with a look of pure hate. “I know what you plan to do. You thought yourself untouchable, Kamoshida. That you could ruin the lives of Shujin’s students as you pleased, and saw the girls in particular as nothing but toys to play with and break on a whim. You thought you could do all this without suffering the consequences.”

The grin returned, and through the pain Kamoshida could have sworn that he was looking at the face of the Devil himself. “And now you’re going to pay for that.”

Kamoshida didn’t even have time to formulate a response before Joker smashed his fist into his face again, and once again his world exploded into nothing but pain.

The Present, Current Timeline

“Holy shit…” Ryuji breathed, staring at Ren with a look of stunned disbelief. He wasn’t the only one, either. Every single one of his friends and confidants, including those who had never even stepped into the Metaverse, could only stare at him, aghast, at his revelation. “THAT’S what you were doing that afternoon?” he spluttered.

Ren chuckled darkly, the sound sending a shiver down everyone’s spine. “The real reason Kamoshida never got his hands on Shiho that day? He was too busy suffering from an acute, severe case of me beating the everloving shit out of his shadow and throwing it down the stairs of his own fucking palace.”

“Damn, Joker!” Akechi whistled, looking thoroughly impressed. “Every time I think I’ve seen everything you’re capable of, you prove me wrong time and time again. I would’ve loved to watch you pummel that degenerate’s shadow into the ground.”

“Don’t encourage him!” Futaba shouted at him. “He could’ve sent Kamoshida straight into a mental shutdown!”

“Absolutely not,” Ren countered, cutting both of them off. “As cathartic as it was to beat the shit out of Kamoshida’s shadow and punish him for all the atrocities he committed with my bare hands, killing him was never once going to be on the table. And I’m not saying that just because killing that piece of shit would’ve caused far more problems than it would’ve solved, although I certainly didn’t spare him because I gave a fuck about his life, for how little it’s worth,” he added the last part coldly.

“Then what was your reason for sparing him, besides the pragmatic concerns?” Makoto asked quietly, still disturbed at how easily and remorselessly Ren had admitted to effectively torturing another person’s shadow, even when that person was as despicable as Kamoshida.

“Because it would deny his victims justice,” Ren answered. “If I killed Kamoshida, then he would bring all of his dark secrets and the truth of his atrocities to the grave with him. He might even be buried as a hero because of his past achievements in the Olympics, and his victims would never get any closure from it. Ryuji would never get the opportunity to fight back against the bastard who smashed his leg and got his track team shut down. Ann would never get the chance to speak out against a pervert who had been lusting after her ever since she first walked into Shujin. And Shiho would never get any peace, knowing that the piece of shit who drove her so deep into despair she threw herself off a school roof would be remembered as a tragic victim himself, rather than the monster everyone here knows him to be. The only way any of his victims would truly get the justice and closure they deserved, was if Kamoshida admitted those crimes himself. Exposed himself for the bastard he always was, and reveal the truth to the whole world. Only through the change of heart would his victims truly be vindicated, instead of shamed for opposing a man who everyone else either thought was a hero or were too afraid to stand up against themselves.”

The Phantom Thieves relaxed as they listened to Ren speak. It was reassuring to know that, as cruel and as hateful as he might be at his very worst, justice and doing the right thing had always been the first and foremost thought on his mind.

Then Ren grinned sinisterly. “Besides…” he added with a touch of sadism, “if I killed Kamoshida’s shadow, then I wouldn’t be able to hear him scream.”

Morgana groaned loudly as the feelings of relief stopped. “Did you really have to add that last bit, Ren?” he asked plaintively.

“Oh, come on!” Ren protested. “How is what I say any worse than what Haru says whenever she’s in one of her sadistic moods?”

Haru giggled sweetly. “Ren-kun does have a point,” she admitted.

“I don’t know what you’re all so concerned about,” Akechi scoffed as he crossed his arms. “You’ve been around your leader long enough to know that he has his dark side just like anyone else.”

“What I’m curious to know is what happened to Kamoshida in the real world,” Yusuke commented. “How did our leader’s ruthless attack on his shadow affect the man in the real world?”

“I can answer that,” Ann volunteered. As everyone’s eyes turned to her, a mixture of relief and sadness appeared on her face. “To be honest, Ren had acted just in time. From what Shiho told me afterwards, Kamoshida had already forced Shiho into his office, and he was only a few seconds away from assaulting her. He was just about to rip her clothes off…when he started screaming in pain.”

“I presume that’s the moment when Ren started attacking his shadow,” Sojiro surmised.

“The way Shiho described it, it was straight out of a horror movie,” Ann described. “Kamoshida started grabbing his head, screaming of pain as he stumbled across his room and fell onto his chair. Shiho said it was like he was being possessed by a demon or something, and that his howls of agony were so terrifying they weren’t even human. She didn’t stay too long though, she got the hell out of there as soon as she could.”

“Then I succeeded in what I wanted to do,” Ren sighed, and for the first time in a while, some of the kindness and compassion that the Thieves admired in him reappeared on his face and in his voice. “I’ll freely admit that I wanted to make Kamoshida suffer, but I wasn’t going to go out of my way to indulge the darkest parts of myself unless some genuine good was going to come out of it. Knowing that I succeeded in saving Shiho is what really matters.”

“He deserves it,” Ann retorted, a fiery rage burning in her eyes. “He deserves what you did to him for going after Shiho like that. After hearing that my best friend nearly killed herself because of the very thing that you just barely managed to stop in time, I don’t have any sympathy left for that creep.”

The others (besides obviously Akechi) weren’t quite sure that brutalizing and torturing Kamoshida’s shadow was the right thing to do, but none of them were going to vocalize their concerns in the face of Ann’s fury, and all of them unconditionally agreed that the alternative of letting Kamoshida have his way with Shiho was infinitely worse in every possible metric imaginable.

Ren chuckled dryly. “It’s ironic, isn’t it?” he asked, speaking more to himself than anyone else. “I was branded as a criminal because I failed to save a woman from being assaulted, and got a false charge of assault thrown on me for it. But now? I succeeded in saving a girl from that exact same circumstance, because I actually did attack the bastard and turned that false assault charge into the truth, even if nobody would ever be able to prove it.”

“Hold on, hold on,” Ryuji suddenly interrupted. “If you attacked Kamoshida’s shadow alone, then why didn’t he recognize you when we beat his ass down to steal his treasure? Heck, why didn’t he transform at all when you were wrecking the shit out of him?”

Ren shrugged. “I’m honestly not sure why Kamoshida didn’t transform,” he admitted. “I think it might have been because we never sent a Calling Card or anything to steal his desires, and when it came to the Palaces, we’ve only ever seen the Palace Rulers transform when they were about to get their desires stolen. Otherwise, Kamoshida could’ve probably transformed into that disgusting demon form of his every other time we showed up in his Palace before we actually tried to steal his treasure.” His lips twisted into a smirk. “Not that that would’ve helped him at all, when his only attacks are Physical, and all of my Personas either Null or Repel them. And as for why he didn’t recognize me back in our real battle…”

April 14, Current Timeline

WHAM!

Joker’s fist smashed into Shadow Kamoshida’s face yet again, disfiguring the once (debatably) attractive man’s face into a mangled pulp. By now, any resistance that Kamoshida could have possibly mustered had long since crumbled away, leaving him completely helpless in the face of what was about to happen next.

Kamoshida’s Shadow could only scream as Joker grabbed him and hurled him down the stairs of his Palace, where he sprawled onto the ground of the Entrance Hall in a broken heap. Joker had pummeled him with his fists so viciously and relentlessly that he didn’t even have the energy to crawl away. All he could do was whimper and blubber incoherently as the monster in the form of a Phantom Thief walked slowly down the stairs and towards like a predator ready to finish off a wounded prey.

Joker approached the fallen “king” and stomped on him with his foot, forcing the last breath of air out of him as he contemplated what to do with the gravely wounded shadow of Kamoshida. Killing him was always going to be out of the question, although Joker would be lying if he denied at least feeling the temptation.

The future leader of the Phantom Thieves was also tempted to just leave Kamoshida’s shadow lying there, broken and crippled on the floor of his own Palace, leaving the real Kamoshida in crippling and horrible pain for days to come. This temptation was significantly harder for Joker to resist, but it came with its own set of problems. Now that he had both the power and the future knowledge to pull it off, he was fiercely determined to finish every single Palace within a single day, and steal the Treasure as soon as humanly possible. If he left Kamoshida’s shadow as gravely wounded as he was right now, it might take Kamoshida several days to recover from his onslaught, pushing back his planned schedule considerably. And if Kamoshida was so debilitated that he needed several days to recover, there was no telling how that might impact the Phantom Thieves’ ability to steal his heart.

There were too many unpredictable variables, too many problems that could potentially pop up. Which meant that, as much as it disgusted him to do it, he would need to heal Kamoshida’s shadow up to a semi-functional state if he wanted to make sure that the corrupt volleyball teacher would be around for his heart to be stolen.

Curling his lips in distaste, Joker took out a Sleep Vial S and broke it over Shadow Kamoshida’s head. Normally, a status effect item like this would never work on a “powerful” boss Shadow like Kamoshida, but Joker had beaten him down and broken him so mercilessly that he was uniquely vulnerable in this specific moment. Shadow Kamoshida’s eyes dulled and he collapsed onto the ground, unconscious and most definitely asleep. Joker then followed it up with a Forget Vial S, smashing that vial on Kamoshida’s head as well to make him forget the event the unholy beatdown that he had just suffered. Then, with great reluctance, Joker began to feed Kamoshida’s Shadow medicines and devil fruits, taking great care to smash the bottles on his unconscious head as he did so, until Kamoshida’s Shadow had restored about a third of his original health.

“Okay, that’s as much mercy as I’m willing to give you,” Joker muttered at the still-sleeping form of Kamoshida. “You can heal the rest of the damage off yourself.” He turned to leave, stopped, and then gave the Shadow one last vicious kick in the stomach. The Shadow groaned in pain, but didn’t wake up from the attack.

“That was for Ryuji, Ann, Shiho, and Yuuki,” the leader of the Phantom Thieves growled, before turning around and leaving down the hallway where he had come in, leaving the pervert and false king sprawled unconscious on the floor.

Present, Current Timeline…

“I felt dirty healing Kamoshida’s Shadow after beating the everloving shit out of him,” Ren admitted, “but my mission and my duty were more important than personal satisfaction. I actually hadn’t been in the Palace for all that long, so when I got back into the real world I still had some time left in the afternoon. I was tired, sure, but I’ve been in the Metaverse plenty of times by now, and I didn’t get as exhausted as much as I did in the first timeline. I decided to go to the diner in Shibuya even though I hadn’t really gotten to know Ann all that well in this timeline, and try to see if she was all right.” He shrugged. “Honestly, I wasn’t expecting to see anyone there at all.”

“Did you find her?” Ryuji wondered.

“He did!” Ann exclaimed. “Actually, he found both me AND Shiho there at the same time!”

“It must have been quite the massive relief for Ren to see Shiho safe after all the lengths he went through to save her from Kamoshida’s deprivations,” Makoto remarked.

Ren sighed. “More than you realize,” he commented. “I don’t regret saving Shiho in the slightest, but it did cause a slight complication with regards to the timeline. One of the biggest reasons why Ann joined the Phantom Thieves in the first place is because of Kamoshida’s actions against her best friend. Now that I’d saved Shiho, would Ann even feel the motivation to join the Phantom Thieves at all?”

Ann smiled at him. “You didn’t have to worry about that at all, Ren,” she declared. “Once Shiho told me about how you’d tried to warn her about Kamoshida, that was all I needed to know that I could trust you.”

April 14, Current Timeline

“Look, Ann!” Shiho pointed towards the black-haired teen who had just walked into the diner. They watched as the teen, the supposed “criminal” transfer student, politely ordered a meal and then sat himself in a booth that was relatively isolated from the rest of the diner. “That’s him!”

“You mean the transfer student who warned you about Kamoshida and tried to stop you from getting trapped with him?” Ann wondered.

“Yeah, I’d recognize him anywhere,” Shiho insisted. “Come on, Ann!”

The two girls got up and walked over to the booth. As they got closer, Ren looked up and smiled at them.

“I’ve seen you two before,” he commented cordially, before giving Shiho a concerned glance. “Are you all right?”

“I am,” Shiho nodded as she gave him a grateful smile. “I just wanted to say, thank you for warning me about Kamoshida. You were right about everything. He tried to get me into his office, just like you said he would, but I managed to get away in time.” She frowned. “He suddenly started developing a massive headache or something. I had no clue what was going on, but I got the hell out of there while I still had the chance.”

“Smart move,” Ren replied approvingly. “I’m just glad to see that you got out okay.”

“Me too,” Shiho agreed, before glancing over at Ann. “Ann, I hope you don’t mind if I go home for the day. I’m just really worn down after everything that’s happened.”

“Will you be all right?” Ann asked worriedly. “I can walk with you to make sure you stay safe.”

Shiho shook her head. “Thanks, Ann, but I can’t let Kamoshida cower me into doing basic things like walking home. If I let him scare me like that, then that’s letting him win in a different way, and I can’t let that happen to myself.” She gave her a reassuring smile. “If I run into trouble, you’ll be the first to know, I promise.”

Ann didn’t look entirely convinced, but she knew that there was no arguing with her best friend when she had set her mind to something. “You better keep that promise,” she warned, as she wrapped her friend in a hug. After warmly embracing each other for several seconds, Shiho broke the hug and started leaving, Ren and Ann watching her climb down the stairs and out of sight.

“She’s a really strong person,” Ren commented once she was gone.

“Don’t I know it,” Ann agreed, before a stormy and furious look entered her beautiful blue eyes. “I’ll never forgive that bastard Kamoshida. I can’t imagine the horrible things he would’ve done to Shiho if he hadn’t gotten that headache in the last minute.” She scowled. “I hope it was the worst goddamn migraine of his life!”

Ren just barely managed to suppress a smirk, knowing exactly what had caused Kamoshida’s severe headache.

Ann sighed, anger giving away to resignation and exhaustion. “If only getting rid of the guy for good was so easy,” she mumbled. “You’ve heard the rumors about me…haven’t you?” she asked. “About Kamoshida, and how everyone says we’re getting it on.”

Ren snorted. “Bullshit. That’s about as likely as me shoving a cactus up my ass,” he retorted.

Ann’s lips twitched, but the brief show of amusement faded back into sadness. “Kamoshida wanted me to go to his place after school today,” she confessed. “If I turned him down, he said he’d take my friend off as a regular on the team.”

Tears filled her eyes and she wiped them with her arm. “I never thought Kamoshida would go so far as to assault Shiho in his own office…” she whispered hoarsely. “I never wanted anything like that to happen to her!”

“Then we should be thankful that she managed to get out in time,” Ren murmured gently, reaching out and placing a hand on her shoulder.

Ann nodded, fully aware of just how much of a close call it had been. “I’m just afraid of what’s going to happen to Shiho in the future,” Ann admitted. She bowed her head, and let her anger flow through her again. “I’ve had enough of this!” she cried out. “I hate him! But there’s nothing I can do to stop him! He has too much power over everyone in the school! The other teachers don’t do anything, and the students are too weak to stop him!”

Ren didn’t say anything for several seconds. When he finally spoke next, his voice was barely above a whisper. “What if I told you there was a way to stop him?” he asked.

Ann looked up at him, a look of confusion manifesting behind her tearful eyes. “What?”

“What if I told you there was a way we could stop Kamoshida?” Ren elaborated. “A way that nobody except we could use to bring him down and end his tyranny over Shujin?”

“What are you saying?” Ann murmured.

“Before I say anything else, let me ask you a question first.” Ren’s piercing gaze met Ann’s own. “Do you trust me?”

“What?”

“Do you trust me?” Ren repeated. “I’m not going to show this to anyone who I can’t trust, or to someone who doesn’t trust me. Not to mention that what I would show you is very dangerous, even life-threatening to anyone who’s unprepared. If I’m going to show this to you, then there needs to be mutual trust, and you need to accept the risks.”

Ann sat there silently, pondering her answer to Ren’s question. Then, her eyes hardened, and she made up her mind. “You tried to warn Shiho about Kamoshida. You tried to stop her from getting wrapped up in the worst situation of her life. You see Kamoshida for who he truly is, instead of blindly praising him like so many other people.” She matched Ren’s gaze with one of her own. “You’re not like anyone else at Shujin, Ren. And because of that, I trust you. I trust you, and I hope that you can trust me. Besides,” Ann couldn’t help but laugh bitterly, “my life’s as good as over anyway if Kamoshida gets his hands on me. After learning about what happened to Shiho today, I’d rather die then let him get that kind of win over me.”

Ren smiled at the girl who would soon become Panther’s answer. “Then meet up with me and Ryuji tomorrow,” he offered. "And we’ll show you how to get back at Kamoshida for his crimes, once and for all.”

The Present, Current Timeline

“So THAT’S why you brought Lady Ann with us when we infiltrated Kamoshida’s Palace the day after,” Morgana realized. “You had already offered to take her with us the day before!”

“That’s right,” Ren confirmed, “and it was much safer this way. Back in the original timeline, after Shiho’s suicide attempt, Ann happened to overhear us talk about the Metaverse, and she stumbled into Kamoshida’s Palace completely on her own. We tried to force her out of it, but she ended up getting captured and only got saved by awakening Carmen.”

“How harrowing…” Yusuke murmured. “You could have been in grave danger if events had been allowed to play out in the same way.”

“Luckily, that’s not what happened,” Ren reassured them. “Ann was with us the entire time, and we were able to easily protect her from any Shadow knights that stumbled into our path. Shadow Kamoshida had recovered enough to be the typical piece of shit that he always was, and just a few seconds of him spouting out disgusting bullshit and seeing his cognitive version of herself pissed Ann enough to awaken Carmen right there and then.”

Ryuji grinned. “You should’ve seen her shoot that cognitive bimbo version of herself, it was fucking GLORIOUS, man!” he shouted.

Ren, Morgana, and Ann all chuckled in agreement for a few seconds, after which the leader of the Phantom Thieves shrugged. “After that, the rest of Kamoshida’s Palace played out pretty much exactly how it did in the original timeline. We infiltrated the Palace, sent the Calling Card, beat the shit out of his Shadow’s demon form, and stole the Treasure. The only thing different that I did at that point was force Kamoshida’s shadow to promise that he would reveal that he was the one who illegally leaked my criminal record. A bit selfish, maybe, but I think I deserved it.”

“I would say you did,” Akechi commented approvingly. “You managed to save an innocent girl from being assaulted, rightfully beat the everloving shit out of that degenerate’s shadow, and still managed to recruit your original team member a second time without derailing the timeline significantly.” He slowly clapped his hands together. “All in all, I would say this was a job well done, Amamiya.”

“I don’t know how to feel about the fact that I’ve been agreeing with Akechi more and more these days, but he’s right,” Futaba agreed. “You did great changing that part of the timeline for the better, bro!”

“Kamoshida will never see the light of day again,” Sae declared. “The justice system might have been corrupted by Shido’s influence, but Kamoshida had nothing to do with Shido’s Conspiracy, and the case against him was ironclad with his own confession. He will suffer the just punishment that he deserves.”

“And outcomes like that are why I wanted to become a Phantom Thief in the first place,” Ren concluded.

“You really have a good head on your shoulders, Ren,” Sojiro praised him, the pride clear in his voice for everyone to hear. “I couldn’t have done that better if I had tried…” the smile faded a bit, “…although I’m still not sure how I feel about you violently attacking someone’s mind.”

“If I had a better idea, I would’ve done that instead,” Ren replied.

“I figured as much,” Sojiro conceded.

“Wait, so that was the first thing you changed, right?” Futaba asked eagerly. “What else did you try to change?”

“Not everything that I tried to change was as impactful as saving Shiho from Kamoshida,” Ren answered, a mischievous glint in his eye. “But that didn’t mean I didn’t find opportunities to swing fate in my favor whenever I got the chance…”

Chapter Text

“Believe it or not, when it came to large, grand, sweeping changes, I actually didn’t make that many of them,” Ren declared. “I couldn’t, not when any one of those deviations could risk screwing up the timeline. A lot of the changes I did make were smaller, more subtle, ones that really didn’t affect the overall sequence of events like going into the Palaces. Saving Shiho was one of the biggest changes I made, but I didn’t do anything like that for months afterwards.”

“So how did you change things?” Makoto wondered.

“A lot of what I did early on was try and turn you guys into the best versions of yourselves as soon as I possibly could,” Ren answered. From the surprised expressions on his friends’ faces, he could tell that this wasn’t the answer that they had been expecting.

“The heck do you mean by that?” Ryuji asked, clearly lost.

“You guys might not have known me back in the beginning of the year, but I knew you guys all too well from everything we’d been through together in the last timeline,” Ren explained mysteriously. “I’ve seen all of your best aspects…and all of your worst ones too. As much as I love all of you guys, I’d be lying if I said that there weren’t moments where you guys occasionally acted like assholes…even to each other.”

There was a moment of silence as the other Phantom Thieves looked uncomfortably at each other. Yusuke felt a wave of shame paint his soul as he remembered how he had blackmailed Ann into serving as a (potentially nude) model for his art, and Makoto winced as she remembered the days before becoming a Phantom Thief, when she had been nothing but an obedient lapdog for Kobayakawa.

Ren could sense the aura of discomfort and waved it away with his hand and a smile. “I’m not talking about things that happened before you guys became Phantom Thieves,” he assured them. “Those were pretty much unavoidable. I’m talking about moments AFTER becoming Phantom Thieves. Things that I made sure didn’t happen again the second time around.”

“So you made us all go through early character development?” Futaba wondered.

Ren nodded. “Basically, although this started long before you joined the Phantom Thieves, Futaba. I was laying the groundwork as early as my interview with Akechi…”

June 10, Current Timeline

“I’d love to hear some more detailed opinions’ on the Phantom Thieves’ actions,” Akechi announced to his audience.

The cute TV announcer got up from her chair and started walking into the audience, beelining straight towards Ren. While Ann and Ryuji looked at her with clear expressions of surprise, the leader of the Phantom Thieves only smirked. “If Akechi wants an opinion, I’ll give him an opinion,” he thought mischievously.

“All right, let’s try asking this student here,” the announcer held out her mic towards Ren. “Hypothetically speaking, what are your thoughts on the Phantom Thieves, if they were real?”

“Well, when it comes to Kamoshida, they’ve certainly done more than the cops,” Ren commented with a light chuckle, passing his barb against the police force as nothing more than a light joke.

“Well, as much as I want to deny that, I can’t really do so,” Akechi admitted with his charming Detective Prince smile.

“It looks like this student has a completely different opinion from yours about trying the Phantom Thieves by law, Akechi-kun,” the announcer pointed out.

“Indeed,” Akechi acknowledged. “It’s rather intriguing to hear such a strong acknowledgment. In that case…there’s one more question I’d like to ask…”

Ren nodded, nonverbally demonstrating his acceptance.

“If his heart was suddenly changed, wouldn’t you think it was the work of the Phantom Thieves?” Akechi asked, focusing his gaze straight into Ren’s eyes.

“Not at all,” Ren replied smoothly, not missing a beat. “And I’ve thought a lot about the Phantom Thieves ever since they first popped up.”

Akechi looked visibly surprised, before adopting a thoughtful expression. “I would very much like to hear more on your opinion on the Phantom Thieves,” he admitted. “Would you care to elaborate?”

“But of course,” Ren accepted easily, ignoring the surprised looks of his friends. “When it comes to their intentions, I believe that the Phantom Thieves are acting as genuine forces of justice. The only people that they targeted were depraved criminals who were never going to be exposed without their intervention. I’ll use Kamoshida as my example here, as I experienced his cruelty personally. You don’t know what it was like in Shujin, Akechi-san, with Kamoshida still in charge. Students were ruthlessly bullied, even injured, by Kamoshida…and I know for a fact that at least one student was almost sexually assaulted. The adults did absolutely nothing, whether it was through ignorance, powerlessness, or deliberately covering up the truth. And I certainly never saw the police in Shujin investigate Kamoshida at any point. I believe that the Phantom Thieves brought Kamoshida to justice the way they did because that was the ONLY way to do so when the “legal” means had comprehensively failed. And as a student there, I applaud them for what they did, because Shujin is already a better place without that disgusting piece of filth around. The same holds true for Madarame.”

“While I must still question their methods, I will be the first to admit that Kamoshida’s change of heart has accomplished much good for Shujin and for basic human decency,” Akechi acknowledged. “And given his cunning, I am forced to acknowledge that Madarame would likely have been able to continue his schemes for quite a long time indeed without the Phantom Thieves intervening. But these are only two people, two changes of heart. Are you not concerned that the Phantom Thieves may start changing the hearts of innocent people, that their currently good intentions may become corruptible?”

“Like I said before, I think the Phantom Thieves are fundamentally good,” Ren asserted, “but I actually think that they could cause a completely different problem by accident.”

“Oh?” It took a considerable amount of self-control for Ren not to smirk at Akechi’s shocked expression. “Can you please elaborate?”

“Absolutely,” Ren agreed. “I’m more concerned about the impact the Phantom Thieves might have on society as they proceed with future changes of heart, and more people become aware of them. More specifically, they might cause a dependence. It’s one thing for people to turn to the Phantom Thieves to save them from injustice when there’s no other options available to them. But what happens when more and more people, or even the entire public, start to depend on the Phantom Thieves to do everything for them? When the public starts to brainlessly rely on the Phantom Thieves to decide every aspect of their life, without taking initiative or even thinking for themselves, that’s what I’m really concerned about. The same really holds true for any politician or other individual or group in power, no matter how good or evil they might be.”

“Fascinating…I never thought about the influence of the Phantom Thieves like that,” Akechi admitted, looking openly intrigued. “I certainly haven’t heard an opinion similar to yours yet.”

“No organization or group lasts forever,” Ren continued. “Eventually, one way or another, the Phantom Thieves will stop doing what they’re doing. And if the public starts to depend on the Phantom Thieves so thoroughly, there will be a massive, empty vacuum left behind that could cause a significant amount of chaos if there isn’t something else to fill that vacuum in quickly and smoothly. I genuinely believe the Phantom Thieves have good and noble intentions, but just because they’re well-intentioned doesn’t mean that their good deeds can’t have negative consequences.”

“I can certainly agree with your assessment there,” Akechi nodded sagely. “There is a reason why the road to hell is paved with good intentions is a saying, after all.”

“Which is why I would like to finish by saying something of my own to the Phantom Thieves,” Ren concluded. “The Phantom Thieves clearly seem to believe that the ends justify the means, and for now, they might be right. But I would encourage them to always be mindful of the effects that they have on the people surrounding their targets and their society. And most importantly of all, I would urge them to never forget that justice and doing the right thing should be the first and foremost goal on their minds. They day they let fame and selfish motivations get to their head is the day they lose the right to call themselves heroes.”

Present, Current Timeline

“I still remember that interview even now,” Akechi acknowledged with the same thoughtful expression that he had worn back then. “And even then, I was very impressed with the insight that you presented. Ignoring the fact that you were secretly the leader of the Phantom Thieves the entire time, you were very clearly a Phantom Thieves supporter, but you had a healthy respect for the Thieves while acknowledging the problems that they could cause. A nuanced, intelligent viewpoint that was a far cry from the brainless lemmings that made up the vast majority of the public.

“Yeah, dude…and I couldn’t forget about that last part,” Ryuji added. “You were talking to Akechi back then…but you were really talking to us the whole time, weren’t you?”

Ren nodded. “I was. There were times where we let the fame of being the Phantom Thieves get to our head, especially after Futaba took down Medjed. It was one of our great failings in the original timeline, and I wanted to make sure that it didn’t become a major character flaw this time around, or at the very least I could take it down a notch.”

“Yeah, after hearing you say that, Mishima’s whole attitude about us becoming popular with the Phantom Thieves was starting to rub me the wrong way,” Ryuji admitted.

Ren shrugged. “He isn’t a member of the Phantom Thieves, and he solved his own attitude by changing his own heart, so I didn’t feel the need to do more than I did last timeline.”

“Hold on a sec!” Morgana suddenly interrupted, his eyes wide in realization. “That conversation you had with me and Ryuji! Was that also…?”

Ren nodded, the smirk on his face the only confirmation that any of them needed. “Now you’re beginning to catch on, Morgana…”

August 29, Current Timeline

“Woooo!” Ryuji stretched his arms out as he, Ren, and Morgana made their way back to LeBlanc. “Damn, that trip was freaking amazing! Great way to end the summer before…” the smile faded and he groaned, “…you know. School and all that.”

“It was a lot of fun, wasn’t it?” Ren readily agreed.

“So, uh…” Ryuji’s brow furrowed in confusion, “…why’d you want to talk to me in private?”

“Actually, I wanted to talk to both you and Morgana,” Ren clarified as they stepped into LeBlanc. To the leader of the Phantom Thieves’ relief, there was nobody in the restaurant apart from Sojiro. “Upstairs in the attic, if you guys don’t mind.”

Ryuji and Morgana exchanged glances at each other, but didn’t argue with Ren as they climbed up the stairs to the attic that Ren called his home.

“You guys can sit down right there,” Ren offered, pointing towards the sofa. Both Ryuji and Morgana did so, and when Ren turned around, the two Phantom Thieves immediately realized that Ren was wearing his “serious business” face that he typically only wore as leader of the Phantom Thieves.

“All right, guys, I’m not gonna delay talking about this anymore,” Ren began without preamble. “I’ve noticed the way the two of you throw insults at each other. At first, I didn’t pay too much attention to it, because it started out as just light banter. Nothing wrong with throwing a barb or two at each other every so often. But when you start calling each other pathetic or useless on even a semi-regular basis? That’s when the trashtalk jumps straight to being downright toxic and hateful. It’s my job as the leader of the Phantom Thieves to look out for the team, so this is where I put my foot down.” His eyes narrowed slightly. “And I really hope neither of you are planning to pin the blame on the other, because as an outside observer, I can safely say that both of you are equally guilty.”

The two of them shuffled uncomfortably, occasionally glancing at each other or trying to look at anything that wasn’t Ren’s gaze.

“Well?” Ren prompted.

Ryuji was the first to break the silence. “…I guess I really did let things get outta control, didn’t I?” he mumbled. “The more I think about it, the more I’m starting to feel like I was acting like my asshole dad was.” He glanced over at Morgana. “Sorry, Mona. I honestly didn’t think I was being as much of a dick as I actually was.”

Morgana sighed. “I wasn’t acting like a proper Phantom Thief either,” he admitted. “Sure, I’ll admit it’s fun to poke fun at you here and then, but I definitely shouldn’t have been saying things like calling you useless either, Ryuji. Ren’s right. We both took things way too far.”

Ren gave them an approving smile. “I’m glad to see that you’re both owning up to your mistakes,” he commented. “The last thing I want is for this kind of behavior to escalate to the point that it hurts the team as a whole. The earlier we can tackle this kind of problem, the better off everyone will be.”

Ryuji grinned. “You said it, leader!” he exclaimed.

Morgana nodded in acceptance. “We won’t let this happen again, Ren,” he promised. “It’s our responsibility as Phantom Thieves to treat each other right.”

“Good,” Ren acknowledged. “And I don’t want to hear any more talk about anyone being useless. You all have different roles to play as Persona users, different strengths that synergize to wreck any shadow we fight, and different weaknesses that you guys can help cover each other. That’s what makes us so effective as a team, and everyone here is equally useful and valuable in their own way.”

Ryuji chuckled. “You’re one to talk, Ren. You completely wipe out every single shadow you see without even trying, it’s not even close!”

Ren smiled mysteriously. “Like I’ve told you before, that’s going to remain my little secret for now. But let’s not distract ourselves. I don’t mind if you occasionally banter with each other while we’re on the job, but always be mindful about what you’re saying to each other.” His eyes suddenly darkened, the effect subtle but noticeable. “And I don’t want us to have this conversation again, because if it gets to that point I’m not going to be as pleasant the second time around.” The darkness instantly vanished as soon as it arrived. “Got it?”

“Hear you loud and clear,” Ryuji immediately answered.

“You don’t have to worry about a thing,” Morgana reassured him just as quickly. “We’ll be on our best behavior…” He turned to Ryuji and gave him a catlike smirk to show everyone that he was joking, “even though he really needs to stop being a loudmouth about us being the Phantom Thieves.”

“Hey! I…” Ryuji tried to come up with a protest, then sighed. “I can’t even argue with that cause I know it’s true,” he was forced to concede, as both Ren and Morgana tried their hardest not to snicker.

Present, Current Timeline

“As much as I love Ryuji and Morgana, there was a timeline when the both of them were acting like massive dicks to each other,” Ren commented, causing the two of them to shuffle uncomfortably. “I wanted to make sure that this time around, I cut the problem off at the roots and stopped that kind of behavior from escalating out of control.”

He smiled. “And it worked. The next time we went out to Mementos, you guys were a lot tamer and a lot less vitriolic with your jokes and barbs, and I never felt like I needed to repeat our earlier conversation. Like I said before, you guys don’t need to be the best friends, I just wanted you to treat each other with respect and work well together as a team.”

Ryuji grinned. “Hell yeah we do, right Mona?”

Mona returned with a toothy grin of his own. “You bet, Ryuji!”

Ann smiled at their display of friendship, but the smile disappeared as a troubling thought suddenly occurred to her. “Wait a minute…” she realized. “You said this timeline…but that would mean…”

“…it would imply that you did not take steps to resolve the growing conflict between your team members,” Akechi finished the thought, “and that the behavior did indeed escalate because of it.”

Ren sighed. “I was almost not going to bring this up at all, but since it affected the entire team in the end, you guys do have a right to know. In the original timeline, Morgana’s and Ryuji’s issues with each other boiled over to the point that they were outright raging at each other in a toxic shouting match, and Morgana temporarily left the team because of it. The fallout affected both our morale and our rational thickening, and Morgana leaving the team was also how he found out about Haru originally.”

“Oh?” Haru perked her head up as her name was mentioned. “But…Morgana did find me in this timeline. He was the one who introduced me to the world of the Metaverse. He was the one who brought me here to LeBlanc Café to meet with you, Ren-kun.”

“Yes,” Ren nodded as he explained, “because I asked him to scout out for any potential recruits for the Phantom Thieves. I wanted to give him a purpose while we were out in Hawaii so that he didn't feel like he was sitting around doing nothing and feeling useless. Of course, since Haru was with us in Hawaii, he wasn't ever going to actually find you until we came back. But once we did, I was hoping he would come across you specifically, since you were a member of the team in the previous timeline."

Haru giggled. “Mona had nothing but praise for his team, especially you, Ren-kun. He practically insisted that I should meet you in person, and that you could provide a solution to my father and that disgusting pig of a man who he had arranged to be my fiancé, a solution that nobody else would be able to provide.”

September 13, Current Timeline

“Ren!” Morgana called out to him as leapt from the window onto his bed. “I think I found someone who could be a really good Phantom Thief!”

“Oh?” Ren raised an eyebrow. “Who do you have in mind?”

“Her name’s Haru!” Morgana explained, so caught up in his own thoughts that he failed to notice the way Ren’s eyes briefly lit up with both delight and relief. “Haru Okumura. She’s waiting to meet you downstairs.”

“I’ll be right down, Mona,” Ren informed him as he got off his bed and climbed down the stairs. He couldn’t help but feel a sense of joy and warmth as he lay eyes on the auburn, fluffy-haired girl who would later become the powerful, dangerous axe-wielding warrior of the Phantom Thieves.

Right now, he had to pretend not to know any of that. Instead, he adopted a neutral, pleasant expression on his face. “You must be the person Morgana brought here,” Ren remarked casually. “Haru Okumura, if I’m not mistaken.”

Haru giggled. “That is indeed correct. And you must be Ren Amamiya, if I’m remembering what Mona-chan told me correctly.”

“That’s me all right,” Ren answered. “If you came to talk about business, then we’ll need to bring this upstairs. Unless that would make you uncomfortable,” he added quickly.

“No, no,” Haru shook her head. “If Mona-chan trusts you and holds you in such high regard, then I trust his judgment.”

Ren gestured with his hand towards the stairs. “Then after you,” he offered. Haru gave him a gracious nod in response, and the two teenagers climbed up the stairs to Ren’s attic. Ren offered Haru a seat on the couch, while he closed the windows and then drew up a chair while Mona departed from the attic, leaving Ren and Haru to have their private conversation.

“First things first, Ren-kun, I want to hear the truth with your own voice,” the words were phrased politely as a request, but everyone could tell that Haru wouldn’t accept any other answer, “are you and your friends the Phantom Thieves that have been making the news lately?”

“We are,” Ren confirmed without missing a beat. “And it sounds like Morgana’s already familiarized yourself with that fact.”

“He did indeed,” Haru nodded. “And he did in…quite the bizarre manner, I must admit. The two of us had found ourselves in a…space station, somehow,” she frowned. “We were being pursued by robots, or things that looked like robots. Mona tried to fight a few of them off, but we eventually had to retreat. Not only that, but I had started to manifest this unusual costume over my regular clothes that reminded me of…French nobility, if you can believe it.” She shook her head. “I’m sorry if all of this seems completely nonsensical, I’m still trying to wrap around what happened earlier today.”

Ren shook his head. “No, I completely believe you, Haru. And not only that, I can give you an explanation of what just happened.”

Haru smiled sweetly. “I’d very much appreciate it if you could, Ren-kun,” she replied.

Ren nodded. “You unintentionally stumbled upon a supernatural universe, Haru. We call it the Metaverse, and it’s a world formed from the collective unconscious of humanity. There are also individual pockets of the Metaverse called Palaces, which represent the distortions and negative characteristics of specific individuals. It sounds like you and Morgana stumbled upon the Palace of someone who views wherever you entered the Metaverse from as a space station.”

Haru frowned. “We had entered this…Palace…near the Headquarters of Okumura Foods. And I overheard many of the robots refer to one man in particular as the Supreme Leader. I think…” she took a deep breath before continuing, “…I think that man was my father. He’s the CEO of Okumura foods.”

Ren sighed and placed a sympathetic hand on Haru’s shoulder. “Then I’m afraid that your father is the cause of the distortion, Okumura-senpai. His distorted desires and negative characteristics have amplified to such a degree that they created their own individual Palace. Not every person with a Palace is evil or a massive asshole…but most of them are.”

Haru merely bowed her head, taking the news surprisingly well, all things considered. “I…always had the feeling that my father was not the same person that he once was,” she admitted. “His treatment of the workers at Big Bang Burger has become increasingly ruthless and uncaring…and he has forcibly arranged a marriage between myself and a disgusting piece of filth who goes by the name of Sugimura. A marriage that will almost certainly destroy any freedom that I have left and ruin my life if it goes through.” She looked up pleadingly at Ren. “Tell me, Ren-kun…is there anything you can do to fix my father’s distortion?”

Ren smiled and nodded at her. “I can, Haru-senpai. It’s what the Phantom Thieves do. I can go into more detail tomorrow when we have more time and I can introduce you to the rest of my friends, but the basics are that each and every Palace is centered around a treasure which represents the distorted desires. Stealing that treasure removes the distortion from the Palace Ruler, and they will go back to being honest men who will feel extreme guilt over crimes that they previously committed without a shred of remorse.”

“I see,” Haru mused over the information that Ren was giving her. “And this change of heart would return my father to the kind man that he once was?”

“I don’t know exactly what kind of man Kunikazu Okumura is, but if you’re saying he was a kind man before the distortion happened, then theoretically that’s what he should turn into once we change his heart,” Ren answered.

“Then that might very well be my only course of action, although I still have some reservations about it,” Haru was forced to acknowledge.

Ren gave her an encouraging smile. “We don’t change hearts unless everyone agrees, and we certainly wouldn’t do anything without your permission,” he promised.

Haru smiled back at him. “I’m very glad to hear that, Ren-kun. As of now, I have only one condition that I would like to impose. When you and the other Phantom Thieves enter my father’s Palace, I wish to be there. I wish to fight alongside you and take part in the stealing of my father’s heart.”

“I’m not opposed to that, but stealing hearts and navigating through Palaces requires the power of a Persona. A power that you don’t have yet. Without a Persona, you would be in grave danger and could very easily get killed,” Ren warned.

“Then so be it,” Haru declared defiantly. “A life as Sugimura’s slave is no life worth living at all.”

Ren nodded in acknowledgment, secretly pleased to see the fire of rebellion burning within the heiress who had once been one of his closest friends. “Then we’ll convene tomorrow, and decide our actions from there.”

Present, Current Timeline

“The actual infiltration of Kunikazu Okumura’s Palace was about the same as we did before, but the circumstances leading up to it weren’t,” Ren explained to a captivated audience. “Morgana still found Haru out by himself, but it was because I asked him to scout out potential recruits for the Phantom Thieves, instead of him leaving the team and stumbling on Haru while trying to go solo. He brought Haru over to LeBlanc that evening so that we could introduce ourselves to each other, and she could tell us about her father’s Palace.”

“You knew about that Palace already, though!” Futaba pointed out.

Ren nodded. “Yes I did, but I needed to find a way for me to share that information to the rest of you guys without you wondering where the hell I figured out something that I shouldn’t have any way of knowing.”

“So overall, the events surrounding Kunikazu Okumura’s attempted change of heart were very similar to how they played out in the original timeline. I noticed that so far, none of what you described past saving Shiho Suzui were major, dramatic deviations or alterations in fate.”

“And that was on purpose,” Ren confirmed. “I didn’t want to make any major changes to the timeline when I didn’t need to. There wasn’t any real reason for me to do so before Kunikazu Okumura’s Palace. And once that Palace did come, I already had a plan in mind to save Haru’s father from being assassinated by Akechi.”

The leader of the Phantom Thieves took a deep breath and sighed. “Unfortunately, as we already know, just because I had knowledge of the future and could try to make major changes for the better…didn’t mean that I was always going to succeed.”

Chapter Text

“As much as I’m saddened at the reminder of my father’s death, I can’t help but feel a sense of curiosity,” Haru admitted, giving Ren a sad smile. “I understand why you couldn’t tell us about it, and I’m relieved to know that you did attempt to save him.” Her gaze became hard and determined. “But now that the danger to our lives has passed, so has the time for secrecy. And we deserve to know the truth.”

Ren nodded in agreement. “You do, and I’ll share it with you know,” he promised. “And there are some things that I want to get out of the way right now. Yes, I did know that Akechi was going to kill Haru’s father. Yes, I did know that Shido’s Conspiracy had hacked the Phan-site to raise Kunikazu Okumura’s numbers far higher than they actually were. And I made a deliberate and carefully considered decision not to share this information with you at the time.”

“I understand that you had to keep things a secret, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it,” Makoto muttered as she crossed her arms.

“Can you please explain your rationale for keeping these details a secret, Ren-kun?” Haru requested. The words were spoken politely, but it was abundantly clear to everyone that this was not optional.

“Of course. The first, and most important, is that I had no way of predicting what Shido’s conspiracy would do if I let you guys know about the hacked numbers, or asked Futaba to investigate the Phan-site and find this out for herself,” Ren explained. “I have no doubt that some of Okumura’s votes were real, but if we corrected this error by ourselves, then it’s entirely possible Okumura might have been much lower on the list of requested change of hearts targets than some other people. If that was the case, then as far as the Conspiracy was concerned, we’d have no real reason to go after Okumura before someone else. And since we know that they were always going to kill off Haru’s father eventually, they might have done it through a different way that we have no way of stopping.”

“Like sending the Cleaner or someone else in the mafia after him,” Akechi supplied. “I can assure you that Shido had plenty of ways to kill anyone he considered to be in his way that didn’t involve the Metaverse. He could have also sent me to murder his Shadow even if you didn’t change his heart, using a fake Calling Card just like he did for that fat fuck who used to run Shujin.”

“That was why it was important for me to avoid making major changes in the timeline until we were ready to strike, and it was too late for our enemies to fight back,” Ren commented. “And the second major reason why I didn’t tell you guys is because it wouldn’t have changed what we were doing anyway. I was always going to have us infiltrate Okumura’s Palace and change his heart, despite knowing what was to come.”

“Really?” Ryuji asked incredulously. “Why the heck would we do that if we knew that it was a trap?”

“Because Haru’s future was at stake,” Ren answered calmly, causing Ryuji to flinch and shuffle guiltily as he realized he had forgotten the biggest reason why they had infiltrated Okumura’s Palace in the first place. “If we didn’t change her father’s heart, then that would mean dooming Haru to be the slave of a disgusting piece of shit. Even if we changed Sugimura’s heart instead, if we didn’t tackle the root cause of the problem, Haru would always be at risk for being sold off.” His gaze hardened. “And I refused to abandon someone who had been a close friend and teammate in another timeline to that sort of fate. As far as I’m concerned, I had a moral obligation to change Okumura’s heart, even with the danger to his life.”

“Ren is correct,” Yusuke immediately agreed. “We all had the distinct displeasure of stumbling across Haru’s former fiancé. Abandoning her to have her life parasitized by that mongrel would have been completely abominable.”

“So what did you change?” Ann wondered. “It sounds like you were doing a lot of the same thing up until the actual heist. It’s not like what you did with Kamoshida and Shiho.”

“Not much, surprisingly,” Ren acknowledged. “Lavenza and Igor showed me the events of the previous timeline, including exactly how Akechi killed Okumura’s Shadow. It was at the very end of the infiltration, right after we had finished the battle, and I took steps to make sure that Akechi wouldn’t get a clean shot in this time around.”

September 21, Current Timeline

Shadow Okumura knelt before them, his head bowed in resignation and acceptance of his defeat. “In the end, I am just one more in a lineage of failures,” he mumbled, his former arrogance and power-hunger completely vanished. “I will contact your fiancé and rescind the marriage offer, Haru,” he promised.

“Do it as soon as possible,” Joker interjected coldly, his voice harder than steel. “Correct your mistake. Don’t allow your daughter to be shackled to Sugimura for a second longer. Your cognition was exactly what the real Sugimura was like. You know just how much of a piece of shit that pathetic excuse of a man truly is, and yet you tried to enslave Haru to him anyway.” The leader of the Phantom Thieves didn’t bother to hide his disgust. “You have no excuse.”

“I will waste no time in making this happen,” Okumura promised, before letting out a sorrowful sigh. “This may be the end for Okumura foods.” He closed his eyes and bowed his knees to the floor as he sobbed in despair and remorse. “Forgive me, Haru…”

“Father…” Noir murmured sadly.

“You were behind all the breakdowns and mental shutdowns, weren’t you?” Skull growled. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed that Joker was maneuvering his body around Okumura until he was standing opposite to them. It was a bit unusual, but everyone was too busy listening to Shadow Okumura’s confession to pay any further heed.

“I admit, I spent large sums of money to help my company grow, and to crush business competitors…” Shadow Okumura conceded.

“Answer me, dammit!” Skull shouted furiously, stomping his foot in frustration. “Did you do it or not?”

“N-Not personally!” Okumura protested. “I had a contract. All I did was make the requests and have them eliminated!”

“Requests?” Morgana repeated incredulously. “Then there really is a mysterious criminal in people’s Palaces after all!”

“So it’s true…” Queen murmured.

“What kind of contract did you form?” Noir asked softly. “And with whom?”

But her question went unanswered, as Okumura was overwhelmed by his own grief and sorry, bowing his head down and sobbing yet again.

“C’mon!” Skull demanded impatiently. “Stop cryin’ and tell us!”

Before anyone could say anything further, the space station suddenly began to shake, and a robotic female voice reverberated around the intercom. “Warning!”

“Dammit, why now…!?” Mona shouted in frustration. “Mr. CEO, can’t you stop that thing!?” he asked frantically.

“Forget it,” Joker interrupted. “Somebody grab the Treasure.”

The mechanical orb that represented Okumura’s Treasure descended, glowing with golden and multicolored light. Mona reached out and grabbed it, putting it away in his pocket sack. “We’re taking your Treasure,” he informed Shadow Okumura coldly.

“Good,” Joker nodded in approval. “Mona, turn into your van form. We’re taking Okumura’s Shadow with us.”

Everyone stared at him in shock. “Wait, what?” Mona asked, clearly confused by Joker’s order. “This is his Palace, though! He’ll be fine!”

“We just learned that there’s a mysterious criminal in the Metaverse who is murdering people’s Shadow,” Joker countered. “A criminal that Okumura was hiring and working with. For all we know, that criminal is here right now, ready to kill Okumura’s shadow the moment we have our backs turned and leave him alone and exposed. Maybe he’ll fine if we leave him here, but I’m not taking that chance.”

“But…” Panther tried to speak.

“I don’t have time to argue this,” Joker brusquely cut her off. “I’m invoking my privilege as leader of the Phantom Thieves and making this as an executive order.” That immediately silenced any protest that the Phantom Thieves might have given. Joker had made it very clear to his friends that the Phantom Thieves were a democracy where everyone’s opinion mattered, and that he would only invoke executive privilege in absolute emergencies. They still didn’t understand why Joker was making such a big deal out of this, but Joker had never led them astray yet, and they trusted his judgement.

Skull, Fox, and Noir picked up the still sobbing shadow of Okumura as Mona transformed into his bus form. “So many questions we still have to ask him,” Queen murmured.

“You can ask as many questions as you want back in the real world,” Joker replied curtly. “Right now, the biggest priority is getting the hell out of here, and making sure that Okumura is safe until the Palace destroys itself.”

Together, the three Phantom Thieves more or less shoved Shadow Okumura into the backseat of the Mona-mobile. “Get moving, and follow Oracle out of here,” Joker ordered as he got into the driver’s seat of the Monamobile, while Noir entered the passenger side to accompany her father. He began to drive Mona out of Okumura’s station, the other Phantom Thieves following him. As they began their escape, it soon became apparent that Mona driving Shadow Okumura all the way to the front of the space station was simply not a practical option. Fortunately, by the time they reached the sections of the space station that would be impossible to navigate while driving Shadow Okumura out, the man had already begun to glow and fade away just as Shadow Kamoshida had done after his defeat.

“I will set things right, Haru,” Shadow Okumura murmured, the kind father he had once been showing in this moment. “I promise.”

“Only you can follow through on your own responsibilities…” Noir murmured to her father as the last parts of his Shadow vanished into light. “That is what you taught me, father…”

As Mona transformed back into his cat form, having no need to remain a vehicle with Okumura now gone, nobody noticed the relieved and victorious smile on Joker’s face as they continue their escape from the doomed space station.

Present, Current Timeline

“I’ll be the first to admit that my escape plan with Shadow Okumura wasn’t perfect,” Ren admitted. “I had forgotten the exact layout of Okumura’s Palace, and there were parts that I couldn’t have realistically driven through with Morgana’s bus form. Luckily, Shadow Okumura had already started to vanish like Kamoshida had by the time that became a serious problem, and with him gone from his Palace, I had assumed that he would be safe. Akechi wouldn’t have had the opportunity to shoot his Shadow this time around, not when I was blocking his line of fire.”

“So THAT’S what you were doing back then!” Ryuji realized. “You were making sure that he couldn’t gun Haru’s father down!”

“After we rescued Okumura’s father, I spent the next several days thinking about how we were going to navigate the days after his change of heart,” Ren continued. “After all, Shido’s conspiracy would have failed to inflict a mental shutdown on his shadow, and they would be caught off guard. This might have given us the advantage of surprise, but it was also potentially dangerous since I’d have no idea how they’d react. My plan was to bring the infiltration of Shido’s Palace way ahead of schedule, pretty much as soon as Okumura exposed Shido’s crimes in his press conference.” The leader of the Phantom Thieves suddenly scowled as he remembered the horrible scene of black ichor pouring out of Okumura’s eyes. “But it didn’t matter. Because I was wrong, and I had failed. Despite what I’d done to try and save him, Akechi was still able to inflict a mental shutdown on Haru’s father.”

“I can explain how,” Akechi offered, all eyes turning to him. There wasn’t a trace of smugness on his face, and it was clear that the Black Mask took no pleasure in how he had outmaneuvered Ren. In fact, Akechi seemed to downright hate his past actions, seeing them now as utterly pointless and more evidence for how Shido had played him as a puppet and a fool for years. “As Ren stated, I was there in Okumura’s Palace, and I was given orders by Shido to kill Okumura’s shadow and inflict a mental shutdown on him. But either Ren knew I was there, or he was extremely fortunate in how he positioned himself between me and Okumura’s shadow. I might have been given orders to kill Okumura, but I had also been given strict orders NOT to murder any of the Phantom Thieves before our plans to send their popularity plummeting into the garbage went into effect. Killing the Phantom Thieves when they were still being praised as the heroes of Japan would have only turned them into martyrs, and that was the last thing that Shido wanted.”

“I had Lucifer equipped as my Persona,” Ren commented dryly. “Even if you had shot me, it wouldn’t have done jack shit except give away your position.”

“Yes, and in hindsight I’m realizing that you were being merciful with Lucifer,” Akechi acknowledged. “As much as I hate to admit it, if I had tried to take a shot at you and you had equipped your Rangda instead, I might very well have killed myself with my own bullet right then and there.”

Ryuji snickered. “I know I shouldn’t be laughing at something like that, but seeing that would’ve been kinda hilarious.” Several of the other Phantom Thieves were also trying not to show amusement at the morbidly humorous image.

To his credit, Akechi didn’t bristle at the insult. In fact, if anything, his lips twitched ever so slightly. “I can…see the humor in it, as much as I hate to admit it,” he acknowledged, before continuing his explanation. “Ren made sure that I failed to kill Okumura in his palace, and I will admit that he had completely thrown me off guard with his maneuver. For several days, I hid this failure from Shido, as he would have almost certainly had me killed if I reported that failure. During that time, I tried to come up with a solution that would rectify my mistake…but it wasn’t until several days later that the opportunity presented itself.”

Sae scowled. “What opportunity, Goro?” she asked curtly. She acknowledged that Akechi had done the right thing in the end, but she didn’t appreciate the fact that her partner was a criminal and a murderer who had hidden his true nature from her for months, with her none the wiser.

“An idea suddenly came into my head, about a week before Okumura’s press conference,” Akechi explained. “What if Okumura’s Shadow had actually rejoined the collective unconscious in Mementos, since his Palace had been destroyed? I had no evidence to actually support this hypothesis, but the incoming deadline forced me into a desperate situation, and I was willing to entertain ideas that I would not have considered otherwise. I ventured deep into Mementos the same day I came up with this idea, and I found Okumura’s Shadow, still broken and weeping over the lives he had ruined. And I killed him,” the admission was brutal, concise, and hid nothing. “I shot him with my gun, and based on Ren’s tale, I set history back on its original course with Okumura’s death.”

“Looking back, I don’t think that idea was ever truly yours,” Makoto pointed out. “I think Yaldabaoth planted that idea inside your head. We saw that the other shadows of the Palace Rulers returned to Mementos after their hearts were changed, and Yaldabaoth was both the ruler of Mementos at the time and the false god arranging this rigged game to begin with. I’d be willing to bet Joker’s entire life savings that he influenced you into going into Mementos, manipulating the realm so that it’d be easy for you to find him and easy for you to finish the job Shido assigned you.”

Akechi scowled. “I’m forced to agree with you, Nijima,” he growled furiously, though the anger was mainly directed at himself. “In hindsight, this seeming inspiration and burst of good luck was nothing more than the false god manipulating me into doing its bidding. More proof that I was no better than a puppet dangling on the strings of two puppetmasters, idiotically and obediently being pulled to carry out their whims despite all of my supposed rebellion against my worthless excuse of a sperm donor.”

“And yet,” Haru’s voice was soft but commanding, drawing everyone’s attention to her, “I sense that you don’t regret the actual act of ending my father’s life, Akechi-kun.”

This time, the smirk on Akechi’s face was completely humorless. “Are you sure you want me to give you the full and complete truth to that answer, Okumura-san?” he questioned. “Because I guarantee that you’re not going to like what I have to say?”

Haru smiled sweetly. “The truth, please,” she insisted. “I guarantee you that no matter how harsh or uncivilized your words may be, I will be far more insulted if you attempt to lie, omit, or sugarcoat the truth in any way.”

“Then no,” Akechi answered curtly. “I don’t regret ending your father’s life, for the simple reason that he was a piece of shit and a morally bankrupt scumbag. Out of all our potential clients, Kunikazu Okumura was by far,” he made sure to stress those two words, “the most frequent customer of Shido’s mental shutdown service, exceeding any other client by a significant margin. He ordered countless assassinations and destroyed many lives simply because his targets had inconvenienced him in some way. He was a representation of everything that is wrong with this society, just like Shido, and I felt no hesitation in ending him the way he had ended the lives of countless others.”

“Dude, you were the one who actually committed the mental shutdowns!” Ryuji protested.

“True, but do you really think that a man as powerful and as despicable as Masayoshi Shido wouldn’t have alternate means of eliminating his enemies and any pawns that might have outlived their usefulness?” Akechi retorted. “I freely admit that I was Shido’s weapon, but I was far from the only one at his disposal. You can argue about the immorality of murder and mental shutdowns all day and night, but at this juncture it would only serve to waste everyone’s time. And let us also not waste our time pretending that a change of heart would have automatically absolved Okumura of all his many sins. Masayoshi Shido also underwent a change of heart, and nobody here is going to call him an innocent or good person.”

“No, you are correct on that last point, at least,” Haru acknowledged, focusing her gaze on Akechi. It was impossible for him to read her emotions. There was no actual hatred or desire for vengeance. Just an intensity and a determination that he couldn’t quite describe. “And as much as I wish to defend my father, I am fully aware of the many atrocities that he committed when his heart was still distorted. But do you truly regret nothing about my father’s death, Akechi-kun? No remorse whatsoever?”

“Before I answer that question, I wish to ask you one of my own,” Akechi answered back. “Why do you care so much about your father’s fate?”

“What the hell kind of question is that?” Futaba angrily interjected, but Haru raised a hand to silence her. The auburn-haired princess could tell that, despite the abrasive tone with which Akechi asked the question, he was being genuine.

“Go on,” she invited, her voice betraying nothing.

“Why do you care so much about your father’s fate?” Akechi reiterated. “As I said before, he was a piece of shit, not just in general but as a father specifically. He was willing to sell you to a rich, misogynistic scumbag who didn’t give a shit about you as a person, effectively ruining your life just so he could advance his own ambition and greed.” A thin, humorless smile appeared on his face. “And I don’t buy for a second that it was solely because he was your father or because he would’ve become a better person after his change of heart. Blood relationships mean nothing when one side is abusive and tainted, and a sudden change of heart wouldn’t have wiped away the years of abuse and his greatest betrayal.”

“Unlike you and Shido, Akechi-kun, I do have memories of father in my youth when he was a kinder and more compassionate man, but you are right in that there are other reasons why I was so aggrieved and infuriated by my father’s death,” Haru admitted. “I awakened in my father’s palace because I wanted to rebel against the atrocious fate that he would have determined for me, and against the role he assigned to me as nothing more than his obedient puppet. More than anything else, I wanted to pass judgment on him myself for the crimes he had committed both against myself and against the people of Japan. The Phantom Thieves gave me the opportunity to carry my out my own justice against my father, to lay waste to his corrupted philosophies and sins before his very eyes and force him to acknowledge his wrongdoings. My justice for him was for him to live with his crimes, be burdened with the guilt of his misdeeds, and ultimately, yes, become a better person through them.” She focused your gaze right into Akechi’s eyes. “And you took that from me, Akechi-kun.”

Akechi didn’t say anything, only inviting Haru to continue with a slight tilt of his head.

“We can discuss whether changes of heart or death are the rightful punishments for criminals like Shido and my father all day and night, Akechi-kun,” Haru continued. “And I’ll even agree with you that my father would never have atoned for his crimes willingly unless he was forced into it through his change of heart. But regardless, I suffered under his hand far more than you. I had the greater claim to decide the justice that my father deserved. And you took that right away from me when you killed his Shadow, Akechi-kun. It may be selfish of me to say it, but depriving me of my justice is the greatest grievance that I have against you, Akechi-kun, even more than the murder itself.”

“I see,” Akechi slowly answered after contemplating Haru’s declaration for several seconds, “then here is my answer to your earlier question.” He took a deep breath and sighed, before continuing. “While I may not regret removing a corrupt and twisted individual from the earth, I do regret the unfortunate reality that he was your father and not merely just another corrupt mongrel. I regret turning both you and Futaba into orphans and the tragedy that I forced both of you into, even if that regret is greater in Wakaba Isshiki’s case because the latter was a genuinely good and innocent person unlike your father. I regret that all the murders I committed, your father included, were ultimately all for nothing, when my quest for justice and revenge against Shido was doomed from the start. And I regret that I stole the right for you to decide justice for the wrongs you suffered from your father. Because as you said, you had more of a right to decide your father’s fate than I ever did.”

Haru contemplated Akechi’s answer for several seconds, before smiling with what looked like approval. “Thank you for not disrespecting me and wasting our time with lies and deceit, Akechi-kun,” she finally responded. “I can tell that you gave me the complete and honest answer that I desired, and the fact that you both acknowledged my greatest grievance and showed genuine remorse for it is a pleasant surprise. I cannot bring myself to forgive you now for your crimes, and I do not know if I’ll ever be able to. But I certainly respect the person you’ve become far more than the person you were just a few short months ago, and I am grateful that you provided me with closure through your apology.”

Akechi nodded at her, but didn’t say anything more. Both of them had said their peace, and there was nothing further to be gained by either of them by continuing this conversation.

Sensing this, Ren decided to switch the topic back to his second run through this year. “Trying to save Haru’s father was the last major change that I made apart from saving Goro,” he concluded. “I was shocked and horrified when I realized that my plan to save Okumura had failed, but as much as I hate to say it, his death made everything a lot simpler since it made the previous and current timelines align with each other once again. The only real difference I made up until the interrogation room was changing Sugimura’s heart, something which we never did in the previous timeline and something that we should’ve done to begin with.”

Ann scowled. “Don’t remind me about that guy’s shadow,” she spat. “What a disgusting piece of shit, ranting about how he was going to use Haru as a trophy wife and a stepping stone to increase his own political status. He’s just as bad as Kamoshida in my book.”

Haru giggled. “I had so much fun making his shadow scream for mercy,” she commented with a sadistic smile. “It was worth listening to a few seconds of his drivel just for that pleasure.

“Hold on a second…” a troubling thought suddenly occurred to Makoto. “There’s another mental shutdown victim we never talked about. Principal Kobayakawa. He was also a victim of Goro’s mental shutdowns, but Ren never mentioned anything about what he did to try and save him. Was he not murdered in the previous timeline?”

Ren chuckled, and this time his laughter was cruel and merciless. The same laughter he reserved for his most hated enemies like Shido and Yaldabaoth. “Oh, I knew that fat fuck was going to die,” he sneered. “I just didn’t give enough of a shit to save him to begin with.”

THAT drew everyone’s attention to him, even Akechi’s. “What the hell, man?” Ryuji exclaimed, unable to hide his horror at the revelation. “You let Kobayakawa get killed on purpose? I know he wasn’t a good guy or anything, but that didn’t mean he deserved to die!”

“Oh, but that’s where I disagree,” Ren answered coldly, and now everyone could hear vitriol and malice in his voice. “That fat fuck is responsible for allowing the greatest evils of Shujin to happen in the first place. It was because of him that Kamoshida was allowed free rein to abuse and carry out his perversions over the students of Shujin, perversions that Kobayakawa was fully aware of and did nothing to stop as long as he could use Kamoshida’s history as an Olympic medalist to bolster Shujin’s reputation and by extension his own. He also knew all about Kaneshiro’s blackmailing and harassment of Shujin’s students, a disgusting operation that threatened to ruin Shujin students’ lives and futures on a far greater and far more widespread scale than even Kamoshida. Kobayakawa knew that his students were in danger and didn’t do a single fucking thing to help them, instead choosing to persecute us when we didn’t commit any wrongs other than to threaten his power and authority over Shujin.”

“It reminds me of a proverb that I once read,” Yusuke mused solemnly. “The way for evil to triumph is for good to do nothing.”

“Except Kobayakawa was never good to begin with!” Ren retorted with a scornful laugh. “He was a slave to Shido’s conspiracy, selling his soul, his freedom, and his morals to them for who-the-fuck-knows-what. Everything he did, he did for himself and out of fear that his masters would get rid of him once he outlived his nonexistent usefulness. If we had a semi-competent principal who actually gave a shit about his students, Kamoshida would’ve never been allowed to get away with as many crimes as he did, and while the students might not have necessarily been safe for Kaneshiro, at least they would have had some kind of adult leadership to turn to for help.” Ren gave a disgusted sneer. “Instead, we got Kobayakawa, a useless, corrupt piece of shit who completely shat on his responsibilities as principal and collaborated with the very evils he was supposed to protect his students again. I knew he was gonna die, and I didn’t do a single fucking thing to prevent his death. He deserved to die by the same philosophy he lived, with nobody giving a shit about him or lifting a finger to help him.”

Everyone stared at him, looking thoroughly disturbed at the reminder of just how cruel and ruthless Ren could be when the darkest aspects of his personality manifested. “Jesus Christ, kid…” Sojiro shook his head, looking utterly saddened at how extensively adults had failed Ren and his friends to the point that he had become this bitter towards them. “Nobody should be sounding like this so early in life…”

Ren chuckled again, but this time it sounded exhausted more than anything else. “For better or for worse, this hatred will always be there,” he sighed. “I try my best to keep it under control, but there are times when it gets the better of me. I’m still not proud of how I acted after we got out of Shido’s Palace…”

Ann lightly placed her hand over Ren’s as a gesture of comfort. “Don’t be, Ren,” she reassured him. “None of us were acting right that day, and we already forgave each other for those mistakes.”

Ren smiled gratefully at one of his earliest friends, though his face hardened as he remembered what he had originally been talking about in the first place. “We might not be perfect, but we know the difference between right and wrong, and all of us, even Akechi, chose to do the right thing in the end. But Kobayakawa? He sold his soul to an utterly corrupt bastard and betrayed his responsibilities several times over. I didn’t have a single good reason to save him, and I had plenty of reasons, both personal and practical, to let him die the death he deserved.”

“What do you mean by practical reasons?” Makoto wondered. She had no love for the late former principal either, but she was still disturbed by the sheer callousness with which Ren had allowed him to die without even making a minimal, token effort to save him.

“As I’ve said already, making major changes to the timeline risks derailing it to the point where I can’t use my knowledge of the future to manipulate the timeline to our benefit, and also risks alerting Yaldabaoth that I’m from the future,” Ren explained. “I carefully considered every change that I potentially made, and whether that change would be worth the risks. Saving Akechi was worth it, not only because I see so much of myself in him and because I sympathize with him despite everything that he’s done, but also because I saw the potential in him to become a better person. Trying to win him over to our side was extremely risky, but that risk was greatly rewarded when he became a Phantom Thief for real, and fought alongside us as a powerful and valuable ally against monsters like Shido and Yaldabaoth. And since it was already so late in the year, it wouldn’t matter if we tipped off Yaldabaoth since we would already be approaching our final battle with each other anyway.”

“He did put in some serious work against Shido and that golden sippy cup, that’s for sure!” Futaba agreed.

“Saving Shiho was worth it because she was an innocent person who didn’t deserve to be violated by the most disgusting piece of shit human I’ve ever met besides Shido himself,” Ren continued. “Hell, saving Okumura was worth it despite how terrible of a person he was before his change of heart, because it would mean that Haru would be able to live with her father as a changed man with his morality restored instead of the tragedy of his death. But Kobayakawa? Why the fuck would I risk the timeline to save his life when all he’d do with that second chance is continue to sell his students out to Shido or whoever the fuck is in power around him?” Ren sneered at the idea. “He didn’t deserve to be saved, and the only thing I regret about his death is that I wasn’t there myself to watch Akechi pull the trigger on his shadow.”

“I still think that’s fucked up…” Ryuji mumbled, but he couldn’t argue against Ren’s assessment of Kobayakawa’s character.

“I mean, I have to agree with Ren that saving that piece of shit wasn’t worth risking the timeline,” Ann reluctantly conceded, “I just wish you weren’t so…uncaring about it.”

Akechi decided not to say anything openly, but he had plenty of his own thoughts on Ren’s apathy towards Kobayakawa’s death. He absolutely agreed with Ren that the fat and corrupt fuck wasn’t worth saving, and he also felt that he understood his rival even more than he already had.

Ren could posture all he wanted about the practicalities behind his decision to leave Kobayakawa to die, practicalities that were in all likelihood completely true. But the core truth of the matter lay in the hatred that Ren felt. His friend (though he would never admit it out loud) had even admitted as much earlier. Though he might carefully control the hatred that he felt towards Japan’s corrupt society and the equally depraved adults who allowed it to happen, there was little doubt in Akechi’s mind that this hatred had not dulled in the slightest when Ren had been given his second chance by Igor and Lavenza.

On the contrary, that hatred might have only grown stronger thanks to the many traumas and burdens that had been forced upon Ren. It was evident with the viciousness that Ren had displayed when brutalizing Kamoshida’s shadow, the sheer loathing and mockery with which he had disrespected Shido in their final confrontation, and the complete lack of empathy with which Ren had allowed Kobayakawa to die.

Ren Amamiya’s resolve and determination to protect the innocent and helpless was just as strong as it had ever been. But any mercy that he might have once held towards the guilty and the corrupt had died along with his friends in the first timeline. Now, there was only hatred, ruthlessness, and brutal judgment upon those who had grievously wronged either him or the ones he cared about.

The only exceptions being Okumura because of his relations to Haru, and himself…even though Akechi was still quite convinced that he didn’t deserve any of Ren’s mercy or sentimentality.

At that moment, the hatred seemed to evaporate from Ren, leaving behind only an exhausted young man who was finally freed from the burdens that reliving the same harrowing journey twice had forced upon him. “It doesn’t matter now,” he murmured, his face now looking serene and relieved, in sharp contrast to the vitriol that he had demonstrated against Kobayakawa only seconds before. “I’ve successfully completed the mission that mattered to me more than anything else. I’ve guided you through this year a second time, making sure that everyone I cared about survived the final battle against Yaldabaoth and everything leading up to that point. I managed to turn Akechi from a slave to Shido’s whims into a genuine and loyal member of the Phantom Thieves, helping him free himself from his chains and reclaim control over his own destiny. And I saved Shiho from one of the worst evils imaginable.” He closed his eyes and sighed. “My duty is done, and I can finally rest for the first time in what feels like forever.”

Before any of the Thieves could express their gratitude to Ren for everything that he had done, Sae approached the edge of the table. She was wearing an expression of guilt and regret on her face with a hint of dread, instantly alerting everyone that what she was about to say wasn’t going to be good news. “Hearing all this makes me feel terrible about the sacrifice I’m about to ask of you, Ren, but it wouldn’t do any of us any good to delay it.”

Ren opened his eyes. “I’m listening.”

Sae took a deep breath before continuing. “Shido confessed to a variety of crimes. We can arrest him on those charges…but the problem lies in proving him guilty. It’d be difficult unless the correlation between the Metaverse and the mental shutdowns is made. Which is why…I want you to turn yourself into the police.”

Chapter Text

The entire room immediately erupted into outrage. “What the hell are you talking about?” Ryuji exploded angrily.

“How could you demand such a thing from our leader?” Yusuke demanded, his voice much colder and more collected, but equally as furious.

“Allow me to explain, please,” Sae politely requested. Ren nodded wordlessly at her, giving the grey-haired woman permission to continue while simultaneously silencing his fellow Thieves. “Your testimony will be necessary to prove Shido guilty. That will mean placing you on center stage. You’ll be the hero who saved this country. However…” Sae looked down despondently at the table, averting her gaze away from Ren, “…there’s no way that the police or the public prosecutors will let that slide. If you turn yourself into the police, you’ll definitely be arrested.”

“You’ve got to kidding me!” Ann retorted, clearly disgusted. “We saw what they did to Ren back in November! And you’re asking Ren to put himself at the hands of the same police who drugged and beat him?”

“How could you even think about asking that of him?” Makoto asked quietly, her deceptively calm voice belying the fury lurking underneath. “He’s already been through so much! This country’s justice system has already failed him to such an appalling degree, and I’m not going to stand by and just let them abuse him yet again!”

Sae shook her head sadly. “I’m not any happier about asking this of Ren than you are, Makoto, especially given everything I’ve heard. But someone has to be the one to bear witness to Shido’s crimes, someone whose story is deeply intertwined with his own.” She shifted her gaze to Ren, her eyes hardening with determination and resolve. “I’ll close the cases surrounding Shido,” she promised. “I intend to expose them all. We need to work together to prevent society from becoming distorted again. That’s what you worked so hard to accomplish, right? Both in the last timeline and in this one?”

“Yes,” Ren confirmed. “That is more important than anything else. As much as I don’t like the idea of submitting myself to the questionable mercy of the police, seeing everything that we’ve worked so hard to accomplish fall apart is infinitely worse.”

Sae nodded in agreement. “I couldn’t have said it better myself. I know that I owe you a great debt for freeing me from my own distortion, and that I owe you nothing. Which is why I’m asking you, both as a friend and as someone who truly wants to see justice done, to turn yourself into the police, of your own accord. I swear on my father’s name that I will never allow the abuse and brutality that you suffered during your last interrogation to occur this time around.”

Before Ren could answer, a chuckle interrupted their conversation. All eyes turned towards Akechi, who had been observing and listening to them with obvious amusement as he tried not to snicker.

“You think this is funny?” Futaba snapped at him. “What the heck is wrong with you, Akechi!”

“I’ll explain in a minute,” he answered nonchalantly. “I must say, Nijima-senpai…you’ve certainly changed dramatically since November. I must say, I approve of your demeanor now far more than I did back when you were consumed by your own distortions. Perhaps the change of heart can accomplish some good after all, so long as the target is willing to make the change themselves like you did.”

The look of clear irritation on his former partner’s face dissolved into one of surprise. “I…changed my own heart?” she asked, confusion clear in her voice.

“In a manner of speaking. You can ask your sister for the details on your own time,” he replied, brushing away the question. “More to the point, I find it both fascinating and amusing how you tunneled so thoroughly on what you believed was the only solution, when you have a perfectly serviceable, if not even more effective alternative, right in front of you.”

The realization hit them all at the same time. “Wait a minute, Akechi-kun…” Haru gasped, “…are you saying…?”

“I’m planning on doing exactly what you think I’m going to do,” Akechi confirmed, without missing a beat. “I volunteer myself to testify against Shido and his crimes. After all, who could be a greater asset to your case against Shido than the very person who perpetrated those crimes on his behalf? Not only that, but I also have knowledge and understanding of Shido’s real world crimes as well, which Ren doesn’t have. There’s no need to force Ren to suffer the indignity of arrest at the hands of the police, when I can hammer the final nail in Shido’s coffin with far greater effectiveness.”

Sae looked just as shocked as everyone else. “Well…I can’t deny that, but…”

“You’re…offering to turn yourself in?” For the first time that anyone could remember, apart from Okumura’s death, Ren looked genuinely shocked. “For me?”

Akechi couldn’t help but grin at his surprised expression. “After all these months, I’ve finally done something to catch you off guard, Ren,” he commented, sounding very pleased with himself. “It’s even more satisfying than I anticipated.”

“You don’t have to do this, Akechi,” Ren started, having still not fully grasped what was going on.

 “Oh, but I do,” his rival answered back with utmost calm and confidence. “In fact, the very idea of not taking your place as the testifier against Shido is utterly unthinkable to me.”

“Can we at least know the reasons why?” Haru asked quietly. She should have been thrilled at the idea of Akechi taking Ren’s place in turning himself over to the police, especially given the crimes that he had committed. But for some reason, the idea of him giving up his own freedom, especially after he had been a loyal ally and teammate for the past month, was harder to stomach than she had anticipated. And one look at Futaba’s face told her that the orange-haired hacker wasn’t any more enthusiastic about the idea than she was.

“I don’t see why not,” Akechi replied, “after all, I don’t have any hidden agenda at this point. The first, and most important reason, is that I firmly believe in repaying debts on personal principle. And the debt that I owe Ren Amamiya is quite significant indeed, especially given the implications of what happened to me in the first timeline. And I think I know exactly what happened.”

Akechi turned to Ren and gave him his most charming Detective Prince smile. “Would you be so kind as to tell me what happened in the Engine Room during the first timeline?”

Ren visibly hesitated. “It’s not important anymore,” he tried to answer. “What’s done is done.”

Akechi was having none of it. “I insist.”

Ren sighed, then steeled himself as he started detailing what had been one of the worst events of the previous timeline. “It’s about as bad as you were expecting,” he admitted. “As you can already imagine, you never joined the Phantom Thieves as a true member. Instead, you followed us into the Engine Room, intending to fight us and stop us from getting to Shido so you could carry out your own plan to ruin him instead.”

Akechi scowled. “So the previous version of myself was still wrapped up in his own delusions and blind to reality,” he summarized. “Distasteful, but unsurprising. Continue, please.”

“You tried to fight us, first as the Detective Prince with Robin Hood, and then afterwards as the Black Mask with Loki,” Ren continued. “I wasn’t the hilariously overpowered Trickster with multiple maxed Personas back then, so you were definitely more dangerous to fight than you would’ve been in this timeline if we were to battle to the death. But even back then, I had already developed my philosophy for maximizing the potential of my Personas, and I already had the makings of a powerful Black Frost with no weaknesses and a deadly Diamond Dust. And with us all working together, we battled and defeated you.”

“I can’t help but wonder what that kind of fight would’ve been like,” Makoto admitted, “not that I’m happy about the idea.”

“With the savage powers of Loki at your disposal, I can only imagine that you would’ve been a formidable foe indeed,” Yusuke mused.

“My past self was a fool for thinking that fighting an entire army of Phantom Thieves by himself would lead to anything other than an inevitable defeat,” Akechi scoffed.

“We actually tried to offer you a chance to rejoin us,” Ren explained. “Even after everything you did, we wanted to give you one last chance to do the right thing. And for a few seconds, it even looked like you were going to take that chance.” His eyes darkened and he scowled. “But then Shido’s fucking cognition had to interfere and ruin everything.”

“You’re talking about Shido’s cognition of Akechi, aren’t you?” Ann murmured in horrified realization. “The one that you brought your Rangda for and violently exploded with Lucifer?”

“That’s the one,” Ren confirmed as a pained, haunted expression crossed his face for a brief moment. “But in the first timeline, I didn’t see it coming, and I didn’t have anything to counter it. The Akechi of that timeline was already seriously weak and wounded from the fight we just had, and because of that he couldn’t properly defend himself when the cognition showed up.”

“Oh, no...I think I know where this is going…” Futaba murmured sadly.

“The cognition showed up with several powerful shadows. I would’ve been able to wipe them all out easily in this timeline, but I didn’t have that kind of power yet in the past. Akechi decided to sacrifice his life by shooting the controls for the engine room, causing the part of the room where he was at to be cut off from the rest of us by a giant metal wall that we had no way of getting past,” Ren concluded grimly. “He knew he was going to die no matter what happened, and by shooting the wall he made sure that the cognition and his backup couldn’t get to us. His last request was for us to change Shido’s heart in his stead, and then he and the cognition shot each other behind the wall.” He let out a weary sigh as he finished recounting the tragic memory. “Those were his final moments, his last acts in defiance of the piece of shit who nearly ruined both our lives.”

“How terrible…” Haru murmured sympathetically. “I’m not surprised to hear that events in the past turned out this way, but to think Akechi-kun was so close to doing the right thing even in a time where we remained enemies.”

“God, what a fucked-up mess!” Ryuji stamped his foot in frustration, before giving Ren an encouraging grin. “But hey, you saw it coming, so you knew how to take care of it this time around, right? And ho-ly shit, did you take care of it!”

“We’d seen Ren pull off some pretty incredible stuff before, but seeing Lucifer blow up Akechi’s cognition with his Morning Star took the cake!” Morgana eagerly agreed.

Akechi nodded, completely unsurprised by the revelations that Ren had bestowed upon them. “As I thought. You not only gave me the insight and clarity to break the chains laid upon me by both Shido and Yaldabaoth, but you also saved me from an unfulfilling death. A death where I never even got the chance to confront Shido for the crimes he committed against myself and my mother in any meaningful capacity.” His face visibly scrunched in disgust at the idea. “Such a fate is utterly appalling to even think about,” he growled.

Then his features softened as he glanced back at Ren. “And the fact that you not only gave me that opportunity, but that you also kept your word in allowing me to decide his fate even when it would have set you against everyone else…that alone elevated my respect for you even further, and solidified the considerable debt that I owe you. Taking your place as the witness to Shido’s crimes is a small price to pay in comparison.”

“Wow…” Ann whistled appreciatively, “I never expected Goro Akechi of all people to admit all of this out loud, in front of all of us to boot!”

Akechi shrugged. “Things change, Takamaki,” he replied nonchalantly. “I see no shame in admitting this now. And that’s hardly my only reason for volunteering myself to take Ren’s place.”

“…you still want to go after Shido, don’t you?” Makoto asked.

The grin that crossed Akechi’s face was worthy of his role as the Black Mask. “Just as the hatred that Ren holds for a corrupt and distorted society never diminished, neither has the hatred I hold for Shido,” he retorted. “Although my original plan for him was unrealistic and doomed from the start, I now have a new opportunity to seal his fate. I will walk up to the witness stand and condemn my worthless sperm donor to the fate he deserves with every word I speak in front of the court. If that requires incriminating myself and landing myself in prison alongside him, then so be it. Leaving him to rot in prison, consumed by his own guilt and despair for the rest of his days as a result of his changed heart, is worth any price.”

“Not sure I’d go that far, but I know what it’s like to have a shit father,” Ryuji sympathized.

“…I still don’t think is exactly a healthy mindset for a kid like you to have,” Sojiro muttered, shaking his head. “Only reason why I’m not trying harder to stop you is because it means Ren’ll remain a free man, and he deserves that freedom after all the hell he’s been through.”

“…are you sure about this, Akechi?” Ren asked quietly. It was clear to everyone that he was very unhappy about Akechi’s decision, but he wasn’t going out of his way to try and stop him either. “If worst comes to worst, you might be locked up for the rest of your life. You’d be trading an early death for years of imprisonment. And I know you value your freedom.”

“The freedom I value is the freedom to make my own decisions and choose my fate for myself,” Akechi corrected. “But even if I valued my own freedom in the traditional sense of the word, there is something that I value far more. Accountability.”

“Accountability?” Makoto repeated, starting to realize where Akechi was going with this.

“Accountability,” Akechi confirmed. “No matter how low I might have sunk, I have always believed in one thing. Everyone should face the consequences for their actions. This was a principle that I prepared all my life to exercise on Shido, and it is a principle that I especially apply to myself.”

“So giving yourself up in place of Ren is your way of taking accountability for your own actions,” Sae mused.

“I freely admit that I am the last person who should be speaking about ethics and morality,” Akechi acknowledged, “but I have my own code of honor that I believe in, and accountability is an integral part of that code. And failing to abide by that code is unthinkable, especially when I can prevent yet another injustice from being forced upon a better man than myself.”

He turned to face the rest of the Thieves. “I could say that I regretted all of the crimes that I have committed, but that would be a lie. Many of the mental shutdowns that Shido ordered me to inflict were on corrupt scum that were equally as depraved, and it was my personal pleasure to clean out the filth and end their predations on society once and for all. But not everyone I killed deserved death, or were complicit in Shido’s crimes,” he acknowledged with a sigh. “Innocents died at my hand for a purpose that was ultimately all for nothing, and to them, at least, I owe both the final condemnation of Shido and judgment upon myself.”

“You better make sure Shido gets what he deserves!” Futaba declared, pointing a finger at him. “I’ll never forgive you if you don’t!”

“Nothing would give me greater pleasure,” Akechi replied, before focusing his attention on Ren. “As for you, Ren, we do not see eye-to-eye on everything. To me, changing a person’s heart by forcing elements like empathy and a functioning conscience into them is a violation of free will and inherently unethical. I view it as a necessary evil at best, and only because the other options of mental shutdown or doing nothing are inherently even worse.”

Ren nodded. “I can understand and respect that viewpoint, Akechi,” he assured him. But as you say, when the only other option is to let even worse evils continue, morally dubious actions are better than doing nothing.”

“I’m glad that you can recognize that, as it means you know when to limit yourself and your actions in a way that someone like Shido never could,” Akechi answered. Then, a small but genuine smile appeared on his face. An expression that was completely different from the fake happiness of the Detective Prince, or the vicious smirks and sneers of the Black Mask. “That being said, I do hold a great deal of respect for you, Ren. You used the knowledge that you had gained from the previous timeline and applied that knowledge brilliantly and shrewdly to achieve an outcome where all of us faced down a false god corrupting the very fabric of society itself and lived to tell the tale. You possess both a great deal of power, and the wisdom to temper it. And if it weren’t for your intervention, I would never have been able to finally confront Shido for his crimes. And I have no regrets whatsoever about taking your place as the final testifier against Shido, so that I can finish the final steps to bring him to justice in the name of my mother.”

“Even if it means losing your freedom in the process?” Ren asked quietly.

Akechi smirked mirthlessly. “I was always planning on bring myself down along with Shido,” he answered without hesitation. “In a way, this is merely an alteration of that plan. The sacrifice of my reputation as the Second Detective Prince is a small price to pay, and imprisonment is a just and appropriate punishment for my own sins.” The smirk vanished and his eyes hardened with the resolve of a man who had made his decision and would not be swayed from it. “It may not be the most pleasant fate, but it is the fate that I choose for myself. Isn’t that what we fought the false god to obtain?” he challenged.

Ren gave a resigned sigh and shook his head. “No, you’re right, Akechi. I won’t pretend that a part of me doesn’t want to stop you from going through with taking my place, but I won’t stop you. Some of us may not forgive you for your crimes, but I respect the person that you’ve become too much to strip the free will you value so highly away from you. Especially when you’re trying to do the right thing.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way, Ren,” Akechi answered. His tone was almost…sympathetic, or at the very least much less abrasive than it normally was.

Ren reached out a hand towards him, a mirror of the gesture that had started their bond all the way back when they had first met. Akechi recognized it as such, and didn’t waste any hesitation in extending his own hand and completing the handshake.

It was poetic, really. The gesture that represented when their paths and fates had first crossed, would be the final show of respect that they would give each other before their paths would separate for the foreseeable future.

After a few seconds, Akechi separated his hand from Ren’s and turned to face Sae. “I don’t see a need to delay this any further,” he declared. “We can go to the police station now.”

“Before, I would have questioned your intentions, Goro,” Sae replied. It was clear in her voice that she had regained some of the respect for him that she had lost after discovering the truth about him, even if that respect was now for completely different reasons. “But after everything you’ve said, I have no doubt that you’ll cooperate with the investigation.”

Akechi grinned. “That would save a lot of time.”

Sae nodded, then turned to Ren. “I’m sorry for ruining the evening with my earlier request,” she apologized. “Now that Goro is volunteering to take your place, you can forget everything I’ve just said. I’ll take him in myself.”

Both Akechi and Sae got up from their respective seats. “I won’t claim that everything will turn out perfectly for you,” Sae acknowledged, “but I would bet this case will reach its natural conclusion.” She suddenly shook her head. “No, that’s not good enough. I swear on the honor of the Nijima name that I will get this case properly settled.”

“Hang on a sec!” Ryuji suddenly interrupted, all eyes turning to him. “Look, I know you have to bring Akechi in to the police, and I respect the hell out of the fact that he’s taking Ren’s place for that, but can’t he stay here for the party? Just for one night?”

That actually got Akechi surprised. “You’re honestly inviting me to stay for the celebrations?” he asked incredulously.

Ryuji grinned. “Duh! Even if you weren’t taking the fall for Ren, you were a true Phantom Thief just like us in the end!”

“Yeah!” Ann eagerly agreed. “You were right on the front lines fighting Shido and that false god! Heck, if Ren didn’t have all of his overpowered Personas, you’d were one of our best fighters in the battles that mattered the most!”

“If he’s really going to be turning himself in so that Ren can stay free, then I don’t mind having him around for the party,” Futaba declared. She glanced over at him and smirked. “Besides, this guy clearly has never heard of fun in his life! Time for us to fix that, wheh heh heh! He’s going to have fun if it kills him!”

“I…I really don’t think that’s…” Akechi began, but a smile from Haru stopped his words.

“I would highly encourage you to stay and join our celebrations, Akechi-kun,” she requested, clearly enjoying his discomfort. “I insist.”

Akechi rolled his eyes. “Fine…” he drawled, “If you insist on having me around in your festivities for whatever ridiculous reason, I suppose I can stay for the celebrations a little while longer.”

Ren smirked. “Face it, Akechi, we’re your friends now and you secretly want to join the party.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Amamiya,” he retorted. “Perhaps I overestimated your intelligence if you’re willing to indulge in these delusions.”

But his actions told a different story, as he walked back to the booth and sat back down next to Ren. And as the Phantom Thieves broke out the food and began to celebrate their success with a well-deserved meal, nobody missed the small but genuine smile that appeared on Akechi’s face.

Though his pride would never allow him to admit it out loud, the Phantom Thieves were his family now. The first people who had showed him genuine kindness since his mother so many years ago. And he wouldn’t trade that for anything.

Chapter Text

Three Days Later…

“Hey, Akechi,” a guard called to him gruffly through his cell door. “Nijima’s here to speak with you.”

Akechi looked up from his bed in the cell. He knew that he’d certainly been given a better hand than Ren had in the hands of the police. He hadn’t been beaten once, and the days spent in the cell when he wasn’t going over all of Shido’s and his own many crimes were dull and boring more than anything else.

Still, Sae had proved relentless in her quest to see Shido brought to justice, and Akechi was a most eager partner in helping the elder Nijima accomplish this quest. He gave the guard his trademark fake Detective Prince smile and tone. “Well then, we certainly shouldn’t keep her waiting, should we?” she asked rhetorically.

The guard merely continued to gaze at him, unimpressed, as he opened the door and let Akechi out into the cell block. Akechi knew the way to the interrogation room by heart at this point, and when he arrived there, Sae was already waiting for him.

But he could tell immediately that something was wrong. Sae’s brow was furrowed in consternation and frustration, a distinct scowl on her face. Akechi knew and expected that Sae would face resistance from the remnants of Shido’s conspiracy, but she had faced those challenges with a cool and collected demeanor. This was entirely different. “Is there a problem?” Akechi asked, deciding to dispense with the pleasantries and go straight to the point once Sae closed the door behind her, making sure that they were alone.

Sae grimaced. “We’ve faced a bit of a complication,” she admitted. “It’s not necessarily that the case itself is going sour. It’s more what Shido has said with regards to said case.” She took out an audio recorder and held it out in front of her.

Fighting down the feeling of dread, Akechi accepted the recorder and activated it. Immediately, the words of the man he had hated and desired to kill his entire life, emanated from the recording. “Akechi?” he could hear the sneer in Shido’s voice. “He was nothing but a pawn. He was so eager to discover that I was his father, it made him the perfect puppet to do whatever I desired. The fool was completely blind to my true nature, believing me to the innocent and ideal father that he always wanted, even as I manipulated him into carrying out seemingly benign orders with blissful ignorance, unaware of my true plans lurking underneath that veneer.

Akechi immediately understood why Sae was considered. “This isn’t right,” he murmured. “Shido’s orders to me were anything but benign. For fuck’s sake,” he raised his voice, getting more agitated, “I was the one who did the fucking mental shutdowns!”

Sae sighed. “Yes, and as far as assassins go you were one of the best I’ve ever seen,” she reluctantly admitted. “In fact, you did your job far too well. So well, in fact, that there is no hard evidence that actually connects you to the mental shutdowns. Not only that, but Shido’s testimony explicitly separated you and the Black Mask as two distinct entities.”

“WHAT?” Akechi all but shouted, pressing the “Play” recorder with his finger so viciously it was a miracle he didn’t break it.

“Akechi played a vital part in my plans as the Detective Prince, a figure to win the appreciation of the public so that I could control them from behind the scenes,” Shido continued his sinister explanation. “With my connections to SIU and the subsequent nepotism this allowed, it was child’s play to plant him there and use him to manipulate the public into turning against the Phantom Thieves as their greatest voice of opposition. And while I couldn’t jeopardize his position by allowing him full knowledge of my more corrupt actions, his naivety, his ignorance, and his willingness to do anything to please me made him more trustworthy than most when it came to delivering messages to the assassin responsible for the mental shutdowns.” Shido scoffed. “Even I don’t know that assassin’s name…not that it matters anymore. I had him killed once it seemed as though my position had solidified, and I took extensive precautions to have the body and all records of him disposed of thoroughly. After all, my most powerful weapon was also the greatest threat to my person, and I simply couldn’t allow that. Don’t bother wasting your time looking for him, I doubt you’ll ever find a trace of the man ever again.”

“What the hell?” Akechi snarled. “What in the actual hell? All of this is bullshit! Why is Shido going so far as to fabricate his stor…” the answer suddenly hit him. “The change of heart.”

“The change of heart,” Sae agreed. “With a functioning conscience, Shido must feel an obscene amount of guilt and regret for all of his crimes and atrocities. And that regret must be the most intense when it comes to you specifically, Akechi-kun, as you have a personal relationship to Shido that most others lack.”

Akechi sneered. “Not by my fucking choice,” he spat.

Sae shook her head. “No, but it exists for better or for worse,” she replied solemnly. “And I am almost certain that Shido presented this narrative of you as a blissfully ignorant pawn on purpose, as a means of atonement and an apology towards you for the evils he inflicted upon both you and your mother. Even if the relationship between he and you is exposed, all of the condemnation and hatred of the public will fall upon him, leaving your reputation much less endangered by comparison.”

“Well he can shove this apology up his fucking ass!” Akechi snarled vitriolically. “I don’t want his mercy, or his apology, or any of that shit! I’m not some precious little ten year old he can coddle around and take the blame for whenever he makes an innocent mistake! I’m fully aware of the crimes and atrocities that I committed as the Black Mask! I made a promise to Ren and his little group of friends that I would take accountability for my actions, but how the fuck am I supposed to do that now that Shido’s fucked up everything? Even after his change of heart, the piece of shit can’t help being a massive fucking LIAR, now can he?” he ranted.

Sae sighed. “Be that as it may, Shido’s confession has already been recorded and submitted as official evidence. Something that we haven’t had the chance to do with you, as we had spent the past few days uncovering Shido’s many hidden crimes and bringing them to light. Your testimony has proven invaluable for this purpose, as the moment I asked Shido about the crimes that you brought to light, he immediately and tearfully confessed to all of them.”

Akechi scowled, biting back the retort that she should have gotten his own testimony recorded and submitted in the first place. If he wasn’t completely honest, it wasn’t Sae’s fault, at least not entirely. He had jumped at the opportunity to bury Shido under the weight of insurmountable evidence to prove his guilt once and for all, and even without the Metaverse taken into account, there was more than enough evidence of his crimes in the real world to see the man locked away in prison to rot alone and unloved for the rest of his miserable existence.

The work he and Sae had put into this endeavor had been immensely gratifying…but it had come with a heavier cost than he had been expecting. A cost that he had foreseen too late, and now he had no choice but to pay.

“Unfortunately, this means that you can’t put forth the truth that you were the assassin performing the mental shutdowns before the court of law,” Sae grimaced. “It’ll be your word against Shido’s. Shido’s former allies in the Conspiracy might be in a dangerous situation now that their leader has had his change of heart and the public has turned against him, but they’ll jump at the chance to exploit such a massive and easily exploitable weakness. And with such massive contradictions between stories, it’s very likely that…”

“…that a judge will just throw the whole case out and let Shido go free,” Akechi spat bitterly. “Yes, Nijima-san, I’m well aware. This is an outcome that I absolutely cannot allow, for reasons that should be perfectly fucking obvious.”

Sae nodded in understanding. “We still have a few days left before I need to obtain your official testimony, Akechi. And the decision is ultimately up to you. How do you want to approach this?”

Akechi thought carefully for several seconds. “Give me a sheet of paper,” he finally requested curtly. “I have a message I’d like to write to Ren.”

The Next Day, at Café LeBlanc

“…and this is the situation I now find myself in,” Ren finished reading the letter that Akechi had written him. After realizing that Akechi had sent him a letter, Ren had made it his first priority to read it. Akechi had requested that only he, Futaba, Haru, and Sojiro be aware of its contents, and once Sojiro had realized what was going on, he had no hesitation with closing the café early so that Ren and his friends could have the privacy they needed. “If I claim responsibility for the mental shutdowns as I had originally intended and as I had promised, then it will throw the entire case against Shido into complete chaos, and risk the man who has plagued and poisoned all of our existences going free. All of the options that I have sicken me to some degree, but this more so than any others. As I have wronged all of you personally, to a much greater degree than any of the other Thieves, it is only right that the three of you to voice your opinion on what my course of action would be.

I would strongly advise you not to dawdle in your response, as Shido’s trial comes soon and I will have to give my official testimony for the record within a day or two.

                                                                                                                        Goro Akechi”

Ren put down the letter, his face grim as he studied the expressions of Haru, Futaba, and Sojiro. Futaba unsurprisingly looked frustrated, while Haru had a more thoughtful expression on her face. Sojiro, meanwhile, looked like he was just completely and utterly done with what was once again a failing of the Japanese justice system.

On the plus side, it appeared that the case against Shido was going as strongly as ever, and that Akechi was providing vital evidence to ensure that the former corrupt politician would be going down for good, this particular hiccup notwithstanding.

“Ugh, are you kidding me!” Futaba exclaimed as she threw her hands up in the air in frustration. “It’s not fair! Both of them deserved to be punished by the law for what they did. Hell, even Akechi himself thinks this! You heard what he said to us before he left with Sae.”

Sojiro sighed. “I know, Futaba, I know,” he muttered. “But the sad truth is that reality often laughs at our expectations. We’ve all seen just how thoroughly the god forsaken justice system and government of this country have failed us all. The fact that Ren ended up punished for Shido’s crimes to begin with is proof enough of that.”

“I do respect how Akechi reached out to us to inform us of this development,” Haru acknowledged. “His abrasive attitude aside, it’s clear that he values our opinion on this complicated matter. The Black Mask Akechi before Ren-kun convinced him to change his path would’ve either been uncaring or outright mocking of our tragedy.”

“For me, the answer is clear,” Ren declared without hesitation. “Akechi has to go along with Shido’s narrative. The consequences for doing anything different would be an absolute disaster. If Shido goes free, even if it’s only based on a technicality, then his Conspiracy might be able to cling to power. And with that kind of outcome, all that will change at the end of the day is one corrupt bastard taking the place of another. A corrupt bastard that we won’t be able to bring to justice now that the Metaverse is gone.”

“As much as I hate to admit it, I share the same opinion with you, Ren-kun,” Haru agreed. “Akechi has blood on his hands, including those of our family members. That will never change. But the blood of every mental shutdown Akechi ever committed ultimately rests upon the head of Shido, who in addition has almost certainly committed far worse crimes and atrocities in the real world than Akechi would even consider doing.” Haru’s eyes burned with determination and her next words were spoken with steel. “We absolutely cannot allow a despicable monster like Shido, who only now seeks forgiveness and atonement because his unholy desires were forcibly stolen from him, to go free and unpunished. No matter what the alternative might be, such an outcome is an atrocity for anyone who even has the slightest understanding of true justice.”

Futaba sighed. “You’re right. Akechi might have been the one to kill mom, but Shido was the one who manipulated him into doing it. And Akechi never wrote that horrible fake letter blaming me for mom’s death. He wasn’t the one who sent the police to my family, turning them against me and leaving me so depressed I didn’t leave my room in Dad’s house for years. That was all Shido, and only Shido. I can deal with Akechi getting a lighter sentence than what he actually deserves, cause he actually did choose to fight with us against the monsters that caused all of this in the first place, and he’s the reason why Ren’s still free instead of being locked away again for something he didn’t do.” She gave Ren an affectionate smile, which Ren returned encouragingly, before her face turned into a scowl again. “But I REFUSE to deal with a world where Shido doesn’t get punished for his crimes. Seeing that would almost be as bad as seeing mom die all over again,” she buried her face in her knees, “and I don’t think I can handle that.”

“Then we’re all agreed,” Ren summarized as he got out a sheet of paper and a pen to write their collective response. “As much as I hate to admit it, sometimes the only way, or at least the best way to do good is to choose between the lesser of two evils.”

“Hold on!” Futaba interrupted fiercely. “If Akechi really is serious about accountability and all of that, he should at least confess to the real-world crimes he did for Shido, things that can actually be proven. Yeah, he might not be punished like he would be if people knew he was the assassin, but at the very least he’ll get some kind of justice for what he’s done!”

“That is a very good idea, Futaba-kun,” Haru complimented. “And it will give us the opportunity to test Akechi-kun’s intentions. Let us see if he truly believes in the accountability that he claimed to follow above all else.”

Ren nodded. “Actions speak a thousand times louder than words ever could. Just look at every evil heart that we ever changed. All of them claimed to be the peak of humanity, but their actions exposed them as the worst scum to ever disgrace mankind.” The leader of the Phantom Thieves suddenly smiled. “But I don’t think either of you have anything to worry about when it comes to Akechi. After everything we’ve been through, for better or for worse, I believe in him and his conviction. He won’t let us down.”

“Just don’t be surprised if the public doesn’t react the way you expect or want them to,” Sojiro warned. “You guys should know better than anyone else.”

Later That Week…

Shido’s trial started at the end of that very week, shortly after Ren sent his letter back to Akechi. The corrupt politician and Yaldabaoth’s greatest tool would finally have his many crimes and sins would finally be exposed to the public in full. The Phantom Thieves spent every night after it started watching it in Café LeBlanc, eager to see the moment when a monster who had masqueraded as a hero and glorious leader would finally be laid low and be properly punished once and all from a society freed from its corrupt distortions.

Ren had made sure to warn the rest of the Phantom Thieves about Shido’s falsified narrative on Akechi’s behalf, that their former enemy had had no choice but to go along with it and that they shouldn’t be surprised when he presented himself as far less dangerous than he had actually been. There was some predictable grumbling to this, but since Haru and Futaba had made their peace with the situation nobody actually vocalized any complaints.

Sae was relentless in her prosecution of Shido, revealing the vast extent of Shido’s corruption from the pettiest crimes to the Conspiracy that he wielded to very nearly dominate all of Japan. Each and every time, Shido confessed the crime in question, going out of his way to provide as many details as possible to erase any doubt that he was the perpetrator behind them all. The man outright broke into tears of remorse several times during Sae’s prosecution, but the elder Nijima sister had no sympathy for the man, and neither did any of the Phantom Thieves.

It came as a pleasant surprise to everyone when Sae went out of her way to address the crime that Shido had committed against Ren specifically. How Shido had been out on a trip to Inaba, Ren’s home country, attempted to force a woman working under his employ into having relations with him, and how he had placed the blame for that sexual assault upon Ren himself when he had tried to stop him. Shido admitted to this crime with the same meticulous detail that he had provided for all the others, and now the foundation had been set. With Shido admitting the truth to the public in a court of law and that truth on the record, it would be simple child’s play for the rest of the Phantom Thieves and Confidants to pick up where they had left off and ensure that Ren’s criminal record was wiped clean.

“Hell yeah, the fucker actually admitted to it!” Ryuji cheered, playfully punching Ren on the shoulder. “He mentioned your name and everything!”

“Wheh-heh-heh!” Futaba cackled. “There’s no way anyone can believe that you’re still a criminal now!”

“Oh, I’m sure that there’s still some people who will still brush me off as a delinquent no matter what my record says,” Ren commented, keeping a more realistic perspective. “But I stopped giving a shit about what the brainless public thinks of me. The only opinions that matter to me are the opinions of the people I care about. And that includes everyone right here.”

Makoto smiled fondly at the memories they had shared and how far all of them had come since the month of April. “Be that as it may, I refuse to allow that injustice to linger any longer now that we have the opportunity to correct it. I’m going to be working hard on making sure your criminal record gets lifted, Ren. If I can’t even do that for my closest friend, then I don’t have any right to pursue a career in justice at all.”

“And I’ll help you, Makoto!” Haru added brightly. “It’d be a disgrace for us not to!”

“Hell yeah, count me in!” Ryuji volunteered with an enthusiastic grin. “This is one thing I’d be HAPPY to study for!”

“You guys!” Futaba pointed at the screen, bringing all of their attention back to Shido’s trial. “Akechi’s on!”

Everyone focused on Akechi as he walked into the courtroom, flanked by two guards. Akechi solemnly walked up to the witness stand, his expression that of the perfect Detective Prince that he had pretended to be.

When Sae began the questioning, she was noticeably less harsh on Akechi than she had been with Shido, although she didn’t throw any easy or gentle questions towards him either. There had been a certain aggressiveness towards Shido that was completely understandable given the crimes that he had committed, an aggressiveness that was absent in her questioning of Akechi. Though some might have had doubts about whether Sae would be the proper prosecutor to question Akechi, given her working relationship with him in the past, the cool, collected, and professional demeanor with which she asked him her questions quickly removed any concern that this relationship would impede her ability to question Akechi in a professional and objective manner appropriate for a court.

“Many who have heard Shido’s testimony would consider me blameless,” Akechi was speaking to the court, his Detective Prince persona laid with a morose, solemn, and remorseful tone. While all of them knew that the persona itself was a lie, the regret itself was real, at least to a degree. “Some would consider me an innocent pawn who loyally and naively carried out his father’s orders, completely oblivious to the horrific truth of their wickedness. They would believe that I should not be punished for the sins of the father. But I assure you, I am far from blameless in this whole sordid affair.”

“The details might be wrong, but the overall sentiment and theme behind what Akechi’s saying is truth,” Ren commented idly, to general agreement from the rest of the Phantom Thieves. “Just as we had discussed.”

On the TV screen, Akechi took a deep breath, collecting his thoughts, before continuing. “In the back of my mind, I always had this sneaking suspicion that Shido’s orders weren’t always what they seemed. That there was something fundamentally wrong lurking underneath the seemingly harmless requests that I fulfilled and the communications that I delivered on his behalf. As a detective, I should have trusted my intuition. I should have investigated more deeply into the true nature of what Shido was requesting of me. But I allowed my reputation and work in my role as the Detective Prince to get the better of me, ignoring my instincts and in doing so failing in my duty. It is only until very recently, with Shido’s arrest and trial, that I was able to fully investigate and research exactly what my father has been doing behind the scenes.” He adopted a very convincing expression of horror and contrition. “I could not have possibly imagined the true depths of the cruelty and wickedness that Shido was orchestrating behind the scenes, a diabolical plan to seize control of all Japan and unleash unspeakable evil upon its people. And it is no exaggeration for me to say that my actions facilitated this horror to a much more significant degree than what anyone could have possibly expected.”

“They have no idea,” Futaba mumbled.

“Knowingly or not, I was an accomplice to Shido’s evil,” Akechi finished his miniature speech, “and I should be judged in the eyes of the public as such. I do not ask for mercy, nor do I believe I deserve it. For there can be no justification for the evils that I allowed and aided, ignorantly or otherwise. The legacy and reputation of the Second Detective Prince ends now, in my own eyes if nobody else’s, and has been irreparably damaged due to its connection with such a vile monster who masqueraded as Japan’s savior.”

“Thank you, Akechi-kun,” Sae interrupted him gently but firmly. “While I am just as horrified as you are at the revelations behind the defendant’s crimes, it is best that we focus solely on him for the time being.”

“Ah, yes…” Akechi drawled, the sadness and regret replaced by cool fury. Though it was carefully and expertly concealed, the Phantom Thieves could still see the traces of the true Goro Akechi’s personality, all the venom he had gathered in his soul towards his monster of a father finally being channeled outward to forever doom Masayoshi Shido with the very law that he had sought to subvert and corrupt. “The crimes of Masayoshi Shido. Where do I even begin to start with them…”

“I’ll take care of that part,” Sae reassured him. “All I’m asking you to do, Akechi-kun, is to confirm and provide additional testimony on the evidence that we have gathered on Masayoshi Shido’s crimes. Let me reassure you that you are not the one on trial today. He is.”

Akechi nodded, and together, the two of them buried the final nail in the coffin for any hope of a verdict of innocence for Shido’s crimes. As the trial went on and on, with the details becoming less important to the Thieves personally, Ryuji suddenly asked a question.

“Hey, uh, I don’t know shit about this law stuff, but how come none of Shido’s other Conspiracy members are saying anything?” he asked. “I mean, we all know that Akechi’s story is bullshit, and I’m pretty sure they know it too. How come they haven’t said anything about Akechi being the one behind the mental shutdowns? Hell, they haven’t even mentioned that topic with Shido yet either, all of the crimes Makoto’s sister has been talking about have been stuff Shido in the real world.”

It was a good question to ask, and a surprisingly insightful one from Ryuji.

“I was actually talking to sis about that,” Makoto answered thoughtfully. “Akechi did his job as an assassin really well, too well in fact. Shido kept Akechi’s role as the Black Mask very carefully hidden except for the highest levels of the Conspiracy, making sure to leave no written records that could confirm Akechi as the murderer behind the mental shutdowns. It’s one thing to prove that Akechi had a connection to Shido, that could be confirmed easily. But any evidence that places Akechi as the Black Mask would be extremely circumstantial, and would almost certainly be dismissed by any court or semi-competent lawyer. That’s why Shido was able to successfully pass Akechi off as an innocent but unwitting pawn as the second Detective Prince, and nobody can prove that he’s lying.”

“Not only that, but trying to accuse Akechi of being the Black Mask would be extremely dangerous for any member of Shido’s conspiracy right now,” Ren added. “Shido’s gone from being the rising star in Japanese politics, a few seconds away from becoming its next prime minister, to possibly the most despised corrupt politician in all of Japan. From what I’ve heard from Sae, this is pretty much a slam-dunk conviction at this point with all of the evidence that Sae and Goro worked to uncover and confirm. The Conspiracy members can see the writing on the wall, and right now they’ll want to keep their heads low and try to distance themselves from Shido and his doomed campaign as much as possible. Trying to accuse Shido and Akechi of lying, and trying to expose Akechi as the Black Mask even as an act of spite, would be one of the worst possible ideas they could do right now.”

“Really?” Ann asked curiously. “What makes you say that?”

 “Well, as I’ve said already, there isn’t any hard evidence that actually identifies Akechi as being the Black Mask,” Ren explained, “so any claims that a corrupt ally of Shido makes about the Second Detective Prince secretly being a masked murderer is going to either get laughed off and dismissed by the public, or seriously piss off all of the Detective Prince’s fans. And even if those claims WERE taken seriously, then people are going to be wondering exactly how and why the politician in question has this kind of information, information that Shido kept so secretive from everyone except those closest to him. Sae told me that if anybody does try to contradict the story that Shido and Akechi created, then she’s going to be hunting down the answer to those questions and jumping down the throat of that politician like nothing else.”

 “I kind of want to see somebody be stupid enough to actually try that,” Morgana admitted as he absentmindedly licked his paw.

Ren smirked. “You and me both, Morgana. You and me both.”

The Phantom Thieves spent a few more minutes watching the trial in silence. To everyone’s surprise and horror, Shido admitted that he had secretly created a lethal poison, one that would have almost exactly imitated the effects of a mental shutdown, complete with the black goo leaking out of the victim’s eyes. The former prime minister candidate then this project had been kept under utmost secrecy with very limited amounts created and no official records. According to Shido, this poison was the true reason for the mental shutdowns, the last of which had been used to murder Kunikazu Okumura right as he had been about to confess his crimes as a result of his change of heart.

“How disturbing,” Yusuke muttered, looking utterly disturbed. “To think that one could cause the horrible death of a mental shutdown without even requiring the Metaverse…”

“He can’t be telling the truth, right?” Futaba asked, trying not to panic at the idea of something this evil actually existing. “This is all just a cover story to hide the fact that Akechi was the guy behind the mental shutdowns, right?”

“Akechi mentioned this to me once,” Ren admitted grimly. “Shido actually had been working on creating a poison to imitate the effects of the mental shutdowns, although they weren’t nearly as far in that plan as Shido is saying he was. As far as he knows, there was only one experimental dose of it ever made, a dose that was going to be used to poison Kunikazu Okumura at his trial as a backup plan just in case the mental shutdown didn’t work, or wasn’t enough. Haru’s father could have done a lot of damage to Shido’s campaign, if we don’t count Yaldabaoth’s manipulations fucking everything up, and Shido couldn’t have that. Getting Okumura out of the picture was one of his top priorities.”

Haru sat there in silence, a stormy expression on her face with the revelation that her father had been doomed from the start. Akechi had been right. Even if their former enemy hadn’t murdered his shadow, it was almost certainly likely that her father’s fate had been sealed one way or another. Her contempt and disgust of Shido only increased even further, and she needed to find a way to change the question as soon as possible before her thoughts and emotions overwhelmed her.

“When do you think Akechi-kun’s going to have his trial next?” Haru suddenly asked, more to change the subject than genuine vitriol towards him. “Even if he won’t be tried in the court of law as the Black Mask and the perpetrator of the mental shutdowns, he was still an accomplice to some of Shido’s crimes, and I can’t imagine that would be ignored by the public.”

“Akechi will be having his own trial a bit after Shido’s,” Makoto answered with a sigh. “Akechi insisted on having one to answer for his crimes, but it’s being pushed to the backburner until Shido’s trial is over and done with. Getting the man tried and punished in the court of law was sis’ top priority, and she didn’t want a second trial so closely connected to the first mudding up the waters and just making everything more confusing.”

“That makes sense,” Ann commented with a nod. “She must have a lot to deal with already.”

“You have no idea,” her senpai answered dryly.

“They can’t deny the truth any longer!” Futaba added happily. “Now that we’ve kicked that false god’s ass and he’s not messing around with people’s brains anymore, there’s no way that they can deny all of the horrible stuff that Shido’s done. Not when he’s literally nodding his head and saying that he did all of it right in front of them!”

“We’ll find out soon enough,” Ren answered with a scowl. “After how many times this godforsaken society has disappointed me and fucked up in some way, I’m only going to believe Shido’s gonna get the judgment he deserves when I see it.”

Sojiro shook his head in resignation. “Nobody should be that pessimistic at this young an age,” he commented with a sigh, “but after everything you’ve been through, Ren, I don’t blame you in the slightest. Like you said just now, we’ll find out soon enough.”

A Few Days Later

Days passed as Shido’s trial went on, and it truly appeared as though the death of Yaldabaoth had freed the public from his manipulations and enslavement. Because for the first time, Ren ended up having nothing to worry about. The public as a whole were thoroughly disgusted and appalled by the gravity and magnitude of Shido’s crimes, to the point that several crowds had gathered in protest outside of the courthouse, calling for Shido’s conviction, lifelong imprisonment, and sometimes even the death penalty for the good of Japanese society.

For a society that was now free of distortions, the outcome was never in doubt. The evidence amassed against Shido was simply overwhelming, and that was without going into the rather crucial detail that Shido himself had admitted to everything, tearfully pleading to be punished to the fullest extent of the law. The change of heart had completely stripped him of his arrogance and all of his other vices, forcing him to confront the impossible weight of his own depravity. The politician who had once thought to establish himself as ruler of Japan was now practically begging to be punished for his crimes, a wish shared by many that was about to be granted.

“By unanimous decision,” the judge at the center of the judges’ bench spoke on behalf of his fellow lay judges, “we find Masayoshi Shido guilty of all charges, including treason, murder, corruption, and conspiracy to overthrow the government. In my many years of serving as judge on behalf of the people of Japan, I have never seen such an extensive list of crimes and wicked deeds laid at the feet of a singular man.”

“I understand,” Shido murmured, his head bowed low as he struggled to hold his tears for the Nth time, the number now uncountable as he was constantly plagued by his own guilt and regrets over the evils he had committed.

 If it were not for the fact that you have plead guilty and showed remorse for your crimes at the late hour, the punishment would have almost certainly been the death penalty. As it stands, we have decided that your fate shall be life imprisonment in maximum security jail, with no hope of parole or initial release.” He gestured towards the guards who had escorted Shido in. “Get him out of my sight,” he barked. “I never want to see him again.”

The guards nodded and grabbed Shido roughly by the arms, practically dragging him out. As he passed Akechi, who had been sitting as a witness close by, Shido turned his head towards him, a sorrowful look in his eyes as he gazed at the son he had abandoned, abused, and manipulated. “I’m sorry, Goro…” he murmured.

Akechi sneered at his father. “Go to hell,” he spat, allowing his true face and personality to be seen for a brief second. It might have been risky exposing his inner self to the public when they were accustomed to the courteous and well-spoken Detective Prince, but the satisfaction of saying those words was worth the risk.

In Café LeBlanc, there was a similar sense of satisfaction and victory (if not quite the same level of vindictiveness) at seeing the man who had caused so much death, misery, and corruption being dragged away to his rightfully deserved fate. “Hell yeah! Shido’s going to jail forever!” Futaba whooped in delight. “Mom’s finally been avenged!” She raised her glass up into the air. “Let’s drink to that, guys!”

Ryuji grinned and mirrored the expression with his own glass. “Hell yeah!” he cheered. “Now it really IS finally over!”

Makoto smiled. “Maybe for us, but for Sae, her work has only just begun,” she commented. “She’s not just stopping at Shido. Shido namedropped several politicians and other important figures, including corrupt cops in the police. She’s gonna work on bringing as many of them down as possible, and with the death of the SIU director who worked for Shido, they might finally start doing their jobs for once!”

“Just tell her to be careful,” Sojiro warned from behind the bar. “Shido going to jail is a major victory, but even with that it’s entirely possible for her bite off more than she can chew. She’s a much more pleasant person now than she was a couple of months ago, and I don’t want to hear about something bad happening to her.”

“I’ll let her know,” Makoto promised.

“Has anyone heard from Akechi?” Yusuke asked with his natural curiosity. “He hasn’t really been seen by the public, or us for that matter, ever since the end of Shido’s trial.”

“He’s still in police custody,” Ren answered the question with a serious tone. “Akechi will be having his own trial in a week or so. Like he himself said during Shido’s trial, he was an accomplice to Shido’s actions, even though the actual truth is different from what he presented. They were actually going to let him go on bail, but Akechi himself insisted that he be held at the police station until the trial. He clearly thinks he deserves to be treated like a criminal, and none of us can honestly say that he’s wrong.”

“Is he going to be safe in police custody?” Haru wondered with a hint of concern. “After all, the last time one of us was captured by the police…”

“Sae is going to make sure that he stays safe,” Makoto reassured her. “She did background checks on the police keeping guard over Akechi. None of them were ever tied to Shido in any way.”

“That’s good,” Futaba breathed a sigh of relief. “I might want the guy to be punished, but not like that.”

“I honestly don’t know what Akechi’s fate will be,” Ren commented with a sigh. “It’s not like Shido, where it was obvious from Day 1 that the piece of shit was guilty of a thousand different crimes and was going to be either locked away for life or executed for his crimes. Akechi could end up doing anything from community service to years of jail time, and we have no way of knowing what his ultimate fate is going to be.” He shook his head, and then smiled. “But we can worry about that another day. Today, we celebrate. Shido’s trial and execution is a true demonstration of our success and our accomplishments as the Phantom Thieves, and a major victory for every single person here!”

“Damn right it is!” Ann laughed, holding her mug up. As one, the Phantom Thieves who hadn’t already done so mirrored the movement until they were all ready to toast. “Cheers!”

“CHEERS!” every single one of the Phantom Thieves chorused, clanking their mugs together, before drinking the coffee that Sojiro had provided for them. As they settled down to enjoy the delicious meal Sojiro had prepared to celebrate their victory, Ren allowed himself to relax in a way that he hadn’t been able to since restarting the year.

True, a part of Ren was still concerned about Akechi and what fate the justice system of Japan would impose upon him. But those worries could wait another day. Today, he could celebrate the downfall of his most hated enemy with friends who were all still alive and here to share in that victory with him. Proof that he had succeeded in defying fate, and saved all of his friends from death at the hands of a false god.

Chapter Text

The last thing that Ren expected was to wake up in the Velvet Room one night in the middle of January.

“What the hell?” he thought as he got up from the cot in the prison cell. For a terrible moment, he was afraid that all of his hard work had been undone. That Yaldabaoth had somehow survived and regained form, that he had enslaved Igor and split apart Lavenza yet again, and that he was trapped back in the chains of fate once again.

But as he regained his bearings, he realized to his immense relief that none of that had happened. He was still wearing his normal school clothes, the cell door in front of him was still wide open, and Igor was still sitting in his ornate and comfortable chair with Lavenza by his side.

“Igor? Lavenza? What’s going on?” Ren immediately started asking questions. “Is something wrong?”

“Wrong?” Igor repeated, tilting his head slightly before shaking his head. “Perhaps not at this time. I merely called you here because you have earned the right to know that fate reached a crossroads for the briefest of moments.”

“What do you mean by that?” Ren asked, his relief turning to confusion.

“The power of the collective unconscious, the power to warp cognition and reality itself, has been released to the masses,” Lavenza explained with a gentle smile towards Ren. “Thanks to your actions, humanity has been freed from the chains of a false god. That is how it should be, and how it must be.”

“Indeed,” Igor agreed with a wide smile. “However, after you defeated Yaldabaoth, for a brief time, that power did not flow freely to the public as it should have. None of you could have sensed this, not even Morgana, but the power released from Yaldabaoth very nearly concentrated into another entity. An entity who came very close to stumbling upon ultimate power without fully understanding the nature of that power.”

“Who?” Ren asked urgently. “If someone’s going to take that power and use it to rewrite reality, even if it’s by accident, we need to stop them!”

Igor raised a hand to pacify Ren. “Calm yourself, Trickster,” he answered reassuringly. “Whatever crisis may have arisen from this turn of events has naturally resolved itself. The entity in question was very close to having a connection to the cognitive world powerful and deep enough to claim this power, but in the end it was not strong enough. Without completing that connection, his claim over the power of cognition weakened, withered away, and crumbled into nothing. The power and desires of the collective unconscious are now back in the hands of humanity as a whole. Considering that you fought so hard to free humanity from a false god’s tyranny, it was only right that you receive either the summons to once again fight for humanity’s freedom, or the reassurance that your part to play in this quest has reached its end.”

Ren began to relax as he processed Igor’s words. “So…nobody is about to seize control over humanity’s desires, right?” he asked carefully. “The Phantom Thieves succeeded in our goals, and I didn’t go back in time and repeat this entire goddamn year just for some oblivious shmuck to take Yaldabaoth’s place?”

“That is correct, Trickster,” Lavenza gave him a reassuring smile. “While it is impossible for anyone here to truly predict the future, there is no immediate danger of a second god or any other entity rising up to seize control of the public’s desires at this time. As far as this particular journey is concerned, Trickster, your quest has been accomplished in a glorious and worthy victory.”

“Thank fuck for that!” Ren replied, letting out a breath that he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “I wouldn’t even know where to begin if I had to deal with a second godlike being taking control, especially since nothing like that ever happened in the first timeline to begin with!”

Lavenza giggled. “Then let us be thankful that fate has decided to show us all mercy for a change,” she answered gently. “And with that being said, there are no further tasks for you to complete. You are free, Trickster. Free from the chains of duty, of time, of the false god.”

Ren smiled back at her, but the smile faded as a troubling thought occurred to him. “What about Akechi?” he asked. “I might have saved him, but he’s still locked up and in the hands of Tokyo’s police. I know I did the right thing…but it doesn’t feel like I did,” he admitted.

“The other Wild Card’s fate may not be an ideal one,” Igor freely admitted, “but it is the one that he chose for himself. The one that allowed him, warped and twisted as he became from all of his years of trauma and death, to adhere to the morals and principles that he has left.”

“Knowing what little I do about the one who was ensnared in Yaldabaoth’s chains, I do not believe that he would accept any other path,” Lavenza helpfully added.

Ren took a deep breath and sighed. “I know,” he admitted. “I know that you’re right, even if that doesn’t mean I have to like it. Futaba and Haru might disagree, and they might even have be right…but I wish he could’ve gotten something better.”

Igor shrugged. “Perhaps his fate is not as dire as you believe it to be, Trickster. There is always hope now that humanity is freed, is there not?”

Ren chuckled. “I suppose you’re right, Igor. Like Morgana would say, hope is the greatest power that humanity has.”

Both Igor and Lavenza smiled at him, and Ren felt his mind leave the Velvet Room like it had countless times before. He woke up, the early rays of morning sunlight shining through his window with Morgana fast asleep at his feet, and felt a sense of peace with the confirmation that his quest truly was over, that there would be no need to fight again for humanity’s fate in the immediate future.

But there were still some questions in his mind. “Who was the entity that Lavenza and Igor were talking about?” he couldn’t help but wonder. It was genuinely disturbing to think that, after all of their struggles and hard-fought victories, that somebody somehow had the capability to seize away the power of the human subconscious, even if (or perhaps because) they could do it completely by accident.

For some unexplainable reason, the mention of this anonymous entity carried with it a sense of familiarity, even though he didn’t have a single way to explain this. In the end, the leader of the Phantom Thieves decided to dismiss the thoughts from his mind. Whoever this being might have been, they had failed to claim Yaldabaoth’s place according to Lavenza and Igor, and that was the only thing that mattered in the end.

Besides, there were far more pressing concerns on his mind. Namely, what would happen to Akechi once he had his own trial. Ren knew that Akechi wouldn’t be charged for the crimes that he had committed in the Metaverse out of necessity, but he knew full well just how vicious the Japanese legal system could truly be, with or without Yaldabaoth’s cruel manipulations.

Still, there was nothing he could do about it now. They had all made their own choices, and now all they could do was see how fate played out its natural course, for better or for worse.

One Week Later, in Café LeBlanc…

The day of Akechi’s trial arrived faster than they had expected. Once again, Sojiro had cleared Café LeBlanc of customers early so that Ren and his friends could watch the trial by themselves. Makoto’s sister was once again involved, only this time as Akechi’s defense attorney rather than a prosecutor. Despite Akechi’s former celebrity status and reputation, his trial turned out to be a subdued and far less vicious affair, since Akechi didn’t have a prosecutor trying to tear apart and expose all of Shido’s crimes the way that Sae had done to Masayoshi Shido.

Even though Akechi and Shido had both already presented the narrative that Akechi had been an unknowing dupe who had unwittingly facilitated his evil plans, Akechi still pled guilty to being an accomplice to Shido’s conspiracy to take over all of Japan. “Unknowingly or not, the fact remains that my actions almost allowed my monster of a father to seize control of all of Japan. My ignorance should not, and must not, be a mitigating factor in deciding how I should face justice,” Akechi insisted, expertly adopting the role of the regretful Second Detective Prince disgraced by his own ignorance. “As my actions very nearly led to the downfall of Japan and the enslavement of its people, I request that I be punished to the fullest extent of the law.”

“He’s really laying it on thick, isn’t he?” Futaba asked dryly as Akechi finished his speech.

“This is the best way that he can try and bring as much judgment and punishment on himself as possible,” Ren explained, before dryly adding, “If you still want him to be punished for your mom’s and Haru’s dad’s deaths, he’s literally doing everything he can to make that wish come true.”

“I acknowledge and respect that he is trying to do so, even though it still leaves somewhat of a bitter taste in my mouth,” Haru admitted, before an innocent smile appeared on her face. “I will just have to satisfy myself with fantasies of Shido languishing and rotting away in prison for the rest of his life, where he belongs.”

Ryuji shook his head in bemusement. “Always gotta find a way to scare the crap out of us, don’t you, Haru?” he asked rhetorically.

“Still not as scary as Ren on a bad day,” Morgana replied with a snicker.

“So I guess the legend of the Second Detective Prince is gonna die by the end of the trial, huh?” Ann speculated. “Even if people don’t know that Akechi’s the Black Mask, there’s no way that the Detective Prince is gonna be the hero that the public loved for most of this year.”

“Good,” Futaba retorted. “Detective Prince Akechi was the Akechi that pretended to be our friend, infiltrated our group just so he could try and get Joker arrested and killed. Looking back at it, Detective Prince Akechi was so goddamn fake it pisses me off just thinking about it. The Black Mask Akechi, the real Akechi? Yeah, he might have been a jackass who murdered a lot of people, including my mom, but he was the Akechi that chose to join us as a true Phantom Thief and do the right thing when it mattered the most. He was the one who helped us take down the bastards who were really responsible of all the shit that’s happened, and he was always honest about who he was and where he stood. Weird as it is to say, that’s the Akechi that I’ve actually started to respect and even care about.” She scowled. “That fake Detective Prince shtick he was hiding behind can go crawl into a hole and die.”

“How very eloquently spoken, and I am with you on this,” Yusuke agreed completely. “Though I respect Akechi far more than I ever expected to after learning about his true motivations, one thing that is unambiguously true is that he does not deserve to still be regarded as a hero through the false canvas of the Detective Prince.”

“I can say right now that Akechi hates the existence of the Second Detective Prince just as much as you guys do,” Ren confirmed. “Before he turned himself in with Sae, he told me very clearly that he was going to do everything in his power to kill the Second Detective Prince, once and for all. Knowing what I do about Goro, I’m 100% sure he’s on the same page as the rest of you guys.”

“This is all so surreal for sis,” Makoto commented. “First she got a slam dunk on the biggest case of the decade by putting away Shido, and now she’s trying to do the exact opposite for Akechi. I bet if you tried to tell her a year ago that all of this was gonna happen, she’d think you were either crazy or drunk.”

Ren snickered. “I will say there’ve been times when I’ve thought about just taking a night off and going to Lala’s bar just to get drunk out of my fucking mind. Pretty sure I could convince her to let me get away with it with my charisma.”

“Uh-uh,” Sojiro immediately countered, putting his foot down. “You’re not gonna be drinking underage under my watch, Ren. Especially when you’re technically still on probation to begin with.”

“Just kidding,” Ren answered dryly as they turned back to watch Akechi’s trial.

With Akechi pleading guilty and admitting to several of the accusations placed against him, the trial was a short and simple affair. The trial was over by the end of the day, and the lay judges had their sentence ready for Akechi by the time evening finally came around. “Goro Akechi,” the head judge began, “you stand before us, accused as an accomplice to a conspiracy that threatened to enslave Japan under the rule of a tyrant masquerading as a savior. You have pled guilty to charges including conspiracy, possession of an unauthorized firearm, breach of trust, concealment of documents that was both unauthorized and illegal, and obstructing performance of public duty. While your guilt with regards to these charges is unmistakable, and you have even admitted as such, there are several extenuating circumstances and mitigating factors that we must consider. The greatest of these circumstances is the fact that you were not aware of the most egregious and most serious of these crimes, having been deceived by Masayoshi Shido just as we all were deceived by his false promises.”

“I mean, that last part is technically true,” Ren admitted dryly.

“Shhh!” Ann scolded. “They’re about to say the sentence.”

“In addition, when you discovered the truth behind the crimes that you unknowingly committed, you immediately accepted your role in those crimes and confessed to them without hesitation, displaying a commendable level of responsibility and accountability that few other criminals have demonstrated in front of this court,” the judge continued. “Because of this, we are willing to demonstrate some clemency with regards to your sentence. In accordance with my fellow judges, you will be sentenced to three years in a juvenile detention facility. You shall serve the first year and a half of your sentence without any chance of parole. However, depending on the conduct that you demonstrate throughout your sentence, we shall revisit the possibility of releasing you from your sentence early when that first period expires.”

Akechi bowed respectfully, his face a mask of politeness and gratitude. However, there was a flash of displeasure and frustration in his eyes for the briefest of moments, an expression that only the Phantom Thieves recognized. It was frustration at the fact that, against both his wishes and his principles, he had been given mercy and pity. Mercy and pity given from ignorant people who knew nothing about who he truly was or what he had done, completely different from the Thieves who had a far more complete understanding of him and his crimes but had chosen to accept him as a fellow member despite that knowledge. The sentence given to him was not true justice. It was far too lenient for it to be just, and Akechi knew it.

Still, to protest this sentence would open up a Pandora’s Box that would jeopardize everything that he and the Phantom Thieves had sought to accomplish in the real world, or at the very least invite far too many questions that would be extremely difficult if not impossible to answer. So instead, Akechi gave the judges a charming, grateful smile, and bowed in acceptance. “I thank the judges for their leniency,” he declared with a surprisingly genuine contrite expression (even if that contrition was reserved for a select few, and for completely different reasons than what the public believed). “While part of me will always feel that I have not been punished thoroughly enough for my actions and the great evil that my foolishness almost allowed, all I can do is to accept the sentence that the revered justices of this court have placed upon me. All I can do now is to carry out my sentence as dictated by the court of law, and strive to better myself with every day that passes from this point forward.”

“…he’s telling the truth,” Haru murmured as Akechi stood up and was led away by the guards. “The context might be all wrong, but I can tell that Akechi-kun is telling the truth.”

“That message might have been spoken to the judges,” Ren agreed with an understanding nod, “but it was really meant for us. Especially for me, you, and Futaba. I’m dead certain of it.”

“Akechi looked annoyed for a second, like that face he always makes whenever we do something stupid,” Ryuji commented. “He really wasn’t happy about getting off lightly, was he?”

“I saw that too,” Morgana nodded. “You can say what you want about him, but he was really serious about everything he said about accountability, wasn’t he?”

“I never had any reason to believe he wasn’t,” Ren answered solemnly. “Heck, the only reason why he isn’t confessing that he’s behind the mental shutdowns is because nobody here wants Shido to walk out of the courtroom without being punished.”

“Yeah, no kidding,” Futaba mumbled. “Honestly, knowing what I do about that asshole, Shido probably would’ve sent someone to poison or gun down mom or something even if he never sent Akechi to kill her.”

“I wonder what Akechi truly thinks about all this,” Yusuke mused. “We might have had a glimpse into his true thoughts just now, but otherwise all we have seen is the false modesty and courtesy of the Second Detective Prince. Surely the inner workings of his mind must be far different from the façade he presented during the court case.”

“I’ve been in contact with Akechi periodically over the past few days,” Ren answered. “I think he’ll be sending us a letter soon.”

/

As it turned out, “soon” would translate to “the very next day.”

“Hey, Ren?” Sojiro called out to him, waving an envelope in his hand. “Sae was here earlier. She left you a letter from Akechi.”

“Already?” Ryuji exclaimed. “Damn, that was quick!”

Ren smirked. “Did I call it, or did I call it?” he asked rhetorically as he walked up to Sojiro and accepted the letter from him. He sat down at one of the tables, the other Thieves crowding around him as he opened up the letter to read what his rival and their former enemy had to say.

To the Phantom Thieves,

I’m sure that all of you have witnessed the sham of a trial that I have just been through. And a sham it was indeed, for we all know the truth and gravity behind the crimes that I committed on my worthless sperm donor’s behalf.

“Heh, there’s the real Akechi all right,” Futaba snickered. “No way prim-and-proper Detective Prince Akechi would’ve ever called anyone a worthless sperm donor in public.”

The punishment that I received by the court was far too merciful for one such as myself, and only the necessity of remaining silent to prevent contradicting Shido’s false confession stopped me from announcing my crimes to the world and demanding the years of prison or execution that I justly deserve.

“I’m actually relieved to see that Akechi-kun won’t be wasting away for years in prison or executed,” Haru announced. The words might have been a surprise a month ago when they had only just gotten used to Akechi joining their side for real, but by now they were familiar with how Haru’s opinion of Akechi had softened (or at the very least her anger had cooled) over time. “Say what you wish about Akechi-kun, but the fact that he has a brilliant mind is undeniable. It would be a complete waste for an intellect as commendable as his to be wasted through years of disuse in prison or an early grave.”

A few years in juvenile detention center is hardly sufficient to repay the debt that I owe to you all, and to some of you in particular. My quest to atone for the sins I’ve committed will hardly end when my sentence in juvenile detention reaches its conclusion, whether it be in two years or three. It would be a disgrace to myself, my mother, and to my victims for me to believe otherwise.

“You know he’s being dead serious about this when he brings his mother up,” Ann commented. “She was one of the biggest reasons why he did everything he did in the first place.”

My preferred fate would have been to be properly punished for the many crimes that I committed and lives that I ruined through the mental shutdowns. However, as fate and circumstance have denied this to me, the only option now is to try and bring forth some good instead to make up for some of my earlier wickedness, no matter how futile such an endeavor might be in the end.

“The Akechi of the past wouldn’t have ever even considered saying something like this if he wasn’t trying to mock us,” Makoto said with a smile. “It really shows how far he’s come just in the past two months.”

It is out of gratitude to you all that I am seeking to becoming a far better version of myself than the wretch I had once been, especially to you, Ren Amamiya. If it weren’t for you reaching out your hand to me, that night down in the interrogation room, I would have spent the rest of my existence as a deluded slave, blind to the chains ensnared upon me by Shido and the false god that I took a great deal of pleasure in witnessing you destroy. You opened my eyes to those chains and helped me shatter them, and for that I owe you a debt that I will unlikely ever fully repay. The life I have now, imperfect though it may be, is infinitely preferable to what my end would have otherwise been.”

“That’s Joker for you!” Mona boasted proudly. “He’s so cool, he turned one of his worst enemies into a true Phantom Thief!”

I do not know where to even begin on the path of atonement. Obviously, the path of the Second Detective Prince is forever closed to me. I’ve forever tainted that title with my actions and crimes, and even if I hadn’t, the idea of wearing that false face and identity now disgusts me more than anything else.

“Hardly a surprise, given everything that the identity of the Second Detective Prince is associated with,” Yusuke commented, to general agreement from his friends.

To be honest, I had always imagined my life would end the moment I exposed Shido to the world as part of my original plan, for even then I wasn’t deluded enough to believe that Shido wouldn’t unleash unholy retribution upon me in return. I never thought about the future beyond that, and I am forced to admit that I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do with my life. But that’s no reason for me to just give up and lose myself to my own confusion. Countless people live with that uncertainty and find ways to overcome it. It would be an utter embarrassment for me to not be a part of that number.

“Dude, it’s normal to not know what the hell you want to do with your life!” Ryuji exclaimed. “Most of the time I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do with my life, either!”

“Is that normal or is that just you, Ryuji?” Ann joked, earning a couple of laughs while Ryuji spluttered in protest.

I may not know the path to my own future for now, but here in juvenile detention, I expect that I will have nothing but time to spare. I do know this, however: do not expect any further messages from me in the near future.

“Wait, WHAT?” Futaba exclaimed. “He’s just gonna go into radio silence, just like that? After everything we’ve been through?”

“Hold on, hold on,” Ren interrupted her with a raised hand to calm her down. “I’m not finished just yet.”

That isn’t to say that I plan on cutting off communication entirely. As much as I hate to admit it, you are among the very few whose company I don’t disdain on a daily basis.

Morgana snickered. “That’s basically Akechi-speak for saying he considers us his friends and enjoys hanging around with us.”

Ryuji grinned. “Don’t expect him to say that out loud though,” he answered as the other Thieves struggled to hold back their laughter.

I merely do not believe it would do either myself or you any good to present myself to you all while my thoughts are still in turmoil. Once I have figured out my own destiny, once I have started to make good on my promise and become a better version of myself through my future actions, only then will I seek to reconnect with you.

“I’m not sure how much I agree with this, but at least he had the courtesy to inform us in advance,” Haru acknowledged. “At the very least, I can tell that his decision comes from a place of sincerity and good intentions, which is far more than what I can say about anything Akechi-kun did as the Black Mask.”

After all, Ren…our rivalry is not yet concluded. I freely acknowledge your superiority when it comes to your power within the Metaverse, but our rivalry cannot be defined by just one aspect. If I cannot prove myself your better within the Metaverse, then I will have to find other ways to triumph over you. A fascinating combination of synthesis and antithesis, our relationship has turned out to be. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

                                                                                                                        -Goro Akechi

P.S. I insist that you burn this letter as soon as you have finished reading it. There is far too much incriminating information in it to leave it lying around, no matter how attached you might be to brainless sentimentality.

“I wouldn’t have it any other way either, Goro,” Ren thought fondly as he got up from the chair and walked over to the stove to burn it as he had requested, ignoring the others’ protests. If he was being honest with himself, if this had been him in the first timeline, he probably wouldn’t have gone through with it. But the many months of brutal hardship and the repeating of the year had taught him harsh but necessary lessons on the value of pragmatism, and he wasn’t going to make a hypocrite of himself by denying Goro’s requests now after he had already done so before. Sojiro frowned at the sight of the letter being burned up (probably due to the fire risk as much as any other inward objections towards Ren’s actions), but he didn’t comment or make a move to stop him.

“I know it’s for the best that you did that,” Ann reluctantly conceded after Ren returned to his seat and explained his reasoning to the other Thieves, “but I still feel like that was wrong, somehow. That letter, more than anything else, was proof that Akechi really turned into a better person and Phantom Thief like the rest of us in the end.”

Ren sighed. “I didn’t like doing that any more than you did,” he admitted. “But what Akechi said wasn’t wrong. Leaving a letter lying around like that could ruin everything that we’ve worked so hard to achieve. And I’m not going to let two years of careful planning and hard effort be ruined because of a stupid mistake like that.”

“I can only imagine, after everything you’ve been through,” Yusuke sympathetically acknowledged.

“What do you guys think Akechi will be like after he leaves juvie?” Futaba wondered. “Do you guys think he’ll be a completely different person, or the same Akechi we all know with just some of that edge smoothed down a bit?”

“Who can say?” Haru shrugged, before adding with a giggle. “However, I have no reason to doubt any of Akechi’s words in this letter. And while it would have been unthinkable for me to say this when we first discovered his betrayal, but I am genuinely looking forward to meeting him again in the future.”

Ren smiled at her, speaking thoughts that all of them were sharing. “You and me both, Haru,” he agreed. “You and me both.”

Later That Night…

When Ren woke up in the Velvet Room once more, Lavenza and Igor were once again present, both of them giving him knowing smiles. “You knew this was gonna happen, didn’t you?” Ren asked. It wasn’t an accusation, merely a statement of confirmation. “You knew the fate that Akechi would have in the end.”

“We did,” Igor acknowledged, speaking plainly now that fate had already run its course. “But the other Wild Card’s fate was his own. There was no need for us to intervene or even disclose that fate early, without a false god seeking to puppet humanity from behind the strings.”

“Goro Akechi’s fate was one that he chose for himself,” Lavenza added, “and if I understand him correctly, Trickster, I do not believe he would have appreciated you interfering in that fate if you had the knowledge and capability to do so.”

Ren sighed. “No, you’re right,” he admitted. “I’m not angry or anything. Just wondering if there was some other way that things could have turned out better for him. He might be my friend, but he still has plenty of his own issues to deal with.”

Lavenza smiled at him. “You have already delivered him from the ignoble demise that had been pre-ordained for him by the false god. Now, he is on the path of rehabilitation. True rehabilitation, not the deception that the false god presented as such. I do not believe that you have any more reason to fear for his future now, Trickster.”

Ren let out a sigh, letting his worries wash away from his soul with that one action. “So is there anything else now that needs to be done?” he asked the two entities of the Velvet Room. “Any more tasks that need to be completed?”

Igor’s grin widened. “As far as your long quest is concerned, you are free now, Trickster,” he declared. “Free from your duties and service to humanity. Free from the chains of the God of Control.”

“Whether or not you will be called upon again to fight on behalf of humanity with the power of a Persona, it is impossible for us to say at this time,” Lavenza agreed, her golden eyes shining with both adoration and reassurance. “But the freedom that you have earned for yourself is more than rightfully deserved. I could not have asked to serve a better Trickster.”

“And I’m more than happy to see that my actions made everything as it should be,” Ren answered with his own grin. The two entities of the Velvet Room beamed at him, sharing the exact same sentiments that he did.

And as the world around him started to fade away, Ren felt a sense of tranquility and inner peace, the turmoil in his soul finally laid to rest.

Fate had been corrected. His friends, all of them, were still alive. It didn’t matter if he couldn’t predict what would come anymore.

He couldn’t have asked for a better timeline.