Archive of Our Own

In one universe, it goes like this:

The flashing lights blind him, the cold metal of the cuffs on his wrists cut off his air, and the world becomes a distorted watercolor painting that he can only recall in flashes of emotion and sound.

In that universe, he goes to Tokyo knowing what happened but unable to recall the details of who until confronted with the offending party face to face after heartbreak and betrayal ravaged his world.

In this universe, it goes like this:

The cops come and the cuffs are cold as ice, but his eyes burn as he stares down the man about to ruin his life. He stares and stares with eyes everyone told him were too intense as he painstakingly committed the face to memory.

This man just tried to rape a woman. And yet when he told her to lie, she did. He had power. He had influence. And he was about to use it to ruin Ren's life.

He refused to forget his face.

And a simple Google search later got him the rest.

In this universe, when he went to Tokyo, he was armed with a name. And that? Turned out to be the key to everything.

He hadn't seen it coming.

How could he? For over two years, he had been the only one who had access to the metaverse. Two years of meticulous trial and error to figure out the extent of his powers and the inner workings of this other world. Two years and enough of his blood spilled to fill a blood-bank. Two years of being that man's god damn attack dog just for the chance to bring him to his knees like he deserved.

Just to have the chance stolen right from under his nose.

Akechi stared at the tv in a numb sort of haze as he watched the man who was his father fall to knees in front of the entire world and sob as he confessed his crimes.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so, so, so sorry,” he kept saying and Akechi wanted to put a bullet between his eyes. He wanted to rip his throat out with his teeth. He wanted to watch the light leave his eyes as he laughed and laughed and laughed and-

Oh. He was crying. When had that happened?

The scene on the TV changed. Shido was gone now, replaced by a news anchor whose voice washed over him from somewhere far away.

"When searching his office, officers found a calling card left by a group calling themselves 'The Phantom Thieves Of Hearts,’ where they claimed they would steal Representative Shido's 'distorted desires' and make him 'confess his sins with his own mouth.’”

The… Phantom Thieves?

The name was vaguely familiar and Akechi struggled through the fog clinging to his brain as he tried to recall where he'd heard it before.

That's right… just a month or two ago, the gym teacher at that school had done something similar, hadn't he? Shido had had him looking into that, because the principal there was in on the conspiracy for some god forsaken reason. Probably someone's brother's cousin's nephew who was useful enough to Shido that he kept him around to make them happy.

There had been some smaller incidents, house wives and teenagers suddenly feeling remorse when they had been gleefully ruining lives before. There'd even been a cute little website that he'd found, filled with a list of names and their terrible offenses such as 'cheating at video games.’

But this? This wasn't some small-time gym teacher. This wasn't some high-school girl stalking her pathetic little crush. This was the man who ruined his life. Who was responsible for his mother's death. And beyond that, the deaths of hundreds of other people. How on earth had they made the jump from an abusive teacher to the puppet master of an entire swath of the political world?

And how did they do it?

This was obviously the work of the metaverse, but how, he had no idea. In all his time hunting through Mementos and tearing through Palaces, he'd never encountered anything like this. He could drive people insane, he could turn their brains off like a switch, but to make them crumble under the weight of their own sins? If he'd known how to do that then he never would have-

Never would have-

It didn't matter now. What's done is done. His hands were already stained red, and nothing he could do would change that.

The scene on the TV changed. The news anchor was gone again, replaced with the kneeling figure of his father once more, crying and begging due to the actions of someone else.

All for nothing. It was all for nothing.

It was over. It was over before he'd even realized there was another player on the field and there wasn't anything he could do about that. Not now.

But what he could do, he realized as the fog finally began to lift from his head and the burning pulse of hatred that he called his heart reignited once more, was find the ones who took his revenge from him. And when he found them?

He snatched the remote and flung it at the TV, shattering Shido's sobbing image into a thousand jagged shards.

He'd make them pay.

After dealing with Shido, Madarame's palace was a breeze.

The lasers were annoying, and the various paintings and traps hidden in those paintings were surprising and sometimes unavoidable. But the Shadows gathered there? Pathetic.

Or maybe not that pathetic. Ren had a vague idea that these Shadows were stronger than the ones that had haunted Kamoshida's castle, but it was hard to recall. It'd only been a handful weeks since then, but in that time they'd grown so much that it felt like a distant memory.

It was almost funny to think about; that if things had gone even slightly differently this would have been their second target instead of their third. If Yusuke had approached Ann earlier. If Shido hadn't been at that buffet.

But Shido had been at that buffet. And seeing his face had filled Ren with such a powerful wave of righteous fury that he hadn't been able to speak a single word until the others had all talked themselves into becoming Phantom Thieves for real. And then? They needed a target, and Ren just happened to already have a name picked out.

(He'd almost cried when they'd listened to him without question. When they sat there as he described that terrible night filled with flashing lights and cold cuffs and didn't doubt him for a second. They believed him. They believed him.)

When they'd finally entered that ship though, after days of research and guessing for a location and a distortion, Morgana had taken one look at the Shadows patrolling the edges of the crowd of masked guests and yowled at them to retreat retreat retreat Joker we gotta get out of here now.

Ren had looked back, as they raced out the way they came in a confused panic, and on instinct activated his Third Eye.

Red. Red so deadly and deep it was almost black.

After that, he was the one urging the others out the door.

Morgana had shown them Mementos then, and though they couldn't travel very deep yet, they were dedicated. They spent entire days in the depths, running down Shadows and burning through their healing items until nothing was left. Then they'd wake up at the crack of dawn, drag themselves to school, and do it all again after. Over and over and over until red became yellow became blue.

(Ren had asked, one day after a particularly close call with the Reaper, why the others were doing this. They didn't know Shido. He hadn't done anything to them. Why were they pushing themselves so hard to beat him?

Ryuji had taken him aside and earnestly explained that the same could have been said about him. That day, when they woke up in that cell in Kamoshida's Palace, the two of them didn't even know each other's names yet. Kamoshida had been entirely focused on Ryuji. If Ren had wanted, he could have escaped then, while the man's Shadow was focused on the blond boy in front of him. But instead he awoke his persona to protect him, despite not knowing him at all. So no, Ryuji didn't really give a shit about Shido one way or another beyond the fact that he was clearly another fucked up adult. But Ren cared, and that meant he would do whatever it took to help.

Ann had simply looked at him with burning eyes and spoke about the way Kamoshida used to talk to her, how he got in her space and touched her even if it never got as far as it had with Shiho. And how everyone's eyes just skimmed past, or worse, judged her as if a teenage girl was the one holding the power in those interactions. Shido had tried to do the same thing with that woman on the street. He tried to use his power and influence and physical strength to hurt that woman in ways that led to rooftops and paramedics. But Ren hadn't looked away. He'd intervened. And Ann was going to make sure no one else would have to fear this man ever again.

Morgana had just crowed something about how someone that corrupted would obviously have a treasure worth stealing, and really, he was just looking after his own interests here. But when Ren woke up that night with tears in his eyes and sirens in his ears, Morgana laid on his chest and purred and purred until it was all he could hear.)

After all that, the silly little security guards patrolling the gaudy museum of Madarame's corrupted heart were basically nonentities.

It felt good though. It felt good to crush Madarame beneath their heels like he'd crushed all his students. They were righting a wrong, refusing to look away from an injustice, and nothing could stop them.

Hell, they'd even gotten a new teammate out of it. Yusuke was weird, prone to flowery rants about beauty and art and strangely ignorant about simple things like budgeting and public decency, but his eyes burned with a familiar fire for all that he covered the battlefield with ice. He wasn't as strong as them, not yet, not without the frankly ridiculous amount of practice they'd put in, but that was fine. They were strong enough to cover him while he learned.

And he brought his own talents to the group. As satisfying as it had been to deliver that calling card to Shido, carefully concealed in a ream of paperwork that had nearly gotten them caught hiding it, Ren had to admit that it had been missing a certain flare. Ryuji had tried with Kamoshida, bless him, but he was no artist, and Ren hadn't been willing to let him try again.

It felt strangely appropriate that Yuskue's first calling card was delivered to an art exhibit.

Besides, Madarame was his teacher, his tormentor. It was only right that Yusuke got the final blow.

His final words were worrying though.

"What about the one in the Black Mask?"

Later, they would all look at each other with a rising uneasiness. They would take careful note of each other's masks despite already knowing their designs by heart. And, at least for the original four, they would think about how Shido had looked at them and laughed bitterly when they finally managed to exhaust him and bring him to his knees.

"Funny, you're not the ones I expected to see here."

Once was a coincidence, twice was a pattern.

There was someone else in the metaverse, and they had no idea who they could be. They didn't even know where to start. All they could do is hope this Black Mask person was friendly.

Akechi was going fucking end them.

He was going to string them up by their hair and beat them like fleshy piñatas. He was going to shoot them full of so many holes they'd look like fucking cheese graters. He was going to slice them open and watch them bleed out until they were indistinguishable from the fleshy walls of Mementos.

And it still wouldn't be enough.

It had been weeks, weeks, since Shido had his fantastical breakdown on live television, and Akechi still hadn't found a single hint of these "Phantom Thieves" anywhere.

Akechi growled and shot a fleeing Shadow in the back, watching dispassionately as it burst into smoke and disappeared.

They were still active. God, Akechi was well aware that they were still going around "stealing hearts" from air headed office workers and overbearing parents somewhere in the depths of Mementos. That little website of theirs was filling up with more sob stories every day. But for the life of him, he couldn't catch them at it.

He'd tried ambushing them. He'd tried waiting at the entrance of Mementos, at the deepest door he could reach, at any and all rest stops for days at a time. But it all came to nothing. The entrance and rest stops had just led to hours on hours of dull, pointless boredom, the ceaseless silence allowing his own thoughts to creep up on him and whisper in his ear.

It's already over. Everything you did was pointless. Why are you even still here?

At that point he'd begin actively hunting, stalking the ever changing hallways of mementos like a beast out for blood.

It got him nowhere of course. He knew, he knew, that staking out one of the few stable areas of Mementos would have a much higher chance of getting him closer to his goal. But he just. Couldn't. Sit. Still.

So he prowled the hallways, running down Shadows that rightfully fled at the sight of him and keeping his eyes peeled for more humanoid figures. He'd do this until the rattling of chains filled his ears and he was forced to retreat, lest he gain the Reaper's wrath.

(He almost stayed, once or twice. The part of him that hosted Loki cackled madly at the challenge. The part of him that hosted Robinhood as well as, he suspected, his common sense, protested the idea though, and he inevitably left before he did something inadvisable.)

What he should do, he knew, was find whatever Palace they were no doubt infiltrating and ambush them there. Unlike Mementos, the layouts of Palaces didn't change, and with his experience, it would be child's play to get the drop on them before they even knew what hit them.

The problem was a Palace required a name, and Akechi had no idea whose name could have possibly caught their eye this time. How did you possibly top the future prime minister of the country?

Though to be fair, while it was no secret in the political world that Shido had been aiming for the top, to the general public, he was just a very appealing member of a well known party that no one realized was simply a stepping stone for a greater plot. There wasn't even supposed to be an election any time soon. All the truly horrific stuff had been going on behind the scenes, where the thieves couldn't have possibly heard about it. So maybe Akechi was going about this all wrong.

What did Kamoshida and Shido have in common? The fact they were abusive dicks who used their power to ruin people's lives?

Fucking useless. That didn't narrow anything down at all! Practically every damn person in this city fit that description! People abusing their power for their own gain? That was the natural state of things. Human beings used each other until there was nothing left, then refused to acknowledge the consequences of their actions in the aftermath. Truth? Justice? A god damn child's dream. These Thieves were naive children. He could think of no less than forty-eight Palaces they could be in at this very moment if that's all it took. Hell, he'd even gone through a few of them on the off chance that he did run into them there.

So he was back to square one. Mementos.

And the rattle of chains.

Akechi sighed, slipping his gun back into its holster and taking a second to reorient himself. He had been wandering this floor for a while, so it was really no surprise that the Reaper had finally decided to make an appearance, but it was still damn annoying. Thankfully, he was pretty close to the escalator leading to a higher floor, so he wouldn't have to make a fool of himself by frantically running through the hallways.

The layout of the upper level had changed again when he emerged, but he wasn't really concerned. It wasn't like he had a particular target in mind today. No more lists sent to his phone in the dead of night and unspoken deal with them or else hovering just beyond the screen. No more frenetic energy burning under his skin, urging him forward, pushing him to get better, be stronger, become more. No more bullet holes bleeding black and justifications ringing as hollow as justice. He was just. Wandering. Running on the half hearted hope of getting lucky.

What a joke. Lady Luck didn't even know his name.

The rattle of chains was behind him though, and he knew he had a decent amount of time to linger before the Reaper decided to give chase again. Now the only thing he could hear was the faint sound of moaning from unseen Shadows, the steady dripping of water that he'd never been able to discover the source of, and the low rumbling of an engine.

He rocked on his heels for a second, taking a moment to decide if he wanted to hunt down more Shadows in an attempt to blow a bit of steam, or if he should just write this entire day off and head back to his shitty little apartment to sulk. It wasn't like there was any real chance of him running into-

Wait.

Akechi froze, straining his hearing to its absolute limit. And, yes, there it was again. The faint rumbling of a car engine, just the slightest bit louder now. Akechi had wandered these ever changing hallways for two years and not once had he ever heard an engine. Sometimes the rumble of a subway, yes, but not a car.

He started running.

And as he ran, he felt a smile split his face, jagged and sharp. It turned out he was wrong.

Lady Luck must have seen him on TV.

Bringing Yusuke to Mementos was the logical next step.

Three days. Three days was all it took to bring down Madarame between the five of them. One to reach that stupid door, one to breach that stupid door and secure the route to the treasure, and one to send the calling card and actually steal the treasure.

Now they were stuck in the waiting phase, waiting for the change of heart to settle and for Madarame's mind to wrap around the horrible shit he did without his distorted desires letting him justify it.

In the meantime, Yusuke needed a lot of training if he wanted to catch up with the rest of them before their next big heist. Because they weren't planning on stopping here. No, they were going to change the world.

Probably. Maybe. Honestly, it felt a little silly when Ren thought about it like that. But that was the goal. To change enough hearts that society woke the fuck up and started taking ownership of their actions. They couldn't save everyone, but like Ann had said at that buffet when she and Ryuji were still debating on whether or not they should continue, they could give people the hope they needed to do it themselves.

And it seemed like society was pretty receptive to that idea, if the number of doors that had opened in the wake of Shido's defeat was any indication. If Morgona's theory that the doors directly responded to how well known they were to the public, then Ren really needed to sit down and check out the Phansite instead of just gathering requests that Mishima sent to him directly. It made sense, he guessed. A big name politician was a lot more attention grabbing than a school gym teacher, former Olympic gold medalist or not. But it still surprised him.

The Shadows down here were much stronger than the ones on the first level where they had been forced to train before, but they still didn't hold a candle to the nightmares that had gathered in Shido's palace. Still, they were a fair bit stronger than what haunted Madarame's palace, which meant they made great practice for Yusuke to gain his footing. Even if they weren't currently on their feet.

The Monabus rumbled soothingly beneath them as they causally explored the maze that was this level of Momentos. Yusuke was in the backseat next to Ryuji, rambling about the aesthetic appeal of the last Shadow they fought while Ryuji looked on in complete bewilderment. Ann was in the passenger seat next to him, humming some indistinct tune. And Ren was simply basking in the strange peace of it all as they rolled along.

And then he saw the shadow.

Not a Shadow, capital S. Not one of the hulking figures of human consciousness given monstrous form, but a shadow, lower case, a simple silhouette of a human form if not for the almost bird-like shape of the head.

He tensed, turning his head to get a better look, when suddenly several things happened at once.

First, there was a BANG so loud Ren felt it in the back of his teeth.

Second, Morgana let out an unholy screech of pain as the Monabus veered wildly off track before disappearing altogether in a puff of smoke and being replaced with his true form.

And finally, the inertia from their forward movement in the van failed to disappear with the van, causing the five of them to fly forward in a tumble of limbs and adrenaline.

Ren was the first to scramble back to his feet, extracting himself from Ryuji's legs with almost frantic speed. His eyes darted wildly around, trying to take in the whole of the situation.

Ryuji's face was buried in Yusuke's stomach, while Yusuke's eyes held the vaguely glassy look of someone who had recently hit his head. Ann was underneath them, but she seemed to have taken the tumble with more grace than the others, eyes fixed on the final member of their party with worry written plain as day on her face.

Morgana was a bit further away from the rest of them, either his lighter weight or the force of his transformation having thrown him further than the more human shaped Thieves. He wasn't paying attention to them though, too busy curled around the bleeding hole through his left arm while he quivered in pain. Ren took an aborted step towards him, hand unconsciously drifting to his mask in the instinct to summon help, but ultimately tore his gaze away before doing anything. Because as much as he wanted to help…

The shadow was still there. And it was holding a gun.

"Are you the Phantom Thieves of Hearts?"

The voice made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. Low and pleasant and utterly at odds with the deadly weapon currently pointed at his face.

It was also, strangely enough, vaguely familiar.

He didn't let himself focus on that. The team was incapacitated. There was no telling how long it would take them to recover. Ren needed to distract this stranger long enough for the others to pull themselves together, or none of them would be going home tonight.

"It depends on who's asking,” he said as confidently as he could manage, trying to project an air of swagger in his words. Mentally, he shuffled through the various masks he wore in his day to day life, trying to find the one that would most likely get them out of this alive. Confident. Capable. Unintimidated.

The shadow man was unimpressed.

"It was a rhetorical question” he said derisively, lazily adjusting the angle of the gun. Ren fought the urge to tense up, not comforted in the least by the trajectory change but unwilling to show how desperately he was watching its movement. "It's quite obvious just who you are. After all, there's no other group of costumed hooligans running around the world of human consciousness, sticking their noses into things far bigger than themselves."

"Well, you have me at a disadvantage then,” Ren said, switching masks again. Smug, suave, savvy. Keep your eyes on the gun. "You know who we are, but I'm afraid I don't have the honor of knowing you."

"Me?" The shadow man, who was less of a shadow and more of a black clad human threat, with his face completely obscured behind the tinted confines of a pointed helmet, laughed in a way that caused the hairs on the back of Ren's neck to raise. "Me? I'm the man you screwed over while you were playing your childish games of justice and honor."

He laughed again, high-pitch and insane, before he abruptly cut himself off with a jerk of his gun, now aimed perfectly between Ren's eyes.

"And the only reason, the only reason you're still alive right now, is because I want answers."

Shit shit shit. Abort abort. Negotiations failed.

Ren shifted back on his heels, loosened his body language and lifted his hands in appeasement. Calm, contrite, cooperative. Give him what he wants and maybe he'll leave them alone. It hadn't escaped his notice that the mystery man hadn't glanced in the other Thieves direction since this standoff had begun. If he could just keep the guy talking without stepping on whatever landmines filled this guy's brain, the others might be able to recover enough to come to his aid.

Judging from that laugh, though, those landmines were numerous.

"Well, what do you want to know?" he said, slow, cautious, being careful not to sound cocky or careless. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ryuji begin to slowly lift himself off Yusuke.

"Masayoshi Shido."

And just like that, Shadow Man had his entire focus.

"Masayoshi Shido. I want to know why you targeted him."

Ren forgot his mask. He forgot what he had tried and what he hadn't. He forgot everything but the burning rage he'd felt at the injustice he'd suffered at that man's hand and as a consequence his words were more careless than they should have been.

"Didn't you see the confession?" he asked, his face twisting into an unconscious sneer. "He was a corrupt asshole who-"

"I am well aware of the depraved bullshit that festered in that bastard's heart,” the shadow man cut him off, and Ren stared, surprised to find that he believed him. "What I want to know is how you knew about it."

And all Ren could do was stare at him, standing there with his gun and his fury and his barely leashed insanity, and wonder what the fuck was going on.

"Why?"

"Why? Why?" The shadow laughed, low at first, a barely discernible sound that grew and grew and grew until his whole body shook with the force of it. Then with a snap of movement so abrupt it made Ren flinch, he ripped off his helmet so that he could meet his eyes: red, wild and crazed. "Because he was mine."

And Ren felt his blood turn to ice, heard Ryuji curse somewhere behind him and Ann give a horrified gasp, as he realized exactly why his voice sounded so familiar and where he'd seen that face before.

"Fucking shit, it's the terminator dude!"

Luckily the boy didn't seem to hear Ryuji's shout. Or if he did, he didn't care. Which was good, because Ren was too busy freaking out right now to be any use trying to protect his teammates.

Shido's Palace had been ridiculously difficult. The Shadows there had been insanely strong, the steps necessary to open the door to the room holding the treasure completely convoluted, and the cognitions of old men that held those god damn letters of recommendation being way too smart and way too powerful.

But the biggest threat they had faced there hadn't been any of that.

No, the thing that had given them the most trouble had been a single cognition. He took the form of a simple school boy. He wore an impeccably clean uniform and carried a shiny briefcase in his right hand. And in his left, he carried a gun.

He hadn't seemed like that big of a threat at first. He didn't even turn into a proper Shadow when they faced him. All it took was one good hit from their persona and he dispersed into black mist like every other cognition.

Except. Unlike other cognitions, he came back.

Over and over and over again. No matter how many times they dealt with him, within half an hour he would be back, calmly hunting them down and informing them of how pointless their struggles were in his smooth, pleasant voice.

Morgana had theorized that Shido must have seen him as an unstoppable force. Someone who got the job done no matter what and was utterly loyal to him, judging by some of the things it had said. That, paired with the gun in his hand and some of the things the other cognitions had said, made it very obvious just what this guy's job was in the real world.

And now he was standing here, in front of Ren, with a metaverse outfit of his own and completely aware that Ren had taken down his boss.

Fuck.

"Well? I'm waiting."

Ren grimaced, mentally flipping through his masks once more, trying to find a way out of this situation, but he was drawing a blank. He didn't know how to act here. He didn't know what to do. There was a gun trained on his head and an assassin waiting on an answer, and he didn't know what to do.

Well, he thought while mentally bracing himself for what he was 90% sure was a bad decision, they always say the truth will set you free.

"It was personal."

The boy stared at him, narrowing his eyes just the slightest bit in confusion.

"What?" he asked, and Ren rushed to explain before he lost his patience and squeezed the trigger.

"The reason we targeted Shido. It was personal,” he said, before his eyes slid away in something close to shame, though he made sure to keep an eye on the muzzle from the corner of his vision. "I want to say that we did it because he was a corrupt asshole, because he cheated and lied and murdered his way into power, and to an extent it was, but going in, we didn't know about most of that stuff. All we knew was that he ruined my life, and I wanted him to suffer for it."

Silence.

Ren resisted the urge to meet the boy's eyes, resisted the urge to fidget with his coat, resisted the urge to do anything other than remain perfectly still while mister black mask processed his answer. At this angle, he could just make out the forms of the other Thieves, no longer in a tangled heap, but sitting up and watching the two of them speak with tensed muscles and worried expressions. They didn't dare move to stand though, no doubt sensing the same thing Ren did: that any sudden movement right now would end in death.

After all, Ren had spent enough time in Iwai's shop to recognize when a gun was fake and when it wasn't.

"How?"

Ren flinched, snapping his eyes up to meet the burning red gaze of the other boy's once more.

"What?" he asked, then wanted to slap his hand over his mouth because what the fuck he was already on such thin ice as it was.

Shadow man seemed to agree, because he glared at him as his hand visibly tensed around the handle of his gun. Thankfully, he didn't pull the trigger, instead choosing to clarify.

"How did he ruin your life?"

Ren kind of wished he'd just pulled the trigger.

"He had me arrested,” he said instead, clenching his fists as he thought about that night once again. He swore he could feel the freezing cuffs around his wrists, could hear the rattle of the links as he was shoved into the back of the car. "I was walking home from cram school late at night. All the roads were abandoned. But I heard screaming and I went to investigate. There was a woman. He was trying to force her into his car. I intervened, and even though I never laid a hand on him, he managed to fall down and bust his head open."

And that was the ultimate irony, wasn't it? That he didn't even touch him. All the trouble that came after, the reputation he gained and the things he found out about the man later, and he never even laid a single finger on him.

"He blamed me and when the police came, they believed him,” he said, face twisting into a frown as he thought about it all. "And then the court believed him, and my parents, and the people I used to think were my friends. Next thing I know, I'm being shipped off to live in Tokyo with a man I'd never met, with the threat of hard time if I stepped a single toe out of line and a permanent black mark on my record.

"I don't regret it,” he said, not sure why he felt the need to explain that, but doing it anyway. Arsene burned somewhere in his heart, fierce and proud and Ren found himself standing a little straighter. "I don't regret saving that woman. If I could go back in time, the only thing I'd do differently is actually take a swing at the bastard because the fucker deserved it. But he ruined my life. I have a criminal record now, and that shit will follow me until the day I die. So yeah, we changed Masayoshi Shido's heart. And it's too late for you to do anything about it now."

Then he blinked, realized what he just said, and instantly broke into a cold sweat.

He couldn't forget that this boy was the same one that that cognition had been based off of. The unstoppable tide in human form. Shido's loyal attack dog.

Except… Except the way he spoke about him didn't make sense if that was true. The way he insulted him. The way he seemed to choke on his own rage. There was more going on here than Ren understood, and he didn't like it.

And neither, it seemed, did the other boy.

He glared at Ren as he seemed to process what he said, his face unreadable but the cogs clearly turning behind his eyes. His hand clenched and unclenched around the gun; clenched and unclenched, clenched and unclenched until he finally let the entire arm drop and clutched his face with his free hand.

He laughed. It sounded defeated.

"I don't know why I'm surprised."

Ren stared, stunned at this turn of events.

"What?" he asked, eyeing the gun that was now pointed at the ground in a sort of numb disbelief. Behind him, he saw Ann take the opportunity to dart to Morgana's side, remaining crouched and tense the whole way.

The boy didn't even notice, staring at nothing with glazed eyes while his gloved hand clutched his face. Ren suddenly realized those gloves ended in sharp claws. The points were entirely too close to his eyes for comfort.

"Of course he was caught trying to violate some innocent woman!" he said with a bitter laugh. He removed his hand and met Ren's eyes, molding his face into a smile so plastic Ren could almost hear it creak. "That's how my mother ended up with me after all. I wonder, how many half siblings do you think I have out there?"

"What?" he said again, because no, seriously, what the hell was happening???? "You're his son? Is that why you were working for him?"

It was the wrong thing to say.

The plastic smile disappeared as if it never existed. The gun raised again, though this time it was pointed more toward his chest area than his head. And those eyes looked at him wide and wild.

"Working for him?" he asked, voice high and incredulous. He waved his gun for emphasis and Ren swore he felt his heart stop. "Working for him? I was trying to kill that fucking bastard!"

What?

"What?"

The other boy scoffed, sneering at him as if he were the stupid one for not being able to make this absolutely batshit insane leap of logic. Ren couldn't even bring himself to truly feel offended, too busy trying to fit this curve-ball into some sort of cohesive narrative and coming up short.

"My mother never wanted a child,” the boy said, his voice almost pleasant, taking on the cadence of a teacher explaining a history lesson: informative and detached. And yet, Ren froze, because something in the other boy's expression caused all thoughts to flee his mind. It was angry, yes, but there was also something unbearably sad about it as well, and Ren felt his heart clench as all these conflicting signals came together to tell a story even more bleak than the words from his mouth. "She was too young for it, too unrooted. She had no friends or family to help support her, no money to feed or clothe an infant."

That pleasant voice cracked, a hint of hatred shining through.

"But that bastard didn't exactly give her a choice."

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, seemingly struggling to compose himself. The gun in his hand dipped, pointing towards Ren's legs now, instead of his torso and some tiny part of him whispered that that was a survivable injury, that now was the time to run while the other boy was distracted. He could see Morgana getting to his feet now, his wound healed by whatever item Ann had shoved in his mouth. It would only take him an instant to transform again, and then the five of them could be out of here before the boy even had a chance to retaliate.

And yet, Ren couldn't bring himself to do so. The other boy's pain was so obvious, so familiar, that he felt compelled to listen, to bear witness to his pain, despite having spent every moment up until this point looking for a way to flee.

"She wasn't a good mother,” the boy stated simply, opening his eyes as his voice fell back to that pleasant, impersonal cadence. He shrugged, as if to say: what could you do? As if he weren't talking about his own life. "She wasn't equipped for it. But she tried."

He stared into the distance, obviously seeing somewhere else entirely.

"She tried to get a job that could support us, eventually resorting to selling her own body. She tried to show me the love and attention I so craved, despite being so tired most days she could barely stay awake. She tried to keep a roof over our heads and clothes on our backs, even though every place we attempted to stay at kicked us out within a few months. She tried and tried and tried and tried.

"Until one day, she tried a fistful of pills,” he smiled, and it was a bitter thing made of broken glass. "And then she never tried anything ever again."

Then he opened his mouth and the shards fell out, sharp and cutting.

"That bastard murdered her," he hissed, and the gun was up again, though the intent didn't seem to be behind it. It was pointed in his direction, but not at him, as if he were aiming at a person not really there. "As surely as if he'd held a gun to her head himself. It was his fault. All of it. Every bad thing that had ever happened in my life and all the things that had ended hers. And I was going to make him pay."

Silence. The only sound filling the tunnel was the dripping that echoed from nowhere and the other boys panting breaths.

Ren's thoughts rattled in his head, clinking together like metal on metal but struggling to connect. Because he got it, he understood, yet at the same time he didn't. Because while he could understand the hatred, the betrayal by the hands of a cruel world, he couldn't understand the execution.

One plus one was equaling gun and it was clear he was missing the part of the equation that led to murder.

"How?" he finally asked, because at this point he was pretty sure he'd found the right mask for this guy. He wanted to talk, and Ren was more than ready to oblige if it meant answers. His friends would be okay. There was no way this guy hadn’t noticed them by now. He just didn’t care about them. Which meant he could afford to be a bit more… aggressive with his questions.

"Just how were you planning on making him pay? By working for him? By killing people on his orders?"

The boy rolled his eyes at him. Which Ren could see clearly now that his face was unobscured by the helmet, his eyes red and dismissive. He felt a jolt of annoyance zip through him, because people’s lives weren’t a joke damn it. But something about the way the other boy held his mouth, the way his legs tensed, the way he didn’t meet his gaze entirely head on kept him from protesting right away.

That, and the gun.

"You saw his palace, didn't you?” the other boy offered in explanation, his voice bitter. “You saw how overwhelmingly strong the Shadows that resided there were."

He clenched his free fist, scowling.

“I couldn't make a dent in the damn place,” he said, and it sounded like it pained him to admit it. “My only hope of getting anywhere near his shadow was to become someone he trusted."

And that… made sense. Shido’s Palace had been insane, each shadow residing there individually strong enough to take out the entire team of them in one hit before they had done their intensive training in Mementos. Even after all that training, sometimes the only thing that saw them to victory was the fact that they could all look after each other’s wounds.

And Shido’s Shadow himself…

That was a fight they almost didn’t walk away from.

Not to mention Shido never left that sealed conference room. Ren had gotten the impression from Kamoshida and Madarame’s Palaces that it was common practice for the palace ruler to wander around their own palace. But Shido had kept himself sealed away with his treasure, separate from the common riff raff he let on his ship. The only ones with access being his most devoted followers, and even then, you needed all five letters to open those doors.

He couldn’t imagine trying to confront that place alone. Especially when he first entered the Metaverse, before he had any real idea of how his powers worked or what was going on.

But.

"That meant killing people?"

The other boy snapped.

"Oh, get off your fucking high horse,” he snarled, taking a step forward and raising his gun just a bit. Out of the corner of his eye, Ren saw Morgana move as if to lunge forward, only to be grabbed by Ann at the last second. The angry boy paid them no mind. “I was a fifteen year old orphan who had spent the last few years being bounced from foster home to foster home. I had nothing that man wanted, nothing that could be useful to him. No money, no connections. All I had was one thing.”

He waved his free hand in a gesture at the pulsing tunnel surrounding them.

“I could access this other world."

Ren raised an eyebrow, unimpressed.

"So he had you kill people."

The other boy snarled.

"Oh, for fuck's sake! It didn't start with killing people,” he said, voice dripping with contempt as if he couldn't comprehend how Ren wasn’t getting this. “You think I wanted to be a murderer? You think I wanted to become the thing that goes bump in the night? This," he waved at his costume, all dark lines and deadly claws, "This isn't how it started. This isn't what I used to see when I looked in the fucking mirror every morning. But Shido was relentless."

He paused, drawing a deep breath and taking a moment to steady himself. His shoulders loosened, his stance steadied, and his gun, to Ren’s eternal dismay, focused between his eyes once more.

"It started benignly enough,” the boy said, his voice once more level and pleasant. It made Ren’s teeth ache with tension, the false sugar of it tasting like poison on his tongue. “At first, he simply had me use my abilities to extract blackmail from his competitors. Shadows are notoriously loose-lipped after all. But the man already had knowledge of the metaverse, or at least something like it. I'm not sure of the specifics; he made damn sure I never got close to those documents. But he knew what a Shadow Self was. And he knew what happened if you killed one."

He smiled and tilted his head with a shrug.

"I didn't."

And then he frowned, his entire body doing a 180 in its presentation of emotion, in a way that was eerily familiar to Ren and yet jarring in its speed and degree.

“I won’t pretend like I didn’t have my suspicions. I’m not stupid, and I’m not going to use my ignorance as an excuse for my actions,” he said, his tone deadly serious. “But I didn’t know, with 100% certainty, that pulling the trigger and dispersing the shadow would end that person’s life.”

Then he smiled again, a sick twisted thing that brought to mind images of nooses wrapped around pale necks.

“Not that it actually kills people most of the time. It just… turns them off. Why, with the miracle of modern science, we can keep their comatose bodies going for years and years after!”

He snorted, as if it were all some sort of sick joke, and Ren clenched his fist to keep himself from doing anything stupid, like trying to throw a swing at the man with a gun trained on his forehead.

“Of course, nothing can be done for them if they shut down while, say, crossing the road or driving a vehicle.” the other boy continued, with bitter humor continuing to cling to his voice. “And with politicians, well, that demographic has always skewed older. So many of them have underlying health conditions that the littlest upset can set off.”

He laughed, and Ren had never heard a less joyful sound in his life.

“But it worked,” he said, his smile widening, twisting at the edges into something mad and unsettling. “Shido was beginning to trust me, rely on me. Me! The bastard son he threw away without a backwards glance! His whole empire of rot was being built on a foundation laid by my hand. And when he finally reached that pinnacle he worked so hard to reach, when he finally stood at the top and tasted the sweet nectar of victory, he was going to turn around and find my gun to his head. And he’d know exactly who he owed it all to before the light left his eyes like all the others.”

And finally, finally, the other boy paused and looked at him, waiting for a response.

Ren took a deep breath and rocked back on his heels slightly. The gun followed the movement, the aim shifting slightly to remain firmly in place between his eyes but otherwise staying still. He nervously ran his tongue over the back of his teeth and kept a wary eye on it as he thought.

He needed to be careful here. The other boy wanted an audience, someone to listen, but he was also clearly unstable. Ren could get away with a little bit of pushing, but if he pushed the wrong thing, it might all blow up in his face. And then who knows if the other boy would be satisfied with his own death, or if he would finally turn his attention to the rest of the team as well.

But there was more to it than that. Something about the other boy called out to him, bounced back like an echo of something he’d only ever seen flipped and reversed in the glass of a mirror. His actions were exaggerated and horrific, crossing lines that Ren himself would never even consider, but his motivations…

"So you wanted him to acknowledge you. To acknowledge what he did and then pay for it."

His motivations he could understand.

"Yes! Yes!” the other boy exclaimed, his eyes wide and manic, gleeful with having someone finally get it.

Then his eyes narrowed, his smile becoming a snarl as he suddenly took a step forward, causing Ren to stumble back a step in surprise.

“And I was so close!” the boy snarled, stalking forward for every step that Ren took back, suddenly horrifically aware that he’d pressed the wrong button. “So many plans were in the works, so much blood sacrificed to slick the gears. This was going to be the year it was all going to come together, when it was all finally going to be worth it, and then you had to come along and ruin it all!"

He stopped, abandoning his forward stride in favor of wildly waving his gun in the air, with no regard for its aim. Ren felt his heart stop as the barrel briefly pointed at Ryuji, then the ceiling, then the ground, then Ren. Wild and aimless and so much more dangerous for it.

"You just made him confess!” he said, voice high and hysterical. “Just made him fall to his knees and cry like the pathetic worm he is! Like it was nothing, like it was easy, when I spent years getting to this point!"

And Ren decided that the time for caution was over.

"So why didn't you change his heart?" he snapped, his voice deep and powerful in the tone he usually reserved for giving orders in the metaverse.

It caused the other boy to startle, the gun whipping around to settle on Ren once more as he stared at him in weary confusion, as some part of him seemed to instinctually pick up on the fact that he was no longer the only threat in the room.

"What?" he snapped, tone violent, but eyes wary.

"You were trying to gain his trust to get to his shadow, right?” Ren said, straightening up and leaning forward menacingly.

The other boy didn’t visibly react to his change in posture, but it was clear that his sharp eyes were cataloging his every movement.

“To 'make him pay', right?” he continued when the other didn’t immediately respond, using finger quotes to lend a mocking edge to his words. “But his treasure was in the same room. If you'd just stolen his treasure yourself, he would have had no choice but to acknowledge what he did to you."

The other boy narrowed his eyes.

"What the fuck are you talking about?” he snarled.

“His treasure?” Ren asked, feeling a little less sure of himself now in the face of the other boy’s blatant confusion. “The source of his distorted desires? You know, the thing that holds the palace together in the first place?”

There was no comprehension on the other boy’s face.

“I have no idea what the hell you’re referring to right now," he said, tone slow and cautious, "but judging from the context, I suspect that it has something to do with your method of brainwashing that I’ve seen all over the news.”

Ren frowned, deeply offended

“It isn’t brainwashing,” he said, then paused for a moment as he struggled to think of the right way to explain. He thought of Morgona's original explanation, then of Ann's reaction, then Yusuke's and chose something in the middle of all of them. "We just take people’s distorted desires away from them so they are forced to look at their own actions with clear eyes. Without all the other bullshit in the way, they can’t lie to themselves anymore, and the guilt of that is what causes them to confess.”

Silence. The other boy just. Looked at him, eyes narrowed and thoughts obviously racing. Compared to the frenetic movement of before, the stillness now was almost more unsettling. He may have been more unpredictable in his anger, but anger led to mistakes. But this. This was the face of someone who was thinking.

And Ren had learned the hard way that he wouldn’t like those thoughts.

“And that’s… it?" the boy finally asked, his voice low and vaguely offended. "That’s all it takes? Just go in and steal this… treasure thing and then they suddenly become a decent human being? That’s all it takes?”

Ren frowned, the unsettled feeling only growing. There was a rising tension in the air and Ren wasn’t sure he was equipped to cut it.

“Well, it’s a little more complicated than-” he started to explain cautiously, only to be cut off.

“And this works for everyone?” the other boy asked, his voice steadily growing louder and more offended with each word. “I’ve seen your little website. It isn’t just politicians and gym teachers that you target; you’ve also gone after cat abusers and kids with crushes. And they all walk away from it as changed people.”

Ren felt a flare of panic at that, at the idea that their enemies could see the Phansite as well as their supporters. It was one thing when the people who used it were just anonymous voices that he’d never be able to put a face to, and another thing entirely when they stood in front of him with wide eyes and a gun.

“I mean, yes,” he said, the tension in his muscles only growing as he tried to cut whatever revelation that was going through the other boy's head off before it led to another explosion, “but-”

“What was the point of everything then?” the other cut him off again. His eyes were wild and wide once more, but less like a madman now and more like a cornered animal. Like he was trapped. Like the walls were closing in. “All the blood and the pain and the lies? What was the point of it all, when everything could have been solved by snatching some simple bobble from that man’s mind?”

He paused, his gaze going unfocused as he looked at something Ren couldn’t see. The air vibrated with a tension so tight that he dared not break it now, the string of it on the verge of snapping all on its own. The boy lifted his empty hand and stared at it; gloved, clawed and black as night. The silence held, trembling and choking.

Then the boy opened his mouth and his voice was barely a whisper.

“What’s the point now, that it’s already been done.”

And then he laughed, slow and low, before it raised in volume, getting louder and louder as the hair raised on the back of Ren’s neck. Just as the boy raised his gun away from Ren’s face.

“You know what?” he said, still chuckling lowly. “I think I get it now. How removing someone’s distorted desires leaves them with no choice but to confront what they’ve done. He’s gone. He’s gone and now I have no choice but to face what I’ve done.”

He turned the gun and Ren felt his stomach drop.

"I finally understand how she must have felt too. It's ironic, I spent so much time agonizing over how similar I was to that man that I forgot exactly who raised me."

The boy smiled, bitter and sad and so so familiar as the barrel rested in brown tresses.

"But I guess I am my mother’s son after all.”

And then he pulled the trigger.

"NO!"

It was like the world moved in slow motion. Ren lunged, his body realizing what was happening seconds before his brain, his arm already outstretched, red gloved hand reaching desperately forward even as his brain informed him there was no way he’d be able to get there in time. Time stood still as he met the red eyes of the other boy, dull and filled with regret, and he knew, deep in his heart, that this was going to be the last time he saw them.

Then there was a blur of movement from the corner of his vision.

He didn’t even get a chance to try to turn his head before something clipped his shoulder as it flew by, knocking him to the floor mere milliseconds before it tackled the boy in black. There was a bang, loud and terrible as the muzzle flashed with light. Ren screamed, scrabbling to his feet as fast as he could to do. Something. He didn’t know what. He couldn’t exactly heal a bullet to the brain. But instinct wasn’t logical and so he lunged forward expecting to find blood and bone and bits of brain splattered on the floor of Mementos in a grisly sight that was sure to traumatize him for the rest of his life.

Instead he found a body, sprawled across the ground and staring at the ceiling with wide eyes as the other body on top of it held his arm away from his head. Its chest was raising, even as its eyes remained unblinking and Ren abruptly realized that the boy wasn’t dead.

“You goddamn idiot!”

Ren blinked, his gaze refocusing, and he suddenly realized he recognized the other body too.

It was Ryuji, hair bright as a ray of hope, as he crouched over the boy in black with a snarl on his face.

Of course. When mister black mask had been waving his gun around before, Ren had noticed it point at the other boy. Because he had been closer than the others, even if they had all started in the same position. He must have been steadily inching closer the entire time the two of them had been having their standoff in an effort to be in a position to help in case things got ugly. He must have realized what the other boy was about to do before Ren did, must have started running before Ren had even twitched. And well, Ryuji was always the fastest of them, even with his leg.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

Ren flinched as Ryuji snarled in the other boy’s face, his hand tight around the other’s wrist as he held the gun as far away from his body as possible. The boy on the floor only stared up at him in bewilderment, clearly not comprehending how he ended up there or who, exactly, was on top of him now.

“You think killing yourself is gonna do anything?” Ryuji shouted, grabbing the front of the other boy’s bodysuit with his free hand and lifting him just a bit to shake him sharply. His gun clattered to the ground from his suddenly laxed grip and Ryuji didn’t hesitate to kick it out of reach without breaking eye contact. “You think that’s gonna bring any of those people back? You think dying will do anyone any good? You moron! The only thing dying will do is let that bastard win!”

Red eyes blinked up at him, slow and dazed, but hesitantly gaining awareness. Ren tensed a bit as he opened his mouth, yet somehow didn’t feel as terrified as before.

“Wha-”

“Look, I get it, alright?” Ryuji said, cutting him off. His face settled into a frown, the glint in his eyes deadly serious. “You’ve got a shit dad. I do, too. And I get it. No matter how fucked up you know they are, no matter how much you hate their guts, there’s still some little part of you that just wants them to fucking acknowledge you for once.”

The boy stared, and Ren felt himself staring too, taken aback by the sudden fierceness Ryuji was displaying.

“So, like, I don’t get how you could go so far as killing people, but I understand where you’re coming from,” he said before giving the other boy another little shake. “But I met the dude, and let me tell you man: that guy did not give a shit about you. As far as he cared, you were only important in how useful you were to him. And if you weren’t useful? Then you might as well just die.”

And Ren flinched, because that. That was exactly how his cognitive double had died.

Mr. Terminator, as the group had taken to calling him, had been a relentless force that had followed them through the whole palace. No matter where they went, no matter what they did, he always came back again and tried to mow them down. He wasn’t as strong or as fast as any of the other enemies in the palace, but something about the pure unstoppable nature of his existence made him more terrifying than any other enemy combined. Still, despite his best efforts, he never managed to kill them, and when they finally unlocked the conference room at the heart of Shido’s palace, they thought they had seen the last of him.

They hadn’t.

He showed up in the middle of their confrontation with Shido, taking a shot at Ren while he hadn’t been looking. Luckily, his reflexes had been sharp enough to allow him to dodge based on the sound of the shot alone, but it had been a close call and Ren had been dreading having to fight two enemies instead of one.

Instead, Shido has turned to the cognitive boy with a terrible scowl of rage on his face and shouted at him.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing here? You don’t have permission to be here! You had one job and one job only, and if you can’t even do that right, you don’t deserve to live!”

And the cognition had looked at him, blank faced and pleasant and said:

“My apologies, Captain Shido.”

Before raising its gun to its own head and dispersing itself in a fountain of black smoke.

They hadn’t even had time to be properly horrified by it at the time, because seconds later Shido had attacked and it had devolved into a fight for their lives that they couldn’t afford to be distracted from for even an instant. But afterwards the image of it haunted his nightmares enough that Morgana had to wake him up on more than one occasion. It had been horrific.

And it had almost happened again, in reality this time.

“You can’t let him win, man,” Ryuji said, his tone becoming something softer, his grip on the other loosening just a bit. “If nothing else, you can’t prove that bastard right.”

The boy stared up at him, visibly reeling from those words. Ren could relate.

Ryuji had always been more emotionally intelligent than anyone ever gave him credit for, but this?

"Skull…" he said quietly, almost afraid that the sound of his voice would shatter the moment. "You…"

And then someone else shattered it for him.

"Joker! We need to go!"

Ren jerked, snapping his head in the direction of the voice as his heart leapt to his throat.

It was Morgana, fully healed and jumping up and down as he frantically gestured at something behind him.

And that's when he finally registered the sound that had been steadily growing louder this entire confrontation, just below the realm of conscious thought. The sound that caused the hair on his arms to stand on end and his hands to tremble. The sound that spelled doom.

The rattle of chains.

One second he was being held suspended in the air by bright yellow gloves, and the next he was on the ground, struggling to draw air.

Someone was shouting, their voice high pitched and frantic, but Akechi could barely hear them. His ears were ringing, his mind a jumbled mess as he tried to process the words the boy in the skull mask had said.

You can't let him win.

Was that… what he had been doing? This entire time, while he was fighting, fighting, fighting, had he been letting that man win? At what point had he given up? It wasn't just now, that had been a realization he had been desperately putting off ever since he saw Shido's sobbing face live on tv. No, he'd given up a long time ago, made excuses to distance himself from his own actions and continuously shattered what little sense of self he had left until he was unrecognizable.

Because the blond boy was right. There was a part of him, some small, pathetic little part of him that wanted nothing more than to finally be acknowledged. To be loved by his family. To not be left behind.

And Shido had seen that. He'd used that. And Akechi had let him.

He had let him win.

And everyone paid the price for it.

"We've got to go!" a voice suddenly shouted, right in his face.

Akechi jerked back, cringing into the concrete beneath his back, struggling to emerge from his own head and take in the world around him. To his left, the strange cat-like creature had transformed into a vehicle again, the blond girl in a red catsuit already halfway inside. To his right, the boy with the white mask was running, face pale and eyes wide. The reason why was obvious and immediately apparent.

The form of the Reaper loomed behind him.

Akechi jerked upright, instinctual terror overtaking his body and forcing him to move despite being ready to die only moments before.

There was more cursing from nearby, then suddenly yellow hands grabbed his own, jerking him to his feet with a shocking amount of force and dragging him in the direction of the cat/vehicle/thing that the others were rushing for. He blinked, and suddenly the black haired boy was ahead of him, swinging open the driver’s door and bodily throwing himself into the driver’s seat. The boy with the skull mask gave his arm another yank, swinging him around, and suddenly another pair of hands was grabbing his arms, this time clad in pink.

“Come on, come on, come on. We’ve got to go!” the girl in the catsuit said, her voice high and stressed.

Akechi tensed, almost resisted on pure instinct alone, but before he got the chance, the boy with the skull mask shoved him from behind, causing him to tumble into the surprisingly spacious floorboard with a startled curse. He felt booted feet clamber over his legs with bruising force and cursed louder, before the sound of a slamming door cut him off as another voice shouted over him.

“Joker, I believe we are all secure! I suggest leaving now before the creature gains on us any more!”

“On it!” the black haired thief shouted back and then suddenly Akechi was desperately scrambling to hold onto anything as he was bodily thrown back while the cat/vehicle/thing peeled away from the Reaper with a squeal of tires.

There was a moment of stressed silence, the only sound being the revving engine being pushed to its absolute limits and Akechi's own labored breaths as he attempted to regain his bearings, before the catsuit girl spoke up once again from somewhere above him.

“Uh, Joker, I don’t wanna freak anyone out, but I can still see it following us!”

The black haired boy cursed.

“Mona! How close is the nearest escalator?!”

There was a brief burst of static and then the voice of the cat thing came out of the radio speakers, sounding childish and panicked.

“Too far away to reach in time! We’re not gonna make it guys!”

The black haired boy, presumably Joker, cursed again, before jerking the wheel and swinging down a random hallway with enough speed to sling Akechi across the floorboard, where his feet slammed into the door with bruising force.

"Someone grab your phone!” the newly dubbed Joker shouted, his voice sharp and demanding. “We’re about to make an emergency exit!”

And Akechi blinked, before abruptly trying to scramble upright. Because at the speed they were currently traveling, if they were to exit Mementos now they would end up-

“I’ve got it!” shouted the fox masked boy triumphantly before reality warped around them and they were all bodily flung across the very real concrete in a subway full of very real people.

Immediately the air was filled with startled screams as the brainless masses began to panic at the unexpected bodies thrown in their midsts. Akechi desperately wanted to cover his ears to block it all out, but he was too busy groaning as his entire body screamed at him about the abuse he had put it through today. He briefly entertained the thought of getting to his feet and telling them all to shut the fuck up, but instead settled for rolling onto his back and staring blankly at the ceiling far above him.

Honestly, this might work out for the best. If nothing else, that mad dash for their lives had made it adamantly clear that at least some part of him wanted to survive. The blond boy was right, he couldn't let that bastard win, but there had to be consequences.

One of these screaming harpies in the crowd would surely call the police, who would no doubt detain them for 'disturbing the public' or some other asinine charge like that, and then he could simply confess to all the various crimes he had committed and that would be that. He could spend the rest of his days rotting in a cell somewhere, serving out his penitence like he deserved, and he wouldn’t be letting his bastard of a father win by neatly wrapping up his loose threads for him.

Hell, maybe they'd even put him next to Shido. Wouldn’t that just be the perfect punchline to this terrible joke.

"Hey," said a voice that was rapidly becoming the bane of his existence. A familiar head of unruly black hair entered his vision, followed by a pair of sharp gray eyes that were no less dulled by the thick glasses that were covering them instead of the mask he wore in the metaverse. "Come on. We need to get out of here before the police show up."

Akechi stared at him before curling his lip and looking away.

"Leave me here. We've already established exactly what kind of person I am. No need to drag this out."

There was a long moment of relative silence, where the only noise was the continued panicked clamor of the crowd, and for a moment Akechi thought that was that. He let his eyes slip closed and braced for the inevitable.

Then the bastard kicked him.

Akechi jerked upright with a snarl.

“What the fuck was that for, you little-”

He stopped. There was a hand in his face, bare this time, not clad in any color. It was held out to him, palm open, fingers splayed. He stared in bewilderment.

“Look, I’m not going to pretend like you haven’t done some fucked up shit,” the other boy said, his hand still outstretched. Akechi shot him a look that clearly communicated no shit, but he didn’t falter. “In fact, I’m willing to bet I only know the very surface of all the fucked up shit you’ve done. But I can tell you from personal experience that the police are not going to help you make things right. The only one who can do that is you.”

Akechi stared at the outstretched hand for a moment more before lifting his eyes to meet the other boy’s.

“And how would you suggest I go about doing that?”

And the boy smiled, in a way that both lit up the room and suggested trouble was to come.

“Well, I don’t know if you know this, but we’ve been looking for our next big target. And it seems like you know a lot of corrupt assholes that could do with a change of heart.”

He nudged his hand closer, the invitation obvious.

“So what do you say? Want to try your hand at making a difference?”

Akechi stared, thinking about screams he heard even when there was no sound and blood that ran black instead of red. He thought of wide eyes driven to madness and families left broken without ever knowing how or why. He thought of text messages left on read and the silent or else driving every pull of the trigger.

Then he thought of his mother, not as he last saw her, silent and still, but as she was in life, wilted but vibrant. She used to brush his hair, late late at night, and whisper in his ear: my little hero.

He'd spent so long leaning on Loki and his crackling promises of chaotic revenge that he'd forgotten what inspired Robinhood.

"You can’t prove that bastard right.”

Maybe it was time he remembered.

And Akechi reached back.