Ren returned to the van, both Makoto and Haru eyeing him from inside the van. Both with some concern as he exited the internet cafe.

"What's wrong?" he asked as he climbed into the middle seat.

"That man who went in after you…" said Makoto as she started the van once again. "He looked like a science experiment."

"I'm surprised his legs can carry that body," said Haru.

"The attendant seemed to think he may be one of the fake review users," Ren looked at the list of usernames that Futaba had provided. "And he does seem to be someone who… you would expect to have a certain lack of imagination with usernames. I wasn't able to confirm anything. He was immediately suspicious of me, but I think it's likely he's someone involved."

"He looks like he could choke someone, that's for sure," said Haru.

"We watched him from quite a ways away, just walking down the street," said Makoto, "He doesn't seem concerned about anything."

"Could be innocence," said Ren, "Could be arrogance."

"Either way," Makoto turned them out of the parking lot, "the police can't very well go question anyone that has big muscles after a murder, so it's not like he would hide himself."

Ren took out his phone. It was getting close to noon. Were the three members dropped off on the seaside strip also satisfied with their time spent?

==J: seaside crew- are you still investigating or ready for a pickup?

==F: my painting is complete.

==S: hell ya, we got something. We got something good! Come get us!

"Makoto. Ryuji says they are finished at the seaside strip. Let's pick them up and return to the others at the resort."

"Right."

Other than Yusuke showing off the rather excellent landscape he'd painted, the seaside strip team was not willing to share their information until the full group was gathered for another meeting.

"We found something really good," was all Ryuji would say. Even Morgana was dedicated to the secrecy of their discovery. Ren suspected a sushi bribe was involved, but it made for a relatively quiet ride back up to the resort.

In the front seats, Haru and Makoto wandered into a discussion regarding skirts and leggings, both of them favoring that wardrobe combo during most of the year.

"I've been interested in where you find those bright, classy stockings," Makoto was saying, "Black goes with most things, of course, but it does make everything I wear a bit same-ee."

"The thing is…" Haru said, "if you start flowery at the bottom, you kinda need to colorize the whole outfit or it looks mismatched…"

"But Haru, you make mismatched look matched…"

Ren's mind didn't latch on to the rest of their words, but he closed his eyes and dozed lightly, enjoying the sound of their voices. The others in the car seemed equally absorbed in their own thoughts and internal worlds, all of them having had one meeting this morning, and another one imminent on their return to the resort. The drive made for a welcome mental hiatus.

Ann texted that her shoot was finished as they drove through the resort gate, so in short order, the entirety of the Phantom Thieves were reassembled in Futaba's hotel room.

"So, we all seem to have had some success this morning," said Ren, "Who wishes to begin?"

"Me!" said Ryuji. He stood, took a small plastic bag from his back pocket, and slapped it down onto the carpet in the middle of the group. They all gazed at in silence. The small baggie contained some sort of powder in it.

"I found that inside a fish that was inside Otohime's dumpster."

"What is it?" asked Yusuke.

"My guess would be some variety of amphetamine or methamphetamine," said Makoto, "Ryuji, it was dangerous of you to bring that here! Even possession of drugs like that is an arrestable offense."

"I know it's dangerous, but it's evidence," said Ryuji, "And that was just inside one fish, and Otohime's dumpster was full of sacks of fish. It's like the catch comes in, and they put the baggies in the fish, and then throw away the fish, but it's not a real trash truck that picks them up. Well, I mean it's real, but it's not an official one."

Makoto reached for the baggie. "We need to destroy it. No one is going to believe that a group of teenagers has a bag of whatever that is for anything other than using it, and none of us can afford a drug charge on our record."

"What! Wait!" cried Ryuji, "That's my find!" He reached to get the baggie back

"Let her destroy it, Ryuji!" said Haru, sharply.

Ryuji froze at Haru's tone, looking at her a little wide-eyed. Makoto snatched up the bag and took it to the bathroom.

"You still got her, Ryuji, you made the big break on Otohime," said Ren, "We know she's a drug dealer now."

That seemed to pacify Ryuji the rest of the way.

"A drug smuggler," said Ann, "She's like a direct source. She not up early to buy the day's fish, but to oversee the imports."

Futaba pursed her lips. "I know it's illegal and everything, but are illegal drugs really what we as Phantom Thieves are about? If someone wants to risk the law and buy drugs from someone- is it really our business? Like- if some salaryman wants to get high, why do I care? That's for politicians and police."

There was a sound of a flushing toilet and then rinsing water. Everyone turned to watch Makoto re-emerge from the bathroom. "I flushed the powder and washed the bag out," she said, "And to answer you, Futaba- I would say it's not the drugs that concern us, but the actions someone might take to protect their own ability to profit from them. There is a man dead, as an example- and it seems likely Otohime had a direct hand in it."

"And there are who knows how many people involved that could be getting exploited!" Said Ann, "Both here and where the drugs came from! Before you joined us, Futaba, there were students at our school being blackmailed into carrying drugs like the ones Otohime are peddling. That's exactly the sort of thing the Phantom Thieves are about stopping."

Makoto nodded at Ann. "Whether or not we care about someone making their own personal choice to use illegal drugs- the reality of illegal business is damaging to lots of innocent people."

"Operating under the glaze of an honest occupation the entire way," said Yusuke, "Who would suspect the old woman who's owned and operated such a long standing restaurant?"

"More than just owned that restaurant," jumped in Haru, "but the clerk at city hall advised that the Otohime family has owned their land for hundreds of years, and that the ice cream shop is also owned by her."

"So property ownership was not a motive for the murder.." said Makoto, "But in light of Ryuji's discovery, there seems plenty of speculative motives related to smuggling."

"And I don't think Mr. Ito was involved, either," said Ann, "I spoke with him today and he did not mention any sort of anti-resort movement in the local area when he was building this place. He said he and Otohime used to be business partners and had a falling out."

"So if we believe him," said Ryuji, "Then the whole sob story Otohime told Haru and Ren was bullshit?"'

"Seems that way." Ren frowned. "And to top things off, the fake reviews might be the doing of Otohime, too. I believe I met the man responsible for at least some of them. And while we don't have any specific link between Otohime and this man- he is a bodybuilder and seems very capable of choking a man to death with one hand."

"Could Ito be the employer of this bodybuilder?" wondered Yusuke.

Ren shrugged. "It's not something we can rule out, but why hire him to murder one of Otohime's tenants? What does Ito gain? If we go by movies and stuff, I would guess Otohime the drug smuggler would ultimately have more reasons to kill the man than Ito. Loyalty. Secrecy. Blackmail. Who knows?"

"So we're thinking what?" said Ann, "That Otohime used the same goon to murder the ice cream guy and to send out some fake bad reviews- targeting both herself and her own tenants? Why?"

"If you mean why use the same person, I would guess its because he's a loyal footsoldier." Makoto shook her head. "If you mean the specific motive for murder and self-sabotage…perhaps with less customers around, it's easier to stay under the radar? Or perhaps she needs the excuse to boot her tenants because she wants to do something else with her land? Whatever is actually happening remains a mystery- we learned a lot this morning, but ultimately we don't have what we need to answer the question we wanted to."

"Hell yeah, we do!"

Everyone looked at Ryuji.

"The question wasn't really why ice cream dude was killed. That was our path forward, but the real question was: do the Phantom Thieves take down Otohime?! We know this hag is a big time drug smuggler. We know she's got employees. And we know people around her end up dead. It doesn't matter we don't know exactly why she did some of the things she did, but we can be damn sure its related to the illegal shit she's doing. No one gets that deep into the dark and not get distorted. If the Metaverse still existed, Otohime would have a Palace- one-hundred-per-cent."

Futaba was nodding. "It's weird to say, but I think Ryuji's logic is spot on. I agree."

Ann was looking a little sad. "And I think Mr. Ito was a part of it, too, at some point. Though I have no idea in what way."

"It seemed like the clerk at city hall was involved, too. Or at least aware," added Makoto. "Normally, I would say that drug smuggling, like murder, is something for police to handle, not us. But in this case, I'm actually not so sure."

"Can the local police be relied on?" said Yusuke, evoking the memories of them all. Corrupt police and those who controlled them had been a major threat to them in the past. "Otohime appears to be as a part of this town as the rocks are. Some of the police may even be her relatives."

'Yeah, so what are we going to do about it?" asked Ryuji. "We could drop a ton of info on the local police station, but I bet you, nothing would happen. This is something only we can solve right now. So are we going to do it, or not?"

All heads turned to look at Ren. He felt flat-footed, as this meeting transformed from a discussion to a call for action rather quickly. Indeed, what are the Phantom Thieves going to do?

"Give me a few moments to think about this," said Ren quietly. He closed his eyes and, without realizing it, began rubbing his bangs between his fingers. The rest of the Phantom Thieves waiting in silence.

They'd already exhausted all the real world investigation they could think of. Outside of more stakeouts and tailing people, there didn't seem much else to be done. And stakeouts and stalking people was not what the Phantom Thieves did- that sort of stuff was for detectives. Ren considered what Ryuji said- that they'd managed to get enough information to confirm that Otohime was a bad enough person to be a legitimate target for the Phantom Thieves. The specific details in regards to what type of bad person she was- well, that wasn't material to the next step in the process: infiltrating her Palace and triggering the change of heart.

Otohime's distorted view of the world would make her Palace a live-action diorama of her misdeeds. And since Otohime will specifically confess all her wrongdoing should they be successful in stealing her Heart, the Phantom Thieves didn't need to collect evidence or worry about corrupt police, either. Once they were done, Otohime would take care of her own clean up, and the police would simply have to publicly do what they are supposed to do, whether on-the-take or not, because it was hard to ignore public confessions. In a similar fashion, no one had wanted to get started on Shido after his change of heart, but even the police loyal to him were compelled to arrest him and hold hearings in response to his confessions. They'd found ways to delay it, appeal it, and otherwise hold off justice as long as possible, but it seemed Niijima Sae was about to finish it once and for all. So the same would happen with Otohime: justice would eventually come, sooner or later.

But this was assuming there was a Palace to infiltrate. And it was assuming that the process of changing someone's heart even still worked in the post-Metaverse world they found themselves. If there wasn't, they would need to contemplate an overt battle with magical spells in the streets. Ren didn't want to go there. Ren hoped they didn't have to go there. Triggering a change of heart really was the most effective way to completely neutralize an evil person- the world of evidence and trial dates that the police and prosecutors needed to navigate as a normal course of life was agonizingly slow and unreliable in comparison. And flat out justice killing would probably create more problems than anything- a new boss, a power struggle, who knew? But if the Phantom Thieves could steal Otohime's twisted desires, then she would likely dismantle her entire operation herself, netting big fish and small fish up and down the line.

Speaking of the normal course of life… Ren looked at his phone. It was getting to mid-afternoon. Did they even have a place to stay arranged for tonight?

"By the way, Ann, were you lucky with getting us another free night here?"

"Yes, but it won't work again."

"That's fine, thanks," Ren was relieved, that's one less worry for them tonight. "Then I suggest we plan an early dinner at Ms. Otohime's restaurant," said Ren, "That puts us near her for a legitimate reason, and if she has a Palace, I would assume that's where it would be. We don't know if Palaces still exist, or if we can still trigger changes of heart. So do we experiment by attempting the process on Ms. Otohime? Raise your hands if you say, yes."

"Wait," interrupted Makoto. "Doesn't this feel rushed?"

"We have to rush," said Ryuji, "You heard Ren and Ann. We only have one more night of free rooms, and I don't have a ton a money!"

"We also have the majority of our roadtrip left ahead of us," said Yusuke. "We cannot tarry here forever."

"It's the next step, anyway," said Morgana.

Haru nodded in agreement.

"I suppose all that is true..." Makoto's voice still sounded worried.

"We've had more important deadlines, if not shorter ones" said Ren, "And I can't think of any other way to experiment with the existence of Palaces than to find someone like Otohime."

Makoto thought that over and then raised her hand slowly. "I see your points, I agree with everyone."

"No other concerns or objections?" Ren looked around, a sea of intense faces looking back. "Then it's unanimous. Though how we do this without the navigation app... has anyone seen it on their phones?"

Everyone shook their heads.

Well, that was a long shot.

It was an odd feeling, this particular walk to the van. It was the first time in Ren's memory that they'd ever moved as a group without a specific plan in mind. Well, there were Palace stakeouts where they had not been sure what keywords might be needed to get in- but they'd still at least known the process of how to get into a Palace in general.

This time everything seemed a mystery, They were unsure if Palaces still existed for one. And if they existed, they didn't know how to get inside a Palace when they lacked the navigation application on their phones. And to top it all off, would the process of stealing the Treasure be the same?

Their walk was quiet, but as soon as the last of the van doors closed and Makoto started the engine, Ren wondered aloud: "With the MetaNav, we needed a name, a location, and keyword of the target's distortion. If it's possible now without that app, how might it be done?"

"I dunno," said Ryuji, "but we'll figure it out."

Morgana hopped up onto the middle seat. "That's the process Ren is trying to get started, Ryuji,"

"Oh, right."

Yusuke cleared his throat. "Perhaps the discovery of how to use our personas holds some clue?"

Haru nodded thoughtfully. "And the clue for that was in the message from the Velvet Room. Can you say it again Ren?"

Ren obliged: "The game is over. The world is remade and the people are free. Yet, Fate still weaves, but it knows not where. All that can be, shall be the result of your cognition."

The van was silent except for the quiet acceleration of the engine as Makoto once again drove them down the long drive of the resort.

"My mind is drawn to the second sentence," started Makoto, "we know that the world is remade, but what does it mean that the people are free? We know that Mementos and the prison at the bottom is gone, but does it mean anything else?"

"It does seem too straightforward to not actually have more of a meaning," said Ann.

Yusuke cleared his throat again. "Actually, that was not exactly what I meant. I meant that we learned to control our powers by cognitizing the result we desired. Perhaps in a similar… results-focused method- we will discover our way back into Palaces."

Everyone went quiet while they considered that.

"I get where you are going, Yusuke," said Futaba, "But if we have to imagine the Palace before we can go in, that would make it really hard. Like, would any of us have thought that Shido's "ship of state" was literally a ship in his mind?"

"Just because it might be difficult doesn't mean it can't be true," countered Yusuke.

Futaba sighed, but didn't have a response.

"I think there will be a Palace," said Ann, "We have our powers, so it would be weird to have those but not have any of the other stuff."

Ren did feel like that had a ring of truth to it.

"One odd thing.." said Makoto, eyes on the road, "about Sae's Palace, or at least for me, anyway- was that it was at the courthouse. Remember when we came out of there late at night a few times? I would look back at the building and I would know that Sae wasn't in it. She was out at a restaurant or at home or somewhere that wasn't the courthouse, but we had just jumped out of her cognition- at the courthouse. That her Palace was locked in a geographic location, and it was not directly influenced by where she physically was at any given time. That was odd."

"But all of 'em were that way," said Ryuji.

"Yes, and isn't that odd?"

Morgana's tail flicked against the seat. "That was because the Palace was tied to Mementos and the Metaverse- it was an entire infrastructure that enabled the distorted cognitions of Palaces to take root."

"But with the Metaverse gone," said Haru, "there is no soil for a Palace to root in, so the only place a distorted cognition could exist would be... inside someone's mind?"

"The people are free," quoted Makoto.

"Free to be distorted wherever they wish," said Yusuke.

Ren let out a long breath and leaned back in his seat. All he'd done was start the conversation off and his friends went and figured it all out. This team really was amazing. "I think you guys cracked it, so we'll just have to try."

"Try what?" asked Ryuji.

"Well, in any fictional story involving jumping into someone's mind, you have to touch the other person. So, I'll try touching the woman and see what happens."

"That kinda sounds gross, dude- I'll be honest..."

Otohime gave them a pleasant smile as they all arrived at her restaurant. The sun was still high in later afternoon, and the veranda was empty, as it always seemed to be when they were not eating here. The beach was sparsely populated this time- a few families enjoying the water on a very warm spring afternoon- the hint of summer in the power of the sun. Otohime helped them open the umbrellas over two tables to provide some shade.

"We are leaving town tomorrow," said Ren, "And we decided we wanted to end our time here with as excellent a meal as when we started."

"I'm flattered," said Otohime, "What will it be?"

"May we have the same arrangement as the first night?"

"Of course! I'll get some tea." She left for the interior of her restaurant.

She was acting as she had that first day- back when she was simply an elder restaurant owner to Ren and the group. The spicy attitude she displayed at the pizza party and last night was not on display. It seemed Otohime wore some sort of mask when she was operating her restaurant, and instinctually kept it on. It almost seemed like she was two different people.

The Phantom Thieves exchanged some shallow conversation while they waited. Then Otohime returned with a tray and tea set, and when Otohime reached to place a teacup, so did Ren. He fixed his mind on that peculiar sensation of entering the Metaverse- as if it was already happening to him.

Their hands collided, and upon their contact, Ren felt all the hair on his body stand up, a dark, undulating.. Something.. Blanket?...sheet?... waved in front of his vision and then everything was the same as it was before, but- completely still. As if all his friends and all the world were frozen and he alone was not.

Cautiously, Ren withdrew his hand, and Otohime didn't move, was as still as a statue. He looked at his friends. They were still as well- all of them locked as they were in that instant he'd made contact with Otohime's hand. He reached out and touched Makoto's shoulder- she was solid in the sense that his hand stopped when it contacted her, but Ren realized he couldn't feel her. He had no sensation on his skin as he ran his hand over the bare back of her hand, nor of her long-sleeved shirt. It looked like he was touching her, but he was not.

Then Ren noticed there was a window hanging in the sky. Just behind Ryuji's head, and just to the left. A window, just hanging in the air, and a fish swam past the window on… on the other side? Ren stood and walked towards the window, and as he got closer, his changing perspective revealed that what was once the sky and horizon of the beach and ocean, was actually a wall… and it was as if someone had pasted a 3-D photograph on a two-dimensional surface to fool him with an optical illusion. He reached out and literally touched the distant horizon, and it was firm, like drywall. He looked up at the clouds in the sky, and reached for them- his hand hit a ceiling. It was like a photograph, too.

But the window, it was really a window, and beyond the wall upon which the horizon of Matsuzaki's beach was now glued like wallpaper, there was something else entirely. A undulating blue medium was outside, like a vast curtain which stretched higher than Ren could see- he stuck his head out of the window and looked up, but it stretched on and on into darkness. Below the window, there seemed to be some sort of grass. He climbed out of the window and stepped onto that grass. It was wet. Like seaweed at low tide.

He looked behind him, and the window was just the window of a small shack- almost like a garden shed. He could see Otohime, all his friends, and even himself, still sitting in the chair, as if he'd never gotten up and stepped outside this window at all. His hand was still touching Otohime's hand. It was as if what had just been his real world, was now a static grouping of manakins in this small box of a building, and posted to the far side of the room, behind Ren and Otohime, was another 3-D photograph of Otohime's restaurant, completing the panorama of sitting and frozen Ren's physical reality.

Still mystified, the moving Ren walked away from the window and around the corner of the shack. A vast structure stood before him on a hill- it reminded Ren of the imperial palaces of Japanese mythology. Arched, tiled roofs with curving ends. Flowing cerulean and gold dragon motifs. Long walls surrounded the central structure, creating the mystique of a forbidden city being contained within. From high in the sky, aquamarine light streamed down upon the palace, and the light shimmed and flickered, like when one looked at the sky from the bottom of a swimming pool. The distant outlines of whales drifted slowly past the sun above.

This was a palace, obviously, and it was equally obvious to Ren that this was Otohime's Palace- her stronghold of desires, motivations, and cognitions. But instead of being locked to the restaurant in the real world, and accessed through a strange magical phone application, Ren reached this Palace by touching the old woman physically. So the palace was not a place, but a person. He was inside Otohime, or at least some part of him was, while his own physical form remained behind, sitting at the table in the small room of the "real" world.

Ren reached for his weapons, and found the knife and pistol he always had with him in the Metaverse. He was also in his usual trench coat and gloves. So his mind had cognitized them into existence for him? That was different than how things used to work, but it wasn't a huge logical leap. If he could cognitize himself into the cognitive world of another person, why wouldn't he be able to create weapons and equipment for himself, too? He wandered back around the shack and returned to the window back into the physical world.

At a glance, it all looked the same inside, but on closer inspection, he realized that the still forms of his friends were not completely still. They had moved slightly. Eyelids were very slowly opening and closing. Makoto was looking at the physical Ren still sitting at the table, and the mental Ren standing outside the window recognized the early signs of Makoto recognizing something was odd. The expression was coming to her face, but she was moving very, very slowly. It seemed time was still progressing outside of this place, but at a much slower rate. Though his own physical form and Otohime's seemed different: they didn't appear to be moving or changing in any way.

So, how to get back? Ren climbed back through the window of the shack, containing himself back inside the 3D images his eyes made for him inside his own head. And lacking anything else to try, he sat back down in his chair, merging his cognitive form with his still physical form and-

Suddenly he could feel the movement of the air, hear the movement of the sea, and the tea cup spilled over onto the table. Otohime apologized and wiped up the liquid. Ren blinked and looked around him. Everyone was staring at him and Otohime. They'd all noticed something had just happened.

"Why the intense stares?" said Ren, trying to restart conversation, "It's just a cup of tea."

"Don't be so clumsy then," said Ryuji, clearly jumping onto the conversation train to dispel the silent shock that had been over everyone. "Making the poor woman clean up after you."

"You should talk," said Futaba.

"What does that mean!"

Makoto continued to look at Ren intently, but she waited for Otohime to wander back into the restaurant before speaking. "What happened? The moment you both touched, its like you both froze for a few seconds."

"Yes." said Yusuke, "It was quite brief, but I saw it, too."

"A few seconds?" said Ren, he'd been inside for a few minutes at the very least. "It felt longer to me, but I was there. In the- the place." He looked back at the restaurant. Could this veranda be wire-tapped? It didn't seem likely, but with what they know now about Otohime, could they risk it? Then again, if Otohime didn't hear her own name, how would she know what they were talking about? Ren continued: "Yusuke was right. I filled my mind with the result, the feeling of going to the- other place we used to go. And it happened."

"What was it like?" asked Haru.

"Like the other Palaces, but this one actually looks like a literal palace, too- but under the ocean or something. But the way I entered was… different. I think it would be too hard to explain, you'll see for yourselves soon enough."

"Well, we can't all go in while-" Makoto looked around, "we're in such a public spot. It would look very odd, even at a distance."

That was true. If being inside Otohime's Palace freezes all of them, they couldn't just stand around for bystanders to discover and interfere with. They would need to lure Otohime to a secluded spot."

Ren looked at Morgana. "Let's eat our dinner, and then when I go to pay, we can play a bit of 'stray cat'- like last night. Maybe 'stray cat in the kitchen' this time?"

Morgana's tail flicked in understanding.