"Where's our man, Tetsu?" said the voice from the hall. "We know that moron wandered in here."

Dread ran through Makoto's body. Ren was helpless- in the mind of the infiltration target and thus rigidly comatose in this world, gripping the arm of a similarly frozen gangster. Ren could be accidentally shot- or purposefully shot, come to think of it. Or beaten. Or just be pulled apart from the infiltration target.

This new, direct-contact infiltration was a delicate process that Makoto and the others didn't know enough about- such as: what would happen to Ren if the process was interrupted? The Phantom Thieves didn't know, but they were all confident it would have a bad result of some sort. How bad? Who knew? So they didn't experiment. And now a yakuza war was breaking out in this very room with Ren on his knees in the middle of the floor!

Makoto cursed herself for putting Ren in this position. Acceptable risk? What did that really mean when the dice come up snake-eyes? A regretful fool clutching statistics to their chest, that's what. And Makoto could hear Yusuke's voice in her mind, from a time not long ago, as he matter-of-factly gave an honest evaluation of Makoto in front of everyone in Cafe Leblanc: '...she can be astonishingly impulsive when she gets a plan in her head.' It had embarrassed Makoto then because it was too accurate, and it still was, but this time she wasn't helpless amidst gangsters: it was Ren.

She had to come up with a plan to fix this!

From where she stood, Makoto could only see the new hand and the gun sticking through the ajar door. Should she attack now? Should she wait? She tried to consider what could happen in either case, but she didn't have enough information. Was it just this one man with a gun? Were there more with him? Could she disarm the weapon hand before Tetsu was shot? Did it matter if he was shot, so long as Ren was kept safe? Would Ren be safer with Tetsu alive or dead?

Paralyzed by a mind churning on too little information, Makoto watched the door open wider and a goon stepped in- haphazardly-worn-suit, tie, smug smile, pistol in hand- Ren was right, they always had that look.

Makoto decided she just needed to attack. At least she would have the initiative at that point, so if any other goons were in the hallway, they would be reacting to her instead of entering the room and seeing Ren.

But just as she readied herself to spring forward, another voice from the hall said: "Hey, there he is!"

The door burst open and another suited goon strode into the room.

"Get off him, jackass!" the man said, and he raised his right foot into the air.

Just as Makoto realized the man was going to kick Ren, it was already happening. The gangster's foot shot out and hit Ren's shoulder. Ren's body was shoved away from the infiltration target, his hand losing its grip on the target's wrist. Ren went limp and rolled with the kick's momentum onto his stomach, face in the carpet.

"No!" shouted Makoto, as a third man entered, heard her voice and pointed his gun at her. She was only vaguely aware of the new arrival, her eyes locked on Ren's still body. She needed to get to him. She needed to see if he was okay. She needed these damn gangsters gone!

Makoto fixated her attention on the nearest goon- the one pointing his gun at her. A plan began forming in Makoto's mind: She decided this man would go down first, just as soon as she had an opening. Meanwhile, the gangster squinted at her in confusion, then his gun dropped away from Makoto as he turned his head to look towards his companions.

"I think we got a civilian here, guys. What should I do?"

This is it! Makoto imagined herself filled with power, just as Ren had described from his final fight with Akechi- and just like she'd practiced since.

"Anat!" she shouted, pouring her focus into her voice, willing the cognition to be reality. It worked. Makoto could feel Anat surface from where it dwelled somewhere within.

The goon turned at the sound of her shout, his gun coming back up. But Makoto did not intend to wait for him. Maybe no Phantom Thief had attempted using the full-body enhancement technique on a normal human before, but Makoto didn't trust her nuclear attacks. She had no other choice.

She burst into motion, her legs infused with Anat's supernatural speed, feet following the endlessly practiced steps of an akido attack kata. Almost before her eyes could transfer what she was seeing to her brain, she was inside the reach of the goon. The instinct of training moved Makoto without thought. She formed the knife-hand strike with her right hand and chopped at the goon's wrist. The edge of her palm burst through sinew and bone with a meaty, crunching noise, followed by high-velocity gore splattering over the nearby floor and wall. The ruin of a human hand, still gripping a pistol, flopped wetly to the floor.

Surprised by the violence of her own strength, Makoto halted in her kata, withholding the under-chin uppercut that was supposed to be the next move. The now-one-handed goon, the other gangsters, Tetsu- everyone froze for a second in collective shock. Then the man screamed in terror, breaking the spell.

Makoto swung her chopping hand back around, flat-palmed, slapping the screaming goon in the chest. A crunch of cartilage, but no blood- and the goon shot sideways through the air and into one of his two comrades. They both slammed into the room's drywall in an explosion of plaster.

The final goon was whirling on Makoto, moving his aim from Tetsu's face to Makoto's. She would be upon him before that maneuver could be completed, but as soon as the gun was pointed away from Tetsu, he punched the goon in the side of the head, sending the final enemy to the floor in a limp heap.

Testu picked up the man's gun, then moved to the two men half-embedded in the wall. Makoto left him to it, with the immediate threat gone, she only had eyes for Ren. He was still prone on the ground and motionless.

Fear tingling in every pore of her body, Makoto reached for him, laying hands gently on his back, holding her breath. She felt his chest rise and fall. Relief flooded through Makoto's body. Ren wasn't dead. He was breathing- a bit heavily and quickly, but robustly.

Makoto cautiously turned Ren over. His eyes were closed and he had a concerned expression on his face. Makoto placed a hand on his cheek, feeling the chill of her own skin from her earlier fear.

"Ren?"

He didn't respond. She patted him lightly on the cheek with her palm.

"Ren?... Ren!"

Still nothing. Could he have hit his head on the floor? Makoto didn't think he had fallen with much force, but perhaps she hadn't noticed in the heat of the moment. She could try a heal spell.

"Anat! Diarahan!"

Green energy flowed from her hands and absorbed into Ren's skin. She waited impatiently for a few seconds. Nothing seemed to happen. Ren continued to breathe and nothing else. It was like he was asleep or in a coma.

Alarm began to spread through Makoto again. Ren had been separated from the target during an infiltration. A few Phantom Thieves meetings had been spent speculating on the consequences of this event: but since this form of infiltration was new… they had no way to know what would really happen, so guesses ranged from 'nothing would happen' to 'death,' and everything in-between. And for every guessed symptom there was an equally unknown prognosis…

"Ms. Niijima?"

Makoto looked up to find Tetsu staring down at her. Other men were in the room, too. She hadn't noticed them arrive. More of Otohime's soldiers picking up the fallen enemies. She needed to get Ren out of here. Needed to get him safe. Get him seen by people who might know what's going on. A hospital? No. What could they do? And if anything was wrong with Ren's body, her heal spell would have fixed it. This was some other problem. A metaverse something or other. Makoto needed the other Phantom Thieves. Leblanc. She needed to get Ren back to Leblanc.

"Get us a car!" said Makoto, her voice sharp and fierce. She didn't have much control over herself at the moment.

Tetsu took a slight step back. "Of course."