The Phantom Thieves of New Game+

a collection of Persona 5 one-shots

Chapter Fifteen

"Dethroning a Queen"

(A/N: No beta - We die like all non-time-looping challengers to the Togo Kingdom.)

He sat in the church, trying not to laugh at the look on the face of the girl sitting across from him. He watched as her eyes roamed the board sitting between them for what must have been the hundredth time, trying to find where she messed up, trying to find a way out of the predicament she was in.

"I believe knowing when to concede defeat is a sign of grace, is it not?" Akira asked, trying to keep the humor out of his voice. She looked up at him and gave him a glare. It wasn't as powerful as the Nijima sisters could give, but it still caught him off guard. That last time he saw that glare on her was during one his previous runs where he decided to go for a harem.

He still had nightmares about what the girls did to him.

"Are you for real?" she asked, catching him even more off guard. He knew that the phrase "for real" was said by many people, but when the Phantom Thieves went out of their way to not say it least they be compared to Ryuji, it had been a long time since he heard someone else say it. "You said you only had a little experience playing shogi. This," she snapped, waving her hand over the board, "isn't a 'little' bit of experience."

"Well, I just wanted to make sure I gave you a decent game to practice." he said, causing her to raise an eyebrow at him. "I mean, if you want someone who will constantly lose to you, I can have my friend Ryuji come and lose...I mean play...against you. He'd probably lose as quickly to you as you did to me." he finished nonchalantly.

"Still, this shows that you have a lot more experience than just a bit." she muttered, looking back at the board. "In shogi, the more moves ahead you can see the better your chances of winning."

"A lot of things are like that."

"But this game..." she trailed off, looking up at him. "You weren't seeing moves ahead of me, so much as you had already seen how the game would play out."

"Well, uh..." he said, rubbing the back of his neck.

Technically, she wasn't wrong. It had seen how this game normally played out at least twelve...thirteen times by now.

"We must play again." she said, moving to reset the board. He watched her for a second before helping to reset his side as well. "You have managed to do something that has not happened in quite a long time. You managed to dethrone the Queen of the Togo Kingdom. That insolence cannot go unchallenged."

"I wish you luck in removing the Joker who usurped it." he said, giving her a smirk worthy of Joker.

"I have no doubt that I will." she said, looking up at him with a rare smirk on her face. It almost caught him as off guard as hearing the words "for real" come out of her mouth. "After all, you outright admitted you would send your friend as a sacrifice to face me with no regards for what would happen to him."

"Yeah, well, to be fair you'd probably beat him in seven moves." he said, moving out his first piece to start the game. "He's the kind of person who would believe you only win once you have captured every one of your opponent's pieces."

"So he has no knowledge of shogi?" she asked, making her first move as well. Akira was honestly surprised she was talking normally while playing.

"I mean, I guess he might?" he replied, somehow turning it into a question. "To be fair, I think my friend group would have a collective heart attack if he did."

"Then maybe I will take your discarded pawn and train him into a knight worthy of the Togo Kingdom." she said, putting on a haughty look. "With his help, we will overthrow the pretender to the throne who thinks so lowly of his men."

"I guess we'll have to see how that goes, then." he replied with a smirk.

Hifumi teaching Ryuji how to play shogi.

That could be entertaining to watch.

(A/N: Lets all be honest. If you have seen the same game play out a dozen times, you've spent a dozen years training against the same opponent, all while said opponent NEVER gains more experience, you would eventually beat them with no effort. That is why the Togo Kingdom has fallen to the Phantom Thief Joker's Thieves Guild. What remains to be seen is if the Immortal Dragon Guard will accept his role as a sacrifice for the usurping leader Joker, or will the beautiful Queen of the Togo Kingdom manage to convince him to aid her.

There were a few shot-outs to vivvav's Confidant Roulette chapter 6 over on AO3, where the idea of Ryuji/Hifumi was born. It's one of those rare-pairs that, when you honestly think about it, you can really see working. Is this leading to that? No idea.

Maybe.

Probably.)