qA long-nosed man sat alone at a desk in a room with black and blue walls, only accompanied by the ever present singing and piano. His most recent guest, the Leader of the Phantom Theives, had been a smashing success. He had nothing to be disappointed about. And yet, he longed for another go. Igor suddenly felt another presence with him and observed his surroundings. The default appearance of the velvet room hadn't changed, and he had no attendant by his side, so he knew that it couldn't be a guest. Suddenly, he found two small, beady red eyes looking back at him.

"Ah." Igor said, starting his usual routine. "Welcome to the velvet room. You are quite the intriguing guest, aren't you?" Igor added a small chuckle for good measure. "You-

"What exactly do you mean by that? I wanted to be here, so I came. What's intriguing about that? You're irrational."

Igor was taken aback. The creature before him was clearly not human, but that wasn't unusual for the velvet room. What was unusual was the fact that this was the only other presence here. Its behavior, as well, was alien to Igor. 'Irrational' was not how most reacted to him.

"Well, you're some kind of small animal. Most of my guests are human. And how exactly did you enter this place without permission?"

"I simply teleported in. And I'm aware that most who come here are human. You make contracts with them, correct? That's what we discovered in our preliminary research into you."

"I'm being researched?" Igor never expected that a group of demons could be powerful or organized enough to teleport directly to the velvet room to research him. Truly, whatever group that this creature hailed from was a potential adversary, perhaps to send a new guest after.

"Correct. We first discovered you and the metaverse around two years ago in that massive disturbance in Japan. You had a group of humans prevent that anomaly." The creature seemed to pause for a moment. "Your method of harnessing the hope and despair energy in humans is truly revolutionary. So why, we wondered, do you not bother harnessing it?"

Igor thought for a moment, then gave his rebuttal: "I have more that enough power to satisfy myself. I have no need for more. Besides, trying to 'harvest' that energy would most likely bring harm to the humans. It is necessary to restore the balance."

"How irrational. Why value the lives of a few humans when there are so many out there? That energy could be put towards extending the life of the universe."

Igor was swiftly offended. How could anyone suggest something so callous?

"They are my esteemed guests, thank you very much. Their lives hold far more value than any old human. And why extend the life of the universe? Are all things not meant to come to an end?"

"You're even more irrational that I thought. Why give in to entropy? It's best to harvest to energy of a few humans to fight it, even if it means an eternal battle."

Suddenly, Igor had a more pressing question on his mind. "You've been doing exactly that under my nose, haven't you?"

"Correct. We set up humans to fight a few shadows, only for them to become shadows in return, and then collect the energy let off by the defeated shadows. Ingenious system, is it not?"

Igor was beyond disgusted with this thing at this point. Had he come face-to-face with the source of shadows, who turned innocent humans into shadows? It seemed he had found cause to allow a new guest into the velvet room already. "I shall rise up a guest to defeat you, no matter how you try to subvert me!" He shouted angrily.

"Well, that's what I was hoping to discuss with you today. I wish to pit the humans you sent to reverse that anomaly against some of mine. I want to run an experiment."

"I'll only agree to your 'experiment' if you agree to cease your operations if my humans prove victorious."

The small creature sighed. "You know, I haven't even explained how I found you yet. I suppose it's good that you can agree given certain conditions. Anyway," the creature continued, "We recently developed technology that allows to observe alternate realities. To our surprise, we found that several groups of universes featured the rise of humanity without our intervention. We were looking around this universe when we found that massive anomaly I mentioned earlier. Tracing the energies of the humans led us directly to you, after accounting for background noise in the data. It's taken quite a lot of energy to meet you directly, so I'd like to explain how we'd like to run the experiment."

"Go on," said Igor, wondering how anyone could view the world through such a cold lens.

"I want to send 5 humans from each group to another particularly low-tech universe and have them engage with each other over a period of a little over a year. Collect some data from combat encounters. They'll all be separate, so we can observe how they initially interpret this challenge. I've prepared this device for sending them there." The creature then placed a small device on Igor's desk. "This device sends them there and changes their appearance to match the locals. It won't impact the abilities they gained in the contracts made with them."

"And you agree to my terms if your twisted 'experiment' is a failure?" Igor asked.

"Of course. This experiment is important to us, after all." The creature replied. Igor suspected that this creature didn't really mean those words, but there was no telling how it would react if he declined. "Very well. I will bring the Phantom thieves to this world in the way you described," Igor replied.

"All right. It was nice speaking to you," the creature said as it seemingly vanished into the darkness. As it did, Igor knew that he had to make good on what he just said. "Let the game begin," He said to himself, once again alone in the velvet room.

Off in a relatively unremarkable part of Japan, an older teen boy opened the door to his apartment. Taking off his shoes as he entered, he placed his things down on his table, which included a small black cat, his smartphone, an empty bottle which previously contained coffee, and a boatload of studying materials crammed into his backpack. He'd been out studying in his school's library, as a midterm exam was coming up. The cat jumped down from the table, helping itself to some cat food, and then turned to the teen to speak.

"Rough studying session, huh?"

This was no ordinary cat, and the teen was no ordinary teen. He was Ren Amamiya, leader of the long-out of operations Phantom Thieves, a band of stylish vigilantes that, nearly two years ago, exposed several famous people's dirty laundry by using the metaverse, a realm that allowed them to explore the inner workings in distorted people's minds, and even change their hearts. Morgana, the cat, had accompanied him in the endeavor from the very beginning, and in the end, they succeeded in changing the hearts of the general public, eliminating the biggest source of mental distortion globally, at the cost of eliminating the metaverse altogether. Nowadays, when he wasn't being followed by the police, Ren spent most of his time being an ordinary high school student.

"Indeed," Ren replied. "I've been having some trouble on civics lately. I need to keep working at it. It's been rough getting people to study with me because of my reputation."

"If they really knew what being a phantom thief meant, they would respect you for it," Morgana protested. "If it weren't for us, Japan would be two years into the most corrupt Prime Minister in its history."

In addition to changing the hearts of the public, The Phantom Thieves had succeeded in exposing the corrupt nature of the leading candidate for Prime Minister, Masayoshi Shido, by changing his heart and cooperating with a prosecutor named Sae Niijima to pin him in court. This was the reason for Ren's current reputation, as exposing Shido in a court of law required Ren to testify against him, which involved confessing to being the leader of the Phantom Thieves. Ren sometimes had feelings of doubt about whether he made the right call, especially since he did so with only Sae knowing, but since the result was so positive, and he wouldn't be able to continue being a phantom thief with the metaverse gone, he never truly regretted it.

"I can't change their hearts now, Morgana. Even if I had cause to do so."

"Still, you should advocate for yourself a little more, Ren. Being a phantom thief was a noble cause!"

"I've tried that, buddy. Some people just have the wrong idea about me. Besides, I need to start putting that stuff behind me. My days of being a phantom thief ended two years ago when we defeated the God of Control. I need to look at the future these days, Morgana."

"In that case, why don't we call it a day and hit the hay? I want to go to sleep."

"That's my line, Morgana. I was the one working hard. You slept half the time."

"Hey, being a cat and not a human is tiring!" Morgona complained.

The two of them then proceeded to the bedroom, and promptly fell asleep. As he drifted to unconsciousness, Ren fondly remembered how he'd often be called to the velvet room in his sleep. To his surprise, however, he woke up in that very prison cell, along with morgana, with its walls covered in velvet. Immediately, he rose and saw Igor and Lavenza, patiently waiting for him and Morgana to recognize where they were.

"Igor!" Ren, despite what he said to Morgana, was excited at the prospect of being the Leader of the Phantom Thieves again. Seeing Igor again filled him with an almost nostalgic feeling. "Did you call me here to be a phantom thief again?"

"In a sense, yes. I do have need of your talents again. However, the circumstances are a bit dire. An enemy similar to the God of Control has made it's presence known to me, and it intends to pit you against a group of persona-wielding humans that it's been using as sacrificial pawns up to this point. I feared retaliation from this creature, so I agreed."

"Persona users? As sacrificial pawns?"

"From what I could tell, it was harvesting the energy from their personas when they fell in combat. It claimed to be doing good, but it very clearly isn't."

Ren was taken aback, but the idea of a figure similar to the God of Control doing something like this wasn't socking to him. "And I have to fight them?"

"Indeed. And as part of the game, only a few of you will be participating. I've chosen the confidants I deemed most important, but I wasn't able to get everyone."

"You see," Lavenza interjected, "This creature is demanding that we chose only five humans to participate, and that they be sent to an alternate reality. One where none of the participants exist."

Igor continued. "However, I've decided to send in Morgana in on a technicality. After all, He isn't a human."

"Very clever, master!" Morgana said with a laugh. "And if we win?"

"This creature has agreed to cease it's operations at once if it fails. Now then, we're running short on time here. Lavenza, if you may."

Lavenza conjured a portal behind Ren and morgana, which glowed with rainbow colors. "Once you step through that portal, the game will begin," Lavenza said. "Are you ready?"

"I was born ready. Come on, Morgana. We've got some hearts to Steal!"

"Yeah, let's do this, Joker!"

At once, the two of them leaped through the portal, and promptly drifted into unconsciousness.

When Ren awoke, he found himself in a forest, with the autumn trees covered with golden-brown leaves. He tried to stand, but he fell over almost immediately, and felt his fur press up against the ground, and…. Wait a minute. His fur? He happened a glance at the lack he happened to wake up next to, and what he saw shocked him. He was a small, fox-like creature, with black and red fur, and blue eyes. It was a sight straight out of a videogame, or a light novel. I'm a Pokémon! A Zorua, at that! Ren, struggling to re-learn how to walk, turned to what he could only assume was Morgana. He, too was changed. He still strongly resembled his metaverse form, but he was now a grayish-looking Alolan Mewoth. He, too, was staring into his reflection in shock. He then turned to Ren.

"Ren, we're video game characters! We turned into Pokémon! What do we do?"

"Well, I don't know. Look for a village? Maybe Pokémon can be civilized."

"I certainly hope you're right, Ren."

With that, the two of them set off, ren still struggling to walk in his new form. Ren could only hope that they'd find a way to access the metaverse soon.