Before Mocker had even made it to his own ship in his rampaging state, Ren, fallen to his knees in despair, was feeling some very turbulent emotions right about now. There wasn't much he could've done other than what he tried given the information he had, but still. He had so utterly failed to stop Akechi and Homura that it was almost kind of saddening. In fact, it was saddening. Deeply so. And enraging, and confusing, and the like. These mixed negative emotions felt like a tornado ripping through his very soul. Ren hadn't felt like this since he'd seen Okumura die live on tv, but that time was different. That was a brutal reality check after the Phantom Thieves had allowed themselves to be consumed by thoughts of their popularity more than they probably should have. It destroyed their reputation for a time, but in the end, they recovered and accomplished their mission. But now? They were way over their heads, their plans ruined at every turn, and now their reputation would be far beyond saving, all while they were just managing to make a name for themselves in this world. A disaster, to be sure. Come to think of it, Akechi played a direct role in what happened with Okumura, too…

As Ren wondered whether he was just being dramatic or whether it was as bad as he thought, he looked around him. God, how long have I just been sulking here? "Dammit!" He cried out, getting up on his feet, his despair giving way to rage. "Don't think you can just get get away with this! Do you have any idea how much this is going to destroy the image of the Phantom Thieves? This goes against everything we stand for!"

"I don't recall ever saying that I wished to formally join the Phantom Thieves," Akechi replied dismissively. "I'm not bound by your foolish ideals, got it?"

Akechi's tone only multiplied Ren's anger. "Like it or not, Benham is treating all of us like we're cooperating, so you're going to go down with us, dammit! How do you think he'll react when he sees how Mocker suddenly turned into a mindless beast? He's not stupid! He'll make the connection between that and King Diego, and just double down on his efforts to stop all of us! What if he finds a meta-nav? We're all done for then!"

Akechi paused as if to consider all of this, then shrugged. "Guess we'll all have to live life on the run, then. Oh well. Probably beats being cooped up in treasure town, that's for sure."

Ren didn't even know what to make of that response. "…Do you seriously not understand the importance of what everyone thinks of the Phantom Thieves? Nobody's going to see how just we are now! That's the importance of having a moral code! To prove our resolve and nobility! We can't just take lives as we see fit!"

Akechi laughed Ren off. "Do you seriously not see how fixated on being popular you are right now? If I didn't know any better, I'd think that's all you cared about right now."

As everyone else just watched in stunned silence as the question cut right through Ren like a blade. That's not true, is it? Surely I haven't lost sight of what's important, have I? I'm Joker, the leader of the Phantom Thieves, harbingers of justice! I care about more than fame and glory, right? Akechi seemed to notice how much this was getting to Ren.

"Ah, was there perhaps truth to what I said? Sorry for bursting your bubble. Not sorry, actually. Your pathetic idea of justice disgusts me. Goodbye."

"Akechi!" Ren called out, but it was far too late. Akechi had already activated the meta-nav, leaving the metaverse, probably to go make preparations to run away from home preemptively. Ren fell to his knees again. "Dammit…"

"Don't let him get to you, Ren," Futaba said. "There's no need to listen to the logic of a murderer."

"You're right…" Ren agreed, getting back on his feet. Akechi's a murder and a fiend. Nothing justifies such heinous acts…

"He's not wrong to point out that we've been thinking a lot about how we're perceived," Morgana admitted. "But that's only because our cause is just."

"Hell yeah!" Ryuji encouraged. "If Akechi isn't going to help, then we'll just have to put a stop to his bullshit! We'll let him get captured on his own when the time comes! It'll even work as payback for when he got your captured! See how he likes that!"

Ren was starting to feel a lot better after everyone's encouragement. "Thanks, everyone. I needed that." Ren took a deep breath. "At this point, we'll have to be prepared for the moment when Benham finally makes his move. It's unavoidable, but we can be ready for it, at least. We'll rebuild our reputation once we're on the run." It sounded doable enough, even if it meant dedicating a much longer stretch of time to that cause that he imagined. He'd do it. No matter what. There were evils out there he needed to fight, it seemed. Akechi seemed to be one of them, but the other big one he could think of right now seemed perfectly happy barging in on this conversation.

"I'll never understand why you humans engage in these kinds of conversations. I see it again and again, and it's all so irrational. Why?"

It was none other than Incubator, of course. It's utter lack of tact was quite typically of Ren's interactions, but it was especially jarring here not only because of how much his friend's words helped him just now, but also because he just hadn't seen Incubator in a while now.

"What brings you here, bastard?"

"I prefer to be called Kyubey. I should have mentioned that sooner. My apologies." This degree of tone-deafness was truly impressive, but Ren probably shouldn't have expected anything more from a being with such lacking empathy. "In any case, I'm only here to collect data from the fight that just happened. Homura actually bargained with me to make her own meta nav send her somewhere different in exchange for me being allowed to monitor the ensuing fight and tamper with the environment slightly. I was going to get some amazing data I probably wouldn't get otherwise, so I accepted the offer, and here I am doing maintenance on it all now…"

A thought immediately crossed Ren's mind. "Wait, did she ask anything else of you?"

"No, why?"

"…You aren't lying, are you?"

"I would never do something as irrational as lie."

Ren had no idea what kinds of things regularly went on in Incubator's head, so it was impossible to tell how truthful that statement was. Riiiiiight… He thought. The Incubator started speaking again.

"Ah, right. That reminds me. I wanted to talk to you about stealing hearts some more, since I didn't get much of a chance to do that when you were handling that King. Do you mind answering a few questions for me?"

"I do mind. Not in the mood to cooperate with you without a good reason. It's time to go, anyway?"

"But you lose nothing if you help me out! Why would you refuse here?" Incubator truly didn't seem to understand how Humans thought.

"I'm leaving. Futaba, Yusuke. Make sure you leave on your own. You can't be seen in camp."

"Roger that," Futaba replied. She and Yusuke left without hesitation.

"Alright. Anya, take us home. There's no doubt we'll come back to a mess, though."

"Got it," Anya responded. Ren certainly had mixed feelings about everything that just happened. Knowing that Akechi was going to do whatever he wanted made him nervous. And yet, he'd found optimism in the bleak idea of life on the run. No matter what he'd stick to his ideals. Even if it cost him everything.

Two entire moons passed in the blink of an eye, and hope seemed to abound. Construction on the ship that would finally allow them to leave this accursed island would be done mere days from now. Food supplies were wearing thin, but with a little rationing, they'd made it over that hurdle, and they could finally leave. The guild was in high spirits, to say the least. Finally being off the island meant finally seeing land again, which by itself was huge, but more than that, it seemed like the problem of how to deal with the pirates had essentially solved itself. For some bizarre reason, the pirate captain suddenly rushed out of camp, destroyed his own ship, and then committed suicide with his helmsman. The Phantom Thieves, terror of the seas, were no more. At least, save for the two defects residing on the island, but they'd mostly kept to themselves, so hardly anyone was concerned about them. Benham, on the other hand, was not feeling so upbeat. He was feeling… conflicted. By now, I'm almost positive. Ren, and his fellow humans, are my culprits. I'd imagine the probability to be as high as 70%.

There was far, far too many points against him to ignore. For starters, there was the issue of feasibility. Ren, as a Zorua, was capable of making illusions. That meant several things. For starters, Ren could have used that to easily slip past the guards back in High Town. Ren could've also entered Mocker's hut without raising an alarm thanks to the loose panel. Ren would also be able to sneak away from the camp easily if need be, allowing him to inform the ex-pirates of information they might not otherwise have. Now, Homura could also do most of this with her teleportation, save for the incidents in High Town. Moreover, illusions could easily allow him to slip other things by Benham that he probably didn't even notice. So long as it came down to seeing or hearing, the sky was the limit. It may even be possible to use this to influence the minds of others with some kind of hypnotic trance, but that was pure speculation. What really made Ren suspicious, was all of the strange behaviors that didn't line up directly with evidence. Ren's bizarre hesitation to impersonate Homura despite seemingly getting a good grip of making illusions fairly quickly. The sudden scrapes and bruises he sustained one day, that could've been caused by falling from a great height, like a tower. His weird comment as the Guild was being exiled, that seemed a little too quick to prove his innocence. His suddenly being knocked out at Akechi's place. Mocker just happening to surrender when Ren was in the room, and his claim that he knew exactly who the copycat was. Ren just happening to suggest that the hut needed to be fortified, and then saying 'that'll do, I think' after not working on it for very long. It was all to easy to explain if Ren and his teammates were the copycats. None of this even factored in his still-mysterious relationship with Homura and Akechi, who seemed to behave strangely towards him. Which led to the biggest issue.

There's still way, way too many unknowns. How many humans are there? What are their affiliations? What happened between Ren and Akechi? And, most importantly of all, how did this 'stealing a heart' thing work. Before, when Benham only had the King to go off of, he could probably assume some kind of threatening interrogation method was used. But there was no way anything like that would work on Mocker, a hardened criminal who didn't even flinch when Benham tried to play tough with him. No, clearly, some kind of mind control was being used here. Nobody in Ren's group was a Pokémon that could do anything like that, except maybe Ren himself via illusions, and even then, Benham doubted the feasibility of that. Most likely, it was some special ability he had no further information on, one that only Ren had, not unlike Benham's now-gone dimensional scream. Dimensional Scream, huh? Come to think of it, that calling card thing made references to shady things the King had done Behind closed doors. Perhaps Ren's ability has a similar intel-gathering function. In any case, not knowing the limits of Ren's ability made him exceedingly dangerous.

Benham probably shouldn't have wasted much time on speculation about it just yet. He needed to spy on Ren somehow, but without people in the loop about the Humans other than Loudred and Bibarel, he really couldn't do that. He'd have to wait for officer Magnezone's help to arrange a proper investigation. But for now, there was one piece of speculation that he was pretty confident on at this stage.

Chatot must've been the first target. I'm sure of that now. Chatot's change in behavior was sudden and drastic, not unlike Mocker's and the King's. In fact, it was even more drastic than those two. Chatot went from being a bitter old man to someone who fully grasped the errors of his ways. And Team shadows seemed to have a strange dispute going on with him at the time. When he got back, searching Chatot's room was a top priority on the list of things to do. After explaining all of this to amity, of course.

Benham walked outside to see the vessel in all of it's incomplete glory. The Guild had been working on this Behemoth since the first few days of being shipwrecked here, and now it was finally close to being completed. Certainly, everyone else had a good reason to be in such high spirits over it. Once they sailed home with it, ownership was planned to be given to Aldo and his crew so they could actually continue their careers, since it was the Guild that got them in this mess in the first place. Aldo himself stood nearby with a tear in his eye. Despite how old the Walrein looked, he was relatively young, not much older than Benham himself.

"Feeling emotional?" Benham asked.

"I'd be lying if I wasn't on the verge of crying tears of joy," Aldo confirmed. "After this, it'll finally be over."

"Yes, we will finally be able to leave this dreadful island. That's good."

Aldo shook his head. "More than that, friend. Mocker's been around for a while, cause untold pain. Now he's gone. His victims can rest easy knowing that he'll never lay a finger on anyone ever again." Aldo sighed. "Guido, now the whole town's free. You can rest easy."

"Town?"

"Wave Town. Apparently, the place Mocker got his start. Mocker's been having a rein of terror over that place for the longest time now. My mentor Guido won't have to fear him coming around anymore…"

"Your mentor?"

"Yes, my mentor was a Pansage named Guido. He's a great guy. If you ever visit, come to his pasta shop. Guido's pastas. Apparently sailing was a hobby of his before Mocker showed with his ugly mug."

"…I see." Benham didn't exactly know what kind of person Guido was, but he got the sense that he was something of a victim.

"Anyway," Aldo continued. "Do you think you'll manage on your end?"

"I'll catch whoever pulled that stunt and got Mocker's attention in the first place, that's for sure."

"Good to hear. Whoever they are, they put us all in danger. I imagine they'll be dealt with harshly for all the trouble they caused."

"Indeed…" Benham stared up at the ship, his resolve ironclad. He'd figure out what Ren was doing and how to stop it, no matter what. If he didn't, how could he even call himself Guildmaster? That, at least, was for certain.

These past two months had been… interesting for Madoka, to say the least. Ever since her awakening, she'd been nervous to head back into the metaverse. It wasn't a matter of raw strength. From what she could tell, she had power in spades. It was just that the whole place was odd and weird to her, and it made her feel uncomfortable, so she was hesitant to head in at all. Seeing it reminded her of the inside of a witches' labyrinth, which brought back painful memories for her. It didn't help that Kyubey was constantly by her side, only ever opening his mouth at the worst of times. Still, she'd felt a drive to at least try, and especially in the past week or so, she'd seriously attempted to probe at the limits of her power. Because she knew she had the potential to save everyone.

Her persona, Gabriel, had several powers that fell into two broad categories, at least, from what she could tell. The first were powers that were entirely geared towards combat. She could fire out powerful rays of light, directly slow down or weaken targets, and even her physical capabilities were noticeably increased while Gabriel was active. The second, however, was of much greater concern to her. She could, somehow, directly influence the memories and personality of those she targeted, like what happened with Homura and that Nuzleaf merchant. She'd barely managed to gain some control over this ability, and in doing so, she'd learned some of it's limitations. First of all, she couldn't influence mindless beasts. That mostly meant the lesser shadows that had no real personality of their own. Second of all, she couldn't directly change what her target saw and perceived, only how they interpreted it. That limitation, however, was less restrictive than it seemed. Sure, she couldn't just have a person see something, but she could have that person think they were seeing something. That was all the power she really needed in the metaverse, the world of the mind. Inside here, it effectively made her all powerful, so long as she had someone else to influence.

It's all for the sake of saving everyone, Madoka thought. She knew that she'd crossed several ethical lines just to glean this much. She'd already used her own family as guinea pigs in her testing. She'd take them into the metaverse, play around with their memories and cognition to see what she could make them say or do, and then erased all memory of the encounter afterwards. She felt guilty over it, but at this rate, the ends would have to justify the means.

The ends justify the means? She thought. Suddenly, she had a terrible realization. Isn't that exactly Kyubey's attitude? Am I any better than he is? What am I even doing here? Is this okay? …No. I have to keep going, or else I won't be able to save anyone! She pushed down on her doubts as hard as she could, lying there in her bed in the real world. Hang on a minute… Kyubey? Of course. Kyubey. There was never any need to risk someone innocent. I have a perfect guinea pig right here.

"Hey, Kyubey. I'm going back in. Could you come?"

"I was going to come anyway," Kyubey replied. "I have to monitor your progress for the sake of the experiment. Although… haven't you already gone in for the day? Did you forget something important."

"I just had an idea, that's all."

"Alright, what's your idea?"

"It's a secret."

"How irrational. What could you possibly stand to gain by hiding your intentions from me?"

He really doesn't comprehend how I could be a threat to him. In his mind, I don't stand to gain much more than using anyone else. He's wrong, though. "You'll see, Kyubey."

Madoka fished out the meta-nav from it's usual hiding spot, and activated it. The sensation of traveling from the real world to the metaverse and back was something she knew she'd probably never get used to, but it wasn't the end of the world. Now in the metaverse, she turned to Kyubey.

"Can I ask you a few questions?"

"What are your questions, Madoka?"

"What is the purpose of this… experiment?"

"Of course, to observe the interactions between persona users and Magical girls, observe the process of making a persona, and to determine which is a better model."

"Am I correct in assuming that your endgame in all of this would be somehow incorporating this into your whole magical girl scheme?"

"In an ideal world, we could supplant it with this. With the magical girl system, we always have to make direct contact with a prospective magical girl and actually grant a wish. But with this, we can just tamper with their soul ahead of time, let them discover the metaverse, and reap the benefits. No need to formulate some bizarre fantasy, just let them awaken a persona that's built to fail, all on their own, while we barely have to lift a finger. It's almost perfect. We just need to data and insight to make it happen! We'd even get energy we wouldn't otherwise get with the Magical Girl system."

"And have them all fall into despair?"

"Yes."

"And if Igor gets in your way?"

"Why would he? He already agreed to run this experiment, so why would he object after the fact?"

Maybe, if Igor's like the Incubators. But if he's anything like a human, he'll do everything in his power to stop them. "And what about any other objectors?"

"I seriously doubt anyone possibly could stop us. At least, not within our jurisdiction. After all, we hold their souls hostage. What can they possibly do to us then?"

"Holding souls hostage, huh?" With that, Madoka summoned Gabriel and immediately extracted all of Kyubey's memories and emotions… or at least, a normal soul should've had emotions. Madoka knew that Kyubey's wouldn't have any, but it was eerie to see them completely absent from the soul itself, after seeing them in every other soul she'd messed with this way.

"Who… am I?"

Madoka turned back to Kyubey, responding the very same way she'd seen everyone else respond when she tried this. With memories and emotions gone, the only thing they could do was curiously ask who they were and what they were doing. Madoka watched Kyubey curiously investigate himself and his surroundings with a bizarre, childlike wonder. Not wanting Kyubey to try anything funny, she put him to sleep using one of Gabriel's combat abilities and turned back to what she extracted. Souls, as she'd learned, were as bizarrely tangible thing. What stood before her looked like a formless mass of colors chosen at random, which she'd somehow been able to make sense of. She couldn't eradicate all of the memories from existence, but she could just store them in her own soul to stop them from re-awakening later. That's where Homura's memories of her had gone, in fact. She immediately absorbed all of Kyubey's memories into her own soul, which left her with a weird, whitish blob thing, that represented all of the latent potential energy Kyubey had stored. She started by grafting emotions onto it's soul. Individuals had varying kinds of emotional states, and that went on to determine what kind of personality they had. Madoka knew that any significant changes to these emotions could create an essentially unrecognizable person, and yet they seemed to change somewhat over time, only anchored in place by memories. This was the first time, however, that she would get to create an essentially new person from scratch. She was going to go all out. With extreme levels of generosity and kindness, there was no doubt Kyubey would want to assist her. Next were Kyubey's memories. The ones that told him he was from a hive mind race that viewed humans as cattle had to go. Instead, Kyubey would be a guardian spirit, sent down from high to lend Madoka aid in her goals. Madoka spent a while tweaking the details, and almost had fun with it. She imagined her own little fantasy world for Kyubey. Maybe this is how it feels to write a novel. When she was done, she stood back and admired her creation. Then, she inserted it all back into Kyubey, and dismissed Gabriel.

"Rise and shine, Konomi. We've got a lot of work to do."

'Konomi' opened her eyes for the first time, and looked up to Madoka with a smile. "Of course! I'll always be by your side, Madoka!"