Things calm down considerably after the interrogation with Sae actually starts, but Futaba still doesn't move until Morgana nudges her and gestures to the brightening sky outside the window. "We have to get to that meeting at Makoto's place," he reminds her, voice uncharacteristically soft in the early morning air.
Futaba stretches begrudgingly, joints stiff from crouching in one position for hours. She doesn't want to go to the meeting with the rest of the Phantom Thieves. For one thing, it's dangerous for them to stray from their usual routines, and if even one government official spies them all gathering together only hours after their leader's arrest, they'll all be taken into custody. But Akechi seemed to delight at the prospect of pushing their limits, and with their position, they didn't exactly have the option to say no to his demand for a post-infiltration meeting.
After all, he's a government official who successfully spied and gathered information on them for months before finally revealing himself and crashing their entire operation down on their heads. There's not much they could do even if they tried.
She's reluctant to leave her computer and the interrogation camera feed behind, but Akira and Sae look like they're as deep in their discussion as they have been since they'd begun talking hours ago. Futaba trusts him to sway her to their side - all that's left now to get cognitive Akechi out of the picture.
The meeting goes - well, the meeting goes smoothly , with Akechi lecturing them about the arrest and then bulldozing over any possible protests. Futaba grits her teeth but manages to stay silent as he confidently informs them that he'll be the one to save Akira, like he's some sort of white knight rather than a cheerful executioner. Akechi lies through his teeth, masking his intentions with a patient smile, and it makes her want to scream, damn the plan to hell and make him hurt just as much as he's hurt them. She bites her tongue to keep the words back, crushing the fabric of her sleeves in her fists and imagining that it's Akechi's face underneath her hands instead.
There's a collective sigh of relief when the apartment door finally clicks shut behind him. After a few moments, Makoto folds her hands neatly and asks, "Does everyone know the plan?"
Ryuji scowls. "Yeah, and it's stupid."
Yusuke's voice pierces the stiff air, as sharp and calculated as the slice of a katana, "Just because you cannot be trusted to have subtlety does not require the entire plan to be critiqued."
Ryuji leaps to his feet, hands tightening into fists. "Dude, this is Akira we're talking about and you guys won't even let me help!"
"If you are only going to be a liability, then yes, I will heavily object to any help that you claim to provide!"
Enraged, Ryuji opens his mouth to retort, but Ann interrupts with, "Stop it! This is already stressful enough without you all fighting!"
"Ann's right," Makoto interjects before the boys can get a word in edgewise. "It's far from perfect, but we need to be in and out quickly and quietly. The larger the group, the higher the chance that we'll fail." For a breath, she lapses into a tense silence, and then, "Akira will die. Do you understand?"
"Of course I understand!" Ryuji exclaims. "You're the one who doesn't understand! Akira's life is on the line, and you expect me to just sit around and be useless!"
Futaba curls further into herself, tucking her knees underneath her chin and hugging her calves in a vice-grip. If she makes herself small enough, it's like she'll meld into the background, just another piece of furniture as everyone's voices continue to rise into an unrelenting wall of noise.
Ryuji turns to look at the others, desperation written into every line of his body. "Haru! You get me, don't ya? They're leavin' you too!"
Futaba glances up and is startled to meet Haru's eyes, narrowed slightly in concern. At the sound of her name, her head snaps up, and she frowns. "I -" she takes a deep breath, "I wish to help Akira. I need to. He's doing all this for us, and I cannot just leave him when he needs me!"
Ryuji gestures wildly, triumphant. "See! If Akira was here-"
"Akira is not here!" Makoto's voice cracks like a whip, precise and deadly. She surges out of her seat, and Futaba can't help but shy away at the fury on her face. " I am here! As the strategist, that means that I'm the leader right now! What I say goes, and the plan is that Ryuji, Ann, and Haru stay behind!" She glares at the rest of the Phantom Thieves before rounding on Ryuji. "Do you think I like this or something? Do you think I want to be in this position? My only goal is to get Akira out of that room alive, and I will do whatever it takes to make that happen!"
"Mako-chan," Haru starts haltingly, "we're all-"
"Don't," Makoto snaps. "I know we're all trying to help him! I know we all want to do something! This is how we do it! There is no other way! It is this or nothing!" She takes a fortifying breath. "I wish there was time to come up with a better plan, but there isn't. There is no time. We have two hours left until Akechi shoots Akira, and I refuse to spend that time having a pointless argument about it."
The silence that follows her outburst is all-consuming, and it prickles on Futaba's skin like a physical force. She shivers. Ann crosses her arms, brow furrowing. Haru's shoulders hunch inward, and Futaba can see the deepening welts her polished nails are digging into her palms in an effort to appear carefully composed. Ryuji glares daggers at the ground, refusing to look at them all. Futaba would hate to be in their position, helpless in the final stretch to stop Akira's assassination, only able to watch a plan be enacted from afar and hope that everything would swing in their favor.
But she's not in their position and she refuses to be, so when Makoto finally sighs and tells them that it would be best for everyone to leave her apartment in shifts rather than all at once, Futaba is the first to volunteer.
"Make sure you two are at the courthouse at noon, okay?" Makoto instructs as Futaba makes her hasty retreat with Morgana in tow. "I want all of us to enter the Palace as a group." Now that she's not yelling, it's easier for Futaba to see the uncharacteristic exhaustion behind her usual determination, the darkening shadows developing underneath her red eyes and the worried wrinkles that crease into her skin.
Futaba doesn't like to think that she's fleeing, exactly - it's more like she's making a strategic withdrawal to escape the suffocating tension of the room. She's not good with people, with how to manage the delicate cracks in the facades that she's used to. She has more than enough on her plate right now, she thinks, to spend any more brain space worrying about what the others are feeling. Her own tangled emotions are a heavy, confusing weight in her chest, a dull roar in her mind that builds behind her eyes and shortens her breath on the train ride back to Yongen-Jaya, but she pushes that away too. Those are for later, when she doesn't have a murder plot hanging over their heads.
It's déjà vu to slip back into Sojiro's house, already prepared to hunch back down in her room and resume obsessively watching over the silent footage of the interrogation, but she's barely stepped over the threshold before she screeches to a halt. Only half-illuminated by the morning light streaming through the kitchen window, Sojiro stares her down with crossed arms and deadpan expression. "Futaba," he start, voice infuriatingly evenly.
She rocks back on her heels uneasily, and Morgana makes a noise of concern from her bag. "Hi, Dad," she hedges, desperate to get past him even as she stays rooted to the spot. "Shouldn't you be at Leblanc right now?"
Sojiro's gaze snaps to Morgana before sliding back to pin her in place. "There was a lull in customers," which Futaba takes to mean there have been no customers, but she bites her tongue to stop herself from making a quip, "so I thought I would come see you, seeing as you got home after I went to bed and left this morning without having any breakfast." He nods at her bag. "And you have the cat with you, which means he's not with Akira, who, funnily enough, was also not around when I went to open up the café. I thought you might know something about that."
Futaba opens and closes her mouth uselessly. Sojiro takes a step forward, his usual slouch loose and nonthreatening, but she can't help but fidget nervously as he looms closer. "The news said the leader of the Phantom Thieves had been caught," he clarifies, more gentle.
Futaba wraps her arms around herself. "Yeah," she admits, and then the words begin to spill out of her in a mess. "He was. It was - I mean - I - we have e-everything under control, so d-don't worry, it's all gonna be o-okay."
The footsteps get louder, closer, and Futaba tenses in nervous anticipation before she feels a heavy, familiar presence around her, gathering her in a tight hug. Futaba relaxes into Sojiro's hold and buries her face into his pink apron as he pats her hair awkwardly. It's not particularly comfortable, with Sojiro's bony joints poking into her back and his height forcing him into an unnatural bend over her, but he's safe and warm and Futaba wants to stay there forever, away from the plan and the interrogation and the fact that she's all that stands between Akira and certain, unavoidable, insta-kill death.
She doesn't cry, because she can't, she doesn't have the time or the energy to expend on bursting into tears, but she squeezes her eyes shut and lets herself block it away for a few precious moments.
Eventually, Sojiro says, "Tell me what happened and what I need to do to stop it."
Futaba swallows and pulls away. She fiddles with the sleeves of her shirt to avoid looking at Sojiro. She misses the hug. "I - I can't," she gets out. He opens his mouth to protest, and she rushes to add, "I promise there's a reason, and I'll - we'll - be able to explain it soon, but right now, there's just a lot going on. It's complicated and there's a plan, and I just," she trails off in uncertainty, voice stuck traitorously in her throat. "We have - we have it under control." She meets his eyes and almost crumbles in the face of his open concern that borders just on the edge of righteous, protective anger. "Please trust me, Dad," she whispers. "Just for a little bit longer."
He sighs. "All of this, the cognitive whatever that you two are involved with - it's beyond me. Both of you know that. I want to believe you, but Akira's in custody right now. Here, in the real world. I can actually help you kids with this."
No, you can't, she almost bites out, desperation burning into anger. Instead, she says, "You can help by going back to Leblanc. We think we're being watched, and if we break routine now, everyone will know and this will all be for - it'll all be for nothing and it won't work."
"You're being watched?"
"It's complicated. Please don't ask. I need to get back to my room." Her eyes are big and pleading. Every moment she spends away from those camera feeds is another that claws deeper inside her, unanswered questions and growing anxiety gnawing on her mind. "Please, Sojiro."
His gaze searches her face for what feels like an eternity. She wishes she knew whatever it had been that he'd found when he finally acquiesces. "Fine. I need you to get him out of there in one piece, and if you say you can do that, well," he pauses, "I trust you, Futaba."
The smile on her face is small but genuine. "Thanks, Dad. But, um," she stops, unsure, and then barrels on past the roiling reproach the idea wells within her, "could you call Dr. Takemi for us in a few hours?"
She's grateful that he doesn't ask questions beyond a worried jump of his eyebrows. "Sure," Sojiro grunts. He steps aside so that he's no longer blocking the hallway. "Do what you need to do."
"Thanks," she says, the words half a breath, and moves to bolt past him. She stops, and before she can convince herself out of it, throws her arms around him again in a tight, frantic hug. She untangles herself before he can properly respond, and within the next moment, slams the door to her room behind her in her haste to jump to her computer chair.
Morgana leaps gracefully out of her bag to settle on the desk, and she ignores his worried look as her hands flash across the keyboard in order to pull up the cameras. The crash of relief when she sees Sae and Akira in the same position as they were when she'd left is overwhelming, and she allows herself a moment to simply stare, drinking in their pixelated forms.
It's like those old movies that she and her mom used to watch, where everyone was silent and monochrome. Her imagination has to fill in the blanks, try and figure out the flow of conversation from the dregs of context. Here, there's no overacting, no desperate movements of actors trying to convey their emotional state for a petty scene. There's only Sae sliding the copy of a calling card across the steel table so that Akira can see it better from his exhausted hunch opposite her. His mouth is still moving in a steady stream of words, but Futaba can see the way that his fingers dig grooves into the skin of his cheek in his determined effort to keep his head propped up and alert. Is he fighting through the haze of drugs, even now? Is sleep deprivation catching up with him? Is he even mentally coherent enough to give a clear testimony? She'd considered it last night, but she'd trusted him to keep his usual steady presence. What if he couldn't even do that? All of Futaba's work wouldn't matter if Akira wasn't able to convince Sae in the first place!
There's still one more major step, and she has nothing to contribute to it. She's not strong enough to take down Akechi's cognition, and Morgana, Yusuke, and Makoto know the way down to the interrogation room just as well as she does. At least on Palace runs, she's able to guide the rest of the Thieves and provide aid in their battles. In Sae's hyper-realistic cognition of the Tokyo police station, she won't be able to even give them any supplemental energy.
That's the thing about being solely the team navigator, she's found. Her abilities are too passive to do anything but assist from afar, so she hides away from the danger of fighting. Without access to Prometheus, she'll have to rely solely on the others. She'd trust them with her life, but the idea still terrifies her.
Sae looks like she's getting heated on screen, and there's steel in Akira's answering expression. Futaba's gaze searches him, fascinated. She's been getting better since her heart was changed, but she still freezes up in crowds, still would rather curl inward rather than face the larger world. It was the Phantom Thieves who were helping her get better. It was Akira who was teaching her how to be brave.
If he could do it, then so could she.
"You okay, Futaba?" Morgana asks. "We still have some time before we have to leave. Do you want to rest for a bit?"
Futaba waves off Morgana's regular bedtime needling and instead turns her attention to her second monitor, blank and waiting. Without her hacking skills, they wouldn't be able to pull off any part of their plan, but right now, there's still one more thing for her to do. More than anything, this is a gamble, a hope and a prayer that the security guards won't bother to corroborate the surveillance footage with the people actually interacting with the interrogation room. There are the cameras inside Akira's room, but much more dangerous are the ones outside it.
Futaba boots up the monitor impatiently. Hacking into the hallway cameras is child's play, and she barely spares a moment to flip between them. The police had only assigned one guard to stand outside the door. She stops, waiting for him to blink, shift, do absolutely anything to show signs of human life. He adjusts his posture, stretching slightly in a way that's just generic enough to be repeated, and she captures the footage immediately, putting the cameras on a loop. There. Now no one will be able to tell who was leaving or entering the room, for at least until the time that Futaba changed it back.
Akechi should be thanking her. By giving Sae and Akira a clean getaway, she's saving his skin too. The thought of it makes Futaba's blood boil.
Futaba isn't sure how long it's been when Morgana finally says, "If we don't leave now, we'll be late."
She gives the camera footage of the interrogation room one last regretful look, catching a last glimpse of the final moments of Akira and Sae's discussion. She takes a fortifying breath and then loops that camera too, hiding away any future evidence of his rescue away. They wouldn't be able to fake Akira's death forever, but they just need to buy enough time to throw Akechi off their trail and uncover the rest of the conspiracy that wanted the Phantom Thieves destroyed.
Morgana prods Futaba's arm. She sets a fifty-minute timer on her laptop before stuffing it in her bag, and leaves her house in a whirlwind to end the threat to Akira's life once and for all.
Yusuke and Makoto are already waiting at the courthouse, deep in discussion, when Futaba arrives in a harried mess, bag bouncing on her shoulder and out of breath from running. They cut themselves off when she catches up to them. "There you two are!" Makoto exclaims, relieved, while Yusuke frowns, head dipping slightly. "I was beginning to get worried."
Futaba bounces on the balls of her feet, and Morgana says, "We're here now though, aren't we?"
"Correct," Yusuke says, tucking one lock of dark hair behind his ear in a single elegant motion. He still has his school bag with him, the old fabric speckled with iridescent splatters of paint. "Now that we have all gathered together, I think that it would be for the better for us to continue this discussion within the realms of Niijima-san's cognition."
"Right." Makoto nods and whips her phone out, opening the MetaNav's search history in concise movements. "Is everyone prepared?" she asks, and does not wait for an answer before Futaba feels the familiar pull of the Metaverse upon her. The cloying atmosphere is an unnatural pressure against her soul in the brief moments that she's stranded between the two dimensions before leaving the comforting trappings of reality behind completely. The vertigo of travelling through dimensions fades quickly, the spike of a headache dissipating mere moments after it appeared. Futaba has enough practice traversing between reality and the Metaverse for the process to no longer bother her, but it's still weird to appear in a place exactly to the one that she had just left, if completely devoid of another living soul.
Sae's mental cognition of the world around her is eerily accurate, clinical in its absolute attention to detail. It's perfect for their operation. For Futaba, who knows what it is like to misconstrue the world around yourself in such a way that it warps your very soul, Sae's cognition is just creepy. Without Morgana's newly-appeared Metaverse form and the flaring lights of the casino in the distance, Futaba could trick herself into thinking that they'd never left reality at all. Her laptop is a comforting weight in her bag, the last grasp of control over this place that she has.
Futaba says, "If everything keeps going according to plan, we should have a little more than half an hour before Akechi gets here."
"Then let us begin." Yusuke's voice is grave, and Makoto nods. Morgana leaps in the air with cartoonish anticipation, and as a group, they approach the police station.
In the past few weeks, Futaba has travelled down to the interrogation room multiple times with the others. The trips were routine, side-quests to figure out exact dimensions and find possible areas of distortion fluctuations. Makoto had used Futaba's hacking program to get the blueprints of the underground levels of the building in order to create a comprehensive map of the area. Using that information, Futaba had spent two hours down here last Saturday with Akira and Yusuke to help figure out the correct timings for when the app should activate after it was in Sae's possession and how far away would be safe for her to stop without accidentally becoming witness to Akechi committing murder.
She and the others know the police building like the back of their hands, and it doesn't take long for the four of them to take the long elevator ride to the bottom floor - a depressing, sound-proof place meant for the police to hide their worst crimes away from the rest of the world. There are few rooms down here, absurdly high-security as an attempt to keep the most hardened criminal suspects contained. Far away from the warmth of the sun, the solid concrete hallways are chilling, squeezing any signs of life away. Despite how familiar Futaba is with the area, it still makes her shudder.
Thankfully, the cognitive guard outside the interrogation room does not notice their presence, continuing the idle animation that Sae must have imagined the guard to have. Futaba, Makoto, Yusuke, and Morgana gather in a cluster at the bend of the hallway. Makoto points at the elevator behind them. "Okay," she whispers, soft voice unnecessary but strangely appropriate. "So, the real Akechi will exit the elevator, but Sis won't realize he's there until he actually rounds the corner and enters her line of sight. That means his cognition should first appear," she gestures to an area of the floor a meter away from the group at the junction where the two halls meet, "there."
"Up until Oracle's bug activates the MetaNav, cognitive Akechi should be copying everything that the Akechi in reality is doing," Morgana adds. "But it'll stop that once we interact with it, because dealing with us in the Metaverse has nothing to do with what Sae thinks Akechi is doing in reality."
"I've programmed the app to send Akechi and Sae into the Metaverse ten seconds after their GPSs align," says Futaba. "Will that be enough time?"
"That window is narrow, but it should work." A small frown pulls at Makoto's lips. "The only thing we need to make sure of is that cognitive Akechi is out of sight by the time Sis and the real Akechi enter the Metaverse."
Yusuke hums, thoughtful. "I would suggest transporting the cognition to another floor to ensure that neither party encounters it after the assassination." He glances at the elevator, eyes narrowed. "If we are to trust the layout of this building, I imagine that Floor B-3 would best suit our requirements for containment."
"I think you're right," Makoto agrees. "Floor B-3 is just offices, so Akechi won't have any reason to stop there."
"Indeed," says Yusuke. "I have no doubt that he would prioritize making a hasty retreat rather than risk being observed by any potential witnesses."
Makoto squares her shoulders. "My plan is that Oracle and Mona should stay by the elevator and keep the doors open. Fox and I will wait right here so that we can grab the cognitive Akechi as soon as it appears. We need to be out of here well before Sis and the real Akechi can see us, so we'll have to move fast to be off this floor before the MetaNav activates." Her gaze sweeps over them, their little ragtag strike team. "Does everyone understand?"
Futaba clenches her fists and sets her jaw, determined. There's a round of nods, matching expressions of righteous conviction. "Okay then," Makoto says. "Let's go."
The four of them split, with Yusuke and Makoto leaving to flank the entrance of the hallway while Morgana and Futaba retreat to guard the elevator. The doors open with a chime, too loud in the silent basement, and Futaba winces. She and Morgana share a look before taking opposite sides of the entrance. Futaba leans against the frame, using her weight to stop the elevator doors from automatically closing, before slowly sliding down it to sit on the floor, the cool metal seeping through the back of her jacket. It doesn't take long for her to wrestle her laptop out of her bag, and she opens it eagerly to see the timer still going. The internet may not work in the Metaverse, sure, but that didn't stop her programs from running.
"He should be getting here in thirteen minutes!" she calls out to the others, reading aloud from the steadily ticking numbers on her screen. She thinks she hears someone reply with an affirmative, but she's already engrossed with her computer, fingers flitting across the keyboard as she runs analytics. So far, Sae's palace is responding to their expectations exactly as planned, but it never hurt to check her own calculations for the thirty-second time over. After weeks of preparation, the last few minutes seem to drag on, a melancholic eternity.
For a long time, no one speaks. The silence is only broken by the sound of rapid typing. The stillness makes Futaba's skin crawl the few time that she brings herself to glance up at the others, statuesque as they wait. It's weird to see them like this, with such a single-minded patience, readily coiled and waiting to strike. Even Yusuke and Morgana have stopped their regular fidgeting. It's creepy to see them all like this, Futaba thinks, even more so than the stone-cold hallway and eerie interrogation room that prickles the back of her neck.
She can understand the sobering force that grounds them. One click from their phones, and they could all leave the Metaverse into reality and plunge right into the thick of the action. Akira is right there. They could stop this all from happening. They could rescue him in the real world, burst into reality and break Akira out of the interrogation room instead of lying in wait for an apparition of his murderer to appear in a mirror dimension.
They could do that, like knights in shining armor, and ruin the plan completely. They would lose their edge over Akechi, and then all of their lives would be on the line. This would all be for nothing.
Futaba takes a deep breath, fingers stilling over her laptop. She watches the timer on her laptop tick down, a steady stream of numbers. The text spills over, and she announces, "He should be here in less than a minute."
"Acknowledged," Makoto says, and Yusuke tilts his head, eyes not leaving the spot where the cognitive Akechi is set to appear.
Morgana bounces again, the end of his yellow bandana whipping with how fast he turns to look at Futaba. "Get up!" he urges. "You have to be ready!"
Futaba wants to snap something, words barbed and sarcastic, but instead she just scrambles to her feet, shutting down her laptop with a clatter and shoving it unceremoniously into her satchel. She mirrors Morgana, keeping a hand latched onto the door frame, one foot inside the elevator and the other in the hallway, ready to dash in either direction. The seconds slide by, one after another in a steady march. Mentally counting down, the only thing that she can hear is her own rabbiting heartbeat, body too tightly-wound to even take a full breath.
Like the flip of a camera shutter, everything changes.
Cognitive Akechi blinks into existence, dressed in Akechi's signature uniform and with a placid smile already in place. It's mid-step, posture relaxed as its hand begins to raise in a wave to Sae. It's an identical copy of the real person, down to the perfectly faked mannerisms.
Futaba isn't given much time to dwell on it.
Between one breath and the next, Yusuke has lunged towards the cognition, viper-like as he springs forward. He slaps one hand across its mouth and wraps his other around its torso, pinning the cognition's arms down and cutting off any means to escape. The cognition reacts immediately, pulled away from Sae's vision and beginning to flail desperately in Yusuke's grip as it gets dragged back towards the elevator. Its hand tightens around the handle of its briefcase, like it's prepared to use the narrow angle to hit back and try to free itself, but Makoto notices the movement before Futaba can shout a warning. Makoto snatches its wrist, keeping perfect pace with Yusuke, and twists it harshly until it's forced to let go of the impromptu weapon. She catches the briefcase before it can hit the ground, soundless.
The three of them hurtle past Futaba and Morgana to slam into the back of the elevator. "B-3, now!" Makoto orders, tone frantic. Futaba jolts into action, punching the button on the elevator panel before repeatedly jabbing her finger against the 'close door' symbol. Still, it feels like an eternity before the doors finally slide shut. The Phantom Thieves let out a collective sigh of relief as the elevator whisks them away from the interrogation rooms. Akechi's cognition continues to struggle haplessly, and finally removed from the immediate danger, Yusuke releases it from his hold. It breaks away from him with a strangled gasp, chest heaving, before turning its enraged scarlet gaze on the rest of them.
"Where are you all taking me?" the cognition hisses. Its eyes land on Makoto. "Niijima?" it asks, shock flaring across its expression before settling back into anger. It takes a step forward, drawing to its full height. "What do you think you're doing?" it demands, trying its best to tower over her. Embarrassingly, Futaba finds herself shrinking back from the ghost of a threat. The elevator feels too cramped, the five of them completely enclosed as they travel upwards.
Makoto scowls, standing her ground. "You couldn't even begin to understand," she spits.
The cognition takes another slinking step forward, predatory, and why did Sae think of Akechi like this what changed what had happened in the interrogation room when Futaba wasn't looking snarls at Makoto. "Try me."
"Try me?" Makoto barks a humorless laugh. Her knuckles are white around the handle of the captured briefcase, and her other hand is balling into a painfully tight fist. Fury emanates from her like the volcanic core of a nuclear blast, red eyes blazing with loathing. "You arrogant asshole, why don't you try this!"
Makoto's fist blurs through the air, the punch too fast for Futaba's eyes to track. The cognition crumbles, knees buckling as it crashes into the elevator wall with the force of her hit. Morgana barely scrambles out of the way as it slumps ungracefully to the floor, tawny hair flopping over its face and hiding the blossoming bruise on Akechi's sharp features from view.
Makoto flushes, shaking out her hand frantically. "Oh, I didn't-"
Yusuke makes a disgruntled noise and frames the cognition's unconscious form between his hands. He closes one eye to center the image better. "Actually, Makoto," he muses, "I believe that this appearance is an exceeding improvement upon its former façade."
Morgana snorts. "Yeah, no kidding!"
The giggle bubbles out of Futaba before she can stop it, the mounting stress of the past day crescendoing into open laughter. Makoto finally cracks a smile and nudges the cognition with her foot, still dead to the world. Her grin turns more mischievous. "Akechi does look better like this, doesn't he?" She adds, "To be honest, I've wanted to do that for a long time."
Futaba clutches at her side, still snickering. "And I've been wanting to watch you do that for a long time! Holy cow, Queen, is he completely out?"
"I think so!" Morgana exclaims.
"Your extensive workouts have proven to be a roaring success," Yusuke says. "Please consider me honored to witness you employ those skills to their fullest potential."
Futaba laughs, but the pleasant ding of the elevator arriving at their destination stops her from saying anything. The elevator doors glide open to reveal an empty office space, shrouded with darkness and the inherent, eerie stillness of abandonment. Makoto sighs, wiping her wrist against her forehead as she looks down at the knocked out cognition. "Fox, could you-?"
She trails off, handing Akechi's briefcase to Futaba. She circles around to the cognition's right side, stooping down to throw its arm around her shoulder. Yusuke mirrors her on its left, and together, they heave it upright. The cognition's head lolls lazily onto Yusuke's shoulder, feet dragging against the ground as they prop him up. It looks like a broken doll draped haphazardly between the two of them as the group searches for a place to drop off its comatose body.
Yusuke was right, Futaba thinks. Completely defeated is a good look on Akechi. She can't wait to mirror it in reality.
It doesn't take long for them to find a desolated corner to dump the cognition. It's still appropriately unconscious. If everything goes according to plan, it won't wake up and try to find help within the next two minutes, or at least until the real Akechi leaves the Metaverse.
Remembering their time limit is sobering, and Makoto all but shoves the Phantom Thieves back to the exit. They need to completely out of sight by the time Akechi reappears, and after that, it'll be up to Sae to finish the plan that they'd started and get Akira to safety.
Once they've moved far enough away from Sae's perception of the police station, Yusuke opens his phone to transport them to reality. There's still so much left to do, so many factors dreadfully outside of her control, but Futaba can't help but smile. "We did it," she whispers, awestruck.
"Yeah," Morgana replies, his smile genuine. "We did."