Knock knock knock. "Futaba? I can hear you're not asleep."

The geek opened the door, wrapped in a coverlet like a mummy. "I am not asleep because you kept knocking on my door for God knows how long."

"It's important. Can I get in?"

Groaning in irritation, Futaba moved out of the way, and Akechi entered the room. Both of them sat down, one on her bed and one on the chair. "What do you want?"

"To everyone's chagrin, Shido remains popular," he started. "Changing his heart wasn't enough, so I want to try something else."

"…go on."

"He rents an office in the city center, and keeps most of his documents there. I want to search them for kompromats."

"And - yawn - there's some security in the way, correct?"

"Correct. I think I can deal with the lock on the door of the office itself, but the building entrance has a card reader I want to bypass."

"Model? Installation year? Any details to help me?"

"Um, it said Ohrannik on the keypad. It looked a few years old…"

"Gimme your phone."

Akechi pulled out his smartphone and gave it to her, as she unraveled her cocoon a tiny bit to free her hand. "You don't have a card in it," she said, tapping through menus to check something.

"I had to throw it away. I didn't want to be tracked by the authorities," he explained. "By the way, the battery's dying and I don't have a charger. Could you please…"

"Get off the chair." Akechi did as ordered and watched as the girl sat by her laptop, unplugged her phone, and plugged his. She then looked up the security company's name. "The company was closed in the late 2000s. An old system, and probably not connected to any external network. I can't just control it remotely."

"What can you do?"

"Is there a cafe, a diner, or something like that nearby?" she asked, opening a browser and looking up some electronic parts and adding them to the cart. "A place where the workers would go for breaks."

"There's a small cafe on the ground floor."

"Perfect." She grinned. "There will be two obstacles. One is the fact that someone will need to spend half a day in that cafe, and the other," she pointed at the 'Total' amount on the screen, "is the price tag on the equipment. Both for getting inside and for copying things wholesale from any computer you might find inside."

"Hm…" Akechi rubbed his chin, "I'll manage." He pulled out a note block. "Can I note that list down? I'll look around Akihabara for those, so we won't have to wait for shipping."

"Yeah, sure." Futaba glanced at the detective and realized something's off. "…are you smiling?"

"Huh?"

"You are, well, were smiling," she repeated. "And it wasn't a psychotic sentai villain smile, or a smug prick smile, or a forced smile like you do in public. You looked… genuinely happy."

"I… did?" he put his hand behind his head. "That's a new one." He hastily scribbled the list down and put the note block back in his pocket. "Alright, you probably want to return to sleep. I'll leave you alone. Thank you for your assistance."

He retreated from the room, leaving the girl alone with his charging phone. Futaba glanced at the 52% in the upper left corner.

"Haru?"

Haru turned around, startled, and relaxed after noticing it was just Makoto. "Please don't sneak up on me like that."

"Sorry." She looked at the plants the rich girl was tending to. "I am impressed, you managed to get plants to grow on a Tokyo rooftop in early December."

"I guess I'm a great gardener." She smiled sheepishly. "Though prototype seeds from Okumura Foods certainly helped."

"Feeling better than yesterday?"

"Yes. Sugimura sent me a formal apology letter. It burned nicely." Haru marched to the rooftop door, and leaned against them. "Since you are here, can we discuss… our intern?"

Makoto needed a second to process the euphemism. "I understand you're… disappointed with his performance, but I believe allowing him to stay is the right thing to do."

"We should turn him over to authorities."

"You know what the police has done to… our director." Makoto glanced nervously at the door, as if wanting to see through them and the other girl. "I wouldn't wish that to anyone."

"And they've done it to him because the intern betrayed him," Haru growled. "He betrayed all of us."

"And we're better than him, aren't we?" Makoto replied. "I understand your reservations, but unfortunately any other alternative would mean either leaving him unattended or leaving him to die."

"And the latter outcome is bad because…"

Makoto felt like someone dumped a cold bucket of water on her. "Haru… that's messed up."

"You know what's messed up?" Haru glared at her. "Being robbed of an opportunity to see my father be a better person because he was murdered in cold blood by a sociopathic manchild with daddy issues!"

"Too loud!" Makoto hissed, then glanced at her phone. "The break's almost over. Can we get back to this conversation after class?"

"I have plans for the afternoon."

"Evening then?"

"I'll see. For now, adieu." Haru politely nodded, then left the rooftop.

Makoto pulled out her cellphone. Good news and bad news.

Whatshisname pissed off, but she's bitter about Akechi, Joker accurately guessed.

Can you blame her?

Of course not. I know asking you all (but her and Futaba in particular) to tolerate him is a really tall order. But what else can we do?

[shrug] Could you give her a call after class? You know, to show her she's not alone.

Can do. By the way, I remember you taking driving lessons. How did that go?

"Joker?"

He put away his cell phone. "Hm?"

"When doing yesterday's laundry, I've noticed… things missing from my jacket."

"What things?"

Akechi looked elsewhere. "Things that would get you in massive trouble if they found them on you."

"Like, say, handgun ammo?"

Sigh. "And a suppressor."

"Yeah, we searched you after getting out of Shido's Palace and confiscated anything you could use in the real world. Sorry for that."

"Can I borrow your glasses for a moment?" Joker obliged, and Akechi put them on and ruffled his hair. "Oh jeez, I am apologetic over having to disarm you, it's not like you had attempted to commit murder-suicide a moment prior." In case he didn't get the point, he added "That's you. This is how you sound right now."

"Hey, I can do that too." With a smirk, Joker reached into his pocket, and pulled out a pair of black leather gloves. He put them on and stroked his chin. "Hmmm, this group of vigilantes has targeted my supervillain dad, who I want to crash and burn. That's a perfect moment to attack them." He put on a fake grin. "Ooh, maybe we'll all kill each other!"

"Seriously though, what was your endgame?" Morgana raised his head. "What did you hope to achieve?"

"I…" Akechi paused, mincing his words, "I don't think I wanted to achieve something. At that point, it was just a suicidal temper tantrum. My way or the highway."

"And 'your way' was: step 1, help Shido by murdering the opposition, step 2, take Shido down," Joker weighed in. "Sounds like too many steps to me."

"It was… supposed to be grand," the detective rose from his seat. "To take him down at the peak of his power, and show the society what their saviour really is like!" A pause, as he slumped back down, staring intently at the floor. "That sounded… less ridiculous one realization ago." He glanced at Joker. "Are you guys positive you don't want to kill me after all?"

"Yes, and I'll throw Morgana at you if you ask again."

"While we're on topic of bad plans," the cat piped up, "I gotta ask: why do you think Shido's office will have any incriminating documents inside? If I were a head of a country-wide conspiracy - or do anything illegal, really - I wouldn't have any proof put to paper."

"Fair point, but let me reply with a question: if you were to fake someone's suicide, would you not even bother to check if there's a corpse in the morgue?" Akechi tented his fingers, "Shido is unbelievably careless, and the only reason it didn't catch up to him earlier is because an even bigger fool was cleaning up his loose ends."

"Wait, there's another assassin?" Joker raised an eyebrow.

"Um, no. I meant me. There weren't any others."

Cue disbelieving stares from the brunette and the cat. "Let me get this straight:" Morgana said, "the entire conspiracy hinged on you, a single guy, doing the dirty work?"

"A single guy with a massive chip on his shoulder about the leader of said conspiracy," Joker added.

Akechi nodded.

"I take everything back," Morgana rolled his eyes. "He's stupid enough to have a signed confession in his desk drawer or something."

"Anyway," Akechi turned to Joker and pulled out a note block from his pocket, "Futaba prepared us a shopping list for the infiltration. Gathering all the parts might end up taking more time than a trip to and from Mementos. I should probably go incognito."

The brunette glanced at the detective, still wearing his glasses and with his hair ruffled, and something clicked in his head. Without a word, he got up and trotted to his room, and returned after a moment with a spare zip-up hoodie. He gave it to Akechi, who put it on over his undershirt. "Whatcha think?" Joker asked Morgana.

"This… might work," the cat replied. "You always appear in public in that suit of yours, people probably won't recognize you if you're out of it," he said to Akechi. "The glasses help too."

"And if someone gets suspicious, just change your voice or something," Joker added.

Akechi ahemed. "Who, me?" he said, his voice an octave deeper, "Ya, folks keep tellin' me I look like that bundle a' sticks from the telly. I cannae see that meself."

Chef's kiss. "Perfect." Joker's phone beeped. He picked it up and glanced at the screen. "Yusuke wants to drop by after school, is that okay with everyone?"

"We'll be out shopping," Akechi remarked. "Ask Futaba."

Sometimes, a change of surroundings might be able to improve your productivity. Which is why I sometimes go to a cafe to write this stuff, and why Yusuke had hauled his easel and other art supplies all the way to Ōta.

"Whatcha painting, Inari?" Futaba popped from behind him.

"The sunset over the city," he replied. "The colours outside are gorgeous."

"Yeah, they look cool."

A period of awkward silence followed. Yusuke put down the paintbrush. "Do you… want anything?"

"Well… I hunger," she said. "We could order takeaway, but maybe you can cook something. Joker and Akechi bought some grub before leaving."

The idea of food that he didn't have to pay for (leaving more cash for art supplies) was appealing. He walked to the kitchenette and inspected the cupboard and the fridge. A package of coarse sausages caught his eye. "Well, I could fry some," he read the label, "kielbasa, and serve with with rice on the side. How does that sound?"

"Witcher food!"

Taking that as a yes, Yusuke poured three cups of water into a small pot, put it on the stovetop, and went to cut sausages into slices, when Futaba piped up:

"What was the name of that guy that was training you?"

He put the knife away, mid-slice, expecting a heavy question to follow. "Ichiryuusai Madarame."

"If he…"Futaba looked elsewhere, "if he approached you on the street and told you he regrets everything and wants to say sorry, what would you do?"

There it is. "It's… complicated." He turned to her. "I want to believe that there's a sliver of goodness left in him, but the truth of the matter is, he is responsible for both my mother's death and my personal… quirks…" At that exact moment, he realized why could she possibly be asking that question. "…but it isn't about him, is it?"

"Wow, you read me like a PDF," she smiled, weakly. "Yes, it's actually about that little rootkit sharing a flat with me." Inhale. "It was easy to hate him when he's talking about killing Joker, or hamming it up in Shido's Palace, but when you live with him… he's, well, rather affable."

"That could be a facade," Yusuke pointed out. "He has a lot of experience in faking affability."

"I know, but…" the girl looked down, "that facade reminds me a bit of how I used to be."

"Does it?"

"Okay, it's mostly his suicidal ideation. That belief that you should just curl up and die."

"Hm…" the boy muttered. "Considering what we witnessed in Shido's Palace, it might be genuine after all. Where is he now, by the way?"

An impish grin appeared on Futaba's face. "Come to my battlestation, I'll show you."

The two marched to the girl's bedroom, and she sat down by her laptop. She clicked on the A-looking protractor icon on the taskbar and opened an IDE.

"It's a small app I've been working on," she explained, trying to use simple words. "It's supposed to do two things: send and receive encrypted messages between the Phantom Thieves, and quietly track the position of a specific cell phone." She launched the emulator. "For now, I'm testing it on Joker's phone, since Akechi doesn't have a SIM card yet, but they're staying together for now, so…" She poked the blue dot on the map. "They're in Akiha, doing some shopping for me."

"Shopping for what?"

"Well, Akechi wants to stealthily get inside Shido's office…"

"Let's check what we have already:" Joker pulled out the shopping list, "Card reader?"

Akechi glanced into the bag and nodded.

"Coil?"

Nod.

"Microcontroller?"

Nod.

"Battery pack?"

Nod.

"SSD?"

Nod.

"SIM card for you?"

Akechi shook his head.

"Okay, we'll get that in a moment." Joker pulled out his phone. "I forgot I was supposed to give Haru a call." He found her on the contact list and tapped her name.

"The number you're trying to reach is currently unavailable."

When you take away a Palace owner's Treasure, the place ceases to exist. Conversely, if it stays within the borders of the Palace, the place remains standing.

And as it turned out, in the latter case the Palace persists in some form even if the domain holder has a change of heart on their own.

A small room, tucked somewhere in the corner of consciousness. In it, two chairs and a table. On the table, a handgun, with two bullets missing. A few days before, a group stopped by and left two spare magazines and a suppressor next to it.

A person entered the room. With a shaking hand, they took the gun from the table and inspected it. After some fumbling, they managed to swap the magazine for a full one, but the suppressor just didn't want to stick to the barrel, so they didn't attach it, and just put it in their pocket, next to the handgun. Then, they hastily left the building, and then the Metaverse.

The phone picked up the signal and beeped a few times. They glanced at the screen. An SMS about two missed calls from Joker, and a message from Futaba in the Thieves' group chat. Haru tapped the latter notification.

Hey all, I have an app I want you to install. [link]