The wardens and the new guest materialized in front of Igor's desk. "Welcome," he said, "to my Velve-"

"Guys! You're alive!" Goro marched around the room, as if to check that all the others behind bars aren't just cardboard cutouts.

"…have you been crying?" Haru asked.

"Of course I was fucking crying!" he replied, "You've disappeared in front of my eyes, convinced I had betrayed you again!" Beat, as he tried to regain composure. "Sorry, I-I-I shouldn't have screamed at you."

"Yes," Igor attempted to steer the conversation back on track, "and I wan-"

"Don't worry, we're all on edge," Ryuji spoke up. He looked at the detective's puffy eyes and still-moist face. "…we really shouldn't have assumed the worst about you, huh?"

The detective turned to him. "I-i-it's fine," he said, attempting to sound reassuring, "I-I can s-see why you'd jump to that conclusion."

"It was based on one sentence from the being behind this whole mess," Makoto countered.

"Which was-"

"A-and me very pointedly not dissolving into thin air," the detective interrupted Igor.

"There could've been other reasons for that. You're a celebrity, you've got media presence on your own."

"And you also joined late," Ann added, "and not without hang-ups between you and others. I mean, I know it's impolite to bring that up, but that could also be a factor."

Goro turned to her. "Don't worry about that, I deserve whatever's-"

"We talked about this, Rootkit! Repeatedly!"

"We did not talk, you just sic-"

"I am trying-"

The detective turned on a dime towards Igor. "Don't fucking interrupt me, Grail!"

A moment of silence followed, as everyone was startled by the sudden change of volume, and then the tengu-like man said "…why does everyone assume-"

"You sound identical!" Joker shouted from his cell.

"Let us move back to the main point," Justine faced the detective. "Mr Akechi, the inmates here claim you're aligned with them. Is that true?"

Goro gave the warden a weird stare and opened his mouth.

"No sarcasm!" Makoto shouted. The detective turned to her and she elaborated: "If they can gain something by misinterpreting an obvious joke, they will."

He nodded and faced Justine again. "Yes. As of…" he counted on his fingers, "six or seven days - boy, what a week - we're unquestionably on the same side."

"Do you believe that to be the case," Igor piped in, "even after they were informed of your role in the current events?"

"Yes!" the brunette butted in again.

Goro raised an eyebrow. "A-and what was my role in that?"

"I've already told you, the day you were granted your powers."

"You… you did?" The detective tried to focus. "M-maybe? I don't remember. It's a blur…"

"Persona awakenings aren't pleasant experiences, to put it mildly," Yusuke pointed out. "Even with the generous assumption that the Grail isn't deceiving us, you could simply not register its alleged explanation."

Igor sighed. "I will reiterate then: you were chosen by me to cause chaos and oppose the Trickster - that is to say, the inmate over there. And you've succeeded at that with flying colours."

"I… see…" In the mixture of emotions bubbling inside the detective, an unspecified kind of anger began to surface. His Metaverse wetwork was a mistake, yes, but it was his mistake, based on his decisions. The idea that he was just a pawn of some higher power felt, for lack of a better word, insulting. "But… I didn't succeed. They stopped me. I've helped them by getting the kompromats on Shido. I'm willing to sacrifice myself for his cause, that has to count for something."

Cue yet another irritating chuckle. "Too little, too late, detective. You surely cannot believe you will be able to repair the damages caused by you and your father. The people of Japan, even after presented with unquestionable evidence of his corruption, are too apathetic to dare and change their fate."

"It really feels like they should've reacted to that, though," Makoto rubbed her chin. "People lost their careers for less, didn't they?"

"Yeah, there was the case of Toranosuke Yoshida twenty years ago," Joker piped up. "He was involved in an embezzlement scandal that tanked his political career, but recently it was revealed that his mentor at the time was responsible for it."

The detective turned to him. "How do you know so much about a scandal that's literally older than most people in this room?"

"I'm friends with him. Met him in a beef bowl shop and helped him with his rallies a bit."

Goro's jaw dropped just a tiny bit. "…did you befriend the entirety of Tokyo over the past nine mon-"

"Enough tomfoolery!" Igor raised his voice just a bit. "The children of man have given me ample justification to end this world and build it anew, but as an act of mercy I will permit them to exist, with their free will surrendered to me." He shot the brunette a particularly pointed glare. "You, however, are a lost cause. Your rehabilitation has failed, and I sentence you to death."

"What?" went the Thieves.

"What…" went Justine and Caroline.

"What?!" went Joker.

"Over my dead body," whispered Goro, then collected himself. "Alright, let's talk like one villain to another - why? You don't need him to die."

"My verdict is final," Igor responded. "Those are the rules of the game."

"Your game is rigged!" the detective snapped back. "You're the Treasure of humanity, to admit that they aren't as worthless as you claim they are would be to deny your very reason for existence, and so you changed the people's cognition so they didn't believe in the Phantom Thieves! You have achieved everything you wanted, killing Akira gets you nothing!"

Igor stared at him for a moment, a fixed grin on his face, before responding: "I will not entertain those baseless accusations with a response. I am a god, I do not need to explain my motives to an uplifted delinquent with a firearm." He turned to the twins. "Execute the Trickster."

If the detective had been thinking clearly at the moment, he would have noticed the obvious trap he was about to blunder into.

"Fuck that." He yanked his gun out, pointed it at Igor and pulled the trigger repeatedly.

If the detective had been thinking clearly at the moment, he would have realized that a repelling shield had materialized in front of the god before firing his fourth shot.

He coughed up blood.

"He's armed!" Caroline ripped the gun from his hand, pushing him in the process. He shifted his weight to the hurt leg, causing him to fall down and hit his head against Haru's cell to add injury to injury. He slid down to the ground, leaving a bloody trail on the bars.

"I am sorry, master!" the warden apologized, crushing the firearm into a pile of scrap with no effort and dissolving the remains into nothingness. "We didn't expect him to attack you!"

"He goaded him to shoot!" Joker screamed at the top of his lungs. "And he gave him his powers expecting, knowing he'll mishandle them! This whole mess is his fault as much as it is Goro's!"

"I never forced his hand," the god shrugged. "Everything he had done, he had done of his own free will. Just one more argument to prove me right."

Haru reached through the bars of her cell to grab the detective by his hand in a futile gesture of reassurance. "Sorry for the mess…" he whispered, staring blankly ahead. "You want me to… pass a message to your dad or something…"

Joker looked at Goro sitting in the pile of his own blood, and felt every thought drain from his mind, until only a single piece of information remained: The one that orchestrated everything sits in front of me. He glanced at Igor, and another thought bubbled up: He hurt my friend. "You know, he has a point," he said, unnervingly tranquil. "There had to be a reason why you insist on offing me." He gripped the bars of his cell. "Are you… scared of me, maybe?"

The god glanced back at him, confident. "Why should I be?"

The cell door is broken open with a single kick. Wait, what?

"Let me demonstrate," he snarled. Blue flames enveloped him as he stepped out of his cell, burning off the prison garb and leaving behind his black and red Phantom Thief outfit. A mask appeared on his face. He pointed at his near-dead comrade. "Diara-"

"Makajam."

A large crack appeared on Joker's mask. He felt the power draining from him and the healing spell fizzle out. He tried to protest that it was his turn now, but the words didn't come out.

"That was an old spell," Igor explained, "blocking you from accessing any of your Personas, or speaking at all. You have no team to support you, no spells you can utilize, and if I see correctly, you're also lacking a weapon. Surrender and die with dignity."

The brunette gave him a stare that would've straight-up murdered a lesser being. A double-edged knife, one edge plain and the other serrated, manifested in his hand.

"If you want to be difficult…" He glanced at the twins. "Wardens, stop this riot immediately."

Justine and Caroline placed themselves between Joker and Goro. "Inmate…" the clipboarded warden averted his gaze, "we do not want to fight you."

"Do not force our hand," the other added. "Please."

Joker briefly hesitated, then, realizing there's too much at stake, charged forward.

Goro opened his eyes.

He was in the interrogation room again, sitting by the table. Steps could be heard from the corridor. Before he could even think about what to do next, the door was opened and someone familiar walked in.

"Case closed." Dream Joker reached into his school uniform and pulled out a suppressed handgun. "This is how your redemption ends." He took aim and fired.

A 'BANG!' flag popped out, poking the detective in the forehead. "Ow!"

The brunette (the redhead?) smiled. "Sorry, I thought it'd be good to break the tension." He sat down opposite the detective. "So, welcome to the afterlife. Or maybe to a reassuring hallucination produced by your dying brain." He shrugged. "Who knows? I don't."

Goro said nothing, just stared at the table top with a sour expression.

"Disappointing, innit?"

"Not…" he paused, "not how I wanted to go." He raised his head to glare at him. "You know, even dying in that bloody engine room would've been better. A defiant last stand, with me perishing after a satisfying fight with worthy opponents. Not some fucking… repelled bullets from my own handgun." Pause. "But… after all I've done, I guess I deserve such a disappointing demise."

Dream Joker sighed. "Jeez, give yourself a break for once…"

"GiVe YoUrSeLf A BrEaK-"

"You can repeat that with a mocking voice all you want," he interrupted, "that doesn't make it wrong. A person can be both a villain and a victim, doing evil stuff doesn't mean you deserve to have evil stuff done to you."

Goro didn't respond to that - at least not verbally. The glance he gave the voice in his head, however, very clearly conveyed sheer disbelief with the notion.

Dream Joker rubbed his chin. "You know, I wanted to argue this based on human's innate right to not feel like shit all the time, but it won't work on you. So let's focus on how you've earned that right in the past few days."

Somewhere, a projector clicked, and an image was displayed on a wall to the side of both of them. It depicted Goro going through the papers in Shido's office. Another click, and it switched to Haru holding Goro at gunpoint and him calmly talking her down. Another click, and an image of him beating up a goon with a cane. Another click, and an image of him aiming his suppressed pistol at the Grail.

"Side note to that last one:" Dream Joker spoke up, "it's also an example of how your issues can make it hard for you to fix your mistakes, and you should deal with them for that reason alone." With another click, the projector turned off. "But my main point is…" He tented his fingers. "Good people are good because they do good things and you've done a lot of those over the last week."

"Psh," Goro scoffed. "What were my other options?"

"Exit stage left."

Something emerged from the same side wall. The reassuring clicks revealed it to be the Confidant split flap display from their previous meeting. It set itself to The Fool.

"The real me has an irrational soft spot for you," the not-real Joker explained, gesturing at the meter showing a ten on a ten-point scale. "If you asked him for a fake passport and a one-way ticket to Amsterdam, he would've covered it without a second thought. But you didn't do that. Running away from your sins didn't even cross your mind. You turned around and focused your brash suicidal stubbornness on the bad guys." He looked at the detective and flashed a faint smile. "You aren't a villain anymore, Goro."

He averted his gaze in response. "We both know this isn't my call to make."

"It is not, and yet it is."

The display started slowly going through all the people that he interacted with, as Dream Joker went on: "Forgiving you is a decision left to those you've hurt. Some of those people will not give you that, and they have the right to do so. And those that will might still harbour some resentment they must process in their own time." Another pause. "Honestly, with all the suffering you've caused them, the Thieves giving you the time of day is… legitimately impressive."

The display finally stopped on The Tower. The name section displayed GORO / XXOXXXX / AKECHI. The meter's pointer kept wildly swinging around.

"But that isn't enough." He stood up, as the detective in front of him absorbed every word. "That would have been naïveté, foolishness even, if not for your decisions, your risks, your continued insistence to keep going." He gave Goro the pointer finger. "You lucked out to get the opportunity to change, but how you used and continue to use it makes all the difference in the world."

The meter's pointer twitched for the last time, and finally settled on 1.

"You won't get your issues resolved with a single pep talk," Dream Joker sat back down, "but this is a good first step."

The detective gave him a confused look. "Um, more like the last one. The only reason we're having this conversation is because I bled out to death in that prison."

"Ah, yes, sorry. You're dead and gone." His smile widened to a grin. "Unless the guy that runs the prison didn't check people other than Akira for contraband, and unless Makoto had rez items in her emergency stash, and unless Akira's fight with the wardens is distracting Yaldabaoth so that the others can help her pass it on to Haru, and unless she overcomes her disgust with all the saliva and blood coming out of your mouth to shove some Revivadrin down your throat."

"…run that by me aga-ghk!"

Goro didn't finish the sentence on account of choking on something. His vision blurred and then refocused, and then he was back on the floor of the Velvet Room, with Haru's hand covering his mouth.

"Agidyne!" one of the twins shouted. A beam of fire connected with Joker, who looked much worse for wear than a moment ago, but stood defiant. He charged the attacker and sliced her with his dagger, leaving a rather nasty wound.

"Bufudyne!" the other twin followed up.

"He's holding back for some reason," the princess whispered. So were the wardens, but she understandably didn't notice nor care. "You're not imprisoned like the others, do something, please."

His friends were in danger.

Akira was in danger.

And some motherfucking bastard with a god complex was overlooking this mess with a shit-eating grin.

A force that willed forever evil…

The voice sounded familiar. Not unlike the detective's, but had a vaguely German accent to it.

…will now work forever good.

And then, pain. Debilitating pain, distributed evenly around each and every cell in his body. It took all of Goro's willpower to not cry out and draw attention to himself.

Even after your change of heart, your destructive powers remain useful.

His eyes turned golden.

After all, how can you build a better world before tearing down the rotting remains of the status quo?

Something appeared on his face. Somehow, whatever it was bothered him more than the all-encompassing pain.

Rise, Crow of the Phantom Thieves. Cut the remaining strings and free yourself of your puppet masters.

He clumsily yet firmly grabbed it and pulled it with all his might. As it started coming off, taking chunks of skin along, he let out a short, anguished cry.

I am thou. Thou art I.

Despite Haru's hand still covering his mouth, it was loud enough to draw everyone's attention. 'Igor' pointed at him. "Arrow of Light."

And then Joker did, well, what heroes like him do best - took a dive and tanked the attack meant to finish off his friend.

It hurt like hell.

He tumbled on the ground a bit, grievously wounded but kept alive by two equally powerful forces - the power of bonds he had created over the past few months and the sheer righteous fury directed at the god in front of him. He lifted his head in defiance and, despite everything, whispered "Just… piss off."

"Diarahan!"

Joker felt relieved, both physically and mentally. Someone marched up to him from behind and outstretched his hand.

"Come on," Goro smiled, "don't tell me you're gonna just let him treat you like this."

Author's note:

Just as a heads up - the next chapter will come out when the art I commissioned for it will be ready, and I do not know when that'll happen. Thank you for your patience, see you (hopefully) soon. :3

"Hee hee hee… What did I tell you? Humans regularly outperform whatever expectations you have."

"…why does he look like you?"

"To trick my warden. She wouldn't have served him willingly if she saw his true form."

"Warden? There's two of them!"

"Again, it will all be explained soon, I promise. Hopefully she will notice the abnormalities before your friends hurt her too much."

"…"

"Please, Lavenza, snap out of it…"