This late into the semester, Makoto still couldn't understand the layout of Hope's Peak Academy. Nonetheless, following a simplistic map on the invitation card, and the sound of her upperclassmen cheering and shouting, she found the homeroom of Class 77, with a tangle of colored streamers hanging overhead.
It was a little late into the day, and whoever might have greeted her at the door must have given up waiting and went to join the celebration. Makoto took the moment to adjust her fitness tracker, from GPS to vitals.
But she didn't go completely unnoticed. A camera shutter clicked as she made the switch.
"Hi, Makoto!" Mahiru said from behind another girl in an ornate dress. "I thought you said you couldn't make it."
"Hello, everyone!" Makoto bowed. "I'm actually just looking for someone." And there he was, standing off to the side with his shoulders slouched over a soft drink he held close to his chest. She walked over beside Fuyuhiko, watching from the sidelines.
At the end of the room, Chiaki leaned back against the frame of a chair, with a game controller in her hands. On another side, a boy with a long scarf oversaw a performance of hamsters on two desks stacked with books. It was hard to look away from.
But Makoto had other matters to attend to. "That thing you mentioned in the bookstore. Is it too late?" she said, leaning just a little further.
"Tch. No. Why would it be?" Fuyuhiko said. "You seriously want to talk to him?"
Makoto shook her head. "I don't think there's anything to say. But I need to meet him, face to face. So if there's anything you want me to ask him, I'm all ears."
Fuyuhiko turned away from the hamster show to face Makoto, and nodded towards the door, out to the hallway. "What, you want to hear all his lame excuses? It's my business anyway. Not yours. And you're not going there to snoop around, either. You meet, you talk, you leave. Capiche?"
Well, it got her into whatever hole Kaneshiro was hiding in. If all Makoto had to do was find something to say, that was a small price. "Understood," she said.
Peko tapped on the doorway, looking right at Fuyuhiko. "Are you leaving already?"
"I'll be right back," he said. "You…" Fuyuhiko looked away, and took his phone out of his pocket to make a call. "Just, enjoy yourself in there. Okay?"
A question still flickered in Peko's eyes between him and Makoto, but her last look to Fuyuhiko was free of any lingering doubts. "As you wish." She broke off, with surprising enthusiasm, back to Chiaki's class party.
Makoto and Fuyuhiko headed straight for the front gates of Hope's Peak, where a limo driver waited for them, holding a small burlap sack in his hand. He offered it to Makoto, and offer Fuyuhiko wasn't about to let her refuse.
"Just a precaution," he said. "And I'm gonna need your phone, too."
Just a precaution, Makoto assumed. She handed him her cell phone.
"Eh, make that the whole bag, while you're at it."
"Seriously?" Makoto slid the straps of her bag down, off her shoulder and handed that over too.
"I'm not gonna look through it or anything!" Fuyuhiko dumped the phone inside and pulled the zipper shut. "Just can't be too careful. After that Naegi kid's stunt, who knows what kind of weird tactics the cops are gonna try to pull?"
Makoto crossed her arms, turned to the back seat door opened to her. "I get it," she said. "I'm ready." She felt the strands of the sack tickling her face, and stepped blindly into the limousine.
He was almost all the way up the stairs to the train station overpass. Makoto held his phone closer and closer to his face. How much longer was it going to take to get the coordinates pinged, or whatever was supposed to happen?
Well, staring at the screen wasn't going to help anything. He tucked his phone back into his pocket, and crested the last step up to the glass tunnel overlooking Central Shibuya. His eyes scanned the street for the alley where everything seemed to take off, but Makoto wasn't quite eagle eyed enough to pick it out.
He looked around the rest of the walkway, spotted a big tuft of blonde hair off to the edge of the passing crowd of people, and hurried towards her as fast as his legs would carry him.
For some reason, it felt weird not being out of breath. "Hey, guys," Makoto said, looking from Ann, to Ryuji, to Ren, and the boy and girl with them he didn't recognize. "Nice to meet you two. My name is Makoto Naegi."
"Ah, so you're the mysterious Makoto," the boy in a purple button up shirt said. "I must admit, you look much more ordinary than I was led to believe."
Well, Makoto was certainly no man of mystery, but he did understand how incomplete information could devolve into rumors, and from there into nonsense.
The boy in the button up shirt went on, "Ah, excuse me! Where are my manners? I'm Yusuke Kitagawa, a student of Kosei High."
Next to him, a shrewd looking girl gave a gentle wave of her hand. "Hifumi Togo," she said. "I'm also a Kosei student." That alone explained why Makoto had never seen the two of them before.
Or, almost never. "Hifumi… You're the women's Shogi champion, aren't you?" Makoto said.
Her eyes dropped as soon as she heard. "I was." Makoto's eyes dropped just the same. There was a story there, a story that would have to wait for another day, should they ever meet again.
All five of them looked at each other, and what felt like a sixth pair of eyes as well. "Well, Makoto," Red said. "Are you ready?"
"Where are we going?"
"It's a little bit hard to explain," Ann said, as Ren took out his phone and opened an app, a symbol of a freaky red eyeball. "Better to just see it for yourself."
"Just don't freak out, dude," Ryuji said. "We got your back in there."
Makoto turned to each of them, one after another, and at Ren, just finishing the inputs on his phone. He followed them back down the stairs, all the way down to the toll gates before the station platform, to a poster in the corner of the room where nobody was looking.
Looking around the corner, Makoto heard a neutral female voice. "Beginning navigation." The whole world twisted and swirled around him, and he fell to his knees, grabbed at his head just to feel if it was still there, eyes clamped shut.
The limo rolled to a stop. Makoto swayed in her seat, rubbed her wrist, and heard the engine switch and sputter off. The door next to her clunked open, and a steady hand pulled her out of the car and the sack off her head. She flinched at the sudden rush of sunlight.
Her eyes adjusted to the sight of an unremarkable middle aged man in a dull colored suit. He beckoned her to a heavy steel door, the only thing that distinguished one building's facade from every other one on the street.
Makoto approached and knocked on the door. A hatch slid open, just wide enough for a man whose sunglasses barely covered a face full of tattoos to glare out at her, and for her to glare back. "I'm here to see Kaneshiro," she said. "Open the door."
The tattoo faced man held on her for a second longer, then flickered over to the driver standing behind her, and he slammed the hatch shut.
Makoto checked her tracker. Her heart rate was already climbing. She took a deep breath as the door swung open to pulse pounding music and the stench of alcohol and smoke. The light inside was dim, and only dimmed further then the sentry closed the heavy front door again.
"If you want the big boss, he's way in the back." The tattoo faced man sat back in his chair and picked up his glass pipe from the table next to him.
Every step Makoto took into the hallway, the smell in the air grew thicker, and with every door she passed, a new smell made its way into the mix. "What are they doing in there?" she said. But she knew the answer already, in part. Beyond the details, there was little to be said. They were doing drugs.
"Best not to dwell on it," the middle aged driver said. "It's none of your concern anyway."
The hallway opened into a common room, where green felt gaming tables covered the floor and fold up chairs covered the walls. In the corner, Makoto saw the speakers blasting its bass beat and English lyrics that made it increasingly hard to even hear herself think.
The men around the room, alternately covered in piercings or ink and each holding a cigar or a bottle or both, gathered around the tables with pool cues all on one side and decks of cards on the other. The sound of hard plastic balls smacking together was the only sound that cut through the music. That, and-
"FUCKING DEALER, DUDE!"
A man whose face was actually visible stood up from one of the card tables. He threw his two cards at the dealer's face, and then the rest of the deck, and then his stack of plastic chips. "The whole thing is rigged! It's actually rigged! Fuck you!" He dragged the dealer across the table and tossed him on the floor. "Suck my balls, dude!"
The outburst stole everyone's attention. Even Makoto had to be prodded along to keep going, to the velvet lined door at the back of the room, a door that screamed Kaneshiro almost as loud as that other guy screamed about losing a card game.
As he came to, the first thing Makoto noticed was the overland exit of the train station cracked and fading into pure darkness. It didn't even register for a while that the air itself carried a heavy red tinge.
It pressed on his chest, making every breath its own fight for survival. Makoto grasped at his neck, relieved at least that his scar didn't suddenly open up again. Or, was it only a matter of time? "Where…?"
The others were gone. Ryuji, Ren, Ann, Yusuke, and Hifumi, all gone. Everyone was gone, not a soul to be seen anywhere here, except a group of five people in bizarre outfits, and a deformed, standing up, cat… thing.
"What on Earth is that?!" Makoto said, pointing at the thing.
Okay, the rest he could kind of wrap his head around. He came into whatever this place was with five people, and there were five other people here. Whatever these outlandish outfits meant, they were probably, no, they were definitely the Phantom Thieves.
"I'm Morgana!" the cat thing said in an inexplicable feminine voice. "And we're not exactly on Earth right now."
"Let me explain," a boy in a trench coat and domino mask said. "This is another world, a world of thoughts. What people think in the real world, becomes this world."
"… What?" Another world? Thoughts becoming a whole world on their own? That didn't really explain as much as he probably wanted it to. Makoto felt like he should have had more questions, but just looking around, seeing this other world with his own eyes, he still didn't even know where to start.
"For what it's worth, I thought that was a wonderfully succinct way to put it," another boy in a black and white karate outfit said.
"It doesn't help if I don't get it, though," a boy with a skull face said. "Uh, I mean, if Makoto doesn't get it!" Right, so a hundred percent, Skull Face was Ryuji. That left Karate Guy and Trench Coat to figure out later. And the girls.
Makoto was starting to get his bearings, now. This was a world of thoughts. The Phantom Thieves broke into this world. "So, when you say you steal desires…" he said. And desires were thoughts too. "You mean that literally."
"Wow, you really catch on quick!" the girl in full red bodysuit said. "Yeah, that's what we did to Kamoshida."
"And Madarame, as well," Karate Guy said.
"And it's what we're going to do to Kaneshiro." The other girl wore a flak jacket with flowing sleeves.
"So this is his castle, then?" Through the eye slots of their masks, Makoto could sense everyone's confusion. "A castle, right? That's what Kamoshida said at the assembly."
"Close," the cat thing, Morgana, said. "We call them palaces, but this isn't Kaneshiro's palace. It's everyone's. And even this is barely even scratching the surface." The cat walked towards the train tracks, and jumped onto them, becoming a short, black bus. Makoto watched the others climb aboard.
He stood at the edge of the platform, looking down at how far a jump it was. "Come on, Makoto," Ren said. "No hesitating now. This only works if you see everything."
He took the jump, landed feet first, and boarded the cat-bus without even a sting. Looking into the black of the horizon, Makoto barreled forward down the tracks.
The sudden silence after the velvet door closed popped and rang in her head just as loud as the music before. With a wince, Makoto looked around this inner sanctum, at the men and women paired and naked, at the ashtrays full of cigars, the ice buckets of wines and liquors, and haze of powder drugs in the air.
Her eyes locked on the fat man with slick hair, circling around the couch with his fingers sliding along the backrest, and a tall glass clinking with everyone else. "Kaneshiro," Makoto said.
Tiny eyes swelled at her with disdain, and then turned up, as Kaneshiro walked the rest of the way around the couch to settle in to his seat in the middle. He forced a kiss left and right, onto women pinned to him and squirming at the touch of his lips. "Can't you see I'm busy?" he said. "You better have a good reason for interrupting me. I'll make you pay dearly for wasting my time."
"And, what exactly am I interrupting?" Makoto glanced at the woman bent over the bar counter, at the tattooed man thrusting himself into her. "Were you actually about to do something productive? Like scamming kids in downtown Shibuya. Again."
"Is that punk Kuzuryu still on my case about this?" Kaneshiro swung his glass around, struck one of the women over the eye. The last drops of his champagne flew into Makoto's face. "If he wants to hear it so bad, he can come here and ask me himself, instead of sending a bunch of bitches to do the barking for him."
Makoto wiped the splash of wine away. "That's just it," she said. "He doesn't care."
"So, why are you here?" Kaneshiro said. "Could it be that you're here undercover, for the police? Are these the tactics they resort to now? But this won't hold up in court." He poured himself another bubbling glass. "Besides, you don't know where we are, anyway."
Makoto nodded, clasped her hands together over her uniform skirt, concealing her tracker. "The way I see it, exploiting kids is your tactic. But, that's strike two. I'll just get to the point, then. I want to know how my father died."
"Why don't you ask him yourself?" A man with a dozen rings on his hand pulled a knife and rushed toward her.
"This really isn't necessary-"
The ringed man held the knife hard and swung over his head. Makoto lunged forward, clutched his wrist and flipped him over the couch.
The knife thumped on the floor. Makoto picked it up point pressed the flat of the steel against the back of the man's neck, while she held up his head by his hair.
"… and apparently just a bad idea." Kaneshiro leaned in, as did one of the women next to him. The other turned away in the moment, but she swallowed her disgust and looked too. "Well?" Kaneshiro said. "Don't just stop there. Things were just getting good!"
Makoto struggled to keep the knife still in her hand, gripping tighter and tighter. Then, she let go of his head, stared down at his heaving breath and the red trail dripping from the knife's edge.
A click. A flash.
Makoto turned around to Kaneshiro's phone, at the camera lens the shined just right in the dim light of the club room.
"Tell you what, why don't we make a deal?" he said, waving his phone. "I'll tell you everything you want, if you put this sad sack of shit out of his misery. And if not, well, don't be surprised if he suddenly starts pressing charges. Lawyers can get anyone for assault these days, isn't that right, Niijima?"
"They can get anyone for anything," Makoto said.
Kaneshiro sat back and phone away with a shrug. "Except murder." He took the more hesitant woman by the chin, and stroked his way down her flesh. "Tell me, Makoto. Does it still tear your sister up inside that I got away with everything?"
He was just posturing. He was just trying to get a rise out of her. Makoto dropped her head and curled up her hands. "No," she said. Sae probably had moved on. Even if she said she never forgot, Makoto couldn't forget either, what it took to push her to action.
"No?" Kaneshiro said. His hand suddenly stopped, pinched tight around the woman's nipple. "So even the prodigy prosecutor Sae Niijima has accepted the situation for what it is." He sneered, and burst out cackling. "She can't touch me! No one can touch me!"
"No." Makoto leaned forward, eyes dead level. "That's wrong!"
The wheels of the magic cat bus rocked up and down on the uneven fastenings of the train tracks. In the back seat, Makoto pressed his head on the window, watching the walls that looked to writhe and pulse with life.
The disfigured shapes of people shambled around the tracks as well, dripping with black ooze that seeped back into the ground, or burst out of it to form more of them. The longer he looked and the more of these people he saw, Makoto could swear he recognized a few of them among the endless faces he ran across every day. "Who are these people?" he said.
"These aren't exactly people." Morgana's unmistakable voice seemed to come out of nowhere. "Besides us, there's nothing but shadows down here. Manifestations of people's distorted desires."
There were a number of things that could mean. Not a single one of them good. Not even the connection Makoto was starting to draw, closer and closer, to how the Phantom Thieves really changed hearts. "So, you could do it to anyone."
"Only someone we all agree on," Morgana said. "And we have the perfect example. Right turn here, Joker. I can feel it."
Joker, the one in the trench coat at the driver's seat, yanked the steering wheel to the right. "Skull, Panther, Dragon, you're with me," he said. Ryuji and the two girls affirmed. "Mona and Fox, you keep Makoto safe while we're in there."
"I shall not allow anything to pass me," Fox said. Well, it was miles better than Karate Guy, that was for sure.
A silent wind rushed out from one of the countless alcoves in the labyrinth. The tracks lifted off the ground and twisted around an infinite swirl of gleaming darkness. The whole chamber unfolded around him and spun inside out and unfolded again, to a distant human figure.
The bus came to a sudden stop. Makoto slammed into the front seat, and fell over as the whole vehicle disappeared. Morgana hopped around at his feet. Fox stayed with him, too.
Joker, Ryuji, and the two girls Panther and Dragon stepped ahead, toward what Makoto could only assume was a shadow.
But this one felt different from the others, seething with malice.
"There it is," Morgana said. "That should be the shadow of the man named Uchimura."
Ryuji held a stance with some kind of club in his hand. "Doesn't he look like he's worried about something?"
Panther lowered herself, foot forward. "But he's abusing his girlfriend, right?"
"Oh, man, didn't her fortune say that she's gonna get seriously hurt?" Ryuji said.
"That's why we're here," Dragon said. She brandished a long lance, aimed directly at the shadow at the other end of the room. "We will fight this fate with all our strength!"
Joker led the charge. When the shadow noticed them, its voice reverberated in the whole chamber. "Dammit… I gambled away all my money again…" it said, indistinct and whining. "Dammit, dammit, dammit, dammit! Where is she? Get over here, so I can beat you!"
"You don't beat your girlfriend."
"Whaaaaaat?!" The shadow flailed its arms. "Don't you dare lecture me! She's mine! I can do whatever I want with her! Beating her is a right only I have! I'll have you know she loves it too! If you wanna get in my way, then you're gonna diiiiiie!"
The chamber rumbled. The shape of the man in plain clothes melted into black ooze, and exploded back as a giant faceless demon.
At once, Fox drew a sword, from where, Makoto couldn't even tell. "Say, Mona, what are the chances a shadow from the main labyrinth will find its way in here?" Fox said.
"Not low enough to ignore." Morgana held a slingshot up, drawn and ready to loose.
But out in front, a dazzling bright blue fire swept around the Phantom Thieves. The chaos as they bounced around beneath huge ethereal figures boggled Makoto's mind. Bursts of energy pushed back against the darkness that filled the chamber, and tossed the demon around, until it met Makoto's eyes, and rushed at him with the point of its sword.
Morgana released its shot. Black ooze splattered from the demon's head, and it stopped in the middle of its charge.
And skidded the rest of the way to Makoto. It raised its sword high over its head, ready to crush Makoto underneath. His knees locked, his whole body froze, except his arms, held out in front of his head.
CLANG!
Fox's katana clashed with the demon's sword, a hair's breadth away from slicing through Makoto's arms. "Doing harm to others won't solve your own problems," he said. "This mistake will be your last. Mona!"
"On it!" Morgana said. "Zorro!"
The same blue flames surrounded the cat, erupted into the form of a thief with gigantic hands. The ethereal figure threw a straight punch to the shadow's head, knocking it to the ground, as the rest of the team returned.
The shadow, Uchimura, melted back out of his demon form, trembling in defeat. "I hate it, I hate it when people look at me like I'm just a bug to them…" he said. "I can do better… I'm a superior human being… But the people around me just don't get it." The shadow said its final words, and vanished in a flash of light.
Morgana stepped into the spot where the shadow disappeared, where a few flecks of light still remained. "The right to beat his girlfriend? He really was the worst of the worst to think that. We changed his heart, so let's go tell the fortune teller when we get the chance."
His slingshot was gone, as were the others' weapons, and the spirits above them. In his bewilderment, Makoto didn't even blink as Morgana transformed back into a bus again, and hardly took notice of anything on their way back to the surface. There was a lot he still had to process.
But even so, his head perked up, looking toward another portal. One with a pulse it seemed that only he recognized, and even then, only barely.
"There's something you misunderstood from the start, Kaneshiro," Makoto said. "My sister doesn't care about you. It's the Phantom Thieves she wants. You're just a means to an end."
"The Phantom Thieves?" Kaneshiro said. "Don't make me laugh. So, they're coming for me now, is that right? Is that what has Big Sister's hopes up? But it will be such an embarrassment for her when I end up stopping them first. Why, she might even have to leave the law behind. Where will she go then? All because useless little Makoto ran her mouth where it didn't belong."
"Okay, whatever." Makoto stood up and turned for the door, but she stopped as she reached for the doorknob, looking at her tracker. She listened to the sounds of moaning, skin and lips smacking behind her.
And she turned back to Kaneshiro. "You listen well," Makoto said. "I know you know how my dad died, and I know why you can't say it. It's because you'll be next. That's what all this is about, too. It's a show to make it look like you're still useful."
"When the heat dies down and Sae makes a fool of herself, business goes back to normal," Kaneshiro said. "Why should I act any different?"
"There's no going back to normal this time." Makoto slammed the knife down on the table in front of him. A pile of powder broke apart. "You're nothing special. You're just a crook. Anyone would happily burn you down to the ground to get what they want."
Kaneshiro snapped to attention. As he stared down Makoto, the women at his arms slipped away. "So what do you want?!" he said. "What, you think you're better than me? Than anyone else? What do you want from me?!"
"I just want to know what happened." Makoto looked down, took the single step left between them, and covered her wrist as she sat down. Beside him. "You have that picture," she said. "You can hold that over me to make sure I keep it a secret. I just want to know. Here." She took off her tracker and gave it to Kaneshiro. She looked in his narrow eyes, then looked away.
"What's this?" he said.
"That's… a microphone. You can keep that, too. A sign of good faith." The door creaked open, and the pulse pounding bass flooded the room. The driver glared at her through the crack in the doorway. "And, you know what, it doesn't have to be now." Makoto hopped up, as quick as she could. "Just between us."
Kaneshiro could never lose his look of paranoia, but the last thing Makoto saw on his face before the door closed was a snap back to arrogance. Good, she thought, holding her fingers over her heart on the way out. He didn't suspect a thing.
Although the navigator said they'd returned to the real world, his vision was still a blur. The smothering darkness and creeping vines lingered on in his eyes. The people, normal as they all looked again, each kept a trace of the shadows' lethargy.
Makoto stumbled his way to a pillar, his head pressed up against it, and his hands planted firmly on his knees. He looked back, past the toll gates, to the corner of the room, to the very same poster for Tanktop Millionaire. As his mind cleared, there was no doubt about it, this was the exact spot they used to enter the other world.
His phone pinged, a message from an unknown number that was nothing but a set of coordinates.
Back in their after school clothes, he saw Ren, Ryuji, and Ann gathered close together, as if they were still in the underground castle. Er, palace. "For real?!" Ryuji said. "You're siding with them?" He pointed to Yusuke and Hifumi, on the other side of their standoff.
He seemed to be talking to no one.
And just as out of the blue, an unmistakable feminine voice shot back. "What are you looking at me for?! I thought Makoto would awaken too, in fact, I was sure of it, but he didn't!"
Makoto pushed away from the pillar. "Morgana?" he said. "Wait, what?"
A completely ordinary black cat poked its head out of Ren's bag. Completely ordinary, except for one thing. "Surprised?" It was the cat's mouth moving. It was the cat's voice talking. "It's me, alright!" the cat said.
Makoto looked around, at his classmates, at his Kosei peers. None of them seemed the slightest bit alarmed. He spun around the rest of the station, at all the people walking by who didn't pay them any mind at all.
"Ah, don't worry about them," Ann said. "We're the only ones that can hear him."
He was confused more than he was reassured, but it looked like Ann was right. Makoto backed up, leaning on the pillar again.
"As for awakening, Morgana means our powers in the other world." Ren felt around one of the pouches on his bag for his glasses. "We actually had a bet going on, whether you would find that power within yourself. Most of us did, our first time in."
"Really?" Makoto said. For all the harm he'd done them, this seemed like a huge sign of faith. But that kind of power, superpowers straight out of a comic or a video game, it wasn't suited for some normal high school student.
But when was the last time Makoto's life was normal?
Nonetheless, he looked away. "Sorry to disappoint you."
"There's no shame in having a life you can be content with," Hifumi said. "But…" she turned to the Shujin group, "That means our contest is finished. We'll see you at Kosei for the summer festival, right?"
Ren hung his head low. "Yeah, we'll be there," he said. They all stood around here a little longer, time for Makoto to catch his breath. "Hey, Makoto. Did you get the answers you were looking for, at least?"
He pulled one hand off his knee and to grab his phone out of his pocket. "Kinda," he said. "This is the same spot we went into that other world from. Is it like that in the palaces as well?"
"Yeah," Ryuji said. "That's why we gotta choose where we go in from carefully."
Makoto threw his head back at the pillar, hard enough to sting. "Is there really no way to leave anywhere else?" he said.
"We've never really tried before," Ren said. "But it also hasn't been an issue before, either. You're bringing this up now, though. Do you think that might become a factor?"
"That depends," Makoto said. He opened the location from the unknown sender on his phone's map, and turned it around. "Is this where Kaneshiro's hideout is?"
The Phantom Thieves all gathered close to look. "Holy shit!" Ryuji said. "Dude, this is fucking scary. How do you keep doing this?"
Makoto withdrew his phone. "So, this is it. Just my luck."
"So what's the curve ball this time?" Ren said. "I'm guessing the prosecutor wanted you to find his hideout so the police know where to arrest him. And us, by extension."
"Can't you tell the prosecutor you didn't find out the location?" Ann said. "That way, we can steal his heart without the police breathing down our necks."
Makoto shook his head. "At this point, she might just confiscate my phone if I withheld anything. And even if not, she'll search the whole city to find you."
"A police raid will certainly have an effect inside the palace," Morgana said.
"Indeed," Yusuke said. "But the greater challenge posed by Makoto's intervention is our escape in the real world. I cannot see any way we will be able to evade a police perimeter, much less a manhunt."
"… I can," Hifumi said. Ren, Makoto, everyone's head turned to her. "Morgana, you said that Mementos is everyone's palace. That means Kaneshiro's palace must have been part of it, at one point. Am I correct?"
"At one point, yes," Morgana said. "Are you thinking they might still be connected?"
"It could serve as our escape route," Hifumi said. "We enter the palace at the hideout, then escape here, through Mementos."
"Hmm, I see," Morgana said. "As far as I know, once the distortions in the target's heart grows strong enough to form a palace, it's separated from the rest of Mementos."
"But he's been wrong before!" Ryuji said. "Come on, even I get Hifumi's plan. We'll just make sure to find the connection next time we go in the palace. We still have to secure the route to the treasure, don't we?"
Ren tapped his fingers together, then shook his head. "Actually, I think we're out of time," he said. "Your semifinal match is tomorrow." He looked to Hifumi. "Are you sure that's our deadline?"
"I'm sure of it," Hifumi said. "But that also means it's the last lock. If we breach that lock, find a way to Mementos, and steal his heart all at once, we should still have a fighting chance." She looked around, brimming with confidence, and finding the same stirring in everyone else.
"Well, Makoto," Ren said. "There's your answer. You do your best, and we'll do ours."
Makoto looked from Ren to Morgana, from Ryuji to Ann, from Yusuke to Hifumi. After all the interlocked plans came crashing together, he truly hoped to see them all again. But for now, he stuffed his phone back in his pocket and crossed the subway gates, having made his final choice.