High up above, the ceiling lights cast their scorn over the courtroom. Makoto stood at the back, behind the rows of chairs where the men and women in suits watched the proceedings, enraptured, as Sae spoke to the judges all the way on the other side of the room.

She stood there between the desks of the prosecution and the defense, barging in the middle of trial underway. Her briefcase stood up, clasped shut, cutting the corner of the prosecutor's desk. A witness at the stand looked behind herself, left and right, but neither lawyer could help more than just shaking their heads.

The judge on the right side turned to his peers. He pointed at the people behind Sae, the witness, the defendant, the counselors. "They can wait a day, can they not?" he said.

The judge in the center looked to Sae, intruding on the trial in progress. "Can this not wait even one hour?" He rubbed his temples, already anticipating the answer.

"With respect, Your Honor," Sae said, "No, it cannot. As I've discussed with Judge Suou, this is a time sensitive issue, and the time is now."

The judge on the right, Suou, nodded his affirmation. The center judge glanced around the courtroom, then looked down at his gavel. "Very well, then. This session of court is adjourned. We will determine a time to reconvene."

At the strike of the gavel, most of the people cleared out of the courtroom at once, though the defendant and his lawyer lingered behind to talk until one of the judges noticed them.

Sae set up at the prosecution desk, and beckoned Makoto to come around the railing, onto the main floor of the room, and he took a seat next to her briefcase, hung open for her to leaf through the folders inside for a partially filled warrant of arrest. "Ready," she said with the warrant in her hands.

The center judge struck his gavel again. "As an urgent matter, a session of court is held at the request of the Public Prosecutor's Office. This action is initiated by Ms. Sae Niijima. You may begin."

"Thank you, Your Honors," Sae said. "Today, the Tokyo Public Prosecutor's Office intends to charge Mr. Junya Kaneshiro with the following crimes. Trafficking of controlled substances, kidnapping, felony assault, extortion, match fixing, and racketeering. Kaneshiro has been a suspect in previous police investigations into organized crime in Tokyo. As such, he is culpable for any crimes carried out on his orders, or in relation to his criminal enterprise."

She gestured to Makoto. "Here, the Prosecutor's Office has an eyewitness to the underlying criminal enterprise upon which the rest of Kaneshiro's criminal racket is built. His testimony will be foundation to initiate the prosecution measures. Although further investigation will be necessary to prove the extent of Kaneshiro's crimes at trial, it is paramount that he be apprehended as soon as possible. So, we call Makoto Naegi to the stand."

Makoto stood up, and slowly stepped up to the podium in the middle of the courtroom. An outline of his palms stayed behind on the desk, and he felt them shaking even as he placed them on the edge of the podium. The judges looked him over.

"Please state your name and occupation for the court record."

This was it. Makoto's eye caught on the court clerk, typing at a keyboard with his eyes darting back and forth. What he said now as forever. "My name is Makoto Naegi. I'm a student at Shujin Academy."

"Mr. Naegi," the center judge said. "Do you swear that your testimony will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?"

"Yes, Your Honor," Makoto said.

"Be advised that making false statements under oath shall be prosecuted as perjury, and carries a maximum sentence of ten years imprisonment," the judge said, and turned his focus behind Makto. "With that, Miss Niijima, you may begin questioning."

Sae walked around the desk, and she switched one form in her hands for another. "Naegi, where were you on the afternoon of June fourteenth?"

Makoto took a deep breath. "I was walking on Central Street, in downtown Shibuya," he said. "There, I met a suspicious person in one of the alleys."

"What happened between you and this person in the alley?" Sae said.

"He approached me and offered me a job," Makoto said. He dug his fingertips against the podium's surface. "He insisted on it, and when I agreed, he gave me an envelope, marked with a number. He told me to put it in the subway station lockers, the one matching the number."

"What was inside the envelope?" Sae said.

Makoto looked to Sae's face, calm and cold as ice. He turned away from her, and leveled his eyes at the judges. "Drugs. I tore open the envelope to see what was inside, and it turned out to be drugs. This happened right as a police officer walked by the alley."

Sae moved the stapled packet of papers she was holding from one hand to the other, pushing up with her thumb. "What happened after you opened the envelope?"

Makoto's thumb twitched, and he reached up to touch his neck. "The man in the alley took out a knife and grabbed me," he said. "He pulled me, step by step, back into the alley, all while holding the knife to my throat. The police officer saw this and drew a gun on the man, but, I was in front of it too."

One of the judges grumbled at the mention of the police officer's recklessness. Sae snapped her head toward him, but soon turned back to Makoto. "For completeness' sake, you yourself were arrested at the end of this incident, correct?"

He reached right with his eyes, at nothing but the blank, beige wall. "I was," Makoto said.

Judge Suou, on the right, raised his head. "I saw the police report about this. There were two other arrests made in this incident," he said. "Miss Niijima, surely we cannot arrest a fourth person now, just based on this one incident?"

"Naegi's testimony brings a new angle of this into consideration," Sae said. "Specifically, it establishes the methods used for drug trafficking. That's the link the police missed. It's what they always miss-"

"That's enough," the center judge said. "The witness can speak for himself. Naegi, during the incident on Central Street, was Junya Kaneshiro ever mentioned?"

It was just the one sketchy guy in the alley. He never said anything about anyone else, not Kaneshiro, that was for sure. Makoto racked his mind, going over the entire conversation again. The man approached him, offered him the job, insisted he take it, gave him the envelope, and told him what to do with it. And then, after that, Makoto asked when he'd be paid for the work.

That man said, we'll find a way.

"Not Kaneshiro specifically," Makoto said. He squirmed his neck underneath his shirt collar. "But the man in the alley did indicate that he was part of a larger operation. I asked when I'd be paid for smuggling the envelope, and his exact words were, don't worry, we'll find a way."

Sae watched the judge, as he rubbed his hands together over the head of the gavel. "For the trafficking, assault, and kidnapping charges, I will accept this to initiate prosecution, however tentatively. This leaves the other three charges unaccounted for."

"Thank you, Your Honor. We will proceed to those," Sae said, and looked back to Makoto. She set the incident report down on the desk, and picked up one other document. "Prior to your encounter on Central Street, we spoke about something similar. What was your conclusion, then?"

It was about what Nishiyama said. It was about Iida, and Yoneno. "I thought a criminal group was exploiting my classmates at Shujin," Makoto said. "And that the job offers were a part of that."

"You mentioned something else related to this exploitation," Sae said. "That a victim of this criminal group exhibited a change of behavior. Who was that, and what changed?"

"That was Iida," Makoto said. "I don't know his first name." As for the change, all he had to go on was what Nishiyama said. "But after taking the job, he suddenly started talking about having a lot of money, and then he suddenly stopped."

"In other words, Iida was deceived into a compromising action, and then he had this information held as leverage against him." For just a moment, Sae glanced to the judges on the bench. "Was Iida the only one at Shujin affected by this?"

Makoto shook his head. "There was also a girl named Yoneno," he said.

"As I said, further questioning will be necessary for this case," Sae said to the judges. "But for now, we can see enough of a pattern of extortion among the student body of Shujin Academy to be certain there's an organized criminal element involved." She stood directly in front of the podium, head tilted down. "Naegi, after the incident, you reached out to the Public Prosecutor's Office again, on June twentieth. That was when you introduced Kaneshiro's name to this case. Where did you hear it?"

"I…" Makoto looked back and forth, from Sae to the judges and back. Niijima should have told her first. She even texted him as much the night before. As the thought played out on his eyes, he caught a flash in Sae's eyes as well. "I met a journalist, who had a collection of old investigation notes about him. When I talked to her, I said about what said here, that someone was exploiting students to smuggle drugs, and she told me Kaneshiro was it."

"And this was in the notes?" Sae said.

"I didn't get them," Makoto said.

Sae waved her hand flat. "That's not a problem." She took a step off to the side. "One last question, Naegi. What put your attention on Kaneshiro?"

Somehow, it only just now struck him that Sae knew every answer Makoto gave. Even though she said this would happen, that this was the strategy, he didn't know until now what to make of it, until now, when it suddenly felt like he was standing on the edge of a cliff.

Because the information he traded to Ohya for Kaneshiro's name, the thing he told Sae to start them down this path.

"It was the Phantom Thieves," Makoto said. He held his face as still and stoic as he could, and felt every struggle against it. "I figured out that Kaneshiro was the Phantom Thieves' next target."

"Now you see why time is of the essence." Sae turned around to the judges again. She turned over the printout photograph in her hands. Makoto recognized the red and black circle pattern instantly. It was a calling card. "This isn't just about Kaneshiro. This is a chance to put an end to the biggest threat to public safety Japan has seen in seventy years. It has to be today."

In that other world, in the dungeon where they fought the demon, they had it at their mercy. But they didn't finish it off. They let it convince itself of something, before it vanished. That was what the cat called a change of heart.

That was what the Phantom Thieves did. They helped people.

And Morgana implied there was something else to check on in the real world. They weren't a threat, but, was that something Makoto could say in court?

Sae had taken another step toward the judges' bench, talking over points of procedure Makoto wasn't paying attention to. He looked down at his hands that crawled their way up to the far corners of the podium, at the trail of sweat along the edges.

There was no reason to object. It wouldn't change the facts. And they already had a plan. All that was left to do was trust the Phantom Thieves to escape.

The judges each signed the arrest warrant. Suou held the warrant last, before handing it to Sae. "Best get started on the search," he said. "And tell the kid he looked good."

The center judge struck his gavel. "This session of court is now adjourned." Without anything immediate on their hands, the judges took their leave.

Sae stood back to face Makoto, her back pressed against the judge's bench. The ends of her lips pulled into a faint smile, that just as soon faded back to business. "So, Makoto sent you the coordinates?"

Makoto nodded, and went around to podium to hand his phone over. "I have them here," he said. He couldn't make heads or tails of the coordinates on his own.

And it wasn't just the numbers that mattered. It was the communication trail that led there. "Do you mind if I borrow this?" she said. "I just need it to brief the police chief. You'll have it back as soon as that's done."

It was evidence, he supposed, and he supposed that there were legal ways to compel his to turn over the phone anyway. "Sure," Makoto said, and after Sae packed up her briefcase they made their way to the doors back to the hallways.

Sae stopped him just before leaving.

"I know what you did," she said. "The people you named back then, Takamaki, Sakamoto, Amamiya, Mishima. You're closer to them than I am. I can't imagine you haven't talked to them." Sae turned her head up, at the glare of the lights, and pointed to the judge's bench. "So whatever bullshit we just gave them, just between us, I want the real truth. Am I going to catch the Phantom Thieves?"

Makoto took his hand off the door, and turned around. "I don't know," he said.

Sae stared at him, long and hard, but the truth was that all she had was a chance. Makoto had no way of knowing which way things would go. And that, she relented on, was good enough.

In the hallways, on their way back to the parking lot, a boy about high school caught up to them. "Sae!" he called. He looked familiar, Makoto thought. He must have seen him somewhere before. The boy pointed at Sae's briefcase. "There's good news in there, I'm guessing?"

This was the guy from the TV station. From his voice, and whatever brought him here to the courthouse, what, the super high school level detective? That had to be it.

"We'll call it good news when it's done," Sae said. "I'm sorry to cut this short, Akechi, but every second counts."

"Don't be," the boy, Akechi, said. "I might be going the same place as you. This is the Kaneshiro arrest, is it not?" He watched her eyes shoot open. "It's hardly a secret. It's been the only thing on your mind for weeks. As it happens, I was asked to support the operation myself, but if it's happening now… I don't suppose you could take me there?"

"Hm… Sure," Sae said. "I want to see this for myself, anyway."

"Just don't look too close!" Akechi smiled with his eyes shut. He stood back, as they all made their way from the courthouse to the police station, near enough to go by foot.

And even when they got there, and Sae and Akechi disappeared around a corner past the police station door, Makoto still couldn't shake the feeling that someone was watching him, almost like an unseen gaze reached all the way into his mind.

An upbeat song filled the kitchen, and occasionally a high note spiked just beyond what her cell phone speakers could handle. Makoto waggled her finger back and forth, in as much rhythm with the song as she could spare the focus for, while she slavered over a pan crackling with yellowtail and soy sauce.

A pile of fish bones sat on a napkin off to the side, next to a large steel mixing bowl filled with vegetables, and a set of tongs sticking out of it. Makoto poked around the pan with a pair of chopsticks, checking on the inside of the fish that looked white enough to be safe for sure.

She turned off the stove coils, but let the fish linger over the rest of the heat and stepped aside to keep mixing the salad in the bowl. Midstroke, Makoto glanced at the rice cooker, and the new rice bag sitting next to it. "Yeah, I better just take care of that," she said, and dropped the tongs into the bowl, and she pulled up the rice bin and looked in the knife drawer for that small sickle to cut it open.

The front door opened before she found it. Of course, it was just Sae coming home, but Makoto looked up anyway. "Good evening, Sis," she said. Makoto tensed up all of a sudden, and tapped the pause button on her phone. "You're just in time, actually. Dinner's almost done."

The door clacked shut, and the next Makoto saw, Sae was holding her head in her hands, nearly shaking on her legs as she made for the couch, and breathing heavier than Makoto could ever remember.

"Sis, are you okay?" she said. Makoto took a step away from the drawer, shook her head and pushed it back shut for now. "Did something happen?"

Sae's voice came out torn and strained. "It's just been a long day," she said.

There was only one thing Makoto could think that meant. She sat down by her side. "You got him?"

Sae's breath hitched. She took her hands away, off the faint streaks of tears down the side of her face. "I got him," Sae said.

Makoto covered a gasp, and held her other hand over her heart. No doubt, it was a huge weight off her shoulders, whether Sae thought of it that way or not. There was some justice in this world after all, and their father hadn't died for nothing.

If only there was some way to get it through her head.

"This isn't the end," Sae said. "But it's a big step." It was never the end, with her. There was always a bigger case, a bigger puzzle, that even someone like Kaneshiro was only one piece of it.

Makoto laid her hand on her sister's shoulder. "You don't have to take the next step right away," she said. "Take some time to take care of yourself. I'll help as much as I can, but if you keep pushing yourself harder and harder, it's like I'm fighting to save you from yourself. And who can save anyone from you?"

She shook her head, looked around the walls and the ceiling. "Apparently, Naegi can," Sae said.

"Naegi's just different," Makoto said. "But, I guess this means the Phantom Thieves are still at large?"

Eyes wide open now, Sae brushed the last drop of her tears away. "For now," she said. "So you don't have to sound so happy about it. I'll find another way."

"Well, that's only natural." Makoto hopped up, and ran back to the kitchen to plate dinner, and brought it back to Sae. "Here, Sis," she said. "Salad with yellowtail tonight. You can get started without me. I'm going to go fill the rice bin first."

Sae took hold of the plate. "Thank you, Makoto."

Behind her, ceramic clinked and fresh, crisp leaves crunched apart. Makoto swept the fish bones into the trashcan, and picked the small sickle out of the drawer. She pressed it to the middle of the rice sack, over the open bin.

They found him there, a fat man with slick hair sat motionless against a black, concrete wall. His head hung down. A gash across his neck sprayed blood against the stone behind him.

A warm pool gathered around his legs, out to his shoes, creeping over the floor, spewing out with the rest of his guts, sliced wide open.