Literally/Meaning/English equivalent: sticking [sb's] nose in not your [=others'] business
annT: heeey
annT: how about a little ladies night?
annT: i could invite haru and a friend of mine and we could watch some movies
ribbon330: Goro-san told you what happened, didn't he?
annT: wot
annT: im outta the loop
annT: what happened
annT: hello?
ribbon330: I attempted to break Oracle-senpai out of Maruki-san's reality and things went badly.
annT: shit
ribbon330: I'm sorry. I got impatient. I didn't want to wait until school began again.
annT: how badly did things go
annT: does goro have a place to sleep
ribbon330: Yes, yes. Morgana-san and Kasumi talked Oracle-senpai down.
ribbon330: She won't help us, but she won't impede us either. Her parents remain unaware.
annT: good
annT: dont pull things like that on us without anyones second opinion
annT: the ladies night is still on the table btw
ribbon330: Do you really still want to hang out after I almost ruined everything?
annT: you didnt "almost ruin everything"
annT: it was a problem, yes, but not unsolvable
annT: not the first time a thief jumped the gun like that, really
annT: and you obviously need to destress now, sooo…
ribbon330: I'll ask dad.
ribbon330: He shouldn't mind though.
annT: great!
annT: and honestly, i get ya
annT: im getting impatient myself
annT: i cant believe im saying this but i want to be back in school already
Ask and ye shall receive, where's the timestamp thingamajig...
Tuesday, January 10th, Morning
"…and I've picked up some mangas to pass the time," Ryuji continued as the Shujin-bound Thieves – him, Morgana, Ann, Haru, Sumire and Kasumi as the honorary member – marched out of the Aoyama-itchome station towards the school. "You guys read anything cool lately?"
"'Pink Dark Boy' is fun," Haru replied. "It's this suspenseful-"
"Stop right there," he interrupted her. "Last time I checked out something you recommended, I couldn't sleep for a week."
The princess responded with an innocent giggle.
Someone turned a corner and marched towards the group, their head suspiciously hidden behind a school textbook. Realizing they're about to walk into them, Ann proclaimed, firmly yet politely: "Hey, watch where you're going."
"Oh sorry," they moved the book out of the way and the group found themselves staring at Makoto Niijima.
Pause.
The situation seemed a bit too convenient, with her bumping into the group first thing after the third semester had begun. On the other hand, random things sometimes just happen in the real world, and she could simply be lost in the lecture – or trying to avoid someone else. Caution.
Unpause.
"Um, hey, Makoto," went Ryuji.
"I didn't introduce myself," went Makoto.
"You didn't have to," Ann moved in to salvage the situation. "You're the student council president, everyone knows who you are."
"You're a kingpin of Shujin Academy," Haru added. "Or should I say, a queenpin."
The president responded with a chuckle. "You'd be surprised how little power I hold. Now, I vaguely recall some of you, but the names of the twins and the black-haired boy escape me."
"I'm Kasumi Yoshizawa," the other twin smiled, "she's my little sister Sumire, and that's Morgana Neko… Neko-something."
"Sakura," the bishounen corrected.
"Oh, sorry," she glanced at him, "I really don't know where the 'neko' thing came from."
"Ah yeah, now I remember," Makoto snapped her fingers. "You two are gymnasts. I've heard the principal comment that bringing you over to Shujin was a bit of a risk since your performance tends to be unpredictable. You're a pair of wild cards."
"...I only have one Persona," Sumire blurted out.
The president sighed in relief. "I take it that we don't need to bother with vague allusions now. Can someone please tell me what is-"
The school bell rang.
"Curses." Makoto muttered. "We'll talk about this later. Meet me in the student council room after class, okay?"
Everyone nodded.
After School
Makoto drummed the table in the student council room, processing the infodump, as the rest of the group sat huddled on the other end of it, awaiting her reaction. "To sum up," she went, "Dr. Maruki is now a god, Akira and Futaba tapped out, you're blocked off by some wires and hope Mishima can help you, and if we won't stop him by the end of January we won't be able to stop him at all?"
"Correct," Ann nodded. "Are you on board?"
"Of course," she said flatly.
"You have a lot to lose compared to some of us." Ryuji pointed out.
"I fancied myself a hero," she growled, offended. "I'm not going to quit because doing the right thing will leave me worse off. And if that copy of my dad has an ounce of the real deal in him, he'll understand." She took a breath to try and alleviate her irritation. "I'm sorry. I'll calm down when I punch something."
Morgana pulled out his phone. "I'm sure Goro will volunteer," he smirked.
"I'll ask him myself," she smiled. "Do you think he'll be up for a bare knuckle duel?"
"I wanna see that when it happens," Haru remarked.
"Welp, that was pleasantly uneventful," Ryuji got off from his chair and marched to the door. "I hope we won't have more problems roping Mishima in."
He opened the door, hoping that the Phanboy was still somewhere around and found himself staring at the devil himself – okay, the Moon himself – leaning against the wall on the other side of the corridor. He glanced awkwardly at the athlete. "Um, sup?"
"...you were eavesdropping on us, weren't you?"
"Uh," he maintained a poker face for all of point seven seconds, "yeah. Everything seemed… off for the past few weeks, but I couldn't put my finger on it. When I saw you all hanging out something drew me towards you, and so I followed you and, well, I've heard everything." He paused. "Now I know what felt off – I wasn't spending hours a day moderating Phansite comments."
Sumire's desire to just move the heck on overrode her usual shyness, and so she stood by the athlete and looked at Mishima. "Okay, so… uh…" Okay, mostly overrode it. "So can you go with us to Maruki's Palace today and look at the computers and try to unblock our path?"
"Er…" Every Thief was now staring at the Phanboy, and he found that pressure less-than-pleasant. "I-I can try, but I promise nothing. A-and if that thing's in a Palace, I won't be able to look up stuff online, so I'm gonna need to prepare some cheat sheets. And what computer are we talking about?"
"Goro got the best look at the interface," Ann stepped out of the room and handed him over her cell phone. "Note down his number and shoot him a message. Heck, note down all of our numbers, so we can stay in touch."
The Phanboy fetched out his own smartphone. "Heh… if someone told me last year I'd get the digits of that pretty white girl, I'd laugh in their face."
"Don't let that get to your head." Ann dared to smirk and hoped he didn't take it as encouragement.
Evening
Mishima's train of thoughts was thus: if he was supposed to infiltrate a Palace like a thief, he had to dress like a thief. And so, he came to Odaiba dressed in a dark gray tracksuit and a matching balaclava – which made him stand out among the more extravagantly dressed Phantom Thieves, amusingly enough.
Since the monitoring room was right next to a safe room, getting him into position wasn't much of a problem. He sat down by one of the stations, opened a folder with a ton of printouts in it next to himself, cracked open a can of Raw Punch, and started typing – not as quickly as Futaba, and occasionally muttering minced oaths while mashing Backspace or arrow keys, but still, he seemed more comfortable with the system than all the other active Thieves.
"How long will that take?" Ryuji asked after a few minutes.
"I dunno," he replied, taking a sip of his energy drink. "I'm gonna skim the system by hand for anything that might help you. Maybe a few minutes, maybe a few hours. We'll see."
Ann pulled out a deck of cards – she had kept it on herself to pass the time during ad casting waits. "Anyone want to play Uno?"
"Guys, you won't like this." Mishima finally said out loud.
"At this point, I prefer bad news to no news," Goro put aside his cards, got up from the floor, and walked up to him. "What did you find, M?"
"The computers here don't seem to control the cables."
The detective was forced to admit to himself that he would've preferred no news to that. "Are you sure?"
"Almost certain."
"Then what the fuck do they do?" he groaned. "Are they just set dressing?"
"They process data." Mishima typed something in the terminal and some text showed up on the screen. "To be precise, they run a Python script which takes incoming data from an array of binary streams, and puts it through some third party libraries, probably made by Dr. Maruki in some form-"
"Dumb it down for me, please."
Mishima rolled his eyes. "Data comes in, reality alterations come out."
"Where does the data come from?" Makoto asked.
The Phanboy tapped a key to scroll the text file up. "As far as the script cares, they come from files with weird names."
A single solitary thread to pull, the detective thought. "What is weird about them?"
"You'd expect them to be in English or in Japanese, and they're neither." He poked the screen with his finger. "Here."
Goro glanced at the screen.
l[0] = open("/media/tmaruki/quimranut", "rb");
l[1] = open("/media/tmaruki/aiyatsbus", "rb");
/* rest omitted by the narrator for brevity */
His eyes drifted downwards and he noticed the name of the last file. "Welp, that's a dead end. We're calling it a day."
"But we're still blocked off from the rest of the Palace!" Sumire protested.
He lifted his hand and stuck out his index finger, pointing upwards. "As God is my witness, we have done everything we could for now," Goro repeated. "M, pack your things, we're leaving."
"You've heard the leader," Makoto remarked. "Phantom Thieves, withdraw."
Mishima grabbed his notes and a near-empty can of energy drink, and the group made the beeline to the safe room, then out of the Palace. Then, without saying anything, they marched a block away from the construction site, before the president commented: "'As God is my witness' meant 'Maruki is listening, we'll talk later', I assume."
"Correct," Goro nodded. "I don't know the extent of his surveillance outside his Palace, but that particular room was monitored last time we were there. I believe he's less likely to hear us now."
"So, what did we achieve today?" Sumire asked, mildly hopeful.
"The files Mishima pointed out were named after Mementos levels," he explained. "And it seems like a new layer manifested at the very bottom. It's worth investigating, if only because we have no other leads."
"So we're going back to Mementos now?"
"No," Yusuke butted in, "now we are heading home because it's nine thirty seven past meridiem."
"Oh." She pulled out her phone and confirmed. "Crud, I should write to Kasumi, she's probably worried sick."
"So…" Mishima piped up, "did I help you?"
"Greatly," the artist smiled.
The Phanboy responded with a satisfied fist-pump.
Elsewhere, a phone rang.
Akira glanced at the screen, and after some hesitation, picked up the call with his off-hand. "Good evening, Takuto."
"H-hey," Maruki said on the other side. "How are you holding up?"
"Decently." A practice balisong unfolded in his hand with a flashy spin. "I'm trying to learn some butterfly knife tricks to pass the time."
"And how's school?"
"Pleasantly uneventful." Beat, as he reclined in the chair by the desk. "You're calling for a reason, aren't you?"
"Well… yeah," he admitted. "Goro continues to be stubborn about his desire to dismantle my reality, and I hoped you would talk to him."
"Just Goro?" Akira asked. "Last time we spoke, I heard about others supporting him."
"Well, yes, most of the Phantom Thieves were with him today in my headquarters. I suspect he managed to deceive them-"
"We're talking about Goro Akechi, right?" he interrupted him.
"He's Sakura now."
"My point is," he continued, "we all know he's… what kind of person he is. If it was just about him and Sumire, I would buy the 'deception' angle, but most Phantom Thieves are both smart enough to see through any hypothetical bullshit and moral enough to believe what they're doing is right." Pause. "You didn't give them any reasons to doubt your good intentions, right?"
No response.
Akira sighed. "We are friends, aren't we?"
"Y-yes, of course."
"Then I can be honest with you, can't I?"
"Naturally."
He paused for a moment, trying to phrase it politely enough: "...I think Goro has a point."
"Has a- you cannot be serious." Maruki seemed more baffled than offended. "You of all people should be aware this is a one-of-a-kind opportunity to make the world a better place."
"It hinges on powers inherited from a mad god and on judgements of a single person."
"I am not a villain, Akira," he replied. "You have seen enough actual villains to be able to tell the difference by this point."
He recognized the conversation was going nowhere and decided to end it. "It's getting late, I should make my bed now. But before I go… one last request, if you please."
"I am listening."
"Don't hurt my friends."
Maruki wanted to get offended at the implication, but the thought of Sumire in the regret chamber was still in the back of his head. "Okay."
"Goro is also my friend at this point."
"If he does not force my hand, I will not hurt him."
Akira bit his tongue, ended the call, and tossed the phone at his desk. After a few idle twirls, he picked the phone back up and opened the chat app.
coffee_criminal: How are you?
ak56: You're writing for a reason, aren't you?
coffee_criminal: As blunt as ever, I see.
coffee_criminal: I just wanted to ask you for a small favour, if that's not a problem.
ak56: I'll do my best.
coffee_criminal: Please don't hurt Takuto.
coffee_criminal: He went a wee bit mad with power, but he's not an evil person, I swear.
ak56: Will he willingly move out of the way?
coffee_criminal: Sadly, no.
ak56: Then I'm sorry, but I cannot promise anything.
ak56: ...yes, I know, I'm a fucking edgelord.
ak56: And how are you holding up?
coffee_criminal: Decently.
