"Moron! Dumbass! Infuriating little one-note, hotheaded, piece-of-shit…STOWAWAY!"

Minako was absolutely livid that Sho had decided to come along, completely against Mitsuru's instructions to remain in custody and not sneak off while she juggled the Sandā Arsenal operation and getting Sho off the police's wanted list so they could figure out what to do with him afterward. Early into the rant (which was now around twenty minutes long), Aigis had commented to Ren and Haru that she had never seen Minako that angry before. Ren surmised that it was probably because Sho rubbed her the wrong way.

Case in point, he didn't look sorry at all considering the way he lounged in his seat, rolling his joints to work out the remaining kinks from being cramped in an overhead compartment for the entire trip.

When Minako finally paused for breath, he commented lightly, "Wow, I've never seen anyone get so angry just by being in the vex-cinity! Haha! I should do this more often, because watching people's reactions is hilarious!"

Minako dropped a fist on his head, which only momentarily put a dampener on his grin. "Take this seriously, moron! You're already causing enough trouble as it is just from coming to Tokyo! Now Mitsuru's going to be in even more trouble for letting you get away, even if we know where you are!"

Ken interrupted, "I've managed to get Mitsuru on the phone. I'll put it on speaker."

The moment he set it down on the table of the RV, Mitsuru's cold fury emanated from it. "Sho. What, pray tell, do you think you are doing in Osaka with the strike team?" she asked slowly.

"We're here to beat up the guys that were trying to grab me, aren't we?" Sho asked easily.

"Don't you dare say 'we'! You're not included in the 'we' because you're not part of the group, Sword Baby!" Minako had calmed down a bit from her ranting when Mitsuru had entered the conversation, but she was now clearly back on the verge of screaming at him again, her eyes a blazing crimson.

"Minako-san, calm yourself," Mitsuru ordered before taking a deep breath herself. "Sho, I explained to you my reasons for ordering you to remain at the compound. Your impulsive behavior is a great cause for concern among the members of PubSec that believe that you ought to be locked up. It is all I can do to assure them that you are still in the custody of some of my strongest operatives, let alone that you won't cause any undue harm to anyone while you're out of their reach."

"Hey, there's nothing for you to worry about," Sho assured in the same easygoing tone he'd been using for the entire conversation. "I'm 'good' now. Now that I know how much fun having bonds can be, I'm more than willing to try making some by fighting our common enemies together, both these Sandy Weapons guys and the leaky Shadows."

"Easy for you to say," Ken reprimanded him. "But regardless of any change of heart you may have had, the fact remains that you have made some questionable decisions in the past, and it's not easy to just forget that."

"Precisely," Mitsuru continued, "though PubSec is more concerned about the disturbances your presence has caused in Tokyo over the past week, and even more so that there are apparently very few things that are capable of keeping you in check. If there weren't a perpetual threat of Shadows flooding the city, the SIU would have issued a manhunt for you by now."

Sho frowned. "Okay, that would be pretty annoying. I've had enough of being chased around for a while."

Mitsuru gave an exasperated sigh before begrudgingly accepting Sho's reluctant acknowledgement. "We will speak more of this on your return. In the meantime, the plan has not changed. Get yourselves situated in Osaka tonight. Tomorrow, you will go to the police station to make the necessary arrangements for the raid. On Wednesday, the raid commences, and we take the people who ordered the attacks on Sho and Okuda-san into custody."

"And if they resist, we beat them up, right?" Sho asked. Minako glared at him to no avail.

"You are to resort to violence if, and only if, there are Shadows involved," Mitsuru stated firmly. "Don't you dare make me clean up any more of your messes."

"Let's hope there are plenty of Shadows involved then!" Sho said gleefully.

Minako opened her mouth to chastise him again, but Mitsuru interrupted. "Leave it, Minako-san. If he wants to act like a child, let him act like a child. Just focus on the mission and have Aigis and Labrys keep an eye on him."

"Roger," Aigis spoke up. "My sister and I will maintain our guard over Sho twenty-four hours a day until we return to base."

Sho did a double-take. "Now hold on a minute, that's-"

"Much appreciated, Aigis," Mitsuru cut him off. "I'm counting on you all. Now if you all will excuse me, I have to finish cleaning up the mess Sho made when he left." The call ended.

Labrys looked at Sho with a smirk on her face. "Don' even bother arguin," she told him. "We ain't lettin' you outta our sight. Not even when you sleep or need to use the bathroom."

"Now I believe it would be prudent for us to join Naoto in the hotel and get settled in for the week," Aigis spoke again before grabbing Sho by the scruff of his collar and marching him out of the van despite his protests, Labrys following behind and grinning all the way.

Ren couldn't keep the grin off of his face either as he watched them go. "Well, that was entertaining," he commented lightly.

Ken grimaced. "I'm totally going to have to listen to Minako-san yelling at that guy the entire trip, aren't I?"

Haru replied, "If it makes you feel any better Ken-kun, I can ask them to stop if things between them get too heated."

Ken considered the offer. "If I need your help getting them to cool off, I'll take you up on that."

Sophia walked over. "Should we not follow them inside?"

Ren looked at her. "Good point, Sophia. Let's grab our bags and head in."

The hotel was a fancy one (typical of Mitsuru), and the employees barely batted an eye at the scarred Sho or the clearly mechanical androids that walked in that night after Naoto to inquire about a prior reservation. The team ended up taking three rooms: one for the boys, one for the girls, and one for Aigis, Labrys, and Sophia to guard Sho in.

Ken walked into the room he was going to be sharing with Ren and Morgana and flopped over onto his bed. Ren was sitting up in a loose black t-shirt and sweatpants, evidently his nightclothes, and looked over at the older college student from his phone. "You must be really tired if you're flopping on the bed like that."

Ken shot him a look. "And what's that supposed to mean?"

Ren shrugged. "You just always seem so composed. At the meeting and throughout the entire trip here you've acted like nothing fazes you."

Ken pulled himself into a sitting position. "Normally, there isn't much that fazes me, especially after everything that happened in 2009. But listening to Sho complaining nonstop for three hours is enough to make almost any sane person crazy."

Ren gave a little snort. "Fair enough."

After a few moments of silence, Ken ventured, "Hey, Amamiya-san?"

"Just Ren is fine."

"Ren-san. Continuing our conversation from the trip, do you think I might have become like Akechi if I had let my vengeance consume me and killed Shinjiro-san?"

Ren glanced at the older young man. "Maybe. You never know. What we do know is that you didn't. Regardless of what happened to you in the past, you were the one who made the choice to abandon vengeance."

Ken considered this. "That's true I guess. Still, do you think you could've ended up like him?"

Ren blinked in surprise. "You know, I have actually thought about that a couple times. If I didn't have my team and my parents on my side, I very well might have turned out like Akechi, maybe even worse. A bastard child put on probation for a crime he didn't commit, scorned by everyone around him and being forced to sit still and watch as continuous injustices occur around him? Who wouldn't be driven down a dark path with experiences like that?"

Ren put down his phone and looked up at the ceiling before continuing. "Ultimately though, I don't think I would've ever been entirely like Akechi."

"How so?"

Ren tipped his head and flashed his smirk at Ken. "There is no way I would have ever come up with as stupid a plan as the one he put together to get revenge on Shido."

Ken raised an eyebrow at this, and Ren continued, "The idiot thought that helping Shido rise to power would give him a good opportunity to tear down everything Shido had built just by revealing he was Shido's bastard child, after which he intended to assassinate him. He somehow didn't think that Shido would just say 'Huh, I thought that might be the case,' and just kill Akechi too."

Ken grimaced. "Was that guy really an Ace Detective?"

"Eh, he was pretty smart," Ren replied, "as evidenced by his top grades and the fact that he was quite good at chess. He just tended to toss out his sense of reason once he got too emotional. Honestly, I kind of feel sorry for him. This world is cruel to people who are viewed as bastards or delinquents, regardless of who they really are. Personal experience." He looked back down at his phone. "Even so, if you at least try to be a good person, eventually there's going to be at least someone who's going to be there for you."

Morgana walked in as he was saying this, his hair still dripping from the hot springs and his ears twitching tiredly. "Texting your girlfriend, Ren?" he asked.

"She's demanding to know how I juggle all the Thief stuff and manage to get top scores in all my classes at the same time," Ren reported. "I just told her she needs to start by taking things one at a time and delegate responsibilities if necessary."

"Plenty of flirty comments mixed in as well I suppose?" Morgana asked drily.

Ren flashed a smug grin. "I refuse to be ashamed of my love."

Morgana groaned. "Someone please save me before I get covered in all this sap."

"Still having lady trouble, Morgana?" Ren teased.

Morgana's hackles raised. "Don't even! It's hard enough trying to get over Lady Ann without having people tease me about it."

"Well, you can start by just calling her Ann," Ken suggested. "You don't call any of the other Thieves 'Lady'."

Morgana and Ren both looked at him. "I thought you were the guy who refused to call anyone without honorifics?" Ren mentioned.

Ken narrowed his eyes. "Who told you that?"

"Yamagishi-san, before the meeting."

Ken grimaced. "I just like being polite with the other Shadow Operatives because they're all my senpai, and I don't know the rest of you as well. I don't use honorifics with my friends at school."

"Sure you don't," Ren sassed. Ken shot him a look and was about to complain again before Ren got up from his bed. "Welp, I think I'm going to try a little bit of nightly crafting. Want to join me, Morgana?"

Morgana glared. "It's already almost nine, you moron! We need to rest if we're going to be busy the next couple days!"

"Okay, twelve-year-old, you can go to bed if you want," Ren told the half-cat. He sat down at the desk and started rummaging around in one of his packs while Morgana spluttered in indignation. Clearly this was an old argument and not one Ken wanted to be involved in.

"Ken! You agree with me right? We should totally be getting to bed now!"

"No he doesn't. That's why he's still up."

Well, so much for that.

Ren's parents looked on with apprehension as Futaba worked through her hacking. The computer room she'd taken over in the Thieves' Den was now twice the size thanks to the whole "bigger on the inside" thing she could do with a Vane of Order, her Persona, and some computer chips.

Futaba had been thriving ever since the Outbreak. After the Phantom Thieves' first public debut saving the city from the Shadows pouring out of Shibuya station, she'd quickly learned to capitalize on the Thieves' exploding popularity, first with a simple hack-and-slash dungeon-crawling PC game where the player would select a Thief and work their way into the depths of a randomly generated dungeon, finding treasures, fighting Shadows, and eventually working their way to the treasure at the very bottom of the dungeon: the Heart. Once the Heart was taken, the dungeon would be on a timer, and it was a race to get out before it collapsed.

It had taken a good chunk of the summer for her to develop, but it had sold like wildfire once it was out, and judging how the player count was not dropping at all, the features she had included with the random generation, unlocking more of the Thieves, and DLC in the form of new treasures and adding Yu, Rise, Aigis, Labrys, and Minako as playable characters (with their permission of course) were being quite successful in ensuring that people would be returning to the game for a long time coming.

On the side, she was surreptitiously assisting Nishima with upgrading his Phan-site. The older Admin had done some admirable work, including detailed and well-organized information on the various Thieves and their powers, profiles of common Shadow varieties around Tokyo, and reworking the polls and discussion sites, but on occasion, she'd found it necessary to make a few corrections when Nishima had gotten something wrong. And then of course, there was her final masterpiece, which had required her to reveal Oracle's presence on the site to the Nishima running it: an Emergency Alert button wired straight back to a separate CPU in the Thieves Den powered by a Vane of Order that would send an immediate alert to Al Azif and allow her Persona to trace the Alert all the way back to where it was sent from and do a quick scan of the area for threats so one of her teammates could be dispatched accordingly. Of course, it wasn't immune to trolls, but once word got around about what would happen if you didn't have an emergency, or worse, if you tried to spam the button, the number of instances where she'd had to deal with that had plummeted.

At the moment though, she was assisting Mitsuru Kirijo's legal team, headed by Fuuka Yamagishi a.k.a. Lucia, in acquiring data for them to use in the sting operation against Sandā Arsenal in the coming days. And already she was starting to uncover some juicy stuff, including a few records of weapons shipments they'd provided to yakuza clans across Japan, including Kaneshiro's. Naturally, they weren't very big due to Japan's extremely strict gun laws, but there were still enough of them that they would certainly be damning if they were dug up.

"How's it going?" Ren's mom eventually asked. Akari, she remembered.

Futaba leaned back in her chair and stretched. "I'm pretty much done for tonight. Sandā Arsenal is pretty much cooked after what I just found. Officially, I'm just an Anonymous Source handing incriminating documents in to the police, and since there's no evidence that they were obtained illegally, those kidnappers ought to be well and truly screwed with this. Mwehehe."

Ren's dad, Kazushi, gave a little chuckle. "Remind me never to get on your bad side."

"Speaking of," Futaba mentioned, spinning her chair around. "I think that I and the rest of the Thieves are all of one mind when we say we want to repay the man who brought Ren into the world."

Akari gave a start of surprise. "You what?"

"It wouldn't really be that hard. All I'd really need is a name. Then I can find out what he's been up to the past eighteen years and whether he needs to be punished accordingly. Ren might've turned out great, but that doesn't change the fact that this guy raped you and got you kicked out of your family's home. So I think we're all justified at feeling outraged on your behalf given everything Ren did for us."

"Futaba-chan, there's no need to-" Akari tried to interrupt.

"No, I wasn't done," Futaba insisted. "After my mom was murdered by mental shutdown, the men in black who forged her suicide note blamed everything on me, and for the next two years I was almost crippled with guilt, anxiety, and even hallucinations, on top of all the neglect and abuse that my relatives heaped on me. By the time Sojiro got custody over me, it was almost too late. I'd become a shut-in with near-constant suicidal thoughts, and the only thing Sojiro could do was make sure I was safe and away from people that would set me off. If it weren't for Ren stealing my heart and helping me reacclimate to people, I very likely might have committed suicide before the year ended."

Futaba took a deep breath. Ren's parents were looking at her with shocked expressions. "I'll be honest, I'm still nervous when it comes to meeting new people, even though it's been two years since I met Ren and I've been going back to school since he went home. That and the fact that you're his parents are probably the only reason I'm even comfortable talking about this stuff with you. And just the thought of how you or Ren might have gone through something like I did… you have no idea how angry that makes me, especially since the guy who did it probably got off scot-free and maybe even decided that if he could get away with that, it was worth doing it again. Heck, I don't even know who my dad was, so there's even a chance he might be my dad too, and Ren and I are actual siblings, I dunno. So…" she trailed off, looking at Akari expectantly.

Akari looked down at the floor. "As much as I appreciate the offer… no. I'm not telling you."

Futaba couldn't mask her surprise. "Huh? Why not?"

Akari smiled weakly at her. "As cathartic as it might be to know I got revenge on the man who did that to me, it was still almost two decades ago. Even though I have faith in your hacking skills, which you've just demonstrated to an incredible degree, mind you, I think that since it's been so long since then, I'm willing to live and let live. I've moved on. I have Ren, Kazushi, and now you and your father and Ren's friends as extended family, and that's all I need."

Futaba felt a little downcast at this response. "I see…"

Akari then flashed a grin very similar to her son's. "Still, that doesn't mean I'll be so lenient if he decides to ruin the new life we've built. If he comes back and tries anything again, I'll be more than happy to tell you his name then."

Futaba immediately brightened again. "Mwehehe. You've got a deal."

Kazushi Amamiya looked at his wife with barely-masked horror, giving Futaba a very good idea of how scary Akari could be when she was angry. Maybe that was why Ren liked scary girls…

Ryouto Yoshino sat in his family's garage and contemplated his options. Admittedly, what he was hoping to accomplish was pretty stupid. He didn't know what this thing was or what it could do. The only thing he did know was that it had felt incredibly uncomfortable to even put his hand near the thing, hence why he'd opted to pick it up with tweezers and contain it in a metal box he'd welded together specifically for that purpose.

The golden feather glittered dully at him. It was almost unsettling how even just looking at it it seemed to whisper in his mind, making him promises of power if he would just pick it up and give in to his darkest impulses. He'd seen enough movies to know where that would go, and the thought just made him more terrified, prompting him to snap the box shut and push it away where he wouldn't hear the dreaded whispers.

He'd seen the massive scars on Okuda-senpai's right hand, shaped exactly like one of these golden feathers. He didn't actually know what had happened with that, but there was no way he was going to put himself through that kind of injury. Not only would it hurt, it would definitely tip off his adoptive parents that he was up to something dangerous, and he was not going to get them involved after what had almost happened during the Outbreak.

Okuda-senpai had probably used one of these to pull off his initial Awakening. He didn't know how, but the scars on his hand were the best proof he had of that. And considering how the feather seemed to be whispering in his mind, it made sense that if one were hooked up to some sort of mechanism, it could be used to create some sort of perception filter as well. The trouble was, he didn't know how to wire such an object to any kind of device that would let him protect his family without a Persona. He walked out of the garage still thinking. Maybe he could take apart something with a motor, see what happened…?

There was a sudden fluttering of wings as a bird that had been perched on the fence post suddenly took off, but not before Ryo caught a glimpse of a hooked beak and talons. A raptor? He thought, watching it fly away. That's weird. I know Okuda-senpai calls his group the Raptor Pack, but I never noticed him actually keeping one.

Was it possible Okuda-senpai had an actual bird of prey spying for him? For all Ryo knew, it was possible. There seemed to be almost no limit to the kinds of miracles Persona-users were capable of pulling off. Still, he didn't know enough. Fortunately, the second-years at their school would be away for the school trip after tomorrow. That would give him a fair window of time to carry out a few experiments in case he was being spied on. He didn't think that Okuda-senpai or his friends would hurt him, but he wasn't taking any chances.

Unbeknownst to him, a pair of lesser Shadows and a Pixie were dissolving into smoke on the other side of the house. The raptor flew off towards the school, where it had seen the humans whom that one had been spying on hunting Shadows. There was a soft rustle of wings as it landed on a nearby building to watch, grabbing a small stone in one talon just in case. The three Shadow-hunters seemed to be doing just fine without it though, so the bird simply sat back and watched them fight.

The team's leader was definitely the lynchpin of the operation. He'd had several moon cycles to get used to his power, while the other male was still getting used to his and the girl hadn't even found hers yet. Still, they worked together relatively well, with the leader taking point and drawing the enemies' attention while the other boy attacked the flanks and the girl supported them with potshots from behind. The bird saw the flanking boy give a shout of triumph as a blast of lightning he summoned managed to stun the Shadow they were fighting, quickly followed by a shot from the girl blasting it off its feet and a signal from the leader to finish it off with an All-Out Attack.

They didn't really need help at the moment, so the raptor took flight again and headed back to its nest, taking note of the rain clouds that were rolling in. Hopefully the oncoming storm wouldn't rain it out of its nest again…