Disclaimer: I own nothing.
As soon as the door to the coffee shop closed, Futaba brought out her laptop and got to work. "Futaba Cannon 2.0, activate!" She cried.
"Woah, woah, woah, what's goin' on?"
Ren let out a heavy sigh, unsure of how he managed to keep this secret to himself for so long. "Long story short, I think Akechi might be alive."
Futaba turned her laptop around to show live feed of the advertisement and news screens in Shibuya showing a red mask with a pointed nose, the words 'We're waiting for you, Crow' trailing across the screen."
"Are you for real?!" Ryuji cried.
Ren nodded his head with a pensive stare. "When I left Tokyo… I think I saw him walk past my train. It was for a split second, but I saw him."
"Ren, are you sure it was him?" Ann gently asked. "After everything that happened, don't you think it could have been your mind playing a trick on you or something?"
He shook his head in denial towards her question, but also somewhat towards himself. "I know it doesn't make sense. That it's a longshot. But if it's true, I need to at least try."
"Don't worry, bro. We've got your back." Ryuji said with a toothy grin.
"He's right. We're standing right behind you, Joker." Makoto confidently added.
He looked at the Phantom Thieves surrounding him with sympathetic smiles and dropped his head with a relaxed sigh. "Thank you. All of you."
With Ren's news out in the open, the Phantom Thieves remained in Leblanc, awaiting their old comrade and enemy to walk through the door. For the first hour, it was almost completely silent, all of them keeping an eye on the cafè's entrance. As s more time passed, the silence grew too unbearable. They talked more amongst themselves about their current lives and plans for the future. Though he was anxious in waiting for his rival's return from the dead, Ren couldn't help but smile, reminding himself of his probationary stay in Tokyo.
As it neared midnight, Ren noticed that Ann, Ryuji and Makoto were already asleep. He pulled a glove from his pocket and slid it over his right hand. The very same glove that Akechi had challenged him with. He sighed heavily, standing up so that he could disband his team, now sure that his sighting of Akechi was nothing more than naive hope. That is until the bell attached to the cafè's door rang, drawing Ren's sight to a man in a large trench coat, a hood covering his face.
No one dared to speak, fearing that if they asked, the stranger would reveal himself to be just that. A stranger. Slowly, he brought his hands to his hood and pulled it down, revealing a stoic Goro Akechi. "I must say, that message you left me was rather unexpected. I didn't think you would do something so grandiose just for me."
Akechi's eyes were locked with Ren's. The Thieves looked between the two, unable to read Ren's expression through his glasses. Akechi, however, could read him like a book. Ren's fists shook and his eyes twitched ever so slightly. He rushed forward, charging the Detective Prince and striking him across the face with his gloved fist. "You bastard!" He yelled, waking up Ryuji, Ann, and Makoto.
"What the-Holy shit, he's here!" Ryuji dazily announced.
Akechi stood at the entrance, face still turned away from Ren's punch. He slowly raised his head back towards the Phantom Thieves as he rubbed his cheek. "I probably deserve more than that."
"Damn right you do!" Ren shouted, grabbing his rival by the collar. "Where the hell have you been?! Why didn't you tell any of us you were alive?!"
"Dude!" Ryuji protested, jumping from his seat and struggling to pull Ren off of Akechi.
"Senpai, please!" Sumire cried.
"Answer me!" He ignored them.
Akechi sighed, removing Ren's hands from his shirt. "I suppose I do owe you some kind of explanation, don't I? To summarize, after Maruki's reality collapsed, I woke up in the care of some doctors. I never learned their names. They were rather secretive. I assume that what happened in Shido's palace had ejected me from the metaverse, rather than outright killing me. Shido's men must have found me and he decided to have me taken care of. Though I can't say why they didn't let me die once his heart was changed."
"Could it be that Shido ordered you be taken care of, no matter what happened to him?" Yusuke offered.
"Anything is possible, I suppose. I don't find that likely though."
Ren balled his fist once more and punched Akechi again, knocking him to the floor this time. "To hell with how! I want to know why! Why haven't you contacted us? We mourned for you, you son of a bitch!"
Everyone present, save for Akechi, was taken completely aback from their leader's outburst. He had rarely, if ever, showed so much emotion. Akechi stood back up, though his arms were shaking. "Tell me, Ren. If you had betrayed the only people who really cared for you, even after you tried to kill them-" Akechi quickly launched his own fist across his rival's face, forcing him to ram into Leblanc's counter. "Do you think you could just show up and act like nothing happened?!" He bellowed.
Ren banged his fist over the counter before grabbing a knife slowly retreating up the stairs, leaving Akechi and the Phantom Thieves staring at one another for answers. Their faithful leader returned shortly after his departure, holding two bamboo stalks. One short and one long. He walked towards Akechi, aggressively placing the longer bamboo into the detective's hands, and continued on outside. Akechi soon followed, and not long after, the rest of the Phantom Thieves.
Ren and Akechi stood ten paces apart from one another, both of them ready for a fight. "Holy shit! Are they gonna fight?" Ryuji asked.
"It would seem so…" Haru sadly confirmed.
"Oh, I am so filming this." Futaba cackeled, hacking into Yongen-Jaya's security cameras.
"Are you sure you want to do this, Ren? I won't hold back like I did in Mementos." He stated, calmly inspecting his impromptu sword.
Ren flourished his weapon through his fingers. "Neither will I." His tone, unlike when Akechi had first walked in, was undaunting.
"Wait, we're not seriously gonna let them do this, right?"
"Do you wanna try and stop them, Ryuji?" Makoto asked.
"Are you kiddin'? Hell no!"
"That's what I thought." Makoto looked at the two wild cards with a battlehardened stare, sure that the fight would be anything but short, assuming no one tried to stop them.
"I'm on Ryuji with this one." Ann said uneasily. "Is this healthy?"
"Who cares about 'healthy'?" Futaba laughed. "Badass is what this is."
Yusuke was sitting down with a sketchbook in one hand and a pencil in the other. "I must capture the beauty of this battle. It will be unlike any other."
"Senpai…" Sumire anxiously whispered.
"I just hope no one calls the police." Morgana stated. "The last thing we need is that guy getting arrested again." Everyone simply nodded their heads in agreement with the cat.
"It seems that your friends won't be interfering. This is your last chance."
"Just shut up and fight!" Ren charged forward, unleashing a never ending wave of attacks, each of them being blocked or parried by his counterpart.
Akechi made a swift side step, throwing Ren off balance and giving him enough time to kick him away and switch to offense. "Then die!" He yelled psychotically.
Ren evaded each of Akechi's swift attacks, fluidly moving his body out of the way as if he were the air itself. Seeing an opening after Akechi overswung his weapon, he charged his shoulder into the detective's chest.
As the fight raged on, the Phantom Thieves couldn't bear to rip their eyes from the battle. With every swing, it was as if they were watching personas vying for supremacy in a never ending conflict. Their fighting continued on for nearly twenty more minutes until both Ren and Akechi saw an opening. The two of them struck like vipers, Akechi aiming for Ren's face, and Ren for Akechi's neck. Their weapons both found their marks, and the two fell to the ground, Ren gripping the side of his face, and Akechi clutching onto his throat, gasping for air.
Ren was the first of the two of them to stand. He shakily made his way to Akechi's side and kicked him over onto his back. Holding his bleeding cheek, he confidantly announced, "I win."
"Bull shit!" He sputtered out, coughing from the sudden intake of air. "I struck you at the same time! We're both dead, if you're lucky!"
"Fine." He replied, slowly taking off Akechi's glove. "If that's how you really feel, then take this." With that, threw the glove into Akechi's face, just like he had done so long ago to him. Ren began walking off towards the main street, no one bothering to stop him until Akechi stumbled to his feet.
"It won't be so easy next time, Ren!"
He let out a quick huff of air through his nose. "You're damn right." He said, turning around with a twisted and ecstatic grin. "Because next time, I'll show you the true strength of a Trickster." With that, the leader of the Phantom Thieves walked off, deciding it was time to return to his parents, Morgana running to catch up with him.
Akechi simply stared at the glove that Ren had returned before pocketing it and turning back towards his old team. "That bastard just doesn't know when to give up…" He said bitterly. His calm and tranquil visage had vanished long ago. "I don't know why you didn't decide to just up and kill me back in Shido's palace…" He said as he passed them. "But I'm thankful to have known you naive fools."
With that, both Ren and Akechi had retreated from Yongen-Jaya. Everyone who witnessed the fight could hardly move from the stress and awe of watching Joker and Crow battle, but Ryuji was the first who managed to speak. "Shit, man... Those two are crazy scary when they get serious."