Akira is used to the attic being nothing more than a glorified storage unit before he spends arduous hours transforming it into a somewhat livable space. Through the eyes of his friends, however, he can feel the new-found disgust of the clutter that covers the dirtied floor and the stale, dusty air. Makoto coughs delicately as Ryuji lets out a low whistle.

"Boss really didn't leave you much, did he?" Ryuji asks, eyeing the thick layer of dust that blankets the desk. He slowly carves a stripe through it with his finger, nose wrinkling when his fingertip turns black in return.

Akira points at Sojiro's excuse for a bed. "He gave me a mattress. Anyway," he shakes his head, "you all wanted answers."

His teammates snap to attention, gazes ripped away from the unfamiliar grime of the attic to give him their single-minded focus. Like soldiers going to war, his mind supplies unhelpfully, before he immediately dismisses the thought. Not now.

Futaba starts hesitantly, "You said we were stuck in a time loop."

Ryuji blurts out, "For real?" as Ann pulls at the ends of her pigtails, distraught. "What happened to Yaldy, then?"

"Is he getting ready to attack us again? Did he do this?" Ann asks.

"No," Akira says firmly. Focus on what he does know, for now. "Even if he does remember, he's not strong enough for a full fledged attack, like before. There's not enough energy from the public in Mementos. We don't exist yet, right?"

"That's so weird to think about!" she exclaims. "This doesn't make any sense!"

Makoto wraps her arms around herself, frowning in thought. "Yaldabaoth was still powerful without Mementos, though, and when he erased everybody's memories. He shouldn't need us to attack the entire world, so why wait?"

"He didn't have the proper motivation without us," Akira argues. "He was perfectly fine to let the world be before we came along."

"But how do you know that he doesn't remember? We all do! It makes sense that he'd try to get us now when we're disjointed like this. I think we should find the others and return to the Metaverse as soon as possible."

Before Akira can reply, Ryuji says, "Dude, how are you being so calm about all of this?"

"That's another thing," Makoto adds. "How are you so sure about everything? You told Futaba that we were in a time loop, not that we'd just time traveled," a pause, her eyes widening, "like you've done all of this before."

Akira swallows, blunt nails digging crescents into his palms. When Makoto's sharp gaze flicks downwards at the movement, he deliberately unclenches his fists, hands hanging loosely at his sides. He can count on one hand the amount of times he's done this before, spilled his secrets to his friends in a chaotic mess, bare and transparent and awaiting their fatal judgement like Caroline and Justine poised over the executioner's blade.

This time has been different. This time will be different.

"You're right," he admits. "I have. I've done this before. All of this before. I've been living this same year for decades, now."

For a moment, no one moves. The four future Phantom Thieves stand in their rough semicircle around Akira, a hasty council crammed into the liminal spaces of the dirty attic. Their silence is surreal, pervasive in the thick air. Akira waits for them.

In a single moment, the quiet cracks, as sudden and jarring as a gunshot. Futaba makes a distressed noise at the back of her throat as Ryuji roughly scruffs at his bleached hair, a curse torn from his throat. Ann's hands move to cover her mouth, but Akira can still hear the sounds of his name muffled behind her palms. Makoto's hands squeeze her elbows harshly, fingers bunching the dark fabric of her uniform as if it will transform into the steel edges of Queen's distinct armor if she grips hard enough.

"Okay," Makoto's voice is flat, a desperate attempt at calmness. "Okay, you're stuck in a time loop. We knew that; I knew that. It's April again, for all of us now. We just n-need to compare what we know."

Ann opens her mouth to speak, but Ryuji beats her to it. "Screw that, Akira, why the hell didn't you tell us before? We could have done something before now!"

The sudden anger from Ryuji is a whiplash change, and for a moment, it completely throws Akira off. "What, would you have actually believed me?"

His tone is venomous, and Ryuji flinches back before saying, "Yes, obviously! We're your friends! You could have trusted us!"

"Ryuji!" Ann hisses.

Akira takes half a step forward, and Ryuji tilts his chin. Akira spits, "Oh, really? Based on past experiences, that's not always the case!"

"Our other selves may have been assholes, then, but we would have been better! You know that!"

"Did I? It's not like you're the same people or anything!"

"Dude, come on-"

"Stop it!" Futaba yells, panicked enough to make them both halt unevenly in their tracks. "Stop it, now!"

With their full attention turned on her, she immediately clamps up, face flaming red. Makoto swoops in to rescue her. "Futaba's right," she declares, eyes hard. "This isn't getting us anywhere. What's done is done, there's no use arguing about it. All that matters is what we do next."

Ryuji glowers at Akira's cluttered shelf, stuffed with forgotten books rather than a treasured collection of gifts. "Right."

"Right," Akira echoes frostily, and adjusts his glasses. Their reactions were predictable, at least. Akira was struggling to grasp on to anything that was in this new, twisted timeline.

After a beat of awkward silence, Akira runs a hand through his hair, closing his eyes. Calm down: this isn't how to start this loop. "You're right," he concedes to Makoto. "We need to get in contact with everybody. Futaba, could you set up the group chat again? Yusuke and Haru have probably figured out what's going on by now, but they'll want to hear from us. We can meet up with them in person tomorrow, but there's no way we'll be able to see them again right now. It's impossible for them to get out of their places."

Even as Futaba whips out her phone and begins to rapidly type, Ann frowns. "Will they be okay? Madarame and Okumura haven't had their hearts changed yet, right?"

Futaba looks up wildly. "Wait. I have, though. I know I have."

Akira nods. "Right. It's still April." He hesitates. "Futaba, you were the treasure of your Palace. That's why you're still fine, I think. We had to steal everybody else's." Futaba relaxes and turns her attention back to her phone.

Ryuji finally speaks, voice still tight but noticeably less enraged. "What about Monamona, then? He's still stuck with Kamoshida. We need to bust him out!"

Makoto asks, "What? Morgana's with Kamoshida?"

"Didn't we tell y'all? We rescued him from a prison cell."

"I rescued him," Akira can't help but add, light-hearted teasing a desperate attempt to cure the sour mood between him and Ryuji. "You wanted to leave him behind."

"Yeah yeah, whatever. Point is, the stupid cat's still stuck. You really asking us to just leave him there?"

The thing is, whenever Akira goes to Kamoshida's Palace, Morgana has always just been there, waiting for him with no memories beyond being tossed in a cold cell. It never mattered when Akira rescued him. It was forever the same, whether Akira came within hours or months of the reset. Even in this weird timeline, Akira knows that Morgana will still be right where they first found him. He's the embodiment of humanity's hope, after all. The passage of time has little meaning to him.

He was positive that they could go rescue him whenever they wanted, but explaining how he knew that would make them question how exactly he was so certain in the first place. Admitting that he once left a teammate to waste away alone and let Kamoshida run rampant for months before bothering to do anything about it? There was no way that that would go over well.

"He'll be fine if we wait," Akira says, authoritative. When Ryuji opens his mouth to argue, Akira adds, "Remember, we only found him on the first day of school. He may not even be in the Palace yet. We should check tomorrow, though. We'll have gathered everyone else by then."

"I don't like the idea of just leaving him there," Ann gripes. "Who knows what he'll do when he wakes up alone!"

"Leaving him confused for a day is better than barging in with no plan," Akira points out. "Anyway, even if we're wrong, he'll just find his way back here like you all did."

Ryuji crosses his arms. "He was trapped, remember? He can't get out without us."

"Kamoshida never actually hurt Morgana before we got there! If anything, he's safe."

Futaba pipes up, "I made the group chat!"

Simultaneously, all of the phones in the room beep. Akira and Ryuji continue to glare at each other for a few tense heartbeats. Akira is the first to look away, fishing out his phone from his pocket to see a gif of Futaba's familiar grinning cat. Instantly, a slew of messages begin to appear.

Haru: Everyone!

Haru: What happened?

Haru: Is everybody okay?

Akira's phone vibrates in his hand, the group chat disappearing as Haru's icon blinks up at him, an incoming call. Akira puts his phone on speaker and sets it face-up on the table. Haru's high-pitched voice filters out, words tumbling uncharacteristically. "Akira-kun!"

He can't help the small sigh of relief. Mentally, he ticks her name off of his list, a concrete confirmation that another member of his team is safe. If nothing else, he's still their leader, and arguments aside, right now they need that more than ever.

"Haru," he says, his voice briefly overlapping with the others and their various expressions of excitement and worry. "You're okay." It's not a question.

"Yes!" she exclaims. There's a frantic rustling in the background, followed by the distinct sound of the slamming of a door. "Yes! Oh, are all of you together?"

"We're currently at Leblanc," Makoto confirms. "Everyone's here except you, Yusuke, and Morgana."

"Did something happen to them?"

"They're fine," Akira cuts in. "None of you were able to make it here. They're safe, I promise." He ignores Makoto's sharp glance. "It's April again." He cuts to the chase. "Yaldabaoth put us in a time loop."

A drawn out silence, before Haru says in a clipped voice, "Yes, I noticed. I just saw my father. He was - he was alright. He was alive."

Ann's mouth opens wordlessly, and Makoto whispers, "Oh, Haru."

Haru takes a fortifying breath. "I'm alright," she says even as her tone wavers. "I'm just glad everyone's safe. Should I come in person?"

"No, you don't have to," Akira hurriedly says before anyone else in the room could shout an affirmation. He doesn't think he can handle another person hugging him today. "Just stay on the phone with us, okay? We're planning on meeting up again tomorrow."

"Tomorrow? Where?"

"Shujin," Akira says, and this time it's directed at all of them. "Morgana's currently still in Kamoshida's Palace. We'll meet up at the front gate at nine am. There won't be many people there, and no one knows about the Phantom Thieves anyway. Ryuji and I will sneak in and rescue Morgana. We can all talk after."

"Wait-" Ryuji says, but he's cut off by Ann's, "Excuse me?"

Makoto looks at him incredulously. "Do we get any say in this?"

"No," Akira says. This isn't really the time for tact. That's for later, when all of them are together again. One step at a time. "Ryuji and I know the path down to the dungeons, and we'll attract too much attention if we enter as a large group."

"You're just going to leave us behind then?" Futaba asks. "Again?"

"It took us four hours to escape Kamoshida's Palace last time. It shouldn't take nearly as long now. You'll be fine." Akira tilts his head. "Besides, a lot of the shadows in the Palace are weak to electric attacks. It'll be a good test run to see how your Personas have reacted to the loop."

"Wouldn't you know?" Ryuji asks, petulant.

"I know how I react," Akira says. He purses his lips before adding, "Usually, I transform immediately. I have to actively concentrate not to."

"Why wait?"

"I didn't want you to know that I was a Persona user right from the start."

"Wouldn't it have been better if he knew?" Ann asks. "You guys told me that you nearly died because you got captured!"

"There would have been too many questions. You needed to see the proof for yourself. You needed to see me unlock my Persona! If you don't, the loop kind of gets ruined."

"So you just faked it in the cell? Dude, what? If you'd waited any longer Kamoshida would have killed me!" Ryuji's voice rises dangerously as he speaks.

"I wouldn't have let you get murdered, Ryuji! Who do you think I am?"

"What are you talking about?" Haru's tinny voice interrupts them, and Akira blinks down at his phone. For a moment, he'd forgotten she was even listening, unaware of what had already been forcibly revealed to the rest. "'The first loop?'"

Futaba blurts out, "Akira's apparently been living this year since forever and only bothered to tell us a few minutes ago!"

"What?"

"See, that's what we said!" Ryuji exclaims. "And this guy just sort of brushed it off!"

"I'm sorry, alright! I'm not sure if you've noticed, but we have more important things to worry about!" Akira says, exasperated.

"Stop arguing, both of you! It's a good plan. We need to get everybody together," Makoto snaps at them. "Then we can figure out what went wrong with Yaldabaoth." She turns to Akira. "That's why you keep resetting, isn't it? Because we've never been able to defeat him?" When he nods wordlessly, she continues. "We all have a second chance here and we can't waste that, but first, we all need to get on the same page."

"It's a long story, and this - this is the first time you've all looped with me." Akira takes a deep breath and rubs at the back of his neck absent-mindedly. "Can we start with what you guys remember? We'll go from there."

"What about Inari?" Futaba asks. "He hasn't replied yet. Shouldn't we wait for him? We'll just have to go over everything again anyway."

Akira feels a trickle of unease at her words, a reminder that one of their teammates was still left unaccounted for, but Makoto saves him from answering. "We should still talk, Futaba." She points out, "It'll be better if we can fill him in on everything at once instead of just waiting around."

"Oh, yeah." Futaba glances down at her phone, tapping forlornly at the screen. She picks her way across the room to crouch on Akira's musty bed and wraps her arms around her knees. "Yeah. Let's - let's talk then."

Ann is the first to speak. "Mementos had just merged with Shibuya. We went to a," she hesitates, "some sort of prison? It was blue."

"The Velvet Room," Akira supplies her.

"Yeah, that! Then we fought Yaldabaoth."

"And then we lost," Ryuji says, face twisting in a grimace. "We fought him and we lost."

"Yeah, we did," Akira agrees. Quieter, "We always do."

"Oh, Akira," Haru says, voice lilting downwards in sorrow. "He was talking to you at the end, wasn't he? He mentioned that you'd already failed. I didn't understand it, at the time."

"I thought he was just," Futaba makes a spiraling movement near her temple with her finger, "villain monologuing. Trying to make fun of us, or whatever."

Makoto puts her hand on her chin. "I saw a blue butterfly, like the one in Lavenza's hair. She was apologizing to you, Akira, and spoke about how she made some mistake. She called you her Trickster."

"Said something about how you're human?" Ryuji adds. "And then everything disappeared and I just," he makes a sweeping gesture with his arms, "woke up in my bedroom and ran here. Didn't even stop until I saw you."

"I was wondering why you were in pajamas, actually," Ann muses.

"I didn't want to be the one to bring it up," says Makoto, one eyebrow raised. "It's past noon, you know."

"Shuddup," Ryuji grumbles. "Fine, Akira, your turn."

Akira mentally backtracks. "So you all remember that, then?" When they all make various noises of affirmation, he continues, "That's never happened before, so I don't know what changed. Lavenza's never restarted it herself or anything like that."

"Wait, then how d'you usually end a loop? She seemed pretty damn confident in herself."

Here goes nothing.

"I die." For such a simple sentence, the following silence is oppressive, weighing down on Akira. He feels the childish urge to raise his shoulders to his ears, but pushes away the meager attempt at hiding from their horrified eyes as they gape openly at him. Death is very real and very permanent for everyone but him.

"You what?" Ryuji shouts, jolting from his position. "You frickin' die?"

"You mean, like, from a Mudoon?" Futaba asks, voice small but eyes wide.

They all know it's not from a Mudoon. Akira shakes his head, and then, for Haru's sake, clarifies, "No. Never from something I can be revived from. Spells don't really do it. Usually, when something happens it's like," he loudly snaps his fingers and doesn't miss the room's collective flinch, "and then I'm back on the train and it's April 9th, 2016."

"And how many times has this happened, do you think?" Makoto asks hesitantly, speaking over the strangled noise Futaba makes in response.

Akira shrugs, uncomfortable. "I lost count, after a while. At least twenty times by now, maybe."

"Jesus, dude. Why didn't you tell us?" Ryuji asks again, tone considerably more worried than hostile.

Akira responds in kind. "I didn't want to freak you guys out."

"Consider us suitably freaked out, then," Ann mutters, her large blue eyes pinning Akira down and trapping him under the heavy weight of their expectations.

"Oh, Akira," Haru says, her high voice pitching in distress. "Are you okay? You've had to go through all of this alone."

"I would have said something eventually," Akira weakly defends himself from their concern. They hardly look convinced, so he amends, "After I escaped."

"After we defeated Yaldabaoth, you mean," Makoto says, brows furrowed.

"Yeah."

"Something that you just said we've never done before."

"I mean," Akira starts haltingly, "if it makes you feel any better, we got close, this time. Really, really close. Closer than I have in a while."

"But not close enough, apparently," Makoto counters.

"Dude, you died," Ryuji repeats disbelievingly. "Stop acting like you're all okay about it! We messed it up." His eyes skip away from Akira's, and he scowls at the floor. "Yaldy's been pullin' your strings for years and none of us ever noticed or did anything." He grinds his teeth. "Some Phantom Thieves we are, huh."

The ensuing silence is scarily empty. Futaba curls further into herself, and none of the Thieves can bring themselves to meet his eyes. Seeing his teammates shut down like this, lost in their own thoughts, isn't quite the worst way they could have taken the revelation. It still hurts.

Ann is the one to finally break the brooding quiet, and when she does, there is Hecate's blazing fire in her tone. "So, what, are we all giving up, then?" she asks them all, gritting her teeth as everyone's gazes snap to her. She jabs a finger at Akira and then gestures to the rest of the room. "Akira, you've been alone this whole time, but you're not anymore! We're going to do everything right this time around! We're going to fix every mistake and do things better."

"Ann, I've tried everything I can think of-"

"You haven't tried it with us!" she cuts him off. "This time, we are going to help you, and we're going to defeat Yaldabaoth, and you're finally going to be free!"

"Ann's right," Makoto says. She straightens her shoulders, determined. Akira can almost see the shadow of Anat's metal mask on her face. "No more doing your own thing. We're in this together, now."

"Yeah, man," Ryuji says, shifting his stance. His eyes are narrowed, fists clenching. From the edges of his vision, Akira can faintly see the swirls of Seiten Taisei's dark storm clouds brush at Ryuji's feet. "Screw Yaldabaoth and his shitty games!"

"If anybody can defeat a god, it's us!" Futaba exclaims. She raises one arm in the arm unsteadily, ignorant of the faint flare of Prometheus' red aura that accompanies the movement.

"I agree! This time, we can save everybody!" Haru's voice is resolute on the other side of the call, stubborn as Astarte's colorful skull.

Akira stares at them all, at a total loss for words. Their optimism is overwhelming, their complete loyalty and trust in him brimming in a way he doesn't quite know how to deal with. Their belief is infectious. For the first time, Akira doesn't need to face down his impossible challenge alone. Right now, they wouldn't allow him to, anyway.

"Okay," he finally says, breathing deeply in relief. "Let's all do this, then."

He allows a small smile, mirroring his teammates, before his thoughts ground to a shuddering halt. Slowly, everyone's grins slide off of their faces at his growing expression of horror. Shit, he doesn't know how he forgot about it for a single goddamn second.

"We can't access the Metaverse," his voice sounds far away to his own ears, the massive hole in their plan threatening to swallow him up. His ears ringing, he can't help but to desperately repeat himself. "Guys, we can't access the Metaverse!"

"Wait, what?" Ann's voice is shrill. "What do you mean we can't access the Metaverse?"

"I mean the MetaNav isn't on my phone!" Panic is rising in Akira's throat, indifferent to his effort to clamp it down. All of his new found hopes for this loop dash away, disappearing like smoke. It doesn't matter if all of them remember if none of them can actually do anything to stop Yaldabaoth!

This loop was just another unique nightmare after all, underneath its pretty guise as a well-deserved blessing. Akira honestly doesn't know why he even bothered to think otherwise.

As one, all of the Phantom Thieves manage to wrestle their phones out of their pockets, frantically turning them on in a race to check their apps. Futaba gets there first, and announces it with a lilting confusion. "Uh, no," she says. "It's literally right here. Look." She turns her phone around for Akira to verify it. The pure red background and simple black search bar is stark and familiar and undeniably there.

"Me too!" Ann says, followed by a confirming grunt by Ryuji. "Check again, Akira." Her fingers fly over the keyboard, and a smooth "CANDIDATE FOUND" rings out from her phone. "See, Kamoshida's still on it and everything. It's fine."

Akira reaches for his own phone, pulse roaring in his ears as he minimizes Haru's call in order to access his home page. He scrolls through his phone as Makoto steps closer to hover over his shoulder. He checks through it twice, clicking through every page hecticly.

"It's gone," Makoto affirms gravely, as if he hadn't already noticed that himself. "Why don't you have it? You were the first one of us to get it, right?"

Akira growls. It's another unfamiliarity, a non-constant factor to further complicate this chaotic loop. "I don't know," he grits out.

Ryuji frowns. "It'll still be okay though, won't it?" he asks. "We can just pull you in with our Navs, and the app will just automatically download."

Futaba nods. "Theoretically, yes. This can't be a big deal. As long as he still has access to his Personas once he enters a Palace, it shouldn't matter."

"This is just a hiccup, then?" Haru says from Akira's phone, and he tiredly brings her call back to full screen, exiting from the rest of his now seemingly terrifyingly empty phone.

Some hiccup.

"Yeah," Akira answers, unable to help the creeping exhaustion in his tone. Ryuji reaches over to pat at his back good-naturedly, and Akira barely resists the urge to shrug off his hand. Everything's still fine. This obstacle is nothing compared to the other stuff he's gone through.

Nothing involving the Metaverse is ever truly nothing, is it?

Makoto shakes her head, stepping around Akira and into the middle of the room. "Well, there's nothing we can do about Akira's MetaNav right now. We have a plan set for tomorrow. Everybody remember where we're meeting up?" At their nods, Makoto folds her hands neatly and turns on her heel to face him. Akira has decades of seniority over her, yet is embarrassingly unable to stop himself from shrinking back under her withering look. "Right now, we have more important things to do."

"Uh, what?" Ryuji asks.

A dramatic pause, and then, with all of the poise and leadership of a Student Council President, Makoto says, "We're cleaning Akira's room. I can barely even think in here. Or breathe."

"Wait, seriously?" Ryuji gapes at them. "Shit, I thought you were joking downstairs!"

Akira shakes his head solemnly, grateful to follow Makoto's all-too-obvious pivot away from their previous topic. "I've never joked about anything, ever, in my life."

Futaba points at him accusingly, face scrunched up. "Lies!" she cries out, and Ann makes an enthusiastic noise of agreement.

"I'm still in pajamas?" Ryuji tries to escape half-heartedly.

"And whose fault is that, exactly?" Ann teases, eager to return to the normalcy of ribbing. "You deserve to be forced to clean someone's room after running across Tokyo in house slippers."

"She's right," says Akira. He points to the cluster of junk. "There's a broom behind the bike. That's a good start, anyway."

"Dude, since when have you ever had a bike?"

"Oh, we're just cleaning now?" Futaba's nose wrinkles as she observes the others. "Actually, you know what? I'm gonna take a nap instead." She tips directly sideways on her perch, ignoring the large plume of dust that releases into the air when she lands on the dirty mattress. "I'm tired," she explains to everyone's stunned expressions. "Goodnight."

She closes her eyes, breath evening out. "Oh!" Makoto says as she stares at Futaba, already fast asleep. "That was quick."

Ann ignores them both. "Akira, where's the feather duster? I'm going to die if I have to look at these spiderwebs anymore."

"Top shelf, to the right and at the back."

"Listen," Haru says, safely physically removed from the abrupt - if not completely necessary - change in tone and activity, "I'm so glad all of you are okay! I was so worried after we got back, but is it alright if I go now? I want to spend some time with my father, now that I have the chance."

Akira relaxes. "Yeah, of course. See you tomorrow morning, then?"

"I can't wait to see you all, Akira-kun. Goodbye, everyone!" She quickly hangs up after everyone echoes the sentiment. Akira sets his phone down, careful to avoid the urge to scroll to where the MetaNav should be. He'll have plenty of time to obsess over that later. Right now, he needs to focus on this, something calm and domestic, anything to soften the unforgiving blow of information he'd been forced to inflict on his teammates earlier.

He's always had to clean his room right about now anyway. It'll be nice to do it alongside friends, for once.