Akane could hardly believe what she was seeing.

Currently the only member of this new lineup of the Phantom Thieves of Hearts whose identity has been released to the public is Inspector for Public Security Zenkichi Hasegawa. Known as Wolf while executing his Phantom Thief duties, Hasegawa-san for the foreseeable future will be acting as the Phantom Thieves link to the law enforcement here in Tokyo for the sake of coordinating their activities and creating a system that ensures the protection of as many people as possible, as well as sharing any new information on the Shadow outbreaks as it arrives.

As Wolf, Hasegawa-san is something of an outlier among the Phantom Thieves. Besides being almost twice the age of the next oldest member, Wolf's powers tend to focus more on brute strength and defense rather than the agility and stealth of the other Phantom Thieves. In combat, he relies on his trusty greatsword to fight off hordes of smaller shadows and uses wide bursts of non-elemental magic to mow down anything stronger.

The news channel she was watching was not only displaying pictures of her dad's normal face, but even some of his Phantom Thief attire, with the strange, spear-nosed hat and the black tasseled coat. When the channel started talking about Wolf's abilities, it displayed a short, shuddering video taken during the Tokyo Shadow Outbreak, where a figure that was very clearly Wolf slashed his sword through a mob of lesser Shadows before joining forces with two other Phantom Thieves who took down the biggest Shadow while her dad summoned his Persona and fired a wave of energy into the remaining Shadows and obliterated them.

Akane's phone buzzed several times as she sat there in stunned silence. When the news program finally ended, giving anyone listening a few bits of information on Shadow safety, Akane was still spaced out. A couple seconds later, she realized it had ended and shook herself out of her shock. She grabbed her phone. She was a first-year in high school now, and thanks to having overcome her depression last year, she'd managed to make some new friends for the first time. Several of them had sent her frantic, excited texts, asking if her dad was a Phantom Thief. She had no idea what to say.

At that moment, she heard the front door open downstairs. "Akane!" she heard her dad call. "Sorry I was gone for so long, some crazy stuff happened while I was in Tokyo."

Akane shot out of her seat and raced downstairs. At the bottom of the steps she almost ran into her father, who was just about to come up and check on her.

"Whoa!" he laughed. "Watch where you're going! Is something the matter?"

"YOU'RE A PHANTOM THIEF!?" Akane hadn't meant her voice to be so loud.

Her dad smiled. His grin seemed more impish than usual. "Sorry I didn't tell you. I didn't think I'd ever be one again after EMMA was shut down."

"I want to see it!" Akane blurted out before she could stop herself.

"My Phantom Thief powers?" her dad asked.

Akane nodded.

"Okay then," he replied snarkily, stepping back and spreading his hands. A second later, there was a flash of blue fire and her father was standing in a long black coat with buckle tassels paired with a wide-brimmed, spear-pointed hat.

"I am Wolf of the Phantom Thieves of Hearts," he toned. "Any who dare to threaten my family will face my Persona! Valjean!"

At this last word, he ripped his mask off with an elegant flourish, and there was another flash of azure light in the living room behind him. His Persona's head almost touched the ceiling, and it brandished its chains fearsomely. Then his mask reappeared and Valjean was absorbed into it.

Akane was at a loss for words. "I mean-! When? How!?"

Her dad's clothes reverted to his suit and slacks. "Bit of a long story really," he admitted.

"Does it have something to do with those high school kids you were hanging out with last summer?"

Zenkichi laughed. "Actually, it has everything to do with them."

Akane's eyes widened. "No. They're not!"

"Yeah, they are."

Akane put her hands on her temples. "Oh my god, it was staring me in the face all this time! The black haired guy with the glasses! I even told him to his face he looked like the Phantom Thieves' leader!"

"Perhaps we should continue this conversation after I've gotten something to eat," Zenkichi remarked. "We have a lot to talk about."

Mitsuru Kirijo walked into the operations room. "Any sort of news?"

Aigis looked up from the monitors. "Syria and North Korea have been destroyed by Shadows," she replied neutrally. "Russia and China seem to be on the brink of collapse, but the United States of America seems to be bouncing back. Their citizens seem to have both sufficient weapons and strength of heart to fight back against the Shadows. According to Fuuka-san, many of them have even awakened."

There was a beeping noise from one of the monitors. Mitsuru pressed the comm button next to it and a robotic figure appeared on one of the screens. "Labrys, how goes the investigations?"

"Not bad," the android replied through the comm system, "though I had a bit o' trouble locatin' some of the people you told me to fetch. Everything going well on your end?"

"Well enough despite the news that two more countries have succumbed to Shadow outbreaks," Mitsuru replied. "When the others get here, send them to the planning room immediately. We need to get to the bottom of this as soon as possible."

"Roger that, Mitsuru-ma'am." Labrys ended the transmission.

Mitsuru straightened before looking at Aigis. "Continue monitoring the situation. Contact me immediately if you notice any further abnormalities."

"Affirmative, Mitsuru-san," the seventh-generation anti-shadow android answered. Mitsuru left the room.

Her heels clacked on the floor of the hallway as she headed deeper into the complex. It had been almost ten years since the Dark Hour had ended, and nothing of this magnitude had occurred before. Granted, there had been a couple of attempts in the last two years, but those had been quickly dealt with...by the Phantom Thieves.

The Phantom Thieves. A vigilante group of Persona-users who targeted criminals hiding in plain sight, all the while leaving behind no evidence as to who they were or how they brought down their targets. Back in November of 2016, their leader, one Ren Amamiya, was supposedly arrested and committed suicide in custody, only for the Phantom Thieves to make a flamboyant reveal the next month that their leader had escaped from custody and that they would be taking on one of the most powerful politicians at the time, Masayoshi Shido.

Mitsuru never would have admitted it, but that alone was enough to make her want to scream and jump for joy when she heard the news. Words could not describe how much she hated that man and his conspirators. In the two years before the Phantom Thieves' emergence, they had been slowly cutting the Shadow Operatives' ability to function, despite her best efforts as the CEO of the Kirijo group. Mitsuru had no idea where they got the money to finance the effort to de-power the Kirijo group until it came out that they'd had connections to such people as wealthy businessman Kunikazu Okumura and yakuza boss Junya Kaneshiro, both of whom were also targeted by the Phantom Thieves.

The Shadow Operatives had taken a while to recover from that mess. The trouble with being a government-affiliated organization meant that you had to follow a lot of bothersome rules and regulations or the bigwigs would shut you down fast. Unfortunately, when a group like Shido's conspirators wanted to shut you down regardless, it was quite a fight to stay alive. If it weren't for the fallout and aftermath, the Shadow Operatives probably could've dealt with the EMMA incident themselves and the police wouldn't have had to drag the Phantom Thieves back into the spotlight.

Well, they're back in the spotlight for good now, Mitsuru concludes her thoughts before reaching a large pair of thick double doors and pushes them open. The reserve members of the Shadow Operatives, Yukari Takeba, Junpei Iori, Ken Amada and Koromaru, have all been reassembled for the first time in over half a decade. Labrys is there as well, as is Fuuka Yamagishi, their navigator.

"Where's Akihiko?" Mitsuru questioned.

"He said he wasn't runnin' too far behind," Labrys replied. "He had some things come up at the office and ended up gettin' off a little late."

Akihiko Sanada chose that moment to barge into the meeting room, out of breath. "Sorry I'm late everyone," he apologized.

"Spare us your excuses, Akihiko," Mitsuru glared at the officer. "We need to get down to business."

"Oof, Kirijo-san's mad today," Junpei commented. Mitsuru fixed him with an icy stare before continuing.

"What new intel do you have on the Phantom Thieves and the Shadows?"

"Shadows first," Akihiko started. "We already know of the Lesser Shadows, which have no unique abilities and are basically cannon fodder, and Greater Shadows, which have their own form, but recently, we've been seeing instances of Personal Shadows appearing. The ones unique to the person whose Shadow they are."

"We're all aware of them," Mitsuru confirmed. "When tamed, they become a Persona, and when rejected, they go berserk."

"But we didn't know what happens when one goes berserk and isn't rejected," Junpei stated soberly. "If a person surrenders themselves to their Shadow and allows it to take over."

Mitsuru's eyes widened. "That can happen?"

"It started happening with a few government officials who used to support Shido," Fuuka moaned sadly. "Their Shadows possessed them, then went berserk. Two of them were found by the Phantom Thieves, who defeated them, after which the Shadows vanished and left their hosts behind."

"Ken and I found another," Junpei remarked with a shudder. "Most disgusting thing I ever laid eyes on. No idea where the rest of them are, and not sure I want to know."

"Dammit, this is exactly the kind of thing he sacrificed himself to stop…!" Yukari halted her speech before she could start crying at the memories again. Everyone in the room, even Labrys, knew who he referred to.

"Are there more of these Corporeal Shadows?" Mitsuru demanded.

"Most likely," Akihiko answered soberly. "There's not really anything stopping them from forming since we don't know how or why they do it. The main trouble though is that they're harder to deal with than even a strong Greater Shadow."

"Makes sense since they have a host," Mitsuru admitted.

"You heard that North Korea collapsed?" Akihiko asked. When Mitsuru nodded in confirmation, he continued, "We suspect the country was brought down by a Corporeal Shadow. Maybe a bunch of them. Reports from the survivors are kind of mixed."

"Then we'll make sure to keep an eye out for these Corporeal Shadows," Mitsuru stated. "What've you got on the Phantom Thieves?"

"Well, they seem to all be around my age for one thing," Ken volunteered. "Except for that guy they chose to be their link to the police, that Wolf guy."

"Inspector Hasegawa," Akihiko remembered. "Nice, helpful guy. No idea how he awakened, but he certainly knows his way around a fight."

"I managed to get a few readings on a couple of their different members," Fuuka reported. "Their Persona readings are very strong. They're next level compared to us and the Investigation Team in Inaba."

"How so?" Mitsuru inquired.

Fuuka explained, "Back before the Shadow Operatives when the Dark Hour was a thing, we had to use Evokers to activate our Personas. Later, when we entered the TV world looking for Labrys and now here in the real world, we no longer had to rely on Evokers and were able to summon our Personas without them. The Phantom Thieves...they're next level. It's as if they're running on pure Metaverse energy whenever they're in costume."

"So the Phantom Thieves are constantly drawing power from their Personas?" Mitsuru concluded.

"That's right," Fuuka concluded. "It's hard to explain, but I think that kind of power isn't possible without an especially close relationship with one's Persona."

"Whaddya mean?" Labrys asked. "Our Personas are already us, right?"

"Yes," Fuuka admitted, "but they're born from our Shadows, which are all the parts of us we don't want to see. We tame them and use them, and they give us their power, but deep down, we still have a hard time accepting certain things about ourselves. Overcoming that allows us to use more advanced forms of our Personas, but it's still something of a give-and-take relationship. My theory is that the Phantom Thieves must have a much closer relationship with their inner selves. Maybe instead of just accepting their inner selves, they've chosen to fully embrace them."

"A perfect union between the self and the Shadow…!" Mitsuru breathed.

"Man, just when I think that Persona powers can't get any more wild, I'm suddenly faced with something like this!" Junpei sounded surprised, impressed, and envious all at once.

"So how do we reach this next level?" Ken asked.

"It would be hard, I should think," Fuuka cautioned. "It would probably involve a much deeper acceptance of your inner self than most of us are willing to perform at the moment. And there might be a risk of going too far…" she trailed off.

"Fuuka? Finish your sentence," Yukari told her.

"Sorry. If someone goes too far, and gives too much control to their Shadow...there's a chance that they might turn into a Corporeal Shadow."

Silence fell over the room. "That makes sense, I guess," Akihiko ventured.

"We should keep in mind that this is all purely conjecture," Mitsuru said firmly. "We're not sure if all of this is true or to what extent. For now, we'll continue as planned. Yamagishi, Labrys, go help Aigis in the Operations Room. The rest of you, return to your stations and remain on standby until called for. If you see a Phantom Thief, keep an eye on them and report it back to base. If you see any Shadows, execute them."

"What are you going to do, Mitsuru?" Yukari asked as the others started to file out.

Mitsuru took a deep breath. "I think it's about time we brought her in. For her own safety if nothing else."

"I was afraid you were going to say that," Yukari admitted.

"It's okay, Tak-*cough* Yukari, I mean." Mitsuru was still struggling to address the younger woman by her given name. "She was just as devastated by his death as you were."

"I know," Yukari said quietly, still trying to hold back tears. "I just...I really wish he could be here." She slammed her eyes shut, clenched her fist on the table, and grit her teeth before looking up at Mitsuru. "But I swear, I'm going to do everything I can out there. I refuse to let anyone else die like Minato or Shinjiro did."

Akane sipped her coffee thoughtfully. "Do you think I would be able to awaken to a Persona?"

Zenkichi frowned. "Probably," he admitted, "but I'm not sure you should. I already told you that the experience is both dangerous and excruciatingly painful."

Akane set down her mug. "It can't be more painful than watching Mom die and the bastard who did it get away with it for two years."

Zenkichi was struck by this. "You're right, it wasn't," he mused. "At least the pain of awakening ends quickly. Having to live without Aoi and watching her killer roam free, knowing I couldn't do anything without putting you in danger...that was far worse."

"Dad…" Akane was struck by how heartbroken her father sounded at that moment.

But then he took a deep breath, rubbed his hand down his face, and looked her in the eyes. "Akane, as a father, I must admit that I do not wish to see you awaken. The thought of you going through that kind of pain breaks my heart. But, if you do end up in such a situation as I found myself last year, just know that I will be there for you. And if you manage to awaken to a Persona, I will be the proudest father alive."

"Then…" Akane ventured, "if I awaken, and you teach me to fight Shadows, will you let me join the Phantom Thieves?"

Zenkichi let out a bark of laughter. "Let's cross that bridge when we get there, okay? For now, how's school been?"

A few hours after the meeting, Aigis detected a human approaching the Shadow Operatives' base. Evidently, she had some business being there, because she simply stopped outside the gate and called out, asking to see someone. Aigis was confused. No one ought to know this place, but she evidently did. Clearly, she was seeking the Shadow Operatives, but Aigis had no idea why.

Aigis chose to confront the woman herself. She was not a Persona-user, and while she looked eccentric, she betrayed no hints of malice. And even if she meant harm, Aigis was sufficiently powerful to deal with almost any threat to the compound.

So it was that she found herself walking out to the gate, fully clothed so as not to betray her mechanical body. She found a smiling woman in a lab coat at the gate. "Helllooo!" she sang. "I've been waiting for ages for somebody to come by and notice me. I was beginning to wonder if I would have to camp out!"

Aigis almost cracked a smile at her bubbly personality. "What is your name, and why are you here?"

The woman smiled. "Straight to the point, are we? Fine, fine. My name is Kuon Ichinose, and I'm looking for the Shadow Operatives."

Aigis blinked. "Why are you looking for the Shadow Operatives?"

"Because my daughter and I would like your assistance."

"Daughter?" Aigis looked confused, but Ichinose had already pulled out her phone. She flipped to a program and displayed the screen horizontally to Aigis. Onscreen was an image of a cute girl in a fluffy white coat with her red hair in a pixie cut.

The girl smiled. "Hello. I am Sophia, humanity's companion."