"Only on the outside." Akechi gritted his teeth. "But since you're willing to save lost causes, as you tried with me, here; Tatsuya here may need your help."

"How do we know that this isn't a trick?" Anne snapped as the rest of the group stood by the stairs, staring down from the rooftop.

"You don't and frankly, I don't care if you do or don't." Akechi sat in a seat by the counter as Tatsuya looked between the two groups. Amamiya glared harshly at Akechi, who just looked back with a smile on his face.

"I kind of do though. Care." Tatsuya looked at Akechi with a blank and confused look. "I just…" The words died on his tongue and he folded into himself, seeming to stop breathing.

"What do you want?" Amamiya growled at Tatsuya, wary of anything.

"To find someone, many someones. People I haven't seen in a long time. People who I think might not wanna see me again." Tatsuya breathed out.

"And why should we help you? We got screwed over by adults many times in this past year." Ryuji snapped, jumping over the railing and landed on his feet with a small grimace.

"I cannot say the same with the adults you've come across, but Akechi mentioned-" Tatsuya spoke quietly with reservation.

"And you trusted him?" Anne's voice was sharp, but her voice was soft.

"...Do you not use Personas?" Tatsuya looked at Akechi with a raised eyebrow, a 'what did you do to them?' expression dancing on his face while Akechi looked at his gloves.

"What do you know about Personas?" Morgana asked while walking down the stairs, his cat legs doing it with no trouble.

"Uh…" Tatsuya blinked a cat.

"Oh, you're a real talkative person." Morgana snapped and jumped into Amamiya's arms, Amamiya catching him without a second thought.

"Your cat talks," Tatsuya whispered, displaying his above-average intellect.

"You've been to the Metaworld." Amamiya snapped.

"Never in my life but I may have had a hand in creating it." Tatsuya rubbed the back of his neck.

"Explain." Futaba snapped.

Hours passed and many pots coffee were drunk as Suou Tatsuya spoke his tale. After a while, he pulled out a lighter and began to flick it open and closed.

"So, you caused a timeline to collapse but because you kept your memories, you think that the timeline melted into ours and formed the Metaworld," Amamiya asked after a long sip of now cold coffee. "Sounds intense."

Tatsuya barked out a laugh. "Yes it was, but after everything, I don't know if I can face them. I almost caused their total destruction because I couldn't just leave them."

"Then why don't you?" Makoto spoke, her eyes locked onto him, boring into his soul.

"It feels like I physically can't, like something is pulling me back, getting ready to devour me." Tatsuya gripped the lighter, his thumb over it like it was the most fragile piece of ceramic ever to exist.

"Sounds like a problem we could have solved, but not right now," Anne said, wiping tears from her eyes. "The Metaverse is gone."

"Why would-oh. You think my shadow reverted back." Tatsuya asked, his brows bunched together. Amamiya nodded. "But people shouldn't have shadows in the first place, there is nowhere for them to be," Tatsuya asked. "So you cant help me. Thank you anyway."

With that, Tatsuya and Akechi walked out into the smoke and grime, disappearing from sight.

"Is he telling the truth?" Yusuke asked, mindlessly dipping a stick in his coffee and using the colored water to paint something.

"If the networks work like his rumors did then all we have to do is believe that it exists." Anne said.

"No, there has to be more to it." Makoto shook her head.

"Well, the best rumor has some truth interwoven," Anne said, like with Amamiya. "While not a thug, he did have a criminal record at the time. No offense, Amamiya."

The team looked at their leader, who was sitting next to Yusuke, watching the artist sketch.

"No offense taken, Anne. We just have to convince ourselves that it could exist again. Futuba put your phone on the table. Yusuke, if you can do this from memory, why do we have to model for you?" Amamiya smirked as he slid the sketch away from him and showed the group.

Futuba placed the phone on the table. The members of the group began to speak at once, bouncing ideas off of each other in panic.

"Akechi is alive."

"He must have escaped but how?"

"Yeah, he should have vanished as well, but he's still alive."

"Why aren't we as angry and violent as the people outside? Shouldn't we be as emotional as the rioters?"

"We made peace with our shadows."

"But they should still be there."

"Where?"

Futuba was watching as the navigation app turned on and off on her phone. As the others were essentially talking over themselves, she calmly sighed. "Maybe we're looking at it wrong. He can feel his shadow not being there, so it must be somewhere, it's in the Metaworld, as are our Personas. That's why we can't summon them despite them being so close. All we did was calm things down and that's more than likely where it is."