The mood remained sour, but Sumire's pep talk gave the others the motivation to push through. Makoto walked back up to the desk and picked up the last tape.

"Do you think we've gotta watch this?" Ryuji asked the group. "I mean, we've seen Doc use his powers for the first time, and we've seen Joker break down and admit his ideas aren't wrong. What could be any more turning-pointy?"

The group considered it for a moment – hey, it seemed like a valid point – before Makoto pointed out: "You noticed we have watched these in chronological order for some reason, didn't you?"

"That's how they were arranged," Futaba commented. "The deeper you go in the archive, the older the memory." She gestured at the tape in Makoto's hands. "This one was the first we picked up. We went through them stack-style, last-in-first-out."

"Okay, so?" Ryuji wasn't convinced.

"So we haven't seen the moment of transition between the real world and Maruki's override," Makoto spelled it out.

Realization crept on his face and he facepalmed, annoyed with himself. "Of course! That'd be the turningest point!"

"What are we waiting for?" Sumire proclaimed. "Put it in, Queen-san!"

Maruki was marching down a corridor. It was mostly empty, save for a few college-age folks sitting on the benches by the side, reading their notes or amusing themselves with phones or handheld consoles. He stopped in front of one of the doors, leading to an office shared by a few lecturers.

"Calm down," he whispered under his breath, then peeked into the office.

It was rather narrow and cluttered – if you put two desks opposite one another, there wouldn't be enough space to fit chairs for them. Despite that, someone managed to squeeze in four plywood desks, a matching document cabinet, tall and wide enough to hide in, and a worn-down table, hosting a photocopier and an electric kettle. A window on the wall opposite to the door would've let some light in if it wasn't getting dark already.

By one of the desks was sitting an older man in a suit jacket and jeans. Judging by the cup of tea in his hand and the newspaper in front of him, he wasn't that busy at the time. "Excuse me, am I interrupting something?" Maruki nevertheless asked.

"No, you can't retake the exam again," the professor grumbled, not looking up from his paper.

"Oh, no, no, no." He entered the room. "I haven't been a student for quite a while now. I quit after you cut funding for my research."

The professor glanced at him. "Why are you here then?"

"Spite, mostly." Maruki produced a slightly-crumpled pile of sheets and placed it on the professor's desk, on the open newspaper. "I continued my research in my free time, and wanted to present my results. Demonstrate the 'concrete evidence' that you thought I lacked back then."

"Hm." The professor grabbed a pair of reading glasses and picked up the paper, and Maruki decided to allow himself to eavesdrop on his thoughts. Okay, you have my curiosity… He flipped through the pages, skimming the contents. Looks mostly coherent. I could nitpick, but honestly, I don't want to be pedantic because you've got some ambition. I swear, most kids nowadays just want to get a passing grade and go back to binge dri- wait. He flipped back to the front page and glanced at the signature at the top. His eyes widened slightly. It's that guy. The one I was told to cut off.

"It never was about insufficient evidence, was it?" Maruki asked, in a tone reserved for rhetorical questions.

The professor went pale. And he knows it. How?! The Phantom Thieves went after Shido last week, did they find it out and tell him or…

"It doesn't matter now though," Maruki continued. "Between the psychotic breakdowns, the mental shutdowns, and Phantom Thieves of Hearts' vigilantism, the evidence for cognitive psience is omnipresent at this point. Which reminds me…" He found himself as angry as the calming spell permitted. "Most people I have shared my research with have all tragically passed away. Suicides, accidents and whatnot."

"Accidents happen, and you don't know how stressful academic work can be," the professor rebutted, seemingly believing what he was saying. "I've seen so many promising researchers burn out and take a long walk off a sho-"

"They were all killed," Maruki interrupted him. He had no time for this drivel. "I assume I remain alive by stroke of luck."

"That, uh…" No. That can't be true. He couldn't get away with this, could he? But… If it was him that had that fast food magnate assassinated, he can get away with anything now. "If you have tangible evidence, you should contact the authorities."

"So that I can 'commit suicide' in police custody, like the leader of the Phantom Thieves?"

"I mean, he lived in the end, didn't he?" he blurted out, desperate to respond to that argument somehow. "…okay, I must concede, the police cannot be trusted now."

"And besides, all I have is one testimony," Maruki continued. "By chance, I have stumbled upon the man that carried out the assassinations on Shido's orders. Adjacent to law enforcement, he commited his crimes using principles of cognitive psience, then 'solved' them in public to reap the benefits." A dry chuckle. "It's almost funny how he hid in plain sight for so long."

What the hell are you on about?, the professor thought.

The Thieves realized that the sky in the memory, visible through the window, began changing color to an unnatural, dirty crimson.

"It all adds up," Makoto muttered.

"What adds up?" Sumire asked.

She turned to her. "In the memory, Maruki vaguely alludes to his chance meeting with Crow, so it takes place after it, and the red skies suggest it's the moment when Yaldabaoth dispensed with the pretenses of his rigged game and tried to merge Mementos and the real world."

"Like Doc, but without good intentions," Ryuji added.

"I see," Sumire remarked. "I noticed the red skies back then – it was mid-December, yeah? – but didn't think too much about it. And it went away after an hour or so."

"Honestly," Ann butted in, a hint of weariness in her voice, "the fact you noticed it in the first place puts you above almost everyone else in Tokyo."

"So," the professor said, "you know more than I do, and you did your research despite getting screwed over. Is that it? Is that all you wanted to achieve?"

"This is just the first step." Maruki picked up the paper from the desk. "While there is sufficient proof that altering cognitions of individuals is possible, my paper outlines a way to alter cognitions of the masses as a whole." The light bounced off of his glasses' lenses, obscuring his eyes. "Cognitive psience will change the world – and this time, it will be for the better."

The professor scoffed. "A college dropout with no connections will 'change the world'. Good ruddy luck." How did I even get dragged into this? I just wanted my PhD dissertation to go through…

"Uh," Maruki noticed the sky outside had turned crimson. "What's happening outside?"

The professor turned around just in time to see some sort of oversized spine-shaped… thing wrap around one of the buildings. "It's dark already," he said, his thoughts matching his words, "The days keep getting shorter, I hate this…"

It is time.

Maruki spun around on his heel, startled, just in time to see… something manifest in front of him. It was veiled in some sort of multicolored beam, and so he was only able to see its general shape – a crucifix, with sharpened ends, floating above the ground. Something resembling a skull and a ribcage was faintly visible inside of it. Two shiny black tentacles were wrapped around its torso, and a third and a fourth came out of its arms, all four long enough to lie on the floor in a pile.

"What the sh-"

Be not afraid, it interrupted him. I am a part of you, bound to the realm of mankind's hearts.

"What are you-" Maruki started, before he registered the second half of the sentence. "Wait- the realm of… mankind's hearts…?"

You may not be aware, the being continued, but I have assisted you even before our current meeting, But now, the sea of hearts from which I hail and your reality have become one.

"Become one…?" Maruki repeated.

Great, I have a madman in my office, the professor thought. I didn't want this…

Something clicked in Maruki's head, and he realized that there's a steady murmur of whispers in the background, seemingly coming from everywhere at once.

Now, we have reached the end of your unjust persecution, and your ideology will finally gain validation.

The whispers, with no effort on Maruki's part, split into a stream of voices, each of them quiet, barely above a whisper, and yet easy to understand.

I want a new console…

…someone to love me…

…my mom back…

…finish that story…

I am thou…

…father to not die…

…perfect weather…

…a steady paycheck…

…my friends to be safe…

…do the right thing for once…

…thou art I.

The screen turned white, bright enough to take the watching Thieves by surprise. It faded after a few seconds. The mysterious being was gone and so Maruki was now staring at nothing in particular.

"I see it now…" He smiled. "To think it would be so…"

"Could you please leave?" the professor said out loud, unnerved. "You have made your point. I will not speak to anyone about our meeting here."

Maruki turned back around towards him, smiling brightly. "Of course. I will be on my way now…"

"Wait," Sumire asked, as the last tape got ejected with a familiar-by-then clunk, "what exactly happened there?"

"It looked like Maruki awakened to a Persona when Mementos merged with the real world," Morgana said, unnerved. "But it doesn't make sense – you can't have a Palace and a Persona at the same time!"

"We are now dealing with an unprecedented amount of power in the hands of a single man," Yusuke pointed out. "The fact that he has overwritten existing rules does not feel surprising in retrospect."

Sumire thought about her first foray into the Palace and subsequent awakening. "Is that… is getting a Persona supposed to look like that?"

"Well, it differed from ours a bit," Ryuji replied. "He didn't have to rip off a mask with chunks of his face."

"Chunks… of face?" she blurted out, confused and a bit unnerved.

"Yeah," Ann pointed at her mask, "our masks were affixed to our skin and we had to forcefully tear them off. There was… more blood than expected."

Sumire took her crescent-shaped mask off and awkwardly turned it in her hands. "I just… took mine off," she said, losing confidence. "And I didn't hear a voice, I just… proclaimed I don't want to be a second banana after Crow-san told me off."

"I wouldn't overthink that if I were you," Makoto put an arm on her shoulder. "We've already established that these things aren't set in stone. Let's put the tapes back and get back to the gate."

"Security lock currently engaged," the door repeated once more. "Answer the identity authentication question to proceed."

Makoto took a breath. "On the day when Mementos and reality has merged, December 12th, 20XX, Takuto Maruki has fully awakened to his Persona, allowing him to mold the cognition of the masses."

After an agonizingly long few seconds, an animation of an opening padlock played on the screen and the door opened. The group promptly marched through it, into a narrow corridor leading towards an elevator upwards.

"There's a safe room here," Makoto pointed at a section of the wall more wobbly than the ones around it. "Let's call it quits for today."

"Can't we keep going?" Sumire asked.

"We're two people short and everyone's morale took a dip, Green," she reminded her. "We might take a day or two off to collect our thoughts and see how Crow manages to process his guilt."

"Uh huh," she grumbled.

"I know you're impatient, but we have time," Morgana added. "We aren't even past mid-January, and we're almost at the Treasure, I can feel it." After a beat, he added: "Literally. I was the navigator before Oracle upstaged me." He lowered his head, ashamed. "I… threw a hissy fit because of it."

"Aw, don't beat yourself up." Sumire reached out to him, but her hand froze in mid-air. "…if I were to pet you when you're a human, would that be weird?"

"I won't complain," Morgana shrugged.

Akira was slightly startled by someone knocking on the door. "Yeah?" he said, putting away his balisong.

"Rennie?" his mom's voice came from the corridor. "You've left your phone downstairs and it looks like someone's trying to reach you." A muffled notification sound. "A lot of someones, actually."

All his internal organs turned into lead, and his mind dutifully provided a multitude of scenarios warranting being bombarded with messages like that – none of them good. Hesitantly, he got up from his chair, marched up to the door and opened it. "Thanks, mom," he said, taking the phone from her.

"Remember, your dad and I are already in on everything," she replied, noticing his visible unease. "Talk to us if something bothers you, alright? We… we might not be able to help, but we can always listen."

"I know, I know, thank you," Akira repeated, then slumped back into his chair. Dreading whatever was going to show up, he opened the chat app and, after some deliberation, opened the oldest message.

spring_loaded: Hey. Haru here.
spring_loaded: I've got the contact data from Goro's phone.
spring_loaded: I've just come out of Maruki's Palace.
spring_loaded: We saw his memory of you breaking down just before your arrest and 'death'.

That brought him a sense of relief. He would've preferred that memory to remain buried, under five meters of concrete if possible, but in comparison to the scenarios his brain was feeding him, it was peanuts.

spring_loaded: Right before we went into the Depths, you've apologized to me, for 'letting' my father die by not looking into Goro earlier.
spring_loaded: In retrospect, I should've said out loud how _freaking ridiculous_ that sounded.
spring_loaded: As if you could've predicted that things would have gone like this.
spring_loaded: You're not a man that doomed my father, you're the man that stopped him from selling me like a harlot to an abusive spoiled bastard.
spring_loaded: You are a great person and the best friend I ever had.
spring_loaded: Do not forget it.
spring_loaded: Do not DARE to forget it.

Akira's thumb hovered over the keyboard as he tried to come up with an appropriate response to all that, but in the end he decided that the "read" notification would have to suffice. He tapped the other entry in his inbox.

blonde_blur: hey
blonde_blur: i wanna write stuff
blonde_blur: dont block me

Judging by the timestamps, what followed were a few minutes of silence.

blonde_blur: ugh
blonde_blur: what are words
blonde_blur: just
blonde_blur: your the man
blonde_blur: youre*
blonde_blur: you saw a guy with dyed hair and didnt go 'ugh eff off scumbag' like everyone else
blonde_blur: and i dont wanna think how much more hurt kamoshida couldve done if not for you
blonde_blur: and i get it
blonde_blur: you dont wanna do more than you already did
blonde_blur: and i dont want you to get more burned out than you already are
blonde_blur: you can take five
blonde_blur: weve got this

Akira put the phone down on his desk and gave himself a moment to process the messages. The conflicting feelings and thoughts he had ever since Goro and Sumire called him out on his naivete two weeks before have floated back up to the surface, leaving him profoundly uncomfortable. After a moment, he picked the phone back up, not even trying to respond, and went for the last unread message:

CattyKittyCat: [tap to see attached picture]
CattyKittyCat: here
CattyKittyCat: a cat pic
CattyKittyCat: in case your down

The picture depicted Morgana lying on his back with his spine bent into a croissant and his paws dangling amusingly in the air. Akira couldn't help but smile. The phone buzzed in his hand and a push notification slided down from the top of the screen.

ribbon330: Senpai?
ribbon330: Are you busy?

He tapped it to open the chat with her and was about to write something to the effect of 'yes, I'll write back later', but realized that a dismissive answer might end up coming off more concerning than he intended. Hesitantly, he replied with:

coffee_criminal: No, not really.
ribbon330: Cool.
ribbon330: I wanted to say sorry for attacking you back in November.
coffee_criminal: ?
ribbon330: Maruki-san's Palace had a room storing everyone's memories, and I got curious about you stealing my heart, and apparently my Shadow attacked you.
coffee_criminal: Oh, you mean that thing? That doesn't count.
coffee_criminal: That's not even in the top five biggest threats to my life from last year.
ribbon330: Yeah, it's not like I could put up a fight.
ribbon330: It's not like I can put up a fight *now*.
ribbon330: I'm useless.
coffee_criminal: …that came out of the blue.
ribbon330: Eh.
ribbon330: We still haven't reached Maruki-san's Treasure and I feel like a deadweight.

Akira started typing up a response, but then an idea popped up in his head. He pressed a button with a camera icon in the corner, and propped his phone up on his desk with some books he had lying around, so that the front camera was pointed at him. He put on a harmless smile, just in time for Sumire's anxious face to show up at the screen.

"Uh, is-is everything alright?" she asked, taken aback.

"Yes, yes," he reassured her. "I just thought that maybe if I tell you that you're valuable to your face, it'll stick properly."

"Eh," she glanced aside. "I still feel like a pointless addition to the team. You have your own stories, in-jokes, shared traumas…" She pointed at herself with her left hand. "And then there's me. This friend that… isn't really a friend to the group, just a friend of a friend that other friends tolerate out of politeness."

"Nobody's giving you grief, are they?" Akira asked, concerned; he wouldn't accuse any Thief of being actively malicious, but some of them could be unintentionally dickish. "Do I need to have a word with them?"

"No, no, no!" She raised her arm defensively. "They're all decent people that don't mind that I'm worthless in a fight. And yeah, Phantom Thief work is about more than raw damage, Goro-san has already told me that-"

Even after all the development he had shown in the past few months, Akira's brain took a moment to process the thought of Goro "I'm too edgy and damaged to have friends" Akechi reassuring someone.

"-but…" Sumire sighed, then looked into Akira's eyes. "You don't think Maruki-san will back down without a fight, do you?"

That thought was somewhere in the back of his head, and Sumire, wittingly or not, forcefully pushed it to the forefront. "Do you think he would be capable of… like, actually fighting you?" he asked, unsure.

"He has demonstrated he's willing to cross lines to defend this world," she continued. "The others can cover my weaknesses in a normal fight, but can they afford me to be a millstone during his inevitable last stand?"

Akira's brain scrambled to respond to that. "You can always step down and let the others-"

"I don't want to!" she raised her voice. "I'm not taking the easy way out again, Akira!"

"Okay, okay," he raised his hands. "I will not suggest that again, sorry."

"Why are you shouting, Sumi?" A voice not unlike Sumire's came from outside the frame, and then a copy of her with slightly darker hair leaned in. "Ooh, is that the famous Akira-senpai?"

"Pleased to meet you," Akira gently nodded his head in greeting. "You're Kasumi, I presume."

"And I thought the assassin's the detective," Kasumi chuckled, then glanced at her sister. "I'll be square, Sumi – he's a cutie, but you have first dibs."

Akira failed to stifle a chortle, and Sumire turned beetroot-red in response. "This is a private conversation, Kasumi," she grumbled.

"Fine, I'm outtie," she left the frame. "Your cookies will go 'ding!' in a minute though," she added.

"Oh!" Sumire glanced back at Akira. "I gotta go, senpai. Thanks for the pep talk though. It… it means a lot to me that you bothered."

"Don't mention it," he said. "That's what friends do. Hang in there, Phantom Thief."

The call ended. Akira let out a weary sigh and felt the air metaphorically coming out of him. Sumire's voice rung out in his brain:

I'm not taking the easy way out, Akira!

It wasn't a deliberate jab on her part. It couldn't have been, she wouldn't have dared to insult him like this, she didn't have the guts for it. And yet, it struck him where it hurt.

He reached into a desk drawer and pulled out a sharp butterfly knife he had ordered online. Its handles were blued, with a bright red latch and pins. He unfolded it with a flashy spin, revealing a steel blade. He stared at his reflection in it for a moment.

The idea of his friends perishing because of a mistake he had made terrified him. But it paled in comparison to the idea of his friends perishing because he wasn't there to tip the scales.

He folded his knife back, stuck it in his trousers pocket and left the room.