Literally: to stick a stick in an anthill
Meaning: to cause disturbance
Rough English equivalent: to put a cat amongst the pigeons

The group found themselves falling through nothingness for a few long seconds before they hit some sort of pillow designed to cushion their fall. Unfortunately for them, they fell in a more or less the same spot and ended up in a big pile.

"The world… has it out for me…" grumbled Goro on the very bottom.

The group got themselves in order with remarkable swiftness and inspected the area. It was some sort of massive conference room, with a stage in front of them and a massive screen above it. In the middle of it stood Maruki. His back was turned to them, but he was no doubt waiting for them and aware of their presence.

"We've been here before, Crow and I," Sumire remarked. "The first time we've entered this Palace."

"You are unbelievably stubborn," Maruki remarked in lieu of a greeting. There was a hitherto absent edge in his voice. Like it took him visible effort to not snap at them.

"The pot calls kettles black," Goro countered. "How many more things have to go wrong for you to realize this isn't sustainable?"

There was a period of uncomfortable silence, before Maruki finally broke it: "I must confess to something."

"Hm?"

"My powers are more flexible than you might have assumed," Maruki explained. "The basic tenet of my reality is a simple cognition override, that I assumed would be sufficient in most situations – and it would've been, if not for certain destructive edge cases."

"Is that… is that a jab at Goro?" Sumire asked. "Because if so, half the team broke out of your reality before him, Maruki-san."

"Or are you so delusional that you think I somehow overrode their convictions?" Goro added. "Like you would want to do."

"Hm." He turned towards the group. The lenses of his glasses were inexplicably opaque, making him appear more sinister. "You are already familiar with the memory storage room."

"For the most part," Makoto replied.

Maruki raised his hand and a video tape manifested in it. "Before you do any more regrettable things, there is one last memory you should see. One without… alterations I have made."

"You have tampered with our fucking brains even more?!" Goro screamed.

"All will be revealed." The tape disappeared from his hand and the large screen above him lit up. "For now, watch."

A clip started playing. Sumire couldn't exactly tell where or when it was set, probably before her time as an active Thief. On the left half of it was Akira, accompanied by Haru, Morgana and Ryuji. They were all scuffed up and worn out, but seemed… oddly content with themselves. And they definitely looked better than Goro on the right side, dressed in that old black and purple costume of his she had seen on a cognition befo-

The coin dropped, as Goro's voice replayed back in her head: It was too late to back out. Expecting to either win or die, I confronted the Thieves in my handler's Palace.

"Mediarahan," Joker on the screen casted a spell to restore his worn-out teammates, then shot a glare towards the downed enemy. "You know," he said, keeping his cool, "I can live with the betrayal, I can even live with being backstabbed for as weak a reason as this. But digging your heels in after being told we're on the same damn side? Really?"

"Just… fuck off," Akechi on the screen replied. "Shut up and finish this already."

"Wait, that's not…" Colors drained from Goro's face. "That's not how I said it…"

Haru lifted her grenade launcher, but Joker gestured at her to stand down. "We've already finished. Well, unless you plan to spit some stuff at me in defiance."

Akechi let out a dry chuckle. "That's that then…?" he hoarsed. "After all I've done… after all the pain and suffering and chaos I've caused…" With great difficulty, he raised his head. "You'll be weak enough to let me live, huh?"

"Believe what you wanna believe," Morgana snapped back. "Whatever makes you feel better about getting your a-" He stopped. "Do you hear that?"

"Sounds like footsteps," Joker added.

Everyone sans Akechi raised their guard, as out of the shadow stepped a near-accurate copy of the celebrity detective himself. 'Near-accurate' since the general build, the hair, the suit and every other detail were a carbon-copy of Akechi, but for whatever reason his eyes were wide open and unblinking, pushing him firmly but gently into the uncanny valley.

"A cognition," Morgana remarked.

"This place's last and best line of defence," the cognition proclaimed.

The aft team dared to come a bit closer, curious. "Considering we are about to establish a route to the Treasure," Yusuke commented, "you have failed."

"Surely you cannot be that dumb," he scoffed. "As long as you didn't have all five letters of recommendation, you weren't a threat. And once you got the last one," he pointed at his defeated counterpart, "this cretin walked in, rambled about his plans to betray Lord Shido, and then you effortlessly trounced him." He grinned. "But the warmup is over," he snapped his fingers, and assorted mook Shadows materialized behind him, "and now you perish."

"Hey, give him some credit," Joker protested, still unfazed. "He put up a heck of a fight all things considered."

"Hm." The cognition put a thumb and forefinger to his chin and thought for a moment. "Perhaps you're right. Perhaps he can still be useful." He spun on his heel and faced the real Akechi. "Let's make a deal. If you help me kill them, I will pretend I didn't hear the whole rant and you'll go back to being a good little hatchet boy."

"How long do you think Shido will let you live?" Morgana asked.

The cognition glanced at him with his unblinking eyes. "Stay out of this," he commanded.

"He's right though," Ryuji piped up, ready to unholster his shotgun. "I mean, he already has enough power to make people 'commit suicide' with little help from Crow. You don't need a Persona to shoot a drugged suspect point-blank."

"That is possible," the cognition shrugged. "But it's not like he has any other choice that would let him live another day." He glanced back at Akechi. "So, what do you think?"

After a long pause, the real deal lifted his head and stared at his cognition. "How about you eat shit?"

He then drew his laser pistol and took a shot that went past the cognition. It hit a control panel of some sort by the wall, with a wire going up to the ceiling. It exploded in a shower of sparks, and then a bulkhead dropped with a loud, dull thud, splitting the screen into two halves, one with the Goros and the mook Shadows and one with the Phantom Thieves.

"What the-" went Joker.

The cognition scowled. "The fuck do you think you're doing?"

"Finishing this on my own terms," Akechi snarled, pulling out a Life Stone from somewhere and crushing it in his off-hand to heal himself.

"You treacherous bastard!" A suppressed handgun materialized in the cognition's hand. The two pointed at each other and pulled the triggers, but only the real Akechi's shot connected, blowing a hole in the cognition's head.

"What's happening over there?!" Joker screamed. "Speak to me, Goro!"

The cognition dropped to the ground and dissolved into dust. Akechi got up from the ground with some difficulty, as the hostile Shadows have finally registered what was happening and started approaching him. He pulled out a Goho-M, threw it against the ground and disappeared in a puff of smoke.

"Oracle!" Joker turned to Futaba. "I need eyes and ears on the other side, stat!"

Her Persona materialized for a moment, floating in the air. She then reemerged. "I… I can't detect life signs there."

Joker didn't reply to that, but seemed to be on the verge of tears.

"We…" Haru muttered. "Did we… did we cause-"

"We couldn't have seen that coming," Makoto interrupted her. "It's not our fault." She grabbed Joker by the wrist and firmly but gently pulled him away from the bulkhead. "Let's get out of here. We almost have the Treasure route set."

The screen turned white again.

"What the fuck was that?!" Goro screamed, as white as his dress shirt.

"What really happened back in the Engine Room," Maruki replied.

"That is not how we remember it," Akira retorted. "And we've already broken through your overlay."

"The normal version, yes," Maruki adjusted his glasses. "The version I assumed would be sufficient for a general population is remarkably fragile. Unfortunately, there are… edge cases." He shot Goro a glare; he found himself uncharacteristically intimidated. "Self-destructive mentally unstable homicidal villains, too broken to see the opportunities of my reality."

"What have you done to me?!" Goro shrieked, on the verge of panic.

"I… thoroughly overwrote the original Goro Akechi," Maruki explained. "I attempted to keep him as recognizable as possible while removing the… undesirable bits. And since that alone would be insufficient, I was forced to resort to tweaking the memories of the Phantom Thieves."

"What?!" went Akira.

"Everything after the Engine Room happened more or less as you remember it," Maruki continued. "You stole Shido's Treasure, but that was insufficient and so you ventured into the Mementos and defeated whatever loomed in the depths, allowing me to come to power. I simply… added a subplot with Goro to your story, so to speak. That way, I could plausibly direct him towards a more civilized life. If you take this reality down… I take no responsibility for what happens to his personality."

Goro started taking breaths to not break down on the spot. "This…" Akira tried to put a hand on his shoulder, but he recoiled away from him. "No, this-this can't be true!"

"Really?" Maruki retorted. "So you're convinced you turned your life around and buried the hatchet with the Phantom Thieves just like that, with no assistance?"

"So," Sumire said, "Goro-san wanted a second chance at life, without his mistakes weighing him down, and you decided the best idea is just… overwriting everything."

"He didn't want it," Maruki replied. "He has given up on pulling himself out of the downward spiral of his life. This… was Akira's wish."

After a moment to process that, Akira replied with a "What?!"

"Why are you so shocked?" Maruki went on, the edge in his voice becoming even more pronounced. "Didn't you want him? Didn't you empathize with him even as he, for all intents and purposes, murdered you in cold blood? Or does it matter all of a sudden that he'd throw you and everyone in this room under a subway train in the name of petty revenge? And now, you stand here and claim my judgment is flawed, blind to your own shortcomings!"

"Fuck you!" Goro screamed and pulled out his Nagant, but a tentacle out of nowhere restrained him. Another one pulled the revolver from his grasp and handed it over to Maruki.

"QED," he muttered, putting the gun in an inner pocket somewhere. "I'll keep it so you can't hurt yourself. Now, go home."

The tentacle retracted into the ground, pulling Goro with him with a cut-off muffled scream.

"Well," Maruki turned to the rest of the group, "maybe now we could try and have a more reasonable conversation."

Akira looked at him, incredulous. "Reasonable?" He took a breath to calm himself down, but it wasn't enough. "Reasonable?!"

Maruki raised an eyebrow, unsure. "Uh, well-"

"The time for reasonable conversation was two weeks ago, Takuto!" Akira didn't let him finish. "When you tossed my friends into personalized Rooms 101! And since then you're just demonstrating how much of a piece of shit you are!"

"I will not be spoken to in that tone."

"You're trying to guilt-trip me with your own actions, I don't give a fuck about my tone!" Akira countered. "Did I force you to take over the world, fuck with everyone's brains, and then taunt us afterwards?"

"What do you expect me to do?" Maruki shouted back. "Just let you dismantle everything I've worked for?!"

"I expect you to stop demonstrating why you need to be stopped, over and over and over again!"

Cue terse silence. The two stared daggers at one another, while the remaining Phantom Thieves stood on the sidelines, waiting for the situation to develop further.

"I… admit," Maruki finally said, "my words today might have sounded… more confrontational than intended."

"I don't care anymore," Akira proclaimed. His voice was devoid of emotion. "You have until tomorrow to surrender, or I'll come and take your Treasure by force." He adjusted his mask. "This is the calling card you're getting, I'm fucking done." He turned to Makoto. "Can we please leave? Almost everyone's running on fumes."

"I'm not sure what's the way out from here," she said.

"I can lead you, I think," Sumire said, walking towards the exit. "I was kind of in a rush last time I was here, but I should get us somewhere."

"This is it then?" Maruki asked. "Our friendship is officially over, isn't it?"

Akira turned back to him. "I'll… put it this way: Haru mentioned how you had compared yourself to Goro a few days ago. I consider him a friend, and I kicked his ass when he went after me."

"That is not a 'no'."

"That is a 'get your shit together', Takuto. How did you phrase it when we talked earlier this week? 'Don't force my hand'?" He turned to Sumire. "Lead the way, Sumi."

The group left the room, one by one. Futaba was the last one, and closed the door behind herself, leaving Maruki alone with his thoughts.

He pulled out the revolver he had taken from Goro, and carefully inspected it in his hands. He then put it away again.

He was not going to surrender.