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Akira doesn't stop visiting the Velvet Room just because the Metaverse is gone.
Even back in his hometown, at night he falls asleep in his childhood bedroom, surrounded by memorabilia of his life before the arrest that now don't hold half as much value as all the knickknacks he brought back from Tokyo; he falls asleep, and the Velvet Room fills his dreams once or twice a week like it's a scheduled shift at his previous part-time jobs. This Velvet Room, however, is never the real deal—too hazy, both never spacious enough and too wide; the light is too blue, the air lacks weight, Igor’s desk is often misplaced and never quite the proper shape. Most noticeably, this Dream Room is quiet. No aria plays from the speakers. In truth, Akira's not even certain there are speakers in there.
But his Thieves make an appearance, too.
Most often in pairs, and—he notices with time—a consequence of who he chatted with the previous day, who video-called him to bear the weight of math homework together, who sent him a photo of a random Phantom Thieves gadget found abandoned in some secondhand store in Nakano Broadway or at the Book-Off in Ikebukuro. But it’s not like a whole lot happens with his Dream Thieves. The moment Akira opens the door for them, like he did back in December, he wakes up, just a line or two of those conversations clinging to him for the day.
Noticeably, Sumire Yoshizawa and Goro Akechi never make a guest appearance in the Dream Room. Which, he guesses, is one of the only details about these recurring visions to make sense.
Not that his unconscious mind doesn’t fantasize about Goro Akechi on his own. Just… never inside the Dream Room. Because Dream Akechi is just a mirror of the recent past. Their conversations are nothing more than a reenactment of the little time they shared—they visit the aquarium, and Dream Akechi points at the same fish Akechi had pointed at. His lips move, and even if no words come out, Akira already knows—already remembers—what is being said. ‘Did you know? There are more species of fish than mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians put together.’
They hang out in Jazz Jin, challenge one another to billiards and darts; they linger in Leblanc past closing hours and take a moment to unwind inside Yongen-Jaya’s bathhouse. Nothing new, nothing Akira has not obsessed over a million other times already.
As if his mind can never know Goro Akechi enough to come up with something original.
In his dream, Akira comes to on top of a bunk, the wooden plank's hard nodes digging into his back. The glittering blue of chains dangling from the ceiling catches in his vision as they second some invisible force, clinking.
The sight, the sensations; they're familiar enough to open a pit in his gut. That blue might even be the right one.
But around him, silence is heavy.
Sighing, he throws his legs over the edge and stands up. The stone blocks paving the ground are cold under his bare feet—another novelty. Usually, he’s wearing his Joker outfit in these kinds of fantasies, not the striped uniform. Maybe his subconscious has eventually concluded that being forced to attend his final year of classes in the same institute that kicked him out on baseless accusations indeed counts as serving prison time. No more cool clothes. At least he’s not chained.
He steps out of the cell and takes a moment to curl his toes against the velvet carpet. Igor’s desk is standing right in the middle, with piles of paper sheets and everything on top, but no long-nosed man to sit on the chair. Akira turns towards the upper end of the round walls, where the speakers that would suffuse the air with a soft, heartfelt melody or blast the fusion alarm are, instead, quiet.
He frowns. This version of the Dream Room seems more faithful to the real one, but Akira can’t shake the impression that something is, indeed, not adding up. The fact that he could access it through sleep without being summoned by Igor or Lavenza, to begin with.
Not that there’s much he can do about it.
He moves towards the gate leading to the cells in the back corridors that surround the room. In his mind, he runs bets about who he will find. Futaba, who binged the latest Featherman release with him instead of sleeping before her first gym rally event? Or Yusuke, all smeared up in oil paint stains from his latest study, whose details he shared in abundance with him?
The corridors on the left turn out to be empty. That rules out Ryuji and Futaba.
The wing on the right isn’t much different.
Once back in front of the central staircase, Akira tips his chin up, towards the top, where the door of the Quarantine Cell used to imprison Morgana. Now that he thinks about it... he never ventured up there in his dreams. Was there even a Quarantine Cell in the previous iterations? Were there stairs? Maybe there were. Go figure. Can hardly trust weird dream logic, anyway.
He climbs to the upper-floor landing.
The Quarantine Cell isn’t there anymore.
What’s there, however, is just a regular cell door, a duplicate of all the others.
And inside it stands Goro Akechi. Back to the wall, arms crossed over his chest, lost in thought. He’s wearing the same tan trench coat from that February night. Akira sucks in a breath. This is new. This is exciting.
"Akechi?"
He turns, detaching from the wall just barely. His gaze rakes over Akira’s appearance like a plow.
"Why are you wearing the equivalent of how a child would draw a prison uniform? Real jumpsuits are much different."
Now, Akira doesn't really wish to linger on the lack of updated visuals on his subconscious's end after a whopping three trips to various detainment facilities.
"Forget that. What are you doing here?"
"Funnily enough, I could ask you the same."
"No fair, I’m supposed to be here. This is—" The immensity of what he’s never told Akechi about the Velvet Room hits him like a bat. "I dream about this place all the time." He gestures to the cell. "Never with you in it, though."
Akechi squints, arms crossing possibly even tighter. "So, am I just a figment of your mind?"
The tone alone suffocates the spark tingling in Akira's chest. He lowers his head, pointedly staring at the floor. Of course there could be no other option. Akechi died in the underbelly of Shido’s Palace, no matter how hard his heart, his mind and his own counselor tried to convince him of the contrary.
"Back to my first question: why are you here?"
"If, as you’ve stated, this is your dream, it would be quite unreasonable to ask that of me, no? If anything, you more than anyone should know the answer."
He even talks like the real one. Akira’s nose and eyes prickle in a way that’s a little too heartfelt for the usual watered-down version of feelings that exist in his nighttime movies. He lets out a long sigh.
"Let's get you out, alright?"
"By all means." Akechi steps back, gesturing at the bars. "If there’s anyone I’d expect to solve a cryptic situation with the snap of two fingers, that’d be you."
"What’s that even supposed to mean?" he huffs out, but gets closer nonetheless. "Have you at least tried to get out?"
Akechi frowns, as if that possibility is occurring to him for the first time. "I was lost in thought, I believe."
Akira smiles to himself. At least this situation is familiar. "I can’t personally break you free, though."
"Excuse me?"
"I can’t pick the lock. Or squish through the bars." Akira frowns at Akechi frowning at him. "Or annihilate the metal, if that’s what you’re thinking. It… well, it needs to come from you."
Akechi does a tch with his tongue, mouth curving down. "Will I ever be rid of your convoluted, sappy ways?"
"Just wait until I wake up, I suppose."
"Then what is even the point of this?"
He rolls his eyes. "Humor me? It’s my dream, why do you get to be so stubborn?"
Akechi pinches the bridge of his nose, but he nods. "Alright. I’ll humor you. How will this work?"
Akira bites back the words 'It’s the power of friendship' before they can tumble out of his lips. "We’re in a prison, right? But it’s a cognitive one. So, if you were to break free…"
Akechi closes his eyes, and the wrinkles on his forehead only deepen. "I… can’t seem to access any of my Personas."
"You need your will of rebellion back. Think about how this all started. What made you awaken to Robin Hood?" He ponders before continuing. "Or Loki. Whichever came first."
"There was no first," he fires back, annoyed. "They came out of me at the same time—specifically, I believe Loki ripped Robin apart."
Gruesome, but not unfitting. Akira loops one of his curls around his finger. "I can see that."
Akechi leans back against the wall and goes on. "I remember being furious at the world. A part of me wanted to bring justice to it, while another wanted to sow chaos as far as the eye could see. Upon testing both Robin’s and Loki’s powers, though, I understood which of the two could aid me best." He turns to him with a sour smile. "I fear a man like Shido wouldn’t have appreciated my rather childish rendition of a hero."
Akira lets the words sink. Every time he speaks with his Dream Thieves, they stay on track with conversations Akira had already had—like Ann obsessing over when she should book train tickets to go visit Shiho, or whether or not Ryuji should ignore Nakaoka’s friend request on LINE. This, however, is all new and not even close to what he and Akechi used to discuss.
A shiver tickles his lower back, goosebumps running all over his skin. Whatever his subconscious is hallucinating, he doesn’t want it to stop. Picturing the scene of Akechi’s awakening in his mind, he whispers,
"I would’ve liked to see that."
One of Akechi's eyebrows shoots up in the most nonplussed expression he's ever seen. "I suppose you don’t mean me walking into Shido’s office at 15?"
"What—of course not! I meant your awakening!" Everyone else’s was so… cool. He bets Akechi was, too.
Akechi taps his foot against the stone floor with a pensive look. "I actually wouldn’t have minded that, either." He turns to look at him, eyes flickering with annoyance. "Isn’t it ironic? I couldn’t obtain what I’d planned originally, and had once more to entrust all matters to you. Of that, I’m not entirely satisfied. Although…" he takes a pause. "I am grateful to you for having settled the dispute against Shido. I, ah, appreciate you respecting that wish of mine."
Akira huffs out a laugh. "Seems a better way to grant wishes."
Akechi stays silent. He glares daggers into the cell door. "So, is your subconscious set on dragging this chitchat for much longer? It escapes me what more I could say to you to solve this, and I’m quite done with being taken captive."
As he says it, a blue light engulfs him, then flames, and then his Black Mask outfit is in place, striped suit and beaked mask and everything. The flames take over the door, eating away at the metal, and Akechi steps out through the now-empty threshold with a self-satisfied grin.
"Wonderful. Had I known it to be this easy, I would’ve solved this much sooner." He stalks away, down the staircase, and Akira scrambles to follow.
"Wait!"
But Akechi just stalks down the corridor at the end of the stairs and enters the front of the Velvet Room. He stops, one hand running to his hip, the other lifting the black mask on top of his head.
"Care to remind me what this place is?"
"It’s called the Velvet Room. Never fully got what its nature is, but someone once told me we’re neither in reality nor in the Metaverse." He scratches the back of his head. "You know how I had all those badass Personas? Not all came from Palaces and Mementos. Some were born here."
Akechi’s lips twitch. "Ah," he comments icily, "fate’s ever-beloved."
Akira’s blood boils. "You only say that because—"
A ring, potent and painful, pierces through his ears like a drill. His morning alarm.
Akechi stares at him, amused. "Oh, are we finished?"
"No… fuck, no, it’s too—"
He wants to say something. He wants to scream. He wants to snatch Akechi’s mask away and neckpiece, and spill everything he hasn’t yet had the chance to say. But he’s frozen. His real body is waking up, and his dream-self is being yanked out of the Room.
Time melts away, its essence spilling through the cracks, leaving only the two of them and Akira’s unspoken speech pooling at his ankles. Akechi’s mouth moves, then twists, then swirls, impossible and hazy, and his final comment seeps into Akira’s soul, chasing it as it drifts away.
"So, it truly was nothing more than a dream."
Akira wakes up with the word ‘soon’ still lodged in his throat like a bite too big to swallow.
Dawn filters from the lower half of the window he forgot to cover, and he shields his eyes with his forearm. Tightness pulls at the bridge of his nose and at the corners of his eyes. His heart is pounding in his chest, in his ears, loud enough that it battles with Akechi’s last words for what can drive him insane faster.
‘Nothing more than a dream.’
Yes, of course. That’s always been the case with these Velvet Room Re-Awakening Reenactments. Pictures of his subconscious to show he may have taken the whole confidants and bonds and tarot thing too seriously, and now that there’s no more practical need for that, his mind can’t let it go just as much as it can’t let go of how it felt to be Joker, weightless and brilliant and extraordinary.
"Fuck," he mutters.
Paws dig into his belly as Morgana curls on his chest.
"Bad dream?"
Akira lets his arm slip on the side and pointedly stares at his spotless white ceiling, coating freshly renewed as he came back home, lest any trace of what happened a year ago taint such longed-after normalcy. If he focuses hard enough, he can still smell the paint.
"Weird dream."
"Looks more than just ‘weird’ to me."
He sighs. "It was Akechi."
"Oh." Morgana tucks his paws under his body so that he becomes a bit of a black-shaped loaf of bread with an unsettlingly bright set of clear blue eyes. "Okay, then."
He doesn’t add anything more, but soft purring thrums through Akira’s ribcage, like it’s massaging his heart.
He smiles at no one as his fingers mindlessly run to scratch between Mona’s ears. Another bleak day of school awaits, but at least he can have five more minutes.
‘It was just Akechi’ sort of becomes his leitmotif as each day begins.
Every night, he dreams about Akechi and the Velvet Room. Every morning, he gets himself dressed in a dark gakuran that honestly doesn’t make him look half as cool as Shujin’s blazer did, and he scoops up rice from the cooker and brushes his teeth with entire segments of their conversation overnight still brewing in his head.
Akira assumed Akechi would want to know everything about the Velvet Room, or how Shido went down, or what happened during Akira’s thankfully very brief juvie sojourn. He wants to ask him all sorts of questions, now that the shadow of a revenge plot doesn’t loom over them, like whether Akechi actually was all that knowledgeable about Hegel or if that stunt in the TV studio was just good PR for his Detective Prince persona. But, he figures, there would be no way for Dream Akechi to know the answer to that. So, Akira never asks. Instead—and with Akechi being the product of Akira’s mind, it makes sense—they mostly discuss the topics of the day’s classes, or Akira’s latest read; they argue over Akira wasting time on a very casual solo campaign on the gacha game that Futaba pestered him to download. A way for his brain to wind down from the regular, boring life or rehearse for an upcoming test.
The semester progresses, and more and more of Akira’s time spent doing math homework consists of hunching over Cartesian planes, scribbling about function studies and limits. Of course, his subconscious, in the form of Dream Akechi, deems it an excellent occasion to bring up Descartes.
"Have you," Akechi inquires one night, "ever wondered what I am?"
Akira stretches on the Velvet Room carpet, fabric brushing under his bare soles. He stares at the speakers hanging from the ceiling, still mute.
"At this point, you’re sounding too complex to be just some dream figure. Maybe you’re a cognition?"
Akechi hums under his breath. He’s still glued with his back to the stone wall. Akira’s lost count of how many times he invited him over to the carpet, or just attempted to unstick him from that spot, really.
"Would that make this your Palace, then?"
This is nothing like it. Akira scrunches his face thinking about that weird hall place Jose led him to once, with the vending machine and the jukebox and the Tycoon playing table. ‘Thieves Den,’ he called it.
"Nah. This place is just weird. I never fully understood it."
Thieves Den’s Akechi kept it pretty princely but would still spout very wild stuff in reaction to the Den’s décor and inhabitants, like that one time he called Maruki a fool for getting scammed. And none of his friends seemed to want to play cards with him if it wasn’t in a match requested by Akira. On a scale from honest-to-god Goro Akechi to Shido’s creepy Akechi cognition, Den Akechi was definitely some steps closer to the real one, yet it somehow didn’t feel as close as this one. Maybe it’s just Akira’s subconscious getting better at tormenting him.
"How much do you know about Descartes?" asks Dream Akechi, unprompted. Akira’s subconscious is definitely going to score well on the torment test.
"French guy whose math graphic is giving me headaches. Not exactly in my top ten list of French guys."
"And what would that look like, if you don’t mind me asking?"
"Arsène Lupin’s first, of course."
"Of course," Akechi mimicks.
"Then his author, Maurice Leblanc. And then the guy who invented the guillotine." He turns to wink at Akechi, but he finds him frowning.
"Do you mean Joseph-Ignace Guillotin? You’re aware he wasn’t actually the inventor of the device, right? He just proposed it was used to carry out executions in a less grisly way than other means more widespread at the time."
Akira probably heard that at Shujin, now that he dwells on it. Whatever. He dismisses the correction with a wave of his hand. "Point is, I do not like the math French guy."
"So," says Akechi, with the air of someone who’s about to deliver a PhD-level class lecture, "I gather you’re not familiar with the expression cogito, ergo sum?"
Smartass. Akira groans. "At least say it in a language I can understand."
"‘I think, therefore I am.’ The assumption that if an individual is capable of the act of thinking, then that’s the fundamental means by which that person can determine the reality of their own mind, for there cannot be a thought if there isn’t also a thinking entity that causes said thought to occur."
Squinting, Akira recalls some crammed paragraphs on a history of Western philosophy tome he dug up in Jinbocho when he was trying to get Akechi and Makoto to say yes to any of his fun outing proposals. The ‘therefore I am’ part has to have struck a note in his memory. Surely that’s why he now has to bear his subconscious regurgitating this stuff at him, to make him suffer. Clearly, Descartes didn’t have the concept of virtual reality, or AI; he most surely didn’t have Metaverse access, and a way to know about Shadows, otherwise he would have seen how ‘I think’ isn’t a solid enough premise for ‘therefore I am.’ Or he would, at the very least, have posed himself the question of what, exactly, counts as ‘thinking’ and what, exactly, counts as ‘being.’
"What of it?" Akira asks, dreading the actual response he will receive. "We’ve seen plenty of stuff that thinks but, uh, is not."
Akechi’s eyes gleam at that, like Akira has just fallen into his trap. Damn it. "But, you see, Descartes didn’t postulate his cogito as a mere reasoning process—the key factor at play here is the ability to doubt. Not only about the world, but about one’s existence. The conclusion being that only by questioning one’s own existence, can one gain the very proof of it."
The only proven thing here is Akira’s growing headache. It’s climbing up the sides of his head in a dream, so he expects he will actually need to take something to fight it once he gets up.
"Of course," Akechi goes on, unbothered, in his ranting, "Descartes himself faced various criticism across the centuries for this postulate, both regarding its formulation and the method by which he obtained it. The Danish philosopher Kierkegaard, for example—"
"Hold on." Akira springs up. He sits cross-legged on the carpet, eyes locked with Akechi. "So, what you’re telling me is that you're still actively doubting your own existence?"
The ring of his alarm drowns out everything, including Akechi’s sour smile.
The world turns to black, until it turns grey and pink again, a line of daylight cutting into his bedroom from the smallest crack in the curtains.
Akira rubs at his eyes and sprawls on the bed like a starfish. Morgana curls by his side. He knows better now than to ask what the dream was about.
Tugging at an especially rebellious curl near his ear, Akira broods over yet another interaction with Dream (question mark?) Akechi. Their chats feel nothing close to what happened with his friends, where he’d remember just a phrase or two of the entire conversation. Talking with Akechi is a vivid picture and clear sounds; their exchanges are articulate and memorable, just as if they’d happened naturally. Just as if they hung out that night.
It drives him crazy. Surely, this is a manifestation of his regrets over what happened in February. It’s June now, and the anniversary—the anniversary!—of their first meeting draws closer. It must be the soreness of knowing he won’t ever get to have a rematch with him despite the glove Akira still devotedly carries in his pocket.
Morgana gently paws at him. Pointy claws still poke at his shoulder through his pajama shirt—he should trim those soon.
Tiredly, Akira gets up, ready to hop on the carousel that is another day in school, another day in this mildly godforsaken place that’s not Tokyo.
Akechi has been ranting about how repressed desires and the unconscious mind translate into dreams and the archetypes of Jungian psychology, and how that applies to their situation as well, for most of the night so far. It feels like it's been most of the night, at least.
Akira, draped on Igor's desk with his shoulder blades bumping against the wood, half-spaced out after the term "psychofiguration" entered the stream of consciousness. The lower part of his back twinges with discomfort—Sumire would probably worry over the shape his spine is taking. It's incredibly sharp for a dream. When does he get to wake up?
"I don’t get," Akechi says, once more stiffly leaning on the wall between two cell doors, "what your subconscious still expects from this."
The possibility that what Akira's been lying on might be the real desk occupies a distinct mental shelf, a thought ruminated on so much that it gave in to fermentation. Hopefully, he’s not sitting on anything too important.
"That makes two of us."
"This… doesn’t appear to be enjoyable to you, in any case."
"It’s not."
Silence stretches between them. Akira kicks the air—air that slithers through his lungs with the same chill of the Velvet Room, that shimmers blue with the same glow of the Velvet Room, but that is not, in fact, part of the real Velvet Room. Because if it were, that might mean this incredibly stubborn, frustratingly difficult, as characteristically talkative a version of his rival is, indeed, his rival—a dangerous assumption to make, as life has already proved.
Also, it would mean he’s just crumpled a bunch of Igor-related bureaucracy under his ass.
"Say, Akira," Akechi resumes. "What do you assume your subconscious expects from this?"
"Not whatever this is, that’s for sure."
"Is it the first time you’ve had… dreams about me?"
Why does he have to say it like that? Akira’s face grows hotter. He keeps very still.
"No. They’re usually nothing like this, though."
"Care to elaborate on that?" There’s an edge to Akechi's voice, as if he’s keeping himself in check, still playing his cards close to his chest. Akira needs to look at himself in the mirror once awake and compliment his mind for such a faithful reproduction of the OG.
He gets up, scrambling even more sheets in the process. Some of them fly off the top. He leans against the edge of the desk and looks at Akechi.
"At first—and I mean when we met—I would dream of plain nonsensical stuff, like a giant you chasing me or us going to see a movie together."
Akechi frowns. "Those are hardly comparable scenarios."
"No fangirls stalked you in the cinema and took secret photos of you, so that looks pretty nonsensical to me. Anyway, after… everything that’s happened, I started dreaming of things we did together. Real events, I mean." He scratches on a spot on his striped pants. "The aquarium, the bathhouse, the dart matches. All our… outings." He doesn’t know why he doesn't call them ‘dates’ since that’s what they were, and this, who just huffs out a frustrated sigh like the real one would because only Goro Akechi gets to rant freely and not get straight to the point, is not, in fact, the real Akechi.
"And?"
"They weren’t original. I didn’t come up with anything I wasn’t already aware of by then." He gestures at the room around them. "So, don’t ask me what all of this is. Because I don’t know."
He’s met with silence once more. Akira has had enough.
He throws himself off the desk, and screw the pile of paper that falls to the side and all the sheets that flutter, abandoned, until they hit the ground. He stalks off to his cell, the number 0, which ironically is exactly next to where Akechi has chosen to stand, and is now watching him as if Akira just sprouted another head.
"What are you doing?"
"I don’t know. Going back to sleep. Banging my head against a wall. Anything that will wake me up at this point."
An arched eyebrow. "You don’t want to unravel the mystery behind my presence? I’d thought better of you."
On the threshold of the cell, Akira stills. His throat is tight as a string. "Listen, the only reason I could think of for you being here is my guilt. Two gods I shot, and it didn’t change a damn thing, so I’ve got less than zero clue about what I should’ve done differently, but I still wonder. Every day of my life." He shoves both hands into the pockets of the striped jumpsuit, shoulders sagging forward. "I still have your glove, by the way. Not that it made a difference." He shrugs. "If my stupid brain has decided dreaming a frighteningly faithful version of you every night is how things’ll be from now on, I guess that’s cool. You can stop harrowing over it."
"Don’t tell me what to do."
It comes as a hiss that startles them both. Akira turns to stare at Akechi, who blinks at him before composing himself again, rebuilding the walls, slipping on the mask again.
"Haven’t you thought, after all this time, that this might very well not be just one of your dreams?"
But that can’t be. Akira can’t possibly handle another prank of fate like Maruki’s reality.
"Think about it," Akechi goes on, ever the insensitive one if it leads to solving a mystery. "My presence here isn’t geared towards any specific means—haunting, harming, dispensing mindless delight. Our dreams are a reflection of our subconscious, and they can picture many things but they’re frail. They’re a castle of glass, one blow and they crumble. And they’re not consistent." His eyes are scorching as he steps closer to him, even if Akira takes a reflective step back. "Akira. I’ve never told you about the circumstances around my awakening, have I?"
"That doesn’t mean—"
"You said it yourself, haven’t you? Your 'regular' dreams about me are either nonsensical scenarios or reenactments. They follow the dreams’ logic. But this… this isn't it." He turns towards the Velvet Room, then back to him. "After all, someone once stated that after you've excluded every other explanation, what you're left with, albeit hard to believe, is the truth."
But Akira won’t have it. "How do I know I’m not making this up?"
Akechi clicks his tongue. "You would claim to know me so well as to be able to come up with a story regarding my awakening?" But he doesn’t wait for a response. He gets even closer, close enough that Akira can smell the leather and gunpowder on him. "Let’s do a little experiment here, mh? Let my claims be backed by facts, something for you to test and ascertain for yourself. You won’t say no, will you?"
Akira scoffs. "Don’t use that against me."
"You’re still in contact with Sakura, I gather."
"I… yes. Yes, I am."
"Good. Have her search up the name Mariko Hyodo. Don’t bother with regular engines—I know she knows where to look."
"What…"
A loud ring shakes the walls around them. Akira stares at Akechi with wide eyes as his dream body freezes up while his real one awakens. It feels like an eternity passes between them, before Akechi smirks back at him.
"See you soon. Have a nice day!"
Akira jolts up on his bed with a gasp that sends Morgana scurrying. His phone’s alarm is going off at full volume, and he rolls to the side to tap the stop button, but the device isn’t anywhere on the nightstand or nearby.
Groaning, he half rolls out of bed. The damn thing is on the floor, both sound and vibration still going off strong.
"It fell," Morgana provides with a grunt. "Took you long enough to wake up!”
"Could’ve turned it off," he grumbles, snatching the phone from the carpet.
"Sure, so you wouldn’t have woken up at all." With an indignant twitch of his tail, Morgana curls up on Akira’s previously occupied spot on the mattress. "Go to sleep earlier if you’re going to have this much trouble in the morning."
Ignoring his feline roommate’s nagging, Akira opens the encrypted chat he has with Futaba and types out the message like his life depends on it.
‘What can you dig up on a woman named Mariko Hyodo?’
In a frenzy and in the lack of a MetaNav, he still launches a regular search engine and inputs the name. The search returns the picture of a woman in her fifties, severe expression marked by heavy makeup and sharp eyebrows, her voluminous hair styled back. She’s marked as the mayor of Sapporo.
‘Mayor of Sapporo rn,’ he adds while Futaba’s typing bubble is still shifting with three dots in it.
The bubble stops. It resumes.
A new message appears at the end of the chat.
‘On it.’
Akechi is still smirking when Akira gets up from the bunk bed in his cell and strides to him across the Velvet Room a few nights later.
"So, how did the experiment go?"
"You’re alive."
"Alive might be a bit of a stretch, given the circumstances. I have to say, the novelty is starting to wear off." He lightly shakes his head with a mock of forlorn exuding from his body. With a handwave, he signals for Akira to continue. "Tell me about Hyodo-san."
Akira takes a deep breath. An itch in his knuckles whispers that he’s going to punch Akechi sooner or later. "Mariko Hyodo, mayor of Sapporo, whose administration was involved in an accident during the annual snow festival two years ago? Unexpected nomination in the city council of one of Shido’s associates shortly after? That Hyodo-san?" He points a finger at himself. "There’s no way I’m hallucinating this, right? My subconscious has not suddenly become a medium?"
"I’d say we can exclude clairvoyancy," Akechi grins. "You’re welcome, by the way."
The smile Akira serves him back is as bitter as coffee. "What is it, another debt to repay?"
"I believe my first attempt went rather poorly, no? Since my offer back in December amounted to nothing, I’m still one favor short of you. This way, you can still topple evildoers, and we’ll be even."
As if that’s all that matters. "Forget that. We still need to solve the issue of how we get you out of here."
Something crosses Akechi’s face, and he crosses his arms on his chest. Akira has no idea how he does that so easily, given the death claws his gauntlets have equipped.
"I fear that’s easier said than done. If, as you’ve said, this place is connected to the Metaverse, but we can’t regain access to that world, it might very well be that I’m simply stuck here. Another way of life to dash irony on me." He gestures vaguely in his direction. "Even you can’t come and go freely, at least to my knowledge."
"I used to," Akira points out. "There would be doors leading to this room, both in the Metaverse and in the real world."
Akechi blinks. "That’s what you were doing when you stared off into the middle distance all that time?"
"Yup."
"And you would meet people here."
"Yup."
"Who, however, seem to be no longer dwelling?"
"Nope."
With a sigh, Akechi pushes the beaked mask past his helmet, possibly just so he can better glare at Akira. "Give me a rundown on how all this works again, if you please?"
Akira fiddles with one of his curls. "So, from what I’ve gathered, I haven’t gotten the, like, typical guest experience here, but very briefly, the Velvet Room was meant to aid Wildcards in their journey." He slips his eyes closed and focuses on the different sensations every one of his bonds had gifted him, each interconnecting like a net. A card hovers in his palm, a blue tarot. "When I unmasked the fake god, Lavenza—white haired girl with the blue dress, you’ve met her—gave me this. It’s the key to the Velvet Room I was supposed to receive during my first visit, but never got."
Akechi inches closer, thumb on his chin. He’s still doing the Detective Prince pose, which causes a tiny smile to spread on Akira’s face.
"It’s… the World?" he says.
Akira nods. "It means I achieved a great deal and connected with people. And stuff."
Akechi snorts. "This is all so incredibly cheesy. I can’t believe I’m a victim of this play, too."
"You are, though," he replies, frowning. "And we have the same power, so you should have a key, too."
"Can’t I simply use yours?"
"Something tells me it can’t be this simple, but we can try." He offers the glowing, floating tarot to Akechi, who hovers a finger above it.
He passes right through the card, as if it were made of air.
Akira sighs, defeated. "Figures."
"We need a different plan."
"Yeah? Suddenly an expert on calling the Metaverse back?"
"Certainly not," he scoffs. "But I have an idea about who might help us get our hands on valuable information." He pauses. "Or better yet: research."
Akira’s stomach sinks. Futaba is still awaiting a response from him, and if he could, theoretically, somehow justify having snatched a node in the net of Shido’s conspiracy, he can’t simply ask for her help unearthing Wakaba’s work with a smiley, ‘But wouldn’t it be so cool to be Phantom Thieves again?’ even though it definitely would.
"I can try," he says, but doesn’t meet Akechi’s demanding eyes.
"Splendid," he replies through a smile that’s a miracle it’s not through gritted teeth. "Since that was so quick, how do you feel about actually recounting what went on on your end?" His stance softens into a more relaxed hand-on-hip pose. "We, ah, never got the chance to."
Suddenly, there’s too much Akira wants to say and too little space in his mouth for all the words threatening to bleed out. He sits cross-legged on the velvet carpet, looking up at Akechi expectantly.
Akechi shoots him a glare, but Akira only shrugs. "It’s a long story. Might as well get comfy."
Akira flips the phone on his desk and drills holes into the screen announcing that it’s 9:01 pm. Futaba is one minute late to the call. She’s never late for video calls.
Frowning, he opens their encrypted chat on his laptop and double-checks that the link she’s sent him is the one actually open in his browser, which it is.
Doubly frowning, he begins typing to ask where she is.
"Yo!" comes loud from the speakers.
Akira turns the webcam on and waves to a very pixelated Futaba.
"Hey there—"
"Holy shit, the log says you’ve been sitting in this call for sixteen minutes already?" Even through the infamous quality of the video, courtesy of shitty rural Wi-Fi, Akira can see her disbelief. "Dude, you’re never less than 5 minutes late to calls. What happened? Who do we need to kick?"
"No one!" meows Mona, jumping on the desk.
"Hey there, kitty."
"Not a kitty!"
"Shht!" Akira urges. "Do you want my parents to kick you out?" Before Morgana can reply, he turns back to the camera and goes on. "No one needs kicking. Yet."
Futaba ponders on her response. "Has this anything to do with the research you had me do the other day?"
"...Yes."
"Oh, great, so now’s finally when I learn where that spawned from?"
Akira wants to die, actually. He messaged her first thing in the morning and avoided thinking about it all day so that he could try and focus on school for once instead of giving his teachers the umpteenth reason to give him a disciplinary note. Now, though, he wishes he’d prepared more. He also mentally vows not to be late for video calls ever again.
"Promise you won’t freak out?"
"That’s not reassuring—"
"It was Akechi."
The speakers are silent for so long, Akira wonders if he’s lost connection and just dropped from the call. Eventually, pixelated Futaba shifts on her gamer chair, but she says nothing, so Akira goes on.
"I’ve been having these recurring dreams about him for a while now and, uh, I know it sounds insane, but after a while we stopped assuming he was a made-up version of Akechi and just… the real one. So he tipped me off about Hyodo to have proof. There’s no way a dream figuration in my head would know something I don’t, right? And since the lead was correct, well, that means…"
"Holy shit," Futaba says, hands covering her mouth. "Suddenly you’re a medium?"
"He’s not dead," he protests. "Well, not properly speaking. You know that place you all found yourself in, back in December?"
"The… Something Room?"
"The Velvet Room, yes. That’s where he is right now. I can come and go, but not him. I have no idea why or how he ended up there, but without the Metaverse, he’s most likely stuck."
"The Metaverse is gone," says Futaba, her voice painfully flat.
"But it came back once already, right? With Maruki."
"That’s because he unlocked the secret buff of, you know, being a god. He’s an exception and should not have been counted."
"But we can’t know for sure." He has to sound insane like this, but he doesn’t care. "What if there was another access? Or a trigger?"
"And how would we trace it? Cogpsi alone is a topic almost no one knows about, let alone the Metaverse—" She squints at him. "Wait. I know what you’re getting at here."
"Believe me, I wouldn’t ask if there was another way."
"Akira…" She takes a long breath before she continues. "Do you know how many hours, weeks, months I’ve spent reviewing mom’s research, over and over, trying to understand what was wrong with me? Why was I hearing voices and having visions? You know how that ended, so… that’s the answer to your question."
"But you were seeing your own Shadow at the time, right? Even before gaining access to the Nav. There must be something."
"And even in that case," Futaba goes on, her voice tighter, "why should I do it to help out Akechi, of all people?"
Akira can’t really counter that. The doubt he’s been pushing away all day comes back in full force to bite him in the ass. In January, Akechi’s presence was at least excused by the need to breach through Maruki’s Palace. They were a group, they had a goal, and Futaba and Haru got the final say on whether or not Akechi could stay. Now, though…
With guilt clawing at his chest, he still attempts to give her the full picture. "So, I’m not saying this to sway you, rather just to give context on why I wanna help him, but: you know when Maruki contacted me on the evening before the heist?"
"Actually," Futaba interrupts him, "I… already knew about that."
Akira blinks. "What?" Then the picture of Futaba’s bedroom flashes through his mind, one of the monitors displaying the program running the bug that listened in on Leblanc. It never occurred to him that they could still be there, or that she still used them.
In response to his blinking, she raises her hands defensively. "Look, I’m sorry, I swear they’d been deactivated after Christmas. But when Maruki said he would come for you, and then he did… I was worried, okay? So I launched the program again and kept an ear on you."
"Even after Akechi asked Mona to leave us alone?"
A beat of silence. "...Yeah."
His face is on fire. His heart is racing in his chest. Maybe it’s unfair on his end to feel this incredibly violated right now, all with him asking Futaba to help him out on something involving Akechi of all people, but he does. He’d have rather had his… whatever with Akechi remain between just the two of them and, to an extent, Morgana. Even discovering Maruki had peeked into that had left a bitter aftertaste in his mouth.
"Great," he says, even if it couldn’t be farther from the truth.
"For what it’s worth, I’m sorry." She chews on her bottom lip. "Both for snooping on you… and for what happened. You didn’t deserve to make that choice alone."
In fact, Akira’d never been more grateful to not have to justify his every reaction to an entire group of people, but he’s not going to admit to that.
"I really thought I would for a sec." He doesn’t know why he confesses that, instead, but it’s out of his mouth before he can stop it. "When Akechi said ‘This isn’t trivial’… I felt like accepting the deal only to prove a point. Which was incredibly stupid and fucked up, but I was so mad both at him and at Maruki and—" He drags a hand over his face and, considering who’s on the other end of the call, takes a breath before he blabs any more. "Sorry. You probably won’t want to hear all that."
Futaba stays quiet for a while, not looking at the camera. She curls further up on her chair and, eventually, speaks.
"I know how that feels. When you came to talk to me for the first time, while I was still under Maruki’s spell… I hated you for it. You put a seed of doubt in my mind, and even if I still hadn’t realized what was going on, I knew I couldn’t just simply live with it and go with the flow like I’d done up to that moment. And even after it hit me and we rushed to rescue you in the Palace, a part of me kept wishing I could go back, if anything, to have a bit more time. To say goodbye. To finally get to tie up the loose ends." Her voice cracks the slightest amount. "I… didn’t even get to tell mom about the promise list because Maruki made me forget about that entirely." She eyes the webcam, and Akira feels small under her gaze, even so many kilometers and one shitty internet connection apart. "I know we all got offered a chance to go back, but the fact it was you who he asked to make that final choice, and seeing you falter, and now seeing there could still be a way for things to be fixed for you… I don’t know."
Akira doesn’t know, either—whether he should be mad at her for peeking into such a private moment or thank her for not telling anyone about this; whether he should say sorry for lingering on the possibility of throwing their unanimous vote to the bushes or insist the comeback of the Metaverse would be good for more than just Akira’s selfish desire to help Akechi out.
"I won’t ask for your response right now." It’s the only thing he can offer.
"Good. Because I don’t have one." It sounds slightly offended. "Either way, you’re still doing this, aren’t you?"
Akira shrugs. "Probably."
She grunts out her frustration and spins in her chair. "It’s just… Akechi? Seriously?"
He shrugs again. What else can he do? There’s a reason he’d kept his… acquaintance with Akechi from turning up in conversation with the Thieves until strictly necessary. It’s not lying by omission if it wasn’t relevant for them to know. And besides, Mona knew. He had some supervision.
"Thank you for at least considering it,” he says honestly.
"Yeah… good night."
She exits the call before Akira can say it back. He pushes the laptop screen down without even letting it compute his exit from the digital room. He doesn't know what he expected.
Akechi greets him, as usual, leaning against a stone wall with both his arms and legs crossed, like he used to do in Maruki’s Palace.
And that’s the only usual sight Akira gets to see tonight.
Stepping out of the cell, he finds the center of the room no longer enclosed by a circular wall—only the portion of it where Akechi stands is at ground level. The other two-thirds of the wall have developed in height, with stacks of prison doors lined on top of his, growing in number the more the wall goes up, like an unfinished cone zeroing in on where Igor’s desk stands.
"What the hell…" he mutters. He cranes his neck back until it hurts, but can’t seem to find the ceiling anymore. He turns to Akechi, who’s studying him with a plain expression. "How…? When…?"
"While you were awake, I suppose. My awareness when you’re not present gets a bit murky, and I eventually fall asleep without fail. I basically woke up to this, same as you."
"This is not normal."
"Would be too boring otherwise," he sighs.
"What’s even… this?"
Akechi pushes the mask over his helmet and studies the upper rows, furrowing his brows. "From the shape of it, considering it grows in height and width going up, it looks like an amphitheater of sorts. The cells would stand in place for the spectators’ seats, and down here would be the stage. I don’t see any stairs to actually climb, though, so it’s unlikely for us to get to explore the area further. Unless you still have access to the backdoors you’ve found me in?"
Akira shakes his head. "Since this is the real Velvet Room, I can’t go there unless someone else opens it for me."
"No luck there, then." Akechi’s glance reverts to him. "What about your chat with our favorite hacker?"
"No luck there, either. She didn’t sound optimistic about bringing the Metaverse back." He wonders how much he should say, and figures there’s no point in keeping the details a secret now. "Besides, she’s not exactly thrilled about helping out, on principle."
Akechi snorts. "What, like she doesn’t miss being a vigilante?"
"She doesn’t wanna help you, specifically," Akira says sourly. Akechi blinks slowly, as if Akira has just admitted to believing the Earth is flat.
"You told her about me?"
"I mean, I had to justify the Hyodo digging! She’s been nagging me about it for days, and then bringing up the Metaverse would’ve been extra suspicious."
He passes a hand across his face. "Despite commending at least one of your friends for having some sense, I hadn’t exactly bet on your complete transparency on the matter."
Anger flares up in his fists. What a prick move. "What made you assume I would lie to Futaba?"
"Oh, so you would to your other friends?"
"Don’t pancake-waffle me."
"Thinking back on it, I suppose I should've accounted for someone as chivalrous as you to be honest to a fault. How did you justify… this?" He gestures at the room-theater.
Akira shrugs. "She’s already been into the Velvet Room once." He looks away from Akechi, heat spreading from his arms to his face. "Also, she knows what went on with Maruki on the night of the calling card. All of it."
Akechi squints. "Even after…?"
"Yeah. Because Leblanc’s bugged, and she was listening."
"I see." He’s trying to keep his composure, Akira can see it—there's something sizzling underneath the glaze of neutrality, but he can’t tell what. "I can’t imagine she was any happier about your faltering over that choice."
"I don’t see how that’s relevant."
"Considering I’m the problem, that suddenly seems very relevant. Sakamoto cared to remind me about your precious little unanimous vote rule at the time, which you were about to break." He looks at him with sufficiency. "A double almost-betrayal, mh? And for something so simple?"
Akira doesn’t know how many times they need to reenact this conversation. Maybe this is hell, and his bits of regular life are dreams he’s having in hell, instead. He clenches his fists.
"Don’t say that."
"Maybe you should reevaluate your priorities."
"Maybe I should’ve said yes."
Akechi lunges at him. He sweeps Akira off his feet, and Akira lands on the carpet, which does little to soften the blow of his entire back slamming against the floor. Akechi crouches on him, bracketing him with his weight, both taloned hands fisting his prison shirt.
"That’s it, isn’t it? Could that be why I’m stuck here, once more a prisoner of your every whim?"
"I’m trying to get you out!"
"Are you, now? Because we’ve wasted an awful lot of time chatting, and I’m seeing little progress here."
"You’re getting paranoid."
"And you’re being spineless."
"Then what will you do?"
Akechi meets his taunt with silence and a seething glare.
"What will you do?" Akira repeats. "You might be dressed for a fight, but you have no sword and no gun, and I see no Persona, so how about you fucking chill—"
Akechi draws out a frustrated growl and slams his fist down like he would if he wanted to thrust a sword right through Akira’s heart. It’s on pure instinct that Akira reacts, shielding himself with both arms like he would do if he still had his dagger.
So, the biggest spook comes not out of Akechi’s murderous intent, but from the clang of metal that booms in the air when the flat side of his dagger pushes away the jagged edge of Akechi’s bloody red sword, breaking his momentum and almost toppling him off Akira entirely.
Panting, they stare at each other, steel still drawn out. Akechi’s eyes glint with maniac energy without the lens of his visor obscuring them.
A familiar weight rests on the bridge of Akira’s nose, on his cheeks, against his eyelashes each time he blinks.
He smirks at Akechi, and Akechi smirks back.
"Welcome back, Joker."
"Crow."
A mirror to his own movement, Akechi rests his claws around the edges of his beaked mask and lowers it on his nose, itching to rip it away.
"Ready when you are."
"Like you wouldn’t believe."
Akira tears the domino mask off. No blood comes out, but blue flames still engulf his entire body.
"Raoul!"
"Hereward!"
He jolts awake to the aggressive pawing of Mona’s barely trimmed claws on his chest.
"Get a grip!" the not-cat hisses. "Go get ready before you’re late for school. And stop ignoring your alarm!"
"Shit," Akira hisses back, and he stumbles out of the bed. His phone signals it’s 7:30 in the morning, and he should very well be on his way to school at this point. The screen still displays the alarm silently ringing, as if it, too, had given up on waking him after a while.
In the dream, he hadn’t even remotely heard it.
You: accidentally evoked my persona last night
Futaba: you’re insane
Futaba: do you actually even need my help
You: desperately
You: i still can’t find the VR exit
Futaba: :v
Futaba: won’t be free nor cheap.
You: you are literally the best??
Futaba: won’t make promises
Futaba: you’ll hear from me when i have something
You: :DDD
Futaba: IF i have something.
The buzzing chatter of distant, invisible spectators taking their seats fills the silence that had been coating the Velvet Room like a thick cloak of mist.
Akechi’s chin tips upward, his forehead plowed by a scowl. Akira entertains the thought of just unleashing all their firepower against the walls, but in truth, he doubts their way out consists of blowing up the entire place. Not least of all because if Caroline and Justine’s attacks didn’t annihilate these walls in December, probably nothing could.
He opts for the second-best option—annoying Akechi.
"Can I ask you something?"
Akechi gives up his current activity of intently staring at bricks and eyes him with the face of someone who’s reining himself back from answering ‘You already have.’
"What?"
"Back when we entered Maruki’s Palace, would you have needed to change back to the Prince outfit had you wanted to use Robin Hood again?"
Akechi blinks. "Where’s this coming from?"
"Just curious. You made it sound like that was the case."
He presses his lips tight but objectively lacks any way to avoid the question. "The short answer is yes. Robin Hood was born to serve a specific purpose, to fit a certain image, so it’s only natural that his presence is tied to a certain way to present myself." He waves his hand in dismissal. "Although I suppose it was theoretically possible for me to seamlessly switch between the two of them, just like you do with your array of many Personas."
Akira grins. "Good thing there’s only one left now, huh?" He squints, scanning his soul for Maria and Yoshitsune and Metatron, but with no result. It’s still a puzzle that’s missing a few pieces. "Yup. Just Raoul."
"It seems we are on the same page, then."
Akira wonders. The two of them, locked inside until they either break out or Akira wakes up; just one Persona each and no danger of demolishing their surroundings. He prays that Akechi's also thinking what he’s thinking.
He unsheathes the dagger, and Akechi follows suit with his sword and a smirk.
This time, the clash of blades comes like a breath of fresh air, oxygen after so much time chained underwater. Akechi channels a dark spell towards his sword, and shadow imbues the blade until Akira can't push against the energy anymore and has to retreat with a backflip. Their round, little world spins around him, breeze tickling his cheeks eventually.
Raoul’s innate speed catapults him from one extremity of the Velvet Room to the other, a zig-zag line in-between where Hereward’s spells land. Akira has seen Hereward employed for the grand total of one single night of fighting, and he can’t stop wanting to grasp at his essence now that the world doesn’t hinge on his next order, on his next step, on his next attack. Sojiro would scold him for playing with his food, but picking Akechi’s new Persona apart in his mind is too delicious an occasion to let slip.
Akira fights with flourish, a performer on stage, while Akechi, with no Shadow to tear to shreds at his mercy, chains move after move with the intent and precision of a scientist. It’s like their combined attack, but it isn't. It’s a dance, and Akira wonders if the crowd noise around him is indeed getting louder, or if it’s just his mind slipping into the theater setting too much.
At opposite sides of the Velvet Room again, they circle each other with heaving chests and sweat-riddled faces, hair wild and eyes wilder. Akira is dying to check how their imaginary audience is faring, but he can’t risk peeling his gaze away from Akechi.
"Enjoying the rematch?" Akechi taunts.
"Please, I’ve barely started."
"Not so easy without all the advantages that come with being fate's favorite, is it?"
Akira snorts. "Someone's a sore loser."
"Not for long."
They lunge at each other, again and again. Spell after spell, they drain all their stamina, and without healing items or conveniently packed bentos of curry, they resort to guns, then blades, then kicks and punches and bites. As a matter of fact, Akira takes the brunt of Akechi's clawed gauntlet straight on the nose, but manages to headbutt him as payback. With blood warming his lips and the pang of copper spreading on his tongue, Akira grins at his rival with crimson-smeared teeth and his heart dancing in his chest. Effort turns his head light, something akin to what he imagines it would be like to get drunk. The night's still young, and he won't back down until Akechi loses.
The smirk he receives back is a promise of Akechi's intentions.
He sprints and tackles him right away. Akechi answers with a knee straight in his guts, and Akira sputters and moans but he doesn't let go, which turns Akechi's own momentum against him.
They topple on the floor, and Akechi jerks up to attempt a headbutt of his own, but Akira dodges it and elbows him straight in the chest. Airflow abruptly cut, it's Akechi's turn to cough and wheeze, and still he has enough fight in him left to struggle against Akira's weight, even with knees pinning his shoulders.
Savoring the moment, Akira yanks one of Akechi's gauntlets away and hovers one of the talons against its owner's throat.
"I win," he says in a breath. "Again."
Akechi wiggles beneath him, trying and failing to hit Akira's back with whatever part of his body he can manage to push there. It's all useless.
"Face it," Akira needles him.
Akechi's bloody red eyes flash with that manic glint he'd let out in the Metaverse, blade-deep into the tenth Shadow in a row. "Die."
Akira lowers on him, gauntleted claws pricking at the taut skin of Akechi's Adam's apple. Every pant rising from him graces Akira's broken lips, the sweaty tip of his nose. "Lost that train a while ago."
It's a mistake, he realizes too late. This close, he's entered grabbing range.
As Akechi's hands run against him, Akira shifts his weight entirely on the right side of his body, so that he can at least block Akechi's left hand. This leaves the other side of the body more exposed, though, and Akechi manages to twist enough to seize Akira's hair with his right. Akira presses the gauntlet deeper against Akechi's neck until the claws dig into flesh. Akechi hisses, but he yanks Akira's head back so that, bent the wrong way, he can't properly see what he's doing. They're at an impasse.
What did you even achieve?
He's about to voice that thought, but Akechi is dragging him down again. Oh, he must have another headbutting attempt lined up. Oh fuck. If he manages it, Akira's screwed. If he manages it, he loses. He can't let Akechi win, he was so close, he needs some way out—
Akechi yanks him down for a headbutt.
Akira pushes forth and kisses him.
Their noses crash together, pain blazing through Akira's skull, but their lips touch, and Akechi gasps, and Akira relents; he goes down again, pressing his mouth against Akechi's startled hiss, and doesn't let go.
A strong grip still pulls at his curls, but slowly it shifts, fingers no longer just tugging hair; they spread against his nape, almost cradling, and now, heart in his throat, Akira feels like he couldn't get away even if he tried. Akechi's own split lips move under his with the inexplicable, impossible intention of kissing back.
Closing his eyes, Akira shoves aside all the whats and hows and whys. Almost a year's worth of tension snaps, and once he tastes Akechi's bloody mouth on his tongue, he knows he'll never have enough. He throws the gauntlet aside and cups Akechi's jaw, kissing him again and again and again, tongue and teeth until his head spins.
With a short tug of Akira's hair, Akechi asks for a pause.
"You're insane," he whispers against his lips.
"Wouldn't have me any other way."
"What's wrong with you?"
Akira laughs in lieu of a response, and doesn't fight it this time when Akechi rolls them and he hits the Velvet Room's stone floor with his back. He fights even less when his lower lip is at the mercy of Akechi's teeth, mind-numbing joy and stings of pain ricocheting all throughout. He will take this. He'll let Akechi have all the rematches and the wins and the headbutts he wants if it means Akira can have another taste of him, and another, and another one after that, and—
He cranes his neck up and inches closer to Akechi again, who, however, draws slightly back. "Hold on."
Akira does struggle against him this time. He needs them to get back to the making out, and he needs it now.
“Less talking, more breaking my skin with your teeth, please and thank you,” he says, breathless.
Akechi puts more force into keeping him pinned. "Hold on, you menace. What's gotten into you?" He squints, studying him, scrutinizing. "And why are you still asleep? How have none of your reflexes kicked in to wake you up after all that damage?"
"Eh, it's okay. Night’s still young,” he assuages, maybe too fast.
Something crosses Akechi’s gaze. Something Akira doesn’t like. "Is it, though?"
Akira gives it some thought. "I mean, probably? I usually wake up when the alarm—" He bites his tongue. He’s been consistently missing those lately, and according to Mona’s recounting, the cat needs to find harsher and harsher methods to wake him up.
Akechi stops, too. "What is it?"
"Nothing. Just waiting to see if I hear anything."
"That's bullshit." Akechi’s eyes narrow into slits. "Are you having trouble waking up from these dreams, Akira?"
"I mean, I won’t say I’m a morning person—"
"Akira."
He says nothing. Akechi leans further away from him. Akira becomes aware of all the heat he was radiating only once the chill seeps in.
"Shit," he hisses, "I knew I shouldn’t have been indulging you." He gets up and strides in the opposite direction with the intent of a man with a mission. Akira sits up, brows furrowed.
"Akechi?"
Without answering, Akechi stalks back towards him, sword in hand once again. He keeps walking and doesn't say anything, but before he can reach Akira, the room-slash-amphitheater trembles again. Akira’s body is paralyzed with the telltale of the wake, and his mouth is glued.
‘See?’ he shoots with his eyes full of desperation. ‘Everything’s fine.’
"Nothing’s fine," Morgana yells at him from the top of the stairs. "You were out as a rock. I had to bite you!"
Akira shoots a glance at the Mona-sized bite mark on his forearm as he furiously ties up the laces of his shoes. If he pulls a sprint worthy of Ryuji’s best track days, maybe he’ll still make it in time for second term, and hopefully no one will spread rumors about him sleeping in with his crazy girlfriend who bites, or something.
Most importantly, this won’t result in him being locked at home for the summer when the Thieves have been planning an RV road trip for weeks at this point. Especially not after he’s been on his better behavior all semester.
"Are you even listening to me?" cries Mona.
"Sorry, buddy, no time." He springs up, picks up the schoolbag, and flings himself out of the door. "See ya later!"
He runs as if he could reach the Velvet Room door and finally solve this mess.
Futaba: earth to akira, we have a problem
Futaba: forget about akechi
Futaba: there’s something weird going on with a new app
Futaba: call me when you can.
Making it out of last night's dream unscathed and unpunished is the last stroke of Akira's luck.
Akechi greets him at his usual spot, blade out and gun high as soon as Akira steps out of his cell. He would laugh at the recurring cycle in which they find each other in situations like this, but he’s tired and not especially equipped to deal with a Goro Akechi who doesn’t want to be reasoned with.
"Before you do anything rushed, I have a plan."
"I’m all ears," says Akechi, who, however, does not lower the gun.
"Futaba tracked weird cybercriminal activities around an app that seems to be getting big. People are seemingly losing themselves after using it for too long. We’re all set for a big trip this summer, and we might do some snooping. Sapporo’s also on the map. All this to say—we only need to resist a dozen days at most, and at the first signs of the Metaverse coming back, I will solve this."
Akechi laughs. One long, raspy, degrading laugh. "I’ve said your stunt in November was the most insane, idiotic gamble I’d seen. I have to correct the course: this one is. And completely baseless, on top of it."
Akira raises his arms in defense. "It’s not like we have other options. I don’t exactly have the Metaverse at my beck and call."
"But the more you keep returning here, the harder it becomes for you to wake up."
"Like I have any way to control it."
"Precisely. Which is why you won’t be coming here at all."
Akechi fires a bullet—a warning shot, or else Akira would’ve had a lot more trouble dodging it.
"Thought we'd called the murder off?" Akira complains.
"Oh, please. We're in your dream, you’ll wake up drenched in cold sweat at worst."
Akechi fires another shot, and Akira has to actually put in the effort to pounce on the side. He readjusts his stance, dagger ready.
"Akechi, listen to me. There has to be another way—"
"And I’m more than enough manpower to look for it from this side, without you having to compromise your life because you don’t fucking know when to give up!"
Akira bites on his lower lip and spins the dagger in his hand.
"Alright. Alright, let’s fight."
Akechi fires a third shot. Akira bends backward so that it grazes his nose, and while he’s sure Akechi is speeding towards him to exploit his lack of visibility, he removes his mask and flips back with one hand. Raoul’s Eigaon intercepts Akechi’s assault before it can reach him, but soon comes Hereward’s Debilitate.
Akira is on his feet again, but with no healing item and a costly Heat Riser counterspell, he’ll just have to outwait the spell’s effect. Just because he doesn’t have an army of Personas, it does not mean his fight with Akechi doesn’t have the same dynamic as his other fights with Akechi: it’s a matter of endurance.
He sprints away from a hail of Curse-encased bullets and taunts Akechi into following him. This room might not be big, but Akira’s more well-versed in fighting inside of it.
He runs towards the wall and jumps, using part of that momentum to run a few steps vertically and then land behind Akechi’s back. He aims the dagger’s point at Akechi’s shoulders, but the other turns in time, and he meets steel instead. Behind the red lenses of his visors, Akechi’s eyes melt with the fire of his determination.
Their blades clash, each clang a pang of pain in Akira’s arms. There’s no way he can win a swordfight against a blade such as Akechi's, and his rival knows it. His strikes are relentless, making it hard to safely disengage, and all Akira’s left with is to parry, parry, parry. But if he holds up for another while, he can hope to tire Akechi out.
Dodging the next blow, he spins a little wider, causing his coattails to flap. He’s always suspected Akechi found those incredibly annoying to be around during their combined attack, and right on time, there’s a falter in the flow of his strikes. Akira safely backflips, putting some distance between them.
Heaving, he draws out his gun and cocks the barrel at Akechi. "Got that out of your system yet, or do we wanna continue?"
"I wouldn’t take this so lightly if I were you, Joker."
White light blinds him. He stumbles back, eyes squinting and crying against his will. The Megidolaon spell landed way out of range, but it wasn’t the damage that Akechi called it for. Shit.
A blade slashes against his torso from nowhere, and Akira cries in pain. On instinct, his fingers rush to his mask, and Raoul comes out with Heat Riser, which helps him stomach Akechi's next blow to his guts with the sword’s pommel.
Gritting his teeth, Akira readjusts the aim and points the gun against Akechi, who only partially evades the shot and comes out of their close confrontation with a chunk of his shoulder bleeding.
Both panting, they stare at each other with mirroring snarls.
"Eigaon!" they both scream, and the concentration of black and red energy clashing between them is enough to send both of them flying.
Akira hits his back against the bricks, coughing out blood.
Akechi stumbles out from the opposite side of the Velvet Room, Hereward flickering behind him in a swarm of blue flames. His lower lip has been split into two, and there’s blood rolling down his chin. If Akira manages to have him waste a few other heavy hits, then there won’t be much left in his artillery.
He switches back into a faster stance, ready to avoid whatever Akechi has in store.
The boy comes directly at him, all precision and pretenses abandoned in favor of ruthless rage and raw aggression. Akira baits him into running in a circle, coming closer and drawing away, a cycle of taunt and dodge with sparse counterattacks. The battle is wearing on him, too, and without healing spells, there’s just so much he can ask of his body, and Akechi won’t fucking slow down.
Panic rising, he attempts a switch in tactics. He draws the pistol out and fires a couple of cautionary shots to buy himself more time. Mentally, he attempts to isolate the heat of battle to hone in on the focus needed to cause his next attack to land even harder. He might not have Megidolaon on him, but Akechi doesn’t have Concentrate, and Raoul’s strong suit has always been magic.
"Eigaon!"
But there’s no one in front of him. In the heartbeat it took him to charge his strike, Akechi’s disappeared.
Fuck.
Something that might carry the Earth’s entire gravity field slams into him from above. His ears ring with the pain and the hit. If he’s not dead on the spot, it’s nothing short of a miracle—or maybe it was just the tail end of that Heat Riser. His vision swims, and he can’t make out above from below. Unbelievably, he's surrounded by debris, and dust dances all around him.
He coughs some of it out and spits blood. The feat causes a pulsing pain to explode behind his skull. He knows better than to attempt to rise through the rubble. The soft blue glow of the Velvet Room seems far, far away…
Akechi pokes in the middle of it. His head sticks at the center of his vision like he’s inspecting the scene from the edge of a trench that Akira’s been buried in.
"Perhaps that was too strong."
Right—Laevateinn. That colossal energy sword had looked way cooler falling on Azathoth’s tentacles instead of all over Akira’s face.
Akechi hops over the edge and descends down the rubble to where Akira lies. His helmet has broken again, and the battle has left his hair mussed.
With a whine, Akira tries his best to push himself to at least sit, but Akechi drops his weight on him, straddling his chest.
"I won."
"Asshole," Akira wheezes out.
"Since we’ve eventually established that I’m the superior fighter—"
"—the fuck you are, I won yesterday—"
"—you most definitely did not, it was a stalemate at best, one you came out of only because of a dirty trick—"
"—oh, and how you enjoyed it!"
"Then, it just makes sense I will be the one looking for a solution with no further involvement from you, mh?"
"No, wait—"
Something sharp pricks at Akira’s chest—the point of his own dagger.
"Thank you for the rematch, by the way," Akechi adds. "As I don’t see how you could return that to me, you may keep my glove."
The point pierces through fabric and skin, and Akira winces in pain.
"Well… take care!"
Akechi thrusts the dagger through his chest.
Still in the dead of night, Akira wakes up with a jolt and a gulp and eyes on the verge of weeping.
Akira stops dreaming of the Velvet Room—real or fake—altogether. If anything, he gains the impression that the more anguish he pours on the matter, the less an opening from the other side will present, which feels like a very on-brand variety of Akechi spite.
Futaba offers no solutions either, especially with how entrenched in EMMA research she’s been. Their road trip inches closer, and if they go on a field trip to gather more intel, they'll also need information and leads to look out for. Not that Akira isn’t over the moon at the idea of escaping bumfuck nowhere to be with the people he really wanted to be with all along, but the thought of Akechi being somewhat alive, or at least in a material, non-imaginary state of existence while Akira can only sit aside is eating away at him day and night.
He manages to focus on studying for his summer exams only because Morgana pulls up the reinforcements card and has Futaba contact Makoto about Akira’s worryingly increasing pile of still-unreviewed material. The silver lining is that if he ever gets to meet with Goro Akechi again, at the very least he’ll be able to flaunt his higher education.
The exams and the trip back to Tokyo come by in a blur.
Tokyo Station welcomes him with muted chaos and enough mugginess to last for the entire season. It’s the first thing in weeks that pulls a genuine smile out of Akira's face.
Sojiro’s car, with its lingering scent of cigarettes and spices, still feels like an embrace, a memory from that day Sojiro came to pick him up out of juvie. Even better does it feel the embrace his friends meet him with—Ryuji’s crushing hug and Ann’s little pulls on his polo shirt.
Surrounded by warmth and the delicious low simmering of freshly prepped curry, Akira can’t help but think there’s only one person missing.
Then he and Ryuji end up in the Metaverse again, they get locked up in a basement and meet Sophia, and everything changes.
He fully expects to be summoned to the Velvet Room that night, but he curls up in the attic’s crate bed and wakes up the next day with no chains, no aria, and no Igor nor Lavenza.
His perplexities grow with the passing of days—Alice’s Jail is proving tougher than they all expected, not least of all due to how vast and populated it is, with the starting formation having to juggle way more than the usual bunch of enemies they’re used to—and not having the Velvet Room isn’t just annoying because he’s been kicked out by his rival-slash-whatever. Not having the Velvet Room means he can’t fuse new Personas. Stronger Personas; Personas that will help his friends not fucking die.
He’d assumed the return of the Metaverse would be the path ahead. Clearly, he needs to find another way. Maybe he just needs to dip into the Sea of Souls himself.
"You've got to be kidding me," Futaba says, eyes open wide, mouth agape, fingers frozen over Morgana's pointed ears, who adds, "Absolutely not!"
"I'm inclined to agree," Takemi chimes in, fingers clenching her notepad. "What you're referring to is most likely a form of pharmacological coma. Not at all something a kid should toy with."
Akira rolls his next words on his tongue carefully, like hard candies that would choke him if swallowed whole. "We know it's possible to execute it safely, though. Shido did it—"
"By your recounting of the situation," Takemi interjects, "I'm guessing it was the last failsafe at his disposal, most likely tested for months if not years in advance, and supervised by a large medical equipe. Not exactly circumstances I see playing out here." She casts a stern look around her examination room. "Moreover, I lack the proper instrumentation to monitor an unconscious patient. Even if I managed to make an upgrade on that front, it'll still take me weeks to do so without attracting unwanted attention."
Akira's smartphone chirps, vibrating in his hands. "I can help with that!"
"Do not," Futaba hisses, "help him."
Sophia seems to give it some thought. "So, not all requests expressed by humans should be answered? But how can I know which ones are better left unattended?"
"Let us start with ignoring the ones compromising a person’s life, okay?" She sighs heavily, then turns to him. "If this is about Akechi again…"
"You know it’s become bigger than this. Me not having the Velvet Room is gonna turn into a problem for all of us more than it is already. I thought once the Metaverse was back I could access the door again, but there simply… isn’t one. Anywhere." He slaps his palm together in a praying gesture. "Please. I wouldn’t do this if it wasn’t my only thread."
She glares at him. Takemi observes them both as if they were aliens.
"You kids are a worrisome bunch, you know that?" Scratching the back of her head, she sighs. "Is this about saving the world again, or whatever it is you Phantom Thieves do?"
With simmering hope, Akira nods.
Takemi sighs. She glances at Futaba. "Do you prefer I do this alone, or do you want to be present?"
"I'm staying," Futaba says. She hugs Morgana tighter. "Kitty's staying, too."
"Fine by me, but the little buddy will have to wait outside." She lowers to look at Sophia. "Shall I request the necessary equipment to you?"
"Mh-hm! I'm humanity's companion, and will do my best to aid you."
Takemi takes the phone away from Akira's hands as she consults with Sophia. Futaba inches closer to him on the examination table, one pinkie extended out to him, and a scowl on her little face.
"Promise me you’ll give up if this doesn't work."
He laces his pinkie with hers. "On all my souvenirs."
"Ugh, this is serious. Okay then." She curls up on the table, scrunching the paper underneath. "You owe me so much merch," she mutters.
Akira gently bumps into her shoulder. Faking his death again wasn't in his plans for the year. At least this time, it will happen in the best approximation of a safe environment he can get.
In his dream, Akira comes to on top of a bunk, the wooden plank's hard nodes digging into his back. The glittering blue of chains dangling from the ceiling catches in his vision as they second some invisible force, clinking. The blue is the right blue, and a soft aria echoes from the speakers. The widest grin unrolls on his face just as he exhales the biggest sigh of relief.
He gets up, but upon crossing the threshold of his once-cell, only Lavenza meets him. Beside her, Igor’s desk remains empty.
“Hello, Trickster.” She bows to him. “Your reappearance tonight is sudden, but brings great relief.”
“Where’s Igor?”
“My master doesn’t seem to be able to attend tonight, much like you in these previous days. As I’m sure you have noticed, there have been… interferences with the regular workings of this Room.”
He observes his surroundings better. The Velvet Room appears to have returned to its prior state, no more half amphitheater. Just a bunch of cell doors, each facing the others and all facing the same round room. But someone is missing.
“Where’s Akechi?” he asks with a frown.
“I fear I was forced to quarantine him due to how unstable the Room had become with his presence.” She gestures toward the wall, and the corridor leading to the backrooms appears once again. “You may free him now. Nothing troublesome will occur again as long as I’m here.”
Akira clicks his tongue. “Lemme guess… then you’ll explain everything in more detail?”
“Of course.”
With a nod, he turns on his heels and traverses the corridor with a strong sense of dejà-vu, climbs the staircase again, and knocks on the quarantine cell’s door again.
“‘Sup.”
Akechi makes a show of squeezing his eyes shut and exhaling a long, pained sigh. “Please, tell me this is about to be over.”
“Hopefully.” He steps aside, and as he does, the door opens on its own.
“Great,” Akechi mutters. He just storms down the stairs, Akira tailing right behind, and he stops right in front of Lavenza. “I remember about you,” he says, a vague accusation in his tone.
“And I about you,” she answers with another bow. “Goro Akechi, the other Champion.”
Akira smiles to himself. It’s such a Lavenza trait to want Akechi to have a title too. Akira’s got him 2:1 on titles, though—both Champion and Trickster—which does feed his ego. Akechi just regards the moniker with a raised eyebrow and goes on.
“Glad there’s no need for reintroductions. Now, if it would be possible to know what the hell is going on…?”
“Since my master isn’t here with us, I can merely speculate…”
“But your ‘speculations’ back in January were quite accurate,” Akechi interjects.
“And I will do my best once again,” Lavenza resumes with a kind smile. “As our Trickster here might have shared, this place is located between dream and reality, mind and matter, and was created to assist all those who possess the power of the Wildcard. This would theoretically include you.” She hugs her big tome tighter. “Had the God of Control not hijacked the game, as an individual with the potential to wield the Wildcard, you might have found yourself in this very same room—only, it would’ve looked different than this, as the Velvet Room mirrors the state of one’s heart. In your case…”
“A stage,” Akechi completes, thinking out loud. “An amphitheater.”
“Correct. When you had gone astray in the Sea of Souls near the conclusion of last year, and then again following the disappearance of the fabricated reality, the Velvet Room must’ve called you as it did for the Trickster and his friends back in December, which is my best guess as to how you came around to entering this place. Although, as a general rule, only one guest may occupy one specific Room at a time, which is why you were initially confined.”
“Oh,” says Akira. “Guess I shouldn’t have let him come out then, huh?”
“That was definitely the biggest source of trouble,” answers Lavenza. “As you’ve seen for yourself, the Velvet Room can host more than one person at the same time, but only for a limited amount of time. Two Persona users lingering for too long would be troublesome, let alone two Wildcards. That is, first and foremost, what destabilized the place to such an extent.”
“I see,” Akechi adds, pinching his chin. “Is it true, then, as we've speculated, that my lack of a key explained my inability to come and go freely?"
“Yes. Nor were you ever otherwise formally invited as a guest. But since the Velvet Room did recognize your right to be here, it began shifting molds, responding to your heart in kind the longer you remained.”
Akira blinks. “That’s why it also got more difficult for me to go out?”
“That is likely. My reasoning is that the Room recognized both of you as its guests, and thus both of you as the intruder. Like holding up the page of a book against a source of light, both sides were true, but they couldn't be read contemporarily.”
“And what happened when I couldn’t come in again?”
“To put it simply, it was like the other Champion, ah, stole your keys?” She tucks one strand of white hair behind her ear. “This is also why I couldn’t summon you, nor could I grant you the usual access points. I had to contain your friend again.”
“And now can you, uh, give him a copy of the keys? So that he can come and go, too?”
Her expression morphs into something uncertain. “I’d need to see what adjustments can be arranged in this sense. No attendant is supposed to supervise more than one Wildcard, and with my master currently unavailable…” She waves her hand in dismissal. “I believe I should at the very least be able to let your friend out, though. Only, once he exits, I can’t guarantee I’ll be able to easily grant him access again.”
“Please,” whines Akechi.
“I think he’d prefer it, actually,” adds Akira.
“Then,” finishes Lavenza, “I’ll ensure he’s free to go. Find the Velvet Room door at the usual place in the Metaverse, and I’ll open it up for him.”
Akechi stares at him with an unimpressed look. “But of course the Metaverse would be back.”
Akira grins.
“And you’re yet again entangled in your vigilante bullshit?”
“Yup,” Akira replies proudly, “and I expect you to stick around for this one.”
“Marvelous,” says Akechi through gritted teeth.
Lavenza bows at him again. “I’ll let you go for now. You’ll encounter no troubles waking up this time. Once this matter is settled, Trickster, we shall take aside some time to discuss the current state of the world, and how you can face what is threatening its order once more.”
Around him, air stops flowing, the flickering of light stills, and Akira feels himself coming awake again.
He opens his eyes to the beeping of a pulse monitor, to Takemi's examination room's white, albeit cracked, plastered ceiling—and Futaba's face squished against his on the pillow as she dozes off, no other remedy for the drug-induced coma needed.
Holy shit.
The next Jail infiltration, Akira does spot the Velvet Room door where it’s supposed to be, Lavenza patiently waiting just outside. She opens the cell door for him, but Akira doesn’t step inside this time. He just waits, heart going off like Ann's machine gun in his chest.
Once Goro Akechi walks out, striped suit and black beaked mask, a few things happen at once.
Akira breaks into a half-jog to meet him.
A few people behind him gasp the loudest gasp Akira’s heard in his life.
Ryuji yells one ‘For real?!’ that’s strong enough to get them found out by the Jail’s security, who charges in their direction, tipping off Morgana's 'You moron!'
And Goro Akechi, hand on his hip, head tilted to the side, smirks at him, a challenge thrown for a challenge met. Akira sprints closer to him.
And he punches him right in the face.