Chapter Text
“Case closed. This is how your ‘justice’ ends.”
One breath, two. Finger on the trigger.
Ren’s unblinking stare bores into him, a million questions and objections and concerns swirling behind that familiar dark blue. Questions he might have wanted to hear, concerns he might have wanted to discuss.
Too late now.
Gunshots were not nearly as dramatic as they appeared in movies. No sending the victim flying backwards or throwing them against a wall. Ren doesn’t move, seeming almost unaffected, were it not for the blood that blooms and begins to pour down his forehead.
Ren’s face lands on the table with an almost comical thud, the impact echoing in the room. Then, silence.
Way too late.
Akechi slides the gun into Ren’s hand, curling unmoving fingers around it. The splatters of red are so distracting. Without them, one could almost pretend Ren is just asleep.
He checks his clothes quickly for any blood splatter. None. Adjusting his gloves, he turns and departs the scene.
Way, way too late.
His chest is burning.
Hadn’t he gotten over this by now? He’s ended so many lives before--yes, it was always in the Metaverse, but it was still by his hand. A killing in the real world is no different. The important thing is he’s now one step closer to his goal.
And anyway, it’s too late.
He pauses on his way down the hall. For a second, he thinks it’s regret. But no, something else is tugging at his attention. A familiar, but very faint sensation. He’d felt it before, when he stopped briefly to speak to Sae on her way out. She’d seemed troubled.
He’d thought it was just his nerves then, a concern for the plan going as expected. But to feel it again now…
Akechi stops. Even though he isn’t actually a detective, so long pretending to be one has still helped improve his observational skills. He spares a few precious moments to try and compartmentalize this feeling, to retrace where he’s felt it before, and why it has him more tense--
The Metaverse. Could it be?
Akechi turns abruptly, goes back down the hall where he came. His searching eyes land on the guard--the one he’d had escort him into the room. The one he’d disarmed and killed.
Time travel isn't a thing. Which means he was inadvertently in the Metaverse. His plan was undone. He has to do it again. This also means that this was a setup--did Sae know? No, she seemed genuinely uninvolved. Then the Phantom Thieves are responsible. All of them? It has to be. They make decisions as a group. The finer details of how need to be processed, but at a later time. The most pressing thing now is having to repeat himself, like deja vu, but with less time and more chance for Sae to come back or someone to notice something amiss. He has to act, and quickly.
But now…
…it’s not too late.
Conflict plagues him, even as he wills himself back. Even as he schools his features when approaching the guard. Even as he says the same lines he said moments ago. Even as it works just as effectively on the real guard.
Even as he's led inside, even as he focuses on taking the gun, even as he shoots the guard yet again , even as the guard collapses in almost the exact same way.
The first real difference is Ren.
In the Metaverse, Ren had been bruised, beaten, but alert. He’d reacted to the situation, seemed shocked as Akechi’s truth spilled out, stared down the face of his murderer without wavering--just like Akechi would have expected him to.
Here, Ren is already slumped against the table.
That burning feeling is back. But Ren’s back rises and falls; he’s still alive. The culprit is a second syringe lying on the ground near the first--a harder dose than Akechi would have initially thought. Due to Ren’s resistance? Or proof of the police being especially cautious?
Too late.
No, not too late. But--
Akechi moves around the table, distantly aware that time is short. He crouches down, moving Ren’s arm aside to get a look at his face.
Ren’s eyes are open, but he’s so clearly out of it that they may as well be closed. After a beat, his lids flutter, he squints, and shifts, raising his head. “...Akechi,” he finally says.
Akechi has the gun. He’s taking precious time. He knows that the Phantom Thieves know, and they concocted some sort of scheme to trick him into thinking they didn’t.
“Your little plan didn’t work,” is his greeting.
Ren breathes in, out. “Is this real?”
“Of course it is.” Drugs are annoying.
Slowly, Ren pulls himself to a sitting position, one hand coming up to hold his head. Akechi stands now, and raises his own hand. The gun holds steady an inch from Ren’s eternally messy black hair.
He doesn’t need to explain. Ren knows he’s a traitor.
“I can’t tell.” Ren seems so out of it, but he’s trying to pull himself back in.
“You can’t tell that it’s real? Of course not; you’re drugged out of your mind,” Akechi snorts.
“I thought…you’d already shot me.”
Akechi raises an eyebrow. “Dreaming about me, are we?” It’s an automatic response, as he tries to calculate these new developments.
“You came in and killed the…” Ren trails off when his eyes finally land on the dead guard. He’s still for a moment, and then says again in a much quieter voice, “is this real?”
Is it shock that their grand plan failed? Or have the drugs been feeding him illusions as well?
Pathetic. Disgusting. Something about it makes Akechi’s blood boil. It suits the burning in his chest. He has a plan--he had a plan, but the Thieves were a step ahead of him. They must have some additional steps to rescue Ren as well. After all, they wouldn’t leave their precious leader in police custody.
Well. He’s not about to be outdone. The fact that he almost fell for their stupid scheme pisses him off, and he feels a rising urge to make it crystal clear to them that they failed , that they can not outwit him.
The easy way is to shoot Ren for real.
It was too late. It had been too late. By a very infuriating set of circumstances, he’s been granted a do-over. He’d left the room with regrets--he can admit that to himself, in the urgency of this moment. And now he has the chance to address them. He wants to prove he’s better than the idiots who had tried to trick him.
And he wants a more satisfying end than this.
He glances back, at the dead guard. Quickly he moves to the corpse, ensuring his gloves are in place before he begins a cursory search. He’s in luck--the man has a pair of handcuffs. Akechi grabs them and stands, moving close to Ren again. His free hand sinks into Ren’s sleeve, squeezing the arm underneath, and pulls. “Get up.”
Ren is basically dead weight. He rises slowly, much too slowly. Akechi’s head is quickly sifting through ideas and calculations, and he yanks harder, trying to speed up the pace. Ren stumbles, tips forward, unable to balance his own weight.
Alechi pivots his shoulder to catch Ren’s weight before he falls. Time’s running short. His eyes sweep the room for anything that may need to be moved. His shoes are clean, he didn’t touch the door or the table.
He handcuffs Ren with ease, ignoring the reddened marks the metal slides into place over. A problem immediately arises as he stares at the door. He was planning to leave alone. Trying to explain his way out of relocating such an important prisoner is far more trouble than it’s worth. And he’s growing more convinced by the minute that the Phantom Thieves will try to contact Sae to help them. She’ll be back, he’s sure of it.
Well, even though their pathetic scheme has failed, they ended up showing him the easiest way to get out of here. Akechi shifts Ren’s weight in order to pull his cellphone from his pocket.
The news cycle came and went that day without any notable updates. Something had gone wrong. Futaba’s text alert only confirmed it--she’d gotten a response from Sae, who was confused and somewhat indignant about the situation. Then, after trading a few texts back and forth, Sae’s messages had abruptly stopped.
A little later, Makoto received a text from Sae:
“Go straight home after school.”
Makoto promised to get in touch with the others as soon as she could find something out. Something unexpected must have come up. Had something happened to Ren and prevented him from explaining the situation?
Futaba advised that hacking into the police station’s system was a difficult and dangerous step, even for her, but she would try it and see if anything could be uncovered.
Makoto did not text the group that night, and the next morning arose with still no information on the news. Ryuji and Ann’s increasingly worried texts finally made Yusuke snap. He warned that every notification from them was only dashing their hopes on actual word about the situation. Futaba went radio silent for the rest of the school day, and Ryuji and Ann texted each other privately to fret about the situation.
Haru messaged the group once that evening, letting them know a couple of detectives had arrived at her home saying they wanted to ask more questions about her father’s case. Speculation flew in the group chat, and Haru was able to join back in about an hour later. She said they had asked some shallow questions about it, but then started asking some things that worried her. They seemed much more interested in discussing the Phantom Thieves, specifically its leader, and what information she had on him.
Something in the wording of her text caused Ann to immediately offer to come over and spend the night. Haru agreed. Futaba explained to a dumbfounded Ryuji and Yusuke that the interview had likely rattled Haru and Ann had picked up on it.
The sun had gone down by the time Makoto texted again. She said they had a problem, and Sae wanted to meet with them all the next day.