Chapter Text

“Since when were you trilingual? I knew you could speak English, but --”



“My dad’s American, but one of his parents was Mexican. I know some Spanish. Not a lot.”



Ryuji immediately regretted asking.



Akira’s parents were always a sore spot for him. All too eager to dump the ‘convict’ off with a family friend he'd never even heard of. They weren’t close to begin with -- it was never outright abusive in the household, just cold. His parents felt more like his employers. He was a lot happier now, a year or so into university with his best friend, back in Tokyo, living with Sojiro and Futaba again.



“...Sorry, man. Didn’t mean to bring up something sore --”



“It’s fine, you didn’t mean anything by it.”



Akira inwardly chided himself for cutting off Ryuji twice in a row, realizing he was letting some old wounds make him act like a jerk. He plastered on a reasonably convincing smile and suggested a break for lunch. Ryuji, unsurprisingly, sprung for ramen.



Akira wasn’t really all that surprised to find out his ‘dad’ wasn’t really his father at all, and had met his mother shortly after he was born. They didn’t resemble each other too closely, and Akira was taller than him before he even finished high school. He did wonder why someone would have enough conviction to marry someone who already had a kid, only to utterly half-ass the actual act of parenting, but at this point, it wasn’t his business. Akira was content to accept their occasional money and uncomfortably formal e-mails in exchange for good grades. Like every other facet of his relationship with his parents, it was just business, nothing personal.



He had wondered for a while if their surprisingly generous financial assistance into his early adulthood -- Akira only had a few months left before his 20th birthday -- was supposed to be some kind of apology for the lack of care before reaching the eventual decision that, frankly, he didn’t give a shit. If it was, it wasn’t meaningful. If it wasn’t, who cares? Besides, he had other stuff to worry about. School, work, friends, normal stuff…



...Also some not normal stuff, but since when was anything really normal for him anyway? It feels like he had essentially started a completely new life ever since that first day at Syujin. Even his name felt out-of-date, even if it was the only one he still really went by -- internally, he always felt like Joker. ‘Akira’ was just Joker’s mask.



At some point during their meal, Ryuji paused his gobbling of chashu and noodles to ask, as all of the old gang would occasionally inquire, whether Akira missed the old days, the thrills of stealing treasures and fighting for their lives.



Akira, as always, felt a minor pang of guilt when lying and saying he missed something he was still actively doing. Sitting inside his bag, Morgana rolled his eyes while Akira gave his lame fake pining for his ‘lost’ hobby. The cat was the only one who knew that, while everyone else had sacrificed their “comic book hero shit” (as Ryuji had gracefully put it some time ago) for the sake of the world, Akira never lost the rebellious powers he gained that fateful day.



He had no idea why, and it wasn’t a complete retaining. Arsene was still with him, but internally -- he hadn’t manifested physically since the fall of Yaldabaoth, but Akira retained the powers granted by his Persona’s awakening. The Wild Card was gone, taking all of his captured demons with it, but his own internal mastery of Arsene’s dark powers and the superhuman enhancement granted by him remained.



Satanael was always just a greater expression of Arsene, and without a literal god drawing forth the utter desperation of both Akira himself and the human race he counted himself a member of, he found that the untold power of that form was no longer within him. It was just Arsene again, forever loyal, even if he now only dwelled within.



“ --kira? Akira! Hey, earth to Joker!”

“Buhwuh?”



Ryuji gave an amused but curious cocked eyebrow and smirk toward Akira, who had been staring blankly into his bowl of shoyu for several minutes now.



“Dude, you were totally spacing out.”



“Oh. Sorry, just thinking about… y’know. Stuff.”



“You alright, man?”



Akira considered answering truthfully before deciding it was better not to make anyone worry.



“Yeah, I’m fine. I think we’ve spent too much time studying lately.”



“You’re telling me! I’m starting to forget what the outside of a textbook looks like.”



They both share a laugh and continue on with their comfortingly pointless conversation before, eventually, paying their bill and heading for their respective homes.



(The tendency of the two to play video games into the wee hours of the night meant they only had their coveted best-friend-roommate situation for a single semester. Akira eventually moved back into the attic of Leblanc, which by now had actually been remodeled into a finished living space. The downstairs, however, was the same as it ever was.)



---



“How much longer are you gonna keep this up?”



“Dunno.”



It’s not like the Metaverse was ever going anywhere. It was, admittedly, a pretty big shock to find out it was some kind of in-between space manifested between the ‘real’ world and what could only be described as… well… Hell. A realm of demons and hate, built on blood and fire. The deep bowels of Mementos were the closest they got to piercing the veil to the other side, and Yaldabaoth was very much a denizen of the underworld, escaped to enact his grand design on humanity.



Akira shook his head as he found himself lost in thoughts again.



The point was, the Metaverse was there to stay. It was only so weird because of the runoff of both human and demonic cognition within it. The deeper you got into its layers, the more traditionally Hellish it got, as the minds of the infernal became its primary shaping force.



The name of that interstice between Mementos and the true gates of Hell stuck in his head, though -- the ‘world of the Qliphoth.’ What the hell was a Qliphoth? He sure as hell didn’t know, but the word was burned into his memory for some reason. It conjured up imagery he thought he’d rather forget -- the burning, pulsing veins (Or maybe roots? It was hard to tell what they were) of indistinct crimson something that jammed through Mementos’ abstract prison of light, steel, and concrete. The demons getting increasingly bizarre and no longer bearing resemblance to any historical myth he could think of. The pressure of the area that made it feel like you were being crushed under the weight of collective sin. He couldn’t stop thinking about it, even years later.



It should have been traumatic, but Akira, to his own bewilderment, found it just felt like unfinished business. Some part of him wanted to go back and find something more, but… what was left to find? The God of Control was deader than disco. The twisted desires of the masses had been freed from their yearning for oblivion. It was pretty much just an empty black-and-red pit now, albeit one that still felt really freaky.



For two and a half years now, Akira had curbed that niggling anxiety of work left undone by adventuring solo through the remaining Palaces and other strange spots of the Metaverse. There was more to it than the Phantom Thieves ever even dreamed, with both larger and smaller locales of form to mess around in and plenty of treasure to steal.



Although lately, the thievery had felt like an excuse. Akira was gradually becoming more of a demonic vigilante of sorts, hunting out potential threats to the real world and making surgical strikes within them to cause collapse from within. Looting their goods was certainly fun, but it was no longer the primary drive.



Fun.



That was the most honest word he had to describe his drive towards the Metaverse, and one he didn’t like to think about too deeply, but he couldn’t help it. He knew on some level that his actions weren’t entirely altruistic. Sure, protecting his fellow humans, especially knowing that it kept his friends safe -- it gave him as cliché of a warm and fuzzy feeling as one would imagine. But he knew deeper down, well…



Akira felt a lot more alive as Joker. The rush of fighting for his life made living it all the sweeter, and the exasperation of angry demons as a ‘mere human’ dared to run circles around them, put down their elites, steal their most prized symbols of power… it was priceless.



Morgana, lacking his Persona and his more useful form now that the cognitive structure of Mementos had largely collapsed, did not accompany Akira for the most part. There was only so much a regular little cat can do against the infernal. Akira had used Morgana’s motivation to find a way to truly become human as another excuse to journey through the Metaverse, and had even found some meaningful leads, but they eventually led to disappointing dead ends.



The cat only kept Akira’s retained powers and adventures secret out of respect, frequently reminding him that the rest of the Phantom Thieves deserved to know, but still letting him be the one to decide when to come clean.



Akira frequently insisted he would tell them soon, somehow believing himself every time. When opportunities presented themselves, however, he always found himself unable to find the right words, and ironically the stress of hiding it ended up in many dangerous Metaverse joyrides to work off said stress.



“Just don’t go too wild tonight, okay? You have stuff to do tomorrow.”



“I know, I know.”



Morgana gave as disapproving a frown as a cat could muster, frustrated that Akira wasn’t even bothering to make much of an excuse anymore. They both knew he was going in habitually at this point, but Akira frustratingly wouldn’t admit it outright.



A moment of focus produced Akira’s knife, which at some point he had named after his old companion. 'Arsene', the Spirit of Rebellion. Morgana told him it sounded silly. Akira told him the weapon picked the name, not him. Morgana told him that sounded even sillier, and with a laugh, the thief had agreed.



They both silently agreed not to talk about how alarming it was that his weapons were now as real in the normal world as they were in the Metaverse.



Taking a deep breath, Akira hit a few buttons on his phone’s touchscreen before shutting his eyes. A few seconds later, Joker opened his on the other side.



He was instantly within a red spotlight, and smirked as he heard alarms sound and demonic threats spouting from encroaching denizens of this latest target.



Finally.

