[ closed starter for @detectivemasked ]
Akechi’s final moments hadn’t been what anyone expected. They’d been onto him from the start- thwarted his plans, and tried their best to show him a kindness they felt he hadn’t been given. It hadn’t been enough- until it was. There was raw shock on all of their faces as the giant metal door closed with Akechi behind it.
No one was prepared- no one was expecting it. There was so much left unsaid- but they had to run. It would be a disservice to Akechi’s sacrifice not to- so they ran, pushing down their shock and regret and bewilderment.
In the months following, they regrouped and kept at what they were best at- but it had undoubtedly put a damper on the team’s mood.
With everything, Akira had begun seeking out more and more time by himself, time to process, time to distract himself, time he wasn’t entirely sure of. With that, meant training. Typically, he seeked out Ryuji to go to the gym, cajoled the team into visiting Mementos, or just worked out alone in his room. Occasionally, though, he found himself wandering into Mementos alone, dropping to a deeper rest stop and exploring the floors directly above and below it to train, to contemplate, but always in safe distance of getting back.
With his explorations, he’d seen things he’d never noticed before, forced to walk along the tracks rather than use Morgana. There was writing, there were dropped personal belongings- maybe treasures, or things people lost in the subway and only existed in the cognitive now. It felt less like a distant place now, it was someplace he was oddly intimately familiar with. He had to wonder if this was the way with Futaba- if her navigation and sensors gave her this intimate view of Mementos.
As he walked along the path, his eyes scanned, cautious of shadows and looking along the ground for anything that caught his eye. At the end of the passage, there was something- someone? curled up in the dark, practically invisible if you weren’t looking.
They hadn’t ID’d anyone recently- and hiding in a corner wasn’t typical for targets. Was it one of the other Phantom Thieves? Akira approached cautiously- worried about what he was about to find. “Hello?” He called cautiously, one hand on his gun just in case. “Are you alright?” What if someone had accidentally followed him into the metaverse at some point?
