— –Makoto Nijima– —
Heavy is the head that wears the crown.
Fate has a habit of leading people in "interesting" directions. For her part, she'd always assumed the blueprints of her life were already drawn. Study, excel, graduate, enroll in the police academy, and eventually earn the title of detective. Maybe then, she'd finally grasp that elusive thing called justice. Maybe then, the Niijima name would mean something more than just a cold house and a heavy silence.
Maybe she should have asked for a different nickname. Anything but "Queen."
It had all started with a simple request. She still remembered the day she'd met Ren in the school library, a charming boy looking for a book, looking for anything they had on psychology. She remembered the neon hum of the arcade when they'd slipped away from school. She remembered the moment he asked if she wanted to help, and the "yes" that left her lips.
Calling herself Queen was tempting fate, wasn't it? Perhaps "Rider" would have been more honest. More free.
It was funny; she'd felt so powerful when Johanna first roared to life. She truly believed she was the one holding the throttle, finally capable of steering the world toward change. She still remembered the night they sent Kaneshiro's calling card, the adrenaline, the strobing lights of the Shibuya screens, and the clinical satisfaction of watching a monster finally in handcuffs.
In the end, she should have known better than to get swept up in the momentum.
She really believed she could see the "big picture." She believed the Metaverse was the ultimate shortcut to justice, a way to finally make her father proud, to ease the burden on her sister, and to prove her worth to her friends.
It all felt like a dream.
But then, the spark of doubt. Perhaps it hadn't just appeared; perhaps it had always been there, a low-frequency hum in the back of her mind. Her doubt didn't lie with the Phantom Thieves themselves, she believed in her gut that their cause was honorable, their hearts true. The doubt lived in the aftermath. It lived in the erratic pulse of the public, the looming shadow of the Antisocial Force, and the sheer uncertainty of their future.
She could see the symptoms every time she stepped outside. Tokyo was no longer the city she knew; it was a fever dream of their own making. Phantom Thief merchandise cluttered the storefronts, their logo plastered on everything from cheap keychains to billboards. You couldn't walk a single block without hearing their name whispered or shouted.
It was a good thing. It had to be.
The crime rate across Japan had plummeted ever since they'd dismantled Kaneshiro's empire. The streets felt safer, the public seemed lighter, and the grueling hours they'd poured into the depths of Mementos were finally paying dividends. People were getting the justice they deserved, one changed heart at a time.
Yet, it felt wrong. It was a persistent, gnawing sensation that she was missing a piece of the puzzle, something staring her right in the face that she couldn't quite see. It was a discomfort the rest of the Phantom Thieves didn't seem to share in the slightest.
For a while, she'd foolishly tried to blame Ren for that uneasy feeling. She'd pushed it down, telling herself her intuition was just misfiring because of his... complicated personal life. Honestly, when she first realized he was dating not one, but two of her friends, she'd genuinely questioned her own sanity. But what could she even say at this point? They were happy. Somehow, against all logic, they were making it work.
It was still weird as fuck.
And yes, it bothered her. She was jealous, a bitter pill she refused to swallow out loud. But deep down, she knew that wasn't the source. That was a different kind of ache. Left to her own devices, she might never have uncovered the truth. The real source of her discomfort was something far larger, and far older, than herself.
"Did you know, Makoto… I died once before."
That night, the floor had fallen out from under her. She finally realized why everything had felt like a dream. Because, in a way, it was.
Their conversation shifted her entire world on its axis. She'd spent the following hours paralyzed in the dark, unable to sleep, replaying every interaction, every look, and every cryptic remark they'd ever shared. For the first time, the fog cleared. She felt like she could finally see him.
Maybe she should have known the moment he casually mentioned his Persona was Tartuffe. An imposter. A hypocrite. An actor. At the time, she'd simply assumed the name was a nod to his "shady" past, the past he hated to discuss. But now, that name shone in a haunting new light.
The world was far larger, and far colder, than she'd ever realized.
Because in the end, every single thing they'd done was not truly theirs. The Phantom Thieves were pawns, the Phantom Thieves were actors, the Phantom Thieves were puppets. All along, they'd been players in another's game. The game of the collective unconscious. A collective unconscious capable of creating Gods. A collective unconscious capable of bringing both ruin and salvation.
Part of her wanted to be angry at Ren, for keeping everything a secret from her, from everyone. Sure, he'd told them about the scalpel, about the Velvet Room, but he'd never told them the entire story. But in the end, she could understand him. He wasn't in the lion's den, he was in the lion's mouth. Igor, the Velvet Room, the Metaverse, all of it had pushed him into a corner. A corner he'd once willingly accepted, but one that he could no longer stand.
That night, he'd finally told her everything. Or at least, as much as he could. He'd spoken in the equivalent of riddles and a muddled mess of vague hints, but it was enough for her to understand. Ren couldn't speak freely, because Igor might overhear.
Even the amount he'd given her that night might have been too much. But Ren was tying a noose around his neck, and he'd trusted her, only her, to be the one to cut the rope once the time came.
"Queen? Are you alright?" Haru asked, her voice cutting through the heavy silence as Makoto paced the perimeter of the safe room.
"Huh?" Makoto blinked, snapping out of the daze. "Sorry, yes. I was just… lost in thought. Did you need something, Noir?"
"Oh, no, well not exactly. It's just… I think I heard something in the vents." Haru answered, her usual poise wavering into uncertainty.
"Oh god, not that creepy thing again." Ryuji muttered. He yanked his shotgun from his back, leveling it at the ceiling. "Get ready. I saw a movie about this a few days ago, don't let that thing get a jump on ya."
Makoto's hand flew to her revolver. She narrowed her eyes, straining to listen, and just as Haru had warned, a faint thumping echoed through the metal ducting. It was rhythmic, heavy, and growing louder with every passing second.
"Noir, get behind me. Be prepared to retreat. Skull, call Kidd." Makoto commanded. She didn't hesitate; she summoned Johanna, the blue glow of the motorcycle's engine humming to life beneath her.
This room was supposed to be a sanctuary, a glitch in Okumura's cognition where the Palace's influence couldn't reach. In theory, Shadows were barred from entry unless intentionally lured inside. At least, that was the rule they had lived by in every Palace until now. However, they hadn't even had the chance to test Okumura's safe rooms until today, with Haru there to grant them access.
As the thumping reached a deafening crescendo, the lights overhead began to flicker. They strobed faster and faster until the bulbs shattered, raining glass onto the floor. The room plunged into darkness, illuminated only by the ghostly, flickering aura of Johanna.
Makoto didn't let her nerves show. She raised her pistol, her finger tightening on the trigger, and waited for the vent to burst.
But the attack never came. The thumping rushed overhead, a heavy, dragging sound that bypassed the safe room entirely. Within seconds, the noise had faded back into the distant hum of the station. For a long, breathless minute, the three of them remained frozen in their stances, weapons leveled at the dark ceiling.
Silence returned, thick and suffocating. It appeared they were truly safe. Then, the heavy pneumatic doors behind them hissed open.
Makoto spun on her heel, the engine of Johanna roaring as she prepared to plow into whatever was coming through the entrance. She caught herself just in time.
"Joker." Makoto whispered. She let out a long, shaky sigh and lowered her gun, allowing Johanna to vanish into blue flames.
[We got everyone jetpacks!] Futaba's voice broke through the tension, trailing off as she analyzed the room. [Oh… what the hell happened here?]
— — —
Drifting through the spaceship, Makoto had to swallow back a sigh. Through the massive windows, she could see the darkness of space. A view that any other day she would have been captured by. Yet at this moment, the view only made her headache stronger.
Using the thrusters that Ren and Mona had scavenged from the guards, they were now maneuvering with at least some semblance of control. But even then, moving through Zero Gravity was too strange a feeling. It was too dangerous.
If a fight broke out, they'd be left practically helpless, even with their makeshift jetpacks.
"Take cover." Ren whispered. He reached out, snagging a passing shipping container and pulling himself tight against its underside.
Following his lead, Makoto hooked her arm around another nearby floating crate, tucking herself in the shadows just as a patrol of flying guards swept past. They were systematically scanning the containers, latching onto specific ones to ferry them deeper into the ship's belly. Accounting for all of the crates floating around them, it was clear that Okumura was building something big.
The sheer volume of metal components and specialized parts was too high for something simple, like expanding the ship. No, Okumura was building something new. Maybe it was a second ship, or an escape pod, some sort of life raft. It wouldn't surprise her if a man like Okumura was scrambling to build himself a way to escape or protect his mind.
In the end, the sigh she'd been holding back slipped past her lips as she thought about it. This Palace was a nightmare.
Glancing ahead, she saw what appeared to be some sort of conveyor belt line splitting into seven distinct parts. From the looks of it, all of the crates they were holding onto were being funneled in that direction.
"Crap." Makoto whispered. At their current trajectory, the group was about to be forcefully separated.
Mona and Ryuji were anchored near Ren, but Haru was drifting behind Makoto. Ryuji would be fine under Ren's lead, but she and Haru were being pulled in the opposite direction. Analyzing the area around them, there were too many guards to be able to sneak from one crate to another.
"Oracle." Makoto whispered into her comms.
[On it. Analyzing the routing signatures now. Just give me a second.] Futaba's voice crackled. [The containers are hitting different checkpoints, but they all converge back at a central assembly factory. Looks like yours and Noir's are being rerouted through a side loading bay, while Joker's group is headed straight for the main construction site. And… oh! Jackpot. There's a Will Seed on your path, Queen.]
"Queen, can you do it?" Ren's voice came through the comms. "Do you need Mona?"
Makoto flinched, her fingers digging into the cold, vibrating metal of the crate. While Haru was capable, she was still their most inexperienced member. Adding a Will Seed hunt on top of an already risky detour was asking for trouble. Yet, as she scanned the surrounding vacuum, she saw the reality: their path was the only one that wasn't crawling with high-level security drones.
"We'll manage." She answered, her voice firm despite the knot in her stomach. "Don't send Mona. If he's spotted crossing the gap, it'll only bring the whole Palace down on us. I'll watch over Noir. Take care, Joker."
"Alright. Oracle will keep an eye on you, if you have to retreat do it. We'll meet you either at the entrance of the Palace or at the construction site."
Glancing back, she looked at Haru, trying to give her a reassuring nod as the two of them were taken away from the rest of the Thieves.
They drifted through the loading bays for several minutes, passing endless rows of robotic workers that moved with a terrifying, mindless efficiency. Finally, they reached a sorting checkpoint. It was a dense labyrinth of machinery, providing enough cover for her and Haru to slip out from under their crates and drift toward a massive shelving unit packed with specialized components.
"This… I remember this." Haru muttered. She reached out, pulling herself toward a specific metal housing unit nearby. "I bought this."
Makoto watched as Haru's hand began to shake, her fingers hovering over the cold steel. When she finally touched it, her hand clenched into a tight, trembling fist.
"It's for a model rocket ship… I bought it for his birthday years ago. We were supposed to build it together." She explained, her voice small and hollow against the backdrop of the humming engines. "I ended up building it by myself because he was always too busy to even open the box. I put the finished model on the shelf in his office… I thought he liked it."
Haru looked around the shelf, her eyes wide as she recognized more and more of the "parts" around them.
"Mako— I mean, Queen?" Haru's voice was soft, barely a whisper over the hum of the loading bay. "What do you think will happen once we change my father's heart?"
She didn't wait for an answer before the next thought tumbled out.
"He's going to go to jail, isn't he? I know it's what he deserves. He's hurt so many people. But then… What does that mean for me? For him?"
Makoto had to hold back another flinch at the question, instead taking a moment to gather her thoughts before reaching and placing her hand on Haru's shoulder.
"He will answer for what he's done… there's no avoiding that, not anymore." Makoto answered, her voice low. "But that doesn't have to be the end. We're stealing his distortions, his twisted desires. Once we're done here, it'll be like we've dumped a bucket of cold water on him. The fog will clear. He'll have the chance to redeem himself. Maybe, in time, the two of you can finally have a normal relationship."
"You think so?" Haru asked. There was a fragile, desperate thread of hope in her voice that made Makoto's chest ache.
"I hope so."
The words were blunt, perhaps even cold, but they were the truth. Makoto couldn't promise a happy ending in a world that felt increasingly like a rigged game. She looked away, her eyes scanning the dark, mechanical horizon of the Palace.
"You haven't been with us long enough to hear about this, but... my sister also has a Palace." Makoto revealed. "I spent my whole life looking up to her. She was my hero, the one person who kept everything together after our father died. But well… in the end, all it takes is one push for someone's cognition to become distorted. Even the people we love aren't immune to it."
Makoto paused, taking in a deep breath before continuing.
"That's to say… whatever happens next, we'll be here for you. In one way or another, we've all had our struggles. The others will tell you their stories when they're ready, but getting to this point hasn't been easy for any of us."
"Okay… thank you." Haru said softly. She looked up through the towering shelves, her eyes narrowing as she studied the industrial landscape. "Queen… I think I know where we are. It's hard to recognize through the space theme, but I've been here before. I can tell by the items on the shelves, and that massive monitor with the flickering numbers. I'm almost certain this is modeled after one of the offices in our headquarters. My father brought me there once, for a presentation on toy premiums for the restaurants."
Using the lack of gravity, Haru pushed off a shelf, drifting higher to get a better vantage point over the factory floor.
"Yes… I know this layout. Over there, do you see that large red container? The one surrounded by the black crates? If I had to guess, that's where the Will Seed is. That's the exact shade of red as the chair my father uses during his presentations. Is that right, Oracle?"
[One second… Joker's making a massive mess… uh…!] Futaba's voice crackled into their ears, followed by the muffled sound of explosions and Ryuji yelling in the background. After a tense silence, she returned. [What was it? Ah, yeah, the big red container. That's the door to the Will Seed room, alright. It's got a high-level encryption lock. I'll try to crack the—ah crap! Ah, well, uh, hang in there. I'll be back.]
The comms cut out with a sharp burst of static.
"Do you think they'll be alright?" Haru asked, a look of genuine concern crossing her face.
"It's Joker." Makoto answered, fighting back a grimace of her own as she imagined the chaos on the other side of the Palace. "I'm sure they'll be fine. I mean, how bad could it really be?"
"Oh, no, you're not supposed to say that…" Haru trailed off, shaking her head before looking back at the red container. "Never mind. Let's just secure that Will Seed so we can regroup with the others as quickly as possible."
"Agreed. Let's move."
The shelves provided perfect cover for the duo to ghost through the factory. Utilizing the zero-gravity environment, they took high-angle routes that bypassed the security robots' sensor arrays. Within minutes, they had reached the cluster of containers.
"Do you have any idea what the code might be?" Makoto asked, pressing her back against the cold metal of the red container as a patrol unit hummed nearby.
"I do, actually. He usually uses his anniversary with my mother for his phone…" Haru answered. She waited until the shadows of the robots passed before stepping out. Her fingers moved nimbly over the keypad. A moment later, a satisfying click echoed through the chamber, and the heavy door began to hiss open.
They slipped inside, finding a single, pulsating blue Will Seed resting in the center of the small room. After ensuring that there wasn't another Alien, or whatever the hell that black blob had been in the seed, Makoto stepped back, nodding toward the pedestal.
"Go ahead, Noir."
Just like the Will Seed before, lasers emerged from the corners of the container, stitching together in the air to create a lifelike hologram around them. This time, the sterile hospital walls didn't reappear. Instead, the two Thieves found themselves standing in the middle of a cramped, suffocating office.
Okumura was there, slumped at his desk with his head buried in his hands. Countless papers, bankruptcies, foreclosure notices, and legal threats, were strewn across the surface like debris from a wreck. He sat in a heavy, miserable silence. He looked exhausted, he looked bitter, and, for lack of a better word, he looked pathetic.
Makoto braced for a confrontation, but the seconds ticked by in total silence. Her eyes scanned the room, searching for a clue, until she caught the date on a desk calendar.
She'd done her homework the moment they'd pinned Okumura as their target. After all, one had to know their enemy. She remembered the data she'd found, this was the year Big Bang Burger had nearly flatlined. They were drowning in employee and stockholder lawsuits and being squeezed out by the competition. The company should have folded, yet somehow, within months, they'd staged a miraculous, aggressive climb to the top.
Which meant this was the turning point.
Right on cue, the heavy office door swung open. A man in a sharp, dark suit stepped in, wearing a smile that didn't reach his eyes.
"Mr. Okumura, it's a pleasure to finally meet you." The man said, extending a hand over the sea of failed contracts.
"Ah, yes." Okumura stammered. He scrambled to shuffle the papers into a semi-neat pile before reaching out to return the shake. "I'm sorry for the... for the mess."
"No need to apologize. That's why I'm here, after all." The man replied with a dry chuckle. He set a leather briefcase on the desk and pulled out a single, thick folder.
He began laying out documents one by one, his movements slow and deliberate.
"You've found yourself in quite the hole. I see your expansion plans stalled out. A few 'disgruntled' employees, and then your own friend turning his back on you to join the competition? I hear he's been... very helpful to them."
At the mention of the betrayal, the hologram began to shudder. Static rippled through the air, blurring the man's face for a split second.
"It's a shame, isn't it?" The man continued, his voice dropping an octave. "People just can't see the vision you have. But we do, Mr. Okumura. And we're prepared to invest in it."
"Invest?" Okumura whispered, his voice cracking. He looked at the folder as if it were a liferaft in a storm, or a trap. "With all due respect, my credit is… non-existent. The banks won't even take my calls. Why would your organization care about a failing burger chain?"
The man didn't blink. His smile remained perfectly fixed.
"We don't care about burgers, Mr. Okumura. We care about infrastructure. You have a talent for logistics, a hunger for expansion, and most importantly… you have a debt of spite toward those who betrayed you."
The man tapped a finger on a specific document, a map of Tokyo with Big Bang Burger locations circled in red. Suddenly, the hologram flickered violently. For a split second, the man's shadow on the wall didn't match his body; it looked jagged, towering, and distinctly non-human.
"We provide the capital. We handle the 'complications', the lawsuits, the strikers, the over-ambitious competitors." The man continued, his voice echoing as if from a great distance. "In exchange, you provide us with a seat at the table. A way to move… certain assets through your supply chain without government eyes. And, in the future, you will provide us with some… assistance in our future political endeavours."
Inside the memory, the younger Okumura looked down at his trembling hands. He looked back at the calendar, then at the door where his "friend" had walked out weeks prior. The pathetic look in his eyes began to curdle into something sharper. Something darker.
"And the lawsuits?" Okumura asked, his voice losing its tremor. "My former partner… He still owns a good portion of stock in my company. He wants me to get bought out by MOS. Unless he sells me his stock back, I can't do anything."
The man in the suit chuckled..
"Let's just say he'll have a sudden… change of heart. And perhaps, once he's returned what is rightfully yours, he'll find himself growing somewhat… unwell. Permanently. What do you say, Mr. Okumura? Do we have a deal? We can discuss the finer details later, but time is a luxury you no longer possess."
The man extended his hand towards Okumura, offering him a handshake. A handshake that Okumura took without any hesitation.