Ren woke up because his phone would not shut the fuck up.
BZZT. BZZT. BZZT.
He blindly reached across the mattress, nearly smacked Morgana in the face, received an offended yowl for his efforts, and finally found the phone half-buried beneath his blanket. "What..." BZZT. "...the fuck?" Morgana lifted his head from the pillow with flattened ears. "What time is it?" Too early. Ren squinted through the glare of his screen and immediately regretted having eyes. Seventy-three notifications. ShadOP messages, regular texts, news alerts, one ongoing stream from Ryuji consisting almost entirely of capital letters, several messages from Ann telling Ryuji to STOP FUCKING SPAMMING, and—huh. One from Yusuke.
[ART]
It appears Sakamoto's suggestion regarding scale was not entirely without merit.
Ren stared at it.
"...What does that mean?"
Morgana crawled closer and shoved his head toward the screen. "Open the group chat."
Ren did.
[Skull]
HOLY FUCKING SHIT
[Skull]
LOOK AT IT
[Skull]
LOOK
[Skull]
AT
[Skull]
IT
[Panther]
WE HAVE ALL SEEN IT
[Skull]
ITS HUGE
[Dove]
We know.
[Skull]
I DIDNT THINK SHE WOULD ACTUALLY GET THE WHOLE THING UP THERE
[Hime]
Rukia is really strong!!
[Panther]
THAT is your takeaway???
Ren slowly scrolled upward until he found the picture and—
"...Oh."
Morgana leaned farther over his arm.
"...Oh."
The entire front of Madarame's exhibit was gone.
Well, okay, no. The building was technically still there. Probably. It was just difficult to fucking tell because someone had draped a massive red-and-black banner down the entire front of it!?! Ren sat upright immediately and zoomed in. The damn thing had to be several stories tall, with a beautifully clean white mask beneath an elegant sweeping black top hat near the top. Red strokes slashed behind it like someone had attacked the fabric with a giant calligraphy brush, and directly beneath the emblem, in letters large enough that apparently half of Tokyo could read them—
TAKE YOUR HEART.
Ren stared.
"Okay."
Morgana's eyes were enormous. "That's..."
"Subtle?"
"No."
"Discrete?"
"No."
"Low-profile?"
"JOKER!"
Ren started laughing.
Okay, this was fucking ridiculous. They had spent all that time worrying about how to avoid being traced back to Shujin, recruited an invisible dead woman with a sword to plant the Calling Card, and somehow the end result had been a banner large enough to qualify as a minor architectural feature.
Beautiful.
Absolutely beautiful.
He zoomed in again and found the actual message beneath the emblem. Thankfully, Yusuke had written it and not Ryuji. Ren loved Ryuji dearly, but Ryuji should never, under any circumstances, be allowed to write formal declarations of intent to criminals. Yusuke, meanwhile, had taken the basic accusation and turned it into something almost ceremonial.
Sir Ichiryusai Madarame, great sinner of vanity.
Your reputation has been built upon talent stolen from those who trusted you. You have used your authority as master and guardian to bury the names of your pupils beneath your own.
The time for admiration is over.
You will confess what you have done with your own mouth.
Your distorted desires will be taken without fail.
—The Phantom Thieves of Hearts
Ren read it once.
Then again.
The humor drained away a little, and Morgana seemed to feel the same because he stopped snickering beside him. "Fox wrote that?"
"Yeah."
There wasn't even that much ornamentation by Yusuke's standards. No elaborate comparison between stolen canvases and souls. No five-paragraph metaphor about paint being scraped from somebody else's heart or whatever the hell Yusuke could probably come up with if given enough time and coffee. It was simply an accusation.
His accusation.
Madarame had taken from people who trusted him. Students. Children. People who had entered his home expecting a teacher and instead had their work, money, futures, and names slowly swallowed beneath his own.
Yusuke included.
Ren stared at master and guardian for another moment before his phone buzzed again.
[ART]
I wished for the accusation to be clear.
Ren smiled faintly.
[Joker]
It is.
A second later—
[ART]
I am glad.
Then, because apparently sincerity wasn't legally permitted to survive in this group for more than ten seconds—
[Skull]
ALSO I HELPED
[Joker]
You suggested making it enormous.
[Skull]
THATS HELPING
[ART]
In fairness, the scale has achieved considerable public attention.
[Skull]
SEE
[Joker]
Alright then.
Ren backed out of the chat and discovered Yusuke had actually undersold it.
The banner was everywhere.
Someone had uploaded a video of themselves approaching the exhibit while talking to the camera, only to stop mid-sentence when the building came into view. Another showed a crowd already gathering across the street. News helicopters had apparently decided subtle supernatural teenage vigilantism made fantastic morning television, because of course they had.
Ren opened one of the clips.
"—an enormous banner apparently appeared sometime during the early morning, and neither the exhibit staff nor local authorities have identified who placed it—"
The camera panned upward, and even through his phone screen the scale was fucking absurd.
"—the message appears to accuse acclaimed artist Ichiryusai Madarame of plagiarism and exploitation of his students—"
The feed switched to a reporter standing among several confused pedestrians. One man was openly taking pictures while a woman beside him frowned up at the banner. "If it's a prank, they put a lot of effort into it."
Someone behind her immediately said, "Wasn't there something like this with that teacher who confessed?"
Oh.
Ren sat straighter.
The video cut again.
"I remember the Phantom Thieves thing," a college student said. "That teacher got one, right? Then he admitted everything."
"That doesn't mean this is real," someone beside him immediately argued.
"But what if it is?"
"What if Madarame actually did something?"
There it was.
Not belief.
Not yet.
A question.
That was all the Calling Card really needed to create outside the Palace. Enough attention that Madarame couldn't simply laugh it off. Enough uncertainty that every interview, every student, every journalist, every person who had ever worked beneath him might start wondering whether there was something hidden underneath the reputation.
Ren switched clips again and found a shakier video from outside the exhibit. Someone had apparently managed to catch Madarame arriving.
The old artist stepped out of a car, glanced toward the building and—
Stopped.
Ren couldn't hear what he said from this distance, but he didn't need to. Madarame's shoulders went rigid, his expression twisted, and one of his assistants barely got within speaking distance before Madarame snapped something at him. Several workers were already trying to figure out how to remove the banner.
Trying.
Because again—
Fucking enormous.
Rukia had somehow secured the thing from the roof so thoroughly that at least four people were currently staring upward like they were reconsidering their chosen careers.
Ren's grin returned.
"She did good."
Morgana nodded slowly. "Really good."
Ren immediately typed into ShadOP.
[Joker]
Someone tell Kuchiki that was fucking incredible.
[Hime]
I already did!!
[Dove]
How did she even get it up there?
[Skull]
SHINIGAMI SHIT
[Panther]
That's not an explanation.
[Skull]
works though
Ren couldn't argue with that.
Another notification appeared, this time directly from Rukia.
[Rukia]
You people are insane.
Ren smiled.
[Joker]
You hung the banner.
[Rukia]
I was assisting.
[Joker]
You hung a five-story Phantom Thief banner from a building before sunrise.
[Rukia]
I was told this was important.
[Joker]
It was.
There was a pause.
[Rukia]
Did it work?
Ren looked back at the paused video of Madarame glaring up at words written by the boy he'd spent years controlling, stealing from, and convincing that gratitude meant obedience.
[Joker]
Yeah.
[Joker]
Perfectly.
Rukia didn't respond.
She didn't need to.
---
By the time Ren made it downstairs, Sojiro already had the news on.
Of fucking course he did.
Ren stopped halfway down the stairs as the television behind the counter displayed the banner in glorious full-screen detail. Sojiro stood beneath it holding a coffee cup, glanced at Ren, glanced back at the enormous Phantom Thief symbol on television, then slowly looked at Ren again.
Ren continued downstairs.
Very normally.
"Morning."
Sojiro stared.
"Morning."
Ren sat down.
Television.
Banner.
Ren.
Television.
Banner.
Ren.
"So," Sojiro finally said.
Ren reached for his coffee. "So."
"Big banner."
"Massive."
"Phantom Thieves."
"So it says."
Sojiro narrowed his eyes while Ren calmly took a drink. Morgana appeared halfway down the stairs, saw Sojiro, saw the television, and instantly became the most normal and definitely-not-suspicious cat in the entire fucking country.
"Mrow."
Sojiro's eyes narrowed even farther.
Ren drank more coffee.
"Authorities say they currently have no leads regarding how the banner was installed without being detected—" the reporter continued.
Sojiro looked at Ren.
Ren looked at his curry.
"Good curry."
"Kid."
"Very flavorful."
Sojiro sighed.
"Go to school."
Ren immediately stood. "Excellent idea."
"I'm serious."
"So am I."
He grabbed his bag and started for the door, but Sojiro's voice stopped him.
"Ren."
Ren looked back.
Sojiro was still suspicious. Extremely suspicious, actually. At this point pretending otherwise would have been insulting to both of them. But there was something else underneath it too.
"If something stupid is going on..."
Ren waited.
"...don't get yourself hurt."
And there it was again.
That weird warmth he'd been feeling around Sojiro more often lately.
Ren smiled.
"I'll try."
Sojiro frowned.
"That's not as reassuring as you think."
"Best I can offer."
"Yeah. I figured."
Ren left before Sojiro could start asking significantly more dangerous questions.
---
The Calling Card was everywhere.
Train. Street. School gate. Hallway. Classroom. It didn't fucking matter. Everybody had seen it.
Some people thought it was hilarious. Some thought the Phantom Thieves had crossed from weird vigilantes into outright vandals. Some thought they were dangerous. Some thought that even if the Thieves were full of shit, accusations that specific probably deserved investigation. Apparently people were already searching for former pupils and old assistants online, which had taken approximately three hours because social media was terrifying.
Rumors were multiplying faster than facts.
Probably dangerous.
Also useful.
Ren heard Kamoshida's name more than once, and that mattered.
The Phantom Thieves weren't just some bizarre school rumor anymore. There was a pattern now.
Calling Card.
Accusation.
Then—
Confession?
Maybe.
No.
When they succeeded.
Ren adjusted his glasses.
One step at a time.
---
The team met after school, and nobody needed convincing.
Ryuji looked like someone had replaced his blood with pure caffeine. Ann had tied her hair back and was already in that focused mood she got before entering a Palace. Shiho rolled one shoulder like she was warming up before practice, while Orihime smiled the moment she saw Ren and then immediately turned red when he smiled back.
...Cute.
Ren ignored that thought before it could become complicated.
Yusuke stood a little apart from the others, staring at a picture of the banner on his phone.
Ren walked over. "Regretting it?"
"No."
Yusuke looked at the message again. "I wondered whether the wording was too severe."
Ren waited.
Yusuke locked the phone.
"It was not."
"No."
A small breath left Yusuke.
"Then let us finish this."
"HELL YEAH!" Ryuji immediately shouted, throwing one arm into the air.
Ann pointed at him. "Indoor voice!"
"We're outside!"
"Then regular voice!"
"NO!"
Morgana hopped onto the nearby railing. "Everyone ready?"
"Ready."
"Yep."
"Let's go."
"Absolutely!"
Yusuke nodded.
Ren looked around at them, pulled out his phone, and opened the MetaNav.
"Ichiryusai Madarame."
The world distorted.
---
Heat hit first.
Then gold.
Then paintings.
The museum rebuilt itself around them and—
WEE-OOO! WEE-OOO!
"OH COME ON!" Ryuji shouted as red emergency lights flooded the entrance hall.
Metal shutters slammed down somewhere deeper in the Palace, Shadows rushed along the upper balconies, and the entire museum practically vibrated with hostility.
Morgana's fur puffed out. "Yep!"
Ryuji grinned. "Calling Card worked?"
Morgana stared at him.
"LOOK AROUND!"
The entire Palace felt different. Tighter. Angrier. Like somebody had taken Madarame's ego, stabbed it with a knife, and then sent a photograph of the knife to every news station in Tokyo.
Yusuke looked upward.
The enormous portraits lining the walls had changed too. Madarame's painted face seemed harsher now, twisted with rage, staring down from every direction like the Palace itself had realized someone was coming to take what belonged to him.
Ren activated his Third Eye.
Gold washed across his vision and—
There.
Far deeper inside the museum.
Something burned against his senses.
Clear.
Solid.
Real.
The Treasure.
Ren grinned.
"There you are."
Arsène stirred inside him.
'The curtain rises, mon ami.'
Ren reached for his handgun as the rest of the team armed themselves around him. Ryuji hefted his mace over one shoulder, Ann snapped her whip once, Shiho lowered her spear, Orihime checked her firearm, Yusuke drew his katana, and Morgana raised his cutlass with a grin.
No more searching.
No more checking every fucking side room.
No more getting trapped by golden vases because Morgana had the self-control of a raccoon in a jewelry store.
No more bathroom treasure chests.
Okay, maybe more bathroom treasure chests in future Palaces. Ren wasn't giving those up.
But not today.
Today, they knew exactly where they were going.
The Calling Card had worked.
The Treasure was real.
And Madarame knew they were coming.
Ren's grin widened as he looked at the path ahead.
"Phantom Thieves."
Everyone looked toward him.
"Let's go ruin an artist's day."
"FUCK YEAH!" Ryuji yelled.
Morgana pointed his cutlass forward.
"TO THE TREASURE!"
And the Phantom Thieves ran straight into the alarm-filled museum.
Because apparently subtlety had died sometime around the five-story banner.
---