Chapter Text
The Holy Grail extended its tendrils over the city of Tokyo, and distortion ran rampant through the bustling metropolis. As the sky turned red, and the ignorant masses succumbed to complacency, the Phantom Thieves found themselves alone and forgotten. Their few believers and confidants found themselves mere whispers against the desires of the greater public, and one by one, the Thieves vanished from cognition. Even as his friends disappeared in front of his eyes their leader stubbornly clung to life, until he felt his legs give out and he reached out to the sky, muttering words of encouragement at someone he couldn't focus enough to remember.
Pain shot through his body, and his hand was gone. Then his arm. Then his body.
The crowd walked over the spot as if nothing happened, oblivious to the crimson storm and the pillars of bone infesting the city.
[...]
The Detective Prince, the original one, sat in her small office. The scent of instant coffee permeated the room, enough to keep her energized through the long hours of her work, and the patter of rainfall against the window kept her focused. Cases upon cases piled on her otherwise tidy desk, most of them solved, and more gathered near the few boxes underneath her workspace.
Gone were the days of high-profile murder mysteries entrusted solely to the celebrity, with jurisdiction over even the police force itself (When they weren't belittling her, of course.) No, that spotlight now shined on the 'Second Coming' of the title she'd been appointed by the public, Goro Akechi. A third year high school student with far more charm than herself, and a knack for solving the elusive Mental and Psychotic Breakdown cases that she'd never been given clearance to look into. More recently (and interestingly) though, he'd decided to undertake the chase against Phantom Thieves, another riddle that she'd been denied permission to look into.
Not that she cared, of course. She was a private investigator, and her work with the police force had been less involved ever since Inaba. She'd still take a crack at them, on her own time. After all, every puzzle was a joy to solve, and the Phantom Thieves in particular reminded her of an old game she once played with her grandfather. She already had an interest in the case. And a certain friend of hers had come over from Inaba to help her out.
Now, if only she could get to it. The more she tried to pry into it, the more work would pile onto her desk. Incidentally, her main client these days was the government. She'd said that her work with the police wasn't very involved anymore, but the truth was that it was almost unavoidable. Old contacts, government officials, corporation employees. All of them seemingly bounced at the opportunity to take her time away, and it hadn't gone unnoticed to her that it seemed like a large number of them would come whenever she started asking around for material on the Thieves, or the breakdowns. It didn't help that her successor had mysteriously disappeared from the public eye, and most of his unrelated work now fell on her shoulders. Not to mention that as Akechi's personality slowly vanished from the public's perception, the media started going back to herself, Naoto Shirogane, for their weekly fix of intrigue and content.
She disliked every second of it. There was a reason for why she'd never made public appearances after the rise in popularity of the pleasant high school boy. Unlike him, she wasn't good with the public eye, and was far more interested in the work than the media appearances. It was awful.
A few buzzes of her phone pulled her out of her train of thought. She let out a sigh, and leaned back on her chair.
"What time is it...?"
Naoto's hand let go of the pen she'd been using to write onto a piece of paperwork, and carefully made its way to her phone. The case was a sleek dark blue, with a sticker of a yellow smiley face her friends had gifted her once.
She quickly dropped the phone, and hurried over to a cabinet on the other side of the office that she began to look through.
Her phone's screen, still on, simply displayed a couple messages.
[Yu Narukami]
I think something's wrong.
[Yu Narukami]
Put on your glasses and look outside.
Naoto's eyes widened behind the lenses of the glasses she'd finally been able to find in the mess of different gifts and souvenirs from Inaba, and she opened the window to the small room.
It was raining blood, and an enormous tower of bones stood above the Tokyo skyline, off towards the direction of Shibuya.