Chapter Text
“‘The watertight bulkhead door has closed.’”
Go.
“‘All personnel within the partition wall–’”
Go! Do not lose the threads of a blood oath you have just formed!
“‘Evacuate–’”
Move, or you will lose him!
He tore his eyes away from the red, blinking lights, turned around, and ran.
“Joker?!”
“H-hey, what–”
“You–”
Something hit his foot and he tripped, but he caught himself before the fall. The wall he had not registered rising from the floor flew up behind his back, hitting the ceiling with a crash of metal against metal.
Then there was the slamming of fists, his friends screaming on the other side.
Joker did not look back. That thing was in front of him, clutching its gut, glaring fire at him. Shadow dogs and shadow soldiers surrounded them, and just beside him–
“You idiot.” Akechi was clutching his side as well, but he still had his gun up, still had it trained on his cognitive double even as his hand and voice shook. “What are you trying to prove?”
“That I have great reflexes,” Joker quipped, voice flat as he raised his own gun and his mind grappled for facts amid the insanity. He was cut off from his teammates, he had heard that voice again, that girl again, if not for her he wouldn’t have made it in time, Akechi had intended to cut himself off from–
“You fool!!” the double seethed, its eyes bulging and mouth opening too wide with each word. “You’re just going to die with him now, do you see? If that worthless puppet won’t do it himself, then I’ll take you both out myself–” The thing turned his gun on Akechi again.
Joker moved first. By some miracle, he still had a Down Shot left.
“Joker?!”
“Joker!! Akechi-kun! What is happening?!”
“We’re fine!” Joker cried, fighting for breath as he rose to his feet after the complex series of jumps. Skull let out another curse and a sharp, “Can’t you get this shit open, Oracle?!” Joker kept his focus on the enemy. That shot couldn’t destroy the cognition, but the false Akechi was down on the floor, the dogs and soldiers were transforming, bursting into four Cerberus and four Cu Chulainn, and there was time. Joker took it and switched masks. “Kushinada!” The green robed spirit burst to life and Joker cast Mediarama on himself and Akechi, healing what damage he could. It wasn’t enough, nothing could be enough with such numbers, but he had taught the spirit Samarecarm, if it came to that. If he could just stay up, if Akechi could somehow use his turn to bring down all of the shadows in one go–
“What are you doing?” Joker chanced a glance and saw Akechi healed, but hesitating. Akechi kept his eyes on the enemies, kept his gun up, but his face was twisted with confusion and uncertainty and rage. He was reeling. “You should have just– just stayed out of it, left me to–”
“We can argue about it later,” Joker interrupted, calm and firm and pressing back every impulse to turn on the man and shake him for all he was worth. Joker could have so easily missed the opening, been left standing on the wrong side of that wall beside his friends, screaming in vain as Akechi– and he had the nerve to be angry with him– “We need to take them out.”
Akechi scoffed, a fraction of the irritation Joker felt in his voice, but he wasn’t the one who spoke.
“You think– It’s going to be that easy?”
Joker’s breath caught.
“You think… you can just walk away… after this?” the false Akechi continued, finally standing straight, the blood flowing freely from its chest wound, unacknowledged as he stared wide, wide, wide-eyed at them both. “I will… take you down… I will tear you to shreds… If you are of no use to the captain, then you should just die!!!”
‘Akechi’s’ face burst and Joker tasted bile behind his teeth at the sight, at the horror of that image, but even that was a pale shadow to the shock of the persona that burst out of the cognition’s skin, great and blue and ugly, spines and tentacles and long bones all bursting out from an unfathomable demon of a creature.
Satan.
“Well,” Joker said, letting his nerves slide out on that one casual word as he assessed the thing in front of him. It was strong, too strong, and better yet had no weaknesses. He had never fused this one, but that was what his insight told him, an insight that he had learned from Akechi. But he couldn’t think about that, about the irony of that gift, or the danger before him. All he could think was, ‘This is how Shido sees Akechi.’
That treasure was looking sweeter by the second.
The thing let out a great, thundering cry, and Joker’s muscles tensed again as he recognized the glow of Concentration. In response he reached inside of himself and, ignoring the base urge to heal, to protect, he switched to Ariadne. He needed to end the fight fast, so he took the risk and cast Revolution, increasing criticals for the whole field.
He heard a scoff and looked to the side, to Akechi, saw his expression twist as he looked down at his own clawed hands and watched the spell affect him. “You…”
Joker held his breath, waiting. There was no time to ask what he would do. They had only seconds. He could only watch, and ignore his friends’ muffled cries, wait and see–
Akechi spit a breath, then called out. “Loki!” The twisted striped persona appeared above his head, and with a room darkening wave of Megidolaon, the Cerberus and Cu Chulainns were gone. They never even got out an attack.
Joker smirked.
“Black Viper!!”
He looked to Satan– and moved just in time as an attack nearly hit him square in the face. He could feel it, how close he came to taking a colossal hit, one that would have downed him instantly, but he had dodged just in time.
Thanks, Ariadne.
The beast let out an enraged cry as Joker refound his footing and instantly threw out a Miracle Punch. The attack landed right on, but the hoped for critical never came. Satan barely flinched. At least, not until Akechi followed up with a roaring Brave Blade that had the monster screaming, but again, not down!
And for all of their efforts, they got an Ice Age in the face.
“F– Joker!” Akechi’s cry prompted calls from Joker’s hidden friends again, all alarmed as they sensed via the black masked persona user’s cry what had happened. Akechi had managed to dodge, but Joker had not. He wasn’t on the ground, but he was staggering, gritting his teeth against the urge to switch back to Kushinada and heal. He couldn’t risk it. Even with the wave of shadows gone, Satan could kill them in a heartbeat, healed or no. The only way to live was to take him down fast!
And so he used another Miracle Punch, and finally breathed when Satan fell.
Got him!
“All out attack!” he cried, moving without a second thought into the familiar routine. It was only when he was slicing through the screaming demon that he realized what he had ordered, and more so, that Akechi had followed. He was right there, flying at his heels, just as he had a dozen times in Momentos and Sae’s palace.
Amid the rush, their eyes locked, just for a moment. The same dark red eye Joker knew from before peered back at him, wild and troubled, but sharp, just as always.
When Joker landed back in his spot, there was a calm in his bones he hadn’t felt in weeks.
Akechi had barely touched the ground before he threw out another Brave Blade, and Satan gave a cry hotter than all the rest before smacking them with another Ice Age. Again, Joker flinched, his alarm returning and multiplying as pain shot through his body and he sensed it. He couldn’t push much farther, he had to heal, or–
He glanced to the side, and froze. Except for him it was a metaphor, while Akechi was truly frozen, caught in place by a layer of ice as he fought to even scream, his eyes wide and burning with desperate rage. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t do anything. Joker had to do something, and there was no time, he had to–
“Kushinada!” But, he didn’t need time. He didn’t need to think. Even if he could, he would make the same decision, switching his persona to cast Amrita Shower and free Akechi.
The other teen nearly fell over with the breaking of the ice, gasping for air. Akechi was free, but he was staggering. His health, too– “You–” he breathed, staring at Joker, eyes still wide, wild, baffled, but there was something else. A true wonder behind the gaze, finally cracking through the rush of their predicament.
Joker met that look head on, and though he sensed the death breathing right at his neck, he felt relief.
“Zorro!”
Light burst across Joker’s body, his pain fading and mind unfogging, and his relief soared and shifted to understanding as he whirled around to see–
“Eat this!” Skull rushed right by him, Seiten Taisei bursting forth with a Megaton Raid as the rest of Joker’s friends fell in formation around him, the wall Joker had never heard fall nowhere to be seen, once more hidden in the floor.
He looked to Akechi, confirming at a glance that he had been healed, too. But the black-garbed man remained bent over, shock clear on his face as he stared at the fight happening in front of him. At the rescue he hadn’t expected.
Joker smirked, and turned back to his friends. “Queen, Noir, you’re up.”
The two girls smiled as one and rushed forward, taking Skull’s place and proceeding to gang up on the demon just as it seemed to recover, smacking it and hitting it with a well-practiced combo attack that ended in a show finisher double kick. With that, the demon let out one final scream, everything he had been in the sound, all the danger and pain and hurtful truths he had represented disappearing in a puff of smoke.
And then it was over, and all that remained was them, Akechi, and the silence.
That is, until Mona smacked Joker in the leg. “What were you thinking, jumping in without us?!” he snapped, glaring when Joker looked down at him. “You think you could face that thing on your own?!”
Joker shrugged, and Mona sputtered at him. Honestly, he hadn’t been thinking at all, but Joker would have done the same thing with a thousand minutes to consider it. And he didn’t need to say that.
“You’re just lucky Oracle figured out how to override the broken gate controls,” Panther admonished, the named navigator adjusting her goggles before glancing back at the still blinking control panel, the wires sticking out of it speaking plainly of their efforts.
“It wasn’t hard, really. I just worried I wouldn’t manage it in time.”
“It really was scary hearing everything when we were unable to reach you,” Noir commented, and Joker shot her a sincere if unashamed smile. Then he turned to look, and the others must have as well, for they all fell quiet again as Joker considered the man standing just a bit apart from them.
Akechi was clutching his arm, staring at the same rewired controls, the broken half of his helmet hidden from the thieves’ view. But there was still enough of his face visible through the cracks for Joker to read the exhaustion there, the silent ‘screw it’ in his expression, the want to fold his hand and bail from the card table before he lost anything else. How that impulse might manifest, Joker wasn’t certain, but he stepped forward before any of them could find out.
Akechi turned, eyed him as Joker said, “We still need to secure the route to the treasure,” but he might as well have been speaking Greek for all Akechi seemed to understand. He stared at Joker like he could not fathom why that could possibly matter.
“You never gave us an answer.” Queen stepped up into Joker’s periphery, a searching, expectant look on her face. “Before your cognitive double attacked you. Are you willing to join us?”
Joker’s expression relaxed as he listened to her ask, realized she was willing to ask, but Akechi just looked more baffled by the second. “I do not understand,” he breathed. “I do not understand… any of you. You should hate me, I will not believe for a second that all of you would–”
“Oh, we hate you!” Oracle was there, standing at Joker’s other side. Her expression was incomprehensible behind her goggles, but her voice was light. “Or at least, I do. But I can sympathize with you, too, especially after that. I’m willing to focus my ire on Shido for the moment, given he started all of this, and you have just as much a right to cream the guy as we do.”
“The enemy of my enemy is my friend, as they say,” Fox commented, and the grimace that had struck Akechi’s face at Oracle’s words grew sharper. “You cannot deny that our motivations are perfectly aligned.”
“And, um, if I am honest,” Noir added, “There are things I would love to say to you.”
Joker saw Akechi’s gaze shift, and he followed it, staring with him. He was fairly sure they were all looking at Noir’s ax, dangling innocently from her hand.
“But, in truth, none of it would change anything,” she went on, seemingly oblivious to how their attention had strayed. “My father will still be dead. Oracle’s mother, too, and… and I don’t think hurting you will make me feel any better.” Joker looked back to see Akechi’s expression twisting, crumbling apart into something lost as he kept staring and Noir rambled on. “So… so, I would like the chance to find out! Find out what will really make things right. If there is anything. I would like the chance to try… and, helping us stop Shido, it seems like the perfect first step. For all of us.”
The room grew quiet again as Noir trailed off, and slowly, Akechi’s attention shifted back to Joker. He questioned him without speaking a word.
Joker returned the look, his pulse thudding, hands shaking in his pockets. But no one could see that. “What do you want to do, Crow?” Crow. His code name. The name of a Phantom Thief. Joker said it intentionally, and the new twist in Akechi’s expression said he caught his meaning.
Akechi turned away, considered the lights blinking red over their heads, and Joker couldn’t guess what he was thinking. But whatever it was, it took only a heartbeat, then he turned back, considered them all one last time… and sighed. “You are probably going to regret this.”
His words were gruff, his expression more resigned than resolved, but the effect was instant. Everyone relaxed, and though Joker could not sense happiness from his team, there was satisfaction, even approval on a few faces.
“Welcome back, Crow,” said Mona, but Panther was quick to shake her head and deny him.
“Uh-uh. Don’t you think it’s more like ‘Welcome aboard’?” she asked, a smile on her face.
“Yeah!” Skull agreed. “It’ll be good fighting together properly this time around, without all the scheming and backstabbing and having to pretend I don’t want to deck you the whole time!”
The exhaustion finally cracked on Crow’s face as he shot the blond an unamused look, and it lingered as Queen smoothly added, “It will certainly be much nicer working with you than against you.”
“I never said I was joining your team.” Crow shifted his glare to Queen, the fire slowly returning to his eyes as he spoke. “I have no interest in what you do. I just want to stop Shido.”
“Things are rather up in the air for all of us, as far as ‘after’ is concerned,” Fox said, his drifting tones a soft counter to the hard looks Crow gave them. “However, whatever may follow, we are at least comrades for the moment, yes? Just as we were in the casino.”
Crow seemed displeased by the reminder, but he didn’t directly acknowledge the words, or look at Fox. He looked at Joker, searching his face once more for some sort of confirmation, or truth.
Joker returned the regard, as blank as ever… then turned away, passing through the group and walking on with a slow, relaxed stride. “Crow, Panther, Skull, you’re with me. Everyone else, watch our backs and run support. We’re getting that treasure.”
“Hell yeah!” Skull cried, and the others all made various comments, a hum of pleasure and excitement and relief in all of their voices. But Joker did not listen to the words, or linger to see if anything else was said. He moved forward, and eventually a small stampede of footsteps followed in his wake, three in particular right at his heels.
Three, the three teammates he had asked for.
Sensing them there, knowing who they were, Joker allowed himself an unseen smile.