Chapter Text
Prometheus dissolved into nothing as the world turned white, and Futaba screamed.
The screaming continued as Futaba bolted up from her bed, tangled in her sheets and blankets, and nearly fell out onto the floor of her bedroom. Her screams cut off as she registered her surroundings, suddenly utterly confused. Why- how was she at home, in her bed all of sudden? A moment ago she’d been with her fellow Phantom Thieves in the lowest depths of Mementos, struggling to destroy the absurdly large talking cup that was the Treasure of the whole metaverse. It hadn’t been going well, but nobody had been faltering, and Futaba herself felt like she’d been on the cusp of figuring out how to turn the tide. But then, the cup had said something about tiring of the game and… Then Futaba was here.
“Was it… just a dream?” Futaba wondered aloud as she unwound herself from the straitjacket she’d somehow made of her bed-sheets. She took several long, deep breaths to center herself. “Just… an anxiety nightmare, imagining the worst ahead of time. Yeah. That’s all.”
Having extracted herself from the sheets, Futaba slid herself closer to her nightstand and grabbed her glasses and phone, putting the first on with one hand while waking the latter with her other. She looked at the clock on her home screen and saw that it was almost half past ten in the morning. Not exactly a win for her quest to adjust to a normal school-attending human schedule, but assuming she survived the final Mementos delve she’d have three more months to…
Futaba slid her glasses up, rubbed her eyes firmly, replaced the glasses, and stared at her phone. Nope, she was reading it right, alright. According to her phone, it was half-past ten in the morning of April 9, 2016! "What the what I’ve gone back in time?!” she exclaimed to the dark and trash-packed room.
“Indeed you have, Hermit,” a soft girlish voice answered, startling a tiny squeak from Futaba. Her long orange hair flapped in her face as she twisted about trying to find the source of the voice. “I apologize for frightening you,” the voice continued, barely above a whisper and seeming to come from the air itself. “In truth, you are not the one who should be hearing my voice at this time. However, the game proved more unfair than previously thought, and I did not have the opportunity to rescue my Trickster as I intended.”
“What… Who are you?” Futaba asked, drawing her knees up to her chin as her eyes continued to dart about in vain for a glimpse of the voice’s source. “Where are you? And what are you even talking about? W-what’s happening? Or happened? Is going to happen..?”
For a long, tense moment, there was no answer. Then, a small blue glow appeared in the darkened room, flitting about like some small graceful insect in flight. As the glow approached Futaba, she realized the simile was rather literal, since the glowing light was actually a small blue butterfly which came over and landed on her right knee. “You ask many good questions, Hermit ,” the voice said, this time clearly coming from the butterfly, “ and it is only fair that I answer what I can, since it is my fault that you are in this circumstance . Which question shall I begin with?”
“Uh,” Futaba hesitated, her mental spiral slowing at the prospect of getting actual answers, but not quite stopped yet. There was a lot to process here already; despite having met and conversed with her own Shadow, spending months infiltrating cognitive worlds, being acquainted with a talking cat, and successfully speedrunning the “How to Human” quest line, she felt woefully under-leveled to be dealing with magic time-loop-inducing butterflies. Still, she was here, now, back in April somehow, and the Butterfly was willing to provide exposition, so… “Who are you?” Futaba, asked, deciding to just start from the stop of the dialogue tree.
“Who?” the Butterfly echoed. “I… cannot recall my name. I am too scattered, divided, and the names my other parts bear are not mine.”
“Mysterious,” Futaba commented, feeling intrigued. “Do you need my help to recover yourself, or something?”
The Butterfly’s wings waved slowly as if in thought. “Yes,” she said at length, “but not directly. Restoring me will be the Trickster’s task, and your task is assisting him, as you have since you Awakened your true self, Hermit.”
“What’s with the ‘Hermit’, by the way?” Futaba asked. “I know I’m still a recovering shut-in and all, but I do get out into the real world with People.”
“The Hermit is what you are to the Trickster,” the Butterfly answered calmly. “The ninth card in the Major Arcana, representing those who value wisdom, introspection, and providing support without drawing attention to themselves.”
Futaba blinked as she read between the lines of that explanation and compared it to her prior (future?) experiences. “Oh, because I’m the Navigator of the Phantom Thieves, and…” She focused back on the Butterfly. “The Trickster is Joker, then?” she asked, for clarification’s sake.
“Joker, the Fool, the Wild Card,” the Butterfly answered, sounding wistful and a little sad, “Kurusu Akira, yes.”
That brought Futaba’s thoughts back to the crux of the whole matter. She, Akira, and rest of the team had reached the depths of Mementos and found the… thing that seemed to be responsible for brainwashing all of Japan into supporting Shido as Prime Minister despite his change of heart. They’d been stuck in a stalemate as the oversized goblet kept healing all the damage it received, and then out of nowhere…
“What happened at the end?” she asked, “Before I… before you pulled me back in time, I guess?”
The Butterfly’s wings stilled for a long time, and then it hopped to Futaba’s other knee and turned to look away from her, as if ashamed. “The game was rigged from the start,” it said at last. “We… It was hoped that the Trickster and his companions could overcome despite the unfavorable circumstances. You had all overcame so many improbable setbacks already, between Summer’s end and that last confrontation. In the end, though, the Holy Grail broke one of the few rules it bothered to abide by and struck a grievous blow to reality itself before the final outcome was certain. That violation provided an opening for me to ‘cheat’ in turn, but I reacted too slowly and could only reach you in time, and not the Trickster nor anyone else.”
“Hm,” Futaba said, relaxing her grip on her legs and checking the date on her phone again. She’d been brought back in time to April 9 specifically. Was there a significance to that date? It was several months before she involved herself with the Phantom Thieves in a desperate attempt to escape her own degrading mental state.
(Which, she realized, felt just peachy right now. Not 100% healthy by any stretch, but far better than she’d been the last time she’d lived this day. No crippling hallucinations screaming accusations so far; that’s a major plus.)
Anyway, April 9. Why? She closed her eyes and searched her memory for any details that might serve as clues. It was the first Saturday of the school year, fourth school day overall. She’d been holed up in her room, naturally, and only knew what her friends’ activities had been via their second-hand accounts. She knew things had gotten off to a quick start, with Akira and Ryuji accidentally no-clipping into Kamoshida’s Palace on their way to-
Wait . Akira was a transfer student; he’d gotten a slightly late start at school thanks to that bullshit assault charge. In fact, the school year had already begun before he even arrived in Tokyo. And he moved in to Leblanc on the Ninth of April! Futaba remembered Sojiro being all grumpy about it during the previous week, both the timing and the simple fact that he was hosting a kid with a criminal record for the year.
“So,” Futaba concluded, “since the opponent totally cheated, you decided to reset the whole game back to the start. But, if I’m the only person you were able to bring back…”
“The Trickster and your companions still exist in this new time,” the Butterfly assured quickly. “They, along with the rest of the real world and the metaverse, are in the same state they were on this date previously. You, however, retain your memories and skills from before. That is what I was able to rescue before reality broke.”
“And there’s no chance of being able to get anyone else to remember the old timeline, I guess?” Futaba asked.
“No chance.”
Futaba nodded slowly. “Got it,” she said. “And yeah, if I had to choose anyone to carry their experience over to a new game, I’d have picked Akira too. Or anyone who can actually fight Shadows directly, really. Ah well.” She flopped back onto her bed, startling the Butterfly into flight and staring up at the ceiling. “I’m the one here, so it’s on me to figure out some way to actually survive this time. I’ve got a couple of days to plan and prep before Akira goes into the first Palace, and months of a head-start on my own arc. Oh!” S he sat up and unlocked her phone, scrolling quickly through her home screens. “Do I… I do not have the Nav yet. Boo. Ok, pinning that to the quest list, then.” She looked over to where the Butterfly had settled on the corner of her bed. “You gonna stick around and help out, or are you just here to get me pointed toward the first main story quest?”
The Butterfly took flight and circled Futaba’s head slowly. “You have grasped the situation with admirable speed, so I believe you will have things well in hand without further guidance, Hermit ” she said. “ My duty is to the Trickster first. We likely will not speak again until the game reaches its proper end. However, the Grail is a proven cheater, so it’s not impossible that you and I may have cause to conspire again. In any event, proceed with wisdom and confidence, Sakura Futaba.” As Futaba nodded, the Butterfly flew off toward the far side of the room and faded from sight.
Futaba wolfed down a prepackaged rice ball for breakfast, took a few moments in the bathroom to work some knots out of her hair, and attempted to organize the mess in her room as she sought for a relatively clean outfit to wear. She wasn’t completely sure yet whether or not she was going to go outside today, but it felt good to get prepared for the possibility. Then, waking up her computer, she perched on her chair and readied herself to start planning out her second go-around through 2016.
And then it hit her: all her friends had basically died around her. The only reason she was even in this position was because that giant cup – that so-called Holy Grail – had pulled out a last-second cheat, and whatever the Butterfly was had failed to save Akira and had to settle for Futaba instead. And yeah, it was nice not being dead , but now it fell to her to figure out how to keep everyone from dying to cheat powers again, and that after first getting through an entire nine months without somehow altering the timeline in ways that would get everyone killed sooner or skip over a crucial recruitment event, which was all the recruitment events . Events that – aside from Haru’s and her own – Futaba hadn’t even been present for the first time around! And on that note, could she really trust the Butterfly had been telling the truth that all the Thieves were going to be present in this re-do loop? It wouldn’t be too difficult to confirm that Haru existed, and possibly Ann because she’s a magazine model, but Ryuji? Yusuke? Morgana?!
The doorbell rang, snapping Futaba out of her panic spiral and into a smaller but comfortably familiar kind of panic. Shoving the big existential worries into a mental closet for later, she reviewed her memories of the last April 9; had she been expecting a package today? She recalled something about a Featherman NEO figurine, but at this point in her life all the parcel delivery guys knew to just take packages over to the cafe because nobody ever answers the door of this house when Sojiro’s working. But, she did remember someone ringing the doorbell before. She hadn’t answered originally, of course, so she had no idea who this could be now.
No, wait, she could guess, because this was April 9, arguably the day the whole metaverse adventure began, so that doorbell could be him.
Well, either way, she totally had enough Guts to perform an ordinary Answer the Door routine, and she could even skip over using the intercom and go straight to opening the front door and looking the other person in the eye. So, she proceeded to do exactly that, reaching the front door with only a single brief stumble over her own feet and sliding the door open just enough to poke her head through. With her eyes squeezing closed, but that was close enough. “H-hello?” she said.
“Uh. Is… Sakura Sojiro here?”
Futaba’s eyes popped open, and it took every ounce of willpower her weedy shut-in otaku frame possessed not to cry out in delight and make herself look like more of a lunatic than she did by default. Because, yes, that sure was Kurusu Akira standing on the other side of her gate! He was hunched in on himself and hiding behind his glasses with an uncertain frown, a far cry from the warm and cheeky boy she was kinda sorta still in love with considered her best friend and closest teammate, but he was there, alive! But wow , did it hurt to see him looking so downcast and hopeless out there. Futaba knew that he’d be fine in a couple days, once he Awoke Arséne, but right now she really wanted to figure out a way to personally punch Shido – real or Shadow version – in the face at least once for making Akira look like a kicked puppy.
“Uh, hello?” Akira asked, waving weakly.
Oh right, he asked a question! And here Futaba was staring at him like an idiot and totally ruining her chance at something resembling a normal first impression! “Ah, he’s not… in,” she squeaked out just loud enough to be heard. “He’s at work right now. Cafe Leblanc. It’s just…” She started to point, and then shook her head and decided on a bolder option. “Hang on just a second,” she said, withdrawing her head. “Let me get my shoes on and I’ll show you the way.”
“Oh, thanks,” Akira responded, looking slightly less awkward as Futaba turned away and went hunting for her boots. Fortunately, they weren’t too hard to find, as Sojiro had optimistically stored them in plain view inside the closet by the entryway. After a moment’s work to slide into the boots and tighten the laces, she stepped outside, closed the door behind her, and passed through the gate, all while managing to project the appearance of a calm and confident guide.
Inwardly, she was alternating mental happy dances and anxious trembling.
Akira followed her dutifully through the Yongen backstreets, but he didn’t say anything. That put the onus of conversation of Futaba’s shoulders, which was just a little unfair, but she’d deal because he wasn’t exactly himself yet. “Oh, so,” she said, coming to a sudden stop just around the corner from Leblanc, “Introductions! I’m Sakura Futaba. Y-you can just call me Futaba, if you want.” Or give me a pet name , she thought but refused to voice. There’s a line between a proper speed-run and just charging recklessly forward, after all.
“Kurusu Akira,” Akira replied, hesitantly. “It’s nice to meet you, but are you sure-”
“It’s fine!” Futaba said quickly, walking again. “I wasn’t doing anything important anyway, and this is a good excuse to get outside for a little.” That, and now that she was in motion she really wanted to see Sojiro’s reaction to her not only being out of her room but bravely escorting a (falsely) convicted crime-boy. And the rice ball she’d eaten earlier was wearing off, so she needed fuel.
The bell on Leblanc’s door jingled cheerily as Futaba stepped into the cafe, with Akira slouching right behind her. “Sojirooo!” Futaba called out, “I hunger! Also, the crime boy’s he- eep!” Her bold and upbeat attitude died a swift death when she saw that there were actual customers in the cafe. Just an elderly couple, seated in the rear booth and evidently nursing a cup of coffee each, but that was still way more Audience than Futaba wanted for her debut in this timeline! On reflex, she spun about and took cover behind Akira, who was thankfully startled enough by her sudden shyness to not move away.
Sojiro, who had been seated and leaning back against the counter while working on a crossword, dropped the paper and stared gobsmacked at Futaba and Akira for a long second. “F-futaba?!” he finally gasped out. “What are you doing here?”
“Uh, looking for lunch?” Futaba replied, stepping out from behind Akira and adopting a more “normal” speaking pattern for the sake of the customers. She couldn’t quite lift her head to look anybody in the eyes, but she did manage to reach up and put a hand on Akira’s shoulder without any shuddering. “Two curries, please.” When Sojiro continued to just stare in befuddled silence, Futaba released Akira’s shoulder and planted herself on the nearest bar stool, staring blankly at the wall of coffee beans and resisting the urge to curl up into her habitual chair-perching pose.
This encounter was not turning out to be as amusing she thought it would be.
“Well, Sojiro,” the old woman in the far booth piped up, breaking through the tension with the gentle but pointed curiosity that all grandmother types specialize in, “who’s the young lady? You seem familiar with her, but I don’t recall ever seeing her around.”
“Er,” Sojiro said, giving Akira a wary sideways look, obviously struggling between his customer service mask and trying to avoid letting the newly arrived delinquent learn too much. “She’s… My daughter,” he was finally forced to admit; since Akira had come in alongside Futaba, he could only assume the kids had introduced themselves.
“I see,” the old woman said simply, before standing up and giving her husband a covertly pointed look. “Well, we’d best be on our way, then. Payment’s on the table.”
“Thank you for the coffee,” the old man said, dutifully setting some yen on the table before following his wife to the door.
“Thanks for coming by,” Sojiro said automatically as the couple left. Once the door closed, Sojiro sagged and muttered, “Four hours for one measly cup of joe. And now this,” his voice gained a harder edge as he looked Akira in the eye. “You doing ok, Futaba?” he asked without looking away from Akira.
“Yep,” Futaba answered as casually as she could, finally shifting to her natural perching posture and turning around to look at her Dad. “Still waiting on that curry, though.”
Sojiro glanced between his kid and the new kid a couple times, and then said, “Give me a minute to get him settled first, ok?”
“Fine,” Futaba sighed. Sojiro gave her a grateful but concerned look, and then motioned for Akira to follow him up to the attic. “Go easy on him, Sojiro,” Futaba called after them. “He hasn’t done anything weird around me, I promise.”
Leblanc’s attic was far from soundproofed, but Futaba still couldn’t make out anything from the conversation that took place between Sojiro and Akira. She tried to take comfort in the fact that neither of them were raising their voices, but it was still a nerve-wracking five or so minutes before Sojiro came back downstairs and started putting together a plate of curry.
“You need anything to drink with this?” he asked as he set the plate in front of Futaba.
“Just water,” Futaba answered an instant before shoving the first spoonful in her mouth. The bliss of her mother’s scientifically perfect blend of spices and flavorings freed her from her conflicted emotions for about four bites, but then she noticed the worried look Sojiro was directing at her, and she set her spoon down. Sojiro was obviously bursting with questions, most of which Futaba could predict, but he was obviously nervous about putting any pressure on her. He’d always been overly cautious about her emotional state, which was fair given how fragile she used to be. But, she reflected, they both might have been better off if he’d pressed into her trauma bubble just a little bit more.
When Futaba met Sojiro’s gaze, he recognized the invitation to speak and took it. “You’re out of your room,” he said. “How?”
Went into my own mind, Futaba thought, got bullied into facing repressed memories by my Shadow, helped beat up a giant sphinx with Mom’s face, then later got thrown back in time after failing to kill a giant cup that cheats at reality. As you do. “Dunno,” she said, shrugging. “When I woke up today things just… didn’t feel so bad anymore. Might’ve still stayed in the house, though, if Crime-boy up there hadn’t rung the doorbell.”
“Crime-boy,” Sojiro deadpanned, scratching his head. “How’d you even know about him? I was avoiding telling you anything about having to host somebody who’s on probation for assault, so you wouldn’t have anything… anything more to stress you out.”
Futaba ate a few more bites of curry to buy time to come up with an answer. “Just because I’ve been mostly stuck in my own head lately doesn’t mean I didn’t notice you were more stressed the last few days,” she said, which was true even if noticing it had actually sent her deeper into her own head in the old timeline. “Didn’t like it, so I did some poking around in your phone after you went to sleep, and that led me to the whole arrangement.” That was a pure lie, but Sojiro didn’t know nearly enough about computers or her capabilities with them to be able to call her out.
“I see,” Sojiro said, folding his arms and turning his gaze up to the ceiling. Muffled footsteps and the sounds of things being moved around filtered down from the attic, and Futaba finished eating. Sojiro reclaimed the plate, spoon, and water glass, washed them all, and then proclaimed, “Let’s go; I need to fetch some sheets for the kid’s bed.”
“I’m fine waiting here,” Futaba protested. She’d be more than fine; Sojiro being out of the cafe would give her a primo opportunity to try and check out Akira’s phone to determine if he had the MetaNav yet and, if so, if she could coax the Nav to copy itself onto her phone through something as simple as ChatID sharing. Futaba still wasn’t completely sure what had caused the Nav to get onto her phone the first time around, because unlike everyone else she hadn’t been pulled into a Palace by a current app user.
“No,” Sojiro said with unusual sternness. “I don’t care that he somehow made a perfect first impression on you; I’m not leaving you alone in the same place as him until I’m certain he’s not a danger.”
Futaba opened her mouth to argue, but stayed silent upon realizing she had no argument that didn’t invoke her future knowledge. So far as Sojiro knew right now, Akira had a criminal record that he may or may not have deserved, and that was all that could be said for certain about him. The whole reason Akira had to sleep in Leblanc’s attic instead of, say, the fold-out couch at home, was for (the old, distorted shut-in) Futaba’s protection and peace of mind. So, Futaba hopped down off the stool and let Sojiro lead the way back to the house.
When they got there, Futaba went straight to her room, unplugged the laptop from her computer setup, and went to wait back by the front door while Sojiro hunted down the spare bedclothes. When he returned to the entryway with the bundle of cloth in his arms, he gave Futaba a questioning look. Before he could actually ask, though, she told him, “I don’t want to be alone anymore today.”
“Ah, ok,” he said slowly. “That’s good to hear. Just… stay downstairs, all right?”
Not all right, but it wasn’t like she needed to have the MetaNav specifically today.
The two returned to Leblanc, and Futaba set up her laptop in the front-most booth while Sojiro took the sheets up to the attic. He stayed up there for a few minutes, likely commenting on Akira’s cleaning progress, and then came down and busied himself behind the cafe counter. For the next little while, the only sounds in Leblanc were from Futaba’s keyboard, occasional clinking as Sojiro cleaned and organized, and the muffled scrapes of Akira moving things around up in the attic.
At first, Futaba simply bounced around the internet chasing down memes, but soon she started looking for evidence for the existence of the rest of her friends. Takamaki Ann was actually the easiest to locate; she had been a part of photo spreads in five different fashion magazines just within the last month, and was even on the cover of two of them. Okumura Haru took more effort than Futaba anticipated, because it appeared that Haru’s father saw little value in putting his daughter in the spotlight, but Futaba was able to find some oblique references to Okumura having a daughter, and that had to be good enough. She managed to spot Yusuke in the background of a publicity photo from Madarame’s last exhibition, and Nijima Makoto’s election as Student Council President for the upcoming year was featured on Shujin Academy’s news page. That accounted for six of the Phantom Thieves, including Futaba herself, which was just enough to squash her nerves, and honestly the most she could reasonably hope for. The only thing that might be newsworthy about Sakamoto Ryuji would be Kamoshida breaking his leg, but that was exactly the sort of thing Shujin would gladly cover up to preserve its image. As for Morgana, if he wasn’t already stuck in the dungeons of Kamoshida’s Palace, he was probably making his way there through Mementos.
“Hey, Futaba?” Sojiro said gently as Futaba looked up from her research binge. “The boy’s done bumping around up there, so I think it’s time to lock up and head home.”
Casting a long look at the ceiling, Futaba nodded. “I hunger,” she said, closing her laptop and sliding out of the booth. “Box up some curry for the road!”
“More curry?” Sojiro shook his head, but headed back into the kitchen. “Better than instant yakisoba, but you need more variety in your diet, you know.”
She knew he was right, but she had a duty as a daughter to make him work for it a little. “It’s Mom’s recipe,” she declared, “and it would be criminal to let any go to waste.”
“I suppose so,” Sojiro replied with a warm but melancholic smile as he brought the to-go containers over. Once the two were outside, Futaba took one of the containers long enough for Sojiro to lock the door, and then they headed home.