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A trail of blood leads through the belly of Shido's cruise ship, through its bowels, its loins. It extends from the cavernous place where a boy fought himself, back through the cramped artery Joker used to break into the guts of the ship. When the day's work is done, and the majority of the Phantom Thieves return home to the mundane world, Joker makes her way back to the Metaverse and the most dangerous Palace of all those she's faced till now, one belonging to a pathetic version of the Antichrist. Without her companions she flits through it easily, ignored by all the shadows.
“Has no one told you...the tale of the scorpion and the frog....Joker? You're a fool. A big dumb...sexy fool.” pants Akechi, as he's helped along the shell of the ship, up its flank, his exhausted, wounded body lying across his rival’s shoulders in a fireman's lift.
Joker huffs and puffs, pausing a moment to make sure her burden is still secure, before resuming her climb, her blood red hands catching on jutting pieces of architecture like five fingered grappling hooks, hauling her up. At one point she uses her actual grappling hook to sail high through the air, her free hand pressed hard to Akechi’s back. “You're not a mindless beast, Crow, whatever you might want to believe.” she says.
“Aren't you...afraid,,,I'm going to betray you? Again?”
“Yes.”
“So...what are you...doing?”
“You'll understand one day. Hopefully.”
Having reached the edge of the little world within a world without being stabbed in the back, Joker steps out of it, returning to being Rin, sad girl, as her passenger returns to being Akechi, sad boy. Then she takes him to hospital.
“Is this real?” he mumbles, as tarmac passes by below him. No blood trails from the Diet Building.
“Screw Shido, get a life.” is what she advises, just before the ER staff reach them.
Akechi attempts a knife-less stab in the kidneys, his arms too weak to obey him, even if he wanted to do something evil. “Isn't that what...you're doing, Rin-sama?”
“Deceived again, Akechi-kun. Reread the tag line.”
The doctors and orderlies take hold of the sufferer, maneuvering him onto a stretcher, but his eyes remain fixed on the person he murdered, and then saved.
“See ya.” says Rin, saluting him and walking away, hands in her pockets.