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By this point, Ren has seen his fair share of Palaces, and Shido’s, while ostentatious, isn’t any more visibly bizarre than any other. It’s hard to get farther out there than outer space.
That said, the puzzles they’ve encountered here have really put things in a new perspective — in more ways than one.
Ren, now in the body of an ankle-high mouse, peers around a corridor with narrowed eyes.
Futaba’s chirp echoes down the hall, “All clear,” hand at the side of her goggles. Her and the b-team are far enough to have escaped this particular affliction for now. “I’m not picking up any other Shadows on this floor. Shall we make like a leaf, fearless leader?”
Automatically, tallies run in Ren’s head. He could use a new knife, and basically everyone could use a new gun, and he hasn’t gotten an Adhesive accessory from the clinic for Haru yet; even with his discounts and favors and part-time jobs, that doesn’t come cheap. “Let’s do one last sweep for treasure,” he squeaks to his other moused teammates, crossing his paws in an x in front of him for Futaba. Her delighted cackle echoes off the walls down to him as he leads the main team back into an adjourning room.
This one last sweep proves problematic, though. Ren knows there’s at least a chest behind this door — maybe even a Will Seed, if Morgana’s gut is anything to go on. But with his tiny rodent body and even tinier rodent paws, he can’t get it open.
“There must be a vent,” Makoto squeaks next to him, turning her head this way and that. “Or a switch, at least. There must be a way to open this.”
“We’ve already looked,” Ryuiji groans, back foot thumping against the carpet. “There’s just doors and more doors, and down that way, a locked door — ”
Ren throws himself hopefully at the door knob one last time while Makoto and Morgana take turns yanking on Ryuiji’s ears.
This floor is absolutely packed full of glowing Shido statues, and as a result, areas where any and all navigation must be done on four paws. Ren wracks his brain trying to remember any available space to wiggle into, any hidden room or secret path, and comes up empty. They’re stumped.
“Let’s split up,” he says with more confidence than he feels. “Mona, run back and tell Oracle the plan, then search the room by the stairs. Skull, you take the room east down the hall; Queen, you’re west. I’ll scope out this area myself.”
It’s a disproportionate amount of ground to cover, but his Third Eye will no doubt ease the burden. Watching his friends file out the doorway, Ren settles back into his confidence like pressing a switch.
And it is going well — it’s easy, letting his Third Eye lead him around. Skim, skip, search, and suddenly an entire room is done, then another, then —
Then, he looks up and sees it. The trap.
Yusuke may be the most food-motivated of all of them, but even without him in the active party drawing their attention to it, there really is something irresistible about this hunk of bright yellow cognitive cheese. Maybe it’s an allegory for Shido’s inflated ego. Maybe Shido just thinks he’s so clever that everyone is just falling over themselves to rot in his cage, and that somehow makes this cheese smell like every kind of food Ren has ever wanted at once. Maybe the general cognition of mice loving cheese is just that powerful.
Either way, Ren’s tiny mouse paws take one unwilling scurry toward the cage, then another. He rears back, turns his face away — but his nose still twitches under his mask, drawing him back in. He feels his body move without him willing it.
So yeah, okay, he takes the bait. The door has no sooner slammed shut behind him than Ren is realizing exactly how fucked he is.
With his companions searching and searching for an exit he isn’t completely certain exists, it’s impossible to say how long he might be stuck here. If he could use his words, he might call out for Futaba, but they’ve long since figured out that doesn’t work.
Ren would like to break free as soon as possible, and saving face is only a part of that. Just because they’ve cleared all the Shadows from the area doesn’t mean more can’t respawn the moment he lets his guard down.
But after a few minutes of trying everything, from gnawing at the bars to pulling out a delightfully mouse-sized grappling hook with a less-delightfully mouse-sized reach, Ren reaches his conclusion.
This… really isn’t looking good, but until he gets some kind of opening, he’s done all he can. Ren is determined, not delusional; he won’t waste energy he barely has. Eyes trained on the nearest door, he sits in his unease and waits.
At least the cheese really was delicious.
Suddenly the door snaps open, and in prowls a familiar face.
Akechi is just as Ren remembers him: long and lean, all straight angles and bright, pointed intention. The characteristic smile is gone, replaced with a curious blankness, like he doesn’t feel anything at all.
Ren wonders if Akechi had worn that same expression when he’d killed him. The thought leaves a sour taste in his mouth.
Within one step, Akechi’s bored eyes have taken a full sweep of the room. Within two, they’ve settled firmly on Ren.
That blankness flickers and splits like a lightning strike, and other emotions cycle past it in rapid succession: shock, rage, doubt. Eyes trained solely on the cage, Ren watches Akechi think and think until his feet finally slow to a stop. Steam doesn’t come rising from his ears, but it’s a near thing.
With his former teammate and intended killer just a few feet away, Ren rushes to form a new plan. Akechi could kill him with a single magical attack, sure, but it wouldn’t be personal enough for him. This is somebody who wants to best him, and casting Eigaon on a caged rodent hardly feels like besting anyone. Akechi will surely open the door, and when he does, Ren will run. Akechi is fast, but Ren will be faster; he needs to be, and he can be anything he really has to be.
His ears are flicking. Akechi’s eyes dart to them, then down his little mouse body, before settling firmly on his mask. “Joker?” he asks, quietly pleasant, as he squats down to reach for the door.
Ren’s traitorous heart thumps; adrenaline hums in his veins. This is it.
Ren is fast, but Akechi is faster. In an unexpected move, he reaches into the cage, fully intent on snatching Ren and dragging him out. No matter how Ren darts and squirms, there’s nowhere for him to go.
Winded from dodging, Ren makes one last, desperate dart toward the entrance. There’s a fleeting second of victory as Akechi yelps, undignified, and falls back on his ass.
Then his left hand sweeps in from the side, grabbing hold of Ren by the tail.
Right, ambidextrous. Upside down, Ren reaches for his Persona once more; once more, all it gets him is a lonely, forlorn squeak.
This close, in this form, Akechi looks like a giant. Ren focuses wholly on one eye, set back into the bright red of his mask. Serious, thoughtful — not bored. At least Ren is back on track for some sort of reaction when he inevitably gets murdered by the boy he likes again.
“Is this how he sees him?” Akechi mutters, more to himself than Ren. “The leader of the Phantom Thieves, just a dumb rat in a trap?”
A few things occur to Ren at once.
First, Akechi hasn’t killed him yet. At first glance, this might mean great things for Ren’s ultimate plan of joining forces, except that it might not mean anything, because —
Second, if Akechi is here, on this ship, in this room, and he hasn’t immediately identified Ren, then maybe he doesn’t know how the mouse rooms work at all. After all, Akechi is clearly in his normal body; he belongs here, on this ship, and the Shido statues can fit easily into the background of the man’s distortion. Which means that —
Third, Akechi must think Ren is just Shido’s cognition of Ren. Insignificant, irritating, and helpless. A rat in a cage.
I’m a mouse, actually, Ren says — tries to say, dangling precariously in the air, tail still caught in Akechi’s fist.
Akechi’s grip on his tail tightens; his brow furrows at Ren’s squeak, like he’s really trying to understand him. His mask is too big, too shiny; the point of its beak is a constant hazard to Ren as he swings slightly just beside it. Ren thinks he would have a better sense of how to read the situation or what to do if he could only see Akechi’s face underneath it.
Instead, he studies him once more, locking the two of them into a staring contest.
Akechi has freckles on his eyelid, pale and half-hidden under his lashes.
Maybe Ren has been upside down too long. He’s beginning to feel lightheaded.
At that very moment, Akechi throws him up into the air and catches him, right-side up this time. By the time Ren is confident enough that he won’t upchuck his cheese if he looks up, Akechi is already staring at him.
It’s not like Ren doesn’t already know that Akechi is intense. Ever since the first time they met at that television station, Ren has been familiar with the prickling weight of holding Akechi’s attention, and none of their further interactions have done a single thing to dissuade that notion — Akechi leaned over the counter of Leblanc; Akechi standing in the hideout with his hand on the back of Ren’s chair; Akechi filing in behind him in the halls of Sae’s Palace, his eyes like a noose around Ren’s neck.
Mortifyingly, Ren feels that same sensation even now, stared down like the vermin he is in Akechi’s palm. His fur twitches involuntarily; his joints lock in place.
Even more mortifyingly: he likes it.
“What am I doing,” Akechi mutters, eyes flashing dangerously. He raises his Ren hand as if to throw him — Ren is shouting internally, yes! yes!, just one baseball lob from freedom — then sighs and lowers him once more.
No! Ren shouts internally, kicking against Akechi’s hand. He was so close!
And then, to Ren’s shock, Akechi pats him on the head.
“Still fighting even now, huh?” he murmurs. His touch is too hard, like no one ever taught him to be gentle with little things — or maybe that’s his murderous rage seeping through again, some base part of him recognizing the mouse in his hand as Ren. Ren couldn’t say; even when the other boy tucks him into his arm with a constrictive, settling hand around his midsection, he just doesn’t know enough about Akechi to guess what he’s thinking.
Still, this is a good sign for Ren. Plan “Get Akechi On Our Side And Beat Up Shido With Him” is seeming more and more possible. At the very least, Plan “Mutually Coexist With Akechi In A World Without Killing Each Other” is still on the table.
Ren is two steps into a new and revised ten-step plan when Akechi settles on the nearest couch and sets Ren on his lap.
The plan promptly sizzles into sparks and sawdust.
“You put up a good fight,” Akechi is saying, and Ren isn’t sure whether to be more shocked at where he’s seated or at the forbidden knowledge that Akechi Goro is the type of person to chat with animals, “for a rat.”
I’m a mouse, Ren objects in an echo. Akechi pets him again.
Okay, well. Downsides: it’s very hard to run when Akechi’s hand is constantly on him, and they’ve already proven that he’s much faster than a four-legged Ren. Also, this is kind of humiliating. If his friends stumble in, they’re never going to let him forget this — if Akechi doesn’t slaughter them all on sight. Also, if his friends instead follow through with what they’re supposed to do, there is a very real possibility that Ren will turn back on Akechi’s lap, and be slaughtered on sight.
Upsides, though: being pet is kind of nice. Ren hasn’t had any time to breathe since October. Admittedly, getting comfort from Akechi of all people is unexpected, and Ren still has the good sense to be wary of him for shooting him in the head, but — details.
Plus he’s pretty sure Akechi can take care of any respawning Shadows. That’s one of his worries taken care of, at least.
The base of the plan hasn’t changed. Ren is a mouse, and he’s trapped. He needs to calm down, save his energy, and wait for an opening to escape.
Akechi has moved on to scratching behind his ears, light and hesitant. The blunt of his index nail is uncharacteristically clumsy for the alleged dextrous hands of billiards mythos, but it’s good anyway. He’s learning fast. Ren’s back foot kicks automatically, like a dog.
At least Akechi isn’t the cooing type. That seems like the kind of thing he would consider embarrassing enough to warrant decapitation of all witnessing parties. Ren has no doubt he could ward Akechi off in a fair fight, but maybe not with all his limbs intact, and maybe not after just having been poofed back into his body.
Maybe it would be best to make a run for it now. Akechi seems lost in thought, and his hold is much looser than before.
Distantly, Ren hears a Shadow respawn down the hall. Maybe not, then.
Even Ren’s best attempt at a sigh comes out in a squeak.
The finger under his chin pauses, then resumes. “I wonder if it’s because he doesn’t know what you look like,” Akechi says in the same voice as before: like normal, but softer, and lower, and farther away. It doesn’t sound like any conversation Ren has ever had with Akechi; it doesn’t sound like his recorded phone call, either. Ren would know, since he’d listened to it over and over: We could say he stole the guard’s gun and committed suicide, playing on repeat in his headphones for weeks now, lulling him to sleep.
This voice is different. Ren thinks he likes it. He lets out an inquisitive squeak, hoping to coax more of it out.
“He has your file, obviously,” Akechi explains absentmindedly. “I saw it on his desk just the other day.” His lip picks up in a snarl; his words are hissed between his teeth. “But he isn’t the type to remember insignificant things like that.”
Ren’s ears flick down, curling in closer to himself. Akechi yanks his hand away, curses. Begins petting him and talking again, softer this time.
“Sorry,” he mumbles, and Ren thinks it might be the first and last time he’ll ever hear him sincerely apologize for anything. “I just mean… You know. He doesn’t know your face. You’re vermin to him, and the only thing that matters about you is your spot on the Phantom Thieves.”
Even the calmed and mouse-friendly version of Akechi’s voice is bitter and angry when talking about Shido. Ren marks another mental tally on the “Saving Akechi Goro” plan.
This unfortunate accident is netting Ren more real information about Akechi in a few minutes than he’s been able to gather in months. Obviously, he should play it up, then. For the plan.
After a long moment of consideration, he relaxes, pitches his ears forward, leans ever so slightly into Akechi’s hand. He looks up at him and squeaks.
Akechi’s expression softens. He pokes Ren’s nose curiously, and Ren lets him with only a small twitch of his whiskers.
Oh yeah. He’s a pro at this.
“It didn’t feel the way I thought it would to kill him,” Akechi says suddenly, sending Ren’s self-congratulations to a screeching halt. “It was… disappointing. Boring. He just… sat there, with that dull expression on his face. He didn’t fight it at all.”
His finger is still on Ren’s nose. Like this, all unhappy and lost in thought, Akechi is giving Ren the opportunity he’s been waiting for since the cage shut behind him. He could duck out from under Akechi’s hand and bolt, hide somewhere or worm his body into one of the vents dotting the halls. It would be the best, safest, most reasonable decision to make.
Instead, he noses Akechi’s finger away and sets his chin on it instead. “Squeak?”
Akechi freezes again. Ren thinks of the way Akechi avoided Morgana before he’d joined the team, how he’s never shared any personal anecdotes involving animals, how even the stray cats who gather outside the bathhouse had scattered when Ren showed up with Akechi in tow.
The thing is that Ren is good at figuring people out. In a few interactions, he can shape himself into whatever the other person needs: he can be generous or harsh, funny or serious, professional or so achingly sentimental it would embarrass anyone else.
From the start, it’s been hard to shape himself into that person for Akechi. Everything he’s ever tried has seemed to irritate and fascinate the other boy in equal measure. Sometimes, Ren doesn’t even feel that he’s pretending at all.
His analysis of Akechi is an incomplete picture. He’s rigid, critical, an overachiever; his standards for and expectations of everything, from himself to the Phantom Thieves to any random stranger, are downright impossible. He’s quick to criticize and hard to please, and every time Ren has ever managed to wrangle a compliment out of him — “Nice one, Joker!”, only ever in the heat of it, out of breath from one last hit — it’s shocked them both. As near as Ren can tell, Akechi has played at kind and charismatic and confident all his life.
Now, Akechi hesitates. Ren files this information away for later: Akechi has never had a pet. Akechi avoids animals. Akechi doesn’t dislike animals.
Then the finger under his chin moves. Ren swallows his pride and nuzzles in, and Akechi laughs, lower than Ren has ever heard it. “How could something from Shido’s brain like me so much?”, so quiet Ren wouldn’t be able to hear him if he were any further away. “Do you know something I don’t, little rat?”
Yes, Ren says, if only because the squeaking seems to against all odds further endear Akechi to him.
“If only your real-world counterpart had been so agreeable.”
Oh, if only he knew.
A scurry of little feet has his ears swiveling in another direction. His teammates must be close by, which means they must have noticed Ren isn’t actually covering these rooms anymore. Ren doesn’t know what’s coming next, but he knows it’s soon.
Above him, Akechi makes no indication that he’d heard it too, but Ren is already familiar with his excellent hearing. This could be very bad. Disappointment at killing the fake Ren doesn’t mean at all that Akechi would have any hang ups about killing the real one; after all, this Ren will definitely fight him. He pushes his face further into Akechi’s hand, thinking.
He has no chance of jumping straight to the floor and making it to a hiding space. Akechi is too quick, his reflexes too tuned. Ren’s going to need a different strategy to escape him.
The beat of his heart is starting to sound more like excitement than fear.
It’s like a sucker punch to lunge toward Akechi now that he’s as relaxed as Ren has ever seen him, but he does it anyway: up his arm, a fake to his face, and then, kicking off his shoulder, a jump down the back of the couch. Ren’s front paws touch solid ground and he’s already singing his victory, eyes on the doorway.
Then a hand snaps around his ribs, hard enough to hurt. Ren squeaks a wheeze.
“It seems I spoke too soon,” Akechi hisses, bent backwards over the back of the couch with his free hand steadying him on the floor and his hair in his face. His mask dematerialized at some point, and when Ren looks up, he shudders at what he finds: Akechi’s eyes are wide and wild, and a smile pulls at his mouth. He looks like a wolf after prey.
Apt, really, considering that Ren is a mouse. He deliberates a half-second longer, then bites on the nearest finger as hard as he can.
Akechi drops him with a curse, and Ren is granted another harsh landing and another few scrambling steps before he’s caught again.
“Joker,” Akechi says, all low and guttural in a way that will no doubt haunt Ren’s dreams for many nights to come, “where are you going?”
And for a moment, Ren thinks: Wait, does he know? But he couldn’t, because if he did, he would have surely killed him. Akechi doesn’t seem to suffer humiliation with grace.
Instead of trying to answer, he bites him again. This time, Akechi doesn’t drop him, but his grip loosens to the point that Ren can escape. This cycle continues for a few more minutes: catch and release, snakes and ladders, over and over.
To be honest, Ren is starting to think he could get really into this play wrestling thing if he weren’t a rodent right now. If they both make it out of here alive, maybe he’ll ask. They can make a competition of it — loser buys lunch.
Unfortunately for Ren, he is a rodent right now, and Akechi wins. “Got you!” he exclaims all too loudly, Ren clutched tight in his fist. Even here, sitting on the floor with his outfit mussed and a scratch across his cheek, there’s a spark in his eye.
For all his metaphorical masks, Akechi isn’t impossible to read. He can say whatever he wants about hate or rivalry, but Ren knows Akechi likes him, even if that like is what drives him to hate in the first place. It’s the reason he had agreed to duel him, and the reason he still keeps his glove — because what is the promise to fight if not the promise to meet again?
Ren had never wondered if Akechi would go through with killing him; he’d known he would. No feelings between them, stated or otherwise, could change that.
But looking at Akechi now, holding on with a victorious smile to what he thinks to be just an illusion made by the man he hates, Ren wonders if Akechi hadn’t wanted to spend more time with him, too.
Got me, Ren agrees the instant before he’s poofed back into his usual body.
The position they find themselves in is compromising, to say the least.
When he was still a mouse, Ren had been held in one of Akechi’s hands, right around his middle. Now, that hand still rests there — tight on the small of his waist, tucked inexplicably under his coat so that only his skintight vest and Akechi’s gloves separate them. Ren’s thighs hover just over Akechi’s hips, pressed nearly chest to chest. When Ren looks down, their noses almost touch.
Akechi’s eyes are wide, his voice faint. “Joker?”
Ren doesn’t reply, and he doesn’t feel his face move into any kind of expression — but the back of his neck burns.
Everything happens at once.
In the moment before Akechi makes to grab him by the lapel, Ren leaps away. Akechi’s hands trail lower and make for his hips, but Ren twists loose of that, too. It leaves his legs vulnerable, and Akechi takes the opportunity to wrap his hand around the back of Ren’s calf. When he tugs, Ren looses his momentum, landing hard on his hip.
That’s all the opportunity Akechi needs before he’s on him, his knee between Ren’s thighs, pressing down with his full weight to keep Ren down. He grabs Ren by the jaw so hard his mouth clicks open.
The look on Akechi’s face is wild; Ren wouldn’t be surprised if he started foaming at the mouth. “It is you, isn’t it?” he asks, turning Ren’s face this way and that to inspect him like cattle. “It’s you.”
Ren’s knee hits Akechi’s ribs hard enough to reverberate unpleasantly up his bones, but Akechi barely even flinches; his hand slides up to the bend of Ren’s knee and yanks it to the side, holding his thigh open.
“Running away again?” Akechi asks, breathy with excitement and deep with something Ren doesn’t recognize.
It strikes Ren suddenly that Akechi might be physically stronger than him. His blood drums up, up, up in his ears.
One moment Akechi is above him; the next, Ren has him on the floor. The back of Akechi’s skull hits the baseboard with a sickening crack but he’s jerking upright in a second, forehead colliding with Ren’s so hard he sees the world in all new colors.
Still, Ren doesn’t roll over and die. Pushing Akechi back to the floor, smile pulling at his mouth and adrenaline humming at a breakneck tempo, he reaches as far inside himself as he can and pulls. “Persona!”
“Finally, there it is!” Akechi laughs, swaying uneasily to his feet, delight spelled in every inch of his face. “There’s the fight I expected!”
The familiar acidic sizzle of Akechi’s Persona burns the back of Ren’s mouth the moment before it makes itself known. It’s decidedly not Robin Hood, and Ren itches with the desire to see it, to pick apart every weakness, to study every way it can move.
But before he has the chance, Morgana’s voice echoes down the hall: “Joker!” Akechi whirls, baring his teeth —
And then Ryuiji busts out from a vent in the ceiling and slams his pipe into the back of Akechi’s head.
“Hehe,” Oracle snickers, peering around the corner with her hand to her mouth, “got him.”
Ren barely has time to catch Akechi as he crumples into unconsciousness in his arms.
The team thoroughly chews Ren out in the nearest Safe Room. There are just as many mouse jokes as Ren had expected. Yusuke asks him, very seriously, if he still has any of the cheese.
No one is really sure what to do with Akechi. They tie him to the foot of the table while discussing their options. Ren tries to follow the conversation, but he’s too busy revising the “Saving Akechi Goro” plan to be an active participant.
Even unconscious, Akechi isn’t at peace: his brows are furrowed, body tense, sweat collecting at his brow. Ren catches himself wondering if it’s different when he sleeps at home, in a real bed, where he might feel safe. He wonders if fitful sleep is just another thing they have in common.
Still, Akechi is nice to look at. Ren leans an elbow on the table to study him, which means he has the best vantage point to tell exactly when Akechi’s eyes snap open.
They fix on him immediately, and murderous intent spews from him like smoke, potent enough to stop the other Phantom Thieves’ discussion in its tracks. “Joker.”
Needless to say, they wreck the Safe Room. Even sporting a possible concussion, Akechi puts a few of them out of commission before Ren is able to have any coherent exchange with him. It almost feels like dancing: one hit, and a word, and a dodge, and another word, spinning round and round. Everything else may as well fall away.
Akechi ends up on his knees again, and it’s Ren’s turn to grab him by the jaw. “Checkmate,” he says, ever the show off, and thinks that through the blood dripping from Akechi’s nose and the snarl on his lips, he might be smiling.
It doesn’t come up again until weeks after everything’s over, sitting across from Akechi at the counter of Leblanc, the sign already flipped to closed.
“I still can’t believe,” Akechi says, swirling his coffee with that particularly polished smile that prefaces something mean, “that my well-thought, several-month plan and a bullet to the head couldn’t bring you down, but a puzzle and a snack almost destroyed you. Aren't you embarrassed to have such base urges, Ren?”
It isn’t mean, really, for Akechi; actually, it’s very nearly a compliment. And Ren can hear the question there, the joke, the shared story — Akechi is bringing this up in the most Akechi way possible, and Ren is glad for that. He can already hear the smooth drag of reluctant affection in the words, the way Akechi’s attention ties around him in that same familiar noose.
Base urges — what a description. Ren thinks about Akechi on that ship, snarling, screaming, holding him to the floor.
His mouth quirks in a smile, but his voice is deadpan. “Turns out I can be a real animal,” he agrees, already reaching behind the counter. “Another cup?”