Archive of Our Own ^beta

A shiny game piece in the shape of a bird rolled under the couch, a fallen warrior laid to rest in a cemetery of dust bunnies. Its comrades were strewn across the expanse of this foriegn land, a realm of wooden planks that was much larger than the familiar map– which was currently being crumpled under colorful sneakers.

The eye of the storm was an innocuous wooden table with a tornado of papers swirling around it. Among the casualties were a bag of chips, a collection of tomes filled with extensive lore, and a benign robot vacuum who unfortunately tried to devour larger debris than it could handle.

Despite his status as a mere participant in this horrid crusade against all things natural and orderly, Akira felt responsible. After all, he had been the one behind the arrangements that allowed any of this to happen, bringing an unstoppable force and an immovable object together in hopes of being the catalyst for comradery.

Comradery had been a grave understatement. This was an alliance capable of taking a nation down in a single night. Great rulers across the continents wept when the word broke out.

This plane of the earth had become but a sandbox for the gods of chaos and destruction to toy with until they simply became bored with it.

It was the perfect team. One building up worlds only to allow the other to obliterate them all with a single gamble.

Futaba was grabbing sheets and scrambling to find a pencil so she could mathematically rationalize why things ended how they did. Haru was foraging through the cabinets to find a broom so she could sweep up the shards of her priceless tea cup. A quick peek at Yusuke’s sketches showed an abstraction of Hell, complete with the odd geometric shapes of dice hidden in the linework. Ryuji was a ticking bomb, the unhinged laughter of the harbinger of chaos threatening to light his fuse any minute now.

And of course, who better suited to bring about Ragnarok than Akechi Goro, reveling in his success with little care for the consequences. Even the aspects he usually agonized over were of no matter in comparison to his underlying goal. His tie was loose enough that a single pull would undo it entirely. The top few buttons on his shirt were undone, revealing his collarbones for the first time in human history outside of bathhouse visits. His messy hair was dark with presumably sweat.

Were the context different, perhaps that would’ve been the result of Akira kissing him silly, effectively calming him down and rendering him a flustered disaster. Here there were no such reservations, only the mark of madness.

The facilitator of it all sat still, watching the aftermath of her work with not the slightest bit of concern. She remained composed as ever, regal like a queen treading unhindered through an active battlefield.

Akira wished he hadn’t introduced Goro and Hifumi.

x

The idea initially came about as a result of a normal dinner conversation. Their relationship had been born from a mutual interest in danger, the knowledge that their end was not a happy one but the will to see it until that conclusion inevitably arrived. But there was something almost equally exhilarating about falling into a routine revolved around each other. Perhaps they were both just extremely petty; they thrived off of the fact that every time they kissed they were actively defying a god.

As per usual, Akira was tending to the pot of curry at the stove when Goro came home. Akira couldn’t look away from the food or else they’d both go hungry, but luckily Goro came to him as soon as his shoes were off.

The feeling of Goro’s arms wrapping around his waist was familiar enough that Akira wasn’t caught off guard in the slightest. Chapped lips pressing against Akira’s cheek made for an adequate and minimal greeting while the food preparation continued.

Had he been someone else, Akira might’ve felt pressured by his boyfriend watching his every move while he cooked. But Akira saw it as a fun challenge. Not to be better than Goro at cooking— that would be laughably easy, as evidenced by the dark spots on the kitchen wall— but to be better than his previous self. He had food blogger royalty on his hands, of course, so he wouldn’t dare disappoint his prince.

(A part of Akira knew that he could’ve fed Goro garbage and the neglected orphan would be thrilled just to have food that was made for him. But that would never happen because Akira was hellbent on making him feel so loved that the years of mistreatment would weigh on him just a little less.)

“I’m almost done,” Akira said softly. “Could you set the table?” The weight of Goro’s chin left Akira’s shoulder and the warmth of his body left Akira’s back.

Dinner was served with no need for flourish or any dramatics. Goro was still in his uniform, but Akira had changed into his pajamas and a custom ordered apron that said “Kiss Your Homoerotic Rival/Fated Soulmate.” The first time Goro had seen it, he’d choked on his coffee and Akira thought he would need to perform the Heimlich maneuver on him. Now it was just a staple of their evenings.

As was briefly walking each other through the events of the day. Morgana was on the floor with his food, lying equidistant from both of them and ready to nestle into the lap of whoever might need it. On Thursday, his blue eyes tended to stay focused on Goro. Akira could only assume he was looking for tells underneath the table, trembling hands clenched into fists and shuffling feet making patterns on the floor.

Every Thursday, Goro went to therapy. Regardless of how the session had gone, he walked through the door with a face of practiced neutrality— a perfect mask assumedly leftover from the journey home. The time between him arriving at their apartment and dinner starting was reserved for taking it off, shifting from existence in a public space to a private one. Once dinner had begun, it took just one question to tear it off.

“How was your day?” Akira asked.

He never said “how was therapy” because that would insinuate that therapy days were different from non-therapy days. And in the grander scheme of things, they really weren’t. Each cycle of the moon and sun was another step in the process of healing.

Negotiations were in progress to add Monday sessions to the schedule as well. Thursdays were good to deal with anything that had come up during the week, and Mondays would serve to cleanse any weekend troubles. All that remained was to see where they could fit that session into the schedule without overloading Goro’s Mondays.

Goro stirred his curry with his spoon, waiting for it to cool down a bit before eating. That seemed to be a sign that things at least hadn’t been horrible. Some days Goro would shove the spoon into his mouth just so he had an excuse not to talk immediately, even if steam was still rising from his plate.

“It was...interesting,” Goro began. “That’s not to say it was particularly good or bad, but rather that it made me think a little bit.” Morgana’s ears perked up. “My therapist said she’s...that she’s proud of me for getting along with your circle of friends. I’ve been handling that much better than I was before I started seeing her.”

Previously, Goro had locked himself away, serving as both warden and prisoner to protect the world from who he had deemed an irrevocably destructive criminal. It had sometimes taken Akira standing outside his apartment for hours until Goro emerged to berate him for wasting time that could’ve been spent on someone better. And even once Akira had gotten Goro out of the house, getting him to sit closer to the group and engage in a conversation had been two entirely different battles to win.

The steam rising up from the curry hovered in front of Goro’s face. “But she suggested that I should try branching out, preferably with people who don’t already have a bad impression of me– from negative experiences or otherwise.” Akira noticed Morgana stirring. Goro seemed to as well. “I-I think she’s right. It would be good for me to forge a bond with someone who won’t think of me hurting them every time they look at me.”

Akira reached his hand across the table to rest it over Goro’s gloved one. “The others don’t think that, honey.”

“You don’t know that,” Goro snapped. Akira squeezed his hand and his face softened, but the looming darkness remained. “Well, maybe you do, but I don’t.”

Morgana nudged Goro’s leg and stared up at him. With a sigh, Goro scooted his chair back so Morgana could sit in his lap. It was sweet to see them like this, though Akira knew much of it was due to a sense of duty on Morgana's part. He was meant to guide two tricksters and one of them hadn't gotten his turn with the emotional support cat when he was supposed to. The past was unmoving, a statue that could crumble and deteriorate but never change. All there was to do now was make up for lost time whenever possible.

“Is there a rule against me introducing you to someone?” Akira asked. Goro shook his head. “Neat. I have a friend who I think you’re really gonna get along with.”

Whether it was the soft cat in his lap or Akira's offer that lightened up Goro’s mood was anyone's guess. Likely a bit of both. “And what's the criteria for someone I would get along with?” Goro said, the pitch of his voice upturned as if asking a question. “Do they have to be insufferably forgiving or insufferably stuck up?”

Coming from Goro, insufferable might be a compliment. Akira tended to assume it was, given the frequency with which Goro tossed the word around while they embraced. But in this particular case, he would never know. “Neither.”

x

“Akira, I know you make acquaintance with people from all sorts of backgrounds, but I don't see how a priest and I are going to get along.”

It was hard not to laugh as they stood just outside the Kanda Church. Goro stared up at the building with the same skepticism he tended to target towards academic articles he disagreed with. Or Ryuji. He very often looked that way at Ryuji.

“I promise we aren't doing anything remotely religious here,” Akira assured him. “It's just a quiet spot.”

“I don't think the confessional and I will get along either,” Goro mumbled. “The voice of God will probably tell me to shut the fuck up.” Akira laughed and opened the tall doors. He held it open for Goro and they entered together.

The sun was positioned just right so that its rays shone through the stained glass windows and created a natural spotlight on the front right pew. As he thought, the one he came to see was already waiting there. Akira and Goro walked side by side down the aisle, the latter never willing to simply follow even when Akira was supposed to be taking the lead.

A space for an opponent was already left on the other side of the shogi board. Akira wordlessly took that seat and made a move. The Silver General moved forward five spaces, putting it closer to the opposing King on the other end. It was wiped out the next turn by the enemy Bishop. Akira winced at his own lack of foresight. He should’ve thought through his move before abruptly challenging the Venus of Shogi.

“That was a shitty move,” Goro’s voice said from somewhere above and behind him. “I thought you were better than that.”

“No cursing in church,” Akira chided. He moved his next piece in time with Goro’s weary sigh.

The next few turns carried on, with Akira not focusing on much else other than getting one of his pieces in range of the king. One by one they were taken out, their journeys cut short by a harsh executioner.

“You approach me on the battlefield unprompted and sent your men to their doom with no rhyme or reason,” his opponent said. “This is not unlike the first time you faced me.” She looked up from the board and looked him over with the perceptive gaze of a master strategist. “Clearly, you didn’t come here for a true battle. You simply wanted to grab my attention.”

“Well, it worked, didn’t it?” Akira asked. He slid himself and the board down just enough that Goro could squeeze in right next to him. “I came because I realized you would probably get along really well with my boyfriend.” Akira leaned forward so that his body was not entirely blocking Goro’s view. “Togo Hifumi, Akechi Goro.”

Out of sheer adoration, Akira had probably gloated about his extremely intelligent and attractive boyfriend to anyone in Tokyo who would listen. But given that many of the people who listened were also people who knew he was the leader of the Phantom Thieves, it was always amusing to see the surprise on their faces when Akira finally introduced his legendary lover, who just so happened to be their most vocal critic and most public adversary.

Nothing would ever top the face that Ryuji had made in October of that year when Akira said he’d had Akechi Goro’s phone number since the TV station trip. If only for the sake of a good laugh, Akira wished he could go back in time and kindly inform his friends that he’d also played with Akechi’s hair and gone to the bathhouse alone with him at that time.

Hifumi's eyes widened for a moment, but with practiced poise and regal dignity, she composed herself and gave them both a knowing smile.“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Akechi-san,” she said with a bow. “Akira-kun has certainly sung your praises.”

“Likewise, Togo-san,” Goro replied, mirroring the gesture. “Akira is rather embarrassing if you ask me.”

“Hey!” Akira protested. “You love me.”

“Unfortunately,” Goro drawled. He turned his focus to Hifumi and smiled. “I’m admittedly not too familiar with shogi. I’ve played once or twice, but I fear I might get some of the rules confused with chess if I tried to play now. Akira and I play quite frequently.”

As much as he loved being pressed up against Goro, Akira’s back was already starting to hurt from leaning forward. So he stood up and moved into the second pew, resting his elbows on the seat in front of him and listening while the two of them compared the strategic specifics of shogi and chess. He could probably keep up with their conversation if he wanted to– handling each of them individually had never been a problem for him, he was smart enough to do it. But that sounded exhausting and this was meant to be a chance for Goro to get social interaction, not time for Akira to lead them both.

He took out his phone and started scrolling through social media to pass the time. Ann had posted a picture of herself on a magazine cover with a caption telling her followers to go read the feature article since it was about her. Because Akira also followed Shiho, it automatically showed him her sweet comment about how proud she was.

After leaving a comment himself, Akira poked around Goro’s old food blog purely out of curiosity. The layout was almost eerie, with Goro forcing his face into identical perfect grins in every single picture. His head was in the same position in every frame too. Each picture was solely differentiated by the food. If not for the varied lighting depending on the location, one might think Goro had been photoshopped into every photo.

From having frequently visited it last year, Akira knew the official Detective Prince account hadn’t been much better. The only posts that weren’t from photo shoots were the ones where he was made up for TV, thanking the hosts for having him and indulging in his theories. Nothing candid could be found within the whole account, every aspect of it was perfectly tailored and ran through several filters to create that naturally flawless facade.

A warning of a low phone battery made Akira check the clock at the top of the screen. Where the heck had the past thirty minutes gone? Had he really spent that long staring at identical pictures of Goro with food?

“I’ll send you the materials tonight,” Hifumi said. “We’ll see who’s willing to join us on our conquest.”

“Excellent. I can share a document with you and we’ll write up our plans over the course of the next week,” Goro added.

Hearing Hifumi speak in terms of conquest was nothing peculiar, but Goro’s dramatics had a history of being a bit more literal. Such as aiding a mission to overthrow the government for the sake of his own personal revenge. Not that Akira didn’t trust him– he trusted Goro with his life, and Goro didn’t have a motive for any nefarious scheming nowadays anyway– but it still raised a few questions. “Conquest?” Akira asked. “What on earth did I miss?”

Hifumi grinned. “We’re going on a quest, Akira-kun. Would you like to be recruited to our party?”

“Oh no, he doesn’t have a choice.” Goro stared at him and somehow he was teleported back to a late February night in Leblanc. The iciness in that gaze made the snow outside seem like a sauna. “You’re participating. If you attempt to refuse, I will cook for you.”

Before Hifumi could ask why feeding your roommate was a threat, Akira translated for her. “That’s Goro’s way of saying he’s gonna burn the house down or make my dentist cry. Kicking me out of bed never works because he always misses me, so he’s resorted to arson.”

That earned him a light slap on the arm. “Shut up. There will be no arson because you’re joining us. It would be in your best interest not to attempt disobeying me,” Goro said.

Akira looked between the two of them, Hifumi’s eyes glinting with a mischief that seemed far more fitting for Futaba and Goro trying to test out laser vision on him. There was no worming his way out of this. Whatever this was exactly.

“Ok. I’ll join you.”

Goro’s grimace turned into a smirk and Akira got the feeling that by introducing the two of them he’d essentially crossed two of the proton streams from Spectrebusters. The results were unpredictable, but they would undoubtedly make a bang.

x

Carrying four large bouquets of flowers while maintaining his poise wasn’t particularly easy. The fact that Morgana made a little wincing noise with every step he took didn’t exactly help in any way either. Akira waddled over to his boss with all of the flowers and silently begged her to take one of them off of his hands as soon as possible.

Thankfully, the customer who ordered the largest bouquet was first in line. It was a bit hard to see over the bouquets without getting flowers up his nose, but as far as Akira could tell it was a middle schooler. He was probably making a big romantic gesture to someone he had a crush on, or maybe showing appreciation to a mentor figure like his mom or a teacher. Either way, it was very sweet, and Akira smiled watching him scurry away with his massive gift.

The next customer joked that the kid had more game than he did, and Akira had to agree. True love is buying enough flowers that you almost fall over while carrying them. But whoever was receiving this man’s bouquet would never have to know, so that was okay.

Two more customers paid and left, leaving Akira’s arms empty and his work day complete. After receiving his pay he picked up his bag and prepared to leave with Morgana, but the cat’s voice stopped him.

“Our kitchen table is kinda bare,” Morgana said. Seeing as he could not set up decor himself, Akira took this as a direct dig at the humans in the house. “Maybe you should buy some flowers to liven it up.”

Akira sighed. “You just like spending my money, don’t you.”

“I can pay you back.”

“I don’t even want to know how you ended up with money.” Despite his complaints, Akira did find his eye drawn to a bouquet of red roses.

Morgana popped out of the bag and rested his head on Akira’s shoulder so he could see what he was looking at. “Would you buy flowers I said if they were a romantic present for Goro?”

As he forked over a portion of his newly-earned pay to his own employer, Akira was treated to Morgana’s taunting laughter in his ears. To Akira, the worst part was that he knew Morgana could easily use that trick to get just about anything. He was especially fond of suggesting the nice sushi for dinner, fully knowing that expensive sushi had the power to flip a switch in Goro’s brain that made him happy for the rest of the evening.

The roses were clutched tight to Akira’s chest as he boarded the train at the Shibuya subway station to get back to their apartment. If he were to buy Goro flowers, red roses were the obvious choice.

Aside from being a universal symbol of romantic love, they contained the sort of duality that Goro so perfectly embodied. The deep red petals were smooth to the touch and delicate, soft like the flushed face Akira cradled in his hands as he leaned in for a tender kiss. But roses have thorns, sharp and cold like harsh glares and jagged scars torn into trembling hands.

Others would likely clip the thorns before presenting the gift to their lovers, but Akira knew Goro. Goro would see the thorns still there and understand what it meant. Akira liked the roses as they were, and Goro’s smile– regardless of how uncertain his smiles tended to be– would grow just a little brighter with the thought.

He exited the train with more caution than usual, careful to make sure a stray elbow didn't snap one of his flowers in two. Even with the pulsing mass of people leaving, he somehow managed it. Akira stumbled into the darkened streets and completed his journey back home.

Morgana kindly offered him the keys– which had been buried somewhere in his bag– and Akira opened up the door. “Honey,” Akira hollered as he waltzed through the doorway, “I’m home!”

Normally when Akira was the last one home, Goro would stop whatever he was doing and run up to him for a kiss. Of course, Akira would oblige, but only after washing his hands. Goro would not let Akira cup his face with hands covered in the dirt of society. That could screw up his whole skin care regiment, and Akira didn’t like giving Goro reasons to put on more makeup (which tragically hid his adorable freckles).

Once Akira’s hands thoroughly smelled like whatever scent was tickling Goro’s fancy that particular month (currently it smelled like pears), he would initiate the kiss and be treated to the startled noise Goro would make in his mouth.

But Akira stood there with his roses and Goro didn’t even look up from his computer. Him doing work in the kitchen wasn’t weird– he preferred doing it at the desk in their room but if he was waiting for Akira then he had no issue with relocating– but no paperwork ever took priority over being loved and cherished.

“Welcome back,” Goro said quickly while he continued to stare at his screen with extreme focus. He wasn’t even typing anything, apparently whatever he was reading was so dense and complex that not even he could multitask while consuming the text.

That was strange. Maybe Goro was feeling shy and he needed Akira to take the first action today. It wasn’t an inconvenience or anything, just a bit odd.

Akira opened their cabinets and easily found the one vase they owned. It’d been a gift from Haru as thanks for Akira’s labor contributions to her beloved garden. The dazzling crystal surfaces clearly differentiated it from the cheaper dishware stacked everywhere else.

He unwrapped the rose bouquet and stuck all of the flowers in the vase, being super careful not to prick himself on the thorns. When he was done, he placed the whole display on the center of the table.

“I got you some flowers.”

Goro looked up from his computer. Just as Akira had predicted, his eyes trailed down the stems– distorted as they were through the glass– and he smiled. “They’re lovely. That was very thoughtful of you.”

The moment left as quickly as it had arrived and Goro became consumed by his computer again. Now that Akira was sitting right across from him, Goro kinda looked like a mess. He forwent his usual under-eye concealer, instead baring the dark circles to the world for once. His hair had been allowed to roam free, no longer shackled by products or straightening irons. The feathery fluff framed his face and Akira was more than tempted to ruffle it further.

The usual buttons ups and sweaters had been replaced with a faded Featherman graphic tee that Goro normally only wore when sleeping on hot nights. Which meant that it had always been too dark for Akira to see the way it nearly fell off his thin shoulders and revealed his collar bones. Combined with Akira’s sweatpants (Goro never wore sweatpants, and Akira could guess that when Goro stood up they would rest rather low on his hips), it was a good look.

“Honey, you’ve been working on this for days,” Akira said. “Don’t you think it’s time for a break? Maybe a nap?”

“My therapist said finding hobbies to occupy myself with was healthy and productive,” Goro replied flatly. “I see no issue with dedicating my time to crafting a thorough and well-researched character backstory while also assisting Togo-san with the creation of her campaign.” He furiously typed up a block of text and then went back to fix any typos he’d made.

Akira sighed. “She also thinks you need to get more sleep. You know. With the sleep medication you’re on by her recommendation?”

The pout that formed on Goro’s face made his cheeks look especially squishable. His nose scrunched up in disgust at the mere idea of a healthy sleep schedule. Akira wanted to give it a little boop.

It became clear that Goro had no counterargument, but in lieu of admitting defeat, he planned to continue working with a deep frown. Which left Akira with no choice. “Oops. You rolled a 1 on the persuasion check,” Akira said. “That means you’re going to bed.”

Goro didn’t react at all until Akira lifted him right out of his chair, separating him from his precious computer. He shrieked right in Akira’s ear and started trying to wiggle his way out of Akira’s grasp to no avail.

“Hey! You imbecile, you didn’t let me finish my thought!” Goro’s protests were ignored and all he got was a kiss on the cheek.

After getting his shins kicked several times, Akira got to their room and tossed Goro onto the soft mattress. It was hard for Akira to hold back his laughter at the sheer contrast between Goro yelping as he was dropped and how quickly his eyes started to droop once his head hit the pillow.

Akira rushed to get a glass of water so Goro didn’t fall asleep before taking his medication. Luckily the spare glasses and the bottles were stored in the same cabinet, so it only took one trip. Akira gave Goro the water and the latter did as he was supposed to. “You can write more tomorrow,” Akira said softly. “But your ideas will be more coherent once you’ve gotten some sleep.”

“Mmmm totally coherent,” was the last thing Goro mumbled before falling asleep right there. He usually took at least an hour of cuddling before he drifted into unconsciousness. Akira wasn’t sure whether to consider this a miracle or a cry for help.

Regardless, if he woke Goro up now he would never hear the end of it. And Goro once woke up because a hair tie fell off his nightstand. Akira tucked him in gently, pulling the blankets over his exposed shoulders. Once he was certain that maximum coziness had been achieved, Akira slid into bed from the other side and let his eyes close too.

x

Spooking the legendary Phantom Thief was no small feat. He’d mastered stealth, being able to remain unseen in both cognitive palaces and while faking his own death in reality. Before any opponent noticed him, it would already be too late. Quick movements and silent footsteps worked in tandem to confound shadows and humans alike.

Even with his contract fulfilled and the world of cognitive beings destroyed for good, he’d retained a power– a gift granted by a mystical man in dire need of a supernatural nose job and a solid eyebrow waxing– that allowed him a smidgen of foresight. Imperceivable dangers and solutions were accessible in the mind’s eye.

(Maybe he had only used Third Eye to find his glasses and get good discounts while online shopping lately, but Igor and Lavenza didn’t need to know that. He planned on keeping the nose job comment to himself as well.)

Yet, for all his abilities and experience, Akira still dumped way too much sriracha into his batch of curry and jumped when his phone went off. He looked grimly at the excess spice floating in his pot. He’d have to take this spicy batch home for himself– carefully labeled with “SPICY!!! GORO DO NOT EAT THIS!!!”– and make a new one for the customers.

Gowo🖤💙😘: Good afternoon. I have been collaborating with a friend of Akira’s– Togo Hifumi, she attends Kitagawa’s school I believe– to craft a campaign for a game that she has introduced to me as Dungeons and Dragons. Akira has already been drafted into our ranks, but more participants are required in order to create a more fulfilling role playing experience. If any of you are interested, please respond promptly and come to Leblanc at 8:00 tonight. If you have a conflict with that, I implore you to text me individually instead of burying this message.

Despite his disappointment about the curry turning out wrong, Akira couldn’t help but smile a bit. The content was a bit wooden and overly formal, but the message was one asking for companionship. This was good. Even if Goro’s message was inevitably going to get buried and he would inevitably get annoyed about it.

Ryuji: y dont ya reply to our memes

Gowo🖤💙😘: Sakamoto-kun, I believe the beginning of your message got cut off. And I do not reply to your strange visuals with the all caps font because I have better things to do.

Futaba: like being a nerd (ﾟ∀ﾟ)

Haru: That sounds fun Akechi-kun! I think I’ll be able to come

Gowo🖤💙😘: Excellent. I shall see you then.

Futaba: im coming and so is yusuke

Ann: sorry boo shiho has a game 😭😭😭

Gowo🖤💙😘: There’s no need to apologize, Takamaki-san. I hope her game goes well.

Gowo🖤💙😘: Is Kitagawa aware that he is involved?

Futaba: nah but hes not doing anything anyway ^o^

Ryuji: if i come to your nerd thing will you stop being an ass and look at my memes

Gowo🖤💙😘: If that is your condition, sure. But I expect you to take this seriously or the deal is off.

Ryuji: dw Ill only send the good shit

Futaba: you don't even know what the good shit is

Makoto: I would like to see everyone but unfortunately I have a big test tomorrow.

Gowo🖤💙😘: Understandable.

Sumire: Sorry, Akechi-senpai! I have practice for a big competition this week.

Ryuji: wdym my memes are great

Gowo🖤💙😘: Make your enemies weep from terror, Yoshizawa-san.

Futaba: note to self don't ask akechi for inspo unless you want to piss yourself

Futaba: your memes are lukewarm

Seeing as everyone was accounted for, Akira felt comfortable turning off his phone and prepping for the incoming storm. He could backread the heated argument over meme quality that was definitely about to begin between Ryuji and Futaba later.

The overly spicy curry wouldn’t even need to be taken home now if everyone was heading to Leblanc. He could feed it to Yusuke, who he could easily predict hadn’t had a solid meal in far too long. Admittedly, Akira wasn’t sure if Yusuke liked spicy food or not– he tended to solely subsist on bean sprouts and stuff he found in parks– but he at least knew he wouldn’t start crying.

At about 7:30, Goro entered Leblanc with papers bursting out of his briefcase. Already, he tended to keep it rather full with his work, a bag of makeup for touch-ups, his boyfriend-made bento box lunch, and a bunch of shiny things that he didn’t think Akira knew about. It was anyone’s guess whether it was bursting because he’d added new items to his bundle or if he’d had to empty it entirely because he just had too much to bring along.

The briefcase made a loud thud when Goro set it down on the bar counter. Hopefully it hadn’t chipped anything. “Do you want a massage?” Akira asked. “That seems fuller than usual.”

Goro sat in his usual stool and sighed. While not as rogue as it’d been in the privacy of their home, his hair was still in a state of disarray. Sizeable chunks hadn’t made it into the ponytail at the nape of his neck. Usually that kind of thing drove Goro mad, but his mind seemed to be elsewhere. Akira was tempted to desert his barista duties momentarily and fix it himself.

“I had to take something out to be able to fit everything I needed,” Goro replied. Akira looked at Goro and wondered if giving him decaffeinated coffee today would be a saving grace or a death sentence.

The latches of the briefcase clicked and Goro took his very manly white and gold makeup bag out. Which in itself was normal enough; no one was here and this morning’s concealer was starting to wear off. But Akira would’ve thought that the makeup would be the first choice when faced with having to remove one item.

“Goro,” Akira started carefully, “the ‘something’ that you took out wasn’t your lunch, right?”

His shoulders sagged when Goro took out the bento box Akira had sent him with this morning and waved it in the air. Given the unusual state he’d been in when Akira arrived home the other day, Akira had started to fear that this game had completely consumed him. Calling Goro’s therapist to say that attempting to make friends had somehow restarted a whole bunch of his old bad habits would’ve been awkward to say the least.

After getting some coffee into his system, Akira watched Goro scurry up the stairs to lay out all of his materials before the rest of their companions arrived. Judging from the papers he’d seen bursting out of the briefcase, it looked like preparing for a game of Dungeons and Dragons was like a combination of filling out tax forms and making an all-about-me presentation to share with a class of fellow kindergarteners with their fingers up their noses.

Unsurprisingly, Futaba was the second to arrive. She walked through the door with knock-off manga ink pens spilling out of her pockets and a cheshire grin on her face. Before she had the chance to ascend the stairs and bother Goro, Akira felt compelled to ask, “What are you planning?”

Futaba pushed her glasses up to mimic the stylish bespectacled protagonists in her favorite anime. Her stature made the image a bit comical. “Akechi’s gonna pop a blood vessel when he sees my character,” Futaba declared with utmost pride.

If that was truly the case, then Akira was glad he’d skipped out on the caffeine today. But he might want to give Takemi a call and see if she could swing by with a tranquilizer that Akira could discreetly shove into Goro’s ass in a worst-case scenario.

Before going to such extreme measures, Akira thought it best to pry further. “How so?”

Futaba puffed her chest out and cupped the air in front of her with her hands. “Anime tits.”

Oh. “I see.” His phone was warm in his pocket. “Just don’t show Sojiro that or he’ll unplug the WiFi at your house. I’m sure he’d be happy to stop paying for it.”

Her mimed tits deflated at the idea of her sacred realm being tampered with. “If you tell him, that’ll make you even more traitorous than your boyfriend. And I’ll know. I have eyes everywhere.” With an evil little laugh, she ascended the stairs invigorated with the intention of promptly giving Goro several gray hairs, subsequently sending him into a paranoid frenzy over his appearance.

The sudden increase in ambient noise outside signalled the arrival of Haru’s ride. Since there were no customers, Akira saw no harm in walking outside to see what kind of monstrously nice vehicle was being jammed into the Yongen-Jaya alleys.

Thankfully it wasn’t a limo. There had been a previous incident where a limo got stuck because the turns were too tight for a car of the length to possibly make. Haru popped out of the passenger seat with a tiny little purse and waved at the driver as he sped off into the distance. The departure of the car revealed Yusuke standing on the other side of the road.

Both of them entered the cafe and said their hellos before joining Goro and Futaba upstairs.

At 7:59, Akira’s phone buzzed. He didn’t need to take it out of his pocket to know that it was Goro demanding that Akira come upstairs and serve as his filter, translator, and occasional moral compass should it be necessary. To be the map as he sailed through foreign waters, the hands on the steering wheel diverting him from potential shipwrecks.

When he arrived upstairs, it looked less like a roleplaying game and more like a discussion of a criminal case file. All of his friends were seated around the table like they were about to hold a smaller scale Phantom Thieves meeting, but instead of it being an open discussion there was a manilla folder in front of each spot. Akira remembered Goro complaining about needing to go buy more a few weeks ago. He wondered if these were the new ones or if some of Goro’s important documents had taken the hit.

Goro stood above them all with a hand on his hips, surveying the people he was to lead into battle. Behind the expression of careful disdain was a fire in Goro’s eyes. His plans were manifesting before his eyes, all the chess pieces stationed in just the right positions where he would surely take the opposing king.

Akira feared to know what exactly Goro’s enemy was.

He slipped into one of the two empty seats, specifically the one on the right of the chair occupied by Goro’s briefcase. Goro watched him settle there like a hawk, then his eyebrows furrowed. His lips formed the number while he silently took attendance of who was meant to be there. Akira could tell he was mentally refreshing himself on who was coming and torturing himself over whether or not he had the right number of seats and folders prepared.

“Where’s Sakamoto?” Goro asked. His voice seemed to walk a precarious path on a tightrope, proceedingly delicately with calculated steps. Should he lean too far on either end, he would lose balance and fall to his death.

It would be interesting to see how long he could keep that up.

Futaba snickered. “He’s about to get his ass kicked from the looks of it.” Goro paid her no mind and moved briskly downstairs. Everyone popped out of their seats to watch him leave, trying to figure out how he planned to proceed.

“Akira, you’re friends with a doctor, right?” Haru asked. She was on her phone, leaving Akira to assume that she was looking at her bank account and calculating how much she could spend on Ryuji’s medical bills and/or bailing Goro out of prison.

Takemi’s availability seemed to be a running theme today. “Goro’s not going to beat him up,” Akira insisted, partially to reassure himself. “Don’t tell him I said this, but Ryuji could take him easily-”

“I’m gonna tell him,” Futaba said.

“And he’s been working on finding healthier outlets for his emotions. Worst he’ll do is swat my hand away.” And when that was the case, chances were Akira deserved it anyway. Often after some overly public flirting.

Yusuke started sketching something on his folder, which Akira knew would end up being the second strike of the day in Goro’s mind. They hadn’t even started creating their characters yet. “Ryuji is significantly more muscular than Akechi. But given Akechi’s...previous lifestyle, it would not be surprising if he knew some self-defense techniques that Ryuji would be ill-equipped to evade.”

Haru spoke like a drop of hot sauce swimming in a cup of overly sweetened coffee. “Oh, yes! I had to take a class myself after my father died. All the bad press got people worried that I might be at risk. Being a former celebrity, I’m sure Akechi-kun understands.”

“Akechi would totally bite him too,” Futaba added.

“He would not,” Akira said. “I’m sure Goro’s just looking around to make sure Ryuji is on his way.” Now that the idea had been planted in Akira’s head by Goro’s comments at the dinner table, the thieves were just watering that seed. It was hard to truthfully say that Goro’s fears were unfounded when these kinds of conversations happened as soon as he left the room.

To be fair to his friends, Goro’s demeanor didn’t exactly help. But it had to be discouraging that no matter how much he tried to change, a part of them would always see him like that.

The door downstairs jangled and they all turned their heads towards the stairs again. A perfectly unharmed and lively Ryuji came up the stairs, followed by a decidedly not homicidal Goro.

“Sorry, guys.” Ryuji rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. “I got uh. A bit held up on the way here.”

“He was helping an elderly woman cross the street,” Goro clarified. He looked down. Akira followed his gaze to see a small wrapped candy in his gloved hand. “I cannot fault him for that.”

Akira looked around at his companions and couldn’t help but smirk a bit. They were all averting their eyes. Good. They should feel bad about doubting Goro when he was pouring his heart and soul into self-improvement, berating himself for any and all missteps along the unknown path he tread.

“Now.” Goro clapped his hands together. “While I do forgive Sakamoto for his tardiness on the account of assisting others, we did lose some precious time as a result . And I think you will all agree with me when I say I do not wish to be here all night. So we must begin promptly. You may now open up your folders.”

It was simultaneously impressive and horrifying how Goro carried himself like the proctor of a standardized test while explaining the nerdiest game on the planet. Especially since he definitely didn’t have any qualifications to teach a game that he’d only learned of two weeks ago.

“The first paper you should see is your character sheet,” Goro explained. “This is where you will catalogue all of the stats, abilities, and other traits of your character.” Goro’s eyes drifted towards where Yusuke was still drawing on the front of the folder. “Kitagawa-kun, this may be of interest to you since there is a space designated for an artistic rendition of your character.”

“Once I’m finished with this sketch,” Yusuke said.

Goro visibly took a deep breath. “Hm. Very well. Behind the character sheet, you’ll find a list I compiled with a basic summary of the classes your character can be. Classes are essentially roles to fulfill and base everything else around, such as fighting styles, backstory, and physical attributes.”

Goro’s list was six pages stapled together. If Akira opened the window, he would likely hear trees weeping. Ryuji wept with them. “For real? I gotta read aaaaaall of this?” Ryuji asked incredulously. “I just wanna be some sort of fighter guy.”

“You weren’t the one who heard to search through several websites, compile all of the information, and type it up,” Goro snapped. Akira tried to meet his eyes to get him to cool down a bit. When he did, Goro pursed his lips and glanced at the floor. His voice was gentler when he spoke again. “Be grateful I am not requesting that you read the handbook. And luckily for you, there is a class called the fighter. I believe it’s on page four.”

Ryuji flipped to the page as asked. He gave a thumbs up and started reading. The fact that Goro knew what page it was on only spoke further to how much time he’d dedicated to putting all of this together.

With all potential outbursts seemingly extinguished for now, Akira felt comfortable taking his eyes off of the room and started to read a bit himself. As risky as they were in the present company, he couldn’t blame Ryuji for his complaints. It was like he was annotating articles in composition class all over again. Only Goro would ever find that fun. Akira preferred to sit and listen while Goro regurgitated all of the important information back at him.

“Just for the sake of variety,” Akira began, “what class are you planning on being, Goro?” There was no way Goro would’ve done any of this without finishing his own character work first, that just wasn’t how he operated.

“A warlock,” Goro replied. “I don’t care if anyone else decides to pick the same class, but I agree that it would make for a more varied narrative if we all selected something different.”

So the fighter and the warlock were both taken. Well, not taken, but Akira didn’t want to be a double. That wasn’t any fun. Skimming over both summaries didn’t yield anything that appealed to him particularly anyway.

For him, the rogue seemed the obvious choice. He could easily slip back into Joker’s red gloves in a sense, lurking in the shadows and living above the law. One of the sources Goro had found even specified that some rogues were falsely accused and aiming to clear their names. That seemed awfully familiar.

But he’d already played Joker for a whole year. Sure, he missed the drama of it, but reprising that same role would be predictable. Akira loathed predictability. He needed something equally flamboyant, yet original.

In essence, he needed to out-do the romantics of a gentleman thief. To reach the next level of seduction.

Nothing sounded particularly sexy until he happened upon the bard on the third page. The bard was a master of arts, a connoisseur of poetry and music. And most importantly, a wielder of irresistible charm. Even the edgy little warlock that Goro’s mind had undoubtedly birthed would be unable to fight him for long.

What particularly intrigued him was the usage of music. Had everything not gone awry on the fateful night that sent him to Tokyo, Akira had been planning on auditioning for the local theater near his hometown. He’d never had any singing lessons, but people said he had a pretty good voice and the girl he’d asked about it had practically begged him to come so she wouldn’t have to dress up as a boy for the third year in a row.

Even if Shujin hadn’t been gung-ho with the athletics, Akira doubted any drama club there would have been very keen on accepting the shady criminal transfer student who does drugs and carries knives.

He had found a link to music in Tokyo through going to the jazz club with Goro. Jazz had to be the most seductive music genre out there, Akira had felt himself falling in love just listening to Goro talk with those melodies behind him.

It was decided, he would be a sexy bard and he would spend every action telling his boyfriend that he loved him very much. The plan was flawless. He could even find a small instrument to play.

His only concern would be that Yusuke might see the arts mentioned and get a similar idea. He peered up from his packet at the artist, who seemed to have finally stopped sketching on his folder.

As he could’ve guessed from her earlier comments about her design choices, Futaba had come already equipped with several ideas. So she was generously lending her infinite nerd wisdom to poor, mega-noob Inari.

“You know what, Inari?” Futaba said. “You should be a druid.” Akira tried not to laugh at Goro aggressively flipping through his own packet, presumably to review what exactly that meant. Given how much information he’d packed into it, Akira couldn’t blame him for not memorizing every last detail. And he was sure that lack of knowledge was already bothering Goro enough by itself.

Yusuke tilted his head to the side. “What does that entail? How much artistic liberty would I be allowed?”

Futaba grinned. “You’re gonna love this. You get to be a furry.”

Goro choked on nothing. “No.”

Futaba stood up and slammed her hands on the table, startling poor Haru. “Yes.”

“It’s a shapeshifter, Kitagawa,” Goro explained hoarsely. He cleared his throat. “Though I do agree with Futaba that you may find it to your liking. The class is very rooted in the elements of nature, which many find to be a source of great beauty.”

“I see,” Yusuke said. Goro was speaking his language now. “That does sound very appealing.”

“If you get enough EXP you can turn into a sea creature too,” Futaba added. That sold it, the bard was open for grabs.

“A lobster.”

Goro sighed. “I fail to see how a lobster would be useful in combat against anything smaller than a mouse, but yes. Hypothetically, you could be a lobster.”

“Damn, Akechi,” Ryuji said. “You don’t know. Maybe there are mice.”

That only earned more of the detective’s ire. “Even so, mere rodents would hardly be a legitimate threat to be neutralized. The lowest of rolls could still crush them.” Akira didn’t have the heart to tell him that rolling a one (according to his own rule book) could result in those mice beating the shit out of him.

“Akechi-kun,” Haru said, “I think he’s going to go for it.” Sure enough, inspiration had struck and Yusuke was reaching for the colored pencils in the middle of the table. “Would you like me to focus on making up for the lack of combat strength on our team?”

He put his hand up to his chin, looking very much like one of the old magazine covers if one ignored the state of his hair. Akira was just waiting for Goro to sit down so he could finally fix it. “I have no issue with a team that focuses on outwitting the enemy rather than using brute force,” Goro decided. “It’s really up to you. If you would like to play a more offense focused character, then be my guest.”

“Wonderful.” She shuffled through the pages and landed on one she liked. “I shall be a barbarian then.”

Akira saw Goro’s Adam’s apple bob in his throat. There was no doubt that he was reliving memories of being squeezed next to Haru in the Morgana bus while she proclaimed a love of listening to shadows beg for their lives. Godspeed to them all.

To take Goro’s mind off of being murdered, Akira felt that now was the time to announce what his own class was. Embarrassment would at least be more pleasant than the fear of imminent death by her blade.

“Hey, honey,” Akira said. He waved him over with his hand. “Come over and let me fix your hair.”

“The state of my hair is inconsequential,” Goro replied. Akira knew he would never hear Goro utter such words ever again as long as he lived.

Turning up the charm, Akira batted his eyelashes. Stupid, he knew, but he also knew it would work every time. “I’ll show you my character if you do.”

He set Goro’s briefcase on the floor, already knowing that the curiosity of a detective would pull him in like a gravitational force. Their existence as a joined unit seemed to operate as such, always orbiting around each other until they collided again and again.

Once Goro was seated next to him, Akira moved his folder so the other boy could see what he’d been writing down while the others chatted about furries and bloodshed. As Goro picked it up and began to read, Akira scooted behind him and gently slid the hair tie out of his caramel locks. It made Akira smile a bit to see that it was one of the colorful ones he’d purchased.

While he gathered Goro’s hair into a better ponytail, Akira looked over his shoulder to see what he was reading. Besides being devilishly handsome, his beloved bard son had started out as a thief. Using the riches he acquired, he was able to make a name for himself as a club musician. The owner of the club– who Akira had been imagining as a truly wonderful combo of Sojiro, Muhen, and Lala; maybe with a bit of Chihaya mixed in for those magical elements– picked up on his talents and decided to take him on as an apprentice, teaching him how to channel his musical gifts into magic.

He was fully capable of using these new skills to charm patrons into tipping him excessively. But his days of thievery had taught him nobility, so he tended to restrain himself unless a particularly troublesome douchebag came waltzing into the club. The instrument imbued with the most magic was a small flute-like object, though given time and experience he could become advanced enough to wield even more powerful magic with a lute or lyre.

“You put a lot of thought into this,” Goro mused. Akira thought it best to not divulge that this was all just an elaborate cover-up for him to flirt with everything in sight. At least not yet. Goro would realize as soon as the time came for Akira’s first roll. “I would have thought you would be unable to resist being a rogue. You never fail to surprise me.”

Mission accomplished. And Goro’s hair was fixed. Akira was on a winning streak. “I’ve gotta keep you on your toes somehow, detective,” Akira teased. “I can’t let you have a boring rival, right?”

Goro turned to him and smiled softly. He slid the file over. “Correct. I look forward to seeing what else you come up with.”

A chest cut-out and pants with high slits. Or maybe a crop top. Something gratuitously gay. “I won’t disappoint you.”

“Alright then. Good work, Joker.” The last word seemed to roll off of Goro’s tongue as easily as he breathed, smooth like satin sheets and silky hair, low and tempting like a satisfied purr. Had Goro been the type, Akira would fear what the bard could do to him specifically if left to be moulded by Goro’s hands. One person could not be allowed that much power.

Akira watched Goro return to his previous surveillance post and thought idly that maybe the heavens struck Goro with social inadequacy because he’d be too uncontainable without it. Or– just as Akira was– the heavens were enlightened to the appeal of the grumpy tsundere.

Thinking about Goro was making his brain conjure up streams of mushy nonsense, so Akira turned his attention to Futaba instead. The manga pens she’d entered with were scattered all around her now. The sheer quantity of them was a bit alarming. Akira wondered if she planned on using them to color and he could already hear Yusuke sobbing at her misuse of the supplies.

It seemed that Yusuke’s heart would be spared; Futaba stretched her arm out to grab a fistful of colored pencils and dragged them towards her. Come to think of it, Akira didn’t really know how good Futaba was at drawing. She was really into anime so it could be assumed that she’d at least tried to replicate the art a few times, but there was no way of telling how successful she was. Sojiro had mentioned her commissioning Yusuke once or twice, but that might’ve been out of pity for his financial situation.

Moreover, she had promised a design that would make the stingy Victorian in Goro weep in horror. If drawn with accurate anatomy, it would truly be a sight to behold.

Yusuke gave him an answer. Sort of. Futaba slid her paper over to him and giggled mischievously, once again sparking Goro’s ire. Yusuke looked it over and gave her some suggestions.

“If the article is meant to fit that way, then it looks fine. You would need to explain it with a strap or an armored piece right there. If you are going for a looser fit, then the motion should resemble a tear drop more,” Yusuke explained. “Given the reference photos, it would go either way, though I much prefer the more elegant flow presented here.” He pointed at one of the images on Futaba’s phone.

Futaba nodded sagely. “What would you recommend for keeping them contained but like. Barely contained, you know? I wanna make the internet proud.”

“Oh, dear,” Goro whispered.

Futaba beamed. “The waifu of the gods is within my grasp.”

Goro’s face was that of a man who realized he’d unleashed something far beyond his control when he invited Futaba to make and roleplay as an original character. But he couldn’t refuse her because he needed her to comply. The sacrifice had to be made.

“What class is waifu supreme?” Akira asked, feeling a shit-eating grin starting to form on his own face. Sorry, Goro. This was too good to ignore.

“Didn’t I tell you?” Futaba said. “She’s the waifu of the gods. Her power comes from them.”

“A cleric,” Goro clarified. “Their healing magic comes from faith in their god.”

Futaba stood up and struck a hot anime girl pose. “In the name of Big Chungus, I’ll punish you!” she declared. “Er. Mostly heal you. But sometimes punish you!”

The situation had officially fallen out of Goro’s hands, onto the floor, and shattered into tiny glass shards that he couldn’t possibly avoid stepping on.

While she was away from her chair, Akira saw Goro start to approach Futaba’s paper. Disaster was imminent. She sensed it too, and for once was not in favor of it. Yes, she had an ulterior motive, but any form of postponing the apocalypse was appreciated. Futaba lunged to snatch her folder away.

“Hey! I’m not done,” Futaba protested. “No way am I letting you see my half-assed sketch. If I do, the final product won’t do as much psyche damage!”

“Your intent is to do damage against me,” Goro repeated grimly. “And I’m meant to rely on you as our primary healer during the campaign.” Futaba gave him a big thumbs up, which she was quick to turn into a finger gun and fired. Akira taught her that move, so despite everything he felt a little bit proud.

When all was said and done, they concluded their work at 10:00. Goro instructed everyone to finish up at home, pointedly glaring when Ryuji bemoaned the existence of homework for something that was supposed to be fun. He said he would be in contact to arrange a time to play through the campaign that Hifumi had written and that they would all share their characters with the group then so she knew what was going on.

That left Akira, Goro, and a shit ton of colored pencils scattered across the floor. Cleaning them up would probably be the right thing to do, but they had to get to the subway before the trains stopped for the day, otherwise they’d be stranded in Yongen-Jaya.

As Goro put it, “You’ve graduated from being mere attic trash. We can deal with it next time we use the space. And I’m sure Kitagawa would be happy to squirrel away the spare art supplies anyway.”

They both exited the cafe, leaving the scene above desolate and slightly disorderly. Neither could have known just how much worse it would become when they reached the real battlegrounds in the coming days.

x

In anticipation of a ruckus, it was decided that the game would be hosted at Akira and Goro’s apartment. The thin walls meant a noise complaint was fully possible should things get particularly heated, but Akira was frankly far less scared of pissing off the neighbors than he was of disappointing Sojiro.

However, the apartment was only meant to house two people, so the two of them had to make preparations to accommodate for the extra bodies sitting around the table. While Akira was making dinner the night before, Goro had gone to the complex storage room and hauled four plastic folding chairs up the stairs. With the two at the kitchen table and the one dragged in from the bedroom desk, that was enough for all seven of them. Akira couldn’t imagine how they might’ve fit ten people if Ann, Makoto, and Sumire had been available.

Hifumi arrived ten minutes early with a big folder, a board to play with, and some dice. Goro had bought a really nice set of his own, but Akira got the feeling he was glad that chipping them was no longer a possibility. He had no qualms with sacrificing Hifumi’s dice to the wolves who were soon to enter with (hopefully) finished character sheets.

Everyone arrived around the same time without a hitch. All the tiny grandmas in need of help in the world must have been too busy to set Ryuji off course. Which was likely good for both their safety and Goro’s sanity. Their dissent into a realm of fantasy could smoothly commence.

It was incredibly refreshing to see Goro excited about a social gathering instead of dreading the prospect of it. The darting eyes and restless hands were protocol, but the energy seemed more anticipatory rather than nervous.

Tucked behind her folder of forbidden secrets, Hifumi got the ball rolling. “Brave adventurers, today you will begin a valiant quest to conquer an imminent evil that threatens to destroy the balance of the world as you know it. Divisions of kingdoms and tribes and clans and villages are insignificant to the monstrous being that aims to blast them all into smithereens. Only by bringing these separate groups together under one cause can you possibly take on a foe of such magnitude.”

“Wait,” Ryuji said. “So the plan is just to tell everyone there’s a magic douchebag coming and get them to all be friends? How hard can that be?’

Hifumi shook her head. “The simplicity of the task itself is only a guide for the intricate relationships you will all be forced to navigate. Tensions run deep, stubborn rulers allow senseless pride to blind them to reality. In some cases, you may need to sway them by impressing them. Perhaps by completing a dangerous feat. In others, you may need to take the kingdoms by force. But nothing will tell you what the best choices are except sheer intuition. And even so…”

She held the dice out above the shield of her folder where their surfaces shone under the fluorescent lights. “Intuition cannot save you from the conniving Lady Luck. By participating, you all ultimately intrust your fate to her.” In Akira’s mind, Lady Luck looked somewhat like Lavenza with an even bigger chainsaw. Scary.

Next to him Goro mumbled, “If fate had any influence on my existence, I would be dead.”

“Well, I told fate that I love you too much for you to be dead, so fate made an exception,” Akira replied. Futaba groaned and was probably steeling herself for several more hours of this. Akira didn’t know how she could’ve possibly expected anything different.

“That’s nice Akira, but you didn’t do a persuasion check before flirting,” Hifumi said. She stood up to place the die in the center of the table. “The dice will decide the quality and effectiveness of your pick-up lines from now on.”

Amidst the chorus of snickers and disgruntled detective noises, Akira took up the dice. The stability of his relationship was at stake here. Well, not really, but how much Goro respected him surely was. And that greatly varied from hour to hour, by no fault of Goro’s. All he did was process the information Akira presented him and form his opinion accordingly.

“Disclaimer: Any bad pick-up lines I say today do not reflect my actual real life charisma, which is infinite. But the good ones absolutely do,” Akira said. He stood up and placed a hand on Goro’s shoulder. “Please don’t break up with me and kick me out.”

“You make awful puns all the time. Unfortunately, I’m used to it,” Goro drawled. Funny coming from a guy who held onto each casual interaction the two of them had like a baby bird who might fly away at any moment. But Akira wouldn’t dare say a word with company present. “Just roll already.”

Akira took a deep breath and prepared his roll. The dice fell like hail, clinking as they clattered on the table. Lady Luck delivered his fortune and presented it before his fellow champions.

Fuck.

“Dude...are you gonna need to crash on my couch for a few days?” Ryuji asked. As much as Akira appreciated the offer, he couldn’t do that to Ryuji’s mom.

“Oh, please.” Goro scoffed. “Cease your dramatics and spit it out already so we can move on.”

This would mark the beginning of the end of Akira’s career. He didn’t think it lacked cleverness or anything. But when delivered to this particular person? Horrible. Dreadful. Half of his health bar would soon be depleted.

Eh. At least his reaction might be funny.

“Hey, baby, are you a magician?” Akira asked, almost knocking everything off of the table as he leaned on it seductively. Goro stared right into his soul, challenging him to do his worst. Sexy. “Because I can feel my pants vanishing.”

Aside from what he assumed was Ryuji snorting soda out of his nose, there were crickets. Or that was the sound of Goro’s teeth grinding together. Either way, spooky!

“Because of your incredibly low roll, the response is the worst possible,” Hifumi narrated. “Your line isn’t even worthy of Akechi-kun’s endless scorn.” Akira would argue otherwise, Goro going completely red in the face was pretty satisfying. But he kept his mouth shut in case that information made Hifumi and Goro both conspire to worsen his penalty.

He’d spent many hours eating chips on Ryuji’s couch. Those hours usually involved them deciding that it was more comfortable to sit with pillows on the floor. All joking aside, his back could not afford to sleep on that thing, especially just as he was starting to recover from the futon on crates in Leblanc’s attic.

When Goro finally said something, it wasn’t a reaction. It was a redirection. Akira’s pride took a bit of a hit. “I’m not a magician,” Goro said cooly. “My character is a warlock. And we should move on to introducing our characters before the sun starts setting or we will never get to the actual game.” It was only about noon, but okay. Sure. “Since you’re so talkative today, would you like to get things started, Akira?”

Honestly, he wouldn’t! After that massive flop, he did not want to reveal that seduction was kind of his main gig. But Goro must’ve had mascara on because ugh those stupid eyelashes on that stupidly pretty face made it hard to tell him no.

He took his paper out and told them all about his studly little music man, now christened with the name Ren Runetoe. The thing he was most proud of was his drawing. He wouldn’t call himself an artist by any means– certainly not on Yusuke’s level– but he was good at replicating things. Once the pose was down from a picture online, he just had to slap some clothing onto it.

Admittedly, he wasn’t the most creative person on the planet. He ended up borrowing a lot of ideas from Joker, Arsene, and the whole general Phantom Thieves aesthetic. His favorite touch was the snazzy chapeau. Oh, and the gratuitous boob window. How could he forget the gratuitous boob window.

Wrapped around Ren’s neck was a chain with a small flute-like object attached to it. The thing he was most excited about– besides repeatedly turning his boyfriend’s face into a tomato with a mullet– was playing around with the musical magic. He had a real world equivalent stored in his pocket too, but it wasn’t time to reveal it just yet. There still had to be a few surprises to keep things lively.

Next up was Ryuji, who proudly displayed a drawing that seemed like the step after stick figures. The limbs are all disproportionate and boxy, but at least they’re masses instead of lines.

Then again, it would be awfully difficult to design a fantasy character using a stick figure.

Ryuji’s character looked like a happy marriage between a graffiti-spraying punk and a classic knight who got his gear from a medieval thrift shop. The rusted armor was adorned with fun colorful designs. The shield was especially fun, bearing the classic skull and crossbones.

Even Goro seemed to approve up until Ryuji started talking. “So,” Ryuji began, “this is Brent.”

Akira smelled blood in the water. Only two people into the character introductions and the sharks were already gathering. Maybe he should text Chihaya and ask her for his fortune. Admittedly his tarot knowledge consisted of little more than Lavenza’s voice tarot card kin-assigning all of his friends and confidants after establishing bonds with them, but he suspected Chihaya might send him back Death or The Hanged Man.

“You have all the creative liberty and online generators in the world to give you a fantasy name for your champion, and you chose to name him Brent,” Goro stated incredulously. “Unbelievable.”

“Hey, what’s wrong with Brent?” Ryuji protested. “It’s a perfectly fine and cool-sounding name. What’d you name your character, huh? Unless your name kicks my ass, I think Brent works.”

Haru took her teacup– apparently she’d carried it all the way here, as if Akira’s corny mugs weren’t fancy enough for her– and slowly brought it up to her mouth, clearly hiding a mirthful smile. Usually she was above hopping onto/supporting the torture train, but it seemed that she made an exception for one Akechi “Traitorous Bitch” Goro.

“It’s not my turn to share yet,” Goro replied evenly. “You may carry on, Sir Brent. Regardless of your mundanity.”

Ryuji scrunched his face up as if willing Goro to taste the lemon he was currently chewing on. Actually, knowing Ryuji, it was probably more along the lines of hoping to inject hot sauce into the detective’s bloodstream.

“Well, my man’s the fighter class and...he likes to fight! Not for the sake of stirring shit though, he’s not some kind of asshole. But if you mess with his friends…” Ryuji clapped his hand and his fist together. “You’ll regret it. Right now he’s working as a cleaner at a club because he got into a fight there and he feels bad screwing stuff up for the owner. Oh! It happens to be the place where Akir- er. Where Ren works.”

“You collaborated to make for more immersive world building,” Hifumi remarked. “I approve.”

Akira grinned. “Sure. We’re bros.” They tried and failed to fist bump across the table. Bro power was unfortunately not impervious to physical masses and the limits of human flexibility.

“Kitagawa-kun, you’re next,” Hifumi said.

Yusuke stood up and left the table to retrieve a comically large folder that he’d left hanging on the coat rack. One of Goro’s winter coats had been pushed onto the floor to make room. Akira didn’t need to look behind him to know that Goro was focused on that rather than Yusuke’s incoming flamboyant presentation.

Returning to the table, Yusuke undid the velcro at the top of his strange package and unveiled a gorgeous painting. In a striking limited palette of only white, navy, and red, Yusuke had painted a semi-abstract portrait of a mystical white-haired man and a similarly colored fox. The strokes were loose and flowing, a clear departure from the rigid, motionless drawings the rest of the had created. Well, at least Akira assumed that would be the case.

“With this work, I aimed to capture the dichotomy between the civilized man and the uncivilized animal within,” Yusuke explained, “which I believe may lie dormant in all of us as living creatures on this earth.” He pointed to the rippling waves that framed the central focus. “The red waves are meant to represent the inevitable addition of the lobster. It will be my goal to reach it as soon as possible.”

Futaba groaned. “Oof. Inari’s gonna make us grind slimes for the whole session just so he gets the experience.”

While the rest of them were still examining the individual details of Yusuke’s painting, Akira noticed Goro tapping his foot. He could tell because they’d locked their legs together under the table, which meant Akira’s poor unsuspecting foot had become the victim of impatience.

“Kitagawa-kun,” Goro said, “you may begin sharing your backstory while your companions continue to admire your remarkable work.” Hifumi murmured something about her being the DM, not him, but it seemed to be without the bitterness with which the assailant on Akira’s foot would deliver such remarks.

Akira thought he might be witnessing an astrological anomaly, because Futaba was soon to voice her agreement. “Don’t tell me you developed such a cool design without actually giving it any character,” she said, personally offended by the idea. “It’s like you’re a developer banking their popularity on the array of collectable hot people instead of an actual plot!”

“You sound like you’ve been wounded before,” Goro remarked, ever quick to encourage bitterness.

Futaba scowled. “Stupid gacha games...always trying to eat my money and assuming I’m a sucker.” She dove into Yusuke’s personal space. “You better not betray me like this, Inari!”

“I did come up with a story,” Yusuke replied at half of her volume. Goro and Futaba’s moods improved visibly, so much so that Akira’s foot was freed from the prison of irritation. “I believe true art needs no summary. The piece should speak for itself.”

It seemed everyone was intent on making their mark on the “top ten anime betrayals” list before the day was through.

“I gave you a whole folder of information and a sheet to fill out to keep things organized,” Goro said slowly, almost like he needed to recount the folly to confirm its magnitude for himself. To prove his ire was justified, rooted in reason and logic rather than control-freak emotionality. “And you decided to let the art speak for itself?”

Yusuke didn’t catch on. “Yes.”

Goro scoffed. Then that scoff evolved into a low, joyless laugh. Everyone except Haru scooted their chair back a bit. “How foolish,” he spat. “I would expect an artist such as yourself to know better. After all, art is meant to be interpreted in the eye of the beholder. The creator will try as they may to push a certain agenda, but in the end, the perception of the viewer is out of their grasp. If a work cannot derive one unified perspective on something as basic as a singular emotion, then how on earth could you possibly hope to convey a concrete backstory! It’s simply impossible!”

“Hm. So this is why you aren’t the Dungeon Master,” Hifumi observed with an impressive lack of concern, though it fell deaf on Goro’s ears.

“Ngh!” Yusuke fell to the ground, clutching his hand to his chest as if pulling an arrow that had punctured his bleeding heart. If he hadn’t seen Yusuke do this in a very public museum exhibit before, Akira might’ve thought he was dying. Historical malnutrition only backed up such theories.

“Inari’s morale is threateningly low! Can he recover from this?” Futaba exclaimed, treating this presentation gone wrong as a battle of wits. Akira should invite her to eat dinner with him and Goro more often, she might get a kick out of it.

“Yusuke-kun,” Haru said, “maybe you should try to say what you were thinking while you were painting this piece?”

All eyes were on Yusuke as he slowly got back on his feet and rose to his full height. His head was right in front of the light in the ceiling, causing him to cast a long shadow over Goro, who sat with his arms crossed and one eyebrow raised in challenge.

Akira kinda wished he’d been the one who fucked up. This looked fun.

“My creation is a being of no name,” Yusuke began. “A name is but a fabrication crafted by civilized society to categorize individuals within a species.”

“You didn’t come up with a name,” Goro translated while Akira internally pondered whether Yusuke would like a burial or a cremation. It came down to which seemed more artistically fulfilling.

“He was raised among the creatures of the forest,” Yusuke explained. “They have no need for names crafted from human language.”

Hifumi frowned. “I hate to discourage your...creative interpretation, but for the sake of storytelling, I do need something to address your character. Otherwise this will be difficult.”

“Fox boy,” Ryuji suggested.

“Harold,” said Haru.

“Eugeniffer,” Futaba said.

“Moronicus,” Goro spat. Akira checked to make sure no actual spit got on the map in the center of the table.

“Hmph. You all lack artistic integrity,” Yusuke declared.

Clearly, none of them had any intention of putting this in Yusuke’s language. Which left that task to Akira. “Yusuke,” Akira started, “when you’re submitting a piece to a museum or a competition, they usually ask you to give it a title. That makes it easier to remember and discuss your piece. Giving your character a name is just giving it a title sort of.”

“And he’s going to spend the next few hours agonizing over that title while we all gather dust,” Goro argued. “We’ve already wasted too much time. Just call him Inari for now.”

Without missing a beat, Yusuke continued with his bullshitted tale. “As I was saying, Inari was raised in the forest, separate from human customs. Therefore he is rather ignorant to the social practices of normal civilizations in villages, despite his form seeming more natural there than among beasts. But even his form is not made to roam in only one plane of existence. His spiritual connection with the foxes who raised him and the realm they live in has allowed him to hone the power to take on a form that resembles theirs. For the sake of survival, he has learned combat in this state as well.”

“Thank you. See? Was that so hard?” Goro asked. “We can finally move on.”

Clearly intent on saving himself for last– and expecting his own character work to top all of theirs undeniably– Goro’s eyes flickered between Futaba and Haru. The mischievous grin on Futaba’s face physically repulsed him, so he picked Haru.

“Okumura-san? I trust that you were thoughtful in your storytelling and came fully prepared,” Goro said without his usual disdain.

Haru clasped her hands together. “Certainly!” She stopped tilting her head up to meet Goro’s eyes, instead honing in on the bobbing Adam’s Apple in his throat. Akira almost laughed. “Miladia Flowerwarrior Okugokena is the daughter of the leader of the Okugokena goliath tribe, sort of like their princess. That is, before her father was assassinated. The power vacuum created by his death has caused anarchy and chaos to break out among several tribes. Their leaders all wish to topple each other in order to take his seat, and his former associates would like to as well. Miladia is the rightful heir, making her a major threat to all of them as long as she remains alive. So now she is on the run, hoping to one day return and restore peace. While in hiding, she has been training to become a better diplomat. Whether her negotiations involve an axe or not is really up to those who dare cross her!”

The only sound in the room was Hifumi rapidly adding that to the extensive lore document she and Goro had been working on together.

Akira wondered how willing Takemi would be to drive over with several tranquilizer darts. Or if perhaps Iwai was a better person to ask about that.

The more he mulled over it the more he was confronted with the fact that his choices of friends were really fucking weird for a teenage boy, and they definitely made him seem even more like a troublesome delinquent. And yet the pristine idol detective had still wound up being infinitely shadier than him. At this point it almost felt like a competition to see how alarmed they could make each other.

Despite not even being a contender, Haru was clearly winning.

“I’m glad she’s on our side,” Akira said with a friendly laugh, nudging Goro with his elbow to resurrect him after his gruesome death by glaring. “I would hate to be on the wrong end of that axe.”

Haru sipped her tea neutrally. Akira wouldn’t be shocked to learn that there were poisonous herbs in it that she'd built up an immunity to. If she were to weaponize her unassuming appearance, she would surely do it with class.

“As you should!” she said with a giggle. “You’ve seen me wield one. I can only imagine the destruction someone taller than me could cause with that weapon in her hands.”

She held up her character design sheet. The colored pencils gave it a bit more class than Ryuji’s drawing, but it was still evident that she was no artist. But the message got across all the same. A pastel barbarian with blood stains on her fluffy fur collar and a baby pink axe. Scary shit.

Goro’s voice was a bit tight when he spoke again. “You certainly fulfilled the role of our heavy hitter.” He cleared his throat. “Well done.”

Before he even finished talking, Futaba popped out of her seat. “Ok! My turn now! I’m going in for the follow up attack.” She flipped through her folder, placed her sheet on the table, and then pulled out a different paper which she clutched to her chest secretively.

Hifumi giggled. “I’m glad we’re starting combat early on. This’ll be an exciting campaign.”

“You betcha!” Futaba exclaimed. “I even created the indisputable best girl, special for the occasion.”

“I don’t know,” Akira teased. “For the sake of my life, I’d say Miladia is best girl. For the sake of my life and my relationship, I’d say Goro’s character is best girl.”

“My character is male, you twat,” Goro corrected.

Akira shrugged. “Still best girl.”

“Silence, homos!” Futaba stomped her foot. “Do you want a big titty goth gf or not?”

“I’m gay,” Goro said.

“Oh! I do!” Haru said.

“Well too bad, she’s not goth,” Futaba said. “But her tits are plenty big. Behold!”

Futaba turned her paper around and held it up in the air like she was displaying her child, the future heir to her tricked-out gamer chair. From the lines alone, Akira could tell she had forced Yusuke to draw this at gunpoint. The fact that the artist looked moments away from collapsing into another grief-stricken monologue about artistry only confirmed this as fact.

Her character looked like a mix of a monk and a sailor scout. But sexier. The gratuitousness of it almost made Akira feel like he’d failed on his quest to create the most seductive being imaginable. But he’d live, his very gay target audience wouldn’t be interested in any of Futaba’s tropes anyway.

“This is Konami,” Futaba said. “She’s part of a religion called Emelgee, where all the members– called Emelgites– worship their lord and savior: Big Chungus.”

Akira looked at Goro and did not think about the anti-balding serum his boyfriend was secretly hiding behind all of his other products.

“All wee little Emelgites are baptized with Mountain Dew. Due to its radioactive properties, a solid portion of Emelgites gain the potential for healing abilities, which are strengthened by their devotion to the Chungus. Konami is a big Chungus stan, so she’s thriving.”

“Are you implying that within this realm of fantasy, there are people selling that putrid unnatural substance?” Goro asked.

Futaba scoffed. “No, silly! There’s a whole waterfall of it! If you bottle it up, it acts like holy water. Great for casting out dark forces and stuff. And a decent last resort for dehydration.”

Ryuji was mouthing “Emelgee” repeatedly to himself, then it hit him. “Oh! Like MLG! I get it!”

Goro scrunched his face up. “The what?”

“Use google, old man,” Futaba said. Akira failed to suppress a little snicker. “As I was saying, Big Chungus is a god of carrot harvest and laughter. Konami and other Emelgite clerics heal people but imprinting his teachings into their minds to make them laugh. Laughter is the best medicine, after all.”

“That’s unexpectedly wholesome,” Hifumi mused. She peered over at the map and nodded. “I think I know where I’m placing the fountain.”

Akira got the feeling that maybe they were supposed to make all the world building sync up prior to actually starting the campaign. Their characters should have been made to fit into Hifumi’s world, she shouldn’t be changing up her world to fit their characters.

Then again, that could only be expected given this crowd. Of course they’d get the whole process backwards. They tended to avoid protocol like it was a life-threatening virus. Usually Goro would be opposed, but Akira got the feeling that even with all of his research he still had absolutely no clue what the hell he was doing. His ability to fake it was admirable at least.

“I have to agree,” Goro said, crossing his arms and pointedly avoiding Futaba’s attempt at a cute anime face. “...I don’t suppose you have any of these ‘teachings’ you speak of on hand for when they are needed.”

Futaba grinned. “Mwehehe. My memes are so good that they’ll cure your depression, unlike Ryuji’s. Just you wait!”

“Hey!” Ryuji protested. “Don’t you have to roll for good memes or some shit?”

Futaba looked to Hifumi expectantly, imploring her to give some good news with her eyes. Hifumi was unaffected by her pleading. “Yes. As with Akira’s pick-up lines, the quality of your memes is determined by the dice. A good roll will get you one so comical that the recipient of your healing falls out of their seat or almost pees their pants. A truly horrible roll will summon a joke that is severely outdated, repetitive, and overall stale. That might even make your healing work in reverse.”

With a pout, Futaba plopped back into her chair. “Stupid RNG, always messing me up.”

They all waited for her to elaborate, but the revelation that her control over her memes was limited had killed her spirit. Akira turned towards Goro and squeezed his hand under the table.

“Welp. You’re up, honey. I’m prepared to be wooed,” Akira said.

“I don’t need to employ such cheap tactics to advance,” Goro said. Sure, Mr. Cutesy Charming Lovable Detective Prince. Nothing cheap about that whole shtick.

(Lucky for him, he really didn’t need those tactics. Akira preferred him without them.)

Chronically nerdy as he was, Goro straightened his tie and stood up like he was preparing to give the most fire powerpoint presentation in the history of all middle schools ever. Teachers around the world would clamour to invent a letter grade higher than the coveted A+, seeing as Goro proved it to be insufficient to categorize his work.

His unnecessary professionalism wasn’t the only thing strengthening his grade. Akira knew that face quite well. That was the oversharing face. And when you make your presentations personal, it makes the teacher seem like a total dick if they don’t give you a good score.

Goro cleared his throat and began to speak with his chest puffed out pridefully. “The kingdom of the elves is ruled by a conniving master manipulator. To the masses, he assumes the front of a pleasant and just ruler with a winning smile. But beneath that facade lies an inner darkness. Those who know of it refuse to speak out in fear of losing their heads.”

“Hold up,” Ryuji said. “You made yourself king? That’s totally overpowered!” Mutters of agreement ensued.

With TV-ready composure, Goro smiled and let out a laugh that teetered closer to being deranged than genuine. “Oh, no. That’s my father.”

If the two weeks Goro had spent manically banging out a backstory on his computer had actually been spent venting out his daddy issues in a fictionalized manner, then...well...frankly that would not be shocking in the slightest. Maybe the sheer bitterness would be impressive on someone else, but nah.

Just everyday Akechi.

His voice was laced with venom as he continued on. “The unfortunate result of the king’s dark deeds is the half-elven prince, Hubys Darksight. His human mother had been kept from revealing the truth of her son’s lineage to the public through threats and blackmail. But with her dying breath, she entrusted the truth to Darksight. Learning of this from royal spies, who likely were the assassins behind her demise, the king banished him immediately, leaving him to fend for himself in a world that tends to be unkind to people of mixed blood.”

Akira had to hand it to him, he’d at least done a very good job translating his trauma into a fantasy setting. If the majority of people present hadn’t also attended his most public mental breakdown ever, they would’ve just thought it was a very well thought-out backstory. Hifumi, blissfully ignorant of the details, seemed pleased.

“Perhaps it would have been easier for him to go down complacently and start a quiet life separate from the unfortunateness of his conception. But Darksight wouldn’t go down that easily.” Another laugh, this one more concerning than the last. Hoo boy. “All this time, he’s been lurking in the shadows, just waiting for the perfect moment to strike! The training he’s gone through as a powerful warlock will pay off soon enough. And when his chance finally arrives, his father will rue the day he ever banished him. The king will burn, and vengeance will be mine!”

If they were going to get a noise complaint at any point today, it’d probably be now. For the sake of humanity, Akira should’ve probably double checked to make sure Goro’s phone didn’t still have the MetaNav on it. Just in case.

To no one’s shock, cackling ensued. All of Goro’s good school boy posture had been suplexed through the floor. Akira would never understand how the hell he stood diagonally like that.

“Wow,” Futaba said. “That is the most gratuitous self-insert I have ever seen. And I had a Sonic phase in middle school.”

Goro went vertical again. His spine probably sighed in relief. “How dare you compare my work to deviantart trash! My drawing looks nothing like me.”

Akira stared up at him with big doe eyes, waiting to lay his eyes on the man he’d be seducing for the next few hours. The fact that Hubys supposedly looked nothing like Goro piqued his interest further, since the other characters at least tended to take on similar hair lines to their corresponding players.

And thus, the hair line was the first thing Akira immediately noticed when Goro presented his drawing to the class. Dark bangs completely covered one of Hubys’s eyes. The other side of his face was still framed by shorter hair in the same way Goro’s was, which drew more attention to the pointed elf ears and striped horns. And lo and behold, there was not a mullet in sight. Truly inspirational.

“Well, he’s definitely buffer than you,” Ryuji said. That was true. Hugging Goro felt like embracing a mix of a shopping cart and a really restless worm. Hugging Hubys would feel more like hugging a lean tree.

The fact that muscle definition was discernible in the first place spoke volumes about Goro’s artistic abilities. He was no Yusuke, but he had a solid grip on human anatomy, enough to successfully pull off a slightly more stylized look while remaining accurate. And Akira knew he was too prideful to copy from a character design template online like he had.

With some amusement, Akira noted that the inside of the cloak Goro had drawn was lined with a black and white striped fabric. The clasp was a braid tied from a red string. Real subtle.

“Well now you made the rest of us look bad for just drawing our ideal selves,” Futaba complained. “Yusuke even made himself a fox boy, dammit.”

Before Futaba could get to the point where Goro stopped understanding her internet culture jokes, Hifumi put a firm stop to the incredibly long character introductions and set the actual game in motion. Akira saw Morgana sneak into the room and hop on the counter to observe from a safe distance. It might’ve been a good idea to look up if popcorn is safe from magical cats, because if so then Akira felt obligated to prepare him for the incoming circus.

“Our journey begins within a humble tavern, populated by people from all walks of life who seek refuge within its walls,” Hifumi began. Either she's memorized this or she was coming up with her whole narration on the spot, because she was making a point of maintaining eye contact with her tributes. Very impressive either way. “No one here could possibly know that they are moments away from witnessing the assembly of the team that will either save their world or lead it to ruin.”

Yeesh. Talk of ruin still gave Akira the heebie jeebies. Damn that manipulative overblown godly cup fuck.

“Tell me, dear champions,” she prompted, “what brings you all here?”

“Spreading the word of the Chungus,” Futaba declared. “The Emelgee always send Konami because people pay attention to her.”

“Ren’s doing his singing job and being sad that this cloaked lady is taking all of his tips away,” Akira said, ruffling her hair playfully while she squealed in protest.

“Hey! It’s not like they’re paying me. I’m a non-profit waifu.”

“You’re a distraction.”

Haru interrupted their sibling squabbles with, “Miladia is here hiding from the entire clans and armies who want her dead!”

“Well, don’t worry, princess!” Ryuji I-ran-in-front-of-a-moving-car-to-help-Makoto Sakamoto said. “To make up for the property damage that he kinda caused in here during a fight, Brent is taking the Boss’s request to be a bodyguard and stop all sorts of fighting!”

Akira no doubt that every time Ryuji said “Brent” it was pushing Goro’s hairline back half a millimeter. The long bangs would only save him for so long.

Almost in retaliation, Goro replied, “You may be of use to the Boss soon then. Hubys is taking a seat at the counter, surely a desirable one for some of the heavy drinkers.”

Hifumi scrolled through her document. “Which seat, Akechi-san?”

“The second closest to the right.” The quick response made Akira smile to himself. His usual seat at Leblanc. Cute.

Hifumi’s smile was far more sinister. “Excellent. That’ll be of use to me. Kitagawa-kun?”

Yusuke looked up from the entirely new canvas that he was sketching on. Had he not known Yusuke any better, Akira likely would have thought it rude that he wasn’t paying attention. But despite Yusuke’s height, social cues still never failed to soar above his head.

“I’m lost,” Yusuke replied without looking up. Akira legitimately couldn’t tell if that was his intended answer or an expression of his confusion.

Hifumi cleared her throat and continued the advancement of the story. “The seat which Hubys has claimed belongs to the leader of a local gang of thugs who frequent the bar, Mette Bohng. The Boss has managed to keep them calm only by ensuring that the leader’s seat is always reserved from him at happy hour. The clock strikes and he enters. He is a knight who was banned from his post for inciting violence. And now, Hubys Darksight, he approaches you with a longsword slung over his shoulder. What do you do?”

Goro smirked, his eyes narrowing playfully. “I don’t see anyone’s name on it. Why should I yield when I was here first?” He picked up the dice and dropped them on the table. The results only boosted his confidence. Akira wished he had that sort of luck a few minutes ago.

“So you choose war,” Hifumi declared. “Very well. You’re very useful for fast plot development, Akechi-kun.”

“I don’t back down easily.”

Coming from the guy who was stubborn about something as menial as letting Akira do their dishes for once (Goro likely meant to compensate for his inability to contribute to meal-cooking, which was sort of sweet), that followed.

“Mette is appalled by your impudence. He leans very close to your face and you can smell his breath. It reeks of booze. He says do you know who I am?” Hifumi said, the tone of her voice aptly portraying a character which the pitch of her voice could not.

“Frankly, no.” Goro replied. “The seat right next to me is free.”

“That seat has one short leg.”

“Boo hoo. It’s a chair. Grow up.”

Hifumi smiled and gestured towards the dice. “Perform a dexterity check to see if your agility can get you out of the mess your mouth has caused.”

The dice clinked against the wood. Goro’s cocky grin turned into a grimace. “Shit.”

“Hubys, caught up in his hubris, fails to foresee the calloused hand lunging for his throat. Chaos erupts as soon as onlookers start to notice the incoming violence.” Hifumi looked over the rest of them. “Do you flee? Do you attempt to de-escalate the situation? Or do you bring about a full-on brawl?”

“Ooh!” Futaba raised her hand like she was in nerd school. “I’ve got a plan. I’ll try to persuade Mette to let this elf twink go by educating him through the teachings of our Lord and Chungus.”

“I’m not a twink,” Goro said.

Futaba stuck her tongue out. “Lies! Anyway, what’ve I gotta do to convert ol’ scary here to my meme cult?”

“A persuasion check,” Hifumi replied. “High difficulty.”

“What?!”

Hifumi shrugged. “Some men believe in nothing. But try as you will. You might get lucky.”

Futaba tossed the dice in the air with such fervor that one of them rolled right off of the table. She vanished from sight, presumably to see what it said. When she reappeared, it was with a sympathetic wince. “Sorry, Akechi. You’re screwed. Have fun getting killed off in the first turn.”

Akira spoke up. “Hey. Don’t be so quick to plan the funeral. Ren decides that even when he’s choking and purple in the face, the twink is pretty cute. Using a little magic to help him out wouldn’t be a chip off of Ren’s shoulder.”

Goro shook his head and covered his mouth. Akira knew it was to hide a fond smile. “You’re impossibly sappy. It’s almost sickening.”

“You better get vaccinated then because I’m never stopping.” Akira stood up and dropped the dice on the table with confidence. The results put a smirk on his face. “Checkmate. It’s time to unleash my secret weapon.”

Within his reach was a weapon of immense power. If he’d let Goro know of it before now, he undoubtedly would’ve done everything within his abilities to prevent Akira from unleashing his gifts onto their fantasy world. But he was a master of stealth, so much so that Goro didn’t notice him stealing one of his socks every day until the drawer was only mismatched pairs.

Akira shoved a hand into his pocket, his fingers gripping plastic. This was no mere cheap toy, it was a vessel of great strength. And right now, it was going to save a cute goth elf from death by strangulation.

“Ren leaps onto one of the nearby empty tables and reveals his instrument of choice.” Akira took the real world equivalent out of his pocket and held it up high. “His magical flute.”

Goro narrowed his eyes. “That’s a kazoo.”

“His flute was crafted by a bunch of nice old artisan ladies who told him of their own seductive conquests back in the day. They imbued it with their power, forging an instrument that no mortal creature can resist.”

“Oh, yeah! Didn’t you get that from the gift store when we went to Hawaii?” Ryuji asked. “Good times.”

“You went to a foriegn country and you bought that cheap toy as your souvenir?” Goro’s eyebrows were furrowed so intensely that they appeared to be on the cusp of merging into one. Hey, Goro managed to win Akira over with that mullet, maybe he’d make the unibrow work.

“I’m about to save your life, asshole.” Akira leaned back in his chair and sighed melodramatically. “I’m so underappreciated.”

“Don’t weaken the legs on our chairs.”

Akira sat upright and winced apologetically. He took Goro’s eye roll as an accepted apology. “Anyway, as I was saying…” Akira put the kazoo in his mouth and started playing some super sexy jazz tune he’d heard a few days ago.

“Enchanted by your song, Mette drops Hubys and gives Ren all of his attention,” Hifumi said. “Akechi-san, you are immobilized for the time being.” Goro frowned and slumped in his chair.

The bout came to a close quickly when Ryuji/Brent and Haru/Miladia used Akira’s distraction as a chance to strike. When asked what he wished to do, Yusuke simply said he wanted to evaluate the aura of the individuals present in this gruesome scene. Yusuke might’ve ended up being more useful in battle as a lobster than a human at this rate.

“Well done,” Hifumi said. “None of you have died yet. But the challenges will get harder from here. The Boss emerges from the back room and surveys the mess. You all fear that he will become angry with you for it, particularly the purple-faced Hubys. Luckily for all of you, he simply laughs.”

After clearing her throat, Hifumi’s voice took on a whole different character. “Heh. Quite the mess, huh? But you all made a pretty good team.” She turned to Akira. “Ren. To tell you the truth, I’ve been keeping you around because I’ve heard some rumors of dark forces gathering. I saw your potential, thought I could take you in and teach you a thing or two and ultimately prepare you to save all of us.”

“That’s a lot of pressure, Boss,” Akira said. He got some major deja vu.

“Well, it wasn’t like I would send you off to the gates of Hell alone and unprepared. But the clock is ticking and this whole lot looks like they’ve got nothing better to do.” She stood up and pointed at a spot on the map. “Should you agree, this will be your next obstacle.”

“Hey!” Futaba exclaimed. “My mountain dew fountain!”

“Is that radioactive substance poisoning the earth?” Goro asked with the utmost seriousness.

Hifumi shook her head. “No, but in Konami’s absence it has been invaded by slime monsters who are attempting to merge with it, gaining its healing properties.”

“No!” Futaba gasped, overly theatrical. “Whatever shall I do without my Mountain Dew!”

“I don’t consume any sugar because I can’t pay for the dentist,” Yusuke blurted out. It was probably the first thing he’d said since announcing that he was lost.

After breezing through some very easy ability checks for the successfulness of their bar clean-up efforts, their merry little band of six combat-trained idiots ventured towards the fountain to defeat the slimes.

The little pieces meant to represent their characters were pushed slightly forward. Without hesitation, Hifumi began her next narration. “You all arrive at the Emelgee Holy Fountain, a natural waterfall overflowing with a potent green substance. It’s hidden behind a large thicket of bushes, likely to conceal it from those who wish to abuse its power. Unfortunately, it seems that the bushes were no match for the slimes. Goopy bits of their forms wriggle aimlessly on the ground, easily crushed beneath your boots. How do you proceed?”

“We can just slice through the bushes, right?” Ryuji asked. “Then BAM! Bye bye, slimes.”

“Or we could be more tactful and ambush the enemy from behind,” Goro argued. “That’s how you all managed to stay alive as the Phantom Thieves, no?”

Akira wondered which approach Goro had taken in his own private work in the Metaverse. Being only one person, sneaking would be smart, but Goro’s battle style seemed to lend itself more to unhinged chaos. As did his play style in this game. Impulsive and petty.

“I propose a compromise!” Haru said. She leaned forward and split their pieces in half surrounding the waterfall. “Brent and Maladia can go straight through the bushes since we’ll most likely hold our own just fine. Konami goes with us because we’ll probably take more damage than the other team. Then Ren, Hubys, and Inari will sneak in on the other side while the slimes are occupied!”

As dungeon master, Hifumi wasn’t allowed to say whether that was a sound strategic approach or not, but Akira caught the fleeting smile that crossed her. That was the face she made before she was about to destroy Akira in shogi with a move so thought-out that it would make him cry. Which led him to believe that Haru’s plan was either excellent or they were about to get demolished.

All Hifumi said was, “Your strength stats are more than adequate to destroy the bushes with your weapons, but you do still need to roll.”

The dice bounced around and the bushes got demolished. Ryuji whooped victoriously and was quick to move his and Haru’s pieces forward. Which just left the rest of them.

“The alternate route to get to the waterfall is a bit treacherous,” Hifumi said. “There are three pseudo-trails you could take. If one of you advances on a path, it will become easier for the next person to follow you. Take your pick.”

Akira put his finger to his chin, then quickly dropped the pose when he saw Goro doing the exact same thing. Hm. That was kinda gay.

“Yusuke,” Akira said, “you’re the most adjusted to the terrain of the woods, so I think you should go first. It’ll be even better if you shapeshift.”

Yusuke replied, “Sure.” And then his brain re-entered the realm of art, never to return to this mortal plane again. That was a bit inconvenient.

Goro groaned. “I’ll go first. Path two.” He chucked the dice to the ground and looked at Hifumi with expectant eyes.

“You tripped over a log,” she said.

“What?!” Goro gestured to the dice. “I rolled an 18!”

“It’s a very big log. You rushed into things.”

Before Goro could start going on a tirade, Akira gently put a hand over his mouth and rolled for himself. “Path two sucks, I’m going for path three.”

“You get through with ease and enter the battlefield where your friends are already slicing through slimes.”

Something bit Akira’s hand. What the fuck? “Goro, what is wrong with you?” he asked, pulling his hand away to spare it from further chomping.

“Oh, Akira. Many, many things.” Goro looked at his little piece tipped over on the map and grimaced. “This is insulting. I can’t play the game.”

“Two very impulsive decisions in a row cost you, Akechi-kun.” Hifumi shrugged. “That’s just how the game works.”

A brief glance at Goro was long enough to understand the magnitude of his fury at this turn of events. Surely being foiled by a mere log felt equally as insulting as the revelation of the infamous pancakes blunder. Akira personally found the latter a bit more tragically comical, not just because of the stakes but because the whole downfall of a plan that Goro had been enacting for two traumatic years was triggered by an innocent attempt at socializing with people his age. Ouch.

Yusuke followed Akira, leading both of their characters to the clearing where everyone except Goro was dealing with the slimes. Haru chopped one in half, splitting it into two smaller entities. Weak, but with a “smaller hitbox,” as Futaba explained it. Despite the ease with which the minion slimes were sliced, their larger leader remained unscathed and was floating in the Mountain Dew waterfall like a round ice cube.

Even if one of them were to give the slime a good bonk over the head, that would not stop it from continuing to soak up Mountain Dew like a gooey sponge. If they wished to nip the bud at the head, it would require drawing the slime out of the water.

“I propose that I draw it out through aggressive negotiations,” Haru said cordially, the epitome of diplomacy.

“If I weren’t being thwarted by a log I could curse it or something,” Goro grumbled.

Akira thought back several months to days spent crashing Morgana into the walls of Mementos. The easiest way– however gross it was– to lure a shadow closer and cease its attacks was to have Ann pose like she was doing a high profile magazine. Nothing ever got all that close to her though, as soon as their guards were down she had drawn her whip and turned them into shadow spaghetti.

Admittedly, Akira might have tried this himself a few times. In Maruki’s palace. With Goro. Unfortunately, his sexy stance had been met with nothing but a feral corvid man telling him to “PAY ATTENTION, JOKER” every single time.

But Goro couldn’t yell at him now. Goro tripped over a fucking log. And Ren’s sexy levels outdid even Joker’s by design.

The dice were cool in his hands. The persuasion check was in motion. They bounced on the board– just next to Goro’s fallen character– and Akira smirked.

“Ren tugs down the chest cut-out on his outfit for no particular reason and poses in a way that happens to emphasize his killer legs. These actions seduce the king slime, making the power of the waterfall seem irrelevant in comparison to basking in the presence of this incredibly handsome fellow.”

Goro slammed a hand down on the table, shaking it but not causing any of the other players to fall. This particular detail seemed to irk him. “No.”

“What do you mean ‘no’?” Akira asked.

He got no answer. Goro got out of his seat and ran towards their bedroom. The rest of them just kind of stared at each other, awaiting the incoming massacre. In the palpable silence, crashing noises could be heard coming from down the hall.

“So,” Ryuji said, “Haru, I bet you one hundred thousand yen that he’s getting a chainsaw.”

Without hesitation, Haru took out her wallet. “Sure!”

When Goro reappeared, it was not with a chainsaw. Or any weapon for that matter.

The rickety wheels of a rolling dry-erase board accompanied him, a red marker clenched between his teeth and a blue one stuffed haphazardly in his tie. Akira would laugh if these visual cues combined didn’t all chalk up to him being in grave danger.

Ryuji opened his wallet and sighed. “I’m screwed.”

“Where the hell did you get that? We don’t own a whiteboard,” Akira said.

Goro smirked. “Oh, but we do, Joker. It’s been stored in our closet for months now.” His satisfaction dissolved into disdain in the same time it took for him to pop the cap off of one of the markers. “But you wouldn’t know that, would you? Because I spend all my precious time folding the laundry neatly for you, only for you to never hang it up! You always take your clothes directly from the basket, which is why you wear the same two pairs of pants every day and why you never saw the fucking whiteboard!”

The fact that out of the five other people involved, only Haru and Hifumi gave Akira a weird look spoke volumes about how he was a magnet for fellow disasters. While he shrunk a smidge under their stares, Goro rolled up his sleeves and began scribbling furiously on the white board.

To Akira’s horror, those scribbles were starting to look like math equations. And graphs. Yes, Dungeons and Dragons requires a bit of math, but that’s mostly simple addition. He did just fine in school, but he did not come to his own kitchen table mentally prepared to deal with math of any degree of complexity. Frankly, he didn’t even know where Goro was pulling these numbers from. It was completely possible that he was making them up but he believed they were all stupid enough to assume what he was doing made sense.

With violent intent, Goro slammed his finger into the board, smudging some of the writing with it. His tie was still loose from holding the marker. To be honest, Akira would kind of be digging the lightly tousled look under other circumstances.

“Logically speaking, a higher roll should generally generate more beneficial results, yes?” Goro began. “But look! The rate at which these results improve is far from equal! Quite the opposite.”

“You need more data to prove that,” Futaba interjected. “You’ve rolled what, six times maximum?”

Goro ignored her. “Akira rolls a twenty and seduces a monster. I roll an eighteen and I trip over a fucking log that immobilizes me for the rest of the fucking turn! That doesn’t make any sense! Why does the minimal margin of two make me so drastically inferior?”

“It’s a big log and his charm modifier is much higher than your dexterity modifier,” Hifumi explained.

Akira summoned his backup kazoo from his pocket and tooted out a sexy little bard tune. Goro looked seconds away from crushing the plastic with his glare alone.

“Dude, quit talking in riddles and just get on with it. You goofed up,” Ryuji said. Ironic how the math scared him when the rule book– horrifically thick and with torturously tiny text– was right in front of him. Not even the bookworms in the room had managed to suffer through the whole thing.

“I will not concede to a man who doesn’t hang up his clothes and brings George Michael’s 1984 pop hit ‘Careless Whisper’ into a realm of fantasy!” Goro declared. “It’s blasphemy!”

He whacked the whiteboard for dramatic effect, which only rubbed more of his writing off. Even with the gaps, Akira realized that each and every one of his equations was just an overly complex way to prove that the difference between eighteen and twenty was two. Kind of impressive how he fooled them into thinking he had a more complicated point.

“If Mountain Dew is canon, then why can’t ‘Careless Whisper’ be?” Akira challenged. Poking the angry bear was fun sometimes. Especially when that bear was actually a twink who at least two people in this room could easily bench press. He’d seen Haru garden before. Her blouses held lots of secrets.

“Hey! Don’t bring me and my expertly crafted lore into your lovers’ quarrels,” Futaba said. “They always end with you two sucking face anyway.”

“I have a multitude of issues with Futaba-chan’s lore, but due to some..complications I am now morally inclined to let her have her way in every regard until the soil reclaims my body at long last,” Goro said.

Welp. That was awkward. Akira glanced at the clock hanging on their wall. They needed to get back into the action before it got so late that he’d feel uncomfortable letting his friends walk home alone at night.

“I’ll pick a different song if you put the whiteboard away and sit back down,” Akira offered. “I might even consider just tooting out one sad little note whenever I use my irresistible charms. If it charms you enough, then that’s all that matters to me.”

Futaba mimed retching violently into the hood of her sweatshirt. Thank you for that, Futaba.

“You’re infuriating.” Goro pushed the whiteboard down the hall and swiped the kazoo from Akira’s hand. “I’m revoking this until it is actually necessary for you to use it again.”

“Maybe you’d change your tune if I charmed your arch nemesis– the dreaded log– into simply rolling away,” Akira suggested cheekily.

“Hitting on inanimate objects will not improve my opinion of you.”

Thanks to Akira’s kazoo wizardry, the king of the slimes was lured out of the waterfall and subjected to a very violent beating. Goro even got to contribute to the brutality once Hubys recovered from his fall. Instead of showing off his prowess with dark magic, he simply crushed the remains of the slimes under his boots until any remaining ones were too microscopically small to pose a threat. Not ideal, but better than being strangled again.

With the fountains secured, their ragtag group of mystical idiots advanced towards land occupied by a gang of orcs. Getting on good terms with their leader would ensure access to an army when the time came for them to fight the darkness referenced by the Boss.

“His Highness demands that you prove yourselves by taking down a beast that has been tormenting their people. It takes on a form resembling a large rodent, yet it is armored not unlike an armadillo,” Hifumi explained. “In the dead of night, it prowls into the villages and steals babies straight from their cribs. None have gotten close enough to the creature to verify if the beast has been eating the orc babies or otherwise harming them, but there are rumors of it dwelling in a cave by these cliffs.” She pointed to a location not so far from their current one on the map.

“Wait a minute,” Ryuji objected. “So, a bunch of big buff orcs couldn’t take this thing down, but His Highness wants us to?”

Hifumi nodded. There was a devious twinkle in her eye. “Perhaps it is a suicide mission. However, that would only make it all the more impressive if you emerged victorious. The loyalty of this orc army would be practically guaranteed.”

Haru clasped her hands together. “We will parade its carcass through the streets as a show of our strength and determination.” Everyone except Goro appeared vaguely disturbed by that image. And even Goro didn’t seem particularly pleased by it either.

Before proceeding to the cave, they received some improved gear from the local merchants who did very little to dissuade their worries that this bloated rodent would cut their whole campaign short by feasting on their heads. Nice people.

However, one weeping, seven foot tall widow offered a helpful tidbit when lovable himbo Brent offered his condolences. She watched the monster take her baby away and ran after it, but found herself unarmed and unable to continue. While this loss was crushing, she did notice a gap in the plates of its “armor” in the neck area.

“See guys, the best way to win a fight is to talk to sad people in the streets,” Ryuji said.

“That could purely be a red herring,” Goro argued. “Togo-san is surely intelligent and devious enough to try leading us astray like that. Targeting that potential weakness is a fine idea, but it does not guarantee that we escape with our lives. The skin beneath the plates could be tougher than you anticipate.”

“Uh. It’s a rodent. I think we’ll be okay, bro.”

“I am not your brother.”

“Quiet!” Hifumi yelled suddenly. Akira had never heard her voice go above the usual conspiratorial whisper he’d come to associate with her. A whisper which returned as soon as she’d successfully gained everyone’s attention. “Be careful, the beast may hear your bickering and decide that the two of you are senselessly babbling just as babies do.”

Goro made a sound like a bird was stuck in his esophagus. “Excuse me? Sakamoto, sure, but are you implying that I act like a toddler?”

Hifumi shrugged. “The rodent beast said it. Not me.” Her lightheartedness retreated as quickly as it arrived, her voice lowering as she continued her narration. “Proceed with caution. It may be onto your scent by now.”

Yusuke looked up from his drawing. “The supposed weak spot is a small area, yes? Then I shall attack it.”

“Damn, you know it’s serious when Yusuke decides to play,” Ryuji said.

“Inari approaches the rumored location of their foe. The sounds of the sea nearby ring in his ears. Emboldened by his connection to the ocean and its indescribable splendor, he unleashes his true power!” Yusuke proclaimed.

This was it. The moment they’d all silently been anticipating. The glorious manifestation of the lobster. Ryuji and Futaba cheered like they were spectating a sports event while Goro looked like his team just lost.

“The beast emerges from the darkness,” Hifumi announced, placing a larger piece onto their map. “It towers over even Miladia and screeches loudly.”

“Kitagawa-kun, you won’t be able to get close enough to the beast to pinch its neck without being easily swatted away,” Goro protested. “A projectile would be far more effective and have a lower risk.”

Yusuke rolled the dice and bulldozed over his objections. “It is true that Inari’s lobster form is small, but that also means it is akin to a single eyelash on a portrait of a human face. Attention is drawn away from such details by the eye itself, vibrant and ripe with life. Each stroke of dark paint is only an ornament to the larger image. A vital one, yes, but that is not what will stick with the beholder.”

Goro looked to Hifumi pleadingly and she just smiled. “Kitagawa-kun has the agility to pull it off. But whether he has the strength to pierce the beast’s skin remains to be seen.”

After two consecutive battles of being rendered useless by his chaotic behavior, Akira suspected that Goro wanted Yusuke to fail just so he could exploit that weakness himself. He didn’t know what the magic arsenal specifically included, but dark arrows of sorts seemed likely. Real life Goro was a cognitive hitman after all. And despite his design choices and claims otherwise, he clearly put just as much of himself into his character as the rest of them did– if not more.

“Inari grabs onto the gargantuan rodent’s flesh with his pincers. The moonlight shines on his magnificent crustacean form. If the monster bleeds, it shall only seem like a new coat of paint on nature’s crimson armor,” Yusuke narrated.

“Its blood is blue, actually,” Hifumi interjected. “Though, your characters don’t know that yet.”

“Ah! Then it shall become purple! How splendid!” Yusuke rolled again to test the strength of his attack. His face fell. “Well, I suppose you were right, Akechi-kun. This would have been more effective against the small slimes.”

Yusuke seemed to brace himself for Goro’s snarky, pretentious rant about how everyone should listen to him more often because he couldn’t have survived the Metaverse alone for two years if he was an idiot so obviously he’s gained a knack for battle strategy.

Instead, Goro sighed. “No. Crushing those slimes beneath my heels was the only contribution to battle I’ve been able to make this entire fucking game. Tell me, Togo-san, has the beast detected him yet?”

Hifumi shook her head. “Mouse anatomy does not allow one to get a good look at one’s neck. Inari seems sort of like an itch that it can’t scratch right now. But if the itch persists too long, it will likely detect the source eventually.”

“So you have another chance,” Goro concluded. Who knew a face of practiced neutrality could seem so intimidating. “Use it wisely.”

Akira couldn’t help but smile. Aww. Character growth was such a beautiful thing.

The second roll just barely pushed Yusuke over the edge. Hifumi seemed surprised. Goro just smirked. “I recall saying you could beat mice like that, did I not?” Of course he still had to always be right.

Haru furrowed her brow. “Didn’t you say Yusuke would only win because mice are small?”

Goro didn’t respond. Even if he intended to, Hifumi left him no room to speak. “Inari pierces through the beast’s flesh, causing it to howl in pain and collapse. It is certainly not dead, but it is far more open to attack than it would have been otherwise.”

“I’ll slit its throat,” Haru said cheerfully, carrying the same tone one would use when volunteering to hand out papers in class. “The body might be too heavy to drag around town, but just the severed head should be no problem!”

Ryuji made a sour face. “I might have to roll strength to keep myself from throwing up in my mouth.”

“While you’re doing that, can I actually contribute to a battle now?” Goro asked. “Combat is far less interesting as a spectator event.”

Perhaps the dice rewarded him for being nice. Just as Akira thought, Goro took that chance to launch sharp dark magic at the fallen creature. While there was no visual aid, Akira kind of imagined the spooky particles looking kind of like blobs of grape soda.

In the end, they emerged victorious. And the orcs didn’t find Miladia’s severed rat head as frightening as the other players did. In fact, their leader decided that it would be stuffed and mounted on the wall. How pleasant.

But more importantly, no fictional babies were harmed in the making of this campaign. They were all just kind of sitting in the cave. Akira assumed that Hifumi did this because she wanted the monster to be unarguably malicious but still didn’t want any babies getting killed.

Now they had an army. But the sun was beginning to set in the sky. Hifumi scrolled down a lot in her plot document and sighed, her shoulders sagging.

“I had a lot more planned, but it’s getting late and I’m sure none of you are big fans of cliffhangers. So, we are skipping ahead to the second to last battle for the sake of time. Award yourselves fifteen more levels each and take note of new abilities accordingly,” she ordered.

They all took a moment to scrawl some notes on their character sheets. Akira was pleased to note that many of his new spells gave him the ability to boost the stats of his companions. His actual charm spells didn’t seem to be impressing his beloved all that much, but surely it would be a romantic gesture if his role in all of this was to grant Goro additional strength and defensive abilities.

“Before you take on the darkness itself, there is one final task you must complete,” Hifumi said. “There are rumors that one ruler plans to aid the malevolent forces once their day of reckoning arrives. Likely it’s a ploy by that leader to save his own skin and establish a place for himself in the new destructive world that shall be born from the chaos. That man is the king of the elves, Hubys’s father. By daylight, he masquerades as one of them. In reality, he is a dark elf– a trait which is far more visible in his half-human son. The elves believe that the man seated upon their throne is one imbued with light. They could not be more wrong.”

“That manipulative piece of shit,” Goro growled. “I think we should just kill him.”

“Hold on, Mister Vengeance,” Futaba said. “The elves aren’t gonna be cool with us if we K.O. their leader! I say we lurk around getting the dirt on him and then leak it to the elven public!”

“He has completely brainwashed them and they’ll believe any nonsense he says,” Goro argued. “He’s far too dangerous to be left alive.”

“So uh. Does the king have a name or are we just gonna call him Shido?” Ryuji asked.

The first thing Akira thought of was “Shidosaurus.” While hilarious, he couldn’t bring himself to do the dinosaurs dirty like that. They deserved better.

“Shidor sounds kinda fantasy-ish,” Futaba suggested. “Or maybe Shidred. Because he’s dreaded by angry twinks across all universes.”

“That first one is fine. No puns.” Goro put his hand up to his chin. “How about a compromise. I murder Shidor, then while I’m cleaning the mess you can present the evidence to the elves and see how well that goes.”

“Miladia decides that Hubys is a threat to their relations with the elves and ties him to a tree,” Haru said abruptly. Everyone failed to contain snickers while she rolled the dice. “She catches him easily and succeeds.”

“I hate all of you,” Goro decided. Akira pouted at him and he groaned. “Except you. I tolerate you.”

He snatched the dice from the center of the table and shook them in his palms with great concentration. “Togo-san,” Goro asked, “what is the requirement for me to get out of here?”

After a bit of pondering, Hifumi replied, “Given Miladia’s strength, it’s safe to assume that those bonds are awfully tight. I’d say...twenty five.”

“Holy shit,” Futaba whispered.

“Given your current strength,” Hifumi continued, “it is impossible for you to roll high enough. Your modifier score would take a point off of your roll even if you got a twenty.”

Akira made the motion of cracking his knuckles, not expecting them to actually make such a loud noise. Yikes. But it did effectively draw everyone’s attention. This was just the kind of drama he lived for.

“Ren sees Hubys sitting there, his gorgeous face marred with rage as he struggles against his bindings,” Akira narrated. “What’s a guy to do when such a pretty boy needs his help? Really, you can’t blame him for being compelled to help. Just look at this beauty.”

He cupped Goro’s face in his hands while still keeping his gaze on the friends who surrounded him. Once they all left, he knew he’d be getting an earful about how his oily hands were going to ruin Goro’s perfect skin. And maybe Goro was right, but Akira knew he would wear stupid amounts of makeup whether his face was flawless or not. A bit of homoerotic cheek squishing wouldn’t kill him.

“Charmed by Hubys’s looks and intrigued by how he always plays hard to get, Ren decides to help a guy out. With his new found magical abilities, he boosts Hubys’s strength for the next three turns so that he has a chance of escaping,” Akira said.

The dice were in his favor. He smiled and scribbled a little “+5” in pencil next to the strength stat on Goro’s sheet. Extending his arm out to the dice, he grinned at his boyfriend– who blinked at him in genuine surprise. Even if the next rolls were catastrophic anyway, Akira was satisfied with the knowledge that he could still catch his rival off guard.

Goro stopped gawking and took the dice in his hands, eying them with the intensity of a high stakes duel. The light from the fluorescent bulbs overhead shone on the geometric faces. One simple roll and he could emulate the closure he’d wasted two years of his life failing to achieve. And he would do so without legitimate repercussions. How glorious. He dropped the dice and it bounced on the surface of their kitchen table.

Nat 20. The highest possible roll.

Haru gasped. “Oh dear.”

“Hold on,” Futaba said, “Akechi, where did you put that whiteboard? I wanna take a look at those odds.”

Ryuji reached across the whole table– bonking Yusuke in the face– to plead with her. “Dude. Please, no numbers. I can’t take all this goddamn math.”

Ignoring all of them, Goro cleared his throat sharply and began his narration with triumph. “With sheer willpower– and a bit of assistance from Ren– Hubys breaks out of his bonds and sprints towards the palace where the vile man who fathered him resides, reveling in the glory of influence he has used to manipulate the masses.”

Futaba glared sharply at Akira. “You set him loose! Now he’s gonna murder someone!”

Akira shrugged. “Better in a roleplaying game than in real life.”

The rest of them spent their next few turns trying to apprehend Hubys before Goro could pull the trigger and cut all negotiations short prematurely. Except one of his new abilities was teleportation, so none of them stood a chance. Futaba healed everyone else in preparation for absolute hell to break loose.

Hifumi placed a new piece on the table. A spiky crown. It and Goro’s piece were inside an image of a shimmering palace.

“The king notices he has company. He scowls. You? I thought I banished you!” Hifumi said, raising her voice in volume to replicate a commanding ruler. “He backs up towards a bunch of barrels behind his massive throne.”

Goro’s confidence inflated like a bounce house on steroids. “Oh, please. Did you think a flimsy little order would stop me? When you so casually betray basic morality behind the backs of your supporters every day? I don’t see why I’d listen to a man like that. Or to a coward who’s hoping his fucking chair will save him from the inevitable.”

“He just laughs,” Hifumi replied, “a cruel and bitter sound. You foolish brat. These barrels are explosives. You can’t kill me without destroying the entire palace!”

“I’m okay with that.”

Akira gasped. “What?! Goro! You can’t die! How will I get my epilogue where we elope if your character explodes?”

“No one wants to roleplay us eloping. This is a necessary evil,” Goro said darkly. He looked down at his sheet. “Besides, if I use a spell with a smaller hitbox, then I won’t hit the explosives.”

“If you miss, the consequences will be deadly,” Hifumi warned. “You’ll either hit one of the explosives by mistake or give the king an opening to attack you.”

Glancing over at Goro’s sheet, the probability for that spell to hit was not very good. And Akira knew exactly what was going to happen next.

“Hubys casts his most powerful spell, expending all of his magic power to land one fatal blow against the fiend who cast him out of his own fucking kingdom.” Goro dropped the dice. The evil laugh and the crazy eyes reappeared for an encore. “The king is dead even before the explosives eviscerate his body and fry his bones. Watching the light fade from his eyes, Hubys feels pure joy. The flames soon consume him and the entire palace, ending that cursed regime once and for all! Hubys can die happy, for his vengeance is complete! No one loyal to King Shidor will escape this burning hellscape with their life!”

While he started cackling his ass off, Hifumi surveyed the rest of them with a weary look on her face. “Your efforts to stop him put you all in close enough proximity to the palace that the explosion hits you too. Your journey has come to an end.” Hifumi swatted all of their pieces off of the table with no hesitation, one of them rolling under the couch. “The darkness consumes the world and scorches everything it touches. Everyone is dead.”

Goro stood up and swept the map off of the table, sending a flurry of papers floating into the air. The dice clinked against the hardwood floors. From Goro’s throat emerged a giggle that rapidly turned into something far more sinister. “This was fun.”

Futaba jumped out of her seat. “Bullshit! You fucked over the whole campaign!”

“Hey!” Ryuji yelled. “Watch your language.” He stood up and walked over to Goro, grabbing him by his loosened tie. The bag of chips he’d been chomping fell to the floor. “What the fuck was that about?!”

None of this unnerved Goro in the slightest. “Catharsis, Sakamoto.”

Yusuke didn’t look up from his sketching and he nodded. “Indeed, creative works are an excellent and harmless means of venting out frustrations. Many artists decide to put their pain onto paper and bare their wounded hearts to the world.”

Their small robot vacuum– which had been trapped in the bed room but had now finally escaped– slid over to the chip spillage and started sucking it up. Then Akira heard a very alarming noise and he peeked his head under the table. The roomba was trying to vacuum the shards of Haru’s super expensive china tea cup.

She noticed the weird noise beneath her feet and gasped. Haru knelt down on the floor and shooed Goro’s beloved Roomba-san away. Then she attempted to push the shards of her teacup into a group with her foot. Maybe Akira should get her a dust pan.

His attempt to rise was impeded by Futaba, who clamped an arm around his shoulder and forced him to watch her figure out the math behind this disaster. Akira didn’t see the point. Math didn’t account for helping your boyfriend get simulated revenge against all better judgement.

Futaba’s grip loosened, giving Akira an opening to help poor Haru. The path to the cabinets was treacherous; he had to stay on his toes to avoid stepping on game pieces, chips, and even Roomba-san. Besides a hand squeezing his ass (which Akira would not do with company around, he had morals goddammit), Akira was certain that Roomba-san being harmed was the only thing that could truly distract Goro.

On his way back from retrieving the pan, he took a chance to check on Yusuke. He allowed himself to release a bit of the tension in his shoulders. Yusuke was safe in the realm of his art, fully detached from the insanity of reality.

Then his eye caught on what Yusuke was drawing. In simple terms, it was the fiery inferno of Hell with Dungeons and Dragons elements incorporated. The sight just made him move faster to help Haru start a bit of the damage control.

While Haru started cleaning, Ryuji slammed his arm into a shelf in the midst of his enraged gesturing. The dense books on philosophy and law fell to the ground, their covers sliding off to reveal intimidatingly-large volumes of Featherman manga underneath.

Akira had no idea how the fuck he didn’t realize those were fake covers. Or why Goro did this shit in his own house.

But the fact that he did cover them up was enough to show Akira that under normal circumstances Goro would be bright red with embarrassment and scolding Ryuji for an invasion of privacy. He didn’t even flinch; he just stood there with that bone-chilling smile carved into his face while the proof of his dorkiness rained down around him.

Ryuji was lucky that the really valuable stuff was kept in their room. Otherwise Goro might’ve snapped out of his wicked glee and strangled him. That vintage original series Red Hawk figure had been such a pain to find too; Akira knew because he was the one to order it as a gift.

Amidst the destruction, Hifumi spoke up. “Would you like to try a different campaign another time? Since you all appear to understand the basics now, I think we could try a multi-session campaign.”

The only sound after a unanimous “NO” was the continuation of Goro’s unhinged laughter.