To Beat The Prosecutor Hunting Us, I Had To Trust My Phantom Thief Leader With My Heart

The chime above the door to Leblanc was the only sound that broke the tense silence, announcing a customer Sojiro would have to deal with. Down in the booth, the air was thick with the scent of coffee and the low hum of Futaba’s laptop.

“Okay, I’ve got a solid lock,” Futaba announced, pushing her oversized headphones down around her neck. Her fingers flew across the keyboard. “The keywords were ‘Infallible Justice,’ ‘Gilded Courthouse,’ and the name… Kenshin Morita.”

A collective intake of breath went around the table. Morita. The star prosecutor whose face had been plastered across every news channel for the past month, his sharp suits and sharper rhetoric all aimed at one target: the Phantom Thieves. He was a man who had built his recent fame on the promise of unmasking and imprisoning them all.

“So, he’s our guy,” Ryuji said, cracking his knuckles. “Talks a big game. Let’s see what he’s hiding.”

“This will be different,” Makoto’s voice cut through, crisp and authoritative. She slid a neatly organized file onto the center of the table. “I’ve been compiling information on him since he first made his public declarations.”

She stood, her posture straight and her expression serious as she began her briefing. As always, she was incredibly thorough. “Kenshin Morita, 42 years old. Lead prosecutor with the Tokyo District Special Investigations Department. He has a near-perfect conviction rate, a fact he’s very proud of. His colleagues call him ‘The People’s Executioner’ for his aggressive, uncompromising courtroom tactics.”

Ren watched her, leaning forward with his elbows on the table. He listened to her words, but his eyes were fixed on her hands. She held a pen, using it to point to key statistics on a printout of Morita’s career trajectory. Her voice was perfectly modulated, the very picture of the calm, analytical Queen they relied on. But the tip of the pen vibrated, a tiny, almost imperceptible tremor running up her fingers. She steadied her hand by placing her palm flat on the table, but Ren had already seen it.

“He’s leveraging the sentiment against us to build his own political capital,” Makoto continued, her gaze sweeping over the team. “He’s framing this as a crusade for true justice against vigilantes who operate outside the law.”

The irony was heavy enough to taste. Ren thought of Sae, of Makoto’s deep, almost painful reverence for the law, and the immense pressure she felt to live up to its ideals. This man, Morita, wasn’t just a corrupt adult with a distorted heart. He was a dark reflection of the very world Makoto aspired to join, a perversion of the justice she so desperately believed in.

“He sounds like a real piece of work,” Ann murmured, her expression troubled. “To use us like that…”

Makoto’s jaw was tight. “He’s a hypocrite. My research suggests at least three major cases where he likely suppressed exculpatory evidence to secure a conviction. He isn’t serving justice. He’s serving his own ambition.”

She said the last words with a quiet intensity that was more potent than any shout. Ren saw her other hand clench into a fist on the table for a brief second before she consciously relaxed it. The battle against Morita hadn’t even begun, but he could see it was already being waged inside of her. And in that moment, his resolve to take the prosecutor down solidified into something harder and more personal than ever before.

The transition was jarring. One moment they were in the sterile quiet of the subway tunnels, the next they were standing on cold, polished marble under a vaulted ceiling that soared into oppressive darkness. The air was frigid and smelled of old paper and ozone. Morita’s Palace was exactly as his ego had dictated: a Gilded Courthouse.

It was built like a panopticon. Corridors and chambers radiated out from a central rotunda, but every angle seemed designed to lead the eye back to the towering judge’s bench that served as the Palace’s heart. It was a place of total surveillance, of absolute judgment.

“I feel like we’re being watched from every direction,” Panther whispered, pulling her arms around herself.

“We are,” Joker replied, his voice low. His gaze swept the upper galleries, where shadowy figures shifted just at the edge of sight. “This whole place is his witness stand.”

They moved cautiously towards the main courtroom. The heavy doors swung open without a sound, revealing the cavernous chamber within. A colossal, empty throne-like chair sat behind the judge’s bench, a golden gavel the size of a sledgehammer resting before it. But it was the jury box that made them all freeze.

It was filled with familiar faces. Not the real ones, but shimmering, cognitive apparitions. Kamoshida sat there, his spectral form still wearing that disgusting, triumphant smirk. Madarame, stroking his chin with an air of artistic superiority. Kaneshiro, counting a stack of ethereal cash. Okumura. Shido. They were all there, a jury of the damned they themselves had created, now assembled to pass judgment on them.

Joker’s eyes immediately found Queen. Her entire body was rigid, her knuckles white where she gripped the handles of her tekko. He saw her gaze lock onto the phantom of Kaneshiro, the first target she had personally pursued, and then to the hazy figure of her own sister’s boss, Shido. A tremor, much more pronounced than the one he’d seen in the cafe, ran through her. This wasn't just a mission for her; it was a trial of her entire belief system, and Morita was using their past victories as a weapon against them.

“Insolent children, trespassing in the halls of justice,” a booming, disembodied voice echoed through the hall. Morita’s voice. “The court finds you in contempt. The sentence is summary execution.”

The floor in front of the judge’s bench began to crack and heave. A hulking Shadow clawed its way out of the marble—a monstrous bailiff clad in obsidian armor, its face a blank, merciless plate of steel. It wielded a gavel that sparked with dark energy.

“Skull, with me!” Joker commanded, drawing his knife.

The Shadow was overwhelmingly fast. It swung its gavel in a wide, horizontal arc, and Ryuji barely managed to dive out of the way as the impact sent a shockwave through the floor, cracking the marble and throwing them all off balance. Ann sent a blast of fire, but it dissipated against the creature’s armor with a harmless sizzle.

“Its defenses are too high!” Mona yelled, his small form bristling. “We’re not ready for this!”

The bailiff raised its gavel again, taking aim at Makoto, who was still struggling to find her footing. Without a second thought, Joker lunged, shoving her hard. He felt the shockwave of the impact against his back as he pushed her clear, the force of it rattling his teeth.

“We’re pulling out!” he shouted, his voice cutting through the chaos. “Everyone, now!”

The retreat was a blur of frantic commands and panicked sprinting through the sterile, echoing corridors of the subway. Back in the real world, the air in the Shibuya station felt thick and suffocating. The team dispersed with heavy hearts and heavier exhaustion, agreeing to reconvene the next day. But as the others peeled off, Ren caught Makoto’s eye. The determined mask she wore in the Metaverse had been replaced by a quiet, strained look that he recognized all too well.

“Not done for the night,” he said, his voice low. It wasn’t a question.

She just shook her head, her grip tight on the strap of her bag.

They ended up in a 24-hour diner tucked away in a quiet side street, the kind of place that smelled perpetually of stale coffee and fried food. Under the harsh fluorescent lights, they spread out Futaba’s hastily copied schematics of the courthouse layout across the vinyl tabletop. For an hour, they spoke only of strategy. Makoto’s analysis was, as always, brilliant. She pointed out choke points, potential weaknesses in the patrol routes, the significance of the panopticon design.

“The problem is that spectral jury,” she said, her voice tight with frustration as she tapped a finger on a rough sketch of the courtroom. “And that bailiff Shadow. Its defenses were absolute. We can’t fight brute force with brute force.”

“It’s a puzzle, then,” Ren said, watching her. The tremor was back in her hand, a slight but constant vibration against the table. She was pushing herself too hard. “Something we’re missing.”

Makoto sighed, pushing a stray strand of hair from her face. She stared down at the papers, but her focus seemed to drift. “This one feels… different, Ren. Morita isn’t just some greedy criminal. He represents the system I’ve always been taught to believe in. To see him twist it into that… that monument to his own ego…” Her voice trailed off. She looked small in the oversized booth, the weight of her own ideals pressing down on her. “And seeing them all there… Kamoshida, Kaneshiro… It felt like he was using our own sense of justice against us.”

The admission hung in the air between them, raw and vulnerable. He saw the fight in her, the fierce determination, but he also saw the deep crack in her armor that this Palace had created. The pressure on her was immense. She was their strategist, the one who saw the logical path forward. But this enemy wasn’t just a target; he was an assault on her very identity.

Without thinking, without planning, Ren reached across the table. He didn’t say a word. He simply covered her trembling hand with his own.

Her hand went completely still beneath his. He felt the faint vibration cease, silenced by the contact. Her skin was cool, but a current of warmth instantly began to build from his palm into her fingers. Her sharp, crimson eyes lifted from the table to meet his, wide with surprise. She didn't pull away. He could feel the fine bones of her hand under his, delicate but strong. He kept his gaze steady, letting the simple, solid pressure of his touch convey everything he couldn’t articulate: I’m here. You’re not alone in this. I see you.

Makoto’s lips parted slightly, as if to speak, but no sound came out. A faint flush crept up her neck, visible even in the diner’s unforgiving light. The strategic plans, the schematic of the Palace, the entire world outside their small booth seemed to dissolve into a muted blur. There was only the quiet hum of the restaurant’s refrigerator, the scent of coffee, and the undeniable heat of his hand covering hers.