Work Text:
Akechi Goro was, in a word, exhausted. He probably wasn’t the only one exhausted, but of the entire group he’d happened to be one of the only two that had been on the front lines for every single fight the group had engaged in. Well. What little fights they had engaged in, at least. The past couple of hours had just been Joker driving around the Monabus and occasionally hitting a wayward shadow with it, the shadow evaporating into dust the moment they were hit. Occasionally he’d mutter under his breath about the “wrong” persona, or he would happily exclaim upon picking up some of the spare parts scattered around the tunnels of Mementos.
“Such a big group in this car… It feels like we’re on a field trip!” Noir exclaimed, somehow managing to muster enough pep to sound excited when the group had spent several hours driving around. It made Goro regret not listening to the advice he’d gotten from several members of the group to bring a book or something else to do - all Goro could do was stare out the window and watch the ever-changing walls of Mementos go by while contemplating the Agatha Christie novel he’d left sitting on his coffee table in his apartment. Considering how Queen had brought her homework (presumably), Fox had a sketchbook he was casually drawing in, and Oracle was fiddling with something, over half the Thieves had something they were doing. Goro wasn’t sure what Oracle was fiddling with though, and taking into account what he knew about Oracle, he didn’t really want to know that much.
“A field trip with a horrible view, maybe,” Panther chimed in, one of the few in the group that hadn’t brought along something to occupy themselves. Arguably the only one that really hadn’t brought anything at all was Goro himself, but Panther, Skull, and Noir’s respective things to keep them busy hadn’t lasted as long as they would have liked.
“I’ll have to kindly disagree, Panther,” Fox said, not even glancing up from his sketchbook. Goro saw Skull glance over at the sketchbook curiously.
“Of course you’d say that when you’re drawin’ the place, Fox!” Skull said, turning away and slumping in his seat. Joker, meanwhile, sat in the driver’s seat seeming completely unaffected aside from a slight twitch Goro was only able to see due to his spot in the first row of seats behind Joker and Queen. Despite his better judgment, Goro chose that moment to speak up himself.
“I don’t think many field trips would be like this, though it has been a while since I’ve been on one myself,” Goro said. He absolutely noticed how Joker had tilted his head ever so slightly to hear Goro as he spoke, and he wasn’t sure how to feel about it. Then again, Joker had acted oddly since the two had met back in April.
“What, does detective work mean you don’t get to go on field trips?” Oracle said, not even looking up from… whatever it was she was fiddling with. She was sitting in the back row of the Monabus, one could forgive Goro for not wanting to completely turn around to get a better look at the Thieves’ navigator and whatever shenanigans she was getting up to.
“Personally, I’d say going to the precinct nearly every day could count as a field trip of its own,” Queen chimed in from the front seat, glancing back at the rest of them.
“But aren’t you used to being there all the time?” Panther asked, turning toward Goro with a curious look. Goro only shrugged.
“I wouldn’t consider going to my job to be a field trip, no. Unless you consider that I am missing school on a regular basis to attend,” Goro said, glancing forward and grinning.
“Oh look! The platform! We can go down now,” he said. Joker nodded from where he sat, turning back and looking at the group and nodding toward the doors. The rest of the group all started toward the back doors of the Monabus, either clambering over each other or rushing to put their things away. Oracle, of course, kept on fiddling with what Goro could now see was… a Nintendo DS?
“How are you getting that to work?” Goro asked as he stepped out of the Monabus, moving aside for everyone else to get out. Instead of responding normally (when did any of the Thieves do that, in Goro’s experience?), Oracle just cackled as she walked toward the escalator to the next floor of Akzeriyyuth.
“Dude, she’s our navi. Oracle can do pretty much anything,” Skull said, prompting a noise of agreement from Noir as she walked toward the escalator behind Oracle.
“You’ve seen a lot of what she’s capable of, Crow. Is getting a Nintendo DS to work in the Metaverse so far-fetched?” Joker chimed in, glancing over his shoulder from his spot at the escalators. As Mona turned back into his not-bus form (Goro wasn’t even going to chance referring to him as a cat in his own head, considering how vocally upset he got) and trotted over to the rest of the group, Joker started down the escalator.
“It’s not far-fetched, it just… doesn’t make as much sense as I’d like. If our phones don’t work properly in the Metaverse, Mementos or otherwise, then why is a handheld gaming console?” Goro replied, striding forward to catch up with him.
“The Metaverse is fucking weird, Crow. Just roll with it,” Joker said as he hopped off the escalator at the platform of floor ten.
“I like to think it works because there isn’t an internet connection, but you’d need to actually ask Oracle about that,” Queen spoke up, adjusting the bag tucked under her arm as she walked off the escalator to Goro’s left.
“Yeah, it has a lot to do with that, from my experiments. I’ve also been able to get my laptop working down here, but I think that’s mostly because I’ve been using it for navi stuff. But playing Pokemon doesn’t require an internet connection, so I can play all the Pokemon I want while we’re dungeon crawling like this, hehe,” Oracle said, popping up on Goro’s right, followed by Noir and the rest of the Thieves shortly after.
“I just…” Goro trailed off, walking forward to continue to keep pace with Joker despite his confusion over the technology he hadn’t expected to work.
“You just?” Joker asked, turning back around and tilting his head like a confused cat.
“He’s stuck on how it doesn’t make any sense, I think,” Queen commented, standing at the platform’s edge. This prompted another cackle from Oracle as Skull waved the two of them over.
“If we’re gonna keep going, we might as well keep at it!” Skull said, but Goro could hear the hint of exhaustion in his voice. The only one who had even remotely some pep in their step still was Noir, which begged the question… Why were they still in Mementos if even Joker had lost steam?
“Right,” Joker said, gesturing toward the track for Mona to hop on. The not-cat did so, doing a flip as he did so, the Monabus landing on the tracks gracefully… somehow. The thieves, after a single moment of deliberation, started piling into the back seat of the Monabus, Joker and Queen taking the driver and passenger’s seats respectively. Goro, through much luck, managed to get his seat behind Queen again. Before he started driving, Joker looked back and locked eyes with him for a second, and Goro could have sworn there was a hint of… irritation, there? He wasn’t sure, but it wasn’t something he usually saw when the two of them looked at each other. Had he done something?
The drive through the tenth floor of Akzeriyyuth was quiet. Shadows ran away from them at the first sight of the Monabus - something Goro was pretty used to on his own, but being able to ride around in a car instead of walk everywhere or hitch a ride on the roof of the trains was nice. But aside from wandering around aimlessly, picking up flowers for the weird egg-haired boy (Jose, he thought) and random items that Goro knew Joker would end up using for crafting, what were they really doing? Without fighting a single shadow, they weren’t gaining any experience and stagnating. At least it hadn’t been every Mementos trip.
Unlike the previous floor, the silence that was occasionally broken up by Fox or Queen’s pencils or the clicking of Oracle’s Nintendo DS was strained. The exhaustion Goro felt - and knew was probably obvious on his face under his mask - was starting to show itself on the rest of the group. To be quite honest, it had been for a while, but Goro just hadn’t been looking for it. He did wonder if anyone was going to address it. He certainly wouldn’t be, if only because he knew that at least one of the Thieves would overextend themselves if he said he was feeling tired. Even if that tiredness wasn’t coming from having to fight so much. What were they still doing in Mementos, with no targets to find or new floors to explore?
“Hey, Joker?” Skull spoke up from one of the rows behind Goro, drawing the rest of the group’s attention. Even Joker, who hadn’t taken his eyes off the road, tilted his head in acknowledgement, prompting Skull to continue.
“Why’re we still down here? I know you like to do long Mementos runs ‘n all, but this one feels uh… real long,” he said. Skull’s words clearly prompted others to speak up, because Panther nodded along.
“Yeah, we’ve been down here driving for hours! I know Mementos time and real world time don’t always line up, but we could’ve left a while ago!” she said.
“I have been enjoying the time to work, but I do agree that this trip has been a bit excessive, Joker,” Queen chimed in, putting her pencil away and starting to pack up her work. Aside from Oracle, who was still absorbed in her game, there was a chorus of agreements in various tones. Goro chose to stay quiet, only keeping his eyes on Joker. He noticed the leather on his gloves near his knuckles starting to strain as his grip on the steering wheel tightened. Joker had slowly been growing more and more frustrated with something the further they’d been driving, and Goro was half expecting him to explode.
“But yeah, man, can’t we just leave?” Skull asked, and as Goro imagined the blond leaning back as he spoke, the Monabus screeched to a stop as Joker whirled around and looked at the rest of the Thieves. There was something in his eye that made Goro worry for a moment, that the leader of the Phantom Thieves was about to lose his shit.
“We are still here for a reason, and we will leave once SOMEONE,” and here, perplexingly, Goro saw Joker’s eyes dart over to him for a moment, “on the Monabus will talk about how he finds it fun to observe ANTS!”
What.
What?!
As the rest of the bus descended into chaos, Goro sat there. He knew there were multiple people shouting, but he wasn’t really paying attention to the words around him.
“...How did you know I like to observe ants?” Goro said quietly, bringing the rest of the chaos in the Monabus to a halt.
“What?” Skull, Panther, Queen, and Oracle all said in chorus, albeit in different tones of voice. Goro, meanwhile, only had eyes for Joker. His eyes had widened behind his mask, almost like he hadn’t meant to say what had come out of his mouth.
“Joker. How exactly did you know that I like to observe ants on occasion?” Goro said, a sharp smile on his face.
“I don’t know what you mean, Crow. Maybe there’s someone else on the Monabus that also harbors a secret love of observing ants and being underground reminds them of it,” Joker replied, though considering how his voice had pitched up slightly and he was fidgeting with one of his gloves instead of starting the Monabus back up... he was absolutely hiding something and Goro was going to figure out what it was.
“I mean, Joker… why would anyone have fun observing ants?” Panther commented, getting Goro and Fox (surprisingly) to make offended noises, prompting Goro to give Fox a curious look.
“I find ant farms to have a certain beauty to them. They keep everything so orderly and that is nothing if not aesthetically pleasing,” Fox said. Oracle, having paused her game, sighed and leaned against Fox.
“I’d expect something like that from Inari. What’s so intriguing about ants, though?” Oracle asked, glancing over at Goro curiously.
“I find them fascinating. What’s so wrong about that?” he asked.
“And that’s the exact kinda nerdy shit we expect outta you,” Skull commented. Goro elected to ignore him, turning back to Joker.
“Don’t forget that I still have questions for you, Joker.” The thief in question, who had slouched somewhat in his seat, froze in place. The rest of the Monabus also turned to look at Joker, who slumped down further in his seat, disappearing from view of the rest of the team.
“How do you know. That I like. To observe ants?” Goro asked, pausing every couple of words for emphasis. The Monabus went quiet, aside from the quiet rumbling of the meowtary engine. After a moment, there was a very quiet mumble from Joker’s general direction. Goro sat up, scooting over slightly while giving Panther an apologetic look as he did so, before staring directly at a Joker whose forehead was level with the steering wheel. Somehow he had contorted himself to fit all of his legs in the space underneath the dashboard. How he was that flexible was anyone’s guess.
“What was that, Joker?” Goro asked, leaning over the seat to make direct eye contact with the other. He mumbled something again, prompting Goro to lean closer, removing his mask as he did and holding it in his off hand. The two of them were nearly nose to nose, staring into each other’s eyes. Goro could almost forget there were other people on the Monabus, except for how he could feel the rest of the Thieves’ eyes glued to him.
“I’m…” Joker trailed off, breathing out heavily as he paused. Goro could both hear and feel his exhale, before Joker closed his eyes and breathed in.
“I’m a time traveler.”
What the fuck, Joker.
Before anyone could reply, there was the loud jangling of chains from right behind them.
“Ohfuckthat’stheReaperwe’vegottago!!!” Oracle shouted as Joker simultaneously launched himself up, knocking his forehead into Goro’s and not even flinching as he leaned forward and slammed his foot onto the gas pedal so hard that if Goro looked behind them he thought he’d probably see smoke clouds.
“Once we get out of Mementos, I have questions!” Goro exclaimed as he shook his head and put his mask back on his face, gripping the back of the front seats like iron safety bars. Worst case scenario, they would get ambushed by the Reaper and Goro would need Robin Hood for that.
“You need to get your priorities straight!” Skull said, prompting an eye roll from Goro.
“We learn that Joker’s a time traveler and you don’t immediately want to ask questions?” Goro replied. As the rest of the Monabus descended into frantic arguing and Oracle continued to frantically type on her navigation screens, Joker caught Goro’s eye in the rear view mirror and gave the slightest of nods. Good. Goro had several questions, and hopefully Joker would have several answers to those questions.
“Though really, revealing that you’re a time traveler because you wanted me to talk about ants is-” Goro started, quiet. Joker cut him off, however.
“You said it last time. I just wanted you to talk about something you were interested in,” Joker replied, and if that wasn’t the most Joker thing he’d said all Mementos trip, then Goro didn’t know what was.