[She doesn't find it by looking into his background, nor does she stumble upon it by searching up her own.
It's simply that Alibaba leaves no stone unturned, least of all the ones belonging to her enemies. And there's no one on this earth that she hates more than Shido Masayoshi.
She digs, and digs, and digs. Deletes her own tracks as she digs up the holes, because the last thing she needs is a trail of the most annoying Conspiracy members all up in her grill. Anyone with a crime background that leaves their encryption this easily crackable deserves to have their stuff broken into, anyway. Some of it is in cipher, but she figures it out the very same day she first lays eyes on it - a few hours after, in fact, and no one was smart enough to use a different one.
The first layers of the files are really the sorts of things she suspects. Blackmails. Dirty money. Bodies upon bodies piling up; some are done by a "Grouse", which she suspects was another word for the cleaner they saw in Shido's Palace. Apparently Shido has one line, and it's talking about the yakuza. The others are marked off as Shido's "personal assistant", and that doesn't take any complicated guesswork on Futaba's part to figure out.
2014. 2015. Even knowing who it is, what he did... It still makes her angry. Digs right under skin, full of all of the wrath that will always be her sin. It used to only be directed inwards - at her uncle, the men reading off a suicide note in her dreams, the facsimile of her mother built within her own mind. Herself, more than anyone else. But she has more than enough to go around for the ghoul that used his own son, barely in senior high, to pile up corpse upon corpse.
He doesn't deserve her anger. Wouldn't care that she is, except that it would probably annoy him. That's its own satisfaction, so she lets it bubble up as she pleases.
She continues her work. Copies it over to her special flash drive, and even does something she never does otherwise - makes hard copies out of the files she's already copied over. She doesn't really know what she does it for, other than an extra security check.
Finally, she hits what must be her mother's research. Deeper than anything else, encrypted and locked away by the sloppy work of the man who tried to steal Medjed's name. There's only a brief hesitation before opening it the same as everything else.
Some of it is typed. Some parts are handwritten notes that have been scanned. All of it is familiar, familiar, familiar - familiar like finding a string of code that she knows was written by one of her online friends, their fingerprints all over every careful letter and number. A pang of longing in her chest, a sting in her eyes. She sniffs, blinks quick, and reads.
It's not anything special at first. Basic things she figured out just from a week of being a Navigator, but things that she doesn't really feel comfortable knowing that a bunch of decrepit geezers have their greedy fingerprints all over. Can't do anything about that. Keep going. Dig more, into the field experiments-
Field experiments?
Her fingers still. Futaba keeps reading.
Finds the files that turn her entire stomach.
Finds out that even people you love more than anything are capable of terrible, terrible things.
Finds the encryption that will take her three whole weeks to crack, because it isn't done by some lame-o IT president that doesn't know Python from Java. It's done by a person she counts on to actually know what she was doing: Isshiki Wakaba. Most likely, it was tossed in with everything else because they didn't want to risk it being another piece of research left to the open public. And most likely? Not realizing they had saved blackmail material against their own boss amongst all of the research they were so desperate to hoard for themselves.
And she learns far, far more than she ever wants to.
Bent over, long hair dangling towards the floor, hyperventilating between her own knees. Doesn't think she's going to throw up. Status effect Panic, but there's no enemy attacking her except for her own too-fast breaths sawing in and out of her lungs.
She forces her head back up.
Top left, Ichiro Clinic. Case ID G9F05Y7W. Child Sakura Futaba, alleged father Shido Masayoshi. She doesn't know how she got him into the clinic for the mouth swab. Maybe she found a way to do it to him herself.
The probability of paternity is 8̴̪͔̪̹͊͜͝͝ͅ9̷̢̻͎̹̪̙̳̘̠̺̫͎͎̿͆͊͝͝ͅ.̶̨̣̱̜̣̞͖̇̓̓̇̏́͝9̸̺̱̠͎͙̟̜̬̥͙̃̊͝8̸̹̎͝%̶̨̗͓̗͚̝̰̲͕̰̭̭͇̔̄̇̀͘ͅ.
She doesn't want to see it.
She doesn't want to read it.
There's only one other file in the folder. It's a txt folder that contains nothing but a single sentence. All source traces have been wiped, but she knows who wrote it. There's only one person that could've.
I will never let you forget what you've done, Masayoshi.
It's little wonder, really. That he killed her.
A few days pass. Futaba rests, replenishes her energy. Stays inside, because she doesn't feel like seeing anyone when she's got all of this poison clogging her brain. Angry, or grieving, or all of it - but she can't tell at what anymore.
But eventually, she opens up an IM. It's someone she's never communicated with outside of a group chat before.]
show up at leblanc tomorrow, no later than 4 pm.
you're going to come, and you're going to listen to everything i have to tell you.
this meeting is non-negotiable.
[If Akechi Goro tries to delete it, an identical message is programmed to send to his phone.]
[ There's no point in keeping a routine as a corpse - it doesn't stop him from setting his alarm anyway. The simple act of pressing a button day after day after day keeps both feet from entering a grave.
So he wakes up. Eats fruit. Listens to the dull voice of a reporter give updates on the day before, as if it matters when a world is molded to perfection by a psycho in a tower. Coffee. A book. Idles against his wall and counter until he hears what they're doing that day. The Phantom Thieves don't have a sense of urgency - the thought irritates him more than ever. He doesn't join in their chats or texts. Mutes it in early morning hours once he knows for certain their leader made other plans.
It's worse when Akechi's prepared and wakes to other plans. There's a persistent itch to slaughter in his twitching fingers, but more than that-
It's something.
Because when that something is ripped away-
There's nothing. No school. No interviews. No meetings in an office full of pandering, cloying sycophants. No orders given in ciphered messages. No vile scum that sew their own percieved injustice into patterns on his skin for him to carry.
There's nothing, so he fills his days with nothing. Sits a breath away from Muhen, instead three tables down. Plays darts into blocks of time that once held meetings. Takes walks around a city he wanted to see crumble by any means. Keeps his old haunts at arm's length and stays far from the largest throngs of people.
There's nothing. The vibration in his pocket feels like an intrusion into the one part of his world he can control. There's nothing and even that emptiness is no longer his.
It might be Kurusu. It could be Yoshizawa. He can't fathom what either would want this late and-
They don't want anything. Futaba sends the message.
Clear. To the point. Without room for argument.
But he wants to argue. Spent his whole life with a tongue sharpened for it, so it's deleted without a second thought.
The next ten minutes try his patience in a brand new way. There might be a hint of gratitude in his gut from shaking nothing free, if only for a second. ]
Don't order me around.
[ Futaba's a force to be reckoned with online and among her closest confidants. That shy, shaking girl only exists to the ignorant. He knows better than to underestimate her tenacity. Needs to make it clear she's not holding the reins. ]
Whatever your intentions are, we can speak at Maruki's palace.
If you want to talk before 4 PM tomorrow, I suggest you find a way to make that happen.
[Pushback. Of course there is. Why would she expect anything else.
But it's still so fucking annoying.]
no. we aren't going to maruki's palace today. i already told akira i have to talk to you.
[Fine. If he wants this the hard way, then she'll have to make it a lot clearer.
Futaba isn't above leverage. There's only one person in a room that Akechi Goro pays attention to. She doesn't know how he ever thought he was going to fool anyone.]
there's a lot more i could tell him, too.
it's a shame how one of the biggest gray pigeon shrine contributors isn't very active these days. they used to get into some pretty funny fights on reedit though. i think akira would get a kick out of some of them.
it might be more interesting to send him the field experiment results of a certain research lab department, though. i can't even guess what kind of face he'd make then.
what do you think?
[It's low. It's a weapon she doesn't want to pull, because there are things in those reports that both of them would rather that Akira never sees. But it's a card that's still worth playing.
Akechi's a fool if he thinks she'll buckle just because he said so.
Another message is delivered.]
all of that is easy for me, and there are plenty of other things i can do.
now. are you ready to come to leblanc, or do you want to stamp your feet like a little child for even longer?
[ The first threat means nothing to him. It's so childish that he almost shuts off his phone on the spot. An anonymous user's arguments may be linked back to him because of an elite hacker, but it's an easy situation to manage. The world is rotten. Perfect. There's no time to nitpick and poke fun at that shit.
It's the second point that makes his finger hover over shut down instead of pressing.
There is nothing in this world that's his alone now. Maruki's strings keep him moving. All his sins were forgotten. His past rests in the mind of Akira and a madman that resurrected him and now-
A nobody holds yet another knife - twists it with such ferocity that he's borderline impressed. He rub his molars raw anyway. It's irritating. Frustrating. Baffling that this is yet another part of his life that can't remain tucked away. The spotlight he yearned for grows brighter, brighter, brighter with every word he reads, rereads, watches pop up onto the screen.
It's disgusting. He wants to smash it and coat himself in a darkness he didn't appreciate months ago.
What a goddamn mess.
He turns on his heel, walking towards the train station before giving a response. She's probably tracking him anyway and -
He presses shut down to prove a point. For a minute, two, three - it's not a tantrum, it's a way to maintain some semblance of control over this. He can end it any point, just as easy she can. There's a reason she wants to talk about information only he can confirm. It takes two to manage it. She doesn't hold all the power here.
And the screen is brighter than ever when he settles into a train seat, power on making yet another point.
It lights up and he responds. ]
When I get there, I expect you to make your point quick and let the matter drop. I don't have time to indulge you in needless chatter nor am I under any obligation to provide information to you.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
my internet died for so long trying to write this. happy birthday.
It's simply that Alibaba leaves no stone unturned, least of all the ones belonging to her enemies. And there's no one on this earth that she hates more than Shido Masayoshi.
She digs, and digs, and digs. Deletes her own tracks as she digs up the holes, because the last thing she needs is a trail of the most annoying Conspiracy members all up in her grill. Anyone with a crime background that leaves their encryption this easily crackable deserves to have their stuff broken into, anyway. Some of it is in cipher, but she figures it out the very same day she first lays eyes on it - a few hours after, in fact, and no one was smart enough to use a different one.
The first layers of the files are really the sorts of things she suspects. Blackmails. Dirty money. Bodies upon bodies piling up; some are done by a "Grouse", which she suspects was another word for the cleaner they saw in Shido's Palace. Apparently Shido has one line, and it's talking about the yakuza. The others are marked off as Shido's "personal assistant", and that doesn't take any complicated guesswork on Futaba's part to figure out.
2014. 2015. Even knowing who it is, what he did... It still makes her angry. Digs right under skin, full of all of the wrath that will always be her sin. It used to only be directed inwards - at her uncle, the men reading off a suicide note in her dreams, the facsimile of her mother built within her own mind. Herself, more than anyone else. But she has more than enough to go around for the ghoul that used his own son, barely in senior high, to pile up corpse upon corpse.
He doesn't deserve her anger. Wouldn't care that she is, except that it would probably annoy him. That's its own satisfaction, so she lets it bubble up as she pleases.
She continues her work. Copies it over to her special flash drive, and even does something she never does otherwise - makes hard copies out of the files she's already copied over. She doesn't really know what she does it for, other than an extra security check.
Finally, she hits what must be her mother's research. Deeper than anything else, encrypted and locked away by the sloppy work of the man who tried to steal Medjed's name. There's only a brief hesitation before opening it the same as everything else.
Some of it is typed. Some parts are handwritten notes that have been scanned. All of it is familiar, familiar, familiar - familiar like finding a string of code that she knows was written by one of her online friends, their fingerprints all over every careful letter and number. A pang of longing in her chest, a sting in her eyes. She sniffs, blinks quick, and reads.
It's not anything special at first. Basic things she figured out just from a week of being a Navigator, but things that she doesn't really feel comfortable knowing that a bunch of decrepit geezers have their greedy fingerprints all over. Can't do anything about that. Keep going. Dig more, into the field experiments-
Field experiments?
Her fingers still. Futaba keeps reading.
Finds the files that turn her entire stomach.
Finds out that even people you love more than anything are capable of terrible, terrible things.
Finds the encryption that will take her three whole weeks to crack, because it isn't done by some lame-o IT president that doesn't know Python from Java. It's done by a person she counts on to actually know what she was doing: Isshiki Wakaba. Most likely, it was tossed in with everything else because they didn't want to risk it being another piece of research left to the open public. And most likely? Not realizing they had saved blackmail material against their own boss amongst all of the research they were so desperate to hoard for themselves.
And she learns far, far more than she ever wants to.
Bent over, long hair dangling towards the floor, hyperventilating between her own knees. Doesn't think she's going to throw up. Status effect Panic, but there's no enemy attacking her except for her own too-fast breaths sawing in and out of her lungs.
She forces her head back up.
Top left, Ichiro Clinic. Case ID G9F05Y7W. Child Sakura Futaba, alleged father Shido Masayoshi. She doesn't know how she got him into the clinic for the mouth swab. Maybe she found a way to do it to him herself.
The probability of paternity is 8̴̪͔̪̹͊͜͝͝ͅ9̷̢̻͎̹̪̙̳̘̠̺̫͎͎̿͆͊͝͝ͅ.̶̨̣̱̜̣̞͖̇̓̓̇̏́͝9̸̺̱̠͎͙̟̜̬̥͙̃̊͝8̸̹̎͝%̶̨̗͓̗͚̝̰̲͕̰̭̭͇̔̄̇̀͘ͅ.
She doesn't want to see it.
She doesn't want to read it.
There's only one other file in the folder. It's a txt folder that contains nothing but a single sentence. All source traces have been wiped, but she knows who wrote it. There's only one person that could've.
It's little wonder, really. That he killed her.
A few days pass. Futaba rests, replenishes her energy. Stays inside, because she doesn't feel like seeing anyone when she's got all of this poison clogging her brain. Angry, or grieving, or all of it - but she can't tell at what anymore.
But eventually, she opens up an IM. It's someone she's never communicated with outside of a group chat before.]
show up at leblanc tomorrow, no later than 4 pm.
you're going to come, and you're going to listen to everything i have to tell you.
this meeting is non-negotiable.
[If Akechi Goro tries to delete it, an identical message is programmed to send to his phone.]
im going to die yama loves me most of all
So he wakes up. Eats fruit. Listens to the dull voice of a reporter give updates on the day before, as if it matters when a world is molded to perfection by a psycho in a tower. Coffee. A book. Idles against his wall and counter until he hears what they're doing that day. The Phantom Thieves don't have a sense of urgency - the thought irritates him more than ever. He doesn't join in their chats or texts. Mutes it in early morning hours once he knows for certain their leader made other plans.
It's worse when Akechi's prepared and wakes to other plans. There's a persistent itch to slaughter in his twitching fingers, but more than that-
It's something.
Because when that something is ripped away-
There's nothing. No school. No interviews. No meetings in an office full of pandering, cloying sycophants. No orders given in ciphered messages. No vile scum that sew their own percieved injustice into patterns on his skin for him to carry.
There's nothing, so he fills his days with nothing. Sits a breath away from Muhen, instead three tables down. Plays darts into blocks of time that once held meetings. Takes walks around a city he wanted to see crumble by any means. Keeps his old haunts at arm's length and stays far from the largest throngs of people.
There's nothing. The vibration in his pocket feels like an intrusion into the one part of his world he can control. There's nothing and even that emptiness is no longer his.
It might be Kurusu. It could be Yoshizawa. He can't fathom what either would want this late and-
They don't want anything. Futaba sends the message.
Clear. To the point. Without room for argument.
But he wants to argue. Spent his whole life with a tongue sharpened for it, so it's deleted without a second thought.
The next ten minutes try his patience in a brand new way. There might be a hint of gratitude in his gut from shaking nothing free, if only for a second. ]
Don't order me around.
[ Futaba's a force to be reckoned with online and among her closest confidants. That shy, shaking girl only exists to the ignorant. He knows better than to underestimate her tenacity. Needs to make it clear she's not holding the reins. ]
Whatever your intentions are, we can speak at Maruki's palace.
If you want to talk before 4 PM tomorrow, I suggest you find a way to make that happen.
live bc yama loves LEXYS!!!
But it's still so fucking annoying.]
no. we aren't going to maruki's palace today. i already told akira i have to talk to you.
[Fine. If he wants this the hard way, then she'll have to make it a lot clearer.
Futaba isn't above leverage. There's only one person in a room that Akechi Goro pays attention to. She doesn't know how he ever thought he was going to fool anyone.]
there's a lot more i could tell him, too.
it's a shame how one of the biggest gray pigeon shrine contributors isn't very active these days. they used to get into some pretty funny fights on reedit though. i think akira would get a kick out of some of them.
it might be more interesting to send him the field experiment results of a certain research lab department, though. i can't even guess what kind of face he'd make then.
what do you think?
[It's low. It's a weapon she doesn't want to pull, because there are things in those reports that both of them would rather that Akira never sees. But it's a card that's still worth playing.
Akechi's a fool if he thinks she'll buckle just because he said so.
Another message is delivered.]
all of that is easy for me, and there are plenty of other things i can do.
now. are you ready to come to leblanc, or do you want to stamp your feet like a little child for even longer?
THROWS MY HANDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! UP
It's the second point that makes his finger hover over shut down instead of pressing.
There is nothing in this world that's his alone now. Maruki's strings keep him moving. All his sins were forgotten. His past rests in the mind of Akira and a madman that resurrected him and now-
A nobody holds yet another knife - twists it with such ferocity that he's borderline impressed. He rub his molars raw anyway. It's irritating. Frustrating. Baffling that this is yet another part of his life that can't remain tucked away. The spotlight he yearned for grows brighter, brighter, brighter with every word he reads, rereads, watches pop up onto the screen.
It's disgusting. He wants to smash it and coat himself in a darkness he didn't appreciate months ago.
What a goddamn mess.
He turns on his heel, walking towards the train station before giving a response. She's probably tracking him anyway and -
He presses shut down to prove a point. For a minute, two, three - it's not a tantrum, it's a way to maintain some semblance of control over this. He can end it any point, just as easy she can. There's a reason she wants to talk about information only he can confirm. It takes two to manage it. She doesn't hold all the power here.
And the screen is brighter than ever when he settles into a train seat, power on making yet another point.
It lights up and he responds. ]
When I get there, I expect you to make your point quick and let the matter drop. I don't have time to indulge you in needless chatter nor am I under any obligation to provide information to you.