"They never proved anything."

"Look at me in the eyes, Amamiya, and tell me that again."

The man named Amamiya scowled. He was used to interrogation rooms by now, but he wasn't expecting the change in prosecutors. He certainly didn't expect the new prosecutor to be sisters with the one he was expecting, either. He wondered what might have changed Makoto Niijima's role that he'd have to endure the strict Sae instead.

"Let me repeat the question: why were you caught and brought here shortly after the reveal that a certain hotel was also doubling as an illegal casino," said Sae slowly, as if to ensure the young man in front of her was listening, "which just so happened to get robbed?"

Amamiya sighed and looked at his wrist watch. "You know, this is really cutting time for me."

"I get paid by the hour," countered Sae.

"That explains why Makoto so often tells me she's home alone." Amamiya smirked and raised a brow, expecting the following reaction.

This was not entirely false. The younger Niijima sister had provided her house for "party time," as the group had agreed upon calling it, for the past month. However, the dark-haired young man didn't need to provide as much information to irk the silver-haired woman. Her eyes lit up and her fist clenched.

"Oh, so you're gonna play like that?" said Sae through gritted teeth. The young man knew she wouldn't do anything if she was in the room alone with him. Fortunately for the both of them, the door flew open and in ran the brown-haired woman called Makoto.

"Sis!" called Makoto in surprise. "I didn't know you were here! Oh… hi, Ren."

Ren Amamiya sighed lowly while adjusting his glasses. While the intervention was pleasant, he was hoping that Sae would be too taken aback to notice what her sister was wearing.

"Why are you here, Mako? You know you can't come in during an interro—"

"I, um, I can vouch for him, okay?" The brown-haired sister said hurriedly. "He was waiting for me when the commotion at the hotel happened, and I told him to get out of there when he was caught!"

She then pulled out her phone and showed her sister her recent conversation with the aforementioned man, which seemed to include some plans to meet up at a hotel in which they had apparently made reservations. Sae squinted at the phone, and then glared at Ren, who was wearing an innocent expression. Ren shrugged almost apologetically; he knew how to play any part, even one where he'd be put in an embarrassing situation. Sae sighed.

"Fine, just get him out of my sight," she said as her cheeks reddened in shame. She then noticed her sister's outfit. "Why the hell are you wearing that, though? You know damn well that impersonating an officer is a serious offense!"

Ren grimaced and Makoto's eyes widened. The latter started to stutter.

"Wha—is—I—ummm…"

"Wait, that's real?" intervened the bespectacled man with feigned surprise. The prosecutor turned to him, wearing an expression of disbelief. "I… I told her to get an officer uniform from the dollar store," he lied with false embarrassment. "Y-you see… Mako-chan here's… a bit of an S…"

"Jeez, Ren," squeaked Makoto while covering her face to hide her amusement, "you don't have to sell me out like that!"

"Ugh, you know what? Just get the hell out of here," groaned the prosecutor. "Of all the things I didn't need to know…"

"R-really? Thanks, sis!" said Makoto happily while Ren stood up. Before the pair left, the brown-haired woman turned to her sister and said, "By the way, I won't be home all weekend!"

"I don't need to know!" yelled Sae with a hint of disgust in her voice.

"What took you?" asked Ren as he and Makoto walked out of the police building; their expressions changed from amusement to seriousness. "I was between a sword and a wall back there."

"Sorry, sorry! Futaba was editing the records when she found out that Sis was sent to Shibuya!" Makoto explained. "The whole text bit was my idea, by the way, in case I ran into her."

"Good call," praised Ren, "but that doesn't explain why you were late."

"Ryuji fell down the last couple of stairs back in Phase Three. You know his leg hasn't been the same since the Kamoshida incident; he gets cramps every now and then."

Amamiya groaned as he and Makoto got into the car. "I told him to be the driver for this one, but no, he wanted to play bouncer yet again. Wait," Ren looked at the back of the car and started counting while pointing at the bags he knew would be there. He noticed there were fewer bags than anticipated. "You split it up?"

"Haru said it'd be safer if she took some in her limo, since it'd be less suspicious."

Ren nodded in understanding, and leaned back in his seat.

The drive to Yongen-Jaya wasn't long, given the hour. Makoto parked the car a ways from the café, and she and Ren walked the rest of the way there after ensuring the bags remained invisible. Ren took his keys and opened the locale as Makoto gave the signal through her phone. In a few seconds, Futaba Sakura entered LeBlanc.

"Success?" asked the short sunset-haired woman. "You guys were later than anticipated."

"Had a cramp," explained a masculine voice as Ryuji Sakamoto limped into the café. "Doctor said I gotta make sure to stretch well before running for the next few weeks. Sorry I slowed y'all down."

"Still went less roughly than last time," said Yusuke Kitagawa as he also entered.

"I almost punched Ann in the face when it was time to run," said Haru Okumura with a smile as she and a gorgeous blonde entered at the same time. "I didn't recognize her in her disguise!"

"That's why I gave you a keyword," said Ann Takamaki with an exasperated expression. "I'm even happier you didn't forget it!"

One by one, the members of the operation came in and greeted their leader via an appraisal of the ease of today's work or their peers' performances. Ren knew they wouldn't be satisfied until they made the news and papers, though. It was the little rush of fame and fortune that made their line of duty worth it for the Phantom Thieves.

"So how much did we actually get?" said Sojiro Sakura as he and Ren started cleaning and preparing the group's victory meals.

"About three hundred million yen," commented Hifumi Togo nonchalantly.

Yuuki Mishima intervened while tapping his pen on his notebook. "You know that's not gonna be accepted when I submit the article, Togo-san! I need the crunchy stuff; people think an amount is bigger if there are more different numbers!"

"You're learning, Mishima-kun!" cheered Ichiko Oya, who also was holding a notebook. "He's right, though; we need to know exactly how much. It's also important for share-splitting."

Haru and Ann started to chatter amongst each other for a moment, and the rest of the group looked at them. The auburn-haired girl then pulled out her phone and made a call, and the tension in the room rose for a moment while she had her men count the half that she'd taken to safety. Ren's eyes swept from one person to the next. While the job was successful and everyone had played their parts to perfection, it had taken a few hundred exhausting hours to plan and set in motion the operation that ended up earning them…

"If we divided evenly between Makoto and me during Phase Five," said Haru after hanging up, "the total comes to three hundred fifteen million; one hundred seventy-five thousand and thirteen yen (give or take a few thousands)!"

The whole group burst in cheers. Ren and Sojiro started to serve the plates to everyone while they celebrated and started discussing what they'd do with their new money. As the two men sat down at their table, Sojiro patted Ren in the back.

"Gotta hand it to you," said the senior, "you really know how to make these people do wonders."

"I'm more surprised I could pull time to work on this and still pass my classes for this semester," answered the messy-haired man not-so humbly.

Yes, balancing college and huge operations (he hated to use the term "heists" for his work) wasn't exactly a cakewalk. However, Ren found it fun to lead a double life like this, and it was well worth it when he celebrated with his teammates like this. A blue butterfly landed on his head, and Futaba and Haru were squealing at the adorableness of the picture of Ren Amamiya with a butterfly on his head while Ryuji urged Yusuke to try to paint a scene like this one. Ichiko and Yuuki compared notes on how they'd write their respective articles before deciding they were finished. They bid their farewells and left, letting the group know beforehand that they'd make front page and breaking news. Ren Amamiya looked down as a little black cat named Morgana came in with a piece of paper in his mouth; he knew it was a greeting from a certain attractive doctor congratulating him.

It all seemed so frivolous, the thieving life, and it might as well have been. But Ren found it so much fun, and so did his allies. Why would they ever give it up?

Welcome to a new fic (oh boy, more hiatuses for a story we don't care about)! The idea behind this one is to, to put it simply, carry on with the "thieves" aspect of the Phantom Thieves; they're criminals. Criminals do very questionable things. They're also all older-old enough to face certain repercussions for their actions, as this chapter hopefully proved. Also, this story takes certain elements from the original game, but other incidents and events are either altered or retold in this story, so don't expect apologies for "glossing over" some events or "messing with timelines". This is, after all, fan fiction.

With that being said, enjoy!