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post-canon shuake fic idea in which akira doesn’t return to being a happy normal teenager, but realizes that the word is exactly as corrupt as it’s always been and now he doesn’t even have personas or the power to do anything about it (thread 
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all of a sudden akira is in college watching the university trustees siphon away donation money and he understands why akechi was so angry. it’s not about how evil and corrupt everyone else is; it’s about how powerless he feels to do anything about it.
the first thing he does is get futaba to help him expose the embezzlement, and he returns the money to the rightful donation recipients. suddenly people are calling him a modern day robin hood for returning money to those in need, and akira’s hooked.
he’s always been good at hiding in plain sight, lying without lying, and pinching items when people aren’t looking. with the help of various other ex-thieves along the way, he picks new targets, exposes new crimes, and always takes the money and gives it back to whoever needs it.
a little bit like being a phantom thief except that akira doesn’t keep his spoils anymore, which, arguably, is even more selfless. the difference is that now the other thieves are moving on with their lives: ryuji walked onto the college track team, ann is a full time model,
makoto went into pre-law and is already publishing papers about legal prejudice, haru is starting her business, futaba is readjusting to outside life and building malware at the speed of light. so it’s only akira who’s so attached to his new hobby.
he can’t forget that moment where he realized that this is the rest of his life: watching corruption go on without him, without being able to do anything about it until he grows old and eventually dies. and he was always sympathetic to akechi’s situation and he
still holds onto akechi’s glove, but it’s different now that all the other thieves seem not to see all the crimes that still happen every day and he thinks akechi might have been the only person who could understand the way he’s feeling right now and akechi’s still missing.
by the time he graduates college and picks up some soulless desk job somewhere, the newspapers are tracking “robin hood’s” every movement. he’s pulling off a hit every other week, now usually by himself as the other thieves move on with their own dreams.
that makes sense to him now; makoto will make a great lawyer, haru will make a great businesswoman, ryuji is going into physical therapy and he’ll be superb at that too. but the way akira can make the world better is by lifting hundreds of millions of yen from bank accounts,
and replacing them where it belongs: away from embezzlers and other rich fucks and in the hands of charities and regular people. being a thief was the only thing that ever felt right to him anyway and he’s happy to keep doing it.
the first time someone pleads in court and gets away with crimes that akira exposed them for. akira sees the update on social media and it sends him right back to that first day: watching corruption happen and feeling like nothing he does will even make a difference.
it’s insane to him that he can hand the receipts of the man’s crimes over to the police and the justice system will just let the guy walk free anyway. he starts digging through his old targets and finds over half of them eventually got away with no jail time or repercussions.
akira quits his job and becomes a barista at one of the coffee shops that’s part of haru’s new restaurant chain. he calls sae and makoto and both of them throw their hands up and say that sometimes the court is just like that. there’s nothing they can do, but they’ll keep trying.
he calls futaba and futaba says that even if they exposed new receipts, there’s no guarantee the court will make up its mind this time. ryuji is pissed but to him, his patients come first; he’s not throwing a fit like he used to as a teen when he can improve his patients’ lives.
akira knows that this piece of shit is just going to keep on exploiting people if left unchecked. he books a plane for the guy’s vacation home under a fake name, slips inside his house that night, and slits the man’s throat.
after that, akira’s crossed the line and it just makes more sense to him to finish the job himself. why wait for the police or the courts? all these people deserve life sentences anyway. it’s just more efficient—he’s already committed one murder, so he might as well keep going.
within six months haru comes to his coffee shop where he’s working and begins to unsubtle ask what the fuck is going on with all these murders. he shrugs and says nobody can prove anything. she leaves to dig up receipts on his movements with futaba,
but akira quits his job that day and goes entirely off the grid. not only as his old teammates not helping, but they’re actively getting in his way. again, he starts thinking about how goro would have understood why he was doing this or what he was thinking.
akira gets better at it. he learns how to do all the tech support futaba used to do for him, and he picks up how to use a gun as easily goro used to. in two years he goes international, and then nobody can trace him.
he’s 28 by the time the french police partner with an anonymous consultant, who isn’t someone akira pays attention to until he nearly gets akira caught twice. akira moves to germany, and the same guy installs himself with the german police.
one night, right before a hit, akira gets an anonymous phone call. a voice (presumably the consultant) tells hims the location, and time that akira was planning to pull off the assassination. “i suggest you get off your high horse,” the anonymous voice tells him.
“this isn’t true justice. this is just your arrogance, and your temper tantrum at the world around you. give it up.”
akira tells him it’s a little hypocritical, to tell akira what he can and cannot do. isn’t that on his own arrogance?
akira tells him it’s a little hypocritical, to tell akira what he can and cannot do. isn’t that on his own arrogance?
the voice says, “of course. a friend once told me the same things i’m telling you. i’ll respect his wishes, even if it means becoming a hypocrite—or worse. it’s for nothing but my own self-satisfaction and desire to honor what he told me that i cannot allow you to continue.”
akira’s had it with this dude, and he’s picked up more than one trick from futaba. the phone call might be encrypted, but futaba had her ways of getting around it, and akira’s got the guy’s location in ten minutes. he packs up his materials and heads to the man’s apartment
he sets up camp to snipe the guy from a nearby building, figures out which apartment is his (leased under a fake name, obviously), and waits for the guy to come near the window. eventually a silhouette passes by the curtains.
akira lines up the shot through the scope just as goro turns to look out through the window, as if looking back at him.
i read somewhere that there used to be a (now debunked) theory that people process their grief of someone’s death by incorporating parts of them… picking up their habits or their mannerisms or the way they think… i always thought that was neat. like synthesis
