Clearing the Web

[madimpossibledreamer]

Main Points:
Persona 4 Verdict AU (P4/Judgment Fusion)
Chapter Summary: The final chapter.
Word Count: 1017
Rating: Teen
Spoilers for the ending of Judgment and a detail in Judgment.  (This also involves the alterna-casting: Masaki = Konishi, which can probably spoil a major plot point if you think about it, hence the cut.)

        “This is insane,” Masaki informs him, but he’s keeping up with Hanamura-san’s headlong dash anyway. 
        Hanamura contemplates this as they run.  Thus far they’ve had to fight yakuza, including Kirijo-san with her sword (and boy did Sanada-san feel bad about that one), the hired homeless, scientists and security.  This goes all the way up to the Ministry of Health.  This would probably be the point at which a responsible lawyer would tell the client this was one battle they couldn’t win.
        This is potentially going a bit far, yeah, but he hasn’t felt this clear, this certain, in a while.  No one else would even attempt this, he’s pretty sure.  If this is all going to stop, they’re going to have to be the ones to do it.  It might be dangerous to go proclaiming he’s on the path of righteousness, because that’s exactly how all the people involved with the secret of AD-9 got here to begin with and brings back the age-old question of ends and means.
        The law takes into account both.  Death caused by another person is still death, but the labels and penalties differ; murder, malpractice, manslaughter, self-defense, soldiers in war.  Still, he’s looked up the statistics, out of curiosity, once he’d been put on this track (he was too much of a coward to have looked into it before, and that’s on him).  He’d found forum threads discussing the papers, which looked to have been tampered with.  He doesn’t get the science to a deeper level, like a scientist would, but if he looks at it—so sue him, he’s a geek and will totally own your ass in a court of law—like a courtroom, he gets it.
        The scientists present their evidence, and the rest of the scientific world renders a verdict on their case.  And messing around with the charts and stuff like that is like evidence tampering, which should in any world that wants to keep functioning on truth lose them their badges.
        Nothing was definitive, of course, but it definitely bore further investigation even if they didn’t have all the evidence Hanamura does about how the charts and graphs they’d presented were forged.  The general consensus between those not blinded by enthusiasm were that it sounded too good to be true, which sounds like a pretty good starting point to look into it further in the opinion of this particular private detective.
        The point is, even ignoring the desperation of trying to make sure the center didn’t close, there’s every chance that the drug would never work, even if all the proper procedures were followed, and that’s ignoring the fact that it’s fatal.  That’s a pretty final way of making sure someone doesn’t have to care about a disease anymore.
        It’s possible that he’d have a different opinion if he had anyone he knew with Alzheimer’s.  He doesn’t understand the pain, because he’d lost anyone that might grow old like that.  He tries to imagine Kirijo-san (with a pang, but assuming he’d lived) or Dojima-san in that position and—
        Well, he gets it, but even then, he wouldn’t trade someone else’s life for theirs unless, maybe, it was his own.  And only his.
        He probably needs a therapist.  He’ll get right on that.  Probably.  But not while he’s trying to catch a serial murderer.  Because looking back through it, there have been more than three deaths, and anyway it’s generally a safe bet to suspect that there’s more deaths than you’ve found with those types of killers.  Not that you go claiming deaths are related without proof, but they’re generally more prolific than you can prove.
        So the point is that the medical community is right, killing human test subjects for medicine development is wrong, all these people died in vain, and he is going to put a stop to all of this.
        He couldn’t stop now if he wanted to, can’t turn a blind eye to all of this.  He’s going to see it through.
        He’s done a good job, pretending.  Acting like he’s sure and a professional that can totally get things done when he barely trusts himself.  Good enough that he fooled Masaki into thinking he wasn’t struggling every day, apparently.  This is the first time he’s felt like this since the last time he stepped in a courtroom, though.
        “If you want to bow out, be my guest,” he responds, slightly breathless, knowing that it’s been a while since he’s spoken and his, what, friend?  Ally?  Probably gave up on getting a response minutes ago.
        “Hell no.  That bastard scientist killed my sister.  He’s going to pay—and don’t worry, Hanamura-san, I left the gun at home this time.  I’ll settle for having him utterly humiliated and thrown in jail for hopefully the rest of his life.”  Masaki responds promptly, and Hanamura smiles at him, distracted.
        He’s instantly calculating.  A lot of it will probably depend on the judge and the deaths they can prove, tie into all of this.  If they can find a lab notebook or some other kind of documentation about the experiments, that will help considerably.  Oddly enough, they’ll probably avoid the death penalty—probably, depending on whether the prosecution highlights the amount of pain and terror inflicted on the victims during the trial, and thus the suffering that not even a yakuza should have to endure—given that their defense could probably argue they weren’t intending to kill and were, in fact, hoping that the next one injected would survive.  A life sentence is probable, which means the only remaining question is the possibility of parole—hopefully not…
        “For once I’m rooting for the prosecution,” he states lightly, like it’s a foregone conclusion that they’ll be able to pull this off.  It’s all riding on them to shed some light on everything, and from there, well, it’s for the courtroom, yes, but public opinion also matters significantly.  It’s a national crime, so it’s also for the nation to judge.  All they have to do is catch these bastards and show the proof of all their hard work.