Futaba Sakura

Futaba is the daughter of cognitive psientist Wakaba Isshiki; her father is unknown. Due to her high intelligence compared to other children around her, she was bullied often and barely had any friends other than a girl named Kana. However, Kana's parents were sexually harassing their daughter, and when Futaba discovered this, Kana left her as well.

At some point, Futaba, under the codename "Medjed," began acting as a "hacker of justice," becoming well known. However, because she stayed anonymous, other hackers began using the name all over the world, eventually forming their own hacktivist group. Futaba saw that the group was getting out of hand, but found it too much trouble to expose its members. Instead, she simply changed her handle to "Alibaba" and stepped away from hacktivism. During the events of the game, the moniker that Futaba used was impersonated by an IT Company president to launch blank threats against the Phantom Thieves.

While Futaba and her mother had a great relationship with each other, two years ago, when she was in middle school and the first Metaverse-related incident instigated by Yaldabaoth and Shido started, her mother, Wakaba Isshiki, suspiciously died in front of her because of a mental shutdown caused by Goro Akechi and ordered by Masayoshi Shido, resulting in Wakaba throwing herself in front of traffic. Her relatives, who have an eye on Wakaba's legacy, blamed the prodigy programmer for her death, based on a forged "suicide note," particularly after agents of the Conspiracy used it to manipulate Wakaba's family, hoping to keep her (alongside other cognitive psience researcher's) research for themselves.

Before her mother died, Futaba asked her to go on a family trip, at which Wakaba expressed her annoyance at Futaba bothering her for completing her research for the sake of her life, which Futaba responds with a tantrum. In reality, she promised her that she will bring her to anywhere she wants to go after she completes the research. The combination of the suspicious timing of her mother's "suicide" being after a family quarrel between the two, and the derogatory content of the forged suicide note, engineered the delusional belief that her mother hated her, which drove her to a complete breakdown. Following her mother's death, custody of Futaba was passed to several of her uncaring relatives, including her uncle, Youji Isshiki, who refused to even treat her as a person, not even allowing her to bathe or have a proper bed. Futaba does not know that her mother died of a mental shutdown before witnessing Okumura's death from the same circumstances, and Shido quickly forgot about Wakaba after he killed her.

This led her to develop guilt, psychological trauma, post-traumatic stress disorder, extreme social anxiety and hallucinations. The hallucinations are often of Wakaba's face overlaid on other people (Or Wakaba herself) looking disappointed in her. She has not attended school ever since graduating middle school: by her age, she should have been a first year student in high school. Wakaba's close friend, Sojiro Sakura has adopted Futaba, paying her uncle the better part of Futaba's inheritance to leave her alone. During her isolation, she tried to use her substantial hacking skills to learn about her mother's research and how it relates to her death only to find all of the information related to it had disappeared completely, and she shut herself in so tight at Sojiro's house that nobody around Yongen-Jaya had heard of her before, even from stores where Sojiro frequents. By the time of the game, her depression has worsened into outright suicidal impulses and a refusal to meet anyone, including Sojiro, as well as a delusional subconscious belief that her death would bring Wakaba back to life. Sojiro even tried to call a doctor to no avail, since she refused to come out of her room and usually locks it. The sheer magnitude of her negative emotions went so bad to the point that she managed to generate a Palace, despite not being a criminal with a heavy desire for controlling other's lives unlike the majority of targets. Due to her heart being distorted, she does not properly recall any of the events that ruined her life, as the memories are concealed in three murals in her Palace.

#### Fourth Heist: Futaba Sakura

Shortly after Junya Kaneshiro's fall, the Phantom Thieves are being threatened by a hacker group named "Medjed," who threatens to unleash a "Cleanse" against the Phantom Thieves and all of its supporters. In reality, this is an impersonator and the "Cleanse" is actually a blank threat issued by the CEO of an IT company affiliated with Masayoshi Shido. Futaba finds out that the protagonist and his friends are the Phantom Thieves by listening to their conversation in Café Leblanc through the bug she placed there. Knowing her own impulses and realizing she has to stop, Futaba sends a message to the protagonist under the alias Alibaba, asking him to steal her heart in exchange for helping them deal with Medjed, who are declaring war against the Phantom Thieves. However, when the protagonist demands more information, Futaba realizes that in order to steal her heart, they need to know more about her. This causes her to panic and hastily attempts to cancel her request for the first time interacting. However, for the second time, "Alibaba" claims that if the protagonist does not change her heart before the Medjed "Cleanse," she will expose all identities of the Phantom Thieves and their supporters, which will most certainly lead to their arrest. Again, she then hastily attempts to cancel the request for the same reasons as the first time. This aroused heavy suspicions around the Phantom Thieves due to the heavily threatening and anonymous nature of the "Alibaba" deal.

When problems with Medjed start to get worse, the desperate Phantom Thieves conclude they require her hacking skills to put an end to the situation. After piecing together the facts, Makoto Niijima correctly deduces that Alibaba is in fact Futaba herself. When visiting Sojiro's house, they find out she also lives there so they directly ask her about herself to get the keyword into the Palace. They sneak into Sojiro's house at night trying to find her. The household was pitch black and seemingly empty, until a lightning broke out and Futaba can be heard screaming, greatly alerting Makoto. This alerts Futaba that people are barging into her house, and she comes out to check only to see a terrified Makoto clinging onto the protagonist's leg. Both are terrified with each other, and Futaba flees into her room instantly due to her extreme agoraphobia. Sojiro then returns to his house to see the party's mess. Despite initially being bewildered because the party deliberately barged into his home and the party terrified in fear of reprisal, he consented to their presence and brings the party back to LeBlanc and explains the situation to them. When the party sneaks into Sojiro's home the next day, they do not force her to come out and allow her to communicate through chat. She told the protagonist that she wanted to die shutting herself in her room, then inputs the keyword "Tomb" by accident into the protagonist's navigator, transporting the party into her Palace. However, exploration was halted when Futaba's heart started to instinctively reject them, causing Shadow Futaba to appear and drop a boulder on them, forcing escape.

Her sin is Wrath, which turns her Palace into a giant pyramid filled with numerous traps such as quicksand pits and boulders and contains several murals which represent her self guilt over "causing her mother's death." Due to her proficiency with technology, the pyramid's interior appear with integrated electronics, and mirroring her shut-in lifestyle, the desert that acts as the outskirts of the Palace is extremely hot while it is much cooler inside the pyramid. Since she does not see anyone other than her mother Wakaba in a distorted way and she outright refuses to even meet people, the only cognitive existence in the Palace is the massive, spiteful sphinx that takes her form, which represents Futaba's guilt over her death, and it fights with Shadow Futaba for control of her own mind.

While the Phantom Thieves are having trouble with the sphinx, she notices the appearance of the Metaverse Navigator application on her own phone, and wonders if she can enter her own palace. She does so, encountering her Shadow and becoming her own Treasure in the process. She is forced to face her own fear as her Shadow urges her to remember her mother's death. Recalling that her mother's death was unnatural and realizing she had been deluding herself, Futaba awakens her Persona power and helps the party defeat the cognitive existence of her mother that she created, who wishes she was never born. After the battle, the image of the true, benevolent Wakaba appears before Futaba, and confesses her love for her daughter before disappearing. After the battle at her own Palace, Futaba holds her end of the bargain, hacking into Medjed's website to stop them from further bothering the Phantom Thieves. This does no damage to Medjed however, and is merely a part of the Conspiracy's plan, due to Medjed itself being an impersonator and the actual Medjed is Futaba herself.

If the protagonist cannot complete her Palace in time, the police come to arrest the protagonist with charges of extortion and suspicion of being a member of the Phantom Thieves, with Sojiro also being arrested for harboring a criminal, implying to be Futaba actually blackmailing them. This scenario is a false recollection made by the protagonist during Sae Niijima's interrogation, due to his mind being addled by drugs forcibly administered to him by the police. Futaba is also already reformed during the interrogation, further indicating that what happens is obviously a false recollection. Sae proceeds to leave the room to give the protagonist time to recover, at which point an assassin takes the opportunity to kill him.

After the Phantom Thieves change her heart, she finally comes out from her shell, starts to go outside by regularly visiting Café Leblanc, interacting with the protagonist and his friends and eventually joining the Phantom Thieves of Hearts to find the culprit truly responsible for her mother's death. She reveals she created the original Medjed identity and later gave her hacking scripts to a group of friends, but when counter-hacking the hostile Medjed she realizes that they do not use her distinct programs. From there, she deduces that someone else must have stolen their name. In addition, she reveals to the team the suspicious way that her mother's condition degenerated before she died, and that her physical notes were the only research that hadn't been destroyed and possibly are the only way to find the ones who forged the note that ruined her life.

After the death of Kunikazu Okumura, while cleaning Futaba's room, Sojiro accidentally finds the Phantom Thieves' calling card for Futaba that she keeps as a memento. He questions the protagonist and Futaba about this, giving them no choice but to explain what truly happened to Futaba's mother. Sojiro only thought that the protagonist had some kind of connection to the Phantom Thieves and got Futaba involved, but Futaba's slip makes him realize that the protagonist is in fact the ringleader of the Phantom Thieves himself. Sojiro then reveals the truth about his past, and how he had realized that the Thieves' methods have some similarity with details of Wakaba's research. Hearing Futaba's wish of wanting to find her mother's killer, Sojiro immediately rejects the idea. However, after seeing how determined both Futaba and the protagonist are, Sojiro promises to keep their secret and allows them to continue their activities under the condition that they should stop if it gets too dangerous.

The Phantom Thieves later find out that the ruining of Futaba's life was orchestrated by Masayoshi Shido, who ordered an assassination on her mother to protect his reputation from being damaged by her research that could otherwise expose his crimes, then forged a suicide note and told his men to read it aloud to her in an unnecessary act of cruelty. When the thieves finally secured the route to his Treasure, Futaba hijacks the broadcasting system of Japan to broadcast a message against him nationwide, which alerts him and causes his Treasure to take form.