History Fanfic / QueensCheckmate

** Despite no longer being the Wild Card, Joker still forms a friendship with Kasumi to help her get out of her gymnastics slump. It's similarly implied that he still also agreed to be Takemi's test subject for her experiments for medicine and also learned of Kawakami's double life.

* AdaptedOut: Some of the confidants in the original game, with those (so far) being Yoshida. It is currently unknown if they will appear sometime in the future.

** One especially prominent moment of this occurs in Chapter 68. When the Phantom Thieves run into Haru in their first trip to Okumura's palace, Makoto assumes she's Black Mask and fires off a Frelia as a warning shot. It's a tense confrontation, especially when Ren has to calm her down to prevent her from attacking who she presumes is the one who's responsible for her father's death...and then once [[spoiler:Ryuji]] shows up, HilarityEnsues as Haru launches into her "Beauty Thief" routine, all while imitating their speech patterns.

** In Chapter 1, Makoto alludes to another member that goes by the codename Witch, which was one of Joker's dialogue options when suggesting Makoto's codename.

* ForWantOfANail: In this story, certain events happen sooner. Because the Phantom Thieves take care of Kamoshida early on, he confesses shortly afterward rather than at the beginning of May. That also leads the Phantom Thieves to have their celebration at the beginning of Golden Week rather than the end of it. It's also why some of Makoto's Confidants differ from Ren's, as unlike Ren who does not have a social life in school due to his criminal record, Makoto is the student council president and so has a reason to have more Confidants that are within the school.

** As Ann is ultimately completely LockedOutOfTheLoop during Kamoshida's palace, she ends up [[ForWantOfANail taking Makoto's role of "stalking" the group to reveal their identity]]. [[spoiler:This is what leads to the Phantom Thieves targeting the principal to get her to believe them.]]

** While the framing story confirms that [[spoiler:Kunikazu Okumura is killed, Makoto thwarts Akechi's initial attempt to kill his Shadow before his Palace collapses. Akechi instead has him assassinated by forcing a psychotic breakdown on a security guard. While this means the Phantom Thieves immediately realise what happened (in contrast to the game where they initially wonder if they may have made a mistake when stealing Okumura's heart), the authorities are still quick to assume it must have been them, Sae going so far as to suggest the Phantom Thieves and Okumura had been working toghether until [[YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness they disposed of him.]]

* EveryoneKnewAlready: [[spoiler:By the time Ren and Makoto reveal their relationship to the other Thieves, everyone had already noticed, with the exception of Ryuji: "WAIT, FOR REAL?! SINCE WHEN?!"

** While the framing story confirms that [[spoiler:Kunikazu Okumura is killed, Makoto apparently thwarts Akechi's initial attempt to kill his Shadow before his Palace collapses, indicating that he doesn't die by mental shutdown.]]

* AdaptedOut: Some of the confidants in the original game, with those (so far) being Chihaya and Yoshida. It is currently unknown if they will appear sometime in the future.

** Shiho Suzui and Eiko Takao are both now Confidants for Makoto.

* AdaptationalAngstUpgrade: In the original games, Ryuji was the ButtMonkey of the team, but he wasn't too bothered by that. In this fic, after being the first one to get knocked out during the fights against Shadow Kaneshiro and the cognitive Wakaba, Ryuji starts feeling like a burden to the Phantom Thieves. When Makoto starts giving Ryuji less action out of concern for him, he doesn’t take it well, and these feelings of inadequacy worsen from there. [[spoiler:It comes to a peak in Chapter 66 when Ryuji leaves the team in at the start of the Okumura arc after Morgana scolds Ryuji for being reckless and blurts out that Makoto was afraid of him getting harmed because of that.]]

** Eiko Takao, the friend Makoto made in her Social Link in the main game, becomes the Faith Confidant.

** During the first chapter, Makoto mentally lists all of the Phantom Thieves... including an unaccounted-for individual that goes by the codename Witch, [[AdaptationDeviation hinting right away that this story has some major differences to the original.]]

** While Morgana could already take care of himself in the original game, it says a lot when in Chapter 8 [[spoiler:he saves Makoto from being raped by Kamoshida by latching onto his face and scratching him, allowing Makoto to flee to safety, and coming back in one piece]] all while in his cat form!
** {{Zigzag|gedTrope}}ed with Ren. While not having the Wild Card means he's no longer as powerful as in canon, Arsène is allowed to grow much stronger since he's not relegated to being Ren's [[StarterMon starting Persona]]. In addition to more powerful Curse spells, he gets a number of {{Status Infliction Attack}}s.

** [[spoiler:Following the fight with Okumura's Shadow, Futaba tells Haru her father is, "kind of a dork. I mean, he was quoting and referencing things in the middle of battle. Like, who does that?"]]

Everyone turned to Futaba, giving her a disbelieving look.

* DiesDifferentlyInAdaptation: [[spoiler:Kobayakawa is still assassinated by the Conspiracy for [[YouHaveFailedMe his continued failures]] (and the Phantom Thieves are still framed for it), but since his Palace has collapsed by that point he's shot dead in his home instead of suffering a mental shutdown.]]

* HypocriticalHumor: Yusuke has the gall to say Hifumi is eccentric, that Eiko is weird, and tells Makoto that she has some strange friends. Makoto can only give him an exasperated side-eye.

* GotMeDoingIt: Ryuji uses his game greeting of "what's bonking?" often, and despite his friends, mainly Ann's annoyance and insistence that it would never become a thing, several Thiefs end up saying it. Makoto says it once to humor Ryuji, Haru says it when caught by an Okumura robot, and even Ann says it after spending too much time with Ryuji. She immediately asks Makoto to forget she ever said it.

The story is currently on a bi-weekly update schedule.

** In chapter 1, Makoto alludes to another member that goes by the codename Witch, which was one of Joker's dialogue options when suggesting Makoto's codename.

** In chapter 12, when Sae tells Ren to tell her his name, he says that it's Akira Kurusu, which is his name in the [[ComicBookAdaptation Manga Adaptation]] of ''Persona 5''. Sae doesn't believe him.

** Likewise, Makoto and Sae’s father is known as Masanori Nijima.

* OnceDoneNeverForgotten: Early in the story Makoto tried to be stealthy by [[IncrediblyObviousTail hiding her face behind a book while pretending to read and taking a peek every so often]]. She only does this once, but Morgana and Ren, ''especially'' Ren, constantly remind her of this. Although she ''does'' hide behind a manga again in chapter 24, she at least wears a disguise so she's harder to recognize.
* OnlyFriend: Eiko mentions in chapter 21 to Maruki that Makoto is her only friend.

** [[spoiler:The original games had Ryuji and Morgana get into an argument that resulted in Morgana leaving the Phantom Thieves at the start of the Okumura arc, as he felt useless to the team after Makoto and Futaba joined and took over some of the roles he had. This fic has Morgana call Ryuji out for being reckless in Chapter 66 when the Okumura arc begins, which leads to Ryuji leaving the Phantom Thieves due to him feeling like a burden to the team after he got quickly knocked out against Shadow Kaneshiro and the cognitive Wakaba.]]

* AdaptationalAngstUpgrade: In the original games, Ryuji was the ButtMonkey of the team, but he wasn’t too bothered by that. In this fic, after being the first one to get knocked out during the fights against Shadow Kaneshiro and the cognitive Wakaba, Ryuji starts feeling like a burden to the Phantom Thieves. When Makoto starts giving Ryuji less action out of concern for him, he doesn’t take it well, and these feelings of inadequacy worsen from there. [[spoiler:It comes to a peak in Chapter 66 when Ryuji leaves the team in Chapter 66 at the start of the Okumura arc after Morgana scolds Ryuji for being reckless and blurts out that Makoto was afraid of him getting harmed because of that.]]

** While Morgana could already take care of himself in the original game, it says a lot when in chapter 8 [[spoiler:he saves Makoto from being raped by Kamoshida by latching onto his face and scratching him, allowing Makoto to flee to safety, and coming back in one piece]] all while in his cat form!