Payback's Hell by Wordsworthy
Disclaimer: I obviously do not own The Shin Megami Tensei series since obviously Atlas does, along with all other references made over the course of the story. This is, after all, just a fanfiction written for the sole purpose of entertainment and no profit motive whatsoever. So please just enjoy the story and do not sue me for this. If you wish to know more about the series, please support the companies producing them directly and purchase their merchandise if you like.
Click click click click click.
"Can't find the server."
Click.
"Can't find the server."
Click.
"I shall exact your vengeance."
Click click click click click.
"The request is accepted."
Beep.
"Hmm… a new request…" muttered the young man as he put on his bomb jacket. Walking over to his desktop, he picked up his shades by its side and placed it atop the ridge of his nose. "Takaya! We have a job tonight."
The pale young man lounging on the couch tilted his head back and looked at the man seated at the computer, his wavy grey hair getting in his eyes but not minding it one bit.
"Really…? Ah… it does seem like even though the world itself is ending, hatred would probably live forever. Have you taken down the name and location Jin?"
"Affirmative." said the young man as he approached with an elaborately embossed card that bore his cursive script. "Check it out."
"Hmm… they get younger and younger every day don't they… oh well, it's not our business. The customer is always right, eh Jin?"
"Exactly. When Revenge Request is on the job, it's satisfaction guaranteed."
Over at Paulownia Mall, a lone girl in a black sailor fuku is sitting quietly by the fountain, dipping her hands in the waters and stirring them around idly, oblivious to the other passerbys that criss-crossed in front of her.
An unseen clock strikes twelve. The landscape suddenly took on a sickening green while the people around the girl suddenly became replaced by glowing black coffins. Despite the ominous turn of events, the girl remained decidedly concerned only with the fountain, even though the water was no longer there.
"Good evening…" greeted a cold voice.
Two men entered the area, one of them carrying a silver case while the other walked with a precarious gait.
"Oya oya… it looks like we're being ignored." said the pale young man with feigned hurt.
"Hey brat, didn't your mom teach you any manners? You're supposed to answer when you're spoken to." admonished the other teenage boy in the bomb jacket before taking out an embossed card. "Is your name Enma Ai?"
"That's right. What of it?" answered the young girl at last, even though she still hadn't spared them a direct glance.
"Sorry brat but somebody's got a grudge against you, and they asked us to get revenge." explained the smart looking guy indifferently.
"Oh? Revenge Request, was it?" came the equally indifferent response.
"Ah, you've heard of us. Pity, you could have been a potential client." added the mouthy smart alec.
"Rivals would probably be more appropriate." said the girl in little more than a whisper.
"Enough talk Jin."
The pale young man walked several steps forward before stopping in between the two transmogrified coffins that flanked the front of the young girl. Without any hesitation, he pulled out his revolver and aimed it directly at her head.
"Allow me to send you on your way to Hell, young one."
The girl finally turned her head towards the pale young man, causing shivers to run involuntarily down the latter's spine as crimson eyes the colour of blood stared directly back at and into him.
"That is my line."
The two black coffins beside the young man suddenly came alive as ghoulish black hands reached for and ensnared him. The coffins then proceeded to move towards each other, enclosing the young man in an even larger coffin as darkness consumed him entirely.
"Takaya!" yelled the boy in the bomb jacket as he reached for his weapon. However, before he could do so, he felt the edge of cold steel pressed along the nape of his neck.
"This is what you get for being an imitation. Consider this an extra, pretender." announced a cavalier male voice.
The sound of a sword slashing through the air followed before two dull thuds clattered on the floor shortly after.
"Otto-san, wake up! You're going to be late for work!"
Tired eyes opened to find an absolutely adorable little girl staring back, her doll-like lavender eyes blinking cutely in anticipation.
"I'm up, I'm up… wow… you are almost as pushy as your mom."
A beautiful woman with flowing black hair and unique bangs stuck her head into the room.
"I heard that. Kikuri, you're going to be walking to school if you don't hurry. I have an executive meeting at nine and I can't be late. As for you… you really should know better than to drink that much on a weeknight? Go wash up now Takaya!"
"Hai hai… I heard you Anna-san…" droned the pale man wearily as he dragged himself up to the bathroom. As he looked at the eye bags in the reflection while idly brushing his teeth, something surfaced fleetingly at the back of his head, but disappeared just as quickly. "Eh… am I forgetting something."
The pale man dragged himself to the office with heavy steps before making it to a small desk in an equally small cubicle. Numerous piles of paper towered above on it while the small workspace was littered with miscellaneous pieces of paper. Before he could even sit down on his scrawny chair, an angry voice called out for him.
"Takaya! Get your scrawny ass in here right now!"
Sighing deeply, the man left his cubicle and laboured to the manager's office.
"You wanted to see me Boss?"
The tall, confident-looking young man in the seat glared hard at the new entrant with the eye that wasn't covered by the hair hanging over the left of his face. Growling angrily, he threw three files directly at his scrawny subordinate.
"Takaya! I had it up to here with your incompetence. Take a look at those files. You missed out two zeroes in those quotations! Do you have any idea how much money the company would have lost if these went out! We may have been classmates but enough is enough!"
"Ah…" said the pale man lamely. "Sorry, Boss. I'll correct them right now."
"Don't bother. Consider yourself fired. Go collect your last paycheck at HR. I don't ever want to see your face again!" ordered the manager coldly.
"Boss! Mr Ichimoku! Sir! Ren-san! Please reconsider. I have a wife and a kid!" begged the man as he crumpled to his knees.
"Security. Please escort Takaya-san out."
"Nooo… Boss… please reconsider!!"
The newly jobless man staggered his way home carelessly, an almost empty bottle of sake clutched tightly in his right arm. The evening had just come and gone, but he had already gotten a night's worth of drink in him. The man finally reached his home and reached for the keys, but the door suddenly opened.
"Otto-san! You're late! And you stink! We have a guest tonight!"
"Really… hic…"
The man staggered into the living room where his former Boss and beautiful wife were seated, a steaming pot of nabe simmering in front of them while the wife refilled the other man's cup with more sake.
"Ara, Takaya! You're late! Ren had been waiting all evening for you! And he has good news too…"
The drunken man trembled as his veins convulsed in alcohol-fuelled anger before he raised his bottle high and struck the other man squarely on his forehead, breaking the glass into a thousand fragments.
"What are you doing with my wife!!"
Bleeding furiously from the gash on the head, the well-dressed man laid still at a corner, his suit and the tatami registering a growing pool of red.
"Takaya, what are you doing!? He was just here to tell you that you can have your job back! I spent the whole afternoon pleading on your behalf!" screamed the wife as she hung herself on his arm while the man tried to shake her off.
"Shut up, you slut! Adulteress!"
As he turned towards her, the jagged remains of the bottle impaled itself into her chest, making her gasp out in pain before she staggered backwards.
"Mom!" cried the little girl as she rushed forward to catch her. Unfortunately, the woman fell unto the table and overturned it, causing the oil base within the pot to spill and make contact with the flames, as well as the canister of fuel.
"Kikuri! Wait!" yelled out the pale man as he leapt towards the girl.
An explosion erupted into being, knocking the man backwards and hitting his head against the side of the wall. His vision slowly faded as his surroundings began to burn.
"Oh, pitiful shadow cloaked in darkness."
A near catatonic man with numerous burns covering his body and large parts of his face sat helplessly in a wheelchair in the court of law as the sentence was passed down upon him by a serene looking old man with beady eyes.
"Thy actions cause men pain and suffering."
"… I now pronounce the plaintiff Takaya guilty of all three counts of first-degree murder. Personally I have never seen a more heinous crime in my lifetime as a judge. Henceforth, I will impose the sentence of life imprisonment on the plaintiff, as a lesson for society."
"Thy hollow soul drowns in thy sins."
The clothes on the man changed into the appropriate prison garb while his surroundings became that of walls and steel bars. His surroundings soon blurred as they spun around him, as did he. By the time the world stopped revolving, the man was nothing more than a frail old man, grotesquely deformed by his burns and unable to speak or do anything other than tremble and spasm. His mind, however, had been screaming all this time as it finally broke down into a million pieces, as did his life. Broken shards and shredded blossoms ended the act.
"How would you like to see what death is like."
The boat moved slowly upon the misted waters of the River Styx, creaking due to its antiquity with every row of its rudder. The pale withered old man by its bow tried its futile best to move and struggle, only to find that he couldn't. A laboured rasping noise was the best it could do in his attempt at speech with the young girl that was rowing them along. The young girl who was wearing an elegant and elaborately-designed floral kimono. The young girl with haunting blood-red eyes.
"What… why…?"
"You do have considerable wisdom in discerning the beauty of death and that of living for the present. However you have failed to realise that Life encompasses of not only the present but also the past and future. More importantly, you also failed to realise that there are things more painful, more bitter and infinitely more terrifying than both Life and Death."
The young girl looked up ahead slightly before carrying on, the great pillars of the gate finally within a few rows reach.
"It is easy to simply give up on life. For you who fear your own mediocrity, for you who is so dependent on death for a sense of ability and identity, for you who so readily gave up on your past and future, it is only fitting that I show you a future that reflected more truthfully the real horror beyond both life and death, and that future became the past which your present form now derives from."
"Noo…" gasped the husk that was Takaya weakly.
"Furthermore… what makes you think Death is the end of all things? Have you so conveniently forgotten the eternity that lies beyond?" added the young girl matter-of-factly as the boat crossed the point of no return.
A low laboured scream made its way out of the man, but was ultimately lost to the world.
"I believe I told you this when we first met, didn't I?" said the girl coolly, her haunting red eyes fully focused on the old young man now that the mists fully consumed them from all sight.
"It is I who shall carry this vengeance to Hell."
Click click click click click.
"Can't find the server."
Click.
"Can't find the server."
Click.
"I shall exact your vengeance."
Click click click click click.
"The request cannot be accepted."
"Why? Why can't it go through!" exclaimed the young man with a stubbled goatee as he banged on the desk where the computer was, causing a well kept sketchbook to tremble in the slightest.
"Because there is already a contract on that person." explained the cold female voice of a young girl suddenly from behind, causing the boy to jump and turn around. A girl in a black sailor fuku with long straight hair to be exact. A girl with blood red eyes.
"Already a contract? You mean, someone besides me asked you to send him to Hell?" said the young man incredulously before he gasped in realization. "Masaka!?"
The next morning, a loud banging could be heard on the second floor of the dormitories. Without so much as an invitation, the young man with the goatee threw opened the door and barged into the room where another silver-haired young man was changing.
"And good morning to you too, Junpei." said the owner of the room stoically, not taking his eyes of his own reflection in the mirror as he put on his uniform.
The other boy stared pointedly at the valley of the rapidly buttoned up white shirt, in particular the area by the left chest where the black tattoo of an inverted magatama residing inside a ring was.
"Sempai! Why?"
The upperclassman turned to his junior with a sad smile and began in an apologetic tone.
"Because it's better me than you. I only wished I had done it sooner…"
"Senpai…"
Slinging on his jacket over his shoulders, the silver-haired young man made for the door before he stopped and called over his shoulder coolly.
"Come. We need to make breakfast before Yukari or Fuuka gets to it. I don't fancy meeting him again for quite a while, if you get what I mean."
"Hai!"
A new white candle stood tall and erect over the rest of its brethren. Inscribed on it with a majestic manuscript were the kanji that read 'Sanada Akihiko'.
Author's notes:
An alternate twist to the story. Queries? Watch Jigoku Shoujo. Then tell me how cool I am.