A/N: Let me be honest. I had no intention of furthering '8man's Journal'. It was an experiment, a test -footage, if you will, to check whether my account works. I'm pretty new at this but I have decided that this story can be written and finished. "I see an ending" as they say.

So here I present to everyone my new and improved: "8man's Journal: Redux Edition". This story will be updated from now on and I hope I can write, edit and post in a timely fashion.

Here's to making it official: I don't own anything. Neither Oregairu nor Watchmen. Don't send Rorschach to break my fingers. I need them to type. And don't send Hikigaya to make me depressed enough to drop this project.

P.S. I won't be saying my catchphrase at the top for I fear I will live upto my name.

Chapter 1: (Provided by BlackLiszt): At 8 to midnight, all the agent and SuperSaiyan crew, go out and round up everyone who knows more than they do.

8man's Journal October 10, 2035.

Random acts of violence clear cobwebs from old reels and an obsolete projector plays a recording from yesteryears underneath the folds of my mind. Compared to present footage, those unfortunate, like me, called again to re-enact their roles find glaring differences in their performances. Reminiscing about my past brings upon a sense of nostalgia.

First day of high school. Leaving early in anticipation. Riding a bicycle. Getting in an accident.

Bad choices taken and acted upon on a whim, with no desire to become a saviour in order to gather some modicum of goodwill. No need to become something you are not. No wish to change and become a worthy individual.

Past scene becomes clear in my mind's white sheets. Everything appears in my psyche as apparitions and ghosts. Looking back, I can envision, a ditzy airhead, taking her dog out for a walk on a misty morning many, many years ago. Dog escapes its leash and runs into the path of an incoming limousine.

Driver spots dog. Hits break. But alas, is late.

Or so he thought.

He was indeed involved in an accident, but instead of finding a dog beneath his tires he finds me, a teenager, a high school student, thrown a few feet away, lying on the road, hurt and injured. I had rescued the dog by shielding him from the impact of the car at the cost of my own body.

My price: A fractured leg, a three weeks stay in a hospital, and a guaranteed life of as a loner.

/

Fogs of past are lifted from my cloudy eyes, in favour of skimming through present roads, where a parody of my history unfolds. Children are skipping schools and finding entertainment in cruelty involved with burning live ants under the focus of a magnifying glass. Those who have graduated from this basic lesson of torturing insects find creativity in vandalism and drawing graffiti.

Most stop here.

But some plan to score their way into college.

Changing their mindset from curious cruelty to sagacious sadism begins with malice directed towards animals. Career criminals and perverse psychopaths begin their humble origin and receive their first taste of an insatiable hunger by burying bodies in their own backyards of strays no one will miss, before setting their targets on neighbouring pets.

I lost Kamakura to one of these incidents.

My paranoia finds meanings in utter nonsense.

Currently a stray dog is being pelted by small stones and pebbles in a sick game, played by a group of seemingly innocent young kids, thought to be incapable of such atrocious acts. Their morbid imagination turns into demented fascination after listening to repeated whelps and shrieks, emanating in the form of anguished barks from the jaws of this homeless pup.

Unseen to them but seen by me, froth seems to be accumulating in the corners of this mutt's mouth. It's displaying signs of an erratic behaviour and showcasing an unnatural fear of water, gathered in a nearby puddle.

Dog's hydrophobic, infected with rabies. No cure.

These stupid kids are the real ones in danger but they don't know it. They will be bitten by a mad dog unless someone steps in.

History is playing a practical gag upon me, waiting for me to repeat my sins, letting me know that I have learned nothing from my past.

…From that fateful day.

Here I am, riding on a motorcycle, upholding laws by travelling below the speed limit, by a respectable margin. And there I will be, up ahead on this very road, a few moments away from saving a couple of random kids, by getting gnawed off and chewed up by a mad dog in their stead. Fate is a bitch and I'm its chew toy.

I will not disappoint. I will fail and fall like this was meant to be.

One particularly large hunk of stone hits this ill dog straight in the eye. It howls in agony and scampers quickly into the middle of the street to work on an offensive manoeuvre. I can see the maddening anger filling this beast's eyes, the primitive rage urging to attack those who are hurting it for sport and nothing else. From its vantage point, it is one leap away from these insolent kids. One leap and he would be on them, tearing flesh from bone, till these brats are nothing but raw meat and blood.

I see it lowering itself, applying pressure on its hind legs, minutes from soaring through the road and landing on its tormentors, preparing to teach them a lesson in pain and torture.

I won't be reaching them in time. They are on their own. I have defied my role in history.

Someone else can do this dirty deed for today and I will be satisfied with wallowing in my own guilt and self pity for a night. My vision is upon the street before me, my hands firmly grasping the handle of my motorcycle and I keep seated on my ride, hearing the mechanical noise of my engine in favours of those noises of violence that I will be expected to hear soon.

I lower my speed and look away.

A second later, my ears pick up the sound of metal hitting flesh, followed by a deafening, beastly howl which concludes with cries of children.

I have taken my eyes off the street for a moment and here I find myself, a witness to another road accident. Focusing on the dog and the kids, I might have missed the speeding vehicle approaching from the opposite side of the road.

This time around I'm not the victim. I take in the scene and it seems to be mocking me, telling me of the road that I had not taken.

This black limousine with a hood ornament, depicting a winged angel, often runs me over in my nightmares and I find my body in a similar state to what is now left of this dog that is no longer living- body reduced to a bloody botch on a clean street, bones grinded, skin peeled off, and a face no longer recognisable.

I ask my nightmares to make an appointment with me for when I sleep.

I have stopped my humble motorcycle from moving forwards upon this road. Providing safe passage to this daunting, luxurious vehicle, a symbol of power and influence, seems a moot point. I kill my engine and wait, watching the automobile involved in a vehicular homicide pull up close to me. The driver decides to lower his window and come forth with an apology. But before he could make one, he is stopped and he escapes with his dignity intact by not being forced to humble himself before someone like me.

Upon receiving orders from his master, he lowers the window at the backseat and I'm offered a small peak at the occupant, lounging in comfort, while remaining completely unscathed and unruffled, after being involved in an accident, eerily similar to one in her past.

…My past.

"Problem?" She asks.

Her delicate fingers never miss a beat and she continues typing in her laptop.

She feels it below her, to lift her cold gaze to meet mines. Nowadays I'm insignificant. Like that mutt she had her driver run over.

"Yes" I say

"Contact my lawyer" she replies.

With a gentle nod she instructs her driver to dismiss my presence and begin their journey which was needlessly delayed. Tinted windows are in the process of being pulled up, moments away from hiding her cold, frozen visage once again.

I get a glimpse of her icy blue eyes at the penultimate moment and my ears hear a shivering murmur:

"Here's how you save others Hikigaya Kun."

Her limousine exits the block and leaves the neighbourhood, leaving me to think of a witness report which will ultimately be squashed by the authorities when I hand them to my superiors. My mind's voice drawls in a dull monotone while I kick-start my motorcycle and leave for a predestined location on the other side of the city where desolation and depravity awaits my arrival.

If minds can be read, then my journal will prove to be an unsavoury and disgusting piece of today's modern literature as evident from my present entry:

"Watching a rabid dog mauled to death made my day this morning. This beast was suffering from a terminal disease and those involved with running him over would argue that it was euthanized in a painfully-harmless fashion. Human beings cannot afford this luxury which has been provided to this creature out of the goodness in someone's cold heart.

Looking into the beast's belly, leaking blood and fluids all over this broad street made me wish for rain to wash away this stench from my nose.

Cold rain, cold shower, was a need of this hour.

Felt an unsettling need to take my head out of the gutter and wash away this memory down the drain with a cup of stale coffee. Thought, whether it was possible to clean myself in a puddle, by swimming in my worries, in this breeding ground meant for tadpoles.

…Frogs remind me of a childhood memory and I pulled away immediately.

Instead, I gallop upon my mechanical steed like the exiled knight that I am.

I have been called upon and entrusted with dirtying my hands by sticking them deep in mud and filth. Catching killers and unearthing conspiracies have become my source of income, after I was forced by circumstances to work in a government institution filled with dishonesty and corruption. Unimportant trivia.

I have never succumbed to temptation and become a sleaze. Shedding light on who's in bed with whom, solely for the purpose of closing an investigation became my modus operandi. I help put away those involved in shady politics and those running an underground prostitution ring in a same cell and ignore them. Plugging my ears with indifference, I tune out their collective curses and threats. These are powerful men waiting judgment from a lenient justice system.

Narrative never changes.

Pay billions in bail and stay away from me.

Fear me- my eyes, my perceptions, my notions.

I won't hesitate to humiliate.

I am forbidden from glowing with others in the light but I can watch them from afar, illuminating my small, diminished world.

I live a lie.

I am a lie.

I have accepted the fact that I'm beyond saving and if someone offers me a hand to pull me up, saying they can help me from this quicksand like existence I call life, I will swat that hand away before it reaches me and hiss:

"Never"

/

I never had a choice. Now I think none of us did. Clogs in a clock of a time bomb, waiting to be set off and obliterate our narrow sense of sanity. We followed footsteps of presidents, without knowing about their chances of getting impeached and we chased after people meant to betray our dreams. Indecent turns in life, cutting corners, taking shortcuts became a norm, a way of life.

Getting bought and sold by entrepreneurs like Yukinoshitas' and Hayamas' was all just good business. Licking milk money from palms of snobs and sluts ceased to be disgusting. We willingly gave up our will to these leeches and capitalist and now a downward spiral paved by our own greed and gluttony has begun to take shape in this shapeless future forming before my own dead fish eyes.

Had everyone preserved the status quo none of this would have happened.

Government have no solution to an oncoming economic depression caused by clueless law enforcement agencies, unable to make progress in investigating a counterfeiting ring and then fearing reprimand, they summon me to take away the heat. I'm currently a sergeant, suspended for an indefinite period and I have been asked by an 'insect' to have a look and provide a guiding hand.

Welcome to Hikigaya Hachiman's present day world

Here blind leads blind.

A/N: So how was it? Hope this doesn't look like a copy-n-paste job. Please leave a review mentioning a chapter name like "BlackLiszt" did. That will be super helpful. I'm not good at naming things, as you can understand.

Am I forgetting something? Um… yeah…

This was a terrible idea.

Take deep breath and whisper in an inaudible tone:

Here's to betraying your dreams.

Will update soon