N.
what was golden went gray
Steel clinks hard on linoleum even when it should make no sound.
Head spinning, heartbeat spiking, Souji runs. Fingers tight around the katana, trainers pounding on the slippery checkerboard floor. He makes contact with its arm, a squishy sound that splatters his face with hot black blood. His glasses fog, covered with thousands of specks of oily blood, and he tastes vomit.
That's not usual anymore, but nothing is usual now. Can't be. Probably won't be – no, need to focus.
"You fucking Shadows – I'm going to KILL YOU!"
God Almighty.
Naoto's light on her feet and better with aim. She stands back from the rest, long distance, taking aim while Kanji smashes in the skull. It's a hard blow, should be; Souji has to wince and hold down the sick as he watches the creature (don't think of it as Yosuke anymore) lull forward, exhaling blood and teeth with breath. Dizzy spins in its eyes, and its six golden toes scrape up black paint from the chessboard floor as it wobbles. Souji tightens his grip again.
That should have knocked him out. If he was still human, it would've knocked him out. Broken his skull. But . . .
Should move, should strike now . . . can't bring himself to move.
"'s that the best yoo've gaut!"
Naoto's hands are steady, but not now. She balances one on the other, squints, tongue in her teeth, and aims. For something that's been smashed in the head, it moves faster than little Shirogane Naoto, and lunges. Her bullet ricochets, misses Chie's shoulder.
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Its tongue's metal now. Parts are, at least. Some of it's still pink and squishy and swollen up and bloody where its teeth have caught and torn in. Souji sees it when it tries to spit out spells and curses and – God, this is bad.
"Garoodine!"
At the start, Souji thought, maybe. Still had human, still had him, in his eyes. But he threw the Garudyne at Kanji, GODDAMNIT, and just watches as Kanji lands hard on the linoleum. Knew what damage it does to him, knew he can't take it, and stands and just watches and listens. Crack. Snap. FUCK. Yukiko runs to him, slipping in the puddles of Shadow blood, and in the backs of all their minds, Rise screams through Himiko.
FUCK, FUCK, FUCK.
Calm down now, he's fine, still breathing, you can see that. Now . . . his blade slides and clinks, oh so soft, oh so quietly, against the hilt. Revenge. End this. (Put him out of this misery but please, don't scream).
Of course he wants to know what happened. How this, how they got to Kakuri Junes, and how instead of his friend, there's this . . . half-Yosuke, half-Shadow, half-mechanical –
FUCK.
Leering, in the middle of a white, sweat-drenched face, brown eyes focus on Souji. Souji flicks through his mind, counting invisible cards –
Lightning to match wind no not Mada, not Norn she'll negate, not, no Odin, Odin works, call Odin damnitcallOdin – stepnow, you're GOING TO GET HIT –
"YOSUKE, STOP!" Chie's eyes go blue and her body tenses and Suzuka Gongen flickers, materializing as she runs and spins her halberd. At the last second, the ice doesn't come, the spear doesn't strike, and Chie's voice comes out in a choke. "WE'RE YOU'RE FRIENDS!"
Souji backs away and his muscles lock and if he keeps his eyes level with the Shadow's brown then it'll only aim at him, not the others, give Yukiko and Teddie a chance to clean up the wounded. His trainers squeak in the blood and on the polished floor.
Lips split. It's trying to smile or, no, not a smile – (FOCUS, CALL ODIN, PICTURE HIM, SETA, NOW) – smiles involve teeth, are human, glee, happiness. Half aren't teeth. Split fangs, white or gold and crooked. Gums black. God Almighty, what happened to you.
"Heh," it bites. It still sounds like him, but tinny, like he speaks through a metal can, an echo through steel hallways. "Yooo . . . you Shadows are all the same . . . can't – can't fight fair."
He wants to know, Souji thinks when he shouldn't. When he should be counting his heartbeats and savoring the moments before it pounces, swinging that fucked up arm, he wants to be told what happened.
I.
at the end
3 october 2011
"You know, there's nothing I enjoy more on a Saturday morning than stabbing monsters."
Chie finishes unzipping her sweater before she gives him a Look. The dim green light of the lab makes her body glow, all the beads of sweat alight like she's embedded in emeralds or, knowing her spending habits, rhinestones. She shifts, the gem-light flickering, and plants both hands on her hips.
"I hope you're joking," she sighs. Yosuke grins and wipes his brow on his sleeve. He's just as sweaty as she is, but Chie makes sweaty and bloody look good. It's a compliment, but she'll hit him (hard) if he says so.
"No, of course not. I would much rather be here with things trying to eat me than, say . . . being at home, playing Fallout or sleeping –" Great. She's rolling her eyes and his tongue ties up and Yosuke ends his complaint with a sigh. "I hate this place."
Really. The lab's going up at the top of Worst Places Hanamura Has Ever Been, right below biazarro-Konishi Liquors. Things here . . . are wrong. Well, nothing in the TV is ever right, but still.
Blinking red lights everywhere, psychedelic against the viridian glow the floors exude. For no reason, mind you. It's as if the floors just picked the creepiest, most nauseating color to exude, and decided to do it constantly. Yosuke thinks it's the goo on the floors. Yeah, that's what messes this place up. He sidesteps radioactive footprints and ignores the smeary handprints all over the walls.
"Really, because I love it." Kanji cracks his jaw and wipes Shadow blood (sticky, oily goo, molasses strained too many times with the smell of rot and crap) off his hands and on his jeans. "Quit complain' and c'mon."
"You know you can't tell him to stop complaining," chimes in Chie, scratching the back of her right leg with her left foot. "It'll be like asking a fish to stop swimming."
"But why would you ask a fish to stop swimming?"
"It's a joke, Teddie."
". . . but why would you?"
Yosuke tries to swallow Chie's words. He doesn't complain that much, especially compared to her, Miss. Oh I Can't Finish Our Project Today My Neck Really Hurts. Her steel boots clink hard on the grated floor, cracking his thoughts. His spine shivers. Footsteps echo, and turn into distant, alien screams.
Ah. That's what this place reminds him of. The ship from Alien. Yosuke really wouldn't be surprised if Ellen Ripley came barreling down the hallways with a xenomorph snapping at her heels.
Well, he would, but maybe a bit of 70's latex costuming would make a break from the very real Hablerie and exploding dice that wanted a bunch of Japanese kids for lunch. The glowing handprints even look like caustic blood . . .
Oh, right. Focus. Monsters are here.
Souji walks in front of them all, long-legged gait sweeping and, above all, silent. His katana's out, held in both hands like a cop carries a gun. Kanji and Yosuke flank him, and the girls and Teddie take up the rear, raiding party style. Yosuke holds his knives in his left hand; the right cleans off the glasses, smearing condensation and making a bigger mess with fingerprints. Not like he wants to see more of this place.
Damnit. He hopes there aren't too many more floors of this.
The labyrinth twists and turns. A broken vertebrae of hallways means they shift directions with every other step, broken by hard clunking and swift, vacuum sucking as the doors open to accommodate them. Every time, his body goes rigid, waiting . . .
When the hallway doesn't have monsters sleeping in wait, everything drains away from him and Yosuke feels the weight of wasted energy.
Souji rounds the corner, quick, and his thick shoulders sink. "Stairs to the basement," he announces. His grip slides down. Great. Spindly stairs in a claustrophobic tunnel. With radioactive blood everywhere. Just . . . just swell.
Yosuke exhales and his breath hangs in a cloud before him. Huh. He's sweating so much he didn't even realize it was cold. Cold and sweat – wonderful combination. Amazing none of them have gotten pneumonia yet
"Do you think . . . we can take a break for . . . for a moment?" Yukiko's hands are shaking, and nobody's going to say no to that. Fine. By. Him.
Light from a computer system on the walls mixes ethereal blue with the sickly green air. His eyes sting with the brightness of it all. A half dozen keyboards line the grating, all of them probably useless – not that there was any moment to check and see if you could get on the internet from the TV world. God his shoulder hurts. Should cast Dia, but everyone'd ask why. Don't want to be a wuss. (Okay, you are a wuss, but you don't want to look like one).
The machinery is claustrophobic. WAY too much like a hospital. A horror-movie hospital with sick genetic experiments – fantastic, now he's thinking of Parasite Eve.
Yosuke shakes his head. Sweat drips into his eyes. No more monster movies before TV world. Seems logical (common sense, you dolt).
"What do you think these things are, Senpai?" Kanji folds his arms and tips his straight nose straight up, staring at the ceiling.
Yosuke copies him and regrets it. Doesn't take more than half a second to regret it. Aw God, he didn't need to see that. There's something moving up between the pipes. Except it's a river-water type of moving rather than an oh-shit-run type of moving. Yosuke's shoulder slides down. Worse than tension, the constant release and building of it, draining him too much too often.
"Water pipes, looks like."
"But they've got . . . I dunno, moving bits in them."
"Look." Chie's voice is tired, empty, resorting to it's standard agitating sighing in lieu of a proper reason. "If it isn't trying to eat me, I don't care what it is. And even then I don't."
"What if there're Shadows in there, huh? Ready to jump out an' eat you? Will you care then?" Kanji's voice is testy, but Chie's got the balls to punch him if he pisses her off. Which he's doing pretty well, by the pulse in her temple and the slit of her brown eyes.
They've been in the TV way too long, Yosuke decides, and hopes Souji picks up the thought and says they can all go home. That'd be great. His back hurts, his legs hurt, his head hurts, and he still has at least another hour of Ekoda-san's homework he needs to bullshit. But Souji sighs and Yosuke turns away very quickly before Kanji can see him looking pissed.
Fuck.
The pipes do have moving bits in them.
Wriggling in the muck, hardly visible. The green and blue of the room catches the plastic pipes' walls and reflects too many pairs of eyes and steely bits than he'd ever be comfortable with. Their footsteps still echo Ellen Ripley-style and Yukiko's breathing is so heavy that Yosuke, thank you merciful God, can't hear if the Shadows in the pipes make noise at all. But the light catches something else. Too much, he thinks; Yosuke would have preferred the darkness.
No. Not in the pipes. Next to them. There's something on the ceiling.
It's impossible to tell, though, its so tangled, so absorbed into the metalwork. Aw hell. It isn't moving. All caught up over nothing. Shadows really need to, dunno, blow up or disintegrate when they die, or something. Yosuke's real tired of seeing their corpses; half the fucking time they don't even look alive to begin with and their immobile bodies just make everything look confusing.
"Haven't seen this one around before."
"Oh for God's sake, just stop staring at it Kanji."
This particular affront to God (he's not religious, but hey, if they shoe fits) is long, lean like floss or copper wife. Lumps of metal muscle cling to its steel skeleton, each group defined, carved by some demented, drunken, but talented sculptor who knew human anatomy way too well. All the parts aren't just right, they're perfect, but twisted and elongated. A golden plague mask engraved with the black scratched 'I' dubs its Arcana.
Magician. Like him.
Fantasies of the arcane still flicker throughout his brain. Yosuke still entertains them, musing over them as he looks at the scratched golden mask on the Magician's face. He can summon wind – hell, hurricanes, when he's feeling full of himself – for fuck's sake. He's like some god of storms. Can't get more awesome than that.
Wait, yes, you can.
Souji's beside him now – damn his shoes are quiet – and he's looking up at the monster in the abyss. He turns away, but Yosuke continues to look, head cocked to get a clean angle from his sweat-stained glasses. The thing looks kinda like a xenomorph, vaguely . . . well, a steampunk alien, really, so not too much –
Souji interrupts and his words take precedent. "I think it's dead."
Death is relative. Yosuke blinks. Is it Jiraya again?
"How can you tell?"
"It would've attacked by now if it wasn't, I suppose." One thing; Souji should never be a doctor. When he's thinking, he's uncaring. Not logical, emotionless. Creepy as fuck.
"Yup! It's dead alright! I can tell!"
"Now how on earth can you tell?" Bloodshot brown lands on Teddie, whose eyes beam and lips smirk even though they're permanently in that blissful smile.
"My nose, stupid!"
"HEY! You're not one to call me stupid!" Ted's fur really isn't what you'd think it'd be; it's longer than it looks, prickly, but thick, soft but not exactly huggable. A lot like a dog's more than a teddy bear's. Teddie feigns a wince after Yosuke thumps him (wasn't that hard, stupid bear).
Chie's here again. Yosuke smells her musk rise up from his left. Not a pleasant smell for not a pleasant person, but attractive. The sweat on his spine goes cold. So's her voice; it cracks, timbre shivering. The TV's making her temper rise, she's been here far, far too long.
"C'mon Yosuke, don't be such a jackass! You don't have to hit him!"
SHADOW! ABOVE YOU!
Bronze cuts through his shoulder anyway.
The copper-wire Magician has six sharpened claws on the tips of stained glass wings. Each a foot long, each dental-tool sharp, each covered now in hot red blood. It glides down, peregrine fast, screeching and clawing at the floor with its talons. Half a hook is lodged wrist-deep in Yosuke's shoulder –
HOLY FUCKING MOTHER OF GOD!
Its gold gaze delights at the sight of blood spilling from Yosuke. He stumbles backwards. Kunai clatter on the grating, nearly hitting his toes but –
FUCKING HELL THIS HURTS.
The hand comes out – FUCKING FUCKING HELL – and rises, waiting, preparing to swing down and take his face off. High voice comes out from behind the mask, splits his skull, his head. Ears bleed – maybe shoulder – WHO THE HELL CARES, THIS HURTS. It's tinny. Shrill. Echoing, curdling, so evil that Yosuke still has no choice but to listen captivated.
Like a woman's scream in a metal hallway. Like Ripley's when she faces death –
Deal with your wound – you can't fight when you're this injured.
Yosuke's trying to push both hands against his shoulder. Right through the bone. Feels like it. Bite down tears, hurts too much to, bite through your tongue you're a fucking man just do it. Doesn't work. Fucking, fucking hell.
Focus on not getting hit again.
Dead eyes behind the plague mask still are fixed on bloodshot brown.
Yosuke blinks stupidly. Fingers wrap deeper around his shoulder. Jiraya – did he call him? No, don't think so – made it shallower. Hurts like a fucking motherfucker. Swallow your tongue, bear it, back away and make sure it doesn't happen again. Let someone else take the next hit, you can't survive another – coward Goddamnit THE PAIN.
It isn't cowardice, because you're not abandoning them.
"ZIODYNE!"
When Kanji calls for lightning, his voice thunders. He makes the room quake. He makes his throat tear. He smiles whenever a Shadow dies, but Kanji's Emperor of the Professional Soldier; glad to succeed, not glad to kill.
Yosuke's hands are drowning and burning. He can't see. The lab turns into a hospital fluorescent lamp.
But when Souji calls for the heavens, via Izanagi (his preferred tool of torture), there's no rage, no fury, no . . . Yosuke's watched for months, and he's never seen anything. Souji's calm.
He watches the Magician writhe and spit out sparks and oily blood. He just watches. Just with a face. Scientific, political, poker face. His eyes don't twitch and his lips don't thin and his cheeks don't fill up with vomit. Empty. Examining.
Seta Souji leads them because when Shadows see Kanji's manic glee, Chie's rage, they see a meal to be won over. But Souji's too much like them, too much of a monster to be fucked with. You don't screw with something that doesn't feel anything when it sees you in agony.
FUCKING MOTHER OF GOD THIS HURTS.
Chie's heel crushes the copper-wire creature's head, and a chill pulses down through Yosuke's bloody arm. It's gray, cept for the part covered in red and a black uniform. It's shaking. Maybe all of him is doing that in that color. Yosuke isn't . . . very sure.
All the colorful lights are going through his eyes right now. Pretty blues, pretty greens, pretty spots of white. Dancing off a dead Magician's skeleton.
"Are you alright?"
Chie has eyes like a bitch. Labrador brown. Burning, melting, milky chocolate. Yosuke blinks. He's tasting sick in the back of his mouth – don't think of food, don't think, don't have enough . . . whatsit . . . to form complete . . . words?
Teeth grit though. You complain too fucking much, Hanamura his brain does succeed in producing.
"Yeah. Scratched me, that's all. Nothing I can't handle."
Twist the mind (I don't wanna, can't . . .) dig in deep (can't I sleep). Yellow eyes wait in that night, but Yosuke doesn't mind them like he did in Konishi Liquors. Yosuke gulps in inhales, skinny chest shaking, and asks of that night, "Dia."
It obliges, but the pain doesn't dissipate. The wound closes and the blood stops seeping, but the pain is still there. As he swallows nausea while blood fills up his systems up again (added bonus, nasty dizzy, only crappy part of the whole damn spell), Yosuke stands and makes a fist over and over again in his blood soaked hand, but the pain doesn't go away.
But don't complain.
"See! You worry way too much, Chie." The grin doesn't come quite so easily. Yosuke blinks his eyes, enjoying the world when he couldn't see it, letting the dizziness subside before he looks again at Chie and Souji and the rest of them. But mostly Chie. She doesn't remember what personal space is when she's worried.
Her hair sticks out in all directions, sweat and Shadow blood making some foul but effective gel, her cheeks flushed a funny sort of pink. But her eyes, still . . . big, brown bitch eyes. The glasses frame them so well that Yosuke looks at them like a painting.
He lets his fingers fall away from his shoulder. Agony. He stiffens his back and forces the grin to look natural.
"It'll take way more than that to knock me out of the ballpark."
"Dunce," she sighs, head shaking.
"Hey, I just got injured; have a little sympathy for me!"
"I think," calls out Souji. His gray gaze still has tints of electric blue to them, subsiding now. He's sliding his katana through his belt, hands careful, but face switching between the five of them haphazardly. "We should probably call it a day. We got sloppy right there."
I agree, Senpai.
Rise's voice in his mind makes Yosuke's teeth rattle. Shoulder pulses. Throbbing pain, broken leg pain, but magic healed the wound. Why the hell.
"But what about Naoto?" Yukiko, paler than her usual snow, sweeps forward. Her legs are black and blue, red and brown, and barely can stand to hold up her anorexic self.
"We're no good to him in this condition. You look like you're about to pass out and," the now-gray eyes fall to Yosuke. Sympathy's etched into his steel, but Yosuke frowns at it. Sympathy's for the weak, his old man would say, and though Yosuke usually accepted both it and the title that went with it, now it makes him ill.
The dizziness starts coming back, and he picks up his knives to excuse the shutting of his eyes. World spins. Pretty green and blues and darkness mix together, nauseating fun house hues.
"You can't even stand."
"I'm fine," says Yosuke but Kanji talks over him, "Senpai's right – no doubt we'll have to deal with Naoto's Shadow too, and you two are fair game.
"Am not," but Yukiko sighs, "I guess you're right."
Thank God, he tells himself, I can go home and sleep.
Pulses of pain warp all sensation of his arms. Pins and needles are nothing – syringes and swords, Yosuke feels as they re-climb the stairs in the decimated laboratory, syringes and swords.
*
Eyes drooping. Buzzing, buzzing, swarm of insects in seats in Sunday evening best. Big black screen, dropped down, slideshow rolling, film is clicking. Exhibit A? Detective talk. Little boy in a purple hat yelling out as darkness bites off fingers shaped like sausage rolls. Hungry? No. Showtime. Snacks after in intermission.
Slip in seat. Eating him, licking its lips. Mighty tasty leg you have there can I have another? No, he says, now shush. Show's about to start.
Six women in undone yukatas and nothing else. Each spastic, bodies flailing, spinning, music box ballerinas trying to choreograph themselves. BOO, buzz all the bugs, BOO. I don't know, they aren't that bad. Pretty though. Naked mostly, the yukatas are made of tissue paper.
But the women aren't content. Half sob and electricity sparks off their bodies oh they aren't human that's right but it's okay because you aren't are you boy, are you boy?
No, no you've got it wrong see here. Teeth sink in and pleasure sweeps up through his arm. The vein hangs in between his teeth, warm and comfortable, spaghetti noodle hanging out from his lips. See, see here, I'm bleeding red nothing more human than that.
The women stamp their left feet. Hips thrust. Twelve eyes set themselves on him, irises changing size. Tinny laughter escape their throats aren't you are you boy, are you human boy?
The world turns into monochrome so quickly.
Sepia, rather.
Age and brown hang in the air and when he runs his fingers through it, he feels old paper. A tinkling tune plays from the ceiling, distorted, scratchy, an old music box-record player tune. Every day's great at your Junes. He hates that fucking song –
The yukata robots dance to it. Hard step, glide to the left, arms roll to the right, hip thrust, neck snap. Imitation dancers, all they are. Imitation human. Their puffed up lips all open in unison and they shout with dead lungs,
ISN'T THAT WHAT YOU ARE, YOU ARE, YOU ARE? Fake fake, double take, look behind you, see a snake.
It's been a while since I've seen your groveling face around, little pest.
Yellow eyes appear in the paper-thick air, and a smile appears below it.
Fake fake, double take, my turn its time to take.
*
Screaming is more effective at waking up a man than any alarm clock could ever be.
Yosuke gulps down air, staring at his shaking hands displayed, stark white, against the dark sheets. Each vein is engorged, speckled between purple lines, doused in sweat. He inhales, sharp, chest burning with the strain, aching eyes shutting but snapping open. That fucking dream still lingers on the insides of his eyelids.
His room is bright, lit by the glow of a television he forgot to turn off. The dead carcass of his character is displayed on the screen with the emblazoned title GAME OVER. Red letters on his clock (piece of shit that it was) announce its 6:54 and he's too tired to do the math to figure out what time it actually is.
He rubs his shoulder with the base of his palm. He stops. It's feels dislocated but it isn't. Fucking arm.
Yosuke falls back onto the pillow and tries to sleep with his eyes open.
*
He isn't sure he'll ever see his reflection properly again.
The faucet drips perpetually into a pool in the sink. Souji and Dojima have both smashed the plumbing to exhaustion and it still drips.
Souji blinks and Titania turns the other cheek in the mirror. Her long hair hides too much of her face and alien eyes. Souji wonders how he'll ever be able to tell when he looks like crap in the morning again. He sighs and Titania flickers away, Siegfried sliding into place, spear and all.
Well, at least it's a man.
He tries to turn the knob and stop the dripping, fails, and shuffles back into his room. Stray chords trip him up, translation work spread over the carpet and couch. The streetlight illuminates most of what the TV doesn't. He isn't even sure why he turned it on – since April he's lost most enjoyment for programs – force of habit, maybe. Said it might drizzle tonight. Does that count as rain?
His phone rings, bland and tasteless rhyme. Souji mutters, "Should change that," as he searches under couch cushions for it. Rise keeps offering free downloads of her songs. Not that she's a bad singer, but he's not a Jpop person. Never would tell her that.
The caller ID comes in garbled windings and symbols.
"I have a message for you from the Velvet Room," proclaims a woman so matter-of-factly you'd think she's speaking about how there're clouds in the sky. "It is a matter of great importance, and I would remiss if I did not suggest you come to claim it immediately."
"Can't you tell me?"
"There are things that must be addressed in person, Mister Seta." Margaret always addresses him western style and Souji wonders if it's English tainting her accent. "This is one such topic. I am available as of this moment should you come."
It's two in the damn morning.
He tells her this, but Margaret says what she said before. "Time is relative, ever changing depending upon our perception of the world. Ergo, its importance is merely dependent on our perception of it."
". . . right. I'll stop by when I can."
"It is of the essence you come."
"I will."
Margaret hangs up before he can say good-bye or good night or farewell, but the attendant always seems to know that he has said I will see you soon. Perhaps it is a western thing. He drops himself onto the couch, springs wheezing, the cushions full of soft cotton and the relaxing stench of Dojima's cigarettes. His remote lays buried to his right beneath bleached shirts, but an hour of flickering only produced the start of a Sailor Moon marathon.
Souji dreams of Margaret with pigtails and a velvet dress.
Disclaimer:
I do not own Persona 4. Its characters and their world belongs to Atlus. I merely play in their sandbox.
Author's Note:
MAN, it has been FOREVER since I put up a story. This thing's been edited and messed with for months now, and this is entirely, entirely the product of District 9 and trance techno. Make of that what you will.
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