A/N: I was inspired to write this oneshot after viewing the first episode of the second season of Gantz. It's um, a bit phantasmagoric, angsty, and involves a grisly character death. TRUST me when I say there's some stuff in here that's really twisted and nasty! In fact, I was super creeped out from writing it, and I was even the one that thought up the damn story! So tread (and read) through these murky black waters at your own risk.

Love,

KoshKing777

Disclaimer: I wouldn't even know where to start on how much I don't own Gantz…but both the anime and manga are unbelievable.

Also, Winky's is the creation of David Lynch and should only be regarded as such.

Gantz

Condemnation

As Kei Kurono lay, soaked in sweat, on his rock-hard bed, he could feel life and reality as he knew it spinning out of control. At the moment, he wasn't even there; he and his mind where still out being surrounded by tall robotic chidren in a pitch-black, abandoned hotel. He was so sure he would die…his mind skipped forward frantically to his death-defying escape from the clutches of the monstrous bird in the sky. He had just barely been able to tap into his primal instincts and bring the fucking demon down with him. He had tumbled onto an apartment roof, where he lay, still and utterly shocked.

He should have felt immense relief at the moment. There was no way at all he should still be alive after coming into such close contact with the monstrosity, without even a suit. In fact, he should have felt ten feet tall. After all, who else could have survived such an encounter? He was the fuckin' toughest guy on the planet!

Instead, two feelings threatened to encase him in their inhuman, disembodied grasp. Terror, and despair.

Kei could still feel himself flying through the air, being carried by that twisted thing. Even on his bed, he felt his body swaying in circular motions, even though he quite certain he wasn't moving. No simple, normal person should ever have to go through that.

THUMP!

Kei jolted out of bed. "What the FUCK?!" His eyes darted around, and he put a hand on his handy Gantz suit. Ever since Kishimoto left, he had been hearing strange voices, coming from seeming nowhere…god-damn, why the fuck did she have to go? Well, he definitely couldn't blame her, he had been a total cock to her tonight…

SCRATCH-SCRATCH-SCRATCH-SCRATCH

Kei's eyes widened. The creepy itching noises seemed to come from all around him. It was then that he noticed just how dark the room was in the realm at the foot of his bed. He swallowed, got up and slowly edged into the darkness.

"Is-is someone there?"

Kei stared at the all-consuming darkness before him, unable to breathe. He wasn't afraid of getting hurt, because whatever it was, he was sure he could take it. However, something felt different…ever since his first venture into Gantz's realm, real life had never felt…exactly the same. It was darker, diluted with anger and bitterness, and reeked of alien piss all around.

Kei was beginning to wonder if…they had really ever left the Gantz.

Suddenly, something moved in the corner farthest away from his bed. His eyes widened as he tried to take in its shape. Some…THING was sitting, curled up on the floor, and was breathing a bit raggedly.

Kei silently started walking towards it, in order to get a better view. 'What…is this thing?' he thought bedraggedly.

Suddenly, the thing shot up out of the ground and stepped forward into the moonlight. When Kei saw its twisted, deformed alien face, he gasped and fell over backwards. The thing he noticed most about the twisted, pale blue mass of skin and fuck was its crippled, inflated, dripping fangs.

As the thing approached, Kei looked and saw its jiggling, spasmodic, injured cock waving around him like a probe, dripping with what appeared to be purple blood.

That was all the incentive Kei needed! His mind reeling with horror, Kei didn't even try to fight; he just reeled backwards, looped around the wall indent, and locked himself in his bathroom, petrified.

THUMP!

Kei couldn't stop gasping, and sank to the bottom of the bathroom with his hands in his messed-up hair. What WAS that thing? Didn't Gantz promise him and everyone else their lives back if they killed whatever aliens it commanded? Was this really life, and there were aliens pervading it, or…was this something else entirely?

THUMP!

The impending footsteps of the creature from the darkness of his room neared even closer. Kei's head shot up like he had been jolted out of cardiac arrest. The first thing he saw was his shower, across the room from him. It was still steamy, from when…

Before he even realized he had made an effort to move, Kei found himself inside his shower, licking the walls, sliding glass door, floor, ANYTHING!..to get a taste of Kishimoto. He HAD to have her with him…the silence, the darkness was just…unbearable.

Hungrily, ravenously, he kissed the wall where he imagined her large, hyperdeveloped tits might have brushed up against it not two hours ago, before the darkness settled in on his home and his mind. WHY?! How could he have been so STUPID?!

Where the fuck did he get off, thinking he could yell at her, and tell her off, when he could have been seducing her?!

When he had been needing her…more than anything…

THUD!!

This noise was getting even louder, and Kei managed to pull himself back into his head, at least momentarily. There, on his toilet, lay his Gantz uniform and gun…

Wasting no time, he pulled on the suit, all the while with Kishimoto's traitorous words coiling themselves like poison ivy around his throat…"Now I can dedicate my life to getting HIM to love me!!"

Kei failed at suppressing a sob, and looked down at his gun, lying on the toilet. He stared at it, wide-eyed, not knowing what to think anymore. Could he really shoot somebody?..he'd never really murdered a person in cold blood before…

Kishimoto's last words seemed to unzip every fiber of caged-up grief, sorrow, and panic within his body…"And I really do like you, Kurono…"

Just as the door THUDDED one final time, Kei had come to a decision. 'If she likes me, then that's all I need,' he thought. 'I clearly can't get along without her anymore…I don't have any choice…I HAVE to find her, or die trying!'

Placing the gun in its holster at his hip, Kei opened the door a crack and looked out with a tear-encrusted into the deep violet darkness of his room for any trace of the supernatural. The hollow rushing sound of ghastly wind wailed through his abandoned bed, where he and Kishimoto could be right now if he hadn't…

Cocking his gun, steeling himself, and kicking open the door first to his bedroom, and then to the outside, Kei came to a conclusion. One way or another, he would rectify this, he decided with a set jaw out of necessity.

If he gasped one more time, he wouldn't be able to pull himself off the ground from all the tears.

After taking the subway to the main street, Kei began aimlessly wandering around Tokyo. He hadn't any idea where to begin looking for the sexy-as-fuck angel, except…

A memory of him and her talking at the local bookstore sprang unbidden to his mind. She had really wanted that gay-looking book Labyrinth, hadn't she? Could she be there?

Kei looked around to see if anyone was following him, and to his horror, saw an impossibly fat, rotten man who more resembled a potato than a human amble past him, glaring at him murderously.

"What are you looking at?" it sang in an impossibly high, derisive 3-year-old's voice, and stopped, staring at him.

"I…" Kei said, his breath stopping in his chest. What was happening to him? Who the fuck was this giant, deformed potato man? It looked like something straight out of a nightmare…

Deciding to ignore it for the time being, Kei started walking in the direction of the bookstore, trying not to listen too intently for the sounds of being followed. After about twenty paces, he looked over his shoulder, and nearly jumped ten feet in the air upon noticing the stretched-out-to-burst face of the potato man even closer to him than before!

"Who are you, and what do you want?" Kei said shakily at the potato man.

"I want to be there when you go to Hell, sir!" the sick-looking fuck said.

"When I…what..?" Kei said, his voice trailing off.

"I'M THERE EVERY TIME YOU HAVE A NIGHTMARE," a slimy, sensual female voice suddenly intoned in his right ear.

"WAH!?" Kei screamed, turning around as fast as he could. There was nothing at all out of the ordinary, except a deathly quiet presiding over the street.

Not wanting to look around again, Kei began walking much more purposefully than he felt towards the bookstore, which was lit up by the only streetlight on his side of the street. As he walked under it, he gazed up at the moths repeatedly ramming themselves into the bulb, only to be caught in the sticky web of a bloated spider. 'Just like me, Katou, and Kishimoto with Gantz…' he thought. 'Will we EVER get out of this fucked up nightmare?'

He turned to view the bookshelf and saw that the lights were out. However, he COULD get a very good view of the absolute nothing to the right of him. The coast was clear, according to the reflection of the store window.

However, common sense told him not to turn around, for something very assuredly WAS there…on the right side of his head, he could feel the hoarse, phlegmy breathing bursting off his head at a calm rate, and he could smell the rotting stench of decaying semen being thrust in his face.

He HAD to get out of here. The fuck was way too close for Kei to do anything to defend himself against it.

Raising a wavering hand to the door handle, he swallowed and pulled with all his might. Surprised that it opened, Kei ran in and rapidly closed it behind him.

The stern-looking bookkeeper looked at him, incensed. "What are you doing here, boy? The shop doesn't open for another three hours. Go home."

It took a few seconds for Kei to find his voice (let alone breath). "Uhm…could I maybe, stay here for a few seconds?"

The bookkeeper shook his head and walked out from behind the counter. "I've had just enough of you hoodlums…"

Kei growled, but stood his ground. "I'm being followed. Can I please stay here, just till the coast is clear?"

The shopkeeper's eyebrows raised. "Oh? So you're being followed, eh?"

Kei's eyes bugged out in exasperation. "…YESSS! That's what I just said, old man!"

The man seemed to be considering his next words. "It's a dark night out there…"

"Yes it is, sir…" Kei said with a gulp, hoping this meant he could stay.

"For all of us."

"…'scuse me?"

The man walked up to Kei and whispered in his ear with bated breath, "The coast is never clear, for any of us!"

Kei turned and stared at him in confusion. The man smiled reassuringly and clasped a large, firm hand on Kei's shoulder. "Go on out there, son! You can take it…do what you need to do."

Kei's throat clenched, and he turned and looked out the window. The monstrous entity from before was no longer visible, but he knew that didn't mean a thing. Across the street was a dingy, blue-lit bar, looking like something out of a different dimension. The people were all sitting, sipping their coffees and spirits with something like spiritual abandon in their eyes. A hypnotic, astral bass line was reverberating down the street.

But what Kei noticed most was the three band members. All three had no visible skin, but instead were covered in thick, molted black feathers and huge, hook-shaped beaks of the deepest blue. They wore matching black zoot suits, but were glaring at him with red eyes of the purest, most abominable hatred.

With his saliva feeling like paste in his mouth, Kei turned and looked at the Winky's next door to the bar. To his complete and radiant surprise, Kei Kishimoto sat there, staring at an empty red tray just as the people at the bar had been doing to their drinks.

All feelings of aloneness, fear, and bleakness suddenly were lifted off him like he had undergone a physical transformation. For the first time all night, he could breathe in the air and feel it actually slide coaxingly down his throat.

"Kishimoto!" he said, his voice cracking in relief. Tears sprang unbidden to his mind, and he tried momentarily to get them to stop, but when he felt them keep going, he just shrugged and walked out the door in order to go over to the Winky's.

Sobbing openly had never felt so good, so cleansing. Looking behind him between sobs, he noticed the potato man begin pacing forwards in his unearthly gait, and now he was joined by the blue man with the bleeding cock from earlier.

Kei laughed, which send poison-tipped tendrils of pain into his lungs. Turning back around to ogle the bar, Kei noticed the bird-like band members turn off their amps, drop their instruments, and proceed to walk towards him at an equal speed.

He stopped in front of the door, basking in the pleasing light of the restaurant. Kishimoto's silky-smooth red hair (that his face had been smothered in a week ago) was visible, and it seemed to him that he was finally home.

Finally pulling himself together and wiping the dirty streams of tears away, Kei pulled open the door and walked inside.

Unable to contain himself any longer, Kei zipped across the floor and skidded to a stop directly in front of Kishimoto.

"Hey!" he said, off to a great start. He was grinning a grin that just wouldn't go away.

"K-Kurono?" Kishimoto said with surprise apparent on her face. "Wh-what are you..?"

"I came looking for you," he said, holding himself back from saying, 'and now, let's fuck!' Instead he said, "and now, let's eat! I bet you're hungry!"

"Oh, s-sure," she said, standing up and brushing her skirt off. She looked up at him with thanks gleaming in her eyes. "Is it okay if..?"

Well now, this would be interesting! I wonder if she has anything of the oral variety in mind? "What?"

"If…I get a…really big order?!" Kishimoto said, blushing and looking away from Kei's intense, smiling gaze. Kei's heart fell…of all the things she COULD have said with that lead-in, she chose this one?

"Sure, sure, of course! My treat," Kei said soothingly, and wrapped an arm around her while taking her up to the counter. 'Wow, I can't believe I have my arm around a girl THIS hot!' Kei thought pleasantly. 'She's so soft, sexy…and comfortable…."

"I'm sorry, I'm just…really, really hungry," Kishimoto murmured, brushing her bangs out of her eyes. "I haven't had anything to eat all day."

"It's alright, don't worry about it," Kei assured her, continuing to gaze at her like she was his savior. "Winky's are always open 24/7, fortunately for us," he said, laughing softly. Kishimoto giggled along with him and hugged him tightly as they reached the counter.

The Winky's employee looked her up and down in a perverted manner, but Kei frowned and flipped the guy off as he pulled Kishimoto closer.

"What do you want?" he asked her gently. She made a noncommittal noise, so he just ordered a bacon burger deluxe with a side of large fries.

After they got their meal, Kei and Kishimoto began walking languidly back to the table where she was spacing out earlier. All of a sudden, she looked up at him with those eternally expressive eyes and said, "Kei…I'm sorry! About what I said about…Katou…"

Kei shook his head roughly. "No, Kishimoto, I'm the one who should be apologizing. I was a horrible jerk to you, and…and I'm really sorry. I didn't mean a single thing I said."

"Right…well, are you sure?" Kishimoto said in a hushed voice.

"Sure I'm sure, now eat your burger!" Kei commanded. Kishimoto sat down obediently and did just that.

Kei smiled encouragingly and sat down across from her, playing with himself as he looked at her primal hunger as she devoured her food. 'Now this is life,' Kei realized, drinking in every single movement she made. 'When I'm with her…nothing feels dead anymore…"

But still, something was nagging him in the back of his mind. Why the fuck would she bring up Katou all of a sudden?! Of all things…goddammit, why does she always have that loser on the brain? He couldn't defend himself OR her if his life depended on it!

Swallowing down such fuming thoughts, Kei regarded her face again, admiring the strength, and resolve with which she hid her pain on a day-to-day basis. He had to constantly hide his pain too…or else he would be nothing but a babbling baby all the time. She was the only person he could relate to in this fucked-up rendition of the world…obviously, they were meant for each other!

But…something was definitely off with this picture. Shouldn't she have been, like ecstatic to see him?? She only seemed happy after he mentioned the food. Kei scowled at the assortment of greasy fast food, deciding to steal a French fry.

He would bet his left nut that if Katou had come in here and done the same thing, she would have immediately jumped up and started making out with him…or worse.

Yes, this was beginning to look more and more like just more of the same with Kishimoto. 'Why does she have to be so clueless all the time? Katou would never come looking for her like this!! It's me who is always there for her, me who will always save her life,…

'Me who loves her…' Kei's hand subconsciously slipped down to his hip, where his gun was still holstered.

He took a deep, steeling breath and said, "Kishimoto…would you like to…go back to my place again? I promise you it's no problem at all!"

She shook her head, "Oh no, thank you, but I really don't want to take advantage of you anymore…"

"No, PLEASE!" Kei said, his eyes pleading. "I need you…without you, the darkness, it…it swallows me alive. I don't want to go back to that, please…will you please come back to me?"

He hadn't meant to say 'back to me,' but he held his breath to wait and see what she would say.

She looked down at her tray, smiled slowly, and looked back up to him with glimmering eyes. "I didn't mean for you to beg, but if it's what you want…"

"YES, yes…" Kei said encouragingly.

"Then I would be happy to. I…I really missed being with you for the time…we were apart," she said with a small smile.

"That is EXACTLY how I've been feeling too," Kei said jubilantly, getting up from the table with her and leading her out of the Winky's with an arm around her shoulders.

"Have a nice day…" the Winky's employee called sadly as they left the building. "Wait, I mean night, or, morning or…whatever…damn I wish I had a girlfriend, too…" He hung his head in recognition of his own uselessness, and then stepped lethargically back to the grill and resumed flipping burgers.

Upon leaving the Winky's, Kei felt a nagging need to get some things cleared up. "Hey, Kishimoto…" he said, not exactly sure what to say.

"What is it, Kurono?"

"I, um…I'd really like it if you didn't mention Katou anymore, okay..?" he winced; that didn't sound too dictatorial, did it? He might have to use his gun sooner than he thought…

"Oh no, of course not! I wouldn't even dream of it!" Kishimoto said hurriedly, shaking her head to emphasize her point. Looking soothingly into his eyes, she put her hand through his jacket and ran it down his chest. A shiver whispered through his bones, making him shudder and grab her hand.

'So soft…and warm!' he thought happily. "Good," he vocalized. "I think that would be for the best."

"Yup," Kishimoto agreed, blushing a bit at the gesture.

He smiled. Was she this easy to manipulate? She had clearly wanted Katou ever since they first met, and yet, her was able to steer her away from that this easily? 'Damn am I malevolent!'

Unbidden images of Kishimoto flitted through his mind in a sickening montage of abuse…

visions of her being chained in his basement for days on end so that she was forced to urinate and defecate in front of him…

the unearthly idea of slitting her wrist again for her, and fucking her through the wet, warm opening…

the unholy deed of cutting off her nipples and forcing her to swallow one while he sucked on the other, raping her repeatedly.

Kei shook his mind in shock. Where the…FUCK had THOSE images come from?! That was so unlike him, it seemed like it came from somewhere else entirely…

Gantz…?

But whatever the case, such idea of such authority over Kishimoto really made him horny. In fact, his cock was as long as a donkey's tail right now.

Kishimoto looked up at him in concern. "Kurono? Are you alright?"

He took a shaky breath and willed his penis to behave. "Y-yeah, I'm fine…" They were now walking down the street past the Winky's, to a cement jungle area immediately behind the building.

Peering into the darkness, Kei murmured, "It's a faster route to the subway station if we just cut through here." Inside, he was panting with barely-contained fervor, knowing that this was his moment.

"Really? It looks a little bit…unsafe…" Kishimoto said in her small voice.

"Don't worry, I'm here to protect you!" Kei said softly as well, passion diluting his sublime voice.

Kishimoto looked at him intensely and then pulled him to her for a quick embrace. "Alright – I trust you…"

Five minutes later, Kei emerged from the concrete jungle in a coat drenched with blood and organ slices. He put his gun back on safety and returned it to its holster.

He could swear he could still hear her gorgeous screams whispering in the silent, midnight air.

He had finally succeeded – he had found the one way, the ONLY way to make her truly belong to him, and him alone, forever.

An adrenaline high and his pounding chest provided a grisly soundtrack to the mystifyingly abandoned street. He looked around, pleased with his handiwork.

There wasn't a single soul, dead or alive, in sight.

Kei thrust his fist into the air and let out a roar of celebration.

He was finally, blissfully, bleakly, beautifully, forevermore…alone.

This has been a Little Treasures, Inc. Adventure

A/N: So there's 'Condemnation'! If you couldn't tell, within the jungle, Kishimoto told him the scoop on her true feelings for him (i.e. she doesn't really like him), and Kei, who was set to rape her anyway, totally cracked and proceeded to murder her grotesquely. For each desecration he performed on her during her dying moments, one of the ghouls that had been haunting him disappeared.

I know it totally goes off track from what happens in both the manga and the anime, so I apologize to those who adhere strictly within the confines of that plot.