Chapter One: Queen and Jester, Bound by Fate

When Kamoshida flees, he takes the fake Takamaki with him. He doesn't matter, all that matters is making sure all this madness ends as quickly as possible.

The knife I have in my hands shouldn't be enough to slash at armor the way it does. But I'm carving through the knights like they're butter. The world turns various shades of black and for the first time in a long time I feel like my life has actual substantial meaning again. Mephistopheles uses flames, and when he doesn't use flames he uses dark hands from the bottom of the universe, clawing at the knights and dragging them into eternal damnation.

Normally, I'd be afraid. Perhaps killing these lesser Shadows will affect the real Kamoshida in some way. Perhaps me summoning yet another creature from the bowels of my mind indicates I'm even more damaged than I originally thought. Perhaps Masako's in Heaven just weeping at me, at the fact that I'm already turning back on my promise to her mother.

Perhaps Masako's just dead and buried in the ground and there is no Heaven or Hell and this is all there is.

Nevertheless, I'm fighting like I've done all this nonsense before. I'm dodge-rolling, I'm weaving in and out, and I'm stabbing the knights like they're Shido's neck over and over again. It's all maddening, it's all incredible. For a moment I sympathize with Niijima and Sakamoto; if they felt this alive when summoning their Personas, no wonder they want to go back into this place.

Everything seems so small now, like I can hold the whole planet in my hands and crush it in my palm. Like all the scum on the planet is just something I can wipe out into nothingness. It's all so easy, so quick, so utterly insignificant. Nothing can topple me, nothing can stop me. The feeling's almost sinful, in a way.

The fighting is all just a blur, but it's the kind of blur that stays with you. You want every single little detail out of it, and when you obtain nothing you're left in a state that makes hollow look desirable.

By the time this all began, there were ten knights in the room. By the time it all ends, three of them have vanished into nothingness while the rest lay about bleeding out black and twitching like they've lost motor functions. The silhouetted high school girls are still stretching, doing their poses even with all the black gunk over their clothes.

I look up, I see the creature that calls itself my Persona. It's unnaturally natural, the sight of him; a part of me feels as though I should be revolted, even horrified. But in the end, he is no more a part of me than my right arm is. My heart's pounding, thudding against my ribcage and making the blood run faster. I nod at him, and he nods back. Though neither of us say a thing to each other, I feel like he and I have known of each other for so long that words feel unnecessary.

"K-Kurusu...!"

I turn and for a brief flicker I see Kana, horrified and looking at me like I've just killed another man. But then she disappears and I see Ann Takamaki, still kept within steel confines, unable to move a muscle. The way she called out my name, I'm not sure if she's amazed or horrified or both. But she can't stay here.

- SECTION IX -
What would you do?

"Did he do anything to you?" I grunt, marching over to her.

"N-no," she stammers out, "he, he planned to...said that his guards were stupid to mistake me for that doll he has latched to his arm...! He told them to start tearing off my clothes, and I...!"

And she's enraged, she's infuriated, she must be feeling a thousand different things right now and I can't blame her. But there's no time to waste. Top priority is making sure the alive stay alive. I turn to her, my hands at the locks keeping her in place. Though my fingers try to rip the steel binds locking her, the steel is ultimately too strong. I can't have Mephistopheles burn the locks, or she may end up with stumps for hands and feet.

"Come out...," I whisper to the other monster inside my head, the one who wears the skin of Kana. "Come on, come on, I need your help!"

"Kurusu, what—!?"

"Why won't you come on out when I need you!?" I cry out, clutching at my hairs and pulling at them, trying to trigger a reaction out of the beast. "Come on! Get out! Gimme your power, you tell me I can use you anytime but you never come out when you're needed most, not with Suzui not with Takamaki not even with Kana WHERE ARE YOU—!?"

"K-Kurusu, hold on! C-calm down, what are you trying to—!?"

"Doesn't matter to you, does it!? Only matters when you say it does...!" I whip out the knife, and I turn to Mephistopheles. He and his membranous hairdo nod again in approval as I turn back to Takamaki, "Sorry if I end up cutting you...!"

"W-wait! You're gonna—!?"

"You wanna stay here any longer!?"

And she shuts up.

I wonder how my eyes must look now. Did Kana see the same sight, when I stabbed Shido in the neck? Was that why she looked at me the way she did? The thought makes my nerves tingle, but I make myself focus when I realize my hands begin shaking again from all the memories of what I did. Bad time, body. Kana's not here, Kana's in the hospital, right now there's someone else who needs me and I will not let Kamoshida get his grubby hands all over her.

Of course, the shackles don't come undone. I may be using a swiss army knife, but it's useless in the hands of someone who doesn't know how to pick locks. I figured perhaps my stubbornness was gonna push through one more time, but of course that was impossibly wishful thinking.

"Please, come on, why aren't you even coming out...!?" I exclaim frantically, the knife still at the keyhole, my hands shaking from the fear of just everything happening, "Your eyes are on me 24/7 but now that I'm actually doing something you've wanted me to do for ages you—" I throw the knife away, let it clatter along the ground, "—now you stop!?"

I whip myself around and I see her. Her and her big green eyes and big red scarf and everything she is, was, and will ever be. Mephistopheles fades away, fades into blue shards of glass, and my clothes return to normal in an instant wash of black fire over my body. I walk to her, glaring at her.

"What is this?" I grunt. "What's happening to me, to my mind, what—"

"You've become an Anomaly," she says to me, smiling again. "Something everyone on all sides has tried to avoid..."

"What are you talking about!?" I cry out, not hearing Takamaki calling out my name.

"Your psyche is fragmented. Convoluted. Memories and moments fleeting in and out. You have two minds in one body, and they are both in flux. One is rational, if more than a little standoffish. The other is the one that killed Masayoshi Shido. You are now currently in an in-between sort of state; even I'm not so sure how long you and I will be able to keep up conversation."

"So, what? Fragmented...like, I have split-personality disorder, something like that? Huh?" I say, though the term split-personality disorder makes my stomach churn like I've just committed seppuku.

"Honestly, I don't quite know where to quantify you. I've never tried imbuing a human with a mind as fractured as yours with my power. But there's a first time for everything."

"Get me out of here," I snarl at her. "Me and her. You can do that, can't you? Make me stronger, you did that with Kana, why can't you do that now?"

"Because I don't want to."

"Kurusu!"

I whip around, before I can tell Kana how much I want to rip her body to shreds. I see Takamaki, who flinches and rears her head back the moment her eyes meet mine. She's looking at me like she's in Hell, and I'm the Devil. I hate how she looks at me, so I turn back and I see that Kana Kohaku is gone once again. Gone with the wind.

And in her place, standing right in front of me, is a golden knight.

I look at it tiredly, and for a moment I want to cry as I weakly mutter out, "Come on..."

It just backhands me with its massive shield, not even bothering to transform into its true and terrible self. I'm flung to the ground and the world just spirals as my head crashes down. Everything's spinning, and I feel a thousand things snap as an unrivalled sort of pain blasts out from the nape of my neck for the briefest of moments. I think I've twisted several bones in my neck. I, by all means, should not be alive right now. But I am, and everything on me hurts.

I try to get up, I need to get up. I see it, I've lifted my head enough to see it march towards Takamaki, who's freaking out now. Calling out my name, calling out for help, she's thrashing about at the locks on her wrists as the golden knight's moving closer.

"Down there, in the dirt...you don't look so tall, now."

I see him again. I see him with his bright red cloak and his garish smile, the fake Takamaki slinking over his arm with that dull look still in her eyes. He's surrounded by them now. Surrounded by golden monstrosities wearing steel shells that help make them look like men.

I try to grab the knife. It's right next to me. I have to kill him, him and everyone else that isn't human in this room. No time for moral grandstanding now, but then I realize—

—I can't feel anything below my neck.

"Aw, what? Paralysis...funny how fragile the human body can be. I see kids every day, kids I'm training to become better athletes. They keep whinging and whining about how much of a jerk I am, how hard I push them. They're all too snot-nosed and pampered to see that I'm trying to make them more than what they are."

"K-Kamoshida...!" cries out Takamaki. "Let him go! H-he has nothing to do with this...!"

"Sure he does! He's a killer, don't you know? Can't have him lumped together with me, I don't care what Kobayakawa says," he laughs, then turning to the other knights in the room. "You mistook her for my queen? Give me a break."

The fake Takamaki is just drooling over his arm now, and he shrugs her off as he tells the knight that had knocked me down, "Pick him up, gut him. Or behead him, whatever you like. Just make sure it happens now."

At that moment I think I begin to know what fear is. "W-wait," the knight walks closer to me. "Wait, s-stop...!" Kamoshida grins again as Takamaki's struggling harder, tears in her eyes now as she and I both realize what is about to happen. "Wait, wait you can't do this...!"

"What, you're begging for your life now? Please. You knew the price to pay in coming here, trying to do something as stupid as you did. You can't just ask for forgiveness, not after your treasonous actions. Attacking the king. Invading his castle. Killing his men, trying to abduct his prisoners. You deserve to die a thousand times over."

"Why are you doing this!?" I cry out, the knight lifting me up by the collar of my uniform. "What's the point to all this—!?" Knight slams me against the wall, and I nearly cough out a lung. "Y-you—!" cough, hack, blood, spit, tastes like bile, "—you gain nothing—from anything you're doing!"

"I get you dead. That's fine with me."

"I'm not talking about that!" I snarl at him, the blade pointing directly over my navel, "Suzui! I'm talking about her, her and everyone else you hurt! Why!? What's the point to hurting them!?"

"I'm not hurting them," he says simply.

"Stop denying it, you—!"

"If they're hurt, it's all up to them. Not like I gave them anything to be hurt over. Sure, with Suzui, I may have gone a little too far. But in the end, she'll live. I haven't hurt her, I'm not like those other people. There's entire communities full of 'em, they talk day in and day out about the screams they hear and the way eight-year olds cry. I'm not sadistic."

"Y-you...!"

He turns to Takamaki, having heard her outburst. He grins at her as she says, "You...monster...!"

"Neither of you know what a true monster is," he grunts, actually seeming angry now. "You know, I hate kids the most. Always ragging on about what should and shouldn't be done to society, like they're old enough to talk about it. You're so quick to judge, so quick to look at people's dark sides and say how horrible they are, like you're any better. Before both of you die, there's something you should know. A little life lesson, to really help underline the tragedy of all this: there's no such thing as good people, or bad people. What you think is a monster, I think is a perfectly normal human being."

"How can you say that, after everything you've done...!?" cries out Takamaki. "You hurt Shiho, you hurt so many other people, you try to get me to sleep with you, how can you live with yourself, still call yourself a human being!?"

"Because I am human. It's not crazy to want to give in to your baser instincts. It's only natural. I've done so many things for society. They keep piling in on everything, asking me to fulfill things for them. Requirements, expectations. It's all a joke. I'm just having some fun with it."

"So you're doing this because you think you deserve it!?" she shouts. "Y-you think you just...deserve to be able to hurt others!?"

"What I deserve is what anybody else does: the freedom to pursue their happiness, in any way I see fit," he smiles widely now.

"Shiho almost died because of you!" Takamaki yells in anger now, the chains actually beginning to strain a little.

"Almost, but didn't. I didn't hurt her. I'm gentle. She took it way too personally, if you ask me," he laughs. "And what were you guys planning on doing, hmm? What were—" he turns to me, "—you planning on doing!? You came in here, ready to hurt me. Ready to make me suffer, even with everything. You said it yourself, it's not crazy to want to kill everyone responsible for the state of the world. Why are you calling me crazy for doing something everyone else is trying to do!?"

"Because you're hurting people...," I snarl at him.

"And you haven't!? You're a killer! You knifed someone in the neck, all in self-defense! You had him killed! A to-be prime minister of Japan!"

"It wasn't to defend—" I mutter, the blood pooling at my neck as the blade scrapes over my belly, "—myself..."

"Oh, right. It was to defend a girl. Right? Some girl the press didn't even bother to mention all that much. What was her name, huh? Kasumi? Kojiro? I know it, it's on the tip of my tongue..."

"Kohaku," I glare at him. "Kana...Kohaku."

"Struck a nerve there, didn't I?" he laughs. "But of course. Miss Kohaku couldn't save herself, so you just had to step in."

I want to kill him now, more than ever before. "He...would have...!"

"He'd have raped her, of course. I know that. Or so you've said. But sadly, that doesn't wipe off the blood on your hands. Like I said, you're just as much a monster as I am."

Never said I wasn't. Never once. But the thought of him lecturing me on my own hypocrisy made me want to sink the blade in him even more.

He then turns again, back to Takamaki. "And as for you. If you weren't so selfish as to reject me, Suzui wouldn't have felt the need to jump off the roof."

"How dare you," Takamaki says listlessly. "How dare you...!? You did that to her! You—it wasn't me, it was—!"

"You could have just said yes. But in the end, you never did. You shirk away from guys like they're all trying to grab you, trying to pin you down. What, do you just swing the other way? Pfft, it'd make sense, then..."

"Shut up...!" Takamaki roars, "Shut your mouth...! You can't act like you did nothing wrong!"

"But I didn't do anything wrong!" he declares, his voice cracking in the way a voice cracks when the speaker's trying to convince himself of something. "Why can't any of you see that!? I deserve it all, don't I!? I'm the king of this castle! I should be the king of the world! None of you know what I've had to do to get to my position! How I've had to endure, to suffer, to sacrifice; everyone kept on piling their expectations on me, and I fulfilled them! I keep on fulfilling them! I have to, or else everyone gets on my case. 'Oh, you can win the Olympics but you can't sign a paper!?' or, 'You can run fifty miles without breaking a sweat but you can't go easy on your students!?' I'm sick of it! Sick of all of it! Who are you both to call me evil!?"

"You don't get to say that you didn't do anything wrong!"

When Takamaki screams, something blue and bright bursts into the world. Everyone's taken aback; I'm just disgusted with myself.

I wasn't able to stop her. And at this rate, I won't be able to save her.

She's writhing now, her wrists shaking against the chains keeping her to her posts. Everyone hears it creak, but nobody can do anything. Nobody can do anything because they're transfixed, something about this sight keeping them from even uttering a word.

The sight alone sends me somewhere else, and I'm just watching it happen again.

"I've had it! I've had enough of you!"

"My...it's taken far too long."

Ann Takamaki is a coward. She knows it, deep in herself.

She's long stopped caring about the insults the girls sling at her behind her back, and has heard enough rumors to last a lifetime. But she hasn't said a thing, hasn't told anyone, hasn't wanted to. She doesn't need to, she'd reason. She doesn't need anybody's pity.

She'd say she'd be okay, as long as she had Shiho by her side. That nobody else would matter, not the girls who take digs at her appearance, not the boys who try to woo her with fake smiles, not Kamoshida and all the horror he's got inside of him.

But in the end, like always, she's alone.

She didn't want to confront Kamoshida. She knew she couldn't, not directly; and yet she wanted to, more than anything else in the world. She was willing to take whatever chance would present itself to her, all because she was just that desperate to make a difference. But a difference for what, exactly?

This question kept her awake, most nights. Was she afraid because of what Kamoshida would do to her? Or was she afraid for Shiho, and what she would have suffered under him? She didn't even know anymore. Was she even fighting him now for Shiho? Or just to salvage what wounded scraps of herself she has left?

But she's not questioning anything anymore. She knows exactly what she's meant to do. Why she accepted the offer from Niijima, from Sakamoto. And why all this madness just has to stop, here and now.

"Tell me...who is going to avenge her, if you don't?"

She remembers holding Shiho in her arms, that day she jumped from the school building. She remembers everyone over her shoulder, watching the scene unfold. Some taking pictures, others just talking amongst themselves. None of them lifting a finger, none of them wanting or caring enough to intervene. Because why should they? What would the point be?

Shiho, to them, was just some other girl.

Shiho apologized to her. She apologized to Ann, as she faded into unconsciousness. Shiho shouldn't have. If anything, Ann should have been the one. If she hadn't...if she had only. No. No, she's not the one who has anything to be sorry for, either.

It's the creature standing right in front of her.

"Forgiving him was never the option. Such is the scream of the other you that dwells within."

At once, she begins to understand. The fire burns through her body and makes her everything tremble and trill with pain and pleasure, excitement and agony. It burrows into her brain and eats at her eyes, but it feels too good to want it to stop. She can feel her wrists purple as she pulls at the locks around her hands, and something red forms over the surface of her eyes.

"We can finally forge a contract. Nothing can be solved by restraining yourself. Understand?"

She remembers laughing. She's a child now, one too young to know about sex or coercion or molesters or anything that vile. She's with Shiho, not with anyone else, because everyone else looks at her like she's some strange entity from another planet. But Shiho doesn't, Shiho outright tells her her drawing's terrible, or that she doesn't look good in blue, or that she's gonna be her friend forever and ever.

Shiho's in a hospital bed now, and Ann's holding her hand. Hoping for her to wake up. She stays in the room, and the minutes feel like days, and though she stays with Shiho's parents and though Shiho's parents consider the girl as family, Ann has to leave. She has to, Shiho's parents tell her to, they tell her she can visit tomorrow, that she has to go home, that she must rest herself up, that she doesn't have to do any of this.

Ann remembers kissing Shiho's forehead before leaving. And she doesn't know if she did it out of a particularly friendly sort of affection, or if it was something more. But it's all she needs.

"I hear you...Carmen."

"Then I'll gladly lend you my strength."

She glares with a red mask on her face, glares at Kamoshida, who rears back. Somehow, and I don't know how, she pulls her wrists from her shackles and the steel crashes to the ground and she is free.

The blue fire emanates from her as a woman twice her size barrels out of her head. The woman is wearing a large red dress, frilled like a rose would be. There are green thorns surrounding her, and entangled in the thorns there are two dimunitive she has heels the size of a bicycle tire. She has black pigtails for hair, pigtails that blast out from behind her head and flow like cyclones.

She is a femme fatale, and as Ann Takamaki rips the mask off her face with a scream, the fire in her topaz eyes gets seared into Kamoshida forever.

"I am thou, thou art I. From the Sea of thy Soul, I cometh. I am Carmen, She Who Shalt Always Be Free."

Kamoshida cries out for his soldiers, "Don't just stand there, kill her!"

But they're not quick enough, they can't be quick enough. Fire spews from the ground like they've come from small volcanoes, and soon enough the knights whose armor sets haven't blackened have melted away, and Kamoshida himself is forced to rear himself back.

He sees his cape catch fire and he immediately wriggles it off of him, gesticulating madly in his fear and making frightened noises. He wants to keep screaming, he wants to kill her, to eat her, tear her to pieces and make her die. As quickly as possible. This can't be happening, none of this can be real.

"Stop this! S-stop it right now!"

Takamaki just glares at him as the fire burns through everyone he's brought to her, to us. The knights begin to weep and wail and melt away like butter to the sun, and Kamoshida keeps pleading, as he backs himself away.

"I-I'm the King! This isn't right! You're not supposed to do any of this!"

And when something snaps at the back of my neck, something returns my body to me. And before he can even turn his back, he realizes I'm on my feet again. When he turns, he sees me, and when he sees me he sees someone who doesn't look like a person anymore. He turns back, turns to Takamaki, and finds out she has the same expression.

So all he can do is scream his defiant and loathsome scream and whips himself around to face me.

Except it isn't me he's facing. The last thing that happens before I disappear completely is I feel my teeth sink into something.

All of a sudden, I see him as a child. He's running around, in some playground. Children his age, all around him. Screaming his name, but only his surname. He's up on the monkey bars, climbing the jungle gym. Getting his shoes caked in sand, throwing mud at other kids. Laughing with them like he's one of them. It's something precious, something pure. When they call his name out, he feels like he's on top of the world. Like it's the greatest moment of his life, when he makes it to the very top of the jungle gym and stands over everyone and everyone acts like he's some sort of king.

When grade school happens the trend continues. Little girls and their little crushes; when they give him their notes he's mostly elated that he's even received notes at all. He turns them down, all of them, but he doesn't try hurting their feelings when doing it. But they cry anyway, and he doesn't know why. He doesn't know how to make them stop crying. He's doing well enough. Well enough that his parents praise him, urge him to keep at his sports activities. They tell him he can become someone. That he can become something amazing. He could live like a king, with the money he'd make.

When he gets to high school, things get slightly more complicated as Kamoshida finds out nobody interests him. Nobody except those slimmer, more innocent, younger. But he shelves that side of him, figures it's not gonna be too bad. Everyone talks, but nobody says anything that matters. So he shambles, he walks, he talks here and there, but the real him is out there on the track field. Or playing volleyball, or basketball, or football. It's when he runs.

When the wind's blowing through his hair and nothing seems to matter in the world. When the crowd's singing and the opponent's struggling to even catch their breath. Ball bounces and everything goes silent. Foot plants itself in the ground and the planet just disappears, it's just him and this moment. He's out there, he's going to win. Every time he tells himself this, it comes true.

It happens for the first game, then the second, then the third. Before he's even aware of it, he's playing nationals. Everyone's cheering on him then. His parents watch his every game, even when they get too old to even remember his birthday. His friends come around from time to time, congratulate him on his wins. He makes some new friends in his teammates, some even on opposing teams. A nickname goes around, one only his closest friends know: "King Suguru."

One night he's out drinking with them, relaxing in some bar, getting wasted and getting high on himself. One of his friends brings in a girl who looks like she's just turned sixteen, I see it through the makeup. The girl is in way over her head but she doesn't know it, she doesn't know it because she's a kid, and she's stupid and she's trying to look like a grownup to be better than everyone else in her school.

Not before long I see someone crying in an alleyway, someone far too young to be curled up in a ball, stuck behind a garbage bin, with her clothes ripped apart. Kamoshida's standing over her with two of his buddies from the bar, and they decide to walk away after deciding to schedule another get together at the bar tomorrow night. They leave her there they leave her there and when Kamoshida realizes that they've left her there, he's already at the front door of his apartment. Kamoshida looks at himself, looks at his unzipped pants, then runs in his bathroom and holds himself throughout the whole night.

He doesn't tell anybody. And life goes on, as it does.

He doesn't go back to those friends of his, and he doesn't ever go to that bar again. Every time he closes his eyes he sees the girl holding herself. Every time he shuts his ears, he hears her weeping noises. Every time he punches something, punches a wall, he makes himself remember how much of a terrible person he is. But in his most private moments, all he can think of his how pretty she was, and lets himself be an animal.

He's not like everyone else. He's not. He's a good man. He's supposed to be.

When he wins the last big game of his senior year the crowd cheers him, calls him out, treats him like a king. He's supposed to be happy, why isn't he happy? Everyone's voices all coalesce into one big cheer and it shames him, it shames him deep inside. It's something twisting and turning in him, and it's burrowing into his heart his lungs his guts.

He thinks of telling everyone right there what he's done. Right there, on the spot, just vomiting out all the words. But he likes it. He likes hearing the crowd. He likes how they cheer his name. And of course he does. He's a king. Why shouldn't he like it? What does he have to feel bad for? What could possibly be wrong with him, with all these people cheering out his name?

He can't be a bad man. He isn't. He knows he isn't.

When he goes to college, he goes to one far away from his old friends, far away from the bar and the noises, and lets himself just be silent in everything except sports. It's in his nature, he can't stay away from sports. He's too good. The girls fawn over him, like they always do, but he still turns them down. They're too old for him, and he still has bad thoughts every now and again to that one night in the alley. The boys talk to him and he even trains some of them, they love how he drives them to be better than they are.

He doesn't tell anyone about what he did, or why he did what he did. The bigger part of him doesn't even know why he did what he did. But the smaller part he keeps locked away knows exactly why.

It's the same small part that drives him to look at things nobody should, to enter places nobody ever must. When he discovers the deep web from a friend, he looks for it because he knows the things that ebb away at him lie there. When he sees small, thin bodies like the ones he sees he's disgusted and he's enraged but at the same time he can't stop licking his lips and feeling so hollow yet so full.

Then the blood comes. Then he sees the red, he sees the kids with their eyes blown out and their bodies all mangled. And he knows that he is a better person than whoever posted those pictures.

With that knowledge, he can sleep.

He's an Olympian by the time he reaches his mid-20's and when he's up there on the stage again in front of all those people, the thought crosses his mind once more. He can't stop it from burning into himself. He wonders why? Why is he still thinking the things he's thinking? It was all in the past, there's nothing he can do, he doesn't even remember the girl's name. Why should he try to remember? Why should he try to fight it all? He's a king, he's loved by all the people. When he cries onstage on the day he wins, he ultimately passes it off as tears of joy when really he doesn't even know if he wants to keep on living.

But why should he not want to keep on living? Won't they be sad? Won't, won't his fans, his parents, his friends miss him when he's gone? Won't he be remembered by them? Won't tears flow at his funeral? He doesn't see why not. He's done a lot of bad things, and he knows it, but in the end he's no better than anyone else. He's done so much good. People love him. He's not a bad person, he knows he can't be. What makes him so upset about all this? What makes him so scared, so sad? So empty about just everything?

He has a medal around his neck. He is a symbol of success. He alone is a standard that people can aspire to be. Why should he feel bad over some stupid thing he did when he was drunk? And you'd think, you'd think the girl would speak up to someone in the media, after all this time. But he hasn't heard a thing. He hasn't heard a thing at all, so the girl most likely got over it by now.

It doesn't matter, none of it matters. It's him, it's all him. People love him. So why can't he?

When the high of the win dies down, he realizes just how quickly people forget. And it's all a shame. The years roll by and sooner or later another man comes in and wins the world. Wins praise, wins trinkets. And it doesn't matter, it shouldn't matter. It shouldn't itch at him the way it does. It shouldn't make him remember how he used to be up there, as often as it does.

They tell you, when you're a child, to just be yourself, and everything will be fine, right?

So why shouldn't he just be himself? Why can't he just be proud with himself? Why does everyone have to smile at him, force him to fall to their expectations like they do? Them and their smiles, he sees his parents and hears them talk about how proud they are of him. He sees the crowd and he can't bear to see the unrelenting horror on their faces. They don't deserve that, they deserve better.

They deserve a king, not a monster.

He's a king, he tells himself. He's a king. He's a king.

He has nothing to be sorry for. As long as he has that medal around his neck, it's a sign that everything he's won up to this point will be for nothing if he just gives up now. He's himself and he loves himself and he will never be anything other than what he is. Call him a monster, call him whatever you'd like. But in the end, he's a man. Just like anyone else.

Nobody could blame him. What would you do, in his shoes? What would you do?

What would you do?

When I return to myself, my hands are around Kamoshida's throat and he's gurgling up black blood. The fires are all around the both of us, as I see Takamaki just watching us, watching me. She looks at me with that look in her eyes she had earlier, that frightened horrified look that makes me feel like I've become a devil.

It's at this point I feel the black fluids that taste beyond bitter in my mouth. I see bite marks in Kamoshida's left trapezius, and as my teeth begin to chatter I taste the meat between them. The meat melts into more black as I stand up and cough it out, I cough and wheeze and breathe and ram my fingers down my throat to get rid of all the bitterness and the pain.

And I think of what I can say to Kana.

I think I'd first tell her I love her, if we'd ever get to meet again. That I've missed her, missed every bit of her. That seeing her smile would make days into memories, and moments. Hearing her laugh would make me wish I could live a thousand lifetimes with her and only her. That no matter what, I never forgot her or let go no matter the length of time between her falling asleep and waking up.

Then I would tell her about what I did. To her, and her family. And we would never see each other again. She means the world to me, still does even to this day. It's draining to think about her. But I need to. I need it all. If I let go, I'll forget. If I forget, she dies for real. And all that'll be left in me is this blank thing that doesn't even deserve to have a name.

She'd be disgusted with me, she'd hate me forever, she'd want absolutely nothing to do with me if she ever discovered what I was planning to do to him. I remember our conversation, about 1984. Thoughtcrime, thought police. That is what I am going to get myself involved in. That's what I've been involved in since the end of my trial. Right under her nose.

But she can't matter right now. Can she?

Not when there's a man terrorizing his own students, and the only way to stop him is to go into his mind and completely brainwash him into becoming a decent human being. If not drive him mad. If not put him in a coma. If not kill him.

The Devil is the Prince of the world. And as such, in the world, it is so unbelievably easy to have the worst of yourself drawn out in the worst of circumstances.

I know I'm not doing this for them. I've not done anything for them. This is for me; it's just so I won't have to feel the weight of Kana's gaze. That's what I'd tell myself, then.

But now I don't even feel her anymore. I think of her, I imagine her, I crave her still. But I don't see her. I don't feel her, watching me. I don't hear her voice. Not even that yellow-eyed creature wearing her flesh. I don't have a trace of her at all.

I killed Shido, and I paid the price. But I know, I know that if I hadn't...

I was and still am completely justified in what I had done. Rendering Kana comatose, that's on me. All of that's on me. Me, and the Wolf. But I didn't try to rape her. I didn't attack her, in the night; I didn't try pulling her into an alleyway in my drunken hedonism. It was Shido. All Shido.

Just like now. It's Kamoshida, all Kamoshida. I know I'm damned, I'm not going to deny that. But if I am damned, then I'll drag him down with me. Nothing a simple knife to the neck won't fix. It all sounds so simple, so natural. But this is exactly what I feared. I'm beginning to justify myself again, because it's easy for me to. It's easy for anyone to. And once I go back down into that place, I don't know if I'll ever get out.

And while I don't think that's necessarily a good thing, I think the fact that I feel actually more than a little relieved is much more concerting.

But before I can justify myself any further, my guts leak out red. I feel something cold and steel. And before I can react, I'm lifted into the air.

I see what lifted me. Something monstrous with a billion bat wings for hair, something cruel and hissing. It is the fake Takamaki, the one wearing a bikini and who I'd often catch staring into nothing. But she's not how she was back then. Though she looks frail, she's carrying a greatsword twice her size and her legs are morphing into something long and slithery, something vile and putrid and I feel so cold when her eyes meet mine.

And when I'm whipped into the wall, everything goes black again.

When Makoto Niijima awakens, the first thing that hits her is the smell. Upon realizing she's got her face nuzzled against a plastic garbage bag, she rears her head back and tries to wipe off the stench and the transparent gunk.

She and Sakamoto and the cat are all in the alley they had gotten themselves and Takamaki into, right before entering the Palace. She looks, sees her aforementioned companions with their heads in the grime, and looks at herself. Her hands, her clothes, the areas on her body where she should have wounds. She's been healed. Even her clothes are fine, though that may be just the result of her being sent back into the real world. She turns to her allies and remembers that Morgana and Sakamoto were both knocked unconscious along with her, and it's not like they could have just crawled back out from the Palace—

It's at this point that she realizes Takamaki's not with them. That she's been left there, inside the Palace, left to Kamoshida's whims. And Makoto remembers what Takamaki had told her, all that talk about Kamoshida calling her up and asking her to sleep with him even though she's half his age, everything that Kamoshida had done to Shiho Suzui and in the end, it's her fault. Makoto was more or less okay with the idea of having Takamaki with them, fighting the Shadows even though she hasn't even awakened to a Persona. Makoto knew they needed more numbers, and she felt then that if Sakamoto could summon a Persona, if she herself could summon a Persona, why couldn't Takamaki?

Surely, she'd get that feeling of anger, that burst of hatred and resentment towards Kamoshida. That's what Makoto was counting on. But she never expected anything like what had happened then. It was stupid of her, foolish of her. She underestimated their threat and overestimated her own gambits. She's sick of it, sick of it all, so sick of Kamoshida being free to do whatever he wants while crushing his boot over other people's heads, and the thing she was sick of most of all was how it had all happened right under her nose, right when she could have stopped it but didn't, and she unwittingly helped let it all just happen.

And in the end she was so sick of it all that she may have ended up costing someone's life. But Makoto remembers that someone must have brought her here. Her, and Sakamoto, and Morgana. There was only one other person who was there, with them all at the entrance of the Palace. And now that one person and Takamaki are both alone, in a mental world filled with Shadows, armed with virtually nothing. Unless...

She grabs Sakamoto's body and heaves him out of the garbage, slapping him around and shaking him and she doesn't care who's watching. When he stirs, he coughs out some bits of dirt and gunk before he sees just who's in front of him, and actually starts talking again.

"S-senpai...?" he holds his head in pain then, muttering, "What happened...?"

"Kanzaki got us back to the real world after we fell unconscious. Now he's in the Palace, stuck with Takamaki."

It's at this point his eyes widen and he becomes well and wide awake, and the both of them turn to the cat, whose head is currently stuck between two heaping piles of black bags.

"H-hey! Can someone get me outta here!?" it exclaims. "Where am I!? A-and what's this smell—!?"

author's notes:

I took a lot of consideration in what Akira and the crew will do next, at this point, and ultimately what I've managed to come up with is something not even I expected to do. Expect some old Palaces, some new ones, characters being introduced at times they shouldn't be, Palaces being taken out of order, and in the end you'll find out just how far our hero is willing to go just to make sure people don't get hurt.

I'll even give a preview of one of the scenes of Chapter 2 right now:

"What are you here for?"

"She was my friend," the girl says before shaking her head. "'Bout you? How'd you know Kana-chan...?"

I purse my lips. "She was my girlfriend."

Now for some explanation: Akira's status as an Anomaly is mainly a result of him having a split personality. Once, his psyche was unified, but thanks to all the trauma and mental taxation he's suffered over such a long course of months, trauma that began the night he killed Shido, he's developed a second personality borne from his worse aspects. This personality is fed further by Nyarlathotep's influence; Akira's on-screen personality, the one we see the most of, the rational and relatively sane-minded version of Akira we've grown to know, is the section of his psyche that's been segmented away from Nyarly's power.

Akira has a Persona in this personality, because it is through this personality that Akira was able to overcome himself and accept his own will to rebel. As for his other personality...

Let's just say there's a different reason from canon as to why he'll be codenamed Joker.

Now, as for Kamoshida, I'd wager his arc will end in either Section XII or XIII. But it's coming to a close soon. Sorry if you guys were getting impatient and just wanted Kamoshida beaten up already, but I wanna add some more scenes of Akira and the Thieves interacting more with each other, as well as a few more scenes with Kamoshida himself.

And as for Akira accessing Kamoshida's memories, that'll be explained too, in a little bit.