6 / 9 / 2016

I throw myself out the apartment and most of my chest wants to explode out my throat the second I take my first step. I can think straight, I can walk without tipping over, I can breathe well enough. Throbbing headache will prolly fade come lunch or so. Pain in my torso will likely last another week. Body's all healed but the agony of broken bones and bent insides remains. Guess that's another blind spot of my Persona's trauma-induced inefficiencies.

"A-are you sure you can do this? Kazuya!"

Can't believe I forgot Maruki existed for a second. "I can."

He turns me around and places a hand over my head. "You've still got a fever..."

"I can make it today."

"I don't want to risk it. You're staying home today."

"If you can kill that fucker without me I'll stay."

"You know we can't kill this person."

"Sure you can. And you'd get away with it."

"Kazuya."

"I've said over and over and over again how little time we have."

"And I've said you can't push yourself to do this. Kazuya. Give yourself another day, at least."

Maruki would have been a good father. His fiancee was stupid to have left him. But my point still stands. "Tomorrow we go."

"Kazuya."

"Tomorrow, we go."

"Day after."

"Maruki-"

"Day after or I'm gonna have your probation rescinded."

"Goddamn you."

"That Niijima girl and I brought you home yesterday. We carried you in my car and it wasn't easy to drag your unconscious body all the way up to my place. When we finally got you in bed you landed like a rock. Today and tomorrow you will give yourself time to rest. And that's final."

"And tomorrow, fuck off."

"Kazuya."

"My father would've let me go."

"You really think so?"

"He already has, as far as my inheritance is concerned."

"Yes, well," he clears his throat, "I don't intend to do the same."

I groan, "Fine. Fucking fine. Whatever."

Maruki's stern eyes soften then, as he lets out a sigh. "Good. Now. What do you want for breakfast?"

I exhale. "Eggs, I guess."

"Scrambled, or an omelette?"

"Omelette," I tell him, as I pull out my phone and tell the chat that I won't be coming to school 'til the eleventh. "Where's the cat?"

"He said he'd stick around school grounds."

.

.

.

6 / 11 / 2016

The fateful day arrives and I feel about sixty to seventy percent better about myself. Head's still a little woozy, but I can walk without my torso wanting to collapse. Body isn't burning up or heaving out air. I don't feel better. But I feel good, and I've to hope that's about enough.

It's certainly enough to head to school. Over my sick leave Takamaki sent me info on all our homework, which was easy enough. So all that's left is to wait out the rest of the day and return to the station, kick the fuck out of Kaneshiro's Palace and then figure out how to trigger a reaction outta him in the real world.

For lunch I take a bite out of some bread I'd bought from the lunch lady in the lobby of the school, sitting in a chair and table left up-top the roof. I think of what must be done, what can be done, what else I haven't done.

"Hikawa?"

I turn to the door. Underneath the canopy she stands, much like how she had so long ago. Then, she confronted us with some unearned air of superiority that, looking back, must've been nothing short of a defense mechanism. Her defenses are lowered now, a more sincere humility in her expression.

I decide to lighten up the mood somewhat. "This area is off-limits, you know."

She's annoyed, but not pissed off, "It still is, by the way. But I suppose today, we can afford an exception."

She says this while taking out her own bento box, and dragging a separate table to mine. She sets herself across from me, eating a plain box of rice and tuna.

Can't help but be amused. "Why're you here?"

"How are you feeling?"

"I'm alright. Mostly."

"Mostly?"

"Yes," I stare downwards as I take another bite. "Maruki told me you helped him bring me back to the apartment."

"...I did."

"I can't imagine it was easy," I look at her now, letting sincerity seep through. "Thank you. I needed those two days of rest."

"It's good to know." Though her face is still, there's warmth in her voice. "We were very worried when you collapsed in the Palace."

I chuckle, "Would you actually have punched me out if I'd decided to keep pressing forward?"

"Yes, I would have."

"You'd have been right to." She looks concerned, for me. It doesn't suit her. "What?"

"Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?"

I blink at her. "Depends on the question."

"How did you come across Palaces in the first place?"

I rub the back of my neck, "I don't feel comfortable discussing it."

"Alright. I didn't mean to pry."

I narrow my eyes at her, taking another bite out of my bread. "How much about me do you know? My records."

"I'm aware you were arrested for assault. That you subdued a much older, larger man, put him in a coma. That's about it."

Hmm. Dad must've pulled strings to block details about the victims. Good on him I guess. "That's the gist of it, yes."

"How did you even...?"

"In all fairness, he was drunk. Probably wouldn't have ended so well if he had been sober." She frowns. "What now?"

"You sound proud of what you'd done."

I nod, letting a small and sad smile break through. "You would be, too."

"Why did you do it?"

"What?"

"Why did you...do that to him?"

For a disproportionately long time, I think to actually tell her the truth. The moment that thought crosses my mind I hurl a thousand profanities at myself for even considering such a foolish move, but in those few seconds where her eyes meet mine I feel something almost wholly unstoppable well up in my throat.

"I tried to save my girlfriend from a drunk man who was harassing her and her mother. The man hurt her and I flew into a mad rage, resulting in him suffering from a cracked skull, and I don't even remember most of that night at all, and because of that my girlfriend ended up so terrified of me that within her Palace lay a giant seven-headed nuclear kaiju that represented everything she feared about me."

Is what I don't say.

What I do say is, "Considering what you do know about me, why do you think I did what I did?"

She eyes me warily, then turns back to her bento, "I'll be honest. I'm very anxious with how you intend to handle Kaneshiro."

"You've been anxious since this all began."

Her eyes turn very, very firm now. "Once this is all over. Do you intend to go into the Palaces of everyone associated with him?"

I'd lie to her again, but I can tell that if I do, she'll see through it.

Because my left hand is shaking again, and I can't stop it no matter how hard I tell my body to do as my mind says.

I'd ask her why I have to tell her anything at all, why I should answer to her. And then I remember that my Personas are weak to skills she's capable of. And then I remember that she twisted my arm easily in the Big Bang Burger, meaning she has actual training on at least some level. And I think I can rest easy because Niijima won't and can't kill me, because her conscience won't allow it. Nor can she afford to beat me up so bad I get incapacitated, not in the middle of all this bullshit.

I stop kidding myself because I know that if I say nothing or lie to her she'll see right through me anyway and stay a thorn in my fucking side forever. Hell, she might send out the recording to the cops and get us all fucked up the second she suspects I'm up to some shit, which I am. No matter how fucked up the person is she won't stand for just killing him.

And as much as I hate her, I can't just kill her, either. Nor can I let her fuck their lives up. Would she do something so callous? Even just to get back at me? No. But she would, if it was to stop me from killing someone else.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, then.

Hit the nail on the head and keep smashing, no matter what. Worked before. It'll work now.

"Can you talk to him?"

"What?"

I eye her carefully, my pupils harsh and cutting, "Can you imagine speaking to a man like Kaneshiro?"

"What are you asking-?"

"Of course you can't. Not without hurling obscenities at him, or calling him any number of variations between murderer, sex trafficker, crack dealer, mobster, yakuza piece of shit. Could you make him afraid of you?"

Niijima understands what I'm going for, immediately. "Hikawa, it's not that he-"

"Of course not. Because what could some teenage girl do that could possibly terrify him. Do you really think he kept those pictures of us to himself?"

She doesn't answer me back. Not for a while. "No. He wouldn't have."

"It's entirely possible for us to change his heart. But it won't matter unless we can trigger a reaction out of him. And what do you think we can do? prison holds no terror for a man like Junya Kaneshiro. Neither does torture, neither does death. Do you see any other way to ensure he or his people don't screw us over, even after we change his heart?"

"Knowing you. You'd attempt to do more than change their heart. Am I wrong?" I don't answer her. Which is answer enough. "Hikawa-san."

I suck in a tremendous breath, because I know sooner or later I'll lose the patience for whatever holier-than-thou bullshit she'll spout this time, so I might as well do as much as I can to reduce my heart rate now before it's too late.

I can't convince her to let me kill this man, or anyone else associated with him. But I can at the very least cause a few dents here and there. If there's anything history's taught me, it's that doubts and insecurity can fracture entire civilizations.

"In all fairness I don't plan to kill anyone unless they force my hand. I don't even intend to go after Kamoshida's men, so long as he kept info on us shelled away from everyone else, which is unlikely."

"It doesn't take much for anyone to force your hand."

Ha. "That's true. Would that be such a bad thing, though? It'd certainly do away with this power-vacuum problem."

"You think you can just act as judge, jury, and executioner whenever you please?"

"I don't take pleasure in any of this."

"Everything you've done up 'til now tells me you take deep pleasure in putting these people down like dogs."

"I won't deny it feels good to hurt them. On the whole it feels fucking liberating to see the fear scramble their brains, as they lose everything they'd wanted to store up deep in their hearts. But it doesn't change anything. After Kamoshida jumped off that roof I didn't feel any different. After Kobayakawa got himself between the wheels of a truck I felt nothing. And after Kaneshiro gets whacked in jail or confined forever or executed for everything he's done, I will feel absolutely nothing."

"I didn't come to you to stop Kaneshiro just because I couldn't go to the cops with this! I came to you because, despite all of our differences, you were willing to put your heart and soul into stopping people who only saw others as tools for their own success. I came to you because I know that you're more than what you believe you are!"

She trembled, when I last spoke to her like this. So long ago she couldn't even fathom the kind of creature she was looking at, when her eyes met mine. Now, now she isn't pathetic, or snivelling, or drowning in self-abasement. Now, she's more beautiful than I could have ever expected.

Why do I keep saying this whenever I find myself talking to her? "You don't know me."

"I don't think even you know you."

"What kind of person do you think I am? You think, deep down, I'm the kinda guy that can actually change the world? Like I could actually be some big goddamn hero, going out there and helping people?"

"Why not?" From anyone else, that reply would've sounded so unbe-fucking-lievable that I ought to beat their fucking heads open for making shitty jokes, but from Niijima all I get is someone who actually buys into the shit they spout.

"What do you mean?"

She runs her hands through her hair. "If you're so self-serving that you would kill a man for your own freedom, you wouldn't care about any of their victims, but you clearly do. Shiho Suzui is proof of that. When you cornered Kobayakawa in his office you railed against him for forcing innocent children into carting around drugs for him! Or what about how, even after everything that I put you through back with Kaneshiro, you followed me to him, because you wanted to save me! Or am I wrong about that, too!?"

Though her hands are shaking, she's able to make herself stay fierce and strong and made of iron. I try to match her. I keep everything within me blustering and violent and raging, because I have to. But all I really want is to throw myself off the roof and hope the fall kills me.

She leaps at the silence I leave hanging in my mouth, "You have the courage and the will and the power to stand against people others fear, but all you can think to do with that power is try to kill whoever stands in your way. You can change so much, but instead you'd rather repeat their mistakes."

"As opposed to letting them run around like animals and not giving them their just fucking desserts."

"Do you think I'd just let you do it on your own?"

"What?"

"I'm willing to come with you."

"Don't be stupid-"

"If Kaneshiro's released our pictures to others, then I'm willing to dive into each of their Palaces along with you, and change their hearts."

"Just to keep me from killing them, you'd babysit me."

"I won't let you kill anyone!"

"And who'll stop you from killing them?"

"You think I'd do such a thing?"

"You don't know what you don't know."

Her eyes turn piercing again. She opens her mouth, intending to retort something, but she exhales, "You say you can't change the world, but you're not even letting yourself believe it's possible to change it."

Get your fucking head back in the game, asshole. "Because it isn't. Planet's a goddamn sewer. Assholes in power use their influence and money to make the world their own, and all their victims choke and die and keep their heads facing the ground because they don't wanna rock the boat. No matter how many hearts we change that will always stay the same."

"You don't think you can inspire anyone? Don't you realize how much you've done for the people at Shujin? I may not agree with your methods. But I can't deny that what you did saved lives. You stopped two sick men from exploiting their own students for personal gain, and you think that hasn't changed anything?"

"All I did was get rid of trash that should've been disposed of years ago. Gave everyone in the school a reason to breathe easy before they lose their nerves again. Only reason things changed as you say is because the worms have spilled and there's no can in all the world big enough to put them back in again. They spent years keeping their heads down and trusting their higher-ups to make all their decisions for them. Getting rid of two pieces of shit won't change that learned helplessness. That's why I was furious when Suzui jumped off the top of the roof. And why I respect her more than I respect any of them."

"What do you mean?"

"She didn't want to die. She wanted to be free. She wanted to escape Kamoshida, escape all the pressure of keeping her mouth shut, while the world kept on making its demands. And why wouldn't she want to escape? Guy raped her and if she spoke up about it everyone'd tell her to shut the fuck up. Nobody cared, nobody would listen, nobody would give a shit, and knowing all that she chose the one way she could be free. And it sickens me to my bones."

"So there's no point in trying to do the right thing anyway, because it won't change anything, is that what you're saying?" she asks then, and I don't rebut her. "I can't agree with that."

"Whatever I did to Kamoshida, to Kobayakawa, even whatever'll happen to Kaneshiro, they'll forget about it in a matter of weeks if not days. How can you have faith in them?"

"The world isn't worth much. It's full of awful, corrupt, terrible people who're willing to use good people to serve their own ends. But those who suffer need someone. They can be strong. I know it. All they need is that little push ," she says, facing me now.

"I don't believe you."

"You don't believe in anything."

"That's where you're wrong."

"Then what do you believe in?" she growls at me, utterly agitated.

I decide to sugarcoat nothing. To speak everything I had never even told Kana.

"By our very nature, the vast majority of humanity is comprised of good people. If deep down, everyone was just another variation of Kamoshida, then we as a species would've died out long ago. That means the vast majority of atrocities committed all throughout human history was committed by good people. I believe that Kamoshida is the exception. I believe the norm's a helluva lot worse. I believe that the only way we can surpass all of this madness is if people stop running away."

"From what?"

"From themselves. Assholes like Kamoshida aren't willing to face themselves, so their hearts fester and boil and make them into monsters. The students and teachers are ineffectual fucks who'd rather stay silent than do anything to help. They're all slaves to themselves and their urges and whatever the fuck people tell them to do. Letting their parents or their friends or anyone who'd speak to them for more than five seconds to decide their own morals and beliefs. Rather than deciding it for themselves."

"You think that once they do that, they'll suddenly become good people? That anyone who would just take a good look at themselves would finally be able to break free from all the terrible things they've allowed themselves to do?"

"I believe humanity is at its very best when it's free to accept everything that it is, warts and all. Monsters exist in each of us, but it's better to accept that they do, rather than pretend they don't."

"And what if someone accepts the monster a little too well? So well they decide to let themselves become it?"

"Then it's a good thing people like you exist. Because you accepted your monster, and now it's a weapon you use to make the world your own. You want to help people. You want to stop fuckheads from making slaves out of them. You want to make up for all your mistakes, and good on you for that. Didn't it feel great, when you first summoned her? When you unleashed everything you kept all bottled up inside, set it all under your control? Didn't you feel free?"

"And you don't think giving people hope would allow them to face themselves? You don't think that could free them?"

"Inspiration only goes so far. People change when reality crashes into them like a freight train and they decide that it's bullshit. And even then it isn't guaranteed."

"Even if the world is the way you say it is, that doesn't mean we can't at the very least try."

"You do whatever you want with Palaces, I suppose. If you want to help people, more power to you. I know what I want to do."

"How can you be so accepting of that?" There's something bizarre in her eyes, this miserable sort of twinge like she's gazing upon a man with nothing worth desiring.

And that pisses me off. More than Kamoshida or Kobayakawa or even Kaneshiro ever had.

"Like I have anything to lose."

"Hikawa, you can't just-"

"Shut up for five seconds and I'll tell you why I can. Everyone in this place hates me or wants nothing to do with me and good on them, because at least they're smart enough to leave me the fuck alone, unlike you. Unlike you I don't have something to look forward to at the end of this shit. You have a sister with a promising career as a prosecutor. You're student council president, any college'll have you as soon as you send your credentials. I don't have the privilege to a future. I have a criminal record that'll hang over my head until the day I die. My father's disowned me and who is gonna hire some stupid kid who got disinherited outta one of the biggest communication companies in the country. I'm not gonna get married, and there's no way in hell I'd be stupid enough to have kids. So before you bitch about how I'm planning to murder the man literally pushing to have me sold off to organ harvesters, know that you don't belong in the world that I live and breathe every single day. You threw yourself and me and the rest of them into this mess all by yourself because you wanted to feel useful. All I've ever wanted since the beginning of this was to let the whole world forget I ever existed, and what do I get instead? That stupid look in your eyes that tells me you think I'm some sad wretched piece of shit who just doesn't understand what he's doing to himself, when I know exactly what I'm doing, exactly what I've done, and exactly what I need to do."

"Everybody's lost something," she snarls. "And you're using that pain for something dreadful. That doesn't give you a license to do as you will with other people's lives, they aren't yours to end. You can't use what you've lost as a reason to let yourself become as much of a monster as the people you hate."

"I'm not a monster. I'm the Devil. You should've known that by now."

"Do you want to be?"

"What?"

"Is that something you want to be? Do you want this?"

"It isn't a matter of what I want."

That look in her eyes grows stronger. Her tone, stern and firm and chastising, she's beyond disappointed now. "Then you're as much a slave as everyone else you've castigated throughout this whole conversation."

I get up out of my seat. She doesn't buckle, doesn't run from the look in my eyes. Were it anyone else they would've fled the second they met my face. "Get out."

She exhales, picking up her bag and heading out the door, "I'll see you at the walkway. Good luck killing what's left of yourself."

If it were possible to hate someone to death, Niijima would be seizing up, collapsing as her face pours out gallons of gore from every orifice. It stays with me far longer than I could have ever believed it would, even as the class hours pass on by.

"She's right, you know."

I turn, and I see the cat perched atop one of the abandoned desks nearby. It says nothing more, for it does not need to; just lets me know, "I'll see you at the gates when you're done for the day."

The world went crazy two Christmases ago, showered in the brains and blood of a man who deserved far worse than what he received. Like a beast I lost myself, and ended up unleashing demons I didn't know I had. For the first time, I felt free. And then I ended up losing everything that my freedom would have made worthwhile anyway.

I know exactly what my Candelabrum represents. I know exactly what my Kingdom represents. Though I desire so much, I know none of it could ever possibly be mine. Not without making the whole goddamn world as sane as possible.

So, no. I have no issue whatsoever in saying she's correct. I've understood that since the beginning. It isn't a matter of fact that I'm so fucking infuriated. It isn't even her ignorance that offends me.

It's how she gets the fucking audacity to say that shit to my face. But how pissed I am doesn't matter, how sick I feel doesn't matter, how Niijima thinks she's finally fucking got one over me doesn't matter.

Cat meets up with me outside the school gates and I stuff it back in my bag.

I meet with Yoshizawa, Takamaki, and Niijima back at the walkway, Maruki arriving about ten minutes after the fact. In stark silence we all return to the Palace, a cloud hanging over us all as we march our way through. Unlike before, Kaneshiro's left the corpses of past Baals and flies, rotting and bleeding out wherever we'd left them. We push past the Security Room and down an elevator. Anxiety sets in when the elevator goes a bit too long for its own good, but the idea of us getting flattened abruptly holds no water when the lift dings and opens its doors.

"What the...?"

The second Tier is dark and decrepit and smells of rotting meat. Harsh florescent bulbs cast beams of light down, making the surrounding darkness even blacker than it would have been otherwise. Hanging from large steel lines lay rows and rows of halved cattle, hanging by hooks pierced through their hind hooves. Vertically, they'd been cut; from the tips of their snouts to the ends of their tails. The blood's been drained out of them completely, but they still shuffle their front hooves, they still groan and squeal, though with considerably less enthusiasm than the ones outside. Up to our ankles is an ocean of viscera, red and thick and sloshing around with every motion we make. On each row the hanged pigs lurch forward one after another, another half-swine shunting into the gaps from shafts in the ceilings. A large bright light lies past all the rows, so blinding that were you to step under it you'd likely fry your eyes.

Takamaki wants to puke, Maruki sways like he's on the verge of fainting, Yoshizawa can't bear the sight nor the smell. Niijima doesn't let anything show, and for once she does a good job of it.

"Mist," I turn to her, "the map?"

"R-right..." She pulls it out her coat pocket, unfurling it for us all to see. "We're lucky that it stayed when we left it in the previous Tier..."

"We'd no choice, it would've despawned had we taken it with us out of the Palace," shrugs the cat.

The floor, like the previous Tier, bears a circular layout. The ends of the rows of pigs stay about ten feet away from each other, but their other ends converge into a center pit titled THE GRINDER. The cat lays a paw right smack dab on the label.

"Asshole's riiiight here. I can feel it. He's a Tough one."

I ask, "Compared to the last one?"

"Tougher."

"Compared to the Matador."

"You keep saying that-"

"About halfway between the last one and the Matador," the cat interrupts Yoshizawa.

"The Biker?"

"Biker and Matador are on the same level."

God-fuckin'-dammit. "Compared to Satanael."

"I mean, he should be able to kill him. But let's see what tricks're up his sleeve."

Niijima asks, "What about all of us combined?"

"We can take him. But he can take at least one of us out, if we're not careful."

She exhales, brandishing a silver toy pistol.

"The hell did you get that?" I ask.

"While you were absent," she says, "Yoshizawa directed me to Untouchable."

"Nice job," I tell Mist.

No response other than, "We make a right, here..."

We move past the groaning half-pigs, some of which beg us to kill them, others whispering obscenities, others still heaving and huffing as though they still had more than one lung. Their noises are utterly drowned out by a groaning, squelching noise that only grows louder the further we go from the elevator from which we'd come.

We follow the map carefully, pushing our feet through red slime; it doesn't slow us in the slightest, though in every way it ought to. Suddenly a hard metal CLANG rings out from the bright light we march towards, and then another, and then a third. Hardly steel against meat; steel against steel, smashing against each other so hard at least one or both shall bend and snap and crumple under the weight of the other. Scraping noises, like a pylon running along glass, slop and gobble and gulp and hhhurk, noises of all kinds grow ever louder as the rows continue being shifted forward, forward, forward.

We make it to the center stage and the noises stop utterly.

The pit is about fifty meters in diameter. A pool of blood and meat. Deep enough such that were you to drop something within, it'd take an hour before it'd touch the bottom. Yet it is filled with so many pig carcasses that I'd wager you'd be able to walk on it just fine.

A voice from nowhere rings out, clawing at our ears, "Pretty, pretty, pretty. All too many, all too beautiful to go to waste."

Rising up in the center of the mass of corpses is a small, golden bird. Literally made of gold; an inanimate statue of a thing with widely-spread wings. Small enough to be a trophy of some kind.

"The Lord seeks you. Follow orders. So many days without new meat, so many days indeed." It huffs and growls and makes unholy noises, as though itself a pig, and the bird swivels on its spot and meets its eyes with Maruki. "Liar. Cowardice dressed in virtue. You shall suffer a liar's death." To Takamaki. "Guilt-ridden. Anger, pointed at oneself. Pale-skinned exotic whore." To Yoshizawa. "Madness and agony. Flee from yourself and the meal shall be saltier." To Niijima. "Foolish girl. Your body shall satisfy hundreds."

To me.

"Hypocrite. Thief. Plunderer," it sniffs a little more, then says with a smile, "Murderer...?" And it laughs, veins in its chest and arms popping and bursting as it makes its horrid noises. "So that is his ploy. The Lord has taken favor upon you, a wondrous favor indeed."

Waist deep in a sea of blood and meat, a thirty-foot tall mass rises to greet us. Another obese monstrosity, a golden bird on a stool in place of its head and neck. Where its collarbone should be instead lies a gaping mouth with cube-shaped teeth each the size of my head. Like Kobayakawa, its body is more a hill made of meat than anything else. Though it lacks in boils and festering wounds, its skin is leathery and craggly, like an old abandoned winter coat. Its arms are redwood logs, its hands boulders unto themselves. In its left hand it carries a butcher's knife as tall as a lamppost, in its right it carries a sharpener that could cut through diamond like butter.

The mouth opens and we smell its ghastly breath: It drops the sharpener, reaching into the pool of blood and shit it lies in and rips out a pig's half-eaten half-carcass, as more and more drop from the ceiling into his excesses. The name Baal Shamin washes over my skull as his giant hand shoves the corpse into our faces.

"Feed. Bite. Soon you shall become food. Dine, before you die."

We all stare at the open bones and chewed flesh, at the maggots, at the colors of the guts and organs that remain and all Niijima can say is, "M-Morgana, what are it's weaknesses-"

"None."

"Resistances!?"

"None."

"Then suit yourselves," it says. It lifts the meat above itself and opens its chest, the mouth expanding well beyond its borders. A tongue whips out of its mouth like a carpet, drool thick with all manner of things that don't belong on a tongue, as the pig slides down with little to no issue. "Half-dead meat. Never anything impressive. Delicious. But boring. Too many times, too many times indeed. Have you come to surrender or to fight?" His chest-mouth stretches into a smile, the edges of its lips slobbery and slick with unbelievably reflective drool. "Surrender and I shall feast on you alive. Fight and I shall do everything in my power to slaughter you, humanely." It runs the sharpener along the steel of the cleaver and the sound is like a million nails being dragged across the largest chalkboard in the goddamn world. "Or have you come to speak? Sparkling conversationalist, I am, indeed."

It slams its massive cleaver down upon the corpses to its right, picking up halved-halves of still-living pigs. This time he chews, the bones creaking and crunching and being ground as blood and meat get mulched in its jaws.

"Why does the Lord of All That Flies possess such an overwhelming hunger?" asks Niijima, stepping forward from the whole lot of us.

"Not my place to say, not my place at all," it speaks, its mouth full, chunks and flops of red lapping over its bulging stomach. "This hunger that consumes him consumes us all. Were he to understand from where it comes, the hunger may drive him mad. So he feeds and feeds, and shall never ever starve."

"Is there no way for you to allow us safe passage through this place?"

"Of course not. Devour or be devoured. There can be no compromise."

"Why not?" she throats out.

I grab her by the arm, "Don't be so fucking stupid-"

"Why not!?" she pulls her arm away from me. "What hunger could be so all-consuming that it would compel him to exploit innocent for his own personal gain!?"

"A hunger found only in the hearts of those who can change the world. You children are kept fat and fed by your parents, your friends, your guardians. You know nothing of hunger, of starvation, of doing what must be done to reap your own path. To assault the world that seeks to feed off your bones, not simply because you hate it but simply because you must."

"That gives none of you the right to use people as you wish!"

"Indeed, no creature has the right to anything. Not the right to life, nor the right to happiness. Those things must be taken and achieved on one's own strength and hunger. You see worth in the pigs upon which we feast, but there is no worth in these lives anyway. What worth is there? What gives the lives of such pathetic creatures their worth, anyway? Because life itself is loved, or hated?"

A loud thrumming noise blares into our ears. The pigs stop moving along their lines. The hooks clipping through their hooves start moving backwards, the carcasses now being carried away from the center and back to whatever dark hole they'd crawled out from in the first place. Gears and metallics groan and shudder, the lines shuffling back as the pigs whine and squirm.

"Indeed, there is no God. There are no souls. All we are is meat and bone. These are certainties you must learn, for if you choose to deny them, you shall be consumed by creatures far stronger than yourself. Whatever rules you thought governed your world, they don't exist. All that exists is the realm of the senses, the will of the flesh. And yours belongs to us."

From the corpse pile he rises, shifting large lumps of four-toed flesh out from the dead pigs. He lumbers out of the pit, metallic shutter doors clamping over the hole once he's slithered his fat slug body right on out. He lets out a hardy, guttural laugh, his twelve-foot long tongue licking at the gore over his chest and at the edges of his mouth. The blades shimmer in the light, the whole Tier now an arena for us to battle.

Devour or be devoured.

Within moments the world goes black as Maruki bellows "Sukukaja!"

We get ourselves the fuck out as he brings down the goddamn cleaver and if Maruki hadn't used his powers on us then, at least one of us would have lost something important.

But again; he used it on all of us.

"Dammit...!"

Maruki crumples, the world turning back to its regular speeds. Baal Shamin tugs and tugs at the cleaver, stuck in the steel flooring, giving myself and Niijima some time. I grab my goddamn therapist and pull him away, the cat crying out, "Got anything?"

"Wh-when I disperse it to all of you...," Maruki growls, "I can only hold it for a few seconds..."

"Then don't. No weaknesses, no resistances, meaning we'll just have to pile on," I grunt out.

"But if it hits us once, we're dead," Niijima seethes.

"Bishop can't keep using Sukukaja on all of us."

"Then he'll have to give it to us, one at a time," she decides. "Starting with you, then me, then Takamaki, then Yoshizawa. We all hit it once, each, individually."

"I-I can only do one at a time," growls Bishop, "I'll need a little time before I can use the spell again..."

"How much time?" I ask him.

"...few seconds, ten to twenty."

"And how long will the spell last?"

"A minute," says the cat.

"A minute?"

"You use it right, a minute's all you'll ever need."

CHUNK goes the cleaver as it rips away from the steel, a giant bent space right where we had once been.

"Then let's make the most of it! Johanna!"

Her bike dashes into the world through a coat of blue flame and she rides it onward, circling around the fat fucking disgusting slug-bird whatever the hell, and it brings the cleaver down upon her with glee. The slams of the blade cause the world itself to quake and quiver but she's able to dodge swiftly, exactly, and whatever terror she may feel now is denied.

So I decide to be a bit of a cheap shot, "Satanael."

BOOM

The creature's back, once a nightmare of fleshy folds and pockets of skin that could never see the light of day, blooms outward in a flurry of red, around where the base of its neck ought to be. It is stunned, much like how you would be if someone had smashed a pot over the back of your head, but even as bone and meat dash and flop downward it turns to me as though annoyed.

A beast as fat and obscene as this has no right marching forward as quickly as it does, but within seconds the cleaver's been lifted above Satanael's head and is brought down in a motion faster than most eyes would ever be able to track-

"Sukukaja!"

-save Maruki's.

Time slows down. Primarily for myself. Yet the creature remains fast, far too fast for my own good. I decide then that this has to be it; death or glory. Satanael's able to raise the gun, pointing it directly for the mouth. I hear a motorcycle rev towards me as Baal Shamin lets out a slobbery laugh. With another BOOM, the both of us suffer unimaginable pains the likes of which most men would never comprehend.

From Satanael's shoulder to the center of his chest, the cleaver carves through. From most of Baal Shamin's tongue to the lower end of his spine, the bullet barrels through. I collapse because even though I suffer no wounds, Satanael's pain is mine-

And before I hit the ground the revving noise draws closer, and I'm grabbed in a motion that I'm unable to even stay conscious enough to see.

Luckily I regain myself after just a few seconds. "You alright?"

Yoshizawa asks me this, holding me close and tight as she stays seated in the back of Niijima's Persona. Niijima herself keeps her eyes forward, her hands on the bars, as she watches the Manikin roar in pain with a pectoral mouth that's missing all of its teeth and sixty-percent of its tongue.

"See what I mean?" asks the cat, "Sometimes, all you need's a minute! Lady!"

"Salome!"

Great balls of fire rain down, her Persona expelling flames from her robes as she twirls and dances in the air. They boil the beast, frying the fat to the point of cooking the meat and releasing a pungent but compelling scent; it continues charging, through the fire and the flames, and will surely bring the cleaver on her too, so Maruki puts on his fucking game face and shouts with all his soul, "Sukukaja!"

She dodges. But to my eyes, she doesn't dodge so much as she does teleport herself ten feet away from where the cleaver would've landed. And the fires come faster, fast enough to put actual real-world military grade missiles to shame, and they come at such a rate that she ends up overcooking the motherfucker just five seconds in.

The minute passes and Takamaki collapses herself, out of exhaustion more than anything else. Niijima calls out, "Lady!"

"I-is it dead...!?" she shouts furiously.

"No, b-but it's close!" cries the cat.

I get myself away from Yoshizawa, ripping off the mask from my eyes as Niijima and I call our Personas' names at the exact same time-

"Johanna!"

"Satanael."

We say our Personas' names at the exact same time. They come, bursting with glory and all the hatred we've allowed to build inside us since this fucking bastard morning, and we don't even need another Sukukaja before we let out an array of lights and fire that shreds the beast utterly. In mounds, in litres, in piles.

It is an even more shredded carcass than whatever pigs it had allowed to enter its gullet. It collapses, a pile of bones wearing opened and decayed and burnt fat and flesh. Its face, bereft of skin and eyes and teeth, speaks clearly: "The elevator beyond here shall take you to the bottom land. It is there the Treasure awaits."

Niijima disperses her Persona. Voice straining with anger, eyes marred by sorrow, "This need to keep feeding, to stave off hunger... what is all of this even for...?"

"What else? For freedom," It says, before its bones and flesh dissolve into bloody black dust.

I hold my side, falling again to my knees. The skin across my shoulder to my chest has swelled vigorously from all the strain as Maruki and Niijima run over to me.

"Joker! Are you alright!?" cries Bishop as he kneels.

"Is there any way we can heal him, Morgana-?"

"Get the fuck away from me," I rise up, pushing past the both of them (Niijima a little more harshly). Despite my torso feeling like it's punching itself from the inside out, I'm able to remain standing, and standing tall at that. "We have one more floor. Don't lose your nerve, we can beat this today."

"Are you sure you'll be okay?" asks Niijima, marching over to me with a concern that pisses me off all the more. "We can leave if you need time to recover-"

"What I need is to see this bastard disintegrate."

"Joker," Bishop growls, grabbing me by the arm. "How much pain are you in?"

"A lot," says the cat. "He took a cleaver from his shoulder to his chest. He doesn't have any wounds on him, but he feels that."

"Do you really think you can push on?" asks Takamaki.

"Joker," Niijima pleads, "please..."

"I'm fine, I just...need some time," I grip my shoulder, arm all tensed beyond what I believed it could be. "My chest and shoulder feel like they're made of lead..."

Suddenly Yoshizawa lets all the concern spill forth. "I might be able to help you," and she goes behind me, pressing her hands down on my shoulders, "just sit down for a second."

"Wh-what...?" She presses her palms against my right trapezius, curling it in a motion that's all too uncomfortable for me to handle so soon, "Wait, what the hell're you-?"

"Massage technique. My trainer taught me, sometime ago. For sore shoulders and tense muscles. If you feel massively uncomfortable, it's working."

"What the...?"

"It should actually alleviate the pain," says the cat. "When your Persona gets hit by a Shadow, you feel the same pain they do. Your nerves and muscle don't know how to handle phantom wounds, so they just seize up. Good work there, Mist."

"What, what're you even, whyyyy-?" Pain searing through my chest, a good and almost refreshing kind, "YyAGH, why, why're you doing this...?"

"We can't make it through this Palace without you. And I don't think you deserve to die in a place like this," I turn to face her, unable to say another word. She just says, not even looking directly at me, "There's so much you shouldn't have to place on your own shoulders."

Queen and I and the rest of them watch as Yoshizawa works her magic in utter silence. The words she just said would've broken me, had she said them literally anywhere else other than here. I almost fly up into the sky again, watch us all from some fucking cloud somewhere, but for some reason it takes me all my effort to stay inside my own head and look through my eyes.

Eventually we do go down the fucking elevator at the end of Tier Two.

"Wh-what the...!?" Maruki cries.

And we see, through the glass windows, what awaits us down below.

Layers upon layers of massive vaults, each arranged in a circular, cylindrical pattern. Furthermost layer spreads to the edge of the floor; there's a ten-meter space between it and the next layer of vaults, and another ten meter space 'til the next layer, and the next, until the fifth, which encircles the center of the whole Tier.

Thousands upon thousands of shelves, each likely containing stacks of money or names or blackmail info or worse. There are gaps, but none are consistently laid out to allow for any form of a path whatsoever.

"We're supposed to check all of these for the Treasure...!?" exclaims Lady.

"No," says Queen. "Wait. This distinct shape...could it be...?"

"What's the matter?" asks Yoshizawa.

"If my prediction is correct," Niijima nods, "we won't need to check every single one of these small vaults."

"What makes you say that?" Takamaki asks.

"...that is, I hope. I'll explain once I've confirmed my theory."

I lumber my way over to the window. Take a good look at everything in front of us. Something clicks, right then and there, a shape that lay at the back of my mind now coming together somewhat. But I don't pay attention too much. "You sense the Treasure, cat?"

It purses its lips. "...not quite here."

"Not quite here, this is Tier Three. It should be here. Unless he's moved it."

"Or...eaten it," groans Maruki.

"I mean, it is here. I'm pretty sure But it's nowhere near our general area. Can't get a bead on where exactly it is..."

"Are there any Shadows or Manikins here?" asks Yoshizawa.

"A good amount of Manikins, actually. Pretty strong ones, too. Few Shadows, here and there, but they're strong, too. Certainly stronger than your usual fanfare of mook flies."

Suddenly the elevator stops in its tracks. We make our way right out once the doors shuffle open, and we see just how tall the vaults are, how they tower what must be hundreds of feet over us, and how little sense this would all make in a realm that actually follows spatial reasoning.

"Hope this theory of yours pans out, Queen," says Yoshizawa.

"For all our sakes, I do, too."

"Guys," cat points to a pair of shifty, unstable doors, "Safe Room."

"Good," Maruki sighs. "We'll be able to take a breather-"

"You go on ahead," I tell the rest of them, staring ahead at the wall of vaults.

"Joker?"

"I'll follow after you."

"A-are you sure?"

"I need to think. I don't do so well cooped up in tiny rooms."

"Joker," mutters Takamaki.

"Senpai..."

Niijima looks like she wants to protest, but she chooses otherwise, wisely. "You should all go to the Safe Room, I'll speak with Joker."

"No, no, you two should come with us-" then Takamaki grabs her arm. "Senpai."

"Do you think you'd be able to convince either of them?"

Maruki sighs. "I'll stand guard outside the door, just in case. You three should go in the Room."

Cat purses his lips, "A'ight. Let 'em have their honeymoon. We'll be right out the second we hear explosions of any kind."

They all enter the Safe Room, some obviously more reluctantly than others, but they do so all the same. Maruki, true to his word, remains just outside the door, far enough away such that he won't intrude on our conversation, but not so far that he wouldn't see trouble coming from a mile away.

"What's wrong?" Niijima asks.

"It's a keyhole, isn't it?"

Niijima turns to me. "You think so, too?"

"Shape is distinct. Would fit with the whole bank aesthetic here. It's still conjecture, nothing more. But it's reasonable." I put a hand to my chin. "Likely he intends to pit us against Shadows or Manikins here to figure out our way forward. Maybe a map to help us go where we need to, or some way to open up these blockades..." I turn to her. It's that fucking look in her eyes again. "What now?"

She purses her lips, "It's nothing. Like you said, it's just conjecture. But I think somewhat strongly about this. If his Treasure's here, he would keep it sealed behind layers and layers of shelves filled with money. It's what he does in reality, after all. Hide his agony behind his riches."

"True. Hopefully you're correct on this front." I turn around and march to the Safe Room.

"Joker. Hikawa." I stop in my tracks. Slowly I turn back to face her again. She tempers the pity in her eyes with her trademark student council sternness, but it still sickens me to my guts. "About earlier...I don't believe it was fair of me to-"

"Yes it was."

She furrows her brows, "Sorry?"

"You're correct. Everything you've said about me, you were utterly correct."

"I just-"

"Now you listen to me. After this, we are finished. You will never speak to me again. Not even if somehow someway this fucking bastard comes back even worse than ever. We can go into his asshole subordinates' Palaces, if ever we find out their names. Which we very well might, considering this place would likely be filled with all sorts of blackmail material. But after everything is said and done you stay the hell away from me."

She looks at me, the anger overwhelming her goddamn pity, "Haven't you had enough of this?"

"Enough of fucking what."

"You don't have to push anyone away. You don't have to let yourself drown, alone like this. If you would just let yourself-"

"Then I'd be free, is that what you're gonna fucking say?" I chuckle, moving inso close I can see the lines in her pupils, the shades of red behind the dark auburn. "I will never be free. You can't give me what I want back, Niijima. If you choose to stay with me any longer than you need to, you will die. And no after-school bullshit about justice is gonna change that. Now, let's go get everyone, and see if this place is a fucking keyhole."

I move past her, approaching the Safe Room. I don't turn back once. But the look she'd given me before I turned away told me how tight her chest felt, how overwhelmingly confusing horror and rage and sadness are, and hopefully how she wasn't correct to pity me at all.

.

.

.

Super happy over getting a new job and what do I learn? The author of Berserk is dead and everything is worse now. Everyone who hasn't yet, read Berserk, or at the very least watch the 1997 anime, because even though it'll likely never end now, what is there will stay with you for a lifetime.

Two chapters left before the end of the Kaneshiro Arc, hope y'all enjoy.