.

.

.

And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit. And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit. And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth: and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power.

- Revelation 9:1-3

7 / 17 / 2016

Curled up into a ball, as if she were a fetus. Niijima's sobbing quietly, her face all but drowned by thick tears cast down from her red eyes. Clutching at her ears, covering her eyes, if she twisted further into herself her body would become a spiral.

Her father Abaddon's voice booms, causing our bones to tremble inside our own bodies - "Unbeknownst to myself, Tsukioka had made a few deals with Kaneshiro of his own behind my back. Unbeknownst to the Tsukioka though, Kaneshiro'd already gathered enough information on him and the other crooked cops under his payroll, to blackmail them into submission. Tsukioka had to offer me to Kaneshiro and his cronies as recompense, my love. "

"Stop it. Stop talking," is all she says, through gritted teeth and labored breaths. "I'm begging you."

"He would have shipped you and your sister out to Americans who had a fetish for young, healthy Asians. The things they would have done to you would have been unimaginable. They have a saying, rape them to break them. Your first twenty-four hours, your first seven days. Before anything else they would have made you know how utterly powerless you are."

"No..."

"The only reason Kaneshiro acquiesced is because Tsukioka gave him information surrounding dozens of other valuable cops who would not have been in the game otherwise. He settled for having me die, and let you both live. After I made my final goodbyes I stood in a designated spot... they filed it as a hit and run. You work with monsters, you'd best be prepared to die for them. I've killed men. I've killed women. I've killed up-and-coming officers who would have been better cops than I ever could be. I've torn out teeth. I've shattered kneecaps, broken people's bones. Strangled people to the point of unconsciousness. Attached the jump leads from a car battery to people's testicles. Struck people's bodies with a chain as they lay helpless and hung up. This is what it means, Makoto. Whatever you think you have to do in the name of your justice, this is it."

"No, you're wrong...!" she cries, tearing herself up to face him again. "You didn't have to die! Nobody had to die! You didn't need - you, you hurt so many people I, I...oh, God..."

"There is no God, Makoto. The only God that could ever exist takes the form of coins and paper bills. Underneath every city known to man is a foundation of corpses; there is no stopping the trade, there is no stemming corruption. Either play the game or break the rules...but don't pretend there is no game. Either you win, or you die. Everything that came out of Junya Kaneshiro's mouth was nothing but horseshit, but he was right about one thing: devour, or be devoured. Such is the way of this world."

She growls, filled with an anger so fierce and burning that it boils her insides, "You were everything I wanted to be! You were all I ever looked up to!"

"I wanted you as far away from this as possible, but you've fallen down this hole yourself; there's no one else you can blame. And now you've immersed yourself in this world, you want out, why? Because it's not what you wanted it to be? What you thought it was? Your sister is far more understanding of the truth than you ever could be. Why do you think Sae is so driven to imprison those under her watch?"

Niijima's eyes widen in horror, the wheels turning in her head, "No...no..."

"Why do you think she's developed such a cold, hollow look in her eye, ever since she became a prosecutor?"

"Stop it. Please."

"Why do you think she has a Palace?" he spits out, grabbing her by her hair and looking her right in the eye. "She understands this truth now far better than you ever could. If you are ashamed of this truth then you think even lesser of her than she does of you."

Right then, right there. I don't know if anyone could hate anything more than the way Niijima hates the beast wearing her father's face. Niijima screams, raises a fist back and could very well cave his face inward through sheer force alone, but he catches her hand right before the fist makes contact.

Then we hear the crunch.

"AAAAGH!"

"Niijima!" Takamaki cries out.

Akechi growls, "Oh my God-"

Bent so far her hand's been dislodged from the wrist. Metacarpals bifurcated. If we don't heal her and heal her soon, she'll never use her right hand again. Niijima crumples to her knees, using her free hand to grasp at her father's arm. Red pools out the hand that's crushed hers, spilling and dripping as the pain gets enough to drive her to even more tears.

"The badge justified everything," he tells Makoto. "The drug dens I would get rid of, justified everything. The prostitution rings I'd put an end to, justified everything. So I'd turn a blind eye every now and again. Take a few rolls of cash. Break the rules here and there, sell information to get information on worse pieces of shit. I'd tell myself I'd have lines I would never cross. But look where that got me."

"FUCKING LET GO OF HER!" I roar at him.

He actually turns to me, letting go of his daughter's broken hand, we see her crooked fingers and palm, bent and folded and bleeding and she's left clutching it in agony, screaming on the floor-he marches towards me, pushes the guard off me, grabs me by my neck and slams me against the wall. Raising me a foot off the ground. "My daughter wouldn't be so fucking stupid to have come here on her own. You must've dragged her into this shit, demon-boy."

"Anyone dragged her here, it's you, all you pigfuckers-" back of my head is pushed further, against the fucking bookshelf, "-all you sick crooked cop pricks who make bank off innocent people."

"There's no such thing as an innocent person. All are complacent in this business of madness and murder. There are no exceptions. If you have the time and the privilege to drive a car, hop on a train, study with your friends, you are living off a peace we ensure. You call me the villain. I helped keep order and peace in this city by setting Kaneshiro up, and you all fucked it up by driving him into hiding. Now we have to clean up your fucking mess for you, and that means more drugs, more trade, more selling fucking girls, because it's not fucking cheap to keep an entire goddamn city in line."

"You never gave a fuck about the city!" I can't resist shouting-

CRASH

"Hikawa!"

A bookcase crashes into another, its shelves caving in as my body feels a thousand times worse off than ever before. Surrounding me are books and broken bits of plywood, and my head's even worse than it's ever felt before. "Snivelling boy! You've killed more men and women and children than you could possibly know!" He picks me up by my face, grasping at it, pressing his fingers into my head to the point where I feel my skull bending and creaking- "Did you think by coming here you would do anything of value, make your little fucking stupid song and dance and un-fuck yourselves!? You're a maggot, worse than a fucking maggot, you're afterbirth, your mother should have aborted you and ripped out her fucking ovaries so that she wouldn't even let more filth COME OUT HER FUCKING WOMB!"

He tosses me away, and I land right next to Niijima. Adrenaline keeping me from feeling the bend in my spine, the agony in my neck, and he lets loose one big exhale. "I trust you'll all stand by your word. You will leave this place as soon as you're able."

"We will!" Akechi throats out, facedown. "We will. Let us go."

I take Niijima by her hand, her broken and shattered hand. I see her face, and empty would never even come close to a proper adjective. And clasp her hand close-not tightly, so as not to hurt her any more than she's been already-I impart Victory Cry upon her bent bones, I feel a part of my soul getting drained out through our touch, and to witness her defeated is something I would never want to see again. If there's anything at all I could say to heal everything she's lost, I'd say them. Anything I could do, I'd do it.

But nothing comes.

Only a burning, unholy desire to slaughter every Shadow or Manikin in this fucking room.

"Don't be stupid, Niijima."

Alciel.

He comes in his fucking robes, looking down upon the whole lot of us. Men decked out in military black, at his sides. He sneers, golden eyes burning as they pass over each of us cretinous Thieves, and he turns to Abaddon and I realize what the fuck's about to happen-

WHAM.

So does Abaddon.

By the time I can open my eyes again he's pressing his foot upon my throat, much like how I had to Kamoshida. Head's throbbing, about three-fourths of my skull in pain so intense I can't think much of anything at all. Eye awash with red from my temple, blood in my mouth as three of my hind teeth loosen out their sockets. I hear people, calling out and crying my name, Niijima's first and foremost as she grabs her father and begs him to unhand me but he just pushes her aside.

Tsukioka's voice, despite the ringing noise in my ears and the general haze, rings loud and clear. "These Thieves have to be dealt with at once. Twice now they've invaded this holy place, tainting it with their corruption."

"All of them? I'm afraid I can't abide by such a thing, sir."

"Why not?"

"Have you the heart to kill children?"

"You were about to rip your daughter's arm off!" Takamaki shouts.

"I would have healed her," he shrugs.

"I would prefer it if children did not have to die. But what would you ask of me? If nothing is done they will sow discord. We must maintain order in this city, at any cost."

"Sir. This is my daughter. You know I can't kill her."

"The danger persists. Do you think these children, with the power they possess, will stop at this Palace alone? They removed Kaneshiro from the whole operation. If we have them abscond from here, they'll go off to some other Palace and destabilize everything even more. Would you be so willing to risk your daughter, coming into contact with the Moriyamas or the Munenoris? God forbid, the Triads? They would do things to her that would make Kaneshiro blush."

"Then what do you suggest, sir?"

"A compromise, then. Re-education. The whole lot of them."

"Wh-what!?" cries Akechi.

"They will each, one-by-one, be brought to the center of the Keep. They will be flayed and tortured and healed and tortured again, until they repeat only the truths we tell them. This way your daughter and her friends will be able to leave this place, and never even think of returning to Palaces again."

"No...no...!"

Abaddon thinks for a moment. Then he grins, "Very well. You always know what's best, sir."

"To the Keep with them, then. All of them. We begin re-education with the first of these fools; the rat-haired boy. His son. He, more than anyone else, needs to be thoroughly rewired."

"I understand, sir."

"Let them go," Niijima cries, grabbing her father's arm again, "let them all go, take me, just take me and do whatever you want with me I'll surrender, I brought them here, I brought them here, they wouldn't be here so please, we'll, we'll never-!"

"I can't take that chance, my love. I'm sorry."

"We'll never go to any Palaces ever again! I promise, I swear on my life! Dad I'm begging you please stop this, stop it now!"

"I love you more than you'll ever know. Which is why I must tell you, that you are a failure. Everything you have done up to this point has accomplished worse than nothing. If you want your birth to have been made meaningful, then lie down and stay quiet, and for once shut the fuck up."

"NO-!"

The fight is theirs.

But I knew that thirty seconds ago.

It happens fast, too fast. Brain's a fucking mess and by the time I make out the syllables to my Persona's name, the whole world has collapsed upon itself. I don't see much of Abaddon's true form; I am not able to even feel much of what happens during this fight. I hear Niijima calling out my name. I hear Takamaki screaming, Akechi firing shots from his toy gun. I hear loud, unbearable laughter, taunting me as something gigantic topples bookcases and folder piles. A groaning, horrible, all-consuming noise -

- it sounds like a machine more than a man, expressing a pain so intense it can only bellow out all the air it has for lungs.

.

.

.

7 / 18 / 2016

And then I woke up in chains.

And now I'm here.

"They're in this hall!" Cat cries, ripping off the wings from a Dominion.

"Here!?" Akechi bisects a Power right down the middle, spilling open its insides. "You're sure!? Where!?"

"Far end!" Cat then jumps into an Archangel, and charges right out from its back with its ribcage. "I'm sure! Big one's here too!"

BOOM goes a Virtue, its blue insides shredded upon the wall like sludge, "Manikin or Shadow!?"

"Manikin! Big one! Not as powerful as Abaddon or Alciel but still a piece of shit!"

"Compared to-" Satanael pulls a slash which beheads a few Principalities, "-Kaneshiro?"

"More manageable. Defeatable, even!" Cat licks the blood off its paws. "If we all work together."

"Is her father anywhere near here?" I ask it.

"Don't sense it. That doesn't mean he isn't close, though..."

"Did you sense Abaddon in any way on the way here?"

"No. Just straggler Shadows."

Akechi sighs, "Well, we can assume he'll show up soon enough."

Like a max security prison. Cell blocks to our left and right, rising obscenely high. The women here are not naked, though they still bear no faces. They wear various articles of clothing, but most are in business suits and formal wear. Some even wear dresses you'd see at banquets and shit. But all the cages are filled with dust, filth, and what else have you.

Placard up above says CANDIDATES FOR RE-EDUCATION.

Cat shakes its head. "They're in the same cell, both of them. They're being guarded by this Manikin."

"Then let's find them."

We go up a small flight of stairs leading to a balcony which brings us to the second level; two and fro we have to slaughter guards presiding over their cells, and once we reach halfway through the block we are met with an all-too familiar face, one that I ripped to shreds not that long ago.

"You've got to be fucking kidding me."

A tall, lean man wearing a black suit jacket and pants; purple undershirt. Half his head is bald, shaven completely; the other is long, shaggy, gangly, stretches all the way down to his back. Yakuza puke that Niijima had driven into hiding through sheer force of will. The one who I held at gunpoint and told me about Shijima in the first place. Though his appearance is exactly the same as it had been all those months ago, when I'd first met him in that fucking bar, seeing him now drives me to near madness - for all I can think of now is how I must drive my thumbs into his eyes, reach into his innards, and undo everything that enables him to exist in any world.

In his own Palace he was Baal Zebul, later Beelzebub. Now, now all I hear is Apollyon.

"And who the fuck are you three supposed to be?"

"Junya Kaneshiro...," mutters Akechi.

"Ah, the Thieves who've invaded the Palace. Here to save your little whores."

I snarl, "If you've laid a finger on them-"

"I haven't killed them, if that's what you're thinking. Cold pussy's no use to anyone. And Tsukioka wouldn't have anyone hurt or even touch them anyway; wants them to be completely unharmed come their re-education. Heard he put you through the wringer, though. He either sees great opportunity or thinks you're a huge cunt."

Hand on my mask immediately, "Satanael."

Cat cries, "Joker, wait!"

"Get outta my fucking way."

BOOM

Smoke clears and what emerges is a gigantic steel locust. If the legs weren't folded they'd be thirty feet long. A machine, more or less; one with bat wings sprouting from its back. Rather than any manner of insectoid head, it bears a chrome skull with an iron crown, tusk-like appendages jutting out from opposite ends of its face. Large, glowing red lights emanating from its eyeholes and open maw.

"Big mistake, you stupid shit."

Balcony is not ideal for a fight like this. Wide enough for this massive fucking beast to exist as it is, but not wide enough for us to dodge it in case it tries to charge.

Which it does.

Akechi summons his Persona, as does the cat, and all I can think of is how much easier this would all be if Maruki were here.

"Joker-!"

Satanael rushes forward, impaling Apollyon upon his blade - straight into its fucking mouth and out the back end. Like a barbeque stick, except if it was made of steel and it was still moving. It uses its massive tendrils to stab at Satanael, clawing at him and giving me sensations of thick cuts along my abdomen, and he's cursing me the fuck out despite the fact his throat's been dug in by a fucking blade, "Fucking worthless, fucking abominable shits, you stupid fucking bastard sons of whores, I'LL TEACH YOU TO FUCK WITH ME-"

Satanael allows his massive rifle to disperse in blue flame, freeing up his other hand - keeping Apollyon kebab'd by the blade, he uses his free hand to rip and tear away the steel panels covering its body, then the legs, then all manner of other jutting bits bit by bit by bit - as a child would to a locust he'd find in the garden. The steel panels are attached to nerves and flesh underneath and once they're ripped out so too is muscle and gristle. Blood spewing everywhere as the Kaneshiro Manikin continues its obscenities, and Satanael just rips and tears and strips more flesh, more meat, getting it down to its bizarrely humanoid bone. Pounds upon pounds of sloppy, bloody flesh, splashing into mulch that spreads well over the balcony itself. For me it feels like hours, but in truth it must have taken Satanael no more than a few minutes.

When I can properly see again I see that Satanael's stripped Apollyon off his blade, dropping what's left of its messy corpse down to the lower floors. Guts and all manner of other organs that have no practical form nor function fill the balcony, stretching for about the next three cells in the block.

Robin Hood dissipates as Akechi mutters, "What...in God's name is wrong with you."

I think of all the things they may have done to Niijima while I was unconscious. I think of everything they have done to her, already.

The scream she made, when forced to watch the horrors her father unleashed upon the bodies of criminals. The face she bore, when she witnessed her father being beaten to near-death, when she saw her father's final message to the world - the message Tsukioka tore away from her. The years upon years, wasted completely in following a man who had never truly believed in the cliches he spewed day in and day out.

She was there to pick up the pieces whenever I'd fall apart right before her eyes.

She's been there for me, far more times than I've ever deserved.

Is there not a thing I can do for her now?

We see burns, black ashen burns leading up to the bars of the cage the cat says Niijima & Takamaki are in.

"Hikawa!" They were at the very end of the hall. So far back I doubt they even heard the "fight" at all. Takamaki's holding the bars and she's taken aback to see us all covered in blood and pieces of meat, but she regains herself all the same. "Are you okay?"

She's shackled by her wrists and her ankles, the chains on each of her limbs intersecting to a large black lead ball. "No. But we're alive. And we've got no wounds...so we're better off than we've any right to be."

"...we were worried about you. Tried using my Persona to bust me and Niijima out of here, but..."

"Did they hurt you?"

"N-no, they just threw us in here. We heard that you were being tortured..."

"I got better. Cat. Let's get them out of here."

Cat twirls around a pile of keys he'd found off a Dominion nearby. "On it."

"Akechi, you've your phone, right?"

He nods, maintaining that wary look of me in his eyes, "I do."

"Any Safe Rooms nearby, Cat?"

Sticks out its tongue as it fiddles with the lock, "None that I've felt, in all our time here...sorry to say."

"What?" cries Takamaki. "How should we get out of here, then?"

Akechi muses, "They brought you all down here from a lift. We can try making it back there...but it will take some time. About three hours, considering the Shadows abound..."

She exhales, as the cat leaps up to the lock, "That's all any of us can ask for, I guess. Thank God you're all alive..."

Times like these, I'd like to get my hands on God. "Where's Niijima?"

Takamaki blinks, as the door creaks open. "Well, she's...

"Niijima."

She's lying on the ground, lying on her side. No longer dressed in her leather Thief outfit, she's in her school uniform, which has become covered in dirt, torn at the seams, absolutely filthy.

"She's been taking it...really hard," Takamaki whispers to me. "She hasn't said a word. I've tried to get her to at least sit up, but she won't even do that."

Akechi steps in, approaching her, "Niijima-san, it's me, it's Akechi-"

But I brush myself past him. "Niijima." I kneel down, and place a hand upon her shoulder. Rocking her body lightly back and forth. "Wake up. We've...we've come to get you out of here."

Wake up is a poor choice of words; she is awake. Her eyes are half-lidded, blank and bleak and dull, staring ahead at the wall across from her. Seeing her this way causes my bones to go cold. For just a moment, nothing outside this cage matters whatsoever. Gently, I shift my other hand below her other shoulder, the one planted on the ground, and I pull her up. I have her face me. She's got her eyes groundward - her face void of the vigor, the life, the sheer fucking unrelenting fury that would captivate me time and again.

The cat comes in, unshackling both Takamaki and Niijima's bonds, one by one by one. Before I know it, I'm placing my right hand to Niijima's cheek and grasping at her other hand with my left. She looks at me then, but she doesn't so much look at me as she looks through me - and in so doing she comes to look so much like Kana that it pisses me off and crushes my soul in equal measure.

"We'll...stand guard outside," Takamaki mutters, feeling at her wrists, and pulling Akechi out the cell along with her. "Morgana, come on."

"Sure."

They leave us there, Akechi turning back a little to us before being pulled even further aside.

She was there to pick up the pieces whenever I'd fall apart right before her eyes.

She's been there for me, far more times than I've ever deserved.

For the first time in so long, I want my words to reach someone else.

"Niijima-"

"It was a lie," she says hoarsely, quietly; I've to strain to hear even the clearest syllables she could muster. "All of it, from beginning to end. All the years I knew him, I never really knew him.

"...Niijima."

"I've hated myself for years," she says, chuckling as she slowly shakes her head. "I'd remember my father, telling me to always stay true to my justice. To always do what I knew in my heart was right. But I'd let monsters like Kamoshida and Kobayakawa trample all over me, just so I wouldn't be a burden... and because of my inaction, so many innocent people got hurt or worse. I denied what my father taught me, stewed in self-pity and let myself be used by people I hate... and of all people, you showed me just how hollow my faith in him was in the first place."

I blink at her, as she smiles at me while bearing the eyes of a corpse. "What are you talking about...?"

"My father imparted to me everything he said he believed in. Every single thing he said mattered. Justice. Righteousness. Fighting for the little guy, and standing up to people who'd hurt and exploit others for whatever reason. And I'd throw that away whenever I felt it wasn't tenable. When you pointed out all my mistakes and my ignorance, I felt compelled to be everything that I wasn't, everything I am. I wanted to be the person my father wanted me to be. That's why I wanted to stop Kaneshiro. Why I wanted to help save all his victims. Why I nearly got you and the others killed, more times than I can count. All to live up to the memory of a man who never really meant anything he said at all." She's blushing now, crying terribly as her brows furrow in anguish, and she chuckles and laughs even as the tears rain down from her eyes. "Everything about myself I was proud of, meant absolutely nothing. All I ever did was make things worse."

There is not a thing I can do for her now.

But there is something she can do for herself.

I wipe the tears dropping down her face, the blood on my gloves smearing across her cheeks as she faces me. And I tell her, my hands at her shoulders again, "Niijima. That isn't true."

She just chuckles again. "I'm not even mad that you pity me so strongly."

"I don't."

She grits her teeth, more angry with herself than anything else, "I wanted to believe in him, in some way. I wanted to believe it wasn't as bad as Tsukioka said it was. It was worse than I could have ever imagined."

"So what are you going to do next?"

"I honestly don't know. Part of me doesn't even want to fight anymore. I'll probably just mess everything up again."

Don't you fucking talk to me like that. "So you're gonna give up!? After all you did to get here, dragging me and Akechi and the rest of them, and now you're just gonna give up? What the hell - what did I even come here for?"

"You should just leave me here, then."

"You know I can't do that."

"There's so much you can do. Why aren't you willing to do that?"

"Because you don't deserve it."

"After everything I've done to you, how could you of all people say that?"

"Are your heart and your convictions so hollow that something like this will blind you to the fact people need you? That you're far more than what your father wanted you to be? Thought you would ever be?"

"Hikawa."

"Don't Hikawa me. What are you going to do now, remain stuck here for the rest of your life? You told me, at the beginning of all this, that everything your father taught you still mattered. And now it's different, is that it? Now that you've seen the fucking truth you wanna hold yourself close as you cry yourself to sleep?"

She groans. "Because I've done such a great job thus far."

"Niijima. Your father threw his lot in with the yakuza and the piece of shit he had for a boss, but you took out Kaneshiro. You fought against him, tooth-and-nail, and you did it because you actually wanted to help people instead of trying to line your own pockets. You've made mistakes, you've fucked up bad, but you've done a helluva lot more with the shit your father told you to value than he ever did. And it doesn't matter if you did it for your father, it doesn't even matter if you did it because you believed it was right, it was because you wanted to do it. You chose that for yourself. When at any point you could have just run away and forgot it ever happened."

"And look at what I've done. A gang war is on the horizon. Innocent people will die, because I wanted to be useful. So much has happened, and will happen, because of me."

"But you couldn't just sit there and do nothing. And you sure as hell weren't going to give yourself to them. You did everything you could. And it worked. It's working, now. Kaneshiro's disappearance put a hold on things. You did that, not your father, not your sister, not even me. I nearly got myself killed, and you hauled my dumb ass right out of the fire. None of that would have happened without you."

It's almost enough for me to give her a hug, the way she looks at me now. "I was jealous of you."

"What?" I chuckle, almost thinking she isn't serious. She is. "What?"

"I heard about you. The delinquent transfer student who'd put you in the hospital if you so much as look at him wrong. And the day I met you I realized you were even worse than that. But you did more to help the people in that school than I ever did. You saved my life, far too many times. And you did it because you hated seeing people like them, you hated seeing terrible men hurt innocent people." She chuckles to herself then, "Never once did I think I'd end up holding you in higher regard than my own father. But here we are now."

"Niijima," I take her hands, both of them, holding them tight. "Do you remember what I told you, in that diner?"

"There were a lot of things you told me in the diner."

"You were willing to do things nobody else would ever be able to understand, because you wanted to help people. I only ever do anything when I hate someone enough. And I'm willing to bet...you still want to help people, even now. There's thousands out there getting fucked over by Tsukioka and the yakuza and God knows who else, and I know that you wanna do more for them than just lie down and die."

"Hikawa-san...," her face tightens, "I...I don't know if...if I..."

"But if you still think otherwise, if you still think it's better to just stay here and let the whole world run its course while you curl up into yourself. Then look me in the eyes, and tell me you're willing to go back to being the you that let Suguru Kamoshida violate your fellow students under your watch."

She grips my hands even tighter than ever before, is the first thing I notice. Then, slowly, her eyes open wide. Pupils dilating. Sparks flaring in her head, popping off everywhere. She's breathing heavy, tears storming down her eyes, she's sobbing again but through it all she says, "I never want to be that person again."

And I smile at her a kind I've only shared with one other person, and I tell her, "Good. Now, let's get the hell outta here-"

Suddenly I can't talk.

Suddenly I can't move.

Suddenly, I'm being lifted a foot in the air by a vise grip round my neck so tight that if I remain this way in the next few seconds I'll die of asphyxiation.

"NO...!" Niijima cries out.

Her father just says, "You little fools."

"Hikawa!"

He slams me and most importantly my skull into the wall, once and twice and three times, much like how I did to Shido on the pavement; but perhaps I'm flattering myself. Shido took a dozen hits to the skull to go comatose. Second hit in I feel like I'll die if I so much as keep my eyes shut for a second. When he drops me it takes me all my strength to merely stay awake, and not much more, as the back of my head and both my ears send out blood and grey matter. I hear the others rushing back to the cage as Niijima stands up and backs away, and just in the nick of time Akechi gets himself between Niijima and her fucking father.

"How did you not sense him earlier!?" he cries out to the cat, brandishing a laser sword to the Manikin.

"He wasn't here earlier, he just teleported in!"

"Get away from him or I'm gonna burn you alive!" roars Takamaki.

"Makoto, how long are we going to keep doing this?" Abaddon laughs, approaching them. "It's as if you and your friends are suicidal."

"Back off! Back away!"

"And who's going to make me back away? You, with your glow-stick?"

He clutches the blade of the lightsaber that Akechi had brought to the scene and though it causes his hand to burn it doesn't affect him in the slightest, and Akechi's about to rip off his mask right then -

"Salome!" A plume of flame barrels out the head on a platter and swallows the Manikin whole, but just as quickly a large flaming hand thwacks Takamaki and sends her into the bars.

"Takamaki!" cries Niijima.

Soon enough Akechi's in a chokehold of his own; Abaddon, though covered in smoke and burns and flaky flesh, is none the worse for wear. Even his officer's uniform remains intact. Akechi fires into the man's midsection, sending neon lasers into his lungs and heart and groin but they are worth nothing so he tries grabbing at his mask again yet he too is tossed into the wall like trash. The cat tries dashing in, even doing a bit of a pirouette to spin its blade into him but Abaddon just crushes its head underneath his boot.

And Abaddon hands a firm hand right upon his daughter's shoulder.

"Let her go!" shouts Akechi.

"You've said that so many times already. You move, I'll kill her right here."

"Niijima-san!"

"Dammit!" cries Takamaki, "Dammit...!"

Niijima's trembling, her knees buckling; she's barely got the strength to stand. At this creature she stares, as if he were the Devil incarnate. Abaddon cups her face, and could very well crush it right then, snap her neck right in two, but he speaks to her instead. In a voice so soothing you could hear it as a lullaby, and it would put you right to sleep.

"My love, you've made terrible decisions, and if you continue down this path you'll continue to make terrible decisions. Justice is crime; the two are interwoven and interconnected. One and the same. We all have to make sacrifices for the greater good."

"Sacrifice...?" At once, she stops shaking. She balls her hands up into fists, and in a move of sheer courage she brings up her arms and pushes his hands away from her. "No sacrifice is worth what you or Tsukioka have done to this city!"

"Everything we have done has been to ensure everything stays exactly as it is. Topple it one way or topple it another, you'll send it crashing down. Your sister understands completely. That is why she will even bend over in order for better pay, for a promotion."

"What?"

"Tsukioka hasn't done it yet, but he will. He's seen the hunger in her eyes, the hunger for prestige and a higher salary. He's noticed how she's filled out the curves in her clothes, how hard she pushes herself to ensure all accused head right where they deserve. She does not know of what I've done, she does not know of what Tsukioka's done, but she will. And when she does, she will carry out our will and lead us to even greater heights than where we are now."

Niijima's jaw hangs agape, as the worst realization she could possibly have crashes right into her and all but shatters everything keeping her afraid. "What will you do to my sister?"

"I will do nothing. Tsukioka will make a proposition. She will accept. What is one night, for the protection of this city and its people? One night of liberation? And besides...it's about time she finds herself a husband. Tsukioka's getting on in years, but he will treat her-"

WHAM

It happens, far too quickly for me to savor it. All I see is a streak of blue flame.

I don't even realize what she did, until I see her father writhing on the floor, clutching at his throat. His Adam's apple has been pushed so far into his neck that it's caused his windpipe to completely cave into itself, and were he human he would have died within seconds. I see him limp away from the cell, still clutching at his throat and making horrible gasping, gulping noises - he pulls himself up on the railing of the balcony and coughs out blood as he hangs over.

And I see Makoto Niijima.

Standing tall, and proud, and with a righteous rage. Her whole body covered in leather; over her eyes an iron mask. But something profound has happened to her, something even I'm scared of.

Her eyes blare wide with a neon, nuclear ferocity. Her fists, once pale and lifeless in my hands, blaze with a fire that shall disintegrate all it touches. Sparks dash down from her hands and I'm sure I'll be poisoned if even the smallest sputter so much as burns my robes. The flames, first engulfing her hands, soon coat her body completely in a blinding atomic storm.

Takamaki sees this and backs away, backs closer to me; as Niijima walks craters form in the ground, she does not even need to open the bars, they part for her while liquefying utterly. If any of us were to even reach out to her now, we'd all of us be vaporized. I'm nearly blinded by the sight, the fires stretching so far back they give off the effect of wings, and for once in all this Palace bullshit I see it right in her eyes, I hear it in the little spiteful laugh she gives -

- and I realize I could hear her laugh forever.

"What...what the hell is wrong with you!?" her father seethes, turning back to his daughter, "I am your father!"

"And I don't need you anymore. Come, JOHANNA!"

I hold Takamaki close to me as Niijima and her Persona barrel out the cell in a light so bright and all-consuming that I fear I'll lose my sense of vision even though I close my eyes; everything on me burns and the heat's seared to my bones and even when it fades it takes me minutes to even see again but when I do I rush over and I see that the entire section of the railing facing our cage has melted away entirely.

The storm rages down below, to the bottom of this hall, kicking up bright blooming mushroom clouds; lightning spearing into the flourescents overhead, many of them outright frying the Manikins stuck in cages, crackling and popping and causing the whole of this place to shudder uncontrollably. The sound so loud I almost lose the ability to hear altogether after the third BOOM, yet even as we all cover our ears we hear her scream. And in the blinding burning lights I can see her-

-there isn't a distinct figure to Makoto Niijima, not anymore. Just shades of it, outlines I can barely make out, shadows cast. But I cannot see her father. I do not even see a shred of him; the whole bottom level of this hall of prisoners is a white mass of light that glows shades of color I didn't even know existed. Every now and again I hear her scream, hear her laugh, hear the VROOM of her Persona; one minute I can see her and in the next she's somewhere else entirely, and sometimes she's in multiple places at once.

And now, only now, I realize what the cat meant, earlier.

"He's weak to Nuke... but Niijima's Persona doesn't hold a candle to him, as she is now. Anything she does'll tickle him."

As she is now was the key phrase.

At the time, she was terrified. She was steeled, but terrified. Unsure of herself, depressed and anxious because of the knowledge that her father was a monster.

But now?

Now... she is free.

.

.

.

WOOOT BEST GIRL HAS BECOME ALPHA BEST GIRLLLLL

TUNE IN NEXT TIME FOR THE END OF THE ARC