.
.
.
But does anyone notice? But does anyone care?
And if I had the guts to put this to your head
But does anything matter if you're already dead?
And should I be shocked now, by the last thing you said?
Before I pull this trigger, your eyes vacant and stained
And in saying you loved me made things harder, at best
And these words changing nothing as your body remains
And there's no room in this Hell, there's no room in the next
But does anyone notice...
There's a corpse in this bed?
- My Chemical Romance, Early Sunsets Over Monroeville
7 / 26 / 2016
Of course Niijima's suggestion causes me no end of horror. It's something that I would have considered, had I been actively seeking to end this person's life from the beginning. Worse yet, Niijima's sincere about it. She knows the risks, but she's serious about this proposition. And I might be able to see where she's coming from. If the chances of things being fucked weren't so unbearably high.
There is a chance that bringing Futaba Sakura into her own Palace might just stir her towards a rehabilitation she so desperately needs. Coming to terms with all the horror she's locked up inside herself. Niijima suggested convincing Sakura of her own free will to follow them into the Palace, and honestly? That might just do the trick.
But how would we convince her to come with us? By bringing up memories she'd much rather avoid? How would this girl, who wants nothing but to torture me for the rest of my life, even consider accepting such a proposal from people she doesn't know and doesn't give a shit about?
But Sakura doesn't even really want to torture me, does she? She wants to be free. Of this depression that's swept her up and consumed her, forcing her to sink into blind anger to cope.
Of the corpse in her bed.
We came through the doorway of the pyramid to the right of the Sphinx, killed a few dozen on the way in, which alerted a few dozen more. Now these walls are lined with otherworldly guts, hearts, lungs, and livers. We're lucky it's better lit than the inner halls of either the Sphinx or the previous pyramid.
Perhaps it'll lead us somewhere else, to someone worse.
"Are you alright?"
Didn't expect Yoshizawa of all people to ask me that. "Your knees." She blinks at me, faces groundward, sees how they tremble inward in not-so-subtle jerking motions. She grips them, and I move to put my hands on her shoulders, and in seconds the motions cease. She looks up at me, and she appears so small. Can't help but ask, "Do you...want to-?"
"I-I'm fine," she tells me. "I can keep moving."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes. I want to see this through to the end."
I unhand her. "Okay."
"You didn't answer my question..."
"So I didn't."
Before she can respond I kick away from us a large purple sack of meat that belonged to one of the creatures whose corpses we now walk over. The pathway ahead is a little difficult to navigate through, as the bodies pile so high. It's like walking over a swamp so polluted the waters themselves have become solid matter. But we walk onward, all the same. Sakamoto doesn't wince as he does so, but he doesn't look at the gore he has to walk over, either. Takamaki and Yoshizawa cover their noses as blood paints their boots and leggings. Maruki sways a little, like he's nauseous, but follows me.
Niijima and the cat don't pay any heed whatsoever to the smell or the grime, and we push past this hall to discover -
"A Will Seed..." Cat mutters.
It's another severed head, attached to thick red roots that run all the way to the ground. Unlike Kana's, this one is skinless and hairless. But we aren't looking at a skull. We are looking at a face with exposed muscle - its eyes and mouth open as if screaming.
The room itself is spacious, cuboid in its structure. Across from us, in place of an actual wall, is a fifty-by-forty grid. A fresco sectioned off into pieces, its tiles fit around and assembled in ways that make no sense to the uninitiated - each tile as large as your torso. Disembodied things. Fingers pointing at nothing. Open, upside down upper jaws. Wide eyes that are cut off halfway through. Wild strands of hair that are orange in one panel but black in another. Hints of colorful wings, at the edges and in the middle. Given time I could solve whatever this image is supposed to look like, but we don't have the luxury of time.
"A puzzle...?" asks Niijima. "Here?"
"Above a Will Seed. A pocket of her memories," Maruki mutters. "Okay."
"You're sure it's a puzzle and not some bizarro picture conjured up by her distortion?" Takamaki asks.
"I'm assuming it's a puzzle. We shouldn't put it past us that there're other ways we can open paths in this Palace. But I haven't a clue on how to solve it."
"I agree with Queen," I say. "It's possible that this picture's just a puzzle blocking our actual path forward. Then again, it's possible we're both wrong."
"I concur with the both of you," Maruki nods, turning to me. "Joker. Check the Will Seed. See what you can glean from within."
"Wait," the cat holds out a paw. "It's weird. This Will Seed. It's... incomplete is the best word I can use to describe it. Can't read through its memories."
"You can't?"
"You might be able to. Can't see shit."
Maruki nods. "Okay. So my theory is correct."
Niijima asks, "Which is?"
"This is definitely keeping us from our path forward. But her memories are...so distorted, that even in her Palace things make no sense."
"Is that... normal?" asks Yoshizawa.
"No," says the cat. "Will Seeds, being memory-based manifestations of distortion, have to contain a clear account of the Ruler's experiences. Or at least a clear account of their interpretation of events. This kind of thing, you only find in a person whose heart is so distorted their memories go haywire. Sometimes they remember things one way, other times they remember things another way. Sometimes, in especially terrible cases, they'll just straight up forget things."
Slowly I approach the Will Seed, and once I grab this severed head, an invisible stake is driven into my skull. Several dozen things that should make sense individually make none when all taken into account, and I forget most of them the second I'm taken out of the haze. When I'm fully awake I find I'm in Maruki's arms, everyone looking over me as I struggle to get to my feet.
Maruki interrogates me immediately. "What happened? What did you see?"
"I don't know."
"You don't know?"
"It's all... foggy. I couldn't make much of anything out. I saw...people. Looking down. I saw a car, rushing ahead. I saw someone crying, people shouting at each other. No specific forms other than that. Nobody's faces, nobody's names. Their voices just melted into each other."
Niijima narrows her eyes, hand to chin as she examines the skull. Grabs it herself, doesn't have nearly as violent a reaction as I did. Though she winces and looks a little nauseous, her reaction seems to be more from the sensation of holding onto a severed head than anything else.
"You able to see anything?" Takamaki asks.
"No," Niijima places the head back atop its pedestal of veins, wiping the blood on her gloves off her leather thighs. "Morgana. Are you sure you and Joker are the only ones out of all of us who can peer into Will Seeds for their memories?"
"I mean, so far that's been the case."
Niijima faces Maruki. "Bishop. See if you can comb through this Will Seed for memories"
"Me? You think I'd be able to?"
"Your Persona's different from all of ours - it can't fight, but it can strengthen us, or weaken our enemies. Maybe it might help you see things we can't, either? It's a bit of a stretch. But it can't hurt to give it a shot?"
Cat blinks. "Everyone else should try, after you. Maybe you've all developed that ability with use of your Personas, I dunno. It's been months since you've first awakened."
"Do we have to?" Sakamoto groans.
"Don't be squeamish now. We've come this far. You in, Bishop?"
Maruki stares warily at the head, sucking in a deep breath. He implants his large staff in a crevice in the ground next to him, cracks and bends his fingers back in anticipation. Takes a few breaths, then grabs the Will Seed with both hands-
And his eyes go wide. They roll up into his head and for a few seconds he stays, just like that. I'm concerned enough to try and step in, but the cat stops me. "This is how you look whenever you touch a Will Seed, in case you didn't notice."
His eyelids flutter as his hands tremble, and in a matter of seconds he's falling backward. Lands ass-first, and nobody's there to catch him. We all rush over, though. "You alright?"
"I...saw something..."
"So you can see a Will Seed's memories!" Niijima smiles.
Cat grins, "Everyone else, give it a go."
"What did you see?" I ask Maruki.
"Gimme a minute...," he pushes his hands over his face. "Head feels like it wants to burst..."
"Okay."
Sakamoto, Yoshizawa, and Takamaki try their hand at grasping the Will Seed. Sakamoto faces away from it, holds it for ten seconds. Yoshizawa just keeps her eyes closed, holds it for five. Takamaki holds it for three. All of them are left with the same result as Niijima. "Guess some Personas are better suited to it than others," nods the Cat.
Niijima just looks at me oddly. From the way her eyes furrow I don't know if she feels scared of me or sorry for me. Maybe both, but not neither. Unable to maintain eye contact with her any longer, I study the fresco scattered about haphazardly upon the wall. Both she and Takamaki approach me then, as Yoshizawa gets to Maruki.
"You got any idea what this might look like?" Takamaki nudges my arm.
"Barely. Fragments of fragments," I say without looking directly at either of them. "I heard... voices. They sounded like they were arguing. I think there was a man there. A girl, too. They sound familiar but different."
"You said something about a car?" Niijima asks.
"More of tires, screeching. A large black shape on wheels. Nothing clearer than that."
Takamaki scratches her head, "Think that might've had something to do with her mother?"
"Certain pretty much everything here has something to do with her mother. But as to what, I can't be sure yet."
"Doctor Maruki, wait!"
"It's Bishop, remember, codenames-"
We turn to Yoshizawa and the cat - before we can see what they're all so concerned about, Maruki pushes past the three of us. Approaching the wall, past the Will Seed itself.
I follow him, tap him on his shoulder, "You were able to see something. What was it?"
He doesn't look at me. Keeps focus on the wall. Or rather, the seams of the grid. "I think I know what this is supposed to look like."
"Then tell us," Sakamoto says loudly.
"I can't."
"You can't?" Niijima asks him.
"It doesn't come through in words. Just...," his jaw trembles. "Just images. Things you see and imprint in your mind and heart. Give me some time."
"To do what?" I prod.
His eyes are closed. He raises his hands up, index and middle fingers of both running along the left and right crevices of the panel right in front of him. Gaps between the tiles are large enough to fit his hands through, and he slips both in right up until the base of his thumbs. Gently he pries the tile right off the wall, as if removing a large picture frame. He lays it on the floor, and with eyes still closed, he immediately moves to a completely different panel on the left.
Then his mouth moves.
I recognize what he's mouthing- Adam.
His Persona erupts suddenly from his head, surprising us all for the worse. But there are no enemies here for Adam to buff us up against - instead Adam uses his golden arms to lift Maruki by the waist, enabling him to rise to the upper levels of the fresco and pry off a separate panel from the top left.
"Wh-what's going on? What's he doing?" Sakamoto grunts.
The cat shushes him. "He needs full concentration. This is... wow."
"Is his Persona making him do this?" whispers Yoshizawa.
"Yeah. Interesting. Very interesting... I'll let you know why, once he's done."
Hearing this, I back off from Maruki, Niijima and Takamaki following suit. It's almost as if he's asleep. For his eyes are closed and his breathing is slow. Yet he moves from one tile to another without so much as a hitch in his step. Adam HaRishon carries him whenever the wall's too high for him to physically reach, and he's able to swap each tile out easily. It is as if he has solved this puzzle a thousand times, which is all but impossible considering this is the first he's ever seen of it.
In less than five minutes the fresco is completely and correctly arranged. And we see two people, across from each other.
A girl with black hair that turns flaming orange at the edges. A man across from her, with slicked black hair and glasses. Their mouths are wide open, rays of light blaring out from each other. Disembodied wings take shop at the edges, borders to the fresco. Once Maruki is finished, he opens his eyes and Adam disappears. He sees the fresco along with us and looks at his hands like he's gone mad.
"I...I did this..."
"How did you even...?" Niijima's plainly in awe. We all are, really. Even Sakamoto can't help but be amazed.
"My Persona can detect a Shadow's skills and abilities," Cat suddenly says. "Joker's a dark empath. He can determine a Will Seed's memories, but it can only go so far. It won't work for an incomplete memory, suppressed too far by distortion. But Bishop's Persona has pure empathy. Even when given only fragments of fragments, he can connect the dots perfectly."
What would I ever do without this man by my side.
Maruki looks weathered. As if he's just sat through a three-hour movie solely comprised of puppies getting crushed under car wheels. "Her mother died in a car accident. She was then adopted by a family friend, and in recent years, she... she had begun arguing with him more and more frequently. Shouting violently, throwing things at him, demanding things like he ought to leave her alone. She'd always, always end up in tears."
After her mother had died.
Tires screeching.
A big black box on wheels.
I turn back to the Will Seed, and something's changed-
It is the severed head of Sojiro Sakura. Eyes closed. Replete with flesh and hair, now.
"When the hell did you change?" I rush over to it and grab it with both hands-
And an ocean of shattered memories bursts through my eyeholes.
A big black box on wheels shimmers in the noonday sun, screeching mad.
It is years after this when Futaba Sakura actually adopts Sakura as her surname. Under a man with black hair and a thick goatee - he'd speak directly, sometimes even harshly, but there's not a small kindness in his eyes which always conveys the sincerity of his love. And Futaba Sakura loves this man, she loves this man as her father, and often wishes he could have been her real one. But though he loves her and she loves him, he could never understand her, and she wouldn't dare let him.
A big black box on wheels shimmers in the noonday sun, screeching mad. A tall woman with a bowl cut and glasses, I see her plain as day.
Futaba Sakura does not go to school for months and Sojiro Sakura does not approve of this. It makes him feel awful, like a failure of a father, something Futaba Sakura knows when she sees his mouth smile in such a way that does not reach his eyes. She loves Sojiro because even though she knows he knows she's a burden on him he still treats her like she's actually his daughter, and she doesn't deserve any of it at all. She is strangling him. She and her mother are strangling him. He deserves none of it yet he endures all of it. This is not how it's supposed to be at all.
A big black box on wheels shimmers in the noonday sun, screeching mad. A tall woman with a bowl cut and glasses, I see her plain as day. Her hands are bleeding, vermillion pouring from her bare knuckles and destroyed fingers.
They end up arguing, they argue over the course of many days, stretching to many months, blooming to years. Sometimes they'd argue day after day, once one ends another begins. About how she doesn't even clean her room. About how she ignores his calls. About how she's bought beer using his bank account. It gets to a boiling point one searing autumn day, when Sojiro Sakura finds out that his daughter has purchased drugs off the internet and has been abusing them behind his back. Futaba Sakura and he argue, they argue viciously and violently. She calls him an assortment of names that would sound absolutely vile to anyone with ears to hear, throws objects in her room at him and shouts so loudly you'd think she'd lose the use of her vocal cords in seconds. But Sojiro Sakura does not budge, he does not budge until she says he isn't her father, never has been, never will be.
Futaba Sakura realizes what she's said far too late. Sojiro Sakura leaves her room then, without a word. He looks as though he won't be able to speak to her again for the rest of his life. Futaba Sakura thinks to call back for him, to apologize, to say she didn't mean it at all - but she does not, for this is the freedom he deserves. The freedom to be free from the burden that is her existence - she knows he now sleeps up in the attic of the coffee shop, for she had her people bug the place in her absence. She knows he spends a good number of nights searching up articles on how to help people with depression, how to support drug abusers who don't wish to support themselves, how to be there for someone who doesn't want to be anywhere at all. And though it kills her inside she knows it's for the best. It has to be.
A big black box on wheels shimmers in the noonday sun, screeching mad. A tall woman with a bowl cut and glasses, I see her plain as day. Vermillion pours from her exposed knuckles and destroyed fingers. She is mangled under the car, her limbs and spine folding underneath the wheels.
This happens right in front of Futaba Sakura. But I see something, something strange in the tall woman's eyes. I see the barest hint of it, it comes so quickly I nearly miss it, for her face is obscured by her hair.
But I've seen this sight before, I've seen it worn on the face of a person who had once stabbed me multiple times in multiple places.
Futaba Sakura's mother has her eyes rolled up into her own head, bloody tears pouring down her cheeks.
And Futaba Sakura weeps, she weeps horribly and brutally, as her future goes as dark as night - for she now has neither a mother nor a father.
A hand on my shoulder. I turn almost violently, and Niijima backs off. I'm breathing heavily, sweat running down my neck.
She's concerned, why is she always so concerned for me? "Are you alright? Did you see...?" She notices now, they all do, that the skinned head has become complete. "Oh my God."
"Her mother..." I don't know how I must look, but they stare back at me like it's unimaginable that I could have the expression I have on now. "She was victim to a-"
Then the fresco groans and rumbles, the sound as it rises into the ceiling like the scream of the damned. Slowly it's brought upwards, vanishing overhead in a matter of seconds and there is a path forward now. Another long hallway, a shaft of light peering through at the very end. Left hand trembles. Without another word I march onward, everyone following behind me. Of course Niijima wants to ask me more questions, I can feel her gaze stabbing the back of my head - but I haven't the heart to answer her right away, and she doesn't have the heart to prod me.
We get to where the light is and the only thing standing in our way is a familiar red door with an OPEN sign hanging behind glass panes. I ought to go in, guns blazing, killing everything in sight. But for some reason seeing this specific door in this specific place fills me with the desire to just sit down and have a small cup of coffee.
I push open the door in slight movements, and we all find ourselves in the very coffee shop I'd signed on to work at. Such a time feels like months ago, now. The counter and booths are uncharacteristically spotless, as if the leather and wood have been replaced or renovated. There're far more coffee bean canisters in the shelves, less mess in the kitchen.
No Egyptian beasts or gods here to greet us, save one.
It does not smell of a Shadow at all, and it does not even seem to recognize us as an enemy - he does not react violently to our appearance, or at least he hasn't decided to yet anyway. He is washing the plates with gloved hands and he turns to us. A brief moment of surprise seems to hit him, then the stink-eye, and he sets his plates as well as his dishwashing gloves aside.
My mind tells me its name is Anubis, but looking at him now all I see is the Manikin of Sojiro Sakura. He looks exactly as he does in reality, down to the creases in his forehead, his swept-back hair, his long goatee - his general attire of a pink shirt, khaki pants, and a dark apron above both.
"So you've come," he says, almost resigned if nothing else.
"You...know of us?" Maruki asks.
"I know of him," he points to me. "In the Leblanc out there, I know nothing of any of you. But you've come with him here. Futaba's got you all in her sights. If anything I should unveil my true form and burn you all alive. It's what she'd want."
Maruki dares to question, "But you...don't want to fight us, do you?" The Manikin looks tired. Like he knows he should counter that statement, but doesn't have the energy to. Maruki presses the matter. "You want this to end just as much as she does."
And for a minute the Manikin's eye furrows like he does, like he absolutely will shed his body and let it burst into whatever abomination it truly is, deep down. He longs for it, so much so I can see flickers of its true form - it is a floating man with black flesh and a jackal's head, wearing the lapels and robes of an Egyptian pharaoh. The jackal's head bears glasses and a thin scruff of a goatee down its lower jaw. In its right hand it carries a silver set of scales. The sight appears for just a second yet sets me on edge all the same.
Yet the man exhales. Fiddles around in the front pocket of his apron, and throws Maruki a single golden key. "For the set of doors guarding the Treasure. You'll need a few more before you'll be able to make your way through."
Maruki stuffs it in a pocket at his waist, "Thank you."
"You should know the pyramid behind the sphinx is where one of the worst of them hides away."
"Pyramid behind the sphinx," Maruki repeats.
"Big. Speaks in grunts. Hides in a coffin. Huge prick. You'll know when you'll see him. He'll do anything to prevent you from getting the key. He wants Futaba emotionally devastated. So she'll come to her senses, and learn to, depend on him. Or some fucking nonsense."
"I'm grateful you'd do this."
"Don't make anything out of this," Anubis snarls. "I don't trust any of you fuckers in my daughter's Palace, least of all the prick with the rat-hair and white mask. If it were up to me I'd tear you all apart before you could ever even reach the Treasure. But Futaba will die if she remains like this. She's going to kill herself, and it'll happen while I'm stuck in the real world cleaning dishes and mopping up floors - and she knows I'll find her first, because I'm the only one who ever comes to see her. And she doesn't want me to find her. I don't want to find her." He approaches me, grabs me by my leather shirt, "If you fuck up I will survive the destruction of this Palace and hunt you down wherever else you may be. If I can't kill you I will at least drive you mad. You and everyone you love."
He speaks so fiercely I'm certain he means it, even though he won't possibly survive the collapse of the Palace.
It's Niijima's turn to ask questions, "Is there anything at all you can tell us about Futaba herself? Anything that could help us save her?"
And Sojiro Sakura unhands me, breathes a little heavy, then turns to the coffee brewer atop the counter and fixes himself something black. "She hates you. Well, not really you. More what you represent, I guess. He doesn't deserve friends, doesn't deserve happiness after he was unable to save Futaba's old friend. After he was unable to save Kana. She wants to hurt you, because that would mean giving him what he deserves. Giving him what she feels she deserves. Because she should've been there for Kana, too. After her mother died, she was too depressed to do much of anything or even try talking to anybody she knew. She thinks if she had spoken to Kana sooner, she might have been able to do something."
He takes a long sip right out his mug. "She bugged this place years ago. Learned about you all once the kid signed up to work with me. Tracked him and his records, hit his phone and skimmed through the people he'd spoken to last."
"She put in all that work just to get to 'im, huh?" Sakamoto smirks dourly. "Can't say I don't see where she's comin' from."
"You must have tried so hard to help her," Yoshizawa approaches him. "And she knows you did."
"Really, she hates being stuck where she is. Feeling what she does. I know she doesn't come across that way, especially considering what she's done to you so far. She seems more angry than she ever could be sad, but anger is what people feel when they can't bear to be sad. Would any of you ever want to feel so angry you'd hurt people over it? Ruin their lives brick by brick, kill everyone they know for the crime of knowing them?" He faces us, all of us. But then he faces me, "I've a feeling you know what that's like, more than anyone else here."
I turn around, heading back out the door. "We have what we came here for."
"So you do," he finishes his coffee, lays his mug down on the counter. "Get out. You show your face around here and you don't have the Treasure on you, I'll kill at least one of you."
Pyramid behind the sphinx. The torches that line the walls gleam brightly, though the brick is still black as sin. But there is a forward path, it seems. One that does not lead into a maze hiding a demon slayer with a sword.
"Queen, left!"
Niijima curves, crushing a white baboon with stone tablets - Thoth - underneath Johanna's wheel. Sakamoto and Takamaki boil a gigantic bird alive with lighting and fire - Garuda's wings catch flame as its insides are fried by bolts of electricity that could power up a couple dozen houses. Isis is shredded by Satanael's bullets, her feathers bursting in crimson flurries. In minutes the three are dead and we allow ourselves a very brief moment of respite.
"You know, I think I get it...," Takamaki says suddenly, wiping gore off her knee. "To feel that kind of extreme anger, because you've lost someone."
"Because you've lost people, too," Niijima completes the thought.
"After Shiho jumped, I felt like I could have killed a thousand people and it still wouldn't have been enough. Part of me felt like I'd gone insane."
"It'd have been insane if you hadn't felt that way," I tell her.
"This girl lost her mother and her best friend, it's no wonder she feels like she wants to drive everyone away from her. It's no wonder she feels desperate to take that anger out on you. On us. I'd want to take it out on someone I felt deserved it, too."
"And you did," grunts Yoshizawa.
"I did... and I didn't feel any different afterwards. I can't imagine how this person must feel, knowing everything she's done, and everyone she's lost..."
"I nearly lost my sister to a freak car accident," exhales Yoshizawa. "I'm so grateful that she's just in hospital. It tells me there's at least still a chance..."
"It wasn't an accident. Not this, not what happened to Sakura's mother," I tell them all suddenly. "It was murder."
"You think the car that swerved into her mother did so intentionally?" asks Maruki.
"No. Marukii, when you saw the visions, didn't you notice her eyes?"
"It's a...bit of a blur," he says, closing his eyes and thinking hard.
"Her eyes were bleeding. Rolled back into themselves."
Then Maruki's own eyes widen. "She made this... horrible noise..."
"That, is a mental shutdown."
"You mean...?"
"The same kind that Kana's mother had, when she attacked her family and killed her granddaughter." Everyone faces me then. Niijima and Yoshizawa in particular, looking devastated for me. Satanael looses a single shot which caves open a path from the various gods and goddesses we've ground into paste, and I continue positing things. "Whoever Futaba Sakura's mother was, she had been important enough to have attracted the attention of Shijima. Sent her out into traffic right in front of her daughter. Bishop, when you saw the Will Seed's memories, did you manage to determine the mother's name? I haven't been able to track that detail yet."
"No. But I will say...," he puts a hand to his chin. "I think I've seen her before. Her face is familiar, but I can't recall exactly why. Maybe once we find other Will Seeds, we'll be able to determine her identity."
Takamaki approaches me, "So you think the exact same people responsible for the death of Futaba-san's mother, are responsible for what happened to you and your...?"
"Positive."
"Wait, who's Shijima?" asks Sakamoto. "First I'm hearin' o' this."
Right. We haven't yet told either him or Yoshizawa the details surrounding that group as of yet. "When Queen, Bishop, and I took down Kaneshiro...he mentioned that there was a group of Persona-users out there who were using the Vortex World for their own gain. They had connections as high up as the director of the SIU. Called Shijima. Apparently there're three of them."
"Another group of Persona-users...?" Yoshizawa mulls. "They're able to do something like that, to innocent people?"
"I don't know about innocent. For all we know they might have fucked around with the Palace of Sakura's mother. Drove her mad that way. Or maybe they're so good at what they do, that they don't even need Palaces at all to get the job done. But Kaneshiro described to me how they shut people down. Comb through these cases online and you'll find they're all exactly the same. People suddenly going fucking crazy, and then beheading loved ones, or stabbing friends - blood running down their eyes, them not remembering shit once it's all over. Sometimes it ends in a suicide. Other times it doesn't."
"Then that means...," Niijima suddenly turns anxious - well, more anxious than she typically is. "That means..."
"You alright?" I ask.
"I-I," she stammers, then her face turns stone-cold. "I'm fine. We should keep moving. This is our top priority, above all else."
I think to press her on this further, but she's right. First things first. Finish this so we can settle other fucked up things later on. Like before there's a single long hallway and at the end of it another massive, spacious room. Tiles of a fresco arranged in a way that makes virtually no sense - this time there are more blacks, more objects that look like shrivelled papers. There's pale ivory and black curves, but again it's nothing we can really piece together without time.
There's another severed and skinless head held up by thick red roots.
Sakamoto asks for clarification, "So if Bishop's able to fix up the fresco, then the head should be able to reform itself, correct?"
"Yes," says the cat. "But I have a theory..."
"What?"
"She pushed all these memories to the very back of her mind... rearranging them must have affected her in some fashion."
"The Futaba in the real world, or her Shadow?" asks Takamaki.
"Both. The Futaba in the reality is likely remembering things she's forced all the way back down. And what effect that might have on her... I can't imagine."
"So," Niijima shakes her head, "we might just be making her more depressed?"
"Which means we can't waste time," Maruki mutters. "I figured something like this might happen. I hoped it wouldn't... but this is our only way forward. We've already come this far."
Cat exclaims, "Hostile Manikin on the other side! All of you, get ready!"
Maruki hands me his scepter and I take it willingly, as he approaches the head, and grips it tight. Another few seconds of him seeing through another's life, and he takes it much better this time around. Though he still crumples to his knees, he raises a hand up at us to assure us he's fine. Then, he gets to work the instant he closes his eyes.
He and Adam take five minutes to rearrange tiles, one after another. Adam has begun prying panels off with him, helping him up to the higher spaces, and by the time it's all over we see just what the fresco tries to convey.
Futaba Sakura, naked and curled up. So skinny that you'd think she hasn't eaten in perhaps years. Skin so pale I did not think it was her skin at all. Room is so dark that her white and shrivelled self stands out all the more. Every corner, a pile of garbage and waste.
Niijima and Takamaki look like if they could reach through the image and rescue this girl here and now, they would. Sakamoto turns away, unable to stomach the sight. Yoshizawa looks like she could cry for days. And I approach Maruki, but realize there's nothing I could say to him at all.
I see how his hands tremble. I see his eyes flare wide, I hear how cuttingly thick his breaths run through his gritted teeth. I see his face, how it all but glares into the image he's completed right here and now...
And I think, for the first time since I've ever met him, I'm seeing what Takuto Maruki looks like when he wants to kill someone, in the most painful methods he could ever conceive of.
The face attached to the roots is that of a fat old man. Saggy jaws with creases and craggles upon craggles - a dumb expression in his half-lidded eyes, mouth lolling open and drool spilling out. I grab the severed head and see what horrible memories Maruki must have seen -
- and I learn immediately why he feels so strongly about it.
A big black box on wheels shimmers in the noonday sun, screeching mad...
Immediately after this Futaba Sakura is taken by her uncle, a brother of her mother. An obese man, perhaps not as slovenly as Kobayakawa, but few people ever could be. The man smiles when he proclaims he'll take Futaba Sakura in but his smile makes her skin crawl just as much as it does mine. The man's name is Youji Isshiki.
He does not abuse Futaba Sakura sexually, for he has no need to - he hires prostitutes every night, and the walls are so thin that Futaba can hear them scream obscenities well into the morning. But he is never there to cook her dinner, is never there to tend to her when she has a fever, and is more keen on telling her to clean the fucking apartment only and only when CPS comes to check conditions. He punishes her whenever she speaks badly of his cooking, because in speaking bad of anything related to him she's really speaking badly of him, for he is an oversensitive fat prick who only wanted her with him to receive fucking welfare checks. Welfare checks he only needs, because the nights he doesn't spend sleeping in booze cans, are nights he spends losing everything in casinos.
Her punishment is always the same when she calls him out on this, for he is as unoriginal as he is stupid, and he is as stupid as he is desperate, and he is desperate as he is deserving of a fucking sledgehammer to the balls. The punishment involves her being cooped up in the room, a dank and decrepit little cube of a place that he hoards wastrel and old shitty things he's forgotten about in. She has a futon eaten at the edges by rats, windows blocked by piles of papers and boxes of failed inventions. Not even a fan to cool her off in the warmest summer nights.
One day she nearly dies of heatstroke and it just happens to be the day Sojiro Sakura comes in for a surprise visit. He sees the state of the house and threatens Youji Isshiki with legal action and Isshiki just laughs. Isshiki proclaims he'll win any court case by right of blood, admonishes Sojiro Sakura for even thinking of going to court because Sakura runs this shitty little coffee shop in the middle of fucking nowhere and he'll lose goddamn everything in debt. Isshiki is, of course, projecting - for he has no money with which to fight off anything in court, himself.
Sojiro Sakura is serious when he swears he'll leave and take Futaba with him, and Isshiki dares him to while shitting himself - and Futaba Sakura views this as nothing more than the ripest opportunity she could ever take.
It is the easiest thing in the world to steal his phone (for he spends his nights too drunkenly asleep to stop her from nicking it off his pocket), and it is the second easiest thing in the world to hack into his phone (for he keeps the same password for everything, and it's 80085). She finds out the reason why he comes back every now and again with a black eye or a broken limb. She had thought it because he was a goddamn moron who picked fights with the wrong people, but as it turns out he's just a goddamn moron who'd make shitty gambles. As it turns out this piece of shit once sold his ass for easy cash, and this information is all it takes to ruin his reputation in the eyes of his family members. For his family and his friends are too old and fall back on old backwards notions - and one of the oldest and most backward notions in the world is that faggots are the lowest of the low.
When Youji Isshiki finds this out he beats the shit out of Futaba Sakura, tells her to rid this information off the net forever. Demands she come out with it as a prank and she just laughs, she laughs and she laughs as he beats the fuck out of her. She loses three teeth and swallows another two whole, as this man rages at her and calls her all manner of slurs. But what he doesn't know is that earlier in the day Futaba had made a tearful cry to Sojiro using a burner phone she bought with money she stole from Isshiki's wallet. So he's surprised when Sojiro Sakura enters with a lawyer and a couple cops in tow.
Right in the nick of time.
Sojiro Sakura takes her into his arms...and she embraces him, and it is at this point he will adopt her and she will become his daughter. She cries into his arms when he tells her he'll never let anyone hurt her this way again.
And for one single small moment, the big black box on wheels does not screech into her ears, and she finds herself able to sleep that night.
And I realize, I realize why this moment has been pushed to the back of Futaba Sakura's mind.
It isn't because of the abuse she endured by her uncle. It isn't because she still remembers the moment her mother died. It isn't because she hates herself throughout all this madness, even here.
It's because the moment Futaba Sakura falls into Sojiro Sakura's arms, she tells herself it's all worth it.
And she destroys this moment when she ends up telling him he's not her father.
Years and years later.
Then the fresco rises upward, the wall pulling up with a groan and a scream. Slowly but surely it rises up and up and up.
Whatever I feel, channel it into whatever horrid motherfucker lies behind the wall. Maruki steps back and we all huddle around him, Niijima and I and all the rest going so far as to summon our Personas right here and right now. What lies behind the wall now, is a coffin. Thirty feet high, six feet wide. It is golden and the box shuffles around, as if something lies inside - the name I hear is Mot.
"That bitch returned my kindness in taking her in with making me look like a fucking freak!?" It bellows, violently and voraciously enraged. "I was her uncle, her only family - I was there for her when no one else was, and she repaid me by having me thrown in jail!?"
"You left her to starve, and had her sleep in garbage," Maruki growls, so angry his hands won't stop shaking, even with the staff in his hand.
"SHE KNEW I WAS LOW ON CASH! She knew I went out every fucking night to provide for us! I did everything I could! Everything I knew I could! Everything I only knew how!"
"By gambling!?" I laugh. "You're a goddamn cliche, too fucking stupid to work a real job for money."
"THERE IS NOT A SINGLE ONE OF YOU WHO COULD UNDERSTAND! THEY TAKE FROM ME, THEY TAKE AND THEY TAKE AND THEY TAKE! THERE'S NO ESCAPE, I CAN'T EVEN HIDE FROM THEM IN MY DREAMS, THEY COME AFTER ME AND THEY POKE AND THEY BURN ME AND THEY KICK THE SHIT OUT OF ME AND I HAVE NOTHING! DON'T YOU DARE ACT LIKE I HAD A CHOICE IN ANY OF THIS-!"
"Satanael."
BOOM.
Got him talking, because getting him to talk means catching him off guard when the bullet hits. But I'm too eager.
Mot hides in a coffin, a coffin which shields him from an attack that I've used to kill dozens on my way in.
Then a massive, scaly purple arm opens from right out of the coffin, and with that comes a single word. "Megidolaon."
I fucked up bad.
"EVERYBODY RUN!" shouts the cat, and it dashes back and we follow it into the hallway because we have no time nor space for it to turn into a car, and I run about five feet before I realize Maruki isn't following behind us.
He's just standing there, as a massive purple light forms overhead.
"MARUKI WHAT ARE YOU DOING RUN!"
And he doesn't.
Not even as the light comes down right on top of him. I can only imagine what must be going through his mind, what overwhelming rage has taken him by the throat - when he very nearly shouts out, "Makarakarn."
The impact of the explosion sends me and everyone else flying twenty feet back. Miraculously, nobody's harmed. But miracles don't exist.
Steaming blood fills the hall, and we all rush back in the moment our nigh-liquefied bodies can stand. It still takes us a while. Niijima's lost hearing out one of her ears, Sakamoto's ribs are all fucked up, Yoshizawa and I are mostly unharmed, but Takamaki's sprained her leg. So we make it back to the room as the cat fixes up our injuries, minor and major, and we see that Mot's coffin has been bent and splintered into large steel splinters. That Mot himself has been reduced to sludge and bits of bone. That the whole room is now painted a brilliant bright red, and the stain has spread across thirty feet.
Crimson lathers Maruki's golden suit and white robes and his hands shake because of course they do. I tap him on the shoulder and call out his name, but he doesn't hear me at all, for his ears must be ringing. He just stares at the coffin and its remains, as if having regretted he'd ever said anything at all. In the pile of gore at our feet I find I'm stepping on something hard - not an organ nor a stray brick. A small object I'm able to lift off the ground.
A bronze key.
Mot must have been hiding this in himself.
And Maruki, whatever he did, killed him.
Of course Yoshizawa, Takamaki, and Sakamoto huddle around him once his knees go shaky. They hold him up, tell him to breathe, ask him if he's okay. He's wheezy, breaths labored, he looks like he doesn't even know what he's just done.
Niijima's about to follow them when she and I hear the cat.
"This...isn't possible..."
"What isn't?" she asks it.
"Makarakarn's the spell Maruki used, it...it reflects magicks."
"Well...," I look around us. "That explains what Maruki did to Mot, I guess..."
"It's not supposed to reflect almighty spells."
I turn to it, "What?"
It shakes its head slowly, in awe and frozen terror. "Makarakarn can't reflect almighty spells. Most minds don't have the capacity to reflect or resist such attacks, for they'd have to be strong enough to..."
"To what?"
"To resist something almighty. Something that, by definition, overwhelms everything in its wake."
I blink, turning to Maruki as the others calm him down, get him to hear them again. "Guess almighty spells aren't all they're cracked up to be."
Or maybe Maruki's more than I could have ever imagined.
"Let's head back to the Sphinx," I declare. "There's a Will Seed there, no?"
"There is. You sure we should, though?" asks Niijima.
"We need to know as much as we can before moving forward. Despite the dangers, I think it's worth it. At least more worth it than facing down Dante again."
"You were able to see her memories, too?"
I blink. "It's mostly regrets. Piled on and on after the shitty things she did to her adoptive father. She regrets these things so deeply she wishes she could kill herself over them. And if we let her be..."
"We won't."
"We won't."
She sucks in a deep breath. "Maybe we should head home for today. Bishop looks exhausted."
"Maybe. Let's consult. Put a vote to it."
"Okay. I'd say we've learned enough for today."
"I'm anxious about going home, because we don't know what Sakura might have in store for us back in reality. But it's best we all be at our hundred percent."
"Agreed."
Sakamoto, Takamaki, and Yoshizawa support Maruki, and they decide to take a breather before heading back out into the rest of the Palace. Breather in this case being, sitting atop the corpses of the various Shadows we've slaughtered to get this far.
I on the other hand continue examining the remains of Mot and his coffin. Knowing what the cat had told me about Manikins, Mot would revive as long as the Treasure remains. Thankfully he doesn't seem willing to revive any time soon. I grab the Will Seed again. Her memories no longer flash in my mind like they did moments ago, but they don't need to. They're clear as day, playing out like a film reel at will. Every memory I've ever absorbed from every Will Seed.
"What's wrong?"
Niijima leaning at the doorway, arms folded. I place the Will Seed back on the pedestal. "I dunno. Just trying to glean anything else we can use, I guess."
"I see." She approaches me then, careful not to step over the parts scattered on the floor. Hand on the Will Seed she asks me, "Are you alright?"
I raise a brow at her, "Why ask me? Maruki looks like he's got the wind knocked right outta him."
She steps closer. Speaks slower, softer tones. "Are you alright?"
"No, but you already knew that."
"I did. I do."
"Then why ask?"
"Because you have a habit of bottling everything even when you know it won't do you any good."
I look at her, and for a second I want to tell her to stop being so presumptuous. But when someone's able to easily and accurately determine your fucked up behavioral patterns, are they even being presumptuous at all? "I relate with her. A lot. Were I in her shoes, and I found the person responsible for killing the girl I loved, I'd want him dead or worse."
"She can't possibly know that you...," she stops herself, for the wounds are still raw.
"In her mind it's the same. I brought Kana to my house, and as far as Sakura knows, I couldn't be there for her - I couldn't prevent her from killing herself. That was my failing. She doesn't know I was responsible for far worse."
"It's horrible, what series of events led her down this path. But it isn't right for her to go this far," she muses. "And she won't and can't listen to reason."
"You still thinking of dragging her here?"
"I don't know anymore."
"Meaning some part of you is still considering it?"
"She won't and can't listen to reason. Knowing what we know of her now, it's likely too dangerous to even think of bringing her here, having her face everything she's locked up inside. Even if we somehow convince her to do it of her own will, which in itself will be a challenge."
"But...?"
"But she doesn't want to end her own life. She wants to be able to live it, herself. Without all these horrors hanging over her head. That's why she's pushed it all so far down she can't even properly remember what it was like anymore - it's the only way she can even remotely escape the pain. She hasn't taken it in, accepted it as a part of her. I know it won't bode well for any of us, probably least of all her. Might even kickstart her having a Kingdom, if worst comes to worst."
"But it just might be the trick, you think?"
"I do."
I nod, "I see where you're coming from. I still think it's too risky to try... but I see where you're coming from."
"You do?"
"Never underestimate the power of personal choice. But then again, never underestimate how fucked Palaces can get if you're not careful."
"When I suggested it that first time, I thought you'd have a much more violent reaction."
"So did I. But I don't really have the energy for violent reactions these days. How're you holding up?"
"Me?"
"I had you all come here. Least I could do is ask how you're taking all this."
"I'm doing fine, I suppose. As fine as I'll ever be, going through a Palace like this. Yoshizawa and Sakamoto seem stressed."
"Don't doubt this is a lot for either of them. Pretty sure the both of them want to be out of here even sooner than anyone else here."
"You should speak with them."
"Once we're either outta this Palace, or in a Safe Room."
"Okay."
I think about everything I've seen. Everything Futaba Sakura's done, how in her sadness she cut herself off from the man she once called father.
I wonder if I'll regret killing mine, if ever push comes to shove.
And if ever I do, will it show in my Kingdom?
.
.
.
Bit of a long one but a goodie. Had a frustrating time of it at the start, but come the end of it events flowed super naturally.
We're actually getting pretty close to the end of the arc, now. About an estimate of 3 chapters, I think - I know this has been an extremely heavy set of events, one after another, but for Futaba especially I wanted nothing less. And I'm sure you expected nothing less. Futaba's Palace was a major highlight in the game for me - she was unique among all the other Palace Rulers for her distortion expressing itself through extreme, suicidal depression and anger rather than supervillain-level cartoonish evilness. It was a brilliant change of pace and the game did a fantastic job making her sympathetic.
I can only hope I did the same. For as fucked up as I make Futaba in this story, I still want this to be every bit as emotionally exhausting as her Palace had been. So when it finally gets its happy ending, we feel just as happy.
But then again, this is Morning Star.
Whoever said a happy ending was on the horizon at all?