Sloth / Acedia

Extreme mental or physical apathy; a habitual disinclination to exertion.

7 / 18 / 2016

"NIIJIMA!"

From the ground floor, before us a blinding bright torrent, spouting shockwaves and a hundred mushroom clouds in a row. Each blast of light almost sends me right off my feet, ripples sent all across my body; if I ever got close enough to be taken by the light I'm certain I'd be reduced to pieces. Takamaki and Akechi cry out to her as well, but none of us can hear each other's voices, so why would Niijima?

It goes on so long that Akechi, Takamaki, and I have to huddle close. Rubble drops down upon us as cracks form in the ceiling in floor. I've half a mind to get everyone up and out of here before the ceiling crashes down upon us, but the trembling stops, the whole world goes quiet, the ringing noise in my ears grows the loudest it's ever been - though I can barely hear even the two closest to me, I make myself the first to rise to my feet.

Whole world, caked in dust and smoke and death. So thick it's almost like a fog, but I nonetheless work my way through the all-consuming grey. Takamaki and Akechi follow after me; I hear Akechi protest a bit, he even tries to stop me, but I push past him; a few more attempts to get me to calm the fuck down and he recognizes it's meaningless.

Slowly the smoke clears, bit by bit by painful bit; breathing in the asbestos and grime will certainly do me no favors for my lungs. But I'm compelled to see.

When we all reach her, we find her standing alone, fists closed. Standing straight, chest puffed out with pride, and maybe more than a little anger. Her whole body, coated in smoke.

Before her, before all of us, is a large burnt green mass, mounds and mounds of gore and melted flesh. Smells of burnt rubber and ammonia. The blood bubbles voraciously even now, the pool of dark blood at our feet hissing with steam. Bits of massive teeth scattered across the floor, their ground bits and pieces alone almost resembling shattered bricks and boulders. Each so large that if you were to try and carry just one of them you would suffer from muscle spasms for the next week and a half.

Whatever Abaddon once was, it is now completely unrecognizable. But worse yet, it's heaving, up and down; as though still breathing.

"I love you more than you'll ever know." Is what I'm able to hear it say; if I hadn't focused in, I'd have thought it mangled gibberish. "Makoto. If you try to fight this madness, you will destroy everything you want to keep safe. You will die. Your friends will die. Sae will be made a slave. Remain a meaningless existence, my child. If you continue on this path, all that lies before you is a battlefield."

Niijima raises a hand to her mask once more, trembling violently as she does so, but I grab her wrist. She turns to me, alarmed as an animal would be, and for a moment she tries wriggling out of my grasp. I look at her once, and she blinks, and breathes, and simmers.

I turn to the writhing mass of flesh and rip out my own mask, "Satanael. Megido."

I recall that Satanael had a much more powerful variation of this spell, when this all began. Yet even this reduced spell is all it takes. A bright purple light shoots downward from the heavens, and all but consumes Abaddon's would-be corpse. The crater Abaddon was stuck in hasn't gotten any deeper from the ensuing blast, but the mounds of flesh have been erased into ashes.

Niijima collapses to her knees then, breathing so heavily you'd think she's developed asthma. She's still crying, she's still utterly emotionally drained, but it's in the most cathartic way possible. She's laughing all the while, laughing like she's experiencing an agony and ecstasy most people could never even comprehend.

"N-Niijima-san...?" Akechi wonders. "Are you alright?"

She doesn't answer for a while, then pushes herself back to her feet.

"I feel terrible. Yet it's the best I've felt...in years," she breathes, chuckling a little before wiping her eyes. Then the smile fades, and she turns everywhere, sees all the damage she's wrought; the dead Manikins in cages, the twenty-foot crater she's made, the flickering lights and the melted railings and bars. "What... did I do all this...?"

"You really are perfect for each other...," Takamaki shakes her head.

"H-h-how did I...!?"

"That's what I'd like to know," is all I say.

"I can explain."

We turn to the cat's voice, and we see it, speaking despite the upper half of its face completely gone. Its head resembles an onion, cut in half. Instead of rings it's just black blood and organs that make no sense; all we see from its head is its lower jaw and tongue.

Takamaki doesn't bother looking, Akechi and Niijima wanna puke. I ask it, "What the hell did she do?"

It shoves its eyes over the stump its lower jaw hangs from, and looks around at us. "She got over herself, to put it simply. But to elaborate...everything holding her back was unleashed."

"And that means specifically?"

"Personas hold different properties depending on the heart of their bearer. Personas with nuclear skills tend to reflect the heart of one with extreme amounts of suppressed anger. Which is also why they tend to get shaken up by psychokinetic attacks, since it throws their whole psyche in flux. Queen had been insecure of herself for weeks now, and seeing the shit her father didn't help. All that anger and insecurity, she'd acknowledged it, but hadn't wrestled it under her control. Right then, she let it all loose, like a dam had burst."

"And you didn't tell us she could do this in the first place, because...?"

"Because I can't tell you guys to do that shit, then you'll try to induce it, and when you try, it doesn't happen. It has to come naturally. From the heart."

"Then what the fuck was the point of telling me to get over-"

"Because it's fucking exhausting to hang around such an Eeyore-y piece o' shit like you."

"Fair point. How much stronger is she now?"

"Specifically now, she'll do as much damage as she normally does. The high has died down. But her powers react in response to her volatility. She gets pissed again like she did just a few minutes ago, she'll do...at least ten times the damage she's supposed to."

"Ten times...?" mutters Akechi. "She's suppressed that much anger, then?"

"Oh my God..." All Niijima can do is stare at all the horror she's wrought.

"Compared to us?" I ask the cat. "What're her powers like, compared to us?"

"She can wipe the floor with both Crow and Lady, in that state. Against you, though? I honestly can't tell."

I blink at it. "So we're evenly matched?"

Cat smiles. "In that state, she can vaporize you, if she really wanted to. Then again, you'd be able to trade blows with her, too. So I don't know which of you'd beat the other."

Akechi shakes his head, "Is this unique to her, or can this...empowered state be reached even in other Personas?"

"Depends on the properties of their Personas, really. Lady would be able to reach it; in fact, she already has."

She blinks, "I have?"

"In Kamoshida's Palace, when you awakened, you basically cooked a whole chapel fulla Shadows. It's how you still carried on and fought Kamoshida later that day, even though it was your first time. Carried by an unleashed anger."

"Could Joker do it, too?" she asks it.

Cat nods, "Totally."

"Of fucking course," growls Akechi, under his breath. "Wait, you mean he hasn't!?"

"Not yet, no. In fact, he's a lot weaker than he should be."

"Goddammit," Akechi almost shouts.

"Why're you mad?" asks Takamaki.

"Never mind-"

We all hear a thud and we see Niijima, holding her head, collapsed to the floor. Before I know it I'm there, knelt down as she leans into me, "Niijima, you alright?"

"I-I'm fine, I'm fine, I just... I'm so tired..."

"We need to get out of here, then," the cat says. "If she's this spent, it'd be best for us to haul ass. We've done everything we needed to, right?"

I see it in her eyes, this burgeoning rage that says she wants to keep at this until Tsukioka whimpers beneath her heel. But we are here, with her; we, who have come here only to help her find out the truth behind the man she had once looked up to more than anything. And she knows, she knows if she demands we go after the Ruler of this Palace, she'll only be a liability - a chain around our necks. It's clear on her face.

"We're done here," she exhales, disappointed in herself more than anything else. "Let's go."

"Alright, then. Cat!"

"On it!" Cat leaps up, comes back down a bus. "Let's go!"

As Takamaki opens a door on the right, she asks, "Why a bus, though? Of all things?"

"Some reason, cats turning into buses is a major cognition among the populace. This is the result of a couple months of rigorous training."

"Why's that a cognition?"

"No idea."

I let out a pffft noise, but nobody catches on. Goddamn, Miyazaki.

I manage to get my left hand on the wheel faster than anybody else because I don't fucking trust Akechi's white mitts any more than I'd trust my father to give me back my fucking inheritance money, but Niijima grabs my shoulder before I can make my way in. I ask her, "What's wrong?"

She just blinks at me. "Do you have a license?"

Holy shit. "Are you fucking kidding me."

"I'm not getting in a car with a driver who doesn't have a license."

"I've literally killed people, and you're gonna get on my case about driving?"

"I'll do it," Akechi rips my hand off the wheel, shoves himself in the front seat before I can protest. "I've a license. Bad enough we've got to deal with whatever else is out there, I don't need you two getting on each other's case. Hikawa, you're navigator. Niijima, you stay in the back. And that's final."

She just sighs, "Works for me." And then heads into the back, next to Takamaki.

I stare at her for a time, as she makes her way in the cat's backseat. Akechi calls my name again and I quell whatever's come up. Once I get myself next to Akechi I hear Takamaki muttering things in discontent, and I see Niijima asleep, leaning into Takamaki's shoulder. Stone-cold, like she's dead; the only hint I get that she's still alive is the fact that she still breathes. For a moment I worry for her. Then I realize I'm getting ahead of myself.

What the fuck kind of weakling would she be, if she needed an asshole like me to worry over her?

Akechi kickstarts the engines and the cat shuffles onward, and we're obscenely lucky that the stairs and halls are wide enough for this massive fucking bus to finagle itself around-

But we stop five feet ahead.

"Oh, shit."

"What...?" Akechi throats out, "What's happening!?"

"Someone's grabbing my TAAAILLLL-"

I open my eyes and find myself upside down. Whole world's a big black blur. Face coated in my own blood. Shoulder dislocated. Stomach been pulverized all the way to hell. Spine compressed, a few discs loose. Body feels like it's gonna shatter into a dozen pieces with every movement I make, whether minor or major. So you can imagine how I must feel when I manage to push myself out the side of the car.

Crawling with arms that don't want to stay in their sockets; moving with a torso that bent out of shape, both inside and out; bones trembling with a strain that reminds me there is no God, because if there is He'd never let anyone feel this kind of pain. Victory Cry resets my bones and straightens out my spine, pushing out glass and shrapnel. The pain of fitting everything in order digs into my core, but I make myself get up and back to my feet -

Car upside down. Nobody else outside.

Niijima and the others still in the car.

Legs shaky but they carry me to a door along the side and I pull it open, the very act of pulling it blows open the cat's side.

"Hikawa..."

"Can you move?"

"Not...as much as I'd like..."

I help them both out the bus; Takamaki's got Niijima in her arms. Both of them, bleeding; their costumes torn, lacerations along their arms and legs. Tiny shards of glass in their shoulders, a few more in their faces. Niijima's awake now, but still too weak to move. Takamaki tugs her from under her arms, and I keep Takamaki sitting up as the both of them groan in agony.

BANG goes the driver's door as it slides across the ground, Akechi pulling himself out the wreckage. Left forearm broken, snapped; dangling at his side. Limping as his knee bleeds, as blood dashes down from his arm and drips across the floor in large sweeping ruby strands. He's pulled out his blade and his gun, looking around like a wild animal as he makes his way to us.

As he walks over his body straightens itself out; broken parts grow whole again, bent pieces are shunted into shape. By the time he makes it to the other side of the car he's completely healed, though his attire remains stained with his own blood.

So he can heal himself. Important for later.

"Akechi, heal them," I order him, pushing him down to Takamaki and Niijima, and I look around for any trace of the beast that's fucked us up.

Conserve energy. Kill whatever's here. Grind their fucking bones into shit. It doesn't fucking matter if it's Tsukioka or a Manikin. Doesn't matter if Niijima's dad is back from the dead. Kill everything, before it kills you. Devour or be devoured.

All the same I tear my mask right off and let the urge to fucking annihilate carry me wherever I smell piece of shit -

Alciel.

It barrels into my mind well before I can actually see him, and when I do see him he's furious. He's got a mile-wide hole in his chest, one that spreads up to his face; his robes are torn and bloody from the spot of the shot I'd fired into him just earlier. Though he bleeds he remains furious enough to maintain a heated, unbelievable hatred in his eyes - so pure and golden, so exuberant despite his decrepit visage.

But he is hunched over. His hands tremble. Blood spilling from his shoulder down to his robes. He should have been able to heal since my encounter with him. Why hasn't he?

...because he can't heal.

Because he is a weak, frail, cowardly old man. Who has lived off the suffering of this city and taken no direct part in it beside making deals and threats and doing fucking business. It is the reason why he flailed about when backed into a corner by myself and Niijima, that first day we entered his Palace. The reason he'd surrounded himself with guards despite being ostensibly the Ruler of this place.

Because though he may be a big scary Ruler, he's a fucking frail old man who'd much rather remain watching over things from the shadows. Than even remotely risk himself.

Tossing the cat upon its back must have strained him immensely already.

"Finally decided to nut up then, you fucking geezer?"

"If I throw any more of my men at you...you'll kill them. If you don't...then they kill you. I can't let either happen. I want you all to myself."

He turns to the crater we disintegrated Abaddon in and like a fucking supervillain finds the gall to monologue.

"He was a friend. A trusted friend. One I valued almost as much as my own life. He was not like us, you see; he had no allusions that we were what we were, that we were anything but monsters. Yet he sought to maintain peace in this city. Only accepted bribes when he figured it would have benefitted his family. Killed cops when he believed they would undo the precarious balance we maintained. He was a man who pursued a justice few would ever understand, but he pursued it all the same. I admired him far more than I ever did myself, or anyone else involved in this madness."

"And you fucking killed him."

"I killed him, because while I admired his ability to delude himself... He was no hero, though he may have wanted to believe he was. Though he may have wanted his daughters to be. But no matter how tender a lie, how exquisite - a lie, will remain a lie! And we must all pay the price for the lies we tell."

"Your turn, then. Satanael!"

"NOT TODAY!"

As Satanael rushes forward Alciel bursts into a cloud of lightning-smoke, a thunderclap nearly sweeping me off my feet but I and Satanael remain steady, remain charging - a giant black head with a vertical mouth and a thousand shark-teeth scream to the heavens-

We feel it and I feel it, I feel the floor quake and creak, I see the prisoners in their cells holding each other and trying to slam their bodies against the bars to get out - the ground lights up with a bright orange fire as cracks and divots open up in the concrete and unless I fucking do something we'll be swallowed in an earthquake-

- so before it can take us, Satanael's gun makes its way to the mouth first.

BOOM and a thousand shards of teeth come flying all over the place and the world stops shaking at once - they burst apart angles and directions I didn't even know were spatially feasible. Alciel's head rears back, gurgling on its own blood as bits of its own tongue and gums collapse into its throat. Another BOOM, to the bottom of his jaw. Have to infuriate him. Have to drive him mad enough to flail about - but disabled enough such that he can't make his Palace tremble again.

He then brings his head down, as though trying to squash Satanael and myself from the impact of his cranium to floor but I dodge to my right and Satanael dodges to my left, which doesn't do him any favors.

He screams again, a mix of pain and rage in his roars, his forehead pouring out bits of bone and gallons of blood as the head rushes for me specifically - leaving the back of his cranium ripe for the picking.

Execution-style, another BOOM goes off and the explosion charges through the back of the skull and out Alciel's left eye, spewing blood and black clouds. It whirls back around to my Persona but more explosions tear it to pieces. Something strange happens and I'm in too deep a trance to notice - but the explosions don't stop it from moving.

It pushes onward, even as its skull gets shredded and BOOMs pepper its whole face - it rages, the ground rippling at its collarbone, and I would tell Satanael to use Megido again but there isn't enough in me to even keep this shit up for very long-

"Robin Hood!"

"Salome!"

Never thought I'd say this. But thank God for Akechi. Weren't for him, Takamaki wouldn't have woken up, either.

Arrows of light spear themselves into the side of Alciel's face - one in his temple, the other in his remaining good eye. Same time, large balls of fire blanket themselves across his face, roasting what flesh remains, causing the whole skull to bubble and broil. From the way Alciel screams the fires burn as deeply as the arrows pierce, and another BOOM from Satanael's gun disorients him all over again.

We all stop ourselves because we're certain any more force will kill him. No ifs or ands or buts. All things considered, we realize that maybe we were too late on that front.

What's left of him is a large skull, held together by strips of shredded flesh, covered in large sheets of red, everything that isn't bone cascading down to the floor. Unrecognizable as a face of any kind; eyes melted, nose lopped off, bizarrely-angled jaws exposed. Remnants of the face gleaming in the blood washed over.

Face falls apart then. Splitting in halves which split into quarters which split into even smaller pieces. Strands of blood and veins, perhaps the only things keeping the bone and muscle in place, burst open and spread wide, dashing down gallons. Once everything has been reduced to mulch and gristle we see in the center of the pile a frail old man in Pope's robes, trembling while caked in his own blood and flesh.

We all of us stop ourselves. This had happened before. Kamoshida's Shadow was the same. Kaneshiro's, the same. After everything we did to their true forms, they would revert back into themselves. Kamoshida threw himself off the roof of the school. Kobayakawa probably felt remorse, but was killed before he could act on it. Kaneshiro disappeared off the face of the planet.

Kana slit her wrists.

What the fuck are you gonna do, Tsukioka?

"You fucking whores, all of you. Thieves, fucking bastard thieves - in Hell you all shall burn, I will make sure of it. Strip away the skin off your backs, the muscle wrapped 'round your bones, string you up, stretch your spine, have your limbs split apart by horses - how dare you intrude upon the House of God..."

As he makes his mutterings none of us dare step forward, not even I - if I do, I'd grab him, smack him around, split apart his insides, or do all manner of things I likely won't even remember doing until tomorrow evening or so. And for as much as I'd love to do those things, the fact of the matter is this asshole has to stay alive. Or Tokyo's fucked in ways I can't even comprehend.

"We were weak."

Of all the people to take that first step towards him, it's the one who deserves it the most. Akechi thinks to stop her but he doesn't, he can see in her stride, in her eyes alone, anything he does would be utterly meaningless in the face of her. She's been healed now, thanks to him; her power may not be nearly as much as it was just a moment ago, but it doesn't need to be.

In the end she's still standing, and Hideyoshi Tsukioka is not.

"Shuffling out of the car. Bloodied and bruised and broken. You should have made the world tremble under your screams. Why didn't you, immediately?"

He blinks, hanging his head low. "I...didn't, I...if I had hurt you, I'd..."

She steps over the mounds of blood and meat made by his collapsed brain matter and grabs him by his robes, lifting him up to her - Akechi's about to grab her shoulder again and placate her, but he doesn't need to.

"You and your sister are all that is left of your father and mother. Is there nothing I can say to convince you-?"

"If you even think about touching my sister, I will kill you," she growls madly.

She then drops him into the mounds of his own skull, and speaks the loudest she possibly can without shouting, "You will tell me the names, locations, and distortions of every player in your operation."

Akechi's eyes widen, "Niijima, what-!?"

"We will not steal your heart. You're useful, after all. You're a key figure in all this madness. There's so much you know, so much information surrounding every single monster under your payroll. So you'll tell us all of it. Every single one of their names."

"Wh-what...? You can't be...there are hundreds. Thousands."

"It doesn't matter if there are thousands. It doesn't matter if there are hundreds of thousands. I will find them, by myself if I have to. And I'll put an end to this war before it even has a chance to begin."

"Niijima-san, wait!"

"You are going to feed me everything. From the highest echelons to the lowest bottom feeders. From the crime bosses to the petty dealers. I'll find them all."

Akechi continues pleading, "Stop it, stop it now!"

"And if I choose not to tell you?"

"Tell me, Uncle Tsukioka," she smiles, though her eyes betray the storm surging within. "What do you think will happen to you, if you don't?"

Takamaki and Akechi's jaws drop in terror at the woman before us all and I have to keep myself from laughing from the sheer absurdity.

Every single moment I've shared with Makoto Niijima has always been marked by at least one of us being emotionally drained, or pained beyond words, or generally at the other's throat. She's a very argumentative, stubborn, sometimes brash, and oftentimes completely infuriating lady, and for all those things I respect her immensely. I would never say I like her, I'd never even say I think of her a friend. But I mean every word when I say that despite all her capacity for failure, if she sets her mind to it, she can do anything.

Never once did I think I'd see her the way I do now.

Honestly, I don't know if I'm frightened or staggeringly captivated.

"So does this mean we won't get the Treasure?" asks the cat, placing the pieces of its broken skull back together.

They let us go.

Just like that.

Once we'd defeated Alciel, the Shadows in the area did not even dare touch us, encroach upon us. Once we got what we needed they dared not even rear their ugly heads. A deal was made, right then and there: we would not steal his Treasure, nor kill him - he would not kill us, or even touch us, or even so much as speak to us unless spoken to. We have full rights to the innards of the Basilica's information libraries; access to names, places, distortions. The list spreads to hundreds all over Japan.

And this will not last, we're all but certain. Alciel will become bold when he heals, and Abaddon will revive so long as the Treasure is not stolen. In all likelihood we can expect a reprisal in the future. But not today, not tomorrow, not for at least the next few months. If I could be so fucking funny for once, Niijima had truly put the fear of God in him.

So the exit out the Palace is a bitterly silent one. Takamaki doesn't really want to tread on Niijima's nerves at the moment, and Akechi simply can't be asked to. Cat's obviously not happy about getting the Treasure, but the prospect of possibly hundreds of other Palace Rulers eases its depression somewhat.

Akechi drives us to the elevator, and when we take it and make our way out the Palace we still encounter no enemies. We still encounter no trouble. The silence is painfully deafening our whole way through. Throughout it all Niijima says maybe one or two or three words, nothing more.

Out the front door we emerge. Where once upon a time a dozen cop cars stormed upon the scene and shot at us not a single siren made a sound. Not a single wheel revved in the night to get to us. Not a single guard opened fire. It was bizarre to see the Palace be so utterly neutered, after all the shit we'd been through to get to this point.

Humiliation expresses itself in many different ways. I suppose this is what happens when a Shadow feels it deep.

The sky is dark. Cars bustling in the streets. People passing us by on the sidewalk, though not very many of them. I check the time on my phone, and it's four twenty-seven AM.

"Thank you. I'm very grateful you were all willing to help me."

Is what Niijima says, once it hits us that we're back in the real world, alive and well. She bows in front of us all as she says this, too.

But anyone with eyes can see that both she and Takamaki are exhausted beyond belief. Though we're not particularly invigorated either, Akechi and I being the Sturm und Drang type gentlemen that we are, don't allow either of them to head home on their own.

"I'll take Niijima-san," he says. "You go with Takamaki-san and-"

Niijima doesn't seem to listen to him.

She approaches me, almost dragging her feet as she does so, and I have to catch her in my arms. She just leans in. She doesn't embrace me, doesn't even look up at me as I hold her close. She just leans in, and breathes, and sighs like she's reached Nirvana.

"Thank you for everything. I couldn't have done this without you."

I hold her, and I see her exhausted face, her closed eyes. I feel, for the first time in fucking months, that I've actually done something worthwhile with my life.

"Oh, to hell with it," Akechi growls, grabbing at his phone. "I'm calling Uber. You're all staying at my place."

I wake up far too late in the day for it to even be remotely acceptable.

Five PM. Sun setting. Orange and purple in the clouds. Rush hour in the streets.

The room I'm in is simple. No decorations except a clock on the wall, a window to my left, a desk drawer in the corner. I'm lying in a futon, on a wooden floor. I pull myself up and I see a messy bed next to me. Empty.

Once I get out the room I see Takamaki sleeping, curled up on herself on the couch in the living space, wrapped in a white blanket. Cat's curled into a ball, next to her, in a precarious position that leaves it just short of falling off the couch.

Takamaki and I are both still in our school uniforms from yesterday.

"Now that you're awake, please leave."

I turn to Akechi, sipping coffee while staring at a newspaper. Dressed in a white boxer shirt and shorts.

I don't want to leave, just yet. "Where's Niijima...?"

He says in a deadpanned tone, "She left at eight AM. Her alarm woke her up, of all things. And she headed straight for school."

"She left for school?"

"What can I say?" he shrugs. "Very studious girl. Aggravatingly so."

"And you didn't stop her? What the hell's wrong with you?"

"You know how stubborn she can be. I tried to tell her to calm her nerves, but even through her baggy eyes alone she was able to tell me this wasn't a conversation worth having. So fuck it. I let her leave."

"My God."

"Seems she doesn't want to let what happened this morning bring her down too severely. I'm not as diligent; I called in sick for both work and school."

I shake my head, recalling something Niijima'd said to me so long ago, in the student council room. "Her sister. She must be trying to keep up appearances for her sister."

"We're fortunate on that front," he says spitefully. "Thanks to you doing what you did to Sohei Kobayakawa and Junya Kaneshiro, Sae Niijima has been working around the clock day in and out, not only on the mental shutdown cases but also on this brand new drug trade conspiracy that's been shaming the police left and right and center. Rented out a nice little living space of her own a while back, one much closer to work. She didn't send any texts to either myself or her sister last night, so she must've pulled an all-nighter. You don't have to worry for her on that."

I pull up a chair, sinking in it. "Thank you for letting us stay here for the day."

"Don't get used to it," he says coldly, placing his mug down on the table and shoving his papers aside.

"Right."

"How are you feeling?" he says without a hint of concern. "Exhausted? Exhilarated?"

"I don't feel anything, really."

"Of course you fucking don't," he groans. "Are you at least satisfied with what you've done earlier today? How you helped basically consign yourselves to your own personal Hell?"

"Not really," I shrug. "At least Niijima got her answers, I suppose. I'll take what I can get."

"How quaint," he smiles a smile belonging to the most hateful man on the planet.

"Am I to assume you'll arrest me now, after all the shit that happened earlier this morning? Niijima, pressuring the chief of the SIU to hand her intel on every drug fucker in the city?"

"I will admit that this throws a wrench into things...," he seethes, his teeth all but chattering away. "But perhaps this could be used to our advantage."

"How so?"

He looks at me distantly. Like he doesn't know whether to stab me or to shoot me. I don't know why he feels so blitheringly furious. "I've been thinking. A lot. About what I've seen, about what we've done, all this corruption and madness. And I feel like perhaps...a little madness on our part goes a long way."

"What did you want from me?" I ask him suddenly.

"Hm? Ah, yes..." he's all jittery. I don't know if it's from the coffee or his plain aggravation. "At the beginning of this, I said I'd need you for something. You and Niijima. In exchange for my help. Forget about that."

I narrow my eyes at him. "What?"

"You heard me, forget it."

"Forget it? You can at least tell me-"

"Plans have changed. Circumstances have changed. Niijima's bold enough and stupid enough to commit to something like this. You saw her last night, you saw she meant every word she said. It went beyond mere bravado. And while she may not have a Kingdom, I don't trust her to just cast her promises aside and forget about it like it meant nothing."

I blink at him. "She doesn't have a Kingdom?"

"No. I've checked. She's perfectly stable."

All at once I feel the urge to break down in tears right on the spot out of sheer joy. But I don't. "That's good. Very good."

"I know that you have one," he growls.

And he and I stare at each other, measuredly. In this one moment, there is not a single man I despise more on this earth, and there is not a single man he despises more, either. This lying fraudulent brown-haired snot-nosed smug fucking plastic smile prick shit bastard afterbirth cunt.

"That carried you, didn't it?" he smirks. "That rage. That fury. It didn't allow you to stop. That is why you pursued Suguru Kamoshida, Junya Kaneshiro, Hideyoshi Tsukioka, as doggedly as you did. Your desire, whatever it may be - it drove you to fight them. Drove you to try and ruin them as best as you possibly could. Damn the consequences."

"So fucking intelligent you are. No wonder you became a detective."

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why do you crave their destruction so strongly?"

"Why do you care?"

"I'm not here to preach. Convincing you of the futility of your actions is futile in itself. But I'd like to know. Of the monster that hunts other monsters. Why do you pursue them so maddeningly? Are you compelled? Does hurting them arouse you? Are you stupid? Insane? Both, or neither?"

"Are you done asking questions?"

"Are you willing to answer them? What precisely are you fighting for, Kazuya Hikawa? And don't feed me the bullshit about justice that cops and kids' shows spew every single day. You and I both know you've no true inclination towards some greater, ideal good. What drives you? What makes you what you are?"

"Why do you even want to know?"

"Because I want to know if you and I are the same breed of monster."

It takes me time. But I say it plainly. "So they can't profit from what they've caused. I don't want them to get away."

"And that's all?"

"That's all."

"As simple as that?"

"Simple as that."

"You're willing to take all that madness upon your own shoulders? Destroy your fellow man, all for the sake of your bloody satisfaction?"

"It isn't any hardship."

"Do you mean that?"

"Of course I do."

He doesn't say a word for a time. For a long time. "And what of redemption?"

"If they need their heart changed in the first place I think redemption's out of their reach?"

He looks down at his hands now, clasping them tightly together. "What if they regret the things they've done? What if they mourn it? Crave salvation? But aren't even aware of it?"

"Fuck them."

He looks so dead, even as he faces me again. "You're so deeply disturbed. I don't know whether to laugh at you or to pity you."

"I don't particularly care about your opinion either way."

"And you'll never, ever stop. Is that it?"

"No."

"Thank you." He leans back in his seat, exhaling. "I will help you."

"What?"

"You and Makoto Niijima. You'll both dive into Palaces again, undoubtedly using the information provided to you by Tsukioka's Shadow. I will help you."

"Why?"

It's an honestly dishonest smile. "In all my time with you, you've taught me a lesson in necessity. The corruption in this city is beyond help. But you've both shown me it isn't impossible to resolve altogether. Not without breaking a few rules here and there."

I hiss, "I appreciate it."

"Now let me be clear. I think you are scum. Honestly, I wish you could rot in Hell forever. The things you've done sicken me to my bones. I can't forgive such flagrant disregard of others' rights, the way you've so casually admitted to the torture and the literal mind-rape of-"

"Of sick fucking bastards who would have hurt innocent people if I had done nothing."

"I won't deny that. But still. You trample upon the right to their own thoughts. Their desires. Their own hearts. You'd rob a man of his free will to secure that of others."

"Without a shadow of a doubt."

"I'd rather die, if that were to happen to me. I'd rather die myself than as a man completely altered beyond my own will."

"Some don't deserve that luxury."

"And who determines that, you? You have that right, above all others?"

"Everyone has that right."

"Bullshit. And you know it."

"There is no God. There are no souls. All we are is meat and bone. We can be free or we can be slaves."

"Oh, I see then. So you're free, and everyone you've opposed is a slave?"

"No. I'm a slave who goes after other slaves."

"At least you've accepted your own pathetic state. But what the hell do I know? I'll be helping you fix the mess you made, after all." He gets up from his seat, goes to the counter of his kitchen. "What do you want? Eggs? Cereal? Rice? You'll need your strength for when you leave."

"Rice, I guess."

"Very well. I'll come up with something. You'll let me know when you'll return to Palaces, correct?"

"I will."

"Good," he grabs a small plastic cup and digs it into a container filled with uncooked rice.

"Did you tell Niijima?"

"Hm?"

"That I have a Kingdom."

"No," he stops what he was doing entirely. "No. I did not."

"Why didn't you?"

He smirks. Turns to me. "How could you be so stupid?"

"What?"

He shakes his head and turns back to the rice, and he says something I really should have come to terms with sooner.

"If I know you have a Kingdom, Makoto Niijima definitely knows, too."

.

.

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And so the arc comes to a close, hope y'all liked it. Sorry if it felt rushed, most of this was written between 1 AM and 4 AM, and after the bombshell that was last chapter I wanted to kind of wrap everything up pretty quickly.

Next chapter, we see Makoto and Kaz interact yet again, in what will be one of my favorite interactions throughout this whole fic. Love all y'all, see ya next time.