.

.

.

The falling stars you wished upon
Are cinders now and now they're gone
Their residue festoons my fetid field
Revealing husks of lovers past,
Their shells are all that ever last
I've taken everything that they've concealed

Whoever told you life was fair?
Look around you everywhere
The cruelty of Nature is displayed
Why the scorn, why the surprise?
Everything that's born must die,
And it isn't I who made the world that way

- Spider Suite, The Duke of Uke and His Novelty Orchestra

4 / 25 / 2016

It's familiar, maddeningly familiar—so much so I'm almost pissed off at how familiar it all is. Should've grabbed Maruki's phone and gotten ourselves into my Kingdom. Should've healed myself on the spot, fixed all my internals and then come up with a plan to get this bitch right then.

Instead, I fell unconscious like I have so many times these past few months. Waking in another hospital bed causes my eyes to burn, a wild and white-hot anger searing across from head to toe. Were I a stronger man I'd tear myself out of bed and run across the planet to wherever the hell Futaba Sakura is, to wherever her Palace is, and I'd crush every single inch of that fucking place with my bare hands.

But I'm not a stronger man, I'm a stupid skinny piece of shit who comes to the right conclusions far too late for my own good. So, all I can do is lie in bed. Skin purple in far too many places. Bones straining. Organs wailing with even the slightest movements. Sky's bright and the morning still shines through, but the clock on the wall reads that it's just past one PM.

It's a seething, loathsome fury—I'd feel it every time I'd come face-to-face with a Palace Ruler, every time I'd look at myself in the mirror. But it feels realer now, like it's congealed into something rock-solid. In my chest it's settled, piercing and digging and cutting through, like a stone in my heart howling and floundering and trying to smash its way out my ribcage to freedom.

It's a rage that all but melts away like ice in the sun, because I lock eyes with someone at the side of my bed. A young man with messy, tousled hair and glasses. Dressed in a big brown jacket. Caught between a concern I don't deserve and an anger that will see me wiped off the face of the planet.

Maruki rushes at me with questions, demanding answers as to my injuries. There's a lot of concerned yelling, lots of things that don't really register for the longest time, things I don't have the time to really determine.

Dazed and delirious I grab his phone from the desk next to my bed and hit the app. The trip to my Kingdom terrifies him still, but he realizes what I plan to do, realizes this is the best way to save me. She'd lost my signal, when I transported myself and Matsubara over to my Kingdom - she won't hear us here, she won't be able to learn what we're saying.

My face reforms and my bones creak in place, I breathe again as my eyes are able to see once more. Victory Cry never felt so good, and I turn back to Maruki. "I'm sorry."

"What happened to you!? Why did they...!? What did you do!? Who did you-!?"

I can speak to him. Sakura lost my signal when I went into my Kingdom last. She didn't know what I did to Matsubara.

When Sakamoto had brought me to Kamoshida's Palace, the only thing that worked in his phone was the app—no calls could come from him or reach him. So it must be the same with the tracker.

"After I brought Niijima to the trains I received a text from some hacker bitch. They threatened me, told me if I didn't do as they said they'd hack into your bank accounts and steal all your money."

"What!?"

"They stole five thousand from me and I couldn't let them do the same or worse to you or Niijima. So they had me go all over the fucking city doing errands for them."

"What!?"

"They were friends with Kana. They blame me for letting her die. They wanna fuck around with me because they hate me and they think I deserve it."

"WHAT!? W-wait, what!? That's - they knew your girlfriend!?"

"They turns out to be she. Her name is Futaba Sakura. She's the kid of a guy I've decided to work part-time for, in a coffee shop. Had my ass beaten by a dozen hired thugs when I decided to smart mouth her over the phone."

"You're sure they're one and the same!?"

"Positive. A hundred percent. She has a Palace," I start tapping away at his phone, "all we need's a location, and distortion."

"Wait, wait Kazuya-"

"Leblanc."

No Candidates Found.

"Kazuya, just stop for a second-"

"Yongen-Jaya."

No Candidates Found.

"KAZUYA!"

"Gimme a minute, the world."

No Candidates Found.

Tries to grab the phone outta my hands, "Would you just listen to me for five seconds please-"

And I push him away, "House of Sojiro Sakura."

Candidate Found.

I smirk. "Fucking got you-"

"Enough of this!" Maruki manages to snatch it away, far too late. "Are you going to kill this person!?"

"Wanna come with, get front row seats?"

He smacks me across the face, so hard the skin over my nose burns- "You're not killing anybody!"

"You can slow me down, you can make my hits mean nothing, you can make my skin paper - but you can't stop me, Maruki."

"So what then, are you going to kill me?" he growls. "Is this how you're gonna solve all your problems now? Anyone who stops you from getting your murder-erection is fair game, is that it!?"

"Maruki, don't test my patience-"

"YOU'VE BEEN TESTING MY PATIENCE SINCE THE DAY I MET YOU!" He realizes he's grabbed me by the collar, then he pushes me away. "Fine then. Summon your Persona. Use Satanael to blow me to smithereens like you would any other Shadow. Do it! Do it, come on! Show me how far you're willing to go!"

"Don't be stupid, I've no reason to kill you."

"And how long will it be before you have a reason to!? Before you decide I am in your way and you need me dead so you can go on killing whoever the hell you want next!?"

I think for a second to tell him I'd never do anything like that, not to him, never to him - but I told myself I'd never hurt Kana either, and look how that turned out. So I don't answer him back.

"If you're doing this, then I'm coming with you," he says with finality.

"And what, if I don't let you, you throw me back in jail?"

"No. I tell Niijima-san and she fries you to your bones."

Holy shit. "Well played. We need the cat. I don't know exactly where the house is, nor the distortion. It can track Palaces by itself - it smells lies, apparently. So once we get to the location, we can get it to venture into the Palace itself, and tell us clues on how to access it I suppose."

"Are we doing this on our own?"

"Yes."

"You realize Niijima-san was involved in this, too. If this Sakura threatened her too, she might threaten everyone else. Takamaki-san. Yoshizawa-san."

"I'd rather they not deal with this, if at all possible."

"They have as much a right to this as you."

"This person has memories of Kana in her Palace. That much is certain. And if that's the case, then...," I shake my head. "Then I fear I won't be able to control myself, whatever happens next. They don't need to see that. Niijima doesn't need to see that."

"That's exactly the reason they need to be there with us. If you won't be able to control yourself, then we'll need to bring in people who can."

"Maruki. That means...," my face twists. "I can't. I can't tell them about Kana. I can't, I could barely tell Niijima about Masako. Thinking about her... I thought about her so many times. That alone made me want to kill myself multiple times over."

He closes his eyes, "Kazuya."

I suck in a deep breath. "Let's go in, once. Then...then we invite them, if the need arises. Niijima... I don't wanna drag her into any more of my shit."

"She's already been dragged into it," he sighs.

I think for a moment. "We go now."

"Are you serious?"

"I won't be able to sleep knowing we need to do this. Plus, odds are this bitch is a night owl. She must spend a lot of time on computers and shit. So we go to Shujin, get the cat, then go to Yongen-Jaya."

"Right now?"

"Yes."

Maruki taps me so lightly on my chest that the touch barely registers. But I fall flat on my ass all the same. Takes me a moment or two to get my head right and look at him.

"You're exhausted, aren't you?"

"Of course I fucking am, but I can't just stop now-"

"You are. You will."

I groan, "Fine."

"I'll get Morgana. I'll bring him to the hospital. You tell us what to do from there." He turns his back to me, putting his hands on his sides.

"You can find the cat typically near the vending machines, in a garbage can in a courtyard. You should be able to enter the school easily, security's fucking lax despite everything that's happened. Take the cat to Yongen-Jaya. Have it survey the area. Wait for it in a restaurant called Leblanc."

"Leblanc?"

"It's where I'm part-timing. I'll give you the address I'd found on the pamphlet after this. It's where we and the cat convene, when it tells you it's found a Palace. From there the cat has to figure out where precisely it is. Once I determine the distortion, we go in."

"Okay."

I sigh. Realizing I'm asking so much of this man, again. "Wait. Maruki, you don't have to..."

"I'm coming with you, I already told you."

I've never felt so sorry in my life. But perhaps I don't actually even feel sorry at all. If I ever had truly felt sorry for any of this, I'd have stopped a long time ago. "Alright then."

I wanted us to be free.

To be free to do and say and live as we please. To take our lives by the horns and make the world our own. But I also knew that if everyone in the world believed the same, it would've been an absolute nightmare. In a moral sense I couldn't accept it. Not fully, not completely. Because how could I want something like that and at the same time accept the suffering it would cause? But I always, always knew it was there.

And I knew I wanted it. I knew I craved for it. And what scared me then and scares me now, is the fact that even after everything I experienced, witnessed, and caused.

The fact of the matter is I want all of this, still.

And I don't know if I want it more than I want people like Maruki to remain alive.

I get Maruki and myself out of the Kingdom pretty quickly after that, and Maruki carries out his task without another word.

I don't have the phone Sakura had given me, so I can assume Maruki left it at the foot of his apartment, amidst all the horror. Which is good, because I have a significantly less chance of being spied on. Or not; she might fuck around with his phone instead.

In any case time remains of the essence.

About an hour and a half later, he returns to the hospital, with a bag in his hands I'd never seen before.

"Is it inside?" I ask him.

"No. It's-"

"So you weren't able to convince it?" I ask. "Strange. Thought for sure it'd have wanted to pursue another Palace…"

"Kazuya, you know I can't bring animals in a hospital."

"Too bad animals don't give a fuck about rules," laughs the windowsill.

Fortunate that I've got a fire escape next to my room. Cat pours in through the window and leaps up to my bed.

It says "Yo," like yow, "Maruki told me we have another Palace? Gimme the deets."

"It's in..."

No. Don't take any chances.

I'm tired of looking at my Kingdom so I gesture for a pen and paper, and Maruki hands me a small notepad from his pocket, as well as a pen in his coat pocket. Amidst all the stress it takes me an extra bit of effort not to mess up the letters, but I surprisingly don't.

Yongen-Jaya. I know the name, but not the distortion - the location's a bit tricky in that I know what the Palace location is, but not where it is.

"Why're you writing instead of just telling me?"

Target's a hacker. Might be listening in through Maruki's phone.

Maruki's surprised, peers into his phone for a bit, as the cat mulls, "Really? Damn. So you want me to find this person's Palace for you?"

Yes. Same way you found Kana's Palace, same way you found Kamoshida's Palace.

"Hmm. Okay. I think I can do that. Where'll we head out?"

Maruki'll get you both to Yongen-Jaya. He'll be in a coffee shop the whole time; you meet back up with him once you've gotten a bead on the Palace.

"So Maruki and me'll go into the Palace before you?"

No. Neither of you go, unless I'm able to get there to you both.

"Why don't you want Niijima involved in this again? She'd help a lot."

This is between us three and us three alone. I don't want to pull her into this.

"Why not?"

She's already got a lot on her mind.

"Bullshit, since when did you care about what's on her mind?" Cat laughs.

This person knows Kana, I'm able to write out and the cat immediately shuts up. She blames me for being unable to protect her. "I...don't want Niijima to be involved in this, in the slightest."

It understands, it understands entirely. "Gotcha."

"Appreciate it."

"We should head out now," the cat says then.

"Yeah," mutters Maruki. "Yeah, let's go."

"Thank you. So much," I exhale, getting up off the hospital bed. Gonna be a bitch to explain this to the doctors, but whatever.

Maruki shares a look with me. Though concerned there's nothing he can say to console me, nothing he can say which would mean anything unless we finish this madness. All he does say is, "I brought you a spare change of clothes," as he lifts up the bag to me.

It does take a good long while to convince the doctors that all the grievous injuries I'd obtained just the night before are completely healed like none of it ever happened. They run a few x-rays and shit and feel the need to ask if I've any adverse effects. By the time Maruki and I are allowed to leave it's almost four PM.

We pick up the cat near the entrance to the hospital and Maruki stuffs it in his bag, and the three of us head out to Yongen without a word. We get there later than we'd like; traffic's awful and the anxiety sets in far too soon. Maruki and I check his phone routinely the whole ride through and not once do we receive a text from this Sakura person, not once do we even get a single sign of her. Perhaps she's too depressed to try anything today. Perhaps she's exclusively stuck to messaging that burner phone she had her men hand me, the phone Maruki left behind at the foot of his apartment.

Perhaps in her rage she's just gone after Niijima now, and I don't even know. And I don't even know because I'm not even talking to her, and I'm not even talking to her because I don't know what I could possibly say, and I'm too stupid and too terrified to take the steps I need to. I can't even be honest with her, not even about things that actively endanger her life, because the second I'm honest about one thing I become honest about far too many things, and when that happens I don't know if I'll end up killing her or myself.

For all I know Sakura's freaking the fuck out when we make it to Leblanc, though Maruki had a suggestion to make things a little less awkward between me and the shop owner. Advised me to just hang around the laundromat next door while he waited in the coffee shop itself. The cat descends upon the streets as Maruki orders a cup of coffee and I stare blankly at empty washing machines and I tell myself that whatever happens next I cannot speak to Makoto Niijima ever again.

After I get rid of Futaba Sakura I'm going to devote myself fully to either ending my father's involvement in the whole fucked up conspiracy he's a part of, or finding the man responsible for driving Kana's mother mad and killing Masako. And Niijima won't follow me down that road, because while she's vicious and brilliant and a nuclear tornado made flesh and bone, she isn't a murderer, she isn't a monster, she isn't the Devil.

She has a spotless record. She's student council president. She's smart when she wants to be, and harsh when she needs to be, and her chances of dying horribly decrease exponentially with me not hanging around her. She's got her whole life ahead of her while all I have ahead of me is a large steel wall splattered with organs and grime, at the bottom of the world. There is absolutely nothing someone like me could offer her, nothing that could ever bring out anything except the worst of her.

No matter how much she or I may want that to be untrue.

And for God's sakes, do I even want that to be untrue?

"Found it, Kaz." I turn. Cat and Maruki are just outside the entryway to the laundromat. "Wanna head there now?"

I don't know if I even answer back, because by the time I've gotten myself out of my own head I'm already in front of the house.

It was just a block away from Leblanc. Behind a convenience store and a local theater.

I'd normally be more pissed at the fact that it's so close to Leblanc. But I'm too tired to feel much of anything right now.

I grab Maruki's phone out his hand, "Hell."

No Candidates Found.

"Nightmare."

No Candidates Found.

"Shelter.

No Candidates Found.

This cunt. "Okay, maybe I should've thought a little further ahead."

"I could enter it before you both. See what's inside?" says the cat. "Maybe if I do, you could get a hint as to what the Palace actually is."

Maruki mutters, "You don't need the app, right. I think that'd help."

"Okay. Don't take too long."

"Sure. If I don't make it back in fifteen minutes, assume I've been captured or something."

"Okay."

As the cat vanishes into the aether, Maruki taps my shoulder, "What's this person like? From what you've gathered of her."

"Angry. Viciously, relentlessly angry. Almost as ruthless as I can be, but she's got resources I don't. All this while being severely, cripplingly depressed."

"You say she... blames you, for what happened with Kana?"

"She does."

Maruki closes his eyes. "Rage turned inward..."

"What?"

"It's something I heard a long time ago. Depression is rage turned inward. But in this case... she's projecting everything onto you," he sighs. "She's doing to you what she wishes she could do to herself."

"So we have a lot in common." Just makes me wanna kill her even more.

"Considering that she has a Palace and not a Kingdom... unlike you, she hasn't accepted that aspect of herself. She's just bottled up this anger for so long that when she unleashes it, it goes fully out of her control. I doubt she's aware of how far she's taken herself."

"It won't matter once we steal her Treasure."

"It's a frozen desert." Cat pops back into existence right before our eyes. "Pyramids in the distance, but... everything's coated in snow. So cold you can barely walk a few feet without freezing up."

"What the hell. A frozen desert...?"

Could've just been a frozen landscape. Something like Antarctica. But the idea of pyramids being there bugs me. What's the point of envisioning everything as a desert, to the point of including pyramids in your own fucked up mental world, if it's all gonna frozen in the first place? Granted that might not be on purpose at all, since Palaces are based on the subconscious. But still. What does that even say about this person?

"Tomb," says Maruki.

"What?"

"It's her tomb," he repeats.

Candidate Found.

The sky is an endless darkness. Almost nothing lies within except shreds of comets, ripping through the sky in white-hot fire and then vanishing in an instant.

On the ground the whole world's coated in sheets of ashen-looking snow, so thick you could sink your feet into it and have the snow almost come up to your knees. We're in the middle of an ancient and dilapidated city, or at least the remains of one. All possible buildings have been flattened or withered away, almost looking as if meteors had come and rendered them into craters. Now only unturned stones and snow-covered debris remain all around us.

Inconsistently the winds charge; in one moment they all but storm over us, threatening to freeze us on the spot. In another they're nothing more than a slightly chilling breeze. At their worst they obscure the world in thick white curtains, but not to the point where we're blinded - we're able to peer through surprisingly far ahead.

There are three pyramids and a large sphinx-like structure off in the distance, but they are each frozen solid, like much of everything else in this place - frozen to the point where the yellow of their stone has turned into a gleaming, glistening, icy blue. Maruki shivers because he's got a skintight rubber suit on and the cat's jittering a little too, but for some reason I'm completely fine.

I have some ideas as to why, but none of them matter now. "Cat, turn into a car. Maruki's freezing."

"No!" Cat shouts. "I turn into a car, you guys can turn on the heater while I weather the cold!?"

"Fine," and I rip off my mask.

Hell Biker emerges and his flaming wheels burn through the cold so far that all snow within a twenty-foot radius of us melts almost immediately. Maruki pulls his cape closer and tighter to himself as the cat mewls and breathes in the warmth of the flame, and the both of them huddle close to Hell Biker as if my Persona was a bonfire.

The Cat senses no Shadows, so we take this time to just get our bearings for a bit. Even as Maruki keeps himself close to the Biker, he shivers miserably and sneezes dozens of times.

"How'd you determine tomb as the distortion?" I ask Maruki.

"I...," when he speaks a white cloud bursts from his mouth, "I...I figured...that if this person hated herself as much as she seemed to...," he closes his eyes. "I thought of the worst possible kind of mindset this person could have been in."

"And you were right."

"I don't feel good about that."

"You should. Now we can put an end to her."

"I'm not killing her, Kazuya," he gets up off the ground, shaking the dirt and melted snow off his clothes, "and neither are you."

I wave my hand at him, "We'll deal with that as it comes."

"No, we deal with it now," he growls fiercely. "You don't kill her, you don't kill anyone. We are going to change Futaba Sakura's heart, she is going to survive, and if you try to traumatize her to get an edge, or murder her, or whatever the hell else you can brutalize her with, I will bring Niijima into all this. No ifs or ands or buts."

"We're awfully lucky there aren't any Shadows around," I say, ignoring him completely now. "You think there're any in the pyramids, cat?"

"Definitely. They'll have to bunch up somewhere. And if they're not in here, I figure they're in there. It's where the Treasure is, too. I can feel it."

"In that big pyramid, then?"

"Yup. Over there. The challenge lies in...actually getting there."

Shadows or no, it'll take a while for us to get there. The four pyramids are a good long distance away, easily more than an hour's drive.

"Do you sense a Will Seed?" I ask the cat.

Its ears perk up. "Actually, I do. Similar distance away...but it's in that direction," it points left.

"Any Safe Rooms?"

"No. Can't sense any. But there're no Shadows around, so that's a plus I suppose?"

"Okay. Let's hit up the Will Seed before heading into the pyramids."

"Are you sure?" asks Maruki.

"The more we can find out about this bitch, the more we'll be able to use to our advantage against her, when push comes to shove."

"I literally just said-"

"And I ignored you. I ignored you, because it's better to know what makes her all fucked up and not have to use that knowledge against her, instead of not knowing anything and then getting our asses handed to us because of our ignorance."

Maruki seems to want to argue more, and I'm willing to return volley, but he sees the necessity of it all. He sighs, a thick cloud of mist heaving out his mouth, and just sits himself back down in the snow.

"Can we ride the Hell Biker on the way to the Will Seed? I won't be much help, even as a bus," says the cat. "I'll be shivering all the way."

"I don't think more than one person'll be able to fit behind him."

"If only we had an extra bike. Who else do we know has a bike for a Persona," Maruki mutters derisively.

"That wouldn't actually solve the problem, it'll still be too cold."

"It'll solve some problems."

"You can drive the catbus, I'll get behind Hell Biker, ride alongside you. That good?"

Cat just says, "Sounds alright with me. That work for you, Bishop?"

He doesn't respond. But I know he doesn't want to stay in the dark cold creepy snow desert forever.

The bus does shiver and tremble the whole ride through and it develops frost along its windows, but Hell Biker's presence does a lot to mitigate what could've been. We reach where the Will Seed is after a while, and I see it from the shore, but where it is is the big issue.

There are rivers in the desert, but they've bled out, and have been stilled. The stark red waters are completely frozen, and the snow does not fall upon them as it does the rest of the world. On the surface of the bloody ice, I see veins and arteries sticking outward; I see small frozen strands of things shaped like DNA helixes, the tallest of which would reach only up to your knees, standing tall like plants. I see fish swimming about, far underneath us all - they've got no outer layer of skin, so they swim in this river of blood as organs and bones, as if their flesh had been dissolved long ago.

The frozen red river smells of iron, so overwhelming it reminds me of when I rampaged throughout Kobayakawa's Palace, it reminds me of the first day I hit Kaneshiro's Palace - all the random slaughter, all the guts and organs filling the walls. It reminds me of that madness so clearly I'm almost taken back to those scenes of carnage all at once, but I'm getting ahead of myself. On the other side of the river lies a massive scale, as large as Maruki's apartment building. On one side of the scale lies a feather - the other is completely empty.

Maruki covers his nose and refuses to step forward, so the cat and I take the first few steps forward. Through the soles in my boots it feels unfathomably warm, the surface making mild crunching noises under my heel. Maruki follows me and the cat after we take about ten steps forward, and the closer we all get to the Will Seed the stronger the smell of iron becomes.

The Will Seed is a disembodied head, covered in long strands of black hair that obscure their face, held up by a platform made of large thick frozen veins that've wrapped into each other endlessly.

"Oh, why?" Maruki shakes his head. "What could have made you this way...?"

"Oh shit," Cat mutters, "We have to get it and go now!"

"Why!?"

"MANIKIN FROM UNDER THE WATERS-!"

I can't stay here for very long, none of us can - so I grab it, I grab it right off the platform by the long hairs before my anxiety becomes all consuming and I rush back to shore, the cat and Maruki flee along side me as we hear the ice beneath us crack and shiver and quake, Maruki's screaming the cat's screaming I'm screaming and we all jump and dive back on land just in the nick of time and when I dive forward the hairs on the disembodied headlift up and I see Kana's face staring right back at me -

And I drop Kana's disembodied head, I drop it as I scream and cry uncontrollably, I back away from it like a wild animal as Maruki holds me close and I try to claw myself as far away from this place as possible - as invisible thumbs shove themselves into my eyes, and I see a whole host of nightmares I haven't prepared myself for.

It takes me years back and I'm seeing things from Futaba Sakura's point of view and everything's all grey. Grey, grey... everything.

The only thing that bears color in this monotone world is an older woman with a bowl cut, she bears glasses and black hair and she's busy at work, tapping away at her laptop while sitting at the dinner table. She looks directly at where I'm looking at her from, she lays a kind and warm hand upon my head, tousles my long black hair... then goes back to work, promising things to me, to Futaba Sakura, I cannot truly discern. Her voice sounds distorted, reminding me of Tsukioka, and suddenly the scene shifts again.

The birds don't chirp, they let loose groaning noises - the trees don't sway, they just creak and bend and rattle against the wind. Sky's a deep impenetrable dark color, but there's no rain. Futaba Sakura is walking to school and I'm walking from her point of view and it's her first day - it's her first day and I know it's her first day, because she's writing on a chalkboard and introducing herself and she's so nervous that she stammers and they laugh at her. They chuckle more so, but the sound is amplified bizarrely, the sound reaches into her ears, reaches into mine, and I'm disoriented to the point of madness, Sakura fumbles her way back to her seat and something creeps up her spine, freezes her insides, it's an anxiety I've only ever felt when recalling Kana, a type that would immobilize me and this girl has it so deeply ingrained in her that simple mistakes such as these in a big crowd can freak her out beyond all belief.

She attempts to make friends but the attempts fall flat - she is able to determine so much that it frightens those around her. Makes a bet that she can name every single book on the shelf of a library, and she does without a hitch in her breath. Is able to answer every question in her tests and in class without fail. Is able to pick up on strands of gossip so precise and cutting, but lacks any filter and as such destroys quite a few relationships between several of her classmates.

Voices barrel into her from every single direction, little giggles, mocking and berating her from all over. The voices come not from the classmates, or do they? Futaba Sakura hears them but are they really there? They jeer and scorn and they laugh far too loudly to be acceptable in a classroom, they laugh at her like she's deformed, but nobody's actually budging from their seats at all or even looking at her, yet their voices - whether real or imagined - dig into her bones.

But suddenly a hand reaches over to her from the desk to her left - the hand is colored, warm and bright, and pale. Futaba Sakura looks upward, carrying my vision alongside her, and I see.

She's so much younger. Her eyes are a brighter green than how they were when I met her - her hair is shorter, but still rather long, and still profoundly unkempt. The freckles under her eyes are less prominent, but still there, and she's still wearing that bright red scarf. Her smile is wonderful, and it hits me that she never smiled at me this way at all, not even when things were good.

She's so young, so small, she looks like how I'd envision Masako looking if she grew to be this age. Futaba Sakura eats lunch with her and only her, and they spend months together. Just talking and smiling, and sharing moments all over the school. They look over the roof and see the various sports teams - they cut classes and run around a nearby forest or go do shit at the mall and Futaba Sakura gets chewed out at home for skipping classes by the woman with a bowl cut - they are together, and they are together for so long that their closeness becomes something I could never have understood.

They become so close that Futaba Sakura notices things she should not - a bruise on her wrist, welts on her neck, a swelled discoloration at the edge of her right eye.

Kana falls off her chair in the middle of class one day and Futaba Sakura feels the urge I feel, unstoppable, uncontrollable - a desire to get her to a place where no one could possibly hurt her. The closest approximation to such a place, is the nurse's office of this school, wherever it is.

There are no nurses inside - so Sakura has to make do on her own. Grabs bandages and alcohol and asks Kana what's happening, tapes up her bruised forehead and begs to know what's happened to her, who or what has been doing this to her, and Kana doesn't say a word, she doesn't say a word at all, her actions do all the talking.

The kiss that occurs is without warmth, without love, without passion, but to Futaba Sakura's stressed and addled mind she can find nothing but a happiness that'll never end and a bottomless fear, all at once. Kana begs her to promise to say nothing of this to anyone, and Sakura's too stunned to argue on this point, too afraid she might drive Kana away if she refuses to accept - so she does, she does, despite everything, and she's caught between being deliriously happy and viciously terrified to the point of madness.

So when the day ends and they both pretend like nothing's wrong at all Futaba Sakura keeps on passing glances at this girl, sees how dull her eyes are, sees how fearful she truly is - all the happiness, all the joy she passed on throughout their time together, none of it had been real at all. Sakura escorts her out of the school and Kana thanks her and then turns and freezes and the fear, the horror, it's all so profound in the way her eyes contort that it's a sight that neither Futaba Sakura nor I could ever even remotely forget, and we turn to see what she's looking at and he's standing at the front of the school gates.

I see him.

I see Kouta Magario.

Kana's stepfather is a tall man with messy black hair and dark glasses. A lean frame, though at least somewhat muscular underneath; of average height. A relentlessly generic appearance, to the point where he'd all but vanish in a crowd of ten - but to me.

To me...I see a reflection.

I see him with his hand on Kana's shoulder and anybody, anybody with eyes at all would be able to see that Kana's drained beyond reason - that this man next to her might as well be the vilest creature on planet Earth and Futaba Sakura sees it plainly too, it sucks out the marrow from her bones and fills her with an unquenchable, undying, unknowable hate that even I could never even begin to feel.

He smiles warmly, smiles such a frightening and infuriating smile, and the more I see him the more I want to claw my face away because he looks like me, from the facial structure to the hair to the glasses. When he talks I can understand him clearly but his voice sounds like nails on a chalkboard and it burns my drums and I want nothing on this earth more than to get him away from Kana, I want to grab him by the skin of his chest and rip it off and have him flayed alive, have his hide dangling with fresh red blood from my hands-

He smiles at Kana and he looks like me and he's addressing Sakura and he looks like me and his words make me wanna rip out my ears because he looks like me and every single thing I thought I knew, every single thing I understood, every single thing she had told me, all of them have become paper tarps that are being ripped to shreds right before my eyes and all I see underneath is an empty darkness - empty, red, thick and viscous, filled to the brim with lies and blood.

It is that night that Futaba Sakura decides it is time to track this bastard down and uncover everything, and though his methods of encryption are solid, she's able to tear them down in a matter of hours. That night, that night she and I see everything.

Kana Kohaku, still far too young, posed naked or with scant clothes. Her father's made her dress up in clothes far too light for her own good, made her pose in ways that transform her into something gaudy and monstrous, she has a look in her eye that's supposed to be seductive but if you weren't a pedophile you'd only be able to see it as the eyes of one trapped in fear - trapped in a nightmare. Her body is coated in small bruises, from her shoulders to her back, the cuts grow wider and wider and more skin as Futaba Sakura scrolls through each and every one of the photos and it's enough to make her scream, it's enough to make her cry out in an anguish nobody could ever comprehend, nobody but me-

It's an anger that carries her to do something reckless, something so reckless it might just save Kana's life, and it does.

Everyone in the neighborhood knows of Kouta Magario's predilections soon enough. So does the company where Magario himself works. Systematically the business crumbles - the site is overrun with viruses that brick the computers of anyone who accesses it. Communications are severed once Magario's connections drop him as a liability. His assets are frozen and traded away to child abuse charities as little by little by little everything he'd built for himself comes crashing down.

Within a few days Kouta Magario is found dead, his neck tied to a doorknob.

On that day Kana bursts into the house and it's a sight I've never seen of her, it's a sight Sakura's never seen of her - she's furious, rabid, as if the person she's staring at has taken everything from her. Kana rages madly, blindly, knowing that Sakura had been the one to out her father and Sakura protests, for her father was molesting her, her father was hurting her in ways that could never be described, Sakura tells Kana that she loves her, she loves her so much it hurts and all she's ever wanted was to protect her and Kana screams at her back -

Kana screams that she's pregnant now and that her father was the only one who could have provided anything for her and the kid, Kana's screaming and crying and the tears flow so strongly that her face is all but covered in them, she's screaming and she's crying because even though her stepfather took a thousand photos of her and had her plastered all over the internet as jerkoff material for other pedophiles, even though her stepfather would lie to her mother and constantly slap them both around, even though he would lie to them and feed them presents and trips around the city to make it seem like he did love them after all, even though he raped her and made her pregnant -

Even after everything he did, now she does not know what to do with herself, she does not know how she feels - she does not know what to do with her and her mother because her stepfather's fucking dead and they're back to losing the only source of income they had ever had.

Futaba Sakura does not speak to her again, and Kana doesn't even try to ask forgiveness - so she and her mother disappear entirely, and Sakura's guilt is such that she does not even try to find out where she's going. The day Kana leaves, Futaba Sakura cries into her mother's arms throughout most of the day, and her mother stays with her and consoles her and keeps her close, so close it provides her with almost enough warmth to soothe her despair...

But there's nothing that could possibly bring me peace.

Nothing that anyone could tell me, nothing anyone could do for me, nothing at all.

Suddenly the red ice bursts into a flurry of frozen boulders and they very nearly flatten me and Maruki until we get ourselves out of dodge. The river BOOMS loudly, ferociously, as blood shoots upward and lands upon the snow at its shores - soon enough the river of blood bubbles and broils like oil in a pot, the blood turning hot enough enough to melt the surrounding snow - embers rise in seconds, embers which give way to flame, a flame that spreads from one end to the river to the other, so bright that it cuts through the frozen night and keeps me far too stunned to realize what I am seeing, before it is too late.

She emerges from the lake of fire, appearing as she did in her younger years - she is naked and covered from head-to-toe in flaming blood. She walks over to us, the flame covering everything but her eyes, which shine a brilliant emerald, even through the fires.

Was there nothing true you had ever told me?

Was everything I knew about you, about your mother, about your daughter a lie?

Was I just a fool you made dance along to your tune?

Why did you approach me in the first place?

Was I someone you believed could help you, could save you?

Or did I just remind you of your stepfather?

What kind of pains have you kept all to yourself?

"My mother refused to believe she had married a man who would molest her daughter. A man who would profit from my body," she says with Kana's voice, albeit distorted and deeper than Kana ever had. "She had refused to believe it for so long. Right up until the day he killed himself. My mother had promised never to leave me again, never to abandon me, never to doubt me - Futaba heard, she heard it, for she kept her eyes and her ears locked up in the house we'd lived. If it were up to her Futaba would have kept watch over me forever. Futaba despairs, she despairs and she rages - she's been gripped by a despair, consumed by it. She loved me then and she loves me still... and she let me die."

Her face morphs into something with black scales, elongated and with a dozen fangs lining the upper and lower jaws - her hair, once black and blazing, turns a golden sheen and all but covers her neck and head. Large black claws burst through her hands, turning her palms and fingers into strips of bloody flesh as her arms split open at the sides and flop off like old clothes. Her waist balloons, now bearing a black leathery texture as her torso splits apart to reveal bloodied yellow fur. Her emerald eyes still gleam as the scales over her face harden, as her mane stands quilled, as she gets down on all fours and glares with the head of a crocodile. She towers over both myself and Maruki, so tall you could stick her lying face down across one end of a road to another, and she'd block traffic for hours.

"You all let me die. Upon you all... judgment comes."

Kana roars and bellows, so loud that I hear ice cracking even in the frozen structures surrounding us, and a name cuts through it all - Ammut, Devourer of Souls.

"Each of your hearts are made of stone. There's not one of you that does not deserve punishment. I shall feast upon your bones and drag you to a second death. Such is the punishment for all mankind, for all who allow the dark to swallow the innocent."

"Sukukaja!"

"Satanael."

BOOM

Ammut charges rapidly but is frozen in time right when we need her to be. Satanael's shot rips through her mouth and cuts through to the back end, causing an explosion upon entry and exit. Ammut's body crashes to the ground, blood vomiting out her mouth and tail, her whole massive body lumbers as her paws and hind legs coat the rapidly-melting snow in her own blood. Ammut laughs deeply, voraciously, even when twelve of her teeth fall out at once, and she roars yet again, bellowing out strands of drool and blood as she charges, her lower mandible grinding against the ground and scooping up mounds of snow and dirt as her maw comes in contact with me -

Satanael's able to shove his sword right through her mouth and kebabs her like he had Apollyon, back in Tsukioka's Palace - Ammut is still too slow, for Sukukaja is still taking effect and Maruki's concentrating on everything - I call out for the cat and it leaps into the air, turning into a bus as it crushes Ammut's spine flat. Blood explodes out of her body on impact and her mangled corpse barely functions as it is. It breathes horribly, like it's being raped - screams miserably, like it's in labor - cries loudly, like it's miscarried. For good measure Satanael shoots her a dozen more times, each time causing a deeper crater than the last.

For all its hate and misery, it weeps loudly like a child. I'd heard Masako cry like this, only once - hearing it from this abomination, it makes me want to kill it and myself in equal measure.

"She does not know what it is she does." Crocodile tears denote dishonesty, but this beast cries tears of blood, and speaks with a nightmarish, unbelievable sentimentality. She speaks like Kana used to, with exactly her voice, with exactly the cadence I recall, the familiar intonations. "I was her dearest friend. Her most cherished, most lovely friend in all the world. I made her the happiest she had ever been in all her existence. For all my lies, she remains chained to me..."

Satanael raises his gun at her once more, and Maruki looks ready to stop me because I've done enough, but one more blast mangles the crocodile's head until it's a twisted mound of elongated flesh, perforated beyond recognition or repair.

And then he shoots her, about a dozen more times. Until the flames of the river of blood die down, until the pieces of her are rendered into pieces, until Kana's laughter and Masako's crying ceases completely, and my vision is nothing but red-

But it isn't enough.

Soon Ammut blooms outward, her body manifesting multiple cancerous boils and tumors all over herself - they fester and grow to the point where her muscles explode outward, bulging violently as she lets loose a roar so loud it sends us all meters back, away from her.

"I WILL HATE YOU ALL FOREVER," she declares. "BUT NEVER AS MUCH, AS I HATE MYSELF."

And in her bloody, maddened, vile and distorted form, she retreats into the red waters as the bloody ice reforms over her head. I try firing at her, I try eradicating every last inch of her away from existence, I try to stamp away all my memories and all my shame, but Maruki pulls me back into a hug and I'm reduced again to just screaming like an animal, as Kana leaves me for a second time.

He doesn't once look me in the eye until I tell him what I saw, in the Will Seed. Everything I've come to know, everything I've realized was a lie all along. I tell him how Kana and her mother had lied about having slept with a boyfriend - how they had made up that story because the truth was far more monstrous, far more obscene and wretched. I tell him how Masako is the bastard child of a pedophile piece of shit who would have undoubtedly taken pictures of her once Kana would have grown too old for his taste. I tell him how Futaba Sakura was the one who drove Kouta Magario to suicide and before I can say any more he embraces me tightly, as a father would to his child.

We decide not to resolve the Palace today.

Maruki and I are able to get back home without a hitch. Judging from the inside of her Palace I can assume today was a depressive fit for her in particular. Hence why I received no trackers, why she didn't just hack Maruki's phone and use that to order us both around. But this can't last forever. We've only so much time before she decides to take out her wrath upon me again. There is plain and sheer and ruthless silence, and I'm left completely drained of spirit once we find the courage to make it right back to the apartment building.

Maruki opens the door for me, sits me down on his couch as he makes me a warm cup of tea.

I do not hyperventilate or scream or throw objects in my rage - I say everything so clearly and calmly, my heart rate not even rising. The cat watches us, for it followed us home, and it says not a word throughout it all.

"I'm... I'm so sorry, Kazuya," Maruki shudders. "I wish I...you..."

"We need to tell Niijima."

Suddenly, Maruki stops crying. "What?"

"We need to tell Takamaki. We need to tell everyone."

"We... you want them to join us?"

"I don't trust myself."

I close my eyes, my left hand trembling uncontrollably.

Futaba Sakura is a malicious, vile, murderous bitch and she dragged me all across the city out of pointless vendetta - she threatened me and Maruki and Niijima, threatened everyone I've so much as looked at all for the sake of vengeance against a man whose involvement in the death of the woman she loved is far more personal than she could ever know.

It is something I cannot quite put into words. It is something that strangles me, keeps me from speaking coherently, from thinking cohesively, from making rational judgments and letting my ruthlessness roar like a lion. It is something profoundly maddening, that I did not think I'd ever feel for another Palace Ruler, let alone one who has actively sought my own destruction.

And it is a joke; it is a dark, miserable joke.

The girl who sacrificed her relationship with Kana Kohaku had done more to save her than the man she actually ended up in a relationship with.

It is no wonder that Futaba Sakura was so infuriated with me, once I accused her of inaction, of projecting all her self-hatred upon me. Not only was I correct in her projection, but in truth she didn't do nothing. She did far more than I ever did.

Far more than I ever could have. So much that Kana hated her for it, and would never speak to her again.

Kana Kohaku had chosen a man who would end up killing her, because she had lied to him and he had believed all the lies, he'd believed them far too easily for his and her own good. She'd chosen a spineless, wretched fool who had sold his soul to the Devil when he was but a child who knew nothing except he desired freedom for himself and those he loved. A monstrous beast wearing the skin of a boy who, despite the lies he had been fed, still cherished and still cherishes the one who told him them all the same, beyond any and all reason, beyond any capacity for understanding.

In her Palace, in her heart of hearts, lay a seven headed monster with my face, whom she called Kazuya.

But was that just me? Or was it also her father?

It is a sick, monstrous, cruel cosmic comedy.

So hideous and vile, that I cannot help but go along with the joke.

"I'm only good at destroying things," I tell Maruki and the cat. "I don't trust myself to save her. That's why we need Niijima. That's why we need everyone we can possibly get."

.

.

.

GONDOR CALLS FOR AIDDDDDDDD

So this is how I'm bringing Ryuji back into the Thieves - Kazuya is so emotionally destroyed that he now wants to save Futaba, something paradoxical even to him. But hates himself so much he literally thinks he's only good at destroying things, hence he wants to drag everyone else in the mess with him so they can save Futaba and he can just be security in case they encounter anything fucked up.

But will Ryuji want to rejoin the Thieves? Will Makoto want to help Kazuya? Will anyone be able to look at him even remotely the same way, once this arc is finished? Will Kazuya realize that he can change, or will he continue hating himself forever and ever and ever?

Tune in next time on Morning Star Z.

Also some trivia - Ammut is an Egyptian monster that isn't worshipped as a deity, rather, she is a beast that represents all Egyptian society's fears and nightmares. Hence why she takes the form of an alligator, a lion, and a hippo all mixed in one - the three man-eating creatures an ancient Egyptian would most likely experience. She embodied everything that Egyptians were terrified of, and she threatened to bind them to eternal restlessness if they did not follow the principle of Ma'at.

So of course, she HAS to be the Kana Manikin in Futaba's Palace.

Now, for the song of this chapter.

First heard it from a video titled Death of the Firstborn Egyptians, by Nina Paley - taken from her film Seder-Masochism. This is the song that the Angel of Death sings, as he performs the tenth plague.

And speaking of music, Morning Star now has a Spotify playlist!

.com forwardslash playlist forwardslash 4yJevW26DwgB94oRUFC1Wb