.
.
.
Our subconscious grows sharper without us realizing.
When I open my eyes to the contourless presence below my bed,
I am devoid of any feelings,
Except an impulse to destroy everything and anything.
Since I can't even choose the season of my passing...
Uninstall, uninstall.
- Chiaki Ishikawa, Uninstall
7 / 26 / 2016
"...so now, I'll help you guys."
He beat them into unconsciousness. Throttled them. Wrecked their shit so quickly most would have never even been able to track his movements before their bodies hit the ground.
And he's here now, announcing he'll help us all.
I'm not pleased with the idea that the guy who pushed our shit in suddenly wants to join forces with us. But I haven't had the luxury to be picky about help ever since this Palace nonsense began.
"What did you do?" Niijima suddenly turns to me.
"I, uh..."
Dante explains, "He was honest with me."
"And that was enough?" blurts Takamaki.
"Well, the pizza helped. But it was enough."
"So... you won't attack us or turn on us...?" Sakamoto suspires.
"Nope. My work here's done. And I like you, basket cases that you are. And besides...you guys have good taste in pizza. You're all pretty strong for what's up ahead. Or, at least you're strong enough. Now I can help you fix this place, so you can get outta here..."
Takamaki stares in wonder at Sakamoto, who just lets out a wheezy sort of chuckle.
I turn to everyone else. I keep myself facing away from Niijima in particular. "Let's head back here tomorrow."
"Right...," Niijima exhales. "Is that alright with you all?"
Stupid question. Everybody's too tired to protest. They all just nod.
"Where'd you bring Sakura?" I ask Niijima, still without facing her.
"I left her up top... At the top of the staircase. I had to get back to you all as soon as possible."
Briskly I turn to the cat, "You still sense her there?"
It looks up, "Yes. She's unharmed."
I'm surprised. "So there are no Manikins or Shadows that've spawned up above ready to steal her away?"
"Nope. This place feels totally isolated from the other pyramids. Only Shadow here is Dante."
"I felt I could leave her there," says Niijima. "I had a feeling she'd be kept safe, even in here."
"Makes you say that?" I ask.
"I get the feeling neither Sakura's Shadow nor the cognition of her mother want to come here. They'd be too close to things they'd want to suppress or run away from...," she exhales deeply. "But I acknowledge it was still a major risk."
"Well, the alternative would have been you rushing out the pyramid in the cold, without backup," Cat shrugs. "Better that you took your chances here. That crocodile-thing is still out there and you wouldn't have stood a chance against it."
Once upon a time I'd have chastised her. Told her how dangerous it was to have just left Sakura alone. But it was a decision she'd made in the heat of the moment. No different from the many reckless risks I've taken leading up to this point. I remember how Niijima was the last time she went all out and I find it in me to look back at her. She's able to stand upright, but her knees are trembling. Her shoulders are low. I catch a flicker of her eyes and they look positively drained. Again, she's trying too hard.
"In any case, we should get to her quickly," I say as I throw one of her arms over my shoulders and grab her waist to help keep her standing.
"Wh-what are you...?"
"You're exhausted," I face her directly. "You can barely stand. Place is too narrow for the cat to turn into a car."
"I... Hikawa, you..."
"Let's get out of here," Dante says, coat billowing as he leads us onwards and upwards.
So Sakamoto puts Yoshizawa's arm over his shoulders, Takamaki sticking closeby behind us all. We wander our way out the maze, sifting through the ash and passing by all the broken walls Niijima had left behind in her wake. Niijima almost falls back asleep a couple times, as I pull her up the steps.
We reach the top of the staircase and we see Sakura, lying in a pile of toys, sleeping.
Takamaki goes over to her, stirs her awake, "Sakura-san...?"
And the girl's eyes open wide. Slowly, of course. She makes little noises as she edges out of her slumber, and once she sees us all she's stunned for a moment. I think she's about to scream and run away, but the shock in her eyes fades - doesn't go away, just fades. If she didn't remember what had happened before she was knocked unconscious, she remembers now.
"S-so... that wasn't a dream, then..."
"No," I say bluntly.
She turns and faces Dante, "You're sure?"
"We're sure," Takamaki tells her.
"Heard you're a big fan," Dante smiles. "Thought you could use the help."
"Er... I, I still reserve my right to believe this is a dream...," she gets up from the pile, looks Dante up and down. "But if it isn't..."
And she pulls him into a hug you'd only ever give someone you love, in the greatest and most powerful sense of the word. He returns it with a hand over her back, patting her gently.
She sounds like she's crying as she says, "I'm so sorry I haven't touched your games in years."
Dante just tells her, "I'm happy you played them at all," as if he were the father she'd never had.
"Will you believe us if we come back here tomorrow? Would you come back here with us then?" I ask.
"W-we'll see..."
BANG
"What the-!?" Sakura cries.
The sound rings from the doors leading into this place, and the whole pyramid trembles as a couple more loud noises smash against the door. Everyone's exhausted, spent on the fight, and I can't toss Niijima to someone else, or lay her down. Sakamoto doesn't know what to do either, nobody does, because most everyone here's too tired to do anything except run to their beds at home.
"Joker! Get ready! It's a Manikin!" cries the cat.
"Suggest you head right on down," Dante unhands Sakura, pushing her behind him.
"Let me go," I hear a whisper to my left. I feel Niijima, weakly trying to get out of my grasp.
"You can't fight, you can barely stand-"
"Then let me go, so you can. Hikawa, please."
"Everyone who can't fight get back down to the maze!"
I see her face. She's looking, right at me. She's so exhausted she can hardly open her eyes.
How many times have these people nearly died because of me?
Takamaki grabs her, tells me, "She'll be okay. You make it back to us, you hear?"
"I...I..."
BANG
"Be careful!" she cries out, rushing Niijima and herself down the stairs. "I'll get back here to you as soon as I bring her down!"
"What's happening!?" Sakura exclaims.
"Big monster at the doors, get down the stairs now!" cries the Cat.
"No, I-I want to see this!" she persists, "I can't...I..."
"Then see," Dante smiles. "This'll all be over in no time."
I turn to the door because I know exactly what's come here and I know what she is about to do to them, as soon as she gets her claws upon them.
BANG!
How many times has Makoto Niijima nearly died, because I was too furious with myself to have thought anything through?
BANG!
I had driven her to rush to Kaneshiro, after poking at her insecurities and making her feel the exact same kind of useless she'd been told she was at home.
BANG!
She rushed into Kaneshiro's Palace alone, in response to my own reckless action. She would have died had it not been for Maruki's intervention, and I would have died had it not been for hers.
BANG!
She came into Futaba Sakura's Palace with me because I'd known I'd have fucked things up if I had gone alone. I had begged her and she came and we got our asses handed to us by a man in a red coat with a sword hanging off his back. Her injuries so grievous she fell unconscious in my arms, and I sincerely thought she had died. Dante had me pinned down but he eventually let me run wild and free.
BANG!
Instead of running to Niijima to help her, I wasted energy mashing my hands uselessly against the face of the man who'd nearly killed us all.
I could have healed her. I could have even just grabbed her and run.
Instead I chose to fight something I couldn't kill instead of be there for someone I could have, and should have been there for.
BANG—
She comes through.
Covered in ghastly wounds filled with maggots and grime. All over her lies massive, swelling boils, each about as large as your torso. Her upper body's swelled to degrees that make her look more like moving set of blooming pustules. Her snout and skull has been split in far too many directions to even resemble a crocodilian shape anymore. She roars and when she does she blubbers horridly, thick red tears streaming down where I assume her eyes ought to be. She rushes forward and her body spills blood from most every orifice and bulging pustule, and it ends just as quickly as I need it to.
BLAM goes Satanael's rifle, tearing through Ammut right down the middle. It's a blast so powerful that Ammut is split in half vertically, the bullet ripping open her spine and cleaving her in two. And it all goes downhill from there.
"On it, kid!"
A red flurry and a shimmering blade. A rising slash, then a horizontal one, then six stabs. It isn't much, but it's all we'll ever need. Ammut has been weakened well enough by everything I and the rest of them have done to her. She would never be able to take that much more punishment. She is in pieces now. Divided into so many it's a miracle her remains still twitch and spasm. A massive, swelled arm coated in festering boils raises itself upward, trying to reach for me again -
"Salome!"
- but Takamaki arrives, right on time. Burns what's left, and the cat was correct in its assessment - her fires have developed a brighter, bluer sheen. I can feel the heat despite me being a rather sizable distance away. I think to stop her, for I'm seeing my dead girlfriend in the form of a monster being burnt to nothingness right before my eyes, but I realize I feel nothing at the sight of it at all.
Her scaled, burnt flesh collapses into ashen grey piles. Her giant bones fade into dust. The smoke eventually clears and in the piles of brume I see a little girl, dressed in a school uniform I do not recognize. Her flesh is blackened from flame, mangled and disfigured and stripped of flesh to the point where all her features are destroyed. Yet I recognize her all the same. She is weeping in despair, and it's an all-too familiar sight. I kneel down to the remains of a girl I thought I once knew, knowing that no matter what I do next, she will return somehow someway. Unless we steal Sakura's Treasure. She rises (or at least tries to) from the ashes, but her arms break apart at the elbows into their own little grey piles. Her eyes are gone. Most everything on her is gone.
She lifts her head up to me. She is still able to speak clearly, despite being cinders.
Sakura knows exactly who she is too. Which is why she kneels down, right alongside me.
"Futaba..."
The girl next to me cries again, more profusely than ever before. She can't control what comes and who could possibly blame her. "H-hi... Hi, Kana..."
"You left me... you left me, with him. You left me, to die."
"I'm...," she furrows her eyes, face twisting in itself. "I'm sorry."
"Do you think I want to see you like this? Do you think I would ever want to see you cry?"
"I...," she chuckles morosely, "I don't know what you would think. I don't think I ever knew what you ever really thought about anything. The day you left was the only day you had ever been honest with me."
"I was your dearest friend in all the world."
"Yeah. You were."
"You remember how we would run into the forests...?"
"I got you into so much trouble. You got me into so much trouble..."
The corpse collapses entirely into the pile. Turns into smoke, rising high into the air.
"...and I loved you every step of the way."
Takamaki walks over to me, helps me stand right back up without a word. Futaba Sakura holds her face in her hands, gripping long strands of her hair in fists. She sobs again, her grief numbing her to the fact that she's crying once more in front of the man who killed the woman she loved.
Together we seven leave this horrible place, our bodies and Personas practically acting as shields for Sakura. Dante waves us off. Last thing he says is, "I'll meet you in the Sphinx if you're game enough," before walking back into the depths of the pyramid, out of sight and out of mind.
We take Sakura back to the real world, fully intent on bringing her to the nurse's office and having her rest up along with Maruki.
We're wordless as we go back. For we have all the keys we need from the pyramids to unlock the door to the Treasure. Sakura trusts us to steal her heart. All we have to do is make our way to the core of the Palace and steal the Treasure, and hopefully not run into anything horrible.
"We have to steal the Treasure tonight," the cat suddenly says.
"Tonight?" asks Niijima.
"Everything that's happened, the Treasure's definitely ripe for the plundering. We don't do this now or at least soon, it'll never happen. It has to be now."
"You think we can actually do this?" Takamaki cries worriedly.
"I'm afraid we don't have a choice-"
"Wh-what the...!? Futaba!"
The Palace location is the home of Sojiro Sakura.
Futaba Sakura doesn't strike me as someone who cooks for herself or cleans the house herself. After all, her room was in disarray. As depressed as she was and is, she'd hardly take the time to keep anything in order. What would explain the relatively clean hallways on the way up? What would explain how she eats meals?
Answer: Sojiro Sakura cleans the house and provides her her meals.
Which is why he's standing outside the house right now, with a bag full of groceries.
Looking right at me.
"What are you doing here!?" he blurts out, "And who are they!?"
Seeing six teenagers, five of whom he doesn't know and one he barely does, surrounding his adopted daughter like they're ganging up on her. And a cat, but it's basically a non-entity.
Did he see us enter into existence, from out of nowhere? How many questions will he have? And how hard will he kick my ass for coming close to his emotionally unstable little girl?
Niijima steps forward to try and placate the situation, knowing it probably won't work. "E-excuse me, sir, uh, we can explain—"
"Get away from her, all of you," he just shoves me and her aside, marches over to his daughter and grips her shoulders softly. "What's going on? Futaba, talk to me. Why're you... who are these people? Why're they here? Are you hurt? Did they hurt you? Are you-"
"Sojiro...," she says tiredly. "It's okay. I promise. It's okay..."
"Futaba..."
"None of them hurt me... I promise. None of them hurt me. They're all here to help me."
"Help you? Futaba, what...?"
"Trust me... when I tell you... they're here to help me. I'll... I'll tell you how I know that, if you..."
"Futaba...," Exhausted, of course. So much has happened today. She all but falls apart in her father's arms. "Futaba!"
"Can I sleep in the coffee shop today, Sojiro?"
"What...?"
"I've missed you," she buries herself into his chest. "I've missed the smell of your coffee. I've missed your curry. I don't wanna be anywhere else. Please."
Slowly, he turns to me and Niijima, and growls, "Move," as he shuffles his arms underneath his daughter's legs, and heaves her arms over his shoulders.
He carries her on his back to the coffee shop. We follow close behind him, because fuck.
We see him tread up the stairs to a room I've not been to before and when we get there I'm glad I've never been to this room. It's an attic, shabby but surprisingly clean. Boxes of old junk and tarps laying around, everywhere. He lays his daughter down on the bed and at once I don't know if I have the right to be here, I don't know if any of us do.
"Stay downstairs," the man snarls. "If any of you leave this place before I get down to you I swear to God you'd better never come back to this neighborhood-"
"Sojiro..."
"Futaba-"
Niijima pulls my shoulder and looks at me, and I'm agonized, I'm agonized because this man is doing exactly what I would do were I in his shoes - if Masako had lived long enough to grow to Futaba Sakura's age, and if I had found her this way, I'd be as terrified as Sojiro Sakura is right now-
Stop, stop thinking about it. You keep this up you'll lose yourself.
I go down along with the rest of them and wait for ten minutes.
It's then that he comes down. Given the fact that he isn't blubbering with tears of chagrined rage, we can assume Futaba Sakura hasn't died of exhaustion and has instead explained some of what's happened to her?
"You are going to explain everything to me, now."
And now we have to answer for our strange and sudden appearance at his house, with his mentally ill daughter, in the middle of the night. Sakamoto's been so deprived he's sleeping in his seat, leaning against and drooling upon Takamaki's shoulder. Takamaki herself is too drained to care. And Sojiro Sakura doesn't much care, either.
We're all huddled in one of his booths and he's looming over us, the lights in the shop casting most of him in deep shadow.
Sojiro Sakura is a tad rough around the edges, but he's never been a malicious man. With someone like Kamoshida, you'd be able to sense their depravity from a mile away, unless you were willfully ignorant or outright stupid. None of that hostility or bullishness ever reared its ugly head whenever I spoke to Sojiro Sakura - he could be blunt and he could be gruff but I doubt he'd ever be one so wicked or distorted to develop a Palace. But somehow, despite his lithe frame and him bordering senior-citizen age, I feel somewhat intimidated by him, by how he speaks with such command. Maybe it's the voice.
"Who are you people? Why're you with him? And why were you standing around in front of my goddamn house, in the middle of the night, huddling around my daughter?"
Niijima intermediates. "My name is Makoto Niijima. I'm...um..."
He stops her, "Wait, Niijima?"
"Y-yes, why?"
He lowers his head, eyes her carefully, "Is your sister... by any chance, a prosecutor?"
She widens her eyes, "Yes, yes she is, her name is Sae-"
"Alright. Get out, all of you."
"Wh-what?" she cries incredulously.
"I don't need this, I already have one Niijima on Futaba's ass, I don't need another-"
"With all due respect sir, her sister has nothing to do with this." I step between Niijima and my fucking boss and I guess I can kiss my paycheck goodbye. "Boss. I know how this must look to you, but trust me when I tell you there is an explanation for all of this and we will be able to show you everything we'll ever need to show you-"
"I can fucking sue you, you little shit—stop trying to fill time and tell me. Futaba told me I can trust you. She begged me not to do anything to any fucking one of you but I'm starting to wonder why I should—"
"You knew of Wakaba Isshiki, correct?" Niijima blurts out.
He looks at her grimly, coldly, his tone thick with suspicion. "God. You too, then. How do you know that name?"
"She was Futaba-san's mother. She researched the existence of cognitive worlds. You took her daughter in as your own, you must at least know that much-"
"Of course I do. But how do you know? You're just a buncha kids, how the hell did any of you even stumble upon all this?"
"Your daughter called me," I suddenly cut in, flipping through past messages and shoving the screen in his face. "She hacked into my phone. Threatened to steal a bunch of cash from me and everyone else here unless I did as she said."
As he looks through the phone his expression grows wearier and wearier. "God damn it."
"Has she... done this before?" asks Yoshizawa.
He just turns to me, "And then, and then what? You managed to track her down and find every little bit of information about her and her family members, is that it? Is that why you asked me to hire you in the first place?"
"No. She did this after you hired me. She bugged the place."
He plants the phone on the counter and wipes his face with his free hand. "My God, why would she do that?"
"Because she blames me for the death of her best friend."
"Oh my God. What do you mean?"
"She, uh... had a friend in Nagoya. Back when she lived there. That friend moved here, became... became my girlfriend, and she - she died. She died, and your daughter blames me for being unable to save her, and..."
He's looking down. So's Niijima and Takamaki and Yoshizawa. My hand is shaking. When had it begun shaking?
"And I," I grab my wrist with my other hand, shoving myself down to the counter, and I don't know why I'm breathing so heavily. "And I... I came here, I came here because..."
Niijima goes over to me, laying her hands on my shoulders. Sojiro Sakura maintains a stink-eye at us, but heads on over to a water filterer he's kept in the kitchen. Hands me half a glass and I down it immediately. I exhale, and I realize I don't even know what's happened in the last few seconds.
How could I have bottled up so much anxiety?
"She said you... came here to save her. That you all entered her heart, or some fucking thing," Sojiro Sakura grunts, folding his arms. "And just how are you going to do that? And why should I trust that any of you even will?"
Niijima steps forward, "Sir, you need to listen to me-"
"I've been with Futaba for most of her life. She's had this, forever. Ever since she was a little girl. She'd have depressive fits, mood swings, tantrums. She's thrown I don't know how many things at my head, and said I don't know how many things she's regretted immediately after. She's broken down in her mother's arms, in my arms, so many times - because of people who don't understand her and people who've never tried to. So where the hell do you get off telling me you can save her?"
"I don't even know if we can save her!" Niijima exclaims, "At this point I think the only one who can save her is herself! But she's given us permission to change her heart!"
"What are you even-?"
"Cognitive worlds, sir," she all but grits out, "Wakaba Isshiki's theories on the existence of realms that reside within the collective human unconscious, were not just theories. They're real. They're tangible. We've been there. Your daughter has one."
"What...?"
Takamaki's turn to placate Niijima, placing a hand on her shoulder this time. Stepping forward to the counter, "Your daughter... feels such a deep well of depression that she's lashing out at everyone around her. I-I know I won't be able to explain this in a way that makes sense, but... it's created a world inside her own heart. Made up of everything she doesn't wanna face about herself, of - of memories she'd rather forget. Your daughter doesn't want to die, she wants to be free of the pain. But as the days go on the only out that she knows is..."
"This is ridiculous, all of you expect me to believe that-?"
"Youji Isshiki," I suddenly blurt out. "The joke of the Isshiki family. Adopted Futaba Sakura for checks. A fat, slovenly piece of shit who'd make less money in a year than a homeless man would make in a week. Sakura outed him as a bisexual who hired gigolos, and he beat the shit out of her in response. You came right on in, just on time. And saved her from him. You took her in your arms and adopted her and that's how she came to live with you."
"You little fuck." He glowers at me, "So you know a couple things. You think you know everything? You think, you think that bullshit's going to convince me that you-?"
I raise up my phone, but Yoshizawa takes the words right out of my mouth. "We can show you."
All of us turn to her, as she remains sitting coldly in the booth. She faces Sakura, and were I on the end of her gaze I'd want to flee for my life. "We can bring you there, right now. Have you see for yourself."
He narrows his eyes at her, then sucks in a deep breath. Slowly he turns to me, and speaks with a voice as piercing as a stalactite. "Then let me see."
Are we really going to do this, here and now?
I turn to Niijima, lifting up my phone to her. She looks at it, wonders if I know what I'm doing for just a minute, then decides we've come too far. She nods back. She wants this just as much as I do, but we haven't a single clue how else to convince this man of the reality of the situation.
I turn to Takamaki and Niijima, and I no longer have the strength to deny either of them this. I just nod. And they nod back.
He snorts, "Fine. Show me."
And we do.
It lasts perhaps half a minute, maybe just a little more. It's all we ever need. We see it in his face - he remains grim and stoic the whole time but it's the kind of grim and stoic you'd wear when you don't know what to think or how to feel. Like me he does not appear to be affected at all by the frigid cold - he's at least not holding himself close or covering up any exposed skin. Though that may be more out of shock than anything else. He faces the cold blizzard winds, sees the pyramids and sphinx off in the distance, understands exactly what kind of world his daughter has developed inside herself.
If Masako had lived, and if she had had a Palace, I would perhaps be just as horrified.
When we go back to his coffee shop he says not a word. He just walks, slowly, over behind the counter and opens a large cabinet I've seen but never really cared to touch. Pulls out perhaps the biggest bottle of brandy I've ever seen, unscrews the cap and downs a quarter of the bottle right then, in front of us all.
Then he downs half of what's been left.
"Sir," Niijima begins, "that was the world inside your daughter's heart. She's, she's come to believe that the house in which she lives is her tomb. This must make no sense to you and there's no time to explain... but we're here to save her. We-"
"She'd feel chilly whenever she'd get depressed. When she was younger she'd just... shiver, until I or her mother would be able to hold her close. Even then it'd take her so long to just... calm down. Whenever she was nervous she'd tell me, Sojiro, I feel cold - I feel cold, Sojiro. I don't know how to stop it. And I wouldn't know how to stop it either. Every time she'd even remotely think about Wakaba, she'd go into a breakdown. And... apparently she's having such a breakdown that she's spawned an entire world inside her heart, huh? Wakaba researched this for most of her life, and never ever once found proof. And here I am, I've witnessed it with my own eyes, and it's all thanks to the fact that her daughter's so depressed it just spawned it into being. What a goddamn joke."
He laughs a little then, placing the bottle down on the counter.
"Please. We've peered through her memories and seen all her traumas firsthand...but any information you could tell us about her would help," Niijima tells him.
"How do you even change someone's heart anyway?" He groans, "What's in that place? Are you, are you going to brainwash her into her own happiness, is that it?"
"That place is called a Palace," I cut in. "It's a manifestation of her distorted desires - it's how she perceives the world. A cold, endless blizzard. What lies at the center of the Palace is what's called a Treasure. In stealing the Treasure we'll be able to... heal her heart of its wounds."
"Really now?" he grunts, taking all these bizarro terms in stride.
"We took her into her Palace. Got her out. That's why you saw us at the front of your house. She views your house as her tomb. Thus her cognitive world interprets it as a series of pyramids and a sphinx."
"Trapped in a frozen desert."
"Exactly."
"You took Futaba into her own mental world. Are you kidding me."
"No. We offered to show it to her. She chose to come with," Niijima says.
"That's why she was so exhausted when you left it!" Boss roars. "Why would you do that!?"
"Because she would have died otherwise," a tiny voice from outta nowhere emerges, stopping the conversation dead in its tracks.
"What?"
Suddenly the cat jumps onto the table, "Stealing someone's Treasure is essentially procuring someone's desires right from their heart. If done recklessly or without taking into consideration the Palace Ruler's mental state, it may very well lead to fatal complications down the line."
"And now a cat's talking to me, my God," Boss heads up off his seat and grabs bourbon from the very same drawer he'd pulled the brandy from last night, and downs most of the bottle in one swig.
I get up off my seat, "Sakura-san, please calm down, we—"
"Since WHEN could I hold my goddamn liquor so well. So Futaba can die, because of you? I'm supposed to trust you and a buncha brats and a talking fucking cat, to save my daughter from her suicidal depression?"
"Then help us!" cries Niijima.
Now it's my turn to wonder, "What the hell are you doing?"
"Come into the Palace with us," she says, not even looking at me. "You took her in as your own! You know more about her than any of us ever could! If there's anyone here who has a chance of saving her it's you!"
"Stop dragging people into places!" cries Sakamoto. "This whole situation's bad enough as is!"
I realize the idea sounds good on paper. It makes sense. Considering this man's relation to Sakura he'd put her safety and concerns above all else.
Then I remember the Will Seed.
He says, "I... I don't think I'll be able to do much of anything at all."
"What...?" Niijima mutters confusedly.
"I just...," he pulls up a seat, leaning over the counter with his hands pressed against his face. "I just might end up hurting her again."
Of course. Because the last real conversation they'd ever had ended with her throwing shit at him and telling him he was never her real father.
"She loves you," Takamaki makes the effort then to step in. "She's always loved you. She loves you, even now. You need to know that."
"And you're so sure of that how?"
"Because she wouldn't be so hurt over lashing out at someone she didn't love," I step in. We've come so far I might as well expound on everything. "She wants to talk to you, desperately. She still cherishes you so much. She just...can't find it in herself to express it. She's too afraid of saying something horrible again. But she loves you, Sakura-san. This shop, it's in her Palace and virtually nothing's changed. She knows you're always looking out for her, that you've only ever done your best. We've seen it."
"What the hell," he seethes out, clearing his throat and covering his eyes with his lone hand, "I'm crying to a bunch of goddamn strangers. You really think I can do anything about this? Do you really think we can help her?"
"Would you just let her be?" I ask him.
He doesn't answer back immediately but I know what he's about to say before he even says it. "How could I? Take me back there."
Oh my God. "What, you wanna see it again?"
"If what you're telling me is true, then I'll need to," he growls. "I don't intend to entrust her mental health and well-being to people I don't even know. I want to see what you've seen."
"You don't," says Sakamoto. "You really don't."
"He needs to know what the stakes are," says Takamaki. "He's her father, he has a right to know."
Sakamoto growls, turning to me. "What do you think?"
"Me?"
He exhales then, folding his arms, and immediately I get the message.
You were a father too, weren't you?
I just shake my head, "I don't know."
"I don't agree. Shadows and Manikins might've respawned," says the cat. "And this guy's old. Doubtful he'd be anything other than dead weight.
"A goddamn cat is calling me old. I've gone insane. I've been hit by a car or something and now I'm in hell."
"Your daughter's been in hell for most of her life," blurts out the cat. "What we're doing, here and now? It's our only chance."
He lets loose a long breath of air.
"Futaba's mother and I knew each other long before Futaba was born. She was a bit of a weird one, but we got along just fine enough, for some reason... She was sharp-witted. A little stern. Somewhat socially-inept. But she was always carefree. She was...," he smiles sadly, chuckling. "She was lovely."
"I see...," Niijima says sadly.
"When something piqued her interest, that was all she'd focus herself on. She'd always work deep into the night. I thought that'd change after her kid was born. But having Futaba didn't actually do much. Even with that, she always took good care of her.
"Working while watching over a child...," Takamaki shakes her head. "I can't imagine..."
"Well. Raising Futaba alone was tough on her in more ways than one."
"And her father?" Sakamoto grunts out thickly.
"There wasn't one," he shrugs. "Well, there probably was one. I didn't know him. She never said a word about him, either. Single when she gave birth to Futaba and single when she raised her. They were an ordinary, loving family. You ever saw her with Futaba, you'd know she loved her. And then...she...," gruffly he turns to me. "You know what happened to Wakaba, right?"
"Yeah."
"Then no need for me to explain any further. Futaba's blamed herself since then, and I haven't a clue why. I didn't want to touch raw nerves... so I didn't ask her. Futaba needed a safe place where nobody would have been able to hurt her. But I…couldn't be there for her when she needed me to be."
"You've only ever done your best," Niijima tells him. "With all due respect, sir - that means something."
He pulls himself up to face us, then. "You said I and the coffee shop were in the Palace?"
"A Palace is a mental world, and significant elements of her life made its way in. Cognitive constructs based on her understanding of reality."
"Then…what was I…?"
Niijima says, "You were stern. You were protective, very much so of Futaba herself. Virtually nothing had changed. You were in the Palace exactly how you are now."
"Is Wakaba inside the Palace?" he asks suddenly.
At once none of us know what to say. "What?"
"Is Futaba's mother… is she in the Palace? You said I was. You said nothing's changed, as far as I'm concerned. What about her mother?"
I close my eyes then.
How long am I going to remain the bearer of bad news? "I should tell him. You all should go. Maruki isn't here. Of those of us left standing, I'm the one who peered through her memories the most."
"A-are you sure he needs to...?" cries Yoshizawa, to which Sakura steps in and demands:
"Tell. Me."
I turn to everyone else, and I nod. They understand. And head right on out the door. All except Niijima.
"You should go, too."
"No," she declares.
Sojiro Sakura is certain, resolute in his desire to know.
Such resolution splinters, bit by bit by painful bit when I tell him what I've seen. I tell him how his daughter believes she was responsible for Wakaba Isshiki's death. About the men with the letter, the men in black suits who forged a suicide note to drive her mad. I tell him how she regrets hurting him so and I tell him that the reason she hasn't apologized is because she feels he would be far better off without her hanging off his back. I tell him what her mother looks like inside the realm of her heart. The visions we've seen - the memories she's suppressed.
Throughout this conversation the old man raises his voice more than once. There's horror and sadness, plain in his eyes. More than once he accuses me of lying to him but every time he knows what I'm telling him is the truth. Once I am done telling him everything, Sojiro Sakura's slumped in a booth and covering his face with his hands again. I can't find it in myself to face him, but I can hear him well enough
I can hear him sobbing, this old withered man who's only ever tried his best.
A little girl is laughing and crying to me at the same time. All this talk of mothers and their daughters. I remember far too many things for me to remain stable. My hand trembles unconsciously but I feel a warmth that wasn't there before.
Niijima grips my hand and holds it tight, the whole way through.
Niijima and I leave the coffee shop then. He follows behind. Eyes red and swollen, though his speech isn't obfuscated by his tears.
"I can't do this," he says. "You have to save her. I can't… I… I won't be able to do anything at all. She told me she…trusts you. That you all have her permission."
"Yeah," I nod.
"She kept telling me she killed her mother. I didn't think she'd…" He faces me, and roughly grabs me by the shoulders, hanging his head low. "I never knew what to do for her, all this time. I don't know what I can possibly do for her now. Please. Please save her. She's all I've got."
"We will," I declare then. "We promise."
Boss pulls away, and nods, and closes the door on us, marching on up the stairs. Marching to his daughter.
Sakamoto inhales, "Let's get this over with."
"I'm ready," says Takamaki.
Niijima takes a few moments, then nods, "We really have to do this now...?"
"Yeah," says the cat. "I know you're all exhausted. But we have Futaba's blessing. We have Dante on our side."
"Will that be enough?" Yoshizawa asks.
"It has to be. As long as you guys are ready and able, we'll have a chance."
"Even without Maruki?" I ask it. "You think we'll be able to make it."
"We have to try. We can't drag the guy back in. He had enough left in the tank for that little bit, and then he got his whole torso shanked. Even if he is awake now, no way we can bring him into the Palace so soon."
"Then we go back to the Sphinx," I decide.
Inside the Sphinx. Real-world time is ten-thirty AM.
At the foot of the massive staircase.
There is no longer a hole at our feet that leads us down a deep and dark pit. It's been filled by brick and mortar. The flames of the sconces are gone. The world right before us is dark, so dark that Takamaki has to summon her Persona again to provide us with a light source.
"Ey, you guys made it," Dante smiles, blade hoisted over his shoulders.
Cat nods, "It's been materialized… up the top of the staircase."
"So it's here," mutters Niijima.
Dante mmhmms, "All of you ready?"
"As I'll ever be," Takamaki says.
Sakamoto grunts out a "Yeah."
Niijima and Yoshizawa nod as well, and plainly I say "No. But let's do it anyway."
We all rush up the stairs, together so as not to leave one another behind as lone prey for the Shadows. We encounter no one. The climb up takes about five minutes or so. Keys to the Palace on our person.
The black gates open right up for us the instant we get in range and we see exactly what's been hidden behind.
"It's in there," says the cat.
We see a sarcophagus, standing tall and upright, adorned in gold and jewels. Carved into the framework is a screaming pharaoh with black eyes and tears of blood, contrasting the bright and lavish jewels that decorate the frame. It stands in the center of this room, sconces keeping the place lit up and upon the wall we see another fresco.
Futaba Sakura, perhaps as a prepubescent, laughing and smiling at a dinner table with Sojiro Sakura to her left and Wakaba Isshiki to her right. It does not look like it's been painted—it's as photorealistic as it gets.
Have you come to put a stop to the will of God? says a disembodied voice, a voice we all recognize.
We all of us summon our Personas and Niijima demands of the cat, "Where is she?"
"I can't get a bead on her, she feels like she's everywhere!"
"God has nothing to do with this," is my reply to the disembodied voice.
Of course you say that—you've allied yourself with a Devil, after all. You're all certainly courageous. And perhaps unbelievably foolish. But almost definitely, above all else, insane.
"You should know, you're the cognitive psience expert."
I was the cognitive psience expert. And then my daughter killed me.
"Everyone, try using your Personas to break open the sarcophagus!" cries Niijima. "Get the Treasure out as fast as we can!"
"On it!" Takamaki says as she and Sakamoto dash to the ornamented coffin.
She killed me, and robbed this world of the discovery of the century. She killed me, and stole away perhaps one of the greatest geniuses on this planet.
And we slash against it with all our might, hammering ourselves against it with most everything we have. Had we done to a normal person what we've done to this sarcophagus we'd have killed that person to the point of unrecognizability. Dante stops us, though.
"You won't be able to open it."
"Coulda told us sooner!"
"This is my first time seeing it, too. You can't open it. Hell, I won't be able to open it."
"Then how do we open it!?" Takamaki begs.
Understanding nothing she continued lumbering about in shameless despair, continuing to disservice the planet itself with her existence alone. And you would save her - you would let her live, even though she will bring your lives to an end? Even though she will destroy you?
"What the hell's goin' on here, I thought she gave us permission!" cries Sakamoto.
"Everything that's happened, her subconscious is in chaos! She's still resisting the change!" cries the cat, "Dammit!"
"WHAT DO WE DO NOW!?" I roar at it.
You die, in accordance to the will of the Lord thy God.
Then the roof of the Sphinx comes undone. The stone filling up the ceiling flies away, carried by the winds. The whole of the Sphinx is stripped of its rock and mortar - within seconds the torrential gusts are enough to lay bare even the pyramids at our sides. Strangely enough, we remain relatively still, in the eye of the storm. The wind still blows into us and we're still struggling to keep ourselves planted on the ground, but the force of these winds ought to carry us into the skies - instead we're able to steady ourselves regardless. In less than a minute we're utterly exposed and the only platform left standing in this wretched world is the one we're standing upon right now.
To my right I see Niijima, barely keeping herself together, and as I see something coming for her I hear Sakamoto cry-
"LOOK OUT!"
If I had been just a little later, she would have been a red smear on brick. The boulder that came at her flies off into the winds as I tackle her out the way, an arm wrapped around her waist.
When we pull ourselves up I look into her eyes, as she does into mine. It's a held gaze that we keep for far too long - as if we both of us fear that if we turn away we'd perhaps never see the other again. Then I shove my arm out to guard her as we and everyone else here face against a giant.
I love my daughter. I love her more than life itself. But she is wretched, and damned, and deserving of the deepest darkness. In my embrace she will be fulfilled. You drown her in poison and lies. Telling her she can be saved, when in truth she is condemned.
The dark night skies rain sheets of scarlet iron upon us all as hails of burning ice crash into the world. The frozen red waters of the world surge outward, pockets of this frozen realm exploding into blood-geysers right before our very eyes. Insects swarm across the skies, becoming clouds unto themselves - in seconds the waters rise high, so high up they utterly swallow half of the stairway we'd used to come up here. The whole world is submerged in the gory floodwaters, bones and corpses of men and beasts alike lying within the raging tides as far as the eye can see.
She's forsaken her robes - now she is a kilometer in length and about as tall as a redwood. Her humane body has transformed into something wretched - bearing the bulk and four-legged stance of a lion, but with black fur rather than gold. Her tail is a scorpion's barb, segmented in dozens of joints each as large as a car, with a stinger so huge it would not pierce but obliterate you if ever it launched itself at your body. From the center of her spine - between her two scapulae - the oversized head of a goat hangs, with curled horns that pierce its skull. The goat's eyes and mouth bellow orange flames and let loose screams of terror. Large black feathered wings unfurl and almost become the sky themselves. The only thing that remains of her original body is perhaps her face, but perhaps I'm being too generous. She is missing her lower jaw, so her tongue and opened throat hang, visible for all to see. Her eyes have rolled back into her head and are weeping great waterfalls of red.
A hundred foot tall manticore, an angel of death, the Persecutor of God.
Mastema.
You are arrogance made manifest. To think you could save the damned from the judgment they so rightly deserve. I shall put an end to your chaos.
With my right hand I pull at my left glove from the base, and let loose a "SATANAEL!"
.
.
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Yknow, I thought I would finish the arc here and now. I didn't expect things to go this long either. This chapter was a pain in the tuchas, you guys don't even know. 2000+ words were added and scrapped and repurposed. Glad I was able to push this out, hope y'all like it. NEXT chapter we'll have the final boss.
Humorously, the thing that helped me conceptualize Masako's involvement in the story was the Maid incident with Kawakami. The funny dialogue option where Joker insists he's a dad got me thinking, "What if he actually was one?" And then I crafted the worst possible conclusion to such a concept.
What really set Masako's existence in stone was the segment where Sojiro explains Futaba and Wakaba's situation to the team. Such a harrowing discussion about depression and loss, especially concerning that of a single mother and child, really struck me as something that would be so profoundly sad to a protagonist who had once been in basically in the same position as Sojiro was/is.
In creating Kazuya I wanted to craft a character who had such a terrible past and history that his traditionally heroic role would be completely turned on its head. What if the guy who had the Devil as his Ultimate Persona actually had the personality of one who pursued his own individual freedoms at the cost of others?
In crafting him I took inspiration from, and put a darker spin on, characteristics from Akechi, Makoto, and Maruki. But interestingly he's become some weirdo amalgamation/dark reimagining of most of the Thieves, in some shape or form.
Makoto's intellect, Akechi's ruthlessness, Maruki's tragic past - but now he has shades of Ann (a close relationship with a girl who had been sexually abused), Ryuji (frequent bursts of uncontrollable anger that set him back more often than not), Sumire (a non-existent self-esteem and perpetual self-hatred), Yusuke (his...complicated relationship with his father, and his relationship with his mother), Haru (given his past as the son of the owner of a corporation), and Morgana (a pursuit of Palaces and Treasures in search of answers).
I did not intend any of that at all - it just became this way as I started writing out the story.
Now, the song for this chapter is called Uninstall - when you read the lyrics, you'll find that it's a massive metaphor for suicide, as well as the rage of feeling totally insignificant and beset on all sides by an unforgiving force that laughs at your existence. The use of Uninstall as a metaphor for Futaba's obvious mental instability is definitely something I had in mind when including it in the playlist, but you could read it as something of a metaphor for all the Phantom Thieves as well. In their feelings of insignificance they assert their dominance over a world that shuns them, and pursue a kind of justice that only they understand.