7 / 26 / 2016

The winds rage all around us, the world consumed by grand scarlet rapids that stretch on to a horizon shrouded in black clouds. Lightning and fires and hail. If we're not careful we'll be thrown into the waters to drown in a sea of a thousand dead animals. Mastema could dive down once more upon us all and crush us under the weight of herself, but really she doesn't need to. All she needs to do is wait –for the winds to carry us to our demise, or for a large piece of debris to fly into us, or for the gore-floods to swallow us whole.

"ANY BRIGHT IDEAS!?" cries Sakamoto, "WE'RE SITTING DUCKS OUT HERE!"

"I have one!" cries Niijima. "Morgana! What do its defenses look like!?"

"She's weak to—" it focuses itself just a little more, "—nothing! Her defenses are high! Really high! Her face and her waist are relative weak spots! But you'll have to hit her point-blank! And her attacks are gonna be a bitch!"

"JOHANNA!" She summons her Persona and revs its engine, calling out to me, "Hikawa! Summon yours!"

Now I dunno what the fuck she's thinking, but who am I to deny someone their plan when I've got none of my own?

"Satanael!" He comes and spreads his wings wide and I have to ask, "What's the plan?"

"Your Persona carries me and Johanna through the air, and throws us at her!"

Everyone except Dante and the cat responds with a big fat "WHAT!?"

"We go about this conventionally, we'll be dead in a matter of hours! We need to finish this quick! After you throw me at her I go full blast, and you wipe out whatever's left!"

Even I have to say "That's fucking insane—if this fails, you die!"

"We'll all die at this rate! If I manage to hit her and she somehow survives, everyone else here has to pick up where we left off! I'm willing to wager you've got the only Persona strong enough to tank whatever she'll be able to throw!"

"Wait, actually that could work!" exclaims the cat. "If Queen goes supernova like she did back in the basilica, I think she'll be able to pull it off! But Kaz needs to be there with her! You both need to work together! Just one of you won't cut it!"

"We need a third man in case either one of us doesn't put her down-" Too late I see Dante getting himself up top Satanael's shoulders.

"Sure thing," he grins. "Time's a-wasting, kid! Let's haul ass!"

"Niijima I hope to God you know what you're doing!" Takamaki cries out, as lightning strikes and flame comes down upon all the world.

"Me too!"

"Everyone try getting the sarcophagus open!" I shout out.

I clamber on up to Satanael's back, much like how I had back in Kana's Palace, getting myself next to Dante. I have my Persona grab Johanna by its sides, heaving her and Niijima up as his wings carry us three in the air.

Sakamoto exclaims, "Don't die, you assholes! I wouldn't know what to say at either of your funerals!"

"Hikawa! Niijima!" Takamaki shouts, "Be careful!"

Yoshizawa cries out, "Senpai! Good luck!"

The last of them to send us off is the cat, "Godspeed!" and I immediately regret all my life choices the instant we take flight a hundred feet into the air.

I remember, flying high up in the air to combat a seven-headed beast with my face on each of its heads—I remember failing so terribly that I wanted to drag everyone and everything to the bottom of the world with me.

Driving a car in the middle of a thunderstorm is one thing, but riding a demon lord in the middle of a typhoon of hail and fire is completely different. Satanael weaves his way around stakes of lightning as flaming ice runs at him at unprecedented speeds, such that if even just one of them hit me I'd be exploded all over before Niijima could ever even make it to Mastema.

There are so many things running through my fucked up little head but perhaps the thing I keep telling myself the most is to not let Niijima die—and when I find we're in range of Mastema I'm almost too scared to make the charge forward.

"Hikawa! CHAAARGE!"

"SATANAEL!"

Mastema roars, charging at us through the rapid flashes of thunder, her black wings beating great gusts and very nearly throwing the three of us right off the charge. But I launch us through the wing beats, I have us charge right on through as shards of red rain coat us all over in crimson. Mastema's flourishes would and could send us back a thousand miles ahead if I'm not careful, so I do everything in my power to cut through the wind at speeds that make my eyes bleed.

"Kid, watch out!" Dante exclaims.

I see it too late, and I force Satanael's wings to face the brunt of the impact, for it's come too quickly for me to dodge. Impact causes my robes to burn faster than I can even scream and I'm sent flying, but Dante grabs ahold of my ankle and keeps me from being sunk to the bottom of the sea of blood.

Do not lose yourself, if you lose it Niijima falls into the fucking ocean and you lose her forever, do not get angry, do not be so angry you forget she's fucking here-

It's by sheer force of will alone that Satanael remains materialized after I had the everything knocked out of me just a few seconds prior. Victory Cry comes because I make it come before I lose consciousness and the burnt slab of meat that was my body turns whole again in a matter of seconds. It is then that I'm able to hear Niijima crying out, "What happened!? Are you okay up there!?"

"We were hit by a lightning bolt," Dante replies.

"WHAT!?"

"Don't worry!" I say, but it comes out as Dunwurregh because my vocal cords haven't fully been restored, and when they are I'm able to say this rather clearly: "I got better!"

"You ready down there!? We're awful close—"

Mastema roars, bellowing without a lower jaw, the soundwaves pushing us back - Satanael carts and pivots himself to try and set himself in place as I lose hearing in both ears, I feel my bones turn to jelly and I have Satanael's wings shield Niijima again. Through the sounds and the screams and as my Persona orients itself back in place I feel my hands catch fire, but they're not my hands, they're Satanael's and I feel the sensation of them burning—

"GET ME THERE NOW!"

I'm carrying someone worth fifteen Hiroshimas in my Persona's hands as we speak and it's burning, it sears through Satanael and into me, I'd tell Niijima to fucking cool it until I've thrown her but I don't even think she can hear me—

"Thanks for the ride," Dante says suddenly. "Allowed me to conserve everything I needed to make this work."

"What!?"

"Throw her, kid!" Dante exclaims, leaping right off Satanael's wings.

He transforms then—into something massive, something horrible, something with molten scales and six black wings and eyes of fire. It flies straight for the face of Wakaba Isshiki and crashes into her like a meteor.

BOOM

If witnessing a mushroom cloud from an atomic bomb, one ought to stick out their arm and measure the mushroom cloud in the distance with their thumb. If the cloud is bigger than your thumb then you ought to run, for you are stuck in the radiation zone.

And for as far as I've put us from all this carnage, Niijima and I may as well be at ground zero. The asteroid that killed the dinosaurs wouldn't have nearly half the impact that Dante had laid into

The ensuing explosion almost sends me and Niijima flying off kilter - ripples are sent out into all the world. She bellows out another titanic scream as her face and half her skull is caved into oblivion. She rears upward, raising her upper arms to her utterly destroyed face, leaving her torso open and I realize there is absolutely no time to think or be careful about literally any of this—

So I throw Makoto Niijima right at this gigantic kaiju-sized manticore angel of death - I throw her across the sky, in the middle of a thunderstorm that could and would kill her in an instant if ever she was hit by hail or lightning or fire. I have her thrown with all Satanael's strength, and all I see after throwing her is a massive blue streak of light flying through these horrid winds. In this thunderstorm where darkness has eaten everything in all the world. It's something I both never wish to see again, and want to see forever.

BOOM

The light is blinding, overwhelming, eating everything I can see—and when the shockwave alone hits I feel I'm being reduced to nothing.

Ashen, cancerous meat sloughs off and is restored to its prime. Incinerated spandex is restored and I'm surprised my whole body hasn't been rendered ash, considering my relative closeness to the blast. And then I see what's happened to the Isshiki Manikin.

When I wake up I don't know how long it's been but when I wake up I'm falling. I'm still a couple thousand miles away from hitting the red ocean below. More than enough time for another Victory Cry.

Curtains of pouring red as the body splits in halves. Mountains and mounds of flaming and charred organs that even the most experienced medical personnel wouldn't even have names for—some of which move and thrash about as they fall, like they're alive. They're falling hundreds upon hundreds of feet as Isshiki's torso tries desperately to remain held together by tracks of flesh that stretch mere dozens of feet. From the center of her chest down to her abdomen is a gaping hole so wide you could fit all of Tokyo inside and it wouldn't nearly be enough to fill. She had blasted her right down the middle — the hole she'd punched open wasn't large in itself, but once a bit of inside went outside, they all came pouring out. Whatever hole had been made was made even wider, larger, as the weight of everything caused the stomach to cave open.

Never expected anything less from Niijima.

Speaking of whom.

In all this chaos I see exactly what I need to see. Somehow, someway — I'm able to peer my vision through the large burning masses and guess who I see, unconscious and falling right down along with them.

"Persona!"

Satanael's wings carry me to her in virtually no time flat, and it is impossible for me to ignore that I feel so goddamn accomplished when I put my head to her chest and find that her heart's still beating.

Then I see Isshiki's face, or lack thereof.

Dante had all but undone the entire front half of her skull - gone were her eyes, nose, forehead, cheeks, all of it. Just a neck, holding the back half of a cranium, with a dark hole coughing out ashen clouds right where the face had once been. Even though this creature has no eyes, no face, no guts and virtually not much else keeping herself alive - she somehow is. She's even still afloat, her wings continuing to beat and keep her from crashing down into the earth. And even missing a face she still turns what's left of her head, and I'm absolutely certain that if she still had eyes she'd be looking directly at me.

It's at this point I remember I still have a role to play.

"Megido."

BOOM

Whatever was keeping the upper body attached to the lower isn't keeping them together any longer.

Gigantic spinal discs are vaporized as a hundred-foot tall pair of legs crashes to the ground. The goat's head hanging off the back bleats in rage and agony as feathers are lopped off the wings in droves. It's a slow descent down, but it's a descent nonetheless. Rather than displacing the floodwaters upon crashing down, she sinks, as if whatever's below is an abyss in itself. The rain's stopped. The hail's been silenced. The waters do not rage like they once did. The skies are still dark but they do not scream at us. Both halves of Wakaba Isshiki's mountainous Manikin sink to the very bottom of this miserable place. Descending down, down, down. It feels like hours, just watching her sink into this ocean of red.

Once that's done with I hold Niijima close and tight, the whole flight down.

And I desperately, desperately want her to remain alive.

"What the hell happened up there...?" Takamaki cries.

"Everything. Any luck opening the sarcophagus?"

"No. We tried lifting it, but no luck on that front, either," responds the cat. "Weighs a ton. I wouldn't be able to carry it outta here even as a bus."

"Is she okay?" asks Yoshizawa.

In my arms I can feel her breathing. She's more or less just asleep. She'd already gone into overdrive earlier in the night and I wouldn't blame her if she just died right here. "She's... alive."

"She'll be out for a day," says the cat. "She's all but spent herself."

Sakamoto looks over the horizon. "Where's Dante?"

"I don't know," I exhale. "He's just...gone. Must've been sent flying somewhere."

Sakamoto looks a little sad at the thought of that, but doesn't dwell on it any further. "So... what the hell do we do with the coffin?"

I'm winded, myself. But I still have to try. Satanael shuffles over to the sarcophagus and tries lifting it, and exactly as the cat said, it can't be pried off its place. not even the bricks it's been planted into are willing to budge.

"We tried burning it, hitting it, cracking it open. None of it worked," says Takamaki.

Cat sighs. "The Treasure's been materialized, at any moment now the Manikin of her mother'll come back."

"Are you for real?" I throat out.

"Yeah. It may take half an hour to half that time, but it'll come back, we need to get the Treasure outta here! She's still resisting the change!"

"What then, will we need to go back and get Sakura over here!?" Sakamoto almost shouts. "We've spent a whole fucking day here and we haven't even dented this thing. We can't even destroy the Treasure cuz this thing's made of goddamn adamantium—"

It's a loud noise. Oddly metallic, it's a groan you'd hear from a coffin made of steel rather than ornamented stone. The lid does not open, the coffin remains shut, but it is shaking violently, trembling right before our eyes.

"Wh-what's happening!?" cries Yoshizawa.

And the cat blurts out, "Guys! We've got company!"

"Where!?"

"EVERYWHERE!"

I can hear a thousand names - Isis, Nephthys, Amun-Ra, Garuda, Seth, Osiris, Hathor - among many, many, many others. From out of the waters, they rise, huskified and decayed, and covered in blood that's shriveled up whatever's left of them. Their bodies have not been prepared for burial or anything like how Egyptians had actually prepped their dead. No bandages, no embalming, no curation or maintenance - they are festering corpses of archaic gods who ought to have died out long, long ago. They stretch so far. They all but surround us and we can't help but be surrounded, on this tiny platform that was once the top of a pyramid that's now been sunken almost completely.

"Cat, how do our odds look!?"

"They're all rotting! We can hit them harder than they could ever hit us! Just don't get overwhelmed!"

"Easy for you to say!" bellows out Sakamoto.

"Takamaki and Sakamoto on the left!" I cry out, "Yoshizawa and the cat on the right! Cat heals whoever needs it!"

"We'll take it from here, senpai—you need to rest!" cries Yoshizawa.

"No," Satanael flies upward, higher than everyone else, as I keep my eyes firm, "I weed them out in chunks from on high."

"SENPAI—!"

An Isis roars a shrill battle cry and stops Yoshizawa dead in her tracks, and within minutes the carcasses of old dead gods swarm us on the spot. Some of them fly. Some of them are so massive I could ride them. Some of them have teeth the size of my forearm. They all want me and everyone else here dead.

BLAM goes Satanael's rifle and a few dozen Egyptian gods are rendered into mulch and I feel my eyes bleed from the strain.

Everyone summons their Personas and we're able to kill swathes of them—Sakamoto calls lightning from the stars, Takamaki lets loose a thousand flamethrowers, Yoshizawa sears them with javelins of light. The cat summons small tornadoes which disintegrate them, and I'm able to splatter entire platoons' worth of their force into the waters. But this can't last forever. Attrition will whittle us down sooner or later, and the Palace isn't gonna run out of fucking beasts anytime soon. The sarcophagus continues groaning and raging and it's shaking so violently I'm afraid the whole platform's shaking along with it, and before we can even question anything or make sense of this new development I feel a ringing noise.

A horrid, vicious anxiety that takes me right out of my own eyes.

It takes me everything I have to not let go of Niijima as a thousand things pour into my mind—

In Kaneshiro's Palace I awoke to a new power. One I haven't much control over, it seems.

I see myself slouched over, with my back against the sarcophagus and Niijima remaining in my arms. I see everyone freaking the hell out because Satanael's dispersed and I'm bleeding out my eyes and nose and mouth, while we're all still surrounded by zombified deities. Yoshizawa cries out for me to wake up, the cat trying to snap me out of my trance. My face is clawed and I'm thrashed about but my body does not respond. I try to return to myself, to return to the battlefield and make the seas run even redder with the blood of our enemies, but I am simply not able to. Not yet.

"It is the stress of the situation." I turn to my left and he is there. The man in my dreams. Standing beside me. I say standing but the truth of the matter is that he is floating as far up off the ground as I am. "It is much like what had happened, during the incident that had set all this in motion. You, looking down at yourself in the middle of the night, with your body on autopilot as it destroyed a man's skull. The stress caused you to dissociate and it's manifested in these cognitive worlds as literal dissociation from the field of battle."

Send me back there.

"I'm afraid I can't do anything about this. This is all you. You've overclocked yourself, not that anyone could blame you."

You said, long ago, that I'd be able to control this given time.

"Yes, but time is not on your side. It's never been. You've spent so much of yourself constantly striving towards your own ill-defined pursuit of freedom that you haven't paid any attention to what you might lose in the process."

They'll die if I don't get back there.

"They'll die even when you do. But it won't be an instant death. It'll be slow, over the course of months, maybe even years. But you will destroy them. You will destroy them because you must. Because the world you desire is not the world they desire at all."

Stop this, now.

"Perhaps this would be a mercy. For them all to die here it would unshackle you, let you free to do as you please. And they would be spared the sight of you remaking the world into your own image."

I don't want this.

"You say you don't, but I'm saying you do. I'm saying you should. I'm saying you'll be better off if you did. And I am you, so what is it really that you want?"

Not this.

"She'll destroy you, you know. She'll chain you up and throw you into a pit of Hell so deep Heaven's light won't even be able to reach where you'll lay."

Get me back there, you fucking—

"Her salvation and your freedom are mutually exclusive. You know this, I wouldn't be here telling you this if you didn't know this. And instead of giving me a hard answer you've the gall to act evasive. Now, of all times. What is it that you want?"

I want to find the people responsible for Masako and flay them all alive. I want to grab the planet by its throat and rip out its innards and tear away every single parasite feeding off its blood. I want to give the whole goddamn world an enema, but I can't do any of that in good conscience—

—knowing they'd have to die in return.

"Interesting," he smiles. "Very interesting indeed."

Suddenly I'm somewhere else. I'm in an attic. It's night, the moonlight peering through the opened windows. Everything untouched by the light is in supreme shadow. In darkness.

I'm staring at a girl sleeping in a mattress propped up by beer bottle cases. The girl is sleeping soundly in a white sheet. I see her father, sitting right next to her in a stool, unable to sleep at all.

How am I seeing any of this?

"Your heart led you here," says the man in my dreams. "Her heart is wretched almost beyond repair and the beasts that lie within are going to kill you and your friends, and you wanted to find a way to stop it, and so you've been brought in the here and now. She can't hear us nor speak to us, but we can see her, and we can see just what she intends to do next."

I see the shape in the bed shift as the girl's eyes blare open and wide, so suddenly even I'm startled from where I am. She rises then, slowly sitting upright—it takes her father a few seconds to realize what the hell's happening but once he does he's driven to keep her back down in bed. "F-Futaba!? What're you—!? You need to—"

"Sojiro."

He holds her by her shoulders, gently of course, and tries laying her back down in bed, "Futaba, j-just lie down, just lie down, I—I don't know what you must have seen but whatever happens next you need to—"

"You loved Mom, didn't you, Sojiro?"

He stops right then. Stops talking and trying to force her into bed, just stares at her like she's stabbed him a dozen times. "I knew, even as a kid. Everyone knew. Even Mom. You loved her so much."

"Futaba..."

"She liked you too, Sojiro," she smiles. "I want you to know she did. She really, really liked you. She always loved your curry. She always loved taking me here when she could. She made it a point on her wall to go to you again once she felt she was finished with her work..."

"Futaba—"

"Why didn't you ever blame me for what happened to her? Everyone else did. Why didn't you?"

"I could never do that to you."

"Even if it were true? You're not even my real dad."

He steadies himself. Takes in a deep breath of air. Kneels down and lifts her head so she'll face him. "Maybe I'm not your father. But you are my daughter. And no force on heaven or earth could ever change that."

She just nods slowly at that. Lets out a smile—a genuine, wide smile that's full of all the love she had never had the strength to show him before. "I could never have asked for anything less, Sojiro."

"What...?"

She gets up from the bed, suddenly breathing very heavy the second she stands upright— "I want to see everything I made myself forget about Mom." And then she runs down the stairs.

"Wh-what!? FUTABA!"

Oh, shit—

"HIKAWA YOU FUCKING BASTARD I SWEAR TO GOD IF YOU DON'T WAKE UP RIGHT NOW I'LL SHIT DOWN YOUR JAWS—"

Is the first thing I hear once I'm back in my own body.

The first thing I feel is a couple of punches hammering my face, courtesy of the screaming and cursing Sakamoto.

I kick him off me and scream "SATANAEL!" because we all can expect company very, very soon.

Storms of blood rush out my eyes and mouth. My arms and legs shriek with pleas to let me stop all this fucking madness. I've only so much left in the tank—I must do with it as much as I possibly can. I can't move, I can barely even breathe, I'm still clutching onto Niijima and there's no way in Hell I'll let her go now, a thousand gangrenous divine husks are rushing at me from the skies and waters and what the fuck else can I do?

"Get ready, the Sakuras are coming into the Palace!"

"Wha—how do you know that!?"

"I saw them! EVERYBODY DOWN!"

BLAM

A rifle shot in my front sends five dozen of them into oblivion. BLAM to my left and Satanael shreds seven dozen more into pieces. A slash to my right and four dozen are bisected. Another Megido sends a hundred of them flying and before I can send out another I keel over Niijima because my chest is roaring. I'm having a fucking heart attack right here right now and everyone's all huddled around me because I'm dying right before their fucking eyes. Blood from my face, pouring upon Niijima's stilled expression and I will not let her die, I won't let fucking any of them die, I'll incinerate millions before even one more person I know dies because I haven't fucking tried hard enough—

When I am done their remains cover the seas. In a fifty meter radius from the platform on which all the rest stand, every single beast that's spawned in this miserable world lies dead, floating and rotted and bloated in the oceans. I do not fly to them—the wings on my back carry my exhausted lug of a body over to the spot. Too exhausted to stand I merely lie on my side, as everyone rushes over. The scales and bent bones and chromed features disappear. I'm not even in my Thief's robes anymore. Just in my regular clothes, but I'm bleeding all over, numb all over. What little I can see is awash in red that pours from my eyes.

"FUTABAAAAA—!"

"Guys! Bogeys at nine-o-clock!"

And we have even less time than I hoped. They fall from the sky, both Futaba Sakura and her father.

They are falling...a hundred feet away from us.

"What the hell!?" exclaims Sakamoto.

Takamaki has Salome fly upwards, "What are they doing here!?"

"We got them!" cries the cat. "Joker, take care of everyone coming from the ground! Everyone else fly up and get them down from there!"

Too late.

An Isis and a Garuda charge at them long before any of them can—and we hear a scream.

"SOJIRO!"

"SHIT! EVERYONE GO GO GO GO GO!"

Blackbeard and Salome release fire and lightning upon all who would dare follow after them, while Cendrillon spears the Garuda and Mercurius sends a flurry of winds that strip Isis to her bones. I'm not able to do much, just fire at everyone and everything that's straggling behind them—it's Mercurius who carries Sojiro Sakura, and Cendrillon who carries Futaba Sakura—the girl is sobbing and crying because Mercurius is bringing her father down to us, her father who is bleeding profusely from an opened gash in his chest—

"Jesus Christ," Takamaki says in perfect English.

Sakamoto all but hyperventilates on the spot, "We're too late, holy fucking shit we were too late—"

"Sojiro—SOJIRO...!"

"I'm healing him, he's fine! He's fine! He's still alive, he's fine!" cries the cat. "I—okay, I won't be able to bring his limbs back, but I can stop the bleeding—"

I'd get over there and use Victory Cry—I'd crawl on my hands and my knees and get the fuck over there as soon as I possibly could.

But Satanael's dispersed. The most I could ever muster out of my cold and drained body is a leaning motion that ends in a collapse. I haven't even the strength to summon anyone or anything. I won't be able to heal even a single one of his open, gaping wounds.

Yoshizawa's bawling in horror as Sakura goes to her father, clutches at his hand and cries over his gushing wounds, uttering as she cries, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry I'm so sorry, Sojiro, Sojiro please don't die please, I should never have, I should have—I'm so sorry for hurting you Sojiro, Sojiro please don't die I'm begging you—"

"Futaba...," he all but sighs out as his skin goes pale, as his eyes begin to haze, as the blood flows and he holds her face, his own blood getting all over her and himself, "you never ever hurt me, not once."

"Sojiro...! DAD!" The girl just holds her head in her hands, shaking and shuddering and groaning in mental anguish, and suddenly all the monsters stop dead in their tracks—the girl is screaming and crying, all that courage she'd built up in herself is scattered to the winds and the winds howl in laughter and rage and despair. The Shadows all speak as one and their voices swallow up any reason—

W̵h̀y̸ ̕w̨o͟n̵'̢t̵ ̸y͜o͟u͝ ̢f̨u͢c̸k͠i̡n͞g̢ ̶S̀A̵Y͘ ̷s̸o̢m̡e͜t̷h̢i̵n̵g̶—̸̕͟͞͞͞͞ M̵̗̆Ȗ̷̲R̸͖̀D̷͙͝Ȇ̵͚R̶̙̆Ë̸̥R̷͇͂!̴̫̒ ALL YOUR FAULT WHY W͞O̢N͝'͠T҉ ͝Y̶O͡U͠ ̀L̶E̛ÁV̀E͠ ̵M̧E͏ ̕A̡L̕O͝N͞E͡,̷ ̕F̶U̸T́A͟B͜A̴!̸?͡ ̵ Y̴o͟u͜ ̨k͠i͝l̴l͘e̵d̵ ̡h͟éŗ,̵ ̛I̷ ̨k̸n̕o͏w̵ ҉y͘óu̶ ͡d̡i̢d̨,̴ ̵s͘h͞e̛ ͘s͝h̕o͡u͜l̶d̡ ͝h̷a̵v̴e͟ ͡h͘a̵d͢ ̛t͏h͢è ̢a҉b̢óŕt҉i̶o͏n͞—̕ ́ ALL YOUR FAULT ̢I͏f̢ ͢s͘h̕e͜ ̀h̵a̛d̛ ̛m̢i̷s͏c҉àr͝r͘i̶e͘d̨ ́s͢h̡e̴ ̨w̶ơu̧l̡d͏ ̨h͟a̡v́e̶ ̛b́e̢e͢n̴ —͏̷́̕͜͞͞ ̶̨́͘͘͘͢ ALL YOUR FAULT ALL YOUR FAULT ALL YOUR FAULT — I '͡M̀ ͞S̢O͞R̴R͝Y͢ I҉ ͡D͡I̶D͘N͏'͘T̀ ͘M̶ÉÁN̨ ̴I̸T҉ ̸I̕ ̕D͘ĮD͡Ņ'́T̨ ͠I͞ ͏P҉R͜ǪM͞I͝S͝E͏ W͞H͏Y̴ ͢C͠A̶N̛'͟T́ ̀Y͡O̸U̷ ̕J́U͟S͘Ţ ̨S͏T̀ÒP͠ L͡O͘O̧K͜I͞N̸G̵ ͏A҉T̀ ͞M͜E̕!̕?͠!̧?̕!̡?͢ W̛H͠Y͢ ̨W̸O̧N̡'̶T̢ ͢Y̢O̕U̴ ͠L͢E͡T́ ͘M͏E͜ ͏D҉I͜È!̴?͢ ALL YOUR FAULT ALL YOUR FAULT ALL YOUR FAULT —̸̕͟͞

The cat exclaims desperately as flesh covers bone and bleeding stumps begin sealing up tight,"FUTABA CALM DOWN, I KNOW THIS LOOKS BAD BUT I'M HEALING HIM—"

"I'm sorry—" she cries, bellowing out as she clutches her head and covers her ears and shuts her eyes and curls up over her father— "I'm sorry! I'm sorry!"

"HE'LL LIVE, HE'LL LIVE GODDAMMIT LISTEN TO WHAT I HAVE TO SAY—fuck this! It's all coming back to her in one big wave! We've gotta stop the voices now!"

Sakamoto cries, "But how!? There's a million of 'em—"

"Sorry I'm late."

One slash. A wall of monsters splits in two.

A man, covered in blood and dressed in a red leather coat, steps on over to us with a massive sword over his shoulders. We all turn to face him, Sakamoto in particular almost overjoyed to see him alive, but he's only looking at me.

"I don't have any more heals on me—you alright, all of you?" I lift my head up to him, bloodied as it is. "Stupid question." Then he sticks a hand out toward me, his mouth curling into a gloating smile. "Kid. Form a Contract with me."

"...what?"

"She's confused, and scared, and running on everything that'll end up killing her down the line. My abilities are dampened now, kid—this realm's all messed up. I need to channel myself through someone else, you want me at my best. You wanna save this girl. There's a thousand of them and only six of you. I just so happen to like you, basket case that you are. And besides...," turns to everyone else, "you guys have good taste in pizza. So am I in, or am I out, kid?"

"You can't!" cries the cat. "He's too strong for you, he'll fry your brains if you try to summon him!"

"Then only until we're able to give her all the time she needs," I decide.

"JOKER!"

I take him by the hand, and say the same thing I said to the Hell Biker. "I chooseth this fate of mine own free will."

Dante smiles, laying a hand upon my shoulder as he imparts, "You're the weakest one here, kid. But always remember: strength is a choice."

And suddenly, I am rejuvenated.

But that feeling ends as quickly as it began.

"Your heart is human, kiddo. But your soul reeks of Hell."

KKKRKKKK—

"ARGGHHHH!"

Everyone screams out my name, but they're forced to kill again, forced to turn away and turn back to the beasts that encroach upon us all. Someone's cutting through and splitting my brain down the middle as I feel my muscles quake and bulge, my nerves and arteries swell, my eyes threaten to jump right out of my head—

"You'll be able to do this. It's a power only I can give you, but it'll cost you. Pain and agony you'll feel for the rest of your life. If your will ain't strong enough, you'll die right here and right now. On the spot. Is it worth it to give your soul, even for a short time, to one who's been touched by demons?"

I see what I could be, I see what I could become, I hear Dante's voice scream in whispers in my mind and I feel fire filling my lungs, ice gripping my heart, hurricanes filling up my guts and sulfur spurting out every orifice in my face and I say YES—

"Then all you need do, Little Lucifer Junior... is say two words."

I hear the fighting.

I hear the chaos rage, as Personas are summoned and the world trembles from all the horrors they're trying to keep away. But none of that really matters anymore.

I see Futaba Sakura crying in her father's embrace—I see Sojiro Sakura holding her close and trying to seal his eyes shut from the carnage.

I see Niijima in my arms, stirring awake.

I prop her up against the sarcophagus, allowing her to sit upright. She strains to awaken fully and when she does she sees an expression on my face I don't know how to describe. But whatever it must look to her, the only face she can give me in return is that which one would give in the face of a creature they no longer can understand.

Strength is a choice, Dante told me.

I stand once more on my own two feet...

...and let a thousand arms drag me down into the Underworld.

"DEVIL TRIGGER."

Then everywhere I feel a pain that should never be felt by mere mortal men—my head bends and morphs and takes on the form of a hammerhead shape as my skin turns black and my robes turn red. Silver rib bones burst out my chest and gleam, as a pair of black wings rises on up out from the back of my waist. My hands and feet grow clawed and scaled as my flesh becomes strong as steel, and everything and anything that had once kept me human slowly disintegrates. I feel rivets develop on my face as though I am turning into a machine—my robes no longer flow like robes and instead become a part of me, as if sewn into my bones. I no longer feel the need to eat, I no longer feel fear, I no longer feel exhaustion or rage. My eyeballs boil and a thousand brazen images fill my mind, blasphemous things that ought not to be even conceived by a human mind.

All the creatures that surround us have transformed in my eyes into masses of serrated stalactite teeth—everyone awake sees what I have become and I feel my throat burn. A massive sword almost as tall as I am hangs off my back and I now have the strength to wield it one-handed, a strength that carries me over the waters as I slash and burn and corrode everything in my path. Within just a minute I'm airborne and the mere act of flying obliterates any Shadow in my path, and it's a euphoria you'd never get from any drug, it's a well of power that could rend entire real-world armies and governments asunder in seconds and for as long as I can find it in me to keep this up it's mine, all mine—

And across the skies I fly, annihilating everything that is not human.

When I wake up I'm lying on the ground. Everything I had once just been, is gone. All the transformed flesh and torn bone—my very nature made inhuman—none of it's stuck. I'm bleeding, not even in my uniform anymore—just this stupid skinny kid in tacky clothes with blood all over him.

Niijima and the others get to me and they all crouch down to try and fix me up. The cat in particular gets its paws over my bleeding and broken face—I don't hear any one of them. I can't. Through my ears there's this horrid ringing noise, but I know they're calling out my name. I know they're arguing over how best to fix me, on what to do next.

I see Makoto Niijima laying a hand on my face, as the cat gets to another broken part of me. I can't feel much of anything at all but I can feel her touch.

I can feel her—I see her eyes and I'm so happy they're open and alive. I'm the happiest I've been in years, for none of them have died.

"Hikawa..."

"You're...all...okay...?" I'm able to barely throat out.

"You're exhausted...," she pulls me up over her shoulder, as the cat fixes my spinal cord with its paws.

"You both are," it says. "If either of you summons your Personas any time soon, you'll both be in comas for I don't know how long. It's a miracle you're both awake at all."

"What happened," I exhale, "to Sojiro Sakura...?"

"He's alive. Barely. You bought us all the time we needed to tend to him."

We all make it over to him, practically crawling, kneeling over his half-corpse. His skin is pale but it's nowhere near as bad as it had been just moments prior. The bleeding's stopped, though his clothes are still coated in red. He looks bizarrely, sagely contented, even though he'd had an open wound stretching from chest to stomach diagonally. Futaba Sakura is sitting over him, drenched in his own blood, still sobbing profusely.

"What... have I done...?"

Niijima turns to me, and I nod. She unhands me but makes her way over to the girl, "Sakura, listen to me."

"I just keep on hurting people. I just keep on doing things that destroy everyone around me and I... I don't deserve them. I've never deserved any of them."

"Sakura, listen to us, if only just this once—"

I SHOULD NEVER HAVE GIVEN BIRTH TO YOU.

No.

Out from the waters, she rises again. Her massive clawed hands gripping the sides of the platform we're on. Her fur and flesh are undone and she's ashen black, charred and burnt and bloody. She rises upwards and out from the sea of blood, sending corpses of gods raining down from her head and her shoulders. Her wings are shredded with dead and dying feathers, her face is still black and empty and void of expression. She does not have a lower half, this is entirely her upper torso from the head down to her midsection. The scale becomes more apparent to me, apparent to all of us here and now that she's so close. Or perhaps after everything I, Dante, and Niijima had done to her, she had somehow grown bigger.

I'm not even a speck of dust compared to her—we're not even really ants.

I SHOULD HAVE STOMPED YOU TO DEATH THE DAY I BROUGHT YOU INTO THIS WORLD—

"Sakura!" cries Niijima, "Listen to me!"

She won't, she isn't, she's too stuck on her guilt and grief and rage, "I'm a murderer, I killed, I killed Mom and I almost killed Sojiro—I killed Mom and I almost killed Sojiro—"

"Listen!" Niijima grabs her by her shoulders then, "Sojiro Sakura isn't in your life because you deserve him. He's here because he loves you, and cares about you, and nothing you could say or do would ever change that! And your mother loved you too! If she were alive today she would still!"

"I killed my Mom—"

"You didn't and you know it," declares the cat. "You've been filled with so many lies that people have told you and you've told yourself that you can't even remember the truth!"

Niijima cuts back in, "It's buried in you, deep down! It's a part of you, Sakura! I know it hurts, but you have to face it!"

"I—I can't...! I can't, I...!"

"Your mother could never hate you!" Yoshizawa cries out, kneeling next to Niijima, as Sakamoto begins to notice.

"Guys! The wind's gettin' all fuckin' hazardous again, you better make this shit quick!"

Cyclonic clouds appearing overhead. Sooner or later the lightning and hail and rain of blood will send us all flying off of here, I can feel it. Darker, darker become the skies.

Takamaki's turn, "There's no way that's your mother! It's just an illusion you created!"

"She never abused you, never hurt you!" cries Niijima, "Boss told us! He said she did her best to raise you all on her own! She loved you! For everything that you are! Please...!"

Futaba Sakura screams then, she screams as the world goes black and she's forced into the recesses of her own heart—

IT IS ALL YOUR FAULT! roars Mastema, IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN YOUR FAULT! NOW IT IS YOUR TURN TO DIE, FUTABA—

BOOM

"What the hell!?"

Suddenly the titanic Manikin of Wakaba Isshiki is sent back, most of her sinking once more into the red seas as the left clavicle of her collarbone is punched through. She roars violently and we turn to see where the hell that had come from—

A jackal-headed Lord of the Dead. He bears Egyptian robes and a scale in one hand, glaring at Wakaba Isshiki's cognition before shifting his fierce gaze onto us. I hear his name as Anubis but I see him as Sojiro Sakura. Next to him is a girl in a school uniform I do not recognize. But the girl herself, I recognize all too well. Messy hair and freckles over her cheeks—green eyes, and a blood-red scarf. She is at once Kana Kohaku and simultaneously Ammut, Devourer of Souls — a massive crocodilian beast roaring and raging for a fight.

And finally, standing between the two—a Pharaoh dressed in rags. She bears Futaba Sakura's face and hair, but wears topaz eyes.

The three of them say at once: "Futaba Sakura—remember."

In a deep and dark void, Futaba Sakura is curled into a ball as her Shadow stands overhead. None of us follow her here, for this is in the deepest realm of the cage that's become her mind.

"You're the reason she committed suicide. You were just getting in the way of her research. The note compelled you to believe it was suicide."

"The note...I..."

"The men in black read it out to you and you believed them, you believed them because you were so destroyed you felt no reason to, otherwise. It was filled with all her complaints... about you. You believed them so much that you believed you threw your own mother into the car that killed her."

"I...I couldn't have..."

"You did not throw her into the car. You wanted to believe you had, but you had not."

"I was holding onto her the whole time. How else could it have...?"

"The shock and pain led you to avert your eyes. Avert it from the truth."

Suddenly the memories flood in. They storm every single inch of this realm, so clear as day the girl feels as though she's been transported through time.

Wakaba Isshiki is a beautiful lady who puts on a perpetual stone-face whenever she works. She wears silk-black shortly-cut hair, a sleeveless black shirt, and dark slacks with heels. She wears glasses and the lenses gleam a bright white that consumes her eyes. Futaba does not ignore her mother's work as children her age normally would, instead the terms are absorbed, memorized instantly. Her chest aches when she sees her mother's back, for that is what she sees of her mother for most of the day - and she hopes, for as focused on her work as her mother is, that her mother knows she tried to understand her and what she does.

Futaba Isshiki says she'll be able to handle this but within a month she caves, and one lonesome Saturday night she pleads with her mother to come to dinner. For Futaba does not want to eat dinner alone tonight, and is it too much to ask her mother for just one night of dinner, as a family?

Mom... I'm tired of eating dinner alone all the time. It's always just convenience store bentos. I wanna go somewhere! Take me on a trip!

Don't be so selfish! You know I'm working hard to support you, right!? She remembers that, she's remembered perhaps only that for years now. But the other half has been dredged up from the darkness. I promise you. Once I'm finished here, I'll be able to find some time for us to go somewhere. We can have as long a trip as you want.

Futaba Sakura remembers, she remembers everything. Her mother's scolding, her mother's smiles, her mother's encouragement, her mother's rebukes, her mother's aggravations, her mother's love, her mother's undying devotion, her mother's embrace, her mother's eyes, her mother's smile, her mother's endless compassion, her mother's determination, her mother's warmth—the way she'd hold her when she was sick, the way she'd calm her down after a tantrum at school, the way she helped her with homework and advised her with relationships and making friends and just being there when she needed someone to be there—

"What denies you is an illusion. A curse put upon you by the heartless. And yet you cowered away in fear. And that fear nearly cost you your father."

A big black box on wheels shimmers in the noonday sun, screeching mad.

A tall woman with a bowl cut and glasses, I see her plain as day. Vermillion pours from her exposed knuckles and destroyed fingers. She is mangled under the car, her limbs and spine folding underneath the wheels.

But before this she is walking, walking into the street as her own daughter tries pulling her back with tears in her eyes.

She walks and her eyes are bleeding and Futaba Sakura desperately tries pulling her away from the car, away from her demise, neglecting to get herself out of the way—

And Futaba Sakura finally realizes that she did not push her mother into that car.

Wakaba Isshiki grabs Futaba's shoulders, shoving her away, but not far enough—

And if she had not done just that, Futaba would have died alongside her.

"Would the mother who loved you so much ever write a letter telling all with ears to hear and eyes to read, how much she hated you? Will you obey the cursed words spat out by a seething illusion? Will you doom yourself, and those you know you love, to a lifetime of lies, death, and misery? "

For perhaps the first time, in all her life, Futaba Sakura knows exactly what she wants.

"I...I want...," tears storming out her eyes, confidence forcing her to stand upright once more, "I want to protect Sojiro. I-I want to get us the hell out of here! I want to find the people who killed my Mom! I want to remember her for who she was! I want to remember all of it, the good and the bad! I don't wanna lie to myself anymore! I want to live! I WANT TO BE FREE!"

"Then let us form a pact. No mysteries nor illusions shall deceive you, any longer. "

"HOLY SHIT!"

We all of us get out of the way, Niijima dragging Sojiro Sakura out of the path as something gleaming and golden and massive emerges from Futaba Sakura's head—large enough to crush us had it ever decided to run us over. I've read of vehicles of this nature in history books—it is a Panzer tank made of gold, from the panels making up its frame to the treads and the wheels, to the barrel of its cannon and its exhaust pipes. Atop the driver's hatch is the head of a bull calf, also made of gold, gleaming glowing red eyes.

"I am Thou. Thou art I.
From the Sea of thy Soul, I cometh.
I am the Golden Calf, Apostate Idol."

"Would you look at that...?" the cat smirks.

Futaba Sakura awakens in a world of computer screens, all over. Codes and data appear in floating text boxes, freely manipulatable in every sense of the word. Her clothes have transformed into a red-and-black bodysuit covered in panel lines like she's a piece of hardware, over her eyes a massive headset of goggles that enable her to track even the tiniest of details, details that would otherwise go unnoticed—

—such as what to hit, and where to hit them.

But we don't see any of this. All we see is a tank that's dropped where the Palace Ruler ought to be.

"S-Sakura!?" cries Niijima. "Are you okay!?"

FUTABAAAAA!

~ I'm done lying to myself! ~ she responds, in a voice that flows directly into each of our minds. ~I won't let these distortions fool me anymore! I won't be led astray by anyone else! I'm going to trust my own heart and my own eyes to distinguish the truth from the lies!~ The cannon lifts upward.

"Uh, Sakura, we're still here—

~There's NO WAY you're my Mom! You're just a fake that I created because I was too scared to face the truth!~

"Sakura!?"

~I'LL NEVER FORGIVE THE PEOPLE WHO TOOK MY MOTHER FROM ME! AND I'LL NEVER LET ANYTHING HERE OR OUT THERE TAKE SOJIRO FROM ME, EITHER!"

"Oh, fuck."

"EVERYONE GET DOWN!"

Mastema roars and tries to bring a hand down but the cannon lets loose something massive, something all-consuming, something real and true, and good.

And the light takes us all to pieces.