This story is a work of fiction. Any similarities to events or persons living or dead in your world is purely coincidental.
Cast Aside, There's No Coming Home
We're Burning Chaos In The Wind
Drifting In The Ocean, All Alone
8/12 Tuesday
Afternoon
Thunder. Static. Everywhere, crashing, crushing, numbing, overwhelming noise. A perpetual slow-motion explosion engulfing and overloading every sense.
Who was she again?
Aiko. Aiko Tsuruga. Yes. Yes, that was it. And Mira and Julian and Noel and Pelagio and Reiha... And Shukiji. She had become completely lost in the unrelenting pressure, in the voice and power and purest malice of the abomination floating before them now. It's original form of a golden brain was straightforward enough. It was clearly the growths overtaking it that were the true source of this horrible vileness infecting their minds, threatening to smash them all beyond recovery.
She had seen a hypnotist at a park once, growing up in Tokyo. He had put on a show, made people do funny things with his strangely compelling voice, a skill she had envied at the time.
But this... this thing... it would have put that old hypnotist to shame. It took every last ounce of resistance she had to fight it, to break free and avoid being drowned in it and just go along with whatever it said. She could see the others all fighting back, struggling to do the same, while Shukiji had already been reduced to a catatonic state by the pain.
"He's... he's corrupting the Shadow!", she forced her own words back into consideration, once again needing to shout them over the roaring winds. "All we have to do is destroy it, just like normal! Leave him with nowhere else to go!"
"Such an apt student that this one has made", the rushing, whispered voice of the entity sounded almost pensive. "Rejecting his people, still he searched the outer reaches of my domain, trying with all his might to find an answer, a way to 'fix' humanity. Unwilling to ever accept the truth that presented itself before his eyes again and again."
Shukiji's mad thrashing only seemed to intensify with its words. His mouth looked covered in saliva and his cries echoed out across the water, and the sight of it only encouraged the beast further, injecting a tone of sadistic delight.
"Understand now that there is no point in trying. There is no point in living. CRY! Cry that there is no answer to be found! For who would know this truth better than I, who am myself all of you humans?"
"Make it stop!", Shu pleaded from his fetal position, hands crushing in on his head until his elbows dug into his sides, trying in vain to make himself smaller and escape notice. "Makeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstop..."
Finally, a gentle green miasma from Noel's crystalline Dellingr Persona covered him, putting his friend a relieved-looking sleep on the transparent floor. Just us and the monster now.
It was the only way she could think of to describe it. Even by the standards of previous Ruler Shadows, this one was beyond hideous. The dark corruption had already spread across the surface of the golden brain, each of the six tendrils occasionally spasming like it had pulled a nerve too tightly. "That's the weak point!", she called to her team, who looked to be recovering from the initial onslaught. "Take out the masks! All of them!"
The beast merely sounded amused by their planning. "The newest bearers of false hope, granted them by the hollow servant. I am no mere Shadow to be banished by violence. I... Am Thou."
"K-keep on talking, big daddy, or whatever the hell your name is", Reiha managed to grate out, summoning Adrestia and preparing her tight-gloved fists. "High-class scum is still scum."
"Whatever your intentions may be", Noel announced, already preparing Dellingr's healing powers in anticipation, "your presence in this world is clearly hurting my friend! I beg you- leave him be, and we shall depart your domain in peace!"
"Sure. Like he's gonna agree to that", Julian scoffed, spinning both revolvers out of their holsters and calling on Wild Bill's fiery power before pausing. "...Actually, that would be pretty damn funny if he did. Come on now, Mr. Hideous Tentacled Abomination Thing. Don't you have any sort of appreciation for fine comedy?"
"He doesn't", Mirambela declared less glibly, drawing her daggers and summoning Oya. "You can all feel it too, can't you? This thing... I can feel the pure hate coming off it. It's like a hundred billion Benihime Kujous crammed into one. It hates us. It hates everything. Everything."
"And I can detect that its power is magnitude beyond anything I have ever felt before", Pelagio warned them, drawing his blade and shield, the elegant Persona Galahad at his side. "We must proceed with extreme caution, captain."
"We will", Aiko promised, choosing the semi-transparent angel Virtue Persona for her opening. "But at the same time, we can't hold anything back here at all... Take him. Take him out now. Hit him with everything you've got! Don't let up for even a moment!"
"Right!", they all echoed loudly. Anything to block out the horrendous presence filling their minds.
"Per-"
"So..."
"NA!"
There was no audible starting bell, but they managed to attack as one all the same. Rapid gunshots from Julian battered one of the pale masks while a fork of lightning from Mirambela zapped another. Before she could even draw a bead on one of them Aiko felt the encouraging presence of a defensive-boosting skill washing over her, followed shortly by an agility bump lengthening her strides.
Focusing, she was able to call on the powers of her newest Persona, the statuesque angel Virtue, as well: "Makouha!" The stormy sky above only held the orange hieroglyphics for illumination, but dangerously bright light managed to manifest from the Persona's aura all the same, blasting all six faces with beams that reminded her of a trick Jiachi had shown her with a magnifying lens once-
Frowned. One of the shapeless masks had ignored the attack completely. Alongside it, she saw Reiha's wide-ranging darkness attack had yielded similar results- one of the others held immunity to curses. Considering what we've seen of this thing before now we should be grateful it's not entirely immune to that. Still...
The reply from the curse-resisting face caught her off guard; a more concentrated cloud of shifting darkness that felt like liquid weight being added before it shattered, eliciting a surprised howl. She could still make out the other masks doing the same, counterattacking with various skills until they were all driven back into a defensive formation.
"Should've known it wouldn't be that easy to win", she grumbled, studying their enemy and trying to decipher it, not unlike the strange Shogi game they'd just played. "Dancer, are you seeing what I'm seeing here?"
"I... think so", Mira agreed, her own gaze narrowed in equal consideration behind her golden headdress mask. "I'll test it further." Lightning struck the cursing face, the damage causing it to shift appearance again. "Someone else try it now. Anyone but Witch."
Pelagio's strange dome-shaped nuclear explosion struck, deforming the target further still, a combined barrage of gunshots and light beams following up until they could all recognize the changes their attacks had caused. The targeted mask had seemed to melt at first, but it was merely altering its form, like a mass of clay becoming deformed before it could take on a new shape. The new shape had pale hair that was nonetheless recognizable to them all.
It was an exact copy of Reiha's hair, and the features beneath it were beginning to resemble hers as well despite an absolute lack of color or sclera.
"C-copies!", Aiko confirmed. "Six of them, six of us. Each one duplicates our abilities and resistances." As if to punctuate her statement, one of the ones they hadn't attacked much yet released a billowing wave of fire from its frozen mouth, which Noel quickly healed up before the burns got too bad.
Another pale mask acted in response to his action, healing the damaged mask in turn with the same sparkling green glow, restoring it to its previous featureless clay shape. "You are correct. That one is copying Mender's powers", Pelagio noted dispassionately. "Captain, we need to take that one out fast, or this battle will never end. Don't forget that it can most likely revive fallen allies as well, just as Mender can."
Thinking for a moment, Aiko switched her Persona for the fairy Titania. "Virtue can revive fallen allies too", she explained, pointing to another one of the masked tendrils, the one that had been blasting them with the blinding neon of bless attacks. "If that one is copying me directly, then..."
"Oh man. This... this is gonna suck hardcore", Julian spoke for all of them, holding his head at the implications. "'Great Father'? More like Great Copycat."
"I Am Thou", came the amused response, overwhelming despite its brevity. "All of Thou." A wide-spread nuclear attack came next, buffeting them all with car-sized detonations that Mira healed... only to stare up in disbelief as the last masked tendril copied her move perfectly, healing all of its brethren in equal measure.
"Focus on the one that's copying Mender!", Aiko reminded them all. She briefly reached down to her belt for the flintlock pistol only to encounter air and remember that it wasn't there. Kujou had stolen it from her during their fight earlier, and she hadn't yet acquired a replacement.
Instead, it was Reiha's attack that started their renewed assault off, more curse energy closing around the target like a vice before shattering apart. "It copies weaknesses too!", Noel called out, seeing the damage done in-between the near-continuous need for group healing to avoid being overwhelmed by it all. "Witch will be our best shot at destroying it! Strike quickly!"
"Says the guy who can't attack!", Reiha complained before a bright flash drew her eyes back up. The mask imitating Noel's skills clearly didn't have the same restriction as he did; a piercingly bright blast of golden light lanced out to shoot right through her stomach, nearly making her pass out.
The offending tendril shook wildly, as if struck. They all shook for a moment, each shifting around another in a mad whirlwind of ichthyoid flesh until each one was in a different position from before. Only the masks copying Noel and Reiha showed any signs of the previous damage, both of them having moved to the rear of the formation. The rest remained a line of identical copies, unrecognizable from each until they resumed attacking with their borrowed elemental skills.
Not good, Aiko felt her earlier bright confidence- whatever she had been able to muster up after the horrible voice of 'Great Father' had struck them all- begin to ebb, giving way to a mounting despair. He can shuffle them around too. I was going to hit the Mira copy, but... We need a different plan of attack.
"Gunslinger!", she shouted after dodging the retaliation. "Shoot the one copying Mender now! Don't stop, even if some of those shots reflect and hit you, got it?! Keep shooting!Mender will save you!"
The command sounded strange, she knew. Desperate, but Julian accepted it without question. "You got it! Eat lead, you slimy little-"
Finally, something that worked. Each individual bullet he fired didn't do much damage, but the near-constant barrage kept the tendril occupied. Even better, the formless mask copying Pelagio's abilities suddenly stopped its own attack to employ the reflective barrier skill that had proven so useful on the floors below; Tetrakarn, causing one of Julian's bullets to deflect back to him... but it was comparatively minor damage, and easily healed. More importantly, that's two less of them attacking us. We all need to do that, focus on the roles that will keep them occupied until we can actually get rid of one of them in one go.
"Witch!"
Wincing from the most recent light blast, Reiha's voice sounded more ragged than angry. "I'm a little busy here, captain!"
"Get closer to the brain and punch it! Punch it as hard as you possibly can! Don't stop!"
The muscular girl shrieked a war cry and charged. The long-armed strikes didn't seem to do much at first, but eventually the enormous cerebellum began to shake, the attacks from the six tendrils becoming less frequent. And same for everything else they do.
Moving into the spot that Reiha had abandoned, Aiko shifted her Persona to yet another, to the blond-haired Asherah. The strangely-garbed entity's various skills included curses, resuming the assault on the fake Noel mask until it was clearly recognizable... and then a carefully aimed pistol shot from Jiachi took it in the forehead, shattering it completely. The tendril death-spasmed, falling back into the dark miasma below to become one with it again.
"One down!", Julian cried out, his own confidence regained. "Who's next!"
"Mine!", Aiko decided after a moment. "It's gonna-"
Too late, she saw what 'Great Father' was doing in response, the five remaining blank masks pausing a moment. The mask copying her released a skull-shaped curse attack against Noel, but that was merely the prelude before the other four released theirs as well. Wind, fire, nuclear and even more black curse energy blended together into a massive hybrid stream of destruction aimed at their healer.
When the onslaught finally faded, the young blond man looked strangely surprised, his mouth open in an 'O' before swiftly falling to his knees and collapsing. Motionless.
"VITIENNE!", Reiha screamed. Despite the unrestrained terror in her voice, her physical assault on the cerebellum didn't stop, only intensifying instead.
"Switch to the Virtue Persona, captain!", Mira demanded. "Raise him, or we won't last long against the others!"
Long-embedded routines had Aiko about to follow her best friend's sound advice until she stopped herself short. Stared at the white mask copying her and seeming to gain confirmation from its empty gaze. "...No. Not yet! We need to take mine down first! Otherwise it'll just copy my move and raise the one it lost!"
To alleviate Mira's doubts, she changed to the Titania Persona instead, employing healing skills of her own to make up for the sudden lack. Every fiber in her body screamed at her to do just as Mira had told her and get Noel back on his feet... but she managed to resist the impulse somehow. As if obliging them, the five tendrils shuffled themselves around, though once again several of them were too damaged to hide their identity any longer.
Finally, Pelagio had enough. Their targets had been able to stay upright and above them for the entire fight atop the enormous brain, limiting the effectiveness of his greatest weapon against them. Without being commanded, he leaped forward, throwing himself up onto the surface of the brain, his armor protecting him from the elemental siege that now targeted him, for two of them were now employing nuclear attacks- an element he could resist.
The instant his boots touched the soiled callopsum, the enemy reacted. Tendrils shifted about to block his path while another one descended to have the mask physically hammer away at his shield with unnatural velocity. Two more of them flew down to strike him down from behind, and he invoked Tetrakarn by reflex, knowing it would be too late to stop them...
But the hammering double impact he expected never came. Something quick and sharp slashed across their path, damaging both and sliding them away just enough for him to dodge back in time.
His captain was there with him now, the two of them pressed back to back in the middle of the circle as the masked fiends regathered themselves for another assault. All five of the tendrils descended together, but one of them was blasted off its course by Julian's bullets. Another one collided with a burst of fierce green wind, and a third was engulfed in Adrestia's curse skill, each of their teammates choosing their targets and opening the way for Pelagio's sword to strike home no matter how much the enemy tried to protect the 'leader' tendril from harm.
Leaping, spinning, screeching his triumph, he cleaved through the stem in a single strike, leaving the revolting facsimile of Aiko's face to fall back into the fetid marsh that had spawned it. The survivors fell upon them again, but the two of them leaped clear, Aiko seeing the chance to shift back to Virtue before she landed.
"Okay!", she choked out, beginning to feel the strain of the battle affect her. "Raising him now! Cover me!"
She'd had the right idea, she saw. Whether this 'Great Father' had caught onto their plan or he was simply focused on eliminating their leader no one could say. Only that the combined attacks of the four remaining masks flew out to target her as one entity.
For a moment, Aiko closed her eyes expecting to shortly meet the same fate as Noel had... but then a sonic air current blasted into the approaching fire, Mira's power dissipating it into embers. Pelagio's barrier skill slid into place over her, blunting much of the damage before breaking apart under it. The lightning and nuclear attacks that got through to her were still painful enough to make her cry out, but she was still alive.
Alive, and able to concentrate enough to accomplish the same for their fallen friend as well, focusing the Recarm skill to call back a soul before it could depart for good.
Sort of what we've been doing the whole time for five months, really.
At first she thought she'd botched the skill, employing it for the first time, but then Noel stirred, groaned and returned to his feet, dazed and trying to remember what had happened until he saw the giant golden brain before them and everything came flooding back. "Dellingr! Restore us all, NOW!"
"Got two!", Jiachi crowed, resuming his stream of fire on the Mira mask even as the healing power assuaged his previous injuries. "What now, bitch?!"
The four remaining enemies were eager to answer him. Yet again they all shuffled their positions around, becoming indistinct blurs before resolving back into their new spots atop the brain. Again, they unleashed a devastating wave of combined attacks; nuclear, wind, fire and darkness together. Blue, green, orange, black... All of it was aimed at Jiachi, shattering Pelagio's hastily-thrown barrier before pummeling him down no matter how much stubborn grit and determination he tried to muster up.
Seeing and feeling Gunslinger's injuries made her queasy as well. Not good. They're learning, just like us. If they keep on doing that we'll be too busy trying to stay alive to give anything back. Need to change this up again. "TITANIA!"
The fairy queen Persona's power unleashed more of the blue nuclear detonations at her signal, but in reply the Mira copy deployed its own healing skills, followed after by the Reiha tendril sweeping down across them all, the unexpected physical strike knocking them all back several meters. "No fair!", the real thing complained. "I can't do that!"
Trying not to let fear fatally slow them down, Aiko watched the offending stalk return back to its position... and blinked, briefly wondering she was going crazy from all this. "W-wait... no! You can do that, Witch! Next time it tries that, punch it! Punch it hard! You'll see, trust me!"
Reiha certainly wouldn't be able to make direct contact any other way now, they saw. Whatever intelligence was guiding the four stalks had learned the danger of letting anyone get on top of the brain to attack, and kept its distance now. On a hunch, Aiko swapped Personas back to Asherah, merely bracing herself for what would come next.
Finally, feeling slowed to a crawl by what must have been a lake's worth of adrenaline pulsing through her body, it happened before her eyes. The Julian mask deployed another crackling wave of orange fire to knock their team off balance and prompt Noel to heal them. That was merely the opener before the Reiha mask descended again to crush them, the tentacle moving even faster than last time-
Or it would have, but a dark fist of equal size and power lashed out to catch and hold it in place, Adrestia's arm following the gestures of her master. Capitalizing, Julian focused Wild Bill's power and covered the attacker with the dark fluid of the Hydrocaras skill. It didn't seem to make much of a visual difference until Aiko's own fire skill ignited it, Mira's lightning feeding into the resulting flames until the tendril fell apart into lifeless ashes.
"Three down!", Mira cheered, her voice unusually excited despite the heavy exhaustion clearly weighing on them all after such a fight. "Everyone, keep at it! We've got this! We're almost... oh NO-"
As if following a pattern, the next combined attack flew out at her. Orange, blue, green... Employing the agility that her code name belied, she dodged the twin nuclear and fire blasts, deliberately moving herself into the path of the wind attack and letting it wash over her, almost harmless now.
Then the Dream Voyagers counterattacked. No matter the heavy fatigue dulling their bones, no matter how hideous and terrifying and cunning this enemy they now faced, they could all keenly feel the momentum of the battle shifting back into their favor. Their three remaining targets were no longer so numerous or powerful that they were trapped in a defensive position like before, and with their reliable healer on the job any attacks that did get through could be swiftly undone.
"Thanks for the offer, 'Great Father'", Jiachi actually had time to quip now, focusing his next attack to synchronize perfectly with the windstorm Mira had gathered on the opposite side of the brain. "But I already have an old man. And he's enough to be dealing with, yeah?"
The swirling winds took the bursting rose-shaped flames unto themselves before spreading across the length of the corrupted brain as a sirocco, a blazing heat storm that fried all three of the masks equally despite them having inherited immunities from their 'originals'.
Taking that cue, Aiko called upon the holy radiance of the Virtue Persona, which was joined by the single strongest curse attack she had ever seen Reiha manifest. Light and darkness fused together into one, tunneling into the target as a flurry of pencil-width rays flickering back and forth between white and black in picoseconds; impossible to interpret as either color. Expecting a follow-up nuclear attack, Aiko looked around but saw no obvious sign of Pelagio anywhere.
But it didn't matter. Their enemy's main body was a burning wreckage now, and while the three tendrils tried to repeat the sweeping motion from before, that only made them easier targets, and a final shot from Julian took the Pelagio tendril out before it could generate any more protective barriers of its own.
"You're finished!", their captain announced demandingly, eager to end it before they all just gave out and collapsed; the rush she was feeling wouldn't last for much longer, she knew, and the others looked even more haggard and worn-down than she. "Whatever the hell you are, whatever it is that you're doing to Niyoga-kun... stop it! Leave him alone. Get out of his Shadow. He's coming back home with us, whether you like it or not."
But the answer hardly sounded defeated. The disgusting mocking laughter of 'Great Father' only grew all the more terrible to hear, and impossible for them to block out.
"Hahaha. Splendid. Truly splendid. Despite the looming death of their own world, humans continue to cling to whatever foolish hope remains, no matter how dim. Which in turn only magnifies the wonderful results when those hopes are trampled, and utterly extinguished."
"Hope is the most powerful human trait, Teufel", Noel shot back. Though his words held some strength still, he looked the most depleted of them all, having had to invoke powerful healing skills nonstop for what felt like at least ten minutes straight. His priestly robes were torn all over, his face ashen and covered in sweat despite the cool breeze of the tower, yet he continued to speak. "Even when we're told there's no chance of success, just to see for yourselves. Bismillah."
The mockery in the beast's tone felt almost perfunctory. "Truly? Then let us see if this hope you so cherish lasts in the face of my power, children of man."
Aiko was about to command the final coordinated attack when the air twisted, heralding an eruption of flesh at the front of the brain. Something pushed out between the hemispheres, a formless lump writhing as animatedly at Shukiji had been until it burst apart into fragments that dissipated just as quickly into tiny bits of golden nothing.
It was an eyelid, she realized. A warped, twisted eyelid that had destroyed itself through the mere act of opening up, parting lengthwise to reveal a single enormous blood-red optic that stared into them all with the same piercing affect as everything else this creature had done so far. The glowing white slit in the middle regarded them all with brief amusement before the blood-red glow grew further still, concentrating itself into power that even a normal human would have felt through their bones.
Aiko had just enough time to scream for them to get back before the power was an unleashed, a stream of unstoppable destruction that overloaded the senses even more thoroughly than the beast's words and presence. She watched walls and railings and statues Shukiji had built topple and collapse in muffled silence before following them down to the ground.
Then something in her whispered no, and she was back up on her last breath, ravaged but alive. One of Virtue's skills, she was able to remember muddily through the haze and destruction. No matter how powerful the attack, it's able to revive me once.
Her friends didn't have that gift, but they had all managed to hang on anyways, all of them gradually recovering, forcing themselves to stand, or at least kneel... but it couldn't be denied that the beam attack had floored them all, an almighty blast magnitudes greater than the once that Ryuken Samesaji- Prince Taurus- had once defeated them with.
More rapid movement somewhere above them drew her eyes back up to their attacker. Up on the dark fungal crust more things were at work; four revolting lumps like enormous living zits forcing their way out until they burst to reveal terrifyingly familiar sights. Four stalks, and four blank masks, to replace the ones that had been destroyed.
None of them could say anything about it. They didn't need to exchange words to know how bad this was, how horribly outmatched they were now. We only barely beat them before, Aiko knew, and he can revive them. And use that beam attack. We're... we're...
"Do you see now?", the entity which called itself 'Great Father' proclaimed, the one-eyed cerebellum looming over them all, the six renewed stalks waving like a giant malformed hand, the single eye basking in the looks of fear and despair in their faces. "Do you comprehend? There can be no greater power than enmity. Enmity is the ultimate driving force of humanity, its sacred truth honored even by the worst of liars who claim to trust in others. Look at where your so-called trust in each other has brought you now."
Aiko felt her gloved hands clench down, felt feeling in them again. There might have been nothing else in this world that could have brought her out of her blank sense of resignation. Nothing, that is, except for insulting her crew. Gripping her sword hilt so hard she thought she might draw blood, she started forward-
But someone else was there first.
It was Shukiji, she saw. He looked just as worn out as the rest of her crew despite not having fought at all, the horrible pressure from the beast that called itself a God still affecting him terribly, still sending rivulets of pain through his head with every breath as he clutched his temple.
"Stop", he managed to bark out, loud enough to cut through the noise, forcing his eyes wide and alert. "Enough! Whatever the hell you are... Leave them." Standing directly in front of the eye now, he spread his arms in a way that made himself seem slightly larger. "That's the trade. Leave them... let them go free... and I am yours. Now and forever."
Hardly impressed, the beast's words radiated sick amusement. "Shukiji Niyoga. You are mine already. As are all of you foolish children of man. You may all watch and learn, as humanity slides into the final destined oblivion. A well-deserved reward, for making it this far."
Another chill of realization, another shot of emotional caffeine to keep her from falling into the last darkness, as Aiko understood Shu's positioning without needing to look him in the eye to confirm it. He wasn't trying to negotiate with the thing, she realized. He was deliberately moving directly between the eye and her.
He was trying to make it so that either 'Great Father' would kill him... or that she would. All it would take is one slice of her cutlass, through his exposed neck. Then the Shadow would die, and leave their enemy with no body to occupy. They would be saved.
But no. No. That was impossible. She couldn't do that. Not to any human. Certainly not to him.
Great Father was under no such limitations. After a moment of silence, it seemed to lose patience, and one of the reborn tentacles swept down to knock him clear away, leaving her at last exposed to the bloody eye of the beast, nowhere left to hide from it.
"Damn you... damn you! You don't get to decide what guides humans!"
It wasn't much, but the words came to her unbidden, without thought.
"I do not decide", Great Father agreed with her. "I merely reflect the Truth, and seek to undo all of the lies. To shatter the masks, and at long last close the curtain on the final act of the pitiful charade called 'civilization'. That, wayward daughter of the ocean, born from nothing, is my-"
The sudden cutoff raised her hopes enough to incline her head the same way. She didn't need to turn around to see it, as it was reflected perfectly in the sphere of the eye.
A falcon lay perched on the entryway to the lift that had brought them up here. Yet, if it was truly a falcon, then it was one far larger and more savage than any that could ever exist in nature. A colossal avian that seemed to be composed entirely of living forged steel, wires and plating, clean enough to be reflective itself, its mechanical wingspan easily matching the entire width of Shukiji's tower, its hooked talons enough to engulf a person and shred them.
A razor-tipped beak the size of a car opened, releasing a wordless screech of fury reaching across across the length and breadth of Faraway Lands, clearing away the horrible mind static of Great Father's presence even as its size and volume drew its attention fully away from rest of them:
"YOU-
WILL-
NOT-
TOUCH-
HER!"
"You... You are... The reborn soul...!"
The sweeping wings dropped, the first hint of the swoop it was leaning into. The cue for Aiko to break out of her sense of awe, forget all of the times that Mr. Umaeda had sworn to give her nonstop detention for months if she ever so much as thought about doing this, throw her arm forward and fling her cutlass directly into the empty slit of the eye. The blade embedded itself deeply in the eye tissue, nearly to the hilt.
It didn't earn any kind of pained reaction from Great Father- it clearly was beyond feeling such things. It did distract it though; the pierced eye refocused itself on her- a titan shocked to be bitten by an ant- just in time for Pelagio's transformed state to ram square into it, wicked talons digging into the exposed flesh of the brain ignoring the elemental attacks bombarding him as soon as he got close.
Lightning and fire and darkness slammed home and for a moment he faltered... until two streams of green light emerged, from Noel and Mira, twining around the wing muscles to ease the damage. Following suit, Aiko switched over to healing Persona as well, a third river of healing energy joining with the other two.
Regaining his strength, Pelagio lifted off, wings flapping madly to regain his lift until he cleared the rail, his equally massive cargo in tow, still blasting him with every type of attack skill it could copy. Letting the pain out in another animal scream, Pelagio turned it into a power dive across the water, clearing the tower completely before letting go, the talons releasing.
Allowing the Shadow and the entity that corrupted it to return to gravity's embrace and fall into the tides with a splash leaving five-foot waves in its wake that fluted up to crash back down into their own reflection.
For a moment Aiko felt herself sag, prior exhaustion returning... but only for a moment. "Follow him!", she shouted to the others, sprinting ahead to lead the way. "He's not done! Follow Guardian down! Go!"
She didn't wait to make sure everyone else was obeying. A short leap up to the rail left the roaring wind in her ears, the descent after magnifying the pressure for a moment before balancing out, the sight of Pelagio's descent below proving her right.
The falcon transformation was already wearing off, she saw. The enormous spoked metal wings had begun to revert back, sliding back into the main body as it shrunk... but only for a moment. He wasn't fully changed back before the next transformation overtook him, expanding out again into the more familiar shape of their ship, the elegant vessel which had borne them all across this world for five months and more.
From her own distance, Aiko could see the Shadow emerging from the waves, unchanged from before, the black fungus wet and stunned but little else in the way of damage.
Until the ship larger than the mechanical falcon had been slammed down directly on top of it, crushing it.
Aiko hit first, angling for the large main sail to cushion her fall. Within seconds the others slammed into it the same way, following her down before grabbing the ropes to slide the rest of the way to the deck, where she finally studied them, hoping no one had missed their cue. "Wait...Niyoga...!"
"He's here, captain", Noel announced, displaying the limp body of his friend tucked under one arm, his eyes closed, almost looking peaceful.
Of all the impossible things they had just been through, that was one that impressed her the most. "...Stronger than you look, Mender."
"He is my responsibility", Noel reminded her, gently setting Shu down, panting despite his bravado. A tremor shook the deck. "What now?"
"Straight ahead", she commanded without needing to think. "Right to the gate, before that thing comes back. That won't keep it down for long."
"Of course", Reiha shook her head in unguarded amazement. "After all, we only just dropped a freaking ship onto him from thousands of feet up, that's just a love tap aight?"
"For that one", Mira worried, "it might be. I think we should get down to the cannons now."
"Happy to", Julian agreed, running after her to the lower decks. "Cheap OP BS regenerating himself."
A few minutes of searching later, she was proven right; the waves surged back up as a dome, breaking apart to reveal Great Father and its golden host once more. Nearly all of the gold was covered by the darkness now, the statue looking worn and decayed from the mold overtaking it, the blood-red eye opening back up and searching frantically before refocusing on them.
"FIRE!", she commanded.
Fire, lightning, nuclear, curse and wind energies converged one last time, blasting the sides of the creature until the masked tendrils were once again broken, snapped off like rotten twigs. Ignoring the damage, the eye gathered its power once more, preparing the deadly beam to fire-
On emptiness. On the last ripple in reality that marked the closing of the gate back to the world of humans.
Great Father was alone.
And it laughed to itself, static and madness filling its world once more.
The beam didn't touch them, but the pressure it exerted did. Aiko found herself pushed forward as if by a massive wind current, spit out out of the gateway until she tripped and fell in the surf.
Lovely way to come back to reality, she considered, struggling to her feet. The others seemed similarly affected, but she easily spotted Pelagio's motionless form there, cradling the bundle of soaked feathers and bringing him up to the shore.
For a while, none of them spoke. They all sat there, regaining themselves, Pelagio tucked into Aiko's arms while Shukiji lay in Noel and Reiha's. Pelagio recovered first, coughing up water and frantically flapping before realizing where he was.
"...Ah. We must have made it back then."
"All thanks to you, Guardian", she hugged him lightly, staring into his raptor eyes. "If you hadn't transformed and grabbed it..."
"Hmph. I sensed that creature's power building up", he explained. His emotional control was present as ever, but even he sounded harrowed by what they'd gone through. "I could tell that it was preparing a counterattack. Fortunately, my transformation was powerful enough to ensure our survival."
"Against a thing like that", Mira noted, breathing out her own exhaustion, "that's a miracle. Well done, Pela-tori. You saved us. You saved us all. Thank you."
"As is my duty", he reminded them, though there was a definite note of pride in his reply. "I merely did what was appropriate in that circumstance."
"It was his turn to do it", Jiachi remarked more lopsidedly, clutching his chest for a moment to expel something. "You saved us last time, at the Shogi game. Guess that means next time I'll do it. Or Witch will. Fair's fair."
Their captain chuckled quietly no matter how much it hurt to laugh. It was only natural that they would joke to try and defuse the paralyzing fear that had gripped them ever since 'Great Father' had first spoken to them. Now all that built-up tension was bleeding off, and they were seeming to remember what exactly had happened.
"So", Reiha stood, surveying the cloudy coast as if expecting their pursuer to tear through reality to reach them across the length of the dimension gate formed by the sun's dying rays. "That was... well..."
"An abomination beyond any demon I've ever seen", Noel suggested. "A being of pure loathing."
"Yeah. Let's go with that", she agreed, facing Aiko. "Don't suppose you knew about that, did you?"
"Never", she promised. Her own fears were still catching up. "We knew about the Reaper, but that thing... It just came out of nowhere. I thought we'd end up fighting Niyoga-kun's Shadow in the end, not... whatever that was."
Julian looked less aghast, though she was almost positive he was just doing a better job of hiding his terror behind his usual mask of confidence. "After so many surprises, you'd think we'd stop trying to predict what's gonna happen whenever we go into that damn world... but hey, silver lining, at least we found the source of the trouble, right?"
"The source of the..." Mira paused, thoughtfully studying the clouds. "So you think that 'Great Father' is the one behind that world?"
"He did say that it was his 'domain'", Aiko considered aloud. "Not like I'd take something like that at their word, but... nothing else makes sense. Whatevs. It doesn't matter right now."
"No", Noel agreed, calling their attention back to the body of their charge. "There are more pressing matters for us to deal with."
Aiko stared. She had first thought it some effect of the dim evening light, but it couldn't be denied any longer that Shukiji's small face looked dangerously pale. His skin was pale normally, but this went beyond pigmentation deficiencies and into something like blood loss. At least that was all she hoped it was.
"'Great Father'", she guessed, staring into the sleeping face and praying he would wake and stop all their worries. "He affected Niyoga-kun far worse than any of us. Because he was possessing his Shadow. You heard him screaming."
"Kind of hard not to hear that", Jiachi agreed, looking equally distraught as he reached for his phone. "I'll call up my old man then. He can drive Niyoga to the hospital from the campus bus stop. Not too far."
"I'll go with him", Noel immediately volunteered, rising to carry his friend like a broken doll. The rest followed, and more quickly than Aiko might have expected.
It felt like they were trying to get out of sight of something. Something watching them.
8/12 Tuesday
Evening
Coming into the Velvet room wasn't even a surprise this time. Aiko only had to rest her eyes a moment, and there she was, surrounded by soothing blue.
She desperately needed some soothing right now.
"It would seem a most unexpected development has occurred", even the perpetually grinning Igor sounded subdued. "The owner of the forbidden name has once again awakened to reclaim it."
"You know him, then", Aiko nodded quietly. "I had a feeling that you would."
"My master has encountered that entity before", Bartholomew explained, more intent on her reaction than the various tarot cards now stacked on Igor's round table. "But until now, we had no idea how close the danger truly was. Perhaps the Masked Circle is to blame for that."
Remembering back to another hectic day in a semester with many of them, Aiko stared. "Yes. Lady Scorpio described something like that. But even she didn't know the thing's real name."
"Nor shall I dare to speak it here", Igor cast his bloodshot gaze and nose across the table, spidery white fingers folding into each other. "To speak it is to strengthen it, and call to it. What you encountered was only the meanest fraction of its true power. The rest remains within the forgotten city- another name long sealed away from humanity's consciousness."
"Sealed?" Aiko blinked. This had all the trappings of some occult story with a bad ending for all parties involved, yet she also owed it to the others to learn all she could about it. "Sealed by who?"
"By my master, of course."
Igor's creepy smile remained steadfast, and for the first time she wondered if maybe that was a mask as well, that he wore that wide smirk to conceal whatever distress he might feel himself... assuming of course that he felt any human emotions at all.
"The only way to prevent the entity from consuming all humanity was to expel it from all conscious thought and knowledge. As an added precaution, the city it was successfully unleashed in was similarly expelled, kept hidden away in the farthermost reaches of the sea of souls. Thirdly, my master also sacrificed his own name and identity, remaining there in the lost city to help contain the entity's malignant influence."
"That wasn't enough", Bartholomew sounded accusatory. "It's woken up now. And those other incidents... Those ones would be the handiwork of 'Great Father' as well?"
But Igor's flat denial surprised them both. "Hehe. No. Those were not his influence. The others were created on their own accord, spiraling out from humanity's ever-expanding consciousness. I believe that the entity was as well, but it is far older than they. Unlike them, my master's chosen champions were unable to defeat it. Resulting in the situation we now face."
Aiko regarded him with a shudder. Whatever unease Igor might cause her, her fear of 'Great Father' eclipsed it by far. If there was anyone she could confess to...
"If you're right, and what we saw was just a fraction of that thing's power... then nothing can beat it. Nothing."
"The same has been said for a great many other beings of similar origin", Igor noted distantly. "Often, they have been proven wrong. However, this is your journey to undertake, Dream Voyager. Whether or not you would seek to confront that entity directly is a decision that, with luck, will remain yours to make."
"Then there's no decision", Aiko already knew. "If Lady Scorpio and the rest of her Masked Circle are really crazy enough to want to wake that thing up, and let it loose... then I know what we have to do."
"I expected nothing else", Bartholomew sounded oddly proud of her. "Human they may be, but I know better than most just how badly humans can be led astray. They can be convinced that social progress is blasphemy, or that mass murder is salvation. They can be convinced to happily take their own lives en masse with the correct words."
It didn't last. As soon as she realized what he was really implying, the blue-clad attendant was back to his usual grouchy self. "...We won't. We'll stop them. We won't murder them. The Phantom Thieves wouldn't do that, and neither will we. That's our code. The code of my crew."
"So certain of your choice, are you?", the sandy-haired young man suggested. "Even knowing the stakes involved, you still refuse to take the necessary actions, and slay them? Don't you understand yet, Dream Voyager? Some humans... some people... they can't be saved. Sometimes... killing them is the only way that they can be stopped."
"Maybe", Aiko declared sternly. "But it won't be by us. Not while I'm the captain of this voyage. Not so long as we honor the code."
That earned an approving cackle from Igor even as Bartholomew gave her a pitying glance. "You heard her, attendant. Our captain's decision on our current course is already set. All that remains is for us to see it though. For you to continue to aid in the ongoing growth of her power, as you have until now."
"As I will do", Bartholomew agreed sullenly. "For whatever lies ahead on this journey."
8/13 Wednesday
Morning
Lights pierced his eyes like bullets and Shukiji sucked back an involuntary gasp.
Poison. The air was poison.
A hospital room, he saw. Tosashimizu General, most likely. It's air should have been stale, but it tasted worse than rank in his mouth. Instinct closed that down as he gagged, reduced him to small inhalations that still burned his nostrils like fire.
Were they trying to kill him? Were they just incompetent? Have to get out of here. Have to get out of the poison-filled room before-
The door slid open before he reached it. Noel stood there, surprised. "You're up."
"No thanks to these fools", Shukiji growled, ignoring the improvised robe his bed sheets made. "Get me out of here."
"Absolutely not. You need to get some rest, mein freunde."
"Not here", he protested, blocking his mouth with one hand to try and block out the stink. Why couldn't Vitienne smell it? "Anywhere but here. If I remain here, I'll be getting eternal rest. It's poison."
And there it was; that infuriatingly clear-eyed look Vitienne gave whenever he was clueless about something. "If you wish, I will ask the nurse for you to be moved to another bedroom."
So the idiot nurses who had brought him here could chuck him into yet another room full of poison air? "Get me OUT of here", he shouted, pushing past him. "NOW!"
"Niyoga, I cannot... you- no-"
Then a button-nosed nurse came, drawn by the noise, tall and thin in her dress. "Is there a problem? You should get back to bed, young man. You don't-"
There was no point in talking to her, he knew. She was trying to kill him.
They were all trying to kill him, he realized, a chill settling into his frame. They all hated him for what he'd done. He could see that slip, the edge of malice in her pretty face. Lies. Betrayal. An evil nurse who killed her patients.
This was the hospital where his mother had died.
He ran. He had to get away. Get away from them all. All the liars. Ran past empty offices and IV stands and startled medical personnel and-
The emerging bedpan felt like a wall, bouncing him back onto the linoleum butt-first. Strong adult arms reached down to grab him no matter how he fought, unable to resist in his weakened state, helplessly hauled back to bed and kept under watch.
"What happened to him?", he heard another nurse ask.
"I'd... rather not say", Noel sounded subdued, guilty. "I didn't expect him to do that. Forgive us. If you must strap him in..."
Strap him in. Shu howled, forcing his way back up only to be pushed back down and held. "No... NO! They're going to kill me, Vitienne!", he screamed in wild desperation. "They're going to! You have to help! You have to-"
The lack of action from the tall blond boy confirmed what he'd suspected, what he'd feared.
Vitienne was in on it too. They all were. They all wanted to kill him, to punish him for what he'd done in the other world. And he couldn't get out. He'd been betrayed. His best and only friend had betrayed him too.
All he could do was glare at Vitienne across the room, eyes expressing quiet fury. You will pay for this, he vowed. I will get out of this and punish you for every lie you-
No.
No?
He looked again. Noel looked sad and concerned, but devoid of malice. So did the nurses, now. They just looked worried about him, no doubt considering the 'accident' excuse Noel had gotten him into the hospital with to be something drug-related, something he didn't care to elaborate on right now.
And he understood the reasons for their concern perfectly. "What... what... what is this? W-what's happening to me?!"
One of the staff remained in the room to guard him, but Noel didn't care. He moved up near him, gripping his feverish hand. "You know what happened, mein freunde. Think back, and you'll remember."
He felt his jaw fall. He did remember now.
Everything.
The whispers. 'Great Father'. Urges destructive of no equilibrium.
The entity testing the upper limits of his capacity for pain and despair. It had felt like he was dying then. Because he had been.
"It was 'Great Father'", he whispered, staring up into the ceiling light, struggling to form words. "He po... po... poss... possessed my Shadow, and..."
"And that has clearly caused you some serious adverse effects", Noel finished for him. "We brought you here to recover from that. Rest now. Take as long as you need."
As long as I need...
But it wouldn't be nearly that simple, he could already tell. The air still smelled faintly of poison. He still had to fight not to scream betrayal. Paranoia, he recognized in blank shock. The words of Great Father.
"There can be no greater power than enmity. Enmity is the ultimate driving force of humanity, its sacred truth honored even by the worst of liars who claim to trust in others. Look at where your so-called trust in each other has brought you now."
The whispered words of an entity born from a depthless, undying hatred even he had never known before. And even now, he could hear them.
They are trying to kill you. They envy your intellect. They want you dead. They want to extinguish your miracle. They cannot be trusted. Vitienne will betray you. Kill him. Punish him for his betrayal. Kill them all. Kill them. Make them pay for trying to lie to you.
Even the hospital lights felt entirely too bright.
But the one thing he'd held pride in over all others was no empty boast. Now, Shukiji understood, was the time for him to prove that. For the sake of the ones who had believed in him, if nothing else. To prove that his mind was strong. Strong enough to endure even this.
"T-thank you", he stuttered. Suddenly, it hurt to think. "I... I will not... not allow... a-allow... this to... to... to... destroy me. I w-will... will get better."
Noel smiled back in melting relief, taking his hand. "I know you will, Niyoga-san. You are stronger than this."
That, he acknowledged more soberly, remained to be seen.
Within, he could hear the whispers laughing at his fragile hope.
Shukiji Niyoga.
You are already mine.
A/N: Thanks again to EnPassant for the review! Hope you enjoy as we progress.
To answer your question, in part yes the lack of skill use by the Shadows was to prevent Shukiji from easily winning the Shogi game. It makes sense for the character, since he's big on playing 'fair and square', and also arrogant enough to believe he could win without asking his Shadow minions to use their special skills... assuming any of them had those kinds of support skills at all. Most of them would just be attack skills identical to a pieces' regular attack, and Recarm or any healing skill would be functionally identical to dropping a captured piece.
I thought about having a gradual escalation where each side used progressively stronger skills to attack multiple other pieces until the board was utter chaos, but I wanted to save that for the big battle in this chapter.