.

.

.

I said Honey, she said Twenty, I said, Get out, you fuckin' whore!
She put on her clothes, headed for the door
Then said, Welcome to the disease there is no cure for!

8 / 15 / 2016

The priority is getting out of here. But given that the host of all our nightmares is standing before us, in the flesh, you can imagine we aren't thinking much about getting out.

I hear another name, one that is spoken by Mitsuyo Togo:

"Mizuchi."

Suddenly, I suffer a strong sense of vertigo.

You received a taste. Now I shall provide you the full course.

Suddenly the walls of the tank are ripped away, torn to pieces bit by bit. We all of us hear Sakura scream, as if her skull's being crushed on all sides. Maruki rushes to her first out of all of us but once everything gives way the whole world turns white.

It takes me five minutes, ten minutes, five hours. I'm awakened by Niijima's voice.

I tear myself up from the ground - I see her, surrounded by a blank white fog, covering her ears. A voice, ringing all around her, all around me.

"Stop... stop it...!" she cries desperately, keeling over as she presses her hands against the sides of her head. "Stop it now! Get out of my head!"

Makoto Niijima. Queen. Student council president of Shujin Academy. I see everything you are. Everything you hope to be. Everything you know you are not.

She roars in rage and summons Johanna. I'd rush to her but the air is thick with a pressure that weighs on my body so heavily I may as well be underwater. I'd call out to her but not a sound comes out my mouth - when I try to scream, the walls of my throat don't even vibrate.

Creatures emerge then, from out of the fog - I recognize their faces though I do not know most of their names - they are from our school. They are all naked, bloody handprints upon their bodies - their lower parts are torn and mutilated, bleeding and dripping profusely upon the ground. As the fog parts I see where we are, where we've always been - the lobby of Shujin Academy.

They all reach towards her, groaning out her name.

"No, NO!" Niijima screams, "STAY AWAY FROM ME!" as she hurls carpets of nuclear fire upon them all.

You knew of Kamoshida. You knew of him and had done nothing.

"SHUT UP!" she bellows, white-hot volcanoes of fission vaporizing the first wave - but they keep coming.

The corpses all speak, one by one by one. In one voice, their blank white eyes piercing into her soul: Petulant child. Useless child. In your heart of hearts you knew! How could you not have known?

"There wasn't, I could have, I - I wanted to do something, anything, but - "

But you were AFRAID!

The chorus rings so loudly she collapses off her bike, and is left writhing on the floor. Covering her ears and huddling to herself like a child.

You were afraid to confront him, to confront anyone - to even approach your whore sister to help save those you've loved. You were afraid to pursue the truth! You were afraid to pursue justice! You were afraid to ruin your sister's reputation!

"Stop-"

You were afraid to rock the boat!

"STOP IT!"

You were afraid to do anything which ran even the slightest chance of ruining your future!

"STOP!"

But more than anything, you were afraid that even if you did end up doing anything, not a soul would listen. Nothing would happen. And you would just be as useless as you were before you even started.

Suddenly a figure lunges at her then, pouncing upon her, pressing upon her center of gravity. It is a rotting, naked, bleeding Shiho Suzui - covered in gore and viscera. She gets her hands in a vise around Niijima's throat and from there her mouth contorts into a jagged smile.

"He took everything away from me!" Suzui roars, "He took everything and you did nothing! You did nothing and you're here, alive! You deserve nothing! Not even to breathe, not even to live! You deserve everything I went through and more, and more, and MORE-"

Niijima wants to fight back - she is kicking and screaming and thrashing about, pounding against Suzui's face with enough force to break bone and tear flesh. She punches and keeps punching, to the point where Suzui's face sloughs off in big bright red chunks and reveals her sister's-

"Our father died pursuing some lofty sense of righteousness and left us behind to pick up the pieces!" she howls, the grip around her throat ever tighter now. "Right now, you're useless to me! All you do is eat away at my life!"

At that Niijima's face just turns purple. Whatever force carried her arms forward has dissipated. Right then she just lies there, and lies there, and lies there -

"MATADOR!"

I'm able to pull myself free of the pressurized air, Matador rushing through and killing everything faster than we had ever considered possible. When she or I can see anything, we see parts flying through the air - eyeballs falling, half-skulls splitting, brains and organs splattering upon impact. When I have her in my arms, we're both of us surrounded by the rotted parts of our schoolmates, her family members - the people she thinks she's failed.

"Snap out of it," I tell her; she's barely listening. "Niijima."

"H-Hikawa...?"

I get her up on her own two feet, standing up with me. "Come on. We have to-"

Suddenly a bright white searing light bursts through, and my arms become a whole lot lighter. Once I'm able to see again, I realize Niijima's gone.

"Joker!" I hear someone cry out - I whirl around and am suddenly forced to curling in a ball. The rocket barely misses me - if I had not crouched it would have crashed into my face.

"Hikawa! Help me!" We're on the school roof. The same one you're thinking of. Takamaki's walking onward, towards the fence at the edge. "I-I can't stop! My legs are moving on their own!"

Ann Takamaki. Lady. Gaijin whore, Kamoshida's bitch. I see everything you are. You threw her to the dogs.

"I thought if I just put up with him he would spare Shiho! I thought I was doing the right thing, I-"

From the edge of the roof we see a hand rise up, clutching the chain links. Climbing upwards to the edge of the fence, another constructed Shiho Suzui rises upward, her neck bent such that her head is facing us upside down. Takamaki is unable to do much else but scream - even as I grab her by her waist in the hopes of pulling her back, she continues walking forward, pulling me along.

"I was afraid of him and you knew it," the false Suzui speaks. "Do you know what he did to me?"

Takamaki's eyes well with tears, "Shiho - I, I never wanted to -"

"No. You could never know. You never threw yourself on the line for me - not until after I threw myself off this roof."

I summon Satanael simply to hurl Takamaki away from her, and once he's gotten her on the furthest end of the roof I whip out a pistol and shoot Suzui point blank in her skull, sending her flying off the roof.

I hear Takamaki cry out "SHIHO!" as she pulls herself away, rushes forward - I grab her and I tell her to fucking snap out of it but something grabs Takamaki from behind and pulls her away from me.

I rush to get her but I'm grabbed from behind too, they dogpile me and force me down. A dozen Suzuis all with the same horror-stricken expression - but someone else grabs Takamaki and grips her throat, landing a hand hard upon her right breast.

It is a man we both know intimately, in the most horrible sense of the word. Over her he stands, drool dribbling down his face - he too has his neck bent and snapped, to the point where the top of his head brushes against her shoulder. Takamaki thrashes wildly, screaming, desperately trying to wrench herself away.

"Oh, the things I would have done to you," he laughs.

At that a fire rises in Takamaki's eyes then, something great and terrible - at once everything burns. When I open my eyes I see Takamaki, engulfed in bright blue flames - her golden locks flaring upward like tornadoes. Everyone that had once surrounded us has melted away into flecks of blackened bone and sloughs of burnt flesh.

"YOU WILL NOT TOUCH ME!" she spouts, great infernos pouring out her mouth for every word. "YOU WILL NOT TOUCH ANYONE EVER AGAIN!"

I try calling out to her once more but something explodes, sends me flying. When I land I roll and tumble along the ground, stamping out any flames that caught onto my coat.

"Hikawa!" I hear someone cry out, and when I turn to face them, I immediately have to crouch down and cover my head with my hands. The tank missile flies right over me, rippling through the fog. When I lift my head up I see a golden tank with a bull head in the front. "You're alive!"

You've enough strength of will to... intervene. Very interesting.

"What's happening!?" I cry out, the hatch on the tank popping open. The cat and Sakura rush out then.

"Illusions! It wasn't Mitsuyo Togo causing them! It was the snake on her arm!" Cat exclaims.

"We have to find it and kill it!" cries out Sakura, pulling up a green panel. "It's sneaking into our heads! There!"

Suddenly I see a clear vision, turning to where SkuI see Sakamoto, screaming and begging and pleading. Four people, all his age, all wearing track jumpsuits - grabbing at his arms and legs and pulling them with enough force to make his bones snap. A man stands over him, wielding a mallet - Kamoshida again. When I reach out for him the fog closes up, and it suppresses my movement again.

"Fuck!" Sakura screams, then we hear a blinking noise - "To the right! It's there! You've gotta break 'em out of it to get Mizuchi to manifest!"

When I'm able to see what's to my right I see another one of my crewmates - this time, I rush to reach him before the fog can close in on me.

"Rumi...!"

I'm in a living room. For a moment I nearly break down right then - but this isn't the living room I know, this isn't the murder scene I've seen so many times in my dreams. An old man and woman lie in the corner, their throats torn. Enough blood on the walls and floorboards to coat most of this place in a steep red. Maruki is no longer in his Thief's robes, but rather a humble dress shirt and black pants, stained from head to toe - in the darkness of the night the red turns black against his skin. He's clutching in his arms a woman with short red hair and eyes like Niijima's -

The woman has a deep stab wound right where her heart is, an open hole in her chest - with her lungs crushed by the knife her breathing comes out in ghastly gravelly sounds. "Rumi. It's me. It's Takuto. It's Takuto, I'm here. Look at me, please. Please don't leave me-"

"Maruki," I grab him but he doesn't register me at all, doesn't even seem to feel me grabbing and pulling at him. Tears in his eyes, blood from head to toe, his lover a corpse in his arms - of course he doesn't respond.

"Rumi, Rumi, I..."

"You love me?" her corpse asks him - her mouth does not move, nor do her eyes. The gaping laceration in her chest moves, it moves as lips would, speaking to him as blood pours out her chest. "No, you know nothing of love. You would rather whisk away my terrors than stay by my side."

Maruki was able to see past whatever vision he'd been shown before - but now he's fallen for it hook-line-and-sinker. Is this the full course? Maruki says not a word at that, just sobs terribly, holding the dead body ever closer to him.

"Maruki, this isn't real," I tell him, knowing he won't listen.

"No. No, I... I can't leave her, I..."

Whatever patience I could possibly have left snaps in twain. I grab him and tell him his girlfriend isn't dead, she's been brainwashed by him to forget he had ever existed. I tell him he did that, and he knows he did that. I smack him hard, twice in the face, and I tell him that this creature is using his guilt to ruin his head. He feels shitty and guilty for brainwashing the woman he loved into leaving behind her past trauma and I tell him he shouldn't. I tell him I'd do exactly the same fucking thing. I tell him that he did all he could and there's not a damn thing he should feel ashamed about, because in a world as horrible as this, when your loved ones are suffering in ways you can't fathom, all you can ever do is do what you can.

Maruki stares at me, the shock wearing off into realization, realization fading into understanding, understanding renewing into resolve. Suddenly I am pulled away by something with teeth clamping down on my shoulder, sending me away as Maruki calls out my name.

As I repair my torn shoulder a fog fills the world ever deeper than before; the cat and Sakura's pleas all but gone.

When the fog parts I am trapped in a place they ripped right out of my own memories.

Roads in the middle of the night. White shirt, casual attire. It's quiet, too quiet. Round the corner I hear people scream. I hear a man yelling; a woman crying out.

I know when this is, where this is. I know what is happening, but even though I know for the love of God, I can't stop my legs from moving forward.

Kazuya Hikawa. Joker. Devil's child. Morning Star. Human asura. Fiend. You kill everything you touch.

When I get there, and I get there, I damn near stop in my tracks at the sight.

That bald fuck, he has them again. Kana and her mother. He's far too alive for his own good so I make my way to him, everything telling me to turn back vanishing the further along I go.

I hear something laughing as I make my way to them all and waste no fucking time. My thumbs rush into his eyes, and he screams and he cries and he weeps great tears of blood as my nails dig into his corneas. Deeper and deeper into his head they go, so deeply and so firmly my hands tremble as he collapses to his knees. Soon enough I stomp his face into the gravel, my heels crushing his nose and eyes and mouth and teeth, forcing him to gargle on his own flesh-

- and Kana and her mother join in.

Kana's mother drives her heel into his throat, howling in rage all the while. Kana grabs my knife from my pocket, as if she knew where it was, and stabs his chest a thousand times. The three of us together beat him till his brains fall out, until his chest becomes a wet slab of glistening red, until the arms he tried to use to push us off flop down lifelessly, until his cries of pain fade into thick gurgles. We laugh all the while, we laugh and we cry and just before I hold the both of them in an embrace I never want to let go, I see flashes of someone else's face in that of the man whose skull I just crushed -

Niijima?

"NO!"

We lie in a lake of blood; since we are crouched over, it's as high as our waists a dark starless sky above us both.

She tries calling me by my name - but her mouth is far too mangled to say it. She's dressed in the clothes she had come into the Palace wearing; her face is destroyed. Her chest is gored open, strips of ground muscle popping right out. Her throat gushing a thick and deep red; she strokes my face one last time with a hand covered in blood. I try to heal her, I call Victory Cry again and again but her wounds never heal. She dies as Kana died; in my arms, staring right up at me with the light in her eye vanished entirely. Her blood coats me entirely as I hold her close, I scream and cry in an anguish I never thought I'd truly feel, and I mourn how again, once more, I failed to tell the person I loved exactly what they meant to me.

You will kill them all, and you know you will. It is simply your way. Your first whore will not be the last.

From out of the bloodwaters their corpses rise and I recognize them all. Sakamoto with his skull opened, split in two, eyes crushed and body bend at a terrible angle. Takamaki torn everywhere but her face, her flayed corpse and torn breasts and opened stomach exposed to the air. Akechi with guts hanging open, speared through the heart with his own blade, his jaw torn from his head and leaving only a tongue lolling out. Yoshizawa with her limbs torn off, leaving her a stumpy torso; Maruki crucified and impaled with a thousand spears; Sakura bisected down the middle like her mother; the cat in various pieces, its eyes floating by.

"But it does not have to be so," a familiar voice tells me.

She rises from the blood, walking to me slowly. A girl in a red scarf with long black hair and freckles under her eyes, a small little infant wrapped in her arms.

"I can be your reality," she tells me, taking my hands in hers. "Forget them. Forget that they ever existed. I am all you've ever wanted. I am what you shall have."

This is a lie, I know that all too well. Yet everything in me tells me it doesn't matter. I damn near take her into my arms and sweep her off my feet. For a moment too long, she nearly has me.

I tell her, "No."

She smiles. "Then let death be your reality."

Suddenly her mouth opens wide, far wider than any mouth should, breaking her jaw completely. A shape lunges from within before I've even the time to react and its jaws clamp around my throat - it is an ethereal serpent, bright blue. I sense it as the very same serpent that was draped along Lilith's shoulders. Mizuchi bears no teeth to sink into my neck but its grip around my jaw is such that if I do nothing in the next seven seconds I will surely die. I've enough strength to call out a name which would settle the matter, in six.

"Matador...!"

I call out his name just barely, a blade coming through and piercing through Mizuchi's length, blade sinking inward between the jaws. I hear Mizuchi cry out in a great and terrible pain as blue blood gushes outward, spilling upon me. In a rage I let loose another scream and Matador pushes the blade forward, charging right ahead -

-and I hear Sakura's voice. "YOU GOT HIM!"

When I'm back in the Palace halls, in the very same hallway we had been in just moments ago, I see Matador impaling a gigantic blue snake right into Lilith's right breast, the two of them run through and screaming as their blood flays about all over the room.

I turn and I see everyone else, alive, not gored to death nor bleeding - I see Niijima with a completely intact face and I very nearly embrace her on the spot-

"DIE YOU FUCKING WHORE BITCH I'M GONNA KILL YOU-"

With a toy laser pistol Akechi fires directly at the screaming, bleeding Lilith but his beams are blocked. A large, musclebound creature with yellow flesh, wielding a naginata and a Japanese loincloth - Kin-ki's able to block every blow with just his massive forearms, and though the beams burn him they don't burrow into him at all. Takamaki and Sakamoto and Niijima charge at the other two oni guards in the place and I realize what a mistake this all was.

"They're too pissed off to think straight!" cries the cat.

Sakura calls out to us as well, "All of you, stop! You're all exhausted! This keeps up your heads'll be too fucked to resist her illusions again! GUYS!"

The closest she gets to a coherent response is from Akechi, who's still trying to fire at Lilith herself. "MY MOTHER, YOU SHOW ME MY FUCKING MOTHER, YOU-"

I want to kill this woman like nothing on earth, and I summoned Satanael to make that a reality, but the truth of the matter is that not a single one of us isn't running on fumes. A reality that grows ever starker when I loose a single shot at Lilith, and blood shoots right out my mouth and nose and eyes. When I so much as open my eyes I see seven of everything. Sounds bounce across the walls and I feel my guts in my throat. I push it all down and I feel someone grabbing my arm - Maruki cries out, "KAZUYA, WE HAVE TO GO NOW!" and before I can say No, she dies here, this bitch doesn't get to walk away from what she fucking did to us I'm hurled into a cold steel box along with everyone else.

When I can see, I see all of us, writhing in exhaustion, lying around and over each other in this cramped and small space. Niijima with a blank stare, eyes wet with chagrined tears flooding down her face - and Sakura getting us up and out of the goddamned Palace, driving her tank a thousand miles away from wherever we were. Though it takes me everything, I pull myself up and grab her by her shoulder, but she doesn't budge from her control panel one second and keeps her eyes forward.

"Did I-"

"No, you didn't kill her, thank God," says Sakura, "you've given us enough time to fuck off."

"Either send us back, or fucking shoot her-"

"I can't," she cries out, "I shoot her, she dies -"

"FUCK HER, LET HER DIE!"

"We can't, we need to get more information outta her! So's we can help stop all the fuckery going on with the yakuza - you all still care about that, right!?" she growls. "'Sides, say I shoot her and she survives - it takes me everything I got to fire a single shot, if she survives then she has her fucking cronies rip apart the tank and grind us to pieces. You're all too stressed out and if I let you all go after her you'd be dead in minutes! She'd fucking brainwash you again and have you rape each other to death or worse and WHO THE HELL'S GONNA STOP YOUR FATHER THEN!?"

Maruki pulls me back, glaring at me all the while. It's enough to render me speechless. It's a look which humbles me, makes me remember where I am and what I'm supposed to be doing.

I turn back to everyone; their faces are pale and they're heaving, shaking with rage and sadness - they look sick, like someone had punched them in their stomachs. All mumbling and murmuring, seething and weeping.

"What happened to them...?" Cat tells me, "Miss Togo's big on psychokinetic magicks. Mizuchi's visions affected your minds and hearts , but Togo made you feel things deeper. Your anger, your regret, your shame, your rage. She amplifies them all, deliberately - it's how she'd have killed you, if we hadn't brought you all out in the nick of time."

I can do nothing but sit there, and gaze at their half-corpses.

This is how the first expedition into Mitsuyo Togo's Palace ends.

.

.

.

8 / 16 / 2016

I have a terrible, awful dream where everyone dies, again. Then I wake up to Yoshizawa, of all people.

"Hikawa?" she asks me. "You're awake..."

I stir myself upright, and I check the window; sunset. I'm in Maruki's room again. Sweating, the whole of me cold and shivering.

"What happened...?" I murmur, but she doesn't hear me.

"Are you alright? How do you feel?"

I want to grab a roll of sandpaper and grind off my skin. I get up off the bed, "Why are you here...?"

"I was called over by Sakura-senpai... she said you all needed help."

"Where is everyone else?"

"Most of them are sleeping in the living room. Others are-"

"Are you fucking kidding me!?" we hear through the door.

"-arguing..."

Akechi's voice. Laughing at someone. I bet I know who it is.

I get up off bed groggily; Yoshizawa grabs my arm. "Don't. Rest. Please."

"I will. But I have to get to them," I tell her. "Can you get me to them? Please?"

She stammers.

"Please, Yoshizawa."

She can't deny me. She gets an arm over her shoulders and helps me get to the living room. Sure enough I see the others lounging around. Sakamoto and Takamaki in a futon on the floor; Sakura on the couch, the cat on her belly. Maruki's nowhere to be seen, but that's probably because he's out fetching groceries or something.

Of course, Akechi and Niijima argue at the dinner table.

"You wish to spare her?" Akechi snorts. "Are you fucking broken?"

"If she dies then we make the whole yakuza situation even worse," she growls. "Bad enough that Kaneshiro vanished into thin air, now another distributor goes?"

"After everything she did to you, to us. You're still a fucking pushover, all this time."

"Call me that again and I'll push you over into traffic-"

"You were all over him," Akechi sneers, obviously infuriating her but he keeps going, "Your skin pressed against his, you wanted to devour him and the only reason you didn't was because he stopped you-"

"Enough," I tell him.

"Were you not fucking satisfied?" He laughs. "Oh, I see, you just want to go back so you can pick up where the both of you left off-"

"I DIDN'T WANT ANY OF THAT!" she yells, grabbing him by his collar and yanking him over the table.

"Assaulting an officer of the court? I get that you want to have something in common with Hikawa, but it's a little overboard to get a criminal record yourself."

I get Niijima away from him; Yoshizawa gets Akechi away from her.

Roughly I tell the both of them to "Shut up," as Akechi gets Yoshizawa off and away from him. "Doesn't she have a point?"

"You got the people you care so damn much about in this mess to begin with," he seethes. "Who put the fucking yakuza in this position to begin with?"

"Akechi-senpai, that's enough," Yoshizawa tells him sternly.

"Fine, fine!" he sneers at Niijima. "She lives. Whatever. Let's see how you deal with it when we get back to her. Fuck him all you want, I guess. Now," he gets up off his chair, "I have work to do. I'll be looking for information regarding these mental shutdowns and for anything we might be able to use to help this whole potential gang war situation. The whole lot of you can sit around complaining about everything for the rest of the fucking day."

Yoshizawa and I glare at him on the way out, as he slams the door in our faces.

"I swear, he used to be so much kinder...," Yoshizawa sighs. "I don't know what happened to him."

I turn to Niijima, who's sat herself down in a chair. Staring at the floor, as if doing so will ease her burned soul.

Makoto Niijima's sense of worthlessness had been beaten into her, by her sister and those in authority - and so had done nothing to stop Kamoshida, for she felt she could not have done anything at all. A self fulfilling prophecy on a truly horrific scale. It is a decision which haunts her to this very day, one that she has spent every moment since awakening to Johanna atoning for. Never more would she deny her own justice. For her to have been bewitched into assaulting a comrade and a friend, someone she said she has complete faith in, must have been an affront to everything she's ever fought for - everything she has become since.

To the freedom she gained by accepting herself.

"I'm so sorry I hurt you," she says to me.

"You've nothing to be sorry for."

"We aren't killing her," Niijima says. "I won't let it happen."

"Even now?"

"Even now," she exhales, all but seething. "I said from the very beginning we won't, unless we have to."

"You have a very tall threshold."

"I hate her with every fiber of my being and I want to see her punished for what she did to us. But I know what I wanted when I started this team, and I'll stand by exactly what I said then."

"No one could blame you if you did just decide to up and kill her."

She takes in a deep breath. "I'm afraid."

"Of what? The thought that if you kill her, you'll become just like her?"

"No. The thought that if I kill her, I'll be fine with killing everyone else just like her." She leans forward, slumping her whole upper body down onto the table. "If I let myself go down into that place, I don't think I'll ever come back out."

"You're stronger than that."

"I wish I could believe you."

"You don't?"

"I thought I was so many things. Then I awakened to Johanna and I realized I was none of them. Did you feel the same?"

"What do you mean?"

"When you... first summoned your Persona. Did you feel like everything you thought you knew about yourself... was wrong?"

"If you can't convince yourself of how strong a person you are, how can you hope to convince me of how right you were to put faith in me?"

"You didn't answer the question."

I inhale. "Tell you the truth... there wasn't much of a difference."

"Oh."

"Sorry if that disappointed you."

"No. It was what I expected to hear," she nods. Then she sits up. "I have your word that we do this my way?"

I nod, "No killing on my part. Though I can't say the same of the others."

"God, I have to convince the others...," Niijima groans. "I've felt absolutely filthy the entire day. I can only imagine..."

I feel Yoshizawa's gaze upon me. She's worried for me, worried for us all; how much of the other day does she know?

I can only imagine how Takamaki feels. Sakamoto. Just months ago a man who thought with his waist used and abused high schoolers under his watch as their gym teacher. They both had feared him, hated him, despised him - Takamaki had even put up with his advances purely out of fear for Suzui.

Sakamoto's reward for the right to not be injured by his own damn teacher was a broken leg.

Takamaki was too late to protect her dearest, most cherished friend, and the man she had put up with for so long remained free to flaunt himself and fuck around and do whatever he damn well pleased.

They became Phantom Thieves to crush people like him, to ensure people like Shiho Suzui would never suffer a similar fate - or at least would be avenged. And after everything they've committed themselves to, someone else nearly forced them upon each other.

Someone nearly forced Niijima upon me - me upon her.

If I had my way I'd fucking gut that bitch to pieces and wear her organs as a trophy.

Niijima wants her spared. I want her dead.

But what if we could circumvent both?

"We should go to Madarame for now," Niijima says. "Maybe... maybe we'll make better progress there."

"Took the words right out of my mouth," I lie.

.

.

.

The massacre was from Texas, so I pulled out the chainsaw
Cuttin' and cuttin', he said Johnny, man, she's dead!
On the news they found remains of just an arm and her head

- Geto Boys, Assassins

We're baaaaack and scarier than ever! Hope you liked this chapter, we're gonna be trying something a little unique for this arc!