Author's Notes:
This is a project that has been in the planning, in various forms and drafts, for near over a year, It is, as the summary suggests, an adaptation of SMT Nocturne, Lucifer's Call edition, therefore there WILL be absolutely MASSIVE spoliers. I know that there is a radio rendition of it, but I've never heard it. If the radio version and this one are in any way similar, I do apologize and insist such resemblance is coincidental. I also have not seen any other adaptations of the game, but if any of them exist, then I insist again that any resemblance is coincidental. I took the name Naoki Kashima as the name of the protagonist as it appears to be canonical.
I am not an associate of the creators of the Shin Megami Tensei, nor any related gaming company, nor do I take any ownership or rights of its characters, plot, organizations or ideas. I do own a copy of the game, but that's about all. This fan fiction is strictly for entertainment purposes. Not for profit and thus I will take no financial gain from it.
Dark Descent is rated M. At first, I contemplated dropping it down to T, but as the story took shape in my mind, it became blatantly obvious that it was a definite M, even despite my own conservative opinion. As the rating suggests, this story is not for the faint hearted or immature. Being based upon Lucifer's Call as it is, and the genre being primarily Tragedy with a generous smattering of Angst and Horror, it will contain strong violence up to and including death, adult themes, suicide, torture and course language including swearing and blasphemy. Most importantly, it WILL contain a plethora of satanic references, glorifying of the devil and demons in general and god bashing which will not appeal to everyone. I request all readers to keep an open mind and remain aware of their right to not read further if they are offended. I welcome any reviews of the story, but please don't simply complain about how outraged you are over its content.
Henceforth, any and all author's notes will be at the bottom of the chapters. I find having them anywhere else a bit distracting, myself.
This story will be Naoki/Yuko Takao, as in the teacher in the same game. I picked the Yuko T one thinking it meant Takao, but now I'm not so sure. There'd better not be another Yuko T in the series, or things are going to get VERY awkward.
Oh yeah, and if you haven't yet, buy the game! I highly recommend all of SMT's series, even Demikids for the Gameboy. It's like Pokemon. . . WITH HORRENDOUSLY EVIL KILLING MACHINES! :D
The day is Monday, the time, 11 AM. A bright, sunny day much like any other, and she's contemplating the unthinkable, just as she has done so for the past year, but never with such feeling.
Is this really the right thing to do?
Will they forgive me?
Will I forgive myself?
Yes, almost exactly like any other. She's teaching a class of twenty six students, pretending to be relaxed and normal when she's anything but. She can barely remember the subject she's teaching. The words of instructions are coming out, and they're coherent, but she's not listening to herself speak. She vaguely remembers it as a mathematics class, a subject universally thought of as boring, but she has the full attention of twenty four people in the room. Her mind, however, is elsewhere, not in her body, not here in this classroom. It is to the future.
How could I do this?
She knows what will happen. She knows.
She knows the students by name. Over there is Taichi Tachibana, a young boy with black hair. He doesn't want to be in this class, he wants to be a famous rapper. It is a stupid desire for an intelligent boy. She shrugs her shoulders and tells him he can be whatever he desires. He tells her he'll make a famous record and name it after her, and she is unsure wether it's a compliment or not.
Next to him, making eyes at the more voluptuous members of the class is Isamu Nitta, violating school policy by wearing his hat – again. He is also one of the two in the class (the other being herself) who is not paying attention to the lecture, preferring to ogle the other girls in their general chest regions. She contemplates telling him off, reconsiders. It doesn't matter.
Nothing matters.
Chiaki Hayasaka s raising her hand, asking a question, and the teacher answers it automatically, not even paying attention to what is asked or replied. It could have been about the lesson, about the\ weather, about something embarrassing. She has plans, that Chiaki, plans that are very simple and involve money and power. Preferably as much of each that can be obtained. Those plans are also not entirely their own. She's an ambitious girl with ambitious parents, parents who crush her beneath their heel until their desires meld together and she dances like a puppet on a string to their demands and orders, believing them her own.
I can sympathise.
But she won't.
These 26 children – teenagers, she reminds herself, they're not children, they're fifteen years old – are the future of the world, and it is her duty to teach them about this world that they've had the deep misfortune to be born into. But she's not doing that. She's teaching them a fantasy. She's teaching them that their world has a future. She is telling them they can be whatever they want to be. She's lying through her teeth.
It's only a matter of time before the proverbial ideological bubble bursts, when fantasy dies and reality rises in its place. How will they deal with it when the times comes? Will they cry? Turn to each other for comfort? Perhaps, even seek out a higher power like so many have done in the past. Maybe a select few will even break through the mire and soar above the rest of the world and achieve their dreams and fantasies.
Or perhaps, like her, they will cave in under the strain and collapse back down to earth.
25 of these children are still in the bubble of fantasy, as far as she knows, some of them deeper in it than others. As for the 26th. . .she knows the bubble burst for him long ago. Or perhaps it never even existed.
He's staring at her now, his blue eyes burning into her own, his pen still in his hand as it draws circles in the air whilst he's listening to her speak. . . whatever it is she's saying, she can't even tell. She CAN tell that the schoolwork he is doing right now is not his own. His book is pushed off to the side, completed and ready, because he is an intelligent boy, a boy whose potential far outshines the rest, a boy who deserves far more in life than he receives.
There is another boy in the class, whose name escapes her for the moment. He is a big lump of a person, unskilled in mathematics but exceptionally skilled in bullying and intimidation, with biceps like corded steel cables. For several days now, his test scores have been unusually high – as in 40 marks above what they were before. His parents are ecstatic at his improved performance at school. Apparently, they believe it is because their threat to remove his beloved playstation has finally made him get his act together.
They are fools.
And so the boy with the blue eyes and the black hair and the jacket draped behind his chair is doing the work of someone else because his own marks are higher than theirs and that cannot be tolerated. So they are doing everything they can to equalise the balance board, up to and including threats to beat the more skilled person within an inch of their life. In the school world of ideological fantasy, it is illegal and supposed to be punished the moment it is spotted.
In the real world, it is also illegal. But it's allowed, endorsed, accepted and encouraged, to the point that the ones who stay true and lawful are the ones left behind, and those that report it are ridiculed and ignored. Crime DOES pay. And nice guys (and girls) always finish last.
Yes. She remembers now, remembers why she embarked upon this dark, evil, horrible path. She's seen it for herself, seen just how sick this world is and how its inhabitants are even sicker. She knows how it happened and how it was allowed to happen. She also knows how to make it stop and fix the damage.
But knowing is not doing. And she is struggling daily.
Just like he is. She knows his story – an awkward conversation one time, when they'd only just met. It feels like a century ago. She was. . . not pure then. . . but purER, not as doomed as she is now. She was preparing for an interview with the parents and guardians of the students, and in an offhand sort of way, told him that she was looking forward to meeting his mother.
A long silence followed which had him staring at the floor, she staring at the back of his head with concerned eyes and a questioning gaze.
Then he spoke and she gasped. Another silence, then came the stunning shock of truth and the hasty apologies afterwards that mean nothing.
Forgive me. . . I didn't realize..
And he replies shaking his head. I'm sorry, he had said, a line that he would later repeat verbatim and she would soon know off by heart. He told her that he was used to it, that It was a long time ago. He asked her not to tell anyone.
She does not end up speaking to his mother.
There are other people for her to speak to when she attends the interview. She speaks to them and they discuss his academic achievements (Is he a good student? Yes, he is well behaved, top of his class) She has other concerns, however. She has seen . . . she struggles to put it into words at the interview. Evidence is the word she eventually decides on, and it fits. Yes, she has seen evidence of a problem.
What sort of problem? they ask.
She tells them.
They shake their head. Impossible!
She persists, tells them what she has seen on his arms, what she has seen in his soul, what she has seen through the window of the classroom whilst they're supposed to be on lunch break, what he does when he thinks nobody is looking. She knows he is troubled. She knows he is deeply troubled, needs help. She knows it because she is exactly the same.
She understands, and she is the only one who does.
She brings up her concerns in the interview. They are ignored as they are unrelated to teaching duties. She is warned to stay away from him. She feels useless. She is sorry for him.
A voice, long forgotten, pleads to her desperately.
Don't be sorry for him and don't get involved. Don't care. No. Don't look at him like that. Don't feel bad. Don't do anything stupid. Don't do the wrong thing. Don't do something you'll regret.
She is sorry for him and she does get involved. She does care. Yes, She does look at him like that. She does feel bad. She does do something stupid. She does do the wrong thing. She does something, and she doesn't regret what she's done.
She knows why he is here. And it is not for the class.
He knows why she is staring at him. And it is not because he is doing somebody else's schoolwork.
Stop this, his eyes plead, as though he can read her thoughts.
"It's too late," she whispers, loud enough for the class to hear. They blink in surprise, ask questions unrelated to the lesson and she evades them with experience and expertise. She is shocked out of her wool gathering moment, returns to the here and now and the young boy – no, man – in front of her. Oh yes, and the others, they're still here, but they don't matter.
There. She said it. They don't matter. And it's true. It shouldn't be, but it is. But he does. He does matter to her. This is also true, also shouldn't be, but it is.
He does. She needs to stop denying it.
And she makes her decision, the first true decision she has made for herself in many years. Like most decisions nowadays, it is a cruel, selfish decision borne of fickle emotions. It is also a minor one, she feels, that won't change a thing.
She knows that by seven o'clock this afternoon, almost the entire world's population will be dead.
But if she can just save him, just this one youth named Naoki Kashima, then she will have no regrets. For in this cruel, corrupted world, he is the only thing that matters to the middle school teacher named Ms. Yuko Takao.