The first few steps into Lost Blightzilith were marked with the sounds of creaking wood underfoot and lungfuls of stiflingly hot, rancid air. How exactly precariously suspended wooden platforms were maintaining any kind of structural stability when surrounding by horizontally-flowing streams of lava, Astaire could hardly imagine.
He'd have turned and asked what everyone else thought about the puzzling phenomenon, were it not for two very prudent problems. The first of which being that he was a white phantom, and his vocal cords were busy taking a Soapstone-induced nap several hundred metres behind him.
The second problem was that he was entirely on his own.
Well, that made sense, didn't it? It was him, after all. Nothing he hadn't done before, right? He trudged through destitute hovels like this all the time! Plus, if the worst came to pass, his death wouldn't even be permanent! Yes yes, he couldn't fault Mr. Narukami's judgement. It was a capital idea to have. Yes indeed.
It didn't stop his hands shaking, though. Nor his eyes from sweeping, nor his breath from hitching with every new noise outside his field of vision.
The problem with traversing another world with companions, Astaire found, was that it made one all the more aware of their absence. And theirs weighed on him like a Titanite Demon knelt upon his shoulders.
A high-pitched buzzing shook Astaire's worries aside. A horde of giant, bloated mosquitoes with worryingly inflated abdomens flew in, encircling him from above, their myriad limbs squirming like fingers on the sizable hand of death beckoning him forth to his demise.
Hah, what nonsense. Mosquitos weren't a worry. As the filthy, wriggling insects descended with killing intent, Astaire reached for his latest armament - the lengthy, twisted Demon's Spear - and made to jab upwards, ignoring the poison they spat and-
The torrent of fire from above bit and scratched at his phantom flesh. His spear's path diverged as his body instinctively drove itself away from the intense heat, shielding its face in desperation.
Alright, the mosquitos were a worry. Fire-breathing hordes of mosquitoes were certainly a worry. Evidently the nightmarish fusions didn't simply extend to the environment alone. Astaire took a mental note as he backed off and rubbed the pain from his face, bearing his teeth through it all. Time for another-
Ksssh~
The sound of something impacting his ethereal form. Something which he could feel pierce the back of his thigh. It was thin, almost to the point of not being noticeable at all.
'Oh Gods.' Astaire's phantom mouthed silently.
He twisted around quickly, just in time to catch the silhouette of an emaciated Undead adorned with the splintered remains of a barrel as armour. Even behind a mottled, wooden mask, Astaire could see them sniggering, their shoulders and chest jittering excitedly. He wasn't long of guessing why. The blowpipe in their mottled hands gave it all away.
Toxic. Far worse than any normal poison. One could bathe in poison for hours and still be better off than a man toxified for a minute.
Into the bottomless box. Forget the mosquitoes for now. Forget the Blowdart Sniper and their incessant sniggering. He needed moss. Moss could take the toxic away. One mouthful of it and he'd be fine. He just needed to-
Pain.
It wasn't Toxic.
PAIN.
It was far, far worse.
PAIN. PAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH
It was like the magma had seeped under his skin and into his veins. Like it had spewed into his heart and filled every chamber, burning and bubbling and blistering everything it touched. It was like he'd swallowed Hell itself and asked for seconds.
For once, Astaire was thankful he couldn't vocalise as a phantom. Hearing his own screams would've just made it worse.
His spear dropped to the ground, as did he. However violent his spasms, however strained his breaths, however wide his jaw stretched open in some desperate attempt to portray how nightmarish this feeling was, it wasn't enough. It felt like something inside him was eviscerating his insides and trying to pierce a hole in his everything to get out.
After minutes which felt like days, the pain reached a crescendo.
Astaire's Phantom let out one more silent scream before he began to drift away on the breeze, his blank eyes rolled back into his head. The pain took all sane thoughts and turned them into indecipherable, foggy nothingness.
One particle at a time, Astaire let himself be taken away.
Five times.
Five freaking times.
As if asking him to die for anyof them once wasn't bad enough to begin with.
Senpai hadn't been joking when he said she wouldn't like it. Because at that moment, Rise felt like walking up and twisting his head around backwards. It was only his insisting that he had something to do at the tower's entrance which saved him. But once he got back? Ooooh, he was in for it. He was gonna be lucky to not be picking the teeth out of his throat.
She sat beside Astaire's body, whose back had been settled against one of the mighty stone walls neighbouring the obsidian doors. His face was still. His chest neither rose nor fell. It almost looked like he'd died already.
No, no, stop it. Stop thinking that. He wasn't dead. Couldn't be dead. Not forever, anyway. The fog gate was proof enough of that anyway.
And true, it still stood. The moment Astaire's Phantom had crossed the breach between the forest and Lost Blightzilith, the fog wall had gone up in a heartbeat, allowing nobody else through. The only time it fell was when his phantom wound up dead. Which he had. Five times by now.
Everyone else bided their time waiting for Yu to get back. Chie and Kanji practiced their kicks and blocking respectively. Naoto and Yukiko were poring over the contents of that ever-present notebook of hers, talking quietly to one another, and occasionally exchanging concerned looks. That just left Yosuke and Teddie, who'd taken up sweating like it was an olympic sport as they lay complaining on the ground. "Dude, seriously… If this stupid fog isn't gonna let us through, the least it could do is turn on the AC a little…" Yosuke complained in particular.
Looking between them all, Rise didn't even need Kouzeon's scanning to tell how they were feeling. Mostly because she felt the exact same way.
This world was as close to Astaire's as they could get, and it was currently beating him black and blue. It didn't give anyone much more hope.
She looked down at him again. Still motionless. Still struggling against conditions far too unfair to even consider.
Rise glimpsed over her shoulder. Nobody was watching, right? She glimpsed again. Yeah, they definitely weren't.
Slowly, carefully, she wriggled her fingers under Astaire's left palm, using her other free hand to clasp his fingers over hers. Kind of a useless thing to do, probably. He likely couldn't even feel it. But imagining that he could made Rise feel that little bit better. "Don't give up. I know you can do it." She whispered to him, giving his hand a squeeze.
Her heart threatened to stop entirely when his body squeezed back.
She scuttled back on her heels after ripping her hand from his, eyes wide. He definitely hadn't been breathing, and if he hadn't been breathing, he couldn't have done that. That wasn't normal. That really wasn't normal.
"Oh shit! Everyone, heads up!" Kanji called out, pointing to the fog wall as it began to thin and disappear.
As the last of the fog left, Astaire's body rocketed back to life. He sprung off the wall and wound up crashing a shoulder into the ground, clutching his arms and rolling around as if he'd been set on fire. He sucked in air through his painfully clenched teeth and tried to quell the scream he wanted to let out. He only half-succeeded as a restrained whine pathetically rose from him. When the worst of his flailing ceased, he settled for a thousand-yard stare and tried to settle his breathing.
It was worse than the other times. Far, far worse.
"Shit, dude, are you alright?!" Kanji asked as he dropped to one knee and rolled Astaire onto his back. "Don' worry, 's'all good now. Ain't nobody gonna hurt ya out here." He assured him.
Yet Naoto could tell just from looking at him. It wasn't any of them he was concerned about. His hands and arms spasmed, despite his best efforts to stop them. His jugular bulged painfully out of his neck. He tried to straighten his leg, but the way it seemed to resist his commands suggested it wasn't easy. "Did you… see what attacked you this time?" She asked carefully.
Quivering lips didn't make answering easy. "P-P-Poison." Astaire finally said. "Bad. F-From behind." He spat out as he sat himself upright.
Everyone was at a loss for words.
They imagined, or at best, hoped, that Yu had only offered this plan -and by extension, Astaire had agreed to it- because of how they understood White Phantoms to work, based on Astaire's explanation via charades a few days prior. Anything someone did to his body would be mirrored by his phantom, but it didn't work the other way around.
Or rather, it wasn't supposed to. But that kind of flew in the face of what they were witnessing right that very moment. True, he didn't actually seem to be poisoned, but entirely healthy people didn't flail about in a pained daze on the ground.
Yosuke's gaze was drawn to the open doors exuding the fierce heat and stinking miasma, and the glimpses of wood and magma beyond. "Dunno about the rest of you guys, but… I'm starting to think this might be a bad idea."
"Me too." Teddie said, looking surprisingly serious for once. "If whatever's in there is enough to kick Stairry-kun's butt…" He trailed off. If whatever was in there could kill the guy who took a sword through the gut, and kill him five more times on top of that, it didn't say much for the rest of them. As tough as they were, they weren't invincible.
Doubt began to sink in deeply. Sure, Astaire didn't have a Persona. He didn't have anyone with a Persona helping or healing him, nor did he have the advantage that numbers gave him. Looking at it that way, it actually appeared to improve the chances of success significantly if they all went in as one.
But that diabolical… something that was poisonous enough for even Astaire's body to feel it, that was worrying. If that was what it did to him, what would it do to anyone else? Would there even be time to help them if someone did get stuck with it? Could they even help them? What if this poison wasn't one even their Personas could cure?
Capable or otherwise, together or apart, the thought made hesitation inevitable.
"No! Give me that!" Rise suddenly barked. Having stabilised himself on both feet, Astaire now found himself staggering back as Rise furiously strode towards him, her eyes ablaze and her face screwed into a visage of purest anger. "I'm not going to let you keep doing this to yourself! Now hand it over!" She cried, clawing desperately up at the white soapstone that Astaire held above his head indignantly.
But the height difference worked against her, as did Astaire's continued backpedalling. "I told you, I'm f-fine." He said as calmly as a man with a still-inflamed jugular could. "Mr. Narukami's plan remains sound. Out of all of us, I'm the only one who-"
"I don't care what Senpai said!" Rise screamed.
The following pause allowed her voice to echo through the trees as everyone stood in a stunned daze. Out of anyone in the team, nobody would've placed their bets on Rise being the first to say something like that.
Still she continued. "I can't just sit here and watch you get killed over and over again! Not you nor anyone else! I order you to give me that soapstone!" But she could see it in his bespectacled eyes. Order or no order, he was adamant about giving it another go. His hand remained aloft.
Rrrgh. Stupid knightly idiot. Taking advantage of his hand being out of reach, Rise's own slipped inside his coat and into the bottomless box. Before he could oppose and backpedal faster, she'd retrieved the leather whip from earlier and lit the air with a loud SNAP. "You're gonna give that thing to me, or I'm gonna make you give it to me!"
"Who's giving what to who now?" Yu casually asked, stepping off the Save Point and brushing the light from his sleeves.
The 'S' in Senpai had barely passed Kanji and Naoto's lips before- "YOU." -ripped apart the atmosphere like a hungry tiger.
Yu had rarely seen this side of Rise. Not angry, no. Angry wasn't strong enough. Volcanic seemed more fitting. But he'd seen it enough times to know he never wanted to see it again. Much less with a leather whip in her hands. The only thing stopping him from turning tail and bolting back through the Save Point was Astaire stepping forward and whisking Rise over his shoulder.
"Put me down, you moron!" She screeched, pounding her fists off his back and flailing her legs at his front, calling him every name of the day and then some. Something in the middle about I'll whip him into ribbons which got lost in the stream of everything else.
"There'll be plenty of time for that later." Astaire assured her legs.
"No there won't." Yu added quickly.
Yukiko quickly closed the distance between them. "It sounds like trouble in there."
"Big trouble." Chie added from behind her, biting her lip as she gave the doors another glance. "Like, hit-once-and-you're-done trouble."
The rest of the team quickly congregated around Yu, save for Rise, who Astaire kept well out of arm's (and whip's) length. "Don't worry Chie-chan, it's all gonna be gravy now that Sensei's here!" Teddie beamed as he leaned in excitedly. "So what's the plan, Sensei?"
"Easy." Yu said with a smile. He turned around and brought his sword to one hand, reaching into the air with the other. From above, an unfamiliar arcana card twirled down to meet him.
Well, unfamiliar to some present anyway. Naoto and Kanji's eyebrows rose at the sight of it, as did one of Astaire's. Because as often as he'd seen Yu switch arcana cards in battle, he struggled to remember him using his.
Lust arcana in hand, Yu stopped just before entering the door. "Stick close."
Astaire's repeated attempts to forge a path through Blightzilith hadn't been as fruitful as he'd hoped. Several emaciated hollows brandishing makeshift wooden weapons lay dead here and there, blending in with the mounds of wooden viscera which littered the pathway, but they hadn't been his biggest concern. Aside from fire-spitting mosquitos and the purest agony he'd known, demons had been his downfall more times than not, and had made killing much else nigh impossible.
The gigantic proportions of the Taurus Demon strained the wood underfoot as it stomped towards the team, hammer raised, roaring as the lava silhouetted its gnarled, twisted horns from above.
Kanji had been brushed aside by its first strike and launched into a mound of wooden barrels. Everyone else was completely open. Open, but not fearful, the demon failed to notice. Ignorant of the situation, the hammer rushed towards the ground.
"Sir Lancelot, parry!"
The hammer's momentum reversed immediately, throwing the Taurus Demon off balance as the thick shield of red light dissipated from around Yu and his friends. Behind him, the illusory image of Sir Lancelot -a Persona clad in thick red armour adorned with white streaks- lowered his shield and raised his sword in turn. "It's vulnerable!" Yu called out. "Time for an all-out attack!"
The speed at which Yu and Sir Lancelot had been dispatching foes was staggering. The Persona moved like none anyone on the team had seen before. For one, it hadn't disappeared since Yu had first summoned him, which was odd enough. Odder still was the techniques it used. It parried attacks and left enemies wide open to assault. It was capable of clashing swords with the hollows which lingered around, shortly before skewering them cleanly.
He moved, Rise noted, much like Astaire did, on occasion.
The Taurus Demon let out a cry as it splayed out, finally dead. "Don't let your guard down, there's still something coming!" Yu shouted as he and Sir Lancelot raised their weapons in unison. "What do you think it is, Astaire-san?!"
"Basilisks! Creatures that will try to engorge you in petrifying mist!" Astaire shouted back, readying his spear from the backline. True enough, three lizard-like creatures scuttled towards them, quadrupedal feet like that of a chicken and what appeared to be a pair of large, bulbous orange eyes set in front. "Luckily my phantom passed them by before they could get me properly, but be careful all the sa-!"
It occurred to Astaire only after the Basilisks opened their mouths that he hadn't actually confirmed that it was fog they spat.
It wasn't fog. It was solid magma.
The gravitational anomaly that plagued everyone in the forest still applied. Rise's pigtails hung horizontally. Yosuke had to wrap his headphones around the front of his neck to keep them safe. And more importantly, it turned streams of magma into beams of solid, merciless fury that flew as straight as an arrow.
Everyone swore and rolled out of the way as best they could. Only some were faster than others. "AAAGH, SHIT! FUCK! MY ARM!" Kanji wailed in white-hot agony, crashing unceremoniously into the ground and propping his arm into the air. The magma had, thankfully, only grazed him. But magma was magma. It was painful at the best of times. Such was the case here.
"No, Kanji!" Yu felt the lingering fear from earlier rise up again. The fear of possibly losing someone. "Yosuke, Chie, circle around those things! The gravity only works on way in here, they can't fire behind themselves!" He astutely assessed. "Yukiko, get him healed, quick!"
"R-Right!" Yukiko nodded, ducking behind the cover Teddie and Kamui-Moshiri provided them and summoning her own Persona forthwith. One Diarahan was all it'd take. No panic. Take it easy. There was nothing to-
Kanji bit his lip as he tried holding back his screams, rolling on his side as tears welled in his eyes. Just like Astaire had done. Yukiko watched as the bite the magma had taken from Kanji's arm began to heal. Began. Slowly. Continued carefully too.
Alarm bells immediately began ringing in Yukiko's head. This was supposed to be an instant heal. Immediate. No waiting and nothing slow about it. But it didn't explain what she was seeing.
Judging from past events, she could make only one conclusion.
"How is he?" Naoto asked as she came to Yukiko's side, the Basilisks' corpses getting punted into next week by Chie making safe her walk over. She tried not to sound worried, but it only made her sound moreso.
But her thoughts echoed everyone else's. As Kanji's wound closed over, he opened his eyes to find every one of his friends surrounding him and watching on eagerly. "I… I'm not sure, but…" Yukiko began to his left. "...I think something's wrong with my healing magic. I don't think it's as good as it was before."
"Almost like it's getting worse the higher up we go?" Teddie offered. Yukiko eyed him in surprise. "Hey, it's been happening to me, too! I thought healing was supposed to make you feel better, but recently it's come with a side-order of ouch to boot!"
The reality of how grave their situation was took a second or two to really sink in. Their healing magic was weakening. Sure, they had healing items which Yu had picked up during the events of the year prior, but they were only so effective, and there were only so many of them. That the monsters in Not-Lordran weren't dropping any new ones only made matters worse.
"Agh, son of a…" Kanji massaged his arm where the pain was slowly bleeding away, picking himself and his Drakeshield back up. "Well at least it still works at all. Good enough for stichin' chunks back into everyone, at least." He said, nodding to his exposed flesh under the hole in his sleeves.
"For now, maybe." Yukiko said. She turned to Rise. "Rise-chan, can you tell how much further we are from the top of the tower?"
Given that this wasn't exactly a normal dungeon, she could only try. Kouzeon's visor settled in place as Rise focused, trying to peer through the void and assess what she saw inside. "...Three floors." She said after a moment of silence. "Three more areas like this above us."
"Huh. That's not too many, actually." Chie said.
"It's more than you'd think when our healing is getting worse all the time." Yukiko said back, her brow pinched in concern.
Sensing their supply of morale quickly spilling out thanks to this hole in the side, Yu clapped his hands together and caught everyone's attention. "C'mon everyone, heads up! We'll worry about the other floors when we get to them, but we're not there yet. The sooner we get out of here, the less time we have to worry about all this."
Mulling over his words briefly, Chie slapped her cheeks and put on her grittiest look of determination. "Yu-kun's right. We gotta kick this place's ass anyway, so we might as well make it quick!"
Like a spark setting alight a bonfire, Yu's words and Chie's enthusiasm bolstered everyone's spirits while quenching their fears simultaneously. Everyone's eyes turned upwards, they exchanged nods, they glared at the rickety wooden walkway ahead like it had insulted their respective mothers. Their fighting spirit flared back to life.
And with that, they ran on ahead, Yu leading the charge at the front.
It was getting closer. Astaire could feel it. The entire scene played out in excruciating detail in his mind. Every sound prickled his skin, every sensation ran a shock down through the core of his bones, all with a lucid familiarity. His body was a record player, and the buzz of the giant, fire-spitting mosquitoes was his LP.
"Ew! Ewewewewew these things are so gross!" Rise squealed from behind the safety of Kanji's shield as he brushed away the flames from above. A volley of six rhythmic cracks sounded out as Naoto emptied her revolver's cylinder, sending four of the eight mosquitoes soaring off horizontally, spiralling to their doom somewhere 'below.'
Against the combined might of Naoto's bullets and everyone else's Personas, the mosquitoes weren't quite as troubling as Astaire remembered them to be. But it wasn't the mosquitoes he was worried about. He took a quick check of everyone's positions. Kanji, Naoto and Rise, accosted by mosquitoes but unharmed. Teddie, Yosuke and Chie, dodging and ducking under punches as launched from a towering giant, forged entirely from titanite. Lastly, Yukiko and Yu, healing everyone and defending one another respectively.
Given how preoccupied everyone was, it seemed the task fell to him."Everyone, be on your guard! This is where I got poisoned on my last excursion!" He shouted over the din of combat.
From underneath his shield, Kanji's eyes bulged. "Damnit, seriously?! Like hell can we keep this up if we all get hit with that stuff!"
Astaire broke off from the rest of the team, spear at the ready. "I'm not going to let that happen! Leave this to me!" He cried, running a short distance ahead. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of a wooden barrel slowly peel apart and grow a pair of arms as it passed his shoulder. In one hand, it clutched a blowpipe. "Not again, you cur." He growled under his breath, redirecting his sprint and aiming for the disguised hollow. He watched the blowpipe rise to meet a mouth-sized hole before he quickly darted to the side, just in time to avoid being darted himself.
Danger passing him by uselessly, a grin found its way to Astaire's face as he closed the gap and ran his spear straight through his barrel-wearing adversary. Revenge was a taste that not oft touched his tongue, but how sweet it was when it did.
The brief excitement began to wear off as Astaire realised he'd almost sprinted entirely off the walkway and into the lava 'beneath' him. He peered down into the fiery, poisonous expanse of rock, wood and magma before him, and suddenly felt his stomach lurch. Whether it was the anomalous gravity or the sheer drop below him, he couldn't decide, but it froze him on the spot.
It froze him long enough to let something catch his ear. The sound of… something quick hitting off wood.
Right as his ear was caught, so too was Rise's eye. "Everyone watch out, something's right on top of us!" She informed everyone, watching the sizable red enemy marker quickly make a beeline for them. Closer and closer. Homing in on Yu specifically. By God, it almost was right on top of him.
...So where was it? Rise peeked under her visor to get a glimpse for herself, only to find Yu being assaulted by nothing but the stench in the air. "What the…? But it's right here! Kouzeon's never wrong!" Rise insisted, double checking her radar.
The sound had drawn closer to Astaire. Close enough for the source to become readily apparent.
He looked down between the messily-arranged wood at his feet..
Several pairs of beady eyes, attached to the one body, glared back at him.
The wooden platform erupted from underneath, showering the team in splinters and discarded wooden chunks. Everyone was thrown off balance as their only foundation rocked and heaved discontentedly, as shaken by the sheer force of the foe's arrival.
Rise readied herself to scan their new arrival, took one look at it, and felt her scream catch in her throat.
An enormous rat, twice as tall as Kanji, shook itself free of wooden debris. But it was wrong. Malformed. It had been thrown into a blender and mixed with something else, and whatever it was, this was worse.
The rat had ill-fitting, lumpy flesh in place of fur, patterned with innumerable sets of black, bloodshot eyes which blinked and twitched independently of one another. Its mouth wasn't a rat's mouth. It was perfectly round when it opened to let out a cry, and filled with row upon row of needle-like teeth. Finally, the rat's tail, as thick as Astaire was broad, was ribbed up to the tip, where it splayed open and spewed sickly acid from within the deformed rat's body.
The acid dripped between the wooden walkway, bubbling as soon as it settled on anything solid. It only stopped when its surface was fully eaten away.
In the shared state of combined shock, everyone forgot to move. They were quickly reminded as the platform lurched underfoot. The lower the acid seeped, the closer they drew to a long fall and a quick, fiery death.
The first to move was Kanji as he raced forward and drove his Drakeshield into the rat's face as hard as he could, recoiling it in such a way that allowed Astaire to approach from the other side. He skewered the rat's neck straight through before his spear was ripped from his hands, the rat flailing and opening its lamprey-like mouth to deliver a guttural, angry screech.
The glimpse Kanji and Astaire shared couldn't have been half a second long, but it conveyed all they needed. With another pounding from Kanji's shield, the rat went off-kilter before he turned and echoed everyone's thoughts perfectly.
"Everyone freakin' book it! NOW!"
The pathway had warped in the small amount of time since Astaire had last set foot on it. Once completely straight, it now inclined and declined, large ramps and platforms seemingly having grown ladders from nowhere, leading onto an ever more twisted horizon.
Which would've been more concerning had everyone not been pursued by a giant Chaos Rat which was slowly destroying their only means of escape. For the moment, nothing else mattered. Not mosquitos, not titanite giants, not blowpipe hollows or anything else. The switch was so strongly thrown to FLIGHT instead of FIGHT that it had practically broken off altogether.
"This is bad... This is bad... This is so bad..." Rise said between breaths as she sprinted at the back of the group. Sensing that she was beginning to fall behind, Astaire quickly swept her up from his side and carried her over his shoulder. Which was fine, until she realised it put her face-to-face with the Chaos Rat. "This is worse, this is worse, this is worse! Spin me around, spin me around!" She panicked, slapping Astaire's back in a frenzy.
She stopped as she peeked behind the Chaos Rat proper, watching as the walkways they'd only just sprinted down broke apart and fell away, the acid making short work of them.
Okay, yeah, maybe now wasn't the best time.
The rat was without mercy. What monsters everyone left in their wake, be they mosquitoes or hollows, were thrashed headlong and sent barrelling over the side of the pathway. There was no discrimination, only destruction and raw killing intent.
In the midst of everything beyond the kitchen sink trying to murder them, Yu spotted a problem. Their walkway was coming to an end, and the only way down was a single ladder. He felt his chest tighten as he realised there wasn't going to be a quick way past this. More than enough time for the notably nimble, distorted rodent to finish them all off.
He had no choice. He interrupted his sprint and turned on a dime, summoning Sir Lancelot at the same time. His comrades ran past him before they realised what was happening, stopping to take their positions behind him. "Everyone, get down that ladder! I'll hold this thing off until we're safe!" Yu barked, already levelling his sword at the incoming foe.
"We haven't time for that!" Astaire barked back, being the only one who hadn't stopped running. "This place looks more like Blighttown than ever before, so follow my lead!" A command which everyone might've been quicker to act on, had following his lead not included what he did immediately after.
"Hey, hey, wait a minute! You're gonna miss the la-AAAAAH!" Rise's insides took flight as Astaire slowed down and promptly stepped off the edge of the platform entirely. She heard the ladder fly past her head, watched the ground rush up to meet her. She closed her eyes and braced for impact and-!
Was completely fine. Her stomach lurched as it became very well acquainted with Astaire's shoulder on landing, but otherwise she was right as rain. Which was more than anyone else could say. She was tossed backwards as Astaire backstepped out of the way of a barrel-wearing hollow swinging a flaming torch at him. Normally, nothing to worry about. With his previous weapon embedded in the Chaos Rat's neck and his charge to keep safe over his shoulder, the worries began to manifest. "I hate to sound impatient but-!" Astaire dodged again, kicking the hollow in the side to try and keep it at bay. "-I would appreciate some assistance down here!"
And down assistance promptly came. The hollow immediately ceased to be as Kanji plunged shoulder-and-shield-first on top of it, liquefying the rotten assailant on contact and landing with a mighty boom. "Gah, frickin'... Nearly broke my damn shoulder there…" Kanji cursed as he quickly got to his feet.
The trio hopped out of the way as the rest of the team -sans Yu- plummeted from above. With a majestic flash of light overhead and a distorted, angry, gurgling roar, Lancelot parried the rat and sent it reeling backwards, giving Yu the time to turn tail and quickly throw himself down onto the lower platform. He landed with a roll before immediately breaking into a sprint. "If we're fast enough, we might actually leave that thing behind! Everyone keep it up!"
Nobody needed to be told twice.
Down, down, down everyone fell. Or whatever way they were actually going with the gravity all messed up. They ducked under swings from hollows, sidestepped streams of lava from Basilisks, and swatted aside assaults from more mosquitoes than any one person could keep track of. To top it all off, they leapt across gaps and plummeted down platforms at such a rate that catching their breaths was naught but a far-off dream.
And still the Chaos Rat pursued them.
"Screw this thing! Screw it right to hell!" Chie roared as she dropkicked a hollow off the platform's edge, wiping the deluge of sweat from her face as she got to her aching feet again. "How can something that huge be that freaking quick?! Your world sucks, Astaire-san!"
"Tell us something we don't know!" Yosuke yelled back at her, latching onto her arm and bringing her up to speed with everyone else. They had little time to waste with fighting every enemy chasing them, much less dropkicking them.
And yet, in everyone's panicked, fervorous marathon, at least one person managed to remain level-headed. "Perhaps… I'm just being… optimistic…" Naoto panted heavily, unloading a shot into an incoming mosquito as she forged ahead. "But that looks… like a rest point to me!"
Following Naoto's field of view, true enough, in the distance lay a layer of what appeared to be stone, so wide and so tall that it seemed to stretch on forever, perforated with holes which spewed out the magma they'd been running above and alongside. But less interesting than its limitations and its output was the ungracefully carved-out cave which was drilled in the center, and the large, foreboding wall of fog at the end of it.
"Oh hell yes! We're almost there!" Chie whooped, all but clicking her heels together in the air. "Once we're back on solid ground, we can beat that freaky-looking rat asshole into- Agh!" She stopped on the spot. Her hand instinctively went to her left side, just under her armpit. Whatever had pierced her sports jersey and breached her skin, it was small and thin.
"Chie! Gah-!" Yu had been the first to turn to help her, only to find himself nailed with the same small, thin projectile which stabbed into his lower torso.
Of those who spun around to face their comrades in response, only Astaire's gaze missed them, instead drawn to the shape jittering around above Chie's shoulder. The quivering, cackling shape of a barrel-clad hollow, abruptly thrown out of its levity by the callous thrashing the Chaos Rat delivered to it.
The blowdarts in both Chie and Yu's skin felt as though they were beginning to heat up. Subtle at first, then escalating at a rate unlike any poison either of them had ever felt. "Oh, crap… This feels kinda… kinda…" Chie tried to say, but her head began to feel like someone was pumping it full of helium, and her stomach, lead.
Yu's fingers fumbled, trying to reach into one of his pockets for a possible cure and failing miserably. "H-How long…?" He asked nobody in particular through marbles of sweat.
Yu. The rat. The cave. The platform collapsing behind them. Yu. The cave. Finally, his thoughts becoming too fast to reliably keep up with, Astaire turned to Yu again. "Long enough, I hope."
Before he had a chance to protest, Astaire gave up his Demon's Spear in favour of whipping Yu off his feet and hauling him over his shoulder to neighbour Rise. If he hadn't protested before, he certainly piped up when Astaire shoved the Blade of Totsuka into his box as well. "Hey, wait… I can manage by myself…!" He insisted as the haze descending over his eyes grew thicker.
"Give it a minute." As Astaire took a step forward, he was interrupted as the walkway beneath him seemed to shudder and groan. Wood creaked and eventually snapped, the destruction wrought by the Chaos Rat's acid coming closer with every second wasted, and the rat itself not far in front. With the weight of two extra bodies on either side, and one being heavier than the other, it wasn't easy to retain his balance.
"Someone pick up Chie-senpai so we can get outta here already!" Rise screamed as death and acid loomed ever closer towards them.
Sensing he was going to get a kick in the ribs later, but favouring that over outright death, Kanji whipped Chie over his shoulder as well, passing Astaire by engulfed in a cloud of swearing, kicking and punching. "Outta everyone I have to frickin' carry…" Kanji grumbled on his way past.
But he could ignore the attempted beatings for a while yet. The end was in sight.
Chie Satonaka didn't scream. Screaming was something that girls did, or at least something typical girls did when they were hurt. Chie got hurt, sat up, licked her wounds, then got right back up again. She did a lot of things, but she never screamed.
But she screamed. She screamed and screamed until her face went purple and her voice went hoarse. She writhed and thrashed in agony, clutching at her skin as though trying to eviscerate her arm and rip the fire in her veins out by hand. Tears streamed down her cheeks, her mouth stretched wide until nothing beyond breaking her jaw would widen it further, and sweat coated her like she'd just come in from the rain.
Yosuke watched and tried to hold back his own tears, unsure whether they should be motivated by rage or sorrow. He figured he would find out once they had time to stop sprinting.
But if things were bad for him, they were twice as harsh for Yukiko. Because she couldn't remember ever hearing Yu scream as he did either.
He was always so calm and collected. Stable and knowing. He'd made tough decisions and been in scenarios that would've made quick work of other guys. She could chalk it up to that first 'cycle' of his, but having the will to go through what he did twice spoke volumes about how tough he was.
Now he was screaming and flailing about violently on Astaire's shoulder, his face as far from 'composed' as one could be. Yelling, choking, coughing, crying. Alongside her best friend, who rarely ever did the same.
Some small part of Yukiko was thankful for the mutated nightmare nipping at their heels. If she hadn't something else to focus on, their screams might have driven her mad. Not that she was far off as it was.
"Senpai, please!" Rise begged through a wall of her own tears. "I know it hurts, but if you don't stop kicking-AH!" She squealed as the walkway shifted again, the structural integrity of the walkway underfoot dropping at rates that could only be called 'worrying.' Where once their feet had fell mid-sprint, sections of the path not far behind them crumbled and collapsed.
A problem for anyone, much less a man carrying two other people, with one desperately, if unintentionally, trying to break free. "If you don't stop kicking, I'm going to wind up dropping you altogether!" Astaire yelled as he forced his center of gravity to stop going haywire. "I know how it feels, Mr. Narukami, I do! But we only need a short while longer!"
"Rrrrgh! Why can't you be like other rats and scurry off where nobody can see you?!" Teddie asked as another cast of Bufudyne encased the rat in ice, only for it to instantly shatter apart the moment it had settled. It was better than constantly gaining on them, but not by much. Claw raised, primed for another casting, Teddie stopped as something grabbed the back oh his collar.
Specifically, Yosuke. "Would you take a hint?! All you're doing is pissing it off even more!"
And pissed off, it was. The midsection of the Chaos Rat pulsed and bloated, glowing a bright orange under the skin. It wheezed as it inhaled, a faint lick of embers dancing at the back of its throat.
"It's going to fire something! Everybody watch-!" Rise began from her front row view atop Astaire's shoulder. She stopped as Yu's screaming deafened her anew, verging on the sound of legitimate death throes. His foot bucked forward and slammed into Astaire's solar plexus, and all at once everything regressed to slow motion. Rise felt his balance disappear, watched the walkway rush up to meet her, and braced as Astaire doubled over and collapsed from the weight.
She lifted her head to find herself staring down the Chaos Rat's gaping mouth as its body ceased bulging in front of her. Astaire joined her, and both found themselves devoid of words.
There was no time to get up and run. Diminished strength aside, Astaire was still winded. No time to grab a Greatshield either. Everyone else had been running in front of them. There was too big a gap for them to make it now.
Rise and Astaire stared death in the face, then stared at each other, both desperate for a solution that would get them out alive.
They both said nothing.
The Chaos Rat's body collapsed as it spewed forth a thick plume of flames, like a thousand grenades had gone off inside it and the combined force directed solely at them. Even in the presence of Blightzilith's sweltering, stinking heat, they could feel the intensity before it even hit them.
There was nothing left to do beyond brace for death, and that's exactly what they did.
"YU-KUN!"
For the second time, the succeeding chain of events played out in a crawling slow motion before Astaire and Rise both. What couldn't have taken half a second felt like it was displayed for hours.
Blue fog and blistering heat gave way to blinding, golden light. A familiar humanoid figure, clad in a cloak of golden feathers, manifested above Yu, Rise and Astaire, as though Saint Peter had come down personally to escort them to the pearly gates. Instead, the figure placed itself between the trio and the Chaos Rat's torrent of fiery death.
With eyes wide and jaw unhinged, Astaire watched as Sumeo-Okami moved with the grace of a ballerina, taking hold of the golden sword at its side and spinning its golden cloak around in front of it. In the same move, the incoming fire redirected its course, the plume of flame bending around Sumeo-Okami's body and over the trio's heads. It brought the image of a bullfighter to Rise's mind.
Yukiko belted out a battle cry from behind as her Persona all but threw the fire back whence it came, pelting the Chaos Rat head-on and pummeling it back without mercy. Every bulging eye on its body squinted and cringed at the pain, and its body rocked from side to side to try and shake it off. However, all the shaking did was spread the acid from its tail all the further around it, eating through the wood around it.
Sensing where things were about to go, Yukiko rushed in and helped Rise to her feet, allowing Astaire to finally catch his breath and pick up Yu mid-spasm anew. Without a word, they bolted down the rest of the walkway.
Yukiko glanced over her shoulder to see the Chaos Rat attempt to chase them once more, only for its first step to disappear through the wood below it. Then another, and another still. The monstrous creature cried out and clawed at the wood as it fell away underneath it, before the rampant destruction which had been coming up from behind them managed to catch up.
The wooden walkway collapsed, and with it, the Chaos Rat. It fell away into the distance with a desperate cry which was abruptly cut short as it disappeared into one of the spires of magma flowing through the air.
Yukiko faced forward once again, now wearing a satisfied smirk. Job well done.
"And you thought you could handle that on your own." Rise grumbled.
"Well it's all the better that I didn't, given the state of things now." Astaire mumbled back, stealing a quick glance at the empty expanse before them, the large obsidian doors naught but a tiny dot in the distance. There was truly nothing left of Blightzilith in between. Not that he minded, not at all. "Although it would've avoided this at least." He said, waiting until the last of the light from Yukiko's healing disappeared before feeding Yu a clump of blooming, purple moss.
It wasn't a cure, not wholly. Blooming moss only cured toxicity and poison, not… whatever that had been. But it was enough to allow Yu to stop kicking and screaming, simmering down to a pained, fatigued calm. He could still feel the throbbing heat in his veins, but it was more of a low simmer than an outright boil.
"Here, Senpai, drink this." Rise urged him, putting a particular can of soda to his lips to help the moss wash down. Amrita Soda, he figured, because the moment it passed his lips, the fire within him was snuffed out and he no longer felt like his skin was going to melt off. It must've been showing on his face, too, because Rise sighed in relief from watching him. "Thank goodness… I hope you're alright after all that."
For a moment, Yu wasn't sure that he was. The pain was gone, but his recollection of it was crystal clear, to the point where he doubted it was going to leave his mind for a good long while. Nonetheless, he wiped the copious amounts of sweat off his forehead and gave Rise a smile. "I'm fine, Rise. Thanks."
"Bleeegh! What the hell was that?!" A suddenly very spritely Chie yelled through Astaire. "It tasted like licking the inside of a dumpster, holy crap!" She wretched, spat a number of times, then forcefully grabbed the can of Amrita Soda from Astaire and gulped the rest of it down in one go. After munching on something as foul as purple moss, she swore she'd never think less of any meal she had for the rest of her life.
"You lick dumpsters often enough to know that?" Laughed a relieved Yosuke before Chie's foot made friends with his ribcage.
"Aah, it's nice to have everything back to normal!" Teddie said, smiling up from the ground as he lay face-first on the stone.
He yelped as Kanji prodded his side with his shoe. "Hell're you tryin' to down there, Ted?"
"I'm resting. My legs are like jelly after all that running!"
A statement which, upon being said, seemed to inflict the same condition upon everyone else. As Yu and Chie felt well enough to get up from the ground, everyone else found themselves inexplicably drawn towards it, as though someone had pulled a plug and let all the adrenaline from their chase spill out. The only answer was to rest.
With their backs resting against the wall, everyone held a moment of silence as they relished in their hard-fought downtime.
After a short time, the silence inevitably broke. "Did any of you guys see those crazy moves Yukiko-senpai pulled back there?!" Rise enthused, her fists balled and her eyes bright. "Holy cow, that was so cool!"
Everyone's heads turned in unison, and all of a sudden Yukiko decided she didn't exactly like being the center of attention. She hid her blush behind her hands and glanced off to the side. "Oh, really, it wasn't anything too special…"
"Are you mad?!" Astaire suddenly blurted out, expression rife with disbelief. "I've never seen anything like that before! Not from Lordran, and certainly not from here! Special doesn't even cover it!"
Oh goodness, now they all looked even more interested. She'd have shot him an icy glare, but chances were her blush would've melted it right out of the gate. "C-Come now, it's really not that-"
"But it is!" Astaire insisted all the harder.
"Just take the compliment, Yuki-chan!" Teddie said as he rolled over onto his back. "...Wait a minute, Stairry-kun-!"
"Please stop calling me that."
"When I met up with you and Rise-chan way back when, didn't you do fiery things like Yuki-chan as well?" Teddie continued, handily ignoring Astaire's request.
For a moment, Astaire stared at the ground and tried to figure out how best to word his meaning. When he felt confident enough, he slipped on the ring Sieglinde had given him and willed his Pyromancy Flame into his palm. "Pyromancy only appears similar to an untrained eye. It is indeed fire, but it is fire as kindled from the power of one's soul."
A hum from Naoto. "Something akin to what gives Personas their power, I imagine."
"That may well be. I wouldn't be the one to say. Regardless-" Rubbing his hand down the front of his armour, the small flame snuffed out. "-it is the power of one's soul. Not legitimate fire. What Ms. Amagi has done is manipulate actual, living fire. Such a power would've caused quite the commotion in Lordran, I imagine."
Chie let out a whistle. "Whaddya know. You could've been famous in this world and the other one, Yukiko."
"Or an arsonist." Yu chuckled at the unfriendly look Yukiko shot at him before she cracked and did the same.
What little levity lay in the air didn't last, as everyone's gaze slowly drifted towards the fog wall at the end of the cave. They were going to have to get to it sooner or later. There'd be no Save Point to help them escape if they didn't. "Hey." Kanji piped up towards Astaire. "Any clue what it might be?"
Astaire shook his head before he felt Rise's elbow nudge into his side. "C'mon, take a guess! Like, something you fought here before, or whatever!"
Easier said than done, given where they'd just run through. Unlike Sen's Fortress or the Darkroot Garden, there wasn't exactly a last time for Astaire to have much precedence to guess from. Between a drake, a giant and a wolf with a greatsword, there was at least some tenuous connection to Lordran's original form. But this?
Stroking his chin in thought, Astaire gnawed on his bottom lip. No, no, don't overthink it. If where they stood now truly was a fusion of Blighttown and Lost Izalith, that simply meant there were two possibilities instead of one, right?
"Hmm. Well, firstly, how accustomed are you to spiders?" Astaire asked.
The way Rise, Yukiko, Chie, Naoto and Teddie's faces suddenly became very pale and very grave told him all he needed. "Easy peasy." Yosuke said, regretting having spoken as every pale face around him shot him a betrayed look. "...I mean, they're just little bugs with eight legs, right? No biggie. We can use Kanji's shield as a flyswatter and call it a day."
"No, I mean large spiders."
Oh no. "Y-You mean, like, a tarantula, or…?"
"Taller than me."
Oh hell the fuck no. Yosuke and Kanji's faces quickly joined everyone else's, save for Yu and Astaire himself. "B-But by all means, that may not be the case! It could always be-!"
Slap. "Nuh-uh." Said Rise over her hand, which she'd launched over Astaire's lips before he could go any further. "Not one more word, okay? Please?" She begged, eyes aquiver. After a quick nod, she sat back down and tried to relax.
Her rest was cut short as Yu brought himself to his feet. "Spiders or no spiders, we need to get outta here." He motioned to the fog wall as he stretched his arms and legs. "And really, how bad could it be? We've fought worse."
"Easy for you to say…" Yukiko mumbled under her breath, despite picking herself up as well. "Are you sure you're both feeling alright?" She asked to Yu and Chie both. "You were both screaming and rolling on the floor not long ago."
Chie laughed and waved a hand dismissively. "It'll take more than that to keep me or Yu-kun down!" She said, although it didn't escape Yukiko's notice that she was shifting her weight onto one side. Nor that Yu was doing the same.
In the midst of her ensuing tirade of worry and frustration, everyone took to readying themselves for battle. Which was easier for some than others, given- "Oh hell, not again!" Astaire's spear had been lodged in the Chaos Rat when it had plummeted to its doom. He grumbled and mumbled as he stuck the Blade of Totsuka in the ground for Yu and went about feeling around for something for himself. "For pity's sake, I must stop being so careless…"
Hs hand dove deep into the box and wrapped around something. Weighty enough to have been etched with titanite, but light enough to be usable. With a flourish and a silvery gleam, the curved blade of the Falchion found itself at his side. "Are we ready to go?" He asked between a few nimble practice slashes.
"You bet we are." Yu said, freeing himself from Yukiko's barrage of concerns to retrieve his sword from the ground and swing it over his shoulder. He motioned for everyone to follow him to the fog wall, which, after a few pre-battle grunts and face-shakings, they did.
The fog seemed to reach out and clog up everyone's throats, the tense atmosphere putting a boot to their respective windpipes. For a moment, everyone simply stood before the wall and silently steeled their nerves.
Well, relative silence. A "Hmm." and the rhythmic sound of metal tapping off metal caught Rise's attention amidst the sea of nerves. Astaire's fingers drummed off the hilt of his Falchion as he frowned in thought.
"Something up?" Rise asked, kicking him free from his daze. "Anything we should know before going in?"
He shook his head. "Not quite, no. It's just…" He paused and looked over his shoulder at where the wooden walkways had been before. "Those basilisks, and that Rat, for another thing… I don't seem to remember seeing any, neither in Blighttown norLost Izalith. They seemed awfully out of place amidst everything else."
"Maybe they wandered in from somewhere else." Yosuke shrugged.
To which Chie scoffed, "And what? Pushed those bigass doors open and closed up behind them? I doubt that."
The puzzle beginning to bore a hole in everyone's heads, Kanji eventually shrugged his shoulders and said, "C'mon, not like it matters now, right? We're almost outta this dump anyway. Lets just go kick ass so I can stop sweatin' up a storm over here."
Clearing his thoughts, Astaire shook his head. "You're right, perhaps I'm simply overthinking things. At your leisure, Mr. Narukami."
Watching everyone step through the fog wall, Astaire mentally berated himself. Pfft. Basilisks and rats. So what? Everything between them and the forest was dead and gone, how could such a thing possibly matter?
Following after Rise and forging his way through the fog, the first thing Astaire set eyes on shot his jaw to the ground.
Alright, maybe it mattered a little.
From afar, a lone figure coiled themselves around the broken base of what had once been a support beam for a wooden walkway far above them. The tail of his suit jacket hung horizontally from his back, owed to the strange gravitational anomaly surrounding him.
He watched as lesser beings perished below him. Undead, giant and malformed monstrosities alike. An impressive display of destruction, certainly. But that wasn't what interested him most.
His mind favoured the memory of that mutated rat with too many eyes, which he'd seen be thoroughly trounced from above his small surveillance post. Only one thought enamoured him more.
"Were you keeping watch as I commanded?" Rattled a deep, rumbling voice from within his head. "Or perhaps you fell asleep before they even arrived?"
"Amidst such rampant destruction? You expect too much of me." The man replied to thin air, rumbling in a similar tone.
"I expect what is owed from your reconnaissance skills thus far, you impertinent slacker." The other voice spat back.
The man felt a toothy grin overtake him. "Then perhaps my report shall rectify that. I have bore witness to a most… interesting development quite directly." He waited, and was rewarded with an interested hum from his partner. His grin grew all the wider.
"It appears there is another child who may prove of use to us. Send someone to investigate the one called Amagi in the coming days."