The breaking down of the general subconscious should have been a good thing. The darkest parts of people should have dissolved and they should have moved on to become better people.
Things tend to not work out the way that they should.
The sins of the people crashed into them. Police stations were flooded with people confessing to crimes. Some people had shutdowns, sobbing uncontrollably. Runoff from the rain was salty from the tears of people standing in the heavens, their saintly images whisked away from them like wallpapers on moldy plaster.
People were pulled away from their careers, often in handcuffs. Bodies were dug up and given proper burials. Crimes were solved.
This should have brought a utopia, but it just pulled back the skin, showing bloody muscle and yellow infections underneath.
People started to remember things they should have forgotten. Things ignored for the sake of preserving relationships were brought to the surface. Courts were flooded with divorce proceedings and civil lawsuits. There was not an hour when a secret tore apart a family.
The Phantom Thieves were officially retired. They did what they were supposed to, stayed in school, stayed out of trouble, just playing the part of the lawful student. They watched the people with unease. This was a flood, but something had to stop the flood.
Years passed and by the time the group graduated from their elite school, the Phantom Thieves were swallowed by the closing of schools, causing an influx of students to be sent to the remaining schools. Honest teachers were given bigger classes on more subjects while lying and screaming teachers were pushed off to the side and filtered out.
The idea of second chances was thrown out. People were not allowed to try to better themselves. Moral ambiguity was traded for a black and white moral system. People were sentenced for years for crimes that wouldn't get jail time before.
The sun was a rare sight now. Churches were burned freely, in an attempt to take away a way for people to justify their crimes. Smoke and ash coated buildings as low hanging smog clouds covered the people and buildings.
People lost their ability to have calmer opinions on something, or a private one. There was only one thing running the show for their reality: emotions.
Suou Tatsuya stood on the roof of the building looking down. The tower he stood on pushed through the dark, cloudy smog and sunlight pushed against his back and hair. The wind pulled the smell of embers up to him, but the blue sky clashed against the smell.
Tatsuya smiled wistfully and closed his eyes as he spun on his heels and leaned back.
He never made it off the roof.
Tatsuya made a small grunt as he felt himself being held by the front of his coat.
"What are you thinking?!" The hand that grabbed him was feminine and his eyes followed it down to the person holding him up. To his surprise, the speaker was male. He had long brown hair and an eye color that kissed red. He wore a brown suit that was in tatters. His face was scraped up and his eyes were hard, but he didn't speak any louder than a whisper. "I can taste the Velvet Room on you."
"Who are you?" Tatsuya choked out as he was thrown back to the safety of the roof's solid ground.
"Akechi Goro." The male gritted his teeth. "And I know all about you, Tatsuya."
The two of them sat opposite each other, sizing each other up. They could see the pain in each other, but that made them not trust each other more.
"What did you do?" Tatsuya asked, his teeth bared.
"Right now, saved your life. As to what I did in general, killed people so my father would love me." Akechi sighed and tightened what was left of his gloves.
"Did he?" Tatsuya asked.
"No. What about you? Don't you have some kind of family to go back to?"
Tatsuya hesitated. "I can't see them, it will doom the world."
Akechi blinked. "At this point, that ship has sailed." He said, making Tatsuya glare at him.
"Even if I do that, how can I just face them, the last time I didn't forget them…" Tatsuya grabbed his head as images of blood and tears filled it.
"That was last time. Now the world is on fire and right now we all need someone by our side." Akechi stood up and offered Tatsuya a hand to help him up. It was refused but he made his way towards the door.
"Will they want me back?" Tatsuya whispered.
"That. I can't help with that. But I know some people who can."
Ren Amamiya had finished permanently moving into the room above the cafe. He was done with school and he was surrounded by friends. There were no riots outside but there may as well have been. The atmosphere was tense outside but inside, the cafe was still being taken care of and it still got business. People were still calmly eating their curry and drinking their coffee.
There were no issues inside but outside fires were being started the moment after others were put out. Smoke was dyeing things black and children were getting sick. Amamiya stared out the window where the thick clouds pushed against the doors, limiting the visibility to nothing. Anne sat on the stairs and Amamiya made himself comfortable just below her.
"You're being really quiet," Anne whispered.
"It's just, I feel like the world changed because I shut down the place where all this frustration went to." Ren Amamiya whispered and looked up at her.
"Maybe. But it's not just you. We all had a role to play in its destruction." Anne sighed. "Besides, what you did...that was horrifying. There must be few men that know what that's like."
"And I found one man just like that," Akechi said as he walked through the doors of the cafe.
"Crow. You're alive." Amamiya snarled.