While the others ran on ahead of him, Tetsuo remained on the front steps for a moment to gaze at the world he was planning to leave behind. For now, the city was placid, but that stillness was exactly what put him on edge. It wouldn't be long before the eye of the hurricane passed them by, and the true chaos began.
It happened sooner than he'd expected.
The instant they left the school gates, the sky flashed an angry red that rapidly deepened until it was nearly as black as night. The air around them throbbed to the beat of an unseen heart, carrying the sound of faint, familiar voices that wormed their way into Tetsuo's ears, whispering promises of things both terrible and beautiful until he clapped a hand over them to drive the murmurs away. Then, from deep within the heart of the Cloud, a tremendous force swept through them like a shockwave, and Nyarlathotep's honeyed voice resounded in their heads.
"Tetsuo, I'm disappointed. After all we've been through…this is the decision you've reached?" he scoffed. "Surely you must understand what it would mean for you to go back on your word now. Well, you still have some time to think it over. In the meantime, I suppose I'll just have to do my best to persuade you to reconsider."
With that, the darkness lifted, but Cloud Nine remained bathed in the same harsh, bloodred light. Everyone removed their hands from their heads and glanced around nervously.
Yoko tightened her grip on her mace. "I don't like the sound of that."
"He's sharing my heart," said Tetsuo. "He was bound to catch on quick. Be ready for anything; he won't make this simple."
As fast as they dared, the group took off down the street towards the hospital. The sound of their footfalls echoed off the buildings lining the streets, altogether too loud for Tetsuo's liking. However, the unsettling quiet proved useful. As they approached the next corner, the clatter of another set of heavy footsteps coming from the other direction joined their own. Tetsuo slid to a halt and threw out his arms.
"Hold it!" he whispered, and waved the others into a nearby alley. They had only just darted out of sight when a group of three Shadows with gold-rimmed masks dressed like ordinary citizens rounded the corner. They stopped just short of their hiding place, whipping their heads back and forth, searching.
"They were supposed to come this way! Any sight of 'em?" one barked in a garbled, distorted tone. The other two shook their heads.
"Then fan out and cover the cross streets! They were holed up in that school; they'll come this way eventually!"
Nodding, one of the Shadows ran off in the direction they'd just come from, while the other left in a different direction. The one that had given the orders stayed put at the corner, scanning the vicinity.
"Doesn't look like it's leaving. What do we do?" whispered Koharu.
Hayate snorted. "What kinda question is that? It's one Shadow. Let's crumple it like paper."
"Let's not let our impulses affect our judgment," said Shibutani. "If the people of this city have been turned against us, then there could be hundreds, if not thousands of Shadows between us and our destination. It would be in our best interest to avoid attracting too much attention."
Tetsuo nodded. "I think so, too, but we're gonna have to go through this one at least. Let's try taking care of it quickly."
Pulling himself upright, he waited for the Shadow to turn its back before he crept out of the alley. Then, he reached up and over his shoulder for his guitar…only to grasp at thin air. He'd forgotten. Its absence sent a shock through his system, and he let out an inadvertent gasp.
The Shadow whirled around.
"H-Hey! What the-"
Panicking, Tetsuo reached within to summon his Persona, only to find that he couldn't. It was as if a barrier had been thrown up around the core of his heart where his Personas dwelled that rejected his mind's attempts to penetrate it. And deep within that chilling miasma, he felt a familiar presence.
"I got him! Over here!" cried the Shadow, and lunged at him.
"Whoa, not so fast! Kay!" shouted Hayate. Kay bodily hoisted the Shadow into the air with two of its hands and drove it back into the pavement in a devastating chokeslam. A sheet of ice froze the enemy solid, and Kay shattered it to pieces with a stomp of his boot.
"You good?"
Dazed, Tetsuo nodded.
"Yeah, I…just let me try again."
Once more, Tetsuo turned his focus inward and ran up against the barrier. This time, he tried steadying his breath, and found that he was able to probe further than he had before. He pushed deeper into the writhing, uncertain mass until finally, he brushed up against his inner self, and Launcelot burst forth.
"There…" he said, but to his surprise, he found himself somewhat short of breath. Launcelot didn't seem quite right, either. His outline was faint and wavery, and his posture lacked its usual vigor as his arms drooped listlessly under the weight of his lance and shield.
"Are you sure? He doesn't look so good," Yoko frowned, but a call from Shibutani interrupted her thoughts.
"Table that for now - we've still got company."
Hearing their comrade's cry for help, the other two Shadows had come rushing back. Shibutani and Koharu stepped forward to meet them. Bors skewered one on the end of his lance, and the other disappeared in a whirl of Le Fay's howling shades. As the enemies collapsed into smoke, Yoko rushed over to Tetsuo.
"Hey, what happened back there?"
"It's Nyarlathotep," he answered through gritted teeth. "He's messing with my ability to summon my Personas."
"Wait, seriously? But, then…" Yoko trailed off with a baffled sidelong glance in the direction of Kay, Le Fay, and Bors. They had been able to come out and fight without a hitch.
"It seems there's no trouble when you allow us to use those Personas," remarked Shibutani. "Perhaps Nyarlathotep doesn't consider us to be consequential aspects of your soul."
"Doesn't think much of us, huh?" said Hayate breezily. "That works out okay for us, though. Just let us handle your Personas 'til you're back up to speed. Business as usual."
Tetsuo relaxed his inner focus, and Launcelot disappeared in a flash of blue. Although he was grateful for the others' support, the situation was still disquieting. Either Nyarlathotep had a tighter grip on his heart than he'd figured, or…
You're still scared.
The nasty, intrusive thought was barely more than a whisper in the back of his head, yet it came through perfectly clear.
So what, he thought. It doesn't matter. It shouldn't matter. Don't let him rattle you.
"All right, then. I'm counting on you guys," he said at last. "For now though, we oughta keep moving. We don't know how many other Shadows could've heard that."
From that moment onward, they pushed deeper into the city's heart with a greater sense of caution. The blocks ahead were rife with squads of the cityfolk-turned-Shadows patrolling from corner to corner in search of them. Tetsuo and his friends stuck to the cover of the web of alleys that criss-crossed between the buildings, engaging the Shadows only when it was strictly necessary to advance.
Tetsuo contributed to the fighting as much as he could, but summoning his Persona didn't get any easier. Even once he'd gotten past Nyarlathotep's interference, controlling his Persona was a taxing effort that made it feel like he was fighting in quicksand. Still, the others made quick work of the enemy without him. Strength wasn't the problem - it was their numbers. Nyarlathotep had only turned these creatures loose to wear them down, and every Shadow they had to fight was one too many.
"How's everyone holding up?" he asked once Guinevere had finished torching a cluster of enemies that had ambushed them from within a bookshop. If the others were getting tired, it didn't show. They all gave him an unfazed thumbs-up in return.
"Great. Let's keep it up, I can see the hospital from here."
This close, Nyarlathotep's pressure had become noticeably oppressive. Dread, heavy and stifling, settled on his shoulders and wriggled into his ears on scuttling legs. The throbbing noise he'd noticed earlier was nearly deafening, and it wasn't until he placed a hand to his chest that he realized that it was the beat of his own heart, amplified by the Cloud hundreds of times over. However, the fear actually helped to steel his resolve. If Nyarlathotep was trying this hard to intimidate him, then he had to be doing something right.
A row of Shadows stood guard at the entrance to the hospital courtyard, but Shibutani and Bors blew through them like a freight train to clear the way. Stepping over their crumbling bodies, Tetsuo tried to keep his vision trained on the entrance straight ahead.
Nyarlathotep had wanted him to return here for a reason. A single sidelong glance at the wreckage strewn about the blown-out lawn, and for a fraction of a second, he was back in the armor, breathing heavily and seeing red through the slits in his visor. He squeezed his eyes shut, and didn't open them again until he heard the doors hiss open in front of him.
Inside, the lobby looked just as it had the last time he'd visited, although this time, even the receptionist was gone. Perhaps, Tetsuo figured, she was outside searching for him with the rest of the Shadows.
Hayate echoed his thoughts aloud.
"Doesn't look like anybody's around. Yeesh, it's creepy in here."
"That's good, though, isn't it?" said Koharu. "All we have to do is find Nyarlathotep."
The six of them paused and glanced around the wide, sterile room, almost as if they had expected to see him sitting in the corner with his nose in a magazine.
"Where d'you suppose he is?" Yoko asked Tetsuo, but he wasn't sure how to respond.
It made the most sense to assume that he'd be waiting in the same place as before - the fourth floor ICU - but at the same time, his presence seemed to be radiating from all over. He could feel it seeping through the walls, pushing up through the cracks in the linoleum, dripping from the ceiling. Nyarlathotep had become an entity capable of filling this entire space, and the hospital itself had clearly metamorphosed into something much greater than before.
"...Deeper," he said at last. "C'mon, let's have a look around first."
They quickly discovered that even if they wanted to check the ICU, they wouldn't have been able to. None of the elevators were in operation, and both of the doors leading to the stairwells at either end of the lobby had up and vanished entirely. The only way forward appeared to be the central hallway, which had transformed into a long, yawning passage that stretched on so far that they couldn't make out where it ended. At some point, it all converged into a single point that not even the flickering fluorescent lights could penetrate.
"Guess we'd better get going…" Mariko muttered uncertainly.
After marching down the monotonous corridor for a while, it began to have some peculiar effects on their senses. No matter how far they went, the doors and art on either wall never changed, making it seem as though they were walking in place. They could open the doors, but they merely led into other hallways that were identical in every way, save for a faint, high-pitched screeching noise that no one was adventurous enough to investigate. At one point, Tetsuo turned around to see how far they had gone, only to find they were back at the elevators again. This, it seemed, was the trick - Nyarlathotep had ensured that the only way to reach him would also be the most exhausting. And so, after a spot of frustrated venting, everyone agreed to keep their eyes forward no matter how badly they wanted to do otherwise, and off they went again.
The journey wasn't any easier the second time around as the minutes blurred together, and any sense of time they might have once had slipped away. Worse than that was the quiet. No one had much of anything to say about the situation, leaving Tetsuo with only his own thoughts for company. Immediately, his mind wandered to his parents. Would his mother be upset at what he'd done? Would he really be able to live without his father around?
Dad…?
Tetsuo scrunched his brow. Was it his imagination, or was he having difficulty remembering his father's face? It hadn't been that long ago that they'd all had dinner together. His thoughts began to race. No, he couldn't be forgetting. It was this damned hospital - it was Nyarlathotep. He had to get out of here, had to get away from his influence-
Mariko's hand clamped down on his shoulder and her eyes met his. Tetsuo's breath caught in his windpipe. He had very nearly turned around.
Then, very matter-of-factly, she said, "What did the grizzly say when he was late for work?"
"What?"
"How em-bear-assing!"
The others winced, and Koharu let out a groan.
"Mariko…are you sure this is the right time for jokes?" Tetsuo asked.
She nodded firmly. "Of course it is! There's no better time for it than now, we need to do something to keep our minds busy! C'mon, who's got another?"
She was right, of course. Tetsuo thought about his father again, remembering one of his favorite jokes.
"Have you heard about the restaurant on the Moon?"
"No, what about it?" said Yoko.
"The food's supposed to be great, but it's got no atmosphere."
Everyone groaned at that one, but the effect it had on their mood was immediate. Instead of oppressive silence, the air grew thick with wretched puns that curled their pursed lips into wry smiles as they tried to one-up each other. It wasn't until much later that they realized that something had changed - the lights were growing steadily dimmer, and the walls were beginning to deteriorate and crumble. Eventually, the corridor mercifully came to an abrupt end, and they gazed out upon a familiar sight.
Beyond the hallway was an immense void dotted with faraway stars and islands carved of black stone drifting about on unseen waves. Swarms of black monarchs flitted to and fro amidst the infinite night, lending the darkness a living, breathing quality.
"We're back," breathed Yoko. Tetsuo now understood why this world had seemed so detached from reality the first time they had visited - this was a place that truly existed outside of time and space, a deep, stygian crevasse beneath the Sea of Souls. This was his realm, his prison.
As though acknowledging their presence, a shimmering, glassy pathway emblazoned with incomprehensible runes unfurled at their feet. It spilled forth into the blackness, spiraling deeper and deeper into the abyss until it plunged out of sight. Tetsuo stepped towards the edge and stared into the swirling vortex of glittering space dust, half expecting to see a pair of eyes staring back. He wrenched his gaze away, and looked back at Yoko.
"This is it," he said. "Just a little bit more to go…one more enemy, and it'll all be over. Thank you, guys, for sticking with me all the way until the end. I wouldn't have been able to do this without you. Now, let's get down there and give Nyarlathotep hell."
His heart filled with both vigor and trepidation, Tetsuo set off at a run down the twisting path with his partners in tow, racing headlong into the chasm's heart.
• • • • •
When they reached the bottom, the echo of their footsteps reverberated into infinity as though they had entered an immense, expansive cave whose walls and ceiling were too far away to see. An enormous magic seal illuminated the vast slab of polished, amethyst-tinged stone that spread out before them with a harsh golden light. Each ring of the complex sigil had been inscribed with hundreds of symbols, seemingly from dozens of different ancient languages. Tetsuo couldn't read a word of it, but the insidious whisper in his mind eagerly translated for him:
Gaoled here within Monado Mandala is Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos, Lord of a Thousand Forms, the Faceless God, Dweller in the Darkness…
The voice continued to drone on and on until he shut it out. Forcing his attention forward, he strode past the seal towards the dais at the slab's far edge, where a lone figure sat waiting for him.
Perched upon his throne of jittering, chitinous wings, Nyarlathotep either hadn't had enough time to heal himself completely, or he had abandoned any pretenses of remaining disguised. His face still hung open where Rin had split him, sloughing off on one side like a discarded wrapper to reveal what lay within - a seething mass of Shadow twisted into his own likeness, boring holes into his mind with its piercing golden stare.
"That look in your eyes…I suppose you haven't come to your senses yet, have you?"
Tetsuo recoiled. When Nyarlathotep spoke, the words issued from both the mouth of the hanging skin and that of the black thing within it. Swallowing hard, he gathered up what courage he could.
"I know what I'm doing…I-I saw what you did to Rin. I'm through with our contract - and I'm through with you."
"Are you now?" The inner mouth sneered. "Let's suppose for a moment that this truly is what you desire…how do you expect your future to unfold? You are destined to suffer in that world. Inevitably, this facade of resolve will crumble, and you will once again find yourself at oblivion's edge…with no savior to rescue you."
"For you to be a savior, you'd have to be even the slightest bit selfless, and I don't think you're capable of that."
It was difficult to read Nyarlathotep's reaction, but Tetsuo thought he caught the slightest hint of irritation in his reply.
"Really? You'd say that after everything I've done for you? I plucked you from the Sea of Souls because I pitied you."
"That's exactly it. You don't care about humans, you pity them. You think we're less than you, that we can't change and become stronger. You didn't choose me because you wanted to help. You chose me because you thought I was weak enough to manipulate."
A weighty pause descended between them. When Nyarlathotep spoke again, the frustration in his tone was no longer subtle.
"You know nothing of your place in the cosmos. Mankind is insignificant and fragile. I have watched greater men than you succumb to the inescapable cruelty of their mortality. Whether inflicted by their own hand or that of fate, misery is endemic to humanity's existence. For a creature like you, receiving my pity is a greater honor than you comprehend."
Tetsuo smiled in spite of himself.
"Yeah, y'know what? Somehow, I don't buy that. You're trapped down here - you told me so yourself. The way I see it, you need me more than I need you, and the idea that I might be stronger than you think scares you shitless."
At that, the shadows flared out of their husk with a chorus of screams, immolating the skin that had once contained them and sending up a cloud of thick, acrid smoke that hung in the air like a storm cloud. Nyarlathotep's voice boomed from within.
"You think I fear you? Absurd. Struggle if you wish, but understand that if you seek to rebel against human nature itself, you will find no answers. Once I have flayed these delusions of bravado from you, you will submit to our contract."
The air rippled violently as the cloud of butterflies and smoke began to undulate and swell before their eyes. A host of faces emerged from its surface, contorting themselves in agony before being swallowed up again. As the heaving subsided, the haze coalesced and took shape, plummeting to the ground with such force that it nearly knocked everyone off their feet.
An enormous mask carved in Tetsuo's likeness lay before them, carved from a bizarre obsidian-like material that shone like glass, but gently pulsated like living tissue, giving Tetsuo the impression of a giant cocoon. With a horrid scraping noise, its eyelids flew open, igniting a pair of vivid golden irises that blazed with a terrible fury. A host of black monarchs emerged from its great mouth, twisting themselves into flailing tendrils.
"Well then, come! Bring your will to bear against me, and I will break it! I, Nyarlathotep, will show you the meaning of true terror!"
