Chapter X

'Father and daughter face each other moribund. The fire the countdown to their final moments. A father wishes to die before his children for many reasons: they love their child and hope they won't meet in the afterlife too early; they couldn't bear the heartache of their child dying in their arms, or out of them; because they are supposed to, Society expects 'that' so 'that' is what happens. When it doesn't, Society demands justice, Society dictates how evil Evil is. In both scenarios, two lives are lost, in one scenario people do not mourn for long, in the other a sense of loss lingers for generations; what is the difference? Is it the time of which life is lost? Maybe it's the potential that Society mourns, not the life? The only truth that remains consistent is that Society is only sad for selfish reasons. Loss is a selfish emotion, as is everything else. So, imagine a third scenario, both die at the same time. How long is one supposed to mourn? A year? More or less? Wrong! If this scenario was to happen, Society would intervene. Society hates abnormalities. Society hates a lot of things, like itself. Society always finds its flaws and scrutinizes itself because of them. Society is nothing more than a teenager finding their way in the world except Society never grows up.'

Death will come soon. Nature will kill both; Society will kill whichever benefits it the most. The light harshens as a hand rises. The light halts. Society has chosen its enactor of justice, of its will.

Akuma's left-hand shivers as it drags down the blaze from a distance. The force he projected from his palm fluctuates, the fire rises and repeatedly falls like a flickering candle; it whips and cracks at the feet of the doomed family. As a constant reminder, the heat rose faster than the flame, the smoke slithered upwards through the air uncontested; that is outside of Akuma's willpower.

'Will Nature take rightful reign over and force an ultimatum of ultimate proportions? Maybe Nature doesn't have to do anything? Maybe, without Society's knowing, it already has?'

Akuma's body temperature begins to plummet under the sun in the heavens. 37 to 35 degrees Celsius. His teeth chatter and clatter as his jaw vibrates; his breath becomes heavy, his body becomes heavy, the want to enter a deep sleep is heavy; his arms collapse, his head collapses, he becomes limp and sinks. The fire rises. Sao rises. The group holding Akuma abandon the weak, defenceless boy, and turn to the rowdy caretaker. Emptyhanded, Sao has nothing to lose. Like a pack of critics, they circle him, waiting for a lapse in quality, a weakness, a dent in the armour.

Fajr's left-hand shoots upwards, fingers to God, palm to the crowd. 'Halt! Ignore him, the demon; make sure the boy can't throw another tantrum.'

In an instant, Sao is left to his devices, and they return to a passed out Akuma; his freezing face on the cold floor, the heat taunting him from behind as they attempt to restore life to full capacity. One, of those hooded, grabs Akuma's right-hand and hydraulic-presses it into the dirt. Another, wielding a kitchen cleaver starts hacking at Akuma's wrist. Akuma's left-hand lightly holds tightly to whatever filth it can get to squeeze. His mouth screams, but his tongue does not help it in doing so. Blood sprays from the laceration, his skin parts with itself. The bone slowed the process, so another hooded figure stamps on the exposed ulna and radius, scattering shards of cream further into his muscles and onto the ground. The hacking proceeds.

A thread of skin remains, which is torn apart like paper by a pair of hands with the force of two horses. Akuma's drain pump stump gushes out his life force; one of his amputators takes a wooden stick and lights it with the stakes of the daughter – who's flame falls as the source at the bottom collapses, crashing her to the floor, leaving her concussed. The amputator presses the fiery stick onto the exposed inner surface, searing it shut. Crackles of wood and the sizzling of burning flesh drum and violin to the chorus of jeers and boos from the dancers. The smell of palace-booze blends with cooked meat and a rotting hand; Sao expels acids out of his throat onto the ground.

Sao freezes. The flame engulfs Alexander's feet and dries the tears he begs his body to hold inside. Kingly, he stands lofted in the air, three nails away from being godly.

'Oh, Antoinette. Why? Of all people to have returned, you chose her. Oh, God? Does thou hath little faith in thee? It was going so well… but then YOU! You returned! I didn't want to see you again. You should be at the ball, now look at what your return has caused. Death, death, death. Why did you come back? You should have stayed away, far away from home; you should have turned away from the palace, start walking, and never stop; you fool, you jester. My plan, it was perfect. One special day and you would have never come back. Oh, why, God?! You self-proclaimed genius. You claim to know everything and what to do, yet you also have the pride to even consider that you love us and understand our emotions. How dare you? How dare you?! You dare to understand my emotions then purposefully act against them with the intent to please everyone? You know everything yet can't find one of the infinite paths where everyone is happy and proud, pleased with life and unwilling to let it go. You sicken me. I will gladly go to hell if I can talk with you once; I wish to make a deal. I will accept your word when I hear it… I love you…"

Following his words, his body made its trip to make a deal, fleeing the smoking sun flowers that shoot up their stick to make them straight towards the sun. Violets sprout down to dirt from Antoinette's eyes, and with that, the dancers are put on full throttle. Society wins.

'Society has no morals; it doesn't take morals into account. Morals are the products of those who don't have to follow them, the laws that make sure that they never will have to follow them; laws and morals and rules, unnatural restrictions placed to constrict the weak. Without morals, Society still stands atop its tower to watch over its land. Granted, Society stole that tower and stole that land, but morals stop the rightful owners from stealing it back. Morals are a restart point. When you want to control people, you place another moral in their ever-growing catalogue of obscure laws and codes that determine whether you are human or animal. Granted, humans are animals, and the human has no right to their catalogue as it is Society's property, or more specifically, humans are Society's property; the body that is, the mind just comes with the bundle. I do consider myself part of that bundle, I don't have the right to feel otherwise. I am a product of Society and those who are adamant that they are not: the animals, so to speak.'

'One is dead, my people. If luck calls for it, we will deal with the other directly,' Fajr bellows from the centre of her heart. The dancers have reached their peak and grow increasingly animalistic. They grab bread and wine and begin catapulting it on towards an insentient Akuma and insensitive Sao.

'Animals I tell you; they do not know what it means to be human, just like Society. To me, no true human exists. Not one human can call themselves perfect, not one truthfully. Even the arrogant, even the prideful, all succumb to the ever-looming threat of Time; they will be forgotten, they will, no matter how god-like they feel, will be forgotten, just as God will be once every impure human and animal die. Rapture is what that day will be called, the day everything dies, whether that be alone or with God. An afterlife cannot be proven; therefore, I am forced to believe that this God that Society swears by is the so-called pure human. If that is true, if God is what the perfect human was, is, and will be, then I'd rather be an animal, to be completely honest with you. I do not want to decide which child dies to the next heinous crime I demand to take place to complete my incompletable plan. A pure human tells us that he can take and give life at will, yet if we try our hardest to live up to the unreachable expectations set upon us by his many mouths, we are prosecuted as murderers, psychopaths, and villains. If an impure human trying to become pure is a sin, then God is prideful and selfish for not allowing anyone to be seen or even have the chance to sit beside him in the holy halls of heaven as equal. Where there are Superbia and Avaritia, the other sins follow. It is us, impure humans, though, who must live alongside Tristitia, which makes me wonder about the story of creation designed by the fake humans that live here. They claimed God was the one who lived alongside Tristitia, and that the Demons harboured the other sins. Even to those who don't truly exist, us impure humans are the ones who are placed alongside the preached sins. I propose this, a continuum of existence; God exists on the left-most side and entities that do not exist are found on the right-most side. We impure humans exist dead in the centre. Now, what puts us at the exact centre? Well, that is simple; this continuum I speak of measures how sinful a being is, along with its state of reality. A being that does not exist, cannot harbour sins; God harbours them all as you must to be pure and remain pure; us humans only possess one true sin: Tristitia, the others are placebos placed on us so Society can rule. You may call me insane if you please because that is what Society wants, it is what God wants. So, I wish to return to my original anecdote. If a father and daughter are about to die, which death is preferable first? The answer is either, they both die in the end. That is what God has planned, is it not?'

Wandering flames are blinded by wandering lights. Three pairs of steroid-enhanced torches take aim over the dancers like a disco ball that arrived late. Three trucks halt in front of the crowd; out of two of the vehicles, four people draped in pitch black armour – spikes and ridges highlighted by a purple tint – march in a single file line, dividing the dancers into two halves. The troops then turn, the first and third turn right and the second and fourth turn left. They all take a synchronised first step forward pushing the dancers apart further and further as the troops continue to make long strides ahead. Before a reaction could take place, the flashes dulled by smoke and bangs kill the mood. Mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, sisters, brothers, cousins, grandparents, simply erased, never to be heard or spoken to again.

No cries; no tears; no dying wishes. Only the dripping of blood makes a sound.

Click, the final truck door opens. A single man carries out a backpack, leaving a girl tied in the truck. His face and fingerprints censored by a repelling black, he takes steps in quakes into the centre of the first level of hell.

'How low you have fallen; scared again, are we?'

Laser eyes burn down into Sao's temple. A cassette recorder replays continuously within his mind, a cassette of Sao from separate eyes. 'Why? It can't be him. He shouldn't be here; he wouldn't be here. It's not what he would want. Is it him? Impossible. Inconceivable. Implausible. He wouldn't come here; he wouldn't leave there, them.'

'Oh, but I would come here, I would leave them, just like you, my idol.'

Sao's cassette jammed, he jolts his neck to face the man's boots, boots that could crush a soul as easily as they could crush a skull; an after-scent of previous punished subjects still linger around his feet. The smell is not visible, like mirrors, Sao looks down on his reflection.

'Have some self-respect, will you? How can I idolize someone too pathetic to look me of all people in the face? Sao.'

'Sao… Sao… Sao… stop that, stop calling me that. You don't deserve to call me by that name. Sao… Sao… Sao… I hate it. I hate that name. I hate that name in that voice.'

'Look at me. Look at what I have become. It has been a while, but I've come all this way just so you could see me. Look at me! Look at me, Sao!' The man digs his nails into Sao's turned skull, contorting Sao's neck with hegemonic force, imposing hazy eye contact. 'Let me allow you to get a better look at me,' he says with a coarse, punitive, irritated voice, letting go of Sao's right cheekbone and taking hold of his light silencing mask. Peeling his mask from his face, right to left, revealing an eye as blue as a riptide, a nose like an upside-down trophy; his secondary pearl-eye looks lost in the new sun. 'Look at what I have become Sao. Some call me a Shinigami, others call me Yama, Viduus, Charon; my men are called angels of death, my angels of death, my loyal angels. I have not come to you as a God, I am not as prideful as those in power here; but if you want to repent, I can be your God. Sao…'

'Please, say this is all a dream; say this is all fake. It's not real!'

'…You're right; this is not real. Allow me to prove it.'

Stepping over the scattered scrapes of the purged crowd, the four angels of death march towards Fajr. Only one of Fajr's guards came to her aid, the wind whistles the top of the hood to the guard's back. Asif's gold hair blows back behind his head; eyes closed as he flies swiftly in front of Fajr's dotted body. Like chickenpox, Asif's face fills with red spots. A second later and those red spots burst and widen; Asif's face becomes a shattered mirror of its prior self with jagged frames of olive and wine. Thud, thud, thud, flesh fall like meteors.

With her ever-loyal subject in tatters in front of her feet, Fajr falls to her knees, smacking the leaking plasma. The man, leaving Sao's slumped sub-corpse, wrenches Fajr towards him, thrusting a thin hidden knife through her torso with a muffled screech.

'Urgh… blah…' barrels of blood bellow from Fajr's gullet, a drop falling on the man's boot.

He shoves Fajr back to the floor, 'Filth, get yourself off me!' He spits at her curled body and turns back to Sao, dusting off his clothes, 'See, no consequences. Only in a fake world would that be the case. Now, do you understand, Sao? No? Well then, maybe one last demonstration will cement the truth for you.'

He hoists Akuma over his head, stares directly into Sao's twitching eyes, then drops Akuma into his stalagmite knee with a snap of a twig. Something intangible within Sao snaps in correspondence. Sao swoops in to grab Akuma and staggers his way to the palace.

Sao turns to look at his past. The man waves to him, holding a girl with a sandbag over her head next to him, the angels of death picking up Antoinette from the stake.

'Your family is mine, Sao.'