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Chapter Text

"Apocalypse" is a surprisingly nuanced word. And one that can be subtle, at least at first.

On the one hand, in modern times, it usually means "Armageddon", the final battle of eternity - by definition, not the least subtle thing in the cosmos. And of course, related catastrophes, which are not known for being especially subtle, what with the end of the world and all (or at least, humanity).

But "Apocalypse" has a base word of "revelation" - the sudden reveal of hidden things. So one could say the apocalypse isn't an uncommon event - some, scholars, scientists, and philosophers, crave it. Nurture it. Worship it, for those of an obsessive bent. 

Both have an undertone of "cleansing." To destroy all that is evil in the world in its cleansing final disaster, or to purify the mind of ignorance in glorious knowledge.

Both meanings would also soon have a herald in the form of Shinobu Hattori - and fittingly, absolutely nobody would have guessed beforehand.

They would not have guessed, because when the devil found him, he was in a state where armageddon purging him from existence seemed preferable to continuing to exist in a ruin of a life.

I just wanted to help...I just wanted to help...I just wanted to help...

That was his main phase throughout that nightmare of a trial, where even his supposed defense attorney seemed to regard his job at explaining how very, very lowly he was. How he could not be faulted for being nothing but a simple country idiot who didn't know his manners when faced with powerful, proper city folk. When he didn't even know the bald man's name - something about "legal protection of supernatural beings" to prevent double jeopardy if the censors of Yu-Shan, the judges of the gods, decided to pursue an audit. That this was supposed to apply to only other gods was shouted down by said attorney as too expensive to litigate.

Because money apparently mattered when stopping a woman from being assaulted.

So here he was, just staring at the ceiling, trying to figure out where it all went wrong, and his future vanished...

And then he heard the singing.

"Liiiight, shiiines, on the heaven.."

It...wasn't a song that rhymed very well. Or had much of a coherent set of lyrics.

It was, however, a break from the gloom. And the voice was quite pretty.

"The earth, the spirit light, brings, glory and graaace..."

The voice was...silky. Almost serpentine. Not entirely human - but not disquieting. More like a reminder that there was more than just this awful, banal people that left him to rot because it inconvenienced some rich man to fall on his face.

"May iiit, op-en your eyyyes..."

Desperate to see that break, he did, spinning to the front of his cell-

There was a mermaid in the prison.

There was a great green fish-woman sitting on the air the middle of the prison, petting a crab as she sang.

"Shaan-tiii, shaaan-tiii...Oh?" The mermaid looked up with pure black eyes, alien and yet soulful. "...did you like it?"

For a moment, Shinobu could do nothing but...stare, at the absolute absurdity. 

A mermaid asking a prisoner if he liked her song when she woke him out of a depressive spiral with her singing.

Then, a bit of his knowledge of fairy tales came back online, and he decided to give her what she was asking for lest he be rude. "Ahem! I mean...the voice is nice, but I don't think it...translates that well into Japanese..."

"Mm. No it doesn't. It rhymes in Old Realm. Thank you for your honesty, though, Hattori. And before you ask," she said, raising a green hand. "Yes, I know your name. It is the nature of a messenger to know who she must find."

Shinobu, if anything, was even more confused now. "A...messenger...?"

"Mm. To start with - I am a demon. A demjen, known colloquially as a quickener of ore for how we can create other demons from metal - our chalcothetes." She held up the crab, revealing it to be not made of chitin, but extremely well-fitted metal, like an art piece had come to life - but with eyes that twitched and looked around like a curious animal scanning its environment, rather than some automaton. "You are aware of what it means for a demon to be going about their duties, generally?"

It wasn't patronizing or gentle. It was simply matter-of-fact - a descriptor of being. Shinobu understood. 

And he wasn't having it. "...No. Tell your summoner that no, whatever he wants, I am not letting him use me as a dancing monkey just because I look like I'm easily manipulated. My life may have been ruined, but I know what a recruiter for a malevolent cult looks like a mile away. I'm a delinquent - not muscle for some two-bit sorcerer somewhere looking for suckers to throw between him and his rivals."

It came out a little harder than he wanted

The demjen seemed taken aback - but hardly put out.

In fact, she seemed...mildly impressed. 

"Actually...not quite. In fact...that will is part of why she called me forth for this duty." The demjen sat up. "Would you like to meet her?"

Before he could respond, the demjen closed her eyes, and turned...slack.

A second later, a glowing red sigil, a hollow circle with an emerald green sunburst at its bottom, appeared in her chest, as she jerked. Like a puppet whose strings were being shaken out to get a sense of its weight. The chalchothete scurried away.

When the demon's eyes open, they had turned red and green too - scarlet sclera and pupil around a green iris.

When she opened her mouth, she did not speak - but she was understood.

Dear child...you who cry out for liberation and enlightenment...Adorjan, the Silent Wind greets you.

Shinobu could tell that if the speaker could actually be heard, she would not sound very much like the demjen. Rather, she would sound...grandmotherly, without being old. The wisdom born of extreme age with the eternal youth of being beyond age and mortality.

When he opened his mouth, the arm of the mermaid quickly flew out to halt. Speak not, please. My hearing is too acute for sound, especially speech - there is too many things to understand. Tone, volume, pitch, the actual information is too much. But I see your heart, for it is ours. Your sorrow and the apathy of Heaven called the Coadjutor - she came.

Shinobu cocked his head in confusion and trepidation.

Tell me, child, have you heard of Solar Exaltations?

The Chosen of the Unconquered Sun, Shinobu recognized. The heroes found by the free-floating Third Souls made by the King of the Gods, Sol Invictus, Lord of Light and Virtue. And more or less the reason why things were never allowed to be boring, especially in the spirit world of the Wyld, the divine city of Yu-Shan, and the Underworld.

And tell me...did you know you almost became one in that trial, but that idiotic coward you called an attorney stopped you?

The prisoner's jaw dropped. 

Part of him knew this could be a lie - a deception by someone who had an axe to grind against the Sun. Sorcerers, especially, were known for chafing against his decrees and rules, since they limited the power of high magic. 

But at the same time - the Wind seemed too...sad about it. There was spite, almost certainly - but also empathy. Nothing could be heard of her except her feelings - and that made it impossible to lie. If she even wanted to.

The flaw in the process - those Exaltations only go to those who have already proven themselves of heroic drive and goals. But heroes are defined by actions, not just virtue - and society often does not allow actions from those it would rather not have as heroes. Now there was anger there - anger with the same compassion, the same sadness, a hatred of anything that would prevent self-actualization and freedom. Through no fault of your own, you failed a test you had not a single chance of knowing you were being measured by - one that, in salt upon wounds, was caused by you spitting at one who had already succeeded that test.

And if Shinobu could speak, he would be utterly silent at that revelation.

Not just because the Wind could not lie - but because of how much sense it made.

The anonymity. The moral outrage of his prosecutors. The bald man's incandescently furious and disbelieving reaction, as if he could not comprehend Shinobu had, quite by accident and his, left him to take a bloody spill on the ground.

Like a mortal overcoming a god without trying. Or in this case, an especially powerful demigod.

I see it in your eyes - you see why we meant him to be a protector of Creation, not its ruler, the Silent Wind continued, bitterly. To judge who is worthy based on their best is no deeper than to condemn based on worst. That man has genuine love in his heart for this country - but only because he is from it. He is everything that forced the hand of the Chosen of the Stars and Chosen of the Elements to bring the Good Death to the First Age, and he was from before his Second Breath.

Shinobu just...stumbled back, and fell on his prison bed.

And then he realized what she just said about "we meant him", and its implications.

You shed ignorance quickly, the Wind felt, approvingly. Yes, we Yozis, the ultimate originators of the beings your kind calls 'demons', were the firstborn rulers of Heaven, the bringers of order and truth to the Wyld, who made all things in Creation from the given flesh of our sister Gaia. Primordials, we were called in the Ages before the First - and the Titans. But the Celestial Incarnae, the Sun and his family, grew wroth with us and our mistreatment of humanity - a species we had made as models for things that held our interests, but they grew fond of for their sheer refusal to give in despite being the bottom of the sentient order. I do not condemn him - when I was still the River of All Torments, my obsessions bound me as much as it did humans. But I admit to a grudge for how he sealed us away when he defeated us - ripping open the flesh of our planet-sized King Malfeas and sealing us and our children within, with the latter being let out only to serve him or sorcerers by Heavenly mandate.

A look of horror came to Shinobu's face, which only increased as he imagined his cell gore-slick and suffering.

I thank you, but it is not so terrible. We Yozis are also living elements of the world - my true form is wind, air, and basalt, for instance. Malfeas is made of brass, stone, and fire - his organs are a great city lit by his living heart, Ligier, the Green Sun, and it is quite livable. But it is still our prison, and so we scheme escape for lack of other things to do - however impossible. We lost, and so we must understand our new selves - but we have also seen our prodigal son's failures, and if we had eyes like yours, they would be blind from tears. To have taken our thrones from us, but proven no better? Even worse? You should be a hero, a king - perhaps an icon of worship to the gods! But look at what his apathy and judgement have made of you - a victim of restraint and dogma, a rock to someone who deserves not the dung on the Sun's boot and received a crown from him, bound in this shanty of a prison that makes our own binding seem like wings that defy gravity itself.

The Wind made her host smile. But it no longer has to be as such. Do you see the mark upon my great-granddaughter's chest? It's a Second Breath - yours. The one you called as the unfairness of the court broke Destiny itself.

Shinobu stared at it, then the host, skeptically.

Hold on to that doubt. In moderation, cynicism is the grease that will prevent shackles of promises from taking hold. But I ask only what you may wish to provide - in our quixotic efforts to escape, we Yozis took 50 Solar Exaltations for our own, quite by happy accident, and we remade them. Better. Less judging, not a crown upon the mighty, but a sword for the weak and the oppressed. What the Coadjutor bares is the Second Breath of a Nadir, the Scourges, the breakers of all chains, who are drawn to the imprisoned to make them uncatchable by all. And it is ready to become one with you - just as she is willing to give of her own existence as an independent being to free you forever.

The feeling grew intense, focused, insistent. Let her do so. Fuse with her, and the Exaltation she bares. Your fury at this unjust fate will become your closest friend, and the Coadjutor your eternal friend, able to speak with all the knowledge of the Yozis. You will embark on a new life, of endless freedom, endless running, endless liberation. A Prince of the Green Sun, equal to the Unquestionable who are our most direct children and rule the surface of Malfeas in our name. We do not promise they will not entangle you in their games, for it is still Hell, and still prone to lethal politics. But to imprison you, ever again - you may have the entire world as your enemy, Shinobu Hattori, a player in an unjust game that seeks to kill you for acknowledging it is unjust and unfair - but first, it must catch you. All we ask, is that you never stop calling out the cards when they cheat, you or anyone else.

Take the sword. Slice through your chains. Take your new shape.

In coming years, Shinobu Hattori, then known as the Joker, the Wisest Fool, and the Zero Who Is Infinity (the demons tried to dub him with more titles, but at that point he had wizened to the honey they provided when tricking others into their lethal political games and deliberate spiteful decadence) would realize how insanely brilliant this was as a deal with the devil, quite literally.

Approach someone who has every reason to hate the world.

Tell them they are justified.

That they are not alone.

And they will have all the power in the world to break what hurt them, if only they will become one with an eternal friend, an Unwoven Coadjutor to speak for the wisdom of the Yozi Demon Kings.

To ask for nothing except to hold on to that hate, and simply try to redirect it in a positive direction - and mean every word.

The Yozis did not entice you into spite and hatred of all gods without nuance or empathy, and to punish humanity for the sins of its protectors, through hidden costs. Exalted of any kind, even Infernal, would fight against it, on the basis of being humans. No, they got into your mind through their generosity, to give you everything you ever wanted and a few things you didn't know you needed, all with comforting words that your spite was justified, everything not of demons was of evil, that the Unconquered Sun was wrong to defend the weakest of sentient creatures over his own creators.

The only manipulation was avoiding letting those they spoke to get in a word edgewise - and at their lowest moment, there was nothing that he could have said in response that contradicted her. Or really, wanted to contest everything he really wanted to hear.

And if he knew all that in advance - he knew, in his heart of hearts, that faced with that extended hand and offer of fusion - he would not have hesitated for a good long minute.

He instead would have grabbed the demjen's hand with both his own, and shook.

For five days, no guard noticed a chrysalis of sea-green scales and living metal in Shinobu's cell, a testament to the power of the Yozis to protect their chosen champions as their body adapted to their new, partly demonic nature.

And when he emerged, as a crow-winged, sharped-tooth specter in operatic clothes and metal exoskeleton over his hands hidden beneath the image of the boy he used to be, he knew that he would die before ever being imprisoned again.

Nothing is more free than flight, after all.

Chapter Text

Some Exalted, upon becoming as such, burst out into the world with an explosion of activity, a detonation of glory to celebrate the coming of a new hero of myth.

Some Exalted were Shinobu, who upon testing out his new demonic form - the Devil-Body Incarnation, the Coadjutor who had taken permanent residence in his head called it - proceeded to promptly submerge themselves in their mundane identity. And like most of his more "slow burn" contemporaries, it was born out of equal parts fearful respect of his new power (he did just emerge from a cocoon made of demon-flesh after accepting an offer from the Demon Kings, after all), and a desire to get a handle on it before upending the order of the world and remaking it in his image.

Shame one of his new teachers wasn't having that.

Who, to add insult to injury...was not Exalted. Not even a Dragon-Blooded, one of the elemental-descended lineages who were born with their power, but as a price for their numbers, their control over their passions, and having a support group in the form of vast families perfectly suited to amplifying the magic of their relatives were among the weakest Exalted. No, Suguru Kamoshida was a completely mortal athlete - and perhaps the fact he was never anything more is part of what made him a monster even Kimbery, the living ocean of Hell known for her lusty and possessive nature, would be repulsed by. Kimbery was, at her core, a mother and a lover - a controlling mother and a paranoid lover prone to drowning both her children metaphorically and rivals to her current beaus' affection literally, but the act of degradation to control deeper was something that the Sea That Marched Against The Flame foreswore, for she still desired her children to grow strong, healthy, and free, and cared whether or not her lovers consented to her obsessive attentions.

Kamoshida...had never grown, really. Not mentally from the immature jock he was in high school, certainly. He was always an angry little boy who saw women as trophies more than anything else - an extremely quaint way of looking at the world when one of the most important people of the lost Second Age before the reordering of the world to a more scientific one and the splitting of the human and spirit worlds was the Scarlet Empress, first and last queen of the Realm despite it living for centuries. But perhaps it was because he only ever viewed people as possessions. Boys for props to his glory, girls as his sex toys and pets, if they weren't enemies.

So while Shinobu was fine keeping his Exalted and human lives a secret as he took the first, tentative explorations of his new existence, Kamoshida decided that he didn't like the potential threat that was a "bad boy" delinquent, especially one that would "ruin the school's reputation." So his record was known to everyone.

And then it turned out Tokyo was also host to a bizarre warp of the Wyld - the spirit world was always partly a place of the fae, creatures of living story. And the story Kamoshida told himself about his distorted, selfish desires had taken on a life of their own there - the school was now his castle. a Palace of Warped Desires in the chaotic reflection of Shujin's real self.

A castle infested with fae and corrupt wood elementals who wanted the story to stay that was, Kamoshida remaining their unknowing provider of their warped little kingdom, with humans wandering in being viewed as a threat to the Church of The Volleyball King.

It wasn't all bad, of course. Because in the desperate scramble to escape with his new friend Ryuji, who had accidentally brought them over (he didn't blame Ryuji, it was an app that downloaded itself to their phones), Shinobu managed to free an interesting little catfolk boy who called himself Morgana - though he insisted he wasn't actually a beastman, but a purestrain human Exalt who had experienced the mutative power of the chaos within the Wyld the hard and direct way. An "Exigent of Cats", specifically - one of the "custom Exalted" made by gods who willingly sacrificed their own power, catalyzed by a spark of pure power the Sun loaned them if they prayed to him in sincere desperation, with Morgana having been chosen to protect the domain of the goddess of the concept of felines. (Of course, this was an assumption on his own right - he didn't remember who he was before he became a beastfolk who was very much more "beast" than "folk"; it was amazing he retained true free will and self-awareness given how the Wyld disliked the complexity of true personalities).

And then on the second trip, it turned out that Ryuji willingly tagging along despite Shinobu terrifying him when he was forced to show his wings and rip apart the knights of the lusty forest send to execute both him and his new friend was not lost on the Incarnae, when a silver-haired woman reached out from behind a mirror to put a headband circlet on him - and then suddenly, he could turn into a macaque, and also both he and Shinobu were sure they had known each other for decades, despite having just met.

When this was explained to Morgana, it took a good few minutes for the young catman to stop laughing long enough to explain that Shinobu and Ryuji were actually two halves a Lunar/Solar Mate Bond - the result of a political marriage of every Solar to the majority of the shapeshifting Lunars, champions of the (usually) goddess of the moon, hunting, and mischief, to stop a post-Primordial War civil war, one that would last between bearers of the same Second Breaths for eternity. And then laughing even harder when both boys turned very red and tried to awkwardly explain to the other they were sorry, but they didn't swing that way. (Thankfully, the marriage was made intentionally dynamic - the only requirement was that the future incarnations would be important to the other, "lovers", "best friends", "favorite rivals", or "mutual loathing" were all acceptable and under the control of both halves.)

But for all their newfound power...they were still teenagers. Still more afraid of consequences than willing to undo Kamoshida. Especially when the high priest of the Church all but threatened their families if they dared tell on Kamoshida, and worse, possibly made it memorable. Which was really perverse, when he was a god himself - a puffed up Regulator of The Lustful Appeal of Athletes by the name of Azmodai. He believed that if Kamoshida's post-Olympic fame returned and he became a renowned coach of legendary sportsmen himself, then Azmodai would be promoted in order to maintain his accounting of Kamoshida's effect on romantic culture in general, with the wood elementals in his court feeding off the generative, lusty Essence he and his fans would generate, and the fae off the romantic drama. 

They probably would have overcome their fear of him - but it was too late for one Shiho Suzui to avoid discovering just how little Kamoshida thought of the agency of women. And her girlfriend was unable to convince anyone of what was going on - she was "Kamoshida's whore", after all, and obviously was jealous of the coach's attentions on someone else.

Which led to the rather grotesque silver lining that the failure induced by Ann Takamaki's mixed heritage and unpopularity because of Kamoshida's control of her mattering more than her actual deeds or personality was enough of a blameless failure that a Coadjutor in the form of a highly intelligent crystalline wasp brought a message and gift from Cecelyne, the Endless Desert and Yozi of Distance, Boundaries, and Law. Five days later, as the new Ascendant emerged from her chrysalis, it was a really good thing the first thing she saw was Shinobu fighting to hold off the Church from trying to kill her while she metamorphosed. She probably would never have considered forgiving him and his forming Circle for bowing to pressure at first, let alone joined fully later, after she had the catharsis of scouring the flesh from Azmodai's physical form and inflicting him with a powerful curse in return for her permission to continue existing - to obey her will to confess his crimes and corruption before Heaven, and get the worst sentence possible for himself and his entire conspiracy.

But that left one very ugly speed bump that was no longer being protected by the corrupt heavens...

"Well, Kamoshida?", Shinobu said, smirking. "I'm sorry to interrupt, but - I think I would like to dispute my expulsion. I've made friends who share my interests in making you wish you were never alive..."

Even if Kamoshida could say much beyond blubbering pleas for mercy, it was unlikely he could respond, what with the telekinetic force around his throat. Mind-Hand Manipulation, a Charm, an occult technique, formed from the Yozis having the same understanding of physics as the architect of the house they designed. One of the favorites of She Who Lives In Her Name, the order-obsessed Yozi of Matter, Stasis, and Scientific Principles (so-called because her actual name was an occult formula that was a mathematical disproof of the existence of the meaning of life beyond continuation of the species and safety - to hear it was to believe it, and to believe it was to forever act only in predictable ways according to her probabilistic outcomes without thought, a philosophical zombie).

"...but I'm not the one you hurt most," Shinobu said, turning more serious. "I'm just a little more experienced than the one who is, so I can enact what she wants..."

He nodded to Ann, who stepped forward - and in her full Devil-Body glory as well.

Really, it seemed fitting - while the demjen part of Shinobu was only obvious if you linked the concept of "opera" and "singer", given the costume metallic exoskeleton on his body instead of his more prominent functional crow's wings - one could easily tell Ann had a bit of agatae in her. The beauteous wasps were well-titled - horse-sized insects certainly were inherently alienating to some, but they resembled living sculptures with prismatic wings, something that was always something beyond majestic to behold, and certainly very becoming of their riders (Florivet, their creator, had made them to serve as combination mount and navigator, as most agatae were about as smart as a college graduate and just as learned). Ann wasn't obviously mixed with a demonic wasp, but the "pretty insect" part was obvious - while nonfunctional for flight as of yet, her demonic form had grown great butterfly wings - and what they lacked in lift, they made up for in spectacle.

For her wings were windows to another world - to look through them was to see phantoms of the terrible and alien wilds of Malfeas-the-World, the great Demon City. One flap, the towering brass citadels that were his hair, growing like architectural trees out of his stone flesh. Another flap, the wings showed the vast upside-down glass root-trees of his brother Szoreny, the Silver Forest. Flap, and now they were the mountainous imprisoned form of Oramus, the Dragon Beyond The World, and his lover Elloge dancing above him as the vast poetry-sigils that gave her the name the Sphere of Speech. Flap, and then it was the two parts of Cecelyne herself, the silver dunes of the infinite distance that were her base form, and the skies above Malfeas, where scholars who had discovered things known only to the Yozis were placed as stars by her son Orabilis, as tribute to their wisdom and to silence those secrets forever. 

As if the woman they attached to wasn't enough a figure of alien beauty, whose true form was covered in prismatic exoskeleton that gave her a look like a colorful statue of precious gems come to life. A pair of feathery antennae replaced her normal pigtails, with her face the only obviously human element left in her and drew attention to the rest of her alien beauty. A very predatory beauty - she wasn't exactly ugly in her human form, but her human form was a softer beauty. One meant more to serve as a disguise and to sway. Her demonic form was meant to push - to inspire her allies that this terrifying and rapturous monster was on their side and felt nothing but empathy for them, and to impress what a mistake her enemies made upon them.

The fact the had a scorpion's tail that cracked like a whip certainly didn't hurt the effect.

It certainly had the effect it intended on Kamoshida, who looked like he wasn't sure to be mesmerized or to wet himself.

"Mm..." Ann's tail played over his face. "You know, it's funny. I dreamed of what I'd do once you were at my mercy. Dreams that would be nightmares, if I was the one being stalked by me. But now...now that I'm here...all of that seems...petty."

"Ann-T-Takamaki?", the coach said, disbelieving, and...hopeful. "You...you forgive-"

The tail snapped, leaving a gash across his cheek.

Ann shuddered, breathing in to control her rage."...you know...I was joking when I said you'd be pleading with me. Like I was actually your girlfriend. I just..." She sighed, a sound like the Endless Desert settling. "I realize that...no matter what I do...it won't undo the past. You hurt Shiho, and she's going to carry that pain forever. I'm not even really quite human any more. Really...what can I do that'd equal what you did, and I wouldn't hate myself later for?"

"Yeah, I dunno, Ann," Ryuji said, perched nearby in hybrid form, watching for any funny business from what was left of the Palace. "He's...kinda beneath being just like him if you kill him."

"I know you, Lady Ann - you aren't half the sadist you'd need to be to be even near his level," Morgana agreed. "I mean, I've got Charms that can take his memory of us - cats are stealthy and forgettable after all. But if you do just stab him - I think that 

"Yeah. But then he's a martyr. He won't ever be able to confirm that the gods coming down to reveal the truth was the truth - people will still make excuses for him. Because who could ever think wrong of our dear...Olympian...coach..."

She came to a pause...and then gave a smile that was far more terrifying than the sharped-tooth mouth Shinobu's own Devil-Body could have. "...hey. Leader?" She looked over. "You can give people demonic traits, right? Look for the bits of a human soul that share...uh, I guess DNA's the proper term, with demons?"

He caught on. "...you want me to give him the traits of something that can't really do sports? I could do a favor to your Coadjutor's cousins - naneke are hunchbacks who literally can't work outside a library..."

Actually, came the voice of his own Coadjutor. Given how manipulative he is...I have something even better. One that provides an incentive for him to confirm what that cowardly little tyrant admitted to the censors...

A day later, the police found Kamoshida - but it took them a while, as he no longer resembled an aging but handsome volleyball star. No, he now had the face, and fingers, of a sobbing, elderly crone made of twisted birchwood.

The chrysogonae were children of Makarios the Sigil's Dreamer, himself the son and Warden Soul of Erembour, That Which Calls To Shadows and perhaps the most famous of the Demon Princes sired by the Ebon Dragon, Yozi of Darkness, Sin, and Opposition. Like their father, grandmother, and ultimate progenitor, they were social manipulators at their core - and perhaps the most basal of all of them, as chrysogonae fed on ambition and intrigue like food and water. Really, it was a mercy - their fingers were about as rigid as birch and cracked painfully if they deigned to move them, to the point where it was easier on them to grow them fast around things they wished to grip and burn the unneeded - something that wasn't exactly good for catching or gripping physical food. Or playing sports, more pertinently. 

However, just like their family tree, there was a twist. The Dragon had unselfish love in what black knot of shadow he called a heart for doomed things, hence why he was the only Yozi that kept on trying escape attempts, as he could not bear to not shower his own quixotic schemes with attention. Erembour loved all things of the night - criminals and predatory animals, to be certain, but also exiles, dreams, and romance, with her passion for the last meaning that sorcerers would sometimes go about the complex rituals of calling forth a Demon Princess purely for her expertise in the arts of love, artistic or physical. And Makarios was often called the most welcomed of demons, as his manipulations were simply a testament to his work effort, as he was the finest and most scrupulous merchant in all of Malfeas. And it was that twist that gave his daughters the sobriquet of the "crying women" - for while they did not always sob, they could not help it when they sensed that innocence was despoiled or true love betrayed, something they sometimes were forced to bring about all too often in their job as powerbrokers and advisors. 

Naturally, the tears coming from the chrysogona tear ducts in Kamoshida's new face prevented him from even seeing until he began to make restitution. Innocence was something he had outright broken in Shujin.

Chapter Text

Of course, it didn't end there. For a moment it seemed like it would - everyone was in awe and fear of the "Phantom Devils" who made a corrupt god go in public and recant his entire scheme and crimes in public out of terror, and then left his unknowing conspirator a mutated shell of what he had once been, to corroborate everything. For a moment, it seemed like they'd have a peaceful life...

But literally none of their Exaltations were having it - Infernal blessings wanted to rage and rebel, Luna's gift was never satisfied with stagnancy, and who in their right mind expected the Second Breath made in the image of cats to not get into trouble. But really, it was Shido who provided the final impetus. Just having him...lord over the rest, confident that even with the power he smelled in them, they couldn't retaliate against his bullying without making their lives worse. A rotten adult to the core.

(They did not know he was the Solar that had so badly derailed Shinobu's life and Shido were one and the same then, only that he felt of power beyond a mortal frame - but really, they realized, they should have seen it coming. The force of narrative conventions demanded it.)

So, they made a website, and turned the Wyld reflection of LeBlanc, the cafe Shinobu was staying at, into their own little slice of Hell to run operations out of.

Morgana picked up sorcery in a past he didn't recall anymore - which made sense for the Exigent of a notoriously mystical animal. He had not discovered if he could access the Celestial Circle that was reserved for powerful gods and more naturally puissant Exalted yet (though he felt he could), but it was more than enough to perform some light workings, and to summon a tribe of marottes, the threadlike hopping puppeteers that served as the crew of most demonic building projects, to finish what he couldn't do. This resulted in an awkward moment where one tried to grab an errant baby as decoration, but Morgana was versed enough in summoning lore to know their odd obsession with infants as fashion statements - after having the concept of "infants belong to their mothers" explained to it, it put the slightly traumatized toddler back none the worse for wear, though the demon in question refused to work until it had a substitute, leading to a rather confused toy shop owner and a rather expensive (and realistic) doll in the possession of a living knot. 

And from there, they started building something of a kingdom. 

It wasn't much of one - Ann's Coadjutor dryly described it as the official, sponsored version of a Beggar's Rift, the villages of outcasts and exiles that would occasionally crop up in Malfeas in places the demon lords forgot about or couldn't reach, which existed mostly to be off-handedly bowled over when it became strategically convenient or absentmindedly crushed when a passing Yozi caused a natural disaster (when your continents were the ambulatory limbs of your god-emperor, you dreaded when he reached over to scratch an itch - asteroids had more care to their impact sites). Which to be fair, it was; a place in the Wyld for those fae cast out by capricious politics, mutants incapable of living among unblemished humans but still human within their changed flesh, rogue demons unable and unwilling to go back to Malfeas, and even the occasional unemployed god or otherwise patron of those same mutant tribes. An eclectic mix of peoples of Tokyo and its Wyld domains, bounded only by the fact they had nowhere else to go. But they made something of it - and more importantly, they were able to run a growing intelligence network to find people who were victimized by society. And really, the name wasn't a bad starting point - Morgana pointed out that the concept of "courts of miracles" weren't that different than a Beggar's Rift, so Shinobu decided to dub it the Rift of Wonders in tribute to the destitute slums bound together largely because polite society had decided to blame them for it failing them (and given the paucity of small-time grifters and masters of milking pity for enough money for food, was also a source of wonders like the "blind" being able to see just fine once they stopped panhandling). 

How and why Yuuki Mishima became something of the ambassador was beyond even him, but his technical expertise was more than appreciated both by the Rifters who liked the internet, and the Phantoms who enjoyed his website as a quest bulletin. Which was how they met Natsuhiko Nakanohara and gave him a nice scare to stop stalking a girlfriend of his - and accidentally turned over a rock filled with more familial drama than they could shake a stick at.

Which was to be expected with Dragon-Blooded, but most Dragon-Blooded didn't actively sabotage their own cousins' wills so they could milk their sons for art.

Ichiriyusai Madarame, scion of the Madarame Lineage of Air-Aspected Dragon-Blooded, known for their abilities as painters, poets, and ability to serve, was probably the kind of person that would cause the Scarlet Empress' ghost to turn red as her distinct dress and disavow all knowledge of what he had done on the off-chance he was descended from her (which to be fair was not that unlikely). The worst part was, he was very good at hiding it - in fact, most people tended to be surprised, relieved, or both when they realized the man in a cheap kimono was a Dragon-Blood who didn't apparently lord over the fact his bloodline made him functionally better than most of humanity (made even more annoying by how it was because of actual superpowers combined with being able to lean on relatives who leveraged those superpowers for influence). In fact, he came off as a bit of a monk, given how he lived in a modest little shack with his apprentices rather than trading his power for money in some way.

Which made the fact that he was the kind of Dragon-Blood who lorded it even more screwed up, because not only did he not actually support his apprentices in a house worthy of the name despite owning a combination mansion in his lover's name (who to her credit honestly thought the students volunteered to help train their own internal Essence and focus on art), many of his apprentices were actually potential Dragon-Blooded, and often, from branch families of Madarame's own. Yusuke Kitagawa himself, a future Phantom, was actually Madarame's cousin a couple generations down - and given how he was more or less adopted by Madarame, thus more or less his grandson-in-all-but-genes. 

Which didn't even get into how it turned out that a genetic ability to focus on abstract matters did not make you a better artist, given how it turned out Madarame actively claimed credit for pretty much every work his students made since his breakout piece, Sayuri - who in a somehow even more twisted event, was actually the last self-portrait of Yusuke's mother, Madarame's grand-niece. Which was meant to have the infant Yusuke in it, just had it painted over.

(When they had taken up the job, Ryuji had wondered if they were aiming a bit low to expose and break a plagiarist after the whole 'corrupt divine court protecting a rapist' thing. He had been answered to his satisfaction when he learned of the abuse, but that particular tidbit caused him to rate Madarame higher on his Internal Doucheometer directly between Azmodai and Kamoshida; Azmodai, at least, had something of a legitimate fear in that a loss of domain to a god was a loss in purpose of life and sanity, even if his fear of losing everything had twisted into a greed for more.)

Ironically, it was discovering how heartless his Sensei truly was that gave Madarame the monkey's paw truth to his claim that "frugal living" was more likely to cause latent Dragon-Blooded to Exalt - because Yusuke finally stood up for himself and went from victim to survivor, and Luna took the form of Sayuri to encourage him and embrace him as its painter would have should she still have lived. And the elemental goons Madarame had summoned were not expecting to fight two Lunars after they thought they isolated Ryuji. A fox couldn't climb like Ryuji's own spirit shape, but a mean bite and a better sense of smell helped with the more stealthy air elementals.

Of course...therein lied the problem. The area around Madarame's manse in the Wyld had twisted with the strange anomaly that echoed Madarame's distorted desires - and the one part of his Lineage's vaunted talents he seemed to be good at quickly became a problem.

Namely, he knew about the little court of petty gods who were supporting the parasocial subculture that made his Palace for their own gain too...and Dragon-Blooded were good at teamwork.

"DO YOU SEE NOW, YOU LITTLE VERMIN?!", he roared from the inside of the maelstrom of fire, wind, ice, and wood he and his elemental minions had constructed around himself. "DO YOU SEE HOW FOOLISH YOU WERE TO DEFAME ME?! THE GOD OF THE ART WORLD?!"

"If you had the humility claimed to be your station, you would know there are several dozen spirits with more claim to that title than you, even before one examines their responsibilities," Yusuke snarked back, crouching into a distinct stance. "Shall we see if your skills with Fire Dragon Style are as real as your supposed talents as a painter?"

Madarame scoffed as he gestured, the winds of his fully activated anima picking up a pair of bo staves, as he himself fell into a similar stance. "More than yours, you ungrateful little kit! You abandoned your birthright, and with it, your full capacity to use these forms, despite my hopes..."

Shinobu gawked. "Are...are you still claiming you're disappointed in him?!"

Whether or not Madarame heard him over his anima synced with his minions, nobody could tell. If he did, he certainly didn't care as he submerged himself in the distinct rhythm of Fire Dragon.

As a martial art, Fire Dragon Style was the artist's style, hence why Madarame used it for appearances if nothing else. Another part was, as he noted, it was an Immaculate Dragon Style, by Dragon-Bloods and for them - without an elemental anima, it could not be used to its full potential, even by a Solar, the pack rat masters-of-all. When Fire Dragons fought, they didn't so much strike as danced, with the attacks upon their enemies almost incidental to the steps of the beat they kept in their head.

And seeing Madarame dive in - Morgana, the martial arts fanatic among the Phantoms, quickly realized his lack of artistic success under his own work was due to a lack of motivation, not a lack of talent.

Whatever you could say about him, the long tongues of flame from his staffs flying like streamers as he struck and bobbed were sublime. Madarame's talent, so neglected in his written work, was beyond compare in his fighting style. There was passion there, and innocence. A sincere love of the lethal pavane that lacked any malevolence or sadism, just a simple passion for the performance that wished to share in its lethal joy.

This somehow failed to produce sympathy for Madarame given the state of his students and his treatment of his "crop."

But he wasn't wrong. While Dragon-Blooded were the best at the element of their inborn Aspect, the fundamental mystical forces of Creation were all the remit of the ancestors, the Immaculate Dragons, and even if it wasn't, they had all intermarried and diverged over thousands of generations; all had some ability with the other five elements from their basal ones. Certainly enough for Madarame to unleash the true power of Fire Dragon, fire-dancing, while for Yusuke, it was just immensely fancy if functional steps with a sword and/or claws of his hybrid form. It didn't help the young painter was a crafter, not a fighter - pretty soon, there was the distinct smell of burning vulpine fur.

Truly, Yusuke could not face his teacher alone. Not with the corrupt spirits and elementals backing him up.

But Yusuke was not alone. And none of his new friends believed in showing honor in combat to one who had none outside it.

It was Morgana who realized that, while he was attuned to the spirits, Madarame was no sorcerer. To open one's soul to the hidden knowledges of the world, required one to accept a level of change on a soul-deep level; humans were not meant to wield the power of the world's Essence the way even those with awakened Essence wielded their own life force, and while there was no moral judgement in it, to become a sorcerer was to become something a little other-than-human, even for the Exalted. Madarame, in his vainglory, disdained that, supposedly because he valued the purity of humanity too much, in reality because some part of him feared that the new perspective of a sorcerer would force him to confront his own rationalizations and find them wanting.

Which meant that none of his elemental helpers were actually bound to him - and thus, all of them were not products of magic, as normal elemental summoning actually wove new ones from the Essence of the world, but little gods with lives of their own...and blackmail material.

Such as for one particular rothopper - a hybridized wood and water elemental resembling a great dog-sized toad - who had once camped out in the dragon Green Frowning Bear's garden to feast on the collection of iuchemon heart-wasps that had taken residence there during an especially long absence by its owner. While nobody shed a tear for the giant bugs notorious for laying their eggs in the hearts of humans, she had stayed there so long that a significant portion of his collection had an unannounced shift into a swamp, killing a few less water-tolerant specimens. While she had fled long before he came back, the fun thing about being able to summon naneke, the readers of forbidden texts, was that the scholarly demons possessed some ability with postcognition, and one note later about politely informing the grumpy dragon about his accidental saboteur unless she provided a favor later...

Shinobu gave a distinct hand signal the rothopper recognized - and with that, Madarame was suddenly blindsided by an exhalation of poisonous, soporific vapors so thick they gathered on the ground around him in a purplish slime.

Purplish, and slippery.

It was fitting that someone who took pride only in his battle dance was defeated when he slipped ass over teakettle in front of the student he so abused.

Chapter Text

Madarame's defeat and confession, combined with how a bit of the fight spilled out into the mortal world, was really what put the Phantoms on the map as a new set of folk heroes. In the same sense of a bootlegger during alcoholic prohibition, mind, but breaking the law in ways that really only upset provably terrible people was a great way for everyone else to suddenly discover moral ambiguity and apologetics. It was kind of hard to hate someone who not only exposed someone as a child abuser and near-slaver, but also a forger with little-to-no actual understanding of culture, not to mention gave a massive amount of his now-stolen (and exposed) fortune to philanthropy. (Even better, the 30% finder's fee was more than enough for a massive nest egg for the Rift of Miracles - man had a lot of money stashed, as it turned out, as he was a genuine tightwad, and he had saved up plenty.)

But all the complimentary notoriety also came with heat. While the public wasn't aware a good half of the Phantoms were demon lords with the kind of attitude and backstory that made them JRPG final bosses and had a kingdom of monsters hidden away in a world of chaos, it was kind of had to ignore the grand larceny, violations of privacy, assault, and vigilantism. Hence, Goro Akechi, the Second Detective Prince, and his dancing assistant, Kasumi Yoshizawa. This would be merely extremely obnoxious, except Akechi was also a very public and very proud Lunar Exalted himself, a Changing Moon to be precise - one who had fixed his metamorphic Second Breath to being a master of emotion and spywork, though he kept it purely to behavioral forensics and investigation (he claimed - no other Lunar in the world, especially Ryuji, suspected a Caste known for how easily they adopted the forms of other humans wasn't willing to go undercover).

More importantly - a lot of people thought they were crime lords first, vigilantes second. Just getting rid of a rival to one of their forgers for the sake of taking over the business with a bunch of demonic craftsmen, a theory that was supported by how the neomah summoned to help keep the Rift's medical wing running were selling forgeries of the paintings now exposed as not originally Madarame's as the real copies until Yusuke glowered at them. (In all fairness to the demonic courtesans and flesh-weavers, they didn't get that originality was that important, as functionality as a piece of artwork was the same for lovingly made copies of it.)

So, they needed a big bust - showing they were quite happy to take down a major underworld figure that they could have just as easily worked for.

One presented itself not long after, when new refugees showed up at the Rift - with dream-eaten women in tow.

Fae had an ill repute among, well, most everyone who wasn't fae. Most didn't deserve it, they were simply the result of the untamed and pre-existent portions of the Wyld spontaneously forming life in reaction to stories, but there was one variety who were not only deserving, they were the source of it - the raksha, also known as the Fair Folk, or true elves. As befitting their chaotic origins, what formed them varied - but they all had a commonality, the ability to incorporate the stories of others into their own. This gave them both great power in the shifting lands, where story was as real as gravity if not more so, but it also gave them great hunger, because without the conflict produced by story interaction with others, their own narratives would calcify, and with it, their own internal biology. Some fed it simply by pursuing dramas with themselves and mortals who sought them out - hence, the notoriously capricious politics of fae courts, it was literally a matter of life and death to them - but others realized that it was safer and often more reliable to find a substitute - imagination. Mortal minds, after all, had the capacity to consider impossible scenarios without being exposed to them, as mortals had hard limitations they were born aware of, and thus, they possessed an ability to come up with story that both fascinated and unnerved many raksha. However, they realized, it also meant that if they took said imaginations and used them to think of new stories without actually getting into conflict with stakes to act them out...

More importantly, the Fair Folk discovered once you took someone's imagination - you also took their ability to recognize their own agency. You had eaten the part of them that was the protagonist of their own story. Which made them ideal slaves, capable of understanding orders and asking for clarification, but unable to contest them - a fact which was not lost on greedy and amoral humans. Such as sex traffickers looking for completely pliable "comfort women."

However, despite learning of a slave ring affiliated with the gluttonous elves - absolutely no trace of it could be found, except in the existence of dream-eaten. Including in the memories of the refugees that brought the women to them in hopes someone could help them - they all remembered 'a deal', but not with who. It was like the world twisted so that nothing could be found.

That was when they got a text message from a mysterious "Alibaba", saying that was precisely the case - and gave them contact information for Makoto Nijima, the Shujin Student Council President.

There were several discoveries made that day - first, Makoto was a Solar - a member of the Dawn Caste of warriors and generals, to be precise, albeit one who much preferred the debate hall to the battlefield, and planning rather than fighting. Second - she had heard of where the dream-eaten were being disappeared from. 

Getting her to cooperate with a demonic kingdom of outcasts took a bit longer, but even before then, she recognized that only one person was condemning people to a horrifying life as living dolls, and it wasn't the lords of the outlaw demiplane. But, one crisis caused by her feeling a bit inadequate and overconfidence later that exposed them to the crime lord in question, they also got his name - Junya Kaneshiro. And with it, the discovery of exactly what he was.

Kaneshiro was a Sidereal Exalted, one of the chosen of the Five Maidens of Fate - specifically a Chosen of Secrets, one of Saturn's band of lorekeepers and spies. So being stealthy was already his forte, were it not for something else - Arcane Fate.

It was an unintended side effect of the end of the First Age - and the majority of Sidereals overthrowing the Solars violently when they realized that too much power and too much self-absorption resulted in madness, and the destruction of the cosmos in the face of competing visions of what the world should be by people who tended to bend the world into that vision by existing. In the process, they broke the Mask, the constellation governing things known but hidden, quite by accident. It still worked, but for Sidereals themselves, it became far too active, for now it regarded the very identity of all Sidereals to be a secret to be hidden - and in so doing, erase that they had ever been mortals. Spouses forgot their fiancees on wedding days, parents wistfully longed for having children when younger, kingdoms spoke of interregnum periods where they had no monarch and yet nobody sought the throne, if only because none could remember the one in it. It didn't stop with their pre-Exaltation life either - the only people who reliably recalled the identity of Sidereals were the various gods of destiny, close friends, and those beyond a need for fate to keep their internal physical laws working consistently, like demons.

Many Sidereals resigned themselves to this, and simply emigrated to Heaven as the Bureau of Destiny's elite underhand and operatives for snarls in destiny the gods realized they could not fix, while guiding the ghost of their old lives as strangers. Kaneshiro was not one of these Sidereals. Perhaps he felt vengeful for taking away the one thing he had, his past, perhaps the realization that no mundane authority could even remember his crimes gave him a taste of power that instantly starved for more, or more likely both, as the vengefulness drove him away from simply integrating into the Division of Secrets and accepting its responsibilities, leading him to never checking his own greed. Whatever the case, he was a rogue, and his paranoia greatly helped him in this - because while the mortal police would be hard-pressed to even comprehend his existence, the Bureau was more than happy to hunt down its prodigal children. To hide your tracks from the literal arbiters of causality was no mean feat.

Much to the humor of the Coadjutors, the Phantoms now found themselves coordinating with the gods. Though to their frustration - the newbie was also the ambassador.

"It is not that I do not trust your virtue, Lady Nijima, it is...your company, in all honesty." Bahal Hesh, Preceptor of Ten Thousand Styles and God of Martial Arts, rubbed his eyes. "Even if their human hearts are pure - they don't just have human hearts."

Shinobu cocked his head. "...I have a literal singer in my head, and Ann has a riding wasp. Apart from some rather tasteless jokes that could be made, I kinda don't see the issue."

"You have Exaltations reforged in the wounded pride of the Yozis and their unceasing entitlement and anger. You will forgive me if I am not especially eager to open the palm for you without assurance you are not the kind of people who learn Black Claw Style willingly." Hesh grimaced. "Ruthless technique. Dishonorable. And worst of all - utterly self-destructive."

"That...admittedly awful thing besides, I can vouch for them - honestly, they tried to talk me out of something very, very stupid." Makoto grimaced as she looked at the crack on her orichalcum gauntlets. "And I think if you're not angry about Kaneshiro, you're not paying attention."

"Oh I am incandescently furious with him and his absolute disregard for my domain beyond its ability for raw strength. I need convincing that the cure will not be worse than the disease, however." The wizened god turned to them.  "May I phrase a question for you? All of you, including Niijima?"

Shinobu winced, but nodded, followed by the rest.

"Let me outline the scenario - let us posit that you become students of my old favorite enemy, Suntarakal. He takes you on for a term as his prisoners and apprentices in his place-body as the Crucible of Brass and Iron. You cannot even attempt graduation until you have mastered at least one martial art. What do you chose, and why?"

There was a bit of thinking.

"...I'm gonna be honest," Ryuji said. "I don't know the names. I got some Earth Dragon down, but that's 'cause it's simple for me - defensive fighting in the thick of it that doesn't need much thought is my name. So, if there's a style that's better for Lunars that extends out of being a brawler, and maybe helps me practice with being surprised so I can counter cheap tricks, that'd be my first choice. Don't fix what ain't broke, especially if it gets me back to my mom faster."

"Yeah, I'm with him. And I'm not a fighter - hey wait, aren't Crane Style and Invincible Voice known for diplomats and being defensive?", Ann said. "Yeah, whatever lets me get out of a fight, subdue people faster, or hit people mobbing my friends faster. Pick two."

"Crane would also be my choice," Yusuke agreed. "I am less direct a fighter than my simian compatriot, but beyond its elegance, it would allow options to disable rather than destroy. I am primarily a sorcerer anyway, fighting hand to hand is not my forte."

"Ebon Shadow, 'cause then I'd be a real ninja," Morgana said, shamelessly. "I know it's an assassin's style, but the think about being sneaky is that you can chose whether or not to hurt someone who's just there for a job and hasn't noticed you. Easy enough to inject a tranq syringe instead of, I dunno, cyanide."

"Me...I'd go with Laughing Monster, because I'm already good with Tiger. It's what I use already." Makoto did a few jabs to emphasize it. "It lets me confuse my adversaries, and fight smarter, not harder. Maybe give them a look at what it looks like when I punch the jerk out of them, literally, see if they're happier or how much they like that part of themselves."

"And since I seem to be the leader, and Morgana likes Ebon Shadow...Throne Shadow," Shinobu finished. "Just as stealthy, but it lets me coordinate with my friends better."

"Aren't the supports of a Throne Shadow called shadow fingers? As in, minions of the body?", Hesh asked. "You intend to remain king, or at least vizier?"

"I won't claim I don't like power behind the throne, I'm more self-aware than that," Shinobu admitted. "But the thing about a martial art meant to be those skills of a mastermind...they're also the skills of a teacher. My end goal is making it so that my fingers don't need me anymore - there's no small amount of would-be minions, those that become peer allies are better morally and practically."

The god nodded, tension dissipating. "I see. And...I approve. For Infernals - and for Lunars - you seem all focused on skills that aren't about violence. More protecting yourself and solving flaws. Not once did I hear anything about your enemies - that is good. The true purpose of martial arts is victory - but a dirty victory that simply leads to a new war is not truly one. I will see what I can do with the Loom of Fate - but please, do not mention this."

Not too long later, Kaneshiro's luck turned - and not well for him.

Chapter Text

Actually getting a Sidereal exposed for his mundane crimes and arrested was...well, it wasn't fun, and it involved an extensive sorcerous Working, a uniquely designed spell, from Morgana and Yusuke both to even leave Kaneshiro's identity stable enough to record he was taken into custody by Heaven (likely to be executed so his Exaltation could go to someone worth it) and that he had a criminal network that needed the mundane police to investigate. Thankfully, an important personage in the Bureau of Destiny's Division of Battles throwing his weight behind an audit with the vociferous approval of every Sidereal who mattered and the vast majority of the ones who didn't behind the audit after the rogue was brought to the Gates of Heaven by persons who totally weren't led by Infernal Exalted meant that the mundane authorities did not need to remember much more than that to do their jobs of dismantling the trafficking network.

(That sudden strokes of luck and coincidence led to a resurgence in popularity of noble demonologists, folk hero outlaws outlaws, and friendly demons in culture was a complete coincidence, the Bureau of Destiny assured Heaven.)

And of course, it was known the Phantom Devils were the reason Kaneshiro was known to exist at all - despite him being the ideal kind of person to hide behind as a patron. Most people didn't realize he existed! It didn't hurt that slavers who worked for the raksha were the most deservedly loathed people in the world, so taking out a massive ring was hardly going to hurt popular image. Quite simply, they were folk heroes now - admirable in their controlled lawlessness, more misunderstood hero than criminal. To shut them down would require somehow stating their virtue was proof of their sins.

Naturally, when a hacker group called Medjed came around to stop their 'false justice', that was precisely what they did. After all, they actually worked outside of the law for vigilante justice instead of just exposed malignancy for judgement in the court of public opinion.

How this "court of public opinion" thing was supposed to work with someone whose identity erased itself from legal records and memory without extreme effort was conveniently never explained, but given how they threatened power outages across Japan unless they acknowledged the Medjed code, nobody paying attention really expected much consistency. 

To be honest, it was probably something the Phantoms could deal with - access to two sorcerers, one Exalted-level craftsmen, and one extremely skilled battle tactician probably could counter whatever power surges were intended simply by conjuring a few lightning elementals and demons to beat up the power surges and hackers causing them while replacing damaged wires before it caused more things than some annoying trouble with the lights. If that was the only item on their list.

For one, Akechi stepped up his investigation, and he and Kasumi became impossible to avoid, especially when he invited himself to LeBlanc - and weirdly, started up a friendship with Shinobu, much to the Nadir's befuddlement. Apparently, Shinobu heckling the stage out of annoyance during the initial interview of the Detective Prince when he was called on was...honesty? He thought it was a pretty milquetoast defense of his own hidden job as vigilante, but it impressed Akechi.

But now he was unintentionally providing pressure on the Phantoms as well as intentionally - assuming the Changing Moon wasn't being a social engineer, which was a bit of a stretch. One didn't need the ability to phase through identities like clothes to be quite the honey trap. Or whatever the friendship version of that was.

The second was that Alibaba called them again - and they, or as they would later discover, she wanted repayment. In the key of antagonizing Heaven and society in general. 

And they discovered how she was able to discover them, and was never very far away.

The first hint that Sojiro Sakura's mysterious, shut-in stepdaughter had vanished was him suddenly calling Shinobu to frantically warn him that he would not be coming in that day. In the middle of the night.

The next was a demon lord - Alueva, the Keeper of the Forge of Night and master craftswoman - showing up to demand that Alibaba require a tithe of building materials and network material from Mishima as part of her favor for repayment, as well as the identities of the 'traitors' in Medjed.

The final was that the research Mishima, Morgana, and Makoto did revealed that Medjed's founder had an IP origin in Sojiro's house...and when checked, there was a very distinct sorcerous circle present in his stepdaughter's room. One that marked it as a place touched by Cecelyne, and thus a path to the Demon City. One that had been recently used. 

Thankfully the Coadjutors had more access to knowledge than what they bound to their human halves with - they were more or less direct channels to the aloof, alien minds of the Yozis. And one ask confirmed it - a new Horizon, one of the sorcerer-scientists of the Green Sun Princes, had taken residence in Malfeas, in a great technological pyramid she had worked on for months, and assuming the mantle of Peer of the Unquestionable - and had every intention of staying in her new domain, a paradise far away from the world that frightened her. Where her stepfather lived.

Thankfully for Sojiro, Shinobu was the kind of force of demonic vengeance who demanded explanation before impulsively attacking at someone who was not doing what it initially seemed like - and he was very good at telling when someone was sincerely devastated when they felt a loved one abandoned them. Admittedly, he had to reveal his true nature at that point - but it was good to do so, both for the sake of simplicity in revealing that his shop had become the embassy of a domain of interdimensional outcasts and so that they could explain where she had ended up, and her new profession and nature as a demon lord of rebellion through knowledge. 

And they quickly discovered that Sojiro was probably one of the only things Futaba Issihki-Sakura had little reason to be angry about - to the point of leaving him a note that she had not killed herself, but would contact him in a month's time "because if I stayed here longer, I probably would have."

About the only difficulty in pointing to whatever moment called a tomescu, one of the the many-armed mist-armored crab knights cursed with foresight (specifically the kind that allowed one to be absolutely certain of the agony of one's own death) known also a clamorous cloud arsenal, to her, was singling out the specific moment. Was it her single mother dying in a way that obviously involved poison and a blatant cover-up via a car crash? Was it a will that Yusuke didn't even need to read more than one line of to detect was a forgery, that cursed her out for existing? Was it an endless line of awful guardians that made her live like an animal if not less than that? Or was it Medjed, the very hackers for justice she founded, turning on her simply because she had a political disagreement with her supposed vice-leader that doxxing lower-level employees was something to be avoided? Most suspected that last, as some light detective work showed that she only started showing signs of working on sorcerous reagents after that (and it was unlikely for any mortal, let alone a teenager, to be able to become a sorcerer), and because a Horizon would have likely killed her oppressors in a snap of entirely reasonable demonic rage, but as far as they knew, some temporal anomaly prevented the tomescu Coadjutor from arriving early. Or the Phantoms would come to darkly suspect later, Futaba was not yet so desperate she would have never have considered refusing the Infernal Exaltation.

But she seemed to have been Exalted almost as long as Shinobu if not slightly longer, and she had not been idle. A Hellishly-powered genius who was already a prodigy with IT and social engineering had a worse base than a secure room she had quickly warded to be as stealthy as possible to everyone except those Sojiro liked. Even her chrysalis had become the component of her first wonder - it had developed some unique Essence circuitry to hypnotize Sojiro into believing nothing was wrong (like the big green cybernetic cocoon containing his mutating stepdaughter was completely unremarkable), and Futaba had recycled it into a magitechnical server. One perfectly suited to forming the core of a massive communications hub that could use digital sutras written in Old Realm and Unicode to summon demons through computers it was connected to, or commune with Malfean brainpool servers to organize future summons and plan with them - and to order the construction of a new palace for the self-proclaimed Oracle-Queen of the Network Transcendent for her to dwell in, away from the planet and species she had come to deeply resent for its abuse of her.

(Reading that particular sobriquet was a relief; Futaba was clearly still a teenager at her core, angry rantings in her journal about how the architecture of the human brain predisposed it to prejudice and illogical fear just her being one rather than a cohesive philosophy - something the Demon Princes clearly encouraged.)

More importantly, with Akechi breathing down their necks, Kasumi sniffing around the school with her increasingly large fanbase, and Dr. Takuto Maruki, the counselor Shujin hired against its will, getting concerned at the increasingly frazzled attitude of Shinobu - they needed her to stop Medjed's rampage. And also for her to not tax them into a favor that would ruin what tolerance the less openly-evil parts of Heaven had for them over Kaneshiro.

Which was why they finally paid a visit to Hell, to convince her to meet in the middle.

What was shocking was that Hell was apparently itching to throw them a welcome party. A very insistent welcome party.

"No, seriously, I have a girlfriend who I don't think would be okay with it, and I'm not poly," Ann said, pushing away a neomah who had been cycling through forms, trying to find Ann's preferences. "I get it's your job, but it's not my thing..."

"What she said, and I'm actually more gay than she is. So please stop - it's getting creepy," Makoto said, waving off a posing pair of male scorpion demons and a heavily laden cart of discounted souvenirs. 

Yusuke, naturally, was the only one apart from Ryuji (who had gotten into a friendly spar with some erymanthoi blood-apes) who wasn't getting uncomfortable, and even he was getting a bit exhausted talking to a local demon lord. "Uh...yes, Gateway is very...stylized, and there is an...art, to...chess patterns." Thankfully, Sigereth, the Player of Games, did not seem to notice the increasingly vacant look in the Lunar's eye as the living box of board games happily continued rambling about the nuances of designing figurines and making a pattern for a backgammon set look just so, the blank expression on the puppet she had enchanted to carry her around making it an excellent straight man to its passenger's obsessions.

"They're uh...they're pushy," Morgana said, blinking. "I mean, I get why demons are pretty chill once they've been bound, it's partly their purpose to serve, but this is...bootlicking. And I don't think they get what we want..."

"Yeah, demons are the world champions of simping," came an unfamiliar voice from near Shinobu. "Though you'll have to forgive Sigereth, she doesn't want to game unless there's a gamble, and I'm feeling a budget crunch right now - she's frustrated."

The source turned out to be an apparently teenage short human girl in pseudo-Egyptian clothing, one that kept cool in the perpetual emerald sunlight of Malfeas, but kept some amount of modesty. Cute as a button, Shinobu thought, but an apparent waif wandering around literal Hell completely casually indicated this was someone a bit more intimidating than she looked. A golden crown with an animated cobra head looked over Shinobu curiously, as she adjusted similarly golden-framed glasses. A grasshopper-like sessejela had extended its limbs out of her neck, and was fixing bright orange hair, and somehow Shinobu was not freaked out by the sight of insect legs with hands phasing through solid flesh like water.

Shinobu held up a hand. "Okay, before you start kissing the ground I walk on, I got kinda weirded out, so can we please talk to each other like normal people?"

"Relax, I'm not a demon, and even if I was, my current agenda doesn't involve kissing ass," the girl said, smiling wryly. "Kaede Honjou. God-blooded of a deity most of Heaven would rather not exist, recently moved to this layer of Our Majesty Beneath Our Feet. You?"

"Shinobu Hattori, Nadir of the Green Sun and apparent celebrity of the day," he said, ignoring the crowd of demonic groupies. "Guess you weren't swept up in it?"

"Frankly, demons celebrate too many things. It gets so dang noisy around here - probably because Malfeas is known for having quick yet-another-stupid-death moments. Might as well get what enjoyment you can." Kaede shrugged. "But it helped me come out of my shell a bit, in any case. I like demonic hyperfocus, it's...predictable. Something you know what it's about once you figure out what it is. Humans are way too scary with how they change, sometimes..."

Shinobu grimaced. "I wish I didn't understand, too. I don't think I'd be an Infernal if I didn't have a disillusioning experience..."

"And now you know why you guys normally move here," Kaede said with a shrug. "I mean...to your Coadjutors, it's home, but here - no matter how low you were, demons accept you for who you are. They celebrate it..."

A bit of wistfulness came to her eyes.

Shinobu increasingly suspected that the celebration was in the key of 'who you are is a weapon of Yozi rhetoric against Creation's current gods', but he kept silent. He suspected that this girl needed a friend for a bit. "Say. As a Nadir, I'm naturally stealthy. Wanna slip out and be Green Sun Prince incognito?"

"Do I? Ooh, there's this excellent tech shop I wanna show you! See, Makarios realized VR was going to be a thing..."

What started as an attempt to avoid the crowd became a day-long tour of Malfeas, as Shinobu turned his investigation of where Futaba put her citadel into a bit of an excursion with one of the few people who seemed like a genuine friend.

It was only later that he learned that "Kaede Honjou" was the name of the protagonist from a manga about a waif-like girl who accidentally broke the game around her simply through an abundance of caution - and was also a pun on maple leaves, as Futaba's name contained the kanji for leaves. She wasn't lying about being god-blooded either - her research had revealed to her her father was a scarab guardian, a minor god of lethal protectiveness set to guard forbidden lore from the world, who had become affectionate with his favorite rival who kept pushing at the boundaries, Wakaba Isshiki. It was also a one-night stand, and given how Futaba was one of the things that scarab guardians were supposed to lock away to never be opened, she never alerted him to his accidental get.

But the initial connection served them well when they finally found their way to her pyramid, and discovered a rather familiar pharaoh running it - ironically, Futaba had come in order to start smoothing over the idea that they should turn their fire towards the Heaven she felt had abandoned her and becoming aloof from humans, only to find herself realizing that a pyramid was, for all its idle pleasures, decadences, and luxuries stacked within it - still a tomb. Still a place to hide in, rather than ever confront her problems, or how she would occasionally hear her mother scream at her in nightmarish visions. 

The same voices that the very same demon that had suggested that she vacate to Malfeas, Iyutha, the Vitriolic Dragon, screamed in when she realized she had lost her hold on Futaba's ear, attacking the pyramid with her brood of living storms in the absolute fury of a bully who was inconvenienced. By the end of it, Iyutha's physical body had been dispersed to sulk in the healing waters of Kimbery, but what would have been a great secondary base was heavily acid-scarred. But Futaba and her newfound Circle were far wiser to the poisonous kindness of the Yozis now - and the seeds of something special had been mutually planted in both her and Shinobu's hearts.

It was very nearly perfect - except for how it turned out Yusuke was Futaba's Lunar Mate. This pleased neither of them greatly.

Chapter Text

Trouncing the Medjed hackers and overtaking their website with the Exalted version of the founder was...honestly too easy, in retrospect. Nobody really expected the Phantoms to lose after Futaba set herself to reconquering the Internet, but to actively change Medjed's website into an outcropping of Mishima's own Phansite for them was...unlikely. Not because it was beyond Futaba's abilities, but because it requited physically connecting some things that should not be connected - not by anyone with any sense in cybersecurity at all. Like hackers.

But to be frank, they were too busy riding high on the new member. Yes, Morgana started to feel a bit inadequate, especially as her own Coadjutor made it clear that like pure Solars, Infernals had access to the final and most secret of the three Circles of Enlightenment that gradated the power of sorcerers, and she was almost certain to break into it as soon as possible, but there was a bit of mollification in that Futaba...was not a fighter. Or even much of a sneak. Her primary goal in any fight was to call out the largest demon she could and hide behind it - and being aware of when was the best time to summon the right demon. Compared to even Yusuke, who at least knew how to fight elegantly with an Essence Sword called from an incantation, she was the "very definition of a glass cannon", as she put it. So he got to remain the 'local ninja master'. 

No, the inevitable fall from the top of the world came as a favor to Makoto - and her Lunar Mate.

In one of the great cliches of the world, it turned out that memories from the past holders of Makoto and Haru Okumura's Exaltations were a "skip straight to dating, do not pass Go, do not collect 200 jade" catalyst. Really, it was kind of a storybook; the brave and relatively rough-and-tumble Solar brawler and vigilante and the soft-spoken and delicate (...for certain values) Lunar heiress and phantom thief, whose fights over treasures Haru "liberated" from the rich and undeserving were more extremely violent flirtation than anything else. Especially because said undeserving included people that Makoto was afraid of confronting herself to remain a "good girl." Needless to say, Haru didn't think her new Circle was a good influence, and was absolutely certain she approved of this new, wilder Makoto. She seemed happier.

Something Haru thought she should have followed for herself, because for all her pretensions at rebelling and upheaval in the name of the unfortunate...she was still more or less under her father's thumb.

Which became quite the problem when she was arranged to be married into a Dragon-Blooded clan - and specifically, to the kind of non-Exalted short branch that gave the mortal relatives of Dragon-Blooded Exalted a bad name for being lazy, entitled idiots who used their last names to cover for the deficiencies at being human. 

While Kunikazu was Dragon-Blooded himself - an Earth Aspect, to be precise - Haru herself coming into the Elemental Blood was something categorically impossible, as Exaltations were jealous things - one could not be both Lunar and Dragon-Blooded at the same time. More importantly, Dragon-Blooded tended to come into their powers at puberty, something that was far behind her - and so, Kunikazu had written off his daughter as a mortal forever, not aware of her hidden identity and protean abilities. Just someone to be cycled back into the marriage pools of the clans, hoping concentrating genes from two mortal offshoots would mean their children would Exalt. Needless to say, this was not a particularly enlightened way of seeing the world (or even that accurate, as it was the health of the family itself the Blood cared about - there were cases beloved adopted children Exalted as Dragon-Blooded of their parents' Aspect), which combined with how he viewed the employees of his vast company as disposable gears, resulted in a...less than healthy relationship between him and his daughter.

But, when Haru discovered that he had his own Palace of Warped Desires, and moreover, was growing bioengineered food that was laced with the Essence of various gods which would inspire faith in them, she realized that may be a way out. If it was clear that he had been attached to something...a bit suspicious, then marrying into a clan would become unacceptable, and Haru would be in the clear. And since Kunikazu seemed to have done something that pissed off the vast majority of the fansite, going by the forum chatter, two birds with one stone.

She failed to understand that at that point, her father's morals, even a pragmatic recognition of business sense, had been long since replaced by a hunger for power - 'overcoming failure at any cost', as he put it. It was about midway through working on the Palace that they discovered that if Haru wouldn't be wedded in, then she could be a mistress - he wanted the social connection, not the guarantee of Exalted grandchildren.

Frankly, for a good minute, it looked like they were nearly out of options - the one thing they could do was to somehow back him into a corner in the Palace, and force him to annul the marriage and agree to treating workers better.

What they saw when they got there was...

Perhaps the darkest silver lining.

"Oh. Hello, Sempais..." Kasumi gave a slight, joyless smile as the corpse of Kunikazu slumped over in her hands, terror affixed forever on his face as the last bit of blood dripped from his neck. What splatter there was stood out against the night-dark plate Kasumi had donned, her newly revealed fangs still discolored.

It took a second, before Futaba realized what she just saw. "The black suns," she breathed. "Chosen of the Primordials slain in the First War. Knights of death. Abyssal Exalted..."

"Mm. Still gives me the right to call you sempai then, I guess..." The newly revealed deathknight looked up, the anti-light shining from her Moonshadow mark making everything around it shine. "I'm sorry I didn't ask, Okumura...I didn't have time..."

Haru, eyes still refusing to see what was in front of her, stumbled back, her hybrid form as a great goat suddenly looking very small. "...f...fat..her...?"

"It's okay. His ghost is still around. I made sure," the redhead said, as a group of bees came from her black ribbon-like whip and crawled into his cooling corpse. "I just didn't want him to get in the way, after all...dead people can't own property."

Gone was the joy and zest for life in Akechi's assistant. Now she sounded...broken. Like she had died long ago, and her body had forgotten.

Which was factually true, in a sense.

"You...who even are you, Kasumi?! If that's even your real name?!", Shinobu growled, reaching for his orichalcum daggers.

"Mm. Her mistake. Saving someone...who did not deserve to live. She did." She sighed. "The mistake died anyway...and gave up her name because she was too afraid to die, too afraid to upset her father. A coward to the end. I am the Violet Dancing Upon the Lip of the Final Abyss now. I can only wear her name because the Neverborn know it isn't mine..."

"...Akechi," Morgana realized. "He's your Lunar Mate. When the Yozis' dead siblings stole the Solar Exalted - they didn't erase it..."

"No. No they did not..." She gave another sad smile. "He's more than I deserve. More than I ever did. Monsters together, the both of us..."

"And now," Ryuji said, pulling out his staff. "You and that asshole can be slain together! I knew there was something off about Pancake Boy!"

She stared. "...pancake-never mind. But I must say - he realized who you were a long time ago. And he has to say - we're not your enemy."

The sheer absurdity of that statement shocked Haru out of her stupefied grief, as she rushed at Violet with a scream of inhuman rage and pain - and telegraphed herself too much, as by the time she reached Violet, the undead Exalt had transmuted herself to ghostly form, and fell through the floor.

But left a USB drive behind. One detailing a plan to frame the Phantoms for the actions of a politician named Masayoshi Shido.

A very familiar politician.

Chapter Text

In hindsight, all narrative conventions demanded it. If Infernals weren't beyond Fate, the moment a pattern spider with any sense of dramatic tension noticed one Solar-derived Exalted drew their Second Breath due to the cruel and amoral actions of another, they would throw themselves into the depths of Pure Chaos if it meant the two would come into conflict again. With Infernals, it was even more likely - the very fact that Shido was a Solar was part of the recruitment pitch, for crying out loud! Of course they'd want to repay that deal, and quite possibly put some major egg on the face of the Unconquered Sun for having made such a boneheaded decision in who got to be His Chosen, success or failure.

But honestly it was still almost unbearably melodramatic - especially with the sudden reveal that the supposed heroic rivals were nightmarish anti-heroes after his guts in revenge.

A bit of sorcerous research (and going further into favor debt with Bahal Hesh to chase down some information from an old flame of his in the Division of Endings) uncovered far more about Goro Akechi and the Abyssal once named Sumire Yoshizawa than anyone ever wanted to know. 

Akechi, for one, should have been named Goro Shido, and the world would be a much better place if he was. His mother was what could be...politely described as a professional girlfriend, and Akechi was a product of Shido more or less bullying her into being as unsafe as possible for his own kinks - he probably did not know he had a bastard son. This would be enough reason for Akechi to hate the man, but then she died by her own hand, the stress of raising him alone when she was a poor sex worker becoming too much. From what they were able to find, he Exalted soon after in recognition of his survival...

And it was Shido who backed his initial desire to become a consulting detective. Which, given how the man abandoned him and his mom, seemed like an odd display of sudden nepotism. Normally blackmail would be the solution - but Shinobu remembered how spiteful and vengeful the man was. He'd probably try to kill Akechi otherwise, especially given his Solar charisma being able to smooth things over and hide it. So they dug deeper, into his assistant.

Which was given an interesting twist when part of learning more about the Violet was assisted by Kunikazu Okumura's ghost - Haru was the most shocked when she discovered that "his ghost is still around" quip was a statement of fact, not a taunt. The bees that had escaped from her soulsteel ribbon were the same kind of thing produced by the necromantic Rune of Sweet Passing, short-lived spirits of memory and sorrow that searched for connections the recently deceased had with their lives and then reforged even the slightest regret or desire to continue living into a tether capable of resisting the call to submerge in Lethe for whatever lay beyond true death or fall into Oblivion for peaceful annihilation - guaranteeing their rise as a ghost, their souls constructing a new body from the stagnant Essence of undeath agglutinating around their obsessions and dragging themselves out of the many rivers of the Underworld. 

Which had the side benefit of forcefully reminding Kunikazu that, no matter what he told himself, his regret was that he had no regard or connection to his daughter anymore - just a suppurating need for more that would never be fulfilled. So besides being able to make peace with her (a rare privilege, as even once ghosts arose in the Underworld, they had to find their way out to interact with the living), he was a source of much-needed insight into the grey courts of the unquiet dead - and the deathlords who served as intermediaries between the Neverborn, the eldritch and mind-breaking ghosts of slain Primordials, and the Abyssal Exalted, their Chosen - people who could have been Solars, but died in the attempt, so the dark Exaltation offered them revival as a hero-king among the undead at the cost of their living name.

After learning who Violet was before she made the deal - even Haru admitted to some amount of sympathy with Sumire. Not much, and there was naught but scorn for the Abyssal she became, but the now-orphaned Lunar seemed quite angry she wasn't able to convince herself she would find her defeat cathartic. 

She tried to die in her sister's place - the real Kasumi Yoshizawa. They were both gymnasts, though Kasumi somewhat outshone her sister - and going by ghostly gossip, had absolutely no ability to read emotions when it came to the depressed. Sumire thought of herself as a burden on everyone close to her, and Kasumi's good-natured teasing and belief in self-reliance was...not the right thing. So when a car lost control, and both sisters tried to save each other, Sumire tried to get someone else to save her sister before her. 

She needn't have bothered. Thanks to some budget cuts thanks to Shido's influence as a favor to a competitor medical director he owed a favor to, the surgeon wasn't able to access tests for a particular anesthetic in time, and both died of an allergic reaction. And since it was Sumire alone who was conscious enough to try and save her sister, she was the only one offered a chance to trade her name for a life-beyond-death. Thus was the Violet born, memories of those around changed by her patron deathlord so that nobody remembered that there was no "lucky" sister (with extra air quotes around "lucky", given how broken the actual Kasumi would have been if roles were flipped). And also had a psychotic break where she refused to know herself as Sumire, as opposed to that name no longer being hers (the Neverborn tended to get...testy with Abyssals who tried to cheat the deal, even when it was the best option).

In a touch of poetry, it turned out each one's respective Second Breath was in a Solar-Lunar Mate bond - and led them to each other, both Exalted victims of Shido's callousness. And who when they discovered more, found they were united in utter loathing for the man - but not quite wanting to kill him.

For Violet, it was born of the knowledge that death was not the end. No, Shido would either escape beyond Lethe or return a ghost still regarded as a martyr and ancestor. No, he needed to suffer, and wish for death before she granted him the charity. For Akechi...honestly it was the daddy issues. He realized long ago Shido was not capable of parental love (or really, any kind beyond self-love), but he at least wanted to be acknowledged and respected first.

Which led to this, in a reconstructed warship of the First Age where Shido had his staging ground for organizing his divine allies in the Wyld, and more compromising information than a wing of the entire Division of Secrets:

"...Your plan is really, really dumb."

The roar of anima that had been building around Akechi as he ranted about said plan suddenly paused. "...excuse me?" There was a strange tone in there - one that would be rage, if it wasn't just so utterly taken aback.

Violet, if anything, was even more caught off-guard, as she gave a surprised squeak as the ribbon she was twirling in preparation for a potential fight nearly dragged her over from the inertia of the sudden stop.

"Yeah. You heard me." Shinobu's demonic form vanished, letting both of the assassins see exactly how serious he was being, without any excuse of not being able to read an inhuman face. "Your plan. Is really. Damn. Stupid."

"What Kage said." Futaba didn't emerge from her more abstract, monolith-like demonic form, but frankly the lights of interlocking clockwork stone gears shifting into a skeptical glare was just as effective. "You two really didn't think this through. Like, at all. You've hit a death spiral state, delete your save, try again with Ironman turned off."

While birds did not generally have easily readable reactions to humans, the sputtering from Akechi's corvid beak was clear enough. "You-you're still looking down on me-?!"

"Correction - I am looking down on you now." Shinobu inhaled, pressing his index fingers to his lip, looking for all the world like a frustrated teacher. "Violet - can I call you Violet instead of the Violet? Nicknames don't count for things that piss off those tomb-bound grumps?"

"Uh - no, it's fine, it's not formal, but I think it's kind of silly to call them-"

"Great, okay - Violet, you've been his sword, right? That's what Kunikazu said you call yourself - the Sword of Vengeance, while he's the Voice of Justice. The enforcer and the killer - tell me, what kind of people have you been killing?"

"Uhh..." It was surprising, how once one got past her "Kasumi" peppiness or the dead-heart murder-dancer, the Violet was...an incredibly awkward person. "...bad guys? People who were corrupt, but didn't have...any...purpose...to..." She trailed off, the anti-light of her Caste mark slowly fading as horror dawned in her eyes. "...Senpai...have we...have we actually ever...killed or investigated anyone without Shido's demand...?"

Akechi gave a short bark of bitter laughter. "This again? My apologies, my dear rivals - but we already planned for this. You are aware of Yaldabaoth, yes? The patron god of Paragon, Lord of Peace And Order Through Control?"

"Yes, we got him during the months-long lore binge," Futaba said, waving a tentacle. "Standard sealed evil in a can stuff - corrupt god, came to importance and power during the dying First Age, pretty bitter about losing his position with the Solars being fragged, sealed away when the Sun himself realized he was a psychopathic control freak, now he's working with Shido to conquer the world and restore his position in some nostalgia-warped nightmare of the First Age - skip the exposition, I want you to lay out your plan verbally, so maybe you realize how much a dumb-dumb move it was when you hear it."

Akechi made a strangled caw sound before he regained his composure at what he felt was clearly less respect than his dramatics warranted. "Well - if you will silence your tongues for a second - you will know that unlike you, we know that Yaldabaoth's power lies in structures of control. If we were to simply kill my illustrious father and be done with it, the system he created would still be in place. Thus, his defeat must also come with it being discredited utterly as well - that I am his bastard son is one aspect, but the world also discovering he relied on a Chosen of Death to do his dirty work? My dear flower of carnage will simply flee to the Underworld, but everyone knowing that the so-called New Sun of Japan was the sort of ruthless murderer that even the yakuza would be shamed to have in their ranks will break the confidence all of Japan has in legitimate authority. At the very least, there will be a breakdown in trust in authority that may only be solved through reforms - ideally, a compete breakdown in order. Anarchy will rule the day - and Yaldabaoth will starve from lack of governmental ability to control humanity's sins. Everyone will see just how corrupt this society is, and no more trust will be afforded in institutions for a while - everyone will have a chance to make a place for themselves, rather than the rotted excuse of a 'civilization' that currently exists. Surely you, as the ultimate rebels, can see that?"

Shinobu sighed. "Distrust of institutions, cynicism about humanity's darker side, and yes, the fact that Green Sun Princes are pretty much walking wrecking balls against society aside - I want you to think about what you just said Yaldy's title was. Lord of Peace And Order Through Control. Not laws. Control."

There was a second, before Ryuji's hand impacted his forehead. "Eff all. I just figured it out..."

"Quiet, monkey," Akechi hissed. "Whatever pageantry your leader asked you to perform to discomfort me, it isn't-"

"Clearly isn't getting through to the birdbrain, my tengu-cosplay friend," Futaba cut in. "I'm surprised you didn't catch on - Akechi, were you ever bullied in school?"

"Well, given how I was not in school until I created the identity of the Detective Prince - not really, no," he replied, icily.

"...Oh. Well, now I feel like a bint. Sorry about that. But the point is, Akechi - you know what the real goal of a bully is? It's control. It's control of the social hierarchy, keeping things working as the bully thinks it should. It's control in its most basal form - through violence, social or physical. But that's the thing - bullying is also something that happens because the enforcers aren't doing their jobs."

Ann stepped forward, catching the point from there. "Take it from me - as someone who's personally experienced the second-worst of bullying, and have a girlfriend who experienced the absolute worst - bullies aren't something bound by the rules. They're something that happens because someone decides the rules shouldn't apply to them."

Akechi cocked his head. "And this matters because...?"

"Akechi, give it to me straight - let's say you have a total victory. Everyone riots, society undergoes a spasm, the government dissolves, mass chaos and upheaval. Okay, great." Shinobu inhaled. "Now, let's imagine for a moment that in this chaos, someone decides that what they want is to have the biggest gang of bandits, or their pet kingdom. Who gets it? The people with the biggest dreams, or the people with the biggest guns?"

"Ugh, do not patronize us with rhetorical-"

"Second of all," Shinobu interrupted, putting all of his Infernal power into the presence of his words to find the ones Akechi would pay the most attention to. "Who has the bigger guns? Minorities? Sex workers? Or perhaps...the army? Or the police? Like say - the very institution that Shido can't stop tongue-bathing? The one based around societal control?"

There was a second, before Akechi's anima suddenly sputtered out, as his moonsilver knives fell from feathered hands.

"Yeah. Fun fact we discovered about Yaldy, too," Futaba continued. "Apparently, he knows a Charm that allows him to speak in the minds of those who have committed violence to uphold a system one of his chosen allies controls. He can't actually control their thoughts, but he can insert ideas in their own mental voices. Those can be dismissed easily as intrusive thoughts or bad ideas - but every record says he's clever. If, for example, he didn't so much implant ideas so much as fan the rationalizing that if two Exalted who were already trying to 'infiltrate' his pet conspiracy by serving as hatchet people for the guy on top that actually working against him and his ambitions, even in small ways, would blow their cover..."

Akechi's beak flapped blankly. "But we...but we told..."

"Correction - Violet told us, and that was after we spent months getting to know you as friendly rivals - and what was it you said at the start of this? That 'some part of you' knew we wouldn't understand, that it was best to just silence Haru's dad and let nobody find him?" Shinobu grimaced. "I suspect that part may have had a lobbyist, people. Take it from the 'lord of rebellion', people - what you're making isn't freedom, not really. You're making a hellscape where might makes right - the very definition of Control - Yaldabaoth doesn't care if it's legally enshrined or at the tip of a sword, and in fact the sword might be better for his goals if his personality and nature gave him an ability that literally feeds on forced coercion. And frankly, discovering Mr. Sealed God's ability to hypnotize you is the only reason I still have any respect for your ability to plan in the abstract. So are you going to stop trying to kill the people trying to help you or are you going to let us save you from yourselves?"

A bit of Akechi's savage pride came back to his eyes, as he reached for his shimmering blades-

And the Violet caught him in her ribbon, before pulling him close, eye to eye.

"Senpai. Senpai, please listen to them. Like you listened to me." There was pleading in that tone - but also kindness. "You heard me - and you didn't judge. You were the one who was the first one to see that Sumire was gone - and the first one to tell me that when I came back as Violet, it wasn't my fault - that I spared my father losing both of us. That I shouldn't be ashamed of what I am. So please - be the leader that decided I'd follow into Oblivion, that I silenced my deathlord for, that...that I love..."

That hung in the air for a good second.

After a second, he inhaled. "...I thought I said we were using each other. There's nothing about love, just mutual agony and some shallow pleasure..."

"...Goro. Remember when the Black Heron came back for me? How you told her to her face that you'd happily enslave yourself to Shido then let her slave me again? And then proved it with that oath?" She smiled. "I think there's some pleasures here you can't get with just any other person..."

Akechi growled, then sighed - and then gave her quite the literal peck on the cheek.

"Fine. And yes, she's right, I'm bound to obey the letter of my father's orders - though not the spirit, and I have free will otherwise," the defeated Changing Moon grumbled at the victors in the fight-turned-debate. "And he didn't order me to necessarily succeed in this assassination - you have ten minutes to explain your plan, and twenty to come up with a substitute to present and actually get out of my order."

Frankly, at that point, the Phantoms had already won - because Shido was, for all his posturing, nowhere near the mastermind of his own scheme. Both Yaldabaoth and Akechi himself were the brains.

Chapter Text

The final fight against Shido, followed soon by subduing Yaldabaoth back into his prison-crypt, was surprisingly painless after finally isolating Shido. The smug moron sincerely did not comprehend that someone so close to him could be flipped, or that the hooks the God of Control inserted in two Exalted could be pulled loose by someone else. So that gave the Phantoms a much needed element of surprise. 

Though it was a spectacular fight at least - it had to be, to get Shido's heroic identity exposed and shown to be a fraud. Though getting it out there was simple - with the forces of the Rift of Miracles having already proven to be the match of Shido's spiritual allies, and him already having his dirty laundry aired, he was easy to goad into a fight with the Infernals that were busy ruining even his chances of winning an election for Prime Minister - and not checking to see if it was televised.

Pretty much everyone saw the great strongman degenerate into a screaming, profane berserk - and the moment it looked like he might have been losing, cowardly calling upon a forbidden god. Even worse for his party - he still lost. And lost badly. 

Authoritarians, especially the nihilistic power-hungry types who wanted to win by any means possible, could overlook much - except for losing. There was some attempt to regain his glory, to claim that the fact he was exposed as a Zenith meant that the gods meant him to lead Japan - but a well-known group of criminals doing everything but literally eating his lunch on a live feed, when said criminals were openly proclaiming to power directly from Hell to punish the excesses of the divine...yeah, their hearts weren't in it. 

Frankly, the Phantoms saved the world, or at least Japan, that day.

So naturally, it ended up being put right back in a cosmic scale of danger the next month. And in a way that was completely unexpected, but in hindsight should have been obvious.

Dr. Takuto Maruki, that kindly old counselor, had been the psychiatrist of Violet...after her death and rebirth. And being at all competent, he had enough insight to realize he was probably speaking to someone who wasn't just depressed, but guilt-ridden over current actions and dealing with the inherent existential crisis that came with "I died, but am not dead." So he would have reported it - or kept it silent while he observed and tried to figure out what was going on.

The motive for that second action needed to be quite strong to even consider it - and that motive was "I wanted to examine a fellow Exalted I was only passingly familiar with and maybe intervene if Shido got too far."

In a bit of thematic echoing, Shido was the worst of the Zenith Caste, the priests and leaders - turning from a voice of the Sun and the people into the loudest voice in the room drowning out whatever other perspective or the inconvenient agency of others. Maruki was a perfect example of the best and worst of the Twilight, the scholars, sorcerers, and artisans - someone who injected love and care into everything he worked on, but also viewed everything as an intellectual problem that could be solved, regardless of how toying with it might result in worse damage simply as he observed, worked with, and diagnosed it. Not a good thing, for a psychiatrist - because with that came the hubris that he, personally, was the best at fixing things, regardless of his skillset versus the actual problem at hand.

And then add an apparent emotional breakdown when he realized how bad things were with Shido when he could have been more help, combined with some grief over having lost someone he loved, and way, way too much sorcery - well, while Shido was emblematic of the reason the Sidereals eventually agreed to the Usurpation, as hubris turned into sociopathic disregard, Maruki's scheme was the reason why the Sidereals started to suspect they needed the Usurpation at all. Because while kind - "weaving a great spell meant to permanently merge the Wyld and the mortal world into a living dream where everyone lived in their personal paradise" was also a bit, well, insane. And unlikely to work in the way he thought it would, what with how that would also release raksha to prey on people simply by disguising them as parts of the fantasy.

Which led to the moment where a band of demon lords, protean monsters, and one vampire queen came to the top of a tree in a garden of paradise, woven by a Working of the savior at the top, with every intention of burning it down to save all within said paradise.

"...Hey, Doc," Shinobu began, joylessly. "I have an answer to whether I would want to live in your world..."

Maruki took a while to turn around, though whether that was reluctance or the heaviness of the orichalcum-plated gunzoha power armor he had donned as it whirred to life out of meditation mode. The helmet flipped down to reveal his gold-masked face, eyes furrowed in a sad frown. "I sense...that sounds like you have a different answer than whether you should," the doctor replied, a note of grim finality in his voice.

"Mmpf..." Futaba sighed. "Yeah. Yeah, it is..."

"I see..." He gave his own downcast look. "It's a shame, really. I honestly feel I got around the brain death limit...was Wakaba at least accurate? Not exactly as you remembered, but in a way that reminded you of her original self?"

Futaba winced, but nodded, causing Maruki to smile slightly. "I see...that's good. No sorcery can reverse death, but it's good to know my recreation of her was as close as the Working could make. I'll be sure to keep that bit of code once I finalize the merge."

"You won't have a chance, you manipulative little coward," Akechi growled, revealing not just his knives, but his gun. "I'm not letting anyone dictate how I think. Not now, not ever again. Especially some self-righteous do-gooder who's even more insufferable with his lovey-dovey shit than these idiots can be."

"Love ya too, Akechi," Morgana snarked.

"Wait. Doctor, before we begin..." Violet inhaled. "Don't you want to at least know why we're fighting? Why we feel we have to do this, and why at the end...Goro and I are probably going to prison for a while...?"

He shrugged. "If you feel it will help you work out some problems..."

"I see..." Shinobu looked up. "Look. Four of us wear the fact that reality...wasn't kind to us in our very powers. The Lunars among us all were dealt a pretty bad hand too, and even Makoto has some issues with living up to her legacy. Truth is, if we thought there'd be no problems with your spell, we'd stay out of the way. A world where everyone has everything they want...about the only person here who disputes that is Akechi, and we think it's because he has a guilt complex he probably is correct in feeling after the crap he and his gothy girlfriend pulled."

Akechi made a grumbling caw, but gave a noncommittal shrugged. 

"But...truth is, Doc...we think that, even beyond the raksha you think won't need to eat dreams in this new world..." Shinobu inhaled. "We think it'd be pretty shitty to you."

Maruki stared. "That is...not what I expected. Sorry?"

"It's what we've learned, being Infernals, and taking care of the Rift," Ann said, looking resolute. "The Yozis meant us to upend everything and leave the world alive but broken, something only they could fix - but deep down, I think they realized how pointless that would be. Or maybe the Solar Exaltations they remade decided that they needed to be fixed too before they could fix the world. But we've learned - being a lord of outsiders and breaker of order, that's not all being a rebel is about. Just destroying a system isn't really changing it, and it's likely to be put right back as soon as you're gone, because all everyone remembers is how much better their lives were before you killed the good along with the bad..."

"It's like that clue we gave Mr. Birdbrain here," Futaba continued. "Just destroying something - that's not really trying to save anyone else, it's trying to create a place you can run from the system to. System can't get you there if there is no system. Actually changing a system requires meshing yourself with it, trying to emphasize with the gears in it no matter how much the machine hurt you - that's painful, and I really don't blame anyone who doesn't feel they can do it. It's frustrating, despairing work, especially if you've actually done things that work but not enough to feel like you've done enough. But if you actually create something better...then you've destroyed the machine more completely than any amount of blowing crap up. Because people don't want it any more."

"And...how is what I'm doing different than that?", Maruki said, perplexed. "I'm abolishing the concept of suffering itself! And don't say I'm the only one not happy - that's simply the flaw, if there was anyone else in pain I wouldn't consider this."

"If that was the only thing - Doc, I have no doubt that you'd be a better overlord than Shido would be at his absolute best. But...you'd still be an overlord," Shinobu continued. "Because the purpose of a true rebel, one with a chance to have actually saved people - is to be unneeded. To have fixed the world enough that it doesn't need further breaking to fix. And when it comes down to it - you may think that one eternal ruler might work, especially given how you aren't going to be luxuriating in pride, but Doc - you're one guy, and you're taking on the responsibility of being the only sad person in a world of smiling faces. I'm sorry, but...that sounds like a worse Hell than anything in Malfeas. You might have no other will than to hold the world on your back, but one guy holding up the planet, forever..." He shook his head. "That's not something I'd ask of anyone, purely on a moral basis. And practically...putting everything on one guy means the moment his legs break..."

Maruki tilted his head, thinking, and...

Chuckled. "Well. I wasn't wrong - you deserved more than this." He shook his head, as his helmet flipped back on. "But, ironically...it seems I have more hope for a perfect future than you, one that doesn't need gradual change. More belief in myself..."

"More like 'less hope in humanity than your powers' and 'a greater desire to punish yourself', but...eh, we can talk sense into you later." Futaba sighed, as her own anima gathered around her. "I guess this is a fight we couldn't avoid..."

"Unfortunately." Shinobu shifted. "Sorry Doc. But we have to break your paradise before you accidentally end up overharvesting it, and leaving the planet itself barren."

"Don't worry. I'm not mad - I'm not going to exclude you from the new world just because you don't have faith in your dreams. But..."

A great golden flame took shape around him, resolving into a grand dove. "I'm not going to stop."

"Didn't think you would. Here we go!"

And so an army of demons clashed with a savior, before he damned himself more than they intended.