The declaration from Hiroshi had a stronger weight to them than Yuki expected.  All around him, he saw signs of life.  Though a massive underground, small pieces broke off to house different people.  They all seemed to live here rather than the surface.  ‘That explains why I didn’t see anyone.  They were all down here.’

“But how is this possible?” inquired Yori with the question on everyone’s mind.

“Right, something this big would hardly be easily created,” agreed Yuki.  It had another one of his manga feels to it.  The temptation to make a comment was nearly unbearable for him.

Hiroshi motioned them deeper into the complex.  “One of our founding members created it.  They’re sort of special.  When everything went south they offered this place to us.”  Several strangers came up to Hiroshi showing some signs of appreciation to him.  None of them were students or teachers like before.  The only guess was that they lived in the city.  The increasingly eclectic cast only created more questions.

“Went south?  I think you’re understating that,” remarked Yuki, “You planning on explaining that any time soon?”

“Yeah, we’re just going somewhere private to talk.”

Chapter 294 – Stolen Future

Milling through what could easily pass for a village, they made it to a large building.  It had a more well-built appearance that didn’t share the same makeshift construction of the others.  Real materials rather than salvaged one put it together.  Hiroshi led them inside it.

The interior had a more military feel to it.  While Hiroshi didn’t seem to approve of the attention, he got a lot of strange salutes in passing.  The crew ranged from the same types they had already seen before to students, even ones that appeared to have walked out of a movie.

A radio signal broke through one of the rooms that they passed.  “…a god walked among us!  Finding us worthy to bear his light, his eternal blessing was granted unto us!  This is not a time of fear, but of rejoicing!  Rise up my brothers and sisters!  We are not monsters like they call us, but the Kami no Kodotachi!”

“Children of God?” repeated Yuki.  He glanced over at Hiroshi for an explanation as they walked.  It only added to layers of new situations to develop in their absence.

Hiroshi didn’t break with his pace.  “Ever since the Solstice Nightmare the world declared all of Japan a threat to world peace and blockaded us, fear spread through the country.  A lot of groups like that one have popped up trying to bring relief and comfort to the frightened.  The Kami no Kodotachi are probably one of the larger groups.”

“Solstice Nightmare?  Children of God?  What the hell happened?”

“After the Shattered Japan Incident, your little stunt, people started figuring out their powers.  The Solstice Nightmare was the three days around the Summer Solstice when certain people got it in their heads they could use their abilities to take what they wanted.  The world saw it as international terrorism.  It wasn’t pretty.  This is their response.”

“Why Children of God?” asked Yori.  He understood the need people had for religion as a means of comfort.  The world had completely turned on its head and they needed some sort of guidance.  Certainty in a confusing world brought ease.  It was only natural.

Stopping for a moment, Hiroshi looked back at Yuki.  His eyes seemed to divide the entire group specifically to target him.  “How does it feel to be worshiped as a god?”

“You can’t be serious?!”  Yuki knew he should have seen it coming, it was too easy of a telegraph, but it was aimed at himself.  He didn’t expect it.  “I’m no god!”  The whole thing was just a mistake, an accident caused by an uncontrollable rage.

His friend turned away and resumed his walk.  “Be that as it is, only a few of us know the truth.  Everyone else just knows reality changed.  Without the truth, what answers do you expect people to find?”

The weight he felt for what he did suddenly became heavier.  It wasn’t the sort of responsibility that he wanted or expected.  The idea of a religion centered around him was absurd even if it already happened.  He couldn’t accept that people believed that a god came down and granted everyone with powers.  ‘This is insane!’

“The more important matter is answering the initial question that you had,” noted Hiroshi.  He had come to a stop and before they knew it, they were inside a room.  The door closed behind the last person inside and though a little tight with the numbers they had it certainly seemed private.  “First, these are my most trusted comrades.”

“We’re your Lieutenants!” corrected Tatsuya, appearing out of the corner.

The familiar voice perked up Yuki.  Hiroshi’s best friend looked almost the same as he remembered.  He had a rough look from days or weeks in the grime, but still not hardened and merciless like Hiroshi.  It gave him some assurance once more.  Yuki jumped up quickly to hug Tatsuya.  “Tatsuya!  I’m so glad to see you!”  He patted him on the back and held tight, needing to know it was real.

“Glad to see you still got all that energy, Yuki!”  He grinned pleased to a friend.  “Seems that Hiroshi’s been giving you a hard time.”

Yuki laughed a bit suddenly, feeling like they were back on the rooftop of the school chatting about the latest game over lunch.  “Yeah, Hiroshi’s playing the hard ass today.”

“Commander Kuroda is working harder than anyone to ensure everyone’s safety and protection!” a stranger barked, clearly feeling insulted by Yuki’s casual tone.

“Miyako, how many times have I asked you not to call me that,” Hiroshi groaned.  He took a seat in what looked like a lawn chair taken from a hundred yen sale.

The tall yankee looking woman with bleached brown, nearly orange, hair stalked over to Yuki.  She seemed to want to intimidate Yuki into an apology, however he had met far more frightening individuals than some tough talking girl that might have rolled in a gang.  He dealt with plenty like her in his past.  “You want something?” Yuki taunted with an unimpressed tone.

“Miyako, enough,” ordered Hiroshi.  He saw the look in her eye.  Fighting was a pointless effort.

Tatsuya stepped in, working on making Miyako back off.  “She takes her job very seriously after Hiroshi saved her gang,” he explained.  “Though Hiroshi hates it, she calls him Commander and it’s just sort of stuck now.  Everyone sees him as the leader, thus we’re his Lieutenants.  Sort of feels like we’re playing out feudal lords during the warring states period, huh?”

Nodding in agreement, Yuki started to have a similar impression.  It all felt familiar and yet out of place.  “I was going to say, but you’re right.  Never imagined Hiroshi as the Lord.”

They laughed over the notion of understanding the out of place nature of it all.  However, Tatsuya corrected himself soon.  “We joke about it, but if you knew his past you understand that this is not so far from his character.  He’s actually quite resourceful and charismatic.”

Hiroshi tossed a spare box at Tatsuya to shut him up.  The hint of embarrassment ran through his face.  “Enough of that.  You came for some answers.  I expect afterwards to hear your decision on my question.  First, I must check something.  You said that you’ve been away.  When was that?”

Factoring the math quickly in his head, Yuki came out with the time.  “It’s been about six weeks give or take a day or two.”

“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that you don’t know then.  What were you doing that you were completely unaware of events here?”

“Out of the country.”  Yuki hesitated even saying that, but it was the simplest answer.  It was no lie, but he knew that it only created new questions.  Atlantis still needed its privacy for the time.  “That’s all I can say about it for now.  It was a personal matter.”

The two stared at each again for nearly a minute.  Hiroshi wanted more from Yuki than a vague answer.  However, the look in his eyes told him a great deal.  ‘What did Yuki see to change his eyes so much?  He’s only showing me that look to tell me to back off…But it only makes me want to know more.   However, I’ll get the answers out of him later…’

Focus returned the bigger matter that Hiroshi needed resolve.  “I would say that it’s been like this since about a month.  It wasn’t long after the UN blockade went up.  I don’t know if people got scared and went insane or what, but for no apparent reason they attacked.”

“Who’s they?” Yori questioned on the vague description.

“A random group of people.  Calling them ‘they’ is the best answer I can give, because they don’t have any common ground other than that they are all fighting together.  At the start, it was mostly just students from our school.”

“What did they want?”

“We don’t know.  We still don’t understand it.  All we know is that they wanted territory.  It started from the school and spread out from there.  In the short span of a week, they brought the entire neighborhood and the surrounding neighborhoods under their control.  It all surprised us that we didn’t know how to react.”

“That’s where Hiroshi stepped in,” inserted Tatsuya.

“We were just a small group then, but I wasn’t about to see innocent people harmed because people were just looking for trouble.  We won a couple of battles and that gave people hope.  Before long, there were too many for me to count.  Two weeks ago, we managed to stage a major offensive against them and took back the western half of the area, but they’ve grown tougher as of late.  As a result, we haven’t made any real progress apart from the minor skirmishes that have broken out.”

Yuki had enough of beating around the bush now.  He had something to go on, though it was hard to believe such an incident went down while they were away.  It didn’t make any sense and it seemed that Hiroshi still hadn’t figured it out as well.  “Do you know who their leader is?  Who’s giving the orders?”

“Yeah, but you’re not going to like what you see.”  Hiroshi slid a photo across the table to Yuki’s group.  It was a slightly blurred image taken from a distance and through a window, the school.  But they all could recognize the central figure in the photo.

Looking up from the photo, Yuki and Saki both stared across the table with their hands pressed tightly against the edge.  “Are you certain?”

“We’ve seen them giving out orders to the others.”

Saki was in disbelief over the revelation.  She staggered back into the group feeling the ground threatening to fall out from underneath her.  “This can’t be!  No!  I-I…”

It was hard for Yuki to watch Saki.  He saw how much it ate at her.  He knew better than the others.  ‘Things just go from bad to worse…’  Even though he didn’t want to hear anymore, he needed to know.  “Tell me everything you know about the situation.”

“Of course…”

The meeting ended with far more unsettling things than they wanted to know.  It left the group having trouble processing it all.  They split up in the base needing to handle things in their own way.  Yuki left last with Hiroshi holding him back.

“I expect an answer from you.”

“Yeah, this is all just a lot to take in.  You’re asking me to fight friends, classmates, people I know!”

“This is the reality, even if we don’t understand it.  You have to accept it!”

“I know…  Just give me some time…”  Yuki disappeared into the crowd leaving the sight of Hiroshi and Tatsuya.

Tatsuya glanced over at Hiroshi.  The look on his face told him how much worry he had over Yuki.  “You think he’ll join us?”

“I guess that depends.”

“On what?”

“On which is the real one, the Yuki we know from class or the Yuki we haven’t seen.”

* * *

Saki stood in front of her high school.  Speed gave her the advantage of not being spotted very easily, even though she did have to lose a couple of tails.  In the end, it didn’t matter too much for her.  Her goal was the high school.

“Of course…I’ll tell you everything we know about them.  The other Faction in the city.  Their base seems to be the high school as you probably already figured out.  Mostly it’s just students around there from what we’ve seen.”

The five guards protecting the main gate all looked ready to attack her.  She felt like she could have dealt with them, but it wasn’t her intention.  “I’ve come to see your leader.  Take me to them.  I don’t plan on fighting.”  Silence carried out between them as they didn’t make any reaction to her demands.  She felt the tension in the air as she wasn’t sure if they would agree.

However, after a wait that seemed to go for days, the gate opened.  Waiting for her was an escort of six.  They were a mix of students and teachers, all that she recognized.  Saki accepted their invitation.  ‘I must know…  If it is true…this is all…’

Within the school grounds, she didn’t expect to see such ruin.  The once beautiful grounds were completely blackened by death and destruction.  It was all senseless.  Just random violence.  Worse, she saw bodies littered about everywhere in different states of decay.  The odor was horrid and made her want to throw up.

“Their group is made up of everyone and anyone they can find.  We don’t know how they do it, but the only one truth is that anyone that enters their gates never returns, at least in the same way as they entered.  They always join the other Faction without fail.  We’ve lost too many already to scouting parties.”

Saki thought the outside was bad, but it was only to prepare her for the halls.  Blood painted the walls in the worst possible ways.  There were odd pieces that she saw stuck to the walls along with the blood and spread out over the floor.  It felt like a horror movie made real.  All of the students that passed through thought nothing of the sight as though it was invisible to them.  ‘How can they be fine with such sights?!’

It felt like she had descended into the depths of hell.  The very walls seemed alive with so much blood and viscera.  She wasn’t sure if the nightmare around her had corrupted her mind already to produce illusions, but it felt like they moved.

However, none of it prepared her what she regretted the most.  A strange moan and scream came from one of the classrooms.  She caught it at the perfectly wrong time.  It was a sight that was never going to be able to be removed from her mind.  A scar forever carved out in her brain.  Saki already considered herself tainted, corrupted by the deaths on her hands, but it couldn’t even compare to the sight.

Two students had a third tied down, but it was hard to even tell that.  Blood poured everywhere along with organs.  Their eyes were completely dead as they kept carving into the student as they moaned and screamed.  Worst of all, the third student didn’t even seem to be pleading.  They seemed as dead to it all, despite still being alive.

She never read it before, but she felt like it might have been what Dante saw in his descent through the different circles of hell.  Each room only seemed to get worse and worse.  Rooms of pleasure, pain, gluttony to describe a few.  Then they just became more twisted and insane.  The sight alone made Saki question if she still had her sanity.

The sight at the end of the hall of the second floor gave her some relief.  It was their destination.  She prayed for nothing more.  Holding back vomit in her mouth only burned her throat further, but it was the only thing she could do to keep herself together.  She was quite certain if she did allow herself the weakness the last thread of sanity she had would be snapped.

Imposing doors stood before her along with her escort.  She stared at them in silence trying to hold herself together.  ‘I haven’t felt this mentally strained since that man went dancing through my mind.  I’m not even sure which is worse anymore…  I didn’t think that feeling of violation could ever be surpassed…’  The door opened to grant Saki entrance into the lair of the leader.  The one that allowed all of this depravity to continue.

Saki stepped in feeling very uneasy.  The room thankfully had a more normal appearance.  It was cloaked utterly in darkness with black cloths everywhere.  Layers upon layers of sheets had to be navigated to even reach the mastermind.

“We don’t know how it happened, just that it happened.  The day the school opened was the day everything changed.  All we know is everyone that attended school that day joined them.  Teachers, students, it didn’t seem to matter.  From there they expanded their control.”

The last of the sheets parted for Saki.  She could finally see in the darkened light of the room the figure.  They were the one that controlled it all.  The one that plunged the city into darkness.  Saki’s eyes widened in surprise even though she already knew the truth.  She just didn’t want to believe it.  “It can’t be!  Why?!  Why is it you?!  Takako!”