Chimera looks at the city with his crimson eyes narrowed and his fists clenched.
Amon hears a sigh coming from Chimera, and then a young voice, even though he's almost half a kilometer away.
"...I see. So this is the scene from the future."
Amon doesn't know what he's referring to.
But Chimera, in this case Arata, was referring to what he saw when he consumed his first vampire some time ago. It's impossible to forget. After all, it was the first and only time he had managed to catch a glimpse of the future.
And that future came true.
"What a headache..."
He jumps from rooftop to rooftop, ignoring the smoke.
"If I don't stop this event here, the zombie apocalypse will swallow the world..."
Arata doesn't have a hero complex and doesn't want to be an angel descending from the sky to save everyone, but even so, in this world there are people who, as the years go by, only become more and more important in his heart.
"But is it okay to stop it?"
'Of course!'
Amon shouts that but the sound only echoes inside his own mind.
"This apocalypse, and the other apocalypse. If I had to choose, it would be this one. Because it would also wipe out the main triggers of the other one."
'What the hell is he talking about?'
Amon doesn't understand.
"Ah..."
Arata seems to remember something and stops on the broken rotor blades of a helicopter lodged halfway up a building.
"I promised #$¥£ that I'd take her on a date once we were old enough."
The name that comes out of his lips sounds scratched out, as if Arata didn't want Amon to hear it.
"Heh..."
His motivation for taking on an entire city of monsters isn't to save the world. It's much simpler than that, and maybe someone would think it's ridiculous, but to him it matters far more than any other reason. Keeping his promise to the person he cares about.
Even if this decision makes fate come back to bite him later, whether it's the Owari apocalypse or something far more terrifying, then...
"So be it."
At the same time he says that with an erratic smile, his skin turns much paler, almost gray, and veins begin to surface across his body. A heavy, suffocating pressure pours out of him, making the air around him tremble.
'Vampire... is Chimera actually a vampire? But his kagunes...'
Raising his hand, he points his claws at his own chest.
—Spluuurt!
He reaches into his own body, and not even a second later, in his hand there's a beating heart.
Then he opens his mouth wide and swallows it.
If Amon had eyes in that moment, he would have opened them as wide as they could go. But the only thing he can do in that situation is watch in shock.
Arata's body floats, then rises at great speed toward the sky. The All-Seeing Eye doesn't follow him directly, but turns upward, giving Amon the view.
High in the sky, Arata is outlined as a black dot against the pale silver moon. Little by little, the moon behind that black dot stains red, as if it were being filled with blood. Starting at the edges, spreading toward the center, and finally the entire moon turns crimson.
Like an enormous bleeding eye watching over the earth...
Amon had seen it in the photos from the incident. But seeing it like this, as though he himself were present in that scene, is something completely different that can't be compared to anything.
Arata raises a hand and all the blood in Kyoto answers him. The blood of the infected bodies, the blood dripping from walls and overturned cars, even the blood that had already dried starts flowing again. All of that blood lifts off the ground and floats in the air, forming threads and the shapes of fine needles.
There's so much blood that the entire air looks red.
And then everything moves at once. In the next instant, while the vampires panic, the infected each take a red needle to the head. If one doesn't kill them, another needle instantly buries itself in their skull without mercy.
Amon can't see it properly because the blood projectiles and the threads tearing through everything move too fast for him to catch anything.
From his perspective, it looks like someone pressed a button and Kyoto went silent in a blink while the bodies dropped to the ground one after another.
The vampires don't escape either. Amon sees the man with the long hair trying to flee, but a spear runs through him from the head down and out the bottom, pinning him firmly into the asphalt.
In a few minutes it's all over, but the moon stays red, and it won't change color until the sun comes up.
'Monster. We were fighting this monster?'
How ridiculous. Those are Amon's thoughts.
If all of this is real, then Chimera was playing with all of them from the very beginning. A true monster who can make a city of over a million people disappear in a matter of minutes.
'Mado-san, we've lost.'
Arata lowers his hand while breathing with difficulty. Blood spills from his nose, and his eyes look like they're about to burst from the veins in his pupils.
He turns his face to one side, and a terrifying smile appears on it.
Amon, or rather the All-Seeing Eye, turns as well. Far off, there's a squad dressed the same way as the students from before, quickly vanishing into the distance.
Whether because he's too exhausted or simply doesn't care, Arata closes his eyes and sits down on the roof of the cracked building while thick blood falls from the sky like drops of rain.
***
Amon's consciousness shuts off, and his blurry vision picks up the present again. His spear lying beside him and Arata crouched in front of him.
From Amon's point of view, from the moment he entered that memory to the moment he came out of it seems to have taken around six hours. But in reality only a few seconds have passed.
"How...?"
Without questioning whether what he saw was true or false, considering the monster in front of him is a vampire mixed with a ghoul, but a vampire at the end of the day, Amon stays on the ground with both arms hanging at his sides. He's aware that Chimera has mental manipulation.
But...
To him, everything he experienced was real. There's no way the terrifying presence of those vampires, the suffocating aura of Chimera, or the faces of humans about to die could be simple replicas.
Seeing that Amon is going to stay like that for a while, Arata feels his mood dip a little, going bored. He gets up while wiping off his hands.
"Well..."
Arata looks at him for a few seconds, then as he passes by him, raps him on the head with his knuckles.
Amon doesn't pass out all at once. His consciousness fades gradually, the way it does when you're very sleepy and voices sound far away.
The last thing he sees is Arata's back walking toward the crowd behind the barricade.
"You really hate monsters, don't you, Amon?"
And the last thing he hears is that monster's voice reaching him as if through a tunnel.
"Depending on your luck, you might live. If your luck is bad, you'll live."
Amon doesn't understand that last sentence. Wanting to say something, open his eyes, do anything, he can no longer command his body and his brain shuts down.
×××
—Tap... Tap...
After Amon falls, the surroundings go silent.
—Tap...
In that silence, only the sound of footsteps can be heard.
The people who were shouting for the investigator a moment ago as if he were the hero of a movie watch the monster approach and all go quiet.
"No... this can't be... Ah! Yes! There's still hope! All those soldiers who went into the building..."
"...but hasn't that building already come down?"
In the middle of extreme fear, that person forgot something important and put their hopes on the shoulders of people who no longer exist, only for someone else to remind them of reality.
After the brief silence that falls over the scene, a woman screams, then a man, then another. The human barricade breaks because people start shoving, some drop their phones on the ground, others fall and get trampled, and a group of young guys who had been excitedly recording the scene turn to run at the same time and crash into each other.
The police try to control the situation, but with the sound of footsteps approaching from behind, their bodies won't stop shaking.
The one holding onto his composure best is Rei's father, who looks at the monster and narrows his eyes. That face...
One policeman wets himself without realizing it and another drops his weapon on the ground without even noticing. Arata walks through all these fleeing people without touching anyone.
Maybe realizing that, the crowd parts for him out of fear.
The monster starts laughing quietly with his shoulders shaking, then the laugh escaping from that mouth full of sharp teeth rings out between the buildings, echoing down the street.
And while he laughs, his body slowly comes apart into specks of red dust, until what's left resembles a red mist glowing in the air. The mist gives off a shrill sound as it flies up into the Tokyo sky until it disappears from everyone's view.
×××
These chapters were a little long and somewhat boring. Even so, I wasn't quite sure how else I could have done it.
If you liked this, throw me your Power Stones!
At 100 Power Stones, I'll drop a bonus chapter.