Muskets rung through the battlefield.

  The samurai were cutting down demons in a gyorin formation like fish swimming through the massacre.

  Officers' roars cut across the land like the muskets through the demons.

  Blood drowned the fields like the tortured souls in Gehenna.

  The sky looked like the endless abyss, finally releasing what the clouds once held.

  Lightning tore across the sky as if nature itself dared to mock man's petty squabbles.

  Staring down at the fools, fools of humans.

  Explosions and flames torched the ground like hell was breaking to the surface. Thunder from the ether above merged with the cannons firing at the masses, creating a great symphony of death and insanity.

  Miyamoto released his blades from their sheaths; they danced through the air, creating bodies from men like an insomniac claiming their slumber.

  I put four rounds in the skull of the damned.

  As a bolt of lightning ruptured the sky, figures of winged beings appeared. I wondered if Valkyries or Tengus had joined this battle of misery.

  A horrific screech cut through the killing fields.

  Miyamoto cast a bewildered gaze at me.

  “What the fuck do you want me to say!?” I yelled.

  For the first time, Miyamoto's face wore an emotion—that of pure confusion.

  “I just wanted to know that madness hasn’t taken me,” Miyamoto said.

  The men were blinded by the horror of conflict, only hoping to survive another second.

  With sabres drawn, officers barked at the musketeers to charge.

  An officer hollered at his men, “May our hands be bleached with the blood of our enemies so we can fulfill the wishes of our fallen comrades and save our motherland!”

  Hordes of men rushed into the fields with bombardment from cannons overhead.

  “V, I think this is a good opportunity to fall back to the bike!” Miyamoto yelled across the sea of blood and the damned.

  “I have to agree with you…”

  A winged demon bashed right into my rib cage.

  I felt like a door being bashed clean off its hinges.

  Sounds just spilled out of my mouth like vomit: “uhaendwlwbi.”

  The strike stole the wind right out of my lungs.

  “V!”

  I spat blood, and the wind was thrashing my face. I was able to stab the back of the demon with my Bowie knife, causing it to lose it and letting me yell at Miyamoto.

  “Get to the bike!”

  A metallic tang filled my mouth… I hate the fucking taste of blood!

  “I got it from here,” I yelled down to Miyamoto.

  The wind was cutting my skin as if the air had become blades.

  Blood gushed out, and the oxygen around me became slimmer.

  “Sweet!

  Fucking!

  Christ!”

  Where the fuck is this fucking beast sending me, and why was it shooting me to the sky?

  Odd things started to appear around me.

  The thing I killed, the people I killed, the men I killed, the beings I killed appeared throughout the sky, painting the sky with ghosts.

  First there was one.

  Then Ten.

  One hundred

  Thousands.

  Millions.

  Billions.

  Death filled the skies and my mind.

  Was it blood loss or the thinning oxygen?

  Oh, how the how never truly matters.

  It's all about the what, and, of course, the what was my damned past.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  A bitter pill that has been forcibly shoved down my throat many times before and after today, if such a thing will ever happen.

  If tomorrow ever reaches my eyes.

  The rotten rhapsody of my greatest misery replayed once more.

  I was sent back to 1997 with

  The Bridge

  The Girl

  The Jump.

  It was as if I were back at that bar, chasing down the mad god once more.

  I’m starting to get sick of seeing this one-hit wonder.

  Not even the worst thing that happened in 97.

  Bohemian Rhapsody was now dripping throughout my subconscious.

  I could hear the lyrics so clearly as if an orchestra was playing straight into my mind.

  "Is this the real life?

  Is this just fantasy?

  Caught in a landslide, no escape from reality." —Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen

  Will the icy grips of death take me once more…

  No!

  I said I won’t die, and I’ll make damn sure I won’t!

  The demon hurled me above the inky cloudscape, forcing me out of the hell below and bathing me within the moonlight from the full moon above.

  The blood covers me like a suit, a suit shimmering in the light.

  Thunder bellowed underneath my feet, and lightning lit the pitch-black clouds.

  A man stood in the air with wings of a demon on his back.

  He looked younger but more dead than I.

  A rather hard accomplishment on that second part.

  His power soaked the air around him with a sense of malice mixed within it.

  He was different from the last time I met him.

  Much colder.

  He wore a one-piece suit, a pocket watch chain wrapped around his body like an ophidian.

  A pair of black loafers dressed his feet.

  And a self-rolled cigarette lay between his lips with a line of smoke flowing upwards.

  “Akuma!”

  “V, why are you here?”

  “I could ask you the same thing,” I said while beating the winged beast that had flung me to the heavens.

  My eyes scanned his body, trying to find any clues.

  His demonic wing that split out of his back tipped me off to something his goddamn name should have.

  The brain damage must be getting to me if I didn’t realize a pair of wings on his fucking back.

  “Walking into that church must have hurt being a Demon and all.”

  “I'm not just some demon; I’m the King of Hell, my friend.”

  “King of Demons,” I muttered to myself. The bitterness of those words slipping out of my teeth. I may have only met him once before, but we went through hell together. I thought I may have found another comrade. What I found was where every relationship of mine seemed to end.

  “Et

  Tu

  Diabolus.”

  The demon I was battling froze at a whistle from Akuma.

  The beast grappled my arms.

  Holding me in front of Akuma like a sacrifice to a bloodthirsty god.

  “Have you grown pitiful for a man you once knew?”

  “V, bitterness doesn't look good on you.”

  The smell of blood from the ground was being carried by the wind. I felt like Quint from Jaws being circled by that lifeless shark.

  My dead heart could only force a cold burn of rage.

  “What’s your plan?

  Are you going to put my head on your wall?”

  “V! I do not wish to be an enemy.”

  “Then why start a WAR!?”

  “MY PEOPLE ARE DYING!” Akuma yelled to the heavens that surrounded us.

  The yells broke the illusions of hatred to a feeling of pity.

  “I can’t live like this anymore, V.

  I cast my die and will do anything to see it through.

  The dam will break; why not join me, V?

  Help my people.

  You yourself should know my woes because two Devils stand here.

  Me.”

  He pointed out.

  “You.”

  “What about mankind, the suppressors?

  During a coup d'état, you don’t keep the person you're overthrowing stay alive for too long.”

  “Of course, humanity will stay.

  This war isn’t a massacre; it's about freedom.

  Freedom to all the races—this is a mere deposer of humanity’s detectorship.”

  “Your words can be as dressed up as you need them to be, but when looking over the walls of words, you find the reality.

  SO TELL ME THE TRUTH, GODDAMN!”

  “FINE! YOU WANT THE TRUTH!”

  “YEAH, I WANT THE FUCKING TRUTH!”

  “The truth is I want a crusade.

  I want revenge for my father and the genocide of my people in the Second Human and Demon War!

  MY PEOPLE WERE FUCKING MASSACRED BY MAN, SO I WANT THEIR HEAD ON A PIKE!”

  “So your revenge is a genocide on the people who genocided your people. I can say I care who lives or dies, but I’m here, and I’ve got my gun.”

  “We are not committing a genocide; we are fighting a war. We are fighting soldiers, man, ready to die.”

  “When you deem someone an enemy, you could do anything to them.”

  “Sure as shit was the belief humanity had within the second war.”

  We both could keep going forever, but we both knew we were just buying time.

  The silence that fell between us was deafening.

  Only Ecstasy of Gold ringing throughout my mind shaved off the madness.

  The only thing we could do was stare at each other as if it were high noon. A revolver was in my coat, but there was something next to it, too. I put my hand in my pocket, still being held by the beast. A cold, round grenade with a fuse screaming at me to light it.

  My voice finally cut through the silence in the air, with death in both of our eyes. “So, how will it end?”

  “In the little time we have known each other, V, I have come to an understanding that you don’t give up.”

  Akuma pulled a katana out, enclosed by flames.

  “Before you do me in, can I have a light?”

  I pulled a cigarette out of my pocket.

  Damn, only fifteen left.

  “I guess I still owe you for lighting mine back at the bar.”

  He lit my cig with the tip of his blade.

  “I have one final thing to say to you if this is goodbye.

  When you wake up and see your face in the mirror, will you be able to face the horror, or will you crumble?”

  Conrad once said that there is no atheist in the foxhole; maybe he was right.

  After a few seconds, I jerk the grenade out of my pocket.

  “V, is th…”

  I lit the end of the fuse.

  “What do you think?”

  Akuma may have been the King of All Demons, but he knew I was as devilish as Lucifer himself.

  The dancing flicker of the fire at the end of the fuse did all the talking needed.

  “Drop him!”

  The demon dropped me into the endless abyss.

  I returned this action by chucking the grenade back up I swore I could see Akuma give me a bitter smile.

  I was plunging through the air.

  My last words to Celeste seem so ironic now.

  “I won’t die even if they kill me.”

  Well, who wants to live forever?

  Because nothing really matters to me.

  The wind hit my back like a buckshot sharding through me.

  The flames of the explosion surrounded the demon and Akuma.

  But there was no blood or guts that had been thrown out.

  Just before the cloud could devour me, the smoke from the explosion was stripped away.

  I saw a red iris looking down at me with a mix of cold and warmth—how paradoxical.

  I raised my blood-soaked arm and looked straight at that Akuma's blood-red eye, still kicking.

  With blood pouring down my face, I cocked my left hand.

  “Bang.”