Chapter 155 - Sins Of The Father
"Right," you announce, "Just one more question before we both get back to work. Have you seen anything strange be placed here in the Black Forest recently?"
"Strange? What would be strange?"
"The Adult Who Tells Lies planted some markers to defend her territory. One of them's somewhere in the Black Forest. Have you seen something that would fit that description?" you clarify. The markers are, as far as your information goes, just modified and upscaled versions of the runes that were used against Homura. While those were rather small, the markers should be large enough to be obvious. Especially since the Black Forest lacks many surfaces to even place it.
"I haven't seen anything like that, but there have been strange creatures entering the forest recently. Perhaps one of them did something?" Judgement Bird answers. You suppose that would've been too easy, wouldn't it? Besides, Judgement Bird might've actually destroyed the marker if they knew what it was.
"I suppose you passed judgement on all of them?"
"Of course."
So follow the gallows to find where the Adult's been interfering. At least you have some direction to follow.
"In that case, I don't believe I have any more questions to ask. We can both get back to work." you say. Judgement Bird leans forward, and this time the movement causes the scale on their neck to shift ever so slightly. An unseen force suddenly presses against your skin, just strong enough to be noticed. It's not quite constricting just yet, but it feels uncomfortably. Like being closed into a tight space. You glance down at Leonie, still sitting in the palm of your hand. She doesn't seem to have even noticed anything change.
Has Judgement Bird not noticed her? No, that seems practically impossible. Even if they're blind, they're still more discerning than that. Besides, Abnormalities can normally recognize one another fairly easily, and Distortions follow a similar rule. And besides, attention doesn't matter with Judgement Bird's attacks. If you're within their range, you take damage. So how is she unharmed?
"You have to receive judgement as well. It's what's fair." the bird says, still looming over you. It was only a matter of time before it came to this. Abnormalities will invariably behave as Abnormalities, even in unusual circumstances. Before you continue, you'll have to face judgement.
But will that mean combat? You aren't certain about your chances against any Abnormalities of WAW-rank or higher, and even if you brought Leonie with this potential confrontation in mind that doesn't mean you want to take the risk if you don't have to. If you just accepted being judged, would you be allowed to go?
At least in the story, Judgement Bird did allow some of the other creatures in the Black Forest to live their lives after they were judged, so long as they weren't executed. It was only later that they decided the safest way to ensure a decisive judgement in every case was to find everyone guilty. By your math, you can live through three or four attacks from the Black Forest's final Guardian. If you let yourself be judged once and then left, would that be easier than fighting?
There's also Leonie to consider. Currently, she's not being regarded by Judgement Bird. She's safe. Whether it's a peculiarity of her Distortion or a consequence of her self-objectification making her an invalid target, she's at no risk as long as things don't change. If you attack and Leonie assists you, there's the possibility it would void her current immunity to Judgement Bird's scale. Only a possibility, yes, but one that you must at least consider.
You're not free of your time limit either. If you have to risk somebody, then it must be you before anyone else. Your health is a small sacrifice if it gives you progress in exchange. You'll take the chance to avoid a fight.
"I'll allow it, so long as you do it quickly. As I said, I have work to get to that needs to be completed." you answer.
If Judgement Bird is surprised by your acceptance, they don't show it. They take a few steps back from you, each one somehow both clumsy and stumbling but smooth and elegant. The movement jostles the golden scale on their neck, sending another wave of pressure rolling over your body. "We'll begin." they announce.
The scale tilts.
The first thing you feel is the air being driven from your lungs. You let the feeling pass, secure in the knowledge that your body's functions are irrelevant to your survival. The blood in your veins slows and then stops, giving rise to a horrible aching feeling that permeates your whole form. Your heartbeat has stopped. In no time at all, every one of your bodily processes halt completely. By all conventional logical, you should be dead. But you learned of the impotence of both conventional logic and death long ago, so you continue to live.
The gallows raise around you, the tugging of the noose around your neck dragging you up off the ground. You're not sure when it appeared, but it is there regardless. Too tight to slip a finger between the rope and your neck, and too tough to even consider breaking. The back of the stand is too far for your legs to reach it if you kicked out, offering no possibility of leverage or control. There is not meant to be any way to escape from this construct. Only one fate can await those who find themselves in its embrace. And yet still you live.
As an impossible force presses against your body from every angle, inside and out, you wonder if it would actually be possible for this to kill you. If your body takes too much damage it collapses and your true form is released, but what about damage to the soul? Do you even have a soul at this point? Though difficult to verify, evidence suggests Abnormalities don't. Their entire beings are continuous, lacking divested parts like mind, body, and soul. They're not even composed of atoms. How similar is your body to theirs? You wish you had more time to test. More resources to explore with. It would be a nice diversion from everything you have to deal with. As it is, the idea is diversion enough from the agony wracking your body.
Leonie lets out a series of panicked clicks in your hand. You wonder if this is what it sounds like for her to scream. You gently squeeze her, rubbing your thumb across the side of her face in what you hope is a comforting gesture. You're not certain what parts of her new body are analogous to what parts of a human's. Hopefully, the message is still clear. Everything is going to be alright. You're still in control, everything that's happening right now is because you chose for it to.
The pain is getting harder to ignore. Something is leaking inside of your body. Your lungs spasm, trying to force out the trickle of fluid slowly filling them, but there isn't enough energy left in your body for even that. Judgement Bird remains statue-like, gazing blindly at you. You are no longer below the towering Abnormality's eye level, instead staring face-to-face with your executioner. The scale tips further down.
What sins are you being judged for, you wonder. You know it doesn't actually affect the Abnormality's verdict, but your morbid curiosity remains. You have no doubt that even if you were being properly judged for your actions, the decision would be the same. You've lived ten thousand years of bloody, brutal life. It would be a miracle for you to have not accumulated enough sins to warrant death a hundred times over. How many clerks did you execute, either to appease the more unstable Abnormalities or simply to preempt their slower, more painful deaths at the hands of unavoidable threats? You could calculate the number as easily as you can recall it, but there would be little point. It was too many. How many agents did you sacrifice for information, for the sake of testing? Even if their deaths were undone, the act remains. And here you are now, using children as soldiers. Children you swore to protect and care for. Just because it was necessary does not make it right. If you continue, you will only hurt more people, and you will twist them so that they thank you for it. The tightening of the noose feels like affirmation. After everything you've done, you have earned this sentence.
The scale tilts further down, and you feel something begin to crack. Not in your body, but somewhere else. Something fundamental, something important. You will truly be executed as you deserve. Perhaps you would have been able to endure Judgement Bird's assault within the Facility, but free of the Qliphoth Deterrence their strength is more than enough to kill you in whatever manner is possible now. It was foolish, really, for you not to have considered such a thing. Perhaps the lack of sleep really is getting to you.
But you cannot accept it. You are not allowed to die before you have served your purpose. You will not leave your work unfinished. And selfish as it may be, you would rather not die just yet. There are still some things you want to see first.
You weigh Leonie in your hand for a moment, then carefully flip her up into the air. You'll need two hands free for this. Mimicry wraps itself around your other hand like a glove, each finger tipped with a twisted, bony claw. With no time to spare, you force your hand into the meager space between the rope and your neck. While the noose holds steady, your body is too withered to endure the force. Half-dried blood bubbles forth sluggishly from the gaping wound, but you have what you wanted. Leverage. You dismiss Mimicry and press your hand into the gap, holding the noose back from tightening further, and push down. With something to grab hold of, it's only a matter of swinging your weakening body upwards. Sword in your free hand, you part the air and grab hold of Leonie in a sing motion. Your momentum carries you up into the vacuum left behind, and Leonie's power opens the door to elsewhere. You vanish from the Black Forest, and the force pressing in on you is gone.
You take a moment to gasp for breath, allowing Sound of a Star's light to wash over you and restore functionality to your failing body. You're not sure how long you lie there on the borders of Leonie's Route. It's not more than a minute, you know that. Just enough to move as fast as you need to for the battle.
"Are you alright?"
Leonie's voice is startling against the total silence of the landscape she's created for you to escape to. A snowy mountaintop, illuminated by a warm blue sunset that shines across pale pink snow. You wish you had more time to appreciate its beauty.
"I'm fine. It'll only take a few moments for me to heal, and I won't miscalculate like that again today." you answer. Only you suffered for your mistaken assessment this time, but you won't tempt fate like that again.
Leonie ticks idly, saying nothing. She's been more outspoken recently. While this is hardly the time, you'll have to make a note to ensure she's commended on it later when she can properly internalize the praise.
As warmth creeps back into your extremities, you sit up and let Sound of a Star shift behind you. It's still working, repairing the remaining damage you've suffered, but you have full mobility. If you'd been able to use it while you were being hanged you could've avoided the self-inflicted throat wound, but such an ethereal weapon requires more focus than you could manage at the time. Still, you're grateful for its other properties. Injuries like what you just received should probably have been incapacitating, if not crippling.
Instead, you are already leaping back into the Black Forest. You slip in through the space between two trees, finding Judgement. It's staring blankly at an empty noose that you presume held you a minute ago. Before your feet have even touched the grass, Mimicry is in your hands. You twist your body with the movement as you hurl the weapon at your foe like a javelin. Judgement Bird turns towards the sound of your projectile screaming through the air just in time to be struck head-on. The towering Abnormality stumbles, stray feathers flying through the air, and is struck by the hail of bullets that follow before they can even regain their balance. With the impact, you feel your breath lighten. Having so many sources of recovery is truly convenient. As your conjured soldiers continue the assault, you dig Mimicry into the ground and force it to spread out as far as it can. The sword digs into the earth like a tree's roots, pushing through colorless soil as easily as it parts flesh. Just as Judgement Bird begins to right themself, the scale balanced in their neck gleaming ominously in the dark, you thrust Mimicry up. The ground erupts, sending clouds of black dirt through the air.
Your foe stumbles again, and Mimicry's dissociated tendrils wind together into a spear. You flick the weapon upward, striking the tip up against the bottom of the descending scale. To your disappointment, it doesn't budge. While reproduction is normally required for a theory to hold merit, you think it's safest to assume for now that no amount of force will let you interfere with Judgement Bird's scale. Instead, you whirl the spear around and strike at the Abnormality themself from the opposite direction.
Before you make contact, Judgement Bird kicks off the ground and vanishes from sight. Before anything can happen, you redeploy your soldiers to new positions and disappear back into one of Leonie's Routes. There will be no sneaking up on you.
You exit nearby, scanning the Forest for your enemy until the sound of gunfire draws your attention. Judgement Bird stalks through the Black Forest in the distance, gloomy twilight gleaming off the scales hanging from their neck. The rest of their body blends into the Black Forest, just another tree among many. Their steps are deliberate and slow, but each one takes the Abnormality much further than it rightfully should. They lift their scales once more, and you disappear into another Route just as the feeling of judgement reaches your skin. You count the heartbeats in safety, they dive out from your hiding place the moment the assault ends.
Judgement Bird wheels on you, having predicted your emergence nearby. A single pitch-black wing rises to intercept your opening lunge, and to your surprise it stills the attack entirely. Your confusion at the Abnormality's inconsistent durability ends when you see something just below the shadowy feathers covering their body: a dull golden light nearly invisible beneath layers of black. It reminds you of Binah's power, of the tiny suns she would raise in her hands before painting a room with the insides of its former inhabitants. Is it actually the same power, you wonder, as A Corp's Singularity? Or just an aesthetic similarity?
You don't have much time to wonder. Judgement Bird's scales are already lowering, and you retreat and disappear before they can fall too far. Your next assault ends similarly: warded off by a single motion.
The third time you approach, you call two soldiers along with you. Judgement Bird blocks your attack with ease and sways out of the firing line of the first soldiers, but the second makes their way to the Abnormality's side and gives a proud salute. You retreat back into a Route just in time to see them explode, a tiny black heart cracking open at the center of the monochrome firestorm that the order unleashes.
You waste no time in exiting the Route the moment Judgement Bird's attack has ceased. They're still off-balance, standing in the center of a scorched crater that can only be differentiated from the rest of the forest floor by the change in elevation and absence of grass. Your feet barely touch the dirt as you close the distance and weave a sword past Judgement Bird's sluggish guard. The first strike gives space for a second, then a third, and you flick Leonie back into the air for a moment to free both hands and fully exploit the moment's vulnerability you are presented with. When you catch Leonie and disappear just in time to avoid the wave of pressure that comes with Judgement Bird's tilting scale, the Abnormality lets out a squawk somewhere between pain and frustration.
A weight settles into your body. It's subtle, but undeniably there. Safe in the Route for the time being, you make a few experimental movements to try and get a feel for the change. This must be another of Judgement Bird's abilities, then. One that was previously inaccessible due to the Qliphoth Deterrence. In spite of everything, a twinge of excitement runs through you at the thought of having more to learn about one of your Abnormalities. Could this be some representation of accumulating sins? Or, more accurately, of sins being tallied? The feeling of weight in your body isn't just physical. It's a reminder, marking moments throughout your life. Each one dragging further down towards oblivion.
Maybe Judgement Bird didn't lose access to this ability, but simply chose not to use it. There's no point in tallying sins if you're going to deliver the same verdict anyways, right? But no, that's too conventional a train of logic. Besides, Judgement Bird claimed to already know you'd committed sins before you felt anything like this.
Whatever. You've got a measure of the change in weight, and you remember the speed it accumulated at. It only became noticeable once your soldiers were gone, for one thing. You can make the necessary adjustments to not be caught out.
"Leonie," you say. "Are you still doing alright? Not feeling anything unusual?"
"Everything is fine." the Distortion answers.
"And what about being tossed in the air earlier? Were you at all uncomfortable?"
"I can do whatever is required of me."
Your eyes narrow, just not at her. "And right now, I require you to honestly tell me how you're feeling."
"It's alright. It doesn't feel strange. It was actually a little fun." Leonie clicks back. Despite the situation, you smile.
"I'm glad to hear that. Maybe you should go on a roll coaster or something when this is done." you suggest. "You've been doing great recently."
Instead of accepting the praise, Leonie deflects. "You give very clear instructions. It makes it easy to know what to do."
"It's still commendable of you to execute properly." you insist. "Now. Are you ready to return?"
Leonie clicks in affirmation, and you step out of the Route and back into the Black Forest. You glance around, memorizing a few good positions for your soldiers. Positioning isn't quite as important when you're expecting them to be regularly wiped out by attacks, but properly-arranged angles of attack will prevent Judgement Bird from evading as easily.
The sound of gunfire calls your attention to your foe, scales already descending. But again and again you slip away, evading the crushing grasp of justice by a hair's breadth each time. It's a bit like a dance, stepping in and out of the Black Forest to strike and scar its Guardian. You cannot afford to be struck again, so you will not be. Instead, you tear away at the Bird's body piece by piece. Explosion after explosion, stab after stab. By the time the first minute has passed, you've hollowed out a fifth crater in the Black Forest's landscape. Judgement Bird tries to keep their distance, tries to weigh you down, but every effort is met with failure. Leonie's assistance turns an impossible confrontation into one where you hold every advantage, and when the weight in your heart grows to the point where you are too slow to flee even with her aid you call Sound of a Star's luminance to you and cast off gravity's hold.
In the end, that is what grants you victory. Where Judgement Bird had been adjusting to your waning agility, getting better and better at timing their assault to catch you exposed, the sudden change in speed is too much. You glide between trees, spear of pale light in hand, and skewer the Abnormality's wing at the elbow. You twist your body and drag the spear down through the appendage and, worn down by your attacks, it breaks. Feathers fall to the ground in a dark shower, and golden light sputters and dies beneath them. Judgement Bird raises their balance once more, but too slow. Their eyeless head stares down at you with almost disbelieving anger as you thrust your blade upward, and the judge's grip seizes you a moment too late.
You return the Abnormality's stare, challenging them to deliver their verdict before they fall. To indict you, to condemn you, to sentence you to whatever punishment is fitting. The grip tightens, hoping to choke the life from you before it is too late. You offer it as much regard as you did the first time: no more than absolutely necessary. It doesn't matter what you deserve. Only what is needed from you. And right now, you need to find a marker in the Black Forest so you can rescue a kidnapped child and save the world from a megalomaniacal Abnormality. You can die when people don't need you.
You exhale deeply as Judgement Bird's body hits the ground. Their night-black feathers have already begun to dissolve into warm yellow motes of light.
"Why didn't you accept it? You can't undo the sins you've committed; you must be judged. Innocent or guilty, a decision must be found." Judgement Bird rasps. Their voice sounds frailer than it did before.
"I would've accepted your judgement, really. Though I hardly need somebody else to tell me what I'm guilty of. Still, there are a few problems with that." you say. You have time, and you aren't going to walk away until you've seen Judgement Bird disappear. Besides, you feel like you owe them an explanation at least. Sad as it is to say it, the three Birds are some of the most human Abnormalities in existence. That's worth something, at least.
"For one thing, I can't die right now. I have work to do, and there would be consequences if I failed. For as long as people are still relying on me, I have a responsibility to keep living. And two… well, I don't agree with your verdict."
"You can't decide that. You have-"
"I know I've done terrible things." you interrupt. "But I played the hand I was dealt. We all do. And all things considered, I could've done far worse. So maybe I've done terrible things, but I only had so many options available to me. I'll spend the rest of my life regretting things I didn't learn faster, people I didn't help in time, mistakes I made…"
Hell, maybe Angela wouldn't have pulled her whole rebellion if you'd showed her some more attention before the end. You and Ayin were still one and the same, and his attention would've meant the world to her.
But no, because in her rebellion the Sephirot were given another life when even you had accepted the end for everyone in the Facility. Your sister has her own life now, and while you can theorize as much as you want about possibilities she's satisfied where she is now. You still have a role, still have people who need your care and attention.
"…but I can live with the choices I've made. I've made the people I care about's lives better, and that's all I need."
And with those words, Judgement Bird's last embers dissolve. A tiny glowing tree pokes up from the black grass, looking so out of place in the empty and dark forest. You brush your free hand against it, and the sprout-
JUSTICE/CONVICTION/WILL
-bursts into Light under your touch. How pleasant, to have a reward for all that hassle. You breathe deeply, feeling for any lingering injuries from your first folly. Nothing you've noticed, though you'll take it easier while searching the Black Forest in case something is still healing. Though not too slowly, though. With Judgement Bird gone, you can't imagine the Black Forest will remain here for much longer. Once it's gone, there will be nothing to stop the Adult from targeting you.
You push your senses outwards, hoping to pick up something of use. You don't have the ability to detect magic innately like your children, but sensing emotions is rather useful when at a range and specificity like yours. You had thought of that sense as a separate power earlier, you recall. As a consequence of your time dissolved into the Light. At some point, though, it just became another sense. Once you have finer control over, but just another part of you regardless.
And one that does not tell you the marker's location. It seems like you'll be following the gallows after all.
And right as you're about to set off, of course that's when you notice the feeling of somebody you don't recognize at the Black Forest's border.
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Porccubus' Sapling - Observation Level 2/3
Schadenfreude's Sapling - Observation Level 2/3
CENSORED's Sapling - Observation Level EXPUNGED/REDACTED
. If we had picked up Parasite Tree before we would even have an E.G.O. of the same name.
