[The End of Osamu Ashikaga]: Inescapable Doom

A sea of people stood in shocked silence in the white halls of Fukuoka Airport as Osamu’s moonlight projections faded away into a shower of sparkling stardust. The earthquake preceding Osamu’s announcement to the world had knocked out the airport’s primary lights and plunged the entire facility into darkness. Some emergency lights flipped on, but they were like amber nightlights in a deep, eldritch dark.

Evacuating civilians, bewildered airport staff, and uniformed JSDF soldiers all stood with their mouths agape and their hearts shattered into pieces. Thousands of pairs of eyes darted around the airport, as if to confirm they weren’t the only ones who had heard Osamu’s terrible message. As the daunting realization set in, horrified voices boomed from all across the airport terminal.

“Osamu’s going to kill us? All of us?”

“That madman! We have to get out of here!”

“No, no! I don’t wanna die!”

“Where are we supposed to go now? They’re all over the world!”

“Please God…don’t let me die like this. Not like this!”

“Honey…I don’t think we’re gonna make it out of this…”

“Aika…that was your friend, wasn’t it?”

Aika snapped out of her trance of terror. Beads of sweat rolled down her forehead, sticking a few stray strands of her long, brown hair to her skin. She felt a tug at the hem of her floral, summer dress and looked down to see her small son pulling at the fabric. She bent down and scooped her son up in her arms, running her hand through his head of short, brown hair.

“Mom? Who was that?”

Aika found it tough to swallow the lump in her throat. She took a deep breath as she rubbed her thumb against the denim of her son’s shorts. “That was Osamu…”

Aika took a glance out the terminal windows and saw the haunting eclipse hanging low in the sky, alongside the steaming, twitching eye of the Underworld. The reflective floors mirrored the two heavenly objects to everyone in the airport, as though they were both beneath everyone’s feet.

“Aika, I’ll take Chihiro.”

A young man nearly two meters tall stuck out his hands, offering to take their four year old son off her hands. She nodded and handed Chihiro over to him. Itsuki’s heart raced underneath his teal, button-up shirt. Osamu had uprooted everyone’s lives and forced the region to evacuate. Now he announced his intention to spread his genocide beyond the shores of Japan.

“He’s serious, Itsuki.” Aika said, staring off into the swarm of people waiting in line behind her. “I don’t know what he’s thinking. Osamu…wouldn’t do this. He’d never kill so many people. Right?”

“Then how do you explain all of this? How do you explain Kyoto?” Itsuki asked. “I know he saved your life, but he’s clearly not the same person he was back then.”

“Dad…I’m tired.” Chihiro whined, rubbing his eye with his knuckle.

“I know. We’re almost there, Chihiro.” Itsuki said, rubbing his son’s back. “Soon we’ll be on the plane and we’ll put on a good movie for you on the backseat screen. We’ll get you some snacks too.”

“At the very least, I know he’d never hurt me.” Aika said. “I know he wouldn’t.”

Itsuki gave Aika a doubtful stare. “I really hope you’re right.”

“Next batch come on through! Only the essentials!” shouted an armed JSDF soldier, causing the massive line of evacuating civilians to move steadily forward. Aika, Itsuki, and Chihiro were patted down and searched by masked JSDF soldiers, all of them armed with Howa Type 20 rifles slung across their shoulders.

Airport staff and addition JSDF troops wearing blue, latex gloves searched through their backpacks, inspecting every pocket and item in their luggage. The Third Great Holy War made invasive searches at the hands of the military a necessity. Japan couldn’t afford any more terror attacks like the one perpetrated by Osamu and Taeko.

As soon as they were searched, the JSDF hurried Aika, Itsuki and Chihiro along like parts on an assembly line. Aika hardly had any time to put her white tennis shoes back on and hard to scurry through the airport alls barefoot along with hundreds of other people. 

As Aika and her family left behind the suffocating crowd behind them, they suddenly heard angry shouting and screams. Itsuki pressed Chihiro’s face into his shoulder to stop him from looking at the commotion.

Scared and desperate, some of the people in the crowd tried to push past the line of JSDF soldiers. Their attempts to break through prompted the soldiers to point their guns into the crowd and shout back.

“Get back! Stay in line!” one of the masked soldiers shouted.

Among the angry screams were tearful pleas to let more people and their children through. No one in that airport wanted to die, but the JSDF couldn’t risk letting everyone through without at least doing basic checks and searches. Procedure and survival instinct came to a direct clash as another line of men rushed the JSDF soldiers, one of them managing to break through the line.

The young man tackled one of the soldiers to the ground, then immediately got back onto his feet and sprinted down the hall. Aika caught a glimpse of the young man, noticing his white collared shirt and brown leather pants. Sweat soaked his face as he ran towards Aika and the rest of those who were allowed through. His eyes glimmered with hope that he might escape Osamu’s restless demons.

He was so focused on staying alive that he didn’t notice the two soldiers close behind him. One of the soldiers pulled a taser from his holster and shot it into the young man’s back. The voltage caused him to crumple onto the airport floor, his leather shoes squeaking and chirping against the tiles as he went down.

The JSDF soldiers quickly sat on his back, pinning him down while they pulled his arms behind his back. The young man groaned and yelled in pain as he was handcuffed, hardly able to breathe with two uniformed, armored men on his back.

“Come on, don’t look!” Itsuki urged.

Aika looked out the windows and caught a view of the military cargo plane standing by on the runways. The military was using their own planes in addition to civilian aircraft to help evacuate more people. As much as the people would’ve wanted it, the planes couldn’t simply take off one after another. With so many planes departing the airport, the pilots all had to wait for wake turbulence to dissipate before they could take off.

The drone of idle plane engines filled the air as Aika and her group were escorted through the passenger boarding bridge connecting the airport to their plane. Four JSDF soldiers assisted the flight crew in getting everyone in their seats and their luggage loaded.

“Everyone, please take your seats and buckle yourselves in!” one of the flight attendants advised. She was a young woman around Aika’s age with short, black hair. “Please try to remain calm! We’ll be passing out food and water to all of you after we take off!”

Aika gazed at her while she and her family took their seats, noticing she was wearing sweatpants, a baggy, white t-shirt, and an unzipped hoodie. It was apparent the young woman wasn’t supposed to work today, but was called in to assist due to the extraordinary circumstance the world found itself in. Scared and desperate for guidance, everyone on board heeded her words like it was gospel coming straight from the mouth of a prophet.

“If he’s going to destroy the whole world, is there even any point in running?” Itsuki asked. “What’s going to be left after all this?”

“I…I don’t know…” Aika said, her teeth chattering.

“You really think he won’t hurt us?” Itsuki questioned further.

“I’ve known him for nearly twenty years.” Aika answered, staring at her knees. “He was always a kind person. If he could give his life to save someone else, he’d do it in a heartbeat. If he had to sacrifice his own happiness to make someone else happy, he’d do it. Osamu fought tooth and nail to give all of us a better life. That’s why…”

Aika slapped her hand over her trembling lips, shutting her eyes tight as she fought back tears. “I don’t want to believe he was this kind of person underneath it all. I don’t want to believe that Yoko, Isabella, and the rest of us were wrong about him.”

Chihiro placed his tiny hand on his mother’s knee and looked straight into her eyes. “We’ll be okay! We’re always okay when we’re together.”

Just when everything seemed grim, the hope and optimism in Chihiro’s glimmering eyes breathed a bit of life into Aika. On humanity’s darkest day, her little boy was her brightest light. If there was anything worth safeguarding in all the world, if there was any shred of humanity that deserved to be spared Osamu’s slaughter, it was the world’s children.

A small jolt rocked the cabin as the plane reversed away from the airport and taxied onto the runway. Sitting between his parents, Chihiro grabbed Aika’s hand in his right, and Itsuki’s hand in his left.

“Whatever’s next for us, we’ll face it as a family.” Itsuki said.

Aika nodded as she wiped her tears away, her frown blossoming into a melancholic smile. “We’re always okay when we’re together.”

Aika looked around, noticing the plan had gone eerily quiet. She had thought that a plane full of people terrified of dying would be filled with screams or horrified sobs. Instead, there was a heavy, contemplative silence. Just as Chihiro had done for his family, other friends and family members on the plane held each other’s hands and reassured one another. Even complete strangers that managed to escape Osamu’s slaughter embraced each other.

The world was an awful place, but human kindness always had a way of shining through during the worst of times. The sight of wounded and scared strangers comforting each other during what could’ve been their final moments filled Aika with a great hope for humanity. Perhaps it was those small vestiges of kindness that had given prior generations of people the hope that mankind would someday end its appetite for war.

It was the moments that often didn’t make it in the history books, the quick flashes of human compassion that made even the worst catastrophes, genocides, and conflicts at least somewhat bearable. If the world could’ve simply shown such kindness even when it had more to gain by waging war, perhaps people like Osamu wouldn’t have come to be.

Aika wished Osamu could’ve seen the small acts of love she was witnessing from her plane seat. She wished he would recognize that none of these people wanted to die. None of them had anything to do with the horrors that plagued the world. They were all just like him when he was younger, ready to show compassion and kindness when it mattered most.

More than anything, Aika wanted Osamu to remember what it was that drove him to sacrifice her memories of him to save her life, to lay down his life for Tsukiakari, and to fight alongside Satori Sentani. To make amends with Rousoku Himawari, to devote himself to Inari Okami. It was his strong belief that people could change, that everyone could be saved, even when they were at their lowest point.

The plane sped down the runway and its wheels lifted off the tarmac. Itsuki looked out the window as the plane became airborne. He saw a sea of people waiting outside the airport, slowly being funneled inside. It must’ve been tens of thousands of people all trying to escape Fukuoka.

“My god…” Itsuki gasped. “We actually managed to get out of that.”

“Told you!” Chihiro said with a cheeky smile.

“Yeah, you sure did” Itsuki chuckled. “You were right all along.”

The plane turned and adjusted its heading for Hokkaido. Itsuki looked out his window again and caught a view of the ocean. His eyes widened in terror as he spotted what looked like tens of thousands of enormous, skeletal lords marching across the sea with their nebula cloaks flowing down their backs. The cloaks shined liked clusters of stars in the dark distance, lighting up the horizon as though the sun were rising.

“So that’s what he meant…” Itsuki said. “They must be headed for the continent to kill everyone there.”

Aika peered through the window, unable to turn her gaze away from the Underworld’s mightiest demons. They marched through the ocean like it was a mere puddle of rain to them. Their otherworldly size stuck out to her even from thousands of feet in the air.

She couldn’t imagine what staring them down from the ground would feel like for everyone on the Asian continent. One could learn their head all the way back and still not see the entirety of the skeletal lords.

As the plane level its wings with the horizon, the Underworld’s Eye twitched and its pupil shrank. In an instant, the plane was rocked by a violent wave of turbulence. Already on edge, the passengers shrieked in fear while the JSDF soldiers and flight attendants urged everyone to remain calm.

That jolt was like a signal to Osamu. Standing alongside Hima, he turned his head towards the direction of the airport and looked on with anger burning in his reddened eyes. He gnashed his teeth and balled his hands into fists as he watched Aika’s plane ascend through the clouds.

“I told them it was useless to run.” Osamu said. “They just don’t listen.”

“Then it’s time for them to learn the hard way. Let’s give them one more little gift before we leave.” Hima suggested.

Six of the skeletal lords marching across the ocean stopped in their tracks. Osamu had just given them new orders. Instead, they turned back and sprinted towards the airport at full speed. With their tremendous size and speed, the skeletal lords closed the distance between themselves and the airport in just a matter of minutes.

The pilots waiting for takeoff on the runways all radioed the airport’s ATC tower to warn them of the approaching threat, but it didn’t do them any good. The pilots, JSDF soldiers, and frightened passengers screamed in terror just before the skeletons’ feet smashed through the planes, causing all of them to explode into fireballs fed by jet fuel.

The JSDF personnel stationed to guard the airport cowered at the sheer size of the skeletal lords, abandoning their posts and running for their lives. The screams of tens of thousands of people filled the air as the footsteps of the skeletons caused the ground to rumble beneath their feet. The massive crowd dispersed and ran for their lives, trampling over each other in their vain efforts to escape.

One of the skeletal lords jumped into the air and extended its arms outward, belly-flopping into the sea of people. Thousands were crushed and mangled beneath the weight of the colossal skeleton, and those caught under its nebula veil were instantly vaporized and turned into stardust.

The sheer force with which the skeleton dropped all of its weight sent everyone who wasn’t crushed beneath it flying up into the air. Thousands of human bodies flailed in the air with their arms and legs extended, before falling back to the ground with hard thuds.

A second skeletal lord raised its foot high and then stomped it down upon the airport terminal, crushing everyone inside with bone and rubble. It stomped on different parts of the terminal, its foot smeared in blood, until the entire building collapsed in on itself, burying everyone inside beneath broken concrete and twisted metal.

The Underworld’s Eye locked onto Aika’s plane with its shrunken iris. A sudden blast of air rocked the plane, snapping off its left wing and tail rotor. The aircraft’s smooth flight quickly turned into a nightmare as the plane tilted downward, nosediving towards the sea.

Aika and the rest of the passengers filled the cabin with blood-curdling screams, the plane’s airframe shaking and rattling as it sped towards the ocean. Aika tried to reach for her screaming son, but the immense, downward force of the plane kept her from reaching her arms out towards him.

“Itsuki!” Aika cried.

“I can’t move!” Itsuki responded.

“Mom!” Chihiro sobbed, reaching out for his Aika.

The plane suddenly inverted, flipping upside-down as it continued to dive towards the sea. The captain, his first officer, and the flight engineer tried their hardest to arrest the dive and regain control of the plane. They reduced their throttle to idle and pulled back on their control bars, but without their left wing and tail rudder, there was very little hope of recovering the aircraft.

The extreme forces pushing down on the aircraft ripped dozens of people out of their seats as soon as the plane inverted. Helpless to move on their own, they were tossed around inside the cabin, slamming into windows, luggage storage, and into other people.

Itsuki looked out the window, seeing the plane’s left wing was gone and the ocean coming up into view.

“Oh my god!” Itsuki screamed. “We’re fucking dying!”

The captain’s voice rang out over the intercom, his words few and far between as he breathed erratically. “We’re going to crash! I’m sorry, everyone! Brace for impact!”

Whatever awaited them, they would face it as a family. Aika hoped her husband’s words meant they would survive Osamu’s massacre, only to realize they were a terribly prophetic eulogy. Aika, her son, Chihiro, and her husband, Itsuki, would face a horrific death together at the hands of the one man Aika desperately still wanted to believe in; Osamu Ashikaga.

Knowing this was it, Aika closed her tear-soaked eyes and waited for it all to end. Her heart raced in her chest. She worried it might explode from how fast it was going, but even that would’ve been a mercy compared to dying in a plane crash.

For a moment, the rattling airframe, roar of the strained jet engines, and screams of her fellow, dying passengers all disappeared. Aika opened her eyes and found herself sitting at the island table in Yoko’s kitchen. Yoko gently laid a hand on Aika’s shoulder as she approached from behind.

“Dozing off at the table again? Did you sleep okay?” Yoko asked, putting down a mixing bowl full of shrimp coated in mayonnaise, chives, and dill on the table.

Yoko was the same as Aika remembered her, with her shining, sapphire eyes and endearing smile. She wore a white apron with a crescent moon in the center, dark blue gym shorts, and thigh-high black socks. Izanami tended to the dishes in her floral dress and pink obi, while Tsukiakari sat at the island to Aika’s right side, cradling her head in her left hand.

“Uh, Yoko, what the hell is that?” Tsukiakari asked, pointing at the bowl of shrimp.

“It’s skagenröra! Shrimp salad, basically.” Yoko answered. “I got tired of eating the same thing, so I wanted to try something different.”

“It looks pretty good, Yoko!” Izanami sang, looking back to steal a glance of the food. “We can make sandwiches with it!”

“Oh, I’m sorry.” Yoko said, rubbing Aika’s back. “You’re not allergic to shrimp, are you?”

Aika shook her head and smiled. “No, not at all! This looks delicious, Yoko.”

“Well okay then!” Yoko cheered. “Let’s eat, everybody!”

Rei appeared from behind as well, putting down white dinner plates for everyone. “We’re serving this with some pineapple juice! Perfect for cooling down in this heat!”

“Thank the heavens, even my boobs have been sweating in this heat. It’s insane.” Tsukiakari groaned.

“Oh, you’re more than welcome to use some of my baby powder, Gekko!” Izanami chimed. “I just bought a new one.”

“You’re a lifesaver, Izanami, thank you. I’ll get my own thing of baby powder soon too.” Tsukiakari said.

Being back in Yoko’s house with everyone, enjoying good meals, and having small conversations about small things, it was all bliss to Aika. Her eyes welled with tears as the memories of her time with everyone came back to the surface. She tried so hard to think of her happiest place inside that plane, and she ended up exactly where she wanted to be; home.

The conversation came to a halt as Aika began to cry. Yoko and Tsukiakari got up and rushed to her side, kneeling by her to get a look at her face.

“Aika? Sweetheart, what’s wrong?” Yoko asked.

“I think…I’m about to die.” Aika said. “This is the last time I’ll see you guys. I wanted to come back home and have your cooking again, Yoko. I wanted to be with you all. I wanted my son to meet your kids and play in the yard together. I wanted to tell Osamu not to lose hope. I wanted him to keep being himself. But I…I can’t do any of that now.”

“Aika…” Tsukiakari murmured.

“I’m going to die…with so many regrets!” Aika sobbed. “I don’t want to die! I don’t want to! Please, someone save me! At least save Chihiro and Itsuki!”

Hidden in the shadows by the staircase, Osamu, Hima, the Shoku Twins, and Amaterasu watched the girls from behind. None of them said a word. They simply watched with their eyes veiled by darkness.

Aika slowly turned her head to look behind her. When she saw Osamu and the others looking back at her, her heart nearly stopped in her chest.

“Osamu…why?” Aika wept.

“I’m sorry, Aika.” Osamu said. “I really am. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry…but I have to do this. I can’t stop.”

Osamu took a step forward, just enough so that Aika could see the tears gathering in his eyes. “Close your eyes. Don’t think about it. It’ll be over so quickly you won’t even feel it.”

This was it, the final moments of her life. She turned away from Yoko and the rest of the girls with her balled hands resting on her legs. Tears rolling down her cheeks, she took one last breath and closed her eyes.

“Thank you for everything, Aika.” Osamu said, his voice fading into the distance.

The scenery around her turned into a terrible, deep void of darkness. Yoko, Osamu, and the house were all gone. It was just Aika sitting in silence by herself. She sat with her eyes closed tight and her body shivering beneath her floral dress. She waited for the end to come in that silent void, a world apart from the chaos and suffering happening around inside the cabin.

The inverted plane slammed into the ocean at nearly three-hundred miles-per-hour. It completely disintegrated upon impact, breaking into thousands of small pieces. The force of the impact was so great that not a single human body on board remained in tact. Everyone was torn to pieces just as the plane was.

Aika, Itsuki, their four-year-old son, Chihiro, and four hundred other passengers all died instantly. Still lying on the ground and healing from her wounds, Izanami felt hundreds of jolts and tingles in her spine, one for every life lost on that plane.

Her eyes opened wide and filled with tears as she witnessed Aika’s final moments from her perspective. The heartbreak was unlike anything she had ever felt before. Everything around her went silent. All she could hear was her own heartbeat.

When Izanami met Aika all those years ago, she never could’ve imagined that she’d meet such a terrifying end. She thought Aika would live a long life and die of old age with her loved ones surrounding her. To die so painfully, so afraid, and so violently was the least of the heartbreak. The true misery of Aika’s death was that she wanted to come home to Yoko. She had her own family, her own life, and yet she still felt that Yoko’s house was her true home.

Izanami curled up and wept violently, hardly able to breathe. The tingles in her spine continued to torture her as more and more people were murdered across Southern Japan. Soon, the whole world would follow.

Osamu and Hima teleported away to Minavere as Fukuoka was swallowed by the earthen maelstrom. With the JSDF and global coalition beaten back, and then Shinto pantheon thinned out after fighting Izanami, there was simply no hope of stopping Dark Dawn. There was no hope of stopping Osamu.

There was nowhere to run or hide. While the destruction of Japan continued, Osamu’s horde of nightmarish demons marched their way to the continent. Soon, they would carry out their master’s order; exterminate humanity, nation by nation, race by race, culture by culture.