𝐂𝐇𝐎𝐊𝐄 • Chishiya Shuntarō

XIII: FIRE OF JUDGEMENT

"Fifteen minutes remaining."

Chishiya and Hana stood looking over the annex. There stood the militant corps, their guns pointed at everyone.

"That's enough!" A voice yelled. Hana squinted her eyes to see Arisu. Her face lit up, and she ran downstairs. Chishiya grabbed her hand in an attempt to stop her, but she barely felt his grasp. He let go sooner than he'd grabbed her, and watched as she ran to her friends.

"Usagi, I'm sorry, I didn't want-" Hana began.

"We know," Usagi said, smiling. Hana smiled back as they walked towards Aguni.

"This ends now," Arisu said, "You... You had me tied up the whole time. When the murder happened, that's where I was. So that means you know that I can't be the witch. And if you aren't the witch, you don't need to kill me. Just work with me and we'll find the witch!"

Aguni walked over, hitting Arisu in the face and kicking him to the ground. Usagi tried to stop him, but he easily threw her off, too. Hana didn't even want to try it with Aguni. She was strong, but not Aguni strong.

"I know everything!" Usagi said, "You're going after Arisu even thiught you know that he didn't do it. And that's because you're the witch!"

"Are you the witch?" Someone asked.

"Yes," Aguni said, "I am the witch." Hana looked up at Chishiya, who was shaking his head. The militant corps raised their guns at Aguni, but Hana didn't believe him. "Go ahead. Do it!"

"Well, shoot him!"

"Aguni's not the witch," Hana said.

"She's right," Arisu said, "It's a Ten of Hearts game! It plays with your feelings and your emotions! You're not gonna win by killing Aguni. That's not the way this game works! I know you're not the witch. So why then? You gotta have another reason. The one that you killed wasn't Momoka. It was Hatter. I could see it right away in your eyes. It was as if you lost all hope and just gave up. I had that same feeling when I killed my friends. You're not dumb. But as soon as you took over, you wanted to kill everyone. And that's not like you. So you... had to have another motive. Ever since I came to the Beach, I couldn't quite figure it out. If you had possession of all these guns, why didn't the militant corps take over a long time ago? That never happened until now. Because in the end, you weren't against Hatter at all. Didn't you actually help each other out? You wanted to make sure that scary people like Niragi didn't go ballistic. You tried to hold them back. I know how close you and Hatter were. You were best friends, weren't you? Then, why did you kill him? I'll tell you why. Because you could never forgive him for what he did. You wanted it all to stop, but it was too late. You didn't recognise him anymore, isn't that right?"

"You don't know anything!" Aguni yelled, grabbing Arisu and punching him again, until Tatta and Usagi ran to stop him. He threw them off, grabbed Arisu by the top of his shirt. "You know nothing."

"I know what it feels like to see your friends die, to kill them. I see it. You killed your friend, I see it in your eyes. And now you just wanna kill everyone here, because they were the ones who made your friend crazy. These painful feelings of yours, the game master is using all of them. That's why it's a game of Hearts. Don't you get that?"

"Shut up!" Aguni threw Arisu to the ground, and he landed at Hana's feet. Hana knelt down, and Tatta and Usagi scrambled over.

"So if all of this is true, then Aguni wanted to kill everyone no matter what the game was," someone said.

"He had you do it," another said to the militant corps.

"And we said nothing and went along with it all," one of the militant corps said.

"So, who here is the witch then?" Usagi asked.

"I know who it is," Arisu said, "I know who the real witch is. A game master uses similar characteristics in every game. In a game of Hearts, he usually makes a fool out of everyone. It might be that there really was a way to end the game without having to kill someone. A solution where nobody has to get hurt, and no one has to die."

"But that's impossible," a girl said, "We have to hunt down the witch and burn them in the Fire Of Judgement, right?"

"No." Tatta, Usagi and Hana helped Arisu to his feet. "The witch could be right here and no one dies. Because the witch is... Momoka. She was the witch all along."

"So, wait. She stabbed herself in the chest?" One of the women asked.

"Yes. If I were the game master, that's what I would come up with."

Aguni kicked Arisu in the stomach. "You're full of shit," he said, "I'm the witch! You all wanna kill me, right?"

Aguni started attacking everyone as they started screaming. "Aguni's trying to take everyone down with him," Arisu said.

"Killing Hatter really did drive him crazy. I can't imagine," Hana said, "Should we just kill him?"

"No," Asahi said, "Listen. I know how to stop Aguni, trust me! I'll get his attention, alright? Burn Momoka in the Fire of Judgement. Arisu. This whole thing has to stop now, okay?"

Asahi stood in the middle of the room. "Everyone!" She said.

"Shit," Hana whispered. She knew what she was about to do.

"I'm the one! The dealer of this game!"

A laser shot down into Asahi's head. It was sad, but it did cause a distraction. Everyone looked in silence. Then, Ann and Kuina came out of the crowd.

"It was a reverse grip," Ann said, "Fingerprints with a reverse grip were found on the knife. That means that Momoka grabbed the handle of the knife and stabbed it through her own chest. She was the witch."

"But why would she do that?" Someone asked, "It couldn't have been just for the game. So Momoka was really the game master after all?"

"And that girl said she was the dealer," a man said, "So they were just toying with us the whole time, then?"

"So there was never any higher power doing all this?" Tatta asked, "They were just human?"

"But it's possible that they could've been controlled by somebody else," Usagi said.

"Aguni," Arisu said, "We need to stop this. No more innocent people have to die. Too many people have already. I understand how it feels to kill your friends. But we can't take it out on people who are still alive! We are still alive! We're all in this together and we have to fight to end it all! I don't want anybody else to die!"

"The fire is spreading!" Someone yelled.

"Quick! Put her in the Fire of Judgement!" Kuina yelled.

Someone was about to grab her, but he was shot, along with others. Hana looked forward to see Niragi, someone still alive. "Someone's charred," she said.

"That hurt," Niragi said, "If I could do it all over again, I'd use this Fire of Judgement to burn this whole place down! And that will make me the winner!"

Niragi threw the fire into the middle of the room, screaming as he shot at everyone. Everyone ran, and Usagi jumped onto Niragi's back while Arisu tried to take his gun. He threw both of them off.

Hana ran over next, knocking Niragi to the ground with a punch. Aguni came running over, picking him up and running into the fire with him. The last thing that they heard of both men was two gun shots.

"Three minutes remaining in the game."

"We need to hurry!" Kuina said. They lifted Momoka and threw her into the fire, watching as it burned.

Hana began to look around her for Chishiya, but she couldn't see him. She began to ask around, but no one else had seen him since the game started.