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The sound of the elevator descending from the ground floor of Shachihata into the basement was the only noise that signaled the approach of the Batter to Zacharie from where he was. His current inventory was laid out on a cloth, to separate the precious objects from the questionably-clean folding table he'd procured. He straightened a deck of Jokers with his index finger as the Batter strode silently into the room.
Zacharie couldn't recall then if he'd served any other customers in the past, but he was fairly sure none of them could've looked quite as unusual as the Batter. The man who was being led about by an intangible being from another world was dressed like, of all things, a baseball player, and had four eyes instead of two. Very unusual indeed.
"Greetings!" Zacharie said, "Things going smoothly, I trust?" The Batter made no reply. He usually didn't, since he'd already picked up on how Zacharie tended to speak to his puppeteer and not himself. Understandable, but Zacharie felt like talking to someone who was capable of responding to him.
"May I ask you a question, Batter?" he asked.
The Batter looked down at Zacharie, "Okay."
"Why do you need four eyes?" Zacharie asked. He already knew the reason why, of course. Zacharie knew lots of things. But he was curious to see if the Batter himself knew, or maybe even if he was willing to let his puppeteer in on it.
The Batter blinked. "For seeing things with," he said bluntly.
Zacharie laughed. The Batter never failed to be amusing to him. "Is that so? Most people here can see perfectly well with just two of them," Zacharie said, "I know that I can."
"Or perhaps," the merchant continued, "They allow a special something more to your vision?"
"That sounds about right," the Batter replied, then stepped to the side and leaned over the items Zacharie had for sale. He was there to shop, after all. Just as Zacharie was there to sell. Nothing more.
While the Batter's upper eyes scanned the array of wares that had been set out for him, the lower ones remained unwaveringly fixed on Zacharie, who snickered. One would've thought the Batter was keeping a suspicious watch on the shorter man, which only made Zacharie suppress another laugh. He stared right back into those eyes, knowingly. He returned their gaze with a wink.
At once, the Batter stiffened and all four eyes locked on Zacharie. He said nothing, and slid 270 credits across the table, taking a piece of silver flesh and three pieces of Moloch's meat before turning his back without another word as the puppeteer set him back on course.
Zacharie waved a goodbye as the Batter passed through the doorway.
He wondered if he got to see it.
Not long after, deep in the heart of the Room, Hugo froze.
The Batter towered over what was left of the Tall Mister, Dedan. Soft light radiating from Alpha illuminated the gruesome scene.
Ruby red blood dripped from bronze flesh across the regal violet of the desk Dedan was slumped over.
Body broken in countless places, he struggled to even whisper his incredulous final words.
"I... I... I lost? Lost???"
The Batter still held his weapon tight, as if the mortally wounded guardian could somehow do a thing to him anymore.
He offered the dying man no comfort, simply announcing his adversary's defeat.
"This land is now pure."
And with that, an eerie red light filled the room, growing brighter and brighter until it became a pristine white that outshone them both and lifted the Batter into the nothingness.
And from his own little room, Hugo coughed into his fist. He wasn't sure how to feel about it, other than unwell as usual.
"That started badly..."
The Batter held the book with the unreadable title, opened to pages 152 and 153. He held his eyes still on the pages, better for his puppeteer to see them through; they must've seen something they thought was important, if they were examining them for so long. The Batter thought about turning the pages, but one of the librarians had forbidden it-- he had some respect for the upholding of rules, so he quietly complied.
While his upper eyes remained unblinking and rigid, the lower ones moved over and over the pages. Their illustrations showed hand-drawn diagrams of exotic flowers, and someone had scrawled notes containing numbers in the corners with a pencil. The paper was stained and smelled absolutely ancient. The Batter sighed and rubbed the book between his fingers as his puppeteer called for him to reshelve it. He closed his eyes; they'd almost certainly derived some sort of meaning from the pages.
The Batter frowned as he put the book with the unreadable title back in its place and walked over to the next shelf.
It didn't mean a thing.
"Be proud to have accomplished your mission, Batter..."
Japhet's musical voice was discordant and rasping as he uttered his mordant final words.
Again, a metal bat was held far too tightly. Again, hot blood oozed across cold metal.
But this time, there were feathers.
The rushing wind around the top of the skyscraper of the Library blew them every which way.
They were many colors, copper, ivory, gold, some even rose red with the blood that they'd been so viciously painted with. Countless hundreds, hundreds, blown in a grotesque spiraling flurry, everywhere, everywhere.
It was all so much, Hugo turned around in fright to face the wall behind him, hoping its pattern could disrupt the horrible display.
The Judge meowed something fretful and Hugo coughed harshly, clinging to the piece of meat in his lap. Hugo didn't quite hear what words the Batter said then, but he knew them anyway.
"The..." Hugo whispered, curling further in on himself, "The bird... He left too..."
This felt like it had all happened so fast, but amidst constant sickness and sitting in his room, he couldn't ever be sure on the passage of time.
Hugo fidgeted nervously. He just hoped that things would turn out right.
The Batter stood quietly in the room beneath the chimney in Vesper. He looked around, dead bodies were piled everywhere. The stench was practically tangible, thick with ashes and rotting flesh. So, this was the secret of the dessert that the workers received in zone 3. Disgusting. Whoever the director of this zone was, the Batter was eager to purify that awful man and leave zone 3 scrubbed beautifully clean of death, sugar, and sickness.
Of course, once his guide helped him get there, he'd do all of that. Navigating the zones and purifying their demons was something that he found harder to do on his own than he'd admit; but with that benevolent otherworldly entity holding his hand, he had nothing to complain about.
They walked him closer to the tiny man that stood beside the open furnace, who didn't look up from his grisly work even as the Batter stood in the blood on the floor right beside him. The Batter turned and faced the furnace, too. His puppeteer then sent him a query, a tap on the back of his head, and he leaned in closer.
It was plain courtesy in exchange for them helping him so diligently. He carefully examined what was before him; it sometimes took as long as minutes to be sure, but a spirit like theirs would always register it as a mere instant, so he had plenty of time to be thorough.
The Batter stared into the bright red flames, and they roared back. The heat continuously radiated into him, intense, but not enough to harm him. He frowned and crouched to get a better look inside. And, just as the tiny man had said, within the fire was bodies-- bodies being consumed by the artificial inferno.
It was so bright, he couldn't make out the number of corpses, so he didn't bother to count. It wasn't important. What was important was the sheer impurity of the sight. As the bodies were destroyed by the flames, tender parts holding some of them collapsed and twisted, making it look almost as though they were still alive and struggling in the furnace (most certainly not helped by the distant screams of ghouls in rooms nearby).
Some people, some people much, much weaker, might have looked away. Their stomach might turn, tears might spring into their eyes, they might beg for him to leave and cry out into the dark about how awful these things are...
The Batter didn't even blink.
This was what his mission was about. This was why he was here. He exhaled with resolve and stood up.
"This is an oven, lit by corpses," he finally explained.
Satisfied, his puppeteer steered the Batter towards the stairs. As he left, however, just outside their view, he cast a brief, determined glance over his shoulder back at the piles of bodies, the sugar-addicted little man, and the raging furnace.
This was why he was right.
"Bis Vincit, Qui Se Vincit In Victoria."
Hugo shook almost uncontrollably. They were gone. They were all gone. And there was the Queen, the one roadblock left on the bloody path between the Batter and himself. The game was nearly over.
She jabbered and jabbered at the Batter, but her acidic, pseudo-poignant words couldn't shake the will of her adversary. She didn't stand a chance against him. She never had.
Metal striking flesh and piercing shouts flew with such force that they rattled down into Hugo's room and made the floors and walls tremble around him. He coughed and winced with every hit the Queen took. He knew that she was composed in a similar manner to the Batter, but hadn't figured her destruction would make such a mess. It was love that made her fight, and Hugo wished he could dredge up more pity for her.
The fallen Queen tried once again to strike a chord of guilt in the Batter, to no avail. His conscience was clear, and for all blood it'd held, her body simply faded away into nothing as she breathed her last. The patterns and tiles of her black platform faded away, too. They peeled back to reveal a place where everything were the color of freshly-slaughtered meat.
Hugo knew he couldn't run. He saw the Batter's silent feet moving closer and closer to him.
He'd seen every fight. He'd seen every guardian die.
He'd seen everything.
The Batter held four eyes in his face. Two for himself, and two for his maker. Powerful enough were they to project sight across the endless void, for those worthy to see through. His vision was utterly perfect, for he always saw things for what they truly were. No creature, living or dead, would be misjudged under the Batter's transcendent gaze. From the moment of his birth, Hugo trusted him completely to carry out what was right.
What the Batter saw, Hugo saw. It was a gift, and he carried it without complaint as his naïve puppeteer toured them through the metallic playground the guardians had constructed. The Batter had everything Hugo wanted-- the freedom to go where he pleased, the strength and courage to chase away what lurked in the dark, lungs that wouldn't choke on the smoke-filled air... all he had to do to share it with him was look around.
It had been fun, following the Batter's adventures from within his chamber. When it was quiet enough, and he held his ham just right, Hugo could almost feel like it was himself beating back the scary ghosts with a bat, riding in pedalos, and feeling the breeze from the wide open skies. No tiny bedroom, no imprisoning walls. Free to explore the world as he was meant to from the beginning.
But that was just a sweet dream in a bitter land. There was no way to call any of it "playing," after everything he'd seen. The trail of destruction, the toppling of those whom he'd once called friends, the rotting infection in the zones that had festered in the wake of his dark power, all a nightmare he'd been personally walked through by his own twisted proxy.
A nightmare that's door was closing as a paper-white face peered through the entrance of his room.
It sure was strange to really look at himself. Two images assaulted his mind's eye: There was the Batter, filling up the entire doorway, tall, powerful, pure. And there was himself, looking so far away, so tiny, so weak.
"I'm here."
The first time in an eternity since he'd heard that voice as anything besides an echo reaching him through the nothingness.
That voice was so clear, so certain.
Hugo found himself unable to respond with his own. The Batter stepped forward.
It sure was strange to have shut his eyes as tightly as he could, but still be able to see himself crystal-clear, shivering on the floor. He cried out when the first hit struck him, and struck him again. He instinctively shielded his body with the meat he held, but it was just as fragile as he was against the Ashley Bat.
Even more unpleasant still, from the view Hugo had, it looked like it was his own hand holding the bat and slamming it into his tiny frame. And in a way, that wasn't untrue. After all, it was himself who sculpted the Batter from his own turbulent feelings and unleashed him upon the zones. Just another thing that made him feel sick. If he'd never had those stupid powers... If he'd never gone outside and talked to Japhet and Enoch... If he'd never done whatever it was that made his mother never come back... If he'd just never existed at all... maybe things wouldn't have turned out so bad.
How pathetic I look, was what he thought as the Batter undid him strike by strike. It hurt terribly, but it wasn't like he wasn't in pain before.
Eventually, the hits stopped coming, and Hugo carefully peeked his eyes open to look up at the Batter. The Batter was crouched over him, silently staring him down, face blank, eyes wide. Hugo couldn't move. He could see his injuries, his arms and legs were twisted at unnatural angles, and his blood blended in with the intense red of his room's floor.
"I'm..." Hugo coughed, the pain in his body liquefying into white numbness, "Scared of the dark..."
"From now on, there will be no more darkness," the Batter replied. There was no comfort in his tone, only cold determination; but Hugo pretended his words were ones of kindness, anyway. As the last of his life trickled out of him, his vision turned dark and faded, but the vision in the eyes of the Batter remained. And as the figure above Hugo turned black, a final image solidified brightly before him-- the image of his own shattered corpse, frozen in time like the rest of the world, dead and white.
And the Batter held on to that image. He held it in those extra eyes of his, the eyes of a child who should've died years and years ago. Everything was finally gone. The violent spectres, the corrupted guardians, the suffering of the men in the zones, the slothful Queen, Hugo's tainted powers, and any doubts about the reality of his mission that his puppeteer might have had, all disappeared as the only eyes left to see them with were his own.
All that remained of the old world was burned into his brain in the image of his creator, cold, dead, and beaten almost beyond recognition. He tightly held it as he ran down the secret hallway behind Hugo's door to tightly hold the switch that rested there.
This was it. The end of all the impurity they'd built up. Everything he was meant for. Everything he'd worked so hard to reach. It would all be gripped perfectly in his hand. He felt his heart soar at the glorious finality of it.
And for one pure moment, he closed his eyes in relief.
It was finally over.