After DAISHU shut down its research at Mt. Aoi into the creation and breeding of half-human, half-rabbit beings, other than the few of Hayao's kin who'd managed to escape into the wilds, the vast majority of them had been slaughtered by DAISHU's enforcers, their bodies harvested for fluids and organs.

Hayao's gray fur paired nicely with his black slacks, white buttoned up shirt, and the black vest he wore atop it.

"Maybe we should play musical chairs," Miyamoto-san suggested.

Ogino-san coughed. "I don't think I have it in me."

I certainly don't, Hayao thought.

The unnaturalness of Hayao's body had always been a source of aches and infirmities, but the ones currently bearing down on him were worse than any he'd ever known.

Then again, that was the whole point.

"What's the point of playing music?" Tajiri-san asked. "It's just more echoes into the void."

Shimamura-san sighed. "It would be better than sulking."

"Would it, Shimamura-san?" Urameshi-san asked. "Would it really be better? What, are these some kind of magical chairs?" He waved his hands at the sides of his head like they were elephant ears, and then pointed at one of the blackened windows. "Will sitting in them undo what's happening out there? Or is it just another bit of Miyamoto-san's 'spontaneity' bullshit? Try growing a pair, for once. When death stares you in the face, you don't fucking look away. You face it like a man, even if it takes you!"

Hayao often meditated on the nature of power, and its dialectical engagement with personality and historical contingency. He felt deep affinity toward the ideals of the more militant socialist agitators, but had difficulty reconciling them with his devoted pacifism. Unlike most corporate leaders, DAISHU's CEOs genuinely meant well—Urameshi-san notwithstanding. In a way, the men were artists, merchants of dreams. They helped make the impossible possible, and earnestly believed in free enterprise and trade as a means for benefitting all—again, Urameshi-san notwithstanding. They accepted the Munine government's regulations that the annual salary of a corporate executive could not exceed more than 1 million times the annual salary of their lowest-level employees, much to Urameshi-san's dismay. Ogino-san had gone so far as to lobby the government to lower the wage disparity even further, but Urameshi-san and the rest of the company's shareholders voted against it.

These men were caught up in a web far beyond their ability to fully comprehend, let alone control, except for Urameshi-san, who was too stupid to realize it.

Hayao lamented this. It would have been so much easier to kill them if they'd been the typical corporate slime. But, save for Urameshi-san, it was not to be.

Justice was rarely straightforward or clear-cut.

Thankfully, Hayao knew he wouldn't have to bear the weight of Ogino-san's death on his conscience for very long.

He'd be returning to the forest soon enough.

Suddenly, Tajiri-san rose from his seat and, then declared, in a loud, uncharacteristically assertive voice, "I do not wish to live anymore," and then, without hesitation, grabbed the fork from Miyamoto-san's hand and stabbed himself in the throat. As best as Hayao could tell, Tajiri-san had been aiming for his jugular vein, but his aim hadn't been up to par.

Tajiri-san fell to the floor with a louder-than-usual scream. The other four CEOs rose to their feet in alarm. Hayao folded his long ears back against his head, perturbed by the sound, though he didn't have to do so for long, as Tajiri-san's screams soon quieted into violent gurgles.

He was drowning in his own blood.

"Tajiri-san!" Ogino-san yelled. "No!"

Shimamura-san rushed over to his fallen colleague. Getting down on his knees, Shimamura-san tried to pull the fork out of Tajiri-san's throat, but the dying man swatted his rescuer's hand away, like one of Miyamoto-san's dogs.

"Get the fuck over here, Hayao!" Urameshi-san barked. "Do something!"

"Tajiri-san said he wanted to die," Hayao replied. "I will not violate his last wishes."

Miyamoto-san pulled out his console. "Have I shown you the pictures of my horse?"

Quaking with fury, Urameshi-san rose to his feet, ran up to Miyamoto-san, grabbed him by the shoulders, and shook him violently.

"Shut up! Shut! Up! Shut up about your dogs! Shut up about Crusader movies! Shut up about your horses, your go-karts, your favorite restaurants—shut up, shut up, shut up!" Urameshi-san stared Miyamoto-san in the eyes. "Don't you understand you son-of-a-submariner?! THIS IS THE END! We. Are all. Going. To. DIE!"

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

"There has to be a way to fix this, Urameshi-san," Shimamura-san said. "DAISHU always finds a way. That's why people trust us! DAISHU is the way!"

Miyamoto-san's eyes widened, and then he screamed.

Urameshi-san wasn't the best at navigating social situations. Had his sensibilities been a bit more delicate, Urameshi-san might have realized that Miyamoto-san was trapped in a perpetually deluded state ever since several days before, when he learned that his entire family had died.

Once again, Hayao folded his ears back. He was really getting sick of the yelling. It was only making his headache worse.

Miyamoto-san's scream then exploded in a coughing fit. Rolling back in his wheeled swivel chair, the CEO of DAISHU's entertainment subdivisions pushed away from the table as he wretched black ooze all over the table and the synthetic flooring.

Urameshi-san and Shimamura-san pushed away from the table, pale as death. Even Urameshi-san, for all his bluster, fell out of his chair as he rushed to get away from his infected colleague.

"ARISU!" he screamed, pointing a finger at Miyamoto-san "ARISU! Quarantine him! Quarantine him now!"

There was a momentary pause during which Miyamoto-san gasped for breath.

"All infected personnel have been quarantined."

Urameshi-san looked up at the ceiling. "What do you mean, all infected personnel?"

While Urameshi-san yelled at the computer, Shimamura-san removed his safety vest and unbuttoned the business shirt underneath and then flinched and screamed as he saw fungal threads growing beneath his arm like black lightning.

Everyone stared at him.

Ogino-san shook his head, and coughed again.

He paused for a moment, and then let out an, "Oh…" in equal parts realization and resignation.

"I thought you said the cough was just because we ran the air-conditioning last night…" Shimamura-san said.

Groggily, Miyamoto-san lifted his head, using his suit's sleeve to wipe the black ooze off the corners of his mouth. "So did I…"

More than anything, Hayao felt relieved. He let out a sigh that quickly devolved into a ragged, rib-cracking fit of coughing. He smiled as he gasped for breath.

"I'm sorry, sirs, but… you left me with no choice."

"Hayao?" Shimamura-san said, in a rictus of disbelief. "You…?"

The rabbit-man nodded. "Some of the food in the refrigerator must have been contaminated with the fungus' spores. I don't know how or when, but it happened, and everything has been contaminated since the beginning. I threw out everything that was too far gone to be edible: the eggs, the rest of the burger steaks. But… it gave me an idea." He coughed, and then smiled ever so slightly. "After much deliberation, I sprinkled spores in yesterday's breakfast."

"Why?" Miyamoto-san asked.

Hayao shook his head. "I blame myself. I should have raised you better." He bowed to Ogino-san. "My apologies, Ogino-san."

Except for Ogino-san, who was a natural-born human, the CEOs were as unnatural as he was; they'd been born in the same labs, after all—Hayao having been genetically engineered to provide a cheap, ethically questionable source of organs for human beings; the CEOs, to be the ideal group of gentlemen to take the reins of the most important institution in human history. Tajiri-san was the product of the second generation of genetically engineered CEOs. It made Hayao wonder if the others of Tajiri-san's cohort had fared any better.

"Hayao," Miyamoto-san said, "you're like a brother to me. How could you do this?"

"I should have done something like it a long time ago," the rabbit-man replied. "If there is such a thing as too much power, it's DAISHU. But…" he sighed, "…for better and for worse, I was too weak."

"Why couldn't they have bred me to be immortal?" Urameshi-san said, with a cough and a groan.

"It was deemed too much of a business risk," Ogino-san said.

"My life isn't a fucking business risk, old man," Urameshi-san growled.

"No one's is," Hayao said, "nor should they be." He shook his head again. "If there's one lesson I've learned, it's that the greatest evil is not losing one's humanity, but taking away someone else's."

Slowly, Ogino-san rose to his feet. His gaze had turned to the window.

"Uh… guys…?" he muttered. "What is… that?" He looked up at the darkened glass of the surveillance dome in the ceiling. "ARISU, clear the windows."

The AI replied. The weird distortions of Noyoko's murky skyline came into focus as the windows' dark tint faded away.

It had been several days since any of them had last taken a peek. Hayao wondered if the world had changed as much as the CEOs had been expecting.

For him, it certainly had.

People called downtown Noyoko, "the Jungle", but the name had never fit the area quite as well as it did now. The city's heart was a fungal forest, studded with remnants of concrete, steel, and glass. The dark bark of the mycelium exuded from buildings like lava from the earth. Clusters of branches like hollow bamboo trumpeted green clouds into the night, while bulbous growths' sallow blue shine cast shadows over the streets. Golden-eyed serpents coiled among the decaying spires, in between the radio towers and the wireless electrical broadcasters, like dragons of legend.

But that wasn't what Ogino-san was pointing at.

Even the dragons seemed to look up in shock.

Everyone nani-ed, and then the room fell silent. Rising from their seats—Tajiri-san notwithstanding—they ambled toward the windows with trepidatious steps, like statues who had only just been granted life.

Even Hayao stared.

"They're… enormous," Shimamura-san whispered.

Another forest had appeared. It hung from the sky, high above the city. Its logs were metal and studded over in gems and branching crystals. They were poetic, as if someone had softened the Noyoko of before into clay and molded it into the light-studded forms that now dominated the sky. Small, origami shapes emerged from the objects in swarms that glowed as they began their descent. Light beams swept out from them to scour the ruined city. One of the beams passed over the conference room. The shaft set the reflectors on the CEOs' safety vests alight as it shone through the windows.

For the first time in his life, Hayao was genuinely surprised.

"I told you… it couldn't have been us," Shimamura-san said. "We couldn't have made the plague. It wasn't our fault, and now… there's proof!" He coughed and groaned. "It's them! It's them!"

Mr. Urameshi stared at the coming storm, and then turned to the ceiling and yelled. "ARISU," he said, "send out the order. No more hesitation! Fire the missiles! Nuke these fuckers out of the sky!"

"Yes, Urameshi-sama," the female voice replied.

— — —

All across the world, the commands went through. Here and there, a few decrepit commanders pushed the buttons and flicked the switches, running through the motions of behaviors long since consigned to memory. Others needed no human intervention at all. Computers spoke their messages to one another, and followed instructions without error.

In the ensuing hours, silos opened from Bazkatla to Crownsleep, loosing rockets into the sky.

If only someone had been there to aim them...

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