WARNING: Squeamish people read with caution. I'll only say it once. Involves gore to an extent. No character death.

We return to Izaya in his search for the red eyes that haunted him. Though, are those eyes the thing he should REALLY be worried about?

I find it incredibly ironic that while humans say they are not monsters, those that they create in their own image become monsters. If a God created humans in his own image would he find the same situation ironic as well, or call it déjà vu?

As he approached the spot where he last saw the red-eyed figure, Izaya leaned against a downed pillar. He had not realized how uneven the ground was; let alone how difficult his footing would fare on it. How interesting those years of running from that beast could be thrown out by a few loose stones.

The creature will be better spotted from atop one of these structures, though getting up an unfamiliar – and possibly not originally placed structure – would prove to be a difficult endeavor.

Crouching slightly, he bound towards another downed support beam in the distance and leaped atop one of the crooked roofs, only to go prone as the creature was right on the other side of the roof. It leaned back and forth, mechanical sounds wiring from it as it seemed to "sniff" the air about. Izaya scanned his immediate area in case he needed to escape but quickly was interrupted as he felt the ceiling below him collapse inward. Always with the unintentional escapes, he thought.

When you accuse a being of being a monster, you consider what they do to be in a type of wrongness. An example of such would be a rapist or a murderer. Humans gaze on these other humans and consider them lesser. Now, I do not condone their actions or personally endorse their midnight – or sometimes midday endeavors, but I do love to consider the possibility that somewhere down the line: Was what we consider wrong once our right? The idea that humans created wrongness out of their shame and disgust of themselves – a true lesson in humility – is what has me laughing on occasion.

The fall didn't really hurt him, as it was a much shorter distance than what he has handled before. What hurt his eyes though was the green and red pulsating throughout the interior; along with the meat-like ligaments that stretched from wall to wall like cartilage filled spider webs that looked about as unnatural as anything Izaya has seen up until this point. They seemed to be made of organic material, but Izaya poked one of the stretched meat webs and found it was made of a type of metallic bone interior, almost trans-human in nature. The floor was covered in a type of slush that could only be described as a frothing mess of filth – and the smell. Gods, the smell was atrocious. The smell of almost pure diluted protein and brass; covered by a thick layer of humidity that seemed to make it condensate on your many fibers. It made him want to gag, but if he opened his mouth at all he feared that he would taste what he smelled, and that would not end pleasantly. He was not one for sickened gestures anyways.

The opening above him was too high and too far for him to jump to, so his only choice was to push into the mass of organic… stuff in front of him in order to proceed.

This idea isn't new. College majors and high school book worms constantly debate these ethical ideas and create different arguments in favor of the "for" and "against". One thing these arguments fail to realize and that I constantly humor myself in my head about is that if truly one of these is wrong, none of them make sense. Arguing for rape and murder has about as much wrongness as arguing against it – you're passing the judgment where you are not allowed to judge, in theory. We call ourselves our SELVES because we keep to them, so why do we pass judgment on things we do not do, for or against? The creature inside of us would have no hesitation doing these wrongs, yet we constantly consider ourselves better as we have "self control", which could be argued as wrongness in certain societies. Can we pass judgement if we ourselves are not suited to be judges?

Weirdly enough, the material under his feet made no sound – in fact, none of it did. He hadn't noticed the dead silence until that moment, and it unnerved him even more. He could only hear his own heartbeat pounding steadily as he tried to keep his composure.

The next room was even more humid than the last one. Izaya speculated that the heat was most likely coming from the materials around him; a sort of "body heat" that kept the temperature so high. The smell was still just as strong, and made him feel uneasy and eventually would cause nausea to set in. His heartbeat was still steady, which surprised him. Though, he wasn't sure why. The materials around him seemed to sway every once in a while, almost twitching, and Izaya saw why. In the middle of this big room, was a person covered in this reddish green organic structure. He approached the being with a slight curiosity laced with fear, in order to examine it – was it human?

Its eyes began to open slightly and the heartbeat , which Izaya realized was not his own, began to increase in rate. The being was held by many of the ligaments and tendons that were covered in oozing slime like materials, and as those tightened around the room, the creature lifted off the ground and was placed on its feet by the tendrils. They then separated themselves from the creature and retreated to their walls where they seemed to merge with the rest of the organic materials. The beings eyes held a red tint to them, almost like the beast that Izaya was chasing after. It began to extend its legs in a demented fashion as if it was unsure of how a human would walk. Izaya heard its internal components clicking as it tried to adjust its joint speeds and rotations, quickly learning its footing as it extended its arms to Izaya – but Izaya backed away slowly, just at a quicker pace than the creature.

Suddenly a blade impaled the creature. It fell with a high pitched shriek.

Izaya felt a shiver down his spine as he heard it, directly next to his ear. A breath, and then a low and mechanical: "Stay still."

"What…?"

"I said stay still." Izaya locked all his body parts, letting only the putrid air enter his lungs and exhale back out. A mechanical hand gently placed itself on his shoulder and from his peripheral vision he saw the bright red eyes and that horrifyingly distorted smile.

"Saika wanted to be here." It calmly said.

"It begged me, it screamed at me until I complied."

"Yet it doesn't know. It is finding out now. This creature is made of meat, but it is not the sentience that drives it. The pure primal rage forged from those it killed is what drives it. Saika will be overwhelmed when it sees what it has sliced into."

A scream erupted from the creature, its clawed hands reaching its zenith and raging back and forth. Guttural grunts and mechanical shrieks began to slide out of its throat in long and tiresome wavelengths. The tendrils that had assembled it before began to sickeningly sweep out and probe into the creature, driving the cries of agony out longer and harder than previously thought possible.

"Notice the duality of the beast?" The voice next to him said, almost in whispers. Izaya could hear what he meant. The screams were not one, but two in unison, a chorus of pure pain. Unimaginable pain; and Saika had no idea what to do.

"Saika was made to love humans, and to do anything to love anything resembling humans. It never saw what humans hid inside themselves. It could sense it, even exploit it, but that was by driving the person to madness. What is happening now…" It paused as the creature became more and more tired of the pain, both voices almost separating their screams at points.

"…Is Saika is tasting the full rage of a primal human. No barriers for Saika to be held behind. No drive."

The voice sighed and the hand left Izaya's shoulder. The creature began to stir on the ground and the tendrils began to latch on harder than before, trying to silence it, almost panicking. It began to flail, running violently into the wall; crying and sobbing while its multicolored blood and oil spilled onto the meaty floor.

Izaya felt no rage for this being, nor did he feel pity. He could not feel anything but fear for himself in that moment, and ran out of the nearest intact opening to the outside world.

What really drives a human to dismiss a monster is the presence of self-worth. We believe ourselves to be more precious than those we deem lesser. Our choices, no matter how bad they could be considered by outsiders, are inherently okay as we do not succumb to monstrous ambitions. We do not rape or murder or betray or put down. We blame the existing monsters, the monsters we are nowhere near similar to. Yet the one question I ask about humans in regards to what makes us a monster is this:

If you were told one of your two infants were to be a monster, could you tell by looking which one it would be?

Apologies for not updating this is a very long time. A lot has happened and I apologize to all who follow this story who enjoyed it.

I will NOT be ending this story. I will be expanding on it and adding more in due time, hopefully within the coming months. I always have an issue as an author when it comes to "how long enough is a chapter" and "is this too short? Will people feel ripped off?"

I will post when I can and I hope you can theorize in the comments what will happen next. I love to hear any thoughts and theories, if any, and the encouragement will definitely drive me forward.

This chapter, admittedly, isn't a recent writing. It was posted in 2016 on AO3 (My name is ChillingLucifer on there) and I simply neglected to upload it here. I will make sure not to do that again.

Please enjoy as I continue to emotionally torture these poor characters. ;)

-C