Yesterday night, after Icarus allied with Azazel and Natalia, they informed him of when they planned on going to convince Jefferson.
"HUH?! You're gonna wait until the morning?! That's just wasting what little time we have left!" The Jester loudly objected.
"Jeez, you're loud," Natalia commented, walking behind them both.
"We were working earlier, asshole. Sorry but if you have a problem, you can do what Nat said earlier and kill yourself," the Detective replied, hands hidden within his trench coat's pockets.
Chrollo sighed and closed his eyes. "If you two are gonna waste our time by sleeping, then I'll be doing things my own way. Whether we're beside each other or not, we all have the same goal, don't we?" he asked.
Upon turning around, the duo would notice his stationary legs. Seeing as how they couldn't advance without clarification on his intentions, they stopped shortly thereafter.
"'Your own way'? What's that mean? How do you plan on recruiting Kima?" Natalia worriedly interrogated.
"I don't have to explain myself to you. I'm not your prisoner nor are you my captor. I can do what I please whenever I please—"
The Plague's pupils shrunk. She abruptly sprinted ahead, extending her palm as she did so. Unfortunately, she was too late. By the time her palm grasped where he stood, the Jester had already vanished into a transcendental gateway. Seconds before her inevitable face-plant into the concrete, she was grabbed by her hood and yanked onto her bottom.
"Wh- WHY'RE YOU STOPPING ME?!" Natalia noisily objected.
"You're too damn rowdy. If we don't trust him, he won't trust us. It goes both ways, idiot," he said.
"But he's—"
"Look, Nat. If we really wish to stop Alex and Katie before they bring the world to an end, then we'll have to force ourselves to push our past differences aside and trust one another."
Later that same night…
Kima Myers had broken up with Ace Wilder. Attempting to drown her sorrows, her thumb flicked her lighter ablaze, surrounded by nothing but darkness and smoke. The spliff's fiery end withered with every new inhalation until she finally tapped it against the nearby ashtray. By the time she'd finished, she was flat against her bed, subconsciously throwing gummies into her mouth every couple minutes.
'I haven't had this dream since childhood…' Her high brain thought.
Without care for anything in this world, Kima widely grinned; her head flat against her pillow.
Then, she shot right up. Her fingers interlocked, barely forming the necessary hand sign mandatory for summoning her signature beasts. Suddenly, she felt two fingers grab onto her cheeks and before she knew it, she was thrown out her bedroom window.
Kima's screams seemingly resounded throughout her neighborhood. She was so luckily caught by her instinctively-summoned winged Chimera beast, grabbing onto her shoulders with its claws and guiding her to the ground. Once the monster landed, she stumbled toward a nearby lamppost and started rapidly panting.
'What just happened? Am I dreaming? Goddammit, I'm too high for this right now!'
"Yo."
'That voice…'
Kim turned her head. Even through her disoriented sight, his figure was entirely recognizable.
Icarus Chrollo stood directly behind her, his arms idle at his body's sides.
Flashing his iconic mischievous smirk, he greeted her with, "Long time no see."
Before he could muster any follow-up, her hands immediately clasped together. Many of her Beasts accumulated from shadows behind her, pouncing, slithering and rolling forward to annihilate their target. The first to jump ahead was none other than the iconic werewolf: Kon.
The canine slashed at Chrollo's face after its initial pounce closed the distance between, to which his left arm raised, blocking the cleave via his flesh. With its claws lodged into his skin, he leaned forward and kicked Kon ahead—directly at Kim standing behind it. Luckily, she managed to leap out of the way.
'She's not jumping away. I forget she doesn't mind getting close in tandem with the Beasts. How FUN~!'
Chrollo's fangs shone under the moonlight. Below the boundless gloom the night presented, Icarus watched as she descended from the air with an overhead slash. He jumped back, leading to her missing the attack. Despite that, she landed nevertheless. The two were now right across from each other, both staring into each other's darkly-colored eyes.
'I can't… fight properly…' Kim thought, panting while holding her sword.
"Sorry for attacking you but those things are unhealthy for you anyway," Icarus commented.
Kim chuckled through clenched teeth. "I never thought you'd be one to apologize," she said.
"I'm not. I've come to talk to you regarding something important," he replied.
Her eyebrow raised. Following that, she lowered her weapon and the Beasts waiting behind her dissipated.
"Even more important than our rematch?" she asked.
"If you wish to stop Katie and Alex. If you don't, then I guess not," Icarus answered.
Her eyes widened. Out of all the things she'd assumed him to say—she had to be dreaming! The merciless Jester was proposing an alliance to stop her friends from decimating the entirety of the world's population. The same Jester who tortured Ace for a week? She rubbed her eyes. He was still there when they opened yet again. This was no fantasy. No matter how hard she tried, it was useless. In the end, even if she drowned herself in smoke, it was pointless.
There was no paradise for her to escape to.
"Do you even know what that entails? If we stop them, our destruction is assured. The Requiem Subjects will be damned for eternity and gradually be exterminated by you and the outside world. I don't support anything those two are doing but we don't have… any other choice."
Kim lamented everything. How far everything had gone, how it led to the present. But most importantly—how they were forced to endure. Continually making morally wrong choices for the sake of survival. Because they were born into this world, because they had a right to do anything they wanted without anyone threatening them. Regardless of the means, the end was the same. It would've come to this eventually anyway! Even so… even if it was all done for the greater good, even if this was their last resort and they had no other choice…
"Even so… I…"
Icarus stepped closer, his hand extended and his eyes teary.
"I can't… ACCEPT THIS! I DON'T WANT… TO STAND BY AND ALLOW ANYMORE PEOPLE TO DIE!!!"
Kim fell to her knees. Covering her eyes with her arms, she wept loudly into her sleeves.
While she experienced the embodiment of sorrow, endlessly sobbing into her limbs against the ground, Icarus was idle. Just as he was about to speak, his open mouth closed. Before he knew it, the second he took to step forward had already faded, and he was kneeling, hands holding her shoulders. Only now did he take the time to talk.
"I've always been searching for something. Something beyond my reach. Good people. For all my life, I never thought they existed. I searched relentlessly, I cleansed mercilessly. All for the sake of locating the means to evolve the world into my kingdom. Only then would I be able to fully analyze the extent of human behavior. I always thought this world was distorted. That good people were a rarity, and bad people were the norm…"
Icarus remembered his friend. His mentor. Founder Rivers. A man who thought what he did was neither righteous nor wrong. Right or wrong, good or bad, it never mattered. For so long, the Jester had been blind to the truth that was in front of him all along. No one in this world was good or bad.
"But… I was wrong. Instead, there was something far more important in front of me. I was just too blind to see it before."
Icarus solemnly smiled. Removing his hands from her shoulders was what sent her head to rise. She stared through teary sight upon the Jester's build. Was this the same demon that'd been terrorizing them for the past three years?
"The world may very well be distorted. I just didn't realize that… I, too, was distorting it. If good and bad really do exist, then I'm undoubtedly a 'bad person'. Even still, that doesn't bother me. For so long, I've been trying to be someone I'm not. Researcher. Investigator. Human nature doesn't interest me at all. From the moment I was born, I was designed to be an agent of chaos. To thrust the world into disaster with nothing but the hatred within my soul fueling me. Human nature is so blinding. I am chaos. Nothing more, nothing less. And after I stop Katie Moon and Alexander Amara, I'll steal Death's Source from her and obliterate everything."
She started rising. Only then did she notice his turned away head. Wiping away any dust dirtying her leggings, she sighed and stared ahead. His black eyes shot back toward her—even as he said such things regarding the entire world's destruction, that solemn smile stained his lips.
"By the time we mobilize to stop her, the destruction will be unavoidable. At this rate, we'll be nothing more than murderers. How can you live with that?!" Kima yelled, tears flying from her wide-open eyes.
"I'm not going after Katie and Alexander to stop what they're doing. If they succeed by the time we get there, that'll be all the better. I'll… take credit for slaughtering everyone and murder Katie and Alex," Icarus responded.
"So, you want to destroy the world because that's your nature and you've finally accepted that after running away from it for so long. But Alex and Katie are already doing that. So you want to take credit for slaughtering everyone and murder those two. Is that it?" Kim asked.
"Pretty much. So, whaddya say?"
"When the time comes and the world's destruction is avoided, we'll… be turning our attention to you. If you're still okay with that, I'll agree," she replied.
"Good, then. That makes us both…
Accomplices."