The corridor leading to the leader's room hadn't changed since the last time he'd walked it, except now there was significantly more concrete dust in the air and a hole in a wall somewhere behind him letting in the night.
Muzan walked at a relaxed pace.
Not because he needed to be careful. Just because he didn't feel like rushing.
'That was a good fight.' He rolled his shoulder once, more out of habit than necessity.
'David and Cable, I'll try to remember you guys.'
He pushed open the door to the leader's room, and found it empty.
Not abandoned-empty, but Recently-emptied.
A high-backed chair still holding the shape of someone who'd been sitting in it minutes ago, a glass with two fingers of something amber left in it, condensation still sliding down the side.
Papers scattered across the desk in the specific pattern of someone who'd swept them aside in a hurry and only grabbed what was important rather than packing them properly.
'He ran.'
A beat passed, and then he sighed.
'Of course he ran.'
He didn't sigh because of disappointment, this was quite the opposite of disappointing actually.
But still annoying.
He opened a door in the wall, and stepped through it, reappearing one floor up, directly in the main hallway.
Neil would have to cross to reach the stairwell, and he could kinda tell where he was. It was like a call, a silent something against his mind.
'Maybe that's his Orga Lux? But why is it like a beacon right now?'
Muzan considered the doubt, and then arrived at a somewhat reasonable conclusion.
'Maybe it has a function of giving a somewhat psychological invisibility, or just pushing the suggestions that nothing is wrong in the surroundings. Useful in case of escape.'
He smiled and shook his head. "But not this time man."
He stood there, hands in his pockets, waiting.
The sound of footsteps came from around the corner.
Neil, the leader of this "Terrorist organisation" rounded the corner, and ran directly into him.
He was tall, broad-shouldered and was wearing a while coat with golden embroidery, which made a dual wing on his chest.
He had the kind of face that belonged on a recruitment poster. Sharp jaw, composed even mid-panic, the bone structure of someone who'd either been born lucky or built himself carefully over years.
Even now, sprinting from his own building, his coat hung correctly on his frame.
Neil froze in shock as he locked eyes with Muzan.
Muzan, on the other hand looked at him with mild interest.
"Going somewhere?" He asked as if making small talk.
Neil's mouth opened, closed and opened again.
Like a goldfish.
And then, instead of running, instead of fighting, instead of doing literally anything a reasonable person might do when cornered by the man who'd apparently dismantled an entire organization in under an hour,
he smiled.
'Now that's a Aizen kind of reaction.' Muzan thought, amused.
"You," Neil said, voice smoothing out in real time, "must be the one causing all this commotion."
"That would be me."
"Remarkable." Neil's posture shifted, the panic folding itself away somewhere convenient. "Truly remarkable. Do you have any idea what you've just done?"
Muzan made a show of thinking and said "Killed your friends, mostly."
"You've," Neil continued as though Muzan hadn't spoken, "demonstrated exactly the kind of strength this world desperately needs."
And there it was. The voice, except now it wasn't a beacon, now it was a lighthouse.
Something underneath the words now, a low current running parallel to the sentences, soft pressure aimed at something beneath conscious thought.
Like a seductive, sirens song, calling for a sailor to fall into the ocean.
'Oh.' Muzan tilted his head slightly. 'There's the Orga Lux.'
And ofcourse, it did nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
His soul had been through a brutal full fight karma trial that lasted ninety-eight years.
A man's voice asking nicely was not going to make a dent in his psyche.
'Seriously, sometimes I feel like I'm a overpowered protagonist in some stupid story.'
That, was rotten food that should not be fed to thoughts!!!
.
.
.
.
.
.
The orga lux may not have any affect on him, but the pitch itself though,
'Huh. He's actually decent at this.'
"I've been searching," Neil said, taking a careful step closer, "for someone exactly like you. Someone with real power." He said with a wide smile.
"Not these—" a dismissive gesture toward the corridor behind him, toward David and Cable, toward everyone Muzan had already handled, "—limited tools."
"That's quite harsh." He said. "They seemed pretty attached to you."
"Loyalty is useful, but strength like yours is rare." Neil's eyes gleamed. "Join me friend, and I promise you things beyond anything you've imagined. Wealth beyond counting. Fame across every corner of this island. Power that humans will kneel before. And more than that, a legacy! A legend!"
Muzan let his expression soften.
Let his shoulders drop, just slightly. The universal body language of someone being reeled in.
"Go on," he said.
Neil's confidence inflated visibly as he went further.
"Together, we end this farce of human authority. We rebuild this world with Genestella at its head, and your name will be remembered as one of its greatest founders."
"That does sound nice." Muzan said, nodding along.
He listened to Neil's pitch for three minutes straight. Internally counting every second, nodding at the right intervals, and letting small flickers of consideration cross his face while Neil built increasingly elaborate architecture out of nothing.
It was, genuinely, entertaining.
'Man, maybe those years did effect afterall. My humour is so broken.'
Muzan lamented.
Then Neil, mistaking his patience for surrender, decided to press his advantage.
"Of course," he said, voice cooling into something with edges, " now that you've joined me friend, we must leave everything behind and step into the new world. But before any of that, you did kill several of my people tonight."
He straightened. "A debt like that requires acknowledgment, that's the only way to step into the new world."
"Makes sense," Muzan said outwardly, but inside,
'man, why is this guy acting like he's some benevolent saint granting forgiveness to the lost lamb? Seriously. He's too into his role.'
"Kneel."
Muzan kept nodding.
"And receive a kick as your punishment."
Muzan stopped nodding.
His face had gone absolutely still, as if he'd lost all contact with his own body for a few seconds.
'Hold on.' Something in his head had genuinely stalled, gears spinning without catching. 'Let me process this.'
He looked at Neil, who was looking at him as if expecting whatever he asks to come true.
Then he looked at the building behind him, wrecked from one end to the other.
And then he remembered David and Cable, who had taken everything he'd thrown their way, and still kept pace for a little while.
And then, his eyes and thoughts, came back to Neil.
'This man just asked me to kneel.'
A second passed.
'And receive a kick from him.'
He looked at the Orga Lux faintly visible at Neil's throat. Then back at Neil's face, which was still composed, still confident, completely unaware that anything had gone wrong.
'This organization,' Muzan concluded, 'was doomed even if I'd never shown up.'
He smiled.
Not the pleasant one.
"You know," he said, conversational, almost warm, "I want you to know I was genuinely impressed for a minute there."
Neil blinked. "...What?"
"The pitch. Wealth, fame, glory, thing, it was very good." Muzan gestured vaguely toward the Orga Lux, a small dagger which was hung around his neck. "And the voice thing, genuinely well built. I get why it worked on the others."
"It worked on—"
"It didn't work on me." A small pause, almost gentle. "Hasn't worked since you opened your mouth. I just wanted to see how far you'd take it."
Something in Neil's face came apart.
"That's—" he started. "That's impossible. My Orga Lux has never—"
"Lots of firsts tonight." Muzan rolled his neck. "You should feel special."
Neil's hand flew to his throat, the Orga Lux flaring with sudden desperate intensity, voice climbing into something louder, more layered, command stacked on command — *kneel, submit, obey, serve* — every trick the weapon had, all at once.
Muzan watched him do it with the patient curiosity of someone observing a kettle that had decided to boil harder instead of accepting it had no water left.
"Still nothing," he reported helpfully.
Neil was about to say something again when Muzan, took a step forward, and extreme terror washed over him.
"Wake up to reality you shit," he said sternly, his face giving away no emotion, and yet conveying a sense of deep terror straight into Neil's heart.
"you're not aizen, nor are you a Chinese young master, just where do you get the confidence to spout all that nonsense?"
Muzan could truly not make any sense of this. He had thought Neil to be a smart and composed man, but his actions completely ruined that image.
'People come in all shades. Someone who looks like a legend, can be just an Usopp.'
'Heck! Usopp himself is a legend! This guy didn't even compare to Usopp.'
Muzan almost felt sacrilageous, thinking of this clown as someone similar to Sosuke Aizen.
Hearing his words and feeling that chill in his heart, Neil decided to follow his first instinct.
And so he ran.
He made it four steps before a door opened directly in his path and he collided with it face-first.
"That's embarrassing," Muzan said, feeling the shame for both him and himself.
He walked towards him.
Neil scrambled up, turning around and tried negotiation. "Wait — wait, we can discuss terms, I have resources, accounts, information about other organizations like mine across the continent—"
"Mm. Not interested."
"I can make you rich—"
"Already planning to rob this world, no need for you. Thanks for the offer though."
Neil's breathing had gone ragged. He tried one more time, voice cracking with effort, the Orga Lux burning itself out trying to find purchase on something that simply wasn't going to receive it.
Nothing.
He sat down on the floor, finally, the fight draining out of him in one long exhale.
"Why," he said. Not a demand anymore. Just exhausted. "Why any of this. Why kill them. Why come here at all. Why doesn't it—" he gestured weakly at his Orga Lux, "—why doesn't this work on you?"
Muzan looked down at him for a long moment.
"Wait, do you expect me to like, explain all that?" Muzan laughed, looking extremely amused. "Do I look like someone granting last wishes?"
Neil stared up at him, completely defeated.
Muzan stared back, equally serious.
A few seconds passed.
Then, almost to himself, but pitched exactly loud enough to be heard —
"...Although, I did tell a guy I'll respect mothers, and that I'd try not to harm women unless they deserved it." He put a hand under his chin, remembering all those promises.
"And I guess I did perform those hundreds of magic tricks for that child, without any powers, just magic tricks, and that one mother, i didn't promise her that I'll feed hungry children if I can." He considered this. "Huh, guess I have granted or am granting a few last wishes."
Hearing all this, while still confused something flickered in Neil's expression. The beginning of a word, maybe hope, maybe one more desperate sentence for control, or negotiation.
And then a bone spike stabbed his heart, and then scrambled it by rotating counter clockwise at high speed.
Muzan killed him before his words finished forming.
Smiling the whole time.
He hadn't earned the rest of that sentence. He hadn't earned much of anything tonight.
The body folded into the floor without ceremony, and then a door swallowed it whole.
Muzan turned and walked back the way he'd come, past the wrecked hallways, past the rooms, past the quiet that had settled over everything now that there was no one left to make noise.
He stepped out into the night air through the hole in the wall and looked up at the sky.
'Months,' he thought, mildly irritated by the concept. 'I have to sit in that academy for months before the Festa even starts.'
If this were a world he actually cared about — if there were characters here he'd grown up watching, plots he wanted to see unfold with his own eyes — he could've stomached it. Filler was tolerable when you loved what came after.
But this wasn't that kind of world.
He was hungry, mildly bored, and staring down several months of teenage bureaucracy in a place that held no particular weight for him beyond curiosity and a wish slot waiting to be claimed.
'Sigh.'
He opened a door home and stepped through it, already thinking about what he wanted to eat.