Flowers for Her

"Foreigner! Foreigner! Foreigner!"

"I'm sorry! I can't help it my eyes are blue!"

"HEY! CUT THAT OUT!"

Little Akira Fudo threw himself between little Miki Makimura and the bullies who were taunting her because of the blue eyes that gave away her mixed parentage. He flung his arms out, daring them to try and hurt his friend, even while his knees were shaking.

"Aw, it's just the crybaby…."

"C'mon, let's get outta here…."

After they had gone, little Miki tried to squeak out an apology, but words failed her. She was even too shocked to cry. She was more worried about little Akira as he whimpered and drew his arm over his eyes.

"I'm here for you, Miki, whenever you're in trouble," little Akira promised through his tears when he turned to look at her, crying for the way other kids treated this girl who was special to him for reasons he was still too young to understand.

Little Miki blinked at him, surprised that someone would cry for her when she couldn't.

And then she smiled, suddenly finding her voice.

If Akira could cry when others couldn't, then Miki could smile when others couldn't.

"Oh Akira…" she told him honestly, "I always knew that."

When had it happened? How had he not realized it until the moment it was too late? Was it because at that point she was all he had left of the family he'd known since childhood? The only one left who wasn't dead or hadn't betrayed him?

Sure, there'd come a point when he'd looked at her and thought she was cute, and he started wishing he could be more for her and get her attention. That he could look out for her the same way he did when they were little.

And sure, at the same time, long before that he'd discovered the secret world of porn on the internet and in spite of his innocent heart, he was still a human boy with human needs.

But Miki made him feel something cleaner and purer than even sexual desire, even if his new demon side had sometimes tried to make him forget that. And the fact that she knew about his porn habit did start to make him feel a little bad, but the feeling was too complex and new for him to quite understand why. Perhaps because he compartmentalized genuine affection from basic carnal urges.

The complications increased naturally when he became a devilman.

With his new body, he was flooded with an aggressive virility he had trouble controlling, especially at first. With the grief that had come from having to kill his demon-possessed father and free the departed soul of his mother, colliding with these urges, and his anger, he'd fallen briefly down a darker path, going so far as to use sex as a means to try and destroy an enemy demon harpy. The way she'd been forcing herself on him, trying to coax the demon Amon back out of him, begging him to screw her, that she wanted it rough…that had touched that sexually charged frustration at odds with his rage and his sorrow.

As for where Miki herself was concerned, being able to see her naked body through her PJs with his new, perfected night vision, the demon in him had howled and crowded into his head, luring him into a haze of pure sexual need. It was only thanks to the fear he'd sensed from her that he'd managed to tear himself away and struggle with his frustration solo. If he hadn't, he'd have definitely done something he'd have deeply regretted.

In spite of that though, after having the thought that perhaps there were demons who could love, and after the world had gone to shit, with his futile efforts to save Miki's parents and little brother, Taro—his foster family—none of that mattered. The haze lifted, and suddenly Akira Fudo saw everything clearly. When they had both bawled their eyes out over the deaths of her—their—family, even while in separate rooms, when she had hugged him after, even when the whole world now knew that he was a devilman…he had felt something click into place, and a warmth he had missed flooded his chest as he and she held each other.

It was so pure and honest, and so obvious.

Miki opened her arms to him, with that bright smile on her sweet face…this young teenage girl who had just lost her parents and her little brother. Akira was almost uncertain as she came up to him and wrapped her arms around him, but then her warmth settled against his, and he smiled like he felt hadn't smiled in a very long time, as he returned her embrace.

"You were crying for my family, weren't you Akira?" She sighed against him and hugged him tighter, and for once her scent filling him up didn't trigger the demon inside him—more, it was like her softness subdued it. "You haven't changed at all."

And he knew what she meant. When he had gained his new devil body overnight all that time ago (a time that felt like an age, a lifetime), everybody at school who had even the slightest attraction to a man made it no secret that he had turned hot and sexy.

But Miki hadn't really batted an eye. Of course, she'd been stunned as anyone would be over such a drastic and inexplicable change, particularly in someone they knew personally, but by that same token, she had known him nearly all of her life, and to her, the way he was on the inside was what counted most to her. And even with such a strange change in his boy, even when she was learning something new about him now, that something new didn't chase her away.

Instead, it drew her closer.

She believed in him, the Akira who cried for others' suffering, who wore that goofy grin because he wasn't afraid to show when he was happy, who had always wanted to be a hero for her, deep down.

And after the stand-off in the stadium, where offering up his life in defense of the defenseless had made the frightened humans see reason, that was when it hit him, what his heart had known all along, because he had felt her spirit with him in that moment.

"Miki…there's something important I have to tell you…I can remain a human…because you exist!"

He had tried to get back to her in time. But what he came back to instead was a vision of Hell itself.

His friends.

All of them.

In pieces.

Paraded on pikes before a monstrous blaze that consumed the Makimura house.

And there…the head of the girl he loved, her wasted face with blue eyes so empty…jostled up and down in some sick parody of puppetry.

Akira thought he had known enough heartbreak by then, but he was wrong. This shattered his heart, ground it to dust. He could feel that pain, physically and heavily, in his chest. The tears spilled from his demon eyes as he grabbed his head, his wounded, strangled cries unearthly and utterly piteous.

And then the fury, that fuel to the fire, that desperate attempt of the soul to cleanse one of their pain, or at the very least to block it out….

He curled his demon claws at his side. Everything was red, the triumphant murderers no longer worthy of the name "human", their laughter driving him over the edge.

He bared his razor-sharp demon teeth. "You guys are the ones who're demons…so…you can go to Hell…you MORTAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALS!"

With a roar he tore them all apart in a burst of anguish and rage.

The red haze beat against his brain again and again and again. When he'd screamed until his lungs would give out, the red haze lifted and he collapsed to his knees, exhausted, his body shedding its demonic form, once more wearing his black clothes, including the jacket. Taking great heaving gulps of air, he fell forward onto his hands, down on all fours like the beast he had just been. For a moment, all he could do was shake as the adrenaline burned away and the numbness set in as his mind tried to come to grips with the terrible truth even as he had witnessed it, vaguely aware of how the fire had died down and now there was nothing left of the Makimuras' house but smoldering ruins.

Miki was dead. His Miki.

They were all dead.

Wamu.

Gabi.

Miko. Even Miko.

Their bodies torn and skewered like they were nothing more than cow meat.

Akira curled his human hands into fists, nails digging into the flesh of his palms, closing around the dirt on the Makimuras' grassy front lawn. Then he lifted his head, one last shred of him praying that this was all just a nightmare and he'd wake up, and Miki would be there, smiling and unharmed, like she was when he last saw her.

But no.

His attack on the butchers who'd slain everyone left who was dear to him had reduced them all to burnt and bloody corpses. However, his dismembered loved ones had remained untouched. The pikes on which their body parts had been stuck though now lay in the grass like fallen matches. Breathing heavily for the weight of grief in his chest, Akira dragged himself to his feet and staggered the few steps forward that it took to reach the pike with Miki's head on it.

The only thing he had left of her.

He dropped to his knees beside it, reached over, overcome in his sorrow by a painful tenderness as he brushed back her soft brown bangs, and after, like with his mother, gently closed her eyes. Then he stroked her cheek, before he wordlessly curled an arm carefully around her head, holding on while he used his other hand to gently work her head off of the end of the pike.

Once he got it off, he scooped her head up into both of his arms, cradling it against his chest. From the worn look of her waxen face, she had without a doubt died in the throes of agony and terror.

Had she cried out for him in her last moments? Had she believed until the very end that he would come back just in time to rescue her from her bloody fate?

It tore at his insides to think that she probably had.

Akira sniffed, thinking she also seemed otherwise peaceful in death. He was glad for that, if nothing else.

"At least we have you off that pike," he murmured to her, a strange calm coming over him. "That's better, isn't it?"

Perhaps for the briefest of moments, he'd let himself completely lose his mind, if quietly so.

He brushed back her hair again, and then he ran the pad of his thumb over her wasted lips, recalling through a cloud of memory how he had put his mouth to hers in order to exorcise the water demon Gelmer out of her body. Back then, he'd been strong enough to save her, to protect her.

And now….

It wasn't fair.

She was so good.

The best and most beautiful person he had ever known.

His bottom lip trembled, and his stinging eyes overflowed as his numbed heart refilled, brimming with grief.

"I'm so sorry, Miki," he whimpered. "I'm so sorry…." He held her head closer, curling around it and touching his forehead to hers. "Please forgive me…!" he gasped out in a sob, and then he sobbed again and again and again, cried like he had never cried in his life, crybaby that he was.

His tears dripped onto her skin, her skin that no longer smelled of her.

WHY? WHY HER? WHY THEM? WHY?!

He shook his head, over and over, but nothing changed. No amount of running would make anything any different.

Pressing Miki's head to his broken heart, Akira threw back his head and let out an inhuman howl of agony to the indifferent skies above, the tears that had always defined him streaming down his face. He howled for so loud and so long he might've never stopped had he not screamed his voice raw. Still, he rocked back and forth, Miki's head nestled in his arms, as he wept in his rough, broken voice, wept words that made no sense in his own ears.

He wanted to die. He actually wanted to die.

WHY COULDN'T HE JUST DIE?

For a time, the idea of simply laying down right now and letting his heart slow to a stop was what he wanted more than anything. That soon subsided however.

When he was spent, when he couldn't even so much as whisper, he buried his face in Miki's hair again, trying to catch his breath. But in the aftermath of this torrent of grieving, the serene eye of the storm descended, one that buzzed with the growing anger stirring quietly but no less dangerously.

How had it come to this?

Akira knew. He knew whose fault it truly was.

He might not have killed Miki and the others with his own hands, but what he had done had catalyzed everything, turned everything to shit. If he hadn't, then Miki…and everyone else….

Ryo.

His friend.

His best friend.

Akira clenched his jaw, inhaled deep and then exhaled in a low, bestial growl. He clutched Miki's head closer to his chest, the burning ire coursing violently through his veins and blazing in his lungs. He struggled for a moment just to breathe, panting like a monster blind with rage about to charge and tear apart its helpless prey.

Gulping, he managed to control himself enough to sit up. But he kept his jaw clenched, seething.

Where are you now, Ryo?

Wherever he was…he couldn't hide from him forever.

He would try at his apartment, like he had been planning to do before, and then, if he wasn't there, there was one other place he just might be after everything that had happened.

Still cradling Miki's head in his arms, Akira broke his demon wings out of his back and spread them, and then he launched himself into the air.

The rising declivity on the seaside cliffs were grayer and bleaker than they had been in the halcyon days of Akira and Ryo's youths. Back then, Akira hadn't a care in the world, he'd just wanted to make his friend Ryo smile. And he'd always led the way, and Ryo, while expressionless or frowning for the most part, had seemed happy enough to follow him down whatever hill he wanted to run down, whatever adventure for them to go on for that day, just the two of them.

Seeing him smile now, as he waited for Akira at that top of that rise, Akira felt nothing but his anger and his sorrow. Having dispensed of his demon wings when he'd landed, he brokenly made his way on foot up to meet him, stopping when he reached him halfway. All the while holding Miki's head close to his chest with the kind of protectiveness he would a newborn infant.

"I had a feeling you would come here, Akira," said Ryo, his voice more serene than Akira had ever heard him speak.

In fact, it wasn't even that he sounded serene, so much as…empty. Sure, Ryo had never been particularly high-energy, but talking like this…

…he didn't sound like the Ryo Akira had known at all.

Then again…perhaps…the Ryo Akira thought he'd known was truly the lie.

"Ryo…why did you betray the humans?" he rasped, voice raw, teetering on the edge of tears again, hugging Miki's head to him in growing desperation, his knees shaking as he was bent nearly double in anguish. "Why did you do it? You drove them mad by making them scared!"

"Humans are weak," Ryo answered simply, all pretense of a smile gone. "Their extinction is inevitable."

"But you're human too!"

His childhood self echoing, "You're crying too!"

"No, Akira, actually…I'm not at all human."

It was the last thing Akira had expected to hear, and through his haze of pain, he lifted up his head and gasped at the sight that next unfolded before him.

Ryo transformed in a burst of light and color, shedding his white clothes to reveal a naked and wholly hermaphroditic body—all curves and breasts that had never been there before as well as the male genitalia he still possessed—his shorn hair flaring out and lengthening into golden shoulder-length waves. And six pairs of wings—twelve wings in all—burst from his head, his back, his legs, his ankles, their varying spans impressive. They were beautiful, angelic, as was the much more Adonis-like version of Ryo's face. Even his blue eyes shined more brightly crystalline than they ever had before, like pieces from Heaven itself.

The smile returned, but again, it was vague, and empty, and nothing like Ryo.

"I am Satan," Ryo told Akira.

Satan.

Ryo was Satan.

Akira's jaw went slack and his eyes went wide.

The incredulity of this revelation was enough to pierce through his own personal suffering so that he actually managed to absorb the wild tale this being who was no longer Ryo wove for him about the fall from grace, how the rebellion against God caused God to destroy a former version of the world that now hung in the sky as the moon, and created that which was the rebel angel Satan.

Reborn in the body of the boy who would come to be named Ryo, drifting on the sea, lost and alone and having no idea of being Satan, crashing on the shore of the little seaside village, where Akira had found it—found him.

"Are you okay?" Little Akira reached out a hand to help the small, shivering blond boy up. Seeing how lost he looked, he dropped to his knees and hugged him, telling that stunned child, "It's okay. You don't have to be afraid…it's okay…."

Akira would never forget that.

Yet, in spite of all he had lost, because of Ryo—because of Satan—he could not bring himself to regret finding him and taking him in as his friend that day, with the open kindness inherent in most children.

However, he supposed he should give up on the idea that the Ryo he knew would ever come back to him. That Ryo was dead. Only Satan stood before him.

He considered Miki's head cradled in his arms. "My family…my friends…the person I loved more than anything…." His voice broke just for a moment as he hugged Miki's head more tightly. "Everyone…you stole them all away from me."

Satan opened its arms to him, Ryo's sweet tone of voice ringing false. "Come, Akira! Come and live beside me, here in this brave new world of demons!"

The growing flame of ire in Akira's chest flared up.

"You're full of SHIT!"

This violent outburst was so powerful that as Akira shifted into his demon form in the blink of an eye, the ground between him and Satan on the declivity split in half, leaving a sizable open crevice between them.

Satan, infuriatingly enough, remained passively serene as this occurred.

"I would honestly like to cry for you," Akira admitted harshly, "but I don't have any tears left that I can cry."

Yes…Akira the Crybaby was all dried up.

"If you fight me, Akira, you'll die," Satan stated matter-of-factly.

Though instead of this tone incensing him further, Akira experienced a bitter satisfaction at this, as if he were waiting to hear someone tell him that it was okay for him to die, even if that someone was Satan.

"If it must be then," Akira hissed, "then I would gladly welcome it. I don't think you understand just how much I would like to die right now. Just the same, I intend to drag you to Hell with me," he added, gnarling the words.

"Don't be so ridiculous," Satan admonished, not without some measure of disdain underneath his cool tone. "You know I do not wish to fight you, Akira."

"That's fine…I have ENOUGH FIGHT FOR THE BOTH OF US!" Akira roared, flinging out his wings and unleashing his demonic flames.

"How foolish," Satan opined dispassionately. "You could never hope to kill me."

"I will kill you," Akira promised, seething virulently, "when next we meet."

And without waiting to hear more of Satan's pointless and indifferent drivel, he turned away, carrying Miki's head in his demon arms. There was a small, weeping part of himself that desperately wished that Satan would call out to him, would bring back Ryo, but no.

That could not be.

Any more than the last few days could be reversed, back when Akira didn't know just how much his heart could suffer, how much the world could crumble to ash and be consumed with despair.

They could never go back to the way things were.

The fact of the matter was, he had nothing left, save for his bloody thirst for retribution. Just the same, he would also continue to fight for the humans that still lived.

And perhaps once he slew Satan, and let the flames of this last battle take him, he would find peace again in his soul.

As would Ryo.

The neighborhood Akira had grown up in was unrecognizable when he returned, like a war zone.

But then, it effectively had become one in all the violent madness.

Even so, he managed to find the small plot of open land where he'd buried Miki's parents and Taro, and there he gave proper graves to all of the others, digging tirelessly in human form, heedless of the sweat and dirt that caked his skin.

Despite the seeming barrenness of this gray, dreary, dying world, Akira wanted to give Miki and the others the same offering he managed to give the Makimuras. He sought once more that small clump of flowers he'd found growing nearby, praying there were still some left.

There weren't.

They'd all been trampled upon.

Akira stared at their mangled corpses for a moment, their beautiful petals and leaves crushed into the dirt. Though he was beyond tears by now, he remained locked in a stasis of sorrow, the walls of which closed in upon him at seeing the last of the nearby flowers murdered like this. He had nothing left except this unbearable anguish for everything he and so many others had lost in the space of a day.

It hurt so much to breathe, to keep breathing. Which made the breaths he took now shallow and burning in his lungs, like it had when he'd gaped in disbelief at the demon that had possessed his father and then killed his mother.

But then he felt something, or maybe he just imagined it to give his broken mind some measure of comfort, but it was like Miki embracing him in her warmth from behind.

Yes. These flowers were gone, but he would not give up his search for more.

There had to still be some left.

Eyes sad but dry, he went in search of other flowers unviolated.

Which he did find, after poking around the smoldering ruins of the tent city that had gone up in Ebisu Park, where he had found Miki's father shot dead, and her mother half-eaten by Taro, who had become a demon...

Taro. He had been so young. Sure, he'd liked to talk about a lot of the awful things he'd dig into without his parents' knowledge, having no understanding of them, but Akira had been no different when he'd been that age as a boy. On the whole, Taro had been a good, sweet kid, who had always looked up to Akira even when he'd teased him.

He and his big sister and their parents had deserved so much better. They all had. Miko and Wamu and Gabi and the others too.

He wanted to believe that Taro perhaps had still retained his human heart, like a mini devilman, but being a child, it had been difficult for him to remain in constant control, and thus was unable to keep the demon in him from devouring his mother.

Either way, the demons kept swallowing up every last bit of good in this world, and Ryo—or Satan, rather—was to blame.

The tent city in Ebisu Park was as much a graveyard as anywhere else. Akira moved through the ruined tents, ransacked and overturned, drifted through it like a shadow ghost. Bodies, bloody and often mutilated much in the way Miki and the others had been, lay everywhere, like forgotten, broken dolls. Blood mixed with mud and stained the dying grass. Dark clouds loomed heavy and somber overhead.

And yet, as the wind kicked up, shaking the leaves off a naked cherry blossom tree, there, growing at its base…a patch of untouched wildflowers of all colors and sizes. So many of them.

They were so beautiful, so stark in their vibrant hues against the dark gray, moribund world.

Akira knelt beside them with some reverence, before he carefully picked and collected what he could, using some loose twine snapping off a nearby collapsed tent to tie them together until he could get all the way back to the plot of land where he'd dug everyone's graves alongside the Makimuras.

He buried what he could, surrounding what he buried with the flowers. One good thing about this place becoming so barren and abandoned was that he needn't have worried about anyone coming around while he was gone and messing with his friends' corpses, or what was left of them.

He buried them all, laying Miki to rest last.

When he laid Miki's head in her grave, he did so with the same tenderness with which he'd picked the flowers. So careful, like laying a newborn in its cradle. Or maybe he wanted to prolong the last time he would hold this part of her, as now he had to let her go.

At least she didn't have to suffer anymore. His throat got tight, seeing her worn but peaceful face laid in the earth, but he did not cry. He even managed to find something meaningful, sorrowful as it was, in surrounding her head with the rest of the blossoms he'd gathered. They stood out in their loveliness against the bleakness of everything else.

If only he could just stay and look at her. Even if she was dead, and it was just her face, at least it was her.

He reached over and tucked back her hair again, wondering and wishing if maybe she knew, wherever she was now, she could see the love with which he treated her remains. He'd never gotten the chance to tell her how he felt about her. Why couldn't he have had at least that?

Moreover, his pain was further consumed in the emptiness brought on by the probability that wherever she had gone in the afterlife, he imagined that if it wasn't Heaven, then at the very least it was some state of perpetual and eternal bliss…and thus, he had no hope of ever seeing her again when his time to die came. She had been the closest thing to an angel on this earth, and the idea that her spirit was incandescent in some paradisal realm was more than likely.

But him? Well, he was a devilman, and had done some terrible things besides, even if it had all been an effort to protect people.

No. Akira had little doubt that when he died, he'd fall into some fiery pit in Hell. That said, he at least wanted to go out dragging Ryo down with him with his demon claws, just as he'd told him he would. Though he saw little point in surviving beyond this fight, fight he would, just the same.

It was at that moment that in the gloom, a reflective twinkle glistered at Miki's one earlobe. Mustering some curiosity, Akira reached over and lifted the lobe with one gentle fingertip to examine what it was.

It was an earring. A simple little pearly earring.

It looked like the one that had been in Wamu's ear.

Perhaps he had given it to her as some kind of token or charm. Even though it hadn't done her any good, Akira appreciated the implied sentiment coming from Wamu.

Without having to think about it, and at the same time his head and heart painfully missing Miki, he unhooked the earring from her ear and fixed the tiny bauble to his own. It gave him more of this sense that she would be beside him when he went into battle and faced Ryo one last time.

Then he smoothed back Miki's hair, before he dragged the nearby pile of undug earth over and covered her flower-adorned face with it. When the little grave was filled in, he patted the soil, a last gesture of physical affection.

And then, overcome, though he didn't cry, he doubled over and touched his forehead to her grave marked by a wooden cross like all the others, hands splayed on the turned earth, the same way that he'd touched his forehead to hers earlier.

"Miki," he murmured. "Miki…."

How much easier it would be, to simply curl up here like a cat and fall asleep forever, dream of Miki forever. He returned again to that low feeling of wanting just to die. Just for a moment. A weakness inside that begged him to simply lay upon the ground atop Miki's grave and stop this painful act of breathing. He knew it would all hurt less once he stopped breathing.

If only.

But no.

He couldn't die—yet.

"It'll be over soon, Miki," he whispered to the ground covering her grave. "Just a little longer…I know…you'd want me to be strong, and have hope…but without you…there is none." He closed his tired eyes. "Still, I will fight until my last breath. And then you…your family…everyone…all of you can be at peace."

Akira.

Akira reopened his eyes and raised his head, and turned to find himself face to face with what looked like…

…a…devilcat…?

Yeah, it was shaped like a cat, but it had demon wings, and a light on the end of its tail.

Akira, it's me.

And…it talked.

Akira swallowed. "Um…."

Then it hit him.

It was…the Makimuras' cat.

"T-Tako?"

Look, Akira. All of the devilmen have come here.

And Akira looked, and saw the vast legion of devilmen who had arrived, of all shapes and sizes, some with wings, some without, all with claws and teeth and a rage that only spilling the blood of demons could satisfy.

"We'll all fight with you, Akira Fudo," one of them growled. "Lead us into battle, we'll fight beside you."

Akira nodded. "Good. Thank you." He turned and regarded Miki's grave as he slowly stood. "Because I don't intend to simply watch the demons destroy this world quietly."

"Damn those demons for what they've done!" roared another devilman as he swiftly shifted into demon form.

And Akira agreed.

He tipped his head up to the stormy heavens, dark and heavy with oncoming rain. Yet he had a feeling that no rain would ever come.

Only lightning. And thunder.

"Tako," he had to ask, "how is it you became…a devilcat?"

They killed my family.

Akira glanced at the hovering cat flapping his wings, admittedly surprised at this answer. Sure, Tako was now a devilcat and could speak to him intelligibly, but he'd still been nothing more than a housecat before, the kind whose sense of loyalty to his humans was based on the fact that those humans fed and petted him and gave him shelter.

But then, maybe for a cat that was enough.

The devilcat that beside him now was still adorable, but his eyes were much larger, and very intense. Almost sinisterly so. Like they could bore into one's very soul.

Tentatively at first, and then, with more surety, Akira reached up and stroked the tip of his finger along the soft fur between the devilcat's ears, and then scratched those ears.

"We'll avenge them, Tako," he murmured. "I promise."

That's why I fight beside you, Akira, the devilcat answered simply.

Tako started to vibrate, to purr, like always, and Akira petted the devilcat a little longer before he withdrew and turned back to his legion of devilmen.

"Let's go," he commanded them, very simply, demon wings bursting from his back and opening wide.

But then, he didn't need to say much more than that. The icy promise of vengeance and death in his dark eyes said more than words ever could, he suspected.