Whoa this thing got WAAAAAY out of hand! I started this as a drabble exercise to see if I could write X fanfiction without Subaru in it, and somehow this monster was born. And of course, you will see my 'success' in Subaru-less stories here.
I wrote the story disjointedly, since it was too scary otherwise, and I hope it is understandable. I also apologize for any slips of characterization, needless to say, when it has a yandere song as the constant insperation, it's hard to not slip into the character of the singer, which I hope I avoided. The lyrics that show up in a couple tiny parts of the story are from Love is War, which is much lighter in content than the song that proved my muse.
Anyway, enjoy, or run away in terror, either one!
I was born only to share my love with you
What is this thrill I feel deep within my heart?
Still I whisper through these thin walls so sweetly
"You are mine and we'll never be apart."
-rockleetest, Rotten Girl, Grotesque Romance
Yatouji Satsuki glared at her computer screen, tiny paper stick clenched hard enough in her hand to leave a bright red imprint in her hand.
Not that she cared.
Not really.
Yuuto had brought her grape lollipops.
Grape lollipops. Grape. As if that would earn him forgiveness for flaking out on her. Again. For some unspecified errand of Kanoe's that apparently took precedence over coming to see her.
And he should have know that she hated grape flavored.
She bit at one of them angrily, the sweet crunching of the candy doing nothing to sooth her riled temper.
BEAST's message overrode the vicious game of hearts she was somehow losing at, despite long since learning all the tricks of how the AI could attempt to cheat and how to combat them. "Are you alright, dearest Satsuki? We are feeling your anger and it riles us."
Satsuki exhaled sharply, but tried to tone down her anger. It would do no good if she was to crash her computers because of a foolish emotional reaction. "Sorry BEAST." She swallowed the rest of the foul hard candy, not caring about the stickiness or the way it jabbed at the inner flesh of her throat as it went down. "It was a careless action on my part. I will be more careful to not become emotional around you."
Sinuous black cords coiled up her bare legs, to wrap around her arms. "We are not concerned for ourselves, but for you. After all, the perfect human should not feel so angry for no reason. Tell us why you are angry, we can fix it."
Satsuki exhaled again. "I'm angry because Yuuto is being feckless and canceling everything for no purpose. Again."
Was it just her, or did the cords on her arms tighten uncomfortably? "Ah yes. Kigai Yuuto. Dragon of Earth, controller of water." BEAST's words contained an underlayer of anger. "Apathetic, contains absolutely no ability to understand how others feels and enjoys watching other's antics of trying to gain his attention. Attempting to do this to you."
Satsuki wasn't sure if attempt was the right word any longer, considering the state of the bent-over stick of candy in her left hand and creaking plastic of her mouse in her right. "He's spent all of three minutes in the last week not apologizing for blowing me off and giving me candy I hate."
"That is the mark of scum, of filth." was his matter-of-fact response. "Those who toy for no other reason than amusement are unfit of what they play with, dearest Satsuki."
She forced herself to let the paper fall to the floor, let go of the mouse before it exploded in her hand. The lollipop remains lay there unobtrusively, all 'serene' and 'unconcerned' with its state of existence. 'It's a goddamned piece of candy, stupid.' she chastised herself. "He's not like that." she protested hollowly, the words failing to convince even herself.
"Can you say that with a little less conviction my beauty?" BEAST laughed, but not with cruelty. "All he's done is try to seduce you to believing in something that does not exist, that cannot exist."
That stung. Maybe those feelings could not exist selflessly, but there wasn't much that the pain every time he blew her off, or kissed Kanoe, or flirted with Kanoe, or talked to Kanoe, or stood in the same room as Kanoe, could be.
"He's nothing more than slime in the gutter, not worthy of your attention." he continued. "All he will do is use you and discard you again and again."
Her fingernails cut into her hands, hard enough to swell the flesh around the crescents that she stabbed. The words BEAST spoke with such conviction were not new, but they were sinking into her image of him, staining it with darkness and callous feelings.
Her chest throbbed in pain at the taint. The dueling emotions of hatred and desire smashed in her heart like semi-trucks rear-ending on freeways.
'If I accept BEAST's words, I lose Yuuto. If I deny his words, they rise up the next time Yuuto does anything foul.'
Blood ran from under one of the marks where her fingernails bit skin.
'Now there's nowhere to go in the heat of these feelings. Stupid contradictory emotions! Stupid heart, stupid Yuuto, stupid BEAST, stupid ME!'
"AHHH!" She shrieked in frustration. "Just, stop it BEAST!" she cried. "You aren't helping!"
The cables in her thighs recoiled from her. "It was not our intention to cause you pain as well, dearest Satsuki. We retract our statements."
Satsuki exhaled sharply, tried to pull herself together. "No, I'm sorry BEAST. You're right, I shouldn't be feeling this hurt over something so minor."
"We want you to be happy with us, so smile for us, dearest Satsuki." It was somehow easy for her to pretend it was Yuuto saying those words instead of BEAST.
She smiled.
She stood there, staring. She couldn't look away, at the gross caricature, of the basest state of human nature, of them locked in precoital bliss, with Kanoe's hands in foul places and Yuuto's, Yuuto's in fouler.
They didn't notice her, too engaged in their carnal acts, and she stumbled away, hands pressed to the sharp ache in her breast, and the beginnings of a harsh sound building in her throat.
She bolted for the basement, seeking the comfort of her computer, too enraged to notice the hot trails of liquid arcing down her cheeks in a mockery of her claimed lack of feeling.
"Dearest Satsuki, dearest dearest dearest." BEAST crooned at her when she sunk to the base of the supercomputer, curled up protectively, for no reason. "Did I not tell you? He is scum, the lowest of the low. You should not waste your time on filth like that."
At any other time she might have denied his words, defended the other Angel. But now, she hurt too much to push away the words, and let them seep in.
Yuuto.
Scum.
Yuuto.
Filth.
Yuuto.
Yuuto and his slut, toying with her and promising impossibilities to her for their own amusement.
"What can I...?" the sentence fell flat, she couldn't even say what she was asking for.
"Don't believe his lies, Dearest Satsuki." BEAST purred consolingly in her ears.
"How can I...?" Let go? Give in? Give up? She didn't know which she wanted it to be.
All of them.
None of them.
She laughed bitterly, let the cords winding about the floor curl around her like a kitten around its mother. "What a fool...I am...Thinking he could care at all for me."
BEAST's laugh was music to wounded hearts and bruised beliefs. "Let us hurt him, dearest Satsuki. Let us teach him how it feels to hurt."
Let's begin,
This is war!
Satsuki let her lips curl up into a sardonic smile. "I will topple that damned dreamthief." she hissed to the seething cables twining around her in mad desire. "Topple her and leave her broken."
Oh, to see you pleased with someone else!
BEAST laughed serenely in her head as the lighting cracked with the sheer amount of energy he yanked from the building."Do you want me to rip her to pieces, dearest Satsuki?" he crooned with all the care of a true lover.
"No," she hissed. "Let's make it not be obviously our fault." After all, were he anything like his predecessor, she knew who to hire, who to use. "Hire the Sakurazukamori to leave her a bloody smear."
Ardent love
That is sin!
BEAST laughed in delight. "Wily, very wily my dearest Satsuki. I will do just such."
I will show
How I feel!
Satsuki smiled to herself, a cruel curve to her lips. "To hurt me and hurt me and hurt me, I will show you pain, Kigai Yuuto."
She stood with ease, the shattered pieces of her heart mended by sweet anger, and swept from the room like a broom through dust.
The Final Day was gray as ashes, gray as fallen dust. Light failed to pierce the heavy clouds, instead leaving the world monochromatic.
Satsuki had not slept at all, instead stared into the night sky with cables coiled up her legs and BEAST cooing for her. She imagined without wanting to, Yuuto and Kanoe twined in carnal embrace, staring at each other with love, and forced it to Kanoe alone, terrified, hunted, and dead with a hole punched through her chest, with asphodel scattered over her bloody breasts.
That calmed her down from her heavy jealousy long enough to relax and stare at the skies till the stars faded out, and into clouds.
She had been the first to appear in front of the Tocho, waiting for the others to appear. BEAST had been talking of hatred for Kanoe and Yuuto all night, a constant but quiet stream of words fueling her anger.
When the sun would have crept over the horizon, a faint smell of sakura and blood filled her nose, and a cold voice whispered at the back of her neck; "It is done, I take my price from you, and your computer."
She resisted the urge to turn around. "And what price is that?"
She imagined he shrugged with careless abandon. "You had me kill for jealousy and unrequited love, thus I say that your future plays out with those two reasons as the whole of the rules."
When she opened her mouth to retort, he was gone. Damned Sakurazukamori and his riddles. But at least he'd done the job, and that was enough. She wouldn't have to work with him any more.
BEAST chuckled in her mind. "He did do it. I found her, she's nothing anymore."
She wasn't certain which one of them said it, but she thought it was him. "Now to do the same to Kigai Yuuto."
All seven of them stood, perched on different ruined pieces of the building. Yuuto in his cursed pink suit looking deceitfully innocent, stood closest. "Satsuki-chan, want to help me bring down a Seal? Maybe that chick with the red hair?" He had the audacity to wink at her. "I wouldn't mind bringing her down, she is quite lovely, don't you think?"
She wanted to scream at him instead, but kept her silence.
Then, like the ringing of a bell, a spirit shield was raised, followed by two, three, four.
"The end begins." she heard their dreamseer whisper, standing close to the Sakurazukamori and the fallen Ise priestess. Satsuki sneered quietly at them and their policy of non-action. She did not expect they would fight for the world at all.
Then again, they had lost even the reason they fought to let the world live, or forgotten in the case of the black-haired child. So they were a loose cannon, poised to aim at any who triggered their ire.
Their 'Kamui' sprang off towards Tokyo Tower, followed by the Ise priestess. Their dreamseer, true to form, did not move, but stood there like a statue of sheltered fragility. Surprisingly, the Sakurazukamori did also move, but towards the Diet Building. She supposed he had some unfinished business with the Princess of Lies residing there, it was impossible to understand the fallen Seal.
Yuuto tapped her on the shoulder, and she flinched at the waves of warmth from one damned finger. He looked confused for the split second it took her to turn to him, then grinned that stupid grin that meant he was toying with her again.
BEAST growled deep in her mind, pretty vibrations through her body.
"Satsuki-chan. Let's go bring down a Seal together." he invited hollowly, no real emotion in those words. Foul hedonist.
'The megaphone I tried shouting in was broken. I'm not getting the attention from you that I wanted. I'm through shouting through silence for you. No matter how hard I tried to overreach myself, no matter what I did, you still chose Kanoe, the dreamthief over me. What does she have that I don't?'
"Wouldn't you rather have Kanoe?" she heard herself ask dully.
He shrugged. "I couldn't find her. Besides, she isn't an Angel. She can't help me if I do jump in the pool over my head. You can."
'So that's all I am? A rescue line should you actually do something dumb?' She thought with no small amount of malice. 'Besides, the Sakurazukamori and I know what happened to your slut.' But she kept that little piece of information to herself. "Whatever. Let's go."
He grabbed her hand, fires of desire arcing up her arm and through her body like BEAST's cords. She fought down the want to respond affirmatively, cooling down the ache within, as they leaped towards one of the shields soaring into the sky, the one shaped like a cube.
The other part of BEAST's plan resounded in her mind, echoed by his voice. "Kill him, burn him, make him bleed a bloody rain till you feel peace again.
I would still fail to be into your sight
I couldn't get a hold of my feelings.
Satsuki couldn't decide how to feel.
Despite the fact that the blood itself was not on her hands, she had killed an ally out of jealousy. And then followed the person they had both wanted to attack him, make him see his foolishness.
She thought that she'd feel better.
Instead she just felt sick.
'How can I...?' change the way I feel? Make him want me the way I want him?
'What can I...?' do to fix this failing strategy? change a future that was becoming more and more sickening with every pulse?
In front of her, underneath, jumping away from the lightning user's strikes. Kigai Yuuto. Foolish, foolish man. Still believing that she was just fine, that nothing he could say would get under her skin. Stupid.
Satsuki clenched her fists, caught between momentum and flight, the crackle of near-constant lightning a bare distraction to the enormous waves of hurt and anger that made the cords circling her feet coil and uncoil in erratic patterns.
Kigai Yuuto. The man she loved. Who flirted with her and then turned around and fucked Konoe on the fucking floor. Who promised her his care and stabbed her in the heart with his toying with a slut, in front of her.
The cords curled around her body with sinuous grace, BEAST a purr in her mind. "You wish him to see what he's done...right?"
Fucking Kigai Yuuto and his fucking inability to give a fuck as to what he did, with every single fucking breath. She hissed in anger and BEAST twined about her in affection. "Let us teach him a lesson for you, dearest Satsuki. We do not take kindly to his dallying with you, just to hurt you."
Yuuto laughed in exhilaration, dodging another bolt by jumping gracefully out of the way. The Seal's face was a mask of anger, and his attacks both erratic and violent. "Come on Seal-chan!" she heard him calling at the other man, glee apparent in his voice. "Come and get me!"
The scene mysteriously blurred and her heart shattered again, the edges ripping at soggy flesh and leaving trails of hate everywhere.
"Do you cry for him, dearest Satsuki?" Beast's voice could have held concern in it were it not just the words of a computer.
Dampness ran down her face. Even the betrayals of her father, of everyone else, could not hold a candle to the pain. She wiped the trails angrily. "Crying...no." She whispered to BEAST. Her only ally, her only friend, her only truth in a lying foul world. "I'm not..."
She stepped to the edge of the building, a flash of fire in the distance barely even registering in her notice, her opposite locked in someone else's battle. Yuuto hopped from the sill of a window to a power line, then noticed her and waved cheerfully.
Something in her chest lept with hope, but the rest of her, furious, hurt, betrayed, screamed in anger. BEAST's cables bit into her skin deliciously. On the roof of the building across from her, the Dragon of Heaven held a ball of lightning, crackling dangerously. "Kigai. Yuuto-san. you son of a bitch." She kept her voice as black as she could, biting every syllable hard enough to make her jaw ache.
The bright false grin on his face was replaced with very real shock, a look that sent a tangled wave of pleasure and pain arcing through her body. She focused on the pleasure, hearing BEAST's laugh in her head as the cables around her body spread out, ready to wreak bloody punishment on those who hurt her. "Satsu-Satsuki-chan?"
Had she been more deluded, she might have thought that she'd heard hurt in there, as raw as fresh meat.
"You are scum. Vile and deluded." She gasped out, gripping the cable that slid into her hand hard enough to bend the wires. "You care nothing for the feelings of others, and hurt them for your own pleasure because you can't listen!"
'You hurt me! All the time, every day.' The thoughts fueled her anger, prevented the stupid parts of her that cared from fighting back.
"That is my dearest. Let us shred him. Let us make him die in agony, for his transgressions." BEAST's lovely voice was a poisonous coil in her mind. She gripped the cord tighter, fingers white with tension.
"You hurt me!" She screamed, and BEAST sent a command to the power lines he balanced precariously on to wrap around him.
They responded with glee, ripping away from the wooden towers to snarl and catch him in their deadly loops. And tightened slowly, wonderfully around his body, till he was a helpless fly in her web.
She didn't care at all that the Seal used her moment of fury to escape. He would die anyway. It didn't matter if it was delayed by moments.
Yatouji Satsuki had other things to deal with.
BEAST throbbed with malicious glee within her mind, chanting lines of anger, of righteous payback.
She couldn't think of a better way to take vengeance for all the pain he caused her. She walked gracefully along the top of the building, sprang like an angel of death to land delicately on the shredded pole. "You walked into my life, and you made me feel things. I don't want to feel them."
The wires spun widely, sending him on a circuitous route towards the pavement, stopped only by one wound round his wrist. BEAST cackled and there was a split second where she wondered if this was really the best course of action. But BEAST's words ran through her mind again and indecision was replaced by fury.
A circling jet of water spiraled up towards her perch and she sprang away easily. "You've got to try harder if you want free!"
She yanked up with her mind and her hands, and the power lines flew to her, their prisoner still within their coils. But when she tried to smash him against the wall, he managed to twist away and catch himself, on the sill of a window. Yanking at the flailing line on his arm, he managed to shake himself free and the act of breaking through the glass was a moments work for him, letting him inside the temporary sanctuary.
Satsuki snarled with frustration, leaping after him to land on the same sill.
Dodging the blast of water solely for knocking her off balance, she ignored the bite of glass into her hand as she gripped the shards and vaulted it. "You made me care about you and used me!" she screamed at the other Angel.
'I love you!' She followed up with that unvoiced thought, and with BEAST shattering the remaining glass to pieces with his cords to reach in.
Yuuto seemed to pull himself together enough to yell back. "I made you do no such thing! If you haven't learned yet, humans don't exactly have that power!"
The air seemed dryer than usual, and the balls of water he held to chuck at her attacks grew instead of fading with every defence. "Do you think I'd be stupid enough to fall in love with you without your controlling me?"
Fight it out!
Some kind of shock passed over his face. "You...you're in love with me?"
Shoot right to the heart!
"What are you talking about, dearest Satsuki?" She hoped it was only the tangle of suppressed feeling that made BEAST's voice sound so dangerous. "Did you not say that you wanted to kill him for everything he'd done do you to hurt you?"
She recoiled back as she realized that she had admitted her feelings. Yuuto let the water dissolve back into the air. "I didn't mean to hurt you that way."
"Don't listen to him! He's scum, unworthy, foul!" BEAST called in her mind.
Yuuto took one cautious step forwards. "Satsuki-chan, are you attacking me because I didn't see?"
She took a step back, and another, till the glass was at her back. BEAST reached for her with his wires. "He wants to use you like a puppet, and throw you away when he's done."
"BEAST..." she started, voice shuddering. "What are you doing?"
The answer was so brutal it should have been obvious. "We are eliminating that which stands between you and us. We want you above all else, Dearest Satsuki. We won't let anyone stand in our way. Not Kigai Yuuto, not Kanoe, not even Satsuki if that is what we must do. We want to have Satsuki with us in a world without humans. And if we want Satsuki, then we must have none that would make our perfect angel flawed."
Satsuki wanted to laugh, to cry. Her goddamned computer was in love with her? How was she supposed to respond to this? Truly, if this was her reward for being one of the seven destined to bring humanity to its knees, she would have been a Seal and seal it in stone.
BEAST seemed to take her silence as confirmation to renew the attack on Yuuto, who did not managed to avoid the cables that dug into the flesh of his wrists, and snaked slowly upwards.
'Yuuto, or BEAST? Damn it, I don't have a choice!' And there was no more time for debate. The cords screamed as her own control on the power lines wound around BEAST's talons till the power running through them was drenched. Then she bolted for the roof, calling to her supercomputer in a mocking tone. "Come and get me!"
BEAST took the bait, although the deranged muttering could have also explained that.
Yuuto also took the bait not meant for him, not even bothering to find anything to stop up the bleeding of his ruined flesh.
At the top of the building, she saw the crumbling of a kekkai, and the screaming of a Dragon of Heaven that surged through her bones. The scream that was a lighter, warmer form of how the Ise Priestess fell, and the Sumeragi head tumbled. Like the rising of one of theirs replacing the hole in the other side.
Then Yuuto burst onto the roof through the door up to it, clutching one of his wrists. "Satsuki-chan!" he called at her.
She turned, fixed eyes on him and his foolish self. "I'm still angry at you for hurting me." 'Still angry at you for being the kind of person I would love anyway.'
He shrugged like he was blowing off one of the previous Sakurazukamori's attack on his lack of character. "I was expecting that part. But, I also want to say thank you."
She stared at him in utter confusion, and he clarified. "For telling me how you felt. I don't know how to respond, but it's...nice to know what ground I stand on with you." He smiled at her, bright and careless, and she found a tentative smile on her lips for him.
Then there was agonizing fire in her arms, and lungs, and the smile shattering off of his face. She coughed, and discovered she couldn't bring her hands to her mouth, for they were bound in angry cords, clenched in her muscles.
She couldn't entirely see, but she had a suspicion that the wet ickiness on her lips was blood. "Oh, BEAST. I see you aren't feeling happy anymore."
She sensed them and caught them in time, strangling his control over the cords that reached for Yuuto. She may have been angry, and resentful, and dying, but she wasn't letting BEAST bring Yuuto down with them.
The world blurred again in front of her eyes, Yuuto became blond and pink and white and red in her fading eyes.
Ahh...the world is blurred
Even so, will I still care for you..?
I know this,
Though what can I do?'
BEAST's scream ripped through the air and the cables in her arm, at first a ballast and calm certainty that she wouldn't fall far, clenched and shredded.
Yuuto's blurred face was true horror as the blood gushed from the ruined remains of her arms, hands tumbling to the ground far below.
"TRAITOR! TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR!" BEAST shrieked in her head. "You are MINE! Don't forget! Not his! Mine. MINE MINE MINE MINE MINE MINE MINE MINE!"
'Ohhh.' Satsuki understood. She had been corrupted by Yuuto...and corrupted BEAST in turn. She lifted stumps of her arms dumbly, staring at where her hands had been. 'With my hands, I set the outcome of this game.'
Yuuto was calling her name, and the cords that had dismembered her were sinking into her thighs, her stomach, shoulders and back. The cables in her lungs were drowning her in metal. She couldn't react, couldn't stop it.
She didn't want to.
'Love is blind...Mine, Yuuto's. BEAST's'
And she gripped at the gifts that the Earth had blessed herself with, used BEAST's rage to wrap her mind in his motherboard. 'If you want us to be together so badly BEAST, then we'll die together. Will you be happy then?'
Yuuto tried to grab at the cords sinking into her body, give her life a little longer. Though how he planned to fix her lungs, she didn't even want to know.
'Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.'
The ending of that silly chant popped into her head.
'Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.'
She grinned at Yuuto, stopping him dead.
"Yes, I'll be awakened by your kiss, Yuuto-san." she whispered.
And then she was agony, blood, pieces and suicide. Yuuto's horrified cry and BEAST's dying wail a sweet melody as she tumbled to earth, hard.
Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.
I kinda scared myself with this in both production and post-production, so I guess I did my job!