I had forgotten to cross post
God, what am I doing? My Kurotsuki muse has gotten hyperactive again. This is a, well… strange idea of mine.
Dimension Jumper
The mortal first catches his attention because of his name.
The black demon has become a shadow, hiding in the darker places of the bar, swirling within the quiet confines of booths and tables.
He mentions it to the bartender, his name, Tetsuro Kuroo, and the demon thinks 'That's the same color as me in this language, isn't it?'
But right now, the demon has other things to worry about, he notices that the mortal, slumped over the bar, staring at his half empty glass of liquor is giving off a grey aura.
Nothing seems wrong, physically speaking, so it must be that this one has given up on life, and he hasn't got much of a will left.
Just as the demon realizes this, the hunter walks through the door with light feet and a hand surreptitiously hidden in his pocket.
And still, the hunter hesitates, his pretty golden eyes shift over the few people left at the bar, and the demon takes a leap of faith.
The lamp two meters away falls, the resulting crash startling everyone for a moment; the demon takes the chance to slip into the mortal's prone body.
As is the norm with those humans who have lost all will, the slightly inebriated man barely puts up a fight.
This is what he has always been known for, subtlety, swiftness, slyness, if he had a mouth, he would grin.
Instantly, he suppresses even the barest hint of his presence inside the man, with how weak the demon currently is; doing so isn't hard.
He doesn't expect, however, for the human to unflinchingly give up all control over his body, the demon expected to be allowed enough room to remain a dark thought on the back of his subconscious, not become the god forsaken main personality.
Distantly, he hears a vague whisper, the shadow of an afterthought.
You can stay for as long as you like, the voice says, right now I'm glad someone else wants to live my life.
This Kuroo Tetsuro knows what he is.
And apparently, his life is so shitty that he doesn't care that he's being possessed by a demon –weakened as he might be-, he'd take this with a grain of salt if he didn't desperately need somewhere to hide for the moment.
So the demon spreads his presence through the man's limbs, slowly because the hunter would probably be able to pick up on his presence if he were faster, and also because, now he can tell, this man has at least some psychic capabilities, and he has trained them, the demon now knows that the man's surrender is completely voluntary, he could have held him off decently, had he wanted to.
The hunter –he's tall and wiry, but well defined muscles peek out from beneath his wide necked shirt, his eyes and hair are the color of gold and he's frowning at the bar like it has done him a personal wrong- sweeps over the few drunks in the dingy bar with a look, and his eyes land on Kuroo Tetsuro –or his body, whatever- and he starts walking over.
The demon wills the body to straighten up.
Thankfully the back is already under his control completely, though the limbs do still feel sluggish.
"Hello" The hunter says formally, the demon smirks –just a little more now, the backs of the calves and the tips of the feet-. "My name is Tsukishima Kei"
"G'night" he says, hoping not to sound too out of place. "Kuroo Tetsuro" he says, and reaches out to shake the other's stretched hand.
"Have you noticed anything out of place here?" the blonde leans in and says to him in a conspicuous tone, it's not quite a surprise because however infrequent his forages into this world, the demon has learned enough about hunters and physics to be aware of the fact that most of them can tell their kind apart from your garden-variety human.
A hurried glance over the other's body reveals easily that the blond is oddly stiff, clearly not very comfortable with his surroundings.
The demon decides to toy with this Tsukishima Kei a bit, after all, he wasn't born to a succubus for nothing, and for a human, this one has a riveting quality –also, getting him flustered might make him less aware of any speck of demonic presence that might slip past the demon's guard-. Quietly, the demon slips his hand into the black pants that he's wearing and pulls out his wallet just a smidge.
A wad of bills greets him.
Nice.
"Only that you are here" he says, smirking.
"Please be serious" Tsukishima Kei pushes his glasses further up the bridge of his nose and when the demon smirks, he sighs seemingly deciding to play along, at least for the time being "What do you mean?"
"You're too pretty to be in a place like this" the demon says, noting also, the dark bags under the hunter's eyes, good, exhaustion will make it marginally easier to derail the other "But since you are… let me buy you a drink?"
A small flush appears on the blonde's cheeks "I'm sorry" he says dryly, pulling out a bounty hunter ID "I'm working. I meant if you had seen any signs of a demon, or other supernatural creatures here"
"One won't hurt, Mr. bounty Hun- "
"It's Tsukishima" the other says, irritated, glancing to their sides to make sure there's no one watching.
There isn't, though, because it's early and this is not the place where one would usually start the night.
"Tsukki then" the demon continues, amusement taking over him as a slightly irritated flush takes over the other's cheeks "Well, it'd help if you told me what kind of demon you're chasing, and while you do it, you could take a seat."
The blonde gapes at him, the demon is glad that despite being slightly out of shape for his tastes, this human happens to be quite attractive as well –or so the memories filling the man's head tell him, they are memories of a tall, dark haired man with strong factions and a charming mouth, leaning into the mirror to try and fix an oddly attractive mess of tangled locks that rests over his eye- because he can tell that the blonde has noticed as well –he's only part succubus, but it's a trait that they all have-.
Tsukishima lowers his eyes and sighs, pulling the closest bar stool over to them and propping his elbow on the bar. "I'm not very sure, I'd say it was a primal, but it might well have been a succubus or incubus"
The demon raised an eyebrow at him, the boy had good sensing skills "Oh ho, isn't that a rare couple of beings to be confused about?"
"Yes" The other said, frowning "Which is why I asked when I sensed you"
"Hmm" he says while motioning at the bartender "I'm afraid I can't be of much help then. It's been a… dreadfully quiet night" he purrs and the bartender finally shows up "Bring my friend a…"
The other scoffs, looking resigned both in letting the complete stranger buy him a drink and catching the demon that he doesn't know, is right in front of him. The demon almost wants to laugh "Gin and tonic"
The bartender looks surprised at Kuroo Tetsuro's complete one eighty in demeanor, but only asks the dark haired man if he wants anything else "Another scotch please" he says and smiles wide and devilish.
"So, Tsukki, are you from Tokyo?"
"No" the man sulks and his shoulders drop, exhaustion is even clearer in his slouching frame.
"Well, where are you from?"
"The Sendai region"
"Ohh, I've heard that's infested" He knows that the smile he puts in Kuroo Tetsuro's face is charming "You must be a pretty good hunter"
The other blushes slightly and looks away, he answers, ignoring the compliment "Not more so than Tokyo, not really"
This kid is cute, he decides, too bad he's a hunter who somehow managed to discern his parentage, and the demon really doesn't have the strength to kill him right now.
Their drinks arrive shortly, the demon drains his glass, thankful that this Kuroo Tetsuro seems to have decent tolerance to alcohol.
Tsukishima however, is watching him out of the corner of his eye and holding the drink like it might hurt him, surely he must be familiar enough with alcohol, he doesn't look too young for a human, and he's hunting in an area known for its overabundance of bars and the like.
"How old are you, Tsukki?" He says, curious.
The other takes a tentative sip at his drink "23"
"Oh so you are younger than me, I'm twenty…" The information is just out of his reach, just a little bit beneath the superficial layer of Kuroo Tetsuo's memories. Aware of the potential danger, he reaches in, it's not like the demon is going to stay in the body past this night "Twenty-eight"
Tsukishima's eyebrow arches elegantly and the demon is shot a distrustful look, for a moment, he's almost sure that he has slipped in his control and the hunter has seen through this body's psychic aura and figured out his nature "If you're trying to pretend you're younger, you're a bad liar"
He's older actually, about two centuries and a half older than this human in front of him, who is so sharp and so obtuse at the same time, but it's not like he can tell the man that, "No, no, no, see here Tsukki?", he pulls out Kuroo Tetsuro's wallet and hands the man's driver's license to Tsukishima.
The blonde huffs and looks away "Well, who forgets their own age?"
The demon laughs, "Me, apparently"
He shoots a look at the clock that hangs above the bottles of the bar, it's late enough that it makes sense to excuse himself, he does quite have to regain his strength somehow, maybe find some psychic to feed off of, he doesn't want to feed off of one that's been so pliant, and finding someone to satisfy his incubus side might be too much work right now, the body's getting sleepy-.
The demon pulls out a couple of bills from his wallet and shoves them over the counter "Well, Tsukki, it was nice to meet you, but I'm heading home"
Annoyance feels the blonde's eyes, he sort of wants to tease him some more, he is fun to rile up, but this is going to be their last meeting anyway, and so, the demon just awkwardly waves and as he turns, he can hear a mumbled 'Thanks for the drink' from Tsukishima.
"You're welcome, Tsukki"
He walks out of the bar and into the amber light of the streetlamps, the hands of Tetsuro Kuroo's body quickly seek out his jacket pocket, where in lie a pack of cigarettes and a lighter.
The demon pulls out a cigarette and lights it with a flick of the wrist, he walks down the slope of the street, marveled at how the humans move around him as a solid entity and not a cold gust of wind to some and a mass of black smoke to others, it's a shame that he can't take on his original form in this dimension, what a panic he would cause, if doing so didn't require him to be at full strength –and he wonders too if the hunter, if Tsukishima kei, would fight him in that form, he thinks of how the man might move-.
Kuroo Tetsuro's body has been good he muses, as his feet take him down vaguely familiar streets, and its owner seems blissfully asleep within the recesses of his own mind, so he might as well take the thing home, he never knows when it might be more useful.
After all, from the glimpses of memories that he has caught –because why dwell very deep into some passing human's life-, what the man said once he possessed his body is very much right, very few beings would ever want to live his life, and the demon doesn't count himself as one.
Like a firefly, the cigarette butt soars through the polluted air of Tokyo and lands in the gutter outside of Kuroo Tetsuro's house.
The demon leaves the man's body in his bed, and then he thinks that doing so is quite nice of himself.
.
.
The nebulous recesses of the netherworld greet him with hail and wind, as the demon approaches his home, he finds himself less than pleased at whoever is causing this climate.
Most of the demon world is made out of tiny compounds located somewhere in the middle of near-deserted dimensions, that can almost only be accessed by portal –mostly because no one has ever bothered to properly chart where they are geographically, or at least no one that the demon knows of-. Of course, there are several places where demons from everywhere mix, trade and interact, but he's visited none of those as of late.
When he reaches the last portal, -the one that leads directly inside of his cave- the demon allows himself to slip into his original form for the first time in some time.
Black smoke curls and solidifies, as if shaped by a master artisan, his hind legs take shape and beneath the short layer of fur like hide, the taut muscles all over his body can be seen.
Conjuring such a form in the realm of humans would've been terribly difficult, a waste of energy and a bad decision, here however, it allows him to replenish himself, to rest and gather up strength, and by the time that his snout has formed –elongated, adorned with long, wire thin whiskers- he's collapsing in the soft nest that he has for a resting place.
Altogether, from what he has seen in the realm of humans, he looks very much like the animal they call a panther –only twice as large, with longer claws and ears, and maybe, slightly less furry-.
His hideout is tucked away in a nigh deserted dimension, the only demons he occasionally runs into here are the Ice types, and the hulking, silent one, the biggest of them all, is enough to keep them in check just by exercising the right that his imposing presence allows him.
It's his peaceful place, those who've hunted him as of recently seem to not have found it.
Or so he thought.
His nose catches it first, the rot, the stench of decomposing corpses.
And he has yet to eat to truly replenish himself.
They slither in, sluggishly moving, knowing well enough that he has no escape with them blocking the portal.
He cannot see them, not completely –it is one of their abilities- but the black sludge that appears after them is unmistakable.
The demon cannot create a portal, weakened as he is, from the jumping dimensions, hiding from hunters and the fights just before that.
Brute force will have to do huh? Fat chance of killing them as I am though.
And so, he leaps forward, slashing, biting, they seem to be in a more solid form so it plays to his advantage, although where their hands grab at his fur and paws, unbearable heat blooms, leaving him limping when he finally manages to hurl himself out of the portal.
Without the means to create portals, he has to use the ones created by others for general use.
And that is a mess, at first, he hurls himself into every portal that he sees, until he's dizzy from the constant shifting and has passed the Grand Square at least four times, then, when he's sure that he's lost them, he becomes more strategic taking a rather roundabout way towards an old friend's place.
Perhaps the Red Mist will be able to keep him hidden for long enough to recover.
When he reaches the portal, he's almost immediately granted access to the land of sand and eternal sunset that his old friend inhabits.
If he were still in a human body, he would grin.
.
.
The demon of the Red Mist is an old acquaintance of his, from why back when he'd consume both humans and demons alike, aiming for power like he'd never had.
The Red Mist easily stops him in his tracks though.
Almost a millennia older and ever so patient, ever so tranquil, that is his old friend.
His friend is truly, not the only demon of the Red Mist, like he himself isn't the only black or panther-like demon, but he is one of the most powerful and one he knows well.
Both their species are reclusive and evasive by nature, and there's also the little detail about him being a hybrid, which makes him an outcast out of either fear or mere bigotry more often than not.
There's a cave of reddish sand to his right, he slithers inside, all the way to its end, where he finds his friend in their preferred form; a red birdlike creature of rather dignified posture.
"I see they have gotten to you" the voice doesn't quite come from the bird's beak, but it is protected out of it, like the creature was just a transmitter.
The black demon's voice possesses the same quality "Like you didn't know they would eventually."
"It was a question of time" the other concedes. "Are you planning to stay here until they give up?"
"You know that they won't" he responds, annoyed "But I need somewhere to recharge"
"You have changed" the voice behind the bird remarks. "Matured, I would even say"
The black demon lays down on the sandy floor "On the other hand, you remain the same"
"All of us stabilize at some point"
Exhaustion is catching up with him quickly, his very being feels heavy, and he shifts back to his more solid form, although it is perhaps, more trouble than its worth, it's how he feels the most comfortable "At this pace I won't get to"
"Well, you have gotten yourself into quite a difficult situation" the other says "Have you thought of consuming a human to replenish yourself quickly? Maybe even a demon would do"
Darkness creeps up on him, and he can barely utter a sentence before it takes over completely "I would need far more than that, and isn't that what got me into this mess in the first place?"
And then, in the slightly too warm cave, he drifts into darkness.
.
.
He has slept once and been fed some sort of lesser demons from the prairie by the Red Mist when it happens.
A nudge from his friend's quasi-incorporeal form wakes him.
"They will be here soon"
Their voice is stern, sluggishly, the black demon lifts himself from the floor.
"Don't die while I'm away"
"They are not seeking me out" they say, clearly alert to the shift in energy that happens before the creatures appear.
"Good point"
Over the time that he has spent at the Red Mist's, the black demon has managed to replenish a somewhat decent level of energy though he's not even halfway to half of his potential strength.
But it is enough to open a portal, and he chooses the one place where he knows he'll be able to blend in, and he has a perfect hiding spot awaiting.
The demon makes the leap.
.
.
He finds himself a cloud of dark smoke again, sliding between the millions of legs that move in Tokyo's afternoon crowd, wracking his brain for the address.
Fortunately, in a little less than three centuries, he has gained a pretty decent memory.
Kuroo Tetsuro's apartment building stands in front of him.
.
.
The image is probably brutal to a human, the dark smoke swirls around it quietly.
The body hanging from a rope hooked to one of the ceiling's beams is not even cold yet.
He does remember the man being in a shitty situation.
Maybe the unfortunate human's life would have taken a bit of a twist if the demon had been sent through the portal a couple of hours earlier.
In the human world, his presence is bound to be noticed far more easily, not only by his pursuers, but by the hunters, and while those wouldn't be much of an issue if he were at full strength, the demon isn't very fond of consuming humans to get himself back up into top shape.
He takes in the human's lifeless body.
It hasn't been that long, and he figures, the man had no qualms letting him use that body before, what are a couple more days? it isn't like Kuroo Tetsuro is around to witness it anymore.
Fixing whatever's broken and getting the body's heart thumping and its lungs working should take most of whatever power he managed to acquire with the Red Mist, - mostly, because neither side of his nature has much proficiency with healing at all, and a broken neck is nothing to scoff at, in a human at least- but perhaps, that is for the best, he'll be all but trapped in that body for a while, but that will make him mostly undetectable to anyone hunting him.
And so, after the rope is cut and the body lands on the ground with a dull 'thump' the demon gets to work.
He slips inside through the open mouth and spreads himself into every single cell, pushing against the natural and preternatural barriers –thankfully, the latter have grown weaker due to the human's passing, or his decreased power would not suffice- with stubbornness.
Taking over a body is different from feeding on one or possessing it, he has never done it before, and it's surprisingly hard. He has set out to fix the whole body, but finds that there's far more to fix than the snapped neck.
The lungs are charred black and there are not-so-recent wounds littering the torso –he can do nothing for the ones that have already scarred over, but he still heals what he can- Kuroo Tetsuro had an awkwardly healed right ankle and apparently dislocated his wrist a couple of weeks ago.
His liver is in no better shape than his lungs, the demon fixes that too, just in case.
There's of course, great damage to the brain, from being without breathing for so long, fixing it is a grudging task, perhaps the worst, and he leaves it for last, just before he restarts the heart and the lungs.
-being part incubus thankfully means he's got some idea how a human body works, though he'll be less than surprised if his hasty and inexperienced healing has fucked something up-
The first pump of the heart, the first expansion of the lungs and then the second, the third and the fourth, everything seems to be going well, too well, until it hits him, like a freight train, like lightning, like energy shot straight out of the mouth of a storm demon.
From the recently repaired brain of Kuroo Tetsuro, it floods the demon's mind, and it is not a t all like the first time, when he was able to ignore the memories in the back of the man's mind, because now and for the it me being it is his mind.
An apartment that isn't the one he's lying in, high up in a shiny building of even shinier glass. Plants everywhere and a hand on his head.
Jumping, running, moving. Powers awakening. Satisfied smiles.
He's dancing, and then he's playing, some sort of sport. Volleyball. Blonde hair dye. Kenma Kozume.
Three women in succession. Shattering glass and old books and the smell of fire fed by blood and ages old wood.
Metal in his hands, all kinds. And then the tangy smell of iron in blood and the steps of an army behind him.
Screaming and the wind in a graveyard and the smile of someone absent.
Bokuto Koutarou. Grey hair, loudness. More steps of the army behind him.
Running, again, running and more running. Official papers and his current apartment.
Grey. Grey. Grey. Red. Grey. Bleak Grey. Danger. Grey. Grey.
The city lights, cigarette smoke and alcohol.
Black.
The fever dream, the rushing of memories lasts until the rays of the sun traverse through Tokyo's polluted, overcast sky and the room lights up slightly, and the demon is left staring at the ceiling with wide eyes and trembling fingers, forehead clammy and cold limbs.
Kuroo Tetsuro was definitely not lying that first night.
He tests his control, lifting a finger and then another, pushing back with the muscles that he can feel as his to place his torso upright.
Shaky legs move, straighten and he's standing in the nigh-bare room, staring at himself in a mirror conveniently placed behind the door.
He's observing the face and the body no longer from a detached perspective but as he has stared at his panther-like form in reflective surfaces before.
And for some reason, when he takes in the whole image of himself –bedhead that he now knows is eternal, plain red boxers and worn black shirt, lanky limbs and downward turned mouth- the chill of the room takes him by surprise in its unfamiliarity and the rawness of the memories makes his eyes itch strangely.
He has been warned, many times about how this is the main, the most dangerous difference between taking over and possessing a body, he always disregarded those as tall tales.
Turns out they're not.
He doesn't share Kuroo Tetsuro's opinions, he doesn't thing the way the man did or pretends to act in such a way.
Yet he shares the memories, and the bodies capabilities, and he can feel in the strange ways that human's do.
It's terrifying.
It's confusing.
And he's stuck with it for a while.
.
.
Four days later, he's ready to throw in the towel and go back weaker than the lowest of vermin.
It's too much, the way he can't get used to being a human by all accounts, to not being able to detach himself from the body, almost being at its mercy.
There's no way of letting go of his nature, there's no way of working within this alien organism while it feels like a part of him. He can't adjust and is confused and oversensitive all of the time –the memories don't help, they still instill responses in him, even if they are not, perhaps, the worst he has seen in his long life-.
He'll believe the tall tales next time.
Coincidentally, that's when the Psychic capabilities of his body reawaken, amped up by the surplus of energy from his nature.
Coupled with the senses that his demonic nature implies, he gains awareness almost better than he ever has previously had.
And realizes that not only are they here –and this is something he'll have to look into if he doesn't want all of this trouble to be for nothing-, but also, there are enough hunters in Tokyo that the slightest slip-up –like trying to open a portal- might be a quick demise for him.
They are the bigger threat.
He tucks his nature away in the deepest little well of his body and walks right up to one of the hunter's lairs.
The lesser of two evils, one could say.
So, yeah. There was very little Tsukki in this one, but next chapter will be all about him, I'd really like to know what everyone thinks about the demon -And yes, the demon is the Kuroo we all know and love, he's just settling into that body-.
'Till next time.