Disclaimer - Nothing is claimed by the author, except this story.


"Who am I, you ask? I am the soldier of fortune, the master of a hundred ways to cut and the thousand ways to kill, Warden of the Mad Gate, Captain of the Gravens and apprentice to the Lightning Emperor."

Click. The man who'd spoken, unseen and unheard save by one, bowed to the proud figure before it, a grey-eyed, blue-haired waif in worn battle armor.

"Who am I? I am the gambler of the winds, adventurer extraordinaire and practical pilgrim, friend to the Immortal Court, defender of the weak and weary, solace to the lost and keeper of unspeakable secrets."

Click.

"Who am I? I am the Bane of all that is Bad, hunter of fallen demons, the slayer of the spiteful and the corrupt, Enemy of the Dark, the Deep, and the Outside."

Click. The woman looked surprised, eyes wide and body pose tense, as if she'd been shown something big and terrible.

"I am the last runt of the Dragonols, though this revelation I do not pride as much, for upon my word and my life, it's never why I came to you, Princess."

Click. She was at once angry, resigned, helpless, relieved.

"…but know that to you, Princess, I am but a humble servant to your great love, I am the one whose heart you hold captive in your divine-like grasp, I am the beast laid down helpless before you. I love you and desire you and covet you, Princess, and as sure as the tides this love will only blossom for you, will burn long and bright like the fiercest star – until the end of eternity itself."

Click. There were tears. The man that is not man became a simple man once more, and the woman now wore a blush like a strawberry.

"I am many things, Princess, and I am yours."

And with a final click, Keima Katsuragi leaned back against the bench, flipping his PFP downward against the sun as he stretched. He glanced at a spot behind the solitary tree a few paces to his right, a thoughtful expression crossing his face for a millisecond then, before he relaxed into his seat. Something caught his eye, which made the young man look around the rooftop clearing, seemingly empty of students.

He picked up the unopened can of tea he'd spotted, only to grimace as a foot suddenly came down on his wrist. Keima glanced up into the eyes of a girl wearing the proper uniform of their school.

"Who do you think you are, stealing someone else's drink?" the girl demanded, her arms crossed.

"Who am I?" said Keima, ready to deliver a well-oiled speech. "You know better than anyone, Chihiro. I am the Walkthrough Incarnate-"

"-the self-proclaimed freak of Majima High-" interjected Chihiro, without skipping a beat.

"-the Bold Beacon of Endings-"

"-the biggest otaku in all of Majima – allegedly – "

"-the Ronin of Routes-"

"-the kimono-clad weirdo-"

"-the one-"

"-and only, solitary, lonely-"

"God of Conquests." "Otamegane." Keima looked and felt proud of that first one, while also ignoring the second.

"You forgot to put a 2D somewhere in there," Chihiro pointed out.

"I believe that already goes without saying," said Keima. He found Chihiro's foot still on his wrist. "Seriously, are you giving that to me or not, Chihiro? I can honestly do without tea."

Chihiro didn't respond, eyeing his kimono carefully. "Are those… ferrets? Is that a new one?" Keima knew she was talking about the designs on his kimono.

"Yes, yes, it's a new one," he snapped in exasperation. "Now please let me go." She was putting her weight on his wrist, he realized. He sighed, saying in a low voice. "Please let me go… Chi-chan."

Apparently that particularly phrased plea worked, as Chihiro twitched and eased the pressure of her foot on his wrist. "What? Oh… was this yours? I can never really quite tell. After all, you claim not to drink the… 'commercialized' stuff right? And no one in the school would ever dare buy something for the Otamega. I'd thought maybe it was something someone left behind, carelessly or something."

Keima huffed, freeing himself with a little application of force. He cupped the warm can in his hands. "You're right. I really, really wonder how on earth this came to be here." He put the can down – on his side opposite Chihiro. Upon hearing no reaction from the girl, he flipped his game screen back up.

"It's a really nice day isn't it?" said Chihiro. "A pleasant day to be out and about in the grounds, eating and chatting with friends, hanging out, yet here you are nosedeep in a game."

"At least I'm actually outside."

"You're right. Would've been way more appropriate if I was talking to a shut-in."

Keima arched a brow, eyes on the screen. "So what's the problem?"

Chihiro sighed, as if she didn't know how best to reply to her childhood friend. Though the term itself was something the both of them would hotly contest, reducing it to "some guy/real girl I played with ten years ago" (which was not, strictly speaking, accurate)

The girl bit the inside of her cheek, eyes deep in thought. Then she nodded to herself, as if coming to a decision. "Y'know, class rep's been talking about a little get-together this-"

"If this guy's such a savant at reality modification," Keima interrupted, clicking away at his PFP, in a tone that seemed like he was still talking to himself, "-Why is he having so much trouble simply confessing to the love of his life the normal way? A few dates, a kiss or two, a candlelight dinner, plus Ai obviously likes him too, he just can't see it. Why does he have to create a world, create his own demons, his own monsters, his own little demon-lord, his own harem of girls from every nation to fall willingly at his feet, his own rules, heck, even his own rival is a part of his ego he forcibly manufactured. I'd just as easily confess to her, and then create my own personal, everlasting Eden for the two of us, afterward. What do you think, Chihiro?"

"Are you sure you're the one most qualified to speak for the characters, Katsuragi? Besides, claiming you'd prefer something in a story go differently doesn't make your version better."

"It kind of is."

"No, it'd just become different. Might even suck more for the 'mere mortals' who don't have your 'god-like' vision."

"It is better, because at the very least, Chihiro, foolishness is stripped away and only satisfaction remains!" Keima declared fervently. "Everyone begins and ends with fulfillment in their hearts. Ai wouldn't have had to spend ten years as a starving orphan. Hinano's family would have been spared the revolutionaries' depravities. Megumi would not have languished under the cruelty of the mage-lords. That's the kind of Real filth one wants to escape everyday!"

"…I don't quite get how you're going on about something hollow like that, Katsuragi. They're stories. Like it or not, they exist, they make you happy, said, even… zealously involved like you just—er… well, encouraging the kind of unhealthy, obsessive thinking in people like you." She hesitated, perhaps waiting for a rebound jibe from him, and then continued: "Even if it is what makes you the Otamega."

"My dear Chihiro," a calm Keima said chidingly, seemingly ignoring the second part of her reply. "Don't insult me by referencing your nonexistent mastery and reverence of all things Literature."

"Well, thanks for bringing it up. I know literature-"

"Please don't tell me you mean those things you and your girlfriends giggle about during breaks." Keima scoffed. "Sausage fests."

"-As I was saying, I know literature and that, that right there, that's not literature. At all."

"Maybe not for your medieval standards. But tomorrow? This masterpiece," he said, stroking the side of the PFP like it was the spine of a book. "-already has the markings of a small tour de force. It's got a storyline that is almost guaranteed to foment heated discussion of its every line – Socrates could not hope to match the number of inflamed debates in his forum with that which will inevitably arise from this. This little game developed by N-, written and developed by the hand of a fellow god-"

Chihiro threw her hands in the air, bringing them down with an exhausted thump on her lap. "You know, there's a limit to how much you I have to put up with every day, Katsuragi, so let me just say, good bye and see you later, not-friend."

Keima went on clicking, unperturbed. "Okay then, not-friend. Have fun~~". Keima let the silence settle long enough for Chihiro to feel as if he'd disappeared into the world he'd so derided. He had started breathing heavily, gaze boring like a drill into the screen, thumb flicking up and down incessantly, his mouth quivering – almost watering like he'd seen something good to eat. Chihiro's nose wrinkled in distaste.

She looked like she wanted to say one last thing, before she shook her head with an air of finality and turned to leave.

Keima followed her exit with one eye, the other half of his gaze still on the screen. It had been a skill he'd developed upon reaching the testosterone-fuelled hallways of high school.

When he heard the distant clang of the rooftop door, Keima turned his full attention back to his PFP, and it become as full a reading session as it had been before he'd stretched. His mouth was now bared in a small snarl, tongue lolling out to lick his lips, tapping the button like a jackhammer. His eyes raced across the screen, lapping up the barest of meanings from each line before he swept it away for the next, putting the scattered fragments together to form a bigger, vague picture.

A battle… then another… parlay with the redeemed Council of Ages… last confrontation with Lord Rival… siege of the Domed City… yes, yes, betrayal of the first girl, saw that coming a mile away… breaking of the wards… Ai's messiah complex… fall of the Domed City… pursuit of Ai… close now…

With his other hand, Keima idly played with the circular object attached to his waist, like a belt buckle to the blue band covering the upper part of his hakama. A finger traced one of the ancient scripts engraved along its circumference. A small jade-colored nub was placed at its very center.

The retrieval… the Flsga's interception… third girl's sacrifice… revelation of the Thousandth Way… ah, here… here it is…

Keima's eyes were now the closest to the screen than they'd ever been. His breath had literally stopped in that moment.

"D-don't get any weird ideas… it's not like I just fell in love with you right now or anything- I mean- no! What I'm trying to say is, just because you finally defeated the Flsga doesn't mean I'll magically fall in love with you! Because I've loved you even before that! Oh- oh damn it, damn-"

The curtains have almost fallen, and Keima was treated to the last picture that needed in this game: the final kiss with Ai.

Keima gave a loud whoop, raising his arms heavenward. There might have been a halleluia there, but what could be heard coming out loudly from his mouth was: "Eight! Eight! Eight-hundred and eight!" which, had a nearby person like Chihiro been there, would've sounded to them like "I ate eight hundred and eight!"

The whole of Keima's body shivered and seized in utter euphoria.

In that moment, he was one high motherfucker.

Eventually he calmed down, enough to see to the process of reading the game's conclusion, the pyrrhic victory, the last farewall to the make-believe world, the breaking down of reality, the epilogue of the two lovers' fateful meeting in another world, in another time much like Keima's own, with the words ~Fin~ written in a flowing script across the image.

Keima took a deep, satisfied breath. He flipped the PFP back down, secreting it into the folds of his kimono.

He took one last look around, ostensibly to ensure he was alone. He glanced at the door Chihiro'd just disappeared to, and then turned his attention towards the tree.

"Hey," he called out. "I've got fifteen minutes and another game to start. Now's a good time for you to show yourself."

Fleshy Cosplays

The Root

There was silence.

He adjusted his glasses. "Fourteen minutes. I'm only giving you this small amount of time to hear you out before I make up my mind and exorcise you later."

He paused, waiting for a reply. "Thirteen minutes. I'd decided, for the past week or so, that I would ignore you and your persistent presence in my favorite spot at school, but there're only so much 'dororororos' I can take every lunch time before it gets tedious."

Keima turned, moving to a more comfortable seating position on the bench. "Oh yes, I know the fact that you arrived here Thursday last week, taking up this specific bench during lunch that I was forced to move to my second favorite spot. I didn't miss that, and I sure as heck noticed you hanging around the school ever since: in the halls, outside the window, but most importantly, here in the God's sanctum, with that obnoxious siren of yours. So, tell me what you are."

He checked his PFP. Twelve minutes. "And yes, I can definitely see you." He squinted at a spot near the trunk. "…Most of you. It's hard not to, since I've been trained to sniff out and banish things like you since I was six." Keima deliberately slurred on the "six", pronouncing it in a hiss.

Keima waited for the entity's response, drumming fingers on the belt buckle. He snorted while his eyes tracked something moving unseen from the tree to a couple of steps in front of him. "Ready to come clean yet? Eleven minutes." He frowned when the thing still didn't respond.

He sighed, rubbing his chin in a semi-thoughtful manner. "Fine. If you won't talk yet, I can definitely rattle off my own opinion of your purpose here. You see, I didn't brand it as coincidence that not soon after that Thursday lunch period, I detected a genuine Grade A Malevolence germinate in this very perimeter. In fact, the idea that it was a mere coincidence didn't enter my mind at all. I know that your presence and that thing are related. So you're responsible in any case - either you're the cause or the effect. Now, will you reveal yourself or shall I be forced to eliminate you too? You've got nine minutes."

Keima's hand snaked into his kimono's inner folds and produced a small slip, like a white ticket stub. He flapped it to and fro. "See this? This is a rank D charm. I rip it and an anti-Malevolence weapon comes out, which will either obliterate you outright, or make you unable to move for a time while I procure a weapon that will. This is what I'm gonna use for that Malevolence, and this is what I'll do to you if you don't talk." He narrowed his eyes. Nothing.

He breathed out a sigh, grabbing Chihiro's gift and standing. "Okay. You've made your intentions clear. I'll just let you know I've brought some of the best gear with me today. You have until tonight to get out otherwise it's a big, fat, explosive sayonara." He turned to leave, clogs clacking on the ground, his inner mind already mapping out the next game to conquer.

And then came a loud, high-pitched sound. "Wait!" There was a rush of air that ruffled his kimono, and he paused a bit dramatically mid-stride to look over his shoulder. He cocked a brow at the sight.

It was a slip of a girl, human in appearance (though his senses didn't trust it was really so), wearing a pink, fluffy raiment over her shoulders and what looked like a witch's broom in her hands. Keima frowned at the skull ornament on her hair, and then blinked at the panicked, desperate expression on the presence's face.

"Please wait, mister student! I don't know how you're able to see me, but I swear I'm not bad! Please hear me out!" All of it was said in fervent exclamation points which made Keima already file away the girl's personality among his mind's catalogue of 2D girl personalities.

…Though as Chihiro kept reminding him, one mustn't judge on first appearances. But his first impression of the girl was that of a real-life magical girl.

"I-I-I-" The girl-thing stuttered, eyes clenched and lips quivering, "I'm-!" She hesitated, and then bowed quickly like a drinking bird. "I'm Elsie de Lute Ima! I'm a junior member of the Runaway Spirit Squad! Pleased to meet you, mister human!"

Almost unbidden, Keima's gaze moved up and down the girl's body as she rose back up to full height, her gaze on him. Then he pinched himself where Elsie couldn't see.

He cleared his throat. "I see. And what are you?" Amazingly, she hadn't answered the question he'd actually demanded.

"I'm a demon from Hell!" she replied cheerfully. Well, there went that magical girl theory. She blinked, face relapsing into worry. "U-Um! Please… hear me out-"

"One moment," Keima said, holding his hand outward and wiggling his fingers. "One moment to process everything." He pointed at her. "So you tell me you're a demon from Hell." Check. He knew the presence had to have been something different, but not to this level. It had exceeded his assumptions entirely. Inquiries had to be made – later. "You don't look like a demon."

"Please believe me, I am!" The girl waved her broom to and fro. "Do you want me to play the introduction recording for you?"

"No, that won't be necessary," Keima cut in. He didn't want to spend any more time exploring whatever that was. "To continue, you said you belong to the Runaway Spirit Squad." He cocked his head. "What is that, exactly?"

"It's our duty to patrol the human world and recover runaway spirits!"

He lowered his arm. "You mean the malevolences?"

"Are you familiar with them, mister human?"

"You could say it's part of my job description to exterminate them." He saw her eyes widen slightly.

"Wow!" Was this a trick? Did all demons act this way down there? "I never knew there were humans who could do that, mister human!"

"I'm not-" he started to say, offended somehow by that moniker the girl kept using, but then realized he hadn't formally introduced himself yet. "My pardons," he said, before bowing slightly. "I have many names, but my name I have been given in this mortal coil is Katsuragi Keima of the Katsuragi House. I am more famously known as the Lord of Conquests."

"And do you really exterminate the runaway spirits?" Elsie asked, agog.

"To my family, they are known as the malevolence." He saw a thoughtful glaze on the demon's eyes. "With a capital M if it's really nasty. Sort of like this one."

"Conquests… Lord of… Katsuragi…Keima…"

"Miss Elsie?" The girl-thing looked to be racking her brains for something.

"Ah!" she soon exclaimed, jumping up and pointing straight at him. "You're the Capturing God! Katsuragi Keima of Majima!"

"Why yes, I do hold that title," he acknowledged with a small bow. "Why do you bring this up? Is Hell… acquainted with me?" he asked shrewdly, his mind spinning up a scenario, one of many that had been drilled into him which involved the worst cases in his dealing with the occult.

"The chief said… the chief said that you would be a useful person to us, which was why he was supposed to contact you and request your help." She twiddled her thumbs, pouting glumly. "But not soon after, I was told about your refusal… and so I had to continue on by myself…"

"Refusal? I've never once had any contact with the denizens of whatever plane you hail from. Unless my refusal was in the form of ritual annihilation. If that was so, then I apologize." Still, he was always careful, like with this Elsie, to distinguish the too rotten apples among all the malevolences he had to exterminate.

"Um… chief said you'd been sent a latter… which you declined four times."

Keima ah'd. He remembered. So the "chief" had been the one sending those weird messages.

"So that's why it all felt so strange," said Keima, after snapping his fingers. "I'd assumed a malevolence's refuse had infested my PFP or something, the way I had a bad feeling about it." He had then stabbed his precious device straight through the screen with a class C weapon, with deliberate, almost mournful care.

"Um!" She bounded forward with cautious eagerness. "So if you are the Capturing God, then it's very very important now that I ask for your help! Will you please sign a contract with me now?"

He raised a brow. "I'm leery of contracts." Elsie's expression dimmed. "And anyway, what do Hell demons want with me anyway? I'm just a simple being, living a simple life exterminating Earth's own blend of demons."

"Chief said it's because you're the Capturing God! You're known as the conqueror of a thousand hearts right? You can make any girl fall in love with you in the blink of an eye!"

He repressed the urge to preen or look smug because he didn't like where this was all going.

"…And what does making girls fall in love with you have to do with malevolences?"

"Um… do you call the runaway spirit 'malevolences'?"

"Isn't that obvious?"

She yelped, recoiling at his outburst. "Eh… er… well, for us demons the runaway spirits seek the heart, and make their little homes there."

"True, malevolences do forcibly occupy the emotional space of a single organism, preferably human, but sometimes other, safer, lesser organisms are used."

Elsie made a show of nodding, though a bit uncertainly. "Um…then it has to be removed right? And that's the job of demons like us. And to do that we have to make something else live in the heart – something positive and uplifting. Something like love." Keima snorted. "Once the heart is filled with love, the spirit is forced out bam! And we demons have to run around and scoop it up whoosh! so it never harms another human again." Elsie punctuated her explanations with flailing gestures.

He slapped his forehead. "So you want my help because I am said to conjure love like a genie and love is one of the things that makes malevolences pop out," he said rapidly in a summative monotone. He breathed in and out several times in silence afterwards, focusing.

"Um…" Elsie asked. "Mr. Capturing God…?"

"WRONG!" The force of his shout shattered the serenity of the rooftop scene and caused the demon's knees to buckle.

"O-ouch…"

He loomed over the self-proclaimed demon, drawing as much humanly dread as he could summon. "Wrong, on TWO counts, miss demon. One: you don't need love or any sort of good feels to destroy malevolences, and two: I'm not the Capturing God you think I am. I am the lord, the God of Conquering Girls-" He here held out his PFP. "-in games!"

Elsie, eyes wide, hung her head after a few seconds of that sinking in. "O-of games- I-I- That means- So you're not- you can't… help me?"

Keima, who'd brushed imaginary soot of himself after that declaration, said, "With the malevolence? Of course I'll help."

Elsie's face grew radiant. "You mean-"

"Hold it," he threw up another wiggling hand. He pointed with the other towards himself. "Job description remember? I'm gonna be the one to pop a cap in that malevolence's ass once it gets out."

"Gets… out?"

He turned, giving the demon sprawled out on the floor a sidelong glance. "You call them spirits - for us they're malevolence. Spiritual cankers in a person's soul if you will. Well, I like to think of them as blisters. Our methods mainly include letting them fester for a good, long while inside their hosts, until they become nice and big and obvious to me. Then it's easy to just reach in and pop them, conveniently spreading all their filth out for us to safely obliterate."

"You can't do that!" Elsie said, hand over open mouth like she was truly horrified. "That's a bad, bad thing for the human hosts!"

"Why not? That's how I've been doing it."

"B-Because it's dangerous for the hosts! It could terribly, terribly damage them in many many ways! Don't you see it happen?"

"…No they've mostly been fine. There was a salaryman who got himself involved with the yakuza, but it wasn't that dangerous. As to the malevolences themselves – without a host to cling to, they are as empty as the air." He saw Elsie stare at him in disbelief. "I'm being perfectly honest here. What do you expect to happen to these hosts? Die horrible deaths?"

"I'm not- I haven't seen it yet-" Elsie bit her lip, "-but chief says the hosts would be affected by something horrible if we allow them to grow. They, and everyone around them will be afflicted by bad, bad things."

Well, he hadn't been paying much attention to his targets' surroundings, but he assumed there hadn't been anything serious. After all, he was quite thorough when it came to clean up. There were no traces of the malevolences after their destruction.

It was more than his free time on the line if he'd screwed up.

"What kind of 'bad, bad things'?"

"I don't… know."

"Oh, right. You haven't seen it yourself." He raised a brow.

"…Sorry."

"And how come I've never seen any demons come in to do their jobs anyway? As far as I know I've been the only one killing the malevolences." Not a total truth, but he had sensed no demons before this one. "And doing a, if you don't mind me saying, hell of a good job with it, too."

"That's-" Elsie paused, biting her lip. "N-n-never mind." It seemed the demon saw it was unable to put up a good counter-argument. In that moment, Keima saw she looked so much like a girl lost in the wood. Annoying. That forlorn look might've excited some part of him, but thankfully the knowledge of her true anatomy kept him back. Kept him centered. After all, she was something that felt very much like the malevolences he'd been hunting.

Though the fact that she did induce that feeling him was odd; she was supposed to be a demon from Hell, not little red riding hood. "Are you really not going to help, Mister God? Don't you feel bad for the people with the spirits?"

"I took up this job to kill the spirits of this world, not connect with its 3D citizens. And I definitely don't use love. Eugh." He shook himself. "So now that we've established that, what will you be doing now, demon? Have you got a plan to take care of that malevolence yourself? Because of the circumstances, I would be open to some form of cooperation – to an extent." What he left unsaid was the issue that the self-proclaimed demon had spent uncounted hours since he had sensed it for the first time doing nothing to the malevolence.

He assumed there was a plan.

It was not a plain, ordinary malevolence after all. It was classified "A", a life-changing first for Katsuragi Keima, the hunter.

"I-" He didn't think it was possible for Elsie to droop anymore than she did. "Yes… it's my job…"

There was that look of hopelessness again. He knew some people who got off on this kind of look on girls. If he'd taken a picture of Elsie right now (though he wasn't sure if human technology would be able to capture a self-proclaimed demon), he'd make a fortune in fame passing it around.

Keima took some time to think. Then he shook his head wryly. He glanced down at the demon, who'd still not made to move from where she was.

"You're a pathetic sight." He declared. The demon flinched, and was trying not to look at him. "I just thought I'd let you know. And now that you do, I'd like to invite you to witness my work. I shall begin this afternoon."

"Eh… are you going to…" she trailed off.

"-Destroy the malevolence," he finished for her. He then waved a hand carelessly, as if brushing away cobwebs. "Though I don't particularly care if you do watch or not. Your Hell's had many years to observe, hasn't it?" He turned away, his left hand brandishing his PFP. "I should tell you that this won't be a course of one-upmanship, or a contest. I'm not particularly challenging your Hell, or you, nor do I have something to prove." It would be foolish to challenge something he barely knew about. Particularly if "Hell" was anything like the expected connotation it brought. There was no need to step on any cloven feet, or stir up old fires after all…

"Well then," he concluded, turning to walk away with the air of an emperor going to war, eyes flashing behind his glasses. "If you'll excuse me, I shall now begin preparing for the ritual destruction of the 'A'.

The roof door clanged shut.