Now, I had been in a few sparring matches in my life.

Nothing too major; I did a brief stint in grappling and had a few brawls with Daichi back when we had pretended to be ninjas, so I wasn't so physically inept to not know the basics of fighting. But that was it - the basics. As any competent-but-amateur fighter could tell you, it took a long time for "muscle memory" to advance to the point where you could attack without spending precious seconds formulating a plan. For me and about a million others, there was no avoiding thinking about it. We just weren't good enough. There was always that slight lag of time between me conceiving an attack and executing it. It wasn't too much time, mind you, but it was more than enough time for an actual fighter to take me apart. Unfortunately, however, that's the sacrifice needed to maintain an effective form and not look like a fool throwing punches.

"Letting go" of your body and kicking ass in this peaceful day and age was all but a myth, and getting caught in a battle haze doesn't make you immune to pain; it makes you get sloppy and liable to get knocked out with a lucky punch. The durability and usability of the average human body is vastly overrated and results in the deaths of numerous stupid people daily. Thus, in my daily life, even if Iwere as vastly superior as Daichi would have me believe, I played things cautiously. Cautiously and intelligently. So, it was at least mildly surprising to me that my actions here were not at all cautious, and nor were they terribly intelligent. Even more surprising was how I couldn't help myself.

I was moving before the trio of demons could claim another inch. Pixie let out a little yelp as I rushed past her, the shifting air around me sending her into a tailspin. I felt a bit bad about devaluing her speech about protecting me, but it was a far-away sensation eclipsed by what had driven my body forward. A surge of adrenaline rushed through my body, and my legs were restless. I experienced a feeling not dissimilar to having a hammer poised to destroy something fragile. I felt like I could punch through the concrete scattered around me. With those sort of thoughts fueling my advance, there wasn't a chance in hell I could have ever considered the demons in front of me as a threat.

Obariyon apparently hadn't gotten the memo: I was the biggest badass in the subway. He bent slightly on his stout legs, ready to receive my charge. The red demon's mouth opened wide in anticipation, lips split open in a malicious grin. If I had heard him correctly, he had been able to at least divert the crashing train in order to save the three of our lives. Something in my brain recognized it as pure physical strength, so I accepted the whim without another thought. In that case, Obariyon should have been stronger, more durable, and exponentially more confident in his ability to handle me: what he and I believed to be a regular human.

What he probably didn't expect was me sticking my hand straight into his mouth.

Moments before I reached him, I felt a primal pull. Endorphins of satisfaction gushed through me, and my mind put those feelings to memories. Like an addict down off a fading buzz, I wanted to experience that feeling again. A tingling at the back of my neck told me that the time to fulfill my itch was now, but Hibiki Kuze had no idea how to do it. He had never dealt with an Obariyon, and nor had he experienced that sort of sensation before. Thus, Naoki Kashima took control. Memories of a past life flooded my brain, and a moment later, I was primed for action.

The red demon reeled in surprise as I invaded his space recklessly, and he threw his arms back like a helicopter to try and reassert his balance. Before he could fall over, I rooted him in place with a swift grab of his wide, slimy tongue. His blood-red mane now thrown back by gravity, I saw his eyes widen in surprise only for a moment before I put my other hand on his forehead, still clutching his tongue, and pushed. Squelch. The long piece of meat came free with a scream and a wet tear, garnering a few horrified gasps behind me.

I didn't turn to look. I threw the useless flesh away as I felt I had always done, but something unfamiliar happened. As soon as it hit the ground, it dissolved in the same flash of blue as it had when the demons appeared. That confirmed it, then.

"It's like with the Terminals," I muttered, not understanding quite what I meant. Even so, I got the gist. They were being summoned. Destroying them returned them into the formless blue mana they appeared from, but where they appeared from was still unknown. Still caught in the throes of thought, I brought my foot down subconsciously, and more of the blue energy floated up around my ears. He wasn't so strong after all. Pixie probably helped with the train.

"Yeah, Naoki! We're back in business!" Pixie whooped behind me, and I instinctively turned to give her a toothy smile. Bad idea, of course, in the middle of a fight. I felt a sharp force impact the back of my head like it was shot from a cannon. The force of it made my mouth go numb and almost made my eyes fly out from their sockets. Dizziness invaded my consciousness and brought me to a stagger, but for what it was worth, I was still standing. I searched the ground for the offending projectile with hazy eyes before spotting a slightly crimson rock the size of a fist at my feet.

"Naoki!"

"Hibiki!"

I heard both voices echo in the tunnel through a tin can, one frantic and one tinged with fury.

"Look out!" the frantic voice cried, before tackling me to the floor. It rattled my head around painfully and almost made me bite my tongue, but it wasn't so bad compared to the rock. Regardless of if the tackle was necessary or not, the caution it conveyed was enough to make me notice the smell of ozone and burning hair around me. I could sense energy building up, and that pleasant, soundless voice informed me once again of the spell's name: Ziodyne. I turned around just in time to see it cast. Around fifteen meters away, I saw Pixie dexterously dodge a chunk of concrete thrown by the Poltergeist before blasting him with enough lightning to make the Sun look dark. I wasn't even able to see it disappear - just the black char that remained when it did.

The person next to me, with his arms folded over his head and his torso still over my legs, peeked out from his hands at the carnage around him. "I'm... still alive? Holy crap!" It was Daichi, of course. No one else could have possibly done as bad of a takedown as him.

Io, even closer to the incident, was thankfully unharmed but understandably dumbstruck by the display of power. Her face was frozen in a mix of fear and awe, and nothing seemed to catch her attention except for what had just unfolded in front of her. Which was bad, if the orange glow next to her was anything to go by.

I wouldn't have been able to get to her in time, even if Daichi weren't still hugging me. "Pixie!" I exclaimed. She turned and reacted more quickly than I had expected. She followed my gaze easily to Io, and to the conspicuous Pyro Jack moving on her from the shadows. From there on, I could only admire the speed at which demons could move as she shot over.

Now, apparently, with the small, winged creature of destruction rushing towards her, Io had broken out of her stupor. She was confused for a moment, wondering why the adorable being of death was coming to kill her next when her senses picked up on a distinctive, yet mildly amusing cackling emanating from her right. Her survival instincts kicked in in an instant, sending her scurrying away from the fairies both.

She fled as far as she could in the darkness of the subway, but when she eventually hit a wall in her blindness, Io fearfully turned around and saw Pyro Jack's approaching fire glowing melodramatically. I saw Daichi try to get up to help, but get distracted by a small scrape on his hand for a moment. I rolled my eyes.

Just before Pyro Jack unleashed his flames, the mad cackling reaching its climax, Pixie swooped in from the side and snatched the lantern from his hand. In a single instant, the Jack's malicious smile flipped into a look of despair. The inside of his pumpkin head now looked dark and depressing. "Hey! Give it back!" he cried out desperately.

"No!" Pixie held the lantern away from her body, and even further from Pyro Jack. It was easily bigger than her, but she still held it like it was nothing.

"Give it baaaaack!" Pyro Jack flew around weakly, not possessing of Pixie's greater maneuverability. The result was like a tortoise trying to catch a bird, and it was all rather sad.

"What am I watching?" Daichi asked incredulously.

"Only if you surrender!" Pixie called out in a teasing, mock-authoritative tone. "Pledge your allegiance to the Demifiend!" And with that sentence, it clicked. That was certainly a word I knew. It was all coming back rather quickly, now. I was the Demifiend. Funny time to realize it, huh...

Pyro Jack floated back down to the ground and clasped both his floating hands together in prayer. "Okay! I swear! Please just give it back, hee-ho!" He sounded like he was close to tears, so I kind of felt bad for the guy. He was more like a bad kid than anything. Pixie cracked open an eye.

"Pixie..." I led.

"What? I don't think he meant it!"

"No!" the Jack panicked. "I promise I meant it! I swear that I promised! I ree-hee-ally do!"

"Hmm..." Pixie mused innocently. I knew that look. "Okay! But next time you get on my bad side, I'm keeping it!" She tossed the lantern back, which the floating pumpkin caught with a gleeful spin as he erupted into flames once again. Then, he turned to me.

"I'm Pyro Jack! Glad to be of service!" he said with a cheerful salute. Then, before he disappeared, I somehow heard him mutter, "What a mean fairy." What a guy. I heard a faint ringtone on my phone go off once.

After the fight, it seemed like I had burned up all of my bravado, because I must have waited twenty seconds before I moved again. When I did, I had to shove Daichi off of me. Poor guy was still in shock after having been attacked by demons, then having watched the demons do a sitcom act. Of course, I say "attacked", but he was pretty much spotless. Io looked to be getting her bearings well, though.

"So, was that your idea of fairy family fun?" I commented nonchalantly. In a normal situation, I wouldn't have been able to say that. I'm not sure anyone would have been able to act so familiar with someone he just met, but that was the case for me. My head swam with voices and images from a time before Hibiki was alive. Demons, Amala, Fiends, Reason... everything boiled down to one thing for me: Demifiend. That word felt too right. It had always almost been an insult - like a reminder of something I no longer was. Humans had been exterminated, and I had been turned into something more base and vile. Now, it felt like a second skin I never knew I had lost.

For all intents and purposes, I had only just noticed the pounding of my heart.

"Nah, don't worry about it. Jack's tend to get way too excited when they're having fun, so you gotta knock 'em down a few pegs." Pixie brushed me off playfully with a flick of her hand.

"Wasn't very nice, though."

"I was being nice!" she said indignantly. "He was a fellow fairy, after all. I couldn't just blow him up too! Or tear out his tongue." She looked at me pointedly, and I felt disproportionately sheepish.

"What can I say? I needed to get back into gear." I flashed her a smile jokingly.

Daichi put a hand on my shoulder and spoke bitterly. "Okay, first of all, dude, it's those stupid smiles of yours that steal every girl away from me, and second of all, what the hell is going on?"

Io looked worried about more than being late for exams this time. "What were those things? There was that red creature and a ghost... Oh! Hibiki, are you okay?" She walked over to inspect my head, a motherly tone in her voice.

"It'll take more than that to put down Naoki!" Pixie said enthusiastically, stopping the sheepish Io in her tracks. Frankly, I was flattered, but I was a little bit confused at how I survived getting bullseye'd by twenty pounds in the back of the head.

"Well, I'm not too surprised that he survived with how hard of a head he's got, but can we talk about how he ripped out that thing's tongue?" Daichi, my best bud: always asking the important questions.

"Those death videos aren't a joke, either..." Io intoned softly.

"Okay! To truly understand the one you call Hibiki, you must first understand his dark past..." Pixie started spookily. "It all began in a hospital-" Oh god, that sounded an awful lot like a long story. I sort of wanted to hear it, in this case, but another part of me really didn't want to risk it. Chances are, I knew it, and chances are, it'd be really boring. It was a bad attitude, really; it's been with me since birth.

"Hold that thought," I interrupted, feeling a pebble drop on my nose. Perfect timing, collapsing subway tunnel. Things were getting way too chaotic anyways, and it was hurting my head. "Let's get out of here, first. Give us the short version on the way."

"Oh yeah, sure! So, anyways, it all began in a hospital..."

"Alright, so do you get it?" Pixie asked cheerfully.

"That was almost entirely incomprehensible, but here's what I got from it: there are demons now, you're a demon, and he was a demon too in another life." Daichi pointed a thumb at me, a blank expression on his face. The sun illuminated all of our faces now that we were outside, but it was a mess.

Cars were overturned and the streets were cracked like the entire worker population of Shibuya had taken sledgehammers to it. I could see smoke rising in the distance and small embers where car fires had recently gone out. At the end of the intersection, I had spotted a large group of people gathering, so we ducked into an alleyway to have our conversation. It took a solid bit to placate them about the attack and dead bodies long enough to tell them the story.

"Yeah, you really did get it!"

"No, because that makes no sense whatsoever!" And Daichi was now frustrated. He wasn't just frustrated, either; I could tell from the scrunch in his forehead. He was around three whole Frustrates out of five on the Daichi scale, and that usually only happens when he has too much homework or when he gets dumped. "I'll accept the demon thing, because we just got attacked by them. That's the least of my issues. Never mind about how they came here or why they're only just showing up now, but rewriting the world? I'm sorry, that's just too out there. You don't believe this, do you Hibiki?" Daichi looked at me incredulously, and the other two followed shortly after. I jolted back a bit in surprise.

"Hey guys, don't be strangers or anything," I joked. Daichi narrowed his eyes. "But, uh, yeah. I do believe it, because I remember it now." Pixie's face lit up as soon as the words left my mouth.

Daichi, however, looked like his jaw had dislocated itself and was about to walk away. "You what? Are you serious? You didn't know jack about this thirty minutes ago!"

"Well, yeah," I rubbed my neck sheepishly. This was the part in the conversation where my friends abandoned me and called me crazy if I played this incorrectly. "Apparently alternate universe amnesia recovers pretty quickly." While it was the only thing that came to mind, I still felt like I could have done far better.

Io spoke up, and strange expression on her face. Her eyes focused on the ground as if she were overly shy about the topic, but they had a strange hardness to them that made me notice the gears turning in her head. They did not screech with the sound of a rust, but with the quiet of a well-oiled machine. "Um, I'm sorry, but you said something about him changing the world because of the demons, right?"

"Yep!" Pixie said happily, flying into my shoulder and taking a relaxed seat there. My face heated up, but I felt no urge to remove her.

"Then why are there still demons? If you wanted to redo the world, why is it still like the old one?" Her voice wasn't accusing, but merely inquisitive. Io, as I am wont to say far too often, was far too innocent. And I only say it because it shocks me every time. Even so, it still gave me that restless bite of annoyance.

"This is nothing close to my world. I don't remember much about it past beating the shit out of the entire demon population, but for one, there's no Isamu and Chiaki to ruin everything." I laughed sarcastically, but it came out more bitter than I had intended. Daichi and Io looked taken aback, I felt Pixie's breath hitch slightly, and I became intimately aware of how much of an ass I must have seemed there. I let out a small, awkward cough. "Anyways, that's good. Demons were running amok and no humans were even alive in my world. So, even if this wasn't quite what I wanted, this is a far better situation than I could have hoped for." Kagutsuchi was just a bit mad about me restoring the world after all, I guess.

Salvage the situation, Hibiki. Change the subject. "Ahem. So, Pixie, this world is still different from the old one, even if it still has demons. My name is different, I look different, and Daichi probably became a bigger loser than before because he lived longer." An indignant "hey!" was all I needed to know that he wasn't mad at me for flipping out. Played correctly, indeed. It was a bit of a risk, but it seems I still knew Daichi well enough to judge his mood. Io smiled a bit too at his reaction. For that, was glad, because I had completely underestimated one person's ability to poop a party. "How is it that you remembered me, too? And if that's all it takes to jog memories, does that mean there'll be a bunch of people who'll remember they were dead?"

Pixie hummed thoughtfully. "That's more of a demon thing. A bunch of demons remember stuff like that, but you probably can remember it because you were at the center of the change. Like, for example, I remember helping out this mean-looking army guy with a gun, but he was really a big softie..." She prattled on for a bit, and I got lost in thought.

"Well, I'm not a demon anymore, so I guess I can count out remembering because I'm a demon," I murmured. Daichi looked at me worriedly.

"Uh, dude? Sorry to break the news to you, but that's not exactly right." I could barely voice my confusion before Daichi had expertly whipped out his phone and snapped a picture of my face.

"This isn't the time for pictures, Daichi!" The guy did this all the time when I wasn't prepared, and then he sends them to my mom for the sake of increasing some sick anti-Hibiki rapport, the weirdo. Anyways, chances were that a rock to the back of the head messed up your hair something magnificent. I could almost hear the mocking now...

Surprisingly, he handed me the phone without a word and showed me my face mid-protest. Initially, I hadn't noticed anything wrong, but then...

"Holy crap. That isn't normal."

"Yup," he answered neutrally.

In the picture, and in what I presumed to be real life as well, my eyes glowed yellow.

"Wow!" Pixie noticed my eyes as well. "That's neat, Naoki! Very demonic of you!"

"No, not neat. This could end up being way more trouble than it's worth! How many people do you know who have glowing eyes?"

"Probably the same number of people who rip out demon tongues," Daichi snarked. Huh. Maybe demon eyes weren't my biggest concern.

"Alright, I get the point," I conceded. "If I don't show off, we should be safe from lynch mobs trying to burn us. I'm still a little bit demon, but it definitely feels and looks weaker. Otherwise, I'd have a horn growing out of my spine and I'd look like a bad tattoo advertisement. Is that why I was able to survive the rock?" I directed the question to Pixie, because it seemed like she would know quite a bit about this whole situation. Being a demon and all.

That... was a bit racist, actually.

"Well, it looks like you only just regained your powers because of the summoning. You haven't been working out, Naoki! Your powers are like a muscle; you use 'em or you lose 'em! Anyways, that's probably a part of it, but it looks like whatever you summoned demons with is also keeping you guys from getting hurt too bad by them. Fluffy would probably get some brain damage if it happened to him." Fluffy?

"Fluffy?" Daichi asked, pointing to himself.

I looked at his hair and nodded. "Fluffy."

"You're fluffier than I am, pal!" Daichi pointed to my hair, which was, in fact, boastfully fluffier than his. "Maybe you should be Fluffy! O-Or the Fluffmaster!" Daichi, I like you, man, but in what universe is that okay to say in front of a girl you like?

"But your personality fits better! You guys can call him whatever silly name you want, but he'll always be Naoki to me! Or Nao-cakes, or Nao-kun!" Please don't.

"Yeah, I think I will stick to Hibiki. Naoki's just too weird. How about you, Io?"

Io jumped in shock as she was suddenly thrust into the conversation. With any luck for my poor best friend, the surprise was because she wasn't listening, and would never have to know about his lingual shortcomings.

"W-what? Me? I-I don't even know you that well and-!"

"Come on, Io!" Pixie pressed. "We're all in the same boat now! Pick a name - any name!" The same boat, huh? I guess so.

"Um... well, ok..." She looked at me as if asking for my permission to continue, and I smiled lightly. "I guess... Naoki's kind of growing on me?"

Pixie cheered and Daichi swore. "Damn, that's two for the Naoki club."

"I'll still call him Hibiki, though!" Io said in a panicked tone. "It might get confusing anyways."

"Don't worry, Daichi. I'll still introduce myself as Hibiki. I wouldn't want anybody to hear 'Naoki' and think you have more than one friend."

"Ice cold, man," he said, his voice now relaxed and careless. "Anyways, we got off-topic. I'm still not sure about all of the alternate world and memories and stuff, but I don't really care anymore. After the demon attack I can't bring myself to. But I do know that this whole thing is messed up, we're caught in the middle of it, and you're the only one who knows what's going on. And seeing as how you can still fling burns like that, I don't have to worry about you changing on me, so for the time being, I'll believe you."

"I believe you too," Io spoke up. "I only survived that because you three were there, and I don't think people who would do that would lie about this." That was... admirable. Adorably naive, and unquestionably admirable.

"Oh, it was nothing, Io," Daichi answered smoothly. "You're one of us now, and we would do anything for our own." He leaned over to put his hand on the wall, but I slapped it down, causing him to lose balance and fall into it. He glared at me.

"There was some kind of gathering going on up the street. Maybe we should check it out," I suggested innocently. This was nice. A second ago, we were a hair's length away from going into a panic. Now, we were joking around like it was a regular Summer vacation. Were we with anyone else, I suppose I could have expected Harlem to break out, but things were different here.

Daichi, though he was cowardly at the worst of times and aggravatingly simple at the best, never had a history of letting things get to him. The demon stuff was tough to get a grip on, and all the destruction was debilitating to see, but he soldiered on still. Even without me here, he surely would have adapted well enough on his own.

Io, as well, was stunningly clear-headed given the circumstances. I could really see why Daichi and half the school looked up to her. While she wasn't an overemotional girl, she also didn't go out of her way to hide her emotions and ideas. It ended up making me feel a little inadequate, to be honest. In my opinion, if you weren't keeping people guessing in conversations, your presence would die. If everybody always constantly knew what I was thinking, there wouldn't be a need for me to say anything. It was a dazzling endorsement for Io, then, that she was this popular while wearing her heart on her sleeve.

There wasn't much to be said about Pixie and I. She was a demon, and after everything that had just been dumped on me, I already knew it all. None of the demons or anything surprised me, so I suppose I wouldn't be panicking. Were I not some past-life super-demon, though? Who knows? I might have gone insane from the stress and tried to wear Daichi's skin as a coat. I didn't feel altogether very different, though, even keeping the world modification in mind. Like I said, Naoki Kashima's life just felt like another part of my life that I had never experienced. It was a part of me. That must have been why I didn't mind either name.

Daichi grumbled something resembling an affirmative to my suggestion while Io and Pixie nodded. When we started walking, Pixie loop-de-looped into my hoodie pocket and snuggled up where the fabric was seamed together. Luckily for me and my hoodie, the weather had cooled down as the day had progressed. Curious, I checked my phone, and the display read "17:46".

"Hey, Daichi. No signal." A quick check of his phone confirmed the same thing.

"The land-lines aren't working either," Io observed, and I followed her eyes to the sight of two people leaving a phone booth in exasperation. They rejoined the mass of people standing expectantly in front of a large screen, so we did the same. The soft murmur of the crowd almost didn't match the destruction around us. It was almost as if they hadn't just seen people and their livelihoods destroyed by demons. I knew better, though. It was a poignant quiet that implied worse than it said. They were quiet because this was how they dealt with things beyond them. The ones who had panicked were already dead.

The mood in the intersection was infectious, even after our good mood upon exiting the subway. A moment ago, we had left on a crusade against the evil demons, filled with swashbuckling fun and mutual bonding, but now, it felt like the world had never been reset. People displaced and with their lives ruined. The infrastructure of the block looked like it was on the brink of collapse. I felt despair, and it was morbidly nostalgic.

After another minute or so, the display came alive with the image of a middle-aged, salt-and-pepper newscaster. "We interrupt our regularly scheduled program for this important news bulletin: At around 16:00 today, a large-scale calamity, reportedly a vertical shock quake, occurred. There are no details yet, but massive casualties have been reported around the city. Again, at 16:00-" The display cut off abruptly, going black with a small hum. The voice of the people around me begin to get restless.

I looked to Daichi, almost expecting him to be the same way, but his steadiness surprised me still. It was almost difficult to see him as the same Daichi who needed me to help him burn the sheets he wetted in his sleep. At age thirteen. I guess having Pixie explain things to him did help.

"Was it a quake, though?" Daichi murmured. I knew what he meant. Demons did this. I wasn't sure how, but something had done this. This was an enormous level of destruction even with demons in mind, though.

"Hey, Io? Does your phone work?" I knew it didn't, but really, it was worth a try.

"No... I'm sorry." She apologized way too much. "I need to call my parents, too..."

"Damn, me too." Daichi was finally starting to sound like himself again with the tiny quiver in his voice. He opened his phone and tried to look for an Internet connection to no avail. Suddenly, he spoke up. "Wait a sec, take a look at this, Hibiki. A 'Demon Summoning App'."

"I have it too," Io interjected, and just for posterity's sake, I found that I had it too. "I don't have any demons, though." A quick check-through informed me that I had Pyro Jack and Pixie as my demons.

"Me neither."

"I do, and something's really weird about it," I said, turning my phone for Daichi to see.

"It's cool, isn't it? Like a game!" Pixie's muffled voice came from my pocket, and I covered it in panic. Looks like no one had noticed the voice, but a few people did notice me grab my crotch like a weirdo. I waved the others away from the crowd so we could hear what Pixie had to say. Luckily for us, downtown Shibuya was a den of shady alleys.

"Jeez! Don't do that when there's a bunch of people around! Everyone finds out I have a demon in my pocket, and suddenly a bunch of people want revenge for demons destroying everything," I admonished. "Although, it was good that Pixie spoke up, because it brings up something we need to cover. We need to be a lot more careful about what we say around other people. So that means no talk of demons around people we don't know. And that means no blabbering about the Demifiend, Pixie." Daichi and Io nodded in agreement.

"Don't worry about it! You can just kill the eavesdroppers if they get fussy!" No, Pixie, I couldn't just do that. "Anyways, this Nicaea thing can apparently quantify statistics of different demons! Plus, it's a real handy interface! Much better than blood tomes and runes to control your demon, huh?"

"It's a little dumb." Dumb and a little cheap, but it only boiled down to one conclusion: Nicaea was a filter. Too many things lined up perfectly. Nicaea, even with its dangerous nature, wasn't intended to kill. Maybe other people, but not its user. As far as apocalyptic devices went, it was pretty forgiving.

Needless to say, I was at least a little familiar with apocalypses, and this was no Conception. That was used with the intention of completely eradicating a human presence on Earth. If demons were unleashed without the protection Nicaea offered, humans would've been slaughtered in much the same way, if not a tad slower. As it was, however, it was clear Nicaea was created with the intention of subjugating demons. The interface and injury mitigation prove that easily enough. The question then becomes simple:

Why?

"Well, of course it's dumb for you, Naoki. You can tell all that stuff instinctively; you're half-demon." Come on. From what I could tell, I only had the eyes. "I'm sure the normal humans appreciate the handiness of it!"

"Well, I would, but I don't have any demons to appreciate."

"Actually, there's a reason for that!" Pixie said cheerily. "Naoki already had a demon, and that was me! So since the initial auto-contract function was fulfilled, the only demons we get are volunteers and ones we pay for! The others have to be satisfied with a brutal death."

"So Hibiki and Pixie hog all the kills, and I get shafted with no demon? This sucks."

"Don't whine, Daichi. It's unbecoming."

"Um, where is the other demon, anyways?" Io asked.

"Probably stored in the phone somewhere," Pixie dismissed. "He's not a fun guy to have around, anyways. He's the kind of guy who tries way too hard to fit in. You wouldn't like him." Wow. That was so harsh I could barely believe Pixie said it.

"Look, I don't want to pry into family affairs, but-" I started, before a distinct, female voice cut me off.

"Excuse me, but can you three turn and face me for a moment?" Oh shit. My "fuzz" detectors were going off, and we were the kids smoking behind the school. Swiftly, I grabbed Pixie and shoved her in my hoodie like a used cigarette in a water bottle.

I turned around to see a tall, blue haired woman staring at me intensely from no more than two feet away. With a few inches on me and a professional, black uniform staring me in the face, you could be damn sure I backed up a step. I had to think fast.

"Oh god, a pervert!" A true classic tactic that Daichi and I had devised to throw adults off our trail. Whenever we were doing something we shouldn't, the pervert accusation was usually enough to confuse them long enough to make ourselves scarce. As soon as I saw her face morph to defend herself, I readied myself to go.

"Wait, Hibiki! She doesn't look like a pervert." I jinxed it. And right after I just said we had to keep this stuff secret. I knew Io's naïveté would come back to bite us, but I didn't think it would be this soon. I looked to Daichi and shot him a look that pleaded him to go without me. Leave Io, because she had ratted us out. But the poor, lovestruck fool didn't listen, and now, we were like rats in a cage.

"Thank you, miss." The tall woman recovered her composure. "But I heard you say something about a demon? Can you tell me more about that?" Dear Lord they knew.

Nothing good could come from this. She looked too much like a government agent to be asking innocent questions, and for all I knew, the government was distributing the demons for some sick and twisted experiment. Likely? Not really. Possible? Most definitely. So as someone who was not an ally and was potentially an enemy, we had only one possible recourse: a technique passed through the Kuze line for generations!

"Holy fucking shit! Is someone hurt over there?" Second time's the charm. Step one: swear a ton with some hard consonants to get their attention. Step two: say 'hurt' to imply that I'm not medically savvy, and that I'm too genuinely frightened to use a sophisticated vocabulary. Step three: act.

Like the gullible agent of peace she seemed to be, the tall woman turned in surprise to check for the imaginary casualties. In the few seconds while she did so, I grabbed both Io and Daichi by the hands and dragged them along the path to freedom. By the time the woman noticed we were gone, we had already rounded a corner and were lost in a maze of alleys.

A/N:

lol DeSu2 amnesia