Disclaimer - Nothing is claimed by the author, except this story.
"…She has not reported to me for some time."
A breath. The floorboard of the old school building creaked.
"…like she was bothered by something, which she did not share…"
Someone coughed. The old, familiar dust hung heavy like a cloak over everyone's shoulders.
"…if Takahara doesn't have a good excuse? You already know the answer to that…"
A grim pause. A long, loud noise, like a chorus of heartbeats, echoed in the distance. It was muted by the aged windows.
"…Continue to keep an eye out. Be very wary of the Kasuga. Leave the Katsuragi to me. Very well. You have your orders."
The telephone bleeped once, then shut down.
A breath, and then silence.
Fleshy Cosplays
Branch
The Katsuragi teachings didn't just account for all types of encountered and hypothetical malevolences. They also detailed other magical beings, some living firmly in the incredulous' minds as mere fantasy, others emerging in response to the former group. Most of them were humans acquiring some fantastical trait or superpower, with all the others being evolutionary runoffs ranging the gamut of abstract energy spaces to nanite-plated, microscopic universes.
They all shared one thing in common: they were Secrets, known only to the Katsuragi and anyone else whose job it was to keep track of them.
As of this moment, Keima had more than a half-certainty that the Takahara girl was some sort of secret-superhuman. She just had to be.
The Takahara-thing growled, its voice like flowing gravel. Keima bared his teeth in abject rage.
"Oh, you're in for it now, you fucking mal-soaked bitch! That was a vintage-colored special Yokkyun 4th anniversary edition, fifth generation PFP you just killed, and I'd need the devil's own luck to find- whoa!-" The energy-ridden shape in black-and-white somersaulted onto the wall of the building, leaving a wave of invisible static in its wake that made the hairs on his right arm rise (not of fear, naturally). It stuck its feet and crouched against the wall like a wingless, electrified fly.
Her unknown heritage certainly explained all the electrical energy she was discharging like a blown-out transformer, and the sight of it defying the laws of physics (which were still mirrored in this pocket world).
"Mister God!" Again being dragged away, Keima saw the demon's pink bubblegum clothing wrap around his waist with the strength of a wrestler. Several energy attacks exploded the floor around his former position.
"Oof!" The demon's petite form was bowled over by the force of the collision.
Keima cursed, shaking himself free of the demon. He hurled two class D weapons, small, whirling javelins that homed in on whatever their master was aiming at.
Takahara skidded left along the wall at the last second, the weapons impacting against the wall in an explosion of glass and concrete.
It explained those high (albeit malevolence-affected) speeds that would've broken track records all over Majima.
Upon unflatteringly quick self-reflection, Keima surmised the cause of the latter could've also caused the former.
Keima paused then, more than slightly appalled upon realizing he'd used class D weapons on a human. That was a no-no. Now he had to think of a-
Like a big volleyball of electrifying doom, Takahara's form bounced upward through the air towards the two. It illuminated the world like a tiny, flashing, dying star and crashed into the ground with the force of a wrecking ball.
"When the hell did this turn into a superpowered fight for my life!? Where was the setup? Huh!?" He dove sideward and tumbled as far as his adrenaline could bring him. He wasn't some entity in his games gifted with preternatural skills! He couldn't just go toe to toe with a dangerous in an action-packed scene. This was the unfortunate Real, where he was a simple exterminator at most! He didn't have Kasuga's vaunted warrior spirit! He didn't have the blood of the Nanayas, the technologies of the Great Uras, or the arts of the Mitos (all fictional, exaggerated depictions of Real demon hunters)! He didn't even have the luxury of a secondary character to cover for him—aside from the devil, but it had already proven it couldn't help.
Keima wheezed, throwing out a hand to stop from slamming against the treetrunk and clutching a hand to his heaving chest. He pushed his glasses back, now greasy with sweat.
He couldn't just disengage the trap. That would mean revealing a Secret to the world, which was Bad. There were worse consequences at stake if that ever happened than merely suffering through Kasuga's victorious smirk. (not that she would smirk in that worst-case scenario)
Overall conclusion: his objective hadn't changed. In order to survive, he had to kill the malevolence that he should've already killed by now in a fight he wasn't prepared for – having left all his loud, heavy-hitting weapons back home like a nervous, wide-eyed, buck-toothed newbie. And he had to do so before his body's crappy stamina petered out like a shallow stream, possibly making him pass out and disengage the trap and letting monster-Takahara loose on the entire student body.
"Mister God!"
"Demon! Elsie! Can't you do anything to that thing? Anything at all?" He hated sounding as desperate as the demon had been when he'd dismissed her earlier that lunch. He glared briefly at the loud, beeping skull on its head.
"Awawah! I'm not sure if I can, Mister God!" In the heat of it all, it was easy to conserve energy by not yelling at the demon. "I could end up hurting the target! We're not supposed to do that!"
Takahara tumbled at them again, preceded by a sound like an electric-razor. Cursing inwardly, Keima spat out the last pieces of the dragonfly figurine still in his mouth; and then swallowed, with some difficulty, an entire vial of red liquid. His senses sharpened in that moment, his eyesight becoming blurry from the glasses which he took off, his muscles taking on a pleasant buzzing throbbing, bones popping, awareness shifting. The eternal midnight world was now revealed to him, expanding into a school shaded by twilight hues.
Keima swallowed, hauling the demon by the scruff of its clothes and springing backward, before leaping straight up with legs powered like a frog's. He heard a surprised grunt: the two had disappeared too abruptly into the dark, and now he was fairly certain the thing couldn't peer through the darkened world.
The sound of shattering glass further told him this had only bought him some moments of succor while the Takahara-thing proceeded to troll through the corridors below looking for them.
"Turn that off!" he whispered, snatching the skull-siren on the demon's head, which had now ceased bleeping but was still blinking a steady light. The demon yelped, and irked him even more by suddenly grabbing onto the front of his kimono with shivering hands. "I need a plan. One that doesn't involve a fight to the death since a. the enemy's a malevolence-possessed human and b., I don't have the right tools for it." And the right training, he thought. "Because you're here, I was hoping you might have an idea, demon."
In the darkness, Keima's enhanced eyesight saw the demon's nervous expression. "L-like I said, i-it would be dangerous, Mister God. Demons aren't supposed to attack humans. And I don't really- don't know a lot of magics for that too. I'm-I'm just a junior member…"
"Then what use are you?" he snapped, and the demon flinched. He brushed aside the demon's hands, turning around to think in the gloom. Downstairs, there was a noisome crashing as the malevolence tore the world apart.
Keima's jerked, having felt the demon's hands now clutching the hem of his hakama. "M-m-maybe if we tried…"
"Tried?"
Something pink traced itself into the air beside him, formed in the shape of a heart. "L-Love…"
"How the hell is that gonna help in this situation, huh? Are you trying to put one over me?" Damn it all, he'd nearly shouted. But he felt it was justified, seeing the sheer, annoying idiocy behind him.
Elsie squawked, and for some reason gripped the fabric even stronger. "Y-Y-Yes! That's the surefire way I know to- to evacuate the runaway spirit!"
"How the hell am I supposed to do that in this situation? I ask you, demon. HOW? Takahara's gone full berserk! Even if I could apply myself to the Real as lord of conquests, there's no reasoning with forces of destruction like that! Even with a prior affection flag - which I don't have - the chance of sanity recall is too low-" He groaned in frustration. Once again, he reminded himself, love could not hunt malevolences for him. Once again, he shook himself free from the demon's grasp. He placed a hand on his forehead, trying to find the right thoughts to think. PFP gone, half his tools shredded, he'd left the trinket-box behind in his flight (should've brought it and left the demon), and he was out of body enhancing tonic.
And, by the very near sounds of the screeching masonry below, he was also out of time.
He ran forward through the dark, leaving the demon behind. His hands were now busy unwrapping some of the tools left to him: a longer javelin tipped in a thunderbolt-shaped wedge marked with the bold characters of conviction, a small red jingling pouch, a carved figurine in the shape of a tentacled thing and a reusable net-launcher.
Keima set to work, trudging through the world's darkness with desperate, deliberate, dogged efforts.
And not a moment too soon: the malevolence had taken the direct route and smashed right through the last floor as he was about to finish. Keima didn't want to explore how it was able to do so with Ayumi's body. The sinister, crackling light flashed into the corridor, with bolts of black-white energy bouncing off the ceiling and walls.
The malevolence's head swiveled left and right, peering into the dark like a predatory reptile. Keima stood a long ways down the corridor now, hand gripping the weapon tightly.
His right eye twitched wildly for a few seconds. His sharpened eyesight was fading.
Takahara-thing shrieked an unearthly sound that would have scared even the Devil from hell. And judging by that cry that had come from behind, it had frightened one particular demon as well.
Keima watched the thing make a direct bee-line for him, if its action could even be rightly called that: tearing up the floor, shattering the windows with a frenzied display of light, and causing a faint breeze through the hall as it torpedoed forward.
Halfway of a second to its destination (covering almost twenty meters of hallway), the thing tripped.
It crashed and skidded, sending sparks flying everywhere. The sight of a spread-eagled Takahara swimming on the floor's surface would be almost comical, but the joke would be on Keima, if he became distracted by that. As it was, his eyes tracked the thing's progression, and its inertia slowed down enough for it to trigger the next trap.
A net, much like the human gladiators would have used, engulfed the fallen host. It was, of course, no ordinary net, easily broken by things that could go mach speeds. It was anti-malevolence, Class C, too low for a being such as this, but hopefully enough for his purpose—
Keima had never taken any archery lessons, much less courses on a technique that had been nurtured since before man domesticated his fellow beast. But he fancied himself as someone with good aim as far as his body would permit, having had high scores in accuracy in some of his games that demanded it.
He reared back, holding the humming javelin aloft and then launched it forward. The jagged-tipped missile sailed straight yet not-so-true, but still somehow reached the target: the tip blasting into the blazing white core with the noise of a thunder crash.
Keima hunched, scrutinizing his work. The thing howled and wailed as it thrashed about. Deciding that it still wasn't enough, Keima dashed forward, unveiling three smaller javelins the size of his forearm. He thrust them one by one against the cracking core, and the thing's screams only heightened from that. Keima didn't mind that it sounded as if he were torturing Ayumi herself: as far as he was concerned, she was now a mere target. To wrap up the ritual, he took a pinch of the dust inside the pouch and sprinkled it onto the trapped target.
He let out a breath, stooping to catch his breath. The blue world was now turning back to dark in his eyes. Keima now focused on the extraction process: there would be no mistakes this time.
"U-Um…"
"Be silent, demon," he hissed. "I didn't want distractions before and I certainly don't want them now."
"B-but I have to do my part, yes?" she said, and he almost cursed, feeling her presence so close. He heard a shuffling, but didn't dare look back. "I-I- ahem- I know a spell that will bind her tighter than that, Mister God."
He saw the broom glowing with some strange energy from the corner of his eyes. He didn't know why he was now too slow on the uptake, and was almost halfway through saying, "What are you doing-?" before his world erupted in white.
There was a scream, followed by ripping fabric and falling debris. He felt his body crash into something hard and painful, but he couldn't feel any of that, since his nerves were still inured somewhat to pain.
The squid figurine was already in his hand by the time he felt himself being lifted up. A blast of cold assaulted his face, a cold so fierce it burned and sizzled. His vision cleared enough to see his assailant.
He could no longer make heads or tails of the host. It was as if a twisted mask had covered Ayumi's face, her entire body a horrid mass of dark-and-white wisps held together to form a face that held no discernable shape. "Staaaay… staaay away!"
It speaks, Keima thought, before he felt a solid blow to his chin, strong enough to knock him backward to skid across the floor. He'd never thought anyone could actually be knocked so far away from a simple punch.
"Mister God!" There was the sound of approaching footsteps.
"For once you worthless demon, could you stay the hell away!?" he growled.
"Unworthy… everything… is…" The light in its chest had utterly disappeared along with the lively energy, Keima observed now, and in its place were black and grey and nothing else. "Bl- Black! Black! Everything is… bl- bleak…"
A weapon emerged, easily summoned to his side. There was a clear malevolence in front of him now, and he had to fight, even if he was tired, even if the stimulant had already left his body in beads of sweat.
"Mister God!" The annoying sound kept on repeating.
"Stay the fuck back!" he yelled, hurling his first class D at the miasma.
"You dare… you dare look down on me-? I am better…I am…best!" There was a sickening, gagging sound as the weapon literally dissolved against the malevolence's body.
Another embedded against it with a dull thump. Then another.
Keima had one more Class B. But he'd only use it after the thing had been weakened—
A tendril shot out, catching him right in the gut. He almost crumbled to his knees, gasping for air. Through watering eyes, he saw the malevolence plucking the weapons from its body, before it turned to him.
"Away!"
"You stay right where you are!" He ripped the mouth of the red pouch open and flung the entire thing at the malevolence. A violent puff of smoke exploded up from the floor, engulfing the would-be attacker and stopping it in its tracks. It shrieked unintelligible words, writhing in place as Keima decided to pull out his last weapon.
This weapon was a favorite of his. It resembled a long, thick tube, with a barrel as wide as the head on his shoulders. He primed the weapon—hand-cannon it was more like— and took aim. He didn't know how this would affect Ayumi, but at this point, desperate times called for desperate—
"Gack!" A sudden shooting pain in his side almost made him drop the cannon. A tendril had embedded near his spleen. The shock made him shoot once and the shot went wild, blasting the ceiling apart. "Son of a—"
He took aim again.
He felt something slam hard against the top of his head, and Keima's weapon clattered to the floor, firing one last blast that vaporized the window next to him. A moment later, he followed suit, though he strangely found that he could not resist it, as if the strings holding him up had suddenly been frayed. A raw pain seeped from the top to the rest of his head.
He watched, with dispassionate dissociation, as his view quickly turned from the floor to dark, then the malevolence, then the floor again, then back to dark and repeating, in a sort of roller-coaster experience that was accompanied by dull thumps against all the parts of his body.
Keima was aware of someone shouting, someone screaming, and someone crying, though he wasn't sure if it was all in that order. The sounds felt muffled, as if coming from a CM with bad audio.
Ah, he thought. I know this. He recognized the sensation.
His awareness began to expand.
She didn't know what to do.
In a sense, there were certain protocols to follow, and she'd memorized them all, fervently, that she would not disappoint Hakua, the chief, and Hell.
Though she was a "junior member", that rank alone held more power in Hell and all the planes than any hedge wizard could ever possess in a hundred lifetimes.
So she wasn't useless, as Mister God had said. She just could not channel her powers well and effectively in this situation. And, as she'd said, she was expressly forbidden, as all demons were, from harming humans.
It made the situation a whole lot confusing. And troubling.
Because beneath the fact that she was the junior member of the Runaway Spirit Squad, she was also a very helpful, diligent demon. And that meant she had an obligation to give aid to the human demon hunter, even if he didn't want it. And within this light-leeched world, the only way to give aid was to fight with magics.
But here, the two desires clashed against each other. The first, to do her job without harming the human host of the runaway spirit; against the second, to complete her mission by assisting the human demon hunter.
The mental deliberation had begun as soon as the human had left without her in the darkness, where she had definite trouble seeing. It leaned toward the former when the human had it trapped, and she could assist in non-lethal magics to help the human in whatever it was doing to the spirit.
And then it leaned toward the latter when the spirit's physical manifestation became too strong and started overpowering the human. She had to help!
She tried remembering certain non-lethals, weak enough to distract, but not decimate. Her eyes lit up. Choosing one spell in particular, she traced a symbol through the air with her broom.
The ceiling exploded. She'd missed! Well, she was used to being target practice instead of the other way around. She readied it again, watching with panic as the human was thrown against the ceiling like a rag doll.
Second shot: another miss. The spirit had moved, dragging the human through the floor behind it by the ankles, before flinging him up against the ceiling and down into the floor with bone-crunching thumps.
Elsie winced. Steadying her hands, she aimed the broom again.
She did it! It had hit straight on… and went on and through the spirit and onward to dissipate into air in the distance. She blinked in confusion, and then looked down at herself.
Oh no, she thought alarmingly. She was still invisible! No wonder the spirit had ignored her. This version of cloaking in plain sight also made anything she did seem like nothing on the physical world. That was why the spell had passed through the spirit as if she had just shouted taboo words at it!
Another sickening thump followed, and Elsie was in the process of decloaking herself when the spirit's tendrils curled all around Mister God's body and slammed it against the window.
Elsie fussed about in near-helpless desperation as she watched the human sail through the air and plummet straight down onto the park they had left. She was quick to follow—along with the spirit.
Mister God reached the ground with a concrete splash, and sank into it as if it were made of soft cheese. Elsie fought to stop the tears in her eyes and the lump in her throat, and in the next second her mind recoiled against the sudden scent of blood.
By the Circles, how could she help?
Demons were beings of instinct.
And when Elsie, junior member saw the spirit prepare to deliver an overhead strike on the fallen human, akin to a single piercing nail falling maliciously down on a hapless insect, Elsie did the only thing she could do.
Well, things.
The spike hurt, hurt like a burning torture rod being shoved into her shoulder. She took the attack head on.
In the next instant, she swung her broom: like an energetic pitcher, as if she were sweeping a stray cobweb from the ceiling, and knocked (with an audible thwack) the spirit, howling as it went, away and into a faraway, unseen wall.
In the silence, there was the sound of tinkling glass, and Elsie marveled at the glinting shards, falling like snow from above. Then she choked, letting the broom fall, clapped her hand on her shoulder, and felt the ground give way under her feet.
She watched the midnight display of falling, twinkling stars and wondered whether she'd done a good job.
A shadow passed over her sight.
"Why-?"
Major system failure.
Keima recognized the sign and examined it in the same cold manner as sizing up which heroine route to take first, even as he was turned into the Takahara-thing's personal chew toy.
By all rights, Keima should be dead. Or comatose. Or in a state of in-between.
No normal human could have survived repeated trauma to the head and to the chest. It was aggravated by internal bleeding from the malevolence's pointed appendages and the many bones that had fractured beneath his skin.
He would have coughed up blood and all manner of disgusting fluids if he could. But since he'd been bashed on the head, he'd lost all control.
Yet still he could see.
Still he observed everything that was happening to him; curse it all, he hated coming unprepared almost as much as illogical route progression—why why why didn't he bring the big guns—and the marble Sign was getting dangerously close to cracking, ripping open the Secret, the greatest Secret, damn the malevolence, damn Ayumi, damn the demon from Hell and the—
Keima could see it had been pride and complacency that had lead to this humiliation: the culmination of a thousand years of Katsuragi helpless in the grasp of a sworn enemy. But he had too much of the former to even consider it being a failing: it was a flag gone wrong somewhere, an event in the Real that would be rectified, though he didn't know how at this point—
He could blame the demon. Such a tempting, godforsaken, useless fastball to pitch at him. Right. It would be better to blame her. It.
There it was, seeing it from the corner of his leaden gaze as it hovered skittishly nearby like it had always done since the day he'd sensed it. A buzzing, useless fly, trying god knows what with its weird magic.
He swore that if he ever survived and afterwards see that demon again, he would, he would—
"Stop!"
And then the demon had done the unthinkable. The illogical.
The futile.
No, not the act of hitting a grand slam with Takahara. The fact that it had jumped in the way of an attack that wouldn't have damaged him as much as the malevolence already had, with a speed and readiness that he could not (and would not) expect from humans, let alone demons from hell. A selfless act. A pointless sacrifice.
When the demon fell to earth, he rose, with an unnaturalness that seemed a given considering the state of his body. He took one step with feet that no longer had any feeling, his hands dangling limply at his side as he looked down at the demon's broken form in the darkness.
"Why?"
She was smiling, delirious, no doubt, a wound the size of a baseball gaping near her neck. That delicious, alluring neck. She didn't (or couldn't?) answer.
"This is not the time for a dying scene, demon! We've only known each other all of five hours! Why the hell would you do something like that?"
The demon was as silent as she had been before they'd ever spoken.
"…this is going beyond being fucking moe. It's not even—you can't even—the label won't even apply to you. You were just being clueless, stupid, suicidal…"
A steady trickle of blood now connected his stained kimono to his mouth.
"I'll have you know that was a completely meaningless thing to do. Though in the end… seeing as you don't know me, I guess your little bit of heroism is something that can be overlooked." He turned his head, slowly, towards the source of the renewed noise, before looking deep into the demon's eyes. He saw a light still there, something hopeful and alien and wrong.
"Without you, things would have progressed quite nicely and neatly," he continued, choosing to ignore the fact that she had possibly botched his second attempt at an extraction. "Without you, in this current situation, things would have been simpler."
He chanced a sideways squint. That malevolence had a fast recovery time.
"And now I find that, grudgingly, I actually can't complete this task without you."
Something whistled in the air, piercing into the unshredded part of his kimono. He carefully pulled it out, feeling it dissolve like black soot through his fingers. An instant later, a more solid, compact projectile came, still connected to its source.
As if pulled by an unknown power, Keima's arm raised up to catch the appendage. He secured it in his grip for one second before he forcefully swung his arm forward. Then came the sound of consecutive crashes and thumps as the Takahara-thing was dragged through each of the first floor classrooms. The appendage pulled taut like a fishing line before snapping, and then there was one final crash.
Keima flung away the snapped-off piece he still held and turned back to the demon. Surprise now joined all the rest he could see in its eyes.
"…Mister… God…?"
It speaks, he thought.
"Do I have to repeat it again? Okay. In order for us to get out of this, demon, I will need your help." He gestured with his other hand, whose fingers flopped about like useless tentacles. "There is no other way. I can only see a bad ending for me, whether my body gets blasted apart right now by that thing, or later on if this world collapses and that mal gets turned loose upon a world that is largely unaware of its existence. For you, well I'm not really sure. A "mission failed"? Receiving torments unending for your failure in a lake of fire and brimstone? I don't care. What matters now is the fact that you're the only other one here who has a vested interest in surviving this situation and who can help-"
He delivered a backhand to the charging malevolence, the action looking much like a pathetic slap with his useless hand; but had the greater effect of repelling the malevolence with ease yet again.
"Can't believe it still hurts…" he muttered, appraising the throbbing palm like a piece of meat.
"I'd like to help… Please let me…" Keima refocused. It could talk. He wondered then if wounds like that were nothing to demons—He mentally slapped himself. Right. He was in the middle of selling his plan.
Did he really need to? He asked himself.
"You have to understand, demon. Clearly. I don't say this lightly. The fact that I'm talking calmly to you like this while we're under siege by the mal is-" A roundhouse kick. That twisted his spine and left him only one leg to stand on. The malevolence's parting blow of a whip-like appendage razed a line of skin on his back. "-a definite sign that this is serious.
"I don't know how demons think. So I truly do not know how you'd react. But I know how humans will react. They'll shout and scream and maybe weep. Their stunted views of the Real Real will be challenged, leaving their minds a shuddering, liquefied mess. The experience will be horrifying. (Or it may be enlightening) They may rant, rave, go blind, go deaf, go mute, piss all manner of liquids on themselves, fall into a fetal position, heck they might even faint and die. You need to know that all of the above—and a lot more I won't mention—might happen to you if you do this.
"Would you risk it, just to help me?" Well she'd already risked herself for him once. It wasn't that hard to extrapolate her personality from that act.
But he had to say all this, even if it made him sound like a delusional middle-schooler.
After all, this—this act would be a first in many centuries. No Katsuragi had ever had to make this decision (though the previous Katsuragis would not have gotten into this situation in the first place, a traitorous thought whispered, stabbing his pride in just the right place). Because of that, he would be the first to face whatever consequences would come afterwards.
"Yes…I'll help…" Even up close, Keima couldn't tell what the demon was thinking. He had no idea if that was selflessness or cluelessness. Maybe it was a little of both. A human would have been incoherent and irrational in her situation. On the other hand, self-sacrifice was almost never a logical decision, even for humans.
A flash of pink illuminated the darkness, and the demon sat up with the pink light suffusing her body. Elsie's face looked pained as she kept a palm on her wound. Some of her past vigor made a second appearance on the demon's face. "What will you do… Mister God? Will you be using… love…?"
A sudden, coarse image of a familiar game-time scene occurred to Keima then, and a laugh, inappropriate as it should have been right then, threatened to escape him. He settled for a snort, hiding the amusement on his face by looking away.
Love. Of course.
He could use that.
The idea was indeed novel. It was even appropriate for this current situation.
But he just couldn't accept the fact that it had been the demon who'd given it to him.
"…Yes. You could say that." The demon squirmed, which made him ask: "Are you sure you don't want to clear your head first?"
"Eh? Ummm… no… I mean—aren't we still in trouble?" replied Elsie, and to punctuate her query, the seemingly relentless malevolence mustered another assault.
He was now free to smile. If this were an explosive, bombastic prologue to some modern fantasy action game, he'd be unleashing some sort of secret power to end the conflict, involving ESP or magic or some really cool martial arts by now. It was that, or he'd be like the demon here, watching with gawking awe as something incredible and abnormal happened before his very eyes, before launching into a new world that had been closed to him until that moment.
This moment was nothing so special, or dramatic, or even remotely human -like. It was mundane as some other prologues went.
He did a jumped and kicked out with his remaining foot, slamming his ankle into the malevolence's gut. It didn't travel as far as before, but it bought him and the demon time.
Keima took the demon's place, collapsing to the ground in a near-senseless heap. This was as far as his body could go. He'd lost too much blood.
"Mister God!" Utter concern was delectable…no, focus, detectable in her voice. The light made her face so much like a plump, ripe fruit…
He clenched a hand.
Looking up, he nodded downward, where the circular buckle was, free of damage and blood. "Quickly… the belt… the buckle… take it…"
"Eh?"
"No time, please, demon! Now! The Sign, seize it, remove it… keep it with you—at all costs."
The dark world seemed stifling now, bearing down on his senses. He could barely see the demon's delicate appendage reach down hesitantly, barely see her jerk violently upon Takahara's resurging bellow, barely even think—
In that moment, Keima felt surer of his own body than any human in the world could claim for theirs. Every system sending its dying maydays, every cell of blood scrambling about in chaos, every spark of the synapse, every hormone dying out—
"Remember demon!" he shouted into the encroaching void. "Keep it with you at all costs! Atallcosts-! Atolco-! Atelce- teckil- "
There was one, final pain. The earth shook. A volcano erupted.
And so, the body of Keima Katsuragi died.
What follows is a brief, broken account. Most were from the experiences of one Elsie de Lute Ima as she described in her report to the chief of the Runaway Spirit Squad. It was an understandably vague, disjointed account. It was even nearly struck off as invalid and inadequate, were it not for the intercession of several top-performing demons in the same squad.
Where to start, where to start. (Yes, she had said this)
She clutches the circle close, crouched before "Mister God". Mister God's body is nowhere to be found. She claims an impression of carrying a weight far heavier than it seemed.
"You should… mmm…close that mouth… mmm… or I'll want to close it for you…" It would say to her.
Its voice speaks without malice, without distress.
It was a thing beyond words, billowing over the park like a nimbus, a shapeless aggregate of primordial foam, with a myriad of protruding, flexible limbs writhing and stretching and receding over its slightly luminescent surface.
("I mean, It didn't feel wrong or anything," she would say in response to a previous question. "But I really don't know how I'd describe it without actually showing you." And she did.)
One of its limbs, slick with a sickly sheen, reaches down and gently flicks Elsie's chin up, closing her wide-open mouth. It said those words she'd said it would say.
There comes a clash: mass against mass, miasma against miasma, tentacle versus…whatever it was the spirit would use.
It is a contest/there will be no contest.
The spirit is/will be in its mercy.
Like macroscopic cells, one will engulf the other in phagocytotic glee.
"Best… mmm… to look away… mmm… not like… you'll be able to…mmm…"
Elsie could no longer see the host. She hears (but is not sure) grunts, moans and squeals.
She is then wondering if she made the right call (while holding the circle before her like a talisman).
It shivers, this gigantic, amorphous bag, as if something were struggling to escape. Elsie thinks it might be much like an oversized stomach, after just receiving its fresh, living fill.
"His" work begins.
"Love… mmm… love… mmm…LOVE…"
There came a rumbling, at the same time sounding like thunder and a famished belly.
Elsie's own stomach twists, hearing a scream: long, prolonged, and subdued. She wobbles to her feet, ready to start an inquiry, however much she doesn't want to, as though the only thing she wants to do is keep her distance. (Later she would say she could not identify the feeling that had almost made her turn her back on her honor as a demon)
A limb slapped her hand away. Another tries to loop around her waist tentatively.
Still another slaps it away. Several others hover near, still and almost watching, as if they'd waited for something. Waiting on her.
She bristles, as if on the attack. (Elsie still cannot rightly explain why she felt slightly threatened by the limbs, as if they were a threat she hadn't identified).
She asks questions, first in a low murmur, increasing in volume for each time she repeats them. She was uncertain if it had heard.
As if in response, there was a grand assortment of slurping and gurgling, almost like a dozen hungry pig-demons lunching greedily on something wet and slimy. It pulsed and undulated, it foamed and stretched.
But that does not answer her questions. So she stands, waiting, wounded, battered. Oblivious.
It would continue for two minutes. ("Are you certain of that?" she would be asked. She would hesitate, rightfully distrusting the nagging feeling that it had lasted for perhaps close to an eternity. Then she would shake her head, and point out that the human had claimed the pocket dimension would only last fifteen minutes. Dokuru will recall no mention of it in Elsie's account, but will decide not to speak.)
She hears the thump of a body falling to the floor, at the same time that the thing before her visibly expands like a plume of smoke. At the center of the luminous mass, a large human eye the size of a volleyball forms, staring in the manner of a cold, dead fish.
Elsie realized she'd been staring at its back for the whole time.
She then heard several splurts and pops, and what sounded like a sigh (-"…sounded… 'disappointed'? Could you elaborate, Member Elsie?").
She hails the thing cautiously. The circle weighs like a whole firetruck now—but she can still manage. "M-mister… God…?"
Its entirety wobbled, as if it only just realized Elsie's presence. A score of sinuous limbs instantly surged forth and swarmed around her, making her step back in her first instance of fear. At the last moment, they stopped, quivering, poised in midair like sightless snakes about to strike. Two eyes, similar but smaller than the first, oozed into existence, and she had the feeling their gaze was on her.
"mmm… demon… mmm… are you still you?... mmm… demons… mmm… you are interesting… mmm…" A single limb seems to hesitate, and then stretch over to touch its tip to the devil's cheek. Elsie remembers cringing. "mmm… apologies… mmm… it is… mmm… so very tempting… but forbidden… forbidden fruit… " She fought back the urge to gag and instead stood straight, as proper a demon on a mission as she had to be.
("Under the circumstances", she would be told, "You did very well with that first encounter.")
"Um… is the spirit…?" Elsie tried staring at the unblinking eyes, but the biggest quickly unforms from the shapeless thing's surface at her question.
She would gasp in the next moment, when another group of limbs then emerged from the spot where the eye had been, and in their grasp would be a familiar sight: the smoky, black-white, equally-though-slightly-less-monstrous form of the runaway spirit. Some limbs would hold what looked like wispy, tattered pieces of the spirit, while five others encircled what was the main body: an eyeless horror that had three maws with jagged protrusions that were not teeth, each gnashing separately in outrage.
"mmm… the human's despair… mmm… feisty… stubborn… wonder why it… mmm… seeded Takahara… "
Elsie stared transfixed at the squirming thing; furiously trying to remember what she should do be doing. "What will you- are you going to… eat it…?"
Here, and in the debriefing, there is a prolonged pause.
She heard an abrupt, loud squelch, and she had the good sense to jump in surprise.
"mmm… ark! No… mmm… I thank you for the offer… mmm… but malevolences…"- here there is a loud hiss—"…are poor fare… mmm…"
"Did you-" she blinked, now remembering that she had to pull out the Container, an oversized jar with enough imprisoning magic to trap and transport runaway spirits. A strong suctioning force activated when she opened the lid, and the pieces of spirit held by the limbs began to be sucked in. She now looked like she was doing a balancing act, holding the circle on one hand and the jar that was twice her size on the other.
The dead eye reappeared, though Elsie didn't notice it until the process was already halfway done, and she looked back up to ask a question.
She represses a shiver at its reappearance. "Did you use love, Mister God? What happened to the host?"
"… mmm… entirely one-sided 'love'… mmm… is what it was… mmm… as to the human…" It made a general movement upward, its entire bulk lifting up to reveal the host, now returned to her normal form, lying prone on the ground. Elsie looked at it worriedly while she imprisoned the spirit.
"mmm… she will not remember… mmm… what had to be done… mmm… I suspect… mmm…" She wonders what "had to be done", and what it had done to the human, but for some reason she finds herself hesitant. And by now the process is over: the container sealed in yet another pocket dimension separate from this. She tenses, now holding the circle close to her chest. Mister God (the human) told her to keep it always with her, and she would, but there is this other Mister God (she hopes) to consider…
Now, several of its limbs approached, vibrating uncertainly around her. It was a stand-off of sorts, though Elsie would not become aware of it until much later.
"You may keep it…mmm…" it says suddenly. "It shall have… mmm… outlived its purpose… mmm…" (The circle would crumble into emerald dust right as she would begin the return trip) There is a grand shifting, and the thing scoops the Takahara's body in its arms. Elsie must have looked apprehensive, as a single limb in front of her shook left and right, as if in denial. "I must flee… mmm… and seek polymorph once more… mmm… this world… mmm… shall soon collapse… mmm… cooperation is appreciated… mmm… Takahara will be returned… mmm… appropriately…"
The thing seemed right, Elsie saw. Her vision of the world begun to spindle into many cracks that revealed light. There was a loud rumbling, like a stampede of unseen creatures.
"There is… mmm… only one love… mmm… I acknowledge… mmm…" Elsie sees two limbs extend farther than before, over to a spot behind her. They gingerly lift the two halves of the PFP and carry it back to the thing. It absorbs the pieces, looking like they dissolved into the luminescent, slimy surface. The eye disappears then, for the second and last time.
"Who… who are you…?" she asked, right before she was engulfed in blinding light and a wild, roaring sound.
"mmm…" she hears it rumble, though she can no longer see it.
"I am but a God."
Elsie stood at the center of the park, now painted with colors so bright and vibrant that she had to squint and rub her eyes. She looked around, seeking the thing, but found only the small, relatively lighter buckle, the murmuring buzz of the real world and the faint wind as her companion. She was quick to master herself, and with a gesture of her hands disappeared into the air.
("…and that concludes my report.")