The air remained heavy in the Den, close to being suffocating. Lucifer looked from the upper section of the main hall down on the people, watching them move and talk. There was anger, confusion, sadness and disbelieve in their eyes, their walk and their voice. They continue to deny the possibility that the first unit leader was - in fact - dead.

In the corner another group tried to persuade Tsubaki to send them as additional search party. Her cold voice cut through their plea like a knife, making them fall silent in an instant. Again, she ordered them to stay put and wait for orders from above. Then she turned around and left them standing there.

Lucifer narrowed her eyes for a second. His God Arc vanished, they couldn't track down the signal of his armlet and there was no body to be found as they cleared the area.

She clicked her tongue.

He ended up dead sooner than she had expected, but then again, she hadn't foreseen that their haughty girl's mind had been played with. Of course, she had been in treatment for a traumatizing event in the past and that she would shut down in too stressful situations.

But this was not only a nervous breakdown. As far as she had seen, Alisa had directed her God Arc against Lindow for a split second before that. It was like she instinctively followed a command and then, at the very last moment, fought against it. She had seen this before and considering the circumstances, it was very likely that the girl was brainwashed and walked like a ticking time bomb among them.

There was a difference between keeping people in line by making their life a living hell and straight up trying to assassinate someone, especially in such a "non-subtle" fashion.

She walked down the last few steps of the stairs on which she was standing on, her eyes still set on the group of people who broke their heads over the whereabouts of the first unit leader.

"Hibari?" In the corner of her eyes the woman flinched a little bit before she answered in a soft tone, "How can I help you?" "A mission, please. I will go out solo today."

The young woman at the corner blinked. "Again?" Lucifer gave just a short nod to confirm her statement.

"Someone has to keep these critters in line. And with these circumstances, it's best I work fulltime."

Lindow was most possibly dead, Alisa out of action, Sakuya clearly lacked sleep and suffered from the loss, which only left Kota and Soma as fully active in the first unit. With these prospects, she preferred to go alone, train and stock up materials if she had the chance. She wouldn't take a big aragami alone just yet, but she would hone her skills so that it soon would be the case.

Just because it was her unit leader which happened to die this time than just some guy she hardly knew, wasn't reason enough for her to just stop doing her job. She was here to kill aragami and she would probably continue doing it until she was next.

Hibari tipped away besides her. "Have you...visited her?"

"Visitors were not allowed the last time I was there. Considering that she had a complete mental breakdown and is taking tranquilizers, it is hardly surprising."

"I see...poor Alisa."

Lucifer crossed her arms before her chest. Lately, she often stalked around the sickbay, trying to pick up more information about Alisa's condition. Sometimes she had heard her scream, people had told her that she was completely delusional, apologizing to her parents and then to nobody in particular.

She had seen people being a complete mental mess before and it never was a pretty sight. Maybe she had a chance to gather at least get a better look at the situation if she managed to get into this room.

"Maybe I should try visit her again.", the woman wondered. "Is there still time until the next slated departure?"

"Yes." She typed away on the keyboard again to look up the corresponding times and paused as her eyes spotted the correct data on the screen. "An hour, actually...If Alisa is wake and you get a chance to talk to her...Tell her to get better soon."

"Will do.", Lucifer muttered under her breath as she climbed up the stairs again, walking towards the elevator and pushing the button. She leant against the wall, chewing slightly on her lip and let herself becoming lost in her thoughts for a moment. Even when visiting wasn't allowed at the moment, she would still try to sneak in to get a better picture of the situation.

Now that Alisa had done the job she was brought here to do in the first place, she was turning into living piece of evidence against the one who tried and possibly succeeded in killing Lindow and with that, she was a liability they had to get rid of. Nothing was better than to just silence her with meds, deeming her as a "special case" that needed to be treated elsewhere and then slowly let her "disappear".

Such a sneaky tactic wasn't something she was confronted with before, but it wasn't something she was entirely unfamiliar with either. Normally she wouldn't stick her nose into such a fickle business, even when Lindow had asked her to do it. But on the other hand, she didn't particularly like such things done under her nose either, especially if they interfered with her new profession in one way or another.

Lucifer sighed deeply as she walked over to the sickbay. Despite her knowing better than to meddle with such affairs, she grew curious about this "incident" and that wasn't a good thing for anyone involved. The woman looked at the door, hand wandering to the doorknob, pushing it down.

Surprisingly, it was open.

She peaked through the gap.

Unsurprisingly, Alisa wasn't alone.

The man with the yellow bandanna spotted her, chewing on his cigarette like he would swallow a curse before he set up a smile.

"A-Ah, are you Alisa's friend?"

Lucifer fully entered the room, closing the door behind her and made a slight bow. "Lucifer, member of the first unit. I am the other New Type and was concerned about her well being." She glanced at the bed where the girl lay, still silent and pale. Her chest was raising and falling in a calm manner.

"Unfortunately, I don't think you can talk to her right now. She had another breakdown so we had her...you know." He sighed deeply.

"I see." Her fingertips wandered to touch Alisa's hand, slightly touching the skin. Suddenly a blaze of white went through her vision upon contact and an insecure feeling flooded her mind. It slowly drowned itself into another, darker scenery but then she felt her hand snap back so the forming picture vanished from her view.

It left as soon as it appeared. The girl stirred in her sleep, eyes opening slightly as she slowly came back to reality.

"...T-That's..." The doctor swallowed. "I have to report to this." He mumbled before bolting out of the room. Lucifer blinked and shook her head as the vision slowly went back to normal. Just a second after that her head started to throb painfully.

She frowned, gritting her teeth and rubbed her forehead in an attempt to soothe the pain.

As the feeling slowly ebbed away, the woman looked at her right hand back to the still half unconscious girl whose eyes drifted close again.

She was absolutely sure that this flash hadn't been her imagination although it was too short to actually 'see' what it did besides the headache that came after it. Her fingertips slightly dug themselves into the palm of her hand.

At first she felt insecure if she should touch the girl's hand again. God only knew what this 'effect' really was but on the other hand was the growing curiosity. Maybe it was an ability which could provide useful later on when she discovered how it worked or rather what it did.

Slowly, cautious and still unsure of what to expect of this action, she let her fingertips just hover above her comrade's hand, close enough to feel the warmth of her skin, far enough to not touch her. Lucifer took a last deep breath before she decided to plunge herself into the unknown again by taking her hand fully.

And it was more than she had liked.

For a moment she felt like she was thrown against a wall, hard enough to force the air out of her lungs and for a second she just tried to breathe and failed for the first two seconds. She commanded her hand to let go but she was still enchased in this strange whiteness with no sign of a way to escape.

Before she could curse herself for being too curious with such dangerous things, something changed. She felt agitated but happy.

"Ready or not, here we come!"

A cheerful voice of a women rang through her ears and Lucifer opened her eyes. She looked through the crack between the two doors of a wooden cabinet or closet. A hand was over mouth and she felt how she tried to calm down to not breathe too loud.

Clearly she was hiding from someone but it didn't feel threatening.

A feeling of warmth and comfort filled her as the woman called out again. Two people entered her view this, a man and a woman. They were searching for her, laughing, smiling as she repeated the words again and again.

"Ready or not, here we come!"

It was just a simple game of hide and seek. Then suddenly the couple stopped, their head snapping into a different direction. The relaxed posture of them stiffened, the woman took a step back, ready to run away. Lucifer blinked, confused and she felt her feet slightly moving on place. Now she was feeling nervous, uncertain if she should reveal herself.

It was then, the woman let out a bone curling scream and a huge beast launched itself at the couple. She could hear fangs and claws ripping through flesh and her vision focused just on the pooling, growing red on the ground.

She couldn't speak, mouth hanging slightly open as she just listened to the sickening noise of dying screams and bones cracking. It got harder to breathe as fear paralyzed her body. She only managed to whisper to stop again and again. A voice of a small girl coming out of her dry throat, crying, begging, but it didn't end.

Blood dripped on the ground. The beast turned to her, jaw stained with liquid red and gazed with its monstrous face into the furniture in which she was hiding. She didn't move and didn't scream. She just could stare at it.

Then the scene shifted into darkness and she felt herself blink slowly to accommodate with a much brighter setting.

She was sitting on a bed and looking into a computer screen. A man with a white laboratory coat was standing beside her. Unfortunately Lucifer didn't clearly see his face but she had a slight idea who it could be and this just confirmed some of her fears.

He showed her pictures of different types of aragami, amongst them one of the one she had seen before.

"That is the aragami that killed your mommy and daddy!"

She saw the beast a couple of times again from different perspectives and suddenly it turned into the picture of a man with black hair.

Lindow.

"Ajin duva touri. Say this phrase and it will fill you with strength to beat it."

She did what the doctor instructed as her eyes were still glued to the screen.

"...Ajin duva touri..."

Hate and anger rushed through her body as she saw this face again and again. Her hands moved as if she was in trance, everything blurred as someone else seemed to take the control of her actions.

"Ajin duva touri."

The words echoed through her head, pulling her mind down and she felt like she was falling. It was hard to form a thought, or even a word. Something controlled her and let her dance like a puppet on a string to fulfill the order implanted into her head.

"Revenge your parents and kill this aragami."

Lucifer narrowed her eyes and her hand balled into fists.

"You can't control me."

The simple sentence in her mind suddenly caused the world around her to shatter and she started to fall into the darkness below.

Something stirred beside her.

Alisa's eyes were fluttering open again and this time they moved to gaze up to her.

"...It's you..."

Those words finally shook her out of the stupor her body still remained in and Lucifer tried to respond with a faint smirk to affirm that she had heard her.

"You have seen it, haven't you?...A warm presence, it was you, wasn't it?"

"A warm presence?" The older woman muttered confused as she crossed her arms before her chest

"What are you talking about?" Then she shook her head. "Let's talk about something else…Were those people your parents?"

"I-I…They..."

"Take a deep breath." Lucifer instructed her which the panicking female did almost immediately. As the girl finally spoke, her voice was breaking here and there from the strain of emotions.

Then after a while she broke down into sobs.

Right in front of her, Alisa began to cry and beg for forgiveness, holding her head and sobbing while Lucifer just stood there and watched.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry..."

In the end she was just remained a child.

Suddenly Lucifer's body moved on its own. She bent forward and warped her arms around Alisa's shivering form. Carefully she embraced her, stroke through her silver hair, like a mother who consoled her little kid. She felt the wetness of her tears as the girl's hands started to twist themselves into the fabric of her jacket and as her mind finally progressed her action, her body stiffened.

The girl calmed down after a few minutes.

"I'm sorry...I don't know myself what is even going on."

Alisa looked at the wet stains that littered the jacket and her head turned away, embarrassed.

"T-Thank you."

Slowly Lucifer let her go and settled down on a chair near her bedside. A deep sigh escaped her throat as she titled her head backwards to look at the ceiling. Her fingertips were shaking slightly but she hid them before Alisa was noticing that something was wrong. Besides peaceful social contact, body contact never had been her strength either. Normally she would avoid getting hugged under any circumstances.

The fact that her body just moved to console her on its very own was a very unnerving experience.

"I'm glad you finally came around. The first good message after what happened."

Alisa looked at her hands.

"After...Lindow..."

"Disappeared. We haven't found his God Arc or bracelet yet." While Lucifer was fully convinced that he was dead, she didn't want to send the girl down into the abyss of uttered apologies again. She had to get information and the more, the better.

Alisa began to shiver again, hugging herself. "I-I don't know what happened back then. Suddenly...he..."

"Relax, Alisa. Don't push yourself too much now." Lucifer interrupted her in a calm tone. "You should rest and collect your thoughts, alright?"

But was no use in forcing her now to spill every detail of her life. It could only trigger another breakdown and Lucifer wasn't really keen on repeating this whole thing again.

She stood up, ready to leave, but the girl caught her by her sleeve.

"Y-You will come back later, will you?"

She slowly rose one eyebrow and just looked at her.

"I-I...W-when you have time." A small smirk crossed the older woman's lips.

"Don't worry. You won't get rid of me that easily." Alisa released her and returned the smile albeit snakingly.

"U-Understood...I-I will see you later then."

She could still feel her glance resting on her back until the door to the hallway finally closed itself behind her. With a short shudder, she tried to shake off the sensations she had experienced earlier and still lingered in her mind and focus on the knowledge she just had acquired.

Alisa had been used as a tool to get rid of Lindow. It would be more surprising if she had just killed him out of different motives and that it had nothing to do with someone trying to get rid of him in such a spectacular fashion.

The more interesting part was that she was brainwashed into it. They had planned this and maybe they were ready to install such people into other units to get rid of 'unpleasant' subordinates.

"Why would they go so far just for one…"

Footsteps echoed through the corridor and ripped her out of her train of thoughts. She looked up and smiled slightly at the older man as she nodded softly in his direction.

"Good evening, Dr. Oguruma."

"Ah, good evening to you too. Visiting your comrade again, I see, but due to the medications I doubt you...even though she just woke up for a second." He sighed. "Maybe the meds are still too strong."

"She is awake."

With satisfaction she watched how this face turned from genuine surprised to a displeased grimace. He tried to hide his expression with a cough.

"She is awake?"

"Yes, but I have left her alone so she could rest."

Then the doctor relaxed visibly.

"I see. You are the other New Type...Your name was Lucifer, was it? A strange name for a lady." He was quite quick to switch the topic but being his position, she guessed, it was a sign of nervousness.

"If I could get paid for every time I have to hear that." She smiled out of politeness and was well aware how unnerving it had to look for him.

"Truth to be told, I don't really remember my real one, but that is a long story and not very important." She cleared her throat, turning serious in tone. "How is Alisa's overall condition?"

The man frowned and crossed his arms, deep in thought.

"She makes progress. Give her a few more days and she will be back on the battlefield."

"Good, I was growing worried."

"Speaking of which, I have to check her up...So..."

"Oh, of course. I apologize. I didn't want to hold you up any longer." With that she stepped to the side and walked down the corridor, her hands stuffed into the pockets of her black trousers. Her smile vanished instantly as soon she heard that the door to the room closed.

"A few more days…" She mumbled to herself. These words left a bitter taste in her mouth. She couldn't be there any single day and waking hour. This would only draw attention if she did that even for a supposed comrade who was just 'worried' about her.

Yet she couldn't leave her with this doctor either.

Without a doubt, this man was the one she had seen in her 'visions' and she didn't particularly like it to leave Alisa alone with such a person. Who knew what he would do to erase the evidence of his involvement when nobody was there. Maybe, just maybe as long as she played it safe and stayed around her long enough, Alisa wouldn't fall victim to another brainwashing session or something entirely worse.

"For all that you claim to be, you are an awful liar."

The blunt statement let her slow down and she turned her head just slightly to see where it was coming from.

"Pray tell, Death God."

He looked at her or, more or less, tried to fill her with holes just with his intense glare. He was standing next to the vending machine just around the corner.

"Like you have forgotten your real name. Maybe it got lost between all the former names you used before that."

She lifted an eyebrow, mimic unimpressed by his accusation.

"Well…Did someone snoop around in my personal files? How very impolite."

"The last time I checked there were none to speak off."

Soma remarked calmly and opened the soda can in his hand. His eyes returned to her, showing the clear distrust he harbored and didn't even try to hide it. She chuckled, throwing her hand up as in defeat.

"So?"

"Who are you really?"

"A fighter, a soldier, a person, a weapon, a human, a monster…? Pick the one most suitable for this very stupid question." Lucifer retorted with a taunting smirk. "I am what you see, nothing more, and nothing less."

"And if I see a compulsive liar?"

The woman chuckled. "Then so be it. I don't care about names and titles. Not in the way you do, Death God. If you are expecting me to defend myself then you are very wrong. I see no reason to justify my actions to someone who doesn't even know himself."

"Stop sprouting this nonsense."

"Says the one who is drowning in self-pity because he is called a monster, a jinx."

She heard how the metal of the can was pushed in and he threw her this deadly but quite lively glare again.

"You know nothing about me." He spat, keeping eye-contact and trying to threaten her with it into submission. The air changed. She could feel the sudden bloodlust coming from him and the pupils in his blue eyes were just mere slits now. While others would have left it at that, she decided to push forward.

"And you don't know a thing about me. That does make us equal, does it? Do you really believe what the others tell about you? A monster?"

He kept quiet, maybe in hope, she would just get the gist that he didn't particularly like the subject but she didn't care.

She frowned, her smirk turning faint now. "Seriously? You, a monster?"

"The honest, blunt person in front of me believes he is a monster because people just die around him?" Then she snickered. "Or do you just want to be the scapegoat for people who search for someone to blame?"

"Don't speak of me as if you know me." Another warning from him to make her stop talking.

"Even without knowing who you are, I can see what you do. And your actions don't honor your title."

Lucifer shook her head and fell silent for a moment and then these words came over her lips without her willing them to.

"For a Death God, you are simply too kind and caring."