Tamao's shoes rested from the green grass of the forest and began to step into the fetid heath beyond. She followed the glow of Nagisa's red hair against the sunbeams through the forest's canopy, until the sun faded and the lively forest began to turn gray.
This place was disturbingly wretched, so much that even the Cicadas stopped crying.
"Nagisa, can you tell me what you found now?" Tamao shouted out, wanting to stop from her sprint. As she slowed, Nagisa slowed down as well. She turned around slowly, looking towards Tamao. "Nagisa, tell me. Is it something about Yaya?" Nagisa shook her head.
"Kind of, but not exactly." Nagisa wasn't being direct, playfully leading on Tamao in order to be coy and alluring. Tamao was growing confused. "Can we not play games right now Nagisa-san? Just tell me why we came all the way out here, in a part of the forest I've never seen before. I'm getting really disgusted feelings about this place, it's not natural at all." Nagisa sighed, changing her stance from one of a playful little girl to one of a stiff-backed stalker, all business and no play.
"I have a confession, I am not the real Nagisa." her head hung low.
"...I'm sorry what?"
"I'm not the real Nagisa, Tamao Suzumi. I took this form because I knew you wouldn't have come here to the privacy of my forest and talk to me, to hear me out." Tamao stepped back a bit, shaking her head. "This joke isn't funny. You and Shizuma can stop now." Tamao smiled, nervously getting ready to leave the forest, but as soon as she turned around, Nagisa was there again.
"This isn't a joke, Tamao." Tamao was sent aback, her soft eyes turning stern and focusing on the girl before her. She began to put pieces together of her day, and how suddenly wrong everything became. "You were Yaya's demon. The thing she wanted to kill!"
The false Nagisa simply shrugged, her voice turning uncharacteristically deep and adult. Remi's own voice. "I'm not a demon, Tamao. I'm here to help you. If I wanted to kill you or harm you in anyway, wouldn't have I already done so?" She motioned to the emptiness of the forest.
"You were the one pretending to be Nagisa the entire time. In my bedroom!" Remi licked her lips a bit at Tamao's outrage. "Yeah, sorry. Couldn't help myself. I'm a bit of a pervert too. However, instead of peeking like you do, I just watched the both of you completely invisible. I can't wait to see what you two look like when you're fully grown. So much promise."
"I'll send you back to hell, you monster!" Tamao screamed, as she turned around and fled the scene. Unlike her other victims, apparently Tamao had the good sense to run in the right direction, slightly confusing Remi. She could have swore she disorientated her before she entered these woods, how was she not completely confused and running in nonsense directions like Yaya and Tsubomi had? Like Kasuza and Eri.
"You can't banish me to a place I'm already at, sweet girl." Remi grinned, as she took chase. The back of her shirt began to rise, and wings appeared. Tamao ran towards the green edges of the forest as fast as she could, but from behind her, the laughing had stopped, and powerful flapping appeared in its stead. Before she knew it, something had grabbed onto her hair, and clothes-lined her. She rose mid-air, then fell to the ground with a painful thud, and began screaming. Remi's hand closed over Tamao's face, and she felt a unnatural paralysis seep over her entire body. A creeping terror and confusion that bloomed in her brain and then turned all the nerves in her body off. What the hell was she looking at?
She could see the form of Nagisa begin to crumble away, and see the demoness for her true self, as her uniform peeled away and her red locks melted into a shining black. The soft pink eyes beginning to pulse bestial shades of green, yellow, red. However, that was not the thing that set her on edge, that made her mortified upon looking at her. It was the wings.
They were malformed, monstrous things, that blanketed the ground with shadow and made you feel unbalanced and sick upon looking at them, but one of her wings was different. It was sprouting feathers. Pure, heavenly white feathers, at first seeming like small color fragments but eventually grew and withered away the bat-like membrane. This demon had an angel's wing resting on her back, and nothing had ever looked so wrong. This creature was unworthy to bear such a glorious object.
"W-W-Where did you get that!?" Tamao whimpered, as Remi softened her grip on her face, and rose to her feet. Remi looked to her wing, and expanded it, glorious and shimmering in the bleakness of her forest's edge, almost as if it cast its own light. "It's not the where that's important, Tamao, it's the how. And How did I get something like this? I earned it. Our beloved almighty God gave me this, for helping the girls of Astraea Hill find their true loves." Remi's smile was so overfull with sadism and irony she could barely keep herself from laughing.
She was lying. How could God have rewarded such a monster with this? It had to be an illusion, a fake. She was a demon after all, if she could shape-shift into Nagisa, go invisible, then trying to confuse her with a little trick like this wouldn't be hard either. This demon was trying to attack her faith, her belief. This had to be a succubus, the great creatures of depravity, temptation, lust.
"I've...heard about ones like you." Tamao nervously said. "You believe you are helping others, you believe that terrible things have to happen no matter what, but that if you could change who suffers...that you can do good too." Remi was put off by the surprising comment. Tamao was insightful, even though she was faced with danger, with the threat of violation, with the threat of death.
"Demon, I can't trust you to tell me the truth about anything. I can only fathom you're here to spread suffering, to play God and to confuse those helpless to you. If you are going to kill me or subjugate me, then so be it. I won't play your mind games, your guessing games. Just get it over with."
"I'm not here to break anyone, I'm here to help girls like yourself. To defy the odds, and make impossible love real. It's not my fault that people want to be loved so badly, that they'd do terrible things for it. They choose to kill."
"Does being a Master of lies extend towards lies to yourself? Nobody who truly loves themselves talks about what they do in this manner. What about YOUR IMPOSSIBLE LOVES?" Remi's sadistic expression completely vanished, and her lip quivered, struggling what to say. She feigned her demonic swagger again, huffing air and flipping her bangs to the side.
"I can have anyone I want, there is no impossible love for me." Tamao let the fear in her heart slowly crawl away, while her expression went from despair, to pity. "Then...where is she?" Remi realized it, as the intimidation and aura of discomfort, disorientation and loss she set out was not working. That this girl had flipped this encounter completely around, and had start setting seeds of despair. Remi shook her head, muttering "no" under her breath. Her eyes widened and her wings spread wide, as she screamed and struck Tamao with her hand, letting the blue-haired girl fall to the ground, her white ribbon trailing slowly behind.
"I really hate girls like you. I really do. You are just like Miator. Typical that you would be in HER dormitory." Remi had to assert herself again, hide away her human side, and put the fear back into Tamao's heart, entice her into indulging the darkness. Break her spirit. This girl may have been strong willed, but she was not invincible. All people have a breaking point, and Remi was the best at breaking people. Even the indestructible Yaya caved in over time. Without a pendant, she may be unable to assault Tamao's mind while she's off campus, but she could hope nature would do the damage for her. "You know what? I'll have you begging to come see me again. I see how you long and love for that Nagisa of yours. How you see her with Shizuma, and fear openly. You stay awake at night just a few feet away from a girl you love, and can never touch her."
Tamao rose onto her hands, pushing herself back up to her feet. "I will not let you corrupt the feelings I have for Nagisa. Those are mine and mine alone. I will not lust for her or become a beast around her." Remi shrugged, trading an angry glare back to Tamao. "I don't have to corrupt anything in you. I don't have to reduce you to a yearning beast like I did Yaya. There's already a beast courting your beloved, and she will take her away from you, guaranteed." Tamao stood up, and readied to step away from the demon before her. "So, all this talk is making me think I'm not going to die, that you're going to just let me freely go back to the dorms and tell everyone the truth. Expose you, and have this horrible hell forest you live in exorcised and purged."
Remi nodded in agreement. "Indeed, that could be a problem, wouldn't it? Oh what ever could a deadly demon do to protect herself from a tattling human?" Remi flicked her wings and let red light blaze from her eyes, causing Tamao to fall to the ground in a daze, and passed out. Slowly the memories of everything that happened since Tamao entered the forest were erased, chewed away and sputtered into clusters of lost empty neurons. "This entire encounter has been a failure!" Remi swore, grabbing her hair and wiping tears off of her face. She walked over to the passed out girl and kicked her limp body. She didn't react, still and numb. "Where is my love eh? She's hiding in that grand place of angels, ascended beyond my grasp. I did everything I could to turn Astraea Hill into the place it was so many years ago. I attained the highest honor! I helped so many people! and even that wasn't enough..."
Remi stared at the blackness above her, towards the sky that her terrible trees hid. "You can't ignore me forever Miator. I'm tempting every one of them. Each one straying from the path. I will undo this beautiful place, and make it just as disgusting, monstrous and miserable as the rest of this world. When they're all gone, I'll be just like you. You and your beautiful white wings. I'll drain every single ounce of love and happiness out of these girls until I am an angel too, and I'll walk into heaven and violate everything beautiful there too."
Remi sat beside the unconscious girl, shaking her misery from her system in an attempt to recover from Tamao's sharp words. To deny the reality she spoke. Remi would try again, find a way to convince Tamao to be her pawn. What terrible mindgames to play, what heartbreak and depravity to sew? What would be the most terrible irony Tamao could endure? She would be here when she woke up, and ready herself to take away Tamao's ticket to heaven forever.