Disclaimer: I don't own BE/ANE or any of its characters!

Chapter two,

In the Shadows


That night, he dreamt about a life long forgotten. No, that's not entirely true. Not a life forgotten, but a life abandoned. It was on days like this where his dreams were more desirable than his own reality. Sweet dreams of nodding off to sleep without waking up hungrier than the night before and waking up with a little furry demon cat keeping his legs warm. Kuro… Oh, how he missed that little demon.

The cot creaked noisily as Rin groggily sat up, wiping the sleep from his tired eyes. He pushed himself up and out of his cot and walked towards his dresser, the floorboards creaking underneath his feet as he did so. Throwing on a long overcoat, he quickly scrubbed his face in the sink, trying to wake himself up. He looked up in the mirror, his own tired eyes reflecting back at him. His hair was disheveled, but he didn't care enough to fix it. Walking out the front door, he threw up his hood to protect him from the rain and from being seen. It had been a downpour outside the past few days and rain meant fewer people were out, but there was never any harm in being cautious.

He needed to find something to eat before the end of the week because when he got hungry, he got sloppy. Not to mention that the weekends were far too crowded in Tokyo to snag a meal without getting caught. He had tried that once before and ended up having to run for his life.

Rin walked down a few streets and stopped at the end of a narrow alleyway, watching people go by quietly. His eyes narrowed slightly in concentration, waiting for the ideal opportunity. It was, admittedly, more crowded than he had anticipated. He pressed himself closer to the wall of one of the buildings as he watched people passing by. Men in business suits rushing to work to finish a final assignment before the weekend, mothers ushering their children along in hopes of getting them to school on time, and reckless teenagers reeking of alcohol shouting in the streets and howling with laughter.

When the streetlights turned green, signaling that it was safe to cross the street, an opportunity presented itself. A woman. Rin glanced around, he had seen her around here before, the same time every week. She was completely alone, and Rin could practically smell her warm, sweet blood pulsing through her veins. She was too busy looking at her phone to notice him, perfect.

As she passed by the opening to the alleyway, Rin grabbed her roughly by the neck and dragged her out of sight. She tried to scream, but Rin covered her mouth to keep her quiet. She then tried to bite his hand, only to have her hair pulled, yanking her neck back in a way that would hurt, but not do damage.

"Shhh…" Rin whispered, "I wouldn't do that if I were you." The woman desperately tried to fight him off, but no matter how much she pushed or hit him, he did not budge. His grip around her neck was too strong. If only she could just reach the knife in her coat pocket without making a perilous mistake…

Rin looked around, making sure that no one else was nearby. While he was distracted, however, the woman gave a sudden violent lurch that caught him off guard. She pulled something out of her coat pocket and plunged it into his side. Rin gasped slightly, the sudden pain making him lose his grip on her.

Without hesitation, she took the opportunity and made a run for it.

Headfirst into oncoming traffic.

Rin hearing the squealing of breaks followed by a brief, bloodcurdling scream, and the horrible squelching sound of bones being broken into a hundred, no, a thousand different ways. The sound would be engraved into his memory for years to come.

"Shit." He swore. Well, at least she couldn't run off to the police and tell anyone that she had been attacked. He yanked the knife out of his side and examined the bloody blade, pocketing it. He let out a breathy chuckle, "Well… that could have gone much better." Sighing as he realized he still needed to find a meal, he whistled an unknown tune and walked back down into the dark alleyway, waiting for another opportunity to present itself.

-~x~-

"We have had a sharp increase in the amount of missing peoples reports," Arthur started, his booming voice louder than what was necessary, especially considering that it was just him and a few select others sitting around a small table, "now as you all are perfectly aware, we don't just take on every missing peoples report that we get. We have reason to believe that a high-level demon may be involved with these disappearances. And I, the paladin, have made it my own responsibility to get to the bottom of this. Now if you would, take a look at the folders that you have been presented with."

Yukio, who was the youngest exorcist present, grimaced slightly. The photos inside of the folders were truly grotesque and just looking at them made him queasy. He tried to flip through the photos as quickly as possible.

They were pictures of bodies. Bodies that had been viciously ripped apart in a variety of horrible ways. The first photo alone was what appeared to be the remains of a young adult male. Blood was sprayed across the walls of a dark alleyway, pooling at the photographer's feet. Strewn about were bones and pieces of flesh were all that remained. The demon that had done this clearly showed no mercy to its victims.

Yukio tore his eyes away from the photographs and tuned back into the conversation at hand, "… And if you would take a look at the last photo, it's the only image that we have of the…" He hesitated, as it trying to pick the most fitting name, "monster. It's not much to go on, but it appears to have a humanoid silhouette."

Yukio's stomach dropped and his mind immediately went to Rin. Every time he was on a missing persons case, one of two things always came to his mind. The first one being that Rin is out there somewhere and in danger, and the second one was that what if it was Rin who was behind these attacks…? 'Don't be stupid, it's not him. He's gone.' Yukio thought to himself. After two days of Rin not coming back to the dormitory or showing up to class, there was a search team created to look for him, Yukio being a part of it of course. After three months of searching and much to Yukio's dismay, the search was eventually called off. While they may not be actively looking for him anymore, Rin's case still remains open. When Yukio built up the courage to inform the Cram school students that Rin would not be returning to class, they were all devastated.

Yukio pushed those thoughts from his head, there was no use thinking about it. Rin wouldn't want him to be stuck in the past. Yukio smiled thinking about his older brother, remembering where he was, he quickly wiped the smile off of his face.

The picture really wasn't much to go off it, it looked like it was taken from a low-quality security camera. All that you could really make out from it was the back of a hunched figure over a dead body.

"We are investigating two possibilities for this case at the moment. One is that it is a high-level demonic possession, and we are not denying the possibility of it even being a low-level demon lord. The other one is just a rumor, but there have been mentions that this demon could quite possibly be a Kakuja. For those that do not know what a Kaku-"

"Kakuja's are just a myth." Someone interrupted, almost insulted that such a thing would be mentioned.

"If you would let me finish what I was saying," Arthur gave them a dirty look, "they are often believed to be a myth, but there was a recent study in the American branch where they were able to recreate the process on a low-level demon, now of course that experiment was shut down after we found out what they were doing, but the fact still stands that they were able to successfully create a Kakuja. A Kakuja, as you all know, isn't a type of demon per se, but actually a rare mutation that can occur from repetitive cannibalization." There was a deafening silence. A demon that would purposely eat other demons… That just went against the natural order. These demons are definitely not to be messed with.

"Now, this demon in particular has shown no distinct pattern in its killings, which makes it a little more difficult as most demons fall into a pattern. A lazy habit, shall we say? The odd thing about this one is that it does not limit itself to eating only other demons, but humans as well. We assume that it is killing the latter for the thrill of the hunt."

He cleared his throat and continued, "It has killed countless amounts of demons, but we aren't concerned about that. What we are concerned about are the 48 human deaths linked to this particular demon. We aren't sure if it's connected yet, but just last week there was a woman killed in a supposed traffic incident. Witnesses say that she just suddenly ran out into the middle of the road. Now, while this itself may not seemed connected, it was in the same area where this demon makes most of its kills, Shibuya. We will be taking a team in to investigate the area, and everyone here is included in this investigation. We leave in three days' time."

It was already dark outside by the time Yukio left the meeting. With so little information to go off of, this mission could end badly. Unfortunately, the demon had the element of surprise over them. Mauling these thoughts over, Yukio decided that a trip to the library may prove to be beneficial. It would certainly help in preparing for the upcoming mission. With a rare demon like this, any information would be useful.

Walking down one of the many towering aisles, a book caught his eye; Demonic Attributes: Uses and Causes. He skimmed through most of the book, nothing really standing out. Most of it was just about normal demons, with very few passages for the rarer demons and mutations. He nearly closed the book, but a passage caught his attention.

"… although the majority of Kakuja's are self-created through repetitive cannibalization, there are some demons that inherit a mutated gene that makes them predisposed to mutating. Occasionally these genes will not surface until the demon has reached full skeletal or sexual maturity. The last known sighting of a Kakuja was in England in the year 1888 when a series of killings occurred in a relatively small area…"

Yukio closed the book and tucked it under his arms, it turns out that this book could prove to be useful after all. He took the book to one of the empty library tables and began taking notes, the ticking of a nearby clock echoing throughout the library.