Author's Note : Hello! If you've come here, then you've probably managed to slog through the doorstopper known as Halkegenia Online XD

I admit that HalkO is a strange beast. As much a story as a story debate. And thus it's created a lot of writing prompts and side content over the years. Instead of clogging that up with my main writing, I've decided to archive it here as a mix of one shots, extra, and short multichapter stories by myself and other authors.

Best Regards!

-Abyss Out of Time-

by Zero0Hero/Triggerhappy

The City of Arrun glowed golden beneath the night time branches of Yggdrasil. The spiraling Trunk of the World tree splashed with the play of light as fireworks ignited over Arrun tower.

People were celebrating. A great victory had been won by the volunteers of the Defense Force and their Tristain allies and nearly three hundred of their fellow Fae had been rescued from the Isle of Albion.

It was as good a reason as any to celebrate. They needed something to lift their spirits in times as strange as these and the Faerie Lords had obliged. Party Favors had been handed out, generously donated by decree of the Lord Rute of the Leprechauns. Everyone knew he was just trying to show up Lady Sakuya, but they weren't going to pass up free party poppers and festival masks.

Almost everyone was wearing them. Depicting Demons and Foxes and all sorts of spirits. Between the masks and more than a few people breaking out Kimono, the space around the City Square was beginning to feel like a real festival.

A festival for everyone but a young Imp named Aya and her partner Saya.

"How the hell could you lose her?!" Saya scolded as they each scanned half of the street, looking for any sign of their lost charge. "She can barely move enough to get herself into trouble as it is."

"I know. I know!" Aya groaned. "Yknow . . . she hasn't been acting up as much."

"That's no reason to get sloppy." Saya admonished. "Her conditions isn't one that just improves!" The two girls looked to be about the same age, with lavender hair and eyes, but there was a distinct impression of matriarchal authorty in Saya's verbal lashing.

"Well, better or not, she was able to figure out the door lock just in the time we were gone." Aya observed. "But she couldn't have gotten far. No way she's figured out how to use her wings!"

"We can only hope." And hope they found her before someone else did. They did not need this getting back to someone like that big boobed do gooder Sakuya. People would never understand. Saya sighed as her eyes drifted back to the happy throngs gathered around kiosks and shop fronts.

"Mother . . . where are you?"

Suzu was confused and scared. Mostly scared. She didn't know where she was or how she had gotten there. Everything was strange, including herself.

It had started . . . Actually she wasn't quite sure when it had started. Her memory was jumbled and full of holes. More holes than memory it felt like. What she remember most clearly was her family home near the ocean. There was an American Naval Base nearby, and during the morning you could sometimes see freight ships arriving directly at the military port with supplies.

Suzu's parents remembered when the Americans had been enemies, but Suzu was too young for that, her first memory of them was listening to her grandmother's radio, along with her three older brothers, as news was reported about events in Korea.

What had happened after that became a little hazy. She remembered being older, and being in school . . . kissing a boy . . . and then the memories became steadily more fragmented as they spun off into darkness.

It seemed to Suzu a lot like trying to make sense of a badly scratched record, or the music on a broken radio. She could catch snatches of the song, sometimes even take a stab at what was being said, but most of it was so garbled, a syllable here, and half a word there, a jump to somethign different, and perceived in such a mind breaking stutter that concentrating almost made it harder to understand.

Then, after what felt like a very long time, she'd ended up here. Wherever here was. But even that wasn't something that had happened simply or all at once.

Suzu had come to her senses slowly. Like she was waking from a long and deep dream. A rousing that felt like it had taken days and days. A haze had been cast over her. A fog had filled her brain so that at first she had been forced to grope around blindly just to find her own thoughts. She'd felt locked in only distantly in touch with her senses.

A long time had passed. But it had passed very quickly. Flickers of light and dark as the sun and . . . moons? Drifted past a window. For the first time in a long time she remembered remembering, and the memories built up, stacking on top of each other until enough of them were gathered to collapse into insight.

Two young women had been taking care of her. She was sure of that. They brought her water and strange food and they changed her clothes and cleaned her body when she soiled herself. It had been frighening not being able to control her body. The most she seemed to be able to manage was chewing and mumbling out the shattered stream of surface thoughts that filled her head.

'Have to fix it . . . Have to fix it or he'll kick us out!" She'd stuttered.

"Okay Suzu-chan." One of the girls had said tiredly. "We'll fix it."

"Fix it good . . ." Except even Suzu didn't know what she was talking about. It made sense only for as long as she wasn't thinking. "Fix it good or he'll kill us!"

She could barely move, at first. But in the little corner of her mind that remembered herself, Suzu had been able to watch and listen. And slowly it had dawned on her to be fearful of these girls.

They were not as young as they appeared to be, of that much she was sure. They talked to one another more like her older relatives, her mother and adult sisters. And she couldn't possibly miss the strange lilac shade of their hair, nor the unnatural color of their eyes and ghostly palor of their skin.

Most of all, she was struck by the looks indifference in their foreign faces when they answered her. The faint tone of resentment . . . Of bitterness when they addressed her by name. The glances of detestation.

These women . . . these women were demons!

She had to get away!

By then Suzu had regained enough of her wits to be cautious. She'd only practiced moving when they left her alone. Although, once she'd regained control of her bowels, she couldn't stand to continue soiling herself. Luckily the women hadn't thought it too strange when she became cooperative enough to use a bedpan. It had given her an opportunity to learn more about where she was being kept. A strange house, nothing like the homes around her village.

Eventually, both women had left the house at the same time on some brief errand, and it had been Suzu's chance. She'd sprung from her chair, lurching unsteadily for the door. The knob had given her trouble until she had noticed the lock. But in the span of only a few minutes she had managed to free herself and was outside on a busy street.

Now she wondered if she wouldn't have been better off just staying in that room. She didn't know what her captors had intended to do with her, if they really were demons, probably eat her entrails, but at least there were only the two of them, and it was quiet.

Outside . . . outside was overwhelming . . .

She was surrounded by unfamiliar buildings, a whole city, full of sounds and noises she didn't know. It was at once too bright and yet too dark. Hot golden light contrasting against deep shadows out of which emerged every type of nightmare.

She had stumbled into the night parade! She was drowning in a crowd. Everywhere she looked walked Tengu and Goblins. She watched one of the crow demons vanish in a puff of smoke before appearing again a short distance away, laughing and jesting with one of his kin before both grew black wings and took flight.

She bumped into a woman so tall and pale, her black hair spilling almost down to her ankles, that Suzu was sure she had to be a Jorogumo and recoiled away, fleeing further into the crowd where she was confronted by still stranger creatures.

Giant rotund men with skin like raw earth, and packs of jeering creatures, they looked like men and women at first, but they had the ears and eyes of cats, their pupils alteranating between contracting slits and blacks that almost swallowed their iris.

A minstrel played a strange stringed instrument as, light glittering around him, he multiplied into two, then three, a whole band of one lightly stepping into the air and dancing over the crowd whilst raining music down from on high.

Everyone was laughing, everyone was cheering, everyone except Suzu. It was too much. She felt like her head was going to split!

Suzu saw her opening, a darkly lit alleyway. She had no idea what she'd find down it, but it was quiet and dark. She staggered off in search of refuge, unsteady on her feet and feeling at every moment like she was going to fall over.

It wasn't just whatever had paralyzed her for so long. Her legs felt wrong. Ungainly beneath her and threatening to trip over themselves like they had stretched inh her sleeps. Her hips were too wide, swaying heavily as she walked as if she was going to fall over to her left or to her right with each step. She walked with an awkward bow legged gate to keep legs from chaffin.

And when had she gotten so fat?!

Suzu threw a hand against a cold stone wall, grateful to at last have found a quiet place in which to catch her breath. A few of the strange beings gave her odd looks as they passed, but they didn't seem interested in bothering her. It didn't take long for her to discover why.

The alley was full of shops. Most of them were shuttered for the night. But their door lights cast enough glow to see by and one paned window happened to be struck by the light just so that it made an accidental mirror. Suzu caught site of her reflection and froze.

'That's not me!' Suzu thought wildly. The girl in the reflection looked like the sister of the women who had spirited her away. Lavender hair and eyes, ghostly pale skin, pointed ears.

Suzu could quite believe what the glass was telling her. She pinched her cheeks, hoping it was all a dream and she could wake up atop her futon. But not only did it sting her stranger's face, the skin was unnaturally squishy and stretchy, like she was made from some kind of elastic.

And that figure!

Her bust!

And her butt!

All of it, all of her, threatening to spill out of the dangerously high and scandalously low dress she found herself wearing.

Had eating their foods done this to her?! Those women . . . They hadn't just spirited her away! They'd turned her into a demon like them!

If Suzu had been terrified before, she was hysterical now. If her parents had seen her, they'd have killed her on the spot as a monster. Even worse! They'd disown her! She sank to her knees, hugging herself, wondering what had she done to deserve this?

Suzu's whole body trembled. Her family had never been rich and things had been hard for them. She had learned to cry quietly. Which was why she was surprised when a voice got through to her.

"Hey? Are you alright Miss?"

"Hugh?" Suzu slurred sloppily, wiping her eyes, she squinted through her tears until she could make out a man smiling as he leaned over her.

At least, she thought it was a man, or rather a boy. His feature, especially around the eyes, had a strange sharpness and his skin was ashen, like a walking corpse. 'He's a demon . . .' She thought, sniffling. 'But I'm a demon now too.' And the way he spoke to her was friendly. She didn't think he was going to hurt her.

"I'm . . . I'm lost." Suzu sniffled. "I don't know where I am or how I got here."

"I see." He said. Though he clearly didn't. Still, it was the first genuine kindness she could remember since winding up here. "Do you have any friends . . . or family . . . I mean here with you?"

Suzu shook her head. "N-No. I don't think so."

"Well . . . You can't stay out here. I work at the Cafe right there." He pointed to an open shop, warm light spilling from its windows. Somebody had crudely painted a pair of playing dice on a wooden sign over the door. "We're getting ready to close up for the night, but the owners are nice people, they'll let you stay inside until we can figure something out . . . My name's Corvo by the way."

"S-Suzu." Suzu sniffled. "Hirano Suzu." Now that she was able to get a good look at him, his gaijin features weren't cruel, even if they belonged to a demon. He wore a vermillion apron over dark clothes, bits of pencil and a notebook protruding from the pockets.

What sort of Demon dressed liked that, she wondered.

"Wait, did you use your real name for your avatar?" The boy asked. He helped Suzu unsteadily back to her feet.

'Avatar?' Suzu wondered. Oh! It was probably bad to give a demon her real name. "Uhm . . . Actually I lied before." Suzu stammered. "My name is . . . uhm . . . You can call me . . . Call me Rin!" She decided, mentally apologizing to her big sister.

She didn't think this 'Corvo' person was going to believe her at first. Could Demons tell if you were lying? But whatever he was thinking about did not trouble him for long. He shrugged and smiled. "Well, alright. Right this way, Rin."