Neither Rin nor Daphne could get a word in edgewise over Mephisto's hysterical laughter. They'd come into his office and Daphne had opened her mouth, probably to ask to see the files she'd given him, but he took one look at her haphazard appearance and just cracked up. His face was down on his desk now, little giggles rising up, his shoulders shaking. Daphne's face was red, but she wasn't embarrassed. She had that look in her eyes like she wanted to cut something's head off.

Eventually Mephisto sat up. "I thought we'd sorted out the flashfloods on campus after we banished that water demon," he said, wiping away a tear.

"It wasn't a flashflood," Daphne growled. "I was drawing out the demon from Miyajima and it tried to drown me. Do you still have those reports in here? We'd like to look at them."

Mephisto glanced at Rin, an eyebrow raised. "Yes, they're just here," he said, reaching into a drawer in his desk and pulling out the folder Daphne had given him. "It tried to drown you, did you say?"

Daphne didn't reply. Instead, she snatched the files out of his hand and walked away with them to a low table and a grouping of chairs on the other side of the room. Mephisto leaned forward and started to whisper, "I am under the distinct impression that your wife doesn't much care for me, Mr. Okumura." Rin might have responded, but Mephisto was already settling back in his chair and chuckling. "We missed you at this morning's debriefing."

"I was on call," Rin replied. Technically, he was still on call, but his status at command would show as being out in the field with Shura, so he wouldn't have to worry about it until she got back.

"Do you have anything to add to Miss Lux's report?"

"She gave you her notebook and told you about the demon?" Rin replied. He'd stopped trying to correct Mephisto on the whole "Miss Lux" thing a year and a half ago.

"She did."

"Then no."

The notebook was detailed. He'd added his own encounters to Daphne's and something about the series of events made him reluctant to constantly rehash information. In fact, he wanted to straight up forget the whole thing had ever happened, but that wasn't an option. Whatever the demon was, it had followed them. After Daphne's experience in the locker room, that fact was undeniable.

"Oh, but the water's going down the drains in the shape of a five-pointed star in the girl's locker room where the demon tried to drown Daphne," he added.

"Rin…"

Daphne's voice brought him to attention. He crossed the room quickly to the couch where she was seated. She'd spread as many of the copies she'd made and the original reports Mephisto had given them across the coffee table as would fit, and dug a damp receipt out of her bag to make notes.

"The exorcists listed on these reports…" She paused, putting the end of her pen to her mouth. "I didn't study them before—we were so focused on combing through every file in that office, but look." She tapped a few of the pages. "Names of our dead exorcists appear here…here...here, and here." She picked out several more as she noticed them. By then, Mephisto had moved behind the couch to observe as well. "Most of them are senior members of staff, and the field office is small..."

"So it makes sense for their names to appear so often," Rin said with a nod. "I follow."

"But, none of their names are listed on the new reports—the ones you brought to us, Lord Pheles." Daphne slid the reports in question down from the top of the table. "Nine senior members of staff and not one of them went on these calls."

"Huh."

"We send junior members with each other all the time, but we have the personnel for it," Daphne said, sitting back. She looked up at Rin and Mephisto. "I find it hard to believe that, in an office like Hiroshima, none of those exorcists would have attended these calls."

It was possible there were other patterns as well that he and Daphne simply hadn't noticed since they'd been so focused on the DAMAGES sections of the reports, and Rin was about to say so when his pager went off. He had barely even looked at the screen when his phone starting ringing as well. It was the command center number.

"Rin Okumura," he answered.

"Shura ratted you out," Yukio said on the other side. Rin gritted his teeth. Not even a hello from his own damn brother. "We need you on a manifestation in the market sector. Are you with Daphne?"

Rin glanced at his wife. "Yeah."

"Bring her with you if she's available," Yukio said. "We've got some mid- to high-level ghouls clustered around the fruit stalls, but they're behaving abnormally." Some papers shuffled audibly as Yukio checked his notes. "Moving counterclockwise—"

"In the shape of a five-pointed star?"

"How did you know that?"

Rin's heart stopped. He looked at Daphne and that was all she needed to pack up the files, swing her bag on over her shoulder and start out of the room.

"We're on our way, Yukio," Rin said, following after. "And we'll hurry."

Daphne was in a grand ghoul-slaughtering type of mood. Being nearly drowned by a malevolent spirit that had put you in a trance after apparently following you home would do that to a person. Well, maybe not your average person, but if there was anything Daphne was it was not average. She was an exorcist, and a damn good one if you wanted her opinion, and she wanted to kill something. She wanted to kill something right now.

Rin, unfortunately, was very good at reading her moods. Particularly the murderous ones.

"Hey, hey! Slow down, would you?" he said, catching her up and forcing her to check her pace with a hand on her shoulder. "We can't kill the ghouls. We have to observe them."

Rin Okumura. Talking about observing a demon. Daphne laughed, but it was more of a snort. She did slow down, at least, letting Rin set the pace instead. He was right. If the ghouls really were moving in the way Rin had said Yukio said they were, they would need to take data. They couldn't kill them. Yet.

Daphne's clothes were mostly dry by then, but she shivered in the breeze that was augmented by her movement. She secured her hair back as they ran, tying it into a knot on the top of her head, but it had come undone by the time they reached the market sector. Several lower ranking exorcists had set up a perimeter, keeping back the evacuated and the gawkers, but they let Rin and Daphne through with nothing more than a couple of nods.

Deeper in, near the center of the weaving rows of market stalls where the produce sellers typically gathered, was a pack of ghouls, perhaps twenty strong, circling around each other and moaning, tracing their steps, inexplicably, in the outline of a star. Instinctively, Daphne identified their alpha—a slightly larger model near the center of the group—and drew Castor and Pollux from their seals. She fell into a defensive stance, tracking the demons. Sure enough, their movement pattern matched the one she'd seen in the water almost exactly.

Spirit surged with joy when she sensed them enter—her beings, her precious yin and yang. She had been afraid in those first few moments after fleeing from the light one in the water, after leading her to the water, that she would never see them again. That they would be too frightened of her—but here they were. She could see them with her ghoul's eyes.

Spirit was experimenting. She hadn't meant to hurt the light one, only to see if hers was a body Spirit could share, and she had earned a lot of pain for her efforts. The cold silver of that blade as it had sliced through her arms still stung in Spirit's memory, but she had learned, at least, that that was why the light one smelled so strongly of Gehenna. She kept little pieces of it embedded in her back.

The dark one, however. Spirit was uncertain about him. She had sensed him get near to the goblins she had left behind, still connected though she had shed their skins, but that was all. Nearness was not enough.

She was about to lead her ghoul out, take it to rejoin the others—she had possessed each of them until she'd found one whose shape she liked and had left the rest behind, heading out of the marketplace until she'd sensed her beings—but a great rift into Gehenna opened and a blue light sprang to life before her. Spirit blinked.

She knew those flames.

"I can feel it, Daph," Rin growled, his hand flexing over the handle of a freshly-drawn Kurikara. "It's here, somewhere."

"The demon?"

He nodded. Daphne changed her stance to one a little more aggressive as she scanned the area. The exorcist leading the team on-site had been hurrying over to them, but the sudden flare of Rin's flames had startled him and he'd had to collect himself. He was approaching again, this time more cautiously.

"Can you increase the perimeter?" Daphne asked before the guy had even had a chance to say something. "We have reason to believe there might be a high-level anomaly in the area."

He swallowed. "Uh—um, yeah. Yes. Yes, we can do that."

"Great. Mr. Okumura and I will take the lead on the physical exorcism. You and your team should focus on containment and public safety." She added a smile to the end. He'd follow her orders. If you said anything with the right amount of authority, you could get almost anyone to do whatever you wanted. "Send back-up at your discretion."

The lead exorcist actually saluted before walking away, already giving orders through his earpiece to widen the perimeter. Daphne looked toward Rin. He was grinning at her.

"I love it when you do that," he said.

She laughed. "Focus."

The ghouls appeared to have increased their speed since Rin and Daphne had first arrived. The pair split from each other, circling the demons around either side until they met back up on the opposite end. It was odd that the ghouls weren't going after any of the humans in the area, or even showing signs of doing so. They lumbered in one massive clump, treading on the wreckage of one of the mobile fruit stalls that they must have overturned when they'd manifested. She looked closely, but none of them appeared any different from an ordinary ghoul. So where was the demon Rin had sensed?

"Is the pattern the same as the one you saw with the goblins?" Daphne asked.

Rin nodded. "I think so. It would help if I could see it from above." He squinted over his head, looking around for some place to land.

"It's definitely the same as the water…"

Rin picked out a tall, permanent stall and hopped up onto the top. A moment's observation and he was nodding down at Daphne.

"Definitely the same."

"Do you see anything else up there?"

He would understand what she meant—if he could see the other demon or not. They had no real way to know how high-functioning it was, whether it could understand human speech, so it paid to be careful. Rin shook his head after a moment and leapt down.

"I know what I felt, Daph."

She nodded. "I believe you."

They had reached an impasse. The ghouls weren't doing anything destructive. Rin couldn't see any other demons in the area and it would have been swept by the exorcist team as the perimeter had been set up. Typically when one arrived on the scene of a demon manifestation there was all kinds of havoc to sort out, things to kill. This felt more like shooting fish in a barrel.

"How did you exorcise the goblins?" Daphne asked.

Rin shook his head. "We didn't. They exploded."

Daphne drew her eyebrows together, but her confusion didn't linger long on Rin's statement. Instead it shifted to the ghouls, which had increased their pace and their moaning, and another, singular, ghoul that had appeared walking toward them from behind a distant stall. Rin bristled and, in an instant, the ghouls broke their formation.

Demons rushed in every direction, snarling and extending their arms to attack whatever they came in contact with. For some, it was other ghouls. For others less fortunate, it was Rin or Daphne. Daphne cut off the heads of the two that had made it to her first, leaned in to parry the claws of a third who stepped in next, then slice it through the neck. She glanced over to Rin. Five exorcised ghouls lay on the ground at his feet, and he was cutting through the remaining crowd to get to the lone one. Ghouls always traveled in packs, and this pack had been locked into a behavior only moments ago. But that one had acted on its own. Rin looked more like he wanted to kill it than find out why.

They didn't have time for either, really. The ghouls were quickly becoming unmanageable. Daphne hadn't expected them to break formation and so had been unprepared for the group to make a sudden move. They would have to kill the alpha if they wanted to keep the demons contained.

Daphne had located it before, so she located it again, making evasive maneuvers around the demons that attacked her on her way. The alpha was at the center, and she ran her blades through its heart before it could even raise an arm to acknowledge her. The rest of the ghouls dropped. Some distance away, Rin swore.

In an experience altogether new, Spirit was forced out of the body of her ghoul as it died. She was quick to leave, quick to disperse, quick to make herself scarce before the ire of those blue flames focused on her, but she could not help a thrill of excitement as she fled.

Spirit knew. She knew those flames. He was a demon.

She could possess him. But she would have to be stronger.

Daphne picked her way through the field of dead ghouls to where Rin was pacing circles around the one that had been by itself.

"It was here, Daph, it was here," he said as she approached. "I swear. That feeling—the feeling, it came from this ghoul." He pointed Kurikara at it. "I can't feel it anymore, but I swear to god."

His eyes were worried, confused, when he looked at her, so Daphne sheathed her swords in their seals and stepped over to take his arm. She didn't know what to say, though. They stood in silence and looked down at the dead ghoul until the team of exorcists arrived from the perimeter to assist the clean-up.