Lucky Souls

by Mushy Peaches

When Konata's father mysteriously vanishes, she and her friends brave the baneful fog of the kingdom of Boletaria, a land of demons, in search of him. Out of their minds, and in over their heads, they fight for love, one another, and to survive. Konami

26. Death

Lucky Souls

---

Chapter 26: Death

Free of the stuffy and positively ambrosial confines of her fleshly body, Hiyori merrily twirled and spun herself around the trees in her spherical soul form, assiduously seeking out her target, a place that she might overwrite herself upon an already written slate. The goal in mind being to tear the Storm King's will down around it so that she might control it from within, where destruction of the Arch-Fiend would prove easy. While she wasn't sure her own soul would be able to consciously overwrite the soul of the Storm King, she'd certainly try. In this formless form, she was capable of a heightened sense of awareness, specifically recognition of all things otherworldly and soul-seeking. This trait would allow her a far easier method of detection.

In the case of the Storm King, being the size of several castles, finding its soul wouldn't have been difficult. Yet she hadn't anticipated a sprawling thicket of life thriving atop its backside, the conglomeration of souls and energies she felt was burdening, overwhelming, if she still had human senses she'd be suffocating under the weight of the accumulation of noises and smells.

To single her target out, the soul of the Storm King, she'd have to center herself for such a thing. To slowly break away the shell, peel the layers of intelligence, sentience, and instinct that thrived amongst the living things that populated the Storm King's body. Miniscule things of a life-breeding nature were the first to be washed away, the plant life soon followed, those of no thought were the least affected by the Storm King's influence, and the easiest to ascertain as a false lead.

Yet the animals, scampering and scooting about, mindless and endless, their white noise was maddening and blocked nearly any sense of tracking she had. Behind their animated and nigh-involuntary minds was a certain feeling that set them apart from more heinous things, more impulse and less intent. It took a fraction of her will to concentrate and send their noise away, leaving only a pair of omnipotent, oppressing feelings humming from the center of the Storm King, from inside its body. One of these two powerful soul energies could only be the Storm King, as for the other, it was a mystery.

The goal was set, and audaciously she flew herself into the hide of the Arch-Demon, phasing through the solid walls of flesh in her vapor form past mountains of organs grander than townships, and an unfortunate beholding of the decomposing and corrupted layers of flesh that seemed to taint greener, browner, and blacker the deeper she ventured into its body. Curiously, despite the enclosed spaces, glimmers of sunlight could be seen clawing through open sores and wounds thick and deep enough that they broke inward into cavities never meant to come under the influence of the sun.

Layers of skin collapsed inward leading to alien parts of the body, the remnants of demon brood and even the scars of man himself were patterned across once pink, now blood-encrusted tubes and bindings of life sewn into the manta's body. Mucus-like webbings, black as the blackest hells seemed to radiate everywhere, clinging to everything and sapping the life from any blood sack or artery that managed to escape their encroaching drape.

The Old One's feculence truly riddled the poor creature to its very core, and by no means was it still truly alive with the removal of the majority of its important internals, atrophied from nonuse. Blood vessels suctioned together, overlapping and falling from their fragile networks, clogged with dead, hardened blood no longer traveling to their proper functions.

No analogous affinity to be life could be seen, only barely through the pretense of ruptured, inert bodily pieces could one have argued these to once be the production center of a living being. A fractured shell, a cavern devoid of life that now only propagated a disease crafted from an endless being. Hiyori removed herself from this place, shutting herself out from the horror that was the dead internals of this poor beast; she needn't cloud her mind with fatuous concepts such as pity when it would cause a failing in her concentration.

She reached the beacon's focal point but seconds later, arriving in an expansive, mostly-empty hollow of blackened, stony flesh. Here her target would be, eclipsed inside this blackened place, it was pitched black apart from the genial hum of a lone spectrum of whitish bloom from the center of the alcove. Above the lodestar, a still beating heart, resisting the natural flow of death the remainder of the body had undertaken in favor of a blighted, contravening existence. It thumped without blood passing through its mechanisms, it thrived despite the circumstance, and the extraneous ascendancy over it, that whitish gloss, was the perpetrator.

Hiyori motioned herself next to the glow, aware of the human individual standing below its oscillating whip, diminutive and salmon-haired, dressed in a garb of the purest, bleached white. Conspicuously she examined the apparently indifferent girl until she freed herself from her daze, eminently gazing back at the floating soul orb with a petrified whine.

"W-Who…? W-Wha..?" The priestess exhaled exasperatedly, spent from whatever process the recent interloper had delayed, for the better Hiyori figured, it looked and reeked of ill will.

While unable to properly voice her mocking in her soul form, Hiyori made it incontestably clear she was doing so with an almost giggling-esque series of whistles and toots. Twirling her starry body throughout the room as if the center of attention at a ballroom dance, she ended her routine by soaring directly at the sorceress that stood by the Arch-Fiend's organ by some strange machination, forcing her to duck her head as the billowy soul crashed into the bulk of the ruby red heart.

The suffering Hiyori felt from within the heart was palpable; it tried its best to overburden her, to subjugate her to its level of hardship. Hiyori resisted despite this ache of pain, perceiving as best she could, the imperceptible soul that lay dormant within the Storm King's most repressed places. It was here the emanation of the Storm King's soul could be felt, being wrought upon by the mysterious priestess who fashioned her will upon the far more domineering demon.

The child was apparently attempting to control the Storm King, to retrieve its most invidious emotions and goad them into madness. Hiyori didn't know the reason, but thankfully it seemed the cleric had done this scheming with a high disinclination, her will affixed over the Storm King's own was done so only lightly, and the reigns she tugged were barely attached at all. This reluctance was Hiyori's point of entry; she felt the fissure, the irregularity in the pattern of symbiotic waves of the soul.

She allowed her soul form to dissipate, so as to spread her own convictions and character within the Storm King's own, to fuse their souls into a conflicting, and weak product. Hiyori had imprinted herself onto many beings before, both human and beast, even lesser things held some fraction of soul energy within and were capable of possession, which naturally she had to attempt several times just for a bit of fun.

Surprisingly, the Storm King wasn't the most difficult soul to engrave herself within, this easy entry pointed to perhaps the beast offering her a passage with which to invade its mind willingly. Voluntarily perhaps, it allowed her access so that it might finally rest, but this was pure conjecture Hiyori muddled, it only made the job easier.

The Storm King's soul surrendered to her, and was rapidly and entirely consumed by the coming flood of Hiyori's far more amenable psyche. It absorbed any sense of the self that lingered in the carapace, until naught but Hiyori's own soul remained within the hampering muscle. Yet the Storm King's entirety was not annihilated, she could feel the steady beat of a stream of life within her soul, and she would use this life force to annul the Dregling affliction Kagami was suffering so soundly.

But the job came first, the elimination of the great one she now controlled. It took an application of strength to become acclimated to the uneasy feeling of being the puppeteer of such a giant beast, and that feeling of uneasiness would not be shed during her short stay.

Exponentially her senses began to return to her, but not those all too familiar human ones she had grown so fond of, the senses of the Storm King itself. She could see what it saw, a widened, blurry, horizontal stretch of rain-drenched plains and temples and plateaus that spread and trailed in every direction. Upon closer examination she realized the only way she was even able to see past the hurricane was a thin layer of sticky film coating lathered across the eyestalks of the manta, an evolutionary trait brought about for just such occasions. Surviving in storms for an entire lifetime, the beast would need a way to fight against the icy, bitter rain.

Her new body, as immense as it was, felt light as a feather. The bones within her scaly hide were hollow, and surprisingly brittle, she felt that with each and every unbearably slow flap of her gallant wings they might snap off. The absence of normal appendages of any kind brought about a most confusing euphoria, she wondered if perhaps the feeling was at all akin to how those of missing limbs felt, gossamer and subtle, a body not easily governed.

No sense of smell or taste either, the rumblings of a thousand tongues lathering the walls of her enormous, yawning throat proved as much. Coatings of metallically smooth blobs of slime drooped inward and outward from her venerable cavern of a mouth, brushed to and fro across her thousands upon thousands of tiny, sharp teeth by an impressive arrangement of bristles.

Hiyori had invaded the minds and souls of animals before, but not like this. While these phenomenons she perceived were alike in many ways to the creatures she possessed, they felt inconsistent somehow. The Arch-Fiend felt instinctual yes, but there was far deeper, eerily familiar predisposition saddled within the carnal cage. Vaguely the sensation she felt within the Storm King's soul screamed human being, perhaps a side effect of her soul being so far spread within the mountainous creature, yet it didn't feel like her own soul energy. Perhaps it was the Old One, and the tumors filled with sickness it brought, a likely reason for the all-too familiar feeling, but Hiyori couldn't chalk it up to the same omnipresent despotism of the timeless Old One.

The great machine she and Kuroi had found, could what the celestial sight device showed her be true? Could the machine really ascertain the true guts of the Old One? The supremacy, and terribly human control that seemed to radiate from wherever the demon's miasma seemed to spread, it was too familiar to be coincidence, too imaginable to be impossible. She was sure she knew the human disposition she felt, but she had to be sure, and she would find out as soon as the mission was accomplished.

The mission would only end in the Storm King's death however, and the panoramic extension of mountains, temples and waterfalls that she eyed on every side of her through her surprisingly colored vision, they all screamed of tombstone. All perfect places to smash the Arch-Demon headlong into and snuff out its life, with maximum collateral damage for bonus points. Were there no passengers to consider, including her own lifeless body, she'd have dived into the first jagged rock sprouting from the plateau, or dunked herself into the seas below.

A far-off sharp incline of an arc of rock bed curling like a toe-nail over the oceans below would be more than enough of an impact to utterly destroy the Arch-Fiend, slowly she zeroed in on the cliff, preparing the demon she controlled for its doom. She'd warn her allies before impact, however unlikely it seemed that they'd receive the premonitory cautioning, or register that the sirens call meant anything but another inhuman growl. Yet Hiyori would try, and in her demonic tongue she unearthed a gargling, convulsing roar, alarming all who rode the girth of the beast of a sudden hostile wind in the air. She could only pray, metaphorically speaking, that it had achieved some minor success, and they would at least take something away from the demon's low-toned bellow.

---

An indistinct and indiscernible boom of sound diverged through the air, swaying trees and brush, pulling the rain to its yawn. It seemed to excurse in all directions, coming from everywhere, reverberating off of everything else, chiming the very earth to screech along with it.

A sign perhaps that Hiyori had either failed or succeeded in her ploy to end the Storm King, but regardless of the outcome Kuroi took it as an ominous foreboding that something disastrous was upon them. She was prepared in full, tying one of her tools of the assassin trade, a thick and surprisingly strong string of metal-coated wire around her waist, the other end tethered safely to the mightiest tree she could find.

The excess of the rope slithered back, around Konata, Tsukasa, and Misao's waists, linking the four of them together in a hopefully unbreakable chain, one that would be all too necessary for the impending destruction. Hiyori's soulless body lay limp at the end of the chain, serving callously as the counter-weight attached to an opposite tree, lifeless or not Kuroi figured Hiyori might as well pitch in during their survival attempt considering how abruptly she left them to fend for themselves.

"Is everyone ready? All braced!?" The hit-woman Kuroi called to her dangling lesser consorts.

Misao furled her attachment to the link to be sure, and then nodded hesitantly. "As I'll ever be." Oddly nervous the assassin had noticed, how unlike the drudge. Fumbling in her anxiousness, Misao reached behind her, grabbing a hold of Tsukasa's hand for leverage, squeezing it for comfort, a succor that her friend gladly offered.

"R-Ready…" Tsukasa concurred, putting on the bravest mask she could concoct.

"Izumi?" Fretfully Kuroi yawped, regarding the child fixing her fastener so that it was upside down, she along with it.

"Checking out my awesome idea?" Konata contemptuously promoted upended, head to the ground and feet in the air as part of her ruse. "So this thing's gonna fall outta the sky, right? Well when it does, it's probably gonna flip, so if I'm upside before that happens…I'll be right-side up when it hits the ground!" A positively ingenious idea she figured, curse her brilliant clairvoyance.

An awkward silence followed, one that would be hard to follow up with anything rational after pure, unadulterated stupidity of that magnitude. Kuroi crowed her lips apart to say something, but it failed her, perhaps for the best. Words held no weight in the situation they now found themselves in anyway, the extirpation was upon them. The Storm King's destruction was finally at hand.

It began in light shakes, careful, almost demure tremors not sure if they should begin the abolition in earnest or wait for a queue from their brethren. And from bashful beginnings they grew in great measure, shaking the sight from the women's eyes from the chattering vibrations. They bolstered against the fluttering ground, and against all odds managed to stay entrenched.

Despite the compacted clutch, the turbulence was of such sonority and the whirlwinds of such aptitude; it both blinded and deafened them to all around them. The pressure clenched their jaws together, grinding teeth upon teeth and popping eardrums effortlessly, they couldn't scream if they tried, and as their twisting locks of hair loosened themselves from ties and bows and holds, slapping one another, and themselves in the face tortuously, they wished only to howl.

And while they remained grounded, the lesser aged trees around them weren't so lucky, they began to abate slowly, ripping from their holds and collapsing as the earthquake rocked the Storm King's voluminous back, being uprooted and sucked away in the vacuum of rain and debris that engulfed them into the swirling twist of oncoming wind. Animals and plants filled the spaces of air as regularly as the pouring rain, being flung and tossed about remorselessly as nature thrashed their dying bodies and torn ligaments into trunks of trees and into the skies above.

And as the rain poured diagonally downwards, curving against the contours of the winds that subjugated it, the grassy turfs and meadows discharged vertically, mixing their flurries of fury with the downpour and creating smokescreens of lavish greens.

The fate of the flora and fauna fortunate enough to be at the opportune place to find death at the actions beget from the howling winds, or the daggers of icy rainfall were spared from a far worse fate of falling into the tentative crevasses crafted by the collision's passion. The very body of the Storm King seemed to crack and dissipate, literally falling to pieces and sinking in upon itself as if even the slightest force would've caused the entirety of the demon to shatter like glass.

Those poor creatures that fell did so into fathomless caverns of decayed flesh and bone, the entrances to which seemed to split by chance alone, completely all around the safe-spot of Konata and her company, stranding them between agglomerations of compressed life sprinkled with a hailstorm of humongous boulders, and vast and boundless apertures submerging all the way to the very belly of the Arch-Demon.

In the sleek cracks of their her vision, past the chaos and unending flashes of heated lightning, Konata became vaguely aware that the rain had suddenly increased in volume and substance, and was distinctly, and suspiciously red. Prying her head against the g-force, she became aware of the mountainside but a dash away that was shredding through the body of the Storm King, smearing and impaling it upon the abundance of jagged, burgeoning stones.

The swell of blood seemed to cleave and fracture the whole of the demon despite the majority of its body being out of the direct impact area of the cliff, causing mass phlebotomy that surged like rivers throughout the once reverenced forests around them, painting a burnished, and consternate glaze across everything the surf touched.

As the billowing rivers of blood reached crescendo, Konata noticed their dangerous proximity, but was powerless to stop the lucent spindrift, and ensuing undulation of pulverizing tides that swirled around her head, neck, and waist until she was completely submerged in the husky, viscous liquid.

Perhaps tying all of her security knots backwards and setting herself in disarray wasn't the most intelligent idea she ever had, she felt the punishment of the ludicrous choice first-hand as her insurance wiring tugged into her skin as the river of blood pulled her, digging into her painfully until appreciatively the encumbrance of the stream forced the lifeline to snap and give way.

She couldn't immediately tell from her disorientating position if the others had been swept away by the current as well, the raving rapids didn't even allow her the courtesy of shutting her mouth against the cascade of foul matter, it garroted her throat and nostrils, forcing a series of pained gyrations and hiccups from every facial cavity she possessed.

The unwilling excursion through the bloody rapine ended thanks be, by her back roughly colliding with a conglomeration of downed trees and nameless refuse, which were slowly but surely scaling tall enough to create a damming system that would stall the lake of blood for the time being.

Konata sluggishly clawed at the thicker branches of the overturned trees for a grasping point, but found herself incapable, the rapids had pinned her against the tree just as surely as the turbulence had earlier. Desperately, and roughly, she felt behind her for anything that could assist her, save her from drowning, and outstandingly she found what she least would expect to clasp onto, a hand.

The extension of Nanako Kuroi, her palm tightly gripped around Konata's; dexterously she was able to extract the child from the flooding area onto the island of downed trees. Absentmindedly she noticed the lifeline around Kuroi's waist had been cut, and Tsukasa, Misao and Hiyori were nowhere to be seen, but the passing thought could be paid little heed in the heat of things.

"Thanks Sensei!" Konata attempted to thank her solemnly, but the screeching winds wouldn't allow this simple kindness, Kuroi was oblivious to the kind words, far more preoccupied with the dam beneath their feet slowly crumbling from immense strain of the raging rapids of blood.

The damn began to cave as expected, and Kuroi knew her options were few, so she chose the conciliatory path despite her fear of an imminent death. With Konata still strung around her wrist, the assassin lifted the child's petite body to the air far above her head, assembling every ounce of strength she possessed to toss the one she swore to defend into the breadth of the Storm King's body that was not yet consumed by the river of blood nearby.

Carried by the wind, Konata vaguely saw the silhouette of Kuroi tumble and plummet with the dam at her feet, both she and the trees that formed its bulk were ravenously brushed into the sea of red obscurity, lost to its hunger.

A montage of confusing churns and twists of unfocused colors and sights filled her vision as she flew to safety, ironically landing painfully with a morbid crack from falling nearly a dozen feet. Konata's interminable and cursory thought process didn't even give her a brief pass to allow grief at Kuroi's possibly grisly fate; her mind was completely affixed to her now gnarled fingers.

She rolled to her back, struggling to see past the rain and her mild concussion to capture a glimpse of her hand, her fingers were completely mangled, middle, ring finger and pinky bent at disfigured angles from the impact on the hard ground the assassin had lobbed her to in desperation.

She cried in pain, a seething misery that eclipsed the distorted pandemonium around her entirely, the only limelight she allowed was that of her own injuries. Not the well being of her friends and allies, nor the storm and destruction that threatened to crush and drown and eviscerate her at any opportunity.

Never before had she felt this way, and never before had she ever considered she would have the capacity to feel this way, to be so enraptured in pain that she was unable to spare a brief period to worry for her friends' safety, or woe at their misfortune.

She didn't care, and it mortified her, she wanted only for the throbbing to cease. For the blood coursing from her split fingers to null, for the prickly, tearing bones visible externally to stop tugging at the tender flaps of her distended skin, she loathed this agony.

In vain she attempted to condense the more sensationally rabid portions of her fractured hand in her good one, squeezing the crippled and defective appendages for any palliation it might offer, and it granted none. It only sought to increase her discomfort. Disorientated in a muddy rage at only exasperating her most disagreeable situation, Konata screeched in chagrin, rolling herself despitefully in the dirt in irritation.

The impetuosity helped to kindle a spirited flame that allotted her enough power to stand from her tantrum-fueled series of half-summersaults. She struggled to keep her unforgiving, flapping hair from covering her eyes, her only remaining tools in the entropy.

Laggardly she took several steps, losing her balance and falling to a bruised and blackened knee to again rue the sickeningly raw throe of her broken fingers, but from this stunted angle she could've sworn she saw the sunflower yellow bow that Tsukasa usually wore but a jog away, downed and immobile.

What Konata perceived as Tsukasa's collapsed figure in between the calmer drenches of gushing rain looked strikingly still; she was caught and pressed between a pair of goliath trees, restraining her between their girths. She looked dead, there was no visible blood or splatter of bodily excrements to be seen, but she had the unmistakable placidity of death about her, Konata had witnessed enough of it by this point to be almost sure of it.

Another figure was seen nearby, albeit far more shrouded behind the blearing deluge, it was probably Misao she figured, the delineation matched her spiky, bedraggled outlining, and the furious tenacity with which the shadow tore the trees broken and crashed over the quiescent Tsukasa showed a dauntlessness that was very redolent of the slave.

"Tsukasa! Misakichi!" Konata tried to call out to them, but still her voice would not heed her, she endeavored to rise once more to toil her way over to meet the two, but the avalanche of sliding rocks and trees around her suddenly caught her hectic attention.

The Storm King had begun to rotate just as Konata had speculated earlier in jest, it was actually happening. The boulders and trees that grew from the demon's back like tumors began to slide and drag across the ever-escalating ground, the larger the load the more they accelerated, using their girth to crush and push the lesser refuse away, giving them priority to cycle and spin down the inclination with zeal.

Feasibly Konata lost her balance, dropping again to her knees to maintain a hold on the slowly rising, bloody and branch laden dust beneath her hands.

She looked again to her allies, Tsukasa and Misao, to ensure they were still safe. To her horror the spread of flesh, the broad and endless mass of body that the two were standing upon had completely begun to vanish, separating itself from the Storm King in another detonation of blood, imploding and breaking inward. It was completely dominated by the ruination.

Furiously she peered back to her clutching paws, balling themselves into fists to hold onto the long, loose grass as the solid ground beneath her feet became ever steeper. She felt the flowers and weeds slithering, slowly, from the powerful hold she had on them, and worse, the bedrock beneath the thickets become loose.

The powerful storm must've been boosting the rate at which the demon coiled itself vertically, it was mere seconds before Konata felt her feet lift from any footing they previously had, they dangled limply beneath her as she frantically tried to dig them against the wall of mossy flesh she clung to, kicking the rough hide in abhorrence to her situation, she was completely forsaken, doomed.

At last her grip failed, profusely wet palms and broken fingers accredited to the defeat, and disconsolately Konata allowed herself to fall, she didn't scramble to ineffectually grab at every stray branch about her person as she flaccidly fell.

It was a surreal scene, gazing at the ever-declining Storm King above her as she fell hundreds, if not thousands of feet. An inundation of demon brood, refuse and littered carcasses of wild life, pools of thickened blood and utterly destroyed land mass fell all around her, she could've sworn she even saw the soulless, flailing body of Hiyori in the landslide of matter. These were her only companions of her swift drop to the bleak, dark oceans below her.

She extended her arms and legs, letting the muscles within relax, and her mind followed suite in this meditation. Apathetically she flinched and jerked as stray pebbles and sharp twigs slashed and punctured her falling body, as she thwacked and brushed up against the occasional hurdling tree or corpse of a bisected demon.

It felt almost serene, peaceful despite the madness that wanted so inexorably for her to succumb to impending delirium; the rushing air, water, and earth around her almost placed her within a completely secluded pocket of private space.

She wrapped herself up in the snug hold of her own body, smirking pitifully, encasing herself in a worriless shell in her mind, one where her body wouldn't smash into a thousand pieces when it collided with the surface of the ocean, being impaled on a poorly placed tree, or crushed under the unfathomable weight of the Storm King plunging above her.

She wondered if perhaps she was already dead, the exhilarating elation she felt seemed reminiscent of when the Gray Demon's hoof collided with her torso many moons ago. Maybe she had drowned in the rivers of blood, or was strangled and choked to death by her own safety line, knowing her she wouldn't have doubted if a stray rock had plowed a hole through her face while she credulously, inappropriately made jokes as she always did.

Living or dead, the cloistered rapture would soon meet its end, the wet misting of the ocean breeze that bristled against her neck hairs confirmed this, the sea was likely only meters away, she could faintly hear the rubble and ruins of the Storm King colliding with the ocean, bringing forth great displays of spraying seawater no doubt. It drew closer and closer, implausibly slow, and then the sudden and sharp sensation of the sea cupping her body could at last be felt.

Perhaps this was what it was like to live as the demons did, passionate and always entrancing, exhausted by pain and adversity, but without fear. Konata mused that to live with misery everlasting, to suffer under the overwhelming, incogitable pain, would be an existence worth its torment, if only for the promise of an end to fear.

---

The pitiless surge, that uprising bloat, the crest of the sea brought about by the recent destruction proved unrelenting. Tsukasa couldn't fight its current as she struggled to swim, nor could she see past the thick clouds of shuffling sand, cruelly they deprived her of any ability to identify a proper latching point for safety. Urgently she propelled herself from the drift with a precious need for even one breath, but just as soon as her lips tasted the revitalizing air she was imbibed yet again underneath the surface.

Her thrashing body collided with a protruding stalagmite of volcanic bedrock, appreciatively stalling the reversing waves from sweeping her out further into the endless sea. She used this sturdy hold to slink her way around the circular shaft of the protrusion, noticing the sea level grown shallower in the direction she now faced, a colorful enswathe of coral and saltwater fish could be seen, clearly visible in the far less murky shoal.

The sputtering and brief inhale she had taken previously had reached its limits; the briny water seeped through the crack of her lips, and miserably burned her nostrils. If she resurfaced, or lessened her grip on the jagged stone at all, there was a good chance she'd be lost to the forcefully, and literally, captivating allure of the sea. Such a fate was substandard, and she had no intentions of succumbing to such a tumescent end.

Surprising to even herself, she had hatched an agreeable plan, despite the lack of proper oxygen filling her body. She waited patiently, though agonizingly, covering her mouth with several festering coughs as her mouth became engorged with water, and her lungs eroded of air. The oceans waves pulled and pushed once more, and she allowed the lap to pass before enacting the scheme.

When the rushing sea surged behind her rocky hold, she loosened her tight grip on its painfully grainy, spiky surface to allow her body to be swept along, gliding it swiftly towards the growing sandbar. She clenched herself to endure the scraping and poking of the scabrous coral reef, thankfully passing by the field of substitute daggers unharmed sans a scratch or two.

Circumspectly she allowed her drooping feet to scrape against the sand beneath her until she was grounded. Rigidly she held herself to the dusty floor, slowly wading herself from chest-high waves to ankle-deep pools, and at last onto the shifting, sandy shores of the beach below the shadowed temples cliffs above.

Enervated both mentally and physically from barely surviving the fall of the Storm King, Tsukasa only took a few more stumbling steps before she empowered her legs the grace of a break from holding up her waterlogged body, but being cautious, she crawled several more feet across the beach just in case a particularly gnarly wave decided to butt its ugly, blue head in on her reprieve.

She was too disorientated to consider the possibility of what had happened, or the implications such troubling thoughts grimly brought with them, and far too effete to even begin to comprehend any sense of it all. There was too much chaos teeming about her at the time of the Storm King's annihilation, too much pain, she hardly remembered anything except the unpleasantly sharp rain, and the hollow look in Misao's eyes as she was consumed totally by a racket of destruction. Thanks be it seemed the rain and storm along with it had subsided for the time being, although she could still feel the astringent sting of individual dollops of cold rain all over her body.

And while the destruction was over, were it not for said devastation she surely would've perished by any number of falling horrors, or the incredible drop to the ocean itself from the hide of the falling Arch-Demon. The piling litter, now superfluous waste had saved her, broken trees and large, distended clumps of severed flesh had created veritable secured cushions, holding her in place between their involuntary squeeze during the plummet.

What an awful thought, to think that the same destruction that may have ended her friends in its ruination had also saved her life, it made her sick, but not as ill as the wafting permeation of rot that began to fill her senses. She wasn't privy to it neck-deep in slimy sea water, but now she could smell it, perhaps the storm had muddled the muggy air, but with its departure the putrid stench hung around detestably.

The smell appeared to originate from the sea, and Tsukasa couldn't have missed the forebear of the scent if she tried. The slashed, eviscerated, literally blown apart body of the Storm King loomed on the horizon of the sea, so super massive it extended from a stretch of ocean that had to be at least hundreds of feet deep. The menagerie of exotic plant and animal life that had grown and lived upon its body scattered the waves about its girth, glossing the sea red with their leaky corpses.

The sea beat upon its body harmoniously, scaling higher up the towering walls of flesh with each enfolding rumple, doing its best to clean the endless flow of blood that seemed to spray from even the tiniest wounds. Gulls, and other parasites, flocked to the recent deluge of food, overshadowing its presence by the tens of thousands, the creatures did their best to consume everything in sight, and with their plentiful number, they began to chew holes in the beaten bodies in no time at all.

A series of islands formed from flesh and death, hewed and sculpted by the reddened cliff side above, splattered and painted with entrails trailing all the way up to the apex of the mountains. Some floating pieces still resembled colossal fins or fleshly vanes, even the remnants of an eye stock could be seen partially whole amongst the heap of unnamed parts. Yet the preponderance of the monstrosity was punctured abundantly, by broken trees and once deep-seated mountains, the nature's bounty had carved open entire sections of the torso, and wings of the demon, spilling the insides out.

It was only now, gazing upon this disaster that Tsukasa realized just how many warriors had fallen to the Storm King in times past. Hundreds, if not thousands of human skeletal bodies, dotted the waters just as numerously as the demon brood born from the soil of the Arch-Fiend, reducing in number every time an upsurge of sea sucked their forgotten bones into whirlpools.

An unreal display of death, profound cessations of such a scale were something no person was ever meant to see. The lives of the old, the new, human and non, snuffed out by the literal thousands, it was a debilitating harshness, an extirpation too unlawful to grieve for, Tsukasa was abashed, stunned to hard taciturnity. Was this what the Monumental desired? Was this the job she and the others had set out to accomplish?

She was prepared to fight demons, to kill if, and when she must, and even prepared with some minor protest to give up her life if necessary to preserve the balance the Old One hoped to spin unrelentingly from its harmony. And of course, as originally ordained to her by a good friend, she was fully willing to give her all in the search for Konata's missing father.

Yet now, as she observed the expanse of lifelessness, a hitch in her nerve bore a chip, one she feared would never be filled. The doubt she had felt before hadn't completely invalidated her prior convictions, but they were shaken, this much she could be sure of. Perhaps if destroying the Old One meant such atrocities must come to pass, even if it was the sacrifice of a few for the sake of many, she wasn't sure she could go on committing such sins day by day any longer.

"Pain." A voice spoke tenderly but a single word from somewhere behind her back, and as Tsukasa turned to face the sudden despondent wail, hoping perhaps it was one of her comrades; she nearly toppled over from her haunch in fright when she saw a heavily wounded yet still standing Yutaka and Minami. Somehow it seemed the two had survived the conflict with her allies, and even the chaos during the destruction of the Storm King, they likely had their demon blood and undead perseverance to fall back on in such an event.

Wordlessly Tsukasa depressed her bangs over her eyes, hiding the crusaders from her vision out of fear, wobbly placing her flat palms on the beach to prove her compliant subjugation. "P-Please…" Tsukasa unstably whispered, helpless without the weapon, or courage necessary to face these foes. "Don't k-kill me…" She begged, tucking her quivering lower lip under its partner with a bite, shutting herself out to whatever outcome may be presented to her forthwith, whether it be words or a blade.

Yutaka quivered at the sight, kneeling downward with the help of her knight of Garland until she was at eye level with the genuflecting Tsukasa. "There has been enough death today, I think." Yutaka expressed sorrowfully, affectionately clapping a hand to her bowing enemy's shoulder, alarmed by her almost vibrating body that was pulsating in fear.

"D-Death…" Tsukasa repeated, shaking her head in utter disbelief. "All that life…and it was us…I-I never…I didn't think we would be doing things like this…I don't, I don't even know what…" Gradually she stammered, faltering in her words, slowly growing more and more deficient in creed.

Humbly Yutaka swiped her lengthy sleeve across the teary cheeks of her enemy, standing away from her palliation of the child to gaze towards the open sea at the shocking insolvency of common sense. "Mourn for your sins, but always look forward." Wisely Yutaka recommended, all too often a hypocrite in such a philosophy, but she did her best to adhere to it.

"I can't…" The bubbling Tsukasa admitted, sniveling to herself pitifully. "I'm not like you…I'm not…I'm not like Kona-Chan, or my sister…or Miyuki-Chan…I just can't do this. I can't look forward, because everything I see ahead…scares me." Painfully she confessed, pressing a finger to her leaking eyes. "I see pain, and…and, and death…and I just can't deal with that anymore!" Inauspiciously the ever more dismal Hiiragi fell, until she wretched her head in frustration, squeezing tufts of hair in her fingers in defeat as she sobbed powerfully.

"There will always be pain, and even death, in life." Minami warned, not wishing for the broken child at her feet to be lost to despair. "In times such as these, you need only hope. Hope will not hide the painful truth from you, but it is comforting. In comfort we can bear the weight of our sins, no matter how heavy." The knight of Garland spoke as if all too familiar on the subject, a subtlety in voice that Tsukasa picked up on.

"But how…!?" The melancholy Tsukasa pleaded, drooping her face to the sandy beach, crying into its musky huff. "What comfort can I possibly find in a situation such as this…? What hope do I have?" Sniffling, Tsukasa looked to the sixth saint, who could not bear to reciprocate the begging stare.

Yutaka persisted even in her declining state, a saint's duty was to provide ample remedy to any pain, be it physical or otherwise. This confused, desolate innocent cried out for reprieve, for an end to her suffering, just as their dying world, just as the former husk of the Old One. She could not abandon the forlorn being despite their dispute, nor would she if given the chance.

"A hope…" Yutaka started brightly, affixing her gaze to the clouded skies above. "That for the remainder of our world's days, we find peace. A hope that charity will broaden, hatred will diminish, and love shall blossom. I hope for such a world as we wait out the end of days…where humans cease to be humans, and simply be." Profound, but still slightly melancholic, Yutaka's conviction to allow the world to ride out the remainder of its time under the Old One's miasma held true yet again.

Betrayal was the only word that entered Tsukasa's mind as she grew happier with Yutaka's words, duplicity of an insidious nature; it manifested itself in the stinging dubiousness that continued to suppurate within her like a poison. Horrifically, she agreed with Yutaka's ideals, she saw the sense of allowing the world to die out under the Old One's rot, if and only if, such an event were to render things like hatred and the need for wanton destruction null. Despite her earlier claims, perhaps seeing at last what she needed to see, the death of the Storm King, rendered Tsukasa's prior convictions too shaken to believe. Making the decision for an entire planet concerning their fate, perhaps it was a goal too great to bear.

And even putting belief aside, the Monumental was as trustworthy as the crusaders, which wasn't saying much, and even if it was telling the truth who was to say the disciples of Umbasa weren't doing the same? There are two sides to every argument, and either side usually admonishes, and forgets the other whilst voicing their own side. Therein lies the faulty of a debate, how can one truly and ambitiously spout their illimitable idealism if they don't understand what it is that they're opposed to?

Her friends and allies would no doubt censure her for these treasonous thoughts, and mayhap it would only prove Kagami's initial criticism of her journeying along with them true, perhaps she wasn't cut out to be a warrior, especially one who laid their stake in the desolate badlands of Boletaria. But it was this same irresoluteness that drove her to pursue this new path, she had felt nothing but unsure of herself as an individual ever since she strongly proclaimed she was tenacious enough to come along on this journey.

Perhaps the Monumental was right, and Konata and her father were the anomalies it had been waiting millennia for, a one in a million chance to smite the Old One once and for all, but even with these variables such a task would be daunting, perhaps impossible.

Yet Tsukasa could see that these crusaders, Yutaka and Minami, had the strength of body and character to carry out such a mission, they had the power necessary to do what needed to be done to preserve the world. With their hearty bravura, otherworldly powers, and advanced, in-depth knowledge of the world they lived in, they had her own crew completely outclassed in every statistic and category when it came to a viable plan for saving their dying world.

Tsukasa wasn't readily willing to pay the price of her friends and families love and trust on a gamble that her enemies might be right, but she had to know, she would risk these things in the hope that were either side to fail in their endeavors, perhaps the other one would be able to succeed. And even if Konata and the Monumental were right, she had to know why the crusaders believed them to be wrong.

"T-Ta…" Tsukasa mumbled, wobbly standing from her slump to bravely face the more diminutive of the crusaders. "M-May I…make a request…?" She beseeched to the saint, who seemed noticeably convinced of what her enemy might request.

"You may." Yutaka approved, eyeing her knight of Garland behind the innocent, who seemed oddly percipient of the incoming inquiry, just as she.

"I…I…I don't have much hope left, but…" Tsukasa stammered, breathing deep to rally her spirit. "With what hope I have…I hope for a world where Onee-Chan can be happy. A world where my friends…my home…everyone, can be happy. What you wish for…the Old One, to remain; it is not such a bad thing I think." A selfless doctrine was spoken, it emboldened Tsukasa despite her modestly skittish aura, she felt very brave just speaking such words of folly.

"A beautiful hope." Yutaka graciously complimented, smiling sappily.

"Yes…" Tsukasa agreed, returning the grin. "But I don't think it'll happen…not if the Old One is destroyed…not if we have to keep…killing like this. Not if so many have to die...So please, I beg of you, wherever you are destined…I…I wish to follow. P-Please, take me with you!" She implored to the crusaders, beseeching them to lead her to a world where her hope would be made manifest.

---

Slimy, slick, and wet, riddled with tumors and soaked in blood, Misao could barely see past the luxuriant filthy heaps of decomposing body parts. It obstructed her path, blockading her from the clement sun that beat through the wedged segments of the Storm King's flesh that buried her beneath its heap. With purpose she pushed upward, impassively compressing herself beneath the bulk of the filth, mustering her valor to tear her way through the linings of decayed flesh little by little, until she could at last feel a dollop of attentive sunlight on her cheeks.

"Sweet mama, that stinks!" Misao moaned in displeasure, birthing herself from the split crevasse of the bloated lump of an organ and shaking herself free of a clingy vital that had been roped about her feet.

And what ruins she saw as she liberated herself to the open air again, plentiful flotsam, littered shambles of a once great creature now wafting on the seashore. It was hard to believe such a mass of living things could become so inanimate, but by the test of the annihilated masses of entities here stood the proof. Who knows how many critters tall and small, not to mention the copious flora and demon brood perished in the collapsing chaos?

And even if any survived, without their no doubt unique asylum they'd be easy pickings for the demons and creatures that roamed the forgotten walls of the Shadowed Lands, they weren't meant to thrive anywhere but the back of the Storm King.

A wantonly unnecessary horror on the whole, but little time would be wasted frittering away on what could have been. And while the foundation of life that was the Arch-Fiend had completely collapsed, the aura of her allies could still be felt lost amongst the litter of the Storm King; she had grown accustomed to their exclusive aromas, and the excitation she received only when in close proximity to them.

The scents of Tamura particularly were unfamiliar to her, but she could faintly detect what could only be the mage's own vital signs as well resonating within her mind's eye. A human's life force was so much easier to discern than that of an animal, or a demon. To sense a human was a very delicate, almost poetic feeling, it came without weight, but was heavily disseminated a certain passion that was bound only to the intrinsic and stubborn human spirit.

A demon or a beast were primal, erratic and hard to focus upon. For a mind and soul completely built off of instinct and primordial conditioning, to be able to concentrate on them for very long was a difficult task, they'd quickly fade from mind as quickly as their auras were known.

Still, that fact didn't seem to indulge normalcy for the present, a trio of spiraling life energies became known to her, and she definitely recognized at least one of them to be Tsukasa Hiiragi. The scent of uneasiness, and panic-induced cold sweat constantly clung to her, and they remained as poignant to her nostrils even now. The other two however, reeked of a demonic essence, and if the girl was in trouble she had no time to waste.

Heaving herself up a small incline of rippled flesh, Misao gazed over the wall of bones, attentively watchful of the remote environments before her, scanning for any sign of the doughty Tsukasa amongst the bits and pieces of the Arch-Fiend. And remarkably it would seem she needn't look far, but a leap of a few dozen meters away stood her comrade, stationed on the beach with a lively ambience of viability to her, a good sign.

Favorable fortunes always seemed to induce most disagreeable contingencies however, especially with the Monumental's lot. This churlish happening could be on account of the duo of demons, the crusaders of Umbasa, that stood idly over a kowtowing Tsukasa.

Misao entreated with her body to heed the call of battle, but the debilitating and forceful impact had rendered much of her stores of stamina inert. Even to a being of a higher existence like she, the frailties of a human nature shown through her more brusque qualities. She was daft to believe it, but she almost felt positively poignant, to think that an undying wretch like she could still contain the dynamic breath of a human fused somewhere within her decidedly inhuman core.

Yet this same human decrepitude she adored rendered her helpless, and unable to save poor Tsukasa as the demons imposingly loomed. The little one's deeply ingrained compassion saturated her with a hope however, a belief that an arguably kind soul such as Yutaka could find it within whatever remained of her decrepit shell of a heart to spare but one human.

A forbearance of violence that might've just been made reality, her aberrant hearing seemed to pick up on the fragments of a distant conversation, one between Tsukasa and the crusaders. She focused as much strength to her vibrating ears as she could, until the frequency of incomprehensible whispers became words, petrifying words.

"P-Please, take me with you!" An evidently mad, or hopefully so, Tsukasa had implored to what were supposed to be her enemies.

The shorter of the crusaders seemed taken aback, unsure of what to say, but disturbingly unsurprised by the requisition. Despite her fettered tongue, she laid a hand atop the head of the kneeling child, stroking her locks in sickening wonderment.

"Do you know what it is you ask?" Yutaka both asked, and wondered, to the human that craved a slot in her company.

Misao couldn't discern the specifics of Tsukasa's facial features, so she couldn't be sure what it was exactly her friend was thinking, but despite a series of fidgets it didn't take the girl long to reciprocate the integrity of her answer, to a level of prudence akin to the question.

"I…I think so." Tsukasa irresolutely responded, skeptical of her motives, dubious of herself. "I know only what I don't want…more death, more violence. I'd do anything to make sure my friends live long, happy lives…lives lived without taking the lives of others." She spoke once more, and the words stung Misao deeply, how long had Tsukasa felt this way? Her true feelings fettered within, unable to free themselves because of the bounded duty, she forced herself to succumb to violence and chaotic disarray despite herself, for the sake of others. Perhaps the skittish young child wasn't as cowardly as she seemed, to coerce herself under extreme duress always, just for the reward of her friends smiling faces.

Yutaka did not break her gaze; she stared intently into Tsukasa's awaiting eyes, smiling resolutely as her wicked demonic fingers curled around the human's cheeks. "They shall not, the path we are destined shall provide them with harmony everlasting, paradise, this I swear to you." The priestess avowed, darting her eyes deliberately in the direction of the spying Misao , who shook with fright, her body stalled from the detached spear of vision that had found her so easily hidden amongst the fleshly wreckage.

---

Tsukasa laughed at the sentiment, a hearty, slightly broken giggle, her tears of sorrow transformed to those of elation. "I…I won't fail you, I…I just…I don't think Kona-Chan is right, violence it…it just can't be the way. There must be a way to ensure that everyone can be happy." She wished trustingly, believing that her desires would be most assuredly fulfilled from under the careful watch of the crusaders.

Yutaka could not lie despite the advantageous circumstance; she had to be sure Tsukasa knew what it was she was getting herself into. "Violence steaks its design amongst our constructs as well, a meeting is inevitable." She affirmed unfortunately, slightly despondent when Tsukasa returned a miffed frown.

"I know." Tsukasa surprisingly understood, standing to meet the Arch-Demon and her handmaid eye to eye. "I must make peace with that…but I will do all I can to ensure I spread the disease of violence as little as possible, be amiable even to my enemies…as you have been to me." Appreciatively she swore, bloated with newfound purpose. Despite the happiness she felt at an alternative to the dark path the Monumental had sent her upon, the instability deep within remained unsettled; her animus towards herself was great. She would be betraying everyone she swore to bear arms side by side with, and even worse, she would be betraying her sister's heart that beat within her, the creature that shared the engendering of life with her from birth, and hopefully until death and beyond.

Yet it was not a betrayal she made lightly, she would happily bare any consequences ushered from her heel turn, and would return to her sisters side if it happened by chance, her decision was not the right one. But a life lived without knowing if Yutaka and Minami were right was torture, surely there had to be a better path, one bereft of ignoble happenings, overflowing with hope.

"I wonder what Onee-Chan would say…? W-When she finds out, she'll probably…hate me." Tsukasa mused aloud, vision stark to the wavy seas, still scanning it for any possible sign of her companions, now former.

"I am unsure." Yutaka honestly professed, ignorant to her companion's whims and convictions, her opinion was one that held no weight in such a question. "But I sense your sister's life overflowing from the cliffs above, and the illuminating brilliance of Izumi and her companions below us, they live. And I imagine that as they continue to live, their lives may shape the very fabric of us all. They shine with such…confidence, I am envious." Singularly she spoke, her emanation vacillating, Tsukasa couldn't help but wonder what it was about Konata Izumi that changed the very tone of her voice.

Yutaka was a woman far beyond her years in both appearance, and doctrine, she spoke in a tone that implied she had existed for a time that couldn't be weighed by digits, and she had seen things so undeniably inscrutable it rendered her changed wholly. But despite this hollow shell, this demure priestess continued to have an energetic breath when she spoke of Konata, someone she had never known, but seemed to respect despite even her very self being held in such pitiful esteem.

Envious of a life like hers, or of the principles of a young, fresh mind, with infinite paths with which to choose from, Tsukasa couldn't be sure. Yet she believed that by traveling with these two, these crusaders for the end of time itself, perhaps she might come to be held in such esteem as well. Perhaps she might be one day be able to stand not idly, but proudly toe to toe with Konata Izumi and not be intimidated by her intrepidity, but enraptured by it, symbiotically linked to it in such a way that she too could face the harshness of reality with only a grin as her shield.

Yet she didn't hold this shield presently, and it bothered her to leave her companions unattended in their strife, mayhap they be injured or worse, but Yutaka apparently sensed their life energies, and she trusted her in this matter. Nothing to be gained from a lie, none within the context that she could see, so the trust was well placed. They were tough, and had endured worse; she had no doubt that she would cross paths with them again, and soon. Wherever Yutaka and Konata were destined, the Arch-Demons called home, it may be a time of much bloodshed, but she hoped it wouldn't come to that.

Tsukasa knew she'd change herself so that wouldn't happen, where their inevitable reunion would be met without the spilling of blood, not her own, not theirs, not the crusaders, and not the Arch-Demons. Unity was the key, she needed only to find the door, and the crusaders would lead her there.

---

Caliginous, a true putrefaction of light, the epitome of what it was to glare into a profound state of perception, an incomprehensible sight. What had it been, the ebony quintessence that enraptured her at death's grasp, illusions brought about by unparalleled stress? She had felt the snapping of her bones, the filling of her internals with fatal amounts of fluid, and the last sputtering thoughts and breaths that betrayed nonexistence with their retaliation. But this was no mere fragmented series of demented conscious failings, it was truth, and this reality brought to Konata a most indescribable feeling.

One not unlike the warmth she felt when she initially entered the Nexus during her early travels in Boletaria, it was a feeling of nirvana one could only describe as shedding of a mortal existence, a transcending phenomena, an inescapable pull to higher things. When her body had collided with the murky seas, littered with death, she felt only that same death percolating her entire being, what it truly meant to have an out of body experience.

She had seen herself as she sank deep into the oceans breadth, inches from death, an aggregate mass of red waters throughout the majority of her peripheral vision, what she had seen was surely her own death. A distraught and pained expression, a twisted and mutilated body, but then something happened, something that couldn't be explained with her limited scope of human perceptions.

Her blood had faded in color, perhaps it just comingled with the palette of the sea but this seemed unlikely, it had shaded darker, and bleaker, until her bodily essence resembled a darkened pitch of obsidian. It flowed not unlike a gelatin mass, it writhed and squirmed under the bubbling pressure around it, it had danced about her shattered body, hemming her tightly in its clutch. The blobs of hardening, black blood began to repair her slashed, utterly ravaged body, filling holes made by planks of splintered wood and rock, and closing crevasses of ruptured organs. Perhaps the only part that hadn't filled her with horror more than the water filling her lungs, had been her hand, the mangled fingers upon it slowly but surely had cracked back into place.

The blood shielded her voluntarily, consciously, of its own accord from the falling land mass of the Storm King and its kin above, protecting her as she helplessly struggled to maintain apprehension, no matter how vague. In its subsisting instance, it drew the sustenance to its host required for survival. The black blood extended into flailing masses of tendrils, that lunged and gripped at every available resource, decayed human bodies, shredded demon bodies, and the blood of the fallen.

It seduced them to her core, drawing their nourishment literally into her body. The corpses seemed to phase through her skin, melting, and melding into her insides, filling them with their power. And she felt invigorated by them, stimulated by the bodies that entered her own, it gave her strength, the will necessary to fight against the astounding currents formed by the destruction and swim herself to safety.

This was all Konata could remember from her dip into the sea, waking up a short time later on the beach after her fall was all she was privy to. Her body was healed when she had awoken, but her mind raced to discern the meaning of the supposed dream she had concerning black blood, demons being drawn into her body, and even more horrific things. But breaking her hand was no dream, and yet as she gazed upon her perfectly healthy hand, she knew perhaps there was more to the supposed dream than initially conceived.

Machinations forged from anxiety brought about by the fear she had felt as she fell, it was the only explanation she could conjure, although she had certainly seen more frightful things during her tenure in Boletaria than animate blood. Even were it not simply hallucinations, she didn't have the slightest clue as to what had happened; she had never experienced something like that before. Maybe she was infected with the Dregling virus herself just like Kagami had been, or worse, but that conscious blood of a deep, unforgettable black surely held with it an ominous mystery.

Urgency dictated however, she waste no moments to trifling apprehensions, her allies were in danger or worse, and despite the disorientation that still clung harshly to her body she managed to stand wobbly to begin her search for them.

The beach seemed to be where she had washed up miraculously alive, saved by that eldritch thing, that nightmare of black blood. Debris and residue had tainted the lush sands of the beach red with death, refuse of flesh the size of immature whales were beached upon every small stretch as far as the eye could see. Anywhere the sea met the land, mountains of discarded body parts of the Storm King sprinkled and dotted the landscape, truly a strikingly horrific visage.

To find the by correlation, miniature humans that had stood small atop the broadness of the Storm King amongst this labyrinth of decrepit, obliterated flesh lobes and stony pillars shivered into slag near and far would not be an easy task in the slightest.

But destiny, that oh so unwelcome certainty of intent that seemed to adumbrate all things in her life lately, brought with its shadow the slimy, sop-covered Nanako Kuroi and Hiyori Tamura, the former using her taller body to support the latter as a crutch. They were bumbling, stumbling and swaying down the apogee of the infernal, dampened and stained sands from a slightly elevated incline of beach. Kuroi seemed cognizant, and proffered to the distant Konata a wave of recognition that the two were alive, albeit perhaps not well.

"Yo! Kid!" A ditzy Kuroi shouted amiably, catching herself in a stumble as she approached a thanks be, alive Konata, her master would surely be displeased should any harm come to the young Izumi.

"Sensei!" Konata cooed back, despite her emotional dissonance within, she was still lax to fully analyze what had happened to her when she collided with the sea, and for now it seemed irrelevant. A more bearing topic of relevancy was the quirky mage Hiyori Tamura, who seemed worse for wear than the assassin she used as a walking stick. "She okay?" She inquired obtusely, rather content with the mage's state as of the present, even she would find it hard to not be angry with her when Tamura awoke from her delirium for the antics she had perpetrated atop the Storm King.

"Unfortunately." The liquidator quipped back, unburdening herself with her load by dropping the sorceress to the bloody sand insensitively, gruffly squeezing a bruised, cut shoulder in repose. "Seems that whatever her stupid plan was it worked well, perhaps too well. Any sign of the others?" Kuroi asked cuttingly, at least Konata perceived it as such, for she was surely preparing to ask the same of her.

"Especially Hiyori…" Hiyori added peculiarly, face down in the dirt, spitting up clumps of sand with each word. "Where'd she go? I feel like it's been a long time since I've seen her, how long have I been asleep?" A baffling, and possibly incoherently placed question, it seemed as if the fall had knocked more than a few already loose screws, even looser in Hiyori's mind.

"Oh, she's here." Sarcastically Kuroi ensured, stomping a boot into the whining mage's backside, deriving what would be a most treasured yelp of discomfort. "And here she'll stay, under my boot for the time being, because I gotta say Tamura, I knew you were nuts…but by Umbasa's grace, what in the hell—" Was all the assassin could testily admonish before she saw the billowy, rustic sheen of the soul of Hiyori, fluttering about like a carefree butterfly in the distance but a stone's throw behind the entirely soulless body. Kuroi was certain that Hiyori's soul had retreated back into its cowardly body, but here the evidence seemed to point to the contrary, how was her body still moving and talking without its soul?

Konata followed the lock of her eyes to the sight as well, equally perturbed when she spied the bodiless soul, twirling towards them with the same childish whistles and toots as before. The resplendent bulb halted its shenanigans when it became aware of a conscious, albeit sluggish and disorientated, Hiyori mumbling to herself with a throat full of rough grain. It didn't take the soul long to see her companions were highly disturbed by the fact that despite her body not containing a soul, it still seemed completely aware of its surroundings, and even maintained the ability to vocalize and perceive.

Disconcertedly the shade twirled her soul betwixt those that misunderstood, silencing her whistles as she collided with her body, returning the soul to whence it came. The ravings of the soulless madwoman ceased, and while drowsy, a surprisingly au courant Hiyori snickered gamely, rubbing her neck sheepishly to wipe that messy sweat-induced tension from her leaky pores.

"H-Hey…!" Hiyori greeted shamelessly, crossing her legs snugly with a chirp, doing her best to avoid the scrutinizing eyes shot her way. Acting like she hadn't just retained a consciousness in her body, soul or not.

"Hey yourself." Kuroi reciprocated sarcastically, bending down to a knee to meet the magician eye level. "You gonna tell me what I just saw? With the whole soul not being in the body thing, but the body still being annoying?" She firmly asked, praying for the child's sake they hadn't carted a supposedly ragdoll woman around who the entire time, was obviously perfectly capable of doing so herself, even without her soul.

"W-What?" The sorceress feigned, her insincere tone slipping away when she suddenly remembered that Nanako Kuroi was a dangerous murderer who had plenty of agonizing ways to squeeze blood from stones. "Oh! Oh that! Oh yeah, what can I say? You uh…heh, ever hear of the Lazarus reflex? Yeah, yeah it's something…not at all like that, similar in concept though!" Fallaciously Hiyori pushed her luck regardless, intertwining reality with half-truths as she so often did.

"Nah nah nah nah." Kuroi interjected, sliding a powerful arm around Hiyori's slowly tensing neckline. "Try again, what did I just see?" She demanded more inflexibly, giving the child's neck a light squeeze to flaunt her dominance.

Hiyori managed a shivering wiggle to escape the chokehold in no time at all though, seemed she had some practice escaping from threatening grips. Cautiously she backed up from prying eyes, snickering sheepishly until she felt a presence behind her as well, groping blindly until she felt a fortuitously placed breast, which she squeezed absent-mindedly before being thrust forward with a rough shove.

"Looks like I'm just in time for the beat the snot out of Hiyori power hour." The latecomer jeered, cracking her worn knuckles in tune with a loose tongue that could only be held by the drudge, Misao.

"Oh come on guys!" Hiyori quipped, sluggishly massaging a stingy arm. "No need for violence, sure I have one or two secrets! Maybe more like a few hundred in my case, but the point stands, we all have things we can't share with others. Besides, breaking my bones isn't as important as saving poor Kagami! Onward!" She slyly authorized to her compatriots, dismissing herself from their company as she made her way to a distant, spiraling manmade pathway that connected to the upper plateau.

"She's right, we'll kill her later." Kuroi agreed with herself more than anyone, slipping a glance to Misao's person, morosely grimacing at a trail of empty space behind her where the younger Hiiragi sibling should have been. "Where's the little one?" She interrogated glumly, not expecting any agreeable results to spout from such a dismal curl of the lips on the slave.

"She's alright...I brought her up top, she's waiting for us there." Misao lied, stroking her hair back to rid it of excess salt water that stuck around uninvited. "Let's go, what with all of our screwing around I doubt Hiiragi can wait any longer." Rightly she advised, shepherding the remainder of the stragglers to follow Hiyori up the loopy mountain side. Kagami's deliverance from the plague that bound her with a demon's blood had been a long time coming, and the silence amongst the trio proved that squabbling amongst themselves or worrying about their own personal issues was unfair to the damned one. Tsukasa's supposed betrayal could wait until a more opportune time, Misao would make sure of it.

---

Bizarrely the trek up a mountainside path roughly a kilometer in length proved manageable and expeditious despite its twisty design, Hiyori mused as she reached the apex of the winding trail that this must've been the hidden path out of the shadowed lands Carrot had spoken to her of, not exactly clandestine considering its secrecy, but it was a way out nonetheless.

Waiting for them amongst the positively apocalyptic looking ruins of the now obliterated shadowed temples, was a collection of brooding, injured individuals, whose groups must've assimilated together to watch the no doubt extraordinary show of the Storm King's demise, or perhaps to tend to one another's abrasions and lacerations. Yui shot a glare of contempt Hiyori's way, thrusting her tongue out in disapproval at the witch who had nearly caved her skull in with a dense rock. Quickly however she surrendered herself to the consolatory clerical arts of Carrot, who seemed to sport a similar head injury that painted the forefront of her face with drippy streaks of blood.

Watching over the motionless, unconscious Kagami was a heavily injured Miyuki, who had innumerable lesions and horrifically, a broken arm. Nonetheless, despite the immeasurable pain no doubt striking her frame, the sorceress offered the returners a carefree smile. Partially at the success of their mission, but mostly at their safety. Perhaps in their anguish, or the precarious circumstances surrounding Kagami's fate, none of them seemed to notice that Tsukasa was absent from their collective.

Hiyori wove her way through the injured, kneeling by the side of the heavily demonified Kagami, who was practically a stroke away from death; nothing would keep her from the underworlds pull now, nothing except the soul of an Arch-Fiend. Ruminating what it was she had to do to successfully complete the ritual, Hiyori loosened the baggy cuffs around her arms to position her hands, the catalysts of the spell crafting arts, over the slowly rising chest of the Dregling.

She let her hands waver, feeling the percolating brush of a demonic aura within the child's body, it beat like a drum in waves of energy. The point of no return was at hand, and were the Storm King's soul not placed within the host immediately there would be no return to humanity, it would be lost eternally. Idly holding her stance for increasingly longer seconds of wasted time, the onlookers couldn't help but notice that Hiyori seemed unsure of herself, was she stalling at this most decisive hour?

"Hey, hurry up!" Misao urged, flicking a hard finger into the back of Hiyori's skull.

Hiyori took the sting woefully, turning back to the others with a smarmy wiggle. "Oh sorry, I was just conjuring up some dramatic tension!" Wickedly she snickered, earning objecting groans from just about everyone present. Kuroi even felt herself subconsciously reaching for a hidden dagger; she really needed to work on placating her anger better, especially when it came to Hiyori.

Genuinely this time, Hiyori clasped her hands together, pressurizing the space between them until they jettisoned apart with a thunderous snap, and in the space left from their conjoined hold, a radiant golden orb. Unlike similar instances in which Konata had seen such a thing, this particular composite of soul energy seemed more unstable, it flickered like a torch caught in the wind, and shivered violently as if to escape the magician's hold. Even in death, the Storm King's soul still seemed as voracious and uncontrollable as in life, it seemed.

Yet Hiyori was no amateur, especially when it came to the soul arts, and despite the Storm King's soul protesting her actions with exacerbated wiggles and snorts, she securely held it in place with no question as to whether or not it would escape.

"Assistant!" Hiyori ordered to somebody left unnamed, yet Carrot was the first to take the passed torch, she figured she was the only one who had any real medical expertise in the context. Hiyori regarded her looming presence, and directed her eyes towards Kagami in accordance with her intent. "I'm going to take her soul out and subsume the Storm King's soul into it…and it's probably going to hur, just be ready for any complications." Seriously she warned to the cleric, the usual unctuous tone of the sorceress all but gone.

Carrot nodded wordlessly, kneeling on the opposite side of the bedraggled sub-human to get leverage, constructing her grip on either side of Kagami's neck, prepared to send signals through her body to end nerve reactions if necessary, should any unneeded convulsions impede the process of soul transference.

Hiyori breathed deeply, steadily keeping her mental ministrations in accordance with the fixed concentration required to keep the Storm King's soul from dissipating. Everything had to be congenial, and carefully implemented, the tiniest mistake could disperse the collective consciousnesses that embodied the Storm King's soul, or the single consciousness that was Kagami's soul. Or worse, Kagami's own soul could be overpowered by the demon's own soul if Konata hadn't succeeded in her metaphysical mind adventures.

Too late for fretfulness though, and the suspense only grew the more Hiyori stalled, so she continued her ritual, trusting in her own abilities despite several past mistakes she had made with others during such a delicate process. Pensively she drew the host soul from Kagami's chest, attracting the soul from its body with the very vigor of a mental pull, yet some success could be equated to her telekinetic prowess as well.

By contrast to the Arch-Fiend's, Kagami's own soul was proportionally diminutive, and bereft of the similar golden sheen that seemed to encompass many great souls. Instead it was a dainty, puffy white, the tiny orb almost resembled a miniature cloud as it wafted about, ambiguously held by Hiyori's increasingly strained mental grip. Were there such a thing as figurative sweaty palms, her mind's fingers were soaked with sweat, they could barely hold onto the human's fluctuating soul, the telekinetic hold wobbled the mass to and fro unstably.

Noticing the aberration, Hiyori scraped her mind for a deviation around the oscillating soul that refused to cooperate. It was odd that despite the soul's evacuation from her body, no tension had arisen from within Kagami, nor were there any unseen interferences that could be detected externally. Even were it a health issue, the soul of a human and the body of a human were two entirely different sciences, and while the soul could have an effect on the body, both negative and positive, it was completely unthinkable for a body to have any outstanding impact on the soul.

Yet for whatever reason Kagami's soul seemed discontent, it wavered by some unseen force, perhaps within her mind Kagami was still struggling to accept Konata's vague instructions to her, or worse, perhaps Konata had failed.

Trying her best to ignore the declination to combine it with the Storm King's soul, Hiyori attempted to absorb the greater essence of the Storm King's soul into Kagami's, noticing the gassy smoke of the demon's soul curl and dance about the human's, yet this is where it remained deadlocked. Despite the badgering, Kagami's soul seemed to refuse entry, and should it remain outside her body any longer, depredation was an assurance. The transference process was failing, and despite her many years researching the topic, Hiyori was vexed, her only theory was that Kagami had decided not to accept the soul, in which case, there was nothing she could do.

"What's wrong?" Nervously Konata asked, approaching Hiyori from behind and looking upon the situation with frightful remorse.

"Ah…well…" Hiyori stuttered, biting her lip in presentiment of bad news. "She's…not accepting the soul…" Contritely she revealed, hiding her eyes from Konata's leering gaze under her shaggy bangs, not wishing to see whatever twisted face of suffering was no doubt plastered across the bluenette's face.

Perhaps it was her earlier confrontations with a congregation of death, her own blood trampling on her perceptions of reality, or an escapade through a loved one's mind, but Konata wasn't as disheartened as she thought she might be despite this troubling news. Speechlessly she knelt, cradling a sleeping Kagami's chin over the perch of her hand, stroking it affectionately.

"Hey Kagamin, I thought we had this talk, eh?" Weakly she confided, moving her cupping hand upwards to instead cradle a cheek. "Please don't tell me I got those dog bite scars on my butt all those years ago for nothing, you gotta trust me here!" Jocularly, yet honestly she pleaded, giving the slumbering tsundere a slight shake to possibly rouse some notion of unconscious understanding from her.

However there was none to be seen, despite the claim that many can subconsciously react or apperceive external stimuli, despite a state of insentience, no such proof could be shown from Kagami's features alone. She wasn't reacting and worse, it almost seemed she was rejecting any attempt made to connect with her. The mental damage from her infectious ordeal, abandonment of her friends, and subsequent attempted suicide no doubt left its share of illimitable scars on her mind, perhaps somewhere deep down; she truly didn't wish to return to a world where she was looked upon by her loved ones as a coward.

Yet this was a field Konata was no mere aspirant of, and while the inner machinations of Kagami sometimes seemed deceptively deep, at least the outer shell of her mind's mold was somewhat easier to dissect. Kagami was a proud woman, if not a bit cavalier, and it was this sense of pride that drove her to better herself in all things, and generously, to assist those she cared about along similar paths of success. Not one to admit faults easily, and not one to openly fess up to mistakes, she didn't take criticism well, and her arrogance would sometimes blind her to a lingering hypocrisy in this regard, in that she often criticized others for similar negative traits that she herself encompassed.

By far Kagami's most outstandingly terrible trait however, staying true even in the current context, was that she bottled her emotions. She kept her loneliness and pain tucked inside where she figured it belonged, ignored it so she could concentrate or from a certain point of view, distract herself from forlornness. It was this same feeling of alienation from her peers that no doubt drove her to abandon her quest of destroying the Arch-Fiends, and her outright refusal to tell her companions of her growing illness of Dregling infection, instead deciding to shovel the mass of problems onto her buckling shoulders alone.

To run from her duty was to betray her companions, and to stay was to endanger their lives, she was damned if she did or didn't, and had obviously decided that even without her skills in the picture their lot stood a better chance without a ticking time bomb standing idly by to possibly kill them all in their sleep. Worse still, for her companions to provide her with deliverance from her illness would be to admit she was too weak to stop it herself, and for them to have to cope with her betrayal in the first place.

Most of this only dawned upon Konata in recent events, and despite an unconscious understanding she had of the deeper constructs of Kagami's psyche, she never really gave it much carefully deep consideration until lately, when the girl showed darker aspects of said ego. She had learned much thankfully, perhaps even enough that now, here at this critical juncture, she could make a difference in a decidedly ineludible fate.

Yet how could she succeed in rousing Kagami from her mental lapse? Kagami did not want to be pitied, she didn't want to be helped, yet contrarily, she didn't wish to be alone. How would one avoid sympathy while being supportive, while simultaneously attempting to get closer to a person that mentally thrives on pushing people away? Solving the issue of persuading Kagami to come around to her rejuvenation seemed to truly be the archer's paradox of a human mind, what she sought surely wasn't something she initially thought usable against her; she'd have to delve into unfamiliar territory to subdue the rattled mind of Kagami.

While arousing her over fluffed ego seemed like an easy enough route to take, Konata was never the best liar, and an artificial argument wasn't the type of incentive she required to ensure Kagami that her return to the mortal realm would be a pleasant one. Instead, Konata decided to strike at the less obvious target, Kagami's fear of isolation. A fear that eventually Kagami would have to realize was one that she didn't carry alone.

"Y'know Kagamin…" Konata began whimsically, chuckling to herself bashfully before she continued. "The morning before we left, to find my dad I mean…I stood at the town gate for about, oh, five or six hours before you guys showed up. I walked about a hundred feet from town at least a dozen times in that span of time, but every time I kept coming back to wait for you and the others." She recounted hoarsely, only recognizing the unintelligibility of her tone as she went on, it seemed to be an authentically painful memory, a rarity for the young Izumi.

The others dared not intrude in her spiel, silencing themselves to allow for a brave-faced Konata to pull their companion back to them, knowing she was likely the only one who could.

"In a lot of ways…I think I knew it was selfish to ask you guys to come, so I kept trying to go off by myself and failing spectacularly. Weird right? Even I think of other people's feelings sometimes!" Konata joked as if failure and selfishness was per her usual routine, despite the sharpness of the cutting comment made on her own behalf. "It's pretty obvious to me now why that was; hard to believe but…even I get scared sometimes. The more the thought about it, the more I thought it'd pretty scary, eating and sleeping alone, traveling alone, fighting demons alone. Waking up each day knowing I might never see you again, or dad and Yui, or Miyuki and Tsukasa…" Dawdling in her explanation, Konata paused in her grief, sighing despondently; it was hard admitting such human failings in front of so many people, harder still because it was so uncharacteristic of her to do so.

"It's alright, Izumi-San." Erroneously Miyuki reassured, catching her stifling breath as Carrot mended her fractured arm. Miyuki wished only for Konata to be comfortable at this time, the poor girl was never the best at shedding the weight of inner burdens; it was difficult for her to even comprehend them. Perhaps Konata's cocky, perpetually smarmy attitude was sometimes just a way to make up for not being able to properly convey her true emotions.

"And I feel it again now." Konata continued, resting a hand on Kagami's sweaty shoulder. "That same fear, that loneliness…because I'm afraid you're gonna die and I'm never gonna see you again. You probably wouldn't even visit me as a ghost, you'd be too busy being the devil's consort and damning baker's souls to hell for making sweet treats too irresistible. B-But how you are even…how are you even gonna get mad at me for saying that if you don't wake up now, right now! And smack the stupid grin clear off my face!?" That masking, farcical jesting that Miyuki had thought about seemed to surface again, it showed strongly in the bluenette's face, for there was nary a smile to be seen despite her attempt at humor. Konata wasn't one to cry, but her contorted face shown more agony than any tears could, awash with a paramount degree of fear.

Hiyori shiftily eyed Kagami's soul for any change in pattern, or that the antagonistic fluctuation may have ceased, but it remained consistent. No change could be seen from before, Konata's words seemed to have no effect, Kagami's soul continued pushing against the intruder, disallowing entry. While incapable of speech, by its actions it seemed to choose death. While sometimes rather nihilistic and callous in her dealings, even Hiyori couldn't help but feel a bit depressed; surely these poor girls hadn't gone through all this to be reunited, only for such a disastrous outcome? It seemed almost inexcusable.

"Plus I never…" Konata spoke, reeling her hands from Kagami's body in disconcertion. "I never got to tell you…" Again she awkwardly initiated, suddenly, and despite the current atmosphere, and without warning she felt her mental lobes burning with passion, the birth of an idea.

In a confusing and positively diacritic shift in tone Konata began chuckling to herself playfully, yanking up the lower hem of Kagami's tattered shirt to cup her hands on either side of her friend's waist, pinching slightly pudgy lobes of soft, squishy fat between her nipping hands.

"I never got to tell you about all the weight you've gained recently! Your jelly rolls have jelly rolls, even as a demon you can't shed that adorable tuft of fat, huh?" Rambunctiously she asseverated, content with her ploy of disparaging over a more personal confession, if this failed then there truly was no way Kagami would snap out of her rut. Making Kagami angry was usually the best method to achieve success anyhow, for she only showed her true feelings when she was at the brink of an aneurysm bore from frustration.

Hiyori batted her eyes in astonishment, partially from the fact that somebody other than her had the gall to make mocking revelations at inappropriate times, and doubly concerning Kagami's soul within the palm of her telekinetic mind. The human's soul buoyed in a fuss, hurriedly immersing its collective mass around that of the Storm King, absorbing the larger clot of soul energy into itself, inaugurating the process of the soul transference.

The colliding consciousnesses vied for dominance for a brief instance, but Kagami's managed to wholly devour the much larger orb into her own far smaller, achromatic one. The result was an erratic eruption of energy that ruptured every from corner of the bulb, discharging blasts of soul energy into the skies above. And despite this minor exigency, Hiyori managed to contain the wild soul, easily pressing the newfound fusion of human and demon into Kagami's body intangibly and pushing it directly through flesh and bone like phase matter, straight into the chest cavity.

An explosion of forceful heat proved their success in the ritual, but also sent the huddling group aimlessly flying every which way, tumbling and bouncing and rolling. They barely had enough time regain composure and look on as Kagami's body was lifted from the ground by that same coercion of power alone, floating fastidiously before plopping upwards to its feet, shaking the final quivers of electrical current from her vibrating arms and legs before ceasing, erasing the golden hue that had taxed Kagami's lifeless body as the soul entered it.

The warped appearance of a Dregling that had so unsuitably tainted her beforehand slowly peeled itself from her body, literally, the dead blackened plates and aged wrinkles seemed to slide and fall from her body like dry skin. The wounds made by her own hand, and others similarly knitted themselves inward, repairing the veritable disarray of countless injuries and fractures, contusions and stains of old and new blood. It rejuvenated her utterly destroyed body, returning it to normal just as Hiyori promised it would.

The yellow hue present in a demon's eyes faded from Kagami's own, and her jagged claws and teeth were soon to follow, grating themselves into far more appealing human statures.

As the process of revitalization and the renewal of her human spirit came to an end, wordless and still Kagami stood, breathing smoothly unlike before now that her throat was free of phlegm and rasp. Despite likely needing a moment to catch the familiar tune that had been eluding her this past while, she instead took it upon herself to flash her eyes open in a tiff, and charge like a wild animal past the disorientated and disorganized congregation about her.

She leapt like a jaguar, barring her teeth as she came crashing down on a wobbly Konata, sweeping the two of them from their feet and slamming her knees into the dirt over Konata's own, locking her in place with a powerful hold to the azure knight's wrists. Had they failed? Had Kagami remained trapped with a demon's husk after all? Or worse, had the Storm King's soul been too much for a human mind?

"You try keeping a slim figure when you think about food constantly!" Kagami snarled like a demon, but surprisingly, did not seem to be one. "Seriously, being a demon is all about food, food, food! I can't tell you how often I thought about eating souls…" Bitterly, but upon closer examination, jokingly she pouted, relieving Konata of her forceful grip and standing up off the girl, extending a hand for assistance in standing.

"Ha…" Konata chuckled, too inundated with sappy, warm euphoria to even think about making a joke. She took the hand with pleasure, allowing her tiny body to be pulled upward. She caught her balance not as easily as she hoped, but Kagami was there to catch her, and as she felt those hands on her arm that she had become so accustomed to, it finally broke her tough girl attitude with little effort.

She surrendered herself to the warm space between Kagami's arms, burying herself into the girl's collar bone yearningly, beaming when she felt Kagami's chin convivially plant itself atop her head as she returned the hug. The two stood speechlessly, indulging in one another's heat, basking in familiar smells beget from the other, and enthusiastically returning to the tirade of old, fervently beautiful feelings.

"Welcome back, Kagamin." Konata greeted with love, complacently sighing with reprieve in the sacred personal space of the one she adored, never intending to let her out of her sight again. Never intending to ignore seemingly trivial feelings again as mere passing animosity, she truly wished to try and help Kagami deal with her personal concerns, no matter what they entailed. Surely though, a joke here and there couldn't hurt, or maybe a joke every few minutes, perhaps that was a fair trade for being more sympathetic to her friend's plight.

"Good to be back." Kagami agreed, cradling Konata's head with complaisant, recurring rubs of her long blue hair. As she did so, she quizzically gave a peak at her surroundings, and of the many eyes locked onto her at that moment, some friends, some vaguely familiar, and some she had never even seen before. Synonymously, her environment of endless destroyed buildings heaped into mountains of rubble certainly seemed unfamiliar as well. "By the way, where am I and what's going on?" She questioned appropriately, looking downward at Konata, seriously expecting some answers.

"Oh, crazy, crazy stuff." Was all Konata could reply with, whimpering with joy as she was held. "Oh, speaking of, you have a demon's soul in your body now." She added lamentably as a joke, and to nobody's surprise at all, Kagami's initial reaction was to discard Konata from her arms and send her flailing to the unforgiving dirt, where she would receive no hugs.

"What!?" Kagami screamed in horror, recalling at that moment just who it was she had practically spooned with; she had anticipated something like this to happen in her absence. Just by whose gall and decree was she made to suffer so? Still, as she looked down at the one who captivated her time and time again, unashamedly laughing at Kagami's freak out, she couldn't disagree that suffering certainly had its benefits.

---

A top an adjacent cliff side surveying the obliterated church grounds, a trio of figures hid in plain sight, vigilantly observing the recent scuffle that had taken place between Konata and her companions, the crusaders of Umbasa, and of course the Arch-Fiend. The masked witch at their front had exhausted what little patience she previously held, and while the results of Konata's recent successes were pleasing, she couldn't help but wonder if she needed a little push of assistance.

"Two down." The distinguished, yet still strangely enigmatic voice spoke to its nearby accomplices. The two armored women behind her kneeled, despite their pride, to their new employer. They couldn't disagree, the masked witch did indeed pay well, she had brought them to exactly those they desired, a payment made in full before a contract was even completed was surely a rarity.

"Barely!" The brusquer looking of the two knights scoffed, rubbing her chestnut curls habitually with a jarring sneer. "I thought for sure they were mince meat, you weren't joking that they were tenacious at any rate, though." She derided, feeling an elbow-jerk from her companion, remembering that they were in the presence of an employer, certain etiquette was deemed absolute in such dealings.

"Which is exactly why I have hired you two." The witch surprisingly agreed, pressing a finger to the temple hidden beneath her golden mask in thought. "Those crusaders of Umbasa, kill them. They may have been useful tools in the past, but I can't have them interfering again, or perish the thought, causing any lasting harm to Konata Izumi. Normally I'd send my slave or that assassin Nanako Kuroi to do this deed…but alas, they prove more inept by the day." Woefully she lamented, respiring unenthusiastically.

"And what of Izumi's companions? They will surely react quite strongly when we attempt to accept our 'payment'." The more dutiful and composed of the twp barb-armored knights asked of her employer.

"Brave of you to speak of spoils, considering the job is not yet done. But do with them what you will, it matters not. However, do not harm Izumi in any of your dealings, that is my only warning I shall give you. " Hardened were her words, but her newest mercenaries had no objections to the simple rule.

"Easy enough." The rougher of the knights concluded aloud.

"I should hope so." The witch muttered, unmistakably annoyed by the dragoon with the looser tongue. "And when the crusaders lay dead, the Hiiragi twins are yours, temper this thought into your mind, burn it there as to remind you of the significance of the job at hand…and the remuneration for your deeds." Suggestively she proffered this advice, grinning mischievously underneath her weighty mask.

The duo of dragoons seemed complacent with these boundaries, and conscious of their competence, they had no mixed feelings about their success.

They needed only kill a couple of half-baked, empathy-fueled amateurs of demon brood, and then secure the Hiiragi twins as payment. A job as easy as any to dragoons, a lifetime of battling dragons made demons seem almost like child's play in comparison, they had no doubt of their success. Besides, it had been far too long since the two knights had seen the twins; they were simply dying for a reunion.

---

Author's Note: No note. My thoughts are as boring to you as they are to me. Have a new chapter, though.