After school

The cram school didn't know what happened to Allen Walker; after all the fuss with a son of Satan and the Illuminati and all those things where he didn't do much other than turn up to classes and fail said classes, he had simply left. One day they got to class and he wasn't there, the teacher kindly told them that he had dropped out in the same way that Paku had. The difference was that Allen had dropped out of both schools.

Secretly the majority of the class was glad, after the incident with Amaimon during the camping trip none of them had felt entirely comfortable around him. Rin was slightly sad because without Allen he was last in the class. Mephisto didn't know how to feel; he had never managed to make Mr Walker dance to his tune and part of him was annoyed to see a challenge go, another part of him was happy the person referred to as a "cheater" by the Earth King was no longer there to confuse him.

The cram school didn't know what had happened to Allen walker, but if they were honest they would admit that they hadn't really tried hard to find out.

A few hundred miles away a white haired boy sat on the edge of a cliff and dangled his feet above a fifty foot drop without a care in the world. The scar on his eye announced the presence of a demon trying to sneak up on him; it was a familiar one.

He threw back his head and laughed as Amaimon came into view. They had had many meetings after the one in the 1930', none consisting of much more than thrown punches with the occasional threat or introduction. It had taken until the 1980's for Allen to be introduced formally to the Demon King, only to tell him that he had known since the first game of poker.

The last time they had met had been during the camping trip, the first time Amaimon hadn't tried to rip out his throat. Possibly he hadn't wanted to be beaten by a cheat in fount of people, or maybe had simply gotten sick of experiencing pain at his hand.

'Why did you quite school?' the demon asked.

'Does my lack of education bother you?' he responded.

'I knew where to avoid when you were there,' was the petulant reply.

Allen laughed again at the sulky tone coming from what was meant to be one of the top ten strongest demons in hell, or Gehenna or whatever you wanted to call it.

'I got sick of pretending to be dumber than I am just to escape notice, I got sick of avoiding making connections just to see the people I would grow to care about die one way or another. I just got tired of trying to fool myself into believing I was something different to what I am.'

Amaimon was quiet after that announcement. He wasn't that smart and didn't understand the pain he could hear in the boy's voice, so he sat next to him and joined him in admiring the view.

'I won't die unless it's you who kills me.' The demon king didn't know what made him say it, but he felt like he had to.

Allen laughed again; he did that a lot when he was unhappy. 'Is a demon king trying to comfort me? Me, a cheater of death and bearer of God's Grace?' the words were surprisingly bitter.

Amaimon shrugged, 'All of us were Angels once, until we fell.'

'Is that a way of asking if I would join you?'

'Father and my brothers are strong and hard to kill; you wouldn't have to worry about them dying so much. And we could play so long as you promise to stop cheating, at least against me. It would be funny to see you cheat against Lucy-niisan.'

The laugh Allen gave then was slightly more genuine than the ones before.

'I cheated death once, and after that he decided to avoid me so now I cannot die. You are the first person to continuously seek me out after seeing my true face.

'Well, I guess if it doesn't work out I can just leave. But can we take my method of transportation? Unless you can open a Gehenna gate it's going to be rather hard to get there otherwise.'

Final chapter: epilogue in Gehenna