Walk me through the Valley
Disclaimer: Characters and premise are the property of Kazue Kato. I'm just borrowing them for a little non-profit fun.
Chapter Six: Being a Demon
When Rin, Shiemi and Izumo arrived at Mephisto's office for their class Amaimon was standing in the corner rocking from one foot to the other while nervously crunching a lollypop between his teeth.
"As you can see, you have a new classmate," Mephisto announced brightly. "I know it's a bit irregular, but as our resident Hell King and Moriyama-san are basically stuck with one another, I thought why not? Besides he's my little brother and frankly his lack of forethought is becoming embarrassing." He glanced over his shoulder at Amaimon, "Thoroughly unbecoming of a demon."
Amaimon scowled at his brother for chastising him in front of the Exwires.
Shiemi walked over to Amaimon and took one of his hands between hers. She smiled up at him earnestly. "Let's be friends," she offered.
Amaimon bit through his lollypop. He pulled his hand away from Shiemi and retreated behind Mephisto's chair. "The oath only lasts until you die," he said.
Mephisto sighed. Rin glared at Amaimon furiously. Izumo took her normal place on the loveseat and proceeded to ignore Amaimon.
Shiemi said, "Then we can be friends for… oh I don't know, maybe eighty years?" She smiled gently at the demon. "It's okay, I promised to love and honor you too," she assured him.
Amaimon just glared and didn't come out from behind the chair.
"Well then on with our lesson," Mephisto said with fake cheer.
The following Monday Izumo found herself sitting in the kitchen staring up at the shelf where Rin had hidden the notebook she'd glimpsed before Amaimon's kidnapping attempt the previous week. Rin obviously didn't want her to know what was in it, but… Izumo stretched up on her toes, the notebook was still there, he hadn't moved it yet.
'Rin should be sparing with that ass of a Paladin now, he won't be back for a couple of hours. If it's just something embarrassing, like a diary or something, I'll put it back and pretend I never looked,' Izumo decided. 'I just want to be sure it isn't something that could hurt him.'
She took down the notebook and opened it to the last page and started reading.
Yukio,
I think I did well on my demon pharmacology test today. I'm almost caught up in my classes, I just need to pass one more recitation test for Shiku-Sensei and I'll be up with everyone else. Not doing normal school work really gives me a lot more time to study for cram school. Even better is how Koneko explains stuff, he says I'm a whole-to-part learner and that's sort of why I suck at school. He says I'm not stupid, I just need to learn differently than most of the other people.
I know you won't believe it but I'm not having any problem getting out of bed in time for my job in the cafeteria. Itamae-san and Ukobach are great, I get along with them really well because we all love cooking. Ukobach and I keep trying to top each other, who can chop vegetables faster or flip pancakes higher or stand hotter dishwater, stuff like that. Yesterday we were making meringue, you beat the egg-whites really fast and for a long time to make them stiff. That's what makes the nice peaks, so Ukobach and I were trying to out do each other as normal, only we beat the eggs too hard and they flew out of our bowls and got all over the kitchen. Itamae yelled at us, then he made us clean up and made the meringue himself (since we were obviously too immature). He didn't beat the eggs half as energetically as either of us, but he used a copper bowl and wiped the sides of it with a lemon slice before putting in the egg-whites. His meringue turned out really good. Something about denaturing the bonds in the eggs? You'd probably understand that better than I do, but I'm picking up a little. Chemistry isn't so terrible when cooking is involved.
I hope you're happy in Brazil. I read that it's really warm there and that the girls all walk around wearing bikinis, not that you'd care. You're always way too serious to notice girls, but they notice you! Maybe you could make a little less effort at running away? Shiemi still thinks of me as just a friend, but I guess I don't mind anymore, I don't know why.
Are you teaching Exorcists classes in Brazil? I bet it's a relief not to have me in your class embarrassing you. I know it's been a long time since you needed me to protect you from bullies, you could just give them that teacher-look you'd turn on us Exwires and they'd all run away, you wouldn't even have to pull your guns or anything, but I still wish I knew you were okay.
Your big brother
Rin
Izumo flipped back a few pages. Most of the notebook was filled with similar letters, unsent updates about Rin's daily life and requests for similar information. Izumo scowled, as long as Rin still cared about Yukio, Yukio could still hurt him. Flipping back further, Izumo suddenly stopped. Rin's writing had turned jagged, shaky. There were spots where the ink had run and the page crinkled from tears.
I'm sorry. Sorry I made you hate me. Sorry, sorry, sorry you had to go away. It's all my fault. I'm sorry. Should have just died when you told me to. Dad never should have saved me, then both of you would be okay.
"I believe that's private."
Izumo jumped. She looked up in surprise and saw Father Nagatomo standing in the kitchen doorway giving her a disapproving look. "Do you know what Rin's writing?" she demanded.
"Broadly," Nagatomo admitted cautiously. "It's suppose to help him sort out how he feels about Yukio and what happened."
"He shouldn't feel guilty!" Izumo snapped. "Rin didn't do anything wrong. It's Yukio who should apologize!"
"You know just enough to cause problems don't you?" Nagatomo sighed. "Okay. First, Yukio isn't going to apologize because he refuses to admit he did anything wrong. That, more than anything else, was why he had to leave."
"Who cares about Yukio anyway?" Izumo demanded. "He's evil, he tortured Rin."
"Rin cares," Nagatomo pointed out. "And that's the second problem. Rin agrees that what Yukio did to him was wrong, but he clings to the belief that Yukio meant well; that Yukio's intentions matter more than his actions. Telling Rin how he should feel about Yukio won't help anything."
"Because Yukio brainwashed him," Izumo snarled.
"Yukio had quite a bit of help," Nagatomo replied quietly. "I know Rin, I've known him since he was an infant, there's no question in my mind that he's person just like me, fully capable of choosing between good and evil. Rin's kind-hearted and protective by nature and yet he's a demon. Every day he trains to fight demons because demons are the enemy of all Assiah. Satan, Rin's father, is the epitome of evil. Rin is the only demon other than Satan himself, to be marked with the blue flames, even Mephisto and Amaimon, both sons of Satan and full demons to boot, don't have them. It's not just what Yukio did that Rin has to overcome, it's everyone who's ever called Rin a demon as an insult."
"Yukio was born human, Rin was born a demon; add to that Yukio is better at school and never got into trouble the way Rin did. He sees Yukio as being better than he is." Nagatomo smiled sadly. "Rin was never jealous, he was always proud of how talented his younger brother was. And then Rin came here and even though Yukio is his twin and actually the younger brother Yukio was Rin's teacher, he was placed in a position of authority over Rin. Yukio abused that authority, he used it to tear Rin down to the point where he could only see his existence as something harmful to the people around him. From the outside we see Yukio abusing his position and hurting Rin, but what Rin sees is a person he loves and trusts confirming everything that tells him that he is something less than human, something worse than human."
"Rin has bad moments," Nagatomo nodded toward the page Izumo had been reading, "but he tries not to dwell on them. He's trusting you and the others to see him more clearly than he can see himself. He's decided not to act on the part of himself that still believes the world would be better off without him, but that doesn't stop him from feeling that he's undeserving of the consideration any human has the right to."
"Not everything from Gehenna is evil," Izumo said. "Even your religion has angels and Rin's father was one of them until he chose to become evil."
"No one's ever called Rin an angel," Nagatomo replied. "He's too human."
On the other side of the campus Bon edged around the gym's perimeter chewing on his lower lip. Now that his participation in the spar was part of the training rather than a deterrent to keep Angel from hurting Rin he wasn't really comfortable taking shots at the Paladin. True to his boast, the Paladin was entirely capable of taking on both teens and trouncing them; although Bon wondered if that would still be true if Rin fought with his powers unsealed; still, as good of a fighter as Angel had proven himself to be, firing live ammo at the man as part of a training exercise didn't sit right with Bon.
Besides, doing so would obscured the point if Angel did crossed the line with Rin again.
Given Angel's recent actions Bon was almost ready to give the Paladin the benefit of the doubt and believe that those first few lessons had been an ill-conceived attempt to motivate Rin to fight harder. Angel had certainly adapted quickly enough once he'd figured out that threatening Rin's Aria got a stronger response than hurt Rin himself. At the same time, the previous winter had ensured that Bon didn't trust the Paladin further than he could throw him.
In the center of the gym Rin and Angel crossed swords with a deafening crack of wood on wood. Rin shoved Angel back making use of his greater strength. To his shock Angel didn't even try to hold his ground. Rin stumbled forward, off balance due to the lack of resistance. Angel dropped into a crouch and kicked Rin's legs out from under him.
Bon quickly cast a barrier to prevent Angel from capitalizing on Rin's mistake.
"Your stance is pathetic," Angel informed Rin smugly. "Getting you off balance is child's play. Once that is accomplished your monstrous strength means less than nothing."
Rin hopped back to his feet. "You won't do that again."
Ten minutes later Rin was back on the floor. "Pathetic," Angel repeated.
"So show him how to do it right!" Bon exclaimed angrily. "Are you his teacher or not?"
Angel held up a hand to stop the spar. He scowled, clearly not in favor of Bon's suggestion but not dismissing it out-right either.
Rin looked between Bon and Angel worriedly. Bon watched Angel as the Paladin thought things over. "You don't really want to teach Rin," he accused.
Angel gave Bon a disapproving look. "What I want is immaterial. I have been ordered to train Okumura."
"Well you suck," Bon stated. "You give me more pointers on working with a knight than you give RIn on being a knight. You don't want to train him so you just spend a couple hours knocking him around and call that good."
"I don't undermine my orders," Angel protested but he sounded notably less sure.
"Enlighten me then," Bon snapped. "What do you call doing a half-assed job? You insult Rin when he gets things wrong but you don't tell him what he should be doing instead. You give me suggestions, so I know you can do better, you just don't want to."
Angel paced back and forth for several moments looking like the wrath of God. Then he turned on Rin. "Get up! Hold your sword at ready."
When Rin did as he was told Angel adjusted Rin's hands on the sword and his feet. "Now lunge! Freeze!" Angel snapped then adjusted Rin's position again. There was no missing the distaste in the Paladin's expression every time he had to touch Rin but he was teaching him.
After several minutes Bon set his gun aside and took out a textbook.
Angel spent the rest of the lesson walking Rin through basic sword drills.
"Spend an hour a day practicing those drills on your own," Angel ordered when the second hour was up. "From now on the two of you will spar against me on Mondays. Okumura and I will work on his technique Wednesdays."
"I think I'll hang out anyway," Bon decided.
"Stop treating me like a kid," Rin exclaimed. "You don't gotta protect me from him."
"Yeah I do," Bon disagreed. "Thanks to Yukio, you don't know when someone's abusing you." He nodded toward Angel. "And I'm starting to think that maybe he doesn't know when he's outta line either. You both need a chaperone. If it ain't me, it'll be someone else. I told Mephisto how much damage you were taking after your first lesson."
Uninterested in the by-play between the two boys, Angel put up his bokken and settled Caliburn back in place.
Rin scowled fiercely and Bon looked away. "As long as he's teaching you, you're gonna keep getting monthly check-ups. Bruises shouldn't have the same sort of accumulative effect as holy water but we need to make sure he's not taxing your healing too much." At Rin's look Bon exclaimed, "You nearly died! I'd rather tick you off by being overprotective than risk losing you."
Rin sighed in surrender, "I'm supposed to be your knight, supposed to protect you. But you're always the one protecting me. I must be pretty worthless."
Bon chewed on his lip for a moment, hating how unhappy Rin looked. "How about you protect me from demons and I'll protect you from humans?"
Rin perked up a bit at that. "It's a deal!" he declared.
Angel had been just about to leave, he stopped and turned to stare at Rin in shock.
"What?" Rin asked after a moment. "Do I have something on my face?"
"It's nothing," Angel said quickly and left.
"You're going to get wrinkles," Lightning teased as he slumped casually in the seat next to Angel while they waited for the others to arrive for the council meeting.
"Contradictory orders give me a headache," Angel complained.
"Hmm?" Lightning sat up and gave Angel his full attention.
"I've been ordered to watch Okumura and kill him when he becomes a threat to the Order," Angel explained. "At the same time I have been ordered to train him as a knight. It would be much simpler to kill him now. I don't like playing games."
"Simple yes, but a waste of a potential resource," Lightening pointed out. "He is quite powerful."
"Yes exactly," Angel complained. "His primary weakness is that he has no clue how to use that power. And if I follow my other orders that weakness will be corrected. He'll be much harder to kill after he's trained as a knight."
"Not up to the challenge?" Lightning asked with a smirk.
Angel scowled. "It's a waste of my time to train him just so that he's harder for me to kill later."
"Really, you'd have trouble with him?" Lightning grinned slyly, "Are you starting to like our little hellspawn?"
"Don't be absurd," Angel drew himself up, looking affronted. "I don't like dealing in false hope, he should have been killed when Pheles and Fujimoto's deception was first uncovered. The Exwires are already much too attached to him and the situation has only gotten worse with time. The Grigori has no intention of allowing him to pass the Exorcist's Exam. Training him is pointless and yet I have been ordered to do so."
"Well, you'd better follow your orders to the best of your ability," Lightning replied.
"Which ones?!" Angel exclaimed in frustration.
Tsuzo smiled as she stopped the class outside the Hall of Portraits. "Izumo-chan, Koneko you're up. I hear you two have been doing some background work on your own time, so why don't you catch the rest of us up before we go in?"
"Well, um we interviewed the students who'd had encounters with the portrait," Konekomaru began. "We also talked to Sir Pheles to see if he knew anything."
"Mephisto told us it's call the Family Portrait," Izumo interjected. "He knew more than he was telling us."
"But we decided that he was probably withholding information because this is a class assignment and he didn't want to give us the answers," Konekomaru resumed. "All the students we interviewed told different stories but the common theme was they saw something they were afraid of."
"They couldn't even agree on which portrait they were looking at when it happened," Izumo added with disgust.
"Sir Pheles told us it's getting more dangerous," Konekomaru continued. "The interviews confirmed it. Up until two months ago it showed smaller fears, surface worries: failing a test or friends gossiping behind your back, for example. Now the fears are deeper, more traumatic: death, loss of a loved one, loss of self. It's getting further into people's heads."
"We're pretty sure it gave one student, a guy named Godain, a masho at the start of the term," Izumo said. "We need to get rid of this thing."
Tsuzo nodded. "Officially the Hall's been closed for remodeling since the attack on Godain. That's what gave us the idea of having you lot clean up the Seven Mysteries as a training exercise," she said. "The Street Car is actually the most urgent situation but it's also the most dangerous. We wanted to let you work up to it."
Shima groaned. "So not only did we draw the cross-dressing assignment we also pulled the most dangerous one. That figures."
""We all ended up cross-dressing," Bon reminded Shima.
"But you didn't have to face the embodiment of female spite while cross-dressing," Shima countered.
Shiemi patted him on the back. "Rin and I both thought you made a cute girl," she assured him. "And you weren't trying to peep, it was a class-assignment. And- well-" Shiemi colored lightly.
Shima clapped a hand over her mouth. "Not really helping," he said.
"What? Did it say cross-dressing and sneaking into a girl's restroom was the only chance you had of seeing a naked girl outside of your filthy magazines?" Izumo asked.
"Eavesdropping or was that thing a kindred spirit?" Shima replied.
Konekomaru cleared his throat. "Anyway, the Portrait is urgent," he said. "We suspect it's been possesed by a shapeshifter but we haven't confirmed it or which portrait is the problem. I'm going to cast a protective barrier on myself then go provoke each of the four suspect portraits. Once we know which one has been possessed Izumo will expel the spirit."
"Good prep-work," Tsuzo said. "Let's see how your plan works."
Konekomaru took a deep breath, cast his barrier and reminded himself that all his friends were there to back him up then walked into the Hall of Portraits. He picked the closest of the four suspect portraits and walked up to it. After a moment the painting of the woman began to shift. Konekomaru found himself staring into Rin's hospital room back in early December.
Rin's severely burned body lay beneath a clear tent to try to prevent infection, a futile effort, he'd been running a dangerously high fever for over seventy-two hours now. The night before his heart had stopped twice and Mephisto had placed Kurikara on Rin's chest in a last ditch bid to strengthen him. With Rin's hands, deformed into claws by his burns, placed on the hilt of his sword, he looked like the corpse of a knight laid out for burial. A knight who'd died a particularly painful and gruesome death.
Konekomaru overheard two orderly talking in the hall outside of Rin's room. "I don't why we don't just finish the job he started."
"He's been more stable since Sir Pheles' visit. His fever's still high, but he's gaining ground."
"That fever? That's his humanity being burned away. Humans don't survive being boiled alive. Maybe he was half-human before, but if he wakes up all that will be left is the demon."
Konekomaru sensed Bon standing behind him. "It's your fault you know," the larger boy stated matter-of-factly. "If you hadn't been such a fucking coward after the forest Shima and I wouldn't have ostracized Rin. And then he wouldn't have killed himself."
Konekomaru blinked, he was back in the Hall of Portraits, surrounded by the other Exwires. Bon's hands were steepled and he had a look of intense concentration on his face as he chanted to maintain a barrier around them. Konekomaru felt a flash of shame at how easily his barrier had broken, then he noticed that Rin wasn't with them and his stomach clenched. 'What is real? Rin waking up and recovering, or dying in that hospital room?' Konekomaru wondered as he scanned the circle of faces again, searching for Rin.
"When you went down he went after you before any of us could stop him," Shima said with a nod toward the Hall beyond Bon's barrier. Konekomaru looked over his shoulder and saw Rin, wreathed in flames, his sword still strapped to his back as he fought an invisible opponent. While Konekomaru watched Rin was slammed to the ground, but the demon-boy was immediately up and on the attack again.
"I tried the official expel spirits on the portrait just like we planned," Izumo said accusingly. "It didn't do anything. Rin's gone berserk but with the sword sealed he's not powerful enough to defeat it. We can't get him in the barrier to break the illusion, we can't get the sword because he's berserk and we can't defeat the Portrait ourselves because your plan failed!"
"Okay, okay," Konekomaru said, trying to pull himself together. "First we need to see what's really going on. Shiemi, can you ask Nii-chan for something in the Barberry family?" Shiemi nodded. "Alright, I'll cast a spell of awakening, that should protect us from the shapeshifter's illusions. Bon, how's your barrier holding up?"
Bon shrugged, 'so-so,' his expression told them.
"Can you give us ten minutes?" Konekomaru asked and Bon gave him a fiercely determined look.
Shiemi had already mashed the berries into a paste by the time Konekomaru finished talking with Bon. He took them and dabbed a spot on each of the Exwire's foreheads as he chanted a quick verse. The room shimmered and they finally saw the giant unformed mass that Rin was fighting.
"Why does Rin see it when he's under it's spell?" Izumo asked.
"Try Expel Spirit again," Konekomaru instructed.
Izumo did as he asked and for a moment the mass wavered. Rin saw it's momentary weakness as well and ripped at it with his claws vengefully. But the weakness passed in moments.
"Why is called the Family Portrait?" Konekomaru wondered out loud. "That was the one hint Sir Pheles was willing to give. It was a portrait of a woman. In fact, each of the suspect portraits is of a single individual…" He looked at the portraits again and inspiration struck. "They all have the same frame. Different people were looking at different portraits when they were attacked because they're a set and the shapeshifter is in all of them!"
"Got it," Izumo said and ordered Mike and Uke to exorcise each of the portraits in turn. Each time the shapeshifter wavered and then was restored. Even after the last portrait had been cleansed of evil.
"We have to hit them simultaneously," Konekomaru realized. "Izumo, have your familiars take the top two. Shima hit the one right in front of us. Bon, you're going to have to shoot the last one… But you'll need to drop the barrier and they'll swarm us. We need Rin, but we've got to rescue him first."
"Nii-chan and I can hold them off for a bit," Shiemi said.
"Okay," Konekomaru said moving to stand beside the blond girl. "Ready?"
"Ready," Izumo and Shima said. Bon pulled his gun and aimed it at his target. He stopped chanting and focused on shooting. Nii-chan produced a thicket of brambles around them as Bon's barrier crumbled. "Go!" The three Exwires attacked together and a moment later the shapeshifter folded in on itself and was gone. With his enemy gone Rin crumpled to the floor and wailed.
"You wake him up," Shima told Konekomaru. "Rin's a live-in-the-moment type guy. You were the one who was down when he went in the hall, so his biggest fear right then was that it had killed you."
"That's why Rin could see it," Bon realized. "Shapeshifters are tough to kill but they aren't bright. Rin was scared that it had killed Koneko so that's what it showed him. It wasn't capable of considering how Rin would react."
Konekomaru knelt in front of Rin and gave him a light shake. Rin looked up, his face a teary mess, for a moment he looked confused then he tackled Konekomaru, hugging the slighter boy with such enthusiasm that he knocked them both over. "It's okay, it's okay," Konekomaru murmured hugging Rin back tightly, glad of the excuse to reassure himself that Rin was really okay too.
Izumo plopped down on the floor beside Rin and Konekomaru. "Next time, leave the sword with someone who can draw it," she said.