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.
Notes: Apologies for the delay. This next segment just did not come together the way I wanted it to. It needed massive rewriting and of course work goes crazy at the same time.
Also between reading other people's fanfic and needing to look up details for my own I've been getting terribly spoiled about the Illuminati Arc. Vol 12 won't be out until Fall here, so last week I gave in and found a translation online for Vol 12 and 13.
Now that I've read them I'm going to try to incorporate Izumo's backstory info. I don't really have to change the way I see Izumo to use the reveals about her so it's mostly a matter of choosing to stick with cannon now that I'm aware of it. Shima's a bit trickier, I have to change the way I look at the character fairly drastically to include the reveals about him.
I probably won't try to adapt the current part of the Illuminati arc, or if I do it will be similar to what I'm doing with "Staring into the Abyss" where Egin's there, his goal is the same as in cannon but the timeline has been shifted considerably so Yukio's involvement with him doesn't have much in common with the plot line from the Anime. I've already got a mad scientist facility performing torturous experiments, I don't need another. I can't merge the Illuminati Facility and Egin's Facility because their goals are in direct opposition even if their methods have a lot in common.
At the moment I have fairly complete outlines for the rest of "Staring into the Abyss" and "Walk me through the Valley" which adapt the Kyoto arc for this AU. There won't be much showing up from the Illuminati arc any time soon, excluding Izumo's backstory.
Chapter Eight: Expanded View
"So what has everyone found?" Bon asked. "Are there any other threats on campus we should be taking care of besides the Mansion and the Wunderkammer?"
"Um…" Shiemi began, she flushed with embarrassment. "A few of the students described the Mansion to me, it's not a threat, it's- Well actually, it's um, my house. I had no idea you couldn't get to it without the Keys."
The other Exwires all stared at her in disbelief. "Okay, I guess we can cross that off the list," Bon said after a few moments.
A small white dog wandered into the room. Rin's eyes narrowed.
"The Wunderkammer is a room that shouldn't exist," Konekomaru reported. "Occasionally students find a door where there was never a door before. The ones that have gone inside describe a room filled to the bursting with things that they can't comprehend."
"You got Koneko to do your homework!" Shima exclaimed staring at Bon with a combination of admiration, disbelief and outrage.
Bon frowned. "No one told us the Street Car was killing people while they were waiting until they decided we were ready to deal with it," he said. "This is our school, our classmates, our friends. We need to figure out if there's anything else on campus threatening them and deal with it. We can't trust our teachers to tell us what's going on. Limiting the research team to just Rin and I because of a class assignment would have been stupid."
"So what did the two of you find?" Shima challenged.
Bon sighed. "Nothing really serious but there's a handful of normal students at the Academy who've gotten a Masho at some point. You know how low-level demons get; they'll pick on anyone who can see them because there's not much else they can do."
Rin turned and glared at the little dog. "No one's doing anything to help," he said. "They're scared. They think they're going crazy. They see stuff nobody else can, they don't know why, they don't know what's going on. It's not right."
The other Exwires followed the direction of Rin's gaze. "Oooh," Izumo exclaimed as she knelt down by the dog. "Are you lost?" she asked scratching behind it's ears.
"Don't-" Rin began.
The dog disappeared in a puff of purple smoke only to be replaced by their headmaster. Izumo stumbled back in shock.
Mephisto grinned at her. "So you're a dog person, good choice."
"Why are you wandering around like that causing trouble?" Rin demanded.
"Just checking in on my little students," Mephisto replied with a huge smile that only made the Exwires nervous. "By the way the Wunderkammer is my practical joke collection, I'd prefer that you don't break it. I declare your homework assignment complete and come bearing grades!"
He waved the Exwires toward their seats.
"Miwa-san and Izumo-san receive full marks for doing proper preparation before engaging their targets," Mephisto announced as he took his place at the front of the classroom. He wrote a large 100% on the board beside Konekomaru and Izumo's names, then drew some hearts and smiley faces around it. "Despite their lack of preparation Shima-san and Moriyama-san managed to deal with one of their assignments without aid. Moriyama-san's decision to prioritize saving the souls trapped on the phantom tram over preventing it from taking new victims and risking her own life and that of her teammates in the process is a bit controversial among the faculty. I, personally, agree with her decision but then I know things her other instructors are unaware of. The two of you get a 95% for the toilet spirit and a 70% for the Tram plus a few bonus points for the aid you provided against the portrait for a final score of 85%."
"What do you know that they don't?" Bon demanded.
Mephisto's smile practically sparkled. "More than I could possibly tell you," he replied.
Konekomaru put a hand on Bon's shoulder before the glowering teen could explode. "Specifically about Shiemi's decision. Why do you think she made the right choice?"
"The three of you should know," Mephisto said singling out the Myodha boys with his gaze. He waited expectantly.
"Reincarnation," Bon said after a moment. "The tram had frozen them in a particular moment of time, preventing them from moving on to their next life. But destroying those souls would have removed all future possibilities for them. Even if other people died to save the souls they would still have some future in a different life, but they had to be freed."
"Very good," Mephisto praised. "That doesn't mean you shouldn't take care of your own lives, there is much to be done before you move on, but when a soul is destroyed something completely irreplaceable is lost."
"Now on to our last team. You went into situations unaware of your own limitations and ignorant of what you faced. Despite that you required only minimal aid in resolving your assignment… even if you did smash my statue in the process. You leapt to the aid of your friends and learned to work around your limitations as you discovered them. You took the lessons from your assignment and applied them to the larger world. You received a 75% on your defeat of the Statue..."
"We only got one assignment," Bon immediately protested. "Everyone else got to average their scores."
"But with the aggregated pluses and minus from your actions relating to the larger assignment of resolving the Seven School Mysteries your final score is 83%," Mephisto continued as if Bon hadn't spoken.
Rin grinned, 'A 'B' that's pretty good.'
'I got the lowest score in class!' Bon despaired. "If we do find something else on campus to deal with can that count as extra credit?" he asked.
The next day Bon was waiting impatiently outside of the school kitchen when Rin finished with Itamae for the day. As soon as the dark haired boy stepped through the door Bon grabbed him by the arm and dragged him off to a quiet corner of the cafeteria. "Mephisto agreed we could have extra credit for helping with the normal students who have a masho," he informed Rin. "We are going to redeem ourselves from getting the lowest score in class."
"You worry too much about grades," Rin sighed. "We passed didn't we?"
Bon glared darkly at him.
Rin held up his hands in surrender. "I wanna help those guys; it sucks, what's happening to them. I was thinking about having a talk with some of the low-levels who've been tormenting them even before you said anything." Rin bared his fangs and a bit of flame showed in the depths of his eyes as he mentioned 'talking' to the demons about their bullying.
"Okay, you do that," Bon said. "I'm going to place some additional wards around their dorms. The stuff Mephisto's got up is all about keeping out the really dangerous demons. He ignores the more harmless ones, but they still scare people who don't know any better. Also to get the extra credit Mephisto wants an evaluation of each of the students before the end of the term. I think the True Cross is planning on recruiting some of them for next year's Pages."
"So how do we do that?" Rin asked skeptically.
"First we've got to talk to them." Bon handed Rin a slip of paper. "There are eight students total, we'll each take four. We're not allowed to tell them about Exorcists or demons, but we need to get an idea of how they're coping, how they'd probably respond if we did tell them."
Bon glanced at the clock, "Look I've got to get to class. Start putting a little fear into the demons, we'll talk more later about approaching the people."
After Bon left Rin glanced down at the names he'd been given and did a double take: Sato Aiko, Godain Sei, Kimura Mana and... Shiratori Reiji.
"Shiratori, you gotta be kidding me," Rin muttered. Still, Bon was so worked up about their grade from the Seven Mysteries assignment and he'd sort of implied he'd do it. He didn't like the thought of disappointing Bon. "Well, it's not like I'll need to talk to him more than once to find out if he's still the same old creep he always was," Rin told himself.
On his way downstairs to start breakfast Saturday Rin saw Izumo walking toward the park across from the old dorm. She was dressed in the traditional attire of a Miko and carrying a large box. Rin watched curiously as she made several more trips from the dorm with other items. When several minutes passed and Izumo didn't come back for something else Rin's curiosity got the better of him. He turned off the stove and headed after her.
Rin found Izumo down by the lively brook that crossed the campus. She had summoned her two familiars and was performing a very formal purification, chanting softly as she poured water from the brook over herself. Miko and Uke sat on their haunches watching her with head cocked to the side. After she was done, Izumo set two saucers before each of the Byakko and with great ceremony she served them each some rice and sake.
"Well, she did remember," Uke commented as the two Byakko examined the offering.
"I suppose it's better than nothing," Mike agreed. "But getting up so early to get it over with… Maybe she's ashamed."
"Or getting it out of the way so she can move on to things she thinks are important," Uke suggested.
Izumo spotted Rin lurking in the bushes. "What?" she demanded irritably.
"Sorry, I was curious," Rin admitted. He glanced at the Byakko. "They sound kinda like my dad whining about people who only show up for Mass at Christmas and Easter."
Izumo flushed. "It's Inari's festival day," she muttered. "I felt like I should do something even though I'm not at my temple."
Rin refrained from saying anything.
"If you really want to do something, show us what you remember for the dance," Mike suggested.
"I thought I wasn't cute enough," Izumo accused, old hurt laying her voice.
The two Byakko squirmed uncomfortably, their tails tucked under their bodies. "Perhaps we were a bit hasty," Uke offered repentantly.
"I don't remember anymore," Izumo said stiffly and she turned and walked away.
Toward the end of the following week Rin stared at list of names in his hand. He knew he should get started on talking to them, he'd run out of reasons to put it off.
He had made surprisingly good progress on convincing the demons on campus to back off. Rin approached the issue using the same tactics he'd developed for dealing with human bullies years ago, but with better results. After the first few 'conversations' Rin realized that where the human bullies had seen a fairly slight guy; smaller, younger and less well-armed than themselves and with fewer allies; the low-level demons saw the son of Satan, wielder of the blue flame and not someone they wanted to mess with. With human bullies Rin had always ended up needing to prove that he should be taken seriously and then, once he'd beaten them up a couple times, their pride would be involved and they'd just keep coming after him. It kept the bullies focused on him, not on Yukio or other kids, which accomplished Rin's initial goal, but it only added to the endless cycle of fights that had caused Shiro to despair of him more than once. With low-level demons both proof and pride could be skipped and they were only too happy to spread the message that the True Cross students were off limits in hopes of currying favor with Rin. The only remaining problem was the demons who were too mindless to understand why Rin wasn't happy with them.
Which meant Rin needed to talk to his four so Bon could get his extra-credit. Then Bon wouldn't feel like being paired with Rin was dragging down his all-important grades. Rin had a good idea of how talking to Shiratori was going to go and he was pretty sure the True Cross would have a problem with him getting into fights with normal students. 'Might be a more certain means of suicide than trying to drown in holy water,' Rin thought.
Sato Aiko and Kimura Mana were both girls, girls Rin had never met before. Rin turned pale at the thought of just going up and starting a conversation with them. 'What do you talk to girls about?' Rin wondered. 'How do you talk to girls? Maybe I can talk to Shima, he doesn't seem to have any problems finding the nerve to go up to them… walking away without getting slapped, that's a bit harder for him.'
That left Godain Sei. He wasn't a girl and he wasn't Shiratori Reiji, but he was a normal guy. Not an Exorcist. Outside of Itamae, who knew about demons, Rin couldn't to remember the last time he'd talked to a normal person. Certainly not since he'd dropped out of the Academy classes. Even if he included Fall term Rin had trouble thinking of a time he'd talked with someone normal. Maybe he'd answered -failed to answer- a teacher's question once or twice. Maybe he'd said 'hi' to the cashier at the grocery story occasionally, or maybe he hadn't. He vaguely remembered being surrounded by a bunch of people the day before Kuro died and he tried to kill himself, but even the part of November that he'd been conscious for was a hazy mess of feeling sick, hurt and tired, of long stretches of being disconnected from reality broken by brief, nightmarish flashes of clarity. Rin remembered how strange and notable it had been when his classmates asked him about the cast on his leg at the beginning of fall term and realized those might have been the only real conversations he'd had with non-Exorcists since the day Yukio had told him to 'just die'.
Rin glanced down and saw blood welling up from scratches he'd inflicted on his arm and grimaced. The thought of talking to someone normal, someone who might reject him out of hand and prove that everything Yukio had said was true left him wishing for holy water. He felt like ants were crawling across his skin. 'I should go ask Koneko for a another massage,' Rin thought with a sigh.
Then Rin looked across the square to the steps were Godain was hunched over his books and
squared his shoulders determinedly. Koneko said Yukio had encouraged Rin to avoid being touched so that he could 'reward' Rin for purifying himself with holy water by tending to the resultant injuries. 'I'm going to go over there and talking to Godain,' Rin told himself. 'Then I'll ask Koneko for a massage, it'll be my reward for talking to someone I don't know… And if he automatically hates me, then I'll really need the reminder that my friends aren't revolted by me.'
Rin took a deep breath and walked across the square. He sat down by Godain and waited for a few minutes until the other boy glanced at him. "Hi," Rin said pasting on an uncertain smile. "I'm Okumura Rin."
"Godain Sei, pleased to meet you," the other boy replied automatically. A coal tar floated past them and Godain cringed. Rin scowled, he reached swatted the little demon away. Godain's eyes widened. "You see them too!"
Rin flushed remembering he wasn't supposed tell the normal students that he knew about demons, then he gave a mental shrug, 'Mephisto told Bon to tell me not to tell, I didn't actually agree to anything.'
"Those ones aren't much different from flies. Big, ugly flies but still flies," he said.
Godain smiled tentatively.
Rin walked back to the dorm ten minutes later feeling like he'd made a new friend.
After spending the morning helping her mother at the Exorcist Shoppe Shiemi hurried back to the dorm to check on the new seedlings in her greenhouse.
Since moving into the old dorm in January Shiemi's greenhouse had been steadily expanding. All of the south side rooms on the girls' third floor were over run with greenery and she'd begun expanding into the empty rooms on the boys' second floor. Baby greenman outnumbered the mice in the old dorm ten to one.
Shiemi had beds of new sprouts that would be transplanted to her garden in another month. She had exotic tropical plants that would never survive Tokyo's natural climate. She had three rooms of medicinal herb useful for treating templaits. Under Nagatomo's direction she was cultivating a Dekalp and several other demon plants, taming them.
Shiemi opened the door to the room across the hall from her own room and found Amaimon lounging in the window, basking in the afternoon sun. He was using his favorite hobgoblin as a pillow.
"Oh!" Shiemi exclaimed in surprise.
Amaimon sat up. "This place isn't bad. None of that annoying crap that Big Brother had fits over if I touch. I'm moving in," he declared.
"You can't!" Shiemi protested. "Not this room! This is the girls' floor!"
Amaimon blinked at her. "I like this one best. The plants are strongest here."
Shiemi flushed. "Well- You absolutely having to use the bathroom downstairs," she insisted.
"Why?" Amaimon asked.
"Because the one on this floor is the girls' restroom!" Shiemi exclaimed as she turned beet red.
Amaimon walked over and peered at her closely. "You're changing colors," he pointed out, which only made Shiemi blush more. "What do you do in a bathroom anyway?"
Shiemi stared at him in disbelief, forgetting even to be embarrassed.
"Well?" Amaimon demanded.
"If you promise to stay out of the girls' bathroom I'll tell you," Shiemi offered.
"Agreed," Amaimon sealed the deal.
"First it's where we wash up," Shiemi began. "We take off our clothes there, that's why boys shouldn't go in the girls' bathroom or vise-versa: You might see someone naked!"
Amaimon stared at her intently. "That's a taboo right?"
Shiemi nodded firmly.
"It's good I like these clothes then," Amaimon decided. He gesturing to his waistcoat and ragged suit jacket. "I've kept them from rotting for almost a hundred and fifty years now," he added proudly.
Shiemi looked horrified. "But you take you take your outfit off to bath don't you?"
"Why?"
"You wait here," Shiemi ordered then went and checked the bathroom. "It's okay, Paku-chan and Izumo-chan are out."
"Can't, I promised," Amaimon replied.
"Ooooh!" Shiemi groaned. "And I can't go in a boys' restroom." She thought for several minutes. "There's another bathroom no one uses," she said quietly. "You need to learn proper hygiene, it's for your health," she added apparently addressing her own reservations.
Amaimon followed her up to the fourth floor. Shiemi led him into the bathroom then gave him a thorough explanation of how one washed up, while showing him the various necessary implements. Then she went on to the brushing of teeth and the need for multiple sets of clothing so that a person had something to wear while washing clothes. The Earth King demonstrated his ability to simply command the dirt to get off him and his clothes.
"But there's still sweat and and germ. And you have to use water!" Shiemi insisted.
"What are these for?" Amaimon asked pointing to the stalls. "You're turning colors again," he added a moment later.
"When you -um- go to the bathroom that's where you -um- do it," Shiemi stammered.
"We 'went to the bathroom' when we came in didn't we?" Amaimon asked in confusion.
"Er- um- no. I -um- mean when you," Shiemi wonder if spontaneous combustion due to sheer embarrassment was a danger. "When you defecate," she whispered.
Amaimon stared at her blankly.
"After you eat, the parts that don't get digested, they have to come back out," Shiemi tried again.
Amaimon shook his head. "I've never done that, it sounds gross."
"But what happens to all that candy you eat?" Shiemi couldn't help but ask.
Amaimon shrugged. "Maybe it's just living human bodies that do that," he reasoned.
"You're not…" Shiemi asked.
Amaimon shook his head again. "Big Brother thinks it's a good experience to cohabitate with a human soul. Eventually the body gets old and dies and then it's your completely to reshape as you like but I think it's a pain. I think Big Brother even let his host have control most of the time back when it was alive, so he could study it from the inside out." Amaimon wrinkled his nose, clearly bewildered by Mephisto's peculiarities.
"This body was sacrificed to me," he went on after a moment. "His people dedicated him to me. They buried him alive so they wouldn't have earthquakes. Since I wanted to see Assiah anyway I decided to take him. But even though he was mine he fought when I tried to possess him. He suffocated before I gained enough control of his body to break the entombment."
Shiemi's hands covered her mouth. "That poor person."
Amaimon shrugged. "It worked out. I don't think I'd have liked that defecating thing. I never saw Big Brother do that, he must have stopped it when his host passed on. I certainly would." He paused for a moment then frowned. "He does spend time in the bathroom and he shuts me out. He said it was none of my business what happened in there."
While Shiemi tried to digest what she'd been told Amaimon continued his inspection of the bathroom. Shiemi hadn't mentioned the large cistern or even looked at it but he assumed it had a purpose apart from boiling suicidal demons. "What do you normally do with that?" he asked.
Shiemi bit her lip, then in a low, tight voice she said, "Normally it's for soaking after you're clean. Normally there shouldn't be any holy water in it. Normally-" she broke off.
"I hate this room," she said flatly. "I hate that Rin still has to live in this building. I hate thinking about this room."
Amaimon tilted his head to the side and waited.
"I was always sick or scared or guilty," Shiemi said. "I couldn't go out and be part of the world like everyone else. Then I met Okumura Yukio. He was my age but he was already an Exorcist; he'd done so much. He used to tutor me, and I'd ask him questions about things he'd done or seen. He made my little world just a bit bigger and I loved him for that."
Shiemi's fists clenched. "Then he tried to make Rin like I used to be: sick and scared and guilty. He turned this room into a torture chamber to make Rin's world small and I'll never forgive him for that."