DAY TWO
-continued-
-ooo-
"Each of us assumes everyone else knows what HE is doing. They all assume we know what WE are doing. We don't...Nothing is going on and nobody knows what it is. Nobody is concealing anything except the fact that he does not understand anything anymore and wishes he could go home."
― Philip K. Dick, VALIS
-ooo-
The bell rang again.
It seemed as if it had been ringing for a long time.
A long time and no time at all.
As if someone had been standing outside his room pressing it over and over and over again, unwilling or unable to recognize the obvious in his refusal to answer.
He could think of only one who would dare to plague him so.
He could picture her there, leaning into the bell, laughing.
The way she would smile.
The way she would laugh.
If he did not answer, that noise might well continue throughout the night.
Might never stop at all.
She would never tire of the game, not when she knew she had a captive audience to torment.
And he had no doubt that she knew he was there.
Sometimes he thought her true talent must lie in the realm of foresight.
Or perhaps she simply had a keen nose for misery.
It would please her to imagine him curled on the bed with a pillow crammed over his head to muffle the sound, making a futile attempt to ignore her summons equally as well as it would please her to be permitted to enter his sanctuary so she might examine the state of him, to see the way their deaths weighed upon him, to observe the depths of his despair with eager eyes and that wide and terrible smile.
He could still feel her fingers against the back of his hands, pressing his fingers into the damp, freshly churned earth of the garden.
How warm her breath had been against his ear as she'd kissed his cheek and whispered, "Don't worry, your secret's safe with me."
The way she'd licked the sweat from his brow.
The way she'd laughed when he had scrambled back away from her, face hot and stomach sour.
He shuddered, as sympathetic bile rose to burn the back of his throat at the memory.
Slowly, regretfully, he dragged his sore, protesting body from the bed and stumbled to the door, yanking it open viciously to glare into the corridor beyond.
It wasn't her.
Somehow he had never imagined that someone else might be ringing his bell.
That anyone else would care to seek him out.
And yet….
Kazuichi stumbled, falling in against him when he threw the door wide as if he'd been leaning the whole of his weight upon it, as if it had never occurred to him that the incessant ringing of that bell might actually summon a presence from within.
He reeked of some strong liquor that made his breath foul as the mist that wreathed the lowest levels of hell and his skin clammy and unpleasant to the touch. The scent was sharp and pungent enough to make him wince, but it would be worse by far for the Devas whose senses were far more acute than his own.
...would have been.
Every time he realized he would never feel the cut of their claws again it was like a physical blow even after weeks without the familiar comfort of their presence.
It was a wound that time would never truly close.
It made him falter.
Made him ache.
Made him weak.
Kazuichi's hands caught his weight, curling around his arms, strangely steadying even as they careened into the doorframe.
"Sorry," Kazuichi rasped, his voice rough as if he hadn't spoken to anyone for days. And perhaps he hadn't. When he was focused on his work he had sometimes seemed to forget everyone and everything beyond it and it had been days since he'd caught even a glimpse of him moving through the halls.
Not that he had been looking.
"I should've… sorry, she told me what happened… and I just… messed up. I should've been there, here, I should've… sorry."
None of his words made sense, fragmented and slurred as though Kazuichi's thoughts were pages scattered by a foul and bitter wind leaving him to piece together what remained, to find structure and form within the chaos of destruction.
He could almost hear the echo of her laughter in the silence of the hall.
As if he would not have known his presence to be her doing even without that muttered confirmation.
Humans were terrible.
Terrible and pointless and cruel.
She more than most.
But it mattered little.
For the She-Wolf was not entirely human.
She was better and worse, a harbinger of destruction and an agent of chaos, a creature of immense darkness traveling a forbidden road that could lead only to despair.
If she had sent Kazuichi to his door, hard-won experience told him well enough that there would be only further rejection and misery come morning.
After all, all that was left to connect them now was the accord they had struck so long ago since the bonds of companionship had been broken.
It would be a simple matter for him to fall back into old habits, to simply forget all that had come before and use this poisonous balm to salve his wounds for a night. It would not be the first time he had fallen into that trap and he knew from experience the searing depths of their despair would be all the deeper for the loss of whatever brief fanciful illusions of intimacy they allowed to rule the night.
Nothing between them would be changed by a single night, not by a clumsy embrace or a drunken apology or his own acceptance of either or both.
Nothing could alter the losses he had suffered nor whatever had driven Kazuichi into the bottle that made his limbs loose and his tears fall so freely.
The remembered sting of rejection might seem insignificant when matched against the agony of all that had come after, but it had created a wall between them that had made their exchanges of the past few months tense and stilted and his tattered pride would never allow him to forget that feeling and the weakness that had caused it even had he wished it.
Come morning they would once more be left alone to the tender mercies of their own personal tragedies.
But in that moment- brief though it was- morning seemed a long way off and the night far too long and dark to be weathered alone.
His world was full of shadows and he had had more than his fill of loneliness.
"What would you have of me?" he murmured, yielding to the inevitability of devastation. "I am still bound by my word to aid you as you have aided me."
If he were surprised by his words he gave no sign but the length of his silence as he stumbled back to look at him with bleary eyes gone red and bloodshot from too much drink and too little sleep.
"Yeah, okay, c'mon," he slurred, catching clumsily at his hand to pull him along with him as he turned to fumble his way down the dim lit hall. "I'm gonna show you something."
He let him lead him from his room, half-dressed and shivering in boxer briefs and a t-shirt, the comforting weight of the scarf wound around his throat a poor shield against the chill of the night as he was led through the quiet halls of Hope's Peak.
Kazuichi's hand was sweaty where his fingers were locked around his own and the tiles were cold beneath his bare feet as they stumbled together through the deserted halls. Outside of the gooseflesh that broke across the surface of his skin in answer to the chill of winter and the pain of cold and tiny rocks against his soles, he remembered little of the journey as Kazuichi led him from one hall to the next, outside into the courtyard and around through the garden to a door tucked between two hedges.
His captured hand was finally released so that Kazuichi could use both hands to fumble a passkey from one of his many pockets and press it against the door sensor as he tapped a code into a panel beside it.
There was a soft beep and a click as the door swung open and he was ushered inside by the press of shaking hands against his back into a hallway even more dimly lit than the world outside, made darker still as the door swung shut and latched noisily behind them, a series of beeps and clicks no doubt signaling the reengagement of the lock.
"C'mon," Kazuichi muttered, catching his hand again and leading him through the darkness as his eyes adjusted slowly to the red emergency lights that were the only source of illumination. "Quick, before someone sees us."
He fell silent again as they turned down one hallway after another, finally coming to a stop before a door that looked no different than any of the doors that had come before. There was an engraved plaque beside it and when he squinted and leaned in close to it he could just barely make out the words:
Miaya Gekkogahara
Ultimate Therapist
And then beneath that- in tiny print he had to trace with his fingers to read: By Referral Only.
Beside him Kazuichi held a batch of jangling keys up towards the red light over the door, fiddling through it for long moments before offering a soft grunt of satisfaction as he found the one he was looking for.
The door swung open with an audible creak once- after several interminable moments of fumbling- he'd finally managed to get the key in the lock. Kazuichi shoved him urgently into the darkness of the room beyond, "Get in there already."
The inside of the room was stiflingly warm after the chill of the halls and the grounds between and he found himself shivering harder as Kazuichi pulled the door closed behind them with a snap that made him flinch.
There were no windows so the room was lit only by a weak, wavering green light that made even the mundane shape of furniture seem strange and unearthly as if they were underwater.
"See that?" Kazuichi murmured, breath blowing warm against his ear, making him startle again with the sudden change in proximity.
No matter what had passed between them, his protections always seemed to falter when he was near, to weaken and yield to his presence, to allow him a closeness they would have allowed no other. Hands dusting across his arms, fingers finding and curling against his waist as his body pressed in close behind him, crowding him forward towards the source of that weak ambient light. "It's one of mine."
It is a machine, that much he can tell even in the dark, large and artfully proportioned, a great curved behemoth that dominated the room in which it rested. It seemed almost alive, humming and clicking, covered in a dozen blinking lights and its operation filling the space with a content buzzing sound like that of a thousand bees at work in a hive.
Whatever manner of technological beast it was, Kazuichi's creation glowed an eerie, pulsing, sickly green at its heart, color dulled by dark glass and filled with deep shadows that ebbed and flowed like ocean waves within its mysterious depths.
"Do you see it?" His voice was soft, as if did not truly wish him to hear the question or perhaps as if he is afraid of whatever answer he might offer. "I think they put someone in there."
He says the last so softly that for long moments, Gundham finds himself unable to respond, certain he must have simply imagined them murmured as they'd been against his ear, warm breath stirring hair that had gone limb and heavy after too long without proper cleaning.
The words were whispered once more, the brush of his lips against the shell of his ear making him shiver, "I think they put someone in there."
He wasn't certain what he was meant to say in response or if he was meant to say anything at all, but the longer he stares into the abyss, the more certain he is that he can see a form lying motionless within the depths, unmoved by the flow of liquid shadow around it.
"You see it too, right?"
Kazu's fidgeting fingers danced over his sides, slipped beneath his shirt to trace along the scars there.
A shiver shuddered up his spine and he found himself sagging back against him, leaning into that touch.
"Yes," he whispered finally, as if whatever lay within the tank were a creature he feared to waken.
A gust of breath blew warm and foul across his cheek, almost but not quite a chuckle of relief, "Oh man, I thought I was going crazy. Or maybe I just hoped I was, I don't know."
"What is this infernal device?"
"Netaro. I built it, well, I mean part of it. They put in a lot of extra stuff, but I designed all the major systems. Like there's this, uh, circu-no it's uh, circulator? Circulating? Whatever it moves the special liquid and there's this whole series of like filters and stuff? So, it keeps it, uh, clean so like you can totally pee in there and it's fine." He waved his hand vaguely towards the device. "Supposed to be like one of those sensory depri-whatever tanks, only for like, uh, what's it called? When you can use it for an extra long time? There's a word for it. Like... I don't know, something."
"Why?"
"I don't know. Sometimes I forget stuff-"
"Not that. Why did they contract you to build it?"
"Oh, uh, yeah, don't know that either, I mean, they don't really tell me anything much about what they're gonna do with this stuff."
He supposed that much was true.
He had aided Kazuichi in the construction of a number of devices throughout the duration of their partnership and he recalled Kazuichi often complaining about the sparse nature of the specifications they'd provided.
"I wonder how long he's been in there. Told 'em they couldn't leave anyone in for more than a week, but I keep... I keep coming back to check and there's always somebody..." He trailed off frowning as he leaned in closer and spread the palm of his free hand over the glass. "They volunteered, right?"
"Right," he echoed, though he was not certain.
He would not assume any horror to be beyond the capacity of the filthy humans that ran that corruptible institution
"Yeah, yeah, I mean, that's what I figured. They wouldn't... but still… it's freaky, right?"
"Yes."
And it was.
Though he could not summon the will to care for the plight of a single human locked in a glowing box.
"But what if I'm wrong, huh?"
He blinked and he was sitting on the floor of the beach house once more, ice cream melting sticky warm across his fingers and the fading light a vivid orange where it lay across the walls and floor.
His chest ached and his mouth tasted of bile, but he could not quite remember why.
"What if I didn't build them," the fiend continued, unperturbed by his confusion. "I mean... what if I just... what if I just... just thought I did and I messed up when I was working on them? Or when I was moving them? What if I don't really know anything and I… what if I really messed something up and we just don't know yet? What if I... what if I killed you? All of you? I mean… I think I got everything set up and working right, I think I get how it's all supposed to work, but what if I'm wrong? What if I just messed it up? I mean, what the fuck do I know about life support systems and waste disposal units and self-sustaining, closed filtration whatever-the-crap those things are, huh? I build freaking robots, and not like good robots either. Just kind of little crappy ones that aren't much better than toys. I fix cars, I'm not… what if I screwed it up? I screw everything up!"
He stared at the creature, at it's obvious distress, but could find nothing to say.
It wasn't real.
None of this...
His chest ached and his head buzzed unpleasantly.
He was... was... wa...
"Hey, you okay?" It... he... it asked as it frowned, leaning forward as if he needed to be close in order to see him clearly. "You look kinda..."
A hand landed against his face, cold enough to make him shudder, fingertips tracing across his cheekbone as the fiend leaned in to stare at him from inches away as if that might allow him to be seen more clearly.
He had reeked of boy and sweat and sand and faintly of burnt oil. It should have been off-putting, but it was surprised to find it was... comfortable, almost pleasant, like an old sweater made soft by the ruin of time.
His fingers were rough, skin calloused and marked with scars and the air he breathed tasted like longing and broken promises.
He...
He was...
They were already gone.
Their bodies stiff where they lay twisted within their cages, huddled together or sprawled still twitching across the floor of his room. There was a terrible crunch as he trod upon one in his hurry to reach the Devas where they lay sprawled upon his bed.
He should never have left them there.
Should never have parted from them even for a moment.
Fool.
He brushed tentative, trembling fingers over their coarse fur. Their bodies were still warm beneath his fingertips, their eyes cast wide and limbs akimbo. Theirs had been a death both sudden and painful, he could see it in the frozen stretch of those limbs, in the way their mouths gapped, in how their eyes bulged wide frozen still in the agony of their last moments.
They were beyond saving before he had arrived, long before he could gather them to his chest, before he could cradle them in trembling hands and whisper them to their rest.
They were gone.
They were all gone.
He knelt in a sea of death, all his efforts dashed against the rocks, all that he had ever dared love torn asunder.
He should move.
Should check the others, should at least make an attempt to find survivors amongst the corpses half-buried by the shavings kicked apart by tiny flailing limbs.
Yet he could not.
It seemed impossible that any might survive what the Devas could not.
It was as if he to were frozen in time, cursed to stillness as he felt the last vestiges of warmth fade against his fingertips, until even the memory of life seemed little more than a lie.
And even then he could not bring himself to move, as if by setting them aside he would be conceding defeat, admitting that it was over and committing them permanently to eternal slumber.
He remembered telling Kazuichi ages ago that death was a natural consequence of life.
He had thought himself prepared to face those losses when they came.
And yet….
Perhaps it was different when death came by your own hand.
Perhaps he had simply never known true guilt.
Never truly understood loss at all and his words in that dark room all those months ago had been nothing but the cheap offerings of a ignorant fool.
The world was dark and everything seemed to sway around him.
Distantly he could hear someone mumbling, syllables soft and hurried and nothing distinct amongst them.
The entire back of his body feels as if its been scrapped raw, but even that was difficult to focus on when the vicious ache of loss lingered in his chest and the phantom bristle of fur was still rough against his palm.
The world continued to shift precariously around him and someone moaned, long and low, a terrible keening shriek of agony that echoed within him as the first tears spilled warm from his shuttered eyes.
And then suddenly it stopped.
Everything stopped and there was a brief, blissful moment where all was still and silent, and it was in that moment that the cold, agonizing waters of hell rained down upon him like full body slap.
He was pretty sure he screamed as he floundered back across the slippery tile to escape that reach of that freezing cascade.
His limbs felt heavy and clumsy and slow and when the flow of water ceased as abruptly as it had begun, he found himself panting in the aftermath, propped up on aching arms, squinting at the creature kneeling before him as rage ignited hot and bright and sudden in his chest.
"You…." He growled, fingers curling painfully against the tile.
Instead of cowering before his rage as any other sensible creature might have, the foul beast just knelt there grinning at him, hair plastered wet and dripping against his… its skull, damp t-shirt clinging to its shoulders, its hand still lingering on the handle as if it might turn it back on again at any moment.
"Hey," it called, its eyes crinkling as its smile widened even further. "Welcome back."
He would have cursed him to ash if he'd thought there was a chance he'd have been able to gather his thoughts enough to construct a semi-decent circle.
As it stood, it would have a better chance at success if he simply smacked the smile off its smug, ridiculous face.
Or he would have if he'd thought he could reach the grinning demon without slipping and falling flat on his face.
"Sorry about that," the fiend continued, not sounding as if it felt even the tiniest smidgeon of remorse for its actions. "Whew, that water is really cold, huh?"
There were a dozen questions swirling about within him, but the one that ultimately spilled from his lips was simple: "Why?"
It had the gaul to look abashed, as if the question made it so discomforted that it couldn't even look at him when answering, "Well, I mean… you just… you looked like you were having a seizure or something and it… I mean…."
He frowned as it trailed off into silence and finally allowed himself the luxury of taking the time to survey his surroundings.
They were in the shower room.
The shower room where it had apparently dragged him, if the fire across his back were any indication, because it thought he was….
His thoughts must have shown on his face, because when it glanced back up at him it instantly threw up its hands, exasperated, "Shut up, okay? Just shut up. It worked, didn't it?! I mean… you were all… and now you're fine, you're totally fine, right? So just... just… shut up! Whatever, fine, okay, it was stupid, I know it was stupid. But I mean, what was I supposed to do? I don't… I mean, I had to do something. I mean, I… I…."
He was not prepared for tears.
Nor was he properly braced to withstand the full-force collision as the fiend slammed into him in a tangle of warm, slippery limbs that seemed everywhere at once, all around him and clinging to him as its weight carried them both backwards to land in an awkward, pained heap against the shower wall.
"Unhand me, fiend," he managed, shoving weakly at his...
Shoulder?
Knee?
He wasn't quite certain, everything seemed strangely jumbled and unreal and he... he was...
Ragged nails scrapped across his bare flesh, cold as the frozen tundra, leaving trails of ice across his back, his shoulders, bringing little flashes of pain flaring to life where they caught against the wounds that peppered his body as they sought a purchase they never seemed to find.
It felt….
He felt….
They were sitting on the floor in the main room of the beach house.
His head hurt.
It rambled on, speaking as if there had never been a break in the conversation, as if they hadn't been in the shower room, sprawled together across the floor, only a moment before.
The ice cream was melting, cool sludge oozing over his fingers and thighs as he clutched the damp container too tightly.
The room was warm.
Too warm.
Sweat rolled up his back, ignoring gravity as if it didn't fully exist in that cursed place.
"Sorry, I… I messed up," the demon at his side offered, tugging at his knit cap, cheeks flushed, a sheen of sweat standing out prominently across his brow. "I should've… I've been thinking about it, you know? I've been working on the pods by myself mostly so I… I've had a lot of time to think about stuff, because if I don't think about something other than how bad I'm probably messing up, I'm pretty sure I'd just totally lose it, you know? So, I keep… I keep thinking about you. You and Nidai and everything and I… I should've done something back then."
"Done something?" He echoed, his thoughts felt slow, sluggish.
There was something wrong, something off, but he couldn't seem to remember what that something was, can't begin to make sense of the creature's quiet words.
"Yeah, I mean I could've taken stuff apart and used it to build something that would get us out of there or just… I don't know, something. I should have done something. And I didn't even try. I kept thinking Hinata would or maybe someone else would figure something out. That it'd be fine, because someone else would take care of it, you know? And I guess you did, but… it shouldn't have been like that. If I'd just… done something then maybe... I never helped, you know? Not with any of it. I mean, even Mikan… she was at least tried to help, you know? Even Komaeda. I mean, everything he did was kind of totally terrible, but I think… I think maybe he thought it was… helping, you know? But I never did anything. Not really. I built a freaking video walkie talkie and that... all I ever did was make things worse. That's all I ever did and I survived, I got out. It's not really fair, is it?"
Fair?
"Nothing in life is truly fair," he replied, frowning.
"I still… I still should have done something. I could have at least stopped you from-"
He could not stopper the laughter that bubbled up in his throat, that burst forth from lips, cruel and incredulous, though it felt like it was coming from somewhere else, someone else, like he was merely a conduit, a cursed vessel that existed purely to give that ridicule voice, "Fool. Do you truly think you could have stopped me? I am Tanaka the Forbidden, no simple demon of the lower realms could stand in my path and survive!"
This he knew.
This he...
The decision to enter the Final Dead Room had been a simple one in the end.
His limbs had already been heavy, a sure testament to the toll their captivity had already taken upon his body. As one who had honed his skills within the cursed pits of the darkest bowels of the seven hells he knew well the limits of his imperfect form. He was, after all, one who had measured his speed against the lunge of a thousand deadly vipers, one who had decimated the forces of a hundred demon lords in his quest to liberate the hounds that bayed within their black iron prisons in the depths of Hades. He knew all too well that his body would not be reduced to such a state by a mere day without food nor would that weak physical exertion have been near enough to weaken so significantly the body his efforts had achieved. Surely there was some more nefarious power at work to have rendered his limbs so weak, to have allowed his mind to become such a slow, plodding, useless thing. He could practically feel the forces of atrophy at work during the second day as he found himself staring into space for long moments and missing large portions of the conversations that took place around him with greater frequency.
Surely not enough time had passed for hunger to have had such a dramatic impact and yet the evidence seemed to mock his conception of what his body was capable of enduring. And not just his. It might have been another matter if only he were in true danger, but already he could see the gleam of the Devas fur had begun to dull and while he might be able to survive for weeks without food, they most certainly could not. He would allow them to feast upon his rotting corpse before he would allow fate to conspire to take them from him in such a manner. They were beings meant to perish in glorious battle or at the end of long lives surrounded by their terrible plethora of offspring. He would not allow them to merely wither away.
He had sent them to search out an exit when they'd first awoken, but even they- with all their many gifts- had been powerless to escape that concrete prison. They had searched every inch, every room and hall, had even burrowed into the depths of the elevator shaft, but a better understanding of the shape of the place had done little to put an end to their imprisonment within it.
There had been only one area their magnificent and deadly forms had been unable to penetrate.
And so as they neared the end of the second day, he had decided to risk its unknown dangers himself.
All the signs made it clear to him that a dreadful curse had been laid upon that tiresome house of the damned to which they had been confined. It was the only explanation for why his body had been so enfeebled, why the souls of his companions were so easily persuaded from the idea of survival to the inevitability of surrender unto death.
It wasn't that he feared his inevitable end.
No, death would come for them all in time, but he would not be one to go quietly, to submit meekly to its uncaring judgement, to death's cold embrace.
No.
He would never be so weak.
"Wake my Dark Devas of Destruction," he'd murmured, rousing them from their slumber and coaxing them from where they lay curled upon the bedding he had shredded and laid out to catch their foul leavings. "We shall use our wits to battle the unholy forces that would condemn us to die by inches in this despicable place. Better we should die attempting to free ourselves from these bonds than allow fate to hold us captive. Come, my most trusted companions, there is work that must be done and if I fail you shall at least have a mighty feast with which to fill your bellies as I know you will prove yourselves clever and spry enough to survive whatever horrors might befall me. Let us charge into the unknown and face whatever dangers wait together."
Had he doubted his choice, he would only have had to see the sluggishness with which they honored his command to know that he had made the correct decision.
Their prison had been silent around him as he'd slipped from his room and down the stairs to find the Final Dead Room waiting for him.
The door handle had felt cool as relief beneath his fingertips and he...
"Shut up," the fiend shrieked, summoning him from the flow of memory back to the of the present; the cool of the door handle fading to the barely there chill of the soggy container still clutched in his hand. "I'm not- I could've..."
"Hardly," he scoffed, falling easily back into that preposterous argument. "You were only human. No better nor worse than your peers. If you had attempted to stop me, you would have become my victim in his place and it would have been you that died and I..."
"No way, I'd have stopped you and if I couldn't... I totally could have killed you."
"And how do you believe you would have managed that?"
"I would have figured something out. I can do stuff! Don't freaking look down on me! The only reason you managed to kill him was because that stupid bear put that bullshit button on the back of his neck."
He scoffed, the sound as rough and ugly as the feeling growing in his chest, "You said it yourself: you have always relied on others to save you. What could you have possibly done on your own?"
"Says the guy laying on the ground with melty ice cream all over his balls."
"A cheap shot."
Kazuichi gave an indignant squawk, throwing his hands in the air before jabbing a finger at him in accusation, "You know what? I take it back. I'm not freaking sorry. I'm not sorry I didn't stop you and I'm not sorry that I freaking kicked you either, you freaking deserved it."
"At last you show your true colors, fiend," he crowed triumphantly.
"Oh, go to hell," he... it sprang to its feet, pacing the room in quick, stuttering steps. "You think I like dreaming about you like this? Feeling like this? You think this is fun for me? Because it sucks. It sucks and you suck and I don't get it! I don't get what I would have seen in you that we... UGH! You know, whatever. Whatever! You're the freaking worst and you always were because you didn't even care. You think you were saving us? You were just being freaking selfish. You only ever cared about yourself. And you made her cry. You made everyone freaking cry, but you made her cry the most. Heck, she's still probably crying over you. I mean, c'mon, she's sleeping in your room like- I don't know- like she wants to be the first person you see when you wake up or something. And it pisses me off! It pisses me off, because you don't deserve Miss Sonia's tears! Or mine. Or anyone's! You selfish, stupid jerk!"
The anguish on his face felt like the nails of desperate rats burrowing through his flesh to escape some terrible fate.
Not his.
Its.
Because he wasn't real.
It wasn't real.
None of it.
Not. Real.
It was just an act.
Just….
"I made it for you," his sharp teeth gleamed in the bright light of the hall as he reached up and tapped a hand proudly against the plastic tubing that had been strapped along the length of the hallway. "Or, um, well, for them really. I got special permission from the principal and everything. This way nobody can give you a bad time about them being out and about all they want and you don't have to worry about anyone stepping on them or-"
"No one could step upon the Devas without meeting a gruesome and well-deserved fate," he broke in sharply, defensively, shoulders hunching as Jum-P nuzzled sleepily against the back of his neck.
"Oh, um, yeah, yeah, I mean, obviously, but this way you don't have to worry about all that… uh, clean up or whatever... right?"
He nodded slowly, allowing that the argument had merit. He'd never enjoyed having to scrub the spill of blood from the cursed floors of Hope's Peak. The grouting was far too uneven between the tiles and he'd spent far too many long hours worrying a sponge against those unsightly crevices to be eager to do so again.
"You... have seen fit to give them unlimited access?"
"Oh, yeah, I mean, 'course! They can't go into the principal's office or the therapist's room like officially, but I could probably make a workaround once I get the ventilation system up and running. I mean, it's not like it would be that hard to circumvent if I worked their ventilation system in with the school's, ya know? I mean, I designed both of them so… I know where everything connects. They probably wouldn't even know I'd done it unless I told 'em," he shifted from foot to foot, fidgeting with his hat, worrying at the zipper on his coveralls, chewing at his fingernails.
Nervous.
He was always so nervous now, as if that exploding rocket had stolen away the ground upon which his confidence had been built leaving only uncertainty and the compulsive need for approval to fill the void it had left behind.
"So, uh, what do you think? I mean, they don't have to use it if they don't wanna, I mean… oh man, I should have asked first, huh? I mean, sure, I wanted it to be a surprise and all, but maybe that was a bad idea. Maybe I should have… what if you don't want them to be all cooped up like that? Are the tubes too small? I tried to get a measurement on Cham-P 'cause he's the biggest, but he kept biting me so I mostly had to guess and I don't know if I got it quite right, so… crap, this is… oh man, did I…."
"It's splendid," he murmured, fingers curling into fists at his sides as his quiet words effectively silenced the stream of anxious babble.
Though those words did no justice to the feeling swelling in his chest.
For him.
He had done this for him, for them, unasked.
No one had ever….
This was….
Kazuichi's face flushed pink, and a relieved burst of laughter eased from his chest as he tugged at his hat, pulling it this way and that, "Oh, uh, good. I'm glad you… uh... yeah, I…." He broke off, rocking back and forth, toe to heel and back again, before adding, "I mean, it's not totally done yet, obviously. I can make it better and I was thinking of maybe putting in some like trick pipes and buttons and stuff to make it more interesting for them. I've got some ideas, but I didn't wanna install anything that was gonna give them trouble so I thought maybe you could take a look at the designs and let me know, so... I… I mean, I know it's a little early, but I just… I wanted to… I mean, um, it's your birthday present."
Birthday.
The She-Cat must have told him though he still did not know how she had managed to procure such obscure knowledge much less why she had been inclined to do so or why she would have seen fit to share such a fact with Kazuichi when they rarely spoke except in passing.
The day of his birth had never before been occasion for celebration and the idea that he was being such a gift to honor it was... discomforting.
His smile was already wilting around the edges once more, the grasping talons of insecurity already seeking and finding purchase in his expression once more. "Sorry, I know it's not… I mean, I had to get you something, right? I mean you're kind of my, um, you're kind of like my only friend and I… I'm sorry if this isn't… any good. I guess I could get you something else, maybe, but I don't really… I mean, most of my money goes home and to living expenses and parts and stuff and I just thought…."
Kazuichi's lips were warm and rough beneath his fingers as he pressed his hand against his mouth to stop the seemingly endless flow of words. He couldn't think with so much noise, couldn't make sense of all the information he had been given, not when every fragment of his being felt tight, stretched thin as a dam on the verge of bursting.
His eyes were bright and wide, shining with hope or anticipation or dread or some combination of them all, but he remained still, silent, behind the gentle press of his hand, waiting.
Waiting.
"It is most agreeable."
He glanced away, clearing his throat, but he could still feel the warmth in his own cheeks and the lift of Kazuichi's lips beneath the press of his fingertips.
It was an unprecedented offering.
Ane he was...
The first time he'd seen him, walking through the school's gate- long before they'd ever spoken, long before he'd known his name- he'd thought of Dendrobatids.
His hair had been bright as a warning in the morning sun.
A warning to stay well away.
Perhaps he should have heeded the warning.
Perhaps he was glad he had not.
"Thank you," he murmured finally, quiet and solemn and uncertain which gift he was thanking him for.
He let his hand fall away to hang limp at his side once more.
Something like a laugh slid free of Kazuichi's lips as he slumped forward against him, his forehead crashing in against his shoulder as if those words had weakened him somehow, had cut whatever strings had kept him standing. Hands curled into fists pressed against his back in an embrace he couldn't bring himself to fight or accept.
"You're welcome," he'd replied, his voice thick and heavy with emotion. "Happy Birthday."
It was in that moment that he realized he was...
The water was cold again, but this time he did not flee from the chill.
Instead he let it wash over him as he lay like a stone beneath it as if it might wash him clean of that memory that had felt like revelation and left a sour taste in his mouth.
Kazuichi was lying beside him, fingers petting frantically against his face, alternately shielding him from the water's fall and letting the too warm water cascade across his already frozen skin.
"Hey, hi," his smile was relieved and his fingers trembled against his cheek. "You're here, right? You're back?"
"Where would I go?" He asked, coughing weakly.
It hurt to speak.
It hurt to breathe.
Kazuichi's grin wilted at the edges like a poorly laid mask peeling away.
"I don't know," he replied, shrugging helplessly. "For a second it seemed like I was somewhere else, like I...
"I think I killed him."
He whispered the words into the warm damp shower air as if they were supposed to mean something, as if he were supposed to have an absolution prepared for those words that reeked of the confessional.
His eyes were dark, beseeching, "I just… it wasn't even… it wasn't even hard. Killing someone should be... shouldn't it be harder than that? Than just making a couple of tweaks to a stupid machine and then just... sitting back and watching it happen? It barely took five minutes. He was helpless, helpless and I… he was gonna ruin everything and so I….
"Crap."
He choked on a sob, pressing the back of his hand against his mouth to muffle it, his eyes and face reddening as the first tears spilled down over his cheeks, blending with the water that soaked them both. "I don't want to do this anymore."
He reached out to touch his crumpled face and found himself lying on the floor watching the light fade around him, dry and shivering beneath the chill of falling night.
The ceiling fan spun lazily overhead.
The ice cream container was gone - if it had ever been there at all - and he was alone.
He was...
"Stupid shower's busted and this tool kit is shit," Kazuichi grumbled, a cheap plastic tool kit clutched in one hand as he shot him a furtive, bloodshot glance through the filthy ruin on his hair.
It was as dark and dull as the rest of him.
He had not fared well during their time apart.
"I believe that was the point," he replied, though he knew the comment required no response.
"Yeah, I know, thanks. Like it really even mattered in the end. Stupid jerks didn't even try to take it apart. To take anything apart. She was totally right. We could have left them a key and a get out of jail free card and they still wouldn't have even bothered to try and use them. Fuck! What is wrong with this thing?!"
"It is not yet morning."
Kazuichi snorted, casting the kit down to clatter across the tile as he huffed an irritated sigh, "Right, yeah, of course. I totally forgot about that stupid nighttime rule. That's freaking great. That's just great."
He spun about and threw his back to the shower wall, sliding down to sit upon the floor. His clothes were dark with drying blood, bits of gore and other filth stuck to his coveralls and shirt, grotesque souvenirs of his time below.
He reeked of decay and the ripe stench of one who had gone far too long without bothering to cleanse the grime from his body, but he did not hesitate to cross the tiny room and drop down to sit beside him anyway.
The scent of the boy he'd been had never bothered him and the stench of the man he had become was a familiar comfort. The copper scent of blood and the wet garbage stench of decay was not enough to turn him from his course.
"She'd have found all this hilarious, you know," Kazuichi offered with a half-hearted laugh. "Us all being here. Tsumiki's stupid transplant plan, Miharu's photo shoot, even the fact that Hanamura wants to cook the leftovers. She'd have laughed herself sick about all of it."
He nodded solemn agreement.
"Surprised you even showed. Weren't you in like New Zealand or Australia or something? How'd you even get back here? I thought they had Japan on lockdown or something."
"There are ways. Paths open only to the wretched and depraved, to those who have sacrificed their very souls for the power to walk the paths between worlds."
"Yeah, okay," he replied, his expression souring. "I get it, you don't wanna tell me, it's fine. So, when do you leave?"
He had always been quick to understand, to decipher his words and weave the threads of story he offered into a tapestry they both could read.
"I shall not linger past the setting of the sun. Such journeys are best undertaken at twilight."
Kazuichi snorted, shaking his head, "Yeah, I guess there's no point in sticking around, huh? Why'd you even bother coming in the first place?"
His laughter was bitter and desolate as the world they'd turned to ash and blood and dust.
He didn't have an answer for that.
He could say he came to mourn her, to glimpse her formidable body laid low by her own base desires, to assure himself of her end, but that would be a lie. When he had left the rest to their games and petty intrigues, she had become a distant concern, white teeth and a laugh that echoed through his mind always, but if not for that broadcast he might have forgotten her face altogether. His memory of her drowned beneath the waters of hate and rage and the horrors of the war he has grown tired of fighting.
"I wished to see the answer she had found for myself," he lied finally, leaving the truth- whatever it might have been- to rot in the back of his mind, undiscovered. His reasons mattered little.
"Answer, huh?" Kazuchi shook his head, blowing lank strands of faded pink hair from his face. "She committed freaking suicide by committee, Gundham. There aren't any answers here, only despair. That's all there ever was."
"Since that was all she ever truly cared for, perhaps that was answer enough for her."
"Yeah, maybe. Who knows? It's not like it even matters now. She's gone. She's gone and we're still… what do we even do now? Are just going to surrender or what?"
He chuckled at the thought, "Submit? To them? Despair has been my banner, but it was never my true cause, she was not what drove me so her death changes nothing. Not for me. This war will not be stopped simply because Enoshima Junko is no longer present to fan the flames of conflict. That which has been wrought will not be so easily put aside or forgotten. Sins are not so easily forgiven and the hope her death will bring will inspire only greater despair. Even in death, the dominoes she has tipped will continue to fall. To provoke those who would walk the path she has tread to start anew again and again. They have put humanity on a path towards the inevitability of destruction. She has given them an excuse to surrender to their darkest urges, to revel in their despair and rage and hate. They will not so easily be turned aside by something so minor as the death of a figurehead whose name will one day be forgotten."
"Yeah," Kazuichi murmured, leaning his head back against the wall with a resounding crack. "That sounds about right."
He woke to hands on his face, thumbs grinding against his cheekbones and the rush of breath like fire scorching against the prickling cold of his lips. Dark eyes staring at him- pleading with him- from inches away.
Dark….
Had they always been so?
"Gundham?" Kazuichi asked, voice soft and trembling, water still raining down upon them both, tiles slick beneath his body.
The shower room was full of shadows.
It felt as if he'd been dreaming or perhaps that he still was.
He looked so much older than he had on the island. His hair dark where it clung to his face, his eyes awash with shadows.
"You okay?"
It might be a form of mockery, but his expression was...
"I was responsible for the death of hundreds," he murmured, the words came slowly, reluctantly as warm hands stroked down his bare arms and a cool forehead touched down to rest tentatively against his own, dark hair falling forward to shield them both from the growing darkness. "Both beast and man were laid to waste at my command, their blood soaking the field of battle, their souls sacrificed to her dream of a world dripping with despair. We were the dismal doom of all who crossed our paths, lost in our pursuit of something greater than ourselves, the desire to make all the world feel as we had felt, to be as we were, and in great part we succeeded. When she was there, she fanned the flames within us, gave us drive and purpose. Without her… there was only despair and despair was never enough to fill the void within. Even if I wished to, I could no more absolve you of your transgressions than you could free me from the heavy burden of my sins."
"Is that true?" Kazuichi asked, his voice hushed as if he were afraid to speak too loudly. "Or do I just…."
"It is what I remember," he answered quickly, pulling away to gather the scattered remnants of his pride around him like a cloak. He scooted back across the cool tiles, far enough that they were no longer touching. He gathered his knees up against his chest and rested his head atop them. His skin was cold and what the constant pain of his wounds was, for the moment, a distant afterthought. "I do not know what is true anymore than I know what is false. My memories are a bowl of jagged glass, sharp enough to rend flesh, offering only the barest glimpses of what might have been. The world I see reflected there is both foreign and familiar and I know not what I should believe."
"Yeah," Kazuichi replied, nodding quickly, dashing damp hands across his cheeks. "Yeah, it's like that. It's like… just… bits and pieces and none of it really fits together. And it isn't… I thought it'd all be… awful, you know? Like it was supposed to be... we were supposed to be monsters. And I mean a lot of it is- a lot of it- but… there's all that other stuff too. Like you. Like... you know."
Did he know?
Did he….
Grasping hands and the hum and grind of machinery, heat and building pressure, over him, inside him. The pleasure they seek is quick and filthy, grease-stained hands and sweat-slick skin and never bothering to take the time to disrobe. Later his armor would reek of sex and burnt oil, but it would remind him that those moments were real, that he was real, and knowing would sooth the restless beast within him, would dull the edge of the moments between when there was only darkness and death and death and death and death.
The room - his life - was too quiet without them.
His neck was cold and his heart was colder and he had never been good at being alone.
Everything he touched withered and died.
Those brief interludes and the relief they provided often seemed barely worth the effort and yet still they would find each other again and again, making good on a pact that was a mere shadow of the bond it had once seemed to be.
It was barely better than being alone, than finding release beneath the brisk work of his own hands, but it was still... something.
A single thread in the darkness of their labyrinth of despair.
Soon, he told himself every time, soon he would find the will to leave that last human attachment behind and embrace his demonic heritage in full, surrender himself completely to his greater purpose, to the cause he intended to dedicate the reminder of his time on this plane of existence to.
Soon he would release him from his thrall.
Leave him to find whatever peace he might in what little time was left to him after so long spent at his side.
He doubted it would be long.
Every day he seemed duller and more hollow than the day before as if every moment spent by his side were draining the essential flame from his body.
Perhaps he would recover if they parted company soon.
But he could not believe it to be true.
Not when even the Devas- for all their strength and immense power- had been unable to survive him.
He could hardly expect a simple human such as Kazuichi to succeed where they had failed.
Soon he would release him.
He would.
Soon.
But not yet.
Not yet.
He slammed back into the moment, retching, choking on the gravel of grief lodged thick within his throat. He tossed the soggy container in his hand away in favor of using his cold hand to brace against the floor as he heaved, curling his legs in as if they might shield him from the memory of those moments.
"Hey, hey, you're… okay, I've…"
Hands landed against his flesh, warm and familiar and all the more terrible for it and he slapped them away.
Not because he did not wish for them to touch him, but because he did.
So badly.
His vision blurred and his chest ached as he gagged again and again on the specter of loss.
That poor copy lingered at his elbow, begged explanations he could not have given even if he had been able to make sense of its words.
It was like he was at sea, struggling to stay afloat within the churning, storm-swept waters, but every time he managed to emerge he….
He-
He-
"Hey Gundham?"
"Yes?" He'd inquired, barely sparing Kazuichi a glance as he drew the needle through the exposed flesh of his knee in one smooth motion, exhaling through the pain as he slowly drew the thread taunt before turning the needle about to add another stitch.
"What're you doing over break?"
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see him fidgeting, shifting his weight from foot to foot, left and then right then left again.
Was he nervous or impatient?
Or did he simply needed to urinate?
It was difficult to be certain.
The floor between them was scattered with drawings and maps for the proposed changes to the tunnels to allow the Devas even greater access to the many nooks and crannies of Hope's Peak.
"I will stay here as I always do, I suppose," he answered finally, though he had yet to receive permission to do so. He had been denied before and been forced to spend the interminable length of Golden Week in a rented room in the filthy den of Gibrileth deep within the shadowy depths of Kabukicho.
The Devas had not enjoyed that particular adventure.
"Oh, um, yeah, okay, it's just…" He yanked at his cap again, twisting the threadbare knitting between his fingers. It was a gesture he'd become quite familiar with since their original deal had been struck. "I was just wondering if maybe you might want to come back with me to my parents' place, but that's… that's probably stupid, yeah? I mean, why would you want to go there when you could ju-"
"I would like that," he cut in quickly.
Too quickly.
The speed of his response reeked of desperation, revolting and grotesque and hopelessly needy. He knew that, but could not reign in the impulse. Such was the depth of his desire to avoid another series of weeks spent haunting the empty halls of Hope's Peak or- worse by far- living a furtive existence in whatever cursed accommodations were willing to rent their space to a being such as he without asking too many questions or demanding more money than he could afford to part with.
"Thanks," Kazuichi breathed the word, every syllable relief. "Uh, sorry, um, I mean, that's... that's cool. I mean, it'll be fun, right? My parents are supposed to be out of town for cause it's my mom's birthday so it'll just be the two of us. So, uh, yeah, it's gonna... it'll be cool."
He nodded quickly even though there was something about Kazuichi's words that twisted his stomach up in knots.
"Cool," he echoed, as he pulled the last stitch tight and tied it off.
He awoke to the drip of water pattering against tile echoing around him and the wheeze of labored breath.
Inches away the thing that wore Kazuichi's lay sprawled across the damp tile like a puppet with its strings cut, staring blankly into space as if frozen in place and time. If not for the rush of warm breath against his face he'd have thought...
He startled badly when it suddenly leapt to life and motion once more, screaming as it scrambled back away from him, panic leeching the color from its skin as the string of muddled curses and nonsensical syllables it shrieked echoed through the room, a terrible cacophony of sound that he could not escape even when he pressed his hands over his ears and murmured an incantation that should have been powerful enough to silence even the Ua Briain banshee.
He was not surprised when the spell failed, after all, his were magics that relied upon his life force as fuel.
Fortunately, he still had other tools at his disposal though he did not like the idea of employing them. It felt disrespectful to the Devas to treat this lesser demon as he would have treated them.
The screaming continued, devolving slowly into great heaving sobs as it scrambled backwards, still muttering to itself as it looked about the room as if feverishly seeking an escape route. Its fingers scratched across the tile at its back when it finally hit the wall and could retreat no further, as if it thought it might be able to burrow through the wall by sheer force of will.
"I didn't… I didn't do that, I wouldn't… wouldn't… I…" The fiend made a terrible wrenching noise, choking on nothing, spittle dribbling across its chin. "I wouldn't," he continued, scrubbing a hand across his face, jagged nails leaving a trail of pale marks across its flesh. "It wasn't my fault. I didn't… I didn't know," it moaned, smacking a fisted hand against his forehead.
He was moving before he'd truly made the decision to do so, snatching hold of its hand before before it could do any true damage.
He...
The workshop was never quite dark, but it was always sporadically lit.
An eternally grey space broken by puddles of intense light that made the shadows seem all the deeper by contrast.
He liked to stand in the shadows, just outside the main force of illumination cast by the adjustable mechanical arms the mechanic used in his work, only trespassing beneath the full force of that brilliant light when it was absolutely necessary to do so. The mechanic had seemed to recognize that desire early on and instead of complaining he had seemed to go out of his way to find tasks for him that gave him ample excuse and opportunity to linger on the outskirts. On the whole, what the mechanic seemed to desire most from his presence was simply his continued company. It was not something he truly understood, but he found he enjoyed it nonetheless.
That was not to say he did not find ways to make himself useful.
A bargain was struck, but it could only be properly maintained if both sides met it in truth as well as in practice.
So he found ways to make himself useful beyond what little the mechanic asked of him.
He had the Devas make a survey of the space and eliminate any weakened areas, leaving their cursed offspring to nest in those areas and safeguard the space when they were not present.
He also made a habit of regularly inspecting the workshop throughly for signs of tampering and traps.
And if while doing so he also allowed him to keep a ready eye out for any hexes or runes that might explain his unlikely fascination with the mechanic and his machines, that was only a good use of time and well within the terms of their bargain. After all, it would be to the mechanic's advantage as well as such interference would also explain the mystery of mechanic's enduring interest in his continued presence. Though, even after he put forth his best efforts, he'd found nothing suspicious and was forced to tentatively conclude those sparks of interest to be genuine however suspect its origin.
Maga-Z nibbled at his ear and he slipped him a seed from the pouch in his pocket as he adjusted his grip on the mechanical monstrosity he had been asked to hold.
If he noticed his distraction, the mechanic gave no sign as he continued to speak of gears and fuel variations and- while he did not understand much of what he said when the mechanic began speaking of the more technical aspects mechanisms and differentials- he found he enjoyed listening to him his words nonetheless.
It was a strange feeling.
To find himself so enamored with the mundane ramblings of a mere human.
He couldn't help but wonder if the mechanic was not, perhaps, something more.
He did not seem to believe himself to be anything special, but many did not see their own potential blinded as they were by the shadows of their own personal mythology.
Perhaps he had some demonic heritage of which he was unaware?
It would certainly help to expla-
The clatter of a wrench hitting the tray toolbox open at his feet, brought his attention to focus razor-sharp upon the mechanic who was now staring at him with a focused gaze. His goggles had been shoved haphazardly up onto his forehead so as to make his pink hair bunch oddly beneath their crooked shape. At some point he had managed to smudge several lines of grease across his cheek.
He looked thoroughly ridiculous.
"So, um, look I was thinking…" The mechanic began, turning his gaze aside as his grease-blackened hands fidgeted restlessly with the parts laid out on the ground before him. "You could call me Kazuichi. If you wanted. Because… that's my name, you know. Kazuichi. Well, I mean… maybe you don't know, I mean, it's not like you've ever even called me Souda. Not that that's... I mean it's fine, but..."
The mechanic poked at the tire he'd just finished attaching to the robotic minion he had dubbed Rocket Man 2001, grabbing a socket wretch from the box and banging it against the rubber listlessly before re-tightening bolts he was certain did not actually require it.
Kazuichi.
He had always made a habit of avoiding the use of names when possible. Particularly true names. There was always an inherent danger in speaking a true name aloud or giving one freely, though the mechanic did not seem to know or care about the perils of doing so if he were willing to offer his name so readily to one who had not yet bargained for it.
"I mean," he continued, setting the wrench aside and give him another glancing look that had no sooner settled on him before it was off again, flitting attention across the darkened room as if in pursuit of fairies only he could see. "Look, I just… I just wanted you to know that you could, uh, call me that. I mean, if you want to. You don't... you don't have to."
An offering?
Perhaps the mechanic wished for something more from him than he had already bargained for?
Or was this an attempt to earn his trust?
"What would you seek to gain from me with such an offering?" He asked finally, cautiously.
The mechanic glanced at him again, eyes wide and startled, as if he hadn't been expecting a response. "Oh, uh, nothing, just… I mean, I…."
He faltered, shrugging and turning away once more, hunching over his work as he began to gather the assortment of parts and tools and dump them noisily back into the boxes from whence they came.
Though his face was hidden from view, he could see clearly enough that the back of his neck was as pink as the jagged length of his hair. "Look, I mean, you don't have to if you don't want to, it's just… sorry, it's stupid, huh? I mean it's longer than Souda too so it's not even like it'd be saving you time to use it. Yeah. Yeah, sorry, it was a dumb idea. It's… just forget I said anything, okay?"
He laughed humorlessly, fingers casting a hammer aside so he could tug grease-stained fingers through his tangled hair.
"So stupid," he breathed, barely a whisper.
"You may call me Gundham," he found himself offering tentatively, in a voice he barely recognized as his own.
Even as the words left his mouth he cursed himself a fool for giving such permissions freely without even bothering with the incantation that would have obscured the syllables and keep his true name from being freely offered to another.
But what was done was done and there was no way to snatch back that which had been given freely no matter how much he might wish to.
He was Gundham Tanaka. He was the Forbidden One. He had faced down the great serpent at the world's end and all the demons of hell in pursuit of his goals. He would not doubt his instincts now.
"I shall allow you to call me by my chosen moniker, the name I earned through trials of blood and agony the likes of which you could never begin to comprehend, that which I have given no other permission to use freely in all my time within this realm."
The mechanic swiveled around on his spinning stool to stare at him, mouth opening and closing like a landed fish attempting to draw oxygen from the air.
He could not fault him for his bewilderment.
If anything that reaction made him more confident in his choice.
"Gundham."
He could feel the pull of his true name, feel the summons of its utterance, the way those syllables tightened around his heart and squeezed, demanding his attention. The inherent power of such a thing made stronger by the way it was said.
As if it were special, as if the mechanic truly understood and cherished the gift he had been given.
No... he was the mechanic no longer.
"Kazuichi," he replied gravely, allowing the knots of fate to tighten like a noose around their throats.
His smile was difficult to look upon, wide and brilliant as the sunrise.
He woke alone.
Cold.
Above him, the shower dripped lazily and around him the room was lit only by the dim cast of moonlight across the tiles.
Everything ached.
Slowly, painstakingly, he'd dragged himself to his feet and stumbled forward on legs gone numb, limbs stiff and wooden and tingling, to flail at the handle and put an end to that infernal drip.
In the distance he could hear the constant rush of ocean waves once more.
His skin felt strange, stiff and wrinkled and unpleasant to the touch, as if he had been lying beneath the water for hours.
When he finally limped out into the main room of the guest house to retrieve fresh clothing he had not been surprised to find a lukewarm bag of soggy ice cream melting in the middle of the floor or a puddle that reeked of artificial eggplant smeared across the floor beside a squished and dented black container.
In the days that followed, he poured over what he could remember of the fiend's cursed mutterings with obsessive devotion. He looked for a pen and paper to write it all down but when he'd found nothing he'd instead used condiments from the diner to scrawl what he recalled of them across the walls of the beach house with ketchup. He scribbled his conjectures across the floor with soy sauce, pondered each fractured memory as they returned to him as if it might be the key to unlocking the mystery of that cursed creature's subterfuge and subsequent disappearance.
As if by doing so he might find some spell or charm embedded within the demon's pointless deceptions that would allow him to rip a hole in the fabric of his reality and escape.
But there was nothing.
Only the endless parade of days, each new morning the same as the last.
There were no answers to be had, no truths to be uncovered, no mysteries to be solved.
DAY THREE
-ooo-
Days passed and nothing changed.
All the fiend had truly left him with was a mouth full of bitter regret and a vague sense that he was missing something. That there was some terrible truth in that fearsome creature's words and the way they resonated within him that no amount of effort on his part could ever lay bare.
Worse still was how that knowledge made him long for the fiend's return.
Made him walk the limits of that cursed hellscape over and over as if in doing so he might simply stumble across it or the answers he sought.
Yet his efforts gained him nothing.
There was no sign of any life save his own.
There were no answers to be found.
Eventually he had turned his energies back to the task he had set for himself during those first solitary days.
The exhaustion that came with physical labor and the comfort of the monotony of such efforts, made it difficult to consider such inconvenient ideas. As days passed one into the next, the discomfort of the sun's warmth against burnt his skin dark and darker still. The sunblock he slathered across his bare skin did little to dull the ache and at the end of each day he would feel the warmth of the sun lingering uncomfortably beneath his flesh, but that too served a purpose as it kept his mind from wandering down the darker paths that threatened always to claim what remained of his tattered soul and fading sanity.
And each night he dreamed.
He dreamed of warm flesh.
Of death.
Of laughter.
He dreamed that there was a great black pit that had cracked open at the center of his being that cried out eternally for blood and vengeance, that demanded sacrifice, that hungered always for that which it could not have.
He dreamed he was death itself.
Humans expired at his feet, their brief lives extinguished by his hand or his command, hundreds upon hundreds slaughtered by those meek beasts he had taught the joy of the slaughter.
And he had waded through their blood and felt nothing.
And each morning he woke clawing at his chest as if he could pull that feeling, that emptiness, that wretched weakness from within his breast and cast it aside only to realize belated that it was a part of him, as inescapable as the hell in which his choices had stranded him.
And so he dug.
And he burnt.
And he dreamed.
Dreamed of a life in which he was not himself.
And he was.
He dreamed of a line fine as fishing wire and himself balanced atop it, that such was the perilous divide between the joy of battle and the love of slaughter, between what he was and what he could become.
In the depths of night, his dreams sometimes seemed to melt together, one into the next to form an abominable stew from the feel of the damp warmth of a mouth against him, the wet of blood on his hands, the comforting press of a body curled around his own, the crunch of bone beneath his feet and the snarl of creatures he raised with his own hands ravaged the lifeless bodies of his enemies.
And he woke up each morning, in the strange blue hours before dawn, desire a unquenchable fire within his veins, unable to breathe with the weight of guilt pressing down upon his chest.
That he should even dream of using the creatures of darkness as if they were mere tools rather than partners, rather than equals or betters, was enough to cause the ache in his loins to wither and die upon the vine, to bring the burn of tears to his eyes and the taste of bile to scald his throat.
In his dreams- in all those fractured memories- he was no better than those he had reviled, those he had sought to punish.
He was unworthy of those he had thought to save.
His touch was death itself.
And still he'd sought out others.
Still he'd allowed his own selfish desires to guide his actions.
Perhaps his time in that hellish parody of paradise was a punishment well-deserved.
Perhaps it was best that none that should chose to bear his touch might live, that those who should show him kindness should be cursed by the whatever gods dwelled above or below for their foolish transgressions.
For being so foolish as to care for one such as he.
One so undeserving of their affections.
Perhaps it was best he was alone.
No one to mourn and none to mourn for him.
He had thought himself resigned to his fate.
It was only then that something had changed.
That the rain had begun to fall.
And even as the first droplets fell upon him, it seemed as if the rain had been falling for a long time.
A long time.
And no time at all.
DAY THREE
03:51:01 UTC
-continued-
-ooo-
"I mean, I don't even like guys, well, I mean, I probably don't like guys, so you should just, I don't know, take it as a compliment or whatever. I mean, c'mon, what's a wet dream or two between friends, right?"
No matter how irritating his words, he would not acknowledge them.
Not now.
Not again.
He would not allow it to turn him from his path.
He was not fool enough to throw himself willing into that trap once more.
"Not that we were friends exactly, I guess, but… I don't know... maybe we were. Friends with benefits is a thing, right? So, I mean, we could have been like friends during the day and like... making out at night or something. What do you think?"
Would.
Not.
"Or...ooooohhh... maybe we were dating? Oh man… that's a weird thought. But like, I remember being like touching you a lot. I mean, like, a lot, a lot. I mean, sure, I've never really thought I was into that, but... do you think we were like... doing it? Not like, uh, not like just mouth or hand stuff, but like, you know..."
He could see the creature in his periphery illustrating his point with a crude series of hand motions… as if there were any chance he would mistake the act to which he was so obviously referring.
His hands tightened painfully against the rough wood of the shovel's handle and he closed his eyes, but doing so only made its voice seem louder, its words more...
It gasped loudly enough to be heard even over the pounding rain, "Do you think I was the girl? I was definitely the girl, right? I mean, you're all… I mean, look at you. There's no way you'd just let me stick it in, right? Yeah, no way. So, I guess I had to be. If we were, you know, doing it."
The fiend was still talking, but he could no longer hear his words beneath the buzz of static and the sudden rush of sudden undeniable rage.
"Enough!" He snapped at last, his patience finally shattering beneath the shade's relentless verbal assault. "Speak no more of these things or I shall cast you down into an abyss from whence you will never escape! Heed my warning, fiend, for I shall give it only once! If you should continue to plague me, I shall visit upon you unimaginable torment the likes of whi-"
The creature had the nerve to laugh.
"That's what finally gets you to talk to me? Holy crap! Your face is so red! I thought for sure your head was going to explode or something."
"It was your goal to anger me?" He asked, incredulous.
"Well, yeah."
As if it were obvious, expected even.
"What manner of fool would dare seek to taunt the fires of hell to burn them?"
"Well, it's your fault! If you'd just talked to me in the first place like a normal person instead of ignoring me like the total dick you are I wou-"
"I will destroy you."
"Yeah, okay," the fiend replied, still laughing, its cursed feet still banging back against the packed soil of the pit wall, sending bits of mud and rock flying. "Good luck with that. Seriously, I'm way up here and you're way down there. Hey, what're you— hey! Hey! What're- no, oh crap!"
He was fast, had always been so, even as a child.
It was what had enabled him to survive so many perilous journeys and vicious battles in pursuit of the beasts of the dark places.
With any other enemy, he would have bided his time, spent hours waiting for the perfect moment to strike, the optimal moment in which to seek vengeance, but something about this creature wore thin the threads of his patience and he found himself surrendering to the childish and inescapable impulse to last out.
Which was why he leapt up and snagged the fiend's ankle and yanked it down into the pit with him without any thought for the consequences of doing so.
Unfortunately, the hole he had carved in the earth gave him disappointingly little room in which to move and he was unable to fully dodge its flailing limbs and his speed did little to save him. Which was how he ended up seated in the muddy water pooled in the bottom of the pit with his foe's groaning, complaining weight pinning his legs and one arm down beneath the surface, the blade of the spade wedged uncomfortably against his side.
"Wha-what the crap was that?" It spluttered, pitch climbing high with the residuals of fear or panic, as it attempted to right itself only to end up tripping over their tangled limbs and falling face first back into the muck.
It sat back up, spluttering, spitting muddy water and wiping frantically at its face.
It looked ridiculous.
He threw back his head, triumphant laughter rough and unfamiliar in his chest after so long without, "This is what happens to all who dare to attempt to match wits with the Forbidden One! Know your better, foul beast, and never again attempt to best that which even the darkness fears! Your petty jibes mean nothing to one who who has defeated even the mighty wolpertinger!"
"Oh, go screw yourself," the creature grouched, finally managing to free himself and scramble back against the far wall, swiping mud from its face with the backs of its filthy hands. "How was I supposed to know you could jump that freaking high, huh? And how the crap are we supposed to get out of this hole now, huh? Can you jump all the way up there, Dark Lord of Stupid Town? Well? Can you?"
The walls around them suddenly seemed impossibly high, the sky distant and untouchable as the rain continued to fall and the water level continued to rise around them, all the higher for the presence of an extra body within it.
His laughter died in his throat.
Perhaps, in hindsight, there were a number of details he hadn't fully considered.
"Warning: Breach Protocol Activated: Level 5, Sector T17. Quarantine imminent."
The words boomed like thunder across the world, distant and half lost beneath the pouring rain, the flat feminine voice in which they were delivered both strange and familiar at once.
"... the heck was that?" The fiend at his side marveled, its face turned up to the sky as bright green lightning forked across the clouds.
"Warning: Breach Protocol Activated: Level 5, Sector T17," the voice called again. "Quarantine imminent."
-ooo-