Chapter 34: Savage and Grace

There are demons, there are monsters, and then there are things that go against existence. Satan has dealt with all of those and even the mistakes beyond that.

It was an existence that should not have been. Something perpetually dying yet forced to stay alive, existence tethered to a thing beyond it. A forgery of life that the world itself rejected, yet it could not pass on. And so it shambled forward, even as the body was chewed apart, even as its rattled breathes peeled and burned lungs, even as bones broke and splintered into shards. If it were strong, it could have become something new, a blooming existence that could overturn the order of the world. But as it was, it was missing the most vital piece, the grace needed to not only survive anything, even the world itself, but to become stronger than existence itself. And so, without that, it was doomed to die and be reborn again and again.

It moved forward, seeking its salvation, its death, a presence beyond mere existence. It would find and takeconsumedevoure the grace it could feel, no matter what.

A tiny being, weak and without any grace at all touched it, tried to stop it. Sounds, meaningless even when they rose in pitch and volume when it ripped the being apart. It may not have had any grace but the tiny flicker of life would let it sustain itself even as the world tried to banish it.

The first indication Satan had that something was wrong was the smell. It wasn't rot per say, but it was something that curled his stomach, something that fouled the very air in a way that was beyond mortal means. No one noticed it and no one could notice it because it wasn't the smell of flesh decaying.

It was a soul that had collapsed under foreign gravity and been reborn as a blackhole.

There was only one thing that something so wretched would find value in consuming in the entire world, much less the campus. And like that, Satan knew his gravity was entwined with the beast's. Like two planets pulled towards each other, it was inevitable that the beast would follow him even if he hurtled himself to the other end of the Earth. So, it was only logical that they would collide and the destruction to both of them would be great, scarring their surfaces for millions and millions of years.

Except, no, that wasn't right. Satan was no lowly planet- He was a Sun and would be the one that would devour yet another beast. His flames could scorch away even eternity and kill even-

"Rin…?"

Satan blinked at the warry voice and snapped his hand shut, snuffing the tiny fire that had started to form. He had stood without realizing, pulled forth his fire without realizing, and had very nearly ripped apart the seal just so he could be sure he killed the beast making his way towards him. No…it wasn't a beast, but a fledgling that would be rejected by Assiah's very nature, like a body purging a dangerous but immature virus.

A few desks ahead of him, Yukio's face showed obvious worry at his sudden behavior. The teacher was trying to lecture him, but Satan ignored him to instead stare at Yukio and slowly shake his head before he left his seat entirely and headed to the door. He was sure Yukio wouldn't stay seated for very long despite the trust they shared, but Satan was just happy this was one of the few classes they shared. He knew where Yukio was and could run in the exact opposite direction, dragging the creature away before worry could win out with his son or-

Someone screamed, filled with fear and pain.

Copper tainted the air.

Satan ran.

The hallway was the perfect image of the calm before the storm. A dozen students that had been flushed out of their classes by the noise stood, frozen in shock and clogging the doorways even as others pushed for their turn to look. Pampered and sheltered, they didn't recognize the sharp smell of blood clogging the hallway or the sounds of ripping flesh.

Ah.

Satan had almost forgotten what such a terrible site they made.

It was once human but had been shredded apart, melted like candle wax and poured back into a shape that might be trying to look human. Except it discarded that facsimile for practicality immediately, hunched over the corpse of a girl and dislocating its own jaw, melting its own face so it could eat quicker. It had thirty fingers and four hands and three arms, and even as Satan watched its face and neck completely opened with teeth so it could fit the girl's head into its body in one jerky motion. It moved the corpse (throat crushed, heart ripped free, messy and painful but at least the sheer violence of it meant it had been quick) like a doll, wrapping its body around it and slowly absorbing it straight into its flesh.

Since Satan was sealed, he couldn't properly see to confirm that the girl was well and truly dead and if her soul had already fled.

He didn't know or care for the girl, but sheer pity and empathy moved him to act.

Unfortunately, someone screamed, the reality only sloppily hidden by the veil that kept Assiah in blissful ignorance. Some might have seen the truth, some might have only seen a murder or a dead body moving on its own, but they all saw horror of some sort.

It was like a gunshot signaling the start of hell unbound, and Satan was at the front of the crowd with unnatural speed, knife catching the fledgling in its candlewax head. It did nothing, but the force of Satan's charge knocked it away from the corpse, trails of its flesh snapping free. The king of demons fell forward with his own momentum, flipping over the tipping beast's body to minimize contact.

It still tried to devour him, greedy, and his jacket's side was more hole than fabric with only that brief contact.

Satan didn't bother worrying about the gawkers or the screaming or the panic to hide away like the prey humans were. No, the fledgling beast would follow him without fail now that it had been so tantalizingly close to him, and so the demon turned tail and ran leading it away from Yukio.

The fledgling scrambled after him on five-and-a-half limbs, worryingly fast even if it slipped constantly on the tiled floors. It completely ignored the empty prey and chased the real prize mindlessly. Satan led it away, up a dizzying spiral of steps and down hallway after hallway when he realized he had no way to head down from where he was. That was fine, away was all that mattered.

On nothing but a hint of air moving, Satan spun on his heel and dove around a corner, the fledgling soaring past him with enough speed to take off his head. A malformed hand caught his ankle and pulled, dragging the demon with the fledgling as it skidded down twenty feet of hallway. Satan only just managed to protect his head with the fleeting thought of how bad a broken neck would be as a human, but that was the least of his worries. He screamed more in rage than pain as his pants, sock, and shoe were devoured, his skin burning like acid.

A mere thought brought angry blue flames forth, bursting from his foot and driving the fledgling back with a shriek. Satan scrambled back and into an abandoned recital room and to his feet even as his ankle tried to give out on him, flesh more blister than skin and oozing blood. It was horrific pain, far beyond what most could stand, but he compartmentalized it away even as his vision tried to white out. No, it was painful, but it was unimportant when compared to his duty to draw the fledgling away.

The monster turned to him, wild with the taste of Satan's blood, however diluted it was.

Satan sneered. Even if it ate him, even if he was consumed down to his very bones, the fledgling had no chance to actually devour him. It would be like a human swallowing a grenade. But such a thing was unacceptable. It wasn't even how much it would hurt (a lot) but that Satan would lose his tie to Assiah, lose his connection to Yukio and be reduced to a spirit once more.

His back was to a large window three stories up, but Satan grinned, driven by pain and the will to live. He didn't want to lose everything to something so weak. But he didn't want to sacrifice even a single thing, even a single aspect of his daily life and risk changing his relationship with Yukio. Maybe he would be accepted, maybe he would be rejected, but any chance of failure was so terrifying it was unacceptable.

The creature charged him again.

If he refused to give up anything, he would kill the fledgling with delicacy and grave, just a careful application of his flames to the core beyond traditional existence should-

The window shattered and two booted feet punted the creature fifty yards down the hallway. It crashed through the doorway, ripping open the wall, then into the railway before the steps, splintering the wood and only not falling down the steps because its malformed body clung to the wood like clay.

Satan blinked.

"Ah, the stairs broke even when I was trying to be careful…" Amaimon droned, dropping into the room through the shattered window," I wonder if brother will be mad?"

"You already broke the window, dumbass," Satan muttered to himself, not bothering to question the backwards logic there. More loudly, he said, "What in the hells are you doing here, Amaimon?"

"I got bored, so I decided to spy on you, but you're really boring, you know?" The Demon King explained, like that was just a thing to admit to. Satan was just glad that Amaimon didn't catch him doing anything…questionable if he found his daily life boring, "Oh but then this happened, so I guess it wasn't a complete waste of time. I'm Amaimon by the way, I'm your older brother. Nice to meet you, I guess."

Satan looked at the outstretched hand like it was a hissing snake.

"It's rude to not shake people's hands when they're being so nice to you, you know?"

Satan ignored the fact that he had already made it clear he knew Amaimon before the introduction and moved on to the more pressing matter: "Don't pretend like you won't break my hand, and then I'd have to beat the shit out of you."

"I haven't accidentally broken any human's hands for a week now." The King of Earth countered, but his eyes narrowed the tiniest fraction at his 'younger brother's' threat, "And it's not like you could actually hurt me, since you're still a human."

Blue fire darted on a single finger, "Wanna bet?"

Amaimon peered at a sight he must not have seen for centuries with a tilted head like a curious dog. His expression didn't change, but somehow he seemed more serious, "Hey, you should become a demon already so we can actually play. You seem like you'd be fun to fight, when you won't break. I'm not allowed to break you, or brother will get mad…"

Satan rolled his eyes, partially at the casual promise of future violence and partially at the groans of the damned as the fledgling finally pulled itself free of the wood, "We've got bigger problems right now."

"That weak thing? I guess its regeneration looks annoying, but I'll just smash it to bits."

"If you use even a bit of your strength, you'll bring the entire building down on our heads. And regeneration isn't the real problem here," Satan snapped, refusing to even think about the possibility of Yukio being buried alive, "If you aren't careful with that thing, it'll eat you alive."

A very superficial way of stating things, but it wasn't like he had time to get in the semantics of the monster before them.

"I'll just throw it outside and smash its entire body away then."

"You can't just-"

And then, the worst possible thing happened.

Yukio skidded into view, just left of the doorway, "Rin, what are you doing!?"

The fledgling charged.

Satan stared, helpless to do anything, except, except-

"GO LEFT!"

It spoke of an absolute trust that warmed Satan's withered heart when Yukio obeyed without hesitation and dove to the side like his life depended on it. The fledgling completely ignored him, missed the teen by nearly two feet, but it still made Satan's heart race. It hadn't even been close, but it was still too much when Yukio was so fragile, so easily scarred, so easily ruined.

(So easily lost forever, beyond even his reach)

Amaimon, uncaring of a seemingly random human, reacted before Satan could stop him. He stepped forward with the calm power of a mountain and tapped the top of the fledging's body with a single finger. It crashed to the ground, momentum completely altered, the tile cracking ominously along with its body. Limbs cracked, organs exploded, and it didn't get back up.

"I still don't get what you were worried about." The demon said.

"Rin!" Yukio heaved, picking himself up and running into the room, Demon King completely ignored in favor of grabbing Satan's shoulders to steady him, "Rin, are you alright?"

"Yes, Yukio, I'm perfectly fine-"

Amaimon frowned, "Hey, I'm here too you know."

Yukio let out a relieved sigh, ignoring the childish demon in favor of his brother, "Good. I'm glad." And then he-

Satan blinked, hand reaching up to slowly touch his reddened cheek.

Yukio had slapped him.

It was hardly a scratch, but somehow it hurt far more than his mutilated ankle.

"Are you insane? That…that thing already killed another student, and you provoked it and made it chase you!" Yukio shrieked, angrily pointing and vibrating with anger and fear, "Do you have any idea how scared I was, Rin? I was worried that I was going to get here, and you would be just like that girl!"

Satan couldn't stand to look at so much hurt, but he couldn't look away. Instead, he felt his confidence dry up at the sheer magnitude of emotions he had caused, "I wasn't…"

"Hey, not that this isn't kind of funny, but this thing is getting back up." Amaimon interrupted, idly pointing to the broken creature that was stubbornly reforming itself. If Satan hadn't just been thoroughly cowed, he would have set it on fire and been done with the entire mess. "You're both wanting to be Exorcists, right?" Amaimon asked, idly looking at the mess even as it peeled a half-human face off the floor to groan up at him, "I hit it, but it didn't die, so what do I do?"

Yukio cleared his throat and did his best to suppress his feelings while others were around. He didn't want to blurt out anything suspicious in a fit of rage. He needed to contain the strange demon before more people (Rin) got hurt, "It almost looks like a massively mutated Zombie, so, in theory, destroying the brainstem should work-"

"Destroy the brain, got it." Amaimon confirmed casually.

Yukio only had the sharp inhale of air from his twin as a warning that something unpleasant was about to happen before the Demon King lifted his foot and smashed the monster's skull to bits. The floor shook from the blow and the mutated head burst, the demon's booted foot going through bone with the ease of paper mache.

Well, the brain was certainly destroyed now, along with almost the rest of its body, but it seemed very far away.

Satan let out a wordless and panicked shriek and tackled Amaimon. The Demon King stumbled back, strands of flesh from the fledgling pulling taunt and snapping away. Amaimon didn't fall, but he took a few steps back, more from surprise than anything, and harshly pulled the not-quite-human off him by the collar

"What do you think you're…doing…?" The demon said, starting at an annoyed growl but quickly trailing off in confusion. He ignored the other male he held easily off the ground in favor of peering at his suddenly barefoot. The thicker material had given away in patches and torn the entire bottom away when he had stepped back. A handful of light burns, hardly more than a nuisance but still there, dotted the skin.

"Didn't I tell you that that thing would eat you!? Listen to what I tell you or you'll die!" Satan snapped, anger rising to cover the terrible emotions he had felt. He knew that those weren't the right words to say to solve things, but he didn't care.

A gun clicked and Yukio fearlessly stared down the barrel at Amaimon, "Let go of my brother right now, demon."

Amaimon peered at Yukio with dangerous curiosity and the tension in the room spiked to oppressive levels, moments away from a terrible fight.

And because the tension was at its highest, that was when Satan's easily least favorite son decided to show up in a puff of smoke and glitter that was meant to hide rather (extremely) high-tier magic the time demon liked the throw around like cheap tricks. It was terribly sickly sweet and a waste of power, but Samael was nothing if not a show-off to remind everyone that they were his so-called toys.

"My, my, what a mess you lot have made." Samael chimed in an annoying sing-song voice, though his eyes never left the struggling fledgling on the floor, as he could at least begin to understand the sheer wrongness of it. If Samael didn't at least have suspicions about what was making a mess of his school, Satan would slap the shit out of him for not carrying that scar with him even now. It didn't matter that it had been thousands of years, one did not just forget a near tragedy like that so easily.

Satan would never forget.

"Brother." Amaimon addressed, looking only a little less than pleased at the sudden appearance.

"You aren't supposed to be here yet, Amaimon." The King of Time scolded, though his attention was clearly still elsewhere. He withdrew a checkered handkerchief that was so inconspicuous that Satan was instantly wary of it, "Though, I suppose I can overlook it this once in light of this…development."

The supposedly ordinary fabric was thrown at the fledgling, expanding ten times its size in a single instant. It fell with a light flutter over the broken creature, as light as a feather even when it touched a misshaped head and kept falling. Down, down, until it was flat on the ground, like nothing at all had ever been there.

It was impressive in a way very few people would actually understand, and it made Satan ache at just how little he had had to do with that growth.

Samael coughed politely, "You can put your little brother down now, Amaimon."

"Hmm…Ok."

Satan yipped indignantly as he was tossed across the room like garbage, cursing like a sailor when he landed poorly, and his ankle had words to say about that. Terrible, angry words that promptly dropped him to the floor without his consent and left him cursing even more, mostly at human limits.

Yukio, surprisingly, didn't immediately run to Satan's side, but instead boldly stood his ground, the gun never leaving Amaimon's head.

Samael tutted, "You can put the gun down now, Yukio. Amaimon may be rough, but he helped you two, didn't he?"

"He can't just get away with threatening Rin!" Yukio growled, eyes alight with anger.

"There's a lot of things Amaimon shouldn't do, but…hmm…" Samael hummed, eyes sharply scanning over Satan's fallen form, "I think you should take care of your brother first, Mr. Okumura."

"What do you…" Yukio looked down, following Samael's finger. He abruptly stopped, pulled up short by the sight of burnt flesh he had only ever seen in textbooks, "Oh my God."

It wasn't Yukio's choice to run to his brother's side, his mind simply whited out and suddenly he was there, scrambling through medical supplies that he most certainly hadn't brought with him but had appeared anyway. It reminded him of the Asanbosam incident but a hundred times worse. There was less blood, but there was just something terribly primal at seeing the severely burned and partially melted flesh and muscle peaking through. Somehow, it didn't smell any different than the iron of blood, but it rolled his stomach all the same.

If that had been somewhere more important, like a face or neck, then…

"Would you all help dear Rin recover? I'll handle the mess and everything else that comes with it." The time demon said pleasantly to someone neither brother could see, but the sudden surge in voices jerked Yukio back to the present. He looked up just in time to see Amaimon being dragged off while their male classmates suddenly poured into the room.

Satan tried to use the distraction to sit up, but was pushed back down by Yukio, who had far to much experience with him being stubborn about appearing weak around others.

Ryuji stormed in, phone in hand and panting like he had run the entire way here. "Yukio, Rin, we heard there was a demon attack! What ha…ppened…"

With the obvious focus around Satan's ankle, it didn't take long for them to see what had happened.

Renzo recoiled, taking a step back at the sight. Beside him, Konekomaru did his best to not do the same, "Oh no…What even did that?"

Ryuji exploded, "What the hell did you do to yourself, idiot!? We get a call that you need help from the headmaster, and this is what we find?"

"I didn't do shit!" Satan snapped with a growl, though it was hard to look intimidating when he was so obviously hurt and stuck on the ground, "Besides, it's fine, I can walk to the doctor myself if somebody would let me up already!"

Yukio, well-practiced in ignoring nearly suicidal stupidity from his older brother, was unmoved. All that mattered was that his classmates, who had started to grow at least some immunity to his brother's lovely self, were here to help. He would worry about the how or why later, "Bon, you're stronger than I am, so could you carry Rin for me? He needs immediate medical attention before he loses that foot."

"I'm not going to lose my foot over something like this!" Satan snapped, practically offended that anyone thought he was that weak.

"Rin, your ankle shows signs of what looks like severe chemical burning." Yukio assessed clinically, forcefully pushing the smaller male back down flat when he tried to rise, "The fact that you were standing so easily when you should be screaming in pain might mean nerve damage."

"Oh, don't worry about that," Satan dismissed with a casual wave. The throbbing burning was breathtakingly painful, there was no doubt about that, "I feel the pain just fine, so that's how I know it just looks worse than it is."

The stunned silence reminded Satan that not everyone compartmentalized as well as he did.

"How are you so casual about this? Your leg looks like candle wax!" Renzo said, voice pitched up just a bit higher in rising hysteria.

"It's just physical pain, so I can ignore it. Besides, you heard Yukio say that pain means no real nerve damage, so it's a good thing!"

"Oh my God, you're actually serious." Ryuji said with a detached sense of horror and dawning revelation, "Come on, Yukio, we're taking your idiot brother to the hospital right now."

You hear that? That's the distant sound of the plot train coming. Don't worry, you'll know when it's actually here.