"So…Yaegaki-sensei is your older sister?"
"Y-Yeah-OW OW!"
"In a way of speaking." The older woman, Kazuha Yaegaki, was the one that answered while pinching Taro's cheek.
Within a few minutes of entering the club room, the silver-haired woman had gotten Taro picked up off the floor, then put into a position sitting on his knees, hands resting on them while he was scolded for giving his food away…again.
"Taro's father happens to be my legal guardian, so we grew up together. He calls me his older sister, though, I do believe I've mentioned not to do it in public…" she trailed off, briefly looking away from Kiba to pinch Taro's cheek harder.
"Ow ow ow ow ow, sowwy Kawzu-nee…" The brown haired boy tried apologizing, his pinched cheek slurring his words slightly.
Kazuha sighed and let his cheek go. "Honestly, one would think you'd learn by now… Hm? Taro, hold still."
"Eh? Wha-" Caught rubbing his sore cheek, Taro didn't notice Kazuha pulling a cloth from her pocket and leaning down.
She cupped Taro's cheek, using the cloth to dab away some bits of food that were stuck to his face. Using her hand, Kazuha tilted his head gently side-to-side to see if there was anything else, then nodded to herself when she didn't see anything and withdrew her hand.
"There. And here I thought you grew out of getting food on your face like that…" While most would hear that as a complaint, the small smile on Kazuha's face said differently.
Taro blinked a few times, before grinning with a slight embarrassed flush to his cheeks, "Hehe, thanks Kazu-nee-OW OW!"
"Yaegaki-sensei… at least at school." Kazuha said with a pout.
Kazuha let go of Taro's nose, turning her attention to Kiba, who had remained silent through what most people would probably describe as "sibling antics".
"Kiba-kun. While I came her to scold Taro after Saji-san told me he was here, I also needed to talk to you." Kazuha said, crossing her arms over her chest.
The blonde boy sat straighter in his seat, noting the look the silver-haired woman was giving him. "About what, Yaegaki-sensei?"
"Club activities this weekend. As you know, as club advisor, I talk with Gremory-san to plan them out, and we've finished this weekend's plans." Kazuha then turned to Taro, "Taro, lunch is almost over, so head back to class. I'll take Kiba-kun back to class when I'm done with him, so don't worry."
"Oh… sure." Taro stood up, rubbing the bit of soreness out of his knees from kneeling.
Before she could get another word out, Kazuha was wrapped in a quick and tight hug by Taro, the shorter boy then booking it to the door.
"See ya later, Yuuto-san, Kazu-nee!" And then he left, closing the door behind him.
"H-Hey-" The older woman called out, only to end up grumbling with some red to her cheeks as Taro was gone already.
Shaking her head to clear the embarrassment from her mind, Kazuha walked over to the club room's shut door and laid her hand on it.
A dark gray, intricate circle appeared on the door, strange symbols and letters adorning it as it spun lazily in place against the wood.
"There. Just in case Taro comes back, or anyone else tries to drop by." Kazuha nodded at her handiwork, walking back over to the table and taking the free seat, sitting across from Kiba.
"What did you and Buchou discuss, Belial-san?" Kiba asked.
"To us, an old topic; the recent disappearances around town. People going missing suddenly, no trace. Though, this time, we think we got something." Kazuha held her hand out on the table, another dark gray circle appearing on it, this time projecting a rectangular screen.
"Some familiars that were set up near the town outskirts caught something." Tapping the circle, the screen displayed an image for both to see; a large mass, hunched over at the base of a tree. It stood on two legs and had what appeared to be four arms, but the rest of it's form was blurred and vague, wrapped in something like cloth.
"Me and Gremory went over the photo, and pulled Toujou out of class to investigate along with some members of Sitri's group. The photo shows a creature of some sorts, and we noticed near the bottom something that resembled blood, so we're assuming it is."
Gesturing to the bottom of the image for Kiba to look, he did see some red across the whole thing, possibly a puddle of blood that the creature was standing in.
Though, now that he looked closer…
"Are those…"
"Bones? Good eye. That's what I suggested to Gremory, but she didn't like that possibility," Kazuha said with a shrug, "not that I necessarily blame her, but it's an angle to potentially follow. 20 missing in a town over a month isn't something that you can keep quiet forever, and with no evidence left behind, you have to start thinking differently, even if you don't like the thoughts that come up."
"And your thinking is that, rather than a standard disappearance, it's more like…a hunt? This creature hunting people, those that disappeared." Kiba said, crossing his arms in his seat.
Kazuha shifted herself in her seat. "...like I said, it's only a possibility. We're still waiting for Toujou and the others to come back with what they found; I'm only giving you an update, since it seems like Gremory wants to try and move fast on this. A lead is a lead."
"...is one creature capable of hunting 20 people in a month?" After a minute of looking over the photo, Kiba asked. "While we don't know what kind of creature it is, is it working alone the only possibility? It might be working in something like a pack of some kind."
"It's a possibility. Like you said, we don't what kind of creature it is, so I can't say for sure it's habits and patterns," Kauzha said with a sigh, closing her eyes. "I can't even add my own experience, given there's been no evidence so far. The only thing we can say for sure is that we haven't been notified of any new Strays nearby, but even then… I'm just hoping whatever Toujou can bring back or sense might give us an idea."
Placing her hand on the table once again, the circle faded, along with the screen it was projecting.
"Moving on… you and my little brother friends now, Kiba?" Kazuha asked the blonde, raising an eyebrow.
"Eh-wha-" The whiplash of the question, coming from the tone of the previous conversation made Kiba stutter for a bit while he thought his words through, "Y-Yes? We… hadn't really talked much before, and with Saji-san asking me a favor, we got to talk and… he asked, and I said yes?"
"Good," the silverette asked with a nod, "he needs more of those. Gen and Aka are good kids and I love 'em like family, but kids need more than just two friends. Tokage seems fine, but you… you'll be a good influence. Hopefully."
"Hopefully, Belial-san?"
"Well, you're fine and all but… y'know? The Devil thing?" Kazuha said, shaking one of her hands side-to-side.
"With all due respect, says the half-Devil, Belial-san."
"So is Gen-"
"Recently reincarnated," Kiba said, cutting Kazuha off, "And aside from the prior two mentioned Devils, we also have his adoptive father, the Governer General Azazel, and his other "sister", the Cadre Penemue. Not to mention that brother of his…"
"Don't add Vali to the picture, please, I have no idea how he hasn't let anything leak around Taro. We all thought he was secretly grooming Taro to fight him at some point," Kazuha said with a sigh, running a hand through her hair.
"It's quite a family, Belial-san." Kiba said with a chuckle.
"Yeah…it's a family alright," she said, small smile on her face.
"And I'll be careful around Taro-kun. I… had a minor slip around him earlier, due to my own inexperience with someone switching languages like he can."
"Well…as long you make sure to keep him away from our world when you're with him, it should all be fine." Kazuha said, standing up from her chair. "Oh, but if he tries to invite you to dinner this Friday, make up an excuse."
"Any reason why…?" Kiba asked with a raised brow.
"Every once in a while, Azazel has some of the Grigori higher ups over for dinner. With him staying in Kuoh and working remotely, it's how he meets face-to-face with them." Kazuha explained, "They know the circumstances regarding him staying here, I'd just like to avoid throwing random Devils into that mix of power, especially if Kockabiel is gonna be there."
"...isn't it Kokabiel, Belial-san?" Kiba asked.
"I know what I said." Kazuha bluntly responded.
"Right, right." Kiba said with a sigh.
"Room full of Cadre's and above is not the place for Devils, even if they're used to someone like me being around. Gen and his gramps is one thing, but you? Nah, too risky," Kazuha said with a shake of her head, "and a shame, since you tasted Taro's cooking too. He's the one that cooks for those dinners."
She couldn't confirm it, but Kazuha could've sworn she heard a whine following that sentence.
"Anyway, I believe that's everything." Walking over to the door, Kazuha put her hand on it and dispelled the magic circle, as Kiba also stood up from the table.
"...Belial-san?"
"Hm? What?" Kazuha looked over her shoulder.
"I wanted to ask… the rumors about Taro-kun-"
"You wanted to know if they're true?" Kazuha asked, cutting him off.
"...yes. There's a lot of them, and… what I've heard doesn't exactly line up with the boy who sat here, talked with me, and gave me food. It's mostly curiosity."
"...if you plan on being friends with Taro for the foreseeable future, then you'll find out yourself." Kazuha said, opening the club room's door. "Go on, you first. Head to class and I'll follow to talk to your teacher."
"Yes, Yaegaki-sensei."
With the blonde heading out the door, Kazuha gave the room a look, making sure her circles were gone. They were, but she did see something that made her blink a few times.
"Wasn't there a whole lot more food on that table…? I didn't even touch any."
Around the outskirts of Kuoh, there were large, dense forests. They went on for miles, and were the sources of many ghost stories around town. Some of them… held some truth, as Kuoh was a town steeped in the supernatural, even if the general populace itself didn't know it.
In a clearing in one of these forests, 15 minutes out from the edge of town, stood a trio of girls.
"Sooooo~, this is the spot we're supposed to be investigating?" Standing at 5'3, the girl who asked was Tomoe Meguri, a beautiful girl with shoulder-length, reddish-brown hair tied into twintails, swept bangs and a single strand of hair sticking out from the top along with brown eyes.
Tomoe was dressed in the Kuoh Academy girl's uniform, which while it laid perfectly flat against her chest, the skirt managed to show off plenty of the girl's plump thighs. Resting on the side of her waist was the sheath of a sword, at the moment only showing the handle and guard, resembling a European longsword.
"From what the familiars were able to see, it should be. There's plenty of forest around, so hopefully this clearing is the right one." The next to speak was Reya Kusaka, a girl standing at 5'5, slim, with long brown hair that ends in two short braids and matching eyes, and wearing a blue hairband.
She was wearing same uniform as Tomoe, and floating around her were a variety of masks; some of them were the theater tragedy and comedy masks, some were masquerade masks, there even some kabuki or noh masks.
"Do you sense anything, Toujou-san?" Reya asked, turning to the last girl of the trio, Koneko Toujou.
The three had been sent to investigate the area by their masters, hoping to find a lead about whatever had been there, maybe something linked to the recent disappearances.
20 people over the course of a month, with no bodies, or signs of anything. The two Devil heiresses had been able to keep the situation from spreading from the public through some behind the scenes work, but if more people kept vanishing, it would get harder to keep it under wraps, and the risk only increased with each vanished body.
This time, hopefully, there'd be something. A clue, evidence, something.
"..." The short, white-haired girl was silent at first, before taking a deep breath and closing her eyes. She stayed like that for a few seconds, her nose twitching, and her eyes opening. "Blood. I smell blood."
Koneko started walking forward, past the two girls, who started to follow. The three ended up at the edge of the clearing, a large, tall dead tree standing in front of them.
"This looks like the same tree from the photo…" Reya commented, crossing her arms and looking around. The edge of the clearing didn't have any obvious signs of a disturbance, and a glance back at the tree itself didn't reveal anything to her either. "Though, unlike the photo, no blood or bones. And no creature, obviously."
"Toujou-chan, you said you smelled blood, right? Where?" Tomoe asked, watching the shorter girl get closer to the tree.
"...all around." Koneko replied, not looking at Tomoe as she placed a hand on the dead tree, running her fingers along the dried out, dead bark. Her gold eyes narrowed at a twitch in one of her fingers, stopping and bringing it slightly up again.
She felt it again. Light, almost like it wasn't there to begin with.
An indent. Moving her fingers around that are, she felt two more light indents in the bark.
"...there was something here." Pulling her hand back, Koneko once again closed her eyes and took a deep inhale through her nose.
A coppery tinge to the air.
Metallic flavor she could almost taste.
Blood.
Even if it wasn't on the ground anymore, it was there before. And it trailed beyond the clearing.
With her eyes shut Koneko stepped to the side of the dead tree, starting to walk past it and into the woods beyond it, following the stronger scent.
"Oooo~ And there she goes," Tomoe said with a giggle.
"Well, at least we can rely on Toujou-san's senses, if not her communication," Reya said with a sigh. It wasn't her first experience with Koneko's short and blunt style of talking, having helped the Gremory Peerage on other occasions. "Let's at least keep up with her, Tomoe."
"Gotcha~!"
The two girls followed after Koneko, their focus shifting onto catching up with her and keeping pace, and not on their surroundings.
"Chrk chrk chrk…"
Dirt started to sink into the ground next to the dead tree, as an appendage with three claws resembling a hand gripped the bark, slowly pulling a large mass out of the ground, eerily silent.
A large creature, wrapped in a cloak. Four golden yellow eyes watched the girls fade into the deeper part of the forest, two lower arms wrapped around itself as it's mandibles chirped.
"Chrk chrk… food. More food. Bring food…chrk chrk."
One of it's hands slowly dragged itself up the bark of the dead tree, easily fitting the tips of it's claws into the light indents.
It would know.
It made them.
THUNK
It's hand cracked the bark and sunk through both ends of the tree, ripping itself upwards and free of the trunk.
"Chrk chrk chrk… to mother. Bring food to mother…"
The creature started to sink back into the ground, like the dirt around it turned to liquid. Once it sunk beneath the earth, a slight bump in the grass slithered forward like a snake, following after the trio of girls.
The tree was gone. Sunk into the dirt.
The clearing was empty.
No trace, no evidence.
"Phew~ Sajiiiii! My ends done!"
"Then get your ass over here and give me hand with mine, Yamada."
"Yessir!"
The afternoon sun was shining through the window, illuminating the empty classroom of 1-C, the only two students left in it being Saji and Taro. Classes had ended and most students were with their clubs.
However, Taro had been asked by another student if he could take over cleaning duty for them, and Taro being Taro, didn't know the definition of the word no if someone asked him for help. Saji had stayed behind with him once he realized his friend had been talked into classroom duties. The two had piled the desks and chairs at the back of the classroom, and had each taken a side two sweep, Taro on the right and Saji on the left.
"How the hell do you even sweep that fast?" Saji asked as the brunette walked over, standing at his side and starting to clean alongside him.
"I dunno, I push my broom. How 'bout you?" Taro replied with a giggle.
"...I meant and still do a better job than me, jackass." The dirty blonde said with a sigh.
"Mhm, kinda second nature at this point?" Taro answered, shrugging as he pushed his broom.
"What, like your other househusband instincts?" Saji's cheeky answer earned him a quick swat on the behind from a broomhandle, Taro flipping the cleaning instrument back around.
"You try living with a workaholic dad, failwife older sister, other workaholic sister, and…Vali-nii." Taro said, running one of his bandaged hands through his hair.
"Are we really stereotyping Vali-san as… a Vali?" Saji asked with a raised eyebrow.
"You have been over enough times to see the state of his room, and what happens when we try to assign him dish duty." The comment about dish duty got both boys to briefly shiver and grip their broom handles tighter.
"Even Kaho and Gengo can do a better job at washing up…" Saji said, shaking his head and resuming sweeping.
"They're saints at housework in comparison," Taro chuckled, following his friend's lead.
The next couple of minutes went by in silence, the two boys going about sweeping the classroom. While Taro was able to go faster and could probably finish the whole side before Saji could, he kept his pace even with him. He knew the only reason Saji was there was because he couldn't say no to people asking for help, and Saji wasn't the kinda guy leave him high and dry.
The brown-haired boy kept taking peeks at his friend as he swept, an uncomfortable feeling eating at him, one he was never able to put a name to. Just like how this wasn't the first time Saji had given up his time because Taro couldn't say no, it wasn't the first time the bespectacled young man had felt this way, either.
He shuffled his feet nervously, feeling the question he wanted to ask bubbling in his throat, but wasn't able to open his mouth before Saji did.
"Hey, Taro." Saji stopped his sweeping and turned his head to look at his friend.
"A-Ah, yeah, Gen?" Taro stuttered slightly, caught a little off guard that Saji had broken the silence first.
"You fill out that paper Faulkner-sensei handed out?"
"...huh? Paper?"
"What- that future goal paper, you airhead," Saji said with a sigh. He walked over to the wall and leaned his broom up against it, grabbing his bag underneath and ruffling through it for a couple seconds, until he pulled out a folded piece of paper.
Unfolding it and showing it to Taro, the bandaged boy blinked a few times as he looked at it. "Huh. Huh…"
"So?" Saji asked, shaking the paper.
"So? So what?"
"...did you fill the paper out?"
"Nope." Taro said, popping the 'p'.
"Well what did you do with it?" Sajo asked, folding the paper back up and sticking it in his bag.
Taro had crossed his arms over the top of the handle of his broom, leaning left to right slowly. "I tossed it out-"
"You tossed it out!?"
"Yeah, what's the problem?" Taro asked, his eyes turning to the side and not looking at his friend.
"Aside from Faulkner-sensei eventually collecting them? Because he said he would, and when you don't have one, he's gonna see it as a bigger problem then you just tossing it." Saji explained, walking away from the window and closer to Taro.
"They'll just give us another one next year-"
"And that's next year, this is now. It's just a goal paper, man, they aren't gonna hold you to it. They expect stuff to change, it's only our first year," Saji placed his hand on Taro's shoulder, shaking him a bit. "Come on, I thought you wanted to be a doctor. Why not put that?"
"I-I don't-"
The sound of the classroom's door opening shook the two out of their conversation, both heads turning to look.
Stepping through the opened door was a man who stood a little bit taller than the two boys at 5'8, shaggy brown hair with silver streaks throughout, bag-laden bright blue eyes, relatively thin, and dressed in a white button-down with rolled up sleeves, a black tie, black jeans, and black loafers.
The older man stared at both Taro and Saji for a few moments, then blinked, and sighed. "Alright. You two definitely weren't on classroom duty for the day, so I'm gonna need a good answer as to why you're still here."
The broom that Taro was leaning on slowly fell to the side, clattering to the floor without his weight keeping it upright. "U-Uh… Faulkner-sensei, it's-"
"Yamada-san, if you were about to say that someone asked you to take over for them for the day and Saji-san stayed behind to help you, stop."
"..." Taro gulped.
"Hm. Like I thought." Shay Faulkner, an English teacher at Kuoh Academy, and more importantly the homeroom teacher of Class 1-C, Saji and Taro's class, walked into the classroom and pointed to the back.
"Both of you, grab a chair. I'm gonna give you two a brief lesson on saying no, because just cause they ask doesn't mean you have to say yes," Shay said in a tone the two were familiar with; no mercy.
Shay Faulkner was one of the nicest teachers to his students, but on the other hand, would be relentless in pointing out any flaws he saw to correct their mistakes.
Be it school work, or in their day-to-day. Or, in Taro's case, his inability to say no.
"...Yamada, you suck." Saji with a groan.
"I'm sorryyyyyyy…"
The trek through the woods had gone on longer than the two of them thought it would. Tomoe held a hand over her mouth as she let out a loud yawn, and Reya was communing with her masks; the floating apparel having been sent out around the trio to act as sentries.
While the outing so far hadn't produced the results she had hoped for, Reya was at least happy she could get some field data for Scouting Persona. She'd only had the artificial Sacred Gear since the start of the school year, same as Tomoe, and the others in Sona's Peerage. While they were mostly stable, there were still some… glitches, one could say. A small issue every once in a while, so it was useful to send data to the creator so they could check up on them.
Not mentioning the fact her's had more issues than Tomoe's, but then again, her's was just a sword…
Reya shook her head, dismissing the brief frustration she was feeling and refocusing. Ahead of her and Tomoe was Koneko, who was still leading them forward. The foliage above them only got denser and denser above them as they went, the old age of the trees around them starting to show as they got deeper.
"We're pretty deep in the forest, aren't we? These trees are a lot older lookin', not to mention darker," Tomoe spoke up, looking around while keeping a hand on the sword sheathed at her side.
"Well, we've definitely been walking long enough to warrant being deeper in." Reya said, turning to respond before facing forward again. "I'm just wondering how deep we'll have to go… Toujou-san said she was following a blood trail, but how far does it go?"
"Guess it depends on how much blood the person had~!" Tomoe said, a little too cheerily for Reya's taste, as the brown haired girl stared at her redheaded friend. "...what?"
"Tomoe, girl… even for you, that was in bad taste," Reya said with a shake of her head.
"Huhhhhh~? Whaddya mean?" Tomoe asked with a tilt of her head.
While the two girls in the back made idle conversation, Koneko was focusing on the trail. The scent of blood hadn't she was following hadn't gone away, but every once in a while it got weaker and she had to refocus. The deeper they went into the forest there still wasn't any visible blood, and to her, that didn't mean anything good. It meant that it had gone somewhere, that someone or something attempted to cover it up.
Maybe not literally, but considering the Rook was just following a scent? She wasn't about to dismiss the idea. There was enough worry being thrown around with people going missing, especially from Rias, since they could only change people's memories so many times before irreparable damage started happening to their minds.
She wasn't out here for the sake of the missing or the dead, she was here for Rias. If Koneko could take that heavy burden off her Master's shoulders, she would.
A dead tree was in her away, and as she stepped around it she saw something.
A footprint firmly marked in the dirt in front of her. One that was clearly not a human, from the clawed heel and two toes that she saw from the print. Looking around she found another ahead of it, as and as the shorter girl walked to follow it, noticed they led to another dead tree. This one was larger than the last, with a large, thick trunk that sprouted out six feet in length, then split out into three equally thick and longer branches. In the middle of the trunk was a large hole, almost the same size as she was.
As she approached, however, a smell that wasn't blood started to come to her. Each step Koneko took, made the scent grow stronger and stronger, and it most certainly wasn't blood. The raw, coppery tinge that she knew faded away and was replaced with another smell she was familiar with.
Rot. Warm, unsettling, unmistakable rot.
Laying one of her small hands on the trunk of the tree, the smell was assaulting her senses now. It was strong, and potent. Unrelenting. Taking a breath to try and clear her mind of it, she peered her head into the hole in the trunk-
And quickly snapped a hand to her mouth and nose, a dry heave choked out and stopped as she stepped back.
"Toujou-san?"
Koneko snapped her head to look over her shoulder, seeing Reya and Tomoe.
"Sorry Toujou-chan~! We got caught up talkin'..." The bubbly tone faded from Tomoe's voice as she looked at Koneko, the hand over her nose and mouth slowly pulling away. The redhead's expression hardened, a hand going down and firmly grasping the handle of the blade sheathed at her side. "What is it?"
"Tree… look in the tree." Koneko told the two before taking more steps back, away from the tree, as much as she could without simply leaving the two other Devils there.
Reya and Tomoe both looked at each other, nodded, with the redhead going towards the tree while Reya went over to Koneko.
While her senses weren't as strong as the Rook with them, even Tomoe could smell something wrong as she got closer to the dead tree. Looking through the hole and into the inside of the trunk, she could see why the shorter girl backed off almost immediately.
The trunk seemingly went much deeper into the ground than it's outside appearance would show. It sunk down below, and Tomoe couldn't even guess how deep, because no matter how much further it went, it was full.
Full of meat. Full of the smell of rot, and death.
Flies buzzed around, crawling alongside maggots through a pile of meat that reached to the bottom lip of the hole. Organs, flesh, limbs, they were all in the pile, all in various states of decay and rot. The smell was so strong it felt like it was pounding against the sides of Tomoe's head, and she tried to hold her breath, trying to not let it in, but in her efforts she saw something.
A head, or what remained of one. It looked like it was crushed, imprints of fingers clearly visible in the exposed bone of the skull; insects crawled along it, chittering and skitting, walking along the mushy, fleshy pink insides.
Tomoe pulled her head out as fast as she could, doubling over, stumbling away from the tree and gagging, coughing as the bile and sickness she felt in the pit of her stomach emptied, splashing to the grass and dirt.
"Tomoe?" Reya rushed over to her friend, questions ready to spill out-
THUNK. THUNK. THUNK.
Until a sound from above made the three girls snap to the tree.
Atop the dead branches was a large figure, a ratty and tattered brown cloak wrapped around them. "Chrk chrk chrk…found food. Devils find Mother's food…"
A pair of thin arms lifted out of the cloak, three fingers on the hands cracking as they held onto the branches. A second pair, below the first, gripped the trunk as the cloaked mass lowered itself to the ground. At first hunched down and crouched when it met the ground, once it's arms let go of the tree, it rose up.
It stood at six feet, almost as tall as the tree itself, as its arms rose up and the cloak wrapped around it slowly slipped and fell, pooling around its feet. It was a creature that vaguely resembled a human; in addition to the other two pairs, it had a third set of arms with three fingered hands, each finger much thicker than normal. The arms themselves were skinny with almost no mass to them, the gray skin around them taut; it's legs were similarly skinny and taut, ending in feet with clawed heels and two toes. It's upper body lacked any gut or stomach, the bottom half looking like a skeletal indent that connected to it's pelvis, leading to a chest with very taut skin. Skin so taut it looked like it's ribs and sternum were completely exposed.
The head possessed four eyes, the second set below the original, and kept most of it's other features hidden by virtue of a scarf wrapped around it's head like a hood. The glow of it's golden yellow eyes illuminated bone white skin, but that's all that was visible.
Letting out some insect-like chittering, the skin of the creature's upper and lower mouths split, four mandibles unfolding and letting the chittering ring out, a long purple tongue running itself over two rows of sharpened fangs.
"W…what the hell…?" Reya managed to mutter, eyes locked onto the creature. It simply stretched it's limbs, popping sounds echoing in the silence caused by it's emergence.
"Chrk chrk chrk. Devils find food…devils become food." The creature began to bend, legs crouching as it's long torso folded over, it's pale back facing skyward. "Grrrrrg… graaaaahh…"
Tomoe brought her hand to her sword, pulling it from the sheath and holding it out before her. It was a black, western-styled longsword, one side of the blade colored golden and the other a dark purple, the same pattern found on the pommel, and mechanical guard with a lever.
[Blazer Shining Darkness Sword]
"Uh, so, any idea what this thing is? And the…meat tree?" The redhead asked the other two, eyes trained on the creature and holding her blade.
"The tree is probably where all the people went. As for this… thing…" Reya trailed off, her masks now gathering around and floating directly in front of her.
The creature's groans were soon replaced with the sounds of flesh splitting, as from its back emerged black, flat tendrils that ended in arrowheads. Standing back to it's full height, the tendrils wiggled and extended further out, six of them now coming from it's back and pointing forward.
"Nerve Menace, chrk chrk…"
The tendrils shot forward at a speed the trio of girls couldn't see, burying themselves into the ground. Two lifted back out, with large clumps of dirt attached, that then visible changed, wrapping around the arrowheads and elongating into lance-like shapes.
The other four remained in the ground, and all around them, the ground started to shake as large masses began to emerge from the ground. They similarly started as large clumps, but then began taking shape as four dirt large arms that came from the ground in positions around the three.
"Chrk chrk chrk, chrk chrk, kyahahaha! Devils become food! Devils become food for motherrrrrr!" The creature cackled, it's mandibles splitting as it's laughter rang out. The hands of the dirt arms clenched into fists, turning and crashing down on the girls.
"[Scouting Persona]!"
Reya's masks flew into the arms, detonating themselves in violent explosions that destroyed the constructs, loose dirt flying everywhere as they crumbled. Around the Bishop four masses began forming out of pixels of golden light, taking form as new masks that began to fly around her. "Whatever the hell it is, it's definitely underestimating us!"
"Totes~ I'm gonna show it why that's a bad idea…" Tomoe crouched down, holding her sword to her side and cranking the lever on the guard.
[Change! Light!]
The purple colors on the sword swapped to gold, as the blade itself took on a dull golden glow. Using her enhanced Knight speed, Tomoe kicked herself off the ground and began dashing at the creature.
It sent the two tendrils with dirt lances at her in retaliation, but the redhead dodged one by jumping over it, swinging her sword at the other and slashing through the tendril, then using it as a stepping stone to get in range of the creature and swinging at it's chest.
The creature jumped back, but the end of Tomoe's sword nicked it's chest, causing it to scream out in pain as it went back. "Aaaargh! Chrk chrk! Light!? Devil use light!?"
"Perk of the Sacred Gear~!" the Knight said with a wink.
"Chrk chrk… one not enough. Devils crafty. More. More." The creature flung his three pairs of arms to the side, bringing them back to clap it's hands together. "Mother. Enemies."
Around the creature, red wisps started to roll off it's form. It's tendrils started to sway back and forth, and it steeled it's stance, feet digging into the ground. "Promotion. Queen. X4."
Reya blinked. "Did… did it say Promo-"
The red wisps grew in size, starting to drift off to the sides of the creature and clump together, growing in mass as the seconds went by, and before the eyes of the girls, the clumps started to take form as three copies of the creature. The original took a few steeps forward to stand in front of the other three, giggling to itself and spreading its arms. "Devils you? Us devils too!"
"One not enough. Get more," One to it's left chimed, stepping up.
"Like school. Like school!" The third said, laughing.
"Like school?" Tomoe echoed, eyes drifting to from creature to creature.
"Chrk chrk chrk. We took eight. We four. Other four… where? Chrk chrk chrk…" The last one said, crouching down and extending black tendrils from it's back.
Koneko stared at the creatures and took a deep breath through her nose, taking in the smell and focusing. She looked back over her shoulder, and sniffed a few times. Clicking her tongue, she turned back to Tomoe and Reya, "They went to the school! I can smell them!"
"Chrk chrk chrk! Kyahahahaha! Too late, too late!" The original creature stepped forward, running it's tongue over its teeth. "You stuck. Devils stuck here. Devils there will be stuck. We find food. Food for mother. And boy. Boy for mother. All for mother."
"ALL FOR MOTHER!" The three copies chanted in unison, beginning to walk past the original and approach the girls.
"Hm…? What the hell?" Taro reached a hand up and adjusted his glasses, looking out the window.
"Yamada, pay attention!"
"Sorry, Faulkner-sensei! I thought I saw something outside."
…
Volume One: A Dreamin' Dragon
Chapter 3: Out of The Box
