Chapter Text
Chapter I: New Life+
Makima opened her eyes.
She knew this wasn't something she was supposed to do, because she knew she had died. Denji had cut her down, and Public Safety had cut her up. She was served to him in plastic containers and he took great care in preparing her, prepping the meat for a variety of meals, turning her blood and bones into shakes, and even downing her hair. He did it with love, he had said, which got around her contract with the Japanese Prime Minster, but that didn't change the fact that Denji was a fool. On one hand she was not too pleased about dying, but at least she took solace in the fact that being eaten meant she could be the closest she ever could to Pochita.
But she should be gone right now, she had died, she should be reincarnated into the next Control Devil, her memories of Makima wiped away from this world. She shouldn't be looking up at a very familiar ceiling.
“What is going on?” she asked aloud, and around her on the bed the dogs whine and whimper as she disturbs them from their slumber, though they never fully rouse from sleep. As she typically did when she woke up, she pet the head of the nearest dog, which in this case was Custard, before she pushed herself out of bed, trying her best to not wake the others, though it was still dark out.
This is her apartment, it's where she lives, this is her bed and these are her dogs. She wondered if there was some kind of afterlife for individual incarnations of devils, but she had never heard of devil to represent that, unless Chainsaw Man ate it. The alarm clock on her bedside table told her it was nearly four in the morning, meaning it should be another hour before she's supposed to wake up. As a devil she did not require all that much sleep, and found that she could get by with three hours a sleep a night without it having any negative affect on her day to day business, though on occasion she would treat herself to six hours.
Everything about her apartment is how she had left it, well-furnished and richly decorated, though she did not take much comfort or appeal in the things she had around her apartment. It was more for the sake of simply presenting the facade that she resided in a lived-in apartment, that she had made it a home for herself. On a handful occasions she had hosted dinners here for her bosses and other superiors, but in all honestly she would have been fine with anywhere that had a bed. It's when she moves into the kitchen area and finds the calendar on the counter does she find something amiss.
According to what it says, today is the day before she meets Pochita and Denji.
“Strange,” she said, half in thought, trying to think about what this is when suddenly it feels like a burning rail spike has been nailed into the center of her brain, and Makima screamed out and collapsed to the floor, barely holding onto the ledge of the counter with a white-knuckled grip. It's an intense burning sensation in her brain, it's almost like she's feeling it swell and contort in her skull, like it's about to hurt out of her head, and there's something... else that is happening as well. It's flashes in front of her eyes, images that she can't really decipher all that much because there's just too much going on at once, and if she didn't find herself paralyzed she might have fallen to the floor.
Thankfully, despite the intense pain, it had only lasted but a moment, though the lingering remnants of what felt like the fracturing of her skull continued to remain. Her vision was blurry, her breathing was heavy, her entire body is shaking and it feels as though she has a thin layer of sweat building on her skin. The images in her head make everything fuzzy, and when her body has relaxed enough she gracelessly dropped to the kitchen floor, and was grateful for the cool floor tiles against her heated cheek. Minutes march on, her body recovers from whatever that was, and she is trying to make sense of what these images in her mind are, but it's too hard, it's them flashing too quickly and they are hard to make sense of, but right now that's not the most pressing matter.
Why is she back in her apartment? Why does her calendar give her this date? She had never liked not knowing what the situation around her was, it was not something she cared for, and if she met whoever was responsible for this, it would not end well for them.
But she does know one thing, and that it seems like she's been sent back in time, but how she knows this she cannot say. It would be more reasonable to assume that she was being attacked by some kind of devil, but even that sounds like a stretch because she knows for a fact that Denji had defeated her, and that she was dead. Yet for a reason she cannot explain, she simply knows this to be true. To her, there is no other explanation to be had, it just feels like the most correct answer she can think of, and she does not like that she knows that without knowing how exactly she knows it.
Ah, another thing she now knows. The images in her mind were beginning to make some semblance of sense now, and the longer she focused on them, she noticed something that stuck out to her. It was a simple name, one that stuck in her mind for reasons that would soon become abundantly clear.
The name was Nayuta.
000
For the first time ever, Makima took a personal day, she had called into work and told the receptionist that something had come up that needed her personal attention, and that she would not be in until tomorrow. She was later than usual when it came to feeding her dogs, and she took her time in eating her breakfast, a simple bowl of oatmeal with cinnamon sprinkled in was about all she felt she could stomach right now, and after she had cleaned up she took the dogs out for their usual walk. For the thrill of it, she decided to take her route a few more blocks than she usually did, even taking the time to get a coffee before she headed back home.
The rest of the day Makima had spent alone in her room, staring up at the ceiling, trying to process and sift through these images, hours went by as she thought, and by the time the sun dived beneath the city skyline and Tokyo's own lights had come to life, she was certain she had a pretty good grasp on the situation.
These images were memories, or more precise, her memories, or rather the memories of her future reincarnation, Nayuta, the version of herself that had been born after Denji had eaten her. How she has these memories she still cannot say, but it's strange to say the least, even if she doesn't have Nayuta's entire life in her head, just enough to give her an idea of what kind of life she had led in the future.
Denji is there, he's in many of her memories, and Makima had actually burst out laughing when she came to realize just how much of a constant he was in Nayuta's life, acting like the caring older brother that he had thought that Nayuta would need in her life. Had he truly learned nothing? Was he really so desperate for her affection, for any affection that he was willing to put aside everything she had done to him? She pitied him, she actually pitied him, and that was why she was laughing, the number of people she viewed above contempt could be counted on one hand, but she never actually felt pity for anyone.
Nayuta herself is odd. She goes to school, she eats snacks, she watches anime, she goes to the park. Her future self acts like any little girl her age, anyone who didn't know her devil heritage would assume she was just like any other child you could find in the world. It annoys Makima because she can't figure out what Nayuta's is exactly planning, because she does not have access to Nayuta's thoughts, only her words and actions. Every night she sleeps next to Denji, cradled in his arms, and Makima finds herself jealous, because Nayuta's head is only separated from Pochita by a few inches of human chest. There must be some plan to get Pochita, but she cannot figure out what it is because she never does anything to indicate what that plan is. She wants Denji for herself, that much is obvious, she likely does not want any outside influence from getting in her way, it's why she used her abilities on that dull host that her loathsome sister had taken.
Ah, yes, her sisters. They are involved in her future, unfortunately. The Famine Devil and her overcomplicated attempt at a Machiavellian scheme, starting a “church” in the name of Chainsaw Man and filling it with children too young to know the world around them, it was fully deserving in toppling like it did. The very idea of that church is absurd, if anyone should have been in charge of such an establishment it should have been her. Then there was the weakened and disgraced War Devil, who in an attempt at revenge lowered herself to possessing some emotionally maladjusted girl, only for both of them to be manipulated by Famine in the end. To shame herself even further, she actually allowed herself to be influenced by the girl's emotions, proving her will was weak beyond a doubt. Those two, useless as they had always been, unable to do anything important as their schemes and plans fell apart around them, they were fully deserving of being erased from reality. There was no Death Devil in Nayuta's memories however, and even if Makima did not have all of the girl's memories, she thinks meeting Death would be one of the moments that would come back to her, especially since it looked like the end of the world.
Nostradamus' Prophecy had begun to take shape, with so many sides and people trying to save the world in each their own way, only it seemed like things were not going well from how Nayuta's memories were playing out. Useless, every single human and devil were useless. If Makima had been allowed to build her perfect world, the Prophecy would never have happened to begin with, there would be no end of all life in her perfect world where only what she allowed to exist would be. All the woes and agony of man would simply never have been, humanity would have been truly saved if she had won.
Which is why, she thinks, is the reason she's here.
She was sent back and given these memories of the trials and battles that would mark the end of days because some unknown force had decided to give her a second chance, the ability to correct her failures.
Alone in her bedroom, Makima laughed with joy.
000
The next day she goes out and collects Denji, freshly revived from the dead and covered in the guts and blood of zombies, and like last time she hugs him, wishing she could be closer to the devil heart that beat inside his chest. The day plays out how it did the first time, she takes him back to the Public Safety offices, hands him over to Aki for the day, the fight, and she sends Denji to live with him. There's no real need to change anything, nearly everything had gone right the way she intended it too, a hiccup here and there sure, but nothing that she couldn't adapt to.
The fight with the Eternity Devil. Through Sawatari she arranges the attacks on Public Safety hunters and gains the Katana Hybrid. The Soviets send an agent to try and collect Denji, but it fails and she gains the Bomb Hybrid. Several nations send their assassins to kill Denji, but they all fail, and she gains the Crossbow Devil.
It was around this point that she noticed something odd, it was as though the days between these events were blurred together. The days where the mundane work of her station were the most exciting highlights of her days, such as endless paperwork, various boring meetings, and other dour tasks of a government official just sort of passed her by without her noticing. On one had she's a bit grateful for it, it makes this whole thing far less tedious, it helps her get to the end fast, but on the other hand she's not comfortable with this time being stolen from her and she's no closer to figuring out the exact why of her situation yet. It wasn't as if she had been idle however, she had tried finding out what devils could do this to her, but she never could find any answers to that question.
America summons the Gun Devil against her, they fail. Denji kills Aki, and then she kills Power in front of Denji. He breaks, Pochita returns to his true, glorious form, and her Weapons stand no chance against him. When they finally come to the graveyard and have their final battle, the results end the same way, and she rips the Pochita heart out of the body, but that is where the events will diverge. As she sits there against the cross of some nameless grave, rubbing the heart against her cheek, she does not make the one single mistake that she had made the first time around, the only flaw that had happened in her perfect plan.
This time, she had taken the time to learn Denji's distinct scent, a piece of her memory was wasted in dedication to remembering it.
When he's close enough to her, she turns to him, and she relishes the surprised and panicked look on his face. The heart in her hand beats faster as Denji quickly tries to close the gap between him and her, the Power Saw raised into the air.
She's quicker however.
“Bang.”
She's wo-
000
“Yeah, that's not going to get you through this.”