Chapter Text
The world had ended, and he'd been defeated by a fucking mechanical lock.
Curled up against the annex door of a hospital that, until recently, had felt like any other...
Naoki stared at the back of his hands, softly glowing - cyan flashes highlighting dark paths.
Something like sunlight brought out their colour; and if they weren't his hands, he would have admired them.
Maybe they weren't his hands.
"... Hey, S'cuse me, I said - s'cuse me...
Stop ignoring me, how rude!.."
Far above him, the changed world circled around itself. Bright light from the moon-that-was-the-sun flourished.
There were still plants, growing here. If he just stopped thinking about his hands, he could pretend it was the school roof.
But, he wasn't alone, and he needed to make something clear.
"I wasn't ignoring you."
Naoki always spoke softly.
People got confused if you spoke too loudly, or volunteered too much.
They pretended to understand, sure. But it was always the precursor to asking for something.
And he hated being asked for something, because he always had a hard time refusing.
Just as, right now, she kept hovering about and asking him for something he couldn't possibly give her.
"I can't help you. I. I don't even know what's going on."
His voice cracked the second he tried to explain himself, but that didn't bother him.
Naoki had chosen to fade into the background, whenever possible. It had been a choice, one that made sense.
Because if you stood out, people - found ways to use that.
Right now, he needed to stand out, and he couldn't, and he'd failed -
Crystalline wings made a quiet tinkling sound as they fluttered in place.
Like the beat of hummingbird wings, his exhausted mind decided.
And he'd expected her to protest more, but she didn't.
From where he was curled up against the plastic gate, one leg sprawled against the floor and the other raised -
His hand against it, so that he could stare at the lines gleaming a soft neon blue over blackened flesh...
The demon fluttered over to his arm, which she was slightly taller than.
Lingering side-by-side, she lowered herself to the ground...
Mimicking his resigned posture.
In spite of himself, Naoki smiled -
Right until she spoke.
"We match."
And that couldn't have been less true.
The faint, pulsating blue colour that had burnt itself into his skin was artificial.
It shone like the over-saturated colours of an exotic fish;
Like a colour he hadn't perceived until whatever had happened, happened.
Her clothes were dark blue, like the deep sea. And he felt - he felt, a little, angry...
"Did you really just compare your clothes to my skin."
Naoki's voice was low, because he'd meant to sound tough and scare the demon away.
But she pouted - the lines of her lips forming an almost perfect 'T'-shape - and crossed her arms right under her chest.
"Of course I did? And it worked, didn't it? You did smile! Don't go pretending you didn't!.."
He - he had.
Giving in to her relentless assault, he let formerly grey eyes drift over to her, and take her in.
In the world that was gone, Naoki had preferred to avoid staring too long at people.
For a lot of reasons.
Glancing up at him with a now-placid little smile was a demon that looked less-than-demonic.
All the ones that he'd killed fought through, all of them had been anguished, hateful, formless spirits.
The demon had wavy red-brown hair, and with the artificial moon above shining down on them...
Naoki decided it smelled a little bit of sunlight, or of all the things he associated with the sun.
Encouraging wind over flowers set on the sill, freshly baked bread, the scent of the groaning popped flesh-balloon as it deflated -
"You aren't doing too hot, huh? Sorry if I was bossy."
... Her apology felt unnecessary. He knew he was being terse.
And that he needed to just accept all this, and keep moving, find that - keycard, or whatever...
The words came back slowly, but she didn't seem to mind that he was naturally withdrawn, and always had been.
"S'fine. Could be doing better."
Even though the admission had her giggling, her keen rose-quartz eyes never stopped looking up at him.
Occasionally, she'd squint very hard, as if trying to communicate some thing or concept to him without words.
But whatever it was she was thinking, he couldn't say - only that he felt pretty nice about how companionable this felt...
Despite the fact that she was a demon, and he was just a failure.
"Reit, I'm sorry to hear that. Really. I am!.. But...
Probably a bad time to say that the way you walked right past me and hit the gate was cool?
Useless! But cool! Got to work on those muscles, huh?"
Of course, what was going on here was the same as it always was.
She was buttering him up to help with the 'thing' she was looking for.
Naoki was familiar with how the song and dance went. So he let himself get distracted, once again.
Eyes that had turned the colour of golden amber thoughtfully took in the smaller, lithe body with its pale skin.
The dark blue of boots and gloves and leotard, of everything she wore; trimmed with black lace.
Her slightly pointed ears, her incredibly graceful and constantly-beating wings.
And the way her naturally full, light-red lips almost always seemed to set into a neutral smirk, secure and confident.
... Right then, in that moment, was the third time that it happened.
"Don't tell me you went and ignored me again, I can't believe you!
Here I was giving you, an untrained and freshly made demon another chance and you just spaced out entirely!
Do you always let other people just walk all over you?"
He smiled.
He meant it.
"... Yeah. Sometimes."
The fabric of her long blue glove stiffened as she tightened her right hand into a fist and then pointed right at him.
Roughly at about his nose; he couldn't help it, actually laughed - laughed over teeth that were sharp, now, made for cutting.
"Well, you cut that right out.
Hardly a demon worth bragging about if you're going to let other people talk for you.
Don't go thinking, 'oh, I'm the strong silent type,' either. You couldn't even bust down a door!"
"... Is this supposed to be your pitch for why I should help you find your... 'Thing...'"
The merry sound of her beating wings collapsed, and so did she.
Now her posture wasn't mimicking his; the demon was drawn into a proper sulk, sniffling pathetically, and occasionally dabbing at her nose.
"Meanie. Just - so mean... The only way you could make it up to me is... By helping me out..."
She was so transparent, not even bothering to hide the fact she was treating this like a transaction -
That he started to feel good about it. Just a little.
More than just a little.
"Hey. Why are you so focused on me? I'm not strong, you said so yourself. Certainly you can find someone else. I'm not even a demon - "
But he cut himself off, because that was no longer true.
And the other demon smiled capriciously, and placed her smaller hand to his cheek.
"I just have a good feeling about you. Besides! We help each other, it's a win-win scenario!
You can get rid of me the moment you're tired of me, you know?
Don't go looking like you won't, I know your type.
At the moment they get a bit of attention from a cute girl - Like yours truly -
They'll let it go right to their head!"
The one whose ego was swollen, however, was the one the puffing out her chest and smirking confidently.
He considered flicking a finger at her forehead, but honestly -
"... Of course. I was planning to help you, anyway. I just got a little tired."
He'd been focusing so hard and it hadn't mattered.
Chiaki and Isamu were out there. Ms. Takao... Might be, he didn't know.
And he'd felt certain he had to keep moving, or it'd all come crashing down, and it had.
But suddenly, it felt like - maybe he could just build it back up again.
"Yeah, I figured. But I'm oh-so-good at healing people's hearts!"
Golden eyes stared at hers in disbelief - and he realised it was the longest conversation he'd had in ages.
His hand clenched; black lines traced a path inwards, lit up by bright blue phosphor.
"... I guess you are. What's your name?"
The dark black sole of her boot kicked off from overgrown concrete, and she drifted into the sky above him;
Lazily circling through it with a grace that he almost wanted for himself.
When she paused from where she was floating, some of the teasing mirth had left her face.
"You can call me Pixie, of the Faerie clan! You - "
He stood up, scratching his left hand against the solid bone-like spike rising from the back of his neck.
She was pouting again, but he ignored it. Ignoring it made it feel like they were friends. That was nice.
"Pixie isn't a name. My name's Naoki."
The edges of his fingers still felt like they were his own.
Her smaller fingers met his, carrying a faint heat that fled from her to him.
And her feigned pouting left her, replaced with a wistful look.
"... Names are dumb.
But yours isn't. I like Naoki, it sounds nice. Like you! So! Let's go get that pass-thingie!"
Keenly fighting off the sixth sense telling him the topic had been pushed away, same as he often did... Naoki let her lead the way.
His lanky stride easily kept up with her, as she fluttered through the halls of the hospital - in such visible disrepair.
And soon they'd found a room, and in this room there were more demons, and they died swiftly.
"You trying to show off?"
He asked, as she fluttered from corpse to corpse.
The transparent crystalline sheen of her wings fluttered as if it were kissed with dew; she stared over her shoulder, and grinned.
"Oh, you noticed! Watch out!"
A thin jolt of electricity playfully crawled out along his wrist, up his spine.
The force of it barely tickled, and yet a few moments before, he'd seen it pause one of their opponents in place.
Its whole body, from its disfigured and grave-rotten purple flesh to its withered and withdrawn genitalia convulsing, shuddering...
Before it died, more quickly than the one he'd run through with his arm. He didn't have claws; he'd simply struck it hard, in self-defence.
Hard enough that his arm had went right through it, sending a mix of darkened stains against the hospital window.
Naoki opened and closed his hand; the blood and viscera were already fading, much as the bodies of the slain demons.
And Pixie had yelped happily, holding a keycard above her head and swaying from left to right in the air - before doing a somersault to match.
"Found it, found it, found it! I'm pretty great, huh? Saved you from this gross lot, and found your pass-thingie!"
It was clear she wanted to be praised.
He looked down at where the corpse that had been electrocuted until it stopped moving had been; it wasn't there.
Whatever had been left of it had rapidly decayed, becoming mush and mould and specks of organic matter and then nothing -
And she wanted to be praised. His fingers twitched, but who didn't want that, from time to time...
"Mmn. Great work. You really saved me. Thank you. Thank you so much."
The young man whose shaggy, black hair had been messy even before he'd become a demon didn't cry.
He didn't bow his head or emote much more than a shrug.
But Pixie slowly lowered the keycard to her chest, cradling it as she flew towards him.
With her head tilted to the side, she smiled encouragingly, like she hadn't been the one just fishing for a compliment.
"You're very welcome. You can look forward to relying on me into the future, too!"
And he did.
They cut a swathe through the hospital, through demons that acted like old women, through demons that bled oil.
Through demons made of tightly bound paper talismans, through demons that laughed like young girls even when they gurgled blood.
Through demon after demon that sometimes stopped to beg for their life; and every time he hesitated, found a new opportunity to attack.
Until they'd traced the entire length of the hospital, just to get to a room where they could cut through a different demon, again.
So they did.
Her lightning tore through the demon that reminded him of a manta-ray, paralysing them in place.
Just like before, a demon's body convulsed; left paralysed in front of him, an easy target.
And his hand struck it with enough force to crumple back leathery skin over surprisingly human-like bone, and it felt good.
But what stuck with him most -
Was her face.
Pixie looked like she was so happy; to be fighting beside him, to be fighting a powerful demon, to be winning -
To be of use.
In retrospect, in battle - it was the very last time she was.
And her joyful hug as she flew over, clinging to his shoulder like he was the strongest demon man alive...
That felt good too, almost enough to distract from the bubbles of blood and white-blue fluid escaping the mouth of a dying demon -
Floating upwards towards the ceiling, before their oily skein burst.
But as they travelled farther and farther, and he got better at talking to demons -
As his flesh adopted on instinct to the new world he'd found himself in...
Naoki noticed that his new companion got ever more quiet.
The Vortex World stretched on in a perfect circle, and the teasing comments and jokes and light flirtation faded away.
It was as if their brief roles had reversed, except he had never been one to fill the silence with unnecessary words.
So she starved for them, trying to make it clear that she wanted something more, that she needed something more.
And yet he'd made more and more allies, and they were all of them stronger, down to the weakest blob.
Naoki had started to see other pixies, too.
She fought them with the same lack of reservation as any demon might.
He didn't ask about it because he didn't talk. And she was drowning without conversation, but couldn't offer any of her own.
Occasionally, he'd tried talking to his other demons; they were demons, and he had nothing in common with them, because he wasn't.
What had once been Yoyogi Park loomed out at them; rife with the haunted remains of spirits that had once been human beings...
And pixies, of course; only pixies.
They looked like her, almost identically. He couldn't tell the differences as they danced through the air around them -
Locked out of the park's interior, but relatively safe compared to the more vicious lands he'd just come from.
If he'd never talked to her, Naoki knew he'd have trouble telling her apart from the rest of her peers, or friends, or sisters;
She would've seemed indistinguishable from any other.
And she'd been flying lazily nearby, alongside him, as silent as she'd grown. That changed.
"YaAAAay!
We're finally here!"
She was still talking, but like so many times in his life -
Naoki didn't hear the words.
What he saw was the increasingly rapid flutter of butterfly wings, her left leg drawn behind her right.
What he heard was desperation masked as confidence, that he knew all too well.
"I need you."
The words cut through her pre-planned speech, despite the fact he hadn't let his mask slip free.
And yet they ached. He was scared and unsure and alone, in a world where there had only been violence.
None of his friends were here; they were gone, and might as well be dead.
She was the only person who'd wanted to talk with him about stupid, unimportant, normal things.
Maybe she was a demon, maybe she was more like an insect than a human being, maybe she was one of a million interchangeable sisters.
Pixie could have been all of those things, and he wouldn't have cared.
His plea had been as genuine as an unvocalised desire to not fade back into the background had been.
Life and confidence slowly returned to her small face, lit up with a luminescent blush.
Finally, at long last, he felt like he'd done something real - something good.
Pixie hid her laughter with a snap of her long blue gloves, but powerlessly; the laughter spilled through her fingers.
And she shrugged her bare shoulders, like it just couldn't be helped.
"Well, I do like how that sounds... Fine! I guess I'll stay with you, for just a little while longer."
Even though his face didn't betray his emotions, that had always been the case.
The faint shimmer of his golden eyes met her own, soft as stained glass roses, and he felt his heart swell.
Naoki wasn't alone, anymore. Not in the world that had been, and not here, in the world that was.
He'd made a friend - a reliable friend who knew he could take her teasing, who'd keep an eye on him....
Someone who was already pestering him, with quiet cries of 'so, tell me about all the girls you like? guys too!'
And 'what are your friends like! no way they're as cool as you are!'
Leaving Yoyogi Park, and planning to answer every question she had, when she gave him the chance -
Naoki was just glad he had someone who'd help keep him human.