(New Leaf) Multi-Interlude 6 (Patreon)

Central Kuoh(immediately after Kokabiel’s defeat)

“He is on his way,” a tan-robed young man spoke as he stood on a painfully-hot, glowing-red sigil painted on the floor representing ‘earth’ and ‘stability’, not allowing even the barest hint of relief to appear in his voice lest his attention to his task inadvertently slip.

Kuoh’s central clock tower basement was filled with a tense, strained atmosphere in the crimson lighting, a sense of overwhelming, barely-contained power pressing down on all. There was no screaming or shouting in a panic; the Doumon and Nakiri Clan ritualists were well aware what could happen if they lost focus for even a moment– and truly, they were all too focused on not blowing up at the moment– but every single one of them knew that things had taken a turn for the dire, if not for the city as a whole, then at least for a good chunk of it, themselves included.

The young Nakiri barrier specialist resisted the urge to shift his painful footing, as it may have risked destabilizing his portion of the mystical structure bearing the weight of malevolent energy rushing past. As it was, the sigil was already showing several worrying signs pointing towards potentially imminent failure despite his tending, such as the intensity of the heat and glow, and the lines and brush strokes thinning in places where the ink had begun burning to ash and smoke. “As soon as Nakiri Ken arrives, the ritual can move forward-”

“Hmph, the ritual should have been over already.” One of his compatriots, a wrinkled, elderly woman standing on her own active sigil in flowing blue robes, interrupted the man in a chiding fashion. “The brash upstart knew his role from the beginning, and still chose charging into battle over duty to his clan. I knew we should have chosen a different vessel right from the start!” She harrumphed.

Those of the younger generation stayed quiet, knowing their places, while a couple of the other specialist elders silently shook their heads dismissively, but didn’t belabor the point; the woman hadn’t objected at all in the preliminary planning stages, happily going along with the plan to empower one of the two clans’ favored scions.

“What’s done is done,” an elder Nakiri grunted, forehead creasing from his own efforts.

Another nodded, picking up where he left off. “Whether his personality is ideal or not, Nakiri Ken will be our vessel yet.”

There were three major elements to the ritual outside the core, with members of the Nakiri and Doumon clans positioned on key points around the array. The first part were four pairs of Nakir and Doumon powering sigils embodying ‘stable flow’ in each of the cardinal directions, powering the connections-to-and-flow-paths-from the four primary barrier anchors around the town.

Each of those four connections fed together into the next part, a singular circular array based on the daoist principle of Wu Wei, or effortless action– the idea that water does not strain or force its way forward, but flows formlessly, adapting to its surroundings– maintained entirely by eight Doumon members.

The final part, managed solely by Nakiri members– including the Young man who first spoke– was ‘the earth’, the riverbed, the structure that determined how and where ‘water’ flowed. Only a single sigil of the whole array was left unlit, a dual-earth/water symbol in the center of the flow circle with a connecting path to the northern part of the circle, where a single Nakiri would open a path of least resistance for all power to flow.

‘North’ being the absolute domain of the water phase, representing the ultimate Yin, it was the perfect way to counterbalance the excessive Yang that had been consumed and released by the potential daiyoukai, and smoothen the extreme causticity of the energy before safely entering containment in a human body.

“That… may not be possible anymore.”

Or at least it would be perfect, if Nakiri Ken and his potent water element had been in position in time.

Gazes turned to the speaker.

Doumon Kaito, the diligent, (supposedly) submissive, sealing genius, and the (secretly) true grand architect of the entire plan in the first place, hid his mounting fury and determination behind a meekly worried frown when he spoke from his place at the core of the ritual, right beside Nakiri Ken’s intended spot. As the director of the secret ritual, his job was to administrate the fine-tuning of the various arrays from his own sigil, and place the final containment seal on Ken once the power had finished passing through the last section.

‘That greedy fucking fool!’ He raged internally. ‘The promise of power wasn’t enough for him to follow orders, no! He just couldn’t resist first gaining public accolades fighting against Grigori forces on top of it, and now he’s put everything I’ve worked for at risk!”

“We… we may not have that kind of time,” Kaito ‘hesitatingly’ put forward his assessment as he mentally raced for a solution. “The demon’s power is much more corrosive than any youkai on record…” He gestured at the smoking and flaking ink that made up the primary earth-element structural array, burning away from the presence of the youkai’s power flowing around it in an infinitely circling loop. Along with the rising ash and smog, miniscule flickers of the crimson energy sporadically lashed out in wild splashes from the arrays inked lines, burning ankles and filling the room with a smothering sense of dread and mounting terror. “Even if Ken gets here when expected… we may need to assume we don’t have as much time as we thought.”

Some of the elders shared looks, understanding passing through them even as their grimaces deepened at agreeing with the less palatable ‘upstart’. The ritual’s degradation could very well accelerate as it became less and less stable.

“What would you suggest, boy?” The old crone from earlier– his great-aunt Chiyo– bit out as if it was like pulling teeth to defer to a weakling disappointment like him.

‘I’ll be glad to see the life leave your eyes, you wretched hag.’ He didn’t let the thought show on his face. ‘Soon.’

While the four-pointed barrier that had been erected around Kuoh had succeeded wholly in containing the malevolent energy that had bled the very sky, and withstood the force of multiple attacks capable of wiping out much of the city with relative ease… that wasn’t the problem. That was what the four-direction five-element barrier was meant to do. If anything, it did so too well, given the modifications made to the original design that only the ritualists within the clocktower even knew existed.

In the north, the south, the east, and the west of the town, there were four near-identical ritual formations within reinforced bunkers, hidden underneath freshly built shrines. These cardinal locations were the anchors for the barrier, and the grounding point for all the power that struck the barrier to be broken down and redirected to, where the underground formations and kami-blessed shrines would then safely disperse the base energies; the shrines radiating lighter, purer energies to the heavens, while the heavier, impure energies would be directed into the leylines by the underground formations.

Except, instead of either of those things, the modifications he designed funneled the energy into this fifth, secret, central array, to be taken and used.

And he designed it to take all of the energy, dispersing none of the power, all to be forcefully refined via passing through the body of an arrogant, power-hungry, dual-earth/water element prodigy for both stability and adaptability, so that he– Doumon Kaito, the abused, underappreciated genius– could take it all for himself without exploding.

But Nakiri Ken wasn’t here.

‘Of all the times for the prick to chase even more recognition! No matter, I can still salvage this…’ “I can still modify the cleansing array to be used by those without a dual element, but we will need one of each, of roughly equal elemental strength.”

He was quick to describe his “plan”, using the pair of practitioners who managed the connection to the northern anchor as temporary stand-ins for Ken, drawing the power from the loop first through the revised water element portion of the sigil and the Doumon sorcerer, to impart adaptability first, and continue the flow into the Nakiri’s side, imparting stability. They would continue passing the power back and forth in a miniature loop, refining it bit by bit in segments as they continued drawing more and more power from the larger loop.

Despite their initial hesitation in ceding to his judgement, the elders agreed to his adjustments instantly, and there was a flurry of careful movement as the practitioners rushed to take their new places without disturbing the entire array.

Kaito felt a bead of sweat as he manipulated the ritual to begin opening the flood of power, black turning red as crimson fire raced down inked lines towards the Doumon substitute, a man he didn’t even knew the name of from a different branch of the family.

This would be a balancing act, passing the power between hosts quickly enough so that they didn’t burst without the dual element to rapidly build their own foundation, but slow enough to gradually build up the two qualities that each would impart to settle it; far more delicate than his original plan of using Ken like a cauldron.

A tense handful of minutes passed, and the degradation of the greater flow array slowed to a near stop as energy was slowly drained. The two substitutes shook from the effort, both soaked with sweat as the air between them thrummed with power. The stocky Nakiri had shifted to a horse stance, something that irked Kaito as he had to adjust the process when stability had begun to overtake adaptability.

“Ken-san just gave an update!” The same sorcerer from before announced with relief in his voice. “He’s just one minute away!”

‘No!’ Kaito’s eyes snapped over to the young man in a panic. ‘It’s too soon! He’s no longer needed with the refinement underway! If he takes part as the container now, there will be no chance for me to steal the power away without him and the others noticing!’

The entire ritual was originally designed to give him a back door to the refinement and the containment processes, allowing him to steal the power right from Ken’s grasp as the man burned from the inside. With the modification made to separate those processes, his back door would be plainly obvious and easily punished when the purified energy slipped out from Ken without any negative side effects.

Feeling his dream slipping from his grasp like sand through his fingers, Kaito made his decision and risked it all.

Before refinement was even half-way complete, he yanked the reins on the ritual that only he knew of, and drew it all to himself.

Pure, total, relief. Pure, golden energy, more than he’d ever felt in his life, flooded into his body from the now screaming substitutes as bubbling crimson energy more than they could handle engulfed them, burning hair and skin alike. He paid little attention to the screams and shouts of all around, focused entirely on using the purified energy to make an attempt at building a foundation that could withstand the remaining caustic unpurified power.

Too late.

He had just gotten a framework built and supported with the golden energy when fire rose through his body and filled his veins. He grit his teeth and redoubled his efforts, wrestling with the volatile energy and trying to bind it to its purer counterpart, even as several of the elders who rushed to stop him pulled back, the flesh of one of their hands burned away down to bone after trying to press a talisman through the energy cloaking him.

‘Serves her right!’ He thought gleefully with a fanged grin as he glared out at the hateful old bat, fighting the urge to just immediately lunge forward and tear them all to shreds.

First things first, he needed to not explode.

It was harder than he expected, harder than he feared… but not entirely impossible. With a quick twist of his personal array, dry ink crawled up his skin under his clothes as if liquid, channeling the power within to flow in time with his blood. It was agonizing beyond belief, but it was all he had to live for, so he endured it as he endured his miserable life up until that point, step by aching step. Within seconds, the sealing ink swirled around his chest above his heart in a spiral, and solidified with a red flash and the smell of burning flesh.

As long as his heart still beat, his blood still flow, the power would follow suit, burning and knitting together the flesh in its wake, but staying contained within him to freely use.

The basement dimmed, the only light being the soft red glow of his eyes, and the ink tracing the veins of his exposed skin.

All was still for a moment, the remaining sorcerers staring in wide-eyed shock as he released a breath full of bloody steam in the form of a sigh.

The bodies of the two substitutes finished crumbling to blackened ash and bone

‘This is right.’ The twisted thought poked through the constant pain of his veins burning and healing in a constant cycle, as he stared out at them all, taking in the horrified expressions of all his ‘betters.’ ‘Why shouldn’t they fear me as much as I hate them?’

He grinned, baring fangs while his eyes locked on to his old supervisor’s, a look of terrified recognition twisting the man’s wrinkled features as he took a step back.

He let the smothering veil of hate overtake him.

“Die.”

Not a single sorcerer escaped the building alive, and by the time Nakiri Ken arrived at the blood-spattered scene of the slaughter, he had just missed the culprit by a handful of seconds. Doumon Kaito had already fled into the night on all fours.

Unbeknownst to either of them, the fleeing human had been observed from atop the clock tower by a bespectacled teen in a blood-red mage robe.

“Interesting…” Georg muttered as purple fog thickened around him, swallowing up his form. “Perhaps he can be of use to our cause…”

‘Willingly or not.’

(Dawn, next morning)

Gomeisa tucked his stolen hat lower over his head as he ducked out of the morning crowd and into an alley at the edge of town, wings folded away Light suppressed until even one of his more sensitive brethren wouldn’t be able to tell him apart from a regular middle-aged human.

Somehow, someway, his mystical bindings had broken when the Devil’s club house had finally collapsed, and he had been able to escape in the confusion. The devils hadn’t even had time to sift through the wreckage and confirm his continued confinement before they were to meet with the big bad Azazel himself. Was it sheer happenstance? Right place, right time? Or was it fate, his escape being destined to happen regardless of how it did, planned or not?

‘I should call it ‘divine intervention’, heh,’ he chuckled to himself as he walked out the other side to a much less busy side-street. ‘Fitting for someone trying to play around in God’s domain.’

Gomeisa knew exactly what it was, and he wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth by spreading tales of his lucky break. If people learned of it and started asking questions about how he got away right under fucking Azazel’s nose of all people, the Governor-General might start asking some pointed questions of his own, right after tracking him down and cuffing him to a lab table for experimentation enhanced interrogation.

‘And isn’t that a fucking head-turn and a half,’ he thought to himself as he tracked his prey to an abandoned bar. ‘All-knowing Azzy was here the entire time and let us try it anyway, the scary fuck.’

Truly, Gomeisa felt, the fact that he got away without anyone else the wiser might as well be called a miracle, for how easily he slipped the consequences of the choices he’s made.

For as little as he’d been able to truly push himself to the limits under the man, having Kokabiel as a boss had been great for his own desires and vices. But now that that stage of his life was officially and effectively over, as a soon-to-be wanted fugitive of the Grigori, it was time to find some new employment.

Gomeisa walked up to the worn metal rear-door of the bar, sealed shut with a rusted padlock and chain bolted to the frame, and rapped his knuckles against it three times.

Without waiting for a response, he slashed his hand through the chain and kicked the door with a massive bang, taking the frame and a good chunk of the outlining brickwork around it with it as it fell inward with a second, almost as loud slam against the floor.

Stepping through the gaping hole in the wall, into the dust and mortar kicked up by the fallen section, he deadpanned. “Whoops.”

The smell of blood mixed with the stale air in the room he found himself in, but there was no sign of life or movement as he glanced around the silent kitchen area, light streaming into the dark space and bouncing around the floating dust.

Nevertheless, Gomeisa’s right hand snapped up without warning just outside his peripheral vision, right as his head was turned to the left.

He looked back, turning with a, frankly, devilish smirk on his lips.

Caught in between his thumb and fingers was an all-but-invisible length of empty space.

“That’s no way to greet a prospective employee, now is it?” He squeezed his fingers just the slightest, and it was enough for the smallest creak of bending metal to groan out for a moment, the field of twisted light distorting until the active-camo invisibility shattered.

What was revealed could only be called a Devil as the supernatural world knew them in the most academic sense, sporting the trademark black bat wings. Beyond that, it was nothing more than a nightmarish monster of  sleek, black, chitinous plates connected by sinewy red flesh. It was almost humanoid in shape if not for the fact that it walked on four long and spindly, oddly bent limbs like a demented spider, each tipped by long, metallic blades that merged seamlessly with fleshy muscle. Three of the four blade-pointed limbs were digging silently into the wooden ceiling holding it aloft, while the fourth was stopped inches from Gomeisa’s neck.

Its head was composed of a rubbery black substance, with a featureless curved helm-like plate where the face should be.

It wasn’t his power or anything that stopped the creature from continuing the attempted ambush, nor anything as instinct-based as regular killing intent. If a creature as obviously artificial as this even had any true survival instincts to speak of, Gomeisa would be shocked.

No, instead, it was the absolute certainty in the creature’s primitive mental algorithms that if it continued to attack, it wouldn’t just fail in its purpose, its very creator may be displeased by the resulting retaliation. It didn’t have the capacity to understand how it came to that conclusion, but everything about the man trapping it in place set off its programming in strange ways.

Gomeisa spotted the tiniest shift in the creature’s posture as it stilled, as if on standby for something, and he smiled when it shifted a second time.

“Hey there,” he greeted the mysterious master of the creature who was no doubt listening in now. “I couldn’t help but notice you were pulling these little beasties from the area now that the bigger players are in town, and I wouldn’t say no to a discreet lift out myself. I’ve outgrown my old employer and begun spreading my wings, so I could use some work. What do you say, wanna take me on?”

His smile showed teeth, his distorted image reflected back at him by the sheen of the creature’s blank faceplate.

“I’ve been told my rates are killer.”

Lucifaad, Underworld(Technology Department headquarters, morning after Kokabiel’s defeat)

A bored young devil perked up at his desk while looking at his monitor, as a number on his reactive spreadsheet suddenly spiked. Looking away from his main monitor, he checked his second screen for a more detailed readout while reaching for his phone.

“Sir, unknown energy reading coming from the Dimension Gap, spiked high enough to stand out from the usual background interference, but died down a few seconds later,” he spoke after his supervisor picked up. “It’s apparently reading somewhat similarly to some youkai on record, but way darker in nature than usual.”

“Which sensors picked it up? If you’re calling me right before I finish shift, I’m assuming it’s not the ones pointed at the Rating Game Space? Every once in a while some new reincarnated schmuck happens to be that strong out the gate, even if it’s their first game.”

“Negative, it was picked up by the Earth-adjacent sector, source unknown. The starting point seems to be somewhere outside our sensor ranges, possibly beyond mapped dimensional-space. Cross-references with our earthbound sensors are showing a potential endpoint somewhere over Japan. Forwarding the data to you now.”

“Japan, huh?” His supervisor hummed for a moment, before cursing. “Shit, it figures as much. I see it. Some wild readouts came in from the same location earlier during the night shift, the Gremory and Sitri heiresses little fiefdom, and those readings match this pretty closely, though there are some differences. Some crazy dust-up apparently went down between the Maou’s siblings and a splinter faction of the Grigori, and half a dozen other players too by the looks of it; Big Brother and Big Sister are on the scene already.”

The man sighed.

“Looks like I’m not going home any time soon. I’ll go ahead and pass this on to Ajuka. Hell, maybe he’ll go himself; make sure someone with a brain for these things is on the scene to keep our more troublesome leaders informed…”

The younger devil sweatdropped, pretty sure he wasn’t supposed to hear his superior grumbling about two of the leaders of the underworld.

“Anyway, I’ll handle this. Continue keeping an eye out for other unusual readings. And good work, kid.”

“Sir.” The young man set the phone down and got back to his usual job; boredly watching numbers on a spreadsheet change, while listening to one of those human “podcast” things to kill time.

Tokyo Countryside(Three days after Kokabiel’s defeat) 

A light, citrusy aroma that opened the sinuses mixed with the rich, heady scent of roasted duck fat, while the sweet and savory and bitter tang of canard à l’orange covered his taste buds.

It was a good effort, especially for such a backwards eastern country as Japan. Seven-out-of-ten in his opinion.

Valper Galilei dabbed a few beads of sweat off of his flushed forehead as he took a pause from his meal to glance out at the rushing scenery.

Having escaped from Kuoh itself as all of his temporary allies began rushing off to battles the somehow all managed to lose, he nevertheless knew better than to try and flee the country just yet. Without any land borders to neighboring lands, and with all the airports and leisure cruise lines undoubtedly being watched by now, there would simply be no way for a man as wanted as him to disappear.

He was not too proud to admit that even after all his years on the run, he remained unskilled in the art of stowing away; he was a creature of his life’s work, and of earthly comforts. He would not be able to stand going without a comfortable bed and three quality meals a day or more. The few human trafficking contacts he had in the country would also find him too-hot a commodity to reliably get him where he needed to go- undoubtedly, they would find their eyes drawn to the wallets of those after his head, a much-too tempting opportunity to pass up.

And so he fled deeper into the country he found himself stranded in, partaking in the usual fare of foreign tourists to blend in as he kept moving, landing him on a luxurious dinner train in the countryside, eating a Japanese chef’s take on French cuisine as he pondered his next steps in first-class comfort.

“Hey, this seat taken?”

A flash of irritation twisted through his mind at his thoughts being interrupted, before he registered the words had been spoken in perfect Italian.

Suddenly at attention, Valper looked up from the window to watch as the somewhat familiar voice dropped casually into the empty seat across from him.

“Fancy meeting you again, Genocide Archbishop.” The wide-brimmed rice hat the figure wore to hide their features tilted back a bit, revealing the scruffy face of one of Kokabiel’s more enigmatic officers grinning at him while blue eyes met Valper’s own black.

“Indeed.” Valper smiled his signature ‘grandfatherly’ smile and reached for his wine glass as his mind raced for an out, figuring his loose end was about to be turned into a neat little bow. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

“Relax,” his guest chuckled gamely, reading him perfectly. “My current employer’s been looking for someone with your, ah, expertise.”

“Oh?” Valper blinked, and felt his smile drop for a second in sheer surprise, before it returned moments later.

“Here’s the deal; you join on to help with a related project my boss is interested in, and down the line when the time is right, you can continue your main holy sword passion project with the full backing of House Nebiros and its resources.”

Gomeisa slid a Devil Contract across the table with a crooked smirk, knowing he’d caught the researcher, hook, line, and sinker.

“What do you say?”

“I say-” Valper began as he started to go over the contract, his smile twisting the slightest bit more in hunger as he read the details.

“-that I’m listening…”