Chapter Text
Chapter XVIII: 38 Hours, Roughly
According to reports from eye witnesses, the SVU-turned-helicopter flew out of the airspace around the Tokyo Devil Containment Facility at 4:13 PM, transporting four devils; Chainsaw, War, Control and Bomb as confirmed by Public Safety Hunter Mifune Fumiko. The helicopter was reported to have flown into Tokyo where it went down and crashed into an office building that was undergoing construction, with reports placing the initial crash at around 4:30 PM. A fire started at the top of the building which spread to the rest of the structure, and emergency services were not able to get to the fire due to the number of other ongoing incidents caused by the chainsaw head zombies in the area, leaving the building to suffer severe fire damage before it could be put out. Public Safety arrived to locate the four devils, though they were not able to enter the building to find evidence of their whereabouts.
The bodies of any of the devils were not found in the wreckage and are believed to have escaped, however they have not been found as of the writing of this report.
000
6:52 PM
The alleyway was out of the way of foot traffic, as well as any onlookers who might have chanced upon them being here, and they did not want to risk anyone seeing them after everything that they had gone through.
Nobana threw up behind a trash can.
He had a headache, his mouth felt gross and dry, he was covered in sweat, blood, grime and soot.
He wished he never joined this stupid devil hunters club, he wished his parents made him do anything else but that and he had an irrational hate towards his sister. If she didn't get herself killed they would have focused their attention on her instead of him, but now he's forced to do all this dangerous stuff just so he can do a dangerous job. If she was going to die the least she could have done was die in a way that would have given them lots of money! He didn't care if it made him money, he just didn't want to do this!
Besides him he heard the shuffling and moving of trash, and he forced himself to look back because he knew that he couldn't not do that for very long.
Seigi was carefully laying Haruka down on the ground, on top of a series of cardboard sheets that he had found, and Nobana was surprised to see that he was still unconscious. After everything that had happened, he expected him to wake up, and while there were a few times he seemed as though he was about to, a random flick of the eye or a mumbled word or two, he never woke up. He expected that something was wrong with him, but Seigi told him not to worry about it, that he needed to rest and that he would be up sooner or later.
Seigi...
It took everything in him to look at him, at the person who he had thought was his friend, and between the three of them he looked the least terrible. Sure, there was dirt, blood and soot on him, but unlike him and Haruka he seemed fine for the most part.
“I suppose you want an explanation,” Seigi calmly said, but with a tired air, standing all and leaving Nobana feeling smaller than he already knew he was.
“T-That would be a good start!” Nobana said, trying to sound like he had some measure of control over the situation, though he knew he had none. “Ju-just what was that? Why were you able to do that? You just lit on fire, and everyone started shooting you and then-”
“I'm not human,” Seigi said, and Nobana's words died in his throat. “You know how so many of the Church members were making contracts with the Justice Devil?”
“...Yes...” Noban said, nodding his head.
“Well, they were making contracts with me, either directly or indirectly,” Seigi continued. “It was all Fami's idea, and I'm not the Justice Devil, I'm the Fire Devil.”
“Oh. I see.”
Nobana then fell back and fainted.
Seigi sighed. This was going to take some time.
000
11:28 PM
The night rolled on as it always did, and the lights of the city kept it lit, like they always did. Under a bridge, standing by the river two figures hid in the shadows while light traffic rolled overhead.
“I had an associate once,” the Katana Man said, having reverted to his human form. “She was a private devil hunter, she killed devils, sold them to me and I'd sell them on the black market. One day she comes to me and says she made a contract with the Gun Devil, and that I could have all the guns I wanted if I help her capture something.” Hands in his pocket he scowled at the flowing water before him. “At first I wasn't too sure about that, the Gun Devil was pretty stuff, a nightmare, and I couldn't help but wonder how she even got in contact with it in the first place, but guns were tempting, it was hard to get firearms in Japan a few years ago. What really sold me on the deal was who the target was.” His lips curled into a snarl as he recalled that conversation. “The bastard who killed my grandfather, he had a devil heart that the Gun wanted, and after hearing that I went ahead and helped her with her plan, and the Katana Heart she gave me was a bonus on top of it. Things didn't work out though, and she died.” He then turned to the Nail Devil. “Ever hear of Makima?”
“Makima?” the Nail Fiend asked. “I heard the name a few times, but I heard she died.”
“Well, I met her once, I think,” Katana said, looking back to the river. “I know she was a devil, and that because of her I lost months of my life, the memory of that time just gone. I've tried to find out more but no one wanted to talk about her, especially Quanxi, who always seemed to know the most about her. But if there's one thing I do remember from the one time she came to my cell, it's the chains she made and those damn eyes.” He then drew his hand from his pocket and held it in front of him, clenched in anger. “That little girl, she had the same eyes and the same chains! I don't know what her connection is to him, but I know she's Makima's reincarnation and that she's Denji's sister!”
“What an amazing story,” the Nail Fiend said, somewhat bored and uninterested, while a hand was place on their hip. “You've rant on about this Denji before. He killed your grandfather, yes?”
“He killed a great man!” Katana yelled, loud enough to overpower the traffic above. “My grandfather never did anything wrong in his life, and that bastard killed him for no reason! Screw Public Safety, they had him there that whole time and they never told me! I'm going to kill him and that little girl, and anyone who gets in my way is going to be cut to pieces!”
“So you're not going back to Public Safety then?”
Katana's head snapped to Nail direction. “Hell no! Whatever mind control that brat used on us wore off at some point and we'd already beaten down some of those army guys, it's only by luck that we managed to escape! And I'm going to use this new chance to hunt them down and get revenge! What about you? What are you going to do?”
“Hmm,” Nail hummed, putting a hand to their chin. “Well, I could go back to Public Safety myself, I don't think they'd give me too much trouble if they find out I was mind controlled, but at the same time I don't like them very much, so I don't really want to go back. I suppose I could tag along with you until this is all done with and go from there. But you should know that I don't like the idea of killing children.”
“Children? What children?” Katana grimaced. “We're not dealing with children, we're dealing with devils who only pretend to be children, they have no real parents or futures, so who cares if they die or not!”
“Well, I suppose when you put it like that, I think I could help out.”
With the Nail Fiend having decided on joining him, the Katana Man laughed loudly, cursing Denji's names to the sky above.
000
9:03 AM
A Public Safety hunter smoked his cigarette, even though he had been told multiple times not to, but he didn't have nearly enough respect for the patient in this room to think he warranted the courtesy of not having smoke blown into his face. So he blew his smoke downward and looked down at him with a look of contempt, though he glared half as strongly as he wanted with the eyepatch.
“You really had to ruin everything, didn't you?” he asked, directing his ire to the body before him. “If you just stayed at your station, a lot of this mess could have been easier to deal with. The Control Devil would have been dead and out of our hair, Chainsaw would have still been on ice, we might have had War locked up too, or at least killed her, and that entitled Bomb bitch might have been captured too. But no, you just had to get in the way.” He took a deep drag of his cigarette and blew the smoke down. “Even if things still turned out this way, at least they could have been more manageable, but you had to bring it all crashing down. Some legend you are.”
A thought then occurred to him, and he decided to act on it because who would stop him? He then switched his cigarette to his other hand so he could raise his dominant hand, clenched in a fist, before he brought it down with the intention of a fierce punch.
It didn't make it that far before he found his wrist gripped in a tight vice, and he spun his head around to see Quanxi holding him back. The two of them glared at one another, but he was quick to back off, and she threw his wrist to the side, leaving him to storm out of the room, a trail of smoke following behind him.
She was pretty certain he muttered a slur on his way out, but he wasn't worth the trouble.
Now alone, Quanxi took a deep breath and looked at the person lying in the bed before him.
Both arms handcuffed to the railing, his whole body strapped down, and put into a medically induced coma had done a deal to make Kishibe seem less dangerous than he already was, but no one was taking any risks. Outside this room there were a dozen arms and contracted guards standing at the ready in case he woke up, a number that included her. She doubted he would cause any trouble like that, he had given himself up, she knew he wasn't one to hurt humans, but she had expected them to throw him into a cell instead of this. His gunshot injury was bad, but not so bad that he had to be drugged unconscious around the clock until they figured out what to do with him.
This wasn't the first time she had seen him injured, but to have him in this state, it made him seem much more old and vulnerable than she was used to. It was a pitiful state that the Mad Dog had been reduced to. She didn't like it one bit, it made her uncomfortable. Quanxi took sat down in the chair next to to the bed and took in the near-silence of the room, it only being broken up by the beeping heart monitor which told her that despite his condition he was okay, or at least not dead, but that didn't stop the air of dread in the room.
Quanxi reached into her pocket and pulled out a flask, the one she had taken out of his jacket after they had put him under and lightly shook it, the half-filled contents swishing inside.
“So they finally put the Mad Dog in the pound, huh?” she asked somberly, though she did not expect an answer. “I doubt they'll put you down, not yet at least, but they got you chained up with a muzzle on tight, so I doubt you'll be getting out.” She let out a sigh and leaned back, letting her head rest against the wall. “You got too dangerous, and here I am with a tight leash and collar.”
She let the near-silence sink in, letting her thoughts stew until she screwed open the flask and took a long swig.
She then began to choke once it was done burning her throat on the way down.
“What is this, paint thinner?” she managed to get out before she screwed the cap back on.
000
5:23 PM
Fumiko walked down the hallway, her footsteps echoing in the empty hall as her eyes glanced over the doors she had passed by, with other suited people going by her as they made their way to whatever destinations they had. The last day had been hectic, with the escapes and deaths of so many devils, as well as the loss of so many personnel, everyone was going double time to try and fill in the cracks of what happened, she herself didn't even make it to her own apartment last night, she had to crash in one of the bunks barracks for a brief few hours of sleep. Even after grabbing a quick shower, a new suit and a cup of lukewarm coffee she didn't feel much better, but was prepared to go on with the day of trying to do something about yesterday.
Sadly, her mind wasn't entirely focused on that task at hand as her thoughts were in other places.
The first was Yoshida, who had apparently sided with the Famine Devil, something that had taken her by surprise when she had learned about it. He always seemed so serious about his duty, almost to the point of not being fun, but maybe this should have been expected because his reports were the ones that had told them that Fami was not a threat they should worry about at the moment. Still, she had rather liked Yoshida, so it was unfortunate that he would be treated like a terrorist if they came across him again.
And the second was...
Flashing her badge to the man at the front desk, Fumiko entered the record room and began to look through files that her current clearance level would allow her to access. She recently got a promotion due to what happened at Denji's apartment, despite him turning into Chainsaw Man she went above and beyond her expected duty and was rewarded fairly for her actions, which she thought was fair. She's not going to get herself killed, and Denji did break the agreement, so what else could she have done? Her new promotion allowed her to see uncensored personnel files that she had been denied access to before, though when she had asked about it she was disappointed to find that the version of Denji's file were still mostly walls of blacked out text.
But she wasn't looking for Denji's file at the moment, and as she looked she found her mind wandering.
Gunfire and explosions. Destroyed homes and streets. People blasted into nothing like they were made of nothing. She was hurt and afraid, hiding behind a car when she caught sight of them across the street.
Her parents were standing there, frozen stiff as the monster stood there, a wide smile under the pistol sticking out of its head. Chainsaw Man was there too, and she found herself hoping. She heard about him on TV, the devil that fought other devils, if he was there, then her parents would be alright. The Gun Devil wasn't doing anything, this should be easy.
But... he wasn't doing anything. He just stood there, he was yelling at the Gun Devil, but that was it. She wanted to scream at him for him to jump at it and kill it, to beg and plead to save them, but...
Chainsaw Man did nothing as the Gun Devil raised its rifle-arm and...
Fumiko found the file she was looking forward to and skimmed it over, looking for the relevant information she wanted.
According to his file, Hayawaka Aki was killed by the Gun Devil after the initial assault on it led by the deceased Fourth Division leader Makima failed, though it was heavily injured and retreated into an unknown body. She read the file again, making certain she was reading it correctly, and thought about what Denji had told her earlier.
“Ah...” she said after a time, finger lightly tapping on the back of the folder. “So that is how it was.”
There would be much to think about.
000
10:02 PM
Yoshida sat at the table, chin resting on his folded hands, and he felt tied. The last couple of days finally feeling as though they were taking their hold on him, and he wanted to go into the other room and sleep it off, but he knew his thoughts would keep him awake no matter what he did, so he merely sat at this table with the cup of coffee sitting in front of him, a drink that had long since grown cold. It was late according to the clock on the wall, so Yoshida pushed himself out of his seat and went to the room that was not the guest room that had been used by Asa for the last week, and now him for the foreseeable future, and opened the door.
The room was a mess, covered in plastic and paper wrappings, empty boxes and empty soda cups were thrown haphazardly around, stains were everywhere, from sauces and grease, to frosting and spilled drinks and so much more. The room was a garbage dump and it had only gotten worse since they had come here yesterday after Fami's mission at the Devil Containment Facility had failed. She had him go out and buy as much food as he could, which was doing a number on his bank account which he had been forward thinking enough to fully withdraw from the bank because he had no doubt his assets would have been frozen by now if he wasn't already presumed dead.
Fami lay on the bed facedown.
Trash pushed against trash as he pushed the door open. “Are you going to do nothing but lay in bed all the time now?” he asked, his arms folded over his chest. “I know you're a glutton, but the way you were going through food all day seemed different than any other time.” He couldn't help but smirk. “Are you perhaps stress eating?”
Fami muttered something into her pillow.
Yoshida raised a hand to his ear. “I'm sorry, I couldn't understand that, would you mind speaking more clearly?”
With a great deal of reluctance on her part, Fami turned her head over to face him, and the state of the room was matched by the smeared stains around her mouth, and the bits of food sticking to her face. Early on he had gotten her a cherry pie and she had torn into it with her bare hands, and after that he had no desire to see her eat anything else, only coming in here long enough to give her the food she demanded. When Denji ate that cake with his bare hands he was put off by it, but here it was just unsettling.
“Why are humans so difficult?” she asked, not bothering to lift her head up from her pillow. “Why is it that whenever you try and figure them out something goes wrong?”
“I've been trying to figure that out for years.” He's not being dishonest with that.
“This was the third plan I had involving Asa, but for some reason she never does what she needs to do,” Fami admitted. “Can't she see things would be easier if she does what I need her to do?”
Yoshida said nothing, letting the devil continue.
“If she turned Denji into a weapon at the aquarium, or let the Falling Devil take her, or pressed on and turned him into a weapon at the containment facility, it would all be so much easier. It's all for the good of the world, and she'll get to live a happy life like she wants to.” She paused and buried her head back into her pillow. “Why is she being so ungrateful?”
He tapped a finger against his arm. “Maybe she doesn't like being forced into things she didn't ask for?”
Fami turned her head, just enough so that a single, ringed eye was looking at him from above the pillow. “Why should that matter? Why would she complain about a little suffering now when the rewards will be worth it?”
Yoshida didn't know what to say. He knew that for whatever reason that Fami had become... attached to Asa, but he had trouble figuring out why exactly. To a degree, it reminded him about his relationship, or lack therefor, with Denji.
But look at how that turned out.
He decided to change the subject. There was no point in trying to understand these kinds of things when he was no closer than when he started.
“Are you going to start searching for them then?” he said. “They're still important for stopping the Death Devil, right?”
Fami let out a long, dragged out groan as she pushed herself up so that she was sitting on the edge of her bed. “Yes, I suppose that is something we'll have to do,” she said, her head bowed down low. “We have no idea where they are, and we can't afford to waste time. Yoru has to wield a weapon made from Chainsaw Man, and the sooner we can make that happen, the better.”
“If you don't mind me asking, but why?” Yoshida asked, pushing himself off the doorframe. “Why exactly are the War Devil and Chainsaw Man so important for this? What makes you think that those two will be able to stop the Death Devil?”
The Famine Devil looked up at him, her eyes looking as though they were glowing. “I thought you knew already, or at least would have figured it out by now.”
He had an idea where this was going, and it made him a little apprehensive.
Fami continued. “If Yoru is able to use Asa's guilt to forge a weapon out of Chainsaw Man, she can utilize his power to erase concepts from reality, then when she kills Death, she'll end death itself.”
000
6:12 AM
The door opened and the four of them crept out of the apartment, before they closed it, having no plan to return to this apartment again. Everyone but Nayuta was holding a duffel bag.
“So, you think we'll be able to get away?” Reze asked as they made their way to the stairs. Her duffel bag held Nayuta's clothes. “By now I imagine that everyone is looking for us, so I imagine it'll be only a matter of time before we run into trouble.”
“If we get lucky,” Asa said. “There's a lot going against us, but if we keep our heads down then we should be able to last a while before anyone finds us.” Her duffel bag had originally belonged to Kishibe, but seeing as how he wasn't coming back for it they had emptied it out and used it to carry any supplies like food and towels. They more or less took everything that they could fit in it. As they made it to the next floor Asa readjusted her sweatpants. “I think the first thing we should do is get clothes for Reze and I, the three of us can't share the same clothes forever.”
“I think we should leave the city first, Denji said. “Get as far as we can before we make any stops.” The duffel bag he had was his clothes. “Though we're gonna have to be frugal about what we spent. We only got so much money.”
“We broke into three ATMs last night!” Nayuta interjected, and she recalled how fun it was last night when they all sneaked out to steal money from the ATMs Reze had spotted on the way to the apartment. Asa had no concept of money, so it was easy to convince herself to forge weapons that dispersed money out of them, claiming that she was owed by the state, with a good deal of interest added on. She felt bad about destroying the machines, so the weapons were stored in the duffel bag Denji had, along with the money. “We can just break into more!”
“It would be best to try and not pull too much attention to us,” Reze said. “So I think stealing money should only be a last resort.”
“I think we'll be fine,” Denji said. “I lived for years on not even the bare minimum, so I think I can teach you guys a thing or two about this kind of thing.”
In only a short few weeks, Asa had gone from a nobody that could have died and no one would have even noticed to a wanted terrorist caught in the middle of a battle for the very fate of the world. It was odd to think just where her life had gone, the choices she had made to get here, and what things she might have made if she had known what was down this path. She didn't know where she would end up, and she couldn't deny the fear and apprehension that even now was building inside her, but what else could she do? All she could do was just... go for it and hope that she didn't ruin things for everyone else like she had already done.
“Well, here we go onto our new lives,” she muttered to herself.
Despite the apprehension, the fear, the doubt and all the awful things bubbling inside her chest, Asa couldn't help but have a small smile on her face.
THE END
