Chapter Text
The girl was unraveling. Her fingers splayed and split and stretched in every direction like ribbons. Her head spasmed and cracked as black liquid spilled from her eyes and ears. Her legs stretched, skin tearing as was pulled past its limits. Her shoulders cracked and broke and fixed themselves back into place. Her hair grew long, follicles splitting apart, a hazy curtain of black-turned-grey. Her elbows dislocated. Her arms dangled freely. The room was filled with screams and pushing and attempts to free themselves from this absurd stalemate: a girl with a bloodied knife and a monster pulled from the corpse of the girl they knew as their Class President.
Yuko giggled to herself. This was what she thought might happen. The Justice Devil, if he whispered to her, he must’ve been talking to everyone. She wondered how many had already taken his deal. Not her, though. She wouldn’t sell her soul like that, even if some devils were okay. Looking at the thing in front of her, she was happy to say she was right. Her heart was in the right place, and her actions were just. There wasn’t a world where the thing in front of her should live. She raised her knife and lunged forward.
A hand caught her shoulder. She nearly fell to the floor. Asa was standing there, a look in her eyes that looked more…was that Power? Yuko smiled. “I don’t think the body thing is gonna work out.” She apologized. “But we have a devil to hunt!”
Power’s forehead met her face. Yuko staggered back. She touched her nose. Blood. She frowned. “Power?”
“This isn’t right,” The other girl muttered. “It’s not right, it’s not right, it’s not!”
“I…she’s a monster, Power.” Yuko swallowed. “She’s going to kill people. We can’t let that happen!” She raised her knife. Blood dripped down the blade to her fingers. “Come on, one last hunt before they haul me off!”
“I’m a monster! A devil!” Power’s hands wrapped around Yuko’s collar and she pulled her in. She was angry. Yuko didn’t understand why. “I like killing people and killing things! I drink their blood! I break things cuz it's funny! But this isn’t funny, it’s not! You’re not laughing!”
“Well, it isn’t funny.” Yuko smiled nervously. “It’s justice. You’re not supposed to laugh when you’re doing justice.”
“It isn’t justice! You just wanna hurt things!” Power’s hands tightened around her collar, and suddenly Yuko couldn’t breathe. “You do it cuz you want to! And I try to be better all the time, so I’m not ruining Asa’s and Denji’s lives, and you’re doing it cuz you want to!”
“I…do…it…for you.” Power’s eyes widened. She dropped Yuko, and the girl collapsed to the floor to catch her breath. She could hear desks breaking across the room, a raised voice asking for calm. She ignored it. Power was looking down at her with pain in her eyes, and more. Yuko couldn’t tell what more was, though. She never could. “I…your body…I…”
Power bit her lower lip. Blood trickled down the side of her mouth. “It’s not my fault,” she whispered, then repeated it louder. “It’s not my fault! You did this!”
“I did.” Yuko smiled. “For you.” And Power looked down at her in fear and with anger and Yuko wondered whether a devil could really understand a human’s justice. She looked over at the dead Tanaka in the corner. He had it coming. She didn’t understand why anyone could be mad about that. She stood up and forced her little smile on her face. “Please let me finish.”
Power’s face twisted into a scowl. Then something else flickered on it, and she lunged, reach out towards her. Yuko felt a surge of pain down her left side. She looked down and saw a half dozen tendrils poking out of her ribs. The warmth left the room. Her knees gave out. She swayed sideways and her head cracked against a desk on the way down. She saw Power’s eyes widen and glisten.
Then she was gone.
Denji remembered the day Pochita saved him. He remembered the kiss of a thousand knives on every part of him. He remembered blades in his back and slicing through the back of his legs. Then he remembered the hacking at fingers and joints. He blacked out before they got to the torso. It was probably for the better.
Then Pochita was with him in the trash can. The poor guy thanked him. Then he gave him his heart and demanded to see his dreams. That was their contract. Denji was to live as long as he followed his dreams. Denji saw what devil contracts looked for everyone else. Chunks of skin for Aki’s Fox, an eye for Himeno’s ghost. Higashiyama told him once her contract left her on the brink of starvation when she used it. He knew that his was the exception.
So seeing what a devil did to the Class Prez twisted him up inside. She wasn’t recognizable. Long hair shrouded her face. Her arms hung low to the floor, and she was panting, despairing. Her tormentor was dead, and Yuko had done it, and she'd never even seen it as torment, and she was spiraling. “Hey, Prez, come on, we gotta go-”
She shrieked. Glass shattered along the windows. She whipped her arm forward, and the tendrils stuck into Yuko’s side and tore. The girl collapsed, her head slamming against a desk on the way down. Her neck twisted weird. The blood was pooling at her side too fast. She was gone. Power fell to a knee next to her, a look of shock on her face. She tried to siphon the blood back into her. It drained back out. The girl didn’t stir.
Shit.
Shit, shit, shit.
“Prez, please, we gotta-” A swipe of the tendrils caught Denji in the chest and he flew back. He hit the front of the room and slid down the wall, dazed. No cuts. On purpose? He forced himself back to his feet. Class Prez was storming out of the room and sliding into the hallway. Shit. “Wait, dammit!” He chased after her.
They messed up. They were there, they were right there and they messed up. They let Yuko slip past them and now everything was going to shit. He reached for his ripcord. He hesitated. If he went full Chainsaw, she wouldn’t recognize him. She wouldn’t know he was trying to help, or trying to get her out of there. And what would it let him do? Kill her better? Wrap her up in chains and disappear?
There had to be a way out.
She was in the hallway, tendrils whipping in all directions. Students screamed, braced themselves against the walls. The tendrils missed some, cutting through drywall and glass. Others were diced like morning vegetables, their bits flung across the way. Prez’s eyes remained downcast, though. She didn’t seem to see a thing.
Denji ran after her, ducking past the tendrils as they cut at his eyes and face. “Prez!” He shouted, reaching out. Another dull blow caught him in the gut, folded him over. A tendril smacked the side of his head and sent him to the ground.
She stopped. Turned back towards him. There were no eyes in her new face. No nose or ears. Just a mouth with chapped, bloody lips. “Don’t touch me,” she whispered, her voice gentle and smooth. “Just let me go.” She disappeared around the hall.
Denji forced himself back to his feet, dragged himself towards the corner. He heard the sound of steel on flesh. A soft gurgle. The scrape of fingertips on cinderblock. He stumbled into the hall and saw two students from the Devil Hunter’s Club standing over the body of a devil. Its head lolled to the side, no expression on its smooth face, no words from its chapped lips. A sword was plunged deep into her chest. The larger of the two stepped forward, grabbed the devil’s hair, and sawed through its neck with his sword.
“A survivor,” the other boy said. He wore a red headband. “Are you okay? You’re bleeding.”
Denji stared down at the body. Felt the blood trickle down his cheek, down his hands. A little quicker, maybe, would’ve stopped this. A little smarter. He swallowed. “I’m alive,” he muttered. The larger boy’s knife cut free, and the devil’s head rolled a few inches from its neck.
“Akoku-san, get him back to his classroom.” The boy with the headband said. “And find Mitaka-san, make sure she’s ok.”
The boy nodded. He put a hand on Denji’s shoulder. “Let’s go.” And he walked him back to the empty classroom, sat him down in one of the desks across from Tanaka. He looked down at the girl he probably thought was Mitaka Asa, cradling the body of who he probably thought was a victim, and took his hat off, and bowed his head, and left them to the dead.
It was a modern cathedral. A skyscraper with a flat wedge cap, and a massive statue of Chainsaw Man’s head jutting out of its apex, embedded in the side, the blade of his helmet jutting higher than the building itself. Teenagers loitered near the entrance, talking with wide smiles. One girl stood in the doorway, a strange set of earrings dangling by her shoulders. She stared at the Higashiyamas as they approached, her spiral eyes boring into her like pins holding a bug specimen to a corkboard.
“Higashiyama-san,” the girl said, her voice quiet and lazy. “Is this your sister?”
“Y-yes,” Nobana said. He swallowed. “S-Shio-chan, this is-”
“Call me Fami.” The girl said. “It’s a pleasure, Higashiyama-chan. Nobana-kun told me about you.”
A spike of panic. Stay away from her!
Shio smiled. The panic wasn’t hers, after all. “I didn’t realize his word carried weight.”
“Nobana-kun was one of our first believers.” Fami smiled, thin, stretched across her teeth. “Forgive the discourtesy.”
“O-of course, Fami-san.”
“His sister will always be welcome.” She cocked her head to the side, and the scales tipped away from Shio. “He told me of your weapons, Shio. I think they will do us some great good.”
She knows, she knows, she-
“It’s a contract.” Shio said. “I have to fulfill it someday, but…it has its benefits.”
“And we hope to benefit from them.” Fami turned away. “Come in. We have much to discuss, sister.”
“Sister?”
“We are all brothers and sisters, are we not?” She said, a note of amusement in her voice. “Does Chainsaw not show? Even among devils and humans, there may be kinship…if we are strong enough to allow it.” She disappeared into the mouth of the leviathan.
“Ready?” Nobana asked.
She knows about us, she knows what we want, she knows what we need, she’ll try to stop us, she’ll try to kill us, she’s crazy! Yoru’s panicked thoughts tore through Shio’s mind. If she finds out we’re killing Chainsaw, we won’t have anywhere to go, we-
Are going to use this woman and throw her aside, Shio thought to herself. And then she was going to be free.
“I’m ready.”
He smiled. Took her hand. They stepped into the Cathedral of Chainsaw.
Higashiyama Kobeni [Asset 3452-5, Designation VIOLENCE] arrived at Public Safety Headquarters at 9:27 in the morning with proof of the death of the Pest Devil and a single survivor of its massacre. At 9:28, she departed, leaving the Nail Fiend and the survivor in the hands of the Katana Hybrid [Asset 3452-7] to debrief an incident at a high school near the Gun Devil Survivors’ Housing Project.
Nobana wasn’t with the Devil Hunters. The boy in charge, Iseumi Haruka, claimed that the hunt was simple, but he had not seen Nobana that day, and did not know if he had tried engaging it alone or not. Nobana was not with his classroom, either, huddled together in the back of the room and then asked to stay put so that guardians could find them easily. Nobana was not in the bathrooms, the sports rooms, the cafeteria, or the locker rooms.
As of 9:58 in the morning, he was not in the pile of cadavers, neither.
Yumi had not seen him since breakfast.
Kobeni’s heart pounded in her chest. She stood in the middle of a crowd of lost and confused parents, her mother’s hand crushing hers as the older woman panicked even worse than she did. Yumi stared at the floor, eyes dull, trying to escape far, far away from Tokyo and her school and the massacre before it.
It wasn’t until 10:15 that the teacher was in a state to say that Higashiyama Nobana had never made it to school that day, and panic began to twist into something worse.
She’s gone.
Power’s only thought before she closed herself off. Asa was used to being the one who spread the numbness to her headmate. Now, she could understand Power’s anger and frustration at it. It chipped away at her own walls, her own attempts to try to hold herself together. It undercut her strength. She couldn’t be angry, though. Not with Power. Only scared.
The door to the classroom opened wide. Denji looked up. Higashiyama and her mom and her sister stood in the doorway, eyes filled with tears. He looked at Higashiyama for a moment. He looked down. “I…we messed up.” He whispered.
She swallowed. Kneeled next to him and Asa, put a hand on their shoulders. “W-w-what happened?”
He told her everything. He watched her face grow pale as he spoke, and saw the fear and horror in her eyes. The disgust in the glance she threw towards the body of his homeroom teacher’s broken body. The glance back into the hallway, the Prez’s body was being taken apart to be moved. Yuko. Asa drew her knees closer to her face and closed her eyes. Denji stared at the floor. Tanaka bled a few feet over. No one spoke.
Higashiyama rose to her feet. She reached down and helped the two up. “Come on,” she said quietly. They walked past the devil hunters, who looked at Asa with a mix of concern and pity, and down the stairs. They, unlike many, went home.
At 11:39, Higashiyama Kobeni returned to Public Safety Headquarters to discuss the eradication of the Pest Devil, as well as the devil attack at the high school. Director Abe and Advisor Ieyama were absent, out for lunch. They arrived at 12:17 p.m. to find Higashiyama and Advisor Hideyoshi in an aggressive stalemate. Advisor Ieyama had no notes on what had transpired while he was out, but he understood the intensity of the situation, because Higashiyama wore her crown of hands.
“I believe some temperance is in order,” Director Abe said, holding his constitution together. “Advisor Hideyoshi, is there a reason I was not alerted to this emergency conference?”
“You had your l-”
“With all due respect, my lunch is meaningless compared to the work we do.” The Director sat down in his seat, coffee cup empty. “Higashiyama, I see that my colleague has…trangressed our agreement.”
“He placed the blame of the devil attack on me.” She said, the words ground out from her throat. “The attack on my brother and my sister’s school, on the school of my ward.”
“Ah.” The Director swallowed. “I apologize, but as indiscrete as Advisor Hideyoshi is, his assessment aligns with the Division.”
Higashiyama’s jaw tightened. A tooth cracked. Advisor Hideyoshi flinched at the sound, hand hovering near the emergency button. “Explain.”
“Your wards, rather than reporting via any more appropriate avenues, sought to fix this problem on their own accord.” The Director said, tone even. “Your absence lead to their irresponsible vigilantism and gave the devil an opportunity to attack.”
“I was on a job for you.”
“We understand.” Advisor Ieyama cut in. “We understand that at the moment, you are under a great amount of pressure. Between your studies, your social responsibilities, and your leadership position, there is much room for you to make a mistake. So…we wish to help.”
“I will not compromise my responsibilities for your comfort.”
“No?” Director Abe asked. “Higashiyama, let us make this clear. You are a powerful force. A violent brute and a skilled bureaucrat both. But you could hardly act as both effectively, and your body is far more potent than your mind.”
“I would disagree.”
“Your disapproval is noted.” The Director said. “Higashiyama, your total command of the Special Division is hereby revoked. You will maintain duties in investigating the Chainsaw Man Church and managing your division. However, all further responsibilities will be taken over by a veteran from Internal Affairs. Perhaps this will give you the…flexibility to continue to thrive.”
“You’re pushing me out.”
“You are lucky we aren’t being forced to put you down.” The Director said. “The failure of your pupils cost seventeen children and three teachers their lives. Perhaps this will give you the time to better inform them of their responsibilities.”
Higashiyama stared between the three men. Hideyoshi, the brute. Ieyama, the politician. Abe, the bureaucrat. Ieyama was sure she saw the same man in all three of them, the same specter of the organization. He had no sympathy. She’d chosen this path. Perhaps she had taken Makima’s place. Did she truly expect to be so irreplaceable?
The wreath of hands melted from her face. She looked up at the men. Then she turned and walked out of the room. She’d be back, the next day, to discuss proper protocols for schools going forward, and the implications of a devil born from a girl. On their terms, now. Not on hers.
Perhaps Ieyama owed the devil girl a thank you.
The Bloody Women weren’t the same today. Asa was quiet, and Power was quieter. Higashiyama looked like she’d seen a ghost. Even Denji wasn’t himself, a far away look on his face and pain in his eyes. The murder probably had something to do with it. Nayuta didn’t want to understand, though. She just wanted it to be over.
Their dinner, shared with the Higashiyama family, was light. The two middle children were missing. Staying with a friend, a phone call said. No one was in the mood to fight. They ate thin soup and weak chicken and rice, and then they shuffled off to bed. It was just Nayuta at her chair. Just her.
The door opened. The two middle children came in, Nobana and Shio. Nobana’s face was peaceful. Shio’s was nervous, eyes flickering around the room. They came to rest on her, noted her eyes, the tiredness. Nayuta sniffed. She smelled blood on her.
Something changed in Shio’s face. Spiral eyes like drills and a terrible scar across her cheeks. “Sister,” she said in a voice that didn’t quite sound like Shio.
“War.” Nayuta said, picking at a string of chicken caught between her molars.
“Stay out of my way.”
“Don’t touch my things.” Nayuta blinked slowly. “That means my people, too.”
“This one would be dead without me.”
“So she’s fine.” She shrugged. “Don’t. Touch my things.”
“Hm.” The scar faded, the eyes flattened. Higashiyama Shio stared at her with new eyes. “...you too?”
“Meh.” Nayuta shrugged. “I dunno. Don’t really care, either. I’m tired.”
“...me too.” She looked down. “Were they worried?”
“I don’t know.” Nayuta shrugged. “Don’t care, either.”
“Oh.”
“Did you get what you wanted, at least?”
Shio hesitated. “Yeah.” She nodded. “I think I did.” She turned away, served herself a thin soup. Nayuta turned her attention away, too. She wouldn’t claim that one. She knew what she wanted. School, good food, good people. She shouldn’t concern herself with her sister’s puppet.
No good came from a corpse.
End of Part 4