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Despite what most people might think, there isn’t actually much of a difference between an angel and a demon. The two of them are, at their core, of the same breed—it’s human beings who have projected their various fears and desires onto these creatures. Humanity wants to believe in absolute good and absolute evil to give itself easy justifications for the things it does, a goal to strive towards and a scapegoat for every misfortune. It’s much easier than having to weigh every action for its moral value, or to consider that morality should exist without promised rewards or threatened punishments; the idea that people should be good just because it’s the right thing to do seems to escape the grasp of some. But the reality is that demons are not all evil, and angels aren’t all good. Nothing exists in perfect opposition to anything else, and the fight between the forces of heaven and hell is more a case of a disagreement on the rules of a game that spans the entirety of the universe.
This story really began a long, long time ago in a beautiful garden with a tree that bore delicious and forbidden fruit, but everyone knows that part already.
Yamada Hizashi has been a demon for six thousand years, give or take a couple centuries that he’s lost track of. Six thousand years since he was cast down from the clouds for daring to question The Rules, and wanting to choose his own fate. It all sounds very dramatic, and at the time it certainly felt that way; the world was young and so was he, and everything was happening for the first time. When they clipped off his wings, it was the first pain he ever knew, and the shock of it produced a scream loud enough to rival the calling of Gabriel’s golden trumpet.
Now, though, age seems to have brought with it a certain sense of perspective. Heaven might be paradise, but you can’t make pearls without a little grit. The human world...well, in short terms, it was just a lot of fun. Humans had come up with everything from chocolate puddings to carbon dating, sushi, kayaking, and Hizashi’s personal favorite, karaoke. Leave it to humans to not only come up with singing, but with a group activity that consisted of consuming ridiculous amounts of alcohol and fried foods, then embarrassing yourself by demonstrating just how poorly you could sing along to pre-recorded music. In front of all your friends. And they considered this to be fun. The thought of it alone brought a certain gleeful giggle to the demon’s lips, and he pushed the pedal of his 2006 Honda Civic closer to the well-worn carpet pad. The car strained, but at this point it existed in a constant state of straining under the weight of attempting to contain the energy of one of the high ranking officials of Hell inside a moderately-priced family sedan.
Hizashi reached over to the radio and turned it on, spinning the dial until Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars came blasting out at top volume, which was the only volume it played anything at, loud enough to shake the poor car as it limped down the road. David Bowie—now there was another fascinating human being. Hizashi had been to every single live performance he’d ever given, even the ones he had to astrally project himself into. Well worth it. The bass pounded as the Man from Mars crooned about things strange and wondrous, and Hizashi smiled to himself. Believe it or not, smiling was something demons invented, roughly around the time humans discovered fire, and consequently, that their animal-hide clothing was flammable. Demons were also the first beings in Creation to come up with the concept of humor, though angels had contributed knock-knock jokes. Leaning back against the no-longer plush seats of his beleaguered vehicle, Hizashi lit up a cigarette with the flame that lived at the end of his fingertip, and pondered his current predicament.
After the twelfth century, he’d started referring to every situation he was in as a ‘predicament’, regardless of the circumstances. It saved time.
All around the world, angels and demons alike were being ordered to gather up the (Un)Holy relics of Heaven and Hell, which had turned into something of an Amazing Race as they scampered up unscalable mountains and battled the leviathans of the ocean’s depths—yes, the ones humans thought had died out with the dinosaurs—to reclaim them. There was an awful lot of righteous anger and swinging of oversized, flaming swords as the two Factions duked it out over who could lay their hands on the most shiny trinkets. Of course, they had to be quiet about it; using their full power on Earth was not only strictly forbidden, but actually regulated by a complicated series of literally binding contracts and reinforced sigils. Even with all that in place, horns were being cracked, feathers were being pulled, multiple bands of eyes were being scratched at—it was not a pretty sight. Certainly not the sort of thing Hizashi wanted to get himself involved with these days.
It wasn’t that millennia on Earth, living amongst the humans up close, had softened him out. As a demon, he was incapable of softening on an internal level. But he had grown comfortable, and comfort is a powerful force to reckon with. Try getting out of a really soft chair with good lumbar support, and you’ll understand what that means. Especially if there’s a nice, crackling fire nearby, and a cup of your favorite beverage close at hand, and the characters in your novel are just about to uncover that next major plot point. Comfort like that could restrain a titan. Hizashi liked his life on Earth; he liked his cigarettes, and his fine selections of cheeses, and his canned energy drinks. He loved his music, to the point that he actually had a box at home for all his spare music-storage devices. There were at least six iPod Nanos in there alone. Most of all, he loved his radio show, his loyal listeners, and he even loved the antique microphone he broadcast on, hooked to nothing and requiring no energy of the Earthly realm. At this point, Hizashi just didn’t want to leave behind on-demand streaming and delivery pizza for years scrounging around the farthest-flung corners of the Earth for this or that Magical MacGuffin, and he especially didn’t want to come up against troupes of angels or greedy demons who would be just as willing to knife him in the back as to say hello.
He needed help. Big help. Big, scary, winged, glaring help.
He needed The Enemy.
He needed his angel.
The being in question would probably have rolled all six hundred and fifty three pairs of his eyes if he’d heard Hizashi referring to him as ‘his angel’, but really. You spend a couple thousand years with someone, and you tend to start thinking of them in a proprietary way. It’s just how these things happen. In a way, they were sort of like friends, or maybe even partners. In another, they were something far beyond what any definition of ‘friendship’ could possibly hope to encompass.
Rolling down the window, he flicked the butt of his finished cigarette out (demons also invented littering) and pulled into the parking garage at top speed. With a wave of his hand he raised the boom barrier and didn’t even bother to slow as he headed for one of the emptier upper floors. Demons did not pay to have their parking validated. When he found a decent spot near the elevators, he hopped out of the car and left a blank scrap of paper on the dashboard, which would appear to all mortal eyes as a garage ticket. Then he sauntered for the lift, long legs carrying him with easy grace as he hummed Metallica under his breath. It was difficult to hum electric guitar solos, but he managed.
Then his phone rang.
The noise of a phone from Hell ringing is always the same. It doesn’t matter what you try to set your ringtone to; the higher-ups long ago decided that phone calls from below needed to be as menacing as possible and therefore the default sound of every call was that of an old-fashioned rotary phone with a brass ringer, and appropriately ominous pauses in between. Sighing, Hizashi took the cellphone out of the pocket of his trousers, and checked the number. Area code 666, but the rest of the number was unique, and he recognized it as belonging to a younger demon he fondly thought of as a protege. Pressing the ‘accept call’ button, he held the phone up to his ear and let loose.
“Hey, kiddo! Long time, no torment. How ya doin’ today? I bet it’s special, if you’re giving little old me a call. Finally decided to do in your old man, huh?” He had a way of stretching out the syllables of half his words, making it nearly impossible to tell whether or not he was being sarcastic. Mostly, he was. The demon on the other end let out a long-suffering breath, and he could picture the two mismatched cat’s eyes squeezing shut in exasperation.
“No, Mr. Yamada. I’m not in a particularly patricidal mood today. No more than usual.” By contrast, the young demon had a smooth and even voice, the kind you would expect to talk you down as you were going under anaesthesia, albeit for a particularly risky experimental surgery that would end with you potentially coming out with more limbs than you started with. The kid had more daddy issues than Beelzebub had flies, and Hizashi always secretly hoped he’d be getting the call to come help disintegrate the body. It wasn’t uncommon for demons to kill each other; the higher-ups didn’t actively encourage it, but they certainly didn’t mete out hefty punishments, either. Plus, if anyone had it coming, it was the Wielder of Hellfire, Endeavor the Demon King. Maybe someday.
Hizashi allowed himself a slight smile as he pressed the button to call the elevator, which immediately rose to do his bidding. “So, to what do I owe the pleasure, li’l Todoroki?”
“You’ve been assigned a retrieval mission,” said the youngest Todoroki calmly. Retrieval mission, that was what they were calling it. Sounded mighty cushy, for all the risks involved. “You are to locate and commandeer for the High Armies of Hell…” there was rustling in the background, as Todoroki fought with the likely massive scroll hanging across his desk, “The Lathe of Heaven.”
Hizashi stepped onto the elevator, and pressed the button for the ground floor. Freeing itself from its brakes, the lift plummeted at breakneck speed downwards, and he frowned even though Todoroki couldn’t see it. “I...actually have no idea what that is. Care to endarken me?”
More shuffling, and a muffled grunt of frustration, then the elevator slammed to a halt at the ground floor and chimed their arrival. Any human would likely be sporting a couple strong bruises, whiplash, and a permanent terror of enclosed spaces, but Hizashi stepped out and loped for the exit without a backwards glance.
“It doesn’t say much,” Todoroki finally answered, having reached the descriptive portion of the scroll and translated it from the ancient web of maddeningly complicated script it was written in. “Woe be unto they who doubt the power of The Lathe of Heaven, for it was created by the hand of The Angry God himself, to raze the earth and reform it in His image. It called forth the Flood and shaped the foundations of the Earth, for it is a tool which triumphs above all other tools, a use beyond all other uses. It is many and it is one. They who would wield it must be warned, it harks only to those who are pure of mind, pure of heart, and pure of soul. Anything less shall...I’m fairly certain the best translation here would be ‘obliterate so totally as to never have existed.”
Hizashi let out a shaky breath. “Well, glad it’s something simple, then. I’ll just pop down to the shops and pick it up, shall I?”
“You’re getting British again,” Todoroki stated, and then he paused. “Mr. Yamada...I know this job comes from on high, and you likely want the renown of finding this object for yourself, but...if I could perhaps be of assistance…”
Hizashi couldn’t fault the kid for being eager to prove himself. His father was one of the Seven Kings of Hell, and trying to get out of that shadow was like an ant trying to cross an ocean. It could take lifetimes upon lifetimes, and any little advancement was desperately needed. And while most other demons would have scoffed at the idea of needing anyone’s help with anything, Hizashi considered himself a realist. Well, a sort-of realist. A generally sensible surrealist, if nothing else. Point was, he knew that this wasn’t going to be an easy task, and even if he managed to get the angel on his side, any other helping hands would be welcome. Especially from someone as impossibly strong as young Todoroki, whose command of elemental magic and pure demonic resilience made him a force to be reckoned with by all. The description of the Lathe of Heaven hadn’t bothered to mention what the blessed thing looked like, or where it might be besides Earth, and he had no idea who or what else might be after it. Demonic pride and all, Hizashi was just as willing to scratch Todoroki’s metaphorical back in return for a few passes of his own. “You know what, sure thing. And call up that friend of yours, the one with the glasses and the big legs. I have a feeling that if anyone can get a lead on this heavens-blessed thing, it’s him.”
Todoroki didn’t seem to take the spreading of work too personally, which either meant he wasn’t long for the demon world or that he realized just how monumental their task was shaping up to be. “Yes, sir,” was all he said into the phone, and then hung up with a click. Hizashi slid the phone back into the pocket of his slacks, then pulled the pair of headphones he always kept around his neck up and over his ears. They crackled to life, and The Clash started in with frenetic guitar right away. Looking to the left and right, Hizashi lit up another cigarette and allowed it to dangle loosely from his lips as he crossed the street, heading for the surefire place to find his angel at this time of day.
When you know someone for a few thousand years, you pick up on a couple of their habits. He had no doubt that Aizawa could find him just as easily if he needed anything, but being an angel, he rarely did. Sometimes Hizashi entertained himself by wondering what angels actually did all day, if not causing mischief or a hundred petty frustrations. That was the beauty of being a demon in the modern era. A couple centuries ago, you would have had to start an entire plague or whisper in the ear of a king to really get some trouble started, but nowadays, humans were halfway to trouble on their own. They didn’t need more than a teeny-tiny push in the wrong direction.
Take copyright laws, for example. They weren’t inherently evil in and of themselves, and in fact were actually designed with the purpose of protecting content creators and making sure they were appropriately compensated for their hard work and intellectual property. A noble goal, if ever there was one. But it had only taken a couple signed forms, and an idea or two sprouted in the right minds, and now copyrights could be purchased by third parties and used to suck the life out of a work of art, often tying the creator into producing more of that content whether or not they actually wanted to, racking up the price so the corporation profited while the creators barely scraped by, and anyone who had the gall to like a thing enough to produce a derivative work in celebration of the original could be sued to kingdom come. Pure evil, and he’d hardly had to lift a finger.
It wasn’t about the grand gestures anymore, not really. Plagues of boils and raiding barbarians were so medieval , and the new name of the game was subtlety above all else. It was a million tiny gestures that made the world worse one day at a time, though Hizashi was well aware that plenty of the angelic forces had taken up a similar mantra. They came up with concepts like third-party bug fixes, and donut sprinkles, and kitten blogs—all in the name of making humanity happier. It didn’t hurt that they had a couple oldie-but-goodies on their side too, like spectacular sunsets and returned crushes. And beer. Angels, in what even Hizashi had to admit was a stroke of pure genius, had helped humanity to invent beer back when they were still scratching their heads about how to build mud shacks, and it had been the start of something beautiful.
Demons, in retaliation, had invented hangovers.
Hizashi pushed open the door of the cat cafe with a single shove, the bell hung on top of it jingling wildly in protest at the rough treatment. A young woman with a bobbed haircut and a pair of glasses framed in thick black plastic looked up in shock from her post behind the counter, which was crowded with cat-themed trinkets. There were products for actual cats, including hand-stitched catnip mice and more grooming paraphernalia than any animal could ever need, and then there were cat figurines, cat stickers, coffee mugs with cats and paw prints on them, shirts with the cafe’s logo, and an entire spinning rack of postcards with high-quality images of the resident cats’ faces. This was one of those places that was too tacky even for Heaven, and yet too genuinely sweet to be from Hell; it was a human conception, through and through.
Hizashi didn’t bother taking off his headphones as he leaned one elbow on the counter, bringing him just under the woman’s gaze. He peered up over his lime green tinted shades, and offered her a voracious grin. “Heya, Miss. I’m looking for a friend of mine, about as tall as me, long black hair, always makes you feel better every time he’s around and you can’t put your finger on why, can definitely see into your soul, looks like he hasn’t slept in a couple decades? I need to talk to him, it’s urgent.”
The bewilderment on her face was classic, and highly amusing. He could actually see her assuming he was some sort of weirdo and contemplating asking him to leave lest she call the police, but then recognition lit behind otherwise dull eyes and he knew he’d hit his mark. No matter how hard an angel tried to hide themselves, there was always something about them that stuck out, and humans could sense it. Even with their immense self-absorption and ignorance of the world around them. “I—you have to pay for an hour if you want to go in. I can’t let anyone in unless they buy time, and we’ve only got one hour slot left before closing,” she hedged, clearly hoping that he’d be discouraged by a hurdle so small as human currency.
“It’s my lucky day,” Hizashi said with a grin as he flipped open the top-grain leather wallet he produced from the pocket of his slacks. He took out a black credit card from somewhere in the depths—this wasn’t an intervention of Hell, specifically, it was just any being who managed to stick around for more than a few centuries tended to accumulate a lot of cash. It was easy to game the system when you existed outside of it already. The woman’s eyes widened at the sight of it, but she professionally said nothing and ran the card for the price of an hour with the cats. The machine beeped its’ approval, and if you want to believe that it did so in a slightly snottier tone than usual, go right ahead.
Bolting upright, Hizashi took the card and placed it lovingly back in his wallet, then crammed that back into the pocket from whence it had come. The woman had edged towards a sort of uneasy acceptance of his presence, which was what a lot of humans tended to regard him with—either that, or unbridled enthusiasm. Mainly because he’d never bridled his own, and that sort of thing was as contagious as gonhorrea. She leaned back, rummaging behind the countertop for a minute, then produced a laminated menu with a fancy pink font at the top, and set it between them like a barrier. “You also get one free drink included with the price of your hour. What would you like?”
Hizashi didn’t even bother to glance at the menu. “One cinnamon latte, please. Sugar on the side,” and then he headed for the doors that separated the main entryway from the actual cafe, where all the cats were. She hurried around to let him in, wondering to herself what the awful rush was until she remembered who he was looking for. The tall man with the scarf didn’t seem like the sort of person who frequented cat cafes on first glance, but she’d been working there long enough to know that there wasn’t precisely a ‘type’. People liked the cats for different reasons, and there was no point in questioning it anymore. Scarf-man came three times a week at minimum, and every one of the cats had a bizarre and unconditional love for him, fighting to clamber onto his lap and circling around his legs the second he sat down. It made sense that a guy like that had a friend this weird, though the vibe she got from the two was as different as day and night.
Once the door was unlocked, Hizashi went through the entire routine of washing his hands and sliding on the provided house slippers before entering the cafe proper without complaint. Then he gave the cashier a last winning smile before slipping through the doors, and immediately scanning the tables for Aizawa. It was the late afternoon, and there were only a few guests in the middle of the week—a young person with a short mop of brown curls stroked a sleek tabby cat in their lap while thumbing through a copy of A Little Life , and two women in their forties chatted animatedly while they dangled a string toy in front of a ginger tomcat who batted at it lazily. Then, in the back, holding court with no less than four cats draped on or around him, was Aizawa himself.
The thing about angels is that, technically speaking, they can look however they’d like to look. You could have an angel as your waiter, or as your boss, or as your mailman, and you probably wouldn’t know about it. Your dog could be an angel, or the bush in front of a restaurant; effectively, angels can and often do take on the form of any living thing that suits them. Demons, on the other hand, have the choice between their true form, strange and terrifying as it may seem to human beings, or a human-like visage that they cram themselves into for business on Earth. They can, of course, possess humans who already exist, but this is troublesome and causes a great deal of headaches for everyone involved, so they don’t do it as often as you would think.
Hizashi liked his humanoid body; he enjoyed dressing it up and playing with the long blond hair that grew from the top of his head, he liked the brilliant green glimmer of his eyes that seemed to swirl if watched for too long, and he absolutely enjoyed modifying it with cosmetics and metals and inks. At the moment, he’d shaved the sides of his head up short and let the top flow in a long ponytail behind him, sweeping down over his shoulders, which nicely accented the earrings he’d added to each of his pointed ears. The latter were natural; it was hard to fit the entirety of a demon’s form into a human space, and more often than not, there was a certain degree of overflow. He often used an illusion to hide his horns from human eyes, but in the age of enthusiastic body-modders, he no longer bothered to do the same with his ears. On either side of his lower lip he’d gotten a matching pair of studs set in, and a matching ring graced one brow, gleaming with a dark dulled chrome.
He was dashingly handsome, if he did say so himself.
By comparison, Aizawa looked like a relatively normal human being. He kept his own long hair tied back, more to prevent it from falling in his eyes than for style, and the majority of his wardrobe was ironically shades of black and grey. It was a time-saver, he’d mentioned when Hizashi had once questioned him on it, because black was timeless and he’d grown tired of keeping up with human trends. Today he was actually wearing a suit, which was riding the delicate balance of looking rumpled and yet somehow miraculously put-together. It was the sort of casual debonair thing that supermodels had to spend hours being fussed over by packs of stylists and makeup artists to achieve, but of course, angels could just make it happen without thinking twice. Even when he seemed exhausted, there was still a beauty to him that turned every head subtly in his direction. To look at Aizawa, you’d think he’d grown tired of most things in this world; between the dark circles that had taken up semi-permanent residence under his eyes and the resigned expression etched onto his features. It was only the immense sense of calm one had in his presence, as though reassured by familiar arms that everything would be alright, and the vague fluttering motion that was always just over one of his broad shoulders that hinted at what Aizawa truly was.
He was still damned handsome too. Which Hizashi had said on multiple occasions, and which Shouta blew off every time. For centuries he’d assumed it was the angelic dedication to humility, but recently he’d caught on to the idea that Aizawa was simply shy, and embarrassed about being complimented.
“Hey angel,” he started off cheerfully, throwing himself down into the seat across from Shouta and earning himself a synchronized glare from the cats for his volume. “It feels like it’s been an eternity since we last had the chance to chat. Howyadoin’?”
Shouta raised an eyebrow in an eerie imitation of the cats, but the huff he let out was more fond than anything. Even if Hizashi was the only one who could tell. “It’s been six weeks. You’re incredibly needy, you know.”
Hizashi put a ringed hand on his chest, right over the place where his heart ought to be. It was actually located on the opposite side of his body, but the drama of the gesture was the important thing. “You wound me, truly. And after I came all this way just to see you.”
Shouta picked up his cup of tea and took a long sip, watching Hizashi’s theatrics over the rim with that implacable gaze of his. Then he took his time swallowing, setting the cup neatly back in the saucer, and leaning into the cushioned booth, fingers coming to scratch at the chin of the squash-faced Persian cat on his lap. “You need something. Something important. Even though we’re not supposed to be talking like this.”
They had a lot of things they weren’t supposed to be doing together, and had been for some time, but that was entirely beside the point. “I’ll put aside the insinuation that I can’t be here just to see you because I want to see you, ‘cause this time you’re right,” he confessed, and internally winced at the thought. Confessing to anything wasn’t exactly in his repertoire. “You know how everybody’s been making a big stir about gathering up relics and artifacts from Above and Below recently? Weeeeeeellll, I might’ve gotten assigned one today. A big one.”
Shouta continued stroking the cat, but there was a faint rustling noise from somewhere behind him that gave away his concern. “Mm,” was his only reply, as well as a tilt of his head in acknowledgement, a signal for Hizashi to continue.
“Right, so—have you ever heard of something called ‘the Lathe of Heaven’?” All at once, every cat in the room swiveled its head towards him, their slitted eyes unnaturally bright with knowledge. Well, that was uncanny. And he was a demon, so he knew a thing or two about getting the heebie-jeebies.
“You’re not serious,” Shouta said, his eyes as wide as any of the cats’.
Hizashi let himself smile, though this time it felt like more of a reassurance for his own sake than anyone else’s. “Serious like a heart attack, baby! Except I have no idea what it actually is, or looks like, or anything about it. And since you obviously do, I was thinking we could team up again for old time’s sake and find it!”
That exasperated look came over Shouta’s face again, but it was a testament to their bond that he didn’t simply vanish into thin air, propelling himself away on his wings. Angels had a tendency to do that, whenever they were frustrated or bored or...well, whenever . “First of all, there is no time for us. Old, new, or otherwise. We just are.”
See: demons, invented humor, angels, not so much.
“Secondly, I don’t know very much about the Lathe of Heaven either, and thirdly, what I do know about it, I definitely should not be telling you. It’s not logical for me to share that information, especially not with the Nemesis.” He primly picked up his cup of tea, which was still letting off steam, despite how long he’d been there. Hizashi rolled his eyes, and bounced up and down in frustration.
“Come on, Shouta. Angel-cakes. Hot wings,” he cut himself off when Shouta shot him a look that said it was getting him nowhere. “Look at it this way, okay? If Below is after this thing, that means Above is too. Whatever it is, whatever it does, it’s packing a serious enough punch for both parties to be interested, and you don’t have to be clairvoyant to get that this is all winding up for something big. Big-big. You know, ‘come and see’ big.”
Shouta was glaring at him now, but Hizashi was more than used to it, and closed his mouth as a waiter—good to see the cafe had more than one employee working at a time—came over and sat Hizashi’s latte down in front of him. He’d remember to tip the guy, probably. As soon as he picked up the cup, the beverage went stone cold, but he stirred in the sugar anyway and took a long sip.
“Get to the point,” Shouta muttered as soon as the human had left, and Hizashi licked the foam off his upper lip emphatically.
“Right, yeah. My point is that whatever’s coming down the pipeline is serious this time, and I don’t know about you, but I’m kinda done with serious. We’ve been doing this for a long, long, long time, and I’ve finally gotten to a point where I just don’t feel like it anymore. I happen to like where I am, thanks very much. And I know you do too, so don’t even bother trying to deny it.” He pointed an accusatory finger at the cats, who ignored him. “If this Lathe thing is the key to all of this going down, then why don’t we find it together, and put a stop to it before anyone else gets their hands on it? We can just...break it, or banish it, or something. That way, you get to keep doing what you’re doing, and I get to keep doing what I’m doing, and the world gets to keep on turning. Literally.”
Shouta was silent, but in a way that suggested he was mulling it over. There were varieties to his silence, different flavors that were subtle and near imperceptible, but key to understanding him. It never bothered Hizashi, though. As loud as he was, as much as he loved the constant noise of traffic and voices and pounding music, he’d always felt that Shouta’s quietness was a complementary factor in their relationship. He could chatter enough for both of them; whenever Shouta spoke, it had the weight of his immense contemplation behind it. Or not. Sometimes he said things that seemed completely inscrutable, even nonsensical, but that was because he looked at things from a different angle than most. He had his own takes, and most of his insights were razor-sharp.
“How are you going to explain working with me to your people?” Shouta finally asked, his long fingers sliding over the velvety fur of the cat in his lap, who stretched luxuriously into it.
Hizashi shrugged. “You’re an angel. I can always just spin it like you’re after the Lathe too, and getting in my way.”
“And when we find the Lathe...will you really be able to destroy it? Seal it away? It could mean losing the advantage for Below.” There it was. The biggest hole in his plan: that they both, ostensibly, were still loyal to their factions. Angels, because loyalty was ingrained in their nature, and demons, because allegiance to Hell was the same was allegiance to themselves, and they knew there was strength in numbers.
Sighing, Hizashi took another swig of his cold coffee, feeling a small and warm body brushing against one of his legs. Cats, for their part, had no loyalties whatsoever and thus did not concern themselves with such matters unless it meant moving off whatever they were sleeping on. “I’m worn out, ‘Zawa. Below’s old guard is getting...well, old. They’re stuck in their ways, and they want to keep enacting the same dramas they’ve been playing out since the Beginning. I don’t want this—“ and here he gestured to the entirety of the cafe, but what he really meant was everything in general, “—to come to an end just because they think it should. I wanna spin records on my late-night spot and introduce a new strain of the common cold and eat pizza until I explode, not go toe-to-toe with you and yours. I like myself all in one piece, so why put a stop to a good thing? Don’t you wanna stay here petting cats and teaching those human kids their ABC’s?”
“They’re high school students. They know the alphabet by now,” Shouta countered, but the slope of his shoulders said he’d been convinced already. Deep down, angels and demons were really just the same, after all. At this point, neither of them were interested in fighting anymore. The cat in his lap yawned, stretched out with flashing claws, and hopped down to head for the water bowl.
“So then, do you have a lead on the Lathe? Any clues as to how to find it?” Folding his hands on his now-empty lap, Shouta managed to look at once dignified and disheveled, like an exiled prince from some long lost empire. “We’re going to have to put our heads together for this one.”
Hizashi pushed his tongue up against the inside of his lower lip, toying with the inside of one of his piercings. “I’ve got someone working on it. Someone I trust.”
Shouta raised an eyebrow; and Hizashi broke down instantly. “The little Todoroki. The chimera. And Iida, the one with the big legs and the hooves.” Shouta gave him a wordless glare, one that would have made any lesser being squirm as they felt their soul scorching. Even without the hundreds of extra eyes, it was intense.
Then, all at once, he let up and flicked his gaze to the side, letting the immense pressure dissipate so quickly Hizashi wondered if he’d get the bends. “If you’re bringing in outside help on this, I am too.”
Hizashi’s shoulders stiffened, knowing what was coming next. “Not that angry kid.”
“Bakugou is one of my best fledglings, in spite of his temper. He’ll do what I tell him, and he likes Earth enough to agree with this. Even if he doesn’t agree with your involvement.” That was the understatement of the century, and Hizashi had lived through enough centuries to make the comparison. He’d only encountered Katsuki Bakugou a handful of times, and nearly every one of them ended with the young angel hurling himself full-force at Hizashi. He was an excellent counterexample for every human image of angels as sweet, passive, beatific beings of endless patience and forgiveness. Humans often forgot that angels had been created as weapons of vengeance, and ‘righteous anger’ was embedded in the fabric of their very beings.
But Shouta wasn’t going to be swayed easily, and Hizashi couldn’t begrudge him using his own contacts, especially when they were starting from next to nothing. A rumor, a bedtime story, a few lines in an apocryphal text. They did, in fact, need all the help they could get. “Ugh, fine, but you’d better keep him under control! If he tries deafening me again, I’m pulling out his primaries as punishment.” Not that he actually wanted to get that close to the explosive angel, but it was the principle of the thing. He respected the young angel’s power and his sheer courage to face off against a high-ranking demon, but it was also frankly annoying. Hopefully, age would mellow him out, though Hizashi wasn’t holding his breath.
“He’ll behave if you do.” A tall order for a demon, but Hizashi only grumbled and finished off the dregs of his coffee.
Another cat hopped onto Shouta’s lap, curling up contentedly as he stroked it without more than a downward glance. “I said it was fine,” Hizashi relented. “You’ve got yours and I’ve got mine. Now, do you have a damn clue as to where we’re supposed to be looking for this thing? The sources have been a little vague, to say the least.”
Shouta paused again, head cocked slightly to one side as he thought it over, an action Hizashi couldn’t help but find adorable. Maybe one day he’d convince Shouta to turn himself into a little black kitten, and finally take all the pictures he’d been dying to get for decades. “East Asia, I think. That’s the last mention I can recall of it, and even then, the source is rather flimsy. Still, if it’s all we have to go on…”
Hizashi sighed, drooping against the table. “That narrows it down to a dozen nations with billions of humans and countless hiding spots, no problem,” he muttered, and though he knew Shouta would never be as dramatic as he was—dramatic was his personal speciality—he could see the frustration in the tense set of the angel’s shoulders. He wasn’t particularly looking forward to this either. It was going to be a lot of work for both of them.
“Then the sooner we get started, the better,” Shouta stated, lifting the cat from his lap and setting it on the bench beside him, then reaching across the table to take Hizashi’s hand with his own.
The waiter, whose name is irrelevant to this story, was startled from his bored social-media scrolling by a commotion at one of the back tables. There was a loud but oddly muffled sound, like a large cloth being thrown to the floor, or perhaps the distant beating of wings, and one of the cats hissed and skittered past his legs. When he went to check, though, no one had seen anything beyond the cats all scattering. The table, which had previously housed one of the regulars and a strange blond friend of his, was now empty except for the two sets of cups and saucers, and some neatly arranged cash. No one had seen them leave. One of the cups had a massive crack running down the side, and when he went to pick it up, it crumbled into fragments of ceramic in his fingers.
At least they tipped nearly thirty percent.
——
Meanwhile, somewhere in Japan, a completely average university student was sitting down at his utterly ordinary desk to do some perfectly mundane schoolwork. He was a young man of no particular wealth or fame, who was not blessed with statuesque good looks or any more intelligence than that which he studied and worked hard to gain. Perhaps the only slightly remarkable things that anyone would ever notice about him were the fact that, in addition to being unruly and permanently tousled, his hair was a deep emerald color, and that he was possessed of a rare strength of heart that gave him the courage and kindness to do the right thing in any situation without regard for his own gains.
It could even be argued that his heart was ‘pure’, although that’s a rather vague definition to be throwing around.
He opened his laptop, and as he began reading through an assigned essay, he felt gooseflesh prickle along the back of his neck. Perhaps he’d left a window open. Then, not five minutes later, he sneezed. Once, twice, and a third time. Sighing, he got up and pulled a sweater out of his closet, dragging it over his head and praying that he wasn’t coming down with a cold.
Then a thought flitted across his mind, there and gone again in a second. Just one of the strange memories that pop up at odd times throughout the day. He recalled his mother, sitting at the kitchen table in his childhood home, telling him that sneezing at random was a sure sign that someone was talking about you behind your back. Though, if such a silly superstition was true, he had no idea who it could be.