Chapter Text
The whole building was shaking, a death rattle throughout its structure, windows quivering in their places and cracks forming on the walls outside. The school was empty, a cold Saturday morning making fog wind its way over the damp grass of the field. Dew slicked it over, barely interfering, and yet Kobeni slipped and fell flat on her face.
Power burst out laughing.
- - -
Only the day before had the sun been out, bright and warm, beating down until Kobeni had to take off her suit blazer and roll up her sleeves. The carcass of a devil lay rotting in front of her, its blood still on her knife and smeared over her cheek, and even with this kill under her belt Kobeni blanched and turned around, trying desperately not to throw up.
Her therapist had told her to take deep breaths and count, but by the time she reached five the smell of the garbage in the alleyway mixing with the corpse rot had her retching into the contents of a cut open garbage bag. God's small pity was in how she got no vomit on her suit.
Numbly she walked down the road, having received her pay that was now tucked neatly into her beat up wallet. She dodged the sun's rays by walking under store awnings, her starched collar wilting from her sweat. Her hands were clammy in her pockets and she was only thinking of the fastest way to get home when she saw it.
Beautiful, a slightly faded blue sign with cartoon images of ice cream cones surrounding it. The line was short, barely anything, the prices listed skirting the line of affordability. Kobeni's eyes welled up with grateful tears, and she crossed the street to stand in line, fumbling with her wallet to take the required bills out.
She paid for her cone with barely a stutter, a smile growing on her face at her apparent social prowess, and then looked at the display of flavors. The earth dropped out from under her feet, her stomach joining it to plummet into a deep dark well. There weren't even a lot, barely ten, and yet all sounded so appealing. Kobeni couldn't afford a double cone and she couldn't afford another ten seconds of standing there like a fool.
"Two strawberry!"
Someone jumped on Kobeni, almost knocking her over and sending her face slamming into the counter. Dirty hands with long fingers gripped onto Kobeni's shoulders, blonde hair curtaining over her vision. When she finally managed to see again, the worker was staring at her with an uncomfortable expression, a strawberry ice cream cone in each hand.
Too late for her to say anything, Kobeni let out a pathetic whimper and took out her wallet, taking out a few more bills and watched as her meager pay for the devil she killed earlier dwindled to an amount that was barely enough to buy a slice of bread. She turned to tell Power that she now owed her, but the fiend easily interrupted her.
"Tis an honor for you to pay for me," Power declared imperiously, not even saying thank you when she took her ice cream cone from the poor worker. Kobeni apologized profusely as she backed away, her own cone clutched securely in her hands.
Kobeni ended up following the blood fiend, just holding her ice cream until it started to melt onto her clasped hands, reminding her that she had forgotten to get napkins. By the time she had managed to get it under control, Power was noisily crunching on her cone, ice cream smeared on her face.
"You take too long," She complained, hands on her hips. Her horns glimmered red in the light, a strand of hair messily caught on it as she slumped down on a bench in the full sun. Nervously, Kobeni sat beside her, continuing to finish her own ice cream in the awkward silence.
She didn't understand why Power stayed with her, and she also didn't understand why she sat with her; in the searing sun that quickly melted her cone faster than she can handle. But Kobeni had to admit that it was excellent, strawberry bits mixed in as well, and Power glared at anybody who came near them to the point where they hurried away in the opposite direction.
"Thanks," Kobeni muttered when she was done, sticky hands hovering above her lap. She couldn't afford to get them dirty, since the laundromat she frequented only opened on weekdays.
Power stared at her, obviously confused on why she was thanking her, but then noticed the shine of sugar on Kobeni's knuckles and quickly grabbed at her hands to lap it up. Kobeni shrieked, high and piercing, all heads in the vicinity turning towards them to see Power sloppily, licking Kobeni's hands clean.
"There you go," Power said triumphantly, wiping her mouth clean with the back of her hand. Kobeni stared at her own pair nauseously, saliva smeared all over them. "We're even."
"For what?" Kobeni wanted to say, and somehow it managed to come out, albeit strangled.
The fiend frowned at her, head cocked to the side like a curious dog. "You bought me ice cream. I cleaned your hands. Tis a fair trade."
"No it isn't," Kobeni felt the tell tale sting in her eyes, and she hoped to god she wasn't crying over this.
"Tis." Power said stubbornly, which didn't make any sense at all. Then the fiend did a full one-eighty, a grin with shark-like teeth on full display as she lunged forward to press her hands down on Kobeni's shoulders, one leg on the bench seat, leaving her staring down at poor Kobeni. "Then you'll help me with something! Then we'll be even!"
"That-" Made no sense at all, and Kobeni stared at the sloppy knot of Power's tie as she tried to think of a good way to explain transactions to a fiend whose over-confidence rendered her incapable of listening to any other argument.
"I'll give you the pay for it," Power waved a hand flippantly, sitting back down on the bench in a way that made it creak in a worrying way. "Money is of no consequence. Aki pays for things."
Oh. That changed things. Kobeni could feel her wallet digging into her, its lightness accusatory. "Okay," She said, quieter, calmer. She did what her therapist told her, deep breaths and numbers, but then Power was talking into her ear again, breath smelling sweet like over sugared strawberries, and Kobeni's brain whited out.
The last thing she caught was the date and time to meet, and then Power was off with barely a goodbye and a wave, sauntering down the street, getting distracted by stray cats in alleyways. Kobeni watched her, stunned, and only just noticed that she had smeared her saliva covered hands on her pants on accident.
- - -
And now her pants were even more stained, grass stains and dirt on the knees, as well as on the elbows of Kobeni's blazer. She picked herself up and dusted herself off, feeling even more despair at her spur of the moment decision to say yes to Power's offer. Power, who was now bent over double cackling at Kobeni's plight.
Kobeni felt her lip quiver, but ignored it as best she could, steeling herself and drawing her knife from its sheath as she walked towards the entrance to the school. She didn't look back to see if Power followed.
She could feel the building tremble as the devil inside went on a rampage. Lockers rattled on the walls, a few popping open and spilling their contents all over the floor. Kobeni could hear her heartbeat pound in her ears, her breath in her lungs. Her grip on her blade was not too tight, but not too loose, out in front of her as she carefully walked down the hallway.
Then Power went sprinting in front of her, rummaging through open lockers and popping what looked to be an eraser into her mouth. Kobeni watched as she chewed animatedly, before her expression turned disgusted and she spat out the mess of rubber onto her hand. Power stared at it before putting it back into the locker with a happy trill, and went back to rummaging through different lockers.
"Okay," Kobeni sighed, continuing on. She could hear Power padding after her, occasionally kicking books and other things to the side.
With no better way to describe it, Kobeni would say it smelled like despair. Something damp and rotting, salt and iron lugging itself down the hallway with a deep resonant groan. Its hand curled around the corner, pulling it forward, a mass of flesh and mouths, all moaning and crying out.
"I don't wanna be here," One groaned, leaking a dark viscous substance onto the ground.
"Neither do I!" Kobeni wanted to scream, but Power was yelling something unintelligible as she ran forward, hammer bashing the devil solidly on its side and slamming it into a wall. It screamed, loud enough to make the walls quiver along with its incredibly unappealing fleshiness as Power kept on battering away at it, until it was struggling to escape, grabbing onto broken window frames and pulling itself along.
Kobeni dashed into a classroom, sliding over desks and dodging fallen over cabinets. When she was ahead of the devil, she burst through the window and swung. Her blade cut deep, the devil groaning and crying out as its meager life leaked onto the grimy tiles. Kobeni was breathing hard through her mouth, a mistake, the taste of mildew and bitterness coating her tongue almost like mold.
She stood there for a while, almost in a daze, before she stumbled to the side of the corridor to sit down. A moment later Power joined her, knees drawn up tight to her chest, silent for once. Her shoulder brushed against Kobeni's and she latched onto it, pressing against the fiend for the touch, hands going numb and knife clattering to the floor as her breathing came out fast and shallow.
Her eyes screwed shut, tight, starbursts of white behind her eyelids as she dug her nails into her knees. A pair of hands gently touched either side of her face, firm, strangely wet. Kobeni opened her eyes to see Power looking uncharacteristically focused, hands slick with red from the devil's blood cupping Kobeni's face.
"Better?" She asked, almost at a normal volume. Kobeni was shocked to silence, but she managed to nod. Power drew her hands back slowly, as if Kobeni were a scared alley cat, then licked her own hands clean of the blood. She made a face but kept on going this time, a small cut on her arm that Kobeni hadn't noticed beginning to heal over.
"Obviously I could have handled it," Power said, almost conversationally if it weren't for the fact that the two of them were sitting in a decimated hallway with a devil's corpse.
Kobeni nodded.
"I just let you do it."
Kobeni nodded again, then let her head thump back against the wall. Power seemed unsure for a moment, a strange look on the fiend's face, before she patted Kobeni on the head and stood, walking away with a slow gait as if she were waiting for Kobeni to follow her.
She didn't. She sat there until the stench of the devil became too much and she finally called it in. Kobeni went home like it was any normal day, took a shower and got dressed, slid into bed with a strange feeling sitting heavy in her chest. She stared at the ceiling, hands lifted above her to inspect them, as if there were a physical change wrought from Power's hands and tongue, which was a weird thing to think, but she couldn't get Power's unsure stare out of her head. It wasn't right, wasn't Power.
Kobeni lay in bed like a corpse, too tired to move, too wired to go to sleep.
And then, she got the call.