Chapter Text
Devils attack at random.
You can live 59 years in peace with no issue with your routine, and seconds before you hit 60 a Devils manifested in your city section and it's sucking the fat from your bones.
Kishibe stared out at the ruins of such a section, an unlit cigarette in one hand and a closed fist in the other. No matter how much that filter had to touch his lips for the gears in his head to spin as they should, that fist that would light it would not unclench. It was his birthday today, he should have been somewhere cold, loathing his new 36th.
But he was stuck looking at the mistakes of a younger man. He couldn't bring himself to put her name in his thoughts, to mix her into the worst place he knew. This rubble was her home, once. Everything she was and would be, lie somewhere under the concrete and dark oak paneling sticking out in-between cracks. He opened up his fist and looked at the blood on it. It was green. Right. He just killed a Devil, or his partners did. It was hard to remember. As if on cue, one of them called out, "Hey hey, Master, we should be getting on. The newsmen'll be here soon, and we know you don't like the cameras."
Who was that? Which trainee was calling out to him? He didn't look over his shoulder to find out. Someone else was talking with them, but the voices all blended. Kishibe wondered what he was looking for. A body? Did he want to stare at the dried adhesive on shattered bricks until he could see a body?
No, he didn't want to see a thing. He turned and walked away from the scene. There were obligations to the living he had to see to, in the form of three Public Safety trainees, but he only saw two when be turned back. Finally, he willed himself to light that cigarette, and it all started coming back to him.
The one calling out to him was Satsuki. She, or.. Damn. Kishibe thought he should ask about that someday. Nobody knows where Satsuki came from or who they were, Kishibe was still working on a background check, but it was certain to him that they were loyal as they come. The bloodhound of the three, so it was appropriate they had a contract with the Wolf Devil. Next to them was Shigeri, a less complicated woman that gave up an uncomfortable author's profession for an even more toiling occupation in Devil hunting. She'd be the first of the three to die, Kishibe knew, even with her costly Passion Devil contract that took a developing child as its payment. He only made her describe it once for the sake of the interview process, but even that one and final time was regrettable. The third... He couldn't find the third trainee-woman, Asaka, who gave her tongue for her Octopus Devil contract, the only one out of the three he thought had a real chance in this business. Kishibe took a long drag.
"Last I checked, nobody died. Where's Asaka?"
He asked either of the two trainees before him, who looked to be fully recovered from their fight with... He couldn't even remember. It slipped over his head when the battle started. Foolish thing, to get emotional in the middle of a tactical situation.
Shigeri bowed her head to Kishibe, and extended her left arm out, pointing somewhere out of his peripheral. "She went that way, Master."
So he followed where his trainee pointed, stepping over remaining bits of Devil gore, sometimes stepping on it. Kishibe turned a corner and there he saw on a half-broken wall, Asaka holding a small boy with hair as dark as hers, but short unlike hers, which extended down to her stomach and covered the boy like a thin blanket with split ends. Kishibe bit down on his cigarette, swallowing one half and causing the other to float toward the ground and most of its innards to be cast into the wind. The boy, he was the son of the woman whose home this was. Kishibe drank alone on the day of his birth, with shame and hesitation locking him in place at home. The kid must have been around four then, and Kishibe was certain: He didn't have his mother's eyes.
That doesn't mean it was his.
"Get up, we're out of here before the cameras arrive." Kishibe told his trainee flatly, putting his hands into his suit pocket. Asaka looked hesitant to let the kid go, the kid looked afraid to be let go, and Kishibe didn't want to be around either of them longer than he needed to. His stare stabbed into Asaka, who got to her feet, closing her eyes as she pulled away the boy's hands and hurried off in a half-sprint.
Kishibe looked down at the boy, who in absence of Asaka, came up to him with that same lost puppy look and tugged on the Mad Dog's suit. Kishibe brought a hand to the boy's head and ran the still bloodied fingers through his black hair. The scratched-up, worn-looking boy still didn't say anything, so left it up to Kishibe to break the ice between the two.
"Where's your old man? Is he at work?"
"....I don't..have a-"
Kishibe didn't let him finish, and pushed his head forward, shoving him to the ground. There wasn't any anger in it, indifference maybe. What was his name? What did she call him during those angry phone calls? That's right, he remembered now.
"Yoshida. Some men are going to talk to you and bring you to a place where there's kids like you. I didn't know my folks either, so listen: it's something you'll get over." Kishibe's words were cold and punctual, but if his eyes were to betray his true emotions, they didn't show to Yoshida whose quivering might have pushed Kishibe over the edge into making the better decision than the one he did, to walk away and not look back.
Kishibe didn't spare a second look at any of his three trainees, but he knew they were following as he passed. They were good dogs, even if only pups yet. There would have to be constant training after today - Originally, it was their day off. What a stupid choice. The day he got lazy, Kishibe thought, the world stalled. It couldn't happen again. He gruffed, "Shigeri, split off with Satsuki and take the Ginza Line to Chiyoda. The United States Secretary of Defense should be making a visit to the Diet, then the Kantei, for some naval agreement in a few hours, I need you to stop him, then one of you make a call and tell me if I haven't made my way over already."
Shigeri snapped, "Yes, Master!"
Satsuki muttered, "Uh-huh.."
And both of them were off on their way to the station without so much as asking for Kishibe's motive or even how he wanted them to stop the American. Just how he preferred. They'd both die soon enough, just like everyone else, no matter if they stayed in Public Safety or quit. Not even quitting was enough to save your life these days...
He and Asaka walked along the roadside to apparently fulfill Kishibe's most important piece of whatever he was planning with the politician. To browse the liquor store. As the neon sign came into view, so did Asaka's squinting stare full of judgment and condemnation. "Not yet," Kishibe swore. "Not until I've had half of anything." He breathed in, then out. "After that, I'll tell you."
Minutes later and thousands of yen were spent, and they were standing outside and in the park, both with bottles in their hand and taking a swig after the other person. Asaka's unkempt hair swayed along with her body, but she was still alert, and she was honed in entirely on what Kishibe was saying now. "He can't be mine." the Mad Dog began. "Me and her, we never.. Goddammit, all. He's got my eyes."
Asaka nodded, so Kishibe continued. "It was the only gut feeling I didn't listen to. Or maybe I did, and I just didn't like what I was hearing.. Either way, I'm gonna set him up with something. That American that Satsuki and Shigeri are hunting for owes me big, so the least he could do is babysit."
Asaka shook her head, so Kishibe got defensive. "There's no way that'd work out. I could die any day in this profession, the last thing he needs is to watch a second parent die."
Asaka shrugged, so Kishibe got indignant for only a few fleeting moments before devolving into a dour, pitiful sight, full of regret. "No, it's not his fault, but that doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what I do.. Quitting doesn't save you... But I know that if he stays with me, he won't have a chance.. Hell, I'm trying to die at this point."
Asaka huffed and turned away, so Kishibe felt guilty. "You think you'd do better, huh? You think I should call those two off?" He took a long swig, spilling onto his beard stubble. "Fine, you convinced me. But I'm telling you, Devil Hunters shouldn't be guiding young life, we live to kill and die. You know this."
Kishibe's only friend grinned, nodding multiple times and offering the rest of her drink to him, who now held two bottles in either hand upon accepting it. He drank from both of them and began walking through the park toward something, a phone booth he thought he saw but wasn't too sure of being there. "It was a bad time. She - his mother - was alone, for a long time. Hell, even my old partner was more involved with the first few years than me. Never figured her for the godmother type.. But I always had the thought that she kept tabs on Minami--"
He suddenly blinked hard, and looked over at Asaka, the two exchanging wide-eyed looks, though Kishibe's way weary with thinly-veiled sorrow. "Yeah.. That's her name. Don't go spreading it around."
Asaka's wide eyes turned to a half-squint stare, her eyebrows dropping low to give Kishibe the 'very funny, boss' look. Kishibe hoarsely chuckled, a small pool of liquor sloshing around in his mouth as he did, which was soon swallowed. The two were coming up on a phone booth now, the one Kishibe thought he saw. Both bottles of liquor dropped, shattering to the ground but only a sliver's worth of liquid escaped onto the ground. Kishibe stood too tall for the booth, so pulled on the phone and extended its cord outward, and then Asaka dialed the number.
Ring, ring, ring.
Ring, ring, ring.
Ring, ring, ri-
An answer.
Kishibe spoke first, knowing his trainees well enough that they'd maul anyone who even thought to take the phone from them. They'd done this song and dance before, only the first time that Kishibe called from this phone particularly. "Time to get re-leashed. We won't need the Secretary of Defense anymore."
There was a few seconds of no answer, to the point where Kishibe thought it was someone else on the other side of the line. That was until Satsuki's deep, sandpaper voice came through with, "You're not going to like this, Master, but I've broken the Secretary of Defense's pelvis."
Kishibe coughed onto the phone receiver in a moment of pure surprise. "You what?! Where is he now? WHY did you do that?"
There were a few more moments of silence, and there was a sound almost like static, of the phone switching hands. Shigeri's smoother voice came through now, answering him with, "We didn't know the mission parameters, Master, so we didn't have an answer for why we were detaining him. We declared it a Public Safety top-secret order and broke him down when he resisted. His bodyguards, they're..."
Satsuki's voice again. "They're lunch for the Wolf Devil, Master. It was part of the contract, I'm sorry, nothing I can do about it."
Kishibe put his fist against the glass of the booth, cracking it against the side of his hand. He spoke sternly, straightforward. "I'm coming to clean it up. You've likely started an international incident, and the sword would fall on me, not you." He gritted his teeth. He wanted to reach through the phone and slam his two trainees' heads together. "Apologize to him." he ordered with finality, then slamming the phone back into its holder.
He breathed in, then out, and for a moment in time felt calm enough to look at Asaka and say, "Go pick up the kid. Take care of him.Train him. When the time is right I'll.. I'll be a part of his life. Just don't tell him what I did, what I didn't do.. If he's anything like his mother, he won't understand. You got me?"
Asaka closed her eyes and nodded, then took Kishibe's hand that had broken the glass which ran gently with blood and kissed it once. With her other hand, she tore off the tie that was tight around her neck and put it in Kishibe's palm. He closed his fingers around it. "I accept your resignation." was all he needed to say to confirm that the two were thinking the same thing. "The file on you and the Octopus Devil won't see the light of day. Keep it and teach the kid something useful."
With that, a fiendish smile formed on Asaka's face. She nodded once again, though it was more like a parting bow. A slithering mass formed around her body, one large tentacle trailing so far that Kishibe couldn't even calculate the distance before his former trainee was whisked away at speed across the street and into an alley where both their figures were obscured and finally lost entirely. Of course, Kishibe wasn't so lucky, he had to employ the use of his feet to get around places on days, workdays, and off-days, that taxi cabbies were too scared by the blood on his suit to bother stopping for him.
Today was one of those days, so walk on he did.
...
....
.....
An hour and a half passed. Kishibe stood on the steps of the National Diet Building and looked up to the pillar where an American official on important business was slumped up against a pillar, with two trainee Devil Hunters standing over him. The police perimeter was thick, the gore of the Wolf Devil's leftovers reeked, and Kishibe was still drunk. He rolled his shoulders and took another few steps up, holding his fingers up to silence the two women before they even began with him as he approached. Looking down at the American, he bent a knee and spoke professionally with his best English. It prompted a scoff from the man he was speaking to, then a full on dry laugh and a dryer response in very flat but clear Japanese. The words, "Watch more Sesame Street, you fucking prick.", caused Kishibe's jaw to momentarily clench and unclench. It was important to remember the abuse he'd just gone through on Kishibe's supposed order.
"These women here got on you for an important reason. There's a Devil that was spotted off the Korean Peninsula and moving toward Japan, the Identity Fraud Devil. A message was supposed to be sent out to all incoming flights, but there were security concerns.." Kishibe lied through his teeth, boldly, with the wear of the day disguising his impromptu acting. The Secretary of Defense breathed a few times, groaning in pain as he tried to sit up and fell back down. He opened his mouth, closed it, and opened it again to counter, "Nah.. Goddamn liar. I know it's about a child. I know which one...."
Kishibe's face turned dark, more serious than heaven falling to earth. The trembling of sudden rage he felt in his hands was only concealed by their timely insertion into his suit pockets. "Time hasn't dulled you. Remind me, who that kid is. What you know about him."
"Him? Who are you fooling, motherfucker? We know the Control Devil is a girl."
The answer came as a surprise, though Kishibe didn't show it in his expression. Better than his own blood he'd only met today, Kishibe knew the Control Devil. It was his responsibility as a leading official in Public Safety to at least be familiar with what he once described as the Japanese government's mother of all deterrents, which was how she got her name, Makima. The 'ki' was an extra touch he came up with, otherwise, it was just 'Mama'. The last time he'd seen her, he wasn't even allowed to give her a new toy like he used to do. Those bastards loved their strict protocol. But in recollection of the past, Kishibe nearly forgot the question he was asking himself over and over. How the hell did the Americans know about her already? How long did they know? Suddenly, Kishibe reached out his arm and gripped the pelvis of the wounded official, squeezing down hard. "Yeah, it's about her. Go build up your bombs, pray at the feet of the Nuke Devil until it blesses you with a fertile garden, but leave our weapons alone. Let my sleeping dogs lie, MacDowell."
The Secretary of Defense, MacDowell as Kishibe identified him, groaned and shut his eyes hard and writhed and clenched his fists, only replying when Kishibe released him. "Fucking cocksucker.. How'd you even find out? My orders came straight from the President, in his goddamn office. Heh.. Heheh... He'd sink if it leaked.. You got a mole in the Oval Office, Kishibe?"
Kishibe stood up and signaled his two trainees to lift him with either arm. He turned to the waiting paramedics in front of the police blockade to come up and receive their patient. As they were making the journey, Kishibe turned for one last time back to MacDowell, giving him a light slap on the cheek. "We're always listening. Keep that in mind the next time you want to look into our business. And remember - The Identity Fraud Devil has got us suspecting everyone, state officials included. Don't let this little play date blow up."
The three Public Safety Devil Hunters watched wordlessly as MacDowell was strapped into a stretcher and taken through a secure route, the wheels of the stretcher running right through the leftover intestines of at least two men. It was a grim sight. The Americans know about Makima, which can only mean that today was the start of something. Something big and terrible.
What a time for kids to grow up in.
His kids.
The one by blood, and the other by the whim of men who thought they could domesticate a hellhound.
He wondered if they'd ever meet one day.