Chapter Text
A moon landing isn’t something that comes along often. Less is so common when a voice is heard on the moon. Not only because the moon does not have an atmosphere and therefore sound cannot travel on it, but because the moon is empty. So when an astronaut hears a voice screaming, crying, wailing, from below the surface of the moon, alarms blare. And the astronaut digs. He digs until he finds rock, and then he digs some more. When he finally reaches an empty space in the moon, and sees an almost powerless Devil inside, the Public Safety Commission practically has an aneurism. Especially since something had put the Devil in there for a reason. It makes some in the commission think ‘Should we really be taking this Devil out of the moon in the first place?’. However, a desire by the Commission for power, ironic as it is, made them continue with their original plan.
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Aki knew he would have to make another contract. Knew that ever since the fox devil shunned him he would not be nearly as powerful. And power? Well, that’s something that you need in order to not get killed. Even civilians cling to power like it’s a lifeline. CEOs desperately hoard their power as if it were their blood itself. Politicians use their half-lies to keep the public in love with them. But for Devil Hunters, it’s something more. Power is a Devil Hunter’s one weapon. Whether that power comes from physical prowess, mental stability, or the ever-important contracts, a Devil Hunter will meet a grizzly end without it.
So Aki was completely ready to make a contract with whatever the Commission decided was important for him to make a contract with. He is not the kind of person to think constantly about what Devil he will be making a contract with, yet he cannot help but wondering. The possibilities swim in his mind, toned down to a steady trickle of water than the river it might be with others. Contracts are just what is used to get the job done, nothing more. In order to kill Devils, in order to be powerful, one needs a contract, and the Curse Devil Contract isn’t exactly something Aki can use willy-nilly.
When his fellow Devil Hunters start to explain the curse he’ll be making a contract with, he begrudgingly tunes back into their pointless rambles. Aki doesn’t care what he makes a contract with, as long as they’re powerful. As long as they make him powerful. As long as he can finally have the ability to destroy the Gun Devil, to protect those he loves and cares for. His mind ramblings fade back into the words of the Devil Hunter next to him.
“This baby we’re taking you to is probably the most powerful Devil in our care, despite being severely weakened by classified happenings. Count yourself lucky you’re being given this chance, as it hasn’t made a contract with any Hunter yet. Hopefully it takes a liking to you,” Aki’s focus zooms into this sentence. They are giving him the chance to make a contract with a Devil that hasn’t made a contract before? This is going to be volatile, in the truest of terms. That means Aki doesn’t know what to expect. They might ask for something mental, physical, large, or small. Likely something large, as this is the most powerful Devil in their care. Which begs the question, why are they giving Aki the chance with the most powerful Devil they have captured?
“Aki Hayakawa, meet the Power Devil,” Aki wants to freeze, but refuses his inner desires. The Power Devil? Aki knew the Commission has important Devils in their cells, but something with a name such as the Power Devil? Power is something that is very feared, something very, well, powerful. But to each’s own end. As stated before, all Aki cares about is the power a contract could bring him, and if a devil was based on power that meant the contract would be ever more powerful. It only leads Aki to be curious as to what the Devil will take from him. His fellow hunter opens the door with little fanfare, only to reveal a disheartening sight.
Chains. At first, Aki thought that the chains were the power Devil. As, wouldn’t that be fitting? For a Devil based on something that chains the perpetrator to be made of chains? But no, these chains attach to every edge of the room. They twist into purposeful knots made of metal and sorrow, trapping a figure in the middle of the room, resulting in them being unable to move. The figure itself is smaller than Aki expected it to be, more underwhelming. Their skin, if it is skin, is diluted and pale, eyes sunken and unfocused. It doesn’t look up when he enters to room, doesn’t even move. Aki would not place bets on whether it is dead or not, because the Commission would not keep a dead curse, but if he found it on the street Aki knows what he would bet on, and it wouldn’t be that the Devil is alive.
Did the commission really have the ability to do this? To defeat such an important Devil and turn it to this shell? Aki steps closer, cataloguing the ghostly blue shade of the Devil, cataloguing the inexistent rise and fall of a chest, cataloging the almost numerical shape. Aki waits far too long before the Devil in front of him responds to his presence. And even then, the Devil only raises its eyes to gaze lifelessly at Aki’s face.
“I’m here to make a contract with you,” Aki explains with a matter-of-fact tone. Tiptoeing around the Devil will get Aki nowhere, this he knows. It likely feels trapped, without the dignity of the concept of fear it represents, for it has no power here. The Devil does not blink, only stares. It looks… resigned. As if something happened to make it without everything it has ever loved, as if this physical prison is nothing compared to the prison inflicted onto its mind.
“I don’t know what that is,” The Devil speaks as if its every word is truth. As if it cannot tell a lie for a lie would be pointless in its current state. It brings its head up from its hanging position, if the top half of its body could even be calles a head. It looks so… unassuming in this state. There are eyebags, almost purple in their depth, beneath the heavy yet light gaze of the curse. As if the gaze should be something pressing, but nowadays just isn’t what it used to be.
“A contract?” Aki asks for clarification, and the Devil acts as if this is a very confusing thing to ask it. As if this brings up memories it does not like. Did no one tell this Devil what a contract was? Shouldn’t all Devils automatically know? Well, Aki then supposes that out of the both of them going in blind, Aki can see a little better in the fog. And said fog is thick, as Aki hasn’t been able to interact with such powerful Devils in a while. But he’ll need this power if he hopes to defeat the Gun Devil, so he’ll humor this. “A Contract is when you give me part of your power in exchange for something you want from me,”
“I don’t… I don’t have any power left. They took it,” Does the Devil mean the Commission? How could the Commission take a Devil’s power? Why would they give Aki the chance to make a contract with this Devil if they knew it was powerless? Unless… this Devil still had something very powerful to offer to a Devil Hunter through contract. However, it is apparently up to Aki to figure out what is going on with this. How to gain this power that the Devil somehow hoards in their weakened state.
“Then I wouldn’t have been sent here. You and me both know that. There’s someone I need to defeat, and it’s obvious there’s something you need to defeat too. Ask me for something you need in return,” Aki has no idea why he’s being so kind to a Devil that could likely still tear him apart. Perhaps it is the childish demeanor, although dimmed to a flicker of a flame rather than the burning inferno it should be. However, this admittance on Aki’s side of the conversation seems to stir something in the Devil. It looks up at Aki, and a minuscule amount of shine has returned to its eyes. It laughs, then. Almost inexistent with its gentle and quiet delivery. But it’s there, and it heralds the image of something that was once much greater. The image that once this being was loud, outgoing, and ever so powerful.
“Yoyleite,” The Devil states, and Aki cannot help but be confused. What is Yoyleite, and why does this Devil want it? Is it a name it has given to something else? “The more Yoyelite you find, the more power you will gain. As long as that Yoyleite you find is given to me,” Aki may not know what Yoyleite is, but he does know this is the best deal he is going to get. The Devil didn’t ask for anything regarding his body or soul, and what it did ask for doesn’t sound like anything huge. Aki knows he got off lucky. But he also knows that until he finds this Yoyleite, he will be respectively powerless.
Aki walks out of the meeting with a new contract, and even more questions than he started with. But he feels something inside of him, something twisted and changing. Too weak to even be a spark, but something with the potential to turn utterly torrential.
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When Aki kills his first Devil of his new contract, something unusual happens. Something completely unexpected, yet something that makes too much sense in the long term. The Devil, before it dies, during Aki’s last attack, screams in pain. This is not unusual in itself. However, this scream is different. More primal, as if it is being slowly consumed from the inside. Then, Aki blanked. It was as if one moment, Aki was above the Devil, killing it with his prowess, and the next he was a few feet away from the Devil, and said Devil had changed.
Its color scheme was grayscale, skin sunken into something shriveled and pained. Its guts were ashy, and fell apart with a touch, the wind blowing away the embers with the lightest gust. Aki walked up to it, and almost stumbled at the feeling he was given in his chest. A feeling that power had wormed its way under his skin. Aki is not stupid, despite Denji and Power’s hate-fueled ramblings. This is what the Power Devil meant by Yoyleite. Yoyleite is power, and power is a soul. Aki wants to scream. What has he done?
-
How does it feel to take away life from something so dripping with it? With each Human, Animal, Devil Aki kills, he blanks for a moment, only to come back to a soulless shell. He’s taken to preventing himself from dealing the final blow to a Devil, but often that is not enough. With every kill, a rush of delectable power churns into Aki’s veins, almost addictive in its essence. So he goes to the one being who understands this, the feeling of gaining power through death, even if it’s not as overwhelming and enslaving as this rush Aki appears to get.
Angel Devil is not someone Aki interacts with on regular. In fact, he barely knows anything about the affronted Devil. What he does know, however, is two crucial facts. Fact one, the Angel Devil is not only amicable toward humans, but occasionally helpful (Friendly, even, if Aki was willing to admit such a word could describe a Devil). Fact two, the Angel Devil shortens the lifespan of anyone it touches. These two facts together lead to a picture that means Aki should be able to interact with the Angel Devil on how to control the powerful Devil building behind his skin. The Power Devil is likely even stronger than the Gun Devil with a designation so deadly, which Aki doesn’t want to think about. In contrary, a quote from Edward Abbey pops up in Aki’s mind when he thinks of the Power Devil.
“Power is always dangerous. Power attracts the worst and corrupts the best,” Power is oppression of others, destruction of dreams. Power hurts people more than it helps, and society knows this. The Power Devil reflects this, stealing power from others, stealing what makes them powerful and individual in their own senses, to feed its own tycoon of exponents. Perhaps that’s another reason this Devil so reflects math. Other than the fact that numbers can be powers. Or the fact that in today’s world power is often defined by numbers of money and numbers of people and numbers of everything. Yet Aki doesn’t want to focus on that.
What Aki does want to focus on is the fact that he does not want to become a Devil himself. He feels his insides twisting until he can’t feel himself in the correct way. Ever since what happened with that first Devil Aki killed, his brain has been haywire. He feels something welling up behind his hands, ready to shoot at anyone that comes near. He feels his stomach being strange about anything he eats, as if it can’t decide if it’s a stomach or something else. He feels strange. He feels weird. He feels powerful. He doesn’t like it.
So that brings him to here, sitting across from Angel Devil as said Angel Devil swirls tea in a cup. Aki made them both this tea, as close to an icebreaker as either of them is going to get from the other. Aki does not sip at his, yet he does hold it in his hand. In this way, it is more akin to a prop than an actual article of drink. He does not acknowledge it, other than the telling feeling in his throat that makes him almost want to acknowledge it. Another side effect of his deal with the Power Devil and his subsequent Devil killings, the fact that his throat constantly feels as if something is crawling up it trying to get out, a unsaid word or phrase that is not a word or phrase because it has no meaning other than to attack the listeners.
“I’m surprised they let anyone make a contract with Four. He’s historically very temperamental. What’s even more surprising is that he asked for something you could give him,” Aki’s eyes widen a fraction, related to the fact that apparently the Angel Devil knows the Power Devil, but this quickly translates into suspicion. Aki may not know much about the Power Devil, read, he knows nothing but the Devil’s name and the fact that he was de-powered and captured by the Public Safety Commission, but he does know that no information has come out about the Power Devil in many years
“That’s what I’m here to talk about,” Aki brings himself back to the task at hand, the fact of what the Power Devil asked of him in return for a taste of this power. The power that is built on blood and pain. As most traditional power is as well, now that Aki thinks of it. Fitting, is it not?
“If you want me to help you, you’ll need to give me more information about your contract with Four than that. Not that I’m begging to assist or anything, I could care less” Angel Devil takes a sip of the prop-like tea, before humming at the unusual taste, “You steeped this far too much, it’s very strong,” Aki does not listen to this observation made by the Angel Devil. Instead, he hyper focuses on a small tidbit of information that Angel Devil keeps unintentionally bringing up.
“Why do you call it Four?” This brings the Angel Devil to a pause. He sets his overstepped tea back down onto the table of Aki’s living room, a lucky break that both of his roommates are out of the house so the both of them don’t admonish the fact that Aki isn’t scolding Angel Devil for not using a coaster. The Angel Devil hums for a moment.
“Have you ever thought about the fact that people are afraid of Math?” Aki doesn’t know where this is going, but it certainly isn’t anywhere relevant. He moves to interrupt, but the Angel Devil need only hold up a hand to silence him. The Devil across from him looks more serious than Aki has ever seen him up to this point, “They should be. Not the math itself. No, they should love math, if only to prevent the heralding of what it brings” Aki really doesn’t see how this is relevant, but a reminder of the Angel Devil’s face when interrupted prevents Aki from once again trying to voice his opinion, and instead he lets himself trust that the Angel Devil has a point to its rambles.
“Four’s confinement to the moon is not recent. But, neither am I. I remember when the new moon arrived. That doesn’t come without consequences,” The Angel Devil starts, then pauses. As if this explanation is something much worse than whatever Aki is hearing. In the world of Devils, none of this is unusual. Apart from the fact that the moon arrived. No, wait. Aki pulls his focus onto this turn of words. The ‘new moon arrived’? Arrived where, here? Arrived to Earth from somewhere else? Is the moon they currently have a different moon than the moon Earth originally had?
“When the Devils realized what Four could do, they didn’t like it. Stealing their power forever, even after they’ve gone back to hell, leaving them a shell of what they once were? Not something accepted. So that left me, the Devil tasked with watching over the moon to make sure he could never be let out of said cage,” Angel Devil takes another sip of his overstepped tea. At least, according to Aki. In reality, the Angel Devil does not drink any of the tea, instead pretending to drink it to give himself a stopping point to his explanation.
“But… he did get out of the moon,” Aki prompts the Angel Devil to explain more of what he is trying to say. Why would the Angel Devil allow something so dangerous to leave the moon. Aki isn’t simple-minded enough to think that the humans of Public Safety got the Power Devil out of the moon by themselves.
“I know, I didn’t actually care,” The Angel Devil shrugs, and Aki gets the feeling there is more to it than that. That something made the Angel Devil not only not care if Four got out of the moon, but actively work towards getting him out of the moon. Yet, take this with a grain of salt, as Aki is highly unsure of the full picture. Or don’t, because Aki knows what he’s thinking about. And he thinks that the Angel Devil felt actual care for the Power Devil, and potentially helped orchestrate its escape. Not that it’s much of an escape, from one cage to another. Or, perhaps not a cage for long if Aki keeps ‘killing’ Devils.
“Angel Devil. I think you did,” This admittance by Aki is perpetuated by the ceramic cup cracking beneath Angel Devil’s grip. The Angel Devil’s outwards facial reactions are calm, likely not related at all to the thoughts inside of their mind. Angel Devil sets down the cracked cup, liquid lightly flowing from the fractures webbing the white material. The Angel Devil looks down into the cup, before making a quiet admittance.
“Perhaps I’m sentimental, but… I couldn’t imagine a worse fate for Four than what he’s already been through,”