Chapter Text
The moon hung high above, pale and swollen, spilling its silver light across the trees. The night was thick with silence, only the rustle of leaves breaking through. Linie, however, was really confused. Why was she looking at the moon? She saw it every day. Why did she just blink three times, each one harder than the last? It wasn't like the moon would disappear. When she tried to walk closer to Stark and land the finishing blow, she realized, horrified, that she couldn't move. She just kept standing there, as if waiting for something to happen. Then she heard her own voice.
"What the hell...?" Linie muttered. Her breath slightly puffed in the moonlight, but she hadn't even said anything. Someone else had taken control, but they were just confused as she was.
For some reason, the other person looked down at the axe. Eisen's axe. The other person tiled their head, seemingly confused, as if they'd never seen one before.
"Uh... huh? Why an axe? Did I get lumberjack DLC? Where's my tutorial screen?!"
...what? What language was this person speaking? Lumberjack, she understood. Tutorial, less so, but it was some kind of lesson, right? But screen and DLC... what? And didn't this person understand that a battle axe was completely different from a simple woodcutting axe?
And then they saw the outfit. Linie's amazing work of art, her dress. Her only original creation. Her first piece of magic, her first piece of life, although it was pretty simple.
"What the- " Had this person never heard of a dress before?
They pinched at the hem of the fabric and pulled it up slightly, as if unsure it was real. As if coming to the terrifying conclusion it wasn't a hallucination, the- he, it must have been, staggered back and almost tripped over a root with Linie's beautiful (not that she was biased or anything) shoes.
"... No. No way. Why the hell am I wearing... this?! Is this some kind of crossdressing event? Did someone prank me?!"
Linie would have tilted her head if she could. What was a crossdressing? And a prank?
After a short pause, her head snapped up, skyward, up at the stars, twinkling like diamonds. Her eyes widened as though her possessor had recognized something familiar, but it was quite the opposite.
"Yes!" he pumped his fist up as he jumped in some kind of victory dance. "Yes, yes, yes! Another world, baby! Finally! Yoooosh!"
Linie would have felt embarrassed if she was able to, but instead, she was curious. Another world? Without axes or dresses? It seemed... nice.
"Step one," the other person whispered, "Slimes. Gotta kill slimes."
...
What the heck was a slime?
"Magic... I wonder if I can use magic." his- her hands moved in front of him, wrists touching, palms facing forward. "Fireball! Kamehameha! Hadouken!"
Nothing came out. Not a single drop of mana jumped from his hands. It seemed like magic was alien to his world as well.
Linie, already bored watching this newborn struggle with the reins on his new vehicle, decided to take a nap and realized, sadly, that she could not. Instead, she was pulled into a vision.
As Linie closed her eyes, or the spiritual equivalent of doing so, a wave of names and experiences she'd never known hit her all at once. At first, it was just the familiar darkness of her eyelids, but then it hit her like a truck. ...What was a truck? A classroom. A train. A screen. Really pretty girls. Really pretty guys. What? Popcorn. Lamps and lights. A funeral. Grown men fighting with light sticks. Anime. A cake. A song. Paper. All of it, foreign to her, all came rushing "back" to her like she'd known them all along, but fading away just as quickly. Eventually, she latched onto a random memory - a girl with blue hair singing inside of a sleek metal box. The name came to her instantly. Hatsune Miku.
"Ready? Miku Miku BEAAM!!!" she hollered. Linie, if possible, would have tried to get her out, but she was stuck in this sack of meat known as Subaru. This was probably the dumbest music ever.
Then it switched to another one. Hoshimachi Suisei. She was singing this time, instead of yelling. "Stellar stellar." This was... enjoyable, to say the least. Her voice was pure, she sang beautifully, and- WHY SO MUCH NOISE.
Why were humans trapping so many little people in boxes?
Linie let go of the memory, and in the swirling void, dreamed up a device she had seen Subaru use: a keyboard.
"Huh... I think I just- Erfassen." She immediately started typing just like Subaru. Same speed, same rhythm, just shorter fingers. The most recent memories came up at the top - Hatsune Miku. Hoshimachi Suisei. Reincarnated as a demon - but Linie already knew all about that. But then, scrolling down, she found something interesting - a lightsaber fight. Star Wars. People fighting in the stars? That sounded... interesting.
The void swirled around her, getting brighter and brighter until-
Linie sat on the comfiest chair she'd ever seen. Subaru seemed to remember it as a couch. The walls were blank, empty, like a sheet of fabric right after being washed. Looking up, her eyes burned. She quickly looked straight back down again. The ceiling housed tiny suns, their light blinding.
Once again, she sat watching people trapped in a box, but this time, instead of singing, they seemed to be fighting a war. It was a very interesting story. Subaru seemed to be eating popcorn - the tastiest thing she'd ever had. A crunchy, buttery, delightful snack, presumably made of corn.
Then, onscreen, a man fell underneath a giant hulking metal beast. For some reason, Linie jumped out to grab him and-
Huh. She was floating. Outside of Subaru's body.
It seemed like she could float around in her new state. She tried running around, but it didn't move her anywhere. She tried to blow herself away, but she only managed to look weird in the process.
"Oh. I can fly." Linie facepalmed, a gesture she had seen Subaru do many times throughout the memories. She willed herself to go forward, just like at home, and she managed to fly into the TV. "Oof."
On the screen, Darth Vader announced, "No. I am your father."
"NO!!" Luke yelled. "You killed my father!" (I don't remember if this is right so bear with me.) Subaru leapt up from his seat.
"HE SAID THE THING!!"
'...what?'
She grabbed a handful of popcorn and made her way to the next memory.
As she swirled through the void, she found something cool to watch: Jujutsu Kaisen. Magic Fight. Absolutely!
Although she'd already been in Subaru's room, it was a total shock to see the walls now. With the windows open and the sun shining like the lights in the living room, took one look at the walls and cringed. There was an entire shelf full of white-haired elves. There was also a lightsaber up close for Linie to copy.
On Subaru's personal smaller box (a "computer"?), a man, tattooed all over his face and presumably the rest of his body, raised his hands and put them together and chanted, "Domain Expansion: Malevolent Shrine."
Linie grabbed a small, flat disc covered in powder. Subaru seemed to be eating these, and Linie took a bite-
HOT.
It felt like someone had dunked her tongue into a volcano. She flew around, hoping to get rid of the taste, eating popcorn to dilute it, and after many attempts through the pain, summoned a cup of water, similar to the ones at the Graf's mansion. She took a deep sip and the relief hit her instantly.
'Ah...' Linie sighed. 'Why is he eating this?!' A new word came to her head. Spicy. Then another: masochist. Oh. Why did humans have a word for someone who enjoys pain while-
This was absolutely not appropriate for a young demon like her. She should wait until she turns two hundred at least to dwell upon those matters.
Linie must have doomscrolled too much, because her head was starting to feel airy. Her neck felt weird, then-
Linie jolted back into her own body as a cold feeling passed through her neck. Linie and Subaru both felt something was off. In front of them lay an unconscious and bleeding red-headed boy, Stark. His red hair stood out greatly against the dark green grass, and even in this state, he looked kinda-
'What the frick? Did spending time as a human make me more... human?' Linie panicked. 'This has gotta be a joke, right, me?' She didn't answer. Duh.
Subaru dragged Linie's soul over to Stark, looking kind of curious. The axe would certainly have been weird, seeing as he'd never seen anything like it before (aside from Linie's axe).
'Get away from him. He's going to kill you,' Linie groused at him like he was some stupid movie character. She reached for her popcorn. Then she realized she was about to die. 'GET AWAY FROM HIM! RUN! RUN!'
"Okay... okay, not freaking out again." Subaru took a deep breath, trembling. "Maybe I'm just tired. Yeah. That's it. Sleep deprivation plus trauma equals hallucinations. Great. Totally normal."
Subaru's fingers tightened on the axe and he? she? stepped forward again. The boy lay as still as a statue, the coppery smell of blood, which Linie had long gotten used to, lingering in the air.
Subaru knelt now, more cautious than earlier, and, trembling, shook him slightly. "Hey, hey! You're bleeding... yeah, I know, déjà vu. Ugh, this feels way too familiar."
His voice faltered. "Do I have healing powers?" 'NOPE.' Subaru ignored the tiny voice in his head urging him to give up. "Heal! Still nothing?" Linie would have facepalmed if she could. "Okay, cool, game hates me."
Linie almost laughed at that, the remembered that she didn't actually find it funny. But there was a tiny bit of her that thought, 'That joke was pretty amusing.' She absolutely ignored it. Fun was not for work. Fun was for adrenaline.
Subaru frowned and leaned closer once more, trying to catch a slight whisper crawling out of the redhead's lips.
But this time, everything shifted for Linie, but something small turned slightly for Subaru. Subaru stepped back slightly, while atom of Linie's body screamed at her to jump back and run as far away as possible, because this kid was about to get them both killed.
Subaru's eyes widened as Stark suddenly stood up into a crouch, almost a standing position, blood dripping into into his clothes. His arms were covered in dozens of tiny cuts, each one inflicted by yours truly. His hand trembled as he gripped his axe tighter, raised his axe, and prepared to strike.
"What the- hey! What are you doing?!" Subaru yelped, jumping back instinctively. Linie urged him to run, but no spirit powers worked here. Subaru found himself a whole meter behind his previous position. Her ballet shoes skidded across the dirt as Subaru - now having accepted his fate as a girl - stumbled, steadying herself.
Stark's eyes locked onto the two, cloudy, half asleep, but filled to the brim with determination.
"...demon..." he rasped, voice trembling. "You're just a faker."
Subaru froze, mouth dry.
Linie was totally disappointed. 'He saw the horns, didn't he? He knows he's a demon, doesn't he?!'
Subaru's grip on the axe tightened.
The boy (Stark I mean) lunged.