Work Text:
Reunions
The world had ended, and it was such a shame.
“It would seem that the prophecy had come true after all.”
“I hate every single person who was involved in this.”
“I just-I just wanted to save the world! How couldsnifcould this happen!?”
The fourth voice was fuzzy.
“Well, at the very least, it’s been a long while since we’ve been together like this, hasn’t it? The four of us sitting together? When was the last time that had happened?” Makima said, a slight smile on her lips as she stared at her two sisters (and what was left of the third), sitting around the table in her apartment. Sadly the huskies were nowhere to be found, and it was all Denji’s fault.
“As much as I would like to say otherwise, you actually had the least to do with this,” Yoru seethed, her fingers tapping on the table in rapid succession. “I was so close to winning, all I needed to do was…” The rest went unsaid as she found herself looking off into space, before she glanced off to the empty space to her side.
“It’s all your faults!” Fami cried out, grabbing hold of the table and pushing herself to her knees, her voice strained and her eyes eternally wet. “If all of you had killed yourselves before things got out of hand, the world itself would have been saved! We wouldn’t be here if all of you had done the right thing!”
Both Makima and Yoru gave her unimpressed, uninterested looks, and turned to the last side of the table, where the shape sat. It was difficult to make out what it was exactly, because when their eyes weren’t focused on it, they completely forgot about it. They knew it was something, or rather someone, but it was difficult to guess who or what that could possibly be.
“It’s rather curious,” Makima said, leaning in closer to get a better look at the shape. “I know you, but it’s a struggle to even perceive you when I’m not thinking about it. I assume Chainsaw Man ate them?”
“I think so?” Yoru said, eyes switching over to Makima, trying to keep the shape in her line of sight. “Yes, I think that might have been it. Chainsaw Man and I were fighting, and he ate an important devil, one who was powerful, and I don’t know what it was, but it shifted something important in our fight. I don’t know what happened, but I think their removal is what led to the surge of vermin that suddenly devoured the world.” Yoru said back where she sat, trying to recall those last few moments as the sky darkened and they were all overwhelmed. Denji opted to fight, Asa opted to run, but it wouldn’t have mattered either way. “I blame Famine though.”
“Why?!” Fami cried out. “I-I didn’t do anything!”
“Exactly, you were entirely useless in all of this, though I want to say that your own name is what drove us to be eaten.”
“I didn’t have anything to do with that!” Fami tried to argue, but then the shape said something. It was difficult to understand what it said, but they all knew the thoughts going into it.
It was hungry.
Which was now why they were in a sushi restaurant.
“Wow, really? This place?” Nayuta asked, now having replaced Makima. “Would have loved anywhere else but this.”
“Oh yeah, this place,” Yoru said, looking across the empty restaurant. “This is where the black Chainsaw Man appeared before me, where I was able to start my battle against him in earnest, that is before I was interrupted.” She looked back to the other three, at Nayuta giving a scornful glare to the plates before her, Fami crying as always, to the shape just doing… something, it was difficult to tell. “Though, I suppose it wouldn’t be fair to say you were blameless in all of this.”
The shape gave her a blank stare, and she knew what it was trying to say.
It said that the end of the world was her fault.
“I just wanted to fight Chainsaw Man,” Yoru said with a growl. “I can’t recall much about you, but I know that you kept getting in my way. If it hadn’t been for you, I would have ended him months ago! Say whatever you want about me and how I do things, but at least I keep things straightforward!”
“It’s ‘cause of stuff like that I kept you away from Denji in the first place!” Nayuta argued back. “You’re all gross and stuff! Just wanting to kill him and kiss him all over! He’s my property! You should have, I dunno, jumped off a cliff or something!”
“Well you were dead at the end, so I guess he belonged to me after all,” Yoru grinned, and spun around in her chair so she could lean back against the counter. “I hate Chainsaw Man, everything’s his fault, but I have to admit, I rather like Denji, he wasn’t so bad, and I really wish I could-”
“Do more gross stuff with him?” Nayuta answered with a sneer.
“...something like that,” Yoru said, a slight red tint to the skin on her face. “Asa’s feelings were her own, but those feelings became mine as well, and I think that if the Falling Devil hadn’t come along and ruin everything for us, I think I would not have mind putting my duel with Chainsaw Man on hold for a while, at least until we killed… someone together. Ugh.” With another frustrated groan, Yoru pressed her fingers to her eyes and rubbed the tiredness out of them. “Everything was going so well, why did any of you have to come along and ruin anything?”
“I found him first!” Nayuta argued back. “You’re all thieves trying to steal him from me! How about you-”
“You slut!” Fami cried out, her lips quivering, her shaking finger pointed at Yoru. “You were intending to have premarital sex with him, weren’t you? You were going to have sex with Chainsaw Man!”
“Why are you even here!?” Yoru snapped. “Seriously, out of everyone who showed up, you contributed the least! You were only there to get whipped by whoever that’s supposed to be!” she said, gesturing to the shape.
It said something once again, and once again the room shifted, and they were sitting in a classroom at the school, each one seated at a separate desk across the room.
“Why are we here?” Yoru asked, sitting at a desk at the back, where Asa had sat in her own classroom. “Why would we even come here? I will never understand why Asa wanted to stay here so bad.”
“I liked school,” Nayuta said, head leaning forward as she propped it up with her arm. “It was always fun to show up all the other students how much better I was then everyone else, and I didn’t even need to use my powers to do it.” A grin then appeared on her face, a shameless expression of a past of no regret. “I was able to get whatever kinds of snacks I wanted no problem, ‘cause everyone would just give me stuff.”
“You sounded like a bully,” Famine pitifully said. “The teachers should have disciplined you more for your transactions!”
“‘The teachers should have me-me-meh-meh!’” Nayuta mocked, “That’s you, that’s what you sound like.”
There was then something else said by the shape, and oddly, it came at the defense of Fami.
“And why would you care?” Yoru asked, arms crossed over her chest. “Didn’t you take control of her, or something? If I recall, she never would have worked with you if she had a choice in it.”
The shape said something else.
“You cannot blame this situation on me!” Yoru argued. “If everyone just left me alone and let me win, I would have secured my victory and life would have moved on and the world wouldn’t have ended like this!”
The shape said more, and like always, it had the feeling of being flat and detached.
“That’s not a good argument, and you know it.”
“It’s not like she would have done anything else,” Nayuta said. “But what did it have you do?”
“...It had me throw rocks at people,” Fami said.
“Anything else?”
“... not really.”
The four of them sat in silence for a time, two of them trying to come up with ways to throw new insults at Fami, and Fami trying to think if she should just attack them herself.
The shape said something else, and through its unspoken communications, it made the intention of its words clear.
“I think it’s too late to have regrets now,” Yoru responded, leaning back in her chair. “Everything has gone to ruin, the war has been lost, and nothing of value has been gained. Now we’re stuck in whatever this place is supposed to be, and who knows what will come next.”
The shape spoke once more.
“The end of life?” Fami asked. “I… I don’t know? No one knows what happens at the end of life, but whatever it is, I think this is supposed to be it.”
“I was always curious to see what would happen at the end of life,” Makima said, now replacing Nayuta, and once more the room had shifted, but instead of returning to the nice apartment that she had lived in, there were somewhere smaller, and more cramped; the apartment Nayuta had shared with Denji. The dogs were absent here as well, but the clumps of dog fur remained. “There were things I felt the world would be better without, and if given the chance I would have fed you two to Chainsaw Man and rid the world of your taint.”
Yoru glared at Makima, a seething resentment building behind those eyes, the promise of violence to be visited upon Makima should the opportunity arrive, with or without a weapon. She had always been the most violent among them, and in her world there was simply no room for violence sparked by disagreements and differences. Famine looked as though she was about to cry, but what else was new? Her fear was the result of humanity wasting their resources, of being ill-prepared and refusing to help others, it was human selfishness.
She glanced off to the side, and saw upon the stained carpet a clump of fluff, the presence of the absent dogs, and she picked it up between her fingers. Raising it up, she looked at it, an expression that was unfamiliar to Yoru, who glared at her sister, one she was unable to place. The sight of her sister caused Yoru’s fingers to flex as she felt the urge to create a weapon building inside of her, and Fami stared at her with a wet expression that told of a sense of betrayal, but Makima did not focus on either of them, but instead turned her attention towards the shape. “I think… I had wanted to feed you to Chainsaw Man as well, but seeing what happened, it might have been better to see you as some kind of necessary evil to have, because I don’t think I ever considered the ramifications of what would have happened.”
“Yeah, because you’re a big dummy,” Nayuta said, now replacing Makima. “I saw Denji’s memories of you, and wow you were just kind of stupid.”
“I don’t think you really have the right to judge me,” Makima said, taking her place once more. “You never did anything to further our goals, you merely languished in Denji’s company, doing nothing.”
“Yeah, ‘cause doing things your way sucked,” Nayuta said. “I thought if I did things your way, I could better understand myself and who I was, but without even thinking about it, somewhere along the way I just stopped because I was having too much fun with Denji. You had plenty of chances to have fun with Denji, but you never did, and the more I think about it, the more I don’t get it.” With a sigh, Nayuta laid down forward on the table, and blew a lock of hair from her face. “You’re really super-duper-ultra-mega boring. Don’t know why Denji would have wanted to do gross stuff with you at all.”
“And why would I even want Denji?” Makima said, a slight sour tone to her voice and she pushed herself up. “Chainsaw Man was who I was after, he was my ultimate goal, I was the one who was meant to tame him and bring him to heel” She then looked over and glared at her older sister. “Not you.”
“You failed to prove adequate,” Yoru said with a condescending smile,” It’s not my fault you overthink all your little plans, while I laid my heart bare and let him know what it was I desired most of all, and it’s because of that I was better able to understand Chainsaw Man’s heart than you ever could.”
Makima’s eyes narrowed as she glared at Yoru, her fingers starting to tap on the table in a slow, purposeful rhythm. “And that doesn’t change the fact that Chainsaw Man still tore from your flesh, reducing you to… this.”
Yoru was incredibly close to forming a weapon.
The shape spoke again.
“You don’t get a say in that,” Yoru said, finding herself sneering. “I never lied about anything, I was always who I was, however distasteful people found it, it’s you who hid behind fake names and things like that.”
“I hope this isn’t eternity for us,” Makima said with a sigh. “I’d rather be with anyone other than you three. I think I would have found oblivion all the more soothing, but I’m denied even that.”
“I suppose that’s just how the end of the world works,” Fami said, laying her head on the table. “There’s going to be nothing now, I think all the devils ate everyone, and it will only be a matter of time before they turn on one another, and however long it takes, it will come down to the sole survivor in the world.” Giving a deep sigh, Fami stared off into nothing. “So much wasted life, and all of it was for nothing.”
Suddenly, the four of them found themselves in Hell. Endless black sand in all directions, with a starless, moonless abyss above them, with only a few intricate, thin and burnt trees around them. Despite the unrelenting darkness that surrounded them, they were not in absolute pitch black, but somehow the area they were in had just enough visibility in it to give them enough sight to perceive their immediate surroundings. Was this just a quirk of this one aspect of Hell? Would this sight remain if they strayed too far, or would they be left completely blind?
“I’m going to miss stuff like Chinese food and pizza,” Nayuta said, standing where Makima had been.
The shape said something.
“Yeah, you get it!” Nayuta said, pointing a finger at the shape. “Too bad you’re a giant butt munch.”
Yoru stared at the three, at these two devils and the hole in reality where a third devil should be, and she found herself growing irritable. So much time stalking and waiting in the shadows living as a shade of her former self, her former glory, her name forgotten and erased, and now she’s been further reduced to this? With these three as her only company?
She…
She found herself missing Denji.
She found herself missing Asa.
For so long she had been the War Devil, but she found that maybe she was happier being Yoru.
It was too late for regrets now.
“I hate everything about this,” she said, her arms shaking at her side, her fingers digging into her nails. “After everything I had done, this is what awaits me?”
She spun around and pointed her finger at the endless dark dunes before her.
“Bang.”
The sand exploded as the dune was instantly vaporized, the sand rushing into the air in response before it began to fall to the ground in a large cloud of debris.
“Bang. Bang! BANG!” she shouted, unleashing more and more shots off into the abyss, each one having the same destructive effects as the last one. Destruction often made her feel good, it made her feel alive, but no matter how much fury she poured into her efforts, she failed to leave her mark as once the sand had settled, the desert remained unchanged as a whole.
Falling to her knees, Yoru stared off into the endless, starless night before her.
Behind her, her sisters chatted about what she didn’t know and frankly she didn’t care because she knew that it wouldn’t matter. She hated them all anyway. Why was she with them and not with Asa? They had been together at the end, before the insects descended upon them, delivering them their end upon tens of thousands of tiny cuts and bites before something larger had finished the job. She felt Asa’s fear and panic above all else, and right now, wherever she was, she was possibly alone.
There is no fairness in life, Justice had always been a cosmic joke, that was something she had learned from this whole experience, and those who intended to do good were always swiftly punished. It was a mistake to think that you could get through life without causing someone harm, but Asa was someone who was always stuck in her own head about that kind of stuff. She seemed to get it, get something at least at the end, but her thoughts were still forming, trying to cobble together something, but Yoru could feel her own reservations starting to crack.
There’s no point in feeling guilt over everything that happens to you, especially when it comes to survival. If Asa allowed those feelings to bog her down, she never would have gotten a second chance of life.
Yoru thought back on how things had been between them, and she wished that they could, only for one moment at least, that they could
000
The War Devil looked upon these humans, these students, going about their days as the useless sacks of meat they had always been, and as with the countless times as before, she could not understand why sisters were so obsessed with them. All they had ever amounted to were fodder for devils, it was merely their lot in life.
Still, she would need to find her sisters though, and depending on what they were doing, end their lives, and she would-
Someone then bumped into her shoulder, and the other person almost tripped them over, but the War Devil was able to stop herself from falling flat on her face by grabbing the arm of the human who was stupid enough to collide with her with, resulting in neither of them falling.
‘Watch where you’re going!” the War Devil snapped.
“S-sorry!” the human, some girl, said.
She didn’t have time for this, so she let go of the human’s arm and continued on her way, but for some reason, after only a handful of steps, she found herself looking over her shoulder, back to the girl as she was already leaving.
She was tempted to follow her.