[3rd POV]
Six Devil Hunters from the Devil Extermination Special Division 4 were dispatched.
Aki Hayakawa, Himeno Kobayashi, Kobeni Higashiyama, Hirokazu Arai, Power the Blood Fiend and Denji the hybrid.
"I can't believe they already sent us to another mission only two days after we killed the Bat Devil," Hiro complained as the squad stood in front of the hotel.
"That's the Public Safety Commission for ya. They work you until you are bedridden..." Himeno said, "...or dead,"
"I thought being a Devil Hunter in the Safety Commission would provide lots of privileges compared to other jobs. Paid leave and vacations," Kobeni said, her body language timid and her voice still shy.
"Compared to other office workers, yeah. But in one job you risk your life, while in the other, you just work in the safety of your table," Himeno shrugged.
"But some people among us seem eager to work," she said, eyeing a certain duo.
"I'm not eager," Aki said with a straight face, holding the Gun Devil piece by a thread.
"Jin said he's going to buy me dirty magazines if I complete this mission. JAV tapes if Aki said I did a great job," Denji said with a perverted grin.
"You can just go to his house and steal his tapes instead of risking your life," Himeno suggested like a devil, "I heard he lives next to your apartment."
"Done that already. He doesn't have them," he said.
Himeno blinked in surprise, "Seriously? Not even dirty magazines?"
"That's a breach of privacy, Denji," Aki commented with a sigh.
"Nope. Not even magazines," Denji confirmed with a nod.
Himeno quickly turned towards Aki and looked at him intently.
"What? I don't have them either," Aki said quickly.
"Oh, I'm pretty sure you don't," Himeno said. More than a year of trying to pull him in that direction to change their relationship didn't work, so she was pretty sure Aki was not too interested in those things.
She tried after he became legal, mind you.
"It's him I'm worried about. Should I add him to the list with Makima?" Himeno said with a tilt.
Aki furrowed his brows, "What list?"
"Never mind. I'm adding him," Himeno said, straightening up.
"Obviously, she's talking about a list of scary people. Humans are so dumb," Power said with an exaggerated shake of her head.
"Although I can't decide who's scarier," she said, prodding her chin.
"Let's go, we are wasting time," Aki said, leading the squad inside the hotel.
The lobby of the hotel was awfully quiet. The inside of the building seemed like a different world. It was so quiet that they could hear each other's breath.
"Makes me want to leave immediately," Himeno said, looking back at the door to see if the exit was still there.
"Creepy, creepy, creepy," Kobeni mumbled, tightly holding onto Hiro's arm.
On the other hand, Denji walked ahead with his hands locked behind his head and with an almost bored expression. His tie hung crooked, his shirt wrinkled as if he had slept in it, which he did.
Power followed close behind Denji with almost the same expression and posture. These two oddballs did not give a single fuck about the atmosphere.
Aki and the other humans followed their lead. They climbed up the stairs, leaving the lobby and walked through the narrow corridors of the hotel.
"Shouldn't we check the rooms?" Hiro asked.
"We'll do that after we check every floor. The devil would probably show itself first without the need to search. And if it doesn't, we will start checking the rooms more closely," Aki said.
The squad continued to go through the building floor by floor. They did not take the elevators and instead took the stairs to get up the floors.
"I want to drink some blood," Power said casually after a long silence. Aki was honestly impressed that she was silent for that long.
Jin had told her to behave before they set out for this mission and she had been following that order so far. But it seemed that it was going to expire soon.
"Can I drink your blood?" she asked Kobeni, who stiffened immediately.
"No you can't," Aki answered for her.
"Don't try to boss me around just because you are buddies with him." Power barked at Aki, but quickly dropped the subject by huffing and walking faster and catching up with Denji.
"Your roommates seem fun. I heard the Blood Fiend also started living with you," Himeno said, walking beside Aki.
"I don't want to talk about it," Aki said in a tired voice, "At this point, I don't know if I'm a Devil Hunter or a babysitter for Jin."
Himeno laughed and nudged him with her shoulder.
"It's good that you are getting experience before the real deal. I like patient men," Himeno said with a teasing smile,
And much to her surprise, Aki blushed.
Which in turn made her blush because her teasing never worked on him.
The two continued to walk awkwardly, both of them questioning what just happened. Hiro saw all that from the back and had a sour face. He had a crush on Himeno too, like almost every other man who saw her.
The squad continued to move forward, slowly climbing up the floors until they reached the eighth floor. That was when the group suddenly stopped because of a sound.
It sounded like footsteps, wet and slow.
They quickly noticed one door opening in front of them in the corridor.
"Stay sharp," Aki said, quickly pulling back Power and Denji who were at the front.
A few seconds later, something walked out from the door.
It was a head.
A head with feet instead of ears.
The head turned towards them, and suddenly, it jumped straight at them.
"Caught you!" Himeno said, bringing her hands up in a grabbing motion.
An invisible hand, unseen to the eye, materialised in front of the head and caught it mid air.
Power moved, quickly cutting her palm with her claws and making a sword with her blood. She blurred, cutting the head in half while it was stuck in the air.
"Got it!! Hahahaha! The glory is mine!!" she immediately celebrated.
The separated head continued to float in the air. Aki approached with the Gun Devil Piece in hand.
"Is that our devil?"
Aki shook his head, "No,"
Himeno dropped the devil on the floor.
"How the hell did you do that?" Denji, this time, was smart enough to question her.
Himeno then explained how she had a contract with the Ghost Devil. In exchange for giving it one of her eyes, she could use the hand of the Ghost Devil.
"Cool," Denji said, "Do you think I can get a contract like that too?"
"Making contracts with a Devil always comes at a price," Himeno said while pointing at her eyepatch.
"That's not a problem. I've sold my eyes before, too. And my balls," he said.
Everyone was speechless.
The squad continued to move forward. They walked up to the next floor and found nothing there as well. But when they reached the stairs leading up to the next floor, Hiro noticed the oddity.
"Wait," he said, eyes narrowing. "Didn't we just go up the stairs from the eighth floor to the ninth?"
Aki turned slowly, scanning the walls.
A sign read: FLOOR 8.
"This is floor eight too," Hiro said, a bead of sweat sliding down his temple.
Silence settled over the group. Hiro may be the first to voice it out but everyone was pretty sure they were on the ninth floor.
Hiro exhaled sharply. "No. I'll go double check."
He turned and began descending the stairs alone.
The others watched him go, his footsteps receding until they vanished entirely.
Seconds passed.
Then more.
Hiro reappeared at the top of the other stairs.
He paled when he saw the squad.
"…What?"
Kobeni stared, her legs stricken by fear now. "Arai… didn't you just… go down the stairs?"
At that point, everyone kinda knew they fucked up.
"Kobeni," Himeno said gently, "...make double peace signs and stay completely still."
Kobeni obeyed instantly, fingers shaking as she held the gesture in front of her chest, eyes wide and unfocused.
Himeno ran down the stairs as well, her footsteps echoing until they stopped. A few seconds later, she appeared behind Hiro at the top of the stairs.
She looked at Kobeni, still holding the double peace sign.
Now it was undeniable.
"Shit," she exhaled in a humourless chuckle.
Aki moved next, opening the door and entering the room on their left. He quickly ran across the room in search of a window.
"Why is there a room behind the window too…?" he asked himself and jumped out of the window to enter another room.
When he walked across the room and opened the door, he exited from the right room of the corridor. Kobeni and the rest of the squad were staring at him.
"I was afraid of this…" he said with sweat rolling off his side.
Each room connected to another, looping endlessly, identical down to the placement of the picture frames and the crease in the bedspreads. Doors led nowhere. Windows led inward.
And the floors were also looped endlessly.
"We're trapped inside the hotel," Aki said, finally confirming the fears of everyone.
Kobeni breathed loudly, so loudly that everyone turned to her. Her eyes rolled and then she collapsed on the floor.
..
..
///////////////
(A few hours later)
The squad stayed inside one of the rooms on the floor. They had tried many things in the last few hours, and now they had all gathered together in shared despair.
Aki stood near the wall with his arms folded. He spoke calmly to the rest of the members. He knew that as the leader of this squad, he had to set the morale for everyone.
"We can't use the elevators," he said. "We can't get outside through the rooms or the windows. We tried breaking through the ceiling and had the same result. The eighth floor is above us too."
"No matter how many stairs we climb up or down from the eighth floor stairway, we always end up on the eighth floor. This is almost certainly a devil's power."
Denji was lying on the bed and staring mindlessly at the ceiling.
"Maybe it's the devil Power killed. Maybe it used its power but she killed it before it could undo it," he said.
"You said to kill it!" Power snapped suddenly, "You said to kill it!"
"Liar!! Why do you always lie!! Lying Devil," Denji snapped back.
"Devils' powers are undone when they die. So that's impossible." Aki said, stopping them from arguing further.
"This is the first time I've seen a devil do something this elaborate," Himeno said, she was sitting on the other bed with Kobeni on her side. The poor girl needed someone beside her, or she'd have another panic attack.
"…Won't other devil hunters come rescue us?" Hiro asked in a defeated voice while sitting on the floor, his back resting on the bedframe.
"Right! Jin can come save us, and everyone will be okay." Denji said, sitting up in bed, "I don't know why everyone is so worried."
"All the clocks in all the rooms were stopped at 8:18," Aki said, pouring water over their spark of hope "And I can't summon the Fox Devil's head."
"The eighth floor seemed to be a completely isolated space or dimension where even time had stopped. In which case....help may never come,"
Silence again.
"Ahhh!!! All this thinking is hurting my brain. I'm just going to sleep. Wake me up when you figure something out," Denji said and lay down on the bed.
Under the silence and everyone's eyes, he fell asleep in seconds, even snoring shortly after.
"I think he has a point," Himeno said, "There is no reason to panic. There is still food left behind by the guests. We have plenty of time to figure something out."
Everyone took her words to heart, calming down, especially at the mention of available food.
And so.
A day passed.
But even after 24 hours, they couldn't figure out anything. Time was frozen inside the hotel, meaning that while a whole day had passed, it hadn't even been a single second in the outside world.
Morale took a hit.
Despair began to colour everything once again after they emptied half of the food available. To make matters worse, Power ate all of the remaining food when no one was watching.
Now there was no food.
There was no escape.
The squad regrouped in a room once more. Kobeni and Hiro were affected the worst by their situation. They had long since stopped trying to escape, instead they curled up in the bed, rolled into a blanket while letting their mind get the better of them.
Aki was still calm and constantly trying to find ways to escape.
Himeno had experience under her belt and she watched over the others. Power and Denji were still unbothered enough to bicker about Nobel Prizes and some shit.
"Himeno, give me a cig," Aki said, coming into the room after another hour of scouting the endless loop of the floor.
"This is my last one," Himeno said, a half finished cigarette in hand.
"Then give me that," Aki said.
Himeno put the cigarette on his lips. He took a long drag that finished the remaining tobacco in one go. He released a cloud of smoke, his mind becoming a little clearer and his worry lessening.
"Okay, we have a problem," Aki began, "The Devil we killed is not dead. And it is growing bigger."
That got everyone's attention.
Normally, that would be horrible news but in their situation, it sounded like hope. Perhaps if they killed this devil, they could escape.
So the whole squad left the room and walked to the corridor where they first encountered that head devil.
"Okay, that's ugly even for devil standards," Himeno commented.
What came out from the opening door was a mass of flesh. It looked like human bodies crushed together like mashed potatoes. You could see what looked to be arms, legs, heads on the mass of different coloured flesh, as if they were not completely crushed.
The colour of the devil was of different corpses decaying. Some were pale, some blue, some purple and a few black and white decay with maggots.
The smell was horrendous as well, causing everyone to pinch their nose.
The mass of flesh weiggled.
Then it spoke.
They spoke to be exact, each face on the goo saying one word.
"Foolish,"
"Humans,"
"Trapped forever,"
The different faces spoke different words. But they were said in a way that sounded like they were the final words of a dying man.
"No escape,"
"No hope,"
"Despair,"
"Despair,"
"Despair."
Hiro and Kobeni were immediately affected while Himeno and Aki hardened their eyes.
"Let's make a contract, humans," the devil spoke after a long chain of incoherent words and mumbling. The voice was clear now.
"Give me the human named Denji, and I will release all of the Devil Hunters trapped inside the hotel,"
"All you have to do is give me the human Denji,"
"Give me,"
"Feed me his heart,"
The squad looked among each other, sharing odd gazes. Unlike in the canon anime where a few people actually attacked Denji and tried to sacrifice him, this time no one made a move.
Why?
"He was right," Hiro said, his dark circles and pale face visibly improving. "The Captain was right, it did really ask for Denji's heart."
Jin, remembering the events from the anime, had warned his members about some things so as to not cause unnecessary drama.
His prediction also brought a sense of control back to the squad. As if this was not some horrible accident but something that was within expectation. You can't despair from something you expect.
....
"And when any devil asked for it, don't give each other up," they recalled Jin's words, "In this dangerous job, Devil Contracts are not your greatest weapon. It is each other. Ape together strong," he made a weird hand gesture. No one understood the reference much to his disappointment.
"Okay, just go. Leave me to cringe alone,"
....
The squad looked at each other and nodded, coming to a mutual understanding.
"The answer is no," Himeno said with a smile before reaching out her hand and then making a fist.
The Ghost Devil's hand moved and tore off a chunk of flesh from the devil. She repeated this motion countless times, tearing out chunks of the devil and making the corridor flood with human blood and devil blood alike.
This time.
They weren't turning on each other.
...
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Author : This was a large chapter that is almost excaly like the manga. I add this because like I've said before, many people who read this haven't even read the manga.
Hence I can't just say. Everything happen like canon and then skip everything.
But to make up for it, easy extra chaptee after 300 stones. We nailed 500 marks easily last week so this is like guaranteed.