[1st POV]
"Huh," I blinked, feeling a sharp pain run across my whole body.
I didn't move.
I remained sitting on the roof of the 4th Division building, my legs dangling at the edge. I watched the screen of my phone as my snake hit itself on the tail. That meant game over. The snake was pretty long by then, and I should feel something. I should rage.
But nothing.
Instead of feeling a new emotion, I felt a loss of one.
I put a hand on my ribs, the place where the sharp pain had come. But there was no injury, there was no blood. Only a phantom pain.
Wait a minute.
Did Aki just summon me?
I expected as much.
He really did summon me. I knew he would do that when faced with the Eternity Devil. In the anime, they didn't have any way to deal with it, no other weapons they could face it. They only escaped after Denji fought the Eternity Devil for days and it finally allowed itself to be killed due to the never ending pain.
But since Aki had a contract with me, I expected him to use it.
And if that was the case. If Aki really did summon me.
Then why am I still here?
I stood up on the edge of the roof and looked around at the city. The building was not particularly high, especially compared to the surrounding structures. I spread my senses, my ear ripped off from my head to be replaced with something bigger.
A pig's ear, with vines covering it like some sort of decoration.
My eyes also contracted and crushed themselves inside my socket, replaced by a new set of eyes that looked like a corpse's.
My teeth fell off, my face caved in, before a snout emerged in bloody gore. It was a pig's snout with big nostrils that immediately took in every scent of the surroundings.
It hurts. It hurts badly like always.
But I barely noticed the pain.
Did the summoning fail? I asked in my mind.
I listened for something. Searched for something. Smelled for anything.
Until my phone rang and I picked it up.
"Jin, we have a problem." I heard Makima's voice on the other side.
"Oink," I replied, but no words came out. I shook my head and cancelled the transformation of the pig's snout.
"What happened?" I asked again.
"The Hotel Morino has exploded and collapsed. The current state of your members is unknown," she said.
"I'm heading there right now," I said, getting ready to transform into my hybrid to make my way there.
"That's the reason why I called you. Jin, there is a pig amid the destruction," she said.
I paused.
"What?"
So the summoning was successful.
But I wasn't summoned.
So what the fuck did Aki summon?
Wait a minute.
That feeling of loss.
I looked inside. I looked inside my consciousness and my stomach. I began feeling the devils inside of me one by one. I counted them as I did so.
Six.
There were only six of them.
There should be seven.
A part of me was gone.
Aki didn't summon me.
Well, he did.
But only a part of me.
And the one he summoned is.
I hung up the phone and began racing towards the hotel.
"The Rabies Devil is gone," I said to myself as I ran from roof to roof as fast as I could.
..
..
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[3rd POV]
Rupture.
Space ruptured as the Pig Devil slammed into the ceiling of the eighth floor.
An isolated space. A different dimension.
None of that mattered as the endless hunger punched through space and began consuming the very fabric of reality the Eternity Devil had created.
"NOOOO!!!!!" the Eternity Devil screamed. It was then that it felt the very emotion its existence was built upon.
Fear.
There were only very few things that devils were afraid of. As entities blessed by immortal reincarnation, what they feared most were beings that could take away their immortality or turn that blessing into a curse.
The Eternity Devil felt every loss of flesh. It felt how it was being consumed piece by piece. The reason for his fear was that it couldn't regrow. It couldn't feel what was a loss anymore.
A piece of itself that could no longer be regained, for it was locked permanently inside the stomach of the vessel of evil.
Aki kneeled down in his own pool of blood, the Rabies influenced Pig Devil still connected to him by intestines. It was like he was holding the devil by a leash.
The mass of flesh that trapped them shrunk away, fearfully avoiding the Pig that chased them wherever they went. Its maw growing hungrier and hungrier as it consumed the Eternity Devil.
When the Pig Devil jumped up the ceiling and was not looped back from the floor, they knew that the trap was undone. They were no longer stuck on the eighth floor. The Eternity Devil had spat everything out in hopes of getting away from the grotesque pig.
"Kon!!" Hiro said as the whole structure began to shake.
The Fox Devil was summoned successfully this time. Its large head consumed the whole squad without biting down. It used its head to shield the humans as the Morino Hotel came undone.
The Pig Devil itself was nowhere to be seen anymore, wiggling amid the debris to chase after the Eternity Devil whose main body was hidden in the upper floors.
A large explosion occurred, followed by a tremor that brought the building down.
The humans could not see anything as the inside of the Fox's mouth was only dark. The only thing they could hear was the sound of destruction and something going on a rampage.
...
...
A minute later, the Fox Devil's head slowly faded away.
The squad finally saw the light of day again in the middle of the rubble. Aki was still kneeling down, his whole organs on the floor and his intestines still connecting to the larger beast. His eyes were unfocused, crying blood. His nose was bleeding from both holes, and so were his ears and his mouth.
He looked like a dead body kneeling.
"Ahhhhhh!!" Hiro fell on his knees, clutching his abdomen with both hands. He groveled on the ground in agony the moment the Fox Devil disappeared.
"What happened Arai... What's happening... Are you okay!?" Kobeni knelt down beside him, shaking his body to see if he was still alive.
"I'm okay," Hiro wheezed out, his body bathed in sweat and his mouth spilling blood which hinted at internal bleeding.
"I had to sacrifice a part of my lung for the contract," he said, "It is the cost I must pay for making the Fox Devil protect us,"
Humans were capable of regenerating their own lungs after weeks or months. So Arai would be fine. But at the moment, the pain he felt was unbearable. Like someone touched his liver and ripped part of his lungs with greedy claws.
"Aki. Hey Aki," Himeno remained beside Aki. She gently shook his shoulder, trying to wake him up. His eyes were wide open but you could tell he was not fully conscious.
"Ah, guys. I think we have a problem," Denji said from the side. His torso bare and in his human form now.
Following his gaze, you could see an abomination of a pig standing in front of them. It didn't have proper hide, so its grotesque bones and decaying flesh were exposed. It was big too, around the size of a school bus.
It looked like a corpse of a pig that died to an infection. Its exposed ribs showed a beating heart and working internal organs. And it was breathing loudly, its body expanding and then contracting like its whole body was a beating heart.
Power was behind Aki, curling up to make herself small while peeking at the Pig Devil.
"Don't get close!" Himeno screamed at Denji.
"I'm not!!" Denji said.
But it was the Pig Devil that slowly dragged itself closer to Denji.
"Hey.....Jin... Is that you?" Denji said nervously as the Pig Devil continued to near Denji.
It opened its mouth, jaw splitting into four different parts so that it could eat Denji with one bite and more.
Denji didn't try to fight back and merely shielded himself after falling on his butt. And as the Pig Devil had Denji inside its mouth already, it felt a pull.
Aki pulled at his intestines that connected to the Pig Devil's intestine, stopping it from consuming Denji.
The Pig Devil turned towards him.
"..I-I didn't name him," Aki said, his voice sounded like a bird trying to talk human. It was choked, wet, and almost incoherent.
The Pig Devil closed its mouth before lunging at Aki. Himeno closed her eyes, and so did Power who was right behind.
But the Pig Devil stopped right in front of them and screamed a horrifying shriek right at Aki's face.
But he didn't even budge.
No fear.
..
"The consequence has been paid.
The Pig has been fed.
Return now, to your eternal prison,"
..
The Pig continued to scream as its body slowly dissolved, turning back into the pairs of ribs where it had come.
Aki's organs also moved back into his body, his blood somehow flowing back into his insides. The process continued until the pairs of ribs returned to where they once were, Aki's abdomen.
And then the wounds closed like nothing had ever happened.
Aki finally inhaled a proper breath after all the excruciating pain. His pale face regained color, his faded eyes regained their lively gleam.
"...I don't want to do that again," he said, face full of sweat and dried blood.
Himeno lunged at him and hugged him into the ground.
..
..
[IMAGE]
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