Magic Hunt at MFing Aokigahara

[disorder_heaven]

The fact that Urushihara had a keen eye for patterns and trends was one of his less appreciated skills. As one of the war generals in Demon King Satan's army, it made his division highly feared and nearly unstoppable.

Here, it had gotten him something more along the lines of a snarky comment from Ashiya. "About time," or something like that. Hard to tell. Urushihara hadn't really been listening.

Either way, upon Urushihara's elaboration regarding the Suicide Forest, Ashiya had grown more and more uncertain. Eventually comments about warning signs and body sweeps deteriorated into snide remarks about cell phones failing to work and the pitch blackness that came with noon.

A bowl of miso soup full of something-whatever beta took care of the bitching, but Ashiya managed to come out of the bathroom just long enough to lob a thick volume of Maou's favourite manga at the back of Urushihara's head. So, when Maou returned home from his long, hard day at MgRonald's, it would be to the sight of Urushihara on the ground and Ashiya in the bathroom groaning dramatically.

Just another day at the Devil's Castle.

Comments

[disorder_heaven]

It was hardly as though Urushihara didn't like MgRonald's. In fact, he was quite fond of it. However, by the time Maou got the already leftover food home, it was cold and soggy, the fries inedible and the bun hard and the lettuce wilted.

That was fine now and again, but lately it had been the only real consistency in Urushihara's diet.

He got up, leaving the food and moving to the closet. He didn't have many clothes, but going to the forest in shorts seemed stupid. He slipped out of them to change into his jeans, mumbling.

[mickeyd_emon]

It was moments like these that made the lockers at MgRonald's rather convenient. Maou was already dressed for the occasion.

He chomped on the stale burger as he waited for Urushihara. Once the pair was grabbing their shoes, Maou called out to the bathroom. "Ashiya, we're going out. There's food on the table; don't let it grow any mushrooms or anythin'."

The bathroom doorknob jiggled, hesitated, then stopped. A fresh series of groans and faint grievances followed, which Maou took as an answer. He stepped out.

[disorder_heaven]

Urushihara needed to exert his holy magic more often. With a devilish smirk that he kept to himself, he left the apartment, slipping into his sneakers on the way out. It was only when he could lean on the washing machine that he felt he was truly out of earshot of Ashiya.

"I want to go out to eat after. That's my condition."

[mickeyd_emon]

"After?" Maou's brow rose. It was such a small request. After centuries of knowing Lucifer, he's come to expect certain types of demands from him. If he was ever in the mood. Not that long ago, it would never have been that . . . benign.

He supposed the way it was now, it couldn't be anything else.

A finger scratched his cheek. "Sure, I guess we can do that. That mean ya don't need anythin' before?"

[disorder_heaven]

"Nah. I already ate. In fact, I made the household lunch while you were out."

He smiled.

"Shall we, sire?" And, shoving his hands in his pockets, he made his way down the stairs.

[mickeyd_emon]

Maou squinted at Urushihara's slumped back. Little Too-Much-Effort hermit, making lunch? That smile, and the vibe Maou was getting . . . There's something fishy about it all, and Urushihara hadn't had any fried fish. Maou was missing something.

Breathing out a light huff, he headed after Urushihara. One problem at a time.



In much too short a time, Maou and Urushihara stood before Suicide Forest. The signs professing the wonders of life or whatever weren't far, but Maou didn't need them to sense the darkness beyond. He stared at the treeline, dread tickling at his chest. He wasn't sure if it was his own or the forest's.

"Right." he said, decided. "Ready?"

[disorder_heaven]

"Do we have to do this?"

Urushihara's whine was about average-level bitchiness. As much as he was prone to complaining, Maou wouldn't be able to help but notice that he seemed fairly relaxed. In fact, he seemed more than relaxed. He seemed to be ready for anything. He had straightened his posture, his arms crossed rather than at his side with hands in pockets.

His eyes, pupils slitted, were on Maou.

[mickeyd_emon]

Maou glanced at Urushihara. Every line of his features were determined, red eyes sharp as they always were before leading his army to war. He could feel Lucifer's eyes on him as if they were a tiger's spotting its trainer for weaknesses, and he cast off any sign of such like an old cloak. It was a glimpse of the Demon King Satan.

He turned to Urushihara and beamed, slipping his hands into his own jeans pockets. "Yep! Think of it as a really messed up field trip. We're even gettin' food after."

He headed for the trees.

[disorder_heaven]

As expected, Maou had read him correctly. Even if Urushihara himself didn't realize it, he looked to Maou exactly as Lucifer had looked to King Satan. Getting out the apartment had done him some good, though he'd never admit it out loud.

He followed, his feet making no noise on the soft litter of the forest ground. In fact, even as he passed Maou's side and walked deeper into the forest, where the light failed to filter as heavily through the trees, neither leaf nor twig so much as snapped under his sneakers.

He spoke a moment later.

"This is weird."

[mickeyd_emon]

"Really weird," Maou grumbled. His tone wasn't taking the situation seriously, but the muscles in his back were tensed for a fight.

The waning light only heightened the shadowed tails of anguish and fear that slunk through the patches, leading back to some greater source. Already, the tips slithered toward the two demons, a dark aura building around them.

"It's like the dark's so hungry it's friggin' eating our words," Maou said, sticking an irritated pinky in his ear. "How deep do they usually go? The humans, I mean."

[disorder_heaven]

"Donno." Urushihara's eyes were fixated on the forest as he walked through. Already there was a good deal of litter, trash and bits of other things. A broken shoelace. A sweater someone had dropped. A flashlight with, he assumed, a dead battery. "From what I could find, there's less of this human debris after about a kilometer in. Which is somehow scarier."

He glanced around at it all as he walked, tense. He was no masochist. In fact, he absolutely hated pain. However, the burning in his back was familiar and not unpleasant.

"Look. It's like one in the afternoon and it's already so dark up ahead."

[mickeyd_emon]

"No kidding," Maou muttered under his breath. "Much farther'n it really will be totally pitch black." The burning in his gut was more like a broil. Urushihara may have delighted in the feeling of human misery flowing directly into him, but Maou hated it. The knowledge of where it came from only served to piss him off.

Which meant, of course, that he'd exaggerate his cocky attitude to make up for it. Maou grinned sharply.

"I expect beyond that kilometer, we'll find somethin' good."

[disorder_heaven]

Really, Urushihara wasn't too thrilled with the emotion he felt flowing through his veins like lifeblood itself. He reveled in human fear, fear caused by him, who had suffered so much because of humanity. For him, it was vengeance.

This kind of despair was hard to take joy from.

He rolled a shoulder back, trying to alleviate the pain building in his spine. His posture grew lazy again, his hands stuffing into his pockets as he walked hunched over.

"I'm hoping so. Just keep your ears open for any sort of buzzing noise. It's giant hornet weather and I hate those things."

What he also hated was the sight of a human body, long-since decomposed, clothes caving in on the breaking skeleton. It was at the base of a tree, beneath a broken branch. Urushihara expected the human had hung themself there, long ago. He drew no attention to it, but kept his gaze firmly ahead.

[mickeyd_emon]

"Yeah, yeah . . ." Maou's flippant mumble trailed off as his eyes settled on the body. His hands in his pockets, he stayed in steady step with Urushihara, thoughtfully gazing at the bones as he passed.

The Demon King has killed innumerable humans, but he had never before thought of what was left behind. What was on this body? Identification, a Relax Bear wallet? Or did they dump it all along the way, with the rest of the trash in that forest?

Maou liked quite a few humans, and he wanted to protect them and their world. But he'd never understand them.

"Hey," he said, turning his sights forward. "Whatever's the source o' this magic? We're taking it all. And we're absorbing every single bit o' the despair in this forest."

But his lack of understanding didn't mean he wouldn't try to help.

[disorder_heaven]

"And what then?"

Urushihara wasn't sure what to do after they left the forest, or even what to do if they found a power source. As they walked, the forest seemed to get darker, heavier, more oppressive. It was as though the lack of light was a physical thing, pressing down on them like thunder that was not yet ready to break.

It touched on another issue he'd been playing with.

Maou loved this world. He talked about protecting the people in nearly the same breath that he spoke of conquering the world. If they got their magic back, what happened? Was going back to Ente Isla really an option on the table? If they got their true forms back now, what would happen upon them leaving the forest? Maou could hardly go into work in his true form, and Urushihara's wingspan was greater than the width of their apartment.

[mickeyd_emon]

"Then . . ." Maou's eyes drifted to the ground ahead of them, as if it held a clue as to where he was going. Sadao Maou was a contradiction, a conglomerate of desires and aspirations from two different worlds, literally. He could easily consolidate these various wants within himself, but once they required spoken words and actual sense, it wasn't so easy.

Rather than look to the weight of the dark canopy like he might otherwise, he turned to Urushihara, smiling. "Then we save it for a rainy day. I got way too many shifts this month to bail now."

[disorder_heaven]

"Yeah, and how're those shifts gonna work out if you're two and a half meters tall with horns scraping ceiling tiles into the fryer? Or are you gonna stretch hair nets over your legs, Satan?"

He rolled his eyes, continuing to walk a pace ahead of Maou. Occasionally, his gaze still flicked to the ground, watching for roots or body parts that might have ensnared their feet. However, as they went deeper in, the litter and abandoned bits of life grew fewer, until his keen senses could only detect egg shells, burrows, leaf litter and a dead nestling or two at the bases of the trees.

Still, there was definitely some force in the forest that made him feel twisted up inside. His heart was in his throat, and suddenly he stopped, waiting for Maou to reach his side.

[mickeyd_emon]

"Hey! I could shave."

Maou trekked after Urushihara, sulking. His positivity was being shoved down like a soggy pile of leaves, and Maou pushed back. There had to be a way to switch to their less conspicuous forms without spending all their magic. He just had to figure out how within the half hour it took them to beat whatever made Maou's breath hitch as he stopped beside Urushihara.

"Hey. What's . . . What's wrong?"

[disorder_heaven]

"Shave your legs and slip your hooves into sand...als..."

He glanced back at Maou, then ahead. There were no sounds from the outside world in this dense forest, but still, not a single sound seemed to do much besides warn of danger. Every sharp bird's call and quick rustle of leaves made the back of Urushihara's neck tingle. Their heartbeats seemed intrusively loud in the woods.

In answer to Maou's question, it became suddenly clear why he'd stopped to wait. If Maou had been behind him, he would have been blown backwards violently, thrown back by the force of Lucifer's wings bursting from his back. His shirt tore open, the shoulders alone holding it to his form. Even so, the trees were so dense that it was troublesome to keep his wings extended. He folded them awkwardly against his back.

"...I'm freaked out, aren't you?"

[mickeyd_emon]

Maou only grimaced at the lone sound of explosive wings in the vacuous space, a brow wryly crushing an eye closed.

"Freaked out?" he started, insulted, before he threw an arm out at the trees. "Of course I'm freaked out this place is terrifying! An' you addin' t' the foreboding atmosphere really isn't helping!"

[disorder_heaven]

"What the hell, man?! My WINGS are freakin' you out?"

Their voices did not echo. That, to him, was even worse.

"Why don't you Power Up and keep us safe from whatever on-Earth-Akuma are around hauntin' our asses?!"

[mickeyd_emon]

"So I've gotta protect us? What, those wings just for show now?!" Maou huffed before continuing, "Ugh, damn, fine. I hate this feeling, so you better be grateful."

He slipped out of his plain t-shirt and tossed it at Urushihara. "Hold on t' that."

[disorder_heaven]

Urushihara held the shirt in front of him between the tips of index finger and thumb, looking miserably at Maou.

"I was so hoping you wouldn't..."

Still, he couldn't deny that this made him relax a bit. It wasn't so much that he was afraid; it was more like, it had been too long since Maou had been... Well, his regular demon king self. Perhaps Ashiya made that line blurry. He certainly couldn't be Lucifer with Alciel around.

Either way, a moment later, Urushihara was pretending not to look. A tree a few feet away seemed very interesting~.

[mickeyd_emon]

"That shirt was ¥700 . . ." Maou said, black smoke streaming toward him like a fire working backwards. "I can't rip it!"

A whorl of darkness gathered around him as Maou drew from their surroundings, and for a moment, light flickered through the canopy. The rare rustle the forest had previously produced stopped altogether, leaving them in brief, total silence.

The shadows faded back into the trees, and the Demon Lord stepped forward. His one viable horn snapped a twig as he moved. He cracked his thick neck and rolled a shoulder, making ridiculously bulging muscle ripple.

"Much better," he rumbled. Then Satan looked down at his goat-like hooves and stared. "Aw man, I forgot t' take off my shoes!"

[disorder_heaven]

"You really are an idiot."

Still, there was a hollow feeling in the pit of Urushihara's stomach. He respected Maou, and he was loyal to him. Especially now.

Didn't mean that Demon King Satan wasn't terrifying in his true form. Urushihara stretched his wings briefly and then folded them again, preening without touching them directly.

"Well, there are so many abandoned pair of shoes around that I'm sure you can pick yourself a new pair. In fact, if Ashiya knew how much stuff was just lyin' around out here, we'd probably never be allowed to buy new clothes." His voice was trembling slightly.