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A loose tile nearly trips her up. Her heart skips, for a second she thinks she does and imagines her laying helplessly as the devil behind rips her up, letting her guts decorate the walls of the apartment complex halls, maybe her brains would be left on the doorstep like a delivery package, maybe her blood wouldn’t be able to washed out of the white decor rug and maybe she wouldn’t be miraculously resurrected, maybe-
“Shut up, girl!” Her thoughts are harshly cut off. Her spitting image with a scar is running next to her. While Asa breathes ragged breaths, Yoru seems to be sprinting with no labour, only a grumpy expression on her face directed right at the panicked girl.
Asa focuses on the present: she’s approaching a crossroads, either she turns right or left and she desperately needs to make space between her and the wild devil trampling on four legs behind her. Her instinct says left.
A dead-end corridor. She will never trust her judgement again.
“Shit!” She squeaks, she has about 10 seconds before she runs into that window ahead of her and there's certainly no option to turn back around.
“I told you to bring a weapon, you're getting too cocky girl!” Yoru makes an uninspiring remark beside her.
A weapon, she needs to make a weapon or she will be ripped to shreds, maybe a door from one the apartments, no, too weak. Oh! Maybe that houseplant. Nope passed it. No, there's nothing, she can’t think.
“Jump out the window!” Yoru made it sound obvious.
“What?!” Asa screams to make sure she really heard right, but they’re on the 4th floor and a height this high would surely kill them.
“NOW!”
Asa wraps her face in her arms in an attempt to protect her eyes. She wants to trust Yoru’s decision, but her mind is racing with about a thousand questions. Will the impact break the glass? How will they survive the fall? Would the devil follow them?
The thrumming of claws scraping off white tiles only got louder as Asa braced for impact. The beast behind her would not stop, she knew that now with her final leap towards her escape.
The glass splinters into pieces. A deep roar smashes through the concrete walls and cracked glass, promptly following Asa’s freefall into the city's smog air.
Everything happened in a nonstop-second of torture, the blast of air, the glass that cut like paper, the claws which pricked her sides like deep-rooted splinters, the crack of her bones like a wine glass breaking on hardwood floor.
Asa lay flat on the main street, intimately next to the devil beside her, who whimpered like a wounded animal. Asa coughed a gargle of blood, her vision black and she could faintly hear the sounds of screaming citizens running from the bloody scene.
“Get up,” Yoru remarks in her mind, her voice is harsh, she’s heaving. “Quick, your shoes.” Asa gets the memo but she’s hardly in the state to move, in her attempt to peel her broken body from the hard concrete, she feels the hard ivory of her bones snapping into place and the cuts littering her body sewing themselves up. It’s inhumane and completely wrong, but she doesn’t take any moment to question as she slowly raises herself off the ground, she can only imagine herself looking like a corpse rising from the dead.
She props herself up against a lamp post and removes her shoes as quickly as she can, wincing in agony, as her body contorts itself to its original form.
She takes in a large breath and stands up straight.
“Shoe sword!” Asa faces the devil rising from the cracked asphalt with a sword in each hand.
-
Denji was furiously captivated by the Chainsaw Man Church’s poster again. Everywhere he goes it seems to follow him. A certain black-haired boy comes to mind. He scowls, every time he tries to not think about Chainsaw Man it still sneaks its way into his life through protests, classmates and these posters, which litter about every alleyway wall he walks through.
Every time he tries to forget about a particular girl, this poster is the prime suspect for mucking him all up again. A million questions fling through his mind all surrounding her, making his head buzz like someone released a jar of bees in his brain. It pissed him off. One question stood out. Why? No. How? No-
“Sick, right?” A short boy with glasses made himself comfortable beside Denji in the alleyway, staring promptly at the posters with him.
“Uh,” Denji is sick with these strangers striking up conversations with him.
“Asa Mitaka is the best thing that happened to the Chainsaw Man Church.” The boy sighed with a little too much fondness. Denji turned to him, brows drawn in confusion.
“Wouldn’t Chainsaw Man be the best thing that happened to the Chainsaw Man Church..?” Denji could feel the heat rushing up his neck right to his cheeks. He wasn’t about to get angry and waste his energy on this rando.
“Well yeah- but she's really pushing the movement and is an amazing devil killer.” The boy began to ramble. “Some say she has a devil contract to help her or is some secret spy from public safety, but I think she's just talented.. ahh what a woman.” He turned to Denji with a lovestruck grin only to be met with an empty alleyway.
Denji couldn’t believe it. Asa, “the best thing to happen to Chainsaw Man Church”, Mitaka. It should be Denji getting this fame, the glory. His legs drag languidly as he makes his way to the main street. It wasn’t very fair. But life was rarely very fair, for him at least. His eyes bore into the ground trying to think of something other than her but only one thing rang around in his mind, Asa Mitaka.
Asa Mitaka.
His eyes make their way upwards as he rounds the corner.
Asa Mitaka?
She’s squaring off a devil 3 times her size, morbidly animalistic with jagged claws coming from 4 muscular legs, long strips of moving flesh protruding from its back which could only be described as tentacles, swirling horns stuck on its ugly head and scales litter its flesh body.
Denji can only take in the scene with an agape mouth and tired eyes. People push past him desperately, nearly knocking the groceries out of his hands. This can’t be real.
Asa is leaping around the devil’s attacks, expertly cutting its ferocious tentacles before they take off her head. A claw to her arm knocks a sword to the ground. She runs to pick it but the devil beats her to it and picks the sword up in its jaws, crushing it into splinters as if it were as fragile as a porcelain doll.
“We need another weapon,” Yoru remarks to herself as she dodges another attack. “I can’t get close without your head being skewered off.”
Asa’s on the sideline as she watches Yoru just barely dodge lethal attacks that would end Asa’s life. It’s almost dreamlike, seeing her own body run around with a nasty scar and swirling eyes battle against a monster. Nightmarish would be a better way to describe it, but she soaks it in, feels the anxiety rush from Yoru to her, a streamline of emotions.
Yoru tucks the shoe sword in her belt and goes to grab at the bow of their uniform, Asa hastily intervenes, “We’re too in public to make any more weapons, there’s crowds gathering!” From Asa’s two weeks of devil hunting she learns that the public is predictable, first they run, then they watch.
When they run it’s a perfect time to create weapons, swap bodies and miraculously heal deadly injuries, but when they watch it only means Asa and Yoru have another thing to worry about.
“We need to move back inside!” Asa shouts running back to the open doors of the apartment complex.
“I know!” Yoru answers her aloud, running shortly behind Asa, devil on her trail.
Denji struggles to comprehend what he saw. He walks carefully over the rubble and destruction the devil and Asa had made in their wake. She can fight that’s for sure, but her skill was… a little bit impressive if he was going to say anything nice.
Though his admiration turns sour as he sees the shocked and awed crowd starting to form, their faces filled with a hope as Asa battles it out with the devil within the apartments. Familiar faces, Chainsaw Man would bathe in the admiration before Yoshida’s strict orders.
An idea strikes him. He drops the groceries to the ground with no care.
He searches the rubble for something sturdy and easy to swing. A loose pipe, perfect. Manoeuvring further into the debris and to the double doors of the apartment, he feels a strong sense of pride and a ting of worry as certain threats come to mind. It’s okay, Chainsaw Man isn’t coming out, Nayuta will be fine.
He walks straight through doors following the heavy footsteps and roaring noises coming from above him. “Maybe Denji can be the best thing to happen to the Chainsaw Man Church.”
A spear. A club. A javelin. An axe. The axe finally lands a critical hit square in the shoulder, right between the collarbone and the right arm, yelping in pain the devil stops to pry it out, giving Yoru a little more time to collect the items she needs to create weapons.
“Where are we going?!”
“The roof,” Yoru makes a quick turn to the stairs, “We’ll ambush it.”
Denji leans himself against the elevator's metal railing. “Where are they?” He thinks aloud, trying to listen to the sounds of action. A large thud and a metal clang rattles the building, shaking the elevator and him in it.
“The roof.” The elevator pings as he walks out the sliding metal doors and a bright red box catches his eye from the corner. He pries open the fire extinguisher cabinet, he’ll take what he gets.
Yoru slams down on the metal door to the roof as she reaches the outside air. Grinning ear to ear, she places a bear trap by the door's foot, a dozen caltrops surrounding it. In her hand, a large rectangular longsword. “Too easy.” She breathes through her nose.
As expected the four-legged devil smashes through the roof's entrance without a thought, stepping on the bear trap causing it to latch into the skin and bones of the beast. It loses balance, its right side falling on top of the caltrops. The beast roars in pain as it stands up, blood oozing from each puncture.
Yoru gives it no time to recover, rushing to swing the sword at its left side, skewering it easily like tender meat. She drags its convulsing body around her, sword still stuck through its bones and pushes it away from the door with a kick, dragging out the sword as she does.
“Give up devil!” She shouts taking in the smell of sick glory as the devil fails to stand up against her. She takes a quick swipe to its right leg, mutilating its already bloody state from the bear trap. The devil thumps flat to the ground.
Using the sword and her own body weight, she flips the devil on its back, leaving its underbelly exposed. A pin cushion for her sword she reckons. She mounts the beast, raising her sword above its chest ready to plummet it in, a smile painted on her face, wind rushing through her hair.
A metal clang rips her attention away, to a blond boy. Denji stands there. Metal pipe in one hand, fire extinguisher in another. Yoru can’t help her consciousness be ripped from Asa’s physical body as Asa takes her place staring dumbfoundingly at the boy.
Denji’s face is unreadable, there’s excitement, fury and what seems to be regret, like it finally hit him that he would be confronting Asa. His ex-potential girlfriend which he stood up without explanation.
Asa’s face is painfully shocked.
“Denji?”
Denji doesn’t move. He can feel a cold sweat coat his hands.
Her face turns from shock to hot anger.
“Denji?! What are you doing here?! Leave!”
He blinks, regaining his thoughts, he came here to slay a devil not talk.
“Nah. I’m killing that devil,” He steadies himself, shifting his body into a position of fighting, he’s not sure of the last time he fought a devil without being Chainsaw Man.
“Huh?!” Her head is swirling with a whirlwind of emotions. She could say a thousand things to him right now, but her tongue is caught in her throat. Could this be a really bad nightmare? She thinks that could be the best outcome right now.
“You can’t take anymore of Chainsaw Man’s credit!”
“Huh??!” She’s now beyond shocked. Asa steps off the devil's body slowly approaching Denji with a furious frown, the longsword dragging behind her with a hiss as it makes contact with ground.
“You don’t get to ignore me for weeks then come up here to-,” She stops, at a loss for words, “What? Kill my devil?!” She shouts, she tries to suppress the spring of emotions building within her, “Ugh, you are so weird!”.
Between the shouting and blind rage between the two, the stirring of the devil behind them goes unnoticed as it comes to a stand behind them.
“It should be Chainsaw Man’s devil!” He retorts back at her. “And I am not weird!”
Thwip. Asa’s eyes turn quickly to her left, a shooting tendril from the beast is about to rip straight through her head. Of course he’d be the death of her.
A rough pain shoots through her, not through her head but rather her chest. She tumbles back taking the blow as Denji pushes her out of the way. She's on her ass as she watches him deflect the attack with a rusty lead pipe. A flush rises to her neck and she quickly rises back up.
A voice in the back of her head directs her to the devil yet to be slain. She wasn’t going to let him get in the way of her.
“Leave now before you get killed.” She stares down the devil with the large sword gripped tight in her hands.
“I’ve been doing this longer than you have." He speaks with such indifference that she can’t even call his... bluff? Either way she takes the statement as a challenge
The devil standing on only 3 legs, steadies itself, it can’t escape, it can barely run, it can only use its tentacle attacks to keep them away. This will be easy. She hears Denji take in a large breath.
He makes the first move, sprinting at the devil while shouting what she would call a war cry from the top of his lungs, pipe and extinguisher in hand.
The devil's fleshy back writhes as a dozen projections extrude from its dank skin and shoots at the two teenagers like whips. Asa uses the exposed ventilation system of the apartments as cover, jumping over and hiding behind them to get the advantage on the devil.
She hears, or for better words, stops hearing Denji’s loud screams and spares a glance, fire extinguisher in his right hand he sprays the extinguisher at the tendrils using it like its shield. It’s laughable, but it works. Asa watches as the devil struggles to find Denji within the makeshift fog screen.
She scoffs under her breath. Whip. Her feet are taken out from under her.
She screams, landing flat on her back, smacking her head off the concrete beneath her, while a shock of pain hits her lungs. She grits her teeth hard, taking in shallow, staggered breaths.
“Focus girl!” Yoru’s voice echoes in her mind. “Let me take the lead!” Asa ignores her, sitting up with a hand on her head, trying to regain her vision. Her eyes fall to Denji, a wild smile and look in his eyes that she’s never seen before, far from his usual sullen expression.
He lets out a small laugh to himself, “I think you should get going now, huh?” He remarks, she feels her face go warm and she wants to rip her cheeks off the bone.
He closes in on the devil, making quick work with the tools he has and smacks the body of the fire extinguisher straight down on the devil’s head. A loud thunk emerges from the contact.
“Don’t be getting flustered now! Get up!” Yoru shouts and Asa can practically feel Yoru’s eyes rolling.
Even with the blow to the head the devil persists, giving all it’s got to slice Denji apart. Denji’s only defence is an extinguisher in the face, blinding the creature.
“Gimme a sword!” Denji demands of Asa. Loosely pointing back to the small sword through her belt. Her remaining shoe sword.
“No!” She starts to make her shots on the devil, missing as she hastily swings the longsword around trying to cut all tendrils flying her way. “Just go!”
Denji responds with only a glare as he tries to hit away the fleshy projections with the metal pipe. They surround him in all directions and for a split second he thinks of pulling his cord. Letting chainsaws rip apart his flesh and becoming Chainsaw Man.
Fighting as himself was fun, the way his heart pumps in his chest and the way his hands go numb, the way he can let go, it felt good but being Chainsaw Man was just… better.
He sprays some more extinguisher to the ground to try to create a smoke screen, but it's not fast enough, he feels tendrils wrap around his left arm, the pipe falls to the ground, and then his right, the extinguisher rolls away.
“Shit.”
The devil’s tentacles pull him back away from it fast enough to give him whiplash, but the tentacles go limp around his arms as Asa cuts them clean off in one large slash of her sword. She takes the smaller sword wrapped around her belt and holds it back to him, not taking her eyes off the Devil.
“If you’re going to be here at least don’t be useless.”
He takes the blade, holds it firmly in his hands and starts swinging. It’s a lot easier to use than a lead pipe. With every tendril Asa and Denji cut off, the more the devil retreats to the edge of the rooftop, trying to make space, but it approaches the edge with nowhere to go.
Denji closes in on the head of the devil as Asa secures the back, ready to finish the beast for sure this time. Without hesitation, Denji pierces his blade through the devil’s right eye, it mewls in agony, as he repeatedly stabs, stabs, stabs. The devil cries out one more roar as it musters the last of its energy to flail its tentacles around, smashing into the vents and across the ground, even itself as it tries to fend off its attackers.
In its last breath, the beast tries to lunge at Denji, but the ground beneath it begins to crumble and crack away, not being able to handle the weight and the force of the devil. The building begins to fall from below them.
Denji lands one more hit into the devil’s other eye, effectively blinding it. Satisfied, he rushes away from the devil, feeling the ground shake beneath him, he didn’t want to be taken with it.
He looks to Asa, still dodging the wild tentacles, flailing in pain as the blinded devil tries to search for anything to latch on to before it plummets to the street below.
She moves to run seeing an opening, but it’s a fate she’s always destined to do. Her shoe caught, stuck on a tiny ledge, she trips. Face flat on the floor. A shrill scream escapes her mouth as she feels her body slide towards the edge of the building as the roof collapses in on itself.
“Girl!” She hears Yoru shout as Asa goes over the edge, she tries to dig her fingernails into anything stable as she goes.
The last thing she sees is Denji’s face, wide-eyed, as he runs from the collapsing concrete beneath him.
Her breathing is loud in her ears, she sucks in air but it barely reaches her lungs. She has one hand on a exposed pipe, her grip is tight, but she can already feel the sweat forming from her hands. Her hand inches down the pipe. Her eyes are fixed only on her hand. She can’t move, she can feel the pipe slowly bend to her weight. Her hand slips down to the end of the pipe and she watches in horror as the pipe starts to snap from its place. It’s tortuously slow, so she lifts her right hand up, reaching for nothing but hope. Asa closes her eyes.
Something rough meets her hand. Callous and strong with its grip, but has an inviting warmth.
She gets the courage to open her eyes. Denji is hanging half his body off the roof, one hand firmly holding on to Asa’s.
“Hang..” His face goes red as blood rushes down into it, reaching out his other hand inviting Asa to take it. She does.
“On!” He swings his body backwards full force, pulling Asa with him onto what’s left of the roof.
They lay there for a moment on the ground together, Denji’s heaving, bangs glued to his forehead with sweat and his face like a tomato. He closes his eyes and takes large breaths through his nostrils.
Asa is acutely aware of how close they are. She can feel the heat radiate off his face and the warmth of his hands linger on hers. And she stares and stares. And stares.
Because they’re so familiar. His hands are too familiar and it’s almost sickening, in fact it's maddening. She wants to pick them up, hold them once more, dig her nails in and scrape her teeth into them because there’s something too familiar about his touch. She wants to scream.
“..Your hands.” She whispers. So faintly but so loud in her ears that it echoes around in her mind and she wants to shrink in on herself. Her face flushes, she can’t help it.
He opens his eyes, there’s a far-off look to them.
“We need to go.” The ever nagging voice makes her appearance. “This rooftop is not stable. You might fall..again.” Salt in the wound.
Asa stands up shakily, twisting her head to take in her surroundings, half the building has seemed to have fallen off, along with the devil, who she assumes decorates the street floor.
She reaches out a hand to Denji, but he ignores it standing on his own. They make their way to the door. He looks back for a moment, not at her but to their broken surroundings.
“Did a number on that devil.” His voice is low, far-off.
“Did a number on the building.” She’s staring right at him, she doesn’t notice until he turns away from her, view, like it’s burning him. He heads straight down the stairs without a second word.
Asa is suddenly put back into her skin as the thud of his shoes dims, leaving her alone at the top of the stairwell. “Hey! Where do you think you’re going?!” She didn’t mean to sound so shrill, so unsure of herself.
A long pause, his sneakers scratch at the concrete of the stairwell landing, half-away away, looking up at her. “Home? I killed the devil like I said I would, that's all I gotta do.” He turns to leave, making his way down the second row of steps. “ Don't have an army of fans waiting for me or nothin’…”
“You don’t just barge in, steal my kill and leave without a word!” Her pigtails flip violently at the back of her neck as she follows him. She stops at the embankment looking down at him, he’s at the bottom of the stairs now, 5 steps away from the exit door. She should just let him go, the exit is right there, they’d never speak again, that's what she wants. Of course it is.
He hesitates to turn around this time, “What do you want me to say?”
She can feel her face go red. “Sorry!” Just let it go. “Say sorry for standing me up you…” Let him leave, “you douchebag!” Her lip begins to tremble and she realises it is far too late to stop whatever is happening.
“I waited for you for so long! -And then you never even came to apologise or even make up an excuse, you just ignored me! I- I.” A hiccup of a sob stops her, a waterfall of tears has unknowingly started to trek down her cheeks. She turns her head to the left, wiping away tears that won’t stop. God, how embarrassing.
Denji is now facing her, he has an expression that one could describe as stressed or upset, Asa could only think of it as caught up in his own consequences. A thief caught in the act.
“I can’t really explain or give you an excuse why I didn't, I just... Just know it's for a good reason.”
Asa looks at his sweat stained face, his grubby hair and stained clothes. His hands, his eyes. She begins to slump to a step, a mellow laugh passes her lips. She rests her head against the coolness of the wall, it feels nice.
“That’s the best you got. You can say you just didn’t like me, it’s clear now you don’t.” Her voice fails not to tremble, but she won't cry again, she can’t, not in front of him.
Denji looks caught off guard by the accusation, he bows his head, now it’s his turn to avert his face. “No I-I did like you. I just couldn’t be with you I-” His voice tethers, his face is scrunched up like a tissue, how can he explain his situation, there’s no way he could.
“I’m sorry.”
Asa is silent. The left side of her face is now uncomfortably cold, she can’t move. Denji slowly makes his way back up the stairs, he reminds her of a stray cat unsure if it should go up to her for food or not. He sits an arm length away from her.
They sit in silence for what feels like an eternity.
“I guess it was for the better, I couldn’t have been with you either," Asa breaks the quiet, she feels bare. She can sense Denji’s confusion, she presses her temple closer to the wall. “I would've…hurt you.” In the silence after, only now she notices the lack of Yoru’s presence, the forever gun to the back of her head.
“I wanted to. I really wanted to be with you.” He says.
“Stop.” Tears threaten to start again, a heavy lump forms in her throat. She hears Denji stand again, his sneakers making way to the bottom of the stairs.
“It was fun fighting with you, if that means anything.” 4 steps away from the door.
She smiles vacantly. 1 step away from the door.
“And you owe me! I saved your life.” Hand on the door knob, his toothy smile on show, it’s jarring. Asa exhales from her nose, rolling her eyes.
“You owe me a date.” She frowns, she didn’t mean to frown. Halfway through the door he stops briefly, but turns away.
“Guess we’re even then.” He’s out the door. It creaks slowly shut, allowing Asa to hear each footstep as he walks away from her. Her wet eyes now sting with the cold, she turns them down to her hands. Her palms are scraped and her fingers are bruised. She squeezes them together, lets her thumbs rub the other. All her thoughts are him.