Chapter Text
"Apocalypse" is a surprisingly nuanced word. And one that can be subtle, at least at first.
On the one hand, in modern times, it usually means "Armageddon", the final battle of eternity - by definition, not the least subtle thing in the cosmos. And of course, related catastrophes, which are not known for being especially subtle, what with the end of the world and all (or at least, humanity).
But "Apocalypse" has a base word of "revelation" - the sudden reveal of hidden things. So one could say the apocalypse isn't an uncommon event - some, scholars, scientists, and philosophers, crave it. Nurture it. Worship it, for those of an obsessive bent.
Both have an undertone of "cleansing." To destroy all that is evil in the world in its cleansing final disaster, or to purify the mind of ignorance in glorious knowledge.
Both meanings would also soon have a herald in the form of Shinobu Hattori - and fittingly, absolutely nobody would have guessed beforehand.
They would not have guessed, because when the devil found him, he was in a state where armageddon purging him from existence seemed preferable to continuing to exist in a ruin of a life.
I just wanted to help...I just wanted to help...I just wanted to help...
That was his main phase throughout that nightmare of a trial, where even his supposed defense attorney seemed to regard his job at explaining how very, very lowly he was. How he could not be faulted for being nothing but a simple country idiot who didn't know his manners when faced with powerful, proper city folk. When he didn't even know the bald man's name - something about "legal protection of supernatural beings" to prevent double jeopardy if the censors of Yu-Shan, the judges of the gods, decided to pursue an audit. That this was supposed to apply to only other gods was shouted down by said attorney as too expensive to litigate.
Because money apparently mattered when stopping a woman from being assaulted.
So here he was, just staring at the ceiling, trying to figure out where it all went wrong, and his future vanished...
And then he heard the singing.
"Liiiight, shiiines, on the heaven.."
It...wasn't a song that rhymed very well. Or had much of a coherent set of lyrics.
It was, however, a break from the gloom. And the voice was quite pretty.
"The earth, the spirit light, brings, glory and graaace..."
The voice was...silky. Almost serpentine. Not entirely human - but not disquieting. More like a reminder that there was more than just this awful, banal people that left him to rot because it inconvenienced some rich man to fall on his face.
"May iiit, op-en your eyyyes..."
Desperate to see that break, he did, spinning to the front of his cell-
There was a mermaid in the prison.
There was a great green fish-woman sitting on the air the middle of the prison, petting a crab as she sang.
"Shaan-tiii, shaaan-tiii...Oh?" The mermaid looked up with pure black eyes, alien and yet soulful. "...did you like it?"
For a moment, Shinobu could do nothing but...stare, at the absolute absurdity.
A mermaid asking a prisoner if he liked her song when she woke him out of a depressive spiral with her singing.
Then, a bit of his knowledge of fairy tales came back online, and he decided to give her what she was asking for lest he be rude. "Ahem! I mean...the voice is nice, but I don't think it...translates that well into Japanese..."
"Mm. No it doesn't. It rhymes in Old Realm. Thank you for your honesty, though, Hattori. And before you ask," she said, raising a green hand. "Yes, I know your name. It is the nature of a messenger to know who she must find."
Shinobu, if anything, was even more confused now. "A...messenger...?"
"Mm. To start with - I am a demon. A demjen, known colloquially as a quickener of ore for how we can create other demons from metal - our chalcothetes." She held up the crab, revealing it to be not made of chitin, but extremely well-fitted metal, like an art piece had come to life - but with eyes that twitched and looked around like a curious animal scanning its environment, rather than some automaton. "You are aware of what it means for a demon to be going about their duties, generally?"
It wasn't patronizing or gentle. It was simply matter-of-fact - a descriptor of being. Shinobu understood.
And he wasn't having it. "...No. Tell your summoner that no, whatever he wants, I am not letting him use me as a dancing monkey just because I look like I'm easily manipulated. My life may have been ruined, but I know what a recruiter for a malevolent cult looks like a mile away. I'm a delinquent - not muscle for some two-bit sorcerer somewhere looking for suckers to throw between him and his rivals."
It came out a little harder than he wanted
The demjen seemed taken aback - but hardly put out.
In fact, she seemed...mildly impressed.
"Actually...not quite. In fact...that will is part of why she called me forth for this duty." The demjen sat up. "Would you like to meet her?"
Before he could respond, the demjen closed her eyes, and turned...slack.
A second later, a glowing red sigil, a hollow circle with an emerald green sunburst at its bottom, appeared in her chest, as she jerked. Like a puppet whose strings were being shaken out to get a sense of its weight. The chalchothete scurried away.
When the demon's eyes open, they had turned red and green too - scarlet sclera and pupil around a green iris.
When she opened her mouth, she did not speak - but she was understood.
Dear child...you who cry out for liberation and enlightenment...Adorjan, the Silent Wind greets you.
Shinobu could tell that if the speaker could actually be heard, she would not sound very much like the demjen. Rather, she would sound...grandmotherly, without being old. The wisdom born of extreme age with the eternal youth of being beyond age and mortality.
When he opened his mouth, the arm of the mermaid quickly flew out to halt. Speak not, please. My hearing is too acute for sound, especially speech - there is too many things to understand. Tone, volume, pitch, the actual information is too much. But I see your heart, for it is ours. Your sorrow and the apathy of Heaven called the Coadjutor - she came.
Shinobu cocked his head in confusion and trepidation.
Tell me, child, have you heard of Solar Exaltations?
The Chosen of the Unconquered Sun, Shinobu recognized. The heroes found by the free-floating Third Souls made by the King of the Gods, Sol Invictus, Lord of Light and Virtue. And more or less the reason why things were never allowed to be boring, especially in the spirit world of the Wyld, the divine city of Yu-Shan, and the Underworld.
And tell me...did you know you almost became one in that trial, but that idiotic coward you called an attorney stopped you?
The prisoner's jaw dropped.
Part of him knew this could be a lie - a deception by someone who had an axe to grind against the Sun. Sorcerers, especially, were known for chafing against his decrees and rules, since they limited the power of high magic.
But at the same time - the Wind seemed too...sad about it. There was spite, almost certainly - but also empathy. Nothing could be heard of her except her feelings - and that made it impossible to lie. If she even wanted to.
The flaw in the process - those Exaltations only go to those who have already proven themselves of heroic drive and goals. But heroes are defined by actions, not just virtue - and society often does not allow actions from those it would rather not have as heroes. Now there was anger there - anger with the same compassion, the same sadness, a hatred of anything that would prevent self-actualization and freedom. Through no fault of your own, you failed a test you had not a single chance of knowing you were being measured by - one that, in salt upon wounds, was caused by you spitting at one who had already succeeded that test.
And if Shinobu could speak, he would be utterly silent at that revelation.
Not just because the Wind could not lie - but because of how much sense it made.
The anonymity. The moral outrage of his prosecutors. The bald man's incandescently furious and disbelieving reaction, as if he could not comprehend Shinobu had, quite by accident and his, left him to take a bloody spill on the ground.
Like a mortal overcoming a god without trying. Or in this case, an especially powerful demigod.
I see it in your eyes - you see why we meant him to be a protector of Creation, not its ruler, the Silent Wind continued, bitterly. To judge who is worthy based on their best is no deeper than to condemn based on worst. That man has genuine love in his heart for this country - but only because he is from it. He is everything that forced the hand of the Chosen of the Stars and Chosen of the Elements to bring the Good Death to the First Age, and he was from before his Second Breath.
Shinobu just...stumbled back, and fell on his prison bed.
And then he realized what she just said about "we meant him", and its implications.
You shed ignorance quickly, the Wind felt, approvingly. Yes, we Yozis, the ultimate originators of the beings your kind calls 'demons', were the firstborn rulers of Heaven, the bringers of order and truth to the Wyld, who made all things in Creation from the given flesh of our sister Gaia. Primordials, we were called in the Ages before the First - and the Titans. But the Celestial Incarnae, the Sun and his family, grew wroth with us and our mistreatment of humanity - a species we had made as models for things that held our interests, but they grew fond of for their sheer refusal to give in despite being the bottom of the sentient order. I do not condemn him - when I was still the River of All Torments, my obsessions bound me as much as it did humans. But I admit to a grudge for how he sealed us away when he defeated us - ripping open the flesh of our planet-sized King Malfeas and sealing us and our children within, with the latter being let out only to serve him or sorcerers by Heavenly mandate.
A look of horror came to Shinobu's face, which only increased as he imagined his cell gore-slick and suffering.
I thank you, but it is not so terrible. We Yozis are also living elements of the world - my true form is wind, air, and basalt, for instance. Malfeas is made of brass, stone, and fire - his organs are a great city lit by his living heart, Ligier, the Green Sun, and it is quite livable. But it is still our prison, and so we scheme escape for lack of other things to do - however impossible. We lost, and so we must understand our new selves - but we have also seen our prodigal son's failures, and if we had eyes like yours, they would be blind from tears. To have taken our thrones from us, but proven no better? Even worse? You should be a hero, a king - perhaps an icon of worship to the gods! But look at what his apathy and judgement have made of you - a victim of restraint and dogma, a rock to someone who deserves not the dung on the Sun's boot and received a crown from him, bound in this shanty of a prison that makes our own binding seem like wings that defy gravity itself.
The Wind made her host smile. But it no longer has to be as such. Do you see the mark upon my great-granddaughter's chest? It's a Second Breath - yours. The one you called as the unfairness of the court broke Destiny itself.
Shinobu stared at it, then the host, skeptically.
Hold on to that doubt. In moderation, cynicism is the grease that will prevent shackles of promises from taking hold. But I ask only what you may wish to provide - in our quixotic efforts to escape, we Yozis took 50 Solar Exaltations for our own, quite by happy accident, and we remade them. Better. Less judging, not a crown upon the mighty, but a sword for the weak and the oppressed. What the Coadjutor bares is the Second Breath of a Nadir, the Scourges, the breakers of all chains, who are drawn to the imprisoned to make them uncatchable by all. And it is ready to become one with you - just as she is willing to give of her own existence as an independent being to free you forever.
The feeling grew intense, focused, insistent. Let her do so. Fuse with her, and the Exaltation she bares. Your fury at this unjust fate will become your closest friend, and the Coadjutor your eternal friend, able to speak with all the knowledge of the Yozis. You will embark on a new life, of endless freedom, endless running, endless liberation. A Prince of the Green Sun, equal to the Unquestionable who are our most direct children and rule the surface of Malfeas in our name. We do not promise they will not entangle you in their games, for it is still Hell, and still prone to lethal politics. But to imprison you, ever again - you may have the entire world as your enemy, Shinobu Hattori, a player in an unjust game that seeks to kill you for acknowledging it is unjust and unfair - but first, it must catch you. All we ask, is that you never stop calling out the cards when they cheat, you or anyone else.
Take the sword. Slice through your chains. Take your new shape.
In coming years, Shinobu Hattori, then known as the Joker, the Wisest Fool, and the Zero Who Is Infinity (the demons tried to dub him with more titles, but at that point he had wizened to the honey they provided when tricking others into their lethal political games and deliberate spiteful decadence) would realize how insanely brilliant this was as a deal with the devil, quite literally.
Approach someone who has every reason to hate the world.
Tell them they are justified.
That they are not alone.
And they will have all the power in the world to break what hurt them, if only they will become one with an eternal friend, an Unwoven Coadjutor to speak for the wisdom of the Yozi Demon Kings.
To ask for nothing except to hold on to that hate, and simply try to redirect it in a positive direction - and mean every word.
The Yozis did not entice you into spite and hatred of all gods without nuance or empathy, and to punish humanity for the sins of its protectors, through hidden costs. Exalted of any kind, even Infernal, would fight against it, on the basis of being humans. No, they got into your mind through their generosity, to give you everything you ever wanted and a few things you didn't know you needed, all with comforting words that your spite was justified, everything not of demons was of evil, that the Unconquered Sun was wrong to defend the weakest of sentient creatures over his own creators.
The only manipulation was avoiding letting those they spoke to get in a word edgewise - and at their lowest moment, there was nothing that he could have said in response that contradicted her. Or really, wanted to contest everything he really wanted to hear.
And if he knew all that in advance - he knew, in his heart of hearts, that faced with that extended hand and offer of fusion - he would not have hesitated for a good long minute.
He instead would have grabbed the demjen's hand with both his own, and shook.
For five days, no guard noticed a chrysalis of sea-green scales and living metal in Shinobu's cell, a testament to the power of the Yozis to protect their chosen champions as their body adapted to their new, partly demonic nature.
And when he emerged, as a crow-winged, sharped-tooth specter in operatic clothes and metal exoskeleton over his hands hidden beneath the image of the boy he used to be, he knew that he would die before ever being imprisoned again.
Nothing is more free than flight, after all.