Chapter Text
You’d think that being ruler of the underworld would at least have its perks. Sure, most other gods fear you and mortals create the weirdest of religions to try and harness your power but hey, you are at least the ruler of some place.
Yeah no, that’s not what it’s like.
Ever since D died, Shiraori had to pick up the slack. Meido decided to drag her out of all the evil god’s progeny down to pick up the pieces. Seriously, why her?!
Being god of the underworld was boring as shit. It was just an empty void of pure nothingness you could gaze into for hours until someone finally made their way down there. Once that happened, most people were too confused or scared to make meaningful conversation and after a short amount of time she had to find them a new place in the universe, making sure to mind the ‘cosmic balance’, whatever that was.
And the worst part, there was no rest. She had to stay awake 24/7 waiting for new souls to fall down there with nothing else to do. No wonder D constantly tried to get out of work, her job was terrible.
At least Meido trusted Shiraori enough to let her have a little time away from the underworld, usually she just returned to Earth and played video games to quell her anxious mind. Sometimes she laid in the hospital bed D died in when her soul finally fell apart so she could have a proper nap, it’s not like she had time to clean up the place anyways…
But hey, at least she got D’s powers…
No use for them at this point…
Today was once again one of those times when she got a break to let her mind rest. Well, not exactly. She was actually away to check on some of her experiments to regrow D’s soul so they could revive her, since the universe would eventually fall apart if she stayed dead. Shiraori teleported onto her balcony and looked up to see the chaotic carnival-like architecture of the city. It had been centuries since her birth and a lot had happened on Earth since then, but a lot had also stayed the same like oppression, violence, and cruelty.
Well, maybe not exactly.
There was this weird phenomenon that happened if a god died on a planet, the life there would evolve to resemble them. The stronger the god the more influence they had over everything and dear lord were the effects of D’s death catastrophic.
It was unnoticeable at first, nothing seemed wrong until the end of the 21st century when certain populations of humans became far more… D-like. They stopped aging outwardly and experienced less emotions with each passing generation until they were practically a different species. After a certain point they took over the world and began tormenting their predecessors, now known as paleo-humans, like D did with everything that crossed her path.
Shiraori wasn’t a fan of neo-humanity, but they were big fans of her and every one of D’s progeny gods. Had she explained that? No? Well, let’s take it from the top!
She wasn’t the first god to be created from D’s soul, no she was one of the last. At some point her creator got bored and decided that splitting her soul apart and mixing it with various different entities was a good idea. She continued until she died with Shiraori being entrusted with the last pieces of her soul so they could re-stabalize their universe and undo D’s stupidity by reviving her.
Most of the gods D created weren’t the most… stable of people, go figures. Some were even downright cursed, but that was pretty rare from what she could tell.
Shiraori walked back into her apartment, pleased that the neo-humans decided to leave her alone this time and not make another paleo-human grovel below her feet for forgiveness again.
Either way, they would go back to harassing her again sometime but she ignored that for now and walked over to the jelly-like thing at the back of the room. This creature was what she used to store shards of D’s soul when she wasn’t using them, apparently he’d once been a human named Ted at some point but her brother AM had done some horrific shit to him. Shiraori sighed, she’d let him die once D was brought back like he’d begged her to do in one of his few moments of sanity.
She pulled a fragment out of his gelatinous body before patting his head and walking away. So far she’d experimented with two fragments, one which used human faith to regrow and the other she placed inside the soul of a hero from another world. Meido requested that personally as she wanted D to be less of an ass when she came back, they were both hoping that his morality would be at least a bit imprinted onto her.
As for this fragment, well, she had no idea what to do with it yet. Which is also why she was here, to create another experiment and see if it worked. Maybe she could improve its growth rate if she placed it inside a neo-human, they didn’t seem to care about each other so nobody would really mind, right?
Shiraori teleported outside her house and floated over the city… or at least a part of it. While the neo-humans were carrying out their day their city had been carved up and fused with what looked like several other worlds, two of which she recognized.
What. The. Fuck. Happened?!
She was only gone for like, well… She wasn’t entirely sure but it wasn’t that long! Did the humans mess up or was somebody pranking her?! Well, whatever it was, this wasn’t funny! Everything was a mess now and who knows what could happen! The safety of D’s fragments could easily be compromised!
As she was caught staring out into the chaos like she did into the underworld’s abyss, a voice nearly shouted at her from behind.
“Well Shiraori! It’s nice to see you again after you kicked me off the Earth like what, 300 years ago? No hard feelings by the way,” She turned to see, of all the gods D had created the most hyperactive of them all, Caine.
“What are you doing here?” Her voice came out almost entirely as an irritated whisper, even after so much time she wasn’t used to speaking with people like him.
“I was just passing through when the world got all jumbled up and now I can’t seem to find anything! Then I saw you, my dear sister, staring out at the world just as confused as I was-” She wondered if he would go on forever.
Shiraori tuned out his monologue and sighed, this was going to cut some time out of her day. Maybe it was her fault for making him a proper god in the first place so he didn’t go insane like AM did? Or maybe this really was just some cosmic prank…
Yeah, D reviving an old abandoned video game just to trap curious urban explorers and unfortunate souls who pissed her off was totally a prank… And she had to step in to make sure the resident AI system didn’t go mad. And even then he just continued to make those bad adventures but in reality this time which forced her to remove him before he destroyed the world.
“-And I’m sure you have a good idea what’s going on,” Caine concluded, she only noticed just now.
“No, I don’t,” Caine almost bluescreened at her response.
“Well now, I’m sure we can figure that out… I promise not to make a mess of things again…” He put his hand on her shoulder and she flicked it off, hard pass.
“No, I have a job to do,” She brought D’s soul fragment up for him to view in hope that it would convince him to leave her alone.
“Oh you’re still working on that… But don’t worry Shiro, I have the perfect idea!” He snapped his fingers and suddenly they were over a complex of wires and monitors not unlike the reality she’d seen on AM’s world.
“In the hundreds of years since we last met, I’ve gotten… Better at making adventures, so good in fact that the humans can’t stop playing them!” She looked down at what she assumed were humans, fat and balding people with empty looks in their eyes, all they did was laze about and plug themselves into machines she assumed to be video game consoles. Not one of them looked healthy, they all seemed addicted.
“They look addicted…” Shiraori muttered.
“Of course they are! Addicted to fun I must say!” She nearly glared at him as he celebrated, this was just a common problem with him. D built him to be dysfunctional and not understand humans properly so that’s how he was, thinking that this was okay.
She snapped her fingers and brought them back to the neo-human city, not wanting to deal with him but knowing that he wouldn't leave her alone.
“You can accompany me, but behave yourself,” Shiraori opened her eyes and gave him a grave stare, one that went completely over his head.
“Oh really? Thank you so much Shiro!” He grabbed her hand and shook it as hard as he could, the shockwaves pulling throughout her body and dizzying her.
She pulled her hand away and began to float to a nearby mountain. Maybe she could get some useful info out of Caine after all, but he was still too much for her.
This would be a long visit…