A Rather Monstrous World

Prologue

It is generally believed that when mist covers everything, the world will suddenly turn more mysterious and perhaps a bit scarier. It's one of the rare times that the Underworld emerges and mingles with the Surface, allowing the dead to pay a long awaited visit to the living. However, the most fearsome beings to be wary of at such a time, are not the ghosts of the dead. And that is because there is nothing a dead man can do more than a living one. The beings that truly must be worthy of a human's fear are the beings who are able to do more than he would ever be. Thus, meaning, the Gods or the Monsters.

At the time the change happened, maybe a God was watching. And if he did, he would truly be a merciless God. Neither the one who punishes the evil, nor the one who protects the innocent, he would be the most merciless kind of all; a mere observer, watching calamities unfold with zero interest, passing him by through the course of history just like many others had before.

Because God didn't do anything as the quiet waters of the sea roiled up, embracing something enormous, foreign, akin to nothing the waters of that shore had ever embraced before. He didn't do anything as a man inside the mist sighed and let his warm breath mix with the humidity around him, he didn't do anything when the slow breeze messed a mass of blond hair through his path.

Maybe, maybe if he would have done something, maybe if he hadn't let that something be driven ashore where nothing else of its kind ever had before, maybe it would have all been for the best.

Chapter One

Orihara Izaya was a man of dubious reputation around a quite wide area of his beloved homeland, maybe a wider one than he had originally intended to, but he always had and always would welcome a bit of a challenge. For many people he was a well mannered, kind and ambitious young man who had all the potential to hit it big and deserve it in the future. For others, and this time meaning the unfortunate people who knew him more than a month, he was a prick. For those who had truly picked the wrong end of the stick in life, for various reasons, he was devil incarnate. It was a fact for everyone though that he was working as an informant for one of the most prestigious Yakuza families in Sekai, the Awakusu-Kai, and he was plenty shady as it was.

Izaya himself never bothered with what other people thought of him, unless of course he could use that knowledge to his advantage depending on the case he'd have to face. Regardless of that matter, he loved other people. Izaya loved humans. Not humans as individuals, he had actually never felt true liking or attraction towards anybody up to this point of his life, but he was fascinated with the essence of human nature. He especially loved seeing other people's faces stricken with grief, desperation, agony and emptiness. Causing those expressions was the best drug and most fun Izaya could ever have and someone could say that his profession was modeled after his preferences.

Sometimes it bothered Izaya to think that the human world might be too small. After all, it only consisted out of an enormous piece of earth, surrounded by a seemingly quiet sea, but as soon as a boat would try to step a bit farther away from the usual fishing zones, ridiculously strong winds and wild waves would crush them like tree leaves. There was a story once according to which the wind was so strong that it took a boat along with its fishermen and crashed it right back at some rocks on a beach of the mainland. Basically, the human world, Sekai, as its people were calling it, was only a rather big island. Izaya was wondering from time to time of what might exist beyond the winds but he quickly dismissed the thought, thinking that there were more humans to observe in Sekai than he would ever be able to in his lifetime. Nevertheless, he possessed quite a grand amount of curiosity so the issue was coming back and forth to his head quite often.

Sekai was a quite nice place to live, in addition to all of the above. The people had a rather developed civilization and a moral code that allowed them to live in prosperity. Their meals consisted mainly of rice and fish, men and women were walking around in their traditional outfits, a very elaborate type of robes called yukatas and kimonos respectively, in the center of each village or city, buying jewelry or eating traditional foods and sweets. When night would come, they would use fire lamps to fend off the darkness. They were using horses and carriages for their travels and they had developed a rather artistic style of warfare using blades, specifically swords called katanas and daggers called kunais. Izaya personally preferred to use kunais, they were easy to hide and they suited his personality better. One needed to be able to protect himself when he was working for the Yakuza and furthermore, when his life goal was to make other people's lives miserable.

That day he had traveled to a quite distant village from the city he was living into, due to business. He had a not so interesting human he was supposed to meet, but he still had an entertaining use for him. As he was leaving, his wife, Namie, didn't fail to remind him that it would be better for everyone in this world but especially for her if he never came back. Their marriage was strictly for keeping up social appearances, since both of them were over 25 years old, and honestly, it suited both of them. It was their common secret that Namie had a thing for her little brother, her unforgivable and incestuous feelings being where Izaya could gladly step on and use to make her do his bidding. Surprisingly, though, their characters turned out to be rather compatible. Despite the rough start, they ended up getting quite along. Izaya had a wife as it was normally expected of him even though he didn't want what that would entail and the same thing but for other reasons applied to Namie as well. And of course, sexual intercourse was out of the question from both sides. And even though both knew that from the start, Namie felt the need to remind him every day that if he ever dared to make a move of that kind, she would castrate him with her bare hands. Honestly, it hurt Izaya a little bit to hear that. Almost as much as when she used to threaten him that she would poison his tea, as she would choose the role of the widow over the one of the wife any day anytime.

Izaya thought that he probably didn't hate her as much as she hated him, but he still hated her nonetheless – even so, he often relied on her and confided in her as well so he thought that maybe he could buy her an elegant hairpin when he would be done with his job, if only to just irritate her; this village was near the sea and it was famous for using sea shells for beautiful hairpins. He knew because his twin little sisters, Kururi and Mairu, had told him so while begging him to buy them several. He never especially liked them.

He waited for his peculiar date for no more than five minutes at the village's main street when the other man showed up. He was an ordinary man with an ordinary troubled and full of disdain face. Nothing bored Izaya more than the completely ordinary. "Hello, Kimura-san!" He chirped though, in a tone that only a very trained near him person could have detected as fake. "Sorry for taking all the trouble in coming here, I'm sure that must have been tough!"

"Shut the fuck up, Orihara." The other guy fastened his pace while his face clouded up even more. "You know very well what kind of-"

"Oh yeah, yeah, I know, I can assure you." Izaya interrupted him and his kind smile gave its place to a malicious smirk. "The way you're coming to me so desperate in order to protect your family, nobody would guess you would be the kind of man to have two kids with another woman, ah, but what's life I guess!" Izaya took a dramatic pose while he stuck out his hand and the other man slapped a closed envelope over it, in a moment of unparalleled fury.

"You scum, you do realize into what danger I'm putting myself by giving this to you? I swear, if you dare to screw up…!"

"Uh-uh-uh, Kimura-san, you should be more careful about exactly whom you are calling scum. Though I might not exactly be the perfect being on this Earth either, hearing it from you really loses all kind of spice." Izaya's eyes shone dangerously and perhaps a bit playfully as he slid the envelope inside his dark red, almost brown yukata over his chest.

The other man's eyes scanned carefully the cursed being in front of him. With Izaya being an unexceptionably good looking person, it made him even more hateful to the other's eyes. He was of an average height, rather slim but well built additionally – rumors were saying that he was escaping assassins and other dangerous elements by jumping over from roof to roof or from one tree to another. His skin was unmarred, his eyes were narrow but charming, as the dark brown color inside was always like it was spitting lights, and his hair was short and silky black. His nose was straight and his chin was small, so, even if he was not feminine, neither in his face nor in his manners, he could easily choose to disguise as one. Through his rage, the other man made a not so far from his thoughts association:

"You should be fucked raw right on the ground." He almost whispered it, boiling with hatred. In his eyes, that was what the other guy in front of him deserved; fucked until he pleaded and begged for forgiveness for all of the crimes he had ever committed before, just like now that he was trying to destroy his family.

"Heeh… You say some interesting things." Izaya narrowed his eyes. It wasn't the first time something like that was being said to him, and anyway, he felt like killing some time playing for a bit. "Then, should I say that you deserve your head to blow up right here right now and paint everything a pretty red? You know, just go BOOM-"

Maybe there was a deafening sound, maybe there was no sound at all. The other man's body violently shook as it got trashed on the side, while blood gashed out of the right side of his head. Izaya remained as he was before, staring blankly at the empty space of air where his interlocutor was previously standing. Time had frozen solid and Izaya didn't realize at that point that by the moment it started running again, eons could have passed by. Later he would deduce that this was the sensation when an era leaves you and a completely new one takes its place.

The screech of a woman brought him back from the shock. He forced his head to look down and saw the boring man's body lying down, bathing in blood, and ending to something that previously must have been his head, but now it was just a lump of brains, bones and meat. "Wha…" He barely managed to utter. Surely he thought of himself above all of his other beloved humans, but even he wasn't at a point where he could just wish something and for that something to happen…

And, then, all hell broke loose.

The deafening sound was heard again. This time, the woman near him who had previously screeched, fell down, clutching her stomach and producing a rather incoherent sound. She was sprawled lifeless on the ground moments later, and Izaya saw that a huge hole was suddenly carved through her. Then the sound was heard once again and another passer-by screamed as his left hand detached itself from him. And then many sounds were heard from many directions, mixing with the human screams like the God from above them was playing darts and he was just aiming and shooting on a whim. Izaya just stood there for some moments, while everyone else around him were confused and screaming and running towards any direction they could think of but they had no way of knowing where might have been safe or dangerous. And as the God continued his cruel game and Izaya saw someone coughing up blood and trying to gather his intestines from his slashed open belly, he forced himself to think that if something or someone was really aiming at them and hitting them with something, maybe the wisest choice would have been to take shelter inside some house.

Knowing that there would be no house that would open its door at such a time and that he'd lose valuable time trying to force himself in, he ran towards his favorite and well known back alleys of the village, to thin and dark spaces he knew so very well because of his shady job. The noise was growing even bigger by the second and his survival instincts were telling him that the danger did accordingly. As he was running, he felt multiple times the sensation of something passing him by at enormous speed, something like an arrow but insanely quicker and invisible as well. When he finally reached the backstreets, he hid behind a house's wooden wall and he finally dared to look behind him at the main street. Blood had painted everything crimson and corpses had already started piling up all over the big road. The injured ones who were desperately trying to find some place safe, were also completely blown up some seconds later. It was truly Hell on Earth. Izaya never particularly believed in God but it wasn't like he didn't believe either. After all, knowing that the death was the absolute end, was too scary of a thought. But even with death unfolding in such way right in front of him, the adrenaline running through his veins wouldn't allow him to think about it. He only thought about it the next moments, when the world finally became too surreal to be tolerated.

Creatures started making their appearance down the street. They were all green, carrying big, black sticks on their arms with a very peculiar shape. "MONSTERS! MONSTERS!" Was heard all over the place from the remaining survivors and Izaya cursed them inwardly for not being able to keep their mouths shut, like they were asking to be found. He then wondered if Namie had indeed poisoned his tea that morning and those were just the final hallucinations until he'd find his way towards the Underworld. Maybe a part of him wished for it to be so. The creatures had a humanoid appearance, they had arms and legs and a torso but their head wasn't a human's head. It reminded Izaya of the head of a fly, with two enormous black eyes covering both of its sides and something like a rope hanging from where the nose should be. He could see no mouths.

So… how would those creatures eat them?

Izaya could feel the blood draining from his face. "Hey, hey, you've got to be kidding me, God." He whispered to himself, as a weak and scared smile appeared on his face. "This can't be real, can it?" Even though he considered himself to be a brave man, he had to fight to suppress the tremble that threatened to take over him, and he even had to lean completely over the wooden wall. He wondered how long it would be until they discovered his hiding place. Fear wasn't an emotion he was glad to accept. In fact, he rarely ever felt afraid. Izaya Orihara was a smart and calculating man, and even if he was involved in a rather dangerous business, he almost always had a great percentage of control over each presented situation. But now this was outside every possible calculation he could have ever made. Now this was so… unpredictable.

The creatures started screaming to each other some noises Izaya could not understand. He didn't know if they were just above a level of a dog's barking or an actually eloquent speech. Then they dispersed, knocking down the wooden doors and dragging out the terrified residents. A man managed to escape one and he started running in frenzy away from them. Then one of the creatures barked something at another. That other picked up the weird black stick it was holding and pointed at the fleeing man. A moment later, the same noise as before was heard and the head of the man exploded just like the one of the man's before Izaya had.

Then it dawned on Izaya; those sticks were responsible for the massacre before. So, maybe, if he managed to avoid them, he would manage to escape with his life. The point was to not let a single green creature see him. It was an unlikely bet but it was better than nothing, at least now he could tell the direction of what seemed like the God's fury before. He just needed to hide until they left. Hide? Or get out of the village? How far had they gone? How did they come here in the first place? Where could they possibly be now? There was no way of knowing.

Anyway, it was dangerous to sit just right there. He turned swiftly in order to leave … and bumped right onto something else. In his terror, he had turned to leave very abruptly so the force of the collision threw him backwards and he landed on his backside. Before he could even come around from the impact, the first thing he saw when he opened his eyes was the end of a black stick, pointed straight to his face. He froze from the shock and he could only move his eyes, from down the green legs, up to the big eyes of the fly. He didn't even have the courage to think sarcastically what a wonderful day today was.

Those few moments when he realized he was probably going to die, he suddenly thought about his sisters and that maybe he liked them a bit after all. Together with them, he thought about the only human he was ever able to call a friend, Kishitani Shinra, a quack with unusually high levels of successful healing cases. Shinra was shunned from their home town and left because he had married a woman who was an outcast due to her strange physical characteristics, like the color of her hair and eyes. Izaya vaguely wondered what might have become of him…

Two other green creatures came from behind. Izaya heard them exchanging sounds with the one holding the stick up to his face, then he heard them laughing. He concluded that they must have been speaking, just in a different code. His curiosity momentarily overcame his terror, but that moment quickly passed because he realized that this laughter was a very ominous sign of what was about to happen to him.

His fears came true when the last two creatures from behind seized him from the arms and made him stand up, holding him so strongly that his escape was impossible. The one in front of him then lowered the black stick and guided it towards the ends of Izaya's yukata, at his ankles. Izaya looked at it perplexed until the creature delved it between his legs, inside the clothing, and then slowly pulled it up, revealing from the shanks and up more and more of his skin.

Izaya's first reaction would be to kick it off and he barely restrained the impulse, because he knew that this accursed thing was point right in his genitals from that angle. The laughter grew louder and he threw his head back and clenched his eyes shut in desperation, as they started to reveal his thighs. He knew what was going to happen to him, it seemed very much like what a monster would do. But then he realized that they didn't seem to have any genitals. He slightly opened his eyes to examine them better, something felt off. A very bad premonition came over him, as he was trying to discern the true nature of those creatures. He had never seen anything like that before, so he might have been mistaken, but as he analyzed their forms, his hunch only continued to grow stronger.

Suddenly, a rough hand shot up and grabbed him from the face, the fingers digging inside his cheeks. One of the creatures that were holding him had grabbed him and brought his face near those hideous oversized eyes. Izaya could only breathe heavily and stare back. Perhaps his hunch was indeed mistaken…

And then the stick was removed from near his person. His yukata fell down and covered his legs again, before other important parts of his body would be revealed, but before he could rejoice also, his hands were roughly shoved behind his back, and tightly tied so that he couldn't even flinch. Then, those two creatures grabbed him from the arms again and this time they started dragging him towards the other end of the alley. What Izaya came across as soon as they stepped into the other main street, was of course corpses and blood everywhere, but now, in the middle of the road, what was shining at the centre of the massacre were carriages. Their cargo was nothing other than people, locked inside huge, metallic cages. So, this was where all the people they were dragging from the houses were going? Izaya bitterly remember the cages of his city's Red Light District, with all the beautiful prostitutes smiling and calling the men for some hours to play. Izaya thought of those existences as pitiful, though occasionally, extremely beautiful women did exist in that industry. Geishas were pieces of art and truly worthy of a man's respect, but those poor souls behind the cages… It wasn't only then that it occurred to Izaya that their smiles were being faked, but he wished as bitterly that he didn't have to join them, as he was violently pushed inside a cage himself.

He almost fell on a woman and he had to drop on his knees to prevent that. Then, lifting his head up and looking around him, he saw that he was on the same cage with a woman in her thirties with big breasts – she must have been a wife and a mother, someone could only guess what had happened to her family – a couple of young girls in the age around sixteen to twenty and one young boy around that age as well. Everybody had wide, glued to the ground eyes, like the fear had already consumed their soul and left them completely empty. Then again, Izaya wasn't in the mood for a chat either.

As soon as he was shoved in, the carriage started to move. Izaya turned around and looked at the demonic landscape they were leaving behind. He was grateful for his life but he knew very well that unless he escaped, said life wouldn't last long. Either way, he stared at the creatures and examined them as thoroughly as he could. He didn't know what he was hoping to see… Until a corpse moved.

Obviously he was someone who had pretended that he died, waiting for the right chance. For Izaya he did something completely stupid, he could have waited until they were gone and then he would have escaped with his life. Idiots, the world was surrounded by idiots. Instead of fleeing, the man grabbed the first wooden stick he found from the broken door of a nearby house, and he swiftly brought it on the behind of the head of the first creature that passed him by, screaming in a blind fury.

Then Izaya saw it. That head with the big fly's eyes fell down unceremoniously. But it wasn't cut off, it just fell off. And when it did, it revealed what it was hiding.

Izaya had never again seen hair of that color. He felt his breath catching up his throat and he didn't realize that he was breathing until then. It was so bright it blinded him, like the coins he used to be paid with for his services. He didn't know golden hair could exist, but here it was, right in front of him. And then that person turned around and revealed a face with a sardonic smile plastered on it, as the blood from the previous hit was running from his hair down to his forehead and then cheeks. Izaya had seen that smile before. It was the expression a beast was taking when it was bearing its teeth, ready to lash out at its enemy.

"I should tell you," Shizuo growled as he was nearing the man that attacked him, who was left as dumbfounded as it was humanly possible, thusly he couldn't move a muscle. "that you SHOULDN'T HAVE FUCKING PISSED ME OFF YOU FUCKING BASTARD!" And with that bark, he punched that man so hard that he literally flew in the air for almost twenty meters and then he landed on his head with a sickening crack.

They were humans… and yet, they were not?