Title: In the coolness, Gods and Buddha, dwell as neighbours

An Ao no Exorcist and Noragami Crossover

A/N: Title is a Haiku of Masaoka Shiki

Only the prologue is a little heavy with Japanese creatures, no worries.

Unlike WL or True to Yourself, this story is chronological and straight forward. No messages behind the plot.

Prologue

Shura gritted her teeth.

What a SNAFU.

"Shura-san!" Bibiri shouted from the emergency staircase, where he was firing bullets nonstop at the blobs of eyeballs closing around them. A type of demons they'd never seen before, more abundant than coal tars and twice as vicious. Empty magazines fell on his feet one after another. The knight could see his supply was running thin. "The building won't last much longer!" He warned her as the ceiling shook for the umpteenth time.

"I know!" Shura slashed at the many Jourougumo [1] facing her, cutting the spiders' threads before they could completely wrap around her sword and mummify it. The nasty things were tough. "Go round up the exwires and make sure they exit safely!" She ordered him, and dodged the acidic poison spat in her direction.

"Understood!" Just as Bibiri pushed forward and tried to make his way downstairs, where his brother and the rest of his cram school classmates were ushering all the survivors out of the laboratory, kechibi [2] flew in through the cracks on the windows and swamped the place, the fireballs burning every old fabric in sight.

"Damn!" Bibiri threw a holy-water grenade at them, yet he barely made a dent. "What is it about this place?"

Throwing caution to the wind, the bespectacled teen doused himself in the last bottle of holy water he had in his pocket and stormed downstairs. Smart guy.

As soon as Scaredy disappeared round the corner, Shura breathed a little easier.

She faced the nude half women half gigantic spiders in front of her and grinned maniacally, her trusted sword kusanagi [3] wielded firmly in her palms.

"Come, you perverts!" She challenged them.

The Jourougumo screeched at her.

"This way, please," Shima kept his arm around the petite lab technician next to him as Izumo led her byakko familiars in clearing the rubbles obstructing the main entrance. A few other researchers and students were cowering behind the two exwires, crying and holding on to each other as chaos unfolded around them.

'Please, come get us!'

Rin snapped and turned his head toward the ceiling. "Suguro! Someone's still up there!"

"Don't go!" Suguro shouted at him as he shot his bazooka at the congregating hyousube [4]. The little bastards were quick-footed, and the sure death that would befell humans if they gazed into the creatures' eyes meant Suguro couldn't aim properly. "Kirigakure-sensei and Okumura-sensei are upstairs! Let them rescue him!"

"Hyaa!" Shiemi exclaimed as the small army barreled against the barrier of branches Ni-chan had erected around the exwires.

Suguro gritted his teeth. "Koneko, not yet?"

The bald-headed Aria in-training shook his head as his mouth never stopped chanting.

'Please! Don't abandon us!'

Rin looked up again.

"B-but they're not reaching him! I can't just leave him alone!" He jumped on the fallen furniture and climbed up to the second level. "I'll go check it out!"

A vein pulsed on Suguro's temple. "Okumura!" he yelled after the half-demon.

Rin continued climbing to the third floor, glaring down any demons that dared to cross his path (and if they didn't back down, there was Kurikara) and following his ears till he reached the middle of the building on the highest floor. Pasted on the ridge beam was a shape like two fans brought together, five long tails of blue, yellow, red, black and white trailing to the ground.

It glowed when Rin picked it up, and soon the one who stood before him wasn't a decoration, but a small boy the height of Rin's waist, dressed in the ceremonial robes of an Onmyouji [5], his long hair tied to a high ponytail.

He reminded Rin of Usamaru.

The boy looked at him grimly. 'This way.'

He pointed at the room next door. Rin quickly went there, and spotted a cabinet which had collapsed at a corner. From where he stood, Rin could see a leg trapped under the stacks of books and broken wood. Muffled pleas came from beneath.

A young bespectacled man in a lab coat stared at Rin incredulously as the exwire used his superhuman strength to heave the cabinet out of the way. "Ah-" his eyes glossed over with tears as relief filled his expression. "Thank you so much! Thank-"

Rin was sorry to interrupt the moment by pouring a bottle of holy water over the survivor. Each of the exwires was handed one before the mission, but Rin didn't need it. "Sorry, but we don't have time," Rin turned to the small boy in the ceremonial robes as he helped the older man to his feet. "You're a protective spirit, aren't you? Accompany him downstairs?" Rin was gonna look for Yukio and Shura.

The spirit smiled at him. 'Thank you, prince.'

Rin blinked as the two of them disappeared down the hole on the floor he came from. "I'm not-"

But he didn't get to finish his sentence.

Because there was a loud crack from his left, and out of the tear on the wall, monsters emerged.

"Suguro-kun!" Shiemi gasped. Her face was pale from having too much of her powers drained in the fight. "Look out!"

Suguro turned around, and spotted a blob of eyeball and sharp teeth charging at him, all too late.

Suguro shut his eyes, anticipating the impact, but suddenly there was a loud bang, the sound waves rattling his chest.

The Kyoto-born re-opened his eyes to find the young teacher running toward them, a barrel of his pistols pointed at Suguro's face. Okumura-sensei had saved him.

The sharpshooter rushed to the exwires, dispelling the demons that had gathered around Konekomaru and Shiemi. He looked around. "Where's Nii-san?"

Suguro gritted his teeth. "He went upstairs through there," he pointed at an opening in the ceiling, "he said he heard someone calling from above."

Okumura-sensei was, expectedly, pissed. He refilled his gun with a fully loaded magazine. His last, judging from the emptiness of the bag around his waist. "Go after Shima-san and Kamiki-san and get out with the survivors! I'll take care of Nii-san," he instructed.

"But!" Suguro protested. He'd ran out of bazooka bullets, too, but his chants didn't have a limited supply. As long as he could speak, he was fine. Okumura-sensei, however…

"This is an order from Shura-san!" The Middle First class exorcist put his foot down. "Follow your captain's words, exwire!"

"Yes!" Suguro replied reflexively, and grabbed his friends, letting the blonde girl lean on him before she fainted. 'Stay safe, young teacher!' he thought as he gave that retreating back one last look.

He didn't have a good feeling about this.

"Back off!" Rin growled, his eyes flashing in blue flames, "go away, you damn monsters!" he swung his sword at them.

One of the gigantic half women half insects only hissed at him. 'We are kin of Beelzebub, you wet-behind-the-ears royalty!' She returned his glare with her eight eyes and shot steely threads out of her mouth, cutting Rin's skin on the arms. 'We aren't yours to order around!' Before Rin had realized it, the spider-webs had entirely covered Kurikara's blade.

"Shit!" Rin tried to burn the binding by exerting his flames on the sword, but his efforts weren't that effective.

While his eyes were averted from his opponents, they had closed around him. Deformed hands reached for him, and Rin raised his dulled weapon to hit them, but it was too late.

His chest burned when sharp knife-like claws pierced his skin and embedded into the flesh between his ribcage. Rin choked as blood surged out of his throat, clogging his breathing pipe.

'They…must have gotten my lungs,' Rin could only think in a daze as he fell to the floor, blood flowing out to the broken tiles. His wounds weren't healing. 'Why…' his sight of the demons bending over him, jaws opened wide, started to blur.

"Nii-san!" Gunshots rang in the air. The half-spiders must have been hit, because a loud shriek tore through the air, high pitched and filled with vengeance. "H-how dare you-" the monsters turned to the door and hissed.

Rin raised his head sluggishly, his mind filling with dread as he saw the spiders going after his brother. It didn't seem like the bullets had done their opponents much harm. "Y-yukio!" With the last vestiges of his strength, he threw Kurikara at the half-woman who was charging at the four eyes from his back.

'Persistent brat!' The monster who had her head smacked by his sword bared her menacing mandibles at Rin. 'I'll get rid of you! I'll eat you!' She crawled toward him with her eight feet at an alarming speed.

Rin scrunched his eyes closed. 'I don't want to die before I defeat Satan-'

"NII-SAN!"

Something warm splashed Rin's face.

No. Rin looked up in trepidation, his heart stuck in his throat. NO!

He was greeted by his worst nightmare: Yukio trapped in the clutches of the demon's jaws, blood soaking his black coat and dripping down his limp arms.

Rin screamed.

TBC

Review please? We'll still see Yukio in the next chapter, I swear!

Btw, I still haven't decided if I will write Okumuracest or Yukio and Rin as brothers.

Notes:

1. Jorogumo - 'the whore spiders' are legendary spider monsters from the Edo period of Japan. They were said to haunt waterfalls, and to use their beauty to lure men and eat them.

2. Kechibi is stated to be the vengeful spirits of humans turned into balls of fire.

3. Kusanagi is a legendary Japanese sword that was used by Susanoo to defeat Yamata-no-Orochi, the eight-headed serpent. Please check wikipedia for the full legend.

4. A variant of hyousube are short, tiny humanoid demons. If man sees one, he will die.

5. Onmyouji are practitioners of onmyoudo, basically Japan's own brand of exorcism techniques in the 7th century to 19th century.