The aroma of flame cauterizes the inside of the blonde's bitten lips, forcing the flow of insults to bubble forth like sea foam. More people take insult from these spoken words, withdrawing from her presence in what is most likely disgust at what the girl has become. Many of them came back to her side to offer her a single chance, and left empty handed. It is vicious, cyclic. It's also a daily occurrence.

She does not mean these poorly chosen words. It is the manipulation of her impurities inside her forcing her to commit such travesties, it is the demon who has driven her friends away. She continuously tells herself these things.

Each day, the belief in this statement fades like exposed paint. Rin is unwell.

Ever since these visions of the lady with pink hair activated in her shattered grip on reality, she noticed a change in personality, as did any person with ears within a twenty foot radius. It's an experience that she is not sure can be put into words, alebeit a slight burning at the mouth, but she does know that the "demon" forces her to say things she normally would not. "Normally" has passed away soundlessly, ever since her relocation to this new planet, but it's the only parameters she has to measure herself up to.

Rin is sure the demon had once introduced herself, but has long forgotten its name out of spite. She has started calling it Luka, but not to its face.

The demon was a figment, the crude append of an imaginary friend long relinquished in the recesses of her mind. The one that taunted word both written and spoken by her mentality was not real, the result of the abnormal channeling of her mind. She was abnormal, this precious information making its way onto her documents. The classification of this sickness was a viewpoint declared by TITAN psychologists, and the words she tried to live by. The demon was not real.

If only, because that would mean that the hand touching her's was not real.

Even as it glides her hand across the sea of glossy paper, writing lewd remarks about Rin's weight, it is not real. Their puppet to puppeteer relationship is a fabrication; squeezing her eyes tight enough to see white spirals burn into her eyelids, she tries to summon a levelheaded mindset, but to no avail. She screams in appall, hoping that this time the pure noise will be enough to drive the demon away. It isn't, and the squeak of a few dozen chairs pickle the room. She freezes, a virtual detected rabbit, fragile back crumpling like rejected paper at the lip of a trash bin. Shit.

Rin denies her head the movement it craves, but she can feel forty avid eyes boring into her, the deepest survey of all being that of her brother's. Eyes bulging, her arms slightly snap as she straightens out her beating spine. She is regretful of the situation she has placed him in ever since Luka came into play, she truly is, but he'll never know because just yesterday, she - or, rather, the demon - called him a piggish bastard. He'll likely never speak to her again, as this is the eighteenth time this month she has insulted him.

When she isn't worrying about what fragment of her reputation the demon will further dismantle next, Rin enjoys keeping track of such minute details.

"Is there something you would care to share with the class, Miss Kagamine?" the teachers drawls. She puts emphasis onto the "miss" to show how little she actually cares for formalities toward students.

Rin's eyes blossom into a miserly orange. No person in the classroom seems to notice this change, but Rin braces herself as the familiar hot coals scald her tongue. She knows what is to come next, and wishes she could at least give the teacher a warning in advance.

"You've already shared your shit attitude with the rest of the class, so I'm pretty sure that speaks for itself," she hears herself snarl. Various sputters rumble the classroom foundations. Students never seem to tire of Luka's endless string of abuses, so long as it is not directed toward themselves. It's a rather cheap shot, considering what the demon usually cooks up, but it's enough for the teacher to knit her eyebrows in repulsion.

"Get out of my classroom, Miss Kagamine. You know where to go." The teacher leans back in her chair, legs splayed on the desk in a rather unprofessional pose, and pumps her pointer finger into the air at the general direction of a student. The selected child obliges. Standing from their synthetic desk, he is opening the door for Rin's departure. As she walks past the student, she can feel the detestation radiating from the heartbeats of the classroom, a reaction cultivated for appearances.

"They all love a good show, you know", Luka jeers. "Filthy bastards."

There's already a seat reserved for her in the office. Sitting in an uncostly plastic chair with the words "TITAN" stamped onto its spine, she is awaiting the judgement defined by the stone faced principal. She receives it soon; despite appearances, the principal is not a busy man. Words the spill out of the principal's mouth in jumbled arrangements of letters and numbers, and she can hardly pay attention as she begins to pick at her split ends with broken fingernails. It's one of the few things she and Luka seem to agree with; the demon's in the corner of the room, rolling her eyes at the speech and occasionally flipping the bird at the office secretary.

It's around then when her brother comes in, ready to escort his mentally troubled sibling home for the day. The bell has sounded somewhere in the distance, and as Rin tries to piece together the exact moment in the past when such a sound had come around, a hand grabs her wrist. Len, that is the name of her brother, and one of the few names she has not forgotten ever since the demon tapped into her daily life, thanks the principal, who pretends not to see him. No person want to associate with the relation of the mentally ill for fear of it spreading. He leads his sister away, pulling her like dead weight. In the process he slings his bag over her back, tired of the added burden. At least she's useful in some respect.

The demon croons at this action. "Look at you, you're a practical pack mule! You've even got the face for it." She traces a finger over Rin's face, leaving a trail of heat.

"Why?"

Rin stops her movement, nearly crashing into her brother's handsome back. Running the risk of allowing the demon another hole to infiltrate, she decides it is best to not open her mouth as her brother swivels around. A fly crashes into her net of hair.

"Aren't you going to say something?"

The silence was urged on by the awkward shuffling of nearby branches. They were a good fifty feet from the school, but the streets were relatively deserted. She is surprised at how far they have gotten in such a short space of time.

He kicked a hamburger wrapping, and watched it foxtrot into the distance before being swallowed by the skyline of the hungry city.

"What's been wrong with you lately? Why don't you speak to me anymore?" His voice is on the verge of desperation. These are words he has wanted to say for a long time coming.

Lately has actually been years. She coughs, and her eyes water. A droplet hits her shoe before dying on the pavement beneath.

"This isn't you." Len trembles slightly, and the pebbles under his sneakers follow in his lead, whimpering as they clash into one another. She tries to take the maximum amount of modest details, all to avoid looking at his face. Rin cannot allow the demon any weakness.

If only he knew. She feel the demon infiltrating her mouth, yet something is different this time around. The spirit feels weaker, unable to exit her tightly cramped mouth. While trying to comprehend this new experience, her brother addresses her in a place far removed. Is that what willpower is? This feeling of resistance, that pulls on her teeth?

She feels the rude comments starting to scar her gums. She pushes them back into her throat, where they burn a hole, and manages a string of words.

"Don't worry. I promise I'll find a way out of this."

Her last words to him were a lie as the planet underneath them exploded.

AN: Sorry if this isn't as good as what most of you expect from me; I'm personally not too thrilled with it myself, but I'll be damned if a story I worked so hard on doesn't get posted to this website. Studying for finals and neglecting my writing has totally killed my style but the good news is that this is my final week of testing, and from there, I have about ten weeks to regain my prowess.

I didn't want to make this exactly like Ava's Demon but with Rin instead of Ava, because so many crossovers do that and it pisses me off. So I twisted it a bit; do you think it's enough?