I'm baaaaaaaack!

And with a super angsty, slightly OOC chapter too!

Don't you guys just love me?

Well, this journey is about to it's halfway point, possibly shorter. I may consider a sequel depending on how it ends.

Also, I know I said no YukioxRin, but in an attempt to appease the larger audience, I have inserted a kind of maybe-there something for you guys, who've been a great audience so far. My way of awkwardly saying thank you.

On with the intense drama!

WARNING: Some intense scenes lie ahead, emotionally and gorily. If you want to blame something, blame Devilman: Crybaby, because it's basically about a half demon who goes insane and who's best friend is literally Satan.

You're welcome.

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CH IX:Blood in the eyes

"All our blood

lying on the floor...

Sense the crowd

expecting something more...

Opened up, proudly on display –

What we tried so hard to hide away."

~ Spaces In Between, How To Destroy Angels.

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Two more days passed on – the plants Shiemi could conjure started small and effectively useless, but were slowly nearing the point of edibility. The moss had blanketed half the room by now, surviving stubbornly off of condensation and urine, which it did remarkably well at re-purposing. A few small, frail-looking bamboo shoots tried to grow in the moss – Shiemi figured that they were edible enough, and that the mature plant would also serve to assist their escape, since bamboo could grow through just about anything if it was really trying.

She kept from the others that the shoots were also super sharp and hard, but kept the thought in the back of her mind.

On the fore of her mind now, however, was Rin – and not necessarily in a good way. The boy had been acting strange all night, keeping her up with a constant rustling and shifting about. She felt her heart softly land upon her stomach at the thought. None of them were too eager to sleep since Konekomaru died – too afraid of the idea that any one of them could be preyed upon next. Shiemi got the feeling that's what had kept Rin up, too –

"...As of now, you are competition for resources...Best you make up your mind what you are, before I do it for you." Mephisto had said that Rin would be among the first to die, since he posed the greatest competition...so why wasn't he dead? Was it just dumb luck that Rin evaded being killed by their headmaster instead of Konekomaru? Or was he purposefully spared? Did it have to do with his heritage?

Shiemi shook her head lightly to clear it. She shouldn't be thinking about things like that. But it wasn't just her empty stomach making her abdomen ache – the thought ate at her, somehow. She didn't know what was going on, but she was growing suspicious about Mephisto's intentions – especially since now, with the light barely having flickered on to signal the dawn (or what they knew of it), Rin was eerily quiet.

'That's a strange way of thinking about it...' Shiemi realized with a frown. 'Just what about him is...eerie?' A little alarm bell rang in her skull. Something seemed terribly off just then. She scanned her surroundings, and seen that Rin was curled up on his haunches in one corner of the room, near the makeshift moss lavatory, far and facing away from everyone else. His tail, normally flicking about or just openly lounging, was tucked close to his side and held in a stiff fashion. And yet, though his muscles were held into a rigid attitude, he didn't seem...quite there, if she were to guess of it. There was an awkward kind of conflict in the message his body sent her, for though he was tense through his core, his appendages, such as his hands, were held to his knees perfectly restful. The only outward sign of tension aside from the board like flatness of his back was his tail, held at sickle like curve which she couldn't guess the meaning of.

"Rin?" Shiemi called to him quietly. Yukio, looking like he'd been awake for hours, looked over at his brother with a tired expression. Shiemi looked hard at Rin, indicating silently through an urgency in her eyes that Yukio should do the same. She just couldn't shake the growing sense that something was terribly wrong. The concerned look on her face registered to Yukio after a few tired blinks, and at once he looked quite awake and alert, looking at Rin with growing suspicion in his gaze.

"Rin?" Yukio also called to him – but neither of them got any response. He held still in a nearly statue-like fashion, almost as though ice had come in the night to freeze him in his pose. He didn't seem quite tense, but rather stiff. Shiemi didn't understand it.

But Yukio did.

Yukio knew that Rin was only ever frozen like that when he was A) exceedingly upset about something, and didn't want to talk about it, B) extra exceptionally angry to the point of not being able to talk about it, (which rarely happened, but he'd seen it once before) or C) when he was sick or hurt very badly and was trying not to puke, faint or cry from the pain.

He didn't waste any time, and went straight to Rin's side, worried it would be the latter after the head-banging injury he'd sustained a few days ago. He acted relatively fine – had even made a goofball of himself slipping on the moss yesterday, which had got him out of his gloomy mood following Konekomaru's passing. But now he seemed affectedly worse, and for a moment Yukio was concerned that he may have sustained some sort of head trauma.

Seeing that Rin wasn't responding to verbal stimuli, Yukio touched his hand lightly against Rin's back – and immediately jumped about a foot backwards as a low, guttural growl reverberated from his sibling's chest.

"Rin?" No response. Yukio startled himself when his hand, the one he'd reached out to his brother with, began to shake. "Rin, are you alright?" Yukio pleaded. Shura came up beside Yukio, offering a supportive hand as he rose back to his feet. There was a sense of danger in her stance, and Yukio listened obediently when her hand pulled him back.

"H...ry..." Rin mumbled, his arms crossed over his mouth.

"Rin?" Yukio asked again, this time for clarification.

"Hungry..." Rin replied after a moment, his voice barely above a whisper. "So...Hungry..."

The dawning of realization spread over Yukio's face before it instantly twisted into a carefully unreadable expression.

"I'm hungry too, Nii-san." Yukio reassured – and it was true. He hadn't eaten anything except...except that meat, in four days. He, however, was trained to become comfortable, more or less, with hunger pains; Father Fujimoto made sure of that. But Rin lacked that same training, and had a higher metabolism to boot.

"N-no...You don't understand..." Rin said quietly. Yukio jumped a little as his heart crashed into his stomach at his brothers tone, which was nothing short of distressed.

"What don't I understand, Rin? Talk to me." Yukio brought out his gentle side, hoping to coax his sibling into some sense of normalcy. The look of alarm in Shiemi's eyes, and Shura's alert stance behind him made sense now, though how their instincts picked up on it before his did he didn't know. What he did know, however, was that something was definitely wrong about this.

Rin heaved a breath, his abdomen tensing in a way that looked painful.

"I just want to eat." He whined, and Yukio could tell before even smelling them that Rin was in tears.

'So I was right, in a way. But at least he's not injured – just...' Yukio stopped his thought a moment, not wanting it to go on, though naturally it did anyway. ' ...starving.'

Against his better judgment, having been growled at already, Yukio came up behind Rin and in an unexpected move even for him, wrapped his arms around his older brother. He didn't want Rin to think we was alone right now, didn't want him to get too upset –didn't want him to lose his grip. To slip up and wind up hurting someone, wind up killing them. Or to get himself killed in the process.

'I told you this was going to happen...I told them all this was going to happen.'

"I'm hungry, Yukio. My stomach hurts...it hurts really bad. My head, too. I can't...I can't think straight." He was now on the verge of hysteria – not good.

"Rin, calm down. Part of your pain might be because you're upset – you normally flame up by now, but you can't do that here. Just calm down and you'll be fine." The subtle urgency of his tone caught the eyes of the others, who now watched the two go down with cautious, ready stares. Shura gave Yukio a look that said she was prepared to interfere if necessary. Don't, Yukio mouthed silently at her. Don't stare at him, it will make it worse he mouthed to the rest as they looked on suspiciously.

"But I'm dizzy, and my head really hurts right now." As if on cue, Rin wobbled a bit, finally sitting down on the moss beneath him, his head weaving side to side in a sickly-looking way. Yukio went around to get a look at his face, and felt his heart pound in his chest as he got a good look at his eyes. Not only were his pupils reduced to eliptical slits, indicating a surge in his demon energy, but his sclera, the whites of his eyes, were a tinted red colour, as though blood had seeped into them.

A wave of panic hit Yukio like a truck. Was his brother sick? Was he using too much of his energy, and the meter in his abdomen causing this? Was he going to die – or worse, get killed for food by those greedy demons? Yukio dare not look their way, not caring to find out if that was their intention.

"Your blood sugar is really low right now, Rin. Give it a while, and your body should straighten things out." Yukio tried to sound reassuring, but a subtle quiver of the panic he felt crept into his voice, and Rin's eyes focused on him worriedly.

"Yukio, are you okay?" 'I'm the one that should be asking you that, dork.'

"I'm fine – but..." Yukio shut his mouth, not wanting to send Rin into a fit.

It didn't really work.

"But what, Yukio? What's the matter?" Just then, a small trickle of blood worked down Rin's cheek from his left eye, and as Yukio's own eyes instinctively followed it, Rin noticed. Feeling the droplet with his fingertips, he pulled his hand back to look, and instantly paled.

"Am I...?"

"No." Yukio said firmly. "You're not going to die. But you need to calm down, Rin. I think that meter inside of you is taking too much of your energy. It's making you sick." The aura of the room changed, and the sudden sense of unease did not go unnoticed by the half demon.

"Rin, calm down, or you really will die." Rin's breathing increased as he began to panic, looking around as if for an escape. Before his brother could do something unnecessarily stupid, Yukio pounced on him, holding him tight to his chest.

"Shhh..." Yukio took a deep breath to slow his own heart down, hoping Rin's would follow. Yukio might have thought of his sibling as a pain in his ass, but he'd already seen the death of two of his classmates – he didn't honestly think he could handle his twin dying, not in here, not like this. Rin shifted a bit in his arms, pressing his face against Yukio's skin, his breathing becoming deeper and more even, but not much slower. "Calm." Yukio reassured, but was thrown off his game when Rin's breathing suddenly stopped. Before a complete thought on it could form, a sharp, stabbing pain erupted in his collarbone. Yukio winced, but forcibly kept himself from saying anything about it, biting his own tongue. A deep breath followed, and then another when a disturbing feeling of a tongue moving over the wound could be identified. "Shhhh..." Yukio...wanted to cry. Right then, right there, he felt the hot, salty fluid sting the corners of his eyes, and couldn't completely keep them from welling as he was dealt another bite on the lower corner of his neck.

He hadn't an idea why his sibling was biting him, but whatever it was, he was sure he didn't want to think about it. 'I want to panic, to run, to flee...and yet, I don't want my brother to die. I never wanted him to die. To hurt him, maybe...perhaps that's what this is. Yes.' Yukio mentally reassured himself. 'It's just payback, that's all it is. I made him bleed before...granted, I didn't drink it, –' Yukio's stomach lurched at the idea. ' – but fair is fair I guess.' A firm tug at his flesh alerted Yukio to the potential danger of the situation. But rather than be afraid of it, he felt weirdly calm. He leaned close, whispering low in his brother's ear.

"Rin, that's enough now." He said it calmly as he felt, stroking his older brother's hair as he gradually detached.

"Good." He could sense, somehow, the panic rising in Rin again. "No no, stay calm. It's fine. Really, it's okay. I'm not upset, see?" Rin leaned back to look at Yukio's face, which was a lot more placid than he'd expected.

"But...I..."

"Like I said." Yukio didn't dare let him finish, not wanting to face the reality himself. "Your blood sugar, and probably your blood iron levels, are low right now. That's going to make you really hungry –make you feel like you're about to die of starvation. But I promise, you're not."

The others looked on with mixed feelings of horror and surprise, though no one felt it more than Ryuuji at that moment. Even Shiemi, though clearly in shock, also had an expression of pained understanding – but all Bon wanted to do was gag. Gag, and run far, far away from this place. The image of Yukio wincing with tears in his eyes and the sound of Rin suckling on what was doubtlessly something wet and sticky – and now that he'd pulled away, the sight of the bright, bloody crimson dripping in rivulets down Yukio's shirt and chest, staining his uniform an dark, wet colour...

It was all he could do not to puke. It was real now. Too real. He couldn't stop the shaking as it started in his hands and travelled up to his spine, wracking his body with shudder after shudder. He looked to Shima, who looked, for all intents and purposes, like he was about to puke as well – but it was an entirely different breed of disgust in his eyes, one which threatened to make Ryuuji very angry, for right now was not the time to be worrying about shit like that. But upon reflection, he calmed – Shima was Shima in any situation, it seemed. In a way, the thought was comforting.

"..." Yukio glanced over at Konekomaru's remains, noting that there was just enough meat left on it...but that it had probably gone past what was humanly safe to eat.

"Rin, you need to eat..." Yukio suggested to his sibling quietly. "I know," he added quickly, seeing some resistance in his brother's too-blue eyes. "...I know that you don't want to. But you need to eat, or you'll just keep getting sicker."

Rin offered no reply, but let his head fall until his hair covered up his expression. He heard a sob to his side, and knew it was Shiemi crying. Looking breifly at her face, he found not the terror he anticipated, but fear of another kind. A fear that, he felt, was directed at him, for him. However, rather than being comforted by her concern for him, he instead felt agitated by her response. ' you should stay away from me. You all should stay away. I wont blame anyone for hating me after this.' He heaved a deep sigh, feeling something sticky catch at the bottom of his lungs. He hoped it wasn't blood, but was dually aware that it probably was.

'What have I become?' He thought. 'I'm going to die here if I don't eat something...but I'll die if I do, too – not in body, but in mind; I feel like something is happening to me, like there's some creature deep inside that is begging to be let out – but if I release it, I'll flame up, and die. What am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to survive?' He looked at Konekomaru's corpse with dread.

'...I guess...I'll just have to eat...without losing control...'

Shiemi heard movement behind her, turning to see Izumo sitting placidly against the wall. Her face was surprisingly expressionless as she watched Rin shamble over to the remains, pawing at a stripped ribcage which to her now held no meaning. It was just a pile of bones to her now – a pile which became increasingly appealing as the days went by. At the time of Nemu's death, she didn't have the gall to call herself a cannibal, deciding last minute to sacrifice her offering to Yukio, who divided it between himself and Shura. But now, watching Rin struggle to keep himself together, she felt the strings of primitive urges strike her in the belly, blow after blow. She hadn't eaten in several days, and her vision now swam with every weakened movement. She knew a human could live for up to three or four weeks without food – but living and surviving were different situations. She dared a glance at Mephisto, sitting statuesque against the opposite wall, and wondered with a daring calmness if he would come after her next. Looking to Shiemi, she was helplessly amazed – the girl was standing, at the very least. Something which Izumo didn't feel like she could do right then. The effort to shift about was becoming too much for her these days, and a slow, creeping thought came into her mind. 'Am I dying? What if I don't make it to tomorrow? What will my sister think?' As the days wore by, she retreated more and more into her thoughts, a thing which had seemed to go unnoticed by the others for the most part. 'Maybe that's a good thing.' she thought. 'Maybe I can just slip away quietly, and no one will know...' A mild headache had been forming in her skull overnight, and as she watched Rin painstakingly pick at the dessicated remains of a skeleton she pretended not to recognize, she felt the tug of sleep pull at the back of her neck, inviting her into it's warm and peaceful embrace. 'Maybe it's a good thing...'

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Short chapter I know, but an update is an update!

I have bigger things planned for the next scene, which is why I'm converting it into it's own chapter, lest this one is too long.

Also, THANK YOU ALL FOR YOUR OVERWHELMING SUPPORT! I have never had this many people follow/favourite a story before, so THANK YOU!

Hope to see y'all soon. :) Happy new year!