Notes; tw: cannibalism. This is a crossover with Digital Devil Saga, after all.

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She thinks it'll be easier, maybe just a little, if she thinks of it as steak. It's all just meat after all, isn't it?

The demon in her head growls with hunger and she stares down at her leg, at the chunk Yosuke took out of it the day they came to rescue her. God, she's going to kill him as soon as she can catch up to him. Sure, they had to subdue her but that didn't really warrant attempting to bite off her leg, did it? It's all a bit of a blur, really, but Souji had been pretty understanding about it, back when he'd been holding her back as she attempted to get to Yosuke.

Funny, how she'd just been content kicking him before when now she wanted to slide Tomoe's naginata into his throat and slowly peel it open and pick through the nerves as he thrashed and struggled between her knees.

"It's like that at first," Souji had said a bit resignedly when she sank her teeth into the back of his hand. She'd only let go when she felt his atma, burning white-hot. "It'll get better."

Yeah, well, she wants to say. When does it get better? It's been four days since they pulled her out of that ballroom and she's still so hungry. It's a sort of hunger that even steak can't quell – or maybe it doesn't want to be quelled, at least not by grilled meat. She tries to think about steak skewers and pork buns and beef burgers but they don't make her hungry like before; if anything, they make her feel nauseous, like maybe if she poked her fingers into her jaw and unhooked them she could just purge everything out. She'd made Yosuke treat her at Junes earlier yesterday, had wolfed down all the meat he'd brought back and then promptly run home to throw it all up.

Not good, she'd decided as Tomoe hissed with outrage, after she sank down the bathroom wall with the taste of bile growing sour and acrid in her mouth. A little very not good.

Man, Yosuke'd kill her for wasting his money like this if he ever found out. She doesn't really mind, though, and she's sure Tomoe wouldn't object to another opportunity to duke it out with Jiraiya.

Her atma pulses, green-black on her calf. Chie tries uneasily to scratch at it and jog after Souji and Yosuke at the same time; it seems to squirm and wriggle, like something alive and parasitic latched onto her flesh. She wonders if she could just ask Souji to tear it off and be done with it – maybe it'd make her normal again, normal in a way that she can understand, without a demon snarling at the back of her mind.

Chie doesn't understand how the others can take it so easily. She doesn't understand the nonchalance with which Souji devours the other creatures in the castle. At least he's not messy about it, though; he eats pretty neatly for a guy – or a demon, for that matter – and makes sure to wipe the blood from his mouth before they go on. It doesn't really help, but at least he's not like Yosuke, with sickly trails of red winding down his wrists and forearms as they pass through the halls of Yukiko's castle.

God, she hopes Yukiko's okay and not infected by the crazy virus in the foggy T.V. world.

On the sixth floor Chie's knees fold beneath her and Tomoe's voice spikes sharply, a warning, a complaint. Souji doubles back and he's holding something red and bloody and oh, god, is that an arm? She squints and wipes her fogged-up glasses despite herself because it's pretty fascinating the way the limb shifts back from demon to human before her eyes.

She'd probably be able to stomach it better had it remained part of a trance twin and not turned into something that looked a bit too much like her arm.

Chie eyeballs it nervously, watches it drip wetly onto the crimson carpet. Yosuke squats a safe distance away and pinches the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. "C'mon, Chie, you gotta eat something, if you go berserk on us like you did before I'm really going to take your leg off." He waggles the arm a little. The fingers flap limply. It'd been severed at the shoulder; she can see the gouges from Izanagi's claws, neat horizontal slashes across the bone. "I mean, then you can't chase after me, right? And if you can't do that then you wouldn't be able to save Yukiko, right?"

Her head hurts. She's not sure whether it's from the hunger or the situation or the warmth of the castle or Yosuke's bullshit reasons or him talking to her like she's a dog refusing its food or all of the above. She swats it away and pulls herself shakily upright. "Whatever, I'm fine," she says, when instead she means to say, good people don't eat other people. It's something that's Just Not Done.

Somewhere along the seventh floor everything blurs and the next thing she remembers is being squashed against the floor and her head is full of roaring; she kicks and cold claws press against her wrists. Something flips her over, something yellow-eyed and shadowy – it's Souji, or rather Souji-as-Izanagi, silver crawling up his jaw and throat from his atma.

"Yosuke," he rasps, and someone pries her mouth open and pushes something between her teeth; Souji's claws move to her neck and he strokes gently, methodically, until she swallows.

Her first instinct is to spit it out in a panic; it feels and looks just like raw steak but it doesn't taste right; she dry-heaves but Yosuke clamps his hand over her mouth and she bites his palm in retaliation. He snarls and then she's feeling Jiraiya's plates over her lips, hard and armoured.

"It's better if you don't fight it," Souji says; it comes out less like words and more like a low growl, hoarse and guttural. Her eyes are stinging when she finally feels it sliding down her throat; it feels slimy, almost, and she has half a mind to retch again.

They let her up once she stops spasming, once Tomoe quiets down and she's no longer sprouting armoured plates and her atma's burn fades to a distant ache. Souji sits back on his haunches and pushes his sweaty hair back from his forehead; his eyes are back to their usual grey but she feels wary now, wary of the ease with which he can control his shift between forms. She rubs her face gingerly. Man, she hopes she won't get carpet burn.

"C'mon, get it together," Yosuke says. It sounds like an attempt at a friendly stab but falls flat instead. Chie and Souji stare stonily at him and he sighs, scratching the back of his head. "Whatever, let's keep going."

So much for good people not eating other people, she thinks glumly.

It gets harder the further up they go, to hold on to her previous conviction; she has to throw that train of thought out of her head when they reach Yukiko because Yukiko's kind of pretty much embraced her situation more than Chie's managed to. When they reach the top floor of the castle there's just Yukiko and now her kimono's red and her mouth is red and she looks so utterly calm when she admits she got a bit peckish after waiting for so long and ate the first prince that turned up.

"He wasn't very charming," Yukiko says sheepishly, and giggles a bit. Chie cranes her head and tries to ignore the all the red, tries to focus instead on finding an atma brand.

She can't see one, though maybe it's just somewhere covered by the kimono. It has to be, because that's the only explanation for Yukiko's calmness and Yukiko's wings, bladed feathers jutting from her arms and across her shoulders. Chie tries not to look at the purple mask on the stairs next to Yukiko.

"Well," Yosuke says, at a bit of a loss. "I guess things turned out pretty well, all things considered."

God, she wants to kick him. Maybe with Tomoe's strength she'd even actually break something this time. That'd be nice, she thinks, if only to stop him from continuing to refer to her losing control. She squeezes her eyes shut; she can see Yosuke wheezing and Tomoe's foot planted on his chest. He bucks and shards of bone punch through his shirtfront; Tomoe rumbles in satisfaction. No, not good. Bad, bad, very bad. Her eyes snap open and the others are staring at her—Souji rubs his neck through his shirt-collar, feeling the pulse of his brand, perhaps; Yosuke's eyes narrow, as though reading her mind.

"Sorry for taking so long," Souji says at last, when the silence gets too heavy. "We ran into … complications."

Chie stares down at her shoes. It's so unfair, just because they're all perfectly okay with eating demons that were once other people doesn't mean everyone would be, it's not that easy, damn it.

Yukiko smiles a little and touches her hand. "Shall we go home?"

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Red always suited Yukiko. It suited her before, before all the demons and blood and constant hunger. It suits her even more now when she's crouched in the heat of the bathhouse, dark hair fanning behind her back as she wipes her mouth and licks her fingers. Chie doesn't know why she's taking it so well, but maybe it's because Yukiko was always an oddity, Yukiko's always had a taste for the strange and so in a really roundabout way it all makes sense.

Yukiko catches her looking and frowns. "Are you all right?"

Yeah, well, Yukiko might have adapted fine to being a bloodthirsty cannibalistic demon but Chie isn't sure she ever will; she can only bring herself to eat when she feels her atma brand searing into her calf, only when the green climbs up her thighs and down her ankles. Maybe one day she'll try and get Souji to gouge it off, to see what happens when she does – at least, if Tomoe doesn't break his neck first.

"Sure, just great!" she says when she realises she's been quiet for too long and Yukiko's been squinting at her through the heat haze filming her glasses. Her voice sounds too false and bright and cheery; she doesn't blame Yukiko for staring at her with narrowed eyes, mouth twisted into a grimace.

"Oh, Chie," she says.

They leave the bathhouse early that day, because realistically they're not going to make it through in one go, not when Yukiko's the only one that's really comfortable in the heat, not when every step makes Chie want to throw up. Not that there'd be anything that'd come out, though, except for bile. Maybe a bead chain today, if they're especially lucky. She had felt something go down with the flesh earlier but hadn't given it much thought – couldn't afford to, not when Tomoe was growing restless, not when she started looking at Yukiko and wondered which part of her would be the most tender, which part would be the easiest on her stomach.

She doesn't think she'll ever get accustomed to that hunger—the wistful urge to devour, to consume, to rend flesh from bone and pick entrails from cooling meat.

They walk back to her place together, huddling close for warmth; or more for Yukiko, really, because Konohana-Sakuya doesn't like the cold and Yukiko's getting fidgety.

"Are you sure you'll be okay?" Yukiko asks, once they get indoors. Chie doesn't answer her immediately, flopping onto her futon. She doesn't know how to answer, because when she actually thinks about it she'll never be okay, not as long as Tomoe's in her head and they're restless with hunger all the time.

"'course, I'm just great!" Chie says, drawing her legs up to her chest. Yukiko presses close against her and kisses her neck. "I … I just, well, it doesn't feel right. I can't do it, Yukiko, I'm not as strong as you or the others."

"Oh, Chie," she says again. Chie shivers when Yukiko slides her hand up her leg, fingers brushing over her atma. "I wish I were as strong as you."

Chie stares at her. "What?"

"It's true." Yukiko hums against her jaw; Chie can feel her smile against her skin. "Don't be silly."

"What if," she says, when Yukiko kisses her palm; Tomoe stirs at the contact and Chie feels hungry again, only it's not quite the same as the awful hunger that makes her want to gorge herself and then heave it all back out as soon as they reach the next floor.

"Hmm?"

"What if we'll never get back to normal again? What if we're stuck like this forever?"

Yukiko gazes up at her, lips pressed against Chie's wrist. Chie's suddenly afraid, irrationally scared that maybe, just maybe Yukiko doesn't entirely have it all together and it's Konohana-Sakuya that's in control at the moment and, oh god, Yukiko's going to tear her hand off—

"I'm sure it'll work out," Yukiko says. She laces her fingers with Chie's, stroking the knuckles with her thumb. "That's the best we can hope for, right?"

"I guess."

Her stomach growls – or maybe it's Tomoe, she doesn't even know by this point. Yukiko giggles giddily and rolls onto her back; the hem of her skirt shifts and rises. There's something on her thigh, a red-black brand that sets Chie's teeth on edge.

"Good to know some things don't change, hmm?"

"Geez," Chie mutters. She reaches towards Yukiko, slips a hand under her skirt, pushing it up. She's never seen Yukiko's atma before. It's pretty, something that looks like a tiger lily, its edges shedding flame. When she rests her palm over it she can feel a rush of heat, a surge of warmth that reminds her of fire and all the danger she's ever associated with it.

Don't play with fire, they said. You'll only get burnt, they said. It won't be so fun when your skin is cracked and peeling and oozing pus, they said.

She thinks of Konohana-Sakuya's wings, glittering and metallic and searing to the touch, stabbing through flesh and shredding into bone. Yukiko gazes hazily up at her and rests her hand over Chie's, pressing it against the brand.

"Do you hear her?" she asks, softly. Chie isn't sure who she's referring to – Konohana-Sakuya or Tomoe; Tomoe, whose voice is a low purr at the back of her mind, idle and soothed. She shrugs absently and rests her hands on Yukiko's knees.

Tomoe's egging her on, urging her to lick a slow strip from Yukiko's knees to her thighs and further, just a little nip, a gentle scrape of her teeth, nothing major, it won't even hurt Yukiko—but she can't, not when her stomach is clenching and Tomoe's shifting within her, waiting to burst from her skin and out of her control. Instead she leans back and shoves her hands into her jacket pockets. "I'm sorry," she says.

Yukiko looks disappointed; for a moment, her eyes are amber and red is spreading, creeping across her skin; Tomoe-in-Chie recoils and the air crackles sharply, a chill seeping into the room.

"I'm sorry," she says again, and Tomoe is roaring again. She has to get away, get away before she loses it again and ends up making a Yukiko popsicle.

"It's all right," Yukiko says and she sounds a little rougher along the edges, like there's fire lapping at her vocal chords, distorting the sound of her voice. "It'll get better, Chie."

She closes her eyes and leans against Yukiko, lets Yukiko pull her into her arms and press her forehead against hers. She doesn't know how much more of this she can stand; how much longer she can take the hunger gnawing at her belly, perpetual and insistent; how much longer she'll try to kiss Yukiko and find herself pressed against her sheets with Konohana-Sakuya's feathers flush against her back, Tomoe howling in her skull.