CHAPTER FIVE - CRAZY RAIN ARC - I AM BELPHEGOR!

"I WANNA HAVE SEX! SEEEEEEEEEEX!!!!!!"

The man's vocal chords sound as if they're about to burst.

Everyone in the arcade stares at him, flabbergasted. 

"Belphegor? Isn't that..." Riru mutters.

As if coming to a sudden realization, Fukuzaki's eyes widen.

The man violently rips off his shirt.

"I JUST! CAN'T! HOLD IT IN ANY LONGER!!!!"

 I NEED A HIGH SCHOOL GIRL! I LOVE THEIR MODEST LONG SKIRTS! I'M ALWAYS DESPERATELY WISHING I COULD TAKE A PEEK UNDERNEATH! I NEED-"

His disgusting fantasies are cut short by a chair slamming into the side of his head with full force.

Behinds him stands a woman who just entered the building. She drops the now bloodied chair and breathes heavily.

"I HATE MEN LIKE YOU! YOU THINK YOU CAN SAY WHATEVER YOU WANT AND JUST GET AWAY WITH IT, IS THAT RIGHT?! I'VE ALWAYS WANTED TO KILL SOMEONE LIKE YOU!"

She picks up the chair again, repeatedly bashing the man on the head with it over and over again.

"I..."

BAM!

"AM..."

BAM!

"BELPHEGOR!"

As the woman screams the name, the sound of a loud crack signals the end of her rampage. Any small chance the man had of surviving had now been eliminated.

Blood oozes across the floor, reaching towards Riru's feet.

The arcade erupts into a chaotic chorus of screams. 

Waves of people begin flooding towards the front of the arcade, toppling over each over while desperately trying to make their escape. The murderous woman collapses on her knees next to the body, bursting into laughter.

"Let's stay together!" shouts Fukuzaki, grabbing onto the other girls as they're pummeled by bodies left and right.

Before everyone can make it to the exit, however-

"I AM BELPHEGOR! I KILLED MY BEST FRIEND!"

"I AM BELPHEGOR! I HATE MY WIFE!"

"I AM BELPHEGOR! I CHEATED ON MY ENTRANCE EXAMS!"

"I AM BELPHEGOR! I WANNA BE HELD BY AN OLDER WOMAN!"

Bursting through the front door comes another group of lunatics, making loud proclamations just like the two who came before. 

"Get out of the way!" a man in the arcade screams, swinging his fist at one of the intruders. He hits them in the face. 

The intruder fights back, tripping the man and knocking him onto the floor.

Suddenly, in the matter of seconds, the entire crowd breaks out into violence. Windows shatter as more of the intruders attempt to enter from the outside, while the people trapped inside the arcade do anything in their power to escape. 

One of the crazed intruders approaches Fukuzaki.

"I AM BELPHEGOR! AND I WANT-"

Instantly, Riru's foot slams into the side of his head, the sheer power of her kick sending him flying back into the crowd. 

"Woah! Riru?!" Inuyama is shocked.

"We can't get out that way! Let's go upstairs!" suggests Misaki, clearly panicking. 

The girls scramble towards the back of the first floor.

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Outside, the mayhem doesn't seem to be any less contained, the streets erupting into complete and utter chaos. Pedestrians randomly attack each other and thoughtlessly throw themselves off of rooftops and into traffic, while cars swerve off the road and crash into nearby buildings. Each person yells their desires aloud, and while every statement differs, one thing remains the same-

"I AM BELPHEGOR!"

A group of devil hunters calmly make their their way down the street, each clad in black religious vestments with pure white crosses printed onto them, simply watching the chaos.

"Quite the conundrum we have on our hands, ain't it?"

One of the exterminators speaks up, an older man with a short frame and square jaw. A permanent toothy smile seems to be carved into his face, and his combover glistens with cheap and greasy hair product. His appearance seems to be perfectly manufactured, gaudy to the point where one would question what grime and filth lay hidden beneath that he would try so desperately to hide. His ghoulish sunken eyes peer out from beneath his brow ridges. 

"Can't you hear it, Michael?! Their souls cry out for me!" another exterminator yells while sticking out his arms towards the heavens. A tall and lanky man, with stubble covering the lower half of his face. He wears a fluffy oversized top hat and star-shaped glasses cover his eyes. He carries a large boombox.

"Belphegor... so this is what he's capable of." mutters the last exterminator, a young woman holding an umbrella in one hand and a massive monstrous spine in the other. She has a pretty face and piercing black eyes, with her scarlet red hair tied haphazardly into a messy bun. Most noticeably, gruesome purple burn marks cover her skin in random spots from head to toe, including half her face. 

"Just make sure to not let the rain hit you, dear," Michael grins.

"Don't call me that," the woman spits.

"My apologies, Lucy."

As she looks up at the sky, the clouds twist in an unnatural and lifelike fashion. 

"Though I have to wonder how that thing made it through a rift..."

Suddenly, the three are interrupted by a group of five hooded figures, long horns sticking out from under the darkness of their hoods.

"Tch. Spoke too soon..."

"You plan to interrupt us? It's already too late..." one of the figures speaks.

"Can't you see what you've done?! You've completely messed with the groove! The hearts of the people beat with the sound of rebellion!" 

The exterminator with the star-shaped glasses seems highly emotional.

"There's a special place in Hell from devils like you. So why'd you up and come here?" asks Michael, his dark glare intensifying.

The hooded figures unveil small daggers hidden within their cloaks. They break off into three groups, running off into different directions.

"They want us to split up..." mentions Lucy.

"Don't seem like an issue to me." Michael's smile seems impossible to break.

Looking at each other for a moment, the devil exterminators separate to capture their foes. 

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Meanwhile in the arcade, the girls reach the staircase to the second floor. But somehow, a foe stands in their way.

"I AM BELPHEGOR! I LOVE FAT BITCHES!"

"Who even cares about that?! How did you make it in here?!"

Fukuzaki trips the man, causing him to tumble down the stairs. 

"W-Woah! I did it!"

"Nice one!" shouts Inuyama.

The four rush up to the second floor, only to find multiple intruders already there. They yell out their declarations while tipping over arcade cabinets. 

"How'd they make up here?!" yells Fukizaki.

Misaki's eyes widen as she looks towards the open window at the edge of the room.

"The window! They somehow climbed up!"

"From the wall?!"

One of the intruders approaches Riru, throwing a punch. She dodges, grabbing his head and slamming it down onto the control panel of a claw machine. It hits the "DROP[" button.

A pleasant jingle plays from the machine as the claw descends. It appears it was still active. 

Inuyama grabs a drumstick from the taiko drumming game, beating another crazed woman over the head with it.

"Hiyah! Hiiiyah!"

With one final smack, she slams the woman's head down onto the drum with a thud.

Riru watches the claw machine, absolutely hypnotized. It somehow manages to grab onto a devil plushie. 

Fukuyama kicks an approaching attacker, knocking them into the side of the machine. The impact causes the claw to wobble.

"Hey! Don't shake it!" shouts Riru. 

On the other side of the machine, another attacker approaches Riru. Terrified, Misaki grabs a ball from the nearby basketball game and halfheartedly throws it at the assailant. 

"Hah! Take that!"

The man slowly turns around.

"I AM BELPHEGOR! AND I... HATE... BASKETBALL!"

"Aaaaahhh!"

Misaki throws another ball, but the man ducks and causes it to miss. It hits the side of the claw machine. The claw wobbles again, dropping the devil plushie.

"NOOOO! GRAAAAAAAHHHH!"

Riru picks up the machine, swinging it in a circle around her and hitting the basketball-hating man. After a few more loops around, she throws it at top speed, and watches it smash into three other intruders on the other side of the room. 

"Woah... You're strong, Ruriri!" shouts Inuyama. 

"Watch out!"

Inuyama blinks a few times before ducking, narrowly dodging the swing of a squishy hammer. It seems it was taken from arcade game somewhere on the floor.

"He's got a weapon!" Misaki looks scared.

Riru engages in combat, dodging the attacker's unpredictable blows and throwing a few punches his way. As the man throws a downward swing, she does a front flip in the air, jumping over his body and landing on her feet behind him.

"GREAT!" shouts a muffled robotic voice. 

It appears she landed directly onto the panel of the dancing game, her foot stepping on a tile.

The man turns around, red in the face with fury. He starts manically flailing his hammer around, and Riru uses quick footwork to awkwardly pose and evade every incoming blow.

"GREAT!"

"PERFECT!

"GREAT JOB!"

She swings her leg forward to trip the man, and he lands face first onto another tile.

"PERFECT!"

She stomps on his head, and the other girls rush over to help kick him when he's down. Fukuzaki jumps up, jabbing the soles of her feet down onto his back with all her weight.

"GREAT!"

"PERFECT!"

"YOUR GRADE... A! THOSE WERE SOME SMOOTH MOVES, BABY!"

Riru laughs, and Fukuzaki looks at her with a smile. The two clap together in a victorious high-five. 

"There's still more!" shouts Misaki, watching as more people crawl their way up to the window.

"Why do they wanna get in here, anyway?" Fukuzaki looks confused.

Riru has a sudden realization.

"Someone, try getting their attention!"

"Huh, okaaay, if you insist!"

Inuyama innocently smiles and waves as she approaches the insane woman contorting her body to climb through the window. 

The woman rushes at Inuyama, who crouches and covers her head.

However, the woman keeps running right past her in a single-minded pursuit of Riru. 

"Huh? But why didn't she..." Misaki is cut off as Riru delivers a powerful blow straight to the woman's gut. She collapses in pain.

"I... AM... BELPHEGOR! AND I..." she passes out.

"...Get out of here." mutters Riru.

"Huh?"

"Just keep going up! Trust me!" 

"That's insane! You're gonna die!" cries Misaki.

Riru looks at her with determination. 

"I won't."

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Outside, in an alleyway off the main street, Michael faces off against his hooded foe. 

"Now, I reckon we could handle this peacefully, don'tcha think?" A ray of sunlight peeks past the dark clouds as if to purposefully make his pearly white teeth shine even brighter. 

The hooded figure doesn't respond, readying their blade. 

"I will not allow you to get in the way of our lord." 

"Well that's just blasphemous, ain't it! There's only one lord! And it's our heavenly father, up on high!"

He lets out a hearty laugh, his voice slightly crackling with the distortion of an old-fashioned radio microphone.

"Well, go on, if you insist. Hit me!"

He pats his chest and opens his arms wide. 

After hesitating for a second, the hooded figure steels their resolve, dashing towards the exterminator with intent to kill.

They swing the dagger in the blink of an eye, slashing through Michael's lower body in one swift slice.

"Hahaha! That was a misstep, boy!"

Static lines appear to cover his entire body, and his colors distort with a chromatic aberration effect. The part that was cut with the blade violently glitches and distorts for a few seconds before returning to its original form.

"Looks like ya got caught."

The figure, terrified, tries to move, but an inexplicable force prevents him. Michael's visage completely disintegrates into the air, while another Michael holding an umbrella steps out from the shadowed depths of the alley. The darkness beneath his brows seem to completely envelop his eyes.

"Now do the world a favor, will you, son? How 'bout you just keel over and die already?"

Not a second after Michael finishes his statement, the hooded figure vomits out heaping amounts of blood. They bend over and completely collapse onto the floor, blood pooling around their curled up corpse. 

"Now, we're all sinners, but some of us just deserve to go straight to Hell."

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Another one of the hooded figures rushes up the staircase of an apartment complex, their feet clanging against the frail iron stairs. The devil exterminator with star-shaped glasses chases after them.

Bursting through the door, the two end up on the rooftop. 

"Why'd you gotta run so far?! I'm already exhausted!" the exterminator yells.

He sets his boombox on the floor, the words 'HEAVEN'S GROOVE' carved into the top. He looks up at the sky as the rain pours down on his face.

"The rain... why isn't it affecting you?"

The exterminator smiles.

"Well, can't you hear it..?"

"I can't hear nothin'! I just gotta get rid of you!"

The hooded figure, more talkative than the last, grabs onto his dagger tightly.

"Shh, just listen..."

The exterminator starts bobbing his leg.

"The beat..."

He sticks up one of his arms, pointing his finger to the sky. 

"Of my HEART!!!!"

He rhythmically points up and down, and a drum beat mysteriously plays around the two combatants. 

"You can hear it all, right here! I've got nothing to hide!"

Boom... Boom... Boom... HIT!

On the fourth note, the hooded figure seems to recoil from damage. 

Boom... Boom... Boom... HIT!

Boom... Boom... Boom... HIT!

A funky bass line is added to the groove. 

"This is the sound... of Mister Sandalphon! Pleased to meet you!"

He shows off a charismatic smile while thrusting from side to side.

Boom... Boom... Boom... HIT!

Each time the last note plays, the figure is assaulted from all directions by a mysterious and powerful force. Stumbling backwards, he falls onto the floor.

Boom... Boom... BoomSLAM.... HIT!

The sound of his fall interrupts the beat. Somehow, this time, the invisible impact never arrives.

"Hey, what're you doing getting in the way of my jam?! If you wanted to join in, you could've just said so! Music's all about communication, you see..."

Suddenly, the beat changes.

Boom... Boom... Boom... SLAM, HIT!

A brass line is added into the mix. 

The hooded figure is now buffeted by two invisible blows at the end of the measure. Coughing up blood, they get sent flying off the edge of the building.

Boom... Boom... Boom... SLAM, HIT, SPLAT!

With that final note, the song comes to a close. Sandalphon looks up into the clouds, sticking up both his arms in victory. A tear seems to fall down his face, though it may have simply been a droplet of rain.

"Your sound was beautiful, until the very end..."

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The three remaining hooded figures surround Lucy on a crowded Tokyo street, surrounded by the chaos of the rampaging citizens. 

Another figure, seemingly the one defeated by Sandalphon, drops onto the pavement with a bloody splat.

"Ugh, let's just get this over with..." Lucy mumbles.

"I've dealt with your kind before. Don't think I'll go down so easily."

One of the figures lets down their hood, revealing a grotesque face of a devil with a demonic symbol carved into his forehead.

"With this summon, I beseech you-!"

"Shut up. Don't drag this out." 

She lifts up the large twisting spine she carries in her right hand as it glows with a red demonic light. With a single forceful swing, the three devils who surround her are cleanly bisected. 

"What...?" One mutters, before death itself interrupts any further thought.

Every exposed part of skin on Lucy's body suddenly ignites in a bright and colorful flame. She winces in pain for a second before forcing a serious expression and attempting to ignore the pain.

"Even in the rain, huh? That's divine punishment for ya..." Michael chuckles, appearing out from a nearby alley. He eyes the demonic spine.

"But I guess it's deserved, ain't it? When are you gonna give up on using that thing?"

"Fuck off. I can handle it," she spits.

She looks up at the sky.

"Now how exactly are we gonna deal with that...?"

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Back on the second floor of the arcade, Riru is surrounded by approaching attackers from all sides.

She hits the side of her head with her palm, and her single large horn shoots out from inside her brain. Grabbing onto it with both hands, she slowly tears it out of her head to reveal the hidden blade sheathed within. 

She smiles with bloodlust.

"I AM BELPHEGOR! I WANNA KEEP LYING TO MY PARENTS FOR MONEY!"

"I AM BELPHEGOR! I GET A RUSH FROM CHEATING ON MY HUSBAND!"

Suddenly, she drops her arm to the side, letting down her blade. An expression of fear crawls across her face. 

"Can I... kill them?"

She stands paralyzed. One of the men approaching her throws a strong punch into her gut, sending her stumbling backwards. 

A strange feeling, buried deep within her consciousness, slowly starts to resurface.

It smells good. 

It smells good. It smells-

"Agh, stop it!"

She stabs herself through the stomach with her own blade. Blood spills from the back of her torso before she quickly draws a sigil to heal the wound.

Now determined, she shoves the horn back inside her head, once again hidden from view.

Three of the approaching assailants jump at her,  causing her to lose her balance, and she tumbles onto the floor. A barrage of fists pummels her from every angle.

While she desperately attempts to crawl out from under the mass of bodies, the weight is too much to bear. Using a free hand to rip out one of her canine teeth from her jaw, she saws off her own leg to set herself free.

Another sigil ignites, and her lost leg is regained, fresh muscle fibers wrapping around her newly reformed bone. She rushes up the staircase to the top floor. A wave of bodies follows her every move, slamming into walls and climbing over each other in a desperate attempt to reach their target.

Finally, she reaches the door to the roof.

After pushing herself through the doorway, she quickly slams it shut. Every fiber in her being attempts to hold down the door as her back is battered with the force of strong impacts over and over again. 

A few moments later, it subsides.

She looks up.

"Hey! Inuyama! Misa-"

"I AM BELPHEGOR!"

The uncharacteristically loud shout comes from the exhausted Misaki.

"AND I... WANNA FUCK OLDER MEN!"

Inuyama joins in.

"I AM BELPHEGOR! AND I LIKE ACTING STUPID SO PEOPLE WILL LIKE ME!"

"Riru..!"

The pleading cry comes from Fukuzaki, who hides from the rain under a power generator platform.

"It's the rain!"

"Huh?"

Riru looks up to the sky, watching as the amorphous mass of clouds twists and contorts.

Rainfall touches upon Riru's skin. 

"Belphegor... I knew that devil at school was too weak to be a prince of Hell..."

"Descending from above to wash away the filth..." A voice echoes in the back of her head.

"Agh!"

She can no longer constrain the sensation tingling the back of her brain that she tried so desperately to repress. 

It smells good. It smells good. It smells good.

"The rain will reveal the truth."

It smells good. It smells good. It smells good. It smells good. It smells good. It smells good.

"JUST SHUT UP ALREADY!"

She staggers forward, barely able to continue standing.

Her single horn shoots out of her head, much longer than ever before, and pierces into the ground.

It keeps growing. And growing. And growing. 

As if her horn were a vaulting pole, Riru is propelled into the sky, further and further up as her horn refuses to cease its endless lengthening.

"Riru!!!!!"