Denouemont

[Kuzuru]

Death was a new and exciting experience for the demon Kuzuru. He had always enjoyed a sort of pseudo-immortality. For as long as humans fought and slaughtered one another he would draw breath. He was the ugly hate that mankind would bring upon itself. Even being confined within the prison of the Ouroboros blade only meant a difference in quality of life rather than a death sentence. Those vessels that wielded the blade and borrowed his demonic powers served as his temporary bodies. Despite his autonomy being limited to what he could forcibly wrench from these meatbags he was content with having front row seats to his favorite show on earth. But the Omniverse changed that. For the first time in an almost inconceivably long time Kuzuru felt he had a body he could truly call his own. Though it was nothing more than a palimpsest of Renji Kiyomasa’s visage it was something that the demon had come to cherish. And he cherished his mortal coil by destroying it in the most exhilarating of ways.

It was a profound experience, he discovered, to be completely incinerated in an explosion. It happens fast enough that you don’t even register pain, just a vague sense of heat and pressure followed by nothing. Well, it would have been nothing if he were anywhere except for the Omniverse.

Kuzuru opened his eyes and found himself in familiar territory. The soft embrace of his leather chair wrapped around his body and provided a comforting sensation. Forming a “U” shape around him stood a desk, covered in dusty paperwork and neglected office supplies and trinkets. Paintings depicting ancient and grand battles hung on the walls. A grandfather clock, constructed from wood stained a deep red, sat in the corner. It stood as the silent guardian of his office, its dulcet tones occasionally echoing throughout the prison of souls. Indeed nothing seemed out of place or agitated since he had left. Nothing out of the ordinary asides from an hourglass sitting on the corner of his desk. Inside the glass trickled a steady stream of rainbow colored sand. The demon raised an eyebrow and reached for the object, only to discover that his hand phased through it as if it did not exist.

“Neat,” the demon quipped.

He leaned back and kicked his feet up. If what he had read on the Dataverse was true he’d be back up and kicking in a few days times. R&R, he figured, would do him a bit of good. After all getting exploded was quite an exhausting experience. So the demon closed his eyes and took a nap. More accurately, he tried to take a nap. No matter how hard he tried to doze off he simply couldn’t. And it wasn’t because he wasn’t sleepy, rather it was an innate function of this place. After all how could a dead man sleep?

For a while he simply sat reclined in his chair. A slight smirk had found a home upon his face as he reminisced the sequence of events that led to his demise. What a glorious end! These thoughts sustained the demon for quite some time, but as he turned over every facet of his excursion he grew increasingly bored. Eventually the lack of stimulus forced him from his seat and up into the center of the room. He paced from end to end, glancing at the hourglass from time-to-time. The iridescent sands moved as if they were cold molasses. The demon reached across his desk and grabbed an old-styled intercom microphone. He pressed a button at its base and spoke.

“Renji Kiyomasa, please report to the warden’s office, thank you.”

Satisfied he took a seat at his desk and watched the door intently. After a few seconds of silence a rumbling echoed throughout the prison. The door creaked open revealed an impossibly long corridor that looked like the throat of a strep patient. Covering the tunnel’s walls were wriggling red tendrils. Kuzuru smirked. Hurtling towards him at breakneck speeds was a vaguely humanoid shape. The figure was being carried along by the tendrils, their ropey bodies wrapping around his limbs long enough to pull him to the next set of tendrils. It only took a few moments for him to cover an unfathomable distance. Without fanfare Renji Kiyomasa was vomited onto the floor of Kuzuru’s office and the door slammed behind him.

“Renji-boy!” Kuzuru cheered and clapped his hands together, “thank you for coming, you’re looking absolutely sanguine today.”

Renji collected himself and climbed to his feet, “what do you want?”

“Oooh, so spiteful,” Kuzuru tittered.

“Bite me,” Renji answered, turning his gaze towards the ground.

Kuzuru smiled and stood. In this realm of his he was able to manifest his true form. He stood several heads taller than the average man and his body was riddled with lean and sinewy muscle. His frame was reminiscent of a human, if that human’s limbs had been stretched to aberrant proportions. Burgundy skin covered his body, it was as rough as sharkskin. Two gaunt arms extended from his shoulders, each of them splitting at the elbow and extending into two sets of forearms. Narrow needle-like claws protruded from each fingertip and a row of razor fangs lined his maw. A row of horns started from his forehead and trailed down his spine, eventually ceasing at the tip of his ropey tail. An almost imperceptible aura of maliciousness surrounded him, subconsciously infecting those around him like a poison.

“Come now Renji-boy don’t be like that,” he said. The demon snapped his fingers and the ground in front of his desk rippled like a pool. From this pool materialized a red leather chair. Kuzuru beckoned towards Renji, “come, sit, it feels like ages since we’ve been able to have a chat.”

“You stole my body,” Renji said.

Kuzuru sighed, “who would’ve known you’d actually grow a spine in here, please just sit down.”

“No,” Renji answered.

There was a moment of silence before the coming storm.

”I SAID SIT!” Kuzuru shouted, his voice becoming impossibly loud.

Red tendrils erupted from the chair and wrapped themselves around Renji’s wrists. In one violent motion he was wrenched into the air and pulled onto the chair. Thick vine-like restraints kept him locked in place and he knew better than to struggle.

“Good,” Kuzuru said, taking a seat himself, “thank you, now get comfortable you wouldn’t believe the past few weeks.”

And so the demon told Renji everything. He spoke of his flight into The Ashen Steppes. Kuzuru’s eyes were alight with excitement as he recalled the Coyotle’s and their prodigal warrior Cinder Salt. He spoke of Charles and Mallory as “effective knuckleheads” taking his time to recall every detail of his fight against them. After that he covered The Ashen Blades, eventually leading into their hunt for Ballad.

“Oh what a fight he said,” he said and snapped his fingers.

A flat screen television materialized itself and began to playback Kuzuru’s fight with Ballad from the demon’s perspective. Every now and again he’d replay a particularly violent spot and get as excited as a kid in a candy shop. Once the fight and subsequent execution was over Kuzuru sighed contently.

“Shame you couldn’t have been there Renji-boy,” he said, “you would’ve had fun.”

Renji said nothing.

“Come on, don’t be so sour, this was just the tip of the iceberg, we haven’t even gotten to the really good part yet.”

From there he launched into his dream with Luci and the Sage. He spoke of the painted girl with a saccharine fondness and spoke well of the Sage’s combat prowess. The ultraviolent town that served as Haunter’s playground and Jacket’s nightmare brought out a longing in Kuzuru the same way a tourist would long to return to Honolulu. He grew increasingly animated as he regaled Renji of Haunter’s demise, eventually pantomiming the final blow.

“That painted girl is a treat though,” he said, “you know she actually got away from me? She was only a few feet from me and she managed to escape, isn’t that crazy?”

Kuzuru didn’t care that Renji had nothing to say, he was just glad to have an audience. Without a break he started retelling his “magnum opus”. He told Renji of the darkchips and Nebula. He spoke of his fight with Morene and Ebony, eventually pulling it up on the flatscreen.

“Check this out, she just tanks my spear and keeps going,” Kuzuru said, replaying the moment that Morene was skewered over and over, “I think I’m in love Renji, this chick can take a beating, it gets better, she takes another one of these and keeps on trucking, but I’m getting ahead of myself.”

This went on for hours, days, weeks; time meant nothing here. Eventually his stories were exhausted and he fell back into his chair basking in a twisted afterglow.

“So?” he prompted Renji.

“So what?”

Kuzuru sat up in his chair, “so, what do you think?! Pretty fucking awesome right?!”

“You’re a psychopath,” Renji muttered.

“Oh come off it, you’re just butthurt that I took your body out for a joyride,” Kuzuru said, “look this place, this Omniverse is designed for shit like this, it’s one big free-for-all and I, for one, have no interest in being a bleeding heart pussy, Omni gave us this wonderful gift of immortality we might as well use it.”