Chapter Text
Shinigami (死神, literally "death god")
- (Japanese mythology) A deity and/or personification of death.
- Soul reaper; guardians of the souls who are going through the circle of transmigration
Not too long ago, Lord Shinigami became a father to two little girls. He named them Elizabeth and Patricia, but most people called them Liz and Patty.
Shinigami took great pride in the creation of Liz and Patty. He’d been the guardian of this world for over ten thousand years, and still, it could be argued that their existence alone was his crowning achievement.
The daughters of Shinigami bore properties of both death god and mortal flesh. They were created to live as deities amongst humans in a human world. Someday, when they were ready, they would evolve into full-fledged shinigami. They would watch over humanity with love and understanding that only a demigod could experience.
Both girls were heirs to Death’s throne, and he had very high hopes for them indeed.
Since childhood, Liz and Patty shared everything. Toys, clothes, teachers, favorite ice cream flavors. They shared the master bedroom in the west suite of Gallows Manor. They shared all the same extracurriculars when they were enrolled in human school, and then they shared matching uniforms at the Death Weapon and Meister Academy. Even their souls shared three Lines of Sanzu: glowing haloes which provided them life and set them apart from mortals. They weren’t twins—Death had created them two years apart, actually—but people often mistook them for such. They behaved as if they knew a secret language that nobody else would ever learn to speak. They worked together as if they could read one another’s soul wavelengths. And maybe they could.
Their sisterly love was indestructible, but time quickly proved it to be their weakness as well. The girls, from a young age, demonstrated that they were neither prepared nor willing to begin training in combat with anybody besides each other. No weapon partner was ever good enough for them—they simply didn’t want one to begin with.
There were many reasons for their refusal to partner with a human weapon. Liz in particular lacked a proper respect for mortal souls. She knew she was meant to govern the universe someday, and she knew she would outlive all the friends she made in this lifetime—so there was no time to play nice with humans. She was too busy preparing herself to someday inherit her father’s work. It was her sole purpose in life, and a human companion would never understand that.
Meanwhile, Patty failed to treat anything with the seriousness expected of a budding shinigami. She laughed hysterically at even the gravest situations, and never seemed to truly process the danger that she and her sister often found themselves in. Therefore, she did not comprehend the necessity of a Death Scythe—or a weapon partner of any kind, for that matter. Her erratic personality and aggressive disposition had always been plenty to get by on.
(Emotionally and mentally, Death’s youngest daughter had never quite been all there. He chided himself for the haphazard creation of her soul; he’d taken too many creative liberties with her conception, whereas Liz’s personality was structured to be less turbulent and better suited for a life of leadership and diplomacy.)
Sometimes Death considered dismissing the matter of finding a weapon partner. Perhaps his daughters would grow into impeccable shinigami even without one. They both demonstrated substantial skill in the realm of combat, self-defense, and death magic. Their souls were strong. And they were aligned with one another—which, perhaps, was the only thing that mattered.
But he worried as a father does. There were situations which required a shinigami to resonate with their Death Scythe. If a kishin were to become active, for instance. He hoped that nothing so catastrophic would ever take place in his children’s lifetimes, but he knew better than to become addicted to peace.
With each passing day, it seemed increasingly unlikely that any human would ever be able to keep up with his girls. Fortunately, Death’s worry would eventually be proven to be unfounded.
***
Worlds apart from Death City, a boy called Kid shared a lot less in common with his older brother.
(Kid had a real name, of course, but nobody ever took the time to learn it. In New York, it was easier to give him a kick and say, “move, kid,” than it was to ask for his name and wait for him to spell it out.)
Kid’s older brother, Asura, was a whole eleven years older—and quite resentful about it. As a high school dropout, he couldn’t relate with Kid about anything, and he most certainly did not enjoy the company of children.
Due to the age gap, he was expected to babysit Kid when their parents were not around. Which was often. Their father hadn’t come home in years, and their Mama was usually too stoned to tell her sons apart. Asura loathed this responsibility, and was one of the first people to decide that giving Kid a real name implied respect he didn’t deserve.
(Kid didn’t mind when Asura forgot to use his real name. It felt special to be called a kid by Asura. Like a nickname with secret meaning.)
Even without the difference in age, there had always been a stark contrast in the brothers’ personalities. Since Kid was old enough to walk and talk, anybody with eyes could have told you that he and Asura were literary foils of one another.
Kid was a quiet little boy who kept to himself whenever possible. Whether he was at school or home, he left no trace: he feverishly cleaned any mess left behind, to the point of near-obsession. He tip-toed through the apartment as if he was afraid that someone would notice him and punish him for being present. He did his best to get along with everybody. He complied with adults. He did his chores. He always raised his hand to speak. He was the sort of child that teachers described as “a pleasure to have in class.”
Asura, on the other hand, was a loud-mouthed teenager who was more likely to be called a “lost cause” or “bad influence.” In his high school days, he had a penchant for smoking weed, starting fistfights, and skateboarding on private property. He was a petty thief and a selfish bully. He had been arrested on multiple occasions (once for carjacking, once for bringing a gun to class). He was sent to juvie twice, and suspended from school more times than he could count.
He wasn’t sorry about it, either. He had never received a word of praise in his life, and so he had long since stopped caring what others thought of his lifestyle. In fact, his side of the bedroom was akin to a crack den, and he kept it that way to deliberately agitate his neurotic little brother.
If Asura ever came off as angry and vengeful, it was only because he was more afraid than anything. He lived in constant fear of some vaguely terrible thing befalling either him or his only brother. His world had proven to be a traumatic and unforgiving place. He had to stay on his guard to keep things from getting worse.
The overwhelming paranoia, coupled with excessive substance abuse and an undiagnosed misfiring of synapses—was enough to make his brain rot.
From where Asura stood, Kid always seemed to have things easy. He was only five, and somehow even he had experienced a lifetime of luck that simply eluded Asura for over sixteen years.
Namely, he had been born a Demon Pistol like their father before.
That, to Asura, was the most insulting blow of all. It was the biggest and most glaring distinction between him and his little brother. For whatever reason, Asura had been born a simple human, wholly powerless and untalented.
And he would never forgive Kid for being better than him.
Entirely unaware of Asura’s misplaced resentment, Kid loved his older brother fiercely.
Without exception, Kid could find the good in everyone. This included his free-loading, waste-of-space, lazy bastard of a brother (Mama’s words, not his).
Whenever Asura had bad dreams or sleep paralysis, Kid would give him his plushie Pikachu to sleep with through the rest of the night. If they were tight on money, he would let Asura have the last Capri Sun in the box. When he stumbled across coins in the sidewalk cracks, he’d quietly leave them in Asura’s pockets.
He couldn’t grasp why Mama was so mean to Asura. Asura misbehaved a lot, sure, but he was a good brother. He gave piggyback rides around the grocery store and laundromat, and sometimes he’d let Kid have the very first puff of his cigarette, the expensive Marlboro kinds he treasured so deeply. If he was in an extraordinarily good mood, he would even let him sit on his lap as he played Grand Theft Auto—or he’d let Kid take a turn on the old PlayStation.
So he couldn’t have been as horrible as Mama said.
By extension of his compassionate personality, Kid considered it his personal duty to keep Asura and Mama from fighting too much. He tried to explain to Mama that punching and kicking wasn’t an acceptable way to resolve anger—the teachers said this all the time at school!—but the last time he said anything, she threatened to beat his ass to a pulp. So he stopped trying to give her advice.
Especially when alcohol was involved, Kid was too small to physically intervene during an argument. He’d learned his lesson after being pushed, shoved, and stepped on so hard that he broke a pinkie finger. He had never been properly taught to use his pistol form, either, so that had no bearing on his family’s power dynamic.
Sometimes the fighting spiraled so far out of control that all he could do was hide in the bedroom. Under the covers, he would pray for Papa to come home soon, since Papa was the only one scary enough to make Mama stop hitting people.
But very rarely were those prayers answered. Kid could probably count his father’s visits on one hand.
If he did happen to come home, Papa was even scarier than Mama in some ways. He never punched anyone, but he was a Demon Weapon—a gun, just like his youngest son—and he’d often threaten to shoot both Mama and Asura dead. Or he’d threaten to kill himself right in front of them. So far, he hadn’t followed up on the threat, but Kid was certainly concerned.
And so it went. Kid couldn’t remember it being any other way. It went on like this until the day Asura and Mama had a big fight. They had big fights all the time, of course, but on this day, they really, really fought.
Kid was too young to remember what exactly happened that night, but he could vaguely picture some parts, like fuzzy scenes from a VCR tape that had gotten all messed up inside.
He remembered Asura yelling so hard that he began to cry, and crying was something Asura never did. He remembered seeing dark spots of blood on the flea-bitten sofa. The blood had deeply bothered him, because he knew the stain would be permanent on the light-colored fabric.
He also remembered carefully packing his bag, the ratty old Jansport that once belonged to Asura. He remembered the Jansport was not very clean or fun: pockmarked with cigarette burns, and reeking of ash no matter how many times it went through the wash. It was also much too large for a kindergartener to wear on his back.
But at least Kid was able to fit lots of things inside. He couldn’t recall what he packed, though he did remember leaving most of his Pokemon toys behind. He had a very hard time discerning which ones to take along. In the end, he decided Pikachu deserved a spot in the Jansport—his symmetrical little face was the most aesthetically pleasing, anyway.
“Kid, you have five seconds to pack the rest of your shit or I’m givin’ you away to Goodwill,” Asura had said.
He remembered the blurry yellow streaks of the street lights, which passed by through the dirt-streaked car window. He remembered asking Asura why he was sitting in the front and not the booster seat. He remembered Asura yelling at him for asking too many questions. He asked then if they could turn on the radio. Asura was so mad that he didn’t even answer that one.
He wanted to ask where they were going. But he didn’t.