Most people would have found it hard to sleep in a helicopter that was cutting through the air above Tokyo, for obvious reasons. Asagi Igawa was not most people, nor were the four other members of the Taimanin Rangers with her. Each of them could have, and had in the past, gotten rest in worse conditions. So Asagi was not surprised that the other Rangers were taking this opportunity to close their eyes and rest as they could.
Next to Asagi sat Kirara Onisaki, the excitable and loose blonde, half-demon and half-human, slumped backwards in her seat, the straps of her seatbelts squishing her sizable bust against her chest, quietly snoring. On the other side of the helicopter from Asagi sat Mirabell Bell, the serious, dark-skinned Union Forces soldier, her arms crossed in front of her, her nostrils silently flaring with each breath. Further down sat the Slashing Taimanin, the great swordswoman Akiyama Rinko, her eyes closed but her fingers beating an idiosyncratic rhythm to music that only she could hear. And rounding out the team for the mission was Kousaka Shizuru, the blonde master teacher of spycraft at Gosha Academy.
But it was not the physical environment that kept Asagi from resting. It was her own mind, with the niggling sense that things seemed to be getting worse and worse. Demon attacks were being made at key people and institutions seemingly every other day, and not just in Japan. The increasing tempo of activity was taking a toll on the Taimanin, as it seemed like only a few hours after fending off one attack, they would be sent back out. Asagi knew the cost of it – more and more mistakes in battle, more casualties, more dead ninja. That Fuuma had been forced to pull Kousaka for this mission worried Asagi – were they so low on manpower that second-line Taimanin were now thrust into frontline fighting?
“This seems like a desperation attack,” Fuuma whispered through Asagi’s earpiece, sitting in the front of the chopper as he was. “At current rates of demon infiltration, these attacks have resulted in the deaths of 20% of the past decade’s worth of demon arrivals. Nomad can’t keep that rate up, none of the demon factions can.” His voice was as tired as Asagi felt. “But why gut themselves of manpower? Why would all of them weaken themselves so terribly? You’d think some players would hold back and attack the weakest rivals. I just don’t get it, Miss Igawa.” Even tired as he was, he kept the title for Asagi, his old teacher.
Asagi didn’t answer. She couldn’t figure it out either. Was it just the urge for self-destruction? Had Edwin Black finally thrown off that veneer of civilization and descended into pure nihilism? She wished she knew. At least this mission was to a preemptive attack on an identified gathering place for demons. Being on the offensive gave Asagi a better sense of agency.
As the helicopter turned northeast, Asagi glanced out the window at the city, flashing by below her. She was suddenly struck by the gap between herself and the average citizen down there. What did they know of what was happening, and who was protecting them? They surely didn’t know any details, but they must hear things in the distance, screams that pierce the heart and freeze the limbs. People going missing and the government without any explanations. Being told not to fear, but confronting quarantine zones around dead demons, with human limbs still in their maws. How could they not be afraid? Even animals could sense dangers on the horizon.
“Something’s going to give soon…” Asagi thought to herself. But what would break first? After a week of constant violence without respite, she was worried it might be her.
The helicopter touched down in a small city north of Tokyo, utterly unremarkable. There were still a few hours until dawn, but she could easily see the blinking lights on top of Mt. Tsukuba to her east. Fuuma laid out the mission parameters, and it was all straightforward. “And don’t worry, I’ll have eyes on all of you through the mini-drones,” Fuuma added.
“Well, if you’re going to keep an eye on me, I’ll make sure you get some good pictures of my ass so you can fap to it later!” Shizuru said, smiling and serious about her offer. Asagi and Rinko both shot her a disapproving look, but Kirara giggled at Fuuma’s blushing.
“The old maid’s all talk, Fuuma. But if I get any injuries, you have to promise to kiss them all better!” Kirara laughed.
Asagi was too tired to tell them to knock it off, but she didn’t have to, thankfully.
“You can flirt later, sluts,” Mirabell growled, the metal suit she wore on her limbs whirring as it flexed from her annoyance. “We’ve got a job to do.”
The team split up, leaving Fuuma at the helicopter, approaching what looked like any old warehouse from every side. Asagi didn’t see any sentries, and took it as meaning the demons here were still unorganized, probably trying to assert their hierarchies inside before making a move.
“No guards,” Rinko echoed from her side.
“Go in blasting?” Mirabell asked.
“That may be our best bet, just catch them totally off guard. Alright, weapons free!” Fuuma announced.
Asagi heard a window smash, followed by the sharp boom of a grenade going off, and immediately after the huge crash of Mirabell smashing through the wall with her power suit. Asagi and the other Taimanin took the distraction to flash into the warehouse, and the moment they did so, Asagi knew it had been a mistake.
Inside the open space were hundreds of demons – little more than beasts in intellect, but possessing horrible shapes and mutated forms that brought to mind amalgams of extinct animals. Each one was weak on its own, but in groups they were a danger even to Asagi. They began to surge towards the Rangers, and each and every one of them instantly snapped into the battle mindset.
Mirabell’s rifle began barking in the dark as Asagi swung her blade in huge arcs. Her sword sliced through a dozen at a time, but it was all she could do to keep herself from being overwhelmed. She could hear the distinctive ringing of Ishikiri Kanemitsu, and began trying to cut through the crowd to get to Rinko.
“Group up on Rinko!” Fuuma yelled.
Asagi heard Shizuru scream to her right, before she was drowned out by the hideous, clacking chittering of the slave-demons.
“No you don’t!” Mirabell shouted, moving towards Shizuru’s location. Demons were flung into the air in chunks and pieces with each swing of her armored limbs.
“No, Mirabell!” Fuuma ordered.
Asagi parried a bladed forearm and lashed out with a kick that sent the offending demon’s head into another demon’s chest, shattering both. She was in the battle-mind, focusing on the flow of combat, rather than on each discrete moment. She was a whirling nightmare, surrounded by blood. She was hard-pressed, but she could find the skeins of choice that would lead her to grouping with Rinko. From there, their options were much greater.
“Wait… Taima particles detected?!” Fuuma called out as something in Asagi’s back tingled. “No! Something else… something underground! Rangers, it’s a trap! Get out of there!”
The ground began to buckle beneath the melee. Asagi kept her balance as the concrete cracked and subsided. But it was enough of a distraction that the arms of shadow that reached out of the ground could grab her limbs.
“No!” Asagi cried out. She tensed her body, preparing to unleash one of her own techniques, but it was too slow. One more hand grabbed her face and pulled her into the hard ground, and all consciousness and sensation fled from her.
*****
“She’s waking up.” A male voice, interested, but also worried.
“Good, I was hoping she wouldn’t miss out on the welcoming party!” A female voice answered. It stirred something in Asagi’s memory.
But there were other sounds. Moans of pain, wet slapping, demonic voices growling. She heard the voices of the Ranger squad, shuddering and erotic. But it was the smell that woke her up. Sour and biting in her nostrils, it soaked into her sinuses and down into her lungs. She knew it intimately, could remember it in her pores.
Asagi woke with a gasp, her eyes shooting open. “Oboro!” she screamed, but she was met with a laugh from a different voice. Her eyes focused on the figure in front of her, slowly resolving the blurry image into that of an orc standing next to a woman with long brunette hair, red eyes, and a motherly figure, enhanced by the late-stage pregnancy she was in.
“It’s not the Chaos Arena, Asagi. But it’s nice to see you too,” the woman said.
“Sh-Shiranui?” Asagi said, surprise and worry mingling in her voice. “What’s…!”
Shiranui and the orc stepped aside, giving Asagi a view of what was happening behind them. There she could see the other Rangers being horribly assaulted by a group of almost two dozen orcs. Mirabell was being spitroasted by two orcs, held up only by their cocks, while next to her Shizuru had had her legs folded up and constricted around her arms, and was being used like an onahole by another cluster. Rinko had her face buried in a deep container, an orc’s foot on the back of her head, and Asagi could see bubbles of thick, slimy orc cum popping around her head. Kirara was the subject of three orcs attempting to try and fit three of their cocks into her pussy at the same time, while she screamed and moaned around a fourth in her mouth.
In a moment Asagi took in the evil, and the look she gave Shiranui could have wilted flowers. “Traitor.” She spat the word out, and behind it was every accusation of cowardice and oath of vengeance that a novel could hold.
Shiranui giggled at Asagi’s anger. “I’m really not sure why you think that’s such a bad word. Am I a traitor? Certainly . But did humanity deserve my fidelity in the first place?” Shiranui let out a condescending laugh. “You of all the Taimanin should know the depths of filth humanity is willing to sink to. These demons do what they do because it’s what they are, and they have no pretensions to the contrary. Humans are animals, but they pretend to be otherwise. If I remember one thing about you, Asagi, it’s your hatred of hypocrisy. Am I right about that?”
Shiranui’s hand was already stroking the orc cock next to her, bringing him to hardness as her other hand glided over her belly, where Asagi noticed a glowing tattoo, made of delicate curlicues, strokes, and arrows in the vague sigil of a heart . But it glowed with a pale green light that made Asagi sick.
“I’m here to make you understand the same reality I did, Asagi. You and all these other misguided sluts. Humans are just animals, and can be treated just the same way. If you don’t want to be an animal, you need power.” Mirabell sputtered and came as the orcs spitroasting her started blasting ropes of semen into her holes. Shiranui smiled and clapped. “But let’s get started, shall we?” she said, looking at Asagi.
Asagi’s leg shot out in a move that even other Taimanin would have had trouble noticing, let alone blocking. It should have connected with Shiranui’s temple, ending her wretched existence. It didn’t. Asagi’s foot quivered in Shiranui’s palm, and the traitor flipped Asagi over and around, slamming her into the ground painfully.
“I remember that trick of yours. Remember to add some of those muscle poisons to her meals later,” Shiranui said to the orcs around her. “But not too much! The more we can keep her intact, the stronger she’ll be.”
A few orcs surrounded Asagi, and their grips on her arms were like steel clamps. They hauled her up, and before she could lash out again a heavy fist thundered into Asagi’s belly. The ninja bent over, coughing painfully, before her hair was grabbed and yanked back to pull her face up. A slap struck her cheek, her head instantly turning one way before another slap sent it the other.
A few more moments of selective violence, and the orcs seemed to figure Asagi wasn’t going to try something like that kick again then. Another one tore apart her suit, letting her breasts fall out to their obvious delight and exposing her pussy, growing damp from the sexually-charged atmosphere reacting to the latent enhancements to her sensitivity, even through her mental training.
“Haha, she’s already getting wet!” one of the orcs crowed. Asagi didn’t even deign to acknowledge them.
“It’s time to prepare the girls for some fun. Yank out the bars, boys!” Shiranui said, letting the orc she’d been stroking take a place behind her and start thrusting his cock between her thighs.
The moment what Shiranui said sank in, Asagi grimaced internally. Each female Taimanin had an IUD in place to try and prevent pregnancies from capture. Taking them out meant that Shiranui had an interest in seeing the Rangers all end up as gravid as she was.
“Why are you making that face? I know how the suits work, they’ll repair themselves,” Shiranui asked Asagi, as clearly some of her disgust had become visible. “Unless it’s motherhood that disgusts you? You’re much older than I was when I had Yuki-chan. You’re more than ready to be a mother, and these orcs have a good track record for breeding, and I’ll attest to it personally!”
An orc with a speculum and tweezers came up to Shizuru. He thrust the tool into her gaping hole, making her throw her head back and gasp. As he grabbed the IUD with his other tool, Shizuru started groaning and squirming in the grips of the orcs, shaking in pain.
“I’m trying to work!” the orc bellowed, slapping Shizuru’s mouth hard enough to send a bit of blood flying onto Kirara’s worried face. With Shizuru coughing weakly, he yanked out the little device from her cervix, and dropped it with a metallic clang into a medical pan. The doctor then immediately moved onto Kirara, while Shizuru herself was bent over on the ground and immediately mating pressed.
One by one the Rangers had their IUDs removed. Kirara came from the way the orc medic manhandled the inside of her pussy, but Mirabell and Rinko both felt the pain clearly. When the medic came to Asagi, she’d prepared herself for it. She felt the painful stab of the tweezers on her cervix, then the deep discomfort from the device being dislodged. When it came free, she let out a sharp cry.
“Doesn’t this bitch feel shit like a thousand times more? She’s not cumming yet,” an orc said, perhaps a little annoyed.
“She thinks she’s better than orgasms,” Shiranui responded. “But don’t worry. We’ll have plenty of time to find her buttons and see the pathetic faces she’ll make.”
Once the medic was out of the way, Asagi had mere seconds before another orc stepped up in front of her and thrust his dick into her. She grunted, feeling every rough patch of skin and every uneven bump on his length as his meat seared the insides of her tunnel. She closed her eyes, trying to put internal distance between herself and the situation. The orc saw it and growled, pistoning himself in and out of her harder and faster.
Sensations came in, and Asagi’s mental training worked to separate them into levels of importance. Her heart rate was going up and her breathing was getting shallow. Arousal was beginning to show itself in her body, but that was to be expected. She could ignore that. She could hear the noises coming from the other Rangers though, and they concerned her. She could hear Kirara squealing as she came over and over again. Mirabell was busy moaning around an orcish tongue shoved deep into her mouth. Shizuru gasped and let out indecent giggles as she was filled by yet another orc. Even Rinko was being driven to climax, her legs shivering as they crossed around the back of the orc inside her.
A sagi felt the orc in her also come close to climaxing, and when he did, he hilted himself deep into her, and fired off rope after rope of molten-hot orc jizz into her. Asagi knew the possibilities. Orcs were virile, but the IUDs in her and the other Rangers had chemical components that would last for some time. Long enough for Fuuma to launch a rescue operation, she was sure of it.
The orcs continued to pump themselves into the Rangers, and even Asagi found herself exhausted by their inhuman stamina. Out of the corner of her eye she watched Shiranui sandwiched between two of her underlings with her heels hooked around the neck of the one in front of her, their pillars plowing into her holes from below, and saw her in ecstasy. Her head was thrown back in abandon, her voice low and lusty as she encouraged the orcs to fill her. Asagi didn’t know what Shiranui was pregnant with, but whatever was in there, how was Shiranui able to engage in such acts? Didn’t she worry about the orcs hurting the unborn child? Or was she unconcerned about the possibility?
Asagi counted the times the orcs came in her. 87 separate orgasms fired off in her alone. She counted her own orgasms, and reached 11 before exhaustion set in and she passed out.
The last thing she heard was Shiranui. “ I hope you’re all ready to see your real selves!”
*****
“I’ll be honest, I wasn’t expecting my cellmate to be you, of all people.”
Asagi awoke at the sound of the voice, a low female voice, tired but unbent. She could feel orc semen coating her entire nude body, coagulated and hardened as she’d slept. She wiped at her eyes, even knowing it wouldn’t be perfect.
She was in a small concrete cell, sitting on a thin cot attached to the wall. Across from her, a few feet away, sat a dark-skinned, pink-haired demon woman. “Asagi, is it? Murasaki spoke highly of you. I wonder if she’s still alive.”
Nodding, Asagi moved her stiff limbs. She remembered Ingrid, called the Hell Knight, from Murasaki’s debriefing. But her presence raised a whole host of questions that Asagi needed a moment to sort through. “How long…?”
“You? You got dragged in here a few hours ago. As for myself?” The demon looked down over her nude body, at the marks of whips and bites and handprints among other traces on her body. “A week or so. Not that long, but they seem to think we’ll be here for some time more.”
Asagi noted all the marks on the demon’s body. She knew Ingrid could see the bruises and marks on her own body, and that more would show up on her soon enough if she didn’t get out. “Why do you think that?”
“That ninja slut is still using the easy stuff on me. These orcs are getting disappointed that I’m not cumming from being spanked, the imbeciles.” Ingrid turned to look at the door to the cell, without any handle on the inside, and sneered.
“This isn’t a NOMAD operation?” Asagi’s mind turned. Who else had the resources to set up these attacks to draw the Rangers in?
Ingrid furrowed her brow and shook her head. “ We’re certainly not in Yomihara, that’s for sure. I thought this was some absurd Taimanin business, until I saw you. How did that pregnant bitch get you?”
Feeling the semen drool out of her pussy onto the bed, Asagi grimaced. “ No, I can tell you there’s no Taimanin involvement here. There have been demon attacks all over the world since last week. I got careless and made some mistakes, and got grabbed with my team .” Ingrid’s eyes roamed up and down Asagi’s body, and she felt a momentary surge of embarrassment, like she should cover up her breasts before a lurid observer . But it was useless, and she fought down the urge.
“Well, if you’re being honest about that, then I have to reciprocate,” Ingrid said. “I was ambushed by the bitch herself. I’ve never seen a pregnant woman move so fast, or without any regard for her unborn child as to willingly throw herself into battle as the aggressor.”
“She’s fast,” Asagi added. “Shiranui stopped one of my fastest moves, like she moved before thought was even possible.” Asagi stopped for a moment, wondering how she could fight that kind of speed. She remembered the gross feeling she’d gotten from the tattoo on Shiranui’s belly. “What is that brand on her? Do you know?”
A negative noise came from Ingrid’s throat. Clearly she was going through the same kinds of questions in her head as Asagi was. “ No, it’s nothing I’ve ever felt before.”
“Is it not demonic?”
Ingrid looked Asagi in the eye and shrugged. “ Maybe, but not something I know. I’ve traveled far and wide in the demon realm, and I can tell you that I can’t remember feeling anything that made me so sick as what that woman has done to her soul. Whatever comes out of her mouth is filth. ”
The two fell into silence, but they could tell what they were thinking about. How long would it take someone to mount a rescue operation? Would they find a chance to get out on their own? If they did escape, how to escape or fight Shiranui’s strength?
Food was delivered a little while later, and Asagi could smell the poison on it, meant to weaken her body . But starvation wasn’t going to keep her strong, either.
“Sometimes the orcs don’t distribute the stuff evenly,” Ingrid explained, poking at a vegetable with an oily sheen on it and holding it up for Asagi to note. “They’re not the sharpest tools in the shed, and any dram that doesn’t end in us is a dram of them thinking we’re weaker than we are.” It was a strange thing, taking advice from a demon, but Asagi knew good action when she saw it.
A few hours later, Ingrid was called out, and she walked out of the cell with her head high. Asagi spent the next few hours with her ear on the wall, listening to the sounds of this prison. She could hear orc voices in the distance, lusty and reveling in their violence. There were other voices, screams, but she couldn’t be sure whose they were.
When Ingrid was returned, the Hell Knight was bedraggled. Her entire body was covered in rivers of thick orc jizz, her eyes half-lidded, her legs unable to keep her upright. The orcs that brought her back threw her in without regard, and Asagi had to jump to catch her.
“Th-thank you…” she mumbled as Asagi laid her on the cot. Asagi brushed Ingrid’s hair from her slimy forehead and nodded.
Before she could say anything though, an orc hand grabbed her wrist, and Asagi knew it was time for another endurance test.
She was dragged through cramped halls to a small room, where Shiranui waited for her already. The traitor was seated, but not on any chair. She was sitting on Kirara’s face, the blonde’s body squirming on the narrow table as Shiranui kept her face buried between her ass cheeks.
“She’s a good ass-eater, this one,” Shiranui said as Asagi was pushed inside. “You did such a good job of giving me toys to play with, Asagi! I have to thank you.”
“I will kill you,” Asagi said, prompting Shiranui to throw her head back in a harsh laugh. The movement made Kirara quiver and stiffen, before she started squirting from her pussy as a hard orgasm hit her.
“Look at this pretty little sow, Asagi! Half-demon, half-human? More like she’s half-pig!” Shiranui reached forward and hooked two fingers into Kirara’s panting hole and pulled up hard, forcing Kirara’s hips up. More orgasms rocked Kirara’s body, and muffled sounds filtered out from below Shiranui’s ass. “Why are you so against feeling good, Asagi?”
“This isn’t pleasure, it’s torture,” she replied.
Shiranui smiled. “Who says they can’t co-exist?” She then pointed to a strange, high chair near the corner, and the orcs pulled Asagi to it, and before she realized it, Asagi was upside down, her legs spread and her body constrained. “You can start your fun, boys!”
The orcs started jerking off around Asagi. The mere sight of them wasn’t as intimidating as they might have been when she was younger, but she still detested them for their brutality, their base animal nature. They were organs for reproduction, but warped into making it a sick, lusty game. She knew that the thoughts her imagination could come up with would be worse than whatever the orcs did, and so she tried to banish anxious fantasy.
An orc stepped behind the chair, and Asagi saw that her exposed pussy was at the perfect height for him to dip his cock into her hole. He started playing with her pussy, his rough fingers squeezing and prodding at her sensitive folds. Asagi relied on her training to push the feelings out of her mind, separate her personality and her body.
The first orgasm only took about ten minutes to hit her. Once his fingers were sufficiently moist, the orc pulled his dick out and started slapping at Asagi’s crotch with it. The sound of the wet, meaty slaps were almost as painful as the pure impact of his heavy organ on her clitoris. Asagi’s body flinched with each blow, electric shocks running straight from her clit through her limbs. When he stopped, Asagi realized she’d been holding her breath in anticipation of the next one.
But the relief she’d wanted didn’t come just yet. The smell of the unwashed orc cocks around her made her head spin. She felt the fire in her womb that needed quenching. But it wasn’t real. The aphrodisiac nature of orc cum and musk was well-known. It wasn’t her that was getting aroused by this, she assured herself. This wasn’t pleasure, it was an attack. She could defend against those.
She stared at one cock in particular like it was a weapon, the green shaft and purple head an ugly combination of colors. She noted every boil, every bump, every stray sharp, scraggly hair. She watched as the flesh morphed as the broad hand grasping the based jerked back and forth, seeing the veins pulsing under the stretched skin.
She focused on it so intently, she didn’t notice the orc spreading her pussy with the speculum again until it was inside her. “Ahh!” she let out a yelp.
“Haha!” Shiranui crowed. “I saw how engrossed you were in these orc cocks! Really, Asagi! Be honest! Life’s more fun that way. Isn’t that right, my little ass-eater pig?”
Gritting her teeth as the orc spread her tunnel wide, Asagi refused to respond. She wondered why they were spreading her so far – were they going to jerk off into her open tunnel? Almost all of their cum would fall out the moment she went upright.
That was when the orc reached into her pussy and grabbed at her cervix. The pain was unbelievable, like she was being stabbed. “Hhgggnnngghhh!” she grunted, her face a mask of strained endurance. The orc pulled, and every movement made her hurt more. But she could feel her muscles shifting, her organ being pulled down her vaginal canal. Inch by inch she felt her uterus slipping further and further out of its normal position.
“Would you be surprised to know that childbirth is worse, Asagi?” Shiranui asked, though whether she expected an answer or not was unclear. “But there’s a way to make any pain into pleasure, to make any sorrow disappear! Would you be interested?”
Asagi couldn’t respond. What was the purpose of this? Just to impregnate her?
After what felt like an agonizing hour, but had been closer to a few minutes, the orc let go of Asagi’s cervix. It was deeply out of position, mere inches from her spread hole. Sweat covered Asagi’s body, her whole frame shivering in pain.
That was when one of the orcs stepped up, took out the speculum, grabbed Asagi’s cervix and started pounding his dick against it.
The scream escaped Asagi’s mouth before she could think. It filled the room, and the mere fact of her response was enough to make the orc’s grin evilly. “Hey, the bitch does feel things!”
With her eyes screwed shut, Asagi couldn’t see the orc trying to push his way into her womb. But she felt every thrust against her cervix, the forces that spread through her pelvis and down into her intestines with every thrust. As much as it hurt, the aphrodisiac and her own sensitivity meant she could feel the orgasms beginning to build within her.
The orc kept his tip firmly pressed against Asagi’s cervix, and started to cum. The dense ropes of orc jizz sprayed across the round cap of flesh, so much filling Asagi’s shortened tunnel until it was almost like a little island surrounded by a lake of semen.
She shook her head violently. “No! No! Nnggaaahhh!” she wailed as she orgasmed violently with the orc . It was only her training that kept her from losing her mind right then and there.
Each orc came around one at a time and joined in, battering at Asagi’s defenseless interior gate like siege engines. Each one sprayed his filthy genetic material against the gate, perhaps thinking that even if some birth-control chemical remained inside Asagi, overwhelming it with sheer physical amount might work. They thought that if they could just overwhelm and fill her womb with their seed, at least one would take as Asagi’s ovaries were flooded.
It wouldn’t, as the chemical was meant to disrupt Asagi’s reproductive cycle more than harm any particular kind of sperm. At least, that’s what Asagi told herself to keep from losing her grip. The sensations buffeting her were as bad as anything she’d taken from Oboro, and she wasn’t as young and stupid as she’d been back then.
There was a fear in her, as she saw Kirara squirming and shivering, continuing to use her tongue on Shiranui’s asshole and pussy as the traitor Taimanin moved her hips around, that the Rangers weren’t as strong as Asagi had thought they all were.
Orc after orc came in Asagi, and every time Asagi came, Shiranui made sure to crow, her laughter biting at Asagi’s consciousness. “I can see right through you, Asagi,” she said. “Everyone can! Such a high and mighty woman like you is just begging to be ruined, it’s inevitable!” Shiranui stood up, showing Kirara’s slimy face, her expression full of exhausted bliss. Walking over to Asagi, she grabbed one of the orc dicks next to her and started stroking it over Asagi’s face.
“You look down on me for enjoying myself. You feel the same things, and torture yourself with guilt over it! Which of us is the fool? Which of us is the liar?” Shiranui ran her tongue in a long, slow lick along the shaft in her hand, before capping it with a wet kiss on the side of the head.
“Fuck you…!” Asagi grunted.
“You might get a chance, if you’re smart!” Shiranui said in a sing-song voice. She nibbled on the orc cock, and the orc let out a low moan as he came. Shiranui angled the shots to land directly on Asagi’s face, and Asagi instinctively closed her eyes as the seed splashed on her skin, splattering into her hair, getting on her lips. But Shiranui reached down and spread Asagi’s eyelids. “You’ve got your target, boys,” she cooed.
Asagi’s eyes darted back and forth as the orcs closed in even closer, the smell of their cocks making her nostrils flare involuntarily. One came, and Asagi groaned as the heavy slime hit her eyeball directly, blurring half her vision instantly. Shiranui made sure to keep her eyelids peeled wide as another orc ejaculated onto the other. “Ggghaah!” Asagi gasped.
Shiranui’s grip kept Asagi from shaking her head. “Hmm! Your cute little eyes look great with the glaze. Do you feel it seeping behind your eyes now, Asagi? I wonder what it will do to you?”
T he same question was going through Asagi’s mind. It had sounded like Shiranui wasn’t trying to permanently ruin them, but if it happened, would she be that disappointed?
Shiranui’s voice glided over Asagi’s ear as the traitor whispered into it. “It’s alright to be scared. But you know as well as I do that fear isn’t that much fun, and there’s only one way to not be afraid.” Shiranui’s lips brushed at Asagi’s ear, and Asagi felt a wave of revulsion run through her body. “I have power, and you can have it too.”
Another orc shot his load onto Asagi’s eyes, and Asagi shuddered in suppressed pain. “Go to hell…!” she muttered, not caring that by speaking she let the orc jizz leak into her mouth. It was more important to tell Shiranui what she thought of her offer. Shiranui didn’t reply, but she did giggle whenever Asagi came.
Shiranui let all the orcs get at least one load into Asagi’s eyes, and had Asagi dragged out after as the orcs gather ed around Kirara. “Asagi…!” she called out once, her voice more vulnerable than Asagi had expected.
Asagi was thrown back into her cell, where Ingrid had recovered just enough to grab Asagi before she hit the ground this time. “One good turn deserves another…” Ingrid muttered as she lay Asagi on the cot, and spent a little bit of time scooping as much of the slime from Asagi’s face as she could. Asagi was too tired to speak, and she was half-convinced that she could feel the individual sperm wriggling in her womb and behind her eyeballs, as absurd as it was.
“Control is key,” Ingrid said after Asagi woke up. The Taimanin kept rubbing at her eyes, feeling cum in the unemotional tears that dribbled out. But the way she said it, it was almost like the demon was saying it to affirm it for herself as well.
Asagi wanted to say something about her worry about the other Rangers. But was it smart to say anything like that to Ingrid? What if she figured the Rangers were a liability, something to be sacrificed for her own safety? She kept her tongue still.
Every second day or so for a week, one or both of Asagi and Ingrid were hauled out and abused. Asagi felt the physical torture of her body being mingled with orgasms, but it was Shiranui’s insinuations that were more painful.
“Humanity is finished. It’s weak. Taimanin might have a place in the new world, though…”
As Asagi was beaten again for using too much teeth during a blowjob, she felt weak. But she also knew she wasn’t alone. The other Rangers were still here. They just had to hold out for the right moment. Once the demon assault ran out of steam, she knew that the Taimanin would do everything they could to get her and the team out of there.
Asagi told herself that while she had another round of cervix-glazing. When she was being moved back to the cell, though, she looked through an open door to see Kirara laying on a decadent bed, her belly above her womb inscribed with a sigil similar to Shiranui’s. The half-oni was being plowed by an orc, egged on by her enthusiasm.
“No!” Asagi found the strength to cry out, only to see Kirara look directly at her, and there was something different about her blue eyes now. There was a greasy sensation behind her gaze, that made Asagi flinch.
“You really shouldn’t be surprised, Asagi,” Kirara’s voice came from right next to Asagi. Whipping her head, Asagi saw wrongness in Kirara’s face, like the proportions of her face had been subtly altered. “Shiranui’s right.” She pointed up. “All that up there, all the civilization and society? Time’s up. I figured it’s better to be on the winning team.” She smiled, and her grin was too wide; her teeth, too sharp. “I feel amazing though. Everything these orcs can do just makes me cum my brains out!” The blonde giggled at Asagi’s outraged expression, patting her on the cheek.
“Don’t worry, you’ll feel this good if you get a brand as well!” Kirara said, before disappearing back into the bedroom, waving her fingers at Asagi in a mocking gesture.
In the cell, Asagi was actually a little glad that Ingrid wasn’t there to see her face. She needed some time to compose herself. That Kirara would accept Shiranui’s disgusting offer – it made Asagi sick to her stomach. She slammed her fist on the wall, fury running through her system. She froze there for a long time, shaking with anger – anger at Shiranui for this obscenity , at Kirara for being shortsighted, and at herself.
When Ingrid came back, she was covered in scratches and bite marks. Asagi didn’t help her to her cot, but the demon was able to shuffle to the damp mattress and sit down, her ass clearly sore.
“What should I expect?” Asagi asked.
Ingrid half-smiled, wiping some cum off her face and licking it off her thumb. “Unless you have a history with hounds like I do, I don’t think you have to worry.” Ingrid sighed and let her shoulders droop. “But I hadn’t thought I’d see another mutt from Dr. Kiryu again, to be honest.”
“Him? But how… unless whoever Shiranui’s working for is working with him?”
Ingrid furrowed her brow. “Didn’t you say there were massive demon attacks going on when you got grabbed?” Asagi nodded. “Tell me more about them.”
Asagi gave some details about where the attacks had been, and the targets, and each one she said made Ingrid’s eyebrows furrow more and more. Soon she was guessing at targets, letting Asagi confirm them for her. The more information Asagi gave her, the more Ingrid grew tense, as if some dark doubt of hers was becoming true.
Finally, the demon looked Asagi in the eye. “Do you think your people will come for you?”
Asagi nodded. “If they can spare time. When those attacks end…”
“They won’t, not anytime soon,” Ingrid said authoritatively. “If cooperation between groups is on the table, then your estimates for inflow from the Demon Gates are too low by far, especially if they’re focusing on slave-demons. NOMAD alone could sustain this for weeks, let alone using worldwide resources.”
“So NOMAD’s in this…? Aren’t you…?”
Ingrid took a deep breath. “Put that aside for now. If the attacks are being made at that rate, then there’s at least 6 months before demon population levels hit critical shortages.”
“6 months?! Then we…”
For a moment, Asagi hesitated. She’d been open with Ingrid a bit, but did she need to say more? They might be stuck here for half a year. What horrors might Shiranui concoct before then? Could the other Rangers hold out? The specter of being betrayed by Ingrid loomed over her.
“Why don’t you accept whatever Shiranui’s offering?” Asagi asked quietly.
Ingrid’s eyes lit up. “It’s unclean! That worm has something disgusting inside her! I will not allow whatever power has its claws in her into me!” Her vehemence made her look handsome, even through the physical degradation she’d just been through. “Don’t tell me you’re listening to her talk of a new world coming?” Her voice had the same questioning feel that Asagi’s did , and Asagi realized that Ingrid had been thinking of Asagi in the same terms – is she a liability or a resource? If I am open with her, will this come back to bite me?
She was a little too tired to keep up the stoic front, and she let it slip, just a bit, and shook her head. “No. But… one of my team has,” the admission came out, and Asagi’s hands balled into fists on her thighs. “ And I…! I let it happen…!” Asagi felt her heart pierced by swords, thinking of what she could have done. Where were the other Rangers being held? What was being done to them, to Rinko, to Mirabell? She was so engrossed in her emotional whirlpool that she didn’t notice Ingrid next to her until her hand was in Ingrid’s.
“You are not to blame, ninja,” she said. “You may be a commanding officer, but she has a will of her own, and her decisions are her own. If she wishes to wallow in filth, knowing the consequences…”
Asagi rested her head on Ingrid’s shoulder, and held her hand tightly.
The torture kept going for days , and it was worse not knowing what was happening to the other Rangers. The orcs taunted Asagi with comments about how many babies she was going to pump out for them. They made her give peace signs while dumping buckets of semen on her head. They promised her that they didn’t respect her for anything except her womb.
The orc who made that comment got a knee to his balls, but Asagi wasn’t strong enough to fight off the others around her, and her reward was coming back to the cell while completely unconscious, and waking up to Ingrid doing her best to take care of her. “Discretion is the better part of valor sometimes, ninja,” she said. But her touch was warm and smooth, a welcome change from the rough hands of the orcs and the oily feeling that Shiranui and Kirara left when they felt Asagi up for fun.
Later, Asagi was brought into a viewing room. On the other side of the glass were Mirabell and Shizuru. Both looked as banged up and in as rough a shape as Asagi. With Shiranui’s color commentary next to her, Asagi watched as the two were presented with their prisoner’s dilemma. A giant fucking machine was shown to both, with an attachment that looked designed to batter through the cervix and the womb, and pulp the insides of whoever was unlucky enough to take it. They had a choice – either they shared it for a short time, or they could force the other one to take it.
A wall slammed down to separate the two. Asagi saw Shizuru’s body language, and knew what was going through her head. Shiranui did too, and she giggled madly.
Mirabell took the honorable option. Shizuru defected. When the UFS soldier was lifted into a setup on her hands and knees, her eyes widened in anger and surprise. “No! Shizuru! How could you!? This’ll kill me! It’ll kill me!” Her voice was frantic as realization sunk in.
Her restraints kept her from moving, but Asagi’s body quaked with barely suppressed rage. Shiranui patted her cheek. “I’ve got some converts to make, Asagi dear.”
As Mirabell was pushed to the brink of human endurance, Asagi watched as Shiranui spoke quietly with Shizuru in the other partition. Clearly they could hear what was happening on the other side as Mirabell was being nearly fucked to death. Mirabell’s cries were half-tears, half-pleadings for mercy, interrupted by brute grunts as her diaphragm was pushed by her organs bulging from below. Shizuru stood as still as a statue as Shiranui poured poison into her ear.
Asagi knew what she was saying, knew that she was playing on all the guilt that Shizuru felt, and was promising to make it all go away. She wanted nothing more at that moment than to kill Shiranui.
When Shizuru nodded, walking away with Shiranui, Asagi let out an inarticulate cry of frustration and wrath.
Asagi was not surprised that when she next saw Shizuru, she moved almost like a puppet, with the familiar green-tinged tattoo above her pussy. But a few days after that, when she was shown Mirabell being pummeled by the same machine again, she saw that the dark-skinned soldier also had a brand as well, and was loving the horrific abuse she was taking. Asagi saw her stomach bulge from the inside, so much that it should have ripped her flesh apart and killed her, but it didn’t. She took pleasure in the immense pain.
Asagi got to see all the Rangers except her and Rinko enjoying a furious orgy with the orcs. They encouraged the orcs to hurt them and pummel them and impregnate them over and over again. Their auras were as foul as Shiranui’s, and Asagi felt sick to her soul.
In her cell with Ingrid afterwards, Ingrid spoke, but the words didn’t penetrate Asagi’s consciousness. To avoid pure emptiness, she tried to keep the feeling of anger boiling inside her.
“Asagi!” Ingrid’s voice finally got through to her, and Asagi looked up. “I asked you if you knew your cycle.”
Asagi looked down at her womb. How long had she been here, constantly being inseminated? How long did the contraceptive last in her system? She looked back up at Ingrid. “I think I’m okay. But not for much longer.”
A thoughtful nod from Ingrid. Pregnancy – what would they do if they were pregnant? If they had orcs growing in them? Would they kill the child? The questions bubbled in each woman’s mind, unable to settle.
Two weeks later, Asagi was pulled from the cell to another small room, this one with a TV screen. On it was Shiranui, squatting and holding her gravid belly. “Yuki-chan, it’s mommy! I hope you’re excited to see your brothers and sister get born! Especially the little girl! I’m going to raise her right, like I should have raised you, and she’s going to be a slave-prostitute just like me! She’s going to learn to worship orc cock just like I do!”
Her expression suddenly twisted from cock-drunk to disdainful as she looked off-camera. “No, this is ridiculous. She’s my daughter, I’m not reading off your fucking script.”
Asagi watched in horror as Shiranui composed herself again, and grunted at the onset of a sudden contraction, her grotesquely-swollen belly clenching and heaving as her labor began on-camera. “Yuki-chan…” she said into the camera, “I know I’ve been a bad mother. But trust me when I tell you that I only want what’s best for you.” Bloody water began to splash out of her spread pussy, to spatter on the drain set in the concrete floor below her. “I know what those stupid, blind teachers of yours have been telling you. Be loyal. Be moderate. Protect the weak.” Shiranui spat out the words.
“It’s all bullshit, my darling girl!” Shiranui gave a wild grin to the camera. “Pleasure is all we need! Feeling good is the best! Ever since Master Ryuuji took me in, I’ve learned so many wonderful ways to make boys and girls cum, and it all makes me feel even better! I was sad once, but when I realized that cumming was all I wanted, I stopped, and I’ve become stronger than ever! Hnngghh!”
An orc reached from the side, and shoved his hand into Shiranui’s dilating hole. What should have made her shriek in pain instead made her howl in pleasure. Shiranui’s head bent back as she came, her hips humping the air.
Horror, and a horrible sense of jealousy that Shiranui could be pleasured by even the most obscene violence, filled Asagi. Her mouth fell open as she stared, unable to look away as the traitor swung her head from side to side. The orc grabbed the child in Shiranui’s birth canal, and pulled on it, sliding it down inch by inch as Shiranui’s inarticulate cries nearly blew out the microphones.
The first child came out, a fat green orc son, and the orc ripped the umbilical cord and handed the squealing child to one of the others before shoving his bloody hand back in. His searching hand grasped around, and when he found it hard to grab the next child, he pressed down on Shiranui’s belly as hard as he could, to help her push out the children. It took a few more minutes, but with his “help,” a second orc baby emerged.
Shiranui looked at the camera, her eyes half-lidded, her face a picture of depraved bliss. “Leave Gosha as soon as you can, Yuki! Find the Incubus King, and offer yourself to him, so we can be together!” Her words came between strained grunts. “Please, Yuki… you can even bring that stupid boy you like. I’m sure we’ll find some way to use him. But there’s no future for mankind anymore. Only…! Nngghhh! Only with these powers can we be happy…!”
An orc shoved a giant dildo up Shiranui’s asshole, and the traitor Taimanin orgasmed, squirting blood and birthing fluids. To feel pleasure from something that was a paradigm of female pain… but what had she given up for it? There was something that Shiranui lacked that Asagi was terrified of losing herself. Was it just hypocrisy, though?
Even Shiranui’s demonic strength could not last forever though, and the traitor Taimanin’s eyes rolled around in her sweaty face as she tried to push out her last child. Asagi saw the head begin to emerge from Shiranui’s birth canal. The mother made noises of a purely animal nature, bellowing and howling with the strain, unnameable fluids rushing out of her cavernous vagina to splash on the floor. Asagi fought down the urge to vomit.
Finally, the child’s shoulders emerged, the orc attendant quick to it as it slipped out, and Asagi’s heart sank even further. Yukikaze now had a little sister as well. The newborn girl and one of her brothers were handed to Shiranui, who regarded them with vile, deranged glee.
No child deserved an insane mother like Shiranui, Asagi thought. What tortures would Shiranui put her through? She tried not to imagine the despair and darkness that this girl’s life would be shrouded in. The new mother began to gloat. “My family’s beautiful, isn’t it Yuki? You’ll give birth to so many demons if you join me! Come, Yuki! Join your mother in bliss!”
Then the screen flickered, an awesome tremor making the whole room shake. Dust fell from the ceiling while the guard looked around in alarm. The shaking redoubled in intensity, and the lights went out along with the video, silencing Shiranui. Asagi knew she’d never get another chance this good, and she strained against the restraints on her wrists with all her weakened strength.
The cuffs snapped and she wrenched free, hurling herself at the stumbling guard. Before he could scream, her legs were scissored around his throat, and with a sound like chicken bones snapping his windpipe was crushed. Standing from the corpse and grabbing his keys, Asagi fought down a grim smile. She wasn’t free yet.
Chaos reigned in the underground prison. The earthquakes, or whatever they were, continued randomly, sometimes short and sharp enough to make Asagi stumble, rattling everything that wasn’t nailed down. In the distance Asagi could hear rumbling and crashing that she was sure were tunnels collapsing. She hoped she didn’t need any of them. At some point the emergency lights had come on, and Asagi retraced her steps as quick and silent as a shadow. Any of the orcs that got in her way were dead before they knew it, the demons too disorganized and confused by what was going on.
Asagi got to her cell to find that part of the ceiling had come down, the orc guard crushed under a chunk of the ceiling. She snatched the key off his belt and opened the door. She was nearly struck in the face by Ingrid’s palm, but the knight stopped short when she realized it was Asagi. Another quake nearly threw them off their feet, and heavy cracks started showing in the concrete walls.
“Equipment, then we need to leave!” Ingrid decreed.
“I’ve got one Ranger missing, we need to find her too!” Asagi shot back. Ingrid was about to say something, but stopped herself and nodded in agreement.
The pair went through the complex, taking down a few more confused orcs, avoiding falling chunks of concrete from the ceiling. Finding the armory, Asagi found her suit had repaired to completeness during her captivity, and she got her sword as well. Ingrid threw her cloaked outfit on, and pulled her long blade off the wall.
Equipped, the two cut their way through a few more orcs, heading upwards when they could. Then a voice came out of the PA system.
“YOU THINK YOU’LL BE SAFE OUT THERE!?” Shiranui’s voice was a hysterical screech. “IT’S TIME! IT’S TIME! My master will be king of this new world! Flee if you want, but it’s already over!”
The ninja and demon did their best to shut out her insane giggling. Near the signs that led to the surface, an open doorway made Asagi come up short. She looked back in, and almost dropped her sword at what she saw.
It was Rinko. Or rather, it was Rinko, deconstructed. Her body had been carefully taken apart, piece by piece, each individual organ carefully kept in a series of fluid-filled jars around her de-limbed torso. Her head had been decapitated, and stared with empty eye sockets and an open mouth, filled with orc jizz. Her brain was kept in a jar on one side of the head, and her eyes on the other.
“No…” Asagi moaned. “No…!” She could piece together what had happened. Rinko had been strong, maybe too strong. And so she’d been taken apart bit by bit, to show that no matter how strong she thought she was, she was nothing without the power Shiranui was offering.
Another earthquake, and some of the jars made clinking noises as they jostled together, metal on glass. “We have to go, now!” Ingrid exclaimed.
Asagi knew what she wanted to say. They couldn’t leave her. She looked at Rinko’s eyes, and somehow she knew that they were still working, through some horrible demonic medical knowledge. But there was no way to carry everything with just the two of them. To meddle in this was to invite inadvertently killing Rinko. But to leave her behind felt like the grossest betrayal, no matter how rational it was.
Asagi’s grip on her sword handle made the rope binding groan. “I’ll come back for you!” she shouted, “believe me, Rinko!”
With that, she turned and left, Ingrid already a few paces ahead.
Climbing a long and tall staircase, Ingrid smashed the door open, and the pair were met by the end of the world. The sky was a fiery orange, not only from the conflagrations that could be seen devouring buildings near and far, but from some innate quality of itself, like it was the sky of a foreign world transposed onto Earth’s.
“Are we in the Dark World?” the Taimanin asked, the unfamiliar heavens beautiful and violent.
“No,” Ingrid said, in awe at the sheer scale of what she was witnessing, “it… it can’t be. But… I remember these stars.”
Asagi looked at the horizon, and realized they were somewhere in Chiba, just east of Tokyo proper . Without stopping to give the corrupted Taimanin time to catch them, the two started running through the urban sprawl.
Where there was power, they could hear emergency broadcasts being repeated, telling people to evacuate the cities. To where, there was no information. Was anywhere safe? Was this only happening in Japan? Asagi’s mind reeled at the devastation in front of her. Here and there they saw clumps of demons running through buildings, covered in blood and gore.
“Why are you running!” Mirabell’s voice came from above, and Asagi and Ingrid dove out of the way before her punch shattered the concrete where they’d just been standing. “You’re only gonna tire yourselves out before we start having fun with you two uptight bitches!”
The pair looked at each other, and knew they were too weak to fight. They ran. Mirabell laughed, crouching down to prepare to jump into Asagi’s back, but just before her inhumanly-bulging legs unwound, a demon-wyrm came falling out of the sky, snapping at Mirabell between its jaws. “Damn you!” she screamed, her arms barely keeping the teeth apart. “Aren’t you supposed to listen to my orders?!”
Asagi and Ingrid did not stop to question why, but thanked their lucky stars, especially as they heard Mirabell’s enraged voice as she battled the wyrm fade away as they ran with all speed available to them.
Screams, cars wildly careening, the sounds of people being torn apart, all of these came to the pair as they rushed along . But as much as Asagi wanted to stop, if they stopped too close to the prison, it made them easy prey for Shiranui and the others. They killed demons they came across, of all shapes and sizes – from weird spider-like things dragging webbed bodies into buildings to ogres keeping dead women on their cocks.
After a half hour, they heard gunfire. Ingrid and Asagi started running towards the sound. They saw the dead in piles, in pieces, scattered in bloody swatches in the street. Coming around the corner, they saw some self-defense forces trying to hold a perimeter against an overwhelming number of monsters.
Asagi and Ingrid leaped over the embattled soldiery, and in a few moments the crowd had been thinned to a few fleeing stragglers. Asagi looked for the ranking officer, and found none. “What’s going on?” she asked.
“Those earthquakes started and then monsters just started dropping out of the sky! We’re trying to meet up with regimental HQ, radios are fucked!” one of the soldiers shouted, the terror in his voice only held in check by his training.
“We’ll come with you!” Asagi said, leaping onto the top of one of the Humvees as Ingrid landed on the other. “Just go!”
The drivers didn’t need to be told a second time. Engines flared, and the small group started weaving through chaos that Asagi had never seen before. She looked at Ingrid, her face twisted in grief and anger. “What did Black do?!” she yelled.
Ingrid seemed as shocked as Asagi, which surprised the ninja. “I don’t know! He… he always said he wanted to rule human society, not destroy it!” She balled her fist tightly. “None of these demons come from regions in the Dark World NOMAD recruited from! But if they are as hostile to the traitorous worm and her slaves as they are to everyone else, something tells me whatever plan they had went wrong!”
Another earthquake, and the vehicles swerved on the uneven road, one of them running over an orc with a series of heavy thuds. When he started to stand back up, one of the soldiers fired his rifle, hitting the green bastard.
Above them, a helicopter came into view and started trailing them, signaling to head towards Ueno Park. As the convoy replied that it understood, the helicopter got too close to a high-rise. From the roof jumped a creature like a gorilla without a head and studded with crystals, that smashed into the back of the helicopter, sending it nose-up until the back sheared off, and the whole thing fell to the highway with a heavy, horrifying crunch of flattening metal.
The convoy passed by hordes of fleeing civilians, stampeding without thought, without reason. On top of overturned buses, surviving police tried to direct them to evacuation areas, or at the very least, away from the highest concentrations of monsters. As the convoy crossed the Edo river, the soldiers tried to help where they could, but in the face of rampaging giants, small arms couldn’t do much.
Pandemonium. It was the only word Asagi could use to conceptualize what she saw around her. Chaos and death reigned in Tokyo. Explosions gutted a skyscraper in the distance as a pack of helicopters tried to shoot down another infernal dragon, sending the building toppling onto the raised highway next to it. Screams were everywhere, and Asagi thought she could hear each individual one. People tried in vain to either escape monstrous death, or fight it off and still die trying.
Asagi’s blade cut through as many demons as were stupid enough to get too close to the convoy. But wasn’t it useless? What good was killing one demon, when thousands seemed to be emerging from the ground itself? It felt like a hopeless battle.
The convoy started turning north, to try to get to Ueno, but as they came off the highway and got into the warrens of Tokyo’s ground roads, they reached a makeshift barricade of cars and cursed their terrible luck. Asagi and Ingrid started clearing out a space, and mobs of civilians started pouring out of the buildings to crash against the convoy, each person begging to be taken to safety.
A rumbling came through the ground as the soldiers tried to keep the grasping hands away from the vehicles and their own weapons. “Another earthquake?!” a soldier screamed, but Ingrid shook her head.
“Something big,” she said to Asagi.
The crowd, now grown to thousands and stretching for blocks, began to surge away from a cross-street in the distance in mad terror, trampling over each other in desperation. Asagi and Ingrid braced themselves for what would come into view, but even their most vivid nightmares hadn’t prepared them.
A giant demon-worm, twice the diameter of a subway train, of sickly khaki-colored flesh, and with a maw lined with tens of thousands of flexing teeth, came rushing out of the cross-street into view. As it whipped its mouth side to side, it scooped up scores of shrieking men and women, who plunged into an immense, pulsing sphincter.
“Oh God…” Asagi breathed out. The worm turned to the mass of humanity fleeing towards Asagi, and began building up speed. Asagi looked at the humvees and the barricade, and hesitated. Ingrid made the same calculation that Asagi did, but she was decisive.
Ingrid grabbed Asagi and leaped away from the convoy as the soldiers started shooting into their approaching death. “No!” Asagi yelled, watching as the worm ran through the crowd, swallowing hundreds and crushing hundreds more, and then two whole vehicles of the convoy, before smashing through the barricade.
With a crash, the pair shattered the glass wall of an office overlooking the carnage. The sound of their violent entry made some people, hiding under their desks, whimper in abject terror.
Asagi wheeled on Ingrid, grabbing her cloak. She didn’t even need to speak her thoughts, her face showing her emotions to the demon clearly.
“Self-sacrifice is a virtue when it’s in the service of a higher cause, and it achieves a concrete objective, ninja,” Ingrid answered, her own voice wavering with barely-held emotions. “You can’t kill that thing, neither can I, not right now. We need to figure out what’s happened. If this… congruence of Earth and the Dark World is isolated or not.”
Ingrid’s voice and reason helped stave off some of the helplessness, but it was hard. Asagi felt sick of herself. “Gosha…” she said. “If it’s still standing, it’s the best place for me to go to. It’s in the west, in the mountains.”
Ingrid nodded. “Convenient. There’s a place in that direction that Edw-… Black… used to use as a personal retreat. If he’s involved in this monstrosity, there may be some clues as to what the plan was I can find there.”
“Then we need to get out of the city. But we can’t just cut and leave everyone to die!” Asagi pointed at Ingrid. Ingrid was about to respond when gunfire from below, wild and frantic, caused the hiding workers to moan again.
Ingrid’s sword, black fire that didn’t burn Asagi, roared out, and the floor beneath the two evaporated. As they fell to the floor below, they saw the kicking legs of a soldier go limp with a sickening crunch, as his top half was being consumed by a smaller version of the giant worm. The two blades swung, and the murdering demon was torn apart in revenge.
Then the ground shook again, making the phones and monitors on the desks rattle. The two turned and ran, but it was too late. The outside wall of the building shattered as the giant worm raked across the side. Dozens of slick tentacles flew into the building, trying to catch anything big enough to notice. Asagi got one around her neck, and Ingrid got three on her limbs, both of them yanked off their feet by the shock of being tethered to the worm.
They were pulled into the maw, with a dozen other howling individuals. Going through it, Asagi saw many of the captives get sliced by the teeth, and they started climaxing with insane, inhuman howls.
“Ingrid!” she shouted, but Ingrid was too constrained, and her arm got cut. The demon’s eyes widened and her mouth turned into a rictus as her back arched, a spray of liquid squirting through her clothes.
Again and again Ingrid came, squealing like an animal, as they passed into the interior. Asagi dodged the teeth, holding onto her sword as tightly as she possibly could, knowing that losing it would be her end. The whole crop was pulled through the sphincter into the worm’s insides. They passed into horrid, wet and fleshy tubes that tightly wrapped around their limbs. Asagi tried her best to hold onto Ingrid’s leg as they were swallowed, but the poisoned, shuddering demon was sent down one esophagus, and Asagi another.
A wet, syrupy slurping sound accompanied Asagi being deposited out of her tube, into a chamber of horrors. Pools of acid bubbled violently, filled with the half-dissolved ruins of flesh and clothes that had once been human beings, their blood staining the flesh around the pools.
In the walls, another, even more horrible crime was taking place. Dozens of women were embedded in the walls in various depths. Some were hardly more than exposed torsos with scraps of clothes caught between their backs and the walls, their bellies already engorged with something inside. Others had their heads encased in fleshy tubes that pulsed rhythmically. Others were mostly free, but the wild, poisoned orgasms that racked their bodies rendered them unable to fight back as they were raped by tentacles emerging from the walls.
Asagi watched as a new arrival had three tentacles stuffed into her holes, deep enough that she could see the wriggling heads filling her insides. “Fill me! Fill me! Fill meeee!” she repeated over and over again, until her voice was tearing apart.
For a split second, Asagi almost wondered if Shiranui had been right. Wasn’t any kind of obscene slavery better than this? Wouldn’t Asagi have been happier if she’d just accepted Shiranui’s offer at first? But then she’d have to still think about her failures.
What if she just dropped her sword? The little black voice of despair whispered behind Asagi’s mind. Wouldn’t it be better to go mad? To let this thing devour her brain, reduce her to an egg sac? She could forget everything except for insane bliss.
Asagi’s sword sliced out and cut through the tentacles assaulting the woman, but she saw more and more begin to emerge from the walls. She didn’t have time to save everyone, and she had to find Ingrid. She had no time for despair.
Listening for Ingrid through the cacophony of muffled moans and yelps was difficult, but Ingrid was lucky she had a powerful voice, able to be heard even in this hell. Asagi sliced, and a bloody chunk of the organ wall she was in fell out, showing her another chamber behind.
“Ingrid!” Asagi shouted as she stepped through the wound, the great worm not even shivering in pain. Asagi looked at this gallery of victims, and watched as one woman had fleshy eggs pumped into her womb. Each one was orgasming unrelentingly, agonizingly, maddeningly; their voices were a choir of praise and despair.
Asagi saw Ingrid in the distance, being sucked into the wall, and ran towards her. Already tentacles were pushing into her holes, and her eyes looked at Asagi with ecstatic pain. “K-kill me!” she begged. “I don’t… GGNNGHH! I don’t want to break like this!” Her eyes bulged and her voice sputtered out. As Asagi watched, her eyes rolled back, and slime began to pour out of her open mouth. A bulge passed up her chest, through her throat, and a tentacle pushed out of Ingrid’s mouth. Her orgasms were so intense, Asagi was worried her muscles might flex hard enough to break her bones.
A few slices, and Asagi could pull the tentacles inside Ingrid out, from one hole or another. A few more, and Asagi pulled Ingrid free from the wall. The demon was near-defeat, and the Taimanin knew they had to get out as quickly as possible. She cut through a few more flesh walls, carrying Ingrid and fending off probing tentacles, until she reached a thick muscle she couldn’t cut through. Near her, she saw the top half of a soldier, a group of grenades on his vest. Asagi thanked him for his sacrifice, and took the explosives.
The explosions were enough to finally make the worm shiver in pain, blowing a hole in its internal muscles deep enough that Asagi could cut through the rest. Emerging into the city again after the biological hell made Asagi feel like she was alive again.
Asagi carried Ingrid through the horrors of Tokyo, hiding as only a Taimanin could when danger came too close. It took hours of concentration, and too many times Asagi felt in the distance the unclean auras of Shiranui and her pawns, looking for their escapees.
When night came, Asagi set Ingrid down next to a tree in the forest around Sayama Lake. In the distance, gunfire and explosions could still be heard, as people tried to defend what they could in the chaos. The demon shivered, her eyes having trouble focusing on Asagi. “W-why?” Ingrid asked weakly. Why hadn’t Asagi killed her and taken the simpler route of going alone?
“No one deserves that,” Asagi replied, emptiness gnawing at her stomach. Ingrid’s eyes closed as her pummeled body tried to burn out the worm poison, painful orgasms making her grimace.
“And… I could still… I could save you…!” Asagi whispered as she screwed her eyes shut and slammed her fist into the ground over and over again. Never before had she ever felt failure as heavily as she did then. Never before had she desired nothingness to take her, so she could be free of her guilt. Shiranui’s evil whisperings kept clawing at Asagi’s mind, her own emotional state gladly giving it purchase.
She was almost ready to stand up and find a way to kill herself, when Ingrid’s hand weakly reached out and took hers. It brought Asagi out of her self-recrimination like a bolt from the blue. Slowly, trembling, Ingrid brought Asagi’s hand to her mouth, and gently kissed it. “Thank you…” the words shuffled out of Ingrid’s mouth, before she fell into a fitful sleep.
Her head bowed and her shoulders heaving, tears started pattering onto Asagi’s thighs.
Moving into the mountains slowed the two down even further, as they dodged groups of feral demons, surviving civilians and soldiers, and the questing hunters over days, hiding where they could, sleeping under gnarled roots and empty covered benches for hikers.
Asagi did what she could to help the people they came across – killing nearby demons, finding food and leaving it for a group of families, leaving notes telling people to stay away from Tokyo – but kept herself to the shadows as much as possible. Drawing the eager attention of the hunters was her biggest worry, especially with Ingrid still recovering from the worm poison.
At one point, they came into a forest clearing, on a flat bit of mountainside high above the valley floor, only to find a giant, wild boar, like any other in Japan. But this one had obviously been set upon by a small group of goblins, who’d thought him easy prey. The boar was wounded, bleeding, and would have scars from this, but he was still standing. The goblins were corpses around him. From one of the boar’s tusks, a mashed goblin head still hung, the spine dangling from the ragged stump of the neck. The boar seemed unperturbed by the arrival of further invaders, only watching the two women. When they made no aggressive movements, the boar snorted and whipped his bloody tail around, and marched off back into the forest, as if to say that no matter who these new invaders were, his domain would be his forever.
The ninja and demon began to develop a language between the two of them. Hand signals to indicate demons or humans, imitating the cries of birds native to the Dark World that could now be heard in the forests around them to indicate food or shelter. Ingrid took to it better than Asagi had thought she would.
“I get why Murasaki thought so highly of you before,” Asagi complimented Ingrid quietly one evening.
“Even I know to trust your instincts of stealth over mine, ninja,” Ingrid replied, “it’s still your world.” Ingrid seemed to think that way, but Asagi wasn’t sure she believed it anymore, not when demons ran wild through cities.
Their language was not purely for battle, either. Eating yakisoba sandwiches from an abandoned convenience store, Ingrid’s hand rested on the back of Asagi’s neck, massaging gently. At night, the ninja held Ingrid as she shuddered, still sweating out the last vestiges of the worm’s poison. Without words, through their shared ordeal, the two came to know what the other felt intimately.
A later morning, the two of them awoke to stomach pains. Asagi doubled over and vomited briefly into the grass. Washing her mouth out from the canteen Ingrid had used herself, a shared conclusion flashed between the two with a look. There could be no illusions.
“Maybe they’re daughters,” Asagi muttered, trying to salvage what she could from the awful revelation of their pregnancies. She squeezed Ingrid’s hand tightly in hers, and Ingrid squeezed back. They would have to deal with it, but it would have to be later.
Finally, they reached the point that Asagi had known was coming, but had almost convinced herself might not happen. They reached a fork in the river valleys, one way going to Gosha, the other to Black’s retreat. Asagi couldn’t deny that she wanted to stay with Ingrid, that the demon had become important to her in scary ways. But she also felt the pull of her concern for Sakura, Murasaki, Fuuma, and all the other Taimanin wanting to make her break into a sprint for Gosha, and damn the consequences.
Ingrid turned to Asagi. She’d picked up on Asagi’s hesitation, and knew where it was coming from. “Go, ninja,” she said, “you have a duty to others still. I must see if my loyalty meant anything.” Asagi opened her mouth to protest, and Ingrid quieted her with a finger on her lips. “If you need me, I will be there.” Ingrid smiled warmly, confidently. “That’s an oath from a Hell Knight, and those are not given cheaply, nor broken easily, ninja.” Asagi nodded, understanding.
Then Ingrid took Asagi’s cheeks in her hands, and pulled her in for a deep, passionate kiss. Their tongues met, and for a moment, Asagi could forget the horrors she’d been through. All the evil, mocking kisses the orcs had given her were nothing compared to this, coming from the heart of a proud, beautiful woman. Asagi melted into it, knowing that this is what a kiss was meant to be – from a lover.
When Ingrid broke the kiss, both blushed. But Asagi smiled from a place of sincerity. She didn’t see Ingrid as a victim of the assaults of orcs and tentacles, and neither did Ingrid see Asagi the same way. They’d both been through evil, but it hadn’t bested them.
“Go, Asagi!” Ingrid gently encouraged, and the ninja found her legs moving on their own, desperate to know the situation at Gosha. Before she was totally out of sight, she looked behind her, to see Ingrid saluting her in the distance, until the trees were too deep.
Getting to Gosha took another two days. When Asagi got close to the secret valley, she saw some wisps of smoke rising into the air in the distance. The need for secrecy fled at that, and Asagi began racing through the ancient boughs of the primordial forest around the village. She sprinted down paths she’d known as a child, and as she approached, she knew that Gosha had seen an attack like none other in its history.
Dead demons were everywhere, their corpses pinned with shuriken, riddled with bullet holes, blown apart, burned – Asagi saw evidence for practically every kind of battle technique, including hidden ones that some clans had done their best to keep for themselves. She saw human blood in places – lost limbs, bone, and the like – but no full corpses. These attackers – and they looked like NOMAD soldiers from the look of their uniforms, but others had a sigil that Asagi had seen on the clothes of Shiranui’s orcs – had clearly paid dearly for every yard of ground they’d advanced.
But it was cold comfort when Asagi emerged from the treeline to see Gosha in ruins.
The academy was gone, razed to the ground. The old mansions of the founding ninja clans were gutted, blackened timbers standing in plains of gray ash. The new housing additions, the village square, the major and minor shrines, all had been horribly wrecked or torn down. It hurt Asagi’s heart.
Going down into the ruins though, for all the dead demons – and there were even more here than the mounds in the forest – there were only a few dead Taimanin. Asagi checked each one, remembering their names and faces, praying their spirits were in a better place. They might have died, but they had not gone quietly.
At the site of the Igawa clan manse, Asagi found her ray of hope. A subtle sign, from Sakura, saying to go north. It was in their private, sisterly tongue, and Asagi wanted to cry out in relief when she saw it.
She hadn’t been forgotten.
She hadn’t been callously abandoned.
Asagi knew then that she’d been in Sakura’s and Murasaki’s and Fuuma’s thoughts the whole time, and only the raging conflict had stopped them from doing everything they could to find and rescue her. And even in what must have been a horrific assault, Sakura had still known that Asagi would come here, and would need to know where to go next.
Lingering doubts were washed away. Asagi knew that there were plenty of hidden locations in the Tohoku region that the Taimanin kept for safety’s sake. She’d find them somewhere, if she moved fast enough.
“Thought you’d show up, finally,” came Kirara’s voice from behind Asagi, oddly liquid in its intonation.
Asagi turned, to see Shizuru, Kirara, and Mirabell about 30 yards away. Behind them stood Shiranui, no longer sporting her gravid belly. Shiranui looked wrong, but the other three corrupted Taimanin looked even worse. Things bulged below Kirara’s skin. Mirabell looked at Asagi like she was meat, her eyes empty of all meaning. Shizuru twitched uncontrollably, her doll-like smile a mockery of the erotic confidence she’d had before.
“Do you like what’s been done to the place?” Shizuru giggled. “We smashed the rat’s nest, made them runrunrunrun-”
“We even picked a few up for some fun stuff! Don’t you want to see them break like we did? It’s time to come back, Asagi,” Kirara cooed. “We’ve been coming up with lots more fun things to do to you! Aren’t you excited?!”
Mirabell let out an ugly noise like a strangled bear.
“There’s nowhere to run, Asagi,” Shiranui said, like she was lecturing a child. “It’s all chaos out there. You’ve seen all those weaklings die and die and die even as they beg for it to not happen. There’s no more civilization. No more hypocrisy.” Shiranui shivered. “I’m cumming just thinking about it!”
The ninja said nothing, for no response was needed for the insane. Asagi bared her blade, and fell into an unusual stance.
The three corrupted Taimanin leaped for Asagi. The way they moved, they clearly thought Asagi was going to break and run. They thought her resolve a facade, a mask she wore over the nothingness that was her actual self, pure cowardice that pretended to virtue.
But it was no mask, it was Asagi’s self. In the face of their unnatural powers, Asagi called on the deepest wells of her training, the most basic demand of self-control, to not let fear control her.
The corrupted Taimanin passed Asagi, blinking in confusion as her stance seemed to change from one micro-instant to the other. “Huh…?” Shizuru mumbled, wondering why Asagi hadn’t turned around. Mirabell and Kirara had the same confusion. But when Mirabell tried twisting her head to look around, it fell off her neck to hit the sandy ground with a wet thud like a rotting apple. Kirara tried to make a sound, but the left and right halves of her body sloughed apart. Shizuru let out a disappointed groan, before popping apart at the joints and limbs.
Shiranui clapped, but Asagi took no pleasure in it. Asagi merely readied herself in a different way, staring down Shiranui, daring her to approach.
Shiranui shook her head. “I don’t think so, not after that. Rinko!”
The shock was enough for Asagi to be blindsided. A long, heavy arm, stretched out to obscene lengths, grabbed Asagi by the shoulder and yanked her off her feet to the side. Asagi was grabbed tightly, and saw what had been done to Rinko.
Rinko’s limbs were horribly elongated and misshapen, like her bones had been melted. But her face was the worst part – not just for how her eyes no longer looked like they were in the right places, nor how her mouth didn’t seem to quite fit with the rest of her face anymore, but how the expression on it was one of psychotic vindication.
“You left me senpai…! You left me there…!” Rinko giggled. “But it’s fine! It’s fine now! I’m going to take you apart and make you watch it all happen! JUST! LIKE! ME!”
Rinko’s tongue dove into Asagi’s mouth, longer than any human tongue, going deeper and deeper until Rinko was licking at Asagi’s stomach. And yet even with her tongue buried in Asagi, Rinko kept talking, a cacophony of differing voices, saying different things all at the same time. “loveyouloveyouloveyou” “gonnacumgonnacumgonnacum” “nosadnosadanymore” “feelgoodfeelgoodfeelgood” all repeated in Asagi’s head, trying to batter down Asagi’s mind.
For a moment, Asagi’s resolve wavered, her guilt coming back in a surge. It had been her fault. She could have aborted the mission. She could have done more to fight. She could have done more to support her team.
“There there, Rinko dear,” Shiranui patted Rinko on the shoulder. “You can play with her a bit now, but we have to go back to Master Ryuuji’s fortress soon.” Rinko’s hand tore the crotch off Asagi’s suit, and started fingering her, her digits morphing, surging, pulsing inside Asagi like worms. “Oh, alright! Some fun now.”
Asagi tried to get out of Rinko’s grip, but it was hard to think as she climaxed. It was impossible to breathe, and it made her orgasms even harder. Her legs kicked uselessly as she squirted juices onto the ground below her. And Rinko’s tongue went deeper and deeper through Asagi.
Asagi struggled to hold onto consciousness. The moment she lost it, she knew she was done for. But where was her opening? What could she do? Hopelessness began sneaking into her limbs, carried by oxygen deprivation.
“Ingrid, I’m sorry.”
It was at that moment that flame, darker than night, hotter than hell, more violent than a volcanic eruption, engulfed Asagi. A vague, draconic shape whirled and lifted Asagi and Rinko into the air. It covered her, but it protected her. It went into her, but it did not violate her. It was there only to burn the invader.
And burn Rinko did, not even her brand protecting her from the nearly-nuclear onslaught. She evaporated, her insane choir of disassembled voices snuffed out one by one, until only one remained. And there, in a voice that Asagi knew had been Rinko’s true feeling: “ WHY?!”
Asagi, still wreathed in the flame, gently fell to the ground on her knees. For an instant, she saw the dark dragon in it, and knew Ingrid was keeping her promise. The flames dissipated, and Asagi coughed heavily, catching her breath. She looked for Shiranui, but the monster had clearly fled, not interested in dealing with whatever absurd violence Asagi could pull out, at least not alone.
It was enough breathing room for Asagi. She could run north, find Sakura and the others. But she had heard Kirara’s comment. Other Taimanin were in captivity. Looking at the melting corpses of the former Rangers, Asagi vowed that she would do everything to stop others from facing that abyss. She felt for Shiranui’s tainted aura, and started shadowing in that direction.
*****
On the southern coast of Japan, a cold winter wind blew through the city, making precious gas lamps flicker and gutter in rooms packed with exhausted and scared refugees. Their whole world had fallen apart in hours for some, days for others, weeks for the lucky ones, as so many things they’d taken for granted had fallen apart. A thin perimeter of anyone who could carry and aim a gun was some protection against feral demons, but rations of everything vital were running low.
Asagi looked out the window of the small room she’d been given by the leaders of this safe zone. She’d used it as a place to rest and get information about other Taimanin she could rescue, and had taught as many volunteers as she could the basics of Taimanin skills of self-defense and stealth. But this night would be her last here. She could kill demons, but she couldn’t kill hunger, and an offer had arrived that the leaders of this camp had been unable to ignore.
The Incubus King, as he styled himself, had declared himself ruler of Japan and all of Asia besides, and offered safety and power to all who obeyed him. But most importantly for the decision-makers in this city, he offered food, for a price. The men and women who had risked so much to maintain this little place of peace hated the idea of submission, but they hated the idea of mass starvation more.
Asagi understood their decision, but made sure to warn the leaders that even the most nominal and feigned act of submission held power. They had promised Asagi that they’d never betray her kindness to them, and they’d do what they could to be the most unruly subjects possible.
Hands reached around Asagi’s hips and then her pregnant belly. The child, growing rapidly within her, moved enough to make Asagi a little uncomfortable. The hands began rubbing her skin with soft oil, and the moment of discomfort faded. The oil warmed Asagi’s naked skin, and she didn’t feel the cold as badly.
“Why are you going?” the ninja asked. Not “are you going?” because that question had obviously been decided, and not even she would try to gainsay it or say it was wrong. But she needed to hear her lover’s reasoning for it.
Ingrid pressed her own gravid belly against Asagi’s back, embracing her as tightly as she could, and kissed Asagi in the nape of her neck, before resting her chin on her shoulder. She had a ship to catch in the morning, a vessel bound for North America. “Too many of the surviving leaders in the shards of the UFS were the vampire’s men. If he’s fled Japan, he’s gone there to work the shadows. He’s not so foolish as this Incubus King, to make himself the focus of opposition. He’ll let his warlord pawns battle each other, and whoever wins he’ll make sure is under his complete control.” Ingrid’s voice was calm, but Asagi could hear the restrained rage in Ingrid’s voice as she talked about Black.
Black’s retreat had been wired to explode when Ingrid had arrived and stopped the self-destruct, allowing her intimate access to Black’s last records there. Fuuma had been right – all the great demon factions had been brought together in the months leading up to the first of the hellquakes, as people had coined them. Black’s price of admission to the Incubus King’s plot had been Ingrid, and he’d sold her gladly. Shiranui’s attack on her had been a trap from the start, a way to keep Ingrid in the dark about whether she’d ever be rescued.
The Hell Knight had not taken the insult lightly. She no longer spoke of Edwin, or even Black. Only the vampire, or the bastard, and each time she said it, Asagi could feel the heat of her anger, like a deep volcanic flow. It was that that worried Asagi.
“You told me not to throw my life away once,” Asagi said, her hands intertwining with Ingrid’s, their fingers locking together. “You’re not going just to die, are you?” Asagi spoke of her fear openly. No more barriers were between the two. The heat of Ingrid’s body radiated into Asagi’s back, loosening her muscles.
Ingrid shook her head. “To face him directly… by myself I could do it, but it would require years of preparation, and even then my chances would be low. To cut him down would be satisfying, but I will not let the desire for vengeance get the better of me.” The Hell Knight’s personal inability to lie was a great comfort to Asagi. “But I know how his mind works better than anyone, even Oboro. I might be able to stop many of his plans before they get too far along. There are too many innocent survivors in the UFS, and I cannot leave them to him. The vampire cannot go unchallenged.”
Closing her eyes, Asagi breathed in the scent of the oil Ingrid was rubbing into her skin – a smooth blend like the smoke of delicate incense. Ingrid’s hands glided over her body as Asagi’s had gone over hers, under her growing breasts, up and down her toned legs, along her back and down and between her ass. Asagi knew that the gentle but insistent need was not in her womb alone.
She couldn’t disagree with Ingrid’s assessment of the situation, and Ingrid’s resolve to do what she could to battle Black, no matter how hopeless it seemed, only added to the high feelings Asagi had for her, but the thought of not having her love with her was a bitter dagger in Asagi’s heart.
Looking over the buildings of the safe zone, she saw another painful symbol of failure. Out in the distance, in the middle of the fields being slowly reclaimed by the people here, Asagi could see the immense figure of an elephantine demon. It harmed no one, and Ingrid’s assurance that the type was docile and only defended itself had led to it becoming a bit of a mascot for the refugees, especially after it had crushed a tank used by some bandits.
But it wasn’t meant to be here, on Earth. It was a sign of Asagi’s failure to protect her home, to do her duty, and it pained her to see children playing around its eight trunk-like legs. Would this be their world forever? Would they ever know peace, or even personal safety?
Yet if Asagi had thought it was purely her failure that had led to this, then Ingrid had disabused her of that notion. The Incubus King’s plan had been to shift Earth directly into the universe of the Dark World, allowing his power free reign, and demons utter dominion over Earth. But he’d overestimated his own resources and those of the influential demons he’d recruited, and under the pressure of Taimanin, Chinese Union, and UFS counter-attacks, the demons had all begun to do what they did best: betray each other.
The Incubus King’s ritual had been forced too early, lest it never happen, but the magical resonances hadn’t been strong enough. Earth was still in its home universe, but it was periodically racked by a new kind of weather, demon-storms, when the boundary between it and the Dark World was thinnest. Those days were always bad.
Ingrid knew what Asagi was looking at, and kissed her neck again. “Will you be cruel, and force me to voice my desires in vulgar ways?” she whispered.
Asagi smiled and turned around, shifting Ingrid’s hands onto her hips. “No, though you were very cute saying ‘I want to eat your pussy out’ last time.”
Ingrid’s dark cheeks glowed in the dim room, and Asagi pulled her in and kissed the other woman. Their lips glided on each other, pliant yet rough from their hard living. Their tongues wrestled with each other, not out of any desire to dominate, but out of the pure human need to share themselves with the other. Each time she kissed Ingrid, Asagi felt like she was flying.
Ingrid stepped back from the window, pulling Asagi with her, each step leading the couple to the small bed. Her hands reached down and around from Asagi’s hips, to grasp at Asagi’s ass, and her fingers squeezed, making Asagi giggle in Ingrid’s mouth.
“You like my ass so much, it’s not that much bigger than yours…!” she mumbled as Ingrid assaulted her neck with a flurry of little kisses, leaving faint purple marks on Asagi’s pale skin.
Getting to the bed, the couple sat down, and their hands began wandering around their bodies as they continued kissing. Asagi’s palm brushed over Ingrid’s stiff nipple, feeling the bumps that would eventually start leaking milk. Asagi squeezed at Ingrid’s breasts, larger than her own and heavier, making the demon moan gently in their kiss.
Ingrid’s hand went lower, below her lover’s pregnant belly, questing at Asagi’s thick thighs, her nails leaving pale pink lines as she scratched closer and closer to Asagi’s crotch. Asagi slowly parted her thighs, inviting Ingrid closer and closer. It was a game they played, and Ingrid knew what to do. Her fingers traced delicate trails on Asagi’s skin, making the ninja shiver, until her fingers played at Asagi’s soft pubic hair. Ingrid pushed her fingers against the top of Asagi’s pubic mound, making the ninja gasp.
At that moment, Asagi’s thighs clamped shut on Ingrid’s wrist, trapping her hand against Asagi’s crotch. Asagi grinned at the demon, before nibbling at her bottom lip. “Just fingers first, love,” she whispered.
The pink-haired demon complied, her pointer flicking across Asagi’s engorged clitoris. She pressed on it, then swirled her pad around it slowly one way, then quickly the other way twice. Ingrid put all her attention on her fingers.
Each touch made Asagi tremble and gasp, as electric shocks shook her frame. Here, she could let down her defenses. Ingrid knew how Oboro had abused Asagi’s sensitivity, and how at times Asagi could feel the memories of those 3000 times stronger sensations. But for the lovers, it wasn’t a wall between them, but something else that Ingrid could love about Asagi, and use it to make her ninja feel actual pleasure, and not the painful simulacra of it they’d been subjected to.
Little rivers of saliva dribbled out of the corner of Asagi’s mouth as Ingrid’s tongue pushed into hers. The ninja was too engrossed in Ingrid’s skillful finger-flicking that her hand had stopped on Ingrid’s breast, squeezing randomly. Feeling an orgasm welling up inside her, Asagi didn’t fight it. She didn’t need to push it down, or deny it, or feel like it was a failure. It was a natural, human reaction to being loved.
Asagi came, her body shuddering and shaking so much that the metal legs of the bed squeaked against the flooring. She held onto Ingrid tightly, her fingers digging into the demon’s shoulder, until she could breathe again. Her thighs spread, showing how much she’d squirted all over Ingrid’s fingers and her own legs.
Ingrid slowly, carefully, lifted her hand from Asagi’s crotch, and eagerly sucked on her wet digits with a grin. The demon had told Asagi before that she liked the strong flavor of her arousal, especially after a long period of exertion. Panting, Asagi let herself fall over on the bed, turning towards Ingrid as she crawled to the other side and laid down next to her.
Face to face, Asagi quickly dove in and pecked Ingrid’s lips, making the demon smile. It was such a genuine smile, so full of warmth. Asagi could have stared at it forever.
The demon took advantage of Asagi’s momentary dazzle to rub her fingers against Asagi’s outer lips, wetting them with the ninja’s arousal. Asagi knew what was coming next, and she instinctively raised her right leg up, exposing her pussy and ass. One of Ingrid’s hands covered Asagi’s pussy, fingers squeezing and rubbing her dark, engorged petals. The other went behind, to play at Asagi’s asshole.
Asagi did not allow herself to be totally passive, though. She sent her own hands to engage with Ingrid’s pussy. She felt the gnarled folds, the thick outer lips. Asagi knew Ingrid was no virgin, and though she’d never asked, she knew that the demon must have been centuries old, if not older. She’d had lovers. Asagi wondered if her own ministrations could ever be enough for Ingrid to remember her in the future, and her hands trembled.
Breaking their kiss again, a line of saliva connecting their lips until it drooped onto the pillow between them, Ingrid knew what was behind Asagi’s hesitation.
“You’re you, Asagi. That’s all you need to be, and all I want you to be.” The force of a heavy kick from the baby in Ingrid’s belly went into Asagi’s body and broke the moment of tension, and Asagi nodded. She began to push her fingers into Ingrid’s hole, warm and tight and just as wet as Asagi was.
Ingrid’s fingers pressed both at Asagi’s leaking vagina, but at her sphincter too, coating the latter in the juices of the former. Asagi’s breathing deepened as Ingrid’s nail traced an agonizingly slow circle around her sphincter, scraping along every fold of her donut, then sinking into every valley between. Asagi’s ass flexed over and over again in anticipation of more invasive maneuvers, but Ingrid was seemingly content to take her time.
“You’re going to make me say the embarrassing things this time, aren’t you?” Asagi panted, catching onto Ingrid’s plot. A satisfied purring sound from her lover was her confirmation she was correct. “Ohhh…” she moaned dramatically. Gently, Asagi pressed her forehead against Ingrid’s. “Make me cum, Ingrid… Fuck my ass…” Asagi groaned. She shot a pleading look at Ingrid. “Please…”
No one could resist such an entreaty, let alone Ingrid. Ingrid’s fingers dove deep into Asagi’s pussy, immediately pressing against Asagi’s g-spot. At the same time, her other fingers pushed aggressively against Asagi’s sphincter, and with some worming motions, her fingers slipped into the muscular ring. “Nnggaaahh!” Asagi let out a throaty cry, holding onto Ingrid’s pussy for dear life as the demon fingered her to orgasm over and over again.
But at no point did the terror touch Asagi. At that moment, she wasn’t a ninja, and she wasn’t burdened by awful responsibility and guilt. She was a woman with her lover. Only their gravid bellies, pressing against each other and making movements more awkward than they should have been, brought unwelcome thoughts into the lover’s bower the couple had made for themselves in that bed.
Ingrid did not let up her hands, even as Asagi’s voice started getting loud enough that she knew some of the neighbors would hear. Asagi deserved to be loved, the demon knew, and she deserved to be pleasured in the right way.
It was also cute hearing Asagi’s squeals when she hooked the fingers in her ass one way, and those in her pussy another, to rub against each other through the thin wall of muscle in between. Was it selfish of her to do it over and over again, making Asagi’s pleas for her to slow down melt into orgasmic yelps and blissful moans? Maybe. But that didn’t stop the demon.
What did stop Ingrid was Asagi finally snapping out of the good girl act. One moment Ingrid had Asagi mewling, putty in her hands. The next, Asagi was on top of her, her panting holes above Ingrid’s face, Ingrid’s legs bent over and back so that Asagi had access to the demon’s pussy and asshole. “You’re so mean, my love…” Asagi panted. “It’s not fair if I’m the only one cumming…!” Asagi’s fingers spread Ingrid’s ass cheeks.
“Wait, Asagi…!” Ingrid said, but Asagi dropped her pussy onto Ingrid’s mouth. At the same moment, she dove down, and began lavishing Ingrid’s asshole with a bevy of kisses. With small kisses, big ones, wet ones, slow ones, again and again Asagi’s lips dove in and around Ingrid’s winking asshole. The demon’s ass-cheeks shivered at the attention.
Ingrid’s tongue rolled over Asagi’s pussy, as Asagi’s tongue whirled along Ingrid’s ass. When Asagi felt Ingrid’s muscle freeze and her donut quiver, she knew she was doing something right. And so she’d do it again. And a third time. And more. Spit began to run down Ingrid’s body, front and back, in thin rivers leading from her asshole.
Asagi wriggled her tongue back and forth on the creases of Ingrid’s asshole, and finally, she pushed through. The demon’s muscles squeezed on her tongue, but she used that to her advantage, pulling on it from the inside, stretching it in ways that made Ingrid freeze in lusty bliss. The demon’s juices were strong everywhere, spicy and tingly on her tongue, but here was the strongest Asagi could taste.
For the rest of the night, the two lovers explored their bodies, speaking without words, reaffirming the bonds that could never be broken. At one point, before dawn, their belly buttons against each other, it had felt like their children were pushing against each other.
“They’ll be strong,” Ingrid said, “I can feel it.” Despite her usual trepidation, Asagi agreed.
When the gray frigate slipped from the docks of the city in the morning sun, having given the camp as much food as the sailors could spare, Asagi stood on the coast, watching it sail away. Ingrid looked back at her, and all the emotions they’d felt, all the hardships and joys they’d shared, were clear as daylight for both of them.
Duty called, and they answered because they were the only ones who could do it, but that didn’t make the parting any easier.
Asagi watched as the ship sank below the horizon. At the last moment, before it slipped out of sight, she saw a flash in the air, and she raised her sword with a cry. “Ingrid, I love you!” she shouted across the sea. For a moment, she knew it was a foolish gesture, but she had to do it.
“I love you, Asagi!” drifted back over the waves, and Asagi knew she’d always remember this moment. Without tears, she left the safe zone.
*****
“Fuuma, can we spread the west patrol to this city?” Sakura pointed on the map of places their little group of Taimanin was protecting. For long, painful months the circle had been shrinking and refugee camps were lost either to feral demons or the so-called “demon kingdoms,” despite their best efforts, but with the intrusions of feral demons dropping in number as Spring came into being, Sakura wanted to protect as many people as she could.
Fuuma sighed. Before he opened his mouth, Murasaki let out a disapproving noise. “Going out there means that for two days anyone on that route is right next to that Tsuchigumo.” The demon spider had proven to be a horrible foe to fight, and artillery fire only made it more active. Its lair was now a grotesque collection of webbed bodies, of humans, demons, and anything it could catch. Sakura had almost gotten webbed by it herself a few weeks earlier, and she shuddered at the memory.
The door to their little forest headquarters opened, and the three whipped their heads to see the intruder. Sakura didn’t even need to fully see who it was before she jumped over the table and embraced her.
“Nee-chan!” Sakura cried, bawling into Asagi’s chest before Fuuma and Murasaki could even move an inch. Asagi hugged her sister back as tightly as she could. Fuuma and Murasaki quickly joined Sakura, joy and relief filling the building. Sakura felt something big between her and Asagi, but it was Murasaki and Fuuma who could see what it was – a pregnant belly.
“I’m glad to see everyone’s OK,” Asagi said through Sakura’s teary apologies, a real smile on her face. “But I think my water just broke.”
The labor was hard. Harder than she’d hoped. But then, she had a big child in her. She’d pretended it could be otherwise, but when the crown emerged, and Murasaki gasped, Asagi knew the truth. It couldn’t be denied anymore.
When it was all done, Asagi felt empty. Exhausted, but her voice cold and collected, Asagi asked for her baby. Sakura opened her mouth, but Fuuma stopped her. He nodded solemnly at Murasaki, who gave the swaddled child, already the size of a year-old baby, to Asagi, who held the half-orc stiffly. She asked for them to leave her, because she was tired.
“Nee-chan…” Sakura muttered, wiping at her eyes, “what should we do with…?” Murasaki grabbed her arm and shook her head. Sakura stopped at the threshold and started crying as she closed the door.
That whole night, Asagi contemplated killing it. The baby nosed at her sometimes, wanting her to feed it, but she pushed it away, and eventually it fell asleep. She could hardly bear to look at it.
It was a sign of her failure. Her failure to the Rangers, her failure to the civilians she’d sworn to defend, her failure to the Earth she lived on. When she imagined the future of this child, it made her sick to her stomach. He was part of the problem, part of the demonic invasion of the world. He needed to be erased, like all the other demon ic invaders she’d been fighting.
She took a scalpel, and held it close to the infant’s throat. He needed to die, but then so did she. Her failure had seen the souls of four of her comrades warped into horrific monstrosities. Her failure had seen the death of the society she’d sworn to protect. She, and by extension the Taimanin, had failed beyond all hope of return. The only thing left to do was to kill the monster, and then slice her throat. Her blood would run and run and run until Asagi’s guilt was gone, gone, gone, and she could finally be free of the souls of all the dead accusing her.
The blade almost glowed with the moon’s reflection, and the demon stars around it. Asagi saw in the mirror-bright edge the two red stars that Ingrid had pointed out to her as the stars of loyal lovers, for they never strayed from the other as they whirled through the heavens. Ingrid had said they sometimes spent time apart, but they never let another star in between.
The memory hit Asagi like a punch in the gut. She looked at the baby’s sleeping face, and when his mouth opened in a tiny yawn, Asagi realized how close she’d come to finally, evilly, proving Shiranui right. How close she’d been to losing her humanity.
This child was not his father, whoever it had been. He had done no evil, deserved no hate. He was a demon, like Ingrid. To kill him because he somehow impinged on her honor, because she was terrified of even the appearance of weakness, because he was a half-demon and she’d failed to stop the demon invasion, was pathetic. He was a sign of her resolve to keep fighting, to never give up.
Asagi wasn’t the animal Shiranui had said she was, thinking only of herself, clawing for safety by any means necessary, lashing out mindlessly in rage and bitterness. She was a woman, a Taimanin in an age of demons, a lover of a Hell Knight, and now, a mother. She threw the scalpel to the ground.
Sakura burst in at the clattering sound, her face expecting the worst, to find Asagi bent over her nursing son, sobbing uncontrollably.
*****
Almost two decades later, Asagi crouched on the outskirts of a slave-camp in Hokkaido. The Incubi had been pushing hard to expand in this area ever since the Incubus King had been sent fleeing to mainland Asia years before, and Asagi was not willing to cede ground to the bastard again.
The world had almost gone to hell, and the patchwork of free nations, warlord territories, demon-realms, and dangerous wastelands was not what Asagi had ever wanted to live in. But it was her home now, and she’d fight to make as many places and as many people safe as she could.
And these Incubi really pissed her off.
“Mother, when do we start?” came a deep adolescent voice to Asagi’s right. Her son, Hidekichi, stood taller than her even in his youth. He wore his grandfather’s halberd lightly, and spoke calmly and carefully, as befitting stoic warrior he thought he needed to be. But Asagi had seen the other side of him, the smoldering rage and endless hate inside him that rose to the surface at times.
“Yeah, come on, teach! I’m getting bored just sitting here! I wanna cut some orc nuts off!” came a peppy female voice. A brunette, with an improbably curvy and womanly body despite her age, bounced from one foot to another. Ichigo, as she’d asked to be called, had been Asagi’s revenge against Shiranui – it was Shiranui’s daughter from that underground prison, liberated by Asagi three years earlier, and trained as a Taimanin. The girl was a surgeon with her rapier, and most of the time had an upbeat, spunky attitude. But the savage glee in her eyes in battle made Asagi a little worried sometimes.
But they were her students, among others, and this was their world. They needed to know how to live in it, and how to defend it, and she’d teach them as best she could, by word and deed.
Explosions bloomed in the distance, the pealing thunder hitting a second later as Asagi’s plan went into action. She unsheathed her sword and stood up.
“Now, let’s go!”