Digital Devil Story: Warrior of the Demon City

by Aya Nishitani

  Shimazaki had known Isma from earlier and could recognize him on sight, and with barely a greeting, as soon as he had entered the room was asking if it was true or not that a demon really had been summoned. With a slightly offended look on his face, Isma went over the details of what he knew and had learned from Ohara.

  "So then, instead of Loki, a demon named Set has now been summoned?" Shimazaki's question was hurried and impatient.

  "According to Miss Ohara, it would appear so..." Isma looked back as he spoke. Ohara was trying to open the door and leave.

  "Where are you going?" Isma's gaze stopped Ohara in her tracks.

  "That's none of your business now, is it?" Ohara's tone was confrontational.

  "I won't have you running out on your own and ruining things. Stay right here." His stare affixed on Ohara, Isma moved toward her a step at a time.

  "I don't take orders from you!" As Ohara's eyes opened wide as she spoke, Isma's large, bony hands grabbed her by the back of the neck.

  "Just what do you think you can do on your own? True, we don't know for sure that Loki is dead. But even if I let you continue to play with the summoning program, with your limited computer knowledge, you'd only end up getting killed by Set!" As he admonished her, Isma threw Ohara to the floor like so much useless rubbish.

  Crawling on the carpet, Ohara glared up at Isma with eyes full of humiliation and bewilderment, the white nape of her neck marred with reddish-black marks from his fingers. Like nothing had happened, Isma turned and continued to speak to Shimazaki.

  "Mr. Shimazaki, I would like you to hurry and prepare a computer for me."

  "Of course, Saint. I'll ready any machine you want, be it an IBM supercomputer or a Cray 1. In exchange, if you could let me use the power of the demon as well..." Rubbing his hands together, Shimazaki looked up at Isma.

  As Isma responded with a sarcastic smile, his eyes drifted to Ohara, who was crawling towards the door in an attempt to escape.

  "Don't you get it yet!?" As he yelled, Isma chanted the spell "Yog-sothoth Ya Rubikay Hara" in a low voice.

  That instant, Ohara let out a cry like an animal and rolled around the floor, her hands frantically clutching at her throat. Her shining, manicured nails sunk into the flesh of her neck, and blood flowed from the wounds.

  "Ohara, the mark on your neck will not vanish easily. As I continue to cast my spells, you will feel tightening pain as if you were being hung from the gallows."

  Isma's harsh, merciless words sounded like a far off-echo to Ohara as she writhed on the floor in agony.

  CHAPTER 4

  While this was going on, Nakajima was standing still, alone in Izanami's burial chamber, deep below Asuka. After enjoying a brief reunion with Yumiko, who had been brought back to life by Izanami's power, the goddess had taken her off the the land of Yomi.

  As Yumiko had been drawn into the battle with demons against her will, Izanami wanted to give her the ability to defend herself at the very least. Meanwhile, Nakajima had been ordered to return to the human world. But still sensing Yumiko's presence, he was reluctant to leave the room, and as he was mulling about, his ears started to ring slightly. Looking up, he realized that at some point the crimson walls of the tomb had disappeared, and that he was surrounded by an empty void, almost like outer space.

  What's going on?

  All of a sudden, Izanami's voice sounded in his head.

  "Stand up. And think of the person that needs you the most. Return to her." Realizing that Izanami was using her power to return him to the human world, Nakajima immediately pictured Yumiko in his mind. Immediately in front of him, white mist swirled around and formed into the face of a human.

  "Yumiko!" As Nakajima called out, the face dissipated back into white mist.

  "Nakajima, there's someone that needs you much more than me." Yumiko's familiar voice whispered an admonishment into his ears.

  Soon after, he heard another familiar voice, painfully crying out his name--"Akemi, Akemi." Reflexively, Nakajima covered his ears with his hands. But the voice calling to him became louder and louder, and Nakajima felt as if he was getting smaller as the voice became louder. The white mist condensed again, into the face of a beautiful woman that looked quite a lot like him--his mother.

  "Stop! I don't want to see you!" Nakajima cried out like a petulant child. Nakajima's antipathy toward his mother, who hardly ever bothered with her family, might have been strong enough to completely overwhelm his ego. But the billowing mist gradually started to envelop him.

  "No!" As Nakajima desperately resisted, the mist's movement slowed slightly, and his mother's beautiful face looked down at him with sadness in her eyes. Her kind stare opened the stubborn Nakajima's heart like the unraveling of ropes binding a body down.

  "Mom..."

  The minute the word left his lips, his body became as a drop of condensation in a mist and he was wrapped in a feeling of pure extacy. The mist enshrouding Nakajima quietly moved toward the void. There was no distance or time there.

  I want to stay like this forever... Nakajima thought.

  But at some point, he became aware of an image in the nothingness. The outlines of white walls and a familiar room's lighting formed, and the profile of his mother entered his field of vision.

  "Mom..."

  As Nakajima reflexively called out, he felt all the blood being pulled out of his body along with a floating sensation like being in a weightless environment, and the next instent, his body was hit with a twisting shock as he was tossed somewhere. As he moaned and sat up, he had already been returned to the human world from Izanami's burial chamber.

  A familiar sofa and sideboard stood in front of him. There, in his old living room, his mother sat, dejectedly twirling her disheveled hair with her fingers, not making a single motion to fix it. Though her face looked so young that she was often mistaken for Nakajima's older sister, it now was full of creases and wrinkles, and she looked almost twenty years older than she did before. Looking up, Nakajima's mother saw him in front of her, and she gaped at him in amazement.

  As soon as she confirmed that this was indeed her son, she let out a wail like a cry of anguish, rushed over to Nakajima and hugged him madly, crying all the while.

  That was the first time that Nakajima realized just how much taller he had grown than his mother. The difference must have been there for several years, but in that period, living with his mother without making so much as the slightest physical contact with her, Nakajima hadn't really looked at her as his mother in a true sense. But for the first time, he was starting to feel that reality, and all of a sudden he felt a great love for her.

  As he patted his sobbing mother on the back, Nakajima softly spoke to her.

  "I'm sorry, mom..."

  CHAPTER 5

  At the same time that Isma was making his first chance meeting with Ohara, a foreigner was visiting the Chief Cabinet Secretary's office in the Prime Minister's estate.

  "All right, Richard. I'll do my best for your friend, Dr. Feed." The Chief Cabinet Secretary, Fujita, hung up the phone, and perplexed, peered at the foreigner sitting on his sofa with steady eyes from behind his glasses. Pressing a button on his intercom, he barked a quick order--"Send in Narukawa from the Special Forces, Second Unit"--and stood up with a sigh.

  "Dr. Feed, I've just accepted a request to see to your needs from Aide to the President Richard."

  "Thank you." The tall and thin white man hurriedly stood up from the sofa. He had immaculate white hair and a white beard to match. He was Charles Feed, professor at MIT and founder of ISG.

  "No need to hurry--hold on a minute, Dr. Feed." Trying to restrain his guest with an awkward smile, Fujita sat down on the sofa sitting across from Feed's.

  "Why has someone as famous as you taken an interest in a missing persons report from a random high school in our country? I'm having trouble understanding why anyone as high-up as the Aide
to the President would be getting involved in this..."

  "Even if I tried to explain why, I doubt you'd believe me." Speaking in impeccable Japanese, Feed's expression clouded.

  That moment, there was a knock on the door.

  "Enter."

  As Fujita turned around and spoke his order, a small, delicate man entered the room, closing the door behind him.

  "Let me introduce you to Narukawa from the Cabinet Intelligence and Research Office. You won't be able to conduct an investigation very easily going through the police's official channels. When this man is with you, I can guarantee that you will be able to go wherever you need to freely."

  As Fujita finished his introduction, Narukawa extended his right hand out in greeting. There were burn scars on the pale back of his hand.

  "It's a pleasure, Mr. Narukawa." The instant after Feed gripped Narukawa's hand, he looked up as if a bolt of electricity had shot through his body.

  "Narukawa is a master of all sorts of martial arts. He will also serve as your bodyguard quite well." At Fujita's words, Narukawa looked up at Feed with a fearless smile on his slender face.

  CHAPTER 6

  The next day came. The lines of trees of Musashino, bathed in blazing light from the sun, flowed past in a sliding motion outside the Cadillac heading toward Jusho High.

  "This is all the material you have on Nakajima Akemi?" Sitting in the plush back seat of the car, Feed spoke to the unshaven Detective Iwama sitting next to him.

  "Yes. He's just an ordinary high school student, so there's not much more that we could find on him. But Dr. Feed, do you really think that Nakajima is the ringleader behind the whole incident?" Detective Iwama did not approve of this American, clearly some sort of scientist, interfering with his investigation.

  "In a way, I imagine that he's actually a victim. But he certainly played a very large part in the incident."

  "Do you have any evidence to prove that?" Iwama's voice barely concealed his irritation.

  We investigated each one of the students ages ago. It's true that Nakajima Akemi appeared to be an unusual student, but there was no evidence of him having any violent tendicies. The teachers seemed to have a high opinion of him too.

  But Feed was not paying any heed to Iwama's attitude, and instead was busily flipping through the materials in his hands.

  "The records he left in the online database that I manage is the proof. The time that the incident at Jusho high took place was..."

  "In Japanese time, it was July 13th, sometime between 10 and 12 AM," Narukawa, who was driving, interjected in an emotionless voice.

  "At precisely that time, Nakajima was trying to talk to the AI, Craft, located on my servers in Arkham in Massachusetts."

  "What!? If you had such critical information why didn't you tell us before...No, I'm sorry, pardon the outburst. I presume you will be releasing that information to us?"

  "I'm here precisely because that information is not something that can be so easily released." Feed's voice was calm and composed.

  "But this is an investigation..." As Iwama reflexively leaned ahead, the car suddenly slowed down, and he fell forward. The black Cadillac pulled in front of the gate of Jusho High.

  Iwama entered the CAI room accompanied by Narukawa and Feed, grimaced at the heat and stench in the room, and explained the situation when the incident there had occurred.

  "So then, you haven't been able to identify this matter yet?" Gathering some of the sticky substance sticking to some of the rubble into a petri dish with well-practiced movements, Feed questioned the detective.

  "Unfortunately, not yet..." Iwama's face was sullen.

  At that moment, a small sound from a transmitter rang from Narukawa's arm.

  "Looks like I've got a message from HQ. Excuse me for a moment." As usual, Narukawa showed no waste in his movement. The face of the instructor in charge of the CAI room peered out from the machine room.

  "I've readied the Host Computer. Please come this way." The air conditioner turned on, and cool air finally started blowing through the sauna-like room.

  "Your machines are IBMs, I see." Feed started analyzing the contents of the programs on the host computer with the speed of one very familiar with their operation. As his bony fingers tapped the keys, a huge program list filled the screen.

  "'MATHEMATICS 1.' That's not what I want!" A red mark was appended to the program he was analyzing.

  Come to think of it, we probably should have checked the contents of the computer... While looking at Feed, absorbed in his work on the computer, with a sidelong glance, Iwama secretly regretted not having done so earlier.

  "'ENGLISH READER 2.' That's not what I want either!"

  Feed's eyes continued to dart through the program list like a hawk, until he finally lowered his shoulders with a sigh.

  "Maybe the program I want to see isn't here. It may have been tacked onto the OS itself. Could I have a look at this system's operating manual?"

  "If you need the manual, we keep it in the Teacher's Office..." The teacher in charge of the CAI room looked perplexed.

  "Wait. Hold on a minute here..." Apparently discovering something he had overlooked, Feed cast an uneasy glance toward the teacher and Iwama.

  "Nobody has touched this system since the incident, right?" Feed said in a skeptical tone.

  "As a matter of proper police procedure, we have placed this room off-limits..." Not being able to directly answer Feed's question, Iwama looked at the teacher in an accusatory manner.

  Right at that moment, Narukawa, who had come in at some point, handed Feed a memo.

  "Nakajima has returned."

  The moment his eyes read the scrap of paper, Feed's expression lit up.

  CHAPTER 7

  While Feed was at Jusho High, a man from the Cabinet Intelligence and Research Office calling himself Saga was visiting Nakajima's high-rise apartment building in Suginami Ward. He was impeccably dressed and his speech and mannerisms were those of a gentleman. But Nakajima's mother, who responded to the door, had never even heard of any organization called the Cabinet Intelligence and Research Office before. From the man's appearance, it appeared that this organization held a lot more power than just the police. How did these people have any connection with her son, Akemi?

  "Ma'am, we really need your assistance in our investigation. For Akemi's sake, too..."

  Nakajima's mother had not heard anything from her son about what happened to him at Jusho High that day. But since that day when he practically materialized from thin air in their living room, she sensed in a warmth in Nakajima's eyes that was not there before. They were kind eyes, full of a kindness that looked to her for aid and yet was there to protect her as well. He hadn't said anything; instead he just sat there with her after he appeared, deep in thought about something. She had tried hard to suppress her urge to ask him what had happened to him while he had gone missing. For some reason, she got the sense that Akemi would go far away again if she did. Finally, as if he had gotten his thoughts together, Akemi had stood up and shut himself up in his room, falling into a deep sleep as soon as his head hit his pillow. But that was enough for his mother. Her own mother's intuition told her that he had been through something terrible in that short week he was gone.

  I don't know what happened to him. But at the very least, Akemi didn't abandon me. Nakajima's mother felt a new love for her son from the bottom of her heart.

  I won't let anyone threaten Akemi, regardless of who they are!

  Not knowing what to do in the face of this woman's harsh stare, the man calling himself Saga fished in his shirt pocket for a carton of cigarettes.

  "I'm sorry, but could you lend me an ashtray?"

  The moment he opened his mouth, the doorbell rang. Nakajima's mother immediately stood up and picked up the intercom hanging on the wall.

  "....Yes. Your colleague just arrived. Hold on a minute, I'll
let you in."

  Pursing her lips together as if coming to a decision, she headed toward the foyer. Smiling bitterly, the man returned his cigarette to its box and followed after her.

  PART 2:

  QUICKENING

  CHAPTER 1

  Situated between Musashino city in the greater Tokyo metropolitan area and Mitaka city is a 6600-square-meter wooded area of mixed tree types called the Soga Forest. Thickly overgrown with ancient larch and beech trees growing in irregular patterns, this forest is a good place for children to play during the day.

  However, the children who play in these woods never go near the swamp filled with dark green reeds and other water plants that is located in a corner of the forest. But this is not only because their parents strictly forbid them from any sort of risky playing in the water. The eerie aura given off by the delapidated old western-style house that was there enveloped the entire swamp itself, scaring off everyone who dared come near.

  The house originally belonged to a former elite-turned-war criminal from the Second World War, and misfortune befell all who owned it thereafter. Since the last family that had lived there had been brutally slaughtered by robbers, it had been left untouched, with nobody daring to move in.

  It was most likely that Isma's heightened sensitivity as a magician had caused him to pick this manor from among the places Shimazaki had proposed as a place to summon the demon.

  The cool concrete walls of the underground storage room were completely exposed. A faint, strange smell wafted from one corner. The fluorescent lamp in the ceiling illuminated the not-yet-dry reddish-black paint of the bizarre symbol painted on the ground. It was mysterious geometric pattern, much like an abstract depiction of a bird's eye. In its center stood a large computer. From the computer extended a five-meter-long cable, connecting to a keyboard and display in the middle of a Solomon Hexagram.

  "The preparations for the summoning of Set are complete..." Isma's frigid voice echoed off the concrete walls as he faced the screen. Shortly earlier, that screen had been displaying pictographs that looked like Egyptian heiroglyphs.