The girl had perfected sweet to an art form. Makoto Nishikado's gaze snagged on the pull-ring collar around her throat before he'd even processed the rest of her.
"Don't call me old man," he said, with an expression like he'd bitten into something sour. "I'm still young."
A laugh burst out of her, muffled behind one hand, eyes curving into crescents. "Oh come on, don't pretend. It was in the papers. You're twenty-nine. I'm sixteen. That makes you an old man by definition."
She dragged one finger slowly down her cheek in a teasing, mock-bashful gesture.
Makoto said nothing. Technically, he'd been living in the Chainsaw Man world for over a decade. And if you tallied everything together, his time after transmigrating, his stints through the Reincarnation Game, his whole previous life, he was somewhere in his sixties or seventies by any honest accounting.
So what?
Seventy, seven hundred, didn't matter. He still appreciated a pretty girl. Not for any grand reason. It just made the day better.
"Get moving," he said, shooing her off with a wave. "If you get caught up in something, don't expect me to pull you out."
"So cold!" She pouted, full and theatrical. "I pay taxes like a responsible citizen. Can't Public Safety spare a little warmth?" She pointed across the street to a coffee shop. "I'm Reze, by the way. I work over there. Come by sometime and I'll buy you a cup."
She turned and walked away with a bounce in her step, then spun back after a few paces and waved at him with both arms.
"You have to come!"
Makoto watched her go. "Good grief," he muttered. "Damn, if a virgin encountered this kind of seduction, who could stand it?"
"Boss! We pulled this off the Eternity Devil's body."
The Libido Devil materialized at his elbow in his unsettling muscle-man form, holding something out.
Crack.
Makoto's fist connected on reflex, smashing everything below the Teddy Devil's waist into a bloody pulp.
"That's... that's so brutal, Boss! I worked really hard to dig that out of the corpse!"
The Libido Devil wailed, what remained of him still twitching.
"Stop approaching me in that form."
Makoto pried the item from the Devil's hand. It was a sliver of flesh, smaller than a fingernail.
"Boss, that's a fragment of the Gun Devil," the Rabbit Devil said helpfully from a safe distance. "Consuming flesh from a powerful devil gives enormous power boosts, to humans and devils alike."
It was weirdly reminiscent of the Sacred Jewel shards from Inuyasha, when he thought about it. Plenty of powerful devils handed out pieces of themselves as payment, buying loyalty from humans in exchange for a strength boost.
For years, Public Safety's Devil Hunters had been finding Gun Devil fragments inside high-powered devils. Everyone, including Aki Hayakawa, had assumed the Gun Devil was distributing them deliberately, building a network of subordinates.
The truth was simpler and grimmer. Thirteen years ago, Pochita had beaten the Gun Devil half to death. Fragments scattered across the globe, most collected by the five major nations as military reserves. The rest were swallowed by opportunistic devils who stumbled across them.
Back at Public Safety headquarters, Makoto found Makima waiting with her usual composed smile.
"Well done, Makoto. Defeating the Eternity Devil again. Public approval of you keeps climbing."
She turned on the television. The screen filled with crowds holding banners, chanting in two distinct rhythms:
"Chainsaw Man! Chainsaw Man! Chainsaw Man!"
"Makoto-sama! Makoto-sama! Makoto-sama!"
The first chant was mostly men. The second, almost exclusively women. After twenty-nine years in this body, Makoto had settled into something that teenage girls found difficult to ignore.
"Is that supposed to be good news?" He dropped into the chair across from her with a short laugh.
He knew exactly what he was looking at. A devil's power fed on human fear. But Makima had spent years turning Chainsaw Man into something people cheered for rather than trembled at, steadily sanding down his strength.
The goal was obvious: weaken the Chainsaw Devil enough to take his heart.
Makoto thought back to that night. All those things she did. Does she even remember?
...Honestly, he wasn't sure he cared.
Makima crossed the room and crouched in front of him. Her voice, as always, carried no particular inflection. "I apologize. I thought you would enjoy the attention. Let me make it up to you."
The zip came down.
She tilted her head forward slowly.
Makoto's breath sharpened.
If he was being honest, he preferred this to the alternative. At least this way he didn't have to look at her face, which never moved, never shifted, a doll's face wearing the shape of a person.
About half an hour later, Makima reached for a napkin from the desk and dabbed her mouth. "There's one more thing I wanted to tell you."
"Mm?" Makoto looked over, doing the same.
"Come in."
Yu Ishigami pushed the office door open from the outside.
"It's not Ishigami I'm introducing," Makima added quickly.
The floor near Ishigami's feet rippled, as if the linoleum had turned to water. A dorsal fin broke the surface.
Then Beam erupted out of the floor entirely and launched himself directly at Makoto.
"LORD CHAINSAW! IT'S THE REAL CHAINSAW MAN! LORD CHAINSAW IS THE GREATEST! THE GREATEST!!"
The Shark Fiend was shirtless, wearing only dark shorts, the upper half of his face swallowed by a shark's skull. He came in fast and ecstatic.
Makoto's foot met him mid-lunge.
Crack.
Beam hit the far wall hard enough to leave fracture lines in the plaster.
"Ch... Lord Chainsaw... Lord Chainsaw..."
He crawled back anyway. Inch by inch across the floor, arms reaching for Makoto's leg.
Ishigami stepped forward and kicked him again. "Watch yourself. Can't you see you're being a nuisance?"
Where did this retard come from? Ishigami thought, real heat behind it. Does he think he's stealing my spot as Makoto-senpai's right-hand man?
"He's Beam, the Shark Fiend," Makima said. "Normally he's too feral to have a conversation with. But he says he'll do whatever Makoto asks."
"Why?"
"I'm not sure. Possibly because he heard Makoto has a soft spot for animal-type devil subordinates."
Makoto stared at her.
...Okay, fair. Libido, Rabbit, Dolphin, Gorilla, and now a Shark. If he ever ended up transmigrating into the One Piece world, he'd probably displace Kaido before the week was out.
"Lord Chainsaw! I will obey Lord Chainsaw absolutely! Lord Chainsaw is the best, the strongest!"
Beam sprang back to life and latched onto Makoto's thigh with both arms. Makoto shook his leg with open distaste. The Libido Devil and Gorilla Devil materialized on either side of Beam, seized his arms, and dragged him bodily out of the room.
Makoto and Ishigami left Makima's office side by side.
Per Makoto's standing orders, Beam would operate the same way as the others: stay hidden, don't surface without a direct command.
"Senpai, about..." Ishigami started.
Makoto raised a hand, cutting him off. He reached into his jacket and produced a folded slip of paper, holding it up for Ishigami to read.
Don't talk. Makima might be listening.
Ishigami's expression shifted. He said nothing.
They ended up at a coffee shop.
"Oh! I didn't expect you this fast!" Reze was already there, apron tied, mid-service to another table. Her face lit up when she spotted Makoto in the doorway.
Yukiko Kudo looked up from behind the espresso machine, startled. "Reze, you know him?"
"Wait, you know him too, Ms. Manager?"
Both of them blinked at each other.
The shop was Yukiko's. Her presence behind the counter had done wonders for business, as it tended to. The coincidence of Reze turning up as a part-time employee there was the sort of thing that happened to Makoto with tiresome regularity.
"I said I'd treat you, so order whatever you want." Reze bounced over and pressed the menu into his hands, practically humming.
While they waited, she did actually hum something under her breath, fidgeting with the ties of her apron, radiating that specific energy of a girl who has decided today is a good day.
Yukiko watched her. The way Reze kept glancing at Makoto, soft and obvious, made Yukiko's grip on the portafilter tighten.
You bastard, she thought. How do you manage to attract a new girl every few days?
She knew the reason he'd been keeping his distance from her for the past three years. Staying away to keep Makima from taking an interest. She understood it, accepted it even.
But this girl?
Does he just have a thing for young women, or what?
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