so before you get confused, this time the italics mean a memory... inside a memory. woah!!

Rin opened his eyes into an infinite black.

"Hello?" He called out, confused as to where he was. No one answered.

Rin kept calling and wandering around with slowly increasing panic. Where was he?

And finally, something, something, was visible in the ever ending dark. It was a cloud of brown mist, floating menacingly towards him. Rin felt the hairs on his tail lift into an instinctive, frightened puff.

Rin turned to run from the mist, but suddenly it was everywhere, and then he was running but there was no where to run. Around every turn there was mist, mist, mist. He couldn't escape. Where was he? Why couldn't he leave?

And then the mist took him, much like it had in the room from before. Except this time, it was all in his head, which allowed the mist to do much worse damage than it normally should. It had gotten ahold of him, and it was not letting go.

Rin's eyes, which could only see a devilish brown, began to see new, brighter colors, much like how the cram class watched at this very moment. And suddenly, scenes were playing inside his head.

"You're nobody to me! Don't let me see you acting like my father ever again!" Rin could see himself spitting at a gray haired priest in front of him.

Father Fujimoto wore a blank expression as he reached up and slapped Rin. "It'll be morning soon. Hurry. Go get your things."

There was a long moment of shocked silence. Priests that weren't tending to the wounded turned to stare at the scene before them.

"Yeah, okay," Rin replied in a dead tone, turning away with a red mark on his cheek.

Father Fujimoto stared down at his hand, which was also red with the impact. Suddenly, he choked, hand clutching his chest, and then fell to his knees with a groan. "No—it can't be!"

Priests rushed towards him, calling his name in fright. Everyone was held still by Father Fujimoto choking out, "Stay away! Don't come another step closer to me."

All the lights shattered as he said this, and Rin looked around with a worried expression. "Wha—what's going on?"

Rin's gaze was drawn to his father by a sick, unnatural laugh that forced its way out of the priest's throat. "At long last! I've claimed this body as my own!"

Rin rushed forward to the kneeling figure with a soft, confused cry of "old man?"

Father Fujimoto looked up at Rin with a fanged smile that was so big it seemed physically impossible. "Well finally, we meet at last, my long lost son! Just kidding!"

With another insane chuckle, Fujimoto rose. Blue flames burst in an inferno around him as he laughed and laughed, craning backwards, an unnaturally long tongue sticking out between fangs.

Rin stared in shock, but didn't quite grasp the severity of the situation—he knew nothing about demons, after all. "What the hell's wrong with you, old man?"

A wounded priest called out from the wall he was leaning against. "He's been possessed! Satan has entered him and taken over his body!"

Rin let out a small gasp and turned to the flaming figure before him, almost as if for confirmation—which was exactly what he got.

"Exactly as he says. I am Satan! I am the ruler of Gehenna, and your true father! But you can call me papa if you want!" Responded the devil, in a tone that slowly got more unraveled and insane the longer he talked.

And then came the crazed, high pitch laugh that sounded like something was tearing Shiro's throat out. Priests called out his name and rushed towards Shiro, but Satan just lit them all like torches.

"No! Stop it!" Rin yelled as he watched the priests burn, terror in his eyes.

"Don't you dare spoil our touching reunion," Satan growled out, blood trickling from all of the holes in his face as he worked on—tearing his fingers off? "I'm afraid time is running out for me."

Blood fell to the floor in the shape of a rectangle, as Satan calmly explained. "You see, my power is too overwhelming for Assiah, and so whatever I posses is doomed not to last very long! Just like this man's body, and just like your mother, my son!"

Rin stared with his face etched into an expression of disbelief and terror. The blood on the floor started to bubble and boil, and softly screaming heads made of the stuff fought to surface. Rin fell to the ground. "What the hell is that?"

"Gehenna Gate—the magical door linking Assiah and Gehenna. Now then, let's be off!"

Rin scuttled backwards frantically. "No! Stay away! Stay AWAY!"

It was all a blur to Rin, but he was aware of suddenly being wreathed in his own set of flames, and Satan was laughing again, saying something about him 'pissing his pants,' but Rin wasn't listening, he was busy screaming that no, he wasn't a demon, he was a human, dammit!

Satan was saying something about how his blood ran thick in Rin's veins, but the half demon cold only stare as the blood fell from his adoptive father's body, his vision going in and out of focus as Satan dragged him past the priests that were unconscious on the floor and threw him into a bubbling mass of faces.

He was struggling, yelling, and the damned being before him was laughing about how these were splendid rebirth cries. Why couldn't this be a dream? Why wasn't he waking up? "Somebody! Help me!"

Rin's voice tore and elongated his screams for help, but as he glanced around at the unconscious, flaming bodies on the floor, his face morphed into even deeper horror. No one was there to help. He was going to die—or worse.

"Happy birthday, my beloved son!" And then Satan was laughing again, hysterically, before—

"No. It's not true."

It wasn't the crazed voice from earlier—it was the voice Rin grew up to, the voice he loved. The voice he wanted to hear again one more time—but it was too late. Shiro Fujimoto had taken the sharp tip of his pendant and stabbed it straight into his heart, while he still had this last small portion of freewill. "That boy—that boy is my son, and I'm taking him back!"

His body fell forward almost in slow motion, a background of blue flames exploding as he landed in the Gehenna Gate with a sick squish. Rin barely heard Satan's rage filled screams as they fell. He could only see his father—his father dying.

"So you mean to sacrifice your own life for him? You astound me, you wretched priest." Satan spoke, his voice calm as it faded away "However... it's already too late. Gehenna Gate has taken ahold of you, and it will never... let you... go..."

And that was thing Rin would ever hear come out of his father's mouth.

"Old man! Hang on, hang on old man! Don't give up!" He struggled frantically towards the body, which he prayed still contained life. His voice broke as he reached it, and he let out a rough cry of "Daaad!" as they both began to sink.

Rin heaved them up and grabbed onto the only solid thing there—the Koma sword.

Memories of what his old man told him about this sword resurfaced, and he stared at it, hard, before moving to draw it.

"Rin! Did you forget what Father Fujimoto told you already?" A priest that had been freed from the flames with the disappearance of Satan called out. "If you draw that sword, you'll—"

But Rin was already moving. A brilliant blaze of blue light swamped the room as the Koma was drawn, and amidst the light, Rin's features changed. His ears and teeth sharpened, and a long black tail unraveled seemingly out of nowhere—but he didn't notice, nor did he care. He was focused solely on one thing and one thing only—saving his old man.

He swung Kurikara fiercely at the gate, and in another whoosh of blue, the gate was disappearing as the flames burned its very essence into nothing.

Rin landed in a crouch and sheathed his sword as fast as he could, Shiro's warning about what it would do to him ringing in his head—he hoped that he had saved at least some of his humanity.

And then, Rin was turning, slowly, as if he didn't want to know the answer to the question branding his mind. His eyes landed on the body next to him. Blood tracks fell from Fujimoto's eyes, nose, and mouth. More was around his exorcist pendant, which was still embedded deep in his chest. He wasn't moving. He was dead, and Rin tried to deny it, but seeing him like that—there was no way it couldn't be true. He was dead. He was dead.

Rin was still crouching, and he rested his head against hands that were locked in a death grip around Kurikara. Tears streamed down his face, and he choked on tiny, hiccuping sobs. "Oh Dad..."

oops
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