Chapter 1: We Are D.E.A.D.

"You don't look too good there kid."

His voice broke the boys miserable musings, miserable musing that a ten year old shouldn't be having. Ten year olds should be having fun, not moping on a park bench as this one was.

"Why aren't you playing with your friends?"

The boy looked up at the young man in front of him, he supposed he was a bit of an odd sight to see. He was tall, compared to the ten year old that is, with wildly spiking black hair, a black leather jacket with a pale grey fur collar, dark grey trousers and black trainers, and a dark purple t-shirt marked with a trident.

"Who... are you?" the boy spoke sullenly, tone reflecting the look on his face and in his eyes.

The young man, who looked no older than seventeen or eighteen smiled "The names Gid, Gid Lucione Deviluke. You?"

"Rito" Rito replied despondently, his spiky brown hair shadowing his face as he looked down again.

Rito was ten, he was average height for a ten year old, average weight too most likely, with brown hair and golden brown eyes, currently bleak and lifeless. He looked rather average, in most regards in fact, besides the fact that he was depressed.

Most ten year olds didn't understand depression, beyond that feeling when their parents refused to buy them something they wanted or they were told off. But this boy was well and truly depressed.

"And why are you so depressed Rito?" Gid asked sitting down on the bench the kid was occupying "Those are your friends, right?" he looked over at a group of three 'playing' together, though it looked more like an argument "Why are you here alone? Why aren't you with them."

Rito opened his mouth, but closed it again shortly afterwards.

"Go ahead" Gid told him "You can tell me. How knows, I might even be able to help out."

The boy shook his head "You're wrong."

"Oh?" the teen raised an eyebrow.

"No one can help..." Rito mumbled quietly "That's what the doctors said..."

"The doctors? Are you ill?" Gid inquired, leaning on his palm though staring at Rito from the corner of his sharp black eyes.

"No, not me... my little sister."

"I see" Gid nodded calmly "Your little sister, huh? And she's sick? Really sick I'm guessing."

He nodded "They... they said" a sob cracked his strained voice "They said she doesn't have long left."

Gid waited patiently for the boy to regain control of himself, waiting as he sniffed quietly and wiped angrily at his wet eyes, before finally "Well that sucks."

"Yeah" Rito said lifelessly.

"You really love your sister, huh?"

Rito nodded firmly "I do, she's... she's my only sibling and... I don't wanna lose her."

"I can understand that" Gid told him, patting the boy gently "Family is important. They're the people you're willing to fight, to die for, to kill for... and of course, to live for" he turned on the bench to face the boy "So tell me, Rito" he said with a grin "What would you say if I were to offer you my... assistance, lets call it?"

"A...assistance?" Rito was frowning up at him, curious but confused.

Gid chuckled "Guess I'll have to be frank, huh, you're a bit too young for me to dance around the subject and actually figure out what I'm trying say. I can save you sister" Rito's eyes went wide at the blunt statement and he opened his mouth, but Gid spoke before he could "But in return I want something from you."

"What?" Rito asked, his clouded eyes suddenly flashing with determination "I'll give you anything if you can save Mikan!"

"Anything? Good, cause I want 'everything'" Gid's placed his hand on Rito's head and leaned down until they were nose to nose "The rest of your life, Rito Yuuki, I want it. Swear the rest of your life to me and I promise you that before the week is out, your little sister will be healthy as a horse... and a damn healthy horse at that."

"I swear it, I swear" Rito told him.

Gid grinned darkly "Here" he produced a strange elaborate scroll from his jacket, along with a small vial filled with a red substance "Sign the form and drink the vial, and our deal will be complete."

Rito made to grab the pen Gid fished out from his jacket moments later, but Gid held it out of reach "Are you sure this is what you want, Rito? Your sister will survive, she will live healthy and happy, at the cost of your own life. Ask yourself, is that truly what you want?"

"Will I die?" Rito asked quietly.

"Yes" Gid said "Everyone will die, eventually. But you won't die just yet, that much I assure you. I'm not going to buy a life just to snuff it out you know. I'll have you burn as long as you can... but in my servitude."

"I'll be your servant... huh?" Gid nodded, and Rito followed suit "Give me the pen" he demanded.

The teen chuckled "Here."

Rito signed and chugged, swallowing it down without even tasting it "And now?" he asked.

"And now our deal is complete" Gid took the scroll back, rolled it up and stood "Go and play with your friends, Rito. Enjoy yourself" he smiled at the boy, a dark note in that childish grin "I'll be in touch" he turned and walked away, leaving Rito by himself on the bench, before the boy jumped up to go join his friends.

Gid smiled when he noticed that the moment Rito arrived the arguing stopped and they started 'playing' together.

"Enjoy yourself" he repeated "while you can, Rito Yuuki. You belong to me now."

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Rito woke with his face pressed against the desk to the sound of the bell signalling lunch, he lifted his head, a piece of paper rising with him before he pulled it off, and looked around as everyone headed off to eat lunch.

"I can't believe you get away with sleeping in class" his best and only friend, Kenichi Saruyama, said sitting at the recently vacated desk in front of Rito's and placing his lunch box down on Rito's desk "The bad boy Rito Yuuki scares even the sensei, hmm?"

"Shut it Saru" Rito grumbled tiredly.

Saru, as Rito was fond of calling of him, just smiled "Tough night?" he asked.

Rito grunted in response. His stomach still hurt, or rather the wound hidden beneath bandages and dressings did.

"It was my shift last night, wasn't it?"

"Yeah, but you wanted to watch that stupid anime thing, didn't you?" Rito rubbed at his cheek and pulled out his own lunch box.

"If Gid finds out..." Saru whispered.

"He won't care. So long as someone was doing it Gid wouldn't care if you spent all day and all night fapping away to your stupid fictional girlfriends."

"Hey!" Saru protested "Don't call them stupid, they're the most wonderful, understanding, beautiful, and perfect people in the world."

"Yeah, yeah, stupid otaku."

"Tch, says you, sis-con."

Rito looked at Saru flatly "This morning my little sister handed me my lunch box, I took it then left. I didn't say a word to her, and she didn't say a word to me."

"Ouch" Saruyama commented "Trouble in paradise?" he asked teasingly.

"There's been trouble for the past five years."

"R-right..." Saru looked down at his own lunch box, using his chopsticks to pick up an octopus sausage his mother had loving cooked for him this morning "Want me to take patrol tonight?" he asked.

"You can if you want" Rito responded "I'll do it anyway though."

Saruyama sighed "It's so hard being your friend Rito, you help me, I try to help you, you turn it down, I feel indebted. It's just... annoying. Let me help you once."

Rito rolled his eyes at his friends complaints "If you wanna help then stop bringing pornographic magazines to school and storing them in my desk" he threw said magazine at Saruyama, having found it while he hunted for his bento.

"But no one dares touch your desk Rito. If I store it in mine sensei will confiscate it right away, but she doesn't dare go near yours. Hehe, you're such a yankee Rito, I'm surprised you haven't dyed your hair blonde yet."

"Urgh, you realise I'd look ridiculous with blonde hair, right?"

"Like a poor copy of Goku" Saru chuckled.

Rito sighed.

"Ehehehe, and then..." his eyes had wandered where they were wont to wander and he was forced to pull them away, but Saru had, of course noticed.

"And so Rito's growing obsession with Haruna Sairenji continues, how long will it be before the assumed delinquent uses his obvious yakuza connections to have her kidnapped for his sick pleasures? Hihi."

"Fuck you Saru."

Haruna Sairenji, a cute, blue haired, blue eyed whose hair always seemed to be neatly clipped by a red hair clip, was the one he was looking at, sitting with her friends Mio Sawada and Rise Momioka while they ate lunch and chatted together happily.

It was a whole other world, one he had long since left behind.

"Oh, come on Rito, most girls dig the whole bad boy act. Ask any girl in this school out and I reckon seventy percent will say yes. The remaining thirty percent will be to scared to answer and therefore faint, to stern in their 'moral integrity' to consider 'inappropriate relationships' with anyone, and you know which annoying bitch I'm about" Rito did "Or just smart enough to know that you're a good for nothing and so will naturally turn you down."

"Thanks Saru" Rito told him "So tell me you want your testicles liquefied or just smashed into pulp?"

"Relax Rito, I'm only teasing. Although..." Saru smiled a mischievous monkey like grin "You using your whole bad boy charm to get ladies isn't a bad idea. Then we take them to a deserted area where no one goes and, with them alone and vulnerable, we..."

"Liquefied or pulp" Rito repeated.

"Okay, okay, I'll stop" Saru smiled a small smile instead of his usual bright grin "Nothing ventured nothing gained, Rito. Ask her."

"No."

"But she might say yes, Rito, and you'll never know if all you do is perv on her from a distance."

"I'm not perving on her, and I'm not asking her."

"Rito..."

"Kenichi" Rito said darkly, using 'Saru's' first name "Look at the world she lives in" he said glancing at Haruna "It galaxies apart from yours and mine, they don't even intersect on any level other than this stupid school. And do you think for one moment that I want to drag her into our world?"

That made the monkey boy stop, Rito's words making far too much sense to him "Fair enough" Saru muttered.

And for a while they both ate in a tepid silence.

"So I was playing this game last night" Saruyama began, as if nothing had happened "And this main character girl had massive badoinkies, like seriously huge, big as her head. And they were bouncing all over the screen as she fought the evil villain something or other while her clothes slowly got more and more torn off, and I swear I was going at it so hard I thought it might rip off and...

Rito sighed and tuned it out, one final glance was sent the blue haired girls way, before he focused on his meal.

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It was only at night that 'they' came out.

Rito wasn't sure why. Heck, he wasn't even sure if there was a reason or not. Maybe they just weren't good with groups of people, maybe they didn't like the sun, or maybe the collective emotions of everyone passing through during the day diluted the very things that made up the core of 'their' being.

It could be one of them, or none of them, or all of them, or a bit of this and a bit of that and a dash of the other.

He didn't know.

Nor care particularly, maybe to someone else the reasons, habits and nature of the things he was tasked with killing would be immensely fascinating, but to Rito they were just a job.

And his job was too kill them.

Demons.

Though he called them Demons, as did his employer, Gid, as did all the rest of his group, Rito wasn't sure if that was the correct word for them. From what Gid had told him, and what his seniors had told him, Demons were created from the build up of negative emotions which eventually caused them to manifest into the physical beings that they called 'Demons'.

How exactly that worked was beyond him, so he just accepted the whole 'It's a magical world and there are things you simply cannot understand' type shit that Gid always said to him and just kept killing.

For some reason, here is Sainan City, there was a large amount of these 'Demons'. Whereas others cities in the world might not get one or two in an entire year, and weak ones at that, Sainan got one or two every night. If they were lucky.

If they weren't then it'd be five or six, and if they were really unlucky then it'd ten or twenty.

Those nights were like to kill him, literally.

Rito was one of the D.E.A.D. Unit, or Demon Extermination and Destruction Unit. It was a shit name, acronyms were a terrible waste of time and finding a word that somewhat matched the title you wanted was a sad and lonely thing to do. The member of the D.E.A.D. Unit usually referred to themselves as simply 'the Dead' which was morbid and fatalistic, but not inappropriate.

He had been ten years old when he was recruited by Gid, in return for the life and health of his little sister he had given his life over to that little bastard to be used as he so wished in the fight against Demons.

Despite the harshness, the injuries he came home with every night, the breakdown of almost every friendship he had, even the now stony relationship between him and the very girl he had saved, Rito had never once regretted his decision to accept Gid's offer. No, that wasn't entirely true, he had regretted it, just once.

The Dead were different from ordinary humans in several ways.

Firstly their bodies were enhanced in terms of speed and strength and agility and stamina, able to perform feats that would be beyond a normal human beings limit.

Second they were partially immune to the Demons, while the negative emotions that made up the very beings of the Demons would infect a normal human through nothing more than contact, causing all sorts of problems for said human, the Dead could touch Demons all the wanted.

Usually this was 'touching' them repeatedly in the face/chest/wherever they could reach with their knuckles, and that was only if their weapon was unavailable to them.

Which alluded to the final one, their 'weapons'.

It had taken Rito a while to figure out that the vial he had drunk was actually Gid's blood, needless to say he felt a little sick he learned that particular fact. The vial caused all the enhancements and also allowed them to 'forge' their blood in weapons that could combat and kill the Demons.

Normal weapons would do nothing, but Gid's blood, that flowed through the Dead's veins as well, could kill the damn things.

With a bit of hacking, stabbing, slashing and beheading admittedly.

And thus leads to the situation Rito was in right now, stood in a park in the middle of the night, watching as the darkness coagulated into a beast.

A clawed hand reached out from the blackness and carved marks into the stone path they stood on, Rito watched disinterestedly.

If he attacked now, while it was still forming, the blackness or emotions that were creating it would simply dissipate for now and gather again later. He had to wait until it was fully formed and emerged from the blackness, otherwise he wouldn't have truly killed it, at most he would've taken a slice.

It had four fingers and a thumb, though each finger was a cruelly curved bony claw made of some kind of blackened bone. It's skin was mottled and black. Slowly more of its form could be seen, a vaguely human beast with tusks emerging from its jaw, long, sharp, sabre-tooth teeth piercing down form its mouth, and just avoiding the tusks, and a set of horns on its head.

Its eyes were pitch black, like the hollows holes of a skull, there was nothing but darkness there.

"Finally done" Rito asked, yawning. He'd seen it all before a thousand times over, he'd been doing this almost every night for five years, it'd gotten rather boring after the first fifty times. An established routine prior to a fight, a fight, a death, the end.

It was actually rather simple.

He pulled a utility knife from his pocket, pushing the button forwards to partially extract the retractable blade. Pushing the cuff of his hoodie up his arm to his elbow, he slashed across the wrist without hesitation, letting his blood flow freely.

The blade was retracted and stowed away with his not bleeding left hand, while his right gripped the sword that had been formed there.

His own blood weapon, his sword forged of his very own lifeblood mixed with Gid's supernatural or magical or alien or whatever blood. It didn't look as if it were forged out of blood, instead it look like a real genuine sword.

A huge broadsword, with a blade as wide as he was, with twin razor sharp edges and a equally sharp spear point tip. The guard was cruciform, though it only served to cover the bottom of the massive blade and went no further than that, and the hilt itself was raw metal with a grip carved into the surface.

It was sharp, brutal, powerful, and perfect for the job in hand.

Rito swung it up onto his shoulder like it wasn't as tall as he was and then some, the sword being at least seven metres tall, i.e. way taller than Rito himself was. The sharp edge would've sliced clean through him if it hadn't been his, the weight would've broken his arm if it didn't belong to him. But it did, so none of that mattered.

"Bring it" he said simply, not sure if the Demon even understood what he was saying.

It understood the bite of his sword well enough, two clean strokes and the monster was dead, its arm and leg sliced off as it leapt for him, its head chopped off as it lay there screaming and bleeding out black blood.

Rito sighed "Barely worth the effort" he mused, feeling a little dizzy from the blood loss.

One of the negatives of his humongous weapon, it took a lot of blood to make, therefore he got a little dizzy afterwards, and during in fact but he put it to the back of his mind while he was fighting and only let it take hold afterwards.

He patched up his bleeding wrist with a dressing and bandage he had brought along for precisely this, keeping his sword formed and ready just in case. He didn't want to toss it only to have to remake it and nearly kill himself from blood loss next time, that was never fun.

With his wrist bandages he pulled out his phone, flipped it open, searched his contacts, containing only the numbers of his family, Saruyama, and a couple of others he knew due to 'work'. The only people in his life, and that was kinda depressing. Choosing Saruyama's number Rito let the phone ring and waited, and soon enough Saru picked up.

"What's up, Rito?"

"Nothing, it's down now" he sat on a bench, leaning his giant sword against the seat as well "How's things on your end?"

"Quiet. Met one, killed it, easy."

Rito fiddled with his bandage for a moment while he mused upon Saru's words "So between us we've killed two, huh."

"Yep" Saru agreed "Does that mean we're done for the night?" two was a pretty standard night, three was a few, four was busy, five was a lot. Saruyama knew the drill pretty well by now, even though he'd only been doing this for a year.

"No, we have to keep on guard and be ready..." Rito sighed "But you can relax a little I guess, there shouldn't be many more tonight. Just don't blame me if you end up dead, and don't quote me on what I just said."

"Sweet" Saru cheered "I've got this great new game on the PFP, Deceased or Revived: Super Xtreme Women's Volleyball Giant Tit Spectacular, now is the perfect time to try it out."

"Yeah, yeah, enjoy yourself" he hung up, flipped his phone shut, tucked it away, and looked up at the sky.

It was a nice night.

So I know I haven't updated anything in a while, a week or so ago, might've been longer, I did update Embers but that's beside the point. I shouldn't be starting a new fic with so many others pending, but I am, or am I?

See this is kind of a test, to see what people think of the idea and whether people like it, I know not many characters were introduced and not much of the story touched upon, but this is just a little taste of the idea that's brewing in my head. I'll introduce every character from the canon (who I want or need to appear) eventually, and things will start to fall into place and we'll begin to understand others things about this world I've created, but for now this is it.

Enjoy, and if you like it please review because, as I said, this is a trial or test chapter to see if anyone bites, and bites=reviews, so if you bite then review.

Toodles.