Chapter Text
And so the Harvest Festival began.
It was tumultuous, in a way that no one quite expected. Soyo finally got his cloak mended and returned to him, but it didn’t look like how he remembered. It was a full-length cape now, slit down more sections for movement, and one section even resembled a wolf tail with whoever it was that had the sense of humour to do it.
“It’s a bit of a collaborative work between us and Vassago-sensei,” Quiche enlightens him, helping him get his brace properly set in the morning. “A Vassago only gets one cape in their life, after all. You have to treasure it.”
It had Kalego written all over it. Veer would never have approved keeping fur in the design. And it made a lot of sense when he noticed Purson— who had a similar cloak in the Naberius indigo.
Purson seemed sheepish about it. While it did have the chalk of Purson in its seams, the Pursons themselves never wore it themselves— they had no need for it, after all.
The purpose of it was more tactical than anything— especially when Soyo realized his cloak was indigo on the inside, and Purson’s was red on the inside. They had matching reversible cloaks.
With no limits on the gear you could bring in with you, it seemed most of the other students spent quite some money to prepare— luckily for the Misfits, their tutors prepared them dutifully for the festival with their pride on the line.
Soyo steps into the field, briefly noticed, but never holding anyone’s attention.
“Clarin’s worrying me, and so is Soyoyon,” Lied notes as they gathered at the entrance. They all looked like they marched out of a warzone and collectively, they were physically incapable of not drawing any attention. “He’s grumpy. What did Kalego-sensei do to him? He isn’t taking off that blindfold either. He hasn’t looked at eyes even once today.”
“Why is Clara in a kigurumi?”
They weren’t getting any answers now, unfortunately. Soyo stands around them, energy on the low side. He hadn’t slept more than an hour at a time for the last stretch of his training, but he could tell from the look in the others’ eyes that they were much the same— some of them hadn’t gotten a single smidge of rest at all.
“Well, my training was the absolute worst of all…”
“Huh?”
“I suffered the most, I’m tellin’ ya! You have no idea what I had to go through!”
“Absolutely not, we went through utter hell!”
“You guys are being absurd!”
“You were just playing games the whole time!”
“And you guys were just frolicking in the water the whole time!”
“Heh, come to think of it, with your radio silence we thought you guys died or something,” Agarest chuckles in Jazz and Allocer’s direction.
And then explode, “NO THANKS TO YOU UNHELPFUL TRAITORS!”
“What were we supposed to do, we didn’t know where you were. Try harder to send an SOS next time.”
“We did send an SOS! YOU GUYS LEFT ME ON READ!”
“That wasn’t a mayday, that was a dying message,” Lied said.
“YOU JUST SAID ‘LOL’! GET OVER HERE AND LET ME HIT YOU!”
“Wait, you noticed we read it but you still didn’t think to send your location?”
They were bickering. Immensely. No one could have possibly predicted this, but somehow when strife is supposed to bring people together, these dumbass teenagers were so heated by their suffering olympics that the household was in shambles.
Even Kerori and Elizabetta were snarkily going at each other, honestly colder and scarier than the violent boys:
“So, did you have fun at your ladies’ tea party?” Kerori asks, her voice lilted with spite.
“Oh, we did,” Elizabetta’s’ voice was sultry, impossibly sweet, but under her veil her smile didn’t reach her eyes, “I heard you were part of a lovely magic beast circus?”
“THAT’S IT! We’re settling this with results,” Lied declares, “whoever team wins the Harvest Festival had the hardest time in their training!”
“YEAH!”
And that’s the scene Iruma walks into, blissfully excited to see everyone again after that arduous training regime.
“What’s going on here?? Was Soyo-kun not enough to make all of you get along?”
Soyo’s on standby right now, the petting services aren’t available.
“GET IN OUR WAY AND WE’LL KILL YOU!”
“HELL YEAH, BRING IT ON!”
The rules of the festival are simple— no submitting fake goods, and no violence against fellow students is allowed. But Soyo doesn’t care about that.
As soon as the chime rings out for the start of the festival— he perks up. Eyes under his blindfold open against the sheer fabric, ears perked for the faintest rustle that’s out of place against the endless forage—
—he’s hunting for Purson Soi.
“Hey so, something’s been bothering me.”
In the viewing tent, the teachers are surveying the live footage, enthused by the progress of the Harvest Festival. The Misfits are fully dominating every block in their own, bizarre ways— including Iruma and Lied, who’ve somehow just boiled all of their ingredients into forage stew instead of submitting them to be graded.
“Yeah, they’re so abnormal it’s hilarious, right?” Dali chuckles, “they come up with new ways to be crazy each time.”
“No, not that,” Bachiko points at one of the screens. It’s empty. She looks around. “Wait, he’s somewhere else now…”
Suzy giggles fondly, “they’re all working so hard, it was worth all the work to set up this forest. I wonder who’ll win this year, it’s really such a surprise!”
“I do hear Asmodeus-kun is the favourite to win, but since the Dorodoro Brothers seem to have him tied down in some challenge, he might have a more difficult time.”
“I have my money on the Beast Queen in Block 2, she’s impressive!”
“Are yall ignoring me?!” Bachiko snaps, pointing at another screen this time, “what’s with this one? This kid! He’s freaky, even by demon standards!”
“Oh, you’re talking about Soyo-kun,” Balam turns to look and waves.
Soyo on the screen, who is already staring straight at the camera, waves back with a gentle smile. He leaves right afterward.
“THAT,” Bachiko howls, “what is that? Every time he’s on screen, he’s staring straight at the camera, it’s creeping me out! Don’t the Demonitors usually stay hidden? What demon is that?” she points at it like it’s some freak of demonkind, which, she isn’t wrong, but the other teachers are all so unsurprised by it that she’s starting to think she’s the weird one.
“Hi, Vassago-kun!” Dali greets, and Bachiko pales.
“Vassa—!?!”
“That’s my little brother,” Veer says, showing up behind her. She whirls back so quickly, only to deflate in relief. “No, I’m neither Van nor Saga.”
Bachiko’s shoulders untense a little, but her face remains scrunched into a grimace, “I don’t think you’re all that much better…” he looks at the screen again, where Soyo’s emerged on another demonitor waving back at Dali.
He even returns the greeting, soft and polite.
“So this is the rumoured youngest of the Vassago… he’s going through his rite of advancement later than I thought,” she considers.
“He’s a late bloomer,” Veer says.
Bachiko shudders, “as if those exist in your family…”
The Vassago were the only demon family in the entire Netherworld that treated their young with selective interest. With their Bloodline Ability being an unusual recessive gene in the family, anyone that awakened the powers were automatically adopted into the main family, and everyone else was simply delegated out of it. They were never granted a name, and never anointed a place in the official family registry.
It was cruel, but they were always demons close to origins, so, their absurdity was simply accepted as their demonic signature.
All families worked differently.
A late bloomer couldn’t possibly exist in this family, simply because he would’ve been cut out of their interest long ago. Especially now, when they’re so close to another succession.
The Vassago abandoned the young that were too weak to survive— that was true until Soyo came into the family.
“Isn’t he adorable?” Veer sits down beside them. Clearly making Bachiko uncomfortable. He seems to be thriving in the way she stares at him like dirt.
“Are you guys sure the family didn’t keep him around for entertainment? He’s the lowest ranked in the family right now…”
For that, no one can deny it.
“What’s so wrong about that?”
“Ugh,” Bachiko turns away, disgusted, “I hate your family.”
“Too bad,” Veer says. Smug and proud. “I guess normal demons can’t understand the unconditional love of the Vassago family, huh?”
Every single demon in the tent gives him a bewildered look.
“Is he lying?”
“No, I think he’s dead serious.”
“That’s terrifying.”
“It runs in the family.”
“Clearly.”
As the night falls, the unrest of the forest grows.
Soyo cuts down a very loud crow. Except it’s not a crow, it’s probably a goose, and it’s not a bird at all, it’s just an angler attached to a furry beast with its jaws over like a pitcher plant and it nearly ate him.
There’s a rustle overhead.
Soyo escapes.
Purson emerges from the treeline, stepping onto the fallen beast’s tongue with the barest hint of a furrow in his brows. He looks back down at the beast under him and sighs. It’s not even fully dead yet, the beast just hasn’t noticed Purson past the two layers of Detection Warding.
“He has to get the most tedious ones to bring back.”
He submits the beast to the station and continues the chase. He’ll have to start over trying to catch up to Soyo, but the night is young.
He wasn’t really planning on winning the Harvest Festival, anyways… he’s just going to prevent Soyo from getting points by depositing them in his own name. Apparently the rest of the class is having some kind of team competition, but that has nothing to do with Purson and Soyo.
“That crazy mutt is definitely going to hunt all night long…” Purson mutters a vile curse under his breath and pulls his hood up.
Until the last chime, the hunt continues.
Sinking into the shadows of the trees, he doesn’t emerge on the other side.
“Your teacher is insane! What’d you mean, he taught you guys by cycling back and forth between your evil cycle and rationality? Are you guys trying to go back to primal?”
Asmodeus and Sabnock considered that. The DoroDoro Brothers were hysterical, nothing new, they somehow didn’t have plans beyond ‘ragebaiting’, and were unfortunately just as susceptible to overemotional turmoil themselves.
One had to learn to stop questioning what the Abnormal Class did at this point.
“Well, wicked cycles have caused quite some ordeals in our class,” Asmodeus shrugs, “but it’s nothing new for us.”
“Yeah, Vassago does it all the time,” Sabnock nods in agreement, “compared to that dog, it’s much easier to snap this genius moron out of— ACK!”
Asmodeus jabbed him in the side for that remark. “Who are you calling a moron, you greedy dumbass musclehead?!”
“I put GENIUS in front of it! Be grateful!”
The act of arguing about insignificant nonsense was, unfortunately, also on brand for this class.
“Come to think of it, was he already in his wicked phase this morning?” Asmodeus wonders, “usually if he’s quiet, he’s normal, but nowadays they’re kind of interchangeable, it’s getting hard to tell them apart.”
“Is that what it means to master your evil cycle?” Sabnock mutters. “He doesn’t even need any failsafes in case he loses control.”
“Who knows. Vassago were born to indulge heavily in their desires, so maybe they were always born with the ability to perfectly control their evil cycle,” Asmodeus supposes. “Like some hidden factor of their Bloodline Ability…”
They’re envious, a little.
It’s what Asmodeus and Sabnock were training for— controlling evil cycles, getting as close to the edge of primal as possible in order to maximize their physical and magical potential as demons.
It’s an experiment done by Balam and carefully navigated through pills and supervision.
Yet, the Vassago seemed to already be the successful result of it.
The raw, unrestrained version— one that was borne from generations of arduous and cutthroat survival, rather than the careful, educational cultivation they had now.
“Do you think Vassago doesn’t need a safeword because his evil cycle’s just been bullied out of him? And that's why he’s so unhingedly restrained?”
Sabnock thinks about it. “That sounds about right.”
“...I kinda feel bad for Vassago now,” Asmodeus says.
“Don’t let that post-nut clarity hit too hard,” Sabnock mutters, only to get swatted in the face by a fistful of flames. “WHAT ARE YOU, PICKING A FIGHT?”
“WATCH YOUR DAMN LANGUAGE, YOU DISGUSTING CRETIN!”
For the students and faculty of Babyls, Harvest Festival’s Day Two hung over their heads as a heavy weight. Exhaustion was seeping into bones, and more teams were dropping out— saving the students who underestimated the dangers of the jungle was a chore that wore even the teachers out.
That meant it was time for the Disciplinary Committee to take over the shift.
“There’s got to be a more efficient way to detect where the kids that are in danger are, right?” Quichelight sighs into the tree. He just had to dig someone out of a demon bird’s guts. Twice.
“I’m honestly impressed there hasn’t been casualties,” Western fixes his glasses, trying to get the image of twenty rows of teeth out of his mind. “And we do this every year.”
“There’s never been casualties,” Ameri informs. “The faculty has more control over the forest than it may look. And these demonic plants don’t kill quickly, so as long as we’re vigilant, we’ll remain on top of things. It’s the Disciplinary Committee’s duty to ensure the wellbeing of the student body, in the teacher’s absence.”
The faculty in question were currently lugging their weary bodies back to the tent for a power nap until the next shift.
“We may be several members down right now, but we’re still keeping up,” Ameri says. She doesn’t turn around. “So, please leave or I’ll report you for cheating, Soyo.”
Smoke looks up toward the trees, where Soyo rests upon one of the branches, watching them from behind his blindfold. She quickly turns away.
“Is it really necessary when he had his blindfold on?” she asks.
“In the spirit of fairness,” Ameri insists. “If you’re after the Legendary Leaf, then trying to cheat off the proctors and invigilators isn’t the right idea. It’s much too convoluted to handle on your own.”
Ameri only knows because she’s in the Disciplinary Committee. Soyo would have to figure it out on his own, like the rest of his peers— by communing with the animals, connecting with the forest, and overcoming trials.
“You should look around for clues in the forest, you’ll get there eventually.”
Soyo hums.
In the next rustle, Ameri spins to realize he’s gone from the tree. She keeps her head turned in the other direction, but suddenly SOyo’s all over her, hands around her head and legs wound around her neck, coiling past her and tilting her chin up to face him.
“Hey, you brat! I said you can’t cheat!” Ameri groans, closing her eyes. “Get off in three, or you’re going to get slammed into the ground. Three,”
“Is it cheating, though?” Soyo asks. “I’m looking for clues in the forest. You’re in the forest. You’re a clue.”
Ameri’s brow twitches. “Two.”
Soyo bounces off with a spring in his step. Ameri hears his boot hit the ground with a weighted clutter against his metal brace, but when she turns to look one last time, he’s taken off running, his shadows not even lingering in the sunrise’s call.
He’s left with his haul of information. Without a trace, into the shelter of his Detection Warding Cloak.
“...he can’t have gotten anything, right?” Ameri asks.
He’s heard about this from her father— how the strongest Vassago could track down prey, far beyond the limitations of their preferred Scent Trails.
She should’ve figured.
The Vassago treat secrets as a challenge, and Ameri dangled one so obviously in front of him… but Soyo had never been one to be so competitive and petty. He was always quiet and obedient and never did anything to mischievously go against her.
“Was that okay, President?” Smoke’s question seemed almost lighthearted.
Honestly, if Soyo had just asked cutely, she would’ve let him have it. She could never say no to him, and they’d spent enough time away during his training period to justify this. Soyo found her, fair and square, after all. He deserved a hint.
(She didn’t need to give him one.)
(A part of her is a little sad about it. Her puppy is growing up.)
“Well, I guess it’s about time he learned that not everyone’s going to be kind to him. Might as well let him go overboard a little.”
Back outside, in the loser’s tent, the demons that have resigned from the festival have begun placing bets on who would win the entire thing— most of all everyone was placing bets on which team from the Misfits would be the ones to end up victorious.
“Huh? So there’s six teams and… Vassago-kun’s on his own?”
“They have an uneven number? I could’ve sworn they didn’t… were we not counting Vassago-kun? He would be the thirteenth…”
“Considering what kind of demon he is, I suppose it would be hard to pair him with anyone. Some of the groups seem unconventional, but at least even Ix and Valac are both girls… No one really knows how to work with a Vassago.”
The gossiping was going in an odd direction.
“...unless we’re talking about President Ameri, right?”
“Maybe even a Naberius.”
There wasn’t really much that Jazz and Allocer gained by correcting them, but it did slip their minds. Soyo was the last to leave the room during tutor assignments, but they did learn that he was trained by Sir Kalego himself.
It was odd that he was on his own, but that kid was unique.
“So Soyo-kun’s had a handicap this whole time, huh? I guess he didn’t complain when we were competing at the start,” Jazz supposes.
Allocer shakes his head. “It goes both ways— he is on his own, but he doesn’t have to gather twice the amount of points like our duos would require. He hunts best on his own, an independent hunting wolf, one might say… though, ironically, wolves hunt in packs.”
Wolves hunt in packs.
But the Vassago are isolated among demons, and their numbers are scarce. So there’s no way they could ever have a pack.
But what if they did?
“What is he doing now, anyways?” Jazz’s eyes narrow into all the screen ahead of him— Soyo’s been popping up every now and then to wave at the audience, but he’s been quiet since. “Ah, there he is.”
In the corner of one screen, a telltale dark cloaked figure poked out of the corners of the camera’s vision. The figure doesn’t lift his arms from the shelter of the black cloak— as if he’s observing something beyond view.
“Soyo-kun,” Jazz calls out. Because the last few times they’ve done it, Soyo’s turned over and shush them as if the forest could hear them.
This time, Soyo doesn’t.
Jazz’s blood runs cold.
“Wait… who’s that?” he leans closer, but when he tries to find the same screen again, he can’t remember which one it was. And the figure’s gone, too. “...Allocer…”
Allocer squints judgmentally at him. “Are you hallucinating again, Jazz?”
“What? WHAT? No! He was— you saw it too, right?!”
Allocer would’ve let him continue, but the voice over the ground’s loudspeakers interrupted them— Sir Kalego’s speaking, and everyone clamps right down to listen.
“There are only two days left to the Harvest Festival. We’ll be announcing the current leading rankers at halftime: starting with Asmodeus, at 21,800 points.”
It’s easy to expect Asmodeus to lead the ranks along with several of the other misfits, and other winning hopefuls like Orobas and the Dorodoro brothers. But despite Soyo’s valiant hunting throughout the sleepless days and nights, he isn’t in the rankings at all.
But then Kalego pauses.
And with a soft, amused chuckle that haunts every Misfit in their nightmares— Kalego continues with, “and Purson: 7,600 points.”
There were other names they didn’t recognize as well, but that one— for some reason, only Purson’s name was preceded by a sardonic laughter that could only spell extra remedial lessons from Satan himself.
“...who’s Purson again?”
“Purson… that’s the Detection Warding Family, right?”
“Was there a Purson in our year? But what class are they in?”
Everyone’s gossiping, Fearfully. A deathly shiver coils down Jazz and Allocer’s spines— and an inkling tickles in their throat, one that could only be described as some conflicting mesh of kinship and pity.
(And that’s so exciting, isn’t it?)
Jazz laughs. Light and airy.
“Have you finally lost your mind?” Allocer asks.
Jazz bursts into belly-clutching guffaws, doubling right over, even wiping away the tears building up in his eyes. “Soyo’s up to some mischief! He definitely is!”
Purson Soi stares up at the sky. Contemplating his life decisions. Rethinking everything. His blood is cold and his eyes are blank and empty with numb resignation.
Why? He thinks. Why am I on the rankings?
He didn’t submit more points than what he strictly needed.
He sits down.
“Am I just bad at math? I could’ve sworn. No, I definitely was. I didn’t want to stand out, but I wanted to pass the test, so I just submitted the points that I stole from Soyo and slacked off trying to hide anytime else. But now I’m topping the ranks? In the top ten? How? Why? Soyo could hunt much more dangerous things in the daylight while chasing after me. I’m only taking a fourth of his hunts.”
It doesn’t make sense. This is so nervewrecking. He’s going to cry. Probably. Maybe. He’s not feeling any tears yet but this feels like a bawl into the ground type of situation.
He’s bad with attention. He’s a Purson, for Devi’s sake. He legally can’t stand out. Literally. Metaphorically. Actually. Whatever the superlative of genuinely is supposed to be for this context. Standing out is not his thing, it’s a Ronove thing.
He even has a Detection Warding Cloak on! He’s supposed to be the most invisible he’s ever been since his birth! And he’s standing out the most he’s ever in his entire school year!
…which isn’t very long yet but that’s not the point.
This is the first practical test! What’s he doing, standing out! He should just do the bare minimum and pass like a Purson but somehow he messed up and—
“Wait… how many points is Soyo-kun at right now?”
“Just 666.”
Purson nearly launches himself headfirst into the tree. His knees sag as he nearly dies from heart attack, but he recovers enough to point at Soyo and accuse with the first nonsense that comes up his throat. It doesn’t even go through his head, it comes right out of bullshit central straight onto his tongue, “it’s my turn to hunt you! Go away!”
Soyo stares at him past his blindfold.
“How are you doing that blind?”
Soyo keeps staring. And then his lips curl right up into a bright, shit-eating grin. His ears twitch and his tails wags, like a playful menace puppy looking for trouble.
“Stop smiling, you’re freaking me out—” Purson stops as the words finally register. “You only have… six-hundred points? Three digits? That’s not… one of those plants you hunted in the night was four hundred points, and I only took one of them. You could’ve hunted several dozen!”
Soyo beams, “and I submitted them all in your name! I’m a Vassago, so when I told them we were a team, they just let me do whatever I wanted!”
Purson thinks, dumbly, oh, yeah. That makes sense. That makes the numbers make a lot more sense. He’s actually a little bewildered he hadn’t made that connection— if he handed in everything Soyo hunted in the night that Purson saw him hunt, he’d have about 7,000 points.
“Huh,” disbelievingly, Purson is speechless. Someone’s managed to render him speechless. “Huuuuh? Huh. What. But. HUH?”
“What is Detection Warding’s weakness?” Soyo asks, rhetorical, his feet together. He leans in, like a puppy with a bird under its paw, “it’s fame.”
Right.
Neither of them really care about passing this practical test and raising their rank over it. Hell, it’s not even about scores and points anymore, and Kalego likely won’t really touch their collections, either.
From the day Kalego pit them against each other, they’ve only had one thing on their minds— how do they make each other’s lives as miserable as possible?
How do I fuck this guy over?
It’s petty, irritating, and so, so infuriating.
(So why is Purson grinning in response?)
“You got me, you stupid dog,” Purson acknowledges. “Self sabotage just to catch me off guard? Well, two can play at that game. Let’s see what Sir Kalego does when we’re both disqualified and all the points are voided!”
Purson disappears.
Soyo sidesteps a hand snagging him from behind, it grazes his cloak and doesn’t get close enough. Purson’s visage disappears once more, and Soyo backs up just a little more to regathers his bearings—
—he trips over a root, stumbling over his bad foot.
Purson takes the chance, throwing himself forward— Soyo’s arms coil around the tree roots, flipping his body over his head and onto all fours, sliding a cross over his own chest to get his feet out of the way. Purson’s hand still lands on the loose edge of his blindfold’s strings, and as Soyo dragged his feet under himself, the cloth comes apart.
His eyes are exposed.
Purson Soi is gone.
Soyo laughs. “I guess it doesn’t matter whose turn it is to hunt!” he decides. He might be forgetting something— oh, he wanted to check on Iruma. But— hey, this is so much more fun! Who cares about trouble right now?
Iruma will be just fine.
(Is he forgetting something else?)
Soyo stops. With his eyes open for the first time in weeks, he takes in the sights— breathes in the air that feels crisper. He can tell his senses are getting more enhanced, and the amount of information that comes in, not merely because of his power, but simply the difference in the way the plants click their bulbs differently when someone is near. The way the ground whimpers at the approach of stronger demons, the shiver of the leaves as something amiss occurs upwind.
Something’s wrong.
There’s too much to take in, now that he has his eyes back to understand what he’s smelling, hearing, tasting, and feeling.
The information in the colours lead him forward.
Forward, into a territory he knew better than to traverse— the trail is cut off by magic, clashed between the pungent demonic smile that no composure could hide.
“Something’s here.”
He says, to the nothing that is still lingering around.
He has to go find the something that his senses are warning him about. Not as a student participant of this Harvest Festival looking for prey to hunt.
But as a Vassago, seeking out the signs of imbalance in the Netherworld.
(Is that a demon near their origins?)
He thinks back, to the memories he’d long ignored in favor of all the other wonders he’d experienced in this life. There was something he was forgetting about this Harvest Festival.
An intruder.
That’s right. Orobas causes trouble in this festival, doesn’t he? He doesn’t do it alone. Who was he with? Who was pulling the strings behind him?
Soyo’s heart jumps. His hands tremble even as fists, and his feet waver— but this isn’t a horrible feeling. It’s the opposite.
It’s excitement.
Sir Kalego had the right idea about this entire training.
Rather than plants and beasts or legendary seeds— Soyo’s always at his peak performance when he’s hunting down fellow demons. Who cares about ingredients? In a true harvest festival, there is no greater prize than reaping fellow demons in the name of ambition.
“Let’s get disqualified, Soi-soi!” Soyo calls out, loud and bursting with enthusiasm. “Together— oh, but I’m gonna go first!”
“What?” there’s a crunch of leaves underfoot. “No, it’s going to be me first!”
Purson doesn’t show himself, but when Soyo takes off running, there are steps right behind his own. They’re neither arbiters, tamers, nor farmers. Purson Soi and Vassago Soyo are hunters.
They’re not going to be satisfied with just any boring prey.