a demon only another could love

Even in demonified death, there are things - people, purposes - that don't make sense. You would think, Slime theorizes, that if humans' life makes no sense, always contradicting itself and oozing into spaces it shouldn't, shouldn't demons' death be the opposite? Just as Knowledge and Life are two halves of a whole.

Something like that. Something crotchety and foul like that, and needlessly pessimistic. Something stupid.

Like the Preta. Unprincipled, greedy buggers. No sense of proportion. What they should do is just give in and inure themselves to it, as much as a demon ever can. Accept it as fact, that that nagging feelings is just another haze of the netherworld. It's a curse? Yeah, it's a curse. But they're all damned. That's the point. Ugh, law and chaos...

But Preta insist upon subsisting, even when their bodies never find satisfaction. They gather in groups so unlike a Legion, cackling woodenly and blaming each every other on the collective hunger of the group - leaving those others out to dry when they never return, even. Talk about wasting time puzzling over useless shit.

And still, Slime finds some envy in the situation. Moreover, some judgement to be harvested and spat.

"yOu hAvE a fOrM. yOu cAn'T diSsOLvE." Can't dissolve, can't die, so you gotta keep struggling. "yOu'rE tHe sAmE sPiRiT yOu aLwAyS wErE," it mutters and mutters and mutters, magmaw sloshing about with gelatinous fervor. "i dOn'T gEt yOu cHuMpS. wHy nOt dEcOrAtE iT wiTh sOmEtHiNg sHiNy?!"

Why be incomplete, imperfect? Why continue to struggle like that? If you're not born branded a failure of circumstance.

And so unbalanced - knock-kneed, funny-legged, tuft-headed, beady-eyed. An unstable, nonsensical creature, bobbling along the desolate roadways of Tamachi without even the brains to break into a vending machine.

And yet, hopelessly distended.

"nOt yOu wiTh tHe fUcKiN' gUt..."

Would a Slime have a gut, if gravity didn't drag it and its extremities down to the hot-sand ground to melt and get marbled?

Whatever. The demon haunt is just as nondescript as the rest of Minato. Pretty soon, the Nahobino's moved on to darker demons, and left their stock full of the basic, multi-element-weak critters they began their journey with. Doesn't even fuse them, since everything else, yet, is still found so easily around.

Slime's got nothing better to do than muck around in the sun all day, listening to Gaki titter.

Neko Shogun and Cait Sith, occasional visitors, it ignores. Too peppy, too self-possessed. Whenever Pixie deigns to flit in, she's hanging around Onmoraki and Mandrake - kids.

Gaki kicks his legs and snorts, irritatingly grotesque in a way Slime can't parse.

"The lowest of the low, huh? There's a good Slime... Find anything edible in the cracks, there?"

"wHy dOn'T yOu lOoK fOr yOuRsElF?"

Gaki grins, gape-toothed and gap-gummed. "Hehe...well, but you're always so fetching for the Nahobino. Any 'piece of shit' you find and don't want, you pass off." With a flick of his ever-limp wrist, he jangles his bangles. "Real thoughtful of ya. I wish me 'n' the boys were so nice."

Grr... "nIcE - i'M nOT niCe. nEvEr!"

"But we forget," Gaki continues, ignoring his petulant companion, "since we're so hungry. We can't think of nothin' but where the next crumb's gonna come from. When the Nahobino brought us that sake and dango...yeah, sure, demigods are as demigods'll be. Don't make no never mind to us."

Now it's Slime's turn to snort in semantic derision. "i tHoUgHt yOu sAiD yOu jUmPeD tHeM fOr mOrE. sOmE gRaTiTuDe."

"Of course we did! When there's a pack of us, and only one of them, we gotta look out for our buds. It's all we can do."

Scowling, Slime gurgles over and shifts its mouth up to latch onto the Haunt talisman hanging from Gaki's overstretched right ear.

"Hey, hey! What's all this about?!"

"iF yOu'Re nEvEr gOnNa gEt eNoUgH tO eAt, tHeN wHaDDyA cArE iF i eAt yOu?"

"You're foul!" Gaki exclaims, as if it's a revelation. "I don't taste good, anyway - only bones left here, see?" He gives a jiggle of his empty belly, which doesn't bounce, to prove it.

"sUrE, sUrE. iT's tHe oNLy wAy i kNoW i cAn kEeP yOu aRoUnD, pUnK."

Since Slime's so good at acting contemptible, it has to exercise its fair share of displaying contempt ever now and then, but when that's over with, it doesn't like to lack for companionship any more than any other demon, species or race.

Just then, gripped by the moment's pang of hunger, Gaki tenses, only to fall somewhat limp, as if accepting his fate to drawl within the confines of Slime's amorphous jaw.

"yOu'LL bE mY liTTlE tRoPhY...eEheHeE!"

Slowly, surely, Gaki descends from his erstwhile rock perch to sit atop the crown of Slime's head, as if he's now a toupee for the least insecure gentlefoul remaining in all of Tokyo.

"You're a real weird fellow, you know that? You know you'll drop me for the next shiny thing you find."

"yOu dOn'T kNoW tHaT. i miGHt jUsT fiND sOmE jEllY oR a mUsCLe dRiNk."

Gaki frowns. "And you'd just let me have it?" He wobbles in the precarious perch, waiting for Slime to get emphatic and toss him off. As it is, his talismans are drooping.

But it simply doesn't happen. "oH, i'Ve aLrEaDy hAd mY fiLL."